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live man like this man letting butterfly Flatini wing big
down in our force.
Speaker 2: Man, it gonna cause a tree.
Speaker 3: Fall, letting five thousand mile away. Man, nobody see nobody
else when you see you know, need no.
Speaker 4: Man, we don't like you.
Speaker 3: Follow in another story and.
Speaker 4: Again like that man, don't.
Speaker 2: Black a dag on pan right now?
Speaker 1: You don't?
Speaker 2: I know? All right, Lukespotkan, Welcome to Jay Burdens Show.
How you doing then doing good?
Speaker 3: Thanks for having me on.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's it's good to finally get this going. You
and I have some friends in common, and so it's
always interesting when you have sort of a you know,
a warm hand off. But I'm really excited to have
you on now. Obviously I am familiar with you, know
who you are and what you've done. In fact, I
use some of your old products basically every day.
Speaker 3: Cool, but some of my audience might not be. So
who are you and what do you do? Yeah? So
I'm a young, non educated, no high school diploma, no
college degree, homeschool kid who started a ulster manufacturing company
in twenty thirteen in Middle Tennessee. So we made you know,
holsters for modern handguns, mostly no revolvers, and launched that company,
marketed it on social media. This is you know, twenty
thirteen twenty fourteen, at the height of you know, Instagram
and some of the social media is going gangbusters. Facebook
was kind of doing its thing and it worked really well.
A company was successful. We grew rapidly into a forty
million dollar company over a decade. We were positioned really
well for COVID. We started doing a lot of different
kinds of products, nylon body armor type products, plate carriers,
things like that, retailing select products from other companies and
so we were. It's kind of hard to say what
the company was or is today because it sort of
it was a blend of a retail company, a hulster manufacturer,
creating over one hundred thousand holsters a year up until
recently when I left the company, and we were also
designing and developing soft good nylon products as well, so
we kind of did a little bit of everything, and
also had a lot of media presence online. I'm a
bit of a hate the word, but influencer, just because
of my time on social media and because of some
of the things that I did in the shooting space.
We got pretty big on YouTube, with a YouTube channel
of one point six million subscribers. I think my top
YouTube video has twelve million views on that channel. So
a lot of people, you know, in that farm space
know who I am. You know, they know the kinds
of things that I've been doing the last decade, and
that's all I've done, pretty much, is just work on
that company, build that company, and some stuff has changed recently,
but that's who I am, and that's what I've been
doing for the last twelve years now it's not even ten,
it's a little bit longer than that. So I tossed
a short short story.
Speaker 2: I want to ask about being homeschooled because I was
home skilled and that has a certain negative connotation right
in some In some settings, it was good for me.
I basically was just a free range child and like
ran around the woods and read a bunch of books
and you know, still can't spell with a gun to
my head. But I'm curious, right, what was that like
for you? And I mean, is that something you intend
to do with your children and.
Speaker 3: You have them? So homeschooling is it's different for everyone, right,
Like we've all met the weird homeschool kids. We've met
the homeschool kids that were a little bit more normal
but still weird. I think that connotation is also a
huge gross stereotype because if you look at public school
kids from the last decade, they're even weirder in a
lot of ways. In fact, that was one of the
discussion points for me and my wife when we started dating.
I think it was our second date. We got into
deal breakers. I was like, we're doing this deal breakers,
here they are, and one of mine was, we're going
to homeschool because I don't want to send my kids
to school for tons of different reasons, and she was
a little more on the fence, Like she knew there
were some issues in you know, the public schooling, private schooling,
like she knew, but she you know, I hadn't really
thought about it a whole lot. But then as we
saw things transpire with COVID, and as we saw things
come out more about like the transagenda, you know, things
like that, she was like, Oh, yeah, we're not sending
our kids to another institution where like we're not able
to really check in on what they're being taught. We're
going to homeschool them ourselves. Now, we have every intention
to bring in you know, tutors if we can, and
we're gonna work very hard so that we can do
that so they can get a high level of education
and not just rely on us because like math is
not my strong suit. I can teach my kids business,
I can teach my kids different things I've learned, you know,
in my life. But there's certain aspects of traditional schooling,
whatever that is, and that even needs some redefinition probably
in development that I'm not going to be able to
teach them and they'll have to get that from something else.
But my homeschool background, it very much sounds very similar
to yours. I ran around. We lived on a farm,
so it was a lot of farm chores. It was
not a lot of academic studies. It was a lot
of you know, milking cows, putting up, fencing chickens, you
know things like that. I hated reading. I always had
to be doing something that was a lot more stimulating,
and reading is just very slow and slow paced, and
so I always hated that. When I was younger, loved
playing video games, and then that usually that got throttled
because I played way too many video games and rules
got put in place. But uh, but for so for me,
my homeschooling education was I think it was okay. I've
known other homeschooling kids that get it's way more academic,
it's way more forced. And then I've also seen other
kids where they're not allowed to read any books until
they've memorized the Bible, and that caused serious issues with
those kids, you know, as I got to know them
as they got older, because they just did not understand
the world for what the world is. And that's not
a good way to raise your kids. You have to
raise your kids with an understanding of the world they
live in, and you can't just sort of put them
in in a padded cell utopian box. That's not setting
your kids up for success. So I think my homeschooling
situation it was I think it was good. I think
one of the things that was very helpful for me
was I was taught I can learn anything, and that
can be both good and bad. And I've seen that
go both ways, where kids think they're homeschoolers, think they're
so you know, no, it all teach you. I can
teach myself anything. I don't need professionals, And it's like, well,
hold on, like you actually do stilly to rely on
professionals who make this their life mission, you know, who
go study this thing for ten years, this one thing, Like, yes,
they're going to know more than you even if you
go read online for a couple hours. I think I
got just the right amount of I could teach myself
you know stuff, and I need to, but I also
need to go rely on experts. And I learned that
with my business that it was a healthy amount for me.
But I've seen that go wrong for other people in
some of my environment and some of my community that
I came from where they really thought they knew more
than everyone else. And so the homeschooling, it's it's such
a tough one because everybody tries to make it a formula.
They try to say, teach your kids this much reading,
this much history, this much math, this much you know,
street smarts, and nobody really has it figured out, and
every kid learns differently, Like for me, I love video games.
