297: "I Can Make That Work." Reigniting American Industry

0:00:00 - Opening 0:16:24 - Pete Roberts from Origin USA. 1:46:28 - Final thoughts 1:49:44 - How to stay on THE PATH. 2:14:57 - Closing gratitude. Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/jocko-podcast/exclusive-content

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Jocko Willink?

  This is Jocko Podcast number 297 with Echo Charles and me Jocko Willink. Good evening Echo. Good evening.

• 0:09Jocko Willink?

  I was walking through Washington Square when a puff of smoke issuing from the factory building caught my eye. I reached the building before the alarm was turned in.

• 0:20Jocko Willink?

  I saw every feature of the tragedy visible from outside the building.

• 0:26Jocko Willink?

  I learned a new sound.

• 0:29Jocko Willink?

  A more horrible sound than description can picture.

• 0:34Jocko Willink?

  It was the thud of a speeding living body on a stone sidewalk. Thud. Dead. Thud. Dead. Thud. Dead. Sixty-two thud. Deads.

• 0:54Jocko Willink?

  I call them that because the sound and the thought of death came to me each time at the same instant.

• 1:03Jocko Willink?

  There was plenty of chance to watch them as they came down.

• 1:07Jocko Willink?

  The height was eighty feet.

• 1:11Jocko Willink?

  The first ten thud deads shocked me.

• 1:16Jocko Willink?

  I looked up. Saw that there were scores of girls at the windows.

• 1:23Jocko Willink?

  The flames from the floor below were beating in their faces.

• 1:30Jocko Willink?

  Somehow I knew that they too must come down. And something within me. Something that I didn't know was there steeled me.

• 1:42Jocko Willink?

  I even watched one girl falling waving her arms trying to keep her body upright until the very instant she struck the sidewalk.

• 1:53Jocko Willink?

  She was trying to balance herself.

• 1:57Jocko Willink?

  Then came the thud.

• 2:00Jocko Willink?

  A silent unmoving pile of clothing and twisted broken limbs.

• 2:08Jocko Willink?

  As I reached the scene of the fire, a cloud of smoke hung over the building. I looked up to the seventh floor.

• 2:17Jocko Willink?

  There was a living picture in each window, four screaming heads of girls waving their arms.

• 2:24Jocko Willink?

  "Call the firemen", they screamed, scores of them. "Get a ladder", cried others.

• 2:31Jocko Willink?

  They were all as alive and whole and sound as were we who stood on the sidewalk.

• 2:39Jocko Willink?

  I couldn't help thinking of that.

• 2:43Jocko Willink?

  We cried to them not to jump. We heard the siren of a fire engine in the distance. The others, the other sirens sounded from several directions. "Here they come", we yelled. "Don't jump, stay there."

• 3:00Jocko Willink?

  One girl climbed out on the window sash.

• 3:04Jocko Willink?

  Those behind her tried to hold her back.

• 3:09Jocko Willink?

  Then she dropped into space.

• 3:13Jocko Willink?

  I didn't notice whether those above watched her drop because I had turned away.

• 3:19Jocko Willink?

  Then came that first thud.

• 3:23Jocko Willink?

  I looked up, another girl was climbing onto the window sill. Others were crowding behind her. She dropped.

• 3:32Jocko Willink?

  I watched her fall, again the dreadful sound.

• 3:37Jocko Willink?

  Two windows away, two girls were climbing onto the sill. They were fighting each other and crowding for air. Behind them I saw many screaming heads. They almost fell together. But I heard two distinct thuds.

• 3:54Jocko Willink?

  Then the flames burst out of the windows on the floor below them. And curled up into their faces.

• 4:01Jocko Willink?

  The firemen began to raise a ladder. Others took out a life net and while they were rushing to the sidewalk with it, two more girls shot down.

• 4:15Jocko Willink?

  The firemen held it under them.

• 4:19Jocko Willink?

  The bodies broke it. The grotesque simile of a dog jumping through a hoop struck me. Before they could move the net, another girl's body flashed through it.

• 4:34Jocko Willink?

  The thuds were just as loud. It seemed as if there had been no net there.

• 4:42Jocko Willink?

  It seemed to me that the thuds were so loud that they might have been heard all over the city.

• 4:48Jocko Willink?

  I had counted ten. Then my dulled senses began to work automatically. I noticed things that it had not occurred to me before to notice, little details that the first shock had blinded me to.

• 5:05Jocko Willink?

  I looked up to see whether those above watched those who fell.

• 5:10Jocko Willink?

  I noticed that they did.

• 5:13Jocko Willink?

  They watched them every inch of the way down and probably heard the roaring thuds that we heard.

• 5:22Jocko Willink?

  As I looked up, I saw a love affair in the midst of all the horror.

• 5:28Jocko Willink?

  A young man helped a girl to the window sill.

• 5:32Jocko Willink?

  Then he held her out deliberately away from the building

• 5:37Jocko Willink?

  and let her drop.

• 5:40Jocko Willink?

  He seemed cool and calculating. He held out a second girl the same way and let her drop.

• 5:48Jocko Willink?

  Then he held out a third girl who did not resist. I noticed that.

• 5:54Jocko Willink?

  They were as unresisting as if you were helping them onto a streetcar instead of into eternity.

• 6:02Jocko Willink?

  Undoubtedly, he saw that a terrible death awaited them in the flames and his was only a terrible chivalry.

• 6:15Jocko Willink?

  Then came the love amid the flames. He brought another girl to the window. Those of us who were looking saw her put her arms about him and kiss him.

• 6:29Jocko Willink?

  Then he held her out into space and dropped her.

• 6:34Jocko Willink?

  But quick as a flash, he was on the windowsill himself. His coat fluttered upward, the air filled his trouser legs.

• 6:45Jocko Willink?

  I could see that he wore tan shoes and hose. His hat remained on his head.

• 6:53Jocko Willink?

  Thud dead, thud dead. Together they went into eternity.

• 7:01Jocko Willink?

  I saw his face before they covered it. You could see in it that he was a real man.

• 7:09Jocko Willink?

  He had done his best.

• 7:14Jocko Willink?

  We found out later that in the room which he stood, many girls were being burned to death by the flames and were screaming in an inferno of flame and heat.

• 7:26Jocko Willink?

  He chose the easiest way and was brave enough to even help the girl he loved to a quicker death after she'd given him a goodbye kiss.

• 7:38Jocko Willink?

  He leaped with an energy as if to arrive first in that mysterious land of eternity.

• 7:45Jocko Willink?

  But her thud dead came first.

• 7:51Jocko Willink?

  The fireman raised the longest ladder. It reached only to the sixth floor.

• 7:58Jocko Willink?

  I saw the last girl jump and miss it.

• 8:04Jocko Willink?

  And then the faces disappeared from the window.

• 8:08Jocko Willink?

  But now the crowd was enormous, though all this had occurred in less than seven minutes, the start of the fire and the thuds and the deaths. I heard screams around the corner and hurried there.

• 8:20Jocko Willink?

  What I had seen before was not so terrible as what followed.

• 8:27Jocko Willink?

  Up in the ninth floor, girls were burning to death before our very eyes.

• 8:35Jocko Willink?

  They were jammed in the windows.

• 8:38Jocko Willink?

  No one was lucky enough to be able to jump, it seemed.

• 8:43Jocko Willink?

  But one by one, the jams broke, down came the bodies in a shower, burning, smoking, flaming bodies with disheveled hair trailing upward.

• 8:57Jocko Willink?

  They had fought each other to die by jumping instead of fire.

• 9:03Jocko Willink?

  The whole sound. Unharmed girls who had jumped on the other side of the building had tried to fall feet down.

• 9:14Jocko Willink?

  But these fire torchers suffering ones fell inertly. Only intent that death should come to them on the sidewalk instead of in the furnace behind them.

• 9:28Jocko Willink?

  On the sidewalk lay heaps of broken bodies.

• 9:33Jocko Willink?

  A policeman later went about with tags which he fastened with wires to the wrists of the dead girls numbering each with a lead pencil. And I saw him fasten tag number fifty-four to the wrist of a girl who wore an engagement ring.

• 9:51Jocko Willink?

  A fireman who came down the stairs from the building told me that there were at least fifty bodies in the big room on the seventh floor.

• 9:59Jocko Willink?

  Another fireman told me that more girls had jumped down the air shaft at the rear of the building.

• 10:07Jocko Willink?

  I went back there into the narrow court and saw heaps of dead girls.

• 10:15Jocko Willink?

  The floods of water from the fireman's hose that ran into the gutter were actually stained red with blood.

• 10:25Jocko Willink?

  I looked upon the heap of dead bodies and I remembered these girls were shirtwaist makers.

• 10:33Jocko Willink?

  I remembered their great strike of last year in which these same girls had demanded more sanitary conditions and more safety precautions in the shops.

• 10:44Jocko Willink?

  These dead bodies were the answer.

• 10:55Jocko Willink?

  And that is

• 10:58Jocko Willink?

  an article. First person account, obviously. About the nightmare of a fire.

• 11:07Jocko Willink?

  At the Triangle Shirtwaist Company in Greenwich Village, New York City.

• 11:13Jocko Willink?

  And the story came from United Press reporter William Shepherd, who happened to be there.

• 11:20Jocko Willink?

  Just watching the disaster unfold and who phoned in the details. To a young newspaper employee by the name of Roy Howard, who telegraphed the story to the nation's newspapers. And that article was first published in the Milwaukee Journal, March 27, 1911.

• 11:41Jocko Willink?

  And the fire killed 146 garment workers.

• 11:46Jocko Willink?

  123 women. 23 men.

• 11:51Jocko Willink?

  The oldest victim was 43 years old, the youngest 14 years old.

• 11:58Jocko Willink?

  Many were recent Italian or Jewish immigrants.

• 12:06Jocko Willink?

  And part of the reason that they were up there, even as this fire consumed the building is that many of the doors to the stairwells and the exit doors in the factory were locked shut.

• 12:19Jocko Willink?

  In order to prevent workers from taking unauthorized breaks or stop them from maybe stealing some of the goods that they were making.

• 12:35Jocko Willink?

  Just a complete nightmare.

• 12:41Jocko Willink?

  And we try and find some.

• 12:44Jocko Willink?

  Some good in that story, if there is any to be found. It's that that fire led to eventual improvements of safety standards in these types of factories. And this singular event was a catalyst for massive growth, growth of the International Ladies Garment Workers Union. And that union got together and fought and were successful in improving working conditions in these types of sweatshops. And over time in America, these conditions did improve.

• 13:25Jocko Willink?

  And this is also a story of the incredible sacrifices that American workers have made over time to build this great country and to build our great economy.

• 13:40Jocko Willink?

  And if you look universally, you can see improvements in the conditions that people work in in America. But we have to remember that there are other areas of the world

• 13:50Jocko Willink?

  that have not made any of these improvements. And much of the labor conditions overseas,

• 13:59Jocko Willink?

  especially when it comes to garment industry, is the conditions are still brutal.

• 14:06Jocko Willink?

  There's a group called Anti-Slavery International.

• 14:11Jocko Willink?

  And they report that about a fifth of the cotton production in the world can be linked to forced labor.

• 14:23Jocko Willink?

  For example, much of the forced labor in China, those are ethnic Uighurs. Those are the, those are the slaves over in China. No safety training, no safety protocol. Exposure to harmful chemical, bad air, extreme work hours, nine to 12 hours a day, six days a week.

• 14:52Jocko Willink?

  It's bad.

• 14:56Jocko Willink?

  Conditions that are illegal in this country. But it's the standard overseas in many places. And why am I talking about this? Because.

• 15:09Jocko Willink?

  Well, because we have been trying to do something about it and we actually have been doing something about it. For a few years.

• 15:18Jocko Willink?

  Who's we? It's well, it's myself. And the rest of the incredible team, including. The team that actually works the machines at Origin USA. Incredible group.

• 15:35Jocko Willink?

  That gets this work done.

• 15:39Jocko Willink?

  And takes pride in this work.

• 15:43Jocko Willink?

  And the team at Origin USA and Jaco Fuel. Is who's making a difference right now. And that includes my main partner. In these two endeavors.

• 15:56Jocko Willink?

  Pete Roberts. And he is here once again. To get us up to date. On this fight.

• 16:05Jocko Willink?

  This fight to. Improve the condition of manufacturing. And bring it back to America where we have.

• 16:17Jocko Willink?

  A positive work environment. We have a good work environment. We have a work environment where when you walk the floors. You have people with pride and smiles on their faces. In the job that they're doing. So. Pete. Thanks for coming back, man. Um, it's been a while. Happy to be back. It's been way too long. Well, if you haven't listened to, so you, you first came on the podcast was Podcast 93. You on Podcast 93, Podcast 141, Podcast 94. Those are about a year apart each. September 2017, September 2018, September 2019 is when they came out. We recorded them all in late August, which is right now.

• 17:00Jocko Willink?

  Late August 2021, we're recording this. We, we've recorded all of them at the Origin Jiu Jitsu Camp, Immersion Camp up here in Maine.

• 17:10Jocko Willink?

  And we didn't record last year at all. Because it was the year of COVID 2020. And so we didn't do camp. Yep. Did I, did I come up? What I came up one time in 2020 for some reason, didn't I?

• 17:24Pete Roberts?

  I don't thi- I don't think so.

• 17:27Jocko Willink?

  Was it zero?

• 17:28Pete Roberts?

  No, because you would have seen the expanded facilities.

• 17:31Jocko Willink?

  That's right.

• 17:32Pete Roberts?

  I came out and saw you in Montana.

• 17:34Jocko Willink?

  That's

• 17:34Pete Roberts?

  And I came out and saw you in California, just at the beginning, March of 2020, for the vitamin shop launch.

• 17:40Jocko Willink?

  I must have come out right before COVID hit, because I remember being up here in the winter. Cause we were walking through the snow.

• 17:48Pete Roberts?

  That's right.

• 17:49Jocko Willink?

  We were walking through the downtown. Down High Street, right? And, yeah, so I knew I must have been right before COVID.

• 17:56Pete Roberts?

  It must have been, yeah.

• 17:59Jocko Willink?

  But if you haven't listened to those podcasts, if you want to know why Pete's here, if you want to know how we ended up joining forces and doing what we're doing, go back and listen to 93, 141, then 194. If you've listened to those, if you've been tracking, if you've heard any of Echo Charles

• 18:15Pete Roberts?

  Yes.

• 18:16Jocko Willink?

  Talking about various

• 18:19Jocko Willink?

  various gear to purchase. Then this is what we've been talking about. So you probably are somewhat aware of the situation that's going on. Um, but a lot has happened the last two years since we did a podcast. And just wanted to talk, bring you on, talk about what we've been doing. The progress we've made, the setbacks we've had, the lessons that we've learned. And where we're planning to go from here. I mean, what's, when you think about 2021, and I mean, 2020 and everyone, you know, big negative on 2020, everyone hated it, etc. All kinds of issues, but heading into 2020, coming out of 2019, we had a ton of really positive momentum, a lot of positive growth.

• 19:02Jocko Willink?

  Things were kind of on a really solid track. Trajectory was looking outstanding.

• 19:09Jocko Willink?

  And so that was, we were in a pretty good place. Now, we also had some, we also had some missteps. I know you like to call them tuition payments.

• 19:17Pete Roberts?

  Yes, did take some tuition payments. Last time, last time I was on, I filled you in on the jeans tuition payment. Remember we did that real time?

• 19:26Jocko Willink?

  Yep.

• 19:27Pete Roberts?

  Had to make like 500 pairs of jeans before we got them right.

• 19:30Jocko Willink?

  Yep.

• 19:31Pete Roberts?

  That grew a little bit.

• 19:32Jocko Willink?

  We have been. We have been struggling with, and we paid some tuition payments on Molk bars.

• 19:40Pete Roberts?

  We did. And you know, actually, when you were, when you were reading that, I couldn't stop, but you know, I could help think about my, my great Yaya. And she was an immigrant from, from Sparta, Greece.

• 19:54Jocko Willink?

  So Yaya is Greek for, is that just like your personal nickname or is that everybody?

• 19:57Pete Roberts?

  No, everybody that's Greek, cause he called me Yaya.

• 20:00Jocko Willink?

  Just throwing out Yaya around here.

• 20:01Pete Roberts?

  Yeah, I know.

• 20:02Jocko Willink?

  We are American.

• 20:04Pete Roberts?

  She lived to, uh, she lived to a hundred and, and five. So my, even my kids got to meet her.

• 20:10Jocko Willink?

  Is that the aunt of?

• 20:12Pete Roberts?

  That's the mother of my Aunt Kay, who just turned 90. You sent that video to.

• 20:17Jocko Willink?

  No, your mom's in the, your, your, was it great aunt?

• 20:19Pete Roberts?

  Yes.

• 20:20Jocko Willink?

  She's in the game.

• 20:20Pete Roberts?

  Oh yeah, she's in the game.

• 20:21Jocko Willink?

  She loves you.

• 20:22Pete Roberts?

  She's like, oh, if I ever get to meet Chaka, I've gotta put that makeup on. I gotta make sure I look good. Yeah, she just turned 90. And so she, um, has trusted me with, uh, it's really with a crocheted blanket that my, my great Yaya was a, like a Lowell mill girl. So she worked in these mills you speak of, uh, as an immigrant in the very early 1900s in Lowell, Massachusetts. And she used to.

• 20:48Jocko Willink?

