KHC 179 - Craig Francis

Craig Francis - a hunting- and outdoors-focused creative professional best known today as Vice President of Brand (Brand Development/Marketing) at ULTRAVIEW Archery. Craig has a long history in the outdoor/hunting creative world, he’s worked in content creation, photography, storytelling, and brand strategy for over a decade, collaborating with numerous well-known outdoor and hunting brands prior to and outside of his work with ULTRAVIEW Join us for a conversation about marketing, social strategy, and creative insights of various outdoor industries. Follow Craig: https://www.instagram.com/craigfranciscreative/ Follow along: Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/cameronrhanes Twitter: https://twitter.com/cameronhanes Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/camhanes/ Website: https://www.cameronhanes.com Timestamps: 00:00:00 – Why ULTRAVIEW is Deemed the Hottest Archery Sight 00:09:13 – Marketing, Creatives, and Industry Growth & Downfalls 00:30:08 – Corporate Games, Communication, and Structure 00:40:13 – Stories that Create a Feeling 01:02:53 – Craig’s Top Tier Goal for ULTRAVIEW 01:06:39 – Reaching the Consumer Through Content & Social Strategy 01:12:15 – USA Manufactured Products & Brand Experience 01:20:27 – Becoming a Hunting Influencer … the Right Way 01:37:08 – Marketing Strategies with Releasing Bows 01:44:45 – AI, 3D Models, and the Real Deal 01:50:25 – Grip N Grins & Respecting Animals While Pursuing an Influencer Role 02:06:38 – Up and Coming Influencers in Hunting 02:10:50 – Cam’s Legacy within the Hunting Industry 02:13:40 – F**k, Marry, Kill: Single Bevel, Expandable, and Fixed Blade 02:20:33 – Wounded Archery Animals: Processing the Feel of Failure 02:33:32 – Telling a Great Story: New Product Innovations, Bow Weight, & Speed 02:47:34 – The Acquisition of Status 02:52:41 – Website & Social Media Optimizations 02:59:40 – Final Thoughts Thank you to our sponsors: Black Rifle Coffee: https://www.blackriflecoffee.com/ Use code KEEPHAMMERING for 10% your order MTN OPS Supplements: https://mtnops.com/ Use code KEEPHAMMERING for 20% off Good Ranchers: https://www.goodranchers.com/ use code CAMERON for $25 off your first order Hoyt: http://bit.ly/3Zdamyv use code CAM for 10% off Sig Sauer: https://www.sigsauer.com/ use code CAM10 for 10% off opticsKetone IQ: https://www.ketone.com/Cam use code CAM for 30% off your first subscription

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

• 0:18Cameron Hanes?

  There you go, and that's the Keep Hammering Collective. I just took a piss. No, we're getting set up here. We've got Craig Francis, marketing guru, UltraView legend. How about, how am I doing so far?

• 0:32Speaker 01

  That's pretty strong, but thank you for the compliment.

• 0:36Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah, it's, uh, so we're gonna talk today. I was gonna give you the spiel beforehand, but the spiel right now is, I have no idea what we're gonna talk about.

• 0:45Speaker 01

  Me neither.

• 0:46Cameron Hanes?

  But what I like is, so I've been, you know, bowhunter for a long time. Been involved in, you know, whatever, whatever we do for a long time. And, uh, you know, UltraView caught my attention, and that's your job to get attention.

• 1:03Speaker 01

  When did it catch your attention?

• 1:06Cameron Hanes?

  I'd say a couple of years ago, just seeing the sights, you know? And then, you know, following along, um, you know, saw the arrows coming out, saw, I don't, I don't do much of the release stuff, like, you know, what you guys push. I'm pretty old school. I'm old school on everything until, until like, you know, it's noticeable, like, hey, this is pretty sick. Let me check this out. So I'm slow to change on anything, but I did notice sights. And then, like, one thing that, you know, for me, I like to, how, you know, storytelling is a big part of it, which we can talk about all this, but if you just put in, I hate AI, but whatever, you just put it in, just it's kind of fun to ask it stupid questions. Usually it's like, who's the most hated bowhunter? And it's me, number one, always.

• 1:51Cameron Hanes?

  But I'd say, what is the hottest bow sight right now? And, you know, I shoot SpotHog, been with them forever, so I'm not, I'm just asking a question, and it says UltraView is, and I'm like, okay, so why? You know, cuz...

• 2:10Cameron Hanes?

  As I said, I've been involved forever. You got companies like I think SpotHog Bulletproof Product, you know, love what they do. They weren't even on the list. Okay, so they've been around forever too.

• 2:22Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:24Cameron Hanes?

  Why are they is like, so you think about, well, why is that? Why is a tried and true product? Everybody trusts and knows, not even mentioned on the hottest is because of the longevity. But whatever the case, I want to know why is UltraView deemed the hottest site right now? How did you build? How did you build that?

• 2:45Speaker 01

  By the machines, by AI specifically?

• 2:48Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah. But that's taken like a, you know, I mean, that's what people are saying. You know, that's how they get that answer.

• 2:55Speaker 01

  Well, I'll start with this. I can't take any credit for UltraView prior to about a year and a half ago is when I started.

• 3:01Cameron Hanes?

  Okay.

• 3:01Speaker 01

  Um, so kudos to the team that was there before me.

• 3:04Cameron Hanes?

  Okay.

• 3:05Speaker 01

  Uh, I didn't, I didn't build the whole thing, but Ultra was only seven years old. Colby started in his dorm room at Georgia Tech.

• 3:11Cameron Hanes?

  Okay.

• 3:12Speaker 01

  Uh, target our true guy. As to why does UV have the perception that it does? Um, we push out a lot of media. We try to make it look great, have a premium aesthetic and feel to it. Why does, why do the machines think that our stuff is dope? I couldn't tell you that.

• 3:33Speaker 01

  I think a lot of that algorithmically with, you know, the large language models, it's pulling data just from the internet of aggregate mentions.

• 3:43Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah.

• 3:44Speaker 01

  We get talked about a lot.

• 3:45Cameron Hanes?

  Okay.

• 3:46Speaker 01

  For better or worse.

• 3:47Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah.

• 3:47Speaker 01

  Based on my understanding of how those models pull data, I would say that a non-trivial percentage of their ranking algorithm is based on how many times do those brand names get mentioned on the internet?

• 4:02Cameron Hanes?

  Hmm.

• 4:03Speaker 01

  We get mentioned a lot, so that probably helps us in that regard.

• 4:10Speaker 01

  Why does SpotHog not do so well in that arena? I couldn't speculate on that. It's a great product. I shot SpotHog for 10 years prior to coming to UV.

• 4:21Speaker 01

  It's the only other site that I would recommend other than ours. We'll just leave that right there.

• 4:26Cameron Hanes?

  Okay.

• 4:27Speaker 01

  Yeah, Chris was an internet pen pal of mine for years.

• 4:31Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah, yeah, they're great.

• 4:32Speaker 01

  Great guy.

• 4:33Cameron Hanes?

  I love the, I love all those guys. And the product, I mean, it's, it's really about the product. I wouldn't use it if I didn't believe in it.

• 4:40Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 4:41Cameron Hanes?

  So, yeah, but yeah.

• 4:42Speaker 01

  I get that. Man, we just try to tell great stories and, and put stuff out that meets our customer where they are.

• 4:52Speaker 01

  We're on a pretty big initiative right now of moving all of our manufacturing to the States, which is new for UltraView. We just got another CNC machine in the building last week. I think the robot is getting set up today, actually. I'm missing that. I got my guy filming in the building right now.

• 5:06Cameron Hanes?

  Good.

• 5:08Speaker 01

  But yeah, we, we are just trying to champion a, a marketing strategy, which is pretty popular in adjacent injuries, but I would just call it build in public, where you try to live storytell in as real a time as possible, what is happening with your business to invite people to follow the journey. And if that captivates their attention and your product is good, then maybe at some point in the future, you are, have engaged them in such a way that they are interested in shopping with you and trying out your stuff.

• 5:40Cameron Hanes?

  Right.

• 5:40Speaker 01

  Like, that's my holistic marketing strategy. I want to talk to 95% of people who are not in a purchasing window to buy a widget right now, but be top of mind when they self-select to enter the 5% of, I'm in a buying window, I'm looking for a new release, a new site, new arrows. If I've talked to them in a way that they found compelling, the entire time that I wasn't trying to sell to them, then it just percolates up and maybe they shop with us at that point and then see if our stuff is good. That's literally all that I do.

• 6:17Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah.

• 6:17Speaker 01

  It's very...

• 6:19Cameron Hanes?

  It sounds easy, but hard.

• 6:20Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's, it's a, I would say that... It's complex. It's not complicated.

• 6:26Cameron Hanes?

  Mm hmm.

• 6:27Speaker 01

  Those things are different.

• 6:28Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah. Yeah. So, I mean, you want the customer invested in the story. Um, I like the, you know, precision builds confidence. That's perfect. That's exactly, I mean, that appeals to the archer, to the bow hunter. Um, so I get that and I love taglines like that. It's, in what you explained, makes perfect sense, but very hard to do. Some people talk about discipline and values. Others live them every day. Black Rifle Coffee was founded on service and patriotism. Not the loud kind, but the kind rooted in work, responsibility, and respect for this country. Those values are built into everything they do, and they always have been. Celebrating our amazing country

• 7:10Cameron Hanes?

  isn't anything new. It has been there since the company's inception. As America heads into its 250th year, BRCC is starting strong with coffee made for early mornings, long miles, and people who choose the hard path. For endurance athletes, bow hunters, and anyone who keeps showing up when it'd be easier not to. Grab a bag of Tactisquatch, their dark roast that is steady and strong. Or go with Waking the Neighbors if you want high caffeine and no excuses. Spirit of 76 is bold, straightforward, and built for mornings that matter. If you're heading out early and need something fast, grab their cold

• 7:51Cameron Hanes?

  brew coffee cans in just black or vanilla. Clean, strong, easy to carry into the back country, and if you need even more fuel, GrapeX delivers zero sugar and 200mg of naturally sourced caffeine. Simple energy, no nonsense. Find Black Rifle Coffee at Walmart, Target, Kroger, your local Black Rifle Coffee shop, or online at blackriflecoffee.com and use code KEEPHAMMERING for 10% off your purchase. Keep hammering and fuel the work with America's coffee. Ignite isn't your average energy drink. It delivers smooth, long lasting energy, no jitters, plus mental clarity that cuts through the backcountry fog. Powered by amino acids and

• 8:36Cameron Hanes?

  brain blend of nootropics and 200 mg of clean caffeine, Ignite keeps you sharp and pushing hard mile after mile. Whether you're glassing ridges, packing in before dawn, or heading to elk camp, one scoop in your bottle and you're locked in. It's my go-to every hunt, every hike, every long drive. And Mountain Ops isn't just about performance. They're mission driven. Every purchase helps feed families in need through Operation Conquer Hunger. Right now, you can get 20% off your purchase, just go to mountainops.com and use code CAM at checkout. This season, don't settle for sluggish. Ignite the hunt. If you look at, you know, sometimes I get frustrated with the industry marketing just

• 9:18Cameron Hanes?

  in general, but because if you look at like an old magazine from 30 years ago, the ads aren't that much different. And I'm like, from today, you know, if I know magazines are kind of whatever, but they still are out there. And I'm like, what's the same words? It's sort of the same photo. It's like, are we still just doing the same? What are we doing?

• 9:39Speaker 01

  There's a lot of that.

• 9:39Cameron Hanes?

  Can we not evolve at all and get more creative with this? Yeah, it's a business and it's marketing, but I mean, it just, it seems weird that we haven't got better.

• 9:54Speaker 01

  Just as an industry.

• 9:55Cameron Hanes?

  As an industry as a whole. Yeah. Yeah.

• 9:57Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 10:01Speaker 01

  So I have, I have ideas and a lot I could say.

• 10:04Cameron Hanes?

  No.

• 10:05Speaker 01

  I want a couch. What I'm going to say is like.

• 10:08Cameron Hanes?

  This is like, nobody even listens to this. And this is just between us.

• 10:10Speaker 01

  I'm totally not going to get myself in trouble.

• 10:12Cameron Hanes?

  No, no, you're not.

• 10:16Speaker 01

  I grew up watching all this stuff.

• 10:19Cameron Hanes?

  And.

• 10:22Speaker 01

  I love this space. It's the only space I've ever wanted to work in. I would say that I've been in it for 12 to 13 years.

• 10:30Cameron Hanes?

  Okay.

• 10:31Speaker 01

  I worked at Sika for a long time before Ultra View. I was at Philson in Seattle before that, and I did agency work and freelance before that. I've kind of like seen a lot of inroads and different angles of into how stuff goes in the space. I think, and this is gonna, man, I'm not trying to chirp anybody personally here. This industry, for better or worse, really can be like a good old boys' club. And guys get comfortable and they get soft and they stop pressing new ideas forward because, well, it works, so let's just keep doing it.

• 11:09Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah.

• 11:10Speaker 01

  It totally makes sense to me. And I say that knowing that I myself am susceptible to that line of thinking on a long enough time horizon. And so I fight against it by just trying to come up with new stuff to say in a way that feels the most honest, that will pass through a very finely attuned bullshit filter in the customer marketplace in a 2026 environment. And so just doing status quo stuff is, is just like mailing it in.

• 11:45Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah.

• 11:46Speaker 01

  You're not gonna earn any extra attention, get any like brand accolades, or have someone kind of develop a sense of tribalism for your thing, which is really what I'm after.

• 11:58Cameron Hanes?

  Right.

• 11:59Speaker 01

  One of my kind of brand tenants that I really do believe in is I want to be loved or hated. Both of those are totally fine.

• 12:10Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah.

• 12:10Speaker 01

  Having a Ultra View, nah, that's the worst. That's the worst thing. Having somebody be like, I have no opinion on that.

• 12:19Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah.

• 12:20Speaker 01

  Complete apathy. That's the worst. I would, I would rather have somebody be like, I don't like those guys because of the way that they are. That's totally fine.

• 12:30Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah.

• 12:30Speaker 01

  You just like something else, which is your prerogative. And that's cool, man. Like, I don't have to be for everybody and neither does the company. So you should say something to turn a phrase like say it with your chest. Like put an opinion out there, have a POV. And what that does is it forces people to make a decision about you. Which is really what you're after.

• 12:53Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah.

• 12:53Speaker 01

  In an attention economy.

• 12:57Speaker 01

  It should be.

• 13:00Speaker 01

  Like, I believe what they believe. Therefore, I want to align myself and my purchasing behavior when it comes to archery and bow hunting products with UltraView. Because we're, we're aligned on a, on a values level.

• 13:14Cameron Hanes?

  Right.

• 13:15Speaker 01

  Or. I don't like the way those guys' faces are and they bother me and I shoot fill in the blank brand and I don't want it. That's totally cool, man. There's enough pie for everybody. And so I'm after that result. And so I think to the staleness of the space.

• 13:37Speaker 01

  I think, I think a lot of places, it's just like, here's a system that works well enough. Let's not change it.

• 13:45Cameron Hanes?

  Right.

• 13:46Speaker 01

  That's, that's a scheme to not lose.

• 13:51Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah.

• 13:51Speaker 01

  It is not a game to win.

• 13:52Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah, I get that.

• 13:53Speaker 01

  I want to win.

• 13:55Cameron Hanes?

  I think, do you think that part of it is. You know, once you've established yourself in these, you know, in a market position or in the industry. And the numbers are the numbers. As long as you don't deviate and don't it up. You're gonna, you're gonna keep your job. So it's like, it's kind of devalues people taking big risks. Because there's this trend line in the sales and it's like, we got to keep these bows selling or we got to keep these products moving. And you said to do this. And here's what happened.

• 14:28Speaker 01

  Yeah, so this is like a.

• 14:32Speaker 01

  There's an employee psychology angle in this. That, that I do think is interesting. That's a factor into this conversation.

• 14:44Speaker 01

  As a creative or a brand person or a marketing executive or wherever you're at.

• 14:51Cameron Hanes?

  Also, wait, isn't everybody in marketing in some way?

• 14:56Speaker 01

  Not on my team, they're not.

• 14:57Cameron Hanes?

  Okay, go ahead.

• 14:59Speaker 01

  They think they are. A lot of guys think they are, but they're not.

• 15:02Cameron Hanes?

  Okay.

• 15:07Speaker 01

  To have like the air cover and the freedom and the trust from whoever is your boss.

• 15:14Cameron Hanes?

  Right.

• 15:15Speaker 01

  To try and fail or come up with a campaign that's gonna press the edges of the sandbox and have it not work. That's a level of freedom that is given and a trust that is given by whomever is the HMFIC at the place.

• 15:34Cameron Hanes?

  Hmm.

• 15:36Speaker 01

  That is hard earned and easily lost.

• 15:39Cameron Hanes?

  Yep.

• 15:42Speaker 01

  Brands get stale when whoever is in charge of narrative doesn't feel the freedom to be creative.

• 15:48Cameron Hanes?

  Hmm.

• 15:49Speaker 01

  And that is a human level of if I take a risk, is my job now at risk if this campaign doesn't go well, if this product launch flops, like I have a mortgage, I have kids, like, am I not safe to try?

• 16:07Cameron Hanes?

  Right.

• 16:08Speaker 01

  That's totally part of the calculus.

• 16:11Cameron Hanes?

  Hmm.

• 16:12Speaker 01

  And that is very individual and I see that having just worked at a couple of different places, I can kind of sniff out the brands where their people are empowered and the brands where their people are operating with some percentage of fear-based motivation.

• 16:33Cameron Hanes?

  Okay, now, hold it right there, because I used to do a lot of interviews for my old job and people would say stuff like that. Do you know what my question would be?

• 16:43Speaker 01

  Tell me.

• 16:44Cameron Hanes?

  Give me an example. I want to hear, you said there's companies where there's freedom to be creative and there's companies that are stale and whatever, so.

• 16:57Speaker 01

  You're gonna get me in trouble, Cam.

• 16:59Cameron Hanes?

  No, hey, we're trying to help the industry. I thought this was positive.

• 17:04Speaker 01

  I think so.

• 17:05Cameron Hanes?

  It's tough love sometimes.

• 17:06Speaker 01

  Sure.

• 17:07Cameron Hanes?

  Have you heard that?

• 17:08Speaker 01

  Yeah, 100%.

• 17:11Speaker 01

  I try to be relatively diplomatic in my like, brand relations.

• 17:18Cameron Hanes?

  That's great marketing.

• 17:19Speaker 01

  It's good for my career.

• 17:21Cameron Hanes?

  I know.

• 17:22Speaker 01

  That, that being said, I definitely have a reputation of sharing a strong opinion.

• 17:29Cameron Hanes?

  All you have to say is like, who, who is kicking ass and who's leaving fruit on the tree?

• 17:34Speaker 01

  Okay, I have some examples. I'm gonna talk about my own house, because it's the one that I, that I, that I know the best.

• 17:42Cameron Hanes?

  Great.

• 17:42Speaker 01

  My situation at UltraView is very unique, given that our founder, Colby Hanley, he trusts me almost implicitly to run brand creative and marketing. It's a wild, I, I have a level of freedom and autonomy that is exceptionally rare in this space.

• 18:04Speaker 01

  I share ideas with him and we go back and forth. And he, he actually is a very astute brand mind and understands positioning and narrative and, and high level creative, like, he gets it. He's an engineer by trade and, and has a very technical background, but he, he appreciates good brand play.

• 18:29Speaker 01

  I don't think he's told me no yet on a single idea. And I don't really ask for permission. I just do it now. They were a consulting client of mine prior to me coming in-house. And so I had a decently established rapport prior to coming on staff.

• 18:47Cameron Hanes?

  And trust.

• 18:48Speaker 01

  Sure. And that, that's cultivated and you gotta have a runway and put some wins on the board to, to develop that. But I operate in an extremely privileged framework that is not lost on me, that allows me a lot of leeway and creative freedom.

• 19:04Cameron Hanes?

  But I will say, for you to get to that, that takes a lot to get to that point that you, you played the game right, or you made good decisions, or you presented your ideas right, and you have this proven track record. You said you stacked up wins. So, yes, you're in a great position, but all that was earned over these 12, 14 years.

• 19:23Speaker 01

  Yeah. I mean, that's, that's true.

• 19:27Speaker 01

  I'm hesitant to like, give myself that much credit. I try to be relatively humble about how I've gotten to where that I've gotten. But like, I know what I'm talking about within a very narrow band of niche shit.

• 19:40Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah.

• 19:42Speaker 01

  But that is like, an example of myself, my team, the creative partners that we work with externally. We play very fast and very free. And so if you look at it as a team sport, it's like, we understand the game, the playbook is wide open, and I'm sitting there like calling plays, and everyone is in the exact right position, and well-trained, highly motivated, like, let's go win. That team dynamic is not common.

• 20:15Cameron Hanes?

  Right.

• 20:17Cameron Hanes?

  Most, most, like, there's prevent and defense being played out there.

• 20:21Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 20:21Cameron Hanes?

  And not, not keeping, you know, being aggressive.

• 20:25Speaker 01

  And there, there is a, I've worked at enough places on the agency side and the in-house side to know that there is a significant and fundamental difference at different sizes of companies that are in different phases of growth or retraction. And when you're at a smaller brand like Ultraview that is growing, you get more freedom, and there aren't as many hard and fast rules in the brand book. And there isn't a list of like, no-no's, don't go over there. That list is not as long as a bigger established company that the perception might be, they have more to lose.

