PETE ROBERTS | The Pursuit
Episode Stats
Length
1 hour and 29 minutes
Words per Minute
189.74165
Summary
Pete Roberts is the founder and President of Origin USA, a company that is dedicated to reclaiming American manufacturing. In this episode, we talk about dealing with uncertainty, how to determine what to move towards in the face of so many choices, developing a let s find out mentality, what it takes to win and thrive, the dichotomy between risk and reward, and ultimately the pursuit of not only changing yourself but the world.
Transcript
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Gents, my guest today is my good friend and incredible entrepreneur and visionary behind
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Origin USA. His name is Pete Roberts. Now, you know, I've been talking about
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Origin for years. And if you don't know who Pete is and what he's doing to reclaim American
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manufacturing, this is going to be the podcast conversation for you. Today, we talk about
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dealing with uncertainty, how to determine what to move towards in the face of so many choices,
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developing the quote unquote, let's find out mentality, what it takes to win and thrive
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the dichotomy between risk and reward, and ultimately the pursuit of not only changing
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yourself, but the world. You're a man of action. You live life to the fullest, embrace your fears
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and boldly charge your own path. When life knocks you down, you get back up one more time. Every time
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you are not easily deterred, defeated, rugged, resilient, strong. This is your life. This is
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who you are. This is who you will become at the end of the day. And after all is said and done,
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you can call yourself a man. Gentlemen, what is going on today? My name is Ryan Michler.
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I'm the host and the founder of the Order of Man podcast and movement. I want to welcome you here
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and welcome you back. We've been going for six and a half years now. That is so crazy to say. I
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remember vividly the first podcast conversation and getting this thing up and running and how excited
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I was and how inadequate I felt. I still feel like that most of the time, but I'm honored that
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hundreds of thousands of men across the planet are deciding to band with us and believe in the
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mission of reclaiming and restoring masculinity. So if you're new, what I do here is have amazing
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conversations with incredible people. I have Pete Roberts, the founder of Origin USA on the podcast
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today. I've had Jocko Willink, David Goggins, Grant Cardone, Andy Frisella, Lewis Howes, Jack Donovan.
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The lineup is crazy. Steve Rinella, Jason Wilson. I mean, look, I can go on and on. We've had 300 and
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I don't know, 50 or 60 incredible men on the podcast. And my job is to extract some of their
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knowledge, their wisdom, their information, and then give it to you in bite-sized chunks so that you can
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apply it in your life. And that's what we're all about here today. Now, before I get into the
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conversation, I do want to make a mention of my friends and podcast sponsors, which is Origin USA.
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And like I said earlier, we have the founder and the owner of and the president of Origin USA on today.
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Guys, I just want to say this. I just really, really appreciate your support for these guys.
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I believe wholeheartedly in what they're doing. They're attempting to and doing a fine job
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at restoring American manufacturing. They make boots and jeans and hoodies and lifestyle apparel
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and wallets and knives and jujitsu geese and rash guards. They're doing some incredible,
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incredible things. They've got a new system that allows me to see how many of you have gone in and
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purchased products from Origin. And I got to say, thank you, not only for supporting what these guys
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are doing, but also thank you for supporting me. This is a great way to give back. This is a great way to
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support the podcast. So we can continue to deliver the information that we want to deliver. We can
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continue to serve you. We can continue to have great podcast guests on so that it gives you the
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information you need to thrive as a husband and a father and a business owner. So if you feel so
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inclined, please support what they're doing at originusa.com. I would specifically, if I were you
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check out the Lincoln boots, I have them on my feet. As we speak, I'm breaking them in and they're
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feeling pretty good. I've got the, uh, the, uh, I think it's Oxford blood boots on, uh, and they're
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the Lincoln boot is what I have. So check it out. You can do that at originusa.com and then use the
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code order or D E R, uh, at checkout, because you're going to save some money when you do originusa.com
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use the code order at checkout. All right, guys, let me introduce you to Pete. As I mentioned earlier,
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he is the founder of origin USA and also Jocko fuels. A lot of you guys are using their joint
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warfare and their supplements and their milk and all that kind of stuff. But not only is he a good
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friend of mine, he is my jujitsu instructor. Uh, he's a friend, he's a mentor, and he's a hell of a
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visionary that I've learned tremendously from now, uh, Pete cut his teeth in the digital marketing arena
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and world, and has since began building one of the fastest growing companies in America. In fact,
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he's number 215 fastest growing companies in 2021, according to Inc magazine. And it's my prediction.
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This is just a prediction, take it for what it's worth that they'll likely break 100, the top 100
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fastest growing companies in America in 2022. Uh, he's a large part of the reason I moved here to
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Maine and believe it or not, he made the introduction for us to move into this beautiful home that we live
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in. So, although I know I'm a bit biased, Pete is an incredible entrepreneur, visionary husband and
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father and my guest today. Enjoy. How long has it been since you've been in here?
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I haven't been in here for quite a few months. I don't think we were in the new Jocko fuel warehouse.
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Uh, for, before, before, before, like, I mean, how long have we been in the warehouses before that?
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That's the last time you were in here before that, but when's the last time you recorded a
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podcast? Oh shit, dude. Like what's going on with a podcast? That's what I want to know.
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Life priorities. And honestly, like the podcast actually takes, takes capacity, you know, like
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if I'm going to do a podcast on like, I don't know, it's an old mill or like an old shoe company.
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Like I got to do the research and come up with my talking points. I write an intro and all that
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stuff. And it's just, it's just not been a priority with our current growth trajectory
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and you know, five locations being spread. Like my goal every day is to drive around and build
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culture and make sure all of our little teams, little seal teams of 210 people are getting shit
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done. That's what it is right now. 210, 210 people. That's awesome. Yeah. How many people did you pick
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up when you, when you guys purchased the facility in North Carolina? A hundred. Oh, so you doubled.
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Yeah. We doubled overnight. And that deal was in the, in the making for, I don't know how many
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months. Yeah. I mean, you've been talking about it for a while. Yeah. What, what was that just
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the natural cycle of things or was there some holdups there? What was going on with that?
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Actually today the papers are supposed to be getting signed.
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So it is not even like technically official yet. It's not technically official. Interesting.
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We signed the papers and we like took control, but like I actually transfer funds today.
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Interesting. And take the stock certificates today.
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When you do stuff like that, obviously there's a level of excitement because you wouldn't have
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pursued it if you weren't excited about it. But what, what is the other side of it? Are you,
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is there a nervousness? Is there, is there any skepticism about what you guys are going to do with
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it? You know, with it, with this type of situation, because we couldn't get bank financing.
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Like it's, it's, there's no, like you're buying people. You're, you're, you're literally buying
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knowledge, right? You're buying experience, knowledge, right? Sure. And, and of course we're
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talking in the millions of dollars. So like myself, Jocko and Dodeco basically took our,
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our profit over the past year and we just dumped it back in, out of pocket.
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So it's like cash out of pocket. Yeah. Yeah. Because that's money you could have put in your
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bank account. Exactly. So, I mean, it is, you know, there's definitely some, uh, some, you know,
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risk, I guess you could say for me, I just see it all opportunity, all opportunity. Like the things
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we're going to be in late down there. I mean, I want to do a, uh, uh, I'm calling it the kilo,
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the kilo hoodie. I want to make a hundred thousand hoodies next year. Yeah. I'm going to go buy,
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I'm going to go buy 250,000 pounds of American grown cotton.
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I think what you're going to find is you're going to need 200,000 hoodies. I hope so.
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That's what I think. Cause I remember, so the place we're in right now, when we moved here a
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little over two years ago, if I remember right, you had just moved into this facility and I was
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like, man, this is huge. And I think you were thinking that too. Yeah. And then what a month
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later, I don't know if that's right, but it was very quickly. You're like, this isn't that big.
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Oh yeah. No, it shrunk real quick. You know, I mean, we're spread over, I think it's,
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it's over 200 square, 200,000 square feet now in two States and five locations.
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Total space. Yeah. And then you have another property you just secured.
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Yep. And what are you going to do on that property?
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You know, our longterm goal was to eventually build like America's future factory
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right here in Farmington, Maine. And my wife and I were looking at a piece of land for the past
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decade, which they wanted tons of money for. I mean, I think they wanted like $8 million for it.
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Okay. And it's 105 acres and it's right on the main drag.
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Is that why they wanted so much? It's probably zoned for commercial. It's right there on that main road.
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Yep. Yep. It's zoned for commercial. It's a mile of road frontage. It's the last piece of land on the
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main drag. It's, it's just, it's, it's prime. It'd be great for like a Lowe's or a Home Depot or
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something like that. So, you know, after, after the whole COVID thing, I was like, what,
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where's our advantage here? Like, what can we, what can we do that may be within our means that
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wasn't right. And so we had a realtor reach out to the owners and everyone in our area knows what
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we're doing with brand back, manufacturing, whatever. And then I was like, we'll offer them
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a million dollars and we'll hope that they need the money and they needed the money and we bought it.
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Wow. Yeah. It was freaking amazing. That is amazing. Yeah. So do you think that's a product
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of just being in the right place at the right time, a product of them knowing what you're all
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about, or is there some divine intervention? I think it's definitely some divine intervention.
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I think a lot of it is to, to, you know, I mean, I'm, I'm a big believer in like visualization,
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you know, and putting out there, like you gotta, you gotta take action towards the things you want
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to do in life. You know, we've talked about this, but this specific thing that we've been talking
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about for a decade, like ever since we started manufacturing, we've been talking about this
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space. If there was one, and you've seen me drive around, I've driven around the whole state of
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Maine looking for, but this was the one, the one place we wanted to be. And, you know, putting that
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out there, you know, I mean, putting it out there, you know, praying about it, you know, believing in
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the vision, doing it without compromise, doing the right thing, you know, doing the right things
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behind the scenes, doing the right things when nobody's watching, having the right mindset when
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nobody's watching shit happens, you know, good, good things happen. And this is, this is one of those
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things. So we're super stoked about it. And then getting the bank on board for a property that hasn't
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been surveyed in 200 years, where one firmer said, I put a horseshoe on a tree. And the other guy said,
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there's a birch tree, four feet from that, like trying to like, and getting the bank on board where
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there is no survey, right. You know, and them believing in our vision to actually give us the
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note to purchase the property. I mean, that's just a big deal in itself. Is that because they've,
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they've done business with you in the past? Yeah. I mean, cause I imagine it was much harder with
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your early financing relative to maybe what it is now. Well, you know, one of my advisors told me,
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John, you've heard me talk about him. It told me one time, Hey, listen, you got to stop looking at
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the bank as an enemy. The bank is your business partner. And guess what? They're the controlling
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interest. So you've got to sell them on what you want to do. And you've got to make them a true
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partner. And he said, at some point you're going to be in control. He's like, and you need to play
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that game until you have the advantage. Well, we're the biggest client for the bank.
