Jocko Podcast - 194: Costly Pitfalls to Avoid and Critical Maneuvers. How to Win in American Business. With Pete Roberts

Episode Date: September 11, 2019

0:00:00 - Opening 0:08:42 - Pete Roberts on how to build an American Business. 1:41:02 - Updates and How to Stay on The PATH 2;27:14 - Closing Gratitude.  Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/jocko-podcast/exclusive-content

This is Jocko podcast number 194. With Echo Charles and me, Jocco Willink. Good evening, Echo. Good evening. As a leader, you have to put others before yourself. And that starts at the beginning, and it starts with everything that you do. You have to let the men eat first. You have to make sure that they have the gear that they need.

You have to let them get rest before you do. that's how it works you have to make sure that they have what they need to accomplish the mission and then on top of that you have to make sure that the mission aligns with the good of the troops and this is hard for some people to understand but this applies to any organization the military a business a sports team and you have to make sure that the troops understand that there be short-term sacrifice. There may even be the ultimate sacrifice. In war, men may be killed for the cause, but that cause must be just. And that cause must, even in death, benefit those who may have to give that last full measure. And that may sound impossible, actually.

Because how can anyone benefit from their own death? And the answer is actually quite simple. When military personnel risk their lives, they do so to provide safety and security for their country, the country where their families live. And those individuals put their families above themselves. And as a military leader, if you do see that a mission does not ultimately lead to the same. and security of the families of the people that you do lead, then it's your obligation to raise this up the chain of command and fix it. Then the same thing holds true in business. As a leader, you must put the good of the troops above yourself. Now, the thing that might seem impossible

here is that the overarching measurement of the success of a business is to be profitable and to maximize profit, one of the things that you do is you cut costs. And one of the easiest places to cut costs in any business is people. You minimize what you're paying people or you get rid of people and then you maximize profit. So how can this leadership principle work? How can you take care of people while at the same time maximizing profitability? And the answer is that you have to look at the long game. You have to see that the stronger you build a business, the more long-term stability you build, and the more long-term stability you build, the more stability you build for your employees. And when you're stable, that allows you to grow. And when you grow your business, the employees

have the opportunity for growth. And those opportunities improve the lives for everyone, for the employees, for their family, and thereby the whole community. That's what happens. But then what happens when leaders don't put their people first? In the military, it can result in operations gone wrong. It can result in senseless strategies. And in the military, it can result in wasted lives. and in business you can see another kind of destruction.

In business, it can mean loss of growth for sure. It can mean loss of revenue. Yes, it can mean loss of jobs. But eventually it can mean the collapsing of communities, the collapsing of cultures. Now, of course, a balance has to be found and profitability must be maintained. But the dollar must not trump the people.

and it certainly must not. Regardless of your capitalistic goals, the dollar must not trump the communities that built the businesses in the first place. The pursuit of money must not jeopardize the very fabric of the country that gives us the promise for the unhindered pursuit of that money in the first place.

and yet we've seen that take place. We've seen that take place in our own country. In cities and in towns and in states where saving a dollar meant closing a mill. It meant shutting down a factory. In places where making more money in the next financial quarter caused leadership to forget the long-term impact. and sell the future of those people for cash in hand in the immediate. And that disease, that plague of greed can spread. And it has hurt various parts of America at various times.

And when that's happening, while the people at the top might build themselves a fortune, It's a fortune built on despair and it's a fortune built on destruction and in the end that will come back to haunt them because it is not the right thing to do. And it does not have to be that way because there are leaders who recognize the long term positive impact of growth and the long term positive impact of putting your people first. putting your community first, putting your country first. And one of those leaders happens to be a business partner of mine, happens to be a friend of mine, and his name is Pete Roberts, the founder of origin USA. And once again, we are in the woods,

in the foothills of Maine's western mountains for our judicial. Jitsu immersion camp, which means it's time for us to record a podcast. And if you don't know Pete, then go back and listen to podcast 93 and then listen to podcast 141. And then you can rejoin us here because once again, we have Pete Roberts on the podcast. Pete, welcome back. Thanks for having me. That was powerful.

I was just, you know, you get into that rhythm and I'm just, my head's good. I just catch myself going up and down like shit, the way you captured what you just said is I try to say the same thing. I say it differently, but man, the impact, you know, and how important community is, I know how important it was to New England towns, but it's not just New England towns. It's all towns, all people. And man, you're absolutely right. Well, with the, with the standard that we're holding at origin, the standard is made in America, right? We see every single day, every single day, a corner that could be cut. We could make a compromise. And you know what? The profit margins would increase. The profit margins would increase a little bit. And every day, you and I get to see that.

And you're in it, you know, you're here. You get to see it, you know, five times a day, eight times a day. You see a decision that could be made. You know what? Hey, we could just get this thing instead. And the profit margins go up a little bit. And every day, you know, you know, you see a decision. You you hold the line. Yeah, and I think if you, you know, like this statement I like to make is, well, if you, if you follow the truck back to the source, you're going to end up in a cotton field in the Tennessee Delta region. So if that's your standard, the supply chain is between here and there. Like, like you said, like, oh yeah, we could, like building the boots or the jeans, little buttons, little brass buttons, the leather tags, all these things. If you follow that

supply chain back, you're touching not just your local community, but the thousands and thousands of hands and all the communities in between that supply chain. And I think that's the easiest place that you could get rid of some of that. But it's also the most important if you're truly doing something more than trying to earn your weight at the top, right?

And I think that in the past, we've discussed this in depth in the past, you know, you look at all the free trade agreements, all that stuff, whatever, whatever, you know, side you're on on that thing. It was greed. It was greed. And the people do the work.

You know, yeah, there's minds at the top, you know, and there's minds crunching numbers and designing stuff. But the people do the work. You know, and the beautiful thing that we're doing is we're resurrecting that heritage. And I'll tell you what, I mean, we've been together now, what, three years? I think it's been about three years. And going from, I don't know, what we started at, like, 10 people or 8, 12? I think there was 8 people.

8 people. When I came, when we merged, it was 8 people. So maybe last year we had 25 people. There's 50 people now in the factory. 50 people. Yeah, you know, the, and I was telling kind of the crew this the other day when we gave the tour. You know, I'm sitting here saying this stuff, right? And I'm talking about being greedy.

And immediately, if you go, okay, well, this guy's not greedy, there's like a point where you say, okay, well, what does he believe in? And I actually, in my mind, I was thinking that because here I'm talking about, hey, you can't be greedy. And then I said, listen, I am an absolute hardcore capitalist. And I love deal making. I mean, you get to see me now because we do business, you know, I mean, I love making deals. I love making things happen. I love making money. Like, it's great.

It's a it's a it's a great contest. It's a great way to keep score. You know, it's it's fun, right? And I'm absolutely a capitalist But there's such an easy line to draw it's I don't even think it's that hard to draw it's not like it's a hard decision to make and oh, I don't know what I should do It's like no you you make money, but you do the right thing and you make sure that you're taking care of people You're making the right decisions and that's what you do and this is the the cool thing about it and this is where people make the mistake is in the long run, in the long run, you'll do better. It's just like leadership, just like leadership. If you're taking care of your people, in the long run, they're going to take care of you. And that's going to be the long-term victory is going to be better than looking for the short term, hey, I bark at you. If you work for me and I bark at you and you go ahead and do it right now

because you don't want to get in trouble, but you're looking for another job. Even though I got you to do what I want you to do, it doesn't matter. Long-term, I'm going to lose. And when I'm taking investment away from the people that actually support the community, where we're we are, then that's just a bad decision in the long run. And again, short term, it might look great. Long term, what does it look like? It's a bad deal. It's a bad deal for the community, which makes it a bad deal for the country. And if our country's having a hard time, well, guess what? What have we got? 100%. You've got abandoned mills and factories falling apart in these towns. 100%. So you just talked about growth. What have you seen from a leadership perspective? You've

doubled inside and in size and I know I said to you the other day has said hey Pete it's going to get to a point where you're not going to be able to really you know when you got 20 people we got eight people clearly you you you I mean personal relationships with you families are eight people right exactly when you got 25 people well now we're talking cousins and uncles and aunts maybe you don't know all of them that well and there's probably that one weird you know couple you've recruited all you can yeah yeah like you're there and now when you get to 50 people well there's people that you know you're you're just you're just not sure and and you don't seem every day because you're busy they're busy they're working you're working so you start to

you start to rely on you start to rely more on your leadership team to carry the message through the company how's that been for you honestly i'll tell you and i don't want this to sound like you know oh this is this is the the only thing you should go by but Dude, when we did, when we like, when I pushed extreme ownership, I had a stack of books and all my leadership and anybody else interested. I didn't just hold it to the leadership, but anyone interested in being part of this company long term, I want you to read this book. I'd recommend you read this book. And I had people say, well, I don't read. And I'd be like, cool, I'll pay for, I'll pay for you for download it on your phone.

I'll give you cash. Download it. And that's what I, you know, and it's like, well, I don't have time. Oh, well, put the headphones on while you're sewing. Yeah. Download it, you know, and I got you. So that changed a lot. It changed me a lot.

And we've talked about this in the past. But the biggest thing is how important for me, decentralized command was the decentralized command. And decentralized command and the biggest part of that was, I was telling you, you this the other day like 70, 100. What do I mean? Well, you've got to allow people and empower people and your leaders to make

decisions, right? And if you can get them to a 70% decision, which I learned at the muster also, you know, and I took, if you can get them there, man, that's a, that's a great thing. Here's a great example. We're sitting here in this pro shop at the immersion camp. To get everything here,

it took, it took five or six trucks. I'm talking a 26-foot U-Haul, an 18 foot trailer, another 24 foot trailer, and it took a team of 20 people to get everything here. And I took my wife Amanda to the muster in DC and my father-in-law Joe. And Brian, our business partner came and his wife, Megan,

and we went through it. And when you discussed this, does it always have to be 100%? Like I feel like I'm gonna make 100% decision. Maybe that's a little bit of ego talking, you know, but I feel like my decision is always going to be 100% right and I thought that it was too dangerous to allow anything less so what I used to do is I used to flank people to buy into my idea you know what I mean like flank up to buy into my idea until they until they could see it but I had to get them to

see it to buy in and now it's it's different and it's like setting up this pro shop I know we were it was early in the morning and he's like man your team's your team's going And I was like, yeah, they were up at five, getting everything set up. And I was like, but I'm not there right now. I'm hanging back. There's a few things I got to do here to prep. And Amanda's handling it. My wife is handling it.

And I'm like, it's the 70 hundred. And you're like, what do you mean? I'm like, you know, the 70% hundred. You're like, check. She called me two hours later. We're good to go. I was like, I don't think I could have gotten that done in two hours. My 100%, I don't think I would have gotten it done

in two hours. It maybe would have been another 70%. Maybe it would have been a 65. Maybe it would have been. Maybe it would have been 80. Maybe it would have been in 82. The bottom line, any of that discussion argument, you know, planning would have just wasted valuable time on both ends.

Yep. And, but we did do that. We did because I, it was the night before I was like, but can you see logistically that coming into this camp in the woods, you can't get four. troxin. I'm like you gotta be able to see that. You need to, this needs to happen methodically. You know, so as this one's unloading and leaving, the next one's coming in. So you're saying you did waste time discussing it? I did. And then you let it go. And then I let it go. Yeah. I said, I think you've got a good plan. I think that's going to work. Let me know what you need. And I got

behind supporting the plan. That's the way. That's, yeah. So there's a great example of decentralized come in. And so that's now what you've had to do with everything. Because you can't manage it all. Because this is, you know, we work with at Escalon Front. We work with all different companies, but obviously we work with startup companies and we see this kind of growth. And these are the kind of things that trip them up. They get the guy who's a visionary, like you're the big visionary. And then you start saying, well, I can, you know, I started this thing. When I started this thing, I was making every decision. And now all of a sudden you look up and if you were trying to make every single decision that was going on in the factory, it would be a total disaster.

Oh, a thousand percent. A thousand percent. What has necessitated the doubling in size this year? And it's not just a doubling in people, because when you get people, what else do you need? You need space. Yeah. So we got two more buildings. Yeah.

Man, the new origin labs facility, the warehouse, that was a super challenge, dude. I don't know if you know remember on the Instagram I don't know if you saw that echo like all of a sudden it was flooded you know and we had the spray foam because you know this is in an extreme environment right extreme hot and extreme cold during the winter but we're trying to get everything into the warehouse it's not insulated we got to get a heating system in and you know it's just one of those things where you just grind and grind and grind but we we negotiated a great deal on that property and the next property is going to allow us to expand a little more. You know, and I think that I think we're going to have some challenges ahead of us because we've expanded to three locations, but we've almost created a Bermuda triangle of sorts. The way that we secured the locations, the facilities, it's efficient.

It's like lean manufacturing of, you know, in between the factories. You know, the way you can get from, you know, one point to the next to, maximize your time but you know the labs facility is awesome and what are we fulfilling 500 to a thousand packages a day out of there we're fulfilling yeah all leaned out from a shipping perspective yeah and in the next facility which will be moving into what next week next week you want to hang out and move some of those machines with us I wish are good actually bad ass we're all the the shoe manufacturing machinery will be going and the screen printing and some raw goods materials.

So 22,000 square feet there, 17,000 square feet in labs. And of course, we're chewed up 21,000 square feet currently. So growing quickly. And yeah, leadership has been essential and decentralized command essential in that growth and impossible without it. And seeing your, and I noticed this from early, you know, I'd come up and someone to pull me aside and say, hey, you know, in chapter four you're talking about. this, you know, and they'd ask me questions. Yeah. And I'd just be, it was such a great sign

because when people don't recognize how important their job is and how important they are as a leader, that's not, that's just, it's just not going to work. But when someone realizes that they're having a huge impact with every part of their department and that their leadership is the most important thing in that department, when they realize that and they start taking ownership of it, that has an impact. And that's what, It was good for it. And I saw that early on. I saw that early on.

