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Today we sit down with Sean Glass. Sean is a former U.S. Navy Seal officer, combat leader, and current leadership instructor with Jocko Willink's Echelon Front and co-founder of Primal Beef. Sean spent 13 years in the SEAL Teams, leading five SEAL platoons. Primal Beef is a beef company that focuses on providing high-quality, sustainably sourced beef to consumers who value nutrition, environmental stewardship, and the ethical treatment of animals. Sean's experience in life offers him a unique perspective on the simplicity and nutritional benefits of getting back to basics with our food sources.This conversation explores the intersections of sustainable agriculture, why America is a beef country, and the pivotal role of leadership in both personal and professional realms.
Topics discussed include the contrast between homesteading and ranching, the benefits and logistical challenges of adopting a carnivore diet, Primal Beef's business model and emphasizing grass-finished beef, why America is a beef country, the importance of direct connections between consumers and food sources, the role of leadership and team dynamics within the SEAL teams, the powerful tool of debriefing, strategies for maintaining focus and detachment in decision-making, reflections on the personal growth and life lessons learned from military service, and many others.
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Join The Meat Mafia community Telegram group for daily conversations to keep up with what’s happening between episodes of the show.
*** LINKS***
Check out our Newsletter - Food for Thought - to dramatically improve your health this year!
Join The Meat Mafia community Telegram group for daily conversations to keep up with what’s happening between episodes of the show.
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Creators & Guests
What is The Meat Mafia Podcast?
The Meat Mafia Podcast is hosted by @MeatMafiaBrett and @MeatMafiaHarry.
We're two guys who walked away from the typical path to carve out something different. Based in Austin, we’re on a mission to figure out what it takes to live a fulfilled life in a world that often pushes us away from meaning.
We have conversations with people we believe can help us, diving deep into the pillars of health, wealth, and faith, as the cornerstones of our mission.
Whether it's challenging the modern food system, questioning conventional health advice, or building something from the ground up, we're here to explore the tough questions and share the lessons we’ve learned along the way.
If you're tired of the noise and ready to find meaning, tune in and join us!
Sean, what's happening, brother? Welcome to Austin.
Speaker 2:I appreciate it, man. Thanks for having me, guys.
Speaker 3:Got you back in Texas, your home state. Right?
Speaker 2:Got me back here. You brought me to a place where I could get a good workout in this morning. Like, you brought me coffee. Like, life's good, man.
Speaker 3:Dude, we had to thank you. I mean, you sent a we had a great phone call. It's, It's, like, 3 weeks ago, I think. Eric Hinman connected us, so shout out Eric. It's like you gotta connect with my buddy Sean from Primal Beef.
Speaker 3:They're doing awesome stuff. Had a great call. You sent us a huge box of beef to the office. It was like rib eye strips, everything. And we just got a new office.
Speaker 3:It's, like, 2 minutes away from the studio. So we had, like, 6 people over. So we just threw a bunch of those steaks on the grill, and they were so good, man. That product is incredible, dude.
Speaker 2:Hell, yeah.
Speaker 3:Right out of the Shenandoah Valley. Right? Grass finished product right out of there?
Speaker 2:Shenandoah Valley. Yep. Yep. Fruit. So grass fed and then finished on a blend of fruit, vegetables, and then, like, distillers grain, basically.
Speaker 3:Nice.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah. That's awesome. The fattiness on those were was different. Perfect. Yeah.
Speaker 1:It was, like, perfect for the grill.
Speaker 2:Yeah. Different. Right? For sure. You can tell that fruit finish does something special to it, man.
Speaker 2:Yeah. Something special to the beef.
Speaker 3:Yeah. Sure. And then and then Harry always throws down on the, the charcoal grill outside, so it gets that nice crust on it too. Just some butter. We literally just slice it up, threw it on some cutting boards.
Speaker 3:Nothing else. No utensils. Just stay with our hands. It was incredible.
Speaker 2:Like a bunch of savages. Yeah. Literally. Yeah. The way it should be.
Speaker 1:That's the way to do it. Yeah. I feel like most people, like, wanna sit down and eat steak with a fork and knife. I'm like,
Speaker 2:come on. Yeah.
Speaker 1:Let's, like, eat with your hands.
Speaker 2:Yeah. Pro tip. If you travel and you order a steak, unless you specifically ask them from a nice steakhouse to send you utensils, they don't. So there's been numerous nights where for work, I'll be on the road, and I'll order a steak from the nicest steakhouse I can find, which is always no offense to those steak houses. Always a little disappointing after you've got your own beef operation.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:But they don't send utensils. So I'm in there in my hotel room by myself just, like, literally gnawing on a rib eye with my bare hands.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah. It was
Speaker 3:like I the liver king posted a video yesterday. I think he's in New York, so he's at Peter Lugers. And he was, like, double fisting 2 rib eye, like, tomahawk rib eyes right off the bone. So that's basically you
Speaker 2:As he should.
Speaker 3:Just without the steroids.
Speaker 2:But Yeah. Yeah. Exactly right. Exactly right.
Speaker 3:But I've been getting Harry and I talk about this a lot. For us, it's such a cool feeling since we've done the show of, like, connecting with people like you that are either owned beef companies or they're ranchers. You're able to send us product. We're able to buy product from you and then just, like, host these awesome dinners with our friends. Like, I think it's just such a cool experience when you actually know the person that's growing the food for you.
Speaker 3:They're harvesting it. The product is amazing. Then you kinda have the obligation to share it with your friends. Like, I feel like that's actually natural, and that's what we should be leaning in towards.
Speaker 2:A 100% agree, and that was one of the the our big goals as a company was, I think, the the family dinner table is kind of a dying a dying thing right now. So in my mind, whenever there's steak getting served, like, people are gathering around.
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker 2:And bringing that that kind of communal aspect to the meal back where look. No offense to people who love chicken or fish, but, like, if I'm cooking chicken or fish, I'm not necessarily inviting a whole bunch of people over to partake in it. But if I'm throwing a brisket or 2 on the smoker and I'm working, you know, for working
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker 2:14 hours, on that brisket, People are coming over, and we're breaking bread together at the end of that. And I think Yeah. Beef just naturally kinda brings people together to share that experience, and it's probably been that way for 1000 of years.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Yeah. Food too is like, there's just the spiritual traditions around food, whether it's, like, the preparation, the kill, or actually, like, enjoying the meal with people. Like, we talk about this a decent amount of the show just, like, getting over food and giving thanks. It's a dying tradition.
Speaker 1:It's like It's huge. And and there really is that component of building relationship over food and being able to both share a similar appreciation for the food that gets put on your table. Like, it's just it it is kind of a shame that we're losing that. Like, there's so much value in the the communal aspects of food.
Speaker 2:It's it's huge, and it's it's been that way as a species for as long as we've basically been around. People have been breaking bread around campfires and gathering around over the the harvest and and fellowship. And then in in my my day job now working for Echelon Front, which is a leadership consultancy, question I get asked a lot by leaders is, you know, how do I start to build more of a relationship with with my team? So it's not just, you know, the the boss and and my people. We're we're more of a a commune, if you will.
Speaker 2:I'm like, break bread. Get together off-site. Don't talk about work and just have a meal. And conversations just tend to flow and revolve around those meals, and it's could not be any more natural.
Speaker 3:Yeah. Yeah. It's like, get like, do the change of scenery. Get out of the office. Just share a meal.
Speaker 3:Don't even talk about work. And I guarantee you as a part of that, like, communal experience, you'll learn more about your employee or whoever than you ever will just trying to talk to them in the in the boardroom or the conference room or whatever. Right?
Speaker 2:Yeah. If you're ordering pizza, bring it to the rec room. Like, people aren't gonna be talking that much, but you get away from work. You have a good meal. You actually sit down and ask some smart questions, and you'll get to know people real quick.
Speaker 3:Yeah. It's interesting that you have that perspective of the leadership consulting and then also of a beef company too because one of the things that we always get pushed back on is, like, isn't this diet or this lifestyle more expensive? And I say, like, number 1, I don't think it's more expensive. And even if it was, it's a holistic asset where I think our businesses exist because we got our diet under control, which gave us great energy. It gave us confidence that pushed us to start the show.
Speaker 3:Yeah. So it makes me think a lot about, like, with a client, would you ever talk to a client about nutrition? Because I would think that you get someone's nutrition dialed in, it's gonna give them more mental clarity. It's gonna give them more energy. It would probably make them a better leader or better at their job.
Speaker 3:Right?
Speaker 2:It's not something that usually comes up, but if people ask a 100%, I do. And, really, it's just an investment. And if you look at the amount of money that America as a whole spends on not eating properly, it's like our biggest expenditure as a as a nation outside of maybe the military is health care. And all health care starts with what you're putting in your system. And, you know, does a really good farm raised rib eye cost more than a big mac and a supersized Coke?
Speaker 2:It does Yeah. In the short term. Mhmm. In the long term, it's actually way less expensive to take care of yourself and invest in your health and eat good food that's gonna pay dividends than it is to go down the road of just putting all that other stuff in your body because there's no free rides, and eventually, it's gonna come for a circle.
Speaker 1:Mhmm. Does this surprise you how much we've normalized the current model of health care where it's just like most people are now kind of just accepting the fact that as they age, they aren't gonna be as healthy. They aren't gonna feel as great. They're not gonna be as active.
Speaker 2:It does. It's disappointing, but I think there's kind of a new wave of people who are seeing that's not necessarily the case. And a big piece of that is this social media world.
Speaker 3:You
Speaker 2:know, you're watching my boss, Jocko, who's in his fifties, and he's getting after it every single day. And he still looks like a silverback gorilla in his fifties. And you've got guys like Joe Rogan who are out there, massive following, telling people to be healthy, and then living out that lifestyle. And I think he's upper fifties nice. 55, 56, something like that.
Speaker 1:Yep.
Speaker 2:And people, I think, are seeing that it's just not the case. Like, you can be very active, very healthy, well into old age, and probably the key to that to that health is being active in investing in yourself.
Speaker 3:Yeah. It's one of the benefits of social media. I know it's it's absolutely a double edged sword, but I even think about with me, and we've talked about this bunch of the podcast that I had really bad autoimmune issues. And I started seeing on social media other people that had similar autoimmune issues that were going carnivore, and that gave me the proof of concept of, like, alright. These people prove that they can heal, so why can't I do the same thing?
Speaker 3:And it's the same thing with what you're saying about age. I feel like there's all these guys that are inspirations to other people that show, damn. Just because I'm 45, 50, it doesn't mean I have to, like, wither away. I can actually get better as I age too.
Speaker 2:Yeah. A 100%. And, you know, my wife, has celiac's disease. You know? So she didn't find out she had it until, I I think she was in college, and she started having all these issues, and it's autoimmune disease.
Speaker 2:So it Yeah. It floats around in the gene pool. So, hopefully, none of my kids get it, but I wouldn't be surprised if they if they did. But for us, what that means is our house is full of meat, vegetables, and fruit, basically, because there's no can't really have gluten. So it eliminates a lot of those already not best choices.
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker 2:But she eats right, and she doesn't have any issues whatsoever.
Speaker 3:Yeah. So she's, like, essentially cured, right, as long as she stays away from gluten? A 100%. Yeah. And what is it?
Speaker 3:Does she get, like, really bad flare ups if she has any of those foods
Speaker 2:or sickness. It's literally a sickness. Yeah. You know? She'll be down hard for a day or 2 with almost like flu like symptoms.
Speaker 2:Yeah. Her body's just rejecting all of those things. Awesome.
Speaker 1:One of one of the reasons Brett and I were really excited to have you on the show is you kinda fit, like, the perfect box between, someone who's in the beef industry, co a cofounder of a a beef business, but you also have, the business background, the military background, leadership skills. It's, like, basically fits all the boxes that we we like to talk about. Everything we love to talk about,
Speaker 3:you fit you check the box.
Speaker 1:So we're like, Sean, this is gonna be a kick ass episode. So I I think a really helpful place to start would just be your military experience and kinda what got you to the point of, you know, entering, this business experience that you have with Primal Beef. Like Yeah. The build up before that, the military experience. I know you have 13 years of experience in the military and, just, you know, that background and how that prepared you for everything you're doing today.
Speaker 2:Yeah. I mean, literally, the this seal teams, which is my former community, gave me everything that I have today. Like, every single thing that I have today is a result of being a part having the opportunity to be a part of that community. So, the vast majority of my good habits I learned in that community. How to not have bad habits, I learned in that community.
Speaker 2:Although there's a decent amount of people in the military that have bad habits. Yeah. All my friends, basically, that community gave me. My wife, that community gave me. My kids is a byproduct of that, that community gave me.
Speaker 2:So, basically, that's the lead up to where I am today is everything that I do is is framed from a mindset of the experience that I had in the military.
Speaker 3:Yeah. I feel like, there's so many dudes that are my that are in, like, the millennial demographic that watch that. I forget what it was. It was on the Discovery Channel. It was, like, buzz class 234.
