Jocko Podcast - 349: Powerful Enemies Must Be Outfought and Outproduced. W/ Pete Roberts. Origin USA.

Episode Date: August 31, 2022

Pete Roberts of Orign USA. Origin Hunt line, Clean protein, and Clean Energy. Bringing manufacturing back to America.Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/jocko-podcast/exclusive-content

This is Jocko podcast number 3.49 with Echo Charles and me, Jocco Willink. Good evening, Echo. Good evening. Powerful enemies must be outfought and outproduced. It is not enough to just turn out a few more planes, a few more tanks, a few more guns, a few more ships than can be turned out by our enemies. We must outproduce them overwhelmingly so that there can be no question. of our ability to provide a crushing superiority of equipment in any theater of the World War. And that right there is what President Roosevelt told Congress and America,

less than a month after the attack on Pearl Harbor. And what he talked about doing, we did. America provided almost 70% of the military equipment. for the Allies in World War II. 2997,000 aircraft, 193,000 artillery guns, 86,000 tanks, 2 million trucks, 2.6 million submachine guns, almost 12 million rifles. The US Navy grew from 700 ships

to almost 7,000. And that included 23 battleships and 100. ships and 151 aircraft carriers. And that crushing superiority of production and the brave men who brought those weapons to bear against the enemy overwhelmed the Nazis and the Imperial Japanese Army and America's ability to create and produce to design and manufacture. This has always been one of our strongest. As a nation are working class the men and women of this country that actually do these things

That actually make these things happen, but that asset and that capability It faded it faded and Manufacturing went overseas We shut down a lot of our mills. We shut down a lot of our factories. We abandoned our communities. We abandoned our communities communities. We abandoned our workforce. We abandoned the American worker and our rivals around the world. They smiled and they eased that transition for us. They helped us down that path. They offered cheap labor, basically slave labor. They didn't care about worker safety. They didn't care about the environmental impact of what they were doing. But they were able to

they were able to win on price, but we paid the price. And we began to lose that incredibly valuable asset in our country, our ability to make things, our ability to build things, our ability to create and manufacture. And with the loss of that skill, with the loss of that asset, our strength in the world began to diminish. began to fade.

But there's a new fire burning now. And there's a slow burning revolution occurring. There are companies in America that have had enough of that, that are capturing the skills from the past, that are teaching the right people, that are restoring the machines and resurrecting the factories. There are people and companies that are rebuilding America into the strong, powerful, and benevolent nation it once was. And I am honored to be part of some of those companies with my business partner, P. Roberts.

And we have, we've invested everything we've got into Origin USA and into Jocko Fuel. and we are doing our best in this new war. An economic war, yes, it's an economic war. It's also a war of ideas. And it's a war of ideology. When you look at who we're up against, it's a war of skill. It's a war of production.

It's a war of efficiency. And it's a war of grit. It's a war between state control. and self-determination, a war between subjugation and liberty, between slavery and freedom. That's what's at stake. And that's not just rhetoric. That's what's going on. And it's great to have Pete back here with us tonight to talk about the war that we're fighting right now on all fronts as we try to help rebuild America.

Pete, what's happening, man. Bad ass, man. Powerful. Thanks for having me back on. Pete Roberts, if you don't know who he is, podcast 93, podcast 141, podcast 194, podcast 297. That's we joined forces in 2017. We recorded a podcast every year up here at the origin main immersion jiu-jitsu camp, which we, there's a little gap in 2020.

We got shut down. We weren't allowed to do jihitsu. or allowed to do jiu-jitsu. At least not in public. Yeah, yeah. We kept training. I'm sure you kept training to. So this has turned out to be an annual thing that we're doing.

And it's a good opportunity for us to let people know what's going on, share people, some of the experiences that we've had, and some of the lessons that we've learned because we're learning. We're learning a lot of lessons along the way and give everyone an update as to what's happening so that they can see, sort of the big picture of what's going on. So essentially, we're talking about two companies. And really, these two companies,

I would say it's safe to say that they started as sort of as Siamese twins, right? Like they were connected and, you know, they had a lot, they shared a lot of blood. Pangled. Yeah, maybe shared, you know, like they have three lungs total. One of the lungs was shared. You have two of the lungs.

Yeah. It's like, so there's these shared things going on. One of them is Jocko Fuel. Obviously, it's our supplement nutrition brand and the other ones, Origin USA, which is our hard goods, clothing, accessories brand. We got fitness products in there too as well. So a bunch of stuff, but we got these two companies. So let's talk about where we're at, where we're at with these, what's going on, some of the lessons we learned. Some of the tuition payments that we've made. You know, do you have your MBA? I don't have shit. I'm a college dropout.

Okay. So you don't have your MBA. I don't have my MBA. Echo, do you have your MBA? No MBA. But you know what? We've learned some business lessons.

They can't teach you in school. And they've cost way more than an MBA. Yes. So here we go. Let's start off talking a little bit about Jocco Fuel. Now what's interesting about this is last time we were together or I guess during this time from, I guess we didn't do it. We were getting to a point where we, as we had predicted, we were starting to need money.

So we were starting to need money. This is a cash intensive business, making food products, making supplements, being in retail, having to order millions and sometimes tens of millions of dollars worth of product and having to pay for that. and then having to to hold on and hold your breath and pinch pennies until maybe 90, 120, 180 days, that money starts to come back in. We got, we did a lot of breath holding in this ramp up. And that's kind of the phase we were in last year around this time.

We were in that, you know, every quarter, every month really would be a breath hold, waiting for, you know, payment to come in is not a great feeling. Yeah, and behind the scenes, you know, last year during camp when we were sitting around in private talking about that cash-to-cash cycle and how we're starting to burn cash or or feed the monster, the monster eats cash. I mean, knowing our goals for, you know, mass distribution and to try to get the things we're making in the hands of humanity, I mean, America for sure, that it was going to, it was going to be expensive growth and you know definitely as committing to larger and larger orders should there

some sort of something there go wrong knowing that you then have to dump let's say screw ups which has a massive impact on cash flow also we didn't have too many of those had a couple but um yeah man the monster uh the monster finally get fed uh got fed luckily with, you know, the investment we took on with that great investor. But burning that cash for so long as long as we could, you know, and knowing that the right thing to do was to bring on a partner that could help us blow this thing up. It was definitely challenging knowing how we work together and how we make decisions and how we communicate and sticking somebody else in the mix that we don't know

and trying to trust that process that they're going to plug in easily. I think that for me was the most difficult thing, not even the other stuff, you know, not having a dump flavor systems or, you know, overwrap cans because there's a can shortage, you know,

or like try to, try to pivot on, you know, where we're buying our ingredients from. It was really, it was really trying to plug somebody else into the equation. It could have gone terribly bad if it was, wasn't done right. So obviously, you know, we had some some decent offers from the different

private equity firms and whatnot. But I honestly didn't think we were going to find any at one point. I was kind of like, damn, this just isn't going to happen. And we're going to have to either shrink and rethink, you know, or I didn't, I actually didn't know. Yeah, well, we had, I mean, I remember talking about plan A, B, C, D. Yeah. And that's what we had to do. that the the fact that you and I sometimes well oftentimes we're making decisions in I mean multi-million dollar decisions in three texts or seven text messages and it's always been like that that is definitely a scary thing to mess up because and look I have the benefit of working with so many different companies at echelon front that I see how hard it is for companies to make decisions sometimes

when you have just a little bit, different agendas going on and egos pop up and all of a sudden simple decisions that should take 15 minutes, they end up taking 15 weeks. And I'm not kidding. Like literally, simple decisions that you can see the obvious answer for can take months instead of minutes. And we were operating in the minutes timeframe. And the other thing that was kind of cool was because we were, you know, living paycheck to paycheck for so long, Man, we were lean.

Super lean. And, you know, it was, there was just no fat. We were like a fighter that had cut weight and just barely made it, right? And we were doing that, you know, it was like wrestling season. Every Wednesday and every Saturday, we were making weight. You know, we were trying to see if we could shed a little bit. We were sitting in the sauna trying to squeeze out a little, another extra, you know, eight ounces. Yes.

And but what I liked about that is it made us good, right? It made us good. You know, you ask someone that wrestled, hey, you tell them they got to lose 15 pounds. They look at you like it's a joke. So we got rid of a lot of excess weight. We became very streamlined. But the problem was,

and this is sort of the backup plan was, we were just going to have to expand and grow a lot slower. That's what was going to happen. So if we wouldn't have met good partners who's out of New York, great guys, if we wouldn't have met them, we would have done plan B. and we would have, you know, made some adjustments

and it would have been a slower growth. And the problem with that, for me, is the same thing that I told the team at Jock Fuel yesterday. You know, at Escalant Front, we go and we go to the muster. And at the muster, we'll have scores of people come up to every team member, to J.P., to Leif, to me, to everybody. And the individual will come up and say, oh, you know, I, hey, I got my business back.

We were about to go bankrupt. We recovered everything. We're hiring now. Or I was about to get divorced and my wife and I were back together. And I lost 58 pounds and just all these incredible stories that you hear. And it sounds great. But every muster debrief, what I tell the team is, hey, great job with this small number of people that we helped with these principles. And there are literally millions and millions of people that need these principles to help them.

in their life and we're not reaching them right now so we're not doing what we should be doing and it's the same thing with jaco fuel right now right now as you and i are sitting here talking there's a 22 year old kid that's drinking an energy drink that's absolutely horrible form that's that's what's happening there's another you know seven-year-old kid that's drinking a chocolate milk that's filled with high fructose corn syrup and it's absolutely horrible form and his mom doesn't know his mom doesn't know what's available so that's the issue so as i you know as in my own mind, you know, I had the, the part of my brain saying, hey, hang on, we can hang on. And the other part of my brain saying, who are we hurting? And the compromise is, okay, how about

and, you know, what we eventually did is a minority share. We sold a minority share, brought in great partners that have some great brands. I mean, they've, they've built and run some great companies. I mean, just outstanding. So that made it. That, that, that, that, That was nice. It was like at the end of wrestling season where all of a sudden, we didn't have to cut weight every Wednesday and Saturday. Yes.

Because we have some room. I definitely saw the relief on the finance team. Don got to sit back in his chair for about five minutes and go, ah, you know, I mean, because being that lean and running just in time inventory, and at one point,

Joe Moss, our chief revenue officer said, man, we're running this company with like nine people in three. ball dudes, you know what I mean? It's basically me, Joe and Brian there, whatever. And you're looking at our growth, our growth

rate and our trajectory and it's like, damn Joe, like that's funny, but it's right. And you know what? Running the business like you're on a desert island is going to allow you the risk, you know, you would think now you're going to be a good steward of that investment.

You know, and I was talking to you about as far as like living into the brand, like after that investment came on, I felt like I felt again that same kind of like when I went back in the day when remoraging the house for origin I felt the same thing like man you know some of our family and friends invested in this in this with us alongside of all my family and friends all your family and friends everyone I know yeah and like that's that's a broad statement but like a lot of people that are very close to me exactly game with us and I think that's important

that like this new partner allowed us to bring our family and friends into me and my childhood friend I've known since I was 12 years old invested in this thing you know what I mean it's like man I better I better be a good steward of this and in in like I said live live into it you know what I mean and you were like what is live into it like well I'm gonna I haven't been you know what I mean I like them cookies and that ice cream but uh well how well have you been quote quote living into it this week dude because you're up here I've seen you consume more more of More cookies, brownies. What is going on, dude?

I've been living into that jujitsu immersion poha. That, you know, late night cold cut combo snack. Just getting it in there, dude. But I mean, you know, like as far as understanding the psyche of the consumer, of the people out there. Because I believe right now, and if you look at America, I think we're the strongest and healthiest we've ever been and I think we're the most unhealthy and most out of shape.

You're talking about America at large. The people of America right now. The people and it's probably a worldwide thing too but there's some strong strongest we've ever been and healthiest we've ever been. And then the heaviest and the most unhealthy and people dying of all sorts of shit

and there's this freaking gap you know and yeah you can point the finger but the finger goes in a lot of different directions. You've got to have a lot of finger pointing. The fact of the matter is, is we're trying to fill the void between the two, you know, and educate people in a different way. And, you know, in Jocco Fuel as a mission,

as a movement, and the things we're doing, it's no different than the origin side, you know, origin built to believe, built to believe in the dream, built to believe in resurrection of America's factories and communities and the reclamation and the reshoring and the restoring of the communities and Jocko Fuel built to be better. You know, it's the same damn thing. Everything you wear, everything you consume, like, it's right there.

You know what I mean? It's right there. But then how do you wedge that into this country, which is not just divided, also from a health and physical perspective, it's divided? So there's this education process that's taking place. And honestly, taking on the investment is going to allow us to do more of this education across the board. Yeah.

That was the point I was getting at was like looking at weighing between, okay, we can keep total control and be a little bit greedy. Right. And hang on. This is mine. Or say, hey, listen, let's get this as many people as we can. So we made that adjustment. And so far, it's been awesome.

It's been awesome to have more freedom of movement for us. It's been awesome to still be able to put. forward in ways that we weren't pushing forward before and be able to execute on things that we would have had to. You know, plan B and plan C didn't have the same products coming out. We weren't able to tackle the same problems that we're going to be able to tackle now. So that was awesome. As that's going on, meanwhile, we expanded outside the state of Maine, which I may have broke your heart initially because you're a Maena.

I am a mana. I'm actually a macehole, technically. My father-in-law, Joe, will never allow me to claim being a manta. No, I'm from Massachusetts, man. Even though I've been here since I was eight years old, never a Mena. And your kids can't, you kids can't, like, anchor. They can't anchor baby you up here? No, I wish.

No, but yeah, I mean, you know, like as this is all going on, as we're going through the process of investment and having all these meetings, and everything and at the same time that's one monster yeah so one monster one monster one monster Jocko fuel very hungry very hungry and and like needs attention and food and money yes that's all going on and that's a huge huge deal but then on the other side the other monster the origin monster is also hungry to your point earlier these things are tangled like siamese twins and these monsters are both they're growing and they both need to be fed and like someone has to conduct surgery.

Like, yeah, and just from another perspective, they're both in being tangled, in being connected, they're also mutually supporting. They need each other. They totally need each other. And especially, you know, a year ago, it was like, without one, there really wouldn't be the other. And without the other, there wouldn't really be the one. So, so you had this, the one is eating, you know, is eating big, taking big bites.

