Free Range American: Ep 012 Trevor Thompson - NAVY SEAL

[Music] all right so welcome to another episode of FR a i'm evan Hafer today I've got Trevor Thompson Trevor if you guys haven't caught Trevor he's been on Joe Rogan show he's been part of Fr a from literally the beginning the start he's a photographer for black rifle coffee he's one of my good buddies like so he's an epic human he's got a ton of interesting background he's gonna be part of the f ra components and in cast here if for a lack of a better term forever as far as I know so oh yeah the interesting things I'm runnin off Trevor is we've known each other for several years so the thing that we were talking about initially was your family's history yeah and your family's history specifically and how far does it go back with the American and then before that that just the military yesterday um and you know I like we were throwing in the joke like oh yeah as my is my name foreign thompson's do I feel right now it's that right yeah but haha funny cuz no my family's been here a really long time I think the first family member came over I want to say 1640 to go actually we didn't mention this initially so we have a little extra bit of good info he stowed away so solid yeah I'm an illegal immigrant okay we got over here in the 1640s and the family has had time in military service for every single conflict so I served in the current and my uncle was in Vietnam my dad's dad was in World War two my mom's day I was in Korea and then we've had family in World War one the spanish-american war both sides the Civil War the Revolutionary War the winning side and then also the french-indian war so we've had people serve all the way back through before it was the u.s. you know before it was all the colonies right and it's it was a driving force in me being somebody that wanted to serve during conflict and it's also part of why I got out like it wasn't something that we did forever this wasn't a career move for me I enjoyed it and I'm glad I did it and you know some of the things that the family's been able to have historically are really cool um like my my dad's great-grandfather on his mom's side was actually a prisoner in Andersonville in the Civil War and we know that because he survived and he ended up in I think crippled the rest was life afterwards because the place was hell yeah right and we talked about this earlier but like if you haven't looked it up just you know hit pause for a second and go check out Andersonville Civil War it's shocking horrifying shock like yeah the worst possible conditions like a [ __ ] ton of people died there purely out of neglect yeah and so um great-grandpa great-great-great grandpa Edgington he was actually a flag bearer so he carried a Union flag and when he was captured they they capture all that [ __ ] and he yanked off one of the tassels from the flag which is wild you know what to think like he could probably could have been killed for that right like why you trying to keep part of this this thing that you know is literally an emblem of your opposition to us right well he kept it and we have a letter describing what that tassel is and that tassel and a photograph of him and the letter are all framed at my parents house and it's incredible to have that piece of history it's 160 years old from an American flag that went through that prison camp that is in the home yeah you sent me a picture that oh yeah how long ago and I was like holy [ __ ] it's heavy is it really heavy I don't even know how to describe it because when I saw it I was like holy [ __ ] yeah that in the circumstances around Anderson bill were so horrific and then to have a piece of that history is truly incredible and then you know dovetailing that with your your grandfather's personal history yeah which is another horrific [ __ ] piece of American history that was another guy I mean his his granddad fought in the Civil War and you know he grew up during the Great Depression and World War two comes around and he was at Gonzaga yeah and I mean he probably should have played professional baseball like he was that good ball player right he played with a bunch of this so they used to do pick up baseball games overseas I think they've done some like documentaries about that stuff yeah yeah he played with those people yeah like he played pro baseball while in the war and they asked like I weren't you know you should you should come play and on my mom's side actually we had somebody play for the Reds so there's a lot of baseball in the family right but instead no he was a marine in South Pacific and the six Marine Division I needed seven combat landings including two in Okinawa which is insane totally insane it's completely insane and I just went back through those are a couple of those books helmet for my pillow the old breed and it had been several years yeah yeah I think for me I have to have that asmath adjustment so to speak to think about and really about a reesy row it's it's riesling your azmuth what's important you know how bad do we really have it you know there's all these it's a psychological benefit that can go back through and read what those guys went through specifically in the South Pacific because talk about a [ __ ] horrendous task and talk about the conditions of what they were fighting through and know incredible I know no preparation like no you know what was the nearest thing they had was probably guys that served under McArthur mm-hmm it ran from the Philippines right might have been the close since they had to understanding what kind of conflict they're getting into maybe maybe maybe kinda they were just learning as they're going like you research from Guadalcanal it's a damn nightmare it's a money and then talking to my granddad about Okinawa and and Tinian and it's just like are you [ __ ] kidding me yeah it does I know I know they did the South Pacific I think HBO that they did that it was called the South Pacific or the Pacific I can't remember what's called the Pacific it so I had read the books before the Ambrose books yeah I don't know if there are Ambrose but there's a couple different authors there and I had read those books before watched the Pacific and I'm so glad they did it because so much of world war ii is in the history of world war two has been enveloped with the european theater yeah and that's what people see in their heads like those there as they hear world war ii and they see like you know dresden on fire yeah they see d-day okay well I mean imagine like the landings of d-day but you know for two and a half three years in a row right every island every island and in the hearing stories my grandad about like he remembers things like going up a beach and every single person around him like on a die face right all dead all dead all day going up the beach there's no other way to get there you know or or landing on a beach and they see a naked chicken walking around cuz he's got his feather blown off right by the bombing right it's just wild and and like for me to tell him that I was gonna go be a team guy right you know he's like oh okay yeah that's I mean I guess if you want to be a squid like whatever yeah and I told him what I wanted to do and he was like oh okay yeah yeah respect cuz he remembered seeing some of those EDT guys yeah he remembered those [ __ ] crazy people here's your knife and your swim mass and good luck hope we see you later here's got yourself in Greece it's gonna protect you you're the cold [ __ ] water you'll be okay wear these shirts but that kind of fan background is it's not hyper common right I know especially now like multiple multiple multiple generations you know when you're talking like a couple centuries worth right so it's I didn't feel like a duty but it didn't not feel like a duty yeah seriously when you have that that's a DNA connection to that it's not yeah yeah it's a DNA it's a hard connect into that reality I think I don't know how many times I thought about my grandfather he was a he was a radio guy on a b-24 liberator flying out of the Aleutians into Japanese territory so he's he hated flying course we did right so shot at me for three years yeah and then hearing his stories it was it growing up hearing his stories because I would ask him and it was kinda ask him and ask him and I remember so acutely listening to him talk about just dropping bombs on the Japanese and he was part of the initial invasion force and the Army Air Corps Army Corps as they took back the section of the Aleutian Islands and Alaska a lot of people didn't realize that the Japanese had actually occupied a section of US soil which was you know obviously in the Aleutian Islands I think it was like they lost like 3,500 troops these did yeah so he was from start-to-finish tip to toe on that thing and and I remember really so well because he had a he had a Bronze Star on his key chain for as long as I knew he had he had one Bronze Star but that was only one after he passed away he had you know he had multiple awards to include a it's like the air cross and a bunch of other things where you're like and then he had clippings of his you know his name in the local paper or you know hero returns to small town like type [ __ ] and it resonated with me so well because my grandfather was such a funny funny charismatic guy you would never have known that he had been through you know two years of just absolute [ __ ] hell flying over like dark like dark cold scary water just the weather conditions flying out of the Aleutian Islands bucking scary as hell let alone going over Japanese occupied territory dropping [ __ ] loads of bombs and then hoping that you're gonna get back multiple articles or there's a series of books written about those guys and they're their airplanes we'd come back just [ __ ] tattered from flak oh yeah so I can't even imagine one I don't like flying over dark scary cold water to begin with like I just don't appreciate it it's not something I'm into but then doing that every day is part of your job and hoping that you're gonna get [ __ ] back like flying on empty my grandpa used to always tell me this like we would be fluttering from fuel running on [ __ ] fumes I'm saying trying to [ __ ] land on a postage stamp island that they were having a hard time finding because of cloud cover and weather conditions so you're just trying to find your way [ __ ] home like it the amount of fortitude the mental fortitude time are you doing it like I thought about that before my first deployment my granddad's like oh yeah you know keep your head down I'm just thinking like I didn't I didn't respond you know right cuz I how do I respond to that yeah that dude guy and everybody around him got shot at for years storming beaches over and over and over like thinking ah maybe this time would be different you know they weren't it's this is gonna be just like last get worse again we're gonna do it again yeah we're cuz because we're getting closer and closer to the big island yeah it's gonna only the Fighting's only gonna get more difficult they're gonna get more pissed yeah they're only gonna hold on to it even tighter and it gets like being able to have that kind of connection is wild right yeah I would think about all the time especially knowing about all time like for you right joining and then now there's a war going on and then for me like I joined mid-war mm-hmm like I had it sort of kind of an idea like well I grew up listening and pop talked about this yeah let's go be stupid yeah let's keep our fingers crossed and