From Dad Jokes to DIY: Dude Dad Unplugged!

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Welcome to the around the house show, your trusted source for everything about your home.

Thanks for joining us.

Today we have got Taylor Calis, the dude dad on the show.

Welcome to around the House brother.

Hey, thanks for having me, Eric.

This is going to be a lot of fun, man, because I tell you what, you have changed the world of home improvement with your comedy slash reality.

And man, you're doing a public service and making people laugh, which I think is awesome.

I appreciate that.

I wasn't trying to change the world.

I was just trying to change a couple of light bulbs.

But I guess you do it wrong long enough and people start to relate.

Dude, it's amazing.

It's amazing.

I got to ask you though, I mean if, if people don't know who you are out there, we'll get into that here in a little bit.

But how did you get started with all this?

Because you don't just fall into this.

This is one of those things I always say, oh, it's an overnight success that was 10 years, right?

That usually how that works?

Yeah, no, there's no overnight success.

I actually I gave it like a TED talk one time about my success and there was all these points where it's like, was, was this when I made it?

Was this when I, when was the corner turned?

And there was so many moments that were the culmination of it building into something that you can't define.

One moment.

There's some people that have that.

Like I posted my first video and it went viral and then I just became huge.

Like that was not me.

Yeah, yeah, that was not me.

I, I, my first year I put out 50 videos in one year and got to 2, 000 followers on Facebook and, but it was like a loyal 2,000 followers.

And then the next year I went from 2,000 to a hundred thousand and then the next year after that a hundred thousand to a million.

So.

But it all started because of my, I was in Los Angeles trying to be an actor doing a lot of non profit gigs.

And bands.

We had a lot of non profit band gigs too.

So.

Yeah, exactly.

That T shirt money doesn't go very far.

Especially when the van needs to Be repaired all the time, too.

And there's stories about that.

I was in a band back in college, too, so I. I feel you there a little bit.

We never.

We were never big enough to have a.

A band or a van, though.

We had a minivan.

Yeah, we had a minivan.

There we go.

But anyway, so once my wife got pregnant, I knew that, like, the whole Hollywood thing just might not be a good thing that's going to be able to support the family.

So I started the channel just as a way to stay creative while being a dad.

And it really was just like.

It was my answer to, like, hey, if we have to leave Hollywood, we have to leave the biz.

At least I'm going to have this thing that is my creative outlet.

And I just kind of threw myself into it, had a lot of fun with it, and it was just something I love to do.

And before I knew it, it was starting to take off.

And then all of a sudden found a way to make some money from it.

And I just.

Then we said goodbye to Hollywood, and we're like, we got our own Hollywood now.

Nice.

How did your wife play a part in that?

Because I tell you what, spouses can be so supportive, and for some people out there, maybe not as much, but it seems like you guys got a great thing going.

Yeah, I.

There's.

I say this in my live show that.

That I would not be able to have done this without Heidi.

Like, she supported me from the very beginning.

There was a point where I was working I don't know how many different side jobs while making a video every week, while trying to be a good dad, while still auditioning whenever I could.

And she was working full time nonprofit, making not much.

And I kind of broke down.

I was like, I can't keep doing all this.

I can't.

I have to cut something out of my schedule.

And this is.

This is in that, like, 3,000 followers day and we making nothing from it.

But she stopped me before I could even finish what I was saying and said, you can't quit, dude.

Dad.

You have to keep going.

She believed in me before I did.

So for that, I will always be eternally grateful to her.

But, yeah, she could have very easily just been like, you bum, go get a job.

Support these kids.

Because, yeah, we were pregnant with our second one at the time, too, man.

She.

All her.

All her eggs were in my baskets.

Nice.

Yeah, it gives me chills because I hit that spot probably two years ago where I was doing the.

The national radio show podcast and I got myself into a TV deal where I was doing an hour of TV show 52 weeks a year on top of everything else and I was just.

John remembers that I was just 100% burnt out doing 70 hour weeks and a break was four hours on a Sunday.

And it's just you hit that point of like something's got to give because I'm not going to live through this just pushing too hard.

I'm going to get sick, I'm going to get hurt, I'm going to do something bad which gets me injured.

So nobody wants that.

But it's nice when you figure out and go wait a minute, here we are, here's the plan.

And off you went.

And hats off to you man for you guys creating some just amazing content out there that I think what's cool is you guys hit so many different people from families to home improvement to comedy.

Don't worry, we are just getting started with dude dad.

But it's time for us to go out to our weekly tip from our friends at Red Wing.

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Hey guys, this is Eric G from around the house with a critical safety tip.

Handling electricity the right way so those sneaky zaps don't turn your simple project into a shocking disaster.

Never overload a single outlet by daisy chaining power strips or extension cords.

Spread the load across multiple outlets and circuits or use a heavy duty surge protector rated for your needs.

