[SPEAKER_02]: Let's go.
[SPEAKER_01]: Let's go.
[SPEAKER_01]: Welcome to Citizen.
[SPEAKER_01]: We have a special guest today, Kyle Grothius.
[SPEAKER_01]: I just found out how to say your name because it's weird.
[SPEAKER_01]: Sun's Liberty Gunworks, co-founder it.
[SPEAKER_01]: Everybody knows Mike.
[SPEAKER_01]: He's been on the show before, and then of course, you've got a new venture that we'll get into.
[SPEAKER_01]: But before we do that, let's talk about you.
[SPEAKER_04]: All right, what do you want to know?
[SPEAKER_01]: Who's your daddy and what is he doing?
[SPEAKER_01]: That's a wrong, that's a kindergarten cop.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, love them.
[SPEAKER_01]: It is one of the best movies of all time.
[SPEAKER_01]: It really is like one of the top 10 movies.
[SPEAKER_01]: I really want to show the kids probably when they're, I don't know, what do you think age appropriate for kindergarten cop is?
[SPEAKER_04]: How's this thing in that too?
[SPEAKER_01]: Like it's a handy.
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, my kids are seven and 10.
[SPEAKER_04]: They're probably, I don't think the seven-year-old would get it with the 10-year-old, probably.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, that's the problem is getting it, because
[SPEAKER_01]: A lot of the old classic even Disney movies for this six and three year old just aren't registering yet.
[SPEAKER_01]: It doesn't make any sense to him yet.
[SPEAKER_01]: Maybe which makes me wonder did it make any fucking sense to us when we were watching his kids or it was probably like in the ways because they watch a Christmas story that makes sense because there's a story for very adult themes and Christmas story.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_04]: We'll figure it out, I guess.
[SPEAKER_04]: Where'd you grow up?
[SPEAKER_04]: So I grew up in Hloadas to Southside, San Antonio.
[SPEAKER_04]: So I've been in San Antonio most of my life.
[SPEAKER_04]: Now I live in Farrow, it's close to burning out, you know, that way.
[SPEAKER_04]: Went to high school there in San Antonio, Central Catholic, which is basically a cult, you know, where everybody, I still hang out with.
[SPEAKER_04]: high school friends, which most people don't.
[SPEAKER_04]: My wife thinks that's crazy.
[SPEAKER_04]: I still hang out people from high school.
[SPEAKER_01]: Pretty good cult in.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, go to high school.
[SPEAKER_04]: We have the Gallo for, you know, donate money to the school, you know, the Gallo in a couple weeks.
[SPEAKER_04]: It's a thing.
[SPEAKER_04]: Mike went there.
[SPEAKER_04]: That's I knew Mike.
[SPEAKER_04]: He was four years ahead of me.
[SPEAKER_01]: He seems like a cult guy.
[SPEAKER_01]: Well, he seems like a guy who escaped the cult.
[SPEAKER_04]: As long as the cold doesn't have a lot of work involved, he's like, as he works not as yeah, no.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's like he hates authority so much that you can see that he might have had some experience with somebody trying to control him early on.
[SPEAKER_04]: We join one.
[SPEAKER_04]: He got me into Fiesta's big thing, San Antonio, so we join another group called The Conceas, that support Fiesta and Mike's kind of stepped out of it because it's
[SPEAKER_04]: it's fun getting in and being exclusive like hair in my way in but that put on a uniform and showing up to marching parades and like actually doing things like not as bad as things.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah when doing it it bullshit either.
[SPEAKER_01]: So what'd you do after high school?
[SPEAKER_04]: So after high school I went to Texas A&M, Galveston, so stayed there, was thinking about transferring the main campus but what kind of ad can you do in Galveston?
[SPEAKER_04]: Not much man.
[SPEAKER_04]: It was all so we're the only branch canvas, but it's all ocean stuff every one of our majors was ocean things my My majors and maritime admin, which is like running a port.
[SPEAKER_04]: Oh, that's cool.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I was in Navy R to see and that's I you know I bought with my unit down there so I stayed I never transferred That actually makes a lot of sense and probably
[SPEAKER_01]: probably better than NBA to be honest.
[SPEAKER_04]: No, I have one of those two who did that after.
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_04]: Did a, went, and maybe for a little bit, very briefly went to OCS and then my back screwed up.
[SPEAKER_04]: So I got out of it, it's supposed to, it's supposed to be a back seat or it's supposed to be like Goose and didn't work out.
[SPEAKER_04]: So I got out and then at, at that point, the Navy was really contracting.
[SPEAKER_04]: And a lot of friends, I had gone in surface fleet were getting,
[SPEAKER_04]: pushed out.
[SPEAKER_04]: So they're like, well, you can stay here for a year and maybe we'll find you a slot in a service fleet base.
[SPEAKER_04]: You're going to be moving furniture for a year and I'm like, nah, I'm I'm good.
[SPEAKER_04]: So, got out, got my MBA, it was working for my family a little bit, and still I still run the family business.
[SPEAKER_01]: There's a construction business.
[SPEAKER_04]: It was a lumber yard, a lumber yard in San Antonio, Guadalupe, and then met Mike, we met through a mutual friend that, not our favorite person for either of us, he's a good enough guy.
[SPEAKER_04]: But he knew we both wanted to kind of do the same thing a little differently, and
[SPEAKER_04]: We bootstrapped it man.
[SPEAKER_04]: We had a cell we we both sold our sold luckily at two vehicles.
[SPEAKER_04]: I sold one of mine and he sold his cars We had our first employee drove him to work for the first year so until he bought another one But yeah, we were we had nothing you know what I'd I'd room in the lumber yard.
[SPEAKER_04]: We had a little bunker.
[SPEAKER_04]: So we
[SPEAKER_04]: under, you know, 3,000 square feet under, under another building and no AC, you know, nothing.
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_04]: Wall squetted during the summer, you know, we just had, uh, kind of make it work, and we did.
[SPEAKER_04]: It was, it was rough at first, but we, we made it happen so.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, you need it's it's interesting.
[SPEAKER_01]: We've done the same thing with all of our businesses right now with Hardy after booze company We've paid for everything so far we and over the last year, so we've taken some friends and family money, but for the most part It's been just us and you know, I found that you need
[SPEAKER_01]: Like, one of the recipes for success, I guess you might say, is having a couple of different personality types with the same objective, like somebody who's good at administrative shit and then somebody who's good at dealmaking shit.
[SPEAKER_01]: if you, if you can have both of those guys, you can start pretty much any kind of company.
[SPEAKER_04]: I think you got to have, you got to have like, there's always like three guys, I say, you know, you got to have the guy that's going to, you know, make, make sure you, on your promises, you do what you're supposed to do, you got some out there that really believes in the company and goes and speaks for it and trying to remember what the third one is, you know, a financial person, probably, you know, you got to have, you got to have at some point, yeah, in these days, you could get a fractional CFO and make it work.
[SPEAKER_01]: But for the core group of people, you absolutely have to have an admin guy and a guy who can get, you know,
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, you have an op sky that's going to want it, which is typically my thing like said I have an MBA so that was that's, you know, we ran it by committee at first but eventually I morphed into that role CEO and then finally I didn't even use the title for the first seven eight year.
[SPEAKER_04]: I didn't start using that title till we were farther along, but
[SPEAKER_04]: You know, running all the day to day, all the little pieces and stuff like that and Mike's main job is to go out there and mark it and go and podcast and do this sort of thing and yeah.
[SPEAKER_04]: And he's really good at it.
[SPEAKER_04]: I mean, he's very good at it till this day.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, he that's that's the we have something similar to that here.
[SPEAKER_01]: Ross and I are both a little bit good at both of those things.
[SPEAKER_01]: I did marketing a black rifle obviously for a long time, so that part is easy for us.
[SPEAKER_01]: We're both media guys, so that's easy for us.
[SPEAKER_01]: The admin stuff, it depends on what it is.
[SPEAKER_01]: We kind of divide the labor there, but it would be a lot easier if one of us was really good at one of the things and the other one was really good at the other thing.
[SPEAKER_01]: Right now it's a bit more the division of labor is a bit more hodgepodge because you have to put it together.
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, and these are certainly
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, luckily we've got a good rhythm now so we don't really, that doesn't really happen any more that much, but yeah in the beginning it takes a little getting used to for sure.
[SPEAKER_01]: What's it like, like I know what it's starting a booze company is irritating a shit because you're dealing with the FDA and we have to get our formulas approved.
[SPEAKER_01]: They have to test it and make sure that the
[SPEAKER_01]: chemical compounds are correct that the alcohol level is what we say really I've developed a liquor before and then they didn't really have to do any of that But I guess for canned beverages.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's different.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah And you have to put it like your ingredients on the back, which is weird and you have the test to make sure what you know You have to know with all the ingredients all right.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, yeah, yeah, and then the licensing stuff for because it's
[SPEAKER_01]: I don't know how the gun business works really, but in alcohol, every state has their own little cartel, and which you may have run into if you did some liquor.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's a pain in the ass.
[SPEAKER_04]: It's like, we'd have our label approved, yeah, that was one thing where we'd be the guy that we're doing it with an alamo distilling there in San Antonio, a little side-quist project that kind of died on the vine, because
[SPEAKER_04]: personal things with him, you know, he had to keep his business running in his wife got sick.
[SPEAKER_04]: So I was like, well, we came out.
[SPEAKER_04]: We did one run.
[SPEAKER_04]: That was it.
[SPEAKER_04]: You know, I'd left to bring it back to life.
[SPEAKER_04]: But we had talked about it, you know, sons of liberty.
[SPEAKER_04]: The name sons of liberty is on the label.
[SPEAKER_04]: We couldn't put actual pictures of guns on the label because he thought that would cause a regulatory problem.
[SPEAKER_04]: Like, you know, we didn't know for sure.
[SPEAKER_04]: We didn't try it, but they thought that'd be an issue.
[SPEAKER_04]: But it was, it's called Green Dragon Burbin.
[SPEAKER_04]: And we had some cool stuff like on the inside of the back label.
[SPEAKER_04]: We actually had a map of old time.
[SPEAKER_04]: You know, 1776 like the tavern.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, where the liberation was in Boston.
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, it was, it was really neat.
