Cameron Hanes - Keep Hammering Collective - KHC 109 - Josh Smith

Episode Date: January 9, 2025

Join us for a discussion with Josh Smith, master bladesmith and owner of Montana Knife Company. In this episode Cam and Josh talk about the NEW Packout Skinner Knife, designed by a vision Cam had for a knife that performs better for skinning and meat processing in the field. Follow along: Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/cameronrhanes Twitter: https://twitter.com/cameronhanes Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/camhanes/ Website: https://www.cameronhanes.com Follow Montana Knife Company: https://www.instagram.com/montanaknifecompany/ Thank you to our sponsors: Sig Sauer: https://www.sigsauer.com/ use code CAM10 for 10% off optics Hoyt: http://bit.ly/3Zdamyv use code CAM for 10% off Ketone IQ: https://www.ketone.com/Cam use code CAM for 30% off your first subscription MUD\WTR: https://mudwtr.com/cam use code CAM for 15% off  MTN OPS Supplements: https://mtnops.com/ Use code KEEPHAMMERING for 20% off and Free Shipping Black Rifle Coffee: https://www.blackriflecoffee.com/ Use code KEEPHAMMERING for 20% your first order Timestamps: 0:00:00 Making Knives at a Young Age 0:06:42 Why Josh Started the MKC Company So Early 0:09:30 Scaling the Company & the Heritage Behind Knives 0:14:56 Josh’s First Handmade Knives 0:19:40 Learning from the Masters 0:24:26 Making a Durable Blade 0:31:03 Ad Break 0:33:27 The Struggles of a Full Time Knife Maker 0:37:49 The Packout Skinner Knife 0:50:55 Connections That Helped Build the MKC Brand 0:57:17 Success from Hard Work 01:03:05 American Made & Advertising 01:13:03 Building a Brand in America 01:20:43 Hate Comments & Critics 01:31:37 Studying Successful People - Evan Hafer 01:37:14 Communication & Leadership 01:45:36 Passing Down Credit Within the Company 01:49:12 Culture & A Good Attitude Always Win 01:55:26 Employee Happiness & Being Undeniable 02:00:56 Being Consistently Passionate About Something 02:10:59 Outro

Every step I take, I move my truth. Every time they tell me stop I use. Every comment hate that makes my feel, gather up my energy and boom. I hear them talking, saying the way that I move is so reckless. That is a part of my mind I've been blessed with. Giving my blood so I am relentless. All right. This is a Keep Hammer Collective.

I'm with Josh Smith of Montana Knife Company. Thanks for having me, man. Oh, man. This is, yeah, it seems like I don't want to say long time coming because I don't know how long we've talked about it. but I know I've wanted you on here for a long time. And so it feels like it's a long time coming for me. Well, it's surreal for me because I've, you know, watched you and listened to you for so long.

And, you know, we see each other here and there, different things we're at. And yeah, it's, it's, it's, you know, I've been doing this for a few years, the knife, you know, stuff in the outdoor industry. But these moments like this coming on here with you and some of the other things, I get to do, I still think of myself just as a line. and a regular guy.

So it's, it's an honor to be on here. Appreciate it. Oh, man. Well, yeah, that means a lot. One thing I've noticed is like, because I've listened to a lot of your podcasts. Like, I don't know. I guess I lost track. Sometimes you like start listening to this podcast and then you're like all, you know,

balls deep on it. And then for some reason, something else comes up. Yeah. I was listening to a lot of yours and I don't know what happened, but I haven't been lately. But then I listened to you on, was it born primitive? Was that with Aaron? Yeah. But anyway, point is, it's like, you are, I don't know, you're so good at doing stuff like this.

Oh. Have you always been like, you know, sometimes when you're in the labor workforce, you know, like alignment or maybe in construction, you're just good at working and not really talk, you know. I mean, talking is a whole other art form, right? Yeah. Yeah. But you were good at it. Have you always been good? I don't know, man.

I appreciate that. I don't know. I mean, I only started doing this when I started the company as far as doing some interviews and stuff, but it's not like I ever did anything like this before. Professionally. Yeah, but I guess I'm, I guess I'm kind of a bullshitter. But to be honest, I think what it is is I, my favorite part of owning Montana a knife company and doing what we do is the people.

So when I get to sit down with Aaron or yourself or whoever else, like I love it. I truly appreciate it. you know um and even making making knives as a young kid and all the way through my favorite part was always traveling and and meeting it was really cool with knife collectors or other knife makers from other parts of the country or the world um you know so that that maybe that's just it i just enjoy talking to cool people so when you were young because a lot of times young like kids boys whatever they're pretty quiet normally but were you like a talker Yeah, yeah, probably so. Yeah, I was definitely, I think, told to shut up in class more times than I can count.

And then, like, when you were alignment, so you were alignment for 10 years, were you like, could you get the guys, were you know, were you in a leadership position? Or did the guys just listen to you or did just talk? Not necessarily. Just BS. And I mean, you know, I got a little bit more into leadership stuff as I got later on right before I quit, you know, and went out. after this, but those first number of years, you know, between apprenticeship and then when you're a young journeyman, it's kind of like when you get through buds and you think you're a Navy SEAL and then you show up and the actual Navy SEALs are like, yeah, you just got pinned shut up, you know. Yeah. Yeah. So, you know, I definitely probably talk too much or would offer my opinion to the safety guy that I thought was a douchebag. But no, I was, you know, it was fun because a lot of times we were up in the safety guy. the bucket truck and like my buddy Dave Kennedy, who was my foreman a lot of the times, we would be up there

working on power lines and actually dreaming and talking about Montana Knife Company and like, you know, God, we got to get out of here and do something. And I, you know, I told him about my dream of building this. And for years when we were working on power lines, a lot of times you're up in that bucket and you're in a tiny little space and you're just bullshitting about life. Yeah. And we talked a lot about, you know, what Montana Knife Company could be. Because I registered the name for this company when I was 19 years old. But I didn't start it until I was 39. Oh, 20 years.

Yeah. So I honestly, I think a lot of my friends thought I was probably full of shit because I talked about it for a long time. Well, most guys are full of shit. That's true. I mean, you've talked to people who like, you talk about the election and you think, like, could you be fucking president? Because you act like you could.

So most guys. they're watching the NFL game. So it's like, well, did you even play football? Because it sure sounds like you got all the answer. So guys, that's just kind of what guys do. Yeah. And there was a lot of talk about different things. But that was something I, you know, I had another friend of mine, Nick Salter, you know,

him and I talked about this for years. And he was always encouraging me to start it. But, you know, one thing I knew when I was younger is I didn't, one, I didn't have any money to start it. Number two, I knew I didn't have any expertise and like productive. manufacturing or any of that kind of stuff. And I think actually waiting that long, I got enough seasoning through life that I think if I would have started this when I was

young, I probably would have made some decisions more based off of ego when you're younger and full of piston vinegar and like, oh, I can do everything by myself. Right. But when I was older and I started it, I realized like, well, I can't do everything. So I'm going to need help. Right. And so like when I met my business partner, at first I just hired him to take some photos

and then he's like, well, I can build you a website. So he did that. And I started realizing, Brandon. Yeah. And when I started realizing his abilities, his expertise and like, this guy's really good. And, you know, half of the equation is making a really good product. But the other half is you have to sell it. Right.

And I think when I was younger, I probably would have tried to do it all by myself. Yeah. And when I realized his value, I couldn't afford to pay him anymore. So I'm like, hey, do you want to partner up? And I offered him partnership in it. That was the best thing I ever did because, and I got lucky. I got lucky because I found a guy that actually would match my work ethic. And so we both just like full on, you know, worked our butts off.

Yeah. It's, I mean, because it's pretty impressive. It starts with an idea. But when you think about, well, you register the name when you're 19, what was why? I mean, the passion was knife making. And so you're just like, well, I just love to do this. Yeah.

And just based on the love of it? Or why did you do it when you're so young? Well, one, I had a smart mom. So she, you know, we'd come up with that name, Montana Knife Company. But I was still making knives and it was just Josh Smith Knives, right? And those were my customs. But the idea of like a knife company later in life was something we kind of talked about. And I talked about that with my mom.

And we came up with a name Montana Knife Company. And she actually was like, I'm going to register that for you. So because she knew, I think she had the wisdom to know like that's a good name. Yeah. Like that's when you're going to want to save, even though you're not ready to do it today. But I was, it was also important to me that, you know, to have a different name than the Josh Smith knives. Because for people that don't know, I was a custom knife maker from the time I was 11, you know, I started making knives on. If I, if you buy a Josh Smith knife, every single thing on that, like I do, handmake that, handmade from.

start to finish, no CNC machines, no one else working on it. That's me, right? That's a, it's like a, maybe an original painting. And then, you know, Montana knife company is almost kind of like the version of prints where obviously I'm taking all my expertise and the things I've learned and a lot of the things from that custom knife making, but I'm hiring people to help me do that. I have employees, right? And that, the Josh Smith Knives thing was, it was a struggle. Like any knife maker out there and I have so much respect for custom knife makers because you're making one knife at a time and you what what people don't understand is is if you're not working you're not making money and so it was difficult when I had four young kids if I went out and tried to sit in my tree stand or go hunt

on a Saturday or even just sitting in the house at six o'clock at night it's like I should be out in my shop making knives right if you try and take a family vacation there goes a week income and so it's not easy making, you know, something one knife at a time. And I knew down the road, like, I got to figure out a way to do this where I don't have to be the one doing every single thing. Yeah, I mean, it's not business, like to say scalable. Right. So it's not scalable.

Well, it's like, but then also when you think about it, you know how people are. They love you when you're the one guy grinding out a knife. Yeah. You know, and you do everything, every stroke. is yours, every whatever is yours, and this is a Josh Smith knife. And yeah, he, he does it right. And then you start, well, this isn't scalable. And I want to, I want to take what I know. And I want to, you know, make great knives, American made knives and share this. Then all of a sudden, oh, it's a sellout. All you care about is money now. Right. Right. So how do you, what's that balance for you? And neither

one of them are really accurate or fair. Yeah. And I see some of the hate on the internet. Now it's interesting when you have some success, even though I'm still grinding every freaking day, working my ass off harder than I ever worked. You see some of the hate. I know you get it. People jealousy. But I would say largely knife makers are really proud of what I've been able to do and show that there's a path to turn knife making into a real career and a business.

The struggle I was having when I was making custom knives, they're very expensive. You know, my customs back then were two to $5,000 a piece. You know, anything I make now is $5,000, $20,000 a piece. Really? Whoa. Yeah. And I was building like, I built a sword for a shake in the Middle East. He flew at Abu Dhabi, flew me to London. Like, I did some really amazing.

I just had some adventures and some stuff that, like, just because I started making knives as a kid, these really cool things came along, these opportunities. But what really was bothering me was, you know, a guy in my town in Montana would come and say, hey, I want to buy a hunting knife for my son. He's going to be 13. He's going to go out cunt this year. It's like, God, I need $600 or $800,000 to make that knife to really be able to build my business and to be able to pay my bills. And I felt bad that guy couldn't really afford that knife. And so I wanted to start a company where I could provide that kind of quality, that custom quality, but in a production price. And the other thing I was seeing happening was replaceable blade started to come along. And people were now just throwing away something that we for generations have passed down.

Men generally have passed down knives and guns. And all of a sudden, you know, those knives were being thrown away. And I've had hundreds or thousands of people come through my shop and be like, hey, Josh, this was my grandfather's knife in Vietnam. or he carried this knife every day and he was a welder. And it's the only thing I have, but the tips broke off or it's dull or can you clean it up? So I'd sharpen it and fix it up for them. Some people would still carry them or they'd put them up in their safe.

And I'm like, man, we're now throwing that stuff away. You know, your clothing that you wear, a lot of your packs. And a lot of the things that you associate with hunting are somewhat consumable. But your knife and your gun are things that I really do think you, you generally end up passing down. And, you know, when you're 40 years old and your Cam Haines and you're doing your things, you're not thinking about like, oh, I'm going to pass this down to my grandson someday. You're just doing your thing.

Yeah. But when you're dead and gone, there's going to be some great grandkid or great, great, grand kid that never met you that reads the stories or hears it. And it doesn't matter. You don't have to be Cam Haines. You can just be Bill in Ohio. Yeah. And it's like, God, I had this grandpa.

And, you know, I never met him, but he went to Alaska on a moose hunt back in 2020. Yeah. You know, and this is the knife he carried. How cool is that? Yeah. And it's now 2150, you know. Yeah. So that, to me, when I started Montana Knife Company,

I wanted to start something where I could provide knives to people they could afford. Now, they're not cheap. You know, 300 bucks isn't nothing. But it's attainable for anybody if you place some value in like an American-made product and something that you know you're going to use and pass down. Yeah. No, no, that's a good point. I mean, when I first started hunting, it was like,

when you got a present for whatever birthday, you're getting close to like hunting age, your sharp knife. You got your own knife. That was a big deal. Yeah. Or even like before that, I remember having a pocket knife, like a folding pocket knife, just a little. And it had a little, like maybe antler thing on the side.

