Mark Bell's Power Project - EP. 491 - Dixxon Flannel Co's Danny Dreyer

Episode Date: March 3, 2021

Danny Dreyer is the founder and CEO of Dixxon Flannel, the host of the “$180 Dollar & A Dream” podcast, and father to two boys. Danny took his need to make a couple extra hundred bucks a month and... started selling high quality flannels out of his trunk at low rider get togethers and biker meet ups. His consistency and work ethic turned Dixxon Flannel into a multimillion dollar brand that is recognized across the country. Subscribe to the NEW Power Project Newsletter! ➢ https://bit.ly/2JvmXMb Subscribe to the Podcast on on Platforms! ➢ https://lnk.to/PowerProjectPodcast Special perks for our listeners below! ➢LMNT Electrolytes: http://drinklmnt.com/powerproject ➢Piedmontese Beef: https://www.piedmontese.com/ Use Code "POWERPROJECT" at checkout for 25% off your order plus FREE 2-Day Shipping on orders of $99 ➢Sling Shot: https://markbellslingshot.com/ Enter Discount code, "POWERPROJECT" at checkout and receive 15% off all Sling Shots Follow Mark Bell's Power Project Podcast ➢ Insta: https://www.instagram.com/markbellspowerproject ➢ https://www.facebook.com/markbellspowerproject ➢ Twitter: https://twitter.com/mbpowerproject ➢ LinkedIn:https://www.linkedin.com/in/powerproject/ ➢ YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/markbellspowerproject ➢TikTok: http://bit.ly/pptiktok FOLLOW Mark Bell ➢ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/marksmellybell ➢ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/MarkBellSuperTraining ➢ Twitter: https://twitter.com/marksmellybell ➢ Snapchat: marksmellybell ➢Mark Bell's Daily Workouts, Nutrition and More: https://www.markbell.com/ Follow Nsima Inyang ➢ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/nsimainyang/ Podcast Produced by Andrew Zaragoza ➢ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/iamandrewz #PowerProject #Podcast #MarkBell

Transcript
Discussion (0)
Starting point is 00:00:00 This episode of Mark Bell's Power Project podcast is brought to you by Piedmontese Beef. And I really want to talk about Piedmontese Beef because, in my opinion, it is the most underrated, most untalked about, just underutilized tools when it comes to bodybuilders and their diets. Can you explain exactly why that is, Nseema? Yeah, man. It's actually pretty awesome because we have a lot of bodybuilders on this podcast. And every single time we get one on, we always tell them about Piedmontese because when a bodybuilder goes on a bodybuilding diet they're like i want to eat low fat and you know i can't eat a lot of calories and they always end up eating chicken breasts tilapia just really weak meats just very weak birds um but piedmontese is awesome because they have a lot of different options in terms of their meat that have a great amount of protein like
Starting point is 00:00:43 good amounts of protein but not a crazy amount of fat. So you can be trying to do a diet and you can eat a lot of meat, a lot of red meat that tastes great, that's tender without all of the extra calories. But I want to give this a big butt because a lot of people are like, but I like that. They also have a lot of options of different cuts of meat that have more amounts of fat. So if that's your jam and that's what you want to do, you have that option too. You can't lose. I like that you added a big butt.
Starting point is 00:01:08 We love big butts. We do. Cannot lie. But seriously, stop eating weak birds like Insuma just said. Head over to piedmontese.com. That's P-I-E-D-M-O-N-T-E-S-E dot com at checkout. Enter promo code POWERPROJECT for 25% off your order. And if your order is $99 or more, you get free two-day shipping.
Starting point is 00:01:26 Highly, highly, highly recommend you check out the Flatiron Steak because what Nseema just said, it's ridiculously high in protein and insanely low in fat. Go check that out right now. What up, Power Project crew? This is Josh Settledge, a.k.a. SettleGate, here to introduce you to our next guest, Danny Dreyer. Danny Dixon Flannel Dreyer is the founder and CEO of Dixon Flannel. He is also the host of the $180 and a dream podcast and a father of two boys. His company, Dixon Flannel, is an apparel company that Danny started in an attempt to make a couple extra hundred bucks a month while meeting his need of high quality, durable flannels that look fresh far beyond their first wash. What started as a way for Danny to
Starting point is 00:02:10 make a little extra cash while he worked in his father's motorcycle shop has now turned into a multi-million dollar brand that has thousands of fans from the low rider and biker scene chomping at the bit for each new apparel drop every month. His podcast, $180 and a Dream, reflects on his own journey, how he started originally loading up his trunk and traveling across California, selling his new custom-branded flannels at low-rider get-togethers and biker meetups. Danny was able to take Dixon flannels from doing 25 orders a day out of his own house to doing thousands of orders every day, all operated out of their headquarters in Tempe, Arizona. Dixon flannels are now recognized as a limited
Starting point is 00:02:51 and specialty item, which tend to auction off on eBay for resale at over $100 per flannel. Danny has also been involved in custom designing his own boats with the number one luxury high performance boat manufacturer in the country, Eliminator Boats. But you guys probably don't want to hear about that because that is a different story. Please enjoy this conversation with Danny Dreyer. I'm guessing it was massive or was it just dirty? It was fucking massive. I don't know if I've ever shit like that in my life. I'm so excited. I'm so excited. I gotta see this. Let's go. You're recording now? Yep. So we're gonna have some poop stories today. I hope our guests have some poop stories too, because this will be nice.
Starting point is 00:03:43 He's been hitting up some exercise and then he's lost some weight too, too, because this would be nice. This would be real nice. He's been hitting up some exercise, and then he's lost some weight, too, I think. Oh, really? Yeah. There we go. I think he's been Peloton-ing it. So you have a lot of these flannels, right? I got a bunch of these flannels, and it's via the team here and Smokey. You know, Smokey is hustling these flannels around a lot and then my buddy sean our buddy sean provost is
Starting point is 00:04:06 a huge fan and uh i think they're kicking out the same vibes i think danny dryer and sean provost kind of have the same same shit going on you know they both have a lot of tattoos and they both kick ass in business and they're both into fashion and so uh Sean is the one that kind of made me aware of Danny. And Smokey's the one that made me aware of the brand. And Sean was like, you need to have this guy on the podcast. This guy's just lighting shit up. He's got like a 50,000 square foot facility out in Tempe, Arizona. That just looks awesome.
Starting point is 00:04:41 Like it's like a man cave on crack. You know, it's like instead of a man cave, it's like a man, a man cave on crack, you know, it's like instead of a man cave, it's like a man mall. And, uh, he's got a bunch of his cars in there. His buddy's got a bunch of vehicles in there and they like,
Starting point is 00:04:53 you know, work on their cars and, and, and all kinds of different shit like that. So very similar to Sean, like he's Sean's into coffee and into cars. And another similarity to Sean is that Sean didn't invent coffee. Yeah.
Starting point is 00:05:07 You know, uh, Danny dryer didn't invent or create flannels, but he made flannels that are better executed than most on the market. And, uh, maybe even better than everybody. And now there's probably a lot of people trying to mimic that and trying to
Starting point is 00:05:22 ride the coattails of that. It's, it's interesting right because like a flannel is just a checkered long sleeve shirt i mean who wears flannels like people in colder temperature climates and farmers to protect themselves from like the sun but other than that who cares about flannels well this guy you know helps people to care about flannels i think maybe like west coast choppers or something, you can kind of date it back to some of that stuff. But it's, my understanding is a lot of it is, you know, steeped in a lot of
Starting point is 00:05:55 motorcycle people like it and his shit has taken off. Don't forget lowriders. I'm pretty sure there's multiple photos of like my dad's and my dad and my uncles you know rolling around in flannels and their lowriders my dad had a my dad had an impala 64 impala he still has a 48 panel truck should i go in the red room but uh yeah so part of the lowrider culture for sure is a huge aspect of it all. What's going on, Danny. Can you hear us? Okay. I can. How are you guys? Nice. We are doing fantastic. Uh, congratulations with, uh, the success of your brand and everything you have
Starting point is 00:06:38 going on, man. Dude, thank you so much. It, um, it means a ton to me, man. I really, really appreciate that. You know, first thing we got to kick it off with, man, is that, you know, how can you be taken seriously as a businessman when you're covered in tattoos head to toe? I mean, that's unconventional. You can't be that way, right? Right. You know, I love defying those kinds of things. You know, like I even like on a personal level, like I tell my kids, like we go to the grocery store or something like that. I'm like, you know, if you see a woman in front of you and just like trying to teach them manners
Starting point is 00:07:11 and stuff, you know, like opening doors for ladies or if I see like an old lady or something, then like trying to carry a groceries or something like that, you know, trying to defy all odds, even on a personal level. But yes, it's a, it's a funny way of doing business especially with like very very corporate places like we're starting to get into you know what what's uh what's your background like uh what were you like you know in school and stuff like that like uh do the tattoos represent uh you know something inside of you that wanted to be a little different? Like, did you maybe struggle in school or, or what was that experience like for you?
Starting point is 00:07:49 I, yes, largely. I would say that my exterior now probably shows the exact story that you would, that you would imagine the past. So I didn't fit in at school really, really anywhere. I excelled pretty well. I did well academically for the most part but i was extremely bored i didn't like it i didn't like conventional ways i didn't ever really want to fit into the box that they you know that they say that you should um i was very artistic very creative and um and that kind of lends to you know my reasoning for always being into artistic um expressions like as far as tattoos and whatnot um i'm also more so from a time like i've barely been tattooed in the last like 10
Starting point is 00:08:30 years so i'm more so from a time that realistically um they weren't as widely accepted as they are today um you know now i really don't see many barriers in it but like when i was younger that is definitely a big thing um but i uh like i signed myself out of school the day i turned 18 i'm a high school dropout um i went back and um went to the continuation school just to get my diploma and stuff i have zero college you know experienced never went to business school or anything like that um so you know i'm kind of a self-taught self-moved person do you share that do you share some of that with your children? Or are they maybe too young at the moment to talk to them about that kind of stuff? They're too young at the moment. Um, however they're in education, um, their morale and their
Starting point is 00:09:14 manners are extremely, extremely important to me. Um, so, you know, like I was just having a con, a conversation with them this morning. Like I'm not a big fan of them playing video games and stuff like that. And so, um, you know, I was speaking to him about them being there for each other as brothers, because one of them threw a book at the other one or something like that. Little, little one is just, he's just a hellion. So like trying to throw some education at the other one's head, you know, hoping it seeps in, but yeah, they're, they're too young for that portion right now. But, um, but I spend a lot of time, you know, um, focusing on what's important with them or what's important to me, I should say. Hey, uh, Danny, I was curious, like, um, you know,
Starting point is 00:09:57 so if, if I was in high school and I heard that you had dropped out, I'd be like, yep, it worked for him. It's going to work for me. Like, I just, I mean, the three of us, we all didn't really like love school. Um, I actually really hated it, but like, do you have any advice for, you know, some of the younger listeners out there that, you know, they're like, yeah, like that's, that's, that's the path I want to go down. Like, you know, like even with my daughter, I'm like, yeah, school sucks. But then I'm like, shit, I can't say that, you know, like I have to be a little bit more responsible. So how can we responsibly, uh, you know, kind of educate the youth and be like, Hey, like, I don't know what that was, but like we can, um, you know, kind of go down our own path. It doesn't have to be this, you know, one through 12 and then
Starting point is 00:10:40 college and then job type of thing. Like, you know, how can we like give them some, like, you know, some advice that like, Hey, you can break the mold. Yes. I think that that's an incredible question actually. So I try not to really, sorry, I don't know how to turn off my email. That's all right. We're all good. We'll just be a nice little chime in the background. I try to shy away from that as much as possible when talking to the youth, because I think that education is extremely important.
Starting point is 00:11:10 As far as educational institutions, when it comes into college and everything, I do try to promote, you know, I think trade schools are a great thing. I think that that's, that's a great path for a lot of people with the ways that we can control entrepreneurship these days and then learning a trade at the same time. I think that's an incredible opportunity. However, I do think that education is extremely important. And I think it's a, I mean, I would
Starting point is 00:11:35 always tell my kids to stay in school and to stick it out. And I think that realistically, what happened with me when I was younger is, and even into my twenties, and I'm finding this out even into my early thirties is that you're, you're kind of, you have to be the master of your mind. And I always quit because I was like, you know, I don't like this. I'm over it. You know? And the thing is, is that I did the opposite when building my business. And had I done the same way that I did through school, had I done done the same way that I did through school, had I done it the same way that I'd done through so many other things, I wouldn't be where I am today.
Starting point is 00:12:10 When you say you did the opposite, what do you mean? Like you, you said you quit on a lot of things when you were a kid and you handled your business differently. Like when you started, you're saying that you just didn't quit on anything when it came to your business.
