Jocko Podcast - 297: "I Can Make That Work." Reigniting American Industry

Episode Date: September 1, 2021

0:00:00 - Opening0:16:24 - Pete Roberts from Origin USA.1:46:28 - Final thoughts1:49:44 - How to stay on THE PATH.2:14:57 - Closing gratitude.Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/jocko-podcast/exclusive-content

This is Jocko podcast number 297 with Echo Charles and me Jocker Willink. Good evening, Echo. Good evening. I was walking through Washington Square when a puff of smoke issuing from the factory building caught my eye. I reached the building before the alarm was turned in. I saw every feature of the tragedy visible from outside the building. I learned a new sound. A more horrible sound than description can pick.

picture it was the thud of a speeding living body on a stone sidewalk thud dead thud dead fud dead 62 thud deads i call them that because the sound and the thought of death came to me each time at the same instant there was plenty of chance to watch them as they came down The height was 80 feet. The first 10 thud deads shocked me. I looked up, saw that there were scores of girls at the windows. The flames from the floor below were beating in their faces. Somehow I knew that they too must come down.

And something within me, something that I didn't know was there, steeled me. I even watched one girl falling, waving her arms, trying to keep her body upright until the very instant she struck the sidewalk. She was trying to balance herself. Then came the thud. A silent, unmoving pile of clothing

and twisted broken limbs. As I reached the scene of the fire, a cloud of smoke hung over the building. I looked up to the seventh floor. There was a living picture in each window, four screaming heads of girls waving their arms. Call the firemen, they screamed, scores of them. Get a ladder, cried others.

They were all as alive and whole and sound as were we who stood on the sidewalk. I couldn't help thinking of that. We cried to them not to jump. We heard the siren of a fire engine in the distance. The other sirens sounded from several directions. Here they come, we yelled, don't jump, stay there. One girl climbed out on the window. sash those behind her tried to hold her back then she dropped into space I didn't notice

whether those above watched her drop because I had turned away then came that first thud I looked up another girl was climbing onto the window sill others were crowding behind her she dropped I watched her fall again the dreadful sound two windows away two girls were climbing onto the sill they were fighting each other and routing for air behind them I saw many screaming heads they almost fell together but I heard two distinct thuds then the flames burst out of the windows on the floor below them and curled up into their faces the firemen began to raise a ladder others took out a life net and while they were rushing to the sidewalk with it two more girls shot down

the firemen held it under them the bodies broke it. The grotesque simile of a dog jumping through a hoop struck me. Before they could move the net, another girl's body flashed through it. The thuds were just as loud. It seemed as if there had been no net there. It seemed to me that the thuds were so loud that they might have been heard all over the city. I'd counted ten. Then my dulled senses began to work automatically. I noticed things that it had not occurred to me before to notice little details that the first shock had blinded me to I looked up to see whether those above watched those who fell I noticed that they did they watched them every inch of the way down and probably heard the roaring thuds that we heard as I looked up I saw a love affair in the midst of all the horror a young man helped a to the window sill then he held her out deliberately away from the building and let her drop

he seemed cool and calculating he held out a second girl the same way and let her drop then he held out a third girl who did not resist I noticed that they were as unresisting as if you were helping them onto a streetcar instead of into eternity undoubtedly he saw that a terrible death awaited them in the flames and his was only a terrible chivalry. Then came the love amid the flames. He brought another girl to the window. Those of us who were looking saw her put her arms about him and kiss him.

Then he held her out into space and dropped her. But quick as a flash, he was on the window sill himself. His coat fluttered upward. The air filled his trouser legs. I could see that he wore tan shoes and hose. His hat remained on his head. Thud dead. Thud dead.

Together they went into eternity. I saw his face before they covered it. You could see in it that he was a real man. He had done his best. We found out later that in the room which he stood, many girls were being burned to death by the flames and were screaming in an inferno of flame and heat. He chose the easiest way and was brave enough to even help the girl he loved to a quicker death

After she'd given him a goodbye kiss He leaped with an energy as if to arrive first in that mysterious land of eternity But her thud dead came first the fireman raised the longest ladder It reached only to the sixth floor I saw the last girl jump and miss it and then the faces disappeared from the window. But now the crowd was enormous. Though all this had occurred in less than seven minutes, the start of the fire and the thuds and the deaths, I heard screams around the corner and hurried there.

What I had seen before was not so terrible as what followed. Up in the ninth floor, girls were burning to death before our very eyes. They were jammed in the windows. No one was lucky enough to be able to jump, it seemed. But one by one the jams broke down came the bodies in a shower burning smoking flaming bodies with disheveled hair trailing upward They had fought each other to die by jumping instead of fire the whole sound Unharmed girls who had jumped on the other side of the building had tried to fall feet down But these fire tortures suffering ones fell inertly only intent to

that death should come to them on the sidewalk instead of in the furnace behind them. On the sidewalk lay heaps of broken bodies. A policeman later went about with tags which he fastened with wires to the wrists of the dead girls, numbering each with a lead pencil. And I saw him fasten tag number 54 to the wrist of a girl who wore an engagement ring. A fireman who came down the stairs from the building told me that there were at least 50 bodies in the big room on the seventh floor. Another fireman told me that more girls had jumped down the air shaft at the rear of the building.

I went back there into the narrow court and saw heaps of dead girls. The floods of water from the fireman's hose that ran into the gutter were actually stained red with blood. I looked upon the heap of dead bodies and I remembered these girls were shirt waste makers. I remembered their great strike of last year in which these same girls had demanded more sanitary conditions. and more safety precautions in the shops. These dead bodies were the answer. Is an article. First person to count, obviously,

about the nightmare of a fire at the triangle shirt waste company in Greenwich Village, New York City. And the story came from United Press reporter William Shepard, who happened to be there, just watching the disaster unfold, and who phoned in the day. details to a young newspaper employee by the name of Roy Howard who telegraphed the story to the nation's

newspapers and that article was first published in the Milwaukee Journal March 27th 1911 and the fire killed 146 garment workers 123 women 23 men the oldest victim was 43 years old the youngest 14 years old many were recent Italian or Jewish immigrants and part of the reason that they were up there even as this fire consumed the building is that many of the doors to the stairwells and the exit doors in the factory were locked shut in order to prevent workers from taking unauthorized breaks or to stop them from maybe stealing some of the goods that they were making complete nightmare and we try and find some some good in that story if there is any to be found it's that that fire led to eventual improvements of safety standards in these types of factories and this singular event was a catalyst for massive growth growth of the International Ladies Garment Workers Union and that union got together and fought and were successful in improving working conditions in these types of swept shops and over time in America these conditions

did improve and this is also a story of the incredible sacrifices that American workers have made over time to build this great country and to build our great economy and if you look universally you can see improvements in the conditions that people work in in America But we have to remember that there are other areas of the world that have not made any of these improvements. And much of the labor conditions overseas, especially when it comes to the garment industry, the conditions are still brutal. There's a group called Anti-Slavery International. And they report that about a fifth of the cotton production in the world can be linked to four. Forced labor, for example, much of the forced labor in China, those are ethnic Uighurs.

Those are the slaves over in China. No safety training and no safety protocol Exposure to harmful chemical bad air extreme work hours nine to 12 hours a day six days a week It's bad conditions that are illegal in this country but it's the standard overseas in many places. And why am I talking about this? Because, well, because we have been trying to do something about it and we actually have been doing something about it for a few years. Who's we?

It's, well, it's myself and the rest of the incredible team, including the team that actually works the machines at Origin USA, incredible group that gets this work done. and takes pride in this work the team at origin USA and jaco fuel is who's making a difference right now and that includes my main partner in these two endeavors peter roberts and he is here once again to get us up to date on this fight this fight to improve the condition of manufacturing and bring it back to America where we have a positive work environment. We have a good work environment.

We have a work environment where when you walk the floors, you have people with pride and smiles on their faces in the job that they're doing. So, Pete, thanks for coming back, man. It's been a while. I'm happy to be back. It's been way too long. Well, if you haven't listened to, so you first came on the podcast, was podcast 93. You're on podcast 93, podcast 141, podcast 94.

Those are about a year apart each. September 2017, September 2018, September 2019 is when they came out. We recorded them all in late August, which is right now, late August 2021. We're recording this. We've recorded all of them at the origin jiu-jitsu camp, immersion camp up here in Maine. And we didn't record last year at all. because it was the year of COVID 2020. And so we didn't do camp.

Yep. Did I come up? I came up one time in 2020 for some reason. Didn't I? I don't think so. No, because you would have seen the expanded facilities. Oh, that's right. I came out and saw you in Montana.

And I came out and saw you in California just at the beginning March of 2020 for the vitamin shop launch. I must have come out right before COVID hit because I remember being up here in the winter because we were walking through the snow We were walking down down high street Yeah And yeah so I knew I must have been right before COVID

It must have been yeah But if you haven't listened to those podcasts If you want to know why Pete's here If you want to know how we ended up joining forces And doing what we're doing Go back and listen to 93-141 then 194 before. If you've listened to those, if you've been tracking,

if you've heard any of Echo, Charles, talking about various, various gear to purchase. Then this is what we've been talking about. So you probably are somewhat aware of the situation that's going on. But a lot has happened in the last two years since we did a podcast. And just wanted to talk, bring you on,

talk about what we've been doing, the progress we've made, the setbacks we've had, the lessons that we've learned, and where we're planning to go from here. I mean, when you think about 2021, I mean 2020 and everyone, you know, big negative on 2020, everyone hated it, et cetera, all kinds of issues. But heading into 2020, coming out of 2019, we had a ton of really positive momentum, a lot of positive growth.

Things were kind of on a really solid track. Trajectory was looking outstanding. And so that was we were in a pretty good place. Now, we also had some, we also had some missteps. I know you like to call them tuition payments. Yes. We did make some tuition payments. Last time I was on, I filled you in on the jeans tuition payment.

Remember we did that real time. Yep. It had to make like 500 pairs of jeans before we got them right. Yep. That grew a little bit. We have been, we have been struggling. with, and we paid some tuition payments on milk bars. We did.

And, you know, actually, when you were, when you were reading that, I couldn't stop. But, you know, I could help to think about my, my great Yaya. And she was an immigrant from, from Sparta, Greece. So Yaya is Greek for, is that just like your personal nickname? Is that everybody? No, everybody that's Greek. Because it called Yaya. You can't just throwing out Yaya around here.

Yeah, I know. We are American. She lived to, she lived to 105. So my kids got to meet her. Is that the aunt of? That's the mother of my aunt Kay, who just turned 90. You sent that video to. No, your mom's in the, your, your, was it a great aunt?

Yes. She's in the game. Oh, yeah, she's in the game. She loves you. She's like, oh, she's listening to this podcast right now. She's like, oh, if I ever get to meet Chalka, I've got to put that makeup on. I got to make sure I look good. She just turned 90.

And so she has trusted me with, it's really with a crocheted blanket that, that, my great Yaya was like a Lowell Mill Girl. So she worked in these mills you speak of as an immigrant in the very early 1900s in Lowell, Massachusetts. This story took place in 1911. Exactly. And I was thinking about this the whole time. She used to pick up the skinners, like the little bit of yarn,

and she'd take it home with her. And she'd crochet and make blankets and stuff. So you have one of those blankets? I have it. Dang. I got it. They might have been. been during last year at some point she she shipped it up to me she'd been trying to figure out

who she should give it to and trust it to basically then she saw that you had a freaking loom she was like I got to send it up so I've got it I've got it up and there what a what an incredible thread of personal history yeah I'm gonna frame it at some point when we build a massive new factory it'll be hanging in the front lobby that's that's that's like incredible so that story is that's yaya could have been exactly that's what i was thinking about like the working conditions of course have improved since then but when people ask me like why why would someone want to work in a factory i think about well you know i i talk about my grandparents and great grandparents who all work in factories tanneries and mills and they always said to their kids our parents

the baby boomers don't work in the factories but they always roman romanticized about working in the factories. And I never could figure out why did they romanticize about it and always reflect on it, but then tell their kids not to do it. I didn't understand until right now. That's why. Because the generation before them, their parents were dealing with shit like that. Yeah.

