Massenomics Podcast - Ep. 405: Bells of Steel Owner Kaevon Khoozani

Episode Date: January 8, 2024

Big Kaevon is the Big BoSs at Bells of Steel. Listen in to hear how his Canadian based gym equipment company has grown to a 80+ employee company. This episode also features a lot of great geography insights. Build Fast Formula Use code MASSENOMICS to save 10% on your first order! BearFoot Shoes Use code MASS for a free pair of AWEsome wraps! Juggernaut AI Use code MASSENOMICS to save 10%! The Strength Co Get some Go-To Plates! Swiss Link Use code MASS to save 15%! Texas Power Bars Get the Barbell that changed the game!

Thanks for what you do with your podcasts and all the rest. You're doing a great job. Hope everybody keeps tuning in. You get a lot of good info, a lot of insights, understandings on how to get strong, how to stay strong, how to use your strength. You do a great job, dude. You make things better than they are in real life, I think.

If you don't follow Massanomics, y'all do it. Social media, website, everything. Massanomics! Welcome everyone for episode 405 of the Massanomics podcast, the lifting podcast about nothing. Recorded live from western northeast South Dakota and eastern southeast South Dakota. My name is Tanner. And my name is Tommy. And I love parties that never end and burritos at 4 a.m.

And the twins! I'm glad you said it. I want to see how many episodes we can go in a row where we open with the twins bit. Well, they give us a lot to work with so i'm guessing probably at least 10 to 15 more weeks we got a streak that's three in a row without that's officially a streak it's like a segment kind of now yeah and the twins anyone that doesn't like the whole twins uh bit is really like oh god they're doing the twins thing again or born after the year 2000 it's like what's happening right now yeah it doesn't make any sense they're like oh god is this gonna be like 15 minutes of talking

about those twins literally makes no sense this This guy likes late parties, burritos, and twins. And the twins. We do have a lot to talk about this week. We've got a special guest coming on, the CEO of Bells of Steel. We've got that coming up. We've got a whole mix of topics. I know there's been some sports going on. We'll find out if we've had any books going on.

Would you say we're going to take him to business school when he's on here? We're going to go to business school. Strap in. It's time for a pop quiz. Business school. Weather-wise, just thinking weather off the bat, not a lot of note. I mean, it's a little chilly, but it's pretty moderate. One thing that stuck out to me, I got a little sneak peek of this week's YouTube video,

and in that video, there's some footage of you driving around western northeast South Dakota, and what did stand out was the fact that there is snow on the ground there. Oh, yeah. Yeah, there's snow. There's not that much, but it's not going anywhere as of yet. We don't have that. I mean, I got neighbors that have borderline green grass.

Yeah, okay. Yeah, no, there's snow. Like when it snowed and then it rained on top of it and froze, I wonder if it created like this crust that's like really hard for it to go away. Yeah, a protective layer. And then it's always about like 30 degrees, so I think it's usually just cold enough to keep it hanging on there. But it is January now.

So I'm already stoked that we've made it this far into winter and had it be pretty reasonable. Would you say we're halfway there, Jon Bon Jovi? Oh, we're halfway there. Hold on. What is that? Living on a prayer. Yeah, so that What is that? Living on a prayer. Yeah, so that song kind of was living on a prayer. Okay.

What do you think of Bon Jovi? Okay, he did the thing everyone does now. Or I shouldn't say now. He was maybe a pioneer of it. He went from rock to country, right? Didn't he? Oh, he did. Didn't he have a country career later on

maybe i don't know that bon jovi is my uh he ain't my bag baby yeah it's just that 80s it's not even like 80s well maybe it is like 80s hair rock but it's in a different way it seemed like it was more of a squeaky like like a squeaky or cleaner version of it than, than what the crew was doing. Speaking of squeaky clean to, uh, make sure to, oh, actually let me, let me re start this. Come with me. If you want to lift, I just need your individual differences, your, uh, specific training styles and your height, weight, amount that you sleep per night, and how you feel. This is, of course, a Juggernaut AI ad read, and that's my Arnold voice. That sounds very threatening, you know, the way that you scream that in that Arnold voice.

Yeah, so Juggernaut AI and all those things that I was talking about are just some of the inputs you need to put in when you're setting this training template up or not, not template. I guess that's actually not the right word. It's this programming that you're going to set up. You need to know about your individual differences, your weak points. Like I said, height, weight, nutrition, habits, sleep habits, how you feel that day, how each set feels, how each, each rep of each set feels almost to a certain extent. And then, uh, it'll slowly start to adapt as you're going. It'll become a more adapted for you specifically.

Yeah. It'll be, becomes less general and more specific the longer you use it. I would say you have to make sure to give honest, accurate as possible feedback though. It's essential to making it work properly as it is only as good as the inputs that you feed it. So do take care when you're trying that. And if you want to check out, learn more, go to juggernautai.app. That's where you can sign up. That's where I insist that you sign up and use discount code MASSANOMICS. That'll save you 10% for the lifetime of the membership, but you do have to use the discount code on the web browser, not through the app.

So go to juggernautai.app. Get signed up there. It ends up being like $30 a month is all for pretty advanced with coaching that doesn't have a coach actually there with you. So check it out. Juggernautai.app. And today's episode is also brought to you by Swiss Link. Since 1995, Swiss Link has been importing military issue goods to the United States and into the hands of those yearning for quality gear at uncompromised prices. Swisslink.com carries all you can imagine from british

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Thank you, SwissLink. They've got food-grade stainless steel. We've got aircraft-grade aluminum. After reading that, I kind of feel like between hearing.9-millimeter cold-rolled steel and 304 stainless steel, that maybe our metal game, we have to up that a little bit. We have to have more numbers. We need more description about the.

Yeah, more numbers and descriptions. I think you're on to something there. Okay. What do you got, a can over there or something? Oh, yes, I do. What do you got, something over there or something oh yes i do what do you got something to drink or something i've got something to drink or something right here i've got uh got it in my handy speaking of the drink spotter light i've got a beverage in my drink spotter light and i don't know if i had this last week or a couple weeks ago but i've got an orange cream bubbly and yeah that was i think that

was last week okay it matches my baby shit yellow shirt it actually doesn't match it uh what do you call when two colors almost don't go together very well clash clash it kind of clashes i don't know if it clashes i got a question here is the flavor you really like tart cherry limeade? Yeah, I really like tart cherry limeade. Because this is just cherry limeade. They left the tart apparently. Maybe I made tart. No, because I could have swore tart was on there too.

So maybe I'm. I got to know this. Oh, polar, polar here. Oh, polar. That's why.

Cause it's a polar. This is a Waterloo. All this trick in the book. Zigged when you should have zagged. I think that was the problem. I assume that that's a delicious beverage though. It is. It is quite good.

It's very good. I don't know what I gave I gave this bubbly last time, but I'm giving it a four because it is a fine beverage. I think he gave it a four last time as well. Four J.D. Power and Associates Awards all day. And this is probably four territory too. Cherry limeade is a good flavor. Yeah, that's a good one.

That's top tier. What did you want to get to first here? I see you got quite a few things on the list. I got all types of things to talk about. First one I actually got to ask you. Did you get that New Year's rush at the gym? Oh, no. What?

We don't. You missed it? Masonomics Gym is famous for not having a new year's rush there is not a new year's rush so was it like is it like that i forget is that a thing so now you this would be you would have an experience like so is that a thing like is there a lot of people in the gym um i can say today it was a thing actually because normally surprise the last gym I went to was always pretty busy. So it was just hard to tell. And there were so many kids there,

but this gym, very few people, very few, I don't see very many high schoolers in there at all. Like very rarely do I see people that I think are in high school, maybe one or two when I'm there, that's it. And usually lately I've been going to the gym around like three 30 or four in the afternoon. And usually when I go, there's between four and 10 people there and a certain number of those people are on cardio machines. So I never, I still never have to wait for anything. It's never been a problem. Very, it doesn't bother me one bit today. I counted and there was a little over 20 people there and that is the most I've seen by far. So you could say that that is more than double. Right. And I didn't recognize any of these other people either. It wasn't like we all just showed up on the right day. It was like

faces I'd never seen before. So yeah, it was definitely a thing. Still didn't have to wait. No one was there to squat. If you were curious about that, no one was there to squat or use the reverse hyper. So I had those all to myself. Yeah. So you think, do you think in your estimation that some of those people were resolutioners? I think they maybe were. Yeah, I do think they were. It would be weird that there was the busiest day I'd ever seen, you know, being out of this gym for about three months now,

that the busiest day I've ever seen just happens to be like the first day after New York. Like that seems like a big coincidence and you know the big the busiest day by far it's not even like it was slightly busier it was like two to three times busier than normal so nobody's joined mass dynamics gym in january yet i mean the month is young but there's been no new joining we are to january 2nd so you're gonna right right and uh over before you know it it is this This month is official, the largest number of members we have ever had at the gym, though. That's what we were talking about the other day.

I don't attribute it to, it's not New Year's resolution related whatsoever, but we are at our largest number of members ever. That's pretty cool. That we've had for a given month. Yeah. We're over 70, if anyone's keeping tabs. Over 70 members for the first time. Put that in their record book. Not necessarily by design, but not intentionally.

I don't think anyone's still waiting around to use stuff, are they? No. You actually can't tell one bit. Well, it's so spread out what there's still even amongst that many people there's going to be just about you know there's going to be a fraction that don't even show up ever and then we have so many people that go at like four or five six a.m and then like noon and you know there is no like there's no busy time it is just so there's just spread yeah it's just really from like 4 a.m until 9 or 10 p.m there's kind of a few people there all day yeah

if i ever go down there because lately when i go down there it's odd hours during the middle of the day and there's always just one or two people down there. It's never empty. It's really weird if you go and the lights are off. You're like, what is going on right now? Your only chance of catching it empty probably is if you show up between midnight and 4 a.m. Like those four hours. That is about it. So if you really want to avoid crowds,

that's when you have to go. Yes, yes. Well, there's no crowds ever, but if you want to avoid all people of any kind.'s your best bet that would be your best bet all right the insider tips here so do you tell that to people during orientation that if you want to avoid all people make sure you come between these hours come between yes i do usually check and see what time people say they're gonna go but uh no for no reason other than curiosity yeah and then uh you could potentially be like oh so-and-so's there and you just have an idea yeah yeah yes that's true uh yeah so not a big

not a big gym new year's resolution but there is a new thing a new thing i've been going to uh in western northeast south dakota not a gym maybe this is my new year's resolution i never even thought about it till right now oh i'm very interested i know it's been well documented on the podcast i won't get into it about me being a noon ball basketball guy right yeah and noon balls back to actually noon ball was on a two-week hiatus here yes with the today was our first day back at yeah and holidays and then they refinished the court over the right okay so today was our first day back and thankfully it was a half-court day. Right, where some people were moving off the hangover and the over-reading.

Yeah, so it was just – I actually already said I wasn't going to talk about noon ball, so I'm going to table that for a future week's discussion. And it's been replaced with – you'll know about this a little bit, but I don't know how much you know about it. But our private school in western northeast South Dakota closed its doors this last year. Oh, college. College, private college, presentation college is no longer a thing. And, you know, they had a decent gym facility and weight room.

I mean, they pumped a lot of money into that in the last 10 years. gym facility and weight room and i mean they pumped a lot of money into that in the last 10 years and they had a uh an outdoor an outdoor turf domed uh like a what are those called like like it's kind of like what the old metrodome was i sense yeah well they had it was a practice weird because it was a it was a turf practice field the full 100 yard turf practice football field but then in the winter time they would i don't even know what that was but they would put a dome over it so you could use it in the winter time so you could use it people would they would use it for like soccer and different things like that but now the city since the college is closed the city owns or runs it i don't know what the deal is but anyone can go it's like two dollars a day to use the facilities you can use the dome the basketball

court the weight room any of that and it's two dollars a day really and uh so the the the dome is the football field and then there's a track there's not an actual track around it but they have uh you know it's there's enough turf outside of the field that there's a pretty wide track all the way around it so is it a turf track or what is yeah it's turf it's not a it's not an old it's not a track like a eight lane track or four lane track is there lanes drawn on the ground though no there's not it's but there's it's like the way around it's the width of like a four lane track basically so that that's where people go run and walk and then the the field is open for whatever you want to do and then there's

like batting cage area in on the one end because there's extra space and stuff it's really cool actually because if you're from western east northeast south dakota or the midwest in general during the winter you kind of lose some of these unless you're like on a basketball court there's nowhere to just run openly right so like i took uh my son jack and a group of his friends and we put we we went a time there was nobody else on the the football field so we had a hundred yard game of uh flag football oh yeah that'd be awesome and it was so fun uh and i was just roasting sixth graders left and right i looked like freaking freaking Michael Vick out there.

