Jocko Podcast 349: Powerful Enemies Must Be Outfought and Outproduced. W/ Pete Roberts. Origin USA.

2022-09-01T06:00:23Z

Underground Premium Content: https://www.jockounderground.com/subscribe Pete Roberts of Orign USA. Origin Hunt line, Clean protein, and Clean Energy. Bringing manufacturing back to America. Join the conversation on Twitter/Instagram: @jockowillink @pete.origin @echocharles HOW TO STAY ON THE PATH: JOCKO UNDERGROUND Exclusive Episodes: https://www.jockounderground.com/subscribe Jocko Store Apparel: https://www.jockostore.com Jocko Fuel: https://jockofuel.com Origin Jeans and Clothes: https://originmaine.com/durable-goods/ Echelon Front: https://www.echelonfront.com

AI summary of episode

You know, and I was talking to you about as far as like living into the brand, like after that investment came on, I felt like, I felt again that same kind of like, when I went back in the day, when remortgaging the house for origin, I felt the same thing like, man, you know, some of our family and friends invested in this with us alongside of us. So I kind of, you know, like cast that wide vision early in the year and even, even the constant touch point, I think still, you know, still people, it's almost like, I mean, you have kids, you know, when I, when I had my first child, Keegan, like Amanda, you know, she's pregnant. And of course, you know, he's like, I think, I think for like Kip, like he knows what factories, good factories look like. I believe it's gonna take like some people going to Musters, some of you coming back to the factory, you know, like it's gonna take this constant alignment over the course of 24 months. I was like, oh man, God, like you don't know what you don't know, you know? So obviously, we had some decent offers from the different private equity firms and whatnot, but I honestly didn't think we were gonna find any at one point, I was kinda like, damn, this just isn't gonna happen and we're gonna have to either shrink and rethink, or I actually didn't know. Like it wasn't like, oh, you know, he's hardballing us or he's gonna hold a little bit or we gotta come back with a different number. And while he said something smart to Jason, like I'll kick your ass or something like that, I was just like, I literally put my head in my hand going, oh man, how is this gonna go? And I actually say that to my kids, like, hey, you know, you don't know what you don't know and you can't control what you can't control, but you can respond, you can control the way you respond to things you can't control. So this is what happens, I think, you know, it's like, look, I'm not gonna sit here and say it's a conspiracy theory or a conspiracy that you know, the big corporations don't want people to make things on their own. And it was awesome to, and I remember you and I having this conversation, you know, like, hey, you know, I said, what are we looking like from the financial side? Bro, at some point, sometimes like I, my ass was stuck to my couch, you know, and I would be like on the phone, on the phone, on the phone, on the phone, like till midnight. It's always like you've got plant, you've got like the, Dedeco says this, like when somebody comes to his school, right? But you know, like we're like the things that these big conglomerates are able to make, you know? Like when you came on board and we partnered up, we were still in the woods and we're like, we're gonna buy this big building like 20,000 square feet. We didn't know if the wool would hold, you know, like this, this stealth wool that we gleaned from the special, special forces, we, we tweaked it, you know, so we, we took what they were using for this glove and we tweaked it for our liking with the, with the blend that we wanted. Like there's like almost like a little bit of a rebirth, so to speak this year of what we're going to do as a company, as a mission, as a, as a movement. And finding those guys, you know, I'd say that if people aren't aligned, though the one, the one time that you're gonna have a failure is if we aren't aligned, if two people aren't aligned or if two teams aren't aligned, you're gonna have, you're gonna ultimately have failure. Running the business like you're on a desert island is gonna allow you, you know, you would think, now you're gonna be a good steward of that investment. I'm freaking in, you know, and getting the teams together, feeding them, having a meal, and then like showing them and going to town on like who we are and what we're all about and what culture means and what leadership means and how to lead and how to communicate. And you know, even like, you know, you throughout computer science, actually people that do good computer science and computer engineering, they get dopamine hits cause they're building something. And I'm like, oh, you know, well, so we get on the phone and you're like, hey, we're going through the due diligence and whatnot. Yeah, we got it done when they're like, one of his stipends right at the end of this whole thing was like a cliffhanger, right? But you know, you walk into this place and you could just tell it's like, man, like World War II, post World War II East Germany, Berlin. Don got to sit back in his chair for about five minutes and go, ah, you know, I mean, because being that lean and running just in time inventory and at one point, Joe Moss, our chief revenue officer said, man, we're running this company with like nine people in three ball dudes. And I was like, I like, it's like, if you drink coffee for the first time, of course this is a thousand times better than coffee. But, you know, it's one of those situations where, like, okay, this guy's kind of like a lot of talk. Well, we can respond to the things we don't know, we can control the way we respond to it, you know, and try not to have an entrepreneurial seizure at the same time, which, you know, we had some opportunities to have, I think. You know, like we don't have no idea, but you have to like run a sizable amount of the product, which is not cheap at 50 bucks a yard, right? That's why you see, you know, for years now, for kids, it's been, oh, you know what you need to do is, you need to go to college and learn, you know, you need to learn computer science or liberal arts. They were like, oh, they were like, oh, it's gonna take some time to get this thing worked out. And ultimately we came to agreement and, you know, when you, when, when you talk about like putting money where your mouth is like me, you and Deco stroke to check and bought that place. So I've seen a lot of this and it was awesome because sometimes, you know, you start asking when they start doing the financial due due diligence, you know, it's, it's like opening up a can of worms and mayhem's coming out and it gets crazy. Like I looked at Kip, he looked at me, you know, he's like, are you kidding me, man? And looking at the kind of stepping back out of the trenches, looking at the battlefield, going, how are we gonna go from, you know, point A to point B when it comes to knitwear, when it comes to hoodies, when it comes to T-shirts, when it comes to denim, when it comes to all the things we need to make, we're going to have to look elsewhere. But I mean, you know, like as far as understanding the psyche of the consumer, of the people out there, because I believe right now, and if you look at America, I think we're the strongest and healthiest we've ever been. Like it's not like, and I know you've been down twice now for the whole team, then for the management team. And I remember just calling you and being like, bro, we got to try and buy this place, like walking into that for the first time and seeing it three times bigger than what we're doing and just cranking stuff out. And Jason, you know how Jason is, he's like, you know, kind of get that sales personality. But burning that cash for so long, as long as we could, and knowing that the right thing to do was to bring on a partner that could help us blow this thing up, was definitely challenging, knowing how we work together and how we make decisions and how we communicate and sticking somebody else in the mix that we don't know and trying to trust that process that they're gonna plug in easily.

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Episode transcript

[00:00:00] This is Jocko podcast number 349 with Echo Charles and me,
[00:00:04] Jocko willing.
[00:00:05] Good evening Echo.
[00:00:06] Good evening.
[00:00:08] Powerful enemies must be out fought and out produced.
[00:00:14] It is not enough to just turn out a few more planes,
[00:00:18] a few more tanks, a few more guns, a few more ships
[00:00:21] that can be turned out by our enemies.
[00:00:24] We must out produce them overwhelmingly
[00:00:28] so that there can be no question of our ability
[00:00:31] to provide a crushing superiority of equipment
[00:00:35] in any theater of the world war.
[00:00:40] And that right there is what President Roosevelt
[00:00:44] told Congress and America less than a month
[00:00:48] after the attack on Pearl Harbor
[00:00:51] and what he talked about doing, we did.
[00:00:54] In the United States,
[00:00:56] America provided almost 70% of the military equipment
[00:01:03] for the allies in World War II.
[00:01:05] 297,000 aircraft, 193,000 artillery guns,
[00:01:11] 86,000 tanks, 2 million trucks,
[00:01:15] 2.6 million submachine guns, almost 12 million rifles.
[00:01:20] The US Navy grew from 700 ships to almost 7,000
[00:01:30] and that included 23 battleships
[00:01:33] and 151 aircraft carriers.
[00:01:39] And that crushing superiority of production
[00:01:45] and the brave men who brought those weapons
[00:01:48] to bear against the enemy overwhelmed the Nazis
[00:01:52] and the Imperial Japanese Army.
[00:01:54] And America's ability to create and produce,
[00:01:58] to design and manufacture,
[00:02:00] this has always been one of our strongest assets as a nation,
[00:02:08] our working class, the men and women of this country
[00:02:12] that actually do these things,
[00:02:14] that actually make these things happen, but that asset
[00:02:20] and that capability, it faded, it faded.
[00:02:27] And manufacturing went overseas,
[00:02:33] we shut down a lot of our mills,
[00:02:34] we shut down a lot of our factories,
[00:02:36] we abandoned our communities, we abandoned our workforce,
[00:02:40] we abandoned the American worker
[00:02:42] and our rivals around the world, they smiled
[00:02:51] and they eased that transition for us.
[00:02:54] They helped us down that path, they offered cheap labor,
[00:02:59] basically slave labor, they didn't care about worker safety,
[00:03:04] they didn't care about the environmental impact
[00:03:06] of what they were doing, but they were able to,
[00:03:08] they were able to win on price, but we paid the price.
[00:03:19] And we began to lose that incredibly valuable asset
[00:03:25] in our country, our ability to make things,
[00:03:27] our ability to build things,
[00:03:28] our ability to create and manufacture.
[00:03:34] And with the loss of that skill,
[00:03:36] with the loss of that asset,
[00:03:39] our strength in the world began to diminish,
[00:03:46] began to fade, but there's a new fire burning now
[00:03:54] and there's a slow burning revolution occurring.
[00:03:59] There are companies in America that have had enough of that,
[00:04:03] that are capturing the skills from the past,
[00:04:07] that are teaching the right people,
[00:04:09] that are restoring the machines and resurrecting the factories.
[00:04:15] There are people and companies that are rebuilding America
[00:04:19] into the strong, powerful and benevolent nation it once was.
[00:04:28] And I am honored to be part of some of those companies
[00:04:32] with my business partner, P. Roberts.
[00:04:35] And we have, we've invested everything we've got
[00:04:40] into OriginUSA and into JockoFuel
[00:04:43] and we are doing our best in this new war.
[00:04:51] An economic war, yes, it's an economic war.
[00:04:55] It's also a war of ideas and it's a war of ideology
[00:05:00] when you look at who we're up against.
[00:05:02] It's a war of skill, it's a war of production,
[00:05:07] it's a war of efficiency and it's a war of grit.
[00:05:13] It's a war between state control and self-determination,
[00:05:20] a war between subjugation and liberty,
[00:05:24] between slavery and freedom.
[00:05:28] That's what's at stake.
[00:05:34] And that's not just rhetoric, that's what's going on.
[00:05:37] And it's great to have Pete back here with us tonight
[00:05:42] to talk about the war that we're fighting right now
[00:05:45] on all fronts as we try to help rebuild America.
[00:05:51] Pete, what's happening, man?
[00:05:53] Badass, man, powerful.
[00:05:54] Thanks for having me back on.
[00:05:56] Pete Roberts, if you don't know who he is, podcast 93,
[00:05:59] podcast 141, podcast 194, podcast 297.
[00:06:03] That's, we joined forces in 2017.
[00:06:08] We recorded a podcast every year up here
[00:06:10] at the origin main immersion Jiu Jitsu camp,
[00:06:14] which we, there's a little gap in 2020.
[00:06:16] We got shut down.
[00:06:18] We weren't allowed to do Jiu Jitsu.
[00:06:19] We weren't allowed to do Jiu Jitsu.
[00:06:23] At least not in public.
[00:06:26] Yeah, yeah.
[00:06:26] We kept training.
[00:06:27] I'm sure you kept training too.
[00:06:30] So this has turned out to be an annual thing
[00:06:33] that we're doing and it's a good opportunity for us
[00:06:36] to let people know what's going on,
[00:06:38] share people some of the experiences that we've had
[00:06:40] and some of the lessons that we've learned
[00:06:42] because we're learning.
[00:06:43] We're learning a lot of lessons along the way
[00:06:45] and giving everyone an update as to what's happening
[00:06:48] so that they can see sort of the big picture
[00:06:50] of what's going on.
[00:06:51] So essentially we're talking about two companies.
[00:06:56] And really these two companies,
[00:07:00] I would say it's safe to say that they started
[00:07:04] as sort of a Siamese twins, right?
[00:07:06] Like they were connected and, you know,
[00:07:10] they had a lot, they shared a lot of blood.
[00:07:12] Maybe, yeah, maybe shared, you know,
[00:07:14] like they have three lungs total.
[00:07:16] One of the lungs was shared.
[00:07:18] You have two of the lungs.
[00:07:18] Yeah.
[00:07:19] It's like, so there's these shared things going on.
[00:07:23] One of the Jocofuel, obviously it's our supplement
[00:07:26] nutrition brand and the other one's Origin USA,
[00:07:28] which is our hard goods, clothing, accessories brand.
[00:07:34] We got fitness products in there too as well.
[00:07:36] So a bunch of stuff, but we got these two companies.
[00:07:38] So let's talk about where we're at with these,
[00:07:41] what's going on, some of the lessons we learned,
[00:07:44] some of the tuition payments that we've made.
[00:07:47] You know, do you have your MBA?
[00:07:49] I don't have shit, I'm a college dropout.
[00:07:51] Okay, so you don't have your MBA,
[00:07:52] I don't have my MBA.
[00:07:53] Echo, you have your MBA?
[00:07:54] No MBA.
[00:07:55] But you know what, we've learned some business lessons.
[00:07:58] Shouldn't they can't teach you in school?
[00:07:59] And they've cost way more than an MBA.
[00:08:01] Yes.
[00:08:03] So here we go.
[00:08:04] Let's start off talking a little bit about Jocofuel.
[00:08:06] Now what's interesting about this is last time
[00:08:09] we were together, or I guess during this time frame,
[00:08:12] I guess we didn't do it.
[00:08:13] We were getting to a point where we,
[00:08:19] as we had predicted, we were starting to need money.
[00:08:25] So we were starting to need money.
[00:08:28] This is a cash intensive business.
[00:08:31] Making food products, making supplements,
[00:08:34] being in retail, having to order millions
[00:08:38] and sometimes tens of millions of dollars worth of product
[00:08:43] and having to pay for that.
[00:08:45] And then having to hold on and hold your breath
[00:08:51] and pinch pennies until maybe 90, 120, 180 days,
[00:08:58] that money starts to come back in.
[00:08:59] We got, we did a lot of breath holding in this ramp up.
[00:09:04] And that's kind of the phase we were in last year
[00:09:06] around this time.
[00:09:07] We were in that every quarter, every month really,
[00:09:11] would be a breath hold, waiting for payment to come in.
[00:09:16] It's not a great feeling.
[00:09:17] Yeah, and behind the scenes, last year, during camp,
[00:09:20] when we were sitting around in private,
[00:09:21] talking about that cash to cash cycle
[00:09:24] and how we're starting to burn cash or feed the monster,
[00:09:29] the monster eats cash.
[00:09:30] I mean, knowing our goals for mass distribution
[00:09:34] and to try to get the things we're making
[00:09:36] in the hands of humanity, I mean, America for sure,
[00:09:40] that it was gonna be expensive growth.
[00:09:43] And definitely as committing to larger and larger orders,
[00:09:50] should there, something, there go wrong,
[00:09:52] knowing that you then have to dump, let's say, screw ups,
[00:09:58] which has a massive impact on cash flow also.
[00:10:02] We didn't have too many of those, had a couple.
[00:10:04] But yeah, man, the monster finally got fed, luckily,
[00:10:12] with the investment we took on with that great investor.
[00:10:14] But burning that cash for so long, as long as we could,
[00:10:21] and knowing that the right thing to do was to bring
[00:10:24] on a partner that could help us blow this thing up,
[00:10:28] was definitely challenging, knowing how we work together
[00:10:31] and how we make decisions and how we communicate
[00:10:35] and sticking somebody else in the mix that we don't know
[00:10:39] and trying to trust that process
[00:10:41] that they're gonna plug in easily.
[00:10:44] I think that for me was the most difficult thing,
[00:10:47] not even the other stuff, not having to dump flavor systems
[00:10:51] or overwrap cans because there's a can shortage,
[00:10:56] or try to pivot on where we're buying our ingredients from.
[00:11:01] It was really trying to plug somebody else
[00:11:04] into the equation.
[00:11:06] It could have gone terribly bad if it wasn't done right.
[00:11:09] So obviously, we had some decent offers
[00:11:14] from the different private equity firms and whatnot,
[00:11:16] but I honestly didn't think we were gonna find any
[00:11:19] at one point, I was kinda like, damn,
[00:11:22] this just isn't gonna happen and we're gonna have to
[00:11:24] either shrink and rethink, or I actually didn't know.
[00:11:29] Yeah, well, we had, I mean, I remember talking about
[00:11:32] Plan A, B, C, D, and that's what we had to do.
[00:11:39] That, the fact that you and I,
[00:11:42] sometimes, well, oftentimes we're making decisions in,
[00:11:45] I mean, multi-million dollar decisions in three texts
[00:11:49] or seven text messages, and it's always been like that.
[00:11:54] That is definitely a scary thing to mess up because,
[00:11:58] and look, I have the benefit of working with
[00:12:01] so many different companies at Eshalon Front
[00:12:03] that I see how hard it is for companies
[00:12:05] to make decisions sometimes when you have
[00:12:07] just a little bit different agendas going on
[00:12:10] and egos pop up and all of a sudden,
[00:12:13] simple decisions that should take 15 minutes,
[00:12:15] they end up taking 15 weeks, and I'm not kidding,
[00:12:18] like literally simple decisions that you can see
[00:12:21] the obvious answer for can take months instead of minutes.
[00:12:25] And we were operating in the minutes timeframe.
[00:12:30] And the other thing that was kind of cool
[00:12:33] was because we were living paycheck to paycheck for so long,
[00:12:36] man, we were lean.
[00:12:38] Super lean.
[00:12:39] Super lean, and it was just no fat.
[00:12:42] We were like a fighter that had cut weight
[00:12:45] and just barely made it, right?
[00:12:47] And we were doing that, it was like wrestling season.
[00:12:50] Every Wednesday and every Saturday, we were making weight.
[00:12:53] We were trying to see if we could shed a little bit of,
[00:12:55] we were sitting in the sauna trying to squeeze out
[00:12:57] a little bit of another extra eight ounces.
[00:13:01] And but what I liked about that is it made us good, right?
[00:13:05] It made us good.
[00:13:06] You ask someone that wrestled,
[00:13:08] hey, you tell them they gotta lose 15 pounds,
[00:13:10] they look at you like it's a joke.
[00:13:12] So we got rid of a lot of excess weight.
[00:13:15] We became very streamlined, but the problem was,
[00:13:19] and this is sort of the backup plan was,
[00:13:21] we were just gonna have to expand and grow a lot slower.
[00:13:25] That's what was gonna happen.
[00:13:26] So if we wouldn't have met good partners
[00:13:29] who's out of New York, great guys,
[00:13:31] if we wouldn't have met them, we would have done plan B
[00:13:35] and we would have made some adjustments
[00:13:37] and it would have been a slower growth.
[00:13:39] And the problem with that for me,
[00:13:42] is this is the same thing that I told the team
[00:13:44] at Jock of Fuel yesterday.
[00:13:45] At Escalon Front, we go and we go to the muster.
[00:13:49] And at the muster, we'll have scores of people,
[00:13:54] come up to every team member, to JP, to Lave, to me, to Dave,
[00:13:58] to everybody, and the individual come up and say,
[00:14:00] oh, you know, hey, I got my business back,
[00:14:03] we were about to go bankrupt,
[00:14:04] we recovered everything, we're hiring now,
[00:14:06] or oh, but I was about to get divorced
[00:14:08] and my wife and I are back together
[00:14:09] and I lost 58 pounds and just all these incredible stories
[00:14:14] that you hear.
[00:14:15] And it sounds great, but every muster debrief,
[00:14:20] what I tell the team is, hey, great job with this small
[00:14:25] number of people that we helped with these principles.
[00:14:27] And there are literally millions and millions of people
[00:14:31] that need these principles to help them in their life.
[00:14:35] And we're not reaching them right now,
[00:14:36] so we're not doing what we should be doing.
[00:14:37] And it's the same thing with Jock of Fuel.
[00:14:39] Right now, right now, as you and I are sitting here talking,
[00:14:42] there's a 22 year old kid that's drinking an energy drink
[00:14:46] that's absolutely horrible for him.
[00:14:48] That's what's happening.
[00:14:49] There's another seven year old kid
[00:14:51] that's drinking a chocolate milk that's filled with
[00:14:54] high fructose corn syrup and it's absolutely horrible for him.
[00:14:57] And his mom doesn't know,
[00:14:59] his mom doesn't know what's available,
[00:15:00] so that's the issue.
[00:15:02] So as in my own mind, I had the part of my brain saying,
[00:15:08] hey, hang on, we can hang on.
[00:15:10] And the other part of my brain is saying, who are we hurting?
[00:15:13] And the compromise is, okay, how about,
[00:15:16] and what we eventually did is a minority share
[00:15:19] we sold a minority share, brought in great partners
[00:15:22] that have some great brands.
[00:15:24] I mean, they've built and run some great companies,
[00:15:27] I mean, just outstanding.
[00:15:30] So that made it, that was nice.
[00:15:35] It was like at the end of wrestling season,
[00:15:37] where all of a sudden,
[00:15:38] we didn't have to cut weight every Wednesday and Saturday.
[00:15:41] Yes. Because we have some room.
[00:15:43] I definitely saw the relief on the finance team.
[00:15:45] Don got to sit back in his chair for about five minutes
[00:15:50] and go, ah, you know, I mean,
[00:15:52] because being that lean and running just in time inventory
[00:15:57] and at one point, Joe Moss,
[00:15:59] our chief revenue officer said,
[00:16:01] man, we're running this company
[00:16:03] with like nine people in three ball dudes.
[00:16:05] You know what I mean?
[00:16:07] Me, basically me, Joe and Brian there, whatever.
[00:16:10] And you're looking at our growth rate and our trajectory
[00:16:13] and it's like, damn, Joe, like that's funny, but it's right.
[00:16:17] And you know what?
[00:16:18] Running the business like you're on a desert island
[00:16:21] is gonna allow you, you know, you would think,
[00:16:25] now you're gonna be a good steward of that investment.
[00:16:28] You know, and I was talking to you about
[00:16:30] as far as like living into the brand,
[00:16:31] like after that investment came on,
[00:16:34] I felt like, I felt again that same kind of like,
[00:16:38] when I went back in the day,
[00:16:39] when remortgaging the house for origin,
[00:16:42] I felt the same thing like, man,
[00:16:44] you know, some of our family and friends
[00:16:46] invested in this with us alongside of us.
[00:16:48] All my family and friends.
[00:16:49] All your family and friends.
[00:16:50] Like, yeah, I mean, everyone I know.
[00:16:52] Yeah, hang on.
[00:16:53] That's a broad statement,
[00:16:54] but like a lot of people that are very close to me
[00:16:57] are in the game with us.
[00:16:58] And I think that's important that like,
[00:17:00] this new partner allowed us to bring our family and friends
[00:17:03] into my childhood friend.
[00:17:05] I've known since I was 12 years old,
[00:17:06] invested in this thing.
[00:17:07] You know what I mean?
[00:17:08] Man, I better be a good steward of this and like I said,
[00:17:13] live into it.
[00:17:15] You know what I mean?
[00:17:16] And you were like, what is live into it?
[00:17:18] Like, well, I'm gonna, I haven't been, you know what I mean?
[00:17:22] I like them cookies and that ice cream.
[00:17:25] But how well have you been quote living into it this week?
[00:17:31] Dude, I've seen you consume more cookies, brownies.
[00:17:37] What is going on, dude?
[00:17:38] We've been living into that jujitsu immersion.
[00:17:40] Poha that, you know, late night, cold cut combo snack.
[00:17:46] Just get in there, dude.
[00:17:48] But I mean, you know, like as far as understanding
[00:17:51] the psyche of the consumer, of the people out there,
[00:17:55] because I believe right now, and if you look at America,
[00:18:01] I think we're the strongest and healthiest we've ever been.
[00:18:04] And I think we're the most unhealthy
[00:18:07] and most out of shape.
[00:18:09] The term of America at large.
[00:18:10] The people of America.
[00:18:12] And it's probably a worldwide thing too,
[00:18:14] but we're, you're, there's some strong people.
[00:18:18] Strongest we've ever been.
[00:18:19] 100%.
[00:18:20] And healthiest we've ever been.
[00:18:21] And then the heaviest and the most unhealthy.
[00:18:25] And people dying of all sorts of shit.
[00:18:27] And there's this freaking gap, you know?
[00:18:30] And yeah, you can point the finger,
[00:18:32] but the finger goes in a lot of different directions.
[00:18:35] You gotta have a lot of finger pointing.
[00:18:37] The fact of the matter is,
[00:18:38] is we're trying to fill the void between the two.
[00:18:40] You know, and educate people in a different way.
[00:18:44] And, you know, and Jocko Fuel as a mission,
[00:18:47] as a movement, and the things we're doing,
[00:18:50] it's no different than the origin side.
[00:18:52] You know, origin built to believe,
[00:18:54] built to believe in the dream,
[00:18:55] built to believe in resurrection of America's factories
[00:18:59] and communities and the reclamation and the reshoring
[00:19:01] and the restoring of the communities.
[00:19:02] And Jocko Fuel built to be better.
[00:19:05] You know, it's the same damn thing.
[00:19:07] Everything you wear, everything you consume,
[00:19:09] like it's right there.
[00:19:13] You know what I mean?
[00:19:13] It's right there.
[00:19:14] But then how do you wedge that into this country
[00:19:19] which is not just divided,
[00:19:22] also from a health and physical perspective, it's divided.
[00:19:26] So there's this education process that's taking place.
[00:19:30] And honestly, taking on the investment
[00:19:32] is gonna allow us to do more of this education
[00:19:34] across the board.
