Mark Bell's Power Project - Power Project EP. 70 - John Bartolo

Episode Date: June 13, 2018

John Bartolo is a fitness enthusiast, powerlifter and firearms industry professional. He is the CEO of FALKOR Defense and DRACOS StraightJacket Barrel, and is a sponsored athlete with multiple brands including Blackstone Labs, Gasp Fitness, and Sinister Labs. Rewatch the live stream: https://youtu.be/YNVr53JsNnU ➢SHOP NOW: https://markbellslingshot.com/ Enter Discount code, "POWERPROJECT" at checkout and receive 15% off all Sling Shots ➢Subscribe Rate & Review on iTunes at: https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/mark-bells-power-project/id1341346059?mt=2 ➢Listen on Stitcher Here: https://www.stitcher.com/podcast/mark-bells-power-project?refid=stpr ➢Listen on Google Play here: https://play.google.com/music/m/Izf6a3gudzyn66kf364qx34cctq?t=Mark_Bells_Power_Project ➢Listen on SoundCloud Here: https://soundcloud.com/markbellspowerproject FOLLOW Mark Bell ➢ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/marksmellybell ➢ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/MarkBellSuperTraining ➢ Twitter: https://twitter.com/marksmellybell ➢ Snapchat: marksmellybell Follow The Power Project Podcast ➢ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/MarkBellsPowerProject Podcast Produced by Andrew Zaragoza ➢ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/iamandrewz

Crazy. It's the gun world. Yeah. 2A. People like to shoot stuff. You guys are stuck in this communist state. You know, you got to get out. They're all looking to get out.

They're like, Mark, let's move to Vegas. Nothing good happens in Vegas, right? Or is it all good? Well, it could be all good if you're on the gun range. Yeah. You can shoot more stuff. You guys are like the last holdout. Friends of Lincoln in here.

There's not any... There's no rules in Vegas, right? Pretty much. Don't you think Florida's worse, though? Well, Florida is the gun shine state, but I feel like Vegas... You have a lot of really cool ranges in Vegas. What does gun shine state mean? It's the gun shine state.

It's the nickname for Florida. Really? Yeah. They don't have any rules for anything. Even the supplement... That's why all the supplement companies are. Really? Yeah. They don't have any rules for anything. Like, even the supplement, that's why all the supplement companies are there. Yeah. Because they ain't got no rules.

Yeah, the problem becomes the ranges, finding access to ranges and finding long ranges. Like, in Vegas, you have more space. Right. Where are you from? Boston, originally. Boston. We got to deal with this fucking accent for the next two hours? Yeah, deal with the accent. Edit out the accent.

See if you can work on that. I'll throw a filter on there. Yeah. It takes out every fackin accent. Edit out the accent. See if you can work on that. I'll throw a filter on there. It takes out every fackin'. Yeah, all the fackin', fackin' this, fackin' that. That's the crossover word. Instead of and or um or er, when you're from Baston, it's fackin'. Fackin'. Fackin' this, fackin' that.

You make weapons? What the hell's going on with this? So I work at Falcor Defense. I'm the CEO of Falcor Defense and Draco's Barrel. So what we do at Falcor is we design and develop particularly AR-15, AR-10 platform gas guns all the way up to the.300 Win Mag, which is really a revolutionary firearm in the sense that not many companies have been able to harness the.300 Win Mag cartridge. It's really a long-range caliber. You can pretty much drop anything in North America with that.

So you guys aren't just making stuff that everybody else makes. That's right. You're being innovative. Innovative. What does it take to do some of that? Well, to do it, you have to really be willing to take chances and potentially lose a lot of money because you're going to be doing something that hasn't been done.

And any time you're doing something that hasn't been done, you're going to run the risk of some of that R&D going out the window. So there's a lot of machining, a lot of stuff that goes into it, a lot of IP. The 300 Win Mag is really something that's changed the game. There's only one other company that did it successfully in a gas gun platform. Has anybody gotten hurt making some of these things? I mean, I imagine like some R&D, like you just, something's more powerful

than you anticipated or something strange happens. So it's funny. I'll tell you a funny story. We were starting to develop something new right now that we're working on that I, I really don't want to get too deep into, but, uh, uh, it's a small caliber and, uh, one of the guys in the snail trap taking shots and, uh, you know, he had one, uh, you know, it went full auto on a minute, you know, almost, you know, you can run that risk of like, you got a little scare and I'm nothing really crazy happened, but yeah, there's always that risk, you know, as you're testing, you know, it went full auto on him and it, you know, almost, you know, you can run that risk of like, you got a little scare and nothing really crazy happened.

But yeah, there's always that risk, you know, as you're testing, you know, we get guys that dress up almost in like, you know, the headgear and everything else. They get overly cautious, you know, they got vests on everything. But I think when you're, when you're developing something the first couple of times you're testing it, you're always a little leery. I'm sure you were with the slingshot. Yeah. Is this thing going to work? I got 900 pounds on it. What's going to happen?

