Bryan builds a career in television

He has more than 20 companies and has been a fixture in the home renovation genre of television production over the years. Bryan Baeumler was recently in Halifax to meet with fans and to talk about balancing non-scripted television, personal relationships and a career in the trades. He took some time to discuss how it's happened, why blue collar work is so important and what it means to be a successful Canadian media personality. 

Episode Transcript

(00:02):
Brian Bamler here at Halifax. Wellappreciate here. I am here. Well,
I'm here for a number of reasons. I mean a big one today.
The big announcement is that all ofthe course channels, HGTV and Food
and all the great content that peoplelove is back available on east Link.
So I'm also I also have EastCoast of my blood. Okay, what's
the connection. We've got family inKeith, Bretton and Halifax, cousins,

(00:26):
aunts, uncles, grandparents. Mymom grew up in cox Heath, so
it's always nice to come back home. Well, happy belated fiftieth birthday.
Yeah, thank you. So it'staken a long time for a show to
actually have your last name in it. It has. Yeah, we started,
we started with the first names.Actually. Disaster DII was the first
series. We started shooting that justabout twenty years ago and the concept for

(00:50):
Leave It to Brian came up.It was born out of Disaster DIY when
I would get called into fixed jobsand someone's home and the husband always said,
you know, I want to puta man cave in the base and
I would look around and think,well, you have single pain windows and
mold in the basement, asbestos inthe attic, that that's really not what
you need. And just as everycontractor and builder wants to do, I

(01:11):
said, I wish I could dosomething where just show up in the homeowner
gives me their keys and their moneyand leads, and that's how. That's
how we built that. It justevolved from there. I'm from an age
of Okay, this Old House wasprobably the first show about renovations and home
maintenance that I can recall, andthat was a real how to, you
know, step by step one,two three. Not a lot of backstory

(01:34):
on that, right, and therewas quite an evolution. I mean I
grew up on that as well.And to take me through that, your
Instagram says you're a dad and youbuild things. I build stuff. So
where did this television part of theworld happen for you? How did that
connection happen? How did this careertrajectory come about? Wow? Well,
I mean going back, I openedmy first company of fourteen, a handyman

(01:56):
company on Georgian Bay, Mowen Lawns, Yeah, Mowen Lawns, paint decks,
you know, scraping, scraping oldpaint, those kind of things.
And my partner in that business.He went to trade school route I went
to university, did a degree inpolitical science and business. And we bumped
into each other after the fact thathe's building beautiful homes in BC, and
I said, I made a mistake, went back to trade school and got

(02:19):
back into construction, but using someof that knowledge I had from school.
I mean, marketing is a hugepart of any business, business development,
business growth. And I had offeredsome free services for three months to a
production company in the HGTV space,and you know, you have to be
careful what you ask for. Itall got twisted around and I found myself

(02:40):
sitting at a desk, you know, how would you like to have your
own show? And we just wentfor it. And it's been it's been
a journey. It's been a quicktwenty years. But moving from actually producing
content to producing television shows, that'sthat's a lot different. There's a lot
more moving parts moving pieces there.There sure are. Yeah. I've got
a great partner in production uh thatwe produce for produced with now and and

(03:02):
of course with HGTV. Over theyears, spending time doing other shows Home
to Win and Handyman Challenge and thingslike that, renovation resort that has a
new season coming out this year withScott and I and a new series that
we've just announced, Building Bombler,which will be an evolution of the Island
of Brian series. And more morebuilding, more, more lessons, more

(03:23):
life, more of the complete picture, and breaking that fourth wall a little
bit, so taking people with uson that, on that journey for kids.
You've been married almost twenty years,yes, and and the internet's a
horrible place for people to run withspeculation, is it. There's a whole
page about you and your relationship andyour marriage and have they divorced? Are

(03:45):
they still together? Sarah's involved withthe new show she is, Yeah,
I know, Sarah's involved in ineverything. I mean we show, we
show things that are that are rawand real, and you know, if
if you work with your spouse,there are stressful moments and discussions and things
that happen. We've had a fewmoments, certainly where the camera crew quietly
puts down their gear and removes themselvesfrom the situation. But it's a it's

(04:05):
a standard life and marriage. Sarah, does you know a lot of the
design work we work together four kids, We've got three teenagers, now and
Josephine is on our way. Soyeah, it's life so unscripted television,
but yet you need to have aplan to get a job done. In
theory. In yeah, the we'lldo some of the format shows we've never

(04:28):
we don't script anything. There's acertain format with how the show will flow.
For for Island to Brian and BuildingBombler. Really, I mean,
there's so many factors at play thatwe really don't know what's going to happen
the new series Building Bombler. Oneof the exciting parts is we have this
Moonshot expansion development plan, but we'renot there yet, so we're really writing

(04:49):
the show as it happens, andas different interesting things happen, we'll chase
that storyline. And there's there's alwaysa storm just over at the horizon,
which which creates I guess some interestreviewers they want to see I think people
either watch to think I'd love todo that, but I like to see
him in that situation, or it'saspirational. I kind of put it to

