532: Economic Warfare. The Power of Business In America. Sam Rogers, Joe Cruz, Steve Simar.

>Join Jocko Underground< https://www.jockounderground.com/subscribe Three men, Sam, Joe, and Steve, from different backgrounds come together to build a company from scratch—through risk, setbacks, and relentless execution. This episode breaks down what it really takes to start and grow a business, the power of small business in America, and the mindset required to win. Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/jocko-podcast/exclusive-content

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

• 0:00Jocko Willink?

  This is Jocko Podcast number 532. And I talk often about, obviously about the military and what the military does and the strength of the military, but there is another strength and another force in the world that is equally, if not even more important and stronger, and that is economic force. And one of the most important type of economic force in the world is Americans. And one of the most important economic forces in America is small businesses. Small businesses are hugely impactful to the economy in America. They're what drive the economy in America, which brings us to our guests for today. Three gentlemen from vastly different backgrounds who have built and are

• 0:44Jocko Willink?

  continuing to grow an American company. And this company is called Symmetry Sauna. And I met these guys as we were building out the new gym here at Victory MMA, which is where we're sitting right now. The new gym at Victory MMA, we had a fire, which incidentally was caused by our old sauna. So we didn't want to get that old sauna. We wanted a brand new sauna and we searched around to find who is making the best saunas in the, in the country and really, in my opinion, the best saunas in the world. And we ended up with Symmetry Sauna. And so, once we brought them in and I saw what they were doing, building

• 1:24Jocko Willink?

  business, creating jobs and basically getting after it, which is a huge part of what I like. So Joe Cruz, Sam Rogers, and Steve Simar, the leaders of Symmetry Sauna. Thanks for joining us, fellas.

• 1:38Speaker 01

  Thank you.

• 1:38Jocko Willink?

  Thanks Jocko. Yeah. That sauna looks good, doesn't it?

• 1:41Speaker 01

  It looks really good.

• 1:42Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. The sauna is a beautiful sauna. That is what you guys do is build these amazing custom saunas. And I know you're expanding right now and doing even more than that, but really impressed with what you guys did here. Both the men's sauna and the women's sauna, there's actually two saunas here that you guys built and they're both. What's up with the salt walls? What's that all about?

• 2:03Speaker 01

  Well, you want to go? There is, there are health benefits to Himalayan sea salt when it ionizes at heat, good respiratory benefit, but we're always honest with our clients. They're beautiful. More than anything, it's aesthetics and it and and here's kind of the philosophy is why do we build such beautiful saunas? Cause people will use a more beautiful sauna much more often than they'll use that shabby cedar box in the backyard. So if we build it beautiful, people want to go in it every day and that's the whole goal.

• 2:32Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, no, they the salt walls, they definitely, well, they got like a like a warm glow to them.

• 2:37Speaker 01

  Right.

• 2:38Jocko Willink?

  Cause they're backlit and yeah, they're very inviting.

• 2:42Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's it right there.

• 2:43Jocko Willink?

  So what you had some kind of somebody want to give me?

• 2:45Speaker 01

  Yeah, so I I I'm a father, three kids, but I've got this, the kid in the middle, ten year old girl, jujitsu killer. But she also is kind of an old soul. She likes to sew and crochet. And she, the night before I flew down here, she came running out, dad, dad, dad, I made something for Jocko. Do you promise to give it to him? I was like, what is it? So she showed me and I was like, oh, I think Jocko's gonna love that. So this is for my daughter Talia. She crocheted you a chicken.

• 3:12Jocko Willink?

  A chicken.

• 3:13Speaker 01

  Yeah, and it's a beautiful chicken.

• 3:15Jocko Willink?

  A little bit of a heart shaped chicken.

• 3:16Speaker 01

  There you go. She, yeah.

• 3:18Jocko Willink?

  What's her name?

• 3:18Speaker 01

  Her name's Talia.

• 3:19Jocko Willink?

  Talia, well Talia, this is definitely the coolest chicken that I have ever owned.

• 3:24Speaker 01

  Nice.

• 3:24Jocko Willink?

  Um, black eyes. What is this pink little?

• 3:27Speaker 01

  That's the comb.

• 3:28Jocko Willink?

  Comb on the head. Yeah, that's an amazing piece of, you know, you know, a chicken. Yeah, so it's it's it's a chicken, but let's face it, it looks like it may have been the forefathers of the chicken nugget. Like it looks like this thing would give birth to chicken nuggets. So thank you very much, Talia. Appreciate it. This will stay uh with me. For a long time.

• 3:51Speaker 01

  She'll be stoked.

• 3:52Jocko Willink?

  I I will have to protect it from my dog. My dog will definitely think that this chicken is amazing looking and try and eat it. So I'll keep it safe, Talia. Thank you. Alright, so let's get a little bit, a little bit of a background from you guys. Just just quickly like how you guys grew up and then and then we'll kind of talk about how you guys got linked up. Where do you guys want to start? Who who who goes first?

• 4:11Speaker 01

  I'll start.

• 4:12Jocko Willink?

  Let's hear it.

• 4:12Speaker 01

  Yeah, I uh. I grew up a small white boy in Montana.

• 4:17Jocko Willink?

  Where in Montana?

• 4:18Speaker 01

  Outside of Great Falls. About a hundred acres of land.

• 4:21Jocko Willink?

  Nice.

• 4:21Speaker 01

  Um, and, uh, just a good life. Two sisters, mom and dad, all this land, horses. I basically grew up on a horse with a 22 rifle and a fishing pole, just like Uncle Berry Finn. And, uh, and, uh, I'll tell one quick story. I told my dad I would tell on here. So he, when he was 17, he joined the Navy.

• 4:41Jocko Willink?

  Nice.

• 4:42Speaker 01

  And when he went to the naval recruiting, he said, if I sign up, can I be a frogman? And so this was before Navy SEALs, right? And the recruiter said, if you can, if you can make it through the training, you can be a frogman. So he signed on the dotted line at 17 and it was like a three-year tour. So he came out here actually and did training in Coronado. Uh, but as soon as they saw him, they were like, you can't be a frogman. He's like, they promised me I'd get a shot. And, uh, they said, no, you're nearsighted. You can't be a frogman. So anyway, he became a, he, he worked on the radios for Blue Angels and, and, uh, and the fighter jets. But anyway, uh, he wanted you to, he wanted you to know that he served in the Navy.

• 5:24Jocko Willink?

  Well.

• 5:24Speaker 01

  And he wanted to be a frogman. But, uh, yeah. So then, uh, some, somehow I'll tell the real quick story. Somehow I was always in love with sports. That's kind of all I cared about. And my first sport was basketball. But they didn't have, uh, men's volleyball where I came from. But when I got into college, I started playing volleyball and I got very addicted to this thing. Eventually moved to San Diego to try to play professional beach volleyball and, uh, dabbled in that. I called myself a bottom feeder, you know, and played a lot of professional tournaments, but I spent way more money than I ever earned. But it was a good experience. It gave me a lot of confidence in life that, uh, if you just put your mind to something, you can probably do,

• 6:03Speaker 01

  go a lot farther than you think you could. And, uh, so hold on to that experience in, in business and everything else we do. And, uh, have sort of become delusional from that. I kind of feel like if you, if you decide to do it and determine, I'm just gonna do it and won't be stopped. It's pretty amazing what can happen. So, and, you know, met these guys along the way and here we are.

• 6:24Jocko Willink?

  How you been, how were you feeding your family before symmetry? What'd you do for work?

• 6:27Speaker 01

  So I, I started, owned and operated a residential painting company here in San Diego for 17 years.

• 6:34Jocko Willink?

  Get some.

• 6:34Speaker 01

  And that company's still going. Um, I don't have much to do with the day to day anymore, but it's still going and did that. And then, uh, What else? Yeah, the other, the other thing people might be interested or not is, you know, bow hunting. Bow hunting is another driving force in my life is every September chasing elk in the mountains of Montana, Idaho, Wyoming, wherever, wherever I end up. And that's a huge one for me.

• 6:57Jocko Willink?

  That's the addiction right there.

• 6:58Speaker 01

  Oh, man. That's a good one. So.

• 7:01Jocko Willink?

  Awesome. And what about you, Steve?

• 7:03Speaker 02

  I grew up at West Point in New York. My dad was a graduate and I came back as a football coach. So I grew up as the cord boy on the sideline. And my dad told me if I went to West Point, he'd buy me a car. But I had to go skiing. So I went to Montana State University and skied a lot. And from there, went into youth ministry. I met Sam playing volleyball in Montana in the 90s.

• 7:28Jocko Willink?

  There was people playing volleyball in Montana?

• 7:30Speaker 02

  In the grass. There's not maybe sand there, but Sam was the.

• 7:34Speaker 01

  In the 90s, there was about 30 guys in Montana who were unbelievable volleyball players from all over the world. It was, it was a pretty good scene.

• 7:42Speaker 02

  I was not one of them. I was a bottom feeder. I used to play in my khaki shorts. Called me the khakatek. No. So I moved to San Diego, not long after Sam, we got to be roommates and buddies. I was a freelance photo assistant doing commercial photography and really chasing the dream of skydiving. I was a competitive skydiver at Lake Elsinore. And did that for a long time. Started building my own photography business. Long story short, I drove up to visit Sam and the family in Idaho, and then they shut down California behind me. So, yeah. So I said, I guess I live here now. So, yeah, complete change in life, going from commercial photography to, we started a paint company up there when

• 8:27Speaker 02

  the market was going crazy. And then Joe here kind of talked us into the sauna industry. And that's been amazing. So, yeah, we started, I mean, like how symmetry started, it was me designing and building saunas, you know, and those guys building the business.

• 8:43Jocko Willink?

  And how'd you get in the mix, Joe?

• 8:45Speaker 03

  Yeah, I grew up in Los Angeles and didn't have much background or sports or anything. Stopped going to school about 10th grade and, you know, single mom growing up, giving her best and a bunch of siblings. And from there, my girlfriend got pregnant. I was like, oh.

• 9:04Jocko Willink?

  How old were you?

• 9:04Speaker 03

  Hmm, 18. She was 17, 18, something like that. And then, yeah, sitting down and kind of had that road in front of me. I'm gonna be like my dad. I'm just gonna walk away and throw it in or am I gonna grind it out? And for some reason, I decided to grind it out. So, yeah, we ended up, we're in Los Angeles, moved to San Diego, started doing, jumped in banking, just entry level, whatever, you know, paper file pushing, minimum wage, close to minimum wage, and then started climbing up the ladder and the, you know, supervisor, department head, sales and sales is where I found my love. I was able to, you know, start managing and, and, um, yeah, it just all really started developing for me visually. You know, it's

• 9:49Speaker 03

  very easy. I didn't understand what the complexities were in, you know, in business. So just too naive to know. And from there, after, you know, 2008, I was already kind of looking for something and then.

• 10:02Jocko Willink?

  How long did you stay in banking for?

• 10:03Speaker 03

  Uh, probably as long as I was in San Diego, like nine, 10 years. Yeah, yeah. So in there for a while, a lot of fun. We pioneered a bank right here off Claremont Mesa called FNBA, First National Bank, Arizona. Really cool, a lot of fun, a lot of good memories. But my mentor, Jim Patterson, you know, he was a cop, ex-cop from Kentucky, and he took me under his wing. He used to call me his brown hope, uh, because all the other sales guys, all the other sales guys were, uh, you know, super ambitious and a lot of them were already, you know, fairly well to do. And he saw this guy coming up from nothing, took me under his wing and said, dude, I'm rooting for you. Go out there, kick ass. And, uh, yeah, man, I just started, you know, I became top performer and doing my thing.

• 10:47Speaker 03

  And then when I, you know, everything's shaped up and, um, In that banking industry, I went to sauna. My buddy Logan, who became a mentor, and he's still in sauna, Logan Ross out in Los Angeles, super cool guy. And he mentored me, brought me in, and I just hit the ground running.

• 11:06Jocko Willink?

  Sauna industry?

• 11:07Speaker 03

  Into the sauna industry. Well, I mean,

• 11:09Jocko Willink?

  Like sales or doing what?

• 11:10Speaker 03

  Yeah, just sales. I mean, I was, you know, sales at that point in banking. I mean, I was just crushing it in sales. So I knew I had this thing, whether it was just the street vision, street level from all the crap I've been through growing up. And the desire and the hunger to be awesome and, you know, running a young family, a wife at this point, two sons and just like, okay, I gotta grind. I gotta figure out how to not, you know, be like the rest of my family on the system or cheating the system and just ghetto and, you know, and, and yeah, just kept an elevated mindset.

• 11:41Jocko Willink?

  What do you, where do you think you got that elevated mindset?

• 11:44Speaker 03

  Man, I, yeah, I don't know, man. I think, you know, my mom was fairly crazy in a good way. You know, she did her best and she was a discipliner. She boxed for a lot of years, like, so she would whip my ass and all the way up until I'm not joking, man, like punch me in the face. Um, crazy gang story. If you guys want to hear it real quick. Uh, so I was from a LA street gang for 24 hours. Uh, I was living in Huntington Park where they say Huntington Park where it's crazy after dark. And I was actually in high school, probably ninth grade and, uh, you know, retro was in. So I wasn't even like a gangster looking guy. I was like in bell bottoms and this and that. I'm not joking.