  This is, this story took place in 1911.

• 20:49Pete Roberts?

  Exactly. And that's, I was thinking about this the whole time. She used to pick up the skinners, like the little bit of yarn and she'd, she'd take it home with her. And she, she'd crochet and make blankets and stuff.

• 21:00Jocko Willink?

  So you have one of those blankets?

• 21:02Pete Roberts?

  In my office. Yeah. I got it, uh, she's, I think it might've been, been during last year at some point. She, she shipped it up to me. She'd been trying to figure out who she should give it to and trust it to, basically.

• 21:16Jocko Willink?

  Then she saw that you had a freaking loom.

• 21:21Pete Roberts?

  So I've got it. I've got it up in there.

• 21:23Jocko Willink?

  What a, what an incredible thread of personal history.

• 21:27Pete Roberts?

  Yeah. I'm going to frame it. At some point when we build a massive new factory, it'll be hanging in the front lobby.

• 21:34Jocko Willink?

  That's, that's, that's like incredible. So that story is, that's Yaya could have been.

• 21:39Pete Roberts?

  Exactly. That's what I was thinking about. Like the working conditions, of course, have improved since then, but when people ask me, like, why, why would someone want to work in a factory? I think about, well, you know, I, I, I talk about my grandparents and great grandparents who all worked in factories, tanneries and mills. And they always said to their kids, our parents, the baby boomers, don't work in the factories, but they always romanticized about working in the factories. And I never could figure out why, why did they romanticize about it and always reflect on it, but then tell their kids not to do it? I didn't understand until right now. That's why. Because the generation before them, their parents were dealing with shit like that.

• 22:24Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 22:25Pete Roberts?

  You know, just terrible working conditions, hot bare feet. The woman up in Lewiston, Maine, Rachel DeGrosier, she told me a story about the Bates Mill in Lewiston where we got our first loom from. And she said, one of the girls used to run up the hill for her shift. And her sister would run down the hill and she'd pass her shoes off. And then she'd come down into the mill and work. And it was just survival.

• 22:53Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. So not only was it hard work, but you didn't have enough money to buy a pair of shoes.

• 22:57Pete Roberts?

  Exactly.

• 22:58Jocko Willink?

  And what's really interesting about this is like we were up at the factory the other day at the boot plant.

• 23:05Pete Roberts?

  Pretty awesome, isn't it?

• 23:06Jocko Willink?

  And Andy was telling a story, Andy who oversees all that production.

• 23:10Pete Roberts?

  Yeah.

• 23:11Jocko Willink?

  He was telling a story that the first step in getting a pair of boots produced is a tag gets printed out. So an order comes in, that order gets printed out. And Andy's all about efficiency. And the orders would have the, the human being's name on it that ordered it. So if Echo Charles ordered a pair of boots, it would say Echo Charles, size 11, bison, this sole, whatever, give, and then everyone knows what to make. And he just, you know, to save ink or whatever.

• 23:41Pete Roberts?

  Took it off.

• 23:41Jocko Willink?

  And, and make that tag a little bit smaller, say, oh, we don't, we don't need to know the person's name. Why is that important? And the, and the workers said, hey, what are you doing? We want to know who are making this. We want to know who Jim Smith. We want to know that we're making Jim Smith's boots. And that shows you. What their mindset is, right? The mindset is that they're personally connected. They they're they're personally engaged in making the product, quality product. They want to know who who by name, who it's going to.

• 24:12Pete Roberts?

  You know, the thing is, is after like after, you know, the whole national shutdown last year, and we pivoted, and I'm sure we'll talk about pivoting to making some face coverings. But then we came back to the footwear plant. We dealt with some major issues getting back into production. It just wasn't running smooth. And it almost like there was a at that point, a lot of people home, they're collecting, you know, the the

• 24:40Jocko Willink?

  Additional unemployment.

• 24:41Pete Roberts?

  Additional employment money. They didn't have to be at work, whatever. So I said, timeout. And I talked to Andy and I said, we need to get them more engaged. I said, so we're going to shut down production for a whole day. They're going to pick their leather, the team here, and they're going to make boots for each other. They can make them for themselves, or they can make them for a loved one. And I want to see what happens. Well, guess what happened? Every single boot off the line was the first quality boot. And so it was kind of a flank. I I gathered them all at the end of the day. They have huge smiles on their faces. And I said, what did you guys think about that? And they're like, that was awesome. I said, you made footwear for each other. And they're like, yeah. And I said,

• 25:22Pete Roberts?

  and you injected soul into it because you cared. They're like, yeah. And I said, and that's what we need to do for every customer. And now every every name on there. You know, when Andy stripped it off, like, put that name back on. If we're going to inject soul into this thing, we need to know there's a there's a real human behind it. So.

• 25:40Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, you know what? You are making boots for each other, right? Yeah. And now you're going to make boots for America.

• 25:46Pete Roberts?

  Exactly.

• 25:49Pete Roberts?

  And in production, production improved and quality improved. And yeah, man, it was phenomenal. Little little team building flank, I guess you could say.

• 25:58Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, that's awesome. Prior to COVID hitting though, we, we got hit like we made some missteps on milk bars. So little background is we want to make milk bars, right? Protein bars, good for you. I have probably ridiculously high standards of what I want them to be.

• 26:17Pete Roberts?

  And I just want to eat a damn candy bar.

• 26:18Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, you want to eat a candy bar. Well, and I also have high standards that I want it to taste like a candy bar, but I don't want to use any sugar. Want to have a certain amount of protein in it, want it to be natural. So it's a really tough thing to do. And we kept trying to crack this formula. And probably, probably the biggest mistake we made, I would say is we bought a bunch. We, we kind of settled on a bar.

• 26:43Pete Roberts?

  We did.

• 26:44Jocko Willink?

  That was hella good, as they say in California. This thing was hella good. It kind of tasted like a Reese's peanut butter cup. Um, but it was bigger and it was, had no sugar in it. And it was covered in thick chocolate. I mean, it was redonkulous, man. It was good to go. So we thought, okay, this is it. And, but the problem was it was, it was really difficult to make. And a bunch of bar producers around the country.

• 27:12Pete Roberts?

  Wouldn't do it.

• 27:13Jocko Willink?

  Couldn't do it, can't do it, won't do it, couldn't stand behind it. So of course, what did we do? We'll just do it ourselves.

• 27:20Pete Roberts?

  Hundred percent invest in the machinery, get it done. And there is, there is a, there, being naive is definitely a superpower. But being ignorant and arrogant is definitely not.

• 27:33Jocko Willink?

  That there's a balance that sometimes the line gets crossed.

• 27:36Pete Roberts?

  Well, you know, we've been on such a solid run, the line did get crossed. And when that thing went off the shelf live testing, it didn't work. And.

• 27:44Jocko Willink?

  And basically, if I tried to sum this up, we were doing a process called extruding.

• 27:49Pete Roberts?

  Yeah.

• 27:49Jocko Willink?

  Which means you squeeze out this tasty, like the peanut butter cup part, that middle part.

• 27:55Pete Roberts?

  Yeah.

• 27:56Jocko Willink?

  You squeeze that out through a machine and it kind of just pops out.

• 27:59Pete Roberts?

  Extruder.

• 27:59Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 28:00Pete Roberts?

  Yeah.

• 28:00Jocko Willink?

  Well, the problem was when you do that, you squeeze out a lot of the, the natural fluid inside of it.

• 28:05Pete Roberts?

  The oils.

• 28:06Jocko Willink?

  The oils get squeezed out. And so when you put it on the shelf for the shelf life. After whatever two, three months, which is how long it needs to taste good for. And he actually needs to taste longer for that. As soon as we got to two, three months, it was like, hey, this doesn't taste the same. This is dry. Wait a second.

• 28:21Pete Roberts?

  You're refurbishing those old mills because it turned into a brick.

• 28:25Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 28:26Pete Roberts?

  Yeah. It was not. It was not good. So we, uh, I just actually told Joe on, on Friday before camp, I said, Hey man, let's get this equipment on pallets and get it wrapped and, uh, make, make way for some other things. So it was a tuition payment that we learned from and because of that, we, we recruited, we hired and recruited a food scientist that came in from Arizona. Another food scientist who serves for quality. It was kind of a point where looking at the organizational structure as we're growing was like, we've got to have the right people in the right places if we're going to start doing shit like this.

• 29:11Pete Roberts?

  We've been, we've been shotgunning it for so long and just, just grinding it out. That really was a defining moment in how we need to start thinking. We, we got stores ready to buy this. We got, I mean, vitamin shop. They're like, when are the bars coming? When are the, I mean, they're ready to place a purchase order for these things. Imagine if we had just done it and sent it out and like molded or something.

• 29:35Jocko Willink?

  Well, even if it didn't mold, even if it just tasted.

• 29:37Pete Roberts?

  Even if it just tasted dry or just crumbled, it would have been bad.

• 29:40Jocko Willink?

  The latest version, because we're still on the.

• 29:42Pete Roberts?

  Oh, we're still on it. Yeah.

• 29:43Jocko Willink?

  The, the latest version that I had was freaking legit. And it's weird because it's like a bar, but it tastes like, uh, a relatively dense brownie. It tastes like a dense, moist brownie.

• 30:01Pete Roberts?

  When you say it, it sounds better.

• 30:03Jocko Willink?

  It bro, no, I'm saying, and then it's coated with chocolate.

• 30:05Pete Roberts?

  Yeah.

• 30:06Jocko Willink?

  It's freaking nuts.

• 30:07Pete Roberts?

  It's good.

• 30:07Jocko Willink?

  It's really good.

• 30:08Pete Roberts?

  Yeah. And we're ready to go, but we've slowed down to speed up.

• 30:12Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 30:12Pete Roberts?

  Just making sure we get it right this time.

• 30:15Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. Cause we got people that we are waiting on that one.

• 30:18Pete Roberts?

  Yeah.

• 30:19Jocko Willink?

  Myself included.

• 30:20Pete Roberts?

  Yeah. Yeah.

• 30:21Jocko Willink?

  That one is freaking good. All right. So we hit the malt bar. It took us a while. We learned some lessons there. Little too aggressive, little too.

• 30:32Jocko Willink?

  A little too arrogant on what we what we thought we could get away with and what we thought we knew. And you know what? That's we've also succeeded with that a bunch, you know, you're gonna take some losses.

• 30:41Pete Roberts?

  Yeah.

• 30:41Jocko Willink?

  You know, you go out, you take risks, a lot of risk. We've taken a lot of risks along the way. Every once in a while, you're gonna get an L up on the board.

• 30:48Pete Roberts?

  That was a big L.

• 30:51Jocko Willink?

  Are we gonna sell that equipment? What are we gonna do with it? Are we just gonna?

• 30:54Pete Roberts?

  Yeah, probably sell it. We'll probably sell it. We're gonna have to sell it.

• 30:58Jocko Willink?

  Hmm, that's gonna be a loss.

• 31:01Pete Roberts?

  Yeah, pennies on the dollar.

• 31:03Jocko Willink?

  Anyone need an extruder out there?

• 31:05Pete Roberts?

  The packaging machine is the big one. We had a beautiful packaging machine.

• 31:10Jocko Willink?

  All right. So if anyone's looking for that, let us know. We got some, we got some stuff.

• 31:14Pete Roberts?

  We should just talk about the other tuition payment then.

• 31:16Jocko Willink?

  Which other one?

• 31:18Pete Roberts?

  The uh, the the can tuition payment.

• 31:22Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, well, that was in the middle of COVID.

• 31:24Pete Roberts?

  Yes, it was.

• 31:25Jocko Willink?

  Before we get there, before we get there, let's talk about when COVID hit. Cause we made a, we made a freaking legit.

• 31:32Pete Roberts?

  Pivot.

• 31:32Jocko Willink?

  Pivot. Uh, I'll tell you my recollection. Um. Two months. Before COVID hit America.

• 31:43Pete Roberts?

  Yep.

• 31:43Jocko Willink?

  I had three or four friends. Couple seals. Maybe like a seal, doctor, medic, someone else. Sent me, you know, text, email, whatever, saying like, hey dude, you should make masks. And you and I had a very quick discussion. I said, hey, man. We, there's this thing going on overseas. And what I was thinking is we'd ship them overseas. That was the conversation that I had with my friends. It was like, all of them were saying, hey, they're gonna need these masks. And. You pulled up a couple of examples of N95 masks, because that was kind of what was being asked for.

• 32:21Jocko Willink?

  So now it was, all right, well, you you said to me, hey, we'd have to like tool up for it. We gotta buy these machinery. We were already kind of paranoid about buying more machinery that we could, we could question, we have to go sell later. And you just looked at it like, hey, man, this is probably a no go. It's going to be an investment by machinery to make these masks. And I said, ah, cool. All right, Roger, you know, no factor. And then, and then COVID started, well, now you fast forward a couple of months. And we could check emails. I think I was maybe two months ahead of it.

• 32:49Pete Roberts?

  You had a, I thought you got a call from like a friend at the Department of Defense or something.

• 32:53Jocko Willink?

  That happened a little later.

• 32:54Pete Roberts?

  Okay.

• 32:55Jocko Willink?

  So then as it started ramping up in America, well, that was probably, yeah, you're right. That was probably one, I got a call from the D O, a friend from the D O D, a friend that's a doctor, a friend that's a SEAL medic overseas and like someone else. So there was, there was definitely a triangulation that I should have paid attention to. And I did, you know, I talked to you about it, but you know, sometimes you just look at something, you think it's a, that's probably not, not the best move. And that's what you said. You were like, hey, man, we'd have to buy this plastic. It probably was, I think it might've been called an extruder. I was like, no more extruders. We're not doing it, man. Forget about it. So we, we said, no. But then, so COVID then starts hitting America. And then I had another conversation with you because now you started hearing people started talking about masks, right? Oh, you should wear a mask.

• 33:40Pete Roberts?

  Cut up a T-shirt, put it around your face.

• 33:41Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. So, and I forget the pattern that happened here, but I do remember I said, bro, we just need to make something to put over your face. And then you were like, okay. And then I, this is when we were in lockdown, now we're in like in lockdown.

• 33:56Pete Roberts?

  Yeah.

• 33:56Jocko Willink?

  So I, I actually had to get a cable news because I didn't have cable news, but I wanted to see what the hell was going on. So then I'm watching freaking Fauci. And he's like, uh, don't wear masks. They don't help. And then I text you or calling like, hey dude, they're saying masks aren't doing anything to forget it. And you're like, okay, cool. And then the next week, it was like five days later, it might've been Monday to Friday. Cause it was Friday that I was like, hey, bro, they're saying you have to wear something over your face. Let's go. And you're like on it. And then you designed them over that weekend. That was a Friday by Monday.

• 34:35Pete Roberts?

  Designed on Friday, had the team come in, move all the machines around. And we started cutting and sewing, shut down all the divisions. We had, we had sat down in my office, myself and, and Dawn, our CFO, and talked about what happens if like things get crazy? What happens if things get crazy? What happens if? If supply chain shut down, how does that can affect what we're doing? And the last thing you know, you want to do is get caught in the chaos of supply chains. And I remember we sat down and we actually looked at our projections for the year.

• 35:16Pete Roberts?

  And we started cutting 10%, 20%, 30%. We cut all the way up to 70% of our projections out. And then we found a way to continue to survive.

• 35:29Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, survival.

• 35:30Pete Roberts?

  Survival. And then.

• 35:32Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. Cause by the way, now all of a sudden every jujitsu school in America.

• 35:36Pete Roberts?

  Shut down. Exactly. And we knew.

• 35:38Jocko Willink?

  Which was crazy.

• 35:39Pete Roberts?

  52% of our business for Origin is martial arts, is jujitsu, is geese. It's a crazy statistic. 52%. And we're like, this is gonna, it's gonna shut down and we're gonna lose hardcore. So we, we found out that like it was 70% we could afford to lose. We figured out how we could lean things out. And ultimately that Friday pivot, we were the first ones in America to make face coverings, really. And it was cool, cool design. We, I mean, I mean, we made what a quarter of a million, maybe over a quarter of a million of them. The factory came together and it was honestly, it was the most beautiful thing we've done as a team.

• 36:23Pete Roberts?

  It was really inspiring. It was like a freaking beehive when you walked in that place in the morning, ripping out 10,000 a day.

• 36:32Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. You were sending me texts where, you know, at lunchtime, you'd be like, we're at 3,970.

• 36:38Pete Roberts?

  Oh, yeah.

• 36:40Jocko Willink?

  We are getting it on.

• 36:41Pete Roberts?

  Yeah, it was, I mean, it was, uh, it was, it was crazy, you know, and, and, I mean, it, it went, it went fast. It was six, seven days a week, working long days. We had. The fire departments in in the hospital, we we decided to pivot and we took the collar foam from the gi, like the whole collar.

• 37:02Jocko Willink?

  Oh, yeah.

• 37:02Pete Roberts?

  We took that.

• 37:03Jocko Willink?

  Made face shields.

• 37:03Pete Roberts?

  Yeah, we we got, we ordered bulk um, lamination paper. We had, we had five laminators set up and you just put the lamination paper in the laminators. Then we took those and then we just stitched a piece of gi collar on them and put a piece of underwear elastic band on from our tights and filling up boxes and sending those to the hospitals so they had face face shields. You know, it was, it was phenomenal to be part of just that, what I felt like was almost a wartime effort. There was this

• 37:30Jocko Willink?

  Well.

