Ep 67 ｜ I’m Not Sober, I’ve Just Learned to Deal with It ｜ Mat Best ｜ The Glenn Beck Podcast
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Summary
One of the most popular content creators on YouTube, he would later translate that success into several multi-million dollar companies including a clothing line, a whiskey company, and a coffee company. He served five tours in Afghanistan and served in the elite elite special operations force 2nd Ranger Battalion, and then he comes home.
Transcript
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on today's podcast one of the most popular content creators on youtube he would later
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translate that success into several multi-million dollar companies including a clothing line a
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whiskey company and a coffee company how am i gonna sit with a guy who has a whiskey company
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and a coffee company both two things i gave up and i desperately want he wasn't always a youtube
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personality and a businessman in fact when he first began to make his videos he was a military
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contractor for the cia before that he served five tours in iraq and afghanistan with the elite special
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operations force second ranger battalion and then he comes home and oh by the way before that uh he
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was in the botany club this guy is an american war hero a cia contractor a serial entrepreneur i love
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so let me ask you this because you're in your videos you're a tough guy i mean right uh but you
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i mean you were in the botany club in high school okay that does not scream tough guy that's that's
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that's like the guy i could have beat up in high school you absolutely could have beat me up in
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high school so what happened you know it's weird i grew up the youngest brother out of six and so
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i was not bullied but you know definitely held my hands behind my back and beat up on my brother so i'm
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very thankful for that uh and then high school wait wait explain that to people from today's american
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culture how you could possibly be happy it was it was tough love you know they weren't they weren't
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you know punching me in the face and breaking my nose they were just you know trolling me like older
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brothers should and i think that that's a healthy competitiveness between siblings so um and yeah in
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high school i was just a really low-key quiet i'm a very uh you wouldn't believe it but
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quiet person i'm not an extrovert by any means i'm an introvert and uh so i kind of put on that
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persona now you know i i think that i'm a teddy bear with kind of a tough uh outer shell when i have
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to be you know i don't where did that come from i think just my raising and then who was around you
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know i always had older brothers to kind of run the show so i just kind of set set back and tried not
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to create any drama i'm just but i'm trying to get my hands around botany right elite fighting force
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where when did when did that when did you go you know what i'm i'm an elite fighter when did that
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happen really uh you know my two brothers uh when they graduated marine corps boot camp and i saw that
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i saw them sitting in formation in their uniforms i was just enamored by the professionalism and how
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stoic they looked and that really transpired into my want to join the military and that they
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graduated on 9-11 did they not yes they were supposed to and obviously 2001 um changed that
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changed that but knowing that they were essentially going to war right after that i looked at them and
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i'm like these guys are my heroes and they really inspired me to serve my country and i come from
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such a long history of service my dad was a marine uh my grandfathers and great uncles were in world war
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two um my dad's dad was in the in vietnam so a bunch of service and then finally i watched black hawk
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down and i said army army rangers these guys are so cool i want to be like that and it's funny my
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brothers to this day say we thought you were going to fail you're a little dweeb i guess i was too stupid
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to quit so it's been the case of most of my life so uh because if i had this pivot point to where now i
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i don't have i have older sisters who also just beat the snot out of me i'm the youngest uh and uh
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but there is no point would i be watching black hawk down going yeah i mean i watch black hawk down
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now and i'm like no definitely not not me um the the pivot point uh for you when was it was it that
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moment and how long did it take you to how did you let me ask you this okay what's the dumbest thing
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what's the most glenn beck thing you would have ever done when you were a private when you first
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got in what's the worst dumbest thing you ever did uh you know i'm a jokester so i always played
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by the rules but you know i was the guy sometimes in basic training they'd call the uh formation to
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attention and i'd make like a fart sound and make the formation laugh and we'd all get smoked for it but
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uh which is interesting because a lot of people said you can't make jokes so you have to take this
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so serious and it tended to be the guys with the sense of humor that worked through the hardest
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situations and i've always kind of carried that with me through everything that i've done you know
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when it's time to be professional you're a professional but man life's short there's no
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dress rehearsal we're born terminal like you gotta freaking enjoy this one chance of life we get
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so you went to work for the cia after rangers what'd you do um do you have to kill me