Growing up. Eventually it was sort of throttled and taken
away from me, which is probably good. But all that
video game playing now I actually think was helpful for
me and developing how I learn different things and how
I multitask. I still play a lot of video games,
some high level video games, and that I know for
a fact translates to a lot of my work and
how well I'm able to work, how well I'm able
to shoot, how well I'm able to make decisions, very
fast decisions. And there's been tons of studies showing people
who play video games who grew up playing video games
people who didn't grow up playing video games, and the
decision making process and the problem solving process between those
two groups of people is radically different. And so I think,
you know, early on in my homeschooling. You know, early on,
in the early two thousands, late nineties, you know, video
games bad for the most part. Most home homeschooling parents
thought that. But now I actually think some of that
has to change, which is now some video games are
actually good for development. We live in an electronic like
computer society where everything runs on computers. I actually want
my kids to understand how all of that works, and
they learn that through playing video games. I don't want
them to just be stuck to reading a couple of books,
because that's not going to teach them a whole lot
to be successful. So we are going to homeschool, me
and my wife. We're going to do it very differently
than you know, how we were raised. She went to
public school, she went to college. She's a chemical engineer,
so she's had a very traditional, you know, schooling background.
I had a very not traditional schooling background. And I
think we're going to find something in the middle, and
I think it's going to be really cool. I think
our kids are going to be super involved in the businesses,
not forced into being in the businesses. I think that
could be a problem, but they're going to be in
it around it all the time and going to you know,
the different business trips that we go on. They're going
to see us working all the time. They're going to
see my wife, you know, talking to lawyers in the evening,
or I'm talking to you know, some vendor, or I'm
flying somewhere last minute, and they'll see that, and I
think that's really good for them to see. And we
also are trying to figure out how to make some
of that more normal for them, or not normal. But
let them understand, it's going to sound horrible. We don't
want them to see how we live and think everyone
lives that way, because it's not true. And so we're
trying to figure out how to balance our crazy entrepreneur
lifestyle to hey, not everyone lives this way with these
crazy schedules or eating fancy steaks sometimes or often, or
whatever business dinners and stuff. This is how we do
it because we've worked hard for it, and so we're
trying to figure that out. And we're going to figure
that out and make mistakes along the way. A very
long winded way to answer your question, but the hopesto
was good for me. I think some parts weren't, and
some parts had to learn the hard way, and that's okay.
I mean, that's just how it is. I don't think
anyone's schooling is perfect.
Speaker 2: So well, yeah, I mean there's a lot to that.
So I was I was sort of half and half.
I was homeschooled halfway through, and then my parents sent
me to a Christian school, which I think was very good.
You know that there wasn't much more they could teach
me and I needed some structure in my life. But
I think there's another part of it, which is kids
really aren't all the same. And I was on a
track before I was homeschooled to be put in like
the special program because I just refused to learn how
to read. I was like, yeah, I don't want to
do it. And you know, the conclusion was, no, he's
just really stubborn. There's nothing wrong with him per se.
But I mean, you know, if you get set on
that track at age six, you're kind of cooked, right,
Like it's difficult to break out of that. So I
think that's certainly a part of it. And you know,
I'm glad you brought up raising kids in the business
because this is something I experienced. My grandfather was an entrepreneur,
for a variety of reasons. He you know, did a
lot of raising me, and that was incredibly positive because
you know, you mentioned right this you know, sort of
canard that homeschoolers are weird, and it's like, well, okay,
well weird compared to what, right, the average product of
a public school good, you know, like you don't want
to be that, you know, Yeah, But I think one
of the really positive things is that I was exposed
to a lot of you know, real conversations with adults.
I was doing runs with him. He would make me
go in and talk to a vendor, you know, talk
to a customer, something like that, and so very quickly,
something that a lot of people don't develop until their
mid or early twenties, right, how to talk to an
adult was something that was just expected. And that's not
something you can put on a standardized test, right, I mean, like,
can you imagine right filling out a like the eye
contact bubble on the SAT. It sounds stupid, but that's
a very real skill set. And honestly, you know what
you said right off the rip there about you know,
what is going on in public schools. Like my wife
worked as a public school teacher. She taught art for
elementary so it's not like the most technical thing. But
a large part of the reason that she left is,
even in a conservative area, for whatever that's worth, she
was seeing what was going on, right, the sort of
other people that were getting hired, what they were trying
to communicate to kids, And it's like, well, not only
do I certainly not want my children doing that, but
you know, you sort of feel guilty by association, Like
wait a minute, I'm working as part of an organization
that promotes these sort of values.
Speaker 3: So I want to go back to.
Speaker 2: You founding a business right cause you mentioned right, don't
have a high school diploma, you don't have a college degree,
you don't have, in my mind, the most useless piece
of paper in the world, an MBA.
Speaker 3: Right, Oh yeah, what does that look like? Right?
Speaker 2: By the way, I've met literally one impressive person with
an MBA, and he was an impressive person before who
got one for free, So it's exactly fair enough everyone else.
It's just like, okay, I can discount everything you're about
to say, but sorry, side bone.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, correct, no, I have well on that. I
had a funny story where I've only interacted with one
person with an NBA and it was from social media
and he was talking just mad crap behind I didn't
know anything about business, and so I got in the
DMS or he DM me, and I was just like,
he was like, I could do a better job if
I was in your position. And this is back in
like twenty nineteen, so we were already doing like thirty
million in sales something like that. So I was just like,
I was like, okay, man, what would you do, Like
tell me what would you different? And he was like, oh, well,
I can't you know. And he couldn't give me anything,
not even a single suggestion even seeing the business. And
I finally pressed him on it was just like, yeah,
you've never run a business, you never started a business,
you know anything about business, and you're talking to a
guy who's been doing it for six years, like, you know,
good luck out there. And he didn't have anything for that.
But anyway, so long story short. So so starting the
business was interesting, and this is this is what's this
I think is this is an interesting part of my
story that has resonated with the a lot of people.
So I was the laziest person in our family, like
by far to the point I would get poked and
prauded about it. I don't want to say it made
fun of, because that sounds really bad.
Speaker 2: But it was encouraged.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I don't even know if I would say it
was more like it was more like the statements that
would just get made like so lazy, you know, it
wasn't really an encouragement. So everyone knew in the family
I would try to get out of work. I'd pot
off on my younger brother. Eventually I learned to like
the farm work. I had hung out with, actually, someone
who was a bad influence on me when I was
like fifteen. He was a farm country kid. But the
interesting thing with that was I learned to like work
from him. Even though he was a problematic influence just
character wise, he did seem to like the work and
he would do the work, and I picked that up
from him, so he could still learn things from questionable people.
And so I started to like the farm work. But
I but I was still lazy. And so as soon
as I had something that was interesting to me and
compelling to me, which was this business and making these products,
I was all in, and I mean all all in.
That's all I did. I didn't play video games. I
didn't I didn't go to parties. I didn't spend a
whole lot of time at church after lunch, like I
usually wanted to go, like take a nap or sleep.
Because I was working literally six days a week all
the time, that's all I did. I was so invested in,
so obsessive that I think that the obsessiveness from wanting
to play video games all the time when I was
younger translated as soon as I found an outlet. And
I've heard this from a lot of other young men
who are super like ADHD, lazy whatever. It's because everything
around them is so boring and dull that they have
to find something more interesting to grab their attention. Like
video games, you've got economy, you've got action, you've got
reaction time, decision making. Depending on what kinds of video
games you're playing, they're insanely mentally simulating. And then you
look at real life and a lot of it's like
pretty boring compared to that.