You know, just terrible working conditions. Hot bare feet. The woman up in Lewiston, Maine, Rachel de Grozier, she told me a story about the Bates Mill in Lewiston where we got our first loom from. And she said one of the girls used to run up the hill for her shift. And her sister would run down the hill and she'd pass her shoes off. And then she'd come down into the mill and work. And it was just survival. Yeah.

So not only was it hard work, but you didn't have enough money to buy a pair of shoes. Exactly. And what's really interesting about this is, like we were up at the factory the other day, at the boot plant. And Andy was telling a story. Andy who oversees all that production. He was telling a story that the first step in getting a pair of boots produced is a tag gets printed out. So an order comes in, that order gets printed out. And Andy's all about efficiency.

And the orders would have the human beings name on it that ordered it. So if Echo Charles ordered a pair of boots, it would say Echo Charles, size 11, bison, this soul, whatever, and then everyone knows what to make. And he just, you know, to save ink or whatever, and make that tag a little bit smaller, say, oh, we don't need to know the person's name. Why is that important?

And the workers said, hey, what are you doing? We want to know who we're making this. We want to know who Jim Smith. We want to know that we're making Jim Smith's boots. And that shows you what their mindset is, right? The mindset is that they're personally connected. they're they're personally engaged in making the product quality product they want to know who by name who it's going to you know the thing is is after like after you know the whole national shutdown last year and we pivoted

and I'm sure we'll talk about pivoting to making some face coverings but then we came back to the footwear plant we dealt with some major issues getting back into production it just wasn't running smooth and almost like there was at that point a lot of people at home they're collecting the additional unemployment money they didn't have to be at work whatever

so I said time out and I talked to Andy and I said we need to get them more engaged I said so we're going to shut down production for a whole day they're going to pick their leather the team here and they're going to make boots for each other

they can make them for themselves or they can make them for loved one and I want to see what happens. Well, guess what happened? Every single boot off the line was the first quality boot. And so it was kind of a flank. I gathered them all at the end of the day. They have huge smiles on their faces and I said, what did you guys think about that? And they're like, that was awesome. I said, you made footwear for each other. And they're like, yeah. And I said, and you injected soul into it because you cared. They're like, yeah. And I said, and that's what we need to do for every customer.

And now every, every name on there. And, you know, when Andy stripped it off, you're like, put that name back on. If we're going to inject Solon to this thing, we need to know there's a, there's a real human behind it. So. Yeah. You know what?

You are making boots for each other, right? Yeah. And now you're going to make boots for America. Exactly. And production, improved and quality improved. And yeah, man, it was phenomenal little, little team building flank. I guess you could say.

Yeah, that's awesome. What prior to COVID hitting though, we got hit. We made some missteps on milk bars. So a little background is we want to make milk bars, right? Protein bars, good for you. I have probably ridiculously high standards of what I want them to be. And I just want to eat a damn candy bar. Yeah, you want to eat a candy bar.

Well, and I also have high standards that I want it to taste like a candy bar, but I don't want to use any sugar, want to have a certain amount of protein in it, wanted to be natural. So it's a really tough thing to do. And we kept trying to crack this formula. And probably probably the biggest mistake we made, I would say is we bought a bunch. We kind of settled on a bar. We did. That was hell of good, as they say in California. This thing was hell of good. It kind of tasted like a Reese's peanut butter cup. But it was bigger. And it was had to have. no sugar in it and it was covered in thick chocolate. I mean, it was redonculus, man.

It was good to go. So we thought, okay, this is it. But the problem was it was really difficult to make. And a bunch of bar producers around the country, couldn't do it, can't do it, won't do it, couldn't stand behind it. So, of course, what do we do? We'll just do it ourselves.

100%. Invest in the machinery. Get it done. And there is a, being naive is definitely a superpower, but being ignorant and arrogant is definitely not. There's a balance that sometimes the line gets crossed. Well, you know, we've been on such a solid run. The line did get crossed.

And when that thing went off to shelf life testing, it didn't work. And basically, if I tried to sum this up, we were doing a process called extruding. Yeah. Which means you squeeze out this tasty, like the peanut butter cup part, that middle part, Yeah. You squeeze that out through a machine and it kind of just plops out. Yeah. Well, the problem was when you do that, you squeeze out a lot of the natural fluid inside of it.

The oils. The oils get squeezed out. And so when you put it on the shelf for the shelf life test after whatever, two, three months, which is how long it needs to taste good for it. You actually need to taste longer for that. As soon as we got to two, three months, it was like, hey, this doesn't taste the same. This is dry. Wait a second.

This isn't working. You're refurbishing those old mills because it turned into a brick. Yeah. It was not good. So we, I just actually told Joe on Friday before camp, I said, hey, man, let's get this equipment on palettes and get it wrapped and make, make way for some other things. So it was a tuition payment that we learned from. And because of that, we recruited, we hired and recruited a food scientist that came in from Arizona. another food scientist who serves for quality.

It was kind of a point where looking at the organizational structure as we're growing was like we've got to have the right people in the right places if we're going to start doing shit like this. We've been shotgunning it for so long and just like just grinding it out. That really was a defining moment in how we need to start thinking. We've got stores ready to buy this. We got, I mean, vitamin shop. They're like, when are the bars coming?

I mean, they're ready to place a purchase order for these things. Imagine if we had just done it and sent it out and all of it, like molded or something. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Well, even if it didn't mold, even if it just tasted dry or just crumbled, it would have been bad. The latest version, because we're still on the track. Oh, we're still on it. Yeah. Yeah.

The latest version that I had was freaking legit. And it's weird because it's like a bar, but it tastes like a, uh, a relatively dense brownie. It tastes like a dense hoist brownie. When you say it, it sounds better. No, I'm saying it's coated with chocolate. It's freaking nuts. It's good.

It's really good. Yeah. And we're ready to go, but we've slowed down to speed up. Yeah. Just making sure we get it right this time. Yeah, because we got people that we are waiting on that one. Yeah. Myself included.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. That one is freaking good. All right, so we hit the mulch bar. It took us a while. We learned some lessons there. Little too aggressive, little too, little too arrogant on what we thought we could get away with and what we thought we knew.

And you know what? We've also succeeded with that a bunch. You know, you're going to take some losses. Yeah. You know, you go out, you take risks, a lot of risk. We've taken a lot of risks along the way. Everyone's why you're going to get an L up on the board. That was a big L.

Oh man. Are we going to sell that equipment? What are we going to do with it? Oh, he's going to wait on it? Yeah, probably sell it. We'll probably sell it. We're going to have to sell it. That's going to be a loss.

Yeah, pennies on the dollar. Anyone need an extruder out there? Let us know. The packaging machine is the big one. Yeah, a beautiful packaging machine. All right. So if anyone's looking for that, let us know. We got some stuff.

We should just talk about the other tuition payment then. Which other one? The can. tuition payment. Yeah, well, that was in the middle of COVID. Yes, it was. Before we get there, before we get there, let's talk about when COVID hit. Because we made a, we made a freaking legit.

Pivot. I'll tell you my recollection. Two months before COVID hit America. Yep. I had three or four friends, a couple seals, maybe like a seal, doctor, medic, someone else, sent me, you know, text, email, whatever, saying like, hey dude, you should make masks. And you and I had a very quick discussion.

I said, hey, man, there's this thing going on overseas. And what I was thinking is we'd ship them overseas. That was the conversation that I had with my friends. It was like, all of them were saying, hey, they're going to need these masks. And you pulled up a couple examples of N95 masks because I was, that was kind of what was being asked for. So now it was, all right, well, you said to me, hey, we'd have to, like, tool up for it.

We got to buy these machinery. We were already kind of paranoid about buying more machinery that we could freaking question. We have to go sell later. And you just looked at it like, hey, man, this is probably a no-go. It's going to be an investment by machinery to make these masks. And I said, ah, cool. All right, Roger, you know, no factor.

And then COVID started, well, now you fast forward a couple months. And we could check emails. I think I was maybe two months ahead. of it. You had a, I thought you got a call from like a friend of the Department of Defense or something. That happened a little later. Okay. So then as it started ramping up in America, well, that was probably, yeah, you're right. That was probably one of, I got a call from the DO, a friend from the DOD, a friend that's a doctor, a friend that's a seal medic overseas and like someone else. So there was, there was definitely a triangulation that I should have paid attention to. Um, and I did, you know, and talked to you about it, but, you know, sometimes you just look at something you think that's a, that's probably not, not the best move. And that's what you said. You were like, hey man, we'd have to buy this plastic. It probably was, I think it might have been called an extruder. I was like, no more extruders.

We're not doing it, man. Forget about it. So we said no. But then, so COVID then starts hitting America. And then I had another conversation with you. Because now you started hearing people started talking about masks, right? No, you should wear a mask. Cut up a t-shirt.

Put it around your face. Yeah. And I forget the pattern that happened here. But I do remember I said, bro, we just need to make something to put over your face. And then you were like, okay. And then I, this is when we were in lockdown. Now we're in like in lockdown. Yeah.

So I actually had to get cable news because I didn't have cable news, but I wanted to see what the hell was going on. So then I'm watching freaking Fauci. And he's like, don't wear masks. They don't help. And then I text you or call you like, hey, dude, they're saying masks. Don't do anything to forget it. And you're like, okay, cool.

And then the next week, it was like five. days later it might have been Monday to Friday because it was Friday that I was like hey bro they're saying you have to wear something over your face let's go and you're like on it and then you design them over that weekend that was a Friday by Monday design on Friday had the team come in move all the machines around and we started cutting and sewing shut down all the divisions we had we had sat down in my office myself and in dawn our CFO and talked about what happens if like things get crazy. What happens if things get crazy?

What happens if supply chains shut down? How does that gonna affect what we're doing? And the last thing you wanna do is get caught in the chaos of supply chains. And I remember we sat down and we actually looked at our projections for the year and we started cutting 10%. 20%, 30%, we cut all the way up to 70% of our projections out.

And then we found a way to continue to survive. Yeah, survival. Survival. And then. Yeah, because by the way, now of a sudden, every jujitsu school in America shut down. Exactly. And we knew which was crazy. 52% of our business for origin is martial arts, is jihitsu, skis.

It's a crazy statistic. 52%. And we're like, This is going to shut down and we're going to lose hardcore. So we found out that like it was 70% we could afford to lose. We figured out how we could lean things out. And ultimately that Friday pivot, we were the first ones in America to make face coverings, really.

And it was cool, cool design. I mean, I mean, we made what, a quarter of a million, maybe over a quarter of a million of them. The factory came together. and it was honestly it was the most beautiful thing we've done as a team it was really inspiring it was like a freaking beehive when you walked in that place in the morning ripping out 10,000 a day yeah you were sending me text where you know at lunchtime you'd be like we're at 3,970 oh yeah it's wild yeah it was I mean it was uh it was it was crazy you know and in I mean it

It went fast. It was six, seven days a week, working long days. We had the fire departments in the hospital. We decided to pivot and we took the collar foam from the ghee, like the whole collar. We took that. We made face shields. Yeah, we ordered bulk lamination paper. We had five laminators set up and you just put the lamination paper in the laminators.

Then we took those and then we just stitched a piece of ghee collar on them and put a piece of underwear. plastic band on from our tights and filling up boxes and sending those to the hospital so they had face shields you know it was it was phenomenal to be part of just that what I felt like was almost a wartime effort there was this well sense of nobody knew what was going to happen yeah no days there you know now you can look at it and be like well mask no mask yeah yeah yeah it's like but at that time it was like uh everybody's on the same page everybody's on the same page you need to wear something over your face or you don't you catch this stuff right everyone was saying that and in hospitals, they didn't have it.

And first responders didn't have it. No. So we were donating thousands of these things to first responders, donating stuff to hospitals. And people were buying it as well because now companies needed to keep their employees coming in. If they were in business, that was what did they call the critical need or what was the essential worker? They needed to supply masks to their people. So they started ordering. It was freaking crazy.

