Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast - Republican Strategist Predicts Trumps Arrest | 2024 Election Secrets

Episode Date: July 10, 2024

Republican Strategist Predicts Trumps Arrest | 2024 Election Secrets

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For the summer's biggest adventure. I think I just smurf my pants. That's a little too excited. Sorry. Smurfs. Only did is July 18th. Going down the political consulting rabbit hole, you learn that those people up there

don't give a shit about any of us. They think they're more qualified to run our lives. I feel like that's counterintuitive for you to be saying that. I don't think that's like jobs. I don't care. They weaponize the justice system. It's like just in plain sighted. They're not even trying to hide it anymore.

Leticia James, the Attorney General, of New York State, ran on a platform saying she was going to get Trump. For the sake of our country, I hope he throws him in jail. What does a political consultant do? So I got a phone call in February from a guy I know. He's like, hey, dude, we're doing this thing, some political consulting stuff, and we're going to use influencers and basically our networks. So we get on a plane and go to D.C.

I was brought up there initially as a subject matter expert. expert on censorship in the conservative social media realm, okay? Okay. So, because, like, you remember the stuff with COVID and all that stuff, the post getting censored and taken down and warning labels and all that crazy stuff. So I just did really, really well. Like, I just, I don't gaslight people, and I don't, like, savor rattle. I just explained how things were.

And there was a couple lobbyists in the room that I really impressed. And they called me, like, after. uh one of the meetings and um like hey we want you to do this thing we're we want to win this a i'm a republican for those lists i'm a conservative um and like i was like okay so like so i'll go back up there for another meeting and i remember meeting like some other really heavy hitter organizations like big ones super packs and stuff um and i said what are you doing this election that you're excited about. Tell me one thing you're going to do, because you guys are going to spend over a billion dollars. I just want you to tell me something new and exciting. And they all looked

at me. They said, we don't have anything. I said, well, I'll tell you one thing. You're going to spend more money. So to put it into perspective, the Republican Party has spent $750 million on the last three Senate elections in the state of Georgia and lost all three. So you start looking at at where they're spending all their money. And so you break marketing down into a pie, a pizza, and you got your slices. And they spend a bunch of money on Hannity, Fox News, mailers, appearances. They do all this different stuff. But the thing that they don't do, and they spend a bunch of money with Turning Point USA and all these different organizations. And all that, they literally, they're, they're fishing in the same pond using the same bait. So they're fishing

memories, not conditions. They don't evolve. They haven't evolved. Oh, let's go fish over here. I caught a big bastard three years ago. Well, the water levels are super low. There's no water over there. And the wind's blowing this way and the water tempest, so we're going to go fish over here today. We're going to fish current conditions. So they haven't adapted. So I started looking at what their programs are. And I was like, so you guys are basically going to solidify the base and get everybody worked up and get your talking points and spend all

you're hundreds of millions of billions of dollars here. But what about conservatives that are not political? They're apolitical conservatives. So I came up with a program where, with Jason and Stephen, and focusing on apolitical conservatives, spreading a message on how important voting is. So when you look at, and apolitical conservatives, I don't need, we don't need to endorse a candidate.

it, we don't need to endorse a party. We don't need to endorse really anything because we know their audience is conservative base. Because if we focus on the two-way space, hunting, and the outdoors, and veterans and first responders, that's conservatives. So we started a program called vote, the number four, America.org. And it's basically, you register to vote. And the challenge is to get one person that didn't register in the last election and get them to vote. Now, we started digging the number of licensed hunters in the state of Pennsylvania that did not vote in the last election, $515,000. Dave McCormick wins the Pennsylvania Senate race. This election cycle, all he's going to do is pick up about 4,500 more votes.

Ohio, 620,000 licensed hunters over the age of 18 didn't vote in the last election. Okay. That seems like a lot. That's a big number, isn't it? The other one was five, you said 500 and something. Pennsylvania is 515. That doesn't seem like a lot. $515,000.

Oh, okay. Well, you didn't say thousand. I'm sorry, $515,000. $515,000. Ohio is $620,000. Texas is $669,000. Florida is $639,000. Okay.

So it's basically as an outsider, a D.C. outsider. I'm outside the Beltway. I'm not a D.C. insider. I can look at things from a different perspective and say, okay, if I have the ability to sell billions of dollars of CPG products, consumer packaged goods products over the past 20 years. Getting someone to vote, that's free.

That shouldn't be hard. And I just started kind of, we started evaluating how they do things up there and we're like, hey, you guys are missing out on two really big slices of the pie that you need to engage. And there's a lot of people that want to be involved conservatives, they just don't know how. So in storytelling,

you know, you basically want to convince people that they're the hero of their own story. And I'm, we're just the guide. So I can give you a solution to the problem. So if you're a conservative Republican and you want Republicans to win, register to vote and find one person that didn't vote in the last election, take them to the polls. And that's it. You're the hero. It's not me.

I'm just the guide. I vote every election. And that's basically the gist of it. And then we had another project we're working on, which is not political at all, is smokeless vets.org. So the voting one is vote the number four America.org. And you go to the website and you just register to vote. It's that simple. It's that easy.

That's all you have to do. Smokless vets is we basically want to get a million veterans off of cigarettes by 2030. And it's basically giving them the information. Like there's been a couple studies that came out in Sweden, one Switzerland, and one is in. England that nicotine gum, lozenges, and nicotine patches do not work. The easiest way to quit smoking is to transition on the other less harmful forms of nicotine. And we've got studies and all that stuff. So that's the political consulting stuff.

Met with the Attorney General from Missouri, Andrew Bailey yesterday in St. Louis, super cool guy. Like, you know, going down the political consulting, you know, rabbit hole, you meet some really interesting people, but you also learn that, like, those people up there don't give a shit about any of us. They think they're more qualified to run our lives. I feel like that's counterintuitive for you to be saying that. I don't think they're like, faces. I don't care.

It's, it's, they, politicians, both sides, feel that they're more qualified to run our lives for us than we are to run our own lives. Oh, no, I agree with that. That's definitely, definitely their point of view. And it's, it's interesting, like, there's a lot of money up there and there's a lot of power of there. And you have people that want money and you have people that just want power. It's funny because I used to always when I was growing up, it was always like, well, politicians want power. They're not really concerned about money. They're concerned about power.

But when you look at the amount of money, they walk out of office with, like they show up with being worth, you know, a couple hundred thousand and they leave being worth, you know, eight years later they walk out with $40 million. Like, how the fuck did you manage that? Making $174,000 a year. That's insane. It's completely insane. Like, I mean, to me, it's like every single politician that goes in and that that happens with, which is just a ton of them. Like, to me, that's an investigation. Like, what are we doing? Well, you're asking them to investigate themselves.

Yeah. I mean, I understand the problems. Yeah. Yeah. It's like the inside of the stock trading. Yeah. I personally don't think that elected officials should be allowed to buy in own stock. Right.

I don't think their spouses should be allowed to either. But what they're doing, walking out of a committee meeting and then buying, you know, three. $300,000 worth of Boeing or whatever company it is, Raytheon, it's not illegal. To me, it's, it's wrong, but it's, it's not illegal. It's a law that they have to make, that they can't do that. I mean, listen, you take the money out of politics, it changes the game. Like, I personally don't think that a politician should be able to draw a cent unless they have a balanced budget.

Oh, yeah, I love the, is that, was it a Warren Buffett who said, oh, you can fix immediately if you just that day yeah immediately if you just connected their their you know what they were making oh it and term limits to balancing the budget he said it'd be balanced in a day well the the interesting thing about term limits is like politics was never meant to be a career our forefathers like you were you know you were a pharmacist or a farmer you went to dc and did your two years as a congressman you went home back to home as the farmer it was never designed to be a career right and now that's all it is is career politicians no one leaves yeah i was going to say i i could i can see died in office yeah i can

can see, you know, to me, a term limit of, let's say, you know, three terms or something like that. You might say two, but in some ways, it's like... You can't be a, I don't think you should be a lot to be a senator for more than two terms. That's 12 years. Six years each. Okay. As a sitting, as a congressman, three, three, three terms, four terms, maybe. I would say, I would say probably, yeah, you know, depending on the length of it, two to three, you know, like, I understand you're saying 12 years. I might go to 18, only because, look, only because, let's say, there's something to be said for experience. You know what I'm saying?

something that Trump lacked, was how D.C. worked. Yeah. Yeah. So, I mean, I definitely think that there's something to be said for experience. And I also think that these politicians that every time they make a vote, they go out and they do a survey of what the public things. Like, no offense, but, you know, I don't think that you should be elected to do whatever the whims of the public are. Like, sometimes you have to make a decision that's in my best interest. I don't have all the facts. I don't have time for all the fact, to know all the facts, you were elected so that you get all the facts and you make the best decision in my best interest. And sometimes it may not feel like it's in my best

interest. It might be hard, but that's your call. You know what I'm saying? Like, I feel like you represent people to look out for you. Right. I think it should be the way. But not majority, not majority rules. They should do it based on what's best for their constituents in their home home areas. Yeah. Well, I'm not thinking more president. But yeah. They shouldn't, they shouldn't, They shouldn't make this decisions based on their party. Yeah. No, I hate it when they're fighting. Like, you're a Republican and you've got a bill out and I'm going to go against that bill.

And that's a Republican bit. Like, what do you talk about? Like, maybe that's the best fucking thing for the country. Yeah. You know, so it's like they, now everything is bipartisan. Yeah, it's, it's 100% Republican or 100% Democrat. It's nuts. Do you have any more questions?

Yeah. Let's hear of course. Ask as many as you want. He's got way better questions than me. So this fall, like, what are your thoughts? Trump being, you know, indicted, I guess. Was he indicted? Oh, so you're going to let me get into that?

I mean, yeah. I can't. There's some things I just can't say. People will kill me. So the first trial was the judge in Goran in New York about overvaluing his real estate. With a $435 million judgment. That is completely and totally insane. DeWich Bank, which was like his big lender that actually testified, they were like, listen, we made money.

