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NWA Founders is a voice for Founders, Owners, and Builders driving growth in Northwest Arkansas, and is hosted by Cameron Clark and Nick Beyer.
'NWA Founders' is a voice for Founders, Owners, and Builders driving growth in Northwest Arkansas, and is hosted by Cameron Clark and Nick Beyer.
To recommend a guest or ask questions, reach out at nwafounders@gmail.com and follow us on YouTube and LinkedIn for video content.
[00:00:00] JD Blagg: When you're providing a really good experience and you're able to control the things that you can control. 'cause there's a lot of things about the migration we can't control, and there's a genuine sense of, I care about you and I care about your family,
[00:00:13] Josh Teff: then
[00:00:14] JD Blagg: why would people not want to
[00:00:15] Josh Teff: come back? The relationship is the most important ingredient.
Sustainability and staying power is all about relationship building. All three of us just put the most emphasis on that and it's worked really, really well.
[00:00:27] JD Blagg: I mean, like we've had people that have been going through hard things that have shown up in northwest Arkansas for a weekend because they don't know where else to go.
Yeah. They go hang out with our duck guide. Yeah. It's like, wow. Maybe's like, who's coming in town? I'm like, well, this, they're going through, okay, I'm in.
[00:00:52] Cameron Clark: What is waterfowl? And then what is Falco? Uh, maybe, you know, one of y'all kind of dive in and then one, I mean, y'all [00:01:00] kind of each introduce yourselves here too. Yeah. Thanks for coming on with me and Nick this morning. You bet, you bet. You
[00:01:04] JD Blagg: wanna go first? Yeah, man. I'm John David Blag. Um, go ahead. My name's Aaron Fritz.
I'm Josh Teff. Yeah. And we started Falco Outfitters. So what, your question, what is waterfowl? Yep. So, uh, you know, ducks, geese, any, any migratory bird that, uh, migrates from Canada all the way down through the United States. And uh, that's what we hunt at Falco. I. Um, primarily ducks and geese. Mm-hmm. Um, in North central Oklahoma.
[00:01:36] Cameron Clark: And, and so y'all, y'all are all north Los Arkansas guys
[00:01:39] JD Blagg: though? Yeah. Live, yeah, live, yeah, live,
[00:01:41] Cameron Clark: live in north Los Arkansas. Yeah. And, uh, so I mean, just so people know who aren't, you know, who don't hunt birds or haven't never done it before, why can't you do it here? Why is it not very popular here in northwest Arkansas?
Why are most of the spots in, you know, central East Arkansas? Or, or now in Oklahoma, which is kind of a newer, newer thing, right? I mean,
[00:01:59] Aaron Seifritz: well, great [00:02:00] question. Um, you got flyways and generally your flyways like the Mississippi River Flyway, which comes down through Stuttgart. Everybody knows Arkansas is duck capital of the world and you've got your central Flyway, which it's kind of split by the Ozark mountains.
Uh, we don't have great habitat here. Water's clear, fast moving. You don't have wetlands, uh, you don't have corn grain. Yeah, no farming, no ag. Um, so the flyways are generally you go two hours this way, two hours, that way you can find good duck in goose hunting. But generally in this area, um, this is more deer in Turkey country than it is in black bear country than it's duck waterfowl country for sure.
Mm
[00:02:35] Aaron Seifritz: sure.
[00:02:36] Josh Teff: Yeah. We're kind of between flyways here. Yeah. Yeah. So there's four Pacific, central Mississippi and then the East coast and everything in between those, if you like draw line in the middle, you're probably gonna have a hard time finding concentrations of ducks and geese in those areas. Whereas if you're in those veins and there's a whole map that DU and US Fish and Wildlife put together that, you know, they've tracked birds [00:03:00] over eons show right where they go.
Most of them from, you know, either coast of Canada typically just funnels down into the Mississippi Valley and then you'll have, you know, typically less birds that sort of winter. String off as the mass majority, you know, go to the Mississippi Valley. So it's interesting stuff. And they banned 'em and, and track put tracking collars on 'em to, you know, kind of see where those pattern, how those patterns emerge and how habitat affects it
[00:03:29] JD Blagg: and all that stuff.
It's really cool. You know, like in Arkansas, south Arkansas being the duck capital of the world, a lot of that stems from southeast Arkansas.
Mm-hmm.
[00:03:37] JD Blagg: Like Osborne Labs down at UAM, you know, putting the, the backpack, GPS tracker, tracking devices on this, these ducks and geese, and watching them, you can pull up actually on your computer, you can pull up and see where that duck is right now and in the stage of the migration, which is really cool.
And it gives 'em, like Josh said, a lot of really cool information about where exactly they're nesting, [00:04:00] where they're summering, and then Yep. You know, being able to track them all the way down. It's a wild animal man. Like to do that every year, the resilience that they have and think about the miles and stuff.
It's, it's pretty special that we get to take a part, take part in that.
[00:04:16] Cameron Clark: And you grew up in that world, right? Yeah. I mean that was, yeah.
[00:04:19] JD Blagg: Yeah. I mean, really Aaron and I both did, um, you know, uh, my dad we farm mm-hmm. In Southeast Arkansas, so in the, uh, not in Stuttgart. So we were in Dumas. Yep. And still are, my family still farms.
Uh, and my dad was a duck guide. Mm-hmm. So I saw that my whole life. Um, and he's, and I mean, you can ask these guys, he's one of the best, uh, if he walked in this room, everybody wants to hear my dad and be around him. Mm-hmm. Because he's just that guy. So I got to watch the best do it mm-hmm. And entertain.
And, you know, the, so, um, the, it was, it was pretty cool to now [00:05:00] he's proud of what we've built, you know, and what really what God has, uh, laid before us and we're just taking steps.
[00:05:07] Cameron Clark: What was one of your first memories with your dad that you remember just falling in love with the sport, with the,
[00:05:12] JD Blagg: well, everything.
I mean, I can remember it like it was yesterday. I shot my first pen tail and I don't know how I remember this. I don't remember really much at five, but I was five and I was shooting a 20 gauge that was not a youth 20 gauge.
Mm-hmm.
[00:05:27] JD Blagg: Um, and back then we had waiters, but they were not, the technology we had today, they were rubber that people that are listening that, that, um, might remember the old red ball waders of a cross, but it was just thick rubber or canvas.
[00:05:42] Cameron Clark: Yeah.
[00:05:43] JD Blagg: And they didn't make youth sizes. So he would get the smallest size and then he would duct tape the legs so he would pull it up, fold it, and duct tape so my feet didn't come out.
[00:05:53] Cameron Clark: Yeah.
[00:05:53] JD Blagg: And, uh, I'll just, I'll never forget when I killed my first duck. It was a, it was a big, uh, full, [00:06:00] um, sprig pen tail.
And, uh, I was with my Uncle Bo and my dad and. First time I even shot at a, at a duck. I think I just got super lucky. 'cause I missed, I still do miss a lot, you know? Um, but, and it ended up getting to, you know, shoot that duck with my dad and uncle and, and then I've just been hooked ever since. Yeah. And did
[00:06:23] Cameron Clark: you
[00:06:23] JD Blagg: Rice fields,
[00:06:24] Cameron Clark: that's amazing.
And I mean, and I guess all across the room here when, I mean, when did the, the idea from for Falco come in? I mean, you didn't, it was, you were home builder for a while and then, I mean, y'all been doing, doing different things too. Sure. The was did when you were little JD did that kind of start for you? And then, I mean, you Aaron too and Josh, and what's the,
[00:06:44] Aaron Seifritz: I mean, our whole path to that is different.
I think the thing that, you know, was most how we came together, um, at a stage in life. I, my, I had worked for hunting lodges and Stu Garden Place called Wildlife Farms for 12, 15 years, [00:07:00] um, around that. And learned a lot about waterfowl culture in the hospitality side of it from a family, the barnetts that were there, that ran the place forever.
Um, and so eventually I started having kids and uh, at some point it was kind of like a little thing in the back of my head, was kind of doing my own thing. And then through the course of time, uh, got put together with John David and Josh. My dad actually had a relationship with John David's dad before I met John David in the beach in Seaside, Florida.
And my, uh, father trained a couple dogs for Josh along the way. So, um, and we met, discussed Alco the first time at Whole Hog. Barbecue on North College about this time of year.
[00:07:37] JD Blagg: Um,
[00:07:38] Aaron Seifritz: in 2017.
[00:07:39] JD Blagg: Hold on, hold on. You can't. You gotta
[00:07:41] Aaron Seifritz: get it the full, you got,
[00:07:42] JD Blagg: I mean, just a little bit of it.
[00:07:44] Aaron Seifritz: Um, well, I, I had been thinking about it a bunch.
People been coming to me for years asking me if I knew Josh and saying that we had similar goals and aspirations as far as like what we were doing. And being in northwest Arkansas, that's not like a very common thing versus other parts of country that are a little [00:08:00] more rural. Real quick, real
[00:08:00] JD Blagg: quick, as you listen to Aaron tell this, 'cause he tells it really well.
Just you have to think about the fact that God is behind the scenes. Just like enter, like through other people. Like, Hey, you've gotta meet Josh. Hey, Aaron and I are randomly meeting each other on the beach in Seaside, Florida. No way. Like, year. Year. Oh, that wasn't, that
[00:08:18] Cameron Clark: wasn't
[00:08:19] JD Blagg: set up either at all. No. True story.
So it's just to see God and like Yeah, weaving all this together is
[00:08:24] Aaron Seifritz: pretty awesome. Mm. Um, but I, Josh's name was always in the back of my brain. Um, I can remember even look, was it Greenhead Magazine or something? Mm-hmm. There was a, a ad in there, a place you worked before. And I remember clearly thinking like, well, he's got his fingerprint on, you know, what's, what's growing and what's happening.
Mm-hmm. And I can remember that sticking in my brain. Uh, I looked up John David. I was sitting on a beach in Seaside, Florida, had Corona light in my hand. Uh, my now wife then fiance, I believe, walking down the beach. John David's little girl was holding his fingers. She was probably what, one years old about that time.
And, uh, Lala and then uh, [00:09:00] hit a little, uh, a curly tail pig hat on and I hit my wife on the shoulder and I said, well that's a rice farmer's kid. Uh, that's exactly what I said because I was always like hunting for my next duck hole, you know what I mean? I was like, he has access to the duck hole. And so I said, woo Pig, how was your duck season?
And jumped up outta my chair and we realized pretty quickly that our dads knew each other. Wow. Man. Had a history together and we realized we lived down the road from each other and that we knew pretty crazy. 50 of the same people. Yes. You know, um, I don't know. Fast forward five or six years, John, Dave and I's relationship.
We're Turkey hunting. Anybody knows me. I kind of black out when I Turkey hunt. There's really not a lot going through my brain. Nothing than like what's in front of me, which is part of the reason I love it. 'cause I can just step inside nature and not be anywhere else. But, uh, and Aaron and
[00:09:40] JD Blagg: I had been talking about doing this.
[00:09:41] Aaron Seifritz: We'd been like poking around the idea here and there. And it was like on the front of my brain and turkeys were coming down, John David's Barrel. And I said, we had
[00:09:49] JD Blagg: three turkeys,
[00:09:49] Aaron Seifritz: gobbles. I hit him on the shoulder and I say, I say J John, David text Josh Te right now. 'cause I knew that they had met once, had each other, his numbers.
And uh, I said, text him right now and see if he wants to go get lunch with us next Wednesday. [00:10:00] And he, John, Dave looked at me and said, what, what are you doing? What are you doing? I said. Text him right now. And he was like, put his gun down. And he like showed it to me. Okay. I texted him, you know, let's go s go turkeys, you know?
And, uh, next thing I know he text back John, David holds, okay, yeah, we're on for Wednesday, you know, throws his phone down, we go back to Turkey hunting,
relax.
[00:10:19] Aaron Seifritz: Right? And we meet for a plate of barbecue, um, and share ideas and thoughts. And man, a lot of things, I think just outta the gate aligned for all three of us as far as, uh, the level of hospitality, you know, like how we wanted to be as a group, uh, through guys that cared, knew the market, you know?
And we knew our client base, what we wanted our client base to be. Um, in
[00:10:40] Cameron Clark: your mind, was it a business at the time or was this a like, hey, we're creating a hobby spot for us to, like, what was the thought there when you, when all you all being together? No,
[00:10:47] Aaron Seifritz: no, no. I mean, we, I, I don't think we ever dreamed that like the growth would be as explosive, but that was the power of all three of us coming together.
Mm-hmm. Um, we each brought something to the table. We each brought a network of duck hunters to the table. We each [00:11:00] brought experience to the table. Mm-hmm. Um, and, uh, and we outweigh each other. You know, as far as like Josh's really great at things that I'm not John Dave's great things are not vice versa.
Um, we all just add to the table and somehow some way over, what is it, eight, nine years now, we've managed to never have a blow up argument. And, uh, that's awesome. Work through our differences and work together. But as far as. Um, the explosiveness of it. I, you know, I don't, I don't think we ever, even at that point could have ever even imagined that would've become what it did, because there was really nothing out there to really, like a, a blueprint.
I had to do this, and we had exposure to Arkansas duck culture mm-hmm. And the commercial side of it, running people through there with business. But, you know, the whole thought and feel of taking that mentality to Oklahoma, that hadn't been done really at that point. Um, there's quite a few lodges now, but at that point, there was really nothing to go off of.
Like, will this work? How do we gather enough land to make that effective over there in a place that doesn't have the resources that we're used to? Um, and [00:12:00] then I, one thing I really remember more than anything is, you know, location, location, location, that's anything in business. Uh, Josh at the very end of that meeting, opened up his laptop and said, I don't know much, but I know I wanna go here.
And where he touched that laptop screen was real close to where our lodge is today. Um, wow. Yeah. And so that certainly And had you been there before
[00:12:17] Josh Teff: Josh, or what? Yeah. Yeah. So, um, I mean, we're, our whole situation is like a whole series of cliches, you know, timing's everything and it ain't what you know, but who you know and God's grace and favor.
I mean, if you, those three things are like, what built our whole situation. So they, unbeknownst to them, 16, 17 was the last season you had at Wildlife Farms, right? That's about right. Yeah. So he had, you know, wildlife farms where Aaron was. Had privatized, sold, sold to someone. So they're no longer running hunts there.
16, 17, I had given my resignation at the place I was at in February of 17
[00:12:57] Nick Beyer: with this plane in mind. And I didn't, I've never even met
[00:12:59] Josh Teff: Aaron. I've never [00:13:00] even met Aaron at this point. Okay. So years before, like they told you they meet on the beach. And then JD and I had met at a, at a barbershop right here, or right here at Clint's Barbershop right here.
Um, that's a community right there too. What was it in September, I think, or October of 16. And then I invited him to hunt at the place that I was guiding at the time in Tulsa, just outside of Tulsa. And, uh, we just hit it off and, and so that's how our relationship started. So we hadn't known each other for six months.
We
[00:13:32] JD Blagg: went, we both went to the same church and always had people that assumed that I was close with Josh. And people assumed that he was close with me. And I was like, I keep hearing this. I've never met this man. Yeah. I mean, it's, but I know who he's, because Jeremy, when we started Puritan, I was part of Puritan on Dixon when we started, uh, with Richard and Kevin.