Speaker 2: It just is.
Speaker 3: And so if someone's listening to this who maybe has
a kid who seems like that where nothing around them
compels them, they may be one of these kids where
no they need something so high risk, so challenging, so
interesting to them for them to go from video games
that are also interesting to ooh, super complicated, hard to solve,
compelling project, business, whatever it is, to actually capture their attention.
And that's what happened to me. So I started the company.
I had like a thousand bucks from an inheritance a
grandparent died and I got a little bit of money,
and the tooling was cheap, four hundred bucks in some parts.
It is harbor freight tools from China, and was able
to make this stuff by hand, and which is or
fortunate because a lot of products that you can't get
into it that cheap. And I just would make I
would sell a few and then I would buy more stuff,
and I literally was funding it as I went. There
was no like massive capital infusion to run things, and
it was slow. The first year. It was painfully slow,
but I was so focused on that that I guess
I didn't really care about how long it was taking,
because you know, it's all I had, and I was
just deep into it that I just went in every
day made made holsters. And in the first winter, there
was no heating and air conditioning, so I'd bundle up
with like multiple jackets and make like five holsters and
then go home and send emails and ship them out
like the next day. And I did that for a
year before things started to really take off. And that's
often what it takes. And in my case, thankfully, you know, providentially,
I had a simple product that could make my hand,
didn't require a whole lot of capital. People online were
willing to trust me with their money, and I was
able to move the product and then market it on
social media. Didn't spend a dime on marketing traditional marketing
until I want to say, twenty eighteen. It was all
just self marketed through social media and the timing. This
is where people say like luck in business, and I
kind of agree with the concept. I also don't like
it because it could take away from the hard work
people do. But there was definitely a luck or providence
component of I started this back when social media was
fresh and new and it wasn't censored, Instagram wasn't coming
down on gun stuff yet. I was definitely there at
the right time. That definitely helped, But I still had
to be the one to identify that post post every day,
figure out what to post figure out what not to post,
figure out when to delete a comment, when not to
delete a comment, Like I still had to learn all that.
But that's what it was like starting the business. There's
a lot more I could say, but like it was
just coming in and doing the same thing every day.
But for me, it was so much multitasking emails, proct development, manufacturing, marketing,
social media. It was like playing a video game. It's
it's almost identical to playing a video game. I just
it was just in real life, which is cool.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's an interesting point if something I see is
as well, where a normal life, right whatever you want
to qualify that as where it's like, you know, you
have some sort of like nine to five job with
a certain amount of benefits. And let's be honest, many
of these jobs are not particularly difficult. There's a large
kind of social safety net. You may not be rich,
you may not have a great life, but the kind
of bare minimum level of existence is really not that
hard to do, right, Like, it's not something where it
takes that sort of you know, advanced level of decision
making and additionally, right, and I see, you know a
lot of guys, I'm in my mid twenties. So I
see a lot of guys kind of at the stage
where it's like, once they get that, it's kind of like, well,
why would I like working? You know X percent harder
doesn't get me that much more? So all my attention,
all of my energy is going into you know, something
like video games or you know, maybe some other kind
of more you know, like nefarious fights, right, And I
think a large part of that is that in that setting,
a lot of people are kind of insulated from making decisions.
To be honest, like what you do moment to moment
doesn't matter that much. It's not exciting, there's no risk
to it, and to be honest, there's in many cases
there's not that much reward. So like you know, you
read all these articles or you see these headlines about
you know, gen z is checking out, and it's like, okay, yeah,
that's not a good thing. But you can kind of
understand it, right, because it does feel like, okay, like
if everything around you is kind of pointless, right, it
feels as if there's no direct correlation, like you can
at least understand it, like it's not the correct thing
to do, but it is from a certain perspective rational
and as someone who's fairly recently kind of struck out
on my own, right, I don't have a real job anymore,
per se. It's kind of scary, right because you basically
want to jump in. You don't have that safety net,
and if you mess up, it's not like you get fired,
per se. It's like the thing you built goes away
and you're a loser, right, But at the same time,
like and you're sort of grabbing on to that like
what you know, Ted Kaczinski that you know, the famous
mail bomb guy, what called like the power process, right,
and making decisions that actually matter for you, And like,
aside from any financial motivation, that's incredibly motivating because you're
actually doing something real, you know, it's not like you're
sort of doing something for someone else. I don't know
it's in the most elegant way to put it, but
once you've had a taste of it, I almost feel
like you can never go back for sure.
Speaker 3: And this is this has been a frustration for me,
is the entrepreneur bro marketing, because like, I would love
for there to be more entrepreneurial people, but the reality
is there's just not a lot and there's a reason
for it. Not everyone's wired to handle it. Now. I
think you're you're touching on something that that's super important,
and that is there's right now, there's sort of this
sort it's a spectrum, right, everything is, but there's a
spectrum of how checked out people want to be with
their I don't want to say their life, but their job. Right,
it's very predictable. They have a salary, they could plan
their life around their sixty grand or whatever, eighty grand,
whatever it is. They go into work, not lots expected
of them. They could do this stuff. They can go
home and they can do football, they can play video games,
they can do that thing that they like to do.
And there's tons of people that are okay with that
that that's just how they're wired and how they're driven.
And then on the other side of the spectrum, you
have all the entrepreneur ros or people like me or
whoever who are saying everyone needs to be like us,
and the reality is, well, that's impossible, that's not going
to happen. But I do think there's this area in
the middle which is finding more compelling interesting things for
people in today's era. Because young men are surrounded by
so many distractions. I mean, video games are the best example.
Why I go work at a factory where you're doing
this super mundane thing when I can stay home and
play the most high paced competitive video game that I
feel like, you know, my performance matters because I'll let
the team down. You know, competitive team based video games
feel super purposeful, super meaningful, especially Battle Royales. When those
came out, I think that cooked a whole generation of
young men, good and bad in both ways, because it's
just so meaningful playing a game like that where you're
the you know, if your team is the best, and
you get to the end, you win and you beat everyone,
and you know it, you beat one hundred other people.
So there's this area in the middle that for young
men's or for today's workforce, where where can we offer
a more compelling lifestyle to men that outweighs or at
least is equal to the distractions of today, like video games,
where they want to go to work, they want to
go and create stuff, They want to design product, they
want to make stuff for you know, today's warfighters or
for you know, you know first responders, or these people
over here, or they work in the food industry, which
is super important because food is, you know, how we
stay alive, Like, how do we make that work so compelling?