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That's what I was going to ask is when you say, when he, when John says you're in control,
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what does that look like in a banking relationship? Well, the bank wants to,
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they want to keep you, you know, like they don't want to lose you as a customer. I mean,
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that's how the bank makes money off all the interest. Sure. $10 million in loans, you know
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what I mean? So they, they want, they don't want to lose that. And, uh, and, and honestly,
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what I found is that no, it is actually a real relationship. I've got my banker's cell phone
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number, you know, I'll text him over the K man, I'm looking at this. Hey, what are you thinking?
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What are you trying to do? What do you want to do like this land? I'm like, Hey, I'm looking at
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this. I don't want to pay for it, you know, for two years, three years. He's like, okay,
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I'm just going to do interest for you for the first two years. If you need to extend it beyond
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that, let me know. So it's, it's more of a relationship than anything. And, you know,
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it gets to a point where you don't feel like it's, I feel like the risk factor goes away as we've
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diversified. And as we've built a company, you know, my, my little naive self that was scared
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about taking out my first $2,000 loan to renovate a barn, you know, with the same bank and the hassle
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it took sitting in front of that commercial banker at 21 years old, selling him what I'm
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going to do to this barn. Like you've done to yours. Imagine being a 21 year old kid and having
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a barn like that and being like $2,000 is, it could be a million, it could be $10 million and, and him
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and having to sell him and getting him to buy in and then the bank are not buying in. So need to,
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needing to go to someone else, you know, because of just a interpersonal relationship to, to basically
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sell it to him, to make him buy in, you know, to go from that position for two grand,
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to being able to like text the banker and be like, this is what we want to do.
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I said, I want to pay, I don't want to put a down payment on, you know, we've got too much going
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on. I just, but we want to secure it because we're going to build 150,000 square foot factory,
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factory there in three years and they believe it. And so, and I believe it. And so that's what I do.
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Will everything in this area then be housed there at that 150,000 square foot factory?
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Yeah. Everything, everything will be there. Maybe not the nutritional division because it's just a
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behemoth. Well, and it requires a lot of space when you're thinking about the product and the lines and
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the shipping and the car, the crates and all this stuff. And it's just a, it's just a different
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model. You know, the, my, my dream for this 105 acres is to build a campus, America's future factory,
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of course, number one. Also, I want to, I want to build a factory store that is like a museum.
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Like when you walk in, our first loom is going to be right there in the middle of the store.
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And if you look beyond that loom, there's a glass wall and the factory is working behind that glass
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wall. And so when you walk in, you're going to have this immersive experience, you know, you're going
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to really see and touch and smell what it means to make in America. Like that shit ain't happening
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anymore. You know, and it's cool. And beyond that on this campus, you know, I want to put up a
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distillery, a brewery. I want to do a farm to table restaurant, like an origin steak. Like basically
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you're going to come in to the area, just like you'd go to Ella Bean or anywhere else, you know,
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for a full immersive experience. So that's the, that's the dream. That's the goal.
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That's pretty rad. It's a massive build. Yeah, it is a massive build. Do you think that you've
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always been like, have you always been this, this visionary where you have these ideas
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and things like this? Or, or does this just grow over time? Like, what does that, what
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does that come, come from? What does that look like for you? I, I mean, because let me say
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it this way. Most, like most people, when I say most, I'm talking 99.9% of people, myself
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included, don't think to the same degree that you are right now. So is that, is there something
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that evolves or are there just big thinkers? I don't know if it's big thinking or not. I,
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I work in 10 year blocks, you know, I work in opportunities of 10 because you've got four of
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them, 20 to 30, 30 to 40, 40 to 50, 50 to 60. And Lord, I hope you're enjoying your life at the age
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of 60 and able to do some things for 60 to 75, 60 to 80. So like my 40 to 50 is where I am right now.
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And I'm thinking in that 10 year block and I call this the 10 year project. So, you know,
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the first part of the campus is the factory. That's three years, two years after that, you know,
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a distillery brewery, two years after that, maybe a restaurant, but it's in 10 year blocks as I
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hopefully get my kids ready to take over. You know, my son's freshman year of business school,
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my daughter's a sophomore. So I'm thinking like, I think, I always think big picture and I always,
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I always have thought big picture. I think that that's maybe what makes me, what some people would
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call a dreamer, you know, and I'd say, well, everybody's a dreamer though. You know, everybody's
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a dreamer. You gotta, you know, you're going to take action on those dreams. And I think you need
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the right support system to take action on those dreams. And then I think there's a lot of people
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out there that could do amazing things beyond maybe what they're doing in the moment that didn't have
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that support system. Uh, you know, and I've, I've, I sought out that support system. I may not have had
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it initially, but I went and found the people who, who could get behind being a dreamer and help me
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realize it through knowledge and sharing knowledge and how you go about it. So I continue to seek
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out people like that all the time. Well, and I, I, I think that's one of the things that makes you
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special is that, yeah, I would say dreamer as well, but usually when people say, oh, he's a dreamer,
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there's a negative connotation with it. Yes, exactly. But the negative connotation is he's up here in the
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clouds and he doesn't actually implement anything, but that's not you. Well, I mean, no, it's not. I mean,
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it, um, I don't know if that makes me unique or it does. I don't know. A hundred percent. Yeah. I
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just, I just, I mean, there's other, there's other guys like you. I'm not saying you're the only one
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out, but it, but it is rare. I think actionable dreaming, let's call it, you know, actionable
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dreaming. Because if I take my personality and you know, I have, I have visions and thoughts and things
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that I want to do, but I'm, I'm more of, I would say I'm more of a, uh, a practitioner. Like if you
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put something in front of me, like I'm going to figure out a way to make it happen. Yeah. But
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as far as figuring out what that thing in front of me is going to be, probably not my strong suit.
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Hmm. Well, there's obviously gifts in having that type of a personality profile too. Sure. Like
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you surround yourself with people that compliment you. Maybe that can't do the same exact thing
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that, and that's, you know, you're, you're doing the same exact thing from a, some different
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path, let's say. Right. So, I mean, I see you renovating that old barn. Yeah. I mean,
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which looks amazing. It does look pretty amazing. I'm not going to lie. I love shooting photos in
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there. Oh, it's so cool. Yeah, that's true. I mean, when I, when I moved there, it didn't look
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like that. The bones were good. You saw it. You knew what it looked like. When, when I worked in
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that barn for the first time, I was like, this is the nicest barn I've ever been in. Not nice when
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people would feel like nice. What do you mean nice? I mean, like this hand hewn. Yes. You
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know, mortise and tenon joinery is all true and plumb and level. Yeah. It was just nice.
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One of the things, I don't know if you know this, but Trish and I up in the attic of the
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house found the old artwork for the popcorn factory. Oh yeah. So we, so it's like different
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logos. And then we have a handwritten menu in the original signage or something they were
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using in the store. So Trish just went and got that framed. Oh, you put it in the house
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or in the barn? We're going to put it in the bathrooms in the barn. Oh, that's a great idea.
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Because it's important to me to pay homage in a way to the history of that barn as, and
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anybody who's been around for any amount of time knows that as the popcorn factory or
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the popcorn house or whatever they call it. It's such a cool space. Yeah. So you, so one
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of the things you were saying is when you were talking about, uh, North Carolina and purchasing
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that facilities, you said you, you, you struggled a little bit with saying it's risky. I think
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you acknowledge that there's a risk there, but your framing of risk seems to be different
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than what most people's would. Yeah. I mean, it's, let me tell you the risk is this is our
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first, it's not our first acquisition. It's our first major acquisition, you know, mergers
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and acquisitions. If, if I guess if you're in business, you know, that term, right? Mergers
00:20:42.780
in acquisition, you can either merge with another company, you can acquire another company and
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that's like the quickest way to grow with an already fastest, you know, we're a fast
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growing company and we're, we're a fast growing company and there's gotta be a lot of due diligence
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done in order to make sure you're making a good like fiscal decision. Right. Right. Okay.
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Financially, how does this benefit us? And then, okay, where can we, where can we trim the fat
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and take over, you know, management base? Where can we absorb some of the things like
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our CFO can absorb the financial position? Let me ask you something on that. And then
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I want, I want you to keep riffing on that. Do you feel like your, what will just use the
00:21:23.940
word dreamer type personality? Do you feel like that's ever gotten you into trouble when
00:21:29.620
it comes to these like financial and trim the fat and all the minutia of actually what
00:21:35.020
makes a successful business? Yeah. Yeah. Oh yeah. I'm looking at a, uh, a knitting plant
00:21:41.600
right now, 30 miles down the road from the factory that we're about to close on that we
00:21:46.420
haven't closed on. I'm talking about a denim mill in Louisiana. That's a startup that I've
00:21:52.480
already had two meetings in Boston about, and I'm flying out there in two weeks. That's already
00:21:56.700
had $20 million dumped into it that I think origin should own or be part of owning. So like,
00:22:03.300
I'm not even done with this deal and I'm looking beyond and I have to check myself.
00:22:10.300
And I usually do that by consulting with other people. You know, is this a good idea? Here's
00:22:16.640
what I'm thinking, because I believe in it so much. It's easy for me to sell, but to myself,
00:22:21.980
you acknowledge that about yourself. Yeah. Yeah. It's easy for me to sell to myself and it's easy
00:22:25.940
for me to sell to other people because I believe in it, but what am I not seeing? And it's the same
00:22:31.940
thing with this. This is our first major acquisition. What am I not seeing? And, you know,
00:22:38.140
I'm sure there are things I'm not seeing. The financial seems like it would work. It's going
00:22:42.260
to be accretive to our existing business. It gives us more capacity because it's not a hundred asses
00:22:46.800
and seats that can. So, you know, there's a, there's a management team leaving that has owned
00:22:54.780
the business for 50 years. And, you know, I've, I found out that one of the person, one of the
00:23:01.600
people may try to like poach some of our employees, even though we have a non-compete, you know,
00:23:06.780
shit like that. Yeah. You know, who knows what they've said to the vendors about us, you know,
00:23:12.140
as an organization about the new management coming in, like you can't control what people
00:23:16.940
say behind closed doors. So I've, I believe in our team. I believe in our mission and our vision.
00:23:25.300
And I believe that that's transferable and that our culture is transferable and that we'll find a
00:23:32.600
way to transfer that culture. So ultimately I believe in us. And if I believe in us, then I believe in the
00:23:38.520
next move. So that's how I look at it, you know, and of course one really, really solid person that
00:23:45.780
can spearhead the organization that has skin in the game. So I, I'll have a like origin owns this and
00:23:52.120
we'll have a, we'll have a 10% business partner in the organization. So he's got skin in the game.