Speaker 3:Yeah, man. Hell yeah. And, like, you know, you hear the instructor saying, like, it pays to be a winner. And I think society could honestly use a little bit more of that because I just look at those dudes, and I meet guys like you and some other people that are in the teams. And just being, like, put together, polished, dialed in, competitive, it seems like we've kinda just like, a lot of men have just lost those values.
Speaker 3:So when you meet dudes that are part have those values, it's it's refreshing to be a part of it because I think we could use that as a society.
Speaker 2:I would a 100% agree, and I think probably the biggest mistake that our society is making right now is they're just not offering men challenges
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Which is what men thrive on. So it's like this this thought process that if I remove all the difficult things from your life that somehow your life is going to be better.
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker 2:But that's not the case for either of the sexes necessarily, but especially for men. You know, we thrive on challenges. And whether you realize that that's good for you or not, is a different subject matter. But by removing all of these hurdles and just putting in these constant luxuries and trying to do things like remove being uncomfortable as much as we possibly can, I think we're doing a big detriment to the society? And if you look at all these different arenas now that that young men are flocking to, it's not surprising to anybody that's been watching because they're all areas that offer them some sort of challenge, which is I think what we all crave Yeah.
Speaker 2:At a base level.
Speaker 1:Yeah. John Eldridge has that really good book, Wild at Heart, and I feel like that just I got my hands on that at the right time when I was, like, just starting my entrepreneurial journey, just coming to faith, and really just, like, starting to understand what I was missing, which was just a rite of passage. Like, something that was gonna make me answer the question, like, are you qualified? Are you capable to do the things that you need to do to be a man and lead a family? So I feel like that resonates with me.
Speaker 1:Just, like, this idea of there being a rite of passage for for young guys.
Speaker 2:It's such a good book. And if you look at, so I I grew up Protestant, and I'm Catholic now. But if you look at the Catholic church specifically, the only area of the Catholic church that's growing is the traditional kind of, like, Latin mass based Catholics. And the reason is it's hard and it's different and it requires a tremendous amount of sacrifice, to to partake in something like that. And people are curious of, like, why the church is dying.
Speaker 2:I'm like, well, it's because for the church in general. Right? Like, if you look at the past 40 or 50 years of the church in America, what's the message that they've been sending to to guys? Be nice. Yep.
Speaker 2:You know, be civilized, all
Speaker 1:these different Passivity.
Speaker 2:Yeah. Be passive, all these different things. It's like that's kind of the opposite of you can call the the disciples, the the OGs, a lot of different things, but passive is probably not probably not one of them.
Speaker 3:100%.
Speaker 2:Yeah. So all these different areas where guys are finding meaning now, there's usually some type of challenge associated with that meaning.
Speaker 3:Yeah. There's, like, this weird, like, passivity associated with Jesus that's not correct.
Speaker 1:Yeah. So we he's like a yoga instructor.
Speaker 3:Yeah. Literally. Yeah. And then you actually pull some of the quotes from the Bible of what he said to people, and it's like, no. He was an absolute stud.
Speaker 3:He was a savage. And that's actually the next book we Harry and I help, we run this Christian men's group where it's like we do a 30 minute run, and then we do some scripture, and we read a chapter of a new book. Yeah. And the the next book we're reading is John Eldridge's second book, which is Beautiful Outlaw, which I think addresses who Jesus actually was too.
Speaker 2:Yeah. Outstanding book. And, yeah, the interpretation of there again, there's nothing that he said that was anything other than revolutionary and extraordinarily challenging.
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Like, he never said to anyone, you're perfectly fine the way that you are. Yeah. Matter of fact, he said kind of the opposite of all those things. And he was very upfront and honest with the disciples and the original Christians, which was his life's not gonna be easy, guys. Like, you're not you're opening yourself up to basically a world of of suffering in my name, but it's gonna be worth it Yeah.
Speaker 2:If you're open up to it.
Speaker 3:Yeah. It's amazing how, I feel like every time I've run towards friction in my life, there's always been a good outcome from it even if I didn't notice it in the moment. And every time I run away from friction and just keep relying on the easy thing, I turn into this shell of myself. Yeah. You know?
Speaker 2:There's no growth if you're running away from it. Right? Anytime there's friction. In other word, friction would be stress. Mhmm.
Speaker 2:And anytime there's stress, there's growth. You wanna get bigger? Gotta put your body under stress. You wanna get faster? Gotta put your body under stress.
Speaker 2:Wanna be better mentally? Be able to mentally cope with things? You have to put your mind under stress. And every time you're doing that, you're building up your ability to deal with that stress a little bit more and more and more, and you're just going to be better forward in the end even if you might not see it as you're in it.
Speaker 1:From your experience, serving, doing that around, like, having that friction around other guys, I feel like plays into that even more so. Like, if you're kind of going down that path of seeking discomfort solo, it's great. You can go far. You can really, like, figure stuff out. But when you're doing in the context of, like, a team, that's when you actually really have this dynamic where you're pushing yourself, you're sharpening yourself up against other people.
Speaker 1:And that too is, like, kind of going back to what we were talking about. Like, I feel like what a lot of guys are missing right now is just that group environment where they feel like they have meaning within the group, but then they also are being pushed by other guys who hold them accountable.
Speaker 2:It's the fellowship aspect of things. Right? The mutual suffering aspect of things. And is there somebody out there that maybe could make it through the selection pipeline to be a seal by themselves? Maybe.
Speaker 2:Maybe. I have my doubts about that. But all of a sudden, you put guys in a group and, you know, it's still not a big number.
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker 2:But 13% of people that go through make it through, and I think that number would be, like, 0% if there wasn't the group aspect of it because everybody's gonna have at least one moment of weakness in that. And what you're relying on during that moment where you're tired or you're super fatigued or you're hypothermic for the 1000th time is you're relying on your teammates to help pull you through those things.
Speaker 3:Yeah. How old were you when you realized that you actually crave that friction of the military, not just the military, but you actually wanted to be an operator at the highest level?
Speaker 2:13. And I don't know that I would say I realized those things when I was 13, but 13 is when I made the decision that that's what I wanted to do with my life. And probably innately at some level, I understood that those things would be involved, but it would be very disingenuous to sit here and say, like, that's why I wanted to become a seal at 13 was because I knew the communal aspect and all those things. I think just being a young boy who was just starting to be fueled by testosterone, reading a book about it, those things kinda came to life in my mind, and I think they were very appealing, but I couldn't have articulated that at 13 years old. It was just when people ask me what it was like, I just I read a book, and for the first time in my life, I felt like I was alive.
Speaker 2:I felt like this is what I was called to do. But 13 year old Sean didn't know that was the reasons he was being drawn to that. It was just adventure, basically.
Speaker 1:And
Speaker 2:then you get a little bit older, you get a little bit more mature, you get in the community, and you're like, ah, this is what all those feelings were being directed at.
Speaker 3:So did you go high school right into the navy?
Speaker 2:I did not. So I went that was my plan initially. And then my parents who were supportive more or less about going to military, they wanted me to go they just said, hey. Just Just think about this. If you go to college now, you know, you have the option to be an officer.
Speaker 2:You have the option to go enlisted. You can do what you want, but you'll be done with college. And now let's say that you don't do that. You go into the navy. You do 10, 15 years, and now you want a degree degree.
Speaker 2:You're 32, 35 years old. You're gonna be in college with a bunch of 21 year old knuckleheads. So he's like, why don't you just do the college thing now? And then on the back end, do whatever you wanna do. So, I took that advice, went to Texas a and m, which was good for me because it was a maturing process for me too.
Speaker 2:Out of my own, learning how to, you know, train by myself, learning how to do the just like general life skills when you're out on your own, and that time allowed me to be a more mature person going in to the training, which 100% helped me out on the backside.
Speaker 3:Yeah. Even just the time management of being in college too and just being like, I can do really well in school, or I can just completely screw off and party until, like, that's helpful as well.
Speaker 2:100%. I was the world's lamest college student.
Speaker 3:Were you really? A 100%.
Speaker 2:Yeah. I was so focused and paranoid about screwing things up that my life, I would wake up at 4:30. I would link up with some guys at A and M around 5:15. We do a PT. We'd eat.
Speaker 2:I'd get another PTN by myself before class started. I'd go to class around, like, 9. I'd go to class all day. I worked at a school, at an after school program with young kids. I'd go do that, and then I'd go home, homework, sleep.
Speaker 2:That was it. And on the weekend, it was just more time to train on the weekend, but, like, I didn't really go to parties. I was paranoid about getting into trouble because I I thought, you know, if I have an incident, all these hard work that I put in is just going to evaporate. So it was good for me for sure, but I, you know, did not have the, typical college experience, which honestly I could care less about. Yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah. I mean, it's probably a a service for you now. Like, not looking back and not having to deal with I think it sets a lot of people back in a lot of ways, you know, having to, you know, so use end up associating with the wrong people with the wrong habits. And just like that, maybe your seal opportunities are off the table.
Speaker 2:100%. And I was very fortunate to always be around good people. Yeah. Surround myself, you know, probably by god's grace more than necessarily my my deliberate choices at first. And then just also very blessed to know what I wanted to do.
Speaker 2:So I I never felt like I was floundering in life. I never felt like, oh my goodness. I'm about to graduate, and I don't have a job lined up. I don't have the career path. I don't know what I'm being called to do.
Speaker 2:I I was very fortunate at a young age to know this is exactly what I wanted to do. Yeah. You just had that focus.
Speaker 1:Did you find other people who were that focused at A&M, or was it kinda isolating?
Speaker 2:So at A&M, I fell in with a group of guys who wanted to do the exact same thing.
Speaker 1:Nice.
Speaker 2:And it was definitely an iron sharpens iron type scenario because I thought I was in good shape until I linked up with these guys, and then I realized, oh, this is what being in actual good shape looks like is these guys. They were just savages. They were all super fast, super strong, super good swimmers. So it was just another experience of of associating with people better than you and becoming better through that association.
Speaker 3:Mhmm. So these are all dudes that also wanted to go to BUDS as well.
Speaker 2:Yep. And they all I think, like, 3 quarters of them did, and 3 quarters of them made it.
Speaker 3:Dude, that's insane.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 3:So that shows how legit that group actually was.
Speaker 2:Very, very good group of guys. Very good group of guys.
Speaker 3:Dude, I love the way that you're explaining your college experience. And you don't know this, but how Harry and I met is we both played baseball at the same school in Boston. It's called Baffin, small little d three school.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 3:And d three sports are so different than d one sports where most people kind of view it casually like a hobby.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 3:So shit doesn't work out. Most people just quit. And I felt like I think the reason why Harry and I get along really well is we both just wanna achieve our potential and work hard. But in college, you get very influenced by, like, the older dudes and, like, the drinking culture.
Speaker 2:Mhmm.
Speaker 1:And I
Speaker 3:think we both left our college experience just being like, yeah. We were, like, pretty good students, not great. We could have been done way more on the baseball field. Just feeling like you kinda pissed away your potential and never wanted to have that feeling again. So I think that's so cool that you just had that singular focus, that mission, and you're like, nothing is gonna detract me from achieving this goal right now.
Speaker 2:It was a huge blessing, and I don't really don't think it was anything that that I personally did. It was just whatever reason that calling called to me, and it was just kind of devoted to that beforehand because I was not super disciplined before that. I was not a super hard worker before that. When I told my family what I wanted to do, they were in disbelief of, like, what? Yes.
Speaker 2:Like, the the polar opposite of, you know, teenage Sean Glasspace. I was a good kid Yeah. But I wasn't super hard worker. I wasn't super motivated. Played soccer growing up.
Speaker 2:I was naturally good enough to where I could make the team, but I never applied myself to anything whatsoever until this moment.
Speaker 3:Yeah. I
Speaker 2:mean, it was just kinda like the light switch. Like, oh, this is you can't do this and not fully apply yourself.
Speaker 1:When did you experience the largest, like, growth period of your life? Was there a moment in time where you kinda look back and you're like, man, that was kinda like it for me where I saw things differently.
Speaker 2:My parents separated, and they separated when I was pretty young, but they didn't officially divorce until I was probably 17 or 18. And, you know, no one wants to go through something like that as a kid when, like, your world's disintegrating around you, but it definitely gave me a lot of tools that I didn't have before after I learned how to deal with it. There was a lot of frustration. There was a lot of anger. But after I got all that stuff under wraps, and it was just my perception of what was actually difficult and what actually was a challenge had changed so dramatically that things just didn't phase me like they used to.
Speaker 2:I've always been pretty easy going, but that was definitely an experience where I was like, well, if you survived that whole drama, like, this is no big deal. Mhmm. You know, you got a test coming up. Okay. Whatever.
Speaker 2:Study for
Speaker 3:it. Yeah.
Speaker 2:You know, you got a 30 page paper coming up. Whatever, man, sit down and and write your paper.
Speaker 3:Yeah. It's a really interesting answer because my guess is, like, 9 out of 10 people that would ask you that question would just assume that you would say something about your military experience, but it would sound it was actually your parents' divorce when you were 17, 18 that really sharpened you up the most.