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, um, this is a great product.
[SPEAKER_04]: It was great, great bourbon actually by mistake, almost.
[SPEAKER_04]: We, uh, we used his as a base spirit and we're like, we're going to do a Sherry finish.
[SPEAKER_04]: You know, it's early like bourbon and scotch and Sherry finishes usually come out pretty good.
[SPEAKER_01]: That's what I like.
[SPEAKER_01]: Actually, our bag of Udigol is my favorite.
[SPEAKER_01]: One is my top five favorite scotch.
[SPEAKER_01]: I like scotch.
[SPEAKER_04]: Our burbon 19 is.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, harboring 19's go to, but I like the Udogal because it's finished in CheriCaths.
[SPEAKER_01]: So it's like, they don't do anything really to filter any of the Pete they leave it all in, but they didn't finish it in Cheri.
[SPEAKER_01]: I'll try.
[SPEAKER_01]: So it's like, it's like a LaFroig on the front end and then super sweet on the back end.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's very nice.
[SPEAKER_01]: I like it.
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, I love the P.D.
[SPEAKER_04]: You know, a log of Ulan, uh, boom to havin' like, boom to havin' 18's great.
[SPEAKER_04]: It's not super P.D.
[SPEAKER_01]: But, yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, but, uh, have you had Yamazaki?
[SPEAKER_04]: I've not, I've the trailer.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yamazaki 12 is probably the, I'm not kidding, the best single-multid exists.
[SPEAKER_01]: I've, I've never personally had anything that was better than that.
[SPEAKER_04]: I'll check that out.
[SPEAKER_01]: That's my penny's at Japanese whiskey, but anyways.
[SPEAKER_04]: No, I know of it, yeah.
[SPEAKER_04]: I just never, I mean, you know, I may have had it over the years, but I've never owned a bottle of it.
[SPEAKER_04]: I don't think I can find it.
[SPEAKER_01]: Not a sponsor, by the way, you should be Yomazaki, Cindy free booze you assholes.
[SPEAKER_01]: I'll send you some hearty of, not that I seriously doubt that people that drink, Scottard drink and hearty of seltrs well.
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, like I don't really, I mean no offense.
[SPEAKER_04]: I don't know what a seltrs is.
[SPEAKER_01]: Well, we're 8%.
[SPEAKER_01]: So,
[SPEAKER_01]: uh... they hear the story that is hard to get out what after the story is uh... ross i kept going to and this is how all companies are born it's all in some kind of problem we keep going to these college sporting events and celtzer gotten big but all the and you can't most of the college stadiums
[SPEAKER_01]: We're just transitioning into selling booze at all and they didn't have hard alcohol at all.
[SPEAKER_01]: So they only had shelters.
[SPEAKER_01]: It was like truly and these other ones that are 4% and like I can drink this.
[SPEAKER_01]: I can drink a gallon of this and never get drunk.
[SPEAKER_01]: The problem with and then you have to deal with a bathroom situation is stadium.
[SPEAKER_01]: You have then you got diabetes and it's either it's like tailgate plus stadium plus having to piss every 25 minutes.
[SPEAKER_04]: If you speak to that, if you ever looked at it at Ann, I mean, Ann, I was number one this year and how all sales at their stadium and the police, they called station police, it's like a Twitter feed, where they, they, they roast, basically roast all the people that they were asked to make money.
[SPEAKER_04]: Did it sell later?
[SPEAKER_04]: It's like, yeah.
[SPEAKER_04]: You know, arrested man, you know, they're like, do it like real cop like, right, like arrested man, you know, B.A.C.
[SPEAKER_04]: 0.23, found drinking well turkey out of zip lock bag, you know, whatever.
[SPEAKER_01]: Oh, yeah, he's stuck with it.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's college, it's college stations.
[SPEAKER_01]: So who knows what the fuck goes on up there?
[SPEAKER_01]: We'll have a little bit of a shit goes on for sure.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, but it's so we were like the solution to it at the time was the power club.
[SPEAKER_01]: You haven't heard of that.
[SPEAKER_01]: That's a white clay.
[SPEAKER_01]: Take a sip out.
[SPEAKER_01]: You pour a shot of vodka at it.
[SPEAKER_01]: That's why it's like all right cool and now I've got to carry two things.
[SPEAKER_01]: I only only want to do one thing So he's made an 8% booze You know, but yeah, going to each state you're dealing with an individual cartel which means you have to follow other dumbass rules one of them
[SPEAKER_01]: for most states, Texas is a little bit different.
[SPEAKER_01]: Technically, we could do it, but we don't want to spend the money.
[SPEAKER_01]: You could self-distribute in Texas.
[SPEAKER_01]: Most really, I don't know if you can.
[SPEAKER_01]: Most states are, we have a license for self-distribution, but you have to keep a facility, certain type of facility, and has to meet certain requirements, and then you have to have to go through distributrics.
[SPEAKER_04]: We talked about that with a liquor thing, yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: Now, you can get a self-distribution license here, but you have to like,
[SPEAKER_01]: Then we would have to have extra floor space to put all the shit and trucks to the right end doing all that So every state Effectively because we don't want to spend money on that infrastructure You have to deal with a distributor sometimes multiple in the same state because they only cover certain parts of the state like Florida Texas is one that's like that California is one that's like that and then
[SPEAKER_01]: It's 50,000 bucks to get all that setup plus the license to sell in the state.
[SPEAKER_01]: Every single state we go to.
[SPEAKER_04]: And one thing we run into, at least we heard if we were trying to take our liquor big time, you know, taking the distribution stuff just never happened because, you know, what went down with Almond is stilling, but one thing we had heard too is that a lot of the distillers will lock in a contract for years and if they don't, they fall out, at least on the liquor side.
[SPEAKER_04]: If they, you know, they'll push your product for a year or two and if they don't necessarily like it like lasers for example, they don't.
[SPEAKER_04]: They're not going to release you from that contract, but they're never going to push it again.
[SPEAKER_04]: So you're it is dies on the front, you know, they're they're the rights to it for so long.
[SPEAKER_04]: So that's been a new.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, and then you have to implement usually a cost like 20 to 30 grand to buy yourself out of those contracts or you have to set out of the
[SPEAKER_01]: the state for a full calendar year and reset which kind of sucks if you're trying to grow your business.
[SPEAKER_04]: It's a rack man.
[SPEAKER_04]: There's just the rules and the you know guns are weird kind of like that too.
[SPEAKER_04]: You know you got distributors or you can go direct you know but in booze it's distributor only like that's the only way to do it.
[SPEAKER_01]: Pretty much yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah you could self distribute but the only the only people who really do that are people that come in with a bunch of seed capital who are already rich.
[SPEAKER_01]: Right because otherwise who's got the money to you're not bootstrapping infrastructure that doesn't ever happen.
[SPEAKER_01]: Usually
[SPEAKER_01]: You don't have any employees except for the owners for the while right there so speaking of guns sons of liberty What was it you said you had a bunker space and the old construction business?
[SPEAKER_01]: How did that get started like what what was the first year of that like his wild first year like said we were you know we we were
[SPEAKER_04]: We got to buy all the parts of the whole gun.
[SPEAKER_04]: Now days we design all our own parts, and have them manufacture back then, we're using all the shell parts.
[SPEAKER_04]: We're near most of those first few guns, most of the parts came from our near arms, they were a good partner.
[SPEAKER_04]: And it's funny later on down the line that he became a dealer.
[SPEAKER_04]: They flipped it the other way, and we saw himself a really good relation with John and those got them there.
[SPEAKER_04]: We had known, please, there's just me and Mike at the beginning and we had a guy named Dylan that just showed up one day and loved guns and wanted to learn and, you know, we always joke about it like you showed up and we didn't pay him, but he wouldn't leave, you know, he just kept coming in every day.
[SPEAKER_04]: So we started teaching them how to build guns and he still works with sons of liberty, he left for like two years and he's now he's the master armor, he's the main armor there and he's been there since the beginning.
[SPEAKER_04]: and you know we had no AC barely had you know it was a lot of fighting me and Mike fought a lot the first couple of years we finally finally
[SPEAKER_04]: once we had more is less of a fight over resources we started you know get along better but you know uh... weren't paying ourselves as kind of a k-stop using the company credit card for red box you know that sort of stuff uh... well red box doesn't exist anymore out of thanks no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no
[SPEAKER_04]: I'm like, he's here somewhere.
[SPEAKER_04]: He doesn't have, you know, at that point, he didn't have his own car, like, I brought him in.
[SPEAKER_04]: Like, he couldn't have left.
[SPEAKER_04]: Let's walk off and he's like, like, I passed a guy, you know, passed out on a bundle of lumber out front.
[SPEAKER_04]: And I was like, oh, that's him.
[SPEAKER_04]: You know, let's go wake him up.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: That sounds about right.
[SPEAKER_01]: I mean, look, there's a reason the government decided to put alcohol to back on firearms on the same category, right?
[SPEAKER_01]: And that's because they belong together.
[SPEAKER_04]: and we always did all three together we always had the bar I don't know you know they're about to move buildings again later this year I don't know if they're taking the bar with them we've always had a bar in the shop yeah for many years there's a loaded shotgun hanging you know tombstone style inside that that the the bar has a first gun we ever made and it was a sought off side by side shotgun and we actually registered it
[SPEAKER_04]: This is back when Joe Biden was vice president.
[SPEAKER_04]: We registered it in the NFA as the uncle Joe.
[SPEAKER_04]: He was like, oh, he's always like, oh, just go get a shot gun.
[SPEAKER_04]: We're like, oh, we got one right here.
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, 10 inch barrel.
[SPEAKER_01]: Why not?
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: Um, that's funny.
[SPEAKER_01]: So.
[SPEAKER_01]: Not a bad idea, by the way, to keep that around.
[SPEAKER_01]: I don't know if you see, but for some reason, I don't know if it's because he's so public media-wise, but Michael Cargill's place gets hit all the time.
[SPEAKER_01]: Like fucking bombs trying to break into a gun store.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's like, look, I know he's really short and all but he will kill you.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, we'll see some of that video.
[SPEAKER_01]: But he's like a small guy, but he bought his land to fuck out of some hobo.
[SPEAKER_01]: He was trying to...