Just showing off really. Just with my own horn. It was actually me and the really little kids versus kind of all the medium kids. It was like me and the fourth and second and me and the younger brothers versus the sixth graders. And we were roasting them, although the 100-yard field is so far. You make a play, and you're running laterally a little ways, and then you're running the field. I'm like, that is insane to run that fast for that far,

especially multiple times in a row. And I shouldn't even say that fast, but to run that hard that far multiple times in a row. And then you look at receivers. I shouldn't even say that fast, but to run that hard that far multiple times in a row. But my big takeaway from it, I've been doing a little bit of noon ball and I kind of had gotten sore from that and I wasn't really getting sore from that anymore. But when I played this flag football,

for the next two days after that, my delayed onset muscle soreness was brutal. But why would that be that much worse? I don't know. I think the hard cutting from sprinting but do you not do that in basketball though i don't in basketball it's a lot less often a sprint it feels like to me you know i suppose uh you know it's it's more like constant movement but it's less frequent like actual sprints at least in what i'm doing you know if i've got if i'm handling the ball like if i'm dribbling right you're not i'm not sprinting but if you have a play it's not a fast yeah but if you have a ball uh the football in

your hand and you're like trying to yeah you're running for your life yeah you're you're literally you know you're actually at like a and there again even i probably don't quite sprint but even like a 95 percent yeah um so yeah i that's what i was just gonna say is i got so sore from that i couldn't believe it i woke up the next day and i'm like why can i not walk right now and then i'm like oh yeah i guess from that like so anytime i do anything that's just any different than what I normally do. And even just slightly different. That's why I'm like, cause what you're saying even is kind of what I was thinking. I'm like, why am I not covered from this, from the routine basketball?

Oh, after basketball, I'm just, I can't get sore anymore. I run so much. That's what I kind of had hoped would happen. And I'm just hypothesizing why it's different, but it's definitely different. I can tell you that. Yeah, I could see that. I do forget that not every single play in basketball is an all-out fast break. People will walk the ball down the court

and set something up. Yeah, okay. Well, that is cool, though. So what's the temperature in that thing? It's warm. It's T-shirt weather. I mean, it's not hot. It's like 60s.

Okay. But, yeah, it is like you can comfortably wear T-shirts and shorts. Oh, yeah. Yeah, for sure. Like I was drenched in sweat. You know, by the time we did like two plays, I was like, whoa. I greatly underestimated how hot and tiring this would be. Yeah, that would be.

I told the little kids on my team we have to, like, I started huddling them in every play. And then I, you know, was whispering, and I'm like, we don't really need to talk about plays. I just need a break every time. That's good. That's good. But it is cool, though. Like, and it's, I don't understand the economics of it.

You know, it has to be, because I was just doing the math. Like there's someone taking the toll booth person at like each place. And I'm like, just even to pay them their wages. Two bucks a piece. This isn't making any sense to me. It's open like every single day. Yeah, even if you said 100 people showed up every day, it's like, well, that's. Which, I mean,

that could be it on Sundays, you know. Right. That's $200. That doesn't pay for anything. No, but it's a great thing for, like, my wife's been going, my wife has been going every single day for walking, you know, just like literally walking around. That would be to walk, you know,

because that's the Midwest thing is people will just go to a mall just to go somewhere to walk because you can't walk outside when things like that. Well, and our mall is gross. midwest thing is people will just go to a mall just to go somewhere to walk because you can't walk outside when things well in our mall is gross yes and this is kind of cool and fun and then like when you're walking around there's people then the other times i've been there there's people doing like pickup soccer games there's people in the batting cages there's just like kids and parents playing catch and playing baseball and all this stuff i'm like it's just actually fun it's like being out at a park people that don't live in places like south dakota this is just like what you do outside all year round we're describing outside

but in south dakota in january it's a pretty novel thing for me to have this much space that's just really easy access that you can do indoor you know indoor it's basically like you live in a space shuttle and you can't go outside or you'll die space is at a premium it's kind of like that though yep just like that uh i i've had one thing to say and i i feel like maybe you're rubbing off on me and i'm worried for the first time ever in my life i have hip pain and pain and I have no idea what that is from. I can't ever say that it hurt in the gym or anything. There was just one day.

It wasn't even like I woke up one day. It's like halfway through the day. I'm like, I feel like every once in a while I can get my hip to pop and I'm like, I just feel like it's got to pop. And you know, like right when something's got to pop, like right when you're about to the point,

it's like, it hurts. And then you can pop it and you get through the point and you're good. And it won't get there. And I thought, well, this will for sure be gone tomorrow. That was last Thursday. And then Friday, it wasn't gone. Saturday, it wasn't gone. Well, here we are at what is a Tuesday today.

And it's still there. And everything else has been feeling about as good as it's felt in in six plus months yeah it all feels great right now um but that hip has me a little concerned that that's not coming around and i don't know i don't know what the hell it is i did manage to get through a squat workout today um i just had to kind of narrow up my stance a little bit uh to make things feel better but i'm not sure what that is so i'm gonna keep gonna keep my eye on that one but uh a little concerned at the moment that's a preview of next well the week that this comes out the our youtube video that comes out then i guess i talk a little bit and what's the training vlog and i talk a little bit about the hip aim but what you're describing you're you know you're

you're just like oh i just need to like rotate them and pull them and then they'll pop and it'll feel better my hips have felt like that for like three and a half years now, like all day, every day, all night, every night where they just need to like, I'll lay in bed and be like, oh, if it would just like do something different, it might feel better. And it, no, there's no pop. It's very, and if I had to, you know, like when you do the hip flexor stretch, you know, when you have one leg out and the other one, you're kind of like into your, you know, your hip flexor, your groin. Yeah. I mean, that is right where it's at.

It is just like in one specific spot. Yeah. And I, I don't know. I'm still holding out. I keep thinking one of these days I'm going to wake up and it's just going to be completely gone, but. It probably will be. I hope so. I've never had any hip pain in my, like, that's what was so confusing for me.

I'm like, I've never even felt this before. my life. That's what was so confusing for me. I'm like, I've never even felt this before. I didn't know you could actually. I thought there was just something Tanner talked about. I didn't know this actually happened to people. Let's hope it doesn't ruin your life like it does me. I got that to look forward to. I have kind of like, I'm joking when I say that also because it's kind of serious, but like I'm just also like accepting the fact that no,

my hips are basically going to hurt. This is just how it is. Until I'm an old man and probably get like, I don't know, hip replacement surgery would, it would just be surprising if that didn't happen to me at some point. I do think it's more like it's a genetic thing as much as anything probably and I'd be heading towards it no matter what so because some people would be like oh yeah it's all the heavy lifting over the years and I'm like maybe maybe it is or maybe like not maybe my grandpa and my dad both like had hip problems and like didn't lift at all you know and probably by the time they were

40 were like yeah my hips hurt too yeah so then i'm like i don't know that it's you know it's easy to blame things on lifting sometimes oh yeah you know yes but maybe it makes it better you know maybe it's like to have actively doing stuff all right oh but like you're saying maybe lifting actually helps it you're saying right yeah that's that's not impossible you know to an extent like that's probably uh or maybe it's better because it gives you an actual thing to blame it on too you can say oh this is all lifting yeah it gives your doctor something to blame it on that's for sure that's true it's the damn lifting uh we were kind of just on the topic of football, but did you watch the Washington football game, Tanner? I watched the Michigan-Alabama game.

I watched most of that game, actually. That was a good college football game. That was a hell of a game. Yeah, that is. A lot of the bowl games sucked really bad, but that was a fun game to watch. That was a hell of a game. I watched the beginning of the Washington game um game but old coach deborah

pulled it out so i was excited to see that oh my god i stayed up to watch it i'm like i've watched so many of their football games because i like last night i'm like this is then i'm going to bed early and then i didn't realize how late that game was starting to go like i've watched way too many of their games this season to quit watching this one you know which could potentially be the last game and then it was getting close to being done I'm like there's no did you see the highlights of how it broke down at the end yeah oh my god and I'm like yeah there's no point in me even staying up but then like maybe I'll just stick around and god I've had a heart attack at the end I haven't got that amped up watching a football game because I haven't been vested

I haven't had any interest in a team in so long to care yeah and so that's like the first time I've cared in a while and man I haven't been that worked up watching a football game because I haven't been vested. I haven't had any interest in a team in so long. I haven't had a reason to care. Yeah. And so that's like the first time I've cared in a while. And man, I haven't been that worked up watching a football game in a long time. It really did. So far, we're right on our predictions. Yeah. We are.

Now we just got to have Washington take on the amazing blue. I would love, I'm just really happy to see that Alabama's not in it, but I would love to i would love to see washington win i mean that would that would any other year be like oh i'd say michigan but right yeah washington all the way yeah uh what was i gonna there was one other point i had on oh yeah because i was watching the michigan alabama game and when it got over i'm'm like, oh, I wonder what channel the other game is on because I'm like, it had to have already started by now.

You know, I'm like, this went into overtime, and, like, looking at the clock, I'm like, oh, they're probably, like, almost to the second quarter. I'm like, it's on this channel? And I did the exact same thing. I kept thinking, oh, overtime, I'm missing the other game, but this is overtime, so it's worth missing it. And then'm looking forward it's like oh no it's coming up and that was the moment i knew that i would not be seeing the end of that i don't think i think the game got done it was damn near midnight and then i was all worked up from the game so i had to just like

cool down for a while i wasn't ready to fall asleep until 12 30 one o'clock last night which is too late yeah that like uh watching that michigan alabama game is a reminder to me of why i like sports though too because i really didn't care too much who won either way i did was preferring to mission to go in but just like the way things were playing out i kept finding myself being like oh man you know just like vocally saying things out loud just like oh man like holy cow and um you know without even caring really who won but just because it's so exciting just like like when the michigan uh punt was a kick punt return that's what i kind of like that is part of the college thing is you see more that stuff does happen in the pros but it seems like you've

you see more accidents right or errors in the college levels that can just flip a game. And, and, and guys can have like breakout days that you don't necessarily see as much in the pros. It's like, you know who the guys are,

but in college at any given day, some random guy can step up and just take the game over that. That hasn't done anything all season. So yeah, it was, those were, those were both fun to watch. So yeah, Washington keep this train rolling, I guess.

Yeah. You know what else is kind of fun? Our supporting members. So for anyone that doesn't know, we've got a supporting membership option for the Mastinomics podcast. You can go to mastinomics.com slash join. That's where you find out more. You can see some of the details about the mini

perks that come along with that. It's essentially PerkCity Population U if you sign up. It is a very active community. It's growing. We like to give back to the supporting members in many different ways. Some of those ways are maybe the most important is you get access to our exclusive Discord community. It's the only way you get access in our Discord community, and it's a really positive place where there's a lot of fun stuff going on, some serious training stuff,

but always just kind of with an aura of positivity around it. You know, there's like friendly ribbing and stuff like that, but it's not the normal garbage internet place. Yeah, he has his rib for your pleasure so you get access to the discord you get early info on drops early access to drops sometimes there's exclusive merchandise that you only can get by being a supporting member and then occasionally we do these mailings i'll get to that and then also we do supporting our supporting members each week where we give back. This week, the one I just wanted to mention was Big Steve, Big Canadian

Steve was on Unpaid and Underrated this week. Give that a listen. He had a really good story on there about basically describing his first encounters with massonomics and why he really enjoys it and why he enjoys the community. And he wasn't even really, he was being pretty serious goose, but it was just like really like his testimonial would make you be like, Oh yeah. Like that might be something I would like to be a part of too.