I had one guy, he was on the fire department. He drove up to the fact. actor and he parked outside and we like transferred some face coverings to him and he had he he was in the back of his truck and he like had the hatch open dude this was like black plague this is when wild this is when people it was black plague time the guy remember that the guys like has new stuff you're saying me a video you're like we're doing a test with this stuff right now dude this is freaking crazy he's got like this little smoke puffer thing to figure out how much smoke goes through it, like to see if the virus can get through.

I mean, it was, it was wild. I was, and I'll tell you what, I've always been into, like, post-apocalyptic movies. You're not your childhood fantasy, bro. I was like, I'm having, I'm having so much fun right now just doing this. I mean, obviously that was short-lived. It became really annoying to not be doing what we'd love to do, you know, and be stock in lockdown and all that bullshit. But, um, we got through it.

Yeah, and so this thing going from making jih jitig, because you ended up shutting down all lines. All lines. All lines. All lines just to make face shields, face coverings. That's what we were doing. Face shields and face coverings. We shut down one line at a time over the course of maybe five to eight days, I think, including the boo.

I remember you and I'd be talking, and you'd be like, bro, you'd be like, what do you think? How much material should we use? How much material? and how many do you think we're going to sell? And you know, you and I are just literally throwing our best guess and betting hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of material on how long this is going to last. Because it didn't take, you know, you fast forward from Black Plague Day,

whenever that was, when it just everyone thought. And then you fast forward a few weeks. And I remember saying, hey, man, this mask thing, it ain't going to stick. Like there's other reports are coming out. And again, at the, the time, you're just trying to do the best judgment that you can use. But it seemed to me, like, hey, this is going to, this is going to fade. And I mean, obviously the mask thing didn't fade.

No. But what happened was other manufacturers sort of started getting in the game and order and stuff from overseas and then they're mass producing it. And then it's like, okay, so now the market was completely saturated and flooded. So we kind of owned the market for, how many months? It was months. Three months? I think it was longer than that. We were, we were ripping. Owned the market. We went through every bit of fabric. We had warpwick our compression apparel. We went through all of our denim.

Like we went, we didn't make any out of, our ghee pants material, our twill. That's right. We went through all of our fabric. And the crazy thing was, and it was kind of a blessing in disguise too, in the background, shit started to fall apart in our supply chain,

starting with our tannery. in Maine where we were tanning all of our leather for the boots. It was a Tasman tannery. And I remember them calling me like maybe four, five, six months in saying, I don't think we're going to survive. And I'm thinking, holy shit, like this tannery, the last tannery in the state of Maine that's been around for 100 years, they don't think they're going to survive.

I started to think about our other supply chains. I ended up getting on the phone with someone from the federal government. And he said to me, there's three tanneries in the United States of America that can make the boots for America's military. It's going to kill us if this tannery shuts down. And so he was going to fund, partially fund us purchasing this tannery. I got on the phone with Norm Tasman, the head of the Tasman family. I'm talking to this guy down in Texas about how to keep this thing. alive. Ultimately, it was an elephant we just, you know, we didn't want to take down.

And yeah, well, you and I were having, that's another like a million dollars of conversation you and I are having about, do we, do we do? Well, you know, we break open the coffers. What are we going to do? You want to roll? And it's like, I think I said no. I was just, I think I remember calling him like, bro, I don't think we should do this. You went to it. Oh, yeah. You went to it. And you called me on the way home and you're like, bro, I just, this is a, this is, this is a, you didn't call it a lemon, but you were like, this is a lot, this is a lot. There's a lot that needs to be done. There's a lot of management and leadership that would need to take place.

You were basically saying you would have to surrender other fronts that we're trying to fight on in order to make this happen. Yeah. And it was just a no-go. And so because of that, I started getting a hold of all of our suppliers. and seeing where they were at. And everybody started having the same story. Can't get labor.

Can't make the product. No one standing at looms. No one in the die houses. No one injecting soles for boots. And it started to get pretty shady from that perspective. So just managing, really managing that whole year from a supply chain perspective, when to slow down on the face covering thing, how to pivot back up. And that whole time we lost our denim weaver.

I don't know if you remember that. We couldn't weave denim anymore. And we had the... Real quick, I think where we got lucky, I got lucky, because I was saying, hey, bro, they're not going to make people wear masks much longer. That ain't going to happen. And so we started to taper.

And when we started to taper, they kept making people wear masks. But we got lucky in that so many other people now came on the market and started making them and bringing them in from overseas. You know, however long it took them to go to China and say, hey, we need these things. And it took them time to run the cycle, bake them and then ship them over here. By the time they actually showed up here, we were already in the down swing of making masks. So we got lucky in the fact.

Because I was thinking, it didn't seem possible that we, that America would still be wearing masks after. Because it didn't take long for people to say, oh, it's actually only 10% effective. and seven and then you had the people showing the you know the videos with the like that smoke stuff coming out and being like yeah this is you know again couldn't know the future but we I think that was a stroke of luck the fact that we because otherwise we would have been sitting on you know however many we were doing it week by week I remember you're like what do you think 30,000 more for 50,000 more yeah you're like oh my god we let's do a half a week more you know and like it was that those kind of numbers

Somebody emailed us about profiteering. Somebody emailed me about profiteering. And I sent him an email back and I said, we employ 100 hardworking blue collar Americans. When Google called us and asked us for 40,000 masks and asks us how much it cost, how much is one, 15 bucks, how much is 40,000, 15 bucks? It's because we need to keep 100 hardworking Americans working.

And get out of this thing so that we can get back into our supply chains. And if we had to fund those supply chains, which we did, which we did, we had the fun finding a new denim manufacturer and commit to massive amounts of denim to weave denim, you know, and really secure the supply chain. Like we played it. I think it was, I think by design, we played it well. We were lucky within there, but by design, we played it well. I think it was just real strategic planning, keeping everybody motivated to want to continue working when they didn't have to.

You know, especially in the time. It was scary, but we had such a good team. It was just a tremendous team. I can't say enough good things about them for sticking it out when they didn't have to. I mean, the government was giving away money to people that were unemployed for whatever reason. And it wasn't a normal.

unemployment there was additional unemployment there was like COVID unemployment yeah and it was a it was a substantial amount of money that that people were getting paid and I knew people out in california that were that were making a ton of money for you know for for staying at home yeah and more money than a lot of people could work you could make make work in a job 100% and that's a tough market to compete with. Yeah. Hey, do you want to make $2,000 a month working 40 hours a week doing a hard job? Or do you want to make $2,000 of work a week or sorry, $2,000 a month doing nothing?

Yeah. And a lot of people just said doing nothing, we'll take that. And all of our people, all of our people could have just gone and collected. You know what I mean? And actually, I mean, they still, they still did receive, but they didn't. They didn't rest on that. You know what I mean? They,

they were part of it. I would do, like, weekly motivational speeches and shit. Like, not meant to be motivational, but, like, look at what you people are doing. That was good, too, like, again, in the bubonic plague phase of when, you know, when we started making the face shields that were going to hospitals, that the hospitals couldn't get that they thought were absolutely critical at the time. Otherwise, everyone's going to catch COVID. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

And so that felt really good, you know? And I think that was good for the team to know that America was calling out for this equipment, this personal protection equipment. And Origin was able to, on a weekend, over a weekend, start delivering. And that has to do with the ability having this capability of doing everything there. Everything. Everything. Design. The material was all sitting there.

The people with the skills to make patterns. that people with the skills to sew whatever needs to be sown that's freaking legit vertical integration inside the united states of america yeah no one else had it no all right so the tannery shuts down you're out hunting for oh this was cool too because now we need leather and i think what we how do we talk about it we talk people found out that we needed leather i think they were listening to your podcast it was the sidel family yeah and the They called us and said, heard you guys need help. Like, oh, yeah, we need help. And they said, we can take care of you.

So we sent them what we were using for leather. And we went back and forth with iterations as we were coming out of kind of the mass making COVID thing and trying to get back into making footwear. We had a little bit left of supply. They ramped up for us. They started, they started tanning to our spec. And they got us back on track. They sourced the bison. Because I don't think they were doing bison at the time.

It's a big thing for us is American Lakota bison leather. Because that bison leather is good. It is, man. You want to make like a pillow out of it when you get them, right? You want to make a pillow. You want to make like a washcloth out of it. You know, you want to, it's that freaking nice. I just love the historical nature of it, man.

Like, uh, of the tatanka. Mm-hmm. It's freaking legit. So, um, so they were awesome. They just stepped right up to the plate. Oh, yeah, stepped right up. Hammered it out for us. got it done and got us back on track.

And, you know, I think, I think that a lot of these, we were all in the same place is the thing. Like all of the supply chain, they're all in the same place dealing with the lack of people. You know, every, every, all of our suppliers, everybody dealing with a lack of people. And those relationships, because we've built them for so long with our supply chain,

they're trusting they're going to get paid. So when we're placing these massive blanket purchase orders, if we didn't have that relationship of trust between us, that just wouldn't happen. So, you know, I guess good on us for building those relationships over the years so that we survived and thrived ultimately.

And salute to Seidel reaching out like that. I mean, that's unbelievable. That's because, you know, because of you though. That's so freaking cool, though. You know, it's like I was saying the other day to somebody, when someone listens to the podcast, I have a relationship with someone, if they listen to the podcast.

Yeah. Because we have the same inside jokes. They know, you know, they know some things. They know some little inside jokes. We use the same words. You know, we got stories to refer back to that we experience together. Like, if you're just listening to Echo and I, you're listening to me talk about invading the beaches at Normandy or you're going on the baton death march. We shared that experience if you're listening.

So we have shared common history together. If you're just listening to this, we have common history together. And that's what a relationship, oh, he's talking to Andy about, Andy Stomph. When you meet another seal that is younger than you or older than you, you never served with him.

That you were retired before they joined or you went in after they retired. You still know them and you still have a common shared history that something that you did together. You weren't together, but you both went through buds. You both were a new guy in a platoon. You both went to jump out of an airplane.

You both went through hell week. You have these common things. So you're immediately, you have an actual relationship with someone you've never met before. So it's the same thing with the podcast. So when you get someone like the Side L family, they're like, oh, oh, Jocko needs leather. Oh, okay, cool.

Like, we know him. Yeah, yeah. Let's reach out. I get it. It's like showing up for this immersion camp and everybody's showing up for Jiu-Jitsu. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You know, it's a same connection.

Hey, where were we, how far along were we in making boots when COVID hit? Like we were pretty embryonic. Yeah, we had, we had decided just to buy this facility, which was a Coca-Cola plant. And so that was in 2019. Yep. And we had just started. Late 2019. It was late 2019.

Yep. Late 2019. we had just started getting machine and removed in and setting up and we weren't even really producing. I was going to say we hadn't really started producing yet. We had made boots. We knew we could do it.

We had the skills. We had the technology. But we weren't quite there yet. No, no. And so then in the middle of COVID, we lose the supply of the leather. We get the new supply of leather thanks to the Seidel crew.

And then we decided we're going to start making boots. Yeah. And we start making them. Yeah. Yep. Yep. Barely. But yes.

