Cleared Hot - Powered By BRCC - Episode 211 - Josh Smith

Episode Date: December 13, 2021

Josh grew up in Lincoln, Montana on the edge of the Bob Marshall Wilderness. At the age of 11 Josh's baseball coach, Rick Dunkerley began teaching him how to make knives. About a year later, Josh began putting a shop together at his home, and at the age of 12 he joined the American Bladesmith Society. Over the next few years, Josh began forging and honing his craft. At 15 years old, Josh passed the Journeyman bladesmith test in Atlanta, Georgia at the Blade Show. Josh became the youngest bladesmith to ever pass this test. The Journeyman test is a two-part process. A test blade must be forged and heat treated with the capabilities to chop a 1" rope in half, 2- 2x4's in half, and then still shave hair. Once the cutting tests are done the blade must be able to bend 90 degrees in a vise without breaking. After passing the performance test the maker must present 5 knives to a panel of Mastersmith Judges. Each knife is examined closely to ensure the knife is made to the highest standard of craftsmanship. Josh continued to work on his craft and at the age of 19, he earned his Master Smith rating from the American Bladesmith Society. Josh was the youngest bladesmith to ever pass the Master Smith test. In 2002 Josh moved to Frenchtown, Montana where he now calls home. Josh and his wife Jessica live on a beautiful piece of property near the Clark Fork River where they own and operate the Montana Knife Company. https://betterhelp.com/clearedhot https://feals.com/clearedhot https://athleticgreens.com/clearedhot https://magicspoon.com/clearedhot  

Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. Damn, we are getting close to the end of 2021. It's been a hell of a year, and I have some amazing things I can't wait to tell you about in 2022, but I can't until 2022. Until then, let's talk a little bit about CBD. How's that sound? Today's episode is brought to you by Feels. Now, when we're talking about CBD, it's not about what you feel.

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local to Montana, localish, I guess, less than two hours south of where I live. And I first heard of him when I was watching Forged in Fire. He's the youngest master blade smith in the history of the United States. He's just an overachieving little son of a bitch. Lives in Frenchtown, Montana and owns Montana Knife Company, the makers of some of the most amazing blades that I've ever carried. As a matter of fact, it's all I carried when I was out hunting this year. So actually, I'm just going to shut up because I could ramble on and on and on. Episode 211 with Josh Smith coming at you. I'm looking at danger close now. Amateur not being ready.

What do you got? on? Oh, hell yes. Dudley. God, he's such a good dude. He is. He's one of my favorite people, actually. Probably the single most generous person that I know. And I don't mean financially, even though I'm sure he would be. But with his time and knowledge,

it is unbelievable. The tack that we were at at Snowboard is probably like a perfect example. He will stay out on the course all day long, shoot with absolutely anybody, regardless of what they're shooting, what manufacturer, he doesn't give a shit. If you had an issue with your equipment, he'll fix it. He'll take all the time in the world. And he holds nothing back as far as I can tell.

There's no secret sauce. I aspire to be like him when it comes to that. No, and I actually, I kind of had the cool opportunity. As a few of those tacks went on, I camped next to him. You know, we had our trailers kind of parked by each other. got to know, I mean, we had met before, but I wouldn't, you know, say we were friends, but we got to know each other more kind of throughout those. It was like three weeks, Big Sky, Park City, and Snowbird. And, you know, we kind of got to know each other through that.

And by Snowbird, I mean, we were like linked up and we took our stuff from Black Rifle and went up there and set up by each other. And I actually got to see him kind of do his thing, damn near 24 hours a day from when he woke up in the morning to when he went to bed. And it's, It's legit. Like, it's not an act like for Instagram. I mean, he, man, I want to say he was leaving the camper at like six o'clock in the morning and he was headed up trying to figure out how to get up the mountain ahead of time to make sure he caught the first group.

Yeah. He was helping, you know, some disabled guys and whatnot, try and go shoot with them. And then like just hearing him and Sharon talk kind of in the, you know, more of the personal moments of like, hey, I got to make sure I go help these guys and, hey, there was these guys I want to make sure you take care of when they come to the booth, super nice people, like, just, you know, regular people that he was, like, noticing and trying to help. Yeah. It was really. It's real.

Yeah, it's real. Were you, were you shooting with us when Leah's bow derailed? I was. So an example of, yeah. First off, he's a fucking wizard, too. Yeah. So, how can I tell this story without her getting upset? There was a mechanical issue with the bow.

No, I mean, it's real. And I didn't, I had never even thought about this. But at full draw, I think what happened is as she was letting down, either she pushed the bow to the side or brought her hand in or both. Yeah. Not an expert. Just torched it. Yeah. And I'm not an expert at Bose all.

But basically the string jumped the cam. Yep. And it ripped into it a little bit. I think just the outer sheath. So when I saw that happen, since I know nothing about bows, I'm like, well, this goes in the dumpster now. Right. And took it down to Dudley. At the very least, you were done for the weekend.

Oh, for sure. Like, that was it. Like, weekend over, you would have thought. I've only seen it happen one other time, and I was with Dudley. I actually didn't see it happen. I heard it because the cable, I think, snapped. We were at, I think it's the Easton Indoor Range in Salt Lake City. Have you ever been there?

No. It's crazy. It's like, I actually think there's 80 yards of indoor just awesome. launching. And there was some long-bub people. Then there's the whole outside. And speaking to Dudley, he's there doing a class. And it's really interesting to watch people shoot in front of him because they come unglued. Get the yips. They do. I watch people start to shake and it's, and it sucks because I know what's happening. They're nervous to be there shooting in front of him. But he's trying to give them feedback on their shooting, but they're not shooting like they'd normally do.

Yep. Yep. So there's this whole line and I have my back turned. I I look down and there's a bow in pieces. Yeah. And he was not shooting that bow again, maybe ever. Right. So when her bow derailed, I thought actually that's what it was. And Dudley fixed it with what I'm going to call dental floss. Yeah.

On his lap and found a press at somebody else's booth. Yeah. Went and shot it and it then started shooting more accurate than when we had brought it down. Yeah. No, and that's actually the truth. Like, what the fuck? And when I saw it. What I thought, where I thought he was, you know, she was really done for the weekend was the fact that the string was damaged.

Yeah. Like it wasn't like, oh, you know, oh, it just came off. We can just put it right back on and go back to work. Like the string was damaged. And so I was like, man, you're never going to want to pull that string back again. And the fact that I saw you later, because you guys took off, caught up with Dudley and then I saw you later. And it was already fixed. And like you said she was shooting better.

And we shot the next day. And she was. She was struggling a little bit that first day. It was a little, I can't remember high or low or something. And the next day, she was dialed, like dialed, all day. I knew the answer to the problem when it came apart. And the answer was simple. Find Dudley.

Yeah, where's John? That's all I said. I said, we need to go now so we can salvage at least one day. Right. And then when I handed it to him, he does what he always does when I hand him shit that I break. He just shakes his head. And he's like, what did you do now? Yeah.

And then it was up and running. And so. He did have a message he had sent me to deliver to you. What was it? I mean a couple of them I probably can't see on the air, but one. It's the internet. You can say the other one was always, always aim at the elk's arm bone. Yeah, man, I don't want to talk about that.

Actually, we just, the episode I released today was with Nelson. Yeah. And we kind of went through the people will think it was a hunting podcast, but it wasn't. It was all lessons learned. Yeah. Because we had some wild ones. This hunting season was fucking wild. Yeah.

And I, so that's kind of why I brought it up is I was listening to that on the way up. I probably got 30 or 40 minutes left, but it's a good episode. And I mean, like the way you described what happened, so easy to have happen. Well, and like I said on that podcast, I'm just short on reps in front of the animals with those opportunities. Nelson and I both thought about it. We got one shot on an elk in 365 days. And I've never once set up my foam elk slightly behind a bush that obscures the aim. It's always like in the wide open or sometimes I'll put.

it a little behind a tree on its rear legs. Well, and that's what the total archery challenge. Like, that's what, you know, Sean and those guys have done. And like with Dudley's knock on courses. Yeah. It really, it's the best thing that we got going to try to, try to emulate those situations. But in the end, it's not an elk. It's not, you don't have the adrenaline.

You just, you know, you can only train and practice so much. And then when it's a real elk. And that whole situation of you're looking through your peep, you're trying to, to see, actually having like relation of, if you can't see that leg going down, then how do you have relation as to where exactly, and like you said, you said on that podcast, two inches, what, to the left? If it would, honestly, if it would have impacted, I think, an inch to the left, it probably would have gone right into the chest cavity.

Yeah. Yeah, it would have just kind of deflected right in there. Correct. Yeah. Or penetrated enough. Right. You know, it would have been able to pin in and penetrate enough that it probably would have killed the bull. It's interesting because I've, I've had some guys, actually just a couple days ago,

there's a guy at my shop, and he was like, yeah, I just not gotten into bow hunting, you know, people wound too many animals. And I said, you know, I've heard that. And I actually kind of came back at the guy, said, I've heard that. And I don't, personally, I, I've heard a lot of situations where guys are shooting at elk deer, whatever, antelope, you know, at 1,100 yards with their rifle, who it's been a year since they shot their rifle and it was 100 yards zeroing in their rifle and all of a sudden their Kentucky windage in something at 1100.

I've heard people telling stories about just shooting into a herd of elk. Right. Like there was no actual flock-specific. Yeah, they were just going to shoot into the herd and then see what happened. Yeah. I've been bow hunting now for,

I didn't get to bow hunt last year. I have, that is the, that is the first animal that I have wounded in that time period. Yeah. And I've put a lot of animals down. Yeah. No, and that's percentage-wise, it's better than most guys do. I mean, it's just going to happen.

Yeah. I mean, you're just going to have. And it does happen with rifles, too. Yeah. I've watched it happen with rifles. One of my employees, he felt terrible, but he had a branch just barely deflect his arrow and had a blood trail for a little while. He actually, you know, not so sure that it was a, you know,

was a, you know, a mortal wound, but, you know, you never know. But, I mean, it's just part of hunting. But this idea that, I mean, I think archery's at the highest level it's ever been in history, really just because of the gear and the technology. I mean, when I started bo hunting when I was 13 or 14 or whatever, I mean, I wish I had that bow still because, I mean, they were terrible. And you didn't have the range finders. I mean, you were guessing at everything.

In that environment, I think you might wound more animals. Definitely. Definitely. And I think some of that old thought process of back then, some people still have today. But when you actually see what's happening with these guys with bows and the technology you have, I mean, because it sounds like your shot was basically exactly where you were aiming. It was just just. That's where I land now. I mean, not that I've spent anordinate amount of time thinking about that particular shot. You may not have gotten to the point in the podcast where I was talking about driving home from eastern Montana. with no music whatsoever, just thoughts of how much I suck. And fortunately, I have the next year to beat myself up about it, which is amazing. It'll be really, really good. I'm sure I'll be in a very confident space the next time bow hunting season comes around.

But I think it just hit right where I aimed. I think it was an error and aiming point because I was sitting there and I love a lot about bow hunting. that moment of truth where you're shooting at the animal, it doesn't bug me that much. The cameraman, I had a cameraman like over my shoulder and that's, and we watched the video because it made that beautiful whack. Right.

And then we watched, I'm like, oh shit, that was zero penetration whatsoever. But he, I love the stories from Caleb because he will just talk about people at full draw looking like a dog shit and a razor blade. Right.

Just coming fucking unwound. And for me, I love everything leading up to that. And when I finally get the chance to draw back, there's absolutely nothing especially unique about me, but that moment I generally will do really well in that moment. And Caleb even said, he's like, I was over your shoulder, and I filmed in.

He's like, I could hear you breathe in, and I looked at your broadhead, and it was as stable as could be. He's like, oh, yeah, he's like, video of the year. The footage is, he's like, the sun is perfect. And even Dudley said the same thing. He's like, yeah, I looked over at you. And, you know, cool as a cucumber.

and then I the thing that pisses me off about the whole thing is that going back to Dudley's generosity he took time out of his hunt to get me that opportunity right because people ask me how I call elk and what I'll do is I point at Dudley that's how I call elk I use the Dudley call because I can't and if I did call I can do the cow call off the off the one particular cow but if you get me near a bugle it's going to be a very empty freezer and cooler yeah so I use the Dudley call Yeah. And he's sitting there and he takes the time and he invited me on that hunt. And it's just like, wow, thanks, dude, for all that.

I feel like I let him down at the end of the day. Yeah. And I would feel the same way. I understand it. But you know, you know, he doesn't look at it that way. And, you know, John's going to shoot an animal sometime between now and the end of his career and he's going to lose it. You know, Aaron Snyder, Gamer and Ains, like the best of the best, they're going to have the exact same situation probably happen. So, I mean.

I hope it happens on all of their remains. any animals forever. So I feel better about myself. You probably hope that Johns happens with you next year. So you're there to... You want to talk about a guy who gets it done. I mean, I have been very fortunate to hunt with him quite a bit. Yeah.

