Cleared Hot - Powered By BRCC - From Cell Bars to CEO - with AG Gregoroff

Episode Date: October 16, 2023

AG Gregoroff isn't just the founder and CEO of Toehold Flip Flops - heralded as producers of the world's highest quality flip flops - but a living testament to the power of radical transformation. From a troubled childhood and the dark corners of the California penal system to the liberating expanse of the open ocean, AG's story is one of stark contrasts, unbreakable will, and the resolute belief in second chances. AG unfolds the gritty tales of his past; growing up amidst violence and chaos in Northern San Diego County, his undeserved entanglement with a corrupt police force, and the harrowing experiences within the prison's walls, where his life was dictated by the brutal and racially segregated dynamics of life behind bars. His story takes a turn when, amidst the swirling currents of his misfortune, he discovers scuba diving—a passion that would not only become his escape but a stepping stone to a purpose-driven future. His eventual collaboration with the US military, teaching underwater survival, introduces AG to a new chapter, one where he not only fights the currents underwater but combats unexpected violence above it, surviving a random hammer attack amid the strife of the COVID-19 pandemic. AG channeled adversity into ambition, founding Toehold Flip Flops and crafting more than just quality footwear but creating a symbol of unwavering perseverance and premium craftsmanship. AG's story swims through the turbid waters of injustice and trauma, surfacing into a tale that is ultimately triumphant, uplifting, and without a doubt, inspirational. Toehold: ⁠https://shoptoehold.com/⁠   The Speed of War Comic Series: ⁠https://www.thespeedofwar.com/⁠ Sign up for the new G14 newsletter here: ⁠https://www.clearedhotpodcast.com/exclusive⁠ Check out the newest Cleared Hot Gear here: ⁠https://shop.clearedhotpodcast.com/⁠

Well, good morning, everybody, and welcome back. Before we get into today's episode, which is going to be, it's going to be a banger. Let's talk about the brand that makes this podcast possible. That's right, Black Rifle Coffee. At my laptop in front of me, let's go to Black Rifle Coffee.com and see what they have to offer. The previous weeks I've been talking about Christmas coming up, which, I don't know, nine weeks away at this point, 10, who knows? Halloween right around the corner. Maybe we start thinking about that because that's a little bit more of a two-meter target.

So blackcrafticcoffee.com, there's a rotating banner. First thing I'm seeing is joining the coffee club. And there's different types of clubs. They have an apparel club. They have a traditional coffee club. They have the ECS club, which means other than the ECS, you can get whatever type of coffee you want, delivered wherever you want to, on the timing that you want to. So very convenient there. And, okay, yeah.

The second thing on the banner is maybe you don't know exactly what to order. So they have a quiz that walks you through. palate and taste and roast and all of those things. So you can figure it out and then you know where to order. What else do they have here? New arrivals and apparel. Gear, of course. Coffee bundles, coffee samplers.

That's actually a really good present, by the way. If you don't know what to get somebody, get them a selection of different things. And you can go deeper and deeper and deeper and deeper and deeper into that. So again, Halloween, Thanksgiving, Christmas. All of that should be on the radar at this point. If you have a coffee lover in your life, go to black rifle coffee.com and get some stuff that you know they're going to like and not just bury and forget about.

Like a lot of Christmas presents end up happening to them. My guest today is A.G. Gregoroff. He is the founder and CEO of Toehold, a brand of Flip Flops. These to be specific. He actually gave me this set when we were on the show. We'll get into that. But long before he was making Flip Flops. Let's just say he had a very interesting and diverse upbringing and background.

He gets into his time in prison or jail, depending on actually I think it was jailed, not prison. I'm not sure he might have touched both of those things. His time in Jiu-Jitsu, his time is a military contractor in the diving space, and then what led him to starting to hold where it is now, where he wants it to go. And I'll just say this about this episode. Wherever you think this episode is going to go, it's probably not going to go that way. way. It's going to go much, much farther, much deeper. So let's get into it. Episode number 308 with A.G. Gregoroff. Enjoy. I'm looking at danger close now.

I think I'll lose my train of thought if I hear myself talk. Really? Yeah. Well, that's a personal problem. You should probably want to deal with that. You know you can hear yourself talk without headsets on, right? Not like this. What do you mean? It sounds weird. You'll get used to it. You want them on?

Yeah. How does it help? It draws you into the conversation more. You can tell like the volume level that you're speaking. It helps with the modulation of your voice. Plus we're already going anyway, so it's too late. Okay, good. Yeah.

Casey, what should I ask him? What's the first question? Oh, interesting. Okay. So, Mr. Agee Grigoroff, how long have you been training in Jiu-Jitza? Since 1990. Okay. So that was the attendance of your last class.

Yeah. Yeah. Why don't you train more? Talk to me about your weekly training regimen, Jiu-Jitsu. So the last several months I've been doing one day, week, Wednesdays with Henry Aiken's, just doing privates. So I asked Henry about that when we were down in Salt Lake yesterday. He said he hasn't seen you in a really long time. Henry's been in Japan and in Salt Lake and in Sonoma, Sedona.

I think he's actually been to both of those places that you threw out of Sonoma and. And Sedona? Yeah. But he called you a liar. He's correct. Yeah. I know. I know.

I can't train with him if he's out of town. If only there was somewhere else he could go to train. Isn't it your brown belt from Casey? It is. So why would you not go train with Casey? I'm too busy. Okay. So that's the real answer, the root cause.

You're not prioritizing you. Another way to say that is you don't care. So with Jiu-Jitsu, it was, hey, come and train more. And then I did, and I'd get a bad injury. And then that affects my day-to-day work. Like the last time I tore a ligament in my hand, just a new guy, somebody asked, you know,

can you work with the guy? Tore the ligament, my hand wouldn't open up for like a year. How did you tear it? He just rolled on it, weird. Just did something weird? Yogi? Yeah. Remember?

Yep. I feel like this was AG's fault. He was the new guy. You were the experience guy? Yeah. 100% your fault. So the UFC doctors looked at it and they're like, you need surgery. We have to cut this, remove that, you know.

And every day swinging a hammer, cutting tools, doing leather work. Yeah. It's just every single day, it's a pain in the ass. And here's the thing. So most people train, like new guys like yourself, that maybe there's a big scenario that, not with you, but with normal guys. What's the scenario I'm going to run into that I want to protect myself from? I want to protect my family. I want to defend my life.

somebody breaks into my house, whatever the scenario is. I don't think most people are training for that anymore, to be honest with you. I think they just like it. Not the people I know. Like, it's self-defense. It's a very incomplete self-defense skill set. I agree. Well, not Jiu-Jitsu.

Jiu-Jitsu is very much based off self-defense, but modern Jiu-Jitsu isn't. Modern Jiu-Jitsu is very much like focused on passing, stuff like that. So all the fights I've ever been in, very few of those guys have ever known Jiu-Jitsu. That's excellent. It is. But you're not using jih Tzu on them. You're fighting them. You're punching them.

That's what I'm saying. Jiu-jitsu in of itself is an incomplete skill set for that. I agree. I agree. So just to focus completely on jiu-jitsu, like I've been in those fights before and I've known the result. Yeah. So staying in shape to me is just as important.

It's just going in and sharpening like a pass or something like that. So instead of jiu-jitsu, you're working on your takedowns and striking, right? That's what you're saying? No, I'm working on building this awesome company. Okay. So you just did this really long-winded story about you're just not prioritizing your training. Oh, yeah, absolutely. Okay.

Just checking to make sure that I'm hearing this correctly. It's been on the back burner for about, I don't know how many years now, probably about five years. For clarity, I wish I had found Jiu-Jitsu when you did. And I actually remember being exposed to it, not in the 90s. I think I heard about it in the early 2000s, but people were so fucking dogmatic about it. it and they just were chip tip tip it actually turned me the other direction and of course now I'm you know fucking 20 years behind the power curve with people but yeah that is that cable bothering you no it's good you're very fidgety over there I am I'm fucking weird bro I'm weird I'm weird I move around a lot

I do weird stuff okay I say weird things but that's where the best creative guys come from they're all weirdos that's why I'm weird all of them are weirdos or some of them are weirdos the ones I know are weird. All right. Fair enough. And in Jiu-Jitsu, most of them are weird. Remember, I try out Tenth Planet. We're all weird. Casey, does Tenth Planet Jiu-Jitsu prepare you for self-defense?

Elements of it, yes. So coach's Jiu-Jitsu. And I actually hate describing it as Tenth Planet Jiu-Jitsu. I don't think that's a fair description. I would say focus on only Nogi Jiu-Jitsu, perhaps, more than the sporty aspect. I don't think it's fair to classify it as 10th Planet Jiu-Jitsu. So Coach Casey's jiu-s is quite a bit different because he's a famous UFC coach. He's had hundreds of the world's best fighters.

Yeah, no, I see you on there all the time. So he gets irritating. So he trains more. There's Casey again. He trains more of like a real world fighting, fighting scenario. Yeah. We don't do rubber guard. We don't play from our back.

We get on top, stay on top, smash. And you stay there until that person dies of starvation. There's no reason to get up and just give up positions for no reason. So the whole reason I train is because of coach's style. You know, so we have a much different philosophy. Let's use past fans. the reason I've trained. Yeah.

Let's just... You're hung up on whether I'm training not so much. I gave case the opportunity for the first question, and you were really trying to flirt the, you know, skirt around with truth and not telling the truth. So I look at jih Tzuza as a whole. How much have I trained in my life? Because that culmination of knowledge is important, right? Yeah, but what you're about to do is line up the number of years that you have trained versus the amount of time in that year that you have spent training. So I have been training for just over five years, but I train six to seven days per week.

week two to three hours per day. Because you enjoy it, right? I do enjoy it. But that's not the same as somebody who has trained for five years and goes for two hours once a week. You cannot compare those two via a calendar or the knowledge that's gained. Which aspects of jih Tjitza do enjoy? I enjoy the fact that can't be mastered.

That it's a puzzle that you can't actually put all the pieces together. How quickly, slowly? How do you learn? What kind of learner are you? What are my choices? Like visual, audible, audio, doing it, you know, I think those are the three. I think I do okay across the spectrum. See, I'm the opposite.

I only learn anything, a very specific way. So a classroom environment, whether it be school, learning to dive, jiu-jitsu, I don't learn in that environment at all. So I'll go to a class, and we have the best instructor. It's nothing they're doing is I just have a very specific way to learn things. So I go to a class, I'll go for five days in a row, give me $1,000 to remember what we did. I won't remember a single thing. And they could be like, yeah, you can want, I don't.

I'm a fucking retard. I won't remember it. How do you learn then? So one is I have to ask questions. I get fully immersed. So privates work for me because I could ask a bunch of why questions. Okay. And I could move around the subject.

So is it kind of the chaos of the group setting that interrupts that learning cycle? So super distracted, yeah. I get super distracted. But when we, so my question would be, last time I trained, I ran into this problem. Okay. That'll have nothing to do with what the class's curriculum is because they're teaching based off a curriculum for. So for me, that'll just raise another question and then I'll have a bunch of questions with no answers and I'll just feel lost. And after about a few minutes, I get super distracted.

So even strength and conditioning. My coach will tell us what exercises we're going to do today. Not until we start physically doing it, do I pay attention to what we're doing? Like as soon as the motion starts, I get it. And then if I get my heart rate up, I stop learning immediately. So if I go to class, let's say a private, I do a private with coach. We just sit down and we talk. I'll remember everything he says.

We start running around, we start running around doing warmups. Brain is shut off. My ability to learn has shut down. So how do you apply the knowledge that you could gain in that conversation? into an application on the mats. Say that again? So you have that, you sit down with Casey in, let's say you're doing the private and you're focusing on the conversation and you'll remember everything from the conversation.

How do you improve in your skill if you feel like you're limited when your heart rate goes up? The practical application. No, I stopped my ability to bring in new information. Okay. So I could remember stuff, but my ability to bring in new information stops when I start working. Got you. How are you able to apply the information that you have? learned in real time well, would you say? Or does it, does it take you a lot of reps?

No, I can learn stuff really fast. Okay. Especially if I've taught a specific way. I got this stupid thing where I got too much blood in my body. So we have to drain blood on my body all the time. So as soon as my heart rate goes up, if you took both your hands and you put them over your ears, that's exactly how I hear. You literally have more blood in your body than you're supposed to? Yeah. We drained a little over a gallon of blood in the last four and a half weeks. What is that condition called? Just that too much blood?

My body just produces too much blood. Michael? Look at that shit up. Yeah, I Google it. So my hemoglobin. Did the medical doctor tell you this? Or did the Scientologist? I'm not draining my blood at the gym.

I'm draining it with a doctor. All right. I'm just, what kind of doctor? Ph.D? Yeah, yeah. No, he's a real doctor. Yeah. So I go to a clinic.

Okay, I'm just saying. So. Chiropractors say they're real doctors, too. He's a vet. He's good. He's a vet. He works with expensive animals. he's really good.

I've never heard of this. Yeah, yeah. Well, we didn't know what the problem was for a long time. Hold on, though. Don't endurance athletes, aren't they looking for more blood or more red blood cells specifically? I feel like you had the ability to performance enhance without doing shit. I have a seventh grade education. You're asking way too big a questions from here.

Well, Michael has access to the internet. Do you want to, I could email you my charts. Do you want to see them? Oh, here we got. Polym-Haminar is a type of blood cancer. No, that's not it. Yeah, I was going to say, I don't know if it's that. Are you dying?

No. Okay. Damn it. Find the other one, Michael. As long as I drain my blood, we have to do, the minimum is a pine a week, the minimum. So I feel like having more blood is good. No, it's too much. If you have too much oil in your car, nothing can move.

Yeah, but you're not a car. I'm a person. Yeah. That's true. You know? We can call my doctor. I could put on a speaker phone. No, I'm just, I'm fascinated because I feel like.

So here's what happens. Like Lance Armstrong was trying to pump in all the shit that is in your red blood cell. Yeah. Without actually... That's different. And actually, though, they pull blood out and then they put more shit in when they race. So what his problem was, he was taking EPO and his blood was thickening. His problem was that he's a cheater and was trying to say what he was doing is clean.

However, let's take that to the next level and say every one of those motherfuckers was cheating. And the clean dude was about four stages behind. If you're not doing steroids cycling, you're wasting a time. Okay, Gordon. Yeah. Take it easy. No, steroids are... Your steroids are good.

At a certain age, an argument could be made for an adult male that maybe not steroids, but TRT, could have some benefit. Michael, did you find something other than blood cancer? That's the only one I'm finding. I'm going to go to chat. Are we leaving it up to him to find out what's wrong with me? Yes. I'm leaving it up to him to find any evidence that what you're saying is not bullshit.

You want to see my lab results? I mean, I know how to use Photoshop, too. Okay. So. So when we would do strengthening, or sorry, when we would do conditioning classes at the gym back in the day at our old location, I always thought it was cardio. And then I thought I was doing keto. I was like, why do I feel, you know when you build up too much lactic acid in your legs? You're like, oh, I'm going to stop.

That's not what happens. It's not the cardio version where you can't recover fast enough. It's literally like a tin man, like where my joints just stop moving. Like I physically can't move through. I can't tough guy through it. I just stop moving. So I always thought, fuck, it's the keto, you know? Then I always thought I need to get my cardio better.

So after we would do these conditioning classes, I would go in my truck and I'd sit there for like 20 minutes until I could see it in color again. And I thought everybody did that. I had no idea that that's not the thing. We'd joke about it in class, but my body would just stop. And I had no idea why. So I went to a doctor and he's like, I do, what the fuck is with your blood? So they did tons of tests. They did all the brain scans, that sort of stuff.

What's your blood type? I think it's A minus, a negative, a negative. Interesting. But it's not a matter of the blood's too thick. Because I said, can we do thinners? Hemochromatosis? I don't know what that is. I don't know.

This is Chad GPT. The listeners are going to love this blood conversation. I couldn't find anything besides. So the only solution we could do is just drain it. That's it. It's just drain it. There's just too much blood. There's nothing wrong with the blood.

There's just too much of it in my body. so it compresses and it just fills your veins up it slows down your heart Yeah, okay So that's pretty wild Anything endurance-wise And I get crazy lightheaded

So if I lean over Just right now if I go down Touch my feet and pick my head up Lightheaded Consulate Yeah, I don't All right Yeah

Okay So that's one of the reasons too If I go and train I just stop for no reason If we ever roll together And I just stop You're gonna be like What the fuck?

I'll be like That's it It just stops I can't control It can't tough guy through it can't do anything that's fucking wild man that's weird yeah it's weird to me too i think it's weird do you feel better when they drain the blood oh way way better so about once a week you're pulling a pint out every monday after strength and conditioning i go and i drain yeah i'm assuming the

doctor does or nurse yeah yeah he sends in the nurse and she's a giant needle they drain it super fast too do they donate to a blood bank no no they just uh it's called blood letting they just dump it That sounds very 1800s. Yeah, just dump it. Yeah, oh, you have a headache? I have a screwdriver. Let's just go ahead and jam this through your fucking skull. Wow.

I send you a picture of the needles they use. They're ridiculous. I don't need to see that. It takes 10 hours for me to take off the bandage. If I do it any time before, then they'll... Do they not have a smaller needle? No. Really?

Yeah, they use these giant needles. Okay. I don't Amazon use some that are at a normal size, like an 18 or a 20 gauge. You sound exactly like me, because I told them, I was like, can we use something smaller? They said, no, this is what you need. We need to drain it fast. Well, so that's my weird thing.