[SPEAKER_01]: So like he's like a fucking little little gay black dude.
[SPEAKER_04]: I mean we went to the new building.
[SPEAKER_04]: We walked outside and we had a dumpster.
[SPEAKER_04]: We had a dumpster right in front of the buildings.
[SPEAKER_04]: We were kind of redoing the building.
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, it was a dude like dumpster diving or a dumpster.
[SPEAKER_04]: When we were working like some hobo and we were like, fuck are you doing?
[SPEAKER_04]: He's like, oh, I thought this was like free.
[SPEAKER_04]: You know, I could just take whatever I wanted and like, what gave you that opinion to get the fuck out of here?
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, there.
[SPEAKER_01]: I mean that neighborhood that's right behind there is not necessarily the best thing in the world.
[SPEAKER_04]: We've only had one real break-in at the current building and there's a couple of years ago, and there's the house behind us was like a meth house right there, making it, they're making meth art.
[SPEAKER_04]: Making something there.
[SPEAKER_01]: It smell like catpests the whole time.
[SPEAKER_04]: Oh, dude, they had a bunch of security cameras, and they had a, like, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a,
[SPEAKER_04]: died like a week later.
[SPEAKER_04]: He cuts through, he comes through, he didn't really steal anything like he went to the bar and stole like a case of topo cheeko in our dish soap like a bunch of dumb shit, right?
[SPEAKER_01]: That's a meth head shit right there.
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_04]: And so, you know, we support SAPD, we sell, you know, SAPD guns, so they show up and they're just crawling all over this place.
[SPEAKER_04]: Go back there, talk to him and they're like, oh, it wasn't us.
[SPEAKER_04]: We're like, the holes in your fence and like, oh, someone snuck through our yard and like pass the cameras in the rot-wire.
[SPEAKER_04]: I don't think so.
[SPEAKER_04]: Like, you know, your full shit.
[SPEAKER_04]: So, about a month later, you know, I think, and I think that street crumbs unit started fucing with them on over half kind of screen with them, about a month or two later that do that broke into a Scott murdered in a firearms accident at that property, which means he was causing problems and they they killed him.
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_04]: And then about two months after that, the guy that shot him that had the firearms accident was also killed.
[SPEAKER_04]: And now the house, some little lady, you know, they left and some little lady runs it.
[SPEAKER_04]: So they were, you know, weren't doing their job.
[SPEAKER_04]: They're jobless to make drugs and sell drugs, not, you know, start robbing the neighbors and attracting attention to the operations.
[SPEAKER_01]: So they, yeah, you just kind of got to stand your land, you know, I mean, it's like a self-liquing ice cream
[SPEAKER_01]: like super active, criminal investigations against people who are just selling drugs, usually it stems from some kind of violence.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_04]: You know what I mean?
[SPEAKER_04]: It's human trafficking.
[SPEAKER_01]: That's the main big thing that they're after, especially with these cartels, it's getting rough down there.
[SPEAKER_01]: I mean, you grow up in a load as you said, right?
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: Was it?
[SPEAKER_01]: an issue through that area for some time.
[SPEAKER_04]: I was actually talking to a buddy yesterday that's a federal agent and he was telling me he's like, man, he was actually, he's like the one good thing during the, you know, the Biden years where that a lot of the people that are being trafficked are being imported.
[SPEAKER_04]: They're coming from other countries.
[SPEAKER_04]: They're bringing them into the United States and they're kind of like, almost like a distribution network.
[SPEAKER_04]: They're coming here and they're going other places.
[SPEAKER_04]: he's like now they can't bring him in because the border is so much tighter so now they're the chances of being inducted in the states is higher yeah yeah they're going to find product well we're the other so that's the one downside to shutting the border is that they got to go find them local now so that's that's kind of uh yeah um so
[SPEAKER_01]: What was the, you said that your mutual friend put you guys together because you kind of had the same idea.
[SPEAKER_01]: What was the idea?
[SPEAKER_01]: So Mike had been, he'll tell the story a lot too.
[SPEAKER_04]: He'd been building guns in his, on his trunk on his coffee table for people right for years and he had learned from our friend, Will Larson.
[SPEAKER_04]: He was a good friend of both of us and taught armors class.
[SPEAKER_04]: So so Mike had learned.
[SPEAKER_04]: And Mike, one of those people he just really,
[SPEAKER_04]: understands how the gun works.
[SPEAKER_04]: You know what I mean?
[SPEAKER_04]: The physics behind it everything and finally the ATF caught up to him and basically told him like You know, you can't be doing this out of your truck.
[SPEAKER_01]: What's the real deal like do you have to is it like a car dealer license where if you sell more than a couple a year You have to get a license or it says if you make a business of it you have to have a license.
[SPEAKER_04]: Okay
[SPEAKER_01]: I mean, that's really open, you know, pretty obvious that that's the case to all right, might just make a money on it.
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, especially if you're building them, at that point, you're manufacturing.
[SPEAKER_04]: So you're definitely in the wrong.
[SPEAKER_04]: So he had to go, you know, start out on his own, but he doesn't, you know, I have an MBA.
[SPEAKER_04]: He doesn't.
[SPEAKER_04]: He didn't have any word to do it.
[SPEAKER_04]: So we ended up linking up.
[SPEAKER_04]: And we, like you said, we were yying and yying.
[SPEAKER_04]: We matched up, you know, he had the gun knowledge.
[SPEAKER_04]: And I, you know, I had, had build my own guns.
[SPEAKER_04]: had pretty decent knowledge, but nowhere near what he had, but I also had an MBA in a place to do it at.
[SPEAKER_04]: So, you know, got it all set up, you know, starting LLC, it sales tax, got all that stuff set up, and that started to, got friends to help, you know, painting that little building, you know, made some built-in tables, you know, work benches and start buying tools.
[SPEAKER_04]: and had to do some shady stuff to get going.
[SPEAKER_04]: I mean, we had, you know, not through if they're listening to this, you know, I'm sorry, but like distributors won't open you accounts unless you're, you have a storefront.
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_04]: So we brought all our personal guns in and basically just faked one and photoshopped a sign on the front of the building.
[SPEAKER_04]: Like, oh, it's our gun store.
[SPEAKER_04]: And it worked, you know, now we have full, you know, full retail operation and everything.
[SPEAKER_04]: Had a build a website, our first website was awful.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, most of the websites are bad.
[SPEAKER_04]: Complete garbage.
[SPEAKER_04]: But we sold a gun on it.
[SPEAKER_04]: That was the most exciting thing.
[SPEAKER_04]: When me and Mike the first day, we sold a gun on the internet to someone we didn't know.
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, those are always like the thing where you know your business is going somewhere or the first time.
[SPEAKER_04]: And we're at Shot Show and we sell guy wearing one of our shirts.
[SPEAKER_04]: And we didn't know him.
[SPEAKER_04]: You know, we're like, who the hell is that guy?
[SPEAKER_04]: Do you know him?
[SPEAKER_04]: No, he's like, you know him?
[SPEAKER_04]: No.
[SPEAKER_04]: Is this some guy that bought our shirt on the internet and decided to wear it to shot show?
[SPEAKER_04]: And that's when you really, like, I built something that other people believe in.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, it's weird seeing, even to this day, it's still weird for me seeing.
[SPEAKER_01]: people walk around with a fucking cartoon picture of my face on the show or some dumb ass thing I've said in quotes or something like that it's really funny actually I the quote part I really enjoy more than any of the product stuff like seeing now we see people to send us pictures of people in the wild where in dumb shit or drink and hearty after anything but my favorite and I'm not asking you to replicate this U.S. holes by the way but
[SPEAKER_01]: My favorite stuff was always when people would yell fucked up shit that I had said on the show like a cross airports at me.
[SPEAKER_01]: Like I just tell this joke about Brass being an idiot in yelling wheelchair really loud.
[SPEAKER_01]: but this old lady in a wheelchair nearby because he heard me whispered to somebody.
[SPEAKER_01]: And for months, people would just yell wheelchair as loud as they could at me across public spaces and I'm like, man, this is the influence I've had on the world, that's great, good for me.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's always weird.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's weird, yeah, it's to have that, I guess, parasocial relationship where people know you, you don't know who they are necessarily.
[SPEAKER_04]: I don't get as much of it as Mike did, but I would, you know, I'd run into people at the airport and introduce themselves or shot, you know, shot, shot, walk around, there's constant people introducing themselves.
[SPEAKER_04]: And some of them, I know, other ones, and, you know, they know me, and I'm like, who the, like, are you, you know, like, and I've never seen you before in my life.
[SPEAKER_04]: So I never got as much of as he did, but it was,
[SPEAKER_01]: It was still fun, you know, yeah, it is cool.
[SPEAKER_01]: And then chat show is just a nice place to go get the flu.
[SPEAKER_01]: Um, I fucking hate it so much.
[SPEAKER_04]: We all got it one year before, and we were driving.
[SPEAKER_04]: There's a one year we drove.
[SPEAKER_01]: So you're the ones that spread it to everybody.
[SPEAKER_04]: So with these good things was Mike, you know, we found a connected doctor gave us all therapist flu, like two or three days before and by the time we were ready to leave, we were all good.
[SPEAKER_04]: Mm-hmm.
[SPEAKER_04]: Like we got it like the week before and we're like, oh, we're fucked.
[SPEAKER_04]: Like this, and we're gonna drive that year.
[SPEAKER_04]: We're driving a Mercedes Sprinter.
[SPEAKER_04]: Which the trip up there is probably still one of the wildest road trips I've ever taken.
[SPEAKER_04]: And I don't know how we're not dead.
[SPEAKER_04]: We stopped in Flagstaff, Arizona, just got shit house and then kept going.
[SPEAKER_04]: So it's never doing that again.
[SPEAKER_04]: There's a lot of fun.
[SPEAKER_04]: Drive back not so much.
[SPEAKER_04]: We're all done with it.
[SPEAKER_04]: You know, once you're in Vegas for about six or seven days, you're just done with it.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: Boy, I think three's the max.
[SPEAKER_04]: That's about where I start.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm going to go home.
[SPEAKER_01]: Starting the gun business, let's go from the federal licensure and then go down to the state because you got to have a distributor as well.