00:23:57.500
He's got kids. I want to make sure he's got something he needs to, you know, really be living
00:24:02.780
for, which he does. His name's Jason. And, and that makes me comfortable and confident that he's
00:24:08.880
going to do the right thing, that he's going to go about running the business the right way.
00:24:12.180
You know, having, you know, I think he's got three kids, you know, and having grown up in that area,
00:24:16.860
he doesn't want, he wants to have a good name in the area. So there's, I think about a lot outside
00:24:21.380
of the financial side of stuff, you know, when doing something like this.
00:24:25.780
Well, and on people too, you know, I've noticed one of the, you've really been ramping up and I,
00:24:30.340
the only reason, the only reason I really know this is because every night that I show up to
00:24:34.080
jujitsu, there's like five new people. And I'm like, Oh, are you here visiting? They're like,
00:24:37.320
no, I work here. As of when? Oh, yesterday or people, people are coming in from everywhere.
00:24:42.820
I know you got Austin, Jackson, Georgia, Georgia came from Colorado.
00:24:48.900
Yeah. We've got Dennis. He's been training for five years. He's moving up from South Carolina on the
00:24:52.880
11th. We've got a bunch of people at nutrition, you know, that have moved up a bunch of women that
00:24:58.420
have had moved up. Some of them trained jujitsu. They're coming over from everywhere. I get
00:25:03.760
messages every day. Like people want to move to Maine. I'm like, no, you don't. You don't want to
00:25:07.380
move to Maine. Like it's, it's hard living. It's been easy the last couple of years, Ryan. I know
00:25:13.080
you haven't had much snowstorm. Has it been hard living? No, it's been easy, man. Knock on wood.
00:25:19.880
Yeah. Cause I know, I know it's been mild. Uh, and I like to bust all your guys' balls about how
00:25:24.780
weak you've made your czar and like, this is, this is hard. This is what you call hard. And you're
00:25:28.920
like, no, bro, just wait a second. When I was a kid, uh, you know, I, I didn't grow up with much
00:25:35.600
and, and my mom, we used to have a wood, a wood fired, a fireplace, a brick. It was like a Russian
00:25:42.380
fireplace, you know, heated up, take a while, take all day to heat up, but then it would, it put off
00:25:47.520
heat, you know, for the next 24 hours. If my brother and I didn't get the wood in, you know,
00:25:54.920
we used to cut it all by hand. It would get delivered. A lot of times it was green. And
00:25:58.260
if you've ever cut green, you know, so we've got to suck. So we used to have to cut, I don't know,
00:26:04.040
five or six cord stack, five or six cord, keep the wood stove, you know, the, the fireplace going.
00:26:09.560
And if we didn't, you know, my mom would do what probably a lot of single moms did. She would open
00:26:15.320
up the oven, the, the gas oven, and she turned the oven on and we'd heat the house through the oven.
00:26:20.340
Oh yeah. Yeah. Most people don't know about that. It was a little, it was a little harder living when,
00:26:25.600
you know, old houses that are on like a rock foundation, you know, that have minimal insulation
00:26:32.620
like that, you know, very cold, like they'll cool off. Like if the heat goes off, it's cold in 20
00:26:38.640
minutes. Oh, definitely. You know what I mean? Yeah. And it just cuts through everything. Oh yeah.
00:26:42.940
Even that this morning I woke up and I'm like, Oh dang, I got to put something on. It's a bit of
00:26:47.280
a chill. Got to put that origin heavy on. Yeah. I don't have one yet. What? Seriously? I'm dead
00:26:53.240
serious. I think I might have one in my truck. We'll have to track one down. I think I know a guy.
00:26:57.340
Yeah. I might know somebody. Yeah. I don't know. So when we moved to our place, we had this old
00:27:03.040
wood over oil boiler and I was talking with Lee who obviously you're, you, you know, really well.
00:27:09.800
And I was like, well, what does it take to like heat this place? And based on the system they had,
00:27:16.080
which we have upgraded. Oh yeah. Yeah. He said, well, they were, they were putting wood in here
00:27:22.040
every, every day to keep it warm. And I said, well, like how much would, and they said, well,
00:27:26.300
he's they're down here like three times a day, morning, lunch and dinner. I'm like, well,
00:27:31.420
I'm not doing that. You got kids for it. Yeah. And I'm like, I don't even know if I can get my kids
00:27:35.080
to do that. And I said, well, how much would like, like in a winter 17 cord of wood. That's
00:27:40.880
a lot of wood, man. Or no, no, excuse me. I think it was 20 cord. That's too much. And I still
00:27:45.060
have 17 in my basement. I have 17 cord of wood down there. Real quick. Yeah. Oh yeah. Oh, that was
00:27:51.700
the first thing we did. Oh yeah. Yeah. We got that oil boiler going and that's nice. That would
00:27:56.380
have been some more tricky living. Yeah. That would have been harder for sure. But there is a level
00:28:01.220
of appreciation that I have for the concept of what is it preparing for winter or dealing
00:28:08.260
with winter. Yeah. I actually like that. Yeah. I like that a lot. And I like winters here.
00:28:13.160
Think about if, think about if you're, you're very successful. You guys are very successful.
00:28:17.140
Think about if you had that big house and four kids and you had like a $20,000 a year income.
00:28:26.840
Oh, you're putting that wood in the fire. You're growing your own food. Yes. You're making sure
00:28:33.520
you harvest some big game and waterfowl and you're putting meat in the freezer and you're basically
00:28:39.000
paying for your bills, like your wood and electricity. And that's it. I mean, that's what
00:28:45.540
my neighbor does. I mean, he makes more than 20,000 a year, but they're homesteaders. Homesteaders.
00:28:50.760
Yeah. So they have, in fact, they just started their own meat store. Really? Yeah. It's awesome.
00:28:57.760
He's the guy that did most of the renovation on our barn. Yeah. He did an awesome job. Ben
00:29:01.540
Lowry. Yeah. He's amazing. But yeah, they're homesteaders. I mean, they're, they're at home.
00:29:05.280
Their kids are, I'll get up and I'll go drive down the road at, you know, five 30 or six and their kids
00:29:09.540
are out watering the cows and the goats. And I mean, that guy is the hardest working guy I know. And it
00:29:16.400
just gives me a glimpse into what it may have taken a hundred years ago. Oh yeah. And I don't
00:29:21.160
have that capacity. Now you compound that with like a few feet of snow. Yes. And then, then things
00:29:27.000
change a little bit. It becomes a little harder. Yeah, for sure. There's, there's definitely, uh,
00:29:32.500
an appreciation of it, but that's coming from a place of relative ease. Yeah. I can't even imagine,
00:29:40.200
you know, you're talking about this, but a hundred years ago. So our home was built in 1912,
00:29:44.440
I believe. So a little over a hundred years ago, I mean, it's a big house. And so, and I drive
00:29:50.920
around, there's big houses around here. Like why, do you know why they build them so big? Is it
00:29:55.460
because of the families? Big Catholic families, I think. Okay. Because to me, I'm like, this is super
00:29:59.320
inefficient for, for most of these families had seven, eight, nine, 10 kids. Yeah. Yeah. Like Joe,
00:30:06.200
my father-in-law, you know, big Catholic family, I think it's seven of them. Really? Yeah. Yeah. A lot of,
00:30:11.920
yeah. Yep. Yep. So it's funny. It's also interesting. I was, uh, when you were talking
00:30:17.940
about the vision and being able to share that and cast that with people. So Breckin, my oldest son
00:30:23.140
had his football game, his first football game a couple of nights ago. How'd he do? He did awesome.
00:30:27.980
He had a rough, they had a scrimmage before a week before it was rough. Yeah. And he had a bad time.
00:30:34.620
Well, he shrunk down a lot too. He doesn't have that weight behind him. That's right. And yeah. So
00:30:39.160
he, he had a hard time, but then this last game he did really, really well, but it was,
00:30:44.440
it was interesting. So we got done and we were driving home and in Lawrence, there's a huge
00:30:49.780
factory. Oh, you're at, you're at Fairfield. Fairfield. Is that right next to Lawrence?
00:30:53.900
No, no. Lawrence is the school in Fairfield. Got it. Okay. They're, they're savages.
00:30:57.560
Well, so they are like big kids. Yeah. Like these are big, hardy kids. They're milk kids. Their,
00:31:03.800
their parents will swear at your kids. That's that type of school. That's milk kids.
00:31:08.460
Mill town kids. Oh, mill. I thought you said milk, mill kids, mill, mill kids, mill town,
00:31:13.660
rough place. That's where Brian Littlefield grew up on the railroad tracks. Oh, that's,
00:31:16.920
we saw it right there. Yeah. We, we had the same in Utah. We just called them, you know,
00:31:21.300
farm, farm kids. Yeah. You know, it was the, it was the boy, like we'd go play Delta or,
00:31:26.340
um, or, or, uh, Millard and these are farm towns and they were slinging hay, moving pipe.
00:31:34.280
That's all they were doing all summer. And we'd go like, we'd get there like this call. These are
00:31:38.980
college kids. Got a full beard. That's right. That's right. Uh, but it, as we were driving by
00:31:45.260
this, this mill or this factory, I think it was actually my daughter. And she said, that's awesome.
00:31:51.080
Pete would love that place. That's exact verbatim. That's what she said without prompting. And I just
00:31:56.720
thought he's casting the vision so much so that my daughter's starting to see it.
00:32:00.420
I like it. I like it. Yeah. That's funny, actually, that she would recognize that.
00:32:06.860
Well, I think that goes back to what you were saying about having so many new people coming
00:32:12.140
on board too, is your ability to not only have vision and dream about these things,
00:32:18.600
but you've done an exceptional job casting that vision. And I think that's really important for a
00:32:23.600
man to be able to do is, is not just share, have his own thoughts, but be able to articulate them
00:32:29.120
in a way that you can rally people around you. Yeah, no, you're right. It's, uh,
00:32:35.000
it's just not that hard to do. I would say, as long as you like check your ego, right? I don't
00:32:40.460
think a lot of people may have problems checking their ego, you know? What do you, what do you mean?
00:32:45.760
What, how would ego get in the way of you casting your vision? Because casting your vision
00:32:49.860
means that you put yourself in a, in a learning situation. Like if you're going to cast a vision,
00:32:56.040
you're actually going to go to school, you know, you're going to learn, you got to learn how to
00:33:01.440
do the things you want to do or else you end up just being a dreamer. You know, I mean, that's
00:33:05.920
really the difference is, are you going to dream or are you going to do? And if you're going to do
00:33:10.520
and you haven't done, you've got to find folks who have done, you know, like I, I got to learn how
00:33:17.180
to run a chainsaw. Like I had to be taught how to run a chainsaw, had to be taught how to sharpen a
00:33:21.500
chainsaw, you know, like you got to learn those things. I had to be taught how to, how to swing
00:33:26.160
a mall to cut wood. You know, I, I had to be taught how to pull a truck out of the mud. You know,
00:33:32.680
a lot of people just, they want to tackle these things because they think they're the man, you
00:33:36.780
know, and they have the testicular fortitude just to do it because it's innate and they're born with
00:33:41.460
it. Jiu Jitsu humbles that part of you too, but, uh, but yeah, I mean, a, a, a dream that's
00:33:53.380
actionable ultimately is you're a student to be able to get there and continue being a student.