I don't know if people know this. I'm not a doctor. So I guess I'll have to leave it to someone who actually went to school. Who's a learned doctor, not like myself, who got their PhD by watching House. So more about blood. Yeah. Before I forget, you posted in your stories today, somebody was asking about the fight thing or the Pito thing. So we might as well knock both of those out, considering you're wearing Pito attire.

So start with the fight. I'm assuming they're talking about the hammer attack. Yeah. So during COVID, if you remember, these people, I think the person's judgment was very awful. But there was just a random amount. You wouldn't be my first choice for a soft target. I don't think so either. I don't think so either. I was in Vegas and I was walking out of a grocery store. And to build the scenario was 10 a.m. on a Sunday. Like it was calm, chill, quiet outside, birds, you know, normal stuff. Walked in the grocery store is a small like Mexican market. There's nobody in the parking lot. I do my thing. No interactions with nobody in. inside, you know, bought groceries left, or bought some burritos and left. On the way out, as I was walking out, it was just me. And then as I was walking off the sidewalk, keep in mind there's nobody else around, something just smashes me in the face. I thought for the millisecond, I thought I ran into something or I thought I walked into a car. Because you just see white, you hear the bing. But at the same second, I felt someone's chest like against my shoulder. So immediately,

I grew up in a bad neighborhood. We grew up fighting, just doing tons of awful stuff. I knew immediately I got hit. And the guy's body was right here. So I went to wipe underneath them, grabbed him in a body lock, kicked his legs out, and spiked him on his head by driving my forehead into his jaw. And then on the bounce, like as we hit the ground,

I popped up and got the side of his neck. Like a rear naked choke, but off angled. Yeah. On the side of his neck. It's also known as a crank. And we don't, yeah, super crank. So in class, even in competition, you don't really squeeze 100%. Like you'll squeeze 5, 10%, and then as you start to get upwards of that, the person taps

way before them. Yeah, you see the hand coming up and you're like, I'll just give it a little bit more. I tap this guy so, I mean, sorry, I squeeze this guy so hard that I like pulled a muscle in my ass. I was squeezing them at 1,000 percent, felt the vertebraes in his neck all shatter and his neck just go sideways. And then you can smell where he shit himself. And then I got off him and stood up. there was a guy from the market had come out and started like yelling for guys inside the market

like to come and help. And I got up and looked down at him and he looked dead, like completely dead, neck off to the side, not moving, not breathing, not nothing. So I picked up my phone, walked to the truck, called my attorney and said, I said, he said, hey, what's up, A.G? And I said, hey, I just, I think I killed a guy. And being my attorney, he says, he says, wrong number. He says, did you do it with your dick?

And I said, no, I'm serious. And he's like, okay, what happened? That would be a tough one in court to have like a court report to read that. Absent any context, just neutral tone. Did you do it with your dick? That's the type of attorney I have. So I told him real quick the scenario. And this whole time, I think all my teeth are gone.

Like my face is bloody. I can't feel none of my teeth. My jaw right here is shattered. Not shattered. It's fractured. Yeah. Noses busted. And I get in the car.

I started driving home and in my mind, that guy's dead. You didn't call 911? No, I called my attorney. I understand that was your first call. Did you have any thoughts about making a second call? No, that's his job. The person that you thought was dead. Oh, it was your attorney's job.

Yeah, yeah, my attorney could do that. Where's your attorney live? Vegas. Okay. Yeah, it doesn't look far from me. So he asked me what happened. I told him real quick. He says, hold on.

He calls another number. He calls like the DA for the small town. in adjacent to Vegas. A little bit back and forth. He's like, go home. He's like, stay there. Don't wipe nothing off your face. And I'm not, I don't live far from where this happened.

So he texts me, hey, what's your address? So I tell him my address. And he's like, they're going to come talk to you. And then he messaged me right back. He says, decline to make a statement when they get there. So I'm like, okay, the guy's probably dead because they're going to send homicide over to they always got to investigate stuff like that. So he calls him back a few minutes later.

and he says that he was, the DA was talking to the sergeant on scene and over the radio they heard the guy was like, paraplegic, no movement from his arms, necks, no response, stuff like that, breathing, you know. And then I call him like an hour later and I said, what's the status? He's like, I didn't hear anything.

And that's the end of it. No follow up, no questions, no, what's your side? Nothing. Have you heard what happened to the guy? No. I've been called my buddies who work in law enforcement in Vegas, And it was in a different town.

It was in Henderson. Yeah. So the town adjacent to Vegas. They said during COVID, what they probably did is they probably took him to the hospital, realized what a bag of fucking shit he was, declined to press charges because then they would have had to have their officers sit on him and just waste that manpower for a guy that's just hospitalized. So they just turn him over to the hospital and just they think they just walked away.

But we don't know for sure. And that's it. That's the end. No follow up. I asked my attorney. I was like, what now? He's like, they're not going to call us. I'm not going to call them.

And that was the end. And we've all seen those videos on YouTube where like some dude just walks up to a chick and punches there in the face or walks up to a guy and hits him in the face. And that hammered to the face to a normal person or a guy who's not trained or a chick. Like if that was my mom, my sister, your daughter, that would have killed them, you know. For clarity, it could have easily killed you as well. I think where you got struck and the velocity or strength that you got struck had something to do with it. We're not, you're not immune to a hammer. I hate to tell you this.

I don't know. I mean, I have one in my garage. We can go test the shit. I'm one and O against hammers. You're one and O against hammers. Let's talk about the person who is swinging it. I thought if it was me swinging the hammer, I would have killed me. If it was you swinging the hammer?

Yeah. Yeah, I would have killed me. Yeah, I don't. Now I caught on camp. Oops, sorry, guys. You should be sorry. What are you watching over there? I'm trying to find this.

I don't think there's any story on it. Yeah. So we should talk about your situational awareness because this is what I get out of the story. The lead up, you were describing a lot of things. And then a hammer hit you in the face. Yeah. How did you let, you know, the, here's one of the things I dislike. I already know your question.

Let me answer that. But here's one of the things I dislike about jujitsu. People truly think it's like a Harry Potter wand. Oh, I have a fill in the color blank. I'm going to do just fine. And maybe. But what if we throw it? throw a hammer out on the mats. Are you going to be okay? What if we throw a blade weapon out

on the mats? What if we throw a gun? Self-defense starts with managing your fucking distance. How did you allow somebody? You bring up a great point since I've been through all those scenarios in real life. That's why I don't train jiu jihadist too as much anymore. Fully circle back. How did you let him get that close to you though? So walking out of the he didn't get close to me. So there's a big- Oh, he just within hammer straight and distance. There's a pillar. Did he throw it from across the street, AG? He willed it. There's a pillar, like a big column, and he was standing behind that column. So when I walked past the column, he just came and just smashed whoever the person was.

He didn't look at me. No, he wasn't there. How do you know? Because I walked right by that pillar. I feel like you didn't look. No, no, he wasn't back. I feel like if I came to see other people in this room who are on camera of whether or not you look, they would probably be on my side. What I wish I had was the video.

I fucking wish you had the video too, because we would literally be watching it right now. and I would be breaking your shit down. How you'd be so impressed. You'd be so impressed. First off, eating a hammer strike to the face, I am impressed by that. Yeah, that's solid. Because that's going to sit most people right down. You know what everybody said?

How can we didn't pull your gun? I'm like, I wouldn't have pull a gun on that situation. I'm not a lawyer, but I'm pretty sure you would have met the criteria. One, if we're being serious, there was no time. Like, you're literally in the fight already. But that's the fallacy that I hate about firearms as well. people, Montana is a shall issue state, meaning actually, I take that back. It used to be a shall issue state.

Unless they had a reason to not give you a CCW permit, they would. Now it's a constitutional carry state. So you don't even have to go get a permit. And I know a lot of people who think that because they go to Murdox or sportsmen's and they go get a gun, and then they put their gun in their fanny pack or in their waistline, that they are good to go. and it solves all problems. And it doesn't.

Because like you said, you're already in the fight. Yeah. And if you go to pull that gun, there's nothing but bad scenarios. You couldn't do anything. Like you were immediately fighting it, and that's it. Yeah. Now, there's a lot of scenarios.

You can still pull a gun when you're fighting somebody. Oh, for sure. And there's a lot of scenarios where a gun would be beneficial. Yeah. But even if I had a gun, well, even if I had the ability to pull the gun, I wanted to physically put my hands on that guy. I can understand that desire.

Yeah, it's the intimacy. That's one way to describe it, for sure. Very prison-oriented, but I can appreciate that. Do you carry your gun with a round in the chamber? Yes. If I carry it, yeah. Okay, good. I usually don't carry my gun just because I'm more likely to use it.

I got a little bit of a psychoside. Not bad, but a little bit. So normal scenarios don't bother me, right? If I see somebody bullying somebody else, something like that, I'll fuck up my whole freedom over something like that. I don't go with the justification, the law, nothing like that. That's my like 10% of ghetto side from growing up in a bad neighborhood. That if I feel like someone's doing something wrong, law or no law,

I'll throw all that away for it. So for the most part... It's not very reasonable. No, I'm super... It's not. I agree with you. You may be better off not owning a firearm in general. I don't carry it for that reason.

Okay. Yeah. Except for the time that you got hit in the face with a hammer. Yeah, I didn't need it in that situation. It seemed like it was warranted. I always got my Montana. What if he had two hammers? He was double-fisting hammers.

He should have had another hammer. Always have a backup hammer. But I always carry my Montana Knife Company knife. Which one's your favorite? I put it right there. Speed goat probably? No. Really?

It's what's that one called? Let's see. That's the speed. No, that's not the speed goat. Oh, this might be the collaboration he did with Fieldcraft. No, that's not the Fieldcraft. God, I should know this. I'm sorry, Josh, that I don't know.

So I wasn't joking when I said I was a retard earlier. I don't remember names to things at all. For clarity, that's actually not the description of being a retard. That's just having a poor memory. It's very specific. It's only to names, though. Yeah, again, doesn't even come near the threshold. I can remember how many kids you have, where you live, your job, how long you

You've been there. Your favorite. Won't remember your name. Again, falls well short of the criteria. Can we figure out what knife that is? I think it's the Fieldcraft Survival knife black. No, it's not because the Fieldcraft Survival one has its logo. Oh, yeah, they just, they just redroped that one the other day.

He has a lot of skews. So I'm sorry, Josh, that I can't remember that one. The Speedgoode is my favorite. I have that, I have, well, let's just turn this into a, full Montana Knife Company. Yeah. Why aren't they here? Let's call them up.

They're just down the road, 120 miles away. This is the speed goat. Yes. This thing's badass. I have one of those, too. Orange, because when I'm hunting. Let me see that? It's too small in my hands.

I like that one better. I got that huge one they got, too. What's a giant one? Oh, the Bushmaster one? Yes. Yeah. I don't know if it's actually safe for you to carry anything dangerous because what you've described is your inability to make rational decisions in intense moments.

I think that decision was done perfectly. And I think the other story we're going to talk about that that was also executed very, very well. Fire away. Let's get into it. I'll be the judge of that. No, if I stabbed somebody and I was like, ah, it was the wrong guy, dude. Right? Yeah. But that didn't happen.

That didn't happen. So to back up real quick, growing up in San Diego. What part of San Diego? Oceanside. Old Oside. So back in the 90s, Oceanside isn't what you picture today or San Diego. It was tons of gangs, tons of violence. We grew up in a bad neighborhood. We've seen people get killed when we're little kids.

Like, we've seen guys get stabbed. There was a guy that died on my porch when I was like six years old and just watched him bleed to death. So growing up in that environment, I've always been I was born being super comfortable in extremely violent situations. And to get off topic real quick, don't let me forget. Like when we go hunting, everybody gets the excitement of like shooting the animal and, you know, the, you see I'm breathing heavy afterwards. I lack all of that. It's not uncommon. The buck fever, whatever people would want to call it, it impacts people very differently. The broad prescription of this happens to everyone is not very accurate.

Good, because I thought it was weird. Because they're like, are you stuck? You are weird. I mean, we can definitely pin the ground with that. But the hunting scenario, it happens. It just, there's nothing that applies to everybody equally like that. Okay, good, good. So lighting up the, like putting the side on the animals, shooting it, pulling the trigger, watching it die,

as soon as it hits the ground, my brain switches, and I'm on to the next thing on my list, replying back to a customer, checking my emails. Like, that's literally how quick I switch gears on that stuff. So growing up in a real, like, in a real violent place, we were just around a bunch of gangs, a bunch of bad characters all the time.

What were the gangs in San Diego at that time? I didn't crew. They're still there. So in Oceanside, there's Pesole, which is an old Mexican gang that's been around since the third. So it's been there almost 100 years. There's Center Street.

There's Deep Valley Bloods, Deep Valley Crips. There's Samoans. There's like this gang called Mesa. They're just... All of this is an O-Side. There's 17 street gangs that have been there forever. And for people not familiar with the geography of San Diego, it's basically, I don't want to say a subdivision, but it's a very small section of San Diego.

It's a town that borders Camp Pendleton. Yeah. And then in love that is Vista, which was the methamphetamine capital of the world. during the 90s, all the bikers and all the Mexican cartels when something crosses the border. So a lot of the stuff you hear nowadays from war as Mexico and all that, that switched because California started locking all that down

and stopping all that. So they moved all that stuff. That was the big Tijuana cartel back in the day. So San Diego was super violent. All the three strikes laws, those stemmed from Oceanside. The murder capital of the country was an Oceanside. Stop it. Yeah.

I would not have guessed that. Per capita. Yeah. It was like 56 people got killed in one year in that small town. And it's not that small. It's not that big though either. No, it's not. Especially back then maybe $130,000, $150,000.

So that's the environment we grew up in. And then being so small, all these gangs just interlocked with each other. That spilled over into schools. Our school was horrible. So I stopped going to school in seventh grade. I went to high school a little bit, but not enrolled. I just went to see my buddies, see my friends. But most, like, I think a third of the people that went in as freshmen,

only a third of them ever graduated. What were your parents' thoughts on you stopping? Like, they don't want me to, but my dad was a truck driver, super good guy, super caring, considered guy. He was driving trucks, so he was always busy. So my grandparents raised us, and he was always around, like, in the evenings or every day or two. But we were raised about his cousins and neighbors and, you know,

We were raised by a huge, and we were just cut free. You know, we'd run around wild all day and then come in at night, eat and take a shower, go to sleep. None of them pushed you back towards education, though? No. I mean, they said, you should go to school, but no. I mean, I was so, I was impossible to manage. I was a super bad kid. We did all those, like, learning disability classes.

So special ed back then wasn't like, well, you're an autistic learner. No, it wasn't that back then. It was you were bad. You stabbed another kid with the pencil. you're going to the special classroom where we're going to teach you for less time during the day. So you come for two hours and then you go home. So that's

what like third grade, fourth grade was like. Fifth grade, I couldn't even be in a classroom. They had to pull me aside and they put me through some special testing where they're like, you have like a zero grade education when it comes to math and when it comes to like writing.

But like a college level when it came to science, physics, things like that. So there's a certain areas where I'm really advanced. Like, when people understand physics, it blows my mind. It's like, how don't you understand that? Well, how do you understand physics but have a zero in math? Those two are very tightly intertwined.

They are when you're researching them, not when you're explaining them. Okay. Like Boyle's Law, Charles Law, those are principles. Don't bring up diver's shit. Why not? I'm a diver. Don't try to bring up that diver's shit. I'm trying to sound smart.

Chicks are listening to this. I'm trying to sound smart. I'm not aware of a single woman on earth who gives a fuck about Boyle's Law or Charles Law. Chicks love the cleared hot podcast. Maybe. I don't know. These things are weird because you hit upload.

I don't know who the fuck listens to it. So when I was young, we would go to like a video store to like rent VHS tapes. I would only rent National Geographic stuff. So if you reference cartoons, you're speaking a different language to me. I've never seen a comic book. I don't understand any of the comic characters. I don't understand any like the sci-fi stuff. I've seen Star Wars like once when I was a kid like over just.

watched a little bit of it. Do you understand the physics of Star Wars? Yeah, it's a mess. It's a mess. So that like hyperlogical part of my brain doesn't let me fantasize about things. Okay. You know, like a person flying, I was like, I can't pretend. I can't pretend.

Even as a kid, I didn't, my toys didn't fly because that wasn't real. Did you ever have dreams of that stuff happening? A flying? No, in your moments where you weren't awake, does your mind wander a little bit more? into the fantasy when you were that age it was always super linear yeah interesting yeah it's always very even today like if people do what's your favorite show i don't have one like i like i watch youtube every moment i'm not working i'm just constantly learning new stuff in a way that i can learn it so i love learning stuff but i don't um i don't like anything imaginary all right even reading books

i read one sentence and my mind will start drifting to like something more realistic. I told you I'm weird. Okay. Not to get off track, how did the lack of education impact you later on in life? Did you ever go back and get your GED? No. How did that impact, because I know you worked with Apple, I know you did some pretty extensive diving contracting with the military. Did that ever rear its head up and prevent anything? I just lied and said how to had a GED. I lied and said I had a high school diploma. They never asked for it. No, they never check. They never check. Okay. I suppose that is one way to deal with that. Yeah, especially with like with Apple, it's sales related.

And all the jobs they've had have usually been sales related. I'm really good at results. So when they see your results or you come recommended from somewhere else and they're like, you can move numbers. It carries more weight. I don't care about that. They're not really looking into it. Okay. And then so where were we?