You know, we did like a little, a little session. And, but people were asking me questions during the session, but afterwards, you know, people coming up, hey, I wanted, didn't want to ask this in front of everyone, but what do you think about this? How should I handle that? And so the people are aware. And that's, I think that's one of the things that has made, I'm not saying there's not growing pains. Because, I mean, of course, there's growing pains. But most of the growing pains are, are like, almost like physical growing pains.

You know, like when your son grows four inches in six months and he says, you know, hey, my knees kind of hurt. Yeah. That's just a physical. Yes, it's going to hurt. You're growing. Sorry, dude. But as far as, you know, the psychological trauma of all the, you know, brain damage about this and that. The other thing is very limited right now, which is amazing to see.

Yeah, it is. And we're talking about people who weren't leaders prior to origin. Mm-hmm. You know, nobody had a leadership position. Nobody had a management position, you know, and the leaders that we've built, they're not entitled to it. You know, it's weird because you got people who go through, let's say they go to college to be, you know, business management or leadership or whatever. There's so much potential in people who just want to work and be part of something. They find so much motivation in that.

I would rather have someone, and when I do like job interviews, I say, hey, like one of the first questions, are you looking for a job? Are you looking for a career? And that's kind of a loaded question. When I hear, I'm looking for a career. Okay, we're going to dig deeper into this conversation now. I'd rather take someone who's looking for a career that has no leadership skills and give them the opportunity. Because I know long term, they're going to be an incredible asset to the company. That's the same theory that we have with EF Overwatch, with hiring vets, with bringing vet in. Look, a veteran might not have worked in whatever industry you're in, but that person is hungry. They got leadership skills. They got discipline. And especially the group that we got. They study and train in extreme ownership and the principals.

So they know how to lead. And we're getting the feedback that we're getting is phenomenal because people hire somebody and they go, you know, they feel like they're taking a little bit of a risk because the person it's you know it's this person that was in the in the army for 21 years or this person who's been in the whatever industry the the the the gas oil industry for 21 years and you think well we should probably just hire the guy that kind of has experience and we're finding over and over and over again that guess what you take that person that's really hungry that has good leadership skills they step into that role they learn the this industry specific stuff and they and they rock and

And I tell I tell kids this all the time not not kids but you know college kids college graduates college graduates if you're that person that will work hard you can there's so many companies because I work with so many companies they there's a drought of people no one's like hey yep we got all the good I've never I have never been to a company where they said yep we got all the good people we need we don't need anyone else we don't need any other good people I've never heard anyone say anything close to that ever even companies where you know people are banging on the door to get in big tech companies that have that have popcorn machines in the hallways and pinball I want to work

there right there's people banging on the door to get there you know what those big tech companies say they say how do you think we could get better people that are willing to go hard so it's exactly what you're saying if you look for someone if you look for somebody that has that hunger and has that desire. And then they actually have to have it. Because believe me, there's people that can interview great and say, oh, yeah, I love to grind.

What's your biggest weakness? My biggest weakness is sometimes I work too hard, right? That person. And then you show up and they're in the freaking twinkie stash. So I'm not talking about that person. Sometimes I get in the twinkie stash. I know. I saw you getting in the donut stash today.

Bro. Are you okay? I'm there and I'm good now. You got like insulin spike. Your face was kind of, sagging swaying I was swaying I was like I'm gonna go lay down yeah I mean I can literally never eat a donut again if I do I always think there's gonna be someone with a with an iPhone over there in the corner and that's gonna be the viral the only viral video of

jocco won't be something that echo made it might be you eat the donut it'll be me eating the donut maybe my video of you eating the donut that would that would be a that would be a major kind of situation that we'd have to discuss yeah it's like trees in us yeah yeah Yeah, that would be, I haven't been betrayed very much. In fact, I've only been betrayed one time. But if that, I would consider that, we'd have to, we'd have to put that in the list. That would be a consideration of betrayal. Yeah, I don't think I would do that.

But don't worry, you'd have to wear it because I'm not eating any donuts. Echo, did you have any baclavat the other day? Yes. How many pieces? Two pieces? That's a good start. How many did you feed me? Oh, dude, I would just kept shoveling.

You were busy. I don't think you even know you were taking up. What is, what is like the sweet, like part? The moist, like the really like almost wet part. That's like the honey. Okay. Sugar syrup. But you know, that's a special recipe.

Yeah. You know, we were, when we were, we went to Harry's diner. We were in New York City at Harry Steakhouse. We were eating with Harry. Yeah. We sent him baklava. Uh-huh. And my mom, she called me.

And she's like, you sent Baklava to New York City to a guy who, wants a big restaurant. I go, yeah. She goes, you didn't send the recipe, did you? And I was like, no, no, I just sent him baklava. She was upset. She thought I had like sent him the recipe to make the baklava. It is, it is legit a secret recipe. And there's one thing that she does to make it is good. And I'll tell you what it is after the podcast. Check. It's no one else does it. It's an old Spartan recipe. Yeah, there you go. That's Pete's mom's special recipe. Okay, so there's got to be demand, there's got to be something driving this growth, obviously. You know, and it's been a, it's been a continual kind of rapid, rapid,

there's just continual product invention, for lack of a better word. Yeah. And one of the things, and you and I were talking this morning, I was holding, I was putting on a, I was getting another rift ghee. Yeah. And I know not everyone does Jiu-Jitsu, but the. Rift Ghee is like it's like a complete, it's like a new product. It's like it doesn't exist until now.

And it's weird to say that about, I guess it'd be, I don't know, what's a good, what's a clothing product that like completely changed? Like it didn't exist and now it does. Well, I would say that's easy. That would be the compression shirt, Under Armour came out with. Because we both played college football. Remember we had the grays, the cotton shirts and the cotton shorts. And you wore that cotton teard.

shirt underneath the football pads and then Under Armour came out with the football shirt. And it changed, it changed the game. Now you would, you're not going to play with this old thing anymore. Never wear anything else again. Right. And that's what the rift is like. You're not, you're not going to, you're not going to go, oh, cool. I'm just going to wear another ghee today because I have it. No, no, I just, I'm just going to wear this key. The, the, the whole thing is engineered brand new. Yeah. Right? You, I did you, did you, was the football,

Jersey thing? Like, was that an inspiration for coming up with a Rift? Absolutely. Absolutely. Because the performance, like, we developed this polysynth fiber. You know, what I'd like to say is, you know, we, we didn't just manufacture it. We synthesized this thing. You know what I mean? Like, it's synthesized. And we, you know, I don't, I don't know if I told you how much money we spent on developing this fiber. You might have kept that from me. I probably just didn't think tell you, but you know, we had the, I think I told you, we had to order this whole batch of yarn. We had, and you've got to set up the friggin loom and there's 3,000 ends, right? And it, and it takes 60 hours to set it up. And we had to have the yarn spun.

And then we did it and we're like, it's not good enough. So you have all these prototypes. You know, we've got to get rid of. Now we've got to get the yarn again. They were like, it's not twisted strong enough. It's pilling too much. We need to tuck the ends. You're talking these little freaking fibers. Individual fibers. You know, and well, it's not abrasion resistance enough.

And so, you know, when you take away the garment itself and the cut and the spiral wrap and how it functions on your body and you go right back to the fiber, that's where we had to start. You know, we had to start from that point and then develop the weave, the dragon weave Gen 3.

And it's hard to explain. unless you put it on. Of course, you were down there again, like King Arthur. Like, the rift be old. And you put it on, you know, and you're like, bro, bro, this thing is just ridiculous. And that was, by the way, fresh out of the package. Yeah. When you take any piece of clothing fresh out of the package, it, well, in my opinion,

it all sucks coming out of the package. When you take it out of the package, you know, this doesn't, this thing is out of the package. It's brand new. And you put it on. And it feels like. It feels like it's been... Skinned a unicorn.

Yeah. Kind of yeah. It was something like that. So that's like an example of product moving forward, making things. And this is the other kind of thing that is happening because of our sport, stuff has to be extremely durable, right? So you're making something that just doesn't feel good because you can make something that feels good. It has to be durable. And that's the tricky part.

Right? Because if you look at the way they make things soft or to feel good against the skin, usually what that means is they're deteriorating the textile a little bit. Right? They're breaking it down so that those fibers touch your skin and they feel all smooth and comfortable. And we couldn't deteriorate the strength of the garment. So we had to find a way to do that with the yarn. Right? That's the key is find a way to make the yarn comfortable and then the weave.

and then make the garment form around your body. And the way I explain this, like, if you took a baseball or a lacrosse ball and you took this piece of paper and you wrapped it around, see if you can get it smooth. Can you get it smooth? No, you're going to have wrinkles all through it, right? And that's what basically every ghee on the planet is like, all right, now if you take that same piece of paper and you just strip it into straight strips, and then you start wrapping those strips around that ball, what are you going to get?

You're going to get a smooth surface. And that's why we call it the spiral wrap, because it strips that. that spiral around your body, you know, in seven panels. And yeah, it's innovative. I don't know if there's another, it shouldn't exist. The garment shouldn't exist. Yeah. So coming off of that and while you're working on that,

and I'm all, this is coming home from a trip where I was up here and seeing the factory and being, you know, just kind of in that spiritual high. from seeing our people, American people, working hard, like dedicated, like passionate about doing a good, like just seeing everything in action. And I was flying home. And I remember I was laid over somewhere. And I'm sitting in the airport.

And I'm just looking at everyone while I'm sitting there. And I see that. And I called you. And I said, hey, Pete, man. And you said, yeah. And I said, how many people do you know that you, do jujitsu and you're like um i don't know a hundred and i was like cool how many people do you know that wear jeans and you said everyone and i said i'm in the airport right now and eight out of 10

people are wearing jeans i remember that conversation we need to make jeans and you go i've always wanted to make jeans. You said, I've always wanted to make jeans. And that was the opening of a whole new game, right? A whole new market and a whole new world. From that conversation, what was the next step from there? You know, when we had that conversation, and I don't know, you might have told me this fact. in America, there's 300 million Americans.

You know how many Americans actually own jeans? 298 million. 298 million people own jeans. And there's 2 million communists that don't own jeans. You know, it was, I knew we could make the product, you know, and honestly, like, I always wanted, like, I couldn't have fit four nice jeans as a kid. You know, I remember going into like the Banana Republic or the gap and basically looking at stuff and trying it on.

And, you know, four kids, my mom, you know, $24,000 a year with four kids, she just didn't have a lot of extra. And we would get like one nice thing before the school year started. And of course, school starts for our kids. My daughter started school today, you know, and I think about what she has and what, you know, the hard work has allowed us to do for the kids to start school with a new pair of sneakers and some clothes. And I think about like jeans have always been important to me because we couldn't afford them.

And it was it was always the, it wasn't just the style of it, but it made you feel alive. It made, they made you feel free, you know, and they've always represented that. I mean, digging into denim in around the globe, not just America. if you start connecting denim you see they represent like freedom revolution independence empowerment right they represent these things and

I was so damn excited you were on board with it just like yes I think it was just like yep you just needed a little you were like Frankenstein just needed a little spark yeah you know when of course well you know as exactly

exactly just turn it on because you know managing you know all these people managing, you know, the factory, a couple locations and the growth, right? Of course, you don't want to make mistakes. You still got to be a little bit naive enough to think you can do it, though. And I knew we could do it because we've been making this stuff for combat sports. We've been making products that people are yanking on, ripping at, pulling, wrapping around arms and heads with. and I knew we had the setup to make durable goods and denim was to me it was like well if we make this it will be the most durable genes ever made because we're going to apply the same techniques and concepts we've developed for the past six years manufacturing stuff for combat sports and we're going to apply the same thing to this and that's what we did and we just

did it man i mean i don't even know how to explain i go i mean we got leez our pattern maker and we just started starting to work and i'd overnight you samples sent him back wear them you know and the first ones weren't amazing they were but honestly like got the textile right you know american cotton little bit of stretch you know modern but still super durable and then we started sewing it together with those three needle like chain stitch machines yeah which you just don't find anymore. No. You know, you just don't, you don't find it.

It's hard to do that. Because if you go with two needles, then you cut your cost of thread by a third. And if you go into the store and look at what they actually have, it's usually just one thread. Yeah. The seams, you know, it's just one machine. So, and it's easy to cut costs like that. And it's just like, well, that's just not what we're doing.

So it was challenging, you know, I think it's not just developing the product because you can, and this is across the board when you're starting something new. even though we've been making all these geese and stuff for jujitsu it's still a different product and there's still style you still have to have some type of style and you know call that form right well there's there's like genes out there and it's all all all all form right and then you've got stuff that's just simply function right and the idea is you've got to balance those two things out you can't be too over the top, too extreme. It's just like balancing out leadership.

I mean, it's really the same thing, form and function, the balance of those two things. You know, and we didn't get it right, right off. You know, and you're like, you're like, bro, this yolk here in the back, you know, the riser in the back. Just not doing it for me. Yeah, it's weird too for me to because I never paid attention to it before, right? Did you notice?

Oh, yeah, no. There's too much. As soon as I got it, I was looking at other genes that I had and saying, okay, here's what's different. I remember saying I'd be on like sending you pictures or here's, I didn't even know what a yoke was. But I realized it's like the part below the waistband where it gives you a little separation between the legs of the pants. And I never paid attention to it before my life. But I looked at it.