• 37:31Pete Roberts?

  sense of, nobody knew what was gonna happen.

• 37:33Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, no, I was gonna say in the early days, there, you know, now you can look at it and be like, well, masks, no masks.

• 37:39Pete Roberts?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 37:39Jocko Willink?

  But at that time, it was like, uh.

• 37:41Pete Roberts?

  Everybody's on the same page.

• 37:42Jocko Willink?

  Everybody's on the same page. You need to wear something over your face or you all to catch this stuff.

• 37:45Pete Roberts?

  Yeah.

• 37:46Jocko Willink?

  Right? Everyone was saying that.

• 37:47Pete Roberts?

  Yeah.

• 37:47Jocko Willink?

  And in hospitals, they didn't have it. And first responders didn't have it.

• 37:50Pete Roberts?

  No.

• 37:51Jocko Willink?

  So we were donating thousands of these things to first responders, donating stuff to hospitals. And and people were buying it as well, because now companies needed to keep their employees coming in if they were in business, that was, what did they call the critical need? Or what was the?

• 38:04Pete Roberts?

  Essential.

• 38:05Jocko Willink?

  Essential worker. They needed to supply masks to their people, so they started ordering. It was freaking crazy.

• 38:12Pete Roberts?

  I had one guy, he was on the fire department. He drove up to the factory and he parked outside. And we like transferred some face coverings to him and he had, he he was in the back of his truck and he like had the hatch open.

• 38:26Jocko Willink?

  Dude, this was like Black Plague.

• 38:27Pete Roberts?

  It was wild.

• 38:28Jocko Willink?

  This is when people, it was Black Plague time. The guy, I remember that the guy's like

• 38:33Pete Roberts?

  He's passing stuff.

• 38:34Jocko Willink?

  You're sending me a video. You're like, we're doing a test with this stuff right now.

• 38:40Jocko Willink?

  Dude, this is freaking crazy.

• 38:41Pete Roberts?

  It was crazy. He's got like this little smoke puffer thing to figure out how much smoke goes through it, like to see if the virus can get through. I mean, it was, it was wild.

• 38:50Jocko Willink?

  It was wild.

• 38:51Pete Roberts?

  And I'll tell you what, I've always been into like post-apocalyptic movies.

• 38:58Pete Roberts?

  I was like, I'm having, I'm having so much fun right now just doing this. I mean, obviously that was short-lived. It became really uh, annoying to not be doing what we'd love to do, you know, and be stuck in lockdown and all that bullshit, but um. We got through it.

• 39:15Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, and so this thing going from making jiu jitsu gear, because you ended up shutting down all lines.

• 39:22Pete Roberts?

  All lines.

• 39:23Jocko Willink?

  All lines, just to make face shields, face coverings. That's what we were doing.

• 39:28Pete Roberts?

  Face shields and face coverings. We shut down one line at a time over the course of maybe five to eight days, I think, including the boot.

• 39:36Jocko Willink?

  I remember, I remember you and I'd be talking and you'd be like, bro, you'd be like, what do you think, how much material should we use? How much material? And how many do you think we're gonna sell? And you know, you and I are just literally throwing our best guess and betting hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of material on how long this is gonna last. Because, because it didn't take, you know, you fast forward from Black Plague Day, whenever that was, when it just, everyone thought, and then you fast forward a few weeks, and I remember saying, hey, man, this mask thing, it ain't, it ain't gonna stick. Like, there's other, other reports are coming out. And again, at the time, you're just trying to do the best, best judgment that you can use. But it seemed to me, like,

• 40:19Jocko Willink?

  hey, this is gonna, this is gonna fade. And, I mean, obviously, the mask thing didn't fade. But what happened was, other manufacturers sort of started getting in the game and ordering stuff from overseas, and then they're mass producing it. And then, it's like, okay, so now the market was completely saturated and flooded. So we kind of owned the market for, how many months?

• 40:40Pete Roberts?

  It was months.

• 40:40Jocko Willink?

  Three months?

• 40:41Pete Roberts?

  I think it was longer than that. We were, we were ripping.

• 40:44Jocko Willink?

  Owned the market.

• 40:45Pete Roberts?

  We went through every bit of fabric. We had Warp Wic, our compression apparel. We went through all of our denim. Like, we went, we didn't make any out of, our ghee pants material, our twill.

• 40:56Jocko Willink?

  That's right.

• 40:57Pete Roberts?

  We made, we, we went through all of, all of our fabric. And the crazy thing was, and it was kind of a blessing in disguise, too. In the background, shit started to fall apart in our supply chain, starting with our tannery in Maine, where we were tanning all of our leather for the boots. It was, it was a Tasman tannery. And I remember them calling me, like, maybe four, five, six months in, saying, I don't think we're gonna survive. And I'm, I'm thinking, holy, holy shit, like. This tannery, the last tannery in the state of Maine, that's been around for a hundred years, they don't think they're gonna survive. I started to think about our other supply

• 41:40Pete Roberts?

  chains. I ended up getting on the phone with someone from the federal government and he said to me, there's three tanneries in the United States of America that can make the boots for America's military. It's gonna kill us if this tannery shuts down. And so, he, he was gonna fund, partially fund us purchasing this tannery. I got on the phone with Norm Tasman, the head of the Tasman family. I'm talking to this guy down in Texas about how to keep this thing alive. Ultimately, it was an elephant we just, you know, we, we didn't want to take down. And

• 42:18Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, well, you and I were having, that's another like a million dollars of conversation you and I are having about, do we, do we do, you know, we break open the coffers, what are we gonna do? You wanna roll? And it's like,

• 42:31Pete Roberts?

  I think I said no. I was just, I think I remember calling him, like, bro, I, I don't think we should do this.

• 42:37Jocko Willink?

  You went to it.

• 42:38Pete Roberts?

  Oh, yeah.

• 42:38Jocko Willink?

  You went to it.

• 42:40Pete Roberts?

  Yep.

• 42:40Jocko Willink?

  And you called me on the way home and you're like, bro, I just, this is a, this is, this is a, you didn't call it a lemon, but you were like, this is a lot. This is a lot. There's a lot that needs to be done. There's a lot of management and leadership that would need to take place. You were basically saying you would have to surrender other fronts that we're trying to fight on in order to make this happen.

• 43:02Pete Roberts?

  Yep.

• 43:03Jocko Willink?

  And it was just a no go.

• 43:04Pete Roberts?

  And so because of that, I started getting a hold of all of our suppliers and seeing where they were at. And everybody started having the same story. Can't get labor, can't make the product. No one's standing at looms, no one in the die houses, no one injecting souls for boots. And it started to get pretty shady from that perspective. So just managing, really managing that whole year from a supply chain perspective, when to slow down on the face covering thing, how to pivot back up. And that whole time, we lost our denim weaver. I don't know if you remember that. We couldn't weave denim anymore. And we had the

• 43:47Jocko Willink?

  Real quick, I think where we got lucky. I got lucky because I was saying, hey, bro, they're not going to make people wear masks much longer. That ain't gonna happen. And so we started to taper. And when we started to taper, they kept making people wear masks. But we got lucky in that so many other people now came on the market and started making them and bringing them in from overseas, you know, however long it took them to go to China and say, hey, we need these things. And it took them time to run the cycle, bake them and then ship them over here. By the time they actually showed up here, we were already in the downswing of making masks. So we got lucky in the fact, because I was thinking, it didn't seem, it didn't seem possible

• 44:28Jocko Willink?

  that we, that America would still be wearing masks after, because it didn't take long for people to say, oh, it's actually only 10% effective and seven, and then you had the people showing the, you know, the videos with the, like that smoke stuff coming out and being like, yeah, this is,

• 44:45Jocko Willink?

  again, couldn't know the future, but we, I think that was a stroke of luck. The fact that we, because otherwise we would have been sitting on, you know, however many, we were doing it week by week. I remember you're like, well, you think 30,000 more for 50,000 more? You're like, I'm like, I'll be, let's do a half a week more, you know? And like, it was that, those kind of numbers.

• 45:06Pete Roberts?

  Somebody, uh, somebody emailed us about profiteering. Somebody emailed me about profiteering and I sent him an email back and I said, "We employ 100 hardworking, blue collar Americans." When Google called us and asked us for 40,000 masks and asked us how much, how much it costs? How much is one? 15 bucks? How much is 40,000? 15 bucks? It's because we need to keep 100 hardworking Americans working and get out of this thing so that we can get back into our supply chains. And if we had to fund those supply chains, which we did, which we did, we had the fun finding a new denim manufacturer and commit

• 45:47Pete Roberts?

  to massive amounts of denim, to weave denim, you know, and, and really secure the supply chain. Like we, we played it. I think it was, I think by design, we played it well. There was some, we were lucky within there, but by design, we played it well. I think it was just real strategic planning, keeping everybody motivated to want to continue working when they didn't have to. You know, especially, especially in the, in the, in the time, it was scary, but we, we had such a good team. It was just a tremendous team. I can't you know, say enough good things about them for sticking it out when they didn't have to.

• 46:26Jocko Willink?

  That, I mean, the government was giving away money to people that were unemployed for whatever reason. And it wasn't a normal unemployment. There was additional unemployment. There was like COVID unemployment.

• 46:37Pete Roberts?

  Yeah.

• 46:37Jocko Willink?

  And it was a, it was a substantial amount of money that, that people were getting paid. And I knew people out in California that were, that were making a ton of money for, you know, for, for staying at home.

• 46:53Pete Roberts?

  Yeah.

• 46:54Jocko Willink?

  And more money than a lot of people could work, could make, make, work in a job.

• 46:59Pete Roberts?

  A hundred percent.

• 46:59Jocko Willink?

  And that's a tough market to compete with.

• 47:04Pete Roberts?

  Yep.

• 47:05Jocko Willink?

  Hey, do you want to make $2,000 a month, working 40 hours a week, uh, doing a, doing a hard job? Or do you want to make $2,000 a work, uh, a week, or sorry, $2,000 a month, doing nothing?

• 47:18Pete Roberts?

  Yeah.

• 47:19Jocko Willink?

  And a lot of people just said, doing nothing, we'll take that.

• 47:23Pete Roberts?

  And all of our, all of our people could have just gone and, and collected, you know what I mean? And actually, I mean, they still, they still did receive, but they didn't, they didn't rest on that. You know what I mean? They, they were part of it. I would, I would do like weekly motivational speeches and shit, like not, not meant to be motivational, but like, look at what you people are doing.

• 47:44Jocko Willink?

  Just, that was good too. Like again, in the bubonic plague phase of when.

• 47:51Jocko Willink?

  You know, when, when we started making the face shields that were going to hospitals, that, that the hospitals couldn't get that they thought were absolutely critical at the time. Otherwise, everyone's going to catch COVID.

• 48:01Pete Roberts?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 48:02Jocko Willink?

  And so that felt really good, you know, and, and I think that was good for the team to know that America was calling out for this equipment, this personal protection equipment. And Origin was able to, on a weekend,

• 48:15Pete Roberts?

  Yeah.

• 48:17Jocko Willink?

  over a weekend, start delivering. And that has to do with the ability, having this, having this capability of doing everything there.

• 48:26Pete Roberts?

  Yep.

• 48:27Jocko Willink?

  Everything.

• 48:27Pete Roberts?

  Everything.

• 48:28Jocko Willink?

  Design, the material was all sitting there, the people with the skills to make patterns, the people with the skills to sew, whatever needs to be sewn, that's freaking legit.

• 48:37Pete Roberts?

  Vertical integration inside the United States of America.

• 48:39Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. No one else had it.

• 48:42Pete Roberts?

  Nope.

• 48:43Jocko Willink?

  All right. So the tannery shuts down, you're out hunting for, oh, this was cool too, because now we need leather. And I think, what, how do we talk about it? We talk, people found out that we needed leather.

• 48:57Pete Roberts?

  I think they were listening to your podcast, it was the Seidel family.

• 49:00Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 49:01Pete Roberts?

  And they called us and said, heard you guys need help. Like, oh yeah, we need help. And they said, we can, we can take care of you. So we sent them what we were using for leather and we went back and forth with iterations. As we were coming out of kind of the mask making COVID thing and trying to get back into making footwear, we had a little bit left of supply. They ramped up for us, they started, they started tanning to our spec and they got us back on track. They sourced the bison, because I don't think they were doing bison at the time. And that's a big thing for us is bison, American Lakota bison leather.

• 49:35Jocko Willink?

  Cause that bison leather feels good.

• 49:37Pete Roberts?

  Buttery.

• 49:38Jocko Willink?

  It is good. You want to make like a pillow out of it when you get them, right? You want to make a pillow, you want to make like a washcloth out of it. You know, you want to, you, it's that freaking nice.

• 49:49Pete Roberts?

  I just love the historical nature of it, man. Like, uh, of the Tatanka.

• 49:54Jocko Willink?

  Mm-hmm. Freaking legit.

• 49:56Pete Roberts?

  So, um, so they were awesome.

• 49:58Jocko Willink?

  They just stepped right up to the plate.

• 50:00Pete Roberts?

  Oh yeah, stepped right up, hammered, hammered it out for us, got it done and got us back on track and.

• 50:07Pete Roberts?

  You know, I think, I think that a lot of these, we were all in the same place is the thing. Like all of the supply chain, they're all in the same place, dealing with the lack of people. You know, every, every, all of our suppliers, everybody dealing with the lack of people. And those relationships, because we've built them for so long with our supply chain, they're trusting they're going to get paid. So when we're, when we're placing these massive blanket purchase orders, if we didn't have that relationship of trust between us, that just wouldn't happen. So, you know, I guess good on us for building those relationships over the years so that we,

• 50:51Pete Roberts?

  we survived and thrived ultimately.

• 50:53Jocko Willink?

  And salute to Cydel reaching out like that. I mean, that's unbelievable.

• 50:57Pete Roberts?

  That's because, you know, because of you though.

• 50:59Jocko Willink?

  So freaking cool though. You know, it's like I was, I was saying the other day to somebody,

• 51:06Jocko Willink?

  when, when someone listens to the podcast, I have a relationship with someone, if they listen to the podcast. Because we have the same inside jokes. They know, you know, they know some things. They know some little inside jokes. We use the same words, you know, we got stories to refer back to that we experienced together. Like if you're just listening to Echo and I, you're listening to me talk about invading the beaches of Normandy or going on the Baton Death March, we shared that experience if you're listening. So we have shared common history together. If you're just listening to this, we have common history together. And that's what a relationship, oh, he was talking to Andy about Andy Stumpf.

• 51:46Jocko Willink?

  When you meet another SEAL that is younger than you or older than you, you never served with him. That you were retired before they joined, or you went in after they retired. You still know them and you still have a common shared history that something that you did together. You weren't together, but you both went through BUDs. You both were a new guy in a platoon. You both went to, jumped out of an airplane. You both went through hell. We get these common things. So you're immediately, you have an actual relationship with someone you've never met before. So it's the same thing with the podcast. So when you get someone like the Cydel family, they're like, yeah, oh, oh, Jaco needs leather. Oh, okay, cool. Like we know him.

• 52:25Pete Roberts?

  Yeah.

• 52:25Jocko Willink?

  Let's, let's reach out.

• 52:26Pete Roberts?

  I get it. It's like showing up to this immersion camp and everybody showing up for jiu jitsu.

• 52:29Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 52:31Pete Roberts?

  You know?

• 52:32Jocko Willink?

  It's the same thing. Hey, where were we? How far along were we in making boots when COVID hit? Like, we were pretty embryonic.

• 52:45Pete Roberts?

  Yeah, we had, we had decided just to buy this facility, which was a Coca-Cola plant. And

• 52:53Jocko Willink?

  So that was in 2019?

• 52:55Pete Roberts?

  Yep, and we had just started.

• 52:56Jocko Willink?

  Late 2019, it was late 2019.

• 52:59Pete Roberts?

  Late 2019, we had just started getting machine and removed in and setting up, and we weren't even really producing.

• 53:05Jocko Willink?

  I was gonna say, we hadn't really started producing yet. We had made boots. We knew we could do it. We had the skills. We had the technology. But we weren't quite there yet.

• 53:15Pete Roberts?

  No, no. And

• 53:18Jocko Willink?

  So then in the middle of COVID, we lose the supply of the leather. We get the new supply of leather, thanks to the Sidell crew.

• 53:24Pete Roberts?

  Yep.

• 53:25Jocko Willink?

  And then it's, we decided we're gonna start making boots.

• 53:28Pete Roberts?

  Yeah.

• 53:29Jocko Willink?

  And we start making them.

• 53:30Pete Roberts?

  Yeah. Yep, yep, barely, but yes.

• 53:34Jocko Willink?

  Barely, why?

• 53:35Pete Roberts?

  Ah, it just, um,

• 53:39Pete Roberts?

  a lot of reasons. Out of practice, number one, you know, uh, there were some, there were some, uh, bad seeds, I guess you could say, also. There was, there was some negative, there was some animosity, there was some negative attitudes, you know, and those came out when we, when I kind of flanked the team with, you're gonna make yourselves or a family, a loved one, a pair of boots. Specifically, I wanted to gauge everybody's nonverbal reactions at the end of the day. And there was a couple of individuals that I thought would, would get there, or I questioned would get there, but I was hoping they would. I didn't think they would.

• 54:21Pete Roberts?

  And gauging their, their nonverbals, I was like, God, they're not coming, not coming my way, so.