Yeah. Right. So shout out to big Steve on there. And then what I wanted to mention for all supporting members, make sure if you've had an address change within, like, I'd say the last year, make sure to either on Discord or Instagram send us a DM or shoot us an email if you're an email person. Shoot us an email with that address change

because we're going to have an exclusive mailing coming up at the sometime in the first quarter of this year and we got to make sure we got all your right addresses because this is something that's only going out to supporting members but it is going out to all supporting members and none of you know what it is yet it's a big ass surprise but we need your right it is but no one besides us knows what it is no one but i think literally no one on earth besides you and I knows what this is. Our little secret. And we don't even fully know what it is.

We kind of just mostly know what it is at this point. Just have an idea of what it is. Yeah. So, but we do need your right addresses. So, even if you've placed other orders for merchandise since then with a change address, this address database for our supporting members is separate so still message us with your updated address thank you supporting members and if you heard that and said well i don't have an address in my i don't have an address because i'm not a

supporting member now is the time to join because something cool is coming your way yeah it is there's definitely time to join now you know some at some point in time there's going to be like a line in the sand where if you don't join before the line in the sand you're going to miss out on this if you join or strike that reverse it you know if you know what a line in the sand is i don't gotta say it kind of goes without saying there will be a line in the sand though there's no doubt it'll be a proverbial one and there might even be like a literal one too too. We might make one. We're going to go find sand. We're going to dump out a sandbag in the gym just so we can make a line.

Tanner's going to go to Wiley Beach, and if you don't know what that is, you don't want to go to Wiley Beach in January. You don't really want to go to Wiley Beach any of the months all that bad, like the actual beach itself. There's not that much reason to go onto the wiley beach not especially yeah okay is are you is it my turn now do i go yeah okay okay okay uh today's show is also brought to you by barefoot shoes barefoot shoes are the best barefoot shoes available that's it the end game set match love serving 40 we're gonna keep this ad simple barefoot shoes are the best barefoot

shoes uh it is winter time here in western northeast South Dakota. Tanner and I, we both like to keep our feet protected and warm and barefoot while we're at it. And we do that with the Barefoot Bruin Boot. It is our boot of choice in the wintertime. And it's made from high quality leathers. And it has that great barefoot construction that you've come to know and love with all barefoot shoes. It's available in a brown. that great barefoot construction that you've come to know and love with all barefoot shoes it's available in a um a brown i actually forget what the actual official color is is it is it kodiak kodiak is it kodiak brown or brown bear brown i think it's kodiak and black bear or is it grizzly

yeah there's a brown one and there's a black one and so it's good for any type of wardrobe or uniform restrictions that you may have in your life and if you're good for any type of wardrobe or uniform restrictions that you may have in your life and if you're not the boot type of person well there also happens to be a great line of high top low top and slip-on shoes that would be your ursus your and your also line so make sure to check out www.barefoot.store for the best dang barefoot shoes available and uh while you're there uh you can use the code mass make sure i got that code right tanner i always forget this yes use code mass you can throw some awesome wraps in your cart and you will get the awesome wraps for free so once again thank you Shoes, and you can visit them at www.barefoot.store.

And Tanner, our guest has arrived. Before we bring on, someone already sent me their updated address. Oh! While you were talking there. So yeah, the supporting members are on getting their updated addresses to us. They don't want to be missing out. They don't want to be on the wrong side of the line in the sand. They don't want to be the wrong side of history.

No, they do not. All right. Kick all these sons of guns out of here. Said too many nice things about them already. So we got Big Cave-On, the owner, CEO, the BOS boss of Bells of Steel, right? Is that, which title do you go by? That's my formal title, yeah. Yeah, the BOS boss.

Yeah, I make everybody call me that. And Kavon, I mean, that's how you say your first name, right? I felt like 90% confident on that. My level of confidence on your last name is maybe like a 10%. I'm going to say your last name. I've never heard it said before. So, uh, is it Kuzani? Yeah, that's the one.

Okay. You got it. So, uh, just periodic curiosity. Like what, what is that last name? You know, where does that, what does what is that uh what's the root of origin it's uh it's iranian so my dad's from iran and my mom's polish um and it means from the town of kuzan it's pretty literal then yeah yeah i've never been there but i heard good things they should call us aberdeen ory or Western North East South Dakota-y.

Yeah. Something like that. Working in my name. You've got to get me to read it. Yeah, yeah. Okay. But you are, speaking of world geography, you're a Canadian man, so you're not too far from us at times.

Yeah, I was actually, you know, I've been looking forward to coming on here for a long time. I was just patiently waiting for my invite, but I was like looking up Google Maps from my house to your gym, just so I could like show up one day and demand to be aired. How far is it? It's because I kind of looked a little bit. It's it's sort of you're sort of straight north of us, right? looked a little bit it's it's sort of you're sort of straight north of us right so yeah oddly okay so we start i found it in calgary which is where i am now and where kind of the headquarters is and then we have another uh warehouse and showroom in indianapolis and then another one in toronto um but through a series well i met a woman and ended up in Manitoba, which is directly above you. So I go to North Dakota to fly out of Minot all the time

whenever I'm flying somewhere in America. So, yeah, where I live is like a straight eight-and-a-half-hour shot north of you guys pretty much, and then Calgary is just a little bit west of there. We do need you to get you to actually come down here sometime, though. That'd be fun. Yeah. Yeah, I'd love to.

I had my honeymoon in South Dakota. Really? Yeah. Where at? I like the, what do you call it? The Black Hills? Yeah, yeah. Okay.

Mount Rushmore and Crazy Horse and all that. Yeah, we drove down, and I had a great time. It was fun. I was really hoping you were going to say your honeymoon was in Aberdeen. That would have been. Yeah, yeah, great. That's pretty cool. But so you travel a lot.

So where you live, and you so where you live and you talked about calgary you talked about toronto indianapolis uh is there something also on the west coast or am i off on that that you have some of the west we had like we had this uh so in you're of like a third party fulfillment center like a sure yeah yeah yeah we were working with one in california and la for a bit but it did not go well um so now we just we're sticking to the good old indianapolis um it's just we've had really good business partners there and we've got a few you know we've got our own showroom and employees there and um yeah it's gone really well but it just yeah it was it was hard in california it's hard finding like a good 3pl and so yeah that that wrapped up i think last year so we're no longer working

out la it was okay yeah challenges so so calgary is what you would consider headquarters though or okay yeah calgary's headquarter how far of a drive is that for you though because that's not super close is it it's actually uh further than aberdeen so oh wow yeah so it's yeah it's 10 hours okay yeah uh yeah it's kind of a long a weird story but yeah i didn't i was like i kind of built this business like kind of remote first like I was really into lifting and competing and playing sports and so this was kind of secondary to that like I kind of was using it to fund my uh foolish pipe dreams of of trying to achieve something um in in rugby uh and then uh so I would always work with these like third-party warehouses

in different areas so it's always kind of like i didn't need to be in a fixed place like even in the early days my wife my now wife and i uh went backpacking for six months in asia while i was like running it from my laptop uh so it's always kind of been remote first it's been more challenging now because i do like probably my core focus of what i do these days uh is is just like product development and it's getting like it's harder and harder to like come up with uh like really dial it in you know so like i come for a couple weeks and i'll just like yeah i'm in like my testing room right now yeah and we'll um yeah and i'll just like hammer out a whole bunch of workouts and make a bunch of notes and make a bunch of alterations and

and then uh go back to it but yeah in the early days i was i was kind of remote first and you know as you know being an entrepreneur do you guys have day jobs too yeah yes yeah real job yeah yeah someone someone jokingly said don't quit your day job and we listened so we still have those two see i never had a real job i was like a i was in university while i started this and i was bouncing in the evenings and then i finished university and in a business degree and nobody would hire me so i was like i guess i'll keep doing bells of steel and i kept on doing it and then my wife was like let's move back to where i'm from and i was like yeah i'd like to start a family and not have to worry about, you know, going bankrupt and this fledgling business.

So, yeah, let's go. And so I got, like, financial and family motivated, and now I'm somewhere. Yeah. Yeah, so that's interesting talking about the start of it. So you were, while you were going to university, I guess I'm speaking Canadian. Yeah, Tanner, you're sounding so canadian right now while you were going

to university we would say college but uh while you were going for the sake just to make sure you understand while you were going to university um you had already started bells of steel though it was uh it was something at that point was it called bells of steel was it like uh sort of turning into a real business already while you were in school yeah i guess i guess i would have been i took a long time to finish my undergrad uh so it's probably in like my sixth year of undergrad or something yeah and uh and yeah i i kind of i've been working for a fitness store and then i was i was a big joda franco guy joda franco is probably did you guys used to follow him like back in the day? He's like strong man Saturdays and all that. Yeah. We're a little bit familiar.

You're kind of spoiling a lot of our later, uh, over under top you you've hit on a lot of, you're hitting on a lot of good stuff here too. So yeah. Anyways. So I, I, it's kind of interesting cause like, I guess like I came i came up you know as a millennial and didn't really have access to the internet and my entire i've been lifting weights since i was 12 my entire guidance to lifting weights was like lifting reading old muscle building you know bodybuilding magazines which is just not really applicable if you're really trying to get bigger and stronger and faster and then uh yeah i got steady access to the internet and i was like oh wow this is actually how it's supposed to be training and then didn't really get a lot of the

tools that he was using here and then crossfit was kind of like on the rise and people were looking for more and more of this stuff and i was looking for it for my own training and um oh man i've got i don't even know what we're talking about but yeah that's kind of where you came from do you think your degree helps you with uh what you do at bells of steel like is there anything you pull from it do you think anything that uh not I at least where I went to school like Alberta is like all oil and gas like kind of in ranches like texas-y and uh so you were basically in training to go and work for an oil and gas company so not terribly applicable uh but i think just doing a degree and actually sticking to it and putting those like long-term goals is helpful because there's not a lot of things you do in your life that take that long and, um, you know, to achieve. Yeah. So I'd say,

I mean, I think that's very right outside. Tommy, we, I know we've had this conversation with other people over the years too. And that's what you said is like universally true for everyone has said kind of the same thing. And I would agree with it myself. And the only caveat I put on it, you know, if like, if you're a doctor, I suppose you need, you need to, you know, like that's very specific. There's certain educations that are very occupation specific, but. Yeah. That has been what everyone said though. Even, even more, especially more at the graduate programs are like, if anything, it just teaches you to be really focused on something for two

to three years and commit and hit deadlines and get stuff done and it teaches you how to I didn't I didn't do any of that so I don't know I'm just taking your guys's word for it I've got a speaking of Canada I've got a Canadian question for you what the heck is boxing day yeah I actually don't really know whaty do you know we've all talked about someone asked you to explain what boxing day is what would you say it's like i know you can google it in two seconds but it's always been one of those things where i see it i'm like that's a canadian thing and i've never once taken the time to google it yeah i don't know yeah i don't think i don't think i ever i don't entirely know the origin of it but it used to be like our black

friday but then black friday became our black friday and now boxing kind of like lingering around and um yeah i don't even know why but it used to be like the day yeah it used to be our black friday and uh now we have black friday so when is boxing day usually like what day after Christmas 26 okay okay yeah yeah maybe like yeah I have no idea so you don't know that much more about it than we do even so that's fair no no I'm pretty uh you know I'm geographically isolated in Manitoba there. We don't get a lot of regular news or publicity. I was just, I spent a weekend in Manitoba earlier this summer with my family.

We went and we were, now I forget. Tommy, I know we talked about that. I was trying so hard to remember the name of it too. It was a little like French. It was kind of by Winnipeg, wasn't it? Yeah, it was just southeast of Winnipeg, basically. Oh, okay. There's a few of those kicking around.

Okay, and it was super cool. It was super cool. So I don't know if Manitoba's all the same, but the part of it that we were in, it felt like home. It's kind of like South Dakota or's kind of like south dakota or north dakota i guess maybe more is like this hidden gem is north dakota hidden gem it's hit most people say hidden i think some people would debate you on the gem part all the gem uh you know it's funny though when i fly out of minot i've never seen the technology security technology they have they

have this gigantic uh like thing you put your bag through it looks like a jet engine and you don't have to take any of your liquids out or your laptop you just put it through it's like brand new technology and like why does the minot airport have it like you know like your throttle or I've never seen this in Toronto or Vancouver, but back to the curve. Yeah. Okay, so bells of steel. Back to that a little bit. So you've been up and running now for like 13 years at least, and I suppose it's been a slow build over that time.