try not to get our head blown off or heads blown off like I was explaining this to somebody that's like a you just kind of forfeit the idea that you're not going to live and it's interesting because it's reading about your thought process the World War two veterans that were successful as well and the psychologically the the psychologically successful guys were always the guy those guys that said I've already forfeited my my life I'm done I'm just just assume you're not gonna make it it makes everything a lot easier and it did it made everything a lot easier I remember so well crossing the berm into Iraq going I'm not gonna I'm not gonna come back from this so I'm not even gonna start making plans past the age of [ __ ] 25 okay you think the matter you're not a fatalistic you're just like wow I'm just never gonna see 30 yeah that's just stoutest so every day after 30 it's interesting I've had to try to figure out my life after that and cousin like I'm still here what am I gonna do now guess I'll try to figure it out we met in California when a Dudley shop yeah that's right yeah John Dudley was a mutual friend and then we all did this archery instructional who's you me George Peterson Joe was there Joe was Jocko there Jocko we just went out that night and yeah that's right so he trying to think who else is there bar close there bark whoa that's God man that was such a good time because there aren't a great instructor oh man and I was relatively new I'm still new I couldn't really classify myself as I would say a proficient Archer like I can hit I don't know we were doing great the other day no [Laughter] I well I started with a traditional bow and I really still enjoy defining a traditional though they're super fun you know and you look cool but like John says if you want to hit what you're aiming at you might adjust your system to a compound not new pse that he sent was it's it's pretty incredible so you know as we start to unravel even just our personal history and how we connected through John really through archery and then we went we did a moose hunt together mm-hmm God that was when was that fall yeah that's right last fall and that moose hunt we both took the same kind of router like we're driving our [ __ ] you move that's right you moved up to Utah huh you moved up to Utah and we were like both planning like what are we gonna do with this moose and my only objective because I took this moose and it was its rack was just pathetic I don't I was gorgeous it was pathetic but it's delicious yeah so my only objective what's going up there was I really really wanted to feed my kids my family moose I really wanted to feed my family moose I was not concerned with the size of the rack I wasn't concerned with taking a trophy I was only like legal animal here I'm not leaving here until like I have an animal yep and you were you're the same way you're like oh you know what I'm not leaving until I get an animal and I mean maybe people have seen that moose rack now when I was on Joe show right you know so some people have seen the size of that thing like oh yeah that's a cool huge trophy animal well I can be very honest that I actually tried to kill another moose earlier that day didn't get within range like I just couldn't get a clean shot and he had smaller paddles than anything we killed the whole trip so believe me when I say I was up there for [ __ ] meat like I was there meat hunting period I just got really really really really really lucky yeah with that animal stepping out yeah for sure don't know you don't know all you're hearing is like I don't know holy crap like my experience so the funny thing was was I had been hunting for a few days with a different guide and I wasn't really that satisfied with the hunt that I was getting trevor killed his moose and then just i can't go with my guide turned into a totally different hunting experience it was the first time I'd ever hunted with a guide so I was unsure as to kind of how to navigate that relationship it's an interesting relationship right yeah it's a super interesting relationship yeah and the guys we had there were awesome like the the camp itself like Andy stomp John Barlow you know you and Dudley and Dudley for people that don't know like John is probably one of the most fun people to be around at hunting camp it's out of control it's out of out of [ __ ] control it's so much fun yeah because his like you know he puts the effort in hunting you know what I mean like thing but I think the first bear camp I did with him after that bear camp I was like I'm never missing another hunting camp with you like if you if you invited me on a hunting camp I'm going because this is absurd it's absurd in a way where you're it's it's dangerous fun that's what I like about doing things with John he could have isn't you know he has had his own television series but he truly enjoys a bit of dangerous fun yeah and if you're out with him like you know you you realize like you're gonna put in some work you're gonna put in a lot of work I would imagine because everything I've ever done with John it's typically you're going to put in some some physical miles you're gonna kill something for sure but you're gonna kill something it doesn't matter there's to be blood on the ground mm-hmm there's going to be blood on the ground and you might be a little bit drunk a lot of the time right there there my little a lot yes so the bit John makes it a lot of fun I mean I think as when we look at like all the people and that we spend time with John is probably one of the the most energized and fun people to be around because so it doesn't give and it's genuine yes like that is his personality to a tee it's amazing he's a gorilla one monkey it's gonna rain in tang he's like this big it's a big like like a linebacker essentially built like a [ __ ] linebacker he played he played ball right right like he could have been out of that he could have been an athlete for sure for sure for sure and you know I remember the first time that I brought him out to the ranch down in Texas and he was up probably till 3 o'clock in the morning with JT and and probably one of the few people that could put JT under the table well JT and then there's another guy that an MMA fighter that we hang out with up there Jeremy and those guys are no joke they are professionals at pushing the limit yeah and John not only hung but probably exceeded expectation cuz I was concerned I was like man I I hope I hope these guys are gonna be all right around John because you know I don't know if John's gonna I don't want to just get it on Pam around no no he was like hammer down and then he's up at 6:30 or whenever 6:30 a.m. he went to bed maybe three hours before that throwing around kettlebells I remember that my first bear camp we're up there and I'm like ain't like I saw a lot of booze and I'm like I'm okay is he gonna hang he's like you watch out yeah watch out you watch your ass you be careful what I can't I can't put in like I'm not built for that type of speed I did that as a new guy I'm good like he is it's great he's like a what I would call him is he's like a tractor monster truck he's really fun but there's a lot of utility that you can get done yeah and you're probably not gonna be able to flip it no no you're never gonna see the wheels up no not happening and it you know outside of the faculties probably one of the most proficient you know you know archers and the in the nation as far as like his instruction what he does and this isn't a podcast as promoting John but God what a [ __ ] cool guy that dude is and I like seeing people like that that are so genuinely willing to give their time away yeah which he does he gives it away all the time I gave you got it you guys don't know who John Dudley is like school anak if you're even interested in our tree which you know Trevor and I obviously we minor interest minor interests yeah at this point I would say that we have a major obsession yeah and may or may not be building arrows in my garage all the time all the time yeah it's so much fun and I think you and I've talked about it a lot where this active form of meditation how helpful it is I'll go out I've got you know my bow literally is set up right outside oh yeah and I'll go out and shoot ten fifteen twenty arrows come back in go back to work it just gives me a little bit of a release and then I can go back into what I was doing I do that at the house too and it's like you know those first three or four you're still thinking about whatever it was going on but you know by the time you've walked down to the target and come back two or three times like you know you're 18 or 20 euros in it's like nothing's bothering me nothing's bothering me and I think that's an interesting thing for for veterans oh yeah where you know you you've done a ton of shooting in your past obviously you know trevor was a seal if you didn't know that so he's done a ton of yeah cut my hair so yeah it's and you don't have a lot of jail in it yeah but down low you've taught a ton of shooting you've done it on the private sector as well but what's what's kind of give us some the ideas and thoughts around archery and what it's done for you and kind of how did you get turned on to it so what's your background in it right now our tree I never had an interest in rifle awning mm-hm period um and why part of that's because of how I grew up so I grew up in LA I'm literally from Los Angeles my mom's from LA my dad's from LA like there just isn't a background there no it wasn't an anti-gun or anti-hunting household it's just you know I'm not gonna walk into my backyard and see deer right like we they were there right but they're not it's not part of the culture there now obviously it was for my grandparents but just wasn't taken forward so by the time I joined the Navy and then spent nine years as a team guy you know Mike I don't I'm proficient enough with a rifle like that doesn't seem very entertaining to go shoot an animal with a rifle right when you know everything inside of 500 seems like a chip shot I think okay now I'm not denigrating anybody that's rifle hunting no period I just I know where my background was so I didn't have any interest mm-hmm I don't allow spearfishing out in Hawaii where I was stationed initially so when Andy started getting into archery and bow hunting through John right I told him I came in if something comes up I wanna learn how to do that because that's probably the only way I ever want to hunt anything and man from step one it just felt right like shooting an arrow I'm like this is really hard like this is like this is like pistol shooting but harder right like way harder way harder like everything you do wrong in pistol shooting you have a minor little defect you get a little miss everything you do wrong in archery it's exacerbated the point where you don't even know where the arrow win yeah oh that's great that's caught yeah we're gonna find that it's insane it's it's literally insane how much how much [ __ ] you have to put into that how much thought or no or no thinking to get a great archery shot off so for me being somebody that's taught rifle and pistol combat shooting I was immediately drawn into how difficult it is knowing I'll never get this right perfectly and so from there from that first animal I took which is a black bear I was like this is the only way I want to hunt I love this and I just fell in love with the sport and how difficult it is and how much practice I have to put into it and how how [ __ ] quiet