So the other one, now of a sudden you start hearing, like, the stomach of the other, of the origin monster starts to growl. Yeah, exactly. And, you know, we, I think in an effort to make sure we're doing things right, you know, we made our tuition payments on the origin side. We built the things that built America, denim and boots. We proved we could build them again. We proved we could find and reclaim the knowledge and make the product and do it in a way

that it was profitable to. So we kind of have proved to this. out, it's like, okay, it's time to go. And if you're not growing, you're dying. And that's one thing. I think in business, like people, they get comfortable, they get complacent. Well, listen, if you're not, if you're not growing, you're dying because somebody's smarter than you is behind you, you know. And with everything, there's a beginning, there's a middle and there's an end and trying to extend that middle part. It's not a coast. It's not a flat road. It's not coasting. I was telling somebody the other day, you know, you get to the top of that hill when you're climbing and you're

pedaling and pedaling and you get to the top and you think, ah, I get to coast on the other side. The thing is you get to a plateau and then there's an incline on that plateau. You can't see over the horizon. And with origin, we've been, you know, we've kind of been playing in the sandbox a little bit. I addressing the team, you know, on the inside, you know, kind of in the trenches earlier this year was this year we start I actually said to them we haven't done anything yet we're spread across 250,000 square feet in two states and 400 people and we haven't even started like this shit like we've been we've been a research and development company now it's time to go now it's time to truly rebuild the supply chains and build the

products that we need and use and wear. So I kind of, you know, like cast that wide vision early in the year. And even, even the constant touch point, I think still, you know, still people, it's almost like, I mean, you have kids, you know, when I had my first child, Keegan, like Amanda, you know, she's pregnant. It's like, cool, you know, you're pregnant and whatever. And then then he came out and I was like holy shit what am I going to do with this you know what I mean like this is a this is a real being that's kind of how I feel like we're

ready to like go like there's like almost like a little bit of a rebirth so to speak this year of what we're going to do as a company as a mission as a movement and I I could see it I know you could see it and I'm trying to explain it to the team but they aren't they aren't feeling it yet because it's all just words but we just just I got to throw this out there yeah I'll go to talk to a gas oil

company in North Dakota or I'll go talk to an energy company in Texas or go talk to a construction company in Illinois or just just and there'll be a bunch of people that will show up with they'll have origin jeans on they'll have origin boots on they're in the game they're so supportive and so I think that I get to see that right I get to see people all over the country that are that understand what we're doing and they're so supportive of it and I probably didn't do a great job of you know I should be taking a picture every time that happens you know and sending it to you like hey show everybody this picture I mean I've been to events where there's like 12 people come up and they're all wearing origin jeans like how awesome is that yeah and you know this will be in the middle of wherever

oklahoma it's it's it's awesome so yeah you you can start to you and I can send all that happening and probably need to do a better job making sure everybody on the team knows that. Yeah, and they're, you know what's interesting. I know how to look at this. They're in the trenches every day, like making the stuff, answering the phone calls, you know, doing the marketing and all that stuff. And we're going to build 100,000 pairs of jeans right over the next 12 months. And I'm down in Tri-on, Georgia at Mount Vernon Mills, the oldest mill in America and the last mill that weaves denim. And they weave our denim for us.

And I'm committing to 2 million yards in three years. And I'm coming back and saying, hey, I just committed to every single yard of denim this meal can make. You know what I mean? And they're like, oh, okay. Okay. This is like being in Vegas, man, and just taking your wallet and putting it on black.

100%. 100%. You know, so there's like, how are we going to fill the gap? How are we going to go from point A to point B? And speaking of feeding the monster, Oh, we're going to build 100,000 pairs of jeans and in three years we're going to build a million. You know, and on the Jocko Fuel side,

oh, we're making 30,000 cases of this a month and we need to get to 200,000 in three years. You have these two monsters that you actually know, like, what they're going to eat. Yeah. You know the, you know the consumer, you use the baby. Consumption. The consumption rate.

You know how much freaking milk it's going to take to get these kids to be full grown. That's right. And so you need to plan for it. Yep. And you know at some point, they're going to be a 16 and a half year old boy and they're going to have a voracious appetite. Exactly.

And it's going to be nuts. So we actually know that. We can plot it out. We can see it. And so that's as you look at that growth and the amount of effort it was going to take or the amount of work that it was going to take to get done, you knew that we were going to reach our limit here and Maine. 100%. Yep. And just walking around the factory and just we have.

pivoted and pivoted and pivoted and pivoted and gotten leaner and leaner and leaner and leaner I mean and you got to remember in that in our first little you know our first big factory after we left the woods right like when you came on board and we partnered up we were still in the woods and we're like we're going to build we're going to buy this big building like 20,000 square feet what where where at one point jaco fuel literally was on pallets in between all the sewing machines. Just so people understand how these things were tangled. And so we moved into that building.

2017, July. And when we did that, we had 12 employees. Yeah, 12. 12 employees. I mean, it was cool. It was cool.

And you walked around. It was like, okay, cool. We got like plenty of room to grow, right? Oh, we got plenty of room to grow. Not so much. Not so much.

So, you know, there's, you know, just walking around and thinking, this is not going to sustain us. In looking at the kind of stepping back out of the trenches, looking at the battlefield, going how are we going to go from, you know, point A to point B

when it comes to knitwear, when it comes to hoodies, when it comes to t-shirts, when it comes to denim, when it comes to all the things we need to make, we're going to have to look elsewhere. We're going to have to look elsewhere closer to the supply chains,

knowing that what we're really good at in Maine is building ultra durable goods like footwear and jujitsu geese and that the cotton supply chain, the weaving, and the dyeing is all more down in North Carolina, in Georgia, Louisiana, you know, South Carolina, is there opportunity down there? And we found some opportunity.

So we found a company that, was going to cut and sew for us. And, man, they were starting to work on some projects for us. And I remember just calling you and being like, bro, we got to try and buy this place. Like, walking into that for the first time and seeing it three times bigger than what we're doing and just cranking stuff out.

I was like, oh, man, God. Like, you don't know what you don't know, you know. And I actually say that to my kids. Like, hey, you know, you don't know what you don't know. and you can't control what you can't control, but you can respond, you can control the way you respond to things you can't control. Well, we can respond to the things we don't know,

we can control the way we respond to it, you know, and try not to have an entrepreneurial seizure at the same time, which, you know, we had some opportunities to have, I think. But we bought two factories. Let's talk through the first one. Yeah. Right.

So it's 60,000 square. square feet. You roll down there. There's not a for sale sign on it. No, it's not for sale. You know what I'm saying? Like this isn't like you go on a used car lot. There's a used, you know, cut and sew factory for sale and you, hey, hey, how much is this? And you know that that's not how it worked. No. And these in like they barely have a website. I mean, you know, there's like all these old little old factories spread across America that are still there that have been surviving. They have not thrived. They're not a thriving factories. They've been surviving. They've been surviving for the last 25 years out of a sheer like force of will right whether a commitment

to the people who have been working there for 25 30 years you know or or or not knowing enough to shut it down or being too um I don't know what the word is on a re stubborn stubborn yeah to shut it down so luckily I was able to go into patriotic to patriotic I think patriotic is a better word Yeah. I mean, yeah. So went in and met with this old boy Ted, was going through some health problems, kind of sold them on the vision.

Of course, you know, they are looking at a Yankee, this Yankee coming down. And there's still some of that there. You know what I mean? Like even Jason has said to me, you know, y'all, rich Yankees coming down here. It's like, bro, you kidding me? When we started this company, we didn't have two nickels to rub together a bucket to piss in, bro.

Like go on to YouTube and watch how we built this thing. But it's still like these Yankees coming down and whatever. So, you know, went down there, met with Ted, told him what we'd like to do to carry on his vision and plan for the company. Obviously, he had a great operator down there in Jason Gattie, great operator who's been doing this thing. And he's really the one that's been sustaining this organization for a long. time, you know, 120 employees, whatever it is, and just cutting and sewing, just ripping stuff out. Making stuff for some pretty substantial brands, too. But, you know, it's one of those situations where, like, okay, this guy's kind of like a lot of talk. They're thinking you're a lot

of talk. Yeah. Yeah, I think so. And it's tough. You've got this, you've got these people who have been running this business for 40, 50 years. They've owned it for 40, 50 years. They do things a certain way. They have a certain culture. There's a certain pace. There's a certain vibe. And just somebody coming in that could potentially disrupt that is scary.

Yeah. You know, I mean, you're ultimately, people are innately afraid of the unknown. You know, it's also what also drives some people. but I asked him and convinced him and not just him I flew him up to Maine and showed him our little factory and showed him what we were doing and introduced him to the people introduced him to Amanda obviously turned him on to jaco like you know of course they know who you are anyways so just kind of made that connection that always helps it's always like you've got plant you've got like the De Deco says this, like when somebody comes to his school, right?

De Deco, one of my business partners, also my jih Tjitsu instructor, he's got a school down of Massachusetts in Weymouth. And when people come in, they like, oh, I want to start Jiu-Zitsu. And they were like, okay, cool. Oh, oh, origin geese. Oh, cool. I think I've heard this company, origin. He's like, yeah, man, yeah, origin, you know, origin.

And then they're like, oh, wait, jock, Jocko. And he's like, yeah, yeah. You know, he's also my business partner, my friend, or whatever, and then they sign up right away. So it's the ringer, right? Like, Jocco is the ringer. And every negotiation, I just pull, I pulled Jocko's name. And it always helps. So, you know, we flew him up to Maine.

We flew up, you know who else we flew up? The head stitcher and the mechanic. Yeah. And that's one of those things. This is the hearts and minds campaign. and minds, man. And getting to build relationships with people and getting them to understand

what we understand. Yes. I want the mechanic to meet our team and to watch them sell. That's what I want him to do. So he can say to Ted, the owner, hey, these guys are for real, they know what they're doing.

I get what they're doing. Their head stitcher, I want her to watch the way we sewed, the way the hands moved so that she could feel confident in the same thing. that we are who they are. We're not just Yankees.

We are people who are trying to rebuild the middle class who are retraining and bringing this thing back the same thing they've been doing for 30, 40 years. Luckily, they agreed to it and we made that shit happen. Was there a turning point that you saw? Was there a moment or was it a gradual swaying of the mindset? that. Well, there was a tricky situation there, right? He had a couple other partners. And they, they had a kind of an aggressive ask initially. You know, like you said earlier, I don't have my

business degree. I try to understand people. I'm pretty transparent in negotiation. Like I I wear my heart on my sleeve. I'm not hiding anything. And I explained to him and their first ask, I was like, yeah, it's just not, we're just not there. Like, we're just not there. Like, here's the value of what we're going to do

because we're not going to buy this business as a business entity and keep, like, just running the same way with the same accounts. We're going to buy this as an extension of origin. It's going to be a production facility, ultimately, for origin. So the revenue, doesn't really matter. What's important is you have 120 people who know how to make badass shit,

badass durable shit, and you have the machines to do so. So the value is in the people because you can buy machines. So you're buying people. You're buying a skill set. You're buying a capability. And to try to ramp up 120 people and turn that on, we've already done it. It took, it took freaking a decade to do the same thing. We don't have a decade. So we've got to, got to buy capacity. So we're buying capacity. I explained that to him, unpack that for him. And ultimately, we came to agreement. And, you know, when you, when you talk about like putting money where your mouth is, like me, you and Deco stroke to check and bought that place. Like that's like, we're talking about we're reinvesting in America's communities. That wasn't

a bank loan on that one. We wrote a check. And I think that that was also meaningful to them knowing, Yeah, we got to go finance this thing. Like we're not a hedge fund coming in. You know, we're not corporate raiders coming in. You know, we're actually investing in this personally. Our families are investing in what your family has built. Pushed them over, got the deal done. And, you know, we're high-fiving.

We just added 120 people who know how to build badass shit. But it still wasn't enough. Yeah. And in the meantime, you know, we kind of breezed through the, the, getting the, the, the partnership with good good partners um one thing that was interesting about that was a lot of the stuff that i think would make a lot of companies really sweat and have to work like for instance you know our our financials right so don our cfo he's been here and he we were so dialed in you know despite all the all the overwork that he had done you know by himself much of the

A lot of times and look luckily for me on the Eschlam front side I'm I'm party to a lot of these deals you know I see a lot of PEs come in I watch these deals happen I'm part of these deals sometimes so I've seen a lot of this and it was awesome because sometimes you know it you start asking when they start doing the financial due diligence you know it's it's like open up a can of worms and mayhem's coming out and it gets crazy and it was awesome to and I remember you not having this conversation, you know, like, hey, you know, I said, hey, what are we looking like from the financial size as they're rolling into this due diligence? How long you think

it's going to take? And you're like, hey, man, you know the deal. Like we, it's not going to take long and there's, it's, it's all just good to go. And so I thought that that was pretty awesome, especially considering such a small team of one, much of the time, you know, of just Don being that squared away. And, and he had done a lot to prepare us for that. Uh, so. So, you know, So that was pretty awesome. And finding those guys, you know, I'd say that if people aren't aligned, though the one time that you're going to have a failure is if we aren't aligned. If two people aren't aligned or if two teams aren't aligned,

you're going ultimately have failure. Because you can't be going to two different places. You have to be going to the same place. You can't break the laws of physics and go to two different places. You can't rip bodies apart. It doesn't work. Yeah. And so luckily with good partners, you know, they had, they had built Supreme.

They'd built skull candy. They got some newer companies. Yeah, Dave, they got a hook, the H-U-K, hook performance fishing, like really great companies that are cool. And so they had experience with this stuff. And they were able to address things with us and talk about where we wanted to go. And what, you know, here's something that was tricky. I was tricky because I don't like to lock things in because I don't know what the future holds.

I give this advice all the time, hey, you know what the future is gonna hold. So why are you locking in this or that? And so the way we set things up and the way they worked with us was like, oh, we have all kinds of options. We have all kinds of directions to go into. There's no doors closed.

So that was great how flexible they were. They were patient as hell. Yeah, they were patient. They were patient as hell. Bro, at some point, sometimes I got, my ass was stuck to my couch, you know, And I would be like on the phone, on the phone, on the phone, on the phone, like till midnight. Yeah.

It was, it was, honestly, it was like this kind of, this, I don't know the word for it, this constant alignment. Yeah. Constant alignment and having the right, like the right words. Yeah. You know what I mean? And sometimes those words were tricky to. Yeah, tricky. Tricky.

Here's something else that was cool. And it's a good, this is a good, this is a good lesson learned. for anybody that's out there. Lawyers talking to each other suck is different than two people talking to each other. Yes. So I remember we were, you know, we'd hit a little bit of,

let's say a little, a little hesitation, right? I was a little bit hesitant. It sounded like they, so my lawyers are telling me that they're saying this and their lawyers are telling their crew that I'm saying this.

And finally, I'm like, dude, give me Dave's number. And like, we just got on the phone. And I'm like, hey, this is what I'm worried about. And he goes, yeah, we can handle that. That's no factor. I don't want to, you know, that doesn't make a difference. Okay, cool, great.

Write it up like this. He's like, cool, I got it. He said, hey, but Jocko, you got to give me this over here. And I'm like, oh, yeah, that totally makes sense. I don't, you know, you're not going to give us money if you don't have this type of thing. So once he and I talked person to person, man to man and just, oh, yeah, hey, man. Okay, cool. From there, it was like everything was fine.

Yeah. But there was. getting to that whole time though that monster would kept eating oh it kept eating everything in sight and you know I you know I you were sweating yeah oh yeah I was definitely sweating you were sweating and I talked to me like bro

you're you know you're trying to like talk to the both sets of lawyers and I'm like bro let me talk to Dave let's get this thing and so luckily you know when you talk and you're aligned then it's easy and look look hey this is another thing I remember when someone else is, when the opposing lawyer is looking out for them. And your lawyer is looking out for you.

They're not trying to go to the same place. No. They're trying to go to two different places. So they're going to have a hard time. So you have to have sometimes conversations. And those conversations need to be backed up in writing. Of course. So you can then debrief the lawyers and the lawyers understand where you need to be.