• 21:08Speaker 01

  So, I want to be very careful right now.

• 21:11Cameron Hanes?

  All good.

• 21:14Speaker 01

  The example that I would use is my, where I was prior, I would, I would say Sidka. I know that you're working with Sidka now, so, I'm respectful.

• 21:24Cameron Hanes?

  That's all good.

• 21:25Speaker 01

  I'm not throwing shade. I started at Sika in 2019 when it was much smaller than it is now. I shot my first photograph for Sika in 2014. And so I left in the fall or summer of 2024. So I had some form of working relationship with Sika for 10 years.

• 21:46Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah, that's a long run.

• 21:48Speaker 01

  Watching that company grow and change and morph from starting as a freelance photographer that just sold a handful of photos a year, but got invited to participate in pre-product launch shoots to transitioning to an agency where Sika was a client, to then eventually going in-house as a creative producer in 2019 and kind of climb up senior creative producer and then director of communications. I watched that business grow, morph and change with a massive asterisk on that entire like 2020 to 2020 early four program of like pandemic fund money coupons. Just like, dude, you know better than anybody.

• 22:31Speaker 01

  Like that fundamentally changed the outdoor industry.

• 22:35Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah.

• 22:36Speaker 01

  For better or worse, and like a lot of companies right now are finding out that it was for worse.

• 22:40Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah, it was, it was not real. That bump wasn't real.

• 22:44Speaker 01

  It was fake. And then a bunch of companies put plans in place as though it would never stop. And it turns out that was a heinous thing to do. I'm not saying Sika did that. But what I am saying is Sika got really big, really fast and started installing people that were being generous, adjacent at best to the lifestyle in decision-making chairs. And that has downstream effects and consequences. Now, what I do want to say is that there are still people there that are great. Barclay, great friend of mine, I know he's a friend of yours. He does testing and evaluation for me at UltraView. That guy.

• 23:27Speaker 01

  We don't have to talk about how great he is at what he does.

• 23:29Cameron Hanes?

  As legit as it gets.

• 23:30Speaker 01

  Right. And so having people like him, like a Gilmore, like a Jay Matthews, who's, who's running product, like guys that are deep subject matter experts, but also process oriented to run the giant machine on the product development side that that place is. High integrity dudes that want to make great stuff because they're of the old mind of we make great product for people that are getting out and doing the thing. And that's why we succeed as a business.

• 24:04Speaker 01

  That part of Sitka is like a, it's, it's like a vestige, in my opinion.

• 24:12Speaker 01

  A lot of decisions are being made on a spreadsheet there. And if you look at turnover and people coming and going and why some people get rewarded and why some people get killed, killed off. I got killed off. I got fired in a group of 15 people on a reorg in 2024.

• 24:29Cameron Hanes?

  Really? What'd they say?

• 24:33Speaker 01

  That is difficult for me to answer in public.

• 24:35Cameron Hanes?

  Okay, gotcha. You don't have to. That, that's.

• 24:37Speaker 01

  Well, it's just like, I was right for a phase of business that that company grew out of.

• 24:43Cameron Hanes?

  As America turns 250 this year, Good Ranchers wanted to take a moment to honor the people that helped build this country. Not the ones in the history books, but the ones who wake up before the sun, season after season, without looking for any kind of recognition. These people are America's ranchers. Most of you know I eat a lot of Wild Game, but let's be honest, you don't really get a marbled elk steak. And sometimes a good, hard earned steak is tough to beat. That's where Good Ranchers comes in. What I really like about Good Ranchers is what they stand for. They are a hundred percent committed to America farms and ranches. Every cut of meat comes from right here in the United States. Their packaging and fulfillment happens here.

• 25:27Cameron Hanes?

  Their customer support team is in-house and with every order, they donate a portion of their profits to veterans organizations.

• 25:36Cameron Hanes?

  That matters to me. For more than 250 years, ranchers have fed this country through droughts, wars, recessions, and everything in between. They kept showing up and they kept doing the work. That is a legacy worth supporting. So if you want to support American ranchers and eat great meat at the same time, go to goodranchers.com. As a subscriber, you will save up to $500 a year. And when you use my code Cameron, you'll get an extra $25 off your first order. That is Cameron for $25 off your first order on top of the savings. Hoyt began with a dream and a simple desire. Create the best bow hunting and target archery equipment possible. And since 1931,

• 26:21Cameron Hanes?

  that is exactly what they've been doing. I'm skeptical every year that this year's bow will be better than last year's. Yet somehow, their engineers seem to figure it out. I think what sets them apart is their engineers are all avid hunters themselves. So they take their bows in the field every year with intent to make them stronger, faster, and more accurate. Hoyt is actually my lifetime bow sponsor. That is how much I believe in them. Their products and their drive to always be the best. Hoyt is giving listeners of this podcast 20% off products in their store with code CAM. Sorry, it doesn't work on bows, but it does work on accessories,

• 27:01Cameron Hanes?

  including quivers, rests, and my favorite, the ghost stick. That's code CAM at checkout at Hoyt.com.

• 27:09Speaker 01

  I can have extremely strong opinions and I'm not afraid of saying them

• 27:14Cameron Hanes?

  Okay, now we're getting somewhere.

• 27:15Speaker 01

  to my superiors. And as someone that was like installed in a fundamental part of the creative part of the business, I was like, this is how we should be doing content. This is how we should put our products on display. These are the types of human stories that we should be telling. And I felt personally, that those things just started to erode. And I was given less and less freedom, put on a tighter and tighter leash. And until it became like, I can't do something's under my skin, I'm gonna say it. I'm just wired that way to my own detriment, often.

• 27:57Speaker 01

  And I just started barking and they cut me loose.

• 28:01Cameron Hanes?

  Are you gonna get a result one way or another?

• 28:03Speaker 01

  Yeah, and it was just, it kind of dovetail be loved or hated. That's like a personal ethic for me, too. It was very just like, dude, in my journal in 2012, I, when I was, I think I had sold a handful, like, less than 10 photos in my career at this point. I wrote that I would be the creative director at Cika here.

• 28:27Cameron Hanes?

  You made it happen, didn't you?

• 28:28Speaker 01

  I didn't have that title, but I was freaking close. And then, once I was in the building, it was very clear to me that, like, I was not equipped to, to fill that chair. And so I filled other ones.

• 28:40Cameron Hanes?

  Gotcha.

• 28:42Speaker 01

  The CD job at Cika during the time that I was there, quite honestly, was not a fun job to have. I didn't want it. I worked with some good dudes that were there that had that role at a couple of different CDs during the five years that I was there. All very talented, all doing other things. When companies get big and you're looking at spreadsheet math to determine why you should do this and not do that, for creatives and marketers specifically, your KPIs and how you're measured changes. And you get executives who are just playing a different game

• 29:23Speaker 01

  that are calling the shots and saying, these are now the benchmarks by which we will distribute pass fail markers. Where I really landed on this, and I do really believe this, I understand I've kind of like levied some version of criticism against Cika right now, which I want to be very careful and respectful of because still have friends that work there. They're doing great stuff.

• 29:46Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah.

• 29:49Speaker 01

  The game that I'm good at playing changed and that was a me problem, not a business problem.

• 29:56Speaker 01

  I just define success differently than that company does now.

• 30:00Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah, I think that any creative, they're not going to get to the dollars and cents part. They're not, they're not going to value it the same. So I'm like wondering though, isn't like, isn't the growing pains part of a company like Sidka? Isn't that part of it? Like this transition from the more grassroots? Everybody loves a grassroots story, right? The, you know, Jonathan and Jason, that whole thing. And then whatever happened, then they queue you and all this. But everybody loves that to come up.

• 30:30Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 30:31Cameron Hanes?

  When you get corporate.

• 30:33Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 30:33Cameron Hanes?

  Then every, even people internal hate it.

• 30:35Speaker 01

  It changes.

• 30:36Cameron Hanes?

  Because it's like, wait, I really believed in, you know, this. And now it's like venture capital. I'm not, I don't even know who bought or I don't know how the money part of that worked. But I just know in just in general, uh, investment firms come in. Now you're judged on different things. The grassroots doesn't mean shit.

• 30:56Speaker 01

  The game changed.

• 30:57Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah.

• 30:58Speaker 01

  And so that, that's kind of what I'm really getting at is I know personally that I'm better at a smaller brand. You, you get these like, you know, from, from zero to a million dollars. It's like a wildly different thing than say from one to 20. And then 20 to 50, 50 to 100, 100 to two, two plus. Like those are kind of the buckets.

• 31:17Cameron Hanes?

  Yep.

• 31:20Speaker 01

  I'm really not good. Once things go corporate, personality wise. Because I, on my own teams internally and to people on other teams within the building that I interact with. I'm like, dude, it's just like how my mom talked to me when I was a child. It's how I learned how to communicate. It's extremely direct. It's like, say the real thing. What are we talking about?

• 31:46Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah.

• 31:46Speaker 01

  I don't, I can't do the political thing.

• 31:49Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah.

• 31:49Speaker 01

  So if a company gets big and then you have like jockeying amongst the ranks.

• 31:56Cameron Hanes?

  Power struggle. Yeah.

• 31:58Speaker 01

  Like I can't do it. I'm not good at it. I don't believe in it. I don't, I'm just not interested.

• 32:04Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah.

• 32:04Speaker 01

  And so for me, that was a learning. I, I picked, started to pick that up when I was at Filson. And then when I like later, back half of my time at Sidka, I was like, Dude, if a company is is bigger and getting siloed in terms of departments and power structures and all that stuff, I I cannot work there. I completely took that off the chessboard for me personally.

• 32:32Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah.

• 32:35Speaker 01

  That's a hard wiring and it's a self-awareness thing and it's that's a me thing, not a I'm against big companies thing.

• 32:42Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah.

• 32:42Speaker 01

  Like the game changed, now it's about money. Fantastic. Other people are much better at playing that game than I am.

• 32:48Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah.

• 32:49Speaker 01

  What I care about is story and meeting people where they are in the grassroots phase. I am really good at that part and really bad at the parts that come after that.

• 33:00Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah.

• 33:01Speaker 01

  I think everybody should take, every marketer should do some type of analysis of like, look at the chessboard that you play within the organization that you're in. Do you fit? Are you well-suited? Is who you are naturally, your innate talents and giftings and proclivities and ideas like, are they rewarded on the board in which you sit?

• 33:26Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah.

• 33:26Speaker 01

  If they're not, you should go somewhere else.

• 33:29Cameron Hanes?

  You're in the, playing the wrong game.

• 33:31Speaker 01

  Hundred percent.

• 33:31Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah.

• 33:32Speaker 01

  And this like all goes back to just creative mind space of being able to feel free.

• 33:38Speaker 01

  If I'm on the wrong board and I'm doing creative work that I don't enjoy, that I'm not personally motivated to try to make great because I just, I don't have a belief for this. I'm doing a disservice to myself and my employer.

• 33:54Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah.

• 33:55Speaker 01

  Because I'm not giving them my best. And if you're gonna do the W2 employee thing, you should give them your best. And my opinion, you should be very selfish about it. Because at the end of the day, you're aligned on a spreadsheet and they will kill you. This is a fact, like I, I always get fired. I have always gotten fired. It's just like, what happens to me? It's because I mouth off and I say something that I really believe in and I just get killed. Dude, I always get fired. It doesn't bother me. I've been fired a lot. I've always like figured it out. It's totally fine.

• 34:30Cameron Hanes?

  That's a lot of freedom. I mean, to have that mindset. I mean, I know it's probably not that that like free all the time because you're just like sometimes like what the

• 34:40Speaker 01

  And it's also like earlier, I'm thirty eight. Um, you know, let's call it fifteen to twenty years into my career at this point. Like earlier in my career, if if I got fired and I had a, you know, four, six month delta between jobs, like I'm, I'm, I'm in a bad spot.

• 34:59Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah.

• 35:00Speaker 01

  Just mathematically, like I don't have that kind of, I don't worry that much anymore.

• 35:05Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah.

• 35:05Speaker 01

  Um, dude, in twenty eleven, I was pouring concrete for eight bucks an hour at eighty three dollars to my name. I did the math on how long I could live on peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and milk.

• 35:17Cameron Hanes?

  Mm hmm. So it could get worse.

• 35:18Speaker 01

  I remember.

• 35:19Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah.

• 35:19Speaker 01

  And and I also, that is the best job I've ever had.

• 35:23Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah.

• 35:24Speaker 01

  Because it taught me, like, I'm a white, college educated male in America. This place still don't know me shit.

• 35:32Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah.

• 35:32Speaker 01

  It might treat me better.

• 35:34Cameron Hanes?

  Mm hmm.

• 35:35Speaker 01

  But it still don't know me anything.

• 35:37Cameron Hanes?

  Right.

• 35:38Speaker 01

  And I could go back tomorrow. Like, I know that I can go pour concrete.

• 35:43Cameron Hanes?

  Mm hmm.

• 35:43Speaker 01

  I know that I can figure it out. So there's this like fundamental belief that's like, I could take it to zero.

• 35:49Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah.

• 35:51Speaker 01

  Like, for what I believe in, I'll take it to zero. It's fine.

• 35:54Cameron Hanes?

  Yep.

• 35:55Speaker 01

  And then the freedom of just like having a bit more maturity, a bit more personal resources to like bank into the if this goes up in smoke, like I'll be fine. It just age into that. And then I think a lot of people, going back to what we're talking about earlier, you start to just get comfortable and like soft is a bit more like poke the bear phrase for that.

• 36:20Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah. You're like pillow fight.

• 36:22Speaker 01

  Right. But for me, it's just like, that's the time to get more dangerous.

• 36:27Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah.

• 36:27Speaker 01

  Because you can, and you're not risking as much. And I think most people think If you like swing a big stick and try to make noise later in your career as a marketer, you've got more to lose and that's more risky. Flip it. You have way more to lose earlier when it was like, if you screw up this at bat, your whole thing might be up in smoke.

• 36:53Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah.

• 36:53Speaker 01

  Now, it's like, if you present yourself and your ideas and you do work that

• 37:02Speaker 01

  does what you need it to do for whatever phase of the game you're in.

• 37:08Speaker 01

  You can just like, there's time to, you know, hit singles and there's time to swing for the fence. And you gotta feel that out and know when the right moment is for which instance. But I think later in your career, you should, you should play harder. Because you have the, the freedom to do it now. And if you step out of bounds and catch a consequence, cool, iron that.

• 37:35Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah.

• 37:35Speaker 01

  I was wrong. And being, and being open and ready to look at, like, I am the author of my own life and trajectory. And yeah, dude, I'm susceptible to stepping out of bounds and having a bad idea or saying something stupid or, you know, clacking off in a meeting when I definitely shouldn't have because I wasn't seeing the chessboard in a way that I should have because I was prideful and arrogant.

• 37:58Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah.

• 37:58Speaker 01

  I'm prone to that.

• 37:59Cameron Hanes?

  Yep.

• 38:00Speaker 01

  I'm less prone to it now than I was earlier in my career. And that was, that's why I got fired a lot. I had to learn. But I did learn. And that's the thing is like, if you're going to go through the war, you should take the lesson with you.

• 38:12Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah.

• 38:13Speaker 01

  And, you know, all of that just factors into, in this space,

• 38:20Speaker 01

  dude, we sell bow hunting stuff.

• 38:23Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah.

• 38:25Speaker 01

  This should be fun.

• 38:26Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah. It's not life or death. Yeah.

• 38:29Speaker 01

  If, if it's not fun, you're doing it wrong.

• 38:31Cameron Hanes?

  Right.

• 38:32Speaker 01

  And companies that get big and quit having fun. I'm just like, dude, I'm out on that. What are we, what are we doing? Like, this should be awesome.

• 38:40Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah.

• 38:40Speaker 01

  Like, we get to hunt kind of for a living, not as much as you. But like, make cool stuff and, and tell stories and get out there and do the thing. It's like, This is what we like to do.

• 38:53Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah.

• 38:53Speaker 01

  What are we talking about like in here on this spreadsheet right now? Like we got people for that. Like we're out here telling stories. Let's go.

• 39:00Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah.

• 39:01Speaker 01

  I, I, I love it. I love it.

• 39:04Cameron Hanes?

  Well, that's a, yeah. I mean, I think it's because there's so much passion in it. So it's like, it is fun, but people care. You know what I mean? I'm not talking about in the business. I'm talking about bow hunters. Like this is, I know when I, you know, my whole trajectory of from when I started in 89 to now, it was just all I cared about. So it's like, that's why it's like, sometimes the marketing or whatever, like we're talking business a lot, but as a consumer, man, I can't be more invested in this stuff. You know, so like, I think like, if we talk about the, the brand story and storytelling,

• 39:45Cameron Hanes?

  just in general, I tell this to my son all the time, you know, he's, you know, out there in the public eye a lot, but, and you kind of mentioned it, but I just said, make people care.

• 39:57Cameron Hanes?

  If it's love, hate, whatever, but make them care. And, you know, attention is currency. And he definitely makes people care one way or another. The elite runners hate him. The regular guys love him for chasing his dreams, but they all care. So how do you, how do you make people care? Like you talked about, you know, I'm, I'm sure there's some great projects you did at Sidco, but like, what's one where for however, why did it work? Why did you make people care? Why did it have a huge impact? Tell me how that success story?

• 40:34Speaker 01

  I would use our UltraView slider to launch film from last summer. That's kind of like the more recent example of a story that I felt really mattered. And so to kind of set this up, Colby founded UltraView as a target archery company. He's a competitive shooter, 50 meter outdoor was his discipline of choice.

• 41:03Speaker 01

  He started making light kits for indoor archers and, you know, have your fiber glow better when you're shooting paper. And then started kind of iterating on a series of products that were specific to target archery. He and Chris B., who's a guy that you should have on your show.

• 41:20Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah. I like what he does. I mean, he does a good job.

• 41:24Speaker 01

  Yeah, like, dear homie of mine and part of the UltraView business. He really started to inject, like, he was a target competitor as well. And then as his YouTube channel started to grow, he's like, bow hunting is my thing that I'm gonna do. Just he and Colby started iterating on like, what products could we make specific to hunters to add, like, in the business language, like, a much larger total addressable market than target archers. And so it was like the original thumb button, which was probably the most popular thumb release for bow hunters at that time.

• 42:05Speaker 01

  And then the original slider, which came out, you know, three and a half-ish years ago. That was a very innovative site, the way that, like, our Pat did dual dial mechanism, like nested elevation and windage and how it was put together. It was like, it was the shit at the time. And I think that site really put UltraView on the map.

• 42:26Speaker 01

  But, you know, Chris is growing his business alongside UltraView. It was like, we had this really core audience that was true to the target archery origins, and they were trying to pick up more of the bow hunting, like, collective consciousness and get people into the brand that way. Slider 2 was the first big project that was like, from soup to nuts, this was made to be like a bow hunting site.

• 42:55Speaker 01

  And it was my big, first big product launch in my role at UV. And so that video, I think it's like a five-minute video. We made it with Collectus, our creative partner, Austin Thomas, wildly creative crew. And then like Barclay was in it. We did a Texas all that hunt down with Scotty. And then just talked about the, our design ethos and like, why do we do the things that we do? And it's to support hunting. Because you should enter the field with a level of confidence in yourself and your equipment that makes you highly ethical and lethal in the moment of truth at full draw. And that was kind of the genesis of the precision builds confidence line that I wrote when I

• 43:40Speaker 01

  first got there, is that's a bridge, precision being the target archery discipline. It's like accuracy and precision are not the same thing. You need both, right? So 20-yard indoor Vegas face, that's a precision game. If you're not shooting a 900, you're not in the game. And so precision builds confidence, but bow hunting is a confidence thing. And it's the one thing that you can't buy. You gotta earn it. And so that three, three-line motto is the bridge of our entire brand story. And that slider two video was meant to put that on display and say like, we love hunting. And this is how we think about it.

• 44:23Speaker 01

  This is what it means to us personally in the building. And what we care about is basically being an afterthought onto the stories that hang on your wall that you talk about around a fire with your friends. Because in those moments that you love, like in this room that we're in right now, and you gotta walk me through here later, I want to hear some of these stories, is like, you won't tell me what bow you shot these critters with. It's irrelevant. Doesn't matter. What matters is like, how did it go down?

• 44:54Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah.

• 44:55Speaker 01

  How did it make you feel? Which one went wrong? And then you had to like, scrap it out and figure it out.

• 45:01Cameron Hanes?

  Right.

• 45:01Speaker 01

  Which was like, dude, this is the best process ever. Just super clean, pure arrow. It was magic.

• 45:09Cameron Hanes?

  I've never had one of those. I punched a trigger.

• 45:13Speaker 01

  But it's like in those stories, you don't talk about, you don't talk about gear.

• 45:16Cameron Hanes?

  No, no.

• 45:17Speaker 01

  It's irrelevant. It doesn't matter.

• 45:19Cameron Hanes?

  In the old hunting articles they did, my Thunderhead 125 tipped east and double X 75.

• 45:25Speaker 01

  Yeah, the people love that. Super effective.

• 45:29Cameron Hanes?

  It's so, yeah, it just really reels me in.

• 45:32Speaker 01

  Yeah. Um, but no, like that, that's the example of say something that makes people feel.

