00:00:08 Speaker 1: This is me eater podcast coming at you shirtless, severely, bug bitten, and in my case, underwear listening podcast. You can't predict anything presented by on X. Hunt creators are the most comprehensive digital mapping system for hunters. Download the Hunt app from the iTunes or Google play store. Nor where you stand with on X? All right? Everyone? Uh take two on on Uh you know, not not not making the show the way we're supposed to make it. We're all sitting there, all tight, smelling each other across the podcast studio table. We're remote again. Uh so Quarantine episode Part two. But I got a piece of good news. Um, I just got an email about this this morning that if you know, but the Trump administration has done a number of things around access enhancement. Um, and that could be the thousand things right. Access is really popular. All people that hunting, fish and recreate are like the idea of access or voice the idea that they like access, and the access could mean different stuff, right. Um. So I've heard people take the access argument being like access enhancement and use that as a way to say we should carve up our wilderness areas with roads in order to give us more access in our trucks, so you can take in different ways, but this is a good access where they got a plan. There's rolling out a new plan here which would uh it's a proposal which would expand hunting and fishing opportunities across more than two point three million acres at nine in the seven National Wildlife refuges. So there's there's always been a lot of refuges where you can hunting fish or hunt and or fish, and they're trying to roll that out and also rolling out pushing the roll out hunting and fishing opportunities on some fish hatchery lands. So it's just like taking existing lands and getting it so you can use it for you know, pursuing your activities in places where maybe you can't but it doesn't really make sense while you're not allowed to, uh what the what they look at is they look at distinct new hunting and fishing opportunities. The way they define this is it be a species at a field station in a state. So for instance, if you opened up um you had a refuge, and a refuge had a bunch of large mouth bass on it, and you opened up the refuge in Delaware for large mouth bass. You're creating a distinct new hunting and fishing opportunity, meaning uh, at a specific refuge, you're allowed to catch a specific fish in a specific state. They're projecting that this proposed rule would create nine hundred distinct new hunting and fishing opportunities. Uh, on top of last year they you know, we had access expansion at one point four million acres. Now onbably the last guy to say that that everything that's uh, you know, every administration has got that stings that does right, and it's things that doesn't do right. But I in terms of access enhancement, in making areas that you previously weren't able to hunt and fish open for hunting and fishing, these guys doing a pretty good job there. We've got a guy. I just got a bumper sticker. The guy sent me that says ice fishing is not a crime and it's meant to look like the Yeah, I remember the skateboarding was not a crime, buddy Maya op My mom's BEATIX Skylark era probably like eighty eight had one of those stickers on it. Yeah. This guy, he's connected somehow to Harvard University. He invited us one on our live tour. Our dates keep getting postponed because of COVID nineteen. Uh. He had he already had a ticket to go to our show and are our show in the Boston area, and he was inviting us that we could come tour Harvard. But he was pointing out that he had to make ice fishing is not a crime bumper stickers because ice fishing is so unfamiliar to the people in his area that but when people see someone out on the ice, they their first impulses to call the police. I haven't dug into it, but I thought it was funny. I almost put it on the I was gonna put it on the podcast studio window, but we're not there. Some neat to do that. I don't know what the hell do with the thing now. Uh, follow up on another question, go ahead, and I'm just gonna say, minds on my freezer. That's where my sticker collection lives these days, on your home freez. Yeah, maybe that's what because no one's gonna take your damn freezer from you. This hasn't gone that far yet. Another quick follow up on a past conversation. We were talking about Yadi. Who are we talking about? A dude told a story about his dad's blood transfusion, and I was I was incredulous about how could you give someone fourteen units of blood when the human body, like your body, only holds eight to twelve quote units of blood. So how do you give someone fourteen units of blood? It's like you'd over they'd overflow in it all run out their ears. Yeah, which is what are you talking? Because a couple of people wrote wrote in to clarify that. Yeah, so what was he There was a good analogy that someone used. Well, a surgeon, a surgeon road in, he's done he's done a lot of trauma surgery and uh, he was saying, it's real common to use that much blood. And they call they use what's called a massive transfusion protocol. And he said, they keep bringing in little red Coleman lunchable type coolers containing a combination of packed red blood cells, fresh frozen plasma, and platelets. There's six units in a cooler and you just keep pumping those things in until the bleeding stops. And he says, his personal high, he had a patient the guy actually lived. He ran. Uh, he'd been shot in the gut with a forty five and the surgeon ran seventy two units of blood through that dude whoa he had injuries to his a ord, to his inferior vena cava, which I'll know what that is, his left renal artery, which i'all know what that is, plus some other stuff. The whole time they're trying to fix him. Um like when you take your you have to like take a valve off or whatever. I'm blood vessels and uh yeah, dude bled so much that they gave him what is it again, your body holds eight to twelve And they ran seventy two units of blood through the dude after getting shot by forty five a doctor named Sam out of Amarillo, Texas. This other guy wrote it on the blood thing he had to say. He talks about how he's a real he's a good blood donor, and he's got a kid who has down syndrome and they had uh some other complicating health problems and the kid had to have an open heart surgery. The he's got good insurance, he said. The itemized bill for the surgery came out to two hundred thousand dollars. And he went through the itemized list and they had a single unit of blood ready for him in a cooler, a little lunch cooler iglue lunch cooler that the kid never even needed because the surgery went well apparently, But on the itemized list that unit of blood that you donate when you need it back, it comes out of price tag of eight D twenty seven bucks. I was just wondering how much one of those was. Yeah, the a couple more good things we were complaining. I think that cal was complaining about this, like with all these questions going on right now, like what's an essential service and not an essential service? And um, we're talking about how could it be that you could close like a fishing access site down, but a liquor store could remain open, Like who determines what's serious or what's essential? And how can booze be essential? And a social worker wrote in, and he says he works in addiction services. He says when people detox it could be real ugly, and detoxing often requires a hospital bed. With anticipation ations of hospital beds being in short supply, we don't want folks detoxing right now. Right now, we're focusing on harm reduction, basically, trying to help people stay safe while drinking. They'll sort out the addiction issues down the road. Um. He also pointed out a revenue issue and trying to minimize the economic chaos. Right. Uh, you know a lot of restaurants, alcohol pays the bills or I'm sorry, you know, um, beer pays the bills. Liquors allows stay open or whatever that mantra is in the restaurant business, meaning restaurants without alcohol sales business gets very difficult. Um. And in trying to minimize the chaos here, that can be helpful to allow restaurants to do to go booze and things in order to help them stay solvent right and keep food flowing. Um, in a time of like very stressed situations. Yeah, we heard about that too, right, because I think cal had included that and his his statement there that's one of the states had thrown that in and he didn't understand why, but obviously that's why. Yeah. I'm just dude, Yeah, just dude was writing in about that and the ongoing debate. I'll interrupt these updates here and tell what we have on the beautiful and lovely Evan Halfer right was like how you say it? Hay for from Black Rifle coffee company we met. I was at the I was m seeing. It turns out I don't feel like. My wife pointed this out to me, that I'm not a UM. She feels that I'm not gonna make it into the MC Hall of Fame. UM. Everyone has their talents, she pointed out, but she doesn't know that I'm a gifted m C. I'm like a functional MC, like I get done but I don't, but I get it done without a lot of fanfare. Anyways, I was m seeing at the National Wild Turkey Convention or the you know, the National Wild Turkey Annual big blowout Convention in Nashville, and I met Evan hay For there and then we became kind of like email friends recently. Yeah, yeah, that was that was a great That was the first time I've been out there, So that was a that was a great event. It was huge. I didn't realize it was that big. It's huge. Uh did you take in any of my m seeing or you just backstage and doing stuff the whole time? No, I was. I was down in the crowd. I was taking in the m C. I thought, you did you think? Did you think to yourself, man, this young man this young man really has m seeing dialed. Yeah, I was. That's exactly what I was thinking the entire time. I didn't I didn't think about much else. I was just this is impressive, Steve, what your wife say? Your weak points were weak points that I didn't do a lot of the um. I didn't do a lot of the really sort of corny drumming up, you know, like drumming up enthusiasms. It was more I did more of it. Was it felt more transactional. That was her, That was her takeaway. Uh, we have, Evan, we have now that we've brought you into the conversation here we're doing our run downs. We have an ongoing debate and you probably have some feedback on this because you you spent time in the Special Forces, and we'll talk about that. But we have an ongoing debate about whether or not a real man or a real woman can wear flip flops, like, because my buddy Ronnie Bam feels that you're not ready to defend your family m in flip flops and feels it like he's like when I have flip flops on. I asked myself, what if there's a volcano, what would that mean from my feet? What would that mean for my family? And so we have lot of people right in Like we had a guy one time his wife got assaulted by a rat and he was able to kill the rat with a flip flop. But because