And that both sides have agreed. So that's something to remember. And here's a number. another, you know, you and I never freaking had lawyers in between us. You know what I mean? No, we didn't. And the other funny thing I was telling people this the other day is we never had, we were, we were on a handshake for years, for years on a handshake, millions and millions of dollars worth of business. Tens of millions of dollars worth of business on a handshake. On a handshake. That's legit. Which is freaking awesome. Like old school, I hope people can learn from that. And by the way, the only reason we

eventually we're like okay we need to go to paper on this stuff is because the banks and the lawyers were like hey guys this thing's too big this doesn't work you can't have a handshake like if one of you dies if one of you dies this is a freaking disaster for all involved and we're like all fine so we did it but that but that was a you know that was great i was i was definitely like sweating it and i'll tell you what i got to give kip props on it because he kept telling me that he kept telling us that was me Pete you got to understand something all big fish are lost at the boat you can reel and reel and reel and reel and reel and you go to grab that gill and pull that hook and you lose it you know what I mean like you get it right to the boat and it flaps its tail and rips off

and we were at tail flapping kind of scenario at that point and I'm trying to hang on to the freaking gill yeah you know what I mean yeah like uh trying to grab the club you know to kill this thing. But it was ultimately, I think, I think that they were definitely not only the right partner, but the patient partner we need. Yep. You know, that was, that was a nice, let's say, you know, it proved to me as they were waiting. You know, they're like, okay. They didn't, they didn't freak out. They didn't get crazy. They were like, oh, it's going to take some time to get this thing worked out. You know, it's like, it's like, oh, she doesn't want to marry me right now? Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, it's like she wants to wait another year. And most private equity firms would not have done that. Yeah, yeah.

So they were super cool and proved the type of people that they were through their actions, which was legit. Yeah. And so that worked out great and has been great. Um, in the meantime, right? We get, how long was it? Once we had, The factory in North Carolina, the first factory in North Carolina. October. Factory one. We get that in October. So just after we recorded the last podcast, we closed on that.

October first. We close on it. So we're stoked. How long did the stoke last before you started, you started to hear in hunger growls from the monster again? One month. It was one month? Yeah, because we launched November. We launched our Black Friday.

We do that like one deal a year. And, bro, we sold like 10,000 pairs of jeans. Yeah, that's right. We had to close it off and like, like, I don't know, a thousand, two thousand pairs of boots. And I'm looking at it. I remember you texting me like, we're shutting it down. Yeah.

And that's when I was like, okay, that always sucks, bro, you know? Because what that means is someone out there is going to have to buy a pair of jeans that are made in another country. And that, that's horrible. It's horrible for America. It's horrible for our economy. It's horrible for a community. It's horrible for the person that has to wear substandard jeans on their body.

And yet, you know, I remember, hey, we have to shut this down right now. And I'm thinking, damn. The immediate pivot was, I remember sitting down the day, the next business day after Black Friday with the team and saying, what are we going to do? How are we going to pivot? And we got Jason on the phone, our new partner down in North Carolina, running all North Carolina operations. Then I said, hey, bro, think we can make jeans there? remember this? Yeah.

And I'm like they're, I mean, I think we can, but these machines are completely different. Felling machines. He's like, yeah, we can get it done. We can get it done. And immediately. And I think that's the great thing with obviously owning your supply chain. I like to call it the origin factory blockchain. I use the word blockchain because people understand what a blockchain is these days.

Well, the origin factory factory blockchain is a blockchain is a blockchain. blockchain of manufacturing and transparency where you can trust where everything comes from. You know that cotton's come from Texas. You know that things woven in Tri-on, Georgia. You know it's getting cotton sewn in North Carolina and Maine. And it's a blockchain of manufacturing, which is really powerful. And it's actually core to who we are and core to our story because we got nothing to hide. We ain't cutting out tags, right? We're making the shit from scratch. and you know we actually put out there to the public like we're going to have to make jeans in North Carolina and watch us pivot and also follow us as we make mistakes you know and make

tuition payments but that mechanic that we flew up to Maine used to work in a denim factory and he knew how to set up the machines down there and he knew how to tune them in and he had all the beautiful tooling made. It was actually it was so good. He made more and sent it to Maine so we could use it in Maine. So we made the pivot. It wasn't easy, but we got it done. And we're still not producing enough.

And I remember saying to, I don't know if I called you, while we were down there getting to know the area, this is Ashboro, North Carolina. I drove by a building. and it said on a trailer outside of the building, it said Texas jeans on it. And I remember just asking Jason, like, what is that? He's like, oh, that's this old guy, Wally.

And he's been in the denim business forever. Come to find out, and I didn't know this. I learned that North Carolina was the denim capital of America. And I'm like, so he's got like denim machines and people making jeans in there and everything. He's like, yeah, so again, another situation. We leaned into it a little bit, literally knocked on the door, went in,

and started having a conversation. It all started with a conversation. I know when you're talking about, going back to Factory One, Jason Gaddy, all right? You got this guy. I just want to kind of profile him just for a minute. Did you see a transition in his, because look, the only Jason I've known

is 100% let's make some shit happen now. We got this. Here's what we need to do. That's the only Jason I know. Was that the only Jason you know? Was that a turnaround? Was there a turning point for him

where he realized that this was the right thing to do? Because I mean, like I said, I've seen nothing but Jason, nothing from Jason except for like a 100% positive awesome attitude to make things happen. And also be like, no, hey, we're not going to be able to do that. Or if we're going to do that, here's what we're going to need. Like that kind of thing.

Was he like that the whole time? I would say his level of positivity was always consistent. Nice. And if there was anything he was feeling he definitely didn't show it. Now, with that said, we had a lot of private conversations. A lot of private conversations. He educated me on the way they survived over the past 30 years. He educated me on the restructuring they had to go through with the banks coming in and pulling apart the company and putting it back together and putting a CEO in place and how he fell and, you know, like they had they went through some shit, man.

Like after NAFTA and the WTO, like they went through some serious shit and he was part of it. So there's this protective kind of defense mechanism there that, you know, he's looking out for his people. and again, regardless of, you know, this newfound relationship and working towards this kind of new culture, you're still blending two cultures together and two companies together. So there was definitely some apprehension behind the scenes and we had lots and lots of in-depth conversations, some intense conversations too. the good thing with him is like he's he's a type of guy and maybe at some point it'd be good to have him on the podcast but he's a type of guy that he's a he's a he's a survivor man that I was gonna throw that up and you talk about all these restructurings and all these things going on and

putting a news and he's the guy that's there he's there and and he's been through some shit in his life and in you know and he's he's he's a survivor so that's it's tough when you have built something for so long to then I'm just going to say abandon it. You've been building this thing for 20, 30 years and some freaking Yankee is coming down asking you to abandon it. Because that's ultimately the end goal, right? Is you're going to abandon this and you're going to, and I'm asking you to fully buy into what we're doing, unproven, completely unproven.

Just from watching some freaking YouTube videos and knowing, you know, Jocco's my other partner. It's still, still even though you can buy into that and you can trust it, your livelihood, and all these people's livelihood,

you're betting that we're going to do the right thing without that trust and that bond being built. So, yeah. Another comment I make a lot when I'm working with companies is, you know, they say, well, you know, you guys win the SEAL teams,

and you're dealing with life, life and death, and be dealing with people's lives. And I always say, you know, we dealt with people's lives. You deal with people's livelihoods. And that's the thing about Jason, you could tell that total positive attitude, you could also see that family attitude towards his people that he wanted to take care of his people.

Like he needed to survive because that meant his people would survive. Like you could feel that when you talk to him. Yeah, he's in, He's intense and, you know, thank God he was willing to go to a muster. And he went to that muster and it changed his life. He literally said, Pete, I have learned more about myself and I'm growing every day, man, you know, and his thick southern accent.

And, you know, JP took him under his wing and a couple other, you know, the instructors and really dug in with him. They dug in and kind of, I don't want to say like remolded, but remolded the way he thinks and is walking through life and thinking about business. And that was so important. Honestly, if he didn't go to that muster, I don't know,

I don't know where we would be right now if he didn't go to that muster. Well, as we get into the next factory, you can see, like I would be observing and going, oh yeah, he's got this. He understood, he understands this. He understands that part. He understands this concept. He understands that concept. You could see that. I could see that. And believe me, I look at this stuff all day long. I look at meetings all day long. I sit with companies all day long. I sit in boardrooms all day long. I go to manufacturing floor. This is what I do all day. Yeah, yeah. So for me sitting there watching this, it's like, oh, okay, I can see when I can see when when people are disconnected. I can see when they don't understand what's happening. I can see all that. And you didn't see it at all from him. I saw that he did. And what's cool too is survivor, being a survivor,

we say that as a positive thing, right? But we also know that, and just like any other characteristic, if someone's a survivor and that's kind of they get in that survivor mode, it can be an absolute negative because they're trying to survive and they're not trying to grow and they're not trying to thrive. Yes. Which is problematic. And so I think that transition from him just going,

hey, I'm just going to make sure I take care of what I've got right now into a growth mindset and a thrive mindset of, oh, we can actually not just survive, but actually grow and take over and crush. I think that was a pretty awesome transition for Jason Gaddy to make. Yeah, it was. It was. So now you're driving around Ashboro, North Carolina. Shout out.

And you drive by this building. Yeah. And you see a trailer sitting on. And by the way, it's a big building. Yeah. It's a huge building. But it's very nondescript. Yeah, it's nondescript.

It's got this trailer with it, Texas Janes. And just in terms of timeline here, we, like, I had seen, I had seen this building during the deal making for that first factory. I had seen it. You mean driven by it? Yeah, just looked at it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And actually, I think, I think we tried to get in.

but we weren't able to. Like the guy there was just not interested in talking to us or anything. So it was kind of a blip, right? It was like a, it was like, oh, you know, what's that? You know, and it kind of a blip, tried to get, could get it, whatever. So it came back up and I had remembered, oh, there's this thing. So drove back by it called Jason. Do you know who owns this?

Do you have the contact information? Is there any way we can talk? And, you know, Jason's like, yeah, I know who it is. You know, basically like, good luck. You know what I mean with this whole thing? And I said, well, we're making jeans in Maine. We're making jeans in North Carolina. Things are working.

But at the pace we're selling, right, at the pace of product that we're selling, because we're a company that literally we take an order in and we manufacture the thing. So we're selling, you know, a thousand pairs a week right now on top of the 10,000 in back order. So we're now pushed out from Black Friday. We're pushed out for five months, which is completely unacceptable. It's completely unacceptable in this world of getting shit from Amazon dropped in by a drone, right? Like an hour after you order of it.

So it just was like I kind of looked at the numbers and the run rate of what we're selling. And I'm like, this doesn't work. This ain't happening. It just doesn't work. You remember that phone call. Yeah. Like, hey, we're not going to be able to ever produce what we need to produce at this run rate with this kind of growth trajectory. So Jason connected me with the son of the owner.

The son of the owner connected me with the owner. Again, not for sale. He entertained me. He entertained me in this old 1970s boardroom that had a distinct smell. to it, him and his wife, Dolores. And I could tell this dude was hard. You know, like just the way he carried himself, the way he looked at me, the way he interacted.

He even told me, if I was your age, I would kick your ass. He said, I would kick your ass and I'd kick your ass in business. You couldn't touch me. You can't compete with me. You don't know what I know. What I've done out in this plant, I went out in the plant.

He actually did bring me out in the plant for a couple minutes. And I asked the son if I could shoot photos. And he's like, yeah, go ahead. And then he saw me shooting photos. And he said to Jason, Gaddy, goes, if I see that dude shoot another photo, I'm going to kneecap him right here. I mean, that's the type of dude we're dealing with. Just to put this in a little bit of perspective.

So how long had he been in this business for? About 50 years. So if you don't know this. if you don't know this, this is the old school way. And back in the day, well, look at the history, 50 years.

This is when you had the, like, union issues. This is when you, anti-union issues. This is when you had massive influence from organized crime in the textile industry. Like, this is when you had intense, intense competition in America, because this is before everything's over. So now you're, now you've got in like the most intense competition and this guy, you want to talk about a survivor and a thriver.

This is a guy that dominated and dominated for 50 years and worked. And if you were not a badass, you weren't going to make it. It wasn't going to happen. And if you weren't a badass, you were going to get your ass kicked. And that's what he did. He went around. And that's why he was, you know, the last. standing wash house, the last denim plant from the golden age of textiles in America.

This is the guy, the last standing guy. It's 100%. Right. That's it. The last one. I mean, you're talking about a plant that's 170,000 square feet with this wash house, now a storage room, right? With these big 500 pound washing machines that tip forward to dump out, you know,

The wash jeans, whatever. Like a dump truck, bro. Like a dump truck. That haven't been running in years. The washing machines don't weigh 500 pounds. They wash 500 pounds. You know, a quarter tonne worth of jeans. Yeah, they're nine feet tall.

They're, I don't know how many thousands of pounds. They're massive, massive machines. But, you know, you walk into this place and you could just tell it's like, man, like World War II, post-World War II, East Germany, Berlin. Like everything's just so closed and dark and dank and it just had this it had a survivor type of feeling like this thing exists out of out of sheer survival like it shouldn't exist it shouldn't be here it should have been gutted and turned into something else a long time ago and this guy was not willing to let it go just force of will yeah just a sheer force of will so how did you navigate the conversation to go from this isn't for sale and if you put your don't put your camera way i'm going to kneecap you right here how do you transition from that to let's just i mean how do you even get him to open his mind a little bit well let's let's just say that it didn't start off great

uh in it in ultimately it ended up good but the ebbs and flows of our conversations in what transpired during this time was not only the strangest negotiation I've ever been part of, but even more of one of the more heartfelt too. You know what I mean? It was a hard negotiation. It was hard to talk to him. It was hard to find common ground because of his passion and our passion for what we're doing.

I think ultimately he saw something that he was willing to believe in. a spark of something. And not to get ahead of myself here, but the first time he walked in, I had Jason with me. And Wally walks in, you know, and he's kind of, he's got his kind of the brows over his eyes.

And he kind of walks in, and his wife's behind him. And Jason's like, what up, old timer? And Wally looked at Jason, and you could tell they probably had competed in the past or, you know, whatever. You got two strong southern men.