Okay. And John Allen and his brother was doing artwork for us, like design work for Puritan.
Okay.
[00:13:57] JD Blagg: And we were at some Puritan release [00:14:00] party. And his brother, I knew that his brother hunted. Mm-hmm. And his brother was like. Yeah, I know. Like, you wanna talk to me about hunting? You've gotta meet my brother.
And I was like, again, this is another person saying I've gotta meet your brother.
So,
[00:14:14] Josh Teff: yeah, so Jeremy gets credit for all of our, he, he's done all the graphic work, everything that we have stickers, he's the best website, hats, t-shirts, anything that's graphic, you know, in our brand. He's basically built the brand, you know, essentially.
Um, so yeah, I, so we ended up meeting and then, um, fast forward to April and JD text me outta the blue when they're Turkey hunting and we go meet and, you know, we kinda left that conversation with an idea, you know, I mean, they spawned the idea. And I, and to be honest, like from February until April, all I knew is I couldn't go back to an office job.
Hmm. Like,
[00:14:50] Josh Teff: I, I had to do something and I'm praying every day like, show me a path. 'cause I cannot, I know that I can't go back to an, I will if I have to, but like, I'm 10 [00:15:00] years into getting to be outside and guiding fly fishing and guiding Turkey hunting and deer hunting and waterfowl and the whole deal.
Like, I'm not, like, that's what I'm made for. So I can't just go back and sit at a desk anymore. And I did that for 15 years, you know, so I knew, and then, you know, we talk about it spawns the idea. And then with, and then two weeks after. We had our initial meeting. Another guy comes by my house and it's kinda the same conversation and he wants to do something.
And so, you know, you fast forward to September and at that point, after that second meeting, it was like, I gotta, this is like maybe a, a, I felt like God's telling me something. I need to try to do something. So I'm thinking of people to maybe try to fund our operation. And this one guy keeps popping in my head.
So I, I'm like, I don't have, I've never started a business in my life, have, don't have the first clue about how to do it, but I get on, I literally got on Google and I'm like, business plan, what does it look like? [00:16:00] So I'm, I knew enough from running the, the operation before that. It was like, I can, I can get pretty close to what I think the market will allow, you know, what we can charge, what we can offer, get as close as I can to cost evaluations and all that stuff.
So I put this thing together and, uh. You know, it's completely different than what it ended up being. But anyway, I take it to this guy. We have, I've set up a lunch meeting, take it to him, and he says yes, like on the spot to fund our entire operation. And so, you know, that was later in the latter part of the summer of 17.
[00:16:34] Cameron Clark: And when you, when you say fund the operation, you're talking about buying the land. I'm
[00:16:38] Josh Teff: talking about the whole thing. Okay. Like, just, lemme know how
[00:16:40] JD Blagg: much I need to deposit into
[00:16:42] Josh Teff: your account. Yeah. And the, and to be honest, the scale of it was much, much smaller. Like the business plan allowed for way less than what it ended up being.
Sure. And that was kind of him driving us to be like, Hey, you know, I'm, you're in a good situation here. Which we're in a unicorn situation. Mm-hmm. You know, so it allowed for us to be a little more cavalier [00:17:00] in what we were spending and how big we went. But he was complicit in driving that. I mean, like I said, it was a lot smaller.
So I called JD and Aaron. I don't even think they believed me in the beginning. You know, like they were sort of like, I mean, we don't have to, we don't have to put any money up, or, I remember you guys asking me that. And I'm like, no. Like, this is it. Like, and they're like, holy smoke. So, and it didn't seem real to me.
They, like, for the first year or two, it was like, it didn't seem real to us that Mm. You know, this opportunity is laid out before us. And so it was like, we were super humble,
you know?
[00:17:29] Josh Teff: And we still are. It's like, we're just like, we cannot take credit for this. 'cause it was just one thing after another.
Every time we thought we were gonna hit. A wall or some kind of massive hurdle. It was like, there's the, there's the solution. Mm-hmm. Immediately it's comical. And it was over and over and over. So, you know, once we had the plan, the land, the piece of land, you know, that we bought was on the market. It had, it had sold at auction a year before.
We ended up closing on it for $50,000 more [00:18:00] than we paid for it. What? So it, the first, first piece of property we looked at, yeah, it was the f it was the second, actually the second, second. Har, I think Har and I went to the first one. And that place we had to have a, an easement that we couldn't get. So we were like, this isn't gonna work.
So we find this place online and it had been sitting on the market for over a year and uh, or close to a year. And, um, and we put an offer in and ended up, like I said, buying it for less than what it had sold for. So like all these different things, like, you know, small example, we're assuming we can dig a well for our water source and we call the well guys.
And they're like, no way, dude. You know, there's no chance you're getting enough water. This is after
[00:18:40] Nick Beyer: you bought it. This is
[00:18:41] Josh Teff: after we've already started construction.
[00:18:43] Nick Beyer: Wow.
[00:18:44] Josh Teff: So, like, you know, due diligence, like, oh no, what do we do? Well, Harold, our other partner, um, he's like, I think there's a. County waterline down the road and I'm like, well go down there and look.
You know, 'cause this is bad. Like we, we [00:19:00] gotta have water derail our entire situation. And so he goes down there and sure enough, you know, the county waterline ends on our road. Wow. And we had no clue. So, you know, we run a waterline and all and now we've got fire hose pressure at the lodge. It's crazy. So, um, and did
[00:19:16] Cameron Clark: when, so in general, waterfowl in Oklahoma was not nearly as big?
No. So
[00:19:23] Josh Teff: the Oklahoma waterfowl thing, and you guys will touch back on how we ended up there. So I was guiding at a place east of Tulsa and Harold and I were going and hunting with my mentor. Um, a guy who passed away year, year or two ago now. Um, taught me how to blow a duck call and, and kind of pretty well helped me, you know, build the desire to want to hunt ducks at all.
Duck calling is what made me wanna become a duck hunter. So we were going out there with him and, uh, just blown away, like completely blown away every time we went about the sheer numbers and the concentrations of ducks and geese. And, [00:20:00] and I'm like, this is like, I. I've never been anywhere and seen anything like this.
So when we met the first time, it was like, that's the only thing I was sure of. After the second year of going out there, I'm, I started to look around and see who I could, you know, if there's anybody with an Arkansas, east Arkansas style Duck Lodge or presence out there, and there was none.
[00:20:19] Nick Beyer: Mm-hmm. And what do you mean by East Arkansas?
Like, well, I mean, like a big, for people who don't know that
[00:20:24] Josh Teff: a big full service, amenity driven, customer, service driven, experience driven lodge, you know? Mm-hmm. That's like, not only are you gonna experience phenomenal hunting, but like, we're gonna feed you really good food. You're gonna have a bar, you're gonna have, you know, a range to shoot at.
We're gonna drive you to the spot, we're gonna do all the work, and all you have to do is show up and shoot a full service, you know? Really, really, uh, customer service driven launch. Cool. It didn't exist from, for the waterfowl, um, from a waterfowl perspective in the state of Oklahoma at the time. Yeah. And, [00:21:00] you know, we kind of were the first ones that started that whole market in the state.
And there were people there
[00:21:06] JD Blagg: guiding and, and, and killing ducks had operations that were, that were, had great operations, but God services not operations. They were God services. Yeah. Yeah. We like to think of ourself as more of an experience giver. Yeah. Like, you come, you're not coming just to kill as many ducks and geese as you can.
Yep. You're coming for the whole experience.
Yeah.
[00:21:28] JD Blagg: And there was nobody there doing that. And the reason there isn't Southeast Arkansas is 'cause there's such a culture built around that. It's such a history. Um, and there was not that history, the resources there. But the history wasn't there.
Yeah.
[00:21:40] Josh Teff: Yeah. So now between us and, you know, a few others, we're sort of building the culture, leading the, you know, the, the leading edge of the culture getting developed in Oklahoma.
And the locals still, they, a lot of 'em think it's stupid, you know, they're like, these things are a pest, you know, they don't, they, it, it doesn't even, it still [00:22:00] doesn't register in their mind that people will pay money to come and experience like what they just want off of their property, you know? So it's kind of interesting in that way.
But, um, anyway, so yeah, we found the property and, um, this
[00:22:13] Nick Beyer: is like 1720. This is, yeah, it was
[00:22:16] Josh Teff: 15, 16 that I was going over there, you know, here and there on days off guiding at the other place by Tulsa. And, uh, and then, um, 17, end of 17 we bought the, no, it was end of, yeah. End of 17. It was in 17. Yeah. It was the end of 17.
We bought the property. Okay. We started construction, uh, April of 18. We built everything on our entire property. In six months we had unbelievable buildings. Wow. Yeah. It was like April to September. It wasn't even six months. So y'all, I mean, and the lodge
[00:22:45] JD Blagg: is like 7,000. You literally have to, again, think about like the timing here.
I mean, it was April 17 that we texted Josh. We go have lunch. We end up buying this property. We have a [00:23:00] buddy that says yes to funding it. Mm-hmm. We buy the property in November of 17, end of October, I think end of October 17, we start construction. April? April. April, mid April of 18.
Okay.
[00:23:12] JD Blagg: The lodge, the wetland, the guide quarters, the shop, everything is completely done and we are fully booked by September of 18.
Wow, that's unbelievable. Wow. It's, and so, you know, like we've been on a lot of these and people are like, you gotta be so proud of what you've built. Like it is comical to think that we had a whole lot to do. We've taken steps, and I say this all the time, but God, like clearly laid them out. Mm-hmm. You know, like a lot of times you pray that God would like make this clear and he doesn't lot, you kinda are like, Paul, you're running into, well, I guess I'm not supposed to go there, so I'm gonna keep moving.
This was just like the most clear he's ever been, I think, in most of, in our lives.
[00:23:53] Nick Beyer: So I think one unique perspective y'all have is y'all aren't, it's not like you're 25, 30 taking these, like, how, how [00:24:00] old are y'all when y'all are taking these risks? You have families, you have kids, like,
yeah,
[00:24:03] Nick Beyer: this isn't, this isn't like a very easy risk to take or easy jumping off point for any of you, is it?
[00:24:09] Josh Teff: No. I mean, we're, I'm, I was 35 jds, 36 Aaron's 30. 2, 3, 4, 3. Oh, you're 43? I'm four three. I thought, Hey, this is, this is Aaron. I just look
better.
[00:24:31] Josh Teff: So Aaron's, Aaron's 34. I'm 35 J's 36 when we started. Yeah. And uh, yeah, I had, I had three kids. JD had three kids. Aaron had one at the time.
[00:24:43] Aaron Seifritz: I think dance was pregnant.
[00:24:43] Josh Teff: Okay. Yeah, she was, she's, she has three now. And, uh, yeah, I mean we were in the, in the thick of it family wise and, and all that. And so, you know, what we had that a lot of places struggle with is, you know, we had connections [00:25:00] with affluent folks that love to spend money on this type of thing.
So Aaron coming from wildlife farms, he had a big list. Jd you know, if you know John David very long, you meet him once and he gonna be your best buddy. And so he's, he's got a insane, you know, list of contacts. And I had a fair, fair amount too from where I was. So I don't even remember how we did this or how I went about it, but I do remember somehow I got all their contacts and all of mine put 'em in a spreadsheet, just wiped out everything but emails and phone numbers.
And then that was our initial contact list. And I used, um, you know, uh. Online email service, and then a online tech service. And we booked, I think it was, I mean, probably 75% of our entire first season was all just from people we knew. And
[00:25:50] Nick Beyer: then, and is that like, while you're building the lodge, like you don't have, we're
[00:25:53] Josh Teff: doing it all at the same time.
All
[00:25:55] Nick Beyer: you don't, you don't, it's not like y'all have have a bunch of trips where people are like, yeah, we've been out there and whacked [00:26:00] ducks with these guys. Right. I
[00:26:01] Josh Teff: mean, they had to trust us. Go ahead.
[00:26:02] Aaron Seifritz: Well, for me personally, like this was like my dream When I was 18 years old, my dad took me to a place, a little guide place out in Eastern Colorado and kinda showed me what this man did.
And I remember driving away and I said, I wanna do that. Mm-hmm. Uh, I wanna do exactly what that guy did. He said, no, you're gonna do that way better. Um, so I always, wow. Fortunately, had this mentality that like every customer I met as I guided around the country, um, I went to Colorado State and studied hospitality, outdoor recreation and tourism that I was gonna have to call these people one day.
And so the very first person that I called when we got to that point was a guy named Vinny Lou from San Francisco that I had guided in stuck guard because it was kind of like. Out of these, no way, 30 people who's gonna be the easiest on me? You know? Uh, and at least like say, Hey Aaron, like change your sales pitch.
Do this. And without even blinking and I, or we had two by fours up at that time collage, and without even blinking, he said, you know, give me all, you know, 16 spots for the best dates you [00:27:00] got, uh, like right then and there. Which for me personally, that gave those like the catalyst to me, like saying, well, I can call anybody now.
You know? And so like, I always, I think about him constantly for that. Uh, 'cause it was really like the spark that I needed at that moment. So like, utilize this contact list I developed for 15 years in my life, you know, knowing that one day, like hopefully I wanted to reach out to those people if I was an opportunity.
And then there I was, you know? That's crazy. So,
[00:27:23] Josh Teff: and, and he's still there and we've probably got still. 20 plus 30 plus groups maybe that have been there since year one, that are still coming now eight years later, which is crazy. Um,
[00:27:36] Nick Beyer: and that's the thing, people were like, yeah, have y'all been, we're like, I mean, no.
I've tried, tried to come, and you can't get in.
[00:27:41] Josh Teff: I mean, you can't get in. So, yeah. And that was the, I mean, honestly, that was designed from the beginning. It was like, if we can, if we can hit it out of the park and, you know, guys turn this into almost a quasi club mentality where they have their own dates every year, um, then that's like staying power.
And that's what we were able to do. [00:28:00] And you know what's funny is like, we didn't reinvent the wheel here. We didn't, there's a lot of people that have done this over and over, but we hear it all the time. It's like, man, y'all are just different. You just don't, we've been everywhere and this place is just different.
Why,
[00:28:10] Cameron Clark: why do you think that is? And
[00:28:11] Josh Teff: I, well, I think it's because, um, I think it's because like most places you go, and I'm not, don't, I don't want anybody out there to think that we're cutting down another operation. We're not, no. There's a lot of people that do
[00:28:23] JD Blagg: it really, really well. Yeah. And there's
[00:28:25] Josh Teff: some really good places.
I think the difference is there's very few where the people who have the most vested interest in the. Operation, namely us three are fully engaged in building relationships with those customers every single time they come.
Wow.
[00:28:41] Josh Teff: So it's like, you know, when we're, when they're there, we're there with 'em, we're hunting with 'em, we're hanging out at dinner with 'em.
We're, we're standing around a fire with 'em. And, and it's not work to us to do that. Like, I, we, we want to be around 'em 'cause they now have become our friends.
Yeah.