He never was late. He never missed a pay. we would love to do more business with him yeah that should be that's it it's over that that should be game over um and it says in everything it's like you know uh it's up to the lender these are just values that we're estimating and it's up for the lender to do their own new diligence like buyers aren't we're not allowed to go get an appraisal and give it to the bank the bank has to order their own appraisal right so that is that's shambolic um that's completely insane um and then you had but it's also every i was going to say it's also every single person out there will

tell you that their house is worth X. And it's up to the lender and their appraisal to determine the actual value of the house. So if you're off, so you're telling me that if I say my house is worth half a million, I think it's worth about half a million dollars. And like, first of all, I'm not an appraiser. And then your appraiser comes out and says that it's worth $450,000. You're telling me that I just committed $50,000 worth a fraud? Yeah, that's crazy. It's crazy, that's insane. Like, I'm not an appraiser. Yeah. He has, he said Moralago was worth, the judge said, Mar-a-Lago was worth about $18 million. I will tell you this right now.

If Mar-a-Lago can be bought for $18 million, give me six hours, and I'll have you $18 million. I'll make two phone calls, and that $36 million, whatever. The next closest comp was a parcel, a fraction of the size, was one house was $121 million. So you have a judge in New York telling you what one of those valuable pieces of real estate in America was worth. So you had that. That was a civil fraud case because it wasn't criminal. It was the Latisha James, the Attorney General of New York State, ran on a platform saying she was going to get Trump. Yeah.

All right. So it was, they're all just trying to smear him. So you have that. Then you had the one case where he really, really was kind of out in the open was the Georgia case because Georgia's RICO statutes are so broad. But if you look at Fannie Willis, the judge, and her lover boyfriend, Nathan Wade, it's like Trump's the luckiest guy in the world because he has the dumbest enemies in the world. So then you go up and you have the, and then you also had the E. Jean Carroll lawsuit that sued him for rape and doesn't know what year it was or when it happened.

And he was not guilty of rape. The jury in New York City found him liable. That doesn't make sense. It doesn't make any sense, does it? So he, that was an $84 million judgment, and they said he slandered her because he was like, I didn't rate Percy's ugly. They're like, so they, 84 million dollars, that got, that's going to appeal. And then all of these things will be overthrown on appeal.

And then you have the business one that's 34 felonies, but they're not felonies. Those are, like, it's 34 entries into a ledger that he didn't make, his accountant did, that he put down his legal expense. or something like that. But the statute of limitations had expired. It was a misdemeanor at best. Then the legislature in New York made the law two years ago to extend the statute of limitations for 12 months so then they could sue him. And then the state senator that did that actually got sued for sexual harassment too, which is hilarious.

So that sentencing is July the 11th. And then you have the classified doc stuff, which is Judge Tonny. you chuck in, which is in D.C., and then you have the classified docs case down in Florida with Judge Eileen Cannon. And Judge Eileen Cannon, like, the thing that is beautiful about Donald Trump, and I hate it at the same time, is like, there's certain things I truly enjoy being blissfully ignorant about. I don't need to know, you know. But the amount of corruption that goes on within the DOJ and the FBI and those organizations,

like the current, this is one man's opinion, all right? And I personally think that the current administration, I don't think it was Joe Biden because I think that Joe Biden is a very, very old man. His mental faculties aren't there. The people surrounding him are, I think, the people in his administration are very, very driven to get Donald Trump because they're driven by hate. They weaponize the justice system, the Department of Justice. And I think it's like just in plain sight. They're not even trying to hide it anymore. So those, to answer your question, that long answer, all of those cases do nothing but help him.

The 34, the Alvin Bragg, DA civil suit, that was, I think Trump, when that guilty verdict, when the jury came back guilty, he raised $50 million in the next like 24 hours. He crashed his website a couple times. So here's what I think's going to happen. Trump's going to win the presidency quite easily, in my opinion. I think he's leading in most of the swing states. The House will expand its lead, its margin. Right now it has a two-seat margin. That should expand.

And then the true power for Republicans is getting control of the Senate, because the Senate is the one that confirms all of the president's appointees. And they also are the ones, the main thing that the Senate does in today's, the past couple election cycles is confirming judges. So, you know, people listening, like ask yourself, do you want liberal judges or do you want conservative judges? You know, I believe in the Constitution and how this country is amazing and affords us all these amazing opportunities, and that's because it's founded on, you know, conservative principles. The conservative judges are very, very important, in my opinion. And the president, if he has control of the Senate, he will appoint a bunch, hundreds of conservative judges. So I think Trump wins in a landslide.

I think the Republicans take control of the Senate by about two seats, maybe three, potentially up to like four or five. The swing states are Pennsylvania, Montana, and the Senate, the swing states, Pennsylvania, Montana, Ohio, Indiana, and Nevada, Arizona, Arizona, Nevada confused. do you think happens July 1st? No, you mean July 11th? Oh, is it 11th? I thought it was first, sorry. What about, what about things? Oh, no, July 1st is when Steve Bannon has to turn himself in to prison.

I don't know how in the hell he can defy a congressional subpoena and go to jail when there's people, like Merrick Garland defied a congressional subpoena and it's... Who? Merrick Garland's the head of Department of Justice. He's an attorney general. I'm saying Trump on the 11th. What do I think happens? Yeah.

what do I want to happen. Well, what do you think is going to happen? We'll do both. I'll go with what I want to happen first. Okay. I hope he throws him in jail. Oh, okay. Yeah.

I hope he throws him to be just mayhem. I don't care if it's a night. You throw him in jail. So the other thing about the one, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the judge is one, the judge, the judge is won Rashon. And his daughter is a political operative and raises tens of millions of dollars in the Democrat party. Yes. So it's like, dude, dude, how can you sit. sit on a bench when you're a father daughters have influence over their fathers i don't care how

old where you're from what political party there's something about the relationship of a daughter with her father how he's allowed to sit on that trial with his daughter openly and then also like raising money for shift and all these other people that are just openly anti-trump that to me is insane i hope for the sake this is and just for everyone listening this is not matthew's opinion this is my opinion. I'm just speaking so don't judge him on what I'm saying. It's fine. We've already lost the time. I want

I want to see for the for the sake of our country my opinion of what our country stands for I hope he throws him in jail just because what's going to happen if he goes in jail he wins in a landslide and it's not even close.

If he gives him house arrest then you have to look then you now you have it's election interference because the leading candidate for the president of the United States like you're putting him in jail preventing him from running an election

or you're putting him on house arrest I don't know what's going to happen people that are very, very powerful and knowledgeable of law and attorney generals and stuff that I interact with within this country like they said there's no telling what's going to happen on July 11th.

Now if I'm Trump I'm like I hope this guy throws me in jail Trump said he goes, I'll go to jailbill. I'll be the Nelson Mandela of my generation. It's like, dude, where'd you come up with that? But I think that it should be a clean sweep across all three. That's what I want to happen.

But who knows? I mean, the last election, everyone was like, oh, they cheated, they cheated, they cheated. And I don't necessarily know that, like with the ballot harvesting and the dropboxes, Is that not necessarily cheating, as I understand it? They just, they found some, they found a bunch of loopholes and really, really exploited them. Right. Now, I'm sure there was some monkey business going on, but like my thing is like, you show me a good loser, and I'll show you a loser. Right.

So you win or you lose. There's no asterisk. My dad used to say that. You show me somebody that doesn't mind losing. He said, I'll show you a loser. Yeah. So we lost the last election. I don't give a shit how we did it.

They beat us. And if they did it fair and square, great. If they beat us by cheating, they still beat us. So that doesn't matter to me. If they just, they won. And I want to win in the fall. So, right, real quick. I can talk about this for hours.

Colby doesn't know who Nelson Mandel is. Yes, I do. Yes, I do. Oh. I know, here, I tell you, I know he is, he was like a leader of some of the country and he was arrested. South Africa. That's about it. Yeah.

South Africa. Went to jail for like 20 years, right? Crazy thing. Came out was a leader. Yeah. It was people. He was a leader kind of when he went in. But that they, like, framed them or what, they threw him in for being, like, a

political. Just being on the other team. Yeah, just being, yeah. And they threw him, and he stayed there the whole time for like 20 years. I mean, he preached peace, you know, you know, I don't know him, but, you know, I know his whole story and everything, but. Hey, real quick, just wanted to let you guys know that we're looking for guests for the podcast. If you think you'd be a good guest, you know somebody, do me a favor. You can fill out the form. The link is in our description box, or you can just email me directly. Email is in the description box. So back to the video. What was your take on politics? I mean, I mean, I don't talk about them that much on the, on the podcast, because people get nuts. But, I mean, if you had to say, like, what are you?

Well, I mean, it would be, you know, maybe this is an issue. I don't think so. You're a well-off white guy. I mean, I'm, I'm extremely conservative, although I would like free health care. But, you know, Trump, like, you know, I think he's probably he's, I'm good. I'm okay with Trump being president. I think he's kind of a jackass But I don't have a problem with any of his policies

He's just not polished But I mean so I would I would if I could vote I'd vote Trump And I'm conservative Yeah But I don't hate I don't hate Anybody who doesn't think that way Yeah I don't like the extremes of other party

Yeah Extreme left to extreme right It's like I don't have time for either one of them Yeah I don't yeah You can think whatever you want to think I don't care The thing that's interesting So I went down at Moralago

Are we recording? Yeah we're recording Okay good That's fine So I was in Maralago Two or three weeks ago Okay And I wanted to see what Judge and Gore-on in New York said $18 million was worth.

Okay. Okay. So I got invited down there. And, like, I'm kind of one of those guys that likes to create the news. I don't necessarily want to be the news ever, you know? I don't want to be, I don't have main character syndrome at all. So I went down there with a buddy, and, like, we pulled up, and I was like, $18 million, give me 24 hours. And I'll have you a check if this is for sale for 18.

It's a massive estate. It's the bay on one side, the ocean on the other. It's remarkable. But what I learned about that was, and I am a Republican. That's, you know, I'm not ashamed of that. So Trump walks out, and he has notes. And he's like, oh, the hell with these notes. Fire them off, questions.

