Blaze Your Own Trail - They Made a Motion Picture About His Life with David Packouz

Episode Date: May 26, 2026

Jordan Mendoza interviews David Packouz, the real-life inspiration behind the movie War Dogs, exploring his journey from religious upbringing to government contracting success. Discover how David leveraged his entrepreneurial spirit, navigated legal challenges, and now teaches others to win government contracts through his War Dogs Academy. Key topics David's background and early life The story behind the War Dogs movie How David got into government contracting The process of winning government contracts Lessons learned from legal challenges and success Chapters 00:00 Introduction to David Packouz and His Journey 02:51 Early Life and Religious Background 06:50 Rebellion and the Path to Entrepreneurship 07:19 First Steps into Business and Music 17:09 Transition to Government Contracting 20:29 Understanding Government Contracting 23:02 Success Stories from War Dogs Academy 29:59 The Genesis of War Dogs Academy 35:58 Building a Real Business: The Importance of Integrity 37:50 The Role of Community in Success 40:34 The Journey to Hollywood: From Infamy to Fame 51:22 Finding Fulfillment in Business and Life Connect with David: IG: https://www.instagram.com/davidpackouz/ War Dogs Academy - https://wardogsacademy.com InstaFloss - https://instafloss.com SingularSound (Beat Buddy) - https://www.singularsound.com TrustPilot reviews for War Dogs Academy - https://www.trustpilot.com/review/wardogsacademy.com                 Are you an entrepreneur?Join my FREE Group Coaching Community where we have live calls, Q&A and more! Our Trailblazer Ecosystem also enables you to network with other entrepreneurs and creator hub eliminates multiple subscriptions and logins creating a one stop shop to take action!Use code: FOUNDING100 for 12 months access FREE and Founding pricing for life! (While Supplies Last)Join now! Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Hello everyone and welcome back to the Blaz Your Own Trail podcast. My name is Jordan Mendoza. I'm your host. And today I've got an incredible guest. His name is David Packhouse. And I'm going to have him tell you a little bit about who he is and what he does today. Well, thank you for having me, Jordan. I appreciate it.

People probably know me most for being the real person that the movie War Dogs was based off. So if people have seen War Dogs, then there's two guys who are the main character. played by Jonah Hill, who's like the fat one and Miles Teller, who's the skinny one. I'm a skinny one in the movie. So the pack out that Miles Teller is playing in the film. And so I guess that is my claim to fan. These days, I am, so yeah, so the movie was day something because about 20 years ago when I was in my early 20s, I got into government contracting and we won these huge contracts. one in particular, the $300 million contract to supply the country of Afghanistan with ammunition.

But these days, I have a few different businesses. My main business is I create products for musicians, hence the musical artwork behind me. This is made out of my CD collection that I realized one day I didn't own a CD player anymore, but I had a lot of CDs, so I turned it into this art piece. But I actually make products for musicians. I'm a musician myself, and I design guitar pedals for musicians. For the musicians in the audience, I made my most famous product is called The Beat Buddy, like your buddy that plays the beat.

And it's a drum machine in the form of a guitar pedal that allows you to control the beat hands free while you play your instrument. So that's my main business that I've been building for the past 11 years. And more recently, just in the last two years, started a new business called Wardogs Academy. That's the mug. And what we do in Wardogs Academy, it's an online course and community to teach people how to do government contracting,

which is the business that we got famous for in the film. It's how to win contracts with the government to sell things, goods and services to the government. And that's been going for the past two years, and it's been an incredible ride. So far, we've helped over 800 students win government contracts, over $20 million student wins. And yeah, it's just a super gratat.

And that came out of the movie, of course, because everyone, ever since the movie came out, people were always asking me, you know, like, please teach me this. It's not an easy business to learn. There's a lot of technicalities to it, a lot of details. But so, yes, that's why I started with the two partners of mine who built their own successful government contracting business as well. And it's been just really gratifying to see people find their own success in the government contracting business.

Very cool. Well, I appreciate the intro. You know, congrats on having a movie made after you. I don't think many people in their lifetime get to say that. That is true. A subject of a movie. And so for that alone, folks, he is a trailblazer.

But my favorite part of the show, David, because it's, you know, the success you have today, it's all great. It's all fine and dandy. But our listeners want to know, like, what are you made of? What have you been through? What has the trail look like to get to this version?

of you because I know there had to have been some bumps on the road. There had to been some adversity along the way. And so let's go ahead and take that rewind. So where were you born and raised? And then what kind of kid were you? We're talking elementary, middle, to high school years. Sure. I was boarding St. Louis, Missouri, but didn't live there for very long. Only when I was a baby, my family moved to Israel. My family is Jewish. My dad was a rabbi, So like a Jewish priest for people who don't know what that is. And I'm one of nine children. My family was very religious.

I'm number three out of nine. And my parents always wanted me to become a religious leader like my father. And so there was always a lot of pressure for me to study Bible all day. I went to a very religious school. I didn't talk to a girl who wasn't related to me until I was like 17. It was an extreme environment. For people who know what Orthodox Jews are, they can understand what that is. is it's kind of like a little bit on the, the spectrum, like, towards Amish.

For Orthodox Jews are Amish one day a week. I'm a Sabbath. We can't use, like, electricity and drive a car and stuff like that. So my, you know, my parents who were always pressuring me to be very religious and to grow up and to study Bible and everything, that was not really something that I was particularly interested in. And when I was eight years old, we moved to Miami. And my very religious school was right on the edge of South Beach, which is where all the tourists and all the parties happened and everything.