it is right it's such a cool physical act and it's a thing that humans have been doing for so long it's part of our DNA it really is yeah we are talking about that game yeah yeah inside we're talking about it with mark right yeah who's that a conversation you were having with mark yeah yeah and so we were talking about how you know archery itself goes back was at 13,000 years is that I think the oldest confirmed bow and arrow right from 11,000 years ago and there's some guesses on older stuff but they are absolutely positive that's what that thing is which in the frame of you know human development it's a second right now but it's still when we look at all the rest of the components of you know humanity and hunting and gathering and things like that there is a very somewhat of a spiritual component to it yeah that I'm I have a hard time putting my finger on necessarily I just know for from my perspective I like to think of myself as more of a projectile enthusiast right like I like to hit targets with anything so if I'm like you know throwing my gum in the garbage or you know get rolling [ __ ] bowling balls or whatever it is like I want to hit targets I just enjoy hitting targets oh yeah pistols were always way more fun for me when I was working when I was one in the military and then as an instructor and working at the agency I loved shooting pistol one of the reason I love shooting pistol was it was difficult it's very difficult so difficult right I mean especially when you compare the amount of proficiency that guys in our position you know across the board have with rifle and pistol right you basically teach anyone of us monkeys how to shoot a rifle and you put enough rounds downrange and eventually it's just like so I just put like the X thing on the thing I want to hit it goes goes away yeah that's how that works especially what you put nods on and a laser it's almost like cheating decision yeah yeah you can hold it a point at it right you just put the laser on the target and pull the trigger is that how this works yeah that's how this works I stood again that one gone too you know okay well I get this as opposed to pistol where all it takes the tiniest little misstep in your head right on even physically and you're off paper if you're shooting in a paper target which is almost numbing ly frustrating very yeah being a competent you know pistol shooter puts you in a different category is a shooter as well I know a ton of guys that are I'm gonna taking anything away from the rifle because there are a ton of people out there that you and I both know that can throw rifles around they are incredible at what they do I love shooting a rifle but if you if you give me my choice between firearms that I want to shoot when I go to the range it's always going to be my pistol every time yeah and I know exactly what pistol I'm gonna take then I take an STI with you know an optic if I've got the ability to put it on a suppressor I'm going to you because that's just the way that I like to shoot I like to shoot for time I like to shoot moving there's so many different things that you can put in that I think create an element of fun an additional layer of difficulty that it becomes way more entertaining for me well I get the team nobody ever says oh yeah that guy's like a killer rifle shot it's no it's oh yeah so and so can they can do that like nine plate drill like [ __ ] crazy that's the dude you talk about right nobody gives a [ __ ] if you can you know put thirty rounds downrange and in a tennis ball size target they're like that's neat everybody can everybody do it yeah oh cool okay and that was one of the things as instructing throughout the years and then looking at archery getting turned down to archery the way that I was turned on to it was I was looking for a way to shoot while I was roasting coffee or answering customer service emails while I was working so my first target that I built was coffee bags a big burlap sacks yeah and coffee comes in and I stuffed a burlap sack full of other burlap sacks because I had plenty of those and all sorts of this yet got all sorts of that [ __ ] so I would go into the back behind my office and shoot traditional bow which is quite a [ __ ] quiet don't need a lot of Dhoni long distance 20 yards yeah I could I could have fun even at 15 so I could go back and get these reps in shoot into a target get my mind completely out of work then come back refreshed thinking that I had actually accomplished something which is really just a a psychological game that I was playing with myself because I hadn't really accomplished something I wasn't hitting a target yeah with the projectile yeah but projectile enthusiasts I was a little bit apprehensive about getting into compound and additional layers of technology because it looked so confusing the whole thing worked really confusing to me yeah it's a science project it is it looks ridiculous it looks it looks [ __ ] ridiculous and there are so many different components versus a traditional bows just a piece of wood and us and Easter a string and an arrow well [ __ ] I can hear that I can do this I can do this on my own I don't need it I don't need an instructor to teach me how to do this easy but it's way more complex oh yes it was a great way to learn because the other the other piece of that was as I started to the first bow that that was given to me it was given to me by Baker Levitt so he kept he kept trying and trying and trying it's like you got to do this you've got to do this you've got to get a boat you've got is an advocate for stuff he loves he loves it and I used to always make fun of them I was like why would I use a bow and arrow dude I have a rifle are you stupid I could kill something at yeah you know a mile away pecking my dope I'm gonna drop it in over a ridge line like what are you crazy but once I once I was given the the weight from from him and the guys over Hawaii were freaking awesome - they brought me into the shop they gave me a quick instructional on it here in town right yeah they're right here in sewing it was Isaac who now works for us actually he worked for Easton but he brought us in instantly after throwing a couple arrows I said to myself okay let's not get too into this let's try to dial it back a little money suck that's not the case I mean I have bow vices and all kinds of crazy [ __ ] know that I never I mean there's there's not like a five-gallon bucket out there full arrows there is a five-gallon bucket out there the other nice thing is Easton's been so generous to the two of us as well because we've done of giveaways and I can honestly say I haven't spent a lot of money on on archery you probably driven a lot of business yeah but III think it's part of the Charter the company at this point yeah to turn veterans on to archery I really think that it's an incredible sport and it does something for and you're saying it you don't even need to be a guy that wants to connect with an animal no and it's so much more accessible because every town either has a place that is open enough and legal where you can just set up a target go shoot it or they have an archery club or a range you can go shoot I mean even in Balboa Park in San Diego that's where I was shooting all right a lot there are not that many places you can go shoot rifle and pistol no you know and you know thank God that we have laws in the country that allow people to own as many firearms as they do but they're still so restrictive for a good reason that it's not that except accessible for so many people so archery is something you can literally do basically in your basement yeah right you're ain't you ain't going down your basement and shooting your 300 back out you know uuq your neighbors might knock on the door yeah can i I wouldn't suggest that as a course of action yeah but practicing your draw hitting a target doing all the fundamentals of archery can be done in your basement guys do it all winter long they post videos about it Oh internet all winter right and and Dudley has shown and he sells a release like the right release yep yeah basically dry fire system right don't even need a bow nope you don't even need to be shooting a boat and when I was traveling a bunch two years ago right after he taught me I had to take like two months off right Archer because I was traveling a ton that's when I went to Lebanon doing some security work right and I just took the right release with me and the second I came back it took like one session and I was right back on it yeah there's gave you dry fires in gets get your reps in get your reps in I think that's one of the the single best things I have started in the last I would say at least decade where it it continues to evolve as a skill set that you can you can move into whatever rabbit hole and you can get as sophisticated as you want or you can be the guy that you know throws 50 arrows a year I was talking to yeah super accomplished hunters about what do they do throughout the year what are they doing to prepare for a hunting season and one of my buddies was like oh I go out and I shoot like 50 arrows the rest of the time he's shed hunting and he's out in the mountains but he doesn't really shoot a lot he just makes sure that his bows child it's dialed and so when he goes out he's ready to connect and those are kills an elk every year those are guys that are putting themselves like they're mitigating that you can call it lack of practice in comparison by volume right by putting themselves in scenarios and knowing the terrain and just being a better hunter right right and like for us coming from that background we're trying to mitigate all the factors right like I want to be a very good hunter as well as I just want to be comfortable with a shot at 60 right take a shot at 15 yeah like that's what I want right that that's where I want to be gosh we've done more hunting than I was trying to think about it because we went and did a hog hunt in Oklahoma with John weather so I drove up from San Antonio I met barklow bullets barklow there Barca was there yeah I think Watson was there Torsten and easy and that was so much fun with man oh gosh we put in probably 50 miles there was a lot of water there was a lot of Sun walking I got an arrow off yeah into my first hog I put in because I was looking at my step counter on my watch I put in easily 50 miles before I connected think we were all saying like back again today another 15 no the bank we [ __ ] 12 miles a day and it was frustrating enough that you just wanted to kill you just wanted to kill a hog yeah by the way the the myth of wild pigs not tasting very good that's that's a that's a myth that's that's a total horseshit yeah myth I would imagine there are some based on I guess based on size they plan and based on maybe time of year and what they're eating I'm not exactly sure but when we ate it in Oklahoma was great it was amazing Chad was cooking yeah well it helps when you have the guy from Traeger cooking goes John Dudley they got a Trager then chef from Trager just kept that one of myself yeah how lucky are we at this point in our lives where the guy from Trager comes out and cooks but that was incredible I think actually John had cooked that I don't know if that was rad yeah the first night yeah because I think it was the second night or so that he and Preston were cooking right yeah and we had we had a blast on that trip as well super fun we we did some long-range shooting we they were like because Andy at that time was still getting the pretty dialed