But I have to imagine over 2020-ish was a huge growth time, right? I mean, was that like an enormous year where like was that a game changer time period in in there or okay yeah i mean for sure the whole industry but it was also really like we were so i started in 2010, 2009-ish. And then one of my best friends bought in in 2015. And he's mostly just not really working on it. He just kind of gave me some money and helped sign on to stuff. And then in 2018, he had quit his well-paying corporate engineering job to come on full time with us. well-paying corporate engineering job uh to come on full-time with us so oddly at like the end of 2019 we were gearing up for like our biggest year ever um you know not that we released covid or

anything but uh yeah it's starting to sound a little and so we were like yeah he was on full time and he's he's a yeah like i said he's one of my best friends super smart guy and uh we were like yeah he was on full time and he's he's yeah like i said he's one of my best friends super smart guy and uh we had like maxed out all of our credit cards our line of credit our personal you know his home equity line of credit any piece of cash we could get we're like we're gonna make 2020 the biggest year and then all of a sudden 2020 happened and obviously was the biggest biggest year um from like 2000 yeah i think from like 2019 um we were a team of like maybe five or six and we just entered into the us and we were really selling south before then like a little bit and by like this year yeah we're a team of seven or so and like i think we did like maybe three million sales in a year and then this year we're like a team of

82 and doing like 20 million sales this year or something that's crazy i mean that's that's that's a big business that's exponential growth right right yeah so it was nuts though we we got to the end of like we never we we were a little too cautious so 2020 we're like everyone's gonna be broke everyone's nobody's gonna buy fitness equipment like let's just sell stuff like as fast as we can like run deals or promos or whatever and then obviously the opposite happened to serve like short um and uh but yeah we just kind of kept the momentum going oh yeah in early 2021 uh my partner i would we were just so burnt out because it was still only like maybe 10 of us um and we were yeah we were burnt out and and we're kind of sick of things even though it's going well

and we basically said we either need to like start hiring people until we want to not quit or like scale back and just you know make some money and whatever so we ended up hiring people investing in infrastructure and you know opening up an indie and really going hard in the state it was it was great for the u.s too because we were just getting our start there and everybody would be looking for stuff and they'd you know they'd go to like rap and they'd go to titan and you know sold out sold out sold out so they'd like work their way down the google search list and there we were like eighth place and we're like hey stuff yeah um so it was like massive acceleration for that too and uh yeah lucky for us and it's been quite the trip did you uh

i mean probably in 2009 i have to assume you didn't expect it. I don't know. Like if you go to like 2015 or some timeframe, did you, did you picture that it would be a 80 employee business doing tens of million in sales? Like, did you always think that that's what was going to happen or, um, did that just kind of happen? Right. Right. Yeah. No, I, I never, I didn't think too far ahead and in anything in life mostly been

kind of more in like survival mode um so it's like yeah it it was nice I didn't yeah I never set goals like that like oh I want to be big business or anything I just was kind of doing uh what I love and um you know like I said i was really until about 2016 i was still really focused on my own personal like athletic aspirations um so i hadn't really thought about it and then yeah i just no never never really thought about or yeah wanted for it or whatever it's like they say if you do what you love you'll never work a day in your life that's great is that what it feels like it is some days but now like when you get bigger like this yeah it's you're like i love to make cool products that I like using and do fun marketed things or whatever.

But now like so much of the business is like, well, you got to be sales tax compliant in 50 states to file your taxes on time. Right, right, right. Paperwork stuff. Awful stuff. Yeah. So being a Canadian company with, I'm assuming, a large customer base in America, like, does that, is that a, I mean, is there some unique problems you've had to navigate through the years with that? Oh, yeah.

It's, yeah, it's crazy. Like, I mean, I mean, this is like e-commerce as a whole and e-commerce has been changing but these yeah particularly like the sales tax nexus rules yeah as they come up like every every few months we have a new state we have to register you can you can thank south dakota for that one oh was it them yes they were the ones that sued wayfair that got the whole thing going on yeah right right i never hear all that uh and we kind of have the same thing too here but the complexities in the states too like there's some uh parts of california like we use this special software that like calcs it all out yeah and guys will be like you got a county tax you got a state

tax you got a some city tax there's like four lines of taxes right right and then sometimes we'll get messages being like why are you charging me so many taxes like i didn't i don't know because you live where that is a thing you know whereas here it's just it's very you know it's 10 13 here it's whatever so then do you do you have to do you remit taxes to 50 state i mean you do you uh like it's not like uh you can be like i don't sorry go ahead no i don't even know how to end that question but just like you have to submit like 50 of those like twice a year or whatever the schedule is for that it's i don't know if we're at all 50 because there's like different votes for each state you know you got south dakota's number one so we're always we're submitting taxes there

but uh yeah we have to we use this special software called Avalara that helps collect and remit it on your behalf, plus our own internal guys work on it. So I don't know what they do, but it's expensive too. And there's like two or three providers in the game. And so they're all just charging a lot of money for a very basic service because there's not a lot of people i mean it's kind of the same thing when you take credit cards it's like oh it's pretty simple you take a payment and then it's like oh but they get three percent of everything i do yeah yeah they sure do um but overall it's yeah i mean i think about 50 or 60 percent of our sales now are in the u.s whereas two years ago it was like 10 percent um that's cool seeing the difference in the customers to like uh like

americans like if they love your product like they'll make like a youtube video about it like write you a detailed review and like yeah they will but if they don't like your product they'll do that as well they'll make a 20-minute youtube video like being yeah scratch here and this there but yeah uh it's cool it's i really like seeing it's been really cool to develop and um we get yeah like i said it's it's pushed us to do a lot better like we um have put so much into like making sure our packaging is dialed and like that's another thing like ups if you ship from one end of the country to the other it can go through like five or six ups terminals whereas here it's just like one ups and then like it's to your door

right like we don't have that so we've had to like up our packaging level like our packaging to i never thought i'd spend so much time like figuring out packaging um and like even our products too like we've really had to elevate um you know our product design what we come out with whereas we used to you know like a lot of guys like you kind of get stuff off the shelf we do a lot more design from the ground up now like it was completely original stuff uh and of course that's kind of helped our success in canada too because maybe we didn't have to compete as hard before because we're only one of the only guys in town um and maybe we could have been working harder to do a better better job and now it's like you have to it seems like we tommy and i even talked about it seems like maybe a

general theme of the bales of steel product lines is that they've generally been becoming over time like there's grown more and more premium options that you have you know like you've you've you've developed like uh more the the longer you go the more higher end i don't know if that's the right term but like the more premium gym equipment to the you know there's definitely levels to gym equipment and, you know, the maybe the most basic lowest price point equipment that appeals to a certain group and it would be the best for them. But like you've grown where you're having more and more premium options. Is that right? Or what would you say? Yeah, I'd say so, especially with the racks,

like getting a spider and the manticore. Yeah, I think, but we've also been doing like some, like kind of less, no, not too much, less expensive stuff, but like, yeah, premium stuff. And then some of the, some of the just like, some of the product design and kind of innovation that we've done has been like sky, helped skyrocket success.

Like, I don't know if you, have you guys ever seen that, like those little cable towers there? Yes. Like we have them at the Arnolds. Yep. And you know, those have been around before, but we kind of made our take on it where we just made it compatible with our PowerAck attachments.

And now it's one of our number one best sellers because people are just crazy about it. Well, another piece of equipment that strikes me that pretty nice and cool that you have is like the lat pull-down low row machine. I don't know how long you've had that one. cool that you have is like the lat pull down low row machine. I don't know how long you've had that one. Uh, and, and for that matter, what, uh, so we've got a few pieces at mass dynamics gym. I know we've got crash pads, deadlift, Jack, uh, easy curl bar. We've got a, uh, weight tree on wheels. I really liked the easy curl bar that we have the rackable, easy curl bar that we have all the time, but what would be your of everything that you guys have built and sold and made what's like your favorite piece of bells of steel uh

equipment my it's funny my home gym is like a collection of like old and like bent return products like stuff like like jeep i want to all use it but the things i use most regularly are the belt squat machine and the arch bar um and i really love using those too and it's funny the belt squat is really kind of like falling out of fashion it was like one of our signature products a few years ago when we went into the states i was like one of our signature products a few years ago when we went into the states i was like one of our biggest drivers and it's just like kind of nosedived um but that's yeah that's that's probably my favorite one and then the ones that i'm gonna that i want to start getting more into i'm like gravitating away from like all of my old moral values when it came to lifting or i was just like bar dumbbells that's

it yeah and now like i want a nice leg extension i want leg press i don't want to do um those hard things anymore yeah so yeah my wife my wife opened her own physiotherapy clinic this year and she's got a nice big space for gym in there and i'm gonna uh i'm gonna i think bring over our iso leg press and our leg extension is kind of i gotta i gotta do some work on my on the old twigs uh it's funny you mentioned what your home gym you know it's like the the reject toys that you end up with and when we we were at Elite FTS, Dave Tate made kind of the same comment. He's like, I've got so many bars that other people would not take that, you know, like all those bars you see there.

That's kind of what he said he's collected a lot over the years. You've been, oh, Tommy, were you going to say something? I was going to ask you, you know, Tanner and I, we always talk about this with Massanomics, you know, we're on a much smaller scale, but we're always coming out with new stuffics you know we're on a much smaller scale but we're always coming out with new stuff and you're hoping that things hit and you never really know how people are going to resonate with anything until you release it has there been any products that

you've released and you've just been surprised like how much people love it or how well it sells like you would have never guessed the you know the reaction people had to it definitely those cable towers that i mentioned i i never really thought too much of them i thought they were a cool product and it was just like a nice feature add-on uh but like and you see there's like guys who've started up like their own little fabrication business like doing additional accessories for it like in like a guy tagged me the other day i don't know where he was somewhere in states but i'll tell you what the one that i thought was going to do the best that this yeah this this may be the better one because yeah that's always the you always have like this is the home

run and you're like really no one no one wants this well in my early days i was i was like i was really focused on like being totally different like i want to have stuff that nobody else has and you know sometimes the reason nobody else has it is because it's like terrible it's for a reason yeah it's for a reason and uh yeah these there were like these oversized heavy sledgehammers uh that went up to like i think the biggest one was like 100 pounds or something these these are gonna hit yeah and they did not i ended up giving a lot oversized novelty sledgehammer including the jota franco yeah okay um what i was gonna ask you Including the Joe DeFranco. Yeah. Okay. What I was going to ask you, you've been to South Dakota.

You've been to the Black Hills. So this will be a – you'll get this reference. It's a new thing we're doing with everyone. We have a – we want your Mount Rushmore. And your Mount Rushmore, Big Cave-On's Mount Rushmore, is going to be – obviously, you make a lot of equipment. You also have a home gym yourself. There's four presidents on Mount Rushmore. What would your Mount Rushmore of home gym pieces of equipment be?

Mount Rushmore of home gym pieces of equipment. Yeah. Okay. Yeah, I mean, oh, man. Okay, one of them, one of them, uh, I don't have my own model yet. So it's kind of bad, but I, I've been like really trying to get more into like working out when I'm like working or like answering emails. And I got this like treadmill pad.