[00:19:35] So that was the point I was getting at,
[00:19:38] was like looking at weighing between,
[00:19:39] okay, we can keep total control
[00:19:42] and be a little bit greedy.
[00:19:45] Right.
[00:19:46] And hang on, this is mine, or say, hey, listen,
[00:19:48] let's get this as many people as we can.
[00:19:50] So we made that adjustment.
[00:19:53] And so far, it's been awesome.
[00:19:55] It's been awesome to have more freedom of movement for us.
[00:19:57] It's been awesome to still be able to push forward
[00:20:00] in ways that we weren't pushing forward before
[00:20:03] and be able to execute on things that we would have had to.
[00:20:06] You know, plan B and plan C didn't have the same products
[00:20:10] coming out, we weren't able to tackle the same problems
[00:20:14] that we're gonna be able to tackle now.
[00:20:15] So that was awesome.
[00:20:19] As that's going on, meanwhile,
[00:20:22] we expanded outside the state of Maine,
[00:20:25] which I may have broke your heart initially
[00:20:28] because you're a Maina.
[00:20:29] I am a Maina, I'm actually a mass hole technically.
[00:20:33] My father-in-law, Joe, will never allow me to claim being
[00:20:36] a Maina. Oh, he doesn't let you claim, huh?
[00:20:37] No, I'm from Massachusetts, man.
[00:20:39] Even though I've been here since I was eight years old,
[00:20:42] never a Maina.
[00:20:43] And your kids can't, your kids can't,
[00:20:45] they think I'm a mass hole too.
[00:20:46] They can't anchor baby you up here?
[00:20:48] No, I wish.
[00:20:50] No, but yeah, I mean, you know, like as this is all going on,
[00:20:55] as we're going through the process of investment
[00:20:57] and having all these meetings and everything.
[00:20:59] And at the same time.
[00:21:00] That's one monster.
[00:21:01] Yeah, one monster.
[00:21:02] One monster, Jock with Fuel, is hungry.
[00:21:04] Very hungry.
[00:21:06] And like needs attention and food and money.
[00:21:10] Yes.
[00:21:11] That's all going on.
[00:21:12] And that's a huge, huge deal.
[00:21:14] But then on the other side, the other monster,
[00:21:16] the origin monster is also hungry.
[00:21:18] To your point earlier, these things are tangled
[00:21:20] like Siamese twins.
[00:21:22] And these monsters are both, they're growing
[00:21:24] and they both need to be fed.
[00:21:25] And like someone has to conduct surgery.
[00:21:28] Yeah.
[00:21:29] And just from another perspective,
[00:21:30] they're both in being tangled, in being connected,
[00:21:35] they're also mutually supporting.
[00:21:36] They need each other.
[00:21:37] They totally need each other.
[00:21:39] And especially, you know, a year ago, it was like,
[00:21:42] without one, there really wouldn't be the other.
[00:21:44] And without the other, there wouldn't really be the one.
[00:21:46] So you had this, the one is eating, you know,
[00:21:51] is eating big, taking big bites.
[00:21:52] So the other one, now all of a sudden you start hearing
[00:21:55] like the stomach of the origin monster starts to growl.
[00:21:59] Yeah.
[00:22:01] Yeah, exactly.
[00:22:02] And you know, we, I think in an effort to make sure
[00:22:06] we're doing things right, you know,
[00:22:08] we made our tuition payments on the origin side.
[00:22:10] We built the things that built America, Denim and Boots.
[00:22:15] We proved we could build them again.
[00:22:17] We proved we could find and reclaim the knowledge
[00:22:20] and make the product and do it in a way
[00:22:23] that it was profitable to.
[00:22:25] So we kind of have proved this out.
[00:22:27] And it's like, okay, it's time to go, you know?
[00:22:30] And if you're not growing, you're dying, you know?
[00:22:32] And that's one thing I think in business,
[00:22:35] like people, they get comfortable, they get complacent.
[00:22:38] Well, listen, if you're not, if you're not growing,
[00:22:39] you're dying because somebody smarter than you
[00:22:41] is behind you, you know?
[00:22:42] And with everything, there's a beginning,
[00:22:45] there's a middle, when there's an end
[00:22:47] and trying to extend that middle part, it's not a coast.
[00:22:50] It's not a flat road.
[00:22:51] It's not coasting.
[00:22:53] I was telling somebody the other day,
[00:22:55] you know, you get to the top of that hill
[00:22:56] when you're climbing, you're pedaling and pedaling
[00:22:59] and pedaling and you get to the top and you think,
[00:23:01] ah, I get to coast on the other side.
[00:23:02] The thing is you get to a plateau
[00:23:05] and then there's an incline on that plateau.
[00:23:07] You can't see over the horizon.
[00:23:09] And with Origin, we've been, you know,
[00:23:11] we've kind of been playing in the sandbox a little bit.
[00:23:15] I, addressing the team, you know, on the inside,
[00:23:19] you know, kind of in the trenches earlier this year was,
[00:23:23] this year, we start.
[00:23:27] I actually said to them, we haven't done anything yet.
[00:23:31] We're spread across 250,000 square feet
[00:23:34] in two states and 400 people and we haven't even started.
[00:23:39] Like this shit, like we've been,
[00:23:42] we've been a research and development company.
[00:23:45] Now it's time to go.
[00:23:46] Now it's time to truly rebuild the supply chains
[00:23:49] and build the products that we need and use and wear.
[00:23:53] So I kind of, you know, like cast that wide vision
[00:23:57] early in the year and even, even the constant touch point,
[00:24:02] I think still, you know, still people,
[00:24:07] it's almost like, I mean, you have kids, you know,
[00:24:11] when I, when I had my first child, Keegan, like Amanda,
[00:24:14] you know, she's pregnant.
[00:24:16] It's like, cool, you know, you're pregnant and whatever.
[00:24:18] And then, then he came out and I was like, holy shit.
[00:24:21] What am I going to do with this?
[00:24:24] You know what I mean?
[00:24:25] Like this is a, this is a real being.
[00:24:27] That's kind of how I feel like we're,
[00:24:29] we're ready to like go.
[00:24:31] Like there's like almost like a little bit of a rebirth,
[00:24:33] so to speak this year of what we're going to do
[00:24:36] as a company, as a mission, as a, as a movement.
[00:24:40] And I could see it.
[00:24:42] I know you could see it and I'm trying to explain it
[00:24:45] to the team, but they aren't, they aren't feeling it yet
[00:24:48] because it's all just words.
[00:24:51] But we just, just, I got to fill this out there.
[00:24:54] Like I'll go to talk to a gas oil company in North Dakota
[00:24:59] or I'll go talk to an energy company in Texas
[00:25:02] or we'll talk to a construction company in Illinois
[00:25:05] or just, just, and there'll be a bunch of people
[00:25:10] that will show up with the lab origin genes on,
[00:25:12] they'll have origin boots on.
[00:25:14] They're in the game.
[00:25:16] They're so supportive.
[00:25:17] And so I think that, I get to see that, right?
[00:25:21] I get to see people all over the country
[00:25:23] that are, that understand what we're doing
[00:25:26] and they're so supportive of it.
[00:25:28] And I probably didn't do a great job of, you know,
[00:25:30] I should be taking a picture every time that happens.
[00:25:32] I'm sending it to you like, hey, show everybody this picture.
[00:25:35] I mean, I've been to events where there's like 12 people
[00:25:37] come up and they're all wearing origin genes.
[00:25:39] Like how, how awesome is that?
[00:25:41] And you know, this will be in the middle of wherever,
[00:25:43] Oklahoma, it's, it's, it's awesome.
[00:25:45] So yeah, you can start to, you and I can sense
[00:25:48] all that happening and probably need to do a better job
[00:25:52] making sure everybody on the team knows that.
[00:25:54] Yeah, and in there, you know, it's interesting.
[00:25:56] I don't know how to look at this.
[00:25:58] They're in the trenches every day, like making the stuff,
[00:26:01] answering the phone calls, you know,
[00:26:03] doing the marketing and all that stuff.
[00:26:05] And we're gonna build 100,000 pairs of genes, right?
[00:26:08] Over the next 12 months.
[00:26:10] And I'm, and I'm down in Trion, Georgia,
[00:26:13] at mountain Vernon Mills, the oldest mill in America
[00:26:16] and the last mill that weaves denim
[00:26:18] and they weave our denim for us.
[00:26:21] And I'm committing to 2 million yards in three years.
[00:26:25] And I'm coming back and saying,
[00:26:26] hey, I just committed to every single yard of denim
[00:26:28] this mill can make.
[00:26:29] You know what I mean?
[00:26:31] They're like, oh, okay.
[00:26:33] Okay.
[00:26:34] This is like being in Vegas, man.
[00:26:36] And just taking your wallet and putting it on black.
[00:26:38] 100%.
[00:26:39] 100%.
[00:26:40] You know, so there's, there's like,
[00:26:42] how are we gonna fill the gap?
[00:26:44] How are we gonna go from point A to point B?
[00:26:46] And speaking of feeding the monsters,
[00:26:48] oh, we're gonna build 100,000 pairs of genes
[00:26:50] in three years, we're gonna build a million, you know?
[00:26:53] And on the jockel fuel side,
[00:26:54] oh, we're making 30,000 cases of this a month
[00:26:57] and we need to get to 200,000 in three years.
[00:26:59] You have these two, these two monsters
[00:27:01] that you actually know like the, what they're gonna eat.
[00:27:06] You know that, you know the, you use the baby.
[00:27:08] Consumption.
[00:27:09] The consumption rate.
[00:27:10] You know how much freaking milk
[00:27:11] it's gonna take to get these kids to be full grown.
[00:27:15] That's right.
[00:27:15] And so you need to plan for it.
[00:27:16] And you know, at some point,
[00:27:18] they're gonna be a 16 and a half year old boy
[00:27:21] and they're gonna have a voracious appetite.
[00:27:24] Exactly.
[00:27:25] And it's gonna be nuts.
[00:27:26] And we actually know that.
[00:27:27] We can plot it out.
[00:27:28] We can see it.
[00:27:30] And so that, so that's, as you look at that growth
[00:27:33] and the amount of effort it was gonna take
[00:27:36] or the amount of work that it was gonna take to get done,
[00:27:39] you knew that we were gonna reach our limit here in Maine.
[00:27:42] 100%.
[00:27:43] Yep.
[00:27:44] And just walking around the factory
[00:27:46] and just we have pivoted and pivoted and pivoted
[00:27:49] and pivoted and gotten leaner and leaner and leaner and leaner.
[00:27:53] I mean, and you gotta remember in that,
[00:27:54] in our first little, you know,
[00:27:56] our first big factory after we left the woods, right?
[00:28:01] Like when you came on board and we partnered up,
[00:28:04] we were still in the woods and we're like,
[00:28:06] we're gonna buy this big building like 20,000 square feet.
[00:28:12] Where we're at one point,
[00:28:14] Jocko Fuel literally was on pallets
[00:28:16] in between all the sewing machines.
[00:28:18] So just so people understand how these things were tangled.
[00:28:21] And so we moved into that building in 2017 July.
[00:28:26] And when we did that, we had 12 employees.
[00:28:29] Yeah, 12.
[00:28:30] 12 employees.
[00:28:31] I mean, it was cool.
[00:28:33] It was cool.
[00:28:34] And you walked around and it was like, okay, cool.
[00:28:36] We got like plenty of room to grow, right?
[00:28:37] Oh, we got plenty of room to grow.
[00:28:39] Not so much.
[00:28:40] Not so much.
[00:28:42] So, you know, there's a, you know,
[00:28:44] just walking around and thinking,
[00:28:47] this is not going to sustain us.
[00:28:51] And looking at the kind of stepping back out of the trenches,
[00:28:54] looking at the battlefield,
[00:28:55] going, how are we gonna go from, you know,
[00:28:58] point A to point B when it comes to knitwear,
[00:29:02] when it comes to hoodies,
[00:29:03] when it comes to T-shirts, when it comes to denim,
[00:29:05] when it comes to all the things we need to make,
[00:29:09] we're going to have to look elsewhere.
[00:29:12] We're going to have to look elsewhere
[00:29:13] closer to the supply chains,
[00:29:15] knowing that what we're really good at in Maine
[00:29:19] is building ultra durable goods like footwear
[00:29:21] and jujitsu giz.
[00:29:23] And that the cotton supply chain,
[00:29:25] the weaving and the dying is all more down
[00:29:29] in North Carolina, in Georgia, Louisiana,
[00:29:33] you know, South Carolina,
[00:29:35] is there opportunity down there?
[00:29:37] And we found some opportunity.
[00:29:40] So, we found a company that was going to cut and sew for us.
[00:29:48] And man, they were starting to work on some projects for us.
[00:29:52] And I remember just calling you and being like,
[00:29:54] bro, we got to try and buy this place,
[00:29:59] like walking into that for the first time
[00:30:01] and seeing it three times bigger than what we're doing
[00:30:04] and just cranking stuff out.
[00:30:06] I was like, oh man, God, like you don't know
[00:30:08] what you don't know, you know?
[00:30:10] And I actually say that to my kids, like, hey, you know,
[00:30:13] you don't know what you don't know
[00:30:16] and you can't control what you can't control,
[00:30:18] but you can respond, you can control the way you respond
[00:30:21] to things you can't control.
[00:30:23] Well, we can respond to the things we don't know,
[00:30:25] we can control the way we respond to it, you know,
[00:30:28] and try not to have an entrepreneurial seizure
[00:30:31] at the same time, which, you know,
[00:30:34] we had some opportunities to have, I think.
[00:30:37] But we bought two factories.
[00:30:42] Let's talk through the first one.
[00:30:44] Yeah. Right.
[00:30:45] So, it's 60,000 square feet.
[00:30:48] You roll down there.
[00:30:49] There's not a for sale sign on it.
[00:30:51] No, it's not for sale.
[00:30:52] You know what I'm saying?
[00:30:53] Like, this isn't like you go on a used car lot.
[00:30:55] There's a used, you know, cut and sew factory for sale
[00:30:58] and you, hey, hey, how much is this?
[00:31:00] And you know, that's not how it worked.
[00:31:01] No, and these, and like they barely have a website.
[00:31:04] I mean, you know, there's like all these old,
[00:31:06] little old factories spread across America
[00:31:08] that are still there that have been surviving.
[00:31:12] They have not thrived.
[00:31:13] They're not thriving factories.
[00:31:16] They've been surviving for the last 25 years
[00:31:19] out of a sheer like force of will, right?
[00:31:22] Whether a commitment to the people
[00:31:24] who have been working there for 25, 30 years,
[00:31:26] you know, or not knowing enough to shut it down
[00:31:30] or being too, I don't know what the word is on.
[00:31:35] Stubborn. Stubborn.
[00:31:36] Yeah, to shut it down.
[00:31:38] So, luckily I was able to go.
[00:31:41] Patriotic, to patriotic to shut it down.
[00:31:43] I think patriotic is a better word.
[00:31:44] Yeah.
[00:31:46] I mean, yeah.
[00:31:48] So, went in and met with this old boy Ted,
[00:31:51] had some, was it going through some health problems,
[00:31:54] kind of sold them on the vision.
[00:31:55] Of course, you know, they are looking at a Yankee.
[00:32:02] This Yankee coming down.
[00:32:05] And there's still some of that there.
[00:32:07] You know what I mean?
[00:32:08] Like even Jason has said to me,
[00:32:10] you know, y'all rich Yankees coming down here.
[00:32:12] Bro, you kidding me?
[00:32:14] When we started this company,
[00:32:15] we didn't have two nickels to rub together
[00:32:16] and a bucket to piss in, bro.
[00:32:18] Like go on to YouTube and watch how we built this thing.
[00:32:21] So, but it's still like these Yankees coming down
[00:32:24] and whatever.
[00:32:25] So, you know, went down there, met with Ted,
[00:32:29] told him what we'd like to do to carry on his vision
[00:32:33] and plan for the company.
[00:32:34] Obviously, he had a great operator down there
[00:32:36] and Jason Gaddy, great operator who's been doing this thing.
[00:32:39] And he's really the one that's been sustaining
[00:32:42] this organization for a long time.
[00:32:45] You know, 120 employees, whatever it is,
[00:32:47] and just cutting and sewing, just ripping stuff out,
[00:32:50] making stuff for some pretty substantial brands too.
[00:32:55] But, you know, it's one of those situations where,
[00:32:58] like, okay, this guy's kind of like a lot of talk.
[00:33:03] They're thinking you're a lot of talk is what I'm saying.
[00:33:05] Yeah, I think so.
[00:33:06] And it's tough.
[00:33:07] You've got this, you've got these people
[00:33:10] who have been running this business for 40, 50 years.
[00:33:15] They've owned it for 40, 50 years.
[00:33:18] They do things a certain way.
[00:33:20] They have a certain culture.
[00:33:21] There's a certain pace.
[00:33:22] There's a certain vibe.
[00:33:24] You know, and just somebody coming in
[00:33:27] that could potentially disrupt that is scary.
[00:33:30] Scary, you know.
[00:33:31] I mean, you're ultimately, people are innately afraid
[00:33:35] of the unknown.
[00:33:36] You know, it's also what also drives some people.
[00:33:38] But I asked him and convinced him,
[00:33:44] and not just him, I flew him up to Maine
[00:33:48] and showed him our little factory
[00:33:51] and showed him what we were doing
[00:33:53] and introduced him to the people,
[00:33:55] introduced him to Amanda,
[00:33:57] obviously turned him onto Jaco.
[00:33:59] Like, you know, of course, they know who you are anyways.
[00:34:02] So just kind of made that connection.
[00:34:04] That always helps.
[00:34:05] It's always like you've got plant,
[00:34:06] you've got like the, Dedeco says this,
[00:34:09] like when somebody comes to his school, right?
[00:34:12] Dedeco, one of my business partners,
[00:34:15] also my Jiu-Jitsu instructor.
[00:34:17] He's got a school down in Massachusetts in Waymouth.
[00:34:19] And when people come in, they like,
[00:34:22] oh, I want to start Jiu-Jitsu.
[00:34:23] And they were like, okay, cool.
[00:34:25] Oh, oh, Origin Gees.
[00:34:27] Oh, cool.
[00:34:28] I think I've heard of this company, Origin.
[00:34:30] It's like, yeah, man, yeah, Origin, you know, Origin.
[00:34:32] And then they're like, oh, wait, Jaco?
[00:34:36] And he's like, yeah, yeah.
[00:34:38] You know, he's also my business partner,
[00:34:40] my friend or whatever.
[00:34:41] And then they sign up right away.
[00:34:43] So it's the ringer, right?
[00:34:45] Like Jaco's the ringer.
[00:34:46] And every negotiation I just pull,
[00:34:48] I pull Jaco's name and it always, it always helps.
[00:34:51] So, you know, we flew him up to Maine.
[00:34:55] We flew up, you know who else we flew up?
[00:34:59] The head stitcher and the mechanic.
[00:35:02] Yeah.
[00:35:03] And that's one of those things.
[00:35:04] This is the Hearts and Minds campaign.
[00:35:05] Hearts and Minds, man.
[00:35:06] And getting to build relationships with people.
[00:35:08] And getting them to understand what we understand.
[00:35:12] Yes.
[00:35:13] I want the mechanic to meet our team and to watch them sell.
[00:35:17] That's what I want him to do.
[00:35:19] So he can say to Ted, the owner,
[00:35:22] hey, these guys are for real.
[00:35:23] They know what they're doing.
[00:35:24] I get what they're doing.
[00:35:26] Their head stitcher, I want her to watch the way we sewed.
[00:35:29] The way the hands moved so that she could feel confident
[00:35:33] in the same thing.
[00:35:34] That, you know, we're, we are who they are.
[00:35:38] We're not just Yankees.
[00:35:39] We are people who are trying to rebuild the middle class
[00:35:43] who are retraining and bringing this thing back.
[00:35:47] The same thing they've been doing for 30, 40 years.
[00:35:50] Luckily, they agreed to it and we made that shit happen.
[00:35:54] Was there a turning point that you saw?
[00:35:56] Was there a moment or was it a gradual swaying
[00:36:01] of the mindset?
[00:36:03] Well, there was a tricky situation there, right?
[00:36:05] He had a couple other partners.
[00:36:08] And they had a kind of an aggressive ask initially.
[00:36:18] You know, like you said earlier,
[00:36:20] I don't have my business degree.
[00:36:23] I try to understand people.
[00:36:26] I'm pretty transparent in negotiation.
[00:36:28] Like I wear my heart on my sleeve.
[00:36:31] I'm not hiding anything.
[00:36:33] And I explained to him in their first ask,
[00:36:35] I was like, yeah, it's just not, we're just not there.
[00:36:38] Like we're just not there.
[00:36:39] Like here's the value of what we're gonna do.
[00:36:41] Cause we're not gonna buy this business
[00:36:44] as a business entity and keep like just running
[00:36:47] the same way with the same accounts.
[00:36:49] We're gonna buy this as an extension of Origin.
[00:36:52] That it's gonna be a, it's gonna be a production facility
[00:36:55] ultimately for Origin.
[00:36:56] So the revenue doesn't really matter.
[00:36:59] What's important is you have 120 people
[00:37:03] who know how to make badass shit, badass durable shit.
[00:37:06] And you have the machines to do so.
[00:37:08] So the value is in the people cause you can buy machines.
[00:37:11] So you're buying people.
[00:37:13] You're buying a skill set.
[00:37:14] You're buying a capability.
[00:37:16] And to try to, to try to ramp up 120 people
[00:37:20] and turn that on, we've already done it.
[00:37:22] It took, it took freaking a decade to do the same thing.
[00:37:27] We don't have a decade.
[00:37:28] So we got to buy capacity.
[00:37:30] So we're buying capacity.
[00:37:30] I explained that to him, unpacked that for him.
[00:37:33] And ultimately we came to agreement and, you know,
[00:37:37] when you, when, when you talk about like putting money
[00:37:39] where your mouth is like me, you and Deco stroke to check
[00:37:42] and bought that place.
[00:37:43] Like that's like, we're talking about where reinvesting
[00:37:46] in America's communities.
[00:37:49] That wasn't a bank loan on that one.
[00:37:51] We wrote a check.
[00:37:52] And I think that that was also meaningful to them knowing,
[00:37:57] yeah, we got to go finance this thing.
[00:37:59] Like we're not a hedge fund coming in.
[00:38:01] You know, we're not corporate raiders coming in.
[00:38:03] You know, we're, we're actually investing in this personally.
[00:38:06] Our families are investing in what your family has built.
[00:38:10] Pushed them over, got the deal done.
[00:38:13] And, you know, we're high fiving.
[00:38:16] We just added 120 people who know how to build bad ass shit,
[00:38:19] but it still wasn't enough.
[00:38:21] Yeah.
[00:38:22] And in the meantime, you know, we kind of breezed through the,
[00:38:25] the getting the partnership with good partners.
[00:38:31] One thing that was interesting about that was
[00:38:35] a lot of the stuff that I think would make a lot of companies
[00:38:39] really sweat and have to work.
[00:38:40] Like for instance, you know, our financials, right?
[00:38:44] So Don, our CFO, he's been here.
[00:38:47] And he, we were so dialed in, you know,
[00:38:51] despite all the overwork that he had done, you know,
[00:38:55] by himself much of the time, a lot of times.
[00:38:58] And look, luckily for me on the Eshalon front side,
[00:39:01] I'm, I'm party to a lot of these deals.
[00:39:04] You know, I see a lot of PEs come in.
[00:39:07] I watch these deals happen.
[00:39:08] I'm part of these deals sometimes.
[00:39:10] So I've seen a lot of this and it was awesome
[00:39:13] because sometimes, you know, you start asking
[00:39:16] when they start doing the financial due due diligence,
[00:39:19] you know, it's, it's like opening up a can of worms
[00:39:21] and mayhem's coming out and it gets crazy.
[00:39:24] And it was awesome to,
[00:39:26] and I remember you and I having this conversation, you know,
[00:39:27] like, hey, you know, I said,
[00:39:29] what are we looking like from the financial side?
[00:39:31] Is there a role in this due diligence?
[00:39:32] How long do you think it's gonna take?
[00:39:33] And you're like, hey, man, you know the deal.
[00:39:34] Like we, it's not gonna take long.
[00:39:36] And there's, it's all just good to go.
[00:39:38] And so I thought that that was pretty awesome,
[00:39:42] especially considering such a small team of one
[00:39:46] much of the time, you know, of just Don being that squared
[00:39:50] way and, and he had done a lot to prepare us for that.
[00:39:56] So that was, that was pretty awesome.
[00:39:59] And finding those guys, you know,
[00:40:03] I'd say that if people aren't aligned,
[00:40:06] though the one, the one time that you're gonna have a failure
[00:40:08] is if we aren't aligned, if two people aren't aligned
[00:40:11] or if two teams aren't aligned, you're gonna have,
[00:40:13] you're gonna ultimately have failure.
[00:40:14] Cause you can't be going to two different places.
[00:40:18] You have to be going to the same place.
[00:40:20] If you can't break the laws of physics
[00:40:22] and go to two different places,
[00:40:23] you can't rip bodies apart, it doesn't work.
[00:40:25] And so luckily with good partners, you know,
[00:40:28] they had, they had built Supreme,
[00:40:32] they'd built Skullcandy, they got some newer companies.
[00:40:36] Yeah, Dave, they got Hook, the H UK Hook performance
[00:40:40] fishing like really great companies that are cool.
[00:40:44] And so they had experience with this stuff.
[00:40:46] And they were able to address things
[00:40:48] with us and talk about where we wanted to go.
[00:40:50] And what, you know, here's,
[00:40:52] here's something that was tricky.
[00:40:55] I was tricky because I don't like to lock things in
[00:40:59] cause I don't know what the future holds.