00:34:00.720
Cause if you want to continue climbing the rungs and hitting those different levels, you surrounding
00:34:06.140
yourself with people at each level that have been there and done that and can help guide you so you
00:34:11.960
don't fall off. Yeah. So I guess I just haven't felt like we're going to fall off because we have
00:34:17.820
so many really incredible folks around us guiding us. So you said casting a vision is like you said,
00:34:25.920
well, I don't know, it just kind of seems easy. And your ability to think about these big ideas
00:34:31.920
seems to come fairly natural. Like, but what do you struggle with? Like what, what are your holes,
00:34:37.380
whether it's professional or personal? Oh man, my holes are, I, I used to, I used to get really
00:34:47.000
frustrated that I didn't feel like people were working as hard as I was, you know, like that would
00:34:55.620
like, Oh, they're not a grinder. They're, they're not, they're not willing to, to show up early and
00:35:03.240
stay late. You know, and I actually learned something from JP to now he was saying, you know,
00:35:07.860
there are, there are three types of people in an organization. There are squatters, there are
00:35:12.800
renters and there are owners. You ever heard this one before? No. What are squatters? Well, squatters,
00:35:18.420
they're, they truly aren't fully bought in, right? They, they come in late and they want to leave a
00:35:24.500
little earlier. They ask to leave early. They show up after their lunch break, a couple, couple minutes
00:35:30.460
past the break, you know, and they're a squatter. They don't always have a great attitude. They're
00:35:35.860
not always bought in. They're not saying great things when they leave work. There's probably
00:35:40.300
some entitlement there. Totally, total entitlement. Oh, those people have it all. Those people are so
00:35:46.740
lucky, you know, yada, yada, yada. Squatters, renters, renters, they show up on time and
00:35:53.880
they leave on time. It might not work overtime, but they get the job done. You know, they, they keep
00:36:00.080
their mouth shut. They may notice some things that, you know, are happening and that they could be
00:36:05.620
working extra on, but they choose not to, you know, they're here for a job and owners, man,
00:36:12.380
they show up early and they stay late. They know where to cover and move. They see the holes and they
00:36:16.640
fill them. They build culture, you know, they're ready to go. They're bought in. And, you know,
00:36:22.140
and the idea is that you want to turn renters into owners. And so you, you focus on the owners,
00:36:29.220
not on the squatters. Cause if you focus on the squatters, then the renters see they're getting
00:36:34.700
the attention and they become squatters too. Cause misery loves company. If you focus on the owners,
00:36:40.520
well, now the renters want to become owners cause they see, they see the positivity and the attention
00:36:45.900
because honestly being positive, isn't as infectious as misery. It's, it's very easy
00:36:52.860
to, Oh man, Ryan, man. Oh shit, man. You're, you know, you, that dude took your arm home too much,
00:37:01.120
man. And you hyperextend your elbow. What a douche bag, man. That guy's such an asshole.
00:37:05.120
Not like, Hey man, you should have tapped early. Yeah. That's a little harder conversation to have.
00:37:09.760
You know, so misery loves company. Positivity is, it's not magnetic. And, um, to create a magnetic
00:37:18.320
culture takes years. And when you, when you're one-on-one, somebody is upset, you're going to
00:37:25.120
want to console them. But when you have someone who's upset and you have five people who are
00:37:30.480
positive, that person shuts up. They ain't nobody listening to their bullshit and, and whatever lies
00:37:37.980
they're spewing or whatever attitude they have, cause these people are happy to be here. So that
00:37:43.220
person either becomes a renter to become an owner or they leave or they disappear. Right. So we really
00:37:49.060
learned a lot about this during the whole coronavirus pivot, you know, and we ended up maintaining
00:37:55.740
everybody that wanted to stay employed, stayed employed. I think we lost two people. We, we definitely
00:38:02.440
had some issues. You know, we had a young kid who had just started jujitsu. Um, you probably rolled
00:38:09.860
with him Mo, you know, and, and he was dealing with some things and, and he committed suicide and he was
00:38:15.380
a young kid and he was, it was really hard, uh, hard on the team. We had another one, her, you know,
00:38:21.520
sister overdosed on drugs and passed. And of course we lost Lenny, you know, um, also, so it wasn't,
00:38:29.280
it wasn't easy. Uh, but like that team came together, like it was a wartime effort. I mean,
00:38:36.660
it was amazing to see work in seven days a week. And right when the whole, you know, the COVID thing
00:38:43.140
kind of hit and nobody really knew what was going on. We were the first ones to pivot and make face
00:38:48.520
coverings. And, you know, and, and it was incredible to see we had, we lost like two people,
00:38:54.860
you know, two squatters, everybody else still here. So I think that just is a result of like
00:39:02.500
building like a really, really good culture and building a culture of either renters or owners.
00:39:08.620
Is there a, is there ever a problem with having too many owners?
00:39:16.160
Okay. Right. Okay. I'm glad you made the difference.
00:39:18.300
Yeah. Two owners, owners, they're, they're willing to win. They want to win. And winning
00:39:28.080
means you set your ego aside, you know, winning means that like on a football team, you've got
00:39:34.940
two kids who are great quarterbacks and usually the quarterback is the best athlete on the field,
00:39:39.560
which one is going to step up and say, Hey man, I'll play receiver or running back.
00:39:44.480
Cause they both want to be quarterback. So it takes a big person to say, listen,
00:39:49.980
I know, I know you're a sophomore and I'm a senior and I know you're just as good as I am at the QB
00:39:56.220
position. And instead of for me being on the sidelines, I think I'll jump at, I'll jump in at,
00:40:02.580
at receiver or I'll go on to the defense, you know, like to be able to willing to think that way,
00:40:07.460
not just to do it, not just to say it because it's the right thing to say and psychologically hope
00:40:13.960
that they're like, no man, you, you take, but actually to believe it. Yeah. Like not reverse
00:40:18.280
psychology, like straight up, straight up understanding, like there can be no egos if
00:40:22.880
we're going to win. There can't be. Is that a coachable trait or have you found that there's
00:40:28.060
just people that are that way? I mean, obviously there's people that are that way, but is that
00:40:32.400
coachable if, if you're going to, if you're willing to spend years doing it, it's not
00:40:41.400
coachable. If you think you can say it to somebody one time and expect them to get it. Like I
00:40:47.380
have a couple of folks that I'm seven years in on coaching them, coaching them and it's
00:40:53.040
little strides, you know, just it's little strides and lots of, lots of conversations,
00:41:00.840
lots of emotions and a lot of, a lot of, you know, crying. What do you, what do you see in
00:41:05.960
those people that you'd be willing to do that versus say, you know, this is a lost cause
00:41:10.260
because they show up early and they stay late. So they have that owner mentality, but maybe not
00:41:18.680
the skillset. Is that what you're saying? They even, they even have the skillset. They just don't
00:41:23.460
have the mindset, the mindset to be an owner. You know, they're, they are an owner, but they want to
00:41:31.140
be maybe a dictator and we don't want dictators, you know, dictators, they, they aren't liked and
00:41:38.840
loved and they lead by force versus just being a leader that people want to follow. Right. That is
00:41:44.720
a hard thing to change in some people, especially, especially dependent on that person's background
00:41:51.340
and where they've come from and their experiential knowledge and how they've gone through life. And
00:41:56.900
when you're trying to, when you're trying to turn an adult into that, man, that's, I've had, I've had,
00:42:01.800
I've had actually one of our best employees, our best show up early and stay late. One of our best
00:42:10.460
two is part of building the footwear. She finally said, I'm not going to change. I'm not willing to
00:42:18.320
change. And we had to have that conversation. It doesn't matter how good you are, how much you can
00:42:24.760
do and how much is in that head. Ultimately culture is the most important thing in this company
00:42:30.940
and we need to part ways. Wow. Sucks. Sucks bad. Cause you have a great employee, your renter.
00:42:37.880
Right. And so sucks. But, um, you see, you, the crazy thing is, is you can remove someone like that
00:42:46.280
and all of a sudden the team makes more and does better. And I've learned this a few times now over
00:42:54.680
the past decade, just like, Oh, we need more people, no more hands. You know, many, many hands
00:43:00.160
make light work. Well, the right hands make light work. Right. Cause you could be, if my little kids
00:43:06.480
come and say, Hey dad, can I help you build that thing? Right. This is a bad analogy, but it's like
00:43:11.440
help is a very subjective term in that case. I mean, all things being equal, if you had,
00:43:16.900
if you had 10 women and they were all the same skillset and, and seven of them were owners
00:43:27.900
and three of them were squatters, you remove the three, the seven makes more than the 10.
00:43:35.580
And I, I've, I've proved that time after time, after time, I actually got Andy to buy into that
00:43:40.680
this year in the CEO of our nutritional division. He saw this because we had some issues. We had some,
00:43:46.440
we had some squatters there and we actually removed two or three people and the team started
00:43:52.580
making more, they started covering and moving, you know, they just started, Hey, I see the hole
00:43:56.880
here. I'm going to go fill it. And they did it. They did it with like at a pace, you know,
00:44:02.320
and with like a singleness of purpose, like this needs to get done. I'm going to fill that void
00:44:07.080
instead of standing there saying, well, I just got to wait until it gets to me to do my job,
00:44:11.140
which is not the mindset you want, especially if you're going to be competitive with manufacturing.
00:44:15.880
For sure. America. For sure. So, and I just did a lot of talking.
00:44:20.880
No, it's good. I don't even know how we got on that tangent. I don't know. I'm, I'm listening.
00:44:24.400
Cause you know, I have people in our organization who are owners. I mean, and I haven't thought about
00:44:30.160
it in this framework, but they are, they're owners. You know, Chris, who runs our, uh, events,
00:44:35.500
like I don't need to micromanage him. Right. I need to let them know, like, here's what I'm looking
00:44:39.660
for. Here's what I want. Here's the experience I'm trying to create. What do you think? And he just
00:44:43.900
goes and runs with it and he has questions. He'll come to me and we'll hash it out.