[SPEAKER_01]: But the distributors
[SPEAKER_01]: Might it's not like alcohol words, but we don't have to have one.
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, so did we didn't add a distributor So obviously if they get no seven note to you get the true manufacturing license at that point you can literally make anything and this is like a full on fucking 20-year background check the whole thing right?
[SPEAKER_04]: Yes, for ever for all the pictures on anybody that was more than 20% yeah and every time the principles change You got to get new license
[SPEAKER_04]: Which is bad guys.
[SPEAKER_01]: Cut.
[SPEAKER_01]: I don't think it's like that for the booze at it.
[SPEAKER_01]: No, it's not.
[SPEAKER_01]: I think it's one time.
[SPEAKER_01]: Fuck, every time it changes, you got to get it.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, if you see somebody goes from 19 to 20.
[SPEAKER_01]: You got that.
[SPEAKER_01]: Even if it's like vested, like I'm the CEO of the company, I already own 50%, don't let you.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I'm on a 5% 5-year option.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I've vested five years.
[SPEAKER_01]: And now we've got to realize this.
[SPEAKER_04]: They might have to go away with going till it expires again, but once you expire, then you got to add them.
[SPEAKER_01]: I don't want you to know that.
[SPEAKER_04]: It's a pain in the ass.
[SPEAKER_04]: What is the point of that?
[SPEAKER_04]: I think they just want to make sure there's these substantials haven't changed, right?
[SPEAKER_04]: They just want to make sure there's not nobody in there that has access to it, basically.
[SPEAKER_04]: Because you're what they call you as a responsible person.
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_04]: So they don't, they don't want to have people in there that, you know, we have the cartels approaches to by guns, a couple times, we had to turn them over to the, you know, DHS or whatever.
[SPEAKER_04]: They fake it really well too.
[SPEAKER_04]: They don't.
[SPEAKER_04]: The paperwork, they had everything.
[SPEAKER_01]: Wait.
[SPEAKER_01]: How is that?
[SPEAKER_01]: What was that like?
[SPEAKER_04]: they came so that we had just started exporting and they came in they're like oh we're we're taking bids for the the Mexican army national guard or something like that and like oh that's a thing and we always like really legit looking paperwork and there's a general calling you and all this stuff so we call them consultant we had and she got on the phone with them and started asking them like questions you know what is a form 100 what is all this stuff that you have to have to make you know to do an export and they didn't know what any of it was and we're like she's like yeah this is
[SPEAKER_04]: This is not legit.
[SPEAKER_04]: So she started calling around and we found out that they had reached out to multiple people just trying to find one of them stupid enough to do it.
[SPEAKER_04]: So we, I'm sure they probably ran into somebody at some point at some point.
[SPEAKER_04]: At some point, yeah.
[SPEAKER_04]: So we ended up calling the ATF for like, hey, here's like everything we have like, we're not going to talk to these people more y'all do it.
[SPEAKER_04]: We have about your question yet, so, license, you don't have to have a distributed on the gun side.
[SPEAKER_04]: We self-distributed for five, six years to sold direct, you know, it started by a couple guns, shit by anything, you know at the beginning, to the point where we had to become a distributed dealer for us, you know, you had to buy me by $100,000 a year, which kind of work got to you.
[SPEAKER_04]: which is pretty standard in the industry foods to cotton some of these bigger counts yeah and then we added our sorrows are first distributed as a big deal and we picked up our first distributor actually they're about crow brownhouses are first distributed they're a little smaller but our sorrows number one or number two in the united states have been who you ask
[SPEAKER_04]: And that quickly went from $300,000 account to $3 million account in a year, did really, really well with them.
[SPEAKER_04]: And then we went abatting other ones.
[SPEAKER_04]: We had a sports south, which is once again, number one or number two, deciding, depending on how you're looking for.
[SPEAKER_04]: So just distribution.
[SPEAKER_04]: And there's some people that don't think distribution is the answer.
[SPEAKER_04]: You know, since I've been gone, since Uber's kind of pulled back from the distribution model a little bit and tried to push harder into the direct dealer, yeah, my, my, not predecessor, my, the guy that came out for me, that's run in the company now, cancels to Cato, success or there it go, came from Cato and they didn't have just distribution, they're, they're direct to dealer only, that's the only way they do it so that he's kind of, move it that way, but in the air space, you kind of have to be in distribution because all the big companies are, and if you're not, you're missing a big, big piece of the pie,
[SPEAKER_04]: Especially on parts.
[SPEAKER_04]: If you got gun shops, you know, some people like why have distribution, like some people don't want 10 guns and 10 bulk character groups and 10 triggers.
[SPEAKER_04]: They want, they want one.
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_04]: Or there's a guy walking it out the street.
[SPEAKER_04]: They're like, they don't carry sons of liberty, but I really want this gun.
[SPEAKER_04]: They can go on distribution and get it.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, had you guys ever run into any issues during any of the,
[SPEAKER_01]: supply chain issues with getting parts and stuff like that.
[SPEAKER_01]: Well, is that like, do you use any aluminum because the aluminum was a problem for a while?
[SPEAKER_04]: Yes.
[SPEAKER_04]: So on AR, the receivers on the rail are all aluminum.
[SPEAKER_04]: It's really the only charging handle is a fuel-in-imparts, whereas for the most part steel, the buffer too.
[SPEAKER_04]: We would, the raw materials on the aluminum side, the price would become a problem.
[SPEAKER_04]: We'd get price increases.
[SPEAKER_04]: Getting it was never the issue.
[SPEAKER_04]: Our main issue is always we held everything to, you know, after the last six, seven, eight years we've been designing all our own parts.
[SPEAKER_04]: We'd have engineers that would do the drawings for us.
[SPEAKER_04]: We had one main guy that would do it.
[SPEAKER_04]: And we held everything of very high standards, tolerances.
[SPEAKER_04]: We used what's called bright nip sericote, which is an
[SPEAKER_04]: Difficult not a lot of places do there's only about two or three places in the US.
[SPEAKER_04]: I even do it So why is this so difficult you have to dip the parts in hydrochloric acid and Most places like the anoplant we used to here in San Antonio didn't do it because they're like the fuse of that crap will melt your building Yeah, no, they're that the T.C.
[SPEAKER_04]: Key all the you got to have a scrubber the waste trail for us is insane So we had to basically use one place in Washington state for everything
[SPEAKER_04]: and they're now owned by loopholes.
[SPEAKER_04]: So that wasn't a whole new problem.
[SPEAKER_04]: It's like, oh, we're still going to be able to use them.
[SPEAKER_04]: Now that loopholes is this inadaging plant.
[SPEAKER_04]: So that was always an issue.
[SPEAKER_04]: And mainly the tolerance thing.
[SPEAKER_04]: It was hard to find shops to do work for us.
[SPEAKER_04]: That would hold that level of tolerance.
[SPEAKER_04]: You know, we'd reach out to shops all the time and get samples of parks and they just weren't, they weren't up to stuff.
[SPEAKER_04]: And a lot of the bigger,
[SPEAKER_04]: volume manufacturers that are making parts for the cults of the world, you know, the fn's of the world that are cranking out, 10,000 receivers a month.
[SPEAKER_04]: Even if they could hold that tolerance, they have no issue.
[SPEAKER_04]: They have no interest in doing it for you.
[SPEAKER_04]: They've got plenty of business.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_04]: You know, they didn't want to make us two or three thousand or see where they can go make FN 10,000 or, you know, I'm not calling out FN.
[SPEAKER_04]: They make really nice guns, but you know what I mean?
[SPEAKER_04]: Like, they're just not held.
[SPEAKER_04]: There's very few in the industry that are held to the level tolerance that we did.
[SPEAKER_01]: Why don't you remember, but let's say 2008 to 2012 range.
[SPEAKER_01]: EOTX started having a bunch of problems with their equipment
[SPEAKER_01]: People had seen them in the GUI on television and it's shit and like I need one of those So they started selling them commercially and they were making a fuck ton of money.
[SPEAKER_01]: The problem is And this is something that I wanted to ask you about too because maintaining a high level of a high level of standard Is a real problem when you're scaling this went when when you're dealing with
[SPEAKER_01]: I mean, a cult M4 is one thing, if anybody has been in the military or even fired one, you can hold it like this by the buttstock and kind of move it and you can feel it wobbling back and forth.
[SPEAKER_01]: There's a lot of give in those things, so whatever, right?
[SPEAKER_01]: It's designed that way to take to the desert and you can put sand and shit in there and it'll still kind of operate, okay.
[SPEAKER_01]: Sun's Liberty rifles are precisely manufactured.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yes.
[SPEAKER_01]: Right.
[SPEAKER_01]: I don't know if you've ever seen any of the videos on the internet, but they have a sienna's workshop in there with little fucking nerds, hammered away all day, like the fucking elves, and everything, there's my crommeters all over the place, and it's very precise.
[SPEAKER_01]: And now I gave them to some of my tier one buddies, and they were like,
[SPEAKER_01]: I don't know if it's a work in the sand.
[SPEAKER_01]: I was like, take it to the sand.
[SPEAKER_04]: So it's been just, we've been there now.
[SPEAKER_04]: So yeah, we just, you know what I said?
[SPEAKER_04]: We just, that was one of the last things I did on the way out with some of that so-com contract.
[SPEAKER_04]: So they're, they're definitely in the sand now and a plenty of money.
[SPEAKER_01]: But it was a bit of a, it was a bit of a conversation to get them to even try it to believe.
[SPEAKER_04]: This is a work thing in the gun.
[SPEAKER_04]: You know, there's so many proven brands out there and just getting, you know, people got to trust you.
[SPEAKER_04]: And that was the, that's when we really at critical mass started growing was when we,
[SPEAKER_01]: people sort of trust us law enforcement site you know we got to the point where they were calling us they had heard that we made amazing guns and they asked it forever yeah but it was like I remember the first time I showed one to some delta guys and they were like man there's no wiggle room in this gun how's it gonna operate and conditions and like I want to you here's Mike
[SPEAKER_01]: He'll send you some and you use them and I guess it'll work out because here we are today, but that's a That's a problem with scaling has maintained in that standard if you're gonna be that precise It has to be precise and resistant to the elements as well and then there's also the financial part of scaling that motherfucker, right?