So it was a real kind of dichotomy of going to a literal button down school, all boys school, where we would start prayers at 7.30 in the morning and study Bible most of the day and study all the way until 6.30 at night. And it was a very long day, mostly studying religion. Enjoy it. I didn't like it. So I started rebelling in my teenage years and I started questioning the orthodoxy of the religion. And eventually that kind of led to a big dweat with my family. They fought it very hard because they were concerned that if I left the religion, I would

be a bad influence on my younger siblings. And they were absolutely right about that. After I left the religion, of my six younger siblings, five of them became not religious. In my opinion, I led them to freedom. Leaving the religion was, I think, the single best decision I ever made for myself in my life because none of the things I've done in my life would have been possible if I had stayed in that culture. That on its own just was an extremely painful but very necessary trail that I had to blaze that nobody really showed me how to get out of how to get out of that and where to go.

I mean, it was terrifying because the religion was all I knew, and I didn't, you know, it's a very isolationist cultural, so I didn't really know how to behave in the wider world or how to, or what was expected and what were the norms or how to talk to people, because all I knew back then were other people who were exactly like me. And so when I left the culture, the religion, kind of had to figure it all out on my own. And that was a painful and long process, but I'm very glad I did it. And so what did you end up doing, right? So you kind of had this essentially, it sounds like a path was laid out for you of like what you were going to do, how it was going to be done in the timeline.

And then you decide to kind of go your own direction. Right. And now, obviously, I could tell you're a creative type, you have a big imagination. So like, how did you start to harness that

and leverage that in your teenage years? Was there something that you dove into, whether that was the music side of things, or I'd love just to get to, what route did you actually go down? Sure. Well, with entrepreneurship,

It was actually my dad inspired me to start my first business when I was six years old. So that was, he was, I mean, he was, my dad was a great guy. Passed away five years ago, six years ago. Yeah, thank you. No, he was a wonderful man and a great father. He just was an extremely religious person and with all that implies. but he was always very encouraging of entrepreneurship and very encouraging. So his ideal was for me to become a religious leader.

A second choice would be to become a professional or an entrepreneur or something. So he was always very encouraging of that. When I was six years old, he suggested, I was playing with my sister. We were playing Legos. My older sister's like a year and a half older than least this year. She was like seven and a half. We lived in an apartment building that didn't have a garbage sheet and it didn't have an elevator, so we would have to walk the garbage downstairs to the dumpster on the corner.

And my mother asked us to take the trash out, and we were, like, complaining about it. And he was like, we guys see this as a hassle, but this is really an opportunity because all the other neighbors don't want to take their trash out either. So why don't you guys offer a service to take out their trash and you could charge on like a subscription fee, like a quarter a week or something. So we did that. And we had like eight neighbor sign up. So we were making like two bucks a week, which for, you know, six-year-old is big money.

And then my sister quit because she didn't want to do the work. And so I was making double. And I eventually built up like a few hundred dollars that I spent all on ice cream. It became a little chunky kid at that moment because the ice cream truck would come by every day. And so that was like my first experience I had with entrepreneurship. So that was very encouraged by my dad. My mom is a musician. She plays guitar and she's a singer as well.

So when I was 15 years old, I wanted to learn how to play guitar. I was actually inspired by Nirvana. I listened to Smells Like Teen Spirit, that rocking guitar with in the beginning. And I wasn't allowed to listen to that music. I was listening to it secretly because it's non-religious music. So I couldn't ask my mom to teach me how to play that. But I wanted to learn how to play guitar. So she taught me some like basic open-note chords.

And she actually taught me the first song, she taught me was Bob Dylan blowing in the wind. I guess she approved of Bob Dylan. He was more wholesome than Nirvana. So my mom taught me how to play basic guitar, and I started getting really into guitar and start hanging out with like some musician friends. And that kind of became like part of, I guess, the rebellion process is that, you know, started playing like rock and roll and and started, you know, hanging out on the beach.

I grew up in Miami Beach, so the beach was like a walk away and we would like steal wine from the synagogue and get drunk. And so that was kind of like my teenage years. And my dream was to become a rock star, of course, because rock stars have all the money and all the women. And here I was a religious boy who didn't even know how to talk to a girl. So that seemed like the coolest thing ever. And so that really inspired me to really work on my guitar and singing skills.

But when I got to college, I realized that I needed a, I need to get a job because my people. parents weren't going to support me. And so I, my friends were like all doing minimum wage jobs. And I did not want to do that. And I realized that. And I had talked, this was like when I was 20 years old. I had, I went to Israel when I was 18 to my parents. It was like a last ditch effort. My parents wanted me to become religious again. So they sent me off to Israel to study in like a religious school for two years. It didn't work. But at the time, I met like a girl and she, We were at a festival and there was a massage tool there that was getting out like free massages to everyone, the students.

We all got massages and she, I had this huge crush on this girl who I had no idea how to talk to you. But like after we were coming out of the free massages, she was like, oh my God, that was amazing. Any guy I'm really has to know how to give a good massage. And that right then, I swore to myself, I'm going to learn how to give an amazing massage. when I was 20 years old and was looking for a job, I was like, you know, massage therapist, they make like $75, $100 an hour. I could do one massage in a day and make more money than all my friends were making doing the whole days of work, like waiting tables or, you know, like working as a cashier or whatever. And so I went to massage school and got a massage therapy license. And I was working as a massage therapist.

and, you know, while I was doing a college, I was studying chemistry. And I also started a few side businesses as well, as I said. I'd always been entrepreneurial. So this was back when digital characters, I'm maybe dating myself, this in the early 2000s, digital cameras were first becoming a big thing, and the SD cards were super expensive. So I didn't want to spend a lot of money on an SD cards. I'd have them looking for a better price.