Right. And Wally said something smart to Jason like, I'll kick your ass or something like that. I was just like, I literally put my head of my hand going, oh, man, how is this going to go? You know, what it boiled down to was he's in bad health. And right now, Wally is, he's actually not doing good. I actually wanted to interview him for the documentary we've been working on. And I've asked three times, I've talked to him. I've talked to his wife. and at this point I'm probably annoying about it, but he won't do it. And he said to me, because I remember things a certain way and somebody else remembers them another way. And I can respect that, but some of the stories he told me, which I can't share, I can share some of them,

but are unbelievable, straight out of a movie, you know, with organized crime and all that stuff. But ultimately, we spent 20 hours over the course of a few weeks in that boardroom talking and negotiating. He started the negotiation with, you are not seeing my books, you are not seeing my financials. If you want to get this thing done,

he's like you're going to number one have to tell me why, because I got somebody ready to stroke me a check right now. And that's the person I'm going to sell it to. That's how the negotiation started. There were times where it, This wasn't happening. Oh, there were,

and it, well, let me, let me first start off by saying this. When you first call me about what it was, what the opportunity was,

I was like, oh, this is next level. You know, you're talking about an incredible staff of people that have an incredible skill set, an incredible amount of machinery, a space that's 170,000 square feet, a space that's grandfathered for,

as far as like a wash house. You can't build a wash house like that. You can't do it anymore. There were things that are once in a lifetime. Yes. This was a once in a lifetime opportunity. So I was, and you know, of course, you're telling me, hey man, the genes thing that we're doing right now,

we are not gonna be able to do this. And then all of a sudden here comes like a ray of light, right? Like a lifeboat. Like the Vine intervention. Yeah, you're dry, you're in the ocean. You're alive, but you're in the ocean. And all of a sudden lifeboat comes.

and this thing was like a lifeboat. And so I'm super stoked and you know, you can always make deals happen, right? You can always make deals happen. You can always figure out a way. And my attitude is always, well, we'll figure out a way to make a deal. We'll make a deal.

And there was some times in this where we weren't making a deal, where it wasn't happening, where I just thought, yeah, man, what are we gonna do now? I was in plan B, C, D because you'd say, hey, let me debrief. you want to watch this happen today, you know? And I'd be like, okay, the deal fell apart. Completely. Multiple times.

And then it would come back together. Yep. And then it would fall apart. But it wasn't like, uh, it didn't seem like those deals falling apart were any negotiation. It seemed like it just died. Like it wasn't like, oh, you know, he's hardballing us or he's gonna hold a little bit or we gotta come back with a different number.

Number it was like, no, you know what? I'm actually just not selling this to you anymore. Yeah. didn't even, he honestly didn't care about what we were going to pay for. It didn't really have anything to do with money. He wanted someone tough. That wasn't me, by the way. He wanted someone tough who could come in there and demand respect that knew how to interact

with people that understood the business that could carry on his legacy. And after 20 hours of negotiation, that wasn't me. And I'll share with you in a second who it was. At that table, that conference table, and flying back and forth and having these meetings, I did learn something very important about negotiation. In negotiation with someone who is so passionate about something that they've been building for 40, 50 years.

remember this guy had seven plants around north carolina he made it through the exportation of our jobs and machinery and the abandoned communities he he survived it you know the other thing is is this this guy I don't know it's he's a last of his kind I think is what it boils down to and he doesn't really believe that anyone can do what he does you ever met somebody like that? There is nobody alive that can do what I did what I do. He made the jeans for Levi's. He made the jeans for Wrangler.

He made the jeans for Calvin Klein. On one case he shared with me. He got a contract for Calvin Klein and a guy showed up in his office unannounced. His secretary comes to see him. Hey, there's somebody here to see you. And he's like, okay. and the guy comes in his office and he puts two plane tickets on his desk, tells him, you know, where, I know where you live.

I know, you know, I know everything about you. Basically, you're coming with me. And on the other end of those tickets was a guy named Whitey Bulger. Wally's like, hold on a second. Tells the guy to chill out for a second, gets on the phone, calls a friend of his up in New York. city saying hey I got a guy here named whitey bulger he's like he's asking me to pay money he's like whoa whoa wait wali hold on who he's like whitey bulger he goes who are you making jeans for

he says Calvin Klein he goes I'll call you back in 15 minutes come to find out his friend had the connections I don't even know if I should be sharing this shit bro his friend had the connections to get to the top. And Whitey, basically he gets a phone call back. And they're like, is Mr. Bulger there? puts him on the phone with Mr. Bulger. And Whitey said, I just heard the guy go, yep, yep, yep, got it. Okay, puts the phone down and leaves.

He wasn't paying for every pair of jeans that he was making. He wasn't given the cut. Wasn't given the cut. He didn't know he was supposed to be given the cut. It had never filtered it down to him. So he started receiving checks with the cut taken out for the product. There was a lot of stories like this. There were some pretty, there were some stories that he was telling me.

And I think the point is, is he wanted me to know how tough he was. You know, here's a, here's a guy who's at end of life. You know, and it's actually kind of, it's kind of sad too. He's at end of life. He's built this empire. He's invested everything in this. He's the best in the world at it. He's in the best in the world at making denim blue jeans and he's staring at death

We spent a week negotiating two weeks negotiating and then it's just radio silence There's there's no more conversation I'm trying to figure out what's going on I think the deal's done man I think it's dead There's no more conversation there was another entity Another entity that was that wanted to buy that had a ton of money You know, backed by massive, massive hundreds of millions of dollars and they were ready to roll in there. I finally get on the phone with his wife, Dolores, got her cell phone number. She sounds pretty wound up.

You know, hey, Wally, you know, he's in the hospital, you know. Why don't you come down next week? So I go back down. I'm sitting in the boardroom. Wally comes in and he sits down. You know, and he's looking rough and he, he's welling up. You know what I mean? He's just, he's welling up in his eyes.

And I'm like, what's going on? And he basically said, nobody knows this. I haven't even shared it with my son. But he had a heart attack. And he died called, I guess his wife called. They brought him back to life, got him back. And they actually said there is no way you should be alive right now. You must have more to do.

And that was the defining moment. where he opened up back for negotiation, where he just, he was staring death in the face, and then he dies, he gets brought back to life, and now I'm sitting in a board with him, and I have my wife next to me,

Amanda. And I knew bringing her down was going to be important because him and his wife have been doing this thing, and they've been a unit, you know, they've just, they're like my,

did in one plays off the other one and similar to the way Amanda is and I am and it was then that he decided that we had what it took that I didn't have what it took but that she had what it took because he was asking he asked me actually asked me to bring her down I said Amanda I want to bring out North Carolina listen while he's asking to meet you she's like why do I need to go she's like this is your thing this is what you do I said I don't know I said he wants to meet you. And he,

and I called him back. Yeah, I'm going to be coming down. He's like, you're going to bring Amanda, right? And I'm like, yes, I'm going to bring Amanda.

He stared at me across the table. And he said, he said to me, he goes, he's like, you can't do this. He goes, I don't trust you can do it.

He goes, but she can. I watch the way she moves. I watch the way she walks. I watched the way she interacts. I said, she can make this happen. And I wouldn't do a deal with you, but I'll do a deal with her.

And I said, you're right. Yeah. You're right, man. I agree with Wally, bro. 100%. It's like, you're right. And, you know, that was the turning point, man. The guy died, got brought back to life.

He saw his legacy in front of him. He saw, you know, a family. And I'm talking about a family. he's of course the jocco thing came into play because he had a special forces guy that lives next door to him who told him all about you so you've got people who are hungry to bring back manufacturing in america and it was at that point that he believed that we could carry on his legacy and things move forward and bro like even with even his belief that it could move forward that we could handle it was still

it was still just the beginning of all the bullshit that we had to go through to make the deal happen. Well, one thing I remember, another point was there was, you call me up and you're like, it ain't happening.

Or you send me a text like, it ain't happening. And I'm like, oh, you know, so we get on the phone and you're like, hey, we're going through the, the due diligence and whatnot. And there's no phase two environmental study. Hasn't been done in 30 years or whatever, 40 years.

And you're like, hey man, if this comes up bad, we could be out a million, two million dollars worth of like cleanup and repair and payments. And you're like, we just, we just don't know. And I remember I'm like, okay. I said, hey man, how much would it cost us to build that factory? and you're like, I don't know, you're like, you're running the numbers, you're like, 25, 20, 25, maybe 30 million.

And I go, let's do this deal. And you're like, Roger that, you know, because, and that's again, that's one of those things where you were really close to the deal, of course. But I looked at, you know, that's actually a small risk when you put it up against what we would have done. I mean, and look, even if we had a billion dollars, to say, okay, now go build that factory. How long does that take? Now go get those people.

Where do you get them from? Now train those people. Years. It's maybe seven years. Like literally seven years. If we had a billion dollars, it would have taken seven years. So those little risks, those additional risks that you take, because it's a once in a lifetime deal.

This is a once in a lifetime deal. Yeah, it is, it shouldn't have existed and it shouldn't have existed and it shouldn't have happened. One person's sheer force of will to hang on to the golden age of manufacturing, one person's decision is actually going to spearhead this renaissance, this revolution of manufacturing.

We're actually just dovetailing onto that thing to carry it forward. He was like the underground resistance for 40 years. Just like sitting in a, cave keeping those machines on just keeping it going and everybody I come in contact with everybody I came in contact with since then has said oh you you're you know you're the owner of the new of Wally's factory I said yeah and they're like can't believe you got that

done with Wally like I mean everybody knows the guy and he's he's a hard ass man dude's a hard ass but ultimately it got done we got it got done. Freaking sign the papers. Yeah, we got it done when they're like, one of his stipends, right at the again, this whole thing was like a cliffhanger. Yeah.

Hey, okay, I want the money in a week. That's, yeah. The guy's crazy, man. He's crazy. I want the money in a week. Do we escrow him some funds? Oh, I mean, I remember in wiring big fat numbers around and going, yeah.

And here's the other thing. Like, you kind of breeze through this, but you can't see my book. and you can't see my financials. No, he actually had a piece of like just a notebook paper. And he wrote on his revenue what he did. He's like, this is how much I pay for heat. This is how much, this is my payroll.

Here's lights, electric. He goes and here's the revenue. And you can see this is how this is the math works. And that's cool. You're like, hey, Roger that. You sent me a text of. a napkin or whatever like hey jocco this is what we're buying recording to the napkin i think i think most people walking in there would would be like this is like this guy's crazy yeah like this is a

shit hole yeah you know and in i think it's the future yeah and i think you know thankfully you know had the understanding of the true value and i think you know just like every good deal like he he he got he got what he wanted. Yeah. He really did. He got a team that's going to come on board that's going to continue that fight, that's going to expand that fight. And that's what he wanted, you know? And then all parties can walk away feeling good about the deal.

That's a great deal when that happens. And then it's like you finally get to go into the factory for the first time. And, you know, this is like buying, this is like buying a car. This is like walking up, seeing a car in the parking lot. And the guy's like, hey, I'll sell you that car over on the other side of the parking lot. You can tell what? It's a Corolla. It's a Toyota Corolla.

And you're like, how many miles? He's like, don't worry about it. Can I kick the tires? Nope. Is there an engine in it? Is there an engine in it? I'm telling you there is. I drove it here.

A long time ago. Right? So you just need to buy this thing. So you finally get to look under the hood of this thing. What would you see? What did we actually buy when you got in there? You know, I think that, I mean, where to go with that question? I could go so many different directions.

I think we bought exactly what we needed. And the challenge was that I didn't anticipate was a double merger of companies and cultures. A double merger of companies and cultures. I did not anticipate the difficulty of that. Um, yeah, we went in there. We stripped out 17 roll-off dumpsters full of stuff. We gutted the lights and put all LEDs.

We put $75,000 of Freon into the system. So we had cooling in there so it wasn't a sweatshop. Like we went through and with machinery. We bought new machinery. We stripped stuff apart. We built a fulfillment center. We stripped out the warehouse. We got new controllers, custom controllers.

We bought new dryers. I mean, we did everything we'd do from an infrastructure. But a double mirror. of companies and culture was the tricky part. That, um, the first, like, pictures you're sending me. You're, like, half laughing and half crying. You're like, you're like, uh, like back there, there's a wash house. It's in there, you know, there's just piles of equipment with, and it looked like, you know,

areas of the factory obviously hadn't been cleaned or used in decades, in decades. I remember you excited because you found the floor in some of the areas. Like you actually got enough stuff out of there so that you found the floor. People were smoking inside the building, Jock. Cigarettes. I walked through and I'm like, I'm walking. I'm like, I'm like, I must be some smoke coming in. And I walk by and there's a person smoking a cigarette.

I'm talking this is straight out of the seven. these bro. Yeah. Like shit hasn't changed. Right. Since 1970. Same type of a culture. Same type of a setup hasn't changed.

It looked rough. Now you're going to tell everybody to change. The cool thing was, you know, before we get to the merger in the cultures, that, and I've been talking about this a decent amount lately. So, you know, we even say it actually on front, like, hey, it's not, it's not what you hang on the wall. You can't just run around with a bunch of sayings. actually it kind of does help.

And I talked about, you know, the fact that David Hackworth changed fighter company, or sorry, Fox Company in Korea to Fighter Company. And he changed the hopeless in Vietnam. The 4309th, he changed the hopeless to the hardcore. He just changed these names, changed these things. Hey, gave them little patches to wear on their uniforms, right? Made their salute into hardcore ricondos. No fucking slack.

Like he made these changes. Like just made them. And that starts to shift things. And, you know, out of the gate, you're just like cleaning, just cleaning this place up, right? Getting rid of a lot of this junk. Getting rid of these old machines that weren't, that didn't have any purpose anymore,

painting things, a wage increase across the board for everybody. Yeah. Like, out of the gate. They were making $7.50 an hour, dude. You're making minimum North Carolina wage. $7.50 an hour. Who can live off a $7.50 an hour? So the wage increase.

the cooling system you talk about I mean you know like you got to post that that cooling system again that thing's a monster it's like I don't understand like you have a swamp cooler there's like a small pool of water there you need to cool off you can dive in it's like crazy right and what was the little bet you had with Kip

like I'll give you a thousand dollars if you can get this thing running or something what was the deal on that Kip came down and he's you gotta remember Kip's been in a lot of factories and hope he doesn't mind me sharing this but he told me once like he went into a factory. They drove, you know, an hour.

Then they drove, you know, 15 miles down there's a dirt road. And then they, at the corner of the dirt road, there was somebody carrying, he thought it was like bananas or something out of the forest. Then they drove down an elephant trail, another five miles into the middle of a jungle, where people were like carrying out, whatever. He didn't know. And there's this building. There's this three-story big brick.

building with bars on the windows and he's like don't tell me this is a factory and he goes in and there's a bunch of girls young young girls in there selling and he's like get me the hell out of here and what those folks were carrying out and bare feet was the garments and of course you know he's like i think i think for like kip like he knows what factories good factories look like he knows what infrastructure looks like he knows what's right and he knows what's wrong he's seen it all he walked into the back room with jason gaddy and jason you know how jason is he's like you know kind of get that sales personality oh my look at this he's not it got that so on cool we got this we got this thing it shoots out it'll cool this whole place down and kip's like this thing

ain't working jason he's like no it's it's working it's good to go you just got kip kip walks over he's like yeah there's no way yeah there's no way this works He's like, no, it works. And Kip's like, I don't know, I'll bet you $1,000 that this thing doesn't work. Come to find out, that shit didn't work. That shit didn't work. I think Kip found out like two weeks ago that we had to dump that type of cash into it. But stuff like that definitely important.

Well, all that was happening for me, it was more of, how am I going to connect with the people that have learned leadership from Wally. Again, this dude is living in the 70s, 80s, where you protected your own at whatever cost. How am I going to untangle and re-educate what our culture is like, how we lead, how we treat people? And I remember the first thing I did was I went up to the three managers and they're all looking at me like, who is this guy?