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if you tell me or no i'm not i i tend not to like get too much into it just because the organization
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but not that i did anything super cool but it was a very uh good experience for me because when i got
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out of the military my transition out was insanely difficult you know i was just on my fifth deployment
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as a ranger team leader and master breacher you know kicking in doors every single night and getting
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into gunfights two months after that deployment i was in los angeles california dealing with you know
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progressives on on a college campus that had no clue about what real life is what real sacrifice
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is you know and i had just been bearing friends and you know putting bandages on other brothers and then
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i didn't go through what you you went through but i've traveled right if if you think this is bad
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you know i was just talking to my uh my daughter last night she said dad a friend of ours um they grew
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up in um in iran and in 1979 they escaped and uh they just got off the phone their dad is still there
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they just got off the phone one family member was just shot uh in a protest but he wasn't really
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protesting and she was talking about how they how they can't even say that on the phone they had to
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have a private burial it was they can't go back into iran they can but they don't trust it because
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people are being thrown in jail and she said that's what life is like and i said that's what life is like
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a lot of places a lot of places and that's what life is going to be like if we just let's have a
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revolution are you insane insane yeah i call it the american life lottery you know we used to kind
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of a dark joke but we'd be driving when i worked for the agency and you know low pro vehicles and
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you look around and see some poor poor 50 year old guy pushing a cart just trying to find some rice
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to eat for the day and it's kind of very unfortunate tragic circumstances that are associated with
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humanity as a whole but we've developed this epic tribe in america and we have to stay together
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united or we're going to lose it and we're going to regress back into let me play devil's advocate
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believe it or not i used to do like like stand up okay i believe that yeah i used to do a lot of
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comedy my whole show was comedy for a long time you can't do comedy and survive in this if you want a
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real political voice and one thing that came to me is because it is always turned around if you're
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making a real impact they will turn it into whatever they want to turn it into and you can say
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well it doesn't matter but eventually it does because they create this thing where everything
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is out of context where you're dividing people even if you're saying i want people to come together
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you're the problem you're dividing people have you ever thought of that with any of your stuff
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because you're i mean you're joking it's clearly a joke right but you are also like yeah we're going
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to come over and kick your ass you know because you're whining yeah i guess if you have a dense
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perspective that would be dense meaning meaning an uneducated where you're not seeing the the value
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you're just looking at it at face value you're not understanding the cultural impact it has on a
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specific community i mean america is so great because it's so diverse and so we have all these
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different pockets of belief systems political spectrums sexual preferences hey all good but
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comedy is comedy and what we do is satirical in sense and the good work that we do is very unifying
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and i think it's why for me comedy has got so stale is because comedians are so terrified to make a joke
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i mean dave chapelle even joe rogan goes on about that and you know louis ck all of them all the good
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smart ones right the smart ones are are willing to say it now but there's very few george carlin
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would hate this society because they don't want to take the risk because then you know maybe a venue
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won't book them because they made a joke that offended you know the guys serving popcorn again
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it's it's in satirical nature and it's a comedy show and that's what my platform is i just saw a new
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poll out uh with uh those under 30 how was it 56 58 somewhere in that percentage believe that
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if you say things that are hurtful um it is it should be against the law no protection for that
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if you're hurting people's feelings and jail time are we just gonna like light the first amendment on
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fire then haven't we already i'll leave man bill of rights barely exists anymore yeah that's so crazy
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to me i mean it's there's something different than you know turning someone into a victim and being
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not hurtful but uh aggressive in nature but statements that are satirical in nature that's
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that's just those are words isn't that what isn't that what your brothers were doing and didn't that
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make you stronger you just said absolutely i mean i've never if we keep giving out participation
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trophies no one's going to know what it feels like to lose guess what if i haven't lost so much in life
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and in business i wouldn't know how to be as happy as i am you know it's just like sometimes the rain
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makes the sunshine feel good 50 cent lyric by the way but it's true and i think that enduring you know
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complex problems in life sets you up for such a better mental happiness and that you know what has