Yeah. And it's like, okay, this might. And if you had a knife, hey, anybody got a knife, every boy had a knife. Yeah. Right. And so I totally get that. But I love the, I love to romanticize the hunt, the culture of hunting in our tradition and a good knife.

Yeah. Like speaks to that, you know, I don't rifle hunt, but a rifle is like one of those heirlooms. Sure. Your grandpa passes down. And even bows, it's like, you know, bow technology comes so far that, you know, the one thing about a rifle is you can. and pass that down. So you might be able to still shoot something with it in 40 years, 50 years.

Like with most of these bows, it's like, I know. I'm just going to hang that thing up on the wall. I'm not pulling that back and I have a blow up my face. But it's still cool to know like, you know, oh, my uncle or my dad shot six deer with that bow. I know. You know.

No. The tradition and the history of hunting is what makes it special. Yeah. And so if you have little things, special mementos that, you know, hearken back to whatever, your grandpa or your dad or your great grandpa, that's, I mean, it's incredible. Well, and I, there's something about a knife, you know, you talk about being a kid and getting

your first knife. My little league baseball coach, Rick Dunkerly, he was an outfitter in the Bob Marshall Wilderness, and he was coaching Little League baseball, and he'd bring his knives to practice and show us. And I'm an 11-year-old boy. I think knives and honey and all that stuff are cool. and for some reason he you know I don't know if he thought I was responsible and I was a hardworking little kid in my parents excavation business and stuff but he I kept asking him questions when he invited me up to his shop to make one that winter and I made one or two there and I think it was his way

of probably getting rid of me he's like well if you want to be a knife maker you got to have your own knife shop which was pretty much like beat it kid yeah and so I had a lawn mowing business as well and I worked with my parents. So I went and bought a belt grinder and I put it in my dad's shop. And I made a couple knives and I presented them at my science fair for a heat treating steel project.

And my science teacher and my math teacher each bought one of those two knives for 20 bucks. Nice. And I was like, damn. You mean you can make knives and get paid to do it? Yeah. Like, what else do you need in life? Right. And that was the start. And, you know, I think something resonates also with like making things with your hands.

Yeah, for sure. It was less and less of that these days. And it's why I think it's critical, you know, it was on Mike Rose podcast and the dirty jobs guy. You know, we were talking about, you know, he talks a lot about apprenticeships and, you know, blue collar jobs and stuff. But also like, we need shop programs in school and welding programs. And, you know, my first knife shop, my senior year of college, I knew I'd be leaving home, but I didn't know where I was going to be going or what I'd be doing. And so our senior year, I bought the materials for it. And our construction class, my whole senior year, our construction project was to build me a knife shop. And we built a 10 by 14 shed out back of the high school, right, by the football field. We built it all season. And then later in the winter when we had it finished, we built it on skids. When it got icy one day in the winter there, my dad hooked onto it with his backo and we drug it down the highway to my house. That is your first knife. That was my first shop, kind of my first shop that wasn't in one of my dad's buildings. And then a couple years later, got married and moved into Missoula. And we actually picked that up with two backos. And I bought an old trailer house frame.

And I could weld and stuff. So I cut the trailer house frame down and move the axles up on it. and we set that shed on that trailer house frame, and I pulled it behind my pickup to Missoula. So sketchy. I can't believe that thing didn't blow off. How far was that? 85 miles.

Okay. And I set that up at my boss's shop in Missoula, Montana, just like a shop in an industrial part of town. And I lived in his shop all summer, and I made knives. I plugged that thing into his wall at his shop. And we showered outside out of a garden hose. I mean, trying to live, I mean, I had no money.

Yeah. And later that fall, we closed on our first house. And I quit my job and I went full-time making knives at that point. And I drug that thing to my new house and I parked it next to my brand new house. It looked janky as hell. Yeah. And I worked in that 10 by 14 shed until for two more years, I bought the property men now and actually built and like created a real shop.

But I worked in a storage shed basically. But the point is we, you know, we built that with our hands. and like I'll never get rid of that shed. Yeah, whose plan was that like for high school kids? So somebody had to like get you guys lined out. Our shop teacher, Mr. Heisler. Yeah. But the point of the class was,

and there's only like 12 of us in that class, but the point of that class was to teach kids how to build something. Yeah. You know, hey, we're going to build Josh a shop. We're going to frame some walls. You know, we're going to wire it. You know, we're going to insulate it.

And it was just to teach us all some skills that, you know, you could maybe fall back on. And later in life, I mean, I've built all kinds of stuff, you know. Yeah. So did you guys have a drawing to go by or were you just kind of winging it on building that? We, he taught us how to draw, like kind of drop our own little plans. Yeah, okay. Schematic. Yeah. Gotcha. It was all before computers and cat and all that shit. I gotcha. So yeah, you get the, well, the paper with like the little boxes you could use, right? Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. The grids. Yeah. But I was curious about the first knives, you made you said that first knife maker and i love how you always call out their names too because you know people love hearing their names or like it's to me it's like it's an honor of to history i hear you talk about roy and yeah like rick he's still making knives he's one of the best knife makers

in the world and you know i alluded to it earlier but i get a little bit of hate on the internet because you have some success but i i think it's always incredibly important to point out the masters that that taught you how whether it's to bow hunt to make a knife, to do anything, to give them credit. And especially, you know, a lot of those knife makers are still active. So with some of the success I've had or a platform like this, if it can make someone Google Rick Dunkerly or, you know, some of those people that help me, you know, you think about it,

all those older gentlemen back in the 90s, you know, my first knife show was Eugene Oregon right here. Really? Yep. The fairgrounds. At the fairgrounds. stayed at the campus inn. Yeah.

And I rode as a 13-year-old. I turned 13 at this show. Okay. My birthday, April 1st here. And I rode out in a car with Rick Dunkerley and Barry Gallagher, some of these knife makers. And I mean, you know, they were heathens. And I was just this kid in the back seat, you know,

along for the road. Yeah. But they, you think about the fact that all those older guys took on a 12, 13-year-old and hauled me at a knife show. and anybody I'd ask, if I'd go ask Harvey Dean or Tim Hancock or any of these guys how they did something, these were the masters. I looked up to them.

They were legends. How did you do that? They would teach me. They would show me. And that's the thing about, I think that was cool about when I learned how to make knives, there was no YouTube. There was no internet.

I had to go as a kid, go up and be like, Kim, how'd you do that? And have an actual interaction. So you ask actually, I never thought about this, but like the talking on podcast and stuff, stuff. I had to do that as a kid to learn how to make knives. Okay. Yeah. You know. Yeah. Yeah. Got to ask right

questions. Yeah. And I flew across the country and I was 15 and spent a week with this old legend. He's passed away now. But George Heron spent a week in the shop and he just taught me how to how he makes knives. Like what's so when you say like how did you do that? Like what would you be talking about when you're talking about knife making? Like if you had a question for somebody, you just said it's kind of like I can pass him. Like, how did you do that? Could you show me? Like, what would be something?

Yeah, maybe a guy's really good at finishing. So, like, he's got a really nice polish on a blade, right? Or the fit and finish. Like, the guard fits up super tight. Or maybe there's carving on the handle, like an artistic carving. Like, how do you lay that out? How do you finish the insides of those little things? How do you construct that knife?

It's all screwed together from the back. And there's all these pieces. And there's so many different techniques. techniques, heat treatment of steel. You know, when I started Montana knife company, I brought things I learned as a young knife maker. And, you know, I became the youngest master blade smith in the world. Well, that involves a series of testing of the heat treatment of your blades. And, you know, a knife can be as pretty as you want it to be, but it has to cut.

And it has to hold a good edge. Yeah. And so I was lucky to be around some guys like Rick. some other guys who were really heavily involved in testing their blades for hunting purposes. So like wear resistance of an edge. How long does it hold an edge? And then can you resharpen it or not? Right.

Edge geometry, grinding. All these things I was asking was because I was trying to become a master bladesmith. And it's like a young bow hunter that's like quizzing you. Like I want to kill big bull someday. How, you know, what are the techniques and, you know, how do you learn the wind? and how do you read the topo map and all these things. So it was the same way in knife making. And I was trying to catch them.

But little did I know I got lucky. I started learning from a bunch of guys at the time weren't very good. But little did I know they were all going to become some of the best knife makers in the world. So the whole time I was trying to catch them, they were getting better. God, it got frustrating when I was young because at times I'd want to quit or cry. Because they also weren't nice to me. You know, I would hand them knives and be like, what do you think of this? I got all proud of it and they'd be like, well, guards crooked, you know, you got scratches on your blade here.

It's too thick. You know, the design sucks. Like, and they would just rip it apart every single time. But that's, but they were doing me a favor. If they were like, hey, that's really great kid. I wouldn't have tried to get better. Trial by fire, basically. When did you, what was the first, like, positive feedback you got on a, like, you felt like, okay, I did a great job on this knife.

and as that was verified. I was probably 21 or two years old. I was, or just after I'd passed my master blade smith test, the year after I took a blade to the Atlanta Blade Show, and I showed, Tim Hancock was a, just a legend in the knife community.

He passed away from Parkinson's later, but he, he was just an unbelievable guy. And he was so dialed in. He was fit. He was an ex-boreider. He was a nuclear power. plant welder.

He was meticulous to the nth degree. And he was like no bullshit. And like he would call me out when he would see stuff. Like this just sucks, dude. Like you can't like, I don't even know how you sell that. I mean, he was hard. He would be harsh, right? But also he'd be like, here's how you need to do it better.

Like, why are you doing it that way? And I took a knife to the Atlanta Blade show. And my other hack for getting information of these guys and we're all broke knife makers is I'd asked a room with them at some of these shows, split the cost, right? And so we're in the hotel room. I pull up my knives and I handed a knife to Tim and I'm like, what do you think of that? And he looks it over and he's like, God damn, kid, that's good. Really? I still remember it to this day. Yeah. He was like, that's really freaking good. And then he started asking me how I did the steel in it. How did you do this? And it was the Damascus steel and all that forging. Yeah. He's like,

holy shit. The tables have turned. Yeah, it was like, damn, I kind of made it. Yeah. That's awesome. What'd you do with that knife? Sold it. I mean, I never kept any of my knives because you're trying to pay the bills. Oh, I understand. But, yeah, you find a nailed one. Yeah. Got the feedback you've been waiting for.

Exactly. And, you know, trust me, the critiques didn't stop from there. I mean, other stuff, you know, it's hit and miss and still young. But passing those tests, you know, I became a journeyman knife maker at 15. You know, in the testing process, it really does. relate to what we're doing today because like you have to make a performance blade first and that blade has to be 10 inches long or less and then you have to forge it has to be hand forged forged and you finish it and then it has to chop a one inch rope in half and one chop which just

shows sharpness yeah that's fine that's not that hard to do then that blade has to chop two two by fours and half as many chops as you want and when you get all done with that it still has to shave hair off your arm and then you have to blend that blade 90 degrees reason of ice without breaking it. Wow. Yeah. And so what that shows is that you have control over your heat treatment, your metallurgy. So you selected the right steel.

You knew how to forge it at the right temperatures. You heat treated it right. You ground it correctly. You didn't grind it too thin or too thick. And then you could actually put a good workable edge on it that's a durable edge that's going to hold. And it shows that control. And a blade can't be too hard and it can't be too soft.

Yeah. You know, if it's too hard, it's going to snap. If it's too soft, it's not going to hold an edge for very long. And then you have to take five knives and present them to a panel of judges at the Atlanta Blade Show. And those, they're master smith judges. So you take five knives down there. So I did this in 1996. I was 15.

I flew to Atlanta with my mom, presented those five knives of the judges. And they judge them in a room. and and then, you know, it's a pass fail. And at the Jureiman level, they're, they're, they might let a little bit of something go, but they're pretty harsh. But at the Mastersmith level, you know, a few years later, I tested for Master. And, you know, you just can't have anything wrong. And you also have to make a 10-inch Quillian dagger for that.

