349: Powerful Enemies Must Be Outfought and Outproduced. W/ Pete Roberts. Origin USA.

Pete Roberts of Orign USA. Origin Hunt line, Clean protein, and Clean Energy. Bringing manufacturing back to America. 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 349 with Echo Charles and me Jocko Willink. Good evening, Echo. Good evening.

• 0:08Jocko Willink?

  Powerful enemies must be outfought and outproduced. It is not enough to just turn out a few more planes, a few more tanks, a few more guns, a few more ships that can be turned out by our enemies. We must outproduce them overwhelmingly so that there can be no question of our ability to provide a crushing superiority of equipment in any theater of the world war.

• 0:41Jocko Willink?

  And that right there is what President Roosevelt told Congress and America less than a month after the attack on Pearl Harbor. And what he talked about doing, we did.

• 0:56Jocko Willink?

  America provided almost 70% of the military equipment for the Allies in World War II. 297,000 aircraft, 193,000 artillery guns, 86,000 tanks, 2 million trucks, 2.6 million submachine guns, almost 12 million rifles.

• 1:23Jocko Willink?

  The US Navy grew from 700 ships to almost 7,000. And that included 23 battleships and 151 aircraft carriers.

• 1:39Jocko Willink?

  And that, that crushing superiority of production and the brave men who brought those weapons to bear against the enemy overwhelmed the Nazis and the Imperial Japanese Army and America's ability to create and produce, to design and manufacture, this has always been one of our strongest assets as a nation.

• 2:08Jocko Willink?

  Our working class, the men and women of this country that actually do these things, that actually make these things happen. But that asset and that capability, it faded. It faded and manufacturing went overseas. We shut down a lot of our mills. We shut down a lot of our factories. We abandoned our communities. We abandoned our workforce. We abandoned the American worker.

• 2:44Jocko Willink?

  And our rivals around the world, they smiled and they eased that transition for us. They helped us down that path. They offered cheap labor, basically slave labor. They didn't care about worker safety. They didn't care about the environmental impact of what they were doing, but they were able to, they were able to win on price. But we paid the price. And we began to lose that incredibly valuable asset in our country, our ability to make

• 3:27Jocko Willink?

  things, our ability to build things, our ability to create and manufacture. And with the loss of that skill, with the loss of that asset, our strength in the world began to diminish, began to fade. But there's a new fire burning now and there's a, a slow burning revolution occurring. There are companies in America that have had enough of that, that are capturing the skills from the past, that are teaching the right people, that are restoring the machines

• 4:11Jocko Willink?

  and resurrecting the factories. There are people and companies that are rebuilding America into the strong, powerful and benevolent nation it once was.

• 4:28Jocko Willink?

  And I am honored to be part of some of those companies with my business partner, Pete Roberts. And we have, we've invested everything we've got into Origin USA and into Jaco Fuel, and we are doing our best in this new war.

• 4:51Jocko Willink?

  An economic war, yes, it's an economic war. It's also a war of ideas. And it's a war of ideology.

• 5:00Jocko Willink?

  When you look at who we're up against, it's a war of skill. It's a war of production. It's a war of efficiency, and it's a war of grit.

• 5:13Jocko Willink?

  It's a war between state control and self-determination.

• 5:20Jocko Willink?

  A war between subjugation and liberty between slavery and freedom.

• 5:30Jocko Willink?

  That's what's at stake.

• 5:33Jocko Willink?

  And that's not just rhetoric. That's what's going on. And it's great to have Pete back here with us tonight to talk about the war that we're fighting right now on all fronts as we try to help rebuild America. Pete, what's happening, man? Badass, man. Powerful. Thanks for having me back on. Pete Roberts, if you don't know who he is, Podcast 93, Podcast 141, Podcast 194, Podcast 297. That's, we joined forces in 2017. We recorded a podcast every year up here at the Origin Maine Immersion Jiu-Jitsu Camp, which we, there was a little gap in 2020. We got shut down. We weren't

• 6:18Jocko Willink?

  allowed to do Jiu-Jitsu. Allowed to do Jiu-Jitsu? At least not in public. Yeah, yeah. At least not in the masses. I'm sure you kept training, too.

• 6:30Jocko Willink?

  So, this has turned out to be an annual thing that we're doing. And it's a good opportunity for us to let people know what's going on, share people some of the experiences that we've had, and some of the lessons that we've learned, because we're learning. We're learning a lot of lessons along the way, and giving everyone an update as to what's happening, so that they can see sort of the big picture of what's going on. So...

• 6:53Jocko Willink?

  Essentially, we're talking about two companies. And really, these two companies, I would say it's safe to say that they started as sort of a Siamese twins, right? Like, they were connected and, you know, they had a lot, they shared a lot of blood. Tangled. Yeah, maybe shared, you know, like, they have three lungs total. One of the lungs was shared. You have two of the lungs. Yeah. It's like, so there's, there's these shared things going on. One of them is Jaco Fuel. Obviously, it's our, it's our supplement nutrition brand, and the other one's Origin USA, which is our hard goods, clothing, accessories, brand. We got fitness products in there too as well. So a bunch of stuff, but we, we got these two companies.

• 7:38Jocko Willink?

  So let's talk about where we at, where we're at with these, what's going on, some of the lessons we learned, some of the tuition payments that we've made. You know, you have your MBA? I don't have shit. I'm a college dropout. Okay, so you don't have your MBA. I don't have my MBA. Echo, you have your MBA?

• 7:54Speaker 01

  No MBA.

• 7:55Jocko Willink?

  But you know what? We've learned some business lessons. Shouldn't they can't teach you in school? And they've cost way more than an MBA. Yes. Uh, so here we go. Let's, let's start off talking a little bit about Jaco Fuel. Now, what's interesting about this is last, last time we were together, or I guess during this timeframe, I guess we didn't, we didn't do it.

• 8:15Jocko Willink?

  We were getting to a point where we, as we had predicted, we were starting to need money. So we were starting to need money. This is a cash intensive business. Making food products, making supplements, being in retail, having to order millions and sometimes tens of millions of dollars worth of product, and having to pay for that. And then having to, to hold on and hold your breath and pinch pennies until maybe ninety, one hundred and twenty, one hundred and eighty days, that money starts to come back in.

• 8:59Jocko Willink?

  We got, we did a lot of breath holding.

• 9:03Jocko Willink?

  In this ramp up and that's kind of the phase we were in last year around this time. We were in that, you know, every quarter, every month really would be a breath hold waiting for, you know, payment to come in is not a great feeling.

• 9:17Pete Roberts?

  Yeah. And behind the scenes, you know, last year during camp, when we were sitting around in private, talking about that cash to cash cycle and how we're starting to burn cash or, or feed the monster, the monster eats cash. I mean, knowing our goals for, you know, mass distribution and to try to get the things we're making in the hands of humanity. I mean, America for sure, that it was gonna, it was gonna be expensive growth and, you know, definitely as committing to larger and larger orders, should there's some, something there go wrong, knowing that you then have to dump, let's say screw ups, which has a massive impact on cash flow also.

• 10:02Pete Roberts?

  We didn't have too many of those, had a couple, but um, yeah, man, the monster, uh, the monster finally get fed, uh, got fed luckily with, you know, the investment we took on with that great investor, but burning, burning that cash for so long, as long as we could, you know, and knowing that the right thing to do was to bring on a partner that could help us blow this thing up, uh, was definitely challenging knowing how we work together and how we make decisions and how we communicate and sticking somebody else in the mix that we don't know and trying to trust that process that they're gonna plug in easily.

• 10:44Pete Roberts?

  Uh, I think that for me was the most difficult thing, not even the other stuff. You know, not having to dump flavor systems or, you know, over wrap cans because there's a can shortage, you know, or like try to, try to pivot on, you know, uh, where we're buying our ingredients from. It was really, it was really trying to plug somebody else into the equation. It could have gone terribly bad if it wasn't done right. So obviously, you know, we had some, some decent offers from the different private equity firms and whatnot, but. I honestly didn't think we were gonna find any at one point. I was kinda like, damn, this just isn't gonna happen and we're gonna have to either shrink and rethink, you know, or I didn't, I actually didn't know.

• 11:29Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, well, we had, I mean, I remember talking about Plan A, B, C, D.

• 11:34Pete Roberts?

  Yeah.

• 11:35Jocko Willink?

  Uh, and, and that's what we had to do. Um, that, the, the, the fact that you and I sometime, well, oftentimes we're making decisions in, I mean, multimillion dollar decisions in three texts or seven text messages.

• 11:53Jocko Willink?

  And it's always been like that. That is definitely a scary thing to mess up because, and look, I, I have the benefit of working with so many different companies at Echelon Front, that I see how hard it is for companies to make decisions sometimes when you have just a little bit, different agendas going on and eagles pop up and all of a sudden, simple decisions that should take 15 minutes, they end up taking 15 weeks and, and I'm not kidding, like literally, simple decisions that you can see the obvious answer for can take months instead of minutes. And we, we were, we were operating in the minutes timeframe. And the, the other thing that was kinda cool was because we were, you know, living paycheck to paycheck for so long, man, we were lean.

• 12:38Pete Roberts?

  Super lean.

• 12:38Jocko Willink?

  Super lean and, you know, it was, there was just no fat. We were like a fighter that had cut weight and, and just barely made it, right? And we were doing that, you know, it was like wrestling season. Every Wednesday and every Saturday, we were making weight, you know, we were, we were trying to see if we could shed a little bit. We were sitting in the sauna, trying to squeeze out a little, another extra, you know, eight ounces.

• 13:00Pete Roberts?

  Yeah.

• 13:00Jocko Willink?

  And, but it, but, but what I liked about that is it made us good, right? It made us good. You know, you ask someone that, that wrestled, hey, you tell them they gotta lose 15 pounds, they look at you like it's a joke. So we got rid of a lot of excess weight. We became very streamlined. But the problem was, and this is sort of the, the backup plan was, we were just gonna have to expand and grow a lot slower. That, that's what was gonna happen. So if we wouldn't have met good partners who's out of New York, great guys, if we wouldn't have met them. We would have done Plan B and we would have, you know, made some adjustments and it would have been a slower growth. And the problem with that for me is this is the same thing that I told the team at Jaco Fuel yesterday.

• 13:45Jocko Willink?

  You know, at Echelon Front, we go and we, we go to the muster and at the muster will have

• 13:53Jocko Willink?

  scores of people come up to every team member, to JP, to Leif, to me, to Dave, to everybody. They'll, an individual will come up and say, oh, you know, I, hey, I got my business back. We were about to go bankrupt. We recovered everything. We're hiring now or, oh, I was about to get divorced and my wife and I are back together. And you, I lost 58 pounds and just all these incredible stories that you hear. And it sounds great, but every muster debrief, what I tell the team is, hey, great job with this small number of people that we helped with these principles. And there are literally millions and millions of people that need these principles to help them in their life. And we're not reaching them right now, so we're not doing what we should be doing.

• 14:37Jocko Willink?

  And it's the same thing with Jaco Fuel. Right now, right now, as you and I are sitting here talking, there's a 22-year-old kid that's drinking an energy drink that's absolutely horrible for him. That's, that's what's happening. There's another, you know, seven-year-old kid that's drinking a chocolate milk that's filled with high fructose corn syrup and it's absolutely horrible for him. And his mom doesn't know. His mom doesn't know what's available. So that's the issue. So a, as I, you know, as in my own mind, you know, I had the, the part of my brain saying, hey, hang on, we can hang on. And the other part of my brain is saying, who are we hurting? And the compromise is, okay, how about, and you know, what we eventually did is a minority share.

• 15:19Jocko Willink?

  We sold a minority share, brought in great partners that have some great brands. I mean, they've, they've built and run some great companies. I mean, just outstanding. So.

• 15:32Jocko Willink?

  That made it that that that was nice. It was like at the end of wrestling season where all of a sudden we didn't have to cut weight every Wednesday and Saturday.

• 15:40Pete Roberts?

  Yeah.

• 15:41Jocko Willink?

  Because we have some room.

• 15:43Pete Roberts?

  I definitely saw the relief on the finance team. Don got to sit back in his chair for about five minutes and go. You know, because being that lean and running just in time inventory and at one point Joe Moss, our chief revenue officer said, man, we're running this company with like nine people and three bald dudes, you know?

• 16:07Pete Roberts?

  Me, basically me, Joe and Brian there, whatever. And you're looking at our growth, our growth rate and our trajectory. And it's like, damn, Joe, like, that's funny, but it's right. And you know what? Running the business like you're on a desert island is going to allow you, you know, you would think now you're going to be a good steward of that investment, you know? And I was talking to you about as far as like living into the brand, like after that investment came on, I felt like, I felt again, that same kind of like when I, when, when back in the day when remortgaging the house for Origin, I felt the same thing like, man, you know, some of our family and friends invested in this, in this with us alongside of us.

• 16:48Jocko Willink?

  All my family and friends.

• 16:49Pete Roberts?

  All your family and friends.

• 16:50Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, everyone I know.

• 16:52Pete Roberts?

  Yeah.

• 16:53Jocko Willink?

  That's a, that's a broad statement, but like a lot of people that are very close to me.

• 16:57Pete Roberts?

  Exactly.

• 16:58Jocko Willink?

  In the game with us.

• 16:58Pete Roberts?

  And I think that's important that like this new partner allowed us to bring our family and friends into him. And my childhood friend I've known since I was 12 years old, invested in this thing. You know what I mean? It's like, man, I better, I better be a good steward of this and, and, and like I said, live, live into it. You know what I mean? And you were like, what is live into it? Like, well, I'm gonna, I haven't been, you know what I mean? I like them cookies and that ice cream.

• 17:27Jocko Willink?

  Well, how well have you been quote, quote, living into it this week, dude?

• 17:32Pete Roberts?

  I've seen you consume more, more cookies, brownies.

• 17:36Jocko Willink?

  What is going on, dude?

• 17:38Pete Roberts?

  I've been living into that jujitsu and marriage and poa.

• 17:42Pete Roberts?

  That, you know, late night cold cut combo snack.

• 17:46Jocko Willink?

  Just get in there, dude.

• 17:48Pete Roberts?

  But I mean, you know, like is as far as understanding the psyche of of the consumer of the people out there. Cause I believe right now, a- and if you look at America, I think we're the strongest and healthiest we've ever been. And I think we're the most unhealthy and most out of shape.

• 18:09Jocko Willink?

  You're talking about America at large, the people of America.

• 18:12Pete Roberts?

  People, and it's probably a worldwide thing too, but we're, you're, there's some strong.

• 18:17Jocko Willink?

  Oh, hell yeah.

• 18:18Pete Roberts?

  Strongest they've, we've ever been.

• 18:19Jocko Willink?

  A hundred percent.

• 18:20Pete Roberts?

  And healthiest we've ever been.

• 18:21Jocko Willink?

  Beasts.

• 18:22Pete Roberts?

  And then the heaviest and the most unhealthy and people dying of all sorts of shit. And there's this freaking gap, you know, and yeah, you can point the finger, but it, the, the finger goes in a lot of different directions. You've got to have a lot of finger pointing. Uh, the fact of the matter is, is we're trying to fill the void between the two, you know, and, and educate people in a different way. And, you know, and, and Jocko Fuel as a mission, as a movement and the things we're doing. It's no different than the origin side, you know, origin built to believe, built to believe in the dream, built to believe in, in resurrection of America's factories and communities and the reclamation and the reshoring and the restoring of the communities. And Jocko Fuel built to be better, you know, it's the same damn thing.

• 19:07Pete Roberts?

  Everything you wear, everything you consume, like it's, it's right there. You know what I mean? It's right there, but then how do you wedge that in, into this country, which is not just divided? Also from a health and physical perspective, it's divided. So there's a, there's this education process that's taking place. And honestly, taking on the investment is going to allow us to do more of this education across the board. So.

• 19:35Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. And that was the point I was getting at was like looking at weighing between, okay, we can keep total control and be, be a little bit greedy.

• 19:45Pete Roberts?

  Right.

• 19:45Jocko Willink?

  And hang on, this is mine, or say, hey, listen, let's get this as many people as we can. So. We made that adjustment and it's so far, it's been awesome. It's been awesome to have more freedom of movement for us. It's been awesome to still be able to push forward in ways that we weren't pushing forward before. And be able to execute on things that we had, we would have had to, you know, Plan B and Plan C. Didn't have the same products coming out, did, we weren't able to tackle the same problems that we're going to be able to tackle now. So that, that was awesome. As that's going on, meanwhile, we, we expanded outside the state of Maine, which I may have broke your heart initially.

• 20:28Jocko Willink?

  Cause you're a Mainah.

• 20:29Pete Roberts?

  I am a Mainah. I'm actually a Masshole technically. My father-in-law Joe will never allow me to claim.

• 20:36Jocko Willink?

  Oh, he doesn't let you claim, huh?

• 20:37Pete Roberts?

  No, I'm, I'm from Massachusetts, man. Even though I've been here since I was eight years old, never a Mainah.

• 20:43Jocko Willink?

  And your kids can't, your kids can't, uh, they can't anchor baby you up here?

• 20:47Pete Roberts?

  No, I wish. Nah, but yeah, I mean, you know, like as this is all going on. As we're going through the process of investment and having all these meetings and everything and at the same time.

• 21:00Jocko Willink?

  That's one monster. So one monster, one monster Jocko Fuel is hungry, very hungry. And, and like needs attention and food and money.

• 21:10Pete Roberts?

  Yes.

• 21:11Jocko Willink?

  That's all going on. That's a huge, huge deal. But then on the other side, the other monster, the origin monster is also hungry.

• 21:18Pete Roberts?

  To your point earlier, these things are tangled like Siamese twins. And these monsters are both, they're growing and they both need to be fed and like someone has to conduct surgery, like.

• 21:29Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. And just from another perspective, they're both in being tangled. In being connected, they're also mutually supporting. So they're, they totally need each other. And especially, you know, a year ago, it was like without one, there really wouldn't be the other and without the other, there wouldn't really be the one. So the, so you had this, the, the one is eating, you know, is eating big, taking big bites. So the other one, now all of a sudden you start hearing, uh, like the stomach of the other, of the origin monster starts to growl.

• 22:01Pete Roberts?

  Yeah, exactly. And, you know, we, I think in an effort to make sure we're doing things right, you know, we made our tuition payments on the origin side. We, we built the things that built America, denim and boots. We proved we could build them again. We, we proved we could find and reclaim the knowledge and make the product and, and do it in a way that it was profitable too. So we kind of have, have proved this out. And it's like, okay, it's time to go, you know, and, and if you're not growing, you're dying, you know, and that's one thing I think in business, like people, they get comfortable, they get complacent. Well, listen, if you're not, if you're not growing, you're dying because somebody smarter than you is behind you, you know, and, and with everything, there's a beginning, there's a middle and there's an

• 22:46Pete Roberts?

  end and trying to extend that middle part, it's not a coast, it's not a flat road, it's not coasting. I was telling somebody the other day, you know, you get to the top of that hill and you're climbing, you're pedaling and pedaling and pedaling and you get to the top and you think, ah, I get to coast on the other side. The thing is you get to a plateau and then there's an incline on that plateau. You, you can't see over the horizon. And with Origin, we've been, you know, we've kind of been playing in the sandbox a little bit. I, addressing the, the team, you know, on the inside, you know, kind of in the trenches earlier this year was, this year, we start. I actually said to them, we haven't done anything

• 23:30Pete Roberts?

  yet. We're spread across 250,000 square feet in two states and 400 people and we haven't even started. Like this shit, like we've been, we've been a research and development company. Now it's time to go. Now it's time to truly rebuild the supply chains and build the products that we need and use and wear. So I kind of, you know, like cast that wide vision early in the year and. Even even the constant touch point, I think still, you know, still people, it's almost like, uh, and you have kids, you know?