• 12:25Speaker 03

  And my, but my whole family was like from street gangs. And so, uh, I was at high school in Huntington Park and they're like, hey, aren't you so and so's nephew from, you know, this gang? And I'm like, yeah. And they, they started beating me up in the bathroom, right? Which they called jumping in. I'm not joking, not jumping, you know, they called jumping in. And, uh, so I got jumped in and when they picked me up, they're like, all right, you're from, I won't even say it. They're from X gang now. I'm like, yeah, I am. So I, I belonged, right? I was like, okay, cool. So I went home and all of a sudden, like within 24 hours, like I think I might've shaved my head and, you know, wore the baggy pants. So my mom though, yeah, my mom, my, my grandma was a gang member, right? So my mom was also a gang member, ex-gang member, you know, turned to Jesus and changed her

• 13:07Speaker 03

  life. But once you're a gang member, like you're always kind of a gang member. You always have that mentality. So she ended up finding out, you know, or she found out that I got jumped, jumped into a gang. And she's like, oh, you're not gonna, because it's her ex-gang that they jumped me in. She's like, oh, you're not going down that road. Like, you know, I'll kick your ass. Like, you're gonna get jumped out. So it's within 24 hours. She like walked me to the park in Huntington Park, like, and a bunch of gangsters were sitting on the table. And they're like, well, where are you from? Or no, she said, I want my son out of the gang. I'm so and so from ex-gang, and my, my mom's ex-gang. Long story short, they're like, all right, well, just tell him to deny that he's from the gang and he's out. We don't have to jump him out. Poor kids already got beat up and, you know, 18 hours ago. So, um, so my mom turns to me, she's like, all right,

• 13:51Speaker 03

  Joe, what gang you from? I'm like, and I threw the gang sign, and I told her the name of the gang, right? And she just started beating the crap out of me, like punching me in the face. I mean, it was so bad. Even the gangsters were like, okay, stop, leave him alone, leave him alone, we'll jump him out. So then they like moved my mom aside, and three of them came and beat the hell out of me for a couple of minutes. Then I was out of the street gang. So, yeah, maybe that helped with the, you know, some of the grit that I have. But no, man, I just, I don't know, I never wanted to be like, like, yeah, like the people before me who I just felt like, you know, were always elusive, taking advantage of the system, not being honest, not being hard workers, lazy, all this stuff. And it was, you know, my community of, you know, unfortunately,

• 14:34Speaker 03

  a lot of the Hispanic, you know, community, they're just such hard workers, like, and they grind. And I did see that a lot. I just never saw them getting ahead in business for some reason, right? Whatever it was, right? They're always working for someone. I don't want to work for anyone. I knew that for a very long time since I dropped out of high school in 10th grade, right? Like, I knew, I don't want to work for anyone. So ended up, my, my girl, you know, married her right away. I proposed to her, kind of telling her parents, hey, I'm sorry, I got her pregnant, but I'm gonna marry this girl.

• 15:01Jocko Willink?

  How much did you spend on her ring?

• 15:03Speaker 03

  Oh, I don't even know if I got her ring out of her.

• 15:06Jocko Willink?

  That's, that's low.

• 15:07Speaker 03

  This was, this was, yeah, I mean, no money. This was 20, I mean, we've been married 26 years, right? So, um, anyway, so found my way out of, uh, you know, uh, into the, out of banking into sauna. And then it just, I mean, it was right away. I was already able to consult people is right. Helping people talk about health benefits. I didn't know much, probably three days being in the sauna industry. I was already selling sauna. I was like, but it's because I care. Like I have this passion for human beings to be better, right? There's something, there's a light inside of every human being that, you know, no matter how dim it is, like there's a way to, um, yeah, to extract it, right? To make it bright. And that's what I felt sauna was doing for people. So it was very,

• 15:49Speaker 03

  I spoke with conviction, it was very natural. And then I got really good at what I was doing. And then, um, I'll end it with this. So my wife and I, you know, after banking and into sauna, like there's more than enough money. Like we grew up super poor, we grew up with nothing. And so, but I did tell my wife, I'm like, man, if this is all life has to offer.

• 16:11Speaker 03

  I don't know. I don't, I don't know if we're going to last in our marriage. I don't really, you know, shiny stuff and, and bank accounts and like, none of that's bringing this kind of intrinsic value that I'm seeking out. And so we went to a therapist together and, uh, she said, uh, if you want to feel this deep, meaningful fulfillment, have this lasting impact in your life, um, do something, do something together that's going to change the world without you getting any money or accolades or anything like that. And my wife and I love, uh, you know, we love children and we're good, pretty good parents, you know, we're not perfect. And so we're like, dude, let's adopt some kids. We're just, let's adopt some kids. Let's like change

• 16:52Speaker 03

  somebody's world like hands on and not just any kids. Like let's get the kids that are like thrown, not thrown in the trash, but nobody wants, like the ones addicted, born addicted to drugs and this and that. So we ended up, uh, yeah, getting, you know, going through all the trainings, getting a call from. Uh, getting a call from LA County saying, hey, we got one for you.

• 17:11Jocko Willink?

  How long did that process take?

• 17:13Speaker 03

  Uh, yeah, so about a year. Took about a year. You know, we had to be diligent in the classes and, uh, but it took a year and then, you know, they, we went and met our daughter Sage and she was born addicted to, uh, methamphetamines. But right when we saw her, um, it was so beautiful. Um, held her and I just knew like, uh, yeah, this, she's mine. Uh, she's ours. And yeah, took her home and, uh, on her adoption party, after a year, the process to, you know, from foster to adopt, we got a call from the, uh, from the social worker because we told them, we can only have one. Like we have no space. We have nothing else, you know, we can do. We only have a five seater car.

• 17:53Speaker 03

  And, uh, they ended up calling us on her, uh, adoption party saying, uh, hey, birth mom had another one. What do you, you know, and we knew the family that if we didn't take her, the family was gonna, uh, she was gonna go to. So I looked at my wife and my wife's crying. She's like, uh, you know, I can't tell them, no, you're gonna have to do it. And I said, Vic, well, I'll get a little religious here. Sorry. Uh, I'm confronted with this news, but we can't do it. We have a five seater car, you know, like we're not in a big enough house. We'd have to move, you know, savings is still, you know, I'm, I'm wild in my investments and, you know, everything, uh, isn't perfect, you know, as, as I would go in. So money up, money down. And, uh, this was a time where money was a little down and I just told her, I said, yeah, we, we can't do it.

• 18:36Speaker 03

  So I go outside and I'm sitting, you know, kind of there in the balcony, just, but I did hear in the back of my head, it's like, look at the birds in the air. Look at the lilies in the field, you know, they're clothed, they're fed. How much more do I love you? How much more will I take care of you? And so I walked in and I told Vic, I'm like, hey, we, we don't have the space. We don't have the cash. We don't have the this. We don't have the that. So.

• 19:00Speaker 03

  Let's do it. And we did it. And we brought her on. And when we brought her on, Jules, since we brought, also born addicted, you know, to the, to the methamphetamines and such. But when we brought her on, our entire world changed. Since that day, we've never really had a financial struggle, worry, or anything, right? And so for me, and us and our little family there, you know, what we're trying to do is, yeah, impact the world, impact lives. So now we have four children, two biological sons, 26, 21.

• 19:34Jocko Willink?

  21.

• 19:34Speaker 03

  And then our adopted daughters, Sage and Jules. So it's Eli Zane, Sage 13, Jules 11, and seven grandkids. So both my sons got married at 17. They're following the good old dad. Yeah, we're trying. So, okay.

• 19:49Jocko Willink?

  How the, how's like, what's the medical recovery? Or how do they, how do they wean a kid that's born addicted to meth? What is that process? And where do they end up? Do they, do they end up with deficits later on in life? Can they fully recover? How's all that work?

• 20:04Speaker 03

  Right. Well, there's obviously the predisposition to it, which, you know, as any parent, you're gonna be concerned, right? Like, if there's a predisposition to it, and they get older, you know, they start just even touching the stuff, they're way more prone, more likely to get addicted, that spiral. So in the beginning, yeah, we brought them, you know, Sage, she had, you know, muscular issues in her mouth. So she, she had to have a tube. She couldn't suck on the bottle. And so, yeah, it was, you know, a lot of muscular issues, right? Mobility issues, things like that. Those are some of the bigger problems that we face. There's some, you know, some sensory stuff, you know, that they'll deal with. Detachment, the crazy one is the

• 20:47Speaker 03

  detachment, you know, when we grabbed Sage, and I held her there, and I, I looked at her, my wife's like, bring her close to your face, watch what happens. So she's looking at me, I start pulling her in, close to my face, and she turns her head, turns her head. And this is, and I'm like, okay, pull her back. She looks up, and we're talking weeks old. And she turns her head. And so the nurse was like, hey, these kids who like, you know, are born like this, or they have abandonment and our detachment things going on. It's at weeks old. She doesn't want to get close. So she turned her face every time we brought her close. So that's probably been the hardest thing to work through. But a cool thing is, going back to sauna. These girls, we started when they were just months old, putting them in our infrared sauna at our house. Like, we'd leave the door cracked open. We'd have

• 21:31Speaker 03

  them in there. Their little cheeks get rosy and flush. But we started putting them in there at months old for the detoxification purposes. And this was years ago, right? But yeah, so cool to see now, the world, you know, the West especially, start to evolve in some of these more, I don't know, alternative, you know, wellness paths that they're taking. I think an area that a lot of people are missing, that, you know, symmetry and where we are focused on, and some of our marketing is geared toward is, get your damn kids inside the sauna. Like, get them, you know, using it very, very young for detoxing purposes. Far, there's far more of a need for them than even for us, right? The toxins, you know, from food, environment, name it, right?

• 22:14Jocko Willink?

  How old, over in Europe, when did they start going in the sauna, kids?

• 22:18Speaker 03

  Oh, I don't know.

• 22:19Jocko Willink?

  Do they start young over there?

• 22:20Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah, for sure. It's part of the culture. I mean, the kids go, you know, kids, their sweat glands aren't fully developed yet, so they can't take the super high heat for a long time like we can. But they come in and out. They'll go in for five, seven minutes, come out. It's just part of the family culture. Like, we sauna daily.

• 22:36Speaker 03

  Yeah, if you go to Finland, you know, there's more sauna than people. And it is cool. You'll see, like, on a Friday night, right, the kids getting out of their, you know, whether university or their school, young kids, I mean, we're talking junior high age, junior high age, high school age. And they're, you know, getting together as groups, and they're going to the public sauna. They're just going to the saunas down the street, and that's how they get their weekends going. And so it's just already ingrained in their culture, and it's one of the reasons they're Very, very healthy people.

• 23:04Jocko Willink?

  We have legit sauna, like, family events at my house. My whole family's in the sauna. We do this big factory reset thing where we'll do like 25 minutes in and then we'll do ice bath and another 25 and then ice bath and another 25. But we do that a lot, like the fam- there's definitely, we've adopted some of that Finland activities of getting in the sauna as a family hanging out. Cause you, you know, when you're in the sauna, I mean, I actually, when I go in alone, I always stretch in there, but if you're not stretching, then what are you doing? You're like, at least be able to talk to someone.

• 23:37Speaker 03

  Yeah, it's great conversation.

• 23:38Jocko Willink?

  It's like a time where you're gonna, I'm gonna spend the next 25 minutes with my wife. What are we gonna do? Like, well, we're gonna talk about stuff and hang out and that might not happen in a normal, busy day where stuff is going on. So that's definitely beneficial. So then did you, how did you end up going from the other sauna company? How'd you end up with, with the symmetry thing? Did you move to Idaho too?

• 23:59Speaker 03

  Yeah, great question. So ended up some in LA with my mentor Logan and Kim and, you know, their, their teach. I went from infrared sauna when I first started working for a fairly large company. And then, you know, Logan and I went to traditional sauna. So, you know, started learning traditional sauna, got that pretty quick. And then we wanted to scale, you know? The goal was to scale the company that we were at. And it just didn't end up being something that aligned with my vision. I'm like Sam and Steve, fairly delusional and I'm always globalizing every single thing. I don't wanna, I don't wanna be here to just be a competitor, like wanna dominate, wanna crush, right?

• 24:39Speaker 03

  So I didn't sense that from ownership of that company and just salt of the earth people, really cool. But I had to go my own way. I had to take my own chance. So my wife and I were just like, okay. And we've always been the type, like, we're not risk adverse or whatever. Like, if we make a decision to do something, we're doing it. Like, it doesn't matter, right? So I look at her and let's get out of California. All right, so where do we go? And literally like, you know, kind of blindfold and okay, they're, oh, that's Spokane, Washington, right? So, yeah, a couple of months later, we have our car packed and, you know, the pods and send us up to Spokane. I was working from home already, so it's easy. So I was still consulting and working, you know, the sales with my buddy Logan.

• 25:22Speaker 03

  And so it was nice because I did have the liberty to just get up and go if I wanted. So we go to Spokane, but I could only live there for a handful of years because Spokane has been voted a couple of times the, uh, the city with the ugliest people in the country. So I'm like, dude, we got to get out of here. We got to get out of there. So we ended up going to Coeur d'Alene and shortly after that I met Sam. And I've already consulted some sauna studios, like these commercial places where it's like, oh, come pay $45 and, you know, use a sauna. And so I, I already consulted some of those places. So it was already in my mind to do something like that up in Coeur d'Alene. It seemed right. Uh, so connected with Sam and then we're like, dude, we started just really him and I got together and it was like instant. Oh my gosh, we can take over

• 26:07Speaker 03

  the world, but we only had the ideas. We didn't actually know how to do this stuff. So that's where Steve had to come in.