Eventually, I found a source in China that was connected to the factory that made SD cards. So I bought, but of course, they would only sell like 100 minimum. So I bought 100 of them and I started selling the rest of them on eBay and started making some decent money. And so started selling SD cards. Then a friend of mine was impressed that I was able to find a source overseas and he was selling bedsheets and towels to hospitals and nursing homes. So he's like, so if you could find me a factory overseas that makes bed sheets or towels, I'll buy it from you if you can give me a better price than my distributors. So I started, I found a manufacturer that did that, started importing bedsheets and towels as they showed that part in the movie. But of course, in real life, it wasn't the way they showed in the movie.

I wasn't, I didn't like buy a bunch of stuff and fill up my apartments and get stuff with a whole bunch of boxes of bed sheets. I was only brokering. So I wouldn't even buy the stuff until I already had someone to buy it for me. And then I would just collect the commission in the middle. Spoiler alert, folks, for those that haven't seen it yet, all right? Yes, exactly. Exactly. So that business started going pretty well.

And that's when I bumped into my friend, Ephraim DeVaroli, who in the movie is played by Jonah Hill. And he asked me what I was doing. And I told him that I was doing the bed sheets and linens importing thing. That's D-Card stuff. And he was like, oh, you know, that skill set is kind of the same thing that I do in my business. I sell to the government. And, you know, but we're pretty much doing the same thing, looking for suppliers overseas, arranging logistics and financing and licensing and all that.

And he's like, but I've been on making way more money than you, so you should come and work with me. I could use a smart, motivated guy and we'll make a lot more money together. And I'm like, well, I mean, I thought I was doing pretty well for myself at the time. So it's like, well, how much money have you been making? And he goes to me, he's like, well, I'm going to tell you, but not to show off. I'm just going to tell you to inspire you. And he opens up his laptop and he shows me his bank account and he had $1.8 million in his bank account.

And he was 18 years old at this time. And he'd been working on his own for like one year. He was about to turn 19. The way he learned the business is he needed each other from when we were kids. But he got kicked out of his. He was also a orthodox Jew. He also went to a religious school. And he got caught smoking weed in high school.

So he got kicked out of high school. And his parents said, well, if you're not going to follow the rules of the school, you're going to learn what real life's about and you're going to join the workforce. You're going to go work through your uncle in L.A. His uncle owned this big pawn shop. His uncle also did some government contracting. So he learned how to sell to the government and he got obsessed. He became a gun that while working in the pawn shop.

He would also sell guns to the customers. And so he learned government contracting and the arms business from his uncle. And then his uncle, he worked for his uncle for his uncle for about two years. And then he had a big falling out with his uncle. They each cleaned the other, screwed the other one, you know. And they're both stumbags, I believe in both. And then he came back to Miami and started his own company, started working on his own and started bidding on federal contracts.

And this was in like 2004, right during the ramp up after the Iraq invasion. And the United States was pretty much trying to build a democracy over there. And after taking out Saddam Hussein and part of building the democracy was supplying them with massive amounts of equipment and like their to their police force and their army and everything else. So there were these, there was like literally a trillion dollars being spent to try to build Iraq into a functional state. And he was bidding on these contracts because he already had connections with the small arms industry in the United States. So he was bidding on things like pistols and rifles and ammunition and bulletproof vests and helmets and stuff like that.

He obviously did pretty well for himself. Made about $2 million in this first year. And so when I saw that, I was like, holy crap, this guy. I mean, I was doing pretty well for myself doing the veggies and lettuce, but I wasn't making millions. So I said, okay, it sounds like you know something I don't. So I'm in, teach you what you know. And that's when I got into government contracting and the whole war dog story happened. And so tell me, well, very cool story of just kind of how I,

what all came to be. I'm sure when you looked at that bank account, you're like, is this legal? That's probably one of the first snots. Is this legal? And then obviously, the proofs and the pudding, as you know, success leaves clues. He's got to know something I don't know. Yes, exactly. When you started to dive in, how much more did he know that you didn't know? He knew a lot. I mean, he knew how the whole system worked, and that's how I learned it. It's government contracting, so just to give a little bit of background, people who don't know about it. It's not a commonly known thing. The way the government

buys things, the U.S. government and most governments around the world, is that the U.S. government is required by law to buy things on a competitive basis, right? So let's say they want to buy, you know, to give an example, you know, 100 million rounds of ammunition. They are required by law to put it out for open bid so that all the companies who are able to make or supply, You don't have to necessarily manufacture it. You can buy it from someone else. They don't really care where you get it as long as it's legal, which is, you know, kind of goes into part of my story.

But as long as you can get it, the required goods or services, they don't care whether you make it yourself or you get it from someone else. You're just a broke. So they open it up for open competition. And everyone who is qualified to bid on it, you have to register your company first. And you can submit a bid to the government. And then the government gets all the bids by the deadline. And then they review all the bids.