[SPEAKER_01]: that's not easy.
[SPEAKER_01]: You like in theory, you get price breaks, right?
[SPEAKER_01]: As you know, much of stuff.
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, but it's you think it's a few points, maybe.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, it's it's it's one it's minimal and two.
[SPEAKER_01]: from manufactured to from AR from AP to AR is a window, 90 to 120 days, which means I got to have enough cash to spend right now that I won't see for four months.
[SPEAKER_01]: We admit a minimum, right?
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, well, we had done during COVID when everybody was scrambling for product.
[SPEAKER_04]: We went to our biggest customers and we, we, we, we, we, we, we, we, we, we, we, we, we, we, we, we, we, we, we, we, we, we, we, we, we, we, we, we, we, we, we, we, we, we, we, we, we, we, we, we, we, we, we, we, we, we, we, we, we, we, we, we, we, we, we, we, we, we, we, we, we, we, we, we, we, we, we, we, we, we, we, we, we
[SPEAKER_04]: We took them from 30 days down to 15.
[SPEAKER_04]: We were like, hey, if you get us the money faster, and we start to get them discounts based in like seven, we're like, you get us the money faster, we can give you product faster, because they were selling everything they could possibly get during the COVID years.
[SPEAKER_04]: So that we kind of had to push them back into 30, but we stuck with that for a long time and that helped, but you're not one thing that kind of,
[SPEAKER_04]: good and bad for us, you know, we had a lot of models like guns.
[SPEAKER_04]: We made at the beginning, very custom guns.
[SPEAKER_04]: We had every, we wanted people to, we wanted to be the answer for anything you need on the AR.
[SPEAKER_04]: We made everything from nineish during a blackouts to 1820 and five, five, sixes.
[SPEAKER_04]: We made three awaits, Creedmores.
[SPEAKER_04]: I mean, our new cartridge six max.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, that's 300 right there from probably four years ago.
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, we made it all in the new 300s they're working on right now.
[SPEAKER_04]: We're going to be incredible.
[SPEAKER_04]: I can't really talk a lot about them.
[SPEAKER_04]: They're, Mike's working on some really cool stuff for that.
[SPEAKER_04]: And the supply chain was just held a managed community at, you know, 10, 15 different kinds of barrels.
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_04]: All these rail lanes.
[SPEAKER_04]: We had two different, at 1.3 different levels of guns.
[SPEAKER_04]: They still do, you know, the XO, the L89, the Mark 1.
[SPEAKER_04]: The parts or receivers for all of them are different.
[SPEAKER_04]: We had broad soared, which I don't if you ever seen that where we push the grip back about half an inch So that that was always a really in a cost a lot of money and that yeah, you know Holding that much inventory and general cost money You also don't want to be the cheesecake factory You don't have a menu that's too big because you can't be great at that many things And we had started to cut it down and my my successor cut it down even farther.
[SPEAKER_04]: I think they cut it down quite a bit.
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, to make it a little easier
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, that's good because when you're doing like once you start a company and it's not even a company It's just a couple of dudes fucking doing shit.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, and then all of a sudden you start looking at logistics and stuff and Either you personally or somebody that's really good at supply chain comes and looks at it
[SPEAKER_01]: And that's when you become a real company in my opinion, because like even the size of the box that you ship your shit in matters This because it everything costs money and every and every additional Expenditure is cut cuts into your net revenue Yes, I find crazy when you see Amazon and you get like a like a can a heart of the F and box.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's like this big Yeah, that doesn't make well the read the reasoning
[SPEAKER_01]: The reason they do it is because it costs less money to either just use what's there or use a box that doesn't fit and paper that it does to have a bunch of different because they're cutting their own boxes.
[SPEAKER_01]: They have the instead of using like for black rifle when we ordered box, we had to order it from somebody, right?
[SPEAKER_01]: So they have the CNC machines and they show us exactly what the cuts look like where the logos are going to go all this way.
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, we're going to do that quite a bit.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, we're going to call diamond corded diamond cord that we use them to
[SPEAKER_01]: I don't know about if they use them anymore, but back in the day we used them a bit John and John was a good dude.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, they were really good.
[SPEAKER_01]: So that's a whole thing too, right?
[SPEAKER_01]: That's a whole, like, the more of my skews that I can put into the exact same box, the more of that box I can buy, the cheaper I get it.
[SPEAKER_04]: And so we do like our rifle box was huge, you know, it's four foot long, but it would fit any gun we had.
[SPEAKER_04]: That's something we were working on towards the end.
[SPEAKER_04]: We shipped every gun in a soft case.
[SPEAKER_04]: That was a big proponent of keeping that.
[SPEAKER_04]: You could pull the gun out and only thing you need to put on as an optical sights and you're ready to rock and roll.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_04]: We ship the gun at three mags.
[SPEAKER_04]: We're one of the few that do that.
[SPEAKER_01]: And a constitution.
[SPEAKER_04]: Yes.
[SPEAKER_04]: Constitution stickers all sorts of stuff.
[SPEAKER_04]: You know, fire case.
[SPEAKER_04]: And but we went away from the the soft case just because of price had gotten ridiculous.
[SPEAKER_04]: I mean, even like a cheapo China soft case had gotten a 20 bucks.
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, it had gotten kind of nuts.
[SPEAKER_04]: And then we thought about it.
[SPEAKER_04]: We're like,
[SPEAKER_04]: Anybody actually using this thing past the first couple days they have the gun they're going to go buy nicer case So why give them something they're just going to throw away.
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, so we got to stuff like that But simply we have rifle box, but only every one big one and we try to keep you know, one of the big things I was working out You know, we I just gotten done was renegotiating our contract with UPS
[SPEAKER_04]: talking about saving six figures a year, just renegotiating it and then figuring out how to do it, smarter, you know, new UPS has this thing where you can ship a certain number of boxes for pallet price.
[SPEAKER_04]: So we, you know, we were working on that and we were working on getting our suppliers to do it to get them to run off our contract because our pricing was better.
[SPEAKER_04]: It was always a fight.
[SPEAKER_04]: It's a little next step on there and but saves everybody money.
[SPEAKER_04]: They're passing through that
[SPEAKER_04]: All that sort of stuff, the flow inside the shop, you know, the logistic flow and how to pack things the right way without getting each other's way, you know, we had just read done the shop, trying to improve the flow, but we always ran into the trouble we just didn't have enough space in that building, you know, we were operating out of,
[SPEAKER_04]: ship everything out of about 2,000 square feet was a major, major hurdle most of the time.
[SPEAKER_01]: So what are some, when you guys started to scale, were some of the challenges I guess?
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_04]: People's always a big one.
[SPEAKER_04]: You know, I've heard that you touch on that another episode is hiring your friends, you know, which we did.
[SPEAKER_04]: You know, not necessarily friends, but like Dylan, you know, he came in and just wouldn't leave.
[SPEAKER_04]: So we started paying him eventually.
[SPEAKER_04]: It turned out to be a great employee.
[SPEAKER_04]: We had a lot of people like that, where we had just,
[SPEAKER_04]: they they had to learn into their job, you know, they started as the shipping guy and then it being the director of operations after four or five years, you know, making almost six figures.
[SPEAKER_04]: But we had several like that and it worked out really well and you, you know, one thing me and Mike always said was you got a we hired off a culture, you know, we had hired off a fit and I was certainly skills which in retrospect is really good for certain jobs, but for the higher level jobs, you know, you eventually have to go hire people at know what the fuck they're doing.
[SPEAKER_04]: outside hire and we hard will feed us about six years ago and he's he's no longer with this he's with or no longer with the company's not dead he's with GPR as well GPR is great yeah so we'll the director of GPRS you know he got he got spun off after after I left but you know hiring people like him Chris Greenfield is now with the Ridgeline was doing our our website stuff we hired him off BTO
[SPEAKER_04]: having to go out and actually hire Scott Peterson to do, you know, research and development when he got out of the M.U.
[SPEAKER_04]: You know, hiring people that really knew what the hell they were doing.
[SPEAKER_04]: You know, they might have been friends, they might have been people we knew, but they were, they actually had the experience to bring in and teach us things.
[SPEAKER_04]: You know, it wasn't us teaching them how to do the job.
[SPEAKER_04]: They were teaching us how to do that fast into the business.
[SPEAKER_01]: Sure, yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, that's the thing, man.
[SPEAKER_01]: I mean, you're as a founder, your job should be to try to work yourself.
[SPEAKER_01]: back into your core competency and higher people to backstop, shit that are actual professionals at that thing.
[SPEAKER_01]: You know what I mean?
[SPEAKER_01]: Like I can do marketing and I can do media, but when it comes to designing products and shit like that, I'm just wing it.
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm guessing.
[SPEAKER_01]: You know what I mean?
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: uh... when it comes to logistics i'm figuring it out but i would rather have somebody that can see the tea leaves like you'd look at a spreadsheet knowledge it makes sense to them and they know where to move something to amplify my message or amplify my production or amplify my decision you know what i mean that should always be your goals found over company is to get the fuck out of the way
[SPEAKER_04]: You know, the first thing, the thing you're the worst, you know, you're the worst actually the first thing you outsource.
[SPEAKER_04]: You know, outsource things in the order that you're not good at them.
[SPEAKER_04]: You know, if you're not good at human resources, you're not good at financing and doing the books outsource it.
[SPEAKER_04]: Like I have an MBA.
[SPEAKER_04]: I hate doing bookkeeping.
[SPEAKER_04]: I can do it.
[SPEAKER_04]: I don't want to do it.
[SPEAKER_04]: That's always a first thing.
[SPEAKER_04]: I go higher fractional bookkeeper to do that.
[SPEAKER_01]: These days it's so cheap like fucking $40 an hour.
[SPEAKER_01]: Three for grand a month maybe for fraction bookkeeping if you're elected what we do a lot of For some delivery size company out.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, we're doing a lot of logistics.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's not that much money to be honest It's way less than we would be paying a fucking employee to do that.
[SPEAKER_01]: That's for sure.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, and they're on call too, which is nice Yeah, I enjoyed
[SPEAKER_01]: I've enjoyed that process quite a bit.
[SPEAKER_01]: And we did that at Black Rival 2.