• 24:10Pete Roberts?

  When I, when I had my first child, Keegan, like Amanda, you know, she's pregnant. It's like, cool. You know, you're pregnant and whatever. And then, then he came out and I was like, holy shit. What am I gonna do with this? You know what I mean? Like this is a, this is a real being. That's kind of how I feel like we're, we're ready to like go like there's like almost like a little bit of a rebirth, so to speak this year. Of what we're gonna do as a company, as a mission, as a, as a movement. And I, I could see it. I know you could see it and I'm trying to explain it to the team, but they aren't, they aren't feeling it yet. Cause it's all just words, but we.

• 24:53Jocko Willink?

  Just, just, I gotta throw this out there. Like I'll go to talk to a gas oil company in North Dakota, or I'll go talk to an energy company in Texas, or go talk to a, a construction company in Illinois or just, just, and there'll be a bunch of people that will show up with, they'll have origin jeans on, they'll have origin boots on. They're in the game. They're so supportive. And so I think that, I get to see that, right? I get to see people all over the country that are, that understand what we're doing and they're so supportive of it. And I probably didn't do a great job of, you know, I should be taking a picture every time that happens and sending it to you like, hey, show everybody this picture.

• 25:35Jocko Willink?

  I mean, I've been to events where there's like 12 people come up and they're all wearing origin jeans. Like how, how awesome is that?

• 25:41Pete Roberts?

  Yeah.

• 25:41Jocko Willink?

  And you know, this will be in the middle of wherever Oklahoma. It's, it's, it's awesome. So yeah, you, you can start to, you and I can sense all that happening. And probably need to do a better job making sure everybody on the team knows that.

• 25:54Pete Roberts?

  Yeah. And, and they're, you know, it's interesting. I don't know how to look at this. They're in the trenches every day, like making the stuff, answering the phone calls. You know, doing the marketing and all that stuff. And we're gonna build a hundred thousand pairs of jeans, right? Over the next 12 months. And I'm, and I'm down in Tryon, Georgia at Mountain Vernon Mills, the oldest mill in America and the last mill that weaves denim. And they weave our denim for us. And I'm committing to two million yards in three years. And I'm coming back and saying, hey, I just committed to every single yard of denim this mill can make. You know what I mean? And they're like, oh, okay.

• 26:33Jocko Willink?

  Okay, that's this is like being in Vegas, man, and just taking your wallet and putting it on black.

• 26:38Pete Roberts?

  A hundred percent, a hundred percent, you know, so there's, there's like, how are we going to fill the gap? How are we going to go from point A to point B? And speaking of feeding the monsters, oh, we're going to build a hundred thousand pairs of jeans in three years. We're going to build a million, you know, and on the Jocko Fuel side, oh, we're making thirty thousand cases of this a month. And we need to get to two hundred thousand in three years. You have these two, these two monsters that you actually know, like the, what they're gonna eat.

• 27:06Jocko Willink?

  You know, you know, the, you use the baby, the consumption rate. You know how much frigging milk it's going to take to get these kids to be full grown?

• 27:14Pete Roberts?

  That's right.

• 27:15Jocko Willink?

  And so you need to plan for it.

• 27:16Pete Roberts?

  Yep.

• 27:16Jocko Willink?

  And you know, at some point, they're going to be a sixteen and a half year old boy. And they're going to have a voracious appetite.

• 27:24Pete Roberts?

  Exactly.

• 27:24Jocko Willink?

  And it's going to be nuts. So we, we actually know that we can plot it out. We can see it. And so that, so that's, as you look at that growth and the amount of effort it was going to take with them, the amount of work that it was going to take to get it done, you knew that we were going to reach our limit here in Maine.

• 27:42Pete Roberts?

  A hundred percent. Yep, and just walking around the factory and just, we have pivoted and pivoted and pivoted and pivoted and gotten leaner and leaner and leaner and leaner. I mean, and you got to remember in that, in our first little, you know, our, our first big factory after we left the woods. Right? Like when you came on board and we partnered up, we were still in the woods and we were like, we're going to build, we're going to buy this big building, like twenty thousand square feet. What, where, where at one point, Jocko Fuel literally was on pallets in between all the sewing machines. So just so people understand how these things were tangled.

• 28:21Jocko Willink?

  And, and so we, we moved into that building.

• 28:24Pete Roberts?

  Two thousand seventeen.

• 28:25Jocko Willink?

  Seventeen, July. And when, when we did that, we had twelve employees.

• 28:29Pete Roberts?

  Yeah, twelve.

• 28:30Jocko Willink?

  Twelve employees. I mean, it was cool. It was cool. And you walked around, it was like, okay, cool. We got like plenty of room to grow, right? Oh, we got plenty of room to grow.

• 28:39Pete Roberts?

  Not so much. Not so much. So you know, there's a. You know, just walking around and thinking, this is, this is not going to sustain us. And looking at the, kind of stepping back out of the trenches, looking at the battlefield, going, how are we gonna go from, you know, point A to point B?

• 29:01Pete Roberts?

  When it comes to knitwear, when it comes to hoodies, when it comes to T-shirts, when it comes to denim, when it comes to all the things we need to make,

• 29:09Pete Roberts?

  we're going to have to look elsewhere. We're gonna have to look elsewhere, closer to supply chains, knowing that what we're really good at in Maine is building ultra durable goods like footwear and jujitsu keys. And that the cotton supply chain, the weaving and the dyeing is all more down in the, in North Carolina, in Georgia, Louisiana, you know, South Carolina. Is there opportunity down there? And we found some opportunity. So, we, we found a company that, uh, would, was gonna cut and sew for us. And, man, they were starting to work on some projects for us and I remember just calling you and being like,

• 29:55Pete Roberts?

  "Bro, we gotta try and buy this place." Like, walking into that for the first time and seeing it three times bigger than what we're doing and just cranking stuff out, I was like, "Oh, man, God, like, you don't know what you don't know." You know? And I actually say that to my kids, like, "Hey, you know, you don't, you don't know what you don't know. Um, and you can't control what you can't control, but you can respond, you can, you can control the way you respond to things you can't control." Well, we can respond to the, the things we don't know, we can control the way we respond to it. You know, and try not to have an entrepreneurial seizure at the same time. Uh, which, you know, we had some opportunities to have, I think. But, uh...

• 30:40Pete Roberts?

  We bought two factories.

• 30:42Jocko Willink?

  Let's, let's talk through the first one.

• 30:44Pete Roberts?

  Yeah.

• 30:44Jocko Willink?

  Right. So it's 60,000 square feet. You roll down there, there's not a for sale sign on it.

• 30:51Pete Roberts?

  No, it's not for sale.

• 30:52Jocko Willink?

  You know what I'm saying? Like this isn't like, uh, you go on a used car lot, there's a used, you know, cut and sew factory for sale and you, hey, hey, how much is this? And you know, that, that's not how it worked.

• 31:01Pete Roberts?

  No, and these, and, and like they barely have a website. I mean, you know, there's like all these old, little old factories spread across America that are still there that have been surviving. They have not thrived. They're not thriving factories. They've been surviving for the last 25 years. Out of a sheer like force of will, right? Whether a commitment to the people who have been working there for 25, 30 years. You know, or, or, or not knowing enough to shut it down or, or being too, um, I don't know what the word is.

• 31:34Jocko Willink?

  Stubborn.

• 31:35Pete Roberts?

  Stubborn. Yeah. To shut it down. So luckily I was able to go in.

• 31:42Jocko Willink?

  Too patriotic to shut it down.

• 31:43Pete Roberts?

  I think patriotic is a better word. Yeah. I mean, yeah. So went in, met with this old boy Ted. Hasn't, was going through some health problems. Kind of sold them on the vision. Of course, you know, they are looking at a Yankee.

• 32:02Pete Roberts?

  This Yankee coming down. And there's still some of that there. You know what I mean? Like even Jason has said to me, you know, y'all rich, the Yankees coming down here. Bro, you kidding me? When we started this company, we didn't have two nickels to rub together, a bucket to piss in, bro.

• 32:19Pete Roberts?

  Like go on to YouTube and watch how we built this thing. So, but it's still like these Yankees coming down and whatever. So, you know, went down there, met with Ted, told him what we'd like to do to carry on his, his vision and plan for the company. Obviously he had a great operator down there in Jason Gaddy, great operator who's been doing this thing. And he's really the one that's been sustaining this organization for a long time. You know, 120 employees, whatever it is, and just cutting and sewing, just ripping stuff out, making stuff for some pretty substantial brands too.

• 32:55Pete Roberts?

  But you know, it's one of those situations where like, okay, this guy's kind of like a lot of talk.

• 33:03Jocko Willink?

  They're thinking you're a lot of talk.

• 33:04Pete Roberts?

  Yeah. Yeah. I think so. And it's tough. You've got this. You've got these people who have been running this business for forty, fifty years. They've owned it for forty, fifty years. They do things a certain way. They have a certain culture. There's a certain pace. There's a certain vibe. You know, and, and just somebody coming in that could potentially disrupt that is scary. You know, you, I mean, you're ultimately, people are innately afraid of the unknown. You know, it's also what also drives some people.

• 33:40Pete Roberts?

  But I, I asked him and convinced him, and not just him, I flew him up to Maine and showed him our little factory. And showed him what we're doing and introduced him to the people, introduced him to Amanda. Obviously turned him on to Jaco, like, you know, of course, they know who you are anyways. So just kind of made that connection. That always helps. It's always like you've got plan, you've got like the, the Deco says this, like when somebody comes to his school, right?

• 34:12Pete Roberts?

  The Deco, one of, you know, one of my, our business partners, also my jujitsu instructor. He's got a school down in Massachusetts in Weymouth and when people come in, they like, oh, I want to start jujitsu and they were like, okay, cool. Oh, oh, Origin Geez. Oh, cool. I've heard, I think I've heard this company, Origin. It's like, yeah, man, yeah, Origin, you know, Origin. And then they're like, oh, wait, Jaco? And he's like, yeah, yeah. You know, he's, he's also my business partner, my friend or whatever. And then they sign off right away. So it's the ringer, right? Like Jaco is the ringer. And every negotiation I just pull, I pull Jaco's name in. It always, it always helps. So, um, you know, we, we flew him up to Maine. We flew up, uh,

• 34:56Pete Roberts?

  you know who else we flew up? The head stitcher and the mechanic.

• 35:01Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 35:03Pete Roberts?

  And that's one of those things.

• 35:04Jocko Willink?

  Hearts and minds campaign.

• 35:05Pete Roberts?

  Hearts and minds, man.

• 35:06Jocko Willink?

  And getting to build relationships with people and getting them to understand what, what we understand.

• 35:12Pete Roberts?

  Yes. I want the mechanic to meet our team and to watch them sell. That's what I want him to do. So he can say to Ted, the owner, hey, these guys are for real. They know what they're doing. I get what they're doing. They're head stitcher. I wanted her to watch the way we sewed. The, the way the hands moved so that she could feel confident in the same thing. That, you know, we're, we are who they are. We're not just Yankees. We are people who are trying to rebuild the middle class, who are retraining and bringing this thing back. The same thing they've been doing for thirty, forty years. Luckily, they agreed to it and we made that shit happen.

• 35:54Jocko Willink?

  Was there a turning point that you saw? Was there a moment? Or was it a gradual, uh, swaying of the mindset?

• 36:02Pete Roberts?

  Well, there was, there was a tricky situation there, right? He had a couple of other partners. And

• 36:11Pete Roberts?

  they, they had a, a kind of an aggressive ask initially.

• 36:18Pete Roberts?

  You know, like you said earlier, I don't have my business degree. I try to understand people. I'm, I'm pretty transparent in negotiation. Like I, I wear my heart on my sleeve. I'm not hiding anything. And I explained to him in their first ask, I was like, yeah, it's just not, we're just not there. Like, we're just not there. Like, here's the value of what we're gonna do, because we're not gonna buy this business as a business entity and keep like just running the same way with the same accounts. We're gonna buy this as an extension of Origin. That it's gonna be a, it's gonna be a production facility ultimately for Origin. So the, the revenue doesn't really matter. What's important is you have a hundred and twenty people

• 37:03Pete Roberts?

  who know how to make badass shit, badass durable shit, and you have the machines to do so. So the value is in the people because you can buy machines. So you're buying people. You're buying a skill set. You're buying a capability. And to try to, to try to ramp up a hundred and twenty people and turn that on, we've already done it. It took, it took freaking a decade to do the same thing. We don't have a decade. So we gotta buy capacity. So we're buying capacity. I explained that to him, unpacked that for him. And ultimately, we came to agreement and You know, when you, when, when you talk about like putting money where your mouth is like me, you and Deco stroked a check and bought that place. Like that's like, we're talking about, we're reinvesting in America's communities.

• 37:49Pete Roberts?

  That wasn't a bank loan on that one. We wrote a check and I think that that was also meaningful to them knowing, yeah, we gotta go finance this thing. Like we're not a hedge fund coming in. You know, we're not corporate raiders coming in, you know, we're, we're actually investing in this personally. Our families are investing in what your family has built. Pushed them over, got the deal done and you know, we're high fiving. We just added 120 people who know how to build badass shit, but it still wasn't enough.

• 38:21Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. And, and in the meantime, you know, we, we kind of breezed through the, the getting the, the partnership with goo- good partners.

• 38:31Jocko Willink?

  One thing that was interesting about that was a lot of the stuff that I think would make a lot of companies really sweat and have to work. Like for instance, you know, our, our, our financials, right? So Don, our CFO, he's been here and he, we, we were so dialed in. You know, despite all the, all the overwork that he had done, you know, by himself much of the time. A lot of times, and look, luckily for me on the Echelon front side, I'm, I'm party to a lot of these deals, you know, I see a lot of P E's come in. I watch these deals happen. I'm part of these deals sometimes. So I've seen a lot of this and it was awesome.

• 39:13Jocko Willink?

  Because sometimes, you know, it, you, you start asking, when they start doing the financial due diligence, you know, it's, it's like open up a can of worms and mayhem's coming out and it gets crazy. And it was awesome to, and I remember you and I having this conversation, you know, like, hey, you know, I said, hey, what are we looking like from the financial side as they're rolling into this due diligence? How long do you think it's going to take? And you're like, hey, man, you know, the deal like we, it's not going to take long and there's, it's, it's all just good to go. And so I thought that that was pretty awesome. Especially considering such a small team.

• 39:46Jocko Willink?

  Of one, much of the time, you know, of just dawn, being that squared away. And, and he had done a lot to prepare us for that. So that was, that was pretty awesome. And finding those guys, you know, I, I'd say that if people aren't aligned, though, the one, the one time that you're going to have a failure is if we aren't aligned, if two people aren't aligned, or if two teams aren't aligned, you're going to have, you're, you're going to ultimately have failure. Cause you can't be going to two different places. You have to be going to the same place. You can't break the laws of physics and go to two different places. You can't rip bodies apart, it doesn't work. And so luckily with good partners, you know, they had, they had, they had built Supreme.

• 40:32Jocko Willink?

  They built Skull Candy. They got some newer companies. Yeah, Dave, they got, they got a hook. The H U K hook performance fishing, like really great companies that are cool. And so they had experience with this stuff and they were able to address things with us and talk about where we wanted to go and what I, you know, here's, here's something that was tricky. I was tricky because I, I don't like to lock things in because I don't know what the future holds. I give this advice all the time, hey, you know what the future is going to hold? So why are you locking in this or that? And so the way we set things up and the way they, they worked with us was like, oh, we have all kinds of options. We have all kinds of directions to go into. There's no doors closed.

• 41:15Jocko Willink?

  So that was great, how flexible they were, they were patient as hell.

• 41:18Pete Roberts?

  Yeah, they were patient.

• 41:19Jocko Willink?

  They were patient as hell.

• 41:20Pete Roberts?

  At some point, sometimes like I, my ass was stuck to my couch, you know, and I, I would be like on the phone, on the phone, on the phone, on the phone, like till midnight. It was, it was honestly, it was like, uh,

• 41:34Pete Roberts?

  this kind of, this, uh, I don't know the word for it. This constant alignment.

• 41:41Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 41:41Pete Roberts?

  Constant alignment and having the right, like the right words.

• 41:45Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 41:46Pete Roberts?

  You know what I mean? And, and sometimes those words were tricky to.

• 41:50Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, tricky, tricky. Here's something else that was cool. And it's a good, this is a good, this is a good lesson learned, um, for anybody that's out there. Lawyers talking to each other.

• 42:00Pete Roberts?

  Suck.

• 42:01Jocko Willink?

  Is different than two people talking to each other.

• 42:03Pete Roberts?

  Yes.

• 42:04Jocko Willink?

  So I remember we were, you know, we'd hit a little bit of a, uh, let's say a little. A little hesitation, right? I was a little bit hesitant. It sounded like they, so my lawyers are telling me that they're saying this and their lawyers are telling their crew that that, that I'm saying this. And finally, uh, I'm like, dude, give me Dave's number. And like, we just got on the phone and I'm like, hey, this is what I'm worried about. And he goes, yeah, we can handle that. That's no factor. I don't want to, you know, that, that doesn't make a difference. Okay, cool. Great. Write it up like this. He's like, cool. I got it. He said, hey, but Jaco, you, you gotta give me this over here. And I'm like, oh yeah, that totally makes sense. I don't, you know, you're not gonna, you're not gonna give us money if you don't have this type of thing.

• 42:45Jocko Willink?

  So, once he and I talked, person to person, man to man, and just, oh yeah, hey, man, okay, cool. From there, it was like everything was fine.

• 42:55Pete Roberts?

  Yeah.

• 42:55Jocko Willink?

  But there was, the getting to there-

• 42:57Pete Roberts?

  That whole time though, that monster would kept eating.

• 42:59Jocko Willink?

  Oh, it kept eating dude.

• 43:00Pete Roberts?

  It was eating everything in sight.

• 43:03Jocko Willink?

  And you know, I, you know, I, you were sweating.

• 43:06Pete Roberts?

  Yeah. Oh yeah, I was definitely sweating.

• 43:08Jocko Willink?

  You were sweating. And you'd talk to me like, bro, uh, you're, you know, you're trying to like, talk to the both sets of lawyers. And I'm like, bro, let me talk to Dave. Let's get this thing. And so luckily, you know, uh, when you talk and you're aligned, then it's easy. And look, look, hey, this is another thing I remember. When you, when someone else is, when the opposing lawyer is looking out for them, and your lawyer's looking out for you, they're, they're not, they're not trying to go to the same place.

• 43:35Pete Roberts?

  No.

• 43:35Jocko Willink?

  They're trying to go to two different places. So they're gonna have a hard time. So you have to have sometimes conversations, and those conversations need to be backed up in writing, of course. That's why, so, so you can then debrief the lawyers and the lawyers understand where you're, where you need to be. And that both sides have agreed. So, that's something to remember. And here's another, uh, you know, you and I never freaking had lawyers in between us. You know what I mean?

• 44:01Pete Roberts?

  No, we didn't.

• 44:01Jocko Willink?

  And the other funny thing I was telling people this the other day is we never had, we were, we were on a handshake for, for years, on a handshake, millions and millions of dollars worth of business.

• 44:13Pete Roberts?

  Tens of millions of dollars.

• 44:14Jocko Willink?

  Tens of millions of dollars worth of business on a handshake.