Uh, you ever see things yeah yeah yeah threw it under my and we're gonna we're gonna bring in our own version now threw that on my standing desk and then uh a while ago I started using uh chains like heavy chains as a weight vest there's nothing new but i noticed that when you're using them to like walk um they're like swaying around a little bit and they like jack up your core like give them a good core workout so like my standing my treadmill pad chain combo coupled with my my belt squat and my arch bar is kind of my oh but but what's like the mount rushmore is this like the greatest stuff of all time like what i think i mean it's your mount rushmore you can decide yeah it's just yeah it's whatever your interpretation is of it so

that's fair yeah that's yeah those are kind of like my my home runs these days just being this battered you know time restricted person we get that yeah we can relate to that that's uh you're probably you're in the submasters category i would what are you in between 35 and 40 i am yeah i'm 38 yeah but i am like a shadow of the man I used to be when I was, you know, my prime of, you know, lifting and playing sports. And now I'm just like, just trying to like keep my muscle mass. It's hard though. Well, one, you have like a crazy business that you're running, but you have, you get a business and then you have kids and a family and like you try to have a life and it's like, man, that just feels like you're running like five businesses. It gets, it gets hard to keep up on things. And, and like to a flaw, I've always been like, I want to be the absolute best at anything that I do. And if I can't be the absolute

best, it doesn't particularly interest me. And so, yeah, when I was in my twenties and actually when I turned 30, the year I turned 30, I was still playing rugby and I was still trying to make a go of it. Actually played in the States for a little bit or in Santa Monica. Anyways, wasn't good enough. And, and the year I turned 30, I totally ruptured my bicep and broke my nose so i was like i guess i'm done and that i just was like okay instead of hyper fixating on competing and

lifting as much weight as possible i'm gonna hyper fixate my company um and now it's like but i do still really enjoy playing sports scott just got into pickleball oh they're taking the world by storm yeah yeah yeah it's a ton of fun my two my two sports and in school were uh rugby and ping pong so oh ping pong yeah ping pong guy and pick pickleball to me is kind of like oversized ping pong. Yeah. Right. Kind of is.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Do you have, do you have any, um, new equipment in the works that you can't talk about? That I can't talk about? Yeah. I only, I run my mouth all the time. It's really good though. Like I've been starting to put stuff out and just like get feedback because

we'd often we'd release something and people would be like, Hey, you missed like if you did this one like tiny thing that wouldn't cost a lot or like change a lot of the manufacturing, you would make your product 10 times better. And then we have to like come up with a gen two. And so it kind of got away from that. And so now i just run my mouth about everything so let me give you let me give a little tour yeah cook it up here 10 000 foot view the 10 000 foot view um okay so this one is probably what i'm most excited about uh the stack leg extension yeah and kind of like what we're doing with with

our lot tower with our cable towers is we're making everything with that like consistent size tubing so if you do dips on it you could throw your dip attachment or if you just wanted to do put some like store stuff somewhere like a drink spotter a mass and i'm like a drink spotter yeah yeah what size hole is that was that a five-eighths inch hole it's five-eighths but this it's this weird tubing just say weird it's 60 by 60 millimeters it's kind of like i don't know it's an early like tubing that was hot in the market uh it's metric okay it kind of hits it's like really like it's well priced because it's manufactured in like a lot of like they manufacture a lot of it whereas like our manticore or like our hydra when we get that custom like actual

imperial tubing it costs more. A lot of our best sellers are still on the 60x60 system because it cuts the cost down like 30% or something. It's been really popular with our stuff like that. Our magnetic drink spotter would for sure work.

Would it? I got to buy one of those. i should have got one well we'll so we'll send you one since you're on the podcast now we'll get them up there and then this one we just released it um it's like a kind of an all-in-one functional trainer but same thing uh being able to attach stuff to it let me see oh i know where i'll take you i'll take you to the real the real prototype area where all the magic happens where all the magic happens so i'll take you uh let me take you through the back here i'll go quick hopefully my internet doesn't cut out do you have anyone

left that you've made work there at 10 p.m or have they all gone home i made my little brother come with me he he works for me and uh he's a very hard worker but um i don't want anyone thinking he's a nepo baby so i always you know i always so he's uh i think he's he's in the back he says he's uh still hurt hurting from new year's eve so um that's quite the palette stack back there you can build a lot of like reclaimed uh furniture from palettes yes i've been trying to like figure out like there's got to be a better way to like get palettes or like you know cheaper ones or whatever and they're coming out they're not cheaper but they came out with these uh pressed

pressed uh cardboard pallets you can get oh yeah yeah yeah okay yeah um this one's this like weird one i've been working on for a long time and uh today we kind of got like the final one going so nobody's seen this before but this is uh i don't know i don't know if they're gonna release it but it's a uh a belt squat machine that you can attach a pad to and turn into a like a two-in-one hip thruster yeah oh interesting yeah yeah yeah yeah so i was dinking around with it today and um i gotta get some weight on there like some heavy weight and see how it feels uh but it's it's definitely interesting and then we got the the other leg extension this one isn't terribly exciting um is that a plate loaded one

yeah exactly so working on a few things like yeah we put it out for feedback and everyone's like please make it the backrest adjustable so you can do lying leg curls um so i'm trying to hash that out so are those are those both that one and the plate loaded are they leg curl uh leg extension slash leg curl both yeah okay yeah that's right um so yeah there's that was the kind of the biggest feedback and then we got we're getting like more into like some cardio stuff uh this one is actually uh a really interesting product it's just it's like a a really high incline like treadmill okay and it it uh i'm not showing very well but it goes up to like i don't know 50 degrees or something i was doing it today and just you know hammered my um

my hamstrings and and uh gave me a great cardio workout um talking about the cardio equipment too you know it's i think it's is it called your blitz line which is almost like you've got all the you've got all the pieces which I don't know maybe you'd say like at a typical CrossFit gym they have like all these cornerstone pieces of equipment that like their their wads are even based around where it's like the fan air bike the ski trainer, the rower, and then you've also got like the motorless treadmills, I think too. And I think that's, those are all in your blitz line, I think. Right. Yeah. Yeah. We just call it the blitz. It was just kind of like an idea, you know, for branding for the, for the cardio line. Um, but yeah, we're, we've been kind of stepping into it a bit more you know kind of like like i said earlier a lot of time in the early days i was like i don't want to do things

that anybody else does and now that we've gotten more established uh when we do things that are readily available anywhere people still like to get them from us right we got a good reputation people still like to get them from us right we got a good reputation yeah so like here's a question for you um i've got a here i'll just say what we've got we've got a rogue uh echo bike you know and i don't think you you had any of your stuff available at the time when we got these yet we have a rogue echo bike we have the concept two rower we've got uh i think some true form is the brand of uh treadmill but what i don't have that i thought about getting before is this the ski uh trainer so if if uh if i was me which i am and you were you which you are why why should i buy the blitz ski trainer you know versus an alternative there i mean some of the stuff it's just like it's more it's more economic like it's right

it's cheaper right it's cheaper it's it's got uh you know similar warranties or whatever and uh yeah just unit economics i like the there's a couple features on the blitz rower and the blitz or uh like the like the phone the phone holder like i'm now one of those guys who watch the movies cardio yeah so yeah i mean it's it's really the biggest part on those is is price and yeah and know, a couple little design features. But, yeah, save you a couple hundred bucks. I always like saving a few hundred bucks. Here's my Robot Army.

Those are 3D printers then? Is that what that is? Yeah, yeah. These are the 3D printed barbell collars. Oh, yeah. Yeah. You had a bunch of those at the Arnold this year, this last year, 2023. Yeah, and we tried to – we made a custom pair for Arnold himself, but it wasn't going to get him to him. Did you have any leads on that like could you

get like i mean he it's he's like fort knox there i think i don't think he's easily access to yeah no i don't think so there there was one guy who was working there who who was like chatting us up and i i think i gave him a keychain or something i was like thanks for volunteering and then later he came by again i was like oh man i made these calls for arnold i don't know how we're gonna get him to him he's like i'll try and smuggle him to him i think he was successful he should have just taken them to an ad and just been like i'm just gonna keep he'd go around to everyone be like hey you got anything you want me to give to arnold and then he just leaves there with like 50 really cool individual

like personalized things with thousands of dollars worth of free stuff yeah we should just do that we should just put on like an uh just like whatever just a polo and uh says arnold sports festival on it and go around collecting assistant for the weekend do you have anything you want to give it yeah so dress up as security and personal detail so so we we got to meet you in person at the arnold in 2023 in march uh which was cool and you had a really cool bells of steel set up there in 2023 what are your plans for 2024 are you going back and uh what are your plans? Yeah, we actually were going back and we got like an actual, like one of those big corners

or like the, you know, with the... Yeah, we know what you're talking about. Whatever that floating thing is that, yeah. Yeah, whereas last year... You're kind of, you have like an more like an island now almost where uh where last year you kind of were in like several rows yeah together yeah but that was we showed up and yeah they were like a bunch of people around us like i think a couple booths maybe didn't sell and then one of them who had like two booths he just didn't show up um could you imagine that

yeah five thousand bucks yes so i went over to the organizer and was like can i just expand out and you know make it not look empty and right we bought too much stuff um they were like yeah sure so they let us they just let us and it wasn't really intentional but it worked out really well uh so yeah we got an island and we've been planning it for a while um it's a little tricky because i mean it's a little tricky to organize in general um but i yeah we're gonna do it bigger this year and we always see this like huge uptick in march too and i usually do you guys see that like do you see like a big spike in your online sales in march well we kind of do but we always you know it's probably we usually assume it's related to us because the Arnold is the beginning

of March and we've gone there and have a booth you know for several last several years ago our assumption is a lot of times it's tied to that like you know getting in front of some new faces and then it rolls into online sales that month but i don't i don't know if that i don't know that to be true or not you know i don't know is there anything going else else going on in march are there i guess tax returns aren't until april yeah some people can start getting in march i guess though that that that could have that could be relevant to March, I think too. Yeah. We, we've seen it even on, you know, where that's true. Our, our, our transactions

are much smaller, but we've found that anytime people can come by extra money that, uh, disposable income, the extra disposable income thing, when that happens on a broad scale, that uh makes a difference yeah uh yeah it definitely does but i so i don't know if it's like related to that but we always see this like huge spike in march um and i don't i think it's related to the arnold's we're assuming it is because we keep trying to make it bigger and bigger and you know plan it further and further out uh are you are you guys going oh yeah this year yep we'll be there we'll be you know we'll have a similar setup to like what you do and even just thinking about you talking how it's like oh this is an undertaking i can't even i really can't

even imagine and i actually do have a frame reference because we fill up this two 10x10 booth, and it's a big deal for us to do that, which in comparison is small potatoes. And so I really can't imagine what it's like prepping for setting up like what you had last year or even even what you had last year or what you're gonna attempt to have in 2024 it would be wild it's uh it's oh yeah it's a ton of work it's a lot of work i don't know if i'm gonna go this year my i told my partner i wanted to exchange like you do one year i do one year i of fun last year, but it's like, you're like just so.

You're just so wiped by the end of every single day. It just takes everything out of you. And it's also right. There's like four things that I want to do all year. There's like two business conferences and there's this trade show in Taipei I want to go to. And they're all within like seven-day March period. So yeah, we're doing a big booth there, but I'm not totally sure if I'll go yet or not.

Okay. Yeah. And then I think he manages the Indiana. He's affiliated with it. I've met him there several times over the years is it big ryan or is he andrew yeah andrew okay big andrew yeah there you go close enough andrew who's counting yeah he's uh uh yeah he's still managing it there we got a few other guys we hired there too basically our relationship with him is like he is a he's an employee of

but he also has his own like uh gym like powerlifting i think his specialty is actually sprinting uh so they do lots of sports conditioning there and yeah way way back when we first started in in indiana i don't even know how i got onto Indiana. Oh yeah. I found a third party warehouse that was in Indiana, but I wanted somebody like local to be able to go there and take care of things if they need it. So I just started looking up hardcore gyms in Indianapolis on Instagram and started DMing people being like, Hey, and he was the only guy that replied so we got he got a job that's kind of crazy yeah and then we share like we had the showroom like we split the rent like we rent the backspace for warehousing whatever and then he has the front space for his uh you know displaying the equipment but also like

people are training on it on a daily basis right right that's cool yeah okay well we'll be looking i hope you go to the arnold yeah we get it if you're not going to be there but we're we're hoping to see you there do you think people are gonna think we're twins though and that's that's why that's why i want to see it so you guys yeah yeah yeah you guys can switch clothes and we'll see if anyone gets confused i did notice your beard seems like it's coming in pretty strong. I don't remember it being that long. Yeah. I've just been letting myself go a little bit.

No, I live in this small town. I live on a farm. It's like my wife's family's farm. And they're right by this small town. And there's a barber there there and she's quite good and it's good price like 20 bucks her hair and beard cut beard trim and uh but she just you know it's her shop and she runs the show and i don't know every other time i go to get my haircut there during her business hours she's just like i'm not here. I do something.

So I think I went like three times before I came, and every time she wasn't there, I was like, I guess I'm just doing this. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. We've got this little game we play with every guest that we have on the Mastodonomics podcast, and you're going to be no different. We're going to play it with you as well.

It's called Overrated, Underrated, and we've got a special big cave-on set of topics that you're going to be no different. We're going to play it with you as well. It's called overrated underrated, and we've got a special big cave on set of topics that you just have to decide if they're overrated or underrated. You can't ride the line. That's probably the biggest thing you have to definitively decide if each one's over or under, there's no line writing allowed whatsoever. It's very strict rule.