[SPEAKER_01]: I mean, when I first got there, I think they were like, technically.
[SPEAKER_01]: 13 employees, but some of them were people that were doing our fulfillment and we kind of we moved back to a fulfillment company after that, so it was pretty small still.
[SPEAKER_01]: And then we started picking off finance people from fanatics and stuff like that and this guy from this company and this guy from this company and you could see the business start to change.
[SPEAKER_01]: You know what I mean?
[SPEAKER_04]: You work with people and you're like, we need to go hire someone like that or just go hire that person.
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, I mean, that's always the thing you want to do is try to steal somebody and then you know you eventually just like all companies it evolves over time and you're trying to manage it so it evolves into something that you want it to be still and you can get out of your hand sometimes you so that just that is what it is, but
[SPEAKER_01]: the thing about starting a business is, I don't know anybody that's only ever started one.
[SPEAKER_04]: That's kind of what got us, you know, not got us in trouble.
[SPEAKER_04]: It sends a little bit of an awesome, we started a clothing company.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, yeah.
[SPEAKER_04]: TWC, which is now shut down for the most part.
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_04]: You know, and then we got off in Fort Carbine, we bought a forum, and that's, you know, in retrospect, probably should have made either of those moves, but you know, they're both gone now, so that's, should have stuck with what we're gonna,
[SPEAKER_01]: Uh, yeah, but you're uh, you've you've got something new going on now.
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, so, you know, like I said, I stayed on Sun's Library through about Mayor June the last year helping them out after Nate took over in February, you know, still how about they need something I'll, you know, they call me if they, everything was in my name I said everything up.
[SPEAKER_04]: I knew I was the one person that knew everything worked so I occasionally get a call to fix something, but they, they're, they're off on their own now.
[SPEAKER_04]: So my current new business partner Clint.
[SPEAKER_04]: reached out and you know he worked for Sun's Liberty like 10 years ago the Sarah Coder before he started his own shop and he got into doing more OEM high volume work so if you go look at like like HK like that a anniversary gun last year M5 FFC said it it was sand with like a diggy camo pattern laser in he did all those form
[SPEAKER_04]: So he does big jobs, hundreds of guns, you know, and he had a network of dealers around the San Antonio area that were supposed to be feeding him jobs.
[SPEAKER_04]: You know, they're pick up locations for him.
[SPEAKER_04]: If they, someone did sarco, they could drop it over there and he'd pick it up.
[SPEAKER_04]: Well, what he found though, and I, you know, I went after he told me this, I went and talked to other friends at kind of the same model and they all had the same problem was that.
[SPEAKER_04]: These dealers weren't feeding them here and there.
[SPEAKER_04]: They'd get a job, right?
[SPEAKER_04]: But for the most part, the dealers didn't know how to price it.
[SPEAKER_04]: They didn't know anything about Cereco, the newer employees, you know, they didn't want to train employees to know about it.
[SPEAKER_04]: And it just wasn't worth your time to screw with it.
[SPEAKER_04]: At best, there's a good customer.
[SPEAKER_04]: They might take the order in, or most time as like, here's this guy's business card, go call him, kind of thing, right?
[SPEAKER_04]: And maybe they do, maybe they don't, maybe they forget about it.
[SPEAKER_04]: So we wanted to find a way to incline it thought of this idea to design a kiosk that goes in the shop that does it all, you know, you select your farm type, you can select your colors and patterns, you see what you get and you know his original.
[SPEAKER_01]: I mean it's like one of those sliders on the video games like on Call of Duty where you get to choose the scans for your fucking exactly right.
[SPEAKER_04]: And he wanted to do that for himself and I told him like,
[SPEAKER_04]: No, I'll do it for everybody.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
[SPEAKER_04]: And let's build a network of vendors, you know what I mean?
[SPEAKER_04]: We bring in vendors as well, they'll pay us a monthly fee, but they get business out of this Giosk as well.
[SPEAKER_04]: And the customer gets to pick the vendors.
[SPEAKER_04]: So they see a gallery of images just like they would on circles website, ratings, price ranges, whether the customer picks up, you know, et cetera, et cetera.
[SPEAKER_04]: And the system filters it down to the vendors I can do the job.
[SPEAKER_04]: They can opt out of doing some vendors.
[SPEAKER_04]: Don't want to do optics.
[SPEAKER_04]: You know, don't want to do suppressors.
[SPEAKER_04]: a lot of them don't want to get e-cups because it's not worth it, you've paid $40 to circle a cup, so they picked the vendor, they pay us, we collect all the money, and we split it up in the back end, so you've got, at this point, the dealers motivated to have this kiosk in their shop, because we're making 15% on the job, and they're capturing it immediately without someone getting out of there.
[SPEAKER_04]: And man, you just buy a gun, turn around, Sarah coat it.
[SPEAKER_04]: And once you pay the kiosk, all you do is hand it over to the night by the counter.
[SPEAKER_04]: And the system prints out the packing list, prints out the FFL vendor, prints out everything they need.
[SPEAKER_04]: And they ship it off.
[SPEAKER_04]: And another step in there too, they can make a little additional money because they can also, some of the guns of cart, disassembly.
[SPEAKER_04]: So that's a step in the system is like, hey, is the gun disassembled?
[SPEAKER_04]: And the dealer is, say, yes or no.
[SPEAKER_04]: And if it's not, they can put in a disassembly jarge if they want to take the thing apart and put it back together when it comes back.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, I mean, sorry, buddy, Brian Weir has a company kind of like this called One Day Raph.
[SPEAKER_01]: She's out in Southern California, somewhere, but the company.
[SPEAKER_01]: is this vehicle wrapping.
[SPEAKER_01]: But they do all sorts of different wraps as well.
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: But it has something like that.
[SPEAKER_01]: You can either come with your own design that's fitted to a vehicle or you can have one of them design it and it enters a marketplace that finds a place closest to you that can actually do the job.
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, I can actually go find something similar to that.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, but it's like with with it's bespoke stuff design wise, which is more along the lines of what you're talking about.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I could see that working
[SPEAKER_01]: and a of myriad of different ways for forget about me serocoding is something for sure and it's it's a specialized process you got to have somebody knows what they're doing but
[SPEAKER_01]: just thinking of all the because of the type of business it is all the potential upsells that you can do with that like here's my uh... upper and lower i want to see her coat of a wire rire at it here's all the parts i want by and through your vendor and assemble that motherfucker said it back to me ready to go and that's something we we're looking to do and it's a little definitely a blazer engraving out of the box for sure you know we'd looked at putting stippling just on you know uh... polymer frame guns in there
[SPEAKER_01]: But even like site like opt putting on optics and fucking milling everything out.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, you could do it.
[SPEAKER_04]: That's probably next step is looking at me at doing slide cuts and things like that.
[SPEAKER_01]: And then you're then you're doing deals with the manufacturers of those parts as well, which makes you.
[SPEAKER_01]: you get preferential treatment when you're going to wreck the dealers and adding the folding them into your natural business.
[SPEAKER_01]: Typically, you get preferery like you're in first and line to get stuff because they know that that's that sale is automatically going out of the consumer already, right?
[SPEAKER_01]: So they're they're fucking hands are cleaning that things out in the marketplace now.
[SPEAKER_04]: We've looked a lot of really cool ways to take it, you know, another place we want to take it, Syracuse really big also and Harley's motorcycles, you know, circling pipes and gas tanks and, you know, there's a lot of parts in the bike you can circle.
[SPEAKER_04]: So, possibly taking it that realm, you know, taking the ATVs, you know, there's, there's a lot of different industry to take it to full custom guns.
[SPEAKER_04]: be a slight, slight redesign, but there's definitely ways you can take it into full custom guns.
[SPEAKER_04]: The other reason we kind of stayed away from that out of the get go is now you're looking at possibly using two vendors.
[SPEAKER_04]: You know, it gets a little more complicated because most sericotors don't necessarily build guns or sub-arts or, yeah, yeah, do you like that, so whatever, right?
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_04]: So we're, we're like, ask, let's do the things we know we can get one vendor to do, or easily outsource.
[SPEAKER_04]: And once you start getting into that other stuff then you're like,
[SPEAKER_04]: now it gets a little more complicated you know yeah it's definitely something we want to look at and once the systems mature really just changing the databases and the information this the choices in there is really all you got to do and you can turn it into anything yeah yeah I mean it doesn't even necessarily have to be about getting guns here coded right no yeah we've got we're gonna put knives and swords and cups and bows and arrows and sunglasses and flamethrowers and yeah whatever whatever we can think of we're gonna put it in there
[SPEAKER_01]: right for circoding.
[SPEAKER_04]: Yes, tanks on the pipes too because they have coatings that will dissipate heat rapidly.
[SPEAKER_01]: Oh, really cool down.
[SPEAKER_01]: Well, that's probably a pretty narrow field that people that actually know how to do that, right?
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, and that's something we'll have to do is we'll have to, on the vendor side, what the, have them, you know, are you, can you do this?
[SPEAKER_04]: And that's kind of my partner comes in, he knows, can vet the vendors, but, yeah, it'll limit the vendors, but there's a lot of them that can do that.
[SPEAKER_04]: And the cool thing is, once the gun shop has it's in their shop, we can add additional modules to it to build guns or help bring your gas tank, you know, we can add the Harley module into a gun shop.
[SPEAKER_04]: You know, we probably wouldn't charge money extra for it, bring your gas tank into your local gun shop.
[SPEAKER_04]: I have a painted, you know.
[SPEAKER_04]: Car parts can technically be gun painted, but most shops can't handle it because of the size.
[SPEAKER_04]: I know it sounds liberty.
[SPEAKER_04]: We did a motorcycle wheel once for like a chopper and I swear that wheel is like.
[SPEAKER_04]: 36 inches with that.
[SPEAKER_04]: It was huge.
[SPEAKER_04]: We had a build a fixture just a sandblast.
[SPEAKER_01]: Well, how does Sarah Coding work?
[SPEAKER_01]: So is it dipped or something?
[SPEAKER_01]: There's a spray.
[SPEAKER_01]: How's it work?
[SPEAKER_01]: It's great.
[SPEAKER_04]: It's blasted down.
[SPEAKER_04]: You degrease it, blast it down, and then you spray it.