And I think there's some people that are starting to
hit the nail on the head in the reindustrialization movement
where they're starting to say, we need to make manufacturing
more like a video game, where it is more rewarding,
it's more simplified, it's more understandable, it's more teachable so
people can get it a little bit better. And I
think they're starting to maybe go down that road of
figuring out how to I don't want to say gamify
because that starts to make it sound like Wally, but like,
but make it where it's more attractive and understandable to
people that what they're doing is important and there is
a reward behind doing it and it's not just this
mundane work that they go and do. And so my
frustration with the entrepreneur bros. Is how much they tell
people your life socks unless you're one of us. And
I'm like, well, not everyone's gonna go put up literally
all their money, their house, their cars, take great risk,
Like not everyone's wired that way. They just aren't. I'm
doing that right now. I'm putting up literally everything to
start two new companies. I love it. I'm stress, you know,
a few times out of the week, like looking at
the ceiling at night, but like I'm okay with that,
Like I have no problem doing that. Most people aren't
wired that way. They need a little bit more safety,
they need a little more cushion. They're not maybe as creative.
But it's finding that that middle ground for people where
they can feel really fulfilled with their nine to five,
with their four ten, like whatever, you know, work situation
they're in. And that's my goal with my new companies.
And I even had a long discussion with my wife
last night about a manufacturing company i'd like to start,
and we talked about, well, how do we make the
people on the manufacturing floor feel like specialists and technicians.
They're not just manufacturing, you know, their salary, they have
these kinds of benefits, they can work whatever hours they want,
Like how do we build a structure where they feel
like they're all part of the team for this really
important thing and they're not just a cog in the
in the in the machine. And I love to hear,
you know, whenever I hear business owners thinking that way,
I think that's what's required now because of the competition
we have with video games and other distractions. We never
had that before. People didn't know what they were missing
out on. If they worked at a potato factory back
in the sixties, they didn't know what else was out
there besides war, and they probably didn't want to go
to war because of all the stories they had heard.
But now, well it's a little bit harder to attract
people to work because of the cool stuff that we
have right in front of us at all times on
computers and on our phones. Like it's it's very difficult.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, well, and there's also another element too, where
you know, because of those things like you know, video
games or like you know, sports betting or porn or
you know, like all these like synthetic drugs are kind
of more potent than the original thing. Right, you can
sort of fry your dopamine receptors. So, like I have
not played I basically took like ten years off of
call of duty from like roughly about the like Black
Ops two era on.
Speaker 3: Okay, so that was the right call, that was the
right call, and so.
Speaker 2: Like coming back to I guess it would have been
like during COVID so like Modern Warfare twenty nineteen ish,
I felt like I was like a caveman that had
been like handed like a monster energy or something. I
was like, what in the world is going on? There's
so many like stings, and like it's like Nicki Minaj
running around with a shovel just beating me up.
Speaker 3: Oh you got in the wrong one. Oh I feel
sorry for you.
Speaker 2: Yeah, well so, but my point being right, like even
the same medium, right, video game, the same franchise or
whatever from you know that rough let's just say, you know,
five to ten year period, it's like, oh my gosh,
Like I like I am over stimulated. And that's like
an amusing anecdote, right, It's it's a little bit much,
but you think about that on every level where it's
like you were like kind of exposing your body to
like super normal stimulus and so that reward mechanism of
like I did something, I feel good about it. Right,
Not only does that take away longer than a you know,
a forty five minute you know, sixty four v. Sixty
four you know, multiplayer match or whatever, but also you're
getting like those crazy engineered right we know that you
know companies like you know, the big Triple A developers
have whole divisions basically designed to biohack you you know again,
Like that doesn't make it okay to while away your
entire life, you know, one Victori raal at a time.
But it is a huge trap. Uh, one thing I
want to talk about that or talk one thing I
want to respond to. That's how a person would say
it in English, is what you said about, you know,
bringing manufacturing back. Because a lot of the kind of
you know, mainstream on this issue will say it's impossible,
we can't do it anymore. People won't do those jobs.
And I assume you disagree because one you've done it
and you're continuing to do it. So if you could
just kind of give me your thoughts about you know, reindustrialization,
both why it's important and you know how you've gone
about it.
Speaker 3: So I was invited to, So I'll just say this
full disclaimer. When I left my previous company last year May,
I kind of was like, you know what, I don't
want to do manufacturing again. I want to do design development.
There's other factories here in the States I can I
can you know, have make the stuff for me because
they're good at it, like they've been doing it for forever,
big factories, three hundred employees, foreigner employees, and we'll just
do design, marketing, development, innovation, you know. And I got
invited to this event in Detroit called reindustrialization, a super
cool event, and I was, I was, I was, what's
the phrase? It was way above my pay grade. I mean,
there's people there with like three billion dollars and VC money,
and the lead of skunk Works spoke, and the CEO
for big names are there. Air Prince was there. Palmer
Lucky tuned in via a robot. He wasn't there in person,
but he had a robot delivered with his wine shirt on.
It was great. And I just sat there listening to
the discussion around how important it is to bring manufacturing
back for national security but also for prosperity. And one
of the guys who actually had one of the points
that I liked the most was the CTO of Palenteer,
And that's what Pollenteer's a whole discussion, but he said
that America has always been at its best when it's
been on its back foot. And he was talking about
World War Two as an example where the Germans were
producing so much stuff, you know, from a very small country.
Their their industrialization was so good. They were out building,
out manufacturing everyone. And the States we were we were
actually pretty lame back then, but we recognized that we
tooled up. There was a lot of marketing surrounding it.
I mean, obviously Rosie the Riveter and you know, all
this different stuff, lots of propaganda. There were lots of
incentives as well from the government, and there was also
some strong arming of factories like hey, you're not going
to make this anymore, You're going to make bombs. Like
too bad, Like you have to make bombs now. It's
like that funny meme. But uh, but in that moment,
America transitioned and it was able to meet the needs
for that particular conflict and succeed. And so his point was,
just if we can recognize that the US is on
its back foot right now with China, with some of
these other countries, and just in the geopolitical space, we
can fix this country. Now. He was speaking about it
from a defense posture standpoint. I heard that and went, no,
I think he's he's actually talking about manufacturing as a whole.
If our consumer goods can actually operate that way as well,
where we recognize, hey, we're getting all of our clothing
from overseas, we're getting all most of our food from overseas,
We're getting all the other electronics from Taiwan or superconductors
like all that stuff. If we can recognize we need
to bring that stuff back and treat it like the defense.
In that same mindset, we can bring manufacturing back. But
I think there's a component there that is not being
talked about enough. And I was at that event listening
for anyone who would talk about it. Nobody did, And
that was, well, how do we make it cool again?
How do we make manufacturing cool to the people of
America so they want to do it? And what a
lot of people don't realize. There was a cool story
recently during the shutdown that was about a month long.