• 54:29Jocko Willink?

  So maybe, so they weren't the right people for the job.

• 54:32Pete Roberts?

  It's amazing, like, you could have a team of 15, let's say you had a team of 15 people making 50 pairs of boots a day. You'd think that if you lose three, then you'd lose the same percentage in production. What happens is you actually gain. So it goes, you drop to 12, and now you're making 55 pairs. There's just, there's a

• 54:56Pete Roberts?

  When, when, when cover and move is part of your culture, which it is for us, you know, cover and move, and you want to cover and move for people you like, you know, you're, you're apt to move quicker and to be more responsive and to have better peripheral vision and to see where you can inject yourself to improve the process and you give a shit and you inject your soul into it. And I think, I think we had lost some of that, you know, during COVID, you know, the factory turned into a machine. It did, you know, for better or for worse, it literally turned into a machine. When you walked in, there was like a beehive buzzing and we were just cranking six, seven days a week, 10 hours a day, just

• 55:35Pete Roberts?

  burning through, through thread and fabric. And there, there, there was, there was motivation, but there wasn't a lot of culture building over those three or four months.

• 55:45Jocko Willink?

  It was just heads, heads down.

• 55:46Pete Roberts?

  Heads down, man. And you know what? You gotta do that shit sometimes. You gotta do that shit. And 99% of the factory came out of it adjusted and it was wonderful. But, um, but there was a few folks that just, uh, just didn't make it. And, um, so, once, once we took care of that, everything came, came around.

• 56:08Jocko Willink?

  So you were, you, you gave a quote the other day, or you asked a question, or you made the statement about how much it costs to make the first pair of Origin boots?

• 56:16Pete Roberts?

  Half a million bucks.

• 56:17Jocko Willink?

  And, and then what's funny is someone was like, someone said, uh, well, those must've been some awesome boots. And I was kinda like, not really. Like the first pair of boots that I got were like, oh, Alex, send me, you know, change these things. This sucked. Tongue fell out. Freaking soul's coming up. Like, you know, it was, wasn't that bad, but it was definitely, even to get the first prototype boot took a lot.

• 56:42Pete Roberts?

  Yeah.

• 56:42Jocko Willink?

  But yeah, putting a half a million dollars of money. Of our money into that, just buying equipment. And bro, you want to talk about, you want to talk about a freaking trust? Cause I was sketch on boots.

• 56:59Pete Roberts?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 57:00Jocko Willink?

  Man, from the word go, I was sketch on boots because they seem very difficult. They look hard, hard to make to me, right? I look at a pair of boots and I think, man, that seems like, that seems like it's gonna be a problem. You know, like, you know, it's hard for me to understand how like a piece of thread goes through that big piece of leather and how's that gonna work and who's doing that? And it just seems, seems like more challenging and I, and I brought this to your attention.

• 57:26Pete Roberts?

  Yeah, you did.

• 57:26Jocko Willink?

  I said, bro, look, man, it's hard to make gees like, um, this doesn't seem like a smart idea. And the other thing that scares me about it is, first of all, they're, they're really expensive.

• 57:37Pete Roberts?

  Yeah.

• 57:38Jocko Willink?

  And second, you know, if you make t-shirts, you gotta make small, medium, large, extra large, right? If you make boots, you gotta make size five, six, seven, eight, nine, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14. And by the way, you know, one pair of, one brand I wear an 11, another brand I wear a 10, another brand I wear a 13. So now you got people that are pissed off because it's not the right size. It just seemed to me, I was paranoid, man. I was definitely paranoid and, and you like, you're like, no, man, boots are easier than gees. You said to me and I was like, okay, and I, I believed you, you know?

• 58:14Pete Roberts?

  Easier than weaving.

• 58:15Jocko Willink?

  Easier than weaving. And I said, okay. And that was a high level trust, bro. You might as well have like been playing Russian roulette with my head. Cause that's how I felt about it. And then we're spending a half a million dollars on freaking equipment and I'm like, yep, cool, sounds great, man. I'm holding my breath and then you sent me the first pair that was like, maybe, uh, version four or something, version three, and I could already go, ooh.

• 58:42Pete Roberts?

  Oh, wait.

• 58:43Jocko Willink?

  Something there. Oh yeah, this is gonna be good.

• 58:45Pete Roberts?

  Yeah.

• 58:45Jocko Willink?

  So that was a high level of trust.

• 58:48Pete Roberts?

  I appreciate that. I'm glad I didn't screw up on the malt bars before that.

• 58:55Jocko Willink?

  And then what's crazy is while all this is going on, well, we just, we were running out of room. Overall, cause now, because now we're having to buy, because now Jaco Fuel is going berserk, right?

• 59:10Pete Roberts?

  Well, everybody's got to understand we're self-funded. So we've never taken on capital. Like we've always self-funded. If we make a profit, you know, a large chunk of that gets injected back into what we're doing. And in 2017, at the grand opening, I don't know, what do we have for, how many employees do we have? 12?

• 59:31Jocko Willink?

  12.

• 59:31Pete Roberts?

  12 employees.

• 59:32Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. I think when you and I shook hands, we had eight.

• 59:35Pete Roberts?

  Okay. And, and so then we decided we were going to start Jaco Fuel. So everyone's sewing in the factory and all the pallets of Jaco Fuel are in between the sewing machines.

• 59:47Pete Roberts?

  Like that was our warehouse. Was this factory floor was our warehouse too. You know, just winning at all costs, you know, whatever needs to, whatever needs to happen. So.

• 59:57Jocko Willink?

  And Jaco Publishing books are in there.

• 1:00:02Jocko Willink?

  Jaco Publishing, Mikey and the Dragon stacked up in there.

• 1:00:04Pete Roberts?

  Oh, man. So, um, I forgot about that.

• 1:00:09Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 1:00:10Pete Roberts?

  You know, you think about blitz scaling to, we have 210 employees. You know, over 2020, we hired another 40 employees, you know, and so we're dealing with a lack of infrastructure. Uh, that, you know, really a decaying infrastructure. The fact that there is only, I don't know, one or two buildings left in our community, you know, within a half a mile radius that actually could hold our growth. And we did the boot plant. We invested in that coronavirus hit. We had invested another facility for nutrition.

• 1:00:45Jocko Willink?

  Oh yeah. I forgot to mention about the equipment we bought a building.

• 1:00:47Pete Roberts?

  Yeah.

• 1:00:47Jocko Willink?

  So we're just getting crazy.

• 1:00:49Pete Roberts?

  We're getting crazy and we're, we're self, well, when I say self-funding, I mean, you know, we're, we're working with banks. We're working the banks to make all this shit happen. Cause we can see it now. I'm not sure if that's being naive as a superpower or just being naive, but I, I, I believe in our vision. You believe in our vision and we know we've got something special. You know, you know how I know that? Because we have people moving from all over America to work for us. I'm talking Colorado, Arizona, Nevada, Utah, Georgia. I said Arizona, Massachusetts, Connecticut, I'm everywhere.

• 1:01:29Pete Roberts?

  And when, when everyone's saying the same thing, like I want to be part of this, I can see what you guys are doing. It's special. I get it. Like, and it's resonating with them. We just got to tell more people. So we invest in, in, that's part of business. I mean, it's the.

• 1:01:47Pete Roberts?

  I learned a lot about organizational structure and, you know, I've learned a way more than I ever thought I would know about running a, a business of this size, this magnitude. Five facilities, 210 employees. I mean, it's, it's a lot. And I never like believed in titles, like everybody just do what needs to be done. Like literally we got done eating steaks last night and I was in the kitchen with the deck. We were washing the, we washed all the dishes, all the forks. Like just do, do what needs to be done. Like get shit done. But I do understand now because of the situation. How you have to really detach to look at, to look at, I, I don't, I hate to use the word battlefield because it's not a battlefield.

• 1:02:32Pete Roberts?

  But to look at the organization and do you have the right players in the right positions? Are you missing people? And sometimes just letting the fire burn. And what I mean by that. Hess, Hess Malam actually was saying this to me, Pete.

• 1:02:52Pete Roberts?

  You gotta just let the fire burn for some of these things. You can't solve all the problems all the time. Now, you don't want to get it out of control. You don't want it to become a blaze. I said, but if you can't solve this part of your company, like the issues we're dealing with, let's say in finance, we had a CFO, but we really need four people in that department. Cause Don's working, you know, a hundred hours a week. He's like, just you gotta let the fire burn. And if it's not done perfectly, and if it's not closed, the quarters aren't closed on time, that's okay. Let the fire burn. Media, same thing. And focus on the, on the things that really have a massive impact and then get the people to solve the problems. I really, really learned that lesson this year.

• 1:03:34Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. Um, prioritize and execute.

• 1:03:37Pete Roberts?

  Yep.

• 1:03:37Jocko Willink?

  And that's a huge one. And then decentralized command. And what decentralized command, ultimately the power that it gives you in you, when you're in a leadership position is you have the ability to look up and out instead of down and in. So instead of looking down and in at your team, instead of looking down and in and what the schedule is for today and who's on the line and who's not, and who's sick and who's not. Instead of looking down and in at that, which

• 1:04:03Jocko Willink?

  which takes away your, your overall vision of what's happening on the battlefield. You have to be looking up and out. And so, yeah, you, you definitely got that. Um, and, and look, you're not going to solve every problem. And sometimes you gotta be like, oh, yep, yep, that's gonna suck. Um, okay, got it. We accept that suck factor on that thing because we can now focus on our efforts on something that's gonna, that would suck way worse and be much worse for everything that's going on here. But we, you, you, again, you and I have some conversations that are million dollar conversations. We're making decisions and what's funny to me is there's still like three minute conversations.

• 1:04:45Jocko Willink?

  But, but like, cause we bought a few buildings since it's been, so since 20, since 2019.

• 1:04:52Pete Roberts?

  Yeah.

• 1:04:52Jocko Willink?

  We've bought what? Three more, four more buildings?

• 1:04:54Pete Roberts?

  Yeah, three going on four. Yeah. With the new addition of North Carolina.

• 1:04:58Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 1:04:58Pete Roberts?

  Actually, we're not buying a building, buying the business.

• 1:05:01Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. Um, but these are big investments and, and the, the Jaco Fuel Warehouse as, as everything was just overflowing. We needed. We needed to go big.

• 1:05:16Pete Roberts?

  Yeah.

• 1:05:16Jocko Willink?

  We needed to go big and also need to go big on our supply chain.

• 1:05:22Jocko Willink?

  You know, having enough stuff in stock that when people order, we can fulfill it.

• 1:05:26Pete Roberts?

  Well, the thing is, is as we were dealing in, I remember really sitting down on the phone with you, with Joe and Brian, our chief revenue officer and chief product officer, sitting down and saying, hey, listen, guys,

• 1:05:42Pete Roberts?

  learn something during this with apparel and footwear. Where our supply chains are local, let's say on the east coast. I think shit's gonna happen on the nutritional side. Let's lock down everything we can, the whole supply of monk fruit. And we ended up locking down aluminum too.

• 1:06:01Jocko Willink?

  And that was kind of the big one.

• 1:06:03Pete Roberts?

  That was.

• 1:06:03Jocko Willink?

  That was a lucky one.

• 1:06:04Pete Roberts?

  That was a lucky.

• 1:06:05Jocko Willink?

  I mean.

• 1:06:06Pete Roberts?

  I didn't think like people, I didn't think we were gonna be affected by people not at bars drinking off a tap. And because normally, you know, people are going to the store and buying 12 packs of beer, aluminum cans. Well, it's aluminum. Doesn't matter what the can is. It matters that there's an aluminum shortage. So like securing the supply chains of the wrong ingredients in the cans allowed us to really eat market share. At the same time, and I think to what you're saying is having, having, being able to look up and out versus get stuck in the trenches of just survival. It really allowed us to thrive and actually it taught me how to be a CEO for the first time ever.

• 1:06:47Pete Roberts?

  So I was like, CEO, yeah, that's just a bullshit title that I don't want, but I actually get it. Because some of the decisions that ultimately sometimes I just have to make. They are, they're multimillion dollar decisions, but they could make or break us. You know, and I'm, I don't want to screw up, man.

• 1:07:10Pete Roberts?

  I don't want to screw up.

• 1:07:11Jocko Willink?

  How good, how good did it feel to take a quarter million of those precious cans of product? And throw them away? Cause that's exactly what happened. This is another tuition payment. Yeah, that was a tough not to swallow. So 250,000 cans, 250,000 cans. We had to destroy. And this was, when was that? Was that uh, 2020? Yeah. It was like. Three quarters of the way through. Three quarters of the way to 2020. So, so at that time, that was a big chunk of, a big chunk for us. Big chunk. It's a big chunk now, but it's a much less substantial. It's been another, it's been a year since then. At that time, it was a lot. Yeah. And it was especially a lot because aluminum was short. It was hard to get the stuff run on the lines.

• 1:07:55Jocko Willink?

  So 250,000 cans was substantial. Yes. And we, and we, what had happened was, um, we had leaked some of the cans of this 250,000 cans. Were, had been sealed wrong. And. And it was like one in six that were actually leaking. Yep. And so luckily we caught it and then what do we do? We consulted legal. Oh yep, here's what you do. Oh, what? What did he do? You destroy them all.

• 1:08:24Jocko Willink?

  Bro.

• 1:08:26Jocko Willink?

  I, I, yeah, I couldn't even watch it. So. Couple tuition payments. Yep. The funny thing about that was Main Thai, who, so we're shipping, uh, this is, this is Main Thai. Yeah. Main Thai, who's a part of the media department. Yep. Does he run the media department? He's a media department. He's a media manager. He's the, okay. So the media manager, Main Thai, he, uh, when we, when we had to destroy 250,000 cans of go, of which one out of six was actually bad. Yeah. He was, he was, he didn't care. He started making runs with his Jeep. There's many, he said he's got a lifetime supply right now of Jocko Disciplined Go at his house. He's got pallet upon pallet upon pallet. So there's an Amazon seller. Hmm.

• 1:09:11Jocko Willink?

  There's an Amazon seller who's creeping up on us. Main Thai needs to get, needs to get checked out. He loaded up though. Yeah, yeah, he did. He was, I was laughing my ass off when he was telling me that.

• 1:09:22Jocko Willink?

  Did he send you a video? Oh, he told you? No, he just was telling me about it. He was like, you gotta be kidding me. I, I went down there with my Jeep about 10 times.

• 1:09:33Pete Roberts?

  His grandparents are in the game. His grandmother drinks to go. She's always tagging like fire, fire, America, strong, strong, strong.

• 1:09:44Pete Roberts?

  We said, are we sponsoring her now?

• 1:09:46Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, yeah, she's a

• 1:09:47Pete Roberts?

  She's like eighty, we're sponsoring her.

• 1:09:49Jocko Willink?

  She's the freaking Jaco.

• 1:09:51Pete Roberts?

  Yeah.

• 1:09:56Jocko Willink?

  All those are hard. But there was, there were other, there was a couple of other events that happened in the past couple of years that have been freaking really hard.

• 1:10:08Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, I mean, losing people.

• 1:10:10Pete Roberts?

  Losing people, yeah. Yeah, we lost two, two, two really good ones.

• 1:10:18Pete Roberts?

  We, we had this young kid, Mo, wasn't but nineteen years old, awesome kid, just started jiu jitsu. This kid's life was sports, basketball player. In high school, just a tremendous athlete and first time on the mats, I was like, this kid is gonna be special. And he had just gotten into it.

• 1:10:44Pete Roberts?

  Dealing with, dealing with depression and ended up taking his own life.

• 1:10:50Pete Roberts?

  During the, during the whole pandemic and just a terrible, terrible loss that really stunned, you know, the factory and his team downstairs in the bunker. But I, I, I, I think like, man, if he, if, hate to say like, like put this on jiu jitsu, but man, if he had started like a little bit earlier and gotten back into that team type of atmosphere. I know what it could have done for him. Like I know what jiu jitsu has done for people in his situation, you know, and

• 1:11:31Pete Roberts?

  I actually should have pushed harder to like get him to training more, you know, like it just, I didn't.

• 1:11:41Pete Roberts?

  Really shitty situation. We lost uh

• 1:11:45Pete Roberts?

  him and then we also lost Lenny. So Lenny was uh he's the man. He's the guy that got us going, man. When it came to weaving, he did everything.

• 1:11:57Jocko Willink?

  You just give us a little background on on how you on how you found, on how you you kind of found Lenny.

• 1:12:03Pete Roberts?

  Yeah.

• 1:12:04Jocko Willink?

  Um, there was a need, kind of a desperate need.

• 1:12:07Pete Roberts?

  A desperate need to weave to weave fabric because there wasn't any fabric in America that we could make ghee ghee's with ultimately. And if you want the fabric, I'd import it from China or Pakistan, and that wasn't an option. So I just I called around looking for knowledge and we just asking everybody, who do you know who's done this before? Driving around, trying to find people. I just I literally like just chasing information. You know, reconnaissance, you know, and we discovered this guy and I told him what we wanted to do. We we had this old loom and man, he said he'd help us refurbish it and I didn't know what we were getting into. Again, naive when it came to weaving fabric and this is

• 1:12:49Jocko Willink?

  So did you already have the did you already have the loom at this point?

• 1:12:52Pete Roberts?

  They they came about at the same time. Found the loom and then found Lenny.

• 1:12:56Jocko Willink?

  Where where'd you talk to him for the first time?