• 45:40Cameron Hanes?

  Yep.

• 45:41Speaker 01

  That's it. It's all I'm after.

• 45:43Cameron Hanes?

  Gotcha. And that film did that. Okay.

• 45:46Speaker 01

  Yeah, it was the first thing that I would say a lot of people in our company, like we launched it and then

• 45:57Speaker 01

  the public response in comments and on YouTube and everywhere else. And then what I'm really after, like people that know, like all my industry pals and friends that just text me directly. They're like, hey, I'm not blowing smoke up your ass, but that was legit. Like that made me feel something from like

• 46:18Cameron Hanes?

  I'm gonna watch it.

• 46:19Speaker 01

  Qualified people.

• 46:21Cameron Hanes?

  Now I want to see it. So it's a, it's a slide or two?

• 46:24Speaker 01

  Yeah, just do, uh, explore YouTube Ultra View slide or two. Um, it's a why we exist.

• 46:30Cameron Hanes?

  One of the hardest parts of hunting is glassing big country to find animals you know are there. That's why I run Sig Sauer Zulu imaging stabilizing binoculars when I'm covering a lot of ground and need to see everything. These binos are a complete game changer. After long climbs, when your heart rate's up and your hands aren't steady, shaky glass makes it hard to stay locked in. With image stabilization, everything settles down. You can slow the process, really pick apart the country and catch movement you'd normally miss. I've found more animals and saved a ton of time because of these binos. I actually just talked about how impressive this technology is on the most recent

• 47:12Cameron Hanes?

  episode of the Joe Rogan Experience. Once you use stabilized glass, it's hard to go back. It gives you a real advantage when you're hunting big, open terrain. And here's the rare part, optics companies almost never offer discounts, but Sig is giving listeners of this podcast 10% off. Just use code CAM at checkout. So if you're serious about glassing and want the same edge I've had the past couple of seasons, head to sigsauer.com, grab a pair of Zulu binos and use code CAM for 10% off. Sig Sauer Zulu Binoculars. See more, miss less, keep hammering. I use Ketone IQ when I need to stay sharp for the long haul.

• 47:54Cameron Hanes?

  Long runs, lifting before I shoot my bow, even when I'm podcasting, anytime I want steady focus without crashing. What I like about it is how it feels. It helps me stay locked in during long efforts and mentally demanding sessions. Not jittery, not wired, just clear and steady. Ketones are your brain's preferred fuel source. So instead of that spiked caffeine feeling, the focus feels calm and controlled. It lets me push without leaning on caffeine or sugar. I'm not chasing another cup of coffee or something sweet just to get through a workout or a long day. I can train, work, and think without that roller coaster of energy. Physically,

• 48:39Cameron Hanes?

  I feel ready to go. Mentally, I'm locked in. That combination matters when you're putting in long hours and real work. Visit ketone.com backslash CAM for 30% off your subscription order, plus receive a free gift with your second shipment. Or find Ketone IQ at Target stores nationwide in the hydration and protein aisle and get your first shot free.

• 49:03Speaker 01

  You have to, it's my via.

• 49:07Cameron Hanes?

  I can tell you what I like.

• 49:10Speaker 01

  People have said stuff like, you're a. Target archery company, bow hunters are not going to take you seriously. Or they might say bow hunting is supposed to be for everybody and ultra view stuff is just too expensive. We've heard a lot of that. But when you're building a brand, part of the task is to filter out the signal from the noise. Some feedback is going to be helpful. It will help us improve and that's great. We listen for that. Other feedback though is just not for us. We can't please everybody. We're not going to try. We're going to keep our heads down on task and our eyes front.

• 49:49Speaker 01

  Listen, we care about bow hunting and bow hunting is not a discipline.

• 49:53Cameron Hanes?

  That, that frustration scene, like where you, you know, he's like, like looking away that. Everybody can identify with that.

• 50:02Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 50:02Cameron Hanes?

  You know what I mean? It's a, we, we know that, yeah, and high five, we got that. That shit's been.

• 50:08Speaker 01

  That's a very small percentage.

• 50:10Cameron Hanes?

  But most of bow hunting is that. So that to me, that, I mean, that's real.

• 50:16Speaker 01

  Just okay is an acceptable result for us. It's very hard. Anyone who's hunted for even one season understands that. But if we can design and build products that help hunters be more confident and more accurate. That directly translates to being more ethical in the application of an arrow. That's our mission.

• 50:41Cameron Hanes?

  Where's that arrow heading?

• 50:44Cameron Hanes?

  Looks like it's going to be back.

• 50:45Speaker 01

  It's a little bit back.

• 50:47Cameron Hanes?

  The walking, they don't have to be walking very fast to hit back. You know what I mean? But yeah, anyway.

• 50:54Cameron Hanes?

  So I liked it. So to me, this video that was a minute 24 to build. It, it made me care.

• 51:03Speaker 01

  We're trying to establish credibility with people that are bow hunters.

• 51:07Cameron Hanes?

  Big country. I saw big country. I saw the getting down the screen. I saw the frustration. I saw ruggedness. I saw epic drone shot. So I'm like looking at that, that's quality video. That's quality storytelling. A minute 24 of it. So now, show me this shit. What are we talking about? Cause I haven't really seen like, there was no close up that I noticed really of featuring the site. It's just like that. The, um, just the moment and just like, just bow hunting. But so now I'm like, okay, what?

• 51:41Speaker 01

  We started. As a target archery company, the people that say that about us are right. But for years, we worked really hard to bring something to bow hunting that was worthy of being trusted in the field. Our OG slider site was that thing, and it took a tremendous amount of effort and learning for us to bring that to market. We're proud of it, but that's the challenge of designing products to a high standard. You only have the knowledge that you've gained from your previous experience. And our experience started just a short seven years ago.

• 52:14Cameron Hanes?

  That show is good. The quick, you know, from the boardroom to ideas to I didn't hear no bell. That, to me, that is quality storytelling right there. That is like,

• 52:27Cameron Hanes?

  yeah, that's what people aren't good at that shit.

• 52:30Cameron Hanes?

  So that is, that is great. I'm, I'm, I haven't watched this video before, so I'm, I'm impressed. But now I'm like getting into old school. This must be Colby, I take it, in this, in this footage?

• 52:39Speaker 01

  Yes, that's his dorm room where the company started.

• 52:41Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah.

• 52:44Cameron Hanes?

  Do I know that? Did that, did it say it on here?

• 52:48Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 52:49Cameron Hanes?

  Maybe it does.

• 52:50Speaker 01

  Yeah. In Colby's dorm room. You know, it was 3D printers under his bed, and then it was a few more printers in a friend's basement. And then we were in the corner of an archery shop. It just kept going, stacking that experience. There was this continual stream of innovation just born out of love for the sport of archery. That's taken us a long way, and I think that's something to be proud of. But we're just as hungry now as we were back then.

• 53:29Speaker 01

  The new slider two is the best bow hunting site that we have ever made.

• 53:35Speaker 01

  It's more complex.

• 53:36Cameron Hanes?

  I like that. That's like not BS sales, because you could say the best bow hunting site on the market, but.

• 53:43Speaker 01

  Can't measure that.

• 53:44Cameron Hanes?

  No, but the best bow hunting site we ever made, to me,

• 53:49Cameron Hanes?

  I notice shit like that. And probably people, I think other people probably do.

• 53:55Cameron Hanes?

  But maybe subconsciously, maybe. I don't know. I don't, I like that. That's authentic. To me, that's authentic.

• 54:00Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 54:00Cameron Hanes?

  Everybody says the other shit, like we're the best ever, or.

• 54:05Speaker 01

  Has brighter pens and a hot swappable cartridge system. It's lighter weight.

• 54:11Speaker 01

  It has a USB-C rechargeable battery. It's optional. If you live in a state where you can't hunt with a light, you don't have to buy it. It comes in bridge lock, pick mount, and direct mount at a killer price. We think that this is the most comprehensive sliding sight available on the market right now.

• 54:34Speaker 01

  We might look like a big company, but really, we're still just like a very young, scrappy band of misfits. Everybody that works here really wants to be here. We draw on our collective talent to design and build things that we believe deserve to exist. We try very hard to present them to the world in a way that's compelling. And that's what we feel like we've done here.

• 55:01Speaker 01

  This new Slider 2 is the best bow hunting sight that we've ever made.

• 55:09Cameron Hanes?

  I like the, uh, so Macy, we can cut this down like the, where I'm not saying anything, we can cut that out, but I want to leave the commentary.

• 55:19Cameron Hanes?

  I like showing the employees, you know, enjoying what they do. Because that's another part that's like, doesn't get really shared a lot in just in any company. But like, that does make you feel better about the product or about, as we said earlier, you want people invested in the journey. It makes me like feel part of it almost. Yeah, so.

• 55:40Speaker 01

  Keep going, I'll, we'll talk more about it after you finish it.

• 55:46Speaker 01

  Good gear is awesome. We're all gearheads in this building. But at the end of the day, what we're about is hunting. The stories that we're going to share around a campfire with our friends, those stories don't have a damn thing to do with gear.

• 56:02Speaker 01

  Those stories that matter the most are about the spirit of the hunt. Are we leaving the field with our honor intact because we conducted ourselves well while we were out there alone with nobody else watching?

• 56:16Speaker 01

  Are we becoming more in tune with the natural order of things during a 10-day mule deer hunt, where it seems like everything goes wrong and the weather goes to shit? Like, that's where we want to be growing as individuals, as hunters.

• 56:32Speaker 01

  We want to hear about how your ears rang when that bull ripped a bugle in your face from 10 yards away. I want to hear about your arrow finding its mark on a buck that you've had on camera for the last 3 years, but he's only daylighted that one time. We care about those experiences.

• 56:51Speaker 01

  It is our job to offer you products that are capable of being deadly in their precision. It is your job to invest the time and effort required to build the confidence to kill. And let's not kid ourselves, that is exactly what we do out there. We kill to make food. And that is an ancient thing. And there is much more honor in that act than society at large is ready to discuss. But real hunting people understand that. Real hunters know that confidence is the best thing that you can take with you on a hunt. And I hate to be the one to tell you this, but you can't buy that. Maybe that's weird for a company like us to say, I mean, I'm literally sitting here

• 57:34Speaker 01

  recording this marketing video, but that's true. And that message is much more important to us than selling another bow sight. All we want to do here is put good gear in your hands and join you in the sacred act that is hunting for wild game. We are grateful for your trust in us. Thank you for shopping our products and for trusting our gear to go into the field with you on your hunt. That is not something that we take for granted. So when you grab your bow and you head out the door to wherever hunting might take you, take your confidence with you. Be a participant. Go with honor for the land and respect for the creatures that call it home.

• 59:00Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah, that's good shit. Um, yeah, that's, that's really good. And it's like,

• 59:09Cameron Hanes?

  Hmm. Yeah, I don't know. Just good storytelling, good cinema, good video, good script, good, uh, Yeah, I was like, I probably like you in that I always definitely have opinions on stuff. But like, when I was thinking that, I think a cool thing would have, I'm not trying to,

• 59:28Speaker 01

  No, give me a second.

• 59:29Cameron Hanes?

  Whatever, critique it, but like, That's so, I love the precision of that, of dialing that, and you know, the numbers going by really, It just looks like, it does look precision. Um, I was like, I think it'd be cool to show like, you know, back in the day, recurve, guy used to put like, Little notches on the riser for how far you'd want to shoot, like, so that's where it started almost like, A little notch on the riser, that's 20, some guys used to have little marks, like, just rudimentary, Sure. Right, way back in the day. So like, going from that to that would be epic. Um, and then what I had one other, whatever, oh, yeah, I thought it'd be cool,

• 1:00:14Cameron Hanes?

  At a pro, and I love the pro shop life, Bow Rack's not even a mile from me, but like, having somebody like, Or them bolting a sight on, and then like a guy getting in and smiling, you know what I mean? Like a consumer.

• 1:00:27Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 1:00:27Cameron Hanes?

  Cause you guys had you, you guys, and like, that was all whatever, but like, to me, that's the consumer being pumped. You know what I mean? Everybody knows what that feels like. I know when I get a new bow and I put new shit on it, I'm like, fuck, okay, this thing is dialed.

• 1:00:42Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:00:42Cameron Hanes?

  Anyway, but I love the film, um,

• 1:00:47Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah, it's like, I understand, you know, you should be very proud of that. That's killer marketing, dude. So, great job.

• 1:00:54Speaker 01

  Thank you. And that, like, I didn't know we were gonna watch that. And how many of the lines that I wrote that are in that video have I said already?

• 1:01:03Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah.

• 1:01:03Speaker 01

  So, like, that script that I wrote and read into a microphone for that video, like, that's what's in here.

• 1:01:11Cameron Hanes?

  That's all the words you have in your brain. We're just repeating them.

• 1:01:14Speaker 01

  Right. This is what I, this is what I think about. This is what I think is cool.

• 1:01:20Cameron Hanes?

  No, it's just, to me, that means it's authentic.

• 1:01:22Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:01:22Cameron Hanes?

  You've said it, but you said it here on the script that you wrote down. So it's like, no, this is how you, this is what you feel.

• 1:01:27Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:01:28Cameron Hanes?

  And...

• 1:01:29Speaker 01

  It's like, that is a, uh, that's a brand film disguised as a product launch film, which is what I, what I wanted it to be.

• 1:01:38Cameron Hanes?

  Absolutely.

• 1:01:39Speaker 01

  Because I'm trying to establish credibility for just knowing our product roadmap and what we're gonna do in the next couple of years. It's like, I need hunters to care.

• 1:01:49Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah.

• 1:01:50Speaker 01

  And so that, that was a year and a half ago, almost. That's my best attempt to be like, hey, watch us, what we're about to do here. It's gonna be dope. Pay attention. And trying to communicate in a way that is as real as possible, that meets you where you are, that if you're a bow hunter, you're like, yeah, dude. That, what you called out first, like the guy sucking wind and just being like, this, like, sucks. Like, relatable.

• 1:02:19Cameron Hanes?

  Yep.

• 1:02:19Speaker 01

  Because this moment is rare, boy.

• 1:02:22Cameron Hanes?

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:02:23Speaker 01

  But like, the grind of it, and I'm, I'm cold and wet, and I'm tired, and there's water 2,000 feet down there, and I gotta go get it, cuz I'm out. That sucks, but that's the makeup of the whole thing.

• 1:02:37Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah.

• 1:02:38Speaker 01

  I'm just trying to connect and just earn your attention and say like, hey, I know you because we are you.

• 1:02:47Cameron Hanes?

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:02:48Speaker 01

  And in the background, like, you're calling out our people in the building and showing how it's going. My, like, top-tier goal in the seat that I sit in at Ultraview, for as long as I'm allowed to sit in it.

• 1:03:04Speaker 01

  I want UltraView to be the best place to work in the hunting industry for all of our people. I want to send them hunting. I want to pay them as much as we can. I want to give them as much ability to operate within their passion and their gifting as possible. We're going to work very hard. Our crew is like, everybody in that building is a grinder. And we're not as big as we might present on the internet. We're like a core team of folks that's just in there busting ass to try to make good stuff. That's fun, man. Like, I got the jersey on. We're on the same crew here. Let's do this. I'm trying to cultivate culture within the building that bleeds out through the brand.

• 1:03:50Speaker 01

  Because if we don't believe it inside, nobody else can believe it out there.

• 1:03:56Speaker 01

  I just think that that's the best way to do it.

• 1:03:59Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah, definitely.

• 1:04:00Speaker 01

  Like, say something real. Say it in as pure a way as possible.

• 1:04:07Speaker 01

  And have some fun, man. Like, bow hunting stuff, like we said before, this should be fun.

• 1:04:12Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah, for sure.

• 1:04:14Speaker 01

  Make good shit, tell great stories, and invite people along for the journey. Make great product. One of the things that we say in the building, I used to, I had these, during COVID, I started writing these like Post-it notes with like, single phrase marketing isms on them. James, you might remember some of these. One of them is like, if your product sucks and all your marketing is a lie.

• 1:04:36Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah.

• 1:04:37Speaker 01

  And the caption was, "I'm not a liar."

• 1:04:39Cameron Hanes?

  There you go.

• 1:04:40Speaker 01

  Like, it starts with product. And so Colby would tell you that we're a product design company and a marketing firm. Like, we make good stuff.

• 1:04:49Cameron Hanes?

  Right.

• 1:04:50Speaker 01

  And then we tell a story about it. And then as soon as we tell that story, we're back to making good stuff. And so we're in the future already. We've got a couple more product launches coming this year. Everything coming out subsequently is going to be a hundred percent made in the States. That's like our big core initiative. And so that film from from my zone of responsibility was the first big piece of content that I put out. It's like, I'm trying to plant a flag in the ground on UltraView and say like, hey, we might be small and you might have thought you have an idea about who we are, how we operate, what our reputation is. I'm going to mold that to where I want it to go as we grow and make more and better things.

• 1:05:32Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah.

• 1:05:32Speaker 01

  Because Colby, to his extreme credit, is it one of the things that people say is like UltraView is the apple of archery. I take that as an extreme compliment to Colby's innovative spirit. We iterate product in revisions, the same as like a tech company would innovate software. It's like version 2.3, 2.4. If we can make something better today on an existing product line by tweaking or revising the design, we'll do it right now, immediately.

• 1:06:07Cameron Hanes?

  You don't wait for like the season or?

• 1:06:09Speaker 01

  No. Why would you do that?

• 1:06:10Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah.

• 1:06:11Speaker 01

  Why would you wait? That just doesn't make any sense. If we can make the pins incrementally brighter right now, we'll just start building that right now. And then we let people know. It's like, if you want the new thing, here it is. You can buy it.

• 1:06:23Cameron Hanes?

  That's pretty rare, isn't it?

• 1:06:24Speaker 01

  Yeah, not common. Because there's so much like operational challenge.

• 1:06:29Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah, tooling and?

• 1:06:30Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's wildly difficult, but it's the right thing to do.

• 1:06:34Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah, definitely. Yeah.

• 1:06:36Speaker 01

  We just try to do that as much as possible.

• 1:06:38Cameron Hanes?

  Hmm. So telling these stories, is it all video? Or what's your path for reaching the consumer? I mean, we talk about video a lot. You love video. That's a great video. But does so is the only path to reaching the consumer just a killer video?

• 1:06:57Speaker 01

  No. I mean, marketing is all like, where's the attention? Go to that, like skate to the puck, you know?

• 1:07:04Cameron Hanes?

  Because here's like an example. James loves this example. He makes me killer real, professional, looks great, gets two views. I do a selfie out here around and it gets 400,000. So.

• 1:07:19Cameron Hanes?

  Tell me, yeah, where's the focus? Obviously, you want some of both. I get that.

• 1:07:24Speaker 01

  Sure. Yeah. And that's like a cornerstone piece of product launch content, which is meant to be a bigger, more substantial piece of media.

• 1:07:32Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah.

• 1:07:33Speaker 01

  We do all the downstream stuff, too, with our creative crew at Collectus and then Carson, who's our internal creative with a camera in the building, is like, we live across the spectrum of content. So that's like a champion piece of content, all the way down to like, we'll put a microphone on the end of a stabilizer and walk around the building like, what broadhead do you use? Tell me about it. And like, that's just a like shot on an iPhone, edited in four minutes, posted on the internet.

• 1:08:02Cameron Hanes?

  You gotta do it all.

• 1:08:03Speaker 01

  Everything in between. And it is interesting to your point of like,

• 1:08:09Speaker 01

  all of us, if you're trying to distribute a message or media of any kind, in a 2026 environment, you are beholden to the algorithm. And there was a period of time where very cinematic content outperformed everything else. And to your point, that is not the way that it is now. And so we do what I would call like lo-fi, easier, faster, high-touch content of just ripping around the building or behind the scenes media. We just posted a reel the other day, like we made this, we have a shot tester that we put our button release on that runs actuations and like loads the hook

• 1:08:51Speaker 01

  to 100 pounds of draw force and it cycles it. And that shot tester is probably coming up on half a million actuations on the button. We're going to get it to a million and then like show that it's still super good to go. Like you would never put a million shots on a release. But you can, if you wanted, if you wanted to rebuild your shoulder a bunch of times.

• 1:09:13Cameron Hanes?

  It's no different than a hoist dry fire, you know, 1500 dry fires.

• 1:09:16Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:09:16Cameron Hanes?

  Like, you're never gonna do that.

• 1:09:17Speaker 01

  And that's, that's like a durability story that can run the gamut of how you're presenting that.

• 1:09:24Cameron Hanes?

  And that's, that's a whole different category.

• 1:09:26Speaker 01

  Hundred percent.

• 1:09:27Cameron Hanes?

  So, yeah, we got, got to hit all these categories. And do you have a roadmap of categories? Like for each product, you got to hit this cornerstone piece, you got to hit this around with the microphone piece, or is like, or is it just by feel?

• 1:09:39Speaker 01

  I do almost everything by vibes.

• 1:09:42Cameron Hanes?

  Okay.

• 1:09:44Speaker 01

  I don't like map stuff out.

• 1:09:48Speaker 01

  Um, have you seen the, now this is gonna sound extremely arrogant. I'm not putting myself in this same conversation. Have you seen the, the like Rick Rubin clip?

• 1:09:57Cameron Hanes?

  Oh, you're like Rick Rubin now?