There was a Wall Street trader, I think he was
a Wall Street trader. He's a government guy. They're in
New York who was out of a job for a
month because he wasn't getting paid, and he went out
to sell hot dogs at a hot dog stand and
he said that was the most fulfilling thing he's done
in his life. In like twenty years because he knows
the job he's doing is pointless. It's just numbers on
a board. But he went out and actually served food
to people. And I saw that article and I was like, Aha,
he just experienced it. He gets it now, and that
is we are all born to create. You know, God
created us, and in the process, we, I believe, have
this innate desire to also create. I wouldn't say in
his image, but sort of a similar concept. We want
to create stuff too, And most people haven't been able
to create anything. They work these stupid jobs that are
just numbers on a spreadsheet, or they play video games
where you're not making anything, but you're experiencing things. But
the second you get someone who can actually be involved
in making a product and they can see it getting produced,
they see it going to a customer, and they know
how it impacts them, that completely changes how someone sees manufacturing.
And all the guys that I've hired for the new companies,
they come into work early, they leave late. They talk
about I want to come into work, and they think
about it on the weekend because they're all creating things
and they've all experienced that, and so there's a component
there with reindustrialization that has to be talked about, and
that is how do we get people to experience creation
of product anything right, it doesn't really matter, just like
product in general, from taking scrap to finished artisans in
whatever it happens to be. And how do we make
it cool to attract them to getting in and doing that,
because the second they do it, they get the bug
like it bites them and it bites them hard, like
Spider Man or something. And so that's the piece I'm
trying to figure out, is how to make work cool.
And I'm trying to do that with my new businesses,
with the behind the scenes stuff and filming and talking
about it and going on a podcast like this. That
that is the purpose and the meaning that is missing
in so many young men's lives because they don't a
lot of them, I'm not gonna I don't want to generalize,
but a lot of them don't work a job that
actually creates value. And there's this book I've been reading,
Bullshit Jobs by Crap. I always forget the guy's name,
but he talks about how in the last thirty years,
like all these stupid jobs have been created, like hr
weird admin, like all these weird jobs that don't and
the people workers, Yeah, yeah, a manager. It's like they
know they're not creating anything. They know there's no value,
but it's a paycheck. They come in, they collect it,
they leave, they go home, they play video games, they
do football, they do whatever. There's some sort of consultant.
I have to say that lightly because I like some consultants,
but most are a farce. But those jobs don't create
they don't actually create anything.
Speaker 1: And so.
Speaker 3: I think that's what's missing right now in the manufacturing
is we can't bring manufacturing back to the States until
we solve that. If we're able to solve that, and
we're able to create a compelling work environment, compelling pay
as well, that's a very big component, some decent benefits,
you know, not forcing people to work seventy hour weeks,
you know, four tens is a great model, then we
can bring it back. And if the government also can
ease up on the taxes, because honestly, that's a huge,
a huge component that's crushing manufacturing as taxes, we can
bring it back, but some of those things are going
to have to get fixed for it to be readily
accessible to more people to start. But there's been little improvements,
like the government just opened the Trump admin ten million
dollar sbas for manufacturing as opposed to five and that
opens up lots of possibility for people to go buy
certain machines and start doing it and have a little
bit more buffer of money to survive those first few
years while they get you know, clients spun up and
employees trained. But there's that's just a start. A lot
of things have to change. But yeah, my my intent
is to focus on manufacturing here. I will say it.
It's hard, it's it's tough, but it is it is doable,
as as I've been able to do before and as
we're going to do again.
Speaker 2: Yeah, there's several things there. Like you've been i mean
literally for past ten years, right, you've been hearing about
this kind of crisis of meaning, right that you have
people who feel like their life is pointless. Like you
can look to the you know, the deaths of despair,
the people who you know aren't technically dead but might
as well be. And obviously it's multivariate. You know the
fact that these people don't have, you know, a community,
they don't have a religious community, let alone a social one.
But I think another part of that is the fact
that for many people, work feels purposeless. Right, there's not
a connection between the decisions you make in any real thing.
I think in one of my buddies, who's, you know,
a very hard work or very talented, but he's a
financial analyst, and he's literally like, I know, these people
aren't reading them. I work hard, I stay late, I
do a good job, and it doesn't matter, right, They're
not going to look at it anyway, And it's incredibly disheartening.
And so I think that, you know, it's a very
compelling vision, right, like you can be making something, you
can be producing something. And I think your point about
you know, being made in the image of God, obviously
it's it's it's stupid. No one actually believes that, Like,
you know, God looks like us exactly right, that's not
what that means, right, It's something spiritual, but like look
like we God charged at them, right, you know, name
the animals create order make something. And it's a reason
that that is like the most you know compelling, that
that is the most meaningful. And it doesn't mean like
artistic creation in every state in every instance, but like
that's what people are designed to do and sure, like
you know what, like you pay me three million bucks,
I'll make you spreadsheets that don't matter. Fine, whatever, you
know you can. On the extreme end, you know, I
might be able to you know, grit and bear it.
But I think again, when like the situations are where
it's like you aren't gonna starve to death, like realistically,
if you don't have that gun to your head, Like
the difference between welfare and like a you know, like
a shitty, low end job where you're doing something that
doesn't matter, Like that's it really a huge difference. And
so again it's not right, but it is understandable why
people feel checked out. Right, there's nothing connecting what they
do to anything that matters. And on the back end,
on the consumer level, because I think this a lot
where it's like I would and have been willing to
pay more for a product where it's connected to someone
like me, right, like someone else is supporting their family.
Speaker 3: Off this product.
Speaker 2: So I'll pay you know, one hundred bucks for something
made out of a luminum I could get on Ali
Express for fifteen because it's like, well, you know, to
be honest, I don't really want slaves making this. You know,
I don't think that that's a good thing to do,
to have some you know, Chinese school child, you know,
stamping this out, you know, only for them to end
up on Lively three weeks later. And like, I think
that that's something else as well. And I like not
to criticize American conservatives, but to criticize American conservatives, I
feel like a lot of people in that culture, which look,
it's my culture. I love those people have a hard
time talking about something that isn't you know, purely financial,
and so it's like, oh, well it's cheaper to do
it this way where it's more efficient, and it's like, sure,
it may or may not be right. There's a whole
bunch of other things that make that Chinese product cheap
for more expensive that you can't you know, just dismiss
out of hand. But also like I'd much rather live
in a like live in a country where like a
entry level, working class job is enough to support a
family on you know, where it's like you know, like
I again think about my grandparents where it's like they
had working class jobs and they were able to support
a family and have a house. Like I think that
that is a desirable thing. And it again the messaging
to consumer. Right, that's a that's a compelling thing to
sell people, right that you are, you know, part of
something more than just kind of a simple like you know,
exchange of value. But that may be two chins stroking
just something I think about it.