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meaning it has meaning absolutely and if you just live in this like fake bubble of you know every
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everything's perfect when it's not it's this it's not reality that's something else all right back to
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ashford.edu slash beck let me go back to your you're in you're in college and come back how did you
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how did you deal with that i walked off the campus and quit and i went to online college best thing
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you've ever done i bet yeah you know i just didn't really i didn't have the emotional intelligence at
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23 years old to kind of chill out back in yeah yeah i had some a lot of growing and maturing to do
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so i realized that that it was a bad environment for me and um fortunately i went through a really dark
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time during that period you know like terrible alcoholism just didn't care about anything and i finally
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had been sober what's that how long you've been sober oh i'm not sober i just learned how to deal
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with it i learned that you can have a glass of scotch at night and not drink the whole bottle
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really you know i have not mastered that i'm not i'm i'm i am not willing to give that a shot
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um but yeah there was actually a gentleman one of my best friends in all my life trey bullock who who
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kind of saved my life he called me when i was sitting in the gym parking lot and i think he just had
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that spidey sense and said hey man let's get you back doing stuff that you love and he actually
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kind of opened the door for me to work with the agency and getting back into that tribal like-minded
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you know with filled with purpose that i felt it was it's it's crazy that that millennials
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are dividing us so much and they they just think everybody has to be put in this box or in jail or
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whatever when what they're really saying is i want purpose in my life yeah and finding purpose is
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serving other people not shutting them up serving them going and doing something bigger than you
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agreed and they're being sold this package of goods that just leads to total emptiness
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and that's the challenging thing for me because i think you know i'm technically just made the
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millennial lists and 33 but they're coming from a lot of them from an empathetic perspective where
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they truly want to have purpose and make a good change in the world yes they're just going the wrong
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way about it you know especially i've seen in when i went to college and it's only got worse with the
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professors they're just like feeding them this crap and convincing them that you know you have to
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attack people if they don't agree with you i mean i have super liberal friends that think
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completely different than me but we still get along because we see the things we have in common
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not the things that we you know and then we can talk about it yeah and we have better conversation i
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just yeah a guy who was my mortal enemy apparently i i had to look him back up when he was like can we
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have dinner because i want to talk to you about and i was like i was supposed to be pissed at you
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because i don't remember i had to look it back up and google our names um and apparently we were
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moral enemies well we had dinner and we we started to talk because both of us were in a place to where
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i don't hate you you know i don't hate you um and we don't agree on anything right but those are the
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best conversations you can have the best because you learn you're all of a sudden going wait well i
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didn't know that about you i didn't know that i see why this when i did this or said this i see why
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you reacted that way and you learn something and that's how you make a lasting difference
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well there's also this i think like a culture of it's not okay to be wrong i mean we've all been
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severely wrong in our lives whether it was an argument or a perspective and i feel at this point
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in day and age it's like when you get someone you kind of put a cat in a bathtub where they find out
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wow i'm kind of wrong they just start attacking you well you're this and you're that instead of being
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like it's okay to be wrong dude i'm wrong all the time now let's develop a better thought process
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and thinking forward and you know creatively problem solve it's just like entrepreneurship
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if you look at a shipping issue and go everything's screwed well that's not how you resolve something and
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put the mission forward you have to you know define the issue and then solve it just like in politics
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i'm sure that i know nothing about but um culturally speaking you know uh i think that's what we have to
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do and people have that to be more receptive to being wrong and listening are we getting better
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worse you've seen any change in that in one direction or another i don't know if i pay more
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attention these days but it seems like it's getting a little worse and especially with the election
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coming up and all that you know just everything gets so heated and people just start shaming and
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blaming where does that where does that put us how i mean any you've traveled the world you've seen
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troubled areas before any idea what we're headed for how long we have to wake up you know i i honestly
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don't know that answer i think it's super complex but it's it's not a good road forward i know that
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for sure because the more divisiveness you create the more polarizing the two sides become which