And they have a scoring system, depending on the kind of contract. It is they will care about different things. You know, if it's a small contract, I mean, these days, anything under $250,000 is considered a small contract. So you could win a contract under a quarter million without any what they call past performance or proof that you've done this business. You could be a brand new business, not know anything and still win a quarter million dollar contract with the government, anything above a quarter million dollars, they get in, they have requirements as far as like past performance. You have to show that you've done this business in the past. And then they look at the kind of past performance you have and they try

to verify and they give you a score on how reliable they think that you are compared to all the other people. And then they balance the different factors of how reliable the company is, the quality of the goods, you know, how closely it matches what they're looking for, the price. And based on that scoring system, they decide which is the best offer from all the competitors, and they award the contract to that contractor. And then that person, that company, delivers the goods or services. They get paid by the government. They get their profits.

So that's kind of how the whole system works. Now, there is a lot of detail to it. There is the government being the government. They have a lot of rules and regulations and a lot of references that you have to look up and a lot of formatting things that they really care about. And like you can make one little mistake and you don't include this document or you didn't fill out this thing correctly. And then they just disqualify you and all the work you did to create the proposal goes down the trash. And that's actually one of the reasons why so many people ask me to teach them this business is because it's not a easy business to learn.

There's a lot of money. It depends on probably the amount. It probably depends on the country. It probably depends. And there's a lot of variables that come into play. There's a lot of variables. There's a lot of ways to mess up. And it's not an easy thing to get into on your room just by doing, you know, like Googling or something.

So it's much easier when you have someone else who knows what they're doing to teach you, which is how I learned it from Ephraim and why our students really love us at Wardar's Academy because we made that ramp up a million times easier. Set them up for success. So, yeah, so he knew a lot. And that's how I learned the business. And he was obviously already successful at it. He already made a few million dollars. started bidding on contracts. The first contract I ever won myself was not even for any addition of weapons or anything like that. It was 40,000 gallons of propane that I bid on and

was going to the Air Force, delivered it to an air force. What was your margin on that, if you don't mind me asking? Yeah. So we made, but what the total value of the contract was offhand. But I do remember the profits between, we were split at the time, we were splitting at 50-50 because our deal was that I would pretty much do all the work. work and he would come in at the last, at the end and negotiate everyone down in price to increase our margins, as well as examine all my work, supervise and make sure I'm not messing up so that we have the highest chance of actually winning the contract to the government. And of course, he would bid it under his company's name, which had a bunch of past performance. So our deal was

that we would split profits 50-50. And on that first contract, we each laid $8,000. And that was the first contract. And it was about three weeks of work, some not so bad. Yeah, yeah. And what year was that? Was that in 05, 06? That was in 2006. Yeah, yeah.

Yeah, so not bad. And that was kind of the icebreaker, right? There's always that first sale where you got to break the ice, you know. And so when did you start getting into ammunition? Did it take long after that to get into ammunition? So I worked on a bunch of, you know, as I said, the government buys everything, right? Literally everything. They're the biggest, single biggest customer in the world by far. They spend like $300 billion every month on contracts. It's insane. They put out 30,000 new

contracts every single day on sam.gov. The sand.gov is the website where they post all the contracts, like Uncle Sam. Quick question, and this is just listener curiosity, but also my own curiosity. If someone were to join your account, Like let's say they listen this episode, they decide to join your academy. You've had 800 students get to success and you've paid out, I think you awarded a couple million in deals. 20 million in contracts. That we know that has been reported to us, yeah. How much of the timeline do you feel like you're collapsing by them coming to you versus Google and YouTube and Reddit and all these forums and stuff like that?

Enormous amounts. So I couldn't tell you what the average of people doing it on their own is, right? Because obviously there's no way to know that. But we do have some antidotal evidence of people trying it on their own and then joining the academy. So like one guy that is actually he wrote a trust pilot review for our academy, which was awesome. Anyone who wants to see people's experience, I highly recommend they check us out on trust pilot to see the reviews of people. who've been through the process. This one particular, one of my favorite reviews, actually, was this guy who was a vet.

By the way, anyone who's a vet gets additional advantages in government contracting. There are certain contracts that are set aside for vets. Also, women go in business, or if you live in an economically distressed area, it's called Humsome. And we teach you how to get all those classifications as well as part of the academy. But this one guy, he wrote. this review that he must use of that. And he'd been dabbling on and off trying to get into government contracting for 15 years. 15 years. Now, he said he was on and off. He would try. He would work really hard. He'd lose. He'd give up. He'd come back to it like a few months later, you know.

But on and off for 15 year. He says he joined the academy and within two months he won a contract. He won two contracts back to back. So, I mean, I think that that shows you the comparative. But I do know that As far as our students go, the average that our students, the averages of our students, again, I always have to say that have been reported to us because we know that a lot of people they'll win contracts. They never tell us about it, you know, so we know the numbers are much higher, but of the students that have actually been reported to us of their success, the average student wins a contract within the first 90 days.

Some do it sooner. Some do it later. We've had quite a few students who've won the first contract that they ever, bid on. That's unusual, I would say, you know, but, but it does happen. And the average, so the average student wins at their first contract within 90 days. The total value of the contract averaged is $8,000 with an average profit of $13,000. And that's just on the first contract. And of course, every other contract gets easier and more profitable from there because you start building up your past performance. You build up your sources, your supplier sources. And so you have to do less work on

the following contracts and you get better at reading the solicitations and filling out the proposals and understanding what all the terms are. So you save a lot of time. So each contract that you've been on becomes easier with time, like anything in life. You know, the first time you do anything, it's the most difficult. And the second time, it's a little easier, a little easier. So, yeah, so we have our averages for our first contract wins. And we've already had quite a few students who've won multimillion dollar contracts too. And that must seeing those because we, we, have one student. His name is Gavin. He was, he was like he had just left, he had just graduated from college. He didn't want to get a normal 9 to 5. And he had zero business experience.