Let's hear them. Go ahead. Raise your hand. And so there's a crowd of, like, VIP crowd of like maybe 200 people. and just off the cuff, he literally sat there for an hour and a half answering questions. And it didn't matter what your question was.

He was going to answer it. Whether he knew it, whether he knew what he was talking about or not, he was going to answer it. And by watching that, I was like, he's an entertainer. So when you put him in front of a group of people, he just wants to make him laugh.

Right. Because that's like his crack is making people laugh. He's an entertainer. And it was interesting. So I was like, you know, But like you said, like I'm a huge fan of his policies, like some of his personal stuff. I could do without the antics and shenanigans. Yeah.

But, yeah, that's, that was an interesting experience. I was going to say, I was actually down there a couple months ago. I met with Sean Hannity. Okay. I do. I'm not supposed to say I'm a spokesperson. I'm a, whatever, I'm an expert for home title lock, which is a company that monitors home titles. You know, so that they protect you from people changing your home, doing what I did.

Right. Right. So, and I do infomercials for them, and I do different spots on, whatever, marketing spots, that sort of thing. You know, they'll have me, like, a Steve Bannon will interview me, you know, like once or twice, and I'll be on a show. And it's 10 minutes, you know. Yeah. And we do that remote. But Sean Hannity apparently is doing a lot of these spots, and he wanted to meet me.

So they had me go down there, and I met with him for an hour. It was across the street from Mara Lago. It was a restaurant, and there was a, there was a, in as soon as you walk in, it was some kind of, it definitely felt like a country club. I mean, it might have been Mara Lago. I think it, I thought it was, but I talked to somebody. Marlago was a club. I know, but I talked to somebody the other day, and they said, no, no, you were at the such and such across the street because as soon as you walk in, there's a golf, a golf country club. There's a golf store there.

They sell clubs, everything. And then you go up on the stairs and it's a steakhouse. and he knew, he named the steakhouse and everything, and he said, I forget what he said, but anyway, but it was, Mar-a-Logger was right across the street, I think. That's what I think it was. Is it a big parking lot? Yeah, yeah. We had passed that. Okay.

We had just passed that on the turn to left that. Anyway, we met with, so, anyway, I met with him for like an hour, and then I had dinner with his people. How'd that go? It was funny because Sean Hannity, what I thought he was like a stuffed shirt, right? I mean, he comes in in blue jeans, and, you know, I think he had like a collared shirt. He comes in. He's like, hey, what's, you know, he's laughing and joking and, you know, super personable in a way that doesn't come across on TV. Or on TV, he's very much like an anchor.

He's empty suit. Right. And but in person, he was like, hey, what's going on? And, you know, and I was like, that's not the person I thought at all. He's super personal, you know, in person. He's not a robot. Right, right. he's been doing it long enough where his his his uh his brand is so big he doesn't have to

he's made it you have to fake it anymore yeah i get which was super fascinating um yeah so it was like i said he was super nice and asked a bunch of questions and um it's funny uh steve bannon and i always joked about this i always thought this was hilarious i think colby's heard me say this you know when you go on his show you're in the you know the online studio so you're waiting but you can still they leave the show on but then when they cut to commercial he's still talking or they're taught they're like hey Steve we got such and such he's okay I want so and so on after such and such like can he ask him if he can wait and okay and then he at one time I guess he didn't hear me that it realized I was on because he doesn't really know that I'm there I guess and he goes okay

he said what we're doing the home title lock thing right he said home title lock uh you know whatever they call it and he's like yeah yeah he goes he's who am I talking to him I'm talking to the bad guy and he goes yeah see it's a bad guy it's Matt Cox he's okay cool and I thought I don't know my name. He's calling me the bad guy. And then I'm on two minutes and I'm still kind of like grinning about it. Like 30 seconds later he comes on. He's like, hey, we have. And he goes into the pitch. And the great thing about Steve Bannon is if it's a 10 minute, 10 minute interview or discussion, whatever, eight minutes is Steve Bannon. Yeah. Literally he goes on and he talks about he, he does the whole pitch. And then he says, how bad is this crime, Matt? And I go, well, you know, Steve. And then I tell him my little

thing. And then he jumps in there for another minute. And then I literally talk for a minute and a half at most and so it's like this is the easiest thing in the world to do it's not really an interview it's him he just runs with it yeah you know and he has all these stats and statistics and things that he says and I'm like I don't know this shit like what I don't even know what you're I don't even know what you're saying but you know but when he throws it back to me I know what what's appropriate for me to say and they never give me anything they never tell me what to say I was always an off-the-cuff interview because I just have to talk about what I already know.

Right. So, but he's, he's great to be interviewed by. They, um, it's, it's fascinating how that, come, you're in the media world now. You know, it's fascinating how that side of media works. Um, like, if you, like, take politics, for example, the way they run elections, and this is both sides of the fence. Like, they spend hundreds, billions of dollars on, like, TV ads and whatnot for a three to five minute section tops.

And it's, it's, that, what I don't understand is like, like, why they're not doing more long-form content like we're doing right now. So if you look at, so I was in Missouri, flew out this morning, met with their Attorney General yesterday, and he was on Fox right before we met, three minutes tops. Okay. And that section will probably go to like 100,000 households. So you have 300,000 minutes versus a podcast that does an hour, and you get to actually know someone and you learn about them, you find common ground.

Even if it only gets 25. thousand views you still beat the crap out of beat the breaks off of them you know what i think is interesting is what i agree with that is that you know they do these interviews with something like let's say trump um and they interview him and you know he they it's all about just the politics and points and this and that it's all that but to me if you did a more impersonal interview and just talked about like he and his wife or he and his kids or any told stories like to me some of my funniest the funniest things and most endearing um you know aspects of me and my life now is joking around about my wife and I's

interactions right or you know my interaction with Colby I'm always I'm joking with Colby or like you don't always see that with him or or most of these politicians if you did if and you would people would I think they'd be like it'd make them so much more relatable and personable if you could joke around about you and your fight, you and your wife getting into an argument or and laugh about how this happened and it was funny or me and my buddies were doing this or even your camp story. Yeah. So I've, I came across you on the Lex Freedman podcast.

Okay. And. I'm sorry about that. No, it was amazing. Six and a half hours. These guys, like, I just want six and a half hours. I'm like, oh my God. I've met you now.

I've been in your presence for probably 20 minutes total. Okay. Right. And from that podcast, I know more about you. you than people that sign paychecks to me. And so that's the beauty of podcast. It takes basically seven to 31 points of contact with a person before you can extract money out of their wallet.

You can get a transaction going in the marketing world. With them knowing about it. What's that? With them knowing about it. Exactly. Exactly. But if you, so it's repetitive. And so everyone's looking for some type of common ground.

Like if you look at Black Rifle, for example, the reason that Black Rifle, the reason that rifle went from $0 to $1.5 billion company, as fast as it did was because every single person felt that they knew Evan Hafer, the founder, Matt Best, the co-founder, Jared Taylor, the co-founder, and Richard Ryan, the co-founder. There was common ground, and they shared their personal stories, and everyone knew everything there was to know about those guys. And that's the beauty of, like, long-form content podcast and actually putting really good information out They're like, I don't have any idea how Donald Trump and his wife interact with each other. I've never heard a story about the two of them because that's not what they talk about.

You know, it's interesting. Podcast, I think, is the way to go in the marketing world. I don't think there's anything. I think it's the most valuable, I think it's the most valuable marketing tool known to man because there's no other platform out there where you can capture an hour or more of a person's attention. Right. And think about everything you download when you listen to a one hour. podcast. You learn all kinds of stuff about people. It's fascinating. Yeah. I was going to say

Colby and I have talked about this many, many times is like there's a ton of people that will watch my podcast. And then the comments they leave like 95% of the time we were talking about the guy was interviewing. And the comments are about, bro, you're doing great. Man, that was a good interview. Man, Matt. I'm so excited. You've got over 300,000 subs. Matt. And it's like, it's, you know, like, hey, that was so funny when you said, it's like, they're watching me. I talked for five minutes out of a two-hour podcast. Maybe it was 15 at the most. And it was like, but that's because these are people who have watched me so many times.

They've heard me tell stories and joke around. They become invested in you. And then they just like you. They want you to succeed. And they support you. So sometimes I feel like they're watching this interview with this other guy, not because they're necessarily even interested so much in his story. and I like to think they are, but in a good portion of it, they're giving him a chance

because they've signed, they've subscribed to the channel or they like me and they want to see me interact with somebody, even if so for 15 minutes. Well, they want you to win. They're on your team. Yeah, and I got a ton of people. You're pushing a boulder up a hill, and they got their shoulder and it pushed it up. You're their guy. Nice.

So when they talk about podcasts, they're like, oh, dude, Matthew B. Cox, his podcast, it's the shit. Yeah, it's, that's how it works. It's, it's, and I mean, I, at first, I didn't, I don't, I don't, I think, I really understood that and anything. But now that it's like every time I leave now, I get recognized by somebody. We go to Walmart, I get recognized. We go to Target.

Somebody recognized me. We go to, I go to have, you know, I go to have lunch with my sister on Monday. Somebody recognized me. I get, you know, every time I go out with my wife now, we've been out like the last three or four times we've gone out every single time somebody's recognized me. And of course, she, you know, I'm like, he's the other guys, you know, bro, man, me, I love yourself, you're amazing. I'm like, amazing.

Did you hear this guy? Amazing. Be more like him. Yeah. And that's the thing. I get the same thing. And Melissa's always like, yeah, he's not that great. Like you guys.

You don't know him. Yeah, you don't know. Yeah, you don't know. You don't know. You don't know him. So, can we jump back and kind of start like at the beginning, like where you were born, where you were. Yeah. So I was born and raised in Savannah, Georgia.