[00:28:56] Josh Teff: And so it's like every single group is like, well, golly [00:29:00] man, sorry, you guys gotta go hug your neck. But then, hey man, you know, so-and-so's coming this afternoon.
So it's like just a constant flow of stuff like that. And I don't, I'm, and, and then, you know, the place has a really cool vibe. There's music always on. It's always upbeat, you know, everybody's excited. Yeah. Talk about the,
[00:29:17] Cameron Clark: when you walk the, the experience when you pull onto the property. What, what, what do people, what can you expect?
I mean, I've just heard it's absolutely incredible.
[00:29:25] Josh Teff: Well, so I'm a detail, I'm a, I'm a very type A personality He is. So, like, if it's, there's no such thing as good enough in my mind. Like, if perfection's not it, then we still got work to do and it's unattainable. So there's, you know, you're always trying to do things to the absolute best you can.
So when I, I had the hospitality side, uh, and experience with it, with the last place I worked, sort of developed it there and then, and didn't even realize at the time that I was learning these things that I would need later. Uh, learned a lot of what to do, learned a lot of what not to do. And so [00:30:00] when I sat down to sort of try to figure, tailor the operation, I mean, it was like in the weeds.
Hmm.
[00:30:06] Josh Teff: From the time a guy opens his door every moment that he's there, you know, minute by minute, what can, how do we make every minute, you know, something that registers and he remembers. So that's how detail I detail. I tried to get with it and then, you know, we, we bounced ideas off of each other the whole time.
And, uh. Before we knew it, the first group shows up and it's like they're just blown away, you know? Mm-hmm. Completely blown away. And it was like, well that was cool. You know, let's see what happens the next one. And then years later it's like, we hear it over and over and over again and you know, you can let yourself almost get arrogant about it, but it's like, no man, I mean, all we're really doing is it's, is applying the golden rule.
That's all it is, is like we're just doing everything we can to treat people exactly how we would wanna be treated if we're going to their establishment and paying money to, you know, to [00:31:00] experience something. That's it. It's really that simple. Mm-hmm. And it know, thankfully we just all really enjoy good food and a cool environment and building relationships and so we
[00:31:11] JD Blagg: gotta, we can't skip over the first group too fast.
'cause this is just another example and I might be beating a dead horse, but it's. We've gotta give credit where credit's due. So, you know, we start this thing and Josh, um, not only is he's super talented and is an incredible photographer, so we were building this Instagram and now, you know, Instagram is the driving force behind a lot of businesses nowadays.
And, you know, it was starting, I mean, started before we started. So we knew that we had to have a presence on social, social media to kind of get people's attention to Sure. Our lodge in Oklahoma.
Yeah.
[00:31:48] JD Blagg: And, uh, so I, I mean, I'll never forget, we're like, oh yeah, we've got like 500 followers now. It's like, you know.
Yeah. And again, like if you think this is anything that [00:32:00] we had to do with, it's comical. The first group that comes to Falco is a group of Christian influencers that work in the hunting industry Wow. That do social media for all these big companies that now we work with that are close friends of ours.
They were the first group, so we went from like, not much of a following to them getting there and having a great experience and like, kind of being blown away. This is in Oklahoma to posting all over their accounts to Then it just like, after the first group, it blew up, like our social media account blew up.
Which, um,
[00:32:38] Cameron Clark: well, and if they didn't have a killer experience, they wouldn't be talking about it either. Well, that's right. That's
[00:32:42] JD Blagg: right. But it is funny, like, I mean, like, I just know that God knew that. Mm-hmm. They were gonna have a great time. Mm-hmm. I'm gonna put them as the first group. That's awesome. You know?
Yeah. Like let's let them in there and then they, they can tell everybody about it. And then we started having people really reaching out to us like, Hey, I saw so-and-so was there and they [00:33:00] had, I love, you know, their experience that I got to, you know, go follow along on social media with. And then it just kind of started taking,
[00:33:08] Josh Teff: yeah.
And I don't remember we call, we discussed doing that, you know, it was like, we gotta have a social media presence. So, you know, and we have to have industry relationships 'cause we don't wanna pay retail for everything that we use. And at that time, you know, we were small potatoes, but it was like, uh, I don't remember if we called it Genesis then or not, I don't remember.
But what was the purpose? That was the purpose group. That was the purpose.
[00:33:31] JD Blagg: Genesis was January of the first year.
[00:33:33] Josh Teff: Yeah, that's right. 'cause we did it later. So yeah, so the Purpose Group was a guy that reached out to us in Tulsa who I had met, um, Reagan Refr, who's an prior unbelievable photographer. And he asked if we, he wanted, he was trying to put together this Christian men's group.
So we did that. And then that ended up being what JD said, it was a whole bunch of guys, there was more dudes were jumping out of the blind with cameras than guys with shotguns, shooting birds. I mean, it just was like, yeah, I mean, literally it was, it was comical cameras. It was [00:34:00] comical because like, you know, you'd hear there's 20 people in the blind and you know, we're all who you got a few shooting and then you, you see all these cameras come out and dudes just running out, laying on the ground trying to get pictures of the dogs and, and trying to get pictures of us picking up birds and stuff.
And my first experience with influences in Wild, wild, it was pretty fun. It, different people are paid to do this, so I can't remember if that is what spawned the idea to do the industry event or not. But anyway, since year one we've done, um, a group which we're all in invitation only stuff where it's like, these are the companies we want to partner with, so let's invite one or two guys from each of those companies to come out.
Wow. And we call that Genesis is like, um, and so we now it's the opening weekend of every, every year. And, um, but
[00:34:53] JD Blagg: you know, you know, like. Even to Genesis, you know, we're inviting these brands.
Mm-hmm.
[00:34:58] JD Blagg: They don't know really who we [00:35:00] are. Well, one of the guys that was at purpose is a guy named Barton Ramsey, who's a close friend of ours.
He has southern Oak kennels and, uh, Mississippi. And he is, I mean, like the sick waiters. When the sick Waiters came out, he is the picture that was the huge poster in Max that's like mm-hmm. 30 feet by 30 feet over the waiter section. That's Barton. And so he was super connected. So we invite these people to Genesis that's coming up in January and, you know, people are not really committing.
And then Barton gets on the phone, is like, no, y'all don't understand. Y'all gotta be, y'all have to be here and experience this. Wow. This is a new lodge. And they're, they're legit. So he like all these people from Yeti to Sitka. Mm-hmm. I mean, literally every brand within the industry show up because he had experienced it at purpose.
That's right. Yeah. The first trip. Wow. You know, that was at Falco, so yeah, so that
[00:35:57] Josh Teff: first year, like we went from 500 [00:36:00] to, I don't even know it, it just went on social media, Facebook and Instagram. And uh, and then it's just steadily kinda grown since then. And, and, uh, and we showed the whole process. Like we, we posted the, you know, blueprint, the rendering of the lodge originally, and then weekly photos of it all getting mm-hmm.
You know, built and the whole thing. And, and so I think, I think it engaged people and people were interested in it. And then it, you know, I, I'm not sure that it, you know, how many customers that we've, you know, gotten because of the social media stuff, but it's a hundred percent had a huge impact on building the brand recognition, which has now, you know, become
[00:36:40] Nick Beyer: unreal.
[00:36:40] Josh Teff: Yeah. A, a whole other opportunity on its own, you know, outside of just the, the lodge and outfitter.
[00:36:45] Nick Beyer: Well, I wanna talk a little bit, um, a little bit more about Inception. 'cause I think there's a lot that people can learn from You'all there. But before I do, I think one of the key themes already that's coming up is like presence.
And I think there's a ton of stuff about business right now on the internet. It's [00:37:00] like, buy a business, put an operator in and do this. And it's like, you guys aren't doing that. And y'all have been incredibly successful already, se seven, eight years in. At eight
[00:37:09] Josh Teff: years. Yeah.
[00:37:10] Nick Beyer: And I'm sure there's pressure.
Hey, you know, you're spending two, three months away from your family. Why don't y'all just hire somebody to run the lodge? That has to have been a conversation that y'all have had. And it seems like. You're steering away from that because you actually want to be present with your clients and your customers, and that's part of the whole Falco experience.
So, yeah, I don't know. Yeah, I mean, it's pretty unique. We
[00:37:32] Aaron Seifritz: generally, all three believe that like a person is the most interesting thing in the world. Yeah. That's, that's, that's not, that's organic, that's natural in all three of us. Hmm. And so, you know, again, we decided in the front end, take 16 people, that was gonna be our maximum what we did.
And the three of us in a room can make sure we get a personal touch on every single person that's in there when we spread out. And so to be that owner driven, uh, there's no doubt that that's one of the top things [00:38:00] that's gotten us to where we are. That's awesome. You know?
[00:38:02] Josh Teff: Yeah. I wouldn't say that you can't be successful, you know, doing it the other way where you, you know, you're sort of the back end of it and you hire people to fill roles, but I mean, there's a tangible difference in.
Know, like I said, when the people who have the most vested interest are fully engaged in the operation and doing everything they can to make sure, I mean, 'cause in the, especially in the service business. Yeah. Mm-hmm. Know, it's, I was gonna say, especially this business every day. Yeah. It's a huge, huge thing where it's like, I don't have to go ask you to call your manager.
Like I'm talking to the guy that makes all the dec or the guys that make all the decisions, like right now. And fortunately, you know, we don't have very many that have anything but positive things to report. Um, you know, hunting's hunting's at times and, you know, we have to deal with that every now and then.
But even that has been few and far between. Most of the time the hunting's spectacular and, you know, and we got a lot of, uh, credit to give to the guys that work for us. We've, [00:39:00] we've only, I don't know, two people in eight years we've Yeah.
[00:39:05] JD Blagg: One, one person that we let go and, or really two people that we've let go.
Yeah. And eight years and. One person that I'm married and he, you know, we were, we hated to leave him. He is like, you know, a little brother of ours that we love
[00:39:21] Josh Teff: dearly. Mm-hmm. Um, just got outta the business completely. So yeah, we've let go too. And then, and then we've had two leave and amicably and so we've, you know, but 22 people, we got the same staff.
And y'all gotta understand, like, especially on the, well really everybody, but on the guide side, who, you know, which the majority of 'em are guides or, or people, you know, doing the actual grunt work in the operation. I mean, it's four 4:00 AM to 11:00 PM minimum. Mm-hmm. Every single day for four months. Wow.
Other than the holidays in a four day break in the split. So like. You're tired, you're hungry, you start putting
[00:39:58] JD Blagg: those work hours [00:40:00] together and you're working as much or more than anybody that goes to work eight to five rest of the year, Monday through Friday for a whole year. Oh, that's crazy.
[00:40:05] Josh Teff: Yeah. I mean, I work, we did the math and yeah, we work more hours or we're on call, I should say.
Um, don't get me wrong, we aren't moving the 16, 15, 16 hours a day, but, but we're on call. We're like, there's something that you might have to do for that whole time. And if you add all those hours up, it's more than the average person works in a whole year. So, you know, um, my wife, I'm sure all of our wives make comments like that.
Well, it's, you know, you only have to work four months. Mine, mine especially, you know, she's like, I'm like, well, yeah, but you don't understand it. Like, I'm really, we're pushing hard for four months and, you know, and then, so it's, it's, uh,
[00:40:45] JD Blagg: understandably because they're, they are carrying the, they're hardest load getting all of our kids everywhere they've gotta be.
Yeah. And we, I mean, like, we always talk about it, our wives are freaking rock stars mm-hmm. To allow us to, I mean, to be honest, [00:41:00] um, because we wanted their, you know, their favor in doing this and for them to all be like, go do it. Go chase your dream. I mean, that's a huge deal, um, with a lot of weight that they knew that they were gonna have to carry.
Hmm.
[00:41:13] JD Blagg: Um, and kind of back to your question about like, why don't we have somebody, I mean, that runs it. We could, but then, um, God also gave us. Talents to be able to do this. Mm-hmm. And so then you kind of forget about where you came from or what, you know, God has blessed you to be able to do well and it's, that's a great, that's a really good point.
And if we did, then we're kind of going, alright, God, thank you for getting us here. Now we're gonna let we're
[00:41:39] Josh Teff: Yeah. It's almost like it's more than a business. Yeah. Yeah. Which it always has been to us. It's never been a business. I mean, I've told my parents that it's like, you know, there's so many opportunities.
There's no better platform to, to like dig into the spiritual realm with someone than when they're watching the sunrise
and
[00:41:56] Josh Teff: seeing these incredibly beautiful creatures doing things [00:42:00] that they've never seen before. Mm-hmm. And it's like, it just opens doors, opens opportunity for conversation. And, you know, we're, we're pretty bold, you know, about that, about spiritual things.
It's like, um, you know, honestly that is probably the most, um, rewarding part of the whole thing is like seeing how people get affected, not just. It ain't us, it's the spirit through us. But, uh, that business and the operation and the people in it, you know, God works through it and we see that every single day.
And so that's like the most rewarding part of the whole thing. And I think that's why he is blessed it so much. And I think as long as we, you know, my dad tells me this all the time. He is like, Hey, you know, I know. Don't let it go to your head. Like always keep the main thing, the main thing. And as long as you guys do that, then I think, you know, Falco will continue to grow and, and succeed.
And so I, you know, there's probably been moments where we've all let it go to our heads a little bit. Sure. It's human nature, but at the, as soon as it starts to [00:43:00] happen, we're good about checking each other and like, just. Hey, it ain't, this ain't us. You know, my wife's really good about checking me. Yeah.
[00:43:06] Aaron Seifritz: It really is like the coolest job on the planet.
I mean, like, we're in the business of making core memories with people, you know? Uh, I got a customer that first time he's from Georgia. Um, first time I got him was probably oh seven and like every year since oh seven, I've got to like, go out with this guy and his son and now his son-in-laws and like make core memories.
Yeah. And we got him going back a long time. So like, I wouldn't wanna miss that. Yeah. You know, I, I wanna be there every time Mr. Dale shows up. He's a
[00:43:35] Josh Teff: mess too. He's the greatest.
[00:43:37] Aaron Seifritz: Love him. He's so loyal to me though. Yeah. But man,
[00:43:40] JD Blagg: that is, that is the business and is when people, when, when you're providing a really good experience and you're able to control the things that you can control.
'cause there's a lot of things about the migration we can't control.
Mm-hmm.
[00:43:54] JD Blagg: You know, that's out of our hands. And there's a genuine sense [00:44:00] of I care about you and I care about your family then, I mean, why would people not want to come out back? Because we really do. I mean, like, we've had people that have been going through hard things that have shown up in northwest Arkansas for a weekend because they don't know where else to go.
Wow. That's not, they only go hang out with their duck guide. Yeah. It's like, wow. Then's like, who's coming in town? I'm like, well, this, they're going through. Okay. I'm in. And like, that's what it's about. That's what's freaking cool is not only like do we get to love on those people, like in the off season and keep a relationship with them, but then they're gonna bring and trust us, uh, with their clients or friends excited to bring 'em to, you know, our place and, and have a great time out in gosh, creation.