I was like, hey, this seems like it's a lot longer than mine right now. Is there a benefit to that? And you're like, well, here's the benefit. And I said, well, here's the negative. The negative is I've got a pocket on my hamstring right now instead of, on my ass cheek, which is where it needs to be. Form and function. Right.

So then it's like, okay, we can tighten that up. So the other thing that's weird about it that, no, that I definitely don't think about, is when you make it and when you say, okay, this is what we are going to produce and you pull the trigger on that, like, that's what you're going to get. So it better be good. It's kind of like I do relate in the fact that when you publish a book and you're going to print a hundred thousand copies. and then you open it up and you find a mistake,

that's, that stings. And that's, that stings. And that's what happened. You know, those right behind you right there. Yeah.

We went into production and they're coming off the line, right? We trained everybody and I thought we were good to go initially, but they started coming off the line and we weren't used to working with, you know, We're used to working with like compression textile because for all the rash guards and stuff we make. But not a woven. We're used to working with nints. We've never worked with a woven. So all of our machines were set up for rigid, right?

Textiles that don't stretch. And like the first like few hundred pairs that came off, we started to look at them more intently. And we found that we made some mistakes. And the mistake was somehow it was the, the fabric was starting to grow. Oh, grow. It was growing because, and this is something machines will never be able to do.

Yeah. All right. Machines aren't people. They can't, they can't make adjustments on the fly. You can only program a machine to do a task. And it can do that one task well, but it can't recognize when there's something wrong and then make an adjustment, right? It's going to do one thing, one speed, one way.

that's a beautiful thing about humans right and in manufacturing to do it right if they want to do it right and that's a that's a key thing right there they've got to want to do it right because they could just keep rolling even though there's a problem and just keep cranking and this happens a lot this happens so when you say it was growing what does that mean the textile the garment was growing because it was either being held too hard or the tension of the machine and what we found There's a mixture of both. Okay. You know, because we're used to making these real, you know, the stuff for Jiu-Jitsu.

So you're holding it and as they were holding it, the textile was growing because there was a little bit of Lycra in it. Got it. It was growing. The whole thing was growing. So the 32s were coming off the line and they're like 36es. So we had to make some adjustments on the fly, had to change the patterns, recut a batch of denim. And we just, and you know it was the right move. We just didn't release it.

We're just like, no, that's a big tuition payment. That's just, it's just going to be a tuition payment, you know, and push forward. I mean, and some of them had, did that, is that what caused like the twist and the seam down the leg to? My son has a pair, like one of these original ones. And he's, you know, I looked at him. I was like, yeah, look at the thing. He's like, I don't care. Because he's, that's cool.

You think I don't care about what I look like? My son is just like, don't care. Yeah, he's like, these are the best jeans. I'm just wearing them anyways. So the seam on the outside of his leg rolls towards his shin in the front. On one leg. We found an old research, an old research paper from like the 40s. Leg twist in jeans was the title of it.

No kidding. And so what was the cause of that? My old pattern maker, Lisa, she's 6364. She found the paper. She brought it into the factory. And it's a whole research thing, like a college research, leg twist in jeans. What it is is that as the textiles being woven, it's called a twill, and there's, you know, diagonal lines. If you look at the jeans, diagonal lines, in order to cut jeans effectively to not get leg twist, you have to cut them in pairs.

And those pairs have to be reversed opposite. And we found that out after close to a thousand pairs. Yeah. Leg twist in jeans. So you talk about manufacturing a product is simply. is jeans. And I mean, what did it take us before we launched it? I mean, we did it fast, man.

Like, what, six months? Yeah, yeah. You were sending me pairs pretty quick. Boom, just launching, yeah. So we finally got it figured out when we got them launched. And I don't know. You know, they're freaking phenomenal. I don't know what else to say about the product itself.

But man, those ladies worked. I'm saying ladies because that whole floor is all women. Yeah. Between the ages of 20 and 60. And it's awesome seeing millennials work that want to work. Yeah. We've got like, you know, 10 of them on that floor. Cranking, cranking.

And, yeah, working together and just like a beehive, man. Just like a freaking beehive walking in that place in the morning. We're going to, I don't know if you want me to say this or not, but I'm about to. We're going to make another pair of jeans. that's going to be lighter weight. Now, Echo Charles, just for your FYI, the jaco me, I am requesting lightweight jeans. Okay, good.

Kind of weird. Dicotomy. Yeah, dichotomy. Don't want the lightweight hoodie. Want the lightweight jeans. Ken, do you want to know why? Yes. How many times my legs have been cold?

You know how many times have been like, oh, I don't want to be outside anymore because my legs are cold? I don't know. It's never happened. Oh, okay. You know, I used to wear shorts all the, you know, all year long. There's snowing outside. I wear shorts.

Okay. So lightweight jeans. That'll be the next, next thing we're going to make. And we've got a little tie back to my heritage in the Navy, in the SEAL teams, because in the, in Vietnam, the issued fatigues weren't durable enough for the combat operations. that the seals were doing. And so many of the seals in Vietnam wore jeans. And so we're going to make some jeans. We've got a cool name for him that I will not reveal at this time.

I thought you were going to let it rip. I was like, I'm waiting for it. It's too cool. It's too cool. But like I said, and we just, the last podcast, which you haven't heard yet that we just did

with a seal master chief named Kirby Horell who is just as a completely, Legit as they come as frogmen and yeah, he you know he's talking about wearing jeans and nom and so yeah, so we've got that we've got these lightweight jeans coming. I think that's gonna be and I already have actually already have three pairs sorry well I have a pair I've been I've been testing the goods myself so I spent 30 days in Europe last month I put 200 miles on the boots and I think it was 20,000 miles on the jeans as we traveled and and man, those things are getting worn in, they're fading in, and just the abrasion of movement and motion in life. It's awesome, dude. It's freaking awesome. And you know, people are like, why are you so damn excited about genes?

Well, 298 million Americans own genes because they're cool, but it's really what they represent. You know, and I learned something recently that, you know, after the Great Depression, you I can go into an old antique store and you see the trunks and they get the stickers all over home or the postcards. You know, well, people were traveling to Europe before the Great Depression. They were going on vacation for, they'd go for like a month or two at a time, right? And then the Great Depression happened. And everybody just kind of hunkered down. And they didn't feel confident enough to go on these voyages, right?

Ships, these voyages. So what they decided to do is go and explore the American West. And what I've heard is that the cowboys out there were wearing denim blue jeans. And the idea, and I'm digging into this through research, is that that's where fashion and jeans started in the U.S. So the city slickers from the east went out west, saw the free-range cowboys and said, yeah, and took that free spirit attitude back to the East Coast.

And there you go. I still got to prove it. But that's your theory. Yes. Yes. Now, I remember this. Do you remember, do you remember like the Berlin Wall? Do you remember East Berlin as well as I do?

I do. I know you know about it now. Yes, I do, but I didn't get it. I remember watching the wall come down. It was 89. I was 10 years old. 11 years old maybe and I absolutely remember it I remember man I remember honestly feeling unsure because I didn't understand why these men with these sledge

hammers were slamming that wall with such anger and then elation didn't register and I remember the conversation in the house of my parents talking about freedom and communism and I had no idea with these concepts. I didn't know anything about them. But then when the wall came down and they were accepted into their

friends and family watching them come across, I was just like, they've been separated. I just remember that, not knowing what communism was or separation or anything, I just remember that they were in prison basically. Yeah. And yeah,

of course I was there last month, so I Yeah, because what I remember when I was a kid, you know at my school, like kids would go on like a school trip to wherever, England or Spain or something like that. Like the Spanish class, there'd be kids that would go on a school trip. And what people would say is like, you got to bring jeans, bring jeans. You can sell them. Yes. You can sell them. and there was like a black market to get those things into the eastern block country.

You could sell a pair of American, you know, standard American jeans that cost $16 at the grocery store, at the department store, and you could bring them over there and sell them for $100. I remember hearing that $100. And I had like two pairs of jeans or three pairs of jeans. And I'm thinking, hey, can you take these? Can you try and get $100 for these things? And that was, and that to me has always said that those. people over there identified blue jeans like the like you're saying the east coast you do look at

the cowboy and said that's the spirit of freedom right there and you know the thing is is you know when I get into something I go deep that's why we ended up building a factory in my backyard but I needed I need to understand more about why genes represented revolution Anyways, we were in East Berlin last month and working on this project, doing some research. And I sat down with a woman who lived in East Germany. Her dad was a spy. And, you know, they had, and I didn't realize this, they had access to the West in terms of the news and the media and everything. It wasn't like they were closed off from that.

And I think that might be a misconception. they could see it, but they couldn't touch it, right? So it's almost like, like they're in a cage and they can see what's happening outside, but they can't, they can't touch it. And so we sat down and we had dinner in this old Russian restaurant. And it was, it was like this scene,

like you'd seen a movie or something, you know, with the yellow lights and all the pictures on the wall. And we're sitting there intimate like this having dinner. And she told me, about growing up in the East and as she got into the conversation she reached in her in her bag and pulled out her diary from her childhood and she's like let me show you something and she opened the diary and there was a tag in there a Wrangler tag

and she said this was my from my first pair of jeans and this tag was beat up and worn in and and her jeans deteriorated but she She saved that tag. And then she flipped the page. And in her diary, she was, she had a little better, this woman's name was Anya, Anna. And her friend had gone to New York City. And she had written, you know, in a girl's diary, and she had written. And she had written.

And she has jeans. And then she took the pen and she underlined it. And then she took a highlighter and she highlighted it. And she's like, I didn't really understand how important it was to me until you and I started talking, because we had talked the day before. and she said the first time in my life I ever feel empowered as an individual was when I got my first pair of jeans

when I was 13 and I put them on the first time I had only worn dresses what they gave us to wear and I put those jeans on for the first time and I felt free and if you want to distill this thing down why it's so important look at that

you know what I just realized? So I have a 10-year-old daughter. And she's been wearing, your daughter might be too old for this trend, but a lot of girls right now that are younger, maybe six, seven, eight, nine. They wear basically a matching kind of whole polyester, like dry fit type outfit.

Like that's the whole thing, right? And it all matches. It looks like a weird tie-dye looking thing. And, you know, my daughter must have had, like, three or four of them. And she would just rotate them. Like, that's just what, and her and all of her friends, they look like somebody spilled crayons everywhere or something. And that's what they all, that's kind of like, and I think from a mom's perspective, you know, it's real easy, you know, just, here you go. You know, you just wear this.

And my other daughters, my other daughters took her shopping. And when she came home, she says, dad. I'm going to go put on some of the clothes I got. And she had it. She came out and she was wearing a pair of jeans. And it was her first pair of jeans, believe it or not. Wow. Because we live in California.

There's no, we don't wear jeans out there. We work shorts. Or if you're a eight year old girl, you wear these outfits, these matching little, what is it? What is it? I don't know. Does Pee wear those things? Yes. Okay.

It's like a, wait, is that a romper? Yeah, romper. Yeah, well, it's like that. But it's all, it's like a, it's just a outfit. And every little girl wear. Simple. Yeah, yeah, she's a lot of those. So my daughter comes out of her room. And you know, she's 10, you know, and she's tall for a 10 year old.

But all of a sudden she had jeans on it. And I could see now that you're, I'm connecting, you know, she looks so proud. And, you know, kind of like she was standing up straight. Like she was now in, you know, in the big leagues, kind of. And she, you know, you know that time you go through in your life where you're like, I'm a person? Yes. She looked like she had that kind of, I'm a person. I'm an individual.

I'm a person. I'm here. Confidence. Yes, I'm here. Yeah. I'm not mama's little girl anymore. I'm here. And how much of that comes from my daughter's going,

you need to get jeans. You know what I mean? You need to get jeans. Yeah. That's in my kids. That's in my kids psyche. That you, you know what? You get genes.

And that's when you become an individual human, ready to take on the world. Dude, that's badass. That's so cool. And it's crazy because it really does. You know, it really does like it just, you know, when you wear something, like, and that's the, that's the important. I mean, it's a beautiful thing, really, you know, to, that you can be empowered by something

on your body. You know, and people say, well, that's, that's not, it's not important, you know, what you wear. Well, it's really not important what you wear, but it is important how you feel about yourself. You know, it is important how you project yourself. You know, I mean, if you're working for echelon front going somewhere, you know, do you wear a t-shirt? If you go on Fox News, what do you put on? Yeah, I put on a suit. Why? Because that's what you put on. That's right. Right. I think that's important. I think the next time I might be going on, I might be wearing some orange jeans, boy.

This is what I, this is something else I just realized. Think about this. Okay, do you have a, Look, you get a pair of slacks, right? Get a pair of slacks. What's another word for that? Pants. Trousers. Trousers or whatever. You get a pair of pants.

Those, if you just get a normal pair of pants, whatever, they'll change a little bit over time. But basically, the change that they go through deteriorates them and they're no longer usable. But genes are different. Genes wear and they become comfortable and they come to your body. They like, they like become a part of. Yes. They wear in. Yes, they wear in, not out.

But they become yours. Like, you can't. If one, if you have a nice pair of jeans that's broken in that you've had for a while, and something happens to them, you have to go get another pair. You have to go through a period of time where they're not quite your genes yet. And you know what's crazy is, is what those thin ones. Yeah, those feelings. As soon as you get put them on.

That, that woman, Anya, I was, I was with. She, she told me, she's like, you know, they tried to make jeans because eventually you didn't have to smuggle them in anymore eventually you if you knew somebody outside they could ship you the jeans if they could afford them right so they became so popular that east Berlin government decided East Germany government decided we're going to make jeans and they did they made jeans and I picked up a pair of those jeans I found someone who had a pair and they weren't jeans. They didn't know how to weave the textile and they couldn't figure it out.