he was he could get it off quick. Yeah, this guy just got caught up in the earthquake. There he's in boys, he got caught up in the earthquake. He was running around his house and his flip flops, and he got to worrying about the structural integrity of his house and went the book outside and on his way outside tripped in his flip flops and then made it outside. And here he is. The world's falling apart. He thinks his house is gonna fall down, you know, the Yellowstone Volcano might erupt. And he's outside and his flip flops now, and it made him think that this is not an appropriate footwear for American living. I should I should put I should put it to you. Yeah, I would tend to agree with that. I know a couple of guys out there that they always point out that the Afghans have been fighting wars and in flip flops for since the d S so when when they talk about combat footwear, they think about the Afghans fighting, you know, the Soviets, and you know, you've got all these other factions in Central Asia that have been fighting worse for decades and flip flops. So they're always like, it's combat footwear. It's kind of a joke. Actually, it's it's kind of a joke. I it's interesting that you brought that up, because it is a debate even internally. Whereas if I wear a flip flop, I'm typically I know that it's it's because I'm in a boat or I'm in the water and it's recreation time. I don't typically wear them as casual footwear. But my partner, Matt, he wears them every day. I've actually barely seen him wear shoes. So it's an internal debate over here too. Did you guys have a company policy, no, no flip flops. No, we have a company policy which is um carry your firearm most of the time. But that's typically the only company policy we were Really if you want to do it in flip flouts, that's your business. You do it, you know, And I think most guys are more concerned with uh, you know, how how how fast can they react, And so they try to become as proficient as they can in their footwear. That's kind of their mentality. So they wear them all the time just to just to just to stay to stay trained, to stay trained, stay trained. Yeah, just stay trained, stay in the staying the mindset, stay in the mindset. Another thing we had, we recently had the Turkey Doctor on UM. That's a great show. What was the name of that episode, do you guys remember gobble your ass off? Was that it sounds Go back and listen to that one after that. Jared Oakley for he's kind of a friend of the show. His brother, he's a conservationist, works with meal deer. His brother works with Mexican gray wolves. Anyways, he wrote in you saw about hunting in the Black Hills of Wyoming, he found what looked like a bear ship, like a large bore not b o a r like not like a large bore male, I mean large bore like large caliber. Yeah, at large caliber bearship. And he got to inspect in it as one does, and saw that it had a white coating on it, that white frosty coating that you see on bird ship, which I always think resembles that the white mold that you get on good Italian salami. But he says the biggest bird shit you'd ever seen. Um he got talking later to an expert on turkeys. Don't know if you guys ever heard of John Hutto. I think I don't know how he pronounces his name, Hutte. I think he's that guy that lived with turkeys. He raised up turkeys and learned how to communicate with him, and he talks about that. He believes there are It really changed his viewpoint on hunting a fair bit. I think right now he's living with some mule deer, but he lived with turkeys for a long time and learned. He he he feels that he's identified twenty seven vocalizations that turkey's make or something. Uh. He's got a lot of interesting stories about turkeys, but learned to communicate with them, and you kind of gotta watch his own story of it. H u t t O. Interestingly, he's married to the singer Rita Coolidge, but he he was Jared Oakleff was asking about these giant turkeys, which he called ask goblins, and it says that when a hen sitting on her nest. It seems that they don't want to defecate. I should ask a Turkey doctor about this. But they don't want to defecate near their nest because it increases the odor, right, and it could be attractive. It could attract predators. So they build up these giant deuces and then wander off and drop these giant duces, which are the size of bear scats. What do you think of that? You? Honest? It might be Joe. That's what I said, right. Oh, I thought you were saying John My bad. Oh yeah, I could have said that Jared oak Leaf was the guy our friend wrote in. Yeah, Joe, hut toel, I'm sorry. Um, sounds very possible. It sounds like what I would do if I was sitting on a nest, hiding, not wanting to go off, just to drop a deuce, stay low key, hold hold it for a few days. Yeah. Another We talked about four, but another word for that would be to take a growler. Um. You know. We another quick quick note before we get started here. No, two things and and one of these is gonna be great for Evan. Uh. The first one, I don't know if this is up Evans Aali or not. But you know, we talked a lot about Bergman's rule or Bergman's principle. Uh, fill the engineer, you know Bergman's principles. I don't know. So when you're when you're working on the shows, you don't you're not actually listening to anything anybody's saying. I think that Bergman's maybe hasn't been mentioned since Phil started. I do not. I do not recall ever hearing about it. Okay, So maybe you're right, or maybe Yannia, Maybe Yanni's right. For anyone who's ever wondered, why is it that white tailed deer in Florida are real dinky, and white tailed deer in say Alberta have big, huge bodies. Um, why is that? Well, Bergman's rule is this thing or Bergman's principle is this thing that mammals when you look at the mammal's range, okay, and you imagine it's range from north to south. When you look at an animal's range, you will find that within its range, it will tend to have a bigger body the more north you go. So within its range, smaller specimens live in the south, Larger specimens live in the north. We're talking about body size here. Uh, it's believed. Like a way to explain this is that has to do with heat retention and heat dissipation, being that the a let's say this, a two pound person has less surface area, So a two pound human has less surface area than a fifty pound human um, meaning the measurement of your body that's exposed to the air relative to the mass of the body is less. So those bodies are better able to retain body heat. When in the South where it's hotter, smaller bodies tend to have greater surface areas, so they have greater ability to shed uh, greater ability to shed body heat. And someone pointed out, as much as I like talking about Bergman's rule, he pointed out, there's also Allan's rule. And Allen's rule is interesting. I had never heard of it. It's the animals have longer extremities and hot climates. You take the antelope, jack rabbit and think about that, and what's interesting there is it points out that I think it's true that the mule dear defies Bergman's rule, that the mule dear. There's a lot of confusion where you have some larger specimens of mule deer and more southerly latitudes, and so it's an exception to Bergman's rule. But I think when you look at their ears, I think that they addhere to Alan's rule um in terms of length of ear and how much you're putting out for heat dissipation. Last one, this is the one where Evan can feel helpful. We had a debate. We've been having a debate that goes on, uh where we're talking about accidental discharges. And even if I'm not mistaken, in the military, they trained you up. I know in the Marines, they pound it into your head. There's no such thing as an accidental discharge. Now, it's negligent discharge. Okay. A guy's a guy decided to challenge that. And he's from the he's from the Air Force. Well, of course, okay, we'll hear him out. Hear him out. Okay. They're on the firing line. They were getting ready to deploy, and they were going through some tactical exercises. They were firing M sixteens and they had fired dozens of rounds in the last few minutes. Barrels are hot. Yep. They finished another round of shooting, but still have loaded rifles. The range in structure tells everyone to point the rifles down to the ground and down range, but one guy didn't get the down range part and only got the down to the ground part. All of a sudden, bouch gunshot goes off. He looks over and a guy just falls down in a way that he thinks the guy just somehow killed himself or killed someone, killed their neighbor. But it turns out he'd only shot himself in the foot and then and then instantly passed out. Is why he looked like he was why he went down so hard. Everybody laid their weapons on the ground to give first aid. His rifle, which was now a few feet away on the gravel and pointed down range, went off again on its own, and pointed out that it turns out the weapon had cooked off around the barrel, got so hot it ignited the round without trigger pull. Right, they found the cartridges. They did not have dents in the primer, but there was a bulge where it had been pressed against the bolt. Right, the pressure of the round going off on its own had pushed the brass into the hole on the bolt where the firing pin lives. So actually an inverted dimple m hmm. So he says, basically, put that in your pipe and smoke it when it comes down to negligent discharge. But he points this out just reminds you watch where your muzzles are pointed at all times. Yeah, kind of right. So, Uh, there's something called the negligent discharge. And obviously, when you don't point your weapon at anything, you don't seek to destroy it, right, That's that's one of the rules of handling a firearm. So you never pointed in anywhere but a safe direction. So he was false and that because he's pointing it at his foot. Uh. Two, I've I've heated a lot of barrels in my day, Like I've sent hundreds of thousands of rounds down range, and that doesn't happen very often. However, it is something that as the training n c O, the guy that the non commissioned officer that's in charge of your block of training, they have to be conscious of how many rounds are be you put through the barrels and what time frame. So I would say the negligent discharge wasn't actually owned by the shooter. It was owned and the responsibility of that was on the guy that was in charge of the range. That's where That's where I would say that was a negligent discharge, but the ownership is passed on to the person that's in charge and allowing the weapons to get too hot because that shouldn't have happened. Yeah, you know, I feel like I editorialized a little bit now that I'm looking at his email more carefully. He I should point out, and this gentleman's defense. He did not say put that in your pipe and smoke it. He just kind of says, like, watch what your guns pointing right, We'll put that round in your foot. I don't know if that works, but it's probably not. Maybe that circumstance because he also said the Air Force ended up pulling lots of AMMO out of operation due to the incident. M M yeah, that doesn't surprise me. So, I mean all the AMMO, all the barrels and things like that. Now, all these things can inspections can fail. So depending on how the equipment was, the prior maintenance of the equipment, the inspections and the equipment, you know, where were the rounds coming from? Where they depending. There's a lot of variables there, but ultimately don't point your weapon anything you don't seek to destroy, and don't heat up your rifles to the point they're going to cook off rounds. That's it's pretty I literally put on hundreds of courses with thousands of guys at this point, and I've not cooked off around on a range with a rifle. But Evan, you're familiar with this thing called cooking off around. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, we're when your barrels are too hot. What will happen is a lot of these depending right where, Because if you're using suppressors or not using suppressors, your barrels will get really hot and they'll start to smoke. So it's not the smoke from the discharge of the round. It's actually it's cooking the uh, the surface of the barrel. At that point, you you run a lot of different risks, right, You run a lot of different risks on the the the barrel itself. Your firearms or your hands are going to be they're they're gonna be hot as hell. You're gonna have to use a glove to hold onto your rifle, depending on what you're you know, what you're shooting. Your handguards are in place on an m sixteen and four, depending on the variable they're using. They're in place to protect your hand from the heat of the barrel. But at that point, that's an interesting point. Yeah, your barrel is so hot that you'll your hand will not be able to to to to maintain even through a glove. If you get a barrel that hot to cook rounds, you're gonna feel the heat coming off that barrel through the handguards and through your glove. Somebody should have stopped that training it or ration well before that happened. But you know, it's easy for me to arm trire quarterback from my you know, comfortable office here in San Antonio. No I like it, man, That's that's good insight. Um. When my dad was when my dad would reminisce, he had a certain stories from World War Two that he'd like to tell and tell again, and when people on the subject of urine human urine, he would often reminisce about how much he disliked the smell or how much he associated the smell of piss with pissing on overheated barrels in the military, and the distinct odor that made and the um just kind of turned him off to piss. Smell hot piss smell. I know that smell, not from pissing on firearms, him pissing on my muffler, you know, pulling on, pulling over and trying to find the wheel. Well, like just burying yourself in because you had a long road up and you can't find a place to to pull off and get a cover. So I just go in on that on that wear weird were at the truck. I've lately adopted the really old manny, the really old manny thing you do where you open your door and it's kind of wedge in there, ye kind of wedge, so you're standing, you know, like you look like you you sort of you're trying to like look like a person who I don't know what the hell you look like you're doing, Like you're contemplating whether it get in or out of your truck, and you take a piss there. Yeah. I was doing it the other day and kind of got almost got busted by someone. I was at a river access and almost got busted by someone who came in around and caught me through my own passenger window. But I pinched her off and I didn't have an issue that that probably a guy recently wrote in where he's saying, like a hot tip for ice fish, and he says, your hole is freezing up and you think pan on it will thaw it out. Don't do it. You just wind up with a frozen hole covered in frozen piss. Uh. Even now when you're when someone's like, hey, man, what the hell's what the hell's Black Rifle Coffee Company? Yeah, like why that? What do you tell him? Why not? Like did uh, Sir Edmund Hillary? I think he said they asked him, why did you climb Everest? Because it was there? You know, I don't know. I I I say that the Genesis story is not very long, and it's really not that complex because I'm not that smart of a guy. But I was teaching firearms and roasting coffee my previous profession. So I was teaching close quarters combat and advanced pistol marksmanship to a bunch of former Special Operations guys, and I would have this one pound it's called a fluid bed roaster, which is really just hot air. It's it's an elaborate popcorn popper essentially in UM, I was roasting coffee and teaching firearms at the time. Roasting it for personal use, yeah, and for the courses that I was teaching, so guys would come through. I would get twenty four to twelve guys every few weeks, and I would roast coffee for the courses and just as a nice as a nice gesture. Yeah, that's always for just I had. I had a couple of buddies that I would ship it out too, but most of the time it was just because I was interested in roasting coffee. It was my hobby for a long time. I loved it. And I had my service rifle literally on the on the tailgate of the g ride, the government vehicle, and I had a one pound fluid bed coffee roaster on the other side. I looked at those two things, put the two words together, black rifle, because that's essentially it was just this dirty black rifle from being used on the range and coffee. Merge those two things and there's black rifle Coffee company. That was it. It managed to create a, I guess, an image in a lot of people's minds. So if you're anti black rifles, that obviously would kind of incite some feeling of negativity. I wasn't really thinking of that at the time, though, I was just looking at my service rifle. Is very naive, even to the pro to a community and some of those other things, I was super naive. I was just looking at my service rifle and looking at my coffee roaster, going, yeah, these two things look together. You know. I've told this story a bunch of times. But and when we're naming, when we were like starting a show, making a show, um, I was reading, um a lot of books to my new kid, a very young kid, and he like dinosaur and you'd always get to the t rax and it'd be like this ferocious meat eater, right, or you get to like a grizzly bear part of a book or whatever, and it would be like the this meat eater is the king of the mountain. And I was like, I kind of like that word. I just like that word. I hadn't thought of the full implication. And then later it became like um, later it's often understood by people that you're sort of making a dietary suggestion or that you're like the meat eater, when it was just meant to be like this sort of like it was meant to be this kind of like classification of animals. Yeah, you know, I wasn't blind to the way it would work, but it wasn't like a really well thought thing. It was just it seemed like a cool word. It is a cool word. It is like its rolls off the tong they're balanced. You know, it's a cool word. But it's the same thing. People will go, did you I didn't hire a marketing company. I didn't really have any ideas to even how to market a product. To be honest with you, did you did you have a lot of people tell you as you're starting your business, did you have a lot of people tell you that you better change the name? Every day? Yeah, we hear it, even today, even today, Yeah, we hear it. We hear it every day. Ours isn't ours isn't is pugnacious as yours at all. But we still hear um. You know, we have a book coming out, Wilderness Skills and Survival Book, and we just heard from someone affiliated with you know that that our name and there could be divisive. You know, I heard all the time. It's just you know, people they'll DM me or something or you know, where I hear it a lot is from people that don't know me, and they're we're introduced in public places somewhere, and you'll be sitting there with a group of people and you'll have somebody, typically from the corp for at World that has you know, way more degrees than they have intelligence, and they'll say something like, well, how are you going to capture the entire market with the company name like Black Rifle? And instantly I just kind of want to say, uh, you know, I don't care. You know, typically that's what I say, like, I don't care. Uh, I'm not that concerned. Well, how can you not be concerned? You know, that's typically their reaction to. It's like, I'm just now that concerned. Man. I was roscing coffee in my garage, Like, this is bigger than I thought it was going to be when I was doing it. This is way bigger than it is now. I'm more concerned with, you know, other things than capturing the entire coffee market. And you know, working with a bunch of backslapping, pleaded docker wearing you know, back nine D bags Like that's not it's not my thing. It's not my thing. How didn't get a T shirt says that on it? You grew up in in Idaho? Right, Yeah, yeah, I grew up in uh someplace. I'm sure you're familiar with Lewiston, Idaho. Oh yeah, well, yeah, yeah you grew up. Did you grew up hunting and fishing? I did? Yeah, yeah, my dad actually, well every both sides my family, uh mom's side, my dad's side. I grew up in a smaller logging town. When you go up the clear Water on Highway twelve, as you're probably familiar with, up and over the Lolo Pass, there's a really small small town logging town up there called Weip, Idaho. Families from uh we Hi Prairie actually and uh then we moved to Louiston later in life, and I spent more time fishing early on than I did hunting. I would go out hunting with my grandpa, my dad both that. I was way more interested in isshing. From an early age. I was. I was a nerd, you know, like it was when I say, you know nerd. I was the guy building a fly rod when I was twelve, when all my other friends were, you know, wanting to do skateboarding, and you know, I was like, I'm I'm super interested in doing this, trying to build this fly rod. I'm sure that you guys are are very similar to that. You spent a lot of time on the river. I did every Uh, I've spent I would say the majority of my recreation adult life has been on rivers. Uh. That's that's where, That's where I would classify. I'm I'm at home, and I feel the most comfortable outside of my home home as is in the river. You know, I feel like you said this to me. Your mom or your dad was Jewish? Right are you my dad? Yeah? Ancestry, How did you wind up? What was the line? How do you wind up in the logging community there? Uh? It was a family tradition. I think my great grandfather was actually a sheep herder. Um. Yeah, they're sheep herders. And then my grandfather was logging only because that's that's where they they landed. So my grandfather, my dad's dad, we we disconnected from our entire family tree at that point. He moved out west and we didn't really know anyone past my grandfather. So he had moved out to Idaho when he was like twelve or thirteen, taken like a train