with long range yeah Andy's a relatively good and experienced efficient LR guy so they both had the same setup so it made it really easy for him to sit there and like teach him how it was a 65 right yeah yeah so they were shooting at 65 I forget what it was damn they're shooting long ways it was food for dud I mean it was over a grand I think they were doing was in over grandeurs yeah well they were definitely because they they did that they did the hunting down in next with the Mexican borders and went out to West's place yeah they're shooting well over Grande outdoor they were shooting a long ways out there and I think that's one of the cool things with John is he's gotten turned on to shooting through us we've spent fun to teach him it's been an awesome I put it I put a an STI in his hand out in Texas it's like all right and it was a John Dudley and Bret burns and all these guys were out there such [ __ ] cool cool group of people you almost pinch yourself because it around six [ __ ] people Jon just picks up an STI gave him like maybe high point twenty minutes worth of instruction he's never shot a pistol to any level whatsoever he said maybe shot it at 30 minutes in my life maybe everybody's handled one yeah he was ringing steel out to like 40 with no problem whatsoever now part of that is great gear yeah obviously you get set up with great gear great optics and our construction is similar issue yeah archery is similar ish to pistol shooting like he under he understands that every minor error is a major conclusion on the back end like the second order issue that's gonna go on when you you know squeeze too hard with one hand or when you jerk the trigger he understands the same is when he's shooting a bow and he's you know squeezing the bow hand or yanking his release right he understood that well and and that's an interesting translation for most shooters I think that shooting archery directly translates into the rest of you're shooting oh yeah because of that and John proved that point to me because he's Olympic level Archer was he shot worldly for a while hundreds of thousands of arrows and he picked up a pistol he would be categorized as in a top 10% of all Pistor shooters in the nation easily just based on what he was he was doing out there he was shooting six-inch pie plates at 40 yards and ringing them 95% of the time and he has said similar things because I've heard him say it offhand and I've talked to him about it also about guys coming from the Special Operations community with the proficiency in shooting rifle and pistol that he puts a bow in our hands and he's like well that's easy that's [ __ ] turn like that's that's ridiculous like you shouldn't just be able to hit a target at X distance with that kind of proficiency but that's coming from a background of the exact same type of thing like oh look being what's on that's neat oh there there goes and I think that that's that's one of those things where if you're shooting now you're thinking about shooting archery the school a knock obviously is the first place you should go that's exactly where I direct people I've told they're really told to people earlier today you need to go to school and knock because we bought pse bows and give them to employees of the company so they're getting their bows people are getting their bows in the company Matt and I both have PSE bows we both shoot quite a bit he's got I don't know how many 3d targets in his backyard when I could looks like his house like a zoo when he shows it when I go to Matt's house I always bring my bow and he's always because he's a hyper competitive person as well no oh you don't say the first thing we do is the first thing we do is let's let's go out and I mean [ __ ] what happened under together a competition it happened on Saturday with just like our trad bows oh yeah this is fun at 10 how about we just like try like 35 or something what do you think okay okay this is like this is when you know you have good friends let's just so you guys know I like to give context to what we did over the weekend so when you have good friends and you can call them I called Trevor texted him whenever it was I forget it's like hey tomorrow why don't we just bust out a quick workout maybe jump in a horse trough full of ice and do a few minutes and that will just kind of put together something because we're doing social isolation or social distancing because the the pandemic but we can still spend time with one another we're Jack you know three to six feet apart we're you know not sharing food blah blah blah but terms like yeah okay sounds good yeah so hey just pick up ten bags of ice on your way in with it I don't even know do you even know what I was talking about no yours I was like okay hey man grab the rice and away in your like I guess okay okay yeah so this thing is a horse trough I think it's 250 gallons give or take at the top and I've got it out back I bought it because it was okay we're gonna be spending a lot of time here my entire company probably thinks I'm crazy at this point because I'm walking around in my my swim trunks and dunking myself in ice I had a couple people would be like what the [ __ ] are you two doing what are you guys doing what is wrong with you weirdos but you didn't you ever didn't even hesitate he was like yeah sounds good man so we did 100 burpees for time for time and then we did five minutes apiece wait more context so yeah it was 43 degrees outside and yeah and rainy yeah and raining and raining yeah a little so we went to the coffee shop we made some we made some hot hot beverages some tea after this is tea as just tea and Trevor of course he was the first in the chute because he was 20 burpees ahead of me and so I was filming him getting in and then I jump in so he technically warmed it up a little bit you will ended up a little for me and spilled some of the ice out yeah you spill reverse it next time so I I have to go first next time I came in the day before yesterday did it again I saw that check it's ten minutes I get 10 minutes last time how was that uh like my finger dumb silly yeah my fee I yeah my feet were numb I had to you know cuz we were sitting indian-style and this horse trough which keeps your legs and your lower extremities a little bit little bit more but I had to move my legs around in the water because my feet were numb starts to ache right yeah it's just to hurt a little bit I remember that in the SDV like you know doing you start getting into the multi our multi multi our dives you know 8 9 10 hours underwater and like I'm kicking my feet so I don't freeze yeah this is fun super fun but like I said when I got in the horse trough I'm Mike I I think my body's remembering how to do this cuz I wasn't I got it I don't know I don't think I looked very uncomfortable no you didn't look uncomfortable whatsoever yeah you just look like you're sitting in a tub of water it's a little chilly it was chilly I did when I did it the other day the ends a little extra when I did it the other day though the Sun was out and so makes a big difference it makes a huge difference because my head was was warm from and the Sun was directly on my face so so maybe we need like a pop tent over the top of it to avoid that you know what I did is I started dunking my head to get one it was to get the wet is it's a Emilio Emilio responds I believe a million million which was an Aubree Marcos which was something I learned from from listening to his podcast and talking to him but I would dunk my head under water to start cooling myself off even more because as if it wasn't difficult enough I felt like I was cheating because he was so warm he's a fair to me this isn't fair I'm not giving myself an experience I need give myself a better experience on this so I found is that works exceedingly well because it [ __ ] sucks yeah you don't want to do it no but that forced compliance of making sure that you're getting a total experience out of something that is quite literally supposed to be a little bit miserable supposed to suck it's supposed to suck yeah now the health benefits I think way outweigh oh yeah what what the suck factor is but I wasn't gonna go out and try to shortchange myself now I didn't get a good workout in that day at whatsoever because what I was going to do is do that first and then sit in the sauna for a while the dry sauna cranked up the heat but I couldn't get warm enough even work trying to work out to try to get warm enough so I kind of cut my my working out a little bit Mike Clancy he's a he's a former Force Recon guy he's he's he's working with us and he was out back and I was sitting there talking to him so you're gonna work out or would it's like yeah I don't know maybe I don't like it it's you know but it's those experiences I think see but it's it's that kind of experience and those kinds of friends that are cool to have around and it's like like that moose hunt was like that right yeah but it snowed the first day yep and it rained the next two mm-hmm you know like we weren't walking into animals Mount bouncing into moose it's you know or like that hog hunt like it was it was [ __ ] cold on that hog hunt it was cold it was cold yeah a lot of walk like I was glad to be walking so it was cold I I just like the the the gear aspects of those things too because when we first started on that hog hunt you and I both were in the same position where we were carrying our bows in our hands and then after about day two we're like well I'm just gonna put this on my back to do this yeah I remember though because I was going out on the first the first time it was like trying to knock an arrow and yeah you're not gonna need that that's cute Evan yeah we're good we'll see when at lunch Bay if you go back to my moose on it so I I walked and hunted for eight eight days mm-hmm and we only had ten days out there yeah so which is part of why I shot mine on the fourth day yet you're like well God got killed him well he was massive either way I think you guys might have killed me yeah if you would have passed that up I would have been really mortified you're fired [Laughter] but I had walked all week yeah and that morning I had put in a few miles and we had we were we were on bowls maybe one or two we're calling him in on a lake it was [ __ ] beautiful morning breaking frost off off the top of the the grass and the high grasses cool going up in over logs and getting down close to the water it was perfect moose droppings everywhere so much moose on the ground still steaming from the beds that we're walking down through and we're going [ __ ] if we don't kill something here were completely [ __ ] we're inept so sure thing one hits we're calling it in and then we hear boom boom boom from across man I thought it was one of you guys yeah so I thought it was one of one of us I was like oh that's great man like somebody somebody else got one not a big deal but it wasn't one of us so somebody else so we're driving in super defeated my feet are frozen so from knees down yeah you said like your entire lower leg just no just numb and it didn't matter I we were blasting the heater into my feet my feet were completely numb and we're almost back in the side track with no floor yeah exactly no floor we're almost back to we're getting on the boats there's a moose standing in the middle of the road and broadside broadside 98 yards broadside standing in the road and Ashley's like so this is how it goes yeah she's like 200 I was like I didn't even he didn't get you one out of his mouth and I