Speaker 2:Yeah. I think I I probably wouldn't have had the same level of, ability to deal with things in the military as I did going into it. I think that was a big advantage for me was I was a little bit older than most guys. I was 25 when I finally got into the steel teams. So I had a maturity that a lot of other guys probably had yet to come by.
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker 2:And just a perspective of, like, what's honestly difficult and what's all, like, physically demanding? Yes. Absolutely. Physically difficult? Absolutely.
Speaker 2:But not, like, world shattering.
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Not earth shattering. So my my barometer for what's actually an issue, what's actually a struggle was pretty dramatically shifted through that experience.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Do you feel like so entering the seal you enter the seals at 25, and most other people are probably, like, 18, 19.
Speaker 2:Probably early twenties would be the best the best age. A lot of guys come in at 18. The guys that make it through at 18 blow my mind.
Speaker 1:Really?
Speaker 2:Yeah. It's insane. I mean can't. You you literally are a kid.
Speaker 1:A puppy.
Speaker 2:How old is it? And there's just these studs that are coming through and just making it through at that age. So I graduated a and m when I was 23. I was on the the 5 and a half to 6 year program. And, I thought I was gonna graduate and go right into the military because I had my spot.
Speaker 2:So the way that it works for guys that wanna go officer candidate school is you have to put in a package, you compete against everybody else that wants to do it, you know, hundreds, thousands of people in the country, and then I think, like, 10 a year are selected. So I got selected to to go to OCS, my senior year of college. So I knew I was gonna get to go, but it took them about a year and a half to actually get me a spot because I had had a surgery on my shoulder in college to tear to repair a very small tear in my labrum, and I had to go through this medical review board before they would officially give me the date. And in my mind, I'm like, they're just pouring over this and trying to find a way to disqualify me. When in reality, probably what it was was I have a folder with my injury in it, and it goes on some Navy doc's desk buried underneath 300 other people that are in top, ahead of me.
Speaker 2:And he's just working through all of these different people's cases and signing off on it. It probably just took him a year to get to mine, but that was very frustrating for me because I was like, no. I'm I'm ready now. I'm prepared now. I know I have my spot.
Speaker 2:Just send me to the freaking navy, and let's let's get it on.
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker 2:But, you know, another less lesson in timing, and I would say, you know, divine timing versus my own personal timing. My experience would be vastly different if I didn't go in when I did. I wouldn't have met my 2 best friends in the world. I wouldn't have met my wife who I met through one of those outstanding men. I wouldn't have had the mentors that I had in the military.
Speaker 2:Probably wouldn't have known Jocko and Leif. Wouldn't have had the opportunity to work fresh on front, wouldn't have started the beef business, wouldn't be living where I'm living right now. So it's just another example of sometimes, timelines don't work out necessarily the way that you want them to, but just roll with the punches and keep going and things typically shake out alright.
Speaker 3:It's amazing when you connect the dots backwards, how God's timing is actually always perfect even if you don't see it in that exact moment.
Speaker 2:I was so frustrated. Yeah. So frustrated.
Speaker 1:I can't imagine. Yeah. You know? Yeah. You're, like, waiting for a full year, basically Yeah.
Speaker 1:For something that you're, like, this isn't even an issue anymore.
Speaker 2:Literally not an issue. Like, not an issue whatsoever. Very frustrating. But, again, lots of good lessons learned, and then the timing wise, you I wouldn't change a thing about it. Mhmm.
Speaker 3:What what BUDS class were you?
Speaker 2:272 27 2. BUDS class, then I graduated 273. Because if you're an officer, after you graduate BUDS, you get rolled to go to an officer specific course called the junior officer training course, and then you pick up with the next class that comes through.
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker 2:So you graduate BUDS. You get separated from your class. They keep going. You go to, I think it's 7 week long leadership course, and then you pick up with the next BUDS class that goes by. Okay.
Speaker 2:So 272 and then graduated 227 3.
Speaker 3:And what would you say what was your, like, biggest strength or skill set in BUDS, and what did you struggle with the most as part of that experience?
Speaker 2:I was pretty well rounded from the prep and at a and m. So physically, there was nothing that I felt like I really struggled at. I was pretty good at all those things. You know, up here at some, mill the pack at others, it's just a grind. You know?
Speaker 2:So it's doesn't matter how you feel in that day. You're just gonna have to keep keep going. The thing that I hated the most was the cold. Like, you're just constantly cold, and I don't enjoy the experience of being cold. And you're just it's like 6 months of being borderline hypothermic the entire time.
Speaker 2:So surf surf torture sorry. Surf immersion.
Speaker 3:So not surf Oh, you can't say surf
Speaker 2:torture anymore? Immersion now. Surf immersion, you're just laying in the ocean for an hour, hour and a half at 55 degrees water temperature, waves crashing over you, just being cold. Some guys loved it because they weren't getting harassed by the instructors. Probably a lot of actually health benefits from being in the cold water like that.
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker 2:I I hated it. I couldn't stand. I was like, give me a boat. Give me a log. Let me run.
Speaker 2:Let me do something. Did not like the cold.
Speaker 1:Is there anything that's like a consensus? Like, this is the best part of BUDS, this is the worst part, or is everyone kinda find their little place where they have a little bit of peace?
Speaker 2:I think people kinda find their own places. So my swim buddy loved our 2 mile ocean swims because it was no one's messing with you. Yeah. I hated it because it's just 2 miles of side stroke. Literally, you're not seeing anything.
Speaker 2:You're just, like, barely coming up for a breath. When you're watching the shoreline, it doesn't look like anything's moving.
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker 2:You didn't look like you're making no progress. I hated it just because it was, like, monotony, but he loved it because no one was messing with us. And if we passed, we passed, and we didn't get beat afterwards, remediated afterwards. So I think everybody kinda falls in on different things that they're comfortable with.
Speaker 1:How did how do you process that experience now? Like, going through buds, like Oh my goodness. How hard it was.
Speaker 2:It was the best time of my life. Yeah. It was the absolute best time of my life. Now going through it, there's no way I would have said that. But in hindsight, you're like, you're a young man.
Speaker 2:You're at your physical peak, you know, endurance wise. You've worked so much for this goal. And now you're here with all these other just outstanding individuals. And that's your life is you wake up, you train, and then you go to bed, and you repeat. And it was just a single-minded focus.
Speaker 2:And looking back at it, I absolutely loved it. Not going through. I didn't have that frame of reference.
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Good days and bad days. Right? But looking back at it, it's nothing but just fond memories.
Speaker 3:The I I'm really appreciative that I got to live out in San Diego for a year, and then we can have this conversation because it's like the dynamic of Hotel Coronado being there. Yeah. And, like, one of the most beautiful hotels in the world, and then just seeing these, guys go through buds getting the shit kicked out of them is so funny. Like, I remember the 1st week I moved out to San Diego. I was just on a walk in Coronado, had some podcast in, and I hear this noise behind me, and it's, like, 30 or 40 dudes and BUDS just getting the shit.
Speaker 3:They were on a run Yeah. Doing a shitload of push ups. And I was like, I totally forgot that the compound is literally right there. Yeah. Just the dynamic of those two things is so funny.
Speaker 2:It's amazing. It's such a unique little microcosm, and it also gets a lot of people to wash out. Mhmm. Because, like, this can all be over. All I have to do is ring this bell 3 times, and then I'm gonna be warm back in Coronado at the Dell, you know, eating a cheeseburger, whatever the case may be.
Speaker 2:Yeah. But it's very short term sided because the reality is now you're going to a ship, and then the navy's got you. Mhmm. So it gets people being in that environment.
Speaker 3:Yeah. Like, after that shower and that cheeseburger, you're probably like, damn, why?
Speaker 1:Lots of
Speaker 3:Why did I do that?
Speaker 2:Lots of remorse. Oh,
Speaker 1:that's the worst cheese like, the last bite of that cheeseburger is just brutal.
Speaker 2:The worst cheeseburger
Speaker 1:of all time. What did I do?
Speaker 3:It it seems like in modern society, especially, like, the last 5 years, BUDS has gotten so much publicity. It seems like some guys in the teams, like, get annoyed by how much publicity BUDS actually gets. Some guys think that it's justified. Like, what what is your perspective on it?
Speaker 2:I think the less the public know about it, the better. And that's just for the reason that they don't understand.
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker 2:They don't understand the reasoning for the things that we do to those young men and that we all had done to us when we're going through that training. Some people would look at it and be aghast at the conditions that we put those young men through, but the reality is there is nothing about it is sadistic. There's a purpose for every single thing that we do. And the instructors that are, you know, the active duty seals that are leading that instruction when you're going through it, it probably seems like they hate you Yeah. With a passion, but nothing could be further from the truth.
Speaker 2:They love you. They just want you to get the right people in the community. So they're screening the people out that don't belong there, and then they're trying to prepare the right people for the rigors of the job because the reality is your job in the navy is to in that community is to close with and kill the enemy, and that's it. And that's what we're training people for. We're not training them to be baristas.
Speaker 2:We're not training them to be salesmen. We're training them to to go overseas, do very gnarly things, and then come back home in one piece with your honor and your dignity attached. And that process of BUDS works. I don't know why it works. I ran a phase of BUDS during my career.
Speaker 2:It it is chaos, but it works in getting people prepared to do the job.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:So I think the less that people know about it, honestly, the better because they just there's no way to get them to truly understand why all that stuff is necessary. And we faced congressional inquiries before. We faced all these different things that are trying to poke holes in this program. It's like that program is what bring what keeps those young men alive
Speaker 3:Right.
Speaker 2:Is the the knowledge that no matter how bad it gets, they can go further. No matter how many times they get knocked down, they can get back up, and they can keep going. And that's what our country demands of them in that job, and that's what their brothers demand of them in that job is that the person to their left and the person to their right is going to be that individual. And the common thing that links everyone together is that pipeline. And the less that people know about it, I think the better that it is.
Speaker 2:There's nothing brutal that happens to people in that pipeline. There's nothing sadistic that happens to people in that pipeline. It's tough. It's challenging. And like we just said, it's my fondest memories as an adult is going through that, but I don't think most people can understand that when they see what they're going through.
Speaker 1:Yeah. It's this is probably a naive thing to say, but I feel like a lot of that judgment is coming from people too who, like, can't run more than 10 miles. And, like, they don't understand this the, you know, extent that people need to be prepared for going and fighting, especially in the context of if you're not prepared, it's gonna affect the ability of the entire team. So I just yeah. I appreciate the Yeah.
Speaker 1:The context of that.
Speaker 2:It puts everybody's safety at risk, and it puts the mission at risk. And the reason that we get sent, the military in general gets sent overseas is there some strategic objective that we're supposed to accomplish. Right, wrong, good decisions, bad decisions by politicians, remove all that. The people on the ground are over there because they're being told to go over there. And the training that we give people is what keeps people alive.
Speaker 2:Yeah. That's it. And that training starts at Buds Yeah. For us.
Speaker 3:So how old were you when you actually got into the teams once you got through all your training? Twenties.
Speaker 2:How old is it? 26 maybe? Might have just turned 26.
Speaker 3:Okay. Yeah. So that must have been the coolest feeling, like, learning from these older dudes that actually had, like, combat experience of, like, 35, 40 maybe.
Speaker 2:Yeah. Right? It was awesome, and I came into the community at such an amazing time because the wars were full swing. So everybody that I was learning from had multiple deployments underneath their belt, which prior to to 911 to 2001, that wasn't the case. Like, there was no real experience in the teams.
Speaker 2:Vietnam was too far removed, so most of the guys had from Vietnam had already retired. So 2,001, a lot of lessons that we had already learned were getting relearned. By the time I got in the community, things were very tight, very tight.
Speaker 1:I remember
Speaker 2:You always get better, but very tight.
Speaker 3:I I remember hearing a a podcast of Jocko saying, like, in the early nineties when he got in, he's like, you had to hope that maybe you found someone from Vietnam. Yeah. But other than that, it was all just, like, theory because no one had really been in in combat.
Speaker 2:Exactly right. And, look, training is amazing. And training can prepare you for lots of things, but there's nothing like the real deal. You just can't replicate that. Yeah.
Speaker 2:The lessons that are learned there. And one thing our community does very well is we are, very anal about lessons learned. Very anal. Very we're our own harshest critics. We're debriefing all the time.
Speaker 2:You train, you debrief. You deploy, you debrief. You go in operation, doesn't matter what time you get back, you're debriefing on the backside of that to capture those lessons learned. So, the the cycle of training, debriefing, deploying debriefing by the time that I got in, I mean, not that you still don't make mistakes, but it was sharp. And I was learning from people who had been there and done that.
Speaker 1:One one of the things that I I just like I almost yeah. I I I definitely envy is, like, the nature of the military being so focused on kind of the one objective that it allows you to very cleanly stack skills that equip you for that one objective. And I don't know. In the in the real world, I think a lot of people get distracted with, you know, a bunch of different opportunities or things that, you know, maybe, like, aren't all that relevant, and they end up not really focusing on the skills that they need in order to, like, be successful or or be, like, a competent individual. But the military, it's like you can stack skills and they directly apply to your ability to be qualified and lead.