Nice. I like that. Single mom, school teacher, one younger brother, Mitchell. Father, dad of a heart attack. back in 1981. I was five. Mitchell was eight weeks old. How old you now? Forty-nine. A long time ago. And my mom was in grad school at the time. And I was at my parents' anniversary party. And he was talking to my uncle and had a massive heart attack. How old was he? Forty-four. 44? Okay. But a lot of that, my dad spent a lot of time in Vietnam, like a tremendous

years, five years, five different tours. And just the wear and tear on his body and all that stuff is what led to it. And so grew up with a single mom, playing sports, you know, my brother and I both played three sports a year growing up all the way through high school. I always wanted to raise myself, and she said she didn't have the strength to fight me, so she just kind of let me do what I wanted to do. I went to boarding school. I was a hyper kid.

I hated school. Like I couldn't stand that. I graduated second from the bottom of my class, and my brother graduated last in his school. class. He's a doctor now, Stanford Fellow. So that just goes to show you that school's not everything. But both very successful, but a hated school. Just couldn't stand sitting still in the classroom.

Have absolutely no recollection of ever doing homework one time. We're studying for a test. I don't, just none of that stuff. Always sports, kept me busy. And a very, very good high school football player and

very good track athlete ran the hurdles. Was good enough to get on a college football team. Wasn't good enough to play on the team. My best years were, you know, in high school. And I remember on the third day of summer camp, I was like, man, I am wasting my time and everyone else is because I am not good enough for this. So I ended up playing football for two years and then played on the UGA men's

club soccer team for a couple years, ended up graduating and moved to Key West for about six months. Well, between my fourth year and graduating, I spent a year in San Francisco working for an investment bank, and then went back, graduated, and moved to Key West. I was down there for about six months. And I remember Key West is the furthest place in the continental United States you can go without leaving the country. Right. And so here I am this, you know, kid that that grew up in private school his whole life and, you know, all that didn't have any student debt or anything, you know, lucky childhood. And I remember sitting there one night and I was like, every person that lives here

is either running from child support, taxes, alimony, the law. Right. And I was like, this is time to go. I called my mom. It was like 10 o'clock. And so I took the comforter off my bed, laid it out, put all my stuff in it, shoved it in the back of my car, and drove to Savannah, Georgia, where I'm from. And I was like, well, man, what am I going to do? You know, I got to get a job. I don't know what to do. And my family owns a company called Black Investment. So we have some shopping centers and a bunch of rental property and stuff. And my uncle, Jerry, is a real estate attorney. And so I was like, well, I was just, you know, getting to real estate. So

started studying from my real estate license, passed it, and then got into real estate. And that was 2000 and be a salesperson yeah yeah just an agent okay I was gonna say because you know to get into real estate you don't need a license but yeah yeah to be like a licensed realtor broker um so got into real estate February of 2002 and just that was right when the golden years of real estate were cracking off you know in the early 2000s and just went from zero to 60 like my first year it wasn't even a four year I finished second the company in listings um because like I would literally just drive around the outskirts of downtown Savannah and write letters to own, I'd put the assessor's records, find out who own the property, and just write them a letter and say, hey, I have a client

that might be interested in your house, you know, can you give me a call? Is that true? Absolutely not. Okay. But dude, I got a zillion listings. Right. And so I worked for a company called Corbett Thomas Realty, which was like the nicest, highest in real estate firm in Savannah, Georgia. And they're like, what are you doing listing all these like dilapidated like boarded up crack houses and I was like I don't know I mean I have 56 listings right now and they're selling they're like no that it's great but like you don't want to focus on like other stuff I was like I'll get there so what I learned from that was like I learned the downtown historic real estate market from the outside end and what I learned was like I started picking up on like how undervalued some stuff was and

whatnot and I remember buying my first rental property for $18,000. section eight house and i was like man i'm going to be the real estate king and then a few months later i bought a duplex and a fourplex um and then just started because i would see great deals and so i just started buying stuff up and this was the days of like no dock loans yeah yeah you know um and uh i just everything took off and then in like in 2005 um i ended up buying three buildings on broughton street for three and a half a million dollars which were Did you have $3.5 million? So you just got a loan.

No. So what I did was I found two people, Reed Brennan and Nick Applegate, who knew construction and development and stuff. And I was like, well, so now I have two partners. We started a company called ABL Lofts, Applegate, Brennan, and Levitt. Put a lot of thought into that. It was pretty simple, pretty easy. Put more thought into the design of the logo and our business cards

than we actually did the name of the company. So we bought 310, 322 West Broughton Street. those three million bucks, and they were condo conversions. And I went and raised a bunch of money from investors, which most of them were neurosurgeons. And I will never, as long as I live, do business with a neurosurgeon again, as long as I live. And we'll get to that, but like never, ever again. They have a God complex, the likes of nothing you've ever seen. And so started just, like we had 52 units above the commercial stuff,

and we had like Mark Jacobs as an anchor tenant and like it was awesome. It was like the early days of the revitalization of Broughton Street of Savannah. And so we raised money and we're just unloading units as fast as we could get them up and get them white boxed and stuff and let the, you know, then we'd have finishing packages

and whatnot. And then, you know, still a full-time agent. And then we, Robbie Callan, who's family owned like a bunch of hotels and just a bunch of buildings on River Street and all that stuff. and Robbie was like, hey, we're going to buy 5 and 15 West Broughton Street.

Do you guys want to take the residential and we'll take the commercial? And we're like, yeah, sure, man. So we raised another 600,000, which was basically all we needed for the down payment. So that was $6.5 million. And we closed that on a Tuesday. and no dock loan. And then on Thursday, I bought 222 West 39th Street for $5,500, boarded-up crack house. And I ended up selling 229 West 39th Street for like $32,000.

So I actually made money on that house. And then 5 and 15 West Broughton Street was the domino that took down my entire real estate empire at the time, which was about $15 million. dollars. Like, we walked into the 310 to 322 West Brons, we walked into Darby Bank. I was, Reed was 28, I was third, no, I was 28, Reed was 26, and Nick was 32. And they literally gave us a loan for $3 million. No questions. Like, that was back in the day, if you could do this, if you could fog a lens of a pair of glasses, you could get a loan.

Right. So instead of them having to provide, like, their W-2s pay stubs, or, two years worth of taxes to prove that they can make the payments that you walk in and you say they pull your credit if you got over a certain score and you can prove your residency like hey I've been paying my I've been renting for the past two years I have my credit score is over this over whatever my credit score is over 650 and I've I've been paying my bills for the last two years or my rent for the past two years they don't require you to show that you can you can actually make the payments. So as a result, you walk in and sometimes they just leave it blank or the loan

officer would say, well, let me see, let me do the calculation. Okay, here's the new payment. Here's your current payments. Here's this. Here's that. And they go, you need to make $45,000 a month to make this payment. So I'm going to put down you make $52,000 a month. You're good. Well, the problem is, is that's the way the lenders set it up. And the lenders make their own rules. They're allowed to do that. The problem is when these loans, when these guys can't make the payments, something goes bad and they can't make the payments and then they go under, the lenders turn around and the government turns around and say, you lied on the application. What the fuck did I lie in the application? Most of the time, the guy taking the application filled it out. I just signed it.

He's a professional. I don't know what goes there. He's the one who said that you need to make over $50,000. It's a no-doc loan. It's perfectly fine. I don't know. Yeah. He said it.

He wrote it down. He said, here, sign here, sign here. So what happens is, I know guys that went to prison because they got, they had 12 no-doc loans, loans they couldn't afford to pay. And when they went under, the FBI came and indicted them. And then they, I know a guy that went to trial. He got like over 25 years because he went to trial because he said, I never once lied about anything. Right.

But when the loan officers got on the stand, they said, yeah, the guy said he made $45,000 a year or $45,000 a month. What am I supposed to do? That's what he said. Well, like, the law officer is not going to get on and say, I wrote that number down. I asked him, that's what he told me. I typed it in the computer. He signed it. What did I do?

I didn't do nothing. And so this guy goes to trial. And, of course, they're also telling him the jury, by the way, he's got $8 million worth of real estate that went under. And they lost money. And one of the banks went under. So now you've got a bank that went under, sophisticate. You've got all these enhancements. Next thing you know, you've never been in trouble in your life.

You've got a 25-year sentence. Yeah, so we, the 310 to 322 West Broughton Street. So we put, that was three million, we put 500,000 down, and we had like another million dollars in the bank for renovations rehab and all that stuff. And then the 5 and 15 West Broughton Street project, we just had like 600 grand for the down payment. And then they were like, as we sold units, they would release construction funds to us, which was just a horrible, horrible way to go about doing it. And so fast forward, we'd sold, no, no, six or seven units out of that project. and then fast forward to like 2007, like projects were running out of money. The economies, the writing's on the wall for the economy, you know.

And so all those units were over a half a million dollars, and they were white box. They weren't finished. So we couldn't get FHA certification on the units. And the only person that could buy those units was if you came and had cash. Yeah. And no one's going to buy a $500,000 raw unit that doesn't have elevators and stuff in it yet. Um, it was awful. Um, so all of our investors decided they weren't going to put any more money in the project. They were going to let it sink. Um, and they, it's funny, they, you, you mentioned

banks going under. So the 310 to 322 West Broughton Street project was financed by Darby Bank. It was a hundred year old bank that did not make it through the real estate crash. Um, the five and 15 was by through bank south, which is another one that didn't make it through. Um, and so, commercial paper which is something else you can tell educate everyone these rules is all commercial paper

it wasn't like personally endorsed and so every 12 months you have to go in and get your loan renewed so for us we couldn't sell anything didn't have any money

to finish the units you can't do the renewal sunk sunk like there's no way out of this there's no way out of this and so the bank was like we're not going to renew it and then the interest rates

were shooting up The Fed was raising rates a half a point a point each time they met. And then everything just started to crash in 2008. So we had one investor who, I'm not going to name his name, but just a weasel, is a neurosurgeon. And he thought that if he got with all the, because a lot of the investors wanted to bail out the projects, the projects didn't need an insane amount of them. They needed a few hundred thousand dollars each to carry them 12 months until the economy

hopefully started to turn around. which I think I did it basically they would have to forfeit there's like seven or eight neurosurgery they'd need to forfeit like a week a week's worth of pay and combine it and it would have salvaged the two projects but this one one of our investors got with everyone and kind of like scuttled the whole plan to bail everything out it's like you know these will get foreclosed and then we can go to the courthouse and buy these on the courthouse steps for pennies on the dollar because he didn't know that like the bank would when when the project

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banking products. Yep, that's $2,700 to turn up your business. Visit td.com slash small business match to learn more. Conditions apply. Got foreclosed on. The banks would basically go and buy them on the courthouse steps for what the debt was. They weren't taking a loss. Yeah. And then the lawsuit started. They sued everybody. They sued. They They sued the title company. They sued the closing attorney. They sued. This is the neurosurgeons?