• 1:09:59Speaker 01

  Right. Where he's just like, uh, I've been around and I have cultivated a taste that people have chosen to respect based on what I've done. Like,

• 1:10:09Cameron Hanes?

  That sounds good.

• 1:10:09Speaker 01

  I operate on some lesser version of that. That's where it's just like, this is what I see happening in the world. This is what I think would be effective communication to distribute whatever message we're trying to distribute. And I'm just gonna like, where's the wind? I'm just gonna taste it out. I'm almost completely driven by that. I will nuke whatever I thought was a good idea yesterday for what I think is a better idea tomorrow.

• 1:10:34Cameron Hanes?

  Okay.

• 1:10:34Speaker 01

  Not beholden to any type of strategy.

• 1:10:36Cameron Hanes?

  That's kind of what I do. Yeah, I think. I don't know. I don't even know what I do.

• 1:10:41Speaker 01

  The thing with especially like social forward content, you don't know if it's gonna work.

• 1:10:45Cameron Hanes?

  No.

• 1:10:46Speaker 01

  Post it.

• 1:10:47Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah.

• 1:10:47Speaker 01

  If it doesn't work, here's the great thing. All of our collective consciousnesses is so smoked by dopamine addiction from our phones. You'll forget in thirty six hours tops. So if you post something and it flops, doesn't matter.

• 1:11:02Cameron Hanes?

  No.

• 1:11:03Speaker 01

  Doesn't matter. Like, it's not net negative. And as a like purist creative, there's so much of the like, I poured my soul into this. Like, I really hope it works. If you attach your identity to things like that, you're setting yourself up for a lot of disappointment. Just send it reps. Like, just be in the game continuously. And then sometimes stuff will really work and it'll pop off and you'll catch a moment of virality and like, it'll go. Like Colby has a reel on his personal page that's just like, it's the release in his hand, the original button, like a prototype, just like running the thumb barrel and like cocking mechanism. It's like, it's shot like this. That's like twenty million views on it.

• 1:11:45Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah. Yeah.

• 1:11:47Speaker 01

  Doesn't matter. Like, it just worked. That's cool. You would never scheme that out. Like, in a go-to-market strategy session for what are the deliverables that we need to launch a product? Well, something like this. That's 14 seconds long.

• 1:12:02Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah.

• 1:12:03Speaker 01

  You wouldn't come up with that. But if you don't try it, you won't know if it works or not.

• 1:12:07Cameron Hanes?

  Right.

• 1:12:07Speaker 01

  So you can make as many cool cinematic, high-touch things as possible. You should also do all the lo-fi stuff, too. And so, you know, our distribution strategy is all social, email. We do a little bit of like

• 1:12:24Speaker 01

  endemic advertising and a couple of different outlets, but we try to like own our story. Just because I want to control the narrative. And if you look at, like, one of our larger business initiatives is Road to USA Made. Because there was two main knocks on UltraView when I started that, as a customer and just like seeing what people say, it was, "Your stuff is made overseas and it's expensive. I don't like that." So what if we could make it make sense for the business that is substantiated by the spreadsheet? That we bring all of our manufacturing back to the States, most of it within our own facility,

• 1:13:08Speaker 01

  and, in some cases, lower the price of the product because we're no longer playing the like MOQ game. So the tariff thing, everybody thinks we're coming back to the States because tariffs are just eating our lunch.

• 1:13:20Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah.

• 1:13:20Speaker 01

  That's largely not true.

• 1:13:22Cameron Hanes?

  Okay.

• 1:13:22Speaker 01

  I understand why people say that, but it's also in the trajectory of growing the business. And like, you saw it, Colby started his dorm room seven years ago, and they started making things. And the demand was just like, "Holy shit, how am I going to fulfill all this demand?" The quickest way to get stuff made is overseas.

• 1:13:40Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah, definitely.

• 1:13:40Speaker 01

  Especially machine parts. If, and it's not like you have a ton of scale, where you can just go to a machine shop in the States and say, "Can you make me 5,000 of these things?" That would be like a big order. It might take you 12 to 18 months to get into a machine shop on their schedule to do that. It's not true overseas. So it's like the...

• 1:14:06Speaker 01

  Choice to make stuff initially overseas was a, almost like a nonstarter. It's like, we need to make stuff now. This is the way to do it. It was always Colby's intent to be vertically integrated and own our own supply chain. It's a huge capital expenditure to do that.

• 1:14:24Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah.

• 1:14:24Speaker 01

  And so like, other companies in the space were bolted on to existing other business. Like, I'm a guy, I own a machine shop for decades. Down the line, I'm like, I also like to bow hunt. Maybe I'll just start making my own bow hunting stuff and I'll run it through my own company.

• 1:14:44Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah.

• 1:14:44Speaker 01

  And now just two businesses feeding each other, extremely smart. Ultimately, it was not that way.

• 1:14:49Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah.

• 1:14:50Speaker 01

  Everyone, like, we did the, uh, like, uh, we did a podcast with Josh Jones. And he was like, I always thought that your stuff came Saran wrapped, like, off a boat. And it was just like, it's like, dude, there's several hundred parts on the slider.

• 1:15:07Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah.

• 1:15:07Speaker 01

  They all come in, like, in bags and we assemble everything in the States. So it's like, what degree of not made in the States is it?

• 1:15:15Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah.

• 1:15:16Speaker 01

  People don't really care until they do.

• 1:15:20Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah.

• 1:15:21Speaker 01

  And at some, because the competition for bow hunting accessories is so, like, all the companies have chosen that made in the USA is a battleground that we will fight on. And if you're not in that game, they're gonna hold it against you.

• 1:15:37Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah.

• 1:15:38Speaker 01

  And so when I started, it was actually like, in my interview, they were asking me like, what do you think about not being made in the States? And I was like, well, everybody else is, and you're taking it in the teeth by not. So we should probably evaluate, does this work?

• 1:15:54Speaker 01

  Because if you're gonna charge a premium price and exist in the upper tier of, uh, Consumer hard goods within the bow hunting space, all the other available options are USA made. And so that's a chink in the armor. And if we can make it make sense financially, and we can retool the budget and do the hard work on the P and L and our warehousing to free up the capital to do asset investment and start buying our own machines, which are not cheap, and put them in the building so that we can exit the MOQ game offshore, the 90 day ocean freight thing, where we can't make a thing unless we have three or 5,000 pieces on that order.

• 1:16:38Cameron Hanes?

  Right.

• 1:16:39Speaker 01

  Now we just like, hey, Philadelphia, send me some bar stock aluminum. All of our metal is also domestic, just for the record.

• 1:16:45Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah.

• 1:16:46Speaker 01

  We're not bringing metal in from Mexico.

• 1:16:48Cameron Hanes?

  Okay.

• 1:16:48Speaker 01

  Like, the whole thing, down to the packaging, packaging's made in Texas, like, all of it. It's like, if you're gonna do something, do it right. What are we talking, like, don't half-ass it, like, let's go.

• 1:16:58Cameron Hanes?

  Right.

• 1:17:00Speaker 01

  You could totally exit the MOQ game by just buying raw aluminum and brass, and just like, we can make as many as we can make. And so, like, the Button 2 that we just launched, I have one in my pocket.

• 1:17:14Cameron Hanes?

  Oh, nice.

• 1:17:16Speaker 01

  It was like, this is my proto example that I've been shooting for like, eight months.

• 1:17:21Cameron Hanes?

  Let me see if I can trigger punch it.

• 1:17:24Speaker 01

  That's 100% made in the States. And quite honestly, like, we just launched that on, like, January 14, I think, like, month and a half ago.

• 1:17:38Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah.

• 1:17:40Speaker 01

  Dude, we crushed our initial forecast in the first 20 days. I had to turn that off the website.

• 1:17:46Cameron Hanes?

  Really?

• 1:17:47Speaker 01

  Because, like, we had an allotment ready to go to dealers and direct customers, and we sold that allotment, like, immediately.

• 1:17:59Cameron Hanes?

  How much are these?

• 1:18:00Speaker 01

  So that brass version is 349, the aluminum version is 299.

• 1:18:04Cameron Hanes?

  Gotcha.

• 1:18:07Speaker 01

  It was an overwhelming reception to the move of made in the States and we didn't raise the price. Our original button was the aluminum was $2.99 and we did a stainless steel heavy version instead. We moved it to brass because people wanted brass.

• 1:18:22Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah.

• 1:18:23Speaker 01

  $3.49, same price. So that whole thing of like, it's made in the States, it has to be more expensive. I said this on another podcast a couple of weeks ago, flag on the play on that.

• 1:18:32Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah.

• 1:18:33Speaker 01

  I do not agree. I don't think that that's true. And so.

• 1:18:37Cameron Hanes?

  Looks good.

• 1:18:38Speaker 01

  Yeah. The production, I just saw what you just did. The production unit has a rubber damper in it. It's much more quiet.

• 1:18:44Cameron Hanes?

  I was gonna say that.

• 1:18:46Speaker 01

  Yeah. So this is, this is a like P2 and Proto-Tact 2.

• 1:18:51Cameron Hanes?

  Gotcha.

• 1:18:51Speaker 01

  The production unit was like a P5.

• 1:18:54Cameron Hanes?

  I see.

• 1:18:54Speaker 01

  So it's, this is just mine.

• 1:18:56Cameron Hanes?

  That's what I just.

• 1:18:57Speaker 01

  I don't have the new one because I gotta get them to everybody that's ordered them for. I don't even have one that, that has like all the final stuff in it.

• 1:19:06Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah. Looks good. People love, I mean, that, that's precision. Like you said, like, you know, like your hat said, that, that what, that's what it feels like to me.

• 1:19:16Speaker 01

  And it should, that's, that's a, we, our packaging is dope. People give us a lot of credit for our packaging and then people hate on it because they're like, that looks expensive. And that's probably factoring into the price. And like, I don't need this box. I'm just gonna throw it away. Colby would say like, everything is a part of the brand experience. So if you give us a couple hundred bucks for a thing, I want to present it to you in a way that, that also communicates that this is a quality instrument.

• 1:19:44Cameron Hanes?

  No, that's good.

• 1:19:48Speaker 01

  And, you know, we're not for everybody. We want to make great stuff. If you self-select that like, I don't value that to spend that much money on it. There's plenty of other options for you and we don't hold that against you. Like, we want to make stuff that we believe is great. That does what we said and what we set out to do. And the way we're all wired of just like, this is the thing that we love and, you know, a non-trivial percentage of our disposable income is going to go to hunting stuff.

• 1:20:20Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah.

• 1:20:21Speaker 01

  So like, let's make, let's make the good stuff.

• 1:20:24Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah, it's expensive.

• 1:20:25Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:20:25Cameron Hanes?

  Um, no, that looks good. Uh, so as, as part of this brand story then, tell me about, you know, I'm from my end, I was just the redneck bow hunter who just read all the magazines, wanted to like go on hunts all over the world. How does the, how does a bow hunter, since you've been involved in so many brands, get attention and get that opportunity that we all dream of? To, you said earlier, you said hunt for a living. How does one make themself? Well, I mean, it's marketable, I guess, but valuable to a company?

• 1:21:03Speaker 01

  As just a individual?

• 1:21:05Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah.

• 1:21:05Speaker 01

  Like a, are you asking like, how do you become like a hunting personality slash influencer?

• 1:21:11Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah, I just want to know what you guys value from the, from the company. Cause I have my guesses. I've, like I said, I've just been on this side of it.

• 1:21:19Speaker 01

  Sure, sure.

• 1:21:20Cameron Hanes?

  So what do you guys look for?

• 1:21:22Speaker 01

  So a couple of different things. At a, for people that we're going to pay, there's a mathematical like-

• 1:21:33Cameron Hanes?

  And how realistic is being paid to bow hunt?

• 1:21:37Speaker 01

  It's, it's very not realistic. It's extremely hard.

• 1:21:41Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah.

• 1:21:42Speaker 01

  It can totally be done.

• 1:21:43Cameron Hanes?

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:21:44Speaker 01

  Um, I think that almost everybody that is doing that, like, has you to thank for some degree for that. Because you've proven that like this path is attainable. It can happen. It's possible. That like you should have, I, I listened to your episode with Greg and you guys brought up, or he brought up Chris, you should definitely have Chris on to talk about, cause he's like-

• 1:22:05Cameron Hanes?

  I'd love to.

• 1:22:05Speaker 01

  The pristine example of, you know, he's 26 or seven. He's 10 years into YouTube, like he's doing it live.

• 1:22:13Cameron Hanes?

  Right.

• 1:22:14Speaker 01

  Right now. Um, so there's a mathematical, like, how many eyeballs do you get?

• 1:22:20Cameron Hanes?

  Hmm.

• 1:22:20Speaker 01

  Um, what's your, I'm, I'm interested in you as a distribution vehicle to help champion like just brand name, get it out there. That's a part of it. So having like a platform from which you can speak with, with credibility is like the most important thing. Because you and I both know guys that just shill whatever to whoever will write them a check. I'm totally not interested in that.

• 1:22:45Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah.

• 1:22:47Speaker 01

  So, so much of how possible is it to become a personality that gets paid to hunt? And I use that paid to hunt is like you do much more than just hunt. I'm totally aware. That's just kind of how people frame.

• 1:23:02Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah.

• 1:23:04Speaker 01

  It starts with, do you love it? And I mean, really love it. And I think you and Greg did a good job of like framing. I think he said like, you should be prepared to lose money for three years if you do this. I think that that's.

• 1:23:18Cameron Hanes?

  I lost for a lot longer.

• 1:23:20Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:23:20Cameron Hanes?

  But yeah.

• 1:23:21Speaker 01

  You also existed a different moment in time when you were on your come up. So like, when did you?

• 1:23:28Speaker 01

  Like the business of hunting, you said 1989 earlier. What happened in 1989?

• 1:23:33Cameron Hanes?

  That's when I started bow hunting.

• 1:23:34Speaker 01

  Okay. When did you like, cause you wrote for Eastmans for a long time. Like, when did you get your first dollar from hunting?

• 1:23:42Cameron Hanes?

  God, it was a long, I mean,

• 1:23:47Cameron Hanes?

  uh, maybe at least 20 years. I mean, I remember PSC had a commercial and they said, we don't, we don't pay or like something like these people shoot PSC for free and I was on there. And that was like in 2002 or three. And then I was like, kind of like going, I was writing for Eastmans, but I'm like,

• 1:24:11Cameron Hanes?

  if they're saying that I'm doing this for free, it's like,

• 1:24:17Cameron Hanes?

  I mean, I have value. They have me up my picture on there.

• 1:24:19Speaker 01

  Mm hmm.

• 1:24:20Cameron Hanes?

  Why am I not, if I'm being used?

• 1:24:25Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:24:26Cameron Hanes?

  How come, what do I get?

• 1:24:28Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:24:28Cameron Hanes?

  You know, then I was just like, cause then, and then it evolved into, you know, so then it'd be super small. I don't even know how much, no money hardly. But, uh, finally, I think I was, uh, I, I went to, I started to play this camo game because the camo companies had the money.

• 1:24:47Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 1:24:47Cameron Hanes?

  You know, basically.

• 1:24:48Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 1:24:48Cameron Hanes?

  Way more than a boat company or an accessory company. They, you know, those guys make a lot of money. And it's not even, they don't have to manufacture this, selling the, the, the pattern. So they're, you know, it's just.

• 1:25:00Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:25:01Cameron Hanes?

  They definitely have, have more to, to, um, I guess, I don't sponsor people or whatever. So I went through and I just said, I looked at my impressions per thousand. So I'd add up, like I write for this magazine. This is this many people. I post this. And like this was, might've even been right at the advent of Facebook, but I could keep track of where I was reaching people, how many people I was reaching and how much I was proposing. They pay me. And then it would be, you're going to pay this much per thousand impressions through me.

• 1:25:32Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 1:25:33Cameron Hanes?

  And it was a big number by adding all that up because it's awesome. TV shows, this, I had all the numbers for the viewers. So I made it really easy for a marketer to be like, wow, that's, he's getting out there. You know, so I'm, I signed a deal for like a hundred and 25,000, five year deal with, I, Cameron's Realtree or Mossy Oak. But I'm just like, I'm making a hundred thousand. It didn't matter. There's over five years.

• 1:25:59Speaker 01

  Sure.

• 1:25:59Cameron Hanes?

  It was just like, that was kind of validated at that time.

• 1:26:02Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 1:26:02Cameron Hanes?

  So, but that took over 20 years.

• 1:26:04Speaker 01

  Right. And so I think the point there to bring that into a modern context is what you're talking about, like the CPM, like impressions per thousand. That was a very, uh, mathematical way to substantiate someone's distribution value as a marketer themselves for my thing as a brand person. That is still a component. I think now that's, that's part of, that's just like table stakes. If you don't have a lot of distribution, that's like, may I'll I'll seed you some gear.

• 1:26:38Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah.

• 1:26:38Speaker 01

  And I want to invest in people on the come up.

• 1:26:40Cameron Hanes?

  Hmm.

• 1:26:41Speaker 01

  Uh, personally, and so I'm actually in the middle of like negotiating a couple of deals right now with younger creatives that are on their own rise.

• 1:26:49Cameron Hanes?

  Nice.

• 1:26:50Speaker 01

  Because the thing that I find most interesting is I want to align with people that are very hungry. And trying to build a life that they want to live. And if I can help facilitate that, that scratches my own itch.

• 1:27:07Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah.

• 1:27:08Speaker 01

  And I get to, uh, the, the extreme joy, and I do mean that, the joy of shepherding a budget wherein I can help do that for people. It's like you're out there doing the thing, trying to build your presence and like, do what we're talking about right now. Can I, is this even real?

• 1:27:27Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah.

• 1:27:27Speaker 01

  Possible?

• 1:27:28Cameron Hanes?

  It's a dream. It's great.

• 1:27:29Speaker 01

  I can see you on the internet, call you, be like, hey dude, what's up? Tell me your story. What are you trying to do? And if you just engage with me in a way that's like, super honest, and I think that you're talented. And most of what I'm looking at is, do you represent capital H hunting? It's like how I frame it. Like, I work in this space because I'm really afraid that hunting can be legislated out of existence before I'm dead. And so working at a brand is my attempt to grab the biggest megaphones that I can to be like, hey, this deserves to exist. And I want to work with people that all feel the same way. So if you're on that team, I'm with you.

• 1:28:10Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah.

• 1:28:11Speaker 01

  That's what I do.

• 1:28:13Cameron Hanes?

  Hmm.

• 1:28:14Speaker 01

  Selling stuff is, is just like the mechanism by which I do that.

• 1:28:18Cameron Hanes?

  Right.

• 1:28:19Speaker 01

  So,

• 1:28:22Speaker 01

  do you really love it? Do you have a passion for it? Are you dedicated? Do you represent capital H hunting in a way that is like morally and ethically defensible to a non-hunting voting public? Are you stewarding your small corner of the internet in a way that's net positive for the lifestyle that we all love? That's what I'm really after.

• 1:28:42Cameron Hanes?

  Hmm.

• 1:28:43Speaker 01

  And just because we're a smaller company, like, I can't go out and sign people like you. Like, I don't have the budget for what you would demand. I'm interested in younger creatives, guys on the come up, people that are like, dude, I'm on the cusp. I'm trying to figure this out because those guys are dogs, like motivated. They're grinding for it. And it's like aligning with people that are hungry. It's net positive for the both of us. And so in any negotiation stuff that I do, it's like, what are the incentives and how can we align them? Because I'm going to ask things of you and you should ask things of me. So this should be a fair and equitable deal here.

• 1:29:22Speaker 01

  I look for scenarios where everybody can win because we're not a huge brand where it's like, yeah, I can just write you a check and let you do whatever you do and trust that it's going to be good for me. Like, I don't have that type of firepower.

• 1:29:39Cameron Hanes?

  Right.

• 1:29:40Speaker 01

  Different, bigger brands, it's like, I lived in that world before. That's totally a thing and appropriate for other brands at different phases of the game. I like, really need it to work.

• 1:29:53Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah.

• 1:29:53Speaker 01

  Where I'm at now. And so I'm very choosy.

• 1:29:59Speaker 01

  And so, so much of like, as a creator, as a hunter of who's, like, the game is content and media right now, right? You should spend a lot of time, like, picking your horse. Because you want to

• 1:30:20Speaker 01

  do everything you can to keep your integrity intact. And what I said earlier, guys that just shell for a paycheck is like, I'm not interested in that. I also think that most customers, they're just like, they know.

• 1:30:37Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah.

• 1:30:38Speaker 01

  That what you're telling me about this thing, trustworthy is a stretch because

• 1:30:45Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah.

• 1:30:45Speaker 01

  this is a business exchange and that's fine. I'm happy for you, but your credibility is, is not you, but like

• 1:30:53Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah, I understand.

• 1:30:54Speaker 01

  is lessened because it's like, you have a contract and this is what you have to do. And like, I get it. I get it. Cool.

• 1:31:02Speaker 01

  But guys that are like, no, I want to use your stuff. Is there something that we can do here? That's what I'm after.

• 1:31:10Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah.

• 1:31:10Speaker 01

  Because most of the people that I'm engaging with right now in like active conversations today are people that choose to shoot UltraView on their own, that buy it with their own money. Because they've decided that it's the best thing for them. And then if there's an alignment that can be had with UltraView to like double down and do some cool stuff. And you help me to tell stories and share some of your footage and I'll send you on a hunt and like we'll do the thing. Like that, everybody's cool because it's like, we're actually, we're doing it. This is what we're after.