Speaker 1:So I'm curious. Is there are there any skills that you've noticed that you've been able to carry over from the military into the real world that are, like, the most applicable to what you do on a day to day basis?
Speaker 2:Definitely. You know, just to to kinda broadly talk about what you just said, which is it's your mission. You have to know what your mission is. So in the military, you literally have a mission. So it's pretty set in stone.
Speaker 2:Like, there's an ethos that guides the seal teams. We have a mission. We all know what it is. So you can stack all of your skill sets in support of that mission. I think a lot of mistakes that people make in the civilian role when they're starting a business or starting a new careers, they don't actually know what their quote, unquote mission is.
Speaker 2:They don't actually know what they should be good at to be successful in that role. And the reality is it's the same thing that you should be good at in the military. There's no, like, secret to military leadership. It's just leadership in a very dynamic environment. But I I think some of the things that carried over the most was just the knowledge that, like, problems aren't necessarily as big as you think that they are.
Speaker 2:So you have a different perspective when you come from a background of the military about, like, what's an actual problem. So when I got out of the military, I went to work as the the COO of a construction tech company that 2 of my buddies from the seal team started. And one of our biggest assets was we were making all kinds of mistakes that probably would have just crippled other companies. But to us, it was like, okay. No big deal.
Speaker 2:Like, you've made a mistake. We learned from it. You know, didn't kill the company. Very mindful of the mistakes that we could make that would kill the company, so we didn't make those. But you're making lots of mistakes, and you're learning, and you're not getting bogged down in kind of the woe is me.
Speaker 2:Oh my goodness. I I screwed up mentality. Like Yeah. It's not that big of a deal. So the the perception shift of, like, not actually a big problem.
Speaker 2:And I think some people can't recover from those mistakes as easily, and they just kinda downward spiral.
Speaker 3:Yeah. You you probably have this really interesting blend of, like, very high operating standards, but then just this awesome ability to deal with chaos where the average person, like, oh, we lost this client or whatever. It's all gonna go to shit when it's like, no. Like, we can very tactically just find another client or figure out what else we need to do. That's something we've noticed just in our 1st state in entrepreneurship is it feels like you're oscillating between the biggest wins, and then it just feels like shit's just blowing up 247.
Speaker 3:But it's really your mental reaction to it, which determines how good or bad something actually is.
Speaker 2:It's funny because sometimes I actually have to ask myself, do am I too flippant with my sound bite? Do I not care enough about some of these things that are happening? But I think that the answer is is no. Yeah.
Speaker 1:That's not a really that's not a thread you wanna pull on too hard. No. I'm like,
Speaker 2:no. It's fine. Yeah. But, like, our company, our first big client so we were a a home building company, but we did it through a software and robotics line.
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker 2:So people that were our initial clients were taking a pretty big risk with us because we were kind of unproven. And our first client, we actually made the conscious decision to detach ourselves from them because they were just too much drama. And there's no like, no civilian is sorry, civilian. No no one in in the civilian sector is making that decision when they don't have other clients
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Lined up. Well, we have to stay attached to this person because that's where our income is coming from. We looked at it and we just said, the amount of our energy that it took to manage this one client took away from our ability to actually improve our system, and that's what success looks like. It's not this one client. This one client is never gonna make us a $1,000,000,000 company.
Speaker 2:But not being good at what we need to be good at is going to prevent us from being a $1,000,000,000 company. So we cut it loose. We just said, we'll find someone else that better suits where we are as a company and is a lot less drama. And it worked out really well because now that company is building for the number 1 and number 5 largest builders in the world. Wow.
Speaker 3:Yeah. And it takes confidence to do that too.
Speaker 2:Even if it's false confidence, it does. It takes some some confidence to say, hey. We'll figure it out.
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker 2:You know, we'll figure it out.
Speaker 1:Well, risk is such a, like, I feel like we could do a whole separate podcast on risk, but just the the idea of thinking that you're giving up your entire business. But there really are two realities there where, 1, you're you're just, like, catering to this client and almost shifting your entire business to appease them, and that is a risk in itself. Like, you're shifting how you're operating your system so that you're dealing with this unruly dramatic client. Yeah. Or you guys, you know, give up the cash flow and and take that that leap and refine your system.
Speaker 1:So
Speaker 2:You you take a tactical hit for the strategic the strategic long term effect. And, look, there's 2 types of risk. There was a lot of risk, but 22 mainly, there's the risk of action, and then there's also the risk of inaction.
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker 2:So, hey, what could potentially happen if we go down this course, and detach ourselves from this client? We could struggle with cash influx. How much cash do we have in the bank right now that has to last us until we get a new client that we can build with? But the risk of inaction was was way greater than that, which was we did not have the bandwidth at the time based on our staff size, which is basically, like, 7 of us Mhmm. To manage this client and also push the technology forward to where we needed it to be.
Speaker 2:So the risk for us was actually keeping that client because that client was never gonna make us successful. The technology, which is what was gonna make us successful. So the bigger risk for us was staying attached to them was actually the bigger risk.
Speaker 3:Dude, it's so funny you say that because that's actually something that Harry and I are going through right now. I think I told you this a little bit where when we started the podcast, obviously, the podcast, it takes a while to monetize it meaningfully. So we're, like, alright. What are some other sources of things that we can do for income? We're, like, alright.
Speaker 3:Well, we're really good at writing on Twitter. That's how we blew up this whole brand. So we had some early sponsors that said, hey. Can you guys run our Twitter account for us? We're, like, alright.
Speaker 3:Great. We'll make some retainers. We'll put some cash in our pocket. We'll keep the lights on. The that small little side hustle has now turned into, like, a 14 client agency, which is great.
Speaker 3:Right? Because it allows you to pay the bills, make some money. But one of the things that we learned is that it takes up so much of our time and energy that it actually pulls away from our core mission, which is to create the best podcast possible to make as many people healthy as possible. So we've basically decided, look, we either need to purely outsource ourselves and get us fully out of the agency even if it hurts our margins, or we just have to stop doing it because, like, our we feel like our god given purpose is to do this show and make as many people as healthy as possible. Yeah.
Speaker 3:But it's not easy to do, but we just kinda justified, like, that's the long term strategic thing that we need to lock in on.
Speaker 2:You have to be able to view things from a detached perspective. And the more detached you are, the more that you'll see what the actual solution to the problem is because the solution to the problem is never inside of the problem itself. It's always external to it. And our ability to remove ourselves emotionally from the income that's coming in and really focus on what the mission is is going to be pivotal. And, you know, our company was doing a custom home building in a factory.
Speaker 2:They had a software system that would break down any home no matter how architecturally complex into a series of wall panels, floor panels, and roof panels. And then a factory line built around robotics would the software would translate to the robotics, and the robotics would frame out those walls. So we could frame out a 26 100 square foot home in, like, 6 hours in the factory. So our biggest competitor was a company called Cattera. And we had, like, at the time, maybe $2,000,000 in funding that we had secured, and we thought we were, like, rich.
Speaker 2:You know, a bunch of, you know, oh my goodness. This is amazing. $2,000,000,000. Catterra had a $1,000,000,000 a $1,000,000,000 of funding because they were some Silicon Val, Silicon Valley gurus company. And they didn't keep the focus on what the mission is, and they got very distracted.
Speaker 2:So we always knew what's gonna make us successful would be our ability to be the best framers, the best builders of homes in the business. Because if we can't provide that service, no one's gonna go with us. Because they know for a fact they can go ask Joe to frame it by hand, then it'll get done.
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker 2:So if we can't surpass the quality and offer them more of a time saving and value than that, we're never gonna get adopted.
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Keterra very quickly lost focus because, you know, they have a $1,000,000,000 in funding. More money, more problems. Right? As the philosopher,
Speaker 1:big and small has been saying.
Speaker 2:So the they started throwing money at anything, and they lost focus on their core on their core offering to the public, and they bankrupted themselves, which was awesome for us because guess who we hired? All of their smartest people are now working for our company. But it was the focus of what's really gonna detached. Right? Could we have chased other opportunities?
Speaker 2:Yes. But we knew that wasn't our mission. Our mission was be the best framers we can be, and from that, the clients will come.
Speaker 1:Mhmm. Oh, go ahead. I was just gonna ask, how do you think about detaching yourself from these decisions emotionally and just being really clear with how you make decisions that are tough to honestly, tough to make when you do have emotional attachment to it?
Speaker 2:Yeah. I mean, it's a skill, and it's something that you can get better at. And, fortunately, for me in my background, like, that's all that the training in the military is is this the training you to detach. Because they're putting you in all these really stressful scenarios, and your key to overcoming those scenarios and being successful is can you detach from the stress level? So detachment is a skill and anybody can get better at detaching.
Speaker 2:You just have to practice it. And the good news is, because life is hard, it gives you plenty of opportunities every day to detach. And the more emotionally connected you are to a problem, the harder it's going to be to stay detached. So sometimes you literally just have to tell yourself you have to stay detached. Yeah.
Speaker 2:Don't view this emotionally, and you'll tend to make the right decisions. Having someone that's there with you can help out too because if you start getting too emotionally involved in it, you can pull them back out a little bit. And vice versa, if you start getting too emotionally involved in a decision, you know, and you're staying detached, then you can help each other make those detached decisions.
Speaker 3:And then you have that added confidence of having, like, 2 brothers in the fight versus you being by yourself.
Speaker 2:Exactly.
Speaker 3:Yeah. I knew we Exactly. I liked how you said how sometimes you have to remind yourself, like, am I being almost too cavalier about this? Because I just feel good even in the face of adversity. Yeah.
Speaker 3:We felt like we were in a good spot with our agency. We had a day where we actually lost 2 clients in the same day. And if this was us, like, a year ago, we've been have been like, oh, shit. We gotta go find someone new. We're like, alright.
Speaker 3:Let's go find 2 more clients.
Speaker 2:No big deal.
Speaker 3:It's all we can do. Yeah. What else are we gonna do? Like, get emotional about it? It's not gonna help.
Speaker 3:It's not gonna help.
Speaker 2:That's gonna be very detrimental getting getting emotional about it.
Speaker 3:Yeah. One of the other things that you said earlier that I loved was this concept of debriefing, which probably seems so intuitive to you. But Harry and I were just talking about this. We're like, why don't we debrief more? Why don't we watch our podcast back?
Speaker 3:Why don't we, like, talk about sales calls that we were on together? Yeah. Like, watching it's like watching game footage when you play baseball or sport. Like, why do we just stop doing that when we start working?
Speaker 2:You should 100% do that because debriefing is the best tool that you have to get better at anything you wanna get better at. And one of the reasons that the the military, let's say, soft in general is so good, is we get the ability to train more than others. We're a small force whether you're talking about Green Berets or Seals or Rangers or MARSOC or the the TF 1 60th pilots. You're smaller in size than a marine battalion, so you can spend more time training. And then the real value of that training is, are you capturing those lessons and debriefing afterwards?
Speaker 2:And if you're not, then you're gonna continue to make the same mistakes. And if you're not debriefing the podcast or debriefing the sales calls, you're going to con guaranteed you're gonna continue to do some of the same things that are counterproductive. And my last tour in the navy, I was running all wartime training for the West Coast seal team. So it was my job to train every single platoon on the West Coast for war. And by the end of my tour there, I could predict with certainty what platoons were gonna be good platoons and what platoons were gonna struggle.
Speaker 2:And the tool that I would use is the debrief. If I watch that platoon taking the debrief seriously, I knew for a fact they were gonna get better. Yeah. And if platoons didn't take the debrief seriously or they just blew it off, not only did they not get better, what typically happened is they actually got worse. Because what happens is they're making the same mistakes over and over again.
Speaker 2:And anybody that's ever been in an environment where the same mistakes are getting made, the frustration level builds up. You start to kinda turn on each other, and all of a sudden, the dynamic of that platoon breaks down, and they would spend 6 months training. And they'd actually be in a worse place than they would when they started because they weren't debriefing. Single best tool that you have to make sure that you and your team are getting better and better and better is debriefing.
Speaker 1:Why do you think that most people don't take the time to actually go back through their day to day or go back through you know, they have a mission or they have Yeah. A week of work and, you know, why aren't they spending the time to actually go
Speaker 2:into that? Have egos. Yeah. And our egos don't like us to examine the mistakes that we make. And it's very easy for me to make all kinds of different excuses about why I don't have time to do the debrief or why there's no value in a debrief.
Speaker 2:But, really, it's just a certain type of moral cowardice where you're not willing to look at the mistakes that you've made and and see what you can do to do things a little bit differently. Hands down.
Speaker 3:Yeah. Iko, what's the secret to a good debrief?
Speaker 2:Secret to a good debrief is 1, being open and honest about the things that went right, the things that went wrong. And it's it's if you're talking about, like, a personal debrief versus a group debrief, it's a little bit different because a personal debrief, it's just you going through the lessons learned. But the principles are still kind of the same. Yeah. You wanna look at things chronologically.