The investors. Yeah, our investors. They sued literally everyone. I mean, every single person involved in the project got sued, except for the guy who was actually signing the checks for the construction stuff. Because they got him, they met with him, and they were like, yeah, he's going to tell us all. Because they couldn't accept the fact that it was the economy crashing. We had not done anything wrong.

Right. We didn't embezzle money. I mean, the construction guys co-mingled funds between the two projects. And not to be malicious or criminal, they did it because they were trying to keep balls up in the air. Right. And so every single person got sued. I was 32 at the time and recently married, been married about a year. That didn't work out.

But, yeah, I ended up losing everything, 125 total units, about $15 million dollars per year. real estate. And it was awful. I remember going into a deposition. My uncle called. He's like, yeah, Ross, Mr. Ross wants to talk to you. And I was like, well, what do I say to this guy? And he goes, there's no story. It's the greatest, one of the greatest pieces of advice I've ever received. He goes, there's no story in the world that you can invent that's better than the truth. Right. And I thought, game on. And so I went in and met with him, told him everything. and then I remember getting deposed and that whole thing was just

it was arguably at the time you know the worst thing that's ever happened to you in life is the worst thing that's ever happened to you you know like you have a kid in middle school goes through a breakup and they're devastated right but we've all had a dozen failed relationships so it's no big deal to us

but at the time that's the worst thing that's ever happened to them right so yeah that was a super gnarly tough time so everything started going under banks freezing accounts and everything and like and I felt sorry for myself for about 48 hours and going back to my father passing away you know you know back in the 80s there was still a lot of like father son type

events you would bring your father to school stuff I didn't I never had a father and the last thing in the world I would ever want someone to do is feel sorry for me like that's grounds for like physical altercation the way that I process things like you're someone feeling sorry for me like I will lose my mind. And me feeling sorry for myself is like a whole different level of, like, you know, cataclysm for me. Like, I'll go crazy because I don't, I don't, it doesn't accomplish anything. Yeah, yeah, you're just not a victim.

You don't have the victim. No, absolutely not. And so my brother, Mitchell, had just gotten out of the military. He came back from, his last deployment was North and Iraq, no, I'm sorry, North Africa. And he had finished school and he was starting medical school. And this, mind you, was the kid that graduated last in his class. in high school. And I was like, I don't know what to do. Like, I mean, I was at the top of the mountain. And like we were talking about earlier, like, you know, everyone was supporting me on the

way to the top. Like, oh, dude, Baker's the man. Baker's the man. As it pertains to real estate and what we were doing in Savannah. And, and then when I started rolling down the hill, they were all like, yeah, get him. He's, you know, like, these people, they said the worst things about me. Like, I was the fall guy. I got painted with a horrible brush. Like, I was the one that did everything wrong when in fact I did nothing wrong I was going I was the last year of those two projects I was carrying my ass down to the bank with a check for the interest payments every single month solo the about $13,000 a month and trying to keep everything afloat anyway so felt sorry for myself for about 48 hours I was like that is absurd this is not going to accomplish

anything I went to talk to my brother I was like dude don't know what to do he's like you need to join the military and I was like escape. I was like, that's not that idea. He's like, yeah, so there's a program called Rep. 63. And Rep. 63 is you go into the National Guard, you go directly into Special Forces Selection. All right. And I was like, I got a college degree. I'm super fit. You know, it's from the National Guard? Yeah, so that's the program. So Rep. 63, you join the National Guard, and you can go directly into Special Forces and Selection. So is it National Guard like full time? No. No. Oh, no. I'm thinking the Reservoir.

I'm sorry. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay, no matter. So, yeah, there's two SF units. There's the 19th and the 20th group, and those are comprised of guys in the guard. Now, there's full-time guard guys. Yeah. But it allows you to, you know, go about your life, but still try to work your way through that pipeline.

So I was 50 miles away from Camp Blanding, and the guy was like, hey, dude, like, you have an inguinal hernia and your left shoulder shot. You're not going to make it through maps. And I was like, well, that's a bummer. And so I was like, man, I got to do something. Because I had committed to that. I was like, this is what I'm going to do. Because my dad was a green beret for 24 years. You should get surgery on the hernia and hope the shoulder.

Not at 32. Okay. So, and my dad was a green beret for 24 years. My brother was a force recone Marine for six years. My mom was in the military. And so. What about Coast Guard? Huh?

What about Coast Guard? It's got to be a lower standard, right? Yeah, it's different. Okay, sorry. So I decided I was like, I'm going to go through the defense foreign service agent program through the Department of State. And so I started going through that process. I was like, well, if I have language and medical, I'm shoo in like I can do what I want.

So about eight weeks later, I'm in New York City, going to NYU for graduate school for Arabic. And I was doing emergency medicine at Columbia at night. And I remember my first night in New York City, my car got towed because I illegally parked it. And as punishment, I was like, I'm going to walk to the impound lot, which was 80 blocks all the way up upper east side, upper west side, one of the peers. So I started walking and I got about two blocks into this walk and I was like, if my privates were hanging out of my pants right now, no one would care. And I just remember looking up at those buildings and I thought everyone here has their own problems. And I guarantee you if we were to all lay our problems out

in a circle, I would grab my problems back first because I thought like my life was over. I was Like, I'm never going to be able to do anything. It's all over. At what? 28, 29. You're now 32. This is 2002. Oh, yeah.

It's too late to bounce back at 32. Yeah. That's what I thought. I was like, what am I going to do? So, no, 2010, I was born in 75. That puts me at 35. Oh, yeah. It's way too bad.

Yeah. No, it's 34 at the time. And I was like, man, like, what's going to become of me? So I went 110 miles an hour into my coursework. And it's the hardest thing I've ever attempted to do. And then in December of, so I end up in New York City summer 2010. And then that December, we ended up, started a, I was heavy into CrossFit, started a CrossFit apparel company. And that took off.

What about the Arabic then? Did you, no. Does it work out? Okay. No. This seemed like an extreme choice. It was. It was. I mean, I thought my life was over.

I was like, I'm going to do the opposite of what I've always done, which is, I don't care about money. I'm going to, you know, life of service, you know. And so that was in December. And then in January, started a drink company called Kilcliffe. And I was like, I'm an entrepreneur. Like, this is the greatest thing that's ever happened to me. It was losing everything because otherwise I would have spent my life in Savannah, Georgia. So I start this CrossFit Apparel company.

called two-pood in December of 2010, and then we started a drink company called Kilcliffe. Where are you getting these names? I did not come up with one of those names. These don't seem like none of this sounds like that doesn't sound like. They're the dumbest names in the history of the world. No one consulted me. So Two-Pood is a Russian form of weight. It's actually a two-pood kettle bell.

It's the 72-pounder. Okay. All right. It ended up actually selling that company six years ago. I made some money off of it. And then Kilcliffe, what I learned with Tupooed, the CrossFit Company, I learned about mobile customer bases. Okay. So I have a company that has been embraced by the CrossFit community.

And then we started a drink company that's a sports performance beverage. And I was like, well, I can introduce these Crossfitters to this drink. And let's see what happens. And so they embraced that as well. And so Kilcliffe took off and went from zero to about 16 million in three years, all organic direct-to-consumer. We didn't have any retail, very little retail. We ended up, I met... What is the drink?

What is it? It's a recovery drink, low caffeine, no sugar. Okay. So healthy alternative to soft drinks and... No, it tastes delicious. Okay. It's fascinating. I'm going to send you some.

Okay. I should have said it before. If I hadn't... We could be drinking it right now. We could. You're a marketing guy. I'm getting old and slipping, man. So we were the first RTD, so a canned beverage in the drink world is known as an RTD, ready to drink.

And you don't have to mix it or anything. So we were the first RTD to get chain-wide authorization in GNC. And then I was at my mother's house on a Saturday. I got a call from a guy that was a crossfitter and bought Kilcliffe regularly from us. And he's like, hey, man, I want to talk to you about Kilcliffe. And I was like, yeah, like, what's up? He's like, yeah, we're interested. I was like, who is we?

He goes, Tyson Foods. And I went, I'm listening. Tyson, like, Tyson, Tyson Foods are like, like, what are you talking about? He's like, yeah, I'm a VP at Tyson Foods. And so Tyson's company, they did, that year they did 36 billion in sales. Tyson Foods did. Those big huge juggernauts, like Smithfield, Tyson Foods, things like that, they can only grow their companies by a fraction of a percent. a fraction of a fraction of a percent every year.

And so what they do... Why is that? Because they're just so massive. They've maxed out the protein sector. They can't sell any more chicken. They can't sell any more beef. They can't sell any more pork. Tyson Foods that year, they slaughter...

This is 2014. 2013, 2014. They slaughter 1.4 million chickens a week. I'm going to round up. It's like 300 and... basically 400,000 hogs a week, and then 200,000 head of cattle a week. So these big, huge, like, juggernaut companies, what they do is they start buying other companies that my saying is exist on the same aisle of the grocery store.

Okay? So if it's a product that can be sold in a grocery store and it's a startup company, Tyson Foods, these big other companies, they come in and buy them. especially if it's a direct-to-consumer company where the majority of the business is online because they send an email out to their distribution centers and now this little $5 million a year company has distribution in every grocery store that Tyson Foods is in.

So they can do something massive to the company that you could... Overnight. Never hope to accomplish without them. Five emails game on. And so... So what a great way to blow up their investment, right? Yeah. To really expand it.