• 1:31:43Cameron Hanes?

  It's collaborative, yeah.

• 1:31:45Speaker 01

  It's totally possible.

• 1:31:46Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah, definitely.

• 1:31:47Speaker 01

  It, it takes a while. It, this game is so relational and you would know this better than anybody. The, the joke that I tell and any young person that's like, how do I work in the hunting industry? I tell them one on one, there are seven people that work in this space and two of us are in this conversation right now. Your reputation is everything. Your credibility, your trustworthiness, like if I shake your hand, that means something. I operate that way and I value people that operate that way.

• 1:32:19Cameron Hanes?

  Right.

• 1:32:21Speaker 01

  People that jump ship and pop around and do all the thing is just like, there's a time and a place to

• 1:32:28Speaker 01

  change jerseys because people grow, businesses change, like all the things. Like using yourself as an example, like Under Armour to Origin, now to Sicka. They're like, there's plenty of good reasons for that.

• 1:32:41Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah.

• 1:32:42Speaker 01

  It makes sense. You have a responsibility to storytell those changes to your audience in a way that's palatable and keeps your integrity intact. And for my chair, I think you've done a good job.

• 1:32:55Cameron Hanes?

  Thank you.

• 1:32:56Speaker 01

  I know that it's difficult at times.

• 1:32:58Cameron Hanes?

  It's hard.

• 1:32:59Speaker 01

  But for people that are earlier trying to figure that out, it's like you should choose a horse that you think you can have some real longevity with.

• 1:33:06Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah.

• 1:33:07Speaker 01

  Because if you are just out there for like grabbing money because you're trying to get out of your nine to five, to do the thing to buy yourself the time wherein if you're like zero on the P and L at the end of the year, you're you're doing good right now. If you're just like cash grabbing to try to make that happen, but it's short sighted and you don't really want to be using this thing, but that was the opportunity that I had at the time. I think that over enough changes, you lose credibility.

• 1:33:41Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah.

• 1:33:42Speaker 01

  So you should choose a horse that has a long runway that you align with out of core values level. It's like, I want to do that. I support them. I believe the same thing that they believe and I want to be on this team. Those are the things that just make sense.

• 1:34:01Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah.

• 1:34:01Speaker 01

  And as a marketer, when people operate that way with a high level of integrity and transparency to their audience, those are the guys that when they say something, actionable results follow. And so if you can map your business endeavors as a hunting person, working with brands in such a fashion that when a normal dude watches your media and he's just like, I got no bullshit censors pinging right now. Just do that.

• 1:34:41Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah.

• 1:34:43Speaker 01

  It's it's so simple to say, it's very difficult to navigate.

• 1:34:48Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah, for sure. Yeah, it's a the business part because like I said, I just have always just loved bow hunting. So that business part was always hard for me.

• 1:34:57Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:34:58Cameron Hanes?

  Further down the road, I get, I've been jaded, I've been.

• 1:35:04Cameron Hanes?

  Uh, I mean, it's business, you know, so it's like, I don't want it to be business, but it is business. So what am I gonna, what am I gonna do? The, the changes I've had to make and people, they can say just about money this, that. One example would be definitely about money. It was, it was Under Armour, a big company and my contract was up. I knew how many of the shoes with my name on it, they sold. I did the math. I'm just like, they had Steph Curry signed for 500 million. He sold like 1,200 pair of his shoes. I sold their predict, projecting 20 or 30,000 pair of mine. So I'm like, I don't need 500 million, but I want 800,000 a year. Cause I knew the mon- money was there. It's way more than they're paying me.

• 1:35:49Cameron Hanes?

  They said, no, I'm like, cool. Okay, I'm gone. And because it's like, I felt like I was busting my ass for 17 years.

• 1:35:59Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:35:59Cameron Hanes?

  And I'm, I'm producing. We are moving product. So, and cause they say, well, oh, we'll sign you to a lower deal, but you're going to get royalties. Like, I'm getting 5%. Don't act like you're doing me a favor. You're getting 95% royalties. So that was just, and that's just business. But then you go and like, you know, just recently had a bow comp, a bow company offer me 450,000 a year, which is more than Hoyt pays me. But I didn't, I didn't do it because if I'm going to switch, if I'm going to switch, it better be like, all I care about is to be the best bow hunter I can be. Yeah, loyalty is beyond or second to that. But I just want to be the best at what I love to do, and that's bow hunting.

• 1:36:42Cameron Hanes?

  If some bow made me 30% better, I'd be like, I don't care what I gotta do. I want to shoot that bow.

• 1:36:50Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:36:51Cameron Hanes?

  This is all I care about.

• 1:36:52Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:36:53Cameron Hanes?

  I don't, but Hoyt has been loyal. They, they're not paying me what that other company offered me. I'm at Hoyt.

• 1:37:01Speaker 01

  Cause you like it.

• 1:37:02Cameron Hanes?

  I believe in it.

• 1:37:04Speaker 01

  And that's why people trust you.

• 1:37:05Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah. And it's just like, and then I do get frustrated sometimes with the marketing too, because I want, I want to get your thoughts on this, but how, you know, with the bow launches and this and that. I've always thought that, you know, we should, Western should have its own bow launch because the bow is out here. We have different needs than a guy in a tree stand. Why can't we have our own bow launch different times of year because you, everybody wants to sell, it used to be the ATA show, but like, why can't we sell in the spring to get ready for western hunting? The, the east coast guys could get their bow a little later. Different marketing strategies because different intentions in the, you're in the mountains, long shots, you're in a tree stand. But, so I get frustrated with the marketing, but I do, you know, I don't know if Hoyt,

• 1:37:51Cameron Hanes?

  I mean, they did this, the 90 pound bow, a separate launch. And it, you know, obviously the intent probably was to boost sales out of the normal bow launch, right? So it's like two launches, kind of what I'm talking about. But they, they finally did a good job of like this AX90. It's like, how many people are going to actually buy those? Not very many, but man, that brand's out there. I'm talking about it because I'm pumped, you know? So it's my content's there. So it's like, whether they buy that bow or not, they're seeing a lot of Hoyt. Which, and I, it's not like I'm tagging Hoyt every time. I'm just shooting into new bow, talking about how accurate and badass it is to shoot a 90 pound bow. And finally you can buy one too, even though you're probably not going to. But it's that story.

• 1:38:32Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:38:33Cameron Hanes?

  You know, so, so we got that, we got a story to tell now. Because without the, without the hook or something fun to talk about, what are we doing?

• 1:38:42Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:38:43Cameron Hanes?

  And that's the challenge with constant content. It's like, you can't, you said sometimes things don't hit and that's true, but we can't just put up shit content.

• 1:38:54Speaker 01

  No.

• 1:38:55Cameron Hanes?

  So it all has to be very intentional.

• 1:38:57Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:38:58Cameron Hanes?

  So give me your thoughts on all that rambling.

• 1:39:00Speaker 01

  Yeah, I would say,

• 1:39:05Speaker 01

  all coming back to if you say something, do I believe you? Now, I'm in this arena, my bullshit filter is very finely tuned. To the normal person, like they don't have the inside beta that guys like you and I have. And so the threshold for does this pass the sniff test is a lot less. That being said, I think that how you engage with brands and choose when to go here versus there, it's, it's, you're trying to do right by your own reputation. That has always been clear to me about you. I respect that a lot because I know a lot of guys that aren't that way. This isn't like to blow smoke up your ass. I just think that the way that you've conducted

• 1:39:50Speaker 01

  yourself is just the best way to do it because this other company that offered you a bunch more money, you don't like their product as much. So it's, it's not that difficult.

• 1:40:00Cameron Hanes?

  No, it was, it was good. It just wasn't a huge advance. You know, it's like if it's close.

• 1:40:05Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:40:06Cameron Hanes?

  It's not making me better.

• 1:40:08Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:40:08Cameron Hanes?

  But yeah.

• 1:40:09Speaker 01

  I also think that there is a earlier, there's like a burden of choice and then later kind of like late stage career where you're at now with this, it's not a burden of choice. It's, it's a, uh, the, the opportunity cost is much different. And so, uh, to steal a phrase from like Chris Williamson, people should model the rise, not the result.

• 1:40:35Cameron Hanes?

  Right.

• 1:40:35Speaker 01

  And so anybody that's early career, that's like watching your stuff. It's like, how do I, how do I do what Cam does? You can't do what Cam does because you haven't been doing it for 30 plus years.

• 1:40:44Cameron Hanes?

  Mm hmm.

• 1:40:45Speaker 01

  They should go back and read your books from 25 years ago and understand that like you're doing it for the love of the game.

• 1:40:51Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah.

• 1:40:51Speaker 01

  For a very long time.

• 1:40:53Cameron Hanes?

  Mm hmm.

• 1:40:53Speaker 01

  That's what established your credibility and what built your platform and what gives you the authenticity and the leg to stand on that is now like, that's the biggest asset in your quiver is that like the story of you, when did you leave your job?

• 1:41:11Cameron Hanes?

  This.

• 1:41:11Speaker 01

  Like a couple of years ago.

• 1:41:12Cameron Hanes?

  Three years ago.

• 1:41:13Speaker 01

  Insane to me. And I know like Joe was the one who talked you out of it, right?

• 1:41:17Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah.

• 1:41:18Speaker 01

  It's just like.

• 1:41:18Cameron Hanes?

  Tried for a long time.

• 1:41:19Speaker 01

  I, I heard that and I had always just been like, you know, I'm in the space and like, I know roughly like what guys get paid. You keeping your job for as long as you did makes you dangerous because you don't have to say yes to everything else because you're like, I, I do this.

• 1:41:38Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah.

• 1:41:38Speaker 01

  All this hunting stuff is for fun.

• 1:41:40Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah.

• 1:41:41Speaker 01

  Because I love it. Early career creatives, the thing that I tell them is keep your day job because it gives you optionality.

• 1:41:48Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah.

• 1:41:49Speaker 01

  Uh, I started as a photographer and so like I built this network of early career creative professionals. And I used to do this online show where I would field questions, like tell people what to do. It's actually how I met James is like, I just get my jollies out of like helping other people do the thing they want to do.

• 1:42:09Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah.

• 1:42:10Speaker 01

  I would like, go be a firefighter. That's like tactical advice. Do that. Quit your 50 hour a week corporate job. Go be a firefighter. Well, why do you do that? Because you're like 48 on, 72 off.

• 1:42:22Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah, lots of time.

• 1:42:23Speaker 01

  You have time, which is what you need. You need time more than you need money. So if you can do the financial calculus of live below your means to buy yourself time to hunt or get in the hills with a camera or do whatever it is that you need to do to try to bet on your own future, you need time more than you need money. And I tell people all the time, like, get a day job that covers your expenses, that leaves you enough time to scratch your itch, do the creative thing, hunt a lot. Firefighter is just like a really pristine example of that.

• 1:43:03Speaker 01

  I think that not knowing you, but just knowing some of how this conversations go, you staying in your professional career for as long as you did, gave you a lot of optionality, I would imagine. Because it's like, everything else is icing. Your cake is solid. And this icing over here looks really enticing, but it has an opportunity cost. If I say yes to that, what does it actually cost me?

• 1:43:32Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah.

• 1:43:34Speaker 01

  That's a luxury position. If you give up your main thing too soon, because for good reasons, I'm hungry. I believe you, Craig. The time is really what I need and I still have this job and I don't have enough time. If you give it up too soon, then you have to start saying yes, because rents do.

• 1:43:52Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah.

• 1:43:53Speaker 01

  It forces you into decision-making patterns that you otherwise might not choose because you have to. That is a different way to play the game. I think it's net negative. I think you should stay in your stable situation, and I use stable loosely because as we've now documented, I get fired a lot. It's not stable as you want to think, but you should stay in it for as long as you can so that you can operate with a freedom to choose some of these like brand deals and associations and I want to work with them and not them.

• 1:44:31Cameron Hanes?

  The right fit.

• 1:44:31Speaker 01

  Because it gives you the, the, the, the choice. So.

• 1:44:37Speaker 01

  All that being said, dude, it's like, man, it's totally possible to do this. And I think the litmus test, like projecting into the future now, and we'll circle back kind of to where we started with this like whole AI thing. I'm super bullish on stuff that I can see with my eyes and be like, that's real and I know that it's real.

• 1:44:59Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah.

• 1:45:00Speaker 01

  Stuff that feels fabricated.

• 1:45:04Speaker 01

  If we talk two years from now.

• 1:45:08Speaker 01

  I really believe that this will be true.

• 1:45:12Speaker 01

  If it smells a little bit like AI, I'm out.

• 1:45:15Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah.

• 1:45:16Speaker 01

  Because it's like, it's, it's going to accelerate at a wild pace.

• 1:45:22Cameron Hanes?

  Don't you think, I think there's going to be a divide.

• 1:45:25Speaker 01

  This is what, this is what I'm getting at.

• 1:45:26Cameron Hanes?

  Okay.

• 1:45:26Speaker 01

  It's like, I want to go to the blue ocean.

• 1:45:29Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah.

• 1:45:30Speaker 01

  I'm going anti that stuff. And as a, as a, a super active example of this. UltraView historically has done a lot of like 3D Blender modeling and presentation of our hard goods because it's a, it's a really good way to show something in 3D animation in space to explain to me like, how does this thing function? And I can do it in a computer in a way that's arguably sometimes better to explain it to you as a customer. I've killed that at UltraView. All the stuff on our website, real photographs. Like on our PDPs, product display pages, like when you go to the slider two page, that's a photograph of an actual site.

• 1:46:15Speaker 01

  It's not a 3D Blender model.

• 1:46:17Cameron Hanes?

  Love it.

• 1:46:17Speaker 01

  My creative team fights me on that because they're like, dude, it would just be easier to do the 3D models. And I'm like.

• 1:46:24Cameron Hanes?

  Definitely be easier.

• 1:46:26Speaker 01

  Two years from now, if it's a 3D model in the hunt space, people are going to be like, that's big.

• 1:46:33Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah.

• 1:46:34Speaker 01

  Show me the real thing. And I need to know that it's real. One of my favorite like marketing things is I know what it is because of the way that it is.

• 1:46:44Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah.

• 1:46:45Speaker 01

  Just

• 1:46:46Cameron Hanes?

  Best nature.

• 1:46:47Speaker 01

  Make it exist in the real world and then show it to me. Don't do this computer bullshit. Don't, don't fake it behind the CPUs. And I think that everyone projecting into the future, like if you just make it tangible, make it exist in the real world, tell a story that's human, no chips in the mix. People be like, the, my nostalgia is pinging because the world used to be that way. In our industry especially.

• 1:47:17Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah.

• 1:47:18Speaker 01

  We love that stuff.

• 1:47:19Cameron Hanes?

  We're about tradition.

• 1:47:20Speaker 01

  We love the way that it used to be.

• 1:47:21Cameron Hanes?

  That's, we talked about, that's a cheek in the marketing armor, but it is like a superpower also because we, we like authentic. And I know like, you know, how you see all sorts of shit on Instagram, but you're like, you see these girls talking and they're saying like what a man really wants. I'm like, wait, this is AI? And then it's like, looks good, says all the right stuff, but it's like, it's not real. So then you see the same girl or whatever. You're like, no, I don't get, it's not even real. It's like we, so that's just a weird example of like, for me is like this total whatever toxic redneck dipshit. I still don't like, I don't want fake.

• 1:48:03Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:48:04Cameron Hanes?

  So.

• 1:48:04Speaker 01

  And, and I think guys like us that are just so in this space because it's our world. That's an indicator of where things are going to go. Like we're sensing something now that everybody else is going to sense in a couple of years.

• 1:48:19Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah, probably. Yeah. Yeah, it's, it's interesting. Um, so you gave me credit for sticking with my job. I'll just say this, cause I see a lot of these young guys that are like quitting their job and going all in early. It feels very early and then I see them, it's, there's pressure to produce now because.

• 1:48:40Cameron Hanes?

  If you quit a little early, those sponsorships weren't quite where they needed to be to pay for you to hunt all for three months and go to other states and pay your bills. And then you have a tough season.

• 1:48:54Speaker 01

  You're done.

• 1:48:55Cameron Hanes?

  So the, the reason why I stuck with, well, first of all, it was the best job I ever had. So I'm like, how can I quit? I'm, you know, a dipshit. I can't quit. I'm superintendent here. It's taking me forever to be here. It's like, and I love the guys. But also I just didn't have confidence. I didn't believe in myself. And you know, I, I said, I told Joe, I wish I believed in me as much as you do, because I just did not believe I had what it take. I mean, I wanted a TV show forever. I saw Waddell road trips. I think me and Greg talked about this, but I wanted to be like that. I just, I just didn't have it. I just didn't feel like I wasn't that guy. So I'm like, I'm just gonna have to work every day and then hunt when I can. But I had, you know, good benefits. So I had a lot of time off.

• 1:49:38Speaker 01

  Sure.

• 1:49:38Cameron Hanes?

  Um, I'd been there for 26 years. So it wasn't like, it was, it was like this grand scheme plan. I was intentional and like, this is how you do this. My business model. No, I just didn't believe in myself.

• 1:49:51Speaker 01

  And that, that again is a rise versus result paradigm, because you get the survivorship bias of the guys that bet on themselves and won.

• 1:50:00Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah.

• 1:50:00Speaker 01

  And they're like, this is possible. I know you could do this.

• 1:50:02Cameron Hanes?

  Right.

• 1:50:03Speaker 01

  And you probably can't. Like I'm a believer, like swing for the fence, go for it, like fall on your face, you'll figure it out. So you're fine. I think there's a strategic way to do it wherein you lessen some of that, just like financial pressure to perform in a way that you could lose the momentum you have if you don't perform.

• 1:50:24Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah. And bowing is fucking hard, dude.

• 1:50:28Speaker 01

  It's extremely hard.

• 1:50:30Cameron Hanes?

  It is hard to produce.

• 1:50:31Speaker 01

  We do not talk about that enough.

• 1:50:33Cameron Hanes?

  It is like, it's, I get my ass kicked in some way all season, many times.

• 1:50:40Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:50:41Cameron Hanes?

  You know, and so to produce, to get a big bull on the ground is hard.

• 1:50:48Speaker 01

  It's extremely hard. It's extremely hard. Um, yeah, and to play this game, the, the hunting purist in me doesn't like what I'm about to say.

• 1:51:00Cameron Hanes?

  Okay.

• 1:51:01Speaker 01

  If you want to make money in the hunting industry as a personality, you gotta kill a lot.

• 1:51:06Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah.

• 1:51:06Speaker 01

  You have, like, table stakes, you have to. It does, to some degree.

• 1:51:14Speaker 01

  Bastardize is a strong word.

• 1:51:17Cameron Hanes?

  Right.

• 1:51:17Speaker 01

  Whatever's less than that. But it's like. We're commercializing a thing that was never meant to be commercialized. It can be done correctly, and I really do believe that. I think a lot of guys up and are net negative.

• 1:51:33Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah.

• 1:51:33Speaker 01

  And I don't like it.

• 1:51:34Cameron Hanes?

  Right.

• 1:51:35Speaker 01

  Because it's going back to like, why do I do this is guys that are out there doing the wrong thing, portraying capital age hunting in a way that's not palatable to a non-hunting voting public, you guys are gonna kill it for all of us.

• 1:51:51Cameron Hanes?

  Definitely.

• 1:51:52Speaker 01

  You should be a lot more conscious about how you do this. And I have, like, dude, I, I'm a mediocre bow hunter myself at best. I love it. I am like in the process of trying to get much better at it.

• 1:52:08Cameron Hanes?

  I saw some good animals on your page.

• 1:52:11Speaker 01

  Dude.

• 1:52:13Speaker 01

  I try hard.

• 1:52:14Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah, you had some success.

• 1:52:16Speaker 01

  Well, thank you. Uh, there's a, there's 10x more failures. But it's, it's like a, um, I think everybody has a responsibility to present hunting in a way that is net positive for the future of the lifestyle and the sport and the resource. And like, if you're not doing something to further the continued excellence of the North American model of wildlife conservation, you're not in the game. Because if you do something stupid, you could really hurt this for all of us.

• 1:52:52Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah.

• 1:52:53Speaker 01

  So be conscious of what you're doing. And I, I have at different points in my career, like publicly pick fights, because I just believe that, like, in my core.

• 1:53:05Speaker 01

  And I'll be, I'll cite an example and I'll be vague on purpose. There was a, there's a guy that shot like a 200 plus inch mule deer in Utah and shot him in the face. And there's an arrow in that buck's face and he posted on the internet.

• 1:53:19Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah, I saw that.

• 1:53:21Speaker 01

  Eviscerated that guy to the degree that I could on the internet because I'm like, you're not thinking, you're a dopamine addict. This is bad for us. You have to take this down.

• 1:53:33Speaker 01

  It like it, I'mma get, I'mma get mad right now. And this was years ago.

• 1:53:38Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah.

• 1:53:39Speaker 01

  I don't even remember the dude's name.

• 1:53:40Cameron Hanes?

  I don't either.

• 1:53:41Speaker 01

  But stuff like that, that's not acceptable. And, and what the non-hunting public really wants to know is will hunters police their own ranks? And I think that there is the vibe in the industry is like, if you're a hunter, then we're always on the same team. No.

• 1:54:03Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah.