[00:41:01] I'd give this advice all the time,
[00:41:02] hey, you don't know what the future is gonna hold.
[00:41:03] So why are you locking in this or that?
[00:41:05] And so the way we set things up
[00:41:08] and the way they worked with us was like,
[00:41:10] oh, we have all kinds of options.
[00:41:12] We have all kinds of directions to go into.
[00:41:13] There's no doors closed.
[00:41:15] So that was great.
[00:41:16] How flexible they were.
[00:41:17] They were patient as hell.
[00:41:18] Yeah, they were patient.
[00:41:19] They were patient as hell.
[00:41:20] Bro, at some point, sometimes like I,
[00:41:22] my ass was stuck to my couch, you know,
[00:41:25] and I would be like on the phone, on the phone,
[00:41:27] on the phone, on the phone, like till midnight.
[00:41:29] It was, honestly, it was like a,
[00:41:34] this kind of, this, I don't know the word for it,
[00:41:38] this constant alignment.
[00:41:41] Constant alignment and having the right,
[00:41:44] like the right words, you know what I mean?
[00:41:46] And sometimes those words were tricky to,
[00:41:50] yeah, tricky, tricky.
[00:41:52] Here's something else that was cool.
[00:41:53] And it's a good, this is a good,
[00:41:55] this is a good lesson learned for anybody that's out there.
[00:41:59] Lawyers talking to each other.
[00:42:00] Suck.
[00:42:01] Is different than two people talking to each other.
[00:42:03] Yes.
[00:42:04] So I remember we were, you know,
[00:42:07] we'd hit a little bit of a, let's say a little,
[00:42:11] a little hesitation, right?
[00:42:13] I was a little bit hesitant.
[00:42:15] It sounded like they,
[00:42:16] and so my lawyers are telling me that they're saying this
[00:42:19] and their lawyers are telling their crew
[00:42:21] that I'm saying this.
[00:42:22] And finally, I'm like, dude, give me Dave's number.
[00:42:26] And like, we just got on the phone
[00:42:28] and I'm like, hey, this is what I'm worried about.
[00:42:29] And he goes, yeah, we can handle that.
[00:42:30] That's no factor.
[00:42:31] I don't want it, you know, that doesn't make a difference.
[00:42:33] Okay, cool, great.
[00:42:34] Write it up like this.
[00:42:35] He's like, cool, I got it.
[00:42:36] He said, hey, but Jocko, you gotta give me this over here.
[00:42:38] And I'm like, oh yeah, that totally makes sense.
[00:42:40] I don't, you know, you're not gonna,
[00:42:41] you're not gonna give us money
[00:42:43] if you don't have this type of thing.
[00:42:45] So once he and I talked person to person, man to man,
[00:42:49] and just, oh yeah, hey man, okay, cool.
[00:42:53] From there, it was like everything was fine.
[00:42:55] But there was, getting to that-
[00:42:57] That whole time though, that monster kept eating.
[00:42:59] Oh, it kept eating, dude.
[00:43:00] It was eating everything in sight.
[00:43:03] And you know, I, you know, you were sweating.
[00:43:06] Yeah, oh yeah, I was definitely sweating.
[00:43:08] You were sweating.
[00:43:08] And you'd talk to me like, bro, you're trying to like,
[00:43:13] talk to both sets of lawyers.
[00:43:15] And I'm like, bro, let me talk to Dave.
[00:43:16] Let's get this thing.
[00:43:17] And so luckily, you know, when you talk and you're aligned,
[00:43:24] then it's easy.
[00:43:24] And look, look, hey, this is another thing I remember.
[00:43:26] When you, when someone else is,
[00:43:27] when the opposing lawyer is looking out for them
[00:43:31] and your lawyer's looking out for you,
[00:43:33] they're not, they're not trying to go to the same place.
[00:43:35] No.
[00:43:36] They're trying to go to two different places.
[00:43:37] So they're gonna have a hard time.
[00:43:39] So you have to have sometimes conversations.
[00:43:42] And those conversations need to be backed up in writing.
[00:43:43] Of course, that's why.
[00:43:44] So you can then debrief the lawyers
[00:43:46] and the lawyers understand where you need to be.
[00:43:49] And that both sides have agreed.
[00:43:51] So that's something to remember.
[00:43:54] And here's another, you know,
[00:43:57] you and I never freaking had lawyers in between us.
[00:44:00] You know what I mean?
[00:44:01] No, we didn't.
[00:44:02] And the other funny thing I was telling people
[00:44:03] to say the other day is we never had,
[00:44:05] we were on a handshake for years, on a handshake.
[00:44:10] Millions and millions of dollars worth of business.
[00:44:14] Tens of millions of dollars.
[00:44:14] Tens of millions of dollars worth of business
[00:44:16] on a handshake.
[00:44:17] On a handshake.
[00:44:19] That's legit.
[00:44:20] Which is freaking awesome.
[00:44:21] Like Old School, I hope people can learn from that.
[00:44:23] And by the way, the only reason we eventually were like,
[00:44:26] okay, we need to go to paper on this stuff
[00:44:28] is because the banks and the lawyers were like,
[00:44:30] hey, guys.
[00:44:32] This thing's too big.
[00:44:33] This doesn't work.
[00:44:34] You can't have a handshake.
[00:44:35] Like if one of you dies, if one of you dies,
[00:44:38] this is a freaking disaster for all involved.
[00:44:41] And we're like, all right, fine.
[00:44:43] So we did it.
[00:44:44] But that was great.
[00:44:48] I was definitely like sweating it.
[00:44:51] And I'll tell you what, I gotta give Kip props on it
[00:44:53] because he kept telling me, Pete,
[00:44:56] you gotta understand something.
[00:44:58] All big fish are lost at the boat.
[00:45:02] You can reel and reel and reel and reel and reel
[00:45:05] and you go to grab that gill and pull that hook
[00:45:08] and you lose it.
[00:45:09] You know what I mean?
[00:45:10] Like you get it right to the boat
[00:45:11] and it flaps its tail and rips off.
[00:45:14] And we were at tail flapping kind of scenario at that point.
[00:45:18] And I'm trying to hang onto the freaking gill.
[00:45:21] You know what I mean?
[00:45:22] Like trying to grab the club to kill this thing.
[00:45:26] But it was ultimately, I think that they were
[00:45:32] definitely not only the right partner,
[00:45:34] but the patient partner we need.
[00:45:36] You know, that was a nice, let's say,
[00:45:42] it proved to me as they were waiting.
[00:45:44] You know, they're like, okay.
[00:45:47] They didn't freak out.
[00:45:48] They didn't get crazy.
[00:45:50] They were like, oh, they were like,
[00:45:51] oh, it's gonna take some time to get this thing worked out.
[00:45:54] You know, it's like, oh, she doesn't wanna marry me right now.
[00:45:58] Yeah, yeah, yeah.
[00:45:58] No, it's like she wants to wait another year.
[00:46:00] And most private equity firms would not have done that.
[00:46:03] Yeah, yeah.
[00:46:03] So they were super cool and proved
[00:46:05] the type of people that they were through their actions,
[00:46:08] which was legit.
[00:46:10] And so that worked out great and has been great.
[00:46:16] In the meantime, right?
[00:46:18] We get, how long was it?
[00:46:22] Once we had the factory in North Carolina,
[00:46:24] the first factory in North Carolina.
[00:46:25] October.
[00:46:26] Factory one, we get that in October.
[00:46:27] So just after we recorded the last podcast,
[00:46:29] we closed on that first.
[00:46:30] We closed on it.
[00:46:31] So we're stoked.
[00:46:33] How long did the Stoke last before you started,
[00:46:36] you started to hear hunger growls from the monster again?
[00:46:39] One month.
[00:46:40] It was one month?
[00:46:41] Yeah, because we launched November.
[00:46:44] We launched our Black Friday.
[00:46:46] We do that like one deal a year.
[00:46:48] And bro, we sold like 10,000 pairs of jeans.
[00:46:53] We had to close it off and like,
[00:46:56] I don't know, a thousand, two thousand pairs of boots.
[00:46:57] And I'm looking at it.
[00:46:58] I remember you texting me like, we're shutting it down.
[00:47:02] And that's when I was like, okay, that always sucks, bro.
[00:47:07] Cause what that means is someone out there
[00:47:09] is gonna have to buy a pair of jeans
[00:47:11] that are made in another country.
[00:47:14] And that's horrible.
[00:47:15] It's horrible for America.
[00:47:17] It's horrible for our economy.
[00:47:18] It's horrible for our community.
[00:47:19] It's horrible for the person that has to wear
[00:47:20] substandard jeans on their body.
[00:47:23] And yet, I remember, hey, we have to shut this down
[00:47:29] right now and I'm thinking, damn.
[00:47:31] The immediate pivot was, I remember sitting down
[00:47:35] the day, the next business day after Black Friday
[00:47:38] with the team and saying, what are we gonna do?
[00:47:41] How are we gonna pivot?
[00:47:42] And we got Jason on the phone,
[00:47:44] our new partner down in North Carolina,
[00:47:46] running all of North Carolina operations.
[00:47:49] Then I said, hey bro, I think we can make jeans there.
[00:47:54] Remember this?
[00:47:55] Yeah.
[00:47:55] And I'm like, I think we can,
[00:47:59] but these machines are completely different,
[00:48:01] fouling machines.
[00:48:03] He's like, yeah, we can get it done.
[00:48:05] We can get it done.
[00:48:06] And immediately, and I think that's the great thing
[00:48:09] with obviously owning your supply chain.
[00:48:13] I like to call it the Origin Factory Blockchain.
[00:48:16] I use the word blockchain because people understand
[00:48:19] what a blockchain is these days.
[00:48:21] Well, the Origin Factory Blockchain is a blockchain
[00:48:24] of manufacturing and transparency
[00:48:26] where you can trust where everything comes from.
[00:48:29] You know that cotton's come from Texas.
[00:48:30] You know that thing's woven in Triangle Georgia.
[00:48:32] You know it's getting cotton sown in North Carolina
[00:48:34] in Maine and it's a blockchain of manufacturing,
[00:48:37] which is really powerful.
[00:48:39] And it's actually core to who we are
[00:48:41] and core to our story,
[00:48:41] because we got nothing to hide.
[00:48:43] We ain't cutting out tags, right?
[00:48:45] We're making the shit from scratch.
[00:48:48] And we actually put out there to the public,
[00:48:52] like we're gonna have to make jeans in North Carolina
[00:48:56] and watch us pivot.
[00:48:58] And also follow us as we make mistakes,
[00:49:01] you know, and make tuition payments.
[00:49:02] But that mechanic that we flew up to Maine
[00:49:07] used to work in a denim factory.
[00:49:09] And he knew how to set up the machines down there
[00:49:11] and he knew how to tune them in.
[00:49:13] And he had all the beautiful tooling made.
[00:49:16] It was actually, it was so good.
[00:49:19] He made more and sent it to Maine
[00:49:20] so we could use it in Maine.
[00:49:22] So we made the pivot.
[00:49:23] It wasn't easy, but we got it done.
[00:49:25] And we're still not producing enough.
[00:49:28] And I remember saying to, I don't know if I called you,
[00:49:34] while we were down there getting to know the area,
[00:49:37] this is Ashboro, North Carolina,
[00:49:40] I drove by a building and it said on a trailer
[00:49:45] outside of the building, it said Texas jeans on it.
[00:49:50] And I remember just asking Jason, like, what is that?
[00:49:53] And he was like, oh, that's this old guy, Wally.
[00:49:56] And he's been in the denim business for ever.
[00:50:01] Come to find out and I didn't know this.
[00:50:03] I learned that North Carolina
[00:50:05] was the denim capital of America.
[00:50:08] And I'm like, so he's got like denim machines
[00:50:11] and people making jeans in there and everything.
[00:50:14] He's like, yeah, so again, another situation.
[00:50:18] We leaned into it a little bit,
[00:50:20] literally knocked on the door, went in
[00:50:23] and started having a conversation.
[00:50:27] It all started with a conversation.
[00:50:30] I know when you're talking about going back to factory one,
[00:50:33] Jason Gatti, all right, you got this guy.
[00:50:36] I just want to kind of profile him just for a minute.
[00:50:39] Did you see a transition in his,
[00:50:42] because look, the only Jason I've known is 100%.
[00:50:47] Let's make some shit happen now.
[00:50:49] We got this, here's what we need to do.
[00:50:51] That's the only Jason I know.
[00:50:53] Was that the only Jason you know?
[00:50:54] Was that a turnaround?
[00:50:56] Was there a turning point for him
[00:50:58] where he realized that this was the right thing to do?
[00:51:02] Because I mean, like I said, I've seen nothing but Jason,
[00:51:06] nothing from Jason except for like a 100%
[00:51:10] positive awesome attitude to make things happen.
[00:51:13] And also be like, no, hey, we're not gonna be able to do that.
[00:51:16] Or if we're gonna do that, here's what we're gonna need.
[00:51:18] Like that kind of thing.
[00:51:19] Was he like that the whole time?
[00:51:21] I would say his level of positivity was always consistent.
[00:51:26] Nice.
[00:51:27] And if there was anything he was feeling,
[00:51:29] he definitely didn't show it.
[00:51:31] Now, with that said, we had a lot of private conversations.
[00:51:34] A lot of private conversations.
[00:51:36] He educated me on the way they survived over the past 30 years.
[00:51:40] He educated me on the restructuring they had to go through,
[00:51:43] with the banks coming in and pulling apart the company
[00:51:46] and putting it back together and putting a CEO in place
[00:51:50] and how he fell.
[00:51:50] And like they went through some shit, man.
[00:51:54] Like after NAFTA and the WTO,
[00:51:56] like they went through some serious shit
[00:51:57] and he was part of it.
[00:51:59] So there's this protective kind of defense mechanism there
[00:52:03] that he's looking out for his people.
[00:52:07] And again, regardless of this new found relationship
[00:52:12] and working towards this kind of new culture,
[00:52:18] you're still blending two cultures together
[00:52:21] and two companies together.
[00:52:22] So there was definitely some apprehension behind the scenes
[00:52:26] and we had lots and lots of in-depth conversations.
[00:52:29] Some intense conversations too.
[00:52:31] The good thing with him is like he's a type of guy
[00:52:36] and maybe at some point it'd be good to have him on podcast
[00:52:38] but he's the type of guy that he's a survivor.
[00:52:41] He's a survivor, man.
[00:52:43] I was gonna throw that out.
[00:52:45] You talk about all these restructurings
[00:52:46] and all these things going on and putting a new,
[00:52:48] and he's the guy that's there.
[00:52:49] He's there and he's been through some shit in his life
[00:52:52] and he's a survivor.
[00:52:56] So it's tough when you have built something for so long
[00:53:05] to then I'm just gonna say abandon it.
[00:53:08] You've been building this thing for 20, 30 years
[00:53:12] and some freaking Yankee is coming down,
[00:53:16] asking you to abandon it.
[00:53:19] Cause that's ultimately the end goal, right?
[00:53:21] Is you're gonna abandon this and you're gonna,
[00:53:25] and I'm asking you to fully buy into what we're doing.
[00:53:28] Unproven, completely unproven.
[00:53:31] Just from watching some freaking YouTube videos
[00:53:33] and knowing, you know, Jocko's my other partner.
[00:53:36] It's still, even though you can buy into that
[00:53:40] and you can trust it, your livelihood
[00:53:43] and all these people's livelihood,
[00:53:45] you're betting that we're gonna do the right thing
[00:53:49] without that trust and that bond being built.
[00:53:52] So, yeah.
[00:53:54] Another comment I make a lot when I'm working
[00:53:57] with companies is, you know, they say,
[00:53:59] well, you know, you guys win the SEAL teams
[00:54:01] and you're dealing with life, life and death
[00:54:02] and be dealing with people's lives.
[00:54:03] I always say, you know, we dealt with people's lives,
[00:54:06] you deal with people's livelihoods.
[00:54:08] And that's the thing about Jason,
[00:54:09] you could tell that total positive attitude,
[00:54:12] you could also see that family attitude towards his people,
[00:54:20] that he wanted to take care of his people.
[00:54:22] Like, he needed to survive
[00:54:25] because that meant his people would survive.
[00:54:27] Like you could feel that when you talk to him.
[00:54:29] Yeah, he's intense and, you know, thank God
[00:54:32] he was willing to go to a muster.
[00:54:35] And he went to that muster and it changed his life.
[00:54:38] He literally said, Pete, I have learned more about myself
[00:54:43] and I'm growing every day, man, you know,
[00:54:45] and his thick Southern accent.
[00:54:48] And, you know, J.P. took him under his wing
[00:54:51] and a couple other, you know, the instructors
[00:54:55] and really dug in with him.
[00:54:57] They dug in and kind of, I don't wanna say like remolded
[00:55:02] but remolded the way he thinks and is walking through life
[00:55:06] and thinking about business.
[00:55:08] And that was so important.
[00:55:10] Honestly, if he didn't go to that muster,
[00:55:15] I don't know, I don't know where we would be right now
[00:55:19] if he didn't go to that muster.
[00:55:20] Well, as we get into the next factory,
[00:55:22] you can see, like I would be observing and going,
[00:55:26] oh yeah, he's got this.
[00:55:27] He understood, he understands this part.
[00:55:29] He understands that part.
[00:55:30] He understands this concept.
[00:55:31] He understands that concept.
[00:55:32] You could see that.
[00:55:33] I could see that.
[00:55:35] And believe me, I look at this stuff all day long.
[00:55:38] I look at meetings all day long.
[00:55:40] I sit with companies all day long.
[00:55:42] I sit in boardrooms all day long.
[00:55:43] I go to manufacturing floor.
[00:55:45] This is what I do all day.
[00:55:46] So for me sitting there watching this,
[00:55:47] it's like, oh, okay.
[00:55:48] I can see when people are disconnected.
[00:55:51] I can see when they don't understand what's happening.
[00:55:53] I can see when there's some agendas that they're,
[00:55:56] I can see all that.
[00:55:57] And you didn't see it at all from him.
[00:55:59] I saw that he did.
[00:56:01] And what's cool too is being a survivor.
[00:56:05] We say that as a positive thing, right?
[00:56:07] But we also know that, and just like any other characteristic,
[00:56:12] if someone's a survivor,
[00:56:14] and that's kind of a get in that survivor mode,
[00:56:17] it can be an absolute negative
[00:56:18] because they're trying to survive
[00:56:19] and they're not trying to grow
[00:56:20] and they're not trying to thrive, which is problematic.
[00:56:24] And so I think that transition from him just going,
[00:56:27] hey, I'm just gonna make sure I take care
[00:56:28] of what I've got right now into a growth mindset
[00:56:31] and a thrive mindset of, oh,
[00:56:33] we can actually not just survive,
[00:56:36] but actually grow and take over and crush.
[00:56:41] I think that was a pretty awesome transition
[00:56:43] for Jason Gattie to make.
[00:56:45] Yeah, it was, it was.
[00:56:46] So now you're driving around Ashboro, North Carolina.
[00:56:50] Shout out.
[00:56:52] And you drive by this building.
[00:56:54] And you see a trailer sitting on,
[00:56:56] by the way, it's a big building.
[00:56:58] It's a huge building, but it's very nondescript.
[00:57:01] Yeah, it's nondescript.
[00:57:03] It's got this trailer with the Texas Jains.
[00:57:05] And just in terms of timeline here,
[00:57:09] like I had seen this building during the deal making
[00:57:16] for that first factory.
[00:57:18] I had seen it and-
[00:57:20] You mean driven by it?
[00:57:21] Yeah, just looked at it.
[00:57:22] Yeah, yeah, yeah.
[00:57:22] And actually I think we tried to get in,
[00:57:26] but we weren't able to.
[00:57:28] Like the guy there was just not interested
[00:57:30] in talking to us or anything.
[00:57:32] So it was kind of a blip, right?
[00:57:33] It was like, oh, what's that?
[00:57:37] And it kind of a blip, tried to get in, could get in, whatever.
[00:57:40] So it came back up and I had remembered,
[00:57:44] oh, there's this thing.
[00:57:46] So drove back by it, called Jason,
[00:57:49] do you know who owns this?
[00:57:51] Do you have the contact information?
[00:57:52] Is there any way we can talk?
[00:57:53] And Jason's like, yeah, I know who it is.
[00:57:57] Basically like, good luck.
[00:57:58] You know what I mean?
[00:57:59] With this whole thing.
[00:58:01] And I said, well, we're making jeans in Maine.
[00:58:05] We're making jeans in North Carolina.
[00:58:08] Things are working, but at the pace we're selling, right?
[00:58:13] At the pace of product that we're selling,
[00:58:14] because we're a company that literally,
[00:58:17] we take an order in and we manufacture the thing.
[00:58:19] So we're selling a thousand pairs a week right now
[00:58:22] on top of the 10,000 in back order.
[00:58:24] So we're now pushed out from Black Friday,
[00:58:27] we're pushed out for five months,
[00:58:30] which is completely unacceptable.
[00:58:33] It's completely unacceptable in this world
[00:58:34] of getting shit from Amazon dropped in by a drone, right?
[00:58:38] Like an hour after you order it.
[00:58:39] So it just was like, I kind of looked at the numbers
[00:58:45] and the run rate of what we're selling and I'm like,
[00:58:48] it just doesn't work.
[00:58:49] This ain't happening.
[00:58:50] This just doesn't work.
[00:58:51] Can you remember that phone call?
[00:58:52] Like we're not gonna be able to ever produce
[00:58:56] what we need to produce at this run rate
[00:58:57] with this kind of growth trajectory.
[00:58:59] So Jason connected me with the son of the owner.
[00:59:06] The son of the owner connected me with the owner.
[00:59:10] Again, not for sale.
[00:59:14] He entertained me.
[00:59:16] He entertained me in this old 1970s boardroom
[00:59:21] that had a distinct smell to it.
[00:59:25] Him and his wife, Dolores.
[00:59:30] And I could tell this dude was hard.
[00:59:33] You know, like just the way he carried himself,
[00:59:36] the way he looked at me, the way he interacted.
[00:59:39] He even told me, if I was your age, I would kick your ass.
[00:59:44] He said, I would kick your ass and I'd kick your ass
[00:59:47] in business.
[00:59:48] You couldn't touch me.
[00:59:50] You can't compete with me.
[00:59:51] You don't know what I know.
[00:59:53] What I've done out in this plant, I went out in the plant.
[00:59:56] He actually did bring me out in the plant
[00:59:57] for a couple of minutes and I asked the son
[01:00:00] if I could shoot photos and he's like, yeah, go ahead.
[01:00:02] And then he saw me shooting photos
[01:00:03] and he said to Jason, Gatti goes,
[01:00:06] if I see that dude shoot another photo,
[01:00:08] I'm gonna knee cap him right here.
[01:00:10] I mean, that's the type of dude we're dealing with.
[01:00:13] Just to put this in a little bit of perspective.
[01:00:18] So how long had he been in this business for?
[01:00:21] 50 years.
[01:00:22] So if you don't know this, if you don't know this,
[01:00:26] this is the old school way.
[01:00:31] And back in the day, well, look at the history, 50 years.
[01:00:36] This is when you had the like union issues.
[01:00:40] This is when you anti-union issues.
[01:00:43] This is when you had a massive influence
[01:00:45] from organized crime in the textile industry.
[01:00:48] Like this is when you had intense, intense competition
[01:00:53] in America, because this is before everything's overseas.
[01:00:54] So now you've got like the most intense competition.
[01:00:59] And this guy, you wanna talk about a survivor and a thriver.
[01:01:03] This is a guy that dominated and dominated for 50 years
[01:01:08] and worked and if you were not a badass,
[01:01:13] you weren't gonna make it.
[01:01:15] It wasn't gonna happen.
[01:01:16] And if you weren't a badass,
[01:01:17] you were gonna get your ass kicked.
[01:01:19] And that's what he did.
[01:01:20] He went around.
[01:01:21] And that's why he was, you know,
[01:01:23] the last standing wash house,
[01:01:26] the last denim plant from the golden age
[01:01:31] of textiles in America.
[01:01:32] This is the guy, the last standing guy.
[01:01:35] It's 100%.
[01:01:36] Right?
[01:01:37] The last one.
[01:01:38] I mean, you're talking about a plant
[01:01:40] that's 170,000 square feet with this wash house,
[01:01:44] now a storage room, right?
[01:01:48] With these big 500 pound washing machines
[01:01:52] that tip forward dump out, you know,
[01:01:54] the wash jeans.
[01:01:55] Like a dump truck, bro.
[01:01:56] Like a dump truck.
[01:01:57] Like a dump truck that haven't been running in years.
[01:02:00] The washing machines don't weigh 500 pounds.
[01:02:01] They wash 500 pounds, you know,
[01:02:04] a quarter ton worth of jeans.
[01:02:06] Yeah, they're nine feet tall.
[01:02:08] They're, I don't know how many thousands of pounds.
[01:02:10] They're massive, massive machines.
[01:02:13] But you know, you walk into this place
[01:02:15] and you could just tell it's like,
[01:02:18] man, like World War II,
[01:02:21] post World War II East Germany, Berlin.
[01:02:24] Like everything's just so closed and dark and dank.
[01:02:27] And it just had this,
[01:02:29] it had a survivor type of feeling.
[01:02:32] Like this thing exists out of sheer survival.
[01:02:36] Like it shouldn't exist.
[01:02:38] It shouldn't be here.
[01:02:39] It should have been gutted and turned into something else
[01:02:42] a long time ago.
[01:02:44] And this guy was not willing to let it go.
[01:02:47] Just force of will.
[01:02:48] Yeah, just a sheer force of will.
[01:02:50] So how did you navigate the conversation
[01:02:56] to go from this isn't for sale.
[01:02:59] And if you put your, don't put your camera away,
[01:03:01] I'm gonna knee cap you right here.