You know what I mean? And I just, I said to him, I said, listen, I said, they're like, are you going to fire us? I said, no, I'm not going to fire you. Are you going to fire us and bring your own people in? No. Well, how do we know that? I said, we didn't buy this place because of the machinery or the building. I said, we bought it because of the people.

I said, that woman over there, that's felling jeans, I have. never seen anything like it. That one over there, I said, I've never seen anything like it. I said, the skill here you don't find in America anymore. I said, we're here because of you and nothing else. That's it. And the one, there's this one woman and she's staring at me, staring through me. I was actually a little bit feared for my life.

And now I get done and she does this little smirk and she smiles. She goes, I like you. and she just walks off. And it was like a lot of those, you know, keeping those conversations warm and touch points. It was, it was just the beginning. We're in process right now, obviously, of trying to continue changing the culture. And it's difficult, man. I mean, obviously, you've come down twice already.

What did you think when you first walked in for the first time? I was freaking totally stoked. But, you know, you can tell. Again, this is something that I get to see a lot at Eshlam Front, and I get to see it in the military too. You could tell that the people had some level of, for lack of a better word, I've said this phrase the other day, post-traumatic leadership disorder, right? Yeah.

So you have Wally, who's a survivor, who's going to crush, destroy, kick ass to make this work. and that what does that translate to on the front lines tyrannical leadership like you're going to shut up and do it the way i'm telling you that's it that's the way it is and you could tell that that's the environment that these folks in now by the time i got down there again the lights were in the place was clean so you started to see you i could smell the hope right i could start to smell but then you know we'll get into some of the conversations that we had as we went forward and echelon front showed up there uh you could start to see okay But when I got in there, I actually saw hope. And I saw people looking at me. And as I started talking to people, you see that there's hope there

and they were ready for that transition. What's, so we'll get to that. In the meantime, the other monster is out there. I think people really gotta understand. There's like there's two monsters. We're walking through the factory, getting phone calls about this other thing. And when we're doing this other thing,

we're getting phone calls about these deals. It's just, it's a lot of, lot it's a lot it's the other monster now freaking lot bro the other monster's hungry we you know one of the main things that we wanted to get done was make a ready to drink mulk that people could go into a store and say hey i need protein right now i need to fill myself up i need some nutrition i want it to be healthy we we need ready to drink mulk we've had great success and supreme demand for the powdered milk. I mean, it's the best stuff going.

So, but people, sometimes you don't have time to, you don't have a shape cup, all this thing. So we need to make a ready to drink milk. And that was a a chah, chah, chah, challenge. Yeah. A challenge to make the right formula. A challenge to make the formula as healthy as it can possibly be,

as efficacious as it could possibly be. And you've got to counter that with making it taste as good as you can possibly make it. So people want to drink it so it tastes good. And so we have all those just to formulate the thing. And once you formulate it, guess what you got to do? You got to actually make it. So how's this going down?

Yeah, I mean, it's funny. And listening to you talk, it's all about this whole thing that we're doing, not trying to do. We're doing it. We're executing something. It's all around people and community. Like it takes people. It takes knowledge.

It takes equipment. It takes community. Like it's the same damn thing. We're trying to make stuff. You know? We're trying to not lose who we are. Because if we do, I mean,

I don't even want to guess at what happens for our kids' generation. And honestly, I was saying to somebody the other day, it's on us right now. It's on the, it's on the gen Xers. I mean,

us three at this table, it's on us. We're the next leaders of this nation. We're the businessmen and women of this nation. We're going to drive the direction. We're going to drive a divide or we're going to try to unify. You know, and I was explaining these market dynamics, actually, to Kip in the team, that, like, what are we trying to do? And I'll try not to get off on a tangent here, but you have the greatest generation.

The greatest generation were responsible for turning on the war machine of World War II America's war machine, which was America's factories. We had the capabilities. We had the knowledge. We knew how to build tooling if we didn't have it. We knew how to make machines from scratch,

from ore, from iron ore. We would freaking heat and cast and mold and pound that shit into shape until it turned into a tank or a truck, whatever we needed. And we've truly have lost that. And it's been crushing the middle class, you know. And this is all about trying to give the middle class what makes America great, which is real opportunity.

Because without it, who are we? You know, this, I guess it's just a 250 year seizure, you know, and we're trying to do something about it. So I guess my point is, is we've kept this singleness of purpose across the board on origin and on jaco fuel. And although one serves the things you wear and need and use in life, the other one actually serves, you know, the things you need for nutrition and you need to consume this stuff. I was in Europe a couple weeks ago. There's foods that are illegal that are made here. You can't buy shit in Europe, you know, like stuff that comes in boxes that, you know, has, it's at the end of it and cheese at the beginning, you know, like that type of stuff that you want to consume by the handfuls.

But, you know, like we're like the things that these big conglomerates are able to make, you know, like they're just not good for you. And we're trying to make something that's good for you. So this market dynamic of this this World War II generation that is all but gone that passed the stories on to us Gen Xers. These were the future leaders. Our kids have never, I don't want to say have never had any authentic experiences, but most of their experiences come through a device, likes, follows, friends, through this device. they didn't hear the stories from the greatest generation directly. So they lie with us. They've never really experienced anything authentic.

They've never walked into a factory. And so you have this void of, I don't want to use the word authenticity, but you have this void of reality because everything is behind a screen. You can't see it truly. You can't smell it really. you can't feel it and ultimately you don't know who made it and in in there's something missing the thing that's missing is what what they fought for right it's what the greatest generation fought for it's what they went to war for to protect the things we had and then we sell those things to the lowest

bitter that's what we did we sold it to the lowest bidder but we let it happen and origin and jaco fuel like the things we're doing it sits in the middle of this triangle where our our kids are going to they're going to experience something authentic for the first time they're going to walk into a factory and go whoa whoa what is this and they're going to pick up a boot and smell the leather so we're going to leverage this technology they're used to to tell a different story to write a different script to change the narrative and that's the idea here and use in use and in and not romanticize about the greatest generation but honor them through what we're doing and that's that's the ultimate goal like when you look at this immersion camp we're here in this immersion camp right now you got 350 people

here and we're walking through the factory yesterday and in in for the first time 70% of the people here have never been here they've never been to the factory the looks on their faces and the questions they're asking. I mean, we spent four hours walking through the factories and they're just like, wow. And I know you've had a ton of people come up to you and I've had a ton of people come up to me, but we're not selling them anything. We're showing them a way to do something. You know, they manifest what their belief in what we're doing and their alignment with what

they're doing. They manifest that by purchasing a hoodie or a pair of jeans or boots or grabbing a mulk or a go but it's they're living into the same thing we're leaning into and and I think that that's what makes it so not not not powerful it's what makes it so important it's why Wally sold us that the factory that's what he saw he saw a generation that actually could do what he did because he didn't believe he didn't believe it was going to happen he did he thinks he thought we're too soft soft and weak So there's a mindset. There's an air.

There's a there's a frequency that we're all working on to try to make this shit happen. And it all is living as ideas in wanting to be executed, but sometimes recklessly. and we're trying to organize that so that it's executed more refined, I guess you could say. Whether it's with the genes, whether it's with trying to make milk RTDs. And it sounds silly a little bit for me to say it like that, but it's not because that shit is hard to make. There's five people in America who can make it that we know of. We're looking for more. Hey, listen, if you can make this Molk RTD for us in America, please let us know.

know, because it's been difficult. What we wanted to do to keep it clean, you know, the way we needed to package it, how we wanted to keep it actually good for you and healthy for you. There's actually not a lot of people who can do that. And the people who can, the people who can are held back by the big brands who have the market share and the control. and we're trying to come in and trying to take some of that market share and take some of that line time. And those big brands pay them off to not let us in or anyone like us in. They're not going to let us in.

They ain't letting us on the line. They're not giving up an ounce of market share to us. Good thing. We're fighters. You know what I mean? Like a little bit of savages, a little bit of. Savage is a little bit arrogant at times, but uncompromising. So, you know, we're in, we're in that process right now.

I mean, we can't make what we need to make for the supply. We can make a certain amount, you know, like we have the product. We've had it. Our first manufacturer who committed to us then dropped us. I'm sure they got a side deal, you know, some type of check cut to keep us out of the line. I'm not sure. Just keep the line shut. Yeah.

Just don't make anything. They're paying them not. They either are going to make them or they're not going to make anybody else and these companies are getting paid off to do that. Not to make anything. Not to make anything. Just to go back to your tangent about making things and what it's like to see that, I think there's a certain human instinct that we have, that a certain dopamine reward that we

get for creating things, right? Otherwise, how would we be here? How would we as human beings have lasted if we didn't get a little dopamine hit from building a freaking a roof over our head with sticks or put rocks into a circle and make a fire if you didn't get some kind of dopamine

hit from that we wouldn't be we wouldn't exist as human beings so I think we all have that and if anybody's you know ever if you've ever created anything if you've ever made anything you get that little dopamine hit oh yeah if you've you know when you were a little kid and you made a tree fort you

enjoyed that as you get older you remodel the kitchen if you did that you hung dry wall at the end of the day you looked up you got a dopamine hit i remember one time i was building a retaining wall in my backyard i was in the navy i was probably but i was you know was like probably i guess i was 16 17 years in the navy and i had taken you know a three-day weekend so i could build a retaining wall i'm out there laying bricks laying block and i remember i got done and i just came in i said you know hey babe i think when i retire i'm going to become a mason you know like no one is bothering me. I'm listening to some music. The block don't talk. The block isn't going to die.

It's not even going to get injured. And look at what I did today. You know, like it's a good feeling. That dopamine hit is a real thing. And unfortunately, the dopamine hit is subsidized by, you know, clicking, you know, deliver this to my house. And it seems like they don't even want you to understand where this stuff came from. They just want you to get the dopamine hit of hitting Ad DeCart. Yes. Right? They don't want you to know what it feels like to make this stuff.

And you rip that out. That's why you see, you know, for years now, for kids, it's been, oh, you know, what you need to do is you need to go to college and learn, you know, you need to learn computer science or liberal arts. But you're not going to go to a technical school. We don't want you to go to a technical school. We don't want you to be an electrician. We don't want you to be a plumber. We don't want you to be a mason. We don't want you to be a carpenter.

We don't want you to know how to work a loom. We want, but we want you to buy this stuff. So there's like a capitalization of, of dopamine. And they make it easier. And, you know, even like you,

you know, you threw out computer science. Actually, people that do good computer science and computer engineering, they get dopamine hits because they're building something. Yeah.

And it's something that they can make. I mean, I can tell you get dopamine. When you make a video, And it's good you even make a part of a video sometime and you're like hey I built this and there's a certain amount of satisfaction and like that's a certain amount that's something I don't understand I can't make anything on a computer as you know, right? Yes, we know that but I know that you get it from there and I get to go straight to the source on that So this is what happens I think you know it's like a look I'm not gonna sit here and say it's a conspiracy theory or a conspiracy that you know the big corporation's

don't want people to make things on their own, but that's just the way it's turned out. The way it's turned out is, is if you wanna make, for instance, a ready to drink protein, they don't want you to know how good that feels to deliver that product and have people have a healthy choice when they go out. They don't want you to feel that.

Because if you feel that, other people might feel it. And if other people might feel it, all of a sudden we got a problem on our hands. Dude, 100%. It's like freaking soiling, green the way this shit works remember that movie yeah yeah lining up to eat the wafers man yep everybody's lining up to eat the wafers and we're like the insurgency right saying hey join us there's a better way here's the truth we got to have truth yeah got to have truth so so we

through great effort we eventually we we find a manufacturer in Canada yeah that seven hours away. Our neighbors in Toronto. Our neighbors. God bless. And they're up there and they're, you know, not, they're not willing to sit back and shut down their line for money. Right.

They want to have things made. Good on them. So the malt comes. Here's another, you know, just another, the flavors on the go, right? So we got discipline go. When did the first one come out? Two years ago? Two years ago?

Was it two years ago? The new adjusted. No. When's the very first discipline go? Who can remember? So a couple years ago. We have one flavor. It comes out.

It's based on my taste buds, which is a bad idea. I don't drink sugar. I don't eat sugar. Or let me rephrase it. I don't drink a lot. I haven't drinking a Coca-Cola in decades, right? So the very first jaco discipline go that I had, which had a little bit of monk fruit in it, to me, it tasted like frigging, you know, candy cane almost, right?

I'm like, oh, hell yeah, this is sweet. Hell yeah. And that's sort of the baseline that we used in the beginning for the drink. And the bottom line is it was to use Echo's term and Echo's correct. He was like, you're not normal, meaning Jocko, you're not normal. And he's right, my taste buds are not normal. And so we ended up as we developed the flavors for the discipline go. Look, we made the best possible drink.

The efforts that we went through to make it, how we. made it to make it as clean and make it as natural to hold off on making it for seven or eight months so we could actually pasteurize it instead of just hey you know what why don't you just throw some chemicals in there just throw them in there it'll be okay no no we're not going to do that we're going to pasteurize it what about hey monk food's kind of expensive we can throw some you know some of the aspartine we can do that hey no one will really know yes we know I know we're not doing it we're going to hold the line so we make well you should just dump a bunch of caffeine that way people will feel it.

Yeah, then they're going to crash too, and it's not good, but it's a freaking bad for them. We're not doing it. So we end up making an outstanding drink in terms of performance. But taste not the best. Definitely needed to get better.

So we had to attack that issue. Man, I got really happy. I got really used to the taste, by the way. Yeah, so did I. And I was like, I like, it's like, if you drink coffee for the first time, of course, this is a thousand times better than I don't drink coffee.

I did a spurt of five years. I drank coffee in the beginning of starting origin. I don't drink coffee though. And then I ever drank before because I think coffee is disgusting. I think it tastes bad. I think it tastes really good with a lot of sugar cubes and some milk and maybe throw some whipped cream in there. But that's not really coffee, you know what I'm saying?

So I really did like, and I actually drank mango. I drank a mango every day. You know, one can of mango every morning. And that was my best part of waking up was mango in my mouth. You know what I'm saying? And I love the iced tea lemonade. Yeah. And that's what, so the old flavors were like this.

Usually people had one that they really liked. Yes, I had one. And they had two that they thought were okay. Yep. And they had three that they literally didn't like at all, which is not good. No. Right? So we knew we had to redo these flavors.

And we, what we ended up having to do is say, hey, you know what? We need help. We need help. We've reached the maximum capacity of our capabilities. Yes. And reached out to professionals that actually formulate flavors and can help and help us put together and reformulate the flavors on all the drinks. And man, what a freaking difference. Yeah.

I mean, the new flavors, all of them. This is what it's like now. You'll have three that you love. and you'll have four that you absolutely love almost as much. I actually drink every single flavor. They're all delicious now. They're all delicious now. So that was huge.