So what were they? Were they just like some weird fabric? It looked like a, it was a weird fabric and it wasn't even indigo dyed. So they would never, they wouldn't even fade in. They were just like a blue material. Blue material. Yep. Yeah.

It was, it was crazy. So it failed miserably. And she said, so the government imported a million pairs of a, American jeans and they sold out like the day they arrived that's the kind of thing where you realize that's why communism doesn't work yeah because the state can't figure it out yeah but individuals can't so give them some jeans and let them run wild now okay jeans we got that we might have gone a little bit I don't know we've little riffed but hey all right now the other thing you said is you put miles on boots

Yeah. Now, this is a little bit of a reversal role where I said to you like, hey, bro, everyone wears jeans. You said to me, hey, man, we need to make boots. And that made me, that made me nervous because I look at boots. I said, hey, man, like, these are, everyone's feet are different and it's hard to make. And it's, you got to, the sizes, I mean, you can't ham a pair of boots. Like boots are what size they are. And people complain about blisters and, you know, in a seal platoon, everybody wants a different kind of boots. So I was definitely more hesitant on the, on the, just the product itself. And then on the manufacturing, to me, it just seemed like a crazy thing. And you, you were laughing.

I don't know if you remember this. You were laughing. You were like, you were laughing. You were like, bro, it's so much easier to make boots and it is to make, to weave. Fabric on a loop. Yeah. And I think some of that laughter was more like, I'm ready for the challenge. You know what I mean?

Like this is, and the thing is, you know, and just in full transparency, you know, you and I had a private conversation at the end of the last year and like, okay, what are we going to do? You know, what are we going to do to grow? And we wanted to make the investment, you know, of our profit and put it back into the company. And, and we're identifying where we want to grow, right? and what's going to have the biggest impact on the community,

but also what the community can handle. And we know they can handle making denim blue jeans. And I knew the community could not only handle, but if we could make footwear again. I just need to clarify this. When you're talking about the community, what you're talking about is the actual community within which you live,

within which our factory is, within which we have a pool of people. That's the community that actually have this. skill set and that's the part that I didn't appreciate and as soon as you you were like hey because I'm thinking how are we going to make shoes and you said we got the people and then I remember growing up of course who is up here all these massive shoe manufacturers were up here and I said oh yeah obviously okay check run exactly exactly and I mean shit I mean new balance is still in Maine doing some stuff Nike used to be in Maine you had

you had basho, right? You had Dexter shoe. You had Hayden shoe, Alan Edmonds. I mean, you had all these brands. And one of our employees, Christine, she actually was the one who went to the Dominican when the free trade agreements went into play and trained them on,

she was the best little waste stitcher in the country. She trained them how to use that machine. So she was part of, let's call it a brain drain, a skills drain, right? where the skills needed to go away. What happens when they go away? She's the only one left with those skills, right? And I had identified a few people with those skills.

And these old shoe dogs, one of them was Bart Hershey, you know, and this old guy Roland Landry. And Shoe Dog is the name of that book. Is that a term anyways? Shoe Dogs, yeah. There's a book written. Yeah, it's by the guy that made Nike. Exactly.

Yeah. But that's a common term. He didn't coin that term. Oh, no. No, that's what these guys are. He was part of that. Got it. All these guys helped him get started.

This guy, Roland, is the one that helped Timberland start. He's the one that had the machinery and the knowledge to get Timberlin so they could mold a soul onto a leather upper. He developed that. And so I had all these old timers who I had just, honestly, I didn't give an opportunity not to meet me. Like I'd just go to their factory, call them on the phone, you know, show them what we're doing and get in front of them, get in front of them, get in front of him and then finally we started building relationships and this this one guy roland i went over there and and he had to get rid of some machinery and we did some kind of negotiating and i was like what do you what do you want you know you got to figure out what somebody

wants yeah you know we ended up negotiating he's like can you do a lobster bake from my staff and i said yeah he goes take it all loaded up a tractor trailer of machinery as small. It's like a 20 foot, you know. And a couple weeks ago, Joe, my father, Laura, and I and a few other guys from the factory went out and cooked his whole staff a lobster bake. Lobster bake for old shoe machinery.

But these shoe dogs. So shoe dog is the term that is just used. It's a general term for someone who's been in the industry for a long time. But, you know, as we were talking at the end of the last year, and, you know, You know, I kind of put your, I guess, concerns at ease a little bit. For sure.

For sure. You know, it's like, we can make shoes. Yeah. You know, we don't have to reinvent anything, even though we need to build it from scratch. There's a difference there. Yeah. You know, if we're going to like try to figure it out and not have the knowledge, that would be one thing. But the knowledge has only been, it's only been removed for 20 years, right?

If it had been removed for 50 years, I'm not going to say. It's impossible, but I would have taken a lot larger effort and a lot bigger, a lot more costly tuition. Yes, the tuition. The tuition would have been high. And the effort right now has been great. And the expense has been great. I mean, we're in month eight.

And this week, we're finally ready to really launch, like, as you saw in the factory the other day. But you're talking about, okay, Jock got Jocco's blessing, you know, the team's on board. What are we going to do? I hired one person. One person, Henry. And he'd been in the industry for 40 years, and he started January 1st. I gave him a piece of paper with how I wanted the boot to look.

And I said, this is what we want to build. Now, just so, you know, everyone understands, I know you get it, that we're talking about starting something from scratch. All right. We don't have any machinery. We don't have asses in seats, which is my way of saying human resources. We don't have the workflow. We don't have the raw materials. We don't have the patterns.

We don't have the dyes. Zero. I gave him a piece of paper with an illustrator drawing and said, this is what we want to make. That's crazy. Not really. Not really crazy because if you can see, when you, when you, when you, you're, you know, you see people work together where each one has a skill set in and and I know this is like on the seal teams like I'm sure when you did operations and everything was just moving it's like a perfect

it's like a Russian ballet it's like a perfect flow yeah of organization right and I had seen it in the rest of the factory and how we did the rest of the factory and that's why I knew we could do it but I but I also knew that the challenges of building something for a foot you know that that a foot everyone One's feet are different and they're odd shape, they're asymmetrical. You know, it's a strange thing afoot. I knew we were going to have challenges. They're asymmetrical. Yeah, they're not the same.

They're not the same. I knew we were going to have challenges. And I know I haven't told you about all the tuition payments, but I'm going to tell you, I'm going to tell you about a couple that I may have skipped. What happened to all my money? So we got into it and, You know, and we made some boots, you know, to start off. But it was all, you know, Henry with an exacto knife, like hand-cutting everything, whatever.

And we started building the patterns. They weren't perfect. So you got to imagine, like, eight months were now into this thing. Eight months. Once we actually got a boot, of course he started with a 14 wrong. And that would bite us in the ass six months down the road. That was the tuition payment. I wanted him to start with a 14 because I wanted to wear it first.

Not knowing that six months down the road, that would be a mistake because you never grade. Grading is how you scale everything. You never grade from your largest size. You always grade from the middle. From the middle size, yeah. So I should have made your size first. You should have asked me too. Because if you just asked me that question, I would have said, oh yeah, because you probably lose a little bit of, you lose a little bit of that shape in the,

and the, what's the word? The ratios. Yeah, the ratios as you go up. Exactly. That's what grading is. Yep. So we needed all those things. Patterns to fit the foot, leather.

We needed the knowledge, of course. Clicker dies to cut the material. But most importantly, we need shoe making machinery. Which these are very specialized machines. Oh, yeah. Incredibly specialized machines. Very specialized. And it wasn't feasible to just buy new stuff.

You know, I mean, would it have been smartest to buy all new machinery? Yes. Yes, it would have been. Interesting. It would have been smartest if we wanted to take that risk and dump that amount of capital into it. Okay, I was going to say it because it doesn't seem like that would be real smart. Exactly. But you know what I knew?

I knew that Henry used to be a millwright and that. If we could just get decent machinery, even old machinery that was running, he could keep it running. And our little proof of concept called bringing back shoe manufacturing in Franklin County, Maine, if we could prove that concept, it would be only a matter of time to be able to invest in that new machinery. So that's what we did. We talked about it, how much it's going to be. All right, let's do it. So I ended up calling this old timer, Moe.

he's the one that found our first loom. So I went back to the source, Mo. This is what I want to do. And he's wild, you know, this guy. He told me a story. You ever heard of Dexter Shoe, of course. There was a man named Harold Alphan. No.

Harold Alfon built Dexter Shoe. He built it. He was working at another shoe company. He built it by loading up machines that weren't being used. like during the night time into his station wagon and driving them to a mill in Dexter he basically took the machines that were like the abandoned machines from this other factory and he started a factory and he built an empire

all right Harold Alphond he got bought out by Berkshire Hathaway they had a contract that when Harold Alphan died they could move Dexter shoe out of Maine Harold Alphan died a few years back. They shut the factory down and moved it out of Maine. This shit just, man, it gets to me. It gets to me.

Mo told me a story about Harold Alphonse. Because Mo's dad was an old shoe dog, and he made the parts for the machine. And he said, Pete, let me tell you something. You're going to need my help doing this. This is what I do. this guy Harold Alphond, he started this factory and he couldn't he couldn't he couldn't he wasn't getting it. He wasn't making any money and he called my dad and he said can you come up to the factory and this is back when it doesn't matter if this small timer trying to build this the shoe company

hasn't even started selling product yet it's in the hole maybe has a handful of employees this guy's Moe's dad drives up to Dexter two hours sits in front of Harold Alfon and Harold Alphonse says, can you buy these box of parts back from me? I'll buy them back from you in three months. And his dad said, yeah, I'll take him back. Took the parts back, gave him the money. Three months later, Harold Alfon bought him back.

This guy's worth, I don't know, a billion dollars now. But this thing of sitting in front of somebody and having a conversation and building relationships, What I've found in this shoe making thing is the most important thing because these are still the guys running it. The same guys running it. And the dudes, these shoe dogs that have been in the factory helping us combined age, 88, 90. And we've probably had a dozen in there. And you should see their freaking eyeballs when they walk in.

They don't want to leave. Honestly, on occasion, bringing tears to their eyes, that this is what we're doing. Because they saw it. They were part of it, and they saw it leave. And just that spark, man, like, you know, honestly, it just hits me right in the fields, man. That spark they see. It's motivation. And I absolutely knew that with their support, it was going to be possible.

And so we've been grinding. The first pair of boots that, that, that, that I got that you sent me, the first pair of the beach that you sent me, was better than the first pair of jeans you sent me. That that was a shocker to me. Like it was like, take them out of the box. I was like, no way, this is ridiculous.

And you know, you're like, hey, these aren't perfect from sending them just so you can look at them. And I was like, no, I'm wearing them. I mean, I was wearing them out of the box. Comfortable, crazy. Yeah, that was crazy. I was like, bro, what's wrong with your jeans, dude? Well, you got out, like we had to figure out

how to make jeans, you know, mean whereas we had the knowledge base to make the footwear like it was still here you know and man I mean these guys came in and they just like dumped their knowledge on but Henry Henry being the key and this guy Mo and so I'm like I need machinery so he found all the old machinery overseas he brought it back over on a ship literally bringing machinery that's been shipped overseas yep along with the jobs literally we're bringing it back to America yep Actually happening. Actually happening.

Machines designed in New Hampshire, machines designed in Massachusetts manufactured right there, bringing them back these old machines. And Mo refurbished them. And now they're in the factory. And it's badass. So where are we at right now? I know we have the leather for 400, 500 pairs. Yeah. Yeah, you know, we connected with the tannery.

That's 45 minutes away. That's another thing about supply chain, right? There's one tannery left in Maine, and they just happened to manufacture all the leather for the military boots. So we went up to them, and they're like, we'll help you guys however we can. So they're tanning leather for us. They're tanning seven styles of leather. And it took a while to get it right.

I mean, you got to remember, like, leather-like textiles, depending on how it's tan, it can be, you know, it can stretch more, be more rigid and not form right. It can wrinkle. You know, there's all sorts of shit that can happen. That's really bad. So anyways, we had to get through all of that. And we had to get through that and make sure the patterns were right. And then we ordered the dyes and we started cutting and it was wrong because, we had graded them from the 14s.

So we may have lost 10 or 15 grand hunt dyes. I know, but we reordered the dyes and now we've got them working. But yeah, so we have probably 500 pairs cut ready to go. And we lean manufactured out the line and we're in the process of training the young folks now. We have a young girl, Nikki, she's 19, another guy who's in there. Christine and Henry, those two with combined experience, like 80 years, you know, the little waste that you're telling you about in Henry. And we're like, literally once you and I have a conversation like, hey, should we turn it on?

We'll just turn it on. We'll turn it on. And we need to turn it on in the factory right now before we move it, you know, to the new plan. Because it's got to work there first. We've got to have the proof of the concept worked out. But, man, I put a ton of miles on those boots, and, man, they're wearing in nicely. Yeah. Nicely.

No, it's, it's a classic. So what boots, it's like boots. That's what they are. They're boots. Boots, man. And you know what they go well with? Jeans. Yeah.

I love the fact that we like, we're calling the jeans legit fit. Now, while we're doing all this, meanwhile, I'm out starting Jocco publishing. you know, I have a, I'm like, hey, man, by the way, I've got, you know, whatever. I'm going to be, I got 100,000 books that, you know, I'm going to need to get moved from place to place. We have a fulfillment center. And like, you're like, yes, we do. And boom, all of a sudden, next thing you know, we got a fulfillment center.