[01:03:03] How do you transition from that to,
[01:03:07] I mean, how do you even get him to open his mind
[01:03:09] a little bit?
[01:03:10] Well, let's just say that it didn't start off great.
[01:03:16] And ultimately it ended up good,
[01:03:18] but the ebbs and flows of our conversations
[01:03:22] in what transpired during this time was,
[01:03:27] not only the strangest negotiation I've ever been part of,
[01:03:34] but even more of one of the more heartfelt too.
[01:03:38] You know what I mean?
[01:03:39] It was a hard negotiation.
[01:03:41] It was hard to talk to him.
[01:03:43] It was hard to find common ground
[01:03:46] because of his passion and our passion for what we're doing.
[01:03:50] I think ultimately he saw something
[01:03:54] that he was willing to believe in, a spark of something.
[01:03:57] And not to get ahead of myself here,
[01:04:00] but the first time he walked in, I had Jason with me
[01:04:04] and while he walks in,
[01:04:05] and he's got his kind of the brows over his eyes
[01:04:09] and he kind of walks in and his wife's behind him
[01:04:12] and Jason's like, what up old timer?
[01:04:14] And while he looked at Jason
[01:04:17] and you could tell they probably had competed in the past
[01:04:20] or whatever, you got two strong Southern men.
[01:04:27] And while he said something smart to Jason,
[01:04:30] like I'll kick your ass or something like that,
[01:04:32] I was just like, I literally put my head in my hand going,
[01:04:35] oh man, how is this gonna go?
[01:04:40] What I boiled down to was, he's in bad health
[01:04:46] and right now, while he's actually not doing good.
[01:04:49] I actually wanted to interview him
[01:04:51] for the documentary we've been working on
[01:04:53] and I've asked three times, I've talked to him,
[01:04:56] I've talked to his wife and at this point,
[01:04:58] I'm probably annoying about it, but he won't do it.
[01:05:00] And he said to me because I remember things a certain way
[01:05:05] and somebody else remembers them another way.
[01:05:09] And I can respect that,
[01:05:11] but some of the stories he told me, which I can't share,
[01:05:14] I can share some of them,
[01:05:15] but are unbelievable, straight out of a movie,
[01:05:20] with organized crime and all that stuff.
[01:05:23] But ultimately, we spent 20 hours over the course
[01:05:26] of a few weeks in that boardroom talking and negotiating.
[01:05:32] He started the negotiation with,
[01:05:34] you are not seeing my books, you are not seeing my financials.
[01:05:40] If you wanna get this thing done,
[01:05:42] he's like, you're gonna, number one,
[01:05:44] you don't have to tell me why,
[01:05:45] because I got somebody ready to stroke me a check right now.
[01:05:48] And that's the person I'm gonna sell it to.
[01:05:51] That's how the negotiation started.
[01:05:54] There were times where this wasn't happening.
[01:05:58] Oh, yeah.
[01:05:59] And let me first start off by saying this.
[01:06:02] When you first called me about what it was,
[01:06:04] what the opportunity was, I was like,
[01:06:05] oh, this is next level.
[01:06:08] You're talking about an incredible staff of people
[01:06:10] that have an incredible skill set,
[01:06:12] an incredible amount of machinery,
[01:06:16] a space that's 170,000 square feet,
[01:06:19] a space that's grandfathered,
[01:06:22] as far as like a wash house,
[01:06:24] you can't build a wash house like that,
[01:06:25] you can't do it anymore.
[01:06:27] There are things that are once in a lifetime.
[01:06:30] This was a once in a lifetime opportunity.
[01:06:32] So I was, and of course, you're telling me,
[01:06:36] hey man, the genes thing that we're doing right now,
[01:06:39] we are not gonna be able to do this.
[01:06:42] And then all of a sudden, here comes like a ray of light.
[01:06:45] Like a lifeboat.
[01:06:47] Like divine intervention.
[01:06:48] Yeah, you're in the ocean, you're alive,
[01:06:52] but you're in the ocean.
[01:06:54] And all of a sudden, lifeboat comes.
[01:06:56] And this thing was like a lifeboat.
[01:06:58] And so I'm super stoked and you can always make deals happen.
[01:07:02] You can always make deals happen.
[01:07:04] You can always figure out a way.
[01:07:05] And my attitude is always,
[01:07:08] well, we'll figure out a way to make a deal.
[01:07:09] We'll make a deal.
[01:07:10] And there was some times in this,
[01:07:12] where we weren't making a deal,
[01:07:14] where it wasn't happening,
[01:07:16] where I just thought, yeah, man,
[01:07:18] what are we gonna do now?
[01:07:19] I was in plan BCD because you'd say,
[01:07:23] hey, let me debrief you on what just happened today.
[01:07:27] You know, and I'd be like, okay,
[01:07:30] the deal fell apart.
[01:07:32] Completely.
[01:07:33] Multiple times.
[01:07:34] And then it would come back together.
[01:07:36] And then it would fall apart.
[01:07:37] But it wasn't like, it didn't seem like
[01:07:40] those deals falling apart were any negotiation.
[01:07:43] It seemed like it just died.
[01:07:44] Like it wasn't like, oh, you know,
[01:07:46] he's hardballing us or he's gonna hold a little bit
[01:07:49] or we gotta come back with a different number.
[01:07:51] It was like, no, you know what?
[01:07:52] I'm actually just not selling this to you anymore.
[01:07:55] Yeah, he didn't even, he honestly didn't care about
[01:08:00] what we were gonna pay for.
[01:08:02] It didn't really have anything to do with money.
[01:08:05] He wanted someone tough.
[01:08:10] That wasn't me, by the way.
[01:08:12] He wanted someone tough who could come in there
[01:08:18] and demand respect that knew how to interact with people
[01:08:26] that understood the business that could carry on his legacy.
[01:08:31] And after 20 hours of negotiation, that wasn't me.
[01:08:33] And I'll share with you in a second
[01:08:35] who it was.
[01:08:38] At that table, that conference table,
[01:08:41] and flying back and forth and having these meetings,
[01:08:44] I did learn something very important about negotiation.
[01:08:49] In negotiation with someone who is so passionate
[01:08:54] about something that they've been building
[01:08:56] for 40, 50 years, 50 years,
[01:08:59] remember this guy had seven plants around North Carolina.
[01:09:03] He made it through the exportation of our jobs
[01:09:09] and machinery in the abandoned communities.
[01:09:12] He survived it.
[01:09:14] You know, and the other thing is,
[01:09:22] this guy, I don't know, he's the last of his kind.
[01:09:29] I think is what it boils down to.
[01:09:31] And he doesn't really believe that anyone can do what he does.
[01:09:34] You ever met somebody like that?
[01:09:36] There is nobody alive that can do what I do.
[01:09:40] He made the jeans for Levi's.
[01:09:42] He made the jeans for Wrangler.
[01:09:44] He made the jeans for Calvin Klein.
[01:09:47] On one case he shared with me,
[01:09:49] he got a contract for Calvin Klein
[01:09:52] and a guy showed up in his office unannounced.
[01:09:56] His secretary comes to see him.
[01:09:58] Hey, there's somebody here to see you.
[01:10:01] And he's like, okay.
[01:10:03] And the guy comes in his office
[01:10:06] and he puts two plane tickets on his desk,
[01:10:09] tells him where, I know where you live.
[01:10:12] I know everything about you.
[01:10:16] Basically, you're coming with me.
[01:10:18] And on the other end of those tickets
[01:10:20] was a guy named Whitey Bulger.
[01:10:23] Wally's like, hold on a second.
[01:10:26] Tells the guy to chill out for a second.
[01:10:30] Gets on the phone, calls a friend of his
[01:10:33] up in New York City saying,
[01:10:35] hey, I got a guy here named Whitey Bulger.
[01:10:38] He's like, he's asking me to pay money.
[01:10:42] He's like, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, wait, Wally, hold on.
[01:10:45] Who? He's like Whitey Bulger.
[01:10:47] He goes, who are you making jeans for?
[01:10:50] He says, Calvin Klein.
[01:10:52] He goes, I'll call you back in 15 minutes.
[01:10:55] Come to find out.
[01:10:57] His friend had the connections.
[01:10:59] I don't even know if I should be sharing this shit, bro.
[01:11:02] His friend had the connections to get to the top.
[01:11:06] And Whitey, basically he gets a phone call back.
[01:11:09] They're like, is Mr. Bulger there?
[01:11:11] Puts him on the phone with Mr. Bulger.
[01:11:13] And Whitey's, he said, I just heard the guy go, yep, yep.
[01:11:18] Yep, got it.
[01:11:18] Okay, puts the phone down and leaves.
[01:11:22] He wasn't paying for every pair of jeans
[01:11:25] that he was making.
[01:11:27] He wasn't giving the cut.
[01:11:29] Wasn't giving the cut.
[01:11:30] He didn't know he was supposed to be giving the cut.
[01:11:32] It had never filtered down to him.
[01:11:35] So he started receiving checks with the cut taken out
[01:11:38] for the product.
[01:11:40] There was a lot of stories like this.
[01:11:42] There was some pretty, there was some stories
[01:11:44] that he was telling me.
[01:11:45] And I think the point is, is he wanted me
[01:11:47] to know how tough he was.
[01:11:49] Now, here's a guy who's at end of life.
[01:11:53] You know, it's actually kind of, it's kind of sad too.
[01:11:55] He's at end of life.
[01:11:57] He's built this empire.
[01:11:58] He's invested everything in this.
[01:12:01] He's the best in the world at it.
[01:12:04] He's in the best in the world at making denim blue jeans.
[01:12:11] And he's staring at death.
[01:12:17] We spent a week negotiating, two weeks negotiating,
[01:12:21] and then it's just radio silence.
[01:12:23] There's no more conversation.
[01:12:26] I'm trying to figure out what's going on.
[01:12:28] I think the deal's done, man.
[01:12:30] I think it's dead.
[01:12:31] There's no more conversation.
[01:12:32] There was another entity.
[01:12:34] Another entity that wanted a purchase of it.
[01:12:36] That wonderbuy that had a ton of money,
[01:12:38] backed by massive, massive hundreds of millions of dollars
[01:12:42] and they were ready to roll in there.
[01:12:44] I finally get on the phone with his wife, Dolores,
[01:12:47] got her cell phone number.
[01:12:48] She sounds pretty wound up.
[01:12:50] You know, hey, Wally, he's in the hospital.
[01:12:55] Why don't you come down next week?
[01:12:58] So I go back down.
[01:13:00] I'm sitting in the boardroom.
[01:13:01] Wally comes in and he sits down.
[01:13:04] You know, and he's looking rough and he's welling up.
[01:13:09] You know what I mean?
[01:13:10] He's just, he's welling up in his eyes and I'm like,
[01:13:12] what's going on?
[01:13:14] He basically said, nobody knows this.
[01:13:15] I haven't even shared it with my son.
[01:13:18] But he had a heart attack and he died.
[01:13:26] Called, I guess his wife called.
[01:13:28] They brought him back to life, got him back
[01:13:32] and they actually said,
[01:13:32] there is no way you should be alive right now.
[01:13:36] You must have more to do.
[01:13:39] And that was the defining moment
[01:13:41] where he opened up back for negotiation
[01:13:43] where he just, he was staring death in the face
[01:13:47] and then he dies, he gets brought back to life
[01:13:51] and now I'm sitting in a board with him
[01:13:53] and I have my wife next to me, Amanda.
[01:13:57] And I knew bringing her down was gonna be important
[01:14:02] because him and his wife have been doing this thing
[01:14:06] and they've been a unit.
[01:14:07] You know, they've just, they're like-minded
[01:14:11] in one place off the other one
[01:14:13] and similar to the way Amanda is and I am.
[01:14:16] And it was then that he decided that we had what it took,
[01:14:23] that I didn't have what it took,
[01:14:25] but that she had what it took.
[01:14:27] Cause he was asking, he asked me,
[01:14:30] actually asked me to bring her down.
[01:14:32] I said, Amanda, I wanna bring you down North Carolina.
[01:14:34] Listen, Wally's asking to meet you.
[01:14:36] She's like, why do I need to go?
[01:14:37] She's like, this is your thing.
[01:14:38] This is what you do.
[01:14:39] I said, I don't know.
[01:14:41] I said, he wants to meet you.
[01:14:43] And I called him back.
[01:14:45] Yeah, I'm gonna be coming down.
[01:14:46] He's like, you're gonna bring Amanda, right?
[01:14:48] And I'm like, yes, I'm gonna bring Amanda.
[01:14:52] He stared at me across the table and he said to me,
[01:14:56] he goes, he's like, you can't do this.
[01:14:58] He goes, I don't trust you can do it.
[01:15:01] He goes, but she can.
[01:15:04] I watched the way she moves.
[01:15:05] I watched the way she walks.
[01:15:07] I watched the way she interacts.
[01:15:08] I said, she can make this happen.
[01:15:11] And I wouldn't do a deal with you,
[01:15:12] but I'll do a deal with her.
[01:15:14] And I said, you're right.
[01:15:19] Yeah.
[01:15:20] You're right, man.
[01:15:21] I know, man, I agree with Wally, bro.
[01:15:23] 100%.
[01:15:25] It's like, you're right.
[01:15:26] And you know, that was the turning point, man.
[01:15:29] The guy died, got brought back to life.
[01:15:31] He saw his legacy in front of him.
[01:15:33] He saw, you know, a family.
[01:15:37] And I'm talking about a family.
[01:15:39] He's, of course, the Jocko thing came into play
[01:15:42] because he had a special forces guy that lives next door
[01:15:45] to him who told him all about you.
[01:15:48] So you've got people who are hungry to bring back
[01:15:50] manufacturing in America.
[01:15:52] And it was at that point that he believed
[01:15:55] that we could carry on his legacy and things move forward.
[01:16:00] And bro, like even with even his belief
[01:16:04] that it could move forward, that we could handle it
[01:16:06] was still, it was still just the beginning
[01:16:09] of all the bullshit that we had to go through
[01:16:13] to make the deal happen.
[01:16:15] Well, one thing I remember, another point was,
[01:16:19] there was, you call me up and you're like,
[01:16:22] it ain't happening.
[01:16:23] Or you send me a text like, it ain't happening.
[01:16:26] And I'm like, oh, you know, well,
[01:16:28] so we get on the phone and you're like,
[01:16:32] hey, we're going through the due diligence and whatnot.
[01:16:37] And there's no phase two environmental study.
[01:16:40] Hasn't been done in 30 years or whatever, 40 years.
[01:16:43] And you're like, hey, man, if this comes up bad,
[01:16:49] we could be out a million, two million dollars
[01:16:52] worth of like cleanup and repair and payments.
[01:16:56] And you're like, we just don't know.
[01:16:59] And I remember I'm like, okay.
[01:17:02] I said, hey, man, how much would it cost us
[01:17:04] to build that factory?
[01:17:06] And you're like, I don't know.
[01:17:09] You're like, oh, you're running the numbers.
[01:17:11] You're like 25, 20, 25, maybe 30 million.
[01:17:15] And I go, let's do this deal.
[01:17:18] You're like, Roger that, you know?
[01:17:20] And that's again, that's one of those things
[01:17:22] where you were really close to the deal, of course.
[01:17:25] But I looked at, that's actually a small risk
[01:17:28] when you put it up against what we would have to have done.
[01:17:31] And look, even if we had a billion dollars,
[01:17:35] to say, okay, now go build that factory.
[01:17:38] How long does that take?
[01:17:39] Now go get those people.
[01:17:41] Where do you get them from?
[01:17:42] Now train those people.
[01:17:43] It's maybe seven years.
[01:17:46] Like literally seven years.
[01:17:48] If we had a billion dollars,
[01:17:49] it would have taken seven years.
[01:17:50] So those little risks, those additional risks
[01:17:53] that you take, because it's a once in a lifetime.
[01:17:57] This is a once in a lifetime deal.
[01:17:59] Yeah, it is.
[01:18:01] It shouldn't have existed and it shouldn't have happened.
[01:18:09] One person's sheer force of will
[01:18:12] to hang on to the golden age of manufacturing.
[01:18:18] One person's decision is actually gonna spearhead
[01:18:23] this Renaissance, this revolution of manufacturing.
[01:18:26] We're actually just dovetailing onto that thing
[01:18:29] to carry it forward.
[01:18:31] He was like the underground resistance for 40 years.
[01:18:35] Just like sitting in a cave, keeping those machines on,
[01:18:39] just keeping it going.
[01:18:40] And everybody I come in contact with.
[01:18:43] Everybody I came in contact with since then has said,
[01:18:46] oh, you're the owner of the new of Wally's factory.
[01:18:52] I said, yeah, and they're like,
[01:18:54] can't believe you got that done with Wally.
[01:18:57] Like, I mean, everybody knows the guy
[01:18:59] and he's a hard ass, man.
[01:19:01] Dude's a hard ass, but ultimately it got done.
[01:19:06] We got it done.
[01:19:08] Freaking sign the papers.
[01:19:09] Yeah, we got it done when they're like,
[01:19:11] one of his stipends right at the end of this whole thing
[01:19:14] was like a cliffhanger, right?
[01:19:15] Hey, okay, I want the money in a week.
[01:19:18] That's, yeah.
[01:19:19] The guy's crazy, man.
[01:19:22] He's crazy.
[01:19:23] I want the money in a week.
[01:19:25] Do we escrow him some funds?
[01:19:27] Oh, I mean, I remember wiring big fat numbers around
[01:19:31] and going, yeah.
[01:19:32] And here's the other thing,
[01:19:33] like you kind of breeze through this,
[01:19:35] but you can't see my books and you can't see my financials.
[01:19:38] No, he actually had a piece of like just notebook paper.
[01:19:43] And he wrote on his revenue what he did.
[01:19:46] He's like, this is how much I pay for heat.
[01:19:49] This is how much, this is my payroll.
[01:19:53] Here's lights electric.
[01:19:55] He goes, and here's the revenue.
[01:19:58] And you can see this is how this is the math works.
[01:20:03] And that's cool.
[01:20:04] You're like, hey, Roger, that you should,
[01:20:05] you sent me a text of a napkin or whatever.
[01:20:08] Like, hey, John, this is what we're buying.
[01:20:10] Recording to the napkin.
[01:20:11] I think most people walking in there would be like,
[01:20:15] this is like, this guy's crazy.
[01:20:18] Like this is a shithole.
[01:20:19] Yeah.
[01:20:20] And I think it's the future.
[01:20:24] Yeah. And I think, thankfully, you had the understanding
[01:20:29] of the true value.
[01:20:31] And I think just like every good deal,
[01:20:33] like he got what he wanted.
[01:20:38] He really did.
[01:20:39] He got a team that's going to come on board,
[01:20:43] that's going to continue that fight,
[01:20:45] that's going to expand that fight.
[01:20:47] And that's what he wanted.
[01:20:50] And then all parties can walk away feeling good
[01:20:54] about the deal.
[01:20:54] That's a great deal when that happens.
[01:20:59] And then it's like you finally get to go into the factory
[01:21:04] for the first time.
[01:21:06] And this is like buying a car.
[01:21:08] This is like walking up, seeing a car in the parking lot.
[01:21:11] And the guy's like, hey, I'll sell you that car.
[01:21:13] Over on the other side of the parking lot.
[01:21:14] Can tell what it's a Corolla.
[01:21:16] It's a Toyota Corolla.
[01:21:19] And you're like, how many miles?
[01:21:20] He's like, don't worry about it.
[01:21:21] Can I kick the tires?
[01:21:22] Nope.
[01:21:24] Is there an engine in it?
[01:21:25] Is there an engine in it?
[01:21:26] I'm telling you there is.
[01:21:27] I drove it here.
[01:21:28] How long time ago?
[01:21:30] So you just need to buy this thing.
[01:21:31] So you finally get to look under the hood of this thing.
[01:21:34] What would you see?
[01:21:35] What did we actually buy when you got in there?
[01:21:38] You know, I think that, I mean, where
[01:21:44] to go with that question.
[01:21:46] I could go so many different directions.
[01:21:49] I think we bought exactly what we needed.
[01:21:52] And the challenge was that I didn't anticipate
[01:21:57] was a double merger of companies and cultures.
[01:22:01] A double merger of companies and cultures.
[01:22:05] I did not anticipate the difficulty of that.
[01:22:10] Yeah, we went in there.
[01:22:11] We stripped out 17 roll off dumpsters full of stuff.
[01:22:16] We gutted the lights and put all LEDs.
[01:22:18] We put $75,000 of freon into the system.
[01:22:22] So we had cooling in there.
[01:22:23] So it wasn't a sweatshop.
[01:22:25] Like we went through and with machinery.
[01:22:28] We bought new machinery.
[01:22:29] We stripped stuff apart.
[01:22:30] We built a fulfillment center.
[01:22:31] We stripped out the warehouse.
[01:22:32] We got new controllers, custom controllers.
[01:22:34] We bought new dryers.
[01:22:35] Like we, I mean, we did everything we
[01:22:36] need to do for an infrastructure.
[01:22:37] But a double merger of companies and culture
[01:22:41] was the tricky part.
[01:22:42] That the first pictures you're sending me.
[01:22:48] You're like half laughing and half crying.
[01:22:52] You're like, back there, there's a wash house.
[01:22:56] It's in there.
[01:22:57] There's just piles of equipment.
[01:23:00] And it looked like areas of the factory obviously
[01:23:02] hadn't been cleaned or used in decades.
[01:23:05] In decades.
[01:23:09] I remember you excited because you found the floor.
[01:23:13] In some of the areas, you actually got enough stuff
[01:23:16] out of there so that you found the floor.
[01:23:19] People were smoking inside the building, Chaco.
[01:23:21] Cigarettes.
[01:23:23] I walked through and I'm like, I'm walking.
[01:23:25] I'm walking.
[01:23:25] I'm like, I'm like, huh, there must be some smoke coming in.
[01:23:30] And I walked by and there's a person smoking a cigarette.
[01:23:33] I'm talking, this is straight out of the 70s, bro.
[01:23:36] Like shit hasn't changed since 1970.
[01:23:41] Same type of a culture.
[01:23:43] Same type of a setup hasn't changed.
[01:23:47] It looked rough.
[01:23:48] Now you're going to tell everybody to change.
[01:23:50] The cool thing was, before we get to the merge
[01:23:53] and the cultures, that, and I've been talking about this
[01:23:57] a decent amount lately.
[01:23:58] So we even say it, I'm fine.
[01:24:01] OK, it's not what you hang on the wall.
[01:24:03] You can't just run around with a bunch of sayings.
[01:24:05] But actually, it kind of does help.
[01:24:07] And I talked about the fact that David Hackworth changed
[01:24:10] fighter company, or sorry, Fox company in Korea to fighter
[01:24:13] company.
[01:24:14] And he changed the hopeless in Vietnam.
[01:24:17] The 439th, he changed the hopeless to the hardcore.
[01:24:20] He just changed these names, changed these things.
[01:24:22] Hey, gave them little patches to wear on their uniforms, right?
[01:24:26] Made their salute into hardcore Rekondos.
[01:24:29] No fucking slack.
[01:24:30] Like he made these changes.
[01:24:32] Like just made them.
[01:24:33] And that starts to shift things.
[01:24:35] And out of the gate, you're just like cleaning.
[01:24:40] Just cleaning this place up, right?
[01:24:42] Getting rid of a lot of this junk.
[01:24:44] Getting rid of a lot of these old machines
[01:24:46] that didn't have any purpose anymore.
[01:24:48] Painting things.
[01:24:50] A wage increase across the board for everybody.
[01:24:53] Like out of the gate, no?
[01:24:54] Making $7.50 an hour to make a minimum North Carolina wage.
[01:24:59] $7.50 an hour.
[01:25:00] Who can live off a $7.50 an hour?
[01:25:03] So the wage increase, the cooling system
[01:25:06] you're talking about, I mean, you know?
[01:25:08] Like you got to post that cooling system again.
[01:25:10] That thing's a monster.
[01:25:12] It's like I don't understand.
[01:25:13] Like you have a swamp cooler.
[01:25:15] There's like a small pool of water in there.
[01:25:17] You needed to cool off.
[01:25:18] You could dive in it.
[01:25:19] It's like crazy, right?
[01:25:20] But and what was the little bet you had with Kip?
[01:25:23] Like I'll give you $1,000 if you can get this thing running
[01:25:25] or something.
[01:25:26] What was the deal on that?
[01:25:27] Kip came down and he's, you got to remember,
[01:25:29] Kip spent in a lot of factories.
[01:25:30] And I hope he doesn't mind me sharing this.
[01:25:33] But he told me once, like he went into a factory.
[01:25:36] They drove, you know, an hour.
[01:25:38] Then they drove, you know, 15 miles down this dirt road.
[01:25:42] And then they then they at the corner of the dirt road,
[01:25:44] there was somebody carrying.
[01:25:45] He thought it was like bananas or something out of the forest.
[01:25:48] Then they drove down an elephant trail, another five miles
[01:25:52] into the middle of a jungle where people were like carrying
[01:25:56] out whatever he didn't know.
[01:26:00] And there's this building.
[01:26:01] There's this three story big brick building
[01:26:05] with bars on the windows.
[01:26:08] And he's like, don't tell me this is a factory.
[01:26:11] And he goes in and there's a bunch of girls,
[01:26:14] young, young girls in there sewing.
[01:26:18] And he's like, get me the hell out of here.
[01:26:21] And what those folks were carrying out in bare feet
[01:26:24] was the garments.
[01:26:26] And of course, you know, he's like, I think,
[01:26:30] I think for like Kip, like he knows what factories,
[01:26:33] good factories look like.
[01:26:35] He knows what infrastructure looks like.
[01:26:37] He knows what's right and he knows what's wrong.
[01:26:39] He's seen it all.