If he draws his bow back, there is an exceptionally good chance that death is about to occur. Yeah. The first time I ever saw him shoot a bow was last year at the attack events in 20... What is this? What year is it? 20. And I had never seen him shoot in person. We walked up to the novelty shots. Because if you always wonder, if you see only somebody shooting online, I'm not a video expert, but I understand the theory of editing. Yeah, for sure. And so I walked up to the novelty shots,

a big group of people. I mean, there's probably 30 because, you know, Dudley's going to shoot and this big deal. And we walk up there and, you know, everybody's ranging this elk bedded bull elk there at Big Sky laying up on the side of the hill. Everybody's ranging it and it's i think it was like 112 or 109 whatever it was it was 105 close yes we're all discussing it and john's like all right well i'll shoot one first and you know you're shooting for the ten ring um you know hoping that uh you know you get a chance i think put in for one of his bows i think that was the the prize you know everybody that hits the the bull's eye gets in you know put in for that prize so this was over 100 yards yeah i'm just hitting i'm aiming for foam yeah exactly

Exactly, exactly, a non-blown-up arrow. I'm aiming for not a $20 bill thrown in a garbage tank. Exactly. And, I mean, seriously, right? I mean, he pulled up there, draws back, and absolutely pinwheels it. First shot. And I was like, holy shit. Like that, it was, I was like sold right there.

It's like, that's amazing. Wait till you see him grab somebody else's bow? So for context, I would say Dudd is an easy 6-4. he's probably 6-6. Yeah. His arms are the size of my arms and legs combined. Yeah. And he'll grab somebody else's bow that's not size for him and draw up back and anchor in his arm.

He looks like a T-Rex. Yeah. Doink. And he'll do the same thing. Yeah. It's like, what the fuck, man? Yeah. No, it's impressive.

Yeah. And being around, I mean, like you said, their generosity, Sharon, I mean, absolutely nicest person on earth. We, uh, no, we had a great time. just hanging out around them and getting anonymous people. Are you going to do the tax series again? And for people listening, we're talking about the total archery challenge, if that doesn't make sense. Yeah, we are. I talked to Sean the other day, starting to kind of trying to figure out what dates.

We're still not quite at the point where we're ready to have just a full-on tour. So we're trying to figure out kind of where we want to go. We might adjust a little bit. We were thinking about maybe Michigan. Well, definitely, obviously, I mean, the big sky shoot and Park City are easy drives. Yeah, damn near home games. You guys were not selling knives there, though, right? We were.

You were? Yep. I'm surprised you had the inventory, to be honest. Yeah, well, we saved, we definitely planned on that and saved it, just saved it back for it. So you cheated people online. That's what people should get out of that. We did. We did.

Yeah. Yeah. Go ahead and DM. Andy Stumpf. No, I would talk to Brandon about that. Yeah. Yeah. We'll just set him down as the person to contact for any issues about this podcast.

Yeah. It actually really is nice having him because he gets to deal with all the DMs. So actually, most of me, 99% of the DMs people are phenomenal. There's definitely though some... Do you get some weirdos? Oh, man. There's some people, it's amazing how not getting a knife and a drop can really ruin a person's day, like, get real angry.

I actually had a guy I called him. We got an email and I called him and I was just like kind of apologizing and whatever. And then he... What exactly were you apologizing for? I'm not sure. I was just trying to like, hey, look, man. Man, we're trying. Like, I think sometimes people think we drop, you know, 10 knives and we're making a big deal.

But, you know, it's a lot of knives, hundreds. And, you know, I was, and then this guy just kind of kept not let, you know, just not letting it go. And he's like, I'm a lawyer and I was down at this conference and I left this dinner early and all this stuff. And you ruined my evening. And finally, do you ever just do this? Finally, I said, the world's smallest violin. I was like, dude, if this knife on this evening really actually ruins you and I think you got bigger issues that you need to sort out. sure like I love it that people are trying to get our stuff and I do like you know I mean people are

getting online buying shirts and hats and trying to get you know their information in so they can get knives and and we are definitely ramping up more and more it's just kind of crazy it's amazing how it's going but no I laugh and joke about it but there are there's people that have tried four or five different times and they're just maybe a little bit slow and getting their stuff in and I definitely appreciate the yeah well it's It's interesting, right? Because do you want to have so many that you're sitting on inventory, which is the worst, or just under the threshold? So there is that demand.

Or like you said, 10. Yeah. I think you got to land in the middle. You got to aim for what you think it's going to be. But I think it's a better problem to sell out than have shelving space being full. We're definitely getting into a different spot because so the last time I did your podcast, I think it was May. Was it? Yeah.

It was May, and it's amazing how much stuff has changed for us since then. Like, it's just incredible, how much we've grown. And I'll be honest with you, like, when you're a small business, you're just trying to kind of calculate and judge like what you can afford to make and then what you think you're going to sell. And it's just kind of continued ramping up. And we're definitely getting more and more into a spot where, I mean, we're ordering thousands of blades now, you know, as far as when I say ordering the steel for thousands of blades. And, you know, but in the beginning, you can only, you know, when you launch a company, it's not like, well, I'm going to order enough for 10,000 blades because we're going to sell that. And you've never sold anything.

So, you know, we're ramping up. And it's incredible because, I mean, right now we have 13,000 blades in process. Do you really? Yeah. All based out of Frenchtown. Yeah. Well, I know you guys don't make it soup to nuts there, but it all passes through there. Yep.

Yeah. No, and we're actually kind of working. on even some of that stuff like I bought out our guy that does our she's making we bought out kind of his equipment and process and he's moving we're moving him up and we're building a new production facility in the spring bringing a lot more of the processes in-house I mean that's the goal right when we when we started we just were doing what we could do on site but the whole goal obviously down the road is to be able to do everything right there in french town yeah just vertically integrate right there yeah and it's been you know it's been amazing

especially everything going on with China and the ports and shipping. Is there something going on there? I think so. Dude, we were just, it's a shit show. We were just in L.A. And I was riding a motorcycle with my business partner. We each had her own for clarity. And if we only had one, I would have been in front.

This wasn't a dumb and dumber situation. No, if we had only had one, I would have been in front for clarity, even though he's bigger than me. but where we were staying, I happened to look out to the left, and there were cargo ships racked and stacked more than I've ever seen. And I didn't live in that area when I lived in San Diego, but I'd be through it enough that you kind of get used to. And I'm sure they were pulling into the Long Beach Pier. Holy shit. Yeah. Yeah.

And we've been talking to some suppliers and some different people in other industries. And these are some guys that are in the know. and they said it's actually like China kind of made a big push for helping get a product to the U.S. for the holidays for the big sale season. But he said they basically kind of blew their wad out on that. And then it's going to be really bad after Christmas. So what does that look like? He means it'll take time to get things? I don't know if this is true.

It's funny. Sometimes you hear Rogan talking about stuff and he's like, I don't know, I'm just a guy blurting shit out. I don't know if it's true. Yeah, that's a nice catch-all. Yeah. That's kind of what I'm getting ready to do. But he said that because China having a coal shortage that their chef and has shut down some factories just to be able to heat homes. And he said it's like for the rest of the winter, it could get sketchy.

So when people talk supply chain, and this, man, I'm so far out in front of my skis when we're talking supply chain. If they made the push for the holiday, so I'm assuming that means they front loaded and stuff will be here because God forbid we can't have a fucking retail holiday. Right. Because that's actually. Christmas is all about. I believe so. Yeah. I believe that it's about having 25% off in sales before Thanksgiving, which is another topic that infuriates me. That's right. Can we have some goddamn separation between our holidays? Do you remember when Black Friday used to be a thing? I don't even remember when I first heard the term Black Friday. Yeah. But I do love videos of people

tackling each other for $100 TV. Yeah. I'm not going to love it. Well, it's crazy because now they started so early that like I think the whole early morning black, black, black Friday. It's like, Friday. Yeah, it's like, it's like Black October. I like to do, I did a special this year for Black Friday, Cyber Monday. I talked about it on the full out of Friday. It's full retail price and the consumer can pay shipping. You're generous.

How about I am also a fucking small business and I'm trying to like make ends meet as well on items that are not incredibly high in margin? Right. No, exactly. It's like, what the fuck? Yeah. At the same time, I totally get it. I understand why people want to shop and go do.

that, but also maybe reset your expectations. You know, the businesses that you're choosing to support, I'm sure that Target and Walmart and I'm using those because I just drove by them, they're doing fine on Black Friday. Yeah. I think their margins in profit and loss, you know, categories are probably pretty steep. For small business owners, you know, I can't speak for anybody else's business, but margins are an important thing. Even free shipping. Like, hey, I'll cover the ship. Like, that eats into stuff. And I'm not saying people shouldn't do that. that, but at the same time for the consumer, and I guess I can only talk about myself, I don't give a shit about the Black Friday or Cyber Monday. If I happen, I have never once in

my life shop for something on those days. But if I were to happen by there and they were having that sale, sure, I would take advantage of it. But if it's a brand that I want to support, I'm going to support that brand because I want to, not because I'm looking for a sale. And I think that's a big part of, you know, one of the reasons that we've, you know, been doing pretty well this year is as I just think there's a big you know that pendulum is swinging back hard towards supporting you know American made US made small business you know Jocko was just on with Rogan and uh you know they were talking a lot about what they're doing with origin and basically taking over the world trying to yeah as far as I can tell if Jocco's heading that up

probably going to succeed um and and you know listening to what Pete and Jocko you know Pete really started and then Jocco's in on now and those guys is um It's really cool, and it's, I don't know, it's actually so similar to what we've been doing with just trying to start small and then just reinvesting. And that's what we're doing, just reinvesting. And that's what most small businesses do and people need to understand is when businesses in the U.S. are reinvesting, they're reinvesting in their local communities, you know, if not just in their country where those factories in China, they're definitely not reinvesting in the U.S., that's for sure. You know. Yeah, I don't know what people think the metrics are when it comes to money on podcasting or t-shirts is what I sell the most of, which is a bizarre ecosystem in and of itself. Because I'm sure you've figured out, you're like, wow, man, this is a whole weird.

Yeah. You got to figure all that stuff out. But I buy my t-shirts from a guy locally who screenprints them locally. And I used to get them from somebody else in the U.S. and they would ship them over. And I didn't mind the cost, but I want to try to take everything that I can and give back to where I am. And that's why I do that. And yes, could I still survive if I did a Black Friday Cyber Monday? Sure, I could.

But I also could take the money that I saved and not doing that and reinvest it back into the local economy. Yep. And that is what I would rather do. We're actually, I mean, we haven't said anything online about it or anything like that because we're still kind of actually in the process of ordering right now from these guys. But we're switching pretty much all of our shirts and all that stuff over to totally American-made shirts, garments. And I honestly didn't even know that that was even an option. I just thought basically all the shirts like what you're wearing or I'm wearing came from overseas. And when we found out you can actually buy that stuff here, it's a little bit more money, but it's not crazy.

Be cautious, though, too, and make sure you do your research because I had been approached by two people at this point who wanted to sell me an American Made Blank. Yeah. And then they explained to me that it was handled and processed in America like three or four times. Nice. But it was sourced from overseas. But it meets the criteria somehow. There's some bullshit on all that. There's some bullshit loophole that if some, like, and I have no idea what steps need to be taken.

But it is a product. And I saw it and touched it that started in China. Yeah. And then was positioned to me as an American made blank because of the steps that it had gone through. Yeah. It's like, no, this is actually not what I'm interested. This is super cool. It's a super cool company.

and, you know, their name, their name is general standard. But what they're doing is, is there's actually a barcode on the, on the actual tag of the shirt. And when you scan that barcode with your phone and look at it, it shows you what farm in the country grew the cotton, what family picked it. Like, it has a whole description of those people where the garment was actually made, you know, like the particular one that they sent me a sample on was made in L.A., but it was grown in South, the cotton was grown in South Carolina. super, super cool what they're doing. That's awesome. Yeah. So we're kind of working through some things and just, you know, they have some limitations

on colors and not necessarily limitations, but, you know, not everything's just readily available like it is, you know, they have to dye them and stuff like that. So it's a little bit slower. Yeah. But they're working, I think they're working some kinks out. But honestly, I think with what they got going, they could take over the U.S. world when it comes to a lot of these kind of shirts because it'll depend on their. People pay two or three dollars more.

I would. Well, I think their capacity is pretty damn good based on what they were saying they were doing for some orders. Interesting. Yeah. To going back to what you're hearing about China, so what does that mean when you, like, after the holidays, it's going to get crazy? Does that mean there's going to be scarcity when you're coming, when people looking at like consumer goods? Like, what are we talking about? Yeah, he said the consumer goods especially are just going to slow down.

in manufacturing for a few months. He basically just, like, they're shuddering some, some factories for a while. I don't know anything about this, this coal shortage they're having or what the deal is there, but, I mean, think about how many people they have. Imagine how much it takes to heat their places and what they've got going, but. Have you ever been there? No. I have.

And I've been to the factories. Really? Yeah. I went to Fugio, China, actually, when I was working for CrossFit and saw the Reebok factory and drove around a bit. Wow. Holy shit. Because I had questions.

Like on the bottom of the shoe, there was a little red delta. I'm like, where does, how do you guys make that? And they showed me the man. Really? Who was making that. Oh, dude, we spent a week over there looking at how all that stuff is done. It was wild. I'll leave it at that.

Well, they're definitely legit for what they've, how they've figured out how to do everything they're doing. I mean, you know, and not all of its bad quality. That's actually what, you know, has kind of, you know, this kind of goes back to when I told some guys I was going to launch Montana Knife Company two or three years ago. And they're guys that were getting knives made in China brought over here, sharpening them. When you say knives, you're talking about the blanks? No, like full on. You know, so what I was. Everything but the actual sharpen was on the knife?