Didn't know anything about it, but he saw the movie. He was super inspired. He decided to join the academy. And I think, and he bid on, and this is just such a great story because I think he'd been, I forget the exact number, but I think he bid on something like 15 contracts and he lost all of them. And then like on the teeth, he won like a $1.5 million contract. And yeah, and that just right there. And he had like good margins on it too. He made quite a few hundred thousand dollars on that contract. And so and right then, yeah, he just, he was like, boom, he's, he's set. And he's, and now he's working on bigger contracts. And, and we also have him. He's so, like, grateful to us for helping and get into this that he helps us with our other students as well. So he's

Like in our, we have a forum, a community where all the students could interact and talk to each other. We also have an in-house team of experts that are there to help the students. So it's not just a course and, you know, goodbye and good luck. We have retired contracting officers, people who used to work for the government deciding who wins the contracts, analyzing the proposals. We have a team of three of those people who worked for us now. And their entire job is to help the students. They look at their proposal at the student's proposals, make sure they're not messing. up. They explain anything that the students

can understand. We have a weekly live question and answer sessions where anyone can just hop on a video chat and hear what the other students are asking and ask their own questions, as well as private meetings available with our team of experts as well,

if any of the students want to ask something that's more confidential. When we first started it, I told my co-founders Logan and James, and just to give a little bit of background on Logan and James, they were 21 years. This is like six years.

Now they think they're 28. When they look six, seven, that's just now about losing track of time. Like seven, eight years ago. They were 21 years old and they were like dent broke. And they saw the movie War Dogs and they got really inspiring.

They were like, wow, these guys are our age. If they can do it, why can't we do it? And they got obsessed with government contracting. And they started trying to do themselves and they it took them a couple years to really learn it but they did it and a lot of

trial and error a lot of mistakes they lost a lot of contracts they could have won if they knew what they were doing but that's kind of what happens when you learn on your own but after a couple years they finally figured it out and uh and these days they have a they've won over i think it's over twenty five million dollars in contracts and their specialty is not weapons or m or anything like that. They specialize in laundry services of all things. They won this small laundry contract with the Army and then they started

extending from there getting bigger and bigger contracts. I think their most recent contract is a $9 million dollar contract with the Air Force base in Germany. And they have really good margins on that too. So they are making millions of dollars and they contacted me about two years ago saying

hey, you know, just wanted to reach out and say that if it wasn't for Wardog, we wouldn't be where we are today. I just wanted to thank you for the inspiration. And that was what gave me the idea. I'm like, well, I have literally hundreds of people who are like blowing up my DMs, you know, begging me to teach them how to do government contracting. And I've been banned from doing government contracting for like 15 years by the court. So I had an, I was out of the business. I was already inventing products for musicians. I also created another product that I haven't mentioned yet called Instafloss. It's like a water pick on steroids that floss.

all your teeth in 10 seconds. I'll highly recommend everyone check it out. It's the floss.com. Like Instagram, but flossing. Insta floss. Tell your friends.

And so I was like in the product development space. I was like I'd been burned by government contracting and I was, I was like, I'm not doing that again. I wasn't even allowed to. Actually just got off the ban list like a couple years ago. So I could do it again. But they, so I've been out of the game, so speak, for a while. And but these guys, Logan and James, they have.

active multi-million dollar contracts. They taught themselves, which I was super impressed with. I mean, it's not easy to teach yourself this business. So I said to them, I'm like, guys,

why don't we start a business where you could teach people how to do this business? And because I have a lot of people asking me, and they thought it was a great idea. And the first thing that people always asked is like, if it's such a great business, why would you want to teach anyone else this business, right?

Why don't just get all the business for yourself? And what people don't realize is that, as I mentioned before, The government puts out 30,000 new contracts every single day, right? 30,000. That's impossible to even look at, let alone work on. And so in order to succeed in this business, you really do need to specialize in a niche. The government buys everything, and each thing that they buy has its own unique characteristics

and its own unique set of rules and things that you need to learn. So one thing our students always ask is, what do you specialize it? And I tell them, well, if you have any experience in any industry, start specializing in that because you already have a leg up, right? So like we were talking before we started recording that you have experience in the real estate market, right? The government spends a huge amount of money on real estate. They're renting stuff.

They're building stuff. They have maintenance contracts. I mean, the government has millions of employees. They have facilities all over the world and all over the United States. It's enormous money goes into the real estate industry. So I would tell people if you already know any industry whatsoever, the government is probably spending a lot of money in that with that. And if you don't know anything, if you're literally starting brand new like Gavin did, right,

I tell them, start with stuff that you think would be relatively easy to source, right? Don't start working on contracts that have 30 different items because that's going to be a lot of work. I'll start with a contract that has a few items that you can find sources for. and that are relatively easy to get, right? So you don't start working on stuff that, I mean, there's certain things that they put out there that you would not even qualify for,

like when they wanted by a fighter jet, right? They're not going to put that out for open bid, right? Because only Lockheed Martin makes the F-35. So certain things that you qualify for that you could work on and certain things that you have no chance of winning. And that's part of learning the business and learning government contracting

is knowing which of these solicitations give you the highest chance of actually succeeding winning and making money on and that's part of that's a certain segment of the course that we really focus on yeah i love the fact that it's it's not based on theory it's based on actually winning exactly actually getting to the end goal and i also love the fact that anybody can think of an item like let's say they pick hand towels and they find a distributor in china that's that they can get him for 20 cents yeah they're going to come to the gun government for three bucks.