• 1:54:03Speaker 01

  Wrong. We have to hold each other accountable. And because of the way that culture is, and a political environment and the way that decisions get made, like the thing that we all love is vulnerable.

• 1:54:18Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah, definitely.

• 1:54:20Speaker 01

  And it's everybody's individual responsibility to represent it in a way that is morally and ethically and scientifically defensible. And so you should take great care to steward your own personal megaphone in the best way possible. Because this is not a stagnant endeavor. Hunting is either growing or retracting.

• 1:54:43Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah.

• 1:54:44Speaker 01

  And it's been doing a lot of retracting.

• 1:54:46Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah.

• 1:54:47Speaker 01

  It's dangerous, man, worries me and I don't like it. And so like this entire conversation, I want to work with people that think some version of what I've just described, which I totally admit and understand is a personal journey.

• 1:55:02Cameron Hanes?

  Right.

• 1:55:03Speaker 01

  I didn't think this way 20 years ago. When I was eight years old, walking around with a 1022, shooting anything that had breath in its lungs because I was a kid and like shooting stuff's cool. This was not on my radar.

• 1:55:14Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah.

• 1:55:15Speaker 01

  You grow into it.

• 1:55:16Cameron Hanes?

  Yep.

• 1:55:17Speaker 01

  And it becomes like a, a, a personal code of conduct that is just like.

• 1:55:25Speaker 01

  Man, I just, I really want to do it right. And it gets sticky when you're, do I feel this as a, as a VP at a hunting company? Like, I'm in films and I go on paid hunts to do the thing and like, I've got to perform. And if I spend money to go do a thing and the content doesn't pan out, like I've just burned money.

• 1:55:47Cameron Hanes?

  Hmm.

• 1:55:48Speaker 01

  And it, we didn't get the business value out of the thing that we just wrote checks for.

• 1:55:53Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah.

• 1:55:53Speaker 01

  I feel a responsibility to perform, which butts up against like what I want hunting to actually be.

• 1:55:59Cameron Hanes?

  Hmm.

• 1:56:00Speaker 01

  And that's a personal tension to be managed, but if you're going to say that like, I'm a person in this space, whether you're on the brand side or the personality side, it's like, that's a thing that you're going to have to wrestle with to figure out how you want to navigate that entire conversation. It's a weight.

• 1:56:17Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah. It's tough. It's a, you know, and also like to your point, but 20 years ago, because I was killing stuff and putting it, putting it up 20 years ago, but we were only reaching hunters. You know, social media goes everywhere now. So the people who get hunting, they're, they're not going to be bothered by, I mean, I don't like to see the arrow in the face. I just, that's just not, it's just, well, it doesn't help anything. And it's just, it makes us look, I don't even know what, but back in the day, you didn't have to worry about what the non-hunters thought. It was, we were preaching to hunters, from hunters, we're all on the same page.

• 1:56:58Cameron Hanes?

  It's changed so much now that I remember like years ago, I, I, you know, probably talked shit about Ben O'Brien for talking about gripping grins. And I'm like, I don't give a people think I'm happy I killed this buck. I'm going to smile. And then as I got bigger and bigger, like as far as following goes and reaching more people, I'm like, God, these non-hunters just don't get the smiling with the kill. They just don't get it. And actually I was doing that at a different place in my life where. I wasn't, I'm older now, I'm, I feel like I'm more respectful. I'm like the kills.

• 1:57:34Cameron Hanes?

  They've always meant a lot, but they're like, there's more reverence to me now at this age than I, when I was a kid, I would just kill and I wouldn't think about anything. It wouldn't even matter. Now I really think about that life I took. So, so much so, I don't put up smiling, gripping grin photos because it's not truly how I feel when I kill. When I kill, I, I feel like I did what, what I do, and that's what I do, but, and I understand that there's blood on my hands and the animal died because of me, but it's not like that I'm, it's fun. You know, you know what I mean? It's like, it's just part of what I do, part of the journey. That's how I'm, that's what I'm gonna eat all year.

• 1:58:16Cameron Hanes?

  And so I've really thought about how what I do is presented and not just to hunters, but to everybody. And I just want to be proud of what we do, but, and I know people look at my stuff and they can be very critical of it, which is fine. I invite that. I'm a public, public figure, but I don't have sponsorships on my hunting videos. I don't, uh, monetize anything. I'm like, when it comes to animals dying, because I don't want people ever saying, well, you're killing for money.

• 1:58:47Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:58:47Cameron Hanes?

  So I don't let, I just, I just, there's like a definitely defining line for me. And that's not saying anybody else needs to do that. I, people put ads on.

• 1:58:59Speaker 01

  Your personal ethic.

• 1:59:00Cameron Hanes?

  That's me. That's just me, just seeing the landscape and seeing how the non-public affects what we love when it comes to the voting. And if I'm the most visible hunter out there, I have to be really conscious about how people who aren't like us are looking at what I do. And so I'm just really on the storytelling and then not making the money off of it. That's an easy one.

• 1:59:27Cameron Hanes?

  But I think it's it's important to me to not do that.

• 1:59:32Speaker 01

  Well, it's encouraging to me to hear you say that because I do think that you're one of the largest platforms in our space.

• 1:59:39Speaker 01

  And that, the photo with your animal is one moment in time that is not representative of all of the effort and time and sacrifice and everything that went into the respectful pursuit of that animal. So that you and that animal leave the mountain, neither one of you in shame. That's something that I care a lot about.

• 1:59:57Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah.

• 2:00:00Speaker 01

  It's naive for us to sit here and be like, everybody should think that way.

• 2:00:04Cameron Hanes?

  No, it's not like, not gonna happen.

• 2:00:08Speaker 01

  I do want to push people in that direction to the degree that I can.

• 2:00:13Cameron Hanes?

  You know, there's, you know, there's people out there talking about, these guys sound gay. Who cares? We kill. You know what I mean? It's just like, you know, there's a segment of our brothers who are talking shit.

• 2:00:26Speaker 01

  It's like, the, the.

• 2:00:30Speaker 01

  Being a public figure at hunting is the quickest way to ruin hunting for yourself.

• 2:00:36Speaker 01

  The photo that we've just described a few minutes ago is totally fine. I don't know the backstory. Is that a second arrow? Is it necessary? Like, that deer's gonna get away? Like, yeah, I don't know.

• 2:00:49Speaker 01

  Stuff happens out there. You and I both know that. If that's what's required to close the deal. Yeah, that's totally fine.

• 2:00:56Cameron Hanes?

  Right.

• 2:00:56Speaker 01

  Don't post on the internet.

• 2:00:57Cameron Hanes?

  I think it was a shitty shot that just, whatever, drop the buck. Cool. Pull the arrow. Clean up the animal.

• 2:01:03Speaker 01

  Yeah. It's just like, we owe it, you know, to the internet. And that's a whole other discussion of like, is that appropriate? But hey, it exists and we do. Newsflash, you owe it to the internet. If you're gonna be out there posting stuff, talking about hunting, you owe it to the internet to tell the most real truthful story in a way that's morally and ethically defensible.

• 2:01:27Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah.

• 2:01:29Speaker 01

  Because anything other than that's net negative for the thing that we love. And I am accommodating of people's own personal journey in that. But I also, I'm gonna push people towards that realization in any way that I can. Because, dude, I'm worried.

• 2:01:48Cameron Hanes?

  I mean, have you seen the bill this up right now here in Oregon? To outlaw hunting, fishing and farming and ranching. It's, it's called the Peace Act or something, I can't remember, something like to save all the animals. So that got enough signatures. Two hundred thou, I don't know, I can't remember how many it got. But so if you don't think that what we put out there is gonna be used against us.

• 2:02:13Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:02:14Cameron Hanes?

  I mean, that arrow in the face of the deer. If those people, there's a big segment of population that's gonna vote on this. If this comes up and this is an opportunity for the public to vote. A picture like that is gonna.

• 2:02:30Speaker 01

  Do you remember when PETA ran the intelligence operation with the frame that all the hunters started putting on their photos on Instagram?

• 2:02:38Cameron Hanes?

  Oh, yeah, yeah.

• 2:02:40Speaker 01

  If you think that like, smart people that are not on our team aren't out to get us. Boy, I got some stuff to tell you.

• 2:02:48Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah.

• 2:02:49Speaker 01

  Like, be cognizant, think about it. Like, you have a responsibility to take it a couple of levels down and understand the landscape that we play in. And if that bill is actually happening in Oregon, a couple of thoughts. One, that's so, so dumb.

• 2:03:06Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah.

• 2:03:07Speaker 01

  Two, y'all gotta carve Portland out of Oregon.

• 2:03:11Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah, that's also like, you can't own pets.

• 2:03:16Speaker 01

  How is that even?

• 2:03:17Cameron Hanes?

  And this got the signatures, dude.

• 2:03:19Speaker 01

  On what grounds can you not?

• 2:03:21Cameron Hanes?

  Cause pets should be free.

• 2:03:23Speaker 01

  Because they're sentient beings and you like, giving them a couch to sleep on is not good for your dog? Come on, man.

• 2:03:30Cameron Hanes?

  But the point is, there's people who we can, we can make that more, I don't think that, if that ever passes, that's obviously crazy. But.

• 2:03:41Cameron Hanes?

  There's probably more people than we would think that are on board with that.

• 2:03:44Speaker 01

  Well, you and I would have said that the legislation to take grizzlies off the hunting list in British Columbia was terrible and look at what happened.

• 2:03:52Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah. It's the people in Vancouver, you know, that are voting for the, the big cities, just like you said, Portland, but that have no clue. So, and we can bitch about it, but it's real, guys. This is real. So what you're putting out there is influencing the public perception of hunting.

• 2:04:13Speaker 01

  Absolutely it is. And all I'm saying is think about it before you press send.

• 2:04:19Cameron Hanes?

  Maybe think about it a couple of times.

• 2:04:21Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:04:22Cameron Hanes?

  Not just one.

• 2:04:22Speaker 01

  Like wait a day. But that, that is, um, into the psychology of the world that we live in within the hunt space. Like that Griffin grin photo is the one that does numbers on Instagram.

• 2:04:34Cameron Hanes?

  Oh, for sure. That would give me the most likes.

• 2:04:36Speaker 01

  Yeah. And you and I would both be naive to sit here and say that that doesn't make us feel good when it starts pinging. Because that program is designed by extremely smart people.

• 2:04:49Cameron Hanes?

  They know how it works.

• 2:04:50Speaker 01

  To do this in here.

• 2:04:51Cameron Hanes?

  Is doing what it's intended to do.

• 2:04:53Speaker 01

  A hundred.

• 2:04:53Cameron Hanes?

  And we're playing the game.

• 2:04:55Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:04:55Cameron Hanes?

  And it's like, we can act like we're better than it. We're not. I mean,

• 2:04:59Speaker 01

  I'm definitely not.

• 2:05:00Cameron Hanes?

  No, but I just have been more conscious because I know a classic grip and grin is gonna crush. But at what cost?

• 2:05:10Speaker 01

  Yeah. Everybody that is engaging with this material right now is like, you're at your own spot and your understanding. And if you're like a small, unknown person, you're listening to this and be like, guys.

• 2:05:24Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah. My friends and fam, I got 200 followers.

• 2:05:27Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:05:27Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah.

• 2:05:28Speaker 01

  Dude, one screenshot from the wrong person, game over.

• 2:05:32Cameron Hanes?

  And it doesn't matter how many followers you have. It's getting out there at some point.

• 2:05:36Speaker 01

  It's like, send the photo in the group chat.

• 2:05:39Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah.

• 2:05:40Speaker 01

  To the boys that get it, that know that hunting can sometimes go sideways.

• 2:05:44Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah.

• 2:05:45Speaker 01

  And it's just like, guys, this one didn't go so hot, but like I, I closed the deal. I did the best I could. Like this is the result.

• 2:05:50Cameron Hanes?

  Hmm.

• 2:05:51Speaker 01

  And a text message, that's totally appropriate because I know who my audience is.

• 2:05:55Cameron Hanes?

  Definitely.

• 2:05:56Speaker 01

  To the wide open internet, no context? Dude, come on, man.

• 2:06:02Cameron Hanes?

  People would be more upset about that than the Epstein files. That's how crazy it is.

• 2:06:09Speaker 01

  I saw you posting about that today.

• 2:06:11Cameron Hanes?

  Nothing. I can't, I'd lose my hope in humanity sometimes and then I lose self-control. And then I post stuff because I'm irritated, but.

• 2:06:23Speaker 01

  Well, it's just, you know, was it the old like Roman, it's bread and competition in the Colosseum. It's theater.

• 2:06:31Cameron Hanes?

  Bread and circus.

• 2:06:32Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:06:33Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah, they're just distracting us with stupid shit.

• 2:06:38Cameron Hanes?

  I was gonna say, like, did you want to say who the up and comers are that are kicking ass?

• 2:06:44Speaker 01

  Um.

• 2:06:45Cameron Hanes?

  Or is that gonna up your negotiations?

• 2:06:49Speaker 01

  I can't say all of them because they're not, like, I don't have them all signed yet.

• 2:06:52Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah, yeah. I'm just curious because I like seeing who's doing it right. I'm curious about who's doing it right in your opinion.

• 2:07:00Speaker 01

  Sure, so I'll take a second to talk about Chris, who's a piece of our business. He's obviously much more established than some of the people that I'm like vaguely referencing prior. But Chris like sits on our team as a strategic director of the hunting category. He's kind of like the face of the hunt side of Ultra View. He's extremely important to our company and represents us very well. I use, he has a really great.

• 2:07:31Speaker 01

  He's tapped in to that whole world and so we talk like, I'm like, hey, who's you from seven, eight years ago?

• 2:07:38Cameron Hanes?

  Okay.

• 2:07:40Speaker 01

  And so I'm talking to a couple of those people. One, I'll give you one example. He's gonna freak out when he listens to the show, which is exactly what I'd want him to do because he's very humble.

• 2:07:54Cameron Hanes?

  Okay.

• 2:07:54Speaker 01

  There's a kid in Texas named Willie Waldrop, who is gonna be doing some stuff for us. He's kind of like one of Chris's early proteges. He's still in college. He has a very unique family circumstance and has an opportunity to do a lot of hunting.

• 2:08:12Speaker 01

  He's extremely humble.

• 2:08:13Cameron Hanes?

  Must be nice.

• 2:08:14Speaker 01

  Right.

• 2:08:16Cameron Hanes?

  I see that.

• 2:08:16Speaker 01

  But, but like he, he's got a YouTube channel that's like, I don't even think he's, he's not over 50,000 subs yet. He's like just an up and comer that's like respectful, that loves bow hunting, is hunting a lot and doing it the right way. And so, you know, he's, he's in a good situation. He hunts a lot. Um, he does it in a way that I think is representative of where I would want to see bow hunting go. Um, and so he'll be like on our crew.

• 2:08:45Cameron Hanes?

  That's great. How old is he? You said he's in college?

• 2:08:48Speaker 01

  Yeah, he's like a junior, like 20, 21.

• 2:08:50Cameron Hanes?

  Perfect.

• 2:08:53Speaker 01

  There's a few more that I'm in like active conversations with. Um, some of them are being targeted by other brands. So I'm probably not going to name drop them on your show. Cause I want to close those deals first.

• 2:09:03Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah.

• 2:09:05Speaker 01

  But yeah, man, I'm out there looking for people just doing it the right way.

• 2:09:08Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah.

• 2:09:09Speaker 01

  That's it. It's just like, do you love it the way that I love it? Not that I love it, not that I'm right, but just like, I'm going to be the one.

• 2:09:20Cameron Hanes?

  Got to align.

• 2:09:21Speaker 01

  Yeah. It's just like, are we on the same page?

• 2:09:22Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah. I like that.

• 2:09:24Speaker 01

  That's what I'm after.

• 2:09:26Cameron Hanes?

  Have you been in the bow rack down here before?

• 2:09:27Speaker 01

  I haven't, no.

• 2:09:28Cameron Hanes?

  Okay. Yeah. I mean.

• 2:09:30Speaker 01

  I cruised by there today.

• 2:09:31Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah. Wayne's the best and his son is actually a really good bow hunter who makes films and he's doing a pretty good job, Nathan Indy cop. But yeah, I was just, you know, I, I keep track of these young guys because I love the passion. I love these kids who just want to be in the mountains nonstop. And, uh, so I, I think it reminds me of, of me and Roy and Wayne when we were coming up. And so I just, I want to be reassured that I'm not, who's from, I, I hate when people say they're doing it the right way. Cause who the am I? I, it's not, it's not my job to say somebody does it the right way. Cause people could have looked at what I did and said, I wasn't doing the right way.

• 2:10:10Cameron Hanes?

  But I, I like watching kids who seem respectful and, and just love to hunt and love what we do and have reverence for the country and the animals. And, um, yeah, so that's why I was just curious hearing, you know, hearing.

• 2:10:25Speaker 01

  There's a lot of good kids out there.

• 2:10:27Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah.

• 2:10:27Speaker 01

  Doing the thing.

• 2:10:28Cameron Hanes?

  I love it.

• 2:10:29Speaker 01

  I use kids loosely.

• 2:10:30Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah, I know. Everyone's a kid. You're a kid to me.

• 2:10:36Speaker 01

  But no, it's a.

• 2:10:40Speaker 01

  I am optimistic about the future like torchbearers of our space.

• 2:10:46Cameron Hanes?

  Good.

• 2:10:47Speaker 01

  Yeah, actually, I'm interested in this from your perspective. How do you think about like legacy within the space and like your personal responsibility and reputation within the hunt industry?

• 2:11:02Cameron Hanes?

  I just want to continue to be the most hated.

• 2:11:06Cameron Hanes?

  I don't know. Yeah, I don't know. I just, I don't want to up. You mean my how how I'm perceived?

• 2:11:13Speaker 01

  Yeah, just like, how do you think about it? Like this, this last 20 minutes of just like, we've all got a responsibility.

• 2:11:18Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah, I don't. I mean, I think about I can screw up what we're doing and hurt. You know what we all love? And that's all I think about. I just don't want to do that. And I'm, you know, I'm human, I'm infallible. I'm, you know, I'm never going to go poach anything, but I make mistakes. I mean, I'm like, I'm just a normal human. I just don't. I never want to do anything that's ever going to hurt what we love and what we cherish. And, you know, what we're trying to protect. And we talk about the voters and we talk about how we're being portrayed by the not. I just never want to put anything out there that's ever going to be used against us. And so that's the only pressure I feel. And it's not like I'm, you know, got to wrestle with myself to do make good decisions.

• 2:12:02Cameron Hanes?

  I'm always making good decisions, but I just, I just never want to hurt what we love. And so that's pretty much all I think about.

• 2:12:10Speaker 01

  I think that's a good for all the young guys, like, that's a good model. Is you're sitting here in the position that you do, which has been hard earned over decades, saying that like, I'm trying to be pretty cognizant about this. That's, that's something that should be like, I assume that you were that way to begin with.

• 2:12:32Cameron Hanes?

  This same attitude?

• 2:12:33Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:12:37Cameron Hanes?

  To be get, I was just a dipshit dude. I don't even know if I thought about anything.

• 2:12:42Speaker 01

  It's, it's, it's, but it's natural as young men to like, be a little bit rambunctious and press the boundaries. Everybody like matures and learns from mistakes and all that. But I would say that.

• 2:12:54Cameron Hanes?

  I was drinking and, and getting in wrecks, uh, drunk. So I wasn't like, I can't really say I've made good decisions anywhere. So it's like, I'm just saying I'm different now. I'll just say that.

• 2:13:07Speaker 01

  Well, you learn, you, you learn the lessons from, from some consequences that came.

• 2:13:12Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah, I just was stupid, but yeah. Um, I, I definitely do think about just our responsibility is, you know, as we're figures in this industry, um, whether we deserve it or not, that's for somebody else to decide. But the fact is we're reaching people and the messaging has to be correct. If we're gonna protect what we love. That's it.

• 2:13:35Speaker 01

  Yeah, I get that. I appreciate it.

• 2:13:38Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah, thank you. Um, so this is a part everyone hates. You, you're gonna hate it. I hate it. All the listeners are gonna hate it.

• 2:13:47Speaker 01

  Well, they need to like it. If we all hate it, why are we doing it?

• 2:13:51Cameron Hanes?

  I don't know. I don't know. This is like.

• 2:13:55Speaker 02

  Uh, so speaking of the Epstein files, no.

• 2:13:57Cameron Hanes?

  Why are we doing this?

• 2:14:00Speaker 02

  Um, okay. Well, we, we told you there was gonna be a Mary kill. So I got a good one for you. You, uh, have posted some reels that are a little bit maybe controversial with the broadhead space.

• 2:14:12Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah.

• 2:14:13Speaker 02

  So.

• 2:14:14Cameron Hanes?

  No.

• 2:14:14Speaker 01

  That's a good one. So your Mary kill is single bevel, expandable and fixed blade.

• 2:14:20Cameron Hanes?

  Ooh. Yeah, we never talked about this. I didn't know you had a hot take on this stuff.

• 2:14:25Speaker 01

  Okay. Well, uh, back, uh, background before I give an answer.

• 2:14:28Cameron Hanes?

  Okay.

• 2:14:28Speaker 01

  I have done a couple of reels that are in this framework of.

• 2:14:35Cameron Hanes?

  Here's what I use. Does this work?