• 44:18Pete Roberts?

  Hot a handshake, which is freaking awesome. Like old school. I hope people can learn from that.

• 44:23Jocko Willink?

  And by the way, the only reason we eventually were like, okay, we need to, we need to go to paper on this stuff is because the banks and the lawyers were like, hey, guys, this thing's too big. This doesn't work. You can't have a handshake. Like if one of you dies, if one of you dies, this is a freaking disaster for all involved. And we're like, all right, fine. So we did it. But that, but that was a, you know, that was great.

• 44:47Pete Roberts?

  I was, I was definitely like sweating it. And I'll tell you what, I gotta give Kip props on it because he kept telling me, Pete, you gotta understand something. All big fish are lost at the boat. You can reel and reel and reel and reel and reel, and you go to grab that gill and pull that hook and you lose it. You know what I mean? Like you get it right to the boat and it flaps its tail and rips off. And we were at tail flapping kind of scenario at that point. And I'm trying to hang on to the freaking gill. You know what I mean? Like trying to grab the club to kill this thing. But it was ultimately, I

• 45:28Pete Roberts?

  think, I think that they're, they were definitely not only the right partner, but the patient partner we need.

• 45:36Jocko Willink?

  Yep. You know, that was, that was a nice, uh, let's say, you know, it proved to me as they were waiting. You know, they're like, okay. They didn't, they didn't freak out. They didn't get crazy. They weren't like all this. They were like, oh, it's gonna take some time to get this thing worked out. You know, it's like, it's like, wait, oh, she doesn't want to marry me right now?

• 45:57Pete Roberts?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 45:58Jocko Willink?

  No, it's like she wants to wait another year.

• 46:00Pete Roberts?

  And most private equity firms would not have done that.

• 46:02Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. Yeah. So they were super cool and proved the type of people that they were through their actions, which was legit.

• 46:09Pete Roberts?

  Yeah.

• 46:09Jocko Willink?

  And so that worked out great and has been great. Um, in the meantime, right?

• 46:18Jocko Willink?

  We get, how long was it, once we had the factory in North Carolina, the first factory in North Carolina?

• 46:25Pete Roberts?

  October.

• 46:26Jocko Willink?

  Factory one, we get that in October. So just after we recorded the last podcast, we close on that.

• 46:29Pete Roberts?

  First, we close on it.

• 46:31Jocko Willink?

  So, we're stoked. How long did the stoke last before you started, you started to hear hunger growls from the monster again?

• 46:39Pete Roberts?

  One month.

• 46:40Jocko Willink?

  It was one month?

• 46:41Pete Roberts?

  Yeah, because we, we launched November. We launched our, our Black Friday. We do that like one deal a year. And bro, we sold like 10,000 pairs of jeans.

• 46:53Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, that's right.

• 46:53Pete Roberts?

  We had to close it off and like, like, I don't know, a thousand, 2,000 pairs of boots and I'm, I'm looking at it.

• 46:58Jocko Willink?

  I remember you texting me like, we're shutting it down.

• 47:01Pete Roberts?

  Yeah.

• 47:02Jocko Willink?

  And that's when I was like, okay, that's, that always sucks, bro, you know? Cause what that means is someone out there is gonna have to buy a pair of jeans that are made in another country. And that, that's horrible. It's horrible for America. It's horrible for our economy. It's horrible for our community. It's horrible for the person that has to wear substandard jeans on their body.

• 47:25Jocko Willink?

  And yet, you know, I remember, hey, we have to shut this down right now. And I'm thinking, damn.

• 47:31Pete Roberts?

  The immediate pivot was, I remember sitting down the day, the next business day after Black Friday, with the team and saying, what are we gonna do? How are we gonna pivot? And we got Jason on the phone, our, you know, new partner down in North Carolina, running all of North Carolina operations. Then I said, hey, bro, think we can make jeans there? Remember this?

• 47:55Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 47:56Pete Roberts?

  I'm like, they're, I think, I, I mean, I think we can, but these machines are completely different felling machines. He's like, yeah, we can get it done. We can get it done. And immediately, and I think that's the great thing with obviously owning your supply chain. I, you know, I like to call it the origin factory blockchain. I, I use the word blockchain because people understand what a blockchain is these days. Well, the origin factory, factory blockchain is a blockchain of manufacturing and transparency where you can trust where everything comes from. You know that cotton's come from Texas. You know that thing's woven in Tryon, Georgia. You know it's getting cotton sewn in North Carolina and Maine.

• 48:35Pete Roberts?

  And, and it's a blockchain of manufacturing, which is really powerful and it's actually core to who we are and core to our story. Cause we got nothing to hide. We ain't cutting out tags. Right? We're making the shit from scratch. And you know, we actually put out there to the public like, we're gonna have to make jeans in North Carolina and watch us pivot and also follow us as we make mistakes, you know, and make tuition payments. But that mechanic that we flew up to Maine used to work in a denim factory. And he knew how to set up the machines down there and he knew how to tune them in. And he had all the beautiful tooling made. It was actually, it was so good, he made more

• 49:20Pete Roberts?

  incentive to Maine so we could use it in Maine. So we made the pivot. It wasn't easy, but we got it done. And and we're still not producing enough. And I remember saying to, I don't know if I called you, while we were down there getting to know the area, this is Ashboro, North Carolina, I drove by a building and it and it said on a trailer outside of the building, it said Texas Jeans on it. And I remember just asking Jason, like, what is that? He's like, Oh, that's a this old guy, Wally. And he's been in the denim business

• 49:59Pete Roberts?

  forever. Come to find out, and I didn't know this, I learned that North Carolina was the denim capital of America. And I'm like, so he's, he's got like denim machines and people making jeans in there and everything. He's like, Yeah, so again, another situation, we leaned into it a little bit, knocked on, literally knocked on the door, went in and started having a conversation. It all started with a conversation.

• 50:30Jocko Willink?

  I know, I know when you're talking about going back to factory one, Jason Gaddy, all right? You got this guy. I just want to, I want to kind of profile him just for a minute. Did you see a transition in his? Because look, the only Jason I've known is 100% let's make some shit happen now. We got this. Here's what we need to do. That's the only Jason I know. Was that the only Jason you know? Was that, was that a turnaround? Was there a turning point for him where, where he realized that this was the right thing to do? Cause I mean, like I said, I've seen nothing but Jason. Nothing from Jason, except for like a 100% positive, awesome attitude to make things happen.

• 51:13Jocko Willink?

  And also be like, no, hey, we, we're not going to be able to do that. Or if we're going to do that, here's what we're going to need, like that kind of thing. Was he like that the whole time?

• 51:21Pete Roberts?

  I would say his level of positivity was always consistent.

• 51:27Jocko Willink?

  Nice.

• 51:27Pete Roberts?

  And if, and if there was anything he was feeling, he did definitely didn't show it. Now with that said, we had a lot of private conversations, a lot of private conversations. He educated me on the way they survived over the past 30 years. He educated me on the restructuring they had to go through, the banks coming in and pulling apart the company and putting it back together and putting a CEO in place and how he fell in, you know, like, like they had, they went through some shit, man. Like after NAFTA and the WTO, like they went through some serious shit and he was part of it. So there's this protective kind of defense mechanism there that, you know, he's looking out for his people.

• 52:07Pete Roberts?

  And again, regardless of, you know, the, this newfound relationship and working towards this kind of new culture, you're still blending two cultures together and two companies together. So there was definitely some apprehension behind the scenes and we had lots and lots of in-depth conversations, some intense conversations too. The, the good thing with him is like he's, he's the type of guy, and maybe at some point it'd be good to have him on the podcast, but he's the type of guy that he's a, he's a, he's a survivor, man.

• 52:43Jocko Willink?

  I was gonna throw that out there. You talk about all these restructurings and all these things going on and putting a new, and he's the guy that's there.

• 52:49Pete Roberts?

  He's there and, and he's been through some shit in his life and, and, you know, and he's, he's, he's a survivor. So that's, it's tough when you have built something for so long to then, I'm just going to say abandon it.

• 53:10Pete Roberts?

  You've been building this thing for 20, 30 years and some freaking Yankee is coming down, asking you to abandon it. Cause that's ultimately the end goal, right? Is you're, you're gonna abandon this and, and you're gonna, and I'm asking you to fully buy into what we're doing. Unproven. Completely unproven, just from watching some freaking YouTube videos and knowing, you know, Jaco's my other partner. It's still, it's still, even though you can, you can buy into that and you can trust it, your, your livelihood and all these people's livelihood, you're, you're betting, you're betting that we're gonna do the right thing. Without that trust and that bond being built, uh, so.

• 53:53Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, and, and another comment I make a lot when I'm working with companies is, you know, they say, well, you know, you guys win the SEAL teams and you're dealing with life, life and death and be dealing with people's lives. And I always say, you know, we, we dealt with people's lives, you deal with people's livelihoods. And, and that's the thing about Jason, you could tell that total positive attitude, you could also see that like, that family attitude towards his people, that he wanted to take care of his people. Like he needed to survive because that meant his people would survive. Like you could feel that when you talk to him.

• 54:29Pete Roberts?

  Yeah, he's, he's intense and, you know, thank God he was willing to go to a muster. And he went to that muster and it changed his life. He literally said, Pete, I have learned more about myself and I'm growing every day, man. You know, and his, his thick southern accent. And, uh, you know, JP took him under his wing and a couple other, you know, the instructors and really dug in with him, they dug in and, and kinda, I don't wanna say like remolded, but remolded the way he thinks and is walking through life. And thinking about business and that was so important, honestly, if he didn't go to that muster.

• 55:15Pete Roberts?

  I don't know, I don't know where we'd be right now if he didn't go to that muster.

• 55:20Jocko Willink?

  Well, as we get into the next factory, you can see, like, I would be observing and going, oh yeah, he's got this. He understood, he understands this part. He understands that part. He understands this concept. He understands that concept. You could see that. I could see that. And, and believe me, I, I look at this stuff all day long. I look at meetings all day long. I sit with companies all day long. I sit in boardrooms all day long. I go to manufacturing floor. This is what I do all day.

• 55:45Pete Roberts?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 55:46Jocko Willink?

  So for me, sitting there watching this, like, oh, okay. I can see when people are disconnected. I can see when they don't understand what's happening. I can see when, when there's some agendas that they're, I can see all that. And you didn't see it at all from him. I, I saw that. He did. And what's cool too, is survivor, being a survivor, we say that as a positive thing, right? But we also know that, and just like any other characteristic, if someone's a survivor, and that's kind of they get in that survivor mode, it can be an absolute negative because they're trying to survive and they're not trying to grow and they're not trying to thrive.

• 56:22Pete Roberts?

  Yes.

• 56:22Jocko Willink?

  Which is problematic. And so I, I think that transition from him just going, hey, I'm just gonna make sure I take care of what I've got right now into a growth mindset and a thrive mindset of, oh, we can actually not just survive, but actually grow and take over and, and crush. I think that was a pretty awesome transition for, for Jason Gaddy to make.

• 56:45Pete Roberts?

  Yeah, it was. It was.

• 56:46Jocko Willink?

  So now you're driving around Ashboro, North Carolina, shout out, and you drive by this building.

• 56:53Pete Roberts?

  Yeah.

• 56:54Jocko Willink?

  And you see a trailer sitting on, and by the way, it's a big building.

• 56:57Pete Roberts?

  Yeah.

• 56:58Jocko Willink?

  It's a huge building, but it's very nondescript.

• 57:01Pete Roberts?

  Yeah, it's nondescript. It's got this trailer with it, Texas Jeans. And, and just in terms of timeline here. We like I had seen, I had seen this building during the deal making for that first factory. I had seen it and You mean driven by it? Yeah, just looked at it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And actually, I think, uh, I think we tried to get in, but we weren't able to. Like the guy there was just not interested in talking to us or anything. So it was kind of a blip, right? It was like, uh, it was like, oh, we, you know, what, what's that? You know, like, and it kind of a blip, tried to get, could get in, whatever.

• 57:40Pete Roberts?

  So, um, it, it came back up and I, I had remembered, oh, there's this thing. So drove back by it, called Jason. Do you, do you know who owns this? Do you have the contact information? Is there any way we can talk? And, you know, Jason's like, yeah, I know who it is. You know, basically like, good luck. You know what I mean? With this whole thing. And I said, well, we're making jeans in Maine. We're making jeans in North Carolina. Things are working. But at the pace we're selling, right? At the pace of product that we're selling, because we're, we're a company that literally, we, we take an order in and we manufacture the thing. So we're selling, you know, a thousand pairs a week right now on top of the 10,000 in back order.

• 58:24Pete Roberts?

  So we're now pushed out from Black Friday. We're pushed out for five months, which is completely unacceptable. It's completely unacceptable in this world of getting shit from Amazon dropped in by a drone. Right? Like an hour after you order it. So it just was like, I, I kind of looked at the numbers and the, and the run rate of what we're selling. And I'm like, It just doesn't work. This ain't happening. It just doesn't work. You remember that phone call? Yeah. Like, hey, we, we're not going to be able to ever produce what we need to produce at this run rate with this kind of growth trajectory. So Jason connected me with the son of the owner. The son of the owner connected me with the owner.

• 59:10Pete Roberts?

  Again, not for sale.

• 59:14Pete Roberts?

  He entertained me. He entertained me in this old 1970s boardroom. That had a distinct smell to it. Him and his wife Dolores.

• 59:30Pete Roberts?

  And I could tell this dude was hard. You know, like just the way he carried himself, the way he looked at me, the way he interacted. He even told me, if I was your age, I would kick your ass.

• 59:45Pete Roberts?

  He said, I would kick your ass and I'd kick your ass in business. You couldn't touch me. You can't compete with me. You don't know what I know. What I've done out in this plant. I went out in the plant. He actually did bring me out in the plant for a couple of minutes. And I asked the son if I could shoot photos and he's like, yeah, go ahead. And then he saw me shooting photos and he said to Jason, Gaddy goes, if I see that dude shoot another photo, I'm gonna kneecap him right here. I mean, that's the type of dude we're dealing with.

• 1:00:14Jocko Willink?

  Just to, just to put this in, in a little bit of perspective. So this guy, how, how long had he been in this business for?

• 1:00:21Pete Roberts?

  Uh, 50 years.

• 1:00:21Jocko Willink?

  So if you don't know this, i- if you don't know this, this is, this is the old school. Way. And back in the day. Well, look at the history 50 years. This is when you had the like union issues. This is when you anti-union issues. This is when you had massive influence from organized crime in the textile industry. Like this is when you had intense, intense competition in America. Cause this is before everything's overseas. So now you're, now you've got in like the most intense competition. And this guy, you want to talk about a survivor and a thriver.

• 1:01:03Jocko Willink?

  This is a guy that dominated and dominated for 50 years. And worked. And if you were not a badass, you weren't gonna make it. It wasn't gonna happen. And if you weren't a badass, you were gonna get your ass kicked. And that's what he did. He went around, that's why he was, you know, the, the last standing wash house. The last denim plant. From the, the golden age of textiles in America. This is the guy, the last standing guy.

• 1:01:35Pete Roberts?

  Hundred percent.

• 1:01:36Jocko Willink?

  Right?

• 1:01:36Pete Roberts?

  That's it. The last one. I mean, you you're talking about a a plant that's a hundred and seventy thousand square feet with this wash house now a storage room, right? With these big five hundred pound washing machines that tip forward dump out, you know, the the wash jeans.

• 1:01:55Jocko Willink?

  Like a dump truck, bro.

• 1:01:56Pete Roberts?

  That that haven't been like a dump truck that haven't been running in years.

• 1:02:00Jocko Willink?

  They the washing machines don't weigh five hundred pounds. They wash five hundred pounds. You know, a quarter ton worth of jeans.

• 1:02:06Pete Roberts?

  Yeah, they're nine feet tall. They're I don't know how many thousands of pounds. They're massive, massive machines. But, you know, you walk into this place and you could just tell it's like, uh, man, like, World War Two, post-World War Two, East Germany, Berlin, like, everything's just so closed and dark and dank and it just had this it had a survivor type of feeling like this thing exists out of out of sheer survival. Like, it shouldn't exist. It shouldn't be here. It should have been gutted and turned into something else a long time ago. And this guy was not willing to let it go.

• 1:02:47Jocko Willink?

  Just force of will.

• 1:02:48Pete Roberts?

  Yep, just a sheer force of will.

• 1:02:50Jocko Willink?

  So how did you uh uh navigate the conversation to go from this isn't for sale? And if you put your don't put your camera away, I'm gonna kneecap you right here. How do you transition from that? To let's just I mean, how do you even get him to open his mind a little bit?

• 1:03:09Pete Roberts?

  Well, let's let's just say that it didn't start off great. Uh, in it in ultimately, it ended up good, but the ebbs and flows of our conversations in what transpired during this time was not only the strangest negotiation I've ever been part of.

• 1:03:34Pete Roberts?

  But even more of, one of the more heartfelt too. You know what I mean? It was, it was a hard negotiation. It was hard to talk to him. It was hard to find common ground. Because of his passion and our passion for what we're doing. I think ultimately. He saw something. That he was willing to believe in. A spark of something and. Not to get ahead of myself here, but. The first time he walked in, I had Jason with me. And while he walks in, you know, and he's kinda, he's got his, kind of the brows over his eyes and. He kinda walks in and his wife's behind him and Jason's like, what up old timer? And um, and, and while he looked at Jason.

• 1:04:17Pete Roberts?

  And you could tell they probably had competed in the past or. You know, whatever. You got, you got two strong. Southern men, right? And while he said something smart to Jason, like I'll kick your ass or something like that. I was just like. I literally put my head in my hand going, oh man. How is this gonna go? You know, the, what it boiled down to was. He, he's in bad health and right now while he is, he's actually not doing good. I, I actually wanted to interview him for the documentary we've been working on and. I've asked three times. I've talked to him. I've talked to his wife and at this point I'm probably annoying about it, but he, he won't do it and.

• 1:05:01Pete Roberts?

  He said to me, because I remember things a certain way. And. Somebody else remembers them another way. And I can respect that, but some of the stories he told me, which I, I can't share. I can share some of them, but. Are. Are unbelievable. Straight out of a movie, you know, with organized crime and all that, all that stuff. But ultimately we spent. 20 hours over the course of a few weeks in that boardroom, talking and negotiating. He started the negotiation with. You are not seeing my books. You are not seeing my financials. If you want to get this thing done. He's like, you're gonna number one, have to tell me why?

• 1:05:45Pete Roberts?

  Because I got somebody ready to stroke me a check right now. And that's the person I'm gonna sell it to. That's how the negotiation started.

• 1:05:54Jocko Willink?

  There were times where this wasn't happening. And it well, let me, let me first start off by saying this. When you first called me about what it was, what the opportunity was, I was like, oh, this is next level. You know, you're talking about an incredible staff of people that have an incredible skillset, an incredible amount of machinery, a space that's 170,000 square feet, a space that's grandfathered as far as like a wash house. You can't build a wash house like that. You can't do it anymore. There was, there are things that are once in a lifetime.

• 1:06:30Pete Roberts?

  Yes.

• 1:06:30Jocko Willink?

  This was a once in a lifetime opportunity. So I was, and you know, of course you're telling me, hey, man, we're the, the, the jeans thing that we're doing right now. We, we, we are not going to be able to do this. And then all of a sudden here comes like a ray of light, right? Like a, like a, like a lifeboat.

• 1:06:47Pete Roberts?

  Like divine intervention.

• 1:06:48Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, you're dry, you're, you're, you're in the ocean, you're, you're alive, but you're, you're in the ocean.