Speaker 2:And what I mean by that is don't just allow the debrief to just bounce all over the place. You're gonna miss things. Be very deliberate about it. So for us, we have phases of an operation. You have really 5 phases, but we say we say 5.
Speaker 2:It's really 6. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, but then there's phase 0, which is your mission planning for that operation. Each one of those phases needs to get debriefed in-depth before moving on to the next phase. So it could be like a podcast. I would say, look at from the very beginning, your phase 0 would be what's your prep Mhmm.
Speaker 2:For that. How much did you know about the guest? How much did the guest know? What questions did you have preloaded before coming in there? That's kind of your phase 0.
Speaker 2:And then look at it from the introduction to when you got things rocking and rolling to the closeout, to the editing, to to all those different things, and you wanna spend time going through each one of those phases before jumping to the next one or else you're going to miss something critical in there. And then another big piece is everybody in the debrief has to have a voice in the debrief, and people should be debriefing themselves. Because if it's done right, people will be hardest on themselves
Speaker 3:Mhmm.
Speaker 2:If the conditions are set properly for a debrief.
Speaker 3:Got it. So that's actually a sign that it's a good debrief or you have a good team is that people are taking responsibility over their mistakes.
Speaker 2:Yeah. You don't want the debrief to start turning into finger pointing.
Speaker 3:Got it.
Speaker 2:So what I would do if I was setting up a debrief is let's say I was a leader. I would open it up with the things that I screwed up first. Hey, fellas. You know, here's the things that I could have done better tonight. Boom.
Speaker 2:Boom. Boom. Hey. Let's rock. Start at phase 0.
Speaker 2:Let's go through and see if we could have done better. And then people that are involved in those phases should be the ones that are debriefing those phases. Because if it's done right and the conditions are set right, they're going to be 1, they know more about it than you do because they lived it, and 2, they're gonna be typically harsher on themselves than you would be.
Speaker 1:What stands out to me with your experience is that you've just had all these different team oriented experiences, whether it's the construction company, seals, what you're what you're doing now with Primal Beef. And I'm wondering if you have any, red flags or just, like, character traits that you kind of try to identify or measure before you go into a relationship with somebody or or bring somebody into a team. Because we've realized this. If you have if you have a small team and you have a big mission, like, if you have one person who maybe just, like, doesn't have it all pulled together, it can just break everything. So it's, it's really important to be able to identify some of those red flags really early on.
Speaker 2:Humility and integrity, I would say, are probably the 2 biggest. If we were very deliberate about how we hired people on at the construction company, the construction tech company, and it was not focused on who was good Yeah. At the job. It was focused on who's a good teammate because what we understood was a good teammate will be good at the job eventually. If even if they don't start out that way, we can get them to where they need to be.
Speaker 2:But someone that's good at the job, if they're a bad teammate, we're never gonna be able to get them to be a good teammate. So we valued the team ability aspect of things over everything else in our culture because we knew you're gonna be spending long hours together solving problems, and there has to be a high level of trust with the entire team.
Speaker 1:Mhmm.
Speaker 2:And I have to want what's best for you, and you have to want what's best for me. And if that's not there, then at some point in time, that's gonna cause friction inside of the team, and that was just there's enough problems to deal with. We don't need to be worried about personality problems
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Inside of the team. There's enough challenges out there already. So humility is probably the number one thing that I would look for in a teammate is can they own up to their failures? Are they a good person, and do they have a high level of integrity?
Speaker 1:Mhmm. How do you try to
Speaker 2:how do you try
Speaker 1:to stress test that in, like, the the work context, I guess?
Speaker 2:Yeah. Over time. So hire very slow and then fire very quickly. Mhmm. In a certain in a when I say fire very quickly, I don't just mean can people.
Speaker 2:If someone's a good person and they're trying, but they're just not technically getting it, work with those people. But if someone is a bad teammate, the quicker you can figure that out and get rid of them, the less damage it's gonna have on the company. So for us, our hiring process was very slow and very deliberate, and it unfolded over, you know, a course of several different very detailed interviews and then spending time with those individuals to try to figure those things out. And the questions that we were asking were more rooted towards trying to find out who this person was versus what this person is necessarily good at. And then it was all backed up by asking people about them.
Speaker 2:So I would, you know, hey, Harry. Give me an example of a time when, you know, you put a teammate's needs before your own. And then if you're like, well, you know, yeah, in in general, I do this. I'd be like, no. No.
Speaker 2:No. No. Give me a specific example of a time when you put a teammate's needs before your own. And if it takes you 5 minutes to come up with an example, that's a red flag. Yeah.
Speaker 2:And then as soon as you give me an example, I'm like, okay. Cool. What's that teammate's contact information so that I can call them and verify what you just said. So we're not giving and then I'm going to call that person and ask them about that. So the more specific you can get, the more granular you can get where there's not, like, these theoretical concepts of, well, I've been a good teammate my entire life.
Speaker 2:Like, no. Give me specific examples, and then I'm going to call those individuals, and I'm going to see if you're telling the truth. Mhmm. And if you're not, we're done instantaneously right away. And if things are panning out, then we keep going we keep going along the hiring process.
Speaker 3:That's pretty incredible. So you've actually found a way to filter for integrity. So it's asking for specifics and then actually vetting the individuals that they're referencing in the interview process.
Speaker 2:Vetting. 100% vetting. And, you know, I'd like to say it's perfect. It's not necessarily perfect, but I don't know that we ever really had our company, and there's now, I think, 70 something employees. Very, very few people have had to be let go, like, maybe a handful of people.
Speaker 2:And most of those were entry level jobs in the factory, and it was more not a personnel. It wasn't necessarily their bad teammates. It was more just they didn't show up to work on time. They didn't have the part the life skills yet to be there. So the that process was very helpful in making sure that we didn't have to deal with those personality problems down the line.
Speaker 3:Yeah. It's funny that you're saying all this because, you know, this has been our 1st year, you know, building a team, hiring, firing, etcetera. And to think back to what you said about, you know, hire slow, fire fast, I would say that for both of us, with a few employees in particular, we probably knew within the the first 30 days if they were a fit or not. But there's a difference between identifying that they're not a fit and then being willing to have that difficult conversation where if if we're honest, look, we're like, we probably could have made that decision 6 months earlier and saved ourselves, like, a lot of money and stress and energy wasted trying to invest in this person. So it's interesting.
Speaker 3:It's like when you know those attributes, you can recognize it early, then the second step is actually being willing to take action and have that uncomfortable conversation.
Speaker 2:Yeah. And those conversations are very difficult, and people don't have them for a reason because they're very difficult. But for us, we looked at when we were selecting people in the in the SEAL teams, there was a kind of a quadrant that we looked at. We call it the whole man concept. So you'd kinda divide them up into this 4 squares, and you would have good teammate, bad teammate, good operator, bad operator.
Speaker 2:And we would rather have someone that falls in the good teammate, so so operator than the great operator who's a bad teammate.
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker 2:So we actually started to add that to our selection because before, it was just, can they make it through buds? Are they studs? Yeah. Cool. Get them to the teams.
Speaker 2:And it was having issues because people's personalities were selfish and all those different things. So we started to look at valuing I would keep someone in the pipeline longer if they were a great teammate and they were just physically struggling a little bit. We'd give them a little bit more time to figure things out because they were good humans. But if they were the best performer but they were horrible teammates, that was kind of a one way trip out of the community pretty quickly.
Speaker 3:Mhmm. Because you literally can't teach that. Right? It's, like, really something you probably know as a child if you're just a good teammate. I mean, I guess maybe you can teach integrity a little bit, but a certain age, it's like I think with that stuff, you're kinda like a baked product that fits
Speaker 2:your product. Calculus of how much time do you want to spend it. Because, like, could we teach somebody? Probably. Probably.
Speaker 2:But while I'm doing that, I'm neglecting everybody else that's doing the right thing.
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker 1:And
Speaker 2:by the way, like, really dangerous deadly missions that these people have to go on. It's not a risk we're wanting to wanting to take. Mhmm. And for a business, especially a start up, you just don't have your time is your number one resource, your time and your capital. And anything that takes away from that time and that focus, you gotta be really strategic about where you choose to take away from that time.
Speaker 1:You guys are making me think about playoff baseball because I I feel like I feel like baseball is just this unique sport where it's such a war of attrition that the team in the dugout almost needs to be better than the team on the field. Like, not not the team in the dugout, like, people who aren't playing, but you need to actually get along and have this magical connection with your teammates, the selflessness, this camaraderie. And if that doesn't show up on the field, like, you basically, like, will either burn out or you won't be having fun late into the season, so you just won't get that extra level performance late into October. But baseball really does shine this light on, like, the team dynamics where it's it's more important to have a a good team vibe than it is to have, you know, a bunch of right handed, left handed pitchers throwing a 105 and who are just nasty. It's like, yeah.
Speaker 1:You know, you can pay pay for those guys, but you really can't pay for the heart of the team, which is priceless.
Speaker 2:Makes perfect sense. Yeah. If you look at the winningest team in the history of sports is the New Zealand all blacks. And the reason that they're the winningest team is not because they recruit the best players. It's because of a culture that they keep as a team where the culture is about what the team represents, which is the country.
Speaker 2:And if you could be the best player on the planet, and if you don't fit their system of being a humble teammate and putting the team first, they'll boot you off the team instantaneously. And that culture is carried, you know, decade after decade by the players on the field. The coaches have very little to do with that culture because it's become self regulating. Yeah. And when you're talking about it at that elite level, that's the the difference is the minutia.
Speaker 2:Right? Like, once you get to the level of professional sports team, you're talking about the 1% differences for the most part in those sports teams.
Speaker 3:Yeah. I think they have what is it? The, the no a holes policy, and then the second one is, like, the sweep the sheds mentality.
Speaker 2:So Technically, it's no dickheads. Heads.
Speaker 3:No dick heads policy.
Speaker 2:No dick heads.
Speaker 3:No dick heads. I like sweep the sheds too, though, right, where it's like if you if you're the best player on the team and you're not willing to sweep the sheds, like, you just don't have a place on this team.
Speaker 2:I when I was a troop commander, I was very fortunate to to be in charge of 3 platoons, and then we deployed. I got 2 extra platoons to take on deployment. And we had our our 3 troop standards. Our troop was the 3rd troop, so 3 troop. And I blatantly stole 2 of the all blacks key cultural components for, our standards, and one was no dickheads.
Speaker 2:Because if you're just a good dude, things typically work out in your advantage. Yeah. And nothing gets done by being a prick to people.
Speaker 3:Mhmm.
Speaker 2:It just doesn't happen. Relationships are key to mission success. And then the other one was I didn't say sweep the sheds, but it was basically every place we go, we're gonna leave it better than we found it. So when we go to the kill house, at the end of the day, we're sweeping up every single piece of brass, every single piece of dust that may or may not be ours, but we're gonna leave that place immaculate. And it was less so of a calling card and more so of humility.
Speaker 2:You know? Are we good at what we do? Yeah. Is there a lot of, you know, respect in the public for for people in that community? Yes.
Speaker 2:But we're not too good to pick up our own brass.
Speaker 3:Yeah. It's amazing how far that mindset will take you too. Just like these little things of, like, having integrity over, like, your own appearance, the appearance of, like, going to the kill house or something like that, cleaning up, just doing this stuff. It I think it just affects you. It's just it's just having pride in yourself.
Speaker 3:I don't know. Yeah. You know, it'll take you so far.
Speaker 2:It goes back to that whole man concept that we were talking about for the selection is just you could be a good operator, but there's so much more to it than being a good operator. You know, are you a good teammate? Are you a good leader? Are you a good teacher? Are you a good mentor?
Speaker 2:Are you a humble? Like, all of those things really have to come into play if you wanna be the best that you can possibly be at whatever your whatever your vocation is.
Speaker 1:Yeah. How do you think about the culture aspect that you've developed through the military and through, your experience with the construction company
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:In terms of building primal beef?
Speaker 2:Yeah. Culture is everything. It's the thing that you're going to fall back on when things get tough, and it's what you're gonna leverage when there's problems that need to get solved. And for us at primal beef, our culture was centered around how do we give the customer the absolute best experience and best value that we can possibly give them. And every decision that we make is based around that principle of what is best for the customer.
Speaker 2:How we know that our beef is world class, but we want the entire experience for the customer to be a world class experience. So when you go to the website, we want it to be like the easiest to navigate website where you can get your order quickly and feel good about it, which it wasn't. So guess what we're doing right now, we're changing it because the feedback now is and what we've seen is the website is is not giving people that world class experience, which we wanted to give them.
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker 2:So we're changing that up. Customer service, if there's anything that ever goes wrong with your order whatsoever, no matter what it is, one of the founding team is is calling you to take care of that issue and make sure that you either get a brand new order, you get primal points, which is our our loyalty points, which is as good as cash basically for purchases. We're doing everything we can to take care of you. So our culture at Primal Beef, we want it to be something where you can take pride in in ordering the beef because you know you're gonna be giving your family and your loved ones awesome, nutritious beef that was ethically raised, single sourced, so you have traceability. You know exactly where it comes from.