• 26:12Speaker 01

  Yeah. When I met Joe, I had been using sauna for several years now and your buddy, Joe Rogan, podcast 2017, 2018, I heard all these health benefits of sauna. So I was like, oh, I gotta start using one. So I did. And yeah, I love it. It was life changing, right? And so then we moved up to Idaho from, we were living in Oceanside was the last place my wife and I lived with the three kids. But, um, I, I was tired of being stuck in traffic all the time because I was right still running the paint company, paint bids all the time. And I was just stuck in traffic all the time and told my wife, I was like, we're going back to Montana. So I took her on the tour, the tour of Montana, all the places I thought she might want to live. And she was like, eh, eh, eh. Well, we had

• 26:57Speaker 01

  a couple of friends who had moved over to Coeur d'Alene a few years earlier. So she was like, let's go visit them in Coeur d'Alene, Idaho. And so I was like, let's go. So we went over there and, uh, we got there and after two days she was like, I would move here. And, uh, you know, I, Because I grew up in Montana, that was kind of, I had blinders on for going back to Montana, but I was like, quarterly in Idaho, I'd move here too. So 30 days later, I had a, a house accepted offer. And I told her, I was like, hey, 30 days of U-Haul is leaving. Hope you're, hope you're in it because we're going. And a lot of that driving factor for me was elk. Like I, I wanted to be close to where I could elk on every fall.

• 27:37Speaker 01

  Without having to travel, you know, so far from San Diego. And then, uh, and I, you know, having grown up in Montana, San Diego was amazing place to live for the whole journey I did, but I was just kinda, it had run its course for me. And I think I was kinda ready to go back home.

• 27:52Jocko Willink?

  And did you, did you have a business in mind when you moved up there?

• 27:55Speaker 01

  No, you know, that's crazy is I had hired a general manager, trained him for a year to run my painting company. And he was running it great. We had like 17 employees. Just, and, and I was, so I was getting a pretty handsome monthly paycheck doing nothing. And I told my wife, I probably shouldn't have said this. I was like, did I make it? Am I retired? Like, are we okay? Cause we're making good money.

• 28:20Speaker 01

  You know, so I called it my first retirement and then, and then COVID hit. And guess what's not essential in San Diego, California during COVID, painting people's houses is not essential. So within about, you know, it was about six to nine months before you could start going out and giving paint bids. Well, all our guys were gone by then. You didn't have employees left. Like there was, so it was basically done.

• 28:42Jocko Willink?

  So you just got annihilated by COVID.

• 28:44Speaker 01

  Just completely shut the business down. And so then I'm, now I'm in Idaho with no income. And all of a sudden, you know, and that's when Steve came up to visit. And we, we started a company up there called Bullet Painting. But I told him, I was like, hey, what it took me 10 years to do in San Diego, we can replicate in three months. Because now I know exactly what to do, what not to do, how to market this. So we, we launched a painting company and I mean, within weeks, we were selling contracts, getting guys, trying to get it going. We painted a few houses at first ourselves. And we just built a business kind of at scale very, very quickly. But became a name in that town really quickly with that business. And now we still, we still own that, but we hired a general manager to run the painting company. So that's still going, but uh,

• 29:29Jocko Willink?

  And so who is the, who, when did the sauna? Start.

• 29:33Speaker 01

  Twenty, I, I met Joe in 2019. Um, we started, I mean, within months, we were talking about what if we were to build a sauna studio where members would come and use our saunas and da, da, da, da. And, uh, and we were like, yeah, this is, it's a great idea. And we, we had the question though of is Coeur d'Alene population density big enough to actually support this? And, uh, so I always tell people, so we did exactly zero market research, drained our pockets of all the money we had and said, let's just do it.

• 30:04Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 30:05Speaker 01

  And, and that's, that's when, but we knew, like Joe and I are, we're kind of visionaries, we're forward thinking, we're both really good at sales and talking and blah, blah, blah. But we have no skills in building a website, in marketing, in all of the

• 30:18Speaker 03

  Holding tools?

• 30:19Speaker 01

  Holding tools. I have some tools. Just don't let me touch electric. But, uh, but I, I messed up one of our first builds really badly. I, I wired something wrong and everything went, I was like, ooh. And so now they won't let me touch.

• 30:33Jocko Willink?

  That was your last time doing that.

• 30:35Speaker 03

  Oh, yeah.

• 30:35Speaker 01

  He was teaching us a lesson. But John, well, I tell them, I was like, I'm probably the safest guy now. I'm never going to repeat that mistake again. I learned it once, but, uh, we brought Steve in who, you know, you see all of our marketing and our website and the beautiful photography and videography and all of that. That's him. Um, he's, he's the detail guy.

• 30:52Speaker 03

  So I'm, I'm backing it up though, you know, like, and again, uh, something that we saw that I don't think a lot of the, the sauna people, business people have seen is they're opening up these studios. So we talked about, hey, let's open up one of these sauna studios. I know the monthly fees, I already consulted several, you know, across the country on how to do it. So I already had it in the bag. I said, but let's make the sauna studio a showroom for custom saunas. So, and so let's make every sauna very different. Let's make it ourselves because I'm telling you guys, like, this is, uh, gonna be a showroom that members are gonna pay for, right? And it became exactly that.

• 31:30Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 31:30Speaker 03

  Uh, so the studio was running successfully and then, uh, really successfully, actually. Then we had our little suite upstairs in the dingle, the dingle dangle building. And then, uh, as soon as we launched that, you put together that landing page. I, I said, dude, once we put this landing page on, People from all over the country are gonna be contacting us. So we were, we called ourselves Northwest Custom Sauna, right? Was that it?

• 31:55Speaker 02

  There's a few of them, yeah.

• 31:56Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 31:56Speaker 02

  That was the, that was the original name. SaunaInstall.com.

• 31:59Speaker 03

  Yeah, something like that. And then we learned really quick, really quick that, you know, calls are coming in from all over the country. And as they'd speak to us, they realized, on the phone at least, you know, as we're consulting, both Sam and I, we were there to solve problems, problems that the sauna industry and, you know, that they weren't, they haven't been able to solve for the 50-year-old industry that the, you know, sauna is in the US. Like, so us being able to jump on the phone straight away, solve problems, do really cool innovative things.

• 32:28Jocko Willink?

  What was it, what's the biggest issue that Americans had compared to overseas?

• 32:32Speaker 03

  Yeah, so Americans are kind of locked into this, this box of, I don't know, rustic lumber, like grandma, grandpa dingy, this is kind of what a sauna's supposed to look like. And so, you know, being partnered with Steve and knowing that, I mean, Sam and I can, at this point visually, right, write any check we wanted and Steve would have to cash it. So we're just telling people like, go, like, what would you like a sauna to look like? So just the limitations in the US, it's like, it's all cedar, it's all this, and just kind of looks, I don't know, ugly.

• 33:03Speaker 02

  It's also hard to find, it's also hard to find someone that builds saunas, you know, like, in most towns, there's a guy, and there's a carpenter, there's this thing, and it's kind of word of mouth, they don't, they're not marketing and advertising out, or you kind of have your, like you said, the basic cedar boxes, you're going to Pool World and, you know, seeing whatever they can make for you. So elevating the sauna experience from the build side and design side is, we're kind of offering that to way more people and, you know, being, being visible.

• 33:30Speaker 03

  And making sure the materials that we're using, you know, are more sustainable, they're better, less maintenance, you know, things that we're thinking on, you know, how to make salt walls, because salt walls have been made, you know, before our, our time here, but they're always made with these ugly-looking little bricks. And so we said, hey, let's do bigger bricks, let's do white bricks, let's do, let's make it easy change out. Let's just elevate what the other guys are doing. And we started doing that. And, you know, the really cool thing is the organization that we've built. When you get on the phone with someone at Symmetry, you're guaranteed that you're talking to someone who is very convicted about health, meaning not only their words, but we're all in fantastic shape. There's nobody in our organization that you would not say is in really, really good shape, which is crazy.

• 34:15Jocko Willink?

  And would you guys say you were ahead of the power curve or ahead of the popularity of this resurgence of sauna that's come in the past? Like, how long has that resurgence been? Like, you talked about Rogan, talking about, obviously, Huberman talking about it. Like, people have been talking about it in the past. How long has that been? I can't remember. Like, was it, has that been like five years or something like that?

• 34:35Speaker 03

  Upward trend is probably seven. You know, it's at seven, eight years it started. And then, right when COVID hit, it really did take off. Yeah.

• 34:44Speaker 01

  Yeah, sometimes in success, timing has something to do with it.

• 34:49Jocko Willink?

  Oh, for sure.

• 34:49Speaker 01

  And the fact that-

• 34:51Jocko Willink?

  And then failure as well. I mean, like, when you have a painting business and COVID shuts down all your painting, that's gotta be a problem.

• 34:57Speaker 01

  But, yeah, the fact that we decided to join forces and do this thing at this time in history is fortuitous. It was very good timing to, and also, though, but, you know, and Joe, Joe having the most experience in the sauna industry overall, it was, it was like, when we build this thing, we don't want to do it like everyone else. There are all these other sauna companies out there who are doing plain Jane saunas. So, we have to, you know, we're going to present ourselves as very different, and we're going to build things that are very different from what anyone else is doing. And, you know, we found there's two or three other sauna companies in the US, four or five worldwide, that are

• 35:38Speaker 01

  kind of, I think, on par with what we're doing with, with the design, with, actually, we have, we have teams that are, are people that travel all over the US to the Bahamas, to the UK, installing saunas now. So, you know, we're, we are looking to go global with this thing.

• 35:55Speaker 03

  And it kind of fits the way we've built the business, right? Like, internally, you know, we, we've- I guess there's a brain trust that says, you know, do it this way and sauna. A lot of the, you know, I call them dinosaurs. You know, some of them are my friends. Sorry if you're listening to this, but you know who run other sauna companies? They're just dinosaurs, right? They're not, for some reason, they're just, it's not clicking. Uh, so for us, we've built, uh, not only, we, not only do we build saunas, like outside the box, right? But our organization, we've done kind of backward. Like, we're all big on the nepotism, friends and family first, right? Let's lift our people up first and let's build a powerhouse, you know, um, backward, right? But it, it's worked. It's gotten us to, you know, uh, heights that I don't think we even imagined we'd get to. So, you know, our saunas

• 36:38Speaker 03

  kind of fit our, uh, our demeanor. And these guys came up with the stupidest name. Uh, they wanted to call us, uh, the B-Bops, the bad boi, the bad boys of sauna. And I was like, dude, that's so lame.

• 36:51Speaker 01

  This is, uh, just as Joe's boy band sauna name that we rejected very early on. He also, he also did spike his hair for this podcast, just so everyone knows.

• 37:00Speaker 03

  I told you not to talk about hair. All right.

• 37:04Jocko Willink?

  What was the, where'd you guys come up with the name Symmetry? Where'd that come from?

• 37:09Speaker 03

  Hit that.

• 37:10Speaker 01

  Well, um, Wait a minute. Wait a minute.

• 37:13Speaker 03

  He didn't ask how much it cost.

• 37:14Speaker 01

  We, we, we brainstormed a bunch of ideas. Now I have to give credit to my oldest son, Justice, who just turned 13, because about two months before we chose the name Symmetry, at home at dinner one night, I was like, hey, everyone, write down 10 names that you think we should name this sauna company. Well, right there on Justice's list is Symmetry Sauna. Now that kind of got shuffled to the side and then we chose.

• 37:37Speaker 03

  That's a piece of history. That's right.

• 37:38Speaker 01

  Steve will fill in the rest, but, but when I announced the name Symmetry Sauna, Justice brings me his paper and he's like,

• 37:45Jocko Willink?

  He wants a cut.

• 37:46Speaker 03

  Pay me. That's like,

• 37:47Speaker 01

  I had to pay him $250 cash for the name and he was pretty happy.

• 37:52Jocko Willink?

  Were you called something before Symmetry?

• 37:54Speaker 03

  Yeah, we were, we were Northwest Custom Sauna and we were starting to build outside of the Northwest. And so people in San Diego are like, you guys actually do work down here. I was like, now's the time to change the name before we go any further. And so I've, you know, been being in, um, the creative industry and, and branding and design. I've got good friends and my buddy Sean Ritzenthaler, who designed all of our stuff. Um, we did a whole brand, you know, study with him. It is hilarious to, that we land on one that, that,

• 38:21Speaker 02

  Or thirteen year olds.

• 38:22Speaker 01

  Good instincts.

• 38:23Speaker 02

  Yeah, maybe Sean, maybe he was, you know, in contact with justice.

• 38:26Speaker 01

  They had their hoots behind the scenes.

• 38:28Speaker 02

  Um, you know, we wanted something that sort of spoke to, one, the beauty of it, like two, the, you know, I mean, obviously the, the body's symmetrical. Health and wellness is symmetrical, you know, and it's kind of,

• 38:40Speaker 02

  it, it's beyond just on itself, you know, obviously we do cold plunge. We do lots of things in the wellness space now. And so we just thought symmetry was beautiful and.

• 38:49Speaker 01

  And then you stuck with it.

• 38:50Speaker 02

  What we do, we stuck with it.

• 38:51Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 38:51Jocko Willink?

  So now, what was the, how'd you start getting traction out of the gate? Like this is a pretty, you know, how, how is somebody even in Idaho? When they want to build a sauna, how, how were they finding you? Was that via the website out of the gate?

• 39:04Speaker 02

  Yeah, and yeah, I mean, we.

• 39:05Speaker 03

  Talking about the landing page, I mean.

• 39:07Speaker 02

  Yeah, just a landing page.

• 39:08Speaker 03

  I told these guys, I said, dude, like, if we put up a landing page, we're going to start getting calls from all over the country. I don't know if they didn't believe me, but he put up a quick landing page and almost.