No, sharp. They were doing some sharpening, but no, these guys are having knives delivered, packaged, ready to go. put in the store, like all they're doing is just turn around and doing the retail thing with him. And, you know, this one guy in particular is telling me, like, you cannot, you can't set up and manufacture knives in the U.S. like, it's not possible as far as, like, making money and doing it on a large scale, like a big scale. And I was like, man, I think we can do it. Like, I just feel like that, you know, what I had kind of envisioned and the kind of people I was

going to try and market to, which are basically people. like me, I figured they would buy them. And even if it meant we didn't turn into a hundred million dollar company, I think we could have a pretty nice company that can sustain a few families. You know, that was my thoughts. And he was showing me some of the knives and some of the stuff they were getting quality-wise from China. And it's impressive. Really? I mean, it's impressive. I mean, they, and he said that China, that whole China thing with quality really depends on what you want to pay for price. If you call over there and say, I want to make this knife as cheap as possible, probably get some bullshit back. But if you're willing to pay for a little bit more time taken,

a little better quality product, whatever, you know, materials, you know, so there's no doubt they can produce quality. But then we end up in this situation like we do with these ports. And now you can't get your products. And what's scarier to me, and to me, it's not being discussed by our officials, is this whole, you know, chip shortage that they're having. You know, whether it's China or Taiwan or wherever they're having these chips made, you know, I, I, I, bought a four-wheeler from just south of here, and the guy just happened to have them. And he said, honestly, he's like, I just got the chips in. I didn't think I was going to get him in is the only reason he had them. But, you know, the cars, I've got friends that are selling cars. There's a Ford

dealership up the road that I drove by. Yeah. It's got about 15 Chevys on the lot. Yeah. No, and their inventory is so low. And it's funny because you hear people, ah, the chip shortage, but it's interesting to see it because two years ago, that place was, racked and stacked. I don't know what their holding capacity is or what they normally have. But right now, they legitimately, the Ford dealership has other manufacturers' cars like up front, consumer facing as you drive by on the freeway. That's how Carl Tyler is. That's in Chevrolet dealership where we live. It's insane. And he, and he, the salesman friend of mine says it's not going to get better anytime soon.

Like he doesn't see it getting any better in the next year. And but how is this not like a major national security problem? Like, you know. to talk about COVID. I don't know if you heard there's a new variance. Omicron. Omicron? I don't know how to say it. Oh, really? Yes. You know you heard about it. Do you have a mask? I need to put a mask on making me feel nervous about my life. We can't make fun of COVID. I had COVID. I did too. It was real. It sucked. But I actually think at this point, not to diminish COVID anyway, because it shouldn't be diminished. I do believe it's real. I'm reading. I was reading everything I could find for like an hour. I was like, fuck. I'm going to actually take a look at this.

It doesn't seem to be more deadly. It doesn't, it seems to be perhaps more easily transmissible, and the vaccine may be ineffective on it, which at this point I now know a substantial amount of people who have been completely fucked up by COVID and they were totally vaccinated. Different conversation, and I'm not a specialist on that whatsoever. But it's the front page of every newspaper, and I almost wonder how much better life would be

if people could put that shit away for a little bit and just continue on with their lives. Honestly, from, you know, the time I launched MCC last year to now, that's pretty much what I just chose to do is like, we did right in the very beginning of COVID, like we had just gone out to Bert Sorens at Winterstrong, came back from South Carolina,

and we were just hearing rumblings about it as we were traveling then. That was early February. Well, by the end of that month, it was like... It was game on. Yeah, and then, you know, I started, you know, you see you're seeing all this stuff on the news and pretty soon I'm like okay maybe this is pretty serious and so like my I remember specifically the time my wife was like hey my mom's going to

come out for dinner and I was like no I don't think so because she's she's a smoker she's older um you know she's in fine health but if you know based on you know people who are getting screwed up by COVID she'd be a good case to you wouldn't want her to get it yeah and we have four kids going to school so I just feel like we're naturally really exposed And so we went, I'd say a month being really careful or two. And then as it started, you started to kind of see in the numbers and it's like, okay, this is a lot more dangerous. Again, we stayed away from our parents for a while longer.

But I just, we pretty much just chose to live our lives from then until now. We've really just kind of gone full on living life. Well, we're fortunate to live where we do. And to be able to do that. I mean, where I used to live in San Diego before moving up here, probably wouldn't have been an option. But I just, I think what scares me the most is that I didn't realize how susceptible to irrational fear people are.

It's crazy. Well, and it also, it is probably the easiest way to distract people. And I'm not saying there's like some crazy like puppet master behind the strings or behind the scenes. Maybe there is. I don't know. I would really like to believe that that's not the way that our country is heading. Right.

But I think it draws attention. from other stuff. Like to me, having this conversation with somebody about a week ago, and they were talking about, well, how come, you know, people in Australia are so much more willing to have the lockdowns? And first off, I'm not so sure that they are, but there is a difference, in my opinion, at least, between, in a broad sense, Australian culture and American culture. Australians, I'm not going to say they value the individual less, but I think they value the collective oftentimes more than the United States does. For me, like, rugged independence is a part of what the United States. There's only one country that has that and it's, really.

But then we sacrifice it when it comes to shit. Like, it ties back into the supply chain shortage. Where the fuck did we surrender that? And I think it was slowly and incrementally over time for the desire to have less expensive goods. But now here we are stuck, reliant upon other people. And it's the antithesis of what this country was actually founded on. It doesn't make sense to me. And it sucks. Yeah. No,

and it's interesting you kind of observe that because there was a guy this summer I was talking to, he's a steer wrestler and he was down here from Canada. That's his professional job? Yeah, he's a steer wrestler, like rodeo, not just like on people's random,

just walking around to ranches. Because that'd be sweet. Just knock out of people's doors. Like, hello. Can I wrestle some of your steers? They look good. So I was talking to, to him and we were talking about the COVID stuff and I, this was at the fair where my kids had their

4-H animals and I was like, and I made the comment really glad we're kind of having a normal year because the year before with COVID, it just made it miserable on the kids with everything they were doing with the regulations. And so I said, yeah, it's kind of nice, but I said it's still just like crazy what's going on down here with the COVID, you know, stuff the government's trying to do and whatever. And he goes, dude, I'm from Canada. He's like, this is like absolute freedom down here. He's like, it feels so much different. And he goes, I was like, really? And he said, your country is, is founded on a fuck you. It was fuck you to the queen. Fuck you to, you know, being under the thumb of, you know, what we were under with England. And, and he said,

we don't have that in Canada. People are so, we were founded under a, under a different premise, right? We were, you know, still under the queen and still have that, like, we'll just kind of do what we're told. And this is just him as an outsider looking into our country. And he was like, I still, as much as he traveled around here down here, he said, I still feel like you guys still have a lot of that left in you of like kind of rebelling against the man a little bit. Um, you know, and, you know, sometimes people can take that stuff too far, obviously. But, but the personal sovereignty and the ability to, or at least the thought process and the desire to be able to figure shit out on your own and provide. I think that's part of the founding of this country. And if we lose that,

I think we're proper fucked. Yeah. And it's amazing the outrage over, you know, whether I get to vaccination or I don't and you do and you're a danger to me and all this stuff. But where's the outrage over the fucking pedophiles walking around and, you know, all the goddamn people, you know, stealing young girls and selling them into the goddamn sex trades and like, where's the outrage on, I'm much more worried about my 17-year-old daughter, you know, who's an attractive young lady getting snatched at a fucking gas station, then I am worried about her getting COVID. Like, COVID is no concern to me for her. Yeah.

She's a young girl, healthy. I think she's got, she's had it and fine, you know. But being snatched by a creep is a, is just a constant thing I, you know, is always on the back of your mind. You know, you can't do much about it. You can just try to teach them to be smart and watch where you're parking your car and who's, you know, around, but be aware. Yeah.

And all the outrage, you know, with our government, with what we spending money on and what we could be spending money on and the fact that, you know, we just had to just talking to a guy that was, you know, in L.A. And my sister was just here from Seattle where she lives. And she used to live down in the Capitol Hill area, Seattle, which is right downtown. And she was a young single girl living there for several years and felt safe and whatever. and she's like now, her and her fiance, like you just don't go down there.

There's just tents everywhere. He's like there's RVs parked everywhere, like shitty RVs. Have you seen these videos of, I don't know the correct description, but daylight mass robberies? No. Where people just go into stores

and just completely, I don't know if loot is the right term, but just steal everything and they run out and the police do nothing about it. Oh, I've heard Rogan talking about, they've got somebody. where if it's under a certain dollar amount, you can just like... Yeah, and I don't... Well, my social media feed might be slightly bizarre,

given the rabbit holes that I go down. My, yeah, the metrics, the analytics that are... Or algorithm that is showing the stuff. But, yeah, like daylight theft, and nobody is doing anything about it. I was in Chicago a while ago. And the guy that we were there visiting was talking about. I'm not familiar, something to do with, it might be Miracle Mile or something, I don't know, but it's downtown high-end shopping. Like Louis Vuitton stores, people coming in, grabbing stuff and just leaving, nobody does anything.

I mean, how do we reverse that particular trend? Yeah, I don't know. It's a, it's a scary, scary deal. And, you know, and back to our school issue, you know, I, like you said earlier, we're very fortunate to live where we do. And even where I particularly live compared to 15 miles away in Missoula, where some of the rules and some of the stuff they've done at the schools versus where my kids go to school, it's just different there. And I was talking to a friend of ours, her husband's a Navy SEAL, and they're in San Diego. And they've pulled their kids out of school because of this whole forced vaccination thing and everything going on. And, you know, we talked about how even if you pulled your kid out of school as a junior and they were, you know,

you had to homeschool them and try to. I mean, I can't imagine. I can't even read my kids' homework, much less help them on it. But if I pulled my 17-year-old or even 15-year-old out of school right now and tried to teach them the best I could and then kicked them out into life, they'd be fine. Like, they would make it. They'd figure it out. But I'd rather do that versus have some of the indoctrination or some of the crazy stuff

that's happened in school. Yeah. I've had a few friends from San Diego reaching out, too. They wanted to come up and actually visit because they were bouncing up against the same issue, the forced vaccination. And again, in my opinion, not being an expert in this, I feel like every medical decision should be an informed decision made between an individual and their health care provider with their kids, too.

I don't understand this governance by mandate. You can fuck right off with that. Yeah. No, I agree. And especially when it comes to our kids, you know, especially when you look at the numbers and the death rate and all that stuff and it's like, okay, I, I would much prefer to just let my kids be healthy. I mean, we're generally, you know, my wife and I parent and the way we are,

we're generally kind of anti-medication, not anti-medication, but like if you don't really need it, don't take it. Yeah, which is actually what I think medication was designed to be used as. Exactly. Is it when needed, not as a crutch. But I look at what my kids are, my daughters, my daughters that are in high school right now, the honors classes they're taken, the college credit classes, they're doing and like it's full steam ahead for the last two straight years that's what they've

been doing without really missing a single beat and I look around the country and I see other people and their kids and their struggles and there's kids like I think the ac t the SAT scores there's no way that those are not going to start to on average come down I mean there's there's definitely kids that are suffering um in their education they have to be I mean you can't homes to cool kids and expect them to be doing you know college credit you know, calculus or physics or whatever. I mean, parents can't help with that stuff. You know, they need to be in school.

Yeah, or have a great internet connection for YouTube. It's amazing just watching my own kids, how they have figured things out. Pick any topic you want to do that one of their first resources is go into a YouTube video. How do you do this? How do you do that? And it's hard for me to argue talking with my kids about higher education or the decisions that they want to make going into the future. you know trade school versus Ivy League school you know starting starting off with the ability to enter the workforce or going to more school and start with six figures worth of debt in your

early 20s I mean fuck that's a tough conversation or pursuing whatever it is that you want to pursue on the job training you know going through a mentorship program I mean I have a really hard time unless they want to do something specific which none of my kids have said that you know they want to be like a science a doctor or whatever stuff that's dead definitely going to require that path. I think we're in the same boat right now as parents trying to, trying to figure out how to advise on that. I'm actually going and speaking at a high school tomorrow to juniors and seniors about kind of

career stuff. You're going to tell them all to make knives? Yeah. Yeah. Oh, come work for me. Yeah. I've got it figured out, everybody, just start a knife company. It's the best place ever.

Just don't, you're not allowed to go on the internet and see anywhere else. Yeah. Just work for me. Yeah, I should just build a comment. just like a slash cult yeah yeah yeah I'm good with that um no you know I was doing a little bit of research for that because you know my career path since I graduated you know went to college duck hunted my way out of college um change changed colleges and kind of did a little bit of business stuff but never never graduated from college and then you know got a job in the excavation world

because that's what I grew up in and then went full time on knives and then the recession hit and I went back to work and became a lineman, right? And then now back to doing kind of my passion, which is the knives in the last couple years. And, you know, my, my, kind of my point to them is, is like, you don't have to have that shit figured out when you're 17 or 18. And I actually did a little research. I googled last night how many occupations the average person has in a career. What do you think it is? Between what ages. We talk in life? 35 year span is what, what that thing said, or 32. Six.

Twelve. Fuck. Yeah. That's the average number of occupations. Now, granted, when you're in college, you know, you might work at a restaurant here and then you might go do something there. But, you know, that's, and then the average number of people at times that people move is 12. Really? Yeah.