[01:26:41] He walked into that back room with Jason Gaddy.
[01:26:44] And Jason, you know how Jason is, he's like, you know,
[01:26:47] kind of get that sales personality.
[01:26:49] Oh my God, look at this.
[01:26:50] It got that.
[01:26:51] So cool.
[01:26:52] We got this.
[01:26:53] We got that.
[01:26:53] He's like, this thing, it shoots out.
[01:26:54] It'll cool this whole place down.
[01:26:55] And Kip's like, this thing ain't working, Jason.
[01:26:57] He's like, no, it's working.
[01:26:58] It's good to go.
[01:26:59] You just got to keep good walks.
[01:27:01] And he's like, yeah, there's no way.
[01:27:03] Yeah, there's no way this works.
[01:27:05] He's like, no, it works.
[01:27:06] And Kip's like, I don't know.
[01:27:07] I'll bet you $1,000 that this thing doesn't work.
[01:27:12] Come to find out.
[01:27:13] That shit didn't work.
[01:27:15] That shit didn't work.
[01:27:17] I think Kip found out like two weeks ago that we had
[01:27:21] to dump that type of cash into it.
[01:27:22] But stuff like that, definitely important.
[01:27:27] Well, all that was happening for me, it was more of,
[01:27:30] how am I going to connect with the people
[01:27:33] that have learned leadership from Wally?
[01:27:38] Again, this dude is living in the 70s, 80s,
[01:27:41] where you protected your own at whatever cost.
[01:27:47] How am I going to untangle and reeducate
[01:27:53] what our culture is like, how we lead, how we treat people?
[01:27:57] And I remember the first thing I did was I went up
[01:28:00] to the three managers and they're all looking at me
[01:28:04] like, who is this guy?
[01:28:06] You know what I mean?
[01:28:06] And I just, I said to them, I said, listen, I said,
[01:28:12] they're like, are you going to fire us?
[01:28:14] I said, no, I'm not going to fire you.
[01:28:15] Are you going to fire us and bring your own people in?
[01:28:17] No.
[01:28:18] Well, how do we know that?
[01:28:20] I said, we didn't buy this place because of the machinery
[01:28:25] or the building.
[01:28:26] I said, we bought it because of the people.
[01:28:28] I said, that woman over there, that's felling jeans.
[01:28:32] I have never seen anything like it.
[01:28:35] That one over there.
[01:28:36] I said, I've never seen anything like it.
[01:28:37] I said, the skill here you don't find in America anymore.
[01:28:41] I said, we're here because of you and nothing else.
[01:28:45] That's it.
[01:28:46] And the one, there's this one woman and she's staring at me,
[01:28:51] staring through me.
[01:28:53] I was actually a little bit feared for my life.
[01:28:56] And I get done and she does this little smirk
[01:28:58] and she smiles, she goes, I like you.
[01:29:02] And she just walks off.
[01:29:03] And it was like a lot of those,
[01:29:05] keeping those conversations warm and touch points.
[01:29:09] It was just the beginning.
[01:29:12] We're in process right now, obviously,
[01:29:15] of trying to continue changing the culture.
[01:29:18] It's difficult, man.
[01:29:20] I mean, obviously you've come down twice already.
[01:29:22] What did you think when you first walked in
[01:29:24] for the first time?
[01:29:25] I was freaking totally stoked.
[01:29:28] But you can tell, again, this is something
[01:29:32] that I get to see a lot at Eshalon Front.
[01:29:34] And I get to see it in the military too.
[01:29:36] You could tell that the people had some level of,
[01:29:43] for lack of a better word, I've said this phrase
[01:29:45] the other day, post-traumatic leadership disorder.
[01:29:50] Right?
[01:29:50] Yeah, so you have Wally, who's a survivor,
[01:29:54] who's going to crush, destroy, kick ass to make this work.
[01:30:01] And what does that translate to
[01:30:02] on the front lines, tyrannical leadership?
[01:30:04] Like you're gonna shut up and do it the way I'm telling you.
[01:30:06] That's it, that's the way it is.
[01:30:08] And you could tell that that's the environment
[01:30:10] that these folks, now by the time I got down there,
[01:30:12] again, the lights were in, the place was clean.
[01:30:16] So you started to see, I could smell the hope, right?
[01:30:22] I could start to smell, but then we'll get into
[01:30:23] some of the conversations that we had as we went forward.
[01:30:26] And as Eshalon Front showed up there,
[01:30:28] you could start to see, okay, but when I got in there,
[01:30:32] I actually saw hope and I saw people looking at me
[01:30:36] and as I started talking to people,
[01:30:39] you see that there's hope there
[01:30:40] and they were ready for that transition.
[01:30:42] What's, so we'll get to that.
[01:30:46] In the meantime, the other monster is out there.
[01:30:50] I think people really gotta understand.
[01:30:51] There's two monsters, we're walking through the factory
[01:30:54] getting phone calls about this other thing.
[01:30:56] 100%.
[01:30:56] And we're doing this other thing,
[01:30:57] we're getting phone calls about these deals.
[01:30:59] It's just, it's a lot, it's a lot.
[01:31:02] The other monster now.
[01:31:03] It's a freaking lot, right?
[01:31:04] The other monster's hungry.
[01:31:06] We, one of the main things that we wanted to get done
[01:31:10] was make a ready to drink moque
[01:31:13] that people could go into a store and say,
[01:31:17] hey, I need protein right now.
[01:31:19] I need to fill myself up.
[01:31:21] I need some nutrition.
[01:31:22] I want it to be healthy.
[01:31:24] We need ready to drink moque.
[01:31:27] We've had great success and supreme demand
[01:31:31] for the powdered moque.
[01:31:32] I mean, it's the best stuff going.
[01:31:34] So, but people, sometimes you don't have time to,
[01:31:36] you don't have a shape, cup, all those things.
[01:31:37] So we need to make a ready to drink moque.
[01:31:40] And that was a cha, cha, cha challenge.
[01:31:46] Yeah, that's true.
[01:31:47] A challenge to make the right formula.
[01:31:48] A challenge to make the formula as healthy
[01:31:51] as it can possibly be, as efficacious as it can possibly be.
[01:31:55] And you gotta counter that with making it taste as good
[01:31:58] as you can possibly make it.
[01:31:59] So people wanna drink it so it tastes good.
[01:32:02] And so we have all those just to formulate the thing.
[01:32:06] And once you formulate it, guess what you gotta do?
[01:32:08] You gotta actually make it.
[01:32:11] So how's this going down?
[01:32:12] Yeah, I mean, it's funny and listening to you talk it.
[01:32:15] It's all about this whole thing that we're doing,
[01:32:19] not trying to do, we're doing it,
[01:32:21] we're executing something.
[01:32:23] It's all around people and community.
[01:32:27] Like it takes people, it takes knowledge,
[01:32:30] it takes equipment, it takes community.
[01:32:32] Like it's the same damn thing.
[01:32:34] We're trying to make stuff, you know?
[01:32:37] We're trying to not lose who we are.
[01:32:39] Cause if we do, I mean, I don't even wanna guess
[01:32:43] what happens for our kid's generation.
[01:32:45] And honestly, I was saying to somebody the other day,
[01:32:48] it's on us right now.
[01:32:50] It's on the Gen Xers.
[01:32:52] I mean, us three at this table, it's on us.
[01:32:55] We're the next leaders of this nation.
[01:32:58] We're the business men and women of this nation.
[01:33:02] We're gonna drive the direction.
[01:33:04] We're gonna drive a divide,
[01:33:06] or we're gonna try to unify.
[01:33:09] You know, and I was explaining these market dynamics,
[01:33:14] actually to Kip and the team that,
[01:33:19] like what are we trying to do?
[01:33:22] And I'll try not to get off on a tangent here,
[01:33:24] but you have the greatest generation.
[01:33:27] The greatest generation were responsible
[01:33:31] for turning on the war machine of World War II,
[01:33:34] America's war machine, which was America's factories.
[01:33:37] We had the capabilities, we had the knowledge,
[01:33:40] we knew how to build tooling if we didn't have it.
[01:33:43] We knew how to make machines from scratch, from ore,
[01:33:47] from iron ore.
[01:33:48] We would freaking heat and cast and mold
[01:33:52] and pound that shit into shape
[01:33:54] until it turned into a tank or a truck, whatever we needed.
[01:33:58] And we truly have lost that.
[01:34:01] And it's been crushing the middle class, you know?
[01:34:04] And this is all about trying to give the middle class
[01:34:08] what makes America great, which is real opportunity.
[01:34:13] Because without it, who are we?
[01:34:17] I guess it's just a 250 year seizure, you know?
[01:34:21] And we're trying to do something about it.
[01:34:24] So I guess my point is is,
[01:34:29] we've kept this singleness of purpose across the board
[01:34:33] on origin and on jockel fuel.
[01:34:35] And although one serves the things you wear and need
[01:34:39] and use in life, the other one actually serves, you know,
[01:34:42] the things you need for nutrition
[01:34:44] and you need to consume this stuff.
[01:34:47] I was in Europe a couple weeks ago,
[01:34:49] there's foods that are illegal that are made here.
[01:34:52] You can't buy shit in Europe.
[01:34:55] Like stuff that comes in boxes that has its
[01:34:59] at the end of it and cheese at the beginning.
[01:35:01] You know, like that type of stuff
[01:35:03] that you want to consume by the handfuls.
[01:35:05] But you know, like we're like the things
[01:35:07] that these big conglomerates are able to make, you know?
[01:35:11] Like they're just not good for you.
[01:35:13] And we're trying to make something that's good for you.
[01:35:18] So this market dynamic of this World War II generation
[01:35:24] that is all but gone, that passed the stories
[01:35:27] on to us Gen Xers, these were the future leaders.
[01:35:31] Our kids have never, I don't want to say
[01:35:34] have never had any authentic experiences,
[01:35:36] but most of their experiences come through a device.
[01:35:39] Likes, follows, friends through this device.
[01:35:44] They didn't hear the stories
[01:35:46] from the greatest generation directly.
[01:35:48] So they lie with us.
[01:35:51] They've never really experienced anything authentic.
[01:35:54] They've never walked into a factory.
[01:35:57] And so you have this void of,
[01:36:01] I don't want to use the word authenticity,
[01:36:03] but you have this void of reality
[01:36:06] because everything is behind a screen.
[01:36:09] You can't see it truly.
[01:36:12] You can't smell it really.
[01:36:14] You can't feel it.
[01:36:16] And ultimately you don't know who made it.
[01:36:19] And there's something missing.
[01:36:23] The thing that's missing is what they fought for, right?
[01:36:27] It's what the greatest generation fought for.
[01:36:28] It's what they went to war for
[01:36:30] to protect the things we had.
[01:36:32] And then we sell those things to the lowest bidder.
[01:36:36] That's what we did.
[01:36:36] We sold it to the lowest bidder, but we let it happen.
[01:36:40] And origin and jockel fuel,
[01:36:45] like the things we're doing,
[01:36:47] it sits in the middle of this triangle
[01:36:49] where our kids are gonna experience something authentic
[01:36:54] for the first time.
[01:36:55] They're gonna walk into a factory and go,
[01:36:57] whoa, whoa, what is this?
[01:37:02] And they're gonna pick up a boot and smell the leather.
[01:37:07] So we're gonna leverage this technology
[01:37:09] they're used to to tell a different story,
[01:37:11] to write a different script, to change the narrative.
[01:37:13] And that's the idea here.
[01:37:15] And use and not romanticize about the greatest generation,
[01:37:22] but honor them through what we're doing.
[01:37:26] And that's the ultimate goal.
[01:37:28] Like when you look at this immersion camp,
[01:37:30] we're here in this immersion camp right now.
[01:37:32] You got 350 people here
[01:37:34] and we're walking through the factory yesterday.
[01:37:36] And for the first time, 70% of the people here
[01:37:39] have never been here.
[01:37:40] They've never been to the factory.
[01:37:42] The looks on their faces and the questions
[01:37:44] they're asking, I mean, we spent four hours
[01:37:47] walking through the factories.
[01:37:49] And they're just like, wow.
[01:37:51] And I know you've had a ton of people come up to you
[01:37:53] and I've had a ton of people come up to me,
[01:37:55] but we're not selling them anything.
[01:37:59] We're showing them a way to do something.
[01:38:03] They manifest what their belief in what we're doing
[01:38:06] and their alignment with what we're doing.
[01:38:08] They manifest that by purchasing a hoodie or a pair of jeans
[01:38:11] or a boots or grabbing a mocha or a goat.
[01:38:13] But they're living into the same thing we're leaning into.
[01:38:18] And I think that that's what makes it so not powerful.
[01:38:24] It's what makes it so important.
[01:38:27] It's why Wally sold us that factory.
[01:38:32] That's what he saw.
[01:38:33] He saw a generation that actually could do what he did
[01:38:37] because he didn't believe it was gonna happen.
[01:38:40] He thought we were too soft, soft and weak.
[01:38:43] So there's a mindset.
[01:38:48] There's an air, there's a frequency
[01:38:54] that we're all working on to try to make this shit happen.
[01:38:58] And it all is living as ideas
[01:39:03] in wanting to be executed,
[01:39:07] but sometimes recklessly.
[01:39:11] And we're trying to organize that
[01:39:13] so that it's executed more refined, I guess you could say.
[01:39:20] Whether it's with the jeans,
[01:39:22] whether it's with trying to make Moch RTDs.
[01:39:26] And it sounds silly a little bit for me to say it like that,
[01:39:29] but it's not because that shit is hard to make.
[01:39:32] There's five people in America who can make it
[01:39:34] that we know of.
[01:39:35] We're looking for more.
[01:39:37] Hey, listen, if you can make this Moch RTD for us
[01:39:40] in America, please let us know.
[01:39:42] Cause it's been difficult.
[01:39:44] What we wanted to do to keep it clean,
[01:39:46] you know, the way we needed to package it,
[01:39:50] aha, how we wanted to keep it actually good for you
[01:39:53] and healthy for you.
[01:39:54] There's actually not a lot of people who can do that.
[01:39:56] And the people who can,
[01:39:58] the people who can are held back by the big brands
[01:40:03] who have the market share and the control.
[01:40:06] And we're trying to come in and trying to take some
[01:40:12] of that market share and take some of that line time.
[01:40:15] And those big brands pay them off to not let us in
[01:40:19] or anyone like us in.
[01:40:21] They're not going to let us in.
[01:40:23] They ain't letting us on the line.
[01:40:25] They're not giving up an ounce of market share to us.
[01:40:30] Good thing we're fighters.
[01:40:32] You know what I mean?
[01:40:33] Like a little bit of savages, a little bit arrogant
[01:40:36] at times, but uncompromising.
[01:40:39] So, you know, we're in that process right now.
[01:40:42] I mean, we can't make what we need to make for the supply.
[01:40:45] We can make a certain amount.
[01:40:47] You know, like we have the product, we've had it.
[01:40:50] Our first manufacturer who committed to us then dropped us.
[01:40:53] I'm sure they got a side deal meal,
[01:40:55] some type of check cut to keep us out of the line.
[01:40:57] I'm not sure.
[01:40:58] Just shut, keep the line shut.
[01:40:59] Yeah.
[01:41:00] Just don't make anything.
[01:41:01] They're paying them not.
[01:41:02] They either are going to make them
[01:41:04] or they're not going to make anybody else.
[01:41:05] And these companies are getting paid off to do that.
[01:41:08] Not to make anything.
[01:41:08] Not to make anything.
[01:41:12] Just to go back to your tangent about making things
[01:41:16] and what it's like to see that.
[01:41:18] I think there's a certain human instinct that we have
[01:41:22] that a certain dopamine reward that we get
[01:41:24] for creating things, right?
[01:41:25] Otherwise, how would we be here?
[01:41:26] How would we as human beings have lasted
[01:41:29] if we didn't get a little dopamine hit
[01:41:31] from building a freaking roof over our head with sticks
[01:41:36] or put rocks into a circle and make a fire?
[01:41:39] If you didn't get some kind of dopamine hit from that,
[01:41:43] we wouldn't exist as human beings.
[01:41:45] So I think we all have that.
[01:41:46] And if anybody's ever, if you've ever created anything,
[01:41:49] if you've ever made anything,
[01:41:51] you get that little dopamine hit.
[01:41:52] Oh yeah.
[01:41:53] If you've, when you were a little kid
[01:41:54] and you made a tree fort, you enjoyed that.
[01:41:58] As you get older, you remodel the kitchen.
[01:42:00] If you did that, you hung drywall.
[01:42:03] At the end of the day, you looked up,
[01:42:03] you got a dopamine hit.
[01:42:05] I remember one time I was building a retaining wall
[01:42:06] in my backyard.
[01:42:07] I was in the Navy.
[01:42:08] I was probably, but I was like, probably,
[01:42:11] I guess I was 16, 17 years in the Navy.
[01:42:15] And I had taken a three day weekend
[01:42:18] so I could build a retaining wall.
[01:42:20] I'm out there laying bricks, laying block.
[01:42:23] And I got done and I just came in and I said,
[01:42:26] hey babe, I think when I retire, I'm gonna become a Mason.
[01:42:29] You know, like no one's bothering me.
[01:42:32] I'm listening to some music.
[01:42:34] The block don't talk.
[01:42:36] It's the block isn't gonna die.
[01:42:37] It's not even gonna get injured.
[01:42:40] And look what I did today.
[01:42:42] You know, like it's a good feeling.
[01:42:44] That dopamine hit is a real thing.
[01:42:46] And unfortunately, the dopamine hit is subsidized
[01:42:51] by clicking, you know, deliver this to my house.
[01:42:56] And it seems like they don't even want you to understand
[01:43:00] where this stuff came from.
[01:43:01] They just want you to get the dopamine hit
[01:43:02] of hitting add to cart.
[01:43:05] Yes. Right?
[01:43:06] They don't want you to know what it feels like
[01:43:07] to make this stuff.
[01:43:08] And you rip that out.
[01:43:09] That's why you see, you know, for years now, for kids,
[01:43:13] it's been, oh, you know what you need to do is,
[01:43:16] you need to go to college and learn, you know,
[01:43:20] you need to learn computer science or liberal arts.
[01:43:23] But you're not gonna go to a technical school.
[01:43:27] We don't want you to go to a technical school.
[01:43:28] We don't want you to be an electrician.
[01:43:29] We don't want you to be a plumber.
[01:43:31] We don't want you to be a mason.
[01:43:32] We don't want you to be a carpenter.
[01:43:33] We don't want you to know how to work a loom.
[01:43:35] We want, but we want you to buy this stuff.
[01:43:39] So there's like a capitalization of dopamine
[01:43:44] and they make it easier.
[01:43:45] And you know, even like, you know,
[01:43:47] you throughout computer science,
[01:43:48] actually people that do good computer science
[01:43:51] and computer engineering, they get dopamine hits
[01:43:54] cause they're building something.
[01:43:55] And it's something that they can make.
[01:43:57] I can tell you get dopamine when you make a video
[01:44:00] and it's good, you even make a part of a video sometime
[01:44:02] and you're like, hey, I built this
[01:44:05] and there's a certain amount of satisfaction.
[01:44:06] And like, that's a certain amount.
[01:44:08] That's something that I don't understand.
[01:44:09] I can't make anything on a computer as you know, right?
[01:44:12] Yes, we don't.
[01:44:13] But I know that you get it from there
[01:44:16] and I get to go straight to the source on that.
[01:44:18] So this is what happens, I think, you know, it's like,
[01:44:24] look, I'm not gonna sit here and say
[01:44:25] it's a conspiracy theory or a conspiracy
[01:44:28] that you know, the big corporations don't want people
[01:44:30] to make things on their own.
[01:44:32] But that's just the way it's turned out.
[01:44:34] The way it's turned out is, is if you wanna make,
[01:44:38] for instance, a ready to drink protein,
[01:44:41] they don't want you to know how good that feels
[01:44:44] to deliver that product and have people
[01:44:46] have a healthy choice when they go out.
[01:44:48] They don't want you to feel that.
[01:44:50] Because if you feel that, other people might feel it.
[01:44:52] And if other people might feel it,
[01:44:53] all of a sudden we got a problem on our hands.
[01:44:56] Dude, 100%.
[01:44:58] It's like freaking Soil and Green.
[01:45:00] The way this shit works.
[01:45:01] Remember that movie?
[01:45:02] Yeah.
[01:45:03] They're lining up to eat the wafers, man.
[01:45:05] Everybody's lining up to eat the wafers
[01:45:06] and we're like the insurgency, right?
[01:45:09] Saying, hey, join us.
[01:45:12] There's a better way.
[01:45:14] Here's the truth, we gotta have truth.
[01:45:19] Yeah.
[01:45:20] Gotta have truth, so.
[01:45:22] So we, so through great effort,
[01:45:25] we eventually, we find a manufacturer in Canada.
[01:45:28] Yeah, seven hours away.
[01:45:30] Our neighbors in Toronto.
[01:45:31] Our neighbors, God bless.
[01:45:35] And they're up there and they're, you know, not,
[01:45:37] they're not willing to sit back
[01:45:39] and shut down their line for money.
[01:45:42] Right.
[01:45:42] We're gonna have things made.
[01:45:44] Good on them.
[01:45:45] So the malt comes, here's another, you know,
[01:45:48] just another, the flavors on the go, right?
[01:45:52] So we got discipline go.
[01:45:53] When did the first one come out?
[01:45:55] A year ago?
[01:45:57] Two years ago?
[01:45:58] Was it two years ago?
[01:45:58] The new, the new adjusted.
[01:45:59] No, when's the very first discipline go?
[01:46:02] Who can remember?
[01:46:03] So a couple years ago.
[01:46:04] We have one flavor, it comes out.
[01:46:06] It's based on my taste buds, which is a bad idea.
[01:46:09] I don't drink sugar.
[01:46:11] I don't eat sugar.
[01:46:13] Or let me rephrase it.
[01:46:14] I don't drink a lot.
[01:46:15] I haven't drank in a Coca-Cola in decades, right?
[01:46:18] So the very first Jocco discipline go that I had,
[01:46:22] which had a little bit of monk fruit in it,
[01:46:24] it to me, it tasted like friggin, you know,
[01:46:26] candy cane almost, right?
[01:46:27] I'm like, oh, hell yeah, this is sweet.
[01:46:29] Hell yeah.
[01:46:30] And that's sort of the baseline that we used
[01:46:33] in the beginning for the drink.
[01:46:35] And the bottom line is it was to use Echo's term
[01:46:40] and Echo's correct.
[01:46:41] He's like, you're not normal, meaning Jocco,
[01:46:43] you're not normal.
[01:46:44] And he's right, my taste buds are not normal.
[01:46:47] And so we ended up, as we developed the flavors
[01:46:51] for the discipline go, look, we made the best possible drink.
[01:46:55] The efforts that we went through to make it,
[01:46:58] how we made it, to make it as clean and make it as natural,
[01:47:02] to hold off on making it for seven or eight months
[01:47:04] so we could actually pasteurize it instead of just,
[01:47:06] hey, you know what, why don't you just throw
[01:47:07] some chemicals in there?
[01:47:09] Just throw them in there.
[01:47:09] It'll be okay.
[01:47:10] No, we're not gonna do that.
[01:47:11] We're gonna pasteurize it.
[01:47:13] What about, hey, monk food's kind of expensive.
[01:47:16] We can throw some of the aspartame, we can do that?
[01:47:20] Hey, no one will really know.
[01:47:21] Yes, we know, I know.
[01:47:23] We're not doing it.
[01:47:24] We're gonna hold the line.
[01:47:25] So we make, well, you should just dump a bunch of caffeine
[01:47:28] that way people will feel it.
[01:47:29] Yeah, then they're gonna crash too
[01:47:30] and it's not good, it's a freaking bad form.
[01:47:32] We're not doing it.
[01:47:34] So we end up making an outstanding drink
[01:47:37] in terms of performance.
[01:47:39] But taste, not the best.
[01:47:42] You definitely need it to get better.
[01:47:45] So we had to attack that issue.
[01:47:47] Man, I got really happy.
[01:47:49] I got really used to the taste, by the way.
[01:47:51] Yeah, so did I.
[01:47:51] And I was like, I like, it's like,
[01:47:53] if you drink coffee for the first time,
[01:47:56] of course this is a thousand times better than coffee.
[01:47:59] Dude, I don't drink coffee.
[01:48:01] I did a spurt of five years.
[01:48:02] I drank coffee in the beginning of Starting Origin.
[01:48:05] I don't drink coffee though.
[01:48:06] And then I never drank before
[01:48:07] because I think coffee is disgusting.
[01:48:10] I think it tastes bad.
[01:48:11] I think it tastes really good
[01:48:12] with a lot of sugar cubes and some milk
[01:48:14] and maybe throw some whipped cream in there.
[01:48:17] But that's not really coffee, you know what I'm saying?
[01:48:19] So I really did like, and I actually drank mango,
[01:48:24] is I drink a mango every day.
[01:48:26] One can of mango every morning.
[01:48:28] That was my best part of waking up,
[01:48:30] was mango in my mouth, you know what I'm saying?
[01:48:32] And I love the iced tea lemonade.
[01:48:35] And that's what, so the old flavors were like this.
[01:48:38] Usually people had one that they really liked.
[01:48:41] Yes, I had one.
[01:48:42] And they had two that they thought were okay.
[01:48:44] And they had three that they literally didn't like at all,
[01:48:47] which is not good, right?
[01:48:49] So we knew we had to redo these flavors.
[01:48:52] And what we ended up having to do is say,
[01:48:55] hey, you know what, we need help.
[01:48:57] We need help.
[01:48:58] We've reached the maximum capacity of our capabilities
[01:49:03] and reached out to professionals
[01:49:06] that actually formulate flavors
[01:49:08] and can help and help us put together
[01:49:12] and reformulate the flavors on all the drinks.
