Mind Pump: Raw Fitness Truth - 805: Bryan Papé of MiiR

Episode Date: July 2, 2018

In this episode, Sal, Adam & Justin interview Bryan Papé of MiiR. Learn more about MiiR at www.miir.com. Cronyism and your purchasing power in giving back to environment. (7:24) How if you’re not adding value to your products, you will fail. (10:57) Why he felt like a tool growing up? Bryan shares his superhero origin story from growing up with the privilege of experiences to the art of finding discipline in him. (13:40) The Expectation of Excellence. Did he ever feel the pressure of his parents comparing him to his siblings? (22:45) Are there things that stand out to him that he wants to bring to his children? (26:25) What lessons has he learned from his daughter? (31:35) How does he find the balance to being hands-on father to his growing business? (33:24) What ego checking event changed the course of his life? (37:00) The successes of his early business ventures and the biggest takeaway into his business methods today. (50:03) What series of events brought him to MIIR? (52:30) Have there been milestones that have catapulted the business? (54:43) The benefits of becoming a B Corp and is there competition between them? (59:08) Has the company been successful from the start? (1:01:39) Was there any time he wanted to get out of the business to make more money or better opportunities? (1:03:45) How important is autonomy to his legacy? (1:08:10) The low barrier to entry and how EVERYONE can be an entrepreneur these days. (1:11:00) Does he have a fear of failure? (1:14:02) Does he have people within his company that are polar opposite of him? (1:15:22) What are some of the biggest mistakes the company has made? (1:19:23) Product to Project. How does MIIR give back? Choose to partner with? (1:25:55) Conscious Capitalism: Liberating the Heroic Spirit of Business. (1:36:55) How does he stay active now and healthy? Fitness goals? (1:43:30) People Mentioned/Featured Guest: Bryan Papé (@bryanpape)  Instagram Chase Jarvis (@chasejarvis)  Instagram Jason Kilar (@jasonkilar)  Twitter Gary Vay-Ner-Chuk (@garyvee)  Instagram/Twitter Tim Ferriss (@timferriss)  Instagram Related Links/Products Mentioned: MiiR | Product to Project™ IGen: Why Today's Super-Connected Kids Are Growing Up Less Rebellious, More Tolerant, Less Happy--and Completely Unprepared for Adulthood--and What That Means for the Rest of Us - Book by Jean Twenge Dirty Money | Netflix Official Site CreativeLive B Corporation: Welcome Patagonia Outdoor Clothing & Gear Are Millennials More Or Less Likely To Start Their Own Businesses? The 4-Hour Workweek: Escape 9-5, Live Anywhere, and Join the New Rich - Book by Tim Ferriss charity: water John Keatley - MiiR Ad Campaign Splash | Home Conscious Company Media Conscious Capitalism: Liberating the Heroic Spirit of Business - Book by John Mackey and Rajendra Sisodia Would you like to be coached by Sal, Adam & Justin? You can get 30 days of virtual coaching from them for FREE at www.mindpumpmedia.com. Get our newest program, MAPS Split, an expertly programmed and phased muscle building and sculpting program designed to get your body stage ready. This is an advanced program and is not recommended for beginners. Get it at www.mapssplit.com! Get MAPS Prime, MAPS Anywhere, MAPS Anabolic, MAPS Performance, MAPS Aesthetic, the Butt Builder Blueprint, the Sexy Athlete Mod AND KB4A (The MAPS Super Bundle) packaged together at a substantial DISCOUNT at www.mindpumpmedia.com. Make EVERY workout better with MAPS Prime, the only pre-workout you need… it is now available at mindpumpmedia.com   Have Sal, Adam & Justin personally train you via video instruction on our YouTube channel, Mind Pump TV. Be sure to Subscribe for updates.   Please subscribe, rate and review this show! Each week our favorite reviewers are announced on the show and sent Mind Pump T-shirts! Have questions for Mind Pump? Each Monday on Instagram (@mindpumpmedia) look for the QUAH post and input your question there. (Sal, Adam & Justin will answer as many questions as they can)

If you want to pump your body and expand your mind, there's only one place to go. Mind Pump. Mind Pump. With your hosts, Sal DiStefano, Adam Schafer, and Justin Andrews. You know, I'm kind of liking this, just you and I, dude. What do you think? It's not as fun. You think so? Yeah, Justin's a big bag of fun. I don't know, I feel like we could be fun.

Fun-ish. You know what I mean? Like I said, he's a big bag of fun. I don't know. I feel like we could be fun. Fun-ish. You know what I mean? He's like the, like I said, he's a big bag of fun. He brings the cake to the party. He does. He is. He is the cake eater. That's not what I said.

He's the cake eater for sure. We've been poking at him a lot lately. We have been. It's good for him now. He's a good kid. Yeah, Bill's a character. I like him. He's a good kid. Yeah, built a character. I like him. He's a good kid.

Yeah, yeah. Built a character. So let's talk about Brian. Hey, you know what? Pappy. Yes. Pepe. Pepe.

Do you say it Pepe? I think it's Pepe. Pepe. Yeah, Pepe. Brian Pepe. Hey, Brian Pepe. He's a cool guy. Very cool guy.

Right away when we first met. Very cool guy. Right away when we first met, you can just tell. When we meet people on this show all the time i feel like i don't i don't know you until you sit in one of these chairs with us and i get a chance to talk to you it's true and right away i know if i'm gonna like here's what happens when you come on our show you come on our show you meet with us whatever everything's great you leave immediately when you leave- We talk about you. We either say, stupid, or we're like, cool guy or cool girl. So he got the cool.

Yeah, he got the pass. Yeah, he's a cool cat. Right away. Entrepreneur. Great entrepreneur story. Also a philanthropist. I mean, one of the things that motivates his company, Mirror, is the philanthropy. Yeah.

They're helping bring fresh, clean water to people, to impoverished areas of the world. What I really love is that, and I've never seen anybody else do this, is you can actually see your money at work. A lot of these companies, they do something like that, and then it's like, oh, you buy this product and we donate it here, or we give it to this. It's like, okay, cool, but that's where it ends, where all their products, you you can actually i believe it has a little code on it right you can track you go look up and see your money at work which i think that's really neat i think it's a cool way and i think that and we talk about this in the podcast we can talk on this episode you know if you're an entrepreneur right now and you're building a business or you currently run a company the importance of this

it's i think it's more important today than it was 10 years ago oh for sure yeah it's a it's a it's a it's a part of the formula now 10 years ago. Oh, for sure. Yeah. It's a part of the formula now, or at least the consumer is actually demanding it. That's what it is. And they talk about that in that book that I'm reading right now, iGen, is they talk about that the consumer today wants, when they look at a product, because there's so much competition, it's so easy to rank other companies. Obviously, he's not the only company that makes tumblers and mugs and you know cups and thermoses like a lot of companies do that but the consumer now wants a top-notch product and they want to know if they're spending money on it like what's this company stand for and where's their

money going and i think he recognized that at a very early age because of what he grew up in being a part of his what was his great it's his grandfather, right? It's his grandfather, yeah. Who started Pepe, yeah? Mm-hmm, mm-hmm. So I think that- He calls Mirror a product-to-project company. So, I mean, they make these very clean-looking products that, you know, good function, they're simple, they're high quality. But then, of course, behind it is, you know, what they're trying to do by helping people.

And I agree. I think that's the, that's the way you got to run business nowadays, which I like. Now he's genuine. They're genuinely trying to do this, but I think the future of businesses, genuine or not, you got to do this. Yeah. They want to see that you're actually helping people besides providing good products and good services. Um, And their products do provide a lot of value. They showed us incredible hospitality when we did our live event at one of their locations. Very good people, great staff, just all-around good guy. You're going to enjoy this conversation with Brian. Now, you can look at the Mirror products and see what they have to offer when you go to mirror.com. That's

with two I's, M-I-I-R.com. Also, I do want to remind everybody, if you are interested in any of our maps programs or maps bundles where we take multiple programs and put them together and discount them, you can find them all at mindpumpmedia.com. And I guess that's it, right? Without any further ado, here we are talking to Brian Pepe of Mirror. Enjoy. We need to make this place a little bit pretty. It was all, it's all. Adam wants a throne.

I do. I want like a big fucking chair. I want like a rhinestone mic. Like I want it to be cool. Just a big. A bejewel. Yeah, I do. That's why I said I would have bedazzled my mic, man.

I want something hella custom. Nobody has. You know what they say about guys get big bedazzled my mic, man. I want to tell them, hell of custom. Nobody has. You know what they say about guys who get big trucks? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Same thing about thrones. And bedazzled microphones. What do they say about the guy who has these dangly rubber balls on the back of the truck? Have you seen those?

I almost did that. What is that? I almost did that. Of course you did. I almost did that. I feel like if you have a lifted truck, you have to at least consider it. Yeah, but it's like... It's so in your face.

Just in case people didn't think that you thought you had a small dick, just put balls on the back of your ass. Basically, your truck is the dick and those are the balls. That might have been why I didn't do it. See, my strategy was like, huh, if that's what people think, I'm going to drive a Jedi, which is what I still drive. Which is like repellent for pussy. You're such a rebel.

You're such a rebel, Sal. It's the number one vehicle driven by gay men, so you may as well just put a big sign on the back of your car. I'm just comfortable with myself. Yeah, you own it, man. I like you guys a lot. I secretly loved it when Volkswagen just got their asses handed to them on the TDI. So many of my friends were like, look at me and my TDI. got my turbo diesel it's saving the world and then boom right did you three times

as bad as gas have you seen the documentary dirty money on that no oh you gotta watch it goes in depth yeah it goes i gotta watch that i love documentaries like dude you will it's called if so have you not seen that makes you angry it's a six-part documentary called dirty money and that whole i didn't realize how far back that go that's a big scam that was like like decades or yes yeah yes yeah they game the system you gotta watch you gotta watch it doug pull up dirty money and dirty money and tdi and see what pulls up i i think that's the name of it somehow they're able to like lower the emissions indoors right and so they knew that you'd test indoors, but then outdoors it was like...

It like tricked it or something? Yes, they had some scam going with the testers and they were just, oh, it's a great documentary. I had no idea about it. And then I didn't know the history of it and how that all came up. It goes all the way back to like Hitler.

Oh, the Volkswagen? Yeah. People's car. It's a Hitler... The Hitler... I mean, that regime created the Volkswagen? Yeah. People's car. It's a Hitler. The Hitler regime created the Volkswagen. The Beetle. It was a Nazi car.

Now, the irony. Let's think about this for a second. The irony. You became hippies. Exactly. It was a Nazi car. And then the counterculture buys Volkswagen buses and is like, peace and love. Yeah.

The documentary. There it is right there. The documentary gets all into that. It's great, man. Is it on Netflix? Yeah. It's on Netflix, definitely. And I'm trying to remember what else, what other, didn't you guys watch it too?

I watched it, yeah. The whole environmental market is so crazy. Like any market, once it gets a lot of steam, you get this crazy cronyism you know start to you know involvement like like the the train that they're building in california that they're saying oh it's a fast rail it'll save so much whatever it's costing so much money and it's not saving anything at all it's actually extremely inefficient it's not going to help anything but but because the the contractors the people who are getting paid by the state to make it, they've got their connections. And then they'll find some endangered insect and halt all production.

Well, I remember when I was shopping, I don't know if I've told this story on Mind Pump before, but I remember when I had my big lifted truck that got a whole eight miles to the gallon. And at that time- It ran on baby seal meat. Well, I remember- With the subs in the back, right? Yeah, yeah.

Yes, I did. I had two jail the subs in the back. Yeah. Yeah. Yes, I did. I had two jail audio subs in the back. Panda, panda fur, TV screen that flipped out. Yes. Yes. But I remember,

uh, at that time too, I was, I was snowboarding a lot. I was on the lake a lot. Wakeboarding. I was doing a lot. So I was traveling from the city and I wasn't really paying attention to my,

my gas. And I, I look up on my Wells Fargo, fargo like track you know they separate when they first started separating your bills like your grocery gas yeah and i was spending like 8 50 a month in gas and i was like holy shit that's a lot of gas money right yeah and i thought you know what if i could just if i went out and got like a prius you know that gets 50 miles to the gallon or whatever literally the payment would be negated if I just drove it half the time. Like if I just bought a new car, drove this. It should more than pay for itself.

Right. So literally the next day I went down and bought a car, but I was going to go buy the Prius, but I realized what a scam that was because they market it as this great way to save gas money, but then it's $10,000 to $15,000 more than the Toyota Corolla. And the Corolla got me 35 miles to the gallon versus 50. And when you do the math out, it would take 10 years before I would make up the difference. And then I walked away with a Corolla that day, but I didn't know that until I went shopping what a scam that shit was.

Nobody talks about the actual CO2 emissions to go and get the minerals for all the batteries and the e-vehicles. And then what they do with the batteries too, right? After like 10 years or whatever. I mean, the battery technology should get good enough. I mean, look at Tesla, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. I think self-driving cars, when that becomes a big thing,

then you'll see that be a big thing with batteries because then the fleets will go out, do their driving, come back, charge at a station. It'll be much more efficient. Do you guys know anybody that actually has a tesla and has put one of the charging stations in their house the battery wall thing yeah the charge the charge the wall yeah the actual charger right so yeah so i i was just telling somebody how i want a tesla and they're like well maybe before you do it make sure because we're house shopping right now too they're like you might want to look into what your insurance will go to supposedly if you get one of those in your house,

your home insurance goes- Why, are their friends going to explode? Yeah. Oh, wow. Yeah, I didn't know that. That's a real concern. Let me put a nuclear reactor in my house. It'll totally save my energy costs. Your mortgage is $2,000, the insurance is $3,000 a month, just so you can drive this car around. 2000, the insurance is three a month, you know, just so you could drive this car around. Well, California is passing a law that new houses being built have to be, have to have solar panels on them now. I saw that.