So they're,
[00:44:47] Josh Teff: it's another cliche, you know, it's like any business, it, the relationship is the most important mm-hmm. Ingredient. And if you don't have that, uh, it really doesn't matter how good your product is. Or, I mean, I sh well, there's [00:45:00] probably times where product matters a lot, but I mean, sustainability and staying power is all about relationship building and
mm-hmm.
[00:45:08] Josh Teff: And so we all have never questioned that. Like it's, we all felt that way coming into it naturally. And it was like all three of us just put the most emphasis on that, in that equation. And, and it's worked really, really well. That's
[00:45:23] Nick Beyer: awesome. So, let's rewind a little bit to inception here, whatever details y'all wanna share, but like, buying the land, is it roughly 300 acres where the lodge is at 3, 3 20?
You talk about like maybe how much that was or how much it cost to build the lodge, the scope of the project, what it's like raising capital. Any advice to entrepreneurs who are thinking about partnering with someone on the capital front? Anything you guys learned from that? Anything you do differently?
[00:45:50] Josh Teff: Yeah, I mean, I, yeah, I think that the, uh. Yeah. So we paid, uh, $1,200 an acre for that [00:46:00] ground in 2017. Now it's probably worth $5,000 an acre. Um, and it's driven the market. Um, yeah. But as far as like, what? Knowing, knowing now, what I didn't know then is like, don't be afraid to ask, especially if you have relationship.
Mm-hmm. But don't go into, so the, I think what, what a lot of people run into, which I've had to learn this the hard way, um, even since then is like, you can't go and, and approach someone to get capital without a plan.
Mm-hmm.
[00:46:37] Josh Teff: It's like an idea is great. Mm-hmm. But if you don't have the nuts and bolts at least somewhat figured out mm-hmm.
People don't have the time. Um, affluent people don't have the time or the, the willingness to even listen. Like if you get a plan and you can show point A to point B, even if you, it's not it, it doesn't have to be the most, you know, professional, like you've done it forever. Like you can give it your best [00:47:00] shot, you know, and put as much detail into it as you possibly can, uh, based on what you know or what you think is gonna be, um, what you can project or whatever, and have a plan.
And, you know, I think your odds of success and, and getting someone to listen to you and, and do something are way higher if you do that. Just taking someone an idea is, uh, is really tricky. I. To get any results from that. That's, that's my experience and what I know now. Not to say I'm an expert on it at all, but I think, I think having a plan is super important.
[00:47:32] Nick Beyer: So you'll pay like 400 K for the land, the, the lodge, are you wrapping all that into like a construction loan type deal?
[00:47:38] Josh Teff: Yeah, so we have, uh, our investment, uh, our in investor is, um, he basically was like, it started out, we were looking for five or 10 acres just to build a building on. Yeah. And, and he calls me, I don't know, it was sometime a month or two after we'd had our initial meeting and he said, Hey, how much land do you need to hunt on or to be able to hunt on?
And I said, [00:48:00] oh man, like, at least a quarter section was 160. I said, but probably better a half section, which is three 20. Mm-hmm. And IS and he's like, we'll do that. And I was like, whoa, dude. Like if we do that, yeah. Because the
[00:48:13] JD Blagg: numbers are ticking up here. We're like, yeah. Like there's,
[00:48:16] Josh Teff: we're we gotta pay this back.
Yeah. Like the, the, you know, the initial business plan is gone. I mean, ev there's more money in just buying this land than there was for our whole operation. And he's like, well, don't worry about it. You know, don't worry about the money. We'll, it'll be fine. And, and so we just ended up in a super unique situation with someone who believed wholeheartedly in what we were doing and that, you know, the area and the state needed it and.
It. You know, I, I can't even, we tell everybody and the people, we tell everybody the situation, nobody really even believes it. They're like, there's something criminal going on here, you know, almost.
[00:48:54] JD Blagg: Um, oh dude.
[00:48:55] Josh Teff: People have thought that
[00:48:56] JD Blagg: we were a money, money laundering operation for [00:49:00] the mob outta Chicago.
Toby, Keith son. People thought that I was Toby Keith's son. Yeah. Um, is it the voice, the local, the local mean? Seriously, that was a rumor going around. Yeah. So the, no,
[00:49:11] Josh Teff: the county we're in, in Oklahoma has one town, like one like legitimate this gar town. It's en Enid. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. Enid, Oklahoma. And, um, everything else around is nothing but farmland and little, you know, small, I mean, I say small, I'm talking like 300, 2, 300 people.
Small, like really small towns. And, uh, it's super rural. There's very few people and so, you know, but everybody knows everybody. So coffee talk shop, it's like we come out there and almost drop a nuclear bomb in that type of environment. You know, these guys from
[00:49:44] Nick Beyer: Arkansas.
[00:49:44] Josh Teff: Yeah. It was big money, you know, and, and which was another hill we had to climb, you know, when we were leasing land is like, we couldn't just go and ask because the, they see this big construction project and we're taking a, a viable farm and turning [00:50:00] it into recreation.
They're like, what in the world? These guys are crazy. And uh, and so we had to go and sit down at kitchen tables and. Meet people. Mm-hmm. And really try to not only sell 'em on the idea of allowing us access to their land, but they had to get, get to know us to a point where they trusted us mm-hmm. And didn't think we were shysters
[00:50:21] JD Blagg: and they realized that our family weren't Brazilian airs, you know?
Right. Coming into
[00:50:25] Cameron Clark: normal guys. Yeah. I mean,
[00:50:26] JD Blagg: like dog dads, dog trainer, dad's a farmer, dad's a metal worker. Like Yeah. Yeah. We're just chasing a dream. We know, we know y'all's world
[00:50:36] Cameron Clark: a little more than you think we do. Yeah. Yeah. I
[00:50:38] Aaron Seifritz: remember specifically, uh, going to sit down with a really well known family in a small town, and we went and sat in a, a bank conference room that was about a hundred, 10, 15 degrees in July, the three of us.
Yeah. And the whole family comes to see what this is about. I mean, grandchildren all the way up to the grandfather. And we sat there and went kind of back and forth about what we were doing and this and [00:51:00] that. And right when we were about to leave the, the one man in the family that was kind of the most critical of what we were doing, he said, well, I'm gonna buy that place for 25 cents on the dollar when y'all fail.
And I remember the three of us getting in the car, and I, and I'm saying, we're gonna prove that man wrong. Yeah. Yeah. But I remember that light of fire kind of under all three of us. You know, a little bit of doubt goes a long way when you're that, that situation. Yeah. From the, I
[00:51:25] Josh Teff: mean, they legit all thought we were crazy.
[00:51:26] Cameron Clark: Yeah. You know, crazy. So like, is that from like the land value perspective, it's like, Hey, is this. Because, I mean, just industry, you know, wide recreational users can pay and lease a little bit more than farmers, correct? I mean, is that kind of
[00:51:41] Josh Teff: Yeah. Yeah. Well, I mean, I don't know if it's a little bit more because it's, you know, it's so dependent on whether there's birds using those, using that land or not.
So like most of the land we have access to, we have exclusive access to it, but we only pay when there's birds on it. Okay. I mean, you're talking about four counties that they can land [00:52:00] on anywhere. Mm-hmm. And so we're just strategically
[00:52:02] JD Blagg: totally different than Arkansas. It's totally different. Okay. Yeah, completely.
Arkansas, you would go lease, you know, there's a lot of people that lease like a one pit blind in a field for $10,000 a year. You couldn't do that 'cause those birds might not be in that area. Oh. So we stretch like over, I don't know, close to 500,000 acres is what we have access to. Mm-hmm. You couldn't do that in Arkansas.
No. You couldn't have that much money. Absurd amount of money. Yeah. I mean,
[00:52:28] Nick Beyer: so the lease rates are cheaper, like significantly cheaper there? Well,
[00:52:31] JD Blagg: yeah, because there there's not like good holes. Yeah. Yeah. You know where in Arkansas you have good holes where if the birds are in the area, they're gonna come to that spot.
Yep. You know, year after year after year over in Oklahoma, it changes so much you have to be able to move. That's part of our big overhead in our operation is scouting. And we have guys on the road constantly, you know, I mean all of our guides driving 200 plus miles a day looking for birds. But you know, until we know where the birds are hanging out Yeah.
Then it gets [00:53:00] easier.
[00:53:00] Nick Beyer: But So are they like deer in that they're patterned every year, like birds are kind of coming back like, you know, sometimes these white tail will be in the same spot on the same day of the year, is it? Yeah, no,
[00:53:09] Josh Teff: they're not like that at all. Okay. I mean, the only consistent thing about waterfowl is that they tend to migrate to the same general areas.
Okay. So this area county, would
[00:53:19] Nick Beyer: you, would you kind of that be your
[00:53:22] Josh Teff: Yeah. Okay. Yeah, I mean this is, this is a four county area and it's really the whole, there's more than four counties. We operate in four counties 'cause we don't drive further than that, you know, it's too far to go. Um, but they will, generally speaking, we will get the first push of little Canada geese, um, in November.
And then we'll have a few ducks around and, and typically, and in some years, we're loaded in November. But I mean, it's just an area that they've been coming to for eons. And eons. There's the, so the driver of all this is that there's no waterfowl culture in Oklahoma. Um, even compar, even remotely comparable to [00:54:00] Arkansas.
So that's why it was such an opportunity that an untapped resources, like they were there, they've been there, you know, we've talked to lots of fellas that are, you know, up in age and they're like, oh yeah, you know, these are. Corn buzzards have been here forever and always been a pest. And, and you know, but they have said that the duck numbers have, you know, they've seemingly, um, have had more ducks.
But I don't even know if that's true because farmers who could care less about waterfowl, they weren't, they're not looking for 'em. Yeah.
Yeah.
[00:54:28] Josh Teff: And we're actually looking for 'em every day. So I think they've been coming there forever. And, you know, now our social media and a lot of other places now, there's seven different lodges within 150 miles of us.
Um, now there's like such a focus and a spotlight on that, on Oklahoma in general. It's kind of become a, a destination and a place people are interested in. So,
[00:54:51] Nick Beyer: so talk about that first year. Did y'all fill up, was it 80%? Did you fill up all the spots and like, how did that look from, okay, here's much how much capital we had [00:55:00] to take on, here's kind of our debt service, here's like our business model.
Like, were y'all making money the first year? What, what was not really okay.
[00:55:08] Josh Teff: No. I mean, the first year we, we pretty well broke even. Okay. Um, we paid the bills and, and paid, you know, ourselves and all that, but we didn't really have any extra money year. Two we went up. Yeah, two, your two went up and then year four went up.
So we had an initial discussion. I was wanting to be a lot higher and JD and Aaron were both in agreement that we should start, you know, start lower to avoid sticker shock 'cause we're brand new. Um, so the, I and what
[00:55:35] Nick Beyer: was that? I mean, and like couple day, do y'all sell packages by how many days you there?
Yeah, two,
[00:55:40] Josh Teff: two days or three days. We started at
[00:55:42] Aaron Seifritz: seven 50 a day. Seven 50 a day. And my reason for that is 'cause of the lodge I worked at before that was their price and Okay. That's what my customer base was used to. Used to paying. Yeah.
[00:55:50] Josh Teff: Yeah, yeah. So I listened to them and we, we, uh, started the first year and, and I kind of knew we weren't gonna make a lot of money at that 'cause I knew what [00:56:00] everything was gonna cost to some extent.
And so we ended up, I think we booked 90, we didn't book it completely full, but it was like 95 to 98%. Still crazy. First year. Still crazy. Yeah. And then, uh, we went to nine 50 the following two years and did a little better. And then I think two years, the next year we went to 1250. 1250. And then we went to that, we did that for a year or two, and then we went to 1750 and, and did that for three.
And then now next we just went up. So next year we'll be at 2250, which is the, uh, I don't know of another place that charges that in the, for just waterfowl. I mean, there's places that more even South
[00:56:40] Nick Beyer: Arkansas, there's, there's no, yeah. Water
[00:56:41] JD Blagg: Oaks is, five Oaks is, is probably a little more than that, but they're even.
Smaller. They take a smaller group than we do. Mm-hmm. Um, and I mean, they have been around forever. And I mean, that's one of the staples in southeast Arkansas. Okay. Yeah. Um,
[00:56:58] Nick Beyer: and, and it's six 'cause y'all [00:57:00] 16 doesn't feel like that big of a group. It's not. They do 10.
[00:57:03] JD Blagg: Okay. Um, and, but the style of hunting is different again.
Mm. Uh, we could, we could be running 36.
Yeah.
[00:57:12] JD Blagg: You know, we could be running 50. And why not? Why not? Because the experience.
Mm.
[00:57:18] JD Blagg: And the relationship, like, you lose efficiency in every aspect. And the food, the hunting, the relational aspect, you lose efficiency and all that. The more you, so, you know, our, the whole time, our, uh, idea has been, let's make this as boutique and personable as possible.
And let's keep it at that. And let's don't forget that's where we started. That's awesome. And let's keep it at that so we can grow the brand in other ways. Mm-hmm. But let's not lose that. Mm-hmm. You know? 'cause that's kind of what got us to the dance.
[00:57:52] Josh Teff: Yeah. So, I mean, it is like anything else in the market, supply and demand.
So the supply is limited, you know, it's 16 a day, which has [00:58:00] allowed us, the demand's been so high, it's allowed us to, you know, incrementally increase our prices. And, you know, we've never, to be honest, like dead Sears, we've never increased. Um, because we could,
[00:58:11] Nick Beyer: yeah.
[00:58:11] Josh Teff: We've only increased out of necessity.
Mm-hmm. And you know, if you come over there, you'll see how much goes back into the operation. Ain't none of us getting rich off of it. Right. I mean, we, we all make a living. Um, but nobody is, is we, like, we feel so fortunate to be able to do it. I mean, I think we all feel that way, that it's like, you know, I need to make enough to do this to justify it.
But no, I mean, we're, every in, every increase has always been outta necessity. Not out of, you know, just because we could. And, um, and hopefully, and I think our customers, you know, they believe us when we tell 'em that because they keep coming back with everyone, the majority. Um, but yeah, and that's what it is.
It's like if we can, you always have a demand. If the supply's low
mm-hmm. You,
[00:58:58] Josh Teff: you trip double, [00:59:00] triple the supply, well then you lose everything we've talked about mm-hmm. Relationally and the ability to have one-on-one conversations and, and uh, get to know everybody and, and then, and then people come and the vibe completely changes.
It becomes like, I'm just a number here and yeah. I'm just getting herded through and we just do not ever wanna participate in that. That's awesome. So, so you got staying power, I mean, our waiting list is absurd. I don't even like to say it 'cause most people think it's made up. Um, but it's thousands of, thousands of people trying to get in.
It's crazy.
[00:59:30] Josh Teff: And, and we don't turn over. 5%, I mean, at that maximum 5% of our cartel every year. Yeah. Sometimes it's none. So,
[00:59:39] Aaron Seifritz: and to that point, I, for me, it was kind of a pivotal moment was 2020 and you know, like the realization of like the staying power of outdoor recreation. Mm-hmm. Even through the loafs.