Starting point is 00:12:22 Yes. I, and how I mean that is like, you know, the rollercoaster that is entrepreneurism, the rollercoaster that is business, the amount of things that we go through, um, you know, when building a business or being a brand builder, you know, if, if you were to stop at the first hard one or, or the fucking 10th hard one, you know, it's like, then we would never see it through and i think a lot of people look at a larger business a larger scale and they're like wow you've grown your brand to
Starting point is 00:12:49 this this level and they think it gets easier and it doesn't it's like it's just that those roadblocks just become monumentally fucking bigger it's just like you know and it gets so crazy that roller coaster gets steeper the highs get higher the lows get lower and you have to learn that you know that fortitude the resilience and everything moving forward and that's been a huge huge learning curve in my life is being like you know looking at it and not letting outside factors get into your mind and having to control those thoughts you know um you know just this morning right before i got on this call with you guys, you know, I'm like on the phone about like my divorce and going through all this crazy shit. And it's like, you have to be able to just like snap out and be like, okay, cool. Like this doesn't affect me. I'm taking the rest of the
Starting point is 00:13:37 day positive. Like what are the positives in this? What do I learn from this? How can this make me better forge forward, move on and just go, you know, and hit it harder than ever before. You know, you mentioned, uh, when you were a kid, you would stop certain things. And I think, I think kids are really intuitive. Like they stop stuff a lot of times because they're not good at it, which we don't want to see that from our children. We want to encourage them to kind of push forward into it. But I'm kind of obsessed with finding out like what people really like to do and what my children really like to do and doing my best to have them, uh,
Starting point is 00:14:11 lean towards that, encourage them and push them towards things that they sort of naturally like, obviously as a parent, you got to tell the line because you have to force them to do some shit that they sometimes don't want to do. Cause it's, it's overall like hang out with their grandparents or something you know there's there's certain things you want your kids to understand the value of that as they as they move along but i find it really interesting that a lot of times we we are just like i don't like that and it's it's uh not a coincidence i don't think we don't enjoy it we don't like it they're not very good at it like if you went and played football with your buddies and every time you played you cried you you probably just wouldn't
Starting point is 00:14:49 care to play football anymore i i highly agree i i 100 agree and i actually i push my kids quite a bit like i take them skateboard lessons they're starting golf lessons right now they haven't really been big on the team sport thing but that is one that's 100 true you know and i think i was definitely that way but would give up too soon you know it's like soon as something got hard it was like i didn't see the big picture and i think in and in how that relates to business even is that some people have that 30-foot view of looking outside the box and seeing what could be and what we are pushing towards, what the goals end up being. It seems like teaching your kids to be goal-oriented, goal-driven, and being able to see outside the box and be able to look at things positively is a huge thing. I try to focus on that, but I pretty much just push them and just like just like, Hey, you know, give me five more practices or give me like five more games or whatever, you know,
Starting point is 00:15:49 and then we'll decide, then we'll sit back and decide. And after that, if you still don't like it, Hey, I'm not going to force you to do anything you don't like, you know, I'm really, I highly agree with everything you're saying. I'm really curious about you, like you specifically right now, because you were mentioning when you were younger, you do things you'd quit. That was how you were until you started your business, right? And that kind of really echoes the idea of having a fixed type of mindset. You do something, you don't think you're good enough for it, and you just quit immediately because you're not good. And that's kind of hard. It's hard to shift your mindset to doing something and continuing to do it even when it's really hard and it really,
Starting point is 00:16:25 really sucks. Most people can't make that mindset shift or they don't even realize that they don't have the right mindset. So for you, what did you do before Dixon as far as like work and all that is concerned? And when did that mindset shift happen for you? Or when did you realize, hey, I need to change the way I'm thinking about the way I do these things or else I'm not going to be able to move forward. When did that shift happen for you? So I think that shift happened probably when I was about 25 and this is a little bit before Dixon.
Starting point is 00:16:53 So I had a couple other businesses before that. I tried, I was kind of during that whole mortgage blow up and everything, tried to do the mortgage thing. I was a title rep for a little while. I was always interested in real estate more so i think at the time just interested in money i was just young you know thought that that would fix everything so it was like i see all these guys like flying private jets going to vegas every weekend hottest chicks around them it's like you know how it is like that's that's the front that the mortgage guys give you and that's how you end up in a fucking call center. The bottle service and everything comes with it.
Starting point is 00:17:29 And, um, and so I wasn't great at it, but I learned a lot about sales and a lot about technique and stuff there. Um, I went on after that to figure out, I wanted to be passionately involved in what I did. So, um,
Starting point is 00:17:42 after living briefly in Chicago, I moved back and I, um, bought a motorcycle shop with my pops and we independently ran this motorcycle shop for about seven years while I was there. And while I was there, I started, um, my, um, my wife at the time was working in, um, she was an escrow and I learned about like how they, how they trans, um, transported escrow docs and stuff at the time they, how they trans, um, transported escrow docks and stuff at the time. So I started a courier company that was the only one that had motorcycles riding for it.
Starting point is 00:18:11 And so that they could get into LA and split lanes the whole time. Cause in, in LA or in California, you can split traffic. So we were able to get the fastest turn times, operate on less gas, be a little bit more efficient. And I started that when I was about 24 years old. own less gas, be a little bit more efficient. And I started that when I was about 24 years old. However, I still had like that mindset of that mortgage guy, that young broker, and just like, you know, live like a, you know, like I was balling, you know, and taking limos and getting boss service everywhere. We're doing really well. And just as quickly as it started, it quickly
Starting point is 00:18:41 came to an abrupt stop. And a lot of reasons why it became, it came to a stop because I was not open to hearing other people's ideas. I was not open to thinking collaboratively and it wasn't open. Like I let my pride take over really. And when I saw all that go away, just because I couldn't handle myself in a boardroom meeting, because I couldn't handle the pressure. I couldn't handle looking at something from a different perspective. the pressure I couldn't handle, um, looking at something from a different perspective, um, that shift started to change. So then when I started Dixon, I was open, like completely open to different ideas, completely open to looking at doing it for other reasons, you know, outside of financial and being fulfilled by it, by growing myself. And I think that that was a big, big turning point for me, like about a year or two into Dixon and really figuring out that it's like, Hey, you got to suck it up sometimes. And you just got, you got to hear all the shit that you don't want to hear. You have to process it all, turn it around and turn it into something positive and turn it into growth for yourself.
Starting point is 00:19:39 And I just, I wasn't about it. And, you know, to be honest with you, even like self-help talks, you know, podcast, all that kind of stuff, books, like I wasn't into any of that stuff. And I have to be completely honest. The first time I heard Andy for sell a talk was the first time that it was like, someone spoke to me, you know, it was like that, that you grabbed my attention and I was like, Holy fuck. You can't turn this off. It's like, you can't deny, you know? I think it's very clear when you listen to Andy Frisella that he's kind of yelling at himself, you know?
Starting point is 00:20:11 And I think you kind of get on his side and you're like, fuck man, I feel the exact same way. Like I need this. I mean, you shouldn't need someone to kind of tell you to suck it up and to go get it, but sometimes you do. And he's the guy that has neglected fitness. He's the guy that's neglected certain things. And as he was building his business, he went up to 300 something pounds. He admits he was out of shape. He admits that, uh, he neglected certain things. He admits
Starting point is 00:20:37 that his ego got in the way as you were mentioning. And so I think when I, when I heard him for the first time, it was the same thing with me. I was like, oh my God, like he should be talking into a mirror because he's talking to himself. But how many of us need that self-talk? How many of us need to sit down across from a mirror and have a good, hard talk with ourselves? Absolutely. I think you're 100% correct. And like on my social media, my following isn't anything like yours, but as far as like getting out to my customers and whatnot, I try to take the same approach by, you know, showing it's like, hey, I'm saying these things, but it's because I need to hear this shit today.
Starting point is 00:21:13 Like I'm saying this because it's like as I say it and I write it, it's like the best way for me to like get it all inside and, you know, internalize it. And for everything that I need that day, I'm not perfect. I don't know everything. I don't even know everything that I don't know, which is actually a very important thing to, you know, to figure out at some point. You know, it's like in saying, Hey, this is where I come from not to show off. I'm telling you, because I want you to know that it's possible. And, and I think that his approach is very similar as well. And, and that's, and that's why it grabbed me, you know, because when you, when you look at the end result guy, so you look at Andy right now and then,
Starting point is 00:21:51 and it makes everything look like, well, that guy got lucky. Well, that guy, this, well, that guy, that, you know, it was like, instead you look at like 300 something pound Andy and like, you know, and living on a couch that, that, you know, smell like probably came from like dumpster Craigslist or something. And then you think about the journey that it goes on, then things start becoming, you know, it's like, wow, I can find this tangible success that I, you know,
Starting point is 00:22:17 that I can hold and feel and touch and, and build upon this, you know, if this guy could do it, I could do it, you know? And I think that that's almost a responsibility of some of us from a following standpoint, from, from a boy's standpoint, you know, if this guy could do it, I could do it, you know? And I think that that's almost a responsibility of some of us from a following standpoint, from a boy's standpoint, you know, having podcasts and whatnot, you know, and he does a great job of that. I encourage a lot of young people to go out into the world and get punched in the face, you know, and, you know, go and go and find the hard shit in life. And you mentioned moving to Chicago, you mentioned having a business with your dad. You know, navigating those waters and being in business with a family member is very, very difficult.
Starting point is 00:22:52 And then moving is really difficult. But I always encourage young people, like, I was thinking about moving to North Carolina. I'm like, go. You know, just you should really. It's already in your head. That sounds like a wonderful thing. You could always come back. You know, you could always say, hey, I like California more or whatever it is. Uh, what did you find and what did you learn from that experience of moving around a
Starting point is 00:23:12 little bit, uh, and having some of these different jobs? I, you know what? I love the fact that I, like, I always wanted to live in a big city. I always wanted to live in New York. Um, then I visited Chicago and I was like, Oh, it's smaller, like cleaner version, basically. Like I'd rather live here. Plus you got to, you get a like little bit of tinge of that Midwestern hospitality. You know, it's, what I found was that I found myself insignificant, which after that ego trip of a business thing, I needed to fight. And it's like, you got thousands of people walking by every day. It's like you don't know that dude's story. You don't know this person's story.
Starting point is 00:23:51 Those guys, like the guys coming out of McDonald's are sitting at the same bus stop as the guys coming out of the guys at Miracle Mile. And it's like you don't know their story and you realize that you're somewhat insignificant. And it's up to you to only just make yourself happy, really. And it's up to you to have that drive, you know, to find the goals and success is going to find you. The success is not all about the flossing and like, and all the shit that you think it's about before.
Starting point is 00:24:17 You know, I think when we were growing up and that was a big deal for me. And it was also a big deal for me to get like comfortable being alone, you know, just alone in a big city like that, doing your own thing and fulfilling your time with things that actually start to add value to you, actually start adding value to, you know, your skill set and stuff like that when you're younger, you know, and you also have the time to start checking off those wins. You start with small steps and like, you know, just getting there as a win, you know, and you also have the time to start checking off those wins.
Starting point is 00:24:45 You start with small steps and like, you know, just getting there as a win, you know, thriving out there is, is like, you know, 10 steps down the line, but just being able to pay for yourself to be there, paying your own way, finding a new job, you know, meeting new people, finding a set of friends, you know, like just stuff like that. It's like you start preparing yourself for that. Then I think that you get, I would call it comfortable being uncomfortable. And that is very, very, very important, you know, and staying uncomfortable always. When you started Dixon, um, how long did it take you to start being profitable with it? Because you mentioned that you, for the first two years, you really were working on your mindset. You were changing things, right? When I think about that, it's like,
Starting point is 00:25:31 well, you're starting this business. That's amazing right now. But in those first few years, it must have been a pretty difficult thing if you still weren't where you needed to be to actually run a successful business, right? Right. I was profitable by year three. However, it took me to year four or five till it became my full time. So I was working at Harley like 60 hours a week, had a new baby at home. I'd come home, work on it all night, ship out orders, branding, doing all this stuff. And then all the while, when we started out, we started with blanks and we were putting our own tags in blanks, basically, and just working on branding. And then still making t-shirts and prints and art and stuff like that. However, we didn't know how to make custom flannels yet.
Starting point is 00:26:20 And I'm not a trained fashion guy. I didn't know how to make patterns or anything like that. And it was fully, um, I had to commit to learning my own craft and I, I basically learned it on my own. You know, I had a couple of mentors along the way that they were amazing, but, um, you know, I, I kind of like, I didn't really, I didn't want to reach out to the big brands cause I didn't really want to be like the big brands so much. I wanted it to be the way I wanted to do it. I wanted it to talk to a culture that I felt like it didn't talk to or that no one else talked to. And so it was very important those times where I don't know that I had the time to really think about it because I was working so much.
Starting point is 00:27:01 I just looked at it as a sink or swim thing. And that's why we use that slogan still a lot. And also, you know, a lot of the work hard part, because I didn't have a choice. Like a lot of people were like, how'd you stay motivated? How'd you keep going? How do you like, I don't have a fucking choice, dude. I gotta keep going, you know? And like, that was, I think that early success was due just to that was like, just because it was like, I didn't have time to sit back and analyze much more than, you know,
Starting point is 00:27:28 marketing and how, what kind of push we were doing, what kind of growth we're getting. I just kept on going, you know, it was just like, all I knew is the times that I felt like quitting. I just,
Starting point is 00:27:38 I was like, I can't like already know what the other side is like, because I'm, I'm there. And I've been there before, but I don't know what's next. And maybe there's a fucking chance that what's next is monumental. And maybe there's a chance that what's next is just slightly better than it was before. But the thing is, I don't have a choice.
Starting point is 00:27:58 So like, I, I'm just not going to quit. I'm just, there's just no way in hell that I'm going to do this. You know? Yeah. I'm kind of wondering if you maybe feel like you don't have a choice because that insignificance that you felt when you said you were in Chicago, you probably don't want to feel that ever again. Right.