And, and. Oh, really? Yeah. And people, I mean, some people are looking at that being, oh, that's great. It's going to be great for the environment. But what a lot of people don't realize is there's backroom deals going on between the state and the solar panel manufacturers. And that's why these deals kind of get through,

but they, you know, they, they put it through on the guise of, oh, it's to save, you know, the environment. So now it's funny. We took this conversation this way, cause Brian's a perfect guy to talk to and ask this about, do you feel like there's a lot of people in a similar space as you that are, that do the giving back thing as just like publicity and to make their company look good and they're really dirty kind of 100 oh wow so there's so many people out and somebody that have just gone up and died oh really yeah and it's i mean i think we talked about a little bit up in seattle but fundamentally if you're not adding value with your product or your product is amazing

and all you're you're trying to build your brand on the back of doing good, it's going to fail at some point. I think it will legitimately fail and or struggle, right? Like look at Tom's massive growth and now they're struggling big time. Part of it is, I think, cause their shoes, I mean, remember their shoes are 50 bucks and they fell apart in like a month. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That makes a lot of sense. You, you, you, I mean, rule number one in business is you got to provide value to your customers. Totally. Now, part of that value is, today at least, because it wasn't like this even just 15 years ago, but part of that value is what your brand stands for,

maybe what the CEO and the founders are all about. And that became much more apparent. I think Apple was the first company to really make a big difference with that in the sense that like people really gave a shit about steve jobs and kind of idolized him um and that was one of the reasons why you know apple did so well but they also had tremendous value and did such a good job with with their product do you think that was intended that way or do you think that's just because he was so brilliant and so groundbreaking that people were interested in what he was doing. I think that started the whole thing.

Right. Cause I don't feel like that was like a strategy by Apple or, you know, any of those guys. No, I think that was, he was, they were a bunch of geeks inside of a fucking garage that weren't,

you know, they weren't out there trying to, you know, put themselves out. No, I think that's, I think it started like that. Like he's just got an interesting story,

got kicked out of his own company, came back, blew it up, like the whole thing, eccentric, you know, and, and kind of exemplified the the you know the new you know market the the the tech market and what it kind of stands for um and but now you're starting to see people are really interested in those things and it's part of the value but it's not all of

the value you know what i'm saying yep and i think what you're what you're saying is some companies make the mistake thinking oh that, that's all the value. And then we'll just, on the side, we'll make this shitty product. The value's like, oh, we want it. And it's really good intention sometimes. People are like, oh, I want to save the whales. And we're going to go out and make this thing. And they have no idea what they're, or they're just going to make some shirts that say save

the whales. It's like, cool. See how I love that? I can get behind that. Yeah. Do you have a podcast that's informing about why it matters or, you know, food supply or, you know, is ocean plastic getting up in the whales, which is affecting whatever, you know, you know, is there more value than just like selling a shirt

that says save whales? You know what I mean? It's a micro example. Brian, you have a very interesting story and you've told us a couple of times, but our audience isn't familiar with your story. And I think it needs to be told because it's kind of interesting. And it starts off with you saying before there was an event that happened before that you said you were kind of a dick. Yeah. And then something happened. I feel like this is actually more into that.

So my wife, so like I used to tell a story, be like back in the day, I was a total douchebag. My wife hates that word. She hates the word. She's gonna listen to this podcast. She'd be like,

you can't, you said you wouldn't say that word. And I'm like, babe, it was mind pump media. It was totally okay. It fits here. They pulled it out of you. They pulled it out. Yeah.

And so I think the word now is like tool, dick, you know, whatever you want. Like pre-2006 was just, it was all about me. It was like, what could I do to make myself better, make more money? That's, that was like my vision of like, how do I do stuff for me? Right. Uh, where do you, where did you grow up? Uh, like affluent privilege. Did you have like lots of things, you know, provided for you? And is that, do you think that contributed to your attitude? Yeah, I think yes and no. So like good example. So like my, so my grandfather, uh, started a company, the Pape group on the West coast, starting Eugene after World War II.

And actually, he was the original shoe giver. So, you know, Blake from Tom's, he likes to talk about him being the original shoe giver. My grandfather, World War II, over in Europe, helping build bridges, would collect shoes and milk. And when they go into a community after, you know, the Nazis were defeated, he would hand out shoes to the kids because they didn't have them. Oh, no shit. That's awesome. Which is a story my grandma told me recently. So I thought, you know, he was the pioneer on shoe giving.

Fucking Toms. Yeah. Biting off your family. We didn't even know that, dude. So, you know, he grew this successful family company. It's still held by the family. My cousin's the CEO. They sell heavy equipment. So like John Deere, Heister forklifts, a lot of heavy equipment's in construction. So I grew up watching my grandfather and my uncle build this company. And, and with that, you know, came, came a bit of privilege, you know, my, my, um, you know, my family was able to travel a fair amount. We, we traveled around the world. Um, but it was, but in the sense that

like my parents, we, we didn't talk about it, you know, um, to people around, like I grew up in Idaho. So somebody in Idaho travels to like South America and Eastern Europe and all over the place. Like that's probably unique. I would think. Yeah. So spring break, people like, where'd you go? And they're like, Oh, I went to maybe Disneyland. And that's like a big deal for someone in Idaho. And they're like, where'd you go? And I'm like, Oh, I went to South America. Yeah. So, you know, so it was one of those things where like, I was mindful of it, but it definitely contributed. I mean, a good example is some of my, some of my homies on my soccer team, we, my grandma

and this kind of points to like, you know, like, okay, he was so privileged. All the money came to him, whatever. And it's, in fact, it's, it's not, it's not that way, but here's a good example. So my, my grandparents have amassed wealth. My grandma wants to create this foundation. Part of it's giving money away to communities to, to really help improve the communities we all live in. But part of the other foundation is to get the family together. So there's my wife and I having our second kid, which will be my grandma's 25th great grandchild.

So I'm the 14th grandchild. Oh, wow. My daughter's son, we don't know yet. Surprise, will be the 25th great grandchild she celebrated her 96th birthday yesterday i was in portland um with her and it was um it was incredible so so part of their vision was let's get our family to travel around the world so we used to go really cool places um she grew up on the sound up in up in puget sound so on the water her dad built boats by hand, just like really, really good woods craftsmen.

So she loved the water. She loved boats. So she ended up starting to rent yachts for like two weeks. So she would rent Bill Bowen's old yacht, the Taconite, which is this 150 foot yacht. And we charter it and we go up to like Desolation Sound. Oh my God.

It was amazing, right? And I'm in high school and this is not normal. So I know this is not normal. Were you allowed to bring like a chick with you or anything like that? Exactly. Oh my God. At some point in your life, it's And I'm in high school and this is not normal. So I know this is not normal. Were you allowed to bring a chick with you or anything like that? Exactly. Oh my God. At some point, you're just slaying in high school. That's the move.

Yeah, that was, you know. Wow. But in high school, it was weird because we weren't not allowed to date, but it was one of those things where growing up in a very conservative household, it was like you date when you're in college. You date later in life. You don't was like you date when you're in college you date later in life you don't date in high school because you're also going to leave idaho for college you're not staying here like it was one of those things where like boise was an amazing

town but it was my parents were like if you want to go to school in boise you're going to pay for it you can go anywhere else and we'll pay for it oh that's interesting so they knew that it was like you have to go out experience in the world um and listen boise's great but in high school i was like all right i'm going to bring my homies on this trip because you were allowed to bring one friend. Well, my best friends were twins. So I called up my grandma. I'm like, hey, Baba.

Called her Baba. You know, I want to bring a friend on this trip, but my best friends are twins. Can I bring both of them? She's like, yeah, sure, not a problem. And so they've got a couple of yachts. And people would fly in and out throughout those three weeks that she was there for the entire time. Because not everybody can be there for three weeks. We all have jobs and whatnot.

And so basically, I call my two buddies. I'm like, hey, we're going to go on this amazing trip. We're going to water ski, hang out, whatever. And they're like, cool. What do we need to do? I'm like, we're just going to show up at the airport. And they're like, OK. So we would show up at the airport.

Grandma lands in her plane. We jump in, fly to Canada. You land, customs gets on, looks at your passports, gets off, you get in a limo and you go to the, you go to the yacht. So it's like things like that. You're like, holy shit, this kid's like a little rich little bitch. Like, you know, and I say that in the sense that like, and yet I had to mow the lawn. I had to empty the dishwasher. I had to do all of that. And here's a good example of, I think how my parents are parents instilled character in spite of the, the wealth that my grandparents had generated. First of all, nothing, nothing was given to me. First, first and foremost, the second thing was in the summer before I went to college, I broke everything, literally everything that summer was like the worst summer of my life. So

we built this pirate ship to float the Boise river. Everybody floated the Boise River in the summers. And usually it's just like a raft or an alligator, you know, whatever. And so we're like, no, we're going to build this raft. So we built this giant raft on like four sheets of plywood strapped to 55-gallon bell drums, pirate flag, you know, water guns, water balloons, just douchebag, you know, tool stuff, you know, things where you're just like harassing people. We float a cake behind it. Yeah. No, things where you're just like harassing people. Yeah. And, uh, we float a cake behind it. Yeah, absolutely. We were just harassing people. I mean, it was, it was all fun. Right. So we get to the end and we're about to pull out at

Ann Morrison park raft flips over and on the raft is a cooler with all my dad's tools strapped into it. Cooler opens tools, bottom, bottom of the river gone. You know, I get home. I'm like, Hey dad, you know, we, we flipped this raft and unfortunately our tools in the bottom river. And he's like, well, you can either go pick them up or you can buy me new tools. I'm like, hey, dad, we flipped this raft, and unfortunately all your tools are in the bottom of the river. And he's like, well, you can either go pick them up or you can buy me new tools. I'm like, seriously? He's like, yeah, you lost the tools. You need to go and buy them.

All right, so as a tool, I had to go buy tools. And I had saved up money. So it wasn't like, oh, yeah, he just bought the money that his parents gave to him. No, I had to mow lawns. I had to wash cars. I was filming weddings. I had taken our family's video camera.

I was filming weddings at the time. So I'd go and film weddings, save up money and then buy more video equipment. Um, and that's why I have so much respect for this, the studios. Cause, um, now looking back though, where do you, and if you're being honest with yourself, did you, were you kind of like a spoiled brat attitude about it then? Or were you already putting it together that, you know, I was, you know, I was putting it together a little bit because I knew because i knew i recognized um you know if you went and talked to your friends about the shit that you did that was like out there that doesn't like with bros they're not like stoked they're like fuck you man right you know like right you know and then i think that's really

ultimately what attracted me to my wife because she had she like had she couldn't care less about going on a yacht trip or like going on these trips with my family. She's like, I mean, it's fun, but like, I don't like you because of that, you know, like she couldn't care less. Um, but so back to that, that back to the summer, that was the start of it. Then I'm mowing the lawn. There's this oil pipe that sticks up because the house used to be heated by oil back in, you know, whatever the 60s, 70s, put the lawnmower over the top of the, of the pipe bends the shaft of the lawnmower lawnmowers broken. My dad's like, well, you're gonna have to fix it. I'm like, well, it's cheaper to buy a new one at home Depot. He goes, no, no, no, you broke this one. You're going to fix this one. So I have to take the lawnmower to go and get it fixed at this lawnmower repair shop, which I

don't think those exist anymore, but there's a lawnmower repair shop on the way to lawnmower repair shop lawnmowers in the back of the suburban. I had secured it, uh, got unsecured somehow going around the corner. Lawnmower goes out the back window of the suburban. And I get home, my dad's like, looks like you're gonna have to repair that window. And so just all of those things added up where it's like, it wasn't just handed to me. It absolutely had to get earned. Um, and we drove around piece of shit cars too. Like we always had the worst cars that would always break down. I was like, dad, why can't we just have a new car? And he's like, no, you don't need a new car. You're 18. Right? Like, like that was the mentality. And so as soon as I was in college, it's like, I'm going

to save up because I want my own new car. I want a warranty when it breaks. I want to take it to dealership. They're going to fix it. You know, so I really appreciated that. So it was, it was, it was never ever handed to me, so to speak. So it was more of just experiential trips through my grandparents. So were you siblings? Yeah. Three older sisters. Um, they definitely kept me in line. Oh, you're the young, you're the baby boy. Um, they definitely kept me in line. Oh, you're the young, you're the baby boy. I'm the youngest and the dumbest. That's for sure. Oh, they really, really smart. Oh my gosh. My oldest sister has a master's in like food systems. The next sister is a doctor and she's also getting her MBA. And then the sister closest to me,

uh, went to Stanford and then got her master's in urban education. Oh, now did that ever fuck with you growing up? Like, so I'm the oldest of five. And then sometimes I feel like my two youngest brother and sister, they always are telling my mom, like, I'm not my brother. And they'd stop comparing me that way. Do you feel, did you ever have that? Yeah, you know, with them, they would, you know, early on, they'd always like dress me up and stuff, you know, and it was like embarrassing. My cousins dressed me up.

And so, you know, there's that. And, you know, the pressure of high school for me was immense. And I say that because they were geniuses. So they all got four, four, four twos, whatever, going throughout, throughout high school. And it was the expectation. I remember coming home and being like, oh yeah, my buddy Logan, he gets paid for, for good grades. Like, are you going to pay me for A's? My parents were like, no, you're expected to get good grades. Right. We're going to discipline you for B's. Yeah. You know, so Bs. Yeah. So it was one of those things where it was like, there was this expectation of excellence regardless of finances. And so I can see it too, where if that doesn't exist in a house that has

wealth, you're going to grow up an absolute asshole or you could, right? So I really credit my parents for kind of creating that humility growing up. But my sisters had these ridiculous grades. I basically cheated my way through high school. Like I would find their papers, figure out, you know, how they got an A and reverse it. I was, I was not built for school. And then I got to college and I think I graduated like a 2.0. So I barely graduated. No, but how did your parents deal with that? Were they okay with, did they let you kind of find your own path or were they like really hard on you because you weren't living up to those expectations? You know, they were, I mean, they were hard on me. They,

I was, um, I was super into soccer. I got recruited to play soccer at Seattle Pacific. That's ultimately why I went up to Seattle was to play soccer up there. So I did, I had this athletic, um, kind of path that my sisters hadn't gone on and my dad had played football at Stanford. And so again, like this level of excellence, like you go to a school that's, you know, one of the best in the, in the nation and you play sports and there was this expectation that I would do the same thing. And so, uh, fortunately I was able to get a four Oh in high school. I have no idea how I pulled it off because I would, I'd like cliff notes. It was, you know, this is like barely the internet survived, like come into fruition. So you're

at Barnes and Noble reading cliff notes of, you know, whatever book, you know, like, uh, grapes of wrath or whatever. I used to rent the movie. So you don't sound like such a bad, like a bad kid or like a tool. Like you said, why did you, why do you say that you were a tool at this point? Like, what was it that you would, that you would think? I think the ego was massive. So, so while I didn't, um, especially in high school, you know, cause you're with, you're living with your parents. You go to college and you're not living with your parents anymore. And so in college, you're all trying to figure out, you know, who's who and who has what and whatnot. And especially in the Northwest, the Pape name is very visible.