was I you can't you can't hunt up there with a round in the chamber so I was chambering around and the the magazine that I brought with me that morning was not built for that rifle so it didn't scrape around off and there's a 300 Win Mag so I pull up click like hard click no boom [ __ ] and this thing just looked at me even more just sat there and looked at me how dare you how dare you what are you doing give me enough time to chamber around and boom double lung a couple inches above the heart is great I mean it's 98 shots there 98 98 yards it was a chip shot you can't miss him you can't miss so I take off sprinting down the road to try it because he's wallet for a follow up shot and he walked maybe 30 yards and I'm sprinting well I pulled like my lower extremities were frozen I pulled both my calves like pulled them like not just a little bit but completely I felt like I severed the calf off my [ __ ] bone in my leg I remember this that night yeah cuz I came back and you came back and you urea like it was as if you've had like air braces on both feet what's wrong with you yeah I pulled my calves what double could you do bull because I'm hearing [ __ ] mountain food were frozen solid yes sprinting down the road I went from riding and in a in a tiny cuz caleb was in the back and I'm huge I couldn't recline the cedar get any more distance I'm crunched in there I've got zero circulation my legs are frozen I'm jumping out to get a follow on shot I pulled bolt my [ __ ] calves it's horrible but then I walked down 30 yards and he was stoked done yeah he was done grizzly [ __ ] they're everywhere huh they're not super tough not with 300 Win Mag hole in him right not much is no no no with a big hole but I will say as experiences go in hunting yeah and I've hunted it a little bit in my life but killing a moose was so cool so it is so cool I remember that like you came back and that we well we put him on a flatbed and left over yeah run a mile back and like at that point I think mine was starting to get to the point where it was like almost all quartered and skinned yep so I was starting to break mine down and like that was so cool to have a couple moose in camp and you were so freakin stoked to have like the organs and the heart and breaking it down like I could see how how much you cared about that experience too like so cool cuz it is I mean the size of a volleyball yeah you're holding this heart out and it is it's the size of a [ __ ] volleyball it's ridiculous Trevor processed his entire animal so he was out there with knives and a sharpener and a vacuum sealer for what seems like a week like me doing half days myself whereas I just quartered mine in the back of the truck my dad came up my dad came up and and we met him and we just loaded this thing up in the back of his truck and drove it back down now granted I did have the time I had it like four or four and a half days left of the hunt I knew I was gonna have the time to process it and I did go against everybody's advice you did everybody said you don't want to do that right yeah and I did it anyway he did it anyway which my hats off to you because that was a ton of work it was a [ __ ] ton of work but yeah I mean it's paid off in in cuz in December I shot an elk yep and she was big it was like a depredation tag so it was a cow and I after that moose experience and having done a bunch of whitetail I was like cool let's cut her and threw her in my truck yeah hole brought it home later out my garage and I process that whole elk in an afternoon wow that's well that and that because I did the other thing yeah well and I did that even down in Texas a few months ago man I went out went whitetail hunting so we hunted whitetail together and then Matt and I went out a week or so later whenever this whenever the season was and we processed one literally in an evening so he and I zipped through that thing with zero we we had shot it had it on the ground and processed it and put all the meat basically in bags and it was done by 10 o'clock at night we were in and out we were drinking by 10:00 yeah it was [ __ ] it really wasn't a big deal because it's a small animal oh yeah you're essentially processing something that's the size of a dog which pretty much yeah it wasn't very big yeah but that entire week by the the meat that I had taken from our hunt together which was the whitetail down on the border and then that that whitetail by the time I put that other one in the processor make sausage out of it man I was eating whitetail for two weeks straight and it's a great feeling to be that self-sufficient on red meat on protein yeah and especially something that you've handled all of it you know like it feels good to feed people that come to my house or to like I stayed at a friend's place on the way through Missoula on the way back from Canada you're shooting that moose and it felt good to hand him a piece of meat that I know I had processed right you know that came from an animal that I know how it died and I was the one that was respecting that things entire existence right and for me it all started from that first hunt and it's part of the archery thing it's part of the whole hunting experience that's been so fulfilling is you're learning partaking and then passing on a skill that's been going on with humans person-to-person it's a physical thing you have to show somebody how to do it right for hundreds of millenia yeah hundreds of hundreds of thousands of millennia right right so for all of human history there's been some man or woman teaching some other boy or girl how to hunt and kill and process and cook in that order and we're learning that from those successful members of those societies and it's a very very cool thing well I think that's what when we first started talking about Fri and and a lot of people they might not know the full history of f ra and it was originally John Dudley and E stump you were a big part of that as well so you know we bought it from Andy and John last year we rolled it into black rifle coffee one of the whole things that we want to accomplish here is is this sharing of skillsets Yeah right so how do we share good information and really essentially build a collective of people that are interested in that same things that we are give people a resource yeah you you brought over ELQ and Christmas remember had we had ELQ I think my wife you don't have how many poppers yeah yeah so there's no better feeling at this point I when I go down to the ranch I eat you know whitetail that we've taken off the off the ranch or access that we've taken off the ranch we're building garden beds down there one of the things that we're doing for the company I'm doing that in the back of my house here soon yeah we're doing it for the company is shoot how do we build a garden and how do I build a garden that we can deliver yeah you know a bag of groceries every week to everybody that lives in the San Antonio area our employees yeah I mean that could be done here like there's gonna be a quarter acre plot here yep it is super self-sustaining just a greenhouse that runs you around it's so easy and I actually saw somebody post something on it was Instagram I got a social media platform today talking about Victory Gardens during World War two right so they encourage people to have gardens and that delivered like 40 percent of all the groceries yeah fetched groceries in the US during that time because they needed the other food from the major agricultural centers to go to troops and logistics overseas so that kind of sustainability for communities is something that we're seeing the ramifications of that not being a thing right now right shortages where there shouldn't be shortages of some stuff right you know you you there there will be shortages when people panic there will be period but you shouldn't go to the store and be like oh cool I can't buy a vegetable at all no or meat at all like that's ridiculous right right and that's that's not the fault of the grocers that's not the fault of the agricultural system III think there's there's something to be said about that before hunting in general and what that that skill itself provides for individual confidence in psychology I want to be a self-reliant as possible yeah one of the things that we're trying to do with the company is make it zero carbon emissions not because you know I because of some you know progressive wing nut there's some left side ways it's because I I don't want the interference I I want to be able to power the company just on its own without talking to the city and obviously you have to but this entire idea of self-reliance I think has to be activated again and injected into society I hope this is one of the second and third order effects of the pandemic is that people don't look at prepping as some weirdo tinfoil hat thing that they're doing it should be this is my life this is the way that I choose you it's a lifestyle and we talked about this over the weekend where it's like that that second third order effect of being a hunter or somebody that has a garden or a friend as a garden I mean I know like in Switzerland they do Gardens where you just grow carrots right your neighbor grows turnips right so you're maximizing the efficiency of the growing operation because you're gonna have some fail crops right right but you can trade amongst the community right so you know if you're a hunter and you have some some veggies in the background you know in your backyard then this that second third order effect is I don't have to deal with like I've been asked a couple times by some people like oh how is this whole thing you know really affected you and I'm in a fortunate position with the company with how I work right that I've been able to like stay home but because I have so much meat at home and other stuff and I I don't have to go to the grocery store no like this hasn't affected me in that devastating way that it has for a lot of people and I feel for them but there is a way out of it on the back end yeah and a lot of people are they'll say well and I've heard this to you it's like well that's easy for you to say because you know you guys are you know successful like well that's still taking a lot of work to get to this point and that didn't just happen my dad was just a blue-collar single parent he wasn't wealthy my grand my grandparents on both sides they weren't wealthy whatsoever they were actually classification would be poor I mean I we've talked about this both my gram both sets my grandparents came from depression farms right right like I mean my mom's dad co-opted his way through school yeah he worked for the [ __ ] college right like come on people like it it's all doable right it's all doable and I think if people broke down some of those stigmas that are associated with it and said you don't have to have a ten thousand dollar rifle or a five thousand dollar bow you don't have to have you know hundreds of thousands of dollars in a farming equipment to have a garden it can't be overtaken by I guess this progressive ideal and the ideologues that say if you have a garden if you do these things you're some [ __ ] crazy hippie mm-hmm having the ability to feed your family and if you're just single if you're feeding yourself like there is such a unique subset of skills within that that are so interesting that you can choose to turn off [ __ ] football on Sunday or whatever it is that you're into to cook art to go figure out how to grow kale or to and then figure out another layer of that maybe you