You were talking about your upbringing. I think we were slowly making our way back towards the second fight story. Okay. So turn 18 years old. I'm over at my uncle's house. He has this giant beautiful avocado grove in Bonzel, which is just... Oh, I know exactly what it is. Yeah.

Just a little bit inland of Oceanside. And he's super smart guy. He uncle through marriage. So he worked on the guidance system for the stealth bomber in like the 70s and early 80s. He worked on these different components. He was electrical mechanical engineer. So he worked on these really advanced components, him and his dad, for satellites. So he had a lot of money and a giant property.

And growing up in the 70s or sorry, growing up in like the 60s, he was like, kind of a hippie, right? So he'd smoke weed, he would do acid, do stuff like that. So one day I'm visiting his house. I don't live there. I'm visiting. I got my overnight bag. I'm sleeping in the guest house and the SWAT team kicks in the door. Now, if you know anything about kicking doors and throwing flash bangs, it's not something pleasant to wake up to. Correct. Yeah. Which is exactly the way they do it. And you were at what age again? Just turned 18. Yeah. So it's like being woken up with a punch to the face. In the middle of a rock concert.

Yeah, you woke up, but you're dazed and you're deaf and everything's white and tons of people are like grabbing you. So it takes 10 minutes to figure out like what's going on. And you start hearing flashbangs going off all over the property. So to fast forward, he had got together with some guys. So back then they were doing this thing called asset forfeiture. It was, they do it, they don't do it anymore in California so much, but it's really popular back east where they don't have the legislature to stop it. So I'm a cop.

I pull you over. You have a joint on you, but you also have three grand of money. It's probably drug money. I'm going to take that. I'm going to bet that that somehow goes back to the department in some way, shape, or form too. It does. Or a percentage of it. It does.

So this particular unit in San Diego, which was designed to counter how insanely bad everything was there. And in their defense. I'm super pro law enforcement, but in their defense, they needed to get a handle on things because it was completely rampant. I mean, it was biker gangs and cartels and Mexican mafia at MS-13 and all the bad things, you know, infested everything out there. So what they did was they wound up having that confidential informant, tip him off about some weed he was growing. Not a big deal. Everybody has it nowadays, but back then it was bad. Yeah.

Same thing as having like a kilo of cocaine. Also, that confidential informant left a pack of pseudafed and like some chemical. I never seen it. I don't know. I just read the court document. So that was the bare minimum for a clandestant methamphetamine manufacturing. Oh, the precursors? Yeah.

So guess what? It's not your house anymore. And we all go to jail. No way. Yeah. They took all of us. So there was like 15 people on the property. My aunt, my uncle, me, my three cousins who were, they're almost like my brothers.

There were 17, 16, and 15. Two workers that handled the avocados, a guy that rented the property downstairs, everybody went to jail. They take you to jail. You bail out. Guess what they do? The next morning, they raided again. And now the stuff that they, quote, unquote, couldn't find the first day, they find that on the second day. And now you're habitual, your habitual offender on bail, which means there's an automatic

two-year sentence mandatory. And you just switched over to being no longer a minor. But also, here's the thing. This is the twist. Because I had my bag with me that proves legal residency in the state of California. Wow. You've established residency by having personal belongings in that dwelling. So now it's your ability to try to prove that what they're doing is wrong, right? But also, they put a special order on you, and I forget what they call it. But any money you use for defense for bail, you have to prove that it's not drug money. So it's super hard to do. And it takes months to do usually.

You have to go through IRS records and accounting. So we just sat in jail. And they don't want to hear nothing. No one's there to hear your story. You're there to you're guilty until proven innocent. Now when they arrest you, they take your fingerprints. It's called major case prints. They don't take your fingerprints.

They take your whole hand, palm, everything. They drug test you, and they take your clothes away. So you're in a paper suit. And they're using your clothes for, like, drug analysis to see if there's chemicals on them, things like that. If this would happen today, I would walk out of it, Scott Free, just because I'm smart enough to maneuver my way through the situation. At 18, you're not, you know? Yeah. And when the cops, when the DEA and all those guys started interviewing people, everybody had a long story.

and on the police report, it just said Gregoroff invoked his Miranda rights. So I just shut up, I didn't say anything. Then you get an attorney. He comes to you, you're behind glass, and he says, you know,

here's what you're looking at. You're looking at 16 years. And the old timers who are in jail with you, they're already, they're like the best attorneys in the world. They already know how much time you're going to get for what. So they're right telling you plead down,

plead down, take whatever deal they can. So they went up coming to me and they say, hey, listen, we'll give you a possession of controlled substance. you'll do two years in state prison.

Even though you weren't in possession of shit. No. Yeah. Don't need to be. You were at the house. Yeah. So I tell them, fuck no. So they come back and they said two years concurrent in county.

And the old timers were like, take that deal, take that deal. So what you wind up doing is five months with good time. You do five months and 20 days out of a year. It's two years, but they're running together. So then from there, You've already been in a couple months. You got like 90 more days and you're out of here. And then your attorney's like, it's the best deal.

You want to go face 16 years in prison, you know? Is this a misdemeanor or a felony? Oh, felony. Yeah, big felony. That changes your life, though. Yeah, big time. So I take the deal. I sign.

I start doing my time. And during that like first few months, it was pretty chill, just sitting around, working out and stuff like that. And growing up in the environment we grew up in, there was no questions what jail were like. All of our friends had been to jail. We knew exactly what it was like. And California is different than any place else.

Everything's race segregated. Blacks are separated. Northern or Southern Mexicans are separated. Whites are separated. Everybody sticks together. It's very strict politics. You can't sit at other people's tables. You can't shower with others.

You can't hang out with blacks. Can't eat after blacks. Can't do anything. It's very race segregated. Also, there's no nonsense. Any faggotry going on, you're getting stabbed. If I can do anything queer, you're fucking out of there. If you even show up and you've like streaked a foot.

football game. You're going to get fucked up and sent out. Like there's no, it's fucking a man's world. There's no fuckery whatsoever. As long as you're not a pussy, you'll be totally okay, you know. Now you're with a bunch of super mean, super like mentally crazy. Like you're with people that normal people don't understand exist on this planet. You might see a guy once and a while like, that guy's fucking evil. That's nothing but those guys in there. But if you leave people alone, will they largely leave you alone as well? No, not necessarily. But so there's what's called being active and inactive. So Brian Cowan always asks me this.

Hey, if I go to jail, am I going to be all right? I'm like, yeah, you got money, you'll be all right. He won't be all right. I'm like, well, I don't know with those cheeks, but the top cheeks or bottom? Bottom cheeks. Yeah. Yeah. He's like, I'll just lean into it.

But anyways. It's true. He'd push back. You could just mind your own business, but if something happens, you have to quote unquote ride. If so we're going to have a riot, I don't give a fuck if you're just there for a DUI. You're participating. Time to riot. Yeah, you're participating or are you going to get stabbed?

So it's very much like that, you know? And I was super active because you grew up around a lot of guys. I knew some guys in there. So you're fighting people, you're beating people up. And remember, I was a blue belt that had trained for years. So I basically had magic over people that they didn't know. You had already been doing Jitsu at that time? I started in 1990.

And we'll go back to that. Okay. I got a blue belt in 1993. Got a purple belt in 2001. That's about the average progression between blue and purple. I like to take my time. Yeah, apparently. And then I got a brown belt, a mercy brown belt because coach felt bad for me because I

suck so bad. Like two or three years ago? Yeah, something like that. Casey, what do we think in another five to seven years for his black belt? I like 10. Yeah, it's too soon. On your current pace. 2035 black belt.

But so I was already a blue belt. Like I, you know, I've trained. At that time, we were training tons. And nobody knew Jiu Jits. Like a couple guys heard of the UFC, but nobody knew about fucking standing guillotine or rear-naked chokes or even just to build a fight underhooks. Like nobody knew that stuff. And you're fighting in tight, confined spaces. You have such a huge advantage over anybody else.

And if it goes to the ground, they're fucking dead dead. Yeah. Super dead. So we got on a lot of fights, had tons of like interactions, some stabbing. And I got moved to all kinds of different facilities. I was put in this place called George Bailey, which is a supermax facility on the Mexican board. order, it's all dudes that are going to do like life sentences, you know, and gang leader, stuff like that. They call Pelican Bailey because it's just like Pelican Bay, where there's like a central tower where they look down through the glass and you're on multiple tiers.

Is this out by the O Thai Reservoir? Yes. Yeah, I know. Yeah. The jump room for sky to have San Diego, you take off over it. I remember when I first jumped there, they said, hey. Don't land in the prison. That's, they said, if your choice is to land in the prison or.

the freeway, go for the freeway. See, yeah, that's where I was. And when somebody rolls in, so you're a new guy, you come in, you're going to be white, we're going to go to you right away, we're going to greet you, hey, what's up, bro, how are you doing, what do you went for? We'll pull you to the side, we'll start talking you. Someone's going to grab your paperwork, your court documents are with you. They're going to grab your documents,

and start to read them and see what you're there for. Did you snitch on anybody? Wasn't anything weird? You know, what kind of guy are you? Are you a stand-up guy, You knew. Are we talking within the first few hours of you arriving there? No, seconds. Okay. Yeah, you walk in and you're immediately greeted by your race. Okay.

Because if you're, because you don't get to assimilate with us. You know, you're either going to stay in program with us or you're going to get the fuck out of there. Sometimes you can just walk back to the gate and leave, go to protective custody. Sometimes you're going to crawl back to the gate. And sometimes they're going to take you out on a gurney. It just depends what your charges are. Fuck, man.

So that's how it works with everybody. And then because I have olive skin when I'd walk in, the Mexicans and the whites would walk up, you know, and be like, which one are you? I just go with the whites, you know? But that's, so that's how it runs, right? And then you have the leadership within there. There's like the guy. So it's called a car. So everybody is like part of the car.

You either ride or you don't ride. The dudes who are rider is like, you get better food. You get better privileges. The dudes are into drugs. If there's a little bit of drugs going around, you get access to that. to get access to the weaponry, things like that. Then there's just the normal dudes just hanging out, minding their own business. They have to fend for themselves, take care of themselves, things like that.

And then the guy with the keys, he's a shot caller. And it fluctuates. You know, sometimes it might be you. You're the senior guy. Then another guy who comes in who's been around forever, he'll take over. He'll just be handed off back and forth. Or that guy goes somewhere else. And, you know, so they pass it around quite a bit.

Well, this night, it was Christmas Eve. they had what we I'm guessing at this part but I'm guessing that the guards got switched out to junior guys they're going to work Christmas because the senior guys are going to take off. It's fair, yeah. They're always moving people around. There's always a beef. There's something happened. I'm going to fucking kill this guy if you don't get them out of here.

So those are like lower level guys. They're like normal guys. You may tell the guard, I'm going to, I'm going to fuck this guy up if not, if you don't get rid of them. We'll just fuck the guy up and let you deal with it. We catch that guy telling that you're going to fuck him up. We're going to fuck him up. You know, it's, and if you don't, someone's going to fuck you up. It's very strict, very strict on how everything works.

So they rolled in this guy, and we all knew who he was. He was a child rapist. He had raped two little boys, and he was going to do something like 30 years. And we were looking at him through glass. You know, we're locked in ourselves. We're looking at him through glass. And there's little vents on the walls where we could talk to each other. And we're like, yo, they brought a fucking chummo in here.

He knows he's not supposed to be in there. He knows he fucked up. And he argued like at the gate, like, I don't want to go in there. Like, you're fucking going in there. Where did he want to go? Just another protective custody area. So he wanted to be isolated because he knew what the fuck was on the other side of that wall. So you got what they call general population, the main line, and then you got protective custody.

And then you got the hole and things like that. You got a medical wing. If you're injured or some like the really old guys, they'll go over there. And if he has a problem with somebody in a protective custody area, Because a lot of the ex-gang members, like if you're an ex-gang leader and you drop out, you're going to go to protective custody with all the weirdos. So those guys are still gangsters. They're just gang amongst all the weirdos.

And they put them over there so their gang doesn't kill them. Yeah, that makes sense. So it's not pleasant to being protective custody. It's actually fucking chaotic from what I've heard. So he had a beef and they moved him somewhere else. They put him over with us. So the moment the door is unlocked. We went downstairs.

and this guy that was like my battle buddy named Spider, he just went down there and stood in front of the door to make sure he can go nowhere. So we got some, we got a razor blade and a knife, and me and him went down there and we fucked the guy up. So we were bored. It's Christmas Eve. We have nothing going on.

So we have to remove him. He can't stay. He can't stay one second longer than absolutely necessary because then it falls on us. and we might get hit by somebody else because you're like, what the fuck do you leave that chomo over there for? And the guards might come and get him.

You know? And if they get him and we didn't get to him, it's on us. So you have to take out. You have to get rid of them. Didn't the guards probably know what was going to happen to the person? Yeah, for sure.

But a different guard can be like, you know, a different guard can step in or a sergeant could get involved or, you know, a lot of things can happen. That's on their side. We don't know. Yeah. But if for some reason,

they came and got him and he was in our grasp and we didn't get him. Plus we want to get him. He's a child rapist. So we went in a cell and we're like, you know you got to go. And he was just sitting there

sitting on his, sitting on like the little concrete stool with his bedroll and he stood up and then we just started fucking him up. Punching him in the face, punch him in the stomach. We wanted to beat him up real bad.

Punch him in the ribs. And then I got the knife and I had him in like a bulldog choke around the head. And I got the knife and I stuck it. in his mouth, like above his, above his teeth, like in his gum line, and then just started cutting the blade up through his nose, past his eye, out his forehead. And Spider was, like, stabbing him

in the legs and stabbing him in the body. And then I just grabbed the flesh from his face and just start peeling it back, like completely like you do with the deer, you know, like you're decaping something, just pulling it back. You can see his eye, all the blood vessels and stuff. And he's screaming and doing all that stuff. And then this guy, this old school wood named Roof, he was a shock collar. he came over he's like hey dog he's like don't kill him it's christmas tomorrow because we get a special tray on christmas you get like a fucking couple now now and ladders or something like that and we don't want to lose that wouldn't you have ended up staying in prison much longer if you'd have killed him anyway oh yeah yeah well that's if anybody told oh yeah because his face just accidentally came off

he slipped and fell and his face came off check this out check this out you're gonna you're gonna you're gonna you're gonna love this don't let me forget where I was um if we have to do a removal on somebody, right? This was done like vengefully because he was a child molester. But if like somebody doesn't like you in jail, let's say you're a UFC fighter, right? You're the toughest guy in the world. It doesn't fucking matter. Three guys are going to attack you. One's going to have a knife. One's going to stab you and the other two are going to punch you, right? Then during that chaos, that knife is going to disappear. Someone's going to hand it off. And then when the guards come, there's no weapon. You could have been stabbed. You were bleeding on my shoes, so I attacked you.

You showed up like that. There's no weapon. I didn't do it. You came to the yard stabbed. That's literally how it works. So there's no weapon. They can't charge you with the weapon-related injuries. So we hand off the weapons.

We fuck him up real bad. Somebody drags them by his collar to the gate. And there's already guys there with change of clothes. We get in our rack and just drop our heart rate down really fast. And then we do this thing every night. You get this kind of white stuff called noxema, like for Zitz. everybody kind of takes turns just rubbing it on their face throughout the day so that guard just get used to sing it looks like white fucking camo paint but what that's for is to cover up in injuries you have so if we're fighting and your faces bruised up whatever that's going to disrupt your face and since they see it all the time there's no rhyme or reason on why somebody has it or doesn't have it so people put it on all the time so people start knocking um because some of the guys don't know what happened they just know that there was there was like an event happened so just the guys fall in line, they start throwing

Nogzima on just to disrupt. Because if I got in a fight with somebody, let's say we had a beef and we went and sorted out in the cell, we may have to knock Zima up and for the only two guys, it looks weird. So you got to understand, it's like the military in there. It's very strict.

It's more strict than the military. So nothing happens for like 20 minutes. It's just dead quiet. It's dead quiet. And then they just hit us with like 30 guards. They have a special unit that comes in. They have a dog, They have these riot shields with, with electricity to go through them, like a taser. And they just start shaking people down, pulling people out with like a shotgun with like rubber bullets.

You come out of yourself one at a time. You strip naked. You go against a wall. They check you for weapons. Check you for injuries. And then they went up taking me and another guy to the hole, but not because of that, just because we were in like leadership in that area. So they were just spanding that whole area. So that time they put me in the hole for 30 days.

And then they came to us and they came in a, they came in a me. me and said they were going to give me 10 years for mayhem. Like, we know what you did to that guy. People told us they're full of shit. Then nobody said anything. But they try to bluff you like that. And they see how you're going to act if you're going to budge. And you just don't budge.

Nothing happened. That's it. How much longer after that did you get out? From there, I got into one more fight. I went to back to maximum security in Vista, maybe 90 days, something like that. It wasn't very long. That was towards the end of the sentence. How old were you when you got out?

I turned 19 and 20 in jail. So like the end of my 20s. And then there was a bunch of instances. Like we got in tons of trouble all the time. I was in another hole for three months. But when I got out, I started working at the main attraction, the strip club, and Oceanside. You don't know what that place is. I didn't frequent Oceanside much.