It's on like every single piece of heavy equipment. And so people are like, oh, he's a Pape. Must be wealthy. And you're like, well, maybe I'll lean into that a little bit. And so that's what, you know, kind of. Which is natural for a kid. Yeah, totally. I mean, you're trying to meet people. I think it's a little bit. And so that's what, you know, kind of, kind of natural for a kid. Yeah, totally. You're trying to, you're trying to meet people.

I think it's a very natural. That's a challenge. It's people don't realize like if, if, when you, you know, I used to, the, I used to own a wellness studio and a very, very affluent part of the Bay area where the average, you know, three, four bedroom house is like $3 million, right? Very, very affluent. And there's a high school there. And at the high school, I remember there's like twoluent and there's a high school there and at the high

school i remember there's like two or three years in a row where there were like suicides multiple suicides which are extremely rare but there's different challenges i think growing up very very affluent that you maybe don't get in and i'm not saying it's better or worse or anything like that i understand that may come across as saying like oh you know being affluent is really challenging no it's just that no it's just different it's just different, you know, and if you have a child, yeah, if you have a kid that's growing up with all these things, I think the challenge as a parent is, how do I raise a kid that doesn't take this all for granted and who, you know, understands that they need to work for things in life and contribute? And I think that's probably what

your parents are trying to instill in you. Oh, 100%. Yeah. Do you have specific things that stand out in your head that like now that you want to make sure you do with your kids? Because, I mean, if your grandparents are well off, you're doing well for yourself. Now you have kids. They're going to grow up in a very similar situation. Are there things that stand out to you like I must make sure that I do this and this with my kids? Yeah. I mean, I think earning it is – and however you want to do that, whether it's to have an allowance.

You got to do X, Y, and Z, and it has to happen on time or, or you're not going to get your allowance, you know, setting up discipline for whatever it is. So if, Hey, you're going to give your kid a couple hundred bucks every month or whatever for discretionary income in order to do that, they've got to do, they've got to sweep the floors, do the dishes, whatever. Cause those things are valuable, you know, to learn that discipline of like having to clean up after yourself. And I think that's the other thing too, is, you know, looking back, like my grandparents are kind of like old money in the sense that like there was, there was wealth being generated, but there was absolute and expectation of excellence and an expectation of manners. You know, there was these things that were like,

you know, you don't just roll into a place and just pretend like it wasn't new money style, you know, kind of the day where it's like all about flash. And that's, that's the thing that's a little bit different now is like now with wealth, it's kind of like people flaunt it and they, people show it back in the day. That was part of it too, where it's like, you would never know. But I mean, our house was nice, but it wasn't just like some massive, massive house. And even my grandparents, you know, dressed nice, but not over the top, you know, you never were, you know, kind of flaunting back in the day. And so, um, plus the charity that they were involved in, maybe a lot of charity. Yeah. A lot of nonprofit work, um, volunteering,

you know, my, my, my parents made me volunteer and eventually became a choice, you know? So it was kind of this encouragement. Hey, you need to volunteer, like pick something. Yeah. And then it's like you under, you learn to appreciate it. Cause if you force somebody that the backfire is that they're like, ah, I'm never going to volunteer again. Right. So there's a fine line of like forcing and encouraging, um, anything you would do different. I mean, those are all great, great things. It's not, I mean, obviously you have great parent. You can just tell by what, the way they did raise you in that situation. Anything though, you look back and you're like, I'm going to do that different. I, you know, you know, I think the sport thing really,

really sticks out. I totally understand by playing sports, how like it was a blast, right? I went to college and I was burned out. I quit my freshman year. I was out. I was, I tapped out and I think it really disappointed my dad. I think it really did. Cause he had had this amazing experience of playing football at Stanford, Rose bowls, the whole thing. And so he kind of wanted to live that through me. And it really affected me in a, in a not, it wasn't so negative where I was like, but I was honestly going to go play soccer for him and not for me. And I quit. And after I quit,

he was fine with it. So, you know, the good news is that like he wasn't super upset, but I can tell he was disappointed. Yeah. And so I want to make sure that like, as I grow,

as I raise my kids, that when they grow up, it's not, you know, Hey, we need to be active. Here are three sports. What do you want to choose?

Right. Yeah. And Hey, if you're out, if you're over it in high school, cool. You know? Yeah. You put, you push too hard. Then they rebel. Kids tend to want to rebel when they're finding themselves. And one of the, one of the ways you find yourself is you,

you rebel against what the norm is. And sometimes you realize, Oh, okay. I don't need to rebel that way, but you typically will rebel at first. Well, this is totally a struggle. I mean, having two kids myself being an athlete, like, you know an athlete, you don't want to set them up to where they're going to resent you later on by being too hard, even though I want them to come to me. I want them to learn and be able to want to get better at their sport and practice and all that kind of stuff. So how do you sort of present that to where you lay it out where they want to learn and where they want to be invested in the sport. And so you're already thinking of that as far as I think it's options. You know, it's kind of like you never ask your kid what they want to wear because they'll never decide or it'll be hilarious.

And maybe it's funny. I don't know. But you just like, do you want to wear the jeans or the red pants? Like which one? That's a basic sales technique, by the way. Yeah, it is. It's called the alternate advance. jeans or the red pants? Like which one? That's a basic sales technique, by the way. Yeah. It is. It's called the alternate advance. Yeah. Exactly. So, you know,

with sports, you're like, all right, I want my kid to be active. All right, we're going to try skiing. Yeah. You're going to try karate or whatever,

you know, and like you get an attraction there. Yeah. You get to pick and it's, you know, and then they get to figure it out and test it. Hey, you don't like it.

Cool. Move on to the next thing. But secretly though, secretly, is there things that you want them to be into though is there certain skiing for sure i want that like and i took my my two-year-old daughter sienna skiing this winter and she loved it like she was just straight that's gonna get you so excited i was just i was pumped i skied like one day this year it was with her and i was like you know it's fine people like oh bummer and

i'm like it was also kind of sweet you find yourself having to calm down a little bit oh yeah oh yeah it was like it was sunny. She was stuck. Because you never know. You're like, all right, is she going to like it? Do we know? Is she going to panic because she's in these boots and this weird experience? We kind of played with the boots. And one of my friends had the best advice.

Basically, put the boots on your kid a day or two before. Let them play in the snow with all their stuff on. Let them have fun. So we went sledding with their boots on. That's smart. That's great advice. In and out. So then we got to the mountain.

It was like, all right, we're putting on your boots. We're going to have fun. And it wasn't long, you know, we were out for like maybe two hours and went in the lodge and had hot chocolate, came back, you know, and she was just like, now it's like, and then we have this property in Eastern Washington where there's like a small hill. And so it gets about two feet of snow in the winter. So we skied out the property. And so, you know, we're hiking up, walking down skiing and she loved it. So now it's like, Hey, Cece, we call her Cece for short. We're like, Hey, Cece, we're going to go out to the ranch. And she's like, cc we call her cc for short we're like hey cc we're gonna go out to the ranch and she's like ski snow ski snow and we're like well there's not snow right now but we will that's cool yeah what is it what is your your your daughter taught

you so far because i mean kids they teach you so much as a parent about yourself you mean oh yeah yeah like i mean almost like relearning stuff or like seeing seeing the beauty of the world through her eyes because everything that's new to her is like amazing. You know, like airplanes. She is obsessed with airplanes. And it's like in the city, you're like, yep, there goes another airplane. And she's just like, airplane. And just like so focused.

Yeah, it is magic. So I think, you know, kind of like opening my eyes to re-seeing the routine of the world. Because you get in your grind and it's like you walk to and from work or whatever and you just see the same things you don't think anything about all of a sudden she'll be like flower and you're like yeah there is a flower that's a cool looking flower so like slowing down reflecting on actually what's around you and she has you know it's interesting as you as you raise a child and you're looking around at like diversity and inclusion some of these things you realize that kids have like little to no bias you know especially early on like they're not scared you know look i mean there is a stranger danger at some point but like in

in the two-year-old it's like man they they'll smile at anybody they don't care you're on an airplane and you know some big dude smiles at her and she'll smile back you know somebody who's black will smile at her she'll smile back you know and it's just so cool to see like that purity of innocence innocence before you know you get jaded in the world so yeah that's that's that's a huge lesson i learned with my kids is just seeing how they enjoy just the moment and you tend to forget that are you a very hands-on father oh yeah very involved i like like i come home from work and it's like playtime it's really fun. And I think like laughing,

I probably laugh more in the last year than I have in a long time. That's cool. Just because like you're wrestling with her. She loves it. You know, she loves to be like tossed on the bed in the pillows, you know, and she'll be like, again, again.

Now being the CEO and founder of a growing company, a large company, how do you find balance? And because I find that to be a question people tend to ask me quite a bit. I have two children myself and it's like, how do you find the balance in being, you know, hands-on excellent father and also running and growing a big business? Yeah. It's, you know, it's tough because people, people, you know, ask me oftentimes the same thing of like, what does balance look like? And I'm probably the worst person to ask about that because there's very little balance. And what I mean by that is my wife, Becca,

she works at the company too. So we work together, we live together, everything like we literally live and breathe mirror all day, every day. And so the challenge now is how do you create time and space for you to separate yourself from the business where you can like be in the moment and be present? Cause it's one of those things that's like, it's hard. It's you guys get it. It's hard to explain to somebody how ingrained it is into your, into your DNA when you've been doing it for however many years for us, it's been 10 years at mirror that we've been working on the business. And so literally like you live, you dream, you sleep, you breathe mirror and it's good. But the, the, the challenge is that if you're doing that while you're trying to take your daughter skiing, you're not living fully in that moment.

So it's less about a balance, but more about actually being present in what you're actually doing. Because if you're present when you're at work, you're going to be more effective. If you're present when you're playing with your daughter, you're not thinking about all the stressful things that have to happen. So I kind of reframe it in a little bit different way. So it's not necessarily a balance, but more of just being present in the moment and making sure you create time. So the balance piece is like time, right? Do you have rules and stuff you put on yourself?

Your practices you've implemented? You know, it's kind of an ebb and flow. You know, like some nights my wife and I'll be like in bed, both laptops just crushing, you know, just working on stuff. And then other nights it's like, it's just communication too of like, hey, tonight let's close the laptops. Let's watch a show. Let's just like zone out, you know, just working on stuff. And then other nights it's like, it's just communication too, of like, Hey, tonight let's, let's close the laptops. Let's watch a show. Let's just like

zone out, you know? And it's, um, but let you know, it's, and it's interesting as like the stress goes up and the growth is gone. I've had to be more aware about how I'm affecting my family. And recently, and this is why I love my wife so much. Like, I think it was a couple of weeks ago. She was like, you know what? Shooting you straight recently. You haven't been enjoyable to be around. You're going to love that though. And you're like, and usually, usually I know when it's coming. I'm like, yeah, yeah, you're right. And this time, this time was like, the thing that was scary for me was that like, I hadn't recognized it yet. You're like, I thought I was being cool. Yeah. And I was like, wow.

Okay. So then it's like, all right, self-reflection. What was it through this? What was it that, why were you so, why was it so not cool being around you? What were you doing? You know, there's just like, you're not doing probably, you know, is not being present, you know? So taking the stress of work and like relationships and the tensions, like we have a lot of healthy

tension right now at our company. And I say healthy tension because people are always wanting to like, I have this idea that like, Oh, it's all good when nobody's like arguing or fighting. And then like we mine for conflict at our company in the sense of like, we want people to disagree and like challenge, like we want to do that. And sometimes it like really gets to you. And like, when people are brutally honest to you, whether it's employees or whatever else, that stuff as a founder, just like can really get to you and eat at you. And I was letting it eat at me, taking that, carrying it home and just like zoning out and not being present, not, not actually being fully present at home. So that was like a big, like, okay, got to reflect,

got to leave, got to leave some of those things. I got to say, I've met you now a couple of times. We've been on the phone once. you don't seem like a egotistical individual at all you seem like a very down-to-earth uh you know cool person somebody i would probably hang out with oh thank you you know off the show um so i want your phone number no no no but it makes some plans but it's true and you said earlier how you had a big ego in college and i know you told us twice now uh once when we did the event at your company and another time over the phone, that there was an ego checking event that happened. And I find that very common with situations where people have big egos. I had my own where you've just got this big ego.

You think you're the shit and then you get hit really hard with life. That kind of like life tells you like, hey, you're not as cool as you think you are. Totally. What happened? Yeah. Yeah. It's, um, man, it's interesting to think about this, this accident that if it didn't happen, who would I be today? And I'm, and I'm kind of thankful that it happened in a weird way. Like I almost died, which is scary to think about. Um, and now I'm less scared about death than I was then, but ultimately what ended up happening. So 2006, um, you know, kind of tool age, like massive tool, or you said less awesome.