Barely. Why? It's just a lot of reasons. Out of practice, number one. You know, there were some, there was some bad seeds, I guess you could say also. There was some negative, there was some animosity. There was some negative attitudes, you know, and those came out when we, when I, when I kind of flank the team with you're going to make yourselves or a family a loved one a pair of

boots specifically i wanted to gauge everybody's nonverbal reactions at the end of the day and there was a couple of individuals that i thought would would get there or i questioned would get there but i was hoping they would i didn't think they would and engaging their their nonverbales i was like got it they're not coming not coming my way so um so maybe this or they're they're weren't the right people for the job. It's amazing. You could have a team of 15, let's see,

had a team of 15 people making 50 pairs of boots a day. You'd think that if you lose three, then you'd lose the same percentage in production. What happens is you actually gain. So it goes, you drop to 12, and now you're making 55 pairs. There's just, there's a,

when cover and move is part of your culture, which it is for us, you know, cover and move, and you want to cover and move for people you like. You know, you're apt to move quicker and to be more responsive and to have better peripheral vision and to see where you can inject yourself to improve the process and you give a shit

and you inject your soul into it. And I think we had lost some of that, you know, during COVID. You know, the factory turned into a machine. It did. You know, for better or for worse, it literally turned into a machine. When you walked in there was like a beehive. buzzing and we were just cranking six seven days a week ten hours a day just

burning through through thread and fabric and there there was there was motivation but there wasn't a lot of culture building over those three or four months it was just had heads down and heads down man and you know what you got to do that shit sometimes you got to do that shit in 99% of the factory came out of it adjusted and it was wonderful but um but there was a few folks that just didn't make it. And so once

we took care of that, everything came around. So you gave a quote the other day or you asked the question or you made the statement about how much it cost to make the first pair of origin boots. Half a million bucks. And then what's funny is someone was like, someone said,

well, those must have been some awesome boots. And I was kind of like, not really. Like the first pair of boots that I got were like, I was like, send me, you know, Change these things. This sucked. Tongue fell out.

Freaking souls coming up. Like, you know, it was, wasn't that bad. But it was definitely, even to get the first prototype boot took a lot. Yeah. But, yeah, putting a half a million dollars of money. Of our money into that. Just buying equipment. And bro, you want to talk about, you want to talk about freaking trust?

Because I was sketch on boots. Yeah, yeah. Man, from the word to go, I was sketch on boots because they seem very difficult. They look hard, hard to make to me, right? I look at a pair of boots and I think, man, that seems like it's going to be a problem. You know, like, it's hard for me to understand how, like, a piece of thread goes through that big piece of leather and how's that going to work and who's doing that? And it just seems, seems like more challenging. And I brought this to your attention.

Yeah, you did. I said, bro. Look, man, it's hard to make geese like. this doesn't seem like a smart idea. And the other thing that scares me about it is, first of all, they're really expensive. Yeah.

And second, you know, if you make t-shirts, you got to make small, medium, large, extra large, right? If you make boots,

you got to make size five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, 11, 12, 13, 14,

14. And by the way, you know, one pair of, one brand I wear an 11, another brand I wear a 10, another brand I wear a 13. So now you got people that are pissed off because it's not the right size.

It just seemed to me, I was paranoid, man. I was definitely paranoid. And you're like, no, man, boots are easier than geese. You said to me, and I was like, okay. And I believed you, you know? Easier than weaving. Easier than weaving. And I said, okay.

And that was a high level trust, bro. You might as well have been playing rush roulette with my head. Because that's how I felt about it. And then we're spending a half a million dollars on freaking equipment. and I'm like, yep, cool, sounds great, man. I'm holding my breath. And then you sent me the first pair that was like maybe version four or something, version three. And I could already go, oh, oh, wait.

There's something there. Oh, yeah. This is going to be good. Yeah. So that was a high level of trust. I appreciate that. I'm glad I didn't screw up on the mulk bars before that. And then what's crazy is while all this is going on, well,

We were running out a room overall because now we're having to buy because now Jocko fuel is going berserk, right? Well, everybody's got to understand we're self-funded. So we've never taken on capital. Like we've always self-funded. If we make a profit, you know, a large chunk of that gets injected back into what we're doing. And in 2017 at the grand opening, I don't know, what do we have for? many employees did we have 12 12 employees yeah when you and I shook hands we had eight okay and and so then we decided we were going to start jaco fuel so everyone's sewing in the factory and all

the pallets of jocco fuel are in between the sewing machines like that was our warehouse was this factory floor was our warehouse too you know just winning at all costs you know whatever needs to whatever needs to happen so and jaco publishing books are in there I forgot about that shit. Jocco publishing Mikey and the Dragon stacked up in there. Oh, man. So I forgot about that. Yeah.

You know, when you think about blitz scaling to, we have 210 employees, you know, over 2020, we hired another 40 employees, you know? And so we're dealing with the lack of infrastructure, that, you know, really a decaying infrastructure. The fact that there is only, I don't know, one or two buildings left in our community, you know, within a half a mile radius that actually could hold our growth.

And we did the boot plant. We invested in that. Coronavirus hit. We had invested in another facility for nutrition. Oh yeah. I forgot to mention about the equipment we bought a building. Yeah. So we're just getting crazy.

We're getting crazy. And we're self, well, when I say self-funding, I mean, you know, we're working with banks. We're working the banks to make all this shit happen because we can see it. Now, I'm not sure if that's being naive as a superpower or just being naive, but I believe in our vision. You believe in our vision. And we know we've got something special. You know how I know that? Because we have people moving from all over America to work for us.

I'm talking Colorado, Arizona, Nevada, Utah, Georgia. I said Arizona. Yeah. Massachusetts, Connecticut. I'm everywhere. and when when everyone's saying the same thing like I want to be part of this I can see what you guys are doing it's special I get it like and it's resonating with them we just got to tell more people so we invest in in that's part of business I mean it's the I learned a lot about organizational structure and you know I've learned a way more than I ever thought I would know about running a business of this size this magnitude five facilities 210 employees. I mean, it's, it's a lot. And I never, like, believed in titles. Like, everybody just do it. It needs to be done. Like, literally, we got done eating steaks last night,

and I was in the kitchen with the deck. We were washing the, we washed all the dishes, all the forms. Like, just do what do it needs to be done. Like, get shit done. But I do understand now because of the situation, how you have to really detach to look at, to look at I hate to use the word battlefield because it's not a battlefield, but to look at the organization and do you have the right players in the right positions? Are you missing people? And sometimes just letting the fire burn. And what I mean by that, Hess Malm actually was saying this to me, Pete, you got to just let the fire burn for some of these things.

You can't solve all the problems all the time. Now you don't want to get it out of control. You don't want to become a blaze. I said, but if you can't solve this part of your company, like the issues we're dealing with, let's say in finance, we had a CFO, but we really need four people in that department. Because Don's working, you know, 100 hours a week. He's like, just you got to let the fire burn. And if it's not done perfectly and if it's not closed, the quarters aren't closed on time, that's okay. Let the fire burn.

Media, same thing. And focus on the things that. that really have a massive impact and then get the people to solve the problems. I really, really learned that lesson this year. Yeah, prioritize and execute. Yep. And that's a huge one.

And then decentralized command. And what decentralized command, ultimately the power that it gives you, when you're in a leadership position, is you have the ability to look up and out instead of down and in. So instead of looking down and in at your team, instead of looking down and in and what the schedule is for today and who's on the line,

and who's not and who's sick and who's not. Instead of looking down it in at that, which takes away your overall vision of what's happening on the battlefield. You have to be looking up and out. And so, yeah, you definitely got that. And look, you're not going to solve every problem. And sometimes you've got to be like,

oh, yep, that's going to suck. Okay, got it. We accept that suck factor on that thing because we can now focus on our efforts on something that's going to, that would suck way worse and be much worse for everything that's going on here. But we, again,

you and I have some conversations that are million dollar conversations. We're making decisions. And what's funny to me is there's still like three minute conversations. But, but like, because we bought a few buildings since it's been. So since 20, since 2019.

Yeah. We've bought what, three more, four more buildings? Yeah, three going on four. with a new addition of North Carolina. Yeah. Actually, we're not buying a building, buying the business.

Yeah. But these are big investments and the, the Jocco fuel warehouse, as everything was just overflowing, we needed, we needed to go big. Yeah. We needed to go big and also need to go big on our supply chain. You know, having enough stuff in stock that when people order we can fulfill it. Well, the thing is, is as we were dealing and I remember really sitting down

on the phone with you, with Joe and Brian, our chief revenue officer and chief product officer, sitting down and saying, hey, listen, guys, learn something during this with apparel and footwear where our supply chains are local, let's say on the East Coast. I think the shit's going to happen on the nutritional side. Let's lock down everything we can. the whole supply of monk fruit and we ended up locking down aluminum too and that was kind of the big one that was a lucky one that was a lucky i mean i didn't think like people i didn't think we're going to be affected by people not at bars drinking off a tap and because normally you know people are going to the store and buying 12 packs of beer aluminum cans well it's it's aluminum doesn't matter

what the can is it matters that there's an aluminum shortage so like securing the supply chains of the wrong ingredients in the cans allowed us to really eat market share at the same time. And I think to what you're saying is having, having, being able to look up and out versus get stuck in the trenches of just survival, it really allowed us to thrive. And actually it taught me how to be a CEO for the first time ever. So I was like CEO. Yeah, that's just a bullshit title that I don't want. But I actually get it because some of the decisions that

ultimately sometimes I just have to make they are they're multi-million dollar decisions but they could make or break us you know and I'm I don't want to screw up man I don't want to screw up

how good it did it feel to take a quarter million of those precious cans of product and throw them away because that's exactly what happened this is another tuition payment yeah that was a tough not to swallow so 250,000 cans 250,000 cans we had to destroy this was what when was that was that uh 2020 yeah it was like three quarters of the way three quarters of way to

2020 so so at that time that was a big chunk of a big chunk for us big chunk it's a big chunk now it's a much less substantial it's been another it's been a year since then at that time it was a lot yeah and it was especially a lot because aluminum was short. It was hard to get the stuff run on the lines. So 250,000 cans was substantial. And we, and we, what had happened was, um, we had leaked some of the cans of this 250,000 cans were, were had been sealed wrong. And it was like one and six that were actually leaking. Yep. And so luckily we caught it and then, oh, what do we do? We consulted legal. Oh, yep, here's what you do? Oh, what do you do? You destroy them all.

Bro. I couldn't even watch it. A couple tuition payments. The funny thing about that was Maine Ty. So we're shipping, this is Maine Ty. Yeah. Main Thai who's part of the media department. Yep.

Does he run the media department? He's a media department. He's a media manager. Okay, so the media manager, Maine Thai, when we had to destroy 250,000 cans, of go, of which one out of six was actually bad. He didn't care. He started making runs with his Jeep. He said he's got a lifetime supply right now of jaco discipline go at his house.

He's got pallet upon pallet upon pallet. So there's an Amazon seller. There's an Amazon seller who's creeping up on us. Main time. He needs to get checked out. He loaded up, though. Yeah, yeah, he did. I was laughing.

ass off when he said he sent you a video oh he told you no he just was telling me about it he was like you gotta be kidding me i went down there with my jeep about 10 times his uh his grandparents served in the game yeah his grandmother drinks the go she's always tagging like fire fire america strong strong strong we said are we sponsoring her now yeah she's uh she's like 80 we're sponsoring yeah she's the she's the freaking jaco yeah an athlete Jesus All those are hard

but there were other there was a couple other events that happened in the past couple years that have been freaking really hard yeah I mean losing people losing people yeah yeah we lost two two really good ones

we we had this young kid Moe wasn't but 19 years old an awesome kid just started jihitsu this kid's life with sports uh basketball player in high school just a tremendous athlete and first time on the mats i was like this kid is going to be special and he had just gotten into it um dealing with dealing with depression and ended up taking his own life during uh during the whole pandemic and uh

Just a terrible, terrible loss that really stunned, you know, the factory and his team downstairs in the bunker. But I think, man, if he, if, I hate to say like, like, put this on jiu-jitsu, but, man, if he had started, like, a little bit earlier and gotten back into that team type of atmosphere, I know what it could have done for him. him like I know what jujitsu has done for people in his situation you know and uh I actually should have pushed harder to like get him to training more you know like it just I didn't um really shitty situation we lost uh him and then we also lost Lenny so Lenny was uh he's the man he's the guy that got us going man when it came to weaving he did everything you just give us a little background on on how you on how you found how you find you kind of found lenny yeah um there was a need kind of a desperate need a desperate need to weave to weave fabric because there wasn't any fabric

in america that we could make geese with ultimately and if you want the fabric you have the importer from china or pakistan and that wasn't an option so i just called around looking for knowledge and we just asking everybody who do you know who's done this before driving around trying to find people i just i literally like just chasing information you know reconnaissance you know and we discovered this guy and i told him what we wanted to do we we had this old loom and man he said he'd help us refurbish it and i didn't know what we're getting into again naive when it came to weaving fabric and this is so did you already have did you already have the loom at this point they they came about at the same time.