• 1:12:59Pete Roberts?

  At the at the Bates Mill. We stood there and looked at that friggin loom together.

• 1:13:06Jocko Willink?

  So as you were going to get the loom, he went with you?

• 1:13:09Pete Roberts?

  Yep, through the through the chain of people that were involved in the project. He came into it. He was working with a museum to help them get the museum right and make sure the looms were right for this museum and

• 1:13:24Pete Roberts?

  he came in and we looked at this loom and he straight up was like, I can make that work. And just those, I can make that work. Five words. I was like, let's do it. You know, just blind faith. So Lenny, I mean, that guy.

• 1:13:44Pete Roberts?

  Really, he's one of the main reasons for our success and and our ability to do what we do because when I asked Lenny, and you've heard me say this before, how many people know what you knew? And he's like, a whole bunch. Like, how many? Like, how many in New England? He's like, well, at least five. There's at least five. Five people. You know, and he invested all of his knowledge into obviously myself and John and this young kid Cam who knows more than John and I put together times 10. So this young kid Cam who's in his early twenties.

• 1:14:18Pete Roberts?

  Lenny spent hours upon hours upon hours with him teaching him over a three-year period. And, uh, and he passed.

• 1:14:29Pete Roberts?

  And it sucks bad. You know, like I

• 1:14:35Pete Roberts?

  man. First time I broke down in a long time, like losing him. He, he, he meant the world to the company and to the people of Origin and just was such a tremendous

• 1:14:49Pete Roberts?

  tremendous, uh, asset. So we did start a like a scholarship program in his name. So that was pretty awesome. But yeah, so now the, the thing is on us. It's all on us. There's no more Colin Lenny. I, uh,

• 1:15:06Pete Roberts?

  I have a, a voicemail actually. I kept on my phone.

• 1:15:12Pete Roberts?

  I'm not, I'm never gonna delete it, you know? It's like the last, the last voicemail he left me. I listen to it every once in a while, actually. So he, uh, he's the man. And his wife Thea, she still, still calls and stops by and she's just heartbroken.

• 1:15:33Pete Roberts?

  I'll tell you what.

• 1:15:37Pete Roberts?

  When I talk about like the old timers, the last ones left.

• 1:15:43Pete Roberts?

  He was the last one. It was ones. That was plural. He's the last one. He's the, he was the last one in Maine. There ain't nobody else in Maine that has his, that has his knowledge.

• 1:16:01Jocko Willink?

  The, the awesome thing is, is that if you wouldn't have done what you did, that never would have been captured. There'd be no cam. There'd be, it just wouldn't, it just wouldn't have happened.

• 1:16:14Pete Roberts?

  God, that, the business, the industry would be dead forever.

• 1:16:21Pete Roberts?

  Like when they say, oh, it's impossible to bring back.

• 1:16:25Pete Roberts?

  It would have been. It would have been virtually impossible to take back. So much so that there's a company in America that weaves, that weaves denim and they work for some brands.

• 1:16:37Pete Roberts?

  And they flew up to Maine recently and

• 1:16:42Pete Roberts?

  I'm not going to say what the brands are, but they're well-known brands. International, well-known brands. And there's a guy here who's been in the industry for, you know, 30 years, 40 years. New York City, you know, big denim guy, ran, ran programs for the biggest denim brands. And I said, man, why are you in Maine? Like, why are you here? And he's, he's like, can I film your operation? I'm like, yeah, sure. Have at it. Film it. Like, I don't, I don't care. He's like, how'd you figure out how to do all this? I said, we just figured it out. We just use common sense. He's like, yeah, but how did you like learn? How did you, where'd you get the operators? I said, we hired them without any skill and we trained them.

• 1:17:24Pete Roberts?

  And we taught them about our culture and what we're all about and they bought in. And they became better at it because they care. And he just couldn't believe it. He couldn't believe what's happening. And he said, you're the only ones that can do this. I said, what are you talking about? He's like, you're outside of California. This company is the only ones that can make jeans.

• 1:17:53Pete Roberts?

  I said, what about all the brands you work with, the big ones? He said, I've asked them all the same question. Why don't you guys set up your own manufacturing? And they all have the same answer. Because we don't have the knowledge anymore. That was 20 years ago, 25 years ago. We don't know how to do it. And so they're soliciting us to set up cut and sew. So that these brands, big brands can make jeans in America. And I can tell you, one of those brands is Levi's because Levi's called us to ask if we would make jeans for them. And of course, you know, we said, no.

• 1:18:34Pete Roberts?

  Because we're savages. Because we rip people's faces off. But, uh, you know, Lenny, Lenny was, was the last one. And the knowledge is really where there's a vessel of knowledge is origin. It's one of our biggest assets is just the sheer knowledge. So it's, it's a beautiful thing to be part of.

• 1:18:56Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, and that, that's one of those stories right there. I remember you sending me a text like, just got an email from Levi's. I'm like, okay, that's, this should be an interesting call.

• 1:19:07Pete Roberts?

  Yeah.

• 1:19:08Jocko Willink?

  But it's another one of those things where the tactical short-term move that can be very beneficial in the immediate.

• 1:19:17Jocko Willink?

  But if you look at it over the long term, you realize that it's not aligned with what it is we're trying to do. And we ran in the same thing, you know, we had a, we had some very nice offers presented to us in the past year, really, maybe year and a half.

• 1:19:35Jocko Willink?

  That I think,

• 1:19:39Jocko Willink?

  I actually think 99.9% of the people in the world would have, have taken these offers on board and, and, and executed, you know, huge amounts of money. And a lot of security. But what you sell for that security and what you sell for that money is the dream and the vision. And

• 1:20:02Jocko Willink?

  You know, you and I, we had some good conversations about it. But I think a lot of times we had conversations that we were talking. We were discussing. Our mouths were moving. But our hearts were already, we already knew what the answer was. And it was almost like, hey, man, what do you think? Like, well, I mean, we could, yeah, we could. Well, it'd be nice. Yeah, it'd be nice. Um, it's, it's a risk. Yeah, it's a risk. We could have, we'd have all those conversations and in the end it would just, each time it's been, it's a sacrifice of the vision.

• 1:20:45Jocko Willink?

  It's a, it's going away from the ultimate goal. It's giving up, it's giving up control. When there is, and you give up control with people that might not be going where we're going. And if, if they're at a different place and all of a sudden someone else's control, or you gotta deal with someone, I've had this conversation plenty of times. I, I, even with certain investors, I've said, listen, Pete and I make decisions in three minutes. Three minutes. Three texts. We figure out what we're gonna do.

• 1:21:27Jocko Willink?

  This, that is what, that's one of the major reasons why I'm hesitant to do anything. Because I'm gonna have to deal with you people.

• 1:21:37Jocko Willink?

  And you might, you look, you seem like nice people. I get it. But you have, what, you have a direction that you want to go in. And we, I'm not sure what that direction is. I'm not sure where you want to go. I know for a fact where Pete and I want to go.

• 1:21:55Jocko Willink?

  And so you start throwing variables in there. And then on top of that, you know, you start trying to put a price on those variables. And it, and it becomes.

• 1:22:06Jocko Willink?

  Well, we haven't done it.

• 1:22:07Pete Roberts?

  Big prices too.

• 1:22:08Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 1:22:09Pete Roberts?

  Big. The thing is, it's almost like inevitable when you think about where we need to go and how to get there. You know?

• 1:22:15Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, at some point, we will, we will likely have to take some outside capital on board.

• 1:22:24Jocko Willink?

  Every, it seems like every day, every week that we don't, we are in an even better position where maybe we can muddle through it a little bit further. And then you look at me like, what's doing all right? Okay, we're good. Can you breath hold another three months here? Yeah, I can hold my breath. Yeah, can you? Yeah, I can. Yeah, you're gonna be good with it. Yeah, I'm okay, man. Okay, we're good. We're good.

• 1:22:46Pete Roberts?

  Yeah.

• 1:22:46Jocko Willink?

  And we look, and we've done that for the last year and a half. It's been a lot of that. Every, almost every week, the, we, we, we overcome an obstacle. We make a move that turns out good. We've taken some hits too. But that just gives, it gives us so much more security to move forward with just us.

• 1:23:07Pete Roberts?

  I feel like the, uh, the wormhole is closing. You know, like we've been in this wormhole and you can see the light in it and it's like this and we're going and we're, we're moving towards it. We're moving towards it and we're picking up speed. And we've got to get through the wormhole before it shuts, you know? And it's a, it's a difficult place to be, you know, in, into, to read because

• 1:23:38Pete Roberts?

  doing what we do is, is unique and it, it makes us feel alive. And we're completely aligned and working on the same frequency and having fun.

• 1:23:50Pete Roberts?

  But we're building something that's going to transcend us at the same time. You know what I mean? It's like, holy shit, getting to the next level is, it's a big deal, bro.

• 1:24:01Jocko Willink?

  What, what were we on the INC 500 in 2020?

• 1:24:08Pete Roberts?

  Like 2020?

• 1:24:09Jocko Willink?

  Last year.

• 1:24:10Pete Roberts?

  For last year, the year before last, we were 364 on the INC 500.

• 1:24:16Jocko Willink?

  And then this year?

• 1:24:17Pete Roberts?

  And for 2020. We finished two fifteen.

• 1:24:21Jocko Willink?

  Oh, we're gonna crush that.

• 1:24:23Pete Roberts?

  Would you think about for a company that did what we did? It just shows the strength of our people and our culture and our vision to finish the as a two hundred and fifteenth fastest growing business in America? That's crazy from the freaking woods of nowhere, Maine.

• 1:24:40Jocko Willink?

  And

• 1:24:43Jocko Willink?

  literally doing what we're saying we're gonna do.

• 1:24:47Pete Roberts?

  Yes.

• 1:24:48Jocko Willink?

  And and an example that that I'm thinking of right now is we keep saying we're bringing manufacturing back to America. Oh, what does that really mean? I'll tell you what it means. A trip to the Dominican Republic to buy equipment and literally ship it back to America.

• 1:25:02Pete Roberts?

  Yeah.

• 1:25:03Jocko Willink?

  Talk to me about that.

• 1:25:04Pete Roberts?

  Well, Andy, Andy found this this equipment, our COO over there at the footwear division. And he's like, this is what we need to make safety toe boots. And he's gone all in. You walk into his office. It's all books on making footwear. He knows how to make shoes. He knows how to make patterns. I mean, this is a guy who came from setting up plants for Toyota. Now working on footwear. And he was super nervous. He's like, here's the list of stuff we need to bid on. Here's what I think we're gonna need. It's coming out of a Timberland factory, Timberland boot factory in the Dominican that's shutting down. And I was like, cool, man, let's get whatever we need. And he was just super nervous about it. So we sat in the conference room and we bid real time.

• 1:25:48Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. You're posting that stuff on freaking Instagram.

• 1:25:52Pete Roberts?

  You texted me like, hey, bro. Did you say, hey, bro, I do think you should be posting on Instagram. Someone's gonna bid against you.

• 1:25:59Jocko Willink?

  I know, I was worried. I'm like, dude, what are you doing? Like, you're showing everybody that you got stuff for sale. Hold off, give me a twenty minute interval, wait till the freaking bidding closes. Come on, bro, let's be strategic.

• 1:26:09Pete Roberts?

  We uh, we did, we got it. We secured the stuff we we really needed two container fulls of machine. And we sent, we sent Joe, my father in law down there with uh, with Andy and Nicole. And, you know, we, thank God, Nicole's fiance is from the Dominican. So he's like packing heat here. He knows everybody who he has to pay off because this is no small feat to get there and to get in like safely where we needed to go to this factory.

• 1:26:38Jocko Willink?

  This during COVID.

• 1:26:40Pete Roberts?

  He was it?

• 1:26:42Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 1:26:42Pete Roberts?

  Yes, it was.

• 1:26:43Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, of course it was.

• 1:26:44Pete Roberts?

  It was. So, uh, they get over there and you got this, you got Joe from the woods of Maine. I mean, the biggest redneck on the planet. You know what I mean? Strutting there.

• 1:26:54Jocko Willink?

  I know what you mean, Joe.

• 1:26:57Pete Roberts?

  Strutting through the streets, you know, in his, uh, in his, in his jean shorts. That the girls made him at the factory. Oh, man. And, uh, and they, they did it. They, they paid off everybody they needed to pay off. Like it was a mission. I mean, a straight up mission. So we pulled that back and all the machinery. We had a technician come and go through everything and get it all running and it is beautiful.

• 1:27:23Jocko Willink?

  The machinery looked beautiful.

• 1:27:25Pete Roberts?

  It's incredible. I mean, some of the shit's like a year old.

• 1:27:29Jocko Willink?

  And what that was all, that was, most of that was geared towards making safety toe boots. Cause we've had a huge demand signal for safety boots.

• 1:27:37Pete Roberts?

  And it, and it's coming this fall, safety toe boots.

• 1:27:40Jocko Willink?

  Echelon front, the, our work with construction companies is so massive. There's, because the, the correlations between like running a SEAL platoon and running a, running a military unit and running, um, a, a construction site, they're really, really similar.

• 1:27:58Pete Roberts?

  Yeah.

• 1:27:59Jocko Willink?

  And it's a real level of where the explanations just make so much sense to them. We massive and, and they all are in the game. They're all in the game. They're like, when the work pants come out, that's going to get buck wild.

• 1:28:12Pete Roberts?

  Yeah, I know.

• 1:28:13Jocko Willink?

  When the work pants come out and the reason I say this, cause I have a pair and I know that, and I worked construction as a kid. Those things are going to get, they're, they're the perfect pants for work.

• 1:28:25Pete Roberts?

  Yeah.

• 1:28:25Jocko Willink?

  They really are.

• 1:28:26Pete Roberts?

  They're, they're like the pants you want in a post apocalyptic environment. That shit's going to last forever. Totally overbuilt.

• 1:28:33Jocko Willink?

  Totally overbuilt, over engineered.

• 1:28:35Pete Roberts?

  A hundred percent.

• 1:28:36Jocko Willink?

  Over engineered like you read about.

• 1:28:38Pete Roberts?

  Yeah.

• 1:28:39Jocko Willink?

  But the point is of, of the reason I'm bringing that up is this, this talk about bringing manufacturing back, there's no better example of that than going to a foreign country, getting the equipment and bringing it literally back to here so we can build.

• 1:28:58Pete Roberts?

  Yep.

• 1:28:58Jocko Willink?

  That's freaking legit.

• 1:29:01Jocko Willink?

  Uh. Wait. You, when did you get COVID? I got COVID before you, right?

• 1:29:08Pete Roberts?

  Yeah, I got it in, uh, December.

• 1:29:10Jocko Willink?

  And Echo got it. You and I got it together. We had the joint COVID. Yeah. You and I were just, we were. Kind of skated through it a little bit. We, we definitely skated through it. Yeah, you lost your smell. I didn't lose anything. I had a couple of workouts that were kind of weak.

• 1:29:25Pete Roberts?

  Damn. What's your blood type?

• 1:29:26Jocko Willink?

  Brutal. Uh, A negative. I don't know mine. I forget.

• 1:29:31Pete Roberts?

  Mine's A positive.

• 1:29:32Jocko Willink?

  Is that a thing?

• 1:29:33Pete Roberts?

  Yeah, they said it. They said like A positive.

• 1:29:36Jocko Willink?

  You were down hard. You were down hard.

• 1:29:37Pete Roberts?

  Oh, yeah. I mean, I made it look good on Instagram. Like, hey, this is the whole factor. And I put my phone down and just boom.

• 1:29:45Pete Roberts?

  Right back in.

• 1:29:45Jocko Willink?

  It was weird too, because Maine and especially Farmington, you guys didn't get.

• 1:29:51Pete Roberts?

  No, we didn't get.

• 1:29:52Jocko Willink?

  You didn't get hit.

• 1:29:53Pete Roberts?

  No, we locked it down pretty good. We didn't get hit like the rest of the country.

• 1:29:57Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 1:29:58Pete Roberts?

  So, it, I mean, it, it, you know, it was experience.

• 1:30:02Jocko Willink?

  So, how many people total at Origin got COVID?

• 1:30:05Pete Roberts?

  Um, eight.

• 1:30:08Jocko Willink?

  That's unbelievable. How did you not spread it?

• 1:30:11Pete Roberts?

  So. Lots of conversations with the whole team. Hey, listen, when you leave your house in the morning, make sure you're making, you know, if you can, make one stop. And on that stop, make sure you're getting the things you need for the day and then go straight home after. We asked everybody to have, basically say, low impact, have super low impact. Um, we just, you know, we made sure everybody was aligned to follow kind of those guidelines.

• 1:30:44Jocko Willink?

  So you got COVID though, all right?

• 1:30:47Pete Roberts?

  Yeah, I did.

• 1:30:47Jocko Willink?

  So you got COVID. What I'm saying is.

• 1:30:49Pete Roberts?

  Traveling.

• 1:30:51Jocko Willink?

  How did you not go into the factory for two, three days, shake hands? Hey, let me get on that machine. Hey, what do you think of this? You're looking over their shoulder.

• 1:30:58Pete Roberts?

  It was Christmas, New Year's.

• 1:31:00Jocko Willink?

  Got it. So you got lucky.

• 1:31:02Pete Roberts?

  Got lucky. Did you, how long did it take you before you knew you had it?

• 1:31:09Pete Roberts?

  I knew immediately.

• 1:31:10Jocko Willink?