00:44:48.700
Hey man, I got to step away from the conversation very, very quickly. Don't want to interrupt too
00:44:52.340
much, but I do want to tell you one thing and make an announcement. Uh, we are going to be
00:44:56.060
shutting it down. All right. This week, I'm going to be shutting down registration for our exclusive
00:45:00.540
brotherhood, the iron council, uh, for the next 30 to 60 days, because we're going to be heavily,
00:45:05.640
heavily focused on working with our existing members. I want to dedicate all my time and energy
00:45:10.340
and resources to our existing members, uh, and ramping up some, some lofty goals for,
00:45:15.520
uh, 2022. So if you've been on the fence about joining the iron council and you haven't yet pulled
00:45:21.320
the trigger, you really need to get signed up before Friday, because that's when we shut it down
00:45:25.620
for the month of November, uh, to get everything ready for our nearly 1000 members and how they're
00:45:32.100
going to crush 2022. Now I'm not going to bore you with all the details, but I will say that this
00:45:38.340
is the premier men's brotherhood out there because we don't focus on edifying a central figurehead
00:45:43.640
myself, like so many other men's movements do, but we focus on you, you, the man who wants to lead
00:45:51.520
himself, lead his family, lead his business and his community more effectively and better. So guys,
00:45:58.400
you have until Friday of this week, I really want to see you inside and you can get registered
00:46:04.320
at order a man.com slash iron council. Again, order a man.com slash iron council. You can do that
00:46:10.760
after the conversation, but make sure it's done before Friday. But for now, we'll get back to the
00:46:14.620
podcast with Pete. There is another thought though here too, because I think probably if we're going
00:46:21.040
on the same analogy that your, your squatters are going to be the highest maintenance. Yep. They're
00:46:26.800
going to suck all the resources all the time. Um, renters less so owners even less so, but also it
00:46:31.800
seems to me that with owners, like you need that they've got some maintenance too, in that you need
00:46:39.800
to, they need something. And, and if they don't get it, it seems to me that they're good enough
00:46:46.840
that they feel like, well, I'll just go out and I'm an owner. I've got the mentality. I just go start
00:46:51.220
my own business. So how do you keep those people within the organization and give them what they need
00:46:55.680
too? Yeah. That's a tricky question. First of all, I would say that if someone had the
00:47:02.240
drive to like go out and start their own business, like I would support them a hundred percent. Like
00:47:08.900
if one of our, if our best employees, like I want to go start my own business, I'd be like, cool.
00:47:13.140
As a matter of fact, some of our best employees will start their own business.
00:47:17.740
Let's take Ty Nichols, for instance, in the media department, you think Ty's going to be at
00:47:22.760
origin forever? I hope he is. Yeah. You would like that, you know? And I think he likes the idea
00:47:27.560
of that, but I think someday, you know, Ty's probably going to do his own thing. I think,
00:47:33.980
I don't know this. I'm open to the idea that that might happen. I'm not going to like hold him to
00:47:40.200
anything. I'm going to try to give him the best opportunity at origin. I'm going to give him,
00:47:45.400
you know, he's going to, and I'm not, I shouldn't say like, I'm going to give him,
00:47:48.800
there is a platform for him to get the best education in what he wants to do in life.
00:47:57.980
Yes. It's wide open space. They're self-managing. They have a quarter million dollars in tools and
00:48:08.280
And it's like, Hey guys, make stuff. Right. And whatever you need, I will provide it for you.
00:48:14.820
This is a, this is a, what do you call it? It's a, it's a creative, um,
00:48:20.660
there's a word for it. They do these things in like cities.
00:48:24.560
It's like a lab or something. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. This is an incubator. Uh, I don't,
00:48:29.900
do I expect Ty, you know, to be there forever? I don't expect him. I hope, I hope that'll happen.
00:48:35.960
I hope that when he's 35 and 40 years old and, you know, and we're a billion dollar company
00:48:41.820
and we are America's next big brand that he's an art director running the media department,
00:48:47.220
you know, like, and there's a hundred people working under me. That would be cool. But then
00:48:51.860
again, if he wants to go do his own thing, man, Hey Ty, whatever I can give you to help you do that,
00:48:56.880
let me know. Cool. Like you got to let people do the things they want to do in life.
00:49:02.580
We don't have a lot of them that would want to do their own thing because they are so bought into
00:49:08.920
what we're doing. And because we started building the culture with the first one, two, three, four,
00:49:15.880
five employees, and those same employees are still part of the company. And those five employees that
00:49:21.080
were doing all the grunt work are now leading the teams within the company. You know, that culture just
00:49:25.600
gets driven down, but it is a constant reminder and it's a, it's a drip. It's a, it's a stream,
00:49:31.120
you know, that you gotta constantly build culture. I'm, I'm just, that's hard.
00:49:36.940
It is hard. And like you said, it takes a long time. And, and what I'm getting is maybe more
00:49:42.860
selfish than anybody might be listening. Cause I, like, I have this, like, you know, Brandy,
00:49:47.020
she works with me and she's an owner. Yeah. She's an owner. She's an owner, a hundred percent.
00:49:51.640
And so she's just done a phenomenal job with booking guests and getting me lined out.
00:49:56.300
Yeah. You made me follow some like really important people. You got some, like you got Shapiro,
00:50:01.120
and then before him you had Crenshaw. Like we're getting some heavy hitters.
00:50:05.620
Then you get this red Nick from Maine. Yeah. This is, it's, you're going to follow it up.
00:50:10.880
Just great. Just great. Um, so she's been doing a great job and, and I told her the other day and I,
00:50:16.460
you know, I said, look, my, my goal is to have you be here more, like to have you do more here.
00:50:22.240
And I know she wants to start doing some of her own thing. And so, and I'm like, ah, selfishly,
00:50:26.840
I want to have you do more here, but unselfishly, I want to help you start your own business so you
00:50:31.740
can do this for other people. All you can, all you can do is cast your vision and make sure you're,
00:50:39.640
you're making a really good offer. And it might be more than you want to pay.
00:50:43.640
If they say no, it means it has nothing to do with the offer or your vision. It has to do with
00:50:50.600
their vision in, in the value they place on themselves or the risk they want to take or
00:50:56.380
the direction they want to go. Sure. I had the same thing recently with a guy, Roland, who
00:51:01.140
he's helped us build a footwear division. And I've known him for, I think four years now. And
00:51:07.320
he's been talking about coming over to origin for a long time. I made him an offer that he couldn't
00:51:13.640
refuse. Like you don't refuse this offer. And he wanted to do it so badly. I mean,
00:51:24.040
he literally called my wife and he was upset on the phone. Like you could hear it on the phone
00:51:29.580
and he had to decline the offer. It's not, it's not like your vision or my vision or Amanda's
00:51:37.980
vision. It's not the monetary side. It's just that people are on certain paths in life and certain
00:51:43.600
times, you know, they're younger. They know they have more runway. They're older. They want to have
00:51:48.540
more security, their wives and kids and the things they want to do in life have influence over those
00:51:54.080
things. And, you know, and you can't get upset at what somebody wants to do or somebody wants to try.
00:52:00.660
And I think, I think that actually is like a learned something I've learned over the years.
00:52:09.020
Cause I, I would, I would get upset if somebody that was really valuable would want to leave.
00:52:17.900
It's not, it's not ego. It's selfishness. And we're all selfish in some way. I selfishly
00:52:27.120
want that person to stay with me. That doesn't have anything to do with ego. It's just,
00:52:34.540
I want them to be part of my thing. I want them to be part of my gang. I don't want them to start
00:52:40.220
their own gang. You know, it's, it's, it's tribal. It's a tribal mindset. And honestly, it's why we,
00:52:47.320
you know, we have the issues we do in the world. You know, we're tribal. We, you know,
00:52:51.400
we believe in America. We believe in the American dream. We're willing to fight and die for that.
00:52:57.500
We're willing to go to all ends to make sure that our kids are taken care of, you know, to make sure
00:53:04.180
that our, our families have the resources to, to flourish and the opportunities to grow in and do
00:53:11.840
things in the world. And we want to protect that. Well, that's, that's a little bit selfish,
00:53:17.840
but in order to build what we're building as a country or a community or as a company, you need
00:53:25.640
that. So separating that away from somebody who's your friend and or employee and or coworker,
00:53:33.720
when they come to you and say they want to do something else, you're just, you gotta,
00:53:38.000
you gotta see the difference between those two things. Yeah. It's really, really, really freaking
00:53:43.440
hard to do. Really hard to do. And it's very easy to go and say to the other person, they're not all in,
00:53:49.340
they're an asshole. Right. You know, they're greedy, you know, not the case that you're selfish.
00:53:54.920
Yeah. So, well, I remember when I would have people leave, so we've got our iron council,
00:54:00.680
that's our, our brotherhood, our excuse. Sure. Yeah. Early on, I'd have people leave and I would
00:54:05.700
take it personal. Oh, a hundred percent. Like, like not like, Oh, I'm not going to make your $67 a
00:54:12.360
month. That wasn't it. It was like, how insulting, like you're going to leave, you're going to insult
00:54:18.260
me and all that I've done for you. And it's like, okay, hold up. You have no idea what that person's
00:54:24.440
going through. Exactly. You don't know what they're, you don't know where they are in their
00:54:27.500
life. You don't know where they were there on their mind. You don't know their background. You
00:54:31.160
don't know where they've come from, you know, and people, and honestly, that's just, it's, it's,
00:54:37.700
it's having empathy. Yeah. Well, there's a weird, I think there's a weird, maybe a weird
00:54:43.500
dichotomy a little bit in that, well, the word is you have to actually care about people.
00:54:48.380
Yeah. You got to give a shit like, like Ty, that's a great example or Brandy in my case,
00:54:53.340
like you got to care more about them than you do in your own selfish pursuits, but also your
00:55:01.880
own pursuits are important. And that's the dichotomy. The mission is important. It is because
00:55:06.420
if you, if you do care about them only when it's good for you, that's not really care.
00:55:14.660
That's not really caring. Yeah. Yeah. That's a, that's a, that's a tough one to carve up.
00:55:19.700
You know, that I didn't get that till my late thirties, early forties.
00:55:24.800
What, what was the pivot, the pivot moment or was there, was there an experience you had
00:55:29.460
or a little wake up or light bulb moment, or did you just gradually learn these things?
00:55:35.420
You know, it's, it's the understanding that you are not in control, not in control.
00:55:46.880
I'm not in control, man. None of us are. So I, I believe there's a higher power in control and,
00:55:55.160
and that's it. I ain't in control. So I will do the things that I'm passionate about and that I feel
00:56:03.800
right. And you don't follow the pathways that lead to victory ultimately. And people are going
00:56:12.180
to come and go and you should try to maintain relationships and keep the bridges built because
00:56:19.520
you don't know 10 years down the road, 20 years down the road, if you're going to come across that
00:56:24.840
person again, I could be working for Ty. Right. Yeah. In 10 or 20 years, I might be working for him.
00:56:33.660
I don't know. This whole thing comes crashing down. Like I'll be looking for a job. So keep those
00:56:41.360
relationships. You don't ever, don't ever be so high and mighty that you strut around with your nose up.