Was it awesome, less awesome? Yeah, that's the reframe, right? I was less awesome then, right? So kind of a major tool. And I think the thing that played into it is I was having early success as well. So while my grandparents had started this company, had success, and there was kind of this wealth generation for my grandparents, I had also had personal success. I had picked up our family's video camera, filmed weddings, save the money, would start making ski films and rinse and repeat. So, you know, as a, as a 18 year old, I had $5,000 video equipment in

my dorm room, you know? And so like one of my best friends now, like the first time he saw me, he's like, this guy's a tool, man. He's got like dual monitors, like CRT flat screen monitors, like 2003, uh, like mini DV tapes, you know, like that was the era. Right. And so I had had success of like making money and like tasting that. I'm like, yeah, I can do this. I'm 18. I can make my own money, you know? So fast forward, I'm making ski films. Uh, literally thought I was living the dream. How well did you do? Did you make decent money doing it or? Yeah. You know, I was probably making like, gosh, I don't know, $20,000 to $50,000 a summer. What?

Yeah. Yeah, that's great money. That's great. Yes, exactly. So you're like, man, I'm not working at wherever making $10 an hour. I'm fucking killing it. You're like, I thought I was cool and I proved it. Yeah. There's my evidence.

Yeah, there it is. And then it compounded, right? So this is like pre-social media. And yet, like, here I am hanging out of helicopters as like a 19 and 20-year-old. Wow. there it is um and then it compounded right so this is like pre-social media and yet like here i am hanging out of helicopters as like a 19 and 20 year old you know like filming ski films do you guys follow chase jarvis from creative live no he's a really famous creative doug knows him yeah so i was actually chase jarvis's first videographer um yeah so like i i got connected to him he had this small studio he was kind kind of up and coming, was doing video work

for him, Stevens Pass. Anyway, we're filming at Stevens Pass, April 15th, 2006. And we're on the front side trying to post up for a shot, dropped a cliff, got back seat, had to get out of this really narrow alley of trees out of this bowl. And when I skied, I didn't ski with poles. I had my camera tucked into my jacket and a harness. Poles really help for balance. I didn't have any balance, got backseat, ended up splitting two trees and what happened was my ski hit something on the ground like a twig or something and it opened up my leg

and my thigh took an absolute header right into this giant tree. Snapped my femur in half. People that don't understand. That is a very hard bone to snap. To snap the femur. It um which that is people that don't understand that is a very hard bone yeah to snap the femur that and it's a dangerous bone and it is a dangerous bone so it's so it's interesting because ignorance is kind of bliss right like if i had broke if i had broken my femur and not known about your femoral artery bleeding to death internally i probably i would

have had a a very unique life or death experience but i might not have known that you could have died right and so my roommate at the time he had done it two years earlier at a different mountain. He had lived, he survived, came back and said, Hey, never break your femur. Cause if you do, you can hit your femoral artery and essentially bleed to death internally in about 10 minutes. So fast forward two years, 2006 hit this tree. I'm against this tree. And I'm thinking, holy shit, I could die in 10 minutes. Now you knew it was broken. Cause you looked at it. Yeah. Like if you go to my Instagram, you can, uh, it's like, it's probably buried in there, but like every, every year in April I celebrate, um, it was my,

it was, uh, what? Uh, I can't do math. I'm not good at math. 12. Yeah. Yeah. This, this April is my 12th year anniversary of kind of like living again. Right. And so like every April, my wife and I celebrate the day that I almost died as like a, as like a celebration of life that like I am alive. Um, and just like we usually go skiing or that we do something that we're grateful for. Um, so my leg is off to the right. I mean, it's completely like my boot is like twisted. I mean, it's brutal. Um, there's no doubt some fucked up. Oh my gosh. And you know, you know, like it was funny too, cause I was against the tree and I'm yelling back up to my buddy Kevi who's skiing and Chris, who's our marketing director at Steven's past. And I'm like, help, I broke my femur.

And my buddy Kevi was like, you're getting attacked by a beaver. I was like, fuck you, my femur. And so it was like, you know, it was chaotic at the very beginning, but then it got really calm and it was weird because like, I just had this moment of clarity, like absolute moment of clarity in a short period of time. So what did it feel like? You're sitting there, you're freaking out and all of a sudden you're like, okay, I might die. Yeah. It was literally like, I don't know if the, and the leg swelling naturally when you, when you do something like that, but I don't know how fast it swells if you hit your artery. So it was one of those things where I was like, oh my gosh, I literally could

die, you know? And just like life, life flashed before my eyes. And I thought, and this highlights how much of a tool I was, right? So like here I am dating my beautiful wife for three years. And granted I were, were, were young, right? Like I met my wife when I was 18, when we first got to school. Um, but it was like that moment finally solidified for me. I was like, you know what? If I live through, live through this, like I need to marry her. Like she's incredible for who she is and like believing in who I am as a person. So it literally took me like breaking my leg to convince me that I should marry my wife. Do you think if that didn't happen, you would have just dated her and stretch it out as long as you could? Probably. Oh wow. Okay. Or I would have continued to be on a tool and she'd be like,

you're a tool. I'm moving on. Did your sisters like your wife initially? Cause that had to be a process, right? Like you dating girls and bringing them back in. Oh, yeah. She was, you know, there was a girl that I dated. So my wife and I dated and then we broke up and then we got back together again. Then I broke my leg and we ended up getting married. And the gal I brought, the gal I dated between my wife and I and my sisters were like, no, no, no. Like she was into the tool, Brian.

And my sisters were like, no, not cool. So you she was into the tool, Brian. And my sisters were like, no, so you're sitting there busted leg moment of clarity. What's going on? My wife. Second thing was I honestly thought about my funeral. It was weird. I was like, if I died, what would people say about me at my funeral? And that's what struck me. I was like, Oh man, nobody will get up and say like anything positive about me. I mean, people will get up and be like, Brian was funny. Like I put a Volkswagen beetle roof or bug on top of our roof in high school. Like I let our senior prank, like, like I was a jokester, right? Like that comes along with being a tool, right? Like those are the things. And so I realized that nobody would got up and been like,

you know, Brian really like changed my life or like he volunteered all the time or whatever. And I was like, man, what was the last funeral I was at? And it was my, it was my grandfather's funeral in 96. And I remember his funeral. So he passed away far earlier than he should have. People were lined about the door talking about how he, how he had impacted their life. He was the type of guy who created this company from nothing, right? Every single store that he would go into, he didn't go into the front door and talk to the general manager of the location. He would come in the back door and he would talk to every single mechanic, greasy hands, shake their hands. He didn't care. And every single manager that I've

met, cause I, I worked there in college a little bit, um, always shared that. They said, you know, this is one of the greatest things about your grandfather was that he would come in and talk to the people on the ground, shake their hands. Cause he knew that was the lifeblood of the company. And so that always stuck with me too. So that, that was just a weird side tangent, but, um, that, that was what I thought about is how people lined up for, for him. And I was like, nobody would do that for me. And it struck me. I was like, man, I gotta, I gotta get together. I gotta use my talent and experiences to make the world a better place. So they, you, you get pulled off the slope. Are you telling anybody about this or are you

still processing this? Like, when did you start to communicate this? Like, okay, I had this moment of clarity. Yeah. So my wife at the time was, um, or we were, we were dating at the time. Um, she was in Europe studying abroad. So she was in England. And so there's, there's like a whole funny story between like getting off the mountain and whatnot. Like they were going to do a helicopter medevac, but they were like, right. He didn't, he didn't his artery. So we're going to, we're going to ambulance him down. So we get in the ambulance and, and ski patrol didn't do traction. The ambulance didn't do traction. We went to the small hospital halfway between the mountain and Seattle, uh, the small town Monroe. If you're over there, don't go to the hospital. It's awful.

We get, we get there. They have a new x-ray tech, new x-ray tech. I go in and out of the x-ray room three different times off the bed onto the x-ray thing off back three times, moving me around, trying to get the shot. They couldn't get the x-ray. They finally got after got after three times and they're like no we have an on-call orthopedic surgeon we can do it here and i'm and i'm like in and out of it you know just totally hopped up on adrenaline and drugs and i'm like i don't think this is a good idea and chris may he rest in peace so chris we'll get into this later but he was a good friend he was the marketing director at stevens he ended up losing his life in an avalanche years later um which is kind of an interesting experience and so he's there he's like no we're calling his parents so my parents are like absolutely not

taking him to swedish which is the main hospital in seattle and so swedish shows up and they're like has nobody done traction on this guy and everybody kind of looks at each other like you didn't do traction you didn't do traction so traction is essentially where you strap this like metal thing this metal plate to your ankle and your hip and they crank your leg apart to strengthen that shit out strengthen yeah because i'm at, I'm looking at the picture right now. Yeah, there you go. That's a, that's a clean gnarly break in the bones right next to each other. Yep. And so you got to pull it apart and get it back together. And because those bone fragments kind of on the right side, you see how it's kind of sharp, like it's just sharp.

That's a floating around while we're getting off the mountain on the ambulance in and out of the x-ray room so literally like within all of that it could have hit the artery because nobody did traction for those like three hours and so these swedish guys are like are you kidding me like so we do traction we get to swedish it ends up being all good but i we had this again pre-internet um i think I had a flip phone, and my wife and I always, she had like a calling card. You remember those things? Yeah, dude. I love being an old man.

$20 calling card. You used on the pay phone? Yeah, my old pay phone. We would talk at like, I think like 8 a.m. Pacific time, which was her evening or whatever. I was like, oh shit, I'm going to be in surgery, and she's not going to know, and I'm not going to answer. She's going to get all worried.

So I literally changed my voicemail to, Hey babe, it's me. Everything's fine. Just want to let you know that I had an accident. Steven's pass ended up breaking my leg and I'm going to be in surgery when you call. So call Ryan, my best friend. I was like, call Ryan. He'll give you the download, but everything's fine. She gets it. She's like, Oh my God. So that, you know, she flew home and then, you know, really that summer it started getting serious. It was like, you know, I think, I think we should start talking about getting married. Like we love each other. Like this, this is where we want to, um, kind of take our lives. And so I, I, I went to her dad and asked for her hand in marriage. Cause I, you know, I'm very traditional

in that, in that sense. And he's a jokester. He's a, he's a, he's a retired doctor and he's, and he has, uh, he has two daughters and he's like, which one? And he's a jokester. He's a retired doctor and he has two daughters. He's like, which one? And it was interesting because Phil, Dr. Phil, he's not the doctor. Well, he is the Dr. Phil. He's not the Dr. Phil. He goes, you guys are a little young. You want to wait a couple of years? And I was like, nope. Had this moment of clarity. Your daughter's amazing. I have a job. I just bought a condo. I have a car. I'm going to provide for your daughter. And he's like, all right, let's do this. You know? So, and I had kind of, you know, kind of proven with my career. And so, um, that I wanted to kind of get into this. So now did you keep doing the filming after that or, or did you

decide I need, I want to do something else? Yeah. So it's kind of doing three things. I was filming for Steven's pass. I was the first employee of a company called little hotties hand warmers, which is those air activated hand warmers and you skiing or whatever um and then i was also working for chase jarvis as his first video guy and so this is so i graduated college 2007 and it was interesting because 2007 i mean the economy was booming so i literally had three job offers i had an offer from the ski resort to like do all their video production i had an offer from chase jarvis and had an offer from rick at little hotties all their video production. I had an offer from chase Jarvis and had an offer from Rick at little hotties hand warmers. And I was like, I love video production. Chase is this amazing, creative, super insightful. Like I could see

myself there. The ski pass was like a lifestyle choice. It was like, I'm going to not get paid anything, but it would be amazing. Cause I'd ski every frigging day. Um, and then the last one was, man, there's a small business. I could get sweat equity. What an interesting choice you had to make there. It was super bizarre, you know, super bizarre. And Rick, who I'd worked for him for about a year. So I'd interned for him in the summer, worked my ass off in the warehouse, basically building displays for Costco. We just landed the Costco account. And so it was kind of this tough decision. But it ultimately came down to like I was learning the most at Little hotties, hand warmers, business wise, strategy wise. And so I literally took Chase's offer and then went back to Rick and I was like, Hey, I'm, you know, I got this job offer from this guy over here to make this much money. Like, you know,

can you beat it? And so like he beat, you know, so like, and, and Rick's like, motherfucker, I told you, I told you how to negotiate, you know? So that was, it was actually kind of cool to like leverage it back against Rick. So I ended up working at Little Hotties Hand Warmers from 2006, 2009. 2009, we ended up selling the brand to a company on the East Coast, had a good exit, made some money from that. And so that's ultimately how I started Mirror was I took the money that I'd made from the sweat equity at Little Hotties Hand Warmers and started off with Mirror. What were some of the things that you learned from that company? You said that you made it sound like they were better as far as the three, as far as the structure of the company and what you could get from it. What were some of the things that you learned from that company? You said that you made it sound like they were better as far as the three, as far as the structure of the company and what you could

get from it. What were some of the things that you took from it that have now probably benefited? Oh man. You know, I got, I got so lucky and it's funny too, cause we have interns and they're, they're fantastic. Right. But like at the age of 1920, I was flying to China with, with Rick first. And then, and then it was like me, it was just me going to China to work with our suppliers. Cause Rick Haiti going to China. And I was like, Rick, how did you let a 20, 21 year old like go and run your company? He's like, I had it under control. But he's like, you earned it, man. Like you were trustworthy. You got it. You were smart. You were strategic. You listened, you know, like that was probably the biggest thing of listening to Rick, listening to people who have more advice. And I think one of the biggest

takeaways from Little Hotties Hand Warmers was not getting preconceived notions kind of stuck in your head. And what I mean by that was the success of Little Hotties Hand Warmers was not getting preconceived notions kind of stuck in your head. And what I mean by that was the success of Little Hotties Hand Warmers was predicated upon the fact that Rick was the first person to go to China to source a hand warmer. And you're like, what's so special about a hand warmer in China? Well, two companies, it was a small industry. There were two other companies. They had both hammered out. One was specialty and one was mass. One made it in America and one made it in Japan. And China had been making hand warmers for 20 years as well. So these companies were 20 years old, kind of in their lanes.