And you have to do that same performance test with a Damascus steel blade. But, but those are all the things. things that you learn that make like what I'm doing today, like the heat treatment of steel and a working a working knife for a hunter for someone going out in the field or a blue collar guy who just maybe opens a couple hundred boxes a day at his job. Yeah. Yeah. It all relates back to those tests when I was doing that at 15, 18 years old. I actually did my performance bladesmith test here in Eugene at Wayne Goddard shot before the Oregon show. Oh, really yeah Wayne Goddard was a total legend in the knife industry and he lived here in

Eugene oh did he have a shop here yeah yeah yeah it's like when you mention all those different attributes of the knife you know that you need to hit and one knife needs to do it all it's uh I've had because people love giving knives or sending knives or to me it feels like such a competitive market um everybody so many knife makers these days and everybody's like grinding trying to get noticed or trying to get, you know, with social media, they just, they want you to tag them, right? They do. Yeah. And, uh, and I get it. But, um, I've had so many cool knives sent to me that I want to use. They just will, they just don't work. Right. They look really good, but they won't hold an edge. And then you can't get the edge back. And I'm not, I'm not, listen, I'll,

I've, you know, broke down animals with a broadhead. So it's like, I just want something to sharp um but uh but yeah it's it's some knives just like you talked about those you know being able to bend it being able to hold an edge being able to cut a piece of wood man it's it's hard finding a knife they can do all that it is and there's there's so many knife makers out there and it and it's anybody who tells me like hey I want to be a knife maker for a living I'm like man I support that but like you should also maybe think about trying to have a real job too. It's so hard because to get the kind of money you need to actually make enough to put a little in your bank account to pay your house payment, plus have a little left to like buy more equipment

for your shop and buy more materials. And there's so many guys doing it as a hobby that are charging nothing that that guy might make that knife free for 150 bucks, but the professional that's raising three kids needs six or 800 bucks. And the dude that's doing it even as a hobby's like, he's doing a nice job. And it kind of undercuts the professional. Yeah. And it's it's a hard way to go. You know, I had four young kids. I got divorced and then my house burnt down. And so I was living in a camper 10 years ago this last year. Yeah, I'm living a camper in my driveway. And at that point, I had kind of stopped doing the knives full time. I was alignment at that point because I'd kind of realized like all these heroes that I'm talking about, they're all in their

60s and their 70s and they're still making knives and they're going to shows rooming with me and still like short on money. I'm like, what am I doing? Like this is a this is going to be hard to ever retire from or to support my family. And, you know, the housing crash of 2008, 9, that market really showed me like, oh, this is fickle because like a lot of the higher end clients just went away. And so I'm doing the, you know, deal living in my camper. I'm broke as can absolutely be. I had to borrow money from a knife collector to keep my house when I got divorced. And a house is sitting there in ashes.

And I have four young kids. And, you know, a couple years later, I met my new wife, Jessica. And I started telling her about my dream of starting Montana Knife Company. And she's real like, well, then fucking do it. You know? And she's like, I got the kids. Go to your shop every night after work and build it. And so her dad passed away.

in 2018 and she inherited like 18, 20 grand. That's about all he had, you know, to give her. And she said, take that money and buy steel and start MCC. And so I took that money and I bought steel and I made 200 knives. And I started making those prototypes in 2019. And then in 2020s when, like I launched the website with Brandon. And I was still making knives, you know, part time.

I was still a lineman. And I needed the last day of the year off of 2020. It was COVID, which is also a bad time to think about starting a business. But I'm working for this big corporate company. And I, Thomas Rett reached out. And he's like, hey, I'd like to get a knife. I'm going to be up in Montana skiing for New Year's. Can you meet me on December 31st?

And I was like, yeah, no, I'll do that. It's like a four-hour drive. So I go to my boss and I'm like, hey, I need December 31st off. And he goes, well, you're out of vacation. And I'm like, well, yeah, but I get four weeks bank, like the next day. Right. I have a month. Can we like figure something out?

Nope. Nope. It's just too hard corporate stuff, whatever. And so I'm like, hey, man, think hard about this. Yeah. And I come in the morning of the 30th. And I'm like, all right, let's work out tomorrow. How do I get tomorrow off?

And he's like, yeah, dude, it just doesn't work in the computer system, blah, blah. And I was like, all right, I'll be done it. noon. And he's like, what? And I was like, I'll go finish this job with the crew this morning. I was forming on a job. I said, I'll, I'll wrap it up at noon. And then I'll come in and turn in my keys. I'm going to have to quit. And he's like, you serious? I'm like, I told you to think hard about this. And so, yeah, I quit and went down, met him, you know, because you don't, you don't know how, what one thing might lead to or whatever. And as it turns out, that particular meeting didn't lead to anything, but it was cool. Yeah. But January 1st,

the 2021 was like, all right, this is day one. I got to get serious now. Yep. And Brandon and I didn't take a paycheck for the first whole, first half of that year. And we just kept reinvesting. And, you know, I made 200 knives because that's all I could afford to make. And then we sold those. I made 200 more.

And then it was like, shit, we might be able to make 500. Mm-hmm. You know, well, let's try 600. You know, and we would just build them. And then we would put them up for sale when they were done. because I don't want to take anybody's money before I can send you a product. Like the whole, like taking pre-orders and that, I'm not going to do that shit. And it was like it started to actually work.

And later in that year, we started taking a little bit of a paycheck. And then I started hiring some people. And now today we have 75 employees. Wow. Just three years. Man. What a story. It's wild.

Yeah. What a story. Yeah. I well I guess this is a good time let's talk about this knife right now yeah hey are we gonna film this with the phone or what so I can put up a reel um yeah sure yeah you know social media thing is uh Instagram doesn't like flashy stuff yeah they like real stuff like shot with a phone yeah so it if these guys make awesome videos with graphics and all that yeah it just doesn't do anything yeah yeah i filmed me

running or some stupid video it goes crazy yeah we're gonna try something different here instead ripping it off the podcast footage we'll have giddy in here yeah see if he can fuck this up with my phone but let's talk about so this is my new knife yeah montana knife company collaboration yeah tell me about this bad boy the pack out look at this i mean look at first of all look at this box so does every knife come with one of these yeah yeah if your name's cameron haines But here's my new knife and this thing pretty, pretty badass. Tell me about that. Yeah, so, you know, it's interesting because you and I started talking about maybe working together and doing a knife. Yeah.

At least two years ago, maybe a little bit longer. And I still remember when I first met you. And it was in 2020 when Trump didn't win. Right. And it was in Montana. And I said then, I'm like, I want to work with him someday. And so you and I started talking about what to do. And, you know, you were talking about how you liked a knife that wasn't big, a little bit smaller. And we started talking about skinny, skinny knives and stuff. And I think this little knife is absolutely badass.

This is going to be a little skinny workhorse. Oh, money. And it's interesting because when you see the design, like when we drew it up, I was like, I'm not really sure. And then we made a prototype and I put it in my hand and I'm like, Yeah. It feels so good. Oh, it fits per. I mean, it's, it's perfect for what you need to try to get in and work on these animals

for what I wanted anyway. I love breaking down the animals. I love, and, you know, this last video kind of explained it, but I love trying to get every ounce of meat off there more than anybody gets. Yeah. And sometimes you need a little knife to get in there. And even like, when I'm thinking about everybody gets the inside tenderloins back here, there's inside tenderloins like right up front too.

Right. You have to do a little intricate work in there to get those. That's what I was thinking of with a knife like this. Yeah. No, and it's the other thing with this blade, it's cool is, you know, it's only three inches long from the tip to the front of the handle. But if you rock this tip from here on a ruler down that edge, there's three and a half inches of edge.

So, you know, the amount of work that you can get actually out of a shorter blade, to me it's really impressive. And one thing that I try to get across to people is you don't need a big knife. when you're hunting. If you have a blade with the right steel and the right edge and edge geometry and the right heat treat, you can do an incredible amount of work. I mean,

you can do a full moose with this knife right here. Definitely. Yeah. It's, you know, I was just, as you were saying that, I was thinking about it.

So if you have, say, I mean, you said this is three inches, but actually three and a half of blade. Right. Say if you had like a eight or 10 inch knife, how much of that edge are you,

are you actually using? Yeah, about three inches of it. I mean, if that. So, yeah, it's, it's there, but mostly it's just in the way. Yeah, or you're jabbing into the guts. You're jabbing yourself or your buddy. Right. You know, I think about when you reach in and you're trying to get that diaphragm out.

Right. And you got one hand in there and you're pulling and you got that blade in. You know, I want to be able to choke up on this. I'm going to my finger right up here. And in fact, I'll even cover the tip entirely. Yeah. And just have my finger right over the tip. Just to feel it.

Yeah. And that way you're not jabbing yourself. you got safety. And then when you do get that thing apart and you're just taking hide off, you choke back on this thing and start doing this, like you can absolutely fly with this blade. Yeah.

No, I agree. This is perfect too because I was thinking about that. It's like, yeah, you can have like a long handle, a big blade, but it's just not efficient. Yeah. And it's not as effective as something like this. Right. Yeah.

Exactly. And, you know, if you have, a little small blade like a speed goat or something like that if you want something with more of a tip or something it's fine if you want to have another little knife or utilitarian type deal but even if you had to get in and cape with this and stuff you could but this knife's really for like breaking down that animal you know for breaking down the big parts and and getting the hide off of it um i think like when my son and i just went on a moose hunt you know the amount of of you know stroke that you have to have to just get it done and you know it's the middle of the night it was raining it's cold

you want to get work done in a hurry yeah get that thing opened up get the hide off of it and then maybe get back to camp get dried out and come back the next day yeah um you can do a ton of work in a hurry with this little blade and then what i like too is like again i'm not i'm not i'm not a master knife smith for sure master of anything maybe maybe yeah but uh um i'm i'm not a master of knife smithsmiths for sure or master of anything maybe maybe yeah but uh um i like how quick i can get an edge on it you know so i know that's part of what you explained you know that that testing is and i don't know if you mentioned how quick an edge comes back but as i said i've had some cool knives that i just could not sharpen because maybe the blade it was so thick and so that the angle to get it sharp you know

was too much or yeah you have to take off too much steel whatever the case But all I do, I have like a little sharpener is kind of, you know, like one of those little plastic ones. Yeah. And I can just go over this a couple times and I'm back in action. Yeah. I'm not wasting time. And the reason for that is if you actually feel a blade in this, in this direction here, you're feeling for the thickness and the edge geometry. And there's not a bunch of meat behind this edge.

Right. Like this knife isn't made for chopping rocks in half. I mean, it's made for going through flesh and hair and meat. So you don't need all that weight behind this edge. And so when you do start to lose that edge and you go to touch it on a stone with a big thick blade, you have to remove all that steel behind that leading edge. That steel behind there also adds added pressure to the edge when you're actually cutting, where this blade is going to go through hide and meat and all that like a laser.

There's no resistance behind that edge, which is going to also allow that edge to stand up longer. And we do. We have a little for in-your-pack sharpening stone that we did with, work sharp and weighs next to nothing. And again, it's intended for that middle of the elk, you know, you stand up, you know, stretch your back. Yeah. Hit a couple strokes on it and you're right back to work and, you know, but again, it's lightweight. You're carrying it around in the woods. You don't want to carry extra weight. Yeah, exactly. No, I'm stoked. And the other cool thing about

this is this looks so much different than all of our other knives. Like this is so purpose built. Yeah. And intended to do one thing. The other cool thing is this is this the first time we've really done red and black as a standard uh a standard color which is just your color the keep hammering addition yeah i love it and for a knife maker i've always thought i'm always like god dang freaking cams stole such a good tagline because like for a for a for a for a knife maker like keep hammering is such a good uh so to me it's so fitting on a blade yeah you know i i i just love i mean i just love how this feels with the even the spot for your thumb right there I don't know.

It just feels like that control. And you mentioned, too, is like even the diaphragm, like having your finger on the tip where it's not that the knife isn't so long. Sometimes you just, that wouldn't be an option. You'd be halfway up to blade

and trying to hold the tip. But yeah, this is. And with this blade, with you choked up, if you just do this with your wrist, you look at the amount of cutting distance that you're going to do. So if you're inside

and you're just doing this with your wrist, you know, it's not big arm strokes. You're under control. you're like this, but you're getting a lot out of that small movement. Super effective. Yeah. Well, I love that we were able to team up on this, and I think people are going to love this knife.

I mean, and it's just a, yeah, it's just a great tool. It is. It's just a tool you're going to use out there. I don't know. Well, the other thing I think I've always been adamant about is, you know, when you have a knife, you also have to be able to take it with you and pack it in the field. and I've seen knives that in stores where you, it's like, okay, this decent knife, hey, let's see the sheath and then they hand you this piece of shit that it's going to fall out of.

Right. These are form molded to the blade. And they also have this clip on here where you can carry this horizontal or vertical. You can flip this. Right. And you can put it on and off of your pack strap or your belt. Perfect. You know, so we try to do those extra little things to make this an actual usable package, full package.

It's a tool and you should be able to carry it and not worry about losing it. One thing I've noticed with your sheets, they are, I mean, they work. Yeah. You know, the knife's not coming out. Right. And I have had it on my bino harness here where, you know, with the knife right there, I've had it on my belt. I've had it on my pocket.

Yeah. Wherever I have it, it works. Yeah. I've never lost a knife. Yeah. And some people even pull the clip off and they will just tuck it in like a bino harness pocket right behind their binoes or something. But it is.

It should work. And, you know, the last thing that I think makes us different than so many other companies, this is why you buy American made is if you need this knife sharpened up after season, and not just you as Cam Haines, but like Bill in Ohio, you need this sharpened. Say you've gone through a bunch of deer and elk and whatnot, and maybe you're not real, real good at sharpening. You send it to us. We'll sharpen it for free and send it back to you the next day.