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. And then you go back historically that's the case. Yeah. I mean, it, it booms when times get crazy. So, uh, that was kind of where I felt like there was a, where we adjusted the price around that time and [01:00:00] went through that phase and things still boomed, but I felt more confident in our ability to go up overall, you know?
Yeah. Yeah. We've got, we've
[01:00:06] Cameron Clark: got like a, a real brand here. I mean, it just, it made me feel
[01:00:10] Aaron Seifritz: even better about the industry that I already knew about. It was just, yeah. I mean, in at a low spot it can go high. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
[01:00:15] Josh Teff: Well, and the economy's changed too. I mean, people that are, um, you know, probably Gen X and, and since it's transitioned from, you know, I'm gonna put most of the money I'm making the bank and you know it, and let it grow to, you know, people, I think y'all will probably agree you guys are younger than us.
It's like, I, I want to, I obviously I wanna retire at some point, but man, you only live once. Mm-hmm. And I want to experience things. Yeah. So it's become an experience economy and people now are spending way more money to, you know, to go places and, and have experiences and all that stuff, which is great for our business, you know, because it's, you know, there's some people that are always gonna love to duck hunt and goose hunt and, uh, they're gonna.
There's plenty of those [01:01:00] out there. It's not a huge market, but it's big enough, so
[01:01:03] Nick Beyer: that's cool. Well, last thing before we sw kind of swap over the mid-life cycle of business, maybe starting in 2020, it feels like that's when things really started to kind of blow up a little bit. But as you think through that inception, kind of all the, all the things you guys did, were there any just big mistakes that kind of come back to the forefront of your memory?
Hmm. Whether it's the way of think so having to think
[01:01:27] Josh Teff: about it. Yeah. So, I mean, big mistakes I would say No, I mean, minor things. Yeah. You know, um, but I, you know, I guess for me it would always be that we, you know, I'm, I'm kind of a, so I was actually talking to my financial guy yesterday and he is the opposite end of the spectrum of me.
You know, like he will, we were talking about sunglasses, you know, and he's like, I paid my, my wife paid $200 for a pair of sunglasses. Like, I would never do that. I just can't do that. [01:02:00] I probably have like 10 pairs of $200 sunburn. And it's like, I just don't, I, so I'm wired that way, which is here, this is a really cool thing between our dynamic is like, you know, Aaron is probably on the opposite end of the spectrum I'm on when it comes to finances and J d's kind of right in the middle.
So we have a super healthy balance of like when we discuss if we're gonna do something or not, it's like I, who knows, who will bring up the idea or whatever, but there's like a really good balance of, you know, his super cautious personality. Mine throw caution to the wind and Jay's kinda right in the middle, you know, so it's, uh.
We've just, I think that's Avo that's helped us avoid.
[01:02:43] Cameron Clark: Mm-hmm. Yeah. Any
[01:02:44] Josh Teff: major financials, some of those mistakes, problems.
[01:02:47] Cameron Clark: Yeah. Well, and talk about like partnership in business, maybe things that, hey, if someone's, you know, maybe thinking about starting a partnership right now, they're midway through through ways they can be better partners with each other.[01:03:00]
You know what, what would you tell somebody in either one of the situations?
[01:03:04] Aaron Seifritz: Man, we lived together. I mean, literally three months a year we IDs right across the hall from me.
[01:03:10] Josh Teff: Yeah. But initially we didn't even hardly even know each other. So what do you, man, I think
[01:03:13] JD Blagg: that as quickly as you can get, um, to the point where you know what you're good at and having the humility to say, Hey, I'm not good at what you're good at, and you're better at that.
I think that's kind of what organically, which I'm so thankful that we didn't have. And one thing that, uh, one reason we hadn't had any huge blowups is we know that we're better at other things than each other. And, uh. Just organically have fallen into that role. Now that's hard when you're starting, you know, that doesn't always happen like that.
I realize that. Mm-hmm. And I know, like, I don't take that for granted. Um, also, like, I mean, we're also pretty like, secure in who we are. So there's like, if Josh tells me I [01:04:00] did something, I'm not like, oh, you think I'm dated? But I mean, like, it's like we're men and we can handle that. And I know that he loves me, I know that Aaron loves me and that like he cares about my family, you know, more than any of my other friends, like, you know, same as Josh.
And so like. All that off the table, we can take whatever little criticism might come our way and be like, God. Yeah. Sorry, that was dumb.
Mm-hmm. Let's move past
[01:04:26] JD Blagg: that. I'm sorry about, I have tendency to be intense. I think they tell you, and every now and then I'll just have to be like, Hey, I'm sorry I'm being so intense.
I realize that I'm intense. Did you know you were yelling? Yeah. I'm not in my heart. I tell this to my wife all the time in my heart. I promise I'm not yelling. I love you so
[01:04:44] Josh Teff: much. I mean, I think it's like some level of spiritual alignment is super important. Yeah. Like you could, it'd be, I think it'd be really hard to have, um, you know, a, a sold out faithful Christian and an atheist working as partners.
'cause your worldview is so far [01:05:00] apart. I'm not saying like there's not certain, you know, we don't have to all be exactly the same, but there's gotta be some kind of worldview alignment. Mm-hmm. Sure. Um, because that drives so many. Decisions and, and all that. And then, you know, personalities, like it's, you can't like eat, like we always talk about with everybody that works there.
It's like, leave your ego at the door. We all got 'em.
Mm-hmm.
[01:05:22] Josh Teff: Especially in the hunting world. Like if you're a hunter and you're good at it, it is, the ego can just eat you alive and you are the best. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, we all think that deep down, like I think we would all agree that we think we are the best at whatever we're doing and, and, but it's fine to think that internally, but like you can't, you can't mouth it.
Yeah. You can't verbalize it all the time. And, you know, you can joke about it, but at the same time it's like we all, you have to respect the guy, um, next to you. To the extent that you are not gonna cut him down. You're gonna always try to lift him up.
Mm.
[01:05:57] Josh Teff: And you know, you're better off saying nothing at all than [01:06:00] saying something critical most of the time.
And that's a big problem for me, um, especially with my own boys. But, um, but yeah, I mean, I think it's just a mutual respect. Leave your ego at the door.
It's one of the 10 command, it's like one of the greatest commandments. Like, love your neighbor as you love yourself. Like treat the guy in front of you better than you want be treated. Mm. You know? And if you do that, I think that's how partnerships thrive. Like you can partner with anybody if, if everybody's on the same page.
When it comes to those core principles, it's like you can work through anything. Yes.
[01:06:34] Aaron Seifritz: I, I think the best piece of advice I could give an entrepreneur setting out, looking into, getting a partnership with the business, and this isn't just from Falco stuff, this is observations. Other friends of mine things is try to find somebody that is equally or close to as hungry as you are for what it is.
'cause most of the ones I've seen, my other buddies, that relationships, one person may be bringing the hype to the deal, another person might be bringing the capital, and somewhere in there is where things get outta whack. Where [01:07:00] I think three of us really kind of had the same hunger at the same time.
We're kind of in that same place. So I don't really feel like that was the best thing that could have happened to us overall. But, um, yeah, hunger's important, you know? It's so true.
[01:07:12] JD Blagg: Yeah.
[01:07:13] Aaron Seifritz: It's big. Yeah. And like
[01:07:15] JD Blagg: Josh said, I mean like taking your time on the front end to make sure that, um, that the stuff that should be the main thing.
Is y'all share that same main thing.
Mm-hmm.
[01:07:26] JD Blagg: Because at some point you're gonna run into something and your main thing might be this, and the other main thing might be this, and you're going different directions. Yeah. And your business is gonna get drug that way.
Mm-hmm.
[01:07:40] JD Blagg: Um, so odd numbers
[01:07:42] Josh Teff: are
[01:07:43] JD Blagg: better.
[01:07:43] Josh Teff: Equal numbers are tough.
Yeah. Yeah. Mean you got two guys, it's gonna be tough. If they don't agree you got three, then it's like the odd man out's gonna have to make some decisions he's gonna have to concede. Yeah. Which is, yeah. So we have, we have four, so well [01:08:00] five now. Yeah. So yeah,
[01:08:02] Nick Beyer: that's good.
[01:08:02] Josh Teff: Yeah.
[01:08:03] Nick Beyer: So let's talk about is it, is 2020 kind of the year, maybe y'all start, you know, first couple years obviously go really well, probably exceed your expectations, but like when does it start to feel like, holy smokes, like we've got 50,000 followers on Instagram.
I mean Thomas at Chase Rice, or talk like when, is there like a moment that y'all remember or is it kind of just been incremental every year? Things just keep moving. Reputation of the brand growing. Like
[01:08:34] JD Blagg: what? Yeah. To be honest, it's been so organic that it's hard. I mean, for me it's hard to put a finger on that.
Yeah. Like, uh, the relationships have been so organic.
Mm-hmm.
[01:08:49] JD Blagg: That I, I think like Aaron said, I mean, I think that was a great point. I think 2020 when the whole world shut down. 2020 or 2021. 2020, yeah. Um, when the whole world [01:09:00] shut down and we were going, what is about to happen? Like, are people gonna be scared, you know?
They were, we didn't realize it, but they had been looking forward to it the whole time. Yeah. I'm getting outta the house. I'm getting heck out of all this craziness and I can't wait to get with my brothers and get outside. Best part of their year.
[01:09:18] Cameron Clark: Yeah,
[01:09:19] JD Blagg: yeah, that's right.
[01:09:20] Josh Teff: It was a crazy one too, 'cause people turned, they let loose when they got there and you know, we had way more, you know, just ignorant.
Way too overdrinking overindulging and you know, you could just tell people were blowing off steam and so, you know, I'm glad that it came and went. 'cause it was. There were some conversations Yeah. We had to have with clients. It was like, we get it, man. Like, I know you're glad to be outta the house, but like, that's not what this place is about.
Yeah. Yeah. So
[01:09:48] Aaron Seifritz: from a growth standpoint, I agree it has been kind of just slow, organic, incremental. But that was two or three years ago, we all three looked at each other and just the entire process of the business was operating like a sewing [01:10:00] machine.
Yeah.
[01:10:00] Aaron Seifritz: From front to back. Yeah. Like we had almost worked every kink in the chain out.
Um, to the point that I think we all three, like within the first couple weeks of being there, you know, guiding and running the place that year took a big breath and we're like, and we can kind of relax. Like, these guys have worked here for three or four years. They got this. You know, we don't, we don't have to micromanage anybody anymore.
Um, for me that was kind of like, when I realized that it had
[01:10:25] Cameron Clark: almost questioning if that's the reality is like, yeah, we, what's something should be wrong, be wrong. Well, you know,
[01:10:31] Josh Teff: like big business, they'll have training programs, you know, it's like you come in, you get trained and they go through PowerPoints and whatever, and like, we don't have that.
So it's like you just gotta. Like, jump right in. Watch what I do, and watch what we do. And not only do we want you to do it, but we want you to do it a certain way. Mm-hmm. Like with a certain attitude all the time. And, uh, fortunately, like we've had young guys that have come up and grown with the business and, and they're, [01:11:00] you know, it's a, that's really cool too.
You know, like we got guys outta high school, barely that have been there the whole time, and now they're, you know, some of our top people and they're about to get married. And it's like, that's super cool to me. Yeah, it is. It's like they, and we never had to, like, we didn't have to teach 'em to work like they're willing to work, but it, it was like on the job training all the time and that does allow us to like, take a breath and be like, man, we really don't have to worry about the operation part of it.
And now we can focus more on, on really solidifying these relationships and growing them and, and, and maintaining our customer base every year.
[01:11:39] JD Blagg: Yeah. I mean, like, kinda what you were talking about earlier. I think that's, that's a great point. Aaron and Josh, that, you know, the guys now, the business is running smoothly.
We got guys that understand what our expectations are.
Mm-hmm. And
[01:11:53] JD Blagg: they've watched us operate the business. We're still there. You know, if, basically, essentially where [01:12:00] we're at now is if there's a problem, you come to us. Yeah. If there's no problems, we really don't wanna hear from you. Yeah. Yeah. You know what to do.
Yeah. Let's rock and roll. Yeah. And that has allowed us the freedom, to your point earlier, why don't we hire somebody to, well, because they are handling the stuff that needs to be handled that we were having to handle. Now, if we need to run home to a volleyball game, or if we need to, you know, run, if there's something that happens, it's not an issue if we leave and run home real quick.
Mm-hmm. Um, we're coming back, you know? Um, but how far
[01:12:33] Cameron Clark: is it from Northwest Arkansas? Three. Three hours. Three hours. Yeah. Yeah.
[01:12:37] Josh Teff: Three and a half for them. Yeah. Yeah.
[01:12:38] Aaron Seifritz: Yeah. And I think it was around that time that Josh had been really diligent about like, our team culture. Um, I mean, we pick a group fishing trip, a group Turkey hunting trip.
Yeah. You know, every year. And, you know, try to, it is, I mean, it's done a really job of keeping it a family and keeping us a team, you know, from the bottom out. And I mean, from a business standpoint, the, the guys that have come in with us, uh, [01:13:00] Tanner for instance, he started out fresh, fresh outta high school the first year.
Um, his work ethic just excelled him in the place, in the business. But he. You know, has grown up in our business and, you know, with, with our culture and our mentality. Um, so like, you know, for him and other guys can, and Cason too, they kind of come to mind on that deal. Mm-hmm. They just had no concept of, you know, what a kind of a, well tan or dead, I guess to extent, but like the commercial side of things and like a hunting world looked like.
But, um, just, just not, not like a, a benefit to hire young people that didn't have like a big grown opinion in their heads, you know? Yeah. About what it could be or what it should be. Um, and that's really helped I think, just to hire the right people on the front end and teach 'em our way of doing it, I guess.
So,
[01:13:44] Josh Teff: yeah. It's, I mean it's funny 'cause thinking about that as you're talking, it's like the only two people we've let go, it was ego. Hundred percent. Mm-hmm. It was ego that got 'em. Mm-hmm. Got, you know, and the guys that are there now, I mean, don't get me wrong, they have it, but you just gotta keep it in check.
Yeah. And [01:14:00] it's like, you know, we're all pulling on the rope together and,
[01:14:04] JD Blagg: and we're in a, we're in a pretty interesting industry where it's fun and it's attractive mm-hmm. And people want it. So, I mean, we don't also wanna take that for granted. Like, we have a lot of people that would love to work at Falco
Yeah.
[01:14:17] JD Blagg: And be in this industry in general. Not even just Falco. Um, but there's something about not going to get that guy who won the whatever championship. Mm-hmm. Like I know that these guys will wake up at four o'clock. They're careful with our equipment and they can back up a trailer. Yep. And we can depend on them to be there to do the things that we need to get done.
I don't care about Joe Blow that won that calling competition.
Yeah.
[01:14:44] JD Blagg: You know, like, these guys will work and understand our culture. Um, and so, I mean, to be honest, it speaks a lot, I believe to our culture that we have the same people working for us that Mm, from when we started really
[01:14:57] Nick Beyer: Character
[01:14:57] JD Blagg: over competency.
Yeah. Character over [01:15:00] competency. A hundred percent. 'cause they will learn the stuff that they need to learn, you know, to do the job.