In wet areas like bathrooms, kitchens and outdoors.

Always plug into GFCI outlets.

They constantly monitor the current and trip instantly if they detect a ground fault cutting power before a dangerous shock can occur.

If you're doing any wiring work, kill the power to the main breaker box.

First.

Use a non contact voltage tester to quickly detect if power is still present.

Then double check it with a voltage meter to confirm there's zero dangerous voltage.

Never assume label your breakers clearly and always use insulated tools with rubber grips.

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Thanks guys.

Let's get back to our conversation with Taylor or as everyone knows him do.

Dad, was there something that you did that was like one of your skits or bits or whatever you guys do that you went, wow, that hit harder than I thought it would.

Yeah, I mean really, the, the, all the different types of videos we make really comes back to our, our pre, pre recording conversation of adhd.

And I didn't understand what ADHD was when I started the channel.

I just got diagnosed a few years ago.

But it really comes down to like I'm a person that has a lot of different interests and cannot be.

If I have, if I have the choice which when you start your own thing you do.

I can't do the same thing week in and week out because I'll go nuts.

It doesn't feed me creatively to do the same thing over and over again.

So I love comedy.

I love to build things.

I love sitting from the camera and getting a little more vulnerable and like telling stories that way.

So having like a lot of different avenues to be creative and has, it's been a lot of fun and I think it, sometimes it potentially hurts us because everyone's feeds are just full of whatever they want.

You just follow people for like I like that one thing he does and they follow you for that.

And then so like somebody might follow me because they love the renovations I did in my house and then they'll come back the next day and I'm in their feet again.

But now I'm dressed as my wife screaming at the kids and they're like, what in the hell is this?

But it is what it is.

It's a double edged sword sword, but it's my sword to fall on.

So I don't know.

Seeing your target dad's bit, I think every married guy out there can just about or in a relationship guy can relate to that going, oh you want to go to Target?

Great, I'll wait in the car.

Yeah, that's, that was one of the, the early days of, of social media, at least for me.

I think that was maybe like three years in or something like that.

But to find a bit that hadn't been overdone yet.

But I had that idea in my pocket for a little while and then I started kind of collaborating with these other guys and then there was an opportunity to get everybody all in the same place at once.

Some of them had never met.

Don't change that dial around the house.

We'll be back with more from Dude Dad.

Welcome back to the around the house show.

To find out more, head to our website@aroundthehouse online.com.

Now let's head back into the conversation with dude dad.

But to find a bit that hadn't been overdone yet.

But I had that idea in my pocket for a little while, and then I started kind of collaborating with these other guys, and then there was an opportunity to get everybody all in the same place at once.

Some of them had never met, and I was like, I got this idea.

And they're all like, yeah, it could work.

But they all are so great in their own ways.

And to put it all together and then have it be relatable not just to the dads that wait in the car, but also to the wives.

It just hit so many demographics.

It got like 80 million views on Facebook and.

But we.

It wasn't with Target.

Target had no idea.

Had no idea.

You're in the parking lot filming.

And then four years later.

It took four years, but all of a sudden, now at this point, we all have agents, and so four years later, our agents all get a call.

Nice.

Target.

Saying, hey, we want to bring back the husbands of Target and do another video.

And so we end up shooting this thing around the super bowl with Matt Stafford.

Nice.

We did.

I think we've done, like, four of them now.

That is awesome.

It just is such a, like, awesome, like, I don't know, full circle moment for all of us.

No kidding.

In that parking lot.

But now it's not just us trying to, like, hide that we're shooting something now.

There's a crew of, like, 40 people trying to help us make our dumb skit.

And we're all like, hey, guys, we could just do that.

Okay, all right, whatever.

That's fine.

Yeah, hold the traffic.

Bring in the extras.

Okay.

So weird.

Yeah.

It is so different when you go from shooting your own content to having all the crew there and all the different monitors and craft services and everything else.

And it gets pretty wild when you see that happening.

Yeah, it's a different beast too.

And I'd been.

I'd done stuff like that before in back in my early days, but it's definitely a different experience when you go from it just being you and your bodies.

Yeah.

Horsing around to now, like, there's a whole crew of people watching you, and the cameras are way bigger and there's a director and all of the things.

For me, it's hard to.

To.

To shut up.

I'm like oh, what if.

Actually what if not your space.

Totally.

And what's.

It's got to be interesting for you too is to go in and.

And when you're doing that to all of a sudden I mean you've got these crews and it's like you're back into Hollywood again right when you were doing stuff with that.

So Taylor, it's got to be interesting.

It's almost like a full circle thing of coming back to the.

Wow.

Now I'm back in Hollywood again.

Back to the full production stuff 100%.

Like that flight because I took that flight back to Los Angeles so many times because I'm originally from South Dakota and I always remember like flying in and seeing the city below you and just immediately getting anxious because the grind is just so intense and the.