• 1:06:54Pete Roberts?

  Yeah.

• 1:06:54Jocko Willink?

  And all of a sudden lifeboat comes. And this thing was like a lifeboat. And so I'm super stoked and you know, you can always make deals happen, right? You can always make deals happen. You can always figure out a way. And my attitude is always, well, we'll figure out a way to make a deal. We'll make a deal. And there was some times in this where we weren't making a deal, where it wasn't happening. Where I just thought, yeah, man, what are we going to do now? I was in plan B, C, D, because you'd say, hey, let me debrief you on what just happened today. You know, and I'd be like, okay. The deal fell apart.

• 1:07:32Pete Roberts?

  Completely, multiple times.

• 1:07:34Jocko Willink?

  And then it would come back together.

• 1:07:35Pete Roberts?

  Yep.

• 1:07:36Jocko Willink?

  And then it would fall apart, but it wasn't like, uh, it didn't seem like those deals falling apart were any negotiation. It seemed like it just died. Like it wasn't like, oh, you know, he's hardballing us or he's going to hold a little bit, or we got to come back with a different number, number. It was like, no, you know what? I'm actually just not selling this to you anymore.

• 1:07:55Pete Roberts?

  Yeah, he didn't even, he, he honestly didn't care about what we were going to pay for. It didn't really have anything to do with money. He wanted someone tough.

• 1:08:09Pete Roberts?

  That wasn't me, by the way. He wanted someone tough who could come in there and demand respect, that knew how to interact with people, that understood the business, that could carry on his legacy. And after 20 hours of negotiation, that wasn't me. And I'll share with you in a second who it was. At that, at that table, that conference table, and flying back and forth and having these meetings, I did learn something very important about negotiation. In negotiation with someone

• 1:08:51Pete Roberts?

  who is so passionate about something that they've been building for 40, 50 years, 50 years, remember, this guy had seven plants around North Carolina. He made it through the exportation of our jobs and machinery and the abandoned communities. He, he survived it. You know, the other thing is, is this, this guy, I don't know, it's, he's the last of his kind. I, I think is what it boils down to. And he doesn't really believe that anyone can do what he does. You ever

• 1:09:34Pete Roberts?

  met somebody like that? There is nobody alive that can do what I did, what I do. He made the jeans for Levi's. He made the jeans for Wrangler. He made the jeans for Calvin Klein. On one case, he shared with me, he was, he got a contract for Calvin Klein and a guy showed up in his office, unannounced. His secretary comes to see him. Hey, there's somebody here to see you. And he's like, okay. And the guy comes in his office and he puts two plane tickets on his desk, tells him, you know, where, I know where you live. I know, you know, I, I, I know everything about you. Basically, you're coming with

• 1:10:17Pete Roberts?

  me. And on the other end of those tickets was a guy named Whitey Bulger. While he's like, hold on a second.

• 1:10:28Pete Roberts?

  Tells the guy to chill out for a second, gets on the phone, calls a friend of his up in New York City, saying, "Hey, I got a guy here named Whitey Bulger." He's like, "He's asking me to pay money." He's like, "Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, Wally, hold on." "Who?" He's like, "Whitey Bulger." He goes, "Who are you making jeans for?" He says, "Calvin Klein." He goes, "I'll call you back in 15 minutes." Come to find out, his friend had the connections. I don't even know if I should be sharing this shit, bro. His friend had the connections to get to the top. And, uh, Whitey, basically, he gets a phone call back and they're like, "Is Mr. Bulger there?" Puts him on the phone with Mr. Bulger.

• 1:11:13Pete Roberts?

  And Whitey, he said, "I just heard the guy go, 'Yep, yep, yep, got it, okay.'" Puts the phone down and leaves. He wasn't paying for every pair of jeans that he was making. He wasn't given the cut. Wasn't given the cut. He didn't know he was supposed to be given the cut. It had never filtered down to him. So he started receiving checks with the cut taken out for the product. There was a lot of stories like this. There was some pretty, there were some stories that he was telling me. And I think the point is, is he wanted me to know how tough he was. You know, here's a, here's a, here's a guy who's at end of life. You know, and it's actually kind of, it's kind of sad, too. He's at end of life. He's built this empire.

• 1:11:58Pete Roberts?

  He's invested everything in this. He's the best in the world at it. He's in the best in the world at making denim blue jeans.

• 1:12:11Pete Roberts?

  And he's staring at death.

• 1:12:17Pete Roberts?

  We spent a week negotiating, two weeks negotiating, and then it's just radio silence. There's, there's no more conversation. I'm trying to figure out what's going on. I, I think the deal's done, man. I think it's dead. There's no more conversation. There was another entity. Another entity that wanted to purchase. That had a ton of money. You know, backed by massive, massive hundreds of millions of dollars and they were ready to roll in there. I finally get on the phone with his wife, Dolores. Got her cell phone number. She sounds pretty wound up. You know, hey, Wally, you know, he's, he's in hospital, you know, um, why don't you come down next week?

• 1:12:58Pete Roberts?

  So I go back down. I'm sitting in the boardroom. Wally comes in and he sits down. You know, and he's looking rough and he, he's welling up. You know what I mean? He's just, he's welling up in his eyes. And I'm like, what's going on? And he basically said, nobody knows this. I haven't even shared it with my son. But

• 1:13:20Pete Roberts?

  he, he had a heart attack and he died.

• 1:13:26Pete Roberts?

  Called, I guess his wife called. They brought him back to life. Got him back and they actually said, there is no way you should be alive right now. You must have more to do. And that was the defining moment where he opened up back for negotiation where, where he just, he was staring death in the face and then he dies. He gets brought back to life. And now I'm sitting in a board with, with him and I have my wife next to me. Amanda and I knew bringing her down was gonna be important because him and his wife have been doing this thing and they've been a unit, you know, they've just,

• 1:14:10Pete Roberts?

  they're like minded and, and one plays off the other one and similar to the way Amanda is and, and I am. And

• 1:14:19Pete Roberts?

  it was then that he decided that we had what it took, that I didn't have what it took, but that she had what it took. Cause he was asking, he asked me, actually asked me to bring her down. I said, Amanda, I want to bring you down to North Carolina. Listen, Wally's asking, asking to meet you. She's like, why do I need to go? She's like, this is your thing. This is what you do. I said, I don't know. I said, he wants, he wants to meet you. And he, and, and I called him back. Yeah, I'm gonna be coming down. He's like, you're gonna bring Amanda, right? And I'm like, yes, I'm gonna bring Amanda.

• 1:14:52Pete Roberts?

  He's, he stared at me across the table and he said, he said to me, he goes, he's like, you can't do this. He goes, I don't trust you can do it. He goes, but she can. I watched the way she moves. I watched the way she walks. I watched the way she interacts. I said, she can make this happen. And I wouldn't do a deal with you, but I'll do a deal with her.

• 1:15:16Pete Roberts?

  And I said, you're right.

• 1:15:19Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 1:15:20Pete Roberts?

  You're right, man.

• 1:15:21Jocko Willink?

  I know, man. I agree with Wally, bro.

• 1:15:23Pete Roberts?

  A hundred percent. It's like, you're right. And you know, that was the turning point, man. The guy died, got brought back to life. He saw his legacy in front of him. He saw, you know, a, a, a family, and I'm talking about a family. He's, he's, of course, the Jaco thing came into play because he had a special forces guy that lives next door to him, who told him all about you. So you've got people who are hungry to bring back manufacturing in America. And it was at that point that he believed that we could carry on his legacy and things move forward.

• 1:16:00Pete Roberts?

  And, and bro, like, even with, even his belief that it could move forward, that we could handle it was still, it was still just the beginning of all the bullshit that we had to go through to make the deal happen.

• 1:16:15Jocko Willink?

  Well, one thing I remember, another point was there was, you, you call me up and you're like, hey, it ain't happening. Or you send me a text like, it ain't happening. And I'm like, oh, you know, well, so we get on the phone and you're like, hey, we're, we're do, you know, we're going through the, the, uh, the due diligence and whatnot. And there's no phase two environmental study, hasn't been done in 30 years or whatever, 40 years. And you're like, hey, man, if this comes up bad, we could be out a million, $2 million worth of like cleanup and repair and payments. And you're like, we just, you, we just don't know.

• 1:16:59Jocko Willink?

  And I remember I'm like, okay. I said, hey, man, how much would it cost us to build that factory? And you're like,

• 1:17:09Jocko Willink?

  I don't know. You're like, ah, you're running the numbers. You're like, 25, 20, 25, maybe 30 million. And I go,

• 1:17:18Jocko Willink?

  Let's do this deal. And you're like, Roger that, you know, because and that's again, that's one of those things where you were really close to the deal, of course. But I looked at, you know, that's actually a small risk when you put it up against what we would have had to have done. And I mean, and look, even if we had a billion dollars to say, okay, now go build that factory. How long does that take? Now go get those people. Where do you get them from? Now, train those people.

• 1:17:43Pete Roberts?

  Years.

• 1:17:43Jocko Willink?

  It's, it's, it's maybe seven years, like literally seven years. If we had a billion dollars, it would have taken seven years.

• 1:17:50Pete Roberts?

  Yeah.

• 1:17:50Jocko Willink?

  So those little risks, those additional risks that you take, because it's a once in a lifetime. It, this is a once in a lifetime deal.

• 1:17:59Pete Roberts?

  Yeah, it is. Uh,

• 1:18:04Pete Roberts?

  it's, it shouldn't, it shouldn't have existed and it shouldn't have happened. One, one person's sheer force of will to hang on to what, to the golden age of manufacturing. One person's decision is actually going to spearhead this renaissance, this revolution of manufacturing. We're, we're actually just dovetailing onto that thing to carry it forward.

• 1:18:30Jocko Willink?

  He was like the underground resistance for 40 years.

• 1:18:34Pete Roberts?

  Yes.

• 1:18:35Jocko Willink?

  Just like sitting in a cave, keeping those machines on, just keeping it going.

• 1:18:40Pete Roberts?

  And everybody I come in contact with, everybody I came in contact with since then has said, oh, you, you're, you know, you're the owner of the new, uh, of, of Wally's factory. I said, yeah. And they're like, can't believe you got that done with Wally. Like, I mean, everybody knows the guy and he's, he's a hard ass, man. Dude's a hard ass, but ultimately it got done. We got it done. Freaking sign the papers.

• 1:19:09Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, we, we got it done when they're like, one of his stipends right at the, again, this, this whole thing was like a cliffhanger.

• 1:19:15Pete Roberts?

  Yeah.

• 1:19:15Jocko Willink?

  Right? Hey, okay. I want the money in a week.

• 1:19:18Pete Roberts?

  That's, yeah.

• 1:19:21Pete Roberts?

  The guy's crazy, man. He's crazy.

• 1:19:23Jocko Willink?

  I want the money.

• 1:19:24Pete Roberts?

  What do we do? Do we escrow him some funds?

• 1:19:27Jocko Willink?

  Oh, I mean, I remember him wiring big fat numbers around and going, yeah. And here's the other thing, like you kind of breezed through this, but you can't see my books and you can't see my financials.

• 1:19:38Pete Roberts?

  No, you, he actually had a piece of like just notebook paper. And he wrote on his revenue, what he did. He's like, this is how much I pay for heat. This is how much, this is, this is my payroll. Here's lights, electric. He goes, and here's um, the revenue and you can see this is how, this is the math works.

• 1:20:02Jocko Willink?

  And that's cool. You're like, hey, Roger, that you should, you sent me a text of a napkin or whatever. Like, hey, John, this is what we're buying, according to the napkin.

• 1:20:11Pete Roberts?

  I think, I think most people walking in there would, would be like, this is like, this guy's crazy.

• 1:20:17Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 1:20:18Pete Roberts?

  Like, this is a shit hole.

• 1:20:19Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 1:20:20Pete Roberts?

  You know, and, and I think it's the future.

• 1:20:24Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. And I think, you know, thankfully you had the understanding of the true value. And I think, you know, just like every good deal, like he, he got, he got what he wanted.

• 1:20:38Pete Roberts?

  Yeah.

• 1:20:38Jocko Willink?

  He really did. He got a, a, a team that's going to come on board, that's going to continue that fight, that's going to expand that fight. And that's what he wanted, you know, and then all parties can walk away feeling good about the deal. That's a great deal. Uh, when that happens.

• 1:20:59Jocko Willink?

  And then

• 1:21:02Jocko Willink?

  it's like you finally get to go into the factory for the first time. And you know, this is like buying, this is like buying a car. This is like walking up, seeing a car in the parking lot. And the guy's like, hey, I'll sell you that car over on the other side of the parking lot. Can tell what it's a Corolla. It's a Toyota Corolla. And you're like, how many miles? He's like, don't worry about it. Can I kick the tires? Nope.

• 1:21:24Pete Roberts?

  Is there an engine in it?

• 1:21:25Jocko Willink?

  Is there an engine in it? I'm telling you, there is. I drove it here.

• 1:21:28Pete Roberts?

  A long time ago.

• 1:21:29Jocko Willink?

  Right? So you just need to buy this thing. So you finally get to look under the hood.

• 1:21:33Pete Roberts?

  Yeah.

• 1:21:33Jocko Willink?

  Of this thing. What, what'd you see? What, what did we actually buy when you got in there?

• 1:21:38Pete Roberts?

  You know, I, I think that.

• 1:21:44Pete Roberts?

  I mean, where to go with that question? I could go so many different directions. I think we bought exactly what we needed. And, and the challenge was that I, I didn't anticipate was a double merger of companies and cultures. A double merger of companies and cultures.

• 1:22:05Pete Roberts?

  I did not anticipate the difficulty of that.

• 1:22:10Pete Roberts?

  Yeah, we went in there, we stripped out seventeen roll-off dumpsters full of stuff. We gutted the lights and put all LEDs. We put seventy-five thousand dollars of Freon into the system, so we had cooling in there, so it wasn't a sweatshop. Like, we went through and with machinery, we bought new machinery, we stripped stuff apart, we built a fulfillment center, we stripped out the warehouse, we got new controllers, custom controls, we bought new dryers, like, we, I mean, we did everything we need to do for an infrastructure. But a double merger of comp, of companies and culture was the tricky part.

• 1:22:42Jocko Willink?

  That, um, the first, like, pictures you're sending me?

• 1:22:48Jocko Willink?

  You're, you're like, half laughing and half crying. You're like, you're like, uh, like, back there, there's a wash house, it's in there, you know, there's just piles of equipment with, and it, it looked like, you know, areas of the factory obviously hadn't been cleaned or used in decades, in decades.

• 1:23:07Jocko Willink?

  You know, I remember you, you know, excited because you found the floor in some of the areas, like, you actually, like, got enough stuff out of there so that you found the floor.

• 1:23:19Pete Roberts?

  People were smoking inside the building, Jaco. Cigarettes. I walked through and I'm like, I'm walking, I'm walking, I'm like, I'm like, huh, there must be some smoke coming in, and I walked by and there's a person smoking a cigarette. I'm talking, this is straight out of the seventies, bro. Like, like, shit hasn't changed since nineteen seventy. Same type of a culture. Same type of a setup, hasn't changed.

• 1:23:47Jocko Willink?

  It looked rough.

• 1:23:48Pete Roberts?

  Now you're gonna tell everybody to change.

• 1:23:50Jocko Willink?

  The cool thing was, you know, before we get to the merge in the cultures, uh, that, and I've been talking about this a decent amount lately. So, you know, we, we even say that, I'm like, hey, it's not, it's not the, it's not what you hang on the wall. You can't just run around with a bunch of sayings, but actually it kind of does help. And I talked about, you know, the fact that David Hackworth changed fighter company, or sorry, Fox company in, in Korea to fighter company. And he changed the, the hopeless in Vietnam, the 439, he changed the hopeless to the hardcore. He just changed these names, changed these things. Hey, gave them little patches to wear on their uniforms, right? Made their salute into hardcore condos, no fucking slack. Like he made these changes, like just, just made them.

• 1:24:33Jocko Willink?

  And that starts to shift things and, you know, out of the gate, you're just like cleaning, just, just cleaning this place up, right? Getting rid of a lot of this junk, getting rid of a lot of these old machines that weren't, that didn't have any purpose anymore, painting things. In, a wage increase across the board for everybody.

• 1:24:53Pete Roberts?

  Yeah.

• 1:24:53Jocko Willink?

  Like out of the gate, no.

• 1:24:54Pete Roberts?

  They were making $7.50 an hour, dude. They're making minimum North Carolina wage. $7.50 an hour. Who can live off of $7.50 an hour?

• 1:25:03Jocko Willink?

  So the wage increase, the cooling system you're talking about, I mean, crap, you know, like you gotta post that, that cooling system again. That thing's a monster. It's like, I don't understand.

• 1:25:13Pete Roberts?

  With a swamp cooler.

• 1:25:14Jocko Willink?

  Swamp cooler, there's, there's like a, a small pool of water in there.

• 1:25:17Pete Roberts?

  You need to cool off, you could dive in.

• 1:25:19Jocko Willink?

  It's like crazy, right? But, and, and what was the little bet you had with Kip? Like I'll give you a thousand dollars if you can get this thing running or something. What was the deal on that?

• 1:25:26Pete Roberts?

  Kip came down and he's, you gotta remember, Kip's been in a lot of factories and hope he doesn't mind me sharing this, but he, he told me once, like he went into a factory, they drove, you know, an hour. Then they drove, you know, 15 miles down this dirt road. And then they, then they, at the corner of the dirt road, there was somebody carrying, he thought it was like bananas or something out of the forest. Then they drove down an elephant trail, another five miles into the middle of a jungle. Where people were like carrying out, whatever, he didn't know.

• 1:26:00Pete Roberts?

  And there's this building, there's this three story big brick building with bars on the windows. And he's like, don't tell me this is a factory. And he goes in and there's a bunch of girls, young, young girls in there sewing.

• 1:26:18Pete Roberts?

  And he's like, get me the hell out of here. And what those folks were carrying out in bare feet was the garments. And of course, you know, he's like, I think, I think for like Kip, like he knows what factories, good factories look like. He knows what infrastructure looks like. He knows what's right and he knows what's wrong. He's seen it all. He walked into the back room with Jason Gaddy and Jason, you know, Jason is, he's like, you know, kind of get that sales personality. Oh my, look at this. It got that so cool. We got this, we got that. He's like, this thing, it shoots out, it'll, it'll cool this whole place down. And Kip's like, this thing ain't working, Jason. He's like, no, it's, it's working. It's good to go. You just got, Kip, Kip walks over, he's like, yeah, there's no way.

• 1:27:03Pete Roberts?

  Yeah, there's no way this works. He's like, no, it, it works. And Kip's like, I don't know, I'll bet you a thousand dollars that this thing doesn't work. Come to find out, that shit didn't work. That shit didn't work. I think, I think Kip found out like two weeks ago that uh, we, we had to dump that type of cash into it, but. Stuff, stuff like that, definitely important. While all that was happening, for me, it was more of how am I going to connect with the people? That have learned leadership from Wally.

• 1:27:38Pete Roberts?

  Again, this dude is living in the seventies, eighties where you protected your own. At whatever cost. How am I going to untangle? And re-educate what our culture is like, how we lead, how we treat people. And I remember the first thing I did was I went up to the three managers and they're all looking at me like, who is this guy? You know what I mean? Like, and I, I just, I said to him, I said, listen, I said.

• 1:28:12Pete Roberts?