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the contrast becomes wider and then you know it's escalation of force arguments turned into
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riots riots turn into whatever i was talking to a friend of mine the other day and we were talking
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about the idea of you don't talk about religion and politics in public right and it's it's not because
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we wanted to avoid arguments it was because the american way is i don't care yeah you vote for who
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you vote for you worship the way you want to worship no skin off my nose exactly now we don't have
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that in common anymore right we you must comply you must do these things right so what do we have in
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common now uh i would say a hyper quality of life that we have to be a little more appreciative of
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because that's what gives us the perspective to understand how fortunate we are as a society
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especially now i mean yes we've had a war going on for for two decades uh pretty much it's crazy crazy
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you know but we don't have that kind of global threat that we did back in world war ii and i think
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that that's why that generation was so united because they understood what how it was possible that our way of
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life could completely end we had that japanese wiped us out midway what does that leave us at
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like there there were so many different battles that and people were terrified and now it's just
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you know some college student doesn't think about the war in afghanistan i'm half of them probably
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don't even know there's a war still going on we had that growing up with um the cold war i mean i
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remember as a kid being terrified right we're all going to be dead from nukes you know and it there is
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something uniting it's kind of it's kind of like the 9 11 9 12 thing though right do you have to have
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that mortal enemy i pray we don't but i don't know how to resolve that i don't know the answer to it
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because you can only tell people something so much before they you know they just don't believe in it
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so you left college then you started clothing line uh well yeah i left college started my
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online bachelor's i got a bachelor's in liberal arts which is pretty funny and uh while i was
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working for the uh the agency i started making satirical little videos and as a way to kind of
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monetize the platform back then i uh just me and my business partner started making two three shirts
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so if we get 500 extra bucks we could buy a new camera at best buy or wherever and you know
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increase your production value and that kind of snowballed because i think it was a very interesting
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thing that we did or at least were part of is the military culture back then there wasn't a lot of
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fun humorous entertainment associated with the veteran community it was all very tactical and you
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know kind of chest beating which there's nothing wrong with that but a lot of guys in the military we
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have a macabre sense of humor it's how we deal with going out night after night and seeing death
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and so we kind of took that perspective like hey we'll we'll be professionals with firearms but let's
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make people laugh let's make the jokes we did in the team room and that really was the foundation of
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all the entrepreneurial gamers i have um do you
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let me talk to the botanist in you oh please the nerd the nerdy kid okay um ever watched out nabby
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i haven't mr selfridge i know that one yes okay um they both are from the time of world war one
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um and you see what world war one did to society i mean those guys came back nobody had ever seen a
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war like that almost every horse in europe was was slaughtered yeah um it it just was beyond
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understanding and recognition so we didn't see it we had never seen anything like that
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then world war ii happens and it's the strong virile guy who comes back and he can't talk about
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it right you know because that's just not what a strong man does then we go to vietnam where you
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can't talk about it because it was shameful right
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our our veterans um are in trouble with suicides and it's it's horrible but in some ways
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it's kind of the golden era for veterans compared to the past do you know what i mean i'm i'm in
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hyper agreeance with that to be honest with you i think that there's some issues that we have to
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deal with on the individual level as far as people that probably shouldn't have gone to war or were
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subjected to such traumatic situations that they need to seek help so we always have to be proactive
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in supporting them but my main thing that i try to focus on now is the kind of civilian narrative
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that i've heard a lot which is a guy like me that comes back from special operations five deployments
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like oh he's got the pts you know i'm like no we're not pill popping depressive guys where i just came
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back and now i want to live the american dream be an entrepreneur and and have a family and just live
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my life and see what the next chapter has to offer but we've absolutely created a better environment for
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veterans i mean especially looking back at vietnam and how poorly we treated everyone is terrible
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terrible terrible and there is there are a lot of very successful veterans that have come back and
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they and i think in the same way you do they're just like this is all bullcrap yeah i'm just gonna do