We got the Warrior Kid 3. We got Mikey and the Dragons there. We just absorb that. It was like, it was one of those things that gave me the freedom to tell my publisher, watch this. I'm publishing, you know, I got a publishing company now watch this. And to have the freedom to be able to do that was phenomenal because I knew. I was like, okay, well, I can make this happen because they're looking at it going, how the hell, where are you going to, where are you going to store 100,000 books? How are you going to palletize books? Who's going to, you, Jack, are you

going to be in a warehouse somewhere, palatizing books, you know, while you're trying to write another book and do all the other stuff that you're doing? That's not going to work. So they're, in the back of their mind, they're thinking, I'm an idiot. Yeah, they're thinking it's impossible. which is a common theme around here. People think things are impossible. And, you know, there's another thing I was saying the other day. And you were the, you kind of reminded me of this of when you started down the path of, hey, I'm going to make ease here.

And all of a sudden, they're telling you, people were telling you, it's impossible to do this. It's impossible. It's impossible to do this. And the reason that that, that, that, that propaganda is out there is because the big corporations, the best answer that they can give to the American people and they say hey why are you shutting down this factory? The best answer that they can give is

oh it's impossible to manufacture here. That's what it is. It's impossible to manufacture here. That's their answer. That way they can save an extra 32 cents per item by having it manufactured in China where they still have to pay shipping.

They still have to pay customs. They have to pay to get it over it. There's all kinds of, but so it's not like It's not like, oh, those laborers only get a dollar a day, so therefore we're saving $80 or whatever, $12 an item. No, they're actually, with all the other costs, they're saving $0.32 an item by paying somebody over there a dollar a day and by taking a job from an American and sending it overseas. So the best answer that they can give isn't, well, we want to make an extra $0.32 an item. The best answer that they can give is, this is impossible to do here.

Can't manufacture an American. manufacturing America anymore. That's what we are being told. We're being lied to. America is being lied to. And I honestly feel because of the podcast, I feel like you've made what we're doing in Maine the tip of the spear.

I mean, in Maine is shaped like the tip of a spear, which is even more badass. And it is old school New England. It is old school, New England. But it's not impossible. And like, if you look at like we're here, the immersion camp. I was sitting down with a woman. She's in California. We're sitting on the side of of the mat. She's from California. And she's, she's a cop. And she's just talking to me about her

struggles, about media and how they're making her out to be and her, you know, and folks in law enforcement and everything. And she said, you know, she's like, what happened? And I said, and it just clicked. I'm sitting here looking at this map full of 100, 200 people from all different creeds, skin colors, backgrounds, jobs from farmers to huge businessmen, scientists to surgeons, all on the mats for a common goal to train and learn Jiu-Jitsu. Isn't that what America is? Together for a common goal, isn't that how this country was built? Isn't that how New England was established?

when the immigrants came in together for a common goal. And it's literally happening right in front of me. And I just connected into it. And I was just like, what's missing? Well, I can see here that this is all about minds and hands, right? Jiu-Jitsu, you know, learning Jiu-Jitsu. It's not hard. It's hard on your mind.

It's hard on your body. It's hard on your hands. You know, and manufacturing is, the same thing. It's it's the same thing and just understanding like and I know you know you're from Maine and Connecticut and New England and we both are and understanding where we came from and what was sacrificed so that we could get here. I feel like we've abandoned that. You know and I feel like jujitsu is like a spark. You know, looking at those matches just like to spark like whoa, wait a second. I bet there's every type of political affiliation on the mats right now. Oh yeah for sure. I've talked to all of them.

Unbelievable that these people are here smiling and just in just sheer enjoyment. Maybe Jiu Jitsu can solve the world's problems. I don't know. But but I do feel like we've abandoned so much. Well also when you take a kid and your kid says, hey, I want to do this and you tell you can't do that. What does that do the kid? What does that do the kid's kids? Well, that's where we're at right now. You can't do this.

You can't do this in America. And another thing is, when it's like, I want to build something, you can't do it. Think about that. You can't do it. And that is an attitude that used to not even remotely exist in America. We were busy putting men on the moon and building the best cars and the best ships and the best planes in the world and winning wars

and getting after it. And all of a sudden, we're looking around going, oh, you can't, what's the fundamental for all that stuff? Build, build something. And all of a sudden, you're being told, you can't build something. Oh, you have to manufacture overseas. They manufacture better. No. No.

This is our blood. we build things and when you take that away from someone what do they got it's wrong it's just wrong so I actually like a little bit of the propaganda it just helps what we're doing

we can just sneak up behind these folks and choke them out yeah and it doesn't stop there we're in a war on all fronts you know we got on top of all this we got origin labs Yeah.

And we've put out tons of new product at Origin Labs from, but, you know, whatever, me and Echo talk about that all the time. The new products. New products. But from a business perspective, I think one of the biggest challenges has been the go, ready to drink in a can. Yeah. Again, it was one of these things where, hey, we want to make a drink that gives you

you energy, but is not freaking horrible for you. Yeah. Which may seem like that's impossible. That's impossible because you need it to taste good, so it's got to have sugar. You've got to have it not be refrigerated, so it's got to be, have a bunch of chemicals in it to keep it from going spoiled. And then you've got to put 8 billion grams of caffeine in it, so it at least convinces a person that's drinking 10 billion grams of caffeine a day.

that this is actually hitting them. So it's all these, hey, that won't work. No, no, no. That was the first thing. How do we actually make something that I could look at a person and be like, you should drink this? It is good for you to drink this.

It will help you in your life, in your brain, in your athletic pursuits right now. That's a big step. It is. You know, and what's funny is like, I remember the last conversation before we actually pulled the trigger on making a decision and you're like, I'm not compromising, we're changing the category.

Like this is poison, you know, this category, the energy drink category. The energy drink category. It's just straight poison and we're not conforming to the standard. And you made like it's going to be as far as the caffeine thing. When you kind of set that bar, like I was I was on board, you know. And I, you know, the thing is, is like, I'm not a big caffeine drinker, but, and I know you're not a big caffeine drinker, but literally, like, I would never, ever allow my kids to get an energy drink. Are you kidding me?

Yeah. Ever. I think if I gave my kid an energy drink, there would be mayhem in the world. Oh, mayhem. Yeah. So, you know, I mean, just being able to make that decision, we're not going to conform and we're not going to compromise, you know, I mean, that started the challenge. You know, but.

And the other big one was, was how do we make these things stay fresh without the normal chemicals that they add to all these drinks that keep them from being spoiled? Well, let's do what they do with milk. Pasteurize it. Pasteurization.

And so how many other drinks are there that you go into a store or you order or you pop open a can and it's pasteurized? What's the number of drinks like that? I think the number is zero. Yeah, yeah, the number is zero. Again, what's the, what's the business decision?

The business decision, well, it's going to cost a lot more. Yeah. It's going to cost a lot more to pasteurize these things. It's going to cost a lot more to use monk fruit instead of whatever the freaking cancer, carcinogens that they just pump into those things. No, we're going to use the best ingredients. So all those little decisions along the way, hey, we could be wrong. actually we could be wrong

it's worth the tuition payment I was going to say if we're wrong at least I'll be able to sleep it exactly and I think that's what when you distill it down that's what that's what you get right is hey you know you can cut corners and the way you started this you can cut corners here there the other place but what is the right

thing to do you know like with the jeans what's the right thing to do well build a product that's going to last lifetime that's actually the right thing to do that'll never fall apart right and it's the same thing with all the nutritional stuff because there's so much junk and you know my son's 16 I will only let him take mold for protein

or warrior kid either one of those I'll let him take I won't let him touch any of the shit he's going to be 17 my daughter's turning 14 you know it's like there's things they're exposed to and there's propaganda in this industry pushing this poison at kids and honestly like they're at the point where they're mobile

you know I know you're son's mobile too where they're making decisions stopping at the store grabbing things to drink grabbing snacks and i actually i'm on them all the time would you eat today what'd you pick up at the store what'd you drink today you know i'm on them about it because they know how important it is to me that they make good choices with the occasional you know double cheeseburger McDonald's, which I may partake in once in a while. But yeah, there is a, you don't usually find that in, in the categories and in this industry, in the nutritional industry, you know, you usually find people looking at those things.

And I think that ultimately, ultimately honestly, without your podcast, I think it would be almost impossible. I think it would be almost impossible without you explaining to people what's going on here. Well, then you might as well to say it's not really the podcast. It's the people that are listening to the podcast. Sure.

It's not me. It's the people that are listening to the podcast that go, okay, yep, we're on board. That's what it is. Yeah. And so thanks to everyone that listens to this podcast because otherwise we wouldn't be doing much of what we're doing right now.

No, absolutely. I mean, but you got all these, like, you know, these Netflix specials and stuff, you know, on like what makes you fat or like the truth about sugar, you know, or all these things. There's all these news. So there's, there is kind of awakening, I guess I would call it, an awakening about what you're putting in your body. It's happening. It's happening. And I think you're a part of that awakening.

I think you're a big part of that awakening, letting people know, hey, you got to watch what you're putting in your body, but I'm going to make something that I want to put in my body. You know, and I think that's a, you know, that value proposition, it's undeniable. You know, it's undeniable. And we're not going to compromise on that. That's undeniable. Yeah. And if it doesn't work out, at least we did the right thing.

That's undeniable. It's like chasing the truck back to the cotton field. That's where you're going to end up. So you can't argue with it. Yeah. And I think it's the right decision. My wife the other day, I came home and she said, says, do you have a Vitamix blender?

Or like a high-speed blender? Do you have one of those? Um, blend tech. Is it Blanket? Okay. One of those like big high-speed blenders. Oh, like the ninja. I don't know, but it's a big, like, it's almost like an industrial blender.

So I have one of those. And the other day, but I normally don't use it because I just use a shaker cup, right, when I'm making some milk of whatever flavor. So, and everyone in my family just uses a shaker cup. Occasionally someone decides to kick in the, the, the, the, the, the, So I come home the other day and my wife goes you know she's like oh hi hi and then she says I had strawberry milk in the Vitamix And I said and she said this it's the best thing I've ever tasted in my life So my wife said

Seriously seriously and you know she just she said it was so frothy It was so frothy So frothy and it was so frothy and I was so frothy and I was I said, what did you have in it? She goes, just milk and milk, strawberry milk. And when I saw it, because my wife, you know, she's a, she's a world, a worldly person, I guess, you know, she likes, she got a fine palate and she likes all different kinds of foods like, I'm not that, right? For me to be like, this tastes good. That has limited merit, right?

Can I share, can I share the wooden sword thing? The wooden sword? Yeah. What wooden sword thing? So I can, I can help assist painting the picture. of Helen. Go ahead. And you're like, hey, we need to build a wooden sword.

We're on the phone the other day. Oh, yeah. You're like, we need to build a wooden sword, do like a special for my game of dragons. Little wooden sword. And I heard her in the back and her accent, Jocko, that's barbaric.

Dude, I died laughing. She said I was barbaric. Because I wanted little kids to have shields and swords. Little wooden. Which is an awesome idea. Which is like the only thing I played with until I figured out that there was a machine gun.

Then I had a machine gun. Exactly. The wooden machine gun. Right? Which I think is a great idea for, we should do that for like this Christmas or something, like build wooden swords or... With the Mikey and the Dragon shield.

Yeah. With a little dragon on it. Yeah, it'd be badass, dude. If I was a kid and I got that. Yes. I'd be chopping at everything. Yes. I don't know.

I mean, we had wooden swords as kids. Yeah. And then they turned them into foam. Yeah, I was going to say, that's the thing, is now they make them foam. Yeah. Because then you can't hurt. anybody, which I get,

but maybe you need to parent your kids and say, hey, Billy, don't hit Jennifer in the head with the wood sword. Like, don't do that. It's called parenting. Let's try it. Or you just put a helmet on them and put foam with everything and put them in a padded

room and now we don't have to worry about little savages anymore. Oh, man. So, all that stuff together, I mean, it's growth right now, When you look at the growth right now, I mean, do you see any hesitation in the growth? Zero.

Do you see acceleration in the growth? Yes. Are you nervous? I think, I don't know if nervous is the right word. You know, I mean, number one, I love the process. And I hope the process never stops. I don't, I mean, to think of something ending. like what we're doing.

I just, you know, I say, well, you really have four decades of opportunity. And I've, I've told you this before, you know, one of my advisors, John, who I have to introduce you to next time we're Farmington, said, hey, hey, you've got four decades of opportunity, you know, your first 20 years you're learning, you've got 40 years to do, and then hopefully you enjoy the fruits of your labor, you know, and I'm in, I'm in the second decade, right? 20 to 30 30 to 40 turn 40 in February 2nd decade like the process man the process is what gets me excited being in the game you know not standing on the sidelines not being a former player

watching you know the new blood play you know I love being in the game you know and and I think that to be in the game you're going to be a little bit nervous you're going to have butterflies because that's what being part of the team is that's what being in the game is that's what being in the means and if you and if you don't have that then that you're arrogant and or maybe you're complacent right but if you're in the game you've got to feel that thing that's driving you to get up every morning you know and and i love it i love it you know that's truly my passion is being in the game not what the not not winning the game not winning the championship not looking at to an end goal

like if we achieve this we've won you know it's it's just it's just if we achieve this what can we do next exactly where can we go from there exactly I look at one thing that I like doing and I like being a part of

and one thing that I like about working with you is it doesn't seem like I can say hey I think we need to do this and I know that it it's going to be really, really hard, but we can do it. And you're like, oh, yes, we can.