We don't hold these for more than 24 hours. Wow. So, and if it's missing a screw in the shirphing, sheath or you got some little issue like we'll fix all that stuff we'll clean it up people send it in with fat and meat and shit all over them that's most my knives yeah we we clean them and sharpen them and get them back the next day because that's part of it too is like if i'm if i want you to pass this down for generations it needs to be useful for decades right and if it's dull and you really aren't good at sharpening i mean we have youtube videos and all that stuff to show you but if you just don't

want to learn or you're not real good at it. I'd rather you send that to us and let us sharpen it. You know, and I hear people go like, oh, 300 bucks. I can buy a knife for $39 at Cabell's and it's like, first of all, it's made in China. And second of all, you're going to send that in and get it sharpened and somebody's going to take care of it. Like, yeah, no. You spend 300 bucks on this knife. Yeah. It might, you might have this knife for decades and we'll take care of you. Well, yeah, that, I mean, that's huge. And then also one other little, thing that I've learned this lesson the hard way my father-in-law like is when I killed that bowl right there but it was so it was 97 however many years ago that was god that's getting close to 30 years

but he bought me this this sick knife and it had this green and black handle and you just could not see that thing and I ended up losing it I left it where I was breaking down that bowl and I went back in there because it was like he spent a couple hundred bucks on it. You know, it's just like concrete finisher. Yeah. It's not, you know, that's a lot of money. And it was a sick knife. And I could not find that knife again.

So I've always liked knives with a handle that isn't going to blend in. Right. You know, and in a red knife or, you know, I've had some that were orange. I think you guys had one that I used that was orange. I just like being able to kind of glance and like, oh, there's my knife. Yeah. It's just little things like that. I don't care what people say, like you are going to set them down.

Yeah. Yeah, you have to. Yeah, you have to. And it's like, all right, we got this quarter cut free. Like when we were handling Hank's Moose, you know, it's like, all right, it's cut free. You got to help load it in a game bag. Yeah. You set your knife down and your other buddy's over there and all of a sudden something gets pushed over the top of it.

kicked over. Yeah. And, you know, three or four guys working, there's always a knife laying around. You grab one. And next thing you know, the one you set down on the ground's gone. Yeah. So it is. It's nice to be able to go back and find it, especially in headlamps in the middle of the night.

Yeah. So that's, that's why I like. the red because it just kind of pops out a little bit more where it's going to be a little easier to see yeah but yeah it's a great great looking knife um yeah couldn't couldn't be more excited to build a team up with you guys on this one it's awesome man well i appreciate it it's uh i can't wait to see you putting this thing to use this fall absolutely out there crushing it well i want to talk too about um uh just where is you know montana knife company so let's we'll talk about We heard where it started, but then you and I, was that Calisbell? Yeah.

Yeah. So it was there with Trump Jr. Yeah. Trying 2020 election, whatever they're speaking. Met you there. You had knives for us. It's super cool. But I didn't realize that that was like when you're just getting going.

Yeah. And I've heard you talk about this before about what a grind it is to make a business like Montana Knife Company and grow and invest. and like how to do it, how much to invest, how many people to hire. But the team you have now, just the people I know, you know, I haven't met, or maybe I have, but Brandon, he's done a great job with you. I know Jess. Yep, Jess buyers.

Yeah, she still works for you, right? Yeah, she's fantastic. Yeah, she's awesome. Love Jess. And I know Kip is kind of, is he on your board? He is. Yeah. Yeah, Kip Folks.

So tell me about your team and like how that. allowed you to for this vision that you have to implement it yeah there again not not thinking that you can do everything just by yourself you know and you know when I yeah when I met you in 2020 I still was a lineman is a day roundin wasn't there was he he was he was we had by that point we had just partnered up officially okay okay so yeah he would we had just partnered up he was still living in Calispell actually oh I was down in Missoula so he was right there there. He was out of town that weekend.

Oh, got you. Okay. But to come to that event, and it blew me away, because Trump Jr. shoots me a message. I'm freaking nobody. I mean, I'm still a lineman for the power company. And he shoots me an Instagram message, hey, we're going to be in CalSpell. You want to come up and hang out. And it's like, your dad's president and running again and you're, you're shooting me a message? Yeah. And so I thought it was going to be some big long VIP line, like shake his hand. you know, he walks by. And it's kind of reminded me actually of like grade school or junior high where I was the only

kid allowed to bring knives to school. I'd show them teachers and the principal. And here I show up and secret service. I meet up with them and I'm packing freaking knives. Yeah. And they're like, yeah, come on back. And shit, it was just you and Ted Nugent and junior and a couple of local politicians. And we just hung out and bullshitted.

and it's when I realized like, wow, Don Jr. really is just, I mean, he's this big figure, but he's also just a regular guy, like wants to be a regular guy. And you were super kind. And you guys had no idea, like the dream I was trying to build. But I do believe kind of in manifesting your destiny and like, I'm going to work with that guy someday. Like, I'm going to work with Cam, you know, I'm going to, I'm going to do some of these things. But that, help that you needed along the way between Brandon and then like Bert Soren was Sorenx. You know, his was the first event in February of 2020 right before COVID where I showed some knives around at that event. And that was the first time I had been surrounded by humans that were

that driven as a group. Every person there had their own incredible story. And when you have that many people go, hey, we believe in you, you can do this. Justin and I went home, and it was like just into overdrive. Like, we're absolutely going to do this. And then I met Kip through Bert and through that event and just started asking him questions, you know, about what he did underarmor and how he built it and what mistakes did you make. And I constantly just asked people, I got to meet, you know, Evan Hafer with Black Rifle. And I really looked up to Evan what they did at Black Rifle because Evan's just some dude from Idaho in the end.

Like he's just a regular guy like me from a logging town and went to the military. But then he got out and did something special. And I'm like, well, if Evan can do it and, you know, these guys over here can do it like, why can't I? And then, you know, I hired early on in the company I hired Andrew Oliver, our director of operations. he sent me a message. This is kind of a cool story. I actually saw a comment, this is early in the company,

like late in, early in 2021. I saw a comment on Facebook or Instagram, and he's like, somebody had posted one of our knives, and they said, and Andrew commented and said, oh, I had one of those knives.

I love it, but my truck got broken into and it got stolen. So I just sent him a new knife. And I just shipped him one. And I looked his name up in the system. And he sent me a message and he was like, dude, that was super cool. I work at Amazon and Spokane, you know, like to talk to you about operations and stuff. And so later that fall, I posted a director of operations job because I needed help on the operation side.

And he applied and he was sitting at my kitchen table interviewing. And he's like, do you remember me? And I was like, no, why? And he's like, he told me the story. He's like, you did that. And he's like, I went home that day from Amazon and told my wife. I'm going to work for that company someday. Wow.

And that fall, he interviewed, and I joke because I interviewed him, but technically he interviewed us. He asked me 100 questions. I couldn't answer one of them. And I was like, this dude is way smarter than I am. Yeah. And he hired like 4,000 people at Amazon and Spokane and built that from the concrete up. And it was operating it. And so I hired him.

and he literally, we were working in a two-car garage, his computer next to mine in the workbench, and we're making the knives right behind us. I was still sharpening all the knives with Tristan. And he took a huge risk, gamble with his family, to leave that corporate job and come to Frenchtown, Montana, work in my two-car garage. But a guy like him, a guy like Jason or CFO,

they treat it like it's their company. And when you hire people, you need to find people who will match your work ethic and treat it like it's their own. Right. But then you also have to treat them. That's not easy to do. Well, you know, yeah.

It's not easy finding those type of people. It's true. But I think when they see how much passion and work you're putting it into something, the right kind of people. Like when I interview people, a lot of it, it's not technical. I'm trying to find out who you are. Right. What's your work ethic?

Yeah. You can train skills. Yeah. Yeah. You just want the right fit. Yeah. How do you think? What kind of a human are you?

And, you know, that's why I respect so much of what you talk about, what you're about, not just talk about, but what you do. I, the hardest working man I ever saw in my life was my dad. I grew up in that excavation business. I lugged pipe around ditches from the time I was five years old. You know, I saw him go to work. And he's not on Instagram. He's not doing it for followings or fans or to be an ambassador of whatever. whatever, like, he did it because he was trying to feed his family and grow a business.

And they got married. They had $50 in their bank account. And he had this piece of shit cabless backo and built an excavation company as I was a kid. And I really helped, and my sister helped in that family business all the way through high school. But I got work ethic modeled to me. And I believe in, you know, you, the only way to success is hard work. Like that's the only way, you know. Yeah, no, it's true.

It's, then also I'm like, when I think about myself personally, and I can't speak for you, but we talk about hard work is the only way to success. But I also know that there's a lot of people out there busting their ass who no one will ever know. They'll never quote have this voice, right? So it's, it does take hard work, you're right, but it also takes something else. I don't know what. I don't know what that is. And I know I also had, like when I started MKC in 2020 and when I came and met you,

I had no money. So I couldn't, I wasn't going to be able to stand there and offer to sponsor you or to sponsor a podcast or Brandon and I had zero money. So we, we only did it through handing a knife to somebody like you at that event or hand in that knife to whoever else. We seeded product out. And then we, we just counted on. But I never asked for anything. I never asked, like that day, I never asked you to do anything with it or posted

or just like I wanted the product to speak for itself. But to be honest, I was really fortunate because a lot of the people I gave stuff too, they were just good to us. And a lot of them waited for us to grow before maybe I could be of use back to them to help them. Yeah, but I think that, so when I think it's something else too, I think it's your, and you can't really script this

or you can't really tell somebody else, but it's your demeanor, who you are, makes people, because I don't, I don't, I remember that night and I remember getting the knife and, you know, the interaction, but I just mostly just remember that you seem like a good guy, cool guy. So when the opportunity came up, and I don't remember when the next one was, but I do remember me and Joe breaking down his bowl and were using your knives. Yeah. And so I don't know if that was the next time, but it makes you want to like, oh this this Josh guy yeah he's cool he's a badass I like this guy yeah I want to use his knife on this thing so it's like you could have the person doing the exact same thing but if they're not

you and don't have your demeanor or your how you interact with people do you know how people you know going out saying oh I have all these knives but I want to use this guy's because of whatever else so there is something there yeah and I I don't know what that is because I I appreciate that. It's very, very kind of you. But I, I just love,

I love people. And I don't care how famous they are or not famous they are. But like, I've been so fortunate in four years to meet, you know, like meeting, meeting Rogan, right? But or so many of these other really,

really cool people. I try not to ask anything of anybody because I genuinely want to just be friends with badass people. I don't care if they're, country music singer if they're just a riffer in missoula or if it's rogan right um and when i meet really really famous people i've also been like disappointed i don't care if you're famous if you're a douchebag i don't want to be friends with yeah you know but what i found is there's so many cool people like when you sit down with joe and his bar you know after his you know doing his stuff at the

mothership uh he's just a good human yeah you know and went out pig hunting with him and tyler and we just hung out like boys. And I also think a lot of those people don't want to be treated like anything other than just one of your buddies. Yeah, for sure. But I don't know what that is or why I somehow broke through and so many other knife makers haven't. And I don't think it's anything they're doing necessarily wrong. I honestly, I just, I don't know. I feel like I'm just gotten lucky.

Yeah. You know. But as you said, with hard work. I to to to to sometimes for sure in my life to a fault like mm-hmm I wouldn't change anything or regret anything but like when my kids were growing up and young like I probably worked too much you know um even today uh I mean it's seven days a week like but it's it's passion and to be honest you know um like I could I could sell Montana knife company today like people knock on the door they want to

to buy it or these big conglomerates that they're trying to buy us or whatever. And it's like, I could probably become a wealthy person if I sold Montana Knife Company today. But I, I told our employees and I've told people from the day I started this, like, I've been making knives since I was 11. I want to grow a generational brand. I don't care about like the money side. Like, yes, it's nice to make some money and go do some cool things. But if you gave me $50 million today, tomorrow, I would go to my shop. Yeah, I get that. This is what I do.