• 39:17Speaker 02

  That was very ugly. Yeah, yeah. But, uh, but that just speaks to the need, you know? Like when we first started, uh, when we built our studio, it was sort of kind of before the wave. I think it's just from a marketing standpoint, people weren't finding a sauna, looking for a sauna place. Right? The whole, the phenomenon of sauna studios is, is pretty new. We're early in that so that when people were coming to town, they weren't searching for sauna place. So we had to have a big sauna, you know, on the window and, and do all kinds of social media marketing. And, you know.

• 39:44Speaker 01

  I, I, I remember when he, he put out the splash page Northwest Custom Sauna. I was on a call with a guy from Scottsdale, Arizona. And he was a business guy and he was like, so do you guys only work in the Northwest? And I go, where are you, sir? Scottsdale. I go, well, that's Northwest of somewhere, correct? And I was like, so we'll certainly come down and build your sauna too. But he said, you know, how long you guys been around? I was, uh, about a year. He's like, if you were ever going to rebrand, because it might be a good time if you're going to expand, you know, through the whole US. And I was like, yeah, we're, we've been thinking about that. So he planted that seed again. I can't remember his name, but, uh.

• 40:21Speaker 03

  Shots out.

• 40:22Speaker 01

  Yeah, shout out, shout out to that guy from Scottsdale. But yeah, once we, and here's the other thing, I, when we finally got the website done and it was launch day for, for Symmetry Sauna. I remember we're in this tiny office, Joe, Steve, myself and your son Eli.

• 40:38Speaker 03

  Eli.

• 40:39Speaker 01

  And they launched the page. And so, you know, we're just basically staring at each other. And it was within a couple hours, ding ding, a lead comes in. I was like, whoa. And then it has never stopped since.

• 40:52Speaker 03

  Or slowed down.

• 40:53Speaker 01

  I, I bet now we average about thirty really good qualified leads a day. And so we've got ten, ten sauna consultants on the phones banging our video calls all day, every day. It's wild. It's kind of like, you know, we took a tiger by the tail and we're just hanging on sometimes and uh, and not, not letting the ball drop.

• 41:12Speaker 03

  We've taken a lot of missteps. I mean, you kind of mentioned it before, you know, when we opened up, uh, what was called Heat Praxia. It was, uh, now Symmetry Sauna Studio, but it was Heat Praxia was our studio, this, this member paid showroom. I remember, uh, it was during COVID that we, you know, started building our prices, uh, the prices on everything we were going to purchase went up like, I don't know, sixty-five percent. Sam and I are funding this thing out of our pocket.

• 41:37Speaker 01

  Hey.

• 41:37Speaker 03

  And Steve's funding it with his sweat equity. He's building all this stuff, right? We're just shelling out the money.

• 41:41Speaker 01

  At least seventeen dollars I put into this thing.

• 41:43Speaker 03

  That is true.

• 41:44Speaker 01

  That's all I had though.

• 41:45Speaker 03

  That's all he had. And, uh, so we, we get done with this thing. We're way, way over budget. We're just like, all right, we're ready. And we unveil it. We take off the window wrapping and we're, we're standing on the outside looking at it and I'm like, it says Heat Praxia. And I'm like, oh my God, we didn't do any marketing. How do people know this isn't like a heat and air conditioning company? So people are just, it's on Boulevard, right? People are just walking by like, they have no idea. So.

• 42:08Speaker 01

  What is this?

• 42:09Speaker 03

  Uh, yeah. Steve jumped on it pretty quick, but that was a big misstep and you know, you get to learn from these things. None of us have.

• 42:13Jocko Willink?

  Praxia mean?

• 42:15Speaker 03

  What's?

• 42:15Speaker 01

  Well, you know. The, the practice of heat is literally what it means. It was a made up word.

• 42:20Speaker 03

  We thought it'd be fun to have a, a unique word.

• 42:22Speaker 01

  It's done.

• 42:23Speaker 03

  It was pretty cool. People loved it. People started pronouncing it wrong, not knowing what it meant.

• 42:27Jocko Willink?

  Did you, how long did it take you to decide to change that?

• 42:30Speaker 03

  We did that after, uh, probably just last year, actually.

• 42:33Jocko Willink?

  That was recent. And did you get membership in there out of the gate? Did people start coming in?

• 42:37Speaker 03

  We did. It was slow. It was slow because we were, we're right on this beautiful little downtown street in, in, in Coeur d'Alene and people are looking for bars or, you know, tourist stuff and, um, souvenirs. Uh, so they're not really in the, I'm going to go get sweaty vibe. But still we built up a really, really amazing little, uh, community. And then our, our tragedy was, uh, one of the weeks that it was minus fifteen, the, the pipes above us in the building burst and flooded our whole.

• 43:03Speaker 01

  Total loss.

• 43:04Speaker 03

  We're about fourteen, fourteen hundred square feet.

• 43:06Speaker 01

  Yeah, tiny little place.

• 43:07Speaker 03

  But it.

• 43:08Jocko Willink?

  Did you have insurance for it?

• 43:09Speaker 03

  Oh, well, I didn't talk about that one, Steve.

• 43:11Speaker 01

  Some, I'll just say that, there was some, well, not enough, but. By, by all, by all first glances, we were completely covered. And then on page one hundred and seventy-eight, section two dash one A. If a water pipe.

• 43:25Speaker 03

  Frozen.

• 43:25Speaker 01

  Breaks because of low temperatures, frozen pipe, you're not covered.

• 43:29Speaker 03

  You get, you get, you get sixty-two hundred dollars.

• 43:32Speaker 01

  We, we didn't know that clause was in there.

• 43:34Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 43:34Speaker 01

  So we got hosed.

• 43:36Jocko Willink?

  Like I mentioned in the beginning of this, you know, we had a fire here that was due to electrical in the sauna. And thankfully, we, we had like full insurance and that's how we were able to rebuild. And I mean, it's a, it's a massive, um, massive bill to rebuild this place. Without insurance, we would have definitely. But we would.

• 43:56Speaker 01

  Well, we were more or less without insurance, but we chose to do it anyway. So we found a new location, we have about thirty-eight hundred square feet now, and we completely rebuilt. And it's been really amazing.

• 44:06Speaker 03

  We were faced with a decision and that, you know, we, uh, cause symmetry sauna manufacturing and symmetry build has taken off all over the country, become this, you know, juggernaut. And now we have this little studio and we're just like, why are we going to redo this again? And but the thing is, you know, we made a, a promise, number one, we made a promise to our general manager, Heather, guy who goes shout out. Uh, that, you know, as we poached her from her whole company, we said, hey, we're going to take you as far as we can take you. And, you know, and you play it right, you know, you could be an owner with us someday. And we just weren't BSing. Uh, so as we flooded out, we were out several hundred thousand dollars, you know, out of pocket. Uh, we're sitting there, symmetry, you know, sauna manufacturing is taking off.

• 44:51Speaker 03

  It's like, why are we going to do this again? And then Heather came to us and she's like, hey, there's a bunch of members who are leaving their auto payments on for us to rebuild. Like, oh my God, you know, and so we're sitting there, we're like, dude, this, this isn't the, the cow, you know, that, uh, that, uh, manufacturing is. But a lot of people started crying out, you know, how, uh, the studios changed their lives, helped them, you know, um, stop drinking, stop smoking, blood pressure. All these benefits, benefits that, uh, they were experiencing because of what we had exclusively in downtown Coeur d'Alene. So kind of like the adoption thing, right? We looked at each other like, well, we don't have the funds to really do it. Why should we do it?

• 45:32Speaker 03

  Okay, let's do it. And we did it and we made actual Heather, you know, we made her, we kept to our word and you know, we took her from just an employee to she's now an equal partner with us in the studio, you know, lifting her as high as we could get her. So, and this, this is now, um, yeah, it's our pet project, you know, the studio.

• 45:52Speaker 01

  She just texted us yesterday in a big publication in Coeur d'Alene, Idaho, that Symmetry Sauna Studio voted best business in Coeur d'Alene for that year, which was, dang, that's pretty solid. And you know, it is cool now too. There's a sort of a generational shift happening with a lot of these young people in their twenties. They're kind of entrepreneur minded. They're really into health and fitness and they're not going to the bars and drinking. They're coming to our studio.

• 46:19Jocko Willink?

  I forget the number. I just read it two days ago, but people are like the younger, younger generation, they're not drinking.

• 46:26Speaker 01

  Nope. They're taking care of themselves. It's awesome.

• 46:28Jocko Willink?

  Health and fitness. They're like, like I was talking about my family, you know, my kids are in their twenties and they're on a Friday. What are they doing? Oh, sauna and ice bath and working out and going to jujitsu. Like that's kind of, that's kind of the, the new deal. And so I, I'm really glad. I mean, I never would have gone into the alcohol business, but the alcohol business is, I know people in the alcohol business. It's a rough business right now. It's a rough business because the younger generation, they're just not drinking as much as the older generation did. So that's, that's pretty cool. And, and not surprising. I mean, as you learn, as people learn, have learned so much more about what alcohol does to your system and you know, not to mention all

• 47:09Jocko Willink?

  the other drugs. I mean, it's, it's like horrific to think about, you know, what, what your kids went through, being born addicted to meth. Like how addictive has something got to be that you'll jeopardize your child, your unborn child's life? Like, can you imagine how just, uh, demonically?

• 47:29Speaker 03

  Field.

• 47:30Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, that's just, just is insane to think about that. And that's, I was going to say this when you were talking about that, um, cause you talked about they are kind of predisposed to be addicted. And that's one thing that I've told many people, but especially young people. Look, there's eight out of 10 people, they can drink alcohol perfectly fine and be social and carry on. And it'll never be a problem for them.

• 47:52Speaker 01

  Right.

• 47:53Jocko Willink?

  And there's two people out of that 10 that it's going to negatively impact them. One of those two is going to wreck their life. And I'm like, and you don't really know where you are. So what, you know, why you want to risk?

• 48:05Speaker 01

  Take the chance.

• 48:05Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, why take the chance? Well, look, uh, can it be fun for a young person to go out drinking at night or whatever? They have a good time? Sure, but they could also have a good time if they didn't do that. They have a good time doing a million other things. And there's no risk of ruining and destroying your life. And by the way, when you destroy your own life from alcohol, you pretty much destroy

• 48:22Speaker 01

  Everyone.

• 48:22Jocko Willink?

  Everyone around you as well. So, uh, I'm a huge supporter of sauna.

• 48:27Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 48:27Jocko Willink?

  In the replacement of that. So when someone calls up you guys, what's the, you know, they, they call up and say, hey, I'm building a house or I got this space in my house. Here's what I need. Here's what I want. And then you guys go through the design process. How's that work?

• 48:40Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, they'll, they'll call up, you know, it, it depends how far along they already are. But let's say they have a floor plan from their architect. Yeah, sauna is already drawn in. It's a seven by seven. And so we have a whole, you know, design book and all of that, that we can book a call with them on video. Go through all the different lumbers we could put in there. Do you want salt walls? Do you want this? All these different benching profiles we can do. And people basically get to pick and design their own sauna to the aesthetics that they love. Um, and then we'll do some professional drawings and those over, get them a quote. If it goes to that next phase, then they're going to pay us and we're going to get that sauna into production. Once it gets into production, we prefabricate everything up in Idaho.

• 49:24Speaker 01

  We're going to box it in these gigantic crates that are going to be trucked to their home. Once it's delivered, about five days later, our build team will fly out, boots on the ground. And then we'll install that thing and, and go through safety checks and do all that.

• 49:38Speaker 03

  It used to be, it used to be a majority of homes. Now we're about 50 50 commercial. We do a ton of commercial and that's actually, uh, growing even more. The cool thing is, you know, uh, considering we have a studio, I can't tell you how many, uh, competing studios we've actually built out, right? It's with our stuff. But you know, there's plenty of meat on the bone, plenty of people who need to get healthy and, and places all over the country that we probably can't touch. So, you know, yeah, we're, we're more than happy to support, uh, these commercial places that just have a dream and. You know, there's even been points where we've consulted, you know, some of these spaces for studios. Yeah, come on, fly down and we'll teach you the ABCs of how to build a successful sauna studio.

• 50:19Speaker 03

  So I think that's the cool thing about us. We're not just trying to hoard it all and being the guys on top peeing on everyone else. We're, we want everybody to rise together.

• 50:28Speaker 01

  Yeah. And in, in the US market, they say, they think the saturation rate of saunas per house is point six of one percent. So whereas in Finland, it's just about 100%, right? So there, there's more saunas than people in Finland. So in the US, even though it feels like we're in this parabolic rise, we are at the very, very beginning of a very big thing. That's, that's coming in the next 10 to 15 years.

• 50:55Jocko Willink?

  Uh, saunas are expensive. They're more expensive than I think people expect them to be. Cause when you look at it from the outside, you go, it's a box with a heater in it, right?

• 51:03Speaker 01

  Right.

• 51:03Jocko Willink?

  And, but then when you recognize the fact that you gotta put special materials in there, you can't use certain materials. You can't have glues. You can't have certain, uh, like treatments on the wood. Like there's a whole bunch of things that fall into place and they end up, I was trying to think of a good way to say this. They're about as expensive as a car.

• 51:20Speaker 01

  There you go.

• 51:21Jocko Willink?

  And guess what? Can you get a car for five grand? Yes, you can. And you know, that car is going to be a $5,000 car. Can you get a car for a hundred thousand dollars? Yes, you can. Is that going to be a really nice car? Yes, it is. And saunas are kind of that way. You can spend anywhere from five grand or all the way up to 150 grand to, yeah, and higher. Uh, you can, you know, you can spend, I mean, it's, it's a, it's a small room with very, uh, particular materials in it. And then it's gotta be designed a certain way. So yeah, they're, they can be very, very expensive. But, and that's what you guys can do, any kind of anything in that spectrum.