• 2:14:37Speaker 01

  It worked for a long time.

• 2:14:39Cameron Hanes?

  Okay.

• 2:14:42Speaker 01

  Telling you who you are based on the brands you choose.

• 2:14:45Cameron Hanes?

  Okay.

• 2:14:46Speaker 01

  And so it's like a

• 2:14:46Cameron Hanes?

  Maybe I've, maybe I saw that.

• 2:14:48Speaker 01

  The Broadhead went pretty gangbusters. It did real numbers.

• 2:14:54Speaker 01

  And it's tongue in cheek. It's meant to be funny, but there's a lot of like consumer truths in there. And so I'll, I'll give one example, which was like the most incendiary from that reel. I started it with Beast Broadhead.

• 2:15:09Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah.

• 2:15:10Speaker 01

  It's a controversial for all the reasons that we know, but the joke was like, if you shoot Beast, you're on your like third run of gray market test and you don't do your blood work. And you've probably, you've probably not shot anything with it. And I'm not saying that it's not a good Broadhead. I'm just saying that you probably haven't killed anything with it to know if it's a good Broadhead.

• 2:15:34Cameron Hanes?

  Right.

• 2:15:35Speaker 01

  That's a good joke.

• 2:15:36Cameron Hanes?

  That is a good joke.

• 2:15:37Speaker 01

  I know that it's a good joke because Josh hopped in the comments and he's like, that was funny. If you can't take a joke, that's different.

• 2:15:44Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah.

• 2:15:44Speaker 01

  And I like knock, I did Grim Reaper, G5, Element, like the Jackal on the hide.

• 2:15:52Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah.

• 2:15:53Speaker 01

  It's like, if you shoot the hide, it's like, we get it. You vape. And like, that was the joke because it just, it's green and it's has the,

• 2:16:00Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah.

• 2:16:00Speaker 01

  It just looks like a vape pen cartridge.

• 2:16:02Cameron Hanes?

  Right.

• 2:16:03Speaker 01

  I'm just making jokes.

• 2:16:04Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah.

• 2:16:06Speaker 01

  So.

• 2:16:06Cameron Hanes?

  That's hurtful.

• 2:16:07Speaker 01

  Well, get your panties in a bunch. It's fine.

• 2:16:12Speaker 01

  I've done a couple of videos like that. I did one about rifle scopes. I do a decent amount of shooting.

• 2:16:16Cameron Hanes?

  Okay.

• 2:16:17Speaker 01

  And so it's like, it's, it's the marketer in me. It's for me, it's an example to say like, I know the customer psychology of all these brands.

• 2:16:27Cameron Hanes?

  You're stereotyping perfectly.

• 2:16:28Speaker 01

  Yeah. And it's, it's just fun for me and they do numbers because people like get to hate on the thing that they don't like. And then they take it on the chin for whatever versions.

• 2:16:37Cameron Hanes?

  Perfect.

• 2:16:38Speaker 01

  I was like, these are fun. Everyone wants me to do the apparel one. I haven't done it.

• 2:16:45Speaker 01

  So like, that's the setup. Okay. So you said single bevel fixed and mechanical?

• 2:16:50Cameron Hanes?

  Yep.

• 2:16:55Speaker 01

  I would, I would kill single bevel. They're great. I just don't need to deal with it personally. I don't.

• 2:17:05Cameron Hanes?

  Deal, deal with.

• 2:17:08Speaker 01

  Well, just like. I don't.

• 2:17:12Cameron Hanes?

  Looking for a blood trail?

• 2:17:15Speaker 01

  All the extra tuning.

• 2:17:17Cameron Hanes?

  I hit this perfect. Where?

• 2:17:19Speaker 01

  Yeah. It's just like, if I was hunting, if I was going to Africa hunting dangerous game, I would probably have a different answer.

• 2:17:25Cameron Hanes?

  Definitely. Yeah.

• 2:17:26Speaker 01

  Different tool, different job.

• 2:17:27Cameron Hanes?

  For sure.

• 2:17:27Speaker 01

  For like whitetails, mule deer and elk. That's pretty much all that I do. Single bevels can go somewhere. Like I, I don't require them or I don't feel that I require it. Doesn't mean that I think that they're not a good thing, but I would kill that. Um. I'll do a one night stand with fixed blades and I would marry expandables.

• 2:17:52Cameron Hanes?

  Which one? What expandable?

• 2:17:54Speaker 01

  So I, I have never bought or shot a beast. I have no personal vendetta against the beast broadhead. A lot of guys that I know seem to think that it's great and a lot of very qualified people seem to say that it's great. Um, I presently shoot for whitetails. I shoot a, uh, the Grim Reaper Pro. The, with the chisel tip, not the two inch whitetail special, but just the inch and a half, whatever. Um, and for mule deer, I shoot the Grim Reaper Fatal Steel.

• 2:18:25Cameron Hanes?

  Hmm.

• 2:18:26Speaker 01

  Uh, so the smaller one, but the full steel feral.

• 2:18:29Cameron Hanes?

  Okay.

• 2:18:30Speaker 01

  Um, and fixed blades, uh, I shot the bull that's on my page that you must've seen. I shot that with the Grim Reaper Micro Hades Pro. Um, I'm kind of like a Grim Reaper stan. I know that you are too.

• 2:18:43Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah.

• 2:18:43Speaker 01

  Um, that being said, like I've shot a ton of broadheads. Whitetail stuff specifically is just like, man, I want to tear the biggest hole possible in those things. So like big slap cut, two inch rages, like fantastic. Love that. Best blood trails I've ever got came from Rage Extremes, which is like a 2.3 inch, like frigging, it's throwing an ax through. That's awesome. Um, that being said, dude, every broadhead works and every broadhead will fail.

• 2:19:14Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah.

• 2:19:15Speaker 01

  I shot what would have been the biggest whitetail buck of my life back in November. With that Grim Reaper expandable and he took a step when I was like getting into my process and I, it was like right at last light, I still had a couple of minutes left. He was open.

• 2:19:33Cameron Hanes?

  Hmm.

• 2:19:34Speaker 01

  And then he took a step and I didn't factor that in. I didn't see it, didn't notice and I just squared him up in the shoulder. Like right in the T. Lost that deer.

• 2:19:44Cameron Hanes?

  No penetration probably, huh?

• 2:19:45Speaker 01

  None. Never found the back half of my arrow. We did the drone recovery, like all of it was in a state where that was legal.

• 2:19:53Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah.

• 2:19:53Speaker 01

  Didn't turn him up, didn't find the back half of my arrow, blood trailed him for nine hundred yards the next day. Like I knew where he was on a different property.

• 2:20:02Speaker 01

  Look, I need to know how much arrows in him. Like that's a huge piece of the cactus. Never found it. Uh, I've told that story a lot. On Sun, what today's Thursday, on Sunday, that guy texted me a video finding his sheds.

• 2:20:16Cameron Hanes?

  Really?

• 2:20:17Speaker 01

  He's alive.

• 2:20:18Cameron Hanes?

  So he's good.

• 2:20:18Speaker 01

  So that's like a huge.

• 2:20:20Cameron Hanes?

  That's a relief.

• 2:20:20Speaker 01

  Weight off of me.

• 2:20:21Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah.

• 2:20:23Speaker 01

  The, every broadhead will fail.

• 2:20:24Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah.

• 2:20:25Speaker 01

  It's, it's like, admit, I actually want your opinion on this. So now that I've brought up this deer specifically.

• 2:20:35Speaker 01

  I'm in this journey with bow hunting personally where that, that buck is what pushed me over the edge. I lost a Iowa buck in 2022.

• 2:20:49Speaker 01

  And I shot, I missed a public land bull in Montana, like a three seventy class bull.

• 2:20:56Cameron Hanes?

  Wow.

• 2:20:57Speaker 01

  Uh, it was like side hill downhill, strong breeze uphill, like sixty two yards.

• 2:21:04Cameron Hanes?

  Hmm.

• 2:21:05Speaker 01

  And I was like buried on him and that breeze just held my arrow. Like there was no dip.

• 2:21:10Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah.

• 2:21:11Speaker 01

  And that was like a shot at an animal. I was confident at the distance, but I'd never taken like that shot in that kind of breeze. It just like ten inches over his back, clean miss.

• 2:21:19Cameron Hanes?

  Hmm.

• 2:21:20Speaker 01

  But I've had in the last handful of years. A couple releases of an arrow that just didn't go my way for any number of reasons. I understand that that's just a part of it. It's gonna happen because the animal gets a say and the wind gets to say and it's bow hunting's hard.

• 2:21:45Speaker 01

  I, I love it so much and when it goes bad, God eats me up.

• 2:21:50Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah.

• 2:21:51Speaker 01

  And I shot that buck back in November. I feel differently now that I know that he's alive, which is very recent.

• 2:21:58Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah.

• 2:21:58Speaker 01

  Uh, revelation, but that, that buck.

• 2:22:05Speaker 01

  It just got in my crawl and I was like. This is my fault.

• 2:22:12Speaker 01

  This is my fault.

• 2:22:13Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah.

• 2:22:14Speaker 01

  And I am not as good at this as I wanna be. And that's on me.

• 2:22:21Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah.

• 2:22:23Speaker 01

  So what am I gonna do about it? Like, that's the thing and I, I have, I have had hunts. Where like my fitness was a limiting factor. I could not get up the hill fast enough. Or my archery in this recent example, it let me down and that hunt specifically would have been the biggest whitetail I've ever killed.

• 2:22:45Cameron Hanes?

  Like, what, what'd he score? One seventy?

• 2:22:49Speaker 01

  Probably like low seventies.

• 2:22:50Cameron Hanes?

  It's a big buck.

• 2:22:51Speaker 01

  Prior, prior to that, I thought I was shooting a different buck. I saw the biggest whitetail I've ever seen in my entire life, three hours before that. He crossed a bean field like three hundred yards away from me for about six minutes. And I'm like in my binos looking at him. It's, it would be like you're on the face of every magazine ever printed. And so this buck coming in that I ended up shooting, I thought it was the giant that I saw.

• 2:23:20Speaker 01

  And it was this fast, he's like coming in. That that fast.

• 2:23:26Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah.

• 2:23:26Speaker 01

  Do not look at him again.

• 2:23:27Cameron Hanes?

  Right.

• 2:23:28Speaker 01

  So I, in my head, it's this turbo deer. And I feel the pressure of being who I am.

• 2:23:35Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah.

• 2:23:35Speaker 01

  Knowing what this, the fact that my professional career seeped into my brain during that moment.

• 2:23:42Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah.

• 2:23:43Speaker 01

  Unacceptable.

• 2:23:44Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah. We're humans.

• 2:23:46Speaker 01

  It's real. I, I hate, dude, I got rattled.

• 2:23:49Cameron Hanes?

  Mm hmm.

• 2:23:50Speaker 01

  It was like cold and windy. I had my hood up. So I go to get into my anchor.

• 2:23:55Cameron Hanes?

  Changes things, yeah.

• 2:23:56Speaker 01

  I like forgot to pull my hood down.

• 2:23:58Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah.

• 2:23:58Speaker 01

  And so I'm like jacking with my anchor point. That's when he took the step. My thirty one yards, I hit him exactly where I wanted. I just thought his shoulder was open, not back.

• 2:24:07Cameron Hanes?

  Mm hmm.

• 2:24:09Speaker 01

  I, I wasn't in the game as much as I should have been to execute a good shot. And that's my fault.

• 2:24:15Cameron Hanes?

  Mm hmm.

• 2:24:15Speaker 01

  Now I'm grateful that he lived, but for the last couple of months, it's just been tearing me up on the inside. Because I care a lot. And I just came to this realization a couple of months ago, really in December. Uh, because I have the opportunity to hunt a lot this year and some good tags. It's like, I'm not as good at this as I want to be. And that's on me. So what am I going to do about it?

• 2:24:42Speaker 01

  And I've like rededicated myself to my training and I'm, I'm, you know, living in Georgia. It's like, I have a Wyoming hunt this year that it's, it's absolutely going to, the elevation is going to eat my lunch.

• 2:24:52Cameron Hanes?

  Mm hmm.

• 2:24:54Speaker 01

  But I'm out there, starting in December, doing like weighted rucks and doing the thing. And I'm lifting three days a week and I'm taking my diet and fitness like a lot more seriously. Because it's like, I'm not doing the thing that maps towards what I say.

• 2:25:07Cameron Hanes?

  Right.

• 2:25:08Speaker 01

  It is no longer acceptable to me. To have those things be disassociated.

• 2:25:13Cameron Hanes?

  Mm hmm.

• 2:25:14Speaker 01

  I'm going to put myself in as good a position as possible to have an opportunity at success to harvest an animal. And if it still doesn't happen, that's hunting and it will always be that way. But for the part that I'm responsible for.

• 2:25:28Cameron Hanes?

  Right.

• 2:25:30Speaker 01

  I gotta do the work.

• 2:25:31Cameron Hanes?

  Mm hmm.

• 2:25:32Speaker 01

  And I've always approached hunting with a level of intentionality that I would describe previously as being serious about it. But I just kind of, in having conversations with a lot of people that are very serious bow hunters, which is why I'm interested in your take on this. It's just like, dude, I was, I was talking about it, but I wasn't doing it.

• 2:25:52Cameron Hanes?

  Mm hmm.

• 2:25:54Cameron Hanes?

  That's, that's a lot of people. A lot of people, we all know what we should be doing. Yeah. Um, I think sometimes we get complacent or we get lucky on some, sometimes it works out and it kind of gives us false confidence. You know, I mean, cause normally you're going to make that shot at 31 yards almost every time, you know?

• 2:26:17Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:26:18Cameron Hanes?

  And I'm sure you have many times. So you should be confident and, um, but bow hunting has a way of teaching us hard lessons over and over again. And yeah, you can't be perfect. I've always said, you know, like on target, you can be perfect. You mentioned, I think you mentioned 60 X's. I don't know what, what you said, or maybe we, I don't know if we're talking about score, but anyway, you can be perfect on a target. You'll never be perfect hunting. My goal is to be perfect and I trained to be perfect, knowing that that's impossible. But like to your point, all you can do is the best you can do, the shoulder blade shot.

• 2:27:03Cameron Hanes?

  You know, the easy answer would be like, oh, maybe, maybe that single bevel would have pushed through that shoulder. You know, we were kind of shitting on the single bevel. Maybe that would have worked, but maybe more poundish. Maybe, um, you know, I don't know what size your arrow was, maybe a smaller diameter arrow and a cutting tip and a breakthrough there, single bevel. But, um, your setup will kill. I mean, so we're looking at all those different things you can do, but sometimes it's, and I've seen people say, you know, they like it was open and it closed. Sometimes that happens so fast and that animal is moving and that's why it doesn't penetrate. You know, maybe they hear that bow 31 yards is a longer shot out of a tree stand. A, a

• 2:27:49Cameron Hanes?

  animal, if you had to stop it like a, you know, it's alert. If it stopped on its own, that's different. But a lot of this goes in and sometimes they can hear that arrow coming at 31 yards. If they're alert and then they're taking that arrow momentum a little bit as they go.

• 2:28:05Speaker 02

  Right.

• 2:28:06Cameron Hanes?

  That's why I always say, people say, well, you can kill with 40 pounds. I'm like, you can kill with 40 pounds if it's wide open and it takes that arrow like a champ. If it does anything, that's why I'm always like 90 pounds, I'm still pushing through there. If that animal moves and I still, I learned my lesson on a, on a bull I killed. I don't know what bull it is, but uh, I don't know, I know it's out in the shed, but uh, I thought I had a single bevel head. I was shooting 90 pounds, same place you killed that big bull probably on your page, but it was coming in 10 yards, kinda quartering two, I'm like, I can pound right through that shoulder. Cause I had false confidence that I was, I had the setup, I could do it. Didn't do it, didn't get in that shoulder.

• 2:28:51Cameron Hanes?

  So it's like, there's always gonna be examples where it didn't work, does work. All we can do is like, as you said, control all the variables you can. On that bull, he uh, it broke his shoulder and he went up and I got another shot real quick at 60 yards, which is another, you know, the multi-pin on there. I, I don't know what the, what the ultra view is like, but like I used the, single pin with the three fibers. I could just use that bottom pin, I knew, had to just heat of the moment and that's why I got the bull killed. But yeah, so equipment plays in, uh, animal reaction plays in, how you're stopping that animal. Um, yeah, the hood thing, I'm always caught, that does change your anchor.

• 2:29:36Cameron Hanes?

  I mean, you, you have a different anchor than I have, but a hood coming through does change that. And it just gives us our brains something else to think about. Something, some neural pathway which is not helping us make a perfect shot.

• 2:29:50Speaker 02

  Right.

• 2:29:51Cameron Hanes?

  Because you're thinking about that hood. So all these little tiny things still make a difference, you know, and um, I think how bad that failure hurt, cause it, no matter how we want to talk about it, it was a failure, but that's how we get better. I mean, every bow hunter, as you know, has those type of, you know, I mean, if, if I could have all the bulls I screwed up on when I was young, this would, room would be double the size, but uh, that's just how it goes. And that's, that's the beauty of it too. You know, it's, you can't master this shit and.

• 2:30:32Cameron Hanes?

  Um, we have to be at our best. And if you're at your best, then okay, I can live with that. And it doesn't make it easy because I've, you know, I, I never want to fail, but it's really hard if I know I left cards on the table or I didn't do all I could. Then it's like, that's what keeps you up at night. I'm not saying I'm not up at night if I screw up, but if you did all you can, like you're doing now,

• 2:31:00Cameron Hanes?

  it's, it's easier to live with for a little bit, but yeah, that's, that's a hard, I mean, that sucks.

• 2:31:06Speaker 01

  It's, I mean, it happens. Um, I'm just trying to put myself in a position where I control my own controllables and it happens less. I think that

• 2:31:21Speaker 01

  to your point of like bow hunting is very instructive if you allow it to be, I'm like way into that. And I'm, I just want to be better at it because I love it.

• 2:31:29Cameron Hanes?

  I know.

• 2:31:30Speaker 01

  And I'm on this like, you know, even like discipline is one of your like core tenants of your whole brand. It's like, I think there are levels to that where it's like, I, I thought I was, I shoot a lot and I'm a, I'm in the space and like I do the thing. Like that's nowhere near enough.

• 2:31:49Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah.

• 2:31:50Speaker 01

  And I've kind of like flipped this gear where it's just like, if I didn't work in this space, I would still hunt a lot and I would, I wouldn't care about it any less. And so I want to just do the work to put myself in the best position possible, mostly in the space between my own ears.

• 2:32:11Cameron Hanes?

  Well, that awareness, I mean, most people can confuse confidence in regular life to confidence in everything. And you can be the most successful in business and be a terrible hunter. Men have a hard time.

• 2:32:29Cameron Hanes?

  Accepting that.

• 2:32:30Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:32:30Cameron Hanes?

  You know, and so the fact that you do, you're, you're great at what you do, but you want to be great at bow hunting. That's a whole different category.

• 2:32:39Speaker 02

  Right.

• 2:32:39Cameron Hanes?

  You know, and so I, I see people who, you know, and I've been like this, like, oh, I could do that too. If I had those opportunities, I could do that too. She's like, are you sure you could? Maybe you can, but it's going to, it's part of that journey, you know, that of, because I always would see Chuck Adams and I'd read his articles and I'd be like, God, he killed 10 potent young animals in one season. I can, I've only killed three in my whole life. You know what I mean? How does he do it? I could do that. Oh, then you're like, I could do that too. If I got to go on those all those hunts. I'm like, no, I couldn't have because I was just not ready to do that.

• 2:33:14Speaker 02

  Right.

• 2:33:14Cameron Hanes?

  And just, but being aware of that, we're always, or I mean, men can be overconfident.

• 2:33:22Cameron Hanes?

  Luckily, yeah, I mean, I, I have to, but I also knew I was, that helped. I just had to try to outwork that. Um, all right, James, what else you got?

• 2:33:34Speaker 02

  Um, speaking about the launch of the slider two, curious from like a creative standpoint, you know, with that launch film, you know, you tell kind of the backstory of the company. How do you take that and going forward with slider three or whatever the next product is, and tell a good story that isn't based around just the story of the company?

• 2:33:52Speaker 01

  One of the things that, um, we talk about a lot with, um, Bruce is kind of our lead design engineer. And then Robert is, is our other, uh, design engineer. We, we tinker on all of our products, uh, to an extreme degree. It kind of goes back to if we can revise a product and iterate on it now, if we can make it better in real time, let's just go ahead and do that.

• 2:34:15Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah.

• 2:34:15Speaker 01

  That's a different thing than we're trying to do something appreciably better in a different form factor, or that offers a previously, uh, unoffered benefit.

• 2:34:26Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah. It's on a slight tweak to improve.

• 2:34:30Speaker 01

  Right.

• 2:34:30Cameron Hanes?

  This is like overhaul. Yeah.

• 2:34:32Speaker 01

  Right. And so the iterative nature of the bow hunting industry is always like really interesting to me. Um, if we use bows as an example. Um, I have always considered that like, like right now, the significant jumps in bow technology.

• 2:34:55Speaker 01

  Like what do we, I'm not an engineer. I'm like, I'm smooth brained about math. I have no idea. But it's like, how much faster are we going to get it to go?

• 2:35:04Cameron Hanes?

  Hmm.