Is it? Right. So given great example of that with your example, with hand towels or clothing, there are certain rules that the government has with clothing and textiles that a certain amount of the material needs to be grown within the United States and a certain amount of the work to put the stuff together needs to be done in the United States. And you need to know these rules because otherwise you're not going to win the contract. So you can't just buy anything and just offer it to the government.

And that's part of the whole process is learning what all the rules are, what you can and cannot buy so that you have the highest chance of winning and you don't get in trouble by supplying the wrong thing. I mean, if you supply the wrong thing and the government that finds out about it, they're not going to pay you at best or charge you with crimes at worst. So, you know, depending on what the situation is. So it is very important to know what you're doing and understand what the solicitation document is saying. And that is why the course and our team of experts becomes so instrumental in this process. And I told Logan and Jakes when we first had this idea to set up Wardogs Academy that if we were going to do something, I told them, I told them, look, guys, there's an enormous amount of courses out there. And the vast majority of them are bullshit, right? And it has a bad reputation because there's a lot of scammers out there selling get rich quick schemes and the vast majority of it is garbage, right?

I told, if we're going to build something, we have to build something real, right? Something that we could prove works and that isn't bullshit because I already have a felony on my record, right? I got convicted of fraud, as anyone who's seen the movie would know, because we repackaged the Chinese ammunition and that's a whole other story. And if I get convicted of anything ever again, the judge isn't going to go easy on me, right? Because I already have a prior record. So I'm like, I'm taking zero chances here of doing anything. shady. I mean, besides that, it's obviously unethical and et cetera,

but I can't afford any of that, right? So I told him, we have to build something real, something that our students are going to be really happy about, and that that on its own is going to drive its own success as well as keeping us out of trouble.

So that was one of the reasons we came up with the whole Wardogs Academy community as part of the course was because it's one thing to, it's one thing to learn something in school, right? It's different to apply that to the real world. Does anyone who's gotten a college degree will tell you the vast majority of their education starts when they leave college

and enter the workforce? That's when you really start learning what the job is really about. And, you know, you still need to go to school. You need to learn all the stuff, but you'll really learn how to do the job in the field. So that's why we hire the, the team of retired contracting officers to help our students apply the knowledge that they learned in the course to actually win contracts. And a lot of our students have told us that

that was one of the biggest factors of them actually successfully winning government contracts was because they had that additional help after they finished the course. They had our team to look over their proposals to answer their questions because there's so many unique situations that you'll run into, it's impossible to cover it in any course, and it's constantly shifting. And a lot of it is, a lot of the business is also, that comes down to certain social skills as well. Like, how do you interact with the contracting officer so that they trust you and give you new contracts? How do you interact with your supplier so that they trust you and give you good prices? How do you negotiate with them to get even better prices, right?

Can you tell when, you know, someone's full of shit, you know, like that? These are all things that are critical in business for the success of your long-term success of a business that you need to learn. That is not easy to learn in a course. And that is why I think the community is one of the biggest strengths of Ward dogs having and biggest factor in our student's success so far. Yeah, I love it. No, I love it.

And so where can our audience go if they listen to this? Obviously, I want our listeners, if you have not seen the movie yet, go watch the movie because it's going to give you all the context you need. If you want the nitty-gritty message David on Instagram or something, and I'm sure he'll be happy to share some more insights with you. So tell everyone where they can go if they're interested in learning more about the academy. And then I've got one or two follow-up questions before we close out here. Sure.

So to learn about the academy, you can go to wardogsacademy.com. We have actually our students, some of our most successful students, They also work as like our student advisors, like Gavin, for example, that I mentioned earlier. I had a few other people like him get on the phone with prospective students and we'll talk them through like what the whole process is and answer all their questions if they want to ask questions before joining the academy. And for me personally, people can find me on Instagram at David Packaus, P-A-C-O-U-Z, like Zebra, and on all social media platforms. But I guess I'm probably most active on Instagram at David Packhouse.

Awesome, awesome. So one question I had, oh, go ahead. Instafloss.com for my flossing device and for any musicians in the audience, singular sound.com is my music company. Beat Buddy is my most famous musical product that's probably easier to Google, like your buddy that plays the beat, beat buddy. So that's for the musicians in the audience, which I'm sure is a small fraction, but the musicians will love it. Absolutely. And we are going to make sure we put all of those links to all of the products, the websites, the academy. We're going to put those down in the show notes,

that way our audience can jump over there and check out those products as well. Question I had for you. Yes. How did the movie idea come about? Did you guys get reached out to individually? Did one reach out to one of you? And then the second part of that question is,

what was more profitable, the revenue you made in the business or what you got paid from the royalties of being part of the movie? I have no comment on how that side pays out or if they don't or if it's just branding. I mean, I think there's every contract I think is a little different. Yes, yes. It is, everything is unique.