Starting point is 00:28:15 You're right. You wouldn't walk into a facility that's like however many square feet, 50,000 square feet, like your facility is now. And you have the employees that you have and you have the stuff built up that you have. It's almost impossible to feel insignificant. Everybody there I'm sure is bought into the culture and they are probably doing their best to make sure that your day is as, as, as least stressful as possible so that you can still be creative and you can still have time to do other things. Yes. I am so, so fortunate for that last part that you mentioned. So a lot of those guys picked up, I mean,
Starting point is 00:28:54 a lot of our staff has picked up that. They basically, I spent a long time at first learning how to manage people, you know, and mostly through mistakes, you know, I made a lot of mistakes along the way. Um, but spent a lot of time managing people and showing them how hard I worked. And basically what came of it is that they're like, you know, now they're like, dude, please go on vacation. Like, you know, like just go enjoy your life. Like you've been working your ass off for so long, you know, enjoy what this world has to offer. And a lot of stuff lately has been that way. You know, it's been a good balance of that. But before I was just like hit the ground just so hard over and over and over
Starting point is 00:29:34 and over again, I'm going to outwork every person here. I'm going to be the first one here, last one to leave, you know, and everything else. And, you know, now I've found more time for my kids. I actually go to doctor's appointments and dentist appointment, stuff like that. My dentist is like yelling at me. He's like, dude, you just didn't show up for like six years. And it was like, wow, I was working, you know, but it's really cool now because my staff cares about me, you know,
Starting point is 00:29:58 on a personal level, which is really cool and really unique and very neat thing on the significance level. I forget when I walk in and every once in a while, I try to take the reflection and go to the end of the warehouse and look, look at it and just be like, Holy shit. I never ever thought that I could have done this. I never even could envision that that's where it could go. Um, I think I just didn't even know it was possible. It just kept on pushing and pushing and pushing, you know, Um, I like, I just didn't even know it was possible. Just kept on pushing and pushing and pushing, you know, and I don't reflect enough.
Starting point is 00:30:27 I think sometimes, um, but now I am starting to find the time to do it and, and really helps you stay grounded. And I think with that positivity, you let go of a lot that's inside of you and it lets you have more room for creativity. So that's been a big focus for me lately is like, instead of being so hard on myself and being my own toughest critic is really starting to be like, okay, cool. Like I could do this, have some confidence in it, know that I know what I'm doing and then know that there's still more to learn and have time scheduled and dedicated to those times to, you know, to be able to learn more and, you know, to put forth and personal growth.
Starting point is 00:31:09 able to learn more and put forth personal growth. But on a daily basis, I generally walk straight to my office. I don't even look around and I just hit the ground running. I just work hard as hell. Early on, because you said you were working 60 hours a week, you had a new baby, and then you were just any... The rest of the year, like waking hours, you were working on Dixon. So when you first started, not even necessarily brand awareness, but like the, the following and like the lore behind Dixon is gigantic. How did you develop that when you were already doing so many things everywhere else? I think the fact that I had solidified myself in the motorcycle industry for almost 10 years really helped me because like I knew the magazine
Starting point is 00:31:52 publication. So like we were able to get into hot bike early, early on, we're able to get into baggers magazine early on stuff like that. But what I found was that I was kind of sick of that. And I wanted to branch out into all the other things that I that made me who I was and that's when we really started to grow I've never admitted this on a podcast I don't think however our business plan of and the allure of limited stuff just came from because we didn't have enough money to buy anymore and it takes so long to make this stuff it's like it's gonna take another like 90 days for me to make this certain color way i can't just like bring it back out like i gotta be like forecasted out and we just kind of kept on like taking it saving it putting it back in putting it back in putting it back in putting back in and you know and then but now like we
Starting point is 00:32:41 enjoy that limited nature of it but at the you, people were like, how did you come up with that? And it's like, because we just didn't have any money. I was like, I couldn't. I had no control over it. Limited certainly sounds a lot better than we don't have enough money to do anything yet sale. That's sick. Well, along with that, I'm curious how your days looked because working 60 hours a week and then having to start a new totally type of apparel business, but then having to learn the process of
Starting point is 00:33:12 making apparel, make it custom, all of this type of work, it doesn't seem that you had time for leisure. Am I correct? Or, or how did that actually look? Yeah, absolutely correct. Um, I, I mean, I slept like four hours a day, you know, it was just, uh, doing, you know, I do all my packing and shipping myself at that point. I was just hustling my ass off so that my, my wife could stay home and take care of the kids. And so I, she was pregnant again, pretty much when we were really started getting going. And I would like a pull the orders at home at night, try to make like a game out of it. You know, with my youngest, it was like two or three at a time. And cause that's the only time I got to spend with them really. And you know,
Starting point is 00:33:55 basically I leave them all stacked up on the table. So she got up early with the baby, you know, once she had the, the, our second kid, she'd come down and pack the orders while they're just like taking a nap or whatever. And we kind of juggle our days like that and and so we were we're just grinding man it was it was it was a crazy time but we were happy we weren't together a lot but it was it was exciting it was exciting and new and it was ours you know and my i don't know what when i look back on it i didn't have a lot of time for leisure like i stopped drinking stopped like hanging out with anybody like just like i
Starting point is 00:34:32 mean i was just focused on this there's just family and business that's it you know and and those were great times and we had just moved to arizona you know from california originally just moved to arizona for good schools for the kids for um hopefully lower overhead as far as if we ever got to the point we could have a warehouse stuff like that I was all opposed to it I totally hate the desert not a big fan but hey for business and for life you got to do what you got to do you know and so um it was a grind grind of a time like my leisure to be honest with you I had like a 45 minute commute to work at that time. And I just ride my motorcycle to work every day as much as possible. And that was like that was my like mind clearing moment of the day, you know.
Starting point is 00:35:13 But I was what I wish I would have done differently at that time. And probably throughout most of my career has been more like fitness focused because seeing how much that gives my mind now, um, even though I'm extremely out of shape still, this is a new journey for me. Um, it gives so much to my mind and so much more, um, so much room to move. It takes away so much negativity out of it that I feel like it had, I've been more focused on that. I would have had even a better schedule. Yeah. You definitely less stress, the better you eat and the more that your body can handle from a physical perspective, shit just kind of slides off you a little bit easier. You do look a lot healthier from previous pictures and videos I've seen. What kind of progress have you made with your fitness? Looks
Starting point is 00:36:00 like you're heading in the right direction to me yeah uh i've recently in the last couple months lost about like 45 pounds that's awesome dude congratulations yeah but i also lost like a lot of strength during that time so uh so now i'm like back in the gym lifting and stuff and and it's been it's been a cool journey um i think like it started taking a toll on me a little bit just because like kind of have like a new single life and so then i'm like oh i want to hang out with 25 year old girls and those girls like the clubs and do you know i'm not 25 anymore can't keep up and so now i'm like i'm really on track on you know on eating clean every day and kind of doing my thing um which is good it opens my mind up like i was saying like
Starting point is 00:36:46 you know it blocks out the negativity my days start so much more positive um we have a full gym here at dixon and um and so like most of like my top guys and and top creatives like i have a trainer that comes in for them and they do that during work hours which is awesome you know you know increases productivity. The vibe around here has been much lighter and brighter. It's been great. You know, it's, if anyone's listening to this and they're thinking, Hey, I got to, I got to bootstrap my company. I got to do this, this, and this, and you're anything like me and you're eating Taco Bell and taking Instagram pictures of a product on the ground at Harley, you know, once they could sell
Starting point is 00:37:23 it after work, um, you know, it's in introducing those kinds of things in your life is going to make everything just so much easier. What have you done, uh, from a fitness perspective that you've been able to be consistent with? Cause that's what we see is the biggest problem is just people being able to comply to something. Right. Um, I've been doing lately lately i just have someone prep my meals for me but i think that's like my biggest thing because then you know i never uh me and me and uh nicole my uh my now ex-wife we used to divide and conquer and so she's like stay at home take care of the kids and i'm full-on just all business and so i didn, I wasn't around them as much. I'd only been, I've only had my kids like by myself twice before, like we split up. And so then enter this whole new thing where it's like half my half, like my week is like, you know, single dad and I'm with
Starting point is 00:38:17 the kids, you know, um, like three or four days in a row. And, uh, the positive of it is the best time of my life. I, it's like, I'm learning, I'm learning them all over again. And, um, you know, I w I don't think I was a bad dad before. It just wasn't as present. And presence has been a big thing that I've learned lately. Um, because I was just so like, you know, stuck on my phone, just constantly grinding, constantly grinding on the marketing, constantly grinding on design. And I just didn't pay attention. Even if I was there, I wasn't fully present. So basically through doing that, I've found myself so busy, like, you know, but I'm like, I leave work early now. So I'm with them, I cook with them and everything. And so I'm, it's like, first part of my week is a whirlwind. It's just like, you know, it goes past. And then I have to keep myself accountable for the next part of the week because since I could do whatever I want, essentially, suddenly in my life, it's like you kind of like get stuck in these ways of like you want to just like, oh, well, so I want to go here.
Starting point is 00:39:18 And I can go here and I can go there. And then before you know it, you're six meals out, you know, like eating crappy and stuff like that. And so I was like, I really need to reel myself back in. So having a meal prep service prep that part of my week has been a huge success for me on the places I lacked. And then the rest of the time when I'm with the boys, I make them eat pretty healthy anyway. So like I just cook with them and try to make it fun. Is it like super healthy diet or is it just kind of norm? Like is this some specific plan or just kind of like a normal whole food type
Starting point is 00:39:49 of thing? Normal whole food type of thing. I don't, that's an area where like where I need to pay attention to like your Instagram more. And like, I was almost scared to go on this podcast because it becomes like fitness and diet and all that kind of stuff. Like I'm not the guy guy to talk to at all but people love talking to people like you because that's our listeners our listeners are the ones that are like they're really there's some that have figured it out but there's many that are like in the process of figuring out and they love to
Starting point is 00:40:16 hear from people that are just going through the process for like in sema and i like some of the beginning stuff is is so far behind, like, you know, uh, your creation with the flannels and stuff, you barely remember like how hard you remember it was hard and difficult, but to try to explain to somebody from ground zero, the whole process, you'd be like, what is this guy? An idiot. How come he doesn't understand? Like, he doesn't even understand this is how long the arms are supposed to be.
Starting point is 00:40:40 Or like, just have no, no reference point, you know? And so there's many people that are in your same shoes where they're just expressing their fitness side for the first time in their lives. And they're like, what the fuck do I do? Am I supposed to, one guy told me to lift heavy. Another guy said I should be doing 20 reps. Another guy said CrossFit's the best.
Starting point is 00:40:57 Another guy said Olympic lifting. So be like, I don't, I'm supposed to do cardio. You're like, what the fuck am I supposed to do? And don't sell yourself short. Like you've've lost 45 pounds that's a big fucking deal like you've been doing something right so we want to know what the hell that is well i i was just you know that was like you newly going through this divorce thing you have to have like somewhere to like put your energy and your mind and everything and so i found that if I just sat still, I would ruin myself and I couldn't sleep. So I just like, dude, I'd just wail on the punching bag for as long as
Starting point is 00:41:32 I could, dude. And it's like, and I've always hated cardio, but I would, you know, I'd jump on a Peloton and like, you know, do sessions on Peloton, try to do that kind of stuff. And I kind of ignored weights for a little while. And so that's where I, that's where come in. I do that kind of stuff. And I kind of ignored weights for a little while. And so that's where I, that's where come in. I said that I lost a lot of my strength. And so like, I've been having some very, very humbling sessions in the gym lately. And it was totally such a bummer,
Starting point is 00:41:55 like not like being in football or hockey or something when I was growing up. And so I just did that. And I just focused on, I just tried to not eat carbs really. And I love candy. It's stupid. I'm like grown kid, like bears and gummy worms and just dumb shit. It's like, I'd rather just like eat that, you know?
Starting point is 00:42:15 So, and eat all my kids' fruit snacks and shit. But I kind of just like ignored all that completely. And I was like, I got to get away from that and focused on like mostly protein um i hate vegetables so like i try to you know drink the greens in the morning or something um i mix in you know like protein powder with my coffee in the morning instead of creamer you know just subtle changes i guess and i think that i was just living an extremely bad lifestyle before so that like it really helped you know that makes me yeah that makes me kind of curious because um you know you mentioned that the one thing you would have changed when you were building up dixon would be your focus on your fitness and then you also just
Starting point is 00:42:56 mentioned that like you know when the whole the separation thing started happening you started like you needed a place to put your energy. So is that what kind of made you have that shift towards fitness, like that area of your life? Like what, what was that shift for you? Why did that start happening? I think it was because like, I used to have all of my energy into it 100%. And now, I mean, now I have 60, 65 employees or so. And so, you know, I have production assistants and I mean, now I have, gosh, 60, 65 employees or so. And so, you know, I have production assistants and I have, it's no longer my friends that I'm trying to train into executives. It's like there's actually people that are better at their jobs than I could do it, you know.
Starting point is 00:43:37 And that's a big shift in business too, which is an incredible place that you have to kind of take your company to. And so a lot has been taken off my plate so then i have i suddenly have downtime and that downtime i could either sit there and like you know wallow in the misery or you know in the should have and would have and could have or whatever you know and then end up not sleeping and then i'm again not productive the next day or find a way that just makes me tired as fuck and get it all out, you know, get all the bad energy out. And then I was able to finally like sleep. You know, I was looking better, feeling better. I was getting to work.
Starting point is 00:44:12 My head was working right again. I was just like, man, I was like, this is the answer. Obviously, I got to I got to continue on this. This is what I've been missing, you know. From a business perspective, in the beginning stages, how did you, um, communicate what you wanted to have as a culture with everybody, you know, within, within your company, probably not that hard since it was like your buddies and they're kind of seeing the whole thing build up, but how are you able to communicate? Cause I think that's, can be a really
Starting point is 00:44:42 tough thing. And then even moving into the way you are now, you know, now you got people like hopping in that are professionals in design, but maybe, maybe they'd never been on a motorcycle. Like maybe there's unfamiliar with the territory a hundred percent, but they still fit the needs of what your company needs. How do you share the culture with people, you know, from the beginning and, and even now? So now it's changed a lot. In the beginning, It was more like, you know, like you said, my friends, we shared similar interests and everything. So it seemed like it made perfect sense. Um, now it is very different, you know, just like you said, hiring professionals that might not fit that mold. Um, however, now we've moved into so many genres and what was important
Starting point is 00:45:22 for me to the outside was me showing that there's a reason i'm in those genres is because you know like i mean because it because it's me because it's my life and it's how i grew up you know and as far as like the motorcycles the lowriders you know even when we get into music there's the mix of you know hip-hop metal hardcore stuff like that and i'm just such a mix of so many things that it allowed me to connect with a lot of people on the outside. Now on the inside, we're very, very careful about who we hire, but we've also found that, you know, I mean, we get, I get people that, you know, they DM me and they're like, dude, I love to party and ride motorcycles. I want to work there. Like exactly the opposite of what I want to hear. You're not working here.