  They're like, are you gonna fire us? I said, no, I'm not gonna fire you. You're gonna fire us and bring your own people in? No. Well, how do we know that? I said, we didn't buy this place because of the machinery or the building. I said, we bought it because of the people. I said, that woman over there, that's felling jeans. I have never seen anything like it. That one over there, I said, I've never seen anything like it. I said, the skill here, you don't find in America anymore. I said, we're here because of you and nothing else. That's it. And the one, there's this one woman and she's staring at me, staring through me. I was actually a little bit feared for my life.

• 1:28:56Pete Roberts?

  And I get done and she does this little smirk and she smiles. She goes, I like you. And she just walks off. And it was like a lot of those, you know, keeping those conversations warm and touchpoints. It was, it was just the beginning. We're in process right now, obviously, of trying to continue changing the culture. It's, it's difficult, man. I mean, obviously, you've come down twice already. What did you think when you first walked in for the first time?

• 1:29:25Jocko Willink?

  I was freaking totally stoked. Uh, but you know, you can tell, again, this is something that I get to see a lot at Echelon Front, and I get to see in the military, too. You could tell that the people had some level of, for lack of a better word, I said this phrase the other day, post-traumatic leadership disorder, right?

• 1:29:50Pete Roberts?

  Yeah.

• 1:29:50Jocko Willink?

  So you have Wally, who's a survivor, who's going to crush, destroy, kick ass to, to, to make this work. And that, what does that translate to on the front lines? Tyrannical leadership. Like, you're gonna shut up and do it the way I'm telling you? That's it. That's the way it is. And you could tell that that's the environment that these folks in the, now, by the time I got down there, again, The lights were in, the place was clean. So you started to see, you, I could smell the, the hope, right? I could start to smell, but then, you know, we'll get into some of the conversations that we had as we went forward and as Echelon Front showed up there. Uh, you could start to see,

• 1:30:29Jocko Willink?

  okay. But I, I, when I got in there, I actually saw hope and I saw people looking at me and as I started talking to people, you see that there's hope there and they were ready for that transition. What's, so we'll get to that. In the meantime, the other monster is out there.

• 1:30:50Pete Roberts?

  Yeah. I think people really got to understand there's like, there's two monsters. We're walking through the factory, getting phone calls about this other thing. And we're doing this other thing. We're getting phone calls about these, these deals. It's just, it's a lot. It's a lot.

• 1:31:02Jocko Willink?

  The other monster now.

• 1:31:03Pete Roberts?

  It's a freaking lot, bro.

• 1:31:04Jocko Willink?

  The other monster's hungry. We, you know, one of the main things that we wanted to get done was make a ready to drink milk that people could go into a store and say, hey, I need protein right now. I need to fill myself up. I need some nutrition. I want it to be healthy. We, we need ready to drink milk. We've had great success and supreme demand for the powdered milk. I mean, it's the best stuff going. So, but people, sometimes you don't have time to, you don't have a shaped cup, all those things. So we need to make a ready to drink milk. And that was a cha, cha, cha,

• 1:31:44Jocko Willink?

  challenge. A challenge to make the right formula, a challenge to make the formula as healthy as it can possibly be, as efficacious it can possibly be. And you gotta counter that with making it taste as good as you can possibly make it. So people want to drink it. So it tastes good. And so we have all those just to formulate the thing. And once you formulate it, guess what you gotta do? You gotta actually make it. So how's this going down?

• 1:32:12Pete Roberts?

  Yeah. I mean, it, it's funny and listening to you talk, it, it's all about this whole thing that we're, we're doing, not trying to do, we're, we're doing it. We're executing something. It, it's all around people and community.

• 1:32:27Pete Roberts?

  Like it takes people, it takes knowledge, it takes equipment, it takes community, like it it's the same damn thing. We're trying to make stuff, you know, we're trying to not lose who we are. Cause if if we do, I mean, I don't even, I don't even want to guess at what happens for our kids generation. And honestly, I was saying to somebody the other day, it's on, it's on us right now. It's on the, it's on the Gen Xers. I mean, us three at this table, it's on us. We're the next leaders of this nation. We're the businessmen and women of this nation. We're gonna drive the direction. We're gonna drive a divide or we're gonna, we're gonna try to unify, you know, and in.

• 1:33:10Pete Roberts?

  I was explaining these market dynamics, um, actually to Kip in, in the team that.

• 1:33:19Pete Roberts?

  Like what are we trying to do?

• 1:33:22Pete Roberts?

  And and I'll try not to get off on a tangent here, but you have the greatest generation. The greatest generation.

• 1:33:30Pete Roberts?

  Were responsible for turning on the war machine of World War Two, America's war machine, which was America's factories. We had the capabilities, we had the knowledge, we knew how to build tooling if we didn't have it. We knew how to make machines from scratch, from ore, from iron ore. We would, we would freaking heat and cast and mold and pound that shit into shape until it turned into a. Tank or a truck, whatever we needed. And we've, we've truly have lost that and it's been crushing the middle class. You know, and and this is all about trying to, trying to give the middle class. What makes America great, which is real opportunity. Cause without it, who, who are we?

• 1:34:16Pete Roberts?

  You know, this, I guess it's just a 250 year seizure, you know, and. We're, we're trying to do something about it, so. I guess, I guess my point is, is, um. We've kept this singleness of purpose across the board on Origin and on Jaco Fuel. And although one serves the things you wear and need and use in life, the other one actually serves, you know, the things you need for nutrition and you need to, you need to consume this stuff. I was in Europe a couple of weeks ago. There's, there's foods that are illegal that are made here. You can't buy shit in Europe, you know, like stuff that comes in boxes that, you know, has its at the end of it

• 1:35:00Pete Roberts?

  and cheese at the beginning, you know, like that type of stuff you want to consume by the handfuls. But, you know, like we're, like the things that these big conglomerates are able to make, you know, like they're just not good for you and, and we're trying to make something that's good for you.

• 1:35:18Pete Roberts?

  So this, this market dynamic of this, this World War II generation that is all but gone, that passed the stories on to us Gen Xers, these were the future leaders. Our kids have never, I, I don't want to say have never had any authentic experiences, but most of their experiences come through a device, likes, follows, friends through this device. They didn't hear the stories from the greatest generation directly, so they, they lie with us. They've never really experienced anything authentic. They've never walked into a factory. And so you have this void of,

• 1:36:01Pete Roberts?

  I don't want to use the word authenticity, but you have this void of reality because everything is behind a screen. You can't see it truly. You can't smell it really. You can't feel it. And ultimately you don't know who made it and, and there's something missing. The thing that's missing is what, what they fought for, right? It's what the greatest generation fought for. It's what they went to war for to protect the things we had. And then we sell those things to the lowest bidder. That's what we did. We sold it to the lowest bidder. But we let it happen and.

• 1:36:44Pete Roberts?

  Origin and Jaco Fuel, like the things we're doing, it sits in the middle of this triangle. Where our, our kids are gonna, they're gonna experience something authentic for the first time. They're gonna walk into a factory and go, whoa, whoa, what is this? And they're gonna pick up a boot and smell the leather. So we're gonna leverage this technology they're used to to tell a different story. To write a different script, to change the narrative. And that's the idea here and use, and, and use, and, and and not romanticize about the greatest generation, but honor them through what we're doing. And, and that's, that's the ultimate goal.

• 1:37:28Pete Roberts?

  Like when you look at this immersion camp, we're here in this immersion camp right now. You got 350 people here and we're walking through the factory yesterday. And, and for the first time, 70% of the people here have never been here. They've never been to the factory. The looks on their faces and the questions they're asking. I mean, we spent four hours walking through the factories and they're just like, wow. And I know you've had a ton of people come up to you and I've had a ton of people come up to me, but

• 1:37:57Pete Roberts?

  we're not selling them anything. We're showing them a way to do something. You know, they manifest what their belief in what we're doing and their alignment with what they're, we're doing. They manifest that by purchasing a hoodie or a pair of jeans or boots or grabbing a mocha or a go. But it's, they're living into the same thing we're leaning into. And, and I think that that's what makes it so, not, not, not powerful. It's what makes it so important. It's why Wally sold us that, the factory. That's what he saw. He saw a generation that actually could do what he did. Because he didn't believe, he didn't believe it was gonna happen.

• 1:38:39Pete Roberts?

  He did, he thinks, he thought we were too soft, soft and weak. So, um.

• 1:38:46Pete Roberts?

  There's a, there's a mindset. There's, there's a, there's a, an air, there's a, there's a frequency that we're all working on to try to make this shit happen. And it, and it all, it all is living as ideas and, and, and wanting to be executed, but sometimes recklessly. And we're trying to organize that so that it's, it's executed more refined, I guess you could say.

• 1:39:20Pete Roberts?

  Whether it's with the jeans, whether it's with trying to make mulk RTDs. And it sounds silly a little bit for me to say it like that, but it's not because that shit is hard to make. There's five people in America who can make it that we know of. We're looking for more. Hey, listen, if you can make this mulk RTD for us in America, please let us know. Uh, cause it, it's been difficult. What we wanted to do to keep it clean, you know, the, the way we needed to package it, uh, how we wanted to keep it actually good for you and healthy for you. There's actually not a lot of people who can do that. And the people who can, the people who can are held back

• 1:40:01Pete Roberts?

  by the big brands who have the market share and the control. And we're trying to come in and trying to take some of that market share and take some of that line time. And those big brands pay them off to not let us in or anyone like us in. They're not gonna let us in. They ain't letting us on the line. They're not giving up an ounce of market share to us.

• 1:40:30Pete Roberts?

  Good thing we're fighters. You know what I mean? Like a little bit of savages, a little bit arrogant at times, uh, but uncompromising. So, you know, we're, we're in, we're in that process right now. I mean, we can't make what we need to make for the supply. We can make a certain amount. You know, like we have the product, we've had it. Our first manufacturer who committed to us then dropped us. I'm sure they got a, a side deal, you know, some type of check cut to keep us out of the line. I'm not sure. To keep, just shut, keep the line shut. Just don't make anything. They're paying them not, they either are gonna make them or they're not gonna make anybody else. And these companies are getting paid off to do that. To make anything. Not to make anything.

• 1:41:10Jocko Willink?

  Uh, just to go back to your, your tangent about making things and what it's like to see that. I, I think there's a, a certain human instinct that we have that a certain dopamine reward that we get for creating things, right? Otherwise, how would we be here? How would we as human beings have lasted if we didn't get a little dopamine hit from building a freaking, uh, a roof over our head with sticks or put rocks into a circle and make a fire? If you didn't get some kind of dopamine hit from that, we wouldn't be, we wouldn't exist as human beings. So I think we all have that. And if anybody's, you know, ever, if you've ever created anything, if you've ever made anything, you get that little dopamine hit. Oh, yeah.

• 1:41:52Jocko Willink?

  If you've, you know, when you were a little kid and you made a tree fort, you enjoyed that. As you get older, you remodel the kitchen. If you did that, you hung drywall, at the end of the day, you looked up, you got a dopamine hit. I remember one time I was building a retaining wall in my backyard. I was in the Navy, I was probably, but I was, you know, I was like, probably, I guess I was 16, 17 years in the Navy. And I had taken, you know, a, a three day weekend so I could build a retaining wall. I'm out there laying bricks, laying block. And I remember, I got done and I just came in, I said, you know, hey babe, I think when I retire, I'm going to become a mason. You know, like, no one's bothering me. I'm listening to some music. The, the block don't talk. It's, the

• 1:42:36Jocko Willink?

  block isn't gonna die. It's not even gonna get injured. It's, and, and look at what I did today. You know, like, it's a good feeling. That dopamine hit is a real thing. And unfortunately, the dopamine hit is subsidized by, you know, clicking, you know, deliver this to my house. And it seems like they don't even want you to understand where this stuff came from. They just want you to get the dopamine hit of, of hitting add to cart. Yeah. Right? They don't want you to know what it feels like to make this stuff. And you rip that out. That's why you see, you know, for years now, for, for kids, it's been, oh, you know what you need to do is, you need to go to college and learn, you know, you need to learn-

• 1:43:21Jocko Willink?

  Computer science. Computer science or liberal arts.

• 1:43:25Jocko Willink?

  But you're not going to go to a technical school. We don't want you to go to a technical school. We don't want you to be an electrician. We don't want you to be a plumber. We don't want you to be a mason. We don't want you to be a carpenter. We don't want you to know how to work a loom. We want, but we want you to buy this stuff. So there's like a capitalization of, of dopamine. And they make it easier. And you know, even like, you know, you threw out computer science. Actually, people that do good computer science and computer engineering, they get dopamine hits because they're building something. And it's something that they can make. I mean, Echo, you, I can tell you get dopamine when you make a video and it's good. You even make a part of a video sometime and you're like, hey, I built this. And there's a certain amount of satisfaction. And like, that's a certain amount. That's something that I don't understand.

• 1:44:09Jocko Willink?

  I can't make anything on a computer, as you know, right?

• 1:44:12Pete Roberts?

  Yes, we know that.

• 1:44:13Jocko Willink?

  But I know that you get it from there. And I get to go straight to the source on that. So this is what happens.

• 1:44:22Jocko Willink?

  I think, you know, it's like a, look, I'm not going to sit here and say it's a conspiracy's theory or a conspiracy that, you know, the big corporations don't want people to, to, to make things on their own. But that's just the way it's turned out. The way it's turned out is, is if you want to make, for instance, a ready to drink protein, they don't want you to know how good that feels to deliver that product and have people have a healthy choice when they go out. They don't want you to feel that. Because if you feel that, other people might feel it. And if other people might feel it, all of a sudden, we got a problem on our hands.

• 1:44:56Pete Roberts?

  Dude, a hundred percent. It's like freaking Soylent Green. The way this shit works. Remember that movie?

• 1:45:02Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 1:45:02Pete Roberts?

  They're lining up to eat the wafers, man.

• 1:45:04Jocko Willink?

  Yep.

• 1:45:05Pete Roberts?

  Everybody's lining up to eat the wafers. And we're like the insurgency, right? Saying, hey, join us. There's a better way. Here's the truth.

• 1:45:18Jocko Willink?

  We gotta have truth. Yep. Gotta have truth, so. So we, so through great effort, we eventually, we, we find a manufacturer in Canada. Yeah, seven hours away, our neighbors in Toronto. Our neighbors, God bless. And they're up there and they're, you know, not, they're not willing to sit back and shut down their line for money. Right. They want to have things made. Good on them. So the malt comes, here's another, you know, just, just another, the flavors on the go, right? So we got Discipline Go. When, when did the first one come out? A year ago? Hmm. Two years ago, was it two years ago? The new, the new adjusted. No, when's the very first Discipline Go? Who can remember?

• 1:46:03Jocko Willink?

  So colors. We have one flavor, it comes out, it's based on my taste buds, which is a bad idea. I don't drink sugar, I don't eat sugar, or let me rephrase that, I don't drink a lot. I haven't drank in a Coca-Cola in decades, right? So the very first Jaco Discipline Go that I had, which had a little bit of monk fruit in it, it, to me, it tasted like frigging, you know, candy cane almost, right? I'm like, oh, hell yeah, this is sweet, hell yeah. And that's sort of the, the baseline that we used in the beginning for the drink. And the bottom line is it was, uh, to use Echo's term, and Echo's correct, he's like, you're not normal, meaning Jaco, you're not normal.

• 1:46:44Jocko Willink?

  And he's right, my taste buds are not normal. And so we ended up, as we developed the flavors for the Discipline Go, look, we made the best possible drink. The efforts that we went through to make it, and how we made it, to make it as clean and make it as natural, to hold off on making it for seven or eight months so we could actually pasteurize it instead of just, hey, you know what, why don't you just throw some chemicals in there? Just throw them in there, it'll be okay. No, no, we're not gonna do that, we're gonna pasteurize it. What about, hey, monk fruit's kind of expensive, we can throw, throw some, you know, some of the aspartame, we can do that? Hey, no one will really know. Yes, we know, I know. We're not doing it, we're gonna hold the line. So we make,

• 1:47:26Jocko Willink?

  well, you should just dump a bunch of caffeine, that way people will feel it, yeah, then they're gonna crash too, and it's not gonna, it's freaking bad for them, we're not doing it.

• 1:47:34Jocko Willink?

  So we end up making an outstanding drink in terms of performance. But taste, not the best. Definitely needed to get better. So we had to attack that issue.

• 1:47:47Pete Roberts?

  Man, I got really happy. I got really used to the taste, by the way.

• 1:47:51Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, so did I.

• 1:47:51Pete Roberts?

  And I was like, I like, it's like, if you drink coffee for the first time, of course, this is a thousand times better than coffee. Dude, I, I don't drink coffee. I did a spurt of five years. I drank coffee in the beginning of starting Origin. I don't drink coffee, though. And then I never drank it before, because I think coffee is disgusting. I think it tastes bad. I think it tastes really good with a lot of sugar cubes and some milk and maybe throw some whipped cream in there. But that's not really coffee, you know what I'm saying? So I, I really did like, and I, I actually drank mango. Is I drank a mango every day, you know, one can of mango every morning. That's, that was my best part of waking up was mango in my mouth. You know what I'm saying? So.

• 1:48:32Jocko Willink?

  And I love the, the iced tea lemonade.

• 1:48:35Pete Roberts?

  Yeah.

• 1:48:35Jocko Willink?

  And that's what, so the old flavors were like this. Usually people had one that they really liked.

• 1:48:41Pete Roberts?

  Yes, I had one.

• 1:48:42Jocko Willink?

  And they had two that they thought were okay.

• 1:48:44Pete Roberts?

  Yep.

• 1:48:44Jocko Willink?

  And then they had three that they literally didn't like at all, which is not good, right? So we knew we had to redo these flavors and we, what we ended up having to do is say, hey, you know what? We need help. We need help. We, we, we've reached the maximum capacity of our capabilities.

• 1:49:02Pete Roberts?

  Yes.

• 1:49:03Jocko Willink?

  And reached out to professionals that actually formulate flavors and can help and help us put together and reformulate the flavors on all the drinks. And man, what a freaking difference.

• 1:49:18Pete Roberts?

  Yeah.

• 1:49:19Jocko Willink?

  I mean, the new flavors, all of them. This is what it's like now. You'll have three that you love. And you'll have four that you absolutely.

• 1:49:31Jocko Willink?

  Love almost as much. But I, I actually drink every single flavor. They're all delicious now. They're all delicious now. So that was huge, but. We had to destroy some flavor system. This is what's crazy, right? It's not like you snap your fingers and now you have new flavors. No, this is a massive investment financially to, to bring these new flavors around, the testing, the, hey, no, this one sucks. No, I want a little sweeter, less lime, you know, more cherry, all these things going back and forth, paying to get all these things formulated. And then once you get them formulated, well, that now you've got to adjust all the cans that you've made. And you've got some cans that are sitting around that now what are we going to do with these?

• 1:50:17Jocko Willink?

  So this was a, a, a massive effort, a massive effort. But you know what? I, I remember the, huh, I, I don't want to say the, the dictum that I put out. Like the, the commander's intent that I put out was we need to win on taste. Like we're, we're, look, we're winning on. Everything else. Everything else. We've, we've, we've got everyone else crushed. We've got them. No one can touch us. We need to win on taste. If it doesn't taste good, we can, it doesn't matter. And we, we did it. We did it now. We're winning on taste. So now we're winning. We got the, the best tasting. We got the most efficient. And now that means that right there was the production of all the weapons

• 1:51:01Jocko Willink?

  right there. That was the production of all the weapons and all the battleships and all the aircraft carriers and all the airplanes and all the howitzers in World War II. We made this and now they're out. Now it's, now it's time to take them into battle. And this is, this is so, such a fascinating world. This battle that goes on in the business world. And I never knew about it. I mean, I certainly didn't know, know about this three, four years ago. What's going on when you go into stores? How that, how that functions? So you go into a store, you go into a convenience store and you see of, you know, 20 different energy drinks in the, in the, in the cooler, in the refrigerator.