Yeah. And so, you know, my thing is, is, you know, I think there's a lot of pressure. I think my 17-year-old daughter, who's a senior's feeling it right now, like this pressure to know what she's going to do. and have it figured out. And I remember when I was in school, you were just like, everybody just said they're going to college. Even the kids that you knew

weren't going to go to college. The 0.04 GPA crew? Yeah, you were just, you were expected, everyone was expected to go to college. And I think that's definitely turning a bit. You know, that Mike Rowe talks a lot about, you know, just blue-collar jobs and the trades. And, you know, I got a job, you know,

thought I was going to be a welder with Northwestern Energy, a utility here. And then I ended up seeing kind of the age of the workforce and seeing my opportunity and went into the lineman stuff. And, you know, I became, got an apprenticeship and then became a journeyman lineman. Um, fantastic job. I mean, you can easily make a hundred grand a year be an alignment. And they pay you. I think the starting wage for alignment for a, for a, and a, uh, a groundman, which is just a grunt, a groundman starting wage as a lineman here in Montana is $26 an hour. No shit. That's a 19 year old. bugger eater. Like, you know, so, you know, then, then once you get an apprenticeship,

it's a three and a half year apprenticeship, every six months, you advance a step. It's a seven-step program. You advance a step, and every six months you get a pay raise until you're at journeyman scale once you pass your test and you're a journeyman alignment. You know, a lot of these trades are the same way, whether it's plumbers or electricians, you know, welders. It's really hard to sit there and tell a kid. You should go sign up at seven, for $50,000 to $100,000 in eventual debt. I don't know of a worst way to start somebody off young in their life. Yeah.

And I actually have in my notes to talk to these high school kids, debt equals handcuffs. I mean, you can be so free if you're out of debt, if you don't go buy the fancy truck, which I did out of college, out of high school. I was making good money working for my folks in the excavation business. Did you lift it? I did not lift it.

What did I do? Trash. Wheels. Wheels, okay. Yeah. Diesel or gas? Gas. Yeah, brand new Chevy Silverado.

Of course. $1,500. Off-road package. How many times you take it off-road? Well, I hunted, so I mean. Off, yeah. I lived on a gravel road, damn it. I went off-road every day.

But no, if you can be out of debt and you get tired of living in Montana and you want to, a buddy of yours is going to Greece to do something, go with them. Go check it out. You know, like having that ability, you know, when you get tied into these jobs where you're making, I'm making $18 an hour, but I can't afford to quit because I got this freaking truck payment. Like that's handcuffs. Or student loan payment. Student loan.

The only one that you can't file bankruptcy on. Yeah, I have nothing against higher education. I look back at my own life and I, to a degree, wish that I had pursued it to some, to some degree. I also don't know what I would have studied or what I would have wanted to do. I know if I would have gone into college right after high school, I would have failed. I would have wasted my time and likely some of my parents' money and then probably still gone into the military. So I was certainly atypical where I was from with the desire to go into the military, but I'm

glad I had that. But I just feel like when it's positioned as it has to be the next step, we're doing a disservice to people. There's so many other opportunities. I wouldn't be sitting here with you today if I had gone to college would be my guess. I don't know where I would end up being, but I scraped through high school. I was on and off. I would do one

semester of academic probation and then one off so I could play sports and immediately of course go back. Exactly. Yeah. On off, on off. We were on the same list. Yeah. You just can't do on on on on because then you're off the team. So it's got to be. Yeah. Mine was mostly just good enough to keep my parents mostly off my ass. I think my parents gave up on me at some point. I don't mean that negatively.

My sister had like a 7.0 GPA because she's an asshole. Mine too. Substantially smarter than me. So she trailblazed that path. And I think at some point my parents realized that the military may have been a great option for me. Yeah. And perhaps a C is my glass ceiling. Yeah.

Perhaps a C to others is an A to me, Josh. But I've heard on a lot of these podcasts, guys that come on and were like, I was a C student. And then when they found later on what they wanted to do, maybe it was training, you know, college courses or whatever they took in the military or whatever, and then they just smoked them and they were, it's an interest level. Are you interested in it? In high school, I was that kid that had that attitude of like, I'm never going to use this. I'm not going to really pay attention, you know. I wished I would have had a different attitude.

Me too. You know, just out of respect, one for my teachers and two, you know, I'm definitely harder on my kids about their grades or have set a different standard, I think, than my parents kind of did with of me. My sister just kind of managed herself and was pretty much straight days, but Which ruins it for all siblings after that person? Yeah. Yeah, she was an asshole. Well, I look at my high school education and the rest of my life afterwards, and it hasn't helped me back. I have, I have yet to bounce up against a place, and this could be due to me pursuing different avenues that didn't require it, but I've yet to bounce up against a place where my lack of higher

education inhibited me. I was managing $150 million with a few other people, $150 million sponsorship contract between CrossFit and Reebok. Zero business education or schooling. And I was really learning on the job as I went. I was able to get all my pilots licenses. I was able to figure out how to be able to do all of this. I'm just blindfold, like knife fighting my way through business learning as I go.

trying to figure that out. With the business part, you know, like continuing to try to grow that with the coffee shop that will be open next year. And again, I'm not, I haven't found a place where it's held me back. Maybe there's some places where it would have assisted me, but would it have been worth that two years or that four years? Yeah. Would I have lost those opportunities if I had taken that time to do that?

I don't know. But I just don't want people to think it's a dead end. I think work ethic is number one. And if you work hard, you know, people who actually are willing to put in the absolute hours that it takes to do whatever is they want to do, the rest of it you can pretty much figure out. Now, you're right, from a business perspective, it would be nice if I knew how to run spreadsheets better. You know, if I could do an Excel file. You bet you know how to hire somebody you could do that. I do.

And I've done it. Yeah. Her name's my wife. Yeah. Well, I hope she has a nice salary. Yeah. So, I mean, it's, no, it's definitely, it's interesting because in my shop right now, I have the two opposite end of the spectrums. I have a 20 year old and a 19 year old working for me right now. The 20 year old female is in college. She came to me, what, this summer? And she was like, should I quit school? Because, I mean, we're ramping up. Like, we're going like crazy. Yeah. I could use her full time every day. And she's like, should I quit school and just work full time? She's like, I would be more than happy to do that. And I was like, absolutely not.

Like staying, she's only got two years left. She's in business school. I said, absolutely not. You're almost there. Like, you're getting into the meat of it. We'll keep you on. You work whatever hours. And that's what she's been doing.

She comes out when classes are over. I don't question when she's there, when she's not. And I've told her several times, you know, if you have schoolwork classes, tests, you need to study, like, do not come to work if it's going to affect your grades. the opposite of the spectrum is a kid Tristan who's working for him who just graduated this spring from high school from high school phenomenal kid hard driver he was a 4.0 I think he's got a bunch of scholarship opportunities and it's a little awkward for me because selfishly I don't want to go college I just want him to work for me but I've told him you know you have to do what you

got to do however I'm building a company that I feel like he's going to have opportunity to grow in and expand and we'll be able to teach him. And if we need to send him to classes or pay for some schooling, fine. I don't want to tell somebody like him just don't go because I don't want to screw up his potential future. I want it to be all his choice. That being said, I could care less if he ever goes to college. And honestly, in five years from now, he might be managing 10 people under it with no college and be 25, you know. I wonder what the value of the college education will be five, ten years from now.

I think it will always have and retain that value, but I don't know how critical it will be for a lot of these positions. I was listening to Andy Furcilla's podcast, and he had a guy on, I can't remember what company he was from. It was a big one, like a big national brand. And this guy was saying, and Andy's the same way, but this brand was saying they no longer even ask on the hiring form about college education. Really?

All they want is, work ethic and they can see by some of the careers they've been in like you know what have you done basically but really beyond that it's they just want to know if you're willing to work hard and then they'll teach you what you need to know and really as me for me as a business owner we're getting ready to hire quite a few people probably in the next six months um for sure some by February and then more probably in May June when our building's done um I mean I could care less what their college education is, I'm more interested in, frankly, I'm, this whole idea of like the young people of America, you know, or a bunch of shitheads and don't work hard and don't want

to work and, you know, with all the help wanted signs out there and stuff. You mean what they were saying about us when we were young? Exactly. My 19 and 20-year-old kids that are, they're not my kids, but these, you know, two young people that are working in my shop right now, I mean, they're working right now today. I'm up here doing this, and they're phenomenal. They come, they do their thing, and they tell me when shit's going wrong or they need something. They're phenomenal. And I don't care what age you are. I don't care if you're a man or a woman.

I just need you to be there and to go after it and work hard, you know. And I do think there's a lot of young people that are looking for places that they can grow with and move up. Yeah, I agree. How are you managing the growth of your company? I ask because I'm basically taking notes and trying to figure out your playlist and then just steal it as my own. Because your shit is on a rocket ship, man. Yeah. No, it's, I mean, at first I got to give credit to Brandon my business partner.

I mean, he does the marketing side, the Instagram stuff. And then I got to give credit to about 200 other people all across all different industries that have just been super kind and supportive. I mean, it really started at, you know, Bert Sorens and Winterstrong and meeting people there. and then people all across the outdoor industry, you know, the podcasting world such as yourself. I mean, everybody's just been very supportive of what we're doing. And, you know, I think we also, it speaks to people too. Like people have seen, you know, December 20th last year, I still had a full-time job. I was working as alignment.

So I built this in the evenings and kind of dreamed up the plan and what I wanted it to be. but, you know, December 30th, I quit my job. January 1st, I had no idea how this would go. And then it's just been, honestly, it's seven days a week, day and night. But when you love something, and that's what I want to tell those kids in that high school, figure it out. I don't care. I'm 40.

Now, I've loved making knives and whatnot, but it took me a long time to, I think, get mature enough and have enough life experience to really figure out how to do it, right? But, man, when you love something, it doesn't matter how many hours a week, put into it, you know? Yeah. Especially if it's yours, if it's your baby, you know. And even that being said, I've seen some people in companies, whether it's in Black Rifle Coffee or it's in Sorenx or, you know, these other brands that it's not their company, but they love the mission and the idea, and they work like it's their company. And that's what I'm hoping, like Sadie and Tristan that I've working for me right now, I want them to feel like it's their company as well, you know, and

and be like Sadie always texts after our drops. She's so excited about everything selling. And she's like, I'm so proud of our company. You know, and that's what I want people to feel when they work, when they work for us or if they buy our stuff. You know, we're just regular people. When did you realize you guys were on to something? Because your drops are selling out in about six or seven minutes.

Yeah, it's insane. Yeah. It would have been probably this summer, I think the first time we had 500 knives available in a drop. Were you sweating that beforehand? Like, oh, God, we've just done way too much. Probably the sickest to my stomach without being, like, actually just hung over. Just loathing and self-doubt. Oh, yeah, 500 knives, like 500 people after what these.

Seriously. And then how fast did they go? Minut 45. Yeah. And I was like, fuck, that's awesome. Oh, my God. Yeah. No, and we still, I was so nervous the other night, like sitting at the dinner table and my kids are all sitting there and we're watching it.

It doesn't get like old or I don't take it for granted. I mean, man, we're coming into winter in Montana. Like, it's pissing rain driving up here today. Well, let's discuss winter. It's supposed to be 53 degrees tomorrow. Yeah. You've lived in Montana for a very long time. Yeah.

Is this a normal trend? Does it happen occasionally or is global warming real? No, global warming is definitely real and it's Donald Trump's fault. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. Is it traditionally 53 degrees in Montana at the summer? Yesterday, Missouri beat its record high by 9 degrees.

So the old record was like 50, whatever, 8, and it was 67 yesterday or something. There was a beautiful dusting of snow on the mountains and everything around the flathead. Yeah. It's gone. It's basically, it looks like early spring. or late fall. No, it's, but it'll probably be 35 below in 10 days. If not this afternoon.

And we'll set a record low. It's, well, I can't figure it out. That's why I asked you because it'll be below 32 or right at 32 and snow. I was almost getting ready to put the plow on my truck two weeks ago. I was like, God, not yet. I think this is just a teaser. Yeah. And now, if I would have done that, all I would have been doing was just like running up the road.

Yeah. I remember taken, when I was in high school, we had some friends that live. up the Swan Valley and we got a monster monster snowstorm like feet feet four feet four feet at Thanksgiving I feel like that shuts down basically everything it knocked all the power out like everywhere around here but we we still had power we live you know fairly close to our town where we lived and so we cooked this big Thanksgiving dinner and we took it up to see the lake and we could only just pull off the highway and then there's some friends of ours that actually had like horses in a wagon and they came out to the road and picked us up and we actually took like horse and wagon

into their place and we brought them Thanksgiving dinner that's so awesome in condon montana yeah and there was four feet of snow um at Thanksgiving and yeah now it's 65 degrees but i feel like it's not normal it is yeah i mean the resort i think is supposed to open up in 15 days i don't know how possible that's going to be yeah i'm not a snow expert but i believe 50 degrees is not great no for retained snowfall and softness of the snowpack. I know I know most Montanans are rooting for like the winter

of all time just to chase some people back to where they came from. Are you trying to say that they want people who move to Montana to move out? I think so a little bit. It's kind of the guy that I bought out that's moving up here is actually from California and I'm being cursed by a lot of my friends because I'm actually

moving a Californian up here. We've had this discussion about how I get cursed with my pictures. It's like, fuck off. It's beautiful. Honestly, a customer of mine really put into perspective for me. He goes, because I said, yeah, it's going to, hopefully at some point here it's going to slow down a little bit, just with the prices. We were talking the prices of how things are just skyrocketing.

And he laughed at me. And he goes, dude, the amount of people who have moved to Montana in the last two years is a fraction of the amount of people that intend to. He goes, the amount of people that have kids that are juniors or seniors in high school or have three or four years to finish a job out. or, you know, just can't pick up and leave. For whatever reason, he's like, you know, the people that have come in the last two years with COVID and everything else kind of going on craziness, he's like, those are just the people that had the ability to pick up and leave.

Yeah. It's like the people that are coming are planning on it. And just like you said, there's friends of yours that are coming up and looking, and it's not going to slow down. That's... I don't think it'll slow down, but at the same time, we'll see what happens in the country. as a whole.