They flew us out there to Northwest Arkansas. and it was a really, really a cool trip. You know, here I am. I thought everything was over. Now I'm meeting with, you know, some of the board members of Tyson Foods. And they wanted to buy 30% of Kilcliffe. And at the same time, we had a group out of Boston called Sherbrook investors

that wanted to invest as well. And we ended up going with Sherbrook because Tyson Foods, their due diligence. to buy our company, would have basically shut our company down for 90 days. I mean, just think of the number of attorneys in the accounting, the questions those guys are going to ask. So we ended up going with this company called Sherbrook. Is this like a, this is just a private company? This isn't a publicly, uh, yeah, traded company. Yeah, so we were actually, yes, it was a privately owned company.

Um, and we were, we were ranked in the Inc 500, Inc 5,000. We were the number one privately held beverage company. in the country that year, which is just super, at the time, you're like, oh, my God, this is awesome. So we ended up going with Sherbrook Capital. They put a bunch of money in, and then ultimately, you know, you hear stories, horror stories about VC firms. You know, they invest money and they're like, oh, we want you to be so successful.

And like, you guys are, you know, captains of the ship. Right. And then they come in, they have all these requirements. And they, there's a huge bureaucracy. They create a huge bureaucracy. Ultimately, their goal is to get control because they're so much smarter than you and I and we don't know shit and those guys know everything so they actually ended up in wrestling control away from from Todd that was the last person to leave um and that was my identity

I was Baker from Kilcliffe for from 2010 to 2018 2017 and um I was the last person of the founders group to leave and I did I stayed there about two years too long I should have left I should have seen the writing on the wall I should have left but I stuck it around and um It was about the time I met Evan Hafer, who's the chairman of the board and founder of Black Rifle Coffee, and hit it off. I thought it was just this awesome, really entertaining dudes. Greenberry worked for the CIA, just funny, funny shit. And I remember when we, the reason that, one of the reasons, I don't, I don't take credit for anything. Like, I'm a team player.

I'm a spoke in a wheel that can handle the worker like four spokes. And the only thing that I do take credit for is the success of, Kilcliff the drink company. Like, you can, I like to analyze companies and imagine if you removed certain people, like Apple. If, if Steve Jobs had never been there, you still have Wozniak, but it wouldn't, it's not. Yeah, there's no, there's no, there's no Apple, it's all over. Bill Gates, who I'm not a fan of, you pull him out of Microsoft, what do you have?

Nothing. And that's the same with, if you'd removed me from Kilcliffe, it never would have accomplished anything. So it's funny, two complete bastards, right? You know, like, I mean, did amazing things, but just vicious, this. far as, like, treating people and, and the underhanded tricks and yet massively successful. Yeah, but yes, that's actually, I'm glad you brought that up because there's a ruthlessness in business. And I'll get to some of that stuff, but like, I got a taste of the ruthlessness

working with my first VC firm with Kilcliffe. And VC firms, they care about one thing, money. They don't give a shit about the company. They don't care about the brand. They don't care about you or other. They're like politicians. They don't care about anything but themselves. And where was that? What was that all about? Taking credit. You were one of the spokes. Yeah. So I met Evan Hafer, who's the chairman of the board now and a founder of Black Rifle and we always hit it off. But like one of the things about Kilcliffe, the reason it was so successful was when I graduated high school in 94 and this is pre-internet. And I was my college. experience was pre-internet.

And every Saturday morning in the fall would wake up and run down to the end of the driveway and get the newspaper. And I wanted to see if my name was in the paper, did I make the front page for scoring a touchdown? Was my name written in the write-up? Like, run a punt back, intercept a ball, whatever. And I always call that, you know, Coach Carter would say, man, get your name in the paper this week.

That's a goal. Get your name in the paper. And so with Kilcliffe, the way we ran our association. media in the early days was if someone interacted with us, we would follow them. Well, they would comment or post a picture of it. We would engage. Then we'd come back six hours later. We'd follow them.

And then 24 hours later, we would come back and like their post. So they got three points of contact from us in 24 hours. And that's how you created brand advocates. And I got called non-stop. Like, hey, man, like, can you help us out with social media? How you're doing it at Kilcliffe? And I was like, ah, you know, I'm like, this is all I'm doing. I'm not doing anything else, you know.

But I'd talk to people and tell them kind of my strategy. But I had companies reaching out constantly like, hey, man, can you help us? Can you kind of, you know, show us the ropes and whatnot? And like, towards the end of my time at Kilcliffe, because we brought in this new CEO who was just a total beta male. Just a total pansy dude. Like, no leadership skills. He was woke before woke was a thing, which I don't do well with that. You know, that's, I can't handle that.

And so I started kind of doing a little social media consulting on the side. And then when it was, I remember when he and I got into it for the final time when I was like, I'm out of here. I quit. I made a post on Kilcliffe social media. And we sponsored a ton of CrossFit athletes. We were sponsored for the CrossFit games. And I took a picture of all of our females' butts in CrossFit game shorts, not thongs, not bikini bottoms, but like Lulu Lemon shorts. Right.

And it was, can you name the athlete? And I told them all I was doing this. They're like, oh, my God, this is awesome. This is Great Baker. It was tastefully done, but it's like, you know, my wife owns a CrossFit gym. Like, women that do CrossFit have nice butts. And I'm unapologetic about that. it was a 20-year-old

gal from UT Chattanooga emailed Kilcliffe and was like, I will never buy your product again. This is sexist and ages, abelism, and all these weird terms. This is before, like, the whole woke scene hit. Like, they were using all those weird terms. For every one of them, there was 15 that went the other way.

So, who cares? There was, like, 1800 comments. Like, people guessing who it was. and, like, the athletes in the photos were engaging. Like, no, that's not me. How dare you say that? My butt's way better than hers. So he was like, you've got to take that post.

And I was like, I'm not taking shit down, dude. What are you talking about, man? He's like, we got a bunch of complaints in the PR firm is calling us. And I was like, it sounds like you got a complaint. Do you know where you work? Like, we've always been this like in crazy irreverent, funny, cut up active fool type company that was our brand. So I was like, I'm out of here.

You can go to hell. And so that was in December. I was like December 18th. My last day was December 31st. And on January the 3rd, I called Evan. I was like, hey, dude, I just left Kilcliffe. I'm starting a consulting company. What's the one piece of advice you give me?

He goes, you got to be more diplomatic with how you deal with people. And I was like, fuck you. 10.03 a.m. standing out in front of my house. I lived in Washington State at the time. So started a consulting company and then started doing work with Black Rifle and stuff. And then, so fast forward, big consulting company, social digital, you know, 30 different companies in the hunting and outdoor two-way space, director of strategic relations at Black Rifle Coffee, invest in a bunch of companies. And then, funny enough, we sold Kilcliffe a second time to a VC firm in 2018.

And all the years I'm quoting are give me plus or minus two on those, so I'm not 100% accurate on them. but um they ran it into the ground worse than the first guys did and um just sucked all the life out of the brand and um Todd the founder Todd was a former seal of Kilcliffe he's like hey dude uh I think we got a chance to buy Kilcliff back so we ended up buying killcliff back from the VC firm about a year and a half ago um for pennies on the dollar pennies on the dollar um so you know It's been an awesome experience and then sort of doing some political consulting, which is actually the most fun I've had in probably a decade. It's wild. Right.

Because those are the dumbest bastards in the world. The black rifle coffee, like what is like, I don't know that I've, you know, seen it. Of course, I don't want to like grocery shops. I mean, you know, we buy the, what do you call the little K-cups? K-cups. We buy those. We buy the cheapest ones. You can't like the... We do K-cups.

Do you? Yeah, so Evan... Maybe I have seen them. Yeah, so Black Rifle. Evan started Black Rifle. Came up with a concept on a deployment. He was always a big coffee-oficionado. Big coffee drinker.

Nerds out on it. You know, thinks that everyone cares about all the little intricacies that he knows about. It's like, oh, yeah, it's got caffeine in it. Pass it. That's right. I'm good. That's all I need. But we, so Black Rifle started.

2014 and like Evan has this super magic power of kind of like picking the best team at dodgeball as the way I like to describe how Black Rifle got started he got Jared Taylor who was attack P in the Air Force JT's a co-founder Matt Best who was Army Ranger and also worked for the CIA Matt 6-2-220 dudes want to be him girls want to be with him both very very very talented when it comes to multimedia and stuff like that, singing, uh, both amazing musicians. Um, and just kind of caught lightning in a bottle. Um, timing was social media with the conservative movement kicking off. Um, and he was at the range one day. He was like, I'm going to start a coffee company. And like one of his like team sergeants was like, what are you going to name

it? And he looked down and he was like, black rifle coffee. And that's where the name came from. And so what did he look down at? His, his AR, his M4, M4. So his black, his black, he's, he's, he's his gun at the range. And, like, that's just a byproduct of hard work. Definitely not the smartest people in the room, you know, however, adapt really quick, really, really quickly to things, intuitive and pick up on stuff really quickly, and know how to spot trends. And we went public two and a half years ago.

Black Rifle today is, I think, $1.4, $1.5 billion company. and it's just a byproduct to hard work. Like, no, like, advanced degrees, just like... Just nothing overly different or special about it other than the fact that these guys are just busting their ass to make it. And people identified with them. Everyone felt they knew Matt personally,

and they knew Evidence, they knew JT personally. That's every week. Black Rifle, we created culture and community. And if you have culture and community, you can accomplish anything. anything. Right. So we played in a couple different communities, the two-way space, the veteran space,

the conservative space. And then we created our own culture. And it went from nothing to, I think we're going to make it. I think we're going to have a business here to like, holy shit. Oh, my God. This is blowing up. And like I think last year we did 414 million in sales. you know and one of the things like the most brilliant things i've ever seen in business and i've

been doing this stuff for 20 years now 22 um we Evan started uh he had this idea of like this subscription service for coffee and i was like what a stupid idea but i was like yeah man that's a great idea and we had like 50 subscribers right and then we had 500 subscribers and then it crossed 10 thousand. And the peak of the pandemic, it was sitting at 385,000 monthly subscribers. Okay. Which is do the... Book club on Monday. Gym on Tuesday.