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it yep i people have asked me that before it's like does your military experience translate into your
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business um acumen per se and 100 because again i didn't grow up in title life grew up pretty poor
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worked for everything started working when i was 14 and so now it's just get the mission done figure it
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out and be gritty what has changed because military guys generally if you look at it from a conservative
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point of view if you're a member of the military you go to washington you become the biggest kind of
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statist you know because you're used to a cog in the wheel of this giant government machine right
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um but how is it that we're spitting guys out that are such entrepreneurs because i think uh with with
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the advancements in technology and social media you know it's pretty easy to have your voice heard
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and a lot of it it's why we have like a 40 percent um veteran higher rate at black rifle coffee is
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because their their skill sets are so brilliant and they have so much diverse skill sets and mainly
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it's usually the their perspective on work they work you know they don't come in and complain about
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stuff i mean the small stuff they come in and they get to work and they're really good at it so i
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usually like to hire a veteran that doesn't have a skill set for that specific job and then we'll train
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them on job training because i know they're going to work their butts off and they're going to have a good
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attitude every day and just be thankful for where they're at so so if i was if let's say i'm of the
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bank and you're coming to me for a loan and uh and i'm looking at your paperwork and i'm like okay
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black rifle coffee i'm a second amendment guy i'm not offended by that black rifle cup and you're making
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it in uh salt lake city yeah one of our main roasting hubs in salt lake city it's probably the
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least consumed beverage out of all of the states because you're morbid right yeah i'm morbid we
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don't drink coffee i know what are you thinking yeah it was very interesting how that all transpired
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essentially evan and i when the company was getting going we kept looking around the state where we
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should be geolocated where we should put the company and then one day i'm like we can talk about
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this all day i'll just drive up to salt lake and we'll plant the flag and to be honest with you
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salt lake city has been very receptive they've been amazing to us um even people that don't drink
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the coffee come in and buy merch so yeah they're they're an entrepreneurial spirit yeah uh they're
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actually lived there for uh two years did you north salt lake yeah yeah did you like it i didn't mind
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it honestly i i didn't mind it i love texas you know you're going to texas and get a driver's
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license and they hand you a glock it's awesome it's a joke it's a joke kind of um uh i i by the
00:25:30.840
way i just have to say as a former coffee drinker and now not you piss me off every day because i
00:25:38.380
walk by the the coffee pot and it smells so good smells so good so thank you for that i appreciate it
00:25:46.640
no no problem um what uh what changed if anything in your cultural or political mindset
00:25:59.340
from the time you joined the military the time you left what did you learn that's fair i would say i
00:26:09.780
didn't learn a lot while i was in because i was so absorbed into what we were doing and being a
00:26:15.240
professional at my job and keeping my team alive retrospect it was looking back it's looking back
00:26:19.540
i think um and i've definitely become more and more conservative year by year because it didn't a
00:26:25.900
lot of it didn't matter to me but then now when i look how we're treating people coming out and you
00:26:30.500
know love them or hate them i gotta give it to president trump for the amount of support he's
00:26:33.840
pouring towards the military and it's actually it's it's a godsend i think for a lot of the dudes to
00:26:37.980
look out for him and i just wish whatever political spectrum left or right more people cared about
00:26:43.860
the men and women they're they're sending to war and so that's really where it's so immoral it's
00:26:50.000
hyper immoral it is you got these people that's sitting in an ivory tower and they're like wow send
00:26:54.180
the boys and they send off 19 year old men and women to just get slayed and right as if it's nothing
00:26:59.160
it's disgusting it's also immoral to uh to live in this society and have 20 years of war where our
00:27:10.000
soldiers are places we don't even know what are we doing as you know we we were up until world war
00:27:17.240
ii a country that didn't believe in standing armies right and it was eisenhower that said by the way you
00:27:23.780
go down this road everything's going to change he talked about the military industrial complex he
00:27:28.940
talked about the state department and how that was gonna and it's all happened it's all happened
00:27:34.380
right and we just kind of like oh i don't know what are we doing well yeah because i don't think
00:27:40.800
not a lot not enough people care and so it's just kind of unbeknownst to them it is what it is
00:27:54.120
i don't i don't want to stick you out because i think a lot of things can be i think fame and
00:28:00.860
fortune is a drug i think fame and fortune is uh one of the most dangerous things you can
00:28:07.340
give to a human being agreed um horrible you can all of a sudden just buy into it and you are
00:28:26.240
um there's a very interesting gentleman and it gave me so much perspective he's a former
00:28:33.280
um special operations guy and uh his name's tyler and he had this whole statement about
00:28:38.800
lack of pts a lack of post-traumatic stress that was very interesting because you know when i wrote
00:28:44.800
my book i personally just me individually speaking never had issues of what i went through and what i saw
00:28:51.340
mine was always the sense of purpose and that's what i had such a difficult transition coming out
00:28:57.240
because i missed it and when i was in i literally convinced myself i was gonna die and my my mentality
00:29:04.140
was well time to kill as many bad guys before i die i was convinced that was and it was why i was
00:29:10.080
kind of you know i wouldn't say fearless but more aggressive in nature for getting my job done and
00:29:14.900
keeping people safe and um so when you lived past that i didn't know what to do it was like
00:29:21.740
got in the car and someone said drive and i had no gp i had no clue where to go and so that's