Starting point is 00:46:12 But I think that it's gotten to a point where now the creativity speaks for itself. And so the people want to be involved in creativity. Now, the way that I communicate it best is that I try to have weekly staff meetings and have my entire staff present. And I'll talk about things and be as transparent as possible to everyone. So let them know like, Hey, these are the finals coming up. These are the reason why we're doing it. For example, like the one you're wearing the shreddy one, you know, explain to them like, Hey, I remember what it's like to be a smaller brand, you know, and, you know, Blake and Aaron are awesome.
Starting point is 00:46:41 And I 100% like believe in these kids. And I think that what they're doing is amazing. And, you know, and then on a side note, Blake's an amazing driver. So it was like, I take those opportunities to try to collab, not only with the best up top, but the best that I see, like, if I see something like that, I want to help them as much as I can. And, and I felt like there's people that reached out to me and from publications, magazines, stuff like that, that helped me so much that. So this is the reason why we do this. And so then I tried to convey that to the whole staff.
Starting point is 00:47:11 So they know exact reasons why we're doing things, you know, the exact remembrance, the reason why we're doing them. Like, you know, like the Kobe final that you're wearing, you know, it's like when all that went down and we started telling like, hey, we want to commemorate an amazing, amazing man. And what I did was I played some videos, some memorial videos of him and stuff like that. So I tried to educate the staff as much as possible. And I also try to show as much transparency as possible to let them know these are our whys. This is the reason why we do it. eyes. This is the reason why we do it. And then tie in a lesson on personal growth with them, which is a huge, huge thing for me, focus on my, on my staff is their own personal growth. And the easiest way to, you know, build a culture is to have a building of culture. You know,
Starting point is 00:47:56 you're building your facility, like you can't help but to want to be the brand when you're inside the brand and you're living and breathing it. It's got like toxic fumes that you're consuming every day and you have cars and boats and different things that you're into and I think you even have space in your facility to house some of these things and people are seeing these styles and they're seeing these different people come in with I guess just like there's like a breath of fresh air probably are seeing these styles and they're seeing these different people come in with, um, you know, I guess just like there's like a breath of fresh air probably coming in and out of
Starting point is 00:48:28 that facility all the time. All the different people that visit the facility, uh, all the different people that are important to you that come out to the shop and, and see what you have going on. I think you might even have a store inside the facility. So people seeing that day in and day out, even if you're customer service and you were hired because of your customer service skill, but you maybe aren't into flannels or would, were never around them before or didn't know anything about them. Once you get into the culture, you're in this, you're in this facility that breeds this and breeds it every day. Absolutely. Um, I wanted to build a place that just dripped with inspiration.
Starting point is 00:49:06 And a lot of the reason of that was because, you know, coming from small local mom and pop motorcycle shop, and then having to get a job out here with Harley, just so that I can move out here and, you know, basically push my brand and try to, you know, try to grow it um what i noticed is that every harley dealership i went to they're not all the same per se but like they have a lot of that scent they have the same smell they have the same feel you know whatnot you know um outstanding staff makes a huge difference and everything you know from dealer to dealer however it never inspired me i had to actively stay in like into motorcycles, which is like one of my, the loves of my life.
Starting point is 00:49:48 But it's like, at the same time, it's like, when you're doing it day in and day out, you have to actively figure out how to stay passionate about it, you know? And so here I just wanted to make it like, not about the shirt, but about the culture. And so that they have walls of history that they can pass through each time and they kind of see it. And it kind of gives them a focus. I think of like not wanting to let that history down. You know, it's like, if you're going to go in there and you're in a bad mood
Starting point is 00:50:15 because you know, your dude broke up with you or some shit, then it's like, and you're walking through that place to get to, you know, sitting down at customer service, like you're going to have to let all of this shit down just for you to not be in the right mind state. And I did the same thing in the art rooms and everything. Um, I, like I basically, most of my own interior design I've done for a bunch of my staff's offices. They're the ones that have individual offices so that each one of their spaces is like the style that they like, the style that they like coming to. They're comfortable there. It's one of their favorite is like the style that they like, the style that they like coming to. They're comfortable there.
Starting point is 00:50:46 It's one of their favorite places. They'd rather be there than their bedroom, you know, and just try to make it a space that, you know, that is conducive with the goal of wanting to be the best you could be. What's up, Power Project fam? This episode is brought to you by Element Electrolytes. Speaking of Element Electrolytes, I actually wanted to ask you, Insima, you being all jacked and tan and all strong and pretty.
Starting point is 00:51:09 Do you take your element electrolytes pre or post workout? I actually take it pre, during and post. Sometimes I'll do more than one pack. So if I finish the pack of element that I had during like my workout or my jujitsu session, I'll pop out another one, sometimes post. And that hydration really helps my recovery because sometimes after you get done with a really hard workout, when you were sweating a lot, you feel sore, you feel kind of tired and you feel drained.
Starting point is 00:51:34 There is absolutely no problem with taking more than one pack of element. Yeah. I'm really interested in trying it like a intro workout, right? I've always, I've always been one of those guys that's like, oh, you got to have your, your pre-workout and then your post-workout. And in the middle, it's like usually water or something, right? But now with Element Electrolytes,
Starting point is 00:51:50 from what Rob Wolf told us about how it maintains strength and all this other just amazing benefits, I'm just really stoked about it. And if you guys want to be like us, we actually like getting the value bundle because you essentially get a box for free. But if you're not ready to fully commit, Element is still offering you guys a free Element recharge pack. So that's an eight sample pack. All you have to do is cover the shipping. You can do so by heading
Starting point is 00:52:15 over to drinklmnt.com slash power project. Again, it's absolutely free. You just have to cover shipping. Make sure you guys go there and check it out right now. You know, when you mentioned that you started to focus on personal growth when you started the company, there is a time that your company had way less employees. And you mentioned like, you know, making friends, executives. What do you what do you think was difficult when maybe you had less employees and some of these people knew you better? And some of these people knew you better. Was it more difficult for you to inspire the individuals that knew you as an individual versus when you scaled and you're hiring other people that didn't know you. Cause I'm thinking like, if you friends are, if your homies are working with you, your homies know, your homies know that the shit you do, like, they're like, ah, yeah, he kind of fucks around in this way. I can't take it serious.
Starting point is 00:53:14 You know what I mean? So was there any of that or did you really know how to deal with that? That ended up becoming a big issue actually for me. That was a very, very hard pill to swallow for me that I, you know, I even somewhat recently within the last like year or two had to deal with that. So what I did when we were, when we were smaller and say there's like, there's like five of us and we're just all great friends.
Starting point is 00:53:37 Like those are the guys I always wanted to hang out with. They ended up becoming like my best friends. And what I would do is I do like book club things with them every week. And we read a chapter of like a self-help book. We would sit down and then talk about each one of us, what it meant to me or what it meant to us, put it in our own words, and then describe a point in our life that, you know, that you could relate to it. And that was a time of monumental growth. We were like working out together at that time, too. It was like, it was really cool. We had set up this small gym in our old warehouse,
Starting point is 00:54:10 stuff like that. It was one of the best times of our growth because we all trusted each other. We're all on the same path of personal growth. The problem was, is that we're all good friends. And so that line between friends and and boss is very very hard for some people to skirt and for some they're just really good at it and they're like i'd rather know you on a personal level and i know when to separate it you know like i mean one of my top guys is is my brother-in-law and and we work amazing together and we are like, we couldn't be any, you know, any more different from each other. Like I call him like my, the yin to my yang kind of deal, you know, it's like balance
Starting point is 00:54:52 each other, you know? Um, but he knows how to separate that stuff. You know, he knows like when, Hey, when we go to Thanksgiving, like don't talk about work anymore, but like, you know, by the end of the night, if we have to go outside and you know, something catastrophic is happening, then, you know, it's like, it's full on work mode and everything's out the window. Um, but yeah, I had a very difficult time with that. A lot of those guys that started out that way, I grew them. However, this is where I messed up. I always thought, and I've done this in relationships too I always thought that inflating somebody even if it wasn't like fully earned I thought that it
Starting point is 00:55:31 would give them more credibility and more awareness and it would give them more we don't call it confidence maybe here yeah confidence yeah confidence the security like it wouldn't be so insecure about what they didn't know you know and so but what i did is i kind of like i basically inflated an ego without tools to back it up and i found out that's that's a very very rough place to go because then when they're on their way out they're like oh dude you're gonna crash and burn fuck you that you don't have me you know it's like and it's like you have you have to figure out how to do it in small increments and how to reward people for actual you know for actually growing and making sure that growth sticks and they're not just telling you what you want to hear because you're
Starting point is 00:56:20 their friend that they're supposed to look at as your boss, you know? And so what it leads, what it leads to is, you know, bad friendships. It really leads to eventually a bad working environment. And that was a very, very tough pill to swallow. Once we started adding a lot more people in. My wife is really good with that part of it where I'm like, Oh, this person, they're doing so good. And she's like, they're doing their job. You know, she brings it back i'm like use some of that direction yeah i'm like yeah you know what you're okay yeah you're right you know they're doing what what they're paid to do and if they're going above and beyond then that's a different uh conversation but you can't give people something for nothing and i i think the uh compliment sandwich can work
Starting point is 00:57:03 pretty good where you hit them with a compliment. Hey, you're doing really well with this. Hey, but this is where you can get a little bit better. And then you end the conversation with another little pat on the back or a hug. Hey, I appreciate what you're doing. This is great. But at least you still got to put that bullshit in the middle there where hopefully they heard you because you opened their mind up with saying something nice first. I'm going to write that down.
Starting point is 00:57:27 My employees are in the room right now. Holy fuck, man. Now we're going to be understanding everything that goes on. Yeah. Now it's like when we get a compliment first, we're just going to wait for that second. I usually just try not to deliver any compliments. That seems to work pretty good. Yeah.
Starting point is 00:57:44 So did growth in the company in the business and the company did that happen and then you had to hire more employees or did you hire like a designer and something and then you notice the growth like really exponentially uh explode so our design has always our design and production has still been done by the main three of us that have been here pretty much since the beginning. And it continues to be that way, actually. And I was always scared of that because I didn't want it to lose its organic feel. I didn't want it to lose its way. And myself and Chris Jones, which is my very first employee, who is our designer, our head designer, I should say,
Starting point is 00:58:24 which is like my very first employee who is our designer, our head designer, I should say. We always said that, Hey, the day that we reach or the day that we believe our own hype, this shit is all over. Like that's when it all goes down, you know? And so we always have to remain grounded. We always have to remember where we came from and remember that those are the experiences that we pull from to create the reason why we're able to live the life that we live. And I was always scared to insert someone into that. Now, from a standpoint of artists, I wouldn't say artistic direction, actual hand-drawn
Starting point is 00:58:55 art, we have like three artists on site, you know, that they're constantly, all they do all day is draw. You know, they draw and starts out hand drawn turns into these patterns and stuff like that but generally what we do we have tools now where i'll you know come up with a bunch of ideas and list them all out and then as they go through they get you know fresh ideas and then as they want to do their own and if it's some free hand thing that they come up with then they throw it in there too and then i basically end up with huge folders full of art you know stuff that i asked for stuff that they came up with and being able
Starting point is 00:59:30 to build lines a lot easier that way and i still do that myself actually and then um then now we have like a production assistant and everything that actually keeps us you know we're weren't like the best at um you know filing papers or remembering this remembering that it just turns into stacks and stacks of you know art that we end up going through for hours at a time and now we have this amazing woman her name is renata she's worked for hurley and then she used to be um at mattel on the uh barbie side of things and so she came in and she just like basically like mama bared the whole thing and like makes it like, everything's exactly where it's supposed to be.
Starting point is 01:00:09 It's super organized and super professional and amazing. And so we've been basically bringing in the right people to perfect the processes that we may have already put into motion, but being very open to change always, you know, consistently change. Danny, what the fuck? I'm wearing a Barbie flannel right now. He just mentioned having a designer from a Barbie.
Starting point is 01:00:32 It wasn't a designer. Some of that works. Some of that works for him. I think, you know, what you're referring to is like the second that you, you know, think that you're like cool new and fresh is when your shit is like, you know, whack old and stale. You know, it's like. You think you've reached some sort of pinnacle. You think you've reached something. And now there's all the young people. I'm sure there's many people emulating what you have. And you better stay on top of shit. And you better pretend that you don't know anything and still have a white belt mentality.
Starting point is 01:01:00 Otherwise, those younger people who are hungry, that start to build up the resources to be able to do it they're going to be able to uh to beat you or to catch you here and there catch you off guard absolutely i mean i i feel like that's where we came from right exactly you know no one no one took it seriously and then all of a sudden they're like shit like you guys are taking market share you know and it's like how did you guys get in here and it's like just with a different model you know um i think that respect goes a long way like i've always tried to respect other brand builders and stuff like that i there was a time for a little
Starting point is 01:01:35 while in the beginning where i felt threatened by other people trying to do what we did and dude i'd air it out like on social media and try to blast them you versus them yeah and it just i just all i learned was i was like i just started a versus brand and anyone who doesn't like me is just gonna buy this you know and it's like i'm not short on people that you know that don't like me i'm one of those like love or hate guys so i was like i'm just making money for them you know so you can kind of learn from your mistakes you just shut your mouth and focus on your own race. And then I realized that like, you know, when I'm running my own race and it's just me versus me and just, I'm just happy that I get to do what I get to do every day.