[01:49:15] And man, what a freaking difference.
[01:49:19] I mean, the new flavors, all of them.
[01:49:22] This is what it's like now.
[01:49:23] You'll have three that you love
[01:49:26] and you'll have four that you absolutely love almost as much.
[01:49:31] I actually drink every single flavor.
[01:49:34] They're all delicious now.
[01:49:36] They're all delicious now.
[01:49:37] So that was huge, but...
[01:49:41] We had to destroy some flavors as well.
[01:49:43] This is what's crazy, right?
[01:49:44] It's not like you snap your fingers
[01:49:46] and now you have new flavors.
[01:49:47] No, this is a massive investment financially
[01:49:50] to bring these new flavors around.
[01:49:52] The testing, the, hey, no, this one sucks.
[01:49:55] No, I want a little sweeter, less lime,
[01:49:57] you know, more cherries.
[01:49:59] All these things going back and forth,
[01:50:02] paying to get all these things formulated.
[01:50:05] And then once you get them formulated,
[01:50:06] well, now you've got to adjust
[01:50:09] all the cans that you've made.
[01:50:11] And you've got some cans that are sitting around
[01:50:13] that now what are we gonna do with these?
[01:50:14] So this was a massive effort, a massive effort.
[01:50:20] But, you know what, I remember the,
[01:50:23] I don't want to say the dictum that I put out.
[01:50:27] Like the commander's intent that I put out was,
[01:50:34] we need to win on taste.
[01:50:36] Like, look, we're winning on everything else.
[01:50:38] Everything else.
[01:50:39] We've got everyone else crushed.
[01:50:41] We've got them.
[01:50:42] No one can touch us.
[01:50:44] We need to win on taste.
[01:50:45] If it doesn't taste good, it doesn't matter.
[01:50:48] And we did it.
[01:50:49] We did it now.
[01:50:50] We're winning on taste.
[01:50:51] So now we're winning.
[01:50:52] We got the best tasting.
[01:50:54] We got the most efficient.
[01:50:55] And now that means that right there
[01:50:59] was the production of all the weapons right there.
[01:51:02] That was the production of all the weapons
[01:51:04] and all the battleships and all the aircraft carriers
[01:51:06] and all the airplanes
[01:51:07] and all the howitzers in World War II.
[01:51:09] We made this.
[01:51:10] And now they're out.
[01:51:11] Now it's time to take them into battle.
[01:51:14] And this is such a fascinating world.
[01:51:19] This battle that goes on in the business world.
[01:51:22] And I never knew about it.
[01:51:24] I mean, I certainly didn't know about this three,
[01:51:26] four years ago.
[01:51:28] What's going on when you go into stores?
[01:51:31] How that functions?
[01:51:33] So you go into a store, you go into a convenience store.
[01:51:37] And you see 20 different energy drinks
[01:51:42] in the cooler, in the refrigerator.
[01:51:45] And those energy drinks to get into that cooler
[01:51:50] had to fight to get in there.
[01:51:52] And what that means is they in many cases
[01:51:55] had to pay to get in there.
[01:51:56] They had to pay millions of dollars to get that shelf space.
[01:52:01] And each one of those different brands
[01:52:04] that you're looking at in there,
[01:52:06] some of them have paid more,
[01:52:07] some of them have paid less.
[01:52:09] If you happen to have a drink that just performs great,
[01:52:16] guess what?
[01:52:16] They don't have to pay a bunch to get in there.
[01:52:19] If you have something like Jocko Fuel where we do perform,
[01:52:24] we haven't paid to get in there.
[01:52:28] Yes.
[01:52:28] We're getting by on actual performance.
[01:52:32] And that's good because the amount of money
[01:52:35] that gets thrown around in these deals,
[01:52:37] we're talking about billion dollar companies,
[01:52:40] multi-billion dollar companies.
[01:52:42] So you got that war going on.
[01:52:44] So that every space in that shelf
[01:52:49] is fought for.
[01:52:50] And you know what?
[01:52:51] When you go in and you support,
[01:52:53] you go in and you buy a Jocko Go from a convenience store,
[01:52:56] you go into a grocery store and you buy it,
[01:52:57] you are, you're calling for reinforcements.
[01:53:01] You're opening up the gates for reinforcements
[01:53:04] to get in there.
[01:53:05] So when you do that, thank you for doing that.
[01:53:07] Not only are you supporting yourself,
[01:53:09] you're supporting the company,
[01:53:12] which means you're supporting America.
[01:53:13] So thank you for doing that.
[01:53:14] So you got that war going on one front.
[01:53:16] The other war is this virtual war
[01:53:18] that you've got going on, which is insane.
[01:53:21] So whether it's search words on Google
[01:53:27] or searching in Amazon, see this is again,
[01:53:30] bro they don't call it conquest for no reason.
[01:53:33] There's term conquest.
[01:53:35] You conquest somebody.
[01:53:36] This is a war term.
[01:53:37] This is where I started to understand
[01:53:39] what was happening on Amazon.
[01:53:42] You know, years ago, I'm at Ashlam Front
[01:53:44] and I like certain kinds of pens
[01:53:46] as stupid as that might sound.
[01:53:48] You know I'm kind of a particular guy, I'll go Charles.
[01:53:49] I like things a certain way, right?
[01:53:51] There's one right there.
[01:53:53] I like certain kinds of pens.
[01:53:55] I like certain types of pencils.
[01:53:57] I like certain types of paper.
[01:54:00] So, you know, one time I was like ordering one of my pens.
[01:54:03] This is, and I ain't no freaking Mont Blanc dude over here.
[01:54:07] I'm not rolling on a $200 pen or whatever.
[01:54:10] I like pens that cost $2.59.
[01:54:12] So I order one pen for $2.59.
[01:54:16] And Amazon says, yep, it'll be there tomorrow at your house.
[01:54:21] So I'm thinking to myself, that's crazy.
[01:54:24] I don't know how they're doing this.
[01:54:25] It's gotta cost them.
[01:54:29] How much does it cost for them to deliver
[01:54:30] this thing to my house?
[01:54:31] A lot more than $2.59.
[01:54:32] A lot more than $2.59.
[01:54:33] And what's their profit margin on $2.59 or $2.39?
[01:54:39] What is it, $2.20?
[01:54:41] It costs them $2 to get this thing to my door
[01:54:43] at an absolute minimum.
[01:54:45] So how in God's name are they making money?
[01:54:47] How is that happening?
[01:54:49] Well, when I searched pen,
[01:54:53] there's 12 pens that come up
[01:54:56] and each one of them is paying to pop up on my computer screen
[01:55:00] and lure me into buying them.
[01:55:03] And that's happening billions of times a day.
[01:55:06] So there's this virtual war going on inside of Amazon.
[01:55:11] And it was crazy as we put our products on Amazon
[01:55:17] that if you searched Jocko protein,
[01:55:23] before we understood the battlefield,
[01:55:25] you'd search Jocko protein
[01:55:26] and there would be nine proteins come up,
[01:55:29] none of which would be Jocko fuel.
[01:55:32] Or you'd search krill oil
[01:55:34] and seven krill oils would pop up
[01:55:36] and none of them would be Jocko fuel.
[01:55:39] And this confused me for about four hours.
[01:55:42] And then I said, hey, what in God's name is going on?
[01:55:45] And guess what, people are paying.
[01:55:46] And the word you just use is conquest.
[01:55:49] Explain that, explain how that works.
[01:55:51] I mean, we like to do it every now and then.
[01:55:54] I mean, you gotta fight fire with fire a little bit,
[01:55:58] but learning the landscape first of all
[01:56:01] in obviously getting smart people involved
[01:56:04] was key to our hiring process of getting,
[01:56:06] I call it expanding the brain trust,
[01:56:08] you know what I mean?
[01:56:10] Basically it works like this.
[01:56:13] You find smarter people and you algorithmically bid.
[01:56:20] So if you have AI, that's even better
[01:56:22] against your competitors
[01:56:24] and then you conquest them by using their name.
[01:56:27] So regardless if they're searching for you or searching
[01:56:31] or using their brand name, you're coming up.
[01:56:33] And that's the war, that's the war online.
[01:56:36] 100% and it's no different than in the stores
[01:56:39] except that the companies, and we're in this war right now,
[01:56:43] we're in this war in the store right now.
[01:56:46] We have a company that is offering millions of dollars
[01:56:52] for shelf space, which we need.
[01:56:59] We can't fight that battle.
[01:57:01] So we're working on some other techniques
[01:57:03] which we won't share to flank it and stay
[01:57:06] where we need to stay ultimately
[01:57:08] and continue driving velocity to prove out what we're doing,
[01:57:13] not just to the store, but to the consumer also.
[01:57:15] So there's a lot of moving parts there.
[01:57:17] Yeah, and the best thing, so here's a,
[01:57:21] people talk to me for it in a bunch of books, right?
[01:57:23] And people are like, oh, you know what's the key
[01:57:25] to making New York Times bestseller?
[01:57:27] What's the key to having a bestselling book?
[01:57:29] And the key is write a good book.
[01:57:32] That's the actual key.
[01:57:33] So the best thing that we can do is what we've done,
[01:57:36] make the best possible product,
[01:57:38] make it taste as good as it possibly can.
[01:57:40] And that is why we're in there in the first place.
[01:57:43] We don't have the firepower to break through the door.
[01:57:50] What gets us into all these different places
[01:57:52] is the high demand signal.
[01:57:53] So thank you all out there right now,
[01:57:55] tuning in, listening going, hell yeah.
[01:57:57] Clear the shelves.
[01:57:58] Yes, clear the shelves.
[01:57:59] You out there, clear the shelves.
[01:58:00] That's literally what made this happen.
[01:58:03] That's what keeps us going.
[01:58:05] The product, the effectiveness of the product,
[01:58:08] the taste of the product,
[01:58:09] that's the number one weapon to make this happen.
[01:58:14] But, and that's what we have to use,
[01:58:17] is because that's what we have.
[01:58:18] We don't have billions of dollars.
[01:58:20] We can't throw tens of millions of dollars at a store
[01:58:24] to say, can you give us a few more,
[01:58:26] can you get rid of our competitor?
[01:58:28] Because that's what happens.
[01:58:29] And look, this is business.
[01:58:31] This is business.
[01:58:32] I get it and they can win.
[01:58:35] I get that too.
[01:58:36] You can understand Wally a little bit.
[01:58:38] You can understand Wally's mindset
[01:58:40] with his, that protective mindset.
[01:58:41] We're doing the same thing.
[01:58:43] You know, we're going to buy line time.
[01:58:45] We're going to go buy, we're in the process of it.
[01:58:48] We just secured 2025 line time for Moq RTDs.
[01:58:51] 2025, shit ain't even set up yet.
[01:58:54] And we're going to own that.
[01:58:56] Why?
[01:58:57] Because you got to be a savage about it.
[01:58:58] You got to protect what you're building.
[01:59:00] So it is, it helps me understand his mindset
[01:59:04] by our mindset with how we're building this.
[01:59:07] Yep.
[01:59:08] And you have to, like you just said,
[01:59:10] you have to be a savage because if you're not,
[01:59:14] you have to be a predator.
[01:59:15] You have to go, you have to be a predator
[01:59:18] because otherwise you'll get eaten.
[01:59:19] You just look like prey.
[01:59:20] And in these big companies, it's us down here,
[01:59:25] you know, scrapping.
[01:59:27] And they can just, you know, they can throw money at stuff.
[01:59:30] And you know what?
[01:59:31] And like I said, they can win.
[01:59:33] That's the way things work.
[01:59:35] But we also have advantages.
[01:59:38] And that's what we're going to utilize.
[01:59:39] You know, this is how insurgencies work.
[01:59:42] How do small little gorillas running around in the jungle
[01:59:46] defeat giant imperialist countries?
[01:59:49] It's an insurgency.
[01:59:51] There's belief.
[01:59:52] There's belief in what's happening.
[01:59:54] There's unity in the people.
[01:59:58] That's what we have.
[01:59:59] We have people that believe we have unity
[02:00:01] and that's our strength.
[02:00:02] And that's how we're going to win on that battlefield.
[02:00:06] Now, meanwhile, again, while all this is going on,
[02:00:11] which is a daily fight, a daily fight.
[02:00:15] Meanwhile, we got this double merger going on.
[02:00:17] And it's actually more of like a triple.
[02:00:20] We have a triple merger going on
[02:00:23] because now in North Carolina, what we end up with is
[02:00:27] we have factory one that we bought.
[02:00:30] Now we have, and it's not like factory one was bought
[02:00:33] and now everyone, we've been there for long enough.
[02:00:35] Now everyone's completely transitioned
[02:00:37] into everyone understands what we're doing
[02:00:39] and everyone's on board with the way our leadership works.
[02:00:43] No, that's still going on.
[02:00:45] Boom, now we buy another factory.
[02:00:48] And now we have the origin culture, factory one
[02:00:51] and factory two, all these cultures merging in one shot
[02:00:58] at one time.
[02:00:59] What's that looking like?
[02:01:00] Well, don't forget and maybe you want to save this,
[02:01:04] but while all this is going on,
[02:01:06] we have this kind of aggressive and bold idea
[02:01:10] of building an American made hunt line in this factory
[02:01:14] that we're going to double merge together.
[02:01:17] So I don't know if that's crazy.
[02:01:21] It's a little bit crazy.
[02:01:24] What we're trying to do is you're not right in the head.
[02:01:29] I think that's what makes it all work
[02:01:31] is other companies, they're not willing to pull out all stops.
[02:01:39] It's not normal.
[02:01:44] It's necessary though, like you said.
[02:01:46] So double merger, trying to build culture
[02:01:50] at the same time, developing textiles, developing a camo,
[02:01:55] trying to get this wash house up so we can wash jeans,
[02:01:59] developing new fits, hiring a product team,
[02:02:01] getting the logistics figure out,
[02:02:03] building out a new direct to consumer warehouse,
[02:02:05] training people on that, hiring operators,
[02:02:09] like hiring new C level executives,
[02:02:12] having to have board meetings, expanding the finance team.
[02:02:16] It's a lot.
[02:02:17] It's a big ass wave, man.
[02:02:20] I'm just like, and honestly from my perspective.
[02:02:25] These monsters went from like Komodo dragons to Godzilla.
[02:02:29] Yeah, 100% freaking weird.
[02:02:31] Somebody said to me recently, man, you're hard work guys.
[02:02:35] Actually, I will not outwork you.
[02:02:38] I will out ADHD you.
[02:02:41] That's it.
[02:02:42] I got ADHD for days, man.
[02:02:46] Like I can bounce around, but it gets to a point
[02:02:48] where like you got to organize the chaos.
[02:02:51] And you can use your ADHD, I can use it as a superpower,
[02:02:58] but stepping back and like, hey,
[02:03:01] letting people start to organize this chaos
[02:03:05] into a machine.
[02:03:06] It's like you got all these parts and pieces,
[02:03:09] but like putting them together, dumping some oil,
[02:03:12] putting the grease on and tuning it in and letting it run.
[02:03:16] It's kind of where we're at right now is it's together,
[02:03:22] but it's squeaking, man.
[02:03:23] It's squeaking and we know what needs to be done,
[02:03:27] but the biggest part of that is culture.
[02:03:29] And honestly, it's on both sides of this two-headed monster.
[02:03:34] Is keeping that consistent culture, driving it down.
[02:03:37] I believe the most important thing you can have
[02:03:39] in business is culture.
[02:03:41] I think if you have good culture, you can do anything.
[02:03:44] And we've seen that in a positive light and war,
[02:03:46] and we've seen that in a very negative light and war.
[02:03:50] If you can get buy-in from the people
[02:03:53] and you can create a mission and a mindset around that mission
[02:03:59] that people are willing to execute against
[02:04:01] and go to war for, you can truly do anything.
[02:04:06] You truly can do anything.
[02:04:08] I've always believed that as a kid,
[02:04:10] when they said you can be anything you wanna be.
[02:04:11] You can do anything in life.
[02:04:12] I actually believed that shit.
[02:04:14] Maybe I was naive, but I believed it.
[02:04:16] You know what I'm saying?
[02:04:17] And I still do believe it.
[02:04:18] So, I remember calling you up and being like,
[02:04:23] and we don't need to share it here,
[02:04:25] but like, hey, Jocko, we've got some problems.
[02:04:28] We've got some problems trying to merge this thing together.
[02:04:31] I shared some of those concerns with you
[02:04:34] of that mindset from the 70s and 80s
[02:04:38] that was really not gonna work and really not okay.
[02:04:45] And at that point, obviously, you were like,
[02:04:48] yeah, I'm freaking in, you know,
[02:04:51] and getting the teams together,
[02:04:53] feeding them, having a meal,
[02:04:55] and then like showing them and going to town
[02:04:58] on like who we are and what we're all about
[02:05:01] and what culture means and what leadership means
[02:05:03] and how to lead and how to communicate.
[02:05:06] Like it's not like, and I know you've been down twice now
[02:05:11] for the whole team, then for the management team.
[02:05:13] I believe it's gonna take like some people going to Musters,
[02:05:18] some of you coming back to the factory,
[02:05:21] you know, like it's gonna take this constant alignment
[02:05:23] over the course of 24 months.
[02:05:26] That's how long the double merger is gonna take.
[02:05:28] Yeah, yeah, and that's pretty standard, right?
[02:05:32] I don't know, man.
[02:05:32] You tell me, I mean, your business is all the time.
[02:05:34] I don't know.
[02:05:35] I am telling you, yeah.
[02:05:36] I'm with the trenches a little bit.
[02:05:38] It's not an oculation.
[02:05:39] You don't go to a one-no,
[02:05:40] Jocke would talk about extreme ownership,
[02:05:41] okay, cool, now I get it, now we can move on.
[02:05:43] This doesn't work like that.
[02:05:45] But what is beautiful is you can see progress.
[02:05:50] I mean, you mentioned about Jason's progress
[02:05:55] as his mind opened up,
[02:05:57] as he started to understand other ways to lead
[02:06:01] and get out of just a survival mode, which is a good thing,
[02:06:04] but it's not as good as a build and thrive
[02:06:08] and takeover mode, right?
[02:06:09] That's the thing.
[02:06:11] And just like a really simple thing.
[02:06:14] When I talked to the team in North Carolina,
[02:06:17] just explaining to them that leadership wanted their feedback.
[02:06:25] Leadership wanted their feedback.
[02:06:26] Leadership wanted to know if there was something
[02:06:29] on the line that didn't make sense.
[02:06:30] And I remember asking, you know,
[02:06:31] something along the lines of like,
[02:06:32] who here thinks Jason knows how to hem that thing
[02:06:37] better than the person that sits on the machine all day?
[02:06:39] Everyone's like, of course, the person on the machine.
[02:06:41] So if Jason's telling you to do something the wrong way,
[02:06:44] doesn't it make sense that you say,
[02:06:46] hey, this doesn't work or here's a better way to do it?
[02:06:48] Yes.
[02:06:49] And like the light on their faces was a beautiful thing to see
[02:06:54] because you can see that they do have ideas
[02:06:56] and they have better ways of doing things
[02:06:58] and they can definitely help us improve
[02:06:59] and they will help us and they are helping us improve.
[02:07:03] And of course, you still have to power through the fact
[02:07:05] that they've been underneath leadership
[02:07:07] that didn't do that for a long time.
[02:07:09] It was like, hey, you're gonna do what we say,
[02:07:10] we don't wanna hear from you.
[02:07:12] So this is where things start to change.
[02:07:14] And Jason says he getting that feedback that he needs.
[02:07:17] So no, there's not gonna be an overnight transition.
[02:07:19] That's not gonna happen.
[02:07:21] But what's beautiful is that transition is already happening.
[02:07:24] You already see the improvement.
[02:07:26] You already see the attitude.
[02:07:27] The difference between when I went down there the first time
[02:07:30] and I went down there the second time,
[02:07:32] a couple months apart, radically different.
[02:07:34] Radically different situation.
[02:07:35] You can see the difference on the floor.
[02:07:38] You can see the people smiling.
[02:07:40] You can see them looking, wanting to show me something,
[02:07:42] wanting me to look at this.
[02:07:43] So come and look, that's what you see.
[02:07:45] And that's just like, that's where we're going.
[02:07:48] That's the culture starting to grow.
[02:07:50] And the other thing is you can't impose culture, right?
[02:07:52] You can't say, okay, here's the new culture.
[02:07:54] A through Z.
[02:07:56] No, it has to all go into the pot.
[02:07:59] And we have to cook it together and they have to realize
[02:08:02] and there's gonna be some things
[02:08:03] that they're gonna give to us.
[02:08:05] And so that's the beautiful thing is to watch this thing.
[02:08:08] Watch that unfold.
[02:08:11] Huntline.
[02:08:13] So first of all, you being in Maine,
[02:08:17] being in the woods of Maine,
[02:08:20] hunting is a way of life up here.
[02:08:22] So a way of life, I know Joe, your father-in-law,
[02:08:26] he's a hunter, you're a hunter.
[02:08:28] I remember your son out running trap lines.
[02:08:31] Like this is the way of life in Maine.
[02:08:33] So for hunting, for you, it was like,
[02:08:35] oh yeah, this is a no-brainer.
[02:08:37] Yeah, I mean, a total no-brainer.
[02:08:39] And that community's also, they're also patriots
[02:08:43] and they heavily believe in the land.
[02:08:48] They heavily believe in America.
[02:08:50] And the fact that they don't have an option
[02:08:56] that is made here with textiles that were made here,
[02:09:01] like the fact that there's no option anymore.
[02:09:04] We actually, in my last company in the early 2000s,
[02:09:06] we actually manufactured, I mean,
[02:09:08] we did marketing for this company.
[02:09:10] It's called Beagle Ware and they did a wool.
[02:09:14] And I still wear that hunting.
[02:09:16] And I don't hunt a lot anymore
[02:09:18] because I'm trying to feed two monsters seven days a week.
[02:09:24] But I remember, that's what I still wear hunting right now
[02:09:26] is I wear this wool Beagle Ware, which has a DWR on it.
[02:09:30] Freakin' stuff is phenomenal.
[02:09:32] That for me was always like the pinnacle
[02:09:34] of hunting gear made in America, made in Vermont.
[02:09:39] To bring this to fruition and to bring a product
[02:09:41] at the level we've brought it to
[02:09:44] on an American supply chain is, it's a little bit
[02:09:51] of a miracle that we did it.
[02:09:54] And I'll tell you what, if we didn't have the team we did
[02:09:57] and the vision we had, and honestly with Kip involved
[02:10:00] and his knowledge base of building Under Armour
[02:10:04] and him keeping us away from making tuition payments,
[02:10:09] I don't think it would have happened without Kip.
[02:10:11] I don't.
[02:10:12] Well, yeah, it would not have, not even don't think.
[02:10:16] We would not have done it without Kip.
[02:10:18] Exactly, so a big advocate there
[02:10:21] and really driving how things should go.
[02:10:25] And it's been, for me, it's been a year of learning.
[02:10:28] Yeah, I'm kind of directing both organizations,
[02:10:33] both monsters, but he's been there really calling out,
[02:10:40] really calling it out in the Kip way.
[02:10:42] You know what I mean?
[02:10:43] Which is a little bit savage at times.
[02:10:46] I've just kind of kept my mouth shut and executed.
[02:10:48] So I've been, I feel like a little bit,
[02:10:50] I've been just working for him on the Hunt line.
[02:10:56] You know, I'm like working, I'm working for him.
[02:10:58] And I'm totally okay with that.
[02:11:00] Like that dude is, he's been driving this thing,
[02:11:04] but understanding his thought process
[02:11:08] of how to build product.
[02:11:10] And I'm not just talking about Hunt,
[02:11:12] but the thought process of how to build great product
[02:11:16] with innovation, how to think about supply chains
[02:11:19] and logistics, how to communicate with partners.
[02:11:24] You know, how to build relationships that are lasting,
[02:11:28] how to talk to consumers.
[02:11:32] I feel like I've had a college education
[02:11:37] over the past year.
[02:11:37] It's been freaking phenomenal.
[02:11:39] He's gonna hell a lot more than a college education.
[02:11:41] Because Kip has this experience that you just,
[02:11:44] you're just not, you can't, you could never,
[02:11:48] you can't learn what Kip knows.
[02:11:50] You can't learn that from a book or from a seminar
[02:11:54] or from a college course, like ever.
[02:11:56] You cannot learn what he knows.
[02:11:58] You have to have lived it.
[02:12:00] And I actually told him last week on the phone,
[02:12:04] I was like, man, you gotta get ahold of Jocko
[02:12:05] and you got it.
[02:12:06] Cause I've been trying to push him to like write a book
[02:12:09] under the armor, like and to tell the stories.
[02:12:12] And I'm like, Jocko can publish that shit, dude.
[02:12:13] Like, dude, call him and talk to him about it.
[02:12:16] But also like start a YouTube channel
[02:12:19] and Kip's a bit of a savage, you know what I mean?
[02:12:21] The way he talks, he's just different.
[02:12:24] He different.
[02:12:27] But a super positive influence
[02:12:30] on what we're doing as an organization.
[02:12:32] Building this hunt line wasn't easy.
[02:12:34] The Alpha Bravo Charlie layering system,
[02:12:36] the way we're using wool, you know,
[02:12:39] which is really core to who we are,
[02:12:41] is this natural fiber in our nano wool
[02:12:44] and our base layer and our stealth wool
[02:12:47] and mid layer.
[02:12:48] FYI, yeah.
[02:12:49] It's not your dad's wool.
[02:12:52] It's not your granddad's wool.
[02:12:53] No, it's a totally different kind of wool.
[02:12:55] Fine micron American marina wool to be exact.
[02:12:58] It doesn't feel like, well, I don't know,
[02:13:00] Echo, do you, how old are you, 44?