Found the loom and then found Lenny. Where did you talk to him for the first time? At the Bates Mill. We stood there and looked at that frigging loom together. So as you were going to get the loom, he went with you. Yep. Through the chain of people

that were involved in the project, he came into it. He was working with a museum to help them get the museum right and make sure the looms were right for this museum. and he came in and we looked at this loom and he straight up was like I can make that work and just those I can make that work five words I was like let's do it you know just blind faith

so Lenny I mean that guy really he's one of the main reasons for our success and and our ability to do what we do. Because when I asked Lenny, and you've heard me say this before, how many people know what you knew? And he's like a whole bunch. Like how many? Like how many New England?

He's like, well, at least five. There's at least five. Five people. You know, and he invested all of his knowledge into obviously myself and John and this young kid Cam who knows more than John and I put together times 10. So this young kid Cam,

who's in his early 20s, Lenny spent hours upon hours upon hours with him teaching him over a three-year period and and he passed and it sucks bad you know like I man first time I broke down a long time like losing him he he he meant the world to the company and to the people of origin and just was such a tremendous tremendous asset. So we did start a

like a scholarship program in his name. So that was pretty awesome. But yeah, so now the thing is on us. It's all on us. There's no more Colin Lenny. I have a voicemail actually.

I kept on my phone. I'm not, I'm never going to delete it. You know, it's like the last the last voicemail he left me i listened to it every once in while actually so he uh he's the man and his wife thea she still still calls and stops by and she's just heartbroken um i'll tell you what when i talk about like the old timers the last ones left he was the last one it was ones that was plural he's the last one

he was the last one in Maine there ain't nobody else in Maine that has his that has his knowledge the awesome thing is is that if you wouldn't have done what you did that

never would have been captured there'd be no cam there'd be it just what it just wouldn't have happened the business the industry would be dead forever like when they say, oh, it's impossible to bring back, it would have been. It would have been virtually impossible

to take back so much so that there's a company in America that weaves, it weaves denim, and they work for some brands. And they flew up to Maine recently. And I'm not going to say what the brands are, but they're well-known brands, international, well-known brands. And there's a guy here who's been in the industry for, you know, 30 years, 40 years, New York, city, you know, big denim guy ran, ran programs for the biggest denim brands. And I said, man, why are you in Maine? Like, why are you here? And he's like, can I film your operation? I'm like, yeah, sure, have at it. Film it. Like, I don't, I don't care. He's like, how did you figure out how to do all this? I said, we just figured it out. We just used common sense.

He's like, yeah, but how did you like learn? How did you, where'd you get the operators? I said, We hired them without any skill and we trained them. And we taught them about our culture and what we're all about. And they bought in. And they became better at it because they care. And he just couldn't believe it. He couldn't believe what's happening. And he said, you're the only ones that can do this.

I said, what are you talking about? He's like, you're outside of California. This company is the only ones that can make jeans. I said, what about all the brands you work with? The big ones. He said, I've asked them all the same question. Why don't you guys set up your own manufacturing? And they all have the same answer.

Because we don't have the knowledge anymore. That was 20 years ago, 25 years ago. We don't know how to do it. And so they're soliciting us to set up cut and sew so that these brands, big brands, can make jeans in America. can tell you one of those brands is Levi's because Levi's called us to ask if we would make jeans for them. And of course, you know, we said no. We make jeans for us. Because we rip people's faces off. But, you know, Lenny was the last one. And the knowledge is really where there's a

vessel of knowledge is origin. It's one of our biggest assets is just the sheer knowledge. So it's It's a beautiful thing to be part of. Yeah, and that's one of those stories right there. I remember you're sending me a text like, just got an email from Levi's. I'm like, okay, this should be an interesting call. Yeah. But it's another one of those things where the tactical short-term move

that can be very beneficial in the immediate. But if you look at it over the long term, you realize that it's not aligned with what it is we're trying to do. And we ran in the same thing. know, we had some very nice offers presented to us in the past year, really, maybe a year and a half. That I think, I actually think 99.9% of the people in the world would have taken these offers on board and executed, you know, huge amounts of money and a lot of security. but what you sell for that security and what you sell for that money

is the dream and the vision. And, you know, you and I, we had some good conversations about it, but I think a lot of times we had conversations that we were talking, we were discussing, our mouths were moving,

but our hearts were already, we already knew, what the answer was. And it was almost like, hey, man, what, what do you think? Like, well, I mean, we could. Yeah, we could. Well, it'd be nice. Yeah, it'd be nice.

It's a risk. Yeah, it's a risk. We'd have all those conversations. And in the end, it would just, each time it's been, it's a sacrifice of the vision. It's going away from the ultimate goal. It's giving up what, It's giving up control when there is, and you give up control with people that might not be

going where we're going. And if they're at a different place and all of a sudden someone else's control, or you gotta deal with someone. I've had this conversation plenty times, even with certain investors, I've said, listen, Pete and I make decisions in three minutes, three minutes. three texts, we figure out what we're going to do.

This, that is what, that's one of the major reasons why I'm hesitant to do anything because I'm gonna have to deal with you people. And you might, look, you seem like nice people, I get it. But you have, what, you have a direction that you want to go in. And we, I'm not sure what that direction is.

I'm not sure where you want to go. I know for a fact where Pete, want to go and so you start throwing variables in there and then on top of that you know you start trying to put a price on those variables and it becomes well we haven't done it big prices too yeah big the thing is it's almost like inevitable when you think about where we need to go and how to get there you know yeah at some point we will we will likely have to take some outside capital on board every it seems like every day every week that we don't we are in an even better position where maybe we can muddle through it a little bit further and then you look and be like he's

well still doing all right okay we're good can you breath hold another three months here yeah I can hold my breath yeah can you yeah you're gonna be good with it yeah I'm okay man yeah you can okay okay we're good yeah and we look and we've done that for the last year and a half It's been a lot of that. Every, almost every week, we overcome an obstacle. We make a move that turns out good. We've taken some hits too. But that just gives us so much more security to move forward with just us.

I feel like the wormhole is closing. You know, like we've been in this wormhole. And you can see the light in it. And it's like this. And we're going, we're moving towards it. We're moving towards it. And we're picking up speed and we've got to get through the wormhole before it shuts. You know?

And it's a difficult place to be, you know, into read because doing what we do is unique. And it makes us feel alive. And we're completely aligned and working on the same frequency and having fun. But we're building something that's going to transcend us at the same time. You know what I mean? It's like, holy shit. Getting to the next level is, it's a big deal, bro. What were we on the Inc. 500 in 2020?

Like 2020? Last year. For last year, the year before last, we were 364 on the Inc. 500. And then this year? And for 2020, we finished 215. Oh, we're going to crush that. Would you think about for a company that did what we did? It just shows the strength of our people and our culture and our vision to finish.

As a 250th, the fastest growing business in America, that's crazy from the freaking woods of nowhere, Maine. I mean, and literally doing what we're saying we're going to do. Yes. And an example that that I'm thinking of right now is we keep saying, we're bringing manufacturing back to America. Oh, what does that really mean? I'll tell you what it means. A trip to the Dominican Republic to buy equipment and literally ship it back to America.

Yeah. Talk to me about that. Well, Andy found this equipment, our COO, over there at the footwear division, and he's like, this is what we need to make, safety tow boots, and he's gone all in. You walk into his office, it's all books on making footwear. He knows how to make shoes. He knows how to make patterns.

I mean, this is a guy who came from setting up plants for Toyota. now working on footwear, and he was super nervous. He's like, here's the list of stuff we need to bid on. Here's what I think we're going to need. It's coming out of a Timberland factory, Timberland Boot factory and the Dominican that's shutting down. And I was like, cool, man, let's get whatever we need. He was just super nervous about it.

So we sat in the conference room and we bid real time. Yeah. You're posting that stuff on freaking Instagram. You texted me like, hey, bro. You didn't you say, hey, bro, I do you think you should be posted on Instagram? I was going to bid against you. I was worried. I'm like, dude, what are you doing?

Like, you're showing everybody that's stuff for sale. Hold off. Give me a 20 minute interval. Wait till the freaking bidding closes. Come on, bro. Let's be strategic. We did. We got it.

We secured the stuff. We really needed two containerfuls of machine. And we sent Joe, my father-in-law, down there with, with Andy and Nicole. and, you know, we, thank God, Nicole's fiancé is from the Dominican. So he's, like, packing heat here. He knows everybody who he has to pay off, because this is no small feat to get there and to get in, like, safely where we needed to go to this factory. This is during COVID.

He was it? I mean, yes, it was. I mean, of course it was. It was. So they get over there, and you got this, you got Joe from the woods of Maine. I mean, the biggest redneck on the planet, you know what I mean? Strutton there. I know what you mean.

Sure. Strutton through the streets, you know, in his jeans shorts that the girls made him at the factory. Oh, man. And they did it. They paid off everybody. They needed to pay off. Like, it was a mission. I mean, a straight up mission.

So we pulled that back in all the machinery. We had a technician come and go through everything and get it all running and it is beautiful The machinery looked beautiful It's incredible I mean some of the shit's like a year old And what that was all that was most of that was geared towards making Safety Tote Boots because we've had a huge demand signal for safety boots And it's common this fall safety toe boots Eschelon Front our work with construction companies is so massive

Yep There's because the the correlations between like running a seal platoon and running a military unit and running a construction site, they're really, really similar. And it's a real level of

where the explanations just make so much sense to them. Massive and they all are in the game. They're all in the game. They're like, when the work pants come out, that's going to get buck wild. Yeah, I know. When the work pants come out and the reason I say this is because I have a pair

and I know that, and I work construction as a kid, those things are going to get, they're the perfect pants for work. Yeah. They really are. They're like the pants you want in a post-apocalyptic environment. That shit's going to last forever. Totally overbuilt.

Totally overbuilt. Over-engineered. Over-engineered like you read about. Yeah. But the point is of the reason I'm bringing that up is this talk about bringing manufacturing back, there's no better example of that than going to a foreign country, getting

the equipment and bringing it literally back to here so we can build. Yep. That's freaking legit. When did you get COVID? I got COVID before you, right? Yeah, I got it in December. It Echo got it. You and I got

it together. We had the joint COVID. You and I were just, we We were kind of skated through it a little bit. We definitely skated through it. You lost your smell. I didn't lose anything. I had a couple of workouts that were kind of weak. What's your blood type?

A negative. I don't know what mine. I forget. Mine's A positive. Is that a thing? Yeah, they said it. They said like A positive. You were down hard?

You were down hard. Oh, yeah. I mean, I made it looking on Instagram. Like, okay, this is no factor. And I'd put my phone down and just boom. Right back. Right back. It was weird too because Maine and especially Farmington, you guys didn't get.

No, we didn't get hit. No, we locked it down pretty good. We didn't get hit like the rest of the country. Yeah. So, I mean, it, you know, it was an experience. So how many people total at origin got COVID? Eight. That's unbelievable.

How did you not spread it? So lots of conversations. with the whole team. Hey, listen, when you leave your house in the morning, make sure you're making, you know, if you can, make one stop. And on that stop, make sure you're getting the things you need for the day and then go straight home after. I mean, we ask everybody to have basically say low impact,

have super low impact. We just, you know, we made sure everybody was aligned to follow kind of those guidelines. So you got COVID though, all right? Yeah, I did. So you got COVID. What I'm saying is, how did you not go into the factory for two, three days, shake hands? Hey, let me get on that machine.

Hey, what do you think of this? You're looking over their shoulder. It was Christmas New Year's stick. Got it. So you got lucky. Got lucky. How long did you take you before you knew you had it? I knew immediately.