The way that that whole, the movie happened was we first got, I wouldn't say famous, I would say more infamous when the New York Times published a front page article about us with our munch shots on the front page of the New York Times. This was in March of 2008. It was not a flattering article. It was filled with misinformation, actually. It was saying, it claimed that we were supplying like rusty defected ammunition, which was completely untrue. But it made it big a big scandal, a big political scandal at the time.

There were hearings in Congress about us. There's YouTube videos out there. It's like some senator like with one of those easels on the floor of Congress. And he has like our mugshots on the easel. He's like, these are the guys that the Bush administration has been trusting with this critical contract for the war on terror. like the president is the 21-year-old you know a pot addict and his and his vice president is a massage therapist it was kind of funny so we got like

yeah because I think he he had gotten like arrested and he got caught with some like need and so like that was on record and that's kind of how it got into the New York Times article and so our nickname in the press was the stoner arms dealers and so the press really ran with that and then Rolling Stone of course loved the story because they're Rolling Stone. This was like right up there, Ali. And so they wrote, they did a whole investigative journalism piece on us. It was actually, they actually stepped like three years investigating the story because there was, after the New York Times article got published, they canceled our contract and

they charged us with fraud. Even though it turned out later, we found out the army knew about the Chinese ammunition the whole time. They really didn't care until the New York Times made it looked bad and then they threw us under the bus. But that's kind of how politics works. So, We were waiting, we were like in limbo for three years because one of our, I pled guilty, Ephraim pled guilty as well. And I, you know, I got sentenced to seven months of house arrest, so slap on the wrist. He would have gotten a slap on the wrist, too, because they knew that they were really just doing this to cover their asses politically.

But he ended up committing a nun. He got, wound up in a sting operation where they, like, tricked him into, like, kicking up a gun and he had already pled guilty. So he was a felon in possession of the firearm. And so he could have gotten 10 years in prison for that, but he ended up negotiating really hard with his, you know, the best lawyers in Miami. And he ended up negotiating it down to four. So he did four years in prison. But one of our co-defendants, Ralph, who was our investor in the movie, he's a Jewish laundromat owner in the movie. In real life, his name really is Ralph, but he's actually a Mormon. And he owns a machine gun factory, not longramat. So more relevant. But Ralph decided to take the case. to trial and because he took it to trial, we were kind of like stuck in legal limbo. They didn't want to sentence us until his trial was over in case they needed us to testify in this

trial. So during that entire period, we weren't allowed to talk to the press by our lawyers, but Roland Stone launched this big investigation. So they spent three years doing an investigation and because there was a trial and there was discovery. The discovery process in the trial is when each side gets information from the other. So Ralph, his legal team was legally able to get the internal emails of the government talking about our deal where the Justice Department was telling the Army, hey, this is Chinese ammo. And the Army was like, we don't care.

We need the ammo. You know, they have emails like this that came out. And so Rolling Stone got access to all of it. And they wrote this long, really long article about us that they published after we were all sentenced in 2011. And it's a great article. And I would say that that's probably the closest to the real story of anything that's out there, the Rolling Stone article.

He just Googled the Stoner Arms Dealers and it'll come up. But Todd Phillips, who is the director of the hangover movies, and later he made Joker with Joaquin Phoenix. He was trying at the time to kind of get out of comedy, which he was in the middle of filming Hangover, too, at the time. He was trying to get into drama, which he did with Joker. So he decided to make our story into war dogs, which is kind of like what they call in dromody. It's kind of like half comedy, half drama.

So that was like his transition movie from pangover to Joker. And so that's how the movie happened. He saw the article. He saw the Rolling Stone article, thought it was a great story, decided to option the rights. And the way it works in Hollywood when they want to make a story about you is what people don't realize is that in the United States, there is the freedom of speech, right? That's like in the Constitution, I think the first event, freedom of speech. And part of freedom of speech is that you can say anything you want about any public figure

without repercussion, right? And you can make any art piece you want about any public figure. And what's a public figure? If your name appears in the newspaper or on TV, you are now officially a public figure, right? So because we were written about in the New York Times and in Rolling Stone, we were officially public figures. And so Todd Phillips did not need our permission to make a movie. He didn't need to pay us anything. And he could make a whole movie using our real names, say anything he wanted, whether it's true or not, and make a movie and not give us a penny. That is the law in the United

States. However, he wanted to make a movie that's based on a true story. So he wanted it to be kind of close to, at least somewhat close to the real story, right? And, And so Ephraim was in prison at the time, and he's a well-known pathological lot, and also an enormous nightmare to deal with as a person and in business in particular. He ended up stealing all my money that we made from the deal. He still owes me $5 million plus interest. About 20 years of interest. That's quite a lot at this point. We'll never see that money.

I don't expect it. But Ephraim is a well-known scumbag. And so Todd Phillips didn't want to deal with him. And he, so he made a deal with Guy Lawson, who was the writer of the Rolling Stone article who had done all the research. And with me, to, he bought what they call my life rights or the rights to my story. And the way that works is they give you a small amount of money, like the low tens of thousands, right, to option the story. And that means that they reserve the right to make the story within a certain time. time period. It's usually like three years, right? And if they do start production within that

time period, then they give you the rest of the money. It's usually about 10 times what you, what they gave you as an option. And depending on the story, I mean, it really depends on if there's a bidding war for the story, if a few different people want to make it, then that can go up to the millions. But unfortunately, for me, it was only top Phillips. It was interested and making the story at the time so there was no bidding more. So I took what I could get. And if they don't start a production with that, usually they have the option to renew the option, right? So they can give you another few tens of thousands to get another three years, right? And so at the time when the option of story, I think it was 2011, and Todd was in the middle

of making Hangover 2. And he was planning on making Wardogs after Hangover 2, but then he decided, you know what, instead of doing that, let me make hangover three first because that's a sure moneymaker. And so that extended out the timeline. So by the time, so they had to renew the option. And then they started production in 2015 and made the movie came out in 2016. So to answer your question, I did make more money on selling the story than I did in the arms business because I ended up making nothing in the arms business because my ex-scumbent partner stole all the money from me. would have made a lot more money in the arts business if he had pity to me, but it didn't end up making anything from that.