And like you have to have a certain level of stupidity to you to chase that dream that you're just like no, no.

I'm.

Just that intense anxiety I felt every time I flew back in but then this was like the first time ever flying back in that I did not feel that I was just like yeah, I'm supposed to be here.

I'm going to do something.

It was just a very surreal moment for sure.

That's cool.

And so really all of a sudden you were on if I remember.

Weren't you with the holderness on that one too?

Were you working with them?

Yep.

Yeah, they're in that.

Yeah.

Our.

Our pen is.

Anyway.

Yeah.

Funny story with pen.

I went back and watched an HDTV video that I was in this episode and I was trying to get back then Johnny in this but he was like nope, not doing it.

And he sent his guy to it.

But I went back to watch it because I haven't watched it in 20 years.

Went back to watch.

It was so horrible to watch.

And Penn was the host.

My gosh, what's this show?

So it's a show called Designer Finals that was on HDTV 20 something years ago.

He looks like a kid.

And I just started laughing and my girlfriend's like what are you laughing about?

I'm like look at this.

It's the host back then.

And I'm in it and I'm like oh my gosh, what a weird moment that is.

I just text him that that's.

I gotta.

I gotta see this.

So it pretty funny.

Pretty funny.

One of those things where you just go holy smokes.

But that's the world of media out there too, though.

Is that how.

It's such a small world, huh?

And a big one at the same time.

Yeah, we.

We shot a show in Knoxville, Tennessee with this production company called River Media.

Turns out they had shot a show with Charlie as the host, like years before that.

Wow.

Yeah, so.

And he hated it and didn't want anyone to see it.

It was this weird drama thing, but it didn't fit his personality at all.

Yeah, I was the design expert and they were grabbing design students out of the Rocky Mountain in Denver, the Colorado School of Design there, I think it was Rocky Mountain School of Design.

And they were putting them in the first Real World thing.

And I was the actually the design expert on the show because it was a friend of mine that I'd worked with.

And so she's like, do you want to come help me?

I'm like, sure.

And so it was one of those.

And Real World MTV had just wrapped and so they were putting all the Real World people that were producing that on that to make a drama filled television show with brand new designers.

And so it was pretty funny to watch, but.

And so you've gone from South Dakota to Hollywood.

Hollywood, basically.

And then back out to Colorado.

Yeah, we had some friends in Colorado and it just seemed like a good place to land.

We like the outdoor recreation and it's been awesome.

We bought a house sight unseen and spent basically five years redoing the entire thing and then adding on to it.

It's been a journey, man.

So we're like, this is huge.

And then we just kept making babies and needed more space for all of them.

But at that point, like, we loved our neighborhood, we loved our neighbors.

Tons of kids who were like, it's gonna be way cheaper if we just add on.

And then it'll just take a couple more days.

All in all, it took five months from beginning to end.

And I generaled the projects.

I did the framing and the siding and a bunch of random stuff, but we lived in it the entire time.

And they'd done that.

My kids weren't in it.

I think a total of three weeks they were gone out of the five months.

My kids and my wife were gone about three weeks and I was gone for about 10 days through that whole five months.

So there was definitely, I mean, it just goes to show, like, me and my wife will make it through anything.

Like there's no chance of divorce.

Like, yeah, you guys made it.

Yeah, we dealt with the sheetrock dust.

All of the things I think that's.

What ran my ex wife off was the sheetrock dust.

You want to know, listeners, if you really got something, fill your, your house full of sheetrock dust and see how she responds.

You can handle that.

It's real life.

It's gold.

Yeah, it's gold.

Now I've.

Now my girlfriend, now she's got.

She could go out and run the lathe.

So I'm, I'm okay with it.

She understands that what things are, that's its own mess.

Absolutely.

But it is, it is its own mess.

And I do like watching YouTube videos where things in the lathe go sideways, especially when they're big metal objects.

That gets kind of wild, dude.

Yeah, those things could be pretty scary.

Exactly what you're doing.

So I gotta ask you, what projects don't you have done around the house that are on your top five list right now that you gotta get knocked out?

Currently, I'm redoing our mailbox because we got a DM from one of our temporary mailman.

He's like, fills in once in a while and he goes, hey, I love what you did with the house.

The house is beautiful.

But your mailbox is so rickety and boring.

You're just roasting my mailbox.

Don't change that dial around the house.

We'll be back with more from Dude Dad.

Welcome back to the around the house show.

To find out more, head to our website ataroundthe house online dot com.

Now let's head back into the conversation with Dude Dad.

Currently I'm redoing our mailbox because we got a DM from one of our temporary mailman.

He like fills in once in a while and he goes, hey, I love what you did with the house.

The house is beautiful.

But your mailbox is so rickety and boring.

You're just roasting my mailbox.

So I, I got to keep them.

Happy because there is a thing called going postal.