You know, as opposed to the nine reasons or the 12 reasons or the 47 reasons, why, well, you know, there's this problem and there's that problem, and there's this problem, there's that problem. I'd never, I'd never hear that from you. I know you don't hear it from me. No, no. It's, hey, this is where we're at. This seems like it would be crazy to do.

Let's do it. Yes, here's how we can make it happen. Yeah. And to touch on that and the fact that there has been this propaganda delivered to our minds over the past 20, 30 years, whatever it's been, I was talking to a woman recently. And she's the one that saved that first loom when the Chinese came in and they purchased up this mill when Lewiston Maine. They pulled everything out. She saved this loom. I had her on my podcast, actually.

My name's Rachel. And the biggest thing that built the infrastructure for the New England mills were the canal systems. And if you pulled the stones out of like the canal system in Lewiston, you could build another great pyramid. If you pulled the granite out of these canal systems, you could build another great pyramid. Think about what they did 100 years ago in Lewiston, Maine. They built a great pyramid in the form of a canal system. And they did it without technology. They couldn't look up leg twist in jeans and solve the problem.

We can. So to say it can't be done, I'd never say that. We've got technology. We've still got people that know. We've got jets that can get us, you know, you can jump in on a jet blue flight and get to Europe in eight hours. 12 hours, if you need to go see how something works, or if I need to go to California, if I need to just drive to Lowell, Massachusetts, I mean, you have the opportunity to travel

quickly. You're not getting on a boat on the ocean. And that's what they were doing. They were transporting this stuff with a horse and buggy on rails across the ocean, and you're telling me it's impossible. Are you freaking kidding me? This is the easiest time we've ever had to do this. And that's why it's not crazy. Because of what we do have, we're fortunate to be in a day and age where we can get information like that. You know, it's just a matter of putting hands in dirt. That's what people are scared of. You know, they don't know how good calluses feel. If they did, man, it'd be a different, it'd be a different world right now. So, again, fortunate. And in being in England, being in this part of Maine, knowing that feeling may have been abandoned or the people

may have been abandoned and showing him, no, you haven't been abandoned. Actually, this is cyclical. And we know that we're still the best at this. Let's just make it happen again. Let's get back in the game. Let's get back on the field. Let's make it happen again. Just being part of that.

Let's get to work. Let's get to work Awesome Seems like a good place to wrap it up Echo Charles Yes How's it going over there? Pretty cool

Speaking of getting to work Yeah We like to work in various Modalities Yeah I've never heard that word Really Modalities

Yeah And I love expanding vocabulary Explain it to me Different modes Different modes Yeah modality Different modalities One modality

One modality might be We want to get smarter, right? We want to train our brain, right? We want to train our aerobic capacity. Sure. We want to train our defensive capabilities. Yes. We want to train our strength. We want to train our reflexes. I mean, we're just want to train in a bunch of different modalities. Do you know anything that really helps across a broad spectrum of modalities like that? Echo Charles. Yes. And what would that be? Well, one is Jiu-Jitsu. We're out there in the immersion camp.

Immersing ourselves, right? That's the word, right? Immersing. Yes, we are immersing ourselves. You know everybody's ripped off immersion camp now? Oh, really? Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. All the who's who of Jiu-Zitsu were doing immersion camps.

Oh, okay. Yeah. Oh, good. Flattering. That's awesome. Yeah. Hopefully more people are training. Yeah.

Emersing themselves in Jiu-Jitsu because, yes, very useful as a modality of improvement. For sure. Mental, physical. Anyway, we're here. Vocabulary. Vocabulary modality is vocabulary or modality? Well, I'm just saying we are, apparently we're improving our vocabulary tonight across the board. Yes, absolutely.

Immersive modality. Dig it. Diggit. Yes. So, you know, you talk about the new Rift Ghee. I agree 100%. Every element that you brought up, 100%. So echo, I'm going to interrupt you, even though this is your time.

No, no, no, it's our time. Did you know what we did for you? the last four days. Did you connect the dots? Uh-uh. Wait, no. If I, no. You know you got a ghee when you got here?

Yes. You know who else got those geese? Yeah, Jocko. What do you mean? What color was it? Black. Did you see anybody else get a black guy? Jaco.

Who else? I don't know. All the other instructor. All the other black belts. Oh. If you had peripheral vision, which I don't, by the way. You would have known what was about to happen. Jocko.

All right. Okay. Isn't that cool? That's layers right there. Yeah. In the industry, we call those. Pete was concerned. Yeah.

He goes, if I give Echo this, do you think he's going to know? And I was like, no, he'll just think that it's the camp gey or something. Yeah. Echo got his black belt, by the way. For anyone that's listening that didn't hear this yet, and we'll do a whole podcast about that thing. We made 15 blackies for the expert, the blackbell experts, you being one of them. Dang, thanks Pete.

Holy cow. Come on now. Don't leave you head. Man, so cool. So cool, man. And it's funny because it's like you told, and, you know, Jacco told me a few other things and all this stuff. And it's like, you know, like when you watch Fight Club, you know, you're watching

that movie. Oh, I've watched you other things. You know, like you're like, oh, I didn't want to look at you. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. And, you know, at the end of the fight club, this is this big, like, you know, what do you call it, the twist. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Then you watch it again.

And you're like, oh, I see all the little details. Yeah, yeah, you start connecting stuff. That's what I'm experiencing right now with you guys. Nonetheless, you talk about the Rift Ghee, black or otherwise. That is a reinvented scenario right there. Yeah. Really good. And the thing is, I do prefer no Ghee over Ghee.

Sure. But then even that other one, the other, the one that I got, because I got a Rift and another one that looks, it looks different. It's a different cut, but it's also, it's the same material. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, it's a special thing. The same material. Yeah, it's the same material. It's the Dragon Wave Gen 3, which is, uh, I think that's the primary mover in that Ghee feeling so good.

Yes, it is. I get that the cut is also a factor. Yeah. But the bigger factor is that material. The textile is ridiculous. Well, because it, like, I'd say it like dries as you sweat. Yeah, that's a crazy thing. It's a weird thing.

You can put a key in the, in the, you can, it's dry. It's basically dry. When you get done with a spin cycle, final spin. Yeah. Yeah. files, layers. When you get done with that, then it's almost dry right then.

You could put it on the mat. So that's it. For anyone that had a ghee before, like in five years, people would be like, oh yeah, it used to suck. You used to have to, like, dry these things for 80 minutes to get it dry. Now everyone's going to be like, oh, that must have been horrible. It was kind of like, oh, when I was a kid,

I used to have the phones were attached to the wall. Oh, and people were like, oh, that's really horrible. You know? It was like, oh, I used to get my ghee in a dryer for an hour and a half to get it to dry. Oh, that must have been horrible. Are we contributing to the softening of society by making it so nice? No, because we can train more now. That's true.

There we go. More training. You got it. Saving power. It's green. Right. That's true. Yeah.

To get a rift glee. Yeah. So yeah. Green direction. You get to. Unless it makes me want to do more ghee. Just that little push. And I think that's something.

This is what happens. When you have someone that is very, you have someone that is very, you know, very focused on comfort. A little extra comfort goes along with. Yes, sir, it does. So if anyone's wondering, which they aren't, I would assume they are not wondering what Giddy get, you get an origin geek.

This is not just the rift. It's a whole spectrum while you're here. Okay, I'm going to give you some scenarios. I just started Jiu-Jitsu. I'm not looking to compete. I'm going to train three times a week. My budget is tight. What Ghee should I get?

I would go with a comp, Athleta. Okay. Which is still going to give you the performance. Or we have that warrior line, which is a lightweight ghee. But it's more built for warmer environments. You know, the comp athletic really is the right ghee to go. Okay.

Yeah. I'm training six times a week. I'm going to compete. I have a tight budget. Six times a week. You're going to compete tight budget. I'd still go with a comp athletic. Okay.

At what point do I step up and get a. rift at what point do you want to improve no I'm gonna tell you honestly right now if my budget was tight I would wait an extra two months and get a rift yeah it's what I would do well it's it's a game changer product you know it's not it's hard to explain man like like when you're underneath somebody you know like we're an old key let's say you're underneath somebody inside control you've been sweating the whole match you're 10 minutes in and you need to like elbow escape or hip out and your arm stuck inside the sleeve because of the abrasion of the text.

What you're going to feel is free. You know, so it gives you an advantage in that regard. If you want to feel free on the mats, even when you're getting crushed and smothered, get a rift. All right. It's an advantage. It's a way to cheat the system. Yeah.

Okay. It's a whole comprehensive experience. Yeah, exactly. Like the reason you're like no geese so much. much is you like the right the freedom of movement and everything and and the and the rift almost provides that for you you know when you're a major version of covering up his arms as well well because they're massive yeah all right also we got well we just talked about jeans origin jeans order those up we got t-shirts we got uh other clothes and we got supplements do you get yeah

all the different supplements yeah so i had i got the new which We haven't talked about yet. Cold War. We haven't talked about that. Yeah, yeah. Is that for a reason or just now we're talking about it now? We can talk about it. Boom.

So I got some of that cold, cold war, krill oil joint warfare. Good stack. These are like the prerequisite supplements. This is like to keep you in the game. It doesn't matter. You can have, you can have huge strength, all this stuff. But if you can't keep yourself in the game, like if you're on the sideline because injuries, whatever, you're not moving.

correctly you're sick all this stuff but it doesn't even matter so anyway I had that line it dawned on me how these are the most important supplements that there are in my opinion yeah because without them you could possibly not be in the game yeah you can be the strongest guy but you're not even in the game you know you can't roll yeah because whatever your neck is sore it's oh whatever but I've been pounding the joint warfare and I'm almost ready to go there you go you know you did jacqu ever tell you how the cold the cold war came to be because he was getting what off the airplane or something or you were traveling a lot yeah just when i travel and i'm like guys there was i almost got sick i need like a hyper boost of you know

all the stuff that prevents you from getting sick yeah and brian's like cool let me let me figure it out yeah we ran it and then i tested it and i'm like okay i've been traveling whatever it was six weeks no sickness that's that's like and when i say sick you know you know when you travel and just like your nose you just like wake up your mouth tastes like crap and you feel like you're about to get sick that I don't like that

I don't like that either it's pulling you maybe not out of the game but it's infringing on the game it's kind of jamming you up yeah for sure infringement oh yeah so there's all that stuff also what milk milk milk

look to say you don't need milk okay maybe maybe that but you kind of need milk So that is the greatest name ever. Mulk. Yes. I mean, it's, you know, there's this borderline, you know, like just, you know, we were talking the other day about this borderline genius or like just the worst idea on the planet.

Yeah. Mulk is in the genius category. You know what I mean? I do know what you mean. It's genius. Mulk. Yeah. It's fitting.

And it is inspired by Mulk itself. Yeah. Mulk came first. And then Mulk came. You know what I mean? Yeah. The drink came. Yeah.

And it was so good. I remember telling you guys, this is not a protein. This is not a protein shake. We can just call it like a protein. Yeah. This isn't a meal replacement. Right. This is its own thing.

And it tastes to me like mulk. Yeah. I think the influences in there for me were the monk fruit. Yeah. Right. Mon, right. And then kind of like Hulk.

Mm-hmm. Right. Because I knew we were going mint, green. And then, of course, motorhead. Umla. Over the O because that's just legit.

Yeah. And they asked Lemmy why he put the umla over O in Motorhead. And he's like, because it looked cool. Like that was his answer. And I was like, that's good enough for me.

Because it looked cool. There's the full story on it. That's a full story. Umlaut. Umlaut. I thought, so it's not an amulet. Is that a different? Amulet?

It's an umlaut. Umlaut. An emulet. Isn't that like something you wear around your neck? Yeah, like a little thing. I thought that those crystals in it or something. I thought they were called amulets. Maybe not.

No. It's an umulat. Umlaut. Yeah. That's funny. You're like, and when you do it, put, put the umlaid above it. Put the two dots. I was like, I don't know how to do that on the computer.

You're like, hold down this key and press this. It was like, boom. And Moke was born. Hey, you know, Moke is born. It's going to be a pretty important part of my texting sometimes. I'll be texting someone. I like my phone auto corrects like MOLK to M-O-UMLL-L-K, all caps. That's what it auto-corrects.

It does. Right, right, Mulk. That's awesome. But that extra work. Mine doesn't do that yet. You can change it. And mine also, the other thing I have it when I write J-J, it turns. into Jiu-Jitsu.

Ah. So that way I don't have to type out Jiu-Jitsu with a hyphen in there every time. You know, you got to change the keyboard. No, I just write J-J-J-J-J-J-N-It says J-Jitsu. I've got to be honest. I didn't even know you could do that. Yes, you can. So there's probably the two that you actually need, just Mok and J-G-Zitsu.

Because you type Moke so often. I type Moke so often and I type J-Jitsu so often. Because even, like, responding on Twitter, it works. So I just said JJ and it says J-Jitsu. So you must get a lot of questions like, what do you need to be successful in life? You're like Molokin Jiu-Jitsu. Malkin Jiu-Jitsu. There you go.

Super easy. Kind of. Kind of cool. Also disciplined, by the way. Yeah. Yeah. Cannot say discipline. And I will say that is it cheating that today I'm going on how many hours

asleep? None. Yeah, not a lot. And I was tired coming. When I said today, I was all planning, I was like, okay, tonight I'm going to go to bed early. Oh. And I'm going to go to sleep and I'm going to wake up and I'm going to feel great.

And I said, so you want to record tomorrow? You're like, what about tonight? In my mind, I said to myself, damn, that sucks. But I wouldn't ever, like, reveal that. What am I going to say? No, I'm kind of tired. I'm too tired to record a podcast. No, not happening.