[SPEAKER_04]: And then he's most of the coatings go in one another.
[SPEAKER_04]: But there are also an air dried version.
[SPEAKER_04]: And it doesn't really make a lot of sense.
[SPEAKER_04]: But the high heat coatings are typically air dry.
[SPEAKER_04]: So you just let it let an air dry.
[SPEAKER_04]: You know, that stuff you put on
[SPEAKER_04]: as an air drive coating.
[SPEAKER_04]: So if you've got a big enough thing where you can't stick it in an oven, then you have to use an air drive or you have to buy a bigger oven.
[SPEAKER_04]: I mean they make ovens sides of this room.
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, but most places use it's called a shell lab oven which is about the size of a refrigerator.
[SPEAKER_04]: How much is that fucking thing costs?
[SPEAKER_04]: About four grand.
[SPEAKER_01]: Oh, that's not bad.
[SPEAKER_01]: What's the big one cost?
[SPEAKER_01]: I don't even know because like a fucking A paint booth like for cars a big ass paint booth has an oven inside as well I don't think it would get to the temperature necessary to cure It's actually not the high.
[SPEAKER_04]: It would probably wood.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, to cure Sarah code is not that I mean you're talking a couple of degrees Okay, yeah, you use the oven inside of a paint booth to cure The clear coat.
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, the last stage of that would I know some guys do that.
[SPEAKER_04]: Our best Sarah code or at Sun's Liberty was a carpenter You know we hired him off a plate.
[SPEAKER_04]: We had a panel lot, but he's really good at both
[SPEAKER_04]: Um, so you definitely could, you know, it's a guy that specializes in that side of things.
[SPEAKER_04]: You know, there's a lot of oil field components we did at some celebrity.
[SPEAKER_04]: We're doing clamps and stuff.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_04]: The valve valves and things like that.
[SPEAKER_01]: Is that for aesthetic or for function?
[SPEAKER_04]: For corrosion resistance.
[SPEAKER_01]: Oh, sure.
[SPEAKER_01]: But a highly corrosion resistant.
[SPEAKER_04]: Mm-hmm.
[SPEAKER_04]: The oven baked very, very much.
[SPEAKER_01]: So there are a bunch of Cerecote companies out in West Texas, and I didn't know that.
[SPEAKER_01]: I don't know if there is.
[SPEAKER_01]: I don't know if it's really like a good business to start.
[SPEAKER_01]: Oh, yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: Just have some dude walk around.
[SPEAKER_04]: If you got the connections for it, definitely.
[SPEAKER_01]: Like, if you've got the data on it, like, hey, your parts gonna last X amount longer and his how much it cost to replace that bitch and here's how much it cost to serve.
[SPEAKER_01]: Sure, but it's not that expensive.
[SPEAKER_01]: No, it's not.
[SPEAKER_01]: I mean, this, I'm like, these large scale paint booths are like fucking at the high in 25 grand.
[SPEAKER_01]: That's affordable if you're gonna be able to get business.
[SPEAKER_01]: Shit.
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, especially if we're doing car parts, you know, like we, my, my business partners were good friends with Goldberg, the wrestlers in investor in this new company and they were circoding car parts, you know, hoods and doors and stuff for him, bumpers, things like that.
[SPEAKER_04]: That's a good idea.
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, and now you can do some really cool stuff and it's highly corrosion resistant, highly abrasion resistant.
[SPEAKER_04]: The air dry coating is a little less abrasion resistant, but it's the glacier coat and go to, I think, 2,200 degrees or something like that.
[SPEAKER_04]: Oh, wow.
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, it's crazy.
[SPEAKER_01]: That's the air dry.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: 2200, I guess that's good if you're going to put it on a suppressor.
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, suppressor or, you know, they originate the original C series and now they have the glacier, which is like the even higher in one.
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, and CIRCOT makes, they also have a powder coating company, so we may take this, this kiosk technology to powder coating.
[SPEAKER_01]: Powder coating is the one where they use electricity if you can't use on guns.
[SPEAKER_04]: I mean, it's way circus thin.
[SPEAKER_04]: It's only about at max two mills unless you start later in colors, but on powder coatings, I think four or five seconds, it's thicker.
[SPEAKER_01]: They use powder coating for aluminum baseball bats.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, I can say.
[SPEAKER_04]: If you're going to aluminum stuff, you know, a lot of your, you know, your pipe, you know, you know, a lot of engine parts and stuff that they're aluminum, you know, you're called their intake tubes and stuff like that, or it would be powder coated.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: Um, yeah, those bright red carburetors and that's not spray paint on there.
[SPEAKER_01]: No.
[SPEAKER_01]: That would be that would melt immediately Yeah, you see the more anodizing.
[SPEAKER_04]: It's funny.
[SPEAKER_04]: You know if the farm's industry has been really behind the times on materials and get you said anodine isn't as common with some of the bigger manufacturers But they use it but not bright depth.
[SPEAKER_04]: They use just based on dollar dollar.
[SPEAKER_04]: Like I like to go laptop like a dollar black, you know, I mean ours was shiny Is the only way to get shiny, but you had a dip in acid
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, I mean, yeah, and that's a whole thing again, not only just like getting the ass in the first place, I sure that I'm just certain that's a regulated.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yo, yeah, there was a waste trail and all that as a ping-a from knows the tail that's regulated.
[SPEAKER_01]: And then you got to have a scrubber on site for the air otherwise everybody's going to fucking get like you're everybody's going to die.
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, if you look at a loophole to opting, it's kind of shiny black like that, that company did it for loophole for so long, loophole to eventually bought them.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, that makes sense.
[SPEAKER_01]: I mean, a lot of bigger companies buy up their supply chains as they get larger, which is smart to be honest because then not to teach you how to cheat the IRS or anything, but you should always be looking to cheat the IRS because taxes are gay.
[SPEAKER_01]: you can have a pair of company that owns all these companies buy from one of the companies that you own inside of that and it's still right off yeah right even though you own both companies so yeah i was when i was going through grad school they always tell you tell you try to maximize a profit of the company at the end of the chain yeah yeah it's always the that's always the right off everything down below yes that's yeah it doesn't matter if the ones above you in the vertical integration really make a lot of money is on the bottom bottom ones are
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, that's what Trump was talking about in the 2016 debates with Hillary.
[SPEAKER_01]: Like, I know that you're not going to close these Zoom polls because all your friends use them because I show them as well.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: You know what I mean?
[SPEAKER_01]: We're never going to stop.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's like, the tax code was written to confuse middle class people.
[SPEAKER_04]: All these people are like, I'll Trump didn't pay any taxes, I'm like, I mean, I think some are really good businessmen.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: Like, what are you trying to pay more taxes when you're talking about?
[SPEAKER_04]: I read some article by CPA while back and he's like, my job is to cheat, I'm not cheat the government, but I feel we're already used.
[SPEAKER_04]: He's like, my job is to not pay taxes.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's a private client from.
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, that is my taxes.
[SPEAKER_04]: There's little taxes possible, and it's the government's job to make me pay as many taxes possible and it's just a constant back and forth of that, you know.
[SPEAKER_01]: There's a lot of new tech coming out.
[SPEAKER_01]: Maybe guys, is there any, like,
[SPEAKER_01]: AI factory stuff that's going to be integrated into these stuff you're doing now or is that like arg, but because you don't control the in the serocoding process itself, but you've dealt with is there anything coming AI-wise and gons are serocoding?
[SPEAKER_04]: They've gotten bigger and AI on the laser inside of it for sure, so my partner's big on, he's got to type the laser which is huge.
[SPEAKER_01]: I bet that's stippling too, right?
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, a lot of it, a lot of it, it's still not really AI, but there's a lot of a lot more computerized, you know, now you don't have the stencil colors, now you can
[SPEAKER_04]: you know, late three colors on top of a gun and then laser out the pattern.
[SPEAKER_04]: Right.
[SPEAKER_04]: We were looking at integrating AI into the kiosk a little bit, but it gets a little more complicated when you're...
[SPEAKER_04]: A.I.
[SPEAKER_04]: as a habit to just make shit up.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_04]: It'd be almost designing your own circle engine because the pricing's tied into which parts you're circoding and what colors you're putting on them.
[SPEAKER_04]: So we really, it's got to be like in a matrix.
[SPEAKER_04]: It's got to be really defined.
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_04]: And there's one thing.
[SPEAKER_04]: Cerecote, the owner, Cerecote, Brian, and brought up.
[SPEAKER_04]: He's like, well, I'm so easy.
[SPEAKER_04]: I, for that, you know, get better images like you have at the pricing and all these shit on the back and on to get.
[SPEAKER_04]: get fucked up.
[SPEAKER_01]: Then you're going to have to hire somebody to fucking unwind all the nonsense.
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, I'm sure you've used a, I have done it for, used gamma for, you know, different things for different uses and you always got to really check it because if they doesn't know the answer, it just makes it the fuck up.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, I use it for research a lot.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: And then I'm like, what you just said is not real, I was researching battles during the global war and terror actually, and it assigned a Medal of Honor recipient to a battle that they were never at.
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm like, I had to correct them like that's not right, bro.
[SPEAKER_01]: You got to
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, if you're like in a battle, if it doesn't have many people died, it'll just make it up.
[SPEAKER_04]: Wow, yeah, 377, whatever.
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, that's not right.
[SPEAKER_01]: Um, yeah, it's effective at some stuff.
[SPEAKER_01]: The robotic stuff, though, for manufacturing is getting pretty good.
[SPEAKER_01]: There's this company called Philix units in Munich, and it's a startup and they've developed a fucking hydraulic fork lift that's too independent.
[SPEAKER_01]: Uh, lifts that have lasers on that find the gap and then drive into it by themselves and then fucking lift the thing up So you can program it to like and again the point of it is Everything's still got to be measured out they're correct way because it's robotics and it's not until it's not actually intelligent the way that we think So the use of the program.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, so everything has to be in the right place is kind of like our body
[SPEAKER_01]: Zach Millennial Farmer tells about how he's using it up in Minnesota to farm.
[SPEAKER_01]: They will they use it to track all of the fields like the rotational farming, right?