So you kind of got to keep those guys in check trying to make.

Sure it doesn't go postal.

So what we did, I designed a new mailbox that's not only beautiful, not only has little lights above the.

The house numbers, but when you open, sings the mailman song from Blues Clues.

Oh, epic.

Yeah, Beck.

Let's see what he has to say about that.

Let's see what the next dm says.

Actually built a mailbox where we got a letter saying your mailbox is too sturdy.

Yeah, I've.

I'm hoping that's not gonna happen because mine's pretty sturdy.

Yeah.

So I was working at my buddy's winery, and these kids kept coming.

But how do they decide that it's too sturdy?

They go and, like wiggle it.

I don't know.

But mine was built, so I built.

I'll tell you the backstory on it first.

So we had kids coming by with bats busting up mailboxes all the time on that road at his winery.

And he's like, can you make a sturdy mailbox and handle it?

All right, we're paid by the hour.

Let's go do that.

So we went out and found some well casing that was a 12 inch well casing that's like 3, 8 inch thick casing and an I beam.

Welded them together, and it was big enough to put the commercial style mailbox in it.

We welded it and put it in about half a yard of concrete in the ground.

And about four days later, I got a text.

Yeah, here's what happened.

The kids went by with the aluminum bat to hit it again.

Hadn't noticed that they had changed.

And the aluminum bat was about like a right winger's hockey stick at the end.

And there was window glass all over the road.

Bounced off, bounced off.

And there was a report that there was a kid at school that had a broken wrist and another kid that was in for a head injury because the bat came back and hit the kid in the car behind him through the window.

Wow.

And we got a thing going.

Hey, you guys might want to make it at least so somebody runs into this thing by accident that it doesn't kill them.

And I went.

Hadn't engineered that part of it.

So we actually went down and cut it off at the ground and then welded some plates on it with a couple bolts so in case somebody did hit it that it would break away.

It wasn't a death trap for a driver.

Yeah, yeah.

That's.

It was.

They don't even build, like, railings on bridges that good.

We had the materials and we were having fun.

And we'll.

We'll overbuild it.

Absolutely.

Yeah.

Mailbox, Pull it out, turn into a birdhouse.

That is awesome.

But that's.

That's cool.

I love your mailbox idea, man.

That is awesome.

Your mailman's going to freak out with that one.

Yeah, I need to put a GoPro in the back of that so you can get some video?

Yeah, that's the plan.

I've gotta, like, put some GoPros up and then just camp out all day waiting for the mailman, even though I know he's not going to bring me anything good.

It's nothing but bills.

Oh, geez.

The California guys, they'll track you down for life.

Oh, yeah.

They want me for the years that I didn't live there.

I'm like, guys, didn't live there.

Wasn't there.

And you didn't make money when you were living there.

So what are they looking for?

They're looking for the money that I made when I wasn't living there.

Absolutely.

Yeah.

All right.

So you've been going on tour, man, and I see it's all over my feed here because I'm in Portland, Oregon.

So I see you're in Tacoma and Salem, Oregon.

I see.

And then going back to, like Boulder.

Right.

Final leg of the tour.

We do about 20, 22 shows a year.

Me and my wife do the show together.

She's got a part in it.

But yeah, it's just a fun comedy show for parents to come out.

It's a little bit edgier than our normal content, but pretty much the same.

But we just say that because it's more geared for parents than for parents to bring their kids.

So it's a good date night show.

There we go.

Yes, but it's a whole lot of fun.

We've been having a blast with it.

There's nothing, nothing more energizing than like delivering jokes live to a crowd.

You get used to posting videos and everything just becomes reading comments and looking at numbers and this and that.

But when you can actually go out on the road and, and see real people, it's.

It's a whole other ball game, man.

It's got to be great on the energy side because I'm so used to doing in front of a camera, right.

And like we're doing here, the radio.

There's no audience that's sitting here, right here.

So you don't get that feedback.

But now you get to go out there and do kind of the comedian dream and fill up a theater with people and have a good time and, and see what hits and what doesn't.

Yeah, exactly.

The stuff that hits is way more fun than the stuff that doesn't hit.

But if you're, if you're from Oregon or Washington, I'll let you know that we've weeded out all this stuff that doesn't hit by now.

So there you go, perfect stuff.

Best of.

Yes.

So, yeah, no, it's.

It's a whole lot of fun.

And it is interesting, like, how, like, the.

The live audience changes, you know, everything.

Like, we're.

When we go back to Boulder, we're shooting the.

The special, we're going to be taping it, and I'm going through, like, with the producer who's in charge of the T, and he's like, at the end of the show, we will probably have you go back and do some of the same jokes again if we didn't get it quite right or whatever.

I'm like, oh, just do that, like, after everyone leaves or something.

He's like, no, you have to do it with the audience again, because your delivery will be completely different if no one's there.

And I'm like, I don't know.