Rick comes along. It's another long story. He figures out how to source the hand warmers from China. But the biggest difference we found out was none of these other two competitors had ever gone to China. They had. They'd gotten samples from these factories. But in Asia, they liked a long, soothing factories, but in Asia, they liked a long soothing heat. And in America, we liked a six hour blazing hot heat. And so Rick just said,

well, can you change the formula? Whereas our competitors were like, Oh, it's China. It's cheap. They make shitty products. We're not sourcing from there. So without even asking. Yeah. Without even asking. Wow. And that made a big difference. Multi multi-million dollar mistake on both those brands. Cause we ate their lunch for three years. Wow. I mean, literally, the price of our hand warmers was astronomically cheaper than their cost. I mean, it wasn't even fair. Like, literally, we just cleaned house for three years and then sold the company.

Because it was 2009, the economy started changing. Actually, we had been approached by our competitor and another company before the market started melting down. So, we're in negotiations. We chose this other company that wasn't our competitor because they had a better offer and a better kind of exit deal. The economy's melting down as we sold the company. So it was one of those things where like, we had really, really lucky timing because if we had not sold it, we would have figured out how to stay in business. But man, those were scary times, 2009, like everything's melting down. Now, what brings you to, what

brought you to mirror at this point? Yeah. So the idea was, so Rick and I, um, we sold, we sold little hotties, hand warmers. He had a one year earn out where he had to be there for an entire year or maybe it was two years. Um, we negotiated it where like, we kind of made it look like I wasn't that strategic because I was going to go off and start the next business. And then Rick, after that was going to come and join me. And so we started looking at SIG bottles, those Swiss fuel canisters that kind of turn into bottles. And they were like 30 bucks at REI. And Rick and I were like, are you kidding me? These things are just a bottle. Now, was it the lesson that you learned from China that made you kind of think like that? Where you were just like, this is so overpriced.

Yeah. I was like, this is overpriced. We can do better. And I was like, and then I started researching and Nalgene was super popular. I grew up on Nalgene. So I was like plastic, you know, there's some things about BPA that are coming out. The SIG bottle was aluminum, which is toxic, but then they wrapped it in a, in a plastic liner. So you have this aluminum bottle with a plastic liner. And I'm like, that doesn't make very much sense. You know? So like, so that, you know, we started looking at the stainless steel market. And so that was kind of the initial thought was like, wow, you know, this bottle market is starting to grow. And this is 2009.

So this is before, I mean, there's so many bottles in the market. Now there is. Now there is. Yeah. So this is 2009 that we started working on the brand. And so I was like, you know what? I'm going to head off and do this. And Rick's like, cool, go for it, you know?

And so ultimately it ended up Rick left and did his own thing. He has a super successful brand that he sells into Costco and Amazon. And, you know, but but we talk weekly and it's, it's fun. Cause we have, what is that? What is he doing? Uh, it's called cascade mountain tech. So if you go into Costco and you see like, uh, um, stadium chairs, lanterns, he is an interesting as fuck. What is he's a Costco ninja. Like he just, he's a product guy. Like he comes in and he's just like, he'll look at something on the shelf and be like, I can do it for better, faster, cheaper. And then he does it. Costco must love it. Oh my gosh. He is. I mean, it's, you know, so he's like, he's built a good brand, but I'm on the opposite end. So, you know, he's, he, I don't know exactly

what his margins are, but you know, he's, he's on thin margins, but he just knows how to hustle it through Costco and that's his model and just absolutely throttles it. I mean, we get it with hotties, but he was just a strategic, strategic guy on the business side. And then on our end, not that we're not strategic, but we're more on the branded side. You know, we're on a premium branded product. And so for us, it's, you know,

that's why, you know, we do podcasts and that's why we speak. And that's why we have marketing and a social media team. And like, that's our angle that we're going after. Now, over the course of this, the 10 years that you've been building this,

have there been major milestones of things that you implemented or started doing? For example, i.e., like the podcasting. Have there been things that like, oh, shit, that really catapulted us or made a difference? Have you noticed that? Yeah. I think reflecting back, so we started with water bottles, similar to this one on the table. Um, you know, and I think one of the things that, uh, is, is my superpower is basically, um, looking and observing the market and seeing either what's missing or where the opportunity

is. Right. So like the camp cup for us, for example, everybody had those grandpa's enamel, those enamel and grant cups or you go camping with, right? Like they burn the shit out of your lips. They're cool looking. They're nostalgic. Cause your grandfather used them, but like, they're not functional.

And I was like, these things like could be so much better always had my coffee in a ceramic cup that's great but then you got to throw in the microwave you got to throw in the microwave you got to throw in the microwave after it cools down right so i was like why don't we just make a badass camp cup and kind of replace that so that and that was like one of our uh this is one of our most successful products and then and that was like three years ago we launched it and hydrofloss just launched theirs like six months ago yetii just launched theirs. So, you know, things like that, it's like paying attention, observing is like where we've seen kind of the needle move for the business. Um, some little things like we became a certified B Corp. B Corps are kind of, um, kind of a layered on assessment for your

company. So any, any for-profit company can become a B Corp. And so it stands for benefit corporation. So you take this massive assessment about customer supply chain, governance, employee retention, diversity within workforce, and you get the score out of 200 points. If you score above an 80, you can be a B Corp. We're like a 117. Ben and Jerry's is a B Corp. Patagonia was a founding member of B Corp. Now, what are the real advantages for a company to do that? Yeah. I mean, I think now it's still super niche. It's getting there, but you'll see it in Whole Foods a lot. You'll see it on some of the premium brands of organic, non-GMO, a lot of healthcare or a lot of beauty supplies that are non-cruelty, things like that. Who grades it? Who scores it?

So it's B Lab. So B lab is this nonprofit. I think they're out of San Francisco and New York and they have this massive assessment. I mean, there's the amount of questions is unbelievable. And then you never heard of this. You should check it out. But there's this like-minded group. So like I was in Portland at this B Corp conference speaking, but then you meet other people. So there's, you know, B Corp banks who fund, you know, local organizations who are doing good things in their community. So it's very community minded. So we decided it's funny because they tracked us down at a trade show. They're like, you guys should be a B Corp. Like, you know, that's interesting. But we have this give

code on the bottom of our product. Customer registers it. We show them exactly where we're giving, how much money we're giving. Like we're already transparent. They're like, yeah, but we're a third party. We can help certify that you're doing good. And I was like, I don't know. And so we ended up filling out the assessment and I forgot about her something. And Andy called me up from B Corp and he was like, Hey, you've got like a week or it's going to expire. And I was like, all right, fine. I'll fill it out. So we fill it out. We get, we get certified. And I kid you not, like a month later, Patagonia emailed us and they And they were they they emailed us and they go at first we don't have a phone number on our website at the time so like it was just an email address

because there was like three of us right we're like. See Taylor not everybody has a great website right off the gates bro. See that? A lot of multi-million dollar companies start off with a shitty website Taylor. He's always giving me shit about how ugly our website is right now I'm like like bro priorities dude right now. Oh man yeah if it's selling it's cool right we're changing the world right now let's fix that then we'll go back and look cool later we'll clean it up yeah we'll clean it up later we at least had our phone number on there you know yeah we had our phone i don't know what the hell we're thinking so we get this email from this from paul who's a good friend of mine now and paul's like hey this is paul from patagonia not sure if you've ever heard of us

no not at all right yeah I was like, you know, and I'm like crapping my pants in the office, you know, Haley, our customer, our customer service guy was like, uh, someone from Patagonia just emailed us. You know, it's one of those moments where you're like, Holy shit. Yeah. It's like for real. It's for real. Cause I grew up loving Patagonia, you know, and this, and this kind of points back to like, my parents could have easily decked us out in Patagonia, you know, we were in like columbia like everything was on sale that they bought you know so it was like i aspired to buy patagonia because it was the best you know and so like when i had my own money i started buying patagonia because i'm like i want to buy

the best right and so um kind of a weird tangent to like how do you not make sure your kids grow up as an asshole right right right are they right. Are they, are they, are there any tax benefits to being in a B Corp or anything like that? No, but you, well, you might be able to write off the, I mean, you get,

to get the certification, you pay a fee based on your revenue, membership fee, and you can write off that membership fee. Okay. But they'll audit

how much money you, are you giving away? Are you serving? Like, like let's say, let's say like you guys are like, how do we, how do we give back in our business and you're like you know what we want to really instill fitness and in urban areas where there's not much activity yeah and so you create a special mind pump fitness package for people living in like this zip code and it's super

discounted because you believe fitness will help transform their lives that would actually be part of their part of the assessment where you would get points for selling to underserved communities at a reduced price or something like that. So there's super creative ways because you have everything from banking to products to services. Interesting. Because this is the direction we've been talking about going where we want to figure out how we can give back through charity or through something like that. Now is the goal for you to just maintain that over 80?

Are you always trying to increase that score? Yeah, that's where I think the cool factor of this is, is that there's a baseline of assessment for all companies to take. And then you're kind of competing against yourselves and you're competing against others. So like Clean Canteen, one of our competitors, they have a 99 out of 200, 100 out of 100, or 200.

Anyway, we're better than them. That's the bottom line. But here we are competing as B Corps, we're better than them. Um, that's the bottom line in there, but you know, here we are competing as B corpse and you better believe that when we're selling head to head against them in an account, I'm going to bring that up. Cause they'll, or, or they'll bring it up. They'll be like, Oh yeah, clean the B corp too. I'm like, they sure are. And we're sure better than that. But when that happens, like when we compete against each other in that capacity, serving others and helping everybody get like their employees are better for it. Our employees are better for it.

So it's really this cool thing where every year we're like, all right, how are we going to get better? And some stuff you're like, I can't answer this. When we first started, we had a desk inside of a company, inside of a company. So it's like, how are we going to measure our energy usage? Not. Like NA.

So you don't get any points on that. But you can start to measure things like, you know, your CO2 emissions from your building or things like that. So like our flagship store is in a LEED platinum certified building. I don't know if you guys noticed the little signs above the urinals that say rainwater, don't drink. Yeah. Like why would I drink out of urinal? Yeah. Yeah. Because that's where I like to get my water. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I'm so glad they put the sign there. So that, you know, that was kind of a noticeable marker of us becoming a B Corp. And part of it was just serendipitous,

Patagonia reached out at the same time. But that was definitely a moment of like, holy shit, it authenticated what we were already doing. Did you fund MIR when you first started out of your own money? Did you have, okay, so now when did you start profiting? Was there a difficult period where you were eating shit for a little while? Oh yeah. Four years.

We were eating shit for four years. Four years. So what were you like? Nothing. Nothing. Yeah. So we basically, so I, so I wanted to give from day one. So we were going to, we were giving at the time we give now 3% of revenue.

We were giving about three to 5% of our revenue. Cause back, back in 2010, we were giving a dollar for every bottle. And then we were like, okay, what happens if you're like giving away bottles or you're, you're selling at reduced prices or, you know what I mean? So we kind of normalize it to revenue. Cause like a dollar on a growler is way less than a percentage than a dollar of a pint cup. That's five bucks. Right. So we, we normalized the 3% of revenue, um, recently. So we built in giving from day one. So right away, right away. Yeah. It was almost like cost of goods, you know, of like, we're going to bake this into our model and not think about it. Like at the end of the year, if there's anything left, we're going to give, because I knew that there wouldn't be

anything less for years to come because anything that we were going to make was going to go right back into the company. Sure. Um, cause we're looking at the longterm view, you know, it's like, look, we're playing the long game here. We're not trying to flip it in three years or 10 years or whatever. So it's so, it's so important that people understand that because people might look at mirror now and be like, Oh great company it's big you know it's successful making a lot of money for four years you were eating shit that's a long fucking time oh yeah and it's important people understand that because i think a lot of people especially today i'm looking at statistics now and for the first time in a long time uh more kids now want to be entrepreneurs than before it's like a new thing

like i want to be a popular thing it is is. And I know why, you know, obviously tech lowers the barrier into the market and they see all lots of popular entrepreneurs that are coming out through social media and stuff like that, but they don't realize like, unless you're extremely lucky, you're probably going to be really poor and work a lot for a while. It's going to break you. And everybody, everybody thinks about like overnight successes, right? I mind pump right three or three overnight success right yeah right but it wasn't those three years because like think of all the stuff you were doing before that that all led up to this right yeah and so same thing people like oh you guys must have blown up overnight i'm like bro 10 year overnight success yeah um so yeah that i mean for us it

was just eating it for four years anytime during those four years where you were contemplating like fuck maybe we're not gonna do this thing thing, dude. Were you ever like that? Or did you always like, it's okay. I'm I'm I've already knew that I'm going to eat shit for X amount of years that I'm okay with it. I can see the long goal. Or were you like at one point going, fuck, this might not reevaluate. Yeah. Yeah. You know, I, I wish I, I wish I could say that I was like, Oh, I always believe in this a hundred percent all the time. But as a, as a, as a founder and entrepreneur, there's always doubt, you know, there's self doubt. Um, the way we had set it up. So I think we, I think I'm trying to remember how much I

made from little hotties, like a hundred grand or something like that. Literally put it straight into the business, um, over those four years. And my wife was working at Morgan Stanley at the time. So she was bringing home the bacon. So that's how people like, how'd you make it work? How'd you pay rent? It's like, well, my wife paid rent. She wrote the checks. Um, so that was huge. I mean, for her to be able to make money. And then eventually after we started becoming profitable, she came over to the business and now we work together, which is super fun. But, um, there was a point, uh, maybe we share this on the phone, but there was a point in 2012. So this is before Patagonia, as soon as Patagonia like signed up, I was like off to the races. Like if Patagonia is signing on to what we're doing, like we can make this work.