Oh, Miss Rona. Yeah, I knew immediately. You could just feel, you felt sick. Oh, yeah, I felt it. I was like, yeah, I'm not feeling good. But are you echo? What's that? Did you, I think I told you,

so that was the worst. The worst thing for me was I had to call everybody. I had to call everybody I knew that I had been in contact with and say, hey, hey, like, this is the way. Hey, I was, and I was, I guess I was texting people because it seemed more efficient. Yeah, yeah. And the worst was Tulsi. Because Tulsi came to visit us.

Like, we would have recorded a podcast, but, uh, She like last minute thing and she only had a little bit of time. So she's like, hey, just want to come by and say hi. We're like, cool. Come on by. And so you came in. I think we trained. And then we trained.

And then she came in and she hung out. But I will say she wore two masks. The whole time. And at this point, Echo and I, we were in our own whatever COVID bubble. So you gave Echo COVID. We don't know. Or we might have caught it from the same spot. Because we went on a trip.

We went up to Northern California. We met with California. Cowboy and we met with we met with tilt until we did it and that was the hardest thing about this and and look we don't know where we got it Whether cowboy gave it to us but cowboy got a cowboy was a Vietnam Vietnamese Sog guy saw operator just a total badass guy he dude You know you watch that podcast he's like pulling up his shirt showing all I got stabbed here got shot here got blown up over here And then all of a sudden he gets COVID and he was in the hospital stuff. It was bad And by the way the troopers that I pulled

posted about it because it hit his whole family and like people just donated a ton of money and really helped him out man so thank everybody for doing that but wherever we got it because we had flown up there we stayed in a hotel we get done with that and he had had some family event or whatever i don't know anyways we all end up getting covid and and then tulsi came and what made it hard about what i felt bad about tulsi because tulsi went from being with us to flying out to damn dc and They were, they were paranoid level 12 out there. And so she's like, yeah, if I've been exposed, she goes, I have to quarantine for 12 days. I was like, what?

She's like, just for being exposed to us. I feel horrible. So sorry. So she surfed for 12 days. No, I think, no, she was in D.C. So she couldn't go home. And Hawaii was real strict too. So it was.

But you know what? She ended up getting like two back-to-back tests and she was negative, negative. And so ended up being all right, which was cool. what about like your own what about so we we kind of talked about the business COVID was kind of like a little bit rough on Pete Roberts as a as a human well I did I went down for a couple of weeks my whole I gave it to my whole family my father-in-law my lot they were pissed at me no one in my family got it really and we didn't I you know I didn't stay with did you quarantine yourself or anything I after I when I

padded I had to yeah I stayed in I stayed at my property did you stay away from your family though Well, I didn't know I had it. And then I had, I must have got a pretty massive viral dose. And so then I gave it to my, my mother-in-law, my father-in-law, my son, my daughter, my son's best friend, my wife, his freaking parents, Zander. I call him a hos, I call him the Sandalorian. They sent him up to the woods of Maine to a cabin for two weeks. His parents sent him up by himself.

There's like one store up there that he would walk to or get his. goods or whatever. Maybe he had them delivered, I don't know. Bro, no one in my family got it. That's crazy. And we didn't, I mean, my family, because we were like, okay, well, I got it. So we all go, we're just stuck together. We're all going to get it.

And no one got it. Weird. That's weird. I mean, I was, even before I knew I had it, which I obviously had it, I was like, you know, my wife and I are, you know, like. I blame it on chips. Chips, chips, chips, chips. Chips.

What do you mean? I eat chips. Oh, potato chips. And I offer chips to everybody else. Potato chips. Cape Cod kettle-style potato chips. I plain giving COVID to everybody on Cape Cod chips. But my mother-in-law was super pissed.

She was super pissed at me. And I'm like, you're welcome. After she, you know, it was fine. I was like, you're welcome. You're welcome. She didn't like that either. What about your training during Ms. Rona? Yeah, I mean, I was shut down for two weeks.

I was done. And then when I got back into work, working out or trying to work out. It was like literally five minutes. I was like, do you still feel like Ms. Rona in your lungs? So honestly, there's some cognitive things going on for me. There's like.

Beyond just your normal limited capacity. I mean, it's pretty limited as it is. You know what I'm saying? Like I, you know, no, there's a little bit of shit going on. But oh good, I feel like, I mean, I feel super healthy now. You know, even though I put on 40 freaking pounds. You put on 40 pounds.

40, man. Wait. A fowardy. Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. Potato chips, bro. That's a lot of potato chips, dude. It's a post-apocalyptic kind of environment. You're just going daily like, this could be it, man.

This could be it. What's that most is cherry pie, son? I'm thinking survival. You know, you got that extra layer on you. You know, you got a fast for a week or two. The food supplies don't. Dwindling, guess what? You're ready.

This guy's living. Unless you decided to take me out and carve me out. You put on 40 pounds before or after? No, during COVID. I put on 40 pounds during COVID. Wait, when you had COVID. No, no, no. Did you lose weight when you had COVID?

Yeah, I dropped like 10 pounds. Okay. And that was because you couldn't eat. That was because you were sweating, you were sick. Yeah, sweating sick and then couldn't taste anything. So the only thing that actually felt good in my mouth that old school campbell's chicken noodle soup. So you're losing weight.

And all right. So that's happening with COVID. And then we had a bunch of other crazy, like, awesome stuff going on. Because we, that's another thing, timing wise. We went into vitamin shop. Yeah. The entire Jocko fuel line goes into vitamin shop. It explodes because that's where people are shopping.

And goes berserk out of the gate. And then COVID hits. Yep. And all of a sudden, that's like goes on a little bit of a, of, you know, hesitation there because people, it shut down, you know, wasn't whatever. What's the word again? Critical mass, critical essential. Essential.

Right. Was vitamin shop essential? They were. We actually, we actually, the vitamin shop, we exploded in because people, they were buying, like, when you went into the stores, like, my wife was telling me, she's like, I'm going shopping. This is like, as shit's coming across and you're wearing the face coverings and everybody's got mass on. So she's going to the store and she's like, Bubonic play. I just needed some essentials. I needed some bread and

you know some tuna fish or whatever. She's coming out there ready to survive for four years. She's like, Pete, she's like, I'm going down the aisle and I look and there's brown bread and there's only one left. I've never bought brown bread in my life. She's like, I had to put it in the shopping car because there's only one left. And that's the kind of, like the kind of chaos that went on. And then folks started going to GNCs and vitamin shops and anywhere else you could get protein. Yeah. And supplements.

So it kind of spiked. I remember like a little bit of hesitation. And then it was like, yeah. Oh, yeah. So that ended up being awesome. Yeah, it was good for business. And then same thing with going into Wawa, which is the, if you don't know what Wawa is,

it's a massive convenience chain on the East Coast. And we rolled into Wawa, we rolled into Wawa on a three-month test. So if you don't know anything about this kind of thing, so it's convenience stores, they're like the real estate, right? They're like the real estate where you get to sell stuff. Yeah.

If you're lucky, they own it. And they only want to sell stuff that's going to sell. So they don't just, you can't just walk into a convenience store. I'm like, oh, I want to sell my, you know, my drink here. They go, we don't care. We don't want your drink. Get out of here. Because they want stuff that's going to sell.

They want there to be a demand for it. And so we got, we had some relationships. Luckily, like everything's relationship based. Joe Moss had some relationships And So they gave us a three-month test to see how we do in Florida In Florida And I think it was three weeks

Three weeks into it They called and said chain wide Because every all you that are listening to this right now Went out and got crazy Yes And a matter of fact it got to a point where they asked me to stop saying go clear the

because I was like hey if you go to Wawa clear the shelves and people were like okay cool people are posting videos of them just clearing shells into coolers

from Wawa freaking awesome so awesome so that was super helpful and awesome that y'all went out and did that and so in three weeks

they called us and said can we get enough supply to go chain wide in now and we were like okay yeah so that was and that's a

that's an iconic convenience store. It's an iconic convenience store. And it's a benchmark. It's a benchmark for all convenience stores. And we had to, you know, we had to go crush a few Wawa and hoagies. Oh yeah, we got some hoagies on. But that's opened up the doors. Now there's, now there's, we should be spreading to many other convenience stores. I don't want to name them right now, but they're all over the country. The one, probably the hardest one to get into as far as geographically when this is a bummer, California. California has some

convenience stores that we're just, we're not we're not in California the way we want to be. We'll find the right partner, but it's just, it's a little bit tricky of an atmosphere out there, which is weird too, because California like basically is convenience stores. Like there's convenience stores everywhere.

There's people that just, that's where they shop is convenience stores. You know, that's where that's where it's happening. You know, and so we'll, but we're working that issue to get to a point where where it starts to go forward. What else?

That's a pretty good year, man. Yeah, you know, when you think, talking through this, holy shit. All this thing, all this has happened at the same time. Oh, by the way, we bought a, a business,

a factory in North Carolina. In North Carolina, by the way. We just closed on that. Yep. Yep. All the papers are signed. So that's a massive amount of capability that we're going to have

to so even better. And North Carolina, it's similar in many ways to what we have up in Maine, what we have up in New England where this used to be the dominant industry up here. And it just faded away. And North Carolina is similar in many ways. And they have, they also have,

they also have parts of the industry down there that are central in that area that aren't central up here. Yes. And so that'll be a huge boost to what we're able to do as well. Yeah, when it comes to like our heavy hoodies, you know, we have the new heavy hoodies joggers t-shirts grappling shorts vice shorts board shorts knit products like all the all the new stuff we're we're doing as we focus on building origin

and bringing bringing it to the masses blitz scaling this it's just going to be phenomenal to have this other facility so it's another big you know big step you know risk reward you know and I think we both buy into that 100%. I don't think that's like boots. I think it's, yeah, I don't think that big of a risk. But it's still, it's still crazy to say we're going to drive the same culture we drive in Maine and North Carolina,

you know, and think through having the right people in place and processes and making sure that you get enough face time there and get them bought into what we're doing. from an extreme ownership perspective, you know, and it's gonna take time to make all that happen. Yeah, one thing that is beautiful about the culture and them, you know, them, this isn't us having to impose a new culture. This isn't us having to say, hey, here's what you think is important,

and here's what we think is more, do you need to think like we think. because what we're doing, it just resonates. It's in, look, guess what they do for a living. They sew stuff. They make stuff. They want to make stuff in America just like,

we're not trying to sell them something else. They're already on board. And so it's more like a unification. And it's an opportunity for them to have, you know, to do more and better and bigger. And the people that are there right now to have more opportunities and more job stability.

and earn more and make more and do more. Like, that's what, you don't have to convince somebody. You don't have to convince somebody of that. You know what the best part is? The place wasn't for sale. Yeah. Wasn't for sale. Yep.

You know, but being able to connect with the current ownership who's been running it since 1974 and they're, you know, later in life, flying them up to Maine, showing them what we're doing, telling them we want to bring this to North Carolina. We want to re-inject the soul back into this community and back into this company and back into the people. And in them and him, knowing that he doesn't have the energy for it anymore.

He just doesn't have the capacity. He has the passion for it, but he can't physically do it. And seeing that there's another generation who's going to carry on what he's built, I mean, brought tears to his eyes. So it was an opportunity that we just can't pass up on. And I think it's going to be good, man. Looking forward to it. Anything else? Nah.

Echo Charles, you got any questions? What's your cognitive scenario particularly? Like what are you having trouble with? Yeah, like memory or just gathering words up? Oh, for all. Yeah. I've always been very like sharp. I can piece words together, you know, and I can flow them off the tongue.

But sometimes I get caught up and I never get caught up, you know. And someone says, oh, isn't I just age? You're 42 now. I don't know about that. When I drink this stuff, when I'm drinking the go, you're on fire. Oh, yeah. It flows. It flows.