• 2:35:05Speaker 01

  How much 90 pounds seems like a lot before the riser is going to start to have problem. Like more than that, you know, guys turn them up to a hundred and it's like, you gotta start physically changing the form factor to get it to work using different components. And then the addressable market for that is almost no one. Just like, how much better can the bow get really? And then I talked to engineers at bow companies and they're like, well, what about this? It's like some crazy idea that I would have never considered. And so I've always thought that bows is like, dude, you're butting up against the possibilities of physics right now. Like how much better, how much faster, how much lighter weight, what kind of pound, like, how far is this going to go?

• 2:35:42Cameron Hanes?

  Right.

• 2:35:44Speaker 01

  Versus sites is like, there's a lot you can do with sites. And, uh, you know, this, this past couple of year iteration of site development in the upper echelon of higher price competitive sites is like, weight of the site itself kind of became like a battleground. And it's just like, make the site lightweight, which I think quite honestly did a lot of favors to SpotHog because they're like, uh, we're not playing that game. Our things don't bulletproof. It's just like, it kind of separated them. So you're welcome. Um, but everybody else, we're just like, oh, we want the bow to be lightweight, which is driven by the bow companies of like, we want the whole package to be lighter weight.

• 2:36:26Cameron Hanes?

  What, well, you can't probably can't say, I just don't see any value in light. I don't give a, I want a heavy bow that stays put. Uh, for one, for one shot. I'm trying to shoot one perfect arrow.

• 2:36:39Speaker 01

  Yeah. I mean, I think if, if I'm in the zone of Western hunting where I'm hiking, if I want to save weight in my whole system personally, I'm not trying to save it in my bow. I'll save it in my sleeping pad or how I pack my food or I choose this pack versus that pack is like,

• 2:37:02Speaker 01

  I, I agree. I want my boat to hold still.

• 2:37:04Cameron Hanes?

  My bow is heavy as, and it's just like,

• 2:37:09Cameron Hanes?

  If you're putting back bars, sidebars, stabilizers, I mean, your bow is gonna

• 2:37:15Speaker 01

  Heavy.

• 2:37:16Cameron Hanes?

  It's so, yeah, the, this, the weight of the side or the weight of the bow, that's marketing. That's really easy. It's really whatever speed. That's super easy, but what are we achieving?

• 2:37:29Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's interesting. And it's like, you've got a couple levers that you can pull to try to gauge people's, you know, tickle their fancy to get them to buy the new thing.

• 2:37:38Cameron Hanes?

  Interested, yeah.

• 2:37:40Speaker 01

  Yeah. So for our, you know,

• 2:37:42Cameron Hanes?

  Some people love the lightweight stuff. So I'm on board. I get it.

• 2:37:46Speaker 01

  Right.

• 2:37:47Cameron Hanes?

  Some people want all the lightest stuff.

• 2:37:48Speaker 01

  It's, it's an easily measurable thing to discuss.

• 2:37:52Cameron Hanes?

  For sure.

• 2:37:53Speaker 01

  I am more in your, I mean, I'm a 32 inch draw. I shoot a full length 250 spine arrow. It's 540 grains, like just anatomically, like that's what I'm working with.

• 2:38:09Speaker 01

  I'm not that concerned about six ounces coming out of my bow.

• 2:38:13Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah.

• 2:38:13Speaker 01

  Because I can take six ounces out of my food packaging by vacuum sealing it differently. And it's like net, net, I'm still hiking the same weight up the hill.

• 2:38:21Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah. What else you got, James?

• 2:38:25Speaker 02

  See, you guys answered a panel of them.

• 2:38:29Speaker 02

  Oh, just, just to kind of give you guys opportunity to retouch on this, but um,

• 2:38:38Speaker 02

  you guys are talking about like hate or keeping other hunters accountable. Cam, you and I have talked about kind of the infighting. So I just wanted, maybe you guys can elaborate more on that. We're like, keeping each other accountable, but unnecessary hate or infighting in the hunting community, you know, kind of breaking the hunting community up when we should be kind of trying to further our reach into non-hunters or anti-hunters to bring them on to our side.

• 2:39:08Cameron Hanes?

  I'll just say, I mean, we're already a pretty small group. So,

• 2:39:18Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah, the infighting doesn't help. That's different than calling people or calling out things that are wrong.

• 2:39:25Speaker 01

  Right.

• 2:39:25Cameron Hanes?

  That to that, that's different. And I don't, I'm not like blind allegiance to what people do. But if you're just jealous, or I don't, I'm a human too. So like I said, I'm, I have my own flaws. So I don't know why people lash out, but it's just not helpful. If it's, if it's, I don't know who decides what's warranted or not as far as hate or holding people. I don't know. I'm not that, I'm not the council that decides that. But if it's just ego or jealousy that's weighing in on that, that's not, we're not helping anything.

• 2:40:04Speaker 01

  No.

• 2:40:06Speaker 01

  The only industry that I know that's worse than ours is the gun industry. God, they tear each other up. Bad, bad, bad, bad.

• 2:40:13Cameron Hanes?

  I think, don't, I mean, I, now I've been doing the motocross thing. There's, it, I think it's men.

• 2:40:20Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:40:20Cameron Hanes?

  It's competitive men.

• 2:40:22Speaker 01

  So.

• 2:40:27Speaker 01

  The acquisition of status has delivered tangible results to individuals for all of human history.

• 2:40:34Cameron Hanes?

  Yes.

• 2:40:36Speaker 01

  It is baked in at a species level. That we try to out signal one another to gain status, to attract a mate, to gain resources, to say in the totem pole of society that like my position is higher than you, therefore I am better by these objective measures.

• 2:41:00Cameron Hanes?

  Right.

• 2:41:01Speaker 01

  In the hunting industry, it's like, I kill bigger shit than you. I'm better than you.

• 2:41:04Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah.

• 2:41:04Speaker 01

  Which is just like, okay, there's a ton of reasons for that. Maybe you're just like a way better hunter and that's awesome. Good for you. Maybe it's you get clutch invites to go to places where big critters live and that's a big part of the calculus. Um, the like, you know, public land versus private stuff is just like, dude, whatever. The bull that's on my page, that's on private. It's not the place that you thought it was.

• 2:41:31Cameron Hanes?

  Oh, it's not?

• 2:41:31Speaker 01

  No, that was in Montana.

• 2:41:32Cameron Hanes?

  Okay.

• 2:41:33Speaker 01

  The, I killed that bull scouting. I was a door knock. I got permission on that spot.

• 2:41:37Cameron Hanes?

  Okay.

• 2:41:38Speaker 01

  Uh, it was.

• 2:41:38Cameron Hanes?

  Props.

• 2:41:39Speaker 01

  It was terrible archery. It was great scouting and patience. It was seventeen yards and just freaking ripped it and he was dead.

• 2:41:45Cameron Hanes?

  Perfect.

• 2:41:46Speaker 01

  But like, I killed that bull with scout. That was like a, I drew a tag, I put in the work in the summer. I found him.

• 2:41:51Cameron Hanes?

  Oh, that's perfect.

• 2:41:52Speaker 01

  It wasn't the bull that I thought I was shooting, which is a whole different story. Um, but.

• 2:41:57Cameron Hanes?

  That's been happening a few times now with the buck and the bull.

• 2:42:00Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah. It's a problem. Maybe I should pay a little more attention. But the, the status and like ego positioning within our space.

• 2:42:12Speaker 01

  Dude, it's not, it's not unique to the hunting industry. That's a human nature level thing. And it is, it's, it's amplified because there's the bravado and the machismo and like, I'm bigger, stronger, faster, and I kill bigger critters and therefore I'm better and you should respect me more. There's so much just positioning for status in this space. It's just, it's kind of like a part of the deal. Some of it I think is fun. Some of it I think is stupid and too much. And then people get carried away and turn it into like way more than it needs to be. That's net negative.

• 2:42:53Cameron Hanes?

  I only shoot at my table with no shirt on to with people. There's no reason. It's like pointless, but I know some people are gonna be like, oh, I hate this guy. And that's fun.

• 2:43:06Speaker 01

  Yeah, you're allowed to have fun.

• 2:43:09Cameron Hanes?

  It's social media. What, it can't all be business, can it?

• 2:43:13Speaker 01

  No, and it shouldn't be because the, the like levity and the business and the seriousness and how you navigate all of it is just a part of the calculus.

• 2:43:20Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah. Yeah. No, it's good stuff. One thing, like, I, I'm about ready to go eat. I'm starving. But I wanted to say, uh,

• 2:43:33Cameron Hanes?

  Is this just me? Cause and I have to take ownership over this too, but so I shot the flaming arrow at the Supercross. It's like, well, I think it's our most, most viewed reel they've ever put up. Five million some views. I'm like, why does not, why does my website, my Cameron Haynes.com, who I paid somebody 3,000 a month to do, why is that video and picture not on the top of my website? Cause all those people who are Supercross saw me on live TV are like, wait, who's this guy? Let me go. So why, and like, oh, in case you missed it,

• 2:44:14Cameron Hanes?

  here's the hottest thing that happened this week. You know what I mean? Why is Spot Hog with the flame going up into the site and me still shooting the arrow or Hoyt flamed all over the bow? Why, why is that not being utilized?

• 2:44:31Speaker 01

  By you?

• 2:44:32Cameron Hanes?

  By them, by me, by everybody. It's just like, so I, I got, I talked to Kip, you know, from Under Armour and I'm like, how obvious is this content to put up on my website? Why do I have to say this?

• 2:44:46Speaker 01

  Let me ask you this before I give you an opinion.

• 2:44:48Cameron Hanes?

  Okay.

• 2:44:49Speaker 01

  What's your website for?

• 2:44:50Cameron Hanes?

  Uh, Cameron Haynes.com. It's mostly, um, we tell a little storytelling, but mostly for merchandise.

• 2:44:59Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:45:00Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah.

• 2:45:01Speaker 01

  So if I see you at Supercross and I don't know who you are and I Google your name, where do you want them to go?

• 2:45:07Cameron Hanes?

  Um, my website.

• 2:45:11Speaker 01

  Why do you want them to go to your website?

• 2:45:14Cameron Hanes?

  Well, that's where they'll learn about my history. You can't, like on social media, you have to do a little digging to figure out what this person's about. It's pretty much the story's spelled out on the website. Like, oh, here's who this guy is. Here's what he does. Oh, he's got a podcast. He's got the, it's all there.

• 2:45:29Speaker 01

  Right.

• 2:45:30Cameron Hanes?

  So if they, but I want them to go there, not to see another website to be like, oh yeah, that is the guy who was the flaming arrow.

• 2:45:38Speaker 01

  So my opinion is that you warning a person who doesn't know you to go straight to your personal website is a big ask. Because if I don't know who you are, but I just heard

• 2:45:48Cameron Hanes?

  Would they Google it, though?

• 2:45:50Speaker 01

  So they'll Google it.

• 2:45:50Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah.

• 2:45:51Speaker 01

  And the nature of your life as it has panned out, if you Google campaign, we should do this right now. Just, that'd be interesting to see.

• 2:45:59Cameron Hanes?

  Okay.

• 2:45:59Speaker 01

  But it's like, your Instagram's gonna come up pretty high ranked, because you've got a ton of followers. You're definitely

• 2:46:06Cameron Hanes?

  Should be my website first.

• 2:46:07Speaker 01

  You're definitely gonna get, so that's like an SEO thing, like are you doing the right things on the backside of the internet to get your website to rank?

• 2:46:13Cameron Hanes?

  That's my website guy again, three thousand bucks.

• 2:46:15Speaker 01

  You're gonna, you're gonna rank very high on like YouTube links to Rogan episodes.

• 2:46:20Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 2:46:21Speaker 01

  And stuff like that. So getting someone to go to your personal site is like a longer funnel, because that's like the deep dive, like, please come learn about me.

• 2:46:31Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah.

• 2:46:32Speaker 01

  It's not the quickest way for somebody to learn about you.

• 2:46:36Cameron Hanes?

  Is social the quickest way?

• 2:46:37Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:46:37Cameron Hanes?

  Okay, Instagram.

• 2:46:38Speaker 01

  And so

• 2:46:39Cameron Hanes?

  So maybe, I put it there, so maybe that's good enough.

• 2:46:41Speaker 02

  Our, our website did come up first, but I've also been to the website, so I don't know if that affects it.

• 2:46:47Speaker 01

  I mean, cookies on your search history, maybe, but like

• 2:46:50Cameron Hanes?

  Oh, yeah.

• 2:46:51Speaker 02

  I delete those every night.

• 2:46:52Cameron Hanes?

  He has to.

• 2:46:55Speaker 01

  That's a, that's a different problem. Talk about that off air.

• 2:47:00Cameron Hanes?

  No, we don't, we don't wanna talk about it.

• 2:47:02Speaker 01

  What else ranks really high? Instagram and YouTube?

• 2:47:05Speaker 02

  Yeah, the next thing is Instagram. There is like a, an AI, you know, breakdown of who Cameron Hanes is.

• 2:47:11Speaker 01

  Right, like at the top.

• 2:47:13Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:47:13Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah.

• 2:47:14Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah. Anyway, I'm just like, sometimes, yeah, I don't know. I don't even know how to take best advantage of it. Maybe, maybe we're doing it right.

• 2:47:25Speaker 01

  Well, Google ranking and search engine optimization is like a whole other side of marketing, where you're trying to collect attention from the machine overlords. Then it's just like, okay, what, what do you want someone to do if they're on your website? And by your own description, it's like, it's mostly an outlet to sell merch.

• 2:47:49Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah, mostly.

• 2:47:50Speaker 01

  So someone that doesn't know you, that is just like, who is this guy? Is your website the best place for them to go to that? Because let's say they do.

• 2:47:59Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah.

• 2:48:00Speaker 01

  Google.com, Cameron Hanes, cameronhanes.com, okay. What's on your homepage?

• 2:48:07Speaker 01

  Your top of feed is probably like above the fold is like the language of what's your marquee one content block. Right now, the first thing that pops up is the giveaway that we're we're currently doing. So like, that's something that should be because it's like, that's what I'm trying to drive call to action on the most specific thing. But your about page is like, I've got to go a couple clicks to then read some paragraphs to do the thing to discover who you are. It's like, that takes me 48 seconds. And like, I'm probably not going to give you that if I'm just a normal person. Yeah. So you should just optimize your online traffic for the highest fidelity signal,

• 2:48:46Speaker 01

  which is probably Instagram. Because you in the like, status thing, you've got like 1.8 million followers or whatever on Instagram. That's a huge signal of like, oh, this guy is like a guy. He's a he's a thing. Yeah. What is this about?

• 2:49:04Cameron Hanes?

  Right. Because anybody could have a website, I guess. Yeah. So but if you have all those followers, there's a reason why. So this guy must do something. Yep. Let's figure it out.

• 2:49:13Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:49:13Cameron Hanes?

  Okay, I got it. Yeah, that makes sense.

• 2:49:16Speaker 01

  That that's the like, highest signal to time ratio of least amount of time, highest signal is what you're after to try to get somebody into your funnel. It's really good to try to get somebody on your website, because if you're gathering, unlike James, if you're gathering cookies and retargeting data, then you can do all the backside of the internet things for those people. But it is like, you got a seven second window.

• 2:49:44Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah, I know. It's

• 2:49:45Speaker 01

  What are you trying to say?

• 2:49:46Cameron Hanes?

  It's tough. It's tough. It's competitive out there. A lot of people have an attention pulled from every direction. So yeah, that makes that makes sense. Maybe I have a I do a good job of getting pissed, really pissed for probably no good reason.

• 2:50:02Speaker 01

  What are you trying to accomplish with that?

• 2:50:04Cameron Hanes?

  I don't know.

• 2:50:05Speaker 01

  This is like a personal outlet to say something?

• 2:50:07Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah.

• 2:50:08Speaker 01

  Well, you probably earned that, right? But whether or not it's positive or negative for your brand is a different discussion. Probably. You should do a live audit whether his employees, me, are scared.

• 2:50:22Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah, no, we don't want to get into that bullshit.

• 2:50:27Cameron Hanes?

  Dude, this has been, this has been a long, how long has this been?

• 2:50:31Speaker 01

  Almost three hours.

• 2:50:32Cameron Hanes?

  Holy shit.

• 2:50:33Speaker 01

  Wow.

• 2:50:33Cameron Hanes?

  It's good info.

• 2:50:34Speaker 01

  We went for it.

• 2:50:35Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah, I love it. I'm, I'm super appreciative of you coming all the way out here. Um, I loved hearing, learning more about you and hearing your, just that mindset, just that marketing mindset. It's just interesting. Um, cause it's like, you know, we, we love what we do. We love bow hunting. And just having the connection to, to paint that picture and from your perspective is, is really cool. Um, I learned a lot today. Thank you. I learned a lot about you and it's, you know, just great discussion. So I appreciate you.

• 2:51:04Speaker 01

  Yeah, man. Uh, thank you for having me. Can I give you two guests that I'd love to see on your show?

• 2:51:09Cameron Hanes?

  Oh, yeah. Hey.

• 2:51:10Speaker 01

  That'd be sweet.

• 2:51:11Cameron Hanes?

  Uh, we were gonna say, somebody told me I should ask, like, uh, I think Sean Ryan does this, right? Yeah, I like this. Yeah.

• 2:51:17Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:51:17Cameron Hanes?

  So he does three guests, but our thing will be two.

• 2:51:20Speaker 01

  Okay. Well, I have two that I, I would say, one of them we mentioned already, Chris, Chris, you should have on your show.

• 2:51:25Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah.

• 2:51:26Speaker 01

  Because it would be a cool double click. Like we talked for, I don't know, maybe 30 minutes in the middle of this about like, how do you do the thing? He's like the expression of the conversation that we had, which would be value additive to your whole program of like, guys that are interested in what does this look like? Um, and he's great. You guys would have a blast talking about the thing.

• 2:51:46Cameron Hanes?

  I just like how he's like, doesn't have this huge personality, but he's very effective. Like.

• 2:51:52Speaker 01

  He's real, man.

• 2:51:52Cameron Hanes?

  He's just calm, knows his stuff, shares it, and that like gives people confidence.

• 2:51:59Speaker 01

  And he's very quietly on the business side, absolute savage.

• 2:52:03Cameron Hanes?

  Oh, good. Well.

• 2:52:05Speaker 01

  He knows what's going on.

• 2:52:06Cameron Hanes?

  That's not, that's not surprising. I mean, I can, I've watched his trajectory.

• 2:52:09Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:52:10Cameron Hanes?

  And like, you can't have that success without understanding business. So, yeah, that's great.

• 2:52:15Speaker 01

  So you should have him on. And then the other one, a little bit left turn, but I think that you would love this. So let me just describe for a minute. Uh, it's a guy named Webb Smith from Columbus, Ohio. I am in, uh, kind of like an online think tank program that he runs for about 200 people. And it's, uh, it's all about optimization, like health span and lifespan. He is currently about 750 days into running at least a 10K per day to break the world record.

• 2:52:48Cameron Hanes?

  Oh, that's awesome.

• 2:52:50Speaker 01

  It would be difficult for me to describe like who he is. He was kind of like a serial entrepreneur. Now he does like a bunch of different things. He was a head marketer at Rogue Fitness for a while. He founded a brand in like lifestyle apparel and stuff like way back and done a ton of different stuff. And now he's, he's like advising like national security companies and running this optimization program that a bunch of us are in that's like very tight knit and quiet. Like me saying, I might get in trouble for describing this on your show, but I'm trying to put him on a little bit. One, because his like fitness acumen is like right in your wheelhouse and how he's thinking about

• 2:53:31Speaker 01

  health span and lifespan and optimization of the meat suit and like all the very like scientific things. Meets his like very fundamental, highly disciplined, extreme work ethic and recovering from serious injuries. And doing this training, like dude is yoked, like six, two, two, 20, running a 10K a day. And like you guys would jam on the fitness side and the health thing.

• 2:53:58Cameron Hanes?

  That sounds interesting.

• 2:53:58Speaker 01

  I, I think you guys would, would have like a super cool connection and you get brought up in that chat. Probably like once a month.

• 2:54:07Speaker 01

  It's a very, like it's a worldwide connection of people in business and academia. And like, it's like Huberman was talking about this and this is how it

• 2:54:18Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah.

• 2:54:19Speaker 01

  Comes into, into like from the discipline angle. You know, there's a couple inroads into this group with like special operations community and like extreme purveyors of fitness and discipline. And like you get brought up in that context. I think you guys would have a blast.

• 2:54:36Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah.

• 2:54:36Speaker 01

  Talking.

• 2:54:37Cameron Hanes?

  Oh, that's, yeah, give me his contact. We'll see if we can make it happen, but no, that sounds great.

• 2:54:42Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:54:42Cameron Hanes?

  I appreciate that.

• 2:54:43Speaker 01

  Absolutely, man.

• 2:54:43Cameron Hanes?

  And yeah, Chris for sure. I mean, he, I met him over here at the Bow Rack, I don't know, a couple of years ago. But yeah, nice kid. Love to, you know, pick his brain on his thoughts on archery and bow hunting and just this whole journey. So yeah, let's do it. But thank you, Craig.

• 2:55:00Speaker 01

  Yeah, man.

• 2:55:00Cameron Hanes?

  Appreciate you.

• 2:55:01Speaker 01

  Thank you. Appreciate it.

• 2:55:02Cameron Hanes?

  That was great talk.