• 52:01Jocko Willink?

  But you know, I'm just saying this, if somebody calls up and they think they're going to spend 3,200 bucks on a custom sauna. It ain't happening. Like they're, they're, they're definitely more expensive than I think people are used to. Uh, or people expect them to be, especially because you can see, you know, you can go online and there's some, there's some, you know, uh, sauna in a box. That's

• 52:19Speaker 03

  Nine hundred dollars.

• 52:20Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, for, for, for cheaper. And there's some, I think there's, I haven't tried one of these, but there's some of these saunas now that are kind of like portable saunas. Like they're like, if you're a fighter, yeah, you put on a sauna blanket, your hotel room or something like that. So I guess those are options too, but, um, So that's the process that you guys go through and do your people go and install them?

• 52:40Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 52:40Jocko Willink?

  And build them out?

• 52:41Speaker 01

  Now, not on everyone. Sometimes people have a GC who is experienced in sauna building and they want him to do it. And then we're going to get him full elevations and shop drawings to help him have an easier install. But we're finding that, I don't know, 65% of our custom saunas, they prefer to hire symmetry to come out. It goes, and honestly, our cost to do that, I find is about the same as what their GC was going to do it for anyway. And then I'm like, we're going to do it three days faster than him. This is all we do. We don't touch, we don't build anything else anymore. Saunas, saunas, saunas. So, you know, like, like you guys in the Navy SEALs, specialists, right? We are specialists in this thing. So it seems to go better when we do it.

• 53:23Speaker 03

  Yeah, I like the, yeah, the analogy you use there, you know, it's usually when the, when you buy the $5,000 car, right? Your goal is to get to the $100,000 car at some point. So for us, you know, we get calls all the time of, hey, I bought this sauna and it's not, I'm not sweating in it anymore. Right? I'm like, oh, well, what's, what's the temp you're using it? Well, it only goes to 130 degrees. Ah, right? So Sammy's turned me on to this point of, you know, buy once, cry once, right? And what we're trying to do when people call in is we're trying to, you know, walk them through their needs. Like, we don't want them to design and build something so big that, you know, three weeks later, they're like, crap. Right? Like, I shouldn't have got it so big, or I shouldn't have got it so small, right?

• 54:05Speaker 03

  So we're really trying to curtail our conversation and what we're trying to get to, you know, or what they need, right? What's the best value for you? We're never going to overcharge, for sure. We're going to give you value for value. But yeah, I, I think buy once, cry once. A lot of the stuff people buy, they'll end up, you know, we have tons and tons of people who have either infrared saunas or barrels who are calling us like, yeah, I don't like this anymore. And what they've acclimated, right? They, they can only get so hot in some of these saunas. So for us, we're, we're really focused on the, you know, the overall heat impact percentage, you know, the hips that they're able to feel and, and we make sure we build it right. So, yeah, so we're going to be priced higher for sure, but we're only going to do it once.

• 54:51Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 54:51Jocko Willink?

  At what point did you guys know you? Like had a winner, like basically at what point did you guys realize you had a winner of a business or what? Who, who called or, or what business or what, what came through where you were like, oh, this is, this is happening.

• 55:06Speaker 02

  I'll say, I'll say we were finally able to pay ourselves. That was, that was the moment. There's many, many years. Oh, shoot. Uh, we realized, we realized pretty quickly from, uh, the studio that we weren't going to be able to get a paycheck from this little tiny fourteen hundred square foot. Studio. So it was a year and a half, two years.

• 55:23Jocko Willink?

  Population of Coeur d'Alene?

• 55:25Speaker 02

  Fifty, sixty thousand.

• 55:26Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. So even the best business in Coeur d'Alene with sixty thousand people.

• 55:31Speaker 03

  One of the, yeah, one of the cool, one of the cool things about how we started, right? So I gotta bring up Josh and Shelley. So again, we're doing it backward, right? From how most businesses say to, you know, stay away from friends and family in business. And we're like, dude, all we have are friends and family at this point. And so we were just, uh, we had studio run in, we were just launching, um, uh, the custom, you know, custom sauna manufacturing. And we're drowning already. So two people from our home group. So we weren't getting paid, like none of us were getting paid. We're just, you know, working as hard as humanly possible. So several months we're going through it. And, um, a couple, husband and wife from our church, you know, our little church group said, hey, we want to come and help you guys out. We'll just volunteer a little time every week and, uh, you know, we'll see where it goes.

• 56:14Speaker 03

  Something and oh, cool. They seem smart. You know, we never worked with them in a business capacity. They're just like church people. They show up, uh, with their little briefcases, husband and wife on a, on a Monday. They stay there for eight hours. It's like, wow, dude, they did a lot of work today.

• 56:27Jocko Willink?

  Doing what? Answering the phone?

• 56:28Speaker 03

  Just typing stuff, answering phone, buying stuff.

• 56:30Speaker 02

  We weren't sure.

• 56:31Speaker 03

  We, we weren't sure.

• 56:32Speaker 02

  But it looked impressive.

• 56:33Speaker 03

  And they looked busy.

• 56:33Speaker 02

  They, they were really doing anything.

• 56:36Jocko Willink?

  So you guys have your business?

• 56:37Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 56:38Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 56:38Jocko Willink?

  It's, and how many employees do you have at this point?

• 56:40Speaker 03

  Well, at this point it's just, uh, four of us.

• 56:42Jocko Willink?

  Okay.

• 56:43Speaker 03

  So.

• 56:43Jocko Willink?

  And some friends of yours.

• 56:45Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 56:45Jocko Willink?

  From church.

• 56:46Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 56:46Jocko Willink?

  Said, hey, can we just come in and work for free?

• 56:49Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 56:50Jocko Willink?

  At your business?

• 56:51Speaker 03

  They came in on a Monday for eight hours. Then they showed up the next day for eight hours. Then they showed up the next day. For six months. So Josh and Shelley Watkins, huge shout out. We wouldn't be here without you guys. For six months. They worked for, uh, Symmetry with zero paycheck, grinding with us.

• 57:10Jocko Willink?

  How are they feeding their family or whatever?

• 57:12Speaker 01

  They had another contract, they had a long-term contract doing

• 57:17Speaker 03

  Marketing and stuff.

• 57:18Speaker 01

  Marketing and computer work for a company who would, when that company had something for them to do, they were like on retainer, they would send it their way and they're like, they haven't sent us anything for six months. We have time on our hands. We want to come and help you guys out. And you know, turns out Shelley now runs our entire procurement.

• 57:36Jocko Willink?

  It must have been a government contract.

• 57:40Speaker 01

  Right. She, she orders all the lumber, the heaters that, I mean, she orders all materials for our fabrication team. And then Josh is, he's a savant in building systems. He's now our chief of operations. Like he built all the systems of how does a sauna sale communicate through the company to where it finally ends up to where it's supposed to be? With the right people on the ground and he's built automated all of these systems and now he's using some AI to help automate things even better. The guy's a genius.

• 58:09Speaker 03

  Little did we know, right? When we, when they were coming volunteering, like we're just like, okay, we didn't know their background. We just figured they know how to use a laptop, right? But yeah, Shelley was a procurement specialist who worked in tech. Josh is, yeah, this savant and, and, and now he's like into the AI with Eli and they're building our infrastructure. That's why we're able to go into other verticals now, right? We have other businesses because we have the power team. We literally have the group of people we could, if we wanted to uplift and place in any industry and be awesome. Like there's zero doubt about it in my mind, but just the, the fate, right? To get them volunteering their time for six months, then we started giving them a paycheck. So, and now they are, they are intricate, very important piece to the, the symmetry puzzle that we've laid out.

• 58:54Jocko Willink?

  Awesome. So how long did it take before you guys cut yourself a paycheck?

• 58:57Speaker 01

  I think it was about two years. I mean, I mean, there was a couple, it was a little hand to mouth there. Like, you know, I was at the, for the first couple of years, it was me designing and building the saunas, like, and I'd bring help, you know, but it was like, okay, we can take a thousand dollars each from this one. During that time, I was still running, painting full-time and you know, and so Steve.

• 59:20Speaker 01

  And I were owners of that, but any profits we made off that we would just roll over here. So we could get a couple thousand dollars. And then when I, when we finally got our general manager, Adam to run bullet painting. Then I came in full time, right at the time we launched the symmetry sauna website. And I, I was getting paid a whopping $4,000 a month to take care of my family in Coeur d'Alene. Until, until we just started making sales, which happened quickly. I mean, within the first month, it was like ding ding sauna sold ding ding sauna sold.

• 59:48Speaker 03

  Well, that's a stomach you have, that's a stomach you have to have, man. I mean, you've got to, you know, everybody says, uh, you know, they want to, they want to hit it big. They want to test 1% is going to get there, but are, are you going to go through the grind of what it takes? When, yeah, your wife's like looking at you like, we have $0 in the bank. Why is, you know, my, again, we're, we're, we have a lot of friends and family. So we're big into the nepotism, uh, and our, you know, my little brother I had, I hired, you know, be a sales guy. He was getting, you know, my brother Dan, he was getting more paid more money than me. So my wife, yeah, middle of the night, she's like, how's your brother making more than you? You're the CEO and I'm just like, hey, this is what it takes, right? And so it's a sacrifice. So before you want to go jump in and, and, you know, run, run your mouth about how you want to, you know,

• 1:00:32Speaker 03

  be this big shot, man, you better be ready to pay the price because it is a heavy, heavy price.

• 1:00:37Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, no, they're, you're the one that's getting the call when something goes wrong. By the way, what do you guys do about that? You know, sauna setup somewhere, you know, something stops working, something breaks. What's your, what's your protocol on that?

• 1:00:49Speaker 03

  Right. So we've actually built, uh, so we have symmetry sauna manufacturing. We have symmetry studio, uh, and we have a separate company now, a symmetry build, right? And so, uh, Tony and Vera, they run that entire division, uh, and they're so awesome. They run that entire division. So we go out, we send our team out. If anything goes wrong, uh, you know, we're on the phone, we're helping sometimes. And if necessary, we're hopping on the plane, yeah. Right. And, and even though it dips into our margins or even though we go on the red, right? On some projects, we committed to do something and to do it right. So we're going to see it through. So yeah, Tony, uh, him and Vera are running that entire division. We have several teams that fly out of Coeur d'Alene. We have teams in Florida. We have, so we have people all over that this is what they do full time.

• 1:01:35Speaker 03

  In our queue right now, just, I don't know if it's for the next month. We have like 70, 80, 90 builds like that are, that we got to go fulfill. Again, we're writing, uh, Sam and I are writing all these checks and luckily we have the people. Surrounding us who can cash them.

• 1:01:49Speaker 01

  But you know, now, now we have, you know, full time customer service person. We've got the build team that could travel. But early on, we did a, we did a beautiful outdoor sauna for a guy in Encinitas. And, you know, our team built it. Couple of weeks later, I get a call from him like, hey, the sauna's not heating up. I don't know what's wrong. So Steve and I, next morning, we're on an airplane to San Diego. We come down. It took Steve five minutes. He's like, the electrician didn't tighten the wire, tighten up. So we did that. Everything was fired up. We got to jump in the ocean, two hour surf session, back on a plane that night, back to, uh, back to Coeur d'Alene. So that, that was kind of the commitment we had early on was like, it doesn't, we're not dropping a ball on anyone ever, whatever we gotta do. So we would hop on planes

• 1:02:32Speaker 01

  and be in the middle of nowhere, doing a five minute fix.

• 1:02:36Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 1:02:36Speaker 01

  You know, that was costly, but at the same time, you get.

• 1:02:39Jocko Willink?

  It pays so many dividends on your reputation. Cause if, you know, everyone hears this, you know, I have a bad experience with symmetry. I call my friends, don't use them. They suck.

• 1:02:49Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:02:49Jocko Willink?

  You know, that, that is so much worse. But when you take care of someone, man, that's so beneficial because they spread that word too. Like, oh, you should do a hundred percent, go with these guys. I had this issue. They flew down there, fixed it, you know, all good. That's what you gotta do. That's, that's how you maintain the reputation of the business and.

• 1:03:05Speaker 03

  On the, on, yeah, on the thought of when I feel like I felt, you know, we, we made it or we got something big on our hands. Yeah. I don't think it was when we started getting paid. I think it's when I'm sitting there, myself, writing a six million dollar, six million dollar contract, you know, like, plain attorney. Cause I'm still, at that point, I don't think we could afford an attorney. Uh, I'm just like, oh my God, this contract looks good. And we get, and then, you know, it comes back and it's signed. I'm like, this is like a six and a half million dollar single contract. And, uh, we're doing it. Like we're playing attorneys, we're playing sauna builders, we're doing it all.

• 1:03:38Jocko Willink?

  Was that for one sauna?

• 1:03:40Speaker 03

  It was, no, no, no. It was for.

• 1:03:41Speaker 01

  Big, big sauna.

• 1:03:42Jocko Willink?

  I was gonna say.

• 1:03:43Speaker 01

  To be a world record sauna.

• 1:03:44Speaker 03

  Yeah. No, it was for a franchise, you know, studio location. We're just, you know, we're contracted to make several hundred saunas. Uh, but man, that's when I, when we were writing out that contract. And, uh, then I was like, okay, these bigger contracts, you know, we're going to be able to get, and we've. Been able to secure some crazy relationships. And again, I don't know what's attracting it or to us. Right? I just know like our partnership is probably something that it is a bit magnetic, you know, we're all characters and funny, but we're all very honest, right? And straight out as they like to call us, the bad boys of sauna. So we're just gonna tell you the truth regardless, you know, and so we, I think that's when I realized like, yeah, that big contract, that first one was like,

• 1:04:29Speaker 03

  okay, we're, we're, we're in this thing.