• 1:51:45Jocko Willink?

  And those energy drinks to get into that cooler had to fight to get in there. And what that means is they, in many cases, had to pay to get in there. They had to pay millions of dollars to get that shelf space. And each one of those different brands that you're looking at in there, some of them have paid more, some of them had paid, have paid less. If you happen to have a, a, a drink that just performs great, guess what? They don't have to pay a bunch to get in there. If you have something like Jaco Fuel, where we do perform, we haven't paid to get in there.

• 1:52:28Pete Roberts?

  Yes.

• 1:52:28Jocko Willink?

  We're getting by on actual performance. And that's good. Because the amount of money that gets thrown around in these deals, we're talking about billion dollar companies, multi-billion dollar companies. So you've got that war going on. So that every, every space in that shelf is fought for. And you know what? When you go in and you support, you go in and you buy a Jaco Go from a convenience store, or you go into a grocery store and you buy it, you are, you're, you're calling for reinforcements. You're, you're opening up the gates for reinforcements to get in there. So when you do that, thank you for doing that. Not only are you supporting yourself, you're supporting the, the company, which means you're supporting America.

• 1:53:13Jocko Willink?

  So thank you for doing that. So you've got that war going on on one front. The other war is this virtual war that you've got going on, which is insane. So whether it's search words on Google or searching in Amazon. See, this is again.

• 1:53:30Pete Roberts?

  Bro, they don't, they don't call it conquest for no reason.

• 1:53:33Jocko Willink?

  There's, there's terms called conquest.

• 1:53:35Pete Roberts?

  Somebody.

• 1:53:36Jocko Willink?

  This is.

• 1:53:36Pete Roberts?

  That's a war term.

• 1:53:37Jocko Willink?

  This is where I started to understand what was happening on Amazon. You know, years ago, I'm at Echelon Front and I like certain kinds of pens, as stupid as that might sound. You know, I'm kind of a particular guy, Echo Charles.

• 1:53:49Pete Roberts?

  Yes, I do.

• 1:53:50Jocko Willink?

  I like things a certain way, right? There's one right there. I like certain kind of pens. I like certain types of pencils. I like certain types of paper. So, you know, one time I was like ordering one of my pens. This is, and I ain't no freaking Mont Blanc dude over here. I'm not rolling on a $200 pen or whatever. I like pens that cost $2.59. So I order one pen for $2.59 and Amazon says, "Yep, it'll be there tomorrow at your house." So I'm thinking to myself, "That's crazy. I don't know how they're doing this. It had to, it's gotta cost them. How much does it cost for them to deliver this thing to my house?"

• 1:54:31Pete Roberts?

  A lot more than $2.59.

• 1:54:32Jocko Willink?

  A lot more than $2,000. And what's the, you know, what's their profit margin on $2.59 or $2,039? What is it? 20 cents? It costs them $2 to get this thing to my door at an absolute minimum. So how in God's name are they making money? How is that happening? Well, when I searched "pen", there's 12 pens that come up and each one of them is paying to pop up on my computer screen and lure me into buying them. And that's happening billions of times a day. So, there's this virtual war going on inside of Amazon.

• 1:55:12Jocko Willink?

  And it was crazy, as we put our products on Amazon, that if you searched "Jocko Protein",

• 1:55:23Jocko Willink?

  before we understood the battlefield, you'd search "Jocko Protein" and there would be nine proteins come up, none of which would be Jocko Fuel.

• 1:55:32Jocko Willink?

  Or you'd search "krill oil" and seven krill oils would pop up and none of them would be Jocko Fuel. And this confused me for about four hours. And then I said, "Hey, what in God's name is going on?" And guess what? People are paying. And the word you just used is "conquest". Explain that. Explain how that works.

• 1:55:51Pete Roberts?

  I mean, we like to do it every now and then. I mean, you gotta fight fire with fire a little bit, but... Learning the landscape, first of all, and obviously getting smart people involved was key to our hiring process of getting, I call it expanding the brain trust, you know what I mean? Basically, it works like this. You find smarter people and you algorithmically bid, so if you have AI, that's even better, against your competitors, and then you conquest them by using their name. So regardless if they're searching for you or searching or using their brand name, you're coming up. And that's, that's the war, you know, that's the war online.

• 1:56:36Pete Roberts?

  Yeah, 100%. And it's no different than in the stores, except that, you know, the companies with, and we're in this war right now. We're in this war in the store right now. We, we have a company that is offering millions of dollars for shelf space, which we need. We can't fight that battle. So we're working on some other techniques which we won't share to flank it and stay where we need to stay ultimately, and continue driving velocity to, to prove out what we're doing, not just to the store, but to the consumer also. So there's a lot of moving parts there.

• 1:57:17Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. And the best thing, the best, so, so here's a, uh, people talk to me, have written a bunch of books, right?

• 1:57:23Pete Roberts?

  Yeah.

• 1:57:23Jocko Willink?

  And people like, oh, you know, what's that, what's the key to like making New York Times bestseller? What's the key to having a bestselling book? And the key is, write a good book. That's the actual key. So the best thing that we can do is what we've done. Make the best possible product, make it taste as good as it possibly can. And that is why we're in there in the first place. We would never, we didn't have, we don't have the, the, the firepower to break through the door. What gets us into these, all these different places is the high demand signal. So thank you all out there right now, tuning in, listening, going, hell yeah.

• 1:57:57Pete Roberts?

  Clear the shelves.

• 1:57:58Jocko Willink?

  Yes, clearing the shelves. You out there clearing shelves? That's, that's literally what made this happen. That's what, that's what keeps us going. The, the product, the effect, the effectiveness of the product, the taste of the product, that's the number one weapon.

• 1:58:12Jocko Willink?

  To to to make this happen, but and that's what we have to use is because that's what we have. We don't have billions of dollars. We can't throw tens of millions of dollars at a store to say, can you give us a few more? Can you get rid of our competitor? Because that's what happens. And look, this is business. This is business. I get it. And they can win. I get that too.

• 1:58:36Pete Roberts?

  You can understand Wally a little bit.

• 1:58:38Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 1:58:38Pete Roberts?

  You can understand Wally's mindset with his that protective mindset. We're doing the same thing. You know, like we're going to buy line time. We're going to, we're going to go buy, we're in the process of it. We just secured 2025 line time for Molk RTDs. 2025 shit ain't even shut up, set up yet. And we're going to own that. Why? Because you gotta be a savage about it. You gotta protect what you're building. So it is, it helps me understand his mindset by our mindset with how we're building this.

• 1:59:07Jocko Willink?

  Yep. And you have to, like, like you just said, you have to be a savage because if you're not,

• 1:59:14Jocko Willink?

  you have to be a predator. You have to go, you have to be a predator because otherwise you'll get eaten. You, you just look like prey. And in these big companies, it's, you know, it's us down here, you know, scrapping. And they can just, you know, they can throw money at stuff. And you know what? And like I said, they can win. That's the way, that's the way things work. But we also have advantages. And that's what we're going to utilize. You know, this is how, this is how insurgencies work. How do small little gorillas running around in the jungle defeat giant imperialist countries? It's an insurgency. There's belief. There's, there's belief in what's happening.

• 1:59:55Jocko Willink?

  There's unity in the people. That's what we have. We have people that believe we have unity. And that's our strength. And that's how we're gonna win on that battlefield. Now, meanwhile, again, while all this is going on, which is a daily fight, a daily fight.

• 2:00:15Jocko Willink?

  Meanwhile, we got this double merger going on and it's actually more of like a triple. We have a triple merger going on because now in North Carolina, what we end up with is we have factory one that we bought. Now we have, and it's not like factory one was bought and now everyone, we've been there for long enough. Now everyone's completely transitioned into everyone understands what we're doing and everyone's on board with the way our leadership works. No, that that's still going on. Boom. Now we buy another factory. And now we have the origin culture, factory one and factory two, all these cultures merging in one shot at one time. What's that looking like?

• 2:01:00Pete Roberts?

  Well, don't, don't forget and, and maybe you wanted to save this, but while all this is going on, we have this kind of aggressive and bold idea of building an American made hunt line in this factory that we're going to double merge together. So I don't know if that's crazy. It is, it's, it's a little bit crazy. What, what we're trying to do is you, you're not right in the head. I think, I think that's what makes it all work is other, other, other companies, they're not willing to pull out all stops.

• 2:01:39Pete Roberts?

  It's, it's a, it's, it's not, it's not normal. It's necessary though, like you said. So double merger, trying to build culture at the same time, developing textiles, developing a camo, trying to get this wash house up so we can wash jeans, developing new fits, hiring a product team, getting the logistics figured out, building out a new direct to consumer warehouse, training people on that, hiring operators, like hiring a new C level executives, having to have board meetings, expanding the finance team. It's, it's a lot. It's a big ass wave, man. I'm, I'm

• 2:02:20Pete Roberts?

  just like, and from, and honestly from like my perspective.

• 2:02:25Jocko Willink?

  These monsters went from like Komodo dragons to Godzilla.

• 2:02:29Pete Roberts?

  Yeah, yeah. A hundred percent. Bro, so somebody said to me recently, man, you, you're hard work. I said, actually I will not outwork you. I will out ADHD you.

• 2:02:41Pete Roberts?

  That's it. I got ADHD for days, man. Like, I can bounce around, but it gets to a point where like, you gotta organize the chaos, you know, and you can use your ADHD, I can use it as a superpower, but stepping back and like, hey, letting people start to organize this chaos, you know, into a machine. It's like you've got all these parts and pieces, but like putting them together, dumping some oil, putting the grease on, and tuning it in and letting it run. It's kind of where we're at right now is it's together,

• 2:03:22Pete Roberts?

  but it's squeaking, man. It's squeaking and we know what needs to be done, but the biggest part of that is culture. And honestly, it's on both, it's on both sides of this two-headed monster. You know, is keeping that consistent culture, driving it down. I believe the most important thing you can have in business is culture. You know, I think if you have good culture, you can do anything. And we've seen that in a positive light in war, and we've seen that in a very negative light in war. If you can get buy-in from the people and you can, and you can create a mindset, a mission and a mindset around that mission that people are willing to execute against and go to war for,

• 2:04:04Pete Roberts?

  you can truly do anything. You truly can do anything. I've always believed that. As a kid, when they said, "You can be anything you want to be. You can do anything in life." I actually believed that shit. Maybe I was naive, but I believed it. You know what I'm saying? And I still, and I still do believe it. So, you know, like, I remember calling you up and being like, and we don't need to share it here, but like, "Hey, Jaco, we've got some problems." "We've got some problems trying to merge this thing together." I shared some of those concerns with you of that mindset from the seventies and eighties that was really not gonna work and really not okay.

• 2:04:45Pete Roberts?

  And at that, and at that point, obviously, you were like, yeah, I'm freaking in. You know, and getting the teams together, feeding them, having a meal, and then like showing them and going to town on like, who we are and what we're all about, and what culture means, and what leadership means, and how to lead and how to communicate. Like, it's, it's not like, and I know you've been down twice now for the whole team, then for the management team. I believe it's gonna take, like, some people going to musters, some of, some of you coming back to the factory. You know, like, it's gonna take this constant alignment over the course of 24 months. That's how long the double merger is gonna take.

• 2:05:28Jocko Willink?

  Yep, yep. Yeah, and that's pretty standard, right?

• 2:05:32Pete Roberts?

  I don't know, man. You tell me. I mean, you're in businesses all the time. I don't know.

• 2:05:34Jocko Willink?

  I am telling you, yeah.

• 2:05:35Pete Roberts?

  I'm with the trenches a little bit.

• 2:05:37Jocko Willink?

  You, you can't, it's not an inoculation. You don't go to one, no. Jock would talk about extreme ownership. Okay, cool. Now I get it. Now we can move on. This doesn't work like that. But what's, what is beautiful is you can see, you can see progress. I mean, you know, you mentioned about Jason's project, progress, as his mind opened up, as he started to understand other ways to lead and get out of just a survival mode, which is a good thing, but it's not as good as a, as a build and thrive and, and take over mode, right? That's, that's the thing. And just like, like a really simple thing. When I talk to the team in North Carolina, just explaining to them that

• 2:06:22Jocko Willink?

  leadership wanted their feedback. Leadership wanted their feedback. Leadership wanted to know if there was something on the line that didn't make sense. And I remember asking, you know, something along the lines of like, who do you, who here thinks Jason knows how to hem that thing better than the, the person that sits on the machine all day? Everyone's like, of course, the person on the machine. So if Jason's telling you to do something the wrong way, doesn't it make sense that you say, hey, this doesn't work, or here's a better way to do it? Yes. And like the, the light on their faces. Was, it was a beautiful thing to see because you can see that they're, they do have ideas in there. They have better ways of doing things and they can definitely help us improve. And they will help us and they are helping us improve.

• 2:07:03Jocko Willink?

  And of course, you still have to power through the fact that they've been underneath leadership that didn't do that for a long time. It was like, hey, you're going to do what we say. We don't want to hear from you. So this is a, this is where things start to change. And Jason says he getting that feedback that he needs. So no, there's not going to be an overnight transition. That not going to happen. But what's beautiful is that transition is already happening. You already see the improvement. You already see the attitude. The, the difference between when I went down there the first time and I went down there the second time, a couple of months apart, took radically different, radically different situation. You could see the difference on the floor. You can see the people smiling. You can see them looking, wanting to show me something, wanting me to look at this. Oh, come and look. That's what you see. And, and, and that's just like, that's where we're going.

• 2:07:48Jocko Willink?

  That's the culture starting to grow. And the other thing is you can't impose culture, right? You can't say, okay, here's the new culture, A through Z. This is what, no. It, it has to like all go into the pot and we have to cook it together and they have to realize and there's going to be some things that they're going to give to us. And so that's the beautiful thing is to watch this thing, uh, watch that unfold. Hunt line. So first of all,

• 2:08:16Jocko Willink?

  you being in Maine, being in, being in the, in the woods of Maine, hunting is a way of life up here. So way of life, you know, I know you're, I know Joe, your father-in-law, he's a hunter. You're a hunter. I remember your son out running trap lines. Like this is the way of life in Maine. So for hunting for you is like, oh yeah, this is a no-brainer.

• 2:08:37Pete Roberts?

  Yeah. I mean, it total, a total no-brainer and you know, and, and that community is also, you know, they're also patriots. And they heavily believe in the land. They heavily believe in America.

• 2:08:52Pete Roberts?

  And the fact that, you know, they don't have an option that is made here with textiles that were made here, like the fact that there's no option anymore. You know, we actually, in my last company in the early 2000s, we actually manufactured, I mean, we did marketing for this company, it's called Beagle Wear. And they did a wool and I still wear that hunting and I don't hunt a lot anymore. Because, you know, I'm trying to feed two monsters seven days a week. But, uh, but I remember, that's what I still wear hunting right now is I wear this wool Beagle Wear, which has a DWR on it, freaking stuff is phenomenal. That for me was always like the pinnacle of like hunting gear, made in America, made

• 2:09:37Pete Roberts?

  in Vermont. To bring this to fruition and to bring a product at the level we've brought it to on an American supply chain is, it's, it's a, it's a little bit of a miracle that we did it. And I'll tell you what, if we didn't have the team we did and the vision we had and honestly with, with Kip involved and in, in his knowledge base of building Under Armour and, and him keeping us away from making tuition payments, I don't think it would have happened without Kip. I, I don't. Well, yeah, it would not have, not even don't think, we would not have done it without Kip. Exactly.

• 2:10:18Pete Roberts?

  So, big, a big advocate there and, and really driving how things should go and, and it's been for me, it's been a year of learning. Yeah, I'm kinda, you know, directing both organizations, both monsters, but, you know, he's, he's been there like really calling out, really calling it out in the Kip way, you know what I mean? Which is a little bit savage at times. I've just kinda kept my mouth shut and executed. So I've been, I feel like a little bit, I've been just.

• 2:10:53Pete Roberts?

  Working from hit for him on the hunt line, you know, I'm like working, I'm working for him and I'm totally okay with that. Like that dude is, he, he's been driving this thing. But understanding his thought process of how to build product, and I'm not just talking about hunt. But the thought process of how to build great product with innovation, how to think about supply chains and logistics. How to communicate with partners, you know, how to build relationships that are lasting. How to talk to consumers.

• 2:11:30Pete Roberts?

  It, it's, I, I feel like I've had a, like a, a college education over the past year. It's been freaking phenomenal.

• 2:11:39Jocko Willink?

  You've gotten a hell of a lot more than a college education. Cause Kip has this experience that you just, you're just not, you can't, you could never. You can't learn what Kip knows. You can't, well, you can't learn that from a book or from a, from a seminar or from a college course, like ever. You cannot learn what he knows. You have to have lived it and.

• 2:12:01Pete Roberts?

  Yes. And I, I actually told him last week on the phone. It's like, man, you gotta get ahold of Jaco and you gotta, cause. I've been trying to push him to like, write a book under the armor, like and to tell the stories. And I'm like, Jaco can publish that shit, dude. Like dude, call him and talk to him about it, but also like start a YouTube channel. And Kip's a bit of a savage, you know what I mean? The way he talks, the, he's just different. He's different.

• 2:12:27Pete Roberts?

  But, uh, but a super positive influence on what we're doing as an organization. Building this hunt line wasn't easy. The Alpha Bravo Charlie layering system, the way we're using wool. You know, which is really core to who we are is this natural fiber. Um, in our nano wool and our base layer and our stealth wool and our mid-layer.

• 2:12:48Jocko Willink?

  FYI.

• 2:12:48Pete Roberts?

  Yeah.

• 2:12:49Jocko Willink?

  It's not your dad's wool and it's not your granddad's wool.

• 2:12:53Pete Roberts?

  No, it's, it's a totally different kind of wool.

• 2:12:55Jocko Willink?

  Fine micron, American merino wool.

• 2:12:58Pete Roberts?

  It doesn't, it doesn't feel like, well, I don't know, Echo, do you, how old are you? Forty-four?

• 2:13:02Jocko Willink?

  Yes, sir.

• 2:13:03Pete Roberts?

  Oh yeah. Well, I was gonna ask you a question about wool and then I remembered you're from Hawaii.

• 2:13:07Jocko Willink?

  That's true.

• 2:13:09Pete Roberts?

  You didn't wear anything wool growing up, ever?

• 2:13:12Jocko Willink?

  No. All right.

• 2:13:15Pete Roberts?

  You know, we didn't have our wool available yet for me to test and I had to go to Europe a few weeks ago. And we were gonna go, actually, and then we went to Scotland. And so I bought a Smartwool, you know, that brand. I bought some socks. Dude, I wear those socks during like all temperatures. I didn't, I want, I didn't get it, what like merino wool did to regulate your body. I, my feet don't sweat in it. It doesn't make sense. It doesn't make sense how this natural fiber that's so old can be used still very innovatively. You know what I mean? Like it's a, it's an incredible fiber.

• 2:13:55Pete Roberts?

  So, you know, we, we, we, we leveraged this fine micron merino wool. We blended it. We produced these incredible textiles. We gleaned some of the knowledge from spec ops. You know, that hasn't been commercialized yet. And we put this incredible line together, freaking printed, roller printed, sublimated, acid printed, like badass textiles that were cutting and sewing and turning into freaking America. America's first truly American made hunt line without compromise on the origin factory blockchain. There is not another company doing that. I don't give a shit what anybody says.