Right. The pendulum. I would like to believe that, and again, my own personal opinion, there's some very insane things going on. I would like to believe that sanity will become the norm of the day by also sometimes question whether or not it's ever been the norm of the day. But I, you know, it can't, I just can't imagine it's staying the way that it is. Very restrictive, this valve of on, off, on, off.

I actually think that most people are getting to the point where they're like, Hey, that cool story. I have to live my life at this point. Right. What do you think is going to actually happen in like L.A.? So I was listening to a podcast yesterday with a guy who was a seal and now he's a police officer in Orange County. Yep. And he was saying like his, well, I don't know, like basically opt tempo or whatever of being an officer like every single night, every single day. He likes working there actually because he's like busy, busy. but basically he was saying that they're they're not stopping speeding they're not going after like the little petty crime shit he's the only dealing with like the crazy crazy shit yeah but how long

how long is it what's going to happen down there because like they just tried to recall their governor in california and they voted for the same thing by a landslide well i think a lot of that i think a lot of that might have to do with the candidate that again the choices between the two candidates. Yeah, true. I know very little about the individual who is running against Newsom, but from my understanding, he may not have been the best example of what could have been possible. Most politicians are like shining examples of humans. Yeah. I, again, not an expert in politics. I don't know if anything is going to change until we change how long people can be in politics. Yeah. I think we have to start limiting how long people can operate in that environment.

before they are force ejected. So it becomes an actual service to the people that elected them as opposed to a service to themselves. And people could argue against that. I'm like, whoa, they are serving the people. And I would just point you at their net worth after government service shortly after and the jobs and the ascension that they have and try to explain to me how those things are not tied than that influence.

Yeah, I know quite a few people that have made a couple hundred thousand dollars a year for most of their life. And they're not worth billions or hundreds and hundreds of millions. like how is that possible? I don't care right or left. Yeah. Those, you know, U.S. senators, representatives in Washington that are there. Just looking net worth before going into politics and net worth they're after.

Yeah. And look at their yearly salaries. Yeah. And I just, I don't know if anything is going to change until we change our system, which would require those people. Those people to change it. To change it. So I think the likelihood of that happening.

You know, so again, I was in L.A. I've been in L.A. twice now in like the last 30. days, man, you want to talk about thankful that I don't live. There are many things that I can appreciate that I can't appreciate about that area. And I live there in California for all but shit, eight years of my life. So there's some things that can very deeply appreciate. But to answer the question, how do you change some of this stuff, the crime there,

the homelessness in Los Angeles? I have no idea. I don't know if it is salvage. I can only speculate or hypothesize that it would take catastrophe after catastrophe after catastrophe until people are choking on the environment that they have created before they actually take action and fix it. I don't know what that would look like and I don't actually want to see it. No.

And I would like to say that I think we could change it before then, but I think most people are self-centered and like their anchor in the ground is... themselves and they have a hard time seeing the broader aspect of community, which I'm guilty of that at times as well. I try to do my best to think about it from a we is greater than me perspective, but I don't always succeed. I think it'll tend towards that catastrophe. It's scary because some of the people that would be really helpful in making a change down there and making it better are leaving, you know, and if like that friend of mine is right, you know, that they just continue flooding out. It's just less and less people that are going to be left there. And it's really

sad because, I mean, I don't know if there's a more beautiful state than California. I mean, it is an unbelievably amazing state. It's more diverse than people realize as well. Most people when they think California, they are thinking surf and beaches. You know, Yosemite is beautiful. The redwoods, northern California, the Sonoma area up near the northern border of California. It's so diverse, the agriculture, the high deserts that are east of sandy. I mean, you can get in California just about every ecosystem, I think. We took line trucks and bucket trucks down there to help when they had some flooding several springs ago. And we went over Donner Pass in... Unbelievable. It was like early March. And I mean, I'm from Montana. I've seen snow. I've never

seen snow. Yeah, like that. It was unbelievable. And then 30, 40 minutes down the pass, or an hour, I don't know how long it was. We were into like absolute neon green, gorgeous grass, those rolling hills. And that's kind of where we were working right at the base of the past down there. And absolutely, I was like, I could live here. This is unbelievable. You know, they got the mountains there. The beach was a, you know, a couple hours away. And all those foothills were absolutely gorgeous. I had never seen that part of California. I don't know if a lot of people realize

that it's that diverse. I mean, if you ask people for cities in California, they'd probably say from north to south, if they're a wine person, Sonoma, obviously. Yeah. San Fran, L.A., San Diego. Yep. I mean, there's a lot more to the state.

Yeah. However, the cities that I just listed are the vast majority of the voters. Right. For California. No, it's true. And that's how it is really in, even a place like Montana, you know, elections are going to go how Billings, Missoula, Great Falls, Helena go.

Like, you know, those big Calispell. Frenchtown is not really making a dent. I hate to tell you. No, no, not making a dent. Calispell may not be either. Not much, but not too much. But, yeah, no, those, the big areas. But, you know, think about, say, take five cities in Montana are going to basically control what the entire, you know, fourth largest state union is going to do. Like, you look at how big Montana is. Fourth largest by... Like, nobody in Glasgow has a say. Yeah.

Well, you know. It would even put it even bigger perspective. So the fourth largest landmass. Yeah. Yeah. But all of those cities that you just said would be a subdivision in fucking L.A. Exactly. Exactly.

Perspective. What, we just broke a million here a couple years ago. Yeah. I think between L.A., like the greater L.A., Orange County, San Diego has got to be 20-plus million people. Yeah. So. And that's what's funny. When I fly back there going into LAX, I'm just looking out the windows because you start passing over housing and it doesn't break until LAX for like 30 minutes before you land.

Yeah. No thanks. No. Hard pass. No. And it is. It's an eye-opening thing. I sold a four-wheeler the other day to a couple that was from California. And they moved to where I grew up up in Lincoln.

Just happened to find my listing on my four-wheeler. And they told me where they bought. is basically in the Bob Marshall Wilderness, like right up to the edge of it at the, like, the county doesn't maintain the road. And they told me where they live and they bought my four-wheeler and then they said they were going to use the plow to plow their driveway. That's not going to work. And I was like.

That is 100% not going to work. I think I was the first person that told them like a plow on your truck isn't going to plow your driveway. Like on the right winter, you're like, honestly, we had friends that lived up there that snowmobiled in and out when I was in high school, most of the winter. Yeah, for anybody listening, a four-wheeler with a plow. First off, you need chains if you're going to plow. This is a California kid saying this, right?

This is what I've already learned. I didn't buy the four-wheel because I talked to people who know. That shit's just not going to work. You might be able to do a sidewalk with two inches of snow. But what you're going to end up doing, even with change on, is spinning your tires. Yeah. Like the boss plow. I have a F-350 with a boss plow on it.

That thing's awesome, but it also has its limitations as well. Three, four feet of snow, negative. We had, you know, my dad still has them, but back was growing up, and we would always get the call usually around like February when the guy plowing his driveway with his pickup didn't push it all back early enough, you know, far enough early in the winter. And pretty soon he's like in a lose run. Yeah, he's pinned in and he's just bouncing off the sidewalls. And it's like, you guys need to come push the snow back. It's one of my favorite things to do is plow. It is fun.

It's awesome. Until you hit something. I haven't had that experience. Oh, my God. Like, like, like, uh, well, like, con. Like a concrete, like sidewalk or a lid or, you know, we would. There's none of that shit. When I was growing up in high school, we had the, we'd plow all the businesses out downtown

where we live. So my dad, I would take off with abacco at like 3.30 in the morning and my dad would take off with one. And we'd plow all the businesses out before like seven. If it was during the week, I'd go to school at that point. If it was on a weekend, I would just keep going. Yeah. But then we'd go get like all the end of it, people's driveways, you know, homeowners.

So I have a very limited area. So I live off of a dirt road. And my nearest neighbor is about 60 acres away, but they're awesome. So I will plow the road that gets us in. I'll plow up to their house. I think somebody is building a little bit farther in, so I'll do that one. And then I'll just go like mystery plow. Yeah.

Because it's, there's no like, there's no barriers or concrete. So I'm not worried about hitting anything. And if I'm being honest, my favorite thing to do is plow half of people's driveways. What is this guy's deal? I mean, I feel like. I did half of a good job. Maybe like a little berm that's right there, and then I just slowly lift it up and back out

and hope they have a great day. Yeah, perfect. No, we would, it'd be plowing along, and usually it's kind of hypnotic. You get going and you're just kind of cruising along, and then all of a sudden, maybe it's a stump, you know, that's cut off six inches high above the ground. That's not good.

Oh, my God. And you just find yourself planted up against your windshield. I haven't had that experience, yes, and I also wear my seatbelt. That's good. But I enjoy, like when snowstorms are, I'm going to get the plow on the truck, face it down the driveway, get a coffee in the morning, and then just... I don't have fun.

Yeah. Yeah. I also enjoy vacuuming. I think for the same reason. It's immediate. You can see the immediate impact of what you're doing. You're just kind of like out there. I didn't see that one coming, the whole vacuuming from snow plowing.

They're both the same. As you plow, you can look back and look at that amazing stretch of road that I just plow. When you're vacuuming... Do you have shag carpet? Because you probably get real... No? No. Who has shag carpet?

Well, I don't know. You could almost be like... crops. You'd like farming. Oh, yeah. That'd be awesome. I would drive the shit out of one of those combines. I drive by those like in, you know, especially like Eastern Oregon, Eastern Washington or like places in eastern Montana, but like out in Kansas. And you see those fields. Yeah. Those guys have to go over those. You know, they spray weeds. They have to plow them up.

They have to plan them. Then they have to, you know, fertilize. Yeah, but I only want to come out for one solid day. Just a day. Just a day where I can just knock down like a cornfield. You don't want like 48 straight years of it? I would like to take a very hard pass on that. Yeah. Those guys, fuck that. Man, those guys spend a lot of time in a seat of a tractor. I know that. You know what I know that? A lot of them reach out about the podcast. I bet. The full auto Friday questions. Some of them are guys like, I work fill in the number of, you know, umpteen hours per week in this vehicle. Yep. And here's my question for you. It's like, okay, right on. 100%. Yeah, a little windshield time.

Cousin mine's got a custom cutting business where they start cutting, you know, grain down in Texas early in the year when it's still, you know, freaking snows melting up here. And then they cut grain all the way up across, you know, all the way going north across the country until they end up in the Dakotas, eastern Montana, just cutting people's fields. Because these guys grow their grain, but they don't have all the equipment to cut it. You know, and man, a lot of tractor time. That is a lot of tractor time. Like I said, hard paths. Feeding America. Very much so.

Invisible to most people, I think, as well. That connection is lost. Tell me about the veteran event you did. It was not that long ago, right? No, it was in August. It was amazing. Where'd the idea come from, and what do you do with them? You know, kind of seeing like what a lot of what Evans done with Black Rifle with, you know, their adaptive athletes shoots and some of that stuff, you know, as a company,

I'll be honest, when I planned this last January, I had only, you know, not had a full-time job for about two weeks. So I didn't really see where we were going with a company this quickly. But I just wanted to start small at that point. I'm like, this is what I want to do someday. If I have a big company, there's a few things I want to be able to do, which is give back to, you know, some different places. Some of it might be conservation since we're in the hunting world. but you know I feel pretty strongly about the whole you know veteran you know first responder just people who give back to our country that you know I never did do that myself and so Brandon Lilly from Sorenx came up he was a world champion power lifter Laura Zara who's best known for being on naked and afraid but she's actually a super badass chick does a lot of other amazing stuff does a lot of survival type You know, I hate to say survival because she's not really.

I mean, just does really cool, you know, things in the outdoors. How'd you get linked in with her? It's a really cool story. Through Bert Soren and Neil Camomora and some of those people, I think Neil called me actually and said, hey, this girl's moving up to Montana, just broke up with her boyfriend, moving up there. She doesn't know anybody you want to link you two up.

And we became really good friends. And she's got amazing stories. she went to Mexico just as a, I mean, if it was my daughter, I'd have a fit, but just took off to Mexico with like 20 bucks hidden sewn inside of a little book and just rode trains and just went all over the place and like, just a lot of the stuff she's done has been pretty amazing, kind of a cool girl. But got a pretty good following on the internet, both of them do. And so we all got together.

We forged a blade, a Damascus blade, made some steel, made this knife. And then we wrapped a finger pin blade. Yep. Yep. So they each made their own pattern of Damascus, and then I made a pattern, and then we combine it all into one. And I kind of called it that fingerprint, because you can actually look at that blade and see what Damascus each person made. Very different. How did they choose to make it?

Did they layer it or do they a canister? They layered it. Trash. I'm getting nervous because, you know, usually I don't talk to people that know a lot about, you know, Damascus. You know where I got my goddamn education. You're an expert. I am a, well, I was going to say master blade smith. I don't know.

Aren't you a journeyman? I don't know what any of the levels are. I just really like to watch Forge and Fire and see people's blades fucking explode. Yeah. And they always say the same thing. Well, I've never tried this before, so now's the time. Like, perfect. Time compressed.