And the last thing I'd ever want to do is like sell this just for the money and then watch somebody say, hey, we can make a better margin if we make these handles in China. Yeah. You know, and I also want to be able to support like my friends in the industry that have helped me, you know. There's such good people behind a lot of these brands, whether it's Evan with Black Rifle or, you know, nozzle or I wear this shirt. just because like John Nason and Maddie have been great to us, you know. And there were companies and people and it's actually difficult because like I have a lot of friends that compete with each other, you know, it could be a person from this PAC company and this PAC company and whatnot. But we try to kind of be Switzerland because like, God,

there's such good people behind so many of these brands. And it's sometimes that's hard. But I, I don't know. I'm rambling on, but I just truly love the people. people in this industry. Yeah. Yeah, me too. It's a yeah, I just know that it probably, I know how it feels for me, but like when you see Joe wearing an MKC hat or sweatshirt or whatever it does, this is like how incredible is that? Um, it's, it's mind blowing and people will send me photos and, um, sometimes I feel awkward about it because I hate to, you know, Brandon runs our Instagram. He'll share that stuff and, and, you know, take, Joe and all that and I and Joe knows what he's doing when he puts something on like he knows he

knows he knows his influence he's not dumb but that being said I also just want people like him and these other people to know how much I appreciate that like and I never want people to feel like we're like using them or whatever but they they know their platform makes a difference and I've never been on his podcast but it's amazing how many people come up and they're like I heard you on Rogan's podcast. No, you didn't. But you probably saw him wearing our hat or. Yeah. But people have no idea how powerful. Like, you don't need to be Joe Rogan. If you, if you wear an MKC hat, and when you're buying a Montana Knife Company knife, you're buying an idea. You're buying what we are about and what it means. And it's it's two dudes that started a company and

bootstrapped it. There's no major investors. We didn't sell out. We didn't sell out. we didn't go borrow any money in the beginning because I already felt like I was risking my family by quitting my job. Yeah. And even when everyone was telling me so many knife makers

and not in a malicious way, they were just like, dude, you can't make honey knives and make it and compete against the big boys. Like you have to make these in China. You can't make a honey knife and sell it for $300. A honey knife in a store is $69.

And I said, I know there's enough Americans in this country that will appreciate what we're doing that will make a living off of it. And I think we were on the verge, and this was, again, kind of luck. But in 2020, with COVID and a lot of the BS happening, I think there were a lot of Americans out there starting to turn their eyes back towards like American-made products. Yeah. And I tell people, hey, if you can't afford to buy our knife, I totally understand.

If you're on a budget and whatnot, maybe you shouldn't. Like, if that $300 is your last $300 bucks, you should probably save that and make sure your kids have food. But if you even buy a hat or a shirt and wear it or you tell your friend, like, it doesn't matter what marketing we do. It doesn't matter what podcasts I've ever been on. Every single one of our post-knife surveys that we get, how did you hear about our company? Number one is always friends and family. It's recommendation. And so, you know, when you as an American walk into your closet,

and you put your shirt on for the day, you were a part of an advertising budget for somebody right there. And if you choose to put that Nike shirt on or that black rifle shirt or that MKC or that Keep Hamering shirt, you are telling America something about yourself. If you're wearing that Keep Hamering shirt

and you're walking down the street, somebody looks over and they're like, oh, that dude, he's like me. Like that's what I thought Black Rifle did so well. You know, like the world didn't need more coffee. Right. Like the world doesn't need another knife company. Mm-hmm.

But people were buying an idea, you know. And that's what I really enjoyed about following Evan and Matt and Logan and those guys in those early days is I could follow the owner of a company and realize that guy is saying the shit that I believe. He's not afraid to stand up to the woke bullshit and say, no, this is BS. You know, and we try to not be super political on our MCN. PC page because there's plenty of that out there. But if you follow me, like, yeah, I'm going to the inauguration next week. I like Trump. You know, and if you don't like Trump, that's fine. Yeah. But we also don't have to hate each other for it. But you know what? American made like American manufacturing, I had no idea truly. I always thought it was important and powerful. But now that

I've started this company and I have 75 Americans working for me. And then it's not just that. It's also the contractors we use for like where we buy our steel the steel's made in america it's rolled in america laser cut in america ground and you start to see the impact that those when you buy a knife from us or a hat or whatever those dollars are being spread across the country and you look at like francesca with teeton leather where we get our sheaths made she was making she's in her basement when i started mkc she knows that has a full commercial facility with like 10 employees that was built around Montana Knife Company. So you've impacted that whole business and her employees.

Where we have our cutting boards made, Montana Block and Billings. He now has employees in a different facility and he's, you know, and people also see like, hey, where did MKCC get those cutting boards made? And now I see like, oh, there's Montana Block cutting boards being sold over on this website, but they found them because of us. Yeah. So the impact when you buy something that's American made is far reach. Yeah. And I think some people, they do buy into the idea of Montana knife. I think some people also

just want a good knife, you know, and they don't really know about your idea. But then they, because, you know, I don't want to, it's not all marketing, but your marketing is so you guys do such a good job. Even if they just wanted a good knife, now they're in the network, right? And they're, you guys can get that messaging out. And that's what you do a great job of. You follow up with emails the the merch looks great the storytelling is great so that's what I say like when I talk about your team it that's how you grow and that's how you get that this vision of expansion like you know I know you have a big investment in expansion but you have to have that that network of people yeah all going the same direction doing the same thing you know and Kip talks to me about oh they do a

great job their, you know, whatever their visit is, turning that into sales, this and that percentage and all that. And just like, that's what it takes. It's like that business mind, too. So you have this vision as a passion, a knife maker, and this is what you want to see. And this, this feels good to be involved in something like this. But then also it's like implementing this very well thought out business plan. Yeah. And that's what I've been impressed with with you. Yeah. No, I appreciate it. And, you know, yeah, we, you won't find our knives and Cabellas and Shields and some of those places yet because we can't even supply our own website but all and and keep ahead of it you know but by selling knives on our website we know who our customer is if you go buy you know

something from Shields the the people who made that don't know who you are right so we're able to with your data reach out and be like hey are you happy did did we do a good job oh by the way here here's this and right we can retarget that and um but owning your customer's data is important and then we can also track who our best customers are and reach out and say thank you and send them a VIP pack and you know we do some of those things that we don't market and talk about um but we we keep track of our VIPs and our best customers and um but you're right like we have three full-time videographers i mean you have to invest back in your company and in people if you want to grow and you know a lot of people use agencies and that stuff but we can control the exact feel of how we want our brand to feel it's

very important to me when you look at montana knife company ultimately it's you know it's representing josh smith and what he's about and myself and uh you know brandon does a really good job on the marketing side of making sure like i don't want to ever come across as hokey or douchy or doing shit for that's not authentic yeah but you're right you do have to market well and black rifle coffee they marketed well like they were really good at that um and you know the other that you know the other The other part of the idea of Montana Knife Company is, I think we had this BS narrative in our country starting to build where the American Dream was dead and everything's unfair and, you know, you can't get ahead in America. And granted, it's, it's tough.

Like, it's, but I don't think it was ever, also wasn't easy in the 1940s in the Great Depression. Like, it's never been easy. But I think what Montana Knife Company proves is that you can be a regular guy with a regular job. four kids and broke as hell. And in 10 years later, you can have Montana Knife Company and, you know, 75, 80 employees and build a brand. And only in America does that happen.

Yeah. That doesn't happen in other countries. It's true. If you combine some good connections and some good people helping you, a good work ethic and a good product with some good marketing, like you can build anything. And I have people message me. a lot and they're like, well, I'm going to quit my job and start chasing my dream because I'm,

I've been motivated by you. And I'll ask him like, well, what have you done so far? Like, well, nothing. I got to quit my job. And it's like, no, fucker, you got to get up earlier. Yeah. You got to go to bed later. Yeah. Like you, you're risking your family. You know, it's like, well, I want to be the next Cam Haynes and I need to be an ambassador for all these brands. but I got to quit my job so I can go bohunt more and it's like you're just going to go broke bro. Yeah. Like you need to start working on that on Saturday, Sunday,

Monday morning, Monday night, Tuesday morning, Tuesday night. Mm-hmm. And, you know, sleep less. Yeah. And work harder. Yeah. You know. People said, you know, yeah, I want to be a,

I don't even know what a professional bowhunter is, but they want to be that and not like, what does it take? I'm like, it's not going to happen. Right. It's just not going to happen. It's like, because that's the, that's the, the bottom line is the chances of it happening are about zero.

Yeah. So just like with you, if that's your goal just when you were 12, like, oh, I'm going to, I'm going to be this, this thing and the president's going to have my knife, probably not going to happen. If your goal is to make cool knives and you just love doing it, then who knows what. Right. But it's got to have that passion. and it's got to have that.

It's not going to be perfect when you start. It's going to be grinding it out. Yeah, I'm 43. 32 years later, the overnight success of Montana Knife Company appears. Yeah, exactly. It's not, I didn't do this all the way through my 20s and my 30s thinking I was ever going to get rich. Right. I did it because I loved it.

And then I got old enough and wise enough that I made a few good choices and then I got some good help. And then I had some really nice people, you know, willing to share some things because, again, I think they shared it because they just liked the story and like what it was about. But then we capitalized on it. Right. And you have to, that's another part of it. So yeah, the storytelling, we talked about marketing, but really it's storytelling. What's your story? Yeah. If your story isn't like, isn't going to resonate with people. It's the wrong. I guess that story's not going to work. But your story resonates. And then. And. then you were able to capitalize on it. Yeah. You know, and that's that's what people miss too. It's just like, yeah, everything was great up until like, so how do we maximize this opportunity? Right. And that's what you've done a good job of. Yeah. And you also have to be willing to keep pushing your chips in the middle of the table. It's, it's easy to hit one big thing and then say, well, I'm going to pull those chips off and just put a couple more back on the table. Right. It's like, no, I'm going to go all in again. and I'm going to go all in again.

You know, I was, you know, we were kind of facing choice here this year of like, you know, do we take on investment and kind of sell a big chunk of the company to help pay for the next stage? Right. You know, we're still making these knives in my horse pasture at my house. I mean, 70 employees report to work in my backyard at my home. That's why we don't have like a public facing location. because it's literally at my house. Yeah.

And so when we went to buy land and build a building, and we started realizing, I'm like, this is going to cost $15 to $20 million. It's like, if we're going to do that, we're going to have to like literally risk everything. And including putting our homes up for collateral. And that's if we could even get the loans. And so we started talking about this about a year and a half ago

and started building towards it and ask and Kip and different people for advice. And even some of them were like, yeah, it might be smart to bring on an investor. And like let them put five or $10, $15 million into the company, but you're going to have to give up a big chunk, maybe even ultimately control. But you could probably use their money in that boost

to build like this major brand, right? But ultimately you won't be in control. And, you know, brand and I talked about it. And it was like, that's, you know, if we can possibly do it just on our own, we're going to do it. And so we, this summer, we spent all summer trying to figure out the financing part. And just a week and a half of two weeks ago, we closed on the building loans, 20 million bucks that we took out as a personal loans. And loans against the company, loans against Brandon and I's homes, the whole nine yards with zero. invested in it's just Brandon and I and I told our team in our shop the only reason we're

willing to do that is because I have an army of 75 people right behind me like our crew of people you know with Jason is our CFO and Andrew is our CEO and then and then all of the all the way down through the worker bees that we've just hired in the last couple months um you know i feel like we can invade this country and take this country over with those 70 people but i said i told them i'm like we we need every bit of effort out of you guys because we literally just went put all on the line and i think it was actually kind of a transformational moment when there was a dude walking around my place and you had a tape measure stretched across my shop and one of my guys walked in he was like hey what's a dude doing measure in your house and i was like i was like

I told you guys, like, they're praising everything I have to put it on the line for this building loan. And I think it was just like, they were like, oh, holy shit. Like, he's not, he's not just full of shit. And we risked at all to build this next phase and where we just poured a concrete foundation. We're going to start tipping seal up in February. But we're hoping by the end of 2024 to actually have like a public facing building. It's going to have a black rifle coffee shop in it. Nice.

You can stop. If you're on your way from Oregon to Yellowstone Park, you can pull in and get a cup of coffee, and you can actually see through the windows and see the knives being manufactured. But we're in 10,000 square feet right now, and that building's 50,000 square feet. Wow.

And we're trying to bring the rest to some of the processes we don't do in-house now in-house. But it's funny. One of the pages that's shitting on us right now is the new narrative is that, I'm a Fed. Fed. Yeah, I'm a Fed because I'm friends with, like, Trump Jr. and whatnot.

And the only way that our business could have ever gotten alone to that degree and to grow as fast as we grew was through help with the government. And so we're feds. And I was like, oh, my God. It's like, and they're like, well, yeah, it's not possible for a knife maker to build what you built in four years. You have to have had help. And, you know, you've probably had help from. like they were saying meta and all this different stuff. And I'm like, I haven't been able to go live on my Instagram page for nine months because we're shadow banned.

Right. I hit live on my MKC page and it says you're not allowed to use this function at this time because you're, it's like. Yeah, because you're a patriot. Yeah. Well, no, people are fucking insane, dude. It's just like so, so, you know, if you just look at, so if you look at from the 30,000 foot view, it would be like, oh, Josh, yeah, he was a lineman. Here's what people think.

He was a lineman, quit his job. Now he's going to the inauguration and they're making millions of dollars. Right. Yeah. It's just like, okay, I think you're missing a big part. That's where the storytelling is so important. But even if you tell a good, you do a good job of like explaining the investment and putting everything on the line, then you still have these pages of dumb fucks. I swear the only way to get through it, and I don't think it would even work is if you actually show

them your bills like yeah i still have a car payment i wouldn't like i'm not nothing works with those dumb fucks that's all there's to it's true but it's the the thing i will say is 99% of the people are supportive and even the amount of messages i get from custom knife makers that are like dude you're an inspiration you're showing me what's possible i'm going to do this i'm going to do that and i'm always like freaking rock on like go do it you know now you know like you know like you said how How do you become a professional bow hunter? You're not. I had knife makers tell me like, you know, I told them what I want to start.