from Colorado or New Mexico and just striking like striking out on his own. Yeah. Yeah, they had something like you know, eighty kids or something at the point, and he struck out and he landed in in a small logging town which was Wei Borfino. Uh that that whole area in northern Idaho. And uh so we didn't really we weren't practicing or anything like that. It was something that I found later in life where uh, you know, through three and me and a bunch of putting the pieces altogether because my dad used to say, oh, we're this, We're German, and then it was oh we're we're He would he'd have some other names for it. But um, it was pretty easy for me to piece it altogether because I went to Jerusalem later in life and and uh I knew by that time, even before twenty three and me came out twenty three, Me just confirmed the genetics test basically, Yeah, I got you. Uh how did you get into your head growing up the way you grew up where he grew up? Did you guys have like how did you get in your head you wanted to go to Green Bray School? I mean, were you were you were you a military family? No, I you know, it's super easy as guys that were outdoors. You guys are outdoorsmen. Um. I I spent every waking moment. I went to the University of Idaho, which is in Moscow, every weekend, every morning, and then if you know, depending on what you know, Steelhead run was in. It was how active I was going to participate in classes basically, Uh, and I spent the majority of of my high school in college days in the outdoors. I was kind of introduced to Green Berets through a friend, and I loved being in the outdoors. That's that's. I love being in the mountains. I love being in the outdoors. And I thought, well, I also want to jump out of planes. That's that's pretty interesting. Uh. You know, the Green Berets mission is by with and Through, so they're working with host national forces to do essentially covert action, which is direct action. That's to me, that was really adventurous. It was super cool. It was something that I could spend all my time like in jungles and mountains, you know, wearing a rucksack and living out of it and and and then also you know, jumping out of planes and potentially going to war. Uh that sounded Nobody really had to convince me too hard, you know. That was it was a pretty easy connect for me as far as me live to look at my life in Idaho and say, how do I spend my my adulthood outside and doing these high adventure things. And then too, I wanted to learn, and I was kind of in love with this image of, you know, to be a Green Beret. They're called snake eaters, and you know, they'll eat things to make a billy goat puke and all this stuff. And I was like, man, I want to be the ultimate survivalist. I'm gonna I'm gonna be able to just like go out with nothing but a loincloth after I'm done with this and like a knife and just survive off the land, which is total horseshit, but um, that's kind of eighteen years old. That's kind of what I wanted to do. And and it wasn't a hard cell. It is easy. As soon as I was done with college, I was I was off and I wanted to do that. Were your were your parents? Were your parents pissed or supportive or they didn't really know? Uh, they didn't really know what it was they My mom was I don't even know if my mom today even really knows what a Green Beret does or is she just knows like my son was in the military, you know, he worked for the CIA for a while. I think she might have even thought that the CIA was the Culinary Institute of America for a while, like you like, you know, Yeah, my dad was like, once he found out that that's what I wanted to do. I think he probably pulled me off this side and was I was like, well, don't get your hopes up, you know, like, no, get get ready to be disappointed or something like that, you know, because you wouldn't be able to make it through the courses. Yeah. I don't think my dad ever looked at me like a really hard kid, you know, eighteen years old. So I think he was more looking at it like, dude, don't don't really get your hopes up too high. Did you struggle through the elimination course? No? Uh? I you know, I spent most of my time backpacking and and just kind of suffering. I I loved to kind of do these endurance events before endurance events were cool. I liked the aspect of suffering. I wanted to kind of go through this hero's journey for a lack of a better term. Um, I was in love with that process. And there was never a time. I've heard that people always say, well, there's always a time when you would have thought about quitting or something like that. Like I never thought about quitting. I was concerned about my body quitting on me, you know, like, oh can I walk another step? You know? Is that am I going to collapse from heat exhaustion or you know, sleep deprivation. And I was concerned about that. So it was a very conscious thought as to where it is my body and it's physical performance right, And I never found that. I don't know, it's it's very difficult to find that. I would imagine I haven't found it yet. A friend of ours who was in the Navy pointed out that in the in the seal elimination or what do you guys call it? Not elimination course, but the buds, the tryout whatever, you know. He was saying that the strategy there is to use um cold water yeah and PT mhm what what what do they use on you guys? Uh? Well, the cold water PT to break you down, you know, or to find your limit, right, and so but with you, it's not cold water I'm guessing no. A lot of it is built on you have to be alone in the woods under a ruck sack for a long period time. So it's a map, it's a compass, it's sixty plus pounds of weight and a rifle and you're walking from point to point to point. That's part of it. And a lot of people are really uncomfortable being in the in the in the woods at night. A lot of people there's psychologically there. It's a really easy thing to start chopping away that the fat and then too, you know, as you guys know, like navigating with a net, map and compass is a difficult thing to be good at it and to hit your points on time. And as you're running through the mountains with you know, a map in one hand, you're dead reckoning portions of it. You're trying to hit your times and if you don't hit your times, you're going to be eliminated. So that's part of it. The other aspects of it are how do you work as a team. So they do what's called team events, so Special Forces Assessment and selection. They have, uh it's about three weeks plus before you can even get into the course. They have a pre course, which is a twenty some day course that puts you through a bunch of different performance standards, land navigation team events, and then you get into the course the course, so you lose will say, seventy plus percent on the first twenty some days. Then if you get accepted into the course, you lose another seventy plus percent. It takes you two years. It took me two year year, and we'll call it nine ten months just to get a Green Beret. So it takes a long time and it's different. So when you look at other Special Operations units and what they're selecting for, each one is selecting for a very specific mission set the type of person for that mission set. They have very similar They actually, the Special Operations Command and the Joint Special Operations Command they have similar sleep deprivation selection criterias. They can only keep you up I think, don't hold me to this, but it's about three and a half days you can stay. They have they at some point in the course, whether you're a Green Beret or Navy seal or a force recon marine or whatever it might be, they're going to keep you up for about three and a half days before they put you down for about ten minutes of sleep, give or take UM, because they'll cause permanent brain damage if you go pass something like four days or something like that. I was talking to a special operations psychologist about this several years ago, and he's like, everybody has the same sleep deprivation standard, Like everybody has to do the sleep issue, and sleep is it is a single worst thing for I think to go without it. It hurts your body. It just hurts your body to go through intense physical activity with no food and no sleep. Psychologically, that is so difficult to work through problems and be a conscious team member and all these issues that you run into. UM. It physically hurts to go without sleep, and then you pile in all the other things with that. It doesn't surprise me that the most of the people that try these courses they just don't make it because it's it's devastating in it. Even to to this day, I can do without sleep, but I don't like it. I don't, I don't. I do not like it. It's not something that I prefer whatsoever. UM, And I've done it, I think my the majority of my adult life. But you know, you take yourself three days and then put yourself down for a ten minute nap, and then do another day twenty four hour cycle, and then put yourself down for another ten minute nap, and then do it again. You're a wreck. You feel like you've been hit by a by a freight train. Uh real quick, what how much do you like to sleep? Now? Now that that's all behind you? Now, I wish I could like that. I that is like one of the things that I really try. I have to be really disciplined with my sleep, my sleep routine, because I was pre built in this era of guys that used to refer to sleep as a crutch. This was it was repeated and beat into your head over and over and over and over again. You're gonna sleep, and your dad sleep as a crutch. Sleep sleep, Sleep is not It's not an option. I've had two plus decades of that. It's only been in the last two and a half years of my life where I have had to be extremely disciplined about getting seven hours of sleep. And now I have to force myself to sleep more because I know the long term health benefits and then the negative attributes of not getting it right. I don't want to have dementia. When I'm sixty, I don't want Alzheimer's. You know, your recovery cycles are faster. There is such a big difference between five and a half hours and me and seven and a half hours of sleep. See, it's it's miles of difference between worman's, especially when I've got all the responsibilities of the company and a few other things. I noticed. I noticed those two hours way more than I ever have, and more importantly, now I've got to think about it, concentrate and work on getting more. Yeah, that's uh, well, I've been sleeping my ass off now because this, you know, all this quarantine stuff going on. I'm starting I was telling my wife the other day, I feel like I'm getting soft man. We've been sleeping at least eight hours every night, which is like, I'm I'm I need to end it, just because I don't want to have that become, ah such an important thing for me. Well, uh, just just what Evans said, You're gonna do the opposite now, dude. Yeah, Well, hey, what year was all this going on? And you were like, like, were you? Um give me the timeline relative to the nine eleven attacks. Um. I had