But we had to destroy some flavor system. This is what's crazy, right? It's not like you snap your fingers and now you have new flavors. No, this is a massive investment financially to bring these new flavors around. the testing, the, hey, no, this one sucks. No, I wanted a little sweeter, less lime, you know, more cherry, all these things going back and forth, paying to get all these things formulated. And then once you get them formulated, well, now you've got to adjust all the cans that

you've made. And you've got some cans that are sitting around that now what are we going to do with these? So this was a massive effort, a massive effort. but you know what I remember the I don't want to say the the dictum that I put out like the the commander's intent that I put out was we need to win on taste like we're look we're winning on everything else everything else we've we've got everyone else crushed we've got them no one can touch us we need to win on taste if it doesn't taste good we can it doesn't matter and we we did it we did it now we're winning on taste. So now we're winning. We got the best tasting. We got the most efficient. And now that means that right there was the production of all the weapons right there. That was the production of all the weapons and all the battleships and all the aircraft carriers and all the airplanes and all the howitzers in World War II. We made this. And now they're out. Now it's time to take

him into battle. And this is, this is so, such a fascinating world, this battle that goes on in the business world. And I never knew about it. I mean, I certainly didn't know, know about this three, four years ago. What's going on when you go into stores? How that, how that functions. So you go into a store, you go into a convenience store. And you see, you know, 20 different energy drinks in the in the cooler, in the refrigerator. And those energy drinks, to get into that cooler, had to fight to get in there. And what that means is they, in many cases, had to pay to get in there. They had to pay millions of dollars to get that shelf space.

And each one of those different brands that you're looking at in there, some of them have paid more, some of them have paid less. if you happen to have a drink that just performs great, guess what? They don't have to pay a bunch to get in there. If you have something like Jock Fuel where we do perform, we haven't paid to get in there. Yes. We're getting by on actual performance. And that's good because the amount of money that gets thrown around in these deals,

We're talking about billion dollar companies, multi-billion dollar companies. So you've got that war going on. So that every space in that shelf is fought for. And you know what? When you go in and you buy a jocco go from a convenience store, you go into a grocery store and you buy it, you are, you're calling for reinforcements. You're opening up the gates for reinforcements to get in there. So when you do that, thank you for doing that.

Not only you're supporting yourself, you're supporting the company, which means you're supporting America. So thank you for doing that. So you got that war going on on one front. The other war is this virtual war that you've got going on, which is insane.

So whether it's search words on Google or searching in Amazon. See, this is again. Bro, they don't call it conquest for no reason. There's terms called conquest somebody. That's a war term. This is where I started to understand what was happening on Amazon.

You know, years ago, I'm at Eschlam Front, and I like certain kinds of pens, as stupid as that might sound. You know how I'm kind of a particular guy, Eau Charles. I like things a certain way, right? There's one right there. I like certain kind of pens. I like certain types of pencils.

I like certain types of paper. So, you know, one time I was, like, ordering one of my pens. This is, and I ain't no freaking Mont Blanc dude over here. I'm not rolling on a $200 pen or whatever. I like pens that cost $2.59. So I order one pen for $2.59. And Amazon says, yep, it'll be there tomorrow at your house. So I'm thinking to myself, that's crazy.

I don't know how they're doing this. It's got to cost them. How much does it cost for them to deliver this thing to my house? A lot more than $2.59. And what's their profit margin on $2? on $0.59 or $2.39. What is it? $20? It cost them $2 to get this thing to my door at an absolute minimum. So how in God's name are they making money? How is that happening? Well, when I searched pen, there's 12 pens that come up and each one of them is paying to pop up on my

computer screen and lure me into buying them. And that's happening billions of times a day. So there's this virtual war going on inside of Amazon. And it was crazy as we put our products on Amazon that if you searched jaco protein, before we understood the battlefield, you'd search jaco protein and there would be nine proteins come up, none of which would be jaco fuel. or you'd search krill oil and seven krill oils would pop up and none of them would be jaco fuel and this confused me for about four hours and then i said hey what in god's name is going on and guess what people are paying and the word you just use is conquest explain that explain how that works i mean we

we like to do it every now and then i mean you got to fight fight fire with fire a little bit but But learning the landscape, first of all, and obviously getting smart people involved was key to our hiring process of getting, I call it expanding the brain trust. You know what I mean? Basically, it works like this. You find smarter people and you algorithmically bid. So if you have AI, that's even better, against your competitors. and then you conquest them by using their name.

So regardless if they're searching for you or using their brand name, you're coming up. And that's the war. You know, that's a war online. Yeah, 100%. And it's no different than in the stores except that, you know, the companies with, and we're in this war right now. We're in this war in the store right now. We have a company that is offering millions of dollars for shelf space.

which we need. We can't fight that battle. So we're working on some other techniques which we won't share to flank it and stay where we need to stay. Ultimately, and continue driving velocity to prove out what we're doing,

not just to the store, but to the consumer also. So there's a lot of moving parts there. Yeah. And the best thing, so here's people talking about, you've written a bunch of books, right? Yeah.

And people like, oh, you know, what's the, what's the, key to like making New York Times bestseller. What's the key to having a bestselling book? And the key is write a good book. That's the actual key. So the best thing that we can do is what we've done. Make the best possible product. Make it taste as good as it possibly can. And that is why we're in there in the first place. We wouldn't know we didn't have the, the, the firepower to break through the door. What gets us into these, all these different places is the high demand signal. So thank you all out there right now tuning in listening going hell yeah clear the shelves yes clear the shelves you

have there clearing shelves that's that's literally what made this happen that's what that's what keeps us going that the product the effectiveness of the product the taste the product that's the number one weapon to to make this happen but and that's what we have to use is because that's what we have we don't have billions of dollars we can't throw tens of millions of dollars at a store to say, can you give us a few more, can you get rid of our competitor? Because that's what happens. And look, this is business.

This is business. I get it. And they can win. I get that too. You can understand Wally a little bit. You can understand Wally's mindset with that protective mindset. We're doing the same thing. You know,

we're going to buy line time. We're going to go buy, we're in the process of it. We just secured 20, 25 line time for Mulk RTDs. 2025. Shit ain't even set up yet. And we're going to own that. Why?

Because you've got to be a savage about it. You've got to protect what you're building. So it is, it helps me understand his mindset by our mindset with how we're building this. Yep. And you have to, like you just said, you have to be a savage because if you're not, you have to be a predator. You have to go, you have to be a predator because otherwise you'll get eaten. You just look like prey.

And these big companies, it's, you know, it's us down here. you know, scrapping. And they can just, you know, they can throw money at stuff. And you know what? And like I said, they can win. That's the way, that's the way things work. But we also have advantages.

And that's what we're going to utilize. You know, this is how insurgencies work. How do small little guerrillas running around in the jungle defeat giant imperialist countries? It's an insurgency. There's belief. There's belief in what's happening.

there's unity in the people. That's what we have. We have people that believe we have unity and that's our strength. And that's how we're going to win on that battlefield. Now, meanwhile, again, while all this is going on, which is a daily fight, a daily fight. Meanwhile, we got this double merger going on. And it's actually more of like a triple. We have a triple merger going on because now in North Carolina,

what we end up with is we have factory one that we bought now we have and it's not like factory one was bought and now everyone we've been there for long enough now everyone's completely transitioned into everyone understands what we're doing and everyone's on board with the way our leadership works no that that's still going on boom now we buy another factory and now we have the origin culture factory one and factory two all these cultures merging in one shot at one time. What's that looking like? Well, don't forget and maybe you wanted to save this, but while all this is going on, we have this kind of aggressive and bold idea of building an American-made hunt line in this factory that we're going to double merge together.

So I don't know if that's crazy. It's a little bit crazy. what we're trying to do is you're not right in the head i think i think that's what makes it all work is other other other companies they're not willing to pull out all stops it's it's uh it's not it's not normal it's necessary though like you said so double merger trying to build culture at the same time developing textiles, developing camo, trying to get this wash house up so we can wash jeans, developing new fits, hiring a product team, getting the logistics figure out, building out a new direct-to-consumer warehouse, training people on that, hiring operators, like hiring

new C-level executives, having to have board meetings, expanding the finance team. It's a lot. It's a big-ass wave, man. And I'm just like, and from, and honestly from like my perspective. These monsters went from like Komodo dragons to Godzilla. Yeah, yeah, 100%. Bro, somebody said to me recently, man, you're hard work, guys. Actually, I will not outwork you.

I will out ADHD you. That's it. I got ADHD for days, man. Like I can bounce around, but it gets to a point where like, you got to organize the chaos, you know, and you can use your ADA. I can use it as a superpower, but stepping back in like, hey, letting people start to organize this chaos, you know, into a machine. It's like you've got all these parts and pieces, but like putting them together,

dumping some oil, putting the grease on and tuning it in and letting it run. it's kind of where we're at right now is it's together but it's squeaking man it's squeaking and and we know it needs to be done but the biggest part of that is culture and honestly it's on both it's on both sides of this two-headed monster you know is keeping that consistent culture driving it down I believe the most important thing you can have in business culture you know I think if you have good culture you can do anything and we've seen that in a positive light and war and we've seen that in a very negative light in war. If you can get buy-in from the people and you can, and you can create a mindset,

a mission and a mindset around that mission that people are willing to execute against and go to war for, you can truly do anything. You truly can do anything. I've always believed that as a kid when they said, you can be anything you want to be. You can do anything in life. I actually believed that shit. Maybe I was naive, but I believed it. You know what I'm saying?

And I still do believe it. So, you know, like, I remember calling you up and being like, and we don't need to share it here. But like, hey, Jocko, we've got some problems. We've got some problems trying to merge this thing together. I shared some of those concerns with you of that mindset from the 70s and 80s that was really not going to work and really not okay. And at that point, obviously, you were like, yeah, I'm freaking in, you know, and getting the teams together, feeding them, having a meal, and then, like, showing them and going to town on, like, who we are and what we're all about and what culture means and what leadership means and how to lead and how to communicate. like it's it's not like and I know you've been down twice now for the whole team then for the management team I believe it's going to make like some people going to musters some of some of you coming back to the factory

you know like it's going to take this constant alignment over the course of 24 months that's how long the double merger is going to take yeah yeah yeah and that's pretty standard right um I don't know man you tell me I mean I'm telling you this is all the time I don't know I am telling you Yeah, I'm with the trenches a little bit. You can't, it's not an inoculation. You don't go to one, no. Jock would talk about extreme ownership. Okay, cool, now I get it.

Now we can move on. It doesn't work like that. But what is beautiful is you can see, you can see progress. I mean, you know, you mentioned about Jason's progress as his mind opened up, as he started to understand other ways to lead and get out of just a survival mode, which is a good thing. but it's not as good as a build and thrive and and take over mode right that's that's the thing and just like a like a really simple thing when I talked to the team in North Carolina just explaining to them that

leadership wanted their feedback leadership wanted their feedback leadership wanted to know if there was something on the line that didn't make sense I remember asking you know something along the lines of like Who do you who here thinks Jason knows how to hem that thing better than the person that sits on the machine all day? Everyone's like, of course, the person on the machine. So if Jason's telling you to do something the wrong way, doesn't it make sense that you say, hey, this doesn't work or here's a better way to do it? Yes. And like the light on their faces was a beautiful thing to see because you can see that they do have ideas and they have better ways of doing things and they can definitely help us improve and they will help us and they are helping us improve. And of course, you still have to power through the fact that they've been underneath leadership that didn't do that for a long time.

It was like, hey, you're going to do what we say. We don't want to hear from you. So this is where things start to change. And Jason says he's getting that feedback that he needs. So no, there's not going to be an overnight transition. That's not going to happen. But what's beautiful is that transition is already happening. You already see the improvement.

You already see the attitude. The difference between when I went down there the first time and I went down there the second time, a couple months. apart took radically different, radically different situation. You could see the difference on the floor. You can see the people smiling. You can see them looking, want to show me something, want me to look at this, oh, come and look. That's what you see.

And that's just like that's where we're going. That's the culture starting to grow. And the other thing is you can't impose culture, right? You can't say, okay, here's the new culture, A through Z. This is what, no, it has to like all go into the pot. And we have to cook it together and they have to realize And there's going to be some things that they're going to give to us. And so that's the beautiful thing is to watch this thing.

Watch that unfold. Hunt line. So first of all, you being in Maine, being in the woods of Maine, hunting is a way of life up here. So way of life, you know, I know Joe, your father-in-law, he's a hunter. You're a hunter. I remember your son out running trap lines. like this is the way of life in Maine. So for hunting for you,

it's like, oh yeah, this is a no brainer. Yeah, I mean, a total no brainer. And, you know,

and in that community is also, you know, they're also patriots. And they heavily believe in the land. They heavily believe in America. And the fact that, you know, they don't have an option that is made here.

With textiles that, made here like the fact that there's no option anymore you know we actually in my last company in the early 2000s we actually manufactured i mean we did marketing for this company it's called beagle wear and they did a wool and i still wear that hunting and i don't hunt a lot anymore um because you know i'm trying to feed two monsters seven days a week uh but uh but i remember i that's what i still wear hunting right now is i wear this wool beagleware which has a dwr on it freaking stuff is phenomenal. That for me was always like the pinnacle of like hunting gear made in America, made in Vermont. To bring this to fruition and to bring a product at the level we've brought it to

on an American supply chain is it's a it's a little bit of a miracle that we did it. And I'll tell you what, if we didn't have the team we did and the vision we had and honestly with Kip involved and And in his knowledge base of building Under Armour and in him keeping us away from making tuition payments, I don't think it would have happened without Kim. I don't. Well, yeah, it would not have. Not even don't think. We would not have done it without Kim. Exactly.

So a big advocate there and really driving how things should go. And it's been for me, it's been a year of learning. yeah I'm kind of you know directing both organizations both monsters but you know he's he's been there like really calling out really calling it out in the kip way you know what I mean which is a little bit savage at times I've just kind of kept my mouth shut and executed so I've been I feel like a little bit I've been just working from him for him on the hunt line you know I'm like working I'm working for him. And I'm totally okay with that.

Like that dude is, he's been driving this thing. But understanding his thought process of how to build product. And I'm not just talking about Hunt, but the thought process of how to build great product with innovation, how to think about supply chains and logistics, how to communicate with partners, you know, how to build relationships that are. lasting how to talk to consumers it's I feel like I've had a like a college education over the past year it's been freaking phenomenal you got a hell of a lot more than a college education because kip has this experience that you just you're just not you can't you could never

you can't you can't learn what kip knows yeah you can't well you can't learn that from a book or from a from a seminar or from a college course like ever you can't you can't cannot learn what he knows. You have to have lived it. And yes. And I actually told him last week on the phone. It's like, man, you gotta get a hold of Jocko. And you got to, because I've been trying to push him

to like write a book under the armor, like, and to tell the stories. And I'm like, Jocko can publish that shit, dude. Like, dude, call him and talk to him about it. But also like start a YouTube channel. And Kipp's a bit of a savage. You know what I mean? The way he talks, he's just different. He's different.

but a super positive influence on what we're doing as an organization. Building this hunt line wasn't easy. The alpha-Bravo trialy layering system, the way we're using wool, you know, which is really core to who we are, is this natural fiber in our nano wool and our base layer and our stealth wool and our mid-layered. Just FYI. Yeah. It's not your dad's wool and it's not your granddad's wall. It's a totally different kind of wool. Bind micron American marino wool to be exact.

It doesn't feel like, well, I don't know, Echo, how old are you, 44? Yes, sir. Oh, yeah. Well, I was going to ask you a question about wool and then I remembered you're from Hawaii. That's true. So you didn't wear anything wool growing up, ever.