He's like, no, you have to have the crowd.

I'm like, all right.

Okay.

So it goes to show you just how important that live audience is.

Yeah, it is.

One of the secrets I've seen people do is they'll go up and they'll do two or three shows, wear the same shirt, and then just grab the best of those three sets.

And I saw Janet Jackson do a video that way when I was in Tacoma, and she did a black cat video.

And they just did the video.

They did the song three times live and went, good enough.

Let's go.

Yeah.

And they made that work.

Yeah.

We'll be doing two in one night, which is a whole other deal to do two shows in one night.

Exhausting.

Oh, yeah.

Because you.

You leave it all out there, and then you get backstage, you go, oh, we got another show in, like, 40 minutes.

You start back up again.

So do you notice that some jokes hit differently in certain areas than parts of the country?

Then is there a regional thing going on?

100%.

And you never really know what the thing will be at each place.

But I have my certain bits that are always bangers, right?

And then some towns, it's like, oh, that one wasn't the banger here.

Like, they always still do good.

Some of them, you get those pops where you have to, like, wait and hold for the audience to settle down.

And then other cities, that's.

It's not there, you're like, yeah, okay.

Yeah.

And then it'll be something else.

When you do it enough, you start to hear the differences.

And, like, the worst is when you come off of a really good city and then go to, like, a good city because you're like.

Because You.

The second show is a great show, but you just came off of like just ever.

So now you're like, wait, what's wrong with you guys?

Probably just got too high expectations off of last night.

Yeah.

The good news is, is you got.

Comedy is big in the Pacific Northwest when you come up here.

So that's good.

There's a lot of good stuff that happens up here.

And two, you can always make fun of homeless in 10 cities up here, and it's always a banger.

So.

Yeah, actually I literally saw a bit on that this morning.

Somebody making fun of Portland.

Yeah, it's easy to do.

That's a little fruit here.

And we all know it.

We're all used to it.

So it's, it's.

And 95% of it is true.

So that's even the worst part of it is it's like, you're not wrong.

Let's laugh about it.

So at least you guys can laugh at yourselves.

Oh, yeah.

Otherwise we'd be crying.

So that's just kind of what we have to do to.

To survive.

You guys can.

But can everybody in Portland laugh at themselves?

Yeah, there's always that group.

Right?

There's the.

There's the Karen character out there.

That's the.

Yeah, the one that always is that it's way too uptight, that can't laugh at anything.

So they probably shouldn't be at the comedy show to begin with.

So what other projects do you got coming on around the house?

I mean, you've got those to finish, but you got any other additions or you're doing a garage edition.

So you have a place to put that pink wrapped Chevy truck of yours?

No, the pink wraps probably coming off before too long.

It started.

Just started peel off with the pressure washer the other day.

I've got a couple of projects coming up this summer.

The Red Bull soapbox race is coming to Denver.

We entered that, so hopefully going to be building a car for that.

And then I also, like, I couldn't decide what I wanted to do for the Red Bull soapbox race.

And one of my ideas was to make a ticket old jet ski and put wheels on it and then a rapid like a Bay wash jet Ski.

But then I was worried about weight and stuff because the jet ski hull already is really heavy.

And I also wanted to put a motor in it afterwards.

I'm like, then I'll have to build it twice.

So then I just decided after I'd already got a jet Ski off a dude for 200, I'm like, well, you know what?

That'll just be another.

Yeah.

So now I have, like, a go kart, really old crappy jet ski just hanging out in the office waiting for me to do something with them.

So I'm gonna turn a jet ski into a go kart this summer, as well as build.

Build a.

A car for the soapbox race.

So how do you manage all those day two projects, as I call them, the Jet Ski body and that kind of stuff that comes in, because as somebody with adhd, I have a plan for that.

It just.

It's not today.

How do you manage that yourself?

I'm looking for tips.

I don't know.

You put it where you can't.

You put it where you have to step over it, then you either got to get it done or you got to get rid of it.

If you tuck it away, it's going to stay there for a long time.

No, avoid getting the second storage unit.

That's the main thing.

Cleaning out my second storage unit now because I sold my house.

Do it.

You should cut down one storage unit.

Yeah.

We had a lot of fun building our.

Our golf cart into things.

Last year it was a pirate ship for Halloween, and then it was a Santa sleigh for Christmas, and it's still Santa's sleigh right now because we don't know what the next thing is for it.

Nice.

Yeah, I loved your Stranger Things Halloween thing that you did a year or two back.

Yeah, we had a lot of fun with that.

The.

The mind flayer.

Mind Flayer Freyer.

It's been a long enough that now I've forgotten.

I think it's.

But yeah, it's the opposite of whatever I said in the video.

I got roasted.

That was my favorite because it was just this huge thing in our front yard, and it was so ominous, and it only took a day to build, which, man, I know it's for me, that's a huge win because I normally get myself sucked into things that take two weeks.