00:56:48.100
I just, I'll just never be one of those people ever. I, I just have faith that if you just do the
00:56:55.480
right thing, like things are going to work out. Emotional intelligence. That's the word I was
00:56:59.840
looking for. Okay. Got it. See, I knew we'd come to it. Holy cow. Having the emotional intelligence,
00:57:06.520
having the emotional intelligence that's learned. That is not something anyone's born with.
00:57:12.140
No, because we're greedy and we're selfish. And well, I've, I've talked about it as the natural
00:57:17.740
man. We're lazy. We want the results without the effort. We want the shortcut. All of us. There's
00:57:22.700
a, there isn't a single person on the planet who doesn't want that. Yeah. It's a hundred percent.
00:57:26.880
So you got to rebel against that guy. You do. And that's hard. And you, and you got to have the
00:57:31.340
emotional intelligence to recognize when you're, when you're either the victim or, or playing the part,
00:57:40.320
you know, of that lazy man. Well, I think it's also hard because we look at things on such a
00:57:48.140
short-term level that losing a tie, for example, is going to hurt in the short term. It's going to
00:57:56.100
hurt, you know, but over the long haul, it's going to be, it might be good for him. It might be good
00:58:01.040
for you. Like there's things that we can't see that will happen over 10 years, but that requires
00:58:05.180
that long-term thinking. Yep. Yep. Exactly. And I just, I just firmly believe that there is so much
00:58:11.920
talent in the world. Like there are, there are, I've got a hundred people ready to move to Maine.
00:58:18.280
And if we were just a small company that the public didn't know about, there's talent all around you,
00:58:26.160
you know, and finding that talent, you know, it's a job sometimes, but there's always somebody
00:58:31.640
willing to do what the neck, what the person wasn't willing to do. You know, there's always
00:58:37.020
somebody willing to work harder. You know, we talk about this growing up in sports. Oh,
00:58:41.320
there's somebody working harder than you. There's somebody shooting more foul shots in you. You know,
00:58:46.280
there's somebody, there's somebody lifting more days than you. There's somebody going harder than
00:58:51.120
you. There's somebody that wants it more than you. There is, there is, there's always somebody that
00:58:55.880
wants it more than you. And there's a beginning, a middle and an end to everything. And you've heard
00:59:01.540
me say this before, like, I want to stretch that middle. I want to stretch that middle for as long
00:59:06.340
as I can and generational if possible. And, and that takes again, emotional intelligence,
00:59:15.740
a lot of reflection, you know, separating your ego, trying to be unselfish as much as possible.
00:59:22.760
Of course it's built in sometimes, but recognizing, you know, there's, there's more to come and
00:59:30.020
there's more to do and there's more people to get involved and, you know, that's life. So
00:59:35.960
try to live it with, I don't know, try to live it like it's your last day, you know,
00:59:45.140
like get up in the morning with a fire under your ass. Like I, I live every day, like we're a startup,
00:59:52.000
like, I don't have anything. So this is funny. So I get up in the morning and I don't like to check
00:59:59.420
my phone immediately, but let's be honest. I quite often check my phone, right? So I get up,
01:00:04.200
I check my phone. I see Pete on Instagram and I pull up his stories. I'm like, Oh shit. He's been
01:00:10.560
up for three hours. Not always. I know. But every time I see it, I'm like, he posted the story of him
01:00:17.740
driving, you know, into the, into the plan or whatever, two hours ago, I'm just getting out of
01:00:22.720
bed. Yeah. Well, you know what? That's so that's okay. I had shit to do, you know, but like, man,
01:00:28.440
if, if I could sleep till six 30, I would, you know, or seven o'clock. I mean, I brought my hand
01:00:33.940
though. Yeah. I mean, I could, right. You know, I mean, I, so why don't you, I'll tell you what,
01:00:38.540
I'll tell you what this week, Monday, I put my back out Monday. I had my daughter to bring to school.
01:00:45.940
She woke me up at seven 15. Cause I don't wake up to an alarm clock. Oh, you don't know. Never,
01:00:52.720
ever, ever do I wake up to an alarm clock. My body gets up and it's almost like the brain switches on
01:00:59.020
the body and I get up. Right. So seven 15 dad, what are you doing? Holy shit, Chloe. I'm sorry.
01:01:06.460
I get up. Boom. Out the door. I got to bring her to school, you know, Tuesday. Yeah. I got up at,
01:01:11.860
you know, six 30, you know, that's when I woke up. My wife was the first one out the door. I hung out
01:01:16.840
waiting for my daughter to bring her to school Wednesday, Wednesday. I got shit to do, you know?
01:01:21.020
Yeah. I'm up at four. I'm out the door Thursday, you know, up at four 30 out the door Friday up at
01:01:26.300
five o'clock out the door. But that's because I had a sense of urgency to get a project done.
01:01:33.540
Like I got to get this project done. There isn't anybody else that can do it. I don't have anyone
01:01:38.080
I can lean on to do it. And I've got a whole team of people waiting for me to get it done along with
01:01:44.340
a contract that's very expensive waiting for me to get it done. So guess what? It's on me. My ass is
01:01:50.200
getting up. I didn't set an alarm. I just got up cause I knew it had to get done. Just like a
01:01:55.400
farmer would have to go milk the cows. Right. I mean, you want to talk about someone who gets up
01:01:59.340
early, like those kids who get up to milk the cows before they go to school, like every day,
01:02:07.960
seven days a week through the winter, man, those kids are savages. Like, well, and they're going to,
01:02:15.680
I mean, that translates over into life because they're like, Oh, this is hard. No, this isn't
01:02:21.180
hard relative to what dad made me do when I was 10 years old. Yeah. I mean, let's be honest. I got a
01:02:26.620
pretty, like at this point, like I got a pretty not easy life, but I'm comfortable, you know? And,
01:02:33.640
and I, I sick in a sick way, want to make myself uncomfortable. So I'll, yeah, I'll, I'll freaking
01:02:40.600
invest in a factory and I'll spend all the capital I have to the last dime to make that happen.
01:02:46.580
Maybe to get a little uncomfortable again, but. Is it, is it that deliberate of, of like, well,
01:02:52.080
I'm doing this so I can stay outside of my comfort zone? No, no, it's not that deliberate. I think
01:02:56.360
that's like my wife would say, and she's known me since we were 16. Cause you're just built like
01:03:02.880
that Pete. Like what? Uh, just my, I find comfort in being uncomfortable because, uh, now I have a
01:03:13.560
challenge and a mission. I was talking to Kip about this. I hope he doesn't mind me sharing.
01:03:19.780
He's coming back from a hunt, 18 days in the woods. He goes, I finally figured it out.
01:03:24.980
And I was like, well, we'll be in the woods. He's like, yeah,
01:03:27.840
because it's the unknown, the uncertainty of it, the uncertainty of it. It's exciting is what
01:03:37.560
you're saying. Super exciting. You know, I mean, there, and there's a guy that has everything in
01:03:41.260
the world, right? Everything in the world. It's the unknown. It's the uncertainty. You know, I mean,
01:03:48.020
you could wake up and a grizzly bear could be eating you. I mean, from him, he's psycho. He's crazy.
01:03:53.340
He's, he's next level. You know, for me, it's that uncertainty of man, is this North Carolina
01:04:00.220
thing going to work out? I know I just put myself in a position that I need to be down there at least
01:04:06.600
for a week or two a month. I'm going to get my ass from Maine to North Carolina. And that's exciting.
01:04:13.980
I love that shit. You know what we're, what we're about to build. It's exciting. You know,
01:04:19.760
these things I have in my head, can we realize them? Can we manifest them? Are we going to be
01:04:24.040
able to do it? You know, and you could have a bunch of money in your bank account and, and cool,
01:04:31.140
good on you. But when you're out spending energy and mental capacity doing something,
01:04:40.660
bro, that's just, I can appreciate that. I can appreciate that. So I do too. I, you know,
01:04:46.940
the phrase that's come to mind in the past for me is let's find out.
01:04:51.160
Let's find out. What's the worst that could happen? You live in a teepee. You're not dead.
01:04:56.460
No, it's not even going to be that bad. Yeah. You're not going to live in a teepee. You know,
01:05:00.400
you got friends. I got friends. Like you, you have, you have a network. Like if things go South,
01:05:07.340
whatever, fine, but let's find out if you actually can. Exactly. And I think that's reason enough to do it
01:05:13.260
actually. So a lot of people are like, well, you know, I want to do this thing and I want to
01:05:16.240
try this or get into that or start this business, but I don't know. Yeah, you're right. You don't,
01:05:21.160
how could you, you'll go get, you'll get a loan for $75,000 to buy a new truck to strut around town,
01:05:26.800
but you won't take out 75 grand and invest in yourself. Good point. You want to forge knives
01:05:31.560
or axes or start a leather, leather bag company or a hat company or a plumbing company or a fabrication
01:05:39.620
company? You want to build trailers? Like do it. What's stopping you? 75 grand gets you a long way.
01:05:45.620
Go buy a $2,500 truck to have the tools and the mobility to do the things you want to do.
01:05:53.800
People even switching jobs, same thing. Oh, I don't know. I, you know, I have this job. It's so good.
01:05:58.880
I make so much, you know, I make this money. My family's taken care of, you know, you, you put
01:06:03.480
these external pressures on yourself and by no means am I saying you should tell your wife you're
01:06:09.620
going to be making a change and just do it without, you know, her blessing or if it's a woman without
01:06:17.300
his blessing, but, um, but people don't invest in themselves enough. They don't take chances on
01:06:25.740
themselves enough. Even if it's just a slight career, career change or slight career shift
01:06:31.840
to something you've always wanted to try. And you're not sure if you're going to be good at it.
01:06:37.580
You know, I think folks are scared. Well, what if I'm not good at it? And if I, if I'm not good at it
01:06:44.180
and I have to go back to what I was doing, then I failed. And I just, I don't think that's true.
01:06:50.000
I don't think if you try something and you're not good at it, you failed. I think you've learned
01:06:55.680
there's a different, you've learned. Okay. Well, that's, that's not something that I want to do.
01:07:01.280
And just cause you got to go back to what you're doing doesn't, doesn't mean you failed. It means
01:07:05.000
you've learned and now you're doing something you know how to do. So you can think about the next
01:07:08.640
thing. Yeah. But I paint failure different and, and, and I paint it different. Like I actually,
01:07:13.920
if that happens, I think actually, yes, you did fail, but I say it like that because
01:07:19.180
it's really important. We change the way we think about failure.
01:07:24.420
Everybody thinks it's final. Yeah. That's what I mean. It's not final.