• 1:04:31Speaker 01

  And I had a, this year, a moment where I was like, have we made it? Because I get a, I get an email and the name is Laura Trump. And I'm like, nah, that's not, it's someone with the same name. How crazy. So I emailed back, hey, you want to book a video call over this and we can help design your sauna? Sure enough, get on the call. It's Laura Trump. And I'm like, okay, I was like, first of all, I thought you would have an assistant doing this stuff for you. She's like, no, I like to be involved in it. And, uh, and I was like, how, how'd you find us? Did someone tell you about us? She was like, just looking at custom saunas, found your website. Clearly you guys are the ones who are doing this the right way. I was like, well, hold on before you go there, like, let us do it for you and then tell the world that we're doing it right.

• 1:05:15Speaker 01

  But yeah, so she, uh, we, we have a sauna in fabrication for Laura Trump. And then they want us to do the Trump winery after that to redo the saunas there. So it would, you know, that when moments like that hit, you're just kind of like imposter syndrome, right? Like

• 1:05:31Speaker 03

  Jocko, how'd you find us?

• 1:05:32Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:05:35Speaker 01

  That's a good question.

• 1:05:35Jocko Willink?

  Nikki found, Nikki found you guys. So Nikki, who is doing the rebuild here and you know, he's a, he's a, you know, one of our, one of our, one of part of our family at Victory and he was, you know, tasked with building the best sauna we could possibly build here. And so he, he came to me and told me about you guys. And that's kind of how it, how, how

• 1:05:55Speaker 03

  And you sent, you sent him up to Idaho. That was, right?

• 1:05:58Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, maybe.

• 1:06:00Speaker 01

  Let me tell the story from my perspective really quickly. Yeah, Nick called and I answered the phone up in Idaho. And he said, hey, we're, uh, we got a gym down here in San Diego and we want to put saunas in. And I was like, what kind of gym? He was like, oh, it's an MMA gym. And I said, that's, is that Jocko's gym? I said, I heard the place burned down from the sauna. Is that true? And he said, yeah, I'm Jocko's GC. And so, you know, we started talking and he sent me the dimensions and everything and we did this. I sent him a quote. Nick calls me back about a week later and he says, Jocko wants to know why the saunas are so expensive. And I said, I go, I go, Nick, Jocko owns Origin Clothing, right? And he goes, yeah. And I go,

• 1:06:43Speaker 01

  I want you to ask Jocko a question for me. Why is jeans so expensive? And he goes, well, they're made in the USA. I go, you know where our saunas are made? In the USA. And he goes, oh, Jocko's gonna like that. So that was kind of how it went. But, uh, yeah, and, uh, and here we are. So.

• 1:06:59Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. So what are the, uh, how many employees do you guys have right now?

• 1:07:03Speaker 03

  Close to forty.

• 1:07:04Speaker 01

  Yeah, thirty-five to forty, something like that.

• 1:07:07Jocko Willink?

  And then what's the, uh, what's the, what's the goal? Like, what's the next big thing that you guys are doing?

• 1:07:13Speaker 03

  Oh, who? Yeah, silence.

• 1:07:15Speaker 01

  Go ahead.

• 1:07:16Speaker 03

  Uh, yeah, so we've, we've moved in a few different verticals. I think we are, we're going into more the spa, you know, I, I think that's where it's taken us, the overall spa, some not just limited to sauna, you know, the different modalities, um, we're, we're launching a cold tub, uh, very custom, you know, to match, let's say you get an outdoor sauna and you had it built, you know, a certain way, uh, we can custom build the cold tub to match exactly that aesthetically. Uh, so we're in that game now. We've been, you know, we've been building our own cold tubs. We did in studio. So we feel like we have a decent handle on, on that. Uh, then we're getting into, what do you call it? The IV.

• 1:07:57Speaker 01

  IV wellness, yeah.

• 1:07:58Speaker 03

  IV wellness.

• 1:07:59Speaker 01

  Dr. Luke and Nick and.

• 1:08:01Jocko Willink?

  Right on.

• 1:08:01Speaker 01

  And maybe Jocko too.

• 1:08:05Jocko Willink?

  Right on. And if you guys look back, you know, you, here you are, you, you know, you may not have made it to where you want to make it to, but you certainly are on step. You're all getting paychecks, right?

• 1:08:17Speaker 01

  Hey.

• 1:08:17Jocko Willink?

  You know, that's, that's a positive thing. When you look back, like, what are the, what are the big lessons? Oh, let's go through each of you. Like, what, what's the big lessons learned? That you, if you were doing this again, or you were gonna tell someone that's out there, look, everyone's, you know, out there trying to struggle, trying to make things happen. You want to take away or give somebody one piece of advice that would really have been helpful to you? What, what do you got?

• 1:08:39Speaker 01

  I'll go first and we, we had a few, I'll say business advisors or people kind of speaking in our ear telling us, slow down, slow down. You guys are going to make mistakes. You can't grow this fast. You can't expand this fast. And then, you know, Joe and I would look at each other and we'd say, let's press the gas pedal harder. Cause there, we, we knew that we're not slowing down. We are here, you know, as Conor McGregor said, we're not here to take part. We're here to take over. And it, it's just the way we roll, like big vision and we're gonna go a hundred miles an hour and we're gonna find the people and we're gonna train them and we're gonna build the systems and we're gonna do the thing. And then if I have to be on a plane late at night

• 1:09:22Speaker 01

  to go somewhere and fix something, then I'm gonna be the guy that does that. But we're just, we, we don't roll slow and we just saw the potential of what this can be. And so some, some, you know, classical business advice is, you know, build super slow. Do, we had one guy say, let's just do three saunas a month and we'll do those three perfectly. Best advice. And you know, and I was like, there's some of us who have to get a paycheck at some point. And I was like, we could do 30 saunas this month. Why would we not do that? And then just work 24 hours a day to make sure it goes well. And so, you know, so we just, and, and the other thing that I would do. You're gonna steal my thunder. I know it. A hundred times over is everyone always says, do not go into business with your friends

• 1:10:07Speaker 01

  or family. Right? And, and I always say, no, no, no. Know who your friends are. And because at the end of the day, yeah, making money is great because you need it to live, but none, the motivation isn't money. And I know these guys so well, and we've all been dirt broke and completely happy before. And I was like, if I'm broke again, that's fine. Cause it's not gonna change who I am and it's not gonna change Joe. It's not gonna change Steve. So, but being in business with these guys, and there were times in the last couple of years where we had almost no thousands in the bank and we're just looking at each other like, this could be it. Like, are we gonna make payroll this month? And, and we were always just like, high five. If, if it all fails, it's been a hell of a ride. It's been a blast.

• 1:10:50Speaker 01

  It's been amazing. And we'll go, uh, we'll go to the local burger joint and just take that place over. So, just, just resiliency.

• 1:10:57Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. One, one point I, I give people is. You know, you need to listen to the demand signal. And sometimes people falsify the demand signal in their own head, right? They, no, of course, everybody wants a, you know, Bulgarian waffles. You know, and you're like, no one's ever heard of Bulgarian waffles. Nobody wants them. I just made them up my head, whatever. So one thing that's important is like, as you, you get demand signal for 30 saunas. There's no, like you said, like,

• 1:11:25Speaker 01

  Find a way.

• 1:11:25Jocko Willink?

  Like, okay, if you only have demand signal for three and you build 30, guess what? You're going out of business.

• 1:11:31Speaker 01

  You're right.

• 1:11:32Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. So you need to pay attention to that demand signal, but if the demand signal is there, you know, do everything you can to fulfill it and, and grow based on demand signal. Don't grow based on your fantasies. I'm not, you gotta have a vision, right? But there's a difference between a vision and a fantasy. And sometimes people's fantasy is not matching reality. So, uh, check that demand signal, but if it's there, go get it.

• 1:11:57Speaker 01

  Right on.

• 1:11:58Jocko Willink?

  What do you got, Joe?

• 1:11:59Speaker 03

  Yeah. So I, Sam stole a little bit of my thunder, but,

• 1:12:02Jocko Willink?

  Sorry, Joe.

• 1:12:02Speaker 03

  And it's okay. I was reflecting, uh, not too long ago, maybe a month ago. And I did share with these guys, I, I brought up that exact fact, right? I said, Hey, man, when the sauna studio, um, when the heat praxia, the water pipe broke and we, the insurance didn't cover it and we're out several hundred thousand dollars. We could have easily turned on each other, like you didn't, what? Why didn't we? Uh, not once. Uh, same thing, you know, as we were building manufacturing and, and bank account goes way, way, way, way, way up. We're like, yeah, we did it. And then it goes way, way, way, way, way down. Like what's happening? Now, I called Sam into the office and Steve, I'm like, oh no, Sam. Only he was there. Steve was at studio working there.

• 1:12:47Speaker 03

  And I said, Hey Sammy, come here. Want to see something cool? He was like, yeah, check this out. And I pulled up my computer screen and it was not many thousands in there. And we had, you know, a huge nut to cover. We're halfway through the month and he just looks at me and I'm just like, oh, that's our bank account, huh? I'm like, yeah, pretty much all the money we have.

• 1:13:06Speaker 01

  We had, I'll, I'll share. We had, we had $10,000 in the bank account and we were about in two weeks, we were gonna have to pay out 300,000.

• 1:13:14Speaker 03

  Now, keep in mind, we are bootstrapped, right? Like we are, we are truly bootstrapped from the ground for every company we built. We had no money starting, like we had no loans. We got no, none of it. Like we did it out of belief and being too stubborn to take money from the outside saying, we're gonna do this. So. At that point, we wished we would have added money that we take it from the outside or go working capital. What is that? And so we're sitting there, but no blame game, no fingers. Why did we commit to that? Why did we spend on that? None of that. And it was, and we got through that, right? Sam did give a speech like, Hey, man, if this is it, it's been a hell of a ride. And we're gonna go flip burgers for a couple of months, then take over the burger stand.

• 1:13:50Speaker 01

  But I also said, I think we're gonna sell 700,000 worth of saunas in the next two weeks and collect all that money and we'll be fine. And we did.

• 1:13:58Jocko Willink?

  We did.

• 1:13:59Speaker 03

  It was wild. But you know, so the biggest takeaway that I have, if I could replay it or advise anybody is pick your partners wisely and make sure there's a synergy and something beyond X's and O's, something beyond money. Make sure there's a value drive, right? Like, we had brought on relationships, you know, who were in our ears and this is how to do it. This is how not to do it. But those guys were X's and O's guys, right? Those guys were how much money, how much cha-ching. And that was always for us, we're always, you know, value, you know, Sam, even though he loves to make money and be awesome and competitive, he's out in Mexico and building houses, you know, with his family, kids, and my wife and I, you

• 1:14:44Speaker 03

  know, we're very involved in our time with orphans and donate, right? And so it has to be people that align with your values. So get those people, make sure they are not risk adverse, right? Make sure that if you guys agree, right? Think long, think wrong, right? You agree, think it's a dope idea, go, right? Build the plane midair. Do not let the outside noise distract you because what's inside that visceral thing, when you connect it with guys who are the same spirit, like unstoppable, like, and it's not a dysphoria, like my body dysphoria, it truly is unstoppable. So.

• 1:15:18Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, that's a, you know, what you just described is, you know, clearly it's something that I believe in, the idea of ownership and taking ownership. And it's amazing how often. Two or three people or business partners make a decision and they make that decision together. And of course, when the decision goes well, sometimes they still stay together and you know, even when the decision goes well, someone's thinking, well, that was really my idea, right? You know, that, that does happen. But where you really see the fractures are when the decision that we made, we sat in a room, we all agreed on this thing. And you know what, Joe, you might've been the one that was like, like, no, no, I, I, this is what we should do.

• 1:16:00Jocko Willink?

  And maybe I was the one that kind of resisted, but at the end of the meeting, I said, you know what? Cool, we go. And it's amazing how that fractures when that, when the decision ends up being the bad decision. And now instead of me going, hey, all right, what are we going to do to fix it? Instead I say, well, that was your call, Joe.

• 1:16:17Speaker 02

  What are you gonna do?

• 1:16:17Jocko Willink?

  And, and when that, when that happens, when people aren't taking ownership within the ownership group, like together, unified. Cause look, man, like, you know, everyone's rolling the dice and no one knows what the future's gonna be. So it's really easy, really easy to, to, you know, that ownership group to start pointing fingers at each other. So it's, it's very nice to have you guys sitting here recognizing like, yeah, you know, it's kind of that thing. You know, you go, we go.

• 1:16:42Speaker 02

  And I can say, I was the guy in your story, sitting, arguing with my two guys about, we have to make this decision. And I was the advocate and they went with me on the decision.

• 1:16:51Jocko Willink?

  Which decision was this?

• 1:16:52Speaker 02

  A bad one, a bad decision.

• 1:16:54Jocko Willink?

  Our worst one.

• 1:16:55Speaker 02

  Then I, it was about a partner to partner with. And so the lesson there was don't make exceptions for personality for what you think they can do for you.

• 1:17:03Jocko Willink?

  Right.

• 1:17:04Speaker 02

  So that was a big mistake. And, um, and I can speak from personal experience that these guys are gracious. And they did, they took that we decision, you know, and, and have not made me, well, maybe, maybe.

• 1:17:15Jocko Willink?

  We had one session.

• 1:17:17Speaker 02

  One session.

• 1:17:17Jocko Willink?

  I'm not saying they're not kind of smack talk.