• 2:14:35Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, there's, there's some, there's, when you mentioned the spec ops and the military base of this year, there's something called Berry compliant. So Berry was a representative or something and he created a law where, where military had the deal, the Defense Department had to purchase stuff that was American made. And it includes a whole bunch of different things, you know, metal made products, but textiles and clothing is one of them, big one. And it's, it's probably the biggest category. And.

• 2:15:06Jocko Willink?

  And so these things exist. If it wasn't for that, honestly, this stuff probably wouldn't exist and we would have had to build a freaking mill because there wouldn't even be mills here. We would have probably had to build a mill and make the stuff ourselves. But luckily, that did exist. So, thank you Representative Barry, wherever you may be, for putting that law into place because it kept some level of manufacturing here. So, we were able to get a hold of that material and utilize that material. That's outstanding material. It's available, but it's hard. And where they get away with some of this stuff is like the Barry laws. It says some exceptions are due to unavailability, cost, or manufacturing efficiencies

• 2:15:49Jocko Willink?

  of US-based products. So, there's a claim that people can make, "Well, you know, we can't quite make that type of zipper, so we're going to get it overseas." Or, "We can't make this type of nylon, so we're going to get it overseas." Or, "It's going to cost too much. It's literally, it costs too much, so we're going to do it overseas." So, there's ways that people get around it and they can still call it Barry compliant. We're better than Barry compliant.

• 2:16:10Pete Roberts?

  Better than Barry. And that's what we externally, like on our website, we have to say for the consumer something. So, we say Barry compliant. Internally, we're better than Barry. Let me give you an example. You know, there's a company in Maine that makes boots. And their uppers, the full upper of the boot, which is the boot without the sole, comes in from Mexico. And they bottom it. That's what it's called, bottoming. So, they put a sole on it and they put laces in it. And it's American-made. That technically is Barry compliant, right? Internally, we are better

• 2:16:53Pete Roberts?

  than Barry. That's a big deal to say that, "Hey, man, you know, when you buy a pair of boots, that sole that came actually from Massachusetts, from Vibram, they injected it there. That leather came from Wisconsin. Those eyelids came from here." Like, it all, you know, like that pore on midsole on the jeans, that cotton was grown by a Texas cotton grower. That rivet. Yeah, exactly.

• 2:17:18Pete Roberts?

  So, better than Barry is what we stand by internally. And that's the only way that we continue building the limited supply chains and helping everybody.

• 2:17:31Pete Roberts?

  Everybody that touches any part of that product, any component, that's how we rebuild the communities. That's how we build the supply chain. That's how we build America.

• 2:17:41Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. And this, you know, you mentioned that hunters are, are the, probably the most patriotic people in this country as a whole, right? And that's one of the things that, you know, in talking to Cam, Cam Haynes, right? I mean, just a, a world renowned hunter. Um, you know, he was looking to, looking for what he's going to wear when he hunts. He, he needed someone to come on board with him. He needed someone to support him in his efforts. And he could, he could go with any company in the world. I mean, he's, he's the, you know, one of the best, if not the best, certainly the most popular of, of hunters. And, you know, when,

• 2:18:26Jocko Willink?

  and luckily, of course, he, he hunts with KIP, right?

• 2:18:30Pete Roberts?

  Yeah.

• 2:18:30Jocko Willink?

  He hunts with KIP and they're great friends. And so that's awesome. But still, like, he's a guy that's got, you know, a family to support and a whole nine yards. So it's not just about, oh, well, this is my buddy. So we're going. Man, what, in when I talked to Cam, you know, when I talked to Cam, what I talked to him about was, was we're doing this in America, you know, and he's got a son that's in the Rangers. I mean, this, you know, he's a patriotic, hardworking American. He's a, he's a, he's a blue collar guy that's worked his ass off. And he knows what that means. He knows what it's like. He knows what it means to supply jobs to other Americans. And, you know, from my perspective, and then

• 2:19:13Jocko Willink?

  look, it was also, hey, you're going to be, have a huge influence over what we make and how we make it. This is going to be designed. This is going to have your blessing. And if it has Cam's blessing, you know, what, what else do we want, right?

• 2:19:24Pete Roberts?

  Exactly.

• 2:19:24Jocko Willink?

  So, but it was awesome to be able to get Cam involved, to bring Cam on as an owner.

• 2:19:33Jocko Willink?

  Because the reason is, look, he he's not going to compromise on performance. It's not happening. I mean, look at this dude. He's running marath- he's runs a marathon every day. Right? There's no compromise on performance with Cam. So he's not going to compromise there. And he's not going to compromise on his patriotism, on his love for this country. And you know, I I mean, I talked about it with him. I'm like, hey, when we, when we buy stuff from other countries, we're putting money into the pockets of our adversaries. Yes. And that's a horrible thing. And that's just, this is the way it is, man. That's just the way it is. And there's no two ways about that. This, that's what we, this is an economic war and the, the, that, that claim,

• 2:20:17Jocko Willink?

  that's not just rhetoric, like, oh, this is an economic war, but no, no, this is an actual economic war.

• 2:20:24Jocko Willink?

  And our adversaries are fighting. And sometimes, you know, even if you look at, at China's past and what, what their theories of war are, what Sun Tzu said about war, they want to fight without their opponent knowing that there's a war going on. That's what they want.

• 2:20:43Jocko Willink?

  So of course they don't make a big deal out of it. But that's what's happening. And, and so it was awesome to have Cam come on board to a, a company that didn't even exist. You know, it didn't even exist.

• 2:20:58Jocko Willink?

  But for him to know, you know what? This is the right thing to do. And so thanks to Cam and, and for coming on board and then helping with the design has been freaking awesome. And it's been cool. He's already out there hunting right now, by the way. He's out there getting after it. There's already blood on the Raptor camo at this time. So, so that's freaking legit. Uh, but. Not an easy thing to get done, man. Holy crap.

• 2:21:28Pete Roberts?

  No, man. It was, um. I'd never seen roller printing before. We didn't know if the wool would hold, you know, like this, this stealth wool that we gleaned from the special, special forces. We, we tweaked it, you know, so we, we took what they were using for this glove and we tweaked it for our liking. Uh, with the, with the blend that we wanted. And then it's like scorched under thousand degree heat in it, in it, and it scorches the outside and gives it almost a shell, a little bit of a shell type of feel. And we're like, cool. All that's cool. Can we print it? You know, like, we don't have no idea, but you have to like run

• 2:22:08Pete Roberts?

  a sizable amount of the product, which is not cheap at 50 bucks a yard, right? You gotta run a, a bunch of it to see if you can print it. So you're taking all these little risks, you know, and, and it, it really is, is what it's taking to do all this is you're just taking risks. What's the worst that can happen? You lose some money. Okay. What's more important? Loser, losing money? Or rebuilding this thing? So we take the risks, right? But seeing for the first time that like stealth wool go through that roller printer and come off the other side. I was like, bro.

• 2:22:49Pete Roberts?

  I, I mean, I had no words. Like I looked at Kip, he looked at me, you know, he's like, are you kidding me, man? Look at this shit. I'm like, yeah, bro. Like this is it. It was at that point I, I was a believer. You know, I was a believer, like we actually can build a innovative, high performing hunt line in America. Cause there's some, there's some good technical stuff out there, you know, there is, and um. We still got it. I, I guess that's what I would say, like, we still got it.

• 2:23:21Jocko Willink?

  And it launched, what's, what's today, the twenty?

• 2:23:24Pete Roberts?

  Yeah, it launched, 26 publicly.

• 2:23:26Jocko Willink?

  It launched.

• 2:23:27Pete Roberts?

  Pre-order.

• 2:23:27Jocko Willink?

  For pre-order.

• 2:23:28Pete Roberts?

  Because.

• 2:23:29Jocko Willink?

  Today.

• 2:23:30Pete Roberts?

  Yeah.

• 2:23:30Jocko Willink?

  And that's be, it's pre-ordered now because what we made sold.

• 2:23:33Pete Roberts?

  Well, yeah, it's because we're, uh, we're making the stuff right now and we're still weaving some of the textiles for some of the line. And, you know, we're literally making it. It's not like all pre-made. It didn't come over in a freaking container. And we didn't just bring it into a warehouse and ship it out. We're freaking making the shit. So if people want it and they want to, you know, help and wear something on American land that's American-made, put the pre-order in.

• 2:23:59Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. Well, the other thing that's that we were talking about earlier, you were explaining to me is we have a limited amount of fabric. We have limited amount of time. We have limited amount of capacity to actually make this stuff. So if you are out there and you need the, the woodland cami instead of the Highland cami, we, we need to know that now. So we can make it for you. And if you need a size, whatever, XL and your wife needs a size medium, we need to know that so we can make the right thing. So that's why the pre-order is important on this stuff. So we can make the right amount of stuff and get it out to y'all.

• 2:24:43Jocko Willink?

  What else, man? I mean, I know there's a ton of, that's kind of like the broad strokes of the last year. What about camp this year? How's camp? How's camp? Echo Charles, you've been quiet. How's camp?

• 2:24:52Speaker 01

  Good camp.

• 2:24:53Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 2:24:54Speaker 01

  A lot more mellow, a lot more people, but more mellow.

• 2:24:56Pete Roberts?

  Yeah. You've been chilling, man. I've been, I've been watching you out of the corner of my, this has been a good conversation.

• 2:25:01Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:25:02Jocko Willink?

  Over here just cruising.

• 2:25:03Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 2:25:04Pete Roberts?

  Echo and I are matching right now. We're wearing that spring hoodie.

• 2:25:08Speaker 01

  New favorite, by the way.

• 2:25:09Pete Roberts?

  Yeah, it's nice.

• 2:25:10Speaker 01

  It's a good look.

• 2:25:11Jocko Willink?

  Jiu-Jitsu is getting more popular.

• 2:25:13Pete Roberts?

  Dude, it's exploding.

• 2:25:15Jocko Willink?

  People love Jiu-Jitsu.

• 2:25:18Jocko Willink?

  Are you concerned? So we got Galvow versus Gordon Ryan coming up.

• 2:25:23Pete Roberts?

  Yeah.

• 2:25:26Jocko Willink?

  Here's my concern. It's gonna be hype, right? It's gonna be hype. One of my concerns, like they're saying there's gonna be 20,000 people live.

• 2:25:35Pete Roberts?

  Are you going to the ADC?

• 2:25:36Jocko Willink?

  It doesn't look like it because I'll be in the mountains hunting.

• 2:25:39Pete Roberts?

  In Raptor Camel?

• 2:25:40Jocko Willink?

  In Raptor Camel.

• 2:25:44Jocko Willink?

  And it's on Sunday, too. So I actually, I can confirm right now, I will not be there, unfortunately.

• 2:25:51Jocko Willink?

  Here's my concern about this.

• 2:25:56Jocko Willink?

  Jiu Jitsu in that match, well, Jiu Jitsu for can be boring to watch in certain situations. There are, there are, there's a, what percentage chances this is a boring match? Echo Charles?

• 2:26:08Speaker 01

  I don't think it'll be boring.

• 2:26:10Jocko Willink?

  Okay, so you don't think, you think it's 100% exciting match?

• 2:26:13Speaker 01

  I think the chance of it being exciting is like 85 to 90%.

• 2:26:17Jocko Willink?

  Okay, so, okay.

• 2:26:18Pete Roberts?

  I'm reverse.

• 2:26:19Jocko Willink?

  You think it's?

• 2:26:20Pete Roberts?

  I think it's, I think it's gonna be lackluster. I think Andre is gonna play anti Jiu Jitsu and, and try to hit like when the points start.

• 2:26:29Jocko Willink?

  A double leg with three minutes left.

• 2:26:31Pete Roberts?

  Yes, that's what I think is gonna happen.

• 2:26:33Speaker 01

  Okay, is that the, what's the rule set? ADC?

• 2:26:35Pete Roberts?

  It's 20 minutes.

• 2:26:36Speaker 01

  So it's a super fight in ADC?

• 2:26:38Jocko Willink?

  10 minutes, no points.

• 2:26:39Pete Roberts?

  Right.

• 2:26:40Jocko Willink?

  10 minutes, points. 10 minute overtime, 10 minute overtime, so it's, could be a total of 40 minutes. And there's, so that's, that's the rule set, I'm pretty sure.

• 2:26:51Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:26:53Pete Roberts?

  I think if, I think if Gordon doesn't, uh, you know how he like calls out his submissions or whatever, if he just goes in there to win, I think it could be exciting.

• 2:27:02Jocko Willink?

  He 100% is gonna do that.

• 2:27:03Pete Roberts?

  Not like, I'm gonna do this to Aragel.

• 2:27:05Jocko Willink?

  No, no, no, he's not gonna do that. Here's the thing, man, it is freaking hard to do Jiu Jitsu against someone that is avoiding Jiu Jitsu. And

• 2:27:16Jocko Willink?

  you know, that can be really hard.

• 2:27:20Jocko Willink?

  And if that's the game that Andre plays, then that might be boring. Hey, if Andre goes at him, right on, we're gonna have an awesome, an awesome match.

• 2:27:32Jocko Willink?

  But.

• 2:27:34Jocko Willink?

  That could happen. We could, I'm worried that might be not as exciting as we want it to be. And I started talking yesterday, who was I talking to? I was talking to some people at camp and I was like, some kind of a hybrid, like in wrestling, you can get called for stalling. And here's the problem with that. Calling people for stalling in jiu-jitsu goes against one of the principles of jiu-jitsu, which is conservation of energy. Right? So my goal, if I'm going against a big wrestler, my actual goal is to not work and make them work and stall. That's my goal. That's how jiu-jitsu wins in that situation. So to create a rule where you can't do that,

• 2:28:17Jocko Willink?

  you can't stall, which technically what you're doing, right? You're stalling. You're holding someone in your guard and you're stalling. You're making them try to pass, you're stalling. You're not attacking, you're not trying to sweep them, that's stalling. So there's a problem with that rule because it goes against one of the principles of jiu-jitsu, which kind of sucks.

• 2:28:32Pete Roberts?

  Yeah. And if you look at like the match with Galvo and I think it was Hiron or Henner Gracie where where he was showing how to defend someone who was a world champion. Remember this match?

• 2:28:49Jocko Willink?

  Metamoros?

• 2:28:50Pete Roberts?

  Metamoros. There you go.

• 2:28:51Jocko Willink?

  Who was showing what?

• 2:28:52Pete Roberts?

  So, so basically, was it Henner or Hiron?

• 2:28:55Jocko Willink?

  Henner Gracie.

• 2:28:55Pete Roberts?

  Henner Gracie. And he fought Galvo. And Hiron doesn't compete and Galvo is a world champion at this point. And Galvo is trying to submit him for 10, 20 minutes.

• 2:29:07Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, 20.

• 2:29:08Pete Roberts?

  Doesn't submit him. Why? Well, he played defense. You know, he survived, he played defense and good to go. Wasn't it a draw? Because it was a submission only fight. You know what I mean? So, you know, I think Andre knows both sides of that. So I hope, I hope he engages. I mean, after the whole situation with, you know, Gordon slapping him and everything, man, I'd want to. Yeah, I'd want to prove something. You know what I mean? Like when they had that little exchange. Uh, that's that. Yeah, I mean, I hope it, I hope it's fireworks, you know? I mean.

• 2:29:44Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. And I guess the reason I brought that up is because, you know, we're here at Jiu Jitsu Camp, so Jiu Jitsu is on the mind, but also like just talking about the popularity of Jiu Jitsu. And how so many more people are engaged. It's the biggest camp we've ever had, right?

• 2:29:55Pete Roberts?

  Biggest camp we've ever had. And because of that explosion, man, adding two new looms to the factory, they showed up on Friday. We're going to get those things installed and start ripping out more gees and obviously new grappling shorts, which you're going to try.

• 2:30:10Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 2:30:11Pete Roberts?

  Yeah, might have to make some tweaks.

• 2:30:13Jocko Willink?

  They're freaking nice, though. That material is perfect.

• 2:30:15Pete Roberts?

  Yeah.

• 2:30:15Jocko Willink?

  That's a, it's a weird material because you feel like it's not even on you. Like you kind of feel like you're freaking in Spartacus, uh, over there grappling naked. It's so like light and flexible.

• 2:30:27Pete Roberts?

  Hold you back, man.

• 2:30:27Jocko Willink?

  It's freaking legit. Uh, did you, yes or no, get tears in your eyes when I promoted my daughter to blue belt?

• 2:30:36Pete Roberts?

  I did. I did. I, I, uh, I get it. Amanda, my wife says to me, the only time you cry is belts and babies. You don't cry when people die. I don't. I don't cry at death. It's belts and babies. I know the, I, I, I don't know what it is about babies. I, I, I honestly, if there's a baby around crying, I sweat immediately. Cause you know, having babies and getting up in the middle of the night, you kind of get into this, uh, difficult sleeping situation. So I, I'll sweat when there's a baby crying near me immediately. Um, but belts, knowing the work it goes and the relationship and

• 2:31:16Pete Roberts?

  the commitment, seeing you promote Rana was, was pretty moving and I kind of was trying to dry out my eyes a little bit. And I had one single wipe.

• 2:31:28Jocko Willink?

  To wipe.

• 2:31:29Pete Roberts?

  It might've been a tear or two, but I, I had a wipe, but your eyes were a little wet there.

• 2:31:34Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, there was a little dusty in there. Echo Charles, yea or nay?

• 2:31:39Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 2:31:40Jocko Willink?

  Oh, you did?

• 2:31:40Speaker 01

  It was very dusty in there.

• 2:31:41Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 2:31:42Speaker 01

  But, but I did do comparatively speaking, I did a good job.

• 2:31:45Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, you did. Here's the, here's the thing I thought about later and it, okay, okay. So she got her blue belt. Technically getting your blue belt is not a big deal. I mean, honestly, right? Standard getting your blue belt is not a big deal. And I didn't think about this till after.

• 2:32:03Jocko Willink?

  Because getting your blue belts, listen, it's great you got your blue belt, but no one's hyped in a big way because you got your blue belt, right? But what, what it was, and the re, I didn't realize this because I'm in it, is I, the journey that she's had to get her blue belt has been long and hard and really long and hard. And, and, and it's been long and hard because of me as a dad. And so when she's, you know, when they were little kids, you heard me saying this in the, in the little speech I gave. I, I had my kids training jujitsu seven days a week. Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday and Sunday.

• 2:32:49Jocko Willink?

  And on a couple of, three of those days, no, four of those days, they did striking and jujitsu. And they're like ages five, seven and nine. We would go to the gym on Saturday at, we'd leave at seven 30 in the morning. I'd get home from the gym at two o'clock in the afternoon. They'd be with me the whole time. They'd take class, they'd take two classes of jujitsu and a striking class. Every day of the week, they're in there. They'd take both classes. I made them compete. Let me rephrase that. I ma, and by the way, anyone that's listening is like, hell yeah, no, this is wrong. It wasn't good. I made them compete. When I made them compete, this is my first three kids.

• 2:33:30Jocko Willink?

  When I made them compete, I made them compete up a weight class, up an age group, up a belt level. And what happens when you go up a weight, weight class, up an age group and up a belt level, you get smashed. And in my mind, I'm thinking, hey, I'm a great dad. I'm going to make them tougher. But all it did was make jujitsu suck because you go to a tournament, you compete and you lose. And I just thought I'm making them tougher and I'm not. I'm actually making jujitsu suck for them, making it not, making it a bad experience. And eventually, you know, the, they got old enough where it was like, we, you know, well, I don't want to do this anymore. And my two daughters, you know, at a certain age and they're the, they were the oldest of the three.