Yeah. But I don't have any lag in anything. Good. All right. Well, probably a good place to stop. And I mean, just the thing that you just said, that right there that kind of hit that I think is the unifying thing is what we're doing is about the people it's about the people it's bigger than it's infinitely bigger than just

us obviously it's it's a movement that resonates with people the way people think it already is there you know what I'm saying that's what's trying to say like about the culture it's already there and it's not just in North Carolina the people that this resonates with people with people it just resonates they understand what it is we're trying to do they understand that what we all are doing including you that's listening it's like what we all are doing is the right thing to do it's the right thing to do is to rebuild America is to is to take care of our communities is to take care of our families, take care of our friends, take care of our country. And the way that you do that is you

take care of people. And you put people above profit. There's so many decisions that got made. And at some point, when we document this whole thing and we go back and we pick apart decisions that got made by corporations in this country where they decided to save 4% on the production of a pair of jeans or 6% on the production of a pair of boots. And they took and they ripped those that rip those capabilities out of this country for 4%, for 6%, and destroyed communities to make that money. When we tell that story, I think people already know that

and I think that's why this resonates with people, they understand that what we're doing is the right thing to do. Putting people above profit. And by the way, that is not, that is a strategic win. The short term win is, oh, we can make, we can save 4% of it. If we ship everything overseas and we get it shipped overseas or we get it made overseas,

that's a tactical win. Yeah, hey, we made more money this quarter. We made more money this year. But what they did in the meantime is destroy communities and take away the freaking thing that makes America America. And that is the pride in what we do in this country. So I think everybody knows that we're doing the right thing. I think that's why so many people are supporting what we're doing it. That's why so many people are with us.

I feel like it's not just us It's everyone When I meet people You mentioned the other day Someone was telling you that at the muster There's everyone's wearing origin jeans Hell yeah they are Yeah that's what's happening

And when we make stuff and they know where it comes from And they know that it's connected to other people That's why I think this is just a train That's just leaving the station And it's picking up speed And it's gonna roll hell yeah that's where i think we're at echo charles all right so echo uh how do we get on board this train well you got to do the right thing you know speaking of doing the right thing so we'll

talk about okay you mentioned discipline go right helping you with your yeah you know your brain that's jock go yeah yeah that's brain fuel brain fuel that's a morning brew right there so that's essentially doing the right thing in honest in a smaller kind of more specific way where you know we need our energy drinks some people drink coffee and I dig it some people they drink energy drinks but you know you're not doing the right thing a lot of the time when you're drinking like a normal energy drink you mean a sugary snack that so makes you feel like shit yeah later yeah I never drank energy drinks oh for I did I've had a sip of a familiar popular drink once you never drank energy drinks but I heard it about

kids dying from those you know drinks I was like hell no Yeah. Never let my kids either. Now I let them. Of course. Because it's good for you. That's the test. That's the doing the right thing.

Do you let your kids drink it? I do. Yep. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. In fact, my kids kind of get nuts with it. Yeah.

I'll say, I don't know. Speaking of profit before people and I don't know how much profit we're losing because of my kids and their friends. Oh, trust me. He's freaking nuts. Yeah. Yeah. These kids are rocking. Yeah.

Yeah. They, they, they, I didn't. I didn't realize it was going to be so popular with kids, you know, teenagers, athletes, all that stuff. It's been awesome. Yeah,

it's the new, it's essentially the new, what, paradigm? Is that the right word? Paradigm. I shouldn't ask you anymore. Well,

because you don't want to catch his vocabulary in a low. You know, oh, everybody's having, but, but it's like, in this group, my brain's working just fine.

What's the new era? I'm like, Einstein in this group. Amen. But, yeah, but yeah, So it's a new era of energy drinks.

We don't have to worry about that kind of stuff anymore. We don't have to worry about our kids dying anymore. Actually, you drink two of those. You're more healthy, technically. Yeah. Is you what I'm saying? Electrolites everything. Boom.

Just in there. In there. So yeah, that's one of the things you can do, man. Get on the, on the, got to get on that subscription. The cool thing is you're doing a, like, you're doing something good for yourself. And you're helping out the world.

The world. It's tactical and strategic. That's true. 100%. Cross the board. Also speaking of doing the right thing do the right thing for your joint. So you know joint How should I say maintenance? It's not as sexy. It's like an energy drink or even mulk or something like this. You want to know what's not sexy? Limping around. Oh yeah Got hurt. That's not. It's true. It's true. But it's like one of those things. But we got to pay attention to do the right thing. So you get the joint warfare of the super cruel oil. Keep your joints in the game. And see this you just said subscription. You know, you kind of like we're starting to go down that path. But this is the one

in my opinion this is where you subscribe because you don't want to get caught short without what you need yeah and it's not like you're waking up in the morning craving some krill oil or something like this like you might be like hey I'm kind of

craving the discipline go you can find yourself in that kind of situation but the joint warfare you don't crave that but you need that unless you don't take it then you crave it I use it religious I was with Laif

Laif and I were down at the muster and so we do these we we do workouts at the muster you know and they're burpees and you're They're just a little bit different right and So we do them so we show up for the muster before the muster actually starts and we do the PTs to kind of test them out Make sure they're good to go how we're gonna do them where we're gonna do them like and You know so we did a bunch of burpees and jump squats or whatever one day and something like that and Laif and I we have like a room that's connected you know and because we're working and like whatever day two of us being down there he's like bro he texts me about that he goes he got doing warfare and cruel oil i was like bro this is not amateur hour what's

up and he goes i didn't bring because he has a go bag right yeah yeah he travels with it but you got to reload your go bag failure to reload and i was like hey man i got bad news for you i got some for myself i didn't bring enough for other people. Because that's how I do my load out. My load out. Did we overnight him some? I don't know what he did.

He might have got him in a vitamin shop. Yeah. I don't know what he did. I couldn't help him. Yeah. It was rough. But that's the kind of situation you don't want to be in.

No. Right. You don't. So let's not let that happen because he's in there and limping around holding his back. Yeah. It makes you a believer, though.

If you don't take it, you also know, you know, That was a classic. Laif was like, bro. That's our top. You know, our whole company, you combine everything together, apparel, footwear, geese, supplements, everything. Joint warfare is our number one selling item. Every day.

We, like, America's addicted to joint warfare. It's freaking good. It's so good for you. So good for you. So what else? What else? Echo Charles. Speaking of good for you, immunity.

Vitamin D3. Can we talk luck here for a second? Sure. Okay, rewind pre-COVID. B-little. Like, hey, Jocko, what do you think about vitamin D? I take it every day. Oh, do you wanna make some?

I was like, yeah, let's do it. This is pre-COVID. Let's do it, okay. Hey, while we're doing that, let's make immunity, because I travel and I get on planes and I shake hands with a bunch of people, and they're passing you the freaking all kinds of germs and whatnot.

Let's make an immunity thing. Cool, okay, so we make two things, Cold War and vitamin D. Pre-COVID, pre-COVID. Yeah. Pre-COVID. Good timing. God, that was epic. That was epic, man.

Again, this is, you know, just luck, grace of God, God's a frog man, whatever you want to say. That is just perfect. And so we bought a decent amount of it. We stocked up on a decent amount of it. And then as soon as COVID hit, people are literally telling people to take exactly like vitamin D. and half the ingredients that are in in Cold War. Yep. So that was awesome.

And again, luck, timing, grace of God, a little bit everything will take it. I think you, when you're moving in the right direction without compromise and you're in tune, when you're in tune, then, you know, shit just happens. I feel like we're in tune with not just our customers, but we're in tune with what America needs. You know what's weird? I was talking to Maine Tide today. And I was saying sometimes I make myself nervous, right? Because I like, I'm very particular in what I like. And there certainly is no guarantee that anyone else in the world is going to like what I like.

And this podcast is a great example. There's been many times where I've been creating or reading or preparing a podcast. And I'm thinking to myself, this is pretty much going to be for an audience of one. that coach Charles is going to be the only person is going to have to suffer through what I'm doing right now. That's what's going to happen. And I'm wrong because there are other people that think the exact same way. And that's what I said about the discipline go drink. He says, isn't it weird?

He said, I heard you talking about why didn't anybody else make this. And I think for me, I think it's crazy to me that no one would make an, energy drink, that's good for you. That's not sweetened with sugar. That doesn't have any, that's pasteurized. It's crazy to me to think that no one would. And sometimes when I think of these things, I think I might be thinking for an audience of one.

Like, oh, if I could have that, I would do it. Right. And so, but then you test, you know, you put it together and you put it out there and you realize this is the most, this is the best thing about all this stuff, everything that we're doing. The best thing about it is, you realize we're not alone.

I'm not alone, you're not alone, we're not alone. There's a bunch of people on the path that want to be better, that want to help America, that want to take vitamin D3, that want coal. Like, there's a bunch of people that want a stronger immune system. This shouldn't seem like a shock, right? There's a bunch of people that want genes that are made in America. Iconic American genes that aren't even made in America.

What is that? Stop. And so it's very nice sometimes for me to, realize at certain moments that there's that we're in this together yeah it's true yeah speaking of being in this together

milk or on them on the milk train together so that's the good on right extra protein additional protein in form of dessert you did a good job with that one guys real good job with the taste the milk yeah got to get some of the mold providing all those milk shakes at camp this week they loved it

vitamin shop wah wah joccofuel.com if you subscribe to it chipping's free That's, look, look, are we competing against some heavies? You know, are we 135 pounds in the open bracket going in against the heavies? Yeah, we are. And they got some advantages. They got some advantages. And so we got to figure out how we're going to counter some of those advantages.

One of the things that some of these big players, including the biggest players in the game, can do, is they can ship stuff for free because they're absorbing costs. They're making money on the other areas. And so they figure out how to ship stuff for free. And so you and I had this conversation, you're like, bro, we got to figure this out. And I'm like, hey, man, this is America. Like, people don't want to pay for shipping. And you're like brainstorming. I heard freaking spark plugs going off in your noggin.

A week later, you're like, bro, if we can get people, if people subscribe. Like a sterling engine. I was thinking more like a two horse. I was thinking for a lawnmower engine. But, hey, you know what? It produced. Because like two weeks later, you're like, listen, I ran. and the numbers.

If people subscribe, we can ship for free. We can ship for free. And that's how we can do it and like awesome. So if you are out there and you want us to ship for free, which we wanna do, subscribe to one of these things and everything's, all the shippings for free. That allows, that gives us the advantage, an actual advantage in the open match

against the heavyweight monsters that are out there that wanna smash us, by the way. They want nothing more than to smash. Oh yeah, when you start eating people's market share, They're not happy about that. They don't like it. So there you go. What else?

What else we got out? Well, this may seem surprising, but a company called Origin USA. Good company. I hear good things. It's pretty good. Yeah. So like you said, hey, if you're going to get iconic American stuff, but you get it with either materials from overseas or they're made overseas, it kind of defeats the purpose a little bit.

We can't even call that iconic anymore. And we definitely can't call it American. It's very hard. It's very hard. Yeah. But when you're making stuff that's made with literally the seeds of the cotton that's grown all done in America. That's right. All the way you say cotton.

That's how that's how it's said. There's two T's two T's in cotton. By the way. It's not caught in. I guess it's not zero T's. I guess you're right. Cotton. I feel like you guys are right about me being right in this case.

I talked a lot about things that are right and wrong. That thing is not right the way you say cotton. The cotton is grown here in America. And the jeans, whoop, come out on the other side. Iconic American. Delta 68 jeans finally got some. Thanks, Pete. Thanks, Pete.

On the last got some. So, yes, origin USA, you like that kind of stuff? This is where you can get that kind of stuff. Not to mention Jiu Jitsu stuff. That's what you guys started at, right, jiu jitza stuff. Best skis in America. The people at the submerging camp, sorry. Facts'i.

Best geese in the world, 100%. But people everywhere, even you today, You come and say, bro, this is something about to ski. Oh, it was, man. What is this? What is this? Don't. It's special.

It's a beautiful thing. We found the last living unicorn herd and we skinned them. And we made these. I was looking for it. People would be like, they killed the unicorns. Bro, I have this couch at my house. And I forget what the material is, but it's like this gray kind of, um, no, it's not velvet.