Oh, good. Yeah, you're missing anything. Okay. It's terrible. And then but the main attraction Why are they always have the most fucked up Yeah it's dumb pure Pure platinum

So years later Michael right now is like what are you guys talking about? He's googling He doesn't have no idea You know he left Montana for the first time No that's not true It is not true Have you ever rented a car in your life? I'm not even old enough to rent a car

Exactly So by default no He's been to Arizona and Montana I have tattoos older than him You do for sure Yeah so years later later, my uncle wound up suing the county because even though they took, like they did the asset forfeiture where they took his property, like a personal property they couldn't take cars, things

like that. It turned out that the cops that were in charge of this unit, they wound up getting, a few of them got kicked out of the department for unethical stuff, not so much related to our case, but related to like their overall careers. I think one of them went to jail. So my uncle wound up going back and they wound up doing, my lawyer knows a full terms. They wound up doing like a full dismissal of everything. So because of circumstances in which they raided the house and they seized the property, they took my felonies, deleted them off my record. They took my time, deleted that.

So I have zero record. I have zero background. I could own firearms. You have zero record or it's been... No, zero. So an expungent is the record's been sealed and it can't be used against you. That's something different. A dismissal means you go back in time and the court dismisses that whole case.

It's gone. It doesn't exist anymore. Yeah, but they can't dismiss your time in prison. You know what I mean? It was so... Like from a paperwork perspective, I understand what you're saying, but I almost feel like there's a lot of... There's... So that still happened, but there's not.

no record of it happening. I feel like that leads them very, leaves them very liable if they just disappear that type of stuff. I can see them sealing it. No, no, they do it. So they do it. For clarity, I got my jurisdoctorate by watching Law and Order. So if you, if you get like a presidential pardon, it vanishes.

Right. So the DOD, there's kind of like your, it's kind of like your credit. So there's a local departments that, that have your arrest record, right? And an arrest record's different because me and you could walk down the street here, look like murder suspects, get arrested for murder, get released an hour later as a wrong guy. That's an arrest record. So that doesn't really matter. And then there's the DOJ, the FBI, and the California DOJ is the tough one. That's the one that doesn't want to switch anything. So it took multiple years of filing with them and the court orders from them to finally remove those. Fuck, man. Yeah. So when I became a military contractor, which was how. far after this? Probably. Was military contract before Apple?

Yes. Okay. Yeah. So it was like 2007-ish. Okay. So maybe five years-ish, five, six years later. It was still working through the process. So I had court documents stating that it was going to be dismissed.

And there was areas where it was removed. So when I did the background check, I failed. the program manager contacted the person doing the background, and they came to Camp Pendleton and did an interview with me. And I brought all my court documents, and she looked at everything. And she was like, yeah, I don't see why. It's that big of a deal. And she cleared me.

What did you do in the five years from getting out before starting the contracting? I worked. I did some odd jobs, but I worked in sales mostly at 24-hour fitness, LA Fitness. I was a fitness manager, sales manager, general manager. So we learned how to sell memberships. And it's very results driven. So if you had a killer day yesterday, fuck you, what have you done recently? Sounds about right.

Yeah. So when we had just a stud team, so I hired ex-gang members and ex-drug dealers, like two guys from college. So we had smart college people if we needed to write corporate emails and things like that. Then we had dudes that are just hustlers. You know, guys wanted to change their life. Selling memberships at Knife Point? They were selling steroids. They were doing all kinds of shit.

I'll tell you offline some of the crazy shit that happened. Why does it have to be offline? Because there's probably some people that could get in trouble still. Yeah, but they're not here. That's true. But we had guys selling steroids out of their desk. Like, it was complete chaos. But we were making tons and tons and tons of money.

But it was all results driven. As long as your numbers were good. It didn't matter how many chicks in the gym complain that you hooked up with them. It didn't matter how many days you missed. It didn't matter anything as long as your numbers were good. So that's the environment we grew up in, very results driven. Then from there, one of my dive buddies, we were finning in in Oceanside. And he said, hey, one of the guys that I work with broke his back.

Do you want to apply for his job? Well, how'd you get into diving? I just wanted to. That's just the concept of you enjoyed it. So growing up in Oceanside, I grew up free diving, snoring. snorkeling, a little bit of surfing, bodyboarding. Could you still pull abalone at that time? No.

It was already illegal? Yeah, yeah, super illegal. So I've always wanted to dive. And I remember seeing the guys when I was a kid walking out backwards in the surf. And even nowadays, I'm like, what the fuck do they walk backwards for? Because they had their fins on. Yeah, that's so weird. Just put your fins on in the water.

It's very shock. Yeah. That was the timeline. So I looked up a spot. I saved up the money. I went and got certified and the dude was just an alcoholic. Like, it was the worst. certification ever. That checks out. Yeah. Anybody who owns a dive shop, there's

probably a handful of people in the world that are normal, good people and educated in diving. So I would dive. So once I got certified, I would go and rent gear literally like five days a week. Terrible conditions, double overhead, zero vis. I would, you see me finning out by myself. What kind of dives are you doing? You just check. Beach dives. Beach dives. I just wanted to be in the water. Okay. I didn't need to see anything. I couldn't even see my, you couldn't see inches in front of your face.

Yeah. I would dive on the Delmar boat basin, which is kind of like the Coronado boat basin that you guys were in, but smaller and way siltier. That's where the Aavs do all their splashing, so it's just trash in there. I would fin around and just bump into stuff. I would do that all the time, hundreds and hundreds of times. Then I would just see how far out I could fin with no gear on and then come back. And I would go out far, maybe a mile, and then swim bag. It would take 45 minutes an hour of finning out and then finning all the way back to shore.

And the north-south shore curtain would take you a little bit. So you'd come down the beach way further than you should be and have to walk all the way back up. So I was just hyper, hyper into diving. And then eventually we'd have some clear days. And I'd go and dive. We'd see cool things and started catching lobster. And I got really, really good at catching lobster. Because most guys don't have good buoyancy control.

They don't get the reps in to get good. good at it. I'm not so sure it's legal to get lobster with Scooby Tank on. It is. Yeah. You're allowed to get seven lobster within the first Wednesday. You're now talking to an expert. This is the areas where I become smart. I know it's not legal to get him with a Dregor on, allegedly. Were you, did you have a license? No. Okay. Then it's not. They just happened to cross paths on a combat swamber dive. Oh, they jumped in my BCD. I don't know. Allegedly. So from the first Wednesday at night in October to the first Wednesday, at least at the time, I don't know if they changed it. In March, you're allowed to catch up, you're allowed to possess seven lobster,

up to three and a quarter inches across the carapace in your possession. So not on that dive. If you have some in your freezer, that counts as your limit. I'm just saying at the North Island nuclear sub-base, if you're on a dragger, who knows what you're going to see. Who knows? Now, did I always abide by that? I didn't.

There was even times where we would spend the whole year where we were like, we're not going to catch any free-range lobster. We're only going to find lobsters that are in traps. And then we would just pick out, oh, look, there's a lobster in here. I wonder with those metal cages. It's trapped. Let me take it out. Technically, you're freeing them.

Freeing them, yeah. And then I forgot to release them once we got out. Humanitarian mission. Let them go at home. You're basically NATO. Yeah, yeah. Dive with a blue helmet. So diving was like, it's all I cared about.

It's the only thing I cared about in the world. I was just hyper-focused on it. And then one of my dive buddies, he had said a guy had broken his back and we needed another diver. And I didn't know exactly what he did. And he did a terrible job at explaining it. He said, we just trained Marines to like escape from stuff. I was like, all right, cool. And it's in the water.

So I went over to Area 53 on base. Camp Horneau, didn't interview with a guy. And he's like, you know, you sound like a good guy. You're comfortable in the water. Are you sure you're comfortable in the water? Jesse says you're comfortable in the water. This is going to be very, very hard. How many dives do you think you had at that point?

at least like close close to a thousand yeah you were comfortable in the water yeah but but not just diving comfortability free diving is what matters because you have to be able to move through the water hold your breath things like that i know a lot of guys that can dive well but they're not comfortable without their tank they don't know like like holding their breaths on the surface or like having to remove their gear underwater that type of stuff yeah like they could do the basic paddy bullshit that they put you through but if you could come up and you just rip their gear off, they're going to freak the fuck out. Most divers are going to freak out.

So we wound up, I went up signing a contract. And a few days later, I was on a plane to Groton, Connecticut, to this private water training facility that they had. And then we were next to some naval, I could be messing up the name, but I think it's like a naval special war, or, uh, naval special warfare facility. And then also right next to the, um, the Coast Guard. like academy. You say Connecticut? Groton, Connecticut, yeah. This is a total wild-ass guess, but I wouldn't be surprised if they did some SDV development up there. What is that? The small mini-subs.

Oh, the mini-subs, yeah. So it wouldn't surprise me if they were doing work like that up there. So I got a picture of me in front of the sign that says photography strictly forbidden violation of U.S. espina law, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. I got a picture of me like holding the sign. Yeah, it's past the sign where it's illegal. Yeah, but it still looks cool. Technically what you did is not illegal. Okay, good. Still no criminal record. So we did like a month long just the super intense drown proofing where we would just do like hour long treads.

And then we had these simulators, which would look like the inside of a CH 53, CH 46. Dunker. Yeah, exactly. But at this facility, they had all the advanced ones that the military hadn't yet bought. They had like the MV22, a bunch of like little birds that were going to go to Fort Campbell, Kentucky, I think it was. The 160th? The 16th? The aircraft or the unit?

Well, I guess technically we could say both. They fly a bunch of the little birds. Okay. I never worked with that program, but some of the guys I worked with went over there, and they're like, do those guys got more money than anyone? Well, they're a J-Soc unit, so they're at the front leading edge of the checkbook. Yeah, they have all the money. Those are conversations where they say, I want to buy this.

And they're like, well, it's not in the budget, but hold on. And they pick a few pages. What if we were to call it this? Then we have money. You're like, I don't care what the fuck you call this. We need it. We were in this like bullshit trailer from like the 60s on Camp Pendleton with like fold out chairs. And one of my buddies who got who went to Fort Campbell, he's like my chair, like the big leather chair I'm in cost more than our entire fucking trailer at Camp Pendleton.

It checks out. Yeah. So we just did a bunch of drownproofing stuff where we'd be like locked in these small environments. They'd put a bunch of crisscross bars in there. they would flip upside down. You'd be on breath hold. They would kill the lights of the whole facility, and they'd set a two-minute timer. And if you weren't on the surface in two minutes, they would pull it out of the water.

The dive medics were there. But if you can hold your breath for two minutes, you fucking sucked. But it's a working two minutes. Static breath holds are different. 30 seconds, working underwater is worth four minutes holding your breath calm. So it sounds like you were working a lot on just the survivability of the Marines. That was it. For when the equipment goes on the water.

And for people who don't know, when helicopters, hit the water, they're going upside down. So that's specifically what these guys did. And they were a civilian company that had that contract. And then working with them was super cool. We worked with Marines and sailors all the time. And we were over in Camp Hornow and we shared the training tank with the recon training school. So we hung out with those guys all the time.

We would jump in with their classes. And we'd also jump in with the Marines that were doing their like McQuist diver. It's like their advanced. swim qual where they put on like kevlar's and do underwater crossover so we would just do that shit on our lunch breaks we would like walk the bottom of the tank we would do tons of breath hold drills we would like bob up and down tire our hands up we'd do all the any water related stuff we can see online or somebody new we would just do it for fun just to get our breath hold better just get more comfortable in the water and then we'd get all of our guys and we'd jump in the water like 12 of us there was sometimes less but 12 would be the max and then we would take one um tank with us and we would pass it around with no first or second stage, just clamshelling it. And then we would just stay underwater as long as we could passing that tank around until it was empty, you know, maybe 20 minutes, stuff like that, because you're wasting so much air. And like that was our comfortability in the water.

So super, like a high level of comfortability. And then from there, they had changed the contract up because from my understanding, I was never in the military, but some blackwater guys did something that made people frown upon contractors. So I think Obama was like, fuck this, we need to get rid of the contractors. So our program was congressionally mandated. So we went from being a civilian company to falling under the DOD. And then everything got different, you know. We got paid probably 10 times what we were worth. So we were making just stupid money. Our responsibilities drop down. It's like a typical government job. And then from there, they started sending us around the world. So some guys went to Hawaii,

I went to Okinawa. Do the same type of stuff? Yeah, just a little bit like different program, but a little bit more advanced now. We would just, we would just put them through a harder, like a little bit harder, you know, they'd be more realistic.

They'd have their rifles with them, like a mock rifle. Kevlar's flat, they'd have their flack vest, plates. So they just started bringing in gear that they'd really have, bringing in rucks. And then, so it just made it more realistic. And then from there, they were running into situations where Marines were dying with Humvee rollovers, like in canals. So then we started working with those.

And we started doing AAV stuff. And then they pulled me to work on some of the emergency procedures for the MV22 offspray because it has the normal exits on VEACOR pushout exits. You know, there's a gasket. You pull in or you push out. On those ones, they're sealed and there's like a debt charge, like a double. debt cord type of um that goes around awesome underwater it's not that's you're so smart dude that's the scenario we ran into is what happens when you pull that well you die what's it like well that was i could answer that you can either choose to drown that was a debate scramble your eggs

with an explosive charge underwater that was the debate what's it going to be like how intense is it um does the first guy die but everybody else gets out do we blow it on the surface do we blow it in the air do we blow it why the nacelles are up like when do we blow that I think even if it was only debt cord, which is powerful in comparison to not having an explosive, underwater, I wouldn't want to be in that airframe. Yeah. It's going to rock you. So we started building these weird CO2, like mini explosive devices to see, like, at what level we could ramp up to and still, like, maintain. And they shut that down.

Like, when somebody up in, like, the Pentagon found out what we were doing, they shut that down so fast. But it would, it would, like, it would chip your teeth. We would, like, pop these canisters under water and your teeth would just go. Yeah. Yeah, for the average listener out there, water's not compressible. So an explosive charge, you're eating that. Yeah. Like a motherfucker.

Right to the body. Yeah. So I did that for a long time. It was over an Okinaw for, for a year. And then when I came back, I started working part-time with Apple, just for fun. I was wanting to try something new. I still working as a contractor, but we were under a new bid, and it was like, are we going to stay? Are we going to go?

What are we going to do? But if we re-signed, I was going to go back overseas, which I love living in Japan. It was awesome. My first deployment was to Okina for six months, Kadina Air Force Base. Yeah, Kadina. I spent a little bit of time there. Yeah. I was on Camp Hansen.

Well, I lived in town, but I was on Camp Hansen, and then we'd go dive over at Tori Station. Was Tori there when you were there? It was like... That sounds familiar, but I can't say with the... It was the Army base, and everybody says it's like the green beret base, but I don't know what that means because I never seen any green berets on it. Well, yeah, they're not just going to wear them around AG. It's called camouflage. It's called fieldcraft.

It's not a big deal. Maybe, who knows? I've never interested those berets. But Okinawa is incredible. Oh, but before I left, this probably ties the whole story together. Before I left for Okinawa, I was on a hike in Palomar Mountain. with my dad and this girl I was dating. And we were like four miles back on this trail and my flip flops broke.

The thong pulled through and I was like, fuck. Most people don't hike in flip-lops just for clear. Yeah, those people suck. So being from San Diego, it's all we ever did. Like we never wore shoes. The little bit I went to school, I was always in flip-flops. Even in Santa Cruz where I'm from, I don't think I wore shoes a single time in high school. This is why we're friends.

You grew up in a beach town. I mean, I did junior life cards in the summer and play. water pole and baseball. It's just flip flops everywhere. Yeah. And I don't like the way people in Montana look at me when it's cold outside. I'm wearing flip flops. I don't get that. This is just fall. This isn't cold yet.

In February when I was here. Yeah. It's a little weird. I mean, let's be honest. This is the way I look at it is if you're not wearing gloves on your hands, why are you going to wear the similar thing on your feet? Like my feet aren't cold. They're strong.

Because it's your feet not your hands. My hands are strong. You got good blood flow. Too much, apparently. You're right. Always circling back. So they broke and I was like fuck I'm tired of these flip-lops breaking and we were like four miles back and it was like pine cones. It was like pine cones and like and those stupid what do they call those things like just the the the the um spit it out age you I don't fucking know it's like it's like it's not they were like leaves but they have like the little pointy edges edges on them.

I know what you're talking about. I don't know what they're from oak trees. You know they curl up and they got like the sharp ends. So it was just a bitch to get back. And then when I was in Okinawa, we were going through the jungle and we had our translators with us. And I was like, hey, what's that hut right there? And the guy was like, the guy does leather work. And I said, let's go talk to him.

It's just in the middle of nowhere. So random, he was there. And this jungle was infested with bugs and spiders and centipedes. And it's just a horrible, horrible place to be. But we went every day because we thought it was awesome. And I went and I talked to him and I said, hey, can you make flip-flops? And the guy was like, ah, that's not really my thing. Through the translator.

He made bags and wallets. And then I said if I come up with the design, can you make me a pair? And he was like, yeah, maybe. So we went up going back to him a few times. I drew some stuff up and he made me a pair of flip-lops. And those were the first original toeholds. The ones that are at your house. Yes.

No, not the ones I did. Okay. Well, I have that pair. They're at the bottom of the cabinet. Okay. They weren't the ones I showed. Those were the first pair I made. His was kind of like the inception of the idea.

Exactly. So I wore those around and they were awesome. And then I went up getting out of that contract working for Apple, and I sent one of my buddies back over there who still worked in the program. It was like, hey, hit that guy up and see if he'll make me another pair. And he did. So now it's like been 10 years had gone by. And I wanted to like, I wanted to make my own.