That's about it. If you think you're up for it, we'll get playing. Yeah, I'd love a challenge. Let's do it. All right. Overrated or underrated rugby scrums? They are the most underrated, most vital, important part of any rugby match, for sure. What is the rugby scrum

could you explain that to us it's the scrum is basically a way of just restarting play uh so if you drop the ball forward you're not allowed to obviously go forward the ball play is stopped and it's just like a way of starting it again and it's yeah it's eight guys on each side and they line up three it's three two or sorry it's three guys in the front five guys in the middle one guy at the back and then it's just like a strength contest of you know pushing each other to get the ball is what it's kind of was intentionally for. But now there's not, there is some pushing and there are some guys who will push so hard that they

get the ball back to their own team, but it's pretty tricky to do these days. And that's where that, where I lived was up in the front, which is why I'm the way I am. So are they, I mean, is it physically taxing or has that changed like you were saying? Yeah, I mean, okay.

Okay, so like what I mean about like actually contesting the ball is like the guy putting the ball into the scrum, you know, he'll put it in with some spin on it and so it kind of naturally rolls back or try to, some refs will clamp down on it some won't but yeah even just the physicality of you know whatever it is 1700 you know say 1200 pounds on each side just jamming against each other it's you know it's it's like doing your max squat and uh when is it definitively somebody's ball then like i don't i really don't completely understand like is it like no we walked over it like it's underneath

our legs now we can grab it and we're good or like what that's right yeah yeah or if you if the hooker if the hooker hooks it back uh back through the channel of the scrum, then it's theirs. But the person who gets to put in the ball, like if I drop the ball forward, then the other team gets to put it in because I made a mistake. Okay, so it's not the ref feeding the ball in? No, no, the ref is improvising that you, you know.

I didn't have to, like it's's it wasn't like the easiest place to like push people like punch people or or do dirty things but there's some dirty stuff going on there and then some will intentional or not uh will pull the whole thing down which gets really dangerous because then you have you know a huge dog pile and yeah or whatever and yeah yeah okay rugby scrums great name for it too a scrum yeah and it's very important and there's been like some talk of like removing it or like whatever making it more spectator friendly and it's kind of maybe like american football what they've done to the kickoff. You know, they try to make the kickoff, like not even like a part of the game anymore, basically.

Oh, really? Why? Because the collisions were so hard? Yeah, I mean, because it is dangerous. Like, because you got 250 pound guys running 20 miles per hour head on at each other. But historically, it's a, you know, part of the game. But yeah, I think it's a you know part of the game but yeah i think it's just dangerous i try i did try i did try and uh in my 20s switch over to football because i was like man i'm pretty good at rugby but there's no money right there's no scholarships there's no money and there's no nothing right so i switched over to a football team that was kind of like similar level to Canadian University and like potentially path forward to the CFL. But I was just terrible at it and like not built for it.

I was just like a slow, you know, kind of poorly linebacker. Didn't last long. Switched back pretty soon after okay uh overrated or underrated joe defranco let's come his name's come up a time or two here today so yeah i mean he's he's definitely underrated now because you know he's he was the youtube like guy but that was 14 15 years ago but i've been seeing him like pumping out facebook ads and i emailed them too to like uh i don't know do some cross promotion or something and be like joe like remember me inspired but yeah he's underrated i i his uh his old program there uh west side for Skinny Bastards,

I raced around that all the time when I was getting ready for season. And, you know, one of my pivotal moments was watching, did you ever watch the movie he put out? No. No, I haven't seen it either. I don't know. Like a couple, I can't remember. It's a long time ago, but a couple of maybe British guys came over,

did a documentary, and you could only get it on DVD. I probably ordered it from Elite FTS. I don't remember. But, yeah, watching that movie. Did he write for, like, T Nation and stuff back in the day? Or was he, like, on Elite FTS or was he like on elite fts was he writing for on that site or i can't remember i just mostly remember his youtube stuff and then and then on it you know on it like the supplement guy yeah they brought him on somehow and they like

moved his gym to austin and he had this but then he left i don't know what happened but um they had some sort of partnership but i don't know i just remember his youtube videos and i don't really remember who he's writing for if he was writing okay yeah all Overrated or underrated Winnipeg? Winnipeg? Okay. Is Winnipeg the capital of It's the capital of Manitoba. It's pretty much the only real city in Manitoba.

It's like I think maybe city. It's the only real city in Manitoba. It's like, I think, maybe 400,000 or 500,000 population. And the next city, like the next largest. The next largest is like 50,000. Okay. But they're definitely underrated. So fun fact about Winnipeg is Chicken McNuggets were piloted there. Oh, wow. Yeah.

Yeah. The world right there. Change the world. The world world changers. They are, they're so geographically isolated from any major metropolitan. The closest major Metro is Minneapolis, which is I think six or so hours South.

Yeah. Anything else is like, yeah. which is I think six or so hours south. Anything else is like, yeah, next to that is probably Calgary for major cities, which is 10, 12 hours. And so I guess because it's so isolated, it's a good place to test products. Okay.

It's like going to a country that hasn't had contact with the outside world. Right. It's a few guys that have some some or one guy that used to train with has a great gym and And it's also like in this time of crazy cost of living. And I guess you guys in South Dakota probably still have it pretty easy, but Winnipeg is still one of the most reasonable cities in Canada. Okay. So they haven't had that. Because I see it in the news too, like the Canadian cost of living has just got totally out of control. But so Winnipeg is still somewhat realistic. It's gone up, you know, but it's, you could still very much,

I shouldn't say very much, but much more realistic to buy a home there than it would even in Cal, even Calgary has gone pretty bonkers. Isn't somewhere, isn't like Vancouver, for example, isn't it crazy? Like the most expensive in North America? Yeah. Yeah. It's crazy. Yeah. I think it's 1.5 or 2 million for a detached house on average there now, like average. And I grew up on.

It doesn't make sense. No, it doesn't. And they don't have, you know, like they have some industry there, like, but if you go to Toronto, okay, it's expensive, but you can get higher jobs. Yeah. But it's like, it's pretty limited. And, and I grew up in Victoria, which is Vancouver Island. It's like an Island off of Vancouver where the capital is. where the capital is and i remember like in my when i was 20 me and my my meathead buddies you know shared a two-bedroom apartment for like 700 bucks a month in you know 2005 or whatever

and uh that same apartment now is like 2500 a month or something like it's gone cuckoo how about over there is uh is is orcas island have you ever been there before orcas is it orcas island orcas island orcas island no i don't know i gotta look here tanner you go ask your question i'm okay i because it was funny i was i switched it to winnipeg i was gonna ask you overrated underrated vancouver island i didn't know you lived there though but i was curious about vancouver island uh because have you ever seen the show Alone before? It's like. Oh, yeah.

I forgot about that show. It's I don't know if it's like a Netflix document. I think it might be Netflix doc. You reality TV show really is what it is, where they drop like 10 people into remote Vancouver Island with like very limited resources. And it's whoever can survive the longest living off the land, you know? And it's, as far as reality TV go,

TV show go, I think it's fairly legit. And Oh, I actually, Tanner, you described the show to me and I watched it and I was shocked how good it actually was. Right.

Like that. It's actually legit. Like these people are presumably really out there like by themselves alone. And, um, but it's on Vancouver Island. uh like you know anywhere else in canada like you guys you guys got you got florida you got california you got arizona new mexico like if you want to live somewhere hot you can go somewhere hot here we don't have anywhere and the closest thing we have is victoria and i never really appreciated it when i was younger like i used to ride my bike to work in the winter and um to work in the winter and um you know anywhere you step any other city or anywhere else it's just snow and yeah punishing and bitter cold yeah it's like this island paradise i did look though i did find it orca's island is it's one of those islands just east of victoria between victoria and

washington but yeah but back way back in the day, there was this skateboarding video I watched. It was like these guys were on tour and they were, they went and they stopped at Orcas Island. And I remember thinking, this doesn't even seem real. It seemed like the coolest place ever. And yeah, that, that had to look, that's where it's at though. Oh, interesting. No, I haven't, I haven't heard of that one.

I know I haven't been, I've only been to one Gulf Island. But one, one thing about Calgary is you guys getting the last of us. I haven't watched it yet. I have it on my list. I haven't, I haven't done it yet though. Oh,

well it was filmed here. Okay. It's cool. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. All right. Last overrated underrated topic,

and we usually save the most important for the last. It's worth all the marbles. Everything comes down to this. So overrated or underrated, I'm going to say a name. I think you'll know this. Overrated or underrated, Coco. Coco. She's underrated.

She's based. Yeah. she's underrated yeah so who is coco coco is ice tea's wife was that like a reddit post i did or where did you find that maybe it was on my about us page i think that that's where it is i don't like to give out my sources usually but yeah i think that that's where i came across that so uh you said underrated for coco and could you explain your connection i don't think she's like oh our connection i yeah when i was so victoria being like so beautiful um that we would actually get really good talented pretty famous musicians and rappers coming there to play and um and ice tea came to my club and you know i was i was one of the bigger more uh more intimidating looking bouncers so i got to do uh duty and like the vip and whereas coco was hanging out for that night and yeah i just like stood next to coco and didn't really talk much

around and then uh and then when they left this was pre this was pre uh ncis or what's he on what's the one he's on law and order okay yeah i can't keep him straight yeah that sounds right yeah free law and order so i don't know if the budget was a little bit tight but like i escorted them upstairs when they were waiting for a cab and uh and i was like all right and then he got paid he got paid in a big fat stack of american dollars nice and all right here comes my tip and he slapped my hand and he said oh thanks big homie and got his cabin win you know gave you nothing yeah that gave you nothing other than the story which yeah priceless yeah priceless um but yeah did you could you find out does ice love coco i i don't recall like their interaction i remember seeing her and i guess to this day like i've never seen somebody look like that in

real life she was kind of ahead of the curve like she's had that look for a long time and now that look that she has is the look every girl tries to have on instagram right right yeah maybe you're right i uh but i yeah just being like i've never seen somebody in real life look like this but i think that like we kind of get that too um because we get so much media from the states and like the way you guys talk in shows and movies like we don't talk like that so when they go like when i go to the states and i see people and i hear them talk and i see other drafts i'm like this is like a movie i'm in a movie like i don't yeah see it's funny you're saying that because usually people are like saying it the other way to us like oh you're not one of us yeah we're cast out. We're more closely related to you than we are the rest of the...

Honorary, yeah, right, Canadians. But, yeah. To you, do we sound Canadian or do we sound American? Extremely American, yeah. Really? American, yeah. That is funny because we get called out so much for the opposite of that you know or like down like uh like neutral or like or more like uh more maybe like a minnesota accent you

know that's what people tend to know like that which is which is kind of like canadian adjacent though in a way almost you know it's like borderline that yeah i yeah we don't like i guess we have like a little bit but like most of our hard accents are like people from newfoundland and french people but like you can't go to like bc or alberta or mantoa scotch but most of the country everybody just kind of sounds pretty much the same i think some some stuff in the rural areas a little different but yeah good stuff every 20 miles you get a different you know there's quite a bit of quite a variety or uh in the states yeah uh well that's really good i think this is a this is really fun what else uh is there anything else

someone should know about bells of steel that you don't think we asked you about that you, if someone's listening, they're kind of learning more about you for the first time that they should know? Probably just that, you know, we're a home gym equipment company selling pretty innovative stuff and getting more into the premium uh equipment and uh we got some you know big stuff planned and i think uh

i think one really important thing after covid is is that we like we're here to stay right we've been here for 14 years and so you know if you're ever making that decision between us and uh maybe a newer person or somebody not uh so weathered it's a big factor yeah 14 years i can't believe it but um i remember i remember seeing like the post-covid just seeing these kind of pop-up competitors just every few months one would drop new one would drop new one would drop and a lot of time they leave them hanging like uh i don't i don't want to say the name but like a bigger company from the states they're still going um but they had a canadian division and then the u.s company and the canadian division

division and then the u.s company and the canadian division ran financial troubles and the canadian one filed for bankruptcy and like left all these people hanging like didn't they've been waiting for their pre-orders for so long they couldn't even do the chargebacks and uh yeah anyways here to stay here today and we got some really cool stuff coming is there uh last question i have if you want to throw a new one in their bus is there any other uh gym equipment companies that really piss you off that you could just do without uh yeah i sure could so yeah but i thought you know i'll counter that with, with some companies that I think are doing a really great job. I think rep is, has been doing a really interesting thing.