00:29:27.620
something that i've i've found my new purpose in life is ensuring that i don't have hopefully you can
00:29:32.380
help other you know 23 year old dudes like me that get out of the military and have some form of
00:29:36.880
inspiration and an understanding that there is more life to live there's even more quality of life to
00:29:42.700
live outside of the military so be thankful for it but don't find yourself in the rest of your life
00:29:47.000
through that you know four or six eight years that's as a chapter move on and write an epic book
00:29:55.020
can't that be said however for millennials most millennials that they
00:30:03.500
they're getting into a car and they they want to serve they they have good intentions they want to do
00:30:11.000
the right thing right but it's a purpose it's a purposeless life you know social media and all
00:30:19.380
of this stuff it's just it has no purpose well that's that's the very difficult time and you're
00:30:25.360
saying how how fame can be a drug you know i think the social media complex is very scary and terrifying
00:30:33.140
you know you can go on there and see 12 year olds dancing for a like it like on their instagrams and
00:30:37.620
doing all it's just it's weird and bizarre to me and it's like i'm kind of terrified to have kids
00:30:43.180
because i'm like oh man it's a weird world to bring them into and it's a very surface level
00:30:48.700
environment we've created with most social media because they're willing to act immorally or do
00:30:53.300
anything for that comment and like for that self-validation and it's fake affirmation it's it's there's
00:30:58.000
no substance to it you know they'd rather get 60 likes on a comment than have that one great
00:31:03.380
interpersonal you know relationship with someone that loves them their character not their blonde
00:31:08.840
hair or their their muscles you know it's hard you know this because you have 70 million likes on
00:31:15.320
me and 70 million views on on one of your uh youtube videos when you have one that doesn't perform well
00:31:22.780
right it automatically you automatically go well what did i do different what
00:31:28.280
right and if you're not really self-aware which i haven't met a teenager that is
00:31:32.820
if you're not really self-aware yes you start mutating for the algorithm yep it's it's very very funny
00:31:42.600
to say that i've heard comedians and other people say that never read the comments and i i try not to do
00:31:47.340
that because thankfully i love the art of production and film and movies and so i selfishly do it for
00:31:55.340
myself because i love the process from script to screen and then when i put it out i don't really
00:32:00.420
base this base it off of the performance like on numbers but am i happy with the project could i've
00:32:06.280
done it better and i don't think like you were saying you have the emotional intelligence at 15
00:32:10.120
years old when you put out a video to understand that it's okay that you didn't get as much views
00:32:15.720
as your last one right and i don't know if you can grow the emotional intelligence
00:32:19.360
if you're in that bubble yeah if you're in the bubble it's kind of a sounding board and you're just
00:32:25.840
you're talking about i love film and everything else so where we're like
00:32:43.980
what's a goal you're 50 years old what's a goal what do you what do you see as this is that's what
00:32:52.580
i really want to do very interesting question um yes i love film i think two things that are really
00:32:59.440
my path forward are becoming a better executive for my company and you know being a better business
00:33:05.460
owner and business partner okay so let me ask you on this
00:33:08.440
i see you here okay and then i see your videos and i know the difference between
00:33:18.760
i know that you can be honestly be two different people you can be that performer where you're just
00:33:26.420
like doing it and it's fun and you can be this right yeah but most people don't they look at you and
00:33:34.440
like wait what happened to my guy what happened yeah is this is any of is any of that
00:33:44.100
tone down because your business is going way up i don't think we've toned down really at all i mean
00:33:51.240
we put out i mean you oh me uh i think uh depending on the media in certain times i have to speak to a
00:33:57.020
different audience but all of it is me i'm not a politician i don't fake stuff but you know when you
00:34:02.220
have those kind of aggressive more fun natured videos that's just an extension of my satirical
00:34:06.660
jokes that i write like man i want to troll these guys who get spill a glass of milk and cry for 10
00:34:10.880
days you know that's just ridiculous um but you know i like for other people to see the more
00:34:15.940
professional side of me that it's not all you know whiskey and and guns and jokes and all that
00:34:20.720
stuff there's a lot of work that goes into creating an enterprise and employing over 200 people
00:34:25.880
can you just tell me again how you drink whiskey how did you get past that i've never gotten past
00:34:33.320
it and i watch your wife lock it up and just get the three ounces jeez i watch i watch people now all
00:34:40.280
the time i see and it hadn't happened to me in a decade at least but i see people and they they have
00:34:46.860
a glass of whiskey and that's my poison and i'm like oh my gosh that looks so good that looks so good
00:34:52.940
i got i got out of it before i mean jack was you know maker's mark was something that
00:34:59.680
that was fancy uh those two uh and then i got out of coffee and it's like i i got out before there
00:35:09.000
was good coffee before before you know when it was still you know what good whiskey good whiskey was
00:35:15.380
i will indulge in those um bad behavioral patterns for you so i drink great coffee great whiskey quite
00:35:21.940
often how did you break that did you use the word alcoholic yeah i was for sure but i think a lot of
00:35:29.440
that stemmed from the position i was in life you know innately i am a very driven and motivated guy
00:35:35.840
i love to work i love to just create things and when i had nothing to create sitting stagnant in the
00:35:42.720
water essentially the only thing i could do to ski escape myself you're like homes are you familiar
00:35:48.920
with sherlock holmes of course yeah you know the the real sherlock is a heroin act oh really yeah and
00:35:55.520
he doesn't uh it's called the two percent solutions cocaine and heroin and he uh uh when he's on a case
00:36:02.920
he's completely clean interesting but until he finds a purpose he's taking heroin life has absolutely no
00:36:10.340
meaning to him well fortunately i've never touched that yeah yeah yeah yeah i mean that was kind of the
00:36:15.380
position i was in and so that's why i kind of needed a good support system to pull me out of it
00:36:19.260
um i want to go to uh chicken and the egg with your with your um ads because you're not you're not
00:36:32.880
really running ads you're not running ads right um uh you know you do something and then at the end
00:36:39.480
black rifle coffee right completely counterintuitive unless you are yeti or um uh patagonia when you are
00:36:52.820
those companies you realize no i'm i'm a lifestyle they're coming to me because they want to go hiking
00:36:59.800
they want to go do these things they they don't they will spend that on a cooler because it means
00:37:06.440
something right was this did this play a role at all in your head or did it just come naturally
00:37:14.320
i'd say a lot of it came naturally but again i think something i've been very fortunate with is
00:37:20.040
i'm a selfish comedian i do things just to make myself laugh and when i started getting into production
00:37:25.960