I didn't want to make my own. I wanted to get another pair. So I seen these guys on Instagram and I said, hey, or sorry, I seen these guys on YouTube. And I said, hey, can you duplicate this? And they would see the leather and they said, I could, make, duplicate the leather, but I don't understand

the tread part, the bonding, the bonding of materials, like the cobbler part. And I'd go to a shoe guy and he would understand like the complexity of the leather because they use different

types of materials. It's almost like a framer who works with wood, making metal or concrete. If you don't have a crossover, it's not going to work. So years went by after that and then I said,

oh, fuck it, I'm just going to make my own. I want to make my own. So I started just tinkering in my garage, trying to figure out how to make them. And I came up with like an idea.

it was never supposed to be a business. And it's important to say this because even today, even though we have a big business and we do really, really well, I still look at it if like, I don't want to make someone a pair of flip-ups. I just don't. Someone's a dick. I'm like, fuck that guy.

He could walk around barefoot. It's called firing clients. I know some people. Yeah, fire and customers. Yeah. Some of them deserve a second chance. I'm just saying. We'll see.

We'll see. I'm just saying. So everybody has good and bad days, AG. So I made a pair of flip-lops. And then like my train. training partner was like, hey, can I get a pair? And you're still working for Apple this time? Yes.

Okay. Yeah. I'm at the end of my career with Apple. And you were, just to, we don't have to spend a bunch of time on it, but you were working, managing one of the retail. Yeah. So I started off part time. And then because of my sales abilities, they were like, dude, you're killing it.

Can you want to come on full time? And I was like, nah, it's, you know, I'm making a hundred. I'm making $100 an hour as a military contractor. And all we do all day is we do some water time and then we're lifting weights the rest of the day. So, like, we're just, it's free money. They want to give me a sweet deal and bringing me on full-time as a staff member. And then they had this issue where they had trouble, this is in San Diego, they had trouble staffing the Las Vegas locations.

Which store in San Diego were you working at? Carlsbad. Okay. Not a shit location. No, no. Anywhere in Apple store is crushes, crushes. So they wound up, and they knew I was in management before. So they said, do you want to take a shot and try to fix a Las Vegas location?

and they offered me a fuck ton of money, like way more than they should have ever paid me. I was the highest paid Apple manager. And the problem was the store that I was going to take over was supposed to be a flagship. You know, there's tons of, there's a potential for a lot of money out of that location. But everyone who had gone there had fallen apart.

It was our first time living in Vegas. They couldn't handle the lifestyle. They drank, they partied. Vegas, baby. Yeah. It's like the movie The Hangover when they get their car. Some people can't handle Vegas. Right before I had gone to jail,

I had come to Vegas for a few years. with some of my buddies. And it's actually the guy that introduced me to Nelson Montero, the first guy I trained with. His name was Jerry. He was like six years older than me. He was my brother's friend. He went up moving to Vegas, so we wound up kind of coming and hanging out with him in Vegas. That's kind of what brought me to Vegas.

So they offered me a lot of money. And then it was one of Steve Jobs' tasks that he wanted to do before he stepped down to fix a few locations. And that was one of them. So they sent me out here, or they sent me out to Vegas. And it took a little while, but we revamped the store and we made it like one of the most profitable and highest grossing stores in all of Apple. Now, the number one is the New York location. The glass building one. Yeah, that's a big square.

And then we were number three in the whole country. We were like fucking 300 when I took over. So we-'s number two. I think it's the Pugang one in China. The big round. I'm probably saying the name wrong, but it's a big round. Bill. It's a big, it looks just like the diamond, the square in New York, but it's a big

cylindrical, cylindrical, what's the word? Sylindrical. See, that's the seventh grade education. And then we were number, we were number three. Damn. So we even got to know, we were in Forbes magazine, Al Gore's on the board of directors, so even gave us an award like for outstanding achievement. And we got tons of praise from Apple. We killed it.

And then from there, I started just at the tail end I started making flip-bops and stuff like that. A teammate wanted a pair. Another guy wanted a pair. A guy from the gym down the street wanted a pair. They'd be like, nah, I don't want to do it. You were just making them for yourself. Yeah, making them for myself.

And then from there, I had switched over and started working in management for Toyota for just a little while. They offered me a lot of money. And I was going through like the initial like training period. And like two months into that, one of like the senior guys, some high up Toya pulled me aside and he said listen dude if you have an opportunity to leave here and do your own thing do it he said because it's a great retention dog here's here's why he had said he's like i make 475 thousand dollars a year and if i lose this job my life is over he's like my wife spends 475 000 a year fuck he's like you see matt matt makes 25 grand a month he has a wife an ex-wife

two kids an RV he's like everybody here is a slave here. They can never leave. He said, I see what you're doing. And if you can do it, do it. And then he said, everybody listened to Joe Rogan, like while we're working. He says, maybe one day we'll hear you on Joe Rogan. So I was like, yeah. So I went up saying, fuck it, talk to Coach Casey, and decided just to quit my job and make flip-pops full-time. And I made exactly zero dollars for years. Had a little bit of savings. There's literally months where I lived off of like $700. I was like overdue on rent.

I had no money at all. And what I would do is I'd get an order in for like a wallet or a pair flip-flops. And I'd have enough money. And keep in mind, I was making tons of cash before this. So it was unusual. I grew up poor, made a lot of money and then went back to being poor again. But I'd have money to be able to go buy a like a hide of leather. But I wouldn't have the gas money to get there.

So I'd have to ask somebody to drive me to the store. are. In those phases of your life where you grew up poor, had money and then went back to having no money, which phase of that were you the happiest? Anytime I was diving, I was the happiest. So it almost had nothing to do with the money. Yeah. Because what you're spending your time doing.

Yeah. So being able to- People chase money for happiness, and I think that's a really tenuous road to go down. There's only a few things that make me happy. It's like laughing with my friends when the Chargers win, which is very rarely. I was going to say that's rough. if that's a source of happiness for you. They're just good enough to get you excited,

and then they let you down. That's how I used to describe them, too. Don't worry, we'll get to the first round of the playoffs, but no further than that. Yeah, they'll let you down. And then, like, diving, being in the water, like, makes me happy. But other than that, I just... How about making flip-lops?

Yeah, I like... Well, nowadays, that's all I care about. Okay. I'm psychotic about it. Do you still dive? Yes. How many dives do you think you have at this point? When I left the...

When I left the government, they said I had... 5,800 something. So I've probably in the low, six, mid-6,000 range. I'm assuming that we're hoping that they paid for all your qualifications along the way, too. Yeah. So we have dive certifications.

We have like internal certifications that we had to have, which are only relevant to our job. And then we did like the patty bullshit and stuff like that. But the patty stuff is, it's a fucking joke. Have you ever seen the videos of people who are diving into shit-filled tanks? Yeah. Yeah.

How much would somebody have to pay you to do that? Or would it be a journey of adventure to see what you might see down there, waiting through somebody's shit? I've dove, visually, I've dove in those conditions before. In actual shit? Well, you can't see anything. Like, blackout. I'm talking about diving in a septic tank. Sealed, sealed helmet, sealed dry suit.

It's tough because I make so much money nowadays. I don't think I would do it. Not even once so you could say you did. who would I say it to? I don't know other divers. Like, yeah, but have you dove in shit? Yeah. Just go pop open somebody's septic tank.

San Diego Bay is pretty close to that. When we were diving under the midway, when they, we had to do something to the midway and we were diving underneath it. Over on North Island? Yeah, I was like, this is fucking crazy. I literally said it like, how did Navy SEALs do this shit? We can't see anything. No, it just gets super dark and eventually you hit your head on something. You would grab the tank of the guy in front of you.

you would like put your chest against it and then you just piggyback all the way down and hope he figured out where he was going. So we would do our combat swimmer dives. The driver would have the nav board, which is a compass. It's about to say altimeter. Depth gauge is probably more appropriate. And stopwatch. And you do these complicated dives because we were looking for the supports for the screws. You know, you could blow up the propeller on a ship, but then they can, not that it'd be fast, but they could put a new propeller on.

if you can distort the drive shaft, a little bit different than the drive shaft has supports. So you're just doing these dives, which are at night. So there's already nothing to look at anyway. And it just slowly gets darker, and you hear the crustaceans and darker and dark. And you're hoping that your swim buddy is swimming in front of you with their handout.

Most of the time, they're not. And eventually it's just you get a little bit of a neck adjustment. And here we are on the ship. Yeah. It sucked. It quickly, anything ocean related, especially at night, quickly separates the men from the boys. It's a different world down there.

I think I, you were an instructor at Budge, right? Yes. I think I saved you from having to, what do you guys call when you kick somebody out or when somebody rings out or when somebody gives up? If they quit, it's a DOR. Drop-on-O-R. They can get washed out of training for other reasons. I feel like I saved you guys from a lot of those guys because I had tons of, like a lot of buddies that wanted to be Navy Seals. And I said, let's just go swim out in the ocean, pass the waves at night.

And then they're like, fuck this. They never wanted to do it ever again. Yeah, that's kind of the minimum job requirement at some point in time. for that. But that was enough to get them to quit. Yeah, their tenure would have been short at the training plan. So they're painting ships now or something like that in the Navy. You know what's fascinating about buds though? It's not like there's a vacuum of information. Like it's it's air gaped and held in this skiff about what happens at the program. And in every class on the first day of training, there's like 20 or 30 quitters. What the fuck did you think you were signing up for?

First day. Honestly, Aegee, within the first hour sometimes. Nobody told me I was going to get yelled at. Well, then that just makes me wonder, like, what kind of upbringing they had. I remember being yelled at many times. I grew up on my dad's construction site. I remember being in boot camp and not trying to disparage anybody's upbringing, but there were people crying themselves to sleep at night and pissing their bed

so they could say they couldn't handle being in the military. And I was laughing. Like, this is easier than working for my dad in the summer. Yeah, come to jail. Context. Tell about the context. Where were we? We were talking about you transitioned out of Apple and you.

Yeah, so making the flip-flops. Yep. So we wound up growing and getting bigger and bigger, bigger meaning like tiny, like growing in size and just getting better and better with the product. And I had this psychotic obsession of never giving up on quality, never giving up. My goal was to make the best pair of flip-lops in the world. because I was tired of everything breaking.

They always used synthetic materials. They were always made in China. And even if they made them in the United States, they were made with Chinese materials. And they were always very, very low quality leather, similar to like a particle board. And the construction just didn't make sense to me on how they had placed the thong, they laid it between layers, and it would always pull out. Like it's the most critical part, but it was the weakest part. It made no sense to me.

And so I just was just psychotically obsessed with making like the best pair over and over and over again. And people were buying them and I was like, those suck. You don't want to buy these. And people would message me, they'd be a guy, buy a pair. I'm like, no, they suck. You don't want them. I'm like, I'd try talking them out of them. But people would see them.

They'd want them. And then it just grew. And we got better and better and better. And then I remember identifying like certain products I wanted. It's like a certain leather grade I wanted or a certain quality I wanted or a certain leather manufacturer and they wouldn't give us a time of day. Not only did I not have the money, but I didn't have the skills to work with their stuff. Like I wasn't worthy of working with like their high quality leather. They were making that choice though. They were. Interesting. Yeah. And it's still like

that today is if you go to some of our some of our guys and you offer them money, those tell you to fuck off. You don't know what to do it. You don't know what to do with this stuff. Like it's very particular. If you just want to have it. No, I can't. This fucking won three yards of elephant cock to send it over, you know. I'm assuming that would be the square footage of an elephant stick. The exotics are even harder to get. They're even harder to get. But like so to kind of fast forward a little bit,

we got to a point where we had something that I would deem would be acceptable, but even today I'm not happy with what we make. Every pair of flip-offs I've made, I've hated. Like they could be... That can't be entirely true. Yeah, they could always be better. I always see something... There's a difference between it can be always be a little bit better and then you hate the actual product.

I hate them. They need to be better. better. Okay. I got a vision in my mind for what they should be like and we're working towards it. We're generation 25 and 26. It'll be somewhere in like the 50 range. Okay. We're quite a ways away from where I think they could be. So really the magic of our flip-flops is we use this leather called a vegetable-tanned leather. So when you get an animal hide, you have two choices. You either do the modern way of tanning it, which is a preserving process and it's usually done with chromium. So it's chrome tanned. So the people we know that make stuff in America like boots, wallets, belts, gunholsters, most of them are using chrome tan leather.

It takes like a day to make for the tannery. It's very cheap and it makes a very soft, supple leather that doesn't have a lot of strength to it. That's the modern way of doing it. Plus, it's extremely toxic because it's made with chromium. It's not really allowed to be used in the equine industry, the horse industry, because it'll burn the hair on a horse. The contact with it well. Yeah. Oh, interesting.

But people use it on their body all the time, all the time. They make flip flops. Most flip flops are made with that type of leather. And then the other way, the way that's been around for thousands of years, it's called vegetable tanned. And it's like a two-month process that's used to preserve the leather. and they called vegetable tanning because it comes from tree roots, bark, and tannins and soil. The stuff they put on the leather. Correct.

And they put in what looks like a gigantic wine drum, but it's huge, bigger than this room. And it turns and it mixes and it starts to preserve the leather and cure the leather. And it's like an eight-month process from beginning to end to make that leather. It's a very lengthy process. And it's how humans have always made leather throughout history. You go back to the Romans, vegetable tan. You go back before then, vegetable tan. It was always vegetable tanned.

Up until Nike came along in the 70s and started producing synthetic materials, did we switch from leather? So our grandparents all know about this stuff. Our generation doesn't know shit about leather. And then the kids nowadays don't even know what the fuck leather is. They don't know the difference between their sofa,

maybe a wallet flip-flops. So when people see our flip-flops and they see that they're $500, they don't understand. well, I got something here for $2. They don't understand the difference. And it's similar to something that's like a nice, like Brazilian hardwood that's impossible to get.

It's cured over the course of many, many, many years versus like particle board. Like that's the difference. But the thing with vegetable tan leather, it's non-toxic. And what it does is it molds and shapes to whatever it's being used on. So good gun manufacturers know to use vegetable tan,

because a chrome tan will tarnish the metal and finish of a gun. You put your gun in there, you pull it out. You're like, what the fuck? Why does it look like this? Yeah, that's going to piss some people off. Yeah. So the good guys know they use a vegetable tan. Yeah.

Nobody uses vegetable tan in flip-flops. Very few people even use them in shoes nowadays because it's hard to work with. You have to be very skilled. There's a lot of waste, meaning you'll get the hide. You pull basically across the back spine of the animal. The belly material will go back to recycling, and they'll take those fibers and they'll blend them up and they'll put it with like a type of like polymer and they'll make it into stuff that's what's referred to as genuine leather. So a genuine leather is equivalent to a particle board. It's a genuine leather.

It's low grade dog shit. And then they put a print pattern in there that gives it those little pebblings you see. Yeah. Like you'll see that on a car like a like a seat. Seeds, cars, stuff like that. The steering wheel, you can the center rest. That pebbling is a mimic of the top grain of vegetable tan leather. It's meant to duplicate the grain.

It's not real. It's super weak. And then, where was I? You were talking about leather. It's fucking your story, dude. I don't know. You're talking about the differences between leather. It's these headphones.

You've been wearing the headphones for almost two hours now. It hasn't been a problem. It's messed me up this whole time. So the vegetable tan leather will mold and shape to your foot. So you put on the flip-flops, it's going to mold and shape to your foot and take on the contours of your actual foot. If you've ever bought a pair of flip-lops and you go to the store and you see an arch in them or you see like pockets for your toes, whose foot is that? That's not your foot. That's just somebody in China decided that's how your foot should be shaped.

Now you should never have arch support except maybe in a really unique situation where you're like your backpack. or you have heavy loads on your back, similar to where like you'd have a back brace on to support that extra weight. The tendons, the ligaments, the muscles in your feet are what hold your feet in place. The same concept of wearing an arch and that support under your foot

is the same concept of wearing like a neck brace to support your neck. It's only going to make your neck weak, fragile, and like super loose. So the problem we have with feet is it's quite unique. from the ankle up, if you injure yourself nowadays, a doctor's going to tell you you need to do physical therapy, you need to move it, you need to generate blood flow,

you need to generate movement to it. When you injure your foot, you need seditation, you need to stop moving it, you need to support it more, you need to bind it more. It's the fucking weirdest thing. It makes no sense to me. So your foot is exactly like your hand in the sense of how you treat it.

They need to move, they need to, your toes need to spread, your toes need to grip. But what we do when we're kids, we bind them in a shoe that has no give to it, and we pull our toes inwards, and we start to wrap our foot, and we do a lower version of what those Chinese people do when they do the foot binding.

Dude, Michael, have you ever seen footbinding? Google it. Yeah, I have. It's awful. Of course he has. He's deep into foot porn. So it is awful, and it actually, when you look at those pictures,

I have a problem processing in my brain how it's actually real. They look like pointed elf shoes. And they wrap the, the, The toes will wrap underneath the foot. So our flip-lops do a few things. One is they make your feet much stronger because you have to use your foot the way it was designed. Two is they're going to mold and shape around your foot specific characteristics, which is something you don't get from anything nowadays. So I don't have, you see me walk around in the winter.

My feet don't get cold because they're so strong and vascular from moving all the time. If you have seditation in your feet and your feet don't move, they're going to get really. really cold because there's no demand for blood to them. I have seen you walking around with socks on with your flip flops. When it gets below zero. Yeah. I thought your feet didn't get cold. What level are we talking about?

I'm just saying it was the claim that you did. I'm the last person to ever to ever put socks on. But I still got my flip flops on. So that's kind of like that's not something we do as like a sales thing. That's not something we really talk about that much because that's not what my goal is. They make your feet stronger and they're extremely durable. So your feet don't look like? Yeah.