Starting point is 01:02:14 I have way more creativity, you know, there's no negativity in my life whatsoever. It's just, it's amazing. Where did the actual idea of the flannels come from? Like, was that a specific thing where you were like, you know, I'm going to switch into like making flannels or did you start by making a hat or a t-shirt and where's the Dixon name come from? So we, we started with just flannels, like just that was the way to go. And the reason why is because I was sick of flannels that just shrink and wrinkled and stuff all the time.
Starting point is 01:02:42 So I ended up like going on this you know this journey that lasted a couple years of fabrics and trying to figure all that out like what would make sure that it works and how can we treat it because you know the treatings and how you do everything and and and then like you know then we got on this kick where every single year we add like new features to it you know which enters like the sunglass cleaner that came out this year, the pieces in the pockets that you have, like the little hole in the pockets on the front, so you can put your sunglasses in it or put a pen in it or whatever.
Starting point is 01:03:16 And then in the bottom corner, I don't think the Kobe one has it, but the Shreddy one has it for sure. That one at the very bottom corner of the front if you flip open the corner front you're gonna find a pink piece at the like by your waist yes yeah corner front flip it flip it from the inside it's gonna be on your left hand side oh there you go so if you put your finger behind that, that'll clean your sunglasses. And your phone, probably, right?
Starting point is 01:03:49 Yeah, and your phone. Oh, I have one, too. Dude, that's dope. Yeah, my phone. Oh, that one does have it, too. My phone has jizz all over it. I want to say that the COVID funnel might have been the first one that we did it on.
Starting point is 01:04:00 Oh, that's sick. That's smart, bro. I went to wipe my phone, porn hub popped up that's weird not sure maybe my son was playing with my phone so we try to just like introduce like different things that we'll do or like you know all these have it like you guys have the the button downs on the collars that came out a couple years ago so that if you're like riding motorcycles not flapping in the face and so every year it kind of evolves and and that's a big part of business that i think that is very important as
Starting point is 01:04:30 well you can't and it comes into that believing your own hype thing is that you can't be just okay with it you can't like hey it's working let's let's continue on you know and it's like you have to keep on trying to get better, trying to make it more, you know, trying to reinvent where you came from before. And that's where my game and struggle of me versus me really comes in. But it also is like, you know, I think like probably too much to my success. It helps greatly. We got our flannel expert Smokey here who has like,
Starting point is 01:05:04 he knows everything about flannels. That's not true. I just know by looking at your Instagram page. You're my sensei on that one. Yeah, he's wearing, like, four flannels right now because he likes to look really big, so he just stacks them on top of each other. He can barely move and breathe right now. The key is to get different sizes, medium, large, XL, and just keep stacking them up. They stack them on top of each other. You can barely move and breathe right now. But it looks stacked, so it's okay. The key is to get different sizes, medium, large, XL, and just keep stacking them up.
Starting point is 01:05:29 Yeah. Yeah, big fan, Danny. Wanted to kind of talk to you a little bit about the Harley scene a little bit. I recently got into it, purchased my first Street Bob a couple years back, and just been kind of in love with it. And that's kind of what sparked the flannels and the whole vibe and just all the cool features you have, like you went into like the sunglass, uh, you know, micro towel in there and the collars and everything. And, um, I know your
Starting point is 01:05:54 history and experience with working with Harley. Um, how, how does that play an impact now? Um, I see you have a couple of bikes. Uh, I know you're heavily into cars and boats and all that cool stuff. And just kind of wanted to see what you see Harley playing a role or even bikes in general playing a role in your current company. I believe that it is the very roots of our company. of our company. And although I'm not as active in Harley's as I once was, um, I enjoy the freedom of, you know, trying new things, I guess now. Um, however, I think it's interesting with Harley's and this is what I always try to tell my staff when I was at Harley, um, I manage a service department basically. And as I said earlier, it's hard to stay focused on your passion of that. And that's a passion project place. You know, it's like you earn less for more work, but you get to be around bikes every day.
Starting point is 01:06:53 And that's the thing. That's the recipe. Passion project is like, you're lucky, though. You get to be around bikes every day. You're like, thanks. That's awesome. I have to know more than everybody to do my job and sell parts. And I can't get paid for it though.
Starting point is 01:07:07 So, um, so what I used to try to remind them and I'll even tell you is that there are so many men in America that could be 45 to 60 years old and their entire life, they dreamt of owning a Harley Davidson, just that brand, that culture and everything that it means to them. Right. And, you know, and then from a sublet of that on a customization route, you know, I mean, there's an entire industry alive that is that is alive just because of the brand Harley Davidson. That's just aftermarket and not even affiliated with the actual brand Harley Davidson. aftermarket and not even affiliated with the actual brand Harley Davidson. So I think it's, you know, from a business model standpoint, from a culture standpoint, it's extremely, it's extremely unique and it's extremely like diverse place that is so
Starting point is 01:07:55 creative, like creativity based that I love, you know, it's artistic based. So I've always been infatuated with that. And so I try to carry that, that thought into, you know, our marketing still, and, and remembering what it's like to be on a Harley for the first time, remembering what it's like to be outside of the scene and that smile that it gives you like under your face and everything. And then, you know, also it's great that they have gatherings and people learn from each other and, you know, and that there's a decent amount of mutual respect in most of those places. and there's a lot of good people
Starting point is 01:08:27 and i've met a lot of good people through that as i get older i find myself um getting more into cars and stuff mostly because i can do it with my kids and you know it's like and because like you know if i get on a bike like i go fast as fuck like i you know always like i'm like let's go for a cruise real quick and everyone that i'm with they're like uh-huh and they're like you know before you're doing like 110 split lanes like in arizona you're not even allowed to split lanes here but i'm from california and i'm like whatever i'm gonna do it yeah try and catch you know but that's like my thrill and so i'm kind of like all right i don't really want to get wiped across a windshield today like my kids are like getting to that kind of like, all right, I don't really want to get wiped across a windshield today.
Starting point is 01:09:05 Like my kids are like getting to that point where like I need, I have to level out that stupidity factor, you know? And I just, I don't have that control. You know, it's like that throttle, like it makes me live, but don't get me wrong. I still do it like once a week to make sure that I, you know, keep my mind at ease. But that's kind of where I'm at recently. I don't have to go to the shows as much anymore, but I like to pop up here and there. And so that's the reason why that
Starting point is 01:09:31 exclusivity model that we run, we never do the same show twice. We never do it years and years in a row. We don't just show up at Sturgis. And I started getting to the point where I actually, if I did go to the shows, we didn't even set up. I just wanted to go there and finally enjoy them. You know, it was like, I wanted to enjoy as a spectator, enjoy as a writer finally, and not be, you know, working for Harley, not be trying to push my brand or any of those kinds of things. And that was, I would call it a luxury that I've been able to, you know, kind of afford myself the last couple of years. And it's been nice. It's a reopening that passion into why motorcycles made sense to me. That's awesome. What, uh, what's one of your favorite flannels that you, or I want to know what's the, the number one flannel that you have made.
Starting point is 01:10:16 So I have my personal favorites. Both didn't do that. Well, that's the odd part. personal favorites both didn't do that well that's the odd part my two favorite finals um are the very first sns one that we did which is like a blue and gray one and then on the same exact token the red and gray one that's in a fade pattern just like it was called the pulaski and the pulaski was really cool because um chris jones our head designer he's from East Coast and he used to be a pro skateboarder. He grew up in like D.C. area. And that's a park that or it's like a plaza. And you couldn't skate it unless you were like invited to. It was like an earn your keep kind of place. And, you know, and this is enter in like, you know, maybe like 1995 ish skate politics and east coast kind of vibes it's just the way it went and so it meant a lot to him that park meant a lot to him when he got invited to skate there then he got
Starting point is 01:11:12 to like step it up with the pros then he became pro a little bit after that um you know rode around in a van like did the whole pro thing for a little while and then started realizing he's going to get old and not going to be as good of a skateboarder. And he learned graphic design and went into the skate industry. So enter, you know, all that kind of stuff. So that was a very important final to him. And it's one of my favorites. And then on the other hand, S&S, you know, motor components, like, I mean, they've been around since the 50s. You know, it's like they were the first major brand that approached us.
Starting point is 01:11:47 And we're like, hey, we want you guys to do a collab with us. And I was just floored, dude. I was just like, I was beside myself that we could do that. And I think that was about four years ago. And so since then, like our collabs have grown quite a bit. But we still do one a year with S&S. And we still forge a lot of relationships like that. It's been really cool.
Starting point is 01:12:09 That's awesome. What's been one of your biggest failures in business? You had something that you just ended up falling pretty flat in your face that you ended up learning something quite a bit about? I would say management early on as far as a skill. I just wasn't good at it. And accounting, I couldn't figure out how to pay my taxes. Right. It was like, it took me a while to figure all that stuff out. And, and I'll tell you what, like not having like the pressure of, you know,
Starting point is 01:12:38 like tax anxiety and stuff like that these days, like, Oh man, what a different world. Those things were very hard for me as far as on a personal basis. At first I would just get wound up super angry, but like yelling at my friends, like screaming over the phone, you know, just like stuff like that. To this day I'm actually like super at ease. Like I'm very, very calm and collected. I just watch and take notes and, you know,
Starting point is 01:13:04 I'm not the guy who hires and fires anybody which is really nice like you know so um it's a lot different um from a product standpoint um i don't know we've done pretty well um that furry jacket it was like one of my favorite jackets i had like fur line around it like tundra jacket like last i, it was like one of my favorite jackets. I had like fur line around it, like Tundra jacket, like last, I think it was last year, maybe two years ago. It was the first super technical jacket we ever put out. And so I was really like, really, really proud of it. And I ordered way too many and they take up a lot of space.
Starting point is 01:13:37 So it was like a daily reminder when I walked by stacks of boxes, it was like, oh my God. Yeah. Sometimes those things are good though. Cause then you're you're like well that's not really our core competency and whenever i do something like that i can just order a lot less of them it could just be a specialty item exactly and i think that goes back into like an ego thing it really does it's like at the time then i'm like oh i could sell 10,000 of these jackets and it was like you need to get checked you got to get kicked in the ball sometimes and like and just like bring you back down to earth and you're like no let's get realistic with it like you you'll be lucky if you sell 2 000 yeah if you made like
Starting point is 01:14:14 specific like riding boots or something like people like no i spend my money with this company because they make the best boots in the world already and you know you make the best flannels kind of stay in your lane-ish. I feel like nobody should make shoes. It seems brutal, yeah. People are like, why don't you guys make shoes? But there's Vans and there's Nike and Adidas. I don't know. I guess you can probably. Under Armour proved that they could do it, but, like, I don't own any.
Starting point is 01:14:46 And, like, that's a weird thing, though. Like, from clothing, you know, and from everything else, like, enter competition, enter everything else. Shoes just seems like a market that is, like, just, I don't know, it seems untouchable. Yeah. You have to carry so many different sizes, too. I mean, it's crazy. Earlier, you said that you didn't consider yourself a bad father. You said that you weren't present.
Starting point is 01:15:13 You were grinding. You were building your empire. And a lot of people probably can relate to that to a certain extent. Do you think that you maybe could have had everything that you have now? It just might have took a little bit more time if you spent a little bit more time, you know, with the kids? Or was it just you had to have that in order to have what you have now and then now you do have the extra time to kind of hang out with the kids. But like, is it like, can you have one without the other kind of a, you know, question, I guess I'm trying to pose here.
Starting point is 01:15:49 So I'll answer that in two different ways. Do I think that I could have done it a little bit differently? Yes. I think that there was at times when it ended up like, you know, I was working with my friends and stuff like that. We could have enjoyed less leisure. I could have made more of a priority to be around and while I was around more present at that time, however, that presence and knowledge of all those things came from a lot of therapy and counseling and stuff like that. And talking to, talking to professionals and trying to unwind my, the mess that goes on inside of my brain. But can it be done?
Starting point is 01:16:28 I've seen it done before. Would I do it differently? Perhaps. Do I regret it? No way. I just, I look at like, I charged on, I did what I needed to do. I learned massively from it.
Starting point is 01:16:43 And I've grown massively to where I am right now because of it. And when I say grow, I mean personally. And I have a better relationship with them now than I've ever had in their entire lives. I see them more. Everything is great. I love it. I love what we have right now.
Starting point is 01:16:56 And I think that they actually respond to it better because they didn't have me as much before. So they really respect that time a lot. And we make it very positive. We do a lot of cool things together. They listen to me. I've always had to be the disciplinarian, which sucked when you're not around that much. And then you come home and you have to be the disciplinarian.
Starting point is 01:17:18 You're just like the asshole that never was around, basically. But now they get to see the full range. and now I get to hang out with them all the time. And I find myself disciplining them way less. And I'm very present and in, you know, I wouldn't, I don't think I would appreciate today as much had I done it a different way. I think a lot of creativity and innovation comes from kind of downtime with friends and just kind of hanging out. And so those early days where you said you may have been able to be more productive and,
Starting point is 01:17:49 you know, maybe had a schedule, it would have been hard to still have that level of creativity if you were like, oh, we got a meeting scheduled from 12 to, you know, 115 and then 130. I got to be with my kid. You know, it's like, it's very difficult to schedule a time and say, Hey guys, we're going to get together and be super creative. You know, we're to get together and create a viral video or we're going to create a, a viral flannel. It's like, doesn't work that way. It comes from fucking around.