Yeah, that's validation. And we had, um, so, so Becca in college had nannied for Jason Kyler, who was the founder of Hulu. So he had, we had beta test, we beta tested Hulu back in like 2009. That's crazy. Which is crazy. So we were over at their house having dinner or something. And he was like, Hey, I've been working on the secret project, you know know couldn't tell you about it but were you that impressed when you first saw it or did you know i was i was like oh this is cool you don't feel like because i i hate like nobody like i always thought the idea of cable was like ludicrous right like like as soon

as you saw youtube you're like why doesn't everybody do this you know and so um so for it i was like this is brilliant like you can watch your shows whenever you want on my time on my time you know and then i was like how did you get all these networks to agree and like i mean that guy's a gangster like the amount of deals that he had probably put together to get everybody to like be in the same room yeah is super impressive they're really accelerating right now it's fun to watch them they're killing they're killing it um so there was a point where jason had reached out through somebody within the organization and said hey there's this opening we think you'd be really good for it it's in santa barbara or no sorry s Santa, Santa Monica. And it was,

it was at the time where I was like, man, like I want to see this through. Like, and I'm kind of like, I put a bunch of money in this, but man, Hulu is taking off. We can move to SoCal for a couple of years, see what it's like there. We've been living in the rain. So there, I mean, there was a, there was a period in 2012, 2013 where I was like, oh man, do I throw in the towel and go and work for Hulu? See now, why didn't you, why didn't you make that? Because a lot of times I think people look at entrepreneurs and just some entrepreneurs are like this where they're, where they're driven by profit, money, opportunity, opportunity, money. Look like I read this article once. I thought it was absolutely brilliant. And it talks about entrepreneurship and how

there's an element of artistry and entrepreneurship and people, they made a scale and they said, on one end of the scale, you have artists. On the other end of the scale, you have pure entrepreneurs. And a pure entrepreneur is someone that builds up businesses and sells them and doesn't really care, just wants to make the money and see that. And that's also, that's very valuable to society. And that's just a different type of person. Then you have artists who believe in what they're doing so much that they'll do it forever, making almost no money because they believe so heavily in what they're doing. And so they tend to not take those kinds of opportunities. And sometimes we see successes like that, but we don't see a lot as the failures because obviously

if you mirror your idea for too long sometimes. So what made you not go to Hulu? Because granted, you would have made a shit ton of money. Obviously, it's a big company now. What made you decide to stick with Mirror and make no money? You know, I should, that's a good question. I should go back and look at my email and see what I see. I wrote back to them because I remember writing back to like one of the hiring managers as to why. Oh, really? Yeah, I should pull it up. That would be a cool thing to read. But, but, you know, I think it was a gut check. It was, it was how much do I actually believe in this? You know, and I think ultimately part of the reason I had created my own company

because the idea to me that having to show up in an office at 8 a.m. and leaving at 5 or 6 and getting two weeks paid vacation was ludicrous. Oh, yeah. I was like, that sounds awful. And we're trying to be as flexible as we can within our own organization because I'm like, I don't care what time you show up. Just get the job done. And the challenge is then you have to like really define the job, right. So they know what they're supposed to be doing. Um, but I think that was

part of it too, as like, I really thought through it and I was like, okay, Southern California is really expensive and I'm going to have to like be confined to this corporate work environment, which isn't necessarily, it's not bad, you know, it's- It's just not for you. It just wasn't for me. And so I think that was part of it, you know? How important is autonomy to you, being able to control your own destiny? Super important.

Just being able to like see a path and then be able to pursue it is, I mean, that's probably the greatest satisfaction of running your own company is that like you get to set goals, meet it and achieve it. Like just this morning, I kid you not, I'm in the security line and somebody in front of me has a mirror bottle in their backpack and it almost happens every time do you say something

do you like it's hit and miss like sometimes if they're like busy yeah yeah yeah how do you like it it sucks oh yeah mine too usually it's i hey, nice bottle. And it's funny too, because most people are like, oh, thanks. I have no idea who you are. Yeah, majority have no idea. And every once in a while, I'm like, hey, nice bottle. And they're like, wait, didn't you start Mir? And I'm like, yeah, I did. And they're like, oh my gosh.

We selfie it out. And that's super fun. That's great. That's so great. Selfie it out. Yeah. Never heard that term before. Yeah, we don't hug it out.

We selfie it out. Yeah. Never heard that term before. Yeah, we don't hug it out. We selfie it out. But, you know, that autonomy is so important, I think, too. It's funny. I had a conversation a long time ago with a friend of mine. I've been an entrepreneur since I was 22 or 23, so real young. And we were having this conversation, and he's like, man, he's like, you know, it sounds cool, but I could never do it because it's so risky. And statistically, you know, you fail. And, you know, I like having the security of working for someone else, knowing when I can take my vacation time, knowing that I'm going to get paid a certain amount.

But for me, it feels the opposite. It's like working for someone else. I'm not in control necessarily what's going on. Like, I feel like if I work for me, if I succeed or fail, it's much more determined on me. So I feel more secure in that sense. Does that, do you identify with that? Does that resonate with you? Totally.

A hundred percent. And I think that's the great part of that. I think that's what helps make the world go around, right? Like we need people who want to be number two, want to be number 10 at the company, you know? And I think, I think that's the, the, the challenge of this day and age while information and technology has been democratized. And so there's access to like, anybody can like use their iPhone, source something from Alibaba, flip it on eBay,

flip it on Amazon and make some money. And that's great. But like to, to truly be an entrepreneur, like stick it out and like see something and it's, it's not for everybody. And that's okay. You know, I think that's the misconception now is like, it's glamorized of like, oh, you get to work for yourself and you get to make more money and blah, blah, blah. Like most of that isn't true. Um, no, you get to work for yourself and you get to make more money and blah, blah, blah. Like most of that isn't true. Um, no, you take less vacation time,

less time off paying everybody else. You're exactly, you do a lot of shit that you would look. I tell you what, you own a company, you're going to clean the bathrooms and you're going to do some shit that you would never do if you worked for someone else in a particular position. Right.

But the way I've told people is I'm unemployable and I don't mean unemployable in the sense that I don't have skills and whatever. I'm unemployable that I just don't want to work for anybody else. I'm motivated by that. Yeah. And I think that that's a... What do you guys see that's really different now? Because what's neat, I love getting in a room where there's this many entrepreneurs that have been doing it for as long. I mean, you've been an entrepreneur since you were basically a teenager. What do you see different, like that's really different today about building a business than what it was like building as a kid. That's completely opposite or different than what we were when we were younger. I mean, for starters, it's like, it's

like cool now, which is, which is good and bad. I mean, it is what it is. That's just an observation. Like people think it's cool to be an entrepreneur. Yeah. Gary Vee, you know, and hats off to Gary Vee because he even called, he calls it like it is like, it's not for everybody, you know? And that it's for, it's not for most people and it's not, yeah, I'd even go as far as it's not for most people and that's okay. You know, and he always talks about, it's better to be number seven at Facebook than number one at no book, you know, like if money is, you know, if money's your sole thing, but I think the, one of the biggest things is, is access to everything, right? You have access to factories, you have access to online. If you want to start a company that does a million a year, and again, I don't want to sound arrogant that anybody can do it, but literally,

if you have a decent idea and there's a significant amount of customers out there, and you can show up with a quality product and serve the customer, you'll probably make it to close to a million dollars. And there's nothing wrong with a nice book of business of a quarter million dollars, million dollars, and you can do it from your phone. Like the whole, the whole four hour work week, what Tim, you know, Tim Ferris, I mean the, the, the, he admits that the title is basically to sell books, but the concept of being able to work anywhere in the world, like I have a buddy who like lives in Thailand and sells coconut oil and travels the world and sources coffee and loud like so you couldn't do that 10 years. Dude, Brian, I tell you like liberating. If you were to

view it as a picture, the barrier to enter the market before 15 years, 20 years ago was massive. Like you had to start a storefront. What it cost you six figures to invest to start this thing, then to float it, and then you're limited by the amount of reach that you have today. Like look, look at the equipment that we have in this studio to record you know video audio quality stuff 20 30 years ago this equipment would have cost close to seven figures yeah totally you know today it's like if you got 10 grand you could probably buy amazing amazing video and recording equipment and maybe even less doug's probably thinking that's that's a lot of money right and it's and it's it's true so it like, well, not really. We spent a little more than that,

but it's about a drone for that. Well, dude, the camera on your phone, you know, how much would that, would that quality have cost? You know, 10 years ago, we all, I mean, we started this business and we don't share this, this is often, but we all put $1,000 in. Yep. That's awesome. I love that. Yeah. Everybody put $1,000 in and you know, we didn't pay ourselves for a very long time. Yeah. And that's, and that's, I think that's the biggest difference is if you want to be an entrepreneur. And I think that word entrepreneur is expanded, which is fine. You know, like people who want to own their own destiny. So like, you know, you have gym owners or people that will like want to be like, there's now a wider spectrum of entrepreneurs of like people who are self

starters or want to work for themselves. It's almost like the consultant is kind of creeped in entrepreneur, which is totally fine. If you want to be an entrepreneur, quote unquote, entrepreneur now more than ever, there is no excuse not to try at least try it. Right. Because here's the reality. If you fail, you're and you're a smart person. You're probably gonna be able to go back and be fairly employable. Are you, do you have a fear of failure at all? Are you cool with it? No, you know, it's, it's funny. I like people ask me like, how do you deal with like the, the, the risk of like, Oh, you gotta like, you know, have money and a bank line and you have to grow and there's employees, you know, payroll and all that stuff. And by no means do I

ever want mirror to like not exist and we want to keep growing and doing well, but I am 100% comfortable that if mirror goes bankrupt tomorrow and I have to move in with my in-laws and eat rice and beans for a year to get back onto my feet. Like, I'm honestly okay with that. And it sounds weird. Like people like I wouldn't live my in-laws, you know, but like, I honestly am okay with that. If I had to live in their guest bedroom, Sienna has to sleep in our same room. I'm totally fine with that. I think that's what makes you feel, um, that, uh, attitude is what makes you feel not fearless, but okay with being afraid. You know what I'm saying?

It's almost like you're- Getting comfortable with the worst case scenario. Yeah, it's like getting in a boxing match. You're okay with getting punched because you know that's part of the fight and you're going to hit the guy harder or whatever. You have to be okay with getting punched and expect that it's going to happen. And you're not going to make decisions based on fear.

Now, the check is you have to have people around you who are like, let's make good risk. Our C risk. Like our CFO, he talks about good risk. Like there's bad risk where it's like too many product lines, too many calculated risk of like, you know what? We're going to ramp up inventory because we're seeing this trend happen. That's probably a good risk to take if you want to grow your business. How important, how important, right? Do you think it is for you to have staff or people around you that actually would run a business differently than you or have different type of strategies or mindsets. We talked earlier about the, Sal brought up the artist and then the other, what'd you say the

other person? Just a pure entrepreneur. Yeah. Just a pure entrepreneur where they would want to flip it, sell it, just make it profitable. Do you have people within your company that are like that, that are kind of polar opposites? Oh man. Yeah. We had a great, great, I don't want to call it an argument, it was more of just like heated discussion recently with our leadership team. And it was fantastic because we have one of our leadership team members

who is so seasoned, such a brilliant guy. I mean, he basically ran operations for Microsoft doing all the Windows 95 globally back when you had to like burn CDs and like shrink wrap them, you know, and distributed that through Asia. So like super duper ops guy and super process it oriented. And they have me on the other end. Who's like, I love room for serendipity and coincidence and like the flexibility

and more artist side. Yeah. So more, a little bit more of the artist side. And so something in the middle is, is probably a healthy balance for us. And so, you know, Nick's always pushing for like, you know, more purpose in meetings and why are we doing this and structure, structure, structure, which can be good. And I'm always, and I'm kind of more of the antithesis of that of like, yeah, we need good process and, and whatnot, but also like things happen when you don't have every minute planned to a T right. So there's, there's kind of good middle ground. I'd say our CFO is kind of in that middle ground. And the thing that like connects those two pieces together for us is basically being able to trust each other. And that's because if, because if Nick and I don't trust each other, it's not going to work. But if we trust each other and the rest of the team trusts each other, we're going to meet

somewhere in the middle about how are we going to move forward? How are we going to make decisions? What product are we going to launch next? It's that open communication. It's that you encourage the disagreement. I love that. I think uh we've built that within this company too it's respect we respect each other enough to like i respect justin and adam and doug enough to where they can tell me i have a stupid idea or i'm an idiot or what i did was dumb and i respect them enough to consider it because nobody wants to be told pissed you know or well i mean it's gonna hurt my ego it always does right but but i respect them enough to stop and be like okay well i respect them they're smart people maybe they're right so let me consider what they're saying and and i think

that's important that's so far the businesses that we've met in this this podcast allows us the opportunity to meet some really uh incredible you know companies and businesses and so far the most successful ones are the ones that we really so far, the most successful ones are the ones that we really enjoy working with the most have a blend of that. Like you can clearly see, like there's the artist, there's the business guy,

and there's the organized person. The accountant over here. Yeah, and they all kind of understand that and work together and respect each other. And I think that's an important aspect. Well, I learned that lesson in like my early 20s, like leading teams of people that were between 20, 30 people underneath me I learned that lesson in my early 20s, like leading teams of people that were between 20, 30 people underneath me.

And early on in my early 20s, I had a lot of success by myself. And so I would seek out others like me and try and develop them to be as good as me. And that burned a lot of people out. And I had to work really hard all the time. I was still successful, but I found that it was a lot of work for me to do that.