graduated the key course in the summer of two thousand so you were like you were ready to roll, Yeah, right after September eleventh. A few days, not a few days, a few months. I went to the Philippines on our first rotation, which was a War on Terror rotation. And then from the Philippines I went to Kuwait and preparation for Operation Iraqi Freedom, and I did the invasion of Iraqi Freedom, which was March A, two thousand three. So, uh, I was, I was graduating and then going straight into the to the to the mix. Did you spend a lot of time in Afghanistan as well? M M only about two and a half years total, I would imagine, give or take the majority of my time because I I was, it was with special forces in the invasion of Iraq, and then I went to work um two thousand five late two thousand five for the for the CIA. Then I spent uh the next nine years there. So I was deployed the majority of my from from two thousand two to two thousand fourteen, the majority of those years I was, I was deployed either to Iraq or Afghanistan. For give or TAKEI plus days a year. Is the work you were doing with the this kind of I'm anticipating this is a dumb question, but maybe I'll be surprised it's not a dumb question. Is the work you were doing with the c I a like fundamentally different than the work you're doing with the military. Was it just like a whole other skill set or was it sort of a continuation of what you skills you had acquired and we're putting to use combination? Is it? Green Beret you kind of learn a lot about the you know, the art of combat, and then you start to put it into practice in real combat, and then you start to develop and curate other skills that are in the combat environment. So not every one of your skills and in combat is direct fighting, right, So it's not just taking task to the enemy. It's surveillance, countersurveillance, it's asset management, so it's information collection. Uh, but you have to be proficient in operating in a combat zone because it's a unique environment. It's a lot like hunting. If you go out and hunt for the first time, and I mean you guys think back to think about yourselves if you'd never hunted, or you've hunted with a person that's never hunted before there, their gears all messed up, they walk too loud, they don't understand when it's a totally different experience. Combat is so much and living in a combat zone is so much like that. You have to learn the environment and you have to kind of learned how to even survive in that environment, and then you can apply the skills of just survival to being able to thrive in that environment and then excel towards mission accomplishment or mission success um. So it's a different set, but it requires the previous skills, if that makes sense. I imagine that you end up um imatually spend You end up with in an in ordamate amount of time UM, feeling at risk if you had to when you when you imagine that all those years spent war zones, UM, is the amount of time that you felt like that heightened sense of being at risk? Is that? Uh? When you think about it now, is it was it minutes? Was hours? Was it years? Um? It's it's interesting because you're body gets acclimated to it UM. And it's if you guys, you guys have run like big rivers I would imagine, or didn't really well a bit. Yeah, I've done it. Yeah, I mean not like you, but yeah, I've done stuff where are very aware of the very aware of risk. So but as you start to run and you get more proficient, you're tolerance starts to go up because you're more proficient, you're more confident. And then you start going through stuff where they're like, oh, that's no big deal, or you're doing a you know, a climb, or you're you're roping off on something, and you just kind of get a greater amount of tolerance towards risk. Your body starts to acclimate against it, and then you're only really heightened when you're being shot at. But even then it's not like the first time you were shot at, if that makes sense. Um, So you just get your body starts to acclimate and adapt. So I've got I got the best sleep of my life. When I was down range, we'd live in these shipping containers. I would crank the A C unit and block off all the light and I could sleep for eight ten hours. I can't do that today. Um, but it definitely is one of those things where the first couple of years Baghdad, Iraq and Ramadhi those places in two thousand five, two thousand and six. It was, um, it was so active all the time. There were car bombs and I E. D S going off every day, and not just a little, just a few. Um, these were really the most dangerous places in the world, and they were targeting Americans every day with complex attacks and I E. D S. So you got used to being out in the city and and fighting. I remember very distinctly sitting multiple times going, Oh, that's not my gunfight over there, so I can just kind of watch it, um or that's not my ambush. I'm not in that ambush, so which it's such a weird mentality when you think about it. I'd be on the road. It's not my ambush, all right. I Gonna be back here drinking coffee until this ambush comes to me, I guess. And you know those cities at those time frames, uh there. I don't know of any other more dangerous kind of work you could do. And the more complex environment Bagdad oh five oh six, and mosl and where I was there at eight oh nine, by far, they were what I call the most spicy. They were they were the spicy cities. So that of that country, and you're just living in it. We just kind of learned to adapt your environment. You just live in it. You if you think about it, it'll just eat you alive, and you won't you won't actually be able to to conduct your profession. At what point, um, maybe it was all the time, did you start thinking like, Man, when I'm done doing this ship, I'm gonna blank, Like, I'm just gonna hunt fish. That's it. Yeah, I'm gonna start making roasted coffee. Like like, how do you, um, how did you become aware of the sort of afterlife? You know? I didn't. I didn't plan for past thirty, which is always kind of a a morbid thing for people to hear. But I didn't plan past thirty. So past thirty I kind of had to develop a new plan. Oh so if I'm gonna be around for a while, I'm gonna have to try to figure my ship out as an adult. Um, And then I started having those thoughts. It wasn't until I went met my wife where I decided that. And it was much like year in life. I was like thirty six thirty seven. I wanted to have kids, and I wanted to have a family. Did you always know did you always know you were gonna have kids. No, I after after thirty, I didn't plan for anything. I thought that I truly didn't think that I was going to leave iraqra Afghanistan. Um. You mean you didn't think you're gonna leave alive or you just thought that the war would go on forever. No, I didn't. I didn't. I didn't think I was gonna leave alive. I didn't make plans for for for post military post c I A. And if I did, my thoughts were in what was I going to do? Is a Special Operations guy or a CIA guy at at forty or fifty? It wasn't until um, it wasn't until probably thirty six, thirty seven, And honestly it was it was. It was. I was on the middle Fork of the Salmon. I just come back from Afghanistan. Um, and the middle Fork of the Salmon is in the Church wilderness areas I'm sure you're familiar with, because it's just west of you guys and boze men. And I'd rode down the river with my buddy, and I've done two trips back to back, so I've spent about fourteen days in the river. And I realized I was like I've got to get out of the life that I'm in, and I've got to repatriate myself into the mountains. I had had such a long road in deserts and in places where people wanted to kill me. Um, it was really hard for me to even unplug and enjoy the wilderness. And that was like it was strange to me. It felt really really foreign, and I didn't want to live with that anymore. I really didn't. When you're when you're dead and your callous and you can't enjoy you know, snow tipped ridgeline or you know, a simple track somewhere and you can't take enjoyment and in those things. Um. It took me about fourteen days to kind of strip away that and realize I gotta I gotta do something a little bit different with my life and get back to the things that I really really loved. And it wasn't even two years past that point, it was it probably wasn't even eighteen months. I started chopping everything away, and the agency think God told me that they didn't want me to work for them either, and I didn't want to work for them, and it was like it was perfect, which is a plight way of me saying that I got fired, but everybody gets fired from there, so I don't I don't feel this is normal to get fired. Yeah. Nine, you know, I'm when I say it's normal, man, that they have a you know, it's a it's an interesting place to work, but it's it's it's very political. I'm not a political animal. Like I can't survive in political environments. It's not it's not something that can do. I'm not a careerist. And I knew that. I know, I knew that, and so did the people working around me. I'm curious. We say, um, a political environment, what do you mean by that? Do you mean like politics like uh, yeah, like like politics like how we understand politics to be. Or do you mean like political like in terms of people plotting and scheming. I don't even know. It's not even that you've got to And I think this is true with the corporate environment just in general. You've got people that are and you guys understand this too. You've got the mission first, people that are all about accomplishing the goals of the company for the company with team effort and unity. You have people that are serving the country that are the most patriotic and driven people in America, and they are they need all the you know, love and support and appreciation we can with that put put onto them. Then you have the me first people. And these are people where you know, maybe they were picked on as a kid or whatever, and they think that working at a working for an acronym will make them a better person. Right, So because I work at the CIA and I get this next promotion, uh, that will define me as a human being. And so everything is about me and making sure that they are the ones that eat first. They are the ones that are you know, promoted and receiving the accolades. And you have it, the silent majority that our mission first. Unfortunately, the missions and the mees come in conflict a lot because they just they come into conflict a lot. And uh, there's just a lot of and that's just I think true and in general with government bureaucracies at times when you have people that are more concerned with their career than they are with the mission and the men, and it's unfortunate, but it's it's true. But that's not the majority. It's it's definitely not the majority. Earlier we talked about getting interesting coffee and you kind of just mentioned you'd like the roast coffee. Yeah, but uh like in more detail, how did this whole thing happened. There's a lot of people like the