  Oh, Miss Rona.

• 1:31:11Pete Roberts?

  Yeah, I knew immediately. I uh.

• 1:31:13Jocko Willink?

  You could just feel, you felt sick.

• 1:31:15Pete Roberts?

  Oh yeah, I felt it. I was like, oh, I'm not feeling good.

• 1:31:17Jocko Willink?

  What did you, but are you Echo?

• 1:31:18Speaker 02

  What's that?

• 1:31:19Jocko Willink?

  Did you, did you, I think I told you I had, so that was the worst, the worst thing for me was I had to call everybody. I had to call everybody I knew that I had been in contact with and say, hey, hey, like this is the way I'm, I, I was, and I was, I guess I was texting people because it seemed more efficient. Um, and the worst was Tulsi because Tulsi came to visit us. Like we, we would have recorded a podcast, but uh, she like last minute thing and she only had a little bit of time. So she's like, hey, just want to come by and say hi. We're like, cool. Come on by. And so you came in, I think we trained and then we trained and then she came in. And she hung out, but I will say she wore two masks the whole time.

• 1:32:05Jocko Willink?

  And, and at this point Echo and I, we've, we were in our own whatever COVID bubble.

• 1:32:10Pete Roberts?

  So you gave Echo COVID.

• 1:32:11Jocko Willink?

  We don't know.

• 1:32:12Speaker 02

  Or we might've cut it from the same spot.

• 1:32:14Jocko Willink?

  We went on a trip. We went up to Northern California. We met with Cowboy and we met with, we met with Tilt until we did it. And that was the hardest thing about this. And, and look, we don't know where we got it, whether Cowboy gave it to us, but Cowboy got, Cowboy was a Vietnam, Vietnamese. Sog guy, Sog operator, just a total badass guy. He, dude, we, you know, you watch that podcast. He's like pulling up his shirt showing all I got stabbed here, got shot here, got blown up over here. And then all of a sudden he gets COVID and he was in the hospital and stuff. It was bad. Um, and so by the way, the troopers that I posted about it because it, it hit his whole family and like people just donated a ton of money and really helped him out, man.

• 1:32:54Jocko Willink?

  So thank everybody for doing that. But wherever we got it, because we had flown up there, we stayed in a hotel, we get done with that. And he had had some family event or whatever. I don't know. Anyways, we all end up getting COVID. And and then Tulsi came and what what made it hard about what I felt bad about Tulsi because Tulsi went from being with us to flying out to damn DC and they were they were paranoid level 12 out there. And so she's like, yeah, if I've been exposed, she goes, I have to quarantine for 12 days. I was like, what? She's like, just for being exposed to us. I feel horrible. So sorry.

• 1:33:31Pete Roberts?

  So she served for 12 days?

• 1:33:33Jocko Willink?

  No, I think no, she was in DC. So she couldn't go home and Hawaii was real strict too. So it was but but you know what? She ended up getting like two back to back tests and she was negative, negative. And so ended up being all right, which was cool. What about like your own? What about? So we kind of talked about the business. Covid was kind of kind of like a little bit rough on Pete Roberts as a as a human.

• 1:33:57Pete Roberts?

  Well, I did. I went down for a couple of weeks. My whole I gave it to my whole family and my father in law. They were pissed.

• 1:34:02Jocko Willink?

  Dude, no one in my family got it.

• 1:34:04Pete Roberts?

  Really?

• 1:34:04Jocko Willink?

  And we didn't. I, you know, I didn't stay with. Did you quarantine yourself or anything?

• 1:34:08Pete Roberts?

  I after I when I had it, I had to. Yeah, I stayed in. I stayed at in my property.

• 1:34:12Jocko Willink?

  Did you stay away from your family, though?

• 1:34:15Pete Roberts?

  Well, I didn't know I had it. And then I had I must have got a pretty massive viral dose. And so then I gave it to my my mother in law, my father in law, my son, my daughter, my son's best friend, my wife, his freaking parents, Xander. I call him the Xandalorian. I they sent him up to the Woods of Maine to a cabin for two weeks. His parents sent him up by himself. There's like one store up up there that he would walk to and get his goods or whatever. Maybe he had them delivered. I don't know.

• 1:34:47Jocko Willink?

  Bro, no one in my family got it.

• 1:34:48Pete Roberts?

  That's crazy.

• 1:34:49Jocko Willink?

  And I didn't we and we didn't. I mean, my family, because we we were like, OK, well, I got it. So we all go, we're just stuck together. We're all going to get it. And no one got it.

• 1:34:57Pete Roberts?

  Weird. That's weird.

• 1:34:58Jocko Willink?

  I mean, I was even before I knew I had it, which I obviously had it. I was like, you know, my wife and I are, you know, like

• 1:35:04Pete Roberts?

  I blame it on chips.

• 1:35:05Jocko Willink?

  Chips, chips, chips.

• 1:35:07Pete Roberts?

  Chips.

• 1:35:07Jocko Willink?

  You eat. What do you mean?

• 1:35:08Pete Roberts?

  I eat chips. Oh, potato chips. Chips to everybody else.

• 1:35:12Jocko Willink?

  Potato chips.

• 1:35:13Pete Roberts?

  Chips. Cape Cod Kettle style potato chips.

• 1:35:16Jocko Willink?

  Cape Cod.

• 1:35:17Pete Roberts?

  I blame giving Covid to everybody on Cape Cod chips. But my mother in law was super pissed. She was super pissed at me. And I'm like, you're welcome. After she, you know, was fine. I was like, you're welcome. You're welcome. She didn't like that either.

• 1:35:34Jocko Willink?

  What about, what about your, uh, training during Miss Rona?

• 1:35:38Pete Roberts?

  Yeah, I mean, I, I, I was shut down for two weeks. I was done. And then when I got back into working out or trying to work out, it was like, literally five minutes. I was like,

• 1:35:48Jocko Willink?

  Do you still feel like Miss Rona in your, in your lungs?

• 1:35:51Pete Roberts?

  So, uh, honestly, there's some cognitive things going on for me. There's like,

• 1:35:59Jocko Willink?

  Beyond just your normal, limited capacities?

• 1:36:02Pete Roberts?

  I mean, it's pretty limited as it is. You know what I'm saying? Like I, you know, no, there's, there's, there's a little bit of shit going on, but, uh, all good. I feel like, I mean, I feel super healthy now, you know, even though I put on forty freaking pounds.

• 1:36:15Jocko Willink?

  You put on forty pounds?

• 1:36:17Pete Roberts?

  Forty, man.

• 1:36:18Jocko Willink?

  Wait.

• 1:36:18Pete Roberts?

  A fatty.

• 1:36:19Jocko Willink?

  Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait.

• 1:36:23Jocko Willink?

  Potato chips.

• 1:36:26Pete Roberts?

  It's a post-apocalyptic kind of environment.

• 1:36:30Jocko Willink?

  You're just going daily like this could be it, man.

• 1:36:35Pete Roberts?

  I'm thinking survival. You know, you got that extra layer on you. You know, you gotta fast for a week or two. The food, the food supplies dwindling. Guess what?

• 1:36:43Jocko Willink?

  You're ready.

• 1:36:47Pete Roberts?

  Unless you decide to take me out and carve me out.

• 1:36:50Jocko Willink?

  Forty pounds before or after?

• 1:36:52Pete Roberts?

  During, nah, during COVID. I put, I put on forty pounds during COVID.

• 1:36:55Jocko Willink?

  Wait, when you had COVID? Did you lose weight when you had COVID?

• 1:37:00Pete Roberts?

  Yeah, I, I dropped like ten pounds.

• 1:37:02Jocko Willink?

  Okay. And that was because you were couldn't eat. That was because,

• 1:37:05Pete Roberts?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:37:06Jocko Willink?

  You were sweating, you were sick.

• 1:37:07Pete Roberts?

  Yeah, sweating, sick and, and then couldn't taste anything. So the only thing that actually felt good in my mouth is that old school Campbell's chicken noodle soup.

• 1:37:17Jocko Willink?

  So you're losing weight. And, all right, so, um, that's happened with COVID. And then, oh, we had a bunch of other crazy, like, awesome stuff going on. Cause we, that's another thing, timing wise. We went into Vitamin Shoppe.

• 1:37:29Pete Roberts?

  Yeah.

• 1:37:29Jocko Willink?

  The entire Jaco Fuel line goes into Vitamin Shoppe.

• 1:37:32Pete Roberts?

  It explodes.

• 1:37:33Jocko Willink?

  And goes, and goes berserk out of the gate. And then COVID hits.

• 1:37:38Pete Roberts?

  Yep.

• 1:37:38Jocko Willink?

  And all of a sudden, that's like, goes on a little bit of a, of a, you know, hesitation there. Because people, it shut down, you know, uh, wasn't whatever. What's the word again? Critical mass, critical essential worker, right? Was Vitamin Shoppe essential?

• 1:37:54Pete Roberts?

  They were. We actually, we actually, the Vitamin Shoppe, we exploded in. Because people, they were buying like,

• 1:38:03Pete Roberts?

  When you went into the stores, like my wife was telling me, she's like, I'm going shopping. This is like as shit's coming across and you're wearing the face coverings and everybody's got masks on. So she's going to the store and she's like, I just needed some essentials. I needed some bread and you know, some tuna fish, whatever.

• 1:38:20Jocko Willink?

  She's coming out there ready to survive for four years.

• 1:38:23Pete Roberts?

  She's like, Pete, she's like, I'm going down the aisle and I look and there's brown bread and there's only one left. I've never bought brown bread in my life. She's like, I had to put it in the shopping cart because there's only one left. And that's the kind of like the kind of chaos that that went on. And then folks started going to GNCs and vitamin shops and anywhere else you could get protein.

• 1:38:44Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 1:38:44Pete Roberts?

  And supplements.

• 1:38:45Jocko Willink?

  I remember like a little bit of hesitation and then it was like.

• 1:38:49Pete Roberts?

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:38:50Jocko Willink?

  So that ended up being awesome.

• 1:38:52Pete Roberts?

  Yeah, it was good for business.

• 1:38:54Jocko Willink?

  And then same thing with going into Wawa, which is the, if you don't know what Wawa is, it's a massive convenience chain on the East Coast and we rolled into Wawa. We rolled into Wawa on a three month test. So if you don't know anything about this kind of thing, so it gets convenience stores. They're like the real estate, right? They're like the real estate where you you get to sell stuff.

• 1:39:18Pete Roberts?

  Yeah.

• 1:39:18Jocko Willink?

  If you're lucky, they own it and they only want to sell stuff that's gonna sell. So they don't just, you can't just walk into a convenience store and be like, oh, I want to sell my, you know, my, my drink here. They go, eh, we don't care. We don't want your drink. Get out of here. Because they want stuff that's gonna sell. They want there to be a demand for it. And so we got, we had some relationships. Luckily, like everything's relationship based. Joe Moss had some relationships and so we, they gave us a three month test to see how we do.

• 1:39:50Pete Roberts?

  In Florida.

• 1:39:50Jocko Willink?

  In Florida.

• 1:39:54Jocko Willink?

  I think it was three weeks. Three weeks into it. They called and said. Chain wide. Chain wide because every all that are listening to this right now. Went out and got crazy. Yes. And matter of fact, it got to a point where they asked me. To stop saying go clear this because I was like, hey, if you go to Wawa, clear the shelves and people were like, okay, cool. People are posting videos of them just clearing shelves into coolers from Wawa. Freaking awesome. So that was super helpful and awesome. That y'all went out and did that. And so in three weeks, they called us and said, can you, can we get enough supply to go chain wide? In now. And we were like, okay, yeah. So that was, and that's a, that's a. An iconic.

• 1:40:40Jocko Willink?

  People can marry at Wawa. It's an iconic convenience store and it's a benchmark. It's a benchmark for all convenience stores. And, and we had to, you know, we had to go crush a few Wawa and. Hoagies. Oh yeah, we got some hoagies on. Hmm. But, but that's opened up the doors. Now there's. Now there's a, well, we should be spreading to. Many other convenience stores. I don't want to name them right now, but they're all over the country. Uh, the one, the probably the hardest one to get into. As far as geographically, when this is a bummer is California. California has some convenience stores that we're, we're just, we're not.

• 1:41:16Jocko Willink?

  We, we're not in California, the way we want to be. We'll find the right partner, but it's just, it's a little bit tricky of a, of an atmosphere out there. Which is weird too, because California like basically is. Convenience stores like there's convenience stores everywhere. There's people that just, that's where they shop is convenience stores, you know, like that's where they're, that's where it's happening. You know, and so we'll, but we're, we're working that, that issue um, to get to a point where.

• 1:41:42Jocko Willink?

  Where it starts to go forward.

• 1:41:45Jocko Willink?

  What else? That's a pretty good year, man.

• 1:41:48Pete Roberts?

  Yeah, you know, when you think, talking through this, holy shit. All this thing, all this has happened in the same time.

• 1:41:56Jocko Willink?

  Oh, by the way, we bought a, a, a business, a factory.

• 1:42:00Pete Roberts?

  In North Carolina.

• 1:42:01Jocko Willink?

  In North Carolina, by the way. We just closed on that.

• 1:42:04Pete Roberts?

  Yep, yep. All the papers are signed.

• 1:42:07Jocko Willink?

  So that's a massive amount of capability that we're gonna have to sew even better. And, and North Carolina, it's similar in many ways to what we have up in Maine, what we have up in New England, where this used to be the dominant industry up here. And it just faded away. And North Carolina is similar in many ways. And they have, they also have, they also have parts of the industry down there that are central in that area that aren't central up here.

• 1:42:35Pete Roberts?

  Yes.

• 1:42:36Jocko Willink?

  And so that'll be a huge boost to what we're able to do as well.

• 1:42:39Pete Roberts?

  Yeah, when it comes to like our heavy hoodies, you know, we have the new heavy hoodies, joggers, t-shirts, grappling shorts, fight shorts, board shorts, knit products, like all the, all the new stuff we're, we're doing as we focus on building origin and bringing, bringing it to the masses, blitzscaling. This, it's just gonna be phenomenal to have this other facility. So it's another big, you know, big step, you know, risk reward, you know, and I think we, we both buy into that one a hundred percent. I don't think that's like boots. I think it's, yeah, I don't think it's that, that big of a risk, but it's still, uh,

• 1:43:19Pete Roberts?

  it's still crazy to say we're gonna drive the same culture we drive in Maine and North Carolina, you know, and think through having the right people in place and processes and making sure that you get enough face time there and get them bought into what we're doing. From an extreme ownership perspective, you know, and it's gonna take time to make all that happen.

• 1:43:45Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, one thing that is beautiful about the culture and them, you know, them, this isn't us having to impose a new culture.

• 1:44:00Jocko Willink?

  This isn't us having to say, hey, here's what you think is important and here's what we think is more. You need to think what like we think because what we're doing, it just resonates. It's in, look, guess what they do for a living? They sew stuff, they make stuff, they want to make stuff in America, just like we're not trying to sell them something else. They're already on board and so it's more like a unification.

• 1:44:25Pete Roberts?

  Yeah.

• 1:44:26Jocko Willink?

  And it's an opportunity for them to have, you know, to do more and better and bigger. And the people that are there right now to have more opportunities and more job stability and, and earn more and make more and do more. Like that's what, you don't have to convince somebody, you don't have to convince somebody of that.

• 1:44:44Pete Roberts?

  You know what the best part is? The place wasn't for sale.

• 1:44:50Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 1:44:50Pete Roberts?

  Wasn't for sale.

• 1:44:51Jocko Willink?

  Yep.

• 1:44:52Pete Roberts?

  You know, but being able to connect with the current ownership who's been running it since 1974. And they're, you know, later in life, flying them up to Maine, showing them what we're doing. Telling them we want to bring this to North Carolina. We want to reinject the soul back into this community and back into this company and back into the people. And, and them and him knowing that he doesn't have the energy for it anymore. He just doesn't have the capacity. He has the passion for it, but it doesn't, he can't physically do it. And seeing that there's another generation who's going to carry on what he's built. I mean, brought tears to his eyes.

• 1:45:34Pete Roberts?

  So it was a, it was an opportunity that

• 1:45:40Pete Roberts?

  we just can't pass up on. And I think it's going to be good, man. Looking forward to it.

• 1:45:49Jocko Willink?

  Anything else?

• 1:45:51Pete Roberts?

  Nah.

• 1:45:52Jocko Willink?

  Echo Charles, you got any questions? What's your cognitive?

• 1:45:57Speaker 02

  Particularly like

• 1:45:59Pete Roberts?

  What are you losing?

• 1:46:01Speaker 02

  Yeah, like memory or just

• 1:46:03Pete Roberts?

  Gathering words up.

• 1:46:04Speaker 02

  Oh, bro.

• 1:46:04Pete Roberts?

  Yeah, I've always been very like sharp. I can put I can piece words together, you know, and I can flow them off the tongue. But uh, sometimes I get caught up and I never get caught up, you know? And someone says, oh, isn't that just age? You're 42 now. Yeah, I don't know about that. When I'm when I drink this stuff, when I'm drinking the go.

• 1:46:24Jocko Willink?

  You're on fire.

• 1:46:25Pete Roberts?

  Oh, yeah, it flows. It flows. Yeah. But uh, no, then I don't have any. I don't have any lag in anything.

• 1:46:32Jocko Willink?