Man, that show hit home with me because my dad worked for the Department of Energy and was doing CIA stuff as a kid growing up next to the Hanford Nuclear reservation where they had all those secret places.

Yeah, I remember after my dad retired, he was always going like, hey, we always, like, hid things in malls.

We never hid things.

And so my brother and I were watching Stranger Things and we'd be texting each other going, dad talked about this.

And so it was.

There was a really weird realism to that in some weird ways.

That.

And being A child of the 80s, it kind of.

There's a lot of things that hit home.

I mean, any show that's staged in the 80s or 90s, I feel like, are so nostalgic for.

For people our age.

But me and my wife are talking about it like it really was the best time to be a kid because it's when technology got good enough that it was adding to our lives in a positive way, but it wasn't good enough yet that it was hurting our lives in a negative way.

Right.

Like we started getting cell phones that you maybe worked in the car, or you could maybe get a hold of people easier.

Right.

So it made things more convenient, but we weren't tied to them.

And now obligated to be connected with everyone like we are now, where now you just can't.

Yeah, there's no.

There's no getting away.

You're just obligated to do so many more things, and life has to move so much faster now.

Oh, amen.

And.

And I'm alive because of it.

Because there were so many stupid things I did as a kid.

Jumping bikes or doing.

Jumping off cliffs.

If we had said, hey, let's get take two, we probably would have died.

Yeah, that would have been the thing, you know, hey, let's do that again and see if we get a better shot.

And things would have happened.

That's crazy.

The dumb things that we did that we didn't even get footage of.

We're doing it for the high of the moment.

I mean, in high school, we had these sandstone cliffs.

We would jump off in the dark into the Snake River.

So people would drive up there with their cars and trucks.

We.

There are trucks with the lights on.

And after drinking a few beers in high school, we'd go jumping off the cliff into the dark abyss into the middle of the night.

And.

And then you hope that your feet were down, but you really couldn't tell.

And then the water would sneak up on you.

And I look back now and thinking, my kids doing that or something, I was just like, how did we live to tell about it?

I think it's just because we didn't have anybody trying to film it.

We had.

I got my first camcorder when I was, I think, like, 11 or something to.

To film our BMX stunts.

But we didn't have any money.

So me and my brother, when we would get to the end of a DV tape, we just rewind it and start taping again.

So, like, we don't have any of the early footage.

I I like told my mom this and she obviously feels bad.

She's like, I could have bought you a few tapes.

I know, I wish.

But like back then you just went with whatever you had.

Oh yeah.

That would have been a good 12 year old highlight reel, right?

I mean it would.

It's mostly us crashing, but still would have been delightful.

So what's next for you, brother?

You guys have been doing just everything.

You and your wife and the, you got the kids growing up, which I think as the kids grow up is going to give you additional content.

The kids get older, right?

Yeah, the content changes every day.

We are, we're trying to get through this special filming.

Got these last couple shows on the road this weekend, get through the special filming and then bam, we are into summer mode.

Going to try to slow down a little bit.

We got a few events.

We got the Red Bull soapbox race, we got the Potter car bowl where we do like a power wheels race with kids in June.

Then we'll have our, our mini golf open here in Fort Collins in September, which is an event, an event that we've been throwing for the last three years where basically we build one mini golf hole and we get people from the community to build the other mini golf holes.

And this year we're going to have two nine hole courses set up for one weekend at New Belgium Brewing here in Fort Collins.

Nice.

Three days, whole community comes out.

Five bucks to golf.

All the money goes to a local charity.

It's just so fun.

That's awesome.

That's sort of our version of the Red Bull soapbox race.

We saw that.

We're like, I love that.

Yeah.

How do, how do we make our own version of that?

And like mini golf.

Mini golf was fun and like everybody builds their holes differently.

So you come and you just have no idea what to expect.

But it's, it's a blast.

I want to go up and do that thing they do in Alaska on 4th of July.

Have you seen that?

Where they jump the cars into the, into the.

Yeah, off the cliff.

Off the cliff.

And they've got a cable set up.

And I'm like, man, it would be fun to build like a van or something that you would build to take up there just to do that, haul it all the way to Alaska, which would be its own battle.

But it'd be so fun to build something up there and just be a part of that whole thing.

Anything where people are just getting together and building stuff just for the fun of it, the beauty of it.

Like everyone's in responsible to build their own hole and figure out what to do with it afterwards.

But, you know, you're just giving people the opportunity to be a part of something and be creative just for fun.

And the charity is awesome too, because it's all going to a good place.

And.

And it's so much fun when you see that, because then all of a sudden people start going, hey, I'm gonna donate too.

And you get people that are going above and beyond.

And those are awesome stuff too.

Yeah, it's super good.

And then, man, you guys have got to be killing it on your merch.

You guys have got, like the best merch of all time out there with what you're doing.