On national television. Yeah. And they always, they oftentimes forget the white out. And it just doesn't work out well when they take it the can't. Look at you go. No, I told them what they were. going to be making because they've, you know, they don't, Laura actually has some experience in making knives, but, you know, Brandon doesn't. And neither one of them made Damascus. And so

made that blade. And then we raffled it off on our Instagram website and stuff. And, and we raised $10,000. And so we ended up flying in, I think, 17 or 18 veterans from around the country. Some of them drove. Some of them flew. Paid all their expenses. And it was really cool because we set up kind of similar to what Bert had going with his Winterstrong were. We set up tents on site, and everyone camped right there. And it was cool. Black Rifle Coffee sent up a writer from Coffee or Die. And it was interesting because she was a brand new hire,

really didn't know anybody even at Black Rifle, and definitely didn't know any of us. And she was the last one to show up kind of late at night on Friday night. And we were doing a flip-flop with a deer leg on our fire, which that flip-flop has taken a full quarter basically deer leg and just cooking it. Andy Mokal does that where you just cook it on the fire and you season one side and then you just flip it and you just keep flipping and just trimming off the meat that's cooked right on the outside. Oh, interesting.

It is so good. Yes. I've never even thought about doing that. Oh, my God. You have to do it. Could you do with like a quarter of beef? I'm assuming you could, right? Well, that would be a lot of meat. That'd be really heavy.

The neat thing about a deer leg. Why does that have to be a full? size cow. Calf. I mean, I see cows that are a variety of sizes, Josh. Take one out of the neighbor and ranchers field. Salad calf, I mean. Yeah.

No, it's an amazing way to go. He cooks at the attack events and does that. And honestly, it's the best wild game I've had. It's incredible. And you just season it. And you just have a really hot, like, you know, great, basically over the coals. And it just sears that outside. And you just take a knife and you just super thin.

slice it and hand it off to people. And then you just season that side and then flip it back over and you just keep flipping back and forth. Yeah, I love the idea of that. Yeah, it's awesome. And when you shoot a deer, like my boy's deer that he just got, we just cut the front legs off and just wrap them all up and put them right in the freezer. Don't trim the meat off or anything.

For that purpose. Yep. Yep. And it's cool because you could. I was amazed. I had never actually done one myself. I'd just been around them at other like events. And so I had two legs thought out for that thinking.

you know, we had 30 people. We were going to need it. Shit. We could have served 50 people. Really? Yeah, it was amazing. Huh. And so people just stand around.

It's a real, the neat thing about that first night, we didn't do anything official going out in the shop or any of that. I just wanted everybody to get to know each other. Basically, none of the veterans knew each other. And this wasn't like a wounded warriors thing. It wasn't, we just put kind of it out on Instagram. We're doing this. If you're a veteran, send us a DM.

most guys that, you know, we heard from, we kind of took. And, you know, a couple friends of mine that knew some veterans, you know, suggested some people. But, you know, basically 20 strangers is what we had up. And it's interesting. You see, like, right in the very beginning, everybody's strangers, and you get people kind of off to the side and they're, you know, some of the guys are quieter and not so sure about it all.

And, you know, we just kind of going around and bullshit and honestly a campfire is amazing. It just campfire and a little bit of beer or whiskey and a deer leg. And next thing you know, an hour into it, everybody's basically family, you know. And she showed up. It was kind of sprinkling rain. It's the first rain we had had. It was August. It was the first rain we'd had all summer.

Of course, it happens the night that everybody's staying in tents. And she was game. She slept in a tent just like everybody else. I had one kind of set aside for her. and a bunch of the guys kind of bunked in together on cots and a couple guys brought their own tents and everybody just camped out. And then the next morning,

we just started teaching guys how to forge blades. And, you know, I kind of talked a little bit before Joe Maynard came up from Nashville. Joe is an ex-Black Hawk helicopter pilot. And Joe has, Joe was kind of struggling after military service and just trying to figure out what to do and kind of got to a real. really, really low point. And he actually told kind of his story on my podcast, but he told it in person to all these guys where he actually attempted suicide.

And he still has the bullet with the dent and the primer that didn't go off. First time he said his pistol never, never did it ever misfired. It's fortuitous. Yeah. And so he, he actually, actually it was Laura Zara was down at a friend's house. And he, he actually, called this friend and she just happened to be there and he's like man I'm in a bad way he came down there well they were making knives and they started doing some knife making and he basically just

like latched onto it and forged all night long grinding blades and something just struck in his head and he was like I am this is it I'm doing this and it like entirely changed it just gave him purpose and like a mission and he's basically become you know a full-time knife maker and so he came up And he was teaching and kind of, you know, I can only relate to veterans so much. I'm not a veteran. So, you know. We're not that unique just so you know. It's just a job.

Yeah, I know. I understand. I've heard you say that stuff. But still. 100% accurate, though. Yeah. Well, it was cool to have him who's been there who, you know, can talk to guys that are maybe struggling with things that I'm not or haven't.

Yeah. That's fair. And so Brandon and Lily flew back up, Laura flew back up. and these guys were all there. And, you know, my thing with the weekend, it wasn't to turn a bunch of people into knife makers. I didn't care if a person was a wounded warrior or just a guy that had retired and just thought knife making was cool.

It didn't matter to me. The whole point of the weekend was to try to make an impact on someone, one person. It didn't matter if it was just one or if it was five. And what was really cool was there was a guy in particular, there with a with a service dog that basically he was touching that dog all the time that dog was in his lap like you could tell he was dealing with some pretty serious stuff you know mentally and emotionally he was very standoffish he took a little while to kind of warm up to everybody and and then and he did and we started forging and the next thing you know like you couldn't keep that guy of the

forge it just something struck with him and at one point one of the uh guys, he was actually active duty, but he's just getting retired Green Beret. He walks up to me, he's like, hey, do you see what's happening over here? And I was like, yeah, I kind of noticed. And he goes, he hasn't been by his dog. He hasn't touched his dog in three hours. And this guy ended up telling me later on in the weekend, he's like, it's the first time in, and I don't know how long he says where I've turned around and said, where's my dog?

And his dog was just overlaying in the corner on her bed. And he had just lost himself in it. And since then, two or three guys have reached out about setting up forges, and Joe Maynard is actually helping this guy get a belt grinder. He's given him one of his old belt grinders to get going. And I have DMs from two or three of those guys on my phones telling me, like, you don't know how much this has changed my life. And honestly, I didn't do shit.

I mean, I just opened up my shop. I taught them. I did a demo on forging a blade, and then we got them all in there. Another master blade smith, Steve Costa, he came over from Idaho. So we had three guys teaching. We had like five anvils going, and then we had the belt grinder set up the next day, and just kind of taught them some basics

and just let them beat on steel. You know, it wasn't going to make, you know, a super great knife maker out of anybody in those days. But I'd say most people, they all just went home with blades in a fun weekend, and a few of them went home with, like, kind of something stuck in their craw about, like, this is something I want to do.

You're going to do it again? Yeah. I don't know how much bigger I really want to make it because by the end of that weekend I went to bed one night at one in the morning. Guys were sitting in my shop drinking beer and whiskey and whatnot and I went to bed. Those guys I found out the next day were out in my shop until 4 o'clock in the morning. And I guess some things that happened where a lot of guys were opening up about certain things they'd been through what they're struggling with. And there was a couple guys that were kind of helping talk a couple of guys through things. and it was like that personal family intimate relationship part that I'm worried you'd lose if it got

much bigger. It would be hard to manage and it would be a lot of people. I think in that 20 people, 25 tops, it would just be hard to recreate. There was a lot of really personal connection. Guys are exchanging cell phone numbers. everyone was first name basis. Joe was actually nervous, you know, being a veteran himself, he was just nervous about how it all go with all these different guys

and all these different experiences and all these different branches. And it was funny, you got a lot of the military guys going back and forth, you know, the Green Beret saying, you know, the Army can't, you know, the military can't live without us and the helicopter guy going, you guys wouldn't be shit if I wasn't dropping you off, you know. It's funny. It's accurate. They just got a lot.

a lot of the like, you know, griping back and forth of each other, which was all good fun, just fun ribbing, you know, of each other. But you could tell everybody really got like super, super close. And it was actually an interesting time, too, because that's when the Afghanistan shit show was happening. And actually, I did a podcast with several of those people the last night. And it got a little, you know, I brought that up. And you got a lot of mixed emotions with 10 veterans from all different backgrounds. Yeah. About how we left there, should we leave, should we not?

And there's really no right or wrong answer to any of it. Yeah. It's everybody's opinions based on their experience, you know, and, you know, some guys very, very bitter and very upset about. And other guys are like, yeah, knew it was going to happen that way eventually, you know, so. Yeah, that's an interesting one. It's, you're certainly not going to get a parallel answer.

Yeah. from everybody, to say the least. So how are you going to, I have a feeling your applicant pool is going to grow? Yeah, probably will. The first thing we need to find is someone to come and forge that blade in our shop with us, who's got a good following, who wants to, you know, help build a knife, and then we'll, like I say, we need to raise the money for it. Yeah.

It kind of sucked last year because we did, I didn't know this, but we did the raffle and then some douchebag turned us into the Montana State Gambling Association because apparently doing a raffle over state lines is illegal against gambling laws. Are you serious? Yeah. And the guy who called the official was actually super cool. He's like, look, I'm just doing my job. So how do you get around that?

I'm not sure. We need to figure out how, because I don't want to auction it off just to one big bidder. That's what would happen too. It'd be like 20 bucks, 10,000, and then 99.9% of people are out of the wheelhouse. Can't give. Yeah. Yeah, and a lot of people would love to buy $100 worth of tickets and $10 worth of tickets, whatever. There's got to be a way you can legally do that.

I've been trying to figure that out, but we want to get like one or two people that will come down to the shop or fly up or whatever. We'll pay the expenses on all of it we did last year. And then forge a blade with me, make that knife, put it out there, raise some money for it. And then kind of that August time frame actually worked out really nice. It was kind of after all the attack events. and right before school starts for people. And then, yeah, then we'll put it out there again and just have people probably apply on our Instagram.

It definitely will be, I mean, we had a lot less of a following when we did that the first time versus now, so we'll definitely, I'm sure, get more. Is the following increasing commensurate with the sale rate? Yeah, it is. It's been incredible. So how are you managing the growth

and making sure that you're not too far out in front of the cart. You know, a little bit of self-control. I mean, there's some things we would love to be trying to just dive off into now, but I'm really afraid to do that and fuck it, fuck it up, do it bad. You know, so I think the last time I was on here is talking about chef's knives. Yeah. And we still haven't actually launched them because, I mean, they're in my shop. Are they done?

Some of them. Yeah, but I'm working on like figuring out the finish. process. And there are certain things that I'm just trying, and I'll be honest with you, you know, when we had those cut, you know, I cut a couple hundred thinking that would be enough for like a year. And, you know, that is not going to be enough for a year, Josh. No, no. That is not going to be enough for 60 seconds. I know. If things continue the way that you're going. So when we do those, we're going to probably do a little bit of a soft launch on them and then we'll, we'll do a lot bigger kind of run of them. you know, probably more like this summer. You should do a limited run in time to ship them for Christmas so people can buy holiday gifts. Yeah. Yeah, that's not going to happen.

They're not quite that. Fine. Take my idea and just fucking stomp on it, though. I just did. So they're not that ready. Okay. Yeah. I gave you a cutting board with no chef's knife.

So they're obviously not that ready. Well, hold on. This cutting board is awesome. Is this a Montana company? It is. Montana. Yep, Montana Block. So they're making these cutting boards right here.

I think we're going to have those on our website here in the next couple weeks. Where are they based out of? Good question. Montana. Brandon actually contacted them and has been dealing with them. I think they're over in eastern Montana, maybe by Billings. They're doing a great job. It's pretty cool.

It's pretty intricate. This has got to be a laser, I'm assuming. Yes. Yeah. Lasered on our logo and stuff. That thing's badass, man. Thank you for it. Yeah.

But, yeah, we're going to have chef's knives. We want to venture off into the folding knife game. That's part of the whole. Why? That's part of the whole idea of doing our building that we're going to build. Maybe you should go into the energy during space too. That'd be a great one that's not completely oversaturated and a fucking nightmare. Yeah.

No, I think we can do it and do it in a way that's going to be a little bit unique and BS. It's going to be exciting because when we build that building, you know, we're, that's the thing. We're going to be hiring people. We're going to need people to run CNC machines. We're buying C&C's. It's interesting. I think people are enjoying following us too because this. This is like you're watching just some dumbass build a company.

Build a brand. And I'm going to make some dumbass mistakes for sure at times. I mean, we might even have a knife for two break. I don't know. I wasn't going to bring it up. I can't believe you brought that up. No, I'm bringing it up. I'm bringing it up.

I came for my beating and I'm getting my fucking beating, damn it. There's no beating to have. I know. I think if you didn't have a knife, first of all, the knife didn't fail. We were out in the field. Yeah. And a buddy of mine that shall remain namest for his privacy was doing that initial. So I guess there's quite a few different ways to gut an animal.

I mean, at some point you're going to have to cut open the stomach cavity. Yeah. And a lot of people make that initial decision and they get their fingers in there and they're slicing it up. And the tip of the knife just snapped off because it was subpar quality. Yeah, obviously. No, I don't. Which is exactly not what happened for clarity. He might have been using it as a hammer to open the pelvic girdle.

and doing this number back and forth, and maybe we all heard it go, and it's like, oh, I wonder what that was. Yeah. I mean, and honestly, actually, that kind of stuff is going to happen from time to time. And I tell people, and honestly, we are walking a fine line with these knives.

I mean, that's not that bad. I'm holding it up right now. It was like a quarter of an inch. He might have been, if like this is the pelvis, maybe doing this, So yeah, it only can take so much. Yeah, and honestly, I've said that before. We're going to have an occasional knife, tip of a knife, or something like that break,

because we are grinding these blades thin. But it also means people are using them, which is not that there's, I may or may not have a small knife collection. Yeah. It's okay that you're not using all of them, but what could possibly be better than getting an awesome knife and using it for its intended purpose? Right. And if it fails in that, you already got enough, I was up there we were processing our deer. He was already using the other one.