  Good. All right. Well, probably a good place to stop. And I mean, just the, the, the thing that you just said that right there that kind of hit. That I think is the unifying thing is

• 1:46:46Jocko Willink?

  what we're doing is about the people. It's about the people. It's bigger than, it's infinitely bigger than just us, obviously. It's, it's a movement that resonates with people, the way people think. It already is there. You know what I'm saying? That's what I was trying to say like about the culture. It's already there and it's not just in North Carolina. The people that this resonates with people, with people, it just resonates. They understand what it is we're trying to do. They understand that what we all are doing, including you that's listening, it's like what we all are doing

• 1:47:28Jocko Willink?

  is the right thing to do. It's the right thing to do is to rebuild America is, is to take care of our communities. Is to take care of our families, take care of our friends, take care of our country and to put, and the way that you do that is you take care of people.

• 1:47:46Jocko Willink?

  And you put people above profit. There's so many decisions that got made and at some point when we document this whole thing and we go back and we pick apart decisions that got made by corporations in this country where they decided to save 4% on the production of a pair of jeans or 6% on the production of a pair of boots. And they took and they ripped those, ripped those capabilities out of this country for 4% for 6% and destroyed communities to make that money.

• 1:48:21Jocko Willink?

  When we tell that story, I think people already know that. And I think that's why this resonates with people. They understand that what we're doing is the right thing to do. Putting people above profit. And by the way, that is not.

• 1:48:36Jocko Willink?

  That is a strategic win. The short term win is, oh, we can make, we can save 4% if we ship everything overseas and we get it shipped overseas. Or we get it made overseas. That's a tactical win. Yeah. Hey, we, we made more money this quarter. We made more money this year, but what they did in the meantime is destroy communities and, and take away the, the freaking thing that makes America, America. And that is the pride in what we do in this country. So I think everybody knows that we're doing the right thing. I think that's why so many people are supporting what we're doing. That's why so many people are with us. Like, I don't, I feel like it's not just us. It's, it's everyone.

• 1:49:15Jocko Willink?

  When I meet people, when we, you, you mentioned the other day, someone was telling you that at the muster, there's everyone's wearing origin jeans. Hell yeah, they are. Yeah, that's what's happening. And, and when we make stuff and they know where it comes from and they know that it's connected to other people. This, that's why I think this is just a, a, a train. That's just leaving the station and it's picking up speed and it's going to roll.

• 1:49:42Pete Roberts?

  Hell yeah.

• 1:49:44Jocko Willink?

  That's where I think we're at. Echo Charles. All right. So Echo.

• 1:49:50Jocko Willink?

  How do we get on board this train?

• 1:49:51Speaker 02

  Train. Well, you got to do the right thing. You know, speaking of doing the right thing. So we'll talk about, okay, you mentioned discipline. Go right. Helping you with your.

• 1:49:59Pete Roberts?

  Yeah.

• 1:50:00Speaker 02

  You know, your, your brain.

• 1:50:01Pete Roberts?

  That's Jaco Go. Yeah.

• 1:50:03Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:50:04Pete Roberts?

  That's brain fuel, brain fuel. That's a morning brew right there.

• 1:50:08Speaker 02

  So that's essentially doing the right thing in a, in a smaller, kind of more specific way where, you know, we need our energy drinks. Some people drink coffee and I dig it. Some people, they drink energy drinks, but you know, you're not doing the right thing. A lot of the time when you're drinking like a normal energy.

• 1:50:22Pete Roberts?

  You mean a sugary snack that makes you feel like shit?

• 1:50:26Speaker 02

  Yeah, later.

• 1:50:26Pete Roberts?

  I never drank energy drinks.

• 1:50:27Speaker 02

  Oh, for I did.

• 1:50:29Pete Roberts?

  I I've had a sip of a familiar, popular drink once. Never drank energy drinks. When I heard about kids dying from those, you know, drinks, I was like, hell, no.

• 1:50:41Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:50:41Pete Roberts?

  Never let my kids either. Now I let I let them.

• 1:50:44Speaker 02

  Of course.

• 1:50:44Pete Roberts?

  It's good for you.

• 1:50:45Jocko Willink?

  That's the test. That's the do you let your kids drink it? I do.

• 1:50:48Pete Roberts?

  Yep, yeah, I do too.

• 1:50:49Speaker 02

  Yeah, so.

• 1:50:50Jocko Willink?

  In fact, my kids kind of get nuts with it.

• 1:50:52Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:50:53Jocko Willink?

  I'll say, I don't know, speaking of of profits before people. And I I don't know how much profit we're losing because of my kids and their friends. He's freaking nuts.

• 1:51:06Pete Roberts?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:51:07Jocko Willink?

  These kids are rocking.

• 1:51:08Pete Roberts?

  Yeah, yeah, they they I didn't I didn't realize it was gonna be so popular with with kids, you know, teenagers, athletes, all that stuff. It's it's been awesome.

• 1:51:17Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's the new, it's essentially the new, uh, what paradigm? Is that the right word? Paradigm shift. I shouldn't ask you anymore.

• 1:51:24Pete Roberts?

  Well, because you don't want to catch his vocabulary in a lull.

• 1:51:26Speaker 02

  You know, oh, whatever it is, but but it's like.

• 1:51:29Pete Roberts?

  In this group, my brain's working just fine.

• 1:51:33Speaker 02

  It's a new era.

• 1:51:40Speaker 02

  But yeah, so it's a new era of energy drinks. We don't have to worry about that kind of stuff anymore. We don't have to worry about our kids dying anymore. Actually, it'll you drink two of those, you're more healthy, technically.

• 1:51:49Pete Roberts?

  Yeah.

• 1:51:49Speaker 02

  You see what I'm saying? Electrolytes, everything, boom.

• 1:51:52Pete Roberts?

  Just in there.

• 1:51:53Speaker 02

  In there. So, yeah, that's one of the things you can do, man. Get on the down the.

• 1:51:57Pete Roberts?

  Gotta get on that subscription, dude.

• 1:51:58Jocko Willink?

  The cool thing is you're doing a like, you're doing something good for yourself. And you're helping out the world.

• 1:52:07Jocko Willink?

  It's tactical and strategic.

• 1:52:09Speaker 02

  It's true. Hundred percent.

• 1:52:10Jocko Willink?

  Across the board.

• 1:52:11Speaker 02

  Also, speaking of doing the right thing, do the right thing for your joints. So, you know, joint, uh, how should I say, maintenance? It's not as sexy. It's like an energy drink or even milk or something like this.

• 1:52:21Jocko Willink?

  You want to know what's not sexy? Limping around because you got hurt. That's not.

• 1:52:27Speaker 02

  It's true, it's true. But it's like, you know, one of those things, but we got to pay attention, do the right thing. So you get the joint more for the super krill oil, keep your joints in the game.

• 1:52:34Jocko Willink?

  And see, this you just said subscription, you know, you kind of like we're starting to go down that path. But this is the one, in my opinion.

• 1:52:43Jocko Willink?

  This is where you subscribe because you don't wanna get caught short without what you need.

• 1:52:49Speaker 02

  Yeah, and it's not like you're waking up in the morning craving some krill oil or something like this. Like you might be like, hey, I'm kind of craving the discipline. Go, you can find yourself in that kind of situation. But the joint warfare, you don't crave that, but you need that.

• 1:53:03Jocko Willink?

  Unless you don't take it, then you crave it.

• 1:53:05Pete Roberts?

  I use it religiously.

• 1:53:08Jocko Willink?

  I was with Leif. Leif and I were down at the muster and so we do these, we do workouts at the muster, you know? And they're burpees and you know, and they're, they're just a little bit different, right? And so we do them. So we show up for the muster before the muster actually starts and we do the PTs to kind of test them out, make sure they're good to go. How we're gonna do them, where we're gonna do them. And you know, so we did a bunch of burpees and jump squats or whatever one day and something like that. And Leif and I, we have like a room that's connected, you know, because we're working. And like whatever, day two of us being down there, he's like, bro.

• 1:53:45Speaker 02

  He texts me about that too.

• 1:53:47Jocko Willink?

  He goes, hey, you got joint warfare and krill oil? I was like, bruh, this is not amateur hour. What's up? And he goes, I didn't bring, because he has a go bag, right? And he travels with it, but you gotta reload your go bag, failure to reload. And I was like, hey, man, I got bad news for you. I got some for myself. I didn't bring enough for other people, because that's how I do my loadout. My loadout.

• 1:54:13Pete Roberts?

  Did we overnight him some?

• 1:54:16Jocko Willink?

  I don't know what he did.

• 1:54:17Pete Roberts?

  He might have gone to the vitamin shop.

• 1:54:19Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, I don't know what he did.

• 1:54:20Speaker 02

  I couldn't help him.

• 1:54:21Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, it was, it was rough, but that's the kind of situation you don't want to be in, right?

• 1:54:26Speaker 02

  You don't.

• 1:54:26Jocko Willink?

  So let's not let that happen because he's in there limping around, holding his back and what.

• 1:54:33Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, it makes you a believer though. If you don't take it, you also, you know, that was a classic. Leif was like, bro.

• 1:54:42Pete Roberts?

  That's our top, you know, out of our whole company, you combine everything together apparel, footwear, gees, supplements, everything. Joint Warfare is our number one selling item. Every day. We like, America's addicted to Joint Warfare.

• 1:54:58Jocko Willink?

  It's freaking good.

• 1:54:59Pete Roberts?

  It's so good for you. So good for you. All right. So what else? What else, Echo Charles?

• 1:55:03Speaker 02

  Speaking of good for you, immunity.

• 1:55:06Jocko Willink?

  Vitamin D3. Can we talk luck here for a second? Sure. Okay. Uh, rewind pre-COVID.

• 1:55:13Jocko Willink?

  Be little like, hey, Jaco, what do you think about vitamin D? I take it every day. Oh, do you want to make some? I was like, yeah, let's do it. This is pre-COVID. Let's do it. Okay. Hey, while we're doing that, let's make immunity because I travel and I get on planes and I shake hands with a bunch of people. And you know, they're passing you the freaking all kinds of germs and whatnot. Let's make an immunity thing. Cool. Okay. So we make two things. Cold War and vitamin D. Pre-COVID.

• 1:55:37Pete Roberts?

  Yeah.

• 1:55:37Jocko Willink?

  Pre-COVID.

• 1:55:38Pete Roberts?

  Good timing.

• 1:55:39Jocko Willink?

  God, that was epic. That was epic, man. Again, this is, this is, you know, just luck, grace of God. God's a frogman, whatever you want to say. That is just perfect. And so we, and we bought a decent amount of it. We, we stocked up on a decent amount of it. And then as soon as COVID hit, people are literally telling people to take exactly like vitamin D and the

• 1:56:06Jocko Willink?

  half the ingredients that are in, in Cold War.

• 1:56:09Pete Roberts?

  Yep.

• 1:56:09Jocko Willink?

  So that was awesome. And again, luck, timing, grace of God, a little bit, everything will take it.

• 1:56:17Pete Roberts?

  I think you, when you're moving in the right direction without compromise and you're in tune.

• 1:56:24Pete Roberts?

  When you're in tune, then you know, shit just happens. I feel like we're in tune with not just our customers, but we're in tune with what America needs.

• 1:56:32Jocko Willink?

  You, you know what's weird? I was talking to Maine Tide today and I was saying, sometimes I make myself nervous, right? Because I like, I'm very particular in what I like. And there certainly is no guarantee that anyone else in the world is gonna like what I like. And, and this podcast is a great example. There's been many times where I've been creating or reading or preparing a podcast and I'm thinking to myself, this is pretty much gonna be for an audience of one. The only person that is gonna have to suffer through what I'm doing right now. That's what's gonna happen.

• 1:57:08Jocko Willink?

  And, and I'm wrong because there are other people that think the exact same way. And, and that's what I said about like the, about the discipline go drink. He says, he says, isn't it, isn't it weird? He said, I heard you talking about, why didn't anybody else make this? And I think for me, I think it's crazy to me that no one would make an energy drink that's good for you. That's not sweetened with sugar. That doesn't have any, that's pasteurized. It's crazy to me to think that no one would. And sometimes when I think of these things, I think I might be thinking for an audience of one, like, oh, if I could have that, I would do it. Right.

• 1:57:46Jocko Willink?

  And so, but, but then you test, you know, you, you put it together and you put it out there and you realize this is the most, this is the best thing about all this stuff, everything that we're doing. The best thing about it is you realize we're not alone. I'm not alone. You're not alone. We're not alone. There's a bunch of people on the path that wanna be better, that wanna help America, that wanna take vitamin D3, that want like, there's a bunch of people that want a stronger immune system. This shouldn't seem like a shock. Yeah. Right? There's a bunch of people that want genes that are made in America. Iconic American genes that aren't even made in America. What, what is that? Stop.

• 1:58:27Jocko Willink?

  And so it's very nice sometimes for me to realize at certain moments that there's, that we're in this together. Yeah.

• 1:58:37Speaker 02

  It's true, bro. Speaking of being in this together, milk or on the milk train together. So that's the good one, right? Extra protein, additional protein in form of dessert. You did a good job with that one, guys. Real good job with the taste.

• 1:58:50Jocko Willink?

  The milk. Yeah, gotta get some of that. Providing all those milk shakes at camp this week.

• 1:58:56Jocko Willink?

  Vitamin shop, Wawa, Jacofuel.com. If you subscribe to it, shipping's free. That's, look, look, are we competing against some heavies? You know, are we 135 pounds in the open bracket going in against the heavies? Yeah, we are. They got, they got some advantages. They got some advantages. And so we got to figure out how we're going to counter some of those advantages. One of the things that some of these big players, including the biggest players in the game can do is they can ship stuff for free because they're absorbing costs. They're making money on the other areas. And so they figure out how to ship stuff for free. And so you and I had this conversation. You're like, bro, we gotta, we gotta figure this out. And I'm like, hey, man, this is America.

• 1:59:37Jocko Willink?

  Like, people don't want to pay for shipping. And you're like brainstorming. I heard freaking spark plugs going off in your noggin. A week later, you're like, bro, if we can get people, if people subscribe. I was thinking more like a two horse.

• 1:59:56Jocko Willink?

  But hey, you know what? It produced because like two weeks later, you're like, listen, I ran the numbers. If people subscribe, we can ship for free. We can ship for free. And that's how we can do it. And like, awesome. So if you are out there and you want us to ship for free, which we want to do, subscribe to one of these things and everything's, all the shipping's for free. That allow, that gives us the advantage, an actual advantage in the open match against the heavyweight monsters that are out there that want to smash us, by the way. They want nothing more than to smash. Oh, yeah. When you start eating people's market share, they're not happy about that. They don't like it. So there you go. What else? What else we got?

• 2:00:36Speaker 02

  Well, this may seem surprising, but a company called Origin USA, good company. I hear good things.

• 2:00:42Jocko Willink?

  It's pretty good.

• 2:00:43Speaker 02

  Yeah. So like you said, hey, if you're going to get iconic American stuff. But you get it with either materials from overseas or they're made overseas. It kind of diverts the purpose a little bit.

• 2:00:54Jocko Willink?

  We can't even call that iconic anymore and we definitely can't call it American.

• 2:00:59Speaker 02

  Very hard. It's very hard. Yeah. But when you're making stuff that's made with literally the seeds of the cotton that's grown, all done in America.

• 2:01:08Jocko Willink?

  That's right.

• 2:01:08Speaker 02

  All the way to the.

• 2:01:09Jocko Willink?

  I love the way you say cotton.

• 2:01:11Speaker 02

  Brad, that's how, that's how it's said. There's two Ts. There's two Ts in cotton. By the way, it's not cotton. It's not zero Ts.

• 2:01:19Jocko Willink?

  I guess you're right. It's cotton.

• 2:01:21Speaker 02

  Yeah. I feel like you guys are right about me being right in this case.

• 2:01:24Jocko Willink?

  I talked a lot about things that are right and wrong. That thing is not right. The way you say cotton.

• 2:01:30Speaker 02

  The cotton is grown here in America.

• 2:01:34Speaker 02

  And the jeans whoop come out on the other side. Iconic, American, Delta 68 jeans. Finally got some. Thanks, Pete. Thanks, Pete. Nonetheless, got some. So, so yes, origin USA. You like that kind of stuff? This is where you can get that kind of stuff. Not to mention jujitsu stuff. That's why you guys started at right jujitsu stuff.

• 2:01:52Jocko Willink?

  Best skis in America. The people at the immersion camp, sorry. Best skis in the world. Thousand percent. But people, everyone, even you today. You come in, bro, this is something about this ski. What is this? What is this stuff?

• 2:02:06Speaker 02

  It's special.

• 2:02:07Jocko Willink?

  It's beautiful. It's a beautiful thing. We've, we've found the last living unicorn herd and we skinned them and we made skis.

• 2:02:16Speaker 02

  I was looking for an.

• 2:02:18Jocko Willink?

  People would be like, they killed the unicorns.

• 2:02:22Jocko Willink?

  Bro, I have this couch at my house and I forget what the material is, but it's like this gray kind of, um, no, it's not velvet. I don't know what it is. It might just be leather, but, but it's gray. It's gray and it's kind of a big couch, right? And so. It's a brontosaurus. So my son was over with his girlfriend and they were, and my girl, my son's girlfriend's like really nice, super sweet girl. Very nice. And you know, we're, we're sitting on the couch. We're watching UFC or something like this. And you know, all of a sudden she's like, saying the couch is comfortable or my son's like, oh, this couch is so awesome. Cause it's a relatively new couch. So she goes, yeah, this couch is so nice. She goes, what's it made of? And I go, oh, it's baby whale skin.