Pull it up. Pull it up. I could, you want me pulled up on my phone? I got tons of pictures of it. No, I'm actually afraid for you to go through the photo. Real. Oh my God. Look at that.

That looks like a hand. It looks like somebody wrapped their hand around. Yeah. So if you're listening to this, the toes are bound underneath the foot where there's no exposure of the toe whatsoever. The toes are essentially curled under where the arch of the foot. the foot is. Yeah, yeah. See that picture with the diagram of the, of the bones? Up top? Yeah. I love it. Yeah. So that's an extreme version of what your foot does in a pair of Nike's. I think that might be a stretch to say that. No. I don't think Nike's are folding your toes under

like that. No, no, no. That's the extreme version is what I'm saying. The picture is the extreme version. So, but what your toes are supposed to be like this. They're supposed to be spleen out. But if we all look at each other's feet, they're going to look like that. Your toes are going to be touching together. What do you think about footwear that has the natural or the wider toe box for a natural ass? So when I do strength and conditioning, they require me to wear shoes at the gym because for some reason, some guy somewhere dropped a weight on his foot and somehow a shoe is going to help. Yeah, that thin fabric is really going to protect it. It blows my mind.

But one is I've never dropped anything on my feet. My feet are cleaner than most people's hands. but I wear them when I have to wear shoes. How would you back up that particular claim? I wash my feet. How often? Four times a day? No, you don't.

I just went when I went to the bathroom, I washed my feet. You 100% did not. You have no... Coach, do I wash my feet? No. You do not. No. Your feet are not cleaner than people's hands.

So I wear the, well, some people. I've seen some gross people. So when I have to wear shoes for the three hours a week, each hour doing strength conditioning, I wear the wide toe box. Okay. With a flat bottom. But when I wear shoes, I feel unstable. I started getting off balance.

I feel like I'm on like a pair of roller skates. I just can't grip with them. So with my flip-flops, I go hunting in them. I could go way back in the mountains, and I don't have to worry about them breaking. So what we've done is we've created, we've bought the best leather. Now, at this point, we've been able to buy the best leather in the United States. There's a tannery in Pennsylvania that's an Amish country. And they have a hundred and, it's a little bit over 150 years.

It's like the mid-1800s. where the tannery was when the tannery was built they make leather old school old world style they only use american cows use 100% black angus northern black angus cows and they sell us only the best stuff that they produce so they get you know a thousand hides they're going to pick out the ones that they deem are their grade a plus and then they're going to set them aside they're going to take photos of them and they're going to send them to us to pick out and we're going to choose the absolute best that they produce So within the United States, we buy the best leather possibly made in the way it's supposed to be made. And then on the hide, we only use the section of the hide that has the tightest grain and the tightest fiber.

So the flip-flops are the absolute strong as they could be so that they're not going to stretch more than they need to. The straps are made with the same leather but in a thinner cut that we bond together. So there's a top grain on one side and a top grain on the other. Do you remember a few years ago When we were just using one-sided leather? Do you have any of those where it was rough on one side? Yeah They were uncomfortable

Until you broke them in Exactly, yeah So now that break-in process has cut down a lot But the flip-flops are way stronger Dramatically stronger Do you think it would be awesome being Amish Or are they missing out? Do you know how many times we've talked about the Amish

Since we've been in Montana? Me and Coach have been talking about that the whole time Did you encounter some that No, but this is the same thing like a place where Amish people would be. Michael's from Montana. Are there a bunch of Amish people? You know why?

There are Houdierites, which is very... No, no, no. Here's why. When we drive by those big fields, and we see like that old cabin covered in moss that looks like it's from the 1800s. Yeah. Like, that's a type of person that lived there.

But is it awesome? No, there's no Wi-Fi. There's no chicks. Well, there are obviously chicks because there are the population of the march. Let me ask you a better question. If you were single, Yeah. And you had a pick between an Amish chick and a chick from Ireland.

Am I Amish? No, you're you. Is there an option C? I don't like binary choices. Yeah, yeah. Be like, would you rather get shot or stab? Like, that's fucking stupid. Where's my other option?

I think they probably have the two ugliest amount of girls on the planet. I'm just saying if you were born Amish, you wouldn't know that you're missing out on Wi-Fi. Maybe they have it, maybe they have it nailed and we're all fucked up. because all the information we have access to. I don't think so. I'm not saying either way. I'm just an interesting thought experiment. If you went to an Amish person who's like 50 years old, right?

They've lived their whole life happy and then you showed them fake tits. Do you know how it would ruin their life? They've spent their whole life not knowing about fake tits. You're like, dude, what the fuck? Yeah, but fake tics have a shelf life on them too. At some point they go back to be in regular tits. Just buy new ones. I don't know.

I don't know if that works when you're 70 agey. I live in Las Vegas. I've seen some like 70-year-old chicks. Yeah. With great tits. But I live in Las Vegas. At the end of the day, though, at some point, you're going to go back to your natural self. Amish girl.

I mean, I don't know what that fifth-year-old would say. Yeah, I feel like if I was Amish, I'd be super. I was like, I lived my whole life. I didn't know about this. There's more to life than fake tits, though. Name one other thing. that is good in life? Yeah.

Fake tits? Finding an awesome person to spend your life with. Doing jihitsu. That's okay. Just because you have commitment issues doesn't mean the rest of us do. I do. I don't get it. You don't get what?

I don't get it. Like when I see people like married. Yeah. There's people like you and coach, you guys are happily married. Yeah. But I wouldn't ever change my life for that. And when I see people that are unhappily.

No, not at all. What you just mean you just. said is literally the definition of being selfish. I'm quite giving. Quite giving. Okay. We can kind of partly however you want to, but when you say, I would never change my life for that, that is literally the definition of being selfish.

If you had to compare between the happiness I have and then the potential of being, you've seen bad marriages before, right? I've had one. I've been divorced. Just the risk of that, I would never do it. I would never do it. So because something is risky, you're going to put it off the table? That's an awesome life.

No, with that scenario, yes. Maybe you should go be fucking Amish, Egy. With that scenario, yeah. You're missing out on life, man. I don't think so. I'm going to get married, and if it doesn't go right, I'm going to come talk to you. None of what you just said makes sense. I am not responsible for you.

That's how I feel about marriage. I don't get it. I'm happy you guys are doing it. Were your mom and dad divorced? Yes. Okay. So perhaps you modeled something that you would not want to replicate in your life. There's a million reasons why I don't get it.

but I don't get it. Yeah, I don't want kids either. I like kids. I'm good with kids. Don't want kids. You know what? You know what I want to do? I want to make the best flip-flops in the world.

That's literally all I care about. So when you like bring up jujitsu, I'm like, yeah, it's cool, but I'd rather make flip-lops. From like five o'clock in the morning? You'd rather make flip-flops than find somebody who is an amazing partner in life and go through life with them? I would do, I would spend every penny that you have made so far on getting a therapist. That's all I care about. I would go deep. to fucking counseling.

If the therapist can come to me. Yeah. I've actually worked. So a lot of the stuff that I've dealt with, I worked with the hypnotist. My buddy dominant. Yeah. I said therapist. Now he's way better.

I'm not talking about a guy that makes you think you're a chicken. No, no. This is real stuff. Sure. So it removes self-limiting beliefs. So for a long time. Says the hypnotist? Yeah.

Does anybody ever told you you might have a slight confirmation bias on information that you like? I told you at the very beginning. I was dumb. you keep thinking I'm the smart person I'm not well don't confuse educated and intelligent you're not dumb do you remember like a um like two years ago where the company was doing okay but it wasn't killing it then suddenly just fucking started crushing it

it's from working with dom no it's not actually yeah and I'll tell you why because what happened was I was um because I've seen death so much growing up I never planned for the future like you just die who gives a fuck why are you gonna plan anything you're just gonna die like that's how I always looked things. Yeah. Right. So that, for clarity, is dumb. Exactly. I agree with you. Yeah. That doesn't mean that you're dumb. So working with him. Guess who else has seen a lot of death and had their hand in death and still plans for the future? The producer? No. What's his name? Michelle. He looks like a deadly guy. So you can take the approach that you just did. And so, oh, I was around a lot of

death when I was young, so I'm not going to plan for the future. I've been around a lot of death too. And like I said, I've had my hand directly involved with it. It doesn't. doesn't mean that I don't pay attention to the future. Just because I know what can happen, you know what has actually given me a greater appreciation for the future and what's possible. And you're a much better, more mature person than me. I'm not. So. A lot of that's a choice, A.G.

I know, but listen, I'm not saying one's better or worse. I'm saying that's how I was. Okay. That's how I was. So I never planned for the future. I never planned on anything. It was just, we're just going to go and see what happens. Now that's changed, you know.

And I realize it's because of how much fucked up shit I seen growing up. So I was able to work with somebody that could help, like, remove those beliefs. And now we have such a crystal clear plan over however long I stay alive, 90 years, 100 years, 70 years. My Russian side of my family lives to be, like, fucking tortoise age. So being 100 is not, you know, unreasonable. So, but now working with somebody like that, I've been able to remove all that, like, stuff that you just, you weren't born with. And you're, did you see a lot of death and shit growing up? Or was it?

Nope. Later in life. So I seen that from the very beginning of life. So people getting killed. I was like, oh, well, fuck is the fuck. The guy's going to die in a motorcycle accident. This guy's going to die over here. Those two guys got shot.

This guy got shot in the liquor store, you know. I remember going up to a liquor store when I was like seven, eight years old. And there was like a dead guy in the parking lot. We couldn't go get ice cream because we had to wait for the cops to remove the body. If you don't take the time to deal with that at some point in your life, and I mean beyond hypnotism, it's going to come deal with you when you don't want it to. Well, that was me dealing with it. Do you know anything about hypnotism or no?

It's not the TV show chicken thing. I know very little about it. Let me tell you the little bit I know. So think of it like a therapy session, but also doing like meditating. So you're deep in thought, you're going like deep into your past. You're going deep into like your subconscious while you're being guided by someone who's an expert in it. It's not like, okay, what's going to happen is I'm going to snap my fingers. again, that's like a magician.

That's not what real hypnotism is. It's, and then there's timeline therapy where you work your way back through events. And you could pick stuff up subconsciously that you, like, I didn't, oh, sorry, hit the mic. I didn't know that I was a thing that held me back when I did it. How much work did you do with them? Probably four months worth, maybe three, three and a half months. So a couple times a week for many weeks.

But almost right away, I seen there was a huge difference. There was what I call a breakthrough, you know? What did you notice in yourself? Well, one is I didn't know that was a thing. Like, I didn't know why I didn't plan for the future. I just knew I didn't. So being able to discover that was gigantic. And then realizing that was only because of that event,

and we're all going to die one day. Like nothing stops at. But now that's gone. I have crystal clear plans for the future. You know, what I want to do, where I see myself, certain goals, and just been hitting those goals nonstop ever since then. So that's awesome. What about the trauma you grew up with? What about it?

The impact that it has to you as a human being. It's gone. I forgive the universe. I mean, you could say that if you want to, you're totally bullshitting everybody that's in this room and everybody listening. Everything you've talked about is from a business perspective. I'm talking about you as a person. What portion? The trauma that you experienced growing up.

I know, but what about it? I don't understand the question. You don't think it has an impact on you as a human being and how you view the world and potentially? Oh, yeah. Yeah. Of course I do. Everything we do, this conversation, interacting with your friends, the weather, everything has an impact on something. So you handled or focused on your business goals?

Yes. Why are you avoiding doing that for yourself? Well, that was for myself. You're not describing it like that. You talked about working with a hypnotist and then you've hit all of your business goals. So those were also like life goals. You know, we're obviously talking about the business as the topic. You're talking about the future.

I'm talking about the past. Maybe I don't understand your question. What have you done to work through the things that you experienced growing up? Well, one is first acknowledge them. That's the big part. Let me back up. Not even acknowledge them, even realize, because ignoring something, right? So I've had friends who have done combat stuff and you know something bad happened, but they don't address it, right?

I didn't know something bad happened. That's the difference. Oh, yeah, it's normal to see people just shot at a liquor store and, you know, rip somebody's face off in prison. Totally normal. It's not bad at all, right? Well, that was how I grew up. So when I met people, dude, as a human being, you know that shit's fucked up. No, I'm fucking serious.

I don't. Because guess what? The dude across the street, he's seen the same thing. The house across the street, they got, then my neighbors, my cousin, they all seen that same shit. That's where we grew up. It doesn't mean it's normal. That just means that's the ecosystem you grew up in. It's not normal to you because you grew up in a.

different environment, right? Perhaps. I experienced that trauma much later on in life. What was not normal to me? Were your parents married? Yes. Until my mom passed, yes. So that wasn't normal to me.

Did you guys eat dinner at a certain time every night? No. You guys do it like normal family shit? I mean, I'd put it in there for sure, but they may not like not every night, but normal for sure. Here's something I left out. I also grew up Jehovah's Witness. My family was Jehovah's Witness. So we weren't allowed.

How could you leave out a key piece of the house? There's a lot of shit I leave out. Now I actually explain a lot more of this. So we weren't allowed to do like birthdays, friends, holidays, none of that stuff. We can do any of that shit. You might need to find a therapist just to work your way through the Jehovah's Witness part. Oh, I know. I mean, I know it's fucked up.

I was the one that told you I was fucked up. I am saying these things to you because I actually care about you as personal. I know. I know. And then people hide behind the success of their business as a metric of how they're doing personally. the stuff that you described for the first hour that we were talking. Yeah. May have seemed normal to you, but it still leaves a mark on you.

And you can either choose to deal with that mark or it will deal with you in the future. I don't disagree with you and I'm not disagreeing with you. But you just have no plans to deal with it? Well, that was my plan. Let me ask you this. What would you suggest I do? I would suggest you spend some time talking with somebody who's a professional on offloading that particular trauma and the impact that it can have on the development because you experience most of that before your pre-fonal cortex was completely developed.

I thought that's what we were doing. You're not the expert? I'm not a therapist. Damn it. I can talk to you about the years that I have spent talking to a therapist, whether it was every single week when I was going through my divorce or the stuff that I talked with the therapist about from my military career and the impact that it had on me. Yeah.

So I am not a therapist. So I don't disagree with you on anything you said. But because we're talking about the business, that's the highlight of everything. But as far as like being a good person and. making like the right choices in life, treating people well, enjoying life, um, hitting like personal goals. That's super important. That's something I focus on constantly. Developing my team, developing my friendship, you know, being a better friend, stuff like that. Can I ask coach the question real quick? Have you noticed a difference since I started working with Dom on like my friendship

and how I interact with people and stuff like that? Yeah, for sure. I mean, there is one particular person that you made a man's with. Yeah. Yeah. There's a lot of people. I was like, fuck that guy. I want to kill that guy. There's a handful of guys in Jiu-Jitsu. I legitimately wanted to kill them. And then I was like, fuck it. What did they do to you?

Just shitty stuff. Like cowardly shit, you know. They like twisted your nipples on your rolling or what we're talking about? Yeah, they're like dripped sweat on my face. You know, a weird that shit is. Oh, they wrist locks. Hey, they wrist locks. Yeah, they wrist locks.

I was going to say, fuck those people. What do you got, Casey? I've been trying for years to get him to forgive people because I forget everybody for everything. And this is like a common argument that we have. And then he came to me one day and was like, hey, this particular guy squashed it with him. And so I've seen some. Some optimal word. Some.

Yeah. Yeah. See? What I would say to you is this. You may not even realize how it may change your life if you invest the time in it. Maybe it doesn't do shit. Or maybe it completely restructures the way that you think about the universe. So just so I'm perfectly clear.

So to go back and talk to a person, right, about. Hey, I grew up fucked up. And just, do you mean so talk more about what I've done? I would talk with somebody who is an expert at childhood trauma. I'm down. What's the downside to it? No, no, I'm down. Yeah.

I didn't know I needed to talk to anybody, but because we're friends. And if you see something that you think I need, I would totally do it. Even somebody who I didn't know, wouldn't have a friendship with like you, if they described for me, a situation that they grew up and through, I would still have the exact same suggestion for them. Trauma is trauma. Not all trauma is the same, but I think it's all you're putting weight into your backpack. And at some point, it can become unbearable for people and they don't even know that they're, it's usually the person putting it in there themselves. So, but what I don't want you to think is that I thought it was normal and I'm ignoring it. I want you to truly understand this is how we grew up. Yeah. So when I would

watch a TV show, right? And we would see like a home alone where like families, I was like, what the, this is so fake? What are they doing? Nobody hangs out as families and eats together together. You didn't watch home alone like a documentary? That's so weird. No, but the scenario. Of course it's fucking fake. It's a movie. You're missing the point. The fact that they're together, like just hanging out, like the

very beginning, the family's hanging out. Oh, the family dynamic in and of itself. Thank you. Yeah. That to me is like, that's fake. What the fuck are we watching? Any TV show that was like that, It just seemed fake to me. I don't know people did that. So you're not responsible for the trauma that happens to you in your life, but you are responsible with what you do with it. And if you deal or talk with somebody who is an expert in it, they may be able to actually change the way you view a dynamic like that. But that's on you.

Yeah. No, I appreciate it. I appreciate the advice. Do you deal with stuff like that yourself? What part? The trauma stuff? Is it war related? Is that what?