01:07:28.380
We're on the same page of the way of what we're saying, but I'm, I'm not afraid of failure. Like
01:07:34.060
I'm not afraid to say I failed. I'm not afraid to say I fell short. I don't need to say, or
01:07:38.200
come up with an acronym. It's like, yeah, I failed in that. And so like, I'm going to learn
01:07:43.800
something new from it. You know, you know what I, what I feel when I hear failure is
01:07:48.200
I got a lot of F's in school. I failed, I failed a lot of classes and people took that as I would
01:07:59.300
be the most, the, the, the most likely to fail, the least likely to succeed. Cause I, cause I failed
01:08:06.460
that, you know, some, some B's, A's in art, C's, F's in foreign languages, F's in everything else.
01:08:15.840
Okay. I didn't, I got in college cause I was, I was a big kid who was athletic who could play
01:08:21.020
football. And I think for me, when I hear like fail, like you get an F you fail. It means like
01:08:29.420
you're not worthy to move forward in life. You're going to be a bum. And so that's why I use like,
01:08:36.980
it's a transition. It's, it's an opportunity to learn about who you are and transition to
01:08:42.620
something else. If, if, if you lose 150, if you lose 500 grand, which we did last year because of
01:08:50.120
maybe some not great planning, believing, believing something could happen that actually
01:08:55.940
couldn't happen. Do I look at it as failure? I look at it as an opportunity cost, tuition payment,
01:09:02.480
a tuition payment as an opportunity cause, but I didn't fail the company. I just didn't make a
01:09:09.600
great decision. Well, and I also think there's a difference between failing at something and being
01:09:15.660
a failure, right? Just because you failed in this little compartmentalized facet of business or life
01:09:22.540
or schooling, it doesn't mean you are a failure. Like that's attaching unnecessary and too much
01:09:29.520
significance to a minor setback. Yeah. And I think that it's easily interpreted that,
01:09:35.060
oh, you failed at that. That also, oh, you're a failure. Yeah. Or a loser. You're a loser.
01:09:39.960
This is not meant to be worthy. Yeah. This is not, yeah. I don't, I don't like that. I don't like
01:09:45.760
that at all. I re I rarely use the word fail because my, my experiential knowledge, I have removed it
01:09:56.560
from my vocabulary. Like I would never say to my kids, oh, you failed at that. It's okay. I would say,
01:10:02.920
hey, listen, you paid the price, man. You know, hey, Chloe, you paid the price. Like she's on a,
01:10:09.740
she's on a travel lacrosse team and she, she wanted to get on the A team. And I think she's
01:10:16.320
on the B team. So she doesn't get to go to Texas, which is where this big tournament is just around
01:10:21.880
New England. And I said, Hey, when did you pick up your stick between the first tryout and the second
01:10:30.020
tryout? Well, I didn't. Well, so you, you basically bet on the fact that you would practice hard up for
01:10:38.500
the first tryout and you did phenomenal. And then the second tryout, you didn't do so good. And even
01:10:43.540
though the third tryout, you did great. You didn't get on the team you wanted, right? I'd never say,
01:10:49.660
well, you failed at it and you're going to have to figure it out and move on. I'd never say that to
01:10:53.900
my kid. I would say, Hey, well, that's on you. That's on you. So what are you going to do now to
01:11:01.640
change that? You're going to number one, work to be the best player on that team. So they feel like
01:11:06.760
they made a mistake, you know, and, and number two, it's a good learning experience. So, you know,
01:11:11.660
that there are kids that are working harder. There are kids that are working harder than you.
01:11:16.440
And if you really want to play division one lacrosse, you're going to have to find a way to
01:11:21.200
get it done. So instead of her, like being like, screw this every day, she's been in the yard for
01:11:28.820
30 minutes playing wall ball. She picks up her stick and she plays wall ball 30 minutes. I called
01:11:33.360
you yesterday. Hey, you want to go eat dinner with me? Um, I got 20 minutes left, dad, come pick me up in
01:11:39.820
20. All right, cool. So I think, I think if you, if the way that you would teach a kid,
01:11:46.080
you know, cause we're all, we are all kid like in, in Nate, in our minds, you know, we're,
01:11:52.780
we still have the same struggles kids have. And if you tell your kid, you're going to, oh,
01:11:58.900
you're, you failed at that move on. And you tell yourself, oh, you failed at that move on.
01:12:04.820
It's like a strike. Yeah. A strike against your, your future, you know, growth and opportunity.
01:12:13.720
So it's just psychological more than anything, even though it's just a word for me, it's,
01:12:19.180
it's more of a psychological, like how are you going to get the best out of a kid or a teammate
01:12:25.360
or an employee or a partner in that same way as how you're going to get the best out of you.
01:12:31.620
So have that same conversation with yourself. I think what we do is we put too much weight on
01:12:38.560
past performance and I'm not saying we shouldn't look at it. We certainly should. But what I think
01:12:43.020
a lot of people will do is they'll, they'll say, well, I did this one thing and I didn't do it good.
01:12:46.380
And so I'm a loser for the rest of my life and it's over. Right. Or, or alternatively,
01:12:50.380
they did one thing really well and they're like, I'm awesome. I'm amazing. I'm, I'm, you know,
01:12:56.820
invincible. And then they just ride the coattails of some performance they had five years ago.
01:13:01.760
Exactly. Yeah. No growth. You could think about even with our, so take our podcast,
01:13:06.880
very successful podcast by all objective measures. Well, this wasn't my first podcast either. I had
01:13:12.620
another, I had another podcast and it was called wealth anatomy and I was helping financial
01:13:16.800
professionals with their money. Do you, do you think you failed at that?
01:13:19.620
Uh, no, because I voluntarily quit or pivoted, I should say. Okay. You pivoted. Right. I could
01:13:29.640
have kept going with it, but I pivoted. I'm like, okay, well, I don't actually enjoy this conversation.
01:13:35.840
So I want to do something different. You learned about yourself for sure. You learned about what
01:13:39.280
you like talking about. I learned that I enjoyed podcasting, love podcasting. And I learned how to
01:13:44.400
cut my teeth in the podcasting world and then made a pivot. And from day one was like off to the
01:13:49.800
races. We're learning about who we are as a company. We're learning. We're still learning.
01:13:54.040
We're a decade in. And I'd say we, we know who we are at our roots, but we're going from, you know,
01:14:01.460
let's say a adolescence, you know, let's say we're becoming a teenager. We're not, we're not even our
01:14:07.360
twenties yet. You know, we're like 13 as a company. We're still figuring out who we are. We may end up
01:14:14.100
being the world's biggest hunting brand. We may end up being the world's biggest workwear brand.
01:14:21.280
Like, like there are, there are, there are, we, we may be an incredibly big women's brand,
01:14:27.700
you know what I mean? We're because we're actually entering all those categories,
01:14:31.120
you know? And, and I know that like women's workout gear and women's jeans and women's boots,
01:14:37.000
men's men's workwear pants and jackets and, and hunting gear. Like those are all areas that
01:14:43.680
we're allowed to go in, but we may find our true identity in, in one of them. You know,
01:14:51.260
it's like as a kid where you're, you know, and, and, and people would say you shouldn't build a
01:14:56.820
brand that way. You know, you should have a clear vision of who you are. You know what my clear vision
01:15:02.140
of who we are is we are the greatest brand in America since LL Bean. We're the greatest,
01:15:10.380
we're the greatest brand in a hundred years. I actually said to the guys in the media,
01:15:15.420
a little side thing yesterday, we are the most savage company ever. If we were to get into a
01:15:24.140
fight with another company, we would kill everybody. Starting with the six black belts. Like if we were
01:15:31.640
like a hand, hand, hand, hand combat, like what is the, who is the most dangerous, like corporate
01:15:37.000
in the world? We'll take the cake. But, um, but on the product roadmap, we have these,
01:15:44.020
these things we want to do and we can project out how much, you know, we want to move product,
01:15:49.100
but the mindset of our consumer, it's not just Ryan, you know, it's not, it's not just Jocko
01:15:59.860
or just Pete Roberts, you know, it's actually the mindset of, of what origin is like reshoring our
01:16:08.660
jobs, reshoring our machinery, you know, rebuilding our communities, resurrecting the workforce,
01:16:15.180
saving the knowledge, making something with our hands. That's heirloom quality. That'll last forever.
01:16:23.140
That's not just for you, for me or for Jocko, for anybody else that's for everybody. And the market
01:16:29.820
size and what we're able to inject for innovation into the things we build will determine how, how
01:16:36.060
that thing grows. So, and we're still learning about that, you know, and, and, and that's okay.
01:16:42.620
And we're going to make some major tuition payments, major tuition payments over the next 10
01:16:49.800
years. I'm sure of it. I welcome it. And, and that's, that's a great thing too, is not only is
01:16:54.860
it okay that it happens, it's, it's a good thing that it, what it does is it allows you to experiment
01:17:01.620
without any constraints. Exactly. Like we put a lot of constraints on ourselves. Like I can't do that.
01:17:07.780
I shouldn't do this. I'm not good at that. I'm not good at this. Okay. What if you stopped saying
01:17:12.120
that? And instead you gave yourself permission to explore some avenues. Yeah. Some you're going to
01:17:16.380
like, and you keep going down and others you're like, nah, I'm going to shut that one off. I'm not,
01:17:20.340
I don't like that. Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. I, I, uh, I think that that creative process is
01:17:28.280
it's so much damn fun. Like for me, it's so much fun. I've had the, I've had to hire people
01:17:36.220
to handle that for me. Like they're the conduit to getting it done. I'm not doing it anymore.
01:17:44.840
Like with my hands, I'm kind of more like, Hey, let's do this. And then they do it so I can focus
01:17:50.920
on bigger picture stuff. But is that a rewarding pivot for you? That's a, that's a really, really
01:17:57.980
good question. Cause I've thought about that myself. We just brought on a full-time designer.
01:18:03.560
So I'm out of a job there. Yep. Which is your background. Yep. Right. I'm a designer. Uh,
01:18:08.480
we brought on a full-time, uh, product development person, which we're setting up a whole, uh, research
01:18:15.320
and development lab for that can sew just as good as I, you know, that can develop just as good as I.
01:18:20.700
So I've, I've replaced myself with that whole side of the thing. I was actually yesterday,
01:18:25.620
I was driving around trying to find out where I could help. And at the end of the day, I had zero
01:18:33.080
impact, zero on the success of the, the, the company that day. And when I was talking with
01:18:41.100
Brian Littlefield and he's making a bar and I was like filming the bar and I ate a piece and then I
01:18:46.800
shut the camera off. It was on Instagram. And I was like, I sat down and the three of them were
01:18:51.940
looking at me and I'm like, what's up? I'm like, Oh, you know, we're just working on this bar. And I
01:18:56.980
was like, well, this is my last stop. I've been everywhere trying to help. I did help somebody
01:19:03.400
move a box, but I'm not needed anymore. It's like on a, did you see dumb and dumb on dumb and
01:19:09.400
dumb or he's like, big gulps, huh? Yeah. All right. Well, see you later. So I hung out for a
01:19:16.440
while and I was just like, okay, this is what I was supposed to do. I was supposed to work myself
01:19:20.780
out of the job, you know, because if you're not promote, if you're, if you're not replaceable,
01:19:25.540
you're not promotable. So I did work myself out of a job, you know, come.