Yeah, we've got merch on there.

Dudad.com.

All kinds of stuff go out.

Big sales coming up for mother's day and Father's Day.

That's always our kind of big time of the year.

Couple more days, construction got our.

Our.

One of my.

My favorite ads that we've ever done, though, was for our mama bear collection.

But it kind of built off this idea that my wife is like, one of the sweetest people you ever meet, but if you mess with one of her kids, she turns into the mama bear.

So we created these ads where, like, you know, different scenarios where somebody would mess with one of the kids and she would literally turn into a grizzly bear.

We've got, like, this really awesome grizzly bear outfit.

It's turned into a bear and maul you.

It was like super, like, brutal and like over the top.

And not everybody got it, but the people that did get it.

Did you see the bear costume that hit the news this last week?

That there was.

They busted a crime ring because they had a bear costume with real claws in it.

And they were damaging luxury supercars for insurance scams that were.

My God, who's pothead?

Beer drinking, two o' clock in the morning plan.

It's like, hey, guys, I got it.

I got it.

Insurance fraud.

But wait, wait, wait.

With bears?

No, not actual bears.

I'm the bear.

I'm.

You're the bear.

I know a guy.

I know a guy.

He can get us some claws.

Then we can buy the supercars.

That's crazy.

And the insurance company will buy us the new supercars because then we can fix them.

Dude, that's crazy.

It's like a multiple layer YouTube channel.

Start with some.

Start with a Taurus.

Yeah, no, like, start small.

I mean, if I'm the police, I'm going, why are the bears only Attracted to supercars.

Like, I didn't know that bears were into fast cars.

No.

If in the winter time, you've just ruined it because they're in hibernation.

So how did the bear get out and ruin this?

The supercar on December 12th?

Yeah, he didn't anywhere in a five mile radius of here either.

Absolutely.

Pile of bear.

Absolutely.

So, I mean, that was a good one.

That was one.

I just went, are you kidding me?

So that's fantastic.

There's a new skit for you could do.

You could do homeowners, Homeowners insurance scams with that.

So where did that happen at?

I was like, in Florida, someplace weird.

So that fits.

You even have bears in Florida?

That's my next question.

Yeah, that did.

I think they missed a few things that got them busted on that one.

Yeah, you do that up in like Montana.

Maybe that plays better.

Speaking of that, how much hate do you get when you do home improvement projects?

That's always a battle out there.

Yeah, the, the, the trolls.

Oh my gosh.

We call them couch contractors because they're the guys that they are waiting and just watching for you to make a mistake or do something wrong.

So it used to really get under my skin even more than like somebody saying, I'm not funny if so like, that's whatever, like whatever, like whatever.

I'm not your taste of vanilla.

I got it.

But when someone like tells me I did something wrong, that's where I would get way more like in my head.

Because I want, I want to be good at, I want to do things right.

I have a background to a certain extent.

I, I grew up all through high school and college framing houses.

So I, I've been around it a lot, but I haven't done everything.

And I make mistakes.

Just like anybody kind of like realize that, like that I don't have to be an expert.

I can be a DIY guy.

It's almost better when you own your mistakes and say, ah, yeah, I did that wrong.

So we're pulling it apart today and doing it again because that's way more relatable.

Absolutely.

Being the guy that knows exactly how to do it at the end of the day.

Like, what my favorite was some dude clearly not a long time follower was like, he's got people off camera doing all that.

Look at his hands.

He hasn't built any of this.

And, and like I responded the comment with a photo of my hands because they were just like, they were torn up.

I had blisters all opened up all over.

Like my Hands looked the worst they'd ever.

It looked like I just shingled roofs all weekend.

Ye.

Like, it were just.

They were just brutal.

But it was like a.

It was a.

A fun moment of.

They're so good for the algorithm, right?

Yeah.

And we don't play into that stuff too much.

No, but I mean, you don't do it to do it.

I mean, there's guys out there that are doing.

There's guys out there that are doing it wrong to get the clicks.

Oh, yeah.

Those people out there playing the game, you're not one of them.

At the same point, though, there's a thing that I call let's TV finished.

There's like, when Taylor finishes a project, almost when the project is actually done, which it doesn't always.

I mean, there's so many things in this house that are not actually.

They're not done done, but they're TV done.

I always do, you know, from this angle.

Because maybe that piece of trim wasn't finished over there.

Yeah, yeah.

If you look, there's no kickboard.

Oh, actually there's a toe kick there.

Nice.

Oh, must be the other side of the island.

Or Heidi, grab the saw.

So, yeah, Heidi finished it.

And then you got your light up there.

That's tied out of the way.

If that was probably in the way of shooting.

Right.

I mean, that's how that works.

Yeah, that's.

That's all a part.

At a certain point, you become competent, confident enough to just embrace it and know that it's really has become a part of the brand of a couple more days construction and.