And they're like, you're not going to do that. And that's a good point. You have to prove them wrong. That's a good point. It's like, if that's enough to stop you, you are never going to fucking make it. Right. So if it's me saying you'll never be a, you'll never be this sponsored bow hunter. If that stops you, it's fucking never going to happen.

Yeah. Because there's going to be a lot worse things that come up than just some words from me or from you. Or, you know, you heard no, you'll never make it. That wasn't going to stop you. It actually drives me. I mean, it's like, I know, I'm going to, I believe in this so strong, I'm going to prove you wrong. And some of the hater stuff, like I know Rogan says,

don't read the comments and stuff. And I think in general, it's generally a good idea. Yeah. But I, trust me, I go find some of those comments sometimes to walk out in my shop with like a renewed sense of like, fuck you. I love it. I will show you.

you know and to be honest we haven't even gotten started i mean we grew montana knife company where is today in the hunting space was it like 2% of americans have a hunting license yeah something like that you know for a fixed blade hunting knife um wait till we launch our folding knife next year yeah our pocket knives we're coming out within 26 wait till i'm not in my backyard yeah like and i do i get sometimes this attitude of like dude just wait I love that. I love that. Yeah.

You haven't seen shit. My friends come to visit and they're like, where do I park? Like, I have people parking down my road. Yeah. They park in my barn where our cows are. Like, and I always tell our employees, like, even the people that just got hired, I'm like, you might think you're late to the party. But you're going to say someday we're going to be in that new building. And in 10 years, you're going to be telling people like, dude, I used to come to work and have to back into Josh's barn and park next to his Cabota.

Yeah. Like, I love that. It's still just the beginning. Yeah. That's what, and I think that's some, you know, sometimes when you see those, the hate comments or whatever, it's like, because you've sacrificed so much, it's like, if I didn't care, I wouldn't care.

I wouldn't care about anything. Right. But because you care so much, you read that and you're like, you motherfuckers. Yeah. Because you don't know what, they don't know what it felt like for you to be like risking everything. Yeah. And to go through, you know, you mentioned like, oh, I got a divorce and I had four kids. I don't, do people realize how traumatic, like those type of just regular life challenges are? Yeah. And to like quit your job because you couldn't get the day off to go deliver, you know,

Thomas Redd a knife. Those type of decisions you had to make and live with. Yeah. And just like, they can just write it off on like, oh, yeah, he got help from the government, obviously. It's like, What the, what are you talking about? Do you know what this takes? Do you not, you don't remember the time like I do that Craig Kelly had my lineman, but I had to drive 30 miles at the top of Lolo Pass to tow me home because I had a piece of shit truck. I couldn't afford a decent truck and me and my kids are stranded up there and like toes me

home because I couldn't afford to call a tow truck. Right. Like that was nine years ago. That was real. So that's real life. Yeah. So then when you come on my page and you. comment and you're talking shit and you're saying like and I did I shot I shot a guy a message last

week and I did I started I I said shit I shouldn't have but so then what he does he screenshots it and he goes and puts it on his feed and he's like look at Josh Smith he's you know this is the kind of guy you're supporting dude he's petty I defend I have 70 people and with 75 people I'm also responsible to feed each month and you're fucking right I'm going to defend them and defend that because if we don't succeed, they can't pay their bills. They lost a job. Yeah. And I lose my home.

Like if this doesn't work, like we lose. I don't have Vista outdoors or whatever conglomerate as a backup. No, it's me and Brandon. Yeah. That's what people, I've done the same thing. And mostly just because it's been such a hard grind. But it's like, and people will say, oh, you know, Cam's petty.

It's like, yeah, I fucking am petty. You better believe it. And yeah, I'm going to keep reminding you how petty I am. But no, it's just like when you put, you know, the blood, sweat and tears, it sounds cliche, but God. Well, and I see it too, like you see somebody like jelly roll or you see some of these country music singers or UFC fighters. I'm friends with Bow Nickel and Jim Miller and you, you know, you. What I enjoy about being around, not because they're celebrities. Like, I don't care if I hang around.

I get just as motivated by being around somebody like my dad who just ground his whole life for no accolades, no, because he was trying to build for his family. But when you're around some of those fighters or you're around some of those country music singers or, and it's like they're telling stories about like when they were just going down and playing in their local bar for, for tips, right? Or the UFC fighters who were battling away learning their craft early in their careers and they were all broke. They all probably came from tough, you know, conditions. What I love about being around quote unquote famous people is most of those people didn't, weren't born famous. No. They earned their name. They earned it through their hard work. And so I get motivation from that because sometimes it's it does get daunting of like god dang like is this going to keep going you know how are we going to keep doing it and then you you go be around something and you're like

yeah it's it's like look at what that guy did it's possible you know um i see like the hate that evan gets with black rifle like after all the tens of millions of dollars he's given away to veterans and whatnot and they're like you know oh he's woke piece of shit and it's just like i was in that guy's house when the New York Times article broke. And I heard him talking to a private group of people, like how pissed off he was about, like, how they were talking about that guy and his company. And he's defending his company and what they're doing. And, you know, I've personally been around when I've seen them give away money and take care of veterans and do things that aren't on the internet. And so when you're around people like Evan or around other, like, famous celebrities, uh,

that earned their way for over decades. Like I get, I get energy off of that. And I go home and it's like, let's freaking go. Yeah. You know, I mean, you know, I think you mentioned Evan is like, when I think of a CEO, it's like he is like so good at running the company. You know, I know he, you said small town, military, but whatever the case, he's built for, I think, you know,

his operations is kind of what he did in the military, he said when he was a green beret. But he is so good, but your story reminds me of, yeah, he's got so many critics. Mostly it's just because of success. And men who haven't achieved what they want, they like to lash out on people who maybe have, quote, made it. But I was listening to another podcast with another knife maker, and I can't remember his name right now. But he had the story about Evan. Evan, he was struggling.

I think he was separated from his wife. Yeah, it was probably Lucas O'Hara from Grizzly Forge. That's it. Yeah, great guy. And Evan sent him money and made orders so he could keep going. And he was like, hey, could you make me 50 nights? Well, and Evan actually had him move into his shop there at Black Rifles. Right.

Right. Nobody knows all that. Right. If Lucas isn't saying it, Evan's sure the hell not saying it. Right. But that, those type of people, they're doing things that nobody knows about. But everybody's criticizing for shit they don't know or they just see from the surface and that that's I think what drives you crazy and like I've talked about Rogan's generosity for whatever But like when you said that you know sometimes you need to you want to show people your bills. Yeah, it's just like it wouldn't fucking matter no because those type of people it wouldn't matter what you did or how how you tried to justify it. It's never enough. Right and the people that are going to be successful are the ones who

study the successful people and they emulate it. Like when I was a lineman, I was listening to every single one. I was on the service truck for a while, so I was solo. So I was listening to every single one of his podcasts. Whose? Evans. Okay. And I was listening to a lot of times it was back then. It was kind of the core four. They were together a lot. And so I would try to take any little piece of what they were doing. I actually took vacation time in, uh, um, the, summer of 2019, I'm sorry, 2020 in July, I reached out to Evan on social media. And I was like, hey, I'd like to meet with you. I have some ideas, blah, blah, blah. I just, I didn't think that he would respond. And he's like, sure, man, what time you want to meet? And I was like, oh, shit.

So I was like, how about, you know, one o'clock tomorrow afternoon, right after our lunch break? I just figured I extended. He's like, okay, cool. Give me a call. And so I had to take a half hour of PTO vacation time. And I stood, I was in lower Miller Creek in Missoula, Montana in a subdivision down by the fire station. Like I remember, I could go stand where the dirt pilot, today it's probably somebody's yard. We were putting in underground power. And I stood on the side of the job site while backos and everything were running around me. And it was Matt and Evan.

And it's the first time I'd ever talk to him. And I was like, hey, I'm starting this company. You know, and I kind of explained some of the ideas that I had going, what I'm going to do. And I'm like, I really want to work together someday. And they were like, yeah, man. And Evan asked me, he's like, have you ever thought about making bag openers for coffee? And I was like, no, but we could talk about it. And it was just like that initial connection.

And it was funny because he's from Idaho. And he's like, where are you from? And I'm like, well, Missoula, Montana. He's like, oh, so are you a fucking communist? I started laughing. Yeah. Because Missouille is kind of a liberal area. And he's like, oh, I used to come over there fishing on the Clark Fork and the Bitterroot and all this stuff.

And he was busting my balls. But I told him that day, I'm like, we're going to work together someday. And he's like, yeah, cool, man, sounds good. And I'm sure they hung up the phone and are like, whatever, you know. And that was in 2020, again, several months before I met you. And sure enough, down the road, we ended up becoming actually friends and then working together. And people who were in part of the Black Rifle Coffee Club get a discount on our knives, stuff like that. But again, I, instead of shitting on people that I saw that were being successful, whether it was you or whether it was Evan or Kipp or Burt Soren or whoever it was.

It just like when I was, I took the attitude like when I was trying to learn how to make knives when I was 12, I tried to just ask people questions like constant. What did you do here? how did you navigate this? Like, who do you hire to do this or that? Or should I hire it in-house? Or should I have someone else do things out of house? And you get a lot of different information. And ultimately, you have to choose your own path and build your own brand.

What's a, that story kind of reminded me something. So what's something you've learned from Evan? Can you think of anything? Don't give up equity early in your company. Best piece of advice I ever got. So he gave away, you know, not gave away. but I mean he let some people in early because when you're brand new and you're and it's early you can be like oh you can run the camera and do like yeah how about I give you a 2% of my company

because like it's nothing today like when I gave not worth anything when I gave brand in the equity I gave him you know it's not worth anything there you're not 2% of nothing is nothing is nothing yeah and so you give your camera guy 2% And you're like, hey, I'm going to trade this out. Fuck my camera guy, by the way. He's not getting shit. But anyway. But, and then you're like, oh, my best friend, he, you know, he's a good dude.

He's always been there for me. Yeah, he's always, I'm going to give him 2%. And then all of a sudden you wake up one day and you have black rifle coffee and you're trying to go public on Wall Street. And you gave, you know, some dude, whatever percent or whatever. And they're not doing anything, right? And so he told me early on, he's like, protect. those chips, right? Like keep that and also keep control, you know, and, uh, um, and then there was just a lot of other, uh, other things about business related stuff that's just like, it's just

small little things, but they add up, you know, um, little small piece of pieces of advice, you know, and I think also I learned not from him telling me this, but also, uh, Evan is still Evan today. Like, he's the same guy. And like I'm the CEO now of this big company with Montana Knife Company and I still find that That acronym weird like CEO. I'm not CEO. I'm Josh. I make knives right But I try to still just be who I am and that probably comes with me saying should I shouldn't and calling people names on the internet when I shouldn't. But I also think that's what if you change, if you let success or because you're now all of a sudden friends with Rogan all of a sudden you change,

then you're not who you are. You're not why that person became friends with you. Right. Yeah. No, that's a good point. What I like to, what I've learned from,

after I asked you that question, I just think about what I've learned. What I've learned from Evan and from Kip and from people who I look up to in business is they'll just, they'll talk to whoever. Like I'll tell Kip, you know, hey,

he's helping me with my merchandise type stuff. And he's like, he goes, okay, yeah, I'll get on the phone all. I'll get it figured out. He'll pick up the phone and talk to him.

Like most people, to me nowadays, it's like it's either text or it's whatever, it's not even saying anything, but it's like that communication like, no, I need to talk to you about this right now and get it handled. Evans the same way. He'll like, hey, do you got a minute to talk to talk this out? Yeah. And it's just like just dealing with it, you know? Yeah.

Sometimes business goes on and people just don't want to make the hard decision or have the hard conversation or even just talk to the person. And it's just like, that's what I've learned from those guys is they'll get on a plane. They'll pick up the phone. They'll go and just get it taken care of. I handled something last night that I sent an email and dealt with something last night. And one of our people was like, that's not your job. You shouldn't have to do that. I'm like, me, it's not my job. It's my company. Every job is still my job. Like, you know, when we have a new knife that's like maybe a tough design that's hard to sharpener that's new. Like even with this blade, like I'll go down in the sharpener room and I'll spend a half of a day training and making sure that like they know how to do

this. And I think that also helps people follow you when they see that you can like walk in the sharpening room and sharpen for four hours straight and beat them on all their rates and quality. Like they're like, oh, Josh isn't just a carpet walker upstairs. Like he can come down here, stand up to the outgrinder and beat us all. Yeah. Right. And it's not like it's a competition, but it shows like you still can do the thing.