[02:13:03] Yes, sir.
[02:13:03] Oh yeah.
[02:13:04] Well, I was gonna ask you a question about wool
[02:13:05] and I remembered you're from Hawaii.
[02:13:07] That's true.
[02:13:09] You didn't wear anything wool growing up ever.
[02:13:13] No.
[02:13:13] Never.
[02:13:15] All right.
[02:13:15] You know, we didn't have our wool available yet
[02:13:18] for me to test and I had to go to Europe a few weeks ago
[02:13:22] and we were gonna go, actually,
[02:13:23] and then we went to Scotland.
[02:13:25] And so I bought a smart wool, you know that brand.
[02:13:28] I bought some socks.
[02:13:30] Dude.
[02:13:31] I wear those socks during like all temperatures.
[02:13:34] I didn't get it what like marina wool did
[02:13:38] to regulate your body.
[02:13:40] My feet don't sweat in it.
[02:13:42] It doesn't make sense.
[02:13:44] It doesn't make sense how this natural fiber
[02:13:47] that's so old can be used still very innovative.
[02:13:52] You know what I mean?
[02:13:53] Like it's an incredible fiber.
[02:13:55] So, you know, we leveraged this fine micron marina wool.
[02:14:01] We blended it.
[02:14:02] We produced these incredible textiles.
[02:14:04] We gleaned some of the knowledge from spec ops, you know,
[02:14:08] that hasn't been commercialized yet.
[02:14:11] And we put this incredible line together.
[02:14:13] Freakin' printed, roller printed, sublimated,
[02:14:17] acid printed, like badass textiles that we're cutting
[02:14:21] and sewing and turning into freaking America.
[02:14:24] America's first truly American made hunt line
[02:14:28] without compromise on the origin factory blockchain.
[02:14:30] There is not another company doing that.
[02:14:33] I'm giving you what anybody says.
[02:14:35] Yeah, there's something.
[02:14:36] When you mentioned the spec ops
[02:14:37] and military base of this year,
[02:14:39] there's something called Berry compliant.
[02:14:42] So Berry was a representative or something
[02:14:45] and he created a law where military had the deal,
[02:14:50] the defense department had to purchase stuff
[02:14:52] that was American made.
[02:14:54] And it includes a whole bunch of different things.
[02:14:56] You know, metal made products,
[02:14:58] but textiles and clothing is one of them.
[02:15:00] And it's probably the biggest category.
[02:15:03] And so these things exist.
[02:15:08] If it wasn't for that, honestly,
[02:15:09] this stuff probably wouldn't exist
[02:15:10] and we would have had to build a freaking mill
[02:15:12] because the mill, there wouldn't even be mills here.
[02:15:14] We would have probably had to build a mill
[02:15:15] and make the stuff ourselves.
[02:15:17] But luckily that did exist.
[02:15:19] So thank you, Representative Berry,
[02:15:22] for wherever you may be for putting that law into place
[02:15:24] because it kept some level of manufacturing here.
[02:15:27] So we were able to get a hold of that material
[02:15:30] and utilize that material.
[02:15:31] That's outstanding material.
[02:15:35] It's available, but it's hard.
[02:15:39] And where they get away with some of the stuff
[02:15:42] is like the Berry Laws,
[02:15:44] it says some exceptions are due to unavailability,
[02:15:47] cost or manufacturing efficiencies of US based products.
[02:15:50] So there's a claim that people can make,
[02:15:52] well, you know, we can't quite make that type of zipper.
[02:15:55] So we're gonna get it overseas.
[02:15:57] But we can't make this type of nylon.
[02:15:59] So we're gonna get it overseas.
[02:16:01] Or it's gonna cost too much.
[02:16:02] It's literally it costs too much.
[02:16:03] So we're gonna do it overseas.
[02:16:05] So there's ways that people get around it
[02:16:06] and they can still call it Berry compliant.
[02:16:09] We're better than Berry compliant.
[02:16:10] Better than Berry, and that's what we externally,
[02:16:13] like on our website,
[02:16:14] we have to say for the consumer something.
[02:16:17] So we say Berry compliant internally,
[02:16:20] we're better than Berry.
[02:16:22] Let me give you an example.
[02:16:24] You know, there's a company in Maine that makes boots.
[02:16:28] And their uppers, the full upper of the boot,
[02:16:33] which is the boot without the sole,
[02:16:35] comes in from Mexico and they call, they bottom it.
[02:16:39] That's what it's called bottoming.
[02:16:40] So they put a sole on it and they put laces in it.
[02:16:44] And it's American made.
[02:16:47] That technically is Berry compliant, right?
[02:16:51] Internally, we are better than Berry.
[02:16:54] That's a big deal to say that, hey man,
[02:16:58] when you buy a pair of boots, that sole,
[02:17:01] that came actually from Massachusetts,
[02:17:04] from Vibram, they injected it there.
[02:17:06] That leather came from Wisconsin.
[02:17:08] Those eyelids came from here.
[02:17:09] Like it all, like that poor on midsole on the jeans,
[02:17:12] that cotton was grown by a Texas.
[02:17:14] That rivet.
[02:17:15] That rivet, yeah exactly.
[02:17:17] That zipper, that thread.
[02:17:18] So better than Berry is what we stand by internally.
[02:17:21] And that's the only way that we continue
[02:17:26] building the limited supply chains
[02:17:28] and helping everybody, everybody that touches
[02:17:34] any part of that product, any component.
[02:17:37] That's how we rebuild the communities.
[02:17:38] That's how we build the supply chain.
[02:17:40] That's how we build America.
[02:17:41] Yeah, and this, you mentioned that hunters
[02:17:45] are probably the most patriotic people in this country
[02:17:50] as a whole, right?
[02:17:51] And that's one of the things that,
[02:17:53] in talking to Cam Haynes, right?
[02:17:55] I mean, just a world renowned hunter.
[02:18:01] He was looking for what he's gonna wear when he hunts.
[02:18:07] He needed someone to come on board with him.
[02:18:09] He needed someone to support him in his efforts.
[02:18:12] And he could go with any company in the world.
[02:18:14] I mean, he's one of the best, if not the best.
[02:18:19] Certainly the most popular of hunters.
[02:18:24] And, you know, when, and luckily, of course,
[02:18:28] he hunts with Kip, right?
[02:18:30] He hunts with Kip and they're great friends.
[02:18:33] And so that's awesome.
[02:18:35] But still, like he's a guy that's got, you know,
[02:18:39] a family to support in a whole nine yards.
[02:18:41] So it's not just about, oh, well, this is my buddy.
[02:18:43] So we're going.
[02:18:44] Man, what, when I talked to Cam, you know,
[02:18:49] when I talked to Cam, what I talked to him about was,
[02:18:54] was we're doing this in America, you know,
[02:18:56] and he's got a son that's in the Rangers.
[02:18:58] I mean, this, you know, he's a patriotic hard working
[02:19:01] American, he's a, he's a, he's a blue collar guy
[02:19:03] that's worked his ass off.
[02:19:05] And he knows what that means.
[02:19:06] He knows what it's like.
[02:19:07] He knows what it means to supply jobs to other Americans.
[02:19:11] And, you know, from my perspective,
[02:19:13] and then look, it was also, hey, you're going to be,
[02:19:15] have a huge influence over what we make and how we make it.
[02:19:18] This is going to be designed.
[02:19:19] This is going to have your blessing.
[02:19:20] And as Cam's blessing, you know, what else do we want?
[02:19:23] Right?
[02:19:24] So, but it was awesome to be able to get Cam involved,
[02:19:30] to bring Cam on as an owner.
[02:19:33] Because the reason is, look, he's not going to compromise
[02:19:37] on performance.
[02:19:38] It's not happening.
[02:19:39] I mean, look at this dude.
[02:19:40] He's running, he's running the marathon every day, right?
[02:19:43] There's no compromise on performance with Cam.
[02:19:45] So he's not going to compromise there.
[02:19:48] And he's not going to compromise on his patriotism,
[02:19:50] on his love for this country.
[02:19:51] And, you know, I mean, I talked about it with him.
[02:19:54] I'm like, hey, when we, when we buy stuff
[02:19:57] from other countries, we're putting money
[02:19:59] into the pockets of our adversaries.
[02:20:03] Yes.
[02:20:04] And that's a horrible thing.
[02:20:07] And that's just, this is the way it is, man.
[02:20:08] That's just the way it is.
[02:20:10] And there's no two ways about that.
[02:20:12] This, that's what we, this is an economic war.
[02:20:14] And the, that, that claim, that's not just rhetoric,
[02:20:18] like, oh, this is an economic war,
[02:20:19] but no, no, this is an actual economic war.
[02:20:24] And our adversaries are fighting.
[02:20:25] And sometimes, you know, even if you look at,
[02:20:28] at China's past and what, what their theories of war are,
[02:20:34] what Sun Tzu said about war, they want to fight
[02:20:37] without their opponent knowing that there's a war going on.
[02:20:40] That's what they want.
[02:20:43] So of course they don't make a big deal out of it,
[02:20:45] but that's what's happening.
[02:20:47] And, and so it was awesome to have Cam come on board
[02:20:52] to a company that didn't even exist, you know?
[02:20:55] Didn't even exist.
[02:20:58] But for him to know, you know what?
[02:21:00] This is the right thing to do.
[02:21:02] And so thanks to Cam and, and for coming on board
[02:21:06] and then helping with the design has been freaking awesome.
[02:21:09] And it's been cool.
[02:21:10] He's already out there hunting right now, by the way.
[02:21:12] He's out there getting after it.
[02:21:13] There's already blood on the Raptor Camo at this time.
[02:21:18] So, so that's freaking legit.
[02:21:23] But not an easy thing to get done, man.
[02:21:26] Holy crap.
[02:21:28] No, man.
[02:21:29] It was, I'd never seen roller printing before.
[02:21:33] We didn't know if the wool would hold, you know,
[02:21:36] like this, this stealth wool that we gleaned
[02:21:38] from the special, special forces, we, we tweaked it,
[02:21:42] you know, so we, we took what they were using for this glove
[02:21:46] and we tweaked it for our liking with the,
[02:21:49] with the blend that we wanted.
[02:21:52] And then it's like scorched under a thousand degree heat
[02:21:55] in it, in it, in it, in it scorches the outside
[02:21:58] and gives it almost a shell, a little bit of a shell
[02:22:00] type of feel.
[02:22:01] And we're like, cool, all that's cool.
[02:22:03] Can we print it?
[02:22:05] You know, like we don't have no idea,
[02:22:06] but you have to like run a sizable amount of the product,
[02:22:11] which is not cheap at 50 bucks a yard, right?
[02:22:14] You got to run us a bunch of it to see if you can print it.
[02:22:17] So you're taking all these little risks, you know,
[02:22:21] and it really is, is what it's taking to do all this is,
[02:22:25] you're just taking risks.
[02:22:27] What's the worst that can happen?
[02:22:28] You lose some money.
[02:22:30] Okay.
[02:22:31] What's more important, losing money
[02:22:34] or rebuilding this thing.
[02:22:36] So we take the risks, right?
[02:22:38] But seeing for the first time that like stealth will go
[02:22:43] through that roller printer and come off the other side.
[02:22:46] I was like, bro, I mean, I had no words.
[02:22:50] Like I looked at Kip, he looked at me, you know,
[02:22:53] he's like, are you kidding me, man?
[02:22:55] Look at this shit.
[02:22:56] I'm like, yeah, bro, like this is it.
[02:22:58] It was at that point, I was a believer, you know,
[02:23:02] I was a believer, like we actually can build
[02:23:06] a innovative, high performing hunt line in America.
[02:23:12] Cause there's some, there's some good technical stuff
[02:23:14] out there, you know, there is.
[02:23:16] And we still got it.
[02:23:18] I guess that's what I would say, like we still got it.
[02:23:21] And it launched what's today, the 20, 26,
[02:23:25] 26 public, so it launched for pre-order,
[02:23:27] for pre-order because today.
[02:23:30] Yeah.
[02:23:31] It's pre-order now because what we made is sold.
[02:23:33] Well, yeah, it's because we're making the stuff right now.
[02:23:36] And we're still weaving some of the textiles
[02:23:38] for some of the line.
[02:23:40] And, you know, we're literally making it.
[02:23:42] It's not like all pre-made, it didn't come over
[02:23:44] in a freaking container.
[02:23:46] And we didn't just bring it into a warehouse
[02:23:48] and ship it out, we're freaking making the shit.
[02:23:49] So if people want it and they want to, you know,
[02:23:53] help and wear something on American land
[02:23:57] that's American made, put the pre-order in.
[02:23:59] Yeah, well, the other thing that we were talking about
[02:24:02] earlier you were explaining to me is we have limited
[02:24:07] amount of fabric, we have limited amount of time,
[02:24:09] we have limited amount of capacity
[02:24:11] to actually make this stuff.
[02:24:12] So if you are out there and you need the woodland cami
[02:24:20] instead of the highland cami, we need to know that now.
[02:24:24] So we can make it for you.
[02:24:25] And if you need a size whatever XL and your wife needs
[02:24:30] a size medium, we need to know that
[02:24:32] so we can make the right thing.
[02:24:34] So that's why the pre-order is important on this stuff
[02:24:38] so we can make the right amount of stuff
[02:24:39] and get it out to y'all.
[02:24:43] What else, man?
[02:24:45] I mean, I know there's a ton of,
[02:24:46] that's kind of like the broad strokes of the last year.
[02:24:48] What about camp this year?
[02:24:49] How was camp?
[02:24:50] How was camp?
[02:24:51] Back with Charles, you've been quiet.
[02:24:52] How's camp?
[02:24:52] Good camp.
[02:24:53] Yeah?
[02:24:54] More mellow, a lot more people, but more mellow.
[02:24:56] Yeah, you've been chill, man.
[02:24:57] I've been watching you out of the corner of my,
[02:24:59] this has been a good conversation.
[02:25:01] Yeah, over here just cruising.
[02:25:03] Yep, that's true.
[02:25:04] Echo and I are matching right now.
[02:25:06] We're wearing that spring hoodie.
[02:25:08] New favorite, by the way.
[02:25:09] Yeah, that's nice.
[02:25:10] It's a good look.
[02:25:11] Jiu-Jitsu is getting more popular.
[02:25:13] Dude, it's exploding.
[02:25:15] People love Jiu-Jitsu.
[02:25:18] Are you concerned?
[02:25:19] So we got Gal Val versus Gordon Ryan coming up.
[02:25:23] Yeah.
[02:25:26] Here's my concern.
[02:25:27] It's gonna be hype, right?
[02:25:29] It's gonna be hype.
[02:25:31] One of my concerns, like they're saying
[02:25:33] there's gonna be 20,000 people live.
[02:25:35] Are you going to the ADC?
[02:25:36] It doesn't look like it,
[02:25:37] because I'll be in the mountains hunting.
[02:25:39] Oh, in Raptor Campbell.
[02:25:40] Yes, in Raptor Campbell.
[02:25:44] And it's on Sunday too.
[02:25:45] So I actually, I can confirm right now,
[02:25:47] I will not be there, unfortunately.
[02:25:49] So here's my concern about this.
[02:25:56] Jiu-Jitsu, in that match,
[02:25:58] well, Jiu-Jitsu 4 can be boring to watch
[02:26:02] in certain situations.
[02:26:03] There are, there's a, what percentage chance
[02:26:06] that this is a boring match, Echo Charles?
[02:26:09] I don't think it'll be boring.
[02:26:10] Okay, so you don't think,
[02:26:11] you think it's a 100% exciting match?
[02:26:13] I think the chance of it being exciting
[02:26:14] is like 85 to 90%.
[02:26:17] Okay, so okay, I'm gonna reverse.
[02:26:19] You think it's, I think it's,
[02:26:21] I think it's gonna be lackluster.
[02:26:23] I think Andre's gonna play anti-Jiu-Jitsu
[02:26:26] and try to hit like when the points start.
[02:26:29] A double leg with three minutes left.
[02:26:31] Yes, that's what I think is gonna happen.
[02:26:33] Okay, is that the, what's the rule set, ADCC?
[02:26:35] It's 20 minutes.
[02:26:36] So it's a super fight in ADCC.
[02:26:38] 10 minutes, no points.
[02:26:39] Right.
[02:26:40] 10 minutes, points.
[02:26:42] 10 minute overtime, 10 minute overtime.
[02:26:45] So it's, it could be a total of 40 minutes.
[02:26:48] And there's, so that's the rule set, I'm pretty sure.
[02:26:51] Yeah.
[02:26:53] I think if Gordon doesn't,
[02:26:56] you know how he calls out his submissions or whatever.
[02:26:59] If he just goes in there to win,
[02:27:01] I think it could be exciting.
[02:27:02] Oh, he like, 100% is gonna do that.
[02:27:03] Not like I'm gonna do this to Aaron Elville.
[02:27:04] Oh no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no.
[02:27:05] He's not gonna do that.
[02:27:06] Here's the thing, man, it is freaking hard
[02:27:09] to do Jiu-Jitsu against someone that is avoiding Jiu-Jitsu.
[02:27:13] And,
[02:27:14] you know, that can be really hard.
[02:27:20] And if that's the game that Andre plays,
[02:27:24] then that might be boring.
[02:27:25] Hey, if Andre goes at him, right on.
[02:27:28] We're gonna have an awesome, an awesome match.
[02:27:32] But that could happen.
[02:27:35] We could, I'm worried that might be not as exciting
[02:27:38] as we want it to be.
[02:27:40] And I started talking yesterday, who was I talking to?
[02:27:43] I was talking to some people at camp.
[02:27:44] And I was like, some kind of a hybrid.
[02:27:47] Like in wrestling, you can get called for stalling.
[02:27:51] And here's the problem with that.
[02:27:54] Calling people for stalling in Jiu-Jitsu
[02:27:55] goes against one of the principles of Jiu-Jitsu,
[02:27:58] which is conservation of energy, right?
[02:28:00] So my goal, if I'm going against a big wrestler,
[02:28:03] my actual goal is to not work and make them work and stall.
[02:28:08] That's my goal.
[02:28:09] That's how Jiu-Jitsu wins in that situation.
[02:28:12] So to create a rule where you can't do that,
[02:28:17] you can't stall, which is technically what you're doing,
[02:28:19] right? You're stalling.
[02:28:20] You're holding someone in your guard and you're stalling.
[02:28:22] You're making them trying to pass, you're stalling.
[02:28:24] You're not attacking, you're not trying to sweep them.
[02:28:25] You're not, you're stalling.
[02:28:26] That's stalling.
[02:28:27] So there's a problem with that rule
[02:28:29] because it goes against one of the principles of Jiu-Jitsu,
[02:28:31] which kind of sucks.
[02:28:32] Yeah. And if you look at like the match with Galvo,
[02:28:38] and I think it was Huron or Hena Gracie
[02:28:41] where he was showing how to defend someone
[02:28:47] who was a world champion.
[02:28:48] Remember this match?
[02:28:49] Metamoros.
[02:28:50] Metamoros, there you go.
[02:28:51] Who is showing what?
[02:28:52] So basically, was it Hena or Huron?
[02:28:55] Hena Gracie.
[02:28:55] Hena Gracie.
[02:28:56] And he fought Galvo.
[02:28:58] And Huron doesn't compete.
[02:28:59] And Galvo was a world champion at this point.
[02:29:02] And Galvo was trying to submit him for 10, 20 minutes.
[02:29:08] Yeah, 20.
[02:29:08] Doesn't submit him.
[02:29:10] Why? Well, he played defense.
[02:29:12] He survived, he played defense and good to go.
[02:29:15] It wasn't a draw.
[02:29:17] Because it was a submission only fight.
[02:29:18] No, it wasn't a no-me.
[02:29:19] You know what I mean?
[02:29:20] So I think Andre knows both sides of that.
[02:29:24] So I hope he engages.
[02:29:27] I mean, after the whole situation with Gordon Slapping
[02:29:30] and everything, I'd wanna prove something.
[02:29:35] You know what I mean?
[02:29:35] Like when they had that little exchange
[02:29:37] that's that, yeah, I mean, I hope it's fireworks.
[02:29:43] You know, I mean, yeah.
[02:29:44] And I guess the reason I brought that up is cause, you know,
[02:29:46] we're here at Jiu-Jitsu Camp.
[02:29:47] So Jiu-Jitsu is on the mind, but also like just talking
[02:29:50] about the popularity of Jiu-Jitsu
[02:29:51] and how so many more people are engaged.
[02:29:54] The biggest camp we've ever had, right?
[02:29:55] Biggest camp we've ever had.
[02:29:57] And because of that explosion, man,
[02:30:00] adding two new looms to the factory,
[02:30:01] they showed up on Friday.
[02:30:03] We're gonna get those things installed
[02:30:04] and start ripping out more geese and obviously
[02:30:08] new grappling shorts, which you're gonna try.
[02:30:10] Yeah, yeah.
[02:30:12] Might have to make some tweaks.
[02:30:13] They're freaking nice though.
[02:30:14] That material is perfect.
[02:30:15] Yeah.
[02:30:16] It's a weird material cause you feel like
[02:30:18] it's not even on you.
[02:30:19] Like you kind of feel like you're freaking in Spartacus
[02:30:22] over there grappling naked.
[02:30:23] You know what I'm saying?
[02:30:24] It's so like light and flexible.
[02:30:26] I'm gonna hold you back, man.
[02:30:27] It's freaking legit.
[02:30:29] Did you, yes or no, get tears in your eyes
[02:30:33] when I promoted my daughter to blue belt?
[02:30:36] I did.
[02:30:37] I did.
[02:30:38] I get it.
[02:30:40] Amanda, my wife says to me,
[02:30:41] the only time you cry is belts and babies.
[02:30:45] You don't cry when people die.
[02:30:46] I don't.
[02:30:47] I don't cry at death.
[02:30:48] It's belts and babies.
[02:30:51] I know the, I don't know what it is about babies.
[02:30:54] Honestly, if there's a baby around crying,
[02:30:57] I sweat immediately cause you know,
[02:31:00] having babies and getting up in the middle of the night,
[02:31:02] you kind of get into this difficult sleeping situation.
[02:31:06] So I, I'll sweat when there's a baby crying
[02:31:09] near me immediately.
[02:31:11] But belts, knowing the work it goes
[02:31:14] and the relationship and the commitment,
[02:31:17] seeing you promote Rana was, was pretty moving.
[02:31:21] And I kind of was trying to dry out my eyes a little bit.
[02:31:25] And I had one single,
[02:31:28] why do I have to wipe?
[02:31:29] It might have been a tear or two,
[02:31:31] but I had a white, but your eyes were a little wet there.
[02:31:34] Yeah, there was a little dusty in there.
[02:31:36] Yeah, why is there a little dusty?
[02:31:37] Echo Charles, yay or nay?
[02:31:39] Yeah, yeah, yeah.
[02:31:40] Oh, you did?
[02:31:41] It was very dusty in there.
[02:31:41] Yeah.
[02:31:42] But, but I did do it comparatively speaking,
[02:31:44] I did a good job.
[02:31:45] Yeah, you did.
[02:31:46] Here's the, here's the thing I thought about later.
[02:31:48] And it, okay.
[02:31:50] Okay, so she got her blue belt.
[02:31:52] Technically getting your blue belt is not a big deal.
[02:31:55] I mean, honestly, right?
[02:31:57] Standard getting your blue belt is not a big deal.
[02:31:59] And I didn't think about this till after,
[02:32:03] because getting your blue belts,
[02:32:05] listen, it's great you got your blue belt,
[02:32:07] but no one's hyped in a big way
[02:32:10] because you got your blue belt, right?
[02:32:12] But what, what it was, and the, I didn't realize this
[02:32:16] because I'm in it, is I, the journey that she's had
[02:32:20] to get her blue belt has been long and hard,
[02:32:25] and really long and hard.
[02:32:28] And, and, and it's been long and hard
[02:32:31] because of me as a dad.
[02:32:33] And so when she's, you know, when they were little kids,
[02:32:37] you heard me saying this in the, in the little speech I gave,
[02:32:40] I had my kids training Jiu Jitsu seven days a week,
[02:32:44] Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday,
[02:32:47] Saturday and Sunday.
[02:32:48] And on a couple of the three of those days,
[02:32:51] no, four of those days, they did striking and Jiu Jitsu.
[02:32:55] And they're like ages five, seven and nine.
[02:33:00] We would go to the gym on Saturday
[02:33:02] at we'd leave at seven 30 in the morning.
[02:33:05] I'd get home from the gym at two o'clock in the afternoon.
[02:33:07] They'd be with me the whole time.
[02:33:09] They'd take class, they'd take two classes of Jiu Jitsu
[02:33:11] and a striking class every day of the week.
[02:33:13] They're in there, they'd take both classes.
[02:33:16] I made them compete.
[02:33:19] Let me rephrase that.
[02:33:20] I mean, and by the way, anyone that's listening
[02:33:22] is like, hell yeah, no, this is wrong.
[02:33:24] It wasn't good.
[02:33:25] I made them compete.
[02:33:27] When I made them compete, this is my first three kids.
[02:33:31] When I made them compete, I made them compete
[02:33:33] up a weight class, up an age group, up a belt level.
[02:33:38] And what happens when you go up a weight class,
[02:33:42] up an age group and up a belt level, you get smashed.
[02:33:45] And in my mind, I'm thinking,
[02:33:47] hey, I'm a great dad, I'm gonna make them tougher.
[02:33:49] But all it did was make Jiu Jitsu suck
[02:33:51] because you go to a tournament, you compete, you lose.
[02:33:54] And I just thought I'm making them tougher and I'm not.
[02:33:56] I'm actually making Jiu Jitsu suck for them,
[02:33:58] making it a bad experience.
[02:34:01] And eventually, they got old enough where it was like,
[02:34:07] I don't wanna do this anymore.