Speaker 3: Well, now I think you're I think you're hitting something
on the head. So like, look at all the problems
that we have today, the geopolitical, the riots to you know,
all the problems. I think a lot of these problems
have been downstream of our country going from being a
country that manufactures a bunch of cool stuff too. No,
we just make ideas and we export foreign policy and
democracy to the countries and we're there to save them.
That's our product. And the people of the country down
the road feel that they're not necessarily part of a
country that's creating things. And I think that's a that's
a huge reason we have a lot of the divide
that we have today and the people who are able
to run around and you know, destroy so quickly because
they weren't ever involved in creating in the first place.
And I think our country would be more orderly if
we were a country of manufacturing and creating things. I mean,
that's that's throughout history, that's always how it was. When
a country was known for its its export of fine
product or manufacturing, it was generally a more orderly country.
And the US, I mean, look look at the entertainment.
This is actually a great example. Most YouTubers can't do
YouTube longer than like and I say, the good ones, right,
the ones who are making millions of dollars, they quit
it like ten years and and I think they do it.
I think some of them don't know exactly why, but
they feel like there's no purpose for what they're doing.
And maybe they haven't been able to put into words,
but I think it's because they know they're not actually
creating anything. They're creating entertainment, which that is a product
that is that is a thing you could feel good about.
You know, people tell you thank you for doing that
got me through a hard time, and you can feel
good about that and meaningful. But it's not the same
as actually creating a product that someone's using or or
you know, clothing or food whatever happens to be, or shelter,
you know, construction. It's just it's not the same. It
doesn't it hits different and like I just saw, I
don't know if it's real or if it's a stunt.
But the big twitch streamer Kaison it huge, big Twitch
like he was the biggest phenomenon for the last few years.
I guess he's quitting. And I haven't watched these video
of why he's quitting. I don't really want to, but
I would surmise that a lot of it is he
wasn't feeling purposeful and just generating slop content. And the
problem is so much of the consumer market because the
custom you know, folks, what we've been watching for the
last you know, few decades in the United States are
not manufacturing people getting put on a pedestal or inventors.
We see politicians, celebrities, twitch streamers, YouTubers, and those aren't
the people that are known for creating like important compelling
things like they're all doing. Entertainment is what it is.
And if we're a country of entertainment, well we're not
going to be a very meaningful society of people like
we just aren't. We're going to have We're going to
be plagued with all these problems and people that are
willing to go destroy because they have never created anything
in their life, or maybe they haven't created very much.
And so I really think that's the downstream effect of
our country transitioning from you know, based self reliant on
our own manufacturing, exporting all of it during like the
Boomer generation, and then turning into hey, we're entertainment central.
We have you know, OnlyFans, and we have Twitch, and
we have Hollywood, we have all this stuff, and we
have the biggest political system in the world that's a
world stage for everyone in the world to watch. It's
not just our own country, Like everyone watches what we do.
There's so much money dumped into politics and it doesn't
create anything, not at all. And so until we fix
that or at least balance it a little bit more,
we're going to have a hard time getting people to
be interested in creating things again because we're a country
of consumers. So I really think that's the downstream We're
feeling the downstream effect right now, and it's why so
many people say we can't bring manufactory back. We've been
consumers for too long. And yeah, those people are probably
not the ones who are going to do anything about it.
But then there's people like me and a bunch of
other folks who are like, no, it's hard. It doesn't
cost double, it costs plus thirty percent to do it
in America, we can do it and people can pay
a little extra until we get the government to ease
up on taxes some of the different things so that
the prices can be competitive and that, and that's something
a lot of people don't understand. Many stuff in America
doesn't cost double. It is like plus thirty percent. It's
not a whole lot more. There's some clever things you
can do to skip some of the margins, especially if
you're willing to. You know, you're not trying to just
suck everyone dry and make millions of dollars. Like as
far as I'm concerned, like I've told my wife and
all the guys working for us know this, I don't
have to make millions every year if I can be
like clean, just everyone's paid for. Everything's paid for. Investors
are taken care of, banks are taking care of the
employees are taking care of billings paid for, Materials are
paid for. My house. You know, I could still eat,
have shelter. That's enough for me. If we can just
run everything. I don't have to put away you know,
fifty percent margin, sixty percent margin, you know, any of
this crap as long as everything works, because I know
I'll have purpose in my life. Every all my employees
are taken care of. We're creating badass products for people,
and what more can you ask for? Like, that's I
don't want to say that's life, but that's that's what
life hit. That's what life should be. Things like that.
I don't need to stack a bunch of Lamborghinis and
crazy stuff. But the people that have made money their
focus are the people who are outsourcing the China because
they want to hit that seventy points a margin so
that they do make you know, thirty percent profit margin
at the end of the year, so that they have
millions and millions of dollars and that's their pursuit or
you know, making their shareholders happy, which is a whole
nother discussion. So yeah, we're a country of consumers. Until
that changes, it's going to be hard to make manufacturing
cool in America again.
Speaker 2: So well, I think that you know, one other, one
other aspect of this as well, and uh, you know,
Burnham's Manager or Revolution's really interesting book, right, it was
actually the inspiration for nineteen eighty four. George Orwell read
this book and it's like, this sounds so horrible. It
sounds like a horrible totalitarian society. You know, just amusing
bit of a music, bit of trivia there. But one
of the things that Burnham talks about is the transition
from what he calls capitalism to managerialism. And he talks
about like even back in the thirties when he was
writing this, he's like, well, like, find me a capitalist.
Like when Ford Motor Company started, you could go into
the office on the factory and you know, shake mister
Ford's hand and he made all the decisions where you know,
shortly shortly afterwards, well, yeah, sure there's still a chairman
of the board who's named Ford. But really, like the
company's broken up. It's all these tiny little bits of
paper that really no one's in control of. And so
the company is run by managers, right, who have a
very different set of goals. They're an employee, right, They
want to make a lot of money, They want their
stock options to look a certain way. They don't want
to mess everything up so they can get another, you know,
seven figure job at another firm and I think that
that's a really big difference, right, the difference between a
company that is run by a guy, a guy who
can make a choice like what you've made versus you know,
if you're a CEO, Well, are you going to turn
to your shareholders and say I could be giving you
thirty percent more profit? And I decided not to. Like,
I mean, maybe you can some do, but you're not
going to be as popular as you know, some brand
new or not some brand new, but some Harvard Business
School graduate who says I can make every one of
your checks thirty percent vigor right, And so I think
that's an important dynamic. But one thing I want to
bring up, because we are sort of coming to the
end of the hour here, is you have made no
secret of your faith on you know, a number of
shall we say, controversial issues, right, and look like you know,
you and I are perhaps biased on this, you know,
but you know, ten or fifteen years ago, that was
much more controversial, especially in kind of the two A space. Now,
you know, being a religious extremist is kind of cool,
at least a little bit more than.