Speaker 2:Providing American farmers with income, providing, you know, butchers American butchers with income, giving back to to my community through the partnership with the c four foundation and beef donations through there. But we wanted it to be an experience where you feel good about it. Not just because the beef is great, but because all the things that you're doing along the way is going to support things that hopefully you care a little bit about.
Speaker 3:Yeah. I love what you said about the founders personally handling, the customer service complaints. We've seen it with Noble. I think we've probably driven over $50,000 in sales just from taking these customer service complaints and actually giving them a great experience, whether it's calling them, shooting them a text message on their cell, and figuring out how you can actually fix the issue from them. And then they're like, oh, wow.
Speaker 3:The founder's reaching out to me. He's actually a good dude that cares about me. It was an honest mistake. Alright. Great.
Speaker 3:Let me go buy a subscription now. Like, I see that's Absolutely. So much alpha in these little details like you're talking about.
Speaker 2:And most the the guy that takes care of most of it for us is Paul, and he's the nicest, most likable guy of all time.
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker 2:It's he's way more likable than I am. It's impossible to have a conversation with Paul and not just feel like you talked with one of the best humans on the planet. And then you're like, oh, and this person is completely taking care of my order and making sure that I'm completely satisfied and the beef's amazing and we're donating back to the military. Like, this is a no brainer.
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker 2:At least in my mind, that's what I'm always asking.
Speaker 3:No. It's it's a no brainer. Yeah. So you you strike me as someone that you seem like you're a guy that got out of the military, and it seems like you've done this amazing job of figuring out what the next mission is. That's something you talked about earlier.
Speaker 3:And so Harry alluded to it. So you're doing the the construction job. You were COO there. You go to Echelon Front with Jocko, probably a dream job for a team guy. You still work there.
Speaker 3:What was the actual primal beef story of being like, no. We're gonna actually start a beef company and do this thing.
Speaker 2:I I knew I always wanted to do something that was mine. Actually, I didn't always know that. I think the experience of watching my 2 teammates, Garrett and Kyle, start the construction company, was eye opening. I'm like, oh, man. This is they're doing something amazing here.
Speaker 2:They're providing jobs. They're providing environment where everybody's super happy to come into work. Mhmm. And there's a lot of value in that type of being able to take care of people. So I knew I wanted to do something similar to that, and Echelon Front is the greatest job literally that you could possibly imagine.
Speaker 2:And the connections that it has and the people that are there are, like, the greatest team of all time. And when I moved to the town that we're in now and met Paul, who's the the the ranch connection, it just seemed to me like it was almost criminal to just be keeping this beef a secret for just our community, and we wanted to expand it. And before I even talked to Paul, I I called Jocko up and was like, hey, man. What do you think about starting a farm raised beef business and, you know, being the ultimate entrepreneur that he is? He was just, like literally just told me I'm in.
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker 2:So from there, it was just starting the process. So I knew we I wanted to do something that was gonna be a little bit bigger and longer lasting than myself. And then, hopefully, one day, you know, something that I can pass off to my kids if that's something that they want to do as well.
Speaker 1:Was there were there any any ever were there ever any moments were you being a seal totally qualified that you felt like, oh, shit. I'm, like, over my skis right now?
Speaker 2:Oh, like, literally every day. Like, I didn't know, you know
Speaker 3:Like, I feel right now. Yeah. I I
Speaker 2:learned more about beef, and I grew up on on a ranch, but we were, like, raising horses and stuff. We weren't having any cattle. So I knew a little bit about livestock and whatnot, but getting to learn more about, raising beef, what goes in a good quality beef, how much of a difference the processing matters, how much a difference the dry aging matters, how much a difference how you butcher the animal matters, the individual cuts, all of those things. I don't know any of that stuff going into it, but, you know, I was confident that we would get it figured out, and I had good people that I could leverage like Paul, who was very savvy in that industry. So, one of the keys I think to being successful is just surround yourself with good, smart people and something I've just been very blessed and fortunate around is I've always been surrounded by good, smart, hardworking people.
Speaker 2:And just learning to take advantage of not take advantage of, like, I'm taking advantage of, but letting them do what they're good at, which is Paul's great at the beef. That's what he does. I think I'm pretty good at conveying what's important to us being an ambassador for the brand, making strategic decisions, bringing good people on board. So just letting people thrive at what they're good at.
Speaker 3:Yeah. Yeah. That definitely that skill set definitely comes true comes through even in this conversation. And it's funny too when you're talking about the mission. You need you it's also important to have that mission that's so compelling that when shit gets hard, you have to just keep going because there's no other option.
Speaker 3:And the mission of bringing back the voice in the of to of the American rancher to the customer and being able to connect people with the most nutrient dense product possible, like, I don't really know of anything more noble than that, honestly. That's why we do the entire show that we do because people don't even understand what is good beef versus bad beef. Yeah. 85% of all beef at the grocery store is monopolized by 4 large packers. Like, I'm sure Jocko got that with origin because the gene industry is completely screwed up, and it's the same thing with beef.
Speaker 2:100%. And, you know, there was there was there's you'd be hard to make a case that an animal has so much of a history with America outside of beef. You could say bison, but unfortunately, we basically eradicated the bison through market hunting in the 1800. But as far as Ameris is concerned, like, we're a beef country. That's what the main source of protein has been for us since basically the founding of the country.
Speaker 2:And there's a very disturbing report that just came out a couple weeks ago that said that the American beef numbers right now are at basically an all time low, like a 50 year low. And there's so many different reasons for those, and they're not complex reasons. Policy is hurting farmers. People are not viewing farming as a glamorous lifestyle because it's not. It's a lot of hard work.
Speaker 2:So do you know what the average age of the American farmer is right now?
Speaker 1:It's not like 63 or something like that.
Speaker 2:Years old is the average age of the American farmer. So, traditionally, what happened is, you know, you grow up on a farm, you have your kids, somebody takes over the farm, and it becomes this legacy thing, and that that's not really happening. So we're at this kind of crossroads right now where for the first time, we're just not producing a whole lot of beef, and there's lots of factors that are being layered up on top of that. So what's the solution is you're outsourcing all this beef, to different places from overseas. You're buying beef.
Speaker 2:Different conglomerations are the biggest beef producers. So you've got this kind of tragic instance right now where even though you have more ability for farmers to be able to connect with larger audiences than ever before in larger client bases that's not being taken advantage of.
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker 2:So for us, we wanted to be able to kind of connect people with where their food's coming from, and that food is hardworking Americans who are literally pouring their heart and soul into giving you the best beef that they possibly can. And something that differentiates us is we're so obsessed with with quality that could we do more volume eventually by opening up the floodgates and working with lots of different farms? We could. But knowing exactly what's going into that box matters more to us than the bottom line and and profit does.
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker 2:So being able to work with 1 farm where we know exactly how those cows are being raised, where when you order a box, your first box and your 100th box are going to be the exact same beef that's going into that box. That was important to us.
Speaker 3:Yeah. And then, yeah, you're you're creating the most nutrient dense product possible
Speaker 1:for
Speaker 3:the hardworking American so they can take that product and get the energy from it and then go out and do incredible badass things with their lives. Like, that's the ultimate cycle right there.
Speaker 2:A 100%. And then feel good about every step of the way. You bought it from far a farmer who's Yep. You know, raising that beef from its entire stage. You feel good about that.
Speaker 2:You're providing jobs to people at 7 Hills, Abattoir, which is the the artisan butcher that we partner with to do all of our dry aging and processing. And, you know, that town Lynchburg fell on some hard times, and they're providing a resource and jobs to people in that community. They also have a work release program where they're bringing in people from that made some bad decisions in their life, and they're giving them the opportunity post prison time to learn a new skill, to develop themselves, and to earn a living, which most people don't wanna take that risk with people. So they can feel good about that. They can feel good about feeding it to their family because they know exactly what's inside that box, what all went into that, and then they can feel good on the backside about the fact that not only did they provide beef for their family, but because of our partnership with the C4 Foundation, they're feeding a soft operator in their family through their purchase as well.
Speaker 2:So we wanted to be able to give people good nutritional food to to fuel everything that they have going on, but we wanted every piece of that to be something that they can hang their hats on with pride, that whole experience.
Speaker 1:Yeah. That really comes through in in the messaging and and just, like, how you guys are approaching everything. It seems like the entire process is something where there's care just, like, baked into everything. Like, even just you talking about the butcher. It's like it's so cool hearing the you know, someone who's actually providing jobs for other people speak to the nature of that relationship where, like, you actually truly care about the fact that you're creating a job in the economy in Lynchburg, Virginia, which is a relatively small town.
Speaker 1:It's not Yeah. You know? And and and having those jobs stay in the US is huge too or, you know, it's not happening, you know, in some some other country.
Speaker 2:You know, we go down there very frequently and visit with the team down there, and you talk to, especially, the guys that are on the work release program, they have a purpose now. They have a purpose. And it might seem weird to people to be like, well, they're grinding up beef. But that's not how they see it. They see it as they were given an opportunity to start a second life for themselves, to develop a skill, and they're pouring everything they have into that one little thing that they're doing because somebody, the guys that run 7 Hills were willing to take a risk and bring them in when people were turning them away left and right.
Speaker 2:It's a pretty awesome thing, man.
Speaker 1:Can you can you talk about the c 4 Yeah. Efforts that you guys have?
Speaker 2:Yeah. So c 4 Foundation was started by a friend of mine named mister Keating, mister Charlie Keating, whose son was a teammate of ours, Charlie Keating the 4th. So c 4 is Charlie the 4th. It's kind of his nickname in the SEAL teams. And, right before my last deployment to Iraq, the team that we turned over with so we took over Iraq from this team was Charlie's team, and he was killed in the spring during, during an operation.
Speaker 2:And his father, to honor him, wanted to start something up, a a nonprofit in his legacy to give back to the to the seal community. And, look, there's plenty of of nonprofits that are doing good things for the military, plenty of them that are doing good things from the seal teams as well. But I really believe that the value that the c four foundation is providing to seals and their families is providing the best direct impact to the community. And that's why I wanted to partner with them is because what they're doing is directly taking care of seals and their families. So there wasn't a whole lot of of care taken on, like, the backside of a deployment for seals and their families.
Speaker 2:It's like, cool. You deploy for 6 months. You come back. You start the whole process over again, and your family's basically just taken through the wringer with that whole cycle of being in the military. So the c four foundation is totally built around, resources for the family.
Speaker 2:So the family unit can strengthen their bond and then just weather the storms that come with being in the military and being specifically in in a soft unit where just there's just more asked of you. So they have this huge ranch out in California. It's 500 plus acres, and they've basically made a retreat for seals and their families where they can come out there and just get away from everything, reconnect with nature, eat good food, go through these different programs, different mental programs, health programs that they have out there catered for the families when they come. But it's basically just a big resource to make sure that mentally and physically, the operators and their families are as as taken care of as they can possibly be. So when we started primal beef, we knew we wanted it to be more than just, giving good quality, like, the best beef you're gonna get to the customers.
Speaker 2:We knew we wanted to be able to give back to our community as well, specifically Jocko and my community. So I reached out to my 1st platoon chief. He's actually now one of the the guys that's helping run the c four foundation. His name is Dave. And I told him about what we were doing, and I said, hey.
Speaker 2:Would you think that c four would wanna be able to partner with us? And the the the scheme was basically how I viewed things was anytime someone purchases a box, we threw, you know, no cost to the customer. We're not hiding that cost in the box or anything like that. We set aside a cut of beef that we then donate to seals and their families through the c four foundation. So now they were all about it.
Speaker 2:Mister Keating is the man. You know, anything he can do to provide a better service to the seals and their families, he's going to do so. Very graciously, he partnered with us. And now anytime someone places an order with us, we set aside a cut of beef, not from your box, from from our own our own inventory. And then, once a quarter now, if if the if the amount gets big enough, we'll do it monthly.
Speaker 2:But right now, it's once a quarter. We give all of that beef donations to the c four foundation, and they distribute it to seals and their family members. And so far since August, we've only been doing this since August. We've been able to provide over 5,000 meals to seals and their families through the connection with the c four foundation.
Speaker 1:It's unbelievable.
Speaker 3:That's that must be the most motivating feeling ever where it's like every time this business grows, I'm able to feed more and more families as through this amazing organization.
Speaker 2:It's the best feeling you could possibly come up with. And right now, we send basically split the beef. Half of it goes to the East Coast, half it goes to the West Coast because that's where the the seal teams are. They're basically bifurcated between San Diego and Virginia Beach. And I live close enough to Virginia Beach where I load up the truck, and I get to go down there and, like, literally hand it out to my teammates.
Speaker 2:They hand it out to my buddies, and see the impact that it's making on them and their families. And it's awesome, man. It's huge. And that's all made possible by the people that place orders and support our business.
Speaker 1:I feel like that's one of the things that a lot of people, overlook when it comes to starting a business is you can have these missions that are so much greater than profit, sales, and, you know, the amazing outcomes that can happen if you end up selling a business. It's like these little meaningful things that that actually, like, steer your focus. You know, like, the the the fact that you have a a mission that's centered around something that's so much more than just, you know, selling selling beef. It's actually providing meals for, CL team members is and their families is incredible.