[SPEAKER_01]: And the mineral counts all that stuff and then when it comes when you're off season, you drive through and you put nitrogen stems like pellets or whatever down into the ground to fertilize ground.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, and then you're able to track it and then come back during planting season and put the plant right there, like literally on the exact same spot without putting stakes in the ground or into that bullshit.
[SPEAKER_01]: It maps the whole thing out.
[SPEAKER_01]: For what you guys are doing, I think, you know, Bill Thompson of Spartan Forge, Spartan Forge would probably be more aligned those lines because he's Spartan Forge's AI hunting software.
[SPEAKER_01]: It tracks like,
[SPEAKER_01]: Um, game herds when patterns weather patterns, all that shit and tell you where the best place to set up for like if you've only got a weekend, maybe two weekends a year to go do your hunting, you want to kill some shit so you can put stuff into the right.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: So it tells you precisely how to get a fucking good hunt in and then he's got another thing on the back and it's a largely an LLM large language model kind of like GPT or
[SPEAKER_01]: But it's designed specifically for our community, hunting guns, all that shit.
[SPEAKER_01]: So it'll actually answer your questions.
[SPEAKER_01]: Like if you want to know how to build a fucking soft mod for or something like that, it'll give you the exact directions on how to do it without any of the woke nonsense.
[SPEAKER_01]: Like, oh, you shouldn't fucking use firearms or whatever.
[SPEAKER_04]: Whatever the stupid thing says, but trying to get you some more or less on what you're trying to You know, you know, you're pretty past that stage.
[SPEAKER_01]: Let me alone Yeah, but it's it's drawing from a repository of the actual hunting space the actual gun business and stuff like that So it might be really useful for what you guys are doing.
[SPEAKER_01]: Not just there, but it sounds a liberty to To be honest you need to have a child hook you up a bill, but that company's great
[SPEAKER_01]: So what do you guys, we got to get out of here in a second, what are you guys doing next?
[SPEAKER_01]: What's up next?
[SPEAKER_01]: Like what's the next step for customization station?
[SPEAKER_04]: So will be, we'll have a fully operational.
[SPEAKER_04]: We'll be at Shot Show, we won't really be letting people play with it just yet.
[SPEAKER_04]: We're going to be at the Sun's Liberty gave it up.
[SPEAKER_04]: It's not the GBRS party at the Leatherneck, the opening party for Shot Show, it's an awesome party.
[SPEAKER_04]: If you're there, go.
[SPEAKER_01]: I won't be, but I've been to Leather.
[SPEAKER_01]: I've done parties.
[SPEAKER_01]: The Scout Cypher Foundation always does a party.
[SPEAKER_04]: with that grind with those guys yeah no he's usually there too on Mondays yeah great dude and uh we will we'll be there we'll probably have it on a tab but we can kind of we can kind of demo it or make a demo video you know we're just getting the point where it's kind of interactive it's kind of you know doing what's supposed to do because there's we have seven full-time developers working on this we're moving fast on it
[SPEAKER_04]: So, probably by mid-March, we'll have it in beta testing.
[SPEAKER_04]: We'll have it in a bunch of shops around San Antonio and go check it out.
[SPEAKER_04]: You know, love a locator on the website, so you can see where they're at.
[SPEAKER_04]: And then we're hoping beta testing only takes a few weeks.
[SPEAKER_04]: You know, if we do our job right and we, there's going to be issues, but get to the point and there's not anything, any major problems with it.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, the system's not crashing.
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, that's made, you know, I'm going to have one in the house.
[SPEAKER_04]: I'm just going to sit there and just play with it until I break it.
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_04]: That's, that's basically a pay to testing is just find the flaws.
[SPEAKER_04]: But yeah, if we get that done by April, we know where our plan is, I've typically been an anti rep group.
[SPEAKER_04]: That's a big thing that gun history has rep groups.
[SPEAKER_04]: You know what I mean?
[SPEAKER_04]: Typically not been my thing.
[SPEAKER_04]: Haven't had great experiences with them in the past.
[SPEAKER_04]: You know, hired a couple had to fire them.
[SPEAKER_04]: But we think this this product lend itself really well to rep groups.
[SPEAKER_04]: We're going to be going out all of the United States trying to put, you know, we want to put one of these in every gunshot in the United States.
[SPEAKER_04]: I mean, imagine if you have a gunshot in junction Texas, like you don't even know where the nearest Sarah Coder.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yes.
[SPEAKER_04]: That this is a new revenue stream.
[SPEAKER_04]: You can bring on big box stores, you know, that's pro.
[SPEAKER_04]: We can wing it out there and put one of these in stores.
[SPEAKER_04]: I've never offered customization in there.
[SPEAKER_04]: would never even think about it because I don't want to train their employees.
[SPEAKER_04]: I don't want to mess around it, but this way they pay a small monthly fee and your monthly fee doesn't go, you know, go up if you do more jobs, you know, we're paying, we're just charging you.
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_04]: We're taking a small cut for credit card processing and stuff, but otherwise if you do 30, 40, 50 jobs a month, I mean, that's all pure profit on your point.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: So, yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: That's definitely scalable.
[SPEAKER_01]: at no cost to the end user.
[SPEAKER_04]: So yeah, and we're giving them a hardware for free.
[SPEAKER_04]: That's our main our main cost right now.
[SPEAKER_04]: You know, as this, we're going to be supplying them the kiosk.
[SPEAKER_04]: Basically, those are going to be a bit computer screen.
[SPEAKER_04]: You know, we'll be providing the hardware for free for the first year to kind of like sound shop did it.
[SPEAKER_04]: You just be able to get a sound shop kiosk for free.
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_04]: Not one other five grand.
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_04]: uh but we're gonna make it as easy as possible for gun shops to pick this up and you know even the shops that do cerico in house this is a robotic employee that'll price the jobs for them for $200 a month you know it's a lot cheaper than paying some buying the counter how to do it and just hey if you need cerico go over here to this machine and they'll knock it out for you none keep doing what i'm doing you know yeah
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, I mean, that's the digital model to the longer you can keep somebody in your store, which is why every social media platform prioritizes internal links.
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, just like on podcast, I know when we had our own, you know, I mean, my cut-around, we like did like 20 episodes.
[SPEAKER_04]: We figured out if we'd post a link to it on Facebook and say as a podcast, or even in the intro to the podcast, it said, no, no, I'm messing yours up for this one.
[SPEAKER_04]: I'm saying it like eight times, that doesn't matter for us.
[SPEAKER_04]: But it listens to it, and it kind of reduces your exposure, because it's nodes you're going to take it off the platform.
[SPEAKER_04]: You're going to YouTube, respond to fire somewhere else.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, the easiest trick to that is just to post a clip native to the platform.
[SPEAKER_01]: And then in the first comment, put the link out.
[SPEAKER_01]: That's the only way you can really defeat that.
[SPEAKER_01]: But it's an easy way to defeat it.
[SPEAKER_01]: It kind of sucks that it does that.
[SPEAKER_01]: But I understand why you would prioritize your own product.
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm not going to fall somebody for that.
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, I mean, you got to everybody's got to everybody needs to eat, right?
[SPEAKER_04]: So you got to you got to find ways to get around it.
[SPEAKER_04]: It's like we're not going to be using Facebook.
[SPEAKER_04]: I mean, I'm on that shit all the along.
[SPEAKER_04]: So I'm not not using it, you know?
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: Well, uh,
[SPEAKER_01]: been a very eye opening and some of this stuff today.
[SPEAKER_01]: I'd like the conversation about working your way through growing businesses and whatnot.
[SPEAKER_01]: Tell everybody where they can find you and where they can find the new product if it's out there yet.
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, we're on Instagram.
[SPEAKER_04]: We're going to start putting stuff out on Instagram.
[SPEAKER_04]: It might be the first thing we put out on Instagram.
[SPEAKER_04]: Actually, whenever this goes live, but
[SPEAKER_04]: We're on, you look up customization station on Instagram, Facebook, we got a website, and all that's getting built, and most of it'll be running by shot show time.
[SPEAKER_04]: We'll be at shot show, you know, kind of wandering around, you know, I'm easy to spot.
[SPEAKER_04]: So, yeah, are you guys at a booth?
[SPEAKER_01]: You just...
[SPEAKER_04]: Now we've reached out.
[SPEAKER_04]: We had a long meeting with Sarah Coe, but I think we're it'd be a next year thing.
[SPEAKER_04]: They want it fully 110 times.
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, but they're behind us or support in the project.
[SPEAKER_04]: They've been helping us with some technical data and stuff we needed on colors and things like that.
[SPEAKER_04]: So we appreciate that.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: good.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, I'll say that was a great company.
[SPEAKER_01]: All those guys are cool.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: That's why they've dominated that industry for so long.
[SPEAKER_01]: You've brought the other people in great product.
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, they're great.
[SPEAKER_04]: You know, we've been working with, you know, Daniel and Jason and the owner Brian over there 10 years probably shit.
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, they've been there forever and they're good.
[SPEAKER_04]: They're great people.
[SPEAKER_01]: So good.
[SPEAKER_01]: Good.
[SPEAKER_01]: Well, thanks for coming to me.
[SPEAKER_01]: I appreciate the time.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, no.
[SPEAKER_01]: Appreciate you having me on me.
[SPEAKER_01]: That's fun.
[SPEAKER_01]: For sure.
[SPEAKER_01]: Everybody.
[SPEAKER_01]: This will be out tomorrow, by the way.
[SPEAKER_01]: So that's Wednesday.
[SPEAKER_01]: Customization, station, check it out.
[SPEAKER_01]: Check out Southern Liberty Gunworks.
[SPEAKER_01]: That's the rifle that you always see me carrying.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's the best.
[SPEAKER_01]: They make the best rifles in the business.
[SPEAKER_01]: They do.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I think the government's starting to agree with me on that to be honest.
[SPEAKER_01]: They're slowly coming around.
[SPEAKER_01]: They were skeptical.
[SPEAKER_01]: Uh, but.
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm not I'm not getting any details on that, but they're less skeptical about that.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: All right.
[SPEAKER_01]: Cool.
[SPEAKER_01]: Thanks for coming today, man.
[SPEAKER_01]: Appreciate your time.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: Thanks a lot.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: Thank you all for listening.
[SPEAKER_01]: This has been Citizen.