learn how to can yeah holy shackle or pickle yep or get a smoker and learn how to smoke your own [ __ ] meats there are so many different things that you can do that are economical that actually save you money in the long run and we talked about this like I've had people say now granted I'm in a great position where I have been able to save some cash and be able to put down on some of these more expensive hunts right but we've talked about this like you know an expensive hunt isn't that expensive when you look at how much meat you're pulling from the animal right right like those you know that moose like I'm spending unless on that moose me per pound than I would if I went to the store and bought ground beef like good ground be grass-fed like yeah grass-fed finished with corn and it's better it's way better it's way better it's better for you like that's an older animal it's put all that life into that meat you know like that's the reason chicken doesn't really taste like much when you get it from the standard oh that that chicken cost $2 for the entire chicken right because they grow them so fast to get them to a certain size you know they're you're not getting everything the benefit out of that that you would out of like a a couple year old gobbler that you ship that's a turkey right a wild turkey it's a different animal it's a different animal it's it's got a totally different when we look even the DNA and how it's shifted how it's been modified I think there's there are so many different things that we're gonna get into over the next you know 12 and 24 months when we look at you know how we're looking at self sustainment how we're looking at self-reliance it's not you know the tinfoil hat stuff it's a how do we how do we just make it really good you know high value vegetable garden what's high value mean it means that you have to have a lot of macro micro nutrients within your garden so how do you plot that out how are you planting how are you watering how are you going about your daily lives and like does that mean like for for us like I want to put a garden and maybe have chickens in the back way with the garden to help pull the bugs away so I don't have to use pesticide you know like there are ways to go about some of this where instead of like you're not a prepper and you're not like a crazy hippie but when something weird happens you can go oh good I'm good my wife and I have had chickens are I mean for years we've had chickens in the backyard we've always had a garden that's just us that's the way that we live my parents had a garden when I was growing up like we had pumpkins and squash and corn yeah we did on a tiny little tiny in LA in LA well we lived downtown Salt Lake yeah right next to the the largest homeless population in the city we had a fairly decent sized backyard but the house we lived in wasn't fancy the house we live in right now is nothing fancy we have a tiny backyard we still have garden beds we still grow simple things kale is one of those things that it's so Hardy so easy to grow and it's packed with all these nutrients so it's incredible plant yeah but we've done that every year where we can Co out we can pull the vegetables off our own garden we can create salad we've had eggs in our kitchen for years that are coming from our chickens unless our dog is eating them and then we have to replace them but you know according to stock they run away because that's we with two little powers that would be the tea disappointed in the way if they knew that dr. Beane's is eating all the chickens but we've we've had we've had a great time with it the other thing with that is my kids really get into it my kids love it well and the effect of that as well as just raising like very very simple animal husbandry right also puts you in touch with the food you're eating and life and death right yeah so many people have a disconnected relationship and that's part of why I think that's part of why there is such a panic during they don't know and emic is they're like oh my god what the [ __ ] is gonna happen you know oh god there's people dying what is dying right well you know they most people especially in the Western world in a you know first world country they take Grandma and Grandpa and when they're too old for you to deal with and by I mean deal with is you know go over their house and they're there you know when they're too old for them to have their own house you just like sent him to a home and then they die at some point right right nobody deals with this you know those hunter-gatherer peoples they they have Grandma I live with them or grandpa live with them until they die and then they die in the house and you help them take them the person out of the house and bury them right there's a close relationship with life and death it only in the last couple hundred years have people really distanced themselves away from and having animals like oh we have to I want to have a rabbit for dinner tomorrow cool well that means you have to go outside and pick one right that is ready and kill it you know that's for me like I haven't bought red meat in a couple of years at a store and for part of that was I don't want to be part of the the whole factory farming system mm-hmm I wanted to learn how to hunt but I also wanted to have a relationship with the food I was eating right you know if I'm gonna be the person eating that protein be it rabbit chicken duck turkey moose I want to be the one that killed it I'm gonna put the work in right you know it put the work in growing I'm gonna put the work in processing it well I think it's so interesting for me because when I look at these things I just find them interesting because they're skills that you have to learn you have to curate them over time yeah there is no instant gratification and learning how to hunt that's not a thing you have to learn how to shoot and be proficient at shooting especially there it's a firearm or archery you have to learn the ins and outs of not only shooting a bow but then also you have the entire art of hunting on top of that which is a life wide variety of skills and sub-skills that you have a cure a it's not just going out and you know hitting something over the head with the [ __ ] hammer it's not easy but what I've told people I don't know how long it's like nothing in life is worth having if it's [ __ ] easy because you can't appreciate it as much as if you were to put in the work for it I've never had anything in my life that was just given to me where I've just appreciated what whatever it is so if you have to put in the work for it if you have to walk the miles if you have to actually learn the skill so for me gardening and hunting and those types of things those are just interesting to me I want to understand not only where my food comes from and they're accessible they're completely excess especially especially at the time we live now because if anybody out there is listening and here is o garden XYZ and you're living in Brooklyn in an apartment I want you to pause this get on the Google machine and go apartment garden yeah and you're gonna [ __ ] find one where you can hang it up on a wall like right you could live in a 400 square foot little place a 200 square foot place and have a hanging garden mm-hmm like it is the tech is out there it is now the time is now to go backwards in your skill sets to learn those things to be self-sufficient in a tiny little space if that's where you're stuck if that's where you're at and that's what your choice is you can do it and you you don't have the option anymore you can't go to a monster you can't go to bars you can't go and do some of these things yeah so order our garden warden order a garden order something and start learning a new skill like like herbs those are so easy they're super easy herbs are easy or or a hanging tomato garden yeah so stupid simple they grow themselves just put water in it if you cannot burn rice you can have a garden yeah and that's that's a whole other thing where it sits when you look at living with the economy and how it shifts right so high point if we looked at the economy three months ago and we said that was a high point of the economy and quite literally in the last decade plus you were living a very a very removed from from the economy or you're you're living a very removed and disconnected life because you could you could afford it right I could afford to do those things now because the forced social distancing this the forced quarantine what's going on with the the pandemic itself what's going on with the everything's tightening up so now as we tighten I think people have to adapt their lives to that tightening they have to say what are the skills that I'm going to need to curate in order to make myself a little bit more self-sufficient in order to say just create the positive psychology that you'll need in order to navigate this it's like man a few roots and seeds and built a [ __ ] garden think about how an interesting one those skill sets are to think about the psychological benefit that you're getting from knowing you know what I don't need to go to the store and get [ __ ] tomato and even if your paycheck to paycheck right because what is it I saw somebody say hey if you're running low on groceries like try not to go the first to the second because people on food stamps that's when their food stamps get recharged right it can go back and buy the buy the food there might be running on fumes now right like okay so somebody in that position imagine having a garden where instead of being stuck paycheck to paycheck thinking that's when I can get my food or food stamp the food stamp that's when I can get my food you have a garden just running right you're you don't you don't run on fumes for that you run on fumes for other things for luxury items instead of food food should never be a thing that you're [ __ ] panicking about I would tend to agree I think it's a matter of people don't want to put the time in or don't or just have never been exposed to it like they don't know and whether that's their fault or their parents fault or who whatever the case is I look at it fairly simply in this in this sense of there are a ton of people that spend a lot of time online and their online gambling they're watching you know Netflix they're watching sports they're they're spending a lot of this time and their time is money and they're essentially very [ __ ] off they're essentially just [ __ ] off and basically they're just marking time until they're dead Yeah right because you're not gonna be on your deathbed going man I really wish I would have watched that new Netflix special your how did I miss episode 36 yeah like damn it oh my god I wish I would have known the stats on that [ __ ] running back a little bit more that's not what you're gonna be thinking about no you're going to be thinking about man I wish I would have spent more quality time with my [ __ ] kids I wish I would have spent more quality time with my wife I wish I learned this [ __ ] skill that I've always been interested in so instead of just spending and that's what I would say is it's not the health of our society when we look at the wealth it's not necessarily its it's not degrading because of how wealthy we are it's how we actually waste our [ __ ] time yeah time and money are intrinsically [ __ ] tied they are welded together and if you're wasting your time you're wasting your [ __ ] life yeah if you're sitting in your bed and you're going man I should or want to oh I wish I would have