• 2:03:11Jocko Willink?

  She got the most horrified look on her face, bro. I had to like immediately say, no, I'm kidding because she was about to cry. Yeah, baby whale skin.

• 2:03:22Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, so there you go. And it kind of like looks like it could be.

• 2:03:27Pete Roberts?

  A baby whale.

• 2:03:28Jocko Willink?

  Baby whale skin, it could be. So she bought a hand hook line and sinker.

• 2:03:33Speaker 02

  But you have a geez unicorn skin, like the skin that it kind of seems like that could be the case. That's all like luxurious it is.

• 2:03:40Jocko Willink?

  It's luxurious.

• 2:03:41Speaker 02

  You kind of can't go back. I was looking for electric blanket. You don't remember last year here that kind of cold, so.

• 2:03:47Speaker 02

  Bear with me.

• 2:03:49Jocko Willink?

  Hawaiian.

• 2:03:49Speaker 02

  So I'm looking for my big electric blanket and I and I end up pulling out this bin. Like, oh, it could be in there. And it's like my old geez. And bro, I touched the old guy. I'm not gonna say the brand. We don't gotta do that. But I touched that gee and I was like, bro, I could never put that thing on anymore.

• 2:04:06Jocko Willink?

  Sleeping with sandpaper.

• 2:04:07Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's like comparatively speaking, yeah, once you go, you can't, you kind of can't go back, you know?

• 2:04:12Jocko Willink?

  Or USA.com if you want to get some of this stuff.

• 2:04:15Speaker 02

  It's true. Good stuff on that one. Also, Jaco store. Jaco is a store called Jaco store. That's where you can get T-shirts, hoodies, hats. Let's say discipline equals freedom. Jocko podcast. You see people wearing Jocko podcast shirts from time to time.

• 2:04:30Pete Roberts?

  I wear those shirts a lot. Yeah, I wear that green get after it one a lot.

• 2:04:34Speaker 02

  Well, yeah, yeah, some good stuff on there. We've also got a subscription situation too. Free shipping as well. You get a cool new shirt like this one. A little bit different designs, a little bit more creative. Got the next one is an homage to the Sea Wolves.

• 2:04:48Jocko Willink?

  Oh, damn.

• 2:04:49Speaker 02

  If you like the Sea Wolves, some of us do.

• 2:04:51Jocko Willink?

  Straddle the Sea Wolves.

• 2:04:52Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah.

• 2:04:53Jocko Willink?

  It's friggin outstanding.

• 2:04:54Speaker 02

  It's all on Jaco store.

• 2:04:55Jocko Willink?

  That's what I like. I like, let's move in that direction of. Of the shirts on the shirt locker representing that aspect.

• 2:05:08Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:05:08Jocko Willink?

  Of the podcast.

• 2:05:11Speaker 02

  So yeah, jocko store.com. If you like something, hey, get something.

• 2:05:15Jocko Willink?

  Uh, subscribe to this podcast wherever you listen to podcasts. Leave a review.

• 2:05:21Speaker 02

  If you want.

• 2:05:21Jocko Willink?

  Leave a review.

• 2:05:22Speaker 02

  Yeah, man.

• 2:05:23Jocko Willink?

  Said that in a while.

• 2:05:23Pete Roberts?

  Leave a review.

• 2:05:24Jocko Willink?

  But no, leave a review. It's cool because A, we get to read them. You can give us some input. B, if you read, I haven't done this in a long time, but if you write a really funny one, well, I'll read it on here, whatever. Also, don't forget Jocko unraveling podcast with myself and DC Daryl Cooper, grounded podcast, warrior kid podcast for the warrior kids out there. We also have the Jocko underground. Look, we don't control this platform. We don't, whatever platform you're listening on, we don't control it unless you're listening on the underground jocko underground.com that we control. So we set up just to, just to make sure that things don't go awry. We set up our own little platform, jocko underground.com. You are helping us fund that.

• 2:06:08Jocko Willink?

  Uh, by, by subscribing to it. It costs eight dollars and 18 cents a month. That's how you help us build that platform. And maintain that platform and we will be there in the event of an emergency, in case of a real bubonic black plague, or in case of censorship, or in case of free

• 2:06:24Pete Roberts?

  Shadow banning.

• 2:06:25Jocko Willink?

  Shadow banning, all the stuff that's out there.

• 2:06:28Jocko Willink?

  If you can't afford it, it's cool. We want you in the game. We're not trying to like exclude anybody. If you can't afford it, no factor. Email assistance at jocko underground.com and we'll get that taken care of. We have a YouTube channel. Uh, it's called the Jocko podcast channel.

• 2:06:42Speaker 02

  Verified by the way.

• 2:06:43Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. Oh yeah. It's verified.

• 2:06:45Speaker 02

  Is that a thing now? That's how you know. Yeah. Yeah. The same deal.

• 2:06:48Jocko Willink?

  Oh, you like that? Feel pretty good about that one?

• 2:06:51Speaker 02

  I feel good that, you know. I, I feel, oh, what, what do you mean?

• 2:06:55Pete Roberts?

  Like on Instagram?

• 2:06:56Speaker 02

  No, no, no.

• 2:06:57Pete Roberts?

  You're not?

• 2:06:57Speaker 02

  No, I'm not. I don't.

• 2:06:58Pete Roberts?

  You gotta work on that.

• 2:06:59Jocko Willink?

  Are you?

• 2:07:00Pete Roberts?

  There's only one. I'm hot verified. Oh, okay. I only have.

• 2:07:03Speaker 02

  No, that's for like famous people or whatever.

• 2:07:05Pete Roberts?

  Followers on Instagram.

• 2:07:06Speaker 02

  No, but it's not about the number of followers. It's not about the number of followers. It's just like if you're like a, a, what do you call it? Like a public figure like Jocko.

• 2:07:14Jocko Willink?

  Oh, like you are.

• 2:07:14Speaker 02

  No, no, no, no, like you, bro. So like a celebrity.

• 2:07:19Speaker 02

  No, no, I'm not, bro. I'm not.

• 2:07:21Pete Roberts?

  That's so funny. A little, a little blue check mark.

• 2:07:24Speaker 02

  None, no, yeah, it is, it is kind of like a phenomenon, no.

• 2:07:28Jocko Willink?

  All right, let's get this back on track.

• 2:07:29Speaker 02

  You get the blue check mark like Jaco has on Twitter too, by the way.

• 2:07:33Pete Roberts?

  Yeah.

• 2:07:34Speaker 02

  And it's kind of like, oh, yeah, it's like a badge.

• 2:07:36Pete Roberts?

  Yeah, yeah, badge of honor.

• 2:07:38Speaker 02

  Part of the glitterati, whatever.

• 2:07:40Jocko Willink?

  Do I sense jealousy from people over here?

• 2:07:41Speaker 02

  No, no, no, remember when you uh?

• 2:07:43Pete Roberts?

  No, Jaco Fuel, we got verified.

• 2:07:44Jocko Willink?

  That's legit.

• 2:07:45Pete Roberts?

  I gotta, I gotta work on Origin. We haven't, we haven't tried yet.

• 2:07:47Jocko Willink?

  Maybe call it Jaco Origin and it'll get verified.

• 2:07:52Pete Roberts?

  I'm gonna change my Instagram to Jaco's friend Pete.

• 2:07:57Pete Roberts?

  Jaco's friend Pete verified.

• 2:08:00Jocko Willink?

  Hey, you know what else is cool is if you want to follow like a lot of this stuff that we're talking about, also Origin USA, the, the YouTube channel, that's another, uh, another awesome thing to check out.

• 2:08:10Pete Roberts?

  Yeah.

• 2:08:10Jocko Willink?

  You do, uh, Main Tie and the team puts together.

• 2:08:15Pete Roberts?

  Origin HD.

• 2:08:16Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, it's once a week, generally.

• 2:08:18Pete Roberts?

  It's bi-weekly now.

• 2:08:18Jocko Willink?

  Okay. See, that's just weak.

• 2:08:20Pete Roberts?

  Totally, total inside look at what we're doing.

• 2:08:23Jocko Willink?

  What's going on.

• 2:08:23Pete Roberts?

  Yeah, it's awesome.

• 2:08:24Jocko Willink?

  And, uh, Main Tie showed up at Origin saying, can I work here? And you said, what skills do you have? And he was like, mm. And you said, can you sweep floors? He said, yep. And now he's running media.

• 2:08:35Pete Roberts?

  Yep.

• 2:08:35Jocko Willink?

  Media manager.

• 2:08:36Pete Roberts?

  Media manager.

• 2:08:37Jocko Willink?

  So check out what Main Tie, self-taught.

• 2:08:39Speaker 02

  Does some good work.

• 2:08:40Jocko Willink?

  Doing good work, even approved by Echo Charles over there. Uh, so subscribe to those things. We've got Psychological Warfare. I made an album. It's got tracks on it. I'm gonna tell you when your moments of weakness, not to be weak and some, some pragmatic reasons why that's not gonna be a good call.

• 2:08:55Speaker 02

  What if like, you're about to like pound like half a container of baklava? Like, is that like, is that what you know?

• 2:09:01Jocko Willink?

  I don't have one for that. Yeah. Cause that's a lot of positive reinforcement there.

• 2:09:04Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, it's like, kind of like, it's kind of weird, it's hard.

• 2:09:08Jocko Willink?

  Uh, flipsidecanvas.com, my brother Dakota Meyer making cool stuff to hang on your wall. We got a bunch of books. I got a new book coming out called Final Spin, available for preorder right now. And in fact.

• 2:09:21Jocko Willink?

  The, yeah, I just got done recording the audio. There's, I, I read the audio. I was gonna have actors and actresses do the audio. But then when you see the book and you read the book, you'll be like, it doesn't fit. Because the book is just sparse and raw and bare and, and confrontational almost in its approach. And so having a bunch of actors and actresses wasn't like that. So I just read the whole thing myself. So final spin, preorder that. I had a bunch of people, I've had a bunch of people at camp that preemptively apologized to me when they give me a book to sign because it's second edition, third edition, whatever. They feel bad. Look, I don't want you to feel that bad about it. But let's face it, we both know that you hesitated at the moment. So get that first edition, final spin.

• 2:10:06Jocko Willink?

  Leadership Strategy and Tactics Field Manual, the code, the evaluation, the protocols, discipline equals freedom field manual. Way of the Warrior Kid, one, two, three, and four, Mikey and the Dragons, about faced by Hackworth. Been signing that one lately, which is cool. Extreme Ownership and the Dichotomy of Leadership that I wrote with my brother Leif Babin. Echelon Front, speaking of Leif Babin, we have a leadership consultancy. We solve problems through leadership. Go to echelonfront.com if you want help inside your organization with leadership. That's also where you can find the details for our live events, including the muster, including field training exercises, including EF Battlefield. Next muster is Las Vegas. It's in, it's out, it's not on the strip of Las Vegas.

• 2:10:51Jocko Willink?

  It's at a place called the Red Rock Hotel. And so it's not, it's not one of those situations where you go and it's, oh, we're just gonna party. It's not like that. It's separate. So it's like a 20, maybe a 30 minute drive. So most of you don't want to come out and party anyways. But if you want to bring like your company out there and you're thinking, I don't want to have the issues of bringing everyone out there. It's not like that. So that's what we're doing. The next one, that's the next muster. It's in Las Vegas, October 28th and 29th.

• 2:11:22Jocko Willink?

  Also have online training, Extreme Ownership Academy. What's cool is seeing people from Origin doing that.

• 2:11:27Pete Roberts?

  Everybody, everybody from Origin is doing it. That's really a lot of our success in alignment with our, our management team. Middle management and upper management is getting on there. My wife is a savage about it. Like if you miss a training, like some serious shit better have happened in your life. Like straight up, "Why weren't you on the training?" She's, she's really aggressive.

• 2:11:52Jocko Willink?

  I've talked through Amanda, I've talked Amanda through a few situations, you know, like over the years of, "Hey, this is what's going on." She's like, "Hey, can you, can you give me a call and talk to me about this?" And I think what she realizes is all that information that I've given her personally is also available to everybody on your team and everybody whoever wants to sign in. And what an incredible way. The thing about leadership is it's really easy to get distracted and go to your, your primordial instincts of how you, you think you should act. And, and that's wrong. In many cases, it's wrong. So getting that leadership primer every, you know, every couple of times, three times a week, four times a week, checking in,

• 2:12:35Jocko Willink?

  seeing what's going on and getting that in your brain, it's so freaking good for you. So that's why.

• 2:12:39Pete Roberts?

  It's awesome.

• 2:12:40Jocko Willink?

  Your wife is in the game. Um, go to extremeownership.com. And if you want to help service members, active, retired, their families, Gold Star families, if you want to donate or get involved in a charity organization called AmericasMightyWarriors.org. It's run by Mark Lee's mom, Mama Lee. She's making things happen. She has a huge impact. So check out AmericasMightyWarriors.org if you want to. Get involved or if you want to donate. And if you want more of my lagging lyrical lopes.

• 2:13:16Pete Roberts?

  Very.

• 2:13:16Jocko Willink?

  Or you need more of, well, you need more of Echo's chatter, then, well, you can find us on the interwebs, on Twitter, on the Gram, on Facebook. Echo's at EchoCharles. I am at JacoWlink. Pete, unverified, is at Pete M. Roberts.

• 2:13:40Pete Roberts?

  I gotta change that. I'm just gonna change it to Pete Origin. So, you think I should do that?

• 2:13:44Jocko Willink?

  I don't know. I think you should just use Origin USA.

• 2:13:48Pete Roberts?

  I do. Oh, no, I do. It's my primary.

• 2:13:49Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, so I think the other one, I don't know.

• 2:13:52Pete Roberts?

  But it's gonna grow like, well, my personal one, I do more personal stuff. And then Origin is kinda like...

• 2:13:58Jocko Willink?

  Oh, so should we even say it right now? The personal one?

• 2:14:01Pete Roberts?

  Pete.

• 2:14:01Jocko Willink?

  If it's personal stuff?

• 2:14:02Pete Roberts?

  Pete dot M dot Roberts. No, I mean, it's, when I say personal stuff, I like post like, training stuff, like doing jujitsu stuff.

• 2:14:10Jocko Willink?

  But isn't that Origin USA?

• 2:14:12Pete Roberts?

  It is, but Origin USA is gonna grow well beyond me.

• 2:14:15Jocko Willink?

  Uh, so you got a little, you got a little backup. Got it. Uh, you have Twitter, Origin BJJ.

• 2:14:21Pete Roberts?

  Yes.

• 2:14:22Jocko Willink?

  Are you in Twitter, are you in the Twitter game anymore?

• 2:14:24Pete Roberts?

  I mean, I get on like once a month.

• 2:14:26Jocko Willink?

  So not really?

• 2:14:27Pete Roberts?

  Not really. But I mean, I get on there because I get a bunch of buildup of messages and stuff, so.

• 2:14:32Jocko Willink?

  Jaco Fuel, Jaco Fuel dot com?

• 2:14:34Pete Roberts?

  Yeah, I'm working on a new website for Jaco Fuel.

• 2:14:36Jocko Willink?

  Origin, OriginUSA.com?

• 2:14:38Pete Roberts?

  Yes, sir.

• 2:14:38Jocko Willink?

  So that's where we're at. Did I miss anything? For, for how to find us?

• 2:14:43Pete Roberts?

  Nah.

• 2:14:45Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, I mean, and at this point, anyone that's still listening, it definitely knows where we're at. So we're just talking to like, it's talking about an audience of one. There's one person that's working a 48 hour shift in Alaska right now. That's like, man, I hope they keep talking.

• 2:14:59Pete Roberts?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 2:15:01Jocko Willink?

  Else to do, so thanks, but uh, if you are still here and everybody that is here, man, thanks to all of you. Thanks for supporting the cause. Thanks for supporting Origin and Jaco Fuel. And by doing that, thank you for supporting America. And look, everything that we're talking about, every single thing that we're talking about, what we're doing right now, from the, the, the podcast that we're doing, to the gear that we're making, to the fuel that we're supplying to the world. Zero of this is possible without what you're doing, without your support. And we are all in this together, so thank you and let's freaking go.

• 2:15:40Jocko Willink?

  And it's all our military right there, out there, out there right now. We are recording this in August 2021. Afghanistan is in a downward spiral and I do not know what you all are going to be called to do, but I wish you good luck, Godspeed, and I know you will not fail your comrades in arms, and I know you will not fail our country. So, thank you for your service and thank you for putting yourselves in harm's way to protect the freedom that we enjoy and love here. So, thank you. And to our police and law enforcement, firefighters, paramedics, EMTs, dispatchers, correctional officers, Border Patrol, Secret Service, and

• 2:16:23Jocko Willink?

  all first responders, thank you for protecting us and keeping us safe here on the home front. And to anybody else out there, this, what we're doing, it's not just our dream, this is the American dream. That's what it is. To create, to build, to work together, to help and support each other. That's what we're doing. To chase and grind and risk and work and execute and to turn this dream, our dream, your dream into a reality. And

• 2:17:03Jocko Willink?

  to quote Lenny, "I can make that work." And we all can do the same thing. We can make this work. And until next time, this is Pete and Echo and Jaco. Out.