When I started to look at my staff and my team more like a football team and recognize this is my quarterback, this is my wide receiver, this is my running back, this is my defensive end, and how different all those players on a team are, and to be okay with that, I know that even though we're all going in the same direction, my defensive end is not going to know how to quarterback the ball. So don't try and force it. And you don't want them to. Right. And you don't want them to and to be okay with those different positions. It took me a while before I piece it. Once I did, I realized how much more success I had and then how much easier the success came. So I think a lot of people make that mistake. I think we try and hire or try and look for people that all agree with us or have the same exact

vision where, you know, I think where we're at, we're more seasoned entrepreneurs that we know that, listen, I want the guy who thinks completely different than me. And then the other guy who's polar opposite, and I want to pit them against each other. And I want us to be able to take the greatest parts of each of them. And then together, the company grows. Absolutely. But Brian, what are some of the biggest mistakes you've made so far? Because you guys have been in business now for 10 years. You're successful. But I'm sure there's been some dumb decisions or mistakes that you've made along the way. We have so many good ones. I think the most boneheaded mistake that probably, quantifiably, you can actually be like,

this cost us this much money is so funny. It's so embarrassing. I've only shared this a few times. So this will be good to share again because it's just like, it's super humiliating. So we had, so at the, so in addition to bottles, at one point we also had a bike line that we sold to REI. We had kind of commuter bags, we had journals. So we had this like kind of active lifestyle portfolio. And then since then we've focused, which has been kind of a good, so like not a mistake because we've had some really good nuance with some of those product lines of like how we grew the company.

It was interesting, intriguing, but we've really gone, OK, what are we world class at? Let's let's lean into that. Right. And let's great lesson right there, by the way. Yeah. Just really leaning into that. So am I. But my fear was that everybody was getting the bottle. So I was like, oh, we got to pivot and do all these other products. And in fact, it's like, no, no, no. Even if everybody's getting into it, we're still the best. Right. Like like don't just get shaken just because other people are copying Hydra or you or Yeti or whatever. Um, but one of the most bonehead mistakes I made, I think this is like, gosh, 2013, 14. So we were making this kids balance bikes, you know, those bikes without training wheels. It was a super successful product

that we're selling an REI. Every bike that we sold would help get refugees in the U S or like kids who couldn't afford bikes on a bike. So like super noble message resonated really good, really good margin, really good product for REI. And this is just wild. This happened. So our supplier in China, most suppliers don't have like at bike factory.com. It's like they have like Yahoo, but it's called one, two, three. like at bike factory.com. It's like, they have like Yahoo, but it's called one,

two, three. So what do you mean? What does that mean? Meaning like over here, you guys have like, you know, Adam at mind pump media.com. Right.

Over there. It's usually like at Yahoo.com or at one, two, one, two, three is like a Yahoo over there. So they have these emails. So no,

so a lot of people don't have company emails. Oh, I see at factories. If you're like at Starbucks, yeah, you have a Starbucks email address over in China. Right. But like, it'd be like you using your Gmail to run your business here and here it's perceived as like not professional over there. No one cares. And we had been communicating over this email address, my email address, their email address,

their email got hacked. So their email address was literally like a string of eight digits at something, something.com. They hacked their email address somehow, sent them an email that said, Hey, this is Brian from mirror. My email address has changed to BP mirror, something, something at mirror gmail.com. Something where you're like, what the fuck? Like my email would never change to that. Right. But they didn't think anything of it. They didn't think anything of it. They're like, okay. So they started emailing this fake email address. And then from that fake email address, they started sending out messages to me that was one digit off of their email address.

So then they started hacking you. No. So I never got hacked. They had a, they had an intermediary account. So the, they, they intercepted the factory, said my email address changed. So this factory is emailing this fake email account. That's not me. Then they're taking their emails, copying them and pasting them and sending them from the new email address that they created

that looked like theirs with one number off. So it never, so like our threads literally like never changed. You know how Google lumps threads. So our emails are on Google. So like all the messaging was still in the same thread, even though the email, I have to say that's brilliant. It was, it was brilliant. And so literally for six months, we got messages back and forth, photos, PO, or maybe it was like a couple months.

It might've been shorter than that. Literally a copy and pasting our responses back and forth. And then as soon as we had to wire money for some of the product, I got an email and I said, Hey, just want to let you know on the perform invoice, the bank account is slightly changed. We moved.

Oh shit. And it was one of those things where like, I always sent test money to accounts with a new factory always oh and it was one of those things like oh no problem cool send to the bank and they like hey new bank account i'm gonna get it's fine they call me hey do you want to authorize ten thousand dollars this factory send it whatever and three days later like we haven't received your payment and i'm like what yeah it's out of my i sent it and they're like no no you haven't sent it and i was like no i sent it and they're like no no we haven't received it i'm like, what? I sent it. And they're like, no, no, no, you haven't sent it. And I was like, no, I sent it. And they're like, no, no, we haven't received it. I'm like,

release the goods. Cause like with shipping, there's a bill of lading, they can release it. Blah, blah, blah. And so we're like, I'm like, what? And this factory didn't speak very good English. And so I called my buddy who's, who's Chinese, who owns a bunch, who owns a bunch of factories. And he's kind of my homie over there. So I call up, I called my buddy Ellis and I'm like, Ellis, you got to get on the phone with these guys and figure out what's going on. So we're on the phone and it's like just yelling back and forth, you know, in Chinese.

And, and there else is like, they're saying they sent it. I'm like, they didn't send it. And then all of a sudden I'm like, I'm looking through my emails and I finally find like the email where they're like the digit changed.

I'm like, Oh shit. Whoa. I just got scammed. And so we, so we started to get to the bottom of it and they're like deep scam. Oh, it was, it was crazy. So anyway, you got it. You got almost respect. I got to kind of hand it. I'm like, you got me. You did a good job. Yeah. Yeah. You can keep it. So we ended up, we ended up splitting the factory. Cause my, my presses preface was like,

yo, your email got hacked. That's your problem. And they're like, yeah, but you sent the money without calling us. And I'm like, well, so well so what happened did you did they get away with the money they got away so ellis was like wow it worked your net like we contacted the bank of you know wherever we wired it china you're never gonna see that money again wow what a hustle got my ass handed to me those motherfuckers yeah yeah that shit so that was like just a bonehead you know like i mean though i mean how many people would that happen to i mean i'm not gonna lie listening to that story like i could have got had the same way i mean man who's going and actually going scam yeah i have i have a buddy that and people are more privy to it now but i had a buddy

who got a call from someone's like this is the IRS. You owe us back taxes, this and that. We're going to, yeah. And they went back and forth and he ended up giving them like eight grand over the phone to pay his taxes. And the problem with this, the reason why he gave into it is because I think a lot of people-

It's the fear. Yeah, they kind of cheat a little bit or lie a little bit. So then they feel guilty and they're fearful. I'm like, oh, fuck. They got me. Four grand, I just got to get out of this? Oh, that's it? It was only 20. Yeah, exactly. He gave him like eight grand or something like that oh my gosh what's the other one they do where they they the people email you

like oh i'm stranded over in in europe right now with i lost my i got stolen they call that the nigerian yeah the nigerian prince or whatever if you help me release my money, I'll give you half of my money. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. I know people. That sounds real. That sounds realistic. Wow. That's crazy. I want to talk to you a little bit more about the main charity work that you guys do, because you covered how you guys give money and give us a certain percentage of your revenue or whatever. What is this organization? What do you guys do? Yeah. So what we, what we committed to from day one was we were giving back to clean water, um, around the, around the world. So part of the, uh, Genesis part of the story is, you know, 2009 when I started, I was like, all right, we're gonna make bottles. And I was like,

what are we going to give back to? And I honestly had no idea. I knew bottles. I saw the opportunity, saw the market opportunity there. And then from where we were going to give, I was like, I have no idea what we're going to give to, you know, and I something, right. And so Hulu, we're beta testing Hulu in what, February, 2009. And Jason Kyler had given ad space to Scott Harrison, who started charity water, which is this really great nonprofit out of New York. That's addressing the clean water crisis. And so Scott had made this ad that was basically a billion people lack access to clean water and you can help. And it's super affordable. And it was one of those things where you're like, oh man, water bottles, clean water, like made sense. Let's do this, you know? And so that was kind of the very start was like, Hey, we're going to get back to clean water. Uh, let's give a dollar per bottle

because that can make material difference in someone's life in Africa, Southeast Asia, Central America. And so that was, that was kind of the start of it of clean water. And then from there, it's like, it's, it's kind of crazy how we, how we ended up getting to Liberia. So our first giving project was actually, well, maybe our first giving project was charity water. So we started funding charity water, started sending them money for our, for our sales. And I called him up and I said, Hey, I want to go and experience what other people experience. Like, I feel like it's inauthentic for me to talk about giving people clean water when I've never like met these people or like experienced their struggle. Like I would love to go on a trip and like experience this. And they're like, we don't

do donor trips. I was like, Oh, bummer. Like that's okay. Boom. Close door. Um, and then that summer. So like right as we launched the brand in 2010 so this so like i'm talking to charity water because i wanted to i wanted to like pre-fund it i was like i want to like get some good going so basically i like ponied up like five grand for for clean water and i was like all right i know we're gonna sell this much and then i didn't know i just had an assumption that i'd sell as much, so we're at this photo shoot and my buddy, John Keatley, who is a amazing portrait photographer. He's done the portrait photographer, uh, photography for like Howard Schultz book cover, Jeff Bezos, Sarah Palin, he's photographed Annie Leveritz, um, tons of people, really famous guy. And we went to school

together and he called me up and he was like, Hey, I heard you guys, you're launching a business. I'd love to help you out. And so we want to do this funny ad campaign. If you actually go to Google and Google water beard or mere water beard, we had this idea of like making fun of Nalgene because we were making the bottle. So you wouldn't spill water on your face. And with Nalgene, it's like, you know, you spill the water, water gets all over your face, like with this water beard concept. So we started taking these photos and, um, and at the, at the photo shoot, this gal that John knew who was one of the models, Courtney, she goes, I love, I love what you guys are talking about. Oh, this gal that John knew, who was one of the models, Courtney, she goes,

I love what you guys are talking about. Oh, there it is. Yeah, there you go. Yeah, that's Courtney. That's actually really cool. So, you know, you see the Nalgene down in the corner, you know, kind of knocking them. Respect. I grew up on Nalgene. But Courtney goes, hey, you know, I don't, I'm not really into networking, but my brother-in-law builds wellsalgene's. Um, but, um, Courtney goes, Hey, you know, I don't, I don't, I'm not really into networking, but my brother-in-law builds wells in Liberia. Like you should talk to him. I'm like, all right. So I'll talk. So I talked to Daryl. He lived in Seattle. He was a, he was a full-time firefighter. And on the side, he had started this nonprofit building wells in Liberia. Cause his, and he'd been doing it for like 10, 20 years. His grandparents were missionaries

there for like 40 years. And so when he went over to go visit his grandparents, he was like, what do you, what do you need? Like, what is the thing that you need besides Jesus? And they were like clean water. And he's like, all right, I'm going to start raising money for clean water. So we started doing all these clean water projects. So anyway, darn, I, we chat and he goes, Hey, I'm going in February. Do you want to go? And I was like, I'd love to go. And so we knew that we'd fund two water projects based on sales. would love to go. And so we knew that we'd fund two water projects based on sales. So my dad, my wife, um, John Keatley and one of my first employees, Travis, um, who Taylor, you're like his doppelganger. Like you look like Travis walls. Everybody needs, everybody needs a tail. Everybody needs a Taylor. Yeah. Yeah. Google Travis walls. Um, um, and so we went there and it was like,

it was an unbelievable experience. Um, not only like how we got there, but just like to go there and meet the people that Darrell had been working with for, for years and years. And, um, so that was kind of the start of it. Um, but we learned a lot there cause there were, we'd walk around Buchanan, uh, which is about two hours outside of Monrovia on the coast. And you'd see wells, clean water wells and, and, uh, kind of pits everywhere. And you're like, well, why don't these work and they're like oh well you know un would come in dig a well and leave nobody knows how to keep it going that's how to keep it going nobody knows how to fix it such a common problem and you're like holy cow like you hear about this and you go and experience it you're like this is embarrassing like here's all this

well-intentioned work just going to waste and like i think it's it's a super high stat like 50 of water projects fail within the first couple years um that Um, that's crazy. Well, you can't, it's like you're giving them something and then you're not preparing them on how to, or teaching them how to maintain it or, and this, this is a common problem with charities. I know.

Totally. Was it Haiti where we, we destroyed the rice market. Oh yeah. A hundred percent. Completely killed there. Cause they had a, a,

a, you know, relatively thriving, you know, thrive, uh, uh, rice market.

And we just donated a shit ton of rice and it smashed that market there. So all the businesses and stuff that grew rice and harvested and whatever went out of business. And then the people there now don't have rice. Once that rice runs out. And the farmers stop farming and the lands use for something else.

Happened in Africa too. We just gave them so much food that now a couple generations have gone by that don't know how to farm. And so now they're not, they don't know how to maintain. So what do you, what do you guys do differently? Do you guys go in there and train? And yeah, so it's, I mean, it's finding good partners first and foremost. And I think that's potentially a big difference between us and other social enterprises that, you know, when people are like, Oh me, are you building wells? No, what we do is like we make design and manufacture and sell the best possible product in the world. And that's what

we focus on. The giving aspect of it comes out of our desire to be generous as a company. And then we choose nonprofits based on like really strict criteria of like durability, sustainability, how long have they, have they been along nonprofit? What is their results? What is their failure rate? And so two of our nonprofits splash and water first water first both have like 98 success rates over the last decade how do they how do they rate the success rate so they i mean they literally well keep going i would imagine yeah it keeps going if it's still working um splash has this incredible system i can't remember it's like salesforce or tableau on the back end but you can literally go onto their website and look at the well and see how much water came out of it. Like yesterday, it might even be live.

So it's like technology now with like, with just like internet solar, you can literally get this information like almost real time, which is really, really cool as far as transparency, accountability is huge. So part of it's just picking really good partners and the really good partners are the ones who are there who hire locals.

They don't like bring some Western guy in to save the world. That's the complete wrong mentality. So it's going in and finding partners who actually know how to implement solutions, how to train on solutions. Did you have to vet a lot of other companies before you found those, or did you have connections? Someone's like, you've got to check this company out. Yeah, you can kind of sniff it out a little bit.