just learned how to [ __ ] do to manage my diet or gosh I wish I was a little bit stronger healthier whatever it is the only thing that's preventing you from doing it is quite literally you and I've said this so I set it on on marks podcast all right the first time I was on he asked oh why are you hopping on the assault by or and it wasn't it's all bike it was a bicycle like a stationary bike an hour every day right I was doing 1,000 calories every day right on the bike and I said it and it's a flippant statement to say but it's also not when you start understanding the mindset how [ __ ] hard is it do an hour's worth of physical effort a day right so we have 24 hours in a day right okay if you're working ten hours out of those days that's a lot and then you're sleeping for let's call it eight okay so now hopefully it's you're lucky so that means you have six [ __ ] hours of free time yeah let's do some simple math here okay now you have kids so they take up five and a half hours that extra you still have a half an hour of damn free time you can carve it out it's doable I mean you hit I run I run a company of 228 people obviously like I just didn't grow itself overnight I mean I wish I was that lucky I wish I just had a Golden Horseshoe up my ass and that's why I was able to do these things they take an immense amount of discipline and dedication in order to put the appropriate amount of time and have it and it's it's time triage right so for me I've sacrificed some of the things in my life to grow the company over the last six years which is yes I you know probably ten pounds that I'm not like super happy with but I know that the time that I put in on the company that was directly an exchange the front end on that it's an exchange all it is is I spent less time on my body more time on the company I'm trying to balance that scale now but I also have two little kids so I had two little kids in the last six years when people look at my life and you know how lucky it's like man I have worked harder in the last six years of my life and I'm granted you know I think most people know my past like I was a green beret I spent the majority of my adult life overseas working those just come out of [ __ ] a vending machine they just like come out of vending machines like I know what hard work is [ __ ] yeah and it's excruciatingly ly difficult to do those things but there is nothing in my life that has been physically harder than growing this company nothing and I mean I can see it it's brutal there's some days that come in I'm like I'm just gonna sit here it just did not be a pain so I look at people and I say what the [ __ ] like my wife is she gets irritated with me because I have a scene that continues to go around my house would just suck at the [ __ ] up yeah suck it up I've heard that not if you've heard it before not even if everybody started it's like you're feeling down on yourself you know things aren't going your way cry me a [ __ ] River man like I've had you've had injuries I've had injuries big mines don't be a [ __ ] right it's like don't be a [ __ ] suck it the [ __ ] up I get get a little bit in said quote I need I need Jacko's podcasts to give me discipline it's like you're [ __ ] weak shut the [ __ ] up you're just weak and I don't know how many times I've heard things where it's like where I've had these conversations with people it's like man I wish it's like you know what wishing's for it's for [ __ ] cartoons man because it doesn't work and and when people hear us say that or any of us ain't coming from our background or in this scenario right maybe they think it's heartless but it's it's more of like I'm frustrated that you don't [ __ ] get that it's that simple it's that simple make a [ __ ] choice just like be like alright cool so I'm gonna sit down and watch this episode of whatever the [ __ ] fine you want to watch that episode cool how about you do some squats also or I've told people like yeah when I eat it cuz so I've had a pretty massive ankle injuries and hip injuries on both hips right but I'm very very very flexible in my hips my knees and my ankles now and people like oh yeah I mean you know how'd that happen or what kind of PT do you do and like no it's not I made a choice that for years years like three or four years in a row every time I ate dinner or food by myself or in a scenario that I was outside or something like training at the team I would sit like a [ __ ] like that samurai sitting position right or squat like third-world squat all the time and it was really shitty for the first couple years but it fixed you if they fix my hips and it fixed my ankle right and you know what people asked like oh well you know or I don't have time for it well if you watched an episode of anything you have time yeah I just not I aren't a priority to yourself that's fine I feel like an [ __ ] not really but people always ask me the last week or so have you been watching the the tiger king or whatever it is like dude my my partner was texting me at nine o'clock last night he's like hey man you want to go through you want to read this contract I was like man I barely have enough mental capacity right now to read bedtime stories yeah I'm done that gun tapped out by nine o'clock I'm up at five typically 5:30 late point 5:30 it's about right cuz I see the coffee makin every morning and you know I have a rhythm and a routine to my day none of my rhythm and my routine of my day exists anywhere near Netflix it doesn't even [ __ ] come into my radar I don't it's so outside of my habit then it doesn't exist for me so for me to go out and grab thing it's I have to actively think about it remind myself and by the time that I get to it I'm like why do I give a [ __ ] right I don't care like we have such a unique opportunity I think and even now with with what's happening with social distancing and kovat my kids are home all the time no I spent if I'm not at work I spend time with my kids I mean it on Saturday you like this is a dream come true kind of kind of for you personally from you for me personally your personal life is it is it a sacrifice to the business are there changes that we have to make absolutely are we fortunate to be in the business of coffee yes I love coffee so it just so happens to you know I'm in a perfect position to do what I want the majority of the day but it still takes discipline you have to run your schedule you still have to run your habits my day is so habitually ingrained at this point to how I wake up and what I do for the first two hours because I know after my first cup of coffee - I'm the most active intellectually I know that I can solve my greatest problems that I have typically within the first two to three hours every day between coffee and food exactly yeah so I know what do I have to do I can't spend my time what I do is I scroll through my inbox to make sure that I don't have any pressing issues and then I start going through our website I look at kind of what are the changes that we can make on the UX UI front because typically you know our guys from econ will start see things over slack around 7:30 or 8:00 depending and then what I start doing is I start curating what do I need what are my big movers and I have it I literally what's my high value items that I have to start ticking off if I'm not doing that I call it time triage if I'm not doing time triage actively every day chopping the dead weight out of my schedule and then executing against the the massive RO eyes in my life return on my investments I'm not gonna have a great relationship with my kids I'm not gonna have a successful company an important thing to hear is ROI on your life Yeah right like people want to know how guys get into positions like you're in or Matson or John's in or I'm in where it's like look it's been that kind of process maybe not as well executed as you have right so we've all ended up at different points but depending on higher executing that kind of ROI for your life it's going to determine the end result right the the third-order effect of that is stuff like being fit yeah eating well being happy having a job you like I always think about I don't know why it's a little bit more of it but I always think about my last minute in life I always think about my last minute I don't know why because I want to think about what am I going to be thinking about yeah and what I want that last minute of my life to be I already have had my vision statement what that last minute is it's got to be I have a smile on my face knowing I didn't leave one [ __ ] thing on the table yeah my kids are going to know with zero doubt that I love them that I put every ounce in energy that I could into their lives and making them better and then making them better people and more importantly I won't sit there and go I should have because it wouldn't be possible it is not possible though at this time in my life if I were to [ __ ] die tomorrow yeah it is not a possibility for me to think in that last minute that I didn't do everything I could to curate the single best life I wanted it's not possible for me now if I have 5 10 15 20 you know 30 40 years left on the planet I know what I want to achieve in those you know those years but there's not been a time since I left government service that I have not been trying to curate what I wanted in that regard a lot of guys are and a lot of people I think they just want right they just wish they just want like I wish I wish I had a better relationship with my kids I wish I had a better relationship with my partner I wish it's like a lot of it is is the logical conclusion the logical thought process you're gonna get from being hyper involved in either TV movies social media where you're living this voyeuristic the immersion of reality and it's like look [ __ ] you're living this life - yeah you're here don't just be a watcher well that's what they are yeah they're they're spectators in it you know but everybody can be a non spectator yeah everybody can be anybody can be a participant you can choose to get up off the bench and participate and any in in your life the team a infinite players hey coach you don't have to call you up nah it's not exclude like yeah there's not a farm going on for a nothing selection to live an epic life there's not a farm where they're like all right well if you don't have a net wordy and that's that's damn right because yeah not everybody can be a guy that was an SF not everybody can be a team guy that's just reality just reality sorry sometimes it's time in place sometimes it's ability whatever everybody can have a good life if you want it and you choose to pursue it yeah my buddies like some of my closest friends that I truly love and admire they never served in the military they don't have a day of you know public service under their belt under my closest friends he's been a river guide in you know the middle for you know Dustin you know and a Dustin like you guys awesome yeah he's it [ __ ] rad yeah he spent thousands of days all the smile in the middle of the [ __ ] Frank church wilderness area rowing boats in quite literally one of the coolest most beautiful places on the planet yeah he is and some people would look down their nose at it because they're like aha well you just did X and you didn't fulfill the societal agreement of owning a home having a truck you know having 2.5 kids and dog it's like yeah have you met everybody yeah it's not for everybody you know not for everybody and and nobody's saying that you have to just be a river