I was never really bothered by anything. that I encountered in war. I'm not the same person after it that I was before. I say that, but I also struggle to remember what I was like when I was 18, right? So the lens of time, like, was I like this? Did I do these things? I don't know. But what's the downside?

What's the downside in sitting down and talking with somebody? And the most common thing you get from veterans is this. Well, I can't talk to somebody unless they've been through it too, which is total incomplete bullshit. I don't need somebody who's an expert in combat. I need somebody who's an expert in what's going on between my ears as a human being and what trauma of any kind can actually do to that. I absolutely needed that backstop when I was going through my divorce. It was the worst two years of my life. My divorce was fucking way worse than anything that I encountered in combat.

From a perspective of my own self-worth, when I would look in the mirror, the person that I saw, look, I didn't feel like I was deserving of finding somebody like Leah. And I truly feel like it's because I put the work in every single Wednesday for almost two years, talking in the mornings, waking up and literally it was during COVID. So it was bizarre, Zoom shit, you know, it absolutely made a difference. And verbalizing, even just the experiences that you think were normal that would blow the hair back on somebody who didn't come back from that experience, just verbalizing that and talking through that with somebody who understands that stuff, it can change who you are as a person. Yeah, I'm always down and get better. That's the part of the martial art journey that I like is we're always working to get better. Except for you, because you don't go to class. No, but see, you don't need to go to class.

Because I hang out with my coach all the time. So my coach is teaching me. I don't think that's the same as actually going to go. Well, here's the thing. Can I get better at moves? Of course I can, right? But if I go every single day, like, I just don't have, it's not exciting to me. I'm just not passionate about it.

You got to try new shit. So how about this? I'll go to therapist, but you stop busting my balls about not going to jihitsu. You have to go to therapist for two months before I stop busting your balls. Who's paying for this? To hold? Yeah, for sure. It's going to be a copay with that.

A co-pay. Yeah. Yeah, I'm always down to talk to somebody. But, I mean, I'm not, you know, I'm not sad. I don't ever get depressed. Have you ever seen me depressed? Ever, right? You'll never see me depressed.

You'll rarely see me mad. and you'll almost never see me sad. All of that may shift because that's your current baseline. And if you change your baseline left or right, it may completely change how you have felt about yourself. If I became a pussy from going to a therapist, I'm going to be upset. I don't think you're going to become a pussy from going to therapy. Pinky swear.

I mean, I'm not an expert in it, but I think you become even more of a savage. If I cry, I'm going to be upset. Are you anti-crying? No, I cry when my dad died. What about other times? Not really. Okay. Yeah, not really.

So you're not against it. It just doesn't happen that often? Yeah, I don't get sad over stuff. Yeah. Here's a better question for you. Who cares if you become a pussy? I do. Why?

Nobody wants to buy flip-lop from a pussy. I don't think they care. I do. I think the quality of the flip-flop is what stands out, not whether or not the person who's selling is a pussy. We have a reputation. Let's look at Brian Cowan as an example here, right? Clearly, flip-lops being sold by a pussy to really impact. anything.

This is the best podcast I've ever done. I would say that shit if he was sitting right there. I know. I know. I say to him all the time. He's my favorite person in the world to fuck with. He is wildly intelligent. His ability to remember information is fucking shocking.

Well-traveled, well-read as well. He uses humor to kind of disarm people. That fucker's sharp as attack. Yeah. Yeah, he is. And he's one of the most generous caring guys I've ever met. I would agree. Yeah.

When I first met him, I met him. So I met Tate Fletcher first. Have you ever encountered? Yeah, yeah, I know Tate. Isn't Tate a 10th planet guy as well? Yeah. Did he ever train under you? No, he didn't train under me.

We're trained. Okay. So the very first podcast I ever did, I think it was called the Guadcast podcast, and he happened to be there. And I remember. Oh, he was the one that introduced you to Joe, right? No. Yes. But first he introduced me to Brendan and Brian.

I did their podcast. And I met Brian. And I was absolutely nobody. Still him absolutely nobody. He had no reason to develop a friendship with me. And we have been fucking great friends since that day. We just stayed in contact. Like anytime I'm in L.A., I'm staying out with him and his wife.

It's, he's just a fantastic person. It's the point that I'm getting to him. How many minutes after you met him did he invite you to stay at his house? Because it seems like it's almost immediately. It might have been three to five minutes before when he was like driving to get there. Hey, I've heard you're a great guy. Do you want to stay at my house? Clothing option.

Now he's the best. Within like a minute of meeting him, he gave me his phone number. I'm like, you don't even know what kind of person I am. He just seen I had a 10th Planet hoodie on. He's like, what's your name? Where are you from? Yeah. Here's my phone number.

Let's hang out. But Tate was the person to introduce me to Joe. Yeah, Tate's cool. Joe was kind of the same way, though, too. He has no reason to have, develop a friendship with me. And I mean, I'm not by any stretch trying to say I'm in Joe's inner circle, but he's a good fucking dude. Right when I first initiated a divorce, a call out of the, blue from Joe. He just called to see how I was doing and chat with me for like an hour.

Like there's very few people who would do that, especially in that type of ecosystem or orbit that he's in the world. Yeah. It meant a lot to me. That's good to hear. Yeah, everybody said nothing but good things about him. He's exactly the same on the air as he is off. It's just shorter. He's in a booster chair when he's on that side of the table. I'm not actually sure. I've never looked at his side of the table. Are these the same chairs that are in Rogan Studio? Yes. And I know that because I crawled under there after I sat in there the first time I took a picture and then order them after I saved up a bunch of money. You're right.

When I first sat on these, I wasn't sure, but these are really comfortable. They're comfortable. Yeah. How much are these? Over $800 a piece, but they're not $900. I can't remember the exact. Tell Hold needs a bunch of these. Why?

For our desks. What fucking desks do you have? Remember all the desks? Oh, you haven't been over to the shop in a while. Well, you have the ones on the inside, but everybody's standing up on the outside. No, the new inside area, we have three seating area. So for a final assembly. We have the big metal desk where the two assembly guys sit,

and we have another one off to the side now. I think save the money on the chairs and air-condition your garage. Controversial, I know. No, no, no. You're right. Well, here's the thing why the air conditioning doesn't work is because we have to ventilate it for the adhesives that we use. So what we've done is we've come up with a new blend of adhesive that we're testing over the winter. I have a better idea.

Air condition and make them wear a scuba tank while they're working. Right? Keep some current. Maybe they can get some qualls. Yeah, does it count as a dive? I would log it. That's funny. So we're going to probably move into a shop early next year if the right shop comes up. We need to do a build out, spend a little bit of money. If it's going to be a spot where people are going to come, like a destination, not a not a storefront, but so many...

You may want to have a little bit of a storefront. You could come by and... maybe do like a VIP shopping experience. Yep. Just like they do when they come to the house. But it needs to look nice, too. It needs to represent told. Because everything we do is high quality.

Our wallets are world class. Our flip bluffs are world class. Oh. Should it wait until the very end to give you these? I'm going to use my Montana Knife Company. Oh, this is the mini speed go-to. Do you fucking steal it? It's over there.

Where's it? All right. Just check it. See, I tell you, I'm a job. I grew up with Joeva's witness, and you think I still nice. There's no tape on it. All right. Well, most of the time I have one single piece of tape on there.

Let's see what we got. Oh, I saw you post about these. The Beanie, which is appropriate given the temperature. So the other ones are Grandma's house. What did you settle on for these? I think we're going to call them, quote, unquote, your mom's undies. That's what the public voted on. It was between that and like...

Well, let's canvas through. Michael, does your mom have any underwear that looks like this? You would know better than I want. That's potentially true, but in your knowledge and experience. I've trained him well, Casey. Our customers picked that name. I think it was that, and the second runner up is like my aunt from Miami. I forget what the second one was.

Your mom's undies. All right. I mean. Do you have a better name? Off the top of my head. Yeah, we're running out of names. Looks like Grandma's couch print. That's the other pair.

The other pair is grandma's kitchen. Grandma's house. Grandma's house. Yeah. Yeah, I don't know. It's at the same time a very familiar pattern, but I can't place exactly where I've seen something like this. I know what this is. It just dawned on me.

This is a Chinese restaurant. Oh, fuck, this is a Chinese restaurant. That's what it is, right? It could be the chair, floor, ceiling, or wall. Yeah, this is a Chinese restaurant. God, if you spliced a dragon in here somewhere, that would 100% be a Chinese restaurant. Those are dope, man. Now, does it work to call them a Chinese restaurant since we're so anti-China with our company?

You don't really seem to care with the marketing? Yeah. I have another piece of feedback for you if you're ready for some unflattering advice. Oh, tits aren't big enough? No. No. Okay. We're going bigger.

I'm going to let you choose. Unflattering it recommendation. No, tell me, I love feedback. Tell me what you got. Stop with the Nancy Pelosi shit on the rash guard. Those are sold out. Those are discontinued. I don't care if they're sold out or not.

I would really caution you from doing something like that again. About her getting fucked by Bigfoot in the forest? Jiu-jitsu for women is already uncomfortable enough as it is. And I say that having a wife who is very deeply tied into the women's community here, you are not going to get a woman to start jujitsu if a dude in the gym is wearing a rash guard where Nancy Pelosi is getting fucked by Bigfoot. Do you have any data to back that up? Yes, it's called being a fucking normal human being. Is this more therapy stuff?

No, think about it. A.G. I have a daughter who's 15. No, I agree with all those things. We did sell a lot to girls. Do you know what that means, though? Yeah, the girls are awesome. Absolutely fucking nothing.

So you can make money and use that as your litmus test for what's right or wrong, or you can use your moral compass. I would recommend the latter. Is it the sex thing or the... I have a 15-year-old daughter. Right. Let's say I take her to the gym. Yeah. Because I want her to see Jiu-Jitsu.

Yeah, yeah. And she sees a dude wearing that. Yeah. The odds of me, one, not having to explain to her in some way, shape, or form, or two, getting her to start in that activity, are fucking zero. Yeah, that's true. So my question is, it can be done. The better question is why? Do the other ones, are the other ones as offensive?

Have you seen all the ones we've done? I think so. Yeah. I'm just saying that particular one, my question to you would be why. I know the answer, but is the juice worth the squeeze? It was one of our most popular rash cards ever. Who gives a fuck? That's what matters.

Is it? So you're welcome to tell me when we run something, if you're like, I don't know about that one. You already launched that one before you told me anything about it. The first indication I got of it was up on the website. You can use sales as a metric, but what you're going to end up doing is tronching yourself down in the direction of being narrower and narrower and narrower. or of people who are going to look for those things, and eventually that market will run itself out.

I'm just saying on that particular one, I love Jiu-Jitsu. Actually, I think everybody in this room loves Jiu-Jitsu. That one was definitely like our most... Stupid? Runchiest one we've done. It's stupid. I thought it was funny.

It sold well. Congratulations on that. I'm just saying if we all love Jiu-Jitsu and we want people to participate in J-Jitsu, I think one of the most core components of gyms, and I've seen this even here, here locally. And again, I have the short, actually Michael's been doing Jiu-Jitzi lesson I have. The female component of it is huge. They're either the moms that bring the kids to class,

which oftentimes gets them interested in starting on their own. The women's culture in the gym, I think, is hugely important. And whether or not it sells, I don't think is what matters. That's good feedback. We don't, the dynamic of where we train in Vegas, it's not really moms. It's mostly fighters So your input is Well founded Because it's not something That we take it into account

Because it's not something I ever see Like moms and Than where we each I don't know but I can't see Give me that feedback next time In real time Well next time fucking ask me about it Before you launch it

You were probably skydiving In Antarctica or some shit That was in January It was so long ago That was so January of 2020 So all those weird Flat Earth people that think Anarcha is not a real place

I have to all I was like my buddy Andy's in there. Yeah, but I can't talk about what I saw because I signed the NDA. Okay, good. Maybe the ice wall is real. Do you know how many people say, who's Andy Stump? I was like, oh, he's a Navy SEAL podcast. They're like, they were for the government.

I did used to get paid by the government. Trust me. They were not happy with the services that I provided. What's that place like down there? So, I think because of National Geographic shows and a lot of the cruises,

people think it's full of wildlife. Which it is if you are on the exterior. The coast, right? Yeah. Yeah. We were in the interior. There is not even insects. So completely flat sheet of ice.

I think, God, I'm going to fuck this up. Mike Medell, who is one of the owners of the company that we were there with ALE, I swear he said that in some areas there is over 9,000 feet of ice. It's an ice sheet. Thick? Thick. Holy shit. Yeah. There was, there's nothing.

So it looked like snow. Is it just ice or is there soil underneath it? Underneath Antarctica is not floating ice. There are mountains that pop up. One of the expeditions that they do there is the climbing Mount Vincent, which is the highest mountain in Antarctica. It is certainly not a floating icicle, which people may think it is. And where do you fly in from to get there? Like, where's your last flight?

Punta-Iranious Chile. We got on a chartered Icelandic air 737 that landed on an ice runway. How many miles are, how many hours are in the air? About four. Damn, that's far. Yeah. Yeah, it's gnarly. Is it, do you have to have special permission to go there?

Or do you have to have like a special visa or something? You mean a check that doesn't bounce? Yes. A lot of money? It was about 50 grand per person. Holy shit. Yeah. Holy shit.

It was not cheap. And does that include like being able to stay there? It's everything. So that was everything. And for us it was the skydives as well. So you're paying for the tack-out. hours in the aircraft. You were guaranteed, at least an attempt at two jumps. You're lodging your food. And I guess all of the daily excursions that they kind of did, they would take you to some icefall. They would take you to a bunch of different places. If you wanted to go climb Mount Vincent, I think that's kind of an additional cost, but for staying at that ALE camp. So it's not just a scientific research center. It's also a place to receive tourists. ALE is 100%

Well, I can't say that Because I'm not 100% sure Everybody there was there They were paying to be there to do their own things Whether like Alex Honnold was there at the same time He had climbed Mount Vincent Yeah, that's the free caller right? Yeah, he's the dude who's

That should make me so nervous I knew he was alive While I was watching that movie And I was gripping the fucking sofa And sweating profusely So he needs to stop doing that immediately They had people who Cross Country ski to the North Pole

They have people, Elon Musk paid for a camp that he's never been to when he was dating Amber Heard because she wanted to go there. So there's this crazy, boogie camp that I think might be like $50,000 a day. Yeah, there's stuff to do there. I had no idea. I thought the whole time it was like some research center. Those are at the polls. And then there's a bunch. So nobody claims ownership.

Well, I take that back. A lot of countries claim ownership of Antarctica. I don't think it's recognized by any of them nationally. me there's like some treaty like no nation can inhabit it or something like that right i think so like we have research stations at the coast and at the polls there was a chilean military complex that we could see from where we were at even though it wasn't occupied at the time the uh the plane you guys jumped out of is that just a jump plane that's there did you guys have to bring that in they had two twin otters there in three baslers which are planes that uh like d day jumps went out of

Are those there for jumping? They're there for jumping and shuttling people to all the other. You can go snowboarding and skiing in Antarctica. If you want to, that's one of the packages that they offer. I had no idea. It's pretty wild, man. No idea. It's pretty wild.

Yeah, people ask me about that. I don't know. I think he brought his own plane. I had no fucking idea how you guys did that. Here's what's wild. The aircraft, the twin honors at least, in Antarctica, when they were done with that season, flew to the North Pole and did a season up there. And then they go back and forth.

That's a long flight in a turboprop aircraft that goes about 175 miles an hour. And if anything happens, no one's coming to save you? There's nothing out there, right? I think it would depend on how bad the catastrophe was. U.S. military could surge out there for sure because they refill and restock the research station that's at the South Pole itself. Because there's a huge facility out there. Is it just a few research stations and then that tourist, and is that it? Is it almost, there's almost nothing out there, correct?

Man, I'm not an expert on that. There's not much out there. So you should go. No. So I figured. What's the flip-flop situation like out there? Thin to quite thin. Sox.

You actually wouldn't need them. I wore a pair of pants and a t-shirt most of the time. Because the sun was out when we were there. When the sun was not out, you're wearing socks for sure. I brought every piece of cold weather gear that I had and then some more and more almost none of it but if a storm came you would need all of it right you would 100% would need all of it we timed it really well with weather and so it wasn't an issue and you guys set a world record with those jumps right that one of you guys jumping over the pyramids was pretty

cool that was pretty sweet is the pyramids covered with trash and tourist stuff like like i've heard or is it nice not the pyramid itself the kentucky fried chicken is across the street there's a marriott across the street from the pyramids you've been there's been there's there so this doesn't really you could um you'll be able to save this as real or not but i've seen the photos that show the pyramids from the uh city looking out yep and the ones looking back and it's like a giant city the borders right where the pyramids are yes it's built up cairo is built up almost all the way to where the pyramids are i'm not joking there's a marriott at the base wow as we were in the air you could hear there was uh an event going on right next to the pyramids where

they were playing shit on like big screen tea it was like a corporate event are the pair is it one of those things you see once or is it worth going out is it worth going there or not we spent so little time on the ground because we had to get to our next flight I think from there we went to UAE that we didn't get to do any of the tourist stuff so I can't answer that question with any level of authority so you guys landed and got the fuck out of there we left went to you a did our jump there went from UAE, I think, to Australia and then finished up in Australia. How do you file for the world record? How does that work? You pay Guinness. Yeah.

An amazing amount of money. And they send you a certificate with my last name as spelled and say, you're welcome. They leave out the F? Ph. Oh. Yeah. I try to tell people it's not phone book. You know, it's P.F as in go fuck yourself. And I asked that because what we were talking about. talking to Guinness 2 to set the world record for the most expensive flip-flops.