roll. There's a lot of people like the roast coffee. I'm not one of them, but I understand there'll be a lot of them. And they don't all have a big coffee company now, which is weird because it's a whole other thing. My buddy and I were joking around and he's he's up here at the ranch with me. He's like, man, you're you're kind of seen as like the man now and I'm like, what what do you like? You know, what are you talking about? It's like you're kind of a bigger company, and I'm like, God, I don't feel like it. I still feel like the same guy that was roasting coffee in my garage. But to go back, I started getting really into coffee because I loved coffee, um and I started roasting it because I couldn't get fresh roasted coffee down range. I could get this like old, stale, nasty coffee. I can get that shipped out. But I was like, you know what, I'll just buy a little roaster. It'll be a really cool hobby. You know, a lot of guys are you know, they do random stuff where you know, they're like fletching arrows or whatever they do, right, Like, coffee roasting was somewhat like that for me. I would come home, I would experiment with a bunch of different roasts. I was learning about the profiles, and it allowed me to kind of completely disconnect from the professional is into and just kind of dive into something that was a little bit more of of of a curated I guess interest that I could drink. And a lot of this was just being able to take coffees that I truly loved and take them with me. So I would have these epic cups of coffee that I would roast and spend a lot of time with, and I would take them out and you know, be fly fishing in northern Idaho or Montana somewhere, and I would be using my jet boiler, my MSR or whatever it was. I'd make these incredible cups of coffee and then I would take that same roast, poor file, and I would take it with me to Iraq, the shittiest place on Earth, right, and I would go. I would get up in the morning and have a cup of coffee and it would remind me of you know, the you know, the north fork of the clear Water Kelly Creek, or you know, remind me of these beautiful rivers that are amazing and that experience that I had on the on on the river bank. But I could get that in the mornings in Iraq, and honestly it would it would allow me a little bit of psychological comfort in a connection to home and those specific places. They kind of just allowed me to continue to operate, and then I just got more and more interested in it. Um you know what you eventually, when you're hanging out with all these uh, you know, hanging out with all these war fighters, you know and like super tough people, and you talked about learning how to suffer, was there like a joke how I'm sorry, Like I like coffee a lot too. Yeah, but it was there, the joke that's kind of this like fussy sort of a feat like people were people kind of like what all the time, man, there's a big difference between fletching arrows and roasting coffee. Yeah, all the time, all the time. So that then it didn't go unnoticed. No, it didn't go unnoticed. I I it was. It was a joke. It was like hayfer is got this weird thing with coffee. But the thing that is is people could come over where, you know, my little hooch was and they knew. You know, one of my other buddies, who's a great guys, is former CEO V Diamond. He and I were coffee hardcore coffee heads, and we would make these little coffee you know areas and each one of our bases. Well, everybody likes good coffee. No, I don't know if anybody unless they don't drink it, right, everybody loves good coffee. I know a couple of people that don't. Yeah, in Utah, there's a few people that don't even do Um No, I mean, I don't mean like that they don't like coffee. But for instance, my mother's husband, UM just doesn't like He drinks a lot of coffee, but he just insists on it being very He likes folgiers and he likes it to look like tea. That's like the old school. The guys that are from the old school. My grandpa would take these two you know, those green Stanley Thermis is they then they just roll roll around the bottom of the truck that the f one fit dea in the mountains and just they're just beat. They got dense all over them. Almost all the green is rubbed off. They're almost like the shiny steel wool or or stainless steel. My grandpa would make the same crap. You could look through the bottom of the top of the glass and see, you know, twelve inches below you could see the bottom of the cup. Right, It's just it was horrible and it is horrible. So but that's the that's the old school. I know, if I go anywhere, I've I've trained my dad to drink better coffee now. But if I go anywhere with my uncle's man, I can't. I can't even entertain the idea of opening up that stanley and pouring a cup of coffee. It's just horrible. It's nasty. I wonder where that originated, right, because you still see it in like ranching communities. Like if you just stop in at some random ranch house and they invite you in, like your that's probably the cup of coffee you're gonna get, right, because it is it a depression era thing where well we can't use too much of this because we needed to last longer. I would imagine, yeah, I would imagine. The hardest guy I've ever met in my life was never a Green barret or Navy seal. He's a guy, rusty, rusty bents. He's a guy from louis and Idaho. The guy would only drink coffee as far as I know, I don't know if he ever even had he's had a glass of water. He could run full sprint up the and you guys, know these guys, you can run full sprint up a ridgeline in white's boots after a cat with a with his dogs, and I would be, you know, I'm running like fifty miles, you know, fifty miles. I'm like a hardcore Green Beret. And he'd be putting me in the in the ground in the mountains. He's just running on coffee. It's like the hardest guy on the planet. He's seventy years old. He could probably still humpt me into the ground, you know what I mean. Like these guys, like the old school mountain mountain guys that we've all you know, come into contact with, Like there's there's the hardest some of the hardest people on the planet. And I don't know if they just survive on weak coffee, which is that's how they hydrate. But I don't know. I've thought about it a lot though, because those people are there's a lot of hard people out there, so and they're they're not seals. Hit me with the hit me with the basic chronology of how you but how you went from hobby coffee or else through too But what was the first time you sold some right? Like what like what was your first transaction? Oh, that's that was two thousand fourteen. I teamed up with my buddy Matt. He was making these stupid videos on the internet. We still do, and that's what that's what we kind of do. And uh, he was working at the CIA, I was working at the CIA, and we were introduced to one another and we both have this a similar sense of humor which is kind of messed up. And he um, He's like, yeah, I've got this T shirt company called Article fifteen Clothing, which that's a reference to getting trouble in the military, and uh, you know, maybe we should roast coffee. And I was it was a gall UT's roast some coffee for for you so I started roasting their coffee first, and so I roasted like five pounds of coffee for them. And then I said, you know what, I think I'm gonna do this online. And I was really interested in figuring out. I didn't know how to build a website, do not how to do product photography, but I knew that I wanted to have a business that allowed me to explore coffee. That's that's really what I wanted. And so I built all of that stuff because I was fascinated with it. I took my product photos, built a website, you know, started tinking around with how to market and put out even like really bad videos, and and then I started selling coffee. Really, my first transaction was January two fift as my first facial Black Life of Coffee transaction. And man, it's blown up since then. Now we have two employees. That's incredible. Man, it's it's insane, Like it's insane, like I'm you know, to come back from Wark, have all your fingers and toes. I'm a really lucky guy. Like I mean, I'm a very very fortunate and lucky guy for a laundry list of reasons. What's your guys, what's your guys policy on I know you have shiploads of vets that work for you, but what's your Is there a formal policy or you just try to lean that direction as much as you can lean that direction, Like explain that all. Uh, Well I said about fifty hiring rate for veterans. Um. You know, as we've grown the company, I've had to pull in civilian help because they they just know more about a lot of different thingspecially when it comes to finance and operational efficiencies. UM. So when we say it's our official we we do have a veterans preference, and we try in the hiring process if everybody's created equal in a resume, we try to put veterans in the shoot against non veterans, uh in a in a in a more proficient way, so we understand how to read their resumes, we understand their work experience, and we might take on people that don't necessarily have the definitive qualifications for a role, but I might want to see them there in you know, a hundred eighty or two hundred and seventy days, right, So we'll take on people that we we just want to grow into those positions. So I'm trying to be more patient in the way that we hire and then I want, you know, civilians kind of adapt more to a military culture versus the reverse is true with most veterans, which is they sit it like, you know, five percent give or take in some companies, which is high for a lot of companies, But they have to adapt to civilian When I say there their lingo. We use a lot of acronyms out here. I do mission planning here for the company, and that's my corporate planning. So everybody has to adapt to the way that we do company planning the way the military did it. We run military We run military structured meetings and briefings, which is kind of crazy for a lot of civilians because they're like, what in the hell are you guys doing, Like we don't understand, Like, yeah, what do you think it feels like to be a new guy going into the corporate world, stepping into ge for the first time, and you've been, you know, running missions in Ramadi. You're trying to learn as fast as you can because you don't understand what they're talking about. What does the SWAT analysis? What are you talking about? What's a cost per you know acquisition, I don't know, right, So once you dial in your lingo and your recruitment piece, uh, it becomes pretty easy that that's that's the way that we attract people and the people that we we hire and put into positions. You know, you just made an interesting point, man um. I was looking at some resumes recently and and two of them three counting Coast Guard. Three of them had military experience. And it's funny you just mentioned that bext. I didn't realize that wasn't able to do it. All it registered one of the does the explanation, okay, what they did for these years? All it registered