Starting point is 01:18:17 It comes from you guys talking shit to each other, messing around. And someone's like, Oh, we should make a flannel that represents that. And everyone just stops for a second and goes, Oh yeah, we should make a flannel that represents that. And everyone just stops for a second and goes, oh yeah, we should make a flannel that represents that. That would be amazing. Then you start drawing up ideas, and next thing you know, five, six hours went by. You know, you quote unquote wasted a lot of time, but you landed on something spectacular. That's the way it happens around here all the time as well. Oh yeah, absolutely. I agree 100%. I mean our our early on
Starting point is 01:18:46 processes were very very similar well actually they probably kind of still are you know you mentioned that before dixon you and your dad opened a motorcycle shop yes yeah how big of a role did did your dad play in like what you're doing right now? And I guess your business sense, because I mean, that's, that's pretty uncommon to open a business with your parent. Right. So I'm, I click with my mom really well. So her business, I mean, she's very business savvy. My dad's a very different breed than I am. So me and him are very opposite. So we didn't click well in business but i actually learned a lot from watching the things that i didn't like that he did in business
Starting point is 01:19:30 and um and he's just very set in his waist and so like it there's a lot of things that we saw through that business that i actually used to my advantage here because it was almost like i'd already gone through the elementary years of you know of i think somewhat of a closed-mindedness you know and how that can affect you and um but he's the hardest worker in the room but he's more of like that worker bee whereas like i'm more of like i you know one of my staff members come in here and I'm like staring at the wall and they're like, the fuck are you doing? And it's like working. Like, I have to get inside of here right now.
Starting point is 01:20:12 You know, and so it's like trying to channel some shit like through my brain. And and so it's just different. You know, we're just different. Good. We're just good at different things. But it did play a huge role because it made me appreciate a lot of things. It made me appreciate how hard we work to do a certain amount of sales and then look at what we have built in Dixon or how to take care of employees.
Starting point is 01:20:37 I learned a big thing that I felt like some of our employees had us by the balls. Certain techs were really good that we couldn't lose and stuff like that and i kind of vowed from that day that i would know how to do every single fucking job in the building and so that nobody could ever ever have me by the balls of my own business it's like you're not gonna be able to do that to me like because i i can go back and do it all because i've done it all you know and i thought that that was a very important part for them to always know that i'm not just hiring you to do what you do because I can't. I'm hiring you to do what you do nowadays because you're better at it than I am, but I can still go back and do it. How did you shift your mindset from,
Starting point is 01:21:14 you know, early on yelling at people, mismanagement, and maybe even sometimes I'm guilty of this as well, having a little bit of a dictatorship versus opening up your mind and saying, hey, if I give this project off this other person, I'm fully recognizing that they can and should do a better job than me because I'm the one who hired them. How did you switch your mind from being like, I can't offload this to this person. They're not going to be able to handle it. And whatever they produce is going to suck 10 times worse than whatever I can produce. it'll handle it. And whatever they produce is going to suck 10 times worse than whatever I can produce. Or you're still there. You're still stuck there. Sounds like you still might be a little stuck there. So I, I like how you put that. I think there's some steps in the right direction of me just saying, maybe I wasn't good enough at communicating my expectations
Starting point is 01:22:05 i understand and and i think that a huge huge part of growth as a person and as a businessman has to come from accountability it is so so monumentally important i look at every situation at what my fault was in it like how did i you I, you know, almost to a fault and what, but I think the one day that changed it all is that an employee left that I took really good care of. And, you know, and he just never stopped like blowing me up on social media and through friends and through that and this and everything. It was the first time I finally took everyone else's advice and I just shut my fucking mouth and I didn't say anything and it later on it kind of disappeared and he tried everything under the sun take you know take like our factory and take other stuff like take on you know build a competition like you
Starting point is 01:22:57 know stuff like that and i just kept my mouth shut the whole time and i trusted the process and it's the first time in my life that i ever did that. And I call it taking the high road, I guess. And it all worked out for the best. And so now I just kind of shut my mouth and I'm like, okay, let's accept it. Let's move on. I need all of my head space to be able to move on. And from that day forward, it made so many other processes easy for me because I racked up one win and then i was like okay it actually fucking works like all these people were right you know because you know how it is you tell your friend you're like dude just get over it it's not a big deal easier said than done you know then you go through it and you just you know you're just like i'm gonna go visit his house or
Starting point is 01:23:38 i'm gonna like blow him up or do whatever you know and it's like it's just not worth it you know it's like life's too short you know um it's funny because i was just listening to something recently where these two dudes are like one guy was asking this really old guy what's your best relationship advice and he was like shut the fuck up like like that's it just shut the fuck up something happened just shut the fuck up you know you talk you're arguing arguing just shut the fuck up And that was literally like just just shut up. You know I think that's that's just good general relationship advice in general friends With yeah, the guy who wrote the book you know women are from Mars or whatever the hell that book is it's famous He basically said anything. It's negatively charged think about it several times You know and probably you're probably best off just not saying it and then you got then it's hard to interpret like what you consider negatively charged but
Starting point is 01:24:29 those little negative things you throw out in any relationship whether it's employee or otherwise uh they kind of chip away at people and they even if you're kidding around you know you got to be for for you especially like just you're in a position of power people just they uh they take what you say differently than if it just came from another employee and if it comes from the boss they're like fuck man that like that really hurt my feelings he said i was slow with my work or whatever and you were totally 100 kidding around you're just making a joke because they maybe said something to you but it sticks on them you know and so that's been something i i've been working on
Starting point is 01:25:04 learning myself and even like through texting and stuff unless it's with like a good friend or people that throw around some shit back and forth. Um, I try not to end up putting something out there that could be negatively charged between, you know, between two friends or something. Oh, absolutely, man. I think that when you're one of those people that you're, you want your voice heard and you're used to growing up being like i'll get the last say in things it just comes into management and business and everything it is detrimental it's not a good good thing to have you know and even though it's like what's gotten you all the way through life or something and so i think you're
Starting point is 01:25:41 extremely right um you know just shut the fuck up. I'm curious about something. Yeah. I'm curious about your process or something because earlier in the episode you were talking about, um, how you like have to control your mind and your thoughts, right. And then that, that's a difficult thing for a lot of people. And it's something that we talk about on the podcast all the time, like reframing things, controlling yourself, talk, controlling your thoughts. How did you come across the necessity that you needed to do that? And what is your process for that? Like, how, how do you, how do you think about that on a day-to-day basis? So I'm, I'm a huge overthinker. Like I overthink things and I come up with these dramatic conclusions in my head and all kinds of stuff, you know? And, but then on the other side,
Starting point is 01:26:26 like I generally try not to what has helped me the most is that communication is key constantly. And I always tell my employees, this communication is key. Never assume anything, always ask. And so it's like, you don't have to ask in a negative tone or anything, or if you feel that it's, you know, going to a negative place is trying to reframe that question and asking them straight up because the rest of it is a waste of time. And so I just try to communicate as much as possible. Communicating with people that cannot communicate back with you is where the problem really happens.
Starting point is 01:26:59 That leads to a lot of, you know, misthinking and a lot of, you know, jumping to conclusions and whatnot. So I guess my process generally is just trying to communicate and just so that I don't take things out of context and just being, you know, never having too much pride to just be like, hey,
Starting point is 01:27:15 what did you mean by this exactly? I was like, I don't want to take this like in a bad way, but like, how can I fix this? Or I guess what I learned to say is that makes sense. I never thought about it that way. How can I fix this or I guess what I learned to say is that makes sense I never thought about it that way how can I support you and if I always like say something like that then they're kind of like shit well you know it kind of puts
Starting point is 01:27:37 them on the spot then it like sparks conversation you they don't feel like you're pushing them away and then it grabs them in they're able to explain exactly what they meant through it. And you like, and then you waste no time. It's almost like saying, you know, when you,
Starting point is 01:27:49 you're like, you're sitting somewhere and you're like, I wonder what, blah, blah, blah, you know, enter any fucking question in the world.
Starting point is 01:27:54 And it's like, we have these things like attached to our hands. And I'm like, wow. Like why wonder like fucking bring up Google. I typed the dumbest shit in Google all the time. Like, you know, like which, which planet in a row is Saturn. I don't fuckingest shit in Google all the time. Like, you know,
Starting point is 01:28:05 like which, which planet in a row is Saturn? I don't fucking know, but like, I can find out like right now, you know, it's like, and so I try to just like take that same mind state that like,
Starting point is 01:28:15 I never want to waste any time. I don't want to waste any time with whatever space I have left in here because it, you know, there's too much stuff going on up there already. Did we get an answer? Long winded way of, getting to the answer. Did we get an answer on where the name came from?
Starting point is 01:28:31 I'm not sure. I think I might have asked it, but I asked it, like, as part of another question, I think. I wish I had a better story for this. But we used to be called Stay Gold Flannel Company. But we used to be called Stay Gold Flannel Company. We got recognized quickly by like a sneaker magazine or, you know, e-zine or whatever website. And that's trademarked by Benny Gold, who's a streetwear brand in San Francisco.
Starting point is 01:28:59 He's a phenomenal brand builder. And at first I was just like, I don't know. I didn't know enough about it. So he was just like, yo, you can't do that. And he ended up like, let, he gave me like a month to get rid of all my stuff and basically get rid of state gold. I almost quit, but we were trying to think of something. And I was looking up different cities,
Starting point is 01:29:18 all this different stuff. I wanted to call it something kind of Americana like Dixie. And then basically I started looking at longevity wise brands that are ambiguous in name last. And when you try to like kind of market a certain thing, like say it's stay gold. It's like, that might be cool.
Starting point is 01:29:37 Like guys are in traditional tattoos might be cool to the guys that were, that read the outsiders when they were younger and it meant something to them. However, worldwide it's not. And so the less that you can shove all your customers into a box and the more that you open that thing up and it's ambiguous to everyone else and you let the product, the service,
Starting point is 01:29:57 and the message stand for more than the actual name, then I felt like that that was a larger place to growth. You add in an extra X because it's easier when you get into a design capability to have that many letters and split it up in different, you know, different ways you put it, then it didn't make it look like it was stereotypical like this in California or Dixon is a city in London. So it kind of came from nowhere. It doesn't mean anything except that it had a lot of strategy behind it thank you so much for your time really appreciate it is there anything new coming up on the horizon or things that you're working on i i heard uh that you are uh heavy into boats and you're you're
Starting point is 01:30:35 working on some custom boat type of stuff uh what do you got coming up in the future and what what's got you fired up every morning when you wake up? Oh, man, I have so much fun stuff happening this year. So much stuff. We're doing a lot of stuff with bands. That's pretty much all I'll say with that, I guess. There's going to be a lot of stuff that, and that's basically us trying to support the music industry because they can't get out and play shows right now.
Starting point is 01:30:58 And so we're like, well, if we're cutting them royalties and helping them out and we get to actually work with the bands, it's really cool. So look for some cool stuff like that. All I, the only one that I can actually say would be, um, like we will be working with sublime,
Starting point is 01:31:13 which would be really cool. Oh, yeah. We were just working with suicidal tendencies, probably be working with Pennywise. Other than that, there's some other super big ones that I can't say right now, but it's going to be really fun. Um, other than that there's some other super big ones that I can't say right now but
Starting point is 01:31:25 it's gonna be really fun I have a piece coming up that we're doing with a new release with six hour as far as for you guys that are into firearms and that's a release from them not a release from us and it's not clothing item that's a new firearm release but that we will be heavily involved in which is gonna be super cool then eliminated boats they're making me a boat right but that we will be heavily involved in which is gonna be super cool um then eliminated boats they're making me a boat right now that we actually inlaid a flannel plaid a plaid pattern into the graphic which is awesome and then i used a bunch of plaid and alcantara like along the um the full interior and it's all tiffany like tiffany is pretty much like the color
Starting point is 01:32:04 you're wearing actually it's almost like that and a little bit lighter and that thing's gonna be killer so i'm looking forward to summer for the first time in a long time because it's hot as hell out here so um so yeah we'll be in havassu a lot doing all that um going to glamis this weekend taking out um the huge dixon trailer for the first time. That's exciting too. But yeah, there's a lot of cool stuff on the horizon. If anyone wants to check it out, if you don't know already, you can find us on Instagram at Dixon, that's D-I-X-X-O-N underscore flannel underscore co. You can find me at Danny Dixon, D-A-N-N-Y D-I-X D I X X O N. And then we also, you'll find if you're in Canada, if you're in Australia, anything like that, you can find, um, our other countries and affiliates
Starting point is 01:32:52 from there as well. So I really appreciate you guys having me on, man. I'm honored to be on the show. You guys had incredible questions and you know, I think it's gonna be a great listen. Absolutely. I think the only logical thing left would be, you know, Mark, Danny, I think we should have a Slingshot Dixon collab coming out soon. That would be sick. I agree. It'd be wonderful. We'll come out there and go over some deadlifting and stuff with you first
Starting point is 01:33:18 and see how it goes from there. I know. I want to take one of those challenges where you try to eat as much meat as you can. Yeah, carnivore challenge. Yeah. I'd be stoked, man. If you guys ever get out here, you're more than welcome anytime. Yeah. My friend, uh, Sean Provost has a spot out there. I think he came and visited your, your place. Uh, he owns, uh, some Dutch brothers coffees out here in NorCal and then he has Provost Motorsports. So I'm sure he is probably somebody that you ran into at some point, but yeah,
Starting point is 01:33:48 he lives out that way too. So we need to pay him a visit also. Very cool, man. That would be awesome. I'd be super stoked. Have a great rest of your day. Take care.