guide nobody's saying you you have to be an astronaut nobody's saying you have to be anything but a mother but if that's what you want to do do it and enjoy it and do it really well I think that's what it is I think people their vision statement for their own lives as polluted by social media and media just in general right because there's this forced ideal this is where this is what success is this is what it looks like and it's being fed by so you'll different streams you will fit into society because of X in its it's funny I upped it out of that whole thing really early very very very very very early right so that's probably a common denominator amongst all the guys that come out of that Special Operations community super easy most of us between the ages of 17 and 21 or like odd don't think so I'm good on that me dong yeah and it's so funny cuz I was wearing Birkenstocks other day and somebody's like Birkenstocks my gathers super comfortable shoes I think oh cool yeah suppressors and Birkenstocks this could be like a whole thing that I'm into right we're you know I don't really pay a lot attention to what school you know because honestly that's that's a manufactured that's a manufactured existence based on marketing and they suppose it is and a lot of it is based on a false reality of a bunch of people that are really [ __ ] shallow and self-absorbed like I have no no desire to be a Kardashian or anything close to that type of lifestyle right because it's completely built on artificiality it's it's an artificial existence yeah there's no tangible there's no tangible fulfillment outside of just money not even fulfillment it's your reason for existing at that point is so that you can purchase products and make other people more wealthy that's why that's why that lane of traffic exists I completely I completely agree no I do own a company that does market to people but but it is for me when I say that it's it's I I mean just listen to what we're saying like yeah right like we're not coming at it from these shoes are cool cuz they're cool cuz I say they're cool that's why you need to own them well I think a lot of people do like when we look at even the company of black rifle and we say well that's just a coffee and it's cool it's like well people don't understand that we're manufacturers they don't understand that you know I take a lot of pride and sourcing the coffee's and roasting the coffee's the people that work here work here it it's a it to be good at marketing is one thing to be good at marketing and manufacturing is a completely different thing that's just being a good business yeah now when you're just marketing ship products to market a ship product that's totally different I've taken that one to where people are like well you just put you know veteran-owned on stuff I'm like well no in all actuality we were one of the first companies to put that out because I wanted people to know what type of a company we were yeah I wanted people to know that we're pro Second Amendment I wanted people to know that I'm a conservative I wanted people to know because what I felt was it was important for the consumer purchasing that they knew who they were purchasing from it's in the [ __ ] name black rifle coffee company it's really hard for me to say ruckin granola you know crunching tree-hugging and elected not in who works here and how how the values are shown through the charities that are given out right and through how the coffee is made who makes it who prints the shirts who does everything everywhere right the values are there and it doesn't necessarily mean that everybody was in the service because they're not they're not think they're all good company right 50% of the company and I think it's an I think it is one of those things not to go off some type of tangent on that but I think there's a big difference between people that are just marketing products they have no idea about and people that are marketing products that are their product there this is my product I've got my name on it this is my company when we look at the company it's really you know it's it's Matt myself and you know Jared and these guys you know they're very much the media side of the business I'm very much the operational design aspect of the company and the way that we have a division of labor and this AB and flow and how we kind of create the team in what we're trying to do is galvanize these ecosystems between customer and company there's nothing wrong with creating incredible content to go along with an incredible product what I've always said is like if you have an incredible product you should try to create the greatest marketing component to make sure that it exemplifies what you're creating if you're not you're failing when we talked about this when designing the future and outlook for fre right right like creating an ecosystem with a product that is the people mmm and the things that we're touching using places were going and guys that were talking to guys and gals are talking to as the product right and then marketing the crap out of it because people deserve that kind of resource and that kind of cool [ __ ] to see they should part of in touch what if I was the consumer on the other end which I am right so before I was roasting coffee for other people I was roasting coffee for myself yeah I set off with the goal to create the best drip coffee I could ever roast for myself not for other people said I had no ambitions whatsoever of selling coffee outside of just me and my circle of friends zero I just wanted to roast an incredible coffee that was it and from there obviously it's grown but I think some people they kind of mistake some of those things you guys are great at marketing yeah we're great at marketing we're incredible manufacturers which to me those are just developing different skill sets within your own business ecosystem that continue to develop over time if people think we're great marketers now we ain't seem [ __ ] nothing yet bro cuz in January like you just watch out just watch the [ __ ] out yeah because and then that's can be reflected here did it at the company as well as f ra yeah and that's part of that far array expansion right that's like part of this entire thing which is how do we expand and create media that you know inspires the American Dream through hard work and adventure that's a solution statement yeah that's what we're trying to accomplish every day we're gonna inject that back in a living ecosystem that people can participate in either voyeuristically or actually participate in right I don't want to inspire people when I look at this and I look at you know you being part of it and you know John and Andy and all these [ __ ] incredible people the Catman really just like sucking what's out of our heads because we go out and we're so [ __ ] lucky but when we go hunting with guys like John barklow who's designing new equipment and gear for sick holy crap what a [ __ ] phenomenal one he's a great guy to hang out with because he's super fun too the guy gives us a [ __ ] ton a gear which is even better right but the guys and he's just awesome human he's an awesome human being you can't help but be inspired by these people love that guy and like when we when we put the list together of people were like who do we want to have on this year who do you want to talk to right that was another pinch you know pinch yourself moment where it's like I can these aren't like wish list names like these are people that I can call that are in my [ __ ] phone that I keep all this human it's crazy and I could be like a game is human yeah yeah like hey can I have you on the show and every single one of I think I came back that next week I was like ya know they all said they doing so well said they do it like marked white is a great example of that I've been a huge mark fight Mike marked white man fur before that was Jim Jones so I was telling that story where kiss or kill confessions of a serial climber yeah went to his book signing there's like 20 people in Seattle he's an epic human he's incredible incredible person he's an incredible person he'll be the show yeah be on the show come on yeah soon as we get out he's he's one of those guys where I think when you look and listen to you know if you're participating in these things these activities this whole thing called life yeah it's you know you used to be a saying like tune out to tune in right it's like you gotta tune out this [ __ ] just media component that's plugged in on Instagram and Facebook you got a plug you got unplugged from that especially because those things are such echo chambers they are like you know if you're watching right wing news you're you're a person is getting spun up by right-wing stuff if you're watching left-wing news you're a person that's getting spun up by left-wing stuff because that's how they that's how they draw you in that's how they get you in there because you scream oh [ __ ] oh [ __ ] and it echoes back yeah [ __ ] oh [ __ ] oh [ __ ] yeah that's not what should be going on and I think that it's cool all the people were able to involve in this and have on and have people listen to or see is instead of being key holders we can be door openers yeah to information well I think that's that's the big that's the big thing which is you know fr a and what are we trying to accomplish with this what are we trying to accomplish with the podcast it's just providing access to interesting people trevor is going to be a mainstay component so you can continue to add you know your personality and what type of value you're creating and your own life is only going to translate directly into what we're doing so you know where can they find you I think that's a good spot we can tie this up because we've yeah we're an hour and some change so run change where it's Thompson para-sports know or did you change it changed it I made it easier Trevor Thompson oh okay yeah Trevor staples just - right on Instagram it links to my website and links to my photography stuff which is Thompson that's yeah on Instagram also but just check me out there if you want to see me and I'll be back home fre shows as well as some other stuff yeah I mean you're all over the place I'm so over the place yeah he's all over the place so Trevor Thompson thanks man I appreciate obviously yeah all the time so I mean we're gonna have him on the show a lot more the next one we're doing is gonna be with the founder of TRX so he'll be on the show for our next episode Matt myself and Jared are gonna do another one John Dudley is coming up he's in the shoot again so John's gonna be in one of the shows we're gonna Andy bunch of the guys that are just basically twice same ecosystem marked white we've got a laundry list a really really [ __ ] super cool and interesting humans yes interesting humans so thanks a lot everybody thanks to Nick for a [Music] you [Music]

Channel: Free Range American Podcast

Views: 51,440

Rating: 4.9521437 out of 5

Keywords: mat best, jarred taylor, evan hafer, logan stark, free range american, brcc, black rifle coffee, americas coffee, americas podcast, podcast, black rifle, trevor thompson, free range american podcast, trevor thompson navy seal, navy seal podcast, navy seal, navy seals, free range, free range podcast, freerange podcast, joe rogan trevor thompson, jre trevor thompson, andy stumpf, american podcast, black rifle coffee podcast, free range american podcast matt carriker

Id: vsQIHByis4o

Length: 102min 47sec (6167 seconds)

Published: Fri Apr 03 2020