So, but in case you can tell I was in here, I was kind of tired coming in, and then I drank some of the D. As Echo Charles says it. Well, yeah, the discipline's coming a long way. You know, we can have the powder, of course. Yeah. Right.

And then what? Pills. Yes. Powder. Pills. Yeah. Drink. Yeah.

Yeah. The discipline go. And I wasn't going to have a go tonight. Yeah. And then I was like, I'm going on Chaco podcast. Yeah. I need a little extra. A game.

You need your A game. Yeah. A game. Dave Burke. Dave Burke. Good deal. We recorded. Yeah.

As a matter of fact. We recorded the two podcasts back to back and then took a couple days off and then recorded another two back to back and before each podcast. he was taking two discipline go and he's just like yeah 100%. He's like, I'm bringing my A game. Watch this. Did you want to know something that like feels real good? My son came in and he was meeting with your, with Dr. Luke.

I wanted him to learn a little bit about, you know, medicine because he's interested in medicine. And he, he stayed for lunch at the immersion camp here and he went up and he saw the go cans all out in ice or whatever. And he's like, God, dad, can I have one of those? I said, for sure, have it. Yep. That's the first time that's ever happened. Yeah. Because he's asked me in the past.

He's come up to the counter with like a red bowl. Yeah, no. Or like a monster or something. I put that shit back. Yeah. No. You know, and I was like, for sure, man, grab one. You know, it was good, it felt good to be able to do that

and feel confident about it. How do you like it? Yeah, he liked it. Yeah. Oh, for sure, yeah. He's got energy anyways, because he's one. How old is he? 16.

Oh, yeah. He's on fire. You know, him and his friend were like, because they had hands off two weeks ago before double sessions for football. They wanted to come out surfing so bad. And I almost called you. I just didn't know how crazy it was. It was just like, I would have literally called him like, hey, I'm sending the kids out

to California to go surfing. Awesome. I should have. My son would just take him. Yeah. He would not be responsible for their safety because, you know, he's another 16 year old. Of course. They probably would have been jumping off of cliffs and doing whatever else.

They would have done it. Yeah. Check. Anything else? Oh, white tea. Jock white tea. Don't forget about that. Jock white tea.

Always, yes. Very good. Certified organic, by the way. And you can lift 8,000 pounds. Which is a positive thing. Yeah. Oh, by the way. Double blind.

We ran out of Jock White Tea. The second pay of camp. We brought enough for the week. I don't know how many pallets that was. We brought enough for the week. The director here called me and said, Um, we only have a case of Jocka white tea left. Yeah.

So yeah, we had another, we had some more delivered. It's nice to be up here having a giant warehouse with it is a resupply. I know. Well, you know, we figured how many cans, oh, we were going to give away. It was like, oh, if everyone has, you know, one or two a day, like, 5,000 cans. We're going to go through 5,000 cans this week on the house. Come to the immersion camp, get some free jock of white tea. Big time.

Also, Jocko has a store. Store of his own online store. Jocco store.com. This is where you can get, you know, discipline equals freedom, represent while you're on the path, right? Discipline equals freedom. Shirt with his head on it.

It says good. Also, a shirt without his head on it. That says good if you don't, if you don't like my head. Yeah, on your shirt. I saw somebody at cast that liked your head.

Oh, yeah. They had a T-shirt. That's right. That said, that said, hold on it said, Echo looks jacked. And she walked by

and I was fired up. I was like, is that a jaco store t-shirt? Yeah, is that a five? And Jocco's like, no, that's custom. I'll tell you right. It's not,

it's not Jocco store approved, but it's approved. 100%. I think, yeah, she was fired up. Echo looking jacked. There was another guy. Yeah, yeah.

There was another guy that had a good shirt on. Not approved. Yeah. a ripoff. Did you see him? No, but that happens. I feel bad. And it's got, well, if you see on Amazon, there's a bunch of, like, ripoffs, and one of them is, like, the whole

good speech, right? And it just says, good, really big, but then everything else is really small. And it's just in Amazon, you know, somebody's making T-spring or whatever. Yeah, like, yeah. So anyways, and I actually didn't say anything to him. Yeah, and you thought, you know, I can't be like, bro. Yeah, you got it. Unapproved.

But, yeah, watch out. for the counterfeits yeah yeah but hey he's in a way he is rep like his action his intention his intention is strong that's why yeah i'm not mad his intention is good you know i'm i'm not i'm not mad at him right i'm just mad that someone's yeah some insurgents over there trying to train to take people off but actually i do know what happens to insurgents yes they get killed yeah yeah they do but yeah we got some lightweight hoodies a lot of proof of my lightweight hoodie yeah Here, in Maine, by the way. Oh, really?

We're in Maine. It's summer. Exactly, right? That's what I'm saying. I mean, it's not heavy, heavy, heavy function, function. Even though lightweight hoodies do have function, aesthetically and raw functionality. I'm just saying. Does that lightweight hoodie show your biceps?

Yes. I like that you were 100% honest right there. Yes. It is true. Because it's like, it's good. It's aesthetic. You know, I know, and you know what? I know you appreciate it.

the lightweight hoodie. I do. Because it has fashion value. I do. I don't wear it as well as you yet, but I'm working on my biceps again. Yeah, you're looking good, by the way. Thank you.

Many people have approved that hoodie while I had it on. I approve the lightweight hoodie. They like the lightweight hoodie. I think a lot of us like the lightweight. It's there. I didn't like veto it. It's awesome.

It's completely awesome. Anyways, hats, hoodies, all kinds of good stuff. Jocco store.com. The rash guards, where the rash guards made, by the way? Oh, American made. Oh, by none other than origin. Origin made. Origin USA, just origin.

Yeah. Subscribe to the podcast. Also subscribe to Pete's podcast. Your podcast is called Hands in Daylight. You talk about various jih Tzu things. You talk about business things. You talk about history things. Would you say your podcast is kind of like my podcast minus war?

Yeah, it would be more around like taking back America versus war, but the struggles of, you know, from an industry angle, yeah, I would say. Yeah, and it's a lot of storytelling, you know, and it's pretty, it's pretty cool. Yeah, no, it's, it's a great podcast. It's called Hands in Daylight. This podcast is called Jocko podcast. Echo doesn't think you've subscribed yet. If you haven't, Echo is disappointed.

He would like you to subscribe right now. Well, you know, let's put kind of strongly, but yeah. Cool. There you go. Subscribe is cool. It's good to subscribe. I'm saying. What? I was about to say smash the like.

Oh, yes, the subscribe button. Because that's like a joke with everybody. I was watching some YouTube video the other day. They were test driving a car. And it was a pretty good video. Like they were entertaining guys. They were funny. And I was like, oh, these guys are kind of cool.

Like this is, these guys are cool. And it's a good subject, you know. You're like watching. They're given. I mean, I like cars, right? Everyone likes cars, right? And they're test driving a car. And I was actually thinking, I was actually thinking,

if Echo and I were doing this, it'd be kind of fun. Like, remember when we test drove a car? I was test driving car. You happened to be with me. Yes. And it was kind of fun, right? Yeah. Yeah.

Now, imagine if we, there was cameras in there. And we were just talking about how cool that car was. Yeah. Right? Yeah. And I was thinking that. I was like, oh, this is pretty cool. And then in the middle of it, they just start going.

And by the way, if you know, smash the like button and subscribe to us right now and go check our Patreon account. And I was just like, I stopped the video because they came at me like that. So we have a joke or we joked about. And then I overused the joke where he was, he said, he told me live like, hey, that's not funny anymore. So I was just about to do it again

and that's constrained myself. See how it comes full circle and then now it is still kind of funny because he has a clown of a joke. Then there's a Warrior Kid podcast too. so don't forget about that for your kids and don't forget about the Irish Oaks Ranch dot com young Aden making soap on his farm with American hands

that's badass and American goats running a business he's now 13 he started it when he was like 11 so cool he makes that soap so you can stay clean YouTube YouTube video video version in this podcast we want to see what Pete looks like

big tall strong man guy I'm just saying you're big you know handsome whatever you know you paid well but nonetheless if you want to see what he looks like yeah we have a YouTube channel jaco podcast YouTube channel also some excerpts on there you know cut up the podcast I like what you've been doing lately with everything I like the content you know pulling those excerpts the snippets out and it's awesome do you prefer if it's just like me talking or do you prefer if I talk while things explode in the background I do like I do like um

both but for me I like when you're talking but for echo I like when things explode like that's a very point I correct hopefully they don't like pull down your post on their post on Instagram but like the other day when you're like oh yeah yeah yeah yeah that trigger warning one the trigger warning yeah I love when you do that stuff right on good so I'm going to keep that up and the more explosions the more better that's what someone told me yeah straight out like cool jaco says cool stuff I get it but the way I kind of distilled it down as far as like the format is if you're saying something important and it's kind of longer than one minute I won't put any explosions on it cool okay

under one minute explosions and flames by the way we got psychological warfare little moments of weakness that you might experience during your day in your brain in your own little brain the little debates that are happening the weak voice versus the strong voice sometimes the weak voice gets stronger and it needs to catch a beat down. That's when you press play on your iPhone, that little psychological warfare track that tells you, no, you're not going to skip leg day. You're going to go get it. Psychological warfare. That's MP3 iTunes, Google Play, all those MP3 platforms. If you want a visual version of that, that you can hang on a wall, functional graphics

go to flipside canvass.com Dakota Meyer, my brother he's making these canvases and you know where they're made? Oh, they're made in America. Yep, that's right. What about what about our friend,

Dak? Yeah, so can we talk about the special project? Is there any reason not to? No, let's do it. There's no reason. Well, Dakota

Dakota Meyer you know you got a helicopter Yes He's like He's like Because that's what he needs I know he's like Bro you and Brian

Gotta come down to Texas I'll come and pick you up I'm like Cool I'm like Get your license first Oh man Have you ever been to one of those

Kind of helicopters That is out That kind of helicopter When you go into it I've been in them before They seem like You remember when you You remember when you built a model

When you were a kid Do you ever do a build a model when you were a kid? And it was little plastic pieces and they stuck them together with testers glue. Yeah. It seems like this is one elevation above that, just one. It seems like someone made this thing out of little erector set pieces. That's what it seemed. That's what those helicopters feel like when you get in them and when you fly them.

That's what they feel like. If you don't like flying, you're not going to be game for that, especially with Dakota. I will decline that. I will decline. And plus you weigh nine. hundred pounds. So that thing would be like flying lopsided. Well, he is a savage.

Yes. We're actually going to get to do that energy drink for him. We've got to come up with a better name than energy drink for the new go. We'll think about it. But it's going to be called DAC Savage. Dak Savage. Dak Savage. I like it.

So I know I didn't get this Jock approved, but the background is Cam. Oh, yeah, no, no. It's a lightweight camp. No, I've seen it. Okay. Yeah, you sent it to me. Cool. Or either you or B did.

B. Little might have sent it to it. Oh, yeah, I guess I guess we did. Yeah, yeah. No, it looks awesome. That's going into production pretty quick. How would you describe that flavor? Well, he really likes Dr. Pepper. Hmm.

Interesting. So it's like a, like a, what do they call it? Cherry vanilla. Black cherry vanilla. Yeah, black cherry vanilla. There you go. Awesome. Also on it for fitness gear, kettlebells, battle ropes.

rings, maces, steel bells, you know, all this kind of, would you call that new age workout? Is that what you call like that? Opposite direction. Yeah, yeah. It's like old school broad back, right? Yeah, functional. Yeah. It's weird, especially like kettlebells, how they kind of came back like with a vengeance.

Yeah, they did. Oh, yeah. Did I ever send you a leather medicine ball that we were making? No. No, you did not. I'm going to send you one. But I saw one in the mountain training facility. Okay, there you go.

I had a good workout in there the other morning. Yeah, I did have a good work out there in the morning. This got a good vibe, doesn't it? This is the day that Echo slept. Oh, shit. Did you tell them what you thought? Okay, so Echo was, we had a long, we flew from California to Boston. We recorded a podcast in Boston.

Once we got done in Boston, we drove, it was an early, late night, early morning, drove to Maine. we stayed up late that night for some reason. Oh yeah. Then we went to your house. We hung out. Then we went back. And so we got to bed.

It wasn't that late of a night. We got to bed at like 10 o'clock, 10.30. So I wake up in the morning. I'm in Maine. I'm stoked. I'm at the mountain training facility. And I go downstairs. You got.

And it was one of those things I just had just figured out a good little workout with the equipment that you had. You guys had in a Bulgarian bag. 28 kilogram. kettlebell, which is in between, I have 24, I have 32. So I had a little meat, you know, just as a little mix it up. I was going to up the reps, you know, to try some other movements. And so I'm down there getting after it's 430. I get done with that. And I was cranking up some music. I was cranking up some rock and roll. Oh, yeah, a little playlist. Yeah. Danzig. Yep. Some Danzig, some Kayas. And then it just playing whatever. I get done. I go upstairs,

shower, get done, and I have two documents that I got to edit. So I edit these documents and it takes a while but two legit, full documents I'm editing.

Get done with that. And then I look at my watch. That was the morning we talked for like two hours. Yes, we talked for two hours after I had done working. I went for a run. I actually went for a run

towards your old house. I went for a nice long run. I get done with all this stuff. And I look at my watch and Dean and Echo are still asleep. And I go, that's weird that you're still asleep. And it's 12.40 in the afternoon.

And at first I... No movement. So I sent him a text like, hey, are you guys alive? Like kind of calling them out. And then I think to myself, wait a second. Maybe they... It's been 14 hours. They must be dead.

They must be dead. And I got like a little nervous. And I thought, I'm like the carbon monoxide poison, right? Like I get it. okay, I sleep less, right, than a normal person. Cool. I got some weird genetics. Cool.