Speaker 2:Yeah. I mean, what what legacy do you wanna leave behind? Yeah. Is it that you made a lot of money off of a company? Congratulations, man.
Speaker 2:Lots of people do that. Yep. But can you do something a little bit more enduring than that? Can you not only provide for yourself and your family, but can you provide for other people as well? And, you know, if it ever comes a time where we think about selling primal beef, if anybody wanted to buy it in in the relationship with the c four, you can piss right off, man.
Speaker 2:We're not even interested in in looking at something like that because to us, that's really the most aside from giving the customer the best possible beef that we can, that's as important to us as making sure that we can take care of those people who were out there putting themselves through the grinder and their family through the grinder on a daily basis for our security.
Speaker 3:Yeah. Makes me think back to what you said earlier about acknowledging the fact that there's room for improvement for the Primal Beef website, but you weren't gonna let that prevent you from getting started. And I think about how so many people over index thinking they need this perfect thing to get started versus, like, having really good energy and a good plan and just being like, we're gonna be good enough for now. We're gonna figure it out and build this thing over time. Could've you know, if you tried to be perfect, that's 5,000 families that didn't get fed if you you know what I mean?
Speaker 3:If you didn't launch when you guys launched.
Speaker 2:That's I've actually never looked at it through that lens of of the the metrics of the families that have been fed, but that's absolutely true. And you you can't let, you know, perfection be the enemy, basically.
Speaker 3:Like, you're
Speaker 2:just good enough to get it going and then learn from your mistakes and and move forward and make the chain. Listen to your customers. Listen to what basically they're they're asking you to change and shift around, and you'll be just fine. And we knew the quality of the beef and the customer service, we know it's we're going to be okay Yes. As a company.
Speaker 2:And then it's just learning along the way at how we go from where we are now to doing the amount of business that we can do with the amount of cows that we can produce. And the byproduct of that is going to be more Americans are gonna be eating good beef, great beef, nutritionally dense beef, and it's going to be providing for American farmers. It's gonna be providing for American jobs, and it's going to be feeding our nation's military, which, like, that's a win for literally everybody involved.
Speaker 3:100%. The other thing that I love that you said too was the transparency around. Because I think I said, oh, it's grass finished beef, and you're like, no. It's grass fed beef, and then we feed we supplement it with some grains, some fruits, some other stuff. I think that on like, just the transparency and knowing your rancher is so much more important than, like, a grass finished label where there's so much greenwashing that's out there where if you know the rancher and you know they're taking great care of the animals themselves.
Speaker 3:I mean, I eat a ton of grain fed beef, and I feel absolutely amazing. So I love the fact that you're admitting that because it's about transparency. That's the most important thing.
Speaker 2:A 100%. And, look, there's enough farmers that are out there doing grass fed all the way through if that's what you wanna do. For whatever reason, if that's your bag, then, like, man, there's so many farmers that you can support that are doing that. That's not our model for a couple of different reasons. 1, I raise my own grass fed cattle on my own property, and I just don't really like I just don't really like it all that much.
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker 2:I think the beef tastes very differently. I know now that nutritionally, what we know is there's they're almost identical as long as they're eating grass for the majority of their life. When you talk about what would least for us, finishing them on the on the produce, the fruit, the vegetables, and the distillers grain, that that excuse me. That mash, they're only doing that for a couple of months. They're eating grass the entirety of their life, and they're still eating grass while we're supplementing it.
Speaker 2:So all the nutrient density that's coming in is coming from the grass, and then it's getting augmented a little bit by what we're finishing them on. So, you know, there's less fat in grass fed, grass finished if that's what you're looking for. That's also flavor. There's also good things that come with fat. There's also certain less nutrients in grass fed, grass finished over kind of what we do.
Speaker 2:So it's a little bit of a trade off. But if you want grass fed, grass finished, don't buy it from a big box store. Like, get to a farmer who's doing that and buy it from that farmer because you're going to be supporting them, and it's going to be a better product because they're going to be caring for that animal. And if you want, you know, a truly unique experience where you're trying something that you've never had before, which is the grass fed and then the fruit finish, try us, and I promise you, you will not be disappointed.
Speaker 1:Yeah. We've had it.
Speaker 3:We've been smashing it. We've been smashing it for the last week. We've got we've got the office stocked up. And in the backyard, we're, we're gonna put a Sisus sauna, a couple cold plunges, and we got we're getting some more grills out there too. So we're just gonna start buying your your beef boxes on subscription.
Speaker 3:That way whenever we have people over, we can just throw it out on the grill.
Speaker 2:Sounds like paradise. A little steak, a little hot hot, little cold. That's why
Speaker 3:we're gonna have you back out there.
Speaker 2:Please do.
Speaker 3:That's what we need. Yeah. Sorry. Were you gonna say something?
Speaker 1:Yeah. I was just gonna I was gonna ask, ask, it seems like or I was gonna say, it just seems like you're, you're doing what you're uniquely called to do right now. Like, could you envision yourself doing anything other than what you're doing right now?
Speaker 2:No. No. And the reason is all these in Echelon front allows me to do this as well. It allows me to be with my family, which is really all I care about.
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker 2:You know, at the end of the day, if I wasn't a good seal, I could live with that as long as I was a good husband and a good father. And the the blend of working for Echelon Front and starting this up has allowed me to spend quality time with my family, which just life in the military. It becomes quality time, not quantity time for sure in the military because you're just getting pulled in a 1,000 different directions as you should be to make sure that you're properly trained and your team's properly trained to come home safe, but it takes a toll on the family. And I'm in a point in my life right now where the only thing that I really care about truly is being the best husband and being the best father that I can be. And Echelon Front allows me to do that, and Primal Beef allows me to do that and allows me to also involve my family and hope hopefully, build it out to some someday something that, you know, myself and Paul and Declan and Jocko, the 4 founders, can involve all of our families in if they want it to be, you know, a legacy, if you will.
Speaker 3:I think that's what life is about for a man. I don't I don't think there would be a cooler feeling than your kids being so passionate about primal beef that all 4 of you guys have kids that wanna end up taking over the business. How cool that would be.
Speaker 2:I can tell you they're passionate about eating it.
Speaker 3:Oh, yeah. Because I can't
Speaker 2:I mean, my kids, you guys don't know how spoiled you actually are. My kids, they're like, there's like, oh, steak again. Like, come on, dad. So they're definitely passionate about eating it. Yeah.
Speaker 2:They love being involved in the process, but it would be nice. No pressure. But, you know, if one of them wants to step up and and take it over one day, that would be amazing.
Speaker 3:Yeah. I loved how you said too with Echelon front. You guys are able to go to, like, the nicest steak houses around the country. But when you have beef like you have at home and you know how to cook it the way you like it, I'm like, it's really hard to find a steakhouse that makes steak better than what you're gonna make yourself.
Speaker 2:It's always just disappointing. And it's still good steak, but it's always just disappointing because the quality control that goes into the size of our operation, you just can't replicate that at any of these steak houses. And the other fact of it is, you know how you like your steak cooked Yeah. Too. So if it's in a cast iron skillet with butter and salt and pepper, you can do that.
Speaker 2:If it's over an open fire, you can control that. We're at a steak house. They're doing really high quality steaks at at volume. Mhmm. Whereas I don't have to worry about volume.
Speaker 2:Well, I mean, I have 5 kids, so technically, it is a little bit of volume that's going through, but I could control how I make those steaks.
Speaker 3:So Yeah.
Speaker 2:I'm always happy to have a good steak, but it's always a little bit like, I'd rather have my own.
Speaker 3:Yeah. So your family is 7?
Speaker 2:7.
Speaker 3:So for the family of 7, are you throwing them on the grill? Are you going cast iron? It depends
Speaker 2:on what it is. So, I mean, obviously, burgers, like, I'm I'm opening up the the pellet smoker and, like, everything's going on there. If it's barbecue, if it's brisket, if it's our beef ribs, I'm firing up the smoker, the big offset smoker, you know, feeding big chunks of, you know, blocks, pieces of wood in their logs, and I'm working that sucker all day long. If it's steak, for me, I really like the cast iron skillet, and it's just very easy and everything's quick to clean up. It takes me maybe 10 minutes total to go from pan on the stove to steaks complete.
Speaker 2:And then we're sitting down afterwards, eating dinner together as a family, which is important.
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker 2:And then clean up super easy too because I take the pan over to the the sink, and I put some water on it. It cleans itself, and then I don't have to worry about it. I can just sit down and enjoy spending time with the family.
Speaker 1:There's something about just a quick sear that gets the job done. I don't know. It's like, just throw it on there real quick, 4 minutes aside. Boom. Boom.
Speaker 2:Done. And that, you know, that the technical thing is like the Maillard reaction that happens with the beef where it's at caramelization. And the more contact with the cooking surface you have, the better that reaction is gonna be. So when you look at a steak that's on, like, a grill, you're only making contact with that beef where the slats are. Everything else is dropping through into the fire.
Speaker 2:Whereas with the cast iron skillet, that entire steak is making contact
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker 2:With there. So the butter's getting baked in, the salt's getting baked in, the pepper's getting baked in, and everything becomes the crust. To me, that's kind of the gold standard for the steak is, like, every bite has that nice crust on top and then just perfectly, you know, rare, medium rare tenderness underneath.
Speaker 3:Yeah. I mean, you're getting kicked out of mafia HQ if you're doing anything above medium. Done. Medium rare.
Speaker 2:You're done.
Speaker 1:You're done.
Speaker 2:Pains me to think that that might be something that people do with primal beef. Oh. But at the end of the day, it's America, and you do I know. You cook your steak the way that you want.
Speaker 3:I've been liking a blue cheese crust on top of my steak lately.
Speaker 2:I do love blue cheese. There's a
Speaker 3:have you been a salt and time in town? Have you heard of it? It's a steakhouse butcher shop. They make this it's a steak half of it's steakhouse, half it's butcher shop, and they make these compound butter. So they do a marrow butter.
Speaker 3:They do a blue cheese butter.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 3:It's the best butter you've ever had, and we just buy it by the jar and just throw it on everything that we do.
Speaker 2:You can't beat it. I mean, like Yeah. Butter and steak, it's just the greatest thing you
Speaker 1:want to add. A little salt.
Speaker 2:Those steak houses, if you ever have one of those apps where you're looking at what is cooked with I forget the name of the app, but it basically tells you seed oil.
Speaker 1:Seed oil scout?
Speaker 2:Yeah. They're all cooking it in seed oil. They're all
Speaker 3:cooking in seed oil.
Speaker 2:Insane to me. Yeah. Insane to me.
Speaker 3:Well, part of it is, like, I guess the smoke point is really good. So these these highly trained chefs are like, oh, they're they're taught me in culinary school to cook with this
Speaker 2:Crank it up.
Speaker 3:Seed oil, and they also think it's healthier too, which is insane. No. Then when you had a steak and beef towel, you're like, there's no going back.
Speaker 2:It's just the best thing ever. My wife does not not the biggest thing because it does stink the whole house up.
Speaker 3:Does.
Speaker 2:But steak and beef tallow is just and then you're just dumping the rendered fat all over literally everything.
Speaker 3:Yep.
Speaker 2:My kids, they would lick the cutting board if I let them with all the the rendered fat that's on that cutting board afterwards.
Speaker 3:How old are your kids?
Speaker 2:My oldest just turned 13.
Speaker 3:Okay.
Speaker 2:And then my youngest is 4. So I have 3 boys and then, 2 girls.
Speaker 3:Are your boys on the raw milk train?
Speaker 2:They so actually, we're in the talk of buying a deer, like a Jersey cow right now. Nice. It's a lot of work. You know, you're out there every day doing it, but we're to the point with with the farm where we can probably bring that in and we can manage that now. So probably start doing that.
Speaker 2:They drink a lot of milk.
Speaker 1:Is there anything anything cooler than seeing your kids being able to grow up on the farm and actually, like, develop some skills for themselves and grow interest in different animals and things like that?
Speaker 2:There's literally nothing. Yeah. And the one that's taken to it the most is my youngest daughter, Maeve, who's just like the most endearing thing of all time. But it's because it's all she's known. So we moved to, to our farm about two and a half years ago.
Speaker 2:So she was, like, one and a half. Yeah. So all she's known is farm life, and she is the quintessential farm girl. Like, if you can't find her, it's because she's outside in the chicken coop. The sorry.
Speaker 2:I say coop. We have a big open area that's electrically fenced in so we can move the chickens around periodically. And she's just in the big open area with the chickens, just hanging out with the chickens, playing with the chickens. Yeah. If I'm giving hay to the cows, she has to come in the tractor with me to give the hay.
Speaker 2:She's barefoot literally everywhere she goes at all times. So it is such a fulfilling thing as a father to be able to see your kids just enjoying being outside versus we don't even have a TV in the house. Like, there's no TV in our house whatsoever. So if they're just outside having a good time or inside, you know, hanging out with each other playing games.