[01:15:05] Aaron Seifritz: Mm-hmm.
[01:15:05] JD Blagg: Mm-hmm. It's being willing to do the job.
[01:15:07] Aaron Seifritz: That's good. Our chef, for example, yeah, he knew very little about cooking, but the man has the greatest people skills, you know, sincere work, hardest working person on the planet.
Um, I mean, talk about somebody that's into perfection that he's the definition of that. Yeah. He is. But uh, I mean, people come up to him constantly during the year. Where did you go to culinary school? And he's just like, I'm a girl boy from Texarkana, you know? Yeah. On a landscaping list on the side, you know, that's, that's Brian.
But uh, but yeah, hiring the right person with the right attitude and teaching them the way that, you know, is most effective for the business. It seems to be the ticket for us. That's
[01:15:43] Nick Beyer: amazing. So let's talk about growing. Um, y'all have grown a lot. The brand has grown a lot. When you started, you, you own the 300 acres.
Uh, did y'all buy more land? I know you said you have around. You know, 500,000 acres. I assume you [01:16:00] leased most of that. Leased. Leased, yeah. Yeah. So talk about, did y'all buy any more land or is it all leased and like, are you rolling capital from, you know, the appreciation in your, in your. 300 acres into some of that.
How, how are you, you know, how are you going about growth? What capital's needed to do that? Well, we
[01:16:16] Josh Teff: haven't yet, but there's, it's funny, there's like this one piece that abuts us on the north side of our property and we've been, the owner got a great relationship with him. He's given us verbally first ride of refusal on it, but he just won't sell it.
And so we've been waiting, basically we hadn't bought anything. 'cause it's like we gotta, if we're gonna buy it, we gotta buy this one 'cause it's right next to us. Mm-hmm. And then there's another place that was gonna potentially be for sale to the southeast of us. Um, but pretty much everything we've kind of tried to key on, key in on is like right there around us.
And we haven't been able to buy any of it yet. Um, I mean, I, I think in a perfect world, if we had unlimited capital, we'd just go buy everything we could out there. [01:17:00] But it's a, i it's a strange area because very few places come up for sale. Mm-hmm. And we're only interested in stuff that is viable from a recreation perspective.
And another unique part of that area is this water access is, is very, it's tough.
Yeah.
[01:17:17] Josh Teff: So, you know, there may be 50 farms that come up for sale in a year or two and there may not be one or two of them that have the kind of water resources we need to do what we need to do. So for that reason, we haven't bought anything yet.
Those reasons. Um. But as far as growth, we just had a, we, last year or so, six months we've partnered, uh, with a, a family office and, and so they're really interested in trying to help us grow the brand. And, um, you know, branding got a place that we're working on in southern Oklahoma called Boggy Creek and, uh, probably gonna end up being a club, a private equity club.
And, um, so we're developing that. [01:18:00] And, you know, it's kind of funny. You don't realize you have the knowledge you, you have until you need to put it to work. And so collectively it's like we're going down there and turning this place into a, you know, an absolute dime piece of a prop anger. Mm-hmm. Yeah. And aesthetically from the aesthetics to the habitat to, and, and, you know, it's not just us three, like we've got our, all of our guys are adept at, you know, understanding how to, how to take a piece of ground and maximize its potential recreationally.
Yeah.
[01:18:30] Josh Teff: And so that's, that's our plan is to get on there and turn it from what it was, you know, left to mother nature for 10 to 15 years to bringing it to the absolute best it can be. And so that's the recreational side of the brand is, is hopefully over time. We'll be able to brand all these properties that we're, we're buying, developing with this group.
Um, you know, they'll be known as Falco Properties and then, um, and then maybe, you know, there's the potential additional retail, retail stuff and retail [01:19:00] products along the way. So
[01:19:01] Nick Beyer: when did y'all start picking up leases? Is that like every year? Y'all prioritized that. And then can you talk about maybe the challenges that have started to come?
Do people like know all the Falco guys are coming to talk to us? We're gonna ask them for $5 an acres? No,
[01:19:18] JD Blagg: we, I mean the market's kind of set. Okay. Like, and, and the thing is that it's our achilles heel for sure. You know, if everybody decided to take our access away, then sure, we'd probably have to shut the business down.
Yeah.
[01:19:33] JD Blagg: Um, but it's just the golden rule when you go and you do the things you say you're gonna do and you're of your word and you deliver. And if you mess up, if you make ruts or something and you call the farmer and say, Hey, we made ruts on in, in your field today. Yep. What do we need to do to make it right?
Is that bring our tractor over here and smooth it out? Or do we need to give you some money? I. To help with that, you know, like telling on yourself.
Mm-hmm. [01:20:00]
[01:20:00] JD Blagg: Um, I think they've really appreciated that. And I think, like you said earlier, you know, we're not 20 something year old kids coming to do this. We, um, put a lot of weight.
This is our business, so like if we screw up, we're, we're gonna hurt ourselves in the long run if we don't take care of it like grown men. Mm-hmm. And, uh, I think that, that farmers have recognized that and, uh, you know, just time, you know, you can lip service, but through consistency and time, people really kind of know who you are.
Mm-hmm. And, you know, thank the Lord. That's seems to be what has happened
[01:20:36] Josh Teff: and it, it's mutually beneficial, you know? Yeah. Like they don't want those birds eating their crop. Yeah. And they get, uh, they kind of get their cake and eat it too, you know, it's like they get something done that they would let at one time would let anybody do for free.
Yeah. And now they get paid for it and paid pretty, pretty well. Yeah. So they actually had a
[01:20:54] Aaron Seifritz: guy that would pay, he had a young guy that rode around all winter long and that was his job was to keep the geese off [01:21:00] his wheat fields. Yeah. Wow. And now we're paying him to keep him off of his wheat fields. Just changed.
[01:21:05] Josh Teff: Yeah. And we, you know, we had, in the beginning we had people willing to let us hunt for free and we've never ever. Ever accepted that it's like, you know, I'm gonna send you a check and you can cash it if you want. Mm-hmm. But you know, we're, we're gonna pay our way no matter what, just outta principle.
'cause it's the right thing to do.
Mm.
[01:21:22] Josh Teff: And uh, and it just took some time, you know, it took a little time and, and the coffee shop talk got rolling and, you know, four or five core guys that we got in the beginning started to tell their friends and then they would send us like, Hey, you should call this guy he's interested.
Call this guy.
Mm-hmm.
[01:21:39] Josh Teff: And then over, over the first three or four years, we started getting phone calls.
Yeah.
[01:21:43] Josh Teff: And then it, then it, that's when it really started to snowball with access stuff. It was like, Hey, I got five quarters in this area. Love for y'all to hunt it if they're ever there. Cool. You know, this is how we do it and it's good to go.
And we keep a map, you know, that's got everything outlined that we have access to. And, [01:22:00] and, uh, believe it or not, if you saw the map, you'd be like, that is insane. And we still, there's still gaps in it from farms that, you know, they'll get on that we've never touched before.
Mm.
[01:22:10] Josh Teff: Or we've never called before.
And so every year, inevitably we'll have to be like, who farms this one because they're on it and we have no idea who farms it. And so we'll have to find a number and Yeah. You know, play the game like everybody else. Um, but I mean, I would say there's, we definitely have the biggest, by far, the biggest footprint in that area.
And
[01:22:28] Nick Beyer: has that gotten more competitive? I know as like YouTube's picked up all the hunter hunting influencers, they're like door knocking, doing all that. Has that been like a challenge for you guys or is it. Kind of like, y'all have such a good reputation and I mean, how, how is that? I mean, I think
[01:22:43] Aaron Seifritz: we throw around the most weight.
Oh, a hundred percent. You know? Yeah. I mean, and then now that everybody's kind of used to, you know, getting paid a certain amount to do it, it certainly made that harder for someone to just swoop in there and get something. But I mean, you see a little bit of traffic, you know, I guess people [01:23:00] coming through the area
[01:23:00] JD Blagg: way less than there used to be.
Okay. I think now the people that do that, you know, the running gunners that are following the migration and stuff, I think they know when they get to that area that, you know, it's pretty locked up. Is locked Locked up up. Yeah. On that note,
[01:23:14] Aaron Seifritz: anything's possible. And I mean, our relationship to our landowner is just as important as our relationship to our customer.
Hundred percent. Without one, you can't have the other.
[01:23:22] Josh Teff: Yeah. And it a double-edged sword. You. Like, just, just for the idea that like we're this industry and hunting in general is like from, for all of us, it's such a healthy thing for especially young people to get exposed to. So, you know, we're eliminating access to a lot of people in that general area, which is a really good area to hunt waterfowl.
And we're eliminating it, you know? Mm-hmm. Because our business relies on it. So for me it's like if we, we'll have like, you know, a random, and, and I'll get calls now more often 'cause I did it [01:24:00] once. And so, you know, the random high school kid will call and, and we'll let him go hunt with us, him and their, their four buddies or whatever.
And, and then they'll tell their buddies and they'll be like, Mr. Te, I'll get text message Mr. Te can, you know, you guys have anything we can hunt. And, um, normally we will do everything we can to try to appease that. Mm-hmm. And, and the cool thing is like, there's not a lot of people, so we're not getting inundated.
Yeah.
[01:24:21] Josh Teff: Um, but it's like you gotta, you're taking so much, like we've gotta give back as much as we can. So we try our best to do that and be good neighbors and, and um, and, you know, give those kids who otherwise wouldn't have access some. And so that's cool.
[01:24:39] Nick Beyer: All right, well let's go back to Boggy Creek. So like, what, what's next for Falco?
You guys locked up a property? Kinda in between here and, and Dallas Durant ish. Mm-hmm. Couple thousand acres. How did that deal come together? You know, who's involved, what's, what does that project look like for you guys?
[01:24:56] JD Blagg: Yeah, uh, guess I mean, it started with a buddy of [01:25:00] ours outta Dallas that had an idea and, you know, we've been talking about doing this for a while.
Um, but, and we've had several people that we thought we were gonna do it with. Uh, and just over time and progression of the deal, we realized maybe they weren't the best partners or, you know, it didn't feel right. It was all always unanimous between all of us. I don't think with any of these guys, there was somebody like, we need to, you know, we need to do something with them.
And two of us are going, no, I don't like that. It, we always were in agreement. Um, and then Buddy VARs outta Dallas came along, awesome human that we love Cooper, and, uh, had this idea on this property and was a approached about it and just through a turn of events, um, it, it didn't work out and it, they're crushing it on another one right now.
Um, but, uh, our new partner, um, outta [01:26:00] Mississippi came along and just said, Hey, if there's ever a point that I can help y'all on that deal, let us know. And came to the end, he was able to help us, uh, get the property, um, and it made sense for us to have it being that's what we do. Mm-hmm. And it's in Oklahoma.
Um, so, um, anyway, that, that came together and, but I mean, we've gotta give credit where credit's due. We wouldn't have known about the property if it wasn't for Cooper believing in us and reaching out to us. So we're super thankful for that. Um, and, uh, anyway. Yeah, so. Property in southeast Oklahoma. Um, it's funny 'cause one of our close friends to the industry, um, clay Forest, they have Stewart Ranch and uh, he is another, uh, experience driven lodge like Falco.
And to be honest, he was doing it before we were doing it at a smaller scale. He'll, he would tell you that. Uh, but when we built our lodge, clay called us and he was [01:27:00] like, Hey, I want to come up and meet with y'all and kind of look at your lodge and see what y'all are doing because I want to do this. Even though he was guiding way before we were in Oklahoma family huge.
I mean, they're one of the biggest landowners in whole state of Oklahoma.
Wow.
[01:27:15] JD Blagg: Um, but Boggy Creek shares a fence with their homestead Ranch. No way. Uh, Stewart Ranch, which is really neat. So I called Clay when, first, when CO called us about it and I said, do you know anything about this property? Uh, it was called Deer Run Ranch.
And he goes, uh, yeah. It's like Heaven on Earth. And I was like, what are you talking about? And he goes, we share a fence with it, dude. It's butts up against our homestead Ranch. Wow. I was like, you're kidding me. So anyway, he was talking about how he would only step foot on the property one time and he can't wait to go see it because it's one of those things that he just saw over the fence.
Mm-hmm. Like the promised Land, you know. Wow. Um, unbelievable piece of property. Um, water. It's got everything, dude. Um, everything you'd want in a [01:28:00] legacy piece of ground. And when I say legacy piece of property, like, uh, big contiguous block, um, with, you know, everything you'd want from flooded timber to incredible, uh, established duck habitat, great deer, genetics, you know, Turkey, everything you would want.
So, uh, yeah, I mean we're, we want to talk about kind of what we're doing with that. I
[01:28:26] Aaron Seifritz: think, I think like for us, kind of going back to what we talked about earlier as far as the way, you know, as owners that we keep everything small core 16 people and then we're always present part of our like, you know, challenge.
I think to scale has always been like, what happens if we break that up? Um, and as far as I know, no outfit has really successfully opened multiple locations and we know that like doing, that's gonna kind of break up our party. So versus maybe hunting down another outfitting location like we have at Falco, it's a way for us to kind of grow [01:29:00] without breaking up that party, uh, and what's worked for us.
Mm-hmm. Um, a different way to expand our footprint and, you know, looking into the recreational game, um, land game and, you know, like we talked about earlier, the staying power of the outdoor recreation industry alone. Um. Tends to hold the dollar on a piece of land, even in low time. So, um, it's a fun avenue for us to explore, and I think a way for us to grow that doesn't have a ton of risk, um, to break up what already works for us, you know?
[01:29:28] Josh Teff: Yeah. I mean, I think we're at a place where the outfitting thing is, you know, we've sort of established that we don't wanna, it doesn't really make sense for us to like, all right, jd, you're gonna take this operation, Aaron, you're gonna take this one because it's, it, it does, it would water down what we've got already and that, and that's what's built the whole thing.
So it's like, I think if we did at this point, if we did expand and our outfitting footprint at all, it would be like, you know, let's find an established outfitter that needs to scale to some extent, [01:30:00] and let's teach 'em our culture. Mm-hmm. And why it's worked so well and try to implement those principles and, and that type of operation wherever they are.
Not to say that's the direction we're gonna go, but if we did, I think that's what it would look like. And then, um, you know, with this group, um, out of Mississippi that is now our fifth partner, um, they are really more interested in developing the brand. Okay. So, you know. Real estate, uh, marketing, um, using the brand as sort of as a launching pad for, for these types of tracks like Boggy, boggy Creek, whether they're, you know, we're gonna buy 'em, develop 'em and flip 'em, or we're gonna buy 'em, develop 'em and club 'em out, um, and do equity club memberships.
And, and so that's really fun and cool to sort of build that process. And there's tons of clubs out there, just like, there were tons of outfitters, but, you know, how do we collectively figure out how to make a club better than every, everybody else's, you know, and, and figure out [01:31:00] those rules and, and the, you know, parameters to get in and all that stuff.
And, uh. So that's really been kind of fun. And then the, and then the retail stuff. You know, how do we, how do we develop products or whatever. We've got one in process right now, and it'll kind of be the first one. But like, how do we, how do we take and, and, you know. Sell more hats mm-hmm. And sell more t-shirts and hoodies and stickers.