No. All right. You know, we didn't have our wool available yet for me to test, and I had to go to Europe a few weeks ago, and we were going to go actually and then we went to Scotland and so I bought a smart wool you know that brand I bought some socks dude yeah I wear those socks

during like all temperatures yeah I didn't I want I didn't get it what like marino wool did to regulate your body my feet don't sweat in it it doesn't make sense it doesn't make sense how this natural fiber that's so old yeah can be used still very innovatively.

You know what I mean? Like it's an incredible fiber. So, you know, we, we, we, we leveraged this fine micron marino wool. We blended it. We produced these incredible textiles. We gleaned some of the knowledge from spec ops, you know, that hasn't been commercialized yet. And we put this incredible line together.

Freaking printed, roller printed, sublimated, acid printed, like badass textiles. that were cutting and sewing and turning into freaking America's first truly American-made huntline without compromise on the origin factory blockchain. There is not another company doing that. I'll give you what anybody says. There's not another company. Yeah, there's some, when you mentioned the spec ops, the military base of this year, there's something called Barry compliant.

So Barry was a representative or something, and he created a law where military had the deal, the defense department had to purchase stuff that was American made. And it includes a whole bunch of different things, metal made products, but textiles and clothing is one of them, big one. And it's probably the biggest category. And so these things exist.

If it wasn't for that, honestly, the stuff probably wouldn't exist and we would have had to build a freaking mill, because there wouldn't even be mills here. We would have probably had to build a mill and make the stuff ourselves. But luckily, that did exist. thank you, Representative Barry,

wherever you may be, for putting that law into place because it kept some level of manufacturing here. So we were able to get a hold of that material and utilize that material. That's outstanding material. It's available, but it's hard. And where they get away with some of the stuff

is like the Barry Law says, some exceptions are due to unavailability, cost, or manufacturing efficiencies, of U.S. based products. So there's a claim that people can make, well, you know, we can't quite make that type of zipper, so we're going to get it overseas. Or we can't make this type of nylon,

so we're going to get it overseas. Or it's going to cost too much. Literally it costs too much, so we're going to do it overseas. So there's ways that people get around it and they can still call it Barry compliant. We're better than Barry compliant. Better than Barry.

And that's what we externally, like on our website, we have to say for the consumer something, so we say Barry Compliant. client internally were better than Barry. Let me give you an example. You know, there's a company in Maine that makes boots. And their uppers, the full upper of the boot, which is the boot without the soul, comes in from Mexico.

And they bottom it. That's what it's called bottoming. So they put a soul on it and they put laces in it. And it's American made. That technically is Barry. Compliant right right internally we are better than Barry That's a big deal to say that Hey man you know when you buy a pair of boots that soul That came actually from Massachusetts from vibram they injected it there that leather came from Wisconsin

Those eyelids came from here like it all you know like that porn midsill on the jeans that cotton was grown by a Texas That rift that rivet. That rivet. Yeah exactly You know it so better than Barry is what we stand by internally. And that's the only way that we continue building the limited supply chains and helping everybody, everybody that touches any part of that product, any component. That's how we rebuild the communities. That's how we rebuild the supply chain.

That's how we rebuild America. Yeah. And this, you know, you mentioned that hunters are probably the most patriotic people. in this country as a whole, right? And that's one of the things that, you know, in talking to Cam, Cam Haynes, right? I mean, just a world-renowned hunter, you know, he was looking to,

looking for what he's going to wear when he hunts. He needed someone to come on board with him. He needed someone to support him in his efforts. And he could go with any company in the world. I mean, he's, he's the, you know, one of the best, if not the best, certainly the most popular of hunters. And, you know, when, and luckily, of course,

he hunts with Kip, right? Yeah. He hunts with Kipp and they're great friends. And so that's awesome. But still, like, he's a guy that's got, you know, a family to support in a whole nine yards. So it's not just about, oh, well, this is my buddy, so we're going.

Man, what? And when I talked to Cam, you know, when I talked to Cam, what I talked to him about was, was we're doing this in America, you know, and he's got a son that's in the Rangers. I mean, this, you know, he's a patriotic, hardworking American. He's a, he's a blue-collar guy that's worked his ass off. And he knows what that means. He knows what it's like. He knows what it means to supply jobs to other Americans.

And, you know, from my perspective. And then, look, it was also, hey, you're going to be, have a huge. huge influence over what we make and how we make it. This is going to be designed. This is going to have your blessing. And if as Cam's blessing, you know, what else do we want, right? Exactly. So, but it was awesome to be able to get Cam involved to bring Cam on as an owner.

Yep. Because the reason is, look, he's not going to compromise on performance. It's not happening. I mean, look at this dude. He's runs a marathon every day, right? There's no compromise on performance with Cam. So he's not going to compromise there. And he's not going to compromise on his patriotism, on his love for this country.

And, you know, I mean, I talked about it with him. I'm like, hey, when we buy stuff from other countries, we're putting money into the pockets of our adversaries. Yes. And that's a horrible thing. And that's just the way it is, man. That's just the way it is. And there's no two ways about that. This is what we, this is an economic war.

and that claim that's not just rhetoric like, oh, this is an economic war, but no, no, this is an actual economic war. And our adversaries are fighting. And sometimes, you know, even if you look at China's past and what their theories of war are, what Sun Su said about war, they want to fight without their opponent knowing that there's a war going on. That's what they want. So, of course, they don't make a war. a big deal out of it.

But that's what's happening. And so it was awesome to have Cam come on board to a company that didn't even exist. You know, it didn't even exist. But for him to know, you know what, this is the right thing to do. And so thanks to Cam for coming on board and then helping with the design has been freaking awesome and it's been cool. He's already out there hunting right now, by the way. He's out there getting after it.

There's already blood on the Raptor Camo at this time. So that's freaking legit. But not an easy thing to get done, man. Holy crap. No, man. It was, I'd never seen roller printing before. We didn't know if the wool would hold, you know, like this stealth wool that we gleaned from the special forces. We tweaked it, you know.

So we took what they were using for this glove and we tweaked it for our liking with the blend that we wanted. And then it's like scorched under thousand degree heat in it, and it scorches the outside and gives it almost a shell, a little bit of a shell type of feel. And we're like, cool, all that's cool. Can we print it? You know, like we don't have no idea, but you have to like run a sizable amount of the product, which is not cheap at 50. bucks a yard right you got to run us a bunch of it to see if you can print it so you're taking all these little risks you know and in it really is is what it's taking to do all this is you're just taking risks what's the worst that can happen you lose some money okay what's

more important loser losing money or rebuilding this thing so we take the risks right but seeing for the first time that like stealth will go through that roller printer and come off the other side, I was like, bro, I mean, I had no words. Like, I looked at Kip. He looked at me. You know, he's like, are you kidding? I'm, like, yeah, bro. Like, this is it. It was at that point, I was a believer. You know, I was a believer. Like, we actually can build a innovative, high performing hunt line in America. because there's some good technical stuff out there. You know, there is.

And we still got it. I guess that's that I would say, like, we still got it. And it launched, what's today? The 20, yeah, it launched, launched, for pre-order. For pre-order. Because. Today.

Yeah. And that's, it's pre-order now because what we made is sold. Well, yeah, it's because we're making the stuff right now. And we're still weaving some of the textiles for some of the line. And, you know, we're, literally making it. It's not like all pre-made it didn't come over in a freaking container and we didn't just bring it into a warehouse and ship it out. We're freaking making the shit. So if people want it and they want to help and wear something on American land that's American made,

put the pre-order in. Yeah. Well, the other thing that's that we were talking about earlier, you were explaining to me is we have limited amount of fabric. We have limited amount of time. We have limited amount of capacity to actually make this stuff. So if you are out there and you need the woodland cammy instead of the highland cammy, we need to know that now. So we can make it for you. And if you need a size whatever, XL and your wife needs a size medium, we need to know that so we can make the right thing.

So that's why the pre-order is important on this stuff. So we can make the right amount of stuff and get it out to you. What else, man? I mean, I know there's a ton of, that's kind of like the broad strokes of the last year. What about camp this year? How's camp? How's camp?

How's camp? How's camp? Yeah? A lot more mellow, a lot more people, but more mellow. Yeah. You've been chilling, man. I've been watching you out of the corner of my. This has been a good conversation.

Yeah. Over here just cruising. Yep. It's true. Echo and I are matching right now. We're wearing that spring hoodie. New favorite, by the way. That's nice.

It's a good look. Jiu-Jitsu is getting more popular. Dude, it's exploding. People love Jiu-Jitsu. Are you concerned? So we got Galvow versus Gordon Ryan coming up. Yeah. Here's my concern.

It's going to be hype, right? It's going to be hype. One of my concerns, like they're saying there's going to be 20,000 people live. Are you going to the 80s? It doesn't look like it because I'll be in the mountains hunting. in Raptor Camel. In Raptor Camel. And it's on Sunday, too.

So I actually, I can confirm right now I will not be there, unfortunately. Here's my concern about this. Jiu-Jitsu, in that match, well, Jiu-Jitsu for, can be boring to watch in certain situations. There are, there is a, what percentage chance that this is a boring match?

Echo Charles. I don't think it'll be boring. So you don't think you think it's a hundred percent exciting match. I think the chance of being exciting is like 85 to 90 percent. Okay, so okay. I'm reverse. You think it's, I think it's going to be lackluster. I think Andre is going to play anti-jiu-jitsu and try to hit like when the points start.

A double leg with the three minutes left. Yes. That's what I think is going to happen. Oh, okay. Is that the, what's the rule set, ACCC? It's 20 minutes. So it's a super fight in 80s. 10 minutes, no points.

Right. 10 minutes points 10 minute overtime 10 minute overtime So it could be a total of 40 minutes And there's So that's that's the rule set I'm pretty sure

Yeah I think if I think if Gordon doesn't You know how he like calls out his submissions Or whatever if he just goes in there To win I think it could be exciting Oh he 100% is gonna do that Not like I'm gonna do this to average elbow

Here's the thing man It is freaking hard To do jiu jiu jihad against someone that is avoiding jiu-jitsu and you know that can be really hard um and if that's the game that Andre plays then that might be boring hey if Andre goes at him right on we're going to have an awesome an awesome match uh but that could happen we could we i'm worried that might be not as exciting as we want it to be and i started talking yesterday Yesterday, who's I talking to?

I was talking to some people at camp and I was like, some kind of a hybrid, like in wrestling, you can get called for stalling. And here's the problem with that. Calling people for stalling in Jiu-Jitsu goes against one of the principles of Jiu-Jitsu, which is conservation of energy, right? So my goal, if I'm going against a big wrestler,

my actual goal is to not work and make them work and stall. That's my goal. That's how Jiu-Jitsu wins in that. situation. So to create a rule where you can't do that, you can't stall, which is technically what you're doing, right? You're stalling. You're holding someone in your guard and you're stalling. You're making them trying to pass. You're stalling. You're not attacking. You're not trying to sweep me. You're not, that's stalling. So there's a problem with that rule because it goes against one of the principles of jujitsu, which kind of sucks. Yeah. And if you look at like the match with

Galvo and I think it was Huron or Henna Gracie where where he was showing how to defend someone who was a world champion remember this match Meta Morse. Meta Morse. There you go. Who is showing what? So

basically was it Henner or Huron? Heiron and Graysie. And he fought Galvo and Heron doesn't compete and Galvan was a world champion at this point and Galvo was trying to submit him for 10, 20 minutes. Yeah, 20.

Doesn't submit him. Why? Well, he played defense. You know, he survived. He played defense and good to go. Wasn't it a draw? Because it was a submission only. You know what I mean?

So, you know, I think Andre knows both sides of that. So I hope he engages, I mean, after the whole situation with, you know, Gordon slapping him and everything, man, I'd want to I'd want to prove something, you know what I mean? Like,

when they had that little exchange that's that yeah I mean I hope it's fireworks you know I mean yeah and I guess the reason I brought that up is because you know we're here at Jiu Jitsu camp so Jiu Jitsu is on the mind but also like just talking about the popularity of Jiu Jitsu and how so many more people are against the biggest camp

we've ever had right biggest camp we've ever had and because of that explosion man adding two new looms to the factory they showed up on Friday we're gonna get those things installed and start ripping out more geese and obviously new grappling shorts which you're going to try yeah yeah yeah might have to make some tweaks they're freaking nice though that material is perfect yeah that's a it's a weird material because you feel like it's not even on you like you kind of feel like you're freaking in sparticus uh over their grappling naked you know what I'm saying it's so like light in

flex I'm gonna hold you back man it's freaking legit uh did you yes or no get tears in your eyes when I promoted my daughter to Blue Belt. I did. I did. I get it. Amanda, my wife says to me, the only time you cry is belts and babies.

You don't cry when people die. I don't. I don't cry at death. It's belts and babies. I know the, I don't know what it is about babies. Honestly, if there's a baby around crying,

I sweat immediately because, you know, having babies and getting up in the middle of the night, you kind of get into this. difficult sleeping situation. So I'll sweat when there's a baby crying near me immediately. But belts, knowing the work it goes and the relationship and the commitment

seeing you promote Rana was pretty moving. And I kind of was trying to dry out my eyes a little bit and I had one single wipe. It might have been a tier or two, but I had a wipe. but your eyes were a little wet there. Yeah, there was a little dusty in there. It was a little dusty.

Echo Charles, yay or nay? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Oh, you did? It was very dusty in there. Yeah. But I did do comparatively speaking, I did a good job. Yeah. You did.

You hold it back. Here's the thing I thought about later. And it, okay, so she got her blue belt. Technically getting your blue belt is not a big deal. I mean, honestly, right? Standard getting your blue belt is not a big deal. And I didn't think about this until after. because getting your blue belts, listen, it's great you got your blue belt, but no one's

hyped in a big way because you got your blue belt, right? But what it was, and I didn't realize this because I'm in it, is I, the journey that she's had to get her blue belt has been long and hard and really long and hard. And it's been long and hard because of me. as a dad. And so when she's, you know, when they were little kids, you heard me saying this in the little speech I gave. I had my kids training jiu-jitsu seven days a week.

Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday, and Sunday. And on a couple, three of those days, no, four of those days, they did striking and jiu-jitsu. And they're like ages five, seven, and nine. We would go to the gym on Saturday. We'd leave at 7.30 in the morning. I'd get home from the gym at 2 o'clock in the afternoon. They'd be with me the whole time.

They'd take class. They'd take two classes of jiu-jitsu in a striking class. Every day of the week, they're in there. They'd take both classes. I made them compete. Let me rephrase that. And by the way, anyone that's listening is like, hell yeah, no, this is wrong. It wasn't good.

I made them compete. When I made them compete, this is my first three kids. when I made them compete, I made them compete up a weight class, up an age group, up a belt level. And what happens when you go up a weight class, up an age group, and up a belt level, you get smashed. And in my mind, I'm thinking, hey, I'm a great dad, I'm going to make them tougher. But all it did was make jiu-jitsu suck because you go to a tournament, you compete and you lose. And I just thought I'm making them tougher. And I'm not.