I don't know what it is. It might just be leather, but it's great. It's great, and it's kind of a big couch, right? It's a brannosaurus. So my son was over with his girlfriend, and my son's girlfriend's like really nice, super sweet girl, very nice. And, you know, we're sitting on the couch. We're watching UFC or something like this. And, you know, all of a sudden she's like saying the couch is comfortable.

Or my son's like, oh, this couch is so awesome because it's a relatively new couch. So she goes, yeah, this couch is so nice. She goes, what's it made of? And I go, oh, it's baby whale skin. She got the most horrified look on her face, bro. I had to like immediately say, no, I'm kidding, because she was about to cry. Yeah, baby whale skin. She was like, yeah, so there you go.

And it kind of like looks like it could be. A baby whale. Baby whale skin, it could be. So she bought in hook line and sinker right on. But you have the geese unicorn skin. Like the skin that it kind of seems like that could be the case. That's all like luxurious it is. It's luxurious.

You kind of can't go back. I was looking for an electric blanket. You don't remember last year here. You got kind of cold. Bear with me. Hawaiian. So I'm looking for my big electric blanket and I end up pulling out this bin. Like I could be in there and it's like my old geese.

And bro, I touched the old. I'm not going to say the brand. Yeah. We don't got to do that. But I touched that guy and I was like, Brian, I could never put that thing on anymore. It's like sleeping with sandpaper. Yeah. It's like comparatively speaking.

Yeah, once you go, you kind of can't go back, you know. Or is USA.com. If you want to get some of this stuff. It's true. Good stuff on that one. Also, Jocko store. Jocko is a store called Jocco store. That's where you can get T-shirts,

hoodies, hats. Let's say discipline equals freedom. Jocko podcast. You can see Pete wearing Jocco podcast shirts from time to time. You look good in. I wear those shirts a lot. I wear that green get after it on a lot. Well, yeah.

Yeah, some good stuff on there. We've also got a subscription situation too. Free shipping as well. Look at that. Cool new shirt. Like this one. A little bit different designs, a little bit more creative. Got the next one is the homage to the sea wolves.

Oh, damn. If you like the sea wolves, some of us do. Cremble Sea wolves. Yeah, yeah. It's freaking outstanding. It's all at Jocco store. That's what I like. I like, let's move in that direction of,

of the shirts on the shirt locker representing that aspect of the podcast. So yeah, jocco store.com. If you like something, hey, get something. Subscribe to this podcast, wherever you listen to podcast. Leave a review. If you want.

Leave a review. Yeah, I haven't said that in a while. Leave a review. But no, leave a review. It's cool because A, we get to read them. You can give us some input. But B, if you read, I haven't done this in a long time. But if you write a really funny one, well, I'll read it on here, whatever.

Also, don't forget Jockenravelling podcast with myself at D.C., Daryl Cooper, grounded podcast, Warrior Kid podcast for the Warrior Kids out there. We also have the Jocko Underground. Look, we don't control this platform. We don't. Whatever platform you're listening on, we don't control it. Unless something you're listening on the underground, jaco, underground.com. That we control.

So we set up just to make sure that things don't go awry We set up our own little platform Jock Underground.com You are helping us fund that By subscribing to it It costs $8.18 a month That's how you help us build that platform And maintain that platform

And we will be there in the event of an emergency In case of a real bubonic black plague Or in case of censorship Or in case of free shadow banning All the stuff that's out there. If you can't afford it, it's cool. We want you in the game.

We're not trying to like exclude anybody. If you can't afford it, no factor. Email assistance at jaco underground.com and we'll get that taken care of. We have a YouTube channel. It's true. It's called the Jocko podcast channel. Verified by the way. Oh yeah, it's verified.

That's how you know. Yeah, yeah. The same deal. Check on. Oh, you like that. Feel pretty good about that one? I feel good. Are you verified?

I feel good. Oh, what do you mean? Like on Instagram? No, no, no. You're not? No, I'm not. You got to work on that. Are you?

There's only one. I'm not verified. Oh, okay. I only have, no, that's for like, 15,000 followers on Instagram. No, but it's not about the number of followers. It's not about the number of followers.

It's just like if you're like a, what do you call? Like a public figure. Like Jocko. Oh, like you are? No, no, no, no, no, like you, bro. So, like a celebrity. See what I'm saying?

No, no. I'm not, I'm not. That's so funny. A little blue checkmark. None. Yeah. Yeah. It is kind of like a phenomenon, though.

You know, like you get the blue check mark like Jocko has on Twitter, too, by the way. Yeah. And it's kind of like, oh, yeah. It's like a badge of it. Yeah, yeah, a badge of honor. Part of the glitterati. Bing. Whatever.

Do I sense jealousies from people over here? No, no, no. No, Jock fuel, we got verified. That's legit. I got to work on origin. We haven't, we haven't tried yet. Maybe call it Jocko origin. It'll get verified.

I'm going to change my Instagram thing. Jocco's friend, Pete. Chopin's friend, Pete. Hey, you know how to school is, if you want to follow, like, a lot of this stuff that we're talking about, also, Origin USA, the YouTube channel, that's another, another awesome thing to check out. Yeah. You do main tie and the team puts together. Origin HD. Yeah, it's once a week.

Yeah. It's bi-weekly now. Okay. See, that's just a week. Totally, total inside look at what we're doing. Yeah, it's awesome. And Maine Ty showed up at origin saying, can I work here? And you said, what skills do you have?

And he was like, hmm. And you said, can you sweep floors? He said, yep. And now he's running media. Media manager. So check out what Maine Ty, self-taught. He does some good work. Doing good work.

Even approved by Echo Charles over there. So subscribe to those things. We got psychological warfare. I made an album. It's got tracks on it. I'm going to tell you in your moments of weakness not to be weak. And some pragmatic reasons why that's not. going to be a good call what if like you're about to like pound like half a container of

baklava like is that like I don't have one for that same yeah yeah it's a lot of positive reinforcement there yeah yeah it's like kind of like it's kind of it's hard uh flipsidecanvass com my brother dakota mire making cool stuff to hang on your wall we got a bunch of books i got a new book coming out called final spin available for pre-order right now and in fact the yeah i just got done recording the audio there's I read the audio. I was going to have actors and actresses do the audio. But then when you see the book and you read the book,

you'll be like it doesn't fit. Because the book is just sparse and raw and bear and confrontational almost in its approach. And so having a bunch of actors and actresses wasn't like that, so I just read the whole thing myself. So final spin, pre-order that. I've had a bunch of people at camp that preemptively apologized to me

when they give me a book to sign. because it's second edition, third a dish, whatever. They feel bad. Look, I don't want you to feel that bad about it, but let's face it, we both know that you hesitated at the moment. So get that first of the dish, final spin, leadership strategy and tactics field manual, the code, the evaluation of the protocols,

discipline equals freedom field manual. Way the Warrior Kid 1, 2, 3, and 4, Mikey and the Dragons, about faced by Hackworth. Been signing that one lately, which is cool. Extreme ownership and the dichotomy of leadership that I wrote with my brother, Laif Babin. Eschlam Front, speaking of Late Babin, we have a leadership consultancy,

we solve problems through leadership. Go to Eshalomfront.com. If you want help inside your organization with leadership, that's also where you can find the details for our live events, including the muster, including field training exercises,

including EF Battlefield. Next muster is Las Vegas. It's not on the strip of Las Vegas. It's at a place called the Red Rock Hotel. And so it's not one of those situations where you go and it's, oh, we're just gonna party. It's not like that.

It's separate. So it's like a 20, maybe a 30 minute drive. So most of you don't wanna come out and party anyways. But if you wanna bring like your company out there and you're thinking, I don't wanna have the issues of bringing everyone out there, it's not like that. So that's what we're doing. The next one, that's the next muster.

It's in Las Vegas, October 28th and 29th. also have online training extreme ownership academy what's cool is seeing people from origin doing that everybody everybody's awesome that's really a lot of our success in alignment with our management team middle management and upper management is getting on there my wife is a savage about it like if you miss a training like some serious shit better have happened in your life like straight up why were you on the training she's she's she's You know, and I've talked through Amanda, talked to Amanda through a few situations, you know,

like over the years of, hey, this is what's going on. She's like, hey, can you need me a call and talk to me about this? And I think what she realizes is all that information that I've given her personally is also available to everybody on your team and everybody who ever wants to sign in. And what a incredible way. The thing about leadership is it's really easy to get distracted and go to your,

your primordial instincts of how you think you should act. And that's wrong. In many cases, it's wrong. So getting that leadership primer every, you know, every couple times, three times a week, four times a week, checking in, seeing what's going on, and getting that in your brain, it's so freaking good for you. So that's why your wife is in the game, go to Extreme Ownership.com. And if you want to help service members active, retired, their families, gold star

families if you want to donate or get involved in the charity organization called america's mighty warriors.org it's run by mark lee's mom mama lee she's making things happen she has a huge impact so check out america's mighty warriors.org if you want to get involved or if you want to donate and if you want more of my lagging lyrical lopes very or you need more of well you need more Roof, Echoes chatter. Then well, you can

find us on the interwebs, on Twitter, on the gram, on Facebook. Echoes at Echo Charles. I am at Jockelwilling. Pete, Unverified is at Pete M. Roberts. I got to change that. I'm just going to change it to Pete Origin. Do you think I should do that? I don't know.

I think you should just use Origin USA. I do. Oh, no, I do. It's my primary. Yeah. So I think the other I don't know. What is the difference? It's going to grow like, well, my personal one, I do more personal stuff. And then origin is kind of like. So should we even say it right now?

The personal one? If it's personal stuff? Pete. If it's, Pete. Dot M. Roberts. No, I mean, it's, when I say personal stuff, I like post like training stuff. Yeah.

Jiu-Jitsu stuff. But isn't that origin USA? It is. But Origin USA is going to grow well beyond me. Uh, so you got a little. You got a little backslats. Got it. You have Twitter, Origin, BJJ.

Are you in the Twitter game anymore? I mean, I get on like once a month. So not really. Not really. But I mean, I get on there because I get a bunch of buildup of messages and stuff. JoccoFuel. JoccoFuel.com. Yeah.

And working on a new website for JoccoFuel. Origin. Origin.USA.com. Yes, sir. So that's where we're at. Did I miss anything for how to find us? Nah. Yeah.

I mean, and at this point, anyone that's still listening, it definitely knows where we're at. So we're just talking to like, it's talking about an audience of one. There's one person that's working a 48-hour shift in Alaska right now. That's like, man, I hope they keep talking. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. He's got nothing else to do. So thanks.

But if you are still here and everybody that is here, man, thanks to all of you. Thanks for supporting the cause. Thanks for supporting origin and Jock Fuel. And by doing that, thank you for supporting America. And look, everything that we're talking about, every single thing that we're talking about,

what we're doing right now, from the podcast that we're doing to the gear that we're making, to the fuel that we're supplying to the world, zero of this is possible without what you're doing, without your support. And we are all in this together. So thank you. And let's freaking go. And to all our military right there, out there right now, we are recording this in August 2021. Afghanistan. is in a downward spiral. And I do not know what you all are going to be called to do. But I wish you good luck.

Godspeed. And I know you will not fail your comrades in arms. And I know you will not fail our country. So thank you for your service. And thank you for putting yourselves in harm's way to protect the freedom that we enjoy and love here. So thank you. And to our police and law enforcement, firefighters, paramedics, EMTs dispatchers, correctional officers,

Border Patrol, Secret Service, and all first responders, thank you for protecting us and keeping us safe here on the home front. And to anybody else out there, this is what we're doing, it's not just our dream, this is the American dream. That's what it is.

To create, to build, to work together, to help and support each other. That's what we're doing. to chase and grind and risk and work and execute and to turn this dream, our dream, your dream, into a reality. And to quote, Lenny, I can make that work.

And we all can do the same thing. We can make this work. And until next time, this is Pete, and Echo and Jocko. Out.