So it's not like you can't get it replaced. Yeah. But if it's going to fail, I'd rather have it fail in that world. No, and I would rather ship a knife back, or I would rather ship out a replacement knife to a guy here and there that has one fail, then try to make our knives so completely unbreakable

that they're super thick, heavy, like made for the lowest common denominator. Yeah. You know, like I would rather make these blades thin, super easy to resharpen and kind of cut lasers in flesh and hide and stuff they're supposed to cut

and run the risk of an occasional guy breaking one and honestly I mean I've broke shit too I mean we push things to their limits the good thing about us we're going to immediately stand behind any of those kind of issues we're just going to have a certain small percentage of stuff that now and then we have to

replace but I would rather guys use their shit and use it hard than baby it or not use it at all, you know. Your blades do hold an edge that is, I went through a cow elk and four deer without sharpening. It was mainly using, actually I was switching back and forth, so it was two knives, but the speed goat and then what is this one?

Stonewall. Stonewall. Going back and forth between the two, but they were still sharp as hell at the end of that, which is not my experience with a lot of knives. they'll start off sharp as hell, and then the next thing you know, you're like, awesome, just hacking away into it. What angle are you sharpening these two? Right around that 20 degree mark.

Is that probably best for sharpness? Yeah, I tell people, a lot of guys actually worry, like, way too much about angle. I tell them, be in that 20 degree range. If you're 19 degrees, it doesn't matter. You know, generally going to be less of an angle, like 15 for like a chef's knife, you know, but a little steeper angle for, or a knife that you're going to be doing heavier work with. You know, we're going to be coming out with some stuff this year,

maybe more like bushcraft-type fieldcraft stuff, where, you know, your 20-22-degree angle, you know, that you might be chopping with wood. We're going to be coming out with a hatchet, which would be super cool. But, yeah, on these knives like this that are super thin, I like a lower angle, like a 17 to 20. What would be your best at-home recommended tool for sharpening a knife?

You know, we sell some work sharp stones on our website. The flatstones? Yeah, flatstones. I can dull a knife like a motherfucker with one of those. Yeah, you know, and I get so many people that say that. I'm so bad at this. Yeah, but honestly, I would tend to wonder sometimes what guys, I've heard guys tell me that all the time,

and then they bring their knives to me to sharpen. And it's like, yeah, dude, you never had a chance. I mean, with the edge geometry of that particular knife, the steel, how thick it is, and maybe the stone you're using. I've got a YouTube video on our Montana Knife Company YouTube on how to sharpen with a stone. And honestly, these thin knives, like that one right now needs sharpened, and it would not take much at all on a stone to get that right back to where it should be. And that's the whole idea of that thin edge geometry. If I tried to make that knife completely unbreakable and super, say, thick edge, now you have

all that steel behind that edge that you have to move, that you have to remove to sharpen it, where with a thin blade like that, you can just take a few passes and you're going to be back, especially in the field, just a couple passes and you're right back to work. Maybe at home you take a little bit more time with it, but... I have success, and I don't know if this is a good device or not. I think it's a Lansky that has the two little rods that come up for whatever reason I can do pretty good with those

Yeah That's how I'll generally retune up your knives Yeah No, that works And then honestly we We sharpen all of our knives for life I don't care where you got it You know, for free

So I mean people just need to send them back Yeah I was gonna send you back And be like your knives are trash These things don't cut anymore Yeah And the hopes you'd be like I just threw them on the grinder

And they're perfect So here you go Sweet I was gonna send them back your friend, I was going to send your friend a saws-all. In fact, I think I texted you a picture. You did. Which we got a very hearty laugh about in the field. Yeah, it was good. Yeah. But, no, I would actually prefer people send their knives back when they get to the point where they're struggling for me to really resharpen well, set that edge right? Because...

Do you set that edge on the stone or you take it back to the grinder? On our belt grinder, because we're doing so many. Yeah. Just easier to just do it on our belt grinder. But I would rather do that and set somebody up to be completely fresh and ready to go and enjoy using our knife versus like beating their head against a wall trying to sharpen at home. And maybe they're struggling because their sharpening stones not great. You know, there's a lot of difference in stones too. There's diamond stones which are great. But it depends on the grittier stone. You know, I have stones on my website that are, what are they, 6,000 and 8,000 grit.

Well, that's for like a real fine, like, chef's knife blade. You know, a 600 grit stone is going to obviously cut and leave a lot toothier edge for a hunting knife versus a 8,000 grit, you know, wet stone. Yeah. So what people are using is big. If a knife's in really bad shape, I'll tell people start on like a 220 and just get that edge back kind of set to where it needs to go and then finish it on a, you know, 600 or 1,000 grit stone. I was furious this year

because I couldn't find the sheath for my speed goat I had just gutted a deer I was like stomping around acting like an asshole like who the fuck

so the theory is or at least my theory is you have to accuse somebody of theft before you find an item because it almost always appears right after you like you stole my fill in the blank

you're like oh it's just kidding it's over here on the shelf I usually accuse my wife that's a bold move That's a bold move, but you live life however you want to, Josh. So I had just finished, you know, my theory is got an animal on a hill, so that way it goes downhill. Right.

And then you can pull the animal up to a flat area. Yeah. So I was stomping around like an asshole looking for the sheath. And then I realized the only place I hadn't checked was under the gut pile. Oh, shit. Oh, my God. So I like drag it out of the way and there is the sheath to my speed gun. I was like, yeah, I'm going to have to tell Josh about that.

That's funny. Not funny in the moment. That's why we got that little clip, you know? You're supposed to just have it clipped around on your belt. I don't like having stuff clipped there. I find that it will, personally, I find that it will hang up on stuff. And maybe that's just the way that I move. I don't know.

But I don't like having, I definitely don't ever like being wider. I'm not a fan of that. Right. And I see people clipping stuff to backpacks. I oftentimes will take my backpack off to be able to move a little bit more efficient. I'm, of course, going to go back and get it. but I'll oftentimes have a knife in my pocket, so it's always with me, especially if it has a zipper.

That's why we're going to make pocket knives. Yeah, yeah, I just make sure, like, the sick of pants are awesome. They have a big enough pocket, and especially the speed goat is light enough that it doesn't, like, you don't have, feel like you have the sea anchor in one of your pockets. That's actually, we're going to come out with one,

it's going to be the mini goat, and it's actually just a little smaller version of the speed goat, but it really is for that reason for people to just be able to get, you know, a knife in their pocket just to have. And then we get a lot of women that are out jogging, running, whatnot, and they don't need necessarily the length of a speed goat. Not that a speed goat's big, but just that everyday carry,

you know, be able to clip a speed goat on a sports bra or their leggings or something. Like, I think about my daughters being out, if they were in college and they're out jogging. Yeah. I'd rather have them have some kind of something weapon-wise on them. And obviously a girl's not going to run around with a pistol. Boy. You know, that's a good question. Yeah.

Just jogging with a big old revolver. There are other options. Like a 44. You could go dirty hairy wheel gun if you want to. That's how I would roll. I can support the concealed carry crowd that wants to go with a full-size dirty hairy magnum. Yeah. Or you could get some guns that actually are spectacular that have full, you know, 12 to 15 round magazine capacity.

That's what I bought my wife, those P-365s, yeah. Red dot or no? No. Yeah. Consider upgrading it. I will. I plan on it. It's just easier.

Well, it's not always easier target acquisition, but if you get used to, there's a slightly different presentation, but if you get used to presenting with your iron sights, you'll often be able to co-witness and see both at the same time. Actually, you should be able to all the time if it's cited improperly. And once people get used to that red dot, it does help. I need to talk to you about which one to get, because that would be. They make one for the 365. Good to set up.

Because I know when I bought it, I know they have an option where it comes with it brand new, like out of the box, but they didn't have that at that moment. So I just bought the standard gun. So from where I got it. I think I just got it at a local gun shop there. Yeah. No, we can talk offline about that for sure. But they make the frame, the slide is the width-wise. Yeah, like, yeah, it would be the width is a little bit smaller than most of the RMRs, which is a ruggedized miniature red dot for people listening.

And the SIG makes a specific one for the 365. You're going to want to make sure you get that because it probably already has the screw holes for it. Yeah. So it would be easier just to drop that sucker in there. I was laughing at her because I went hunting over east with my kids and she was home alone. And then I came back and normally her pistol's in her car.

And a pistol was right on the bedside table. And I was like, what is happening? And she was like, yeah, when you're gone, I sleep with my pistol right next to the bed. And she has a flashlight on it? She sticks and clothes and ready to roll. She does not. Are you aware that half of every day occurs at night time?

I don't care what happens when she's sleeping. I mean, she won't see it. No, we do. I do need to set up. We need to set our stuff up better for sure. Well, everyday carry guns. I don't carry a flashlight on my 365 either. But if you're going to have a gun for around the house,

you have to worry less, I would hope, about concealment. So you can generally go more of a full-size. I would recommend throwing an illumination object on there, a flashlight of some kind, so you can actually see what it is, what's going on. No, I'd be all for that. I actually want to set up, I was talking with Neil at Ready Gunner. I want to get an AR all set up with a sweet light

because I want to take care of my cowl problem at night. Do you guys have a bunch of coyotes down there? Oh, yeah. I believe in Montana you can shoot yotes without a, you don't need a tag for that, right? 365. Yep. No, it'd be fun. buddy of mine traps them but i mean yeah we just have so many of them really yeah do they hibernate

no so they're out there in the wintertime too just scavenges in like some of the bitch yeah and they're howling outside our window all the time which i mean it's super cool sound yeah freaks my wife out when we're sitting in the hot tub and they start going off i mean they'll be 300 yards away and just going like crazy yeah i don't think i would enjoy that sitting in the hot tub it's it's a it's a cool it's just an eerie it's just cool the some of the wild animal sounds you know i bet but uh yeah He traps him. I think he trapped like 110 last winter. Tans all the hides, sells them.

It's pretty cool. It is pretty cool. Yeah. Not my jam, but I can get it. Yeah. It's just the ranches that he's been trapping on in the last few years, the difference in deer population is staggering. Higher or lower.

In just three years, higher. Really? With the amount of fawns that those coyotes take down in the spring. Yeah, like that ranch is seen, those ranches right around there. seemed like a major, major, like, difference in the deer in their fields this year, huh, the last couple years. Because he's been taking 100 of them out a year for the last three years. Oh, yeah, for sure.

Okay. Yeah, that's going to be a rebound effect for sure. Yeah. What five years from now, man, do you have any idea what MKC is going to be up to five years from now, let alone 10? God. Are you planning for it at all? Do you have any goals written down that you're trying to hit? I mean, obviously, billionaire owning one quarter of Montana.

Yeah, we do. Yeah. who doesn't have that goal, obviously. Yeah. No, we definitely have, we definitely have goals. We, uh, I will say that we hit our five year goal this year in our first year, which was, which is really, really cool. I mean, you just don't know how it can go and you set, you try to set realistic goals, you know.

I, I, I, I want, you know, I, we have financial goals out there, but more than anything, I have a goal of wanting to build a brand that people are proud to work for and proud to own. Like that's, and I will not, just because there's a bunch of people that want us to make a folding knife or want us to come out with a chef's knife or Damascus spatula. Whatever that. Don't forget rakes. Yeah. And rakes.

Whatever that is, like, I won't do it until we can do it right. But the goal is like, I want this to be a brand. It'd be really neat if somebody, hopefully maybe one of my kids or something's running this. And they're like, yeah, we started 70 years ago. you know this guy that started it was my dad or whoever you know my grandpa like we want i want to be that kind of a brand that is around forever i'm not looking to just build something up quick and make some money and move on um i want it to be sustainable um i also want to show people that like american manufacturing and the american dream is still like alive and well you you know it takes

a lot of hard work um frankly it didn't even take a hell of a lot of money really to start this, it took a lot of work and a goal. And then a little bit of money to... Well, a huge decision on your part, though, too, to actually pursue it. It did, yeah. Yeah. And I had, you know, 30 years of making knives as experience, but maybe someone has experience in something else that, you know, maybe it is something in making shirts or hats or whatever

their thing is. But I think too often we hear, you know, whether America's unfair or the big corporations and you can't compete. And I think that's bullshit. Now, I think there's definitely, you know, some things that are unfair in life. Yeah, we'll get used to it. I mean, life's unfair, you know.

I tell people that fair is in Iowa, and there's cotton candy and a merry-go-round. Yeah. And if you want to see it, go for it. Yeah, go for it. I don't. I think we live in the most amazing time in human existence. Like, look at what you have at your fingertips

to find out any kind of information. If you want to start a podcast tomorrow, and you're not friends with Joe. Rogan, you can still go start it, Google it. It's all out there. Like, you can Google anything. Yeah. You know, the amount of information. And I think that's part of this whole college discussion. We live in a different time. Like, you had to go to college to learn things 30 years ago, you know, to go find people that knew things. But look at the amount of YouTube videos and information that's out there. Even when I learned to make knives, there was no YouTube, no internet. I had to go to people's knife shops. you know, and now you can get online and find anything you can connect with people. That's really what building businesses is really about as relationships, you know, connecting

with people in your industry, find, you know, I didn't have the marketing information, so through friends, I found Brandon, you know, and- Does he live up here or down where you live? He lives about 10 minutes from here. Last time I saw him, I think was at the tack, but before that, Trevor and I ran into him on the ski slope. Yeah, he's a savage snowboarder. He hikes the mountain before daylight and before the lift start and goes down. He's a savage. He was just in Alaska hunting blacktail.