How much do they want for it? They want, there's two packages. It's $20,000 to really get the certificate, but you can't use their name like in any of your marketing. I'm like, your name is the only thing that matters. Yeah. And I asked them about what's the world record? Like, we have none.

There's zero world record on that stuff. There's a pair of, like, flip-lops online that some artists did. They posted them for like $18,000. Was it Kanye? No, no, it's like some abstract artist. But they're like a Chinese pair of flip-flops that he painted on. So they're just junk flip-flops. So we wanted to set that record.

But then they want like 40 or 50 to be able to be able to talk about it publicly. Yeah. But there's a very limited in time in which we could do that. I won't get too deep into it because I don't want to irritate the Guinness people. and I wasn't directly involved in the conversation, but I swear they wanted to charge a lot of money for extra certificates. Let's just say that they're in the check cashing game. Wow.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I know what you're talking about. And at the end of the day, does it add value? Hey, I have a world record versus a Guinness world record. I don't know. I don't care. They delivered the certificate to the coffee shop, and I think it's still downstairs in the office.

And the managers. They have like an agent do it? Oh, and there was... Well, an agent that was dressed like a U.S. Postal Service agent, but... It was way more money if we wanted to get us to witness it in person, too. Oh, they offered us that package as well. We politely declined. So what's the next for Toothold, man?

Well, we're going on our holiday season. Yeah. So because of our lead times, which we've cut down to about right around eight weeks, we're going to cut off Christmas orders pretty soon. Eight weeks, you said? Yeah. Oh, shit. We're right at the line.

I was going to say this was going to come out in two weeks. I could probably, I could accelerate this and put this out next Monday, but that would only buy people one week. You drop it whenever you want. But so it's clear out the queue for the end of the year. We have a whole bunch of new products we're dropping, new flip-flops styles we're dropping next year. And we've gone from it just being mean. making flip-flops you remember that to we now have a whole team of people and um our best guys have been there for a year now so getting really good yeah so our production is going to go a little bit

faster and then at the beginning of the year we want to start dropping some stuff that ships same day so you could order custom stuff and you can order anything from our site but we're going to have a handful of things that we'll start making weeks ahead of time yeah they'll say hey we got a size 10 a size 12 with size 13 ships today. We want to get to the point to where half of our stuff ships immediately. Man, that's kind of a guessing game on sizes. It is, but we have such a big following

that anything I post, like, actually made you those three times. Because they got bought? Yes. I would tell you, like, sell them if people are going to buy them for sure. So do you remember the picture I posted online? That was very recently.

Yeah, yeah. So I made them. and then the guy was like, hey, are those for sale? And I said, yeah. I said they're size 10. Somebody bought it. Two other guys bought them. And then the last one, another guy offered to buy those.

And I told them, no, they're not for sale. People are going to want them now. Yeah. Anything Andy Stump has. Apparently, that's a thing. So if we post it online, it sells right away. Like our wallets, we don't take orders on our wallet. So you can't just call up and say, I want to order a black minimalist wallet.

We should probably talk about the exact. too before fireware. But what we'll do is we'll take a hide and then whatever's left over that we can't use for flip flops, then we'll have our guy cut out the wallets. You know, I'll say, hey, give us. The key fobs and stuff to you, right? Or chains, whatever the term is for it. Oh, the key fobs, yeah. Not for exotics.

We just do passport wallets, buy folds, and minimalist wallets. Which? That's a minimalist. So people can see it. this is an early gen yeah um and then so we used so we talked about that vegetable tan earlier so the other thing we do is we use exotic leathers and we get those leather so when we first got approached by one of our brokers i said hey i got some elephant do you want it i was like fuck no and then he was like why not and i said i'm not i don't want to kill an elephant to use it

for flip-flops and he's like no dude he's like you're too new you don't know what's going on let me explain to you. So what, to die, whether or not you make a flip-flop out of it or not. So there's a few things. So there's parts in Africa

where elephants are extremely endangered. And there's parts in Africa where there's too many of them. Just like in America, this place where there's too many bears, there's places where there's no bears. So in a park,

we get a lot from Zimbabwe and a few other parks in Africa. So an elephant dies for whatever reason. Disease, it's too old. They have to, they have to euthanize it. Or even if a poachery, and gets to it. What the game warden to do is they get to that hide as quickly as possible,

and they try to recover the meat, most importantly. If they could get the meat, they could give it to local villagers. Then they take that hide and they turn it over to a government agent that have their own government tannery. And that agent will say, hey, we're putting in like 25 square feet of black elephant or whatever it is to the tannery. That tannery will start to pre-sell it. So they'll reach out to one of our brokers and say, hey, we're going to have some black elephant coming down the pipe. They already know what I want. So they're going to say, hey, give me 16,

give me half of it or whatever it is. And there's a little bit of a bidding war that goes on. It's hard to get because it's toehold, which isn't that small anymore, but tiny compared to the gigantic cowboy boot industry. So it's us against all of those guys for anything we get. And the good thing is because we're small, they want stuff in big quantities.

If one of these big boot companies is going to run something, they need a substantial quantity of it to be able to drop a line of black elephant boots or ostrich legs or whatever it is that they're going to run. With us, we can get just as little as one pair, and we'll just sell them to one of our VIPs. And then the other thing, too, is our customers love crazy colors. So, for example, the ostrich legs ones. The pink ostrich legs.

Wild. So that's made by a tannery based in South Africa. and they focus primarily on the full quill ostrich, the back of the ostrich. The legs are a secondary item. They're popular, but nowhere near as popular as the full hides. And the crazy colored ones, like the ones we get, the purple and the pink, those are extremely in low demand. Like, how many guys are buying pink cowboy boots? Nobody.

But guess who buys all the pink ostrich legs they could get their hands on, this guy? So they decided to stop all the crazy. and we bought up the last of the world's inventory for pink ostrich legs. We have a stack like that big of it. And when it's gone, it's gone. What's the rarest hide? Not that you've used, but like in general. So there's a, there's a couple.

So one is we got, so it could be like a particular animal. So the depredation tags are the ones we want the most. So we had that hippo that killed a villager that we got a few years ago. The murder hippo. Yeah. Dan's brown belt has the purse. Yes. And there's a few wallets out there too. Yep.

So that's one that we could track from its death or it's the murder of a human back to the hunting, back to it being tagged, the hide being tagged, back to it ending up in our possession. There's a whole chain. You know, and someone's not just telling us. Almost a chain of custody. Exactly. Yeah. So we know who everybody that was involved in that is. we bid on a crock that killed somebody but we lost the bid which i was bummed on so a crock you could buy

depending on its quality and the size um a couple thousand bucks we bit like four thousand for this so we bid double for it it's old for seven thousand dollars could you make a pair of flip flops out of human skin no now there's certain things like there's elk what if you layered it because i'm thinking poacher flops. You have kids, bro. The rarest. No, but they're killing in this. What if they see this?

I'll lie. Okay. Part of parenting, Casey can explain this on the ride home is lying. But we couldn't lie about the Nancy Pelosi rash guard? That's a tough one to get around,

given how fucking graphic it is. That's not what's happening. They're fighting. Just say they're fighting. Cockfighting, perhaps? Is that what you'd go with? Bigfoot did have a gigantic cock in that one. Did you see the recent video

where a couple in Colorado claims to have caught Bigfoot on video. The one on the hill, the guy running back and forth on hill. Yeah, the dude in the fucking ape suit. Yeah. He's clearly walking like a normal human being. It's so weird when aliens pop up and when Bigfoot spotted, suddenly iPhone quality drops dramatically.

They've had 4K for years. Do you make game cameras are in Colorado? A lot. Yeah. You know how me that this particular individual in his Bigfoot suit has shown up in? Zero. That's funny. Oh, so with the exotic.

So we lost the bid on the Mani Dube. cracking, which I was super bummed on. So then here's what happened. So we bit on this, we bit on an elephant, we bit on a hippo. And then we put up 100% of that money right away. So it's three, four, five, six, seven grand. That money goes directly back to the park for whatever they want funding, anti-poaching, fuel, ammo, whatever. And then we take the responsibility of trying to sell it. We have like 70, 80 grand worth of leather just sitting around our house that we've had for a while. And we sell a lot of it,

but it's one of these, one of those. We just have so much of it. And then what happens is if these parks aren't funded properly, those game wardens will eventually poach those animals themselves.

Really? It's horrible. So after one of Calend shows, he had a guy come by. I forget his name. I'm so bad with names. But we talked for a few hours. He's a consultant for anti-poaching.

And he told me the whole breakdown on the Asian syndicates that hire the low, It's crazy. It's such a big business. And he was like, it's like, it's impossible to stop. He's like, we could slow it down. We can like maybe break up a hunt.

But those guys will just be back tomorrow the next day, the next day, next day, next day. It's a war of attrition. The local guys, it's almost like if we were all dead poor. And one of us can do something to put our kids through school and feed them for the rest of their life. We're all going to do it. That's what it is for those guys. They kill one rhino. They take one horn.

They're set for life. You know, they make a few bucks a month. They're not making $30,000, which is an unbelievable amount of money to those guys. So it's a tough problem to overcome. So some of the money that we spend, that goes directly back to park funding. They use it for what they want, and then it's all on us to sell it. So as far as the rarest hide, we have what's called a Himalayan crocodile. The white one, isn't it?

Yes. So it's not actually from the Himalayan's. it's an albino, Nile crocodile that has these very particular ridges on the side that look like the peaks of the Himalayans. So it's like an albino plus an extra step. And they're very rare. They're very, very hard to get. Hermes makes their world famous Birken bag, which if you've ever seen like the richest people in the world, they have this white alligator bag that costs. upwards of a half a million dollars.

To be selected to even buy one of those bags, you have to spend $800,000 to a million dollars with Hermes to even be considered to have permission to buy one of those bags. So they're extremely rare. It's the most expensive fashion product in the world that's not a watch. How much leather in comparison, how much more leather or hide would that be to make that bag versus a pair of flip-flops?

substantially more 2-3x I would guess a bag probably consist of I don't remember how the sides accordion in but it's a full belly front and back

so at least one hide there and they're probably using another one or the tail on the sides and they also have some diamonds on there too of course so the pair we want to make

Who doesn't have diamonds on their bags? I mean you got to have them I got them on my fanny pack so so what we want to do. We're not a fashion company. We're very much into like tough, rugged American-made stuff. But just to set the world record and just to kind of be like outside the box, we're going to make a pair of

those for $25,000. And we're going to use a gold and diamond rings around the top. There's thousands of dollars to buy. So our cost into the flip-lops will be enormous. But for a pair of $25,000 flip-flops that would go with a bag that some chick is probably sitting on her yacht with a few million dollars in bags and her boat cost 17 million dollars 25,000 dollars for flip-flops is not a lot of money. No, that would be probably roundoff air. It's, yeah, it's tiny. That's not, we don't want the fashion industry. We just want to do it just for funsies, just because we got the, we got the hide.

But as far as like our main focus, like I said, it's to make the best flip-flops in the world and they bring production back to America. So we only hire guys that are fighters or jiu-jitsu guys. All of our employees are either professional fighters or they train jiu-jitsu at a bare minimum. We pay them really, really well. They start off at for like an apprenticeship. They start off at like $20 an hour. And then they make double that even a little bit more once they're skilled.

And it takes 550 steps to make our most basic pair. There's so many steps involved in cutting and picking and laying everything out and then beveling the edges and sanding and shaping. them and dyeing them and waxing them and finishing them. And then our final product, our final inspection is we probably kick out two to three out every 10 that just they're at the end of the assembly line. It's just something that doesn't look right. I ditch them.

And then we've already paid for all the labor. Yeah. We've already paid for all the material. We've already gone through all the steps. Just at the very end, there might be like a little twist or just something just doesn't feel right on how the flip-flops laying. I'll just, we'll toss it. And we don't sell rejects, those go right in the trash.

I cut them in half and throw them in the trash. Because if you're spending your hard money to buy a product like ours, we want it to be as perfect as it could possibly be within the realm of using organic materials. So that's kind of like our main primary focus. And then the bringing the jobs back to America, right now we're small. We have six, seven guys total that work for us. Some of them part time. some of them full time. But with the way we're scaling,

that's going to be 12, then it's going to be 24, then it'll be 100, you know, and one day it'll be 1,000. And we want to make, we want to, well,

right now we're the only American-made flip-flops in the world, the only ones. There's like a guy who tinkers in his garage a little bit, but he's using Chinese materials. He's using Chinese fabrics. He's using Chinese tread.

Our tread is all from Vibrum. Now, Vibram has, has a location in China. They have a location in Italy, which is excellent. I would totally consider using the Italian stuff because it's world class. But what's even better is the American-made stuff. And it's in very, very short supply.

Vibram is the company that they don't fucking even, it's surprising that they even know we exist because they deal with Nike. They deal with billionaires. And I've bugged the vice president so many times over the years that he takes my calls now. It's crazy. And he's like, I'm surprised.

You guys keep growing. He's like, guys are doing good things. He's like, you're still a $100,000 quantity off per ordering. But, you know, he's interested in what we're doing. He sees that we're going to grow one day to be a customer. So they sell us sort of like in mercy. They sell us some of their treads, which imagine making rubber in America nowadays. Where do they make it in the U.S.?

It's over on the East Coast somewhere. Okay. I have their address, but I don't remember. It's somewhere like it's either Pennsylvania. or upstate New York. But the EPA stuff to make, like, rubber in America, it's insane. It's literally insane. It's so hard.

It's so expensive. It's so difficult. And on this pair here, so that's a Gen 25. We could get that pretty, we could get that in pretty abundance. We could grow quite a bit with that stuff. With what I have here, the Gen 26, which we're testing, we can put 30 of those pieces to what the of just this one is. Flip it towards that camera so you can see the difference.

So this is a test pair. I trash these. But Dan Hart walks, he's walked 180 miles in his and they show nowhere. This is probably about the same. There's almost nowhere on those whatsoever. On a regular pair, there's very little wear. But remember, our goal is to make the best in the world.

And if it costs us substantially more money, but we get a smidge more out of this, that's what we're going to do. Makes sense. But this is really hard to get. AG, where the fuck can people find you? We've been at this for almost three hours. Oh, wow.

So the best place to contact us is on Instagram. TOE underscore H-O-L-D. Shoot us a DM. And this is a challenge I want to send people. So one of the things we do that's great is we have a very high customer focus. We don't want to do things autonomously. We want to engage with our customers and people that want to buy things. from us. So shoot us a DM. So listen to this podcast and then shoot me a DM and just say,

hey, I heard you on cleared hot podcast. And then set a timer and watch how fast we respond to you. And then go to your next favorite company. Shoot them a message and just say, hey, I want to buy something from you. And then just forget that you did. And then watch how long it takes for them to respond to you. There's a difference because we don't want to be autonomous in what we do. We want to be fully engaged with our customers. We want to have people, we want to market to them. and then we want them to be able to reach out to us immediately. You can message me on Christmas Day. And my phone, my emails don't ping.

But for corporate emails, they ping to my phone. Everything customer related goes directly to my phone. We answer them right away. Because one thing I hate as a consumer is when I spend money with somebody or I want to spend money with them and they're not available. Like, why did you advertise to me so hard, but you're not there? I would like to add to that DM. I would request that people send dickpicks. Do it.

it would get lost with all the other dickpicks. You know my people have sent pictures of them jerking off to my feet? It's a staggering amount. I'm going to need a second to process what you just said right there. Yeah, it's weird. Yeah, on a flip-flop company. It's weird. Michael, how many times have you done that?

God damn it. I told you about doing that. I keep creating different accounts. Fuck. Yeah. So find us on Instagram. That's the best place. So you can go to our website.

It's Shop Toehold. You can see what we have, but our Instagram is really our hub where you get to see. We have so many things that are unique and that there's not the quantity to put them on the website. We might have a 1Z, 2Z, maybe 10. So you could see them in our story and when they're gone, they're gone. That's the best place to find the hot new things. And most of the time when it's gone, it's never coming back because the stuff we get is so extremely rare. Yeah, that makes sense.

Close it up, man. What do you want to leave people with? So first off, thanks for the feedback. Of course. I'm going to get a, should I film the therapy session? So I keep it private. Personal choice. Instagram Live.

Share him with Casey. And if he feels the need, he can share him with me. Well, he's the consigliary. What if he says that I'm cured of all my trauma? Yeah, he's not going to say that. No? No. And then do I report back to you on what I've discovered?

What if I discover some other self-limiting belief? Then you should handle that. What if I do? If you go down the therapy, rabbit hole or you don't that's your choice i'm just giving you you feedback i'll do it i'll do it i'll do it because i'm going to do it because i told you i would do it so i'll do it all right and we'll see what we come up and you don't have to report back to me it's not about me it's about you no i want you don't you care i do care but some things are best kept to yourself i appreciate that i

appreciate you having us on i appreciate the support and happy birthday indeed it was uh what's the date today it's the 12th there's two days ago 10th I'm late. It's okay. My son's birthday was yesterday, turned 20. I'm not so sure how the fuck that happened, but it is what it is.

The cuckster? The cuckler is 18. The cuckler. Yeah, he'll be a dinner tonight. How many kids you got? Three. 20, 18, 15.

Who's, which ones haven't I met? I met your daughter. I met the cuckler. Is it your oldest? Probably haven't met my oldest then. He's off with a girlfriend. I don't get to see him that much either.

I love you, bro. Yeah. That's gay. I know. Let's ended on that.