Starting point is 01:33:57 Thank you. All right. Thank you, man. Thanks again. Yo. So, whoa,
Starting point is 01:34:03 this is yellow as hell on camera. Jesus.esus yeah the vibrancy is a little bit wow but that is strong hold on wait check that see oh that's what i look like right now yeah yeah that's what you look like wow it pops though it's on the skin so wait provost doesn't live in sack he uh yeah he moved wow yeah he's here a little bit um i think i think he's selling his place in woodland and he's going to come back go back and forth a little bit he doesn't really have to be here a lot for dutch bros okay um but dutch bros i think is finally going up down the street remember we've been talking about that for a while dutch bros going down uh kind of over near uh starbucks and in and out and stuff like that i hope so oh yeah there's one
Starting point is 01:34:49 in the tomas too that's popping up yep yeah there's one within a mile away of my house so that's that's pretty that's that's too close you know what i mean like it needs to be a little bit more difficult to get to yeah they're popping up everywhere yeah i find it so crazy though real quick about like danny and like his the initial 60 hours a week sleeping four hours a night working on dixon it's just like when i think about living like that it's just i know i mean it's necessary but damn right that's that's that like when when you were when you were starting out with all that stuff, you were kind of still kind of taking care of your health to some extent, right? Or.
Starting point is 01:35:30 Uh, no, I mean, I was, uh, you know, I was right in the middle of my power lifting career. Yeah. Um, I just have, I've been fortunate to be somebody that deals with stress is differently. You know, I, I just, you know, I, you know, from squatting a thousand pounds and handling 800 pound bench presses, uh, you're like, so what? We lost 5,000 bucks cause something got seized or something, or we missed out on some product or some products are, are wet or damaged or something. And it's like, well, let's just figure out a solution to it. Yeah.
Starting point is 01:36:03 I kind of have always been that way. I kind of just have always felt like it's a waste of energy. There are things I can get worked up about, and I used to get worked up about a little bit more, but I learned a lot from that. You know, I learned a lot from, like, if somebody else's post or something came in from somewhere else, like I would just say, well, why don't I insulate myself away from that situation? Or can I insulate myself away from that situation? I remember early on going back and forth with our manufacturer and I had some problems and I was getting very frustrated going back and forth. And my wife just said, I'll just deal with this from now on.
Starting point is 01:36:46 I was like, perfect. That sounds great. Yeah. Even as a bouncer, when I would like kick somebody out of a bar, if I had to physically remove them, one of the rules was that you would have to leave and allow whoever's at the front door to then take care of that. I mean, it depends on, you know, if they're really violent and you have kind of a situation, uh, but you would kick somebody out. They had a, they had a beef with you or a problem with you and now you left and now you don't get your, your ego is not at stake because that guy didn't like push you or knock
Starting point is 01:37:21 you or, or make you look weak or you felt threatened. Like it's all just gone. If you just simply can walk away and have somebody else handle it. So I think early on, I learned a lot of those lessons. And I also knew that I didn't know anything about business. So I I'm like, I know how to,
Starting point is 01:37:39 I know how to make products that I think will be good for people because I've been power lifting my whole life. This is, this is my, this is my life. This is my thing. This is my forte. But anything beyond that, I don't truly know. Although I do think I had maybe some innate gifts in terms of like being able to market the products and a couple things that were like that. But even that was just communicating more powerlifting stuff.
Starting point is 01:38:09 Like if I was like, hey, this is going to help increase your deadlift by 10%, because I've been lifting for a long time, the conversation is really easy on how this could potentially assist you and whether you think it's right for you or not, or in this case, the bench press. Yeah. Yeah, and with Danny talking about, like you said, the 60 hours a week, you know, it definitely takes the what we talked about a couple episodes ago about loving the process, you know, to get the shit beat out of you every single day and then wake up and do it again the next day. You know, and then, you know, sacrificing for the unknown, like he had no idea that this was going to pan out, but he still did it every single day because he absolutely just, he loved everything about it. I think the big parallel between he and I is the motorcycles, you know, the motorcycles
Starting point is 01:38:52 represent what would be to me is powerlifting. You know, my focus was powerlifting. I didn't really care about business necessarily. I'm like, I'm going to make this thing because this will be dope for powerlifting. This will be really cool for powerlifting. He thought this is going to be cool for people that ride motorcycles. This will be more convenient. This will be nicer.
Starting point is 01:39:10 This will be maybe less expensive. Maybe it'll be more durable and things like that. And so if my focus was on business, I would have been out a long time ago, I think, because i would have been bored by it you know someone's like well you know here's how it works and here's the numbers that you have to get to just in order to make a profit and um my stories are so different because it's it's an invention um and then also uh i got really fortunate with what the invention was because it doesn't cost anything to ship it it doesn't cost anything to make it. It doesn't cost anything to make it. And so therefore, like I didn't make a liquid product. I didn't make a product that's like foam.
Starting point is 01:39:50 If you make a product that's like foam or something soft, it takes up a lot of space. So it costs a lot of money to ship it. If you make something heavy, if I made something out of iron, again, it would cost a lot to ship it. I just happened to make like a basically a piece of cloth that now with the design of a flannel you would think that it's pretty simple but there's a lot to learn and i'm sure maybe in the beginning he had buttons falling off these things and uh you think you have a good product and you wash it twice and it's all fucked up and it seems really simple uh but sourcing the material i mean he's probably
Starting point is 01:40:26 still not even where he wants to be after he's been doing it for a long time you know yeah it takes takes a lot of time and trying to get the arm length correct with how long this whole seam is of the whole i'm sure it's just a giant pain in the ass yeah i didn't know that like i knew about dixon but it wasn't like deep in flannel culture like our friend Smokey was. These are comfortable as hell. These, like, I've tried some flannels and been like, hmm. Yeah, sometimes they're itchy. Sometimes they're itchy.
Starting point is 01:40:53 Yeah, yeah, yeah. Or, like, where the buttons are, like, it'll get all wrinkly, and then it just never comes back. I hated that. A flannel's a pretty excellent choice for, like, the weather, because you're like, you know, here in California, sometimes it's like 35 or 40 when you wake up. If you had a flannel on, you're fairly covered. I mean, it'd still be kind of cold, but if you had a beanie on, you would be probably all set. Later on in the day, if it's 70, you could still really wear the flannel and not be too
Starting point is 01:41:19 hot. And if you needed to, if there's too much sunlight pounding down on you, you can pop it off and be all good to go but sometimes if you put a jacket on you know it's like that doesn't really work as well or is it too hot later on or something like that you know you're locked in a lot of great business lessons in this podcast though for anyone who's trying to like start a company with employees or just even getting ready to start something as far as like naming is concerned and dealing with employees and there's a lot of really cool gems in this episode yeah and then also like just not
Starting point is 01:41:51 having it all together right away oh yeah two years he said but he was still working on his mindset yeah like that that's i loved hearing that he's you know he he mentioned you know the the separation that he's going through like he's not's not perfect, you know. Like, he's more us than, you know, like some of these other, you know, like, I don't know, insert any big entrepreneur that's, you know, wildly famous. Sometimes it's hard to relate. But with Danny, it's like, dude, we could instantly hang out with this guy and fit right in. Gary Vee was born to do this shit. Right. You know, he really was. I mean, he's, it's just like part of it's in his blood and just the way that his brain works and him selling baseball cards from a young age and him, you know, working in his dad's business.
Starting point is 01:42:46 and being from a different country and just being really straightforward with the work ethic that he expected from his son, whether his son was crying like a baby about how much he was working or how hard he was working, didn't make any difference. So that was like instilled in him. And Gary Vee is, he's sharp as hell, but he's kind of like a computer almost, you know. He has this algorithm that can figure out just about anything. Not everyone's gifted with that. And what I learned today is that Danny, it seems like he just was learning on the go.
Starting point is 01:43:14 Seemed like he made a lot of mistakes. Seemed like he didn't know what he was doing in a lot of ways. But again, if you go back to what he said in the beginning of the show, he didn do well in school but he still thinks education is really important and i think that what he's talking about and i could be wrong i don't want to put words in his mouth but he's talking about is the acquisition of some sort of skill set and how do you get that you get that through learning stuff you need to learn learn a bunch of stuff about something and then you can monetize that make a lot of money off it if it happens to be in something that you like to do you could find yourself caught up with it and getting obsessed with it just as he did working 60 hours a week how do you get good at something and fucking do
Starting point is 01:43:54 it a lot spend a lot of time doing it so i you know i learned a lot from this this show today and hopefully people that are listening you know that idea that they had if you think that you're going to suck at podcasting you you are going to suck at podcasting, you, you are going to suck at podcasting. If you are new to it, that's okay. You can do some preliminary work to see if you can start out a little further ahead than most. You can, you can record a bunch of stuff, listen back to it, never put it out there in the world. You can do stuff in front of a mirror or have a family member listen and say, hey, how bad does this suck? You know, am I okay to start? But you're going to have to start at
Starting point is 01:44:29 some point. And then once you start, that's really when the learning is going to happen, because you'll get critiques coming in from an audience. And sometimes those are hard to listen to. But if you have a white belt mentality and say hey uh has joe rogan ever gotten flat i mean just look at any podcast joe rogan's ever done out of the thousands he's done negative comments all over the place yep and he's the goat he's the greatest of all time i mean no one's been able to touch what he's been able to do from a podcasting perspective as an individual person you know he's just absolutely crushed it so if he has negative comments you should be expecting some coming your way but maybe for him maybe he's learned from some of those maybe he just learned
Starting point is 01:45:14 to completely ignore them at some point too and just say i'm just going to do what works well for me and what feels good to me can't pay attention to that stuff and yeah there will be a lot of suckage at the beginning a lot of suckage at the beginning a lot of suckage at the beginning now look back at my fair verse youtube videos and it's just a gag a lot of people a lot of people want to delete them yeah right a lot of people are like i deleted a lot of my first couple things it's like oh man you kind of should leave that just for the authenticity but i understand oh my shit's still up yeah my son and my daughter they both you know it's understandable because they were so young but they have like put all their stuff to be like private or whatever
Starting point is 01:45:52 that's funny my daughter had a really funny youtube channel i don't know where she came up with the name but it was called sand plops that's a great name i know it's an amazing name i was like how did you think of that name? She's like, I don't even remember. I just, she, she just thought something else sounded like,
Starting point is 01:46:11 sounded like that word. And, uh, cause she couldn't say it the right way or whatever it was at the time. She thought it meant sand plop. So that was the name for YouTube channel. Sand plops. That's pretty great.
Starting point is 01:46:23 Let me ask you guys, this is such an amazing episode. Do we end it with what we were going? The poop stories? Yeah. Dude, I was just. No, I think we need to have a separate podcast. We gotta have a separate.
Starting point is 01:46:34 Ah, damn it, man. People got away. Okay. We'll save it for later. Okay. It is saved. That was a great show. It was. It was a good one. We won't tarnish it. That was a great show. It was.
Starting point is 01:46:46 We won't tarnish it. That was really good. We do need to go visit that guy. That would be a lot of fun. It would be really inspiring to me because I've seen some videos of his spot and I was like, damn, he really...
Starting point is 01:47:01 Different than what we have here at Slingshot. I think he probably bought his property. You know, he's like on an acre and a half, and he probably bought the building. And so, therefore, he dumped everything, not everything he has, he dumped a lot into it in having it be a place that is full of a lot of culture. This place is full of a lot of culture,
Starting point is 01:47:23 but there's certain things I didn't want to do because we rent the space out. I didn't want to, you know, we're only here for X amount of years. I don't know what will happen. Sometimes other people come in and buy the building. And then when you're, your lease is up,
Starting point is 01:47:35 then you're out, you know, so I didn't want to invest a bunch of money and change the walls and do everything crazy. We do have pictures up and we do have some stuff up, but it would be great to have a spot where we can pour more of that into it because it does remind you,
Starting point is 01:47:49 it does remind you of like, you know, the beginning stages of where the company came from. And anybody new coming on board can then see all that stuff for the first time and say, oh, okay, well, this is the origin of some of these things. You know, having the original slingshot around and some of the original podcast stuff around,
Starting point is 01:48:07 people would be like, okay, cool. It started many, many years ago. We're 500 episodes into this thing, right? We're very, very close, yeah. I can feel it. Yo. Yeah, I was looking at that the other day. I think I came in episode 170-something.
Starting point is 01:48:25 We've done a lot of episodes. Like, y'all have done a lot of episodes. Damn. Yeah. I came on episode 176. And the views have been... Shit! Right to the flow.
Starting point is 01:48:39 How about in SEMA? How about we vote him in as a model for Dixon? Maybe that could be the collab. All we got to throw him in. Yeah, well, sure. My mind is just so childish that it just wants like the lowest hanging fruit when you said a little model for Dixon. It's just like, it just wants to.
Starting point is 01:49:00 Oh, of course you're not going to have any pants on. I mean, obviously. Dick. What do you think this little cleaner's for? Hey, how about you make a Dixon shirt that has a dick pouch in it? You know? Why not, right? Yeah, no, no.
Starting point is 01:49:16 There's no issue with that. How would that work? But here's the catch. Uh-oh. Only purchase it if you're hung like a horse. So eight inches or longer every guy would be like that's me finally they made a fucking shirt that's gonna help me with my junk they must have been thinking of me when they made this obviously shit finally something
Starting point is 01:49:38 that fits this is such a great idea though like this Like, this sunglass thing, like, they'd really be doing the most over there. It's pretty awesome. Yeah. It's fucking awesome. It is great. It's fucking cool. He's got some shit figured out. Yeah, mastering of the mind. I wrote that down because I was like, you know, he mentioned that so early on.