• 1:17:19Speaker 02

  But from the extreme ownership standpoint, I also stand by, you know, you know, what I thought at the time. You know, I did think that.

• 1:17:26Jocko Willink?

  And so what, you, you brought in one more person?

• 1:17:28Speaker 02

  We did, yeah.

• 1:17:29Jocko Willink?

  And, and you kind of saw some, you guys saw some red flags?

• 1:17:32Speaker 02

  From the beginning.

• 1:17:34Jocko Willink?

  And yet you saw like, hey, there's also some benefits here.

• 1:17:37Speaker 02

  I saw some green flags thinking. This might be an opportunity.

• 1:17:40Speaker 01

  This guy was a big businessman, very, very smooth talker. And had convinced us that he could take us to the promised land a whole bunch faster than we could get there by ourselves. But there, I saw a lot of red flags and then a lot of just personality conflicts and I was like, and, and, you know, I was selling the idea that this guy's gonna hose us.

• 1:18:04Speaker 01

  Steve had a much more optimistic view of this person.

• 1:18:07Speaker 02

  Thank you for phrasing it that way.

• 1:18:08Speaker 01

  And I think Joe was a little more neutral. But Steve, essentially, Steve, not a sales guy, somehow sold us on the idea.

• 1:18:16Speaker 02

  You would think you would know better, right?

• 1:18:18Speaker 03

  Hold on, hold on. So we have a, a rule with each other and I think it's been from the beginning and it's called two outvote one, no matter what, and that one who's the outlier needs to change their attitude and get on board with the other two, right? That's in all decisions. So we went to, Sam and I said, no, on this partner. We said, hey, no. We went and met with Steve at his house, like, deep in the woods and we said, not gonna happen. You know, we just don't feel comfortable and we left. And Steve didn't have a good attitude about it, didn't let it go and he called us and he's like, I think we're missing it, guys.

• 1:18:50Speaker 01

  We need another meeting.

• 1:18:50Speaker 03

  Another meeting. And then, yeah, somehow the non-sales guy.

• 1:18:53Speaker 01

  I read a few sales books.

• 1:18:55Speaker 03

  The non-sales guy sold us on this partnership. So begrudgingly, Sam was the most begrudging to the decision. I had a lot of apprehension, probably a little more grace for this guy could possibly not be what we're thinking it is.

• 1:19:09Speaker 02

  And we can, we can wrap that up there, but say that, you know, praise God, it didn't, you know, tank us. Obviously it didn't, you know, collapse the partnership. We were able to get past it and, and learn some extremely valuable.

• 1:19:21Speaker 01

  Yeah, I think, I think e- even me now, I'm actually happy that it all happened because we will not repeat that mistake again. Like, we learned very early on and e- even then it felt like big financial stakes, but in the big picture, it's, it's small beans. What had to happen to remove that person from the partnership group? So, lesson learned and, and now, you know. It it actually brought all of us even even stronger.

• 1:19:46Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 1:19:47Speaker 02

  Together, yeah.

• 1:19:48Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, and from that that perspective, I look at I've again, I've seen, because I have a consulting company, we work with companies all the time. And you see, again, you get the senior leadership in a company. And one person makes a bad call. And at the the the nice thing is here, Steve, is you had the humility to say, okay, I'm looking at what just happened. I made a bad call, we need to fix it like, yep, but I've see the other thing happen where no, you guys just don't get it. No, it's going to get better like the all the writings on the wall, crystal clear. And yet someone just continues to lie to themselves.

• 1:20:25Speaker 02

  Right.

• 1:20:25Jocko Willink?

  And and you can't pull them back. So that's a a good thing to do when things start going sideways. Hey, you know what? Yep, this was on me. I made a bad call. Let's cut ties immediately. It's like with parachuting, you know, with parachuting, you're supposed to make the call. If you got a bad parachute above your head, you know, at 2,500 feet, you go, okay, this thing is not working and you just get rid of it.

• 1:20:46Speaker 02

  Right.

• 1:20:46Jocko Willink?

  And is there a risk where you get rid of it? Sure, there's some, but there's a lot more risk to keep trying to get that thing to work.

• 1:20:51Speaker 02

  It's good.

• 1:20:51Jocko Willink?

  So at a certain point, you got to cut that thing away. And so it sounds like you were able to reach back into some of your parachuting, uh, life and cut that thing away.

• 1:20:59Speaker 02

  And, uh, truth is, I did read this book probably 15 years ago, sitting in my garage apartment in PB. You know, I talked to Sam about it, you know, because we met on talking about business and life and all these things. And that that did make have an impact on me. And, um, you know, they're taking, you know, ownership of of the decisions you make. And it's nobody's fault but mine where I'm sitting and and, uh, I decided to skydive for 10 years instead of building a business. And so here I am, you know, learning amazing lessons.

• 1:21:28Speaker 01

  You do have a world record, though, correct?

• 1:21:30Speaker 02

  That's right. That's right.

• 1:21:31Jocko Willink?

  Uh, skydiving world record?

• 1:21:33Speaker 02

  Skydiving, I think it still stands. Yeah, one of the largest naked, uh, vertical formations ever built.

• 1:21:38Jocko Willink?

  How many people is that?

• 1:21:39Speaker 02

  It was nine of us. Yeah, nine of us.

• 1:21:42Jocko Willink?

  You know why it's only nine?

• 1:21:43Speaker 02

  Well.

• 1:21:44Jocko Willink?

  Because most people are smarter than that.

• 1:21:47Speaker 02

  This this may be true, but I still stand by it. It was a proud moment for me.

• 1:21:51Jocko Willink?

  It's a world record.

• 1:21:52Speaker 02

  It's a world record and, uh, and just to satisfy some curiosity, um, a lot of people do ask the question, what does a naked skydiver look like? And so we're all fit, you know, good looking people on the ground. But, um, if you've ever seen a truck driving down a freeway with a poorly secured tarp.

• 1:22:10Speaker 03

  You know, just violently flapping and waving. That's what everyone looks like.

• 1:22:14Jocko Willink?

  This is gonna feel like a comfortable scenario.

• 1:22:16Speaker 03

  It's not. It was not.

• 1:22:18Jocko Willink?

  Scenario.

• 1:22:18Speaker 03

  But it was worth it.

• 1:22:21Jocko Willink?

  And so, uh, I know, I know we were talking before we hit record today, doing some kind of a, gonna give somebody a sauna. Is that the deal?

• 1:22:28Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 1:22:28Jocko Willink?

  Is that on the plate here?

• 1:22:29Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:22:30Jocko Willink?

  So what is it? Giving away a sauna?

• 1:22:32Speaker 03

  A special sauna.

• 1:22:33Speaker 01

  Yeah, we have, uh, and, and Steve has designed a new prefab freestanding sauna.

• 1:22:40Jocko Willink?

  Indoor or outdoor?

• 1:22:41Speaker 01

  Indoor.

• 1:22:42Jocko Willink?

  Okay.

• 1:22:42Speaker 01

  Uh, comfortably fit to, let's say if it's an adult Jocko size, I would say it's a two-person sauna. If it's an adult my size, not quite as broad in the shoulders, I think three of me could fit in there nicely. So, but it's a

• 1:22:56Speaker 03

  Maybe.

• 1:22:56Speaker 01

  It, it's a very well-built, beautiful sauna, and we're gonna give it away to one of your listeners.

• 1:23:02Jocko Willink?

  Okay.

• 1:23:03Speaker 03

  Yeah, this is a rollout, uh, that we wanted to do, uh, with you and, and, you know, having the opportunity to come hang out with you. We thought, uh, yeah, let's, let's launch a Jocko sauna thing that would be cool. And we're like, why don't we give one away? Uh, so we're gonna do that and it's, uh, you know, we'll retail it, I don't know, fourteen, fifteen thousand dollars. Uh, definitely for any of your followers who, uh, or friends who don't win, uh, we'll, we'll do a massive, uh, price cut for them. Uh, but yeah, that's the goal. Uh, we're gonna cool sauna, probably one of the most beautiful in the market. That's what Steve does. Makes things very beautiful. And, uh, yeah, be able to launch that out pretty soon here for you guys.

• 1:23:41Speaker 01

  Yeah, I was just told that we're at the

• 1:23:43Jocko Willink?

  Sweepstake scenario?

• 1:23:44Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's gonna be an enter to win thing.

• 1:23:46Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, it sounds like you guys have never done this before.

• 1:23:49Speaker 01

  We, uh, we have given things away before.

• 1:23:52Jocko Willink?

  Okay, yeah, because there's, I don't, uh, do you know there's a lot of like legalities behind this?

• 1:23:57Speaker 03

  Right, such as?

• 1:23:58Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, like there's a lot of legalities.

• 1:24:00Speaker 03

  Okay.

• 1:24:00Jocko Willink?

  Like who can enter, how they enter.

• 1:24:02Speaker 03

  Oh, okay.

• 1:24:02Jocko Willink?

  It's a really big deal. Uh, we've given a, I've given away stuff at Jocko Fuel before and at Origin before. And what you think is like, oh yeah, just have people sign up and no, there's a bunch of things. So you're gonna have to look at that over the coming weeks.

• 1:24:14Speaker 01

  Yeah, we have to make sure that it's, my wife doesn't end up winning the sauna.

• 1:24:18Jocko Willink?

  Oh, yeah, there's all kinds of things.

• 1:24:20Speaker 01

  That's the stuff that.

• 1:24:21Speaker 03

  Our attorney, our attorney will. We'll check it out.

• 1:24:24Speaker 01

  But yeah, we'll, uh, we'll, I guess we'll announce that fairly soon of how people can sign up. Yeah. Legitimate giveaway. We don't know who's gonna win it, but someone's gonna, someone's gonna get an amazing sauna.

• 1:24:36Jocko Willink?

  We're joking, talking about nepotism.

• 1:24:37Speaker 03

  Yeah. We know Joe's whole family works for us. So, you know, we. My sons work for us. They happen to win the Jocko sauna. Maybe we should make it a Jocko signature sauna. That'd be kinda cool. We actually don't even have a name for the sauna. We, we tend to name all of our, you know, prefabs. This one's so fresh. Very moving. Yeah. So if any, any, uh, any of your people out there have cool names to suggest once they see this thing, that'd be really cool too.

• 1:25:01Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:25:01Jocko Willink?

  Um, so what I'll do is, I mean, so people can check out the website, right? Which is symmetry sauna.com. And at some point you'll put a, put a banner on there on how to win this sauna. And then I'll, I'll put that out too. So people get the opportunity.

• 1:25:16Speaker 03

  Yep.

• 1:25:16Jocko Willink?

  Cause you know, sauna's good for you.

• 1:25:18Speaker 03

  Super good for you. Yeah. Your family enjoys it.

• 1:25:21Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, no doubt. And, uh, this one here at the gym, both of them, the, the men's and women's are, they're gonna get used like crazy. I mean, they get used like crazy. I mean, this is, this is probably one of the most, uh, ripe environments for a sauna. Cause you've got people that are sore, people that are, uh, need recovery, and people that are cutting weight and you put those three things together. The sauna is just like all the time gonna be just, um, getting crushed.

• 1:25:46Speaker 03

  Right.

• 1:25:46Jocko Willink?

  And that's why you need high quality and, uh, awesome. So that's where we're at. Uh, Zach, it is up to speed. Anything else? We got a chicken.

• 1:25:58Jocko Willink?

  We got a sauna that you guys are gonna give away, which is awesome. And, uh, then if people wanna find you, it's symmetry sauna.com. You got Instagram and Facebook at symmetry sauna.

• 1:26:08Speaker 03

  That's right.

• 1:26:09Jocko Willink?

  And they can check that out. And then go check out symmetry sauna and enter this. Which will be a legal. Very legal, absolutely.

• 1:26:17Speaker 01

  All the hoops.

• 1:26:19Jocko Willink?

  All the hoops, all the lawyers will make sure everything's cool. That's right. And that'll be that, man. Awesome. Cool. Right on. Well, thanks for joining us. Thanks for coming down here. Appreciate you. Thanks for building out like truly freaking most beautiful saunas I've ever seen. Those are the most beautiful saunas I've ever seen that are at Victory MMA. Anybody that wants to question that, come and have a look at them. And fight whoever's in the sauna.

• 1:26:43Speaker 03

  Fight the winner.

• 1:26:45Jocko Willink?

  So you guys are having a MMA match? Is it a grappling match tomorrow? It's a grappling match. So here's the grappling match for tomorrow. Steve versus Joe. Steve's weighing in at 190. How tall are you? 6'2". 6'2", 190. Where are you at, Joe?

• 1:26:57Speaker 03

  172, 6'4".

• 1:26:59Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, so he's 5'4". Whoa, whoa, whoa, 5'7". 5'7", he's 170. Steve has trained for. In the past, let's just say in the past. One year, once a week, 10 years ago, 15 years ago? It was a while. It was a while. That's, that could be dangerous. It might be rusty.

• 1:27:17Speaker 01

  No one's gonna wanna watch this.

• 1:27:18Jocko Willink?

  Joe, two years of wrestling in high school?

• 1:27:20Speaker 03

  Not only that, my mom was a boxer, so all the combinations she gave to me, like.

• 1:27:25Jocko Willink?

  This is no striking, Joe.

• 1:27:26Speaker 03

  Oh, that's right.

• 1:27:27Jocko Willink?

  No striking.

• 1:27:28Speaker 03

  Biting?

• 1:27:28Jocko Willink?

  I need this face, you need that face. And you guys are getting to train.

• 1:27:31Speaker 03

  That's right, with one of your coaches.

• 1:27:33Jocko Willink?

  With one of the coaches for an hour, so. That'll be a good enough.