Date night on Wednesday. Out on the town on Thursday. Quiet night in on Friday. It's good to have a routine. And it's good for your eyes too. Because with regular comprehensive. of eye exams at Specsavers, you'll know just how healthy they are. Visit Spexavers.cavers.cai to book your next eye exam.

Eye exams provided by independent optometrists. Math on that. Yeah, it's a lot. 30 average order sizes is like two bags of coffee. It's a ton. We went public, which was a wild experience, standing on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange and watching a company that you help grow, go public, you know, the whole thing has just been kind of a wild ride.

But that's just a byproduct of hard work. And I guess, like, kind of my stick is like, nothing's ever really as bad as you think it is, you know? Like, look what you went through and you came out the other side of it, you know, with stuff I went through losing everything. Like, I look back on that. I'm like, man, that's the best thing that's ever happened to me. I did have a flashback to just, so in 2015, I was living in Washington State. And I got a letter from the IRS. And they said I owed them $668,000.

It's a bad day. I thought were they returning some money? Well, so we over, we can't believe this. This never happens, but we owe you. I know, never once. And they said I made $1,012,000 in 2006 or 2008. And I was like, because I remember the agent called me on my phone because I just ignored it. I stuck my head in the sand.

And that's one of the things like When I lost everything in real estate I literally stuck my head in the sand I didn't care I didn't I mean dude My apartment in New York My condo dude I had legal letters 10 feet tall

I just ignored everything I didn't care I didn't have any money I had nothing I remember calling my attorney and I was like hey dude what's the latest of this stuff you know because I got deposed

and I will tell you this if I am that was that day that it was an eight-hour deposition, and I remember at one point, their attorney said, can we go off a record? I was like, yeah, sure. He goes, I'm really sorry about all of this. I was like, what are you talking about? It's like, yeah, dude, I had no idea of any of this before we filed suit against you guys.

I was like, you motherfucker. Like, what are you doing? So he goes back on record, but like, I, my deposition, I just told the truth and like just lit everything up, just disclosed everything. But anyway, so I guess a letter from the IRS. and I ignored everything. Oh, anyway, so my attorney is like, I was like, what's the status of that stupid ass lawsuit? He's like, oh, yeah, you got dismissed from it. I was like, what?

He's like, oh, yeah, it says here you got dismissed. I was like, no one ever told me that. He's like, yeah, dude, you were dismissed like seven months ago. I was like, oh, cool. Then where do you have the letter for? From the IRS? Yeah, I thought you said you got a letter, called your lawyer and say, what was up with this? No, no, no.

I got a letter from the IRS. I called them, I called TJ, and he was like, yeah, you were dismissed. So. Then why do I have this letter? Well, they said I made a million, $1,000, $1,000, $1,000,000,000, in 2006 or 2008. And they're saying you owe money. Yeah. And so, and I, like, I ignored everything.

I was like, good luck with this. Do it in the garbage. And they called me one day. Okay. And it's the worst phone call I've received at the time. And we weren't just checking in and make sure you're like, hey. Yeah, they're just like, hey, how's everything going? You know, so make sure you're doing good.

And they're like, yeah, you're like, hey, this is someone's going from there. rest and I was like oh shit man as he's like yeah he's like we've been trying to contact you I'm not gonna lie to you I've literally done everything in the garbage I've been through hell and back over the past like four or five years and uh I don't I don't even know what to tell you's like well you got to solve this because you have to well you're not out of the woods yet yeah he's like yeah so so I remember I went and got an accountant in Washington state Jim trainer. God rest of the soul is amazing man. I was terrified. I was scared because I was in this great relationship. I had two companies that were doing well. I was, you know,

making money again. Like there was light at the end of the tunnel. And I just had this ability to ignore certain things. And that's kind of one of my Achilles heels, just kind of stick my in the sand sometimes. But I took him everything. He's like, I need all the documents. And I thought, oh my God. So all my documents were in a storage unit. unit in Fort Worth. It cost me $4,400 to get all my stuff out of my storage units in Fort Worth and all these documents shipped to him. All right. So that took about eight or nine months. They went through everything. So I had to relive all that bullshit again. And I actually went on an apology tour and called all these people that were involved in it and some of the people that

sued me. And I was like, hey, man, just wanted to call and see how you're doing. And they're like, yeah dude thanks for calling me and like I was like no hard feelings like yeah man like I wish we had done that differently I was like yeah me too so they said owed 668000 it took like eight months because I was slow answering questions for the accountant and like just I was just ignoring it you know but anyway so he's like you got to fix this you got we got to get to the end of this like this is taken forever so add an accounting bill for $34,000 it cost me $4,400 to get all my documents and everything shipped to him. And he goes, hey, man, we're done.

Bring your checkbook. And I went, I'll bring it. But like, I don't know what we're going to do. Right. If you're asking me to stroke you a check for half a million dollars. He's like, it's not that bad. And I was like, what is not that bad? And he goes, just come up here.

Yeah. So I drive up there, I walk inside and he goes, you owe them $574. Holy shit. So the $34,000 or the 40 over $40,000 was worth spending. Yeah. Complete utter nonsense. Because I sold a bunch of stuff in 2006 and the closing firms, the law firms that closed the deal didn't mail the payoff amounts and stuff, didn't report the payoff amounts

to the IRS. So it looked like 100% gain, gain, which it wasn't the case at all. Because I remember when the IRS got called. call me, I was like, hey, man, listen, if you tell me where this money is, we'll split it. Did not think that was funny at all. And he, I went, you didn't think that was funny. He goes, no. And I said, all right.

I said, I said, sir, I'll give you my word. There'll never be a time when you call me and I don't answer the telephone. And there will never be a time that I'm not honest with you. He goes, that's all I ask. And that's like, all right. And so, you know, I met with Jim Traynor. He's like, I'll deal with them. And he's like, we're only going to give them what they ask for.

And I was like, okay. So I would go with like all these, just reams of notes and stuff. He's like, they didn't ask about that. Right. Why are you giving me this? And I was like, oh, okay, it doesn't matter. So, yeah, that whole thing ended.

And, you know, it's funny. It's like, I don't know how I didn't file bankruptcy. I don't know how I didn't have to. To this day, successful guy have operated at pretty high levels in business. And I cannot tell you how I never had to file bank. I don't know because they just didn't come after me. I guess, you know, you can't get blood out of a rock. But, like, I didn't check my credits for seven years.

I didn't look at it. Didn't borrow. Paid cash for everything. I had a company credit card, but, like, didn't have a personal credit card or anything. My car bought brand new, wrote a check for it. And I remember sitting in my house in Washington one night, I was like, I need to deal with this. I need to, because I was like, if it comes back at 200, I'm not going to be surprised.

Right. And at like 11 o'clock, I decided to pull my credit. I was like, I'm going to do it. And I sat there standing that computer until 1.30 in the morning. And I finally hit Enter. And my credit was 8.10. And I was like, son of a bitch. You mean, I could have been like borrowing and buying stuff, like all these years.

The only thing that was on my credit was I had my shoulder rebuilt in 2012. and I had like nine or ten medical things on my credit report. So one of the things, an interesting thing about Black Rifle is just such a vast network. One of the early investors owned a company called Lexington Law Firm. So anyone listening to this that has any dings on their credit, what I'm about to tell you is amazing. So I went online, Jay Ovus is his name.

like Jay, like, what's your, what's your, what's your credit repair thing? And I was, I was mortified making this phone call. Like, I was so embarrassed. I was like, hey, dude, like, I got some dings on my credit. Like, he's like, yeah, Lexington Law Firm. So, and they'd be a great sponsor for this show. I truly, truly, truly mean that. And I will actually make a call on your behalf. So what they, it's like $129 a month. And you give them your social and all your information and it's not like they ask for a bunch of documentation they don't ask for any documentation the copy your driver's license and then uh your social and they pull up all your credit reports and then they go whole high holy jihad war on these companies that are reporting knocks on

your credit so you know for something to stay on your credit like they have to maintain it right so they overwhelm them with with with requests i think there was like there was like nine or 12 things on there. And the only thing I had that just didn't get deleted within three months was I had a T-Mobile bill for like $800 that I never saw. And the funny thing was like the medical dings on my credit. I never saw any of those bills. One of them was for like $3.85. Right. And I never saw any of this. And I was like, you're, you don't even get on the phone with anyone from Lexington Law. It's all done digitally. And I was like, hey, man, like I don't know what any of this is.

He didn't give a shit. He didn't care about anything. He's like, dude, we'll take care of it. Right. We're just going to hammer the crap out of them until they go away. Dude, things started falling off within seven days. It was amazing to see that. So, I mean, like, I thought everything was over into the world.