I'm actually making jiu-setsu soccer for them, making it not, making it a bad experience. And eventually, you know, the, they got old enough where it was like, we, you know, where I don't want to do this anymore. And my two daughters, you know, at a certain age, and they were the, they were the oldest of the three. And I have four now, but they were the oldest of three, you know, like they protested to a point where it's like, you know, my wife said, hey, this is like, you can't do this to these girls anymore. So, you know, we, let's say, we settled it down, you know, didn't train as much. And then luckily, you know, Rana, when she got to high school, she, I persuaded her to wrestle. I persuaded her to wrestle. And to be quite honest with that, I persuaded her to wrestle with money.

I was like, I will pay you to wrestle. I'll pay you to go and wrestle. And so she did it. And it took a little while before she wasn't doing it for the money anymore. She was doing it. She was into it. But again, this is after like going through a lot of stress and tournaments as a little kid and, you know, jit-to tournaments and all that.

And now she's wrestling. She wrestled all through high school. You know, her first year, she's the only girl on the wrestling team. There was a wrestling room. A sweaty, gross wrestling room. Filled with ringworm. And filled with ringworm and filled with, you know, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 17, 18. 18, 19 year old boys,

that's what she's in there with. And she stuck it out. And she ended up, you know, going through that program and eventually making it to state in California, which is a huge deal. And first person from her school that's made it to state in like 35 years

or something like this. And it was her. Like the program, the program just didn't have the wherewithal to get a student, do that she did it you know um and then finally she goes to college and while she's at college she decide she's going to try that jiu jitsu again which is freaking awesome and you know what

after about a week she called me she's crying she crying for her first week of her first week of jiu jih Tzu no one wants to train with me I don't think anyone wants to train with a girl no one wants to train with me. And, you know, it's stressed. There's college and all this other stuff going on. There's a little morsel of her life. And there's a lot of stuff going on. And this is where it comes out. And I'm like, hey, don't worry. Everything's to be cool. You know, you're going to get to know people. It's fine. Just keep going. Please keep going. And sure, she kept going. Paragon, slow. And that's where she trains. And great. I ended up going up there, teaching a little bit up there,

but just a great academy, and she ended up making great friends and working her ass off. And this is, you know, this is what, she's 21 now. So we're talking about like a 16 year journey, right? This is a long, this is most of her life, you know what I'm saying?

And so then finally, so when she comes back, so now she's been training for two years up there, hard, hard, two days, you know, stuff like this. and so she comes back down to San Diego this summer and she's teaching she's helping teach kids classes but she's training all the time training and immediately my black belts are like dude you need to get your girl I rolled her there you rolled her yeah you need to get to grow another color belt and I kind of felt like well you know she's up at up at Paragon now and that's like you know her teachers and her instructors and so i just said hey guys you know she's up at paragon

she'll get you know hopefully it gets promoted when she gets back up there and then like she's tapping out a bunch of people in the academy and my black belts once again you know coach adams like dude come on uh coach brian's like dude you're you kidding me then i rolled with her and i was like oh okay this is not fair and uh so finally what i did reached out to her professors up there and I sent him a text or a message on Instagram, gave my phone number and said, hey, I need to talk to you. It's Jocko, can you give me a call?

And the coach, Chris, he called me up. And I knew the number from that area code. And I answered, say, hey, hello. This is Jocco. And he's like, hey, it's Chris. He goes, I've been waiting for this call. And I was like, that's like the best thing I've ever heard. So, you know, he didn't want to promote her because it's my daughter.

I didn't want to promote her because, you know, she's been training with them. They're putting a lot of work and effort into her. but so that was cool so she did one more tournament as a white belt double gold and then we came out here to camp and got the promotion so so again I realized

afterwards I was like it's kind of weird that I kind of like Echo you got your black belt at camp we all understand that's a big deal right that's 15 years of training for you that's getting smashed like all those things everyone kind of gets that

but for Rano's it's like oh it's like oh she got a blue belt that's pretty cool but I think it was like everybody kind of sensed it because people were freaking hyped oh yeah man that place was crazy of course she was crying oh yeah they were crying you weren't crying they were crying yeah that's awesome that's what it's about and and yeah that's what it's all about it's what it's all about and jihitsu is something that brings really brings people together and look just like you can't impose things on your platoon and you can't impose things on your workforce you can't impose things on your family but you can if you're lucky you can help them see the light you can help them you can help

show them the path and when they find that path even when you show it to them and it's there and they decide you know you can you you can lead a horse to water but you can't make a drink but when you get them there and they jump in man that's that's that's uh one of the best things you could hope for so that was kind of a highlight of camp for me dude is awesome freaking that's uh all right what else Anything else, Pete? Any closing thoughts? No, man. I appreciate you having me on.

Appreciate the, obviously, all the support over the years. And, of course, you telling the world about what we're doing and why and keeping everybody's attention on it. Because with all the attention grabbing going on these days, anyone giving anything time these days is valuable. So, man, appreciate you. Appreciate bringing me on again. It's awesome. Well, you'd be on all the time if you weren't freaking living in farming to me and I wasn't living in San Diego, California. And listen, look, what we're doing right now, this is a campaign. This is not one battle. And this, that we are going to lose. We're going to miss things and we have missed things and we're going to make mistakes. But there are opportunities out there. And what we are going to do is we're going to make everything in America. And, you know, I told this story. yesterday we were in the factory.

It's no compromise. It's a no compromise situation. And actually, I do remember the item. We were making like, what do you call the, the, we were making spats, right? And we needed an elastic waistband. And you and I were having a conversation, and someone came up with a solution.

It was, you said, Hey, John Uncle, I'm like, hey, man, when are we getting these spats? Like, what's happening with that? And you're like, well, it's paused. It's going to be, the manufacturer is going to take four months before they can tool this thing up, blah, blah, blah. Okay. Or we got to get this machine and we'll be able to do ourselves. Okay.

I'm like, you know, are there any solutions? Finally, we get a solution. The solution is, hey, there's a overseas company that can have this stuff to us in three weeks. Airship, boom, done. And you were just like, no compromise. And I was like, of course, no compromise. And that attitude is hard. It's hard to hold the line.

And listen, do you compromise in life when your spouse wants something and you want something else and you compromise to come to a conclusion? Yeah. Do you compromise when you're on a team and you're working together and someone's got one plan and you've got a different idea and you compromise to make things work? Yes, absolutely. Do you compromise when you negotiate to make a deal happen? Yes, you absolutely do. So in life, you've got to compromise, but there's things also in life

that you don't compromise on and where you hold the line. And that's what we're doing here. We're doing it at Jocco Fuel. We're doing it at origin. We're not going to compromise. We're going to hold the line. And the reason we're able to do that

is because everyone that's listening to this right now. So none of this happens. Nothing. This doesn't exist. What we're talking about doesn't exist without you that's sitting there listening to this podcast right now, listening to what we're doing, participating in what we're doing.

Without your support, none of this happens. So thank you for your support. And I'm going to tell you right now, we will not let you down. Echo Charles. Yes, sir. How can people support the podcast?

How can they support themselves? How can they support these companies? and how can they in doing so support America? What do you got? What do you got to do? Well, some of this is just one big reminder, you know, because you guys been kind of talking about it for a long time. But yeah, so reminder or a recap, we'll say.

Jockofuel.com. Joccofuel.com. We got milk, the new Mulk RTDs, ready to drink if you didn't pick that up. Not yet online. It's not yet online. No, not yet. We haven't made enough yet for online. Yeah, we haven't made enough yet.

Okay. But soon. We'll be on the lookout for that one. How about that? because we're over here all week, Joel, not only they kind of ran out quick, but we stole some from the warehouse to drink this week.

Yeah, yeah, we experienced that one. That's good. A little detail that I noticed about the RTD, they're like, you'd think the powder's more versatile because you can mix stuff in the thing,

but this becomes more versatile in a different way because you can use it on other things, like cereal cookies. I'm not saying I did that. I'm not saying I didn't do that, but I'm just saying you'll put it on other stuff. Typically, you don't mix up a protein shake, add your favorite this and that and then put it on something you don't do that usually but this

one you do that i think we all found that out pretty quick because i saw a lot of people do that stuff i like the double hitter moulke in one hand go in the other it's a good morning double hitter you know what i'm saying mowke and go baby moll can go that makes complete sense to me also a reminder or we didn't talk about the joint more first stuff or whatever but yeah just look after your joints yeah we're not getting younger look out for your joints are you getting older pay attention and I'm over here doing the best I can. So yes, joint warfare, super krill oil, got some vitamin D3, general health. These are important things.

If the, what, if your oil runs out in your car, right? That's a problem. That's not good. Yeah, yeah. Dean Lister would say that's a problem. So I'm saying, anyway, so pay attention to these things. Worry Kid Monk does for the kids, of course, like the kids version. Yeah, all this stuff at joccofield.com.

And also other places. Yeah. Also, you can get the drinks at Wollingerfiel. Wah-wah. Actually, the RTD Moak is going into Wawa. It is. We already shipped, I believe. So if you're East Coast, you got that Wawa, go in there and get that moke. And it should be going in by, like it goes, it gets shipped to their whatever, and then they ship it to the store. So between mid and end of September, it'll be in.

And it's Moke and Go people. Right. And maybe grab a hoagie too. Vitamin shop, He-B. There's, I failed to get this list on here. We're in a bunch of retailers. We'll get that out to you. I need to add that into this so you all know.

So joccofield.com, you can get on Amazon as well. There you go. OriginUSA.com. Everything we just talked about that's all going on at originu-sa.com, boots, jeans, keys, rash guards, spats. And the hunt line. The entire. hunt line. It's available.

Go get some of that. We appreciate it. Jocco store.com. Yeah. What do you got going on there? Echo Charles. We're all on the path. You know, you want to represent. Discipline equals freedom. Let's not forget about that. No, we definitely don't. You know the roots. You want to represent that? That's where you can get that stuff at jocco store.com. We got the shirt locker, which is the subscription.

New design every month. I've seen a lot of representation. I got a lot of people in Maine on that subscription, bro. There's a lot of people at camp on that subscription. It's freaking legit. They're looking good. That's like flying, kind of like flying the flag old school.

Yes, sir. Like you're, this is, hey, yeah. Do you call it the subscrib? Are you like,

you got to get on that, subscript. Subscribes. Subscribes. Subscription. On the, on an official level, it's called the shirt locker.

The shirt locker. Like the her, S-H-U-R-T, you know, I got what you're putting down, man. Come on, uh.

But yeah, Yeah, this is a good one. A lot of good feedback on that one. We've got some new stuff coming out. Subscribe to the podcast. You know that. Jock Underground.com. You know that.

Flipsidecanvus.com, Dakota Meyer. I got a bunch of books. Check them out. Only Cry for the Living by Holly McKay. That girl risked her life to go in and write these books. Go in there and buy that book. See that story. See what war is like, like almost as it's unfolding.

My wife's reading it right now. She's really enjoying it. It's really good book. Yeah. Enjoy. might be the wrong word because it's hard to enjoy. She's engaged. She's engaged with the book.

It's a tough one. Yeah. You know I wrote a bunch of other books. Check them out. Eshalomfront.com. We solved problems through leadership. This is what the team at Eshlamfront does all the time. Culture.

Merging of culture. Performance. Leadership. In every single industry, we're there. So check out Eshlamfront.com. We have an event. The event that you talked about, Pete, that Jason came to, it's called the muster. The next one is Atlanta unfortunately.

It's sold out. But go on there, come to one of our live events as well. And then on top of that, look, you might not be able to come to a live event. That's where we have online training. Extreme Ownership.com. We get a bunch of people from origin on there too. Oh, yeah. A bunch of people from origin are on there, which is awesome to see.

And we have live sessions. We have pre-recorded training sessions. It's just a way to train leadership. And this is the interesting thing. Years ago, if someone would have said, hey, people are going to learn jujitsu by online academies. What would you have thought? Hell no. What do you think now?

Oh, hell yeah. I mean, I do. Yeah. Hell yes. So it's the same thing with leadership. And by the way, just like jujitsu or playing guitar or playing basketball, you're not born with the skills. You need to learn them. Same thing with leadership.

We made an online training academy, extreme ownership.com. Go check that. It'll help you with leadership. And it doesn't mean you're in charge of 420 people. at your company. If you're alive and you interact with other human beings, you're in a leadership position

and you're leading them. So go and check that out. If you want to help out some service members, active and retired, you want to help with their families, Gold Star families, check out Mark Lee's mom. She's got an unbelievable charity organization. What they do is they help vets with their health

and give them solutions to their health that the VA doesn't cover. So it's just an outstanding organization. She's an unbelievable woman. America's mighty warriors.org if you want to donate or you want to get involved. Also check out Micah Fink. He's up there taking vets into the wilderness on horses for 41 days where they can find themselves. Heroes and Horses.org, incredible organization.

The social media thing. It's a double-edged sword. We get it. There's an algorithm that's trying to grab you. It's trying to waste your time. There's also some positive that can come out of it. If you want to follow on the social media, Jock Fuel is at Jocko Fuel.

Go check that one out. Go check out Jock Fuel so you know what's happening. You know where you can buy stuff. You know when new stuff comes out at Jocco Fuel. Check that one out. At Origin USA on Instagram. That's where Origins at. Pete's actually at pete.

Dot origin Still haven't gotten that blue check We talked about it last year Yeah They don't know no love for the Yankee For the Yankee The blue Oh like the confirmed

Are you confirmed? I got so many fake accounts now man Oh really I get emails every day from people And they're soliciting them for Crypto stuff New accounts all the time Make any big investments there in the crypto world

Through some random dude on Instagram That sounds like a good plan Yeah So check that out Check out Pete. Check out origin. Check out Jocko Fuel. If you want to check out Echo and me.

Echo's at Echo Charles. I am at Jocko Willink. And Pete, thanks once again. Thank you. Thanks for all you've done and all you're doing. You know, you went out there with your friends and family and cut down a bunch of trees in the middle of the woods to make a factory. And that took some serious guts to do.

And you did it. And we appreciate that. And on top of that, thanks to all the hardworking people. at Origin USA and Jocko Fuel who are out there cutting and sewing and designing and creating and packing and shipping and cleaning and working. Thanks to all of you for everything that you do. You all are the backbone of these companies and we thank you for your hard work and your commitment to this dream.

And you know what? To all the hard working men and women of this great nation and you're out there. I see you all the time. in the fields and in the factories, on the construction sites, and in the cubicles, on the oil rigs, and the utility poles,

in hospitals and hotels, in restaurants and warehouses. To all of you that toil and labor every day, thank you for what you do. It's what allows the lights to come on. And we appreciate it, and thanks to all the military out there for protecting the freedom that we have

that allows us to do what we're doing, And we will do our port, our part to build the economy and support you. And also thanks to police and law enforcement, firefighters, paramedics, EMTs, dispatchers, correctional officers, border patrol, secret service, and all first responders. Thank you for protecting our safety and security here at home and everyone else out there. Thank you. Thank you for your support. Thank you for listening and thank you for believing and thank you for understanding what is at risk and thank you for seeing what is happening in the world and seeing the darkness in the world, but still moving toward the light. Freedom is not free.

It takes sacrifice. It takes guts and it takes grit and it takes work. so let's go get after it and get to work and until next time this is Pete and Echo and Jocko