• 1:27:36Speaker 01

  We should, Jocko, you and I, as experts in this, we should do quick predictions on who we think.

• 1:27:42Jocko Willink?

  Don't even weigh.

• 1:27:42Speaker 03

  Come on, the guy's sitting right here, don't make him feel like that.

• 1:27:45Jocko Willink?

  We were talking about this beforehand and I think Joe's like, this, this, this doesn't sound like a compliment. I'm like, this was not a compliment. We're not people, that's what we hear. Yeah, because, no, it's so weird. The, the, the, the idea that people have in their minds about fighting, if they've never actually trained to fight. And even if you got in, you know, some fights growing up, you got in some fights, you have this little sliver of like, oh, there's gonna be some adrenaline, but to watch people that don't know how to fight. Especially against someone that does know how to fight, which I'm not saying either one of you, because I don't think either one of you not fight excellence. So it's gonna be, but the interesting thing is, it's cool, an hour of training, see who, see who absorbs the most.

• 1:28:30Jocko Willink?

  You're gonna have a little bit, uh, Steve's gonna have a little bit of muscle memory from his one year of intermittent jiu-jitsu.

• 1:28:36Speaker 01

  Yes, small muscles.

• 1:28:37Jocko Willink?

  Small's gonna have, uh, his intermittent memory of wrestling and his mom's genetic boxing skills.

• 1:28:44Speaker 01

  And getting jumped in the bathroom.

• 1:28:46Jocko Willink?

  Even though there's no boxing here. So it's, did you have a prediction you wanted to make?

• 1:28:49Speaker 01

  Well, it's gonna, it's for you to watch them grapple is gonna be like me watching football players try to play beach volleyball. It's gonna be ugly, atrocious and humorous. So I, I, uh, Joe does not need a confidence boost. So if he wins, he's, he's off the reservation.

• 1:29:08Jocko Willink?

  Do you, your kids train, Sam? Do you train?

• 1:29:10Speaker 01

  They do. I, I did train twice in the last month.

• 1:29:13Jocko Willink?

  Okay, that's not.

• 1:29:13Speaker 01

  So he could be both.

• 1:29:16Jocko Willink?

  You, but you haven't trained before that?

• 1:29:19Speaker 01

  No, I. He came to the class. Back in the year, I went for probably a month with Steve and then, so now my training is watching my kids and I'm just absorbing it. Yeah. That's a best way to learn.

• 1:29:32Speaker 01

  My kids still can't beat me. Of course I outweigh them by a lot. Pick a winner. Okay, uh. But be gentle to him. I think, here's my predict, I think Steve wins on length and leverage.

• 1:29:43Jocko Willink?

  And, and he's 20 pounds heavier.

• 1:29:45Speaker 01

  Right. Now, if Joe wins, it's gonna be within about the first 30 seconds by neck crank. That's it. I could see that happening too. But based on the rules. Yeah. Number of subs, two five minute rounds. That's it, two five minute rounds, number of subs.

• 1:29:57Jocko Willink?

  Five minute, you guys are gonna be so tired.

• 1:29:59Speaker 01

  Oh, they're gonna be.

• 1:30:01Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, it's gonna be humiliating.

• 1:30:03Speaker 01

  Yeah. This is why we don't want you to watch. Well, no, no, Jocko to even up the score. So go ahead and pick your winner.

• 1:30:09Jocko Willink?

  Uh, oh yeah. Okay. So you're saying I should be rooting for you, Joe?

• 1:30:13Speaker 03

  No, I'm not saying it. I could see in your eyes you want to. Just call it.

• 1:30:18Jocko Willink?

  It's going to be a very disturbing and humiliating day for the.

• 1:30:22Speaker 02

  I love that.

• 1:30:22Jocko Willink?

  Thank you for that. Yeah. You know what I should do is I should have my, uh, I should have my daughter.

• 1:30:26Speaker 02

  Oh, no, no, no, no.

• 1:30:28Jocko Willink?

  Annihilate.

• 1:30:28Speaker 02

  Oh, no, that's okay.

• 1:30:29Speaker 03

  Dude, two of us on one? This is perfect.

• 1:30:33Speaker 02

  I think she'd still win.

• 1:30:35Speaker 02

  That's not safe.

• 1:30:37Speaker 03

  Seriously, that Jocko, uh, I was going to say one more thing. So I've been on a protein journey for a long time. And, uh, your chocolate protein powder, dude, it is the best, like by far.

• 1:30:49Speaker 02

  Best protein on the market.

• 1:30:50Speaker 03

  It really is. Like, I just gotta say it. I do it too many times a day.

• 1:30:53Speaker 02

  We love that stuff.

• 1:30:54Speaker 03

  So I've actually stopped chewing food at this point. I'm just drinking Jocko's chocolate.

• 1:30:58Speaker 02

  Teeth are getting weird.

• 1:30:59Speaker 03

  That's right.

• 1:30:59Jocko Willink?

  Right on. Awesome, fellas. Thanks for joining us. Thanks for getting after it. Keep getting after it, boys.

• 1:31:04Speaker 03

  Appreciate it, Jocko. Thanks, Jocko.

• 1:31:06Jocko Willink?

  And with that, Sam, Joe and Steve have left the building. And clearly we, you know, the sauna, good for recovery. We call it recovery around here. But you gotta earn recovery. Agreed?

• 1:31:22Speaker 04

  Totally. I had a half hour conversation just now. Uh, second ago with Noah about that.

• 1:31:28Jocko Willink?

  About recovery.

• 1:31:29Speaker 04

  Earning it. You gotta earn more. The rest between sets is only useful if you have some sets. See what I'm saying?

• 1:31:37Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 1:31:37Speaker 04

  Otherwise you're just sitting there.

• 1:31:38Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. Look at you, dude. Metaphors for life, bro.

• 1:31:42Speaker 04

  Here to tell you.

• 1:31:43Jocko Willink?

  Look at you. So we gotta earn the recovery. We earning it, uh, training, lifting, running, sprinting, jujitsu clearly, surfing, swimming, just getting after it is what we're doing. So, once you earn the recovery, you need to get in the recovery mode. You need the right fuel. We recommend.

• 1:32:06Jocko Willink?

  What do we recommend?

• 1:32:07Speaker 04

  Jocko.

• 1:32:07Jocko Willink?

  Yo, look at you. Hey, check out jockofuel.com. We got everything that you need. We got protein. We got the Proline series. We got the muscle drive. A lot of people are into the muscle drive right now. If you're cutting weight.

• 1:32:21Jocko Willink?

  You, eh, for, for whatever reason. Maybe not necessarily cutting weight like a weight cut for a fight. But even if you're just trying to drop some LBs, as they used to say.

• 1:32:31Speaker 04

  If you're on a cut.

• 1:32:32Jocko Willink?

  If you're on a cut, you know, uh, the muscle drive will help preserve and strengthen when you're maybe depleting it of a little bit of caloric intake. So that's a good one for that. The Pro Series Protein. Hey, I'm gonna go, I'm gonna go, I'm gonna talk about this. Thing which I mentioned already, but it's, I'm kinda going next level. This, this Greek yogurt thing.

• 1:32:54Speaker 04

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 1:32:57Jocko Willink?

  Greek yogurt. Hey, this is the thing. It's easy to make.

• 1:33:01Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:33:01Jocko Willink?

  You just literally dump Greek yogurt in a bowl, put milk in there, some protein, whatever flavor you're in the mood for. Stir it up.

• 1:33:07Speaker 04

  The powder.

• 1:33:08Jocko Willink?

  Boom. Yep. You're in there. You're in there. Uh, just so good. And you get, there's something like 45 or 50 grams of protein when you do that.

• 1:33:18Speaker 04

  Yep.

• 1:33:18Jocko Willink?

  So you need protein. You need protein in your life. Check out jockofuel.com. Get energy. We just finished some energy drinks here. Hydrate. I was, I sweat a lot, by the way.

• 1:33:31Jocko Willink?

  Even when I'm not in the sauna, but when I'm training, I was thinking about it. I played basketball when I was a kid.

• 1:33:36Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:33:36Jocko Willink?

  I don't know if I could technically play basketball right now, cause if I played in a full basketball game, I think I would just be making the floor just too sweaty and I'd have to just, that's one thing. It's not, you know, jiu jitsu, that's kinda, I mean, everyone's sweating.

• 1:33:49Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:33:50Jocko Willink?

  So you kinda just deal with it, but in basketball, if I was just fully dripping sweat.

• 1:33:56Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:33:56Jocko Willink?

  Like every play under the basket, people would be slips, lying all about, they'd get expelled from the game.

• 1:34:01Speaker 04

  Yeah, the little towel guy would have to.

• 1:34:02Jocko Willink?

  Dude, he'd be working overtime.

• 1:34:04Speaker 04

  Yes.

• 1:34:05Jocko Willink?

  But when I sweat, get a hydration.

• 1:34:08Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:34:08Jocko Willink?

  Jocko hydrate. So that's what we got. We got all kinds of good, the good stuff for you. Check out jockofuel.com and get some. Also, speaking of jiu jitsu, you need gear for jiu jitsu. Get American made gear. You heard, you heard Sam tell that story. I was like, oh, you make it in America? Cool. We'll figure this out. Look, is Origin gear a little bit more expensive than something that's made by a communist slave? Yep, it is. It is. So that's okay. We're all, we get it. It can be a little bit more pricey, as they say. But it's not that much more. I'm gonna tell you right now, it is not that much more. And the quality's better, and the soul is there.

• 1:34:48Jocko Willink?

  And they know something you got from China. So check out originusa.com and get 100%, 100% communist-free made clothing.

• 1:35:01Speaker 04

  It's true. Also, jocko store.com is where you can get your shirts and hoodies and stuff when you're representing on the path. Discipline equals freedom. It's a big one. Good. Stand by to get some. Get after it. These are all things we can represent while we're on this path. Whether you're in the sauna or not, by the way. We've got shorts on there.

• 1:35:20Jocko Willink?

  You don't need a t-shirt in the sauna, though.

• 1:35:22Speaker 04

  That's why I said the shorts. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Um, I guess you could. No, right? Not like, that's like the protocol, right? No shirt. It's like supposed to do that. Or you're supposed to have a shirt.

• 1:35:34Jocko Willink?

  Well, you'd just be wasting, because you'd be dripping in sweat. So, no point.

• 1:35:38Speaker 04

  Yeah, isn't it like skin, like radiation or something like this, like this? Nothing. I don't know. I'll have to look into it. Nonetheless, when you're not in the sauna, you wear a shirt. Hey, might as well represent. Anyway, look, uh, check out jocko store.com. If you see something on there, you like, hey man, represent, get something. Also, on Jocko Store is what we call the shirt lock, which is a subscription scenario. Don't sleep on this one. Some good designs. A lot of times like at the muster or something like this, they'll be like, oh, hey, I didn't know when did that one come out or whatever. But it came out three months ago just for that month. See what I'm saying? So yeah, you want to get these new, a little bit more creative designs. Boom, that's what, that's where it's from. So yeah, it's all on jocko store.com.

• 1:36:18Jocko Willink?

  If you like something, get something.

• 1:36:20Speaker 04

  Like something, get something.

• 1:36:22Jocko Willink?

  Check out some books, Put Your Legs On by Rob Jones, Need to Lead by Dave Burke, Extreme Ownership, Dichotomy Leadership, Discipline with Freedom Field Manual, Leadership Strategy and Tactics Field Manual, and then a bunch of kids books. Check all those out. Also, Echelon Front, we have a leadership consultancy. If you need leadership inside of your company, your team, your organization, check out echelonfront.com. We also have online training. If you want to check out our online training, go to extremeownership.com. And finally, listen, or not finally, but I want to mention this. In a couple of days, there is going to be an incredible event in Scottsdale, Arizona.

• 1:37:03Jocko Willink?

  It is Mark Lee's 48th Birthday Celebration. Mark was killed in Ramadi in 2006. He carried the Mark 48 machine gun. This is going to be his 48th birthday. A couple of his platoon mates, Lead Bob Holland, who you've heard on here before, and Jake Keinbaum, another stud frogman, they're going to be speaking and telling you about Mark. So if you can, March 21st in Scottsdale, Arizona, go to AmericasMightyWarriors.org and check that out. Also, check out HeroesAndHorses.org, also Jimmy May's organization, BeyondTheBrotherhood.org. For the interwebs, if you're looking for Symmetry Sauna, go to SymmetrySauna.com. They also have The Gram and the Facebook, Yboha.

• 1:37:49Jocko Willink?

  It's at Symmetry Sauna. And then for us, you can check out Jaco.com. And then on social media, Echo's on there. He's at Echo Charles. I'm on there too. I'm at Jocko Willink. Just watch out for the algorithm. Thanks once again to Sam, Joe, and Steve for joining us and sharing some of those lessons learned of building a business here in America. Of course, thanks to all of our military personnel around the world right now, especially those that are over in the Middle East in harm's way. We thank you for your service and your sacrifice and wish you Godspeed in your work

• 1:38:30Jocko Willink?

  out there. Also, thanks to our police, law enforcement, firefighters, paramedics, EMTs, dispatchers, correctional officers, Border Patrol, Secret Service, as well as all other first responders. We thank you for your service here on the home front. And everyone else out there, it's not easy to build something. It's not really easy to build anything. It's not comfortable and it'll cause a lot of stress. But if you stick to it and you put another piece in place, and you put another piece in place, and you put another piece in place, over time, you can get that thing built. As long as you keep working. So go

• 1:39:13Jocko Willink?

  out there and keep working. That's all we've got for tonight. Until next time. This is Echo and Jocko, out.