Speaker 3: It used to be.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so I'm curious could you speak to that a
little bit, because I think that's kind of interesting, right,
you were doing it before it was cool in an
area that was much more like big l libertarian than
I think it is now. So do you want to
talk about that a little bit?
Speaker 3: One hundred percent. It's an interesting topic because I get
criticism on both sides of the aisle. I'll get other
Christians and Christianity as you, as everyone knows listening to
this is a wide swath of belief and how people
live it out. But I'll get Christians one end who
are like Lucas, you don't do enough. You need to
be posting versus everywhere and put them on a product
like trig econ and and and we even had debates
at the old company about that, like do we put
on the front page of our website that we're a
Christian company? And all these verses? And I always push
back on that and said, no, no, no, it's not
about saying it, it's about living it out and doing it.
I want people to know we're a Christian company based
on how we interact with customers, how we take care
of them, how we interact with employees, how we take
care of them. I don't want us to just put
it up on our site. And the second we do that,
the standard people are going to hold for our company
is going to be completely different than if they just go, oh,
this company's really cool. I bought a product from them
and I had a problem and they immediately took care
of it. They did this other thing, or they took
the stance on this specific political issue, and they see
how we actually, you know, live it out in our
day to day life. And I think that's I don't
nothing's black and white, but I do think this is
actually kind of a more black and white issue, at
least to me. It's you have Christians who say they're Christian,
and they proclaim it very loudly, and then you have
people who just don't say it, they live it and
they do it. And I think that's much more of
a christ like life. You know, Jesus didn't go around
telling you everyone, Hey, I'm Jesus everyone.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 3: He would just go and interact with them and he
would say, he would you know, encouraging things to them.
He would you know, tell them to go and send
no more. But he wasn't running around saying everyone, I'm
the son of God. And he didn't start every conversation
like that. He went and lived it out with the
Gentiles and with the Jews, and it's one reason he
had the main reason he was hated is he was
actually living it out. He wasn't just proclaiming the law
and saying, hey, I'm the son of God. And so
my whole approach for living out my faith as a
public figure, as an influencer, as a whatever is people
needed to see me living it out in action more
than they may hear it. You know, me say it,
or a verse that's posted something like that, And I
think that leaves a more effective testimony, especially in an
era right now where everything is just fake and gay.
Anyone can put a Bible verse like you see it.
You see the chicks who posed a bikini photo and
then they have a verse underneath that. That's not living
it out. It's just not. I don't think anyone is
going to in that and say, oh my gosh, like
she's living out her faith. Look she's across and she's
taking a photo of the top section of her body.
It's like, no, that's I don't I don't think that's
living out her faith at all, or maybe not very much,
maybe not very meaningful, but we need we need men
and women who actually live it out before they tell people, Oh,
the reason I did this thing or I said this thing,
or I took this stance on this issue is because
I believe it from reading the Word of God. That's
why I took this stance on this issue. And so
that's been my whole approach this whole time. Is I
want people to to you know, know me by know
me by my fruit, and if they want to ask,
you know, and they want to interact with it at
a deeper level, we'll do that. We'll talk about it.
But I'm not going to be this guy who can
run around and you know, spout scripture and memorizations and
things like that all and then and you know, I
do that on one side, and then on the other side,
I don't do any of the things that are actually
required of me. Which I've seen so much from the
Christian community. They'll use they'll use the Bible when they
can to win an argument a certain passage or certain verse,
a certain area. We've all seen it, but they never
live it out and they never actually read either the
second part of the verse or apply it to their
own life and they're being a pharisee. And that's the
last thing I want is for people to look at
me and say, oh, Lucas is being a pharisee. He's
just he's posting the law or he's posting versus when
it's good for the specific issue, and he won't live
up to it on these other issues. And I've definitely
done that in the past. I've been way too judgmental
on certain topics. I've I've definitely come down on one
issue and then maybe I didn't talk about another one,
which might have been me not doing it on purpose.
Services I missed it because there's so much stuff going on.
But I never want that set of me is oh
Lucas is just a pharasetical Christian. I want people to
be able to say, no, he actually lives it out
in what he does, and he says what he means.
He doesn't back down from doing the right thing. And
and I have a long ways to go. I could.
I could definitely be, you know, far better and more
righteous than I am. But I think we need more
of that. We need more more men and women who
live it before they say it. And uh and sadly
with social media on the Internet, so many Christians learned,
especially as it got cool, like you said, it became
cool to go Christ is King and and and show
like a horrible story. I mean, this is a perfect
example of it. There were about five years ago there
were some guys that I knew and they posted a
Bible study in their in their social media on their story.
They made it look like that a Bible study that morning,
and a friend of mine asked them when he saw
them that day, he said, we hey, we're we all
reading what was your Bible study on? And they went, oh,
we didn't have a Bible study. And they were completely
flippant and willing to admit that they posted it for
people to think they were reading scripture and having a
Bible study, but they but they weren't doing that. They
just posted it because it's so easy to pretend to
be whoever you want to be on the internet unless
it's you know so, So we don't have a whole
lot of authentic Christians out there right now, in my opinion,
who are Lvia Because it is so easy to just
put on the Internet. Everyone thinks you're this really righteous,
amazing person and that was just the one percent they
wanted you to see. They wanted they wanted you to
see that they had a Bible study. But they're perfectly
steamed cup of coffee with the perfect little swirl. They
were posting the coffee monk. They weren't posting the Bible
like they wanted you to see their coffee setup. And
and it's saddening to me that that's that's that's how
people's christian life can be summed up, is in a
just a social media story post that expires in twenty
four hours and was actually just a picture of their
coffee cup. But that's most people's Christianity today. And I'll
get flag for saying that I don't care. People know
it's true and and I'm I'm hoping that again this
goes with that whole the whole purpose thing we talked
about earlier as man and feel more purposeful in their
daily life working because let's face it, all of us
think it more about work and our daily life more
than we'll think about Christ. And we'll think about praying.
Even though it says we're supposed to pray without ceasing,
none of us are praying all the time because we
have other responsibilities, we have everything, so none of us
are doing it. So the fact of the matter is
we're all going to spend more time working, spend more
time with our friends, spend more time with our wives,
than we're going to spend thinking about Christ. So if
we are life doing those things can be meaningful. I
believe that will draw us closer to Christ because we'll
have a more meaningful life that we'll be able to
draw experience from. And now when I read the Bible,
I'm like, man, like, I live that thing that is
talking about. I understand this piece of scripture. Now I
didn't understand it when I was thirteen when I read it,
But now that I have life experience and I've worked
these kinds of jobs, and I've worked with these kinds
of people, and I've worked with some so crappy people,
Like now I understand what it's talking about. And so
people need to be an environment where they're getting that
experience so that they can draw closer to Christ. They
have to have that. I don't say they have to
have that, but it's very helpful. So so I have
no intention of backing down, uh from from my uh
you know, living out my businesses from a faith based perspective.