At first, everybody's like, oh, clean water. We do it. And you're like, cool, let's write you a check. And then you start to look at it and you're like, well, they've been around for a couple of years. Maybe we shouldn't like, here's a good failure. We, we funded a water project in, it was a super small project. It was like, I can't remember, like, like a grand or something like that. It was in Laos. And one of our buddies, um, had been doing it in Laos and successful water project worked. Then the government came in and literally moved the village to somewhere else for some reason. I don't know if they're

logging or whatever else, literally move the entire village out of there. So now this clean water project, it probably works, but like the government moved the village, right? Like, so, you know, the things like that, where it's like, you know, that's just, that's just, you gotta, you try to factor those things in. But, and then as we've grown,'ve brought on people like Nick, our chief impact officer, who has run foundations. He's run nonprofits. He has a really deep history in understanding what does durability look like? What does sustainability look like? What does it look like on the ground?

Who are they hiring? What's the end goal? Do they want to be there forever? Do they not want to be there forever? How do they basically hand the keys over as fast as possible in a sustainable way to the local communities? Do you, do you still visit or do you ever visit these communities that you guys are? Yeah, yeah, absolutely. So we were, our team was just in Honduras. Um, I wasn't able to make that trip in February. Um, so they were down there in February. I think the last trip I was on was in Myanmar, uh, which was unbelievable

experience. I was two years ago, I think, right before our daughter was born. We were in Myanmar, which Cyclone Nargis, 2008, I think, was when it happened. That massive cyclone came through. Unbelievable devastation. Literally, near the Bay of Bengal, the sea swelled up to 12 feet.

When it's already sea level, you're basically on roofs. You go in these communities and you'd meet the families. They're like, oh, well, you know, this is my son and my half son and my half daughter. And you're like, what? And you realize that some of these communities, like half the population, so 500 people, 250 of them died in the cyclone. And then after they'd band together and create new families. So it's kind of this like interesting, cool thing that happened after,

um, you know, obviously not the, the dismantling of families and the death, but that people were so resilient, they started new families with people who were left. Um, the challenge is it's brackish water. They're out on the bay. So they're shrimping, you know, a lot of that sort of, um, um, kind of trade, I guess. And so you can't dig a well cause it's brackish, it's saltwater. So people can come by and sell water. Oftentimes it brackish, it's saltwater. So people can come by and sell water. Oftentimes it's contaminated or it's saltwater. That's just a scam. Everyone's trying to scam man. Um, so what we were doing with this, with this nonprofit, um, was building basically, uh, rainwater retention ponds. So half the year it's, it's monsoon. So it rains. So these ponds collect rain for half the year. So that fills up, they have this massive pond that gets them through the rest of the year. Then inside their houses,

they have clay filters. So they go to the pond, scoop up water, go back to their house and filter the water. So that's the way that they get clean water out on the peninsula of Myanmar. Do you find it changes your, I guess, your perception or sense of purpose when you go to these places? Oh, a hundred percent. I mean, it grounds you, you know, you're in the US and it's like, you know, everything's on your phone and everybody wants your attention and they're, you know, the pace. And you, you start to realize that with, with a potential amount of success comes the, the, the decline of potential joy. And you go to these places where it's like, they don't have an iPhone. They don't have a TV. They don't have Hulu.

And they don't care, you know, like they're so joyful. They're happy to ride their, you know, they're on their bike. They have education. Like the simple things that matter in life are like exposed and you're like, Oh man, I've got it so backwards. You know, like, like I'm just looking for a fresh pair of Nikes, you know? Right. Wow. That's crazy. So yeah, that they're really humbling experiences because you realize that like joy is not tied to wealth. Right. What did you say you were here for again? You're, you're getting ready to head up to Santa Cruz, right? Yeah. We're going out to, um, conscious company leader forum. Um, so conscious company magazines putting on a, um, kind of a leadership forum on how to be a better leader and whatnot. And speaking up there, trying to get in some surfing. We'll see.

Have you been there before? Have you done this before? Oh, so this is your first time. And then, and then tell me a little bit about it. Like how. Is there a lot of people that show up to this? Do you sell tickets? Do they sell tickets? Yeah, I think they sell tickets on Conscious Company's website. I should be more informed about this. I was honestly focused on this. I was like, I can't wait to see the mind.

That's cool. We surpassed him. I like that. Down here to hang out with us. A couple hundred people, you know, and a lot of like-minded companies who are using businesses to improve the world. I love that direction. I feel like it's becoming more cool to do that.

And I feel like that's the right direction. You know, who is it? The founder of Whole Foods wrote a book called Conscious Capitalism. You know, it's that whole, that whole like, you know, markets are great, but you also have to, or you don't have to,

but you should have some responsibility. And don't have to, but you should have some responsibility. And I feel like as a, as an entrepreneur myself, you know, there's, there's some, some, you've seen a sense of purpose, like otherwise you'll end up finding that you make all the money and you're super successful and you'll still find yourself like unfulfilled. Yeah. You know, and you look at like these people who have a mass wealth or they're creating wealth and it's like, well, why are they like mentoring that person? Why are they given to this nonprofit? Because it's that sense of purpose when you're able to develop and help others.

You know, it's, I mean, listen, I didn't get here by just being, you know, a badass and starting this company. It's like Rick taught me everything he knew. I made some money with him, put it in the mirror, had a ton of people come around me and, you know, want to join on to the mission and build the company. So it's there's there's a lot of purpose in being able to give back and doing something with with people. Right. Like if you're doing a podcast by yourself, it probably super boring, but totally. No, we all agree. We all agree on that one. Solo podcasts are the worst. Yeah, that's right. I think that's that is really the magic is that we're all so uniquely different that I think by ourselves,

I don't think the podcast would be nearly as special for sure. No, not at all. So when's your boy or girl come into the world? You got a baby on the way. Got a baby on the way. Yeah, August. No reveal party? I've seen those.

The reveal party would be like you'd be in the room. You'd have exclusive access. It was actually funny. Our daughter, we didn't know with our daughter either, which is funny. Cause most people are like, that's super untraditional. Like everybody's wants to find out like from day one. Right. And everyone's like, well, it's a surprise when you find out. And I'm like, it's also a surprise when you go into your parents' closet and find your Christmas gifts. Like it's a surprise, but it's also, I don't know. I mean, are you hoping for one or the other? Does it matter? You know, it's a surprise, but it's also, I don't know. I mean, are you hoping for one or the other?

Does it matter? You know, it's a funny question because people are like, oh, you want a son, right? And because you already have a daughter. I have a daughter. It's a good assumption. I'd love to see the balance, like just the difference in like how they interact. But growing up with three sisters, you know, my wife, super strong personality, my grandma kind of matriarch of the family.

Like I'm around a lot of women, like all the time, like our, like our CFO is a female. Like it's just one of those things where like growing up with three sisters kind of matriarch of the family like i'm around a lot of women like all the time like our like our cfo is a female like it's just one of those things where like growing up with three sisters kind of i'm cool with like if i had three daughters i wouldn't be just people like oh you want your son i'm like i'm good you know like especially you know nowadays like it sounds so cliche to say this but just like having a healthy family is like p1 you know and so like i should be so lucky to just have a healthy baby of course of course and it doesn't matter what i mean what the baby is boy or girl once it's there it's like you'll love it totally doesn't really matter and kids are so different from individually speaking that you know you have expectations well good luck with that totally totally but i think it

would be cool to have uh you know just a different gender to see you know if i had a boy i'd be interested to have a girl next. I'm pumped though. It's going to be chaos. Having one and then going from one to two, it's not double. It's almost like quadruple. There's a big difference between one

and two. I don't know if you can agree with that. Yeah, but still manageable. I don't know how people do three. That's my thing. My parents are like four kids. Two kids. See, I would think that it would be easier with two than it would be one almost. Eventually, right?

How the hell do you figure that? Well, that's how it is with my bulldogs. Yeah, they play with each other. So like, you know what I'm saying? Like, I didn't have to train the second one as much as I had to train the first one. It's just like, now I can let them play together. They got a built-in buddy. Yeah.

That's right. It is nice. How much does that happen? what seven yeah i would say like yeah well for for my boys it was when uh my youngest was four and then they really started to hang out and like play together and go outside do things together like build things together so yeah it took a while but once they got to like you know a little bit older it became like their best buds yeah yeah maybe it's different because he's got two boys and you have a boy and a girl no they love they play with i mean i couldn't imagine not having both of my kids and i love them it's just it's just a lot of work and then the a lot of the work is in the it's always work right but in the early stages when they're infants and you're

and then when they start crawling and you got to watch out what they're doing like that whole process that is that is that is a lot of work yeah see i can imagine that but then i would think when they start getting to the age of three four and they can kind of play with each other and they're expensive where you used to you know what i mean come on bro it all adds up you know what i'm saying what do they say elephant in the room yeah yeah like and you're like oh that's another you know three million dollars invested yeah yeah well i'm a perfect example of what it's like when you don't have kids all All the shit that I get to do is for the people. How the fuck do you do all that stuff all the time? I don't have fucking kids, man. My partner's like, I just went wakeboarding this weekend.

It was awesome. What'd you guys do? He's like, hey, what'd you guys do yesterday? Because we just decided to go to the movies. It's like, really? You just decided? You just decided? You didn't get a sitter?

You just went? Yeah, because that shit doesn't really happen that much. Anyway. I'm just glad the kids don't start walking when they come out of the womb. It's good that there's like- Like other yeah yeah yeah like just run off right how shocking would that be you're just like ah because you know you get this like it's one of those things where like you find out you're pregnant you get nine months to like kind of like get a little bit of your act together and then all of a sudden it's like the baby's here but it's no doesn't

move very fast doesn't move anywhere just kind of eats and sleeps we give birth to fetuses is what we're doing yeah because of our massive heads and stuff otherwise it'd be weird if your kid was born with like teeth you know what i mean like oh my gosh oh shit one of my friends had a tooth their daughter was born with a tooth whoa yeah that's possible breastfeeding must have sucked yeah i can i can only not imagine well brian you're you're you know when we work with companies you know we like to know the people behind the companies because that's an important part of our partnerships. We have to believe in the people and the brand. And your company is a great example of that.

And I appreciate you and what you guys are doing. And it's always great talking to you, man. You're a cool guy. Oh, thank you. I appreciate you guys having me on the show. I'm bummed we didn't get into macros and maps and stuff. Oh, God. Macros? You're a pretty fit guy and active. Do you train in the gym as well? You did CrossFit for a while. Yeah, I did CrossFit. And then you hurt yourself.

That's weird. Yeah. Wait, CrossFit is weird. That's rare. Super competitive. Yeah. Do you still lift or do you just do like sports and stuff like that? I do both. Like I still lift, um, run a little bit. I'm running. I don't know. I'm not, I blew out my knee three years ago playing soccer. And so I'm not super into running. I'd rather go biking, like mountain biking or something. Yeah.

I'm with you on that, except I wouldn't do all of that. I'd rather not do it. Do you, what are your goal? What are your like goal? Do you just like to stay athletic? Yeah. You know, it's, um, it kind of changed after. So when I had, uh, my daughter, Sienna, you can take your kid to the gym for like, what's four to six months. Cause they're kind of just

chilling. You know, you just throw them in the, in the car seat and hang them from a, not the kid, the car seat from the band, you know, like we'd throw the band over the, you know, the bar and they just kind of bounce there, you know, it's working out and like deadlifts don't wake them up. So they kind of sleep so that we were my wife and i we were doing like crossfit two years before um she was born which i mean my wife was like doing deadlifts the day before sienna was born so she's like super fit that's awesome uh then we got back in the gym right after i mean i was in it right away because it was one of those things where like i took some time off of work and it was really important and my fitness goals now are

just to be consistent because i've noticed that like when I'm down or like joy is depleted or I'm like stressed, there's two things. It's like, what have I been eating and have I worked out recently? And usually those map back to like, Oh, Nope. Haven't been working out. Oh, just had a bunch of cheeseburgers, you know, or whatever it is. So like right now my fitness goals are like just to be consistent, but I think it'll start to scale up in the next. Well, considering your exercise history and the fact that you've been very athletic, you know, soccer and skiing and, uh, you know, based on what you're saying, I think, uh, have we given you access to any of our programs? No, I'd love to be programmed. Can you program me? Yeah, I'll give you, I'll give you 5% off. No, I'm going to hook you on the

right track. I think MAPS performance is probably the program he would enjoy the most. Considering you do CrossFit, soccer, skiing, you like function, you like movement. You probably like MAPS performance, so we'll make sure to hook you up with that, and then we'll hook you up with the correctional exercise components so that you can prevent

any injuries and pains. So I do burpees correctly. There's no burpees in our program. I don't think we've ever programmed those. I don't know if it would sell if we did. No. Burpee is just one of those movements that's just for the sake of making you tired. It's a trainer's punishment, man.

That's what we use. It's like every client hated that. Go sit in the corner and sweat. It's literally like someone's like, what can I have someone do to make them sweat and hard? Oh, I know. Hit the deck and stand back up. There you go. Wasn't there a study though that showed

like your length of life is determined based on how quickly you can get off the ground from a flat position? It's actually, there's two things. There's actually, because there's a lot of factors, right? That's interesting. I've actually never heard that. Yeah, they're always trying to find a connection

between like one thing and longevity. One is how well you can get up off the floor on your own, and the other one is grip strength. So how strong your grip is relatively, I say relatively because compared to other things, it's better, good predictor of health. But, I mean, really, are they really good predictors? No, because if you go that route, I'll put you on Turkish get-ups anyway.

Oh, man, those are the worst. Yeah, absolutely. Way more functional. Way more functional. Because you can't do them fast. That's what makes them so much better. It's just the intention. It brings the intention back. Totally, because the burpees, that's how I hurt myself, was I was flying through burpees trying to beat my

buddy next to me, you know? Competitive, yeah. Oh, yeah. Yeah, I'm not competitive at all. Yeah, you'll like our program, man. Perfect. Well, thanks for coming on the show, brother. Thanks for having me.

Appreciate it. Always good times. Always good times. Thank you for listening to Mind Pump. If your goal is to build and shape your body, dramatically improve your health and energy, and maximize your overall performance, check out our discounted RGB Super Bundle

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