• 2:34:14Jocko Willink?

  And I have four now, but they were the oldest of three, you know, like they protested to a point where it's like, you know, my wife said, hey, this is like, you can't do this to these girls anymore. So, you know, we, we, let's say we settled it down, you know, didn't train as much, but, and then luckily, uh, you know, Rana, when she got to high school, she,

• 2:34:39Jocko Willink?

  I persuaded her to wrestle. I persuaded her to wrestle. And to be quite honest with you, I persuaded her to wrestle with money. I, I was like, I will pay you to wrestle. I'll pay you to go and wrestle. And so she did it. And it took a little while before she wasn't doing it for the money anymore. She was doing it, she was into it. But again, this is after like going through a lot of stress and tournaments as a little kid and, uh, you know, jujitsu tournaments and all that. And now she's wrestling, she wrestled all through high school. Um, you know, her first year, she's the only girl on the wrestling team. There's a wrestling room, a sweaty, gross wrestling room. Filled with ringworm.

• 2:35:22Jocko Willink?

  And filled with ringworm and filled with, you know, thirteen, fourteen, fifteen, sixteen, seventeen, eighteen, nineteen year old boys. That's what she's in there with. And she stuck it out. And she ended up, you know, going through that program and, and eventually making it to state in California, which is a huge deal. And, and, uh, first person from her school that's made it to state in like thirty-five years or something like this. So, and it was her, like the program, the program just didn't have the, the, the, the wherewithal to, to get a student to do that. She did it, you know?

• 2:36:01Jocko Willink?

  And then finally she goes to college and while she's at college, she decides she's gonna try that jujitsu again. Which is freaking awesome. And you know what? After about a week, she called me, she's crying. She cried of her first week of jujitsu. No one wants to train with me. I don't think anyone wants to train with a girl. No one wants to train with me. And you know, it's stress, there's college and all this other stuff going on. This is a little morsel of her life and there's a lot of stuff going on and this is where it comes out. And I'm like, hey, don't worry. Everything's gonna be cool. You know, you're gonna get to know people. It's fine. Just, just keep going. Please keep going. And sure, she kept going.

• 2:36:47Jocko Willink?

  Paragon, slow. And that's where she trains in great. I ended up going up there, teaching, teaching a little bit up there, but it just a great academy. She ended up making great friends and, and working her ass off. And this is, you know, this is what she's 21 now. So we're talking about like a 16 year journey. Right? This is a long, this is most of her life. You know what I'm saying? And so then finally, so when she comes back, so now she's been training for two, two years up there, hard. Hard. Two days, you know, stuff like this. And so she comes back down to San Diego. This summer. And she's teaching, she's helping teach kids classes, but she's training all the time, training and immediately.

• 2:37:31Jocko Willink?

  My black belts are like, dude, you need to get your girl. I rolled with her, yeah. Yeah, you need to get your girl another color belt. And I kind of felt like, well, you know, she's up at, up at Paragon now and that's like, you know, her teachers and her instructors. And so I just said, hey, guys, you know, she's up at Paragon. She'll get, you know, hopefully gets promoted when she gets back up there. And then like, she's tapping out a bunch of people in the academy. And my black belts, once again, you know, Coach Adams, like, dude, come on. Uh, Coach Brian's like, dude, you're you kidding me? And then I rolled with her and I was like, oh, okay. This is not fair. And, uh, so finally what I did, reached out to her professors up there.

• 2:38:16Jocko Willink?

  And I sent him a text on it or a message on Instagram, gave my phone number and said, hey, I need to talk to you. Can Jocko, can you give me a call? And the coach, Chris, he called me up and I knew the number from that area code and I answered, hey, hello, this is Jocko. And he's like, hey, it's Chris. He goes, I've been waiting for this call. And I was like, that's like the best thing I've ever heard. So, you know, he didn't want to promote her because it's my daughter. I didn't want to promote her because, you know, she's been training with them. They're putting a lot of work and effort into her. But so that was cool. So she did one more tournament as a white belt, double gold, and then we came out here to camp and got the promotion. So, so again, I realized afterwards, I was like, it's kind of weird that I kind of

• 2:38:57Jocko Willink?

  like echo, you got your black belt at camp. We all understand that's a big deal, right? That's 15 years of training for you. That's getting smashed, compete, like all those things. Everyone kind of gets that. But for Renos, it's like, oh, it's like, oh, she got a blue belt. That's pretty cool. But I think it was like, everybody kind of sensed it because people were freaking hyped.

• 2:39:18Pete Roberts?

  Oh, yeah, man, that place was crazy. Of course, she was crying. They were crying. You weren't crying. They were crying. That is awesome.

• 2:39:30Jocko Willink?

  That's what it's about. And, and yeah.

• 2:39:32Pete Roberts?

  That's what it's all about.

• 2:39:33Jocko Willink?

  That's what it's all about. And jiu jitsu is something that brings, really brings people together. And look, just like you can't impose things on your platoon and you can't impose things on your workforce, you can't impose things on your family. But you can, if you're lucky, you can help them see the light. You can help them, you can help show them the path. And when they find that path, even when you show it to them and it's there and they decide, you know, you can, you can lead a horse to water, but you can't make a drink. But when you get them there and they jump in, man, that's, that's one of the best things you could hope for. So that was kind of the highlight of camp for me.

• 2:40:09Pete Roberts?

  Dude, it was awesome.

• 2:40:12Jocko Willink?

  All right. What else? Anything else? Pete, any closing thoughts?

• 2:40:15Pete Roberts?

  No, man, I appreciate you having me on. Appreciate the, obviously, all the, all the support over the years and of course.

• 2:40:24Pete Roberts?

  You telling the world about what we're doing and why and keeping everybody's attention on it. Because with all the attention grabbing going on these days, anyone giving anything time these days is valuable. So, um, man, appreciate you. Appreciate bringing me on again. It's awesome.

• 2:40:42Jocko Willink?

  Well, you'd be on all the time if you weren't freaking living in farming to me and I wasn't living in San Diego, California. And, and listen, look, what we're doing right now, this is a campaign. This is not one battle and this that we are going to lose. We're going to miss things and we have missed things and we're going to make mistakes. But there are opportunities out there and what we are going to do is we're going to make everything in America. And you know, I told this story yesterday when we were in the factory.

• 2:41:15Jocko Willink?

  It's no compromise. It's a no compromise situation. And I, you know, I've, I, actually I do remember the item. We were making like, what do you call the, the, you, we were making spats, right? And we needed an elastic waistband. And you and I were having a conversation and someone came up with a solution. It was you. You said, Hey, John, I'm like, Hey, man, when are we getting these spats? Like, what, what, what's happening with that? And you're like, well, it's pause. It's going to be the manufacturer is going to take four months for, you know, before they can tool this thing up, blah, blah, blah. Okay. Or we gotta get this machine and we'll be able to do it ourselves. Okay. I'm like, you know, are there any solutions? Finally, we get a solution.

• 2:41:58Jocko Willink?

  The solution is, hey, there's a overseas company that can have the stuff to us in three weeks. Airship, boom, done. And you were just like, no compromise. And I was like, of course, no compromise. And that, that attitude is hard. It's hard to hold the line and listen.

• 2:42:20Jocko Willink?

  Do you compromise in life? When your spouse wants something and you want something else and you compromise to come to a conclusion? Yeah. Do you compromise when you're on a team and you're working together and someone's got one plan and you've got a different idea? And you compromise to make things work? Yes, absolutely. Do you compromise when you negotiate? To make a deal happen? Yes, you absolutely do. So in life, you've got to compromise, but there's things also in life that you don't compromise on. And where you hold the line. And that's what we're doing here. We're doing it at Jaco Fuel. We're doing it at Origin. We're not going to compromise. We're going to hold the line. And the reason we're able to do that is because everyone that's listening to this right now, so

• 2:43:00Jocko Willink?

  none of this happens, none, none of the, zero, nothing. This doesn't exist. What we're talking about doesn't exist without you that's sitting there, listening to this podcast right now, listening to what we're doing, participating in what we're doing. Without your support, none of this happens. So, thank you for your support. And I'm going to tell you right now, we will not let you down.

• 2:43:29Jocko Willink?

  Echo Charles?

• 2:43:30Speaker 01

  Yes, sir.

• 2:43:32Jocko Willink?

  How can people support? The podcast? How can they support themselves? How can they support these companies? And how can they, in doing so, support America? What do you got? What do we got to do?

• 2:43:44Speaker 01

  Well, some of this is just one big reminder, you know, because you guys have been kind of talking about it for a long time. But yeah, so reminder, or a recap, we'll say.

• 2:43:52Jocko Willink?

  Jacofuel.com.

• 2:43:54Speaker 01

  Jacofuel.com. We got Molk, the new Molk RTDs, ready to drink if you didn't pick that up.

• 2:43:59Jocko Willink?

  Not yet, online.

• 2:44:01Speaker 01

  It's not yet online?

• 2:44:02Jocko Willink?

  No, not yet. We haven't made enough yet. Yeah, we haven't made enough yet.

• 2:44:05Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 2:44:06Jocko Willink?

  But soon.

• 2:44:06Speaker 01

  We'll be on the lookout for that one. How about that? Because we're over here all week, not all week. They kind of ran out quick, but.

• 2:44:12Jocko Willink?

  We stole some from the warehouse to drink this week.

• 2:44:15Speaker 01

  Yeah, we experienced that one. That's good. And a little detail that I noticed about the RTD. They're like, you'd think the powder's more versatile because you can mix stuff in the, in the thing, but this becomes more versatile in a different way. Because you can use it on other things, like cereal, cookies. I'm not saying I did that. I'm not saying I didn't do that, but

• 2:44:33Jocko Willink?

  100%.

• 2:44:33Speaker 01

  I'm just saying you'll put it on other stuff. Typically, you don't mix up a protein shake, add your favorite this and that, and then put it on something. You don't do that usually. But this one, you do that. I think we all found that out pretty quick. Cause a lot of people did that stuff.

• 2:44:46Jocko Willink?

  I like the double hitter. Molk in one hand, go in the other. It's a good morning double hitter. You know what I'm saying? Molk and go, baby. Molk and go.

• 2:44:54Speaker 01

  That makes complete sense to me. Also, a reminder, or we didn't talk about the joint warfare stuff or whatever, but yeah, just look after your joints.

• 2:45:02Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 2:45:03Speaker 01

  We're not getting younger. Look out for your joints.

• 2:45:06Jocko Willink?

  Are you getting older?

• 2:45:06Speaker 01

  Pay attention. Hey, I'm over here doing the best I can. So yes, joint warfare, super krill oil, got some vitamin D three, general health. These, these are important things. If the, what if your oil runs out in your car? Right? That's a problem.

• 2:45:20Jocko Willink?

  That's not good.

• 2:45:21Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah. As Dean Lister would say, that's a problem. So anyway, so pay attention to these things.

• 2:45:28Speaker 01

  Worry Kid Molk does for the kids, of course, like the kids version. Um, yeah, all this stuff at jockofield.com.

• 2:45:34Jocko Willink?

  Jockofield.com. Yeah. Also you can get, you can get the drinks at Wawa. Actually the RTD Molk is going into Wawa. It is. We already shipped, I believe.

• 2:45:44Speaker 01

  So if you're east coast, you got that Wawa, go in there and get that Molk.

• 2:45:50Jocko Willink?

  And it should be, it should be going in by like it goes, it gets shipped to their whatever, and then they ship it to the store. So between mid and end of September, it'll be in and it's Molk and Go people. And maybe grab a hoagie too.

• 2:46:09Jocko Willink?

  Uh, vitamin shop, HEB. There's, I failed to get this list on here. There's, we're in a bunch of retailers. We'll get that out to you. I need to add that into this so y'all know. So jockofield.com, you can get on Amazon as well.

• 2:46:26Jocko Willink?

  There you go. OriginUSA.com. Everything we just talked about, that's all going on at OriginUSA.com. Boots, jeans, keys.

• 2:46:34Jocko Willink?

  Rash guards spats in the hunt line.

• 2:46:38Speaker 01

  The entire hunt line.

• 2:46:40Jocko Willink?

  It's available. Uh, go get some of that. We appreciate it. Jaco store.com.

• 2:46:45Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:46:45Jocko Willink?

  What do you got going on there? Echo Charles?

• 2:46:47Speaker 01

  Hey, we're all on the path. You know, you want to represent discipline equals freedom. Let's not forget about that.

• 2:46:51Jocko Willink?

  No, we definitely don't want to forget about that one.

• 2:46:54Speaker 01

  So yeah, you want to represent that? That's where that's where you can get that stuff at Jaco store.com. We got the shirt locker, which is the subscription. New design every month. I've seen a lot of representation.

• 2:47:05Jocko Willink?

  A lot of people in Maine on that subscription, bro.

• 2:47:08Speaker 01

  There's a lot of people at camp on that subscription, bro.

• 2:47:11Jocko Willink?

  It's freaking legit.

• 2:47:13Speaker 01

  They're looking good.

• 2:47:13Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, that's like flying, kind of like flying the flag old school.

• 2:47:17Speaker 01

  Yes, sir.

• 2:47:17Jocko Willink?

  Like you're, this is, hey, yeah. Do you call it the subscrip? Are you like, you gotta get on that subscrip?

• 2:47:24Speaker 01

  Subscript? Yes, sometimes.

• 2:47:26Jocko Willink?

  Subscription might be subscription.

• 2:47:27Speaker 01

  On the, on an official level, it's called the shirt locker.

• 2:47:30Jocko Willink?

  The shirt locker.

• 2:47:31Speaker 01

  Like the S A Q U R T, you know.

• 2:47:32Jocko Willink?

  Oh, yeah, I could, I got what you're putting down, man. Come on, man.

• 2:47:37Speaker 01

  Uh, but yeah, yeah, this is a good one. A lot of good feedback on that one. We've got some new stuff coming out.

• 2:47:41Jocko Willink?

  Subscribe to the podcast. You know that. Doc underground.com. You know that. Flipside canvas.com Dakota Meyer. I got a bunch of books. Check them out. Only Cry For The Living by Holly McKay.

• 2:47:55Jocko Willink?

  That girl risked her life to go in and write these books. Go in there and buy that book. See that story. See what war is like, like almost as it's unfolding. My wife's reading it right now. She's really enjoying it. It's, it's. Really good book. Yeah. Enjoy might be the wrong word because it's hard to enjoy. Yes. She's engaged. She's really engaged with the book. It's a tough one. Um, yeah. You know, I wrote a bunch of other books. Check them out. Echelon front.com. We solve problems through leadership. This is what the team at Echelon Front does all the time. Culture, merging of culture, performance, leadership. In every single industry, we're there. So check out Echelon front.com. We have an event, the event that you talked about, Pete, that, that Jason came to, it's called the muster. Uh, the next one is Atlanta. Unfortunately it's sold out, but.

• 2:48:41Jocko Willink?

  Go on there, come to one of our live events as well. And then on top of that, look, you might not be able to come to a live event. That's where we have online training, extremeownership.com. We get a bunch of people from Origin on there, too. Oh, yeah. Yeah, a bunch of people from Origin are on there, which is awesome to see. And we, we, we have live sessions. We do, we have pre-recorded training sessions. It's just, it's just a way to train leadership. Like, and this is the interesting thing. Years ago, if someone had said, hey, people are going to learn jujitsu by online academies, what would you have thought? Hell, no. Hell, no. What do you think now? Oh, hell, yeah. I mean, I do. Yeah, hell, yes. So it's the same thing with leadership. And by the way, just like jujitsu, or playing guitar, or playing basketball, you're not born with the skills.

• 2:49:26Jocko Willink?

  You need to learn them. Same thing with leadership. We made an online training academy, extremeownership.com. Go check that. It'll help you with leadership. And it doesn't mean you're in charge of 420 people at your, at your company. If you're alive and you interact with other human beings, you're in a leadership position. And you're leading them. So go and check that out. If you want to help out some service members, active and retired, you want to help with their families, Gold Star families, check out Markley's mom. She's got an unbelievable charity organization.

• 2:49:59Jocko Willink?

  What they do is they help vets with their health and give them solutions to their health that the VA doesn't cover. So it's just an outstanding organization. She's an unbelievable woman. Americas MightyWarriors.org, if you want to donate or you want to get involved. Also, check out Micah Fink. He's up there taking vets into the wilderness on horses for 41 days where they can find themselves. Heroesandhorses.org, incredible organization.

• 2:50:32Jocko Willink?

  The social media thing. It's a double edged sword. We get it. There's an algorithm that's trying to grab you. It's trying to waste your time. There's also some positive that can come out of it. If you want to follow uh on the social media. Jaco Fuel is at Jaco Fuel. Go check that one out. Go check out Jaco Fuel. So you know what's happening. You know where you can buy stuff. You know when new stuff comes out at Jaco Fuel. Check that one out. At Origin USA on Instagram. That's where Origins at. Pete's actually at Pete dot Origin.

• 2:51:06Pete Roberts?

  Still haven't gotten that blue check. We talked about it last year. They don't know no love for the Yankee for the Yankee.

• 2:51:14Jocko Willink?

  The blue. Oh, like the confirmed.

• 2:51:17Pete Roberts?

  Are you so many fake accounts now, man? Oh, I got emails every day from people and they're soliciting them for crypto stuff. Oh, new accounts all the time.

• 2:51:26Jocko Willink?

  Make any big investments there in the crypto world through some random dude on Instagram? That sounds like a good plan. Yeah. So check that out. Check out Pete. Check out Origin. Check out Jaco Fuel. If you want to check out Echo and me. Echo's at Echo Charles. I am at Jocko Willink and Pete, thanks once again.

• 2:51:44Pete Roberts?

  Thank you.

• 2:51:45Jocko Willink?

  Thanks for all you've done and all you're doing. You know, you went out there with your friends and family and cut down a bunch of trees in the middle of woods to make a factory. And that took some serious guts to do and you did it and we appreciate that. And on top of that, thanks to all the hardworking people at Origin USA and Jaco Fuel who are out there cutting and sewing and designing and creating and packing and shipping and cleaning and working.

• 2:52:18Jocko Willink?

  Thanks to all of you for everything that you do. You all are the backbone of these companies and we thank you for your hard work and your commitment to this dream. And you know what? To all the hardworking men and women of this great nation and you're out there. I see you all the time.

• 2:52:37Jocko Willink?

  In the fields and in the factories, on the construction sites and in the cubicles, on the oil rigs and the utility poles, in hospitals and hotels, in restaurants and warehouses. To all of you that toil and labor every day, thank you for what you do. It's what allows the lights to come on. And we appreciate it. And thanks to all the military out there for protecting the freedom that we have that allows us to do what we're doing. And we will do our part, our part to build the economy and support you. And also thanks to police and law enforcement, firefighters, paramedics, EMTs, dispatchers, correctional officers, Border Patrol, Secret Service, and all first responders.

• 2:53:22Jocko Willink?

  Thank you for protecting our safety and security here at home. And to everyone else out there, thank you. Thank you for your support. Thank you for listening and thank you for believing and thank you for understanding what is at risk. And thank you for seeing what is happening in the world and seeing the darkness in the world, but still moving toward the light. Freedom is not free. It takes sacrifice. It takes guts and it takes grit and it takes work.

• 2:54:06Jocko Willink?

  So let's go get after it and get to work. And until next time, this is Pete and Echo and Jaco, out.