But what I also won't do is and I and
I there were some temptations, but I was like, I'm
not doing it. When it got real legy to be like,
I'm a Christian, you know, Christ is king and all that,
I had some temptations to jump in on that too,
but I was like, no, I'm not doing that. Everyone
else is doing that right now. They're they're saying it
because it's cool, They're saying it because it's trendy. They're
they're selling bibles covering camouflage for a bunch of money
out of profit, which I that's a whole other thing
that I think is is is disrespectful to the Word
of God doing things like that for a profit.
Speaker 1: And uh.
Speaker 3: And I was just like, you know what, like this
is always going to exist. There's always going to be
people in the temple that need to be driven out
by a scourge and a whip, which is what Jesus did.
And and you know, I'm not going to be able
to do that for everyone, But I'm going to keep
doing what's you know what I can do. I'm going
to keep interacting with the people in my immediate circle
the way I believe is right. And if that's able
to be an encouragement to other people, then mission accomplished.
And and and I hope that you know, when I
die and I go before the judgment seat, God will say,
well done, good and faithful servant. That's that's the goal.
And I think we get that by by living it
out while also having faith doing both. It's not just
workspaceed but actually living our faith out.
Speaker 2: Yeah, there are several things there, which is one, Lucas,
you've made a core mistake which you have violated the
Jay Burdens school of social media, which is immediately block
and or mute any woman you see. It makes the
whole experience about ten times better. Drama related to didn't
see it drama cause I also didn't see it. Kind
of joking, of course, but I think that, and I'm
friends with I am not at all, for any number
of reasons, an orthodox Christian, but I know a number
of people who are. And I see what's going on
there right where that is there's a number of like
motifs and images which have become you know, trendy and cool, right,
people like how that looks. And so you have this
you know, large influx of people, and you know a
great many of them, you know, turn that into kind
of a real, sincere faith relationship. But as someone whose
religious community went through a very similar thing, where you
know that the kind of in church that I go
to is very trendy in the mid two thousands, it's
actually pretty helpful to see what it's like after the
hype fates, right when it's no longer the it thing,
because sure there's some growth to it, but that thing
mattered more right than you know, simply the kind of
social media or the kind of herd mentality around it,
and that comes and goes. Right. Being public about faith
is currently in kind of an upswing, Whereas in the
kind of twenty fourteen era of you know, gun culture,
it was very much not cool, right, It was a
different look, different, And I'm using gun culture, but it
applies to many other cultures as well, and I think that,
you know, there's certainly something to be said. I mean,
there's something positive about that, right, you know, we want
what's all the worsh for?
Speaker 4: Just ask me in the shop today amazed ar might
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Speaker 2: Wilstock's last people to be looking at. You know Christ
and you know sinceerreallationship with him as a positive thing.
But I think it's also very important to remember that
that is incredibly fleeting. Much like you said, a YouTuber
has a ten year career, like an online religious fad.
If it has a ten year run, I'll be shocked.
I'll put it that way, And on a less serious note,
I'll be honest. When I saw it was funny. It
was a screenshot designed to discredit you. But you called
some dude of faggot on Facebook and I was like,
that's my guy. That's the kind of guy, I'll support
because again.
Speaker 3: Let your yes be yes or your nob no.
Speaker 2: I call it like, I see, that's a word that
I will never one stop using or to stop thinking.
Is really funny, especially in like you know, a corporate
environment where those sort of terms are heavily discouraged. I'll
put it out way. Yeah, but yeah, dude, this has
been a ton of fun. I really enjoy speaking with you. Obviously,
you know you have a new company, you have some
social media. Where can people find you if they're interested?
Speaker 3: Yeah, So Instagram is still there's just a good activity
on there. Twitter's more. Twitter's the x It's the PvP
server of social media, so it is. Yeah, I get
something out of it. But man, I click into that
app like twice a day and that's it. Instagram still
some wholesome stuff there. Lucas bot Can underscore is how
people can find me on there. And then my YouTube
lucaspot Can I should be the first channel that comes up.
Now newer channel since I left my own company, I
don't have access to that one anymore, but I post
a lot of my like behind the scenes business stuff,
like today I'm filming a video on the firearms industry
and is it down or is it correcting and some
of the economics behind that. I'm going to talk about
that a little bit in that video. A lot of
business content for people that are more interested in hearing
some of this I used to do. I used to
just be known for gun stuff, shooting. I shot a lot.
I'm pretty good at shooting, doing a lot less of
that now and now I'm trying to transition more to
sharing what I've learned again, trying to trying to get
young men off their ass as much as I can
to see that creating school works cool and and you know,
trying to do that the best I can so so YouTube, Instagram, Twitter,
Lucas Botkin as well. I mean, it's pretty easy to
find me on there. And then my company, the latest company,
the first one we're starting a couple is Adaptive Defense
without the E. If you google that, you should come up.
That's our defense R and D company with some products
as well. And uh, then we're starting a men's performance
apparel brand made in the US. Very difficult to do
or doing it anyway. We're working on that and that
should launch in Q three of this year. So we're
we're we want to create things. We want to make things,
and that's that's the goal, that's the mission. So that's
where people can find me.
Speaker 2: And I will say, uh, I got I got tipped
off to the fact that the website was going live,
and so I picked up a couple of your your
sling right just to kind of pass out to, you know,
thank you some of my guys. And while I haven't
used them, I just gave them all away very good reviews.
So you know, if you consider a review from some
guy who hasn't used it, know a couple of people
who has. If that carries weight, check them out if
they're in stock. Yeah. Man, as that sounds really interesting.
I've been, you know, watching the development of your company
from a distance. I'm not going to pretend to be up,
you know, on every aspect of it, but it's it's
really exciting to see what you've done and it seems
speak going well. So everyone check that out. As far
as my stuff, Jay Burdens Show, Apple, Spotify, YouTube, this
is what I do. I am a full time podcaster.
If you think there's value to that, throw me a
few bucks a month on Patreon, Substack or gum Road.
I did the math on this not that long ago.
It comes out to like nineteen cents an hour for entertainment,
which really isn't half bad. You still get all the
same content on the on the regular feed. I just
kind of throw a few ads in there to cover
my mortgage. Lucas, thanks so much, man, This was a
ton of fun.
Speaker 3: Thanks so much for having me on.
Speaker 2: Keep your head off, good night. Marketing is hard, but
I'll tell you a little secret.
Speaker 3: It doesn't have to be.
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You love the host, you seek it out and download it.
Speaker 2: You listen to it while driving, working out, cooking, even
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