I think that, you know, when, even though we're competitors, I think maybe doing like doing our own things and letting people decide, but I've, you know, I've chatted with

them at um arnold's and they were just they were really nice and you know i think we're both in it very much the same reason yeah i think more people um you know get fitter and more access to cool stuff and then same with uh peter keller from fringe is a really nice guy. He's in one of my business groups. And I think they do interesting stuff. And he's a very passionate about the actual community. So it's cool to see, you know, these guys that are my competitors, but they're, I think we're working towards like an overall i don't want to say like better life because that sounds a little bit more important yeah but like better life for for people right uh so yeah i i think those those guys are doing

cool things uh and then you ever heard of erwin fitness yeah yeah yeah are they canadian are they they're like yeah an hour drive from my house yeah okay he's in he's in middle of nowhere too and i've only ever talked to him i gotta go and visit him sometime they make some pretty high-end stuff also also yeah yeah and he's like cooking it up in his little shop there in carberry manitoba and he is doing some really beautiful designs and um i think he's still doing well too so what's in the water in manitoba up there i know right the north yeah it's funny too i like during covet and i was looking you know we we offshore our product line i was looking to do more stuff uh in canada and it was just it was couldn't it was hard to find

anybody and it's very expensive and like cumbersome um but a lot of the the local manufacturers in manitoba are like hutterite colonies oh yeah yeah hutterite communities are in south dakota here too yeah yeah so they i guess one colony will specialize in hog farming and one will specialize storage sheds yeah or you know building sick home gym rocks yeah awesome well we were i was really hoping to get like more negative comments out of you but i guess we'll just have to deal with the positive ones that you gave to yeah when i come and visit you i'll give you all well you have an open invitation anytime we would love to have you come down here so and we do really appreciate you taking the time i hope you have a do you have a cot set up somewhere in there around those pallets that you can just get to sleep in the facility at the night when you're there yeah it's funny when we first so this was

a new build like we lease it and when we first got it i was like i we got to plan the layout and i was like i want to shower in there because i'm going to sleep whenever i come last time i'm sleeping there but i never i've never done it oh tonight could be the night yeah yeah tonight could be the night yeah that's a good idea awesome well we do really appreciate this was a lot of fun yeah yeah i'm so glad uh i got to come on and uh yeah thanks for having me we'll see you in march hopefully then yeah see you in march and if not i come. I'll come in the summer. We'll do another road trip. There we go. Awesome. I was looking at water parks on the way. So

take my kids to some water parks. Yeah. Yeah, there's going to be a Western Northeast South Dakota has a decent water park, so you can at least get in on one when you're here. I had some brochures mailed to me. Okay. All right. All right. Thanks right thanks man we appreciate it okay

manitoba cool beans yeah i was gonna ask if those were manitoba cool beans that he got a double dose of man because they're north of the border because they're from manitoba that's from our from our friends south of the border that are north of us. Yeah. Manitoba, I guess they might actually be north of us since they're literally on the map. Yeah. They're still part of our friends that are south of the border.

They just happen to be north of us in this case. Right. They're not like those Toronto posers that south that are literally south of us no not at all have you seen actually that reminds me I wanted I might hold off on this because I wanted to ask you about this for a while but it's is it well I kind of want to I kind of was thinking about making a game out of it you know we better wait at that I always like a good game I mean we could we could do the game right now if you wanted. By the time you read an ad, actually, is it

ad time or not? I do need to, yeah, I should read an ad, actually. I'm going to talk about Build Fast Formula. Check them out at buildfastformula.com. Build smart, build strong, build fast. Come with me if you want to build smart, build strong, and build fast.

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You save another 10%. The code, the subscription 20% off makes it so affordable. You can't afford not to purchase it. Thank you. Build fast. Tanner. I'm confused.

Did you read the strength co ad already? No, I haven't yet. Oh purchase it. Thank you, BuildFest. Tanner, I'm confused. Did you read the Strength Co. ad already? No, I haven't yet. Oh, we didn't read ads before he came on. That's why. Okay. Right, yeah. So I've got, so we each have one more. Because I read.

You read, but I didn't. Oh, okay. That's why I was confused. I'm like, I was really. I was playing catch up there. You were really like playing mind games with me there. My brain was really, really confused. Okay. Are you ready for this? I was playing playing mind games with me there. My brain was really, really confused. Okay.

Are you ready for this? I was playing catch up. So we'll, we'll finish with a couple of ads. Okay. Are you ready for this game? I've wanted to play this with you for a long time and I've never, I've actually never, I don't know why I've told everyone to write everything down and I usually write things down for some reason.

I never wrote this one down. Is this a saw style game? Like let's just say your life is actually on the line here so okay you're not going to want to get anything wrong but well now i'm nervous maybe this is much of a game maybe for all i know you already know all these answers but have you ever looked at a map of europe overlaid on a map of america by latitude so you're sick where it actually lines up north south yeah like where our city's pretty far north like just if i'm looking thinking about a globe so no i don't know that no i don't i i'm

not going to do well at this i feel like i don't even know where to start okay think about it okay so i'm just going to say an american city and then I'm going to say a European city and you have to decide if it's north or south of that American city. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay.

Okay. Okay. So we'll start. We'll start. I want to say we'll start easy, but I'm like, I don't even know. I don't know if any of them are easy. Because I don't know.

I don't even have like a reference point where like one that I know is. Okay. Here, let's try this. Okay, Rome. You know where Rome is, right? Yeah, Italy, Rome. Yeah.

Rome, the Roman Empire. I got an idea, yeah. The Roman Empire was named after Rome, I think. Rome. I often think of the Roman Empire many times daily. Is Rome north or south of Denver? Like, it's funny.

When I picture the globe, most of Europe feels kind of north to me. But I think of Italy as basking in the sun. Right, right. That's what I think of there. But when I think of it actually on the map, I think of, like, North America. Like, if you're watching i think of north america and then europe and you can see like the see that's pretty good because here my my mental model was always like well it's just straight across the ocean you go straight across

the ocean which yeah uh my i feel like if i think of draw the lines what I think of the globe it seems north to me but when I think of the climates I've got to go with Rome as south of uh Denver and I say that with almost no certainty but that's why well that's why I think it because of the climates that I picture in my head and you are incorrect Rome is a fair amount north of denver actually okay in fact rome is actually even north of omaha while we're at it really just just a little north of omaha yeah uh so so that's one that is kind of surprising because it's like uh rome people kind of have a mental model of what that is but right um, not the case. I've never pictured, I've certainly never pictured snow there before.

No, no, not at all. Like the Colosseum, like covered in snow? That is one of the benefits, I guess, of being located on, you know, the ocean or, I guess, the Mediterranean Sea. Well, yeah, I guess Denver is a mile high. Rome is probably at sea level. Sea level, yeah. Right, so that I guess Denver is a mile high. Rome is probably at sea level. Yeah. Right. So that's a big difference there, too.

Okay. How about Paris? Paris, France. Oh, wee, wee. Eiffel Tower. Is that north or south of Minneapolis? Ugh. These are all really hard because I don't know

and climate there again I think of I certainly think of Paris as being a more moderate climate than Minneapolis but I think Paris is north of Rome I will say although this makes no sense to me, just starting to maybe correct my course, I'm going to say that Paris is north of Minneapolis. Paris is way north of Minneapolis, way north. Like, like, uh, that doesn't make sense. Like, I mean, I get it.

I get why it makes sense. And that's why I answered the question, but like, I don't, that seems odd. Yeah. And I have, I have no way to tell you, you don't like miles or anything, but yeah, it is, um, considerably North of Minneapolis. Okay. Here's another one. London, England, London, England. Is that North or South of Winnipeg? north or south of Winnipeg Winnipeg Winnipeg I just drove there

it is a ways into in Canada it's up there ways into Canada but then you even said Paris is a ways north of Minneapolis and I think London is more north than Paris I think I don't show I mean I know almost jack shit I know that I know that uh let's see the

Great Britain Island and France are right next to each other. The English Channel just separates them. But I think that that UK island is a little more north than the country of France, generally speaking, a little bit. I'm going to say this makes no sense. This has to be wrong, but I'm going to say that England is north of Winnipeg. London is north of Winnipeg. London is... Or yeah, London. London is north of Winnipeg. Huh. Not by much, but it is north of Winnipeg.

So is there something different? Is it... Is there something about Earth that the Eastern Hemisphere weather varies just significantly from the Western hemisphere. I mean, it could be that, but I think it's all, they're all on the ocean, I think is what it's doing. So that's the, it's the, it's the elevation. Like it has to be, right?

What else? I don't know what else could do it is, and then I think you just get that warm ocean air or warmer ocean air than, you know, we get none of that. We just get these cold wind, this Dakota breeze. Yeah, right, right. But actually looking at that game, it was hard. So London is north of Winnipeg. Yeah, and what was the one I said before that? Minneapolis and Paris.

Paris, if it was overlaid, is like on the U.S.-American border. Yeah, it'd be basically over Montanaana the montana canadian border if you were to to do the overlay but uh because yeah if you look at it though like vancouver same thing you know vancouver is right north of us good point and they same thing like seattle and they're on that that ocean there that right that bay and they're kind of in that same realm as like paris like vancouver and paris are pretty similar as far as latitude goes and then you look at it's like okay well that makes a little more sense but like germany you know like in my mind i just i wasn't sure just where germany is at and the fact that overlaid on a map germany is basically canada just that is bizarre only

picture that that i picture slightly more just an only reason, the only reason I think of it that way is just from world war two stuff of like the battle of the bulge. But to me, like I want to picture the battle of the bulge. I'm basically picturing like the planes of the Dakotas, but it's like, no,

no, it's, it was significantly North of that even, but it does show like that weather. Yeah, once you start to get inland there, the weather does start to make more sense actually. Right. Yeah, that is kind of wild.

That's a good little game. Yeah. And in case you're wondering south, Houston is about even with Cairo, Egypt. Wow. That's maybe even more weird. Actually, I didn't even notice that one down there with Cairo, Egypt. So, wow. That one, that's maybe even more weird. Actually, I didn't even notice that one down there. Cairo.

Yeah. Jerusalem is fairly even with Dallas. What else is there? Yeah. Baghdad is pretty much even with Atlanta. Like, you know, it seems like just, like in my mind, that's like square on the equator. You're in the desert. And it's like, no, no, no.

That's like in America. Right. That's kind of wild. Yeah. So that was our fun impromptu game this week. Oh, I like that game. We'll say you kind of passed. Yeah.

Yeah. I mean, the game taught me. The only reason I really got the ones right is because the game was teaching me as we played it. You learned. You were using your context clues. I used my strength. Yes. I used my strength.

Yes, yes. I did. I have to report, I listened to most of the Blink-182 album. Oh, let me. It's been a while. Well, kind of like that, except not stained Blink-182.

But it has been a while. It did take me a while to get to it. It's been a while. Well, kind of like that, except not stained. But it has been a while. It did take me a while to get to it. It's been a while. I don't know if I was a fan of it, to be honest. To me, and I was a big, I, growing up, was a huge Blink-182 fan. Where I think Blink-182 is at their best is when they're being really lighthearted, fun, dumb,

kind of immature. I mean, that's what they did. They were dumb, fun, pop punk, immature. And it is just a weird thing.

Like to me, that was when they were at their best. But like when you're in, I don't know, like your forties doing that, it's sort of weird to do that. Cause that works better when you are dumb and immature. If you're 20, that's kind of like, or even like that works better when you are dumb and immature.