And here I am. Better than ever. Hey, sorry to interrupt the video. Just want to let you guys know that we're going to have an extra 15 or 20 minutes of content on my Patreon. It's $10 a month for about an hour. hours worth of extra content every single week back to the podcast so what are you what is your day to day now like you're kind of involved in all these companies it's not it's not it's not a day to dude it's like it's just I don't I don't know what day it is today and I don't really know whatever

what day it is um so my thing is like I focus on I've I put a tremendous value on my time like you have no idea like my time is the most valuable thing on this planet as far as I'm turn. And I only do things that I like to do. I don't do what I don't want to do. I only do things. I only work on, I'm not in a, I'm in a financial position where I can do the things that make me happy. And so for me, with like the political consulting thing, it's like, I never served my country in the military, but it doesn't mean I can't serve now. And so I view this is service to my country, which is very meaningful to me. And then I, dude, I get up early. I stay up late and I don't like work my ass into the ground but like I have a system in the way that I do things that would not work for anybody else on this planet like you give me like an engineer or someone that's like super organized I'd have them like thinking about suicide if they had to spend five days with me but like I just don't stop like I'm always doing something there's always someone to talk to there's always something to do and I enjoy every bit of it so I get I go to bed at it I like to fall as I get in bed about 930 I read till 10 and if I'm reading

something really good. I'll stay up later reading it. But I think that's super important. Try to not have the phone in the bed, but you know how that goes. So I go to bed about 10, 10.30. I wake up anywhere from, dude, if I can sleep to like seven, like I feel like I'm like the King Kong. But I normally get up anywhere between 5.30 and 7 o'clock. And then I just start doing stuff, you know? And this thing doesn't ever stop when I like it that way. Because the moment it stops, it's like well shit man not making any money yeah something's going wrong or why aren't why are people don't valuing my opinion like why is no one calling me like I'm the smartest guy in the room do they know who I am yeah why am I not like why are people not reaching out to me for these things so um yeah so like

but I guess here's a good way to answer your question everything I do exist on the same aisle of the grocery store all the brands I work with all my companies everything kind of works in a cohesive unit. So, like, I went to Missouri yesterday, met with a guy that owns a company called Tactical Shit. Tactical shit sells a bunch of cool stuff online. I can put tactical shit in the Black Rifle Coffee Club Partnership Program. I then met with the Attorney General from Missouri and Andy Frizzella, who owns First Form. I can get first form into the Black Rifle Coffee Partnership program. I can introduce both Andy Friclella and Andrew Bailey, who's the Attorney general to Evan Hafer, who's the

who runs, who's the founder of Black Rifle and he's got a podcast. Evan would love those guys. So now I'm teeing up guests for Evan's podcast. I made introductions to Andy Stump's Cleared Hot podcast. The Drinking Bros and Citizens Podcasts. Like everything, I don't go and

do things and just take one bite of the apple. Like, I eat it to the core. Because, you won't catch me going and doing like a one-dimensional business trip. Like, there's a ton of stuff you can do. Like, there's a lot of hours in the And if you're effective and, like, you know, and then also I have really good employees. I have like some, like, Dax love it.

Dax, you're not going to listen to this, but I don't know what I do without him. Right. So just I am effective in my own unique way. All right. So this is probably a question for both of you guys. So what do you think it is personally that helped you overcome losing $15 million or kind of like hitting, you know, maybe rock, bottom or whatever like to rebuild your life you know what was it what what do you what do you think it is or like maybe advice for somebody who's in a similar situation like what is it that helps

push you through it well how did why how did you push through as opposed to going and getting a job selling used cars and saying fuck it this is just it I'm going I'm going to apply at Walmart I'm going to be a cashier just roll up and play dad just roll and give it up um a lot of it goes back to like feeling sorry for myself all right and then like I'm not I'm not a quitter um I also have a super, super high opinion of myself. Like, in a very, very just and, like, really, like, an honest way. I, my self-awareness that I would say is as strong as anyone's on the planet. I know what I'm really bad at and I know what I'm really, really good at.

And the things I'm really good at, I think I'm as good as anyone on the planet. I don't believe in working on weaknesses. I think that's incredibly stupid. Like, why would, like, if I suck at something, like, why would I work on that and get marginally better at something that I'm not good at when I can just spend all my time working on things that I'm good at so I guess like the reason I was really good at real estate was I enjoy people I enjoy talking and having conversations and asking people questions and learning about things and like I have a tremendous amount of respect for people that are good at things and I don't give a shit what you're good at like if you're a good ballet dancer or you're good at fencing or whatever dude like I want to talk to you and figure out like how'd you do that and I've always like um I don't know how, but I always end up in the presence of, like, really, really impressive people. Like, people that have accomplished, like, really cool things or really smart or very successful. And I just have always, like, just wanted to know more about how they do things.

And then I've never worked a day in my life for money. I don't give a fuck about money. I don't care about it. I have a very binary brain. I care about making good decisions. And so my brain's kind of mathematical, so, like, one plus one is two. yay, I get a gold star. So when I make introductions to people,

hey, oh, you're doing what? What are you doing? Like, Lexington Law Firm. Like, I will literally call Jay and be like, hey, dude, you got to talk to this guy because this is the ideal person for your business and what you guys do. Like, credit repair, dinged credit.

Like, you got to talk to this guy. He's got a great show. It's awesome. And I won't take no for an answer because I'm right. One plus one is two. And I just, I've always, He's like, and it actually, a lot of times it kind of, like, people don't understand it. They think I'm out to get something out of them.

Like, why are you doing this for me? What do you want? I don't want shit, man. Like, what do you, I don't need anything from you. Like, it's just, you're doing this and he does this and like, you guys need to talk. And I've always, like, been really good at creating relationships. And then, like, another superpower I have is maintaining relationships. So, like, you take someone like Evan, all right?

Evan Hafer. So, Evan is, you know, Black Rifle's $1.5 billion company. And the amount of traffic that comes through his phone, his email and all that stuff on a daily basis is overwhelming. He can't keep and maintain all those relationships. I'm good at that because I just think everyone's interesting in some capacity. You know what I mean? So it's like, oh yeah, this guy's pretty cool, man. He does this thing.

You should talk to this guy. Like, that's just what I've always done. And then, like, I know I got off on a tangent, but like, I just, I view life as a business and is like a treadmill. and like you're never too tired to take I can take one more step I'm just not getting off of it you know like if if if it comes down to like who's getting off of it first I'm not going to lose that I'm not I'm not that's all I got to just keep going oh that's easy and then like you figure out how to make money and then you figure out um you hear people that say find what you love and you'll never work a day in your life you know who says that rich people find me a poor person that says that shit there ain't there's isn't one dude that doesn't happen what you do is you find what you're good at and hope to god you like it but you find what you're good at and you get somebody to pay you to do it man and that's like that's the key yeah my dad used to say just you know whatever you choose just just be the best at it he's like you don't worry about the money if you're the best that's something

the money will come yeah be the best version be the best you can be at whatever you're doing don't half-ass anything and like more importantly man I've always put like a massive premium on other people's time like my mother called me inconsiderate when I was 22 years old. I'll never forget that day where we were in her Honda Accord, driving down Habersham. She goes, you're really an inconsiderate person. And I was like, you bitch. In my head, I didn't say to her face. But like, I was like, fuck that. That'll never happen again. So I've always spent, put a lot of emphasis on other people's time, other people's feelings. And like, that's actually not true. I don't really care about people's feelings. I care about how my decisions impact

others. I don't want to inconvenience anybody or cause them any problem or, you know, one of my best friends like doesn't put a value in other people's time which is because his time is worthless but so i hope he doesn't watch this funny story so um i did a podcast of the drinking bros and i was like telling part of my story about you know losing everything and like i lost a wife too victoria um and uh she passed away no no no we got a divorce oh okay which was and you know she's not she knows better to listen to these now I was like, and thank God for that because she's let herself go and she looks like shit now. Dodge the bullet.

She was one of the hottest girls to ever come out of Savannah, Georgia. Victoria Turner and Reagan Howard were the two hottest girls ever. And I was sitting at my desk and I got my phone rang that said Victoria and I was like, hey, what's up? She's like, hey, what are you doing? I was like, I would just work. And she's like, yeah, her husband and I were fishing up in cashers this weekend. and I was like

catch anything caught your podcast no she's like I was driving back to Atlanta to Savannah and she's like we got caught in traffic and I listened to one of your podcast and I was like

which one and she's like you had some less than nice things to say about me and I was like and I don't I don't ever it's very hard to get me to feel bad

like I don't I don't feel bad about anything and I was like I was like hey man listen I've talked to you're part of my story I've told this story hundreds of times and I've always spoken highly of you I was on a little

rough around the edges show and I was talking shit and I'm sorry I didn't I wish you hadn't heard that I said but you have let yourself go and I said and more importantly what in the fuck are you doing listening to a podcast or your ex-husband with your current husband in the car and she was like you're a bastard

hung up on me and the next day I was like I just sent a text and say listen the last i don't have a horrible a bad thing to say about you like we made a mistake we should have never gotten married and i just want you to know that like i have a high opinion of you and i am sorry about that and i'm going to send you some weight loss yeah some ozimpec so here's some ozimpec for you you get you get you back on track i want nothing but the best for you yeah so just just you know like no matter how bad you think something is it's never really that bad you know like when i went through the i audit with the irs i was like oh shit here we go again and then i came

through that and I was like shit that wasn't so bad so next question shoot I don't know I was just when you said you feel you uh you you said I have a high opinion myself I will go to Jess and I will go to

which is my wife we'll go somewhere first watch or something she'll walk in and put our name in she'll come back out and she'll go she's a 20 minute wait and I'll go did you tell them you were with me and she's like yeah I did I did but I mean I don't So, I don't, so Victoria, you know, sent that text.

I was like, I feel absolutely horrible. Like, the last thing in the world I wanted to do was hurt your feelings. That was poor form of me, my bad. But, like, when Melissa and I go out to dinner, like, Melissa's dad was a cop for 30 years, her mom was a cop for 20. She's owned a CrossFit gym for 15 years, you know, basically, I don't want to say live paycheck to paycheck, but, like, ran the CrossFit. Jim for the reason CrossFit was invented for culture and community and all that stuff and um didn't care

about money um doesn't give a shit about money and like i don't do lines i don't wait in people i don't wait in lines and in that situation like there's a 45 minute wait that i hope you don't go to prison we're either we're either going somewhere else or i'm going to walk in and be like here here's 20 bucks like i don't can you get me in there and she's like i can't believe you do that and i was like she's like, that's rude. And I was like, I just gave the hostess $20 for us to wait five minutes. So, yeah, I don't do, I don't like lines. How was that?

Was that okay? Yeah, that's good. Do you have any social media that you? Yeah, where would you like anybody that watches the podcast? Like, if you'd like them to direct them anywhere? Black Baker on Instagram. Okay. Yeah, your Instagram page.

Black Baker. And then if you're listening to this podcast, subscribe, comment, and like. Right. That's what you need to do. If you like the podcast, if you like what Matthew's doing, support it by subscribing and sharing it with your friends. We also have Patreon. It's $10 a month. We put exclusive content on Patreon.

We're putting at least an hour, possibly two hours a week. It's only $10. It really does help us. I appreciate you guys so much. Thank you very much. See you.