And then how do we potentially grow that into, you know, other products along the way, which is really like the most scalable, I think,
you know? Mm-hmm.
[01:31:33] Josh Teff: Direction we could go. Um, and so that's super exciting,
[01:31:37] Nick Beyer: super exciting, because, you
[01:31:38] Josh Teff: know, we're in this for eight years. I, we've all talked about like, if this is all we get is just doing this right here we are Gucci, we're good.
Yeah. Um, but you know, if you're, if there's opportunities that come along, um, and God keeps opening doors and, and lengthening the path, then we'll keep going. And we've, like JD said, we've had, we've had, um, [01:32:00] multiple different groups of people approach us about trying to scale or grow in some way. And, and, you know, I wouldn't say any of them, you know, would've been bad partners per se or bad people.
It was just the deals just weren't, we had to question them. Yeah. And this one we didn't have to question, just came together. It was like, this was, this felt just like when we started the business, it was like all of us collectively were like, man, this is like, this is a no brainer. Like, we need to do this.
Yeah. The other
[01:32:25] JD Blagg: ones felt like we were pushing. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Mm-hmm. And this one, I remember us having that conversation. We were sitting in the living room and, and I remember just saying, this feels like when it started. Yeah. Mm-hmm. Wow. And so
[01:32:37] Nick Beyer: this feels right.
[01:32:39] JD Blagg: You
[01:32:39] Nick Beyer: know, so you guys acquire the property.
Mm-hmm. Did y'all have to put any capital up yourselves or that was all coming from capital?
[01:32:45] Josh Teff: No. And to be clear, we don't own this place. Yeah. Our partner, our fifth partner now, and they're our fifth partner because of this acquisition of this property, um, they, uh, Cooper introduced it to us and then, [01:33:00] you know, we established a, um, an agreement with them.
Um, they were trying to raise the money for, to close the property. Yep. And, um, had one guy, um, a little further bef well, they had time, plenty of time left before they needed to close, had one scenario. We brought a, a guy and he was willing to do it, and they, they backed out on that deal because it kind of eliminated their participation.
Um, and then, then they kind of got their backs against the wall, you know, to a certain extent on the, the closing. And so, um, this guy was actually, we didn't even really approach him, um, because they had already had, they, we'd already been told they had so much out in rec recreational land that they weren't gonna buy anymore.
You know, they were like maxed out. So, uh, anyway, long story, sort of convoluted how it all happened. But the, uh, the land guy, um, gets pulled back into the mix through a. Third party relationship. I mean, this is another example of like God just sort of doing this. [01:34:00] He gets pulled back into the equation from another relationship, not us.
And we end up back on a conference call with one of these guys and I'm like, this is insane. And tha and Thad's his name and Thad's like, he goes, man, every time I feel like I'm. You know, you sort of trying to, I'm separating from y'all. I get thrown right back into the front and he's like, this is something, there's something to this.
And so we felt the same way. And you know, ultimately it ends up in them buying the property side unseen and, uh,
[01:34:29] Nick Beyer: 2000 acres. Yeah.
[01:34:30] Josh Teff: 2,507 acres side unseen. And you know, like we told y'all before we started, they, you know, they spend this absorbent amount of money and we're like, man, I hope they like it as much as we do.
Like, and so they, uh, we take, we all go out there in December and they're, they're even more blown away with it than we were. And so that sort of spawned this whole thing like, alright, we need to do something together. And now, you know, just recently in the last week or two, they've, uh, [01:35:00] we've finalized our deal and, and we've got a, a new capital partner to grow.
And so, you know, I don't know exactly where it's going to go. We're not, they're very calculated. These guys are, um, not cavalier in their decision making. And, and I, I'm cool with that. We, it's a funny thing though, when you're dealing with, uh, this is what one thing we've realized it's kind of funny, is like, whenever a decision we've ever made a decision financially, it's like, all right, we're gonna allocate these funds, so now it's nose to the grindstone and this has to work.
Or we're in trouble, you know, like we don't have a bunch of, of discretionary spending, so we have to make this make sense. These guys are like, y'all just need to calm down. You know, more patient. You need to chill. And,
[01:35:46] Aaron Seifritz: which we're not used to. Yeah. We don't have, it's like, you need to go to the dentist.
Yeah,
[01:35:51] Josh Teff: exactly. Y'all just need to calm down and let things play out and we'll figure it out as we go. And it's like, no, that is not, we can't, yeah. It's a weird
[01:35:58] JD Blagg: dynamic
[01:35:59] Josh Teff: because [01:36:00] they are, they are more like, Hey,
[01:36:01] JD Blagg: this, I mean, we're gonna be fine. Yeah. Well worried. Well there's just,
[01:36:05] Josh Teff: there's no consequences, you know, like for them realistically,
[01:36:09] JD Blagg: but we're treat it as if like we're all gonna die if we nail it.
Exactly. Exactly. It's
[01:36:12] Josh Teff: kind of funny,
[01:36:14] Nick Beyer: but that's a good, speaks to your hyper intentionality and hyper focus, which y'all kind of, that's been Well, you have to be. Yeah. You know, you
[01:36:19] Josh Teff: have to be, it's like, you know, not just monetarily, but like relationally with our original investor, it was like, man, the last thing I ever wanna do is have to go tell him that, that it ain't working.
You know, that would break my heart worse than any monetary loss. Mm-hmm. You know, so that's always the position and the posture we take is like, all right, cool. Like, we're gonna do it. Like, let's get a plan and do it. Yeah. Like right now, you know,
[01:36:43] Nick Beyer: and we'll get to the kind of growth retail excitement for the brand.
The last thing on Boggy Creek is, so they, they bought the property, your capital partners. Mm-hmm. They're u utilizing your intellect, your competency, all the kind of la [01:37:00] the culmination of last eight years, y'all are designing a lodge, building out like what that will look like. Mm-hmm. And is that like fee based or is that like y'all have a,
[01:37:10] Josh Teff: we have a contract, like a small part
[01:37:12] Nick Beyer: of equity in the deal.
Yeah, exactly. Yeah, we do. Yeah.
[01:37:15] Josh Teff: We get, we get carry at the end of the, you know, once everything's done, we'll get a percentage of the profit and we have a contract to do all the work.
Cool.
[01:37:22] Josh Teff: So that's a exact number. And you know, all that is, and everything we're doing is included in it, but it's a collective, you know, it's kind of weird.
I think about this all the time and it's like, you don't realize what you know until someone else doesn't.
[01:37:37] JD Blagg: That's right.
[01:37:38] Josh Teff: And it's like, you know, we're, it's not just the, the last eight years, it's like the last, our whole lives since we started. I mean, I, you know, the idea of, of developing a product, it's like, well these guys have zero clue how to even begin the process of doing that and I can do it in 24 hours.
[01:37:57] JD Blagg: Yeah.
[01:37:58] Josh Teff: You know, just because I know [01:38:00] it and I didn't even realize I knew it until I went to do it. So like we, there's tons of examples of that in this whole process of like, you know, and it's a good way to think as you're developing your skillset throughout life, it's like whatever it is you're doing, don't take it for granted that you probably know.
You know, you probably have a skill set or, or, or knowledge base that somebody else in that space doesn't, especially if you've done it for a long time. So, you know, Aaron's done it since he old enough to walk. J D's done it since he was old enough to walk, you know, I was later in life getting into it, but I'm like, they, they know me this way, but like, if I do something, I'm like all in to the extent that I gotta know everything, I gotta be like mm-hmm.
Completely immersed in it and mm-hmm. And I'll just do that with everything I'm interested in. So I made up for lost time in that way. But I mean, all that knowledge collectively, it's like when it comes to anywhere a duck or a goose is gonna land, there ain't gonna be very many questions that we can't answer.
Mm-hmm. You know, as far as habitat or how to [01:39:00] develop something. And the cool thing is now the lodging aspect of it and, and hospitality on it. Another
[01:39:05] Aaron Seifritz: really cool part is this experience that's allowed us to pull our whole team in mm-hmm. Year round now instead of seasonal work, which is hard. I mean, that's the hardest part of me, like buying myself the time to get where I got was filling the other eight months of the year.
You know, and I think everybody that does that in that world, whether that's guiding fly fishing or duck hunting or what it is, experiences that. So, um, not only did it give us like a little breath of air, but it gave everybody an opportunity for growth in our organization, which has been huge. That's right.
Huge. And there's,
[01:39:35] JD Blagg: there's guys that, that, uh, work with us that we knew we could not lose.
Mm-hmm.
[01:39:41] JD Blagg: So this is just another way, another door that was opened up for us to be able to tell them, Hey, we're not gonna lose you. Yeah. Like, we got you all year. You know? And that was a huge blessing for them and for us.
'cause now we don't, you know, I mean, we still risk the, they could [01:40:00] go do something else or take over a lodge, but to be honest, there would be no hard feelings. And, uh, we, they mean a lot to us and enough to where we're willing to take a little less, to give them more to, um, to stay on, keep 'em around. So, cool and awesome.
[01:40:20] Nick Beyer: So let's talk about kind of what's next for Falco. We've already talked about Boggy Creek, but Capital Partner comes in. Is that capital gonna be used to launch products or is that just kind of like Yeah. How are y'all thinking about that? The brand has continued to grow on social media mm-hmm. And just like, you know, country, country stars, whatever.
Just kind of just talk a little bit about that. Yeah.
[01:40:43] JD Blagg: Uh, what part,
[01:40:44] Nick Beyer: I mean, what, what's next for Falco? What are y'all excited about? What, what, I mean the brand itself, like really come to life. How do y'all envision that?
[01:40:53] Josh Teff: Yeah, I mean, I think it's exactly what I mean. It's all those things together. So, you know, if, if we decide to [01:41:00] expand the, I think the, the major benefit is to expand the, the outfitting piece is, is just brand recognition, street cred.
You know, we, we use that term a lot. It's like, well, you know, say we do end up, you know, developing on any kind of product. Well, if, if we're, if we're rolling it out, then it immediately should have street cred because we're doing it every single day that it's, you know, it's possible to do this one thing.
So we have a pretty good understanding of like what that whatever that specific product is, is what it needs to be
mm-hmm. In
[01:41:34] Josh Teff: any given environment to be as, you know, the best it can be. So it immediately gives the, the consumer confidence that whatever we're turning out in that space is something they can rely on.
And so, um, you know, the outfitting piece, like I said, like we talked about earlier, I don't think we'll do another lodge where we're separating it all. And then on the, um. You know, it kinda on the real estate stuff, it gives it a launching [01:42:00] pad because of the knowledge base. Yeah. And like if we, uh, if we look at a place collectively say, this is a, this place is legit.
That ought to give a buyer or a member, whoever it is, coming in full confidence that, you know, it's been vetted. You don't have to worry. This place is gonna produce and we're gonna, we're gonna make it as good as we possibly can. And then on the retail stuff, it's kind of the same idea. You know, that theme is across the board through everything.
Um, that it, you can just put, you can put your stock in it. You know, it's like, this is gonna, and we don't know right now, we don't know what all that's gonna look like. You know, we we're not, we have some ideas, but there's still a lot of stuff that's gotta happen for that to come to fruition. But that's the, that's the next step.
You know, that's, I think we all agree that's like our next move. 100%. Yeah.
[01:42:47] Nick Beyer: Yeah. And there's proof of concept there. I mean, didn't Bandaid start out of Arkansas? They had, they did start out of Arkansas.
[01:42:54] Josh Teff: Yeah. Yeah. Where was that Chad? I think the original brand was, was Chad?
[01:42:59] JD Blagg: No, it was, it [01:43:00] was Chad Belding created the name, the branded.
Yeah. And then Chuck Browning started was the original from Arkansas Company that started the, the clothing company. Started The clothing company. Yeah, that's right. Um, but you know, again, I think what, and not that they didn't. Sure. Sure. I mean, Chuck Browning is an, is an amazing hunter. Sure. An awesome human.
Yeah. Um, but, you know, having a business that is centered around this culture, you know, does, like Josh said, gives the consumer a little confidence of it's, I mean, look at Phil Robertson. It's a perfect example. Yeah. He, uh, you know, he's the real deal. That whole family's the real deal. Of course, they blew up on tv, um mm-hmm.
But they blew up on TV because they're the real deal. Yeah. Mm-hmm. Right. Uh, it wasn't fake. That was organic, grassroots, what we call
Yeah.
[01:43:48] JD Blagg: They were true to who they are and the whole world needed to see it. Mm-hmm. And they did need to see it, and it was, you know, taken really well and blew up. Um, I'm not saying at all, that's, that's [01:44:00] what's gonna happen with us, but, um, for us releasing a product or doing something different in, in the expansion of our brand, we do have a base.
Of people that do trust us because we've provided an experience and have shown our competence in this industry. So, uh, you know, that's what makes it exciting like Josh said, is, is fast forwarding a lot of, um, maybe what, where other people started to prove that their product is good. Like we're able to hit fast forward on that a little bit.
[01:44:33] Josh Teff: Yeah. And if, if the lodge and our customers there are a microcosm of what the, what the, you know, masses, how they would treat it, then it's like, 'cause like, you know, an example is when every single customer that we have, when we, would they see us wearing any, like if there's any, if, if we're all wearing the same coat.
There's one coat that we all wore for a while and we sold, I don't know [01:45:00] how many of them, through our retail store. It was like we couldn't keep 'em. We couldn't keep 'em because they were all, well, if they're wearing 'em, then the
[01:45:06] JD Blagg: company couldn't keep 'em. Yeah. I mean, it was like they were sold out of that jacket.
[01:45:12] Josh Teff: Yeah. So it's like that with anything. What kind of duck calls y'all blowing? Like what kind of shotguns are you shooting? What kind of chokes are you using? What kind of ammunition are you shooting? Well, I want that, I need that shell bag. I need those boots. Why? What kind of boots are those? So it's like,
[01:45:23] Cameron Clark: yeah.
[01:45:24] Josh Teff: You know, it's immediately like if they're using it, then it automatically must be the best. Mm-hmm. You know, because we're putting ourselves through the worst weather and the worst elements and day and day out you gotta be, you gotta, it has to work. So, I mean, I, hopefully that same concept will apply to the masses when the time comes and
[01:45:44] JD Blagg: Well, and that's how we feel.
I mean, that's how we started out. There's been other companies that have offered us, you know, good money to wear their stuff. Sure. But we've had to say. I'm sorry, but you know, we've said from the beginning we're gonna use the best.
[01:45:58] Josh Teff: Mm. Yeah. Even
[01:45:59] JD Blagg: though we might not [01:46:00] get as good of a deal with that company 'cause it's more expensive, we're gonna use the best.
[01:46:04] Josh Teff: Yeah. Or whatever we think is the best. Right. Yeah. I mean, you know, obviously that's a matter of opinion, but a hundred
[01:46:08] JD Blagg: percent subjective, but like what we believe collectively is the best.
[01:46:13] Nick Beyer: Y'all have product experience or does the capital partner that y'all brought on have product experience or they're really just the capital now y'all are kind of taking,
[01:46:21] Josh Teff: it's gonna be a, that'll be a cumulative effort.