in my head was military, right. I had no way to look at it and be like, oh yeah, I could picture that skill set right, And it was like, but but now, what I realized about myself is I didn't even give it the time to go find out meeting any other job, any sort of job in the professional sector or whatever private sector. I would have been like, oh yeah, I could picture with that entails like I I I see that he must he or she must be um proficient at X, Y and Z to have done that. But with the military stuff, I'm like, oh, military yeah, don't I But I don't know. It's the same thing if I I used to be I was I was. I was looking for a chief financial officer a couple of years ago, and my partner had to explain to me even what a CFO dead. So he's just like, hey, man, you and I've I've got a great partner. I've got a couple of great partners. But they they've they've had to really unpack and organized information for me, and it's been extremely helpful because I can read a military resume of the time, I can tell you plus or minus tempercent efficiency? What that what that job really was? Right? What there's the definition to what it is, and then what does it mean when you're actually executing on it. Uh. Whereas if you're a couple of years ago, if you were to ask me to build a financer and operations department, I would have been like, alright, man, I'm gonna I'm gonna grab some people and hopefully they can help me figure it out. And that's kind of where my head has been in the last few years. Like I said, I've been pretty lucky growing the company to not have too many, you know, massive head injuries when it's been hiring people. Um, but so still not without its mistakes, that's for sure. Yanni's got a question for you. Popped up on my screen. Here. Me and Yanni communicate through little messages. I didn't even see him type. Are you just thinking? Evan's on that same doctor developed Johanni developed the ability just to think into his computer. He's he's working, he's working on that software. Go ahead, UM, I was gonna ask this in your testing of making coffee and trying to get the right bruise and whatnot, just being a coffee connoisseur, like, have you ever gotten to the point because you're drinking regular caffeinated coffee? Have you ever had too much and had a real issue from drinking too much coffee? Yeah? About once a week, give it takes. Yeah, I when you're really cupping a lot of coffee, so I'll go to country of origin, So I'll go to like Guatemala on Duras, Nicaragua, Columbia, wherever in Um, if you're cupping a lot of coffees, I've made that as mistakes really early, which is you're trying the coffee and you take a little spoon and you're dipping it in, You're you're you're aspirrating it across your tongue to try to pick up all the different different aspects of the coffee. Well, early on, you're supposed to spit that out as you're doing it, because if if you're going to be doing it all day, man, that's just too much coffee. And these are typically lighter roasted coffees, which have more caffeine in them. Well, lighter roast and has more caffeine. Yeah, so a lighter roasted coffee has more caffeine than a darker roasted coffee. Dude, I've always maked my call on how much caffeine I want by I had to ask backward. Yeah, it's super easy to think about because the bean itself, as you're applying heat to it, it's turning into carbon, right, So you're just taking away it's it's integrity and you're putting it into charcoal essentially, because if you over roast it, you're you're you're you're you're pulling the beans going endo thermic, so it's pulling in all this heat and it goes exo thermic, so it's pushing it all out and then eventually it starts to to decompose from the heat. Right, So the darker roasted coffee is less intact of the coffee bean itself, and it starts to take away a percentage of its caffeine as it gets darker roasted. So yeah, if you want, I bet Phil new this. Yeah, that's one thing. That's one of the stupid things kill would know. That's like, that's like film those stuff like that. Philisurpri A is you man, he knows lots of stuff. Not a Twitter bombs principle or whatever the thing as we were talking about earlier principle and Philly, he's good. Go on, So and what was what was your question? I forget how often you drink too much? So early on when I was cutting this stuff, I would just drink it because I'm you know, I'm an idiot when it comes to something it's kind of like the you know, sleep as a crotch and these other things. I'm like, I'm just gonna drink this stuff. And your heart. I've I've had a few points where I think my heart is might come beating out of my chest. And then what happens is you get too much and it makes you sleepy, so you hit a wall. Oh yeah, man, you know the wall, but you come back off the other side. What happens you come back off the other side of the wall for me east is you know you can't really drive through it, but you know you'll you'll go sleepy and then you'll meet Sometimes I'll take like a five or ten minute nap and then I'll come back out of it and I'm just as wired for just as long. So caffeine, obviously, it takes you a long time to metabolize it. I think it's up to eight hours, depending on how much. So if you're drinking all day, what I like to think is I can just acclimate myself to just crazy amounts of caffeine and eventually just power through it. You know. Um Yanni. I don't know if you know this about all Yanni, but he can't drink regular coffee anymore because it's his ticker. Really, he's decalf only. Are you decalf only? Yeah? It triggers a severe ventricular tacardia. Really, how long has that been going on? I saved his life three years? Three years? You saved his life? Yeah? I had to save his life one time. How did you do that? I had to drive him to the doctor. Really, he's had and heart trouble. Wow, let's say so you owe hews his life to me, Steve. Steve might be exaggerated a little bit. Who else, who else is going to drive you down there? Yeah? Drop them all way down the middle. Damn night. Um with all the uh, what's your take on what's going on right now? Man? Like with all the psychologically you know, like like with all the imagine that you had to learn how to deal with a lot of stress. Um is business stress and family stress? Its own brand of stress or it's just do you view stress? Is just stress? Now? It's his own, it's it's its own stress. There are different brands. Yeah, it's heavier. So depending on the type of stress it it carries more weight for me. So light stress, for instance, would be uh, a violent engagement, which sounds crazy, you know, be like, oh violent, because it's it's you're in and you're out right, you're done. The the psychological weight of what's happening right now, because the cross pollination of of anxiety between all these different aspects of your life, between the company, between your family, between you, like this is a big, heavy circumstance that I think we're all living in um it it weighs it's it's one, it's heavier to it weighs more heavily on my psyche, which means I have to spend more time compartmentalizing different aspects. And then essentially what I do is I try to compartmentalize and then took off priorities against how I can solve to decrease the low distress. If that makes need form of sense, No, it does not. I got you, but walk walk through, walk through to stuff or two. Um. So, from my perspective, you have concentric rings of responsibility that you have to ultimately take care of in order to be a more effective as you move out. So myself, I have my internal stress which is compounded by the family and then the business. So what I have to do is I have to say, Okay, what are all the things that I can do individually to make sure that I'm taking care of as far as you know. Did I get enough sleep? Am I eating correctly? Am I taking care of all the things that I need so I can be psychologically comfortable solving the more complex problems? Then okay, what does my family need? My family needs stability, They need a plan they need so that becomes finance, it becomes food, it becomes a laundry list of different items. They need leadership. Uh. When I say that, I've got to be plugged in in a positive influence to the family. So I can't wait. I can't let any of these things affect me to the point where I'm not the the cornerstone of responsibility for my family. And the way that I can do that is by plugging in and being positive every day, like you know, propagating love and in an understanding that my kids and my wife need me to be the guy. That's that's the catalyst too, nothing but good, right. I can't bring any of this negative ship into the house. That's my responsibility. And then what I have to do is I have to balance that way again and say, not only can I not bring any negative things in the house, I have to be the positive injection of influence across my entire family. So I'm way more engaged with my kids than I have been. When I say I'm always engaged with my kids, but my kids get like a thousand percent dad right now, which is I got little ham radios from my kids and I'm you know, doing radio checks, and we're doing like fishing, we're more active in the garden, and I'm getting up in the morning and I'm like super charging them like tickles and stories, the things that mean a lot to them. But sometimes sometimes you don't get to them on your regular work cycle. I'm making sure to hit all those boxes now because they need me to be that guy that make sure that they're not effective negatively in any way as far as their their psychology. There three and six. They can't feel the way to this fucking thing. You know. It's interesting you bring that up because earlier I was like taking some jokes at my own expense about sleeping right now, um, and how much I've been sleeping. But to give a little more depth into that, it was there was also a little bit of a conscious decision there where I do better, Um, I do better as a dad when I don't drink at all. Um, and that I don't. I never drank to the point where like you like you get drunk around your kids. Never, but it would be um the hangovers, right, and hangovers really the first thing that takes a hit is my patients when I'm hungover, and then lack of sleep. It takes a hit at my patients and focus, and so in talking about how I've been sleeping a lot, it was kind of conscientious to sleep a lot through this because it's a lot of stress, and I just thought I'd do better with my family if I was well rested, which has kind of been being true. But we had also have been spent a lot of time talking about, um, this will be a our kids are at a very young impressionable age, and this will be a thing that this this will be a thing they talk about for forever, just because of where they're at in their age and and wess interesting, I was just thinking that my kids by the time they're eighteen, it will just be like a little blip in their early childhood. How old are your kids? Uh, six and eight? I think that the like the year that they didn't