i wanted to do a style of content that i had not seen out there and fortunately that started
00:37:31.300
catching wind and what i really want to add value to our customer base is not only like the greatest
00:37:37.160
coffee but how do we give them more of a value add to participate in the brand to feel they're a part
00:37:42.700
of a sense of community and a sense of give back and you know i use the term a lot vote with your
00:37:47.520
dollar and i think at this day and age it's really unlikely for brands to be as transparent as we are
00:37:53.320
but when you engage and participate in a brand you know exactly what we stand for and what we're about
00:37:59.700
there's american flags all over our business most people are concealed carrying legally you know so
00:38:05.420
that's just who we are and if you don't like it go buy go buy coffee somewhere else you know i don't
00:38:09.820
need to the whole world doesn't need to be our consumer and you know being in the cia you probably
00:38:17.460
knew this maybe to some degree but we are we're all categorized now we're all just just through
00:38:26.440
algorithms we're just all categorized and you go into a grocery store and an algorithm can tell you
00:38:32.340
you voted for trump you voted for hillary just by the groceries really oh yeah you didn't know that
00:38:39.000
just by the groceries consumer data is getting scary scary individualized it is it's like with 90
00:38:46.580
like 96 accuracy just on what you buy at the grocery store wow that's crazy that's crazy that's crazy
00:38:55.420
that's crazy and have you ever been to uh like nantucket or um martha's vineyard um i've been by
00:39:04.920
martha's vineyard okay yeah don't go um you go to martha valley right no no that's up in uh massachusetts
00:39:11.620
okay okay so martha's vineyard is is the elite elite democrat liberal martha's vineyard started out
00:39:22.740
as a god place with with real conservative values but now interesting i walk the streets of martha's
00:39:30.160
vineyard it's not comfortable okay nantucket which is just just down the road of spell or down the water
00:39:38.640
or a spell is conservative interesting for massachusetts okay right it's crazy when did we
00:39:47.900
start dividing ourselves like that and is that a good thing or a bad thing it's a bad thing i think
00:39:54.080
they should build a cool little bridge with a nice little bar table just like this and share wine once
00:39:59.160
a week and uh you know hey this is what we're doing this is what we're doing and have some good
00:40:03.340
conversation so when did that but when did that and isn't the brand i mean because right i agree with
00:40:11.980
you i mean i want to serve the people i'm never going i'm never going to be able to get the people
00:40:18.060
who hate me who don't even really know me they just they see this and they're like oh well i know what
00:40:24.380
that's all about yeah i'm the same way right right but doesn't that play into that shopping cart that
00:40:34.040
is completely different where we don't share anything it could be um i think there we kind
00:40:41.240
of segment our brand positions like me i just do a lot more satirical stuff and then black rifle coffee
00:40:46.540
we stand for america the constitution and being a patriot very divisive i don't think so i don't think
00:40:53.460
so i don't think so people when they hear those words in 2019 might think it's divisive but i mean
00:40:58.240
we've had every sexual preference religious preference political preference work in our
00:41:03.520
house as long as you're not offended by the american flag and you put in hard work and you
00:41:07.740
believe in the american dream i've said that 20 times this podcast already super simple to me i mean
00:41:12.600
we've had like one of the huge progressive work for us and just believed in the mission was a
00:41:17.480
sweetheart great person i've had super progressive people no problem but they didn't hate america
00:41:23.440
exactly and they believed in the bill of rights that's that's all it really takes it's pretty
00:41:29.180
simple when you think about it i don't know why we've made it so complex yeah so you said that you
00:41:34.400
want to uh be a better ceo yeah i'm executive vice president evan gets ceo title he's the man he's
00:41:40.300
smarter than me well you want to be a better executive yes so you want to be a better executive
00:41:44.200
executive but i keep hearing you talk about i'm a comedian or i do comedy and i do film and i like
00:41:51.180
the process where is that in being an executive of a coffee company 20 years down the road well
00:42:00.600
that's that's a good question because that's where i have about two personalities in that sense i want
00:42:04.780
one to be the 40 hour a week executive and the other one to be a 40 hour a week you know film director
00:42:09.860
and all that uh you know i've done film before i've acted a decent amount but the older and older
00:42:14.340
i get i'd love to participate more in the production side of it and have the newer guys maybe in veterans
00:42:19.640
come up coach them and and direct movies i'm probably going to direct another movie in 2020 which i'm
00:42:24.940
really excited about about what what's the story like it is kind of like very interesting film it's
00:42:30.820
going to be kind of like deadpool meets i am legend you know so like zombie apocalypse with some
00:42:36.700
some satirical humor in there but then also driven solely by music because i'm obsessed with
00:42:41.960
music so everything will be scored very theatrically and and musically which i don't think has been
00:42:47.740
done i think each one of those have been done on their own but the combination of them all
00:42:51.100
maybe some boz lerman in a way yeah the same way but and then i'll probably be in the botany club
00:42:58.300
in the movie you know selling trees and hamburgers like i used to do and is that what you thought
00:43:04.060
you were going to do what did you think you were going to do when you were when you were in the
00:43:07.680
botany club and you're a skinny you know beat upable kid yeah what did you think you were going to do
00:43:15.160
i don't think i knew to be honest with you but it's a very interesting um entrepreneurial journey
00:43:21.080
i've had because for the botany club i used to grill hamburgers once every two weeks in the quad
00:43:26.820
and you know i'd go to costco and i'd work all the cost of goods out and build a spreadsheet
00:43:30.960
and and see how we could increase profit market and i didn't even know at the time that this was
00:43:35.160
like setting the stone for me in business years and years later but i don't think i knew what i was
00:43:40.500
doing so is there a uh a marriage in your future is there i'm currently married to show me it's on
00:43:51.960
there and i forgot my ring today she's gonna she's gonna kill me for it that's what you went it's on
00:43:56.740
there it's on there okay no i live with my beautiful wife and i have two dogs so noelle
00:44:02.320
is her name and she's a sweetheart it's her birthday friday so i gotta do something nice for
00:44:05.800
her oh good i've been married uh just over like three years yeah how'd you guys meet uh the
00:44:10.260
instagrams you know as the as the millennials say i slid into her dms but she wasn't having it for
00:44:15.880
a long time had to be very convincing and she did she know not really um she worked for a gun store
00:44:23.400
so she's kind of a gun gun nut in a good way yeah and uh is an avid coffee drinker so i make fun of
00:44:29.060
her all the time that she married a gun drinking uh coffee guy or gun yeah gun toting coffee guy so
00:44:35.740
i i think it's um my wife uh i was kind of doing this with my career when i met my wife
00:44:44.240
and everybody thought it was over and i thought i was gonna i was gonna give this talk radio thing
00:44:49.020