Sick of blacktail. Did he get some? Our buddy Casey with Everly Stock was with him. He got one. It's super tiny, right? The blacktail? It's a small species of deer? Yeah.

Well, I don't know how to. I don't know that they're that tiny. I feel like they're the smallest deer ever. I know nothing about blacktail for people. No, I think they're a little smaller, a little smaller horns, but I think their bodies are pretty similar to a white tail. Did you get any deer this year? Yeah, I got a mule deer in Big Chino down in Arizona. Okay.

With my bow. Buck. It was a spot and stock mule deer. Sweet. It was awesome. Yeah, we spotted him about two miles away. We watched them bed. And then I headed off into the hiking over there.

And it was supposed to be set up where the guide could kind of like walk us in because you can use radios down there. You can't in Montana. Well, I got over there and they radio them in there like, hey, those deer are up and moving around. And I'm like, okay, I still had a ways to go to just cut the distance. And I got up in there and they're like, hey, those deer rebeds somewhere up in that area, but we can't see them. And so they're like, you're on your own. And so I just worked my way in super, super quiet. And I mean, I got to where I thought it was within like 150 yards maybe.

And I was glassing like every step as hard as I could glass. And all of a sudden, sure enough, I just saw the tines of one of the smaller bucks, like, right up and underneath these junipers. And I was 38 yards from them right there. Yeah. And that's the first time I could see him. And then I start, so then I'm not moving. I just kept my binoculars up and I started glassing all around. And sure enough, there was the bigger buck.

He was just a couple yards behind him. And so I was able to range that tree that the bigger buck was laying under. and I did not move my feet. I just stayed in that position for like the next 20 minutes. I just watched them. All of a sudden the small buck got up and I knew that big buck probably would too, so I drew at that point.

And sure enough, he stood up. And he was facing straight at me. I didn't really feel like I had a shot. And then he took a step to his left and stuck it right behind the shoulder. Well, you can shoot your ass off with a bow. You were nailing shit at the tack. can do all right

yeah it was uh I mean it was it was just everything just worked out perfect the wind was right I mean spot in stock and mule deer in Arizona is not easy we had 10 other people in our group and that was first morning first stock and I'm like oh wow this is going to be amazing like everybody's going to kill a tagged out bitches yeah because there was I think nine of us bert Soren was there yeah both sandoval and brandon lily um uh Logan stark from black rifle

A bunch of different guys were there. We had a great group, and I ended up being the only one to shoot a deer. Oh, no way. Yeah. You know, it's just hard. I mean, like, Logan and I hunted for the next five days, and Logan made several stocks that were, I mean, he did everything right. I was right there watching, and all of a sudden I just felt this teeny, tiny, tiny little breeze on my neck.

You're done. You're done. It was like, done. They don't tolerate that at all. No. And I think you guys were talking about in your podcast when I was driving up. you can get away the little movement if they smell it

yeah you're done it's over especially with elk yeah no it was uh that was it was frustrating the wind was actually too calm it was kind of just like sitting there and like one minute it's doing this oh very inconsistent yeah

instead of just a consistent breeze so I was hunting with uh Barclow John Barklow on Lanai for Axis deer a few years ago and probably for our first three days it was so frustrating because the wind would not settle in a direction And you would put in some effort and you just feel it on your back. You're like, fuck.

Yep. Watch them take off into the distance. So I actually got a good mule deer buck this year too. Not as exciting as a story of you. I did. With your rifle or bow? With my rifle. Nice.

You got an antelope too with your bow, didn't you? I did. That was awesome. It was okay. Yeah. That was shooting an antelope with your, I don't care if you're in a blind, spot. You spot and stalked that, didn't you? I'm good at hide and seek, though.

That's pretty good. spot because antelope can see their vision is unreal can't see me unreal they might be able to see you last year last year i tried spot in stock for antelope and like i get out of the truck and i'm like okay there i spotted these antelope and i get out of the truck and i like walk through the gate and i like start walk i'm like i'm going to walk across this field and get in this ditch and the antelope are literally like a mile and a half away i'm like i'm going to walk over to this ditch and get in there and then close the distance and like all of a sudden i see him running yeah they're like Fuck you. We've seen this game played itself out.

Well, and it's funny because I didn't think that I scared them. I just thought they were like, oh, something spooked them. So I would then find another group, basically kind of similar situation, do it again. And all of a sudden, like, I see one looking right at me a mile and a half away. And then they all took off. And I was like, holy shit. That would definitely be an easier species with a rifle. Yeah, yeah.

Yeah. I've shot antelope with a rifle. It's definitely fun. Yeah. That mule deer that I shot, did you see the video I posted where it had an air. Yeah, and its nasal cavity. Yes, from the right side of its face, through its nasal cavity, and the mechanical broadhead was exposed on the left side of its face right underneath the eye,

completely through its navel cavity, and the arrow was broke off and bone was grown over the end of the shaft of the arrow. It had been in there at least, I think, two years. I would guess at least. Yeah, they're tough animals. Oh, my God. Yeah, they're tough. Imagine the headache you'd have walked around with for a while. I would not like to do that.

God. Just a dart directly through your face. Of course, my buddies, they tell me that's the reason I shot it. It wasn't able to smell me. There actually might be some truth to that. Broken smeller. You never know. Yeah.

What, uh, how much time do I need to schedule to forge a ring? Um, we talked about this. Yeah, are we talking about this on the air? Yeah, why not? Okay. Um, I want to forge my own wedding ring. I love that. Yeah.

A couple days. Leah probably won't listen to this. So what I want to do is make a... Have you proposed? Yeah. Oh, okay. Yeah, we're engaged. I was like, man, this is a really bad way to propose.

No, no, no. Okay. I want to make a penis Damascus. I think it can be done. You want penises on her ring? No, no, it's my ring. Oh. Penises on your ring.

Here's the thing. It can be done, be tiny penises. It would be little Andes all over it. No, here's the thing, though. Yeah. Let's make a... piece of Damascus. Okay.

That has one big dick on it. And we'll make a ring out of just a section of that. So only I will know, because she'll be furious, but it'll be cock Damascus. Yeah. Cockmaccus. Can this happen? I feel like it can. Yeah, we can definitely do penis Damascus.

Okay. Thank you. That's what I'm into. It doesn't have to look like dicks on the ring. It'll be your secret and my secret. And she can be furious when she finds it. No, just a couple days. We can definitely make that happen.

I would figure a simple wedding band like that. Yeah. I was just thinking about it. I think that would be one of the coolest experiences to go down and actually work through the process and be able to do that. Yeah. Can't be that hard, right? No, and then you should make a chef's knife out of the rest of it.

Something like that. I don't think she would use a Dick Damascus chef's knife. I don't know. We could put an Usik handle on it. What, though, if I made for the groomsmen? You know what Usik is right? Of course not. Who the fuck knows what Ousick?

Fossilized walrus penis. Okay, so I'm in on that so far. And what about for the groomsmen, we just make some small cock knives? Yeah, yeah, we might as well. I feel like this plan's coming together. It is, it is. I actually made, uh, when Bert Soren went to Rogan's, and I don't know if Rogan really knows, but I made him a, uh, Bert gave him a Damascus knife of mine. And, uh, Francesco with Teton leather, she made the sheath for it.

But she actually made the sheath out of alligator. but she used the colloquial, I think it's called. It's the alligator pussy on the sheath. So there's actually like an alligator pussy on the sheath, and we put fossil mammoth ivory inside of it because that matched the handle. Interesting. I am not aware if he knows of that.

I don't know if he does. It would be pretty cool. Someday if I ever meet him, I can be like, you've got Walrus pussy on your knife sheath. I think he might think that, or a gator pussy. He would appreciate it. He would appreciate it. Is anybody still commissioning you to do knives or are you just too busy at this point?

Yeah, I get emails, but honestly, I'm just too busy to take the orders. It's a weird thing. I've just been telling people when I do customs, I'll just put them up on my Instagram and put them up for sale. Yeah. I don't see you having a whole lot of time for custom nights. And it's weird because I went for so many years as a custom maker just wanting any order I could take and just survival, right? And then all of a sudden here, you know, the problem is if I take an order, it could be three years before I ever even get to it, you know. And I feel bad about that.

I actually think there might be rule. I think on the internet there are some rules from when you take their money into when it actually is delivered. Yeah, thank God I didn't take. I know some guys have gotten in a bind with taking deposits and then having life kicks you in the balls. And all of a sudden, you've got a lot of deposits. So I haven't done that. fortunately it's just the people that I do have on my waiting list it's just a verbal so probably better that way yeah anybody man anybody in any kind of leather working or art artistry or anything

if you're going to take deposit i mean i've seen a lot of train wrecks with that oh really yes okay that's a thing and if you're going to take deposits open a separate account put that deposit money in there with an absolute perfect record of who gave you what and what was said put it in that account and file bankruptcy before you touch it. Like, do not touch it, you know. Yeah, I could see people getting upside down on that. That would not be a pretty look. Yeah.

A good friend of mine, he got so popular with his knives that it actually hosed him where he took a lot of deposit, like two or three years worth of orders in deposits for what he was making at a certain price point when he wasn't as well known. And now he's so well known that his prices of what he can command are like probably five times what they were then. But he stuck making two or three years

worth of knives at a price that he promised then. That is rough, but he also paved that road for himself. Yeah. So have fun driving it. Yeah. Yeah. That's what you learn along the way, though. You do.

Damn, I've done some dumb shit with, oh, I'm going to get these because these are going to sell great or I'll have the best idea in the world. Then I realize, sometimes my best ideas are really only good ideas for me. Yeah. So, yeah. No, it's, I don't know. And that's, again, that's another thing like, talking to these high school kids and just telling them, like, life is going to kick you in the balls.

Like, a lot of times you just feel like it's the biggest thing in the world at the moment and, like, life's over. But you just got to freaking push through, you know, push through it. I agree. Well, I want to get you back on the road at some point. Where can people best find you and support you? We've been at this for a couple hours already. Yeah. Yeah.

No, I appreciate it. Montana Knife Company. Montanaknife Company.com's our website. our Instagram's at Montana Knife Company. I've got my Instagram at Josh Smith Knives. That's more, you know, I do knife stuff on there, but then I also have more of just kind of daily family life and if you care about what I'm actually doing.

Yep. Where can they get this sweet-worn shirt that you refunded before, you douche? I actually took a picture of that. My daughter, my 11-year-old daughter, Macy, was packaging packages Saturday morning. Yeah. And I was down in the basement. I just came down to check on her.

and Jess, they were working on it. And Macy turns around and she goes, dad, Andy Stumpf. And I was like, that dickhead, I can support your business as well? Yeah. I was like, Jess take care of that. But it was actually cool that Jess goes, how do you know Andy Stump? And Macy goes, I've heard you guys talk about him. So she was aware enough to recognize the name on the label, which was cool.

So it's her fault. Take it up with her. I don't need to. I just have a new paper. She's feisty. She might give you a run for your money. I have a new PayPal account and I'll buy whatever the fuck I want to from your company. You can't stop me.

No, what you guys have going on is awesome, man. I'm legitimately watching from a distance and taking notes to see how you guys are managing the growth and taking the steps to make sure you're not well out in front of your skis. I think that could be the worst. Yeah. To just make monumental leaps and be incorrect about the distance you can jump. You know, and honestly, that's why we're building the building that we are. we could probably try to build a way bigger facility. We're building it on my property still that I own that, you know, is where my house is.

We're trying to make, you know, the next jump as far as what we can produce and what we're capable of and how many people, you know, my little knife shop is just way too small for what we're trying to do. But, man, I've been around long enough to see the recessions. That's the other thing, the number of recessions, you know, I was going to tell these kids, I googled that how many of there been since the articles have been, you know, of, uh, it's not a new phenomenon. No, it's, there is inflation either.

Exactly. Go back to the pendulum or the sine wave. I mean, it's not, we're not living through anything truly unique. Yeah. Honestly, I'm going to put COVID in that bucket too. 1980 inflation could be right around the corner for us, you know. So yeah, and COVID, COVID could be the, you know, you know, you know, you read Jack Carr's books and, you, you, you know, I know it's fiction, but still, you think about what could happen if, what if an actual real,

terrible, deadly virus hits this planet, which it's going to. At some point, probably. At some point, we're just mammals like. Well, we're too idiotic of a species to not do that to ourselves at some point. Exactly. Like, let's create this in containment and isolation and it'll never get out. Yeah. And they're like, what happened to Bob?

The most populated place in the earth. Bob melted to death. So we're all fucked. Yeah. So. But no, it's, we're trying to grow. again, sustainable. I would rather not grow as fast as we potentially could

than try to grow too fast and kill it. That's the way, I think. Yeah. And the goal, you know, five, ten years, the goal is to be a, you know, a 50 or $100 million company and be this amazing big brand that everybody in the world knows. But if that doesn't happen and I fall well short of that goal and we're just a really cool, solid brand

that a small amount of people know, but I can work with my wife and my kids, and we can hire 10 or 15 local people and build a cool product. And I can be my own boss. Yeah, yeah. I'll live with that and die happy. Yeah, I would do the same.

Yeah. Cool, man. Well, I'll get you back on the road in the shitty Montana weather. Thanks, brother. Ladies and gentlemen, thank you. Thanks for taking the time to tune in, whether you're listening on an audio-only platform or you're watching on YouTube,

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