Okay. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I don't think any of us have delved into that market, you know, um, the retail market. Um, my wife's been at Walmart for 25 years, so I may even have to ask her some of it, but, um, but yeah, I mean it's, you know, I think that the collective group of us will have the knowledge and the resources and find the people we need to Yep.
Throughout this to fill any gaps, fill any gaps we need to. Over time
[01:46:49] JD Blagg: throughout this whole deal, we've become such good friends with people that are really, really good at that. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Um, and that love us. Mm. And so, you know, as far as like [01:47:00] wisdom, but you know, to our new partner, um, partners, they are brilliant.
Mm-hmm. And like Josh said, they, they're very, um, calculated in decisions and uh, are really good at thinking through every angle of a deal or a product or, um, so there's gonna be a lot of trust really both ways. I.
[01:47:23] Josh Teff: Yeah. I mean, we're still idea guys. Yeah. You know, it's like we, me and Aaron, we talk JD every week about like, well, we could do this, but yeah, we could also do this and we could do this, and we could do this.
And it's like, it's like, well, the only thing, we just don't, we just don't have the money to do any of it. So we can talk about it till we're blue in the face. Well finally, you know, we're at a place where we've got someone who I think will take some chances and, but it's the same thing that we talked about earlier.
It's like we have to have a plan. Yeah. Like if we're gonna do something, we're gonna have to beat the horse to death before we, you gotta know
[01:47:54] Aaron Seifritz: your for sures, you know? Yeah. They
[01:47:55] Josh Teff: don't, I mean, you know, guys with venture capital, they don't wanna ha take, [01:48:00] typically don't wanna take big risks unless they really, really believe in it, you know?
Um, so, you know, these guys in particular, this group is, they're gonna do some serious due diligence before they spend a nickel on anything. And that's, that's cool. I mean, it's, it just, they're gonna ensure that it's gonna work, you know, to the extent they can. And I respect that and appreciate it. So it'll keep us from guys like me from just like throwing caution to the wind and.
[01:48:29] Nick Beyer: It's exciting though.
[01:48:31] Cameron Clark: Um, yeah, so kind of getting towards where we're wrapping up here, um, two kind of wrap up questions. One, all of y'all, you know, still live in northwest Arkansas. You could, you could be, you know, I guess you could, could move where the new, uh, the new venture is or where, where the current Falco site is.
Why do you choose to live here? Why do you choose to, you know, keep your families here the remaining eight months outta the year? [01:49:00] Yeah. Well, I
[01:49:00] Aaron Seifritz: mean, it's simple. It's clean, safe, prosperous, uh, a lot of educated people around. I mean, it's a fantastic place to be. I, you know, I think all three of us, maybe at our core of who we are would go live in the middle of nowhere, you know?
Um, but our families and quality of life that we have here, I mean, that's a, that's not even an option to leave here in my eyes, personally, you know,
[01:49:22] JD Blagg: to me it's a no-brainer. I mean, like, I even, I have friends that have moved off to these incredible places and they're like, they've moved back here. Mm-hmm.
Like, those places are cool to go to. Yeah. This is a great place to live.
[01:49:37] Cameron Clark: Yeah.
[01:49:37] JD Blagg: Uh, and, and it's just true. I mean, I've lived and. I did music for a long time and was blessed to tour all around the country and all over and really come back to this is where we, my wife and I wanted to live and we went everywhere and got to do that.
And, and this is just, it's amazing. The, the community [01:50:00] here is amazing. Mm-hmm. There's a lot of really cool industry here. Everything that you would want in a big town is here, but you can escape it in an instant, you know, you can get outside quickly and there's not many places you can do that
[01:50:14] Aaron Seifritz: if you really wanna like, add it, you know, tie to Northwest Arkansas, to Falco, I mean, a large percentage of our customer base is from Northwest Arkansas.
Mm-hmm. Because a lot Northwest Arkansas is real melting pot of everyone from Arkansas. Mm-hmm. And all the people from the Delta with the duck culture, um mm-hmm. Transplants like myself and John David that moved up to this part of the world from the southeast, uh, you know, they can go three and a half hours down to Stuck Art, they can go three and a half hours over to Oklahoma.
And, you know, over the years the quality of the hunting down there, uh, overall is, is has gone down. So, you know, for us to be able to pull these people that are, like we talked about in the beginning, in the middle of two Flyways and take 'em west and show 'em better hunting and a quality experience, uh, it's northwest Arkansas is crucial [01:51:00] to that.
Our relationships here. To driving that for sure. It's allowed us to do it. You know, guys don't have a place to duck hunt here.
[01:51:07] Josh Teff: Yeah. They all thought we were crazy when we were asking them to come to North Central Oklahoma. But mine's easy man. I was born at the old Washington Memorial on 71 B and uh, I lived, it's a while that I can remember this.
I lived in my fir, the first place we lived was, uh, some, an apartment complex below AQ chicken in Springdale. And then I think the next place was Ball Street and Johnson. And then we moved to East Springdale. And the first house my parents bought that they had to file bankruptcy over was across the railroad tracks of East Springdale on Crutcher Street.
And then we moved to Ladon, which was over by the old harps catty corner to aq. And then we moved to, um. From there, we moved to Huntsville Avenue in Springdale, and then we moved to Emma Avenue just up from the high school. That's kind of where I lived [01:52:00] the longest. And then my folks bought a house. I got married, moved to Bentonville, and my folks bought a house in, uh, Elm Springs.
And now I live in Elm Springs. So I've got, my brother lives a half mile as Crow flies from me and his, his wife and two boys. And then my parents live another half mile away in Elm Springs. My sister, unfortunately lives in Bryant. She's a doctor at Children's in Little Rock. And, uh, wish she, I wish they were up here, but I've got, my roots are two deep here, and I've watched it grow from four small farming communities to what it is now.
And, um, I hate the traffic. You know, guys from big cities think this. We, we gripe about traffic and, and rightly so. But you know, when you've born and raised here, it used to be zero, you know? Mm-hmm. It was like we didn't have to worry about anything as far as that went, but it's been really cool. Overall, it's a, it's a net positive to see the industry move in.
Um, and the diversity of people and diversity of business and opportunity and all that [01:53:00] stuff. I mean, it's kind of insulated, you know, we're insulated from the rest of the world, um, especially in this corner of Arkansas for a bunch of different reasons. Crime's low, opportunity's high people are great. You know, you still got kind of the old traditional southern hospitality and, and culture and, um.
I've been to every, I've been to all, every single state except for Hawaii and Maine, and I've never been anywhere that I was like, I could just stay right here. I always wanna come home. So I love visiting everywhere, you know, it's cool. The US is a really cool place and there's some beautiful places out west and all that, but no matter, it doesn't matter where, where I go, I'm ready to come back here.
And so, yeah. No brainer for me to stay right here.
[01:53:47] Cameron Clark: Wow, that's awesome. We ain't leaving. Well, uh, jd, Aaron, Josh, all of y'all. Yeah. I want each of you to answer this question. How do you define success?[01:54:00]
Get you on that for a second.
I define success, uh, with
[01:54:13] JD Blagg: being, having the ability to wake up and do what you love to do every day, um, without jeopardizing the integrity of your family. Um, I dunno. I mean, I feel like I, I mean there's a lot of people that have a whole lot of money. Uh, I do, well make a living, but I feel like I'm extremely successful because I'm landed doing something that I absolutely love to do and with a family that loves each other and is super tight.
Hmm.
[01:54:50] JD Blagg: That's
[01:54:50] Josh Teff: awesome. I think everybody's measure's different. You know, it's not, uh, there's not one definition. It's different for everybody. I mean, I, I [01:55:00] think it's, uh, it's a balance of provision for those that you gotta provide for. Um, not, I think it's, it's definitely not, um, doing something out of pure necessity if you can find something that fulfills you.
And that can be a lot of different things. I mean, I think it's doing something that you don't hate, um, or finding something that you don't hate to provide. Um, but, you know, there's people who make a ton of money and they can't get enough. And there's people who make very little and they're perfectly happy.
I mean, I, there's lots of examples of people in my life that are, or that I've known over the course of my life that I would, you know, guy making 50,000 a years just as happy or happier than the guy making 5 million. So it's never, it is never monetary. Um, I don't think you can even apply, you know, a monetary number to success at all.
So it's, uh, I think it's just a [01:56:00] healthy family environment. It's, it's raising, it's a healthy family. It's a healthy, cohesive family unit. Um, and then provision and doing something that. In some way fulfills you. If you got all, if you can check all three of those boxes, you, you're successful.
[01:56:18] Aaron Seifritz: I dunno, maybe for me, I don't know, like maybe the entrepreneur in me won't let me define that.
I don't know. To me it's almost like if you think you're successful, that's kind of like a signal that like you're done growing. Um, and I don't know if I necessarily think that's a good, you know, entrepreneurial minded thing to be, uh, you know, kind of keep striving for greatness. Even when you think you're hitting your head on the ceiling.
There's, there's an attic above that, you know? So, yeah. Yeah, that'd be hard for me to wrap my brain around. It
[01:56:43] Josh Teff: is a little tough. 'cause contentment is important too. And you know, my dad is a great example of that. He's one of the most content humans I've ever known and want, like, you know, not rich worked every day of his life and he's just perfectly happy [01:57:00] because his family's healthy.
He's got a roof over his head, he's got three squares a day he doesn't want for anything. And that's a hard place for most of us to get to. Um, but I would define that as success, you know, to some extent if you can reach the point of contentment. But like Aaron said, I also agree with that. Like, you know, yeah, you, you, if, if you put a, if you put a bar on it or a, a moment or a, a destination on the idea of it, you're gonna stop when you get there.
And so I think it's different for everybody. There's not one answer.
[01:57:31] JD Blagg: I think my father-in-law says this, and I love this. I think it's when desires, abilities, and opportunities align. When those things cross over, whatever that crosses to. I mean, that's like when you're doing what you're supposed to be doing.
[01:57:49] Josh Teff: Yeah. That's a quote. Success is when preparation meets opportunity. Yeah. Yeah. That's good.
[01:57:56] Nick Beyer: Well, cool. I'll wrap us up here. I think one of the things we like to do at the end of [01:58:00] every episode is really share what we learned, uh, while we're sitting here with, with y'all. And then I think what our listeners are gonna learn what, from a business perspective, from a personal perspective, and I think one of the like first things, and we highlighted it really early on, is just presence.
Like how, how important is that word in, in a world where we can be sitting here for two hours, three hours talking, or we could just be sitting on our phones mm-hmm. And, and be totally unre with each other. And I think that matters and, and you guys represented that well throughout the conversation with your families.
That matters. It matters with your clients. And I think that's part of why y'all have been, we'll call the use the word successful, like why your business has grown so much, is because when people are at Falco, they are spending time with jd, with Aaron, and then with Josh, and y'all are present. And I, I just don't think in the hospitality world, I think it's a lot easier to say that than to do it, especially as [01:59:00] technology's progressed.
And so I, I think kudos to you guys and what y'all are building and, and I think that's something that all of us can learn from y'all. I think the second thing, um, it's just hyper, hyper-focused. You're really focused. And I think you highlighted in one of the things when we, we talked with Andre at Onyx. I mean, when they're opening a new restaurant, they're like, they're, they're, they're, they've got five different plates out.
They're figuring out what plate will, will kind of match the vibe and the atmosphere. And you, you highlighted that really well. Every detail from when a guest wakes up mm-hmm. And walks outta their room in the lodge to when y'all are dropping them off at a pit or a blind to coming home and, and to getting a home cooked meal.
Like all of that is dialed in. Mm-hmm. And there's a ton of focus around it. Um, and even hearing about what y'all, y'all plan to do with boggy, like, there's a lot of focus going into, to, Hey, how are we preparing this property? And, and what do we want guests to get out of it? And then exciting, you know, what's coming with the brand [02:00:00] Falco and products and just, people trust you guys because you're really focused.
You know, there's, there's, and when you're successful, there's probably people who are like, Hey, let's do this. Let's do this together. Like, we should do this. But y'all are like, no, we, we know, we know birds. Like, that's what we're focused on and we know experience and hospitality and delivering that. And y'all have just stayed really focused on that.
And then I think the last one that's been really clear is purpose. All of you have deep purpose in what you're doing. And I think it's, it's even cool hearing like some of the purpose is your relationship with each other. And y'all could go run three lodges and make three times as much, but y'all are like, man, we love getting to hang out and spend time together.
That's part of what makes it special. And that also is what makes the, the client, that's what makes their experience special. And so I think there's deep purpose to what y'all are doing. And I think when you, when you think about how businesses grow, like if you're hyperfocused, if you're purposeful and, and you're in, you're [02:01:00] present.
Like that's a recipe for a hypergrowth business. And that's, that's exactly what we're doing. We're trying to interview founders in northwest Arkansas. We've got businesses that have grown a ton and, and try to figure out why they're growing. And, uh, I think those are the biggest things we learned from y'all.
I think those are the biggest things our guests will learn. And, and we're just really thankful for y'all's time. How can people reach out to you guys, find out more about Falco?
[02:01:24] Josh Teff: Yeah. Um, websites, falco outfitters.com, uh, should be a link to join our, um, what's brand new website's about to roll out. So, um, there may be a little interim here, but, um, normally it pops up with an opportunity to join the mailing list, which is, you know, anything that we have, any information we have to deliver, whether it's openings on our schedule or, or, uh, new offerings or whatever, all that goes on there.
Um, 8 4, 4 4 Falco is the, is the company number, and it'll get to any of us. Um, so [02:02:00] pretty easy to get ahold of if anybody has questions or, or any wants to reach out to get on our, you're gonna be on the waiting list trying to get in right now. Um, that's just, you know, standard, standard operating procedure.
But, um, but you know. I like, uh, I, I manage our calendar, so I really like, um, um, people to be on top of it. So if you, if you're persistent enough, I'm probably gonna bump you to the front of the line. You know, most guys that just wear me out kind of get bumped to the front squeaky wheel, gets the grease. So otherwise you'll just get on the, the waiting list and you'll see dates as we have 'em open.
Um, we got a retail space on there, buy hats and t-shirts and hoodies and stickers and all that stuff. And hopefully that'll grow as time goes on. So
[02:02:45] Aaron Seifritz: Cool. Otherwise, just call us. Yeah, my phone number's on social media just call me directly. I like to make friends. Yeah, that's
[02:02:52] JD Blagg: awesome. Yeah. And then obviously social media, you know, Falco outfit,
[02:02:55] Josh Teff: so yeah, Falco Outfitters on Instagram and, and Facebook.
And, [02:03:00] um, we have a TikTok, but it's pretty small, so.
[02:03:04] Cameron Clark: Well, thanks guys. Thank you for listening to this episode of NWA Founders, where we sit down with founders, owners and builders driving growth here in northwest Arkansas. For recommendations are to connect with us, reach out at nwa, founders@gmail.com.
Lastly, if you enjoyed this episode, then please consider leaving a rating, a review, and sending it to someone who you think would benefit from it. We'll see you in the next episode.