So I made any future royalties as part of the structure or no? Yes and no. Officially, officially I'm supposed to get 2% of the net income on the movie, right? That was the deal. However, in reality, there's never any net income, right? Hollywood is famous or infamous, I should say, for their so-called Hollywood. accounting. Some of the most successful movies of all time have lost money, still losing money somehow, right? Gone with the win is still in the hole somehow, even though it's 100 years old or

something like that. I don't know, maybe not 100, but like you get the idea. But yeah, so I never saw Hollywood Magic Strikes Again. Exactly. Exactly. So I never saw any any additional royalties besides that initial lump sum payment. But what's interesting is that I got, so I got to a cameo in the movie, right? The first five minutes, you see me on screen for about three seconds. I'm playing guitar and singing a song in the old folks' homework, where Miles Taylor, who's playing me is trying to sell bed sheets to the owner. That, because I was in the film, and I'm singing, that's considered a speaking role, and therefore that qualified me for sagged afra, right? The Screen Actors Guild. And Screen Actors Guild negotiates a royalty based on the

gross, not the net, right? So me being a, you know, the subject of the film, the life rights guy, I didn't have any lebron because there was no bidding war. I didn't, wasn't able to negotiate anything on the gross. I could only get something on the net, which everyone knew was going to be zero before them, unless the movie is making literally billions of dollars, right? If it's one of the most successful movies of all time, they can't hide all the money, right? But the most lose these officially make zero on the net. So unfortunately, there wasn't a bidding war going on, so I didn't have much negotiating leverage. So I have to take what I could get as far as the life rights deal was. But because I'm part of Sagafra and Sagafra negotiates as a union, they negotiate

on the gross. So I do still get checks at the mail every quarter or so for about 100 bucks for by three seconds on screen. So we're going to match. We're going to tell the audience, go wear that movie out. Just press play and leave the house. Yes, yes. Let's get this man some more mailbox money. That's right. Every time you watch it on Netflix or wherever, I get a fraction of a penny, so please watch it.

Let's go. Everybody hit play at the same time and just keep it rolling, baby. If you get a $1,000 check, remember me, David. Yeah, exactly. Maybe I'll have to throw you a conclusion. There we go. Well, hey, listen, hey, I appreciate you taking the time sharing your story. and journey, you've definitely blazed some trails and, you know, some of the flames caught up

with you for a little bit. And now it's got to feel good that you're now kind of out of that where if you wanted to, you could go back. But I think you've got such a great thing on the academy side, helping and coaching and training people. And I know there's a lot of fulfillment in that for you because I think the process probably was most exciting for you, the fact that, you know, A, you had the soft skills already, and all you had to do is put it in the context of a new framework and learn it. But that framework is really what's helping so many people get millions and millions of dollars in contracts. So kudos to you on the success. Any parting words for the audience?

I think that just the one thing that I've learned is that you have to find what works for yourself. You know, like there's many, many, many ways of making money and being successful. And you have to know what works for you. So, like, I was able to do the government contracting business because, I mean, I saw the opportunity, obviously. I mean, the opportunities, obviously, even more so there. I mean, government spending, almost double what they used to spend back then, which is crazy. But I saw the opportunity and I was, I was, you know, young and hungry and willing to grind. And that's what it takes to work in that business.

These days, I really enjoy designing products, and it's a very, very different type of business. I enjoy building courses and businesses that help people like World House Academy. That's a very different business than government contracting. And you can succeed in both of those things. And some things require more creativity. You know, they each have their upsides and downsides. The good thing about government contracting is that the money is there and the money will always be there. As long as we have a government, the government will need to buy things.

historically, the budget has only gone up. It's never gone down ever. So the money will continue to be there. But you have to realize the kind of business it is and the kind of skills that are required for it. And the kind of skills that are required for it is the grind, right? You need to be willing to put in long hours to do the kind of work that is not necessarily fun. But because it's not fun, it keeps a lot of other people out. And that's why not that many people go into it. And the people, and the people, people who become successful at it can become very, very successful, as we've seen with many of our students, quite a few of them have made millions of dollars already just in the last two years. So the potential is there. You just need to have the personality for it and realize that it works for you. And if it doesn't work for you, I mean, find something that does, right? Their own style and their own, their own things that they enjoy to do or that they are good at doing, and you have to find that. And I think that that's the biggest factor of success is lining up what you are doing with your strengths and really capitalizing on that.

Great advice. Yeah, tap into your strengths and find what you're passionate about. And it makes work so much more fulfilling and so less stressful when you're doing things to truly enjoy. Thank you so much, David, for coming on the show. I know our audience is going to get value from your story and journey. Folks, if you have not yet checked out our new platform, B-Y-O-T groupcoaching.com. It's your all-in-one platform for our live calls, for building out. Thank you. Thank you, Jordan.

Appreciate it.