Evan can walk in and he can do the thing. Yeah. Kip can walk in and do it. Right. I think the best leaders can still walk in and do it. Also the best leaders know when they can't and they go like Dylan with our machine. Like what, you know, Dylan will come sometimes to me or somebody will come with me with a question and I'm like,

I don't know, you're the expert, go do it. Yeah. Yeah. Like, you know, you don't need to ask me to buy tooling. Like, you know, I think some people are also used to being micromanaged. Yeah. And it's like, yeah, I can do the thing, but I can also say, figure it the fuck out. Yeah. Do it yourself, you know.

And that empowers them to be like they can act like they own the company and go do it. Yeah, take ownership. I do think that that is, there is a fine line there because, yes, you want to be able to do the job. and you want to be able to do it better than anybody, and you can show you still carry some weight. But then also there's like, when do you transition over to like the Bill Belichick where he's not going to be able to go show a corner

how to freaking get on the route? You know, he doesn't have to anymore. No. You know, so he's, he did play at one time, but now he's not playing. Yeah. But so it's like it is that transition. Like, yeah, I used to be able to do this.

I don't need to anymore. but here's what I can, I can help you do your job better, even though I'm not doing it. Yeah. You know, Dylan's a master machinist. I'm not, I hand-filed them.

Like I hand-filed them. I do, you know, when we're making production knives, there's a lot of stuff involved with machines that I never owned. You have C&C machines now, I assume?

CNC mills. Yeah. Or like a Swiss lave that we just bought, like for making screws. So instead of buying the screws, we're starting to make our own screws. and it's because I don't want to have to count on like a supplier. Yeah.

Yeah. And like, oh, I put the screws in the mail three days ago. I don't know where they're at. Yeah. And it's like, come to find out, you never even freaking ship them. Now you're in control of that. Yeah. You eliminate some variables.

Yeah. Make it yourself. Maybe cut down on the margin. Right. It's good decision. But empowering those guys and being like, hey, man, you're the expert. I expect you to run that department and own it, you know. and empower.

And I think that helps with the morale in the shop. Like that was one thing that bothered us as linemen. Like we're the experts. Like we truly know what we're doing on the power line. And then you hire a boss that doesn't know what we're doing. And then he decides he's going to question every single thing. And it's like, dude, go to your truck. Shut up.

Let us get this done. Go buy some coffee. Even though, you know, I was a manager, quote, whatever, I always said I hate management. I fucking hate management because I don't like the guys who are for me it was guys in the ditch for you guys on the pole But it's like those are guys doing the fucking work Yeah they they're the ones who should get the credit where I saw managers taking credit for like yeah We got in you know 20,000 foot of pipe last year. It's like well you didn't get in shit first of all

Yeah, the guys got it in yeah so and you still get the credit that's the thing too like I we really teach that and I and And I'm so proud of some of the leaders in our company because you're right. If you're managing that water crew, you're managing that line crew and they go out and they get a ton of work done in the night after a storm. And they whip it out. And you as a manager, you walk into your bosses and you go, I got everything fixed. I blah, blah, blah. They know you didn't do shit. You look like a douchebag.

But if you go, hey, dude, my crews, like they crushed it. They kicked ass. like unbelievable job, blah, blah, blah, you're still going to get the credit as a manager. Like, we know you still need a manager. And we do reviews quarterly at our business with every single employee because I want them to have a touchpoint to me and to our managers. And so it gives them a chance to have a voice, but also gets us a chance to give them feedback and tell them how they can be improving. And we try to build our leaders from within. and I was complimenting Melissa, who when I hired her, young girl, she came in.

She was like our third employee, and she was working on like a construction crew. She was kind of lost, didn't have much going, right? Just trying to figure out life. She started knowing nothing. And Tristan started with me. He was my first full-time employee, but he started when he was still in high school. Didn't go to college. His family was pissed.

He had a full ride for academics. he chose not to go. I think they thought, oh, he's just taking a year off. The next fall came, and I think he saw something was building. I think he just believed in what I was trying to do. It was just me and him working in the shop together. Brandon didn't even live down there. And now him, who started at 17 and she started at 22, I think,

they both now manage all like 60 people downstairs. The two of them have it split basically in half, and they're managing everyone, 21 years old and 25 or whatever. But when I was complimenting her on some rates and a bunch of stuff, and she goes, oh, yeah, that was all like Jeremiah and Ben or whatever. Like she just was like, oh, yeah, that wasn't me. That was them. Yeah.

It was like, that's why you're going to be successful here. Because you, but you facilitated that. You made sure they knew how to do those things, but then you empowered them to do it. then you pass them the credit yeah there no one else around just me and her in a room she could easily said yeah thanks no i appreciate that yeah but she made sure i knew that was jeremiah and ben yeah that's and it seems so simple that it's so hard i don't know if it's harder for guys because you you know you said melissa maybe women are better at that guys in general are terrible at passing off credit they want to get all the credit so i don't know if that was just her but it sounds like you know you

you know, the other young guy, too. Tristan's the same way. Yeah. But we, that's Andrew, who managed all those people at Amazon. And he was a, you know, he was in the Army, Ranger qualified guy, had a lot of leadership stuff through the military. And we try to actually teach that into our people towards like, you're never going to impress me if you come up and you're taking all the credit for everything.

But if you're reporting what your team is doing and what you're responsible for, and And then also one of the questions in our interview too is like, you know, tell us your biggest failure professionally, right? And for you to be able to walk in my office and be like, hey, Josh, yesterday, like, I completely fuck something up, right? And here's why, here's what happened, whatever. Like, cool. Like, we want people to be able to come in and also tell us when they screw up.

Yeah. But passing down that credit, because then that allows me as the CEO to walk downstairs and go, Hey, Ben, Jeremiah, come here. Hey, I was chatting with Melissa in her review yesterday. She said, you guys are responsible for this? Nice work. Guess who's going to get the credit from them? Melissa.

They're going to go to Melissa and be like, or they won't even say anything, but they're like, damn. My boss, Melissa, went up in her review and talked about us. Yeah. What are they going to want to do the next day? Work harder for her. For sure. Right?

And then they're going to want to do that. They're going to pass their credit down to, hey, Melissa, Aiden and the Sharpen in the Sharpener. him like he crushed it yesterday and now Melissa can walk in the next day and be like hey aiden you're sharpening those packouts for cam's knife nice work ben said you crushed it right and it just snowballs and the next thing you know you have this cohesive 75 people that are just freaking crushing it and that that's what we have going but that comes from it starts at the top and it it works down through every single level all the way to the bottom yeah you know no it's uh i don't know I think people, it's little things like that.

That reminded me too of we had this job, this waterline reconstruction job. And something about, I was arguing with the city about, I don't know, we had to repave the trench line we dug up and how much of the road we had to replace type thing. And so anyway, I just, I asked the GM, I said, could you, is kind of by the main office down there. I said, could you meet me out on the job site? and, you know, I could just walk the job and show you. And so just the GM going to the job, that's all it took. It was just like the guys on, you know, the excavator guy, dump truck guys, guys in the ditch, there's like, oh, shit, the GM's here.

Right. And just that he cared about their job enough to walk the job, that's all it took. It matters. It's just like those little things. It's like giving credit, you know, where it's due and where we want to take all the credit. But even just the little things like you walking through and just, you know, just checking out somebody's work. That's all it takes. Right.

People just want to be acknowledged. They do. And that's the thing is they want to feel like they're appreciated, you know, and just sitting here on a podcast talking about actual names in our shop. Like those people will appreciate that. And we always are trying to, you know, show them appreciation where we can. But I think in general. And this is where so many big corporations lose it is they don't realize that people don't. Yes, they want to be paid more all the time and whatnot.

But they also understand there's only so much that they're going to be able to get paid or so many pay raises. But man, just like, hey, you're doing a great job. Go so far, you know. And mentality, like, that's why so many of our questions when I interview are about you as a human. I always tell them when I look on, if you apply for a job and whatnot and I look on your Instagram,

if I see you, you get up on a Saturday and you go hike to the top of a mountain with your golden retriever, or you go duck hunting or you go, you know, throw a frisbee in the park with your friends. If you're getting up and doing something,

I know you're the right kind of person. Right. If you're just lazy and sitting around and unmotivated, like I can't do much with that. But if I can, I don't care what you do, do something. You know, because your Instagram, I always tell my kids, your Instagram and some of your social media, that's your modern day business card.

That's your resume. I tell my kids who are big athletes, I'm like, your college coaches, you're going to pull up your page. And like, if you're acting like a jackass on there, you're showing who you really are on your Instagram page. Like, you better think of that. And I always tell, I think it catches people off guard. but when I interview, you know, we'll go through kind of the normal, serious interview stuff, questions.

And then I'll be like, hey, Cam, if you were in a giant swimming pool, like the biggest one in the country, and you're swimming in it with your friends or whatever. And somebody on the other end of that swimming pool takes a shit in it. Are you going to keep swimming? And they're like, no. And I'm like, well, it's a huge pool. And they're like, I'm like, you're going to stay in it if there's a turd floating around? And they're like, no.

And I'm like, then don't be the shit in my swimming pool. because if you are, I'm going to scoop you out. Right. And that's a thing like when you put someone on a line crew, you put someone on, you know, a gas project or a waterline project. And you have a crew of four or five or eight guys, right, or a shop full of people making knives. And you put one poisonous personality in that mix,

poisons the whole thing. Yeah. Like that will spread through their like cancer. And so we try our best to really watch out for that because it's also my job to protect. I have 75 unbelievable people in my building. It's my job to make sure number 76 is also awesome. Right. And, you know, just because we need help.

I'm not going to be like, hey, Cam, you got to train this freaking guy here and he's really a piece of shit. But it's your problem. I'm upstairs. Yeah. It's not my problem. Yeah. Like, no, no, we have to keep trying to hand them the, best people possible. We're always looking at people like, can we see this person down the road leading

people? And if you can't, then you're probably, we're probably not going to hire you. Yeah. I read something the other day too. It's like, no matter what job you have, if you're not outperforming the expectations, even at the lowest job, you're probably not going to, your future isn't that bright, basically. So no matter what you do, no matter how menial it is, you can do better than it's expected. Yeah. Right. But that person with that negative attitude,

or you said like the shit in the pool, that also did remind me, linemen always have the best one-liner. Like, that's kind of like a longer analogy. Normally it's like, don't tell me how rough the water is just get the boat in. Normally it's like shit like that.

Or like Aaron said something about a wedding day dick harder than a wedding day dick. That seems like a lineman thing. But I do like those analogies. And it's like that attitude is, so important for just the culture. You know, it's like, you know, you talk about these businesses. It's always culture first.

Yeah. You know, the skills will come, but you have to have that healthy culture. You do. And I told all our people at our Christmas party this year, like, you know, I've done our, I've done the best job I can do. Me and Brandon, Andrew, have provided the best people that we can. But it's getting big enough now that it's hard to having a direct impact on each individual person.

like the CEO. And I said, the feeling in this room at this Christmas party is unbelievable. Like the camaraderie, these, you guys shoot bows together. You go fishing together. You go New Year's Eve, four or five of the guys, we're going rock climbing together. Like, you're snowboarding together. You're doing all these things together. Even though you spend all day at work with each other, I constantly hear about plans being

made at night. I said, from here on, it's now your job to make sure we don't lose that. Right? Like we provided this foundation, but we're going to build a freaking skyscraper on this thing. And I can't be a part of every single floor and know what's going on. It's your guys. It's your guys as responsibility as employees here to make sure you keep this culture good. And we don't allow this to slip because, you know, it'll be a real shame if someday it's just somebody just has an attitude like,

that's just some corporate thing we do, you know. And that's where I think people need to take. individual responsibility. If you work at a big company, have a positive effect on the people around you. Right. Don't just bitch about so-and-so at the top. And that's what Andrew brought from Amazon. You know, people, you know, shit on Amazon. And obviously, it's this major monster of a company. But there's a reason that Amazon grew and got so big. Like, that wasn't an accident. You know, Bezos started that. And he obviously wasn't a dumb guy. And he knew how to lead. And Andrew said at Amazon, they always had a policy that when you're hiring somebody,

you need to try and hire somebody 50% better than yourself. You're almost trying to replace yourself because what that does is it also drives you to get better. And if you're doing that and then you move, we always tell people, train your people really, really good because down the road, when you move up, we're going to move one of those people into your role. and you're going to have to deal with that guy. Your results are counting on the results of that guy. Right.

So don't short their training. You are training your replacement. And if you're good, you're going up, not out. Yeah, that's, you know, I want to make sure I don't go too long. We get you to the airport. But what do you do with, it sounds like right now your company is pretty upperly mobile. whereas if you work hard, if you do the right things, you're going to get opportunities to move up.

So what do you do with the people who think they deserve that opportunity or they got bypassed? And like this, you mentioned this kid that started in high school and now he's 21 and running half the thing. I'm sure there's guys who are older. I'm like, fuck, I should be doing that shit. So how do you keep those guys satisfied? Yeah, I think it's through communication.