go to that they got pulled out of school and we're home schooled, and there was like it was introduced this idea that you have to introduce to him that that there's without trying to use these words, that it's dangerous to go into other people's houses right now, to not go super close to your friends to uh, if you go to the river launch to put in a boat that you don't go over and talk to the dude fishing, right, I feel like this is gonna stick. I feel like it will stick. Um, And so we've really tried to like me and my wife has a couple a little bit of tried to talk about how much h we early on a few weeks ago hit on like that, we're gonna try to switch to I think I talked about this last week. We're gonna try to switch to more of a need to know basis. Yeah, with our kids and um, give them the information they need day and day out, but not uh not spend a whole lot of time talking about different projections from different models and what this might mean, and you know, just try to keep it normal. But there's a lot of not normal. Yeah, there's a lot of not normal. They're not at least for us. You know, we've just decided we don't talk about it. So we don't talk about it around the kids. We don't talk three and six, and I think it's a little bit too young and they can already sense that things are wonky. And you know, when when when we look at it as when my wife and I talked about it. It's at night, so we talked about it at night before we go to bed, and some of the things and how to defects our life. Um. But you know, as kind of going back to where what I was thinking about earlier was I have to go solved for the most part first, and then family and make sure that my family's taken care of and I can start taking care of the company more effectively because once those boxes are full for me, and I'm very kind of a linear thinker in that regard. If I've got everything kind of checked across the board and I'm psychologically comfortable being, you know, a leader and a positive influence, then I can move to the next one. And then I go to my company, and then I go from company to the community. So I have to fill up every one of those and make sure that they're directly proportionate and representing energy. UM. And I think that and not only do I think That's what I put out to my company too, is you know, you have to take care of yourself, your family, the company, and then the community. The community is the last one in the line, but it's not it's not unimportant to us, and we do have to directly consider how we can help others. And I don't want to get on a soapbox, right, but it's you know, if we have psychological stability, leadership, and the things that we're plugged in and we've taken care of, then we need to be out in the community from my company's perspective, trying to inject more positivity and and do good for the people that are in need. So my wife and I were literally just talking about this last week. We're like, we gotta get down and donate blood. We've got to do some of these things that we know are really important, um, that also impact the community outside of what we're doing just for the company. Yeah. Uh, Yanni and I have have for a couple of years now, Um, not because of any particular love for the company at all, but we've plugged up Starbucks via as being an alternative to Noah's Cafe or or Folds Yours Crystals. Yeah, and it changed, like we feel that Starbucks via like fundamentally changed the landscape for backpack backpackers and backpack hunters. Um, I'm switching, no dude, but what walking me through your hunting, your walk me through your product line? Man? Well, you know, it's funny. I I actually did not bring this because we're gonna be on the podcast, but that's what I'm drinking right now is black rifle coffees black powder. Um we. I spent a couple of years on this. You and I were talking about the other day where I didn't have a really a good instant option, and it really annoyed me because I was taking competitors instant options with me, and that's got that's got a burn, right, dude, it's horrible. I was I was doing I was doing the lightweight uh fly fishing trip in in ast Yellowstone, and I was carrying a competitor's coffee with me because I was more concerned with shaving the Grahams than I was with with making my own coffee. And so I spent a couple of years really trying to work on my instant um and I would say it is the best instant out there. Obviously I'm biased, but it took me a long time. I had to go there's only a few different companies that do what's called micro grinding, so they actually grind real coffee into the instant coffee. It's a combination of freeze drying in micro grinds that are ultimately put together to make the best instant coffee. Other instant coffees a lot. They can be just kind of an amalgamation of different chemicals that make a taste profile similar to coffee. So um, we really, when I say we, we spent a lot of time on this product. The other product that I came out with for packing hunting specifically was tea bags, So the standard old looking tea bag, but we filled them with coffee and we've got a different filtration paper system so you can dip it and create you know, a dark cup of coffee or a light cup of coffee, depending on where you where you want to land that. Uh. And then of course I've got like poor over devices and all these other things. I'm the guy that develops all those products for the for the most part, when I say any product that you see from Black Rifle Coffee, there's there's two names on the lower right hand corner, and there's either my name, which is about of the products, and then there's Matt best name and and he's he's contributing a good portion of what we do on the product line as well. So I do all the coffees though, so I do all the coffee. Percent of any coffee I profile it, I cut it. I not only do that, but I cut I cut it against the specs every year. So I cut every one of our profiles against my original specs in my original notes that I developed some of these profiles in two thousand eight, So I cut it against my original notes from two thousands to make sure you didn't get like mission creep exactly. Yeah, and if there is, then it's intentional. I've changed it intentionally. And then, uh, you guys got a good decalf for all your honese here, Yeah, yeah, yeah, we do. I do. Uh. It's a decalf um, and we do it a couple of different options, but it's a Swiss water Colombian decalf. A lot of people, you know that because of our marketing. They think we're just good marketers and like, man, I'm we have. I have a roaster in Nashville that I built last year. I have a roaster in Salt Lake City. We go direct to source. I've got direct farm relationships with the majority of my coffees. I have what's called Q graders, which are like roaster Matt roaster mast masters, roastmasters. There were roastmasters Q graders in the company myself, like, so we we really take pride in those two things, like roasting coffee and creating great marketing and then you know, I think everything else kind of takes care of itself at the end of the day. Is there a decaf in the instant too? But there will be in September, depending the depending the you know, as we look at manufacturing dates continuing to be pushed back, uh, you know, based on shutdowns across the United States, I'm hoping that it's going to be in September. Like last ELK season, I did it um uh. It was a Costa Rican black honey and I called it Flying Elk for Elk season. Um In this year, I'm doing a Flying Elk two point oh during Elk seasons. So every year I kind of cure eight different coffees for different seasons as well, so they're they're different. And I took one to Moose Camp this year, which was pretty isn't It is amazing a cup of coffee, But it's so funny because you're out in like you know, an old trapper cabin with a bunchel you know, salty guides and your hand grinding coffee and bring it up to temperature. Like, what are you doing? Man? It just makes some coffee. Come on. Well, man, it's terrible that we're not like normally we'd be sitting there hanging out. But we'll have to put that on home. We could have a cup of coffee. We'd be having a cup of coffee together. I know I love making it, so i'd be in there like in the studio, gund hand grinding and stuff. I can. I can smell you probably weigh it per cup, don't you have? I do? Yeah, I have, I have have. I waited every day, every cop It doesn't matter what it is. So it's all proper water to coffee ratios based on gram weight and also temperature of water. All right, we're gonna I just lost audience. You did. I'll just be mindful. No, no, don't. I don't mean that. I just mean I'm just disappointed because i'd like to well, I want to hang out. I want to hang out some time and do something fun. Um, and I'm just feeling like psychologically, I'm we called our last episode. I missed my friends. Um, it's just I didn't realize that it would be so hard for me, but it'd be cool. Yeah, I'd like to meet you sometime and hang out. I appreciate you coming on the show. I would love to. I mean two more seconds in my rambling. But I'm a huge fan of the show, guys, Like, I love what you guys do over there. Um, you know, I watched like Tossbod I think I was telling you that on via text. I was like, that's the best show. My daughters watch it. Uh So either way, Like, I mean, I would love to hang out with you guys. I it's a huge honor to be here because you're you're you're creating some of the best content on the Internet. And I don't say that too hardly anybody, but yeah, man, enjoy your time. So your hold up in Texas. I'm hold up for the at least the next six weeks. We're gonna just flat the curve with the family and uh I'm I'm I'm here in San Antonio. I'm gonna be hunting with with my daughter. Is pretty much hunt effishing every day with the daughters and making sure the company stays on the tracks. Good. Have a good Turkey hunt. Tonight. I'll try. I can't get back up there, you guys, I'll I'll definitely try to hit you up so I can come in because i'd love to see you guys in person. Yeah, we'd like to have you are. Our open day of Turkey season is getting um ram routed by a snow storm. But we'll see how that goes. So seriously, it's bad. It's been beautiful, man, But like Saturday, this goes to hell. So we'll climb out. We have a long season, will be good. Good, all right, thank you, very thank you very much for coming on. We're gonna resuse this, all this bullshit ends. We're gonna reschedule you and get you up. Yeah, I can't wait. I would love to thank you, Evan, Evan, hey for everyone. Black Rifle Coffee Company, Oh, should we find out where we can get some black Rifle Steve, if we wanted to try some out, ye, give me a give me a pitch or tell people how to tell people how to find you. Yeah, go to Black Rifle Coffee dot com. Join the club. There's no better way to experience Black Raft of Coffee than joining the Black Raft of Coffee subscription. There it is well done there, it is okay, thank you very much man. Thanks guys see it