a chance i'd done 20 years in top 40 radio and i was so sick of it and so i thought i'd give this a
00:44:54.980
chance and nobody thought it would be successful including me i mean i like you know maybe right
00:45:03.620
she didn't think of success like that she thought i was gonna be i don't know uh you know a chef
00:45:11.840
or something uh and so she's not really into it you know she's just she's a mom and uh and a wife
00:45:22.940
and does her own thing and she's not into the celebrity part of it it was the best blessing
00:45:30.100
of my life i was actually just gonna ask you that question i went to when i first date second date ever
00:45:35.680
with my wife we went to a birthday party with my friends there's this like big famous band playing
00:45:40.280
there and a whole group of people she didn't care about any of it and that's kind of how it is it's
00:45:45.500
been a great counterbalance to my life really good because i had previous relationships maybe like you
00:45:50.000
that were very into it look at me the trophy likes one to be on the arm everywhere and it's it it's very
00:45:56.460
very challenging as a public it will and it will pull you it will pull you apart i mean success
00:46:03.040
is hard it's hyper challenging it is you're under the microscope every single day what's the hardest
00:46:10.800
part about success for you privacy at least as far as public figure wise privacy for sure i'm a very
00:46:19.360
introverted like i live in acreage and hide from everybody so i go out and do what i do and then
00:46:23.920
um i don't like to be overstimulated and it's so weird when you know if you like google your name
00:46:28.980
people know dates and births of everything when you got married your wife's hobbies and it's just
00:46:34.140
it's creepy and you walk into places or into an airport and all of a sudden you see everybody
00:46:39.000
look at you and then they look down to the yeah google and you had to see if that's him that's him
00:46:44.580
i'm sure you get that way more than me but it's it's uh it's a blessing and a curse fortunately for us
00:46:51.040
we have such an amazing supporter base like a lot of people that support us are veterans or patriots and
00:46:57.140
so they usually come up and thank us for the mission that we're doing it's nice that yeah
00:47:00.640
it's wonderful because it does give you the sense of community and it revalidates that purpose because
00:47:06.000
sometimes you know you can sit at two in the morning working like why am i doing this i could just
00:47:10.460
get out of here and go live in an island and then you know you see that message come in that says hey
00:47:17.140
i watched this video and you saved my life and i you know rekindled my relationship with my wife and
00:47:21.920
got in the gym over a stupid two-minute video like you would never have thought it would have that
00:47:26.140
profound impact on somebody but for some reason right place right time it did and amazing in it
00:47:30.400
it's gives me chills it's the most yeah humbling awesome thing i've ever experienced it's really
00:47:35.360
hard not to say i well that's why i planned it i mean i was not at all i didn't yeah i'm not gonna
00:47:42.020
lie about it like you really want to say that well yes i am that genius but no i had bluffing i set
00:47:47.860
out at the age of 15 in the botany club and i'm gonna change people's lives no definitely didn't
00:47:52.360
um let me just ask you some political questions here um and that aren't i don't think they're real
00:47:56.980
political um uh all to do with the military uh we are in a position now and i don't know if you know
00:48:08.940
much about this thing that's happening it's really what i think the the impeachment thing is is all
00:48:16.140
about um we have a policy in the state department of it's called civil society 2.0 and it is training
00:48:24.960
revolutionaries uh with our government money training them then telling them just wait till
00:48:32.260
the right opportunity and when we see the right opportunity go and the government is overturned
00:48:39.280
we've done this with bad governments we've also done this with really good governments
00:48:43.500
um should we as people be fomenting revolution around the world it's a very loaded question i
00:48:55.140
would say i i usually stem more towards like isolationalism you know like not we can interject
00:49:01.240
where we can help but you know proxy wars and all that are so complex and the problem is is we it's so
00:49:08.920
hard to define what the third and fourth order effects of that will be i mean look at iraq
00:49:13.360
with saddam hussein i mean we created an insurgency out of there lost a lot of american lives because of
00:49:19.220
it and and then it's like all you always come back to was it worth it and maybe it's easily to
00:49:23.920
easily define retrospectively but to just go start having proxy wars and overthrowing governments that's
00:49:29.760
that's a way above my pay grade and i think most people that are making those decisions too
00:49:41.940
go get the bad guys we have a responsibility you know go get the bad guys and it kills me
00:49:50.720
what what's happening in china i mean with the uyghurs and the concentration camps that they have
00:49:56.260
there and and what's even happening in hong kong we lose hong kong taiwan is gone that whole
00:50:02.560
thing just spirals out of control and it becomes very even darker than it is right now but i don't
00:50:10.480
want to be involved yeah i mean i find myself in this place to where we we can't do that you know you
00:50:18.880
can't give people freedom you can't they have to earn it they have to find it themselves we can
00:50:26.960
we can help but we can't lead on that and i just i just feel like every time we every time we reach
00:50:36.960
out and we do something because it's the right thing to do with the exception of the big ones like world
00:50:41.920
war ii we make it worse in the end we make it worse historically we have yeah in certain circumstances so
00:50:50.880
it's a hard one because you know you can define a moral argument on either side well are we going
00:50:56.560
to let these you know human transgressions and you know things happen here or are we going to go risk
00:51:02.320
lives to intervene which consequently consequently could turn it way worse it so do you believe in
00:51:10.080
because you were in a private army mm-hmm you believe in private armies as far as being like a contractor
00:51:16.080
yeah um or let me say this i do not want the united states government um going in and freeing slaves
00:51:29.920
in china but if there was a ross perot and he is a private citizen wanted to go in and help rescue slaves
00:51:41.520
out of china i don't necessarily have that problem with that you know what i mean it's not the
00:51:47.040
government's responsibility but maybe it's me and my local church or whatever that went you know we
00:51:55.120
got to save these people right is there a place for that yeah that's that's a very good question that
00:52:02.800
i've really never thought about i mean i think in certain circumstances it could work i look at you know
00:52:07.920
kurdistan and some of the former veterans that were going over to support the kurds and then the
00:52:14.000
travesties that we're having over there and it's hard not to absolutely agree with them you know as
00:52:19.120
they're getting shot at from isis pulling you know children out of rumble of course i agree with that
00:52:26.400
you know so yeah i guess it could work i just don't know the functionality of it and how it would
00:52:31.840
what's the world look like in 10 years hopefully a great place
00:52:40.560
i'm gonna leave it at that thank you thank you so much
00:52:50.160
just a reminder i'd love you to rate and subscribe to the podcast
00:52:54.400
and pass this on to a friend so it can be discovered by other people