And also, you know, those managers that we do give those jobs, jobs need to perform and prove prove their worth, right? But also at a certain point, you know, it's going to be on those individuals to decide where they need to improve to get those roles or move on out, you know? Like, you know, it's, I think we're still a little bit too young to have seen a lot of that yet because just today, yesterday and today, we're interviewing for some internal roles. They're not public roles. They're all internal.

and the ones we interviewed yesterday, I personally told them, I said, there's two jobs and like six people applying. Right. So four of these people aren't going to get it. And it's going to, and I think this is where the communication comes in. I said, you can look at it like,

if you don't get this role, like, you know, we think you're a piece of shit and you're turned down because you're no good or you know whatever. Or you can look at the person that got it and critically analyze yourself and them and go, no, I can see that.

Like I could be stronger in this area or that area. Or maybe have some faith in us that we think you're good for that job, but we actually have an idea of a better job for you in a few months. That's the other thing that I think we have shown is we've passed some people up for some jobs. And then later on, we move them into something else. And later on, I can tell them, I always hate to over promise and under deliver. But I can tell them later, like, yeah, you didn't get that role because we knew this one was coming. So trust that we may actually have a plan for you.

And I always, I told like Aden yesterday, who was applying, I said, to get where you're going to want to get in our marketing department, you're not there. You're not good enough to get there now. And we're going to, you know, if you get this role today, this marketing assistant role, if you want to move up and be on the team of absolute hammers that we have today, you're going to have to get better. but it's probably not going to happen during your eight hours a day at work,

you're going to have to spend time after work. Like you're going to have to learn how to edit better. You're going to have to learn how to shoot better photos. You're going to have to learn how to do all these different things better. And if you're willing to invest that time after work and before work and whatnot and level your skills up, you need to become undeniable. And so that's what I tell those people. And I use that word several times yesterday.

I says, you have to become undeniable. You have to force us to hire you. Right. And so for those people that you're, if you're getting passed up all the time at work, you need to ask yourself, well, are you, are you undeniable? And if you're not, then you must not be. So what, so what are you going to do about that? Yeah. And if you're just going to keep bitching and complain and pretty soon, you're that poop in the pool. Yeah, yeah. You know, it's, uh, I know I've done like little things. Sometimes pick and choose, um, opportunities and maybe pass over somebody just to see how they react is what I used to do

because it's just like I remember I moved this guy off the crew to another crew didn't want to go and mostly it was just to see how how he'd react sure is it is it going to affect every day from here on out or is going to be like okay well I'm just going to maybe I got more to learn you know yeah I think I moved him to maintenance and so you can see how those type of people react to when and things don't go how they want or how they expect because that's life. Yeah. And if that one thing doesn't go your way derails you, that tells you a lot. Or I do that also and then everything gets around, right?

So if somebody's bitching out there and talking shit about you as the manager, you will hear about it. You will. So sometimes you do that just to see about, okay, are they going to fucking cry about this to everybody? Right. That's what I want to know too. Right. Are they going to motherfuck me behind my back? Yeah. Yeah. So I would just put out little tests like that and you learn a lot.

And then... And you're way better off coming to your manager and be like, Cam, I think this is bullshit and this is why. Yeah. Like, I'm not happy about this. You can tell me what you want to tell me and tell me like, I think this is a dumb move. You're being an idiot here. But if this is where you're going to put me, like, I'm going to do it. But I think it's wrong. I can respect that. Me too. If I find out through the grapevine that, like, you know, in the most of the most of the most of the

morning when I see in the you know on the break room you're just like oh cam you're the greatest guy ever has it going and then I find out later like oh yeah he's motherfucker and you behind your back it's like okay that shows you where the kind of person they are yeah that's I've always said that too just even in the hunting industry if you don't like me yeah don't fucking pretend like you like me ever right just don't like me then and that's fine I don't care yeah but I don't want one or the other like when you're around me everything's all good and then you're talking shit about me yeah but uh I did last thing. I put up that, I think it was a guy from Tanzania,

but did you remember that guy that they were hunting and he had that knife on like a fixed blade knife? I think you commented on that. You should have to see a fixed blade knife. Yeah. What did he have a shred? Oh, God, I can't remember what he had. Yeah.

Yeah. But I thought that was funny. It's just like middle of nowhere, but still have to have a good knife. Still have to have a knife. That's the thing like a knife was really, literally our first tool, you know, and you can go hunt, you can forget your rain gear, you can forget, you know, your freaking, you know, base layers, you can forget almost anything.

You need a bow and a knife. Yeah, yeah. Well, I've learned a hard way. Like I said, we had to break down a moose at the broad end. So it wasn't ideal. Yeah. A knife, yeah, a knife, I don't know. What I always say is like if I have my bow, boots, and a knife.

Yep. I'm good to go. Good to go for whatever. But yeah, it's like I think, I don't know, I just love the aspect of just the value of a sharp knife. I love what you're doing with Montana Knife Company. I'm so I'm so honored to be involved and like to have these stories about way back when, you know, it's not even that long ago, but 2020. Yeah. But, and to see where you guys are now and to know you're going to the fucking presidential inauguration. I know. And like you've handed Trump a knife, right? Yeah. Yeah. I mean,

how surreal is that coming from, you know, Frenchtown, Montana? Your whole, I mean, does that even seem real? No. My whole life from the time I was a kid, you know, and getting to travel, you know, when you grew up in a small logging town in western Montana, a lot of those people never leave the state and for sure the country. Some never get on a plane. Right. Yeah. And from the time I was 13 years old, I was flying to knife shows, and I was meeting cool people, and I made, you know, a knife for the governor when I was 15, right? And, you know, getting flown to Turkey to go tour the Top Kappa Palace by the Sheikh, the third in command of the United Arab Emirates, right? And having him fly me to England and go through the Wallace collection and look at swords

from the 1700s and hold them with white gloves on and measure them. Like, first, From that all the way through to, you know, meeting the president and shaking President Trump's hand and, you know, so many of the cool quote unquote celebrities that, you know, you and I both get to meet. I mean, you're the same way, you're a dude that worked at the water department and bow hunted and ran a lot.

Yeah. And look at what you get to do. Like it doesn't make sense, but it does. Like in the end it does because it's a consistent, it shows what being consistently passionate about something, something is passionate, you know, over time.

Yeah. Like, long time. You didn't get the success you got overnight. And I always hate to say, like the success I got, because it's not like I'm a rich guy or whatever. I just,

I get to do really cool things, but it's because I've been passionate about what I've done for 33 years. Yeah. You know, and everyone says, like, oh, MKC's, you know, like overnight, how did this happen overnight? And it's like, it's 33-year overnight success story.

Yeah. Yeah. You know, so it doesn't seem, it doesn't seem real. But I was the keynote speaker at the Drummond High School graduation this spring. They were the competing rival high school to ours when I was growing up. Okay. I think there were 14 kids in this class, seven boys, seven girls. And I was the speaker there.

And I said, you know, among other things. So the last thing I want you to think when you're growing up in Drummond, Montana or Frenchtown or Lincoln, Montana is that because I'm from a small town, I can't achieve the things that people achieve from the big city. You know, you actually have an advantage growing up in those towns because you got to watch that farmer and that rancher model hard work. You got to watch Mark Smith, you know, absolutely model hard work in a ditch. You know, he was a ditch digger. Like, oh, do you want to grow up and be a ditch digger? Fuck, yeah, I do. Like, I, you got to model in these small towns.

You got to actually get to know these people in these big cities. A lot of times kids don't get to go have a summer job tearing off roofs, right? Or working with a welder or learning these things. So if you're from a small town anywhere in America, that's an advantage. That's a superpower. I agree. You know, so take that hard work that's modeled and be passionate about something and don't give up don't stop you know yeah no it's uh and then i think like once we've quote made it out or

whatever whatever that means but i remember speaking there in callospell when i met you and i was like i was speaking because i still had my regular job but i'm speaking for the guys back at work because they feel how i feel they just don't have this platform so to me like i never and i know you don't either but we don't want to forget we have a platform we can talk about the things that are important to us, but I'm talking mostly for the guys who are putting in the water line, who are hanging those power lines, who do the fucking work, you know, who get the military, those type of guys who that our military relies on, who when concrete needs to be ported us, those type of guys, those are the guys who I want to speak for or represent the hardworking guys who keep

the fabric of this country together. And I think that that's where we came from, you know, to your point, when I grew up, if you were all, a logger nobody nobody dreams like in a city dreams of being a logger right but where i came from if you were a longer logger you were a fucking badass yeah you set chokers you are yeah you're you're running the skitter you're you're saw on logs i mean uh you're up at 2 30 a m to get up there and get those first logging truck loaded yeah um uh there was honor in that hard work same same with being a hunter back then it's like if you killed a big buck you were like oh shit did you see the But so to me, those are the type of guys I put on a pedestal, the hard work in the loggers, the hunters.

Same. And that's so that what I think about our discussion here is still elevating those type of people. And I, and I, that's why when I pull into our job site, I mean, we're, we're pouring the last of our peers on our job on our new building today. Mm-hmm. It's January. Those dudes are out there. Wow. They're thawing frost, right?

We just had eight inches of snow this past weekend. And when I pull in on that job site, like, I appreciate those people because I was that guy in that ditch or doing that work just four years ago. I have so much respect for the blue-collar working man and woman in this country. And, you know, when you're driving down the road and you see those cones and the flashing light, slow the fuck down. Yeah. Like maybe run over to Starbucks or black rifle or whatever and buy four cups of coffee. and stop by and drop it off and say, hey, thanks, guys. Like, you're sitting there thawing out, you know, a water key and a freaking hole in the ground as a water department guy.

So people have water to drink in their, in your town. You know, I have so much appreciation for hardworking blue-collar people. And I really think the pendulum is swinging a bit. And I think down the road, some of the most successful people in our nation in the next number of decades are going to be people that knew how to do shit. And they know how to build something. You know, they know how to weld something or, you know, digging around gas lines with tobacco. I mean, that's what I. It's a big deal.

It's a big deal. Like when I was digging electric mains down Higgins Avenue in Missoula, Montana and digging around two-inch gas mains, you hit that gas, I mean, you have blowing gas. Like, they're evacuating blocks. So when you see that guy out digging up your sidewalk in front of your office building, be glad he's a professional. Yeah. Don't walk out there and bitch at him because you got dirt on your freaking sidewalk. Yeah. You know? Yeah.

Tanner works, my oldest son works where I worked. And he talks about the equipment operators there, Sean Bush and Mike Royce, about how good they are at operating equipment, digging. And I just said, like, the biggest thing is like Sean on the excavator, he's digging. And it's like, it's a huge machine. And he can feel. You can feel stuff. Yeah. It's just like he'll stop.

And it's like he felt something with it. with the tooth of that bucket and comes back out. Yeah. Oh, maybe it's a gas line. Maybe it's power, unlocated power, something like that. Yeah.

But just that feel, I don't think people realize what a talent that is. And it's like I'd like to have the spotlight shown on guys like that because those are the guys that keep the fucking wheels going in this country. Yeah. And that's my dad. I mean, that's my biggest hero still is my dad,

just with that hard work and the things I got to learn. And that's, that's the level of operating a machine that my dad and I, but I got to because of my dad, he got to teach me like, you're in, you're not sitting there with earbuds in the backo. You're sitting there and you're listening to everything.

And when the engine, you know, tone changes, like, is there something potentially wrong? Or is it buried down? Are you tugging on something? Yeah.

Like, if you're tugging on something, and you shouldn't be, maybe you should stop, get out and poke around with a shovel, like, oh, shit, there's a freaking gas line that wasn't located. It's a big deal.

Those people are truly masters. And the thing is, not everyone's going to get rich at what they do, but we can sure still appreciate them for what they do. Exactly. Yeah. That's a good point. Well, Josh, thank you so much. It seems like we could sit here and talk forever about all this. But, you know, just know how much I appreciate the partnership and, like, what you stand for and what you do and what you offer this country.

I'm honored to call you a friend, and I'd love to see how the success you've had. and I just want to see more of it. Well, I honestly, man, it's, I've listened to you for years. I listened to you in my shop, you know, like watching your Instagram stories, you just continuing to keep doing what you were doing through, you know, I had so much respect when you were involved so much in that 2020 campaign because you weren't afraid to stand up and lose followers, lose some respect from certain people,

but then you gain so much more from other people. We need people who are willing. to stand up and say what they believe in. And everything that you're about and everything you talk about, it resonates with me. And so for my company and for us to be at the point where we can actually work together with somebody like you, it's truly an honor. And it's one of those surreal moments. We keep having those little things that come along like this.

And yeah, it means a lot. And it's not just like it's different for me because I am so. passionate about where I've come from and how long it took to get here that it's not like oh I'm just going to write a check to some guy and he's just going to be some ambassador right like I didn't want to necessarily do that I wanted to work together with you on something that's real like people are going to pass these things down for generations yeah and people are going to give these to their kid for their first hunt that's amazing right and um so it means a lot to me that you have because you you have great reputation for you to be able to put that out there with us and partner with us on this means a lot

thank you for the opportunity all right well i'm going to get you to the airport thank you so much thank you appreciate it brother