01:19:29.400
Hold on, hold on. I want to, I want to talk about if you're not replaceable, you're not
01:19:33.980
promotable. That's right. Meaning you are constantly trying to replace yourself, train
01:19:38.760
people underneath you, et cetera, et cetera, all the time, or just get people that are better than me.
01:19:43.720
You know, I, I want, I want like star quarterbacks that are more athletic and can throw the ball
01:19:49.640
further. Like I do because the, the vision and the mission in this thing, it's bigger than me.
01:19:58.380
It transcends me, you know, it does. And I've recognized that long time ago. So I'm always
01:20:05.300
trying to find people that are better. And I literally have worked myself out of a job
01:20:11.080
here in Maine. I have a new job in North Carolina, but we even hired a, uh, uh, it's a production and
01:20:20.060
process manager. He used to work at Boeing. He's moving up on the 11th. He's been training
01:20:24.640
jujitsu for five years. Nice. My wife is working herself out of a job too. So, you know, like being
01:20:31.140
to answer your question, what do you like enjoy more? How do you feel about, you know, not being
01:20:38.180
able to design? Do you like what you're doing now more? I would say that I wouldn't trade what,
01:20:47.920
where I am right now in life or anything like, like I wouldn't trade it. I, I love building. I love
01:20:56.100
the unknown. I don't, I just love the unknown. Like, like Kip was talking about with hunting elk.
01:21:03.320
I don't know what comes next. I don't know how fast it comes. I don't know who it comes with.
01:21:09.720
And, and I really don't know entirely how I just know when I sit down in the airport
01:21:16.980
in three years, I'm going to be watching people walk by me with origin jeans on.
01:21:22.220
I just know that. And not have any clue who you are. That's right. Yeah. Which is kind of cool,
01:21:26.680
actually. That's cool. Yeah. So, uh, so yeah, I love, I love where I am. I wouldn't go back to sit
01:21:32.600
in front of a computer designing stuff all day long, even though that is my passion. You know,
01:21:36.940
it's just the progression. It's fun. It's enjoyable. I feel like I'm living in a dream
01:21:43.420
sometimes. That it's not real or you don't deserve it or what? That it actually like happened.
01:21:53.940
Like the, the fact that in 2012, we literally were cutting down trees in my, my backyard,
01:22:03.440
you know, like literally that's what we're doing and sitting on a compact or vibrating sand. So we
01:22:11.200
could pour the concrete and getting timber sawn out to build this, this little factory, you know,
01:22:17.720
and landing old cast iron machines, sewing machines and a loom and, and casting this vision
01:22:25.520
that long ago. And now being here where I thought back then in 10 years, I didn't think we would be
01:22:34.220
this far. I, I, I know where we want to go, you know, and it's like a, it's like a, the pursuit of a
01:22:41.120
lifetime. You know, when you think about the pursuit, I'm talking 40 years, you know, to get where I
01:22:47.640
thought maybe we'd get in 40 years in eight years. Like that's pretty, pretty damn cool.
01:22:53.880
Yeah, man. And so even though like I'm casting the vision for the next 10, you know, it might come
01:22:58.940
quicker than that. It might come in two, might come in three, might come in one. We're having
01:23:04.040
some conversations where it might come in one. No, I've heard some of, I imagine some of your
01:23:08.680
conversations. Yeah. You're privy to the inside, inside of information. Yeah. You'll be careful of
01:23:14.600
that. Yeah. I guess you're not public. No, we're not public and not planning on it. So, um,
01:23:20.180
so yeah, man, it's, it's a, it's a good time. I constantly think about like, like when my wife
01:23:27.540
and kids head out, like, and I'm sure every, every dad does this. Like I always, I always say a prayer
01:23:32.760
every time my, my kids and wife walk out the door, every time they walk out the door, you know, like
01:23:37.420
the only thing that could stop or like take this down is if something happened to my
01:23:44.380
family. And I mean like, that's it. Sure. That's the only thing that's stopping it. And, um,
01:23:50.440
and even that at this point, I mean, it sounds morbid, but even that at this point where you
01:23:54.940
have the team that that may not even stop it at this point, it may, it may change your relationship
01:24:00.160
with it. But that's, that's the only, I only feel vulnerable there, you know? And I think that comes
01:24:08.020
with, I think that comes with age too. I often wondered if like, um, you know, when young kids
01:24:16.040
in the military or like the, like Jocko and the SEAL teams, you know, he said that the reason he,
01:24:22.260
he got out of the SEAL teams, he didn't want somebody else raising his son. I think that was
01:24:26.680
one of the reasons. And, uh, did he feel more vulnerable because now he has kids? Like does
01:24:36.420
it, does a person who's a warrior and willing to run into bullets and, you know, willing to take
01:24:43.880
the shot? Are they more vulnerable now that, Oh, they had their first born and their second born
01:24:49.880
and their kids are getting older and they're real humans. You know, like I feel that vulnerability
01:24:54.920
in, in business and in life also, you know, I've turned gray, I'm 42, you know, I want to maintain
01:25:02.480
my health. I want to stay healthy. I want my kids to be healthy and my wife to be healthy and my family
01:25:06.440
and our parents are getting older. And I know there's a transition coming here, you know, in 20
01:25:12.440
years is going to go by so quickly. So I, I think about these things and I try to, I try to leverage that
01:25:19.100
to do everything I can right now today. Like when I talk about waking up with a fire in my ass,
01:25:25.800
those things run through my head, be like, I got to go, I got to go, I got to go, you know? And so
01:25:30.100
I get up and I go and I make the best out of that day and the most out of that day.
01:25:35.560
And that's like just daily reflection, constant daily reflection. And don't get caught up in the
01:25:43.060
bullshit. You know, just, I just don't get caught up in the bullshit. And there's a lot of it out
01:25:46.780
there. A hundred percent. Don't cut, cut up in the drama, trim the fat on people, bringing you down
01:25:52.040
all that stuff. So. Well, you're doing it, man. I know you're excited about it. You got the fire
01:25:57.140
under your ass, but it's even just inspiring to watch and, and see. And it's helped me do things
01:26:02.420
in my business and lead my family and see like, Whoa, well, like look what he's doing. These things
01:26:07.280
are possible. If he's doing it, clearly I can do it. If that guy's doing it, you've been doing it,
01:26:11.640
man. That's awesome. It's good, man. So I appreciate our friendship. I appreciate your
01:26:15.640
example. Uh, and just to be very small part of what you guys are doing is, is pretty, uh,
01:26:22.080
pretty exciting for me personally. So yeah, I want to thank you for that. Absolutely. And Ryan's
01:26:26.860
jujitsu is getting really good too. For those who, I don't know, man, those who don't know
01:26:31.040
the jujitsu is coming along. You're going to find out. You're going to find out. It's been fun,
01:26:36.620
man. It's been a good journey. Like I feel somebody was asking me the other day, Oh, you know what?
01:26:40.900
It was at our event. Um, somebody was, was saying, you know, how, how long does it take
01:26:46.180
to get good at jujitsu? And, uh, the guy that answered the question said, well, like, what
01:26:51.600
do you think, Ryan? I'm like, well, I've been training like steady, like consistent for two
01:26:56.540
and a half, three years now. And I, I don't, I don't feel like I'm good at jujitsu, but it
01:27:03.360
is nice to know what's going on. Yeah. Like I feel like the language, right? Like I know
01:27:09.640
enough where, you know, maybe somebody catches me. I'm like, Oh yeah, that was cool. Like
01:27:13.360
that. Like actually I remember rolling with Brian last week and he did something. I can't
01:27:17.900
even remember what it was right off hand. And he, he submitted me, he caught me in it
01:27:22.720
and I just appreciated it. Yeah. I was like, Whoa, I didn't see it coming. I didn't see
01:27:27.480
that. Oh, he had me in some sort of like Kimura with my elbow or like shoulder lock with my
01:27:32.600
elbow, the way that he trapped it in. And I was like, Oh, that was awesome. Yeah. I'm
01:27:37.340
to the point where I feel like I appreciate interesting things I haven't seen before.
01:27:42.240
You know, the language, but maybe not all the dialects. Yeah. That's a good way to
01:27:46.200
look at it. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, jujitsu is super, super fun and important. It is. It
01:27:53.540
is. All right, brother. Let's get to it, man. I appreciate it. I, uh, thanks for having me
01:27:57.880
on. Thank you. Been too long. Yeah. I was going to look and I forgot to look, but it's probably
01:28:03.280
been a year or so. Good times. Yeah. All right. Thanks for that. All right. All right, you
01:28:08.180
guys, there's my conversation with the one and only Pete Roberts. He's been on the
01:28:10.960
podcast. It's at least three times that may have even been four, but every time, uh, I
01:28:16.760
know it resonates deeply with you guys. Cause I get a lot of messages and everything from
01:28:19.760
you telling me how powerful that was and what information you're going to be applying in
01:28:23.800
your life. And isn't that the point of what we're doing here in the podcast to give you
01:28:27.600
information that is going to improve your life and help you become a more capable father,
01:28:32.820
husband, business owner, community leader, and just man in general. Uh, so make sure you
01:28:37.400
connect with Pete on the gram, uh, buy their products. If you feel so inclined, if you're
01:28:43.340
interested in their supplements, I would highly recommend their mulk, uh, discipline go, which
01:28:49.580
is their energy drink, their cognitive enhancing drink. Uh, and then their joint warfare, which
01:28:54.840
helps, which helps the joints and the aching bones and joints and all that kind of stuff.
01:28:58.560
Uh, if you want some denim, go with the Delta jeans and then also look into either the bison
01:29:04.940
boot or, uh, the Lincoln boot, which is the one that I have on right now. All right, guys,
01:29:10.500
you've got your marching orders again. Also make sure you check out the iron council. We're
01:29:14.700
closing it down this week on Friday, order of man.com slash iron council, get signed up
01:29:19.020
and get ramped up for 2022. Cause we've got a lot of work to do and we're going to give
01:29:23.240
you everything you need to thrive there. All right, guys, we'll be back on tomorrow.
01:29:27.400
Actually, we'll be back tomorrow, but until then go out there, take action and become
01:29:31.660
the man you are meant to be. Thank you for listening to the order of man podcast. You're
01:29:36.420
ready to take charge of your life and be more of the man you were meant to be. We invite