Speaker 3:Yeah. It makes me think about, like, the this incredible life that your kids and your daughter have. I think back to a lot when I I lived in New York City for 4 years, and there's, like, no besides Central Park, there's no real grass in the city. And I remember walking downtown and, like, looking at the little league fields, and they were, like, just all astroturf fields. I'm like, these kids don't even get to experience grass versus, like, the experience that you're talking about where your daughter's, like, literally in the chicken coop barefoot every single day.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 3:How good that probably is for your microbiome, your immune system, everything.
Speaker 2:It's the best. And, you know, when we first moved out to the to the farm, you know, we were in San Diego for 15 years, and my wife and I were sitting out on the front porch in the rocking chairs one morning. And I looked at her and I said, I can't tell you the last time that all I heard was a bird because that's all I was hearing. Sitting on the rocking chair was just the sounds of the morning, sun coming up, and the birds are starting to sing. And in San Diego, there's always noise.
Speaker 1:Always.
Speaker 2:It's the cars coming by. It's a helicopter overhead. It's your neighbors being too loud because you're all on top of each other. And just that inoculation of the senses where you're just used to just hearing noise all the time and then going out to the country and just being like, I literally don't hear anything. This is amazing.
Speaker 1:Yeah. We, we moved out to Bastrop for, like, few months.
Speaker 2:Oh, hell yeah. It was fun. Yeah.
Speaker 1:But the first thing I noticed was the noise pollution and the light pollution were basically 0. Yeah. So when it got when it got dark out, it was, like, 6 o'clock, and you're like, oh, there's nothing to do out here Yeah. Other than just, like, maybe read a book and then go
Speaker 2:to bed. Yeah. Which is great. We have so we have our house, and then we have, like, our our family rec barn maybe 40 yards behind the house. And, excuse me, that's where, like, the gym is.
Speaker 2:That's where my office is. We have one TV up there. So, like, if we ever want to watch a show, it's a very deliberate movement to where, like, you have to go together as a family up to the rec barn to kinda, you know, watch a show, whatever the case may be. But at nighttime, if I need to go get something from the barn, I mean, it's pitch blackout unless there's a moon. Yeah.
Speaker 2:You can't see in front of your face. It's amazing. And you look up, and you're like, oh my goodness. There's actually stars in the sky.
Speaker 3:Yeah. Yeah. It's, like, it's so good for your circadian rhythm because you're like, alright. Well, I'm just gonna go to bed at 8 o'clock because it's completely dark, and I don't have a TV to keep me up either.
Speaker 2:Yeah. And there's no light pollution, so, like, you're sleeping better. There's no noise pollution, so you're sleeping better. There's fresh air. I I mean, it's just amazing.
Speaker 2:When we first moved out there, you know, just probably former lifestyles type stuff being the military, your sleep cycle was totally jacked. And after moving out there after a couple of weeks, I started to fall into a really good sleep system. And I didn't change anything. It was just the environment itself changed.
Speaker 3:Yeah. That's one of the things that we talk about is how it's like these unsexy things or the things that move the needle and even just getting your sleep into a good spot. You're a totally different person just by doing that one thing.
Speaker 2:Anybody who has kids knows the effect that sleep has on people. My kids are completely different people if they got sleep versus if they didn't get sleep. And the older they get, the more they can manage it. But, like, if my little one was up a couple times during the night, it's like, stand by the next day because she's just gonna be a different mood than she want would be if she got sleep. Yeah.
Speaker 2:It's gonna be highs and lows throughout the day. Yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah. I think about that a lot with food too. It's like we're programming our kids, you know, the their their day to day feelings are basically centered around how much sleep they're getting and the quality of food they're getting.
Speaker 2:Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. Yeah. And, you know, you look at what's a normal American breakfast. Let's load them up with this cereal that somewhere along the line, we convinced ourself was nutritious.
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker 2:And then we're sending them to, like, the most boring environment imaginable, which is most schools.
Speaker 1:Yeah. And
Speaker 2:then we're saying, sit down in a desk after we've pumped you full of all this, like, insulin producing cereal, and then we're shocked when, like, that's not fun for them whatsoever.
Speaker 3:And then we've got some Adderall for you too. Yeah.
Speaker 2:And we got some attention. Yeah. If you can't pay attention, here's some pills you can take. So
Speaker 1:That's just like the perfect storm for, yeah, kids being all over the place.
Speaker 2:100%. Yeah. Yeah. You look at where where we're growing up is where my kids are gonna be. We're so blessed because it's a, you know, smallish community, lots of like minded families, big families.
Speaker 2:So we go to church on Sundays, and we have 5. We're like a medium sized family Really? Where we
Speaker 3:go. Some
Speaker 2:bad. Unbelievable. If you look in the parking lot, it's like sprinter van. Sprinter van. Sprinter van.
Speaker 2:Sprinter van. Because they have to have that. And all the kids are sitting there in church, you know, perfectly, you know, taking everything in. The moms are beautiful. They're well put together.
Speaker 2:The dads are sharp. The kids are looking sharp, and then they're all just running amok together, afterwards. But, you know, they're not looking at screens. They're not doing any of that stuff. They're just being kids.
Speaker 2:And my wife coaches our high school girls soccer team where our kids go to school. It's the elementary school up through high school. And her first away game, she comes home and she's like, I had to give the girls, high school girls, my phone to use to call their parents to tell them what time they were gonna be home because none of them have cell phones.
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker 2:I think there was 2 of the girls on the team that had cell phones, but because they were the oldest of 7 siblings, they were driving their siblings to school and back. So, like, they had a phone to keep track, basically. But, like, nobody else had a phone. They're just out there being kids.
Speaker 1:Wow.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 3:Well, it's encouraging that you can find communities that are like minded that are doing things the right way. Like, you you know, you're talking about going to church, big families, everyone's put together. It just seems like, you know, a lot of people in our age range in this millennial demographic, they don't think they need to get married. They don't think they need to have kids, and they don't think that they need God, which is like and then and Harry and I were thinking about this few years ago. We're like, all the people we know believe in God, they're married, and they all have a bunch of kids.
Speaker 3:There has to be something to that. Yeah.
Speaker 2:I mean, you look at kind of a we know what makes people successful in life. It's not a there's no secret. Like, we know if you look at literature and data, what makes people financially successful, emotionally successful, it's do you believe in something bigger than yourself? Do you have a family, and do you have community?
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker 2:That's kind of like the keys to success, but somehow we fooled ourselves into thinking that it's like a family somehow holds you back from being successful and somehow kids are a burden instead of being, like, the most fulfilling thing that you could possibly ever do with your life.
Speaker 1:Mhmm.
Speaker 2:We have it backwards, but I think people are starting to come around.
Speaker 1:I
Speaker 3:think so too. Yeah.
Speaker 2:There's been some people if you follow on social media that I wouldn't have ever thought would necessarily have started to believe in a higher power.
Speaker 3:Mhmm.
Speaker 2:And they're starting to say things where I'm like, oh, this person's on a journey.
Speaker 3:Yeah. Mhmm.
Speaker 2:This very smart, very educated person that probably 5 years ago was very counter to this is now starting to say things where you're like, oh, he's or she is they're on a journey right now, and it's only gonna end up in one spot.
Speaker 1:Yeah. I've noticed the same thing. Like, it seems like a lot of a lot of people are now publicly, whether they were or were not before, talking about, like, reading their Bible or, like, maybe even starting to attend church, which I think for a lot of people who are in the public light, that's a very hard thing to say Yeah. In current times. But it does seem like the the tides are shifting.
Speaker 1:A lot of it has to do with, like, this post COVID era. I feel like trust has been dissipated out of kind of our our standard systems, and now people are just looking for other other groups, small, like, communities, small community to Yeah. Put their trust in.
Speaker 2:The I mean, the only place, I mean, obviously, outside of God that you can put your trust is in your family and then your community.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Like, government's not gonna save you on a personal level. It's just not going to do that. Yeah. It's something that you've gotta be able to do yourself and through community. And the I joke around with my wife.
Speaker 2:Like, it's a good thing we have a beef business because the amount of meals that we provide to moms that just had babies in our community. Like, every week, my wife's doing 2 or 3 meal train drop offs. And the entire community is doing that because they value that relationship where someone has a baby, everybody in the community wants to support that family. You know, government's not dropping off a meal for those people. It's their local community that's doing all of those things for them.
Speaker 3:Yeah. And I think women are realizing how important animal product consumption actually is for their fertility, their hormone cycle, etcetera. Like, our podcast is primarily male, but the protein company Noble is primarily female as our customer base. Because it's, you know, beef protein isolate, organs, colostrum, collagen, and there's, Heart and Soil did this documentary called Nourished, which talks all about, animal based moms that got pregnant and had kids, and they show up the doula shows a placenta of an animal based mom that was eating a ton of red meat versus the vegan placenta. The vegan placenta is like this dull pink color, and then the mom that's eating all the steak, it's like a dark ruby red, like, rich color.
Speaker 2:Plus a kid.
Speaker 3:I know. Right?
Speaker 2:Kid that's inside the house.
Speaker 1:To send you that because it's like it's one of those things you see it and you're just like, what the heck? Yeah. Please do. It's wild.
Speaker 2:Yeah. It is crazy. It makes 100% perfect sense. And then what happens when that baby comes out is if if if the mother is capable, you know, they're breastfeeding, and all of the nutrients from that diet is what's going directly to nourish that kid as well.
Speaker 3:Yeah. Yeah. I just I we we love this this type of conversation too. I mean, something I've been thinking a lot about is, especially on the Internet for men in their twenties. There's, like, this notion that if you wanna be successful, you need to be single, and you know you shouldn't get married young or whatever.
Speaker 3:And I think it's complete BS. Yeah. When you find the right woman, she'll, like, set you on fire and push you towards your mission more than you could even know. And I think for you, you'd mentioned you got engaged to your wife, like, 4 months after
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 3:Knowing her, and which is interesting because I think the rate in the teams is, like, 90%. It's pretty high.
Speaker 2:It's pretty high. Now I will be the first one to say that as much as I love my community, people make some bad decisions in in my community. And sometimes if if if people's decision making ability in their personal life matched their professional life in the teams, it would everyone would be, like, the most squared away people of all time.
Speaker 3:Wow.
Speaker 2:But I was fortunate enough to have very good examples of good, strong families inside of the teams. And when I met my wife, there was no doubt that she was the person that I wanted to marry. So we did it for 4 months, and then I proposed, and she said yes. And then just training schedules and whatnot, you know, 9 months later, we were we're married. And then, a year almost a year to the day after our first anniversary, our first son was born.
Speaker 2:My son Ronan was born. So and I was doing all those things when I was in the military, and I deployed 6 weeks after he was born. Wow. And my wife, you know, I deployed for almost a year. It was 11 months, that deployment.
Speaker 2:And my wife was at home with Ronan holding the fort down. And you did hear her say it. It's like, it was challenging, but the experience of getting to have Ronan and or not have Ronan during that 11 months, she's like, I I was so glad to have him there with me the entire time while I was overseas, you know, doing those things. So it it's a very it's immature is what it is. And you can't blame them for it, I don't think.
Speaker 2:Because what is the message that they're receiving from popular culture from the world, which is, you know, procreate with as many people as you possibly can.
Speaker 3:Yep.
Speaker 2:Don't get married to you in your late thirties. You know, live your life like marriage is some kind of drag on you, and it's the exact opposite of that. Like, if you want to talk about being fulfilled as a man, it's tough to argue that you're ever gonna be as fulfilled as when you're filling that role as a husband and a father. And, look, some people will never physically have the role of a husband or a father, but you can get that sense through something else. Be a coach.
Speaker 2:Be a youth minister. Be something where you're filling that void. But it's it's immature, and it actually makes me sad for them because I'm like, you're gonna waste the best years of your life pursuing things that you think is going to bring you a lot of joy and fulfillment. And the things that are gonna bring you the most joy and fulfillment, you're actually just glazing over those things.
Speaker 1:I think Brett and I will both agree that the podcast has been the best decision we've ever made in the past few years. Just professionally, it's it's gotten us to have conversations like these that just give us hope. Like, honestly, these these types of conversations just fuel us and inspire us. Like, that there are people out there who are mission focused, doing the right things, trying to leave a legacy, like, all these important things that aren't really talked about in the mainstream just, like, truly fuels us and just we're so appreciative of your time. We know how valuable it is.
Speaker 1:You got a business. You're working for Echelon. You got Jocko as a boss, so I'm sure you got, your your time is, is precious. So we just we really are so appreciative of your service and just for coming on the show.
Speaker 2:Well, it's absolute honor to serve, guys. I mean, literally, when I say the teams gave me everything, like, they gave me everything. And every single second I spent in the military was the best time in my life. And I really appreciate you guys giving me the opportunity to come on and, you know, talk with you, get the word out about, you know, the beef business and all of those things, and, you know, thanks for the opportunity.
Speaker 3:Yeah. We appreciate it, Sean.
Speaker 2:Hey. My pleasure, guys. My pleasure.
Speaker 1:Hey, Sean. Cool. Cool.