(05:13):
you in perspective of for a whilein the early two thousands, everybody was
building motorcycles on television, yes,and everybody thought that'd be pretty cool,
but there are really few custom motorcycleshops that came out of that eraror everybody
needs a place to live. It'strue. It's true. So when you're
doing a public meet and greet likelater today, are people asking you about
Brian the TV guy or are theyasking you, Hey, listen, I

(05:34):
have a problem with my sink.A little bit of everything. I mean,
the most common question I get,you know, to be honest,
is when are you coming to myhouse? But technical questions And that's one
of the reasons too. I travelto a lot of home shows and across
the country and speak to a lotof people just about the industry that I'm
in. I mean, I lovebuilding and fixing and fixing complex problems and

(05:55):
sharing that information with people as welland engaging them in the show and what
we're doing as a family. Andyou know, there's so many facets to
it. I think that's one ofthe great things about a lot of the
content that we produce and the otherChorus Channels produce, is that you can
it's not just a show about building, it's building its relationships, it's business.
Brian's all in that. I shotall last year two episodes down in

(06:16):
Newfoundland, just north of west here, drove through, spent some time in
Nova Scotia, and of course ittook the ferry, but more about business
and business development and growth and youngpeople getting into that and having those hands
on skills. So there's so manyfacets of it that interest people, and
I'm still interested in it. Soyeah, I get a lot of questions
lifelong learning. I mean clearly yousaid university. Well, I'll go back

(06:39):
to trade school. But even thetrade industry is changing and new products,
new services, new techniques. Howdo you keep on top of that and
do a television a series of televisionshows. Yeah, a lot of television
shows. I think you know alot of it is attending the trade shows
and you know ibs down in Vegasand Cabiz and some of the bigger ones
in the US and across canadall thehome shows. You're meeting the contractors,

(07:02):
you're meeting the manufacturers, you're lookingat the designs. We're talking to our
bumber approved network of contractors, whichis quite a few down in Nova Scotia
about the products they're using. Andreally, what I say to you,
there's so many products available. Youhave to choose the one that makes sense
to you. There's one hundred waysto do it right, but there's a
million ways to do it incorrectly.So you have to choose the products that

(07:23):
make sense to you and the methodthat makes sense to you and that you
can afford, and just just commit. Two final questions. One, what's
it like to be a quote unquoteCanadian television celebrity. I don't know,
it's it's it's I mean, it'sinteresting. I'm just I'm just me.
You know, I still get inline at Timmy's and so how do people

(07:46):
and talk to just more people andmore people know me? I forget sometimes
we travel so much and we're workingin albeit at the gas station and hear
my name screen and what and thenwhen you starting me for yeah, no,
yes, of course I'm on TVevery day. So it's it's it's
been fun. I mean, I'ma I'm a people guy and love meeting
and chatting with people, and it'sgreat to be able to share things with

(08:09):
people to show them. You know, you can be a young person coming
out of school with nothing and youcan work one hundred hours a week,
you know, for twenty years,and you can you can do something in
the trades. There are so manydifferent opportunities to create your own business and
make a life for yourself and dodifferent things within that. You know,
you don't have to just pick alane and stay in it. You can

(08:31):
drive across all the lanes metaphorically speakingof course. Yes, So thank you
for promoting the fact that the tradesare an incredibly valuable career and that not
everyone is cut out for university orbusiness college or taking that path. So
true, So so thank you forthat. And secondly, there's a video
of you in a helicopter. Ohyeah, I know you fly. Was

(08:54):
that your chopper? No, that'snot my choppa, that's that was a
good friend of mine. But I'mI am. I am slowly learning,
so I'm experiencing that. Interesting sidenote about the trades. I go for
breakfast once every couple of weeks withfive or six other people who are pilots
and fly and they're all contractors andbuilders. We all own our own businesses

(09:15):
and we get in we talk aboutthe industry as well. We just talked
about it at a restaurant where we'veall flown to to have the one hundred
dollars Hamburgers. So it's five hundreddollars Hamburger now with prices. It depends
what you fly there, certainly,but it's as a career, you know.
I speak to a lot of tradecolleges as well and high school kids.
There's so many facets to it,from architecture to you know, running

(09:37):
running the business for the trade itself, and talking to young people to work
for me that their aspirations are tohave their own business. And I say,
look, work for me for thenext ten years. Make your mistakes,
learn and take a course on howto run a business at night,
learn how to actually run the business. Because we have a lot of great
employees that are incredibly skilled with theirhands and they were self employed. But

(09:58):
at some point you have to runthe business. You've got to You've got
to show up when you say you'regonna be there. You have to do
what you say you're going to do, clean up at the end of the
day, cash the check, payyour taxes, and you can sleep well
at night. Absolutely well. Welcomeback to Halifax, and thanks for having
me. Thank you for this,and once we shut this off, I'll
ask you about politics. Thank youso much. I got a few ideas