[02:34:09] And my two daughters, at a certain age,
[02:34:12] and they were the oldest of the three,
[02:34:14] and I have four now, but they were the oldest of three.
[02:34:16] They protested to a point where it's like,
[02:34:20] my wife said, hey, you can't do this to these girls anymore.
[02:34:24] So, let's say we settled it down, didn't train as much.
[02:34:30] But, and then luckily,
[02:34:34] Rana, when she got to high school,
[02:34:39] I persuaded her to wrestle.
[02:34:42] I persuaded her to wrestle.
[02:34:43] And to be quite honest with you,
[02:34:44] I persuaded her to wrestle with money.
[02:34:47] I was like, I will pay you to wrestle.
[02:34:50] I'll pay you to go and wrestle.
[02:34:52] And so she did it.
[02:34:54] And it took a little while
[02:34:56] before she wasn't doing it for the money anymore.
[02:34:59] She was doing it, she was into it.
[02:35:01] But again, this is after going through a lot of stress
[02:35:05] and tournaments as a little kid
[02:35:07] and Jiu Jitsu tournaments and all that.
[02:35:10] And now she's wrestling.
[02:35:12] She wrestled all through high school.
[02:35:14] Her first year, she's the only girl in the wrestling team.
[02:35:17] She was in wrestling room.
[02:35:18] A sweaty, gross wrestling room.
[02:35:21] Filled with ringworm.
[02:35:22] And filled with ringworm and filled with, you know,
[02:35:24] 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19 year old boys.
[02:35:31] That's what she's in there with.
[02:35:33] And she stuck it out.
[02:35:34] And she ended up, you know, going through that program
[02:35:38] and eventually making it to state in California,
[02:35:41] which is a huge deal.
[02:35:42] And first person from her school
[02:35:46] that's made it to state in like 35 years
[02:35:48] or something like this.
[02:35:49] So, and it was her.
[02:35:51] Like the program, the program just didn't have the wherewithal
[02:35:56] to get a student to do that.
[02:35:58] She did it, you know?
[02:36:01] And then finally she goes to college.
[02:36:04] And while she's at college,
[02:36:06] she decides she's gonna try that as Jiu Jitsu again.
[02:36:09] Wow.
[02:36:10] Which is freaking awesome.
[02:36:12] And you know what, after about a week,
[02:36:16] she called me, she's crying.
[02:36:19] She cried over her first week of Jiu Jitsu.
[02:36:22] No one wants to train with me.
[02:36:24] I don't think anyone wants to train with a girl.
[02:36:26] No one wants to train with me.
[02:36:27] And you know, it's stress.
[02:36:29] There's college and all this other stuff going on.
[02:36:31] There's a little morsel of her life.
[02:36:33] And there's a lot of stuff going on.
[02:36:34] And this is where it comes out.
[02:36:36] And I'm like, hey, don't worry.
[02:36:37] Everything's gonna be cool.
[02:36:38] You know, you're gonna get to know people.
[02:36:40] It's fine.
[02:36:41] Just keep going.
[02:36:43] Please keep going.
[02:36:44] And sure, she's kept going.
[02:36:47] Paragon, slow.
[02:36:49] And that's where she trains.
[02:36:50] And great, I ended up going up there
[02:36:51] teaching a little bit up there.
[02:36:53] But it's just a great academy.
[02:36:54] She ended up making great friends and working her ass off.
[02:36:59] And this is, you know, this is what she's 21 now.
[02:37:02] So we're talking about like a 16 year journey, right?
[02:37:06] This is the longest, this is most of her life,
[02:37:08] you know what I'm saying?
[02:37:10] And so then finally, so when she comes back,
[02:37:12] so now she's been training for two years up there.
[02:37:15] Hard, hard, two days, you know, stuff like this.
[02:37:20] And so she comes back down to San Diego this summer
[02:37:25] and she's teaching, she's helping teach kids classes,
[02:37:28] but she's training all the time, training.
[02:37:29] And immediately my black belts are like, dude,
[02:37:35] you need to get your belt.
[02:37:36] I rolled with it.
[02:37:37] You rolled with it.
[02:37:38] Yeah, you need to get your belt.
[02:37:39] I rolled another color belt.
[02:37:41] And I kind of felt like, well, you know,
[02:37:43] she's up at Paragon now.
[02:37:45] And that's like, you know, her teachers and her instructors.
[02:37:49] And so I just said, hey guys, you know, she's up at Paragon.
[02:37:52] She'll get, you know, hopefully she gets promoted
[02:37:53] when she gets back up there.
[02:37:54] And then like, she's tapping out a bunch of people
[02:37:57] in the academy.
[02:37:58] And my black belts, once again, you know,
[02:38:01] Coach Adams like, dude, come on.
[02:38:04] Coach Bryan's like, dude, you're you kidding me?
[02:38:07] Then I rolled with her.
[02:38:08] And I was like, oh, okay, this is not fair.
[02:38:11] And so finally what I did reached out to her professors
[02:38:14] up there and I sent him a text or a message on Instagram,
[02:38:19] gave my phone number and said, hey, I need to talk to you.
[02:38:21] It's Jocko, can you give me a call?
[02:38:23] And the coach Chris, he called me up
[02:38:26] and I knew the number from that area code.
[02:38:27] And I answered, hey, hello, this is Jocko.
[02:38:30] And he's like, hey, it's Chris.
[02:38:32] He goes, I've been waiting for this call.
[02:38:34] And I was like, that's like the best thing I've ever heard.
[02:38:37] So, you know, he didn't want to promote her
[02:38:38] because it's my daughter.
[02:38:40] I didn't want to promote her because, you know,
[02:38:42] she's been training with them.
[02:38:43] They're putting a lot of work and effort into her.
[02:38:45] But so that was cool.
[02:38:47] So she did one more tournament as a white belt, double gold.
[02:38:49] And then we came out here to camp and got the promotion.
[02:38:52] So, so again, I realized afterwards I was like,
[02:38:55] it's kind of weird that I kind of like echo,
[02:38:57] you got your black belt at camp.
[02:39:01] We all understand that's a big deal, right?
[02:39:03] That's 15 years of training for you.
[02:39:06] That's getting smashed, complete.
[02:39:08] Like all those things, they ever kind of gets that.
[02:39:10] But for Rano, it's like, oh, it's like,
[02:39:12] oh, she got a blue belt.
[02:39:13] That's pretty cool.
[02:39:14] But I think it was like everybody kind of sensed it
[02:39:17] because people were freaking hyped.
[02:39:18] Oh yeah, man, that place was crazy.
[02:39:20] Of course she was crying.
[02:39:22] I mean, they were crying.
[02:39:24] You weren't crying.
[02:39:25] They were crying.
[02:39:26] Yeah.
[02:39:27] That is awesome.
[02:39:30] That's what it's about.
[02:39:31] And yeah.
[02:39:32] That's what it's all about.
[02:39:33] That's what it's all about.
[02:39:34] And Jiu-Jitsu is something that really brings people together.
[02:39:38] And look, just like you can't impose things on your platoon
[02:39:41] and you can't impose things on your workforce,
[02:39:43] you can't impose things on your family.
[02:39:45] But you can, if you're lucky, you can help them see the light.
[02:39:49] You can help show them the path.
[02:39:51] And when they find that path, when you show it to them
[02:39:53] and it's there and they decide, you can lead a horse to water,
[02:39:58] but you can't make a drink.
[02:39:59] But when you get them there and they jump in,
[02:40:02] man, that's one of the best things you could hope for.
[02:40:05] So that was kind of a highlighted camp for me.
[02:40:09] Dude, it was awesome.
[02:40:10] Freaking awesome.
[02:40:13] All right, what else?
[02:40:13] Anything else, Pete?
[02:40:14] Any closing thoughts?
[02:40:15] No, man.
[02:40:16] I appreciate you having me on.
[02:40:18] Appreciate the, obviously, all the support over the years.
[02:40:21] And of course, you telling the world about what we're doing
[02:40:27] and why and keeping everybody's attention on it.
[02:40:30] Because with all the attention grabbing going on these days,
[02:40:34] anyone giving anything time these days is valuable.
[02:40:38] So, man, I appreciate you.
[02:40:40] Appreciate bringing me on again.
[02:40:42] It's awesome.
[02:40:42] Well, you'd be on all the time if you weren't freaking living
[02:40:45] in Farmington, Maine, and I wasn't living in San Diego,
[02:40:47] California.
[02:40:49] And listen, look, what we're doing right now,
[02:40:52] this is a campaign.
[02:40:54] This is not one battle.
[02:40:56] And we are going to lose.
[02:40:58] We're going to miss things, and we have missed things.
[02:41:00] And we're going to make mistakes.
[02:41:03] But there are opportunities out there.
[02:41:06] And what we are going to do is we're
[02:41:09] going to make everything in America.
[02:41:11] And I told this story yesterday when we were in the factory.
[02:41:15] It's no compromise.
[02:41:17] It's a no compromise situation.
[02:41:20] And actually, I do remember the item.
[02:41:23] We were making, what do you call the, we were making spats.
[02:41:31] And we needed an elastic waistband.
[02:41:34] And you and I were having a conversation,
[02:41:38] and someone came up with a solution.
[02:41:40] It was, you said, hey, John, I'm like, hey, man,
[02:41:43] when are we getting these spats?
[02:41:44] What's happening with that?
[02:41:46] And you're like, well, it's pause.
[02:41:48] The manufacturer is going to take four months before they
[02:41:51] can tool this thing up, blah, blah, blah.
[02:41:52] OK.
[02:41:53] Or we got to get this machine and we'll be able to do ourselves.
[02:41:55] OK.
[02:41:55] I'm like, are there any solutions?
[02:41:57] Finally, we get a solution.
[02:41:58] The solution is, hey, there's an overseas company that
[02:42:01] can have this stuff to us in three weeks.
[02:42:03] Airship, boom, done.
[02:42:05] And you were just like, no compromise.
[02:42:10] And I was like, of course, no compromise.
[02:42:13] And that attitude is hard.
[02:42:17] It's hard to hold the line.
[02:42:18] And listen, do you compromise in life?
[02:42:22] When your spouse wants something and you want something else
[02:42:26] and you compromise to come to a conclusion?
[02:42:28] Yeah.
[02:42:28] Do you compromise when you're on a team
[02:42:30] and you're working together and someone's got one plan
[02:42:32] and you've got a different idea and you compromise to make
[02:42:34] things work?
[02:42:34] Yes, absolutely.
[02:42:35] Do you compromise when you negotiate to make a deal happen?
[02:42:38] Yes, you absolutely do.
[02:42:40] So in life, you've got to compromise.
[02:42:42] But there's things also in life that you don't compromise on
[02:42:46] and where you hold the line.
[02:42:47] And that's what we're doing here.
[02:42:49] We're doing it at Jock of Fuel.
[02:42:50] We're doing it at Origin.
[02:42:52] We're not going to compromise.
[02:42:53] We're going to hold the line.
[02:42:55] And the reason we're able to do that
[02:42:56] is because everyone that's listening to this right now.
[02:42:58] So none of this happens.
[02:43:01] None of this.
[02:43:03] Nothing.
[02:43:03] This doesn't exist.
[02:43:04] What we're talking about doesn't exist without you
[02:43:08] that's sitting there listening to this podcast right now,
[02:43:11] listening to what we're doing, participating
[02:43:13] in what we're doing without your support.
[02:43:15] None of this happens.
[02:43:17] So thank you for your support.
[02:43:21] And I'm going to tell you right now,
[02:43:24] we will not let you down.
[02:43:29] Echo Charles.
[02:43:30] Yes, sir.
[02:43:32] How can people support the podcast?
[02:43:36] How can they support themselves?
[02:43:37] How can they support these companies?
[02:43:40] And how can they in doing so support America?
[02:43:42] What do you got?
[02:43:43] What do you got to do?
[02:43:44] Well, some of this is just one big reminder,
[02:43:46] because you guys been kind of talking about it for a long time.
[02:43:49] But yeah, so reminder or a recap, we'll say.
[02:43:52] JacoFuel.com.
[02:43:54] JacoFuel.com.
[02:43:55] We got Moq, the new Moq RTD is ready to drink
[02:43:59] if you didn't pick that up.
[02:44:00] Not yet online.
[02:44:01] It's not yet online.
[02:44:02] No, not yet.
[02:44:03] We haven't made enough yet for a while.
[02:44:04] Yeah, we have made enough yet.
[02:44:06] OK.
[02:44:06] But soon.
[02:44:06] We'll be on the lookout for that one.
[02:44:08] How about that?
[02:44:09] Because we're over here all week drill.
[02:44:10] Not only.
[02:44:10] They kind of ran out quick.
[02:44:11] But we stole some from the warehouse to drink this week.
[02:44:15] Yeah, we experienced that one.
[02:44:16] That's good.
[02:44:17] A little detail that I noticed about the RTD,
[02:44:20] they're like, you'd think the powder is more versatile,
[02:44:22] because you can mix stuff in the thing.
[02:44:24] But this becomes more versatile in a different way,
[02:44:26] because you can use it on other things, like cereal, cookies.
[02:44:30] I'm not saying I did that.
[02:44:31] I'm not saying I didn't do that.
[02:44:32] But I'm just saying you'll put it on other stuff.
[02:44:35] Typically, you don't mix a protein shake,
[02:44:37] add your favorite this and that, and then put it on.
[02:44:39] So you don't do that usually.
[02:44:41] But this one, you do that.
[02:44:43] I think we all found that out pretty quick,
[02:44:44] because I saw a lot of people doing that stuff.
[02:44:46] I like the double hitter, mulking one hand, going the other.
[02:44:50] It's a good morning double hitter.
[02:44:51] You know what I'm saying?
[02:44:53] Mulking go, baby.
[02:44:54] Mulking go.
[02:44:55] That makes complete sense to me.
[02:44:56] Also, a reminder, or we didn't talk about the joint warfare
[02:45:00] stuff or whatever, but yeah, just look after your joints.
[02:45:03] We're not getting younger.
[02:45:05] Look out for your joints.
[02:45:06] Are you getting older?
[02:45:06] Don't pay attention.
[02:45:07] I'm over here doing the best I can.
[02:45:10] So yes, joint warfare, supercrill oil,
[02:45:12] got some vitamin D3, general health.
[02:45:15] These are important things.
[02:45:16] If the what, if your oil runs out in your car, right?
[02:45:20] That's a problem.
[02:45:20] That's not good.
[02:45:21] Yeah, yeah.
[02:45:22] It's Dean Lister would say that's a problem.
[02:45:24] Same anyway, so pay attention to these things.
[02:45:28] Where a kid mucked us for the kids, of course,
[02:45:30] like the kids version.
[02:45:32] Yeah, all this stuff at jockelfield.com and also other places.
[02:45:35] Yeah, also you can get the drinks at Wawa.
[02:45:38] Actually, the RTD muck is going into Wawa.
[02:45:41] It is.
[02:45:42] We already shipped, I believe.
[02:45:44] So if you're East Coast, you got that Wawa going there
[02:45:48] and get that muck later.
[02:45:50] And it should be it should be going in by like it goes.
[02:45:54] It gets shipped to there, whatever.
[02:45:56] And then they ship it to the store.
[02:45:58] So between mid and end of September, it'll be in.
[02:46:02] And it's muck and go people and maybe grab a hoagie too.
[02:46:09] Vitamin shop, H E B.
[02:46:12] There's I failed to get this list on here.
[02:46:16] We're in a bunch of retailers.
[02:46:17] We'll get that out to you.
[02:46:19] I need to add that into this so you all know.
[02:46:21] So jockelfield.com, you can get on Amazon as well.
[02:46:26] There you go.
[02:46:27] OriginUSA.com, everything we just talked about,
[02:46:29] that's all going on at originUSA.com.
[02:46:32] Boots, jeans, keys, rash guards, spats.
[02:46:37] And the Hunt Line.
[02:46:38] The entire Hunt Line.
[02:46:40] It's available, go get some of that.
[02:46:42] We appreciate it.
[02:46:43] Jockelstore.com.
[02:46:45] What do you got going on there?
[02:46:46] Echo Charles.
[02:46:47] We're all on the path.
[02:46:48] You know, you want to represent.
[02:46:49] Displaining freedom.
[02:46:50] Let's not forget about that.
[02:46:51] No, we definitely don't.
[02:46:52] You know the roots.
[02:46:53] We don't know about that one.
[02:46:54] Packard roots.
[02:46:55] You want to represent that.
[02:46:56] That's where you can get that stuff at jockelstore.com.
[02:46:59] We got the short locker, which is the subscription.
[02:47:02] New design every month.
[02:47:04] I've seen a lot of representation.
[02:47:05] There's a lot of people in Maine on that subscription, bro.
[02:47:08] There's a lot of people camp on that subscription, bro.
[02:47:11] It's friggin legit.
[02:47:13] They're looking good.
[02:47:14] That's like flying, kind of like flying the flag old school.
[02:47:17] Yes, sir.
[02:47:18] This is, hey, yeah.
[02:47:20] Do you call it the subscript?
[02:47:22] Are you like, you got to get on that subscript?
[02:47:24] Subscrips.
[02:47:25] Yeah, sometimes.
[02:47:26] Subscription might be subscript.
[02:47:27] On an official level, it's called the short locker.
[02:47:30] The short locker.
[02:47:31] Like the SURT, you know, her locker.
[02:47:33] I got what you're putting down, man.
[02:47:35] Come on, man.
[02:47:37] But yeah, this is a good one.
[02:47:38] A lot of good feedback on that one.
[02:47:39] We've got some new stuff coming on.
[02:47:41] Subscribe to the podcast.
[02:47:42] You know that.
[02:47:42] Jockelunderground.com.
[02:47:44] You know that.
[02:47:45] Flipsidecanvas.com, Dakota Meyer.
[02:47:47] I got a bunch of books.
[02:47:49] Check them out.
[02:47:51] Only Cry for the Living by Holly McKay.
[02:47:55] That girl risked her life to go in and write these books,
[02:47:57] go in there and buy that book.
[02:47:58] See that story.
[02:47:59] See what war is like, like almost as it's unfolding.
[02:48:03] My wife's reading it right now.
[02:48:04] She's really enjoying it.
[02:48:05] It's really good book.
[02:48:06] Yeah.
[02:48:07] Enjoy might be the wrong word.
[02:48:08] Because it's hard to enjoy.
[02:48:09] She's engaged.
[02:48:10] She's engaged.
[02:48:11] She's really engaged with the book.
[02:48:12] It's a tough one.
[02:48:14] Yeah.
[02:48:14] You know I wrote a bunch of other books.
[02:48:15] Check them out.
[02:48:16] Eshalonfront.com.
[02:48:17] We solve problems through leadership.
[02:48:19] This is what the team at Eshalonfront does all the time.
[02:48:22] Culture.
[02:48:23] Merging of culture.
[02:48:24] Performance.
[02:48:26] Leadership.
[02:48:27] In every single industry, we're there.
[02:48:30] So check out Eshalonfront.com.
[02:48:32] We have an event.
[02:48:33] The event that you talked about, Pete, that Jason came to.
[02:48:36] It's called the muster.
[02:48:38] The next one is Atlanta.
[02:48:39] Unfortunately, it's sold out.
[02:48:40] But go on there.
[02:48:42] Come to one of our live events as well.
[02:48:44] And then on top of that, look, you
[02:48:46] might not be able to come to a live event.
[02:48:47] That's where we have online training.
[02:48:49] Extremeownership.com.
[02:48:50] We get a bunch of people from Origin on there too.
[02:48:52] Oh, yeah.
[02:48:53] Yeah.
[02:48:53] Oh, yeah.
[02:48:53] A bunch of people from Origin are on there,
[02:48:55] which is awesome to see.
[02:48:57] And we have live sessions.
[02:49:00] We do.
[02:49:01] We have prerecorded training sessions.
[02:49:02] It's just a way to train leadership.
[02:49:05] Like, and this is the interesting thing.
[02:49:07] Years ago, if someone had said, hey,
[02:49:09] people are going to learn Jiu-Jitsu by online academies,
[02:49:13] what would you have thought?
[02:49:13] Hell no.
[02:49:14] Hell no.
[02:49:14] What do you think now?
[02:49:15] Oh, hell yeah.
[02:49:16] I mean, I do.
[02:49:17] Yeah.
[02:49:18] Hell yes.
[02:49:19] So it's the same thing with leadership.
[02:49:21] And by the way, just like Jiu-Jitsu or playing guitar
[02:49:24] or playing basketball, you're not born with the skills.
[02:49:26] You need to learn them.
[02:49:27] Same thing with leadership.
[02:49:29] We made an online training academy, extremeownership.com.
[02:49:31] Go check that out.
[02:49:32] Help you with leadership.
[02:49:34] And it doesn't mean you're in charge of 420 people
[02:49:36] at your company.
[02:49:39] If you're alive and you interact with other human beings,
[02:49:42] you're in a leadership position.
[02:49:44] And you're leading them.
[02:49:45] So go and check that out.
[02:49:48] If you want to help out some service members,
[02:49:51] active and retired, you want to help out their families,
[02:49:53] Gold Star families, check out Mark Lee's mom.
[02:49:55] She's got an unbelievable charity organization.
[02:49:59] What they do is they help vets with their health
[02:50:02] and give them solutions to their health
[02:50:05] that the VA doesn't cover.
[02:50:07] So it's just an outstanding organization.
[02:50:09] She's an unbelievable woman.
[02:50:11] AmericasMightyWarriors.org, if you want to donate
[02:50:15] or you want to get involved.
[02:50:16] Also, check out Micah Fink.
[02:50:18] He's up there taking vets into the wilderness on horses
[02:50:23] for 41 days where they can find themselves, heroes
[02:50:28] and horses.org, an incredible organization.
[02:50:32] The social media thing.
[02:50:34] It's a double-edged sword.
[02:50:36] We get it.
[02:50:37] There's an algorithm that's trying to grab you.
[02:50:38] It's trying to waste your time.
[02:50:40] There's also some positive that can come out of it.
[02:50:43] If you want to follow on the social media,
[02:50:48] JockoFuel is at JockoFuel.
[02:50:50] Go check that one out.
[02:50:51] Go check out JockoFuel so you know what's happening.
[02:50:53] You know where you can buy stuff.
[02:50:54] You know when new stuff comes out at JockoFuel.
[02:50:57] Check that one out at OriginUSA on Instagram.
[02:51:02] That's where Origin's at.
[02:51:03] Pete's actually at Pete.origin.
[02:51:06] Still haven't gotten that blue check.
[02:51:08] We talked about it last year.
[02:51:10] They don't know love for the Yankee.
[02:51:13] For the Yankee.
[02:51:14] Oh, like the confirmed.
[02:51:17] Are you confirmed?
[02:51:18] I got so many fake accounts now, man.
[02:51:20] I get emails every day from people
[02:51:22] and they're soliciting them for crypto stuff.
[02:51:25] New accounts all the time.
[02:51:26] Make any big investments there in the crypto world
[02:51:28] through some random dude on Instagram.
[02:51:30] That sounds like a good plan.
[02:51:32] Yeah, so check that out.
[02:51:34] Check out Pete.
[02:51:34] Check out Origin.
[02:51:35] Check out JockoFuel if you want to check out Echo and me.
[02:51:38] Echo's at Echo Charles.
[02:51:39] I am at JockoWilling.
[02:51:40] And Pete, thanks once again.
[02:51:44] Thank you.
[02:51:45] Thanks for all you've done and all you're doing.
[02:51:48] You know, you went out there with your friends and family
[02:51:50] and cut down a bunch of trees in the middle of the woods
[02:51:52] to make a factory.
[02:51:53] And that took some serious guts to do and you did it.
[02:51:57] And we appreciate that.
[02:51:59] And on top of that, thanks to all the hardworking people
[02:52:04] at Origin USA and JockoFuel who are out there cutting and sewing
[02:52:10] and designing and creating and packing and shipping
[02:52:13] and cleaning and working.
[02:52:18] Thanks to all of you for everything that you do.
[02:52:20] You all are the backbone of these companies.
[02:52:23] And we thank you for your hard work
[02:52:25] and your commitment to this dream.
[02:52:28] And you know what?
[02:52:29] To all the hardworking men and women of this great nation.
[02:52:33] And you're out there.
[02:52:34] I see you all the time in the fields and in the factories,
[02:52:39] on the construction sites and in the cubicles,
[02:52:41] on the oil rigs and the utility poles and hospitals
[02:52:44] and hotels and restaurants and warehouses.
[02:52:48] To all of you that toil and labor every day,
[02:52:51] thank you for what you do.
[02:52:55] It's what allows the lights to come on.
[02:52:58] And we appreciate it.
[02:52:59] And thanks to all the military out there
[02:53:01] for protecting the freedom that we have that allows us
[02:53:04] to do what we're doing.
[02:53:06] And we will do our part to build the economy and support you.
[02:53:12] And also thanks to police and law enforcement, firefighters,
[02:53:15] paramedics, EMTs, dispatchers, correctional officers,
[02:53:18] border patrol, secret service, and all first responders.
[02:53:22] Thank you for protecting our safety and security here at home
[02:53:26] and everyone else out there.
[02:53:30] Thank you.
[02:53:32] Thank you for your support.
[02:53:36] Thank you for listening and thank you for believing.
[02:53:40] And thank you for understanding what is at risk.
[02:53:44] And thank you for seeing what is happening in the world
[02:53:47] and seeing the darkness in the world.
[02:53:51] But still moving toward the light.
[02:53:54] Freedom is not free.
[02:53:57] It takes sacrifice.
[02:53:59] It takes guts.
[02:54:00] And it takes grit.
[02:54:02] And it takes work.
[02:54:06] So let's go get after it and get to work.
[02:54:11] And until next time, this is Pete and Echo and Jaco.
[02:54:15] Thank you for watching.