Starting point is 01:49:57 And I think that's huge. And then the stuff he said about his children, I'm in 100% agreement with it. You know, kids are really tough. That's huge. And then the stuff he said about his children, I'm in 100% agreement with it. Kids are really tough, but we need to have my pops on the podcast. I know we've had him on before, but he's doing some really incredible stuff with my son, Jake. And Jake, it's been really cool to watch him come to his own conclusions on what he wants to do. I showed him how to work out like very specifically, like there was a day where I showed him and his sister how to work out in our garage and just said, Hey, you know what? This is my life.
Starting point is 01:50:33 Fitness is my life. And this is what I do. And this is sort of how it works. And just showed him some basic stuff, showed him a curl, showed him how to keep their back flat. And just, I'm like, I don't know how to do anything else. So I'm not going to teach you how to fix your car. Cause I don't know anything about it., I don't know how to do anything else. So I'm not going to teach you how to fix your car. Cause I don't know anything about it.
Starting point is 01:50:46 This is what I know how to do. And if you ever care to learn more from me, I'll share it all day long. I know about nutrition. And, uh, so anyway, I, I showed them that and Jake expressed a little bit of interest with lifting and he lifted a couple of times. And, uh, you know, once I asked him to come to the gym with me and he was like no i'm good i don't really i don't really you know like it that much and now he works out with his friends maybe about once a week once every other week it's not super frequent uh but he enjoys it
Starting point is 01:51:16 when he enjoys it it's nothing that i push but all of a sudden he starts you know playing the guitar he comes to his own conclusion his own way his grandmother gave him a guitar he didn't touch it for a while and just something drew him to it at one point he just started he just started playing it and there's been a bunch of other things like that where and my dad is really good at kind of towing that line into into kind of like nudging you to do something and my dad has my son doing taxes and my dad, or my son's making like a hundred bucks a day doing taxes from my dad. And, uh, he's, he's learned it really well. He's picked it up really well. He understands the program. And my dad was real simple with him. He was,
Starting point is 01:51:56 my dad has him do a lot of other work. You know, he, he has him like hanging up the American flag and just making, uh, hanging pictures at the office and just doing shit like that you know um and jake is way into all these different things and so my dad at one point's like hey you know it'd be cool if you learned how to do taxes he's like who knows maybe you could take the business he's like i'm you know getting old you know maybe you can take it over someday and jake's like it's like well what what would that be like and my dad's like well if you were efficient at it you would have a job that gives you about 200k a year jake's like oh shit okay he's like that doesn't sound bad my dad's
Starting point is 01:52:41 like you got to get a license and there's's, you know, some other things involved. And maybe it's not something that you like. And he's like, if it's not something that you like, maybe you can, you know, run it, inherit it, and have other people run it. And you can do a couple a week or something. You know what I mean? And it's just kind of pop these ideas in his head. And my dad's like, well, these are skills that you need to know anyway, because you're going to have to learn how to do taxes. You're going to have to learn about taxes, period. And here's the way it works. And sure enough, Jake is sitting there filing
Starting point is 01:53:11 taxes. So it's really interesting in trying to do stuff with your kids. You can really force them a specific way and have them kind of be mini versions of you, you know, or you can expose them to a bunch of stuff and let them be themselves, which will probably in the long run have, it would probably last longer if they're themselves. You know, you, you watch the tiger documentary and I'm sure there was, it seemed like tiger woods.
Starting point is 01:53:44 It didn't have a childhood. Although some of his relationship with his dad actually seemed really cool. And it was amazing. His dad spent that much time with him, but you also get a sense of like, that seemed pretty, his dad was right. I mean,
Starting point is 01:53:58 his dad, his dad knew that his son was kind of the chosen one in a way, but he also kind of handcrafted them. And who knows what you know tiger woods would just be a regular person if his dad didn't he wouldn't have played golf probably at all you know i don't know it's interesting it's interesting to like you know to see the making of somebody you know you got uh kobe bryant similar his dad was was pretty his dad was a basketball player and his dad I think his dad
Starting point is 01:54:25 played in Italy and stuff like that and Kobe was playing at a really young age Tiger was sort of pushed in a certain direction then you have the opposite of like Shaquille O'Neal whose dad walked out didn't want to you know take any responsibility for his children you know and it's like but that made Shaq too right like and it gets to be confusing. You're like, what are you supposed to do with a kid? You know, like, like,
Starting point is 01:54:49 I think that's a really tough thing because I look back at it when I was given the choice after playing instruments for a few years, when I was given the choice, yeah, you, you don't have to anymore if you don't want to. I was like 12. I was like,
Starting point is 01:54:59 this is nerdy. It's stupid. I was really good, but I was like, I don't want to, right. I stopped. And then as an adult, I'm just like damn i wish i wish you forced me to continue doing at least one of these because
Starting point is 01:55:11 i would really enjoy still being as good as i was then right and starting again now and i'm a fucking beginner it's kind of sucks yeah you're fucked as a parent because there's a lot of kids that say that like i wish my parents would have forced me to eat better when i was a kid and then there's some parents there's some kids that are like my parents were so damn strict the nutrition the second i left the house i started eating cupcakes yeah right yeah exactly so what do you do yeah i remember a difficult one i remember like just getting out of school being like you know i don't just no real person but like this person's like a weirdo it's like oh yeah his parents didn't let him have soda when he grew up you know that was like a thing you know, I don't know, just no real person, but like this person's like a weirdo. It's like, oh yeah, his parents didn't let him have soda when he grew up. You know, that was like a thing,
Starting point is 01:55:48 you know, like, oh, did your parents let you have soda? Like, you know, I don't know. It's just, yeah, that you, I think about that every day now, you know. I think there's different ways of doing it. You know, you present a child with information. Right. Sometimes they're not quite old enough to make a decision. So before the age of seven or eight, you should probably make most of the decisions for them. You know, can I have a cupcake with lunch? No, you, you know, well, you had a huge breakfast. You had a pancake.
Starting point is 01:56:16 You know what I mean? Like you kind of keep track for them, you know, as they get a little older, maybe explanation would really help. And you explain why. Like my nephew Hamish, he doesn't have, he wants to have an Instagram, you know? And I said, and he's like, I'm not allowed to have Instagram. He's like, it really sucks. And I think he's like eight. I was like, did anybody ever explain to you why you can't have Instagram?
Starting point is 01:56:41 He's like, no. And I said, okay, well, it's not to leave you out. Like no one's trying to leave you out of this social media world. They just, because of your age, they want you to mainly communicate with people in person. There's some harmful, weird, wicked people, weirdo people on the internet that do inappropriate stuff with children. And his eyes were like, you know, kind of lighting up.
Starting point is 01:57:03 Like I might've started to give him a little too much information and, uh, he has eyes are kind of lighting up. And I said, so people would rather have you communicate with your buddies and with other people in person. It's not to prevent you from communicating with your friends and taking a funny selfie to your buddies. It would be more preferred that if, if you did that, you just, you know, maybe did it through your mom's phone or something like that, or because he didn't have a phone either. But, you know, once I explained it to him, he was like, oh, okay. And he like walked away.
Starting point is 01:57:33 That's amazing. It's like, maybe just sometimes kids just need, hey, you know, I would prefer that you don't have soda because when you drink a 20 ounce thing of Pepsi, it has nearly 70 grams of sugar, and it's not very healthy. It could lead to tooth decay. Maybe explain, hey, you know Uncle So-and-So? He's 400 pounds because he drinks a lot of soda and overeats all the time.
Starting point is 01:57:58 There's usually references that are close by. That's great, though, because my daughter wants an Instagram account also. And I said some of the things the way you put it, but yeah, just, that's huge. Well, and then you can say to her too, like, hey, you know what? Come back to me, you know,
Starting point is 01:58:16 let's talk about it every couple of weeks or months. And you come back to me with a nice explanation of why you should have Instagram or how you can have it in a way that where you're still safe. It's a private account. You're going to promise that you're not going to, you know, have it not be a private account. And I don't want to have to check through your stuff, but you're going to be good with keeping it a private. Like, are we sure, you know, you're going to do all these things and, you know, maybe not have your phone in your room at night or, or just whatever rules you can come up with.
Starting point is 01:58:47 Yeah. And if they can, your daughter's smart and she's plenty old enough to where she could, you know, under understand, I've had to fight with my daughter many times with her putting her phone away at night. And I asked her like, what's a reasonable hour, you know, for her to put, put it away. And she's like 12 and I'm like, how a reasonable hour you know for her to put put it away and she's like 12 and i'm like how about 10 you know and so you know we settle on what we settle on i'm sure she puts it away i'm in bed so i don't even know yeah it's there on the counter every morning but it's taken a lot of reminders and so i had to like go in her room the other day and say hey you know i i'm not
Starting point is 01:59:22 trying to make a lot of rules for you i'm'm not trying to, uh, I'm not trying to block you from having fun with your friends. You can have the phone the entire day. I don't, uh, dictate how long you can be on your phone for. Um, but there's a couple of requirements that you have with this family, just like there's requirements I have. There's requirements that your mother has, there's requirements that Jake has with his family. And like one thing that I really want to make sure you do is that you put your phone away at around 10 o'clock every night and put it on a charger. It's out of your room because then the next day you wake up very late or you have a hard time waking up for school.
Starting point is 02:00:00 And I said, this is the definition of an addiction. And I can point to family members, say, hey, your uncle died from addiction because this thing got a hold of him stronger than what he was able to handle and he's no longer here anymore. My mother basically died of addiction as well. My uncle died of addiction also. There's family references to where I can say, and obviously that's extreme because it's just talking about her being on her phone for a little bit too long, but it's bleeding into the next day and it's
Starting point is 02:00:30 impacting, it's stressing your mother out more because she's yelling at you to wake up and you're not getting up, but it all just has to speak. It's all centered around your phone. And so the most recent time that I brought it up to her she saw the correlation herself and felt it because she wouldn't wake up until like two o'clock you know 2 p.m like you know an afternoon and so once she started to experience it herself and realize like oh like i i can't function you know and i'm up later than even what I would like to do. Now she sees it and feels it. Now she understands my point and understands my explanation.
Starting point is 02:01:11 And so, you know, for a lot of kids are going to have to like actually have something happen or feel something in order for them to be compelled to really change no matter how many times you mention it you know yeah there's um there's this guy chris johnson and he reminded me of um danny because chris chris he was uh he's an entrepreneur in sacramento and he actually was on shark tank for an instant ramen maker or something like that i forgot i forgot what it was called or what exactly it is but he was saying that he had to have a uh a conversation with his two young kids and his wife. And he had to explain, hey, daddy's going to be working really, really hard for the next six months because everything has to be prepared and pure and great for Shark Tank. You're not going to see me as much.
Starting point is 02:01:56 I'm going to be spending very little amounts of time with you. But when we do, we're going to make it meaningful. So that's what he did. He didn't get to spend much time with his kids for months on end, but he communicated that with them. And when he did have his 30 minutes or whatever, that he could really do it, he made it as meaningful as he possibly could. So I think that all just goes back to the idea of like, kids aren't stupid. Like they might be young, but like the, the, uh, you know, the example you came with Hamish, right? Like he had to talk to, uh, talk about a very weird subject with him and he kind of understood it. If you can communicate these
Starting point is 02:02:28 things, it might just be easier than just kind of flushing through it and doing what you got to do and ignoring the fact and thinking that they don't know what's going on. Yeah, and when that topic comes back up again, you know, in the case of the guy that you're talking about that was on Shark Tank, when he goes to his daughter. Yeah, yeah, that's him. That's him. Yeah, so when he goes to his daughter and says, hey, we're going, I'm taking you to get ice cream or whatever or I'm taking you to the grocery store,
Starting point is 02:02:59 the kid's not complaining because the kid remembered that you said, hey, we're not going to always be able to spend that much time together. And maybe this guy is like, I have to go to the grocery store. The kid hasn't been out of the house all day. This would be a good time to get it, sneak in a drive, maybe end up chatting about something for a few minutes. And maybe it's not their favorite thing to go to the grocery store, but at least we're fucking hanging out, you know, 20 minutes or whatever it is. Yeah. That's dope. Rapid Ramen Cooker and Rapid Mac mac he's right here in sacramento right here in sacramento like
Starting point is 02:03:30 yeah we um we did like this serious thing and my buddy my buddy brian who i do the other thing with he uh got in contact with him and he had him on he is a really dope speaker awesome he is so like yeah get him on some time too. That would be, that would be spectacular. Yeah. Okay. Andrew,
Starting point is 02:03:48 take us on out of here, buddy. I will. Thank you everybody for checking out today's episode. Sincerely appreciate it. Please hit that like, and subscribe button. If you're watching this on YouTube and if you're on iTunes,
Starting point is 02:03:57 go ahead and drop a rating and a review. If you can, that would be super beneficial and that really helps us out. So yeah, if you guys do, thank you. Um, please follow the podcast at Mark Bell's power project on Instagram at MB
Starting point is 02:04:08 power project on Twitter, my Instagram, Twitter, and clubhouse is at, I am Andrew Z and we got more clubhouse stuff coming out very soon. That's going to be freaking awesome. And also, um,
Starting point is 02:04:20 I know you guys just got to get invites from somebody that, you know, it's really hard for me to, yes. Send those out. It's only them for a thousand a piece. I know you guys just got to get invites from somebody that, you know, it's really hard for me to, yes. And those out, but it's only them for a thousand a piece. I know. Right.
Starting point is 02:04:30 Like you can cash at me a thousand dollars and you will get that clubhouse invite. That's all it takes easily. Yeah. Venmo or whatever. Cryptocurrency, whatever it takes. It's Emo.
Starting point is 02:04:41 Where are you at? And it's Emo on Instagram and YouTube and clubhouse. I don't see meyang on Twitter Mark. I'm at Mark Smelly Bell. Strength is never weakness. Weakness never strength. Catch you guys later. Bye.

There aren't comments yet for this episode. Click on any sentence in the transcript to leave a comment.