If you're 20, that's kind of like. Or even like in their case, I think you're like 18 or 17 even for some of their earlier stuff. So that's just like where you get stuck in a spot where, and I have no problem with artists maturing and changing their sound. Actually, I would prefer artists to mature and change their sound as time goes on and not release the same album over and over again. mature and change our sound as time goes on and not release the same album over and over again but especially in the case of like pop punk music i think it works so good because it is dumb immature fun stupid music and then when you get older you can't really play that card anymore because it just doesn't work and then you do a more mature grown-up thing and the more mature grown-up thing in my ears sounds much more generic and right less exciting for me less raw it and it is poly you know it's way more polished too um so it was fine i'd probably if i had to rate it i'd probably put it somewhere around like a six ish if i had to

yeah so you didn't necessarily enjoy all the small things about the album. No, no, no. And I did say I miss you to the old stuff a lot. So, yeah, I did listen to it. Finally, follow up on Blink-182. People have been waiting for that one for a long time. Now, if you would just watch The Wire someday. I listened to most of the Blink-182 album albums so now you have to watch all of the wire it was a fair deal well i guess that's what i said one of those times

oh yeah blink 182 i got uh what about yeah what's this oh you're wondering what this is what you yeah i want to know what this is yeah i was gonna ask you um when i say steamboat willie what comes to mind ah something's kind of on the tip of my tongue on that steamboat willie i don't like adam sandler or something comes to my mind like it's just i'm drawing parallels to like toll booth willie so when you say steamboat willie what I think about is Adam Sandler doing Tollbooth Willie. I can't see. I don't even know what Tollbooth Willie is. Oh, is that, is that, and maybe I'm making that,

maybe that's a bastardization of. I don't know some Adam Sandler stuff, so I could be. Tollbooth Willie. Yeah. Yeah, that's it. That's right. Okay. It's like a doll.

Isn't that, is that where it's like a dollar 25 per? Maybe if I heard it again, because I don't know. Like, I know you have all of these songs, like, memorized completely from this album. I don't know. I never had the full album or any friends that did. So I just knew, like, some of the more popular ones from it. Yeah, Tollbooth Willie.

But I'm sure if I heard Tollbooth Willie, we'll have to listen to it after this. I'm sure if I heard it, I probably would. because it was like one of those things where you had a brother or you had a friend that had a brother an older brother that had the cd old enough to so every once in a while you get to go in their room and play some of it but like they didn't want you to be in their room so you didn't get to play all of it and you were too young to have cd players in your room like that was the kind of my experience with so when you say steamboat willie i think of toll booth willie that's the that's the number one thing um that's a it's uh not quite adjacent i guess it's adjacent

in the same way that they're in the entertainment industry uh steamboat willie was like the earliest incarnation of mickey mouse and so if you've ever seen that if you ever seen that black and white drawing of like mickey at like a ship's wheel, someone did what's there must be. Okay. So this is obviously in the news because I saw someone had a meme in the discord this week where they made the wheel, the strength co-played. Oh yeah. Okay. So yeah.

So this is what's going on is, um, and I, I'm going to be paraphrasing here and I'm gonna do a poor job of paraphrasing because I read the article on this a couple of days ago. But, um, so steamboat Willie was like the earliest version of Mickey. And then I don't, and i don't know disney yeah and i don't know um how it changed if it was because i believe walt disney made steamboat willie yeah walt disney first released the cartoon short steamboat willie in november of 1928 it's one of the first cartoons to use synchronized sound it'd be you know super popular and then i don't know the full details of it, but somehow that morphed into Mickey Mouse.

They look very, very similar. But it morphed into Mickey Mouse, and Disney's gone on to be what Disney is today, that everyone knows. What did they ever do with that, though? Right, yeah. But what's interesting about it is U. U S copyright law, the longest it can extend is, and this is where it gets so confusing. Um, Disney has lobbied many, many times over the years to extend copyright law because it is in their interest to have copyright extend as long as possible. Right. Cause like Mickey mouse, for example. Yes. Like they get the copyright. Cause

I don't think they, I mean, uh, stories like Snow White and things like that. I don't believe that, you know, even Bambi, I don't believe, you know, Disney wasn't the ones that made these, but they were the ones that like made it popular and somehow got their copyright on it. So they've been able to have exclusive rights to these stories for so long. And so through lobbying over the years, they've been able to extend those copyright laws out. And it says in 1998, Disney once again successfully lobbied with other entertainment companies to extend copyright protections to the life of the author plus 70 years for a maximum of 95 years. Well, for however that time was ticking, it hit that in january of 2024 which is where we're at the copyright on steamboat willie officially expired and mickey mouse that version of mickey mouse is now in the public domain anyone could you we could make a shirt with uh steamboat willie on it yes so

we could make and i've seen some of the uh accounts that i follow that do really really dumb shirts already like have one it's steamboat willie at the thing and it just says fuck you asshole huge on the shirt they're like we can legally make this it's yeah which which is kind of crazy uh so good i'm not just for the record generally speaking i'm not in favor of people being able to keep this intellectual property for hundreds of years. Oh, in perpetuity, just forever to own an idea. Like, that's not how ideas should work.

You shouldn't be able to just own an idea forever. Right. And I also don't need to look out for Walt Disney's best interests at this point. Yes. And so there's lots of articles that have been written about this and what this means and everything. But a more recent example

that I didn't actually understand that it had even happened was this recently happened a couple years ago for Winnie the Pooh. And I didn't know that that took place. And so what had happened, and this totally slipped by my radar, was that there was a,

I think a slasher film of Winnie the Pooh that came out. You know, someone took it to the most extreme. Yeah, Yeah. Um, yeah. Winnie the Pooh blood and honey. And it was, and this came out a couple of years ago because Winnie the Pooh went through the exact same thing. Winnie the Pooh is now in the public domain. People can use them how they want. And I think for the most part, people can't really fight it. But like, if you look at the headlines, there's already ones here, steamboat willie horror film announced as mickey enters public domain so all types of things uh will be going on i would imagine there'll be all types of books probably children's books

bunch of bunch of things i do think they have to be like careful to not come off to look like they're disney you know like they can't look like it's Disney releasing this. It has to be clear that it's someone else. Like it's not just, you can do anything at all with it. I mean, there are some, some loose guardrails in place, but for the most part, it sounds like people can take their crack at Mickey Mouse or at least the Steamboat Willie version of Mickey Mouse. What did you say the one t-shirt was? It was just giant. I mean, if you Google the picture of Steamboat Willie, it's the thing that comes up. It did you say the one t-shirt was that you saw? It was just giant. I mean, if you Google the picture of Steamboat Willie, it's the thing that comes up. It's him at the little,

the old fashioned wooden circular ship's wheel. Yeah. And just giant on it. It says, fuck you, asshole. It's just Mickey Mouse smiling at his ship's wheel. Yeah.

Which would be hilarious to see that in person. And, and it being legal. Yeah. Presumably. Yeah. Yeah. That is funny. Good.

I'm not against that. No, no. Let him let, let the intellectual property free. Let it go. Yes. Got too many rich,

powerful people keeping the man down yeah speaking of steamboat willie um like i said someone made the plate and out of the strength now i get the joke a little bit they're like that makes more sense yeah i did drink those new mascot or whatever that didn't dawn on me until you actually yeah i said that because i never put two and two together i'm like oh someone just made a dumb meme but now, yeah, that does make more sense now. Yeah. American-made Olympic iron plates and barbells. That's what you can find over at the Strength Co.

Wait, wait, the Strength Co.? Is that who you're talking about? Yeah, the Strength Co. Up to their old bullshit again? They're back on their bullshit again over at the Strength Co., and it just so happens their bullshit is selling the best the hands-down best made in america olympic iron bar barbell plates on the market so you thought it was going to be new year new strength co no back to the same old bullshit that they've been known for the more things change the more they stay the same the more

that you think maybe they're going to go away from it and make a you know like a lower quality plate that's not made in america something that's not uh black e-coated with this finish that makes it smooth yet easy to grip and that lasts essentially a lifetime you think they're going to stop doing any of that? Nope. Same. Back right back to their old bullshit. Old bullshit. Yeah. Yeah. They, if you thought they're going to get off their bullshit,

you're sorely mistaken. They are back. Try again in 2025 and we'll see. Yeah. If you, you thought they were all of a sudden going to have expensive shipping in 2024. No.

Back on their bullshit. Some of the have expensive shipping in 2024 no back on their bullshit some of the most affordable shipping uh in the market for plates uh of this of this caliber of this quality and you thought they were going to limit their product line and not carry everything from one and a quarter pound plates all the way up to hondus and and uh rubber plates too no yeah yeah they're uh they're certainly most certainly back on their bullshit. Check it all out at thestrength.co. You want to get on their bullshit? Go to thestrength.co.

They're back on their bullshit. The Strength Co. We're back on our same old bullshit. It's all about the he says he said bullshit uh but yeah the strain co owned by uh big grant and big grant is absolutely back on his bullshit uh and today's show is also brought to you by texas power bars buddy caps first started lifting weights in the late 60s and began powerlifting in the mid 70s. At the time, he was working for Image Barbell building gym equipment. Around 1976,

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visit TexasPowerB bars.com. Kind of sounds like Texas power bars is back on their BS too. You can say they've been on it for 50 years. I've got some exciting Texas power bar. Maybe I'll save some of that. See you looking around over there, checking the clock. Oh, damn, we're at two hours and 17 minutes? That's why I'm wondering if I just need to save some of this good stuff.

I guess in the world of massonomics, you can always rest assured that there's always next week, right? You know what? We're always going to be back on our bullshit every single week it's like a guy used to tell me at the gym at the gym you don't want to get too big all at once in the podcast world you don't want to get uh i don't know what do you do in podcasting you don't want to podcast too much all at once you don't want to get you don't want to inform your audience too much all at once you don't want to give them too much content all at once you got to tease them along right so i've got 400 plus weeks i've actually got a lot of interesting gym equipment oh mass gym equipment talk coming up so spoiler alert on this thing

i've got some uh some showcase pieces that are in route to the gym as we speak some um some very uh very interesting plates for one thing wow some very okay it'll be the oldest plates uh in existence now at mass dynamics gym in the existence of the history of the world yeah the the history of the world for sure definitely the history of mass dynamics gym within the world and then also uh gonna be some updates on already on our 2024 mass dynamics gym barbell so already okay okay you have my attention 2020 uh episode 406 stay tuned i it's possible i could remember to talk about this stuff or i could forget all right well i'm not gonna let you forget because I'm putting it in our list right now. Oh, if it's in Asana, then it's basically gospel.

Yep, set in stone. Yep, we can't. There's no going back now. No, no, no. Can't hold anything back now. We didn't hold anything back this episode, did we? We did not. The only thing I didn't tell you is maybe go check out massonomics.com

where we have our merchandise like this MSS and MX hats. We've got a few of these left, these hats, not too many. We don't have a lot of hats. We do have a decent supply of drink spotters right now. We've got the drink spotter light, like I was seeing earlier, and then the classic drink spotters that fit either your 1-inch or 5-8-inch pin size. And then we we got a

restock of our power lifting record holder tee so i think as of now you can catch that tee in all sizes from small to 4x we might be out of extra small now but small to 4x and then we've still got our brown some of our brown varsity tees that i really like yes uh the under underrated tea is that it's our just says massonomics in our varsity font across the front arched and it's a brown one of brown tea one of the benefits to having me as part of your family means you get massonomic stuff for christmas and several people throughout my family got the brown varsity shirt and all of them said oh i like this color that was the unanimous review yeah people loved it i gave that one to some i gave that one to my mother i think also and she let she hurt her response was i like the color so do not sleep on that brown tea the one

other piece of merchandise that i'd highly recommend that i'm looking to, I know we've at least got large XL, 2X, and 3X right now, is the long sleeve pocket tee. Oh, yes. If you're listening to this and you don't own our long sleeve pocket tee, it's got the Massonomics patch on the pocket and then it says Massonomics in white and it's a black pocket tee.

I love that thing. It's great because it's so versatile it can be a going out shirt it can be a going to the gym shirt it can be a staying warm shirt it does all of them perfectly it actually does i know it's kind of a joke but like it actually is really good at all of those things and uh it's got a nice lengthy fit to it i underrated on our long sleeve pocket t i you would have to be some stupid horse's asshole to not go buy one of those right now hey i he said it not me yeah you know it gets serious if i say you're going to be a stupid horse's asshole if you don't don't get one he doesn't throw that out lightly no no it's usually pretty serious if that comes up well i hope

everyone enjoyed this episode 405 in the Mastinomics saga. Tommy, where do they find you at? You can find me at Tomahawk underscore D. You can follow me at Tanner underscore Baird. Just please make sure to follow Mastinomics at Mastinomics. See ya.