I sleep five hours. This is three times that, right? There's no way a person can sleep that long. I think there's carbon monoxide porters. I'm going to go and fight cold bodies. I go in there and they're just like, echoes, you know, like, oh, this is really tired. Holy shit.

Yeah, so there you go. It was nice. Nonetheless, anyway, on it. Yeah, on it. That's where you get the cool stuff. Kettlebells, they did come back. I do have a 28-pound or a kettle. I was like what 62.

I kind of liked it man from I kind of like oh yeah I kind of liked having a little intermediary The problem is I can go overboard with stuff as we know And I'm increased the rest till you die not only not no just get like I'll have every kettlebell Imaginable oh yeah, I do I have the whole spectrum and it takes but man it's worth it because like you can modulate like throughout the whole workout Especially if you're doing kettlebells which I highly recommend by the way do kettlebells peat I've just started recently just like swinging them. Yeah. You should be swinging a nice lightweight because you got your back situation. Swing a nice lightweight and it is so good for you. Man, it feels good. You don't. Here's the thing about kettlebell swings.

You won't feel this because you're going light, but you think to yourself, oh, I got whatever, I got my 40 kilogram kettlebell. No factor. I'll swing this thing. You know, it's going to be pretty easy. And the first six of them, it is easy. You're like, what is this? By the time you get to 16, you're like, Okay. Yep. Then you get to 24 and you're like, okay. I see what's going on. Yeah.

Yeah. It kicks you. Yeah. It kicks you pretty hard. Even on the rowing machine, you got a different rowing machine, but on a concept too about rowing machine, when you start, you're like, I'm going to blast this thing out. And it takes a minute for your energy system. What's that first energy system that you're using?

I forget the ATP. Yeah, like the ATP, that immediate sprint one. And you're like using that. And but then it gets used up. Yes. You know, your anaerobic, that's what it is. Your anaerobic system gets used up

and then you're just sucking. But you think you're Superman for the first, you know. How many meters do you usually row? It just depends what I'm doing. Just depends what I'm doing. You know, and I use it usually for sprinting. I'm usually not in there going for 20 minutes.

I've been doing a little bit. When I couldn't run because my knee, I was rowing a little bit more and I was using minimum. I wasn't going to full range of motion. But anyway, so how long are you going? I go 30 minutes. Yeah, that's cool.

I try to do 8,000 meters. Yeah, that's cool. That's just consistent same speed. Dude, I did one the other night because the mountain retreat where you had the great workout. That was our original factory, all the big timbers and stuff, of course. I've been working out in the evenings, and I did one the other night. It was, I got home and it was really late, and I just kept all the lights out, and I rode in the pitch black. Could you see the monitor or anything?

No. And I just rode until you felt like you're done enough. I actually rode against my shadow because there was just a little bit of light behind me casting a shadow on the wall. And I just just like chasing my shadow. And it was the best workout. I had no idea how long I had rode. I just knew like 30 minutes I set the timer for in the pitch black. And it was freaking phenomenal.

So you did set the timer? My phone timer. Yeah. And it just went off. Went off. And you had no idea. It was just a puddle of sweat. I'm a sweat.

So it's kind of spiritual, right? Exactly. That's what I'm getting at. Yeah, I'm just saying. That's what it sounded. Like, you see what I'm saying. Hey, I got some books. I got a new book,

Leadership Strategy and Tactics, field manual that is available for pre-order right now. If you want to get a first-a-dish, then you should order it right now. If you don't, well, it doesn't really matter what you do. Is that a hard copy or? Oh, yes.

Oh, it is. Yeah. Yeah. Really? Hardcover book. Yeah. It's not the same size as the original field manual. It's smaller so that people can carry it. That's one of the things that when you look at the field manual, you're like, well, do we want to be able to carry it? I'm like, yeah, probably this one is to be used in the field leadership. What are some of like the chapter names? So it's broken down like this. There's 80 chapters. Holy shit. Yeah. There's 80 chapters, but they're short hitting chapters where you're You go. And it's all about leadership. It's my boss is micromanage me.

What do I do? How would this work for some of my floor managers? Because they're plugged into the training program, the echelon front training program, the online program, which has been awesome. You know, but it would be nice because they can't, they can't be on that. Well, they're operating. We call them operators. Well, they're operating.

But if they did have like a book that it was like that, they could. That's what it is. That's why I made it. Yeah. And another thing is I used to be able to say if someone said, hey, you know, as far as practical application of these principles, what do I do if my, if I got a guy that's, if I got a lot of potential, but he's not doing what he should be doing, what should I do? And I used to just be able to say, hey, just listen, you know, go listen the podcast.

And when there was 20 podcasts, it's like, oh, cool, you know, you listen to the podcast. Now if I tell someone, oh, the answer is in the podcast, I'm basically assigning them over 500 hours of listing and that's just inappropriate right so I had to take all this information and like distill it down so you can just look it up it's highly indexed okay so you can just look up that's cool the subject and boom go so totally pragmatic so would if for for like our our managers our floor managers would you say that the book replaces the online training or they serve two different purposes. They serve two different purposes. Here's the facts. You, you, you want to, you don't get good at anything through one direction of training. How much better you at,

how much better you at an arm lock if you learn it from four different instructors? Oh yeah. You're, you're way better. How much better are you at any, learning a subject if you learn three books about a subject instead of one? Oh yeah. infinitely better. It's not just better. It's not, It's exponentially better because you're able to compare and contrast what you learn the first time with what you learn the second time. You see it from another angle. So you see it one dimensional. You see it two dimensional. On the third time you read a book about the same subject, you see it the third dimension.

The fourth time, now you're seeing the fourth dimension of things. And that continues to go. So all these things. So they need both. All these things are an effort to give the different perspectives and different angles on these subjects. because the better you get at them, just like training jiu-jitsu. If you, the more you, the more time you spend on bottom inside control, the better you get it handling it.

The more time you spend dealing with different leadership problems, the better you get at it. The more different angles you can see, the better you get at it. So that's the purpose. But I would say the initial idea was like, listen, people need to be able to apply these principles. They need, because here's another thing. People read extreme ownership.

They actually understand the principles. They can explain the principles back to you. But as far as overlaying those principles and even overlaying the examples onto what they're dealing with, sometimes people, sometimes, some people have a hard time making those things overlay properly. And so here it is, instead of saying,

here's the principle overlay it on your thing, it's like, here's what it will look like right now when you put it there. It's more direct. You don't have to, you can do less, you can you can you can it's just more direct so that's the leadership strategy and tactics field manual um i did just get a note from my publisher and they said this was superb superb superb and you know that's pretty cool when you get you know when you've written a bunch of books and someone this book is

superb that's especially from a publisher that reads books all the time and they don't have to send you that note like this was from someone at the publishing company that doesn't doesn't just send out notes right so it's pretty so they probably read it and are applying the strategies yeah yeah they're probably like okay I'm gonna use this now totally um also way the warrior kid three where there's a will you can get that right now way the warrior kid one mark's mission the the how many people at camp how many books how many warrior kid books have you seen me sign at camp all of them yeah all of them there's just people after people after people after people. Those books are having such an incredible impact. It's so amazing to see. I don't think there's

anything that makes me feel better at this point in my life than getting showing a parent showing me a video of a little kid doing a pull up and then looking at the camera and saying I'm a warrior kid. Yeah, it's badass. This doesn't get any better than that. I've been signing war kid books too, by the way. That's awesome. I didn't write it by the way, but I signed a few. That's awesome. I took the picture in the back. That's something. We've got to make a movie. We're working it.

We're working it. Yep. And then Disciplinical Freedom, field manual. That's another field manual. That's one's directed at you. Individually. How to get after it. The audio version is on MP3s.

It's not on audible. Extreme ownership and dichotomy leadership. The first two books where you learn the principles. You have to know the principles. If you don't know the principles, applying them, make any sense to you. So extreme ownership and the dichotomy leadership get these principles into your head so that you can apply them at your business, at your life. They work. They work.

That's another thing I hear all the time from people. They say, you know, I've been using it. It works. It works. They'll give me specific example of how it works. I had this customer call me and they said, blah, blah, blah, blah. And I said, you know what, that's my fault. And they said, You know what? I probably should have given you a better heads up. It works. It works. We got our leadership consultancy,

which is called Eschalonfront. Go to Eschlonfront.com. If you have problems in your organization of any kind, of any kind, they are leadership problems. And you need to help get your leadership squared away and aligned. And that is what we do at Eschlonfront. Eschonfront.com. We got EF Online, which do you, do you share the size of clients you work with?

Like, do you let people know, like, you guys are on the road, or I should say, around the world all the time helping companies become better leaders, big companies. Like, sometimes we go on the phone, you're like, oh, I'm here. Then I say, like, oh, I'm here. Like, do people actually understand the impact you're just having on leadership in corporate America as a whole? Maybe I don't do a great job of explaining that. We work with the largest companies in the world. And we also work with smaller companies as well. And if you're so small that it's out of the price range for you as a company, guess what?

We got something called the muster. You can sign up and come to one of our musters where we teach these principles. You can bring three, four people in your leadership team. If you've got a company of, you know, 20 people, you can bring three, four of your leaders. and you kind of get that initiated. And then you can use something called EF Online, which you are using. Yeah, we use it.

Yeah. And my, you know, and it's nice because before, like, it's always come to me, come to me, come to me, come to me, come to me, you know, and helping our leaders, which is basically everybody in the factory, become better leaders and to learn leadership principles. But now they can go online,

and then they come to me with questions they have, right? So honestly, doesn't take as much time, which is wonderful. So the efficiencies are going up. You know what I did at first? They were, you know, a few like Jill, the one that's stitching here in Jan and a few others. They're like, when can we start? Can we do this on company time?

That was the first question. Can we, and of course, we don't have computers set up and everything. And I was like, yes. Yes, you can. Because I wanted them to know that I'm invested in this. For sure. And once I, and so I was using the leadership techniques to teach leaders. Yes, indeed.

And then once they saw that I was in, then they went home and then they got online. Yeah. And I was like, now they're doing it on their own time because I was invested in them doing it on this, on our time. Of course. On company. You want it. Think of the cost benefit and the ROI. We get at origin.

You get at origin because of the leadership. Yep. It's just the way it is. Yep. Yep. Absolutely. It's good. Awesome.

Awesome stuff. What else we got? We got. So, yeah, if you can't. come to, if you can't, if you can't hire Eschon on front, go to the muster. The next one's taking place December 4th and 5th in Sydney. We're about to release the follow-on dates for 2020 as soon as we can. The thing is,

here's the deal. They all sell out. They all sell out 100%. And it's not like, hey, it's sold out, but we can fit in eight more people. No, it's sold out and we no one else will be coming. So, want to hear a crazy statistic? Yes. Somebody said to me today. You know how many Americans are? I was like, yeah, there's 300 million Americans. They're like, you know, how many people are at this immersion camp? And I said, well, 300 per session. He's like, so one in a million. And I said, yeah, and we had the cut registration off three months early. How many people do you let in to the muster? It looks like, it depends on the

size of the venue, but it's anywhere between 700 and 850. But the Australian one, we have less. We have a smaller venue. We just couldn't get the size venue that we need. So we have less. But So two in a million you're letting it. Yeah, something like that. You know what I mean it's yeah. Like it's as far as value added is ridiculous. Yeah. Yeah.

So come and check out the monster. And then of course we have EF Overwatch, which we already talked about on this podcast, taking people that have experience in leadership and putting them into companies in the civilian sector. So if you're a company that needs leadership or you're a leader that needs to move on to your next mission in life, go to EFoverwatch.com. And if you haven't heard enough of us, if you haven't heard enough stories about jujitsu, shoes, jeans, whatever else, you can find us on the interwebs.

We're on Twitter, one on Instagram. We're on Dine Fusionbach. What's Dine Fusion, fuck? Oh, Facebook. Oh. It's evolved. You look real concerned to you. You were like, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait.

What are we on? I thought it was Facebook. Yeah, it was. Yeah, yeah, I know. It was. Pete is on Instagram. He's at.

I was forced to go on Instagram. But now that's your primary. Well, I mean, I'm, yeah, it's not prime. What do you mean by prime? That's what you seem to do your most activity on. You think? Where do you think you do most activity on? Origins.

Oh, no, I'm saying Instagram. Yeah, Instagram is where you do most of your interaction. Yes, I have. You do Twitter. Yeah. Because I throw Twitter at your direction. When people say, hey, when are the jeans coming out? I say, as soon as at Origin BJJ releases them.

Yeah, and then I'll jump on. Then you'll jump on. No, I do most of my activity on Instagram. And those two are at Origin USA and then also at Pete M. Roberts. Yeah, pete.m.roberts. Oh, p.m.m. Roberts. That's a pain in the ass, isn't it? Yeah.

Somehow, there's two people that got their names. One's name is at Echo Charles and one's name is at Jocko Willink. And all the stuff that we're doing right now, we would not be doing any of it without our military out there protecting the freedoms that we have. So thank you all for holding the line

and also to our police and our law enforcement and our firefighters and our paramedics and our EMTs and our dispatchers and the correctional officers and the Border Patrol and the Central Patrol and the secret service and all the first responders that are out there, you're the ones that are protecting us here at home and protecting our way of life. So thank you for what you do. And to everyone else that's out there, there is much to be done. And I'll tell you what, no matter what you hear

about how much competition there is in the world, the fact of the matter is there aren't that many people that are actually willing to do the work. It's you. So get up, get to work, and get after it. And until next time, this is Pete Roberts and Echo and Jocko. Out.