Which is just so much more relatable than being perfect at everything.

Absolutely.

Dude.

I've literally had the manufacturer standing there when I've shot stuff, and I get the people say, you're doing it wrong.

And I'm like, I had their engineering team holding pieces and handing them to me.

I guarantee this was done.

This part was done correctly.

There's definitely times where they've gotten it wrong and I was right.

But I didn't know enough that I was like, wait, did I frame that window wrong?

And I went around and around in my head and then.

And then finally find out like, they're fricking wrong.

I did it right.

You're like, that header's right size.

I don't know what you're talking about.

Yeah, yeah, it happens.

But, you know, it's sometimes it.

It's sometimes it's really informative because there.

There's sometimes where people have caught stuff and I'm like, oh, dang.

Thanks, man.

That's good.

That is gonna leak.

There are.

Especially when it gets into, like, weatherproofing, flashing, all that stuff.

I mean, that's its own beast.

And there's sometimes two or three thought processes, depending which construction camp you're on.

And so then you get those guys going, and it's almost like, you know, those guys and girls going out.

It's the Ford Chevy Dodge debate going, okay, come on.

Yeah.

And there's two different types of.

Right.

Yeah, There is the right where it's gonna work.

It's gonna be strong, and it's not gonna leak.

And then there's the.

What does the code say?

And, man, I tell you what, I've had my running with the.

The codes people.

We're good friends now.

We spent a lot of time together.

But there's certain things that they wanted me to do in the.

With the addition that I'm just like, guys, what do we.

What are we doing here?

All these extra anchors and stuff just so the house doesn't blow away.

I'm like, it was never here before.

What are we doing?

Yeah, the rest of the house is going to blow away because it's not tied down that way, but the addition is going to be golden.

I'm like, you know why it's not going to blow away?

Absolutely.

I got a funny one.

I showed up.

This is when I was doing my around the house Northwest television show, and the TV station held a.

A Blazers suite night where advertisers and people got going to come in and hang out the suite and that kind of thing.

This guy comes up, introduces himself, and the first question out is, hey, Eric, what city are you building your projects in?

No, no.

Canada.

Yeah.

I'm like, oh, I live in Lake Oswego.

And he goes, oh, gotcha.

All of them.

Every one of them.

He goes, oh, lead inspector for city of Portland.

That's how I. I move.

We.

We moved here during COVID and the.

The first pro.

The first thing we did was we remodeled this kitchen.

And it was during COVID So they were doing all their, like, virtual stuff through FaceTime, and it was such a joke.

They just like, all right, show me the outlet.

Show me the switch.

Turn it on.

Okay.

All right.

Yeah, you're good to go.

I'm like, what are we doing here?

I stopped pulling permits and projects, and I got about six projects deep before I got a letter in the mail.

Yep.

And essentially, the lead inspector's daughter watches our videos and showed one to her dad, and he Was like, huh?

And did a little digging.

He was the nicest guy, though.

Like letter in the mail saying like that we could get fined up to $3,000 a day until this gets corrected.

And I just immediately call him, like, hey, man, you got me.

Like, he was the nicest guy.

He came, helped me get them retro.

Retroactively.

Permit meant that I had to like, get a structural engineer for a couple of things to sign off on some stuff.

But structure engineers, man, they're your friend because they can write their own code.

They can look at your kids playhouse and go, hey, it's not up to code.

But if you do this, this and this, it's going to be fine.

And then you can do that and you don't have to make the frickin playhouse up to code.

Dude, that is so true.

If you have them on your team, it is the easiest thing because they just got to write a letter and throw a stamp on it.

Yeah.

And they go, oh, more than we do.

So yeah, we're out of here.

Yeah.

And they have the ability to, like, look at something, you know, with their own knowledge and discernment and not just have to follow the code, which is fantastic.

Taylor, we're running out of time.

Let's get people steered to you correctly to find out your channels, your website.

I mean, if you're working in an office situation, they need to buy your caution tape to put around one coworker's desk that thinks they know everything.

We've got caution tape that says, I don't know what I'm doing.

It's really usable in your DIY projects that your husband's working on.

You can wrap that around so people don't get in his way.

Or you can give it to your.

Your friends that just had their first baby.

There we go.

Wrap it around the nursery or maybe put it on the doorknob of your friends that just got married.

Oh, even so many uses.

But yeah, you check out our merch on dudedad.com Other than that, you can see all of our comedy and and DIY videos anywhere that you get videos.

Just look up dude dad.

And it's everywhere.

Taylor, thanks for coming on today, making the time.

I know you're busy.

I know you're probably getting ready to get on some flights and head up here to the Pacific Northwest.

So I appreciate everything and thanks for taking the time, my friend.

Appreciate it.

Eric, thanks for the great conversation.

You too, brother.

I'm Eric G. And you've been listening to around the House.