There's a lot of hurdles that happen when you start a business. And I can't even imagine the red tape that would be surrounded when you're starting a company that makes guns. What were some of the hurdles in the beginning? So when you start a firearms company, you have to first get what's called an FFL and then you have to get an SOT. So you have to have basically the state and the federal government authorize you to develop weapons on the premises, you know? So there's a lot of red tape. There's a lot of, uh, uh, basically paying fees. Was there, were you thinking about this for a long time? Like since the time you were a kid

or you got, you know, you got into hunting or guns when you were young? And so that's a great question. I started out Mark and in finance and I graduated college and know what i was going to do came back like he was coaching football i was kind of like where's life going to take me and kind of like we were chatting a bit about it last night i uh had this opportunity to go to the police academy so i graduated the academy kind of know what i wanted to do a bunch of companies had approached me and said hey would you be interested in doing demos so there was like enforced weapon lights breakthrough clean all all these different brands that kind of got me started. They said, you know, we need someone to go over to departments, work with them, you know, show them the stuff and get them to become customers like anything else, you know. So I started doing all this stuff.

I really didn't know where it was going to take me. I didn't know what was going on. And, you know, little by little, I started building all these clients and I'm running around. And before long, companies started coming to me and saying, Hey, would you come here and do this? Would you come here and do that? And I kind of held out a long time until, you know, Falco came along and offered me the CEO position. So, you know, I kind of,

I didn't want to jump on the first thing in front of me. Right. That's, that's a pretty cool, pretty cool intro into all of it. I got to say, you look pretty jacked in that strong shirt too. Is it just me looking at them in the lighting or smoke? What you think it looks pretty looks pretty jacked yeah no i've been training a long time and uh you know power lifting was my first you know introduction and i look at weight lifting as an extension of defensive tactics and training and you know the theme of training comes up all the time you know um you know when you start out you're kind of like well

you go to the gym you know that's the first thing I'm gonna go to the gym. I'm going to get strong because if I'm strong, then I can do something with it. But then a lot of people don't know, like, what's the next step? You know, how do I make it more functional? So I started out powerlifting, small local federations, just kind of competing and getting out there. I had a bad pec tear a few years into it, you know, went out to eat last night with, uh, John and Matt. It just kind of was, uh, circumstances.

I went to the hotel to to grab a hold of matt and to take him to dinner and then uh there there came john and so we went went to eat and uh earlier in the day matt brown was telling me he's like you know what i hate he's like i hate motherfuckers that talk a lot then we went to eat and this guy can fucking talk so he was talking a mile a minute and it was amazing. It was amazing watching Matt like trying to like handle it. Like he just, he, he just,

it's not, not his thing. Like it just. I could see him and then, you know. Cause Andy was talking so much too. My wife can talk her face off too. They're going back and forth a lot. And then he's like, hey man, if I run into some crazy bastard,

he's like, somebody knows how to fight. He's like someone like you. He's like, I'm just going to fucking shoot him. I'm just taking their ass out. You can see Matt thinking of all these different ways to chop up your body or something. I think he'd kill me ten times in his mind. Oh my god, that guy's a real beast. That was fun. You and Andy got into some political stuff. You guys were talking back and forth, and you actually seemed like you agreed on a lot of the situations. You've rubbed elbows with our current president.

Yes. With Donald Trump. Tell us a little bit about that. Is his hair real? Can we get into this? Can we talk about it? That's the great question. That's the pressing question in America.

So I had this opportunity recently to meet the sitting president, Donald Trump. And I had been, you know, friends with Donald Trump Jr. for a little bit. And we go back and forth and chat. And like I always say, you know, you hear this, me say this a lot, he's a gun guy, you know, so super supportive, super supportive of the NRA, super supportive of everybody in the gun industry. So he says to me one time, hey, you wanna meet my dad? So I'm like, you mean like, leader of the free world, your dad? So I'm like, yeah, sure.

So we get to NRA and I'm kinda like, we walk around a little bit, we chat, and then he's like, meet back here. So we go into this room and I'll tell the whole story because it's kind of funny. So we get into this room and then we get into another room and another room and you get into this green room finally and there's Secret Service everywhere,

it's like a whole thing. So I have Branch Whitman branch warren and uh max michelle who shoots for six hours one of the best shooters in the world uh probably the best shooter in the world and then uh a couple other guys so i'm kind of like you know wow looking around i'm like you know i've never met a sitting president i don't know what to expect the only thing i have going on in my head now is like the forrest gump you know i had me about 14 dr peppers kind of thing you know and i look and there's. Pepper and soda all over the table. So I'm like, oh, what do I, I'm starving.

Now I got to eat because it takes like, you're waiting on him. So I said, Max, go over there, get a drink. Because if you get a drink, it'll be cool. Then I can get a drink. No one will question you. So Max goes over, he's like, I want a drink, man. I'm cool. I'm like, no, go get a drink, dude.

Branch is like, go get a drink. So finally he mows his over. He gets something to drink. He wants the two big bodybuilder guys in the room eating up all the food. The first two mucks getting something to eat. So then there's this huge spread. And there's this table. And there's like a carving station and all this stuff.

And I'm like, Max, go over there. You know, get something to eat. Because if you get something to eat, then it'll be cool. So he goes, no, no, man. I want to eat. You know, he's all cool. He's from New Orleans. I'm good. But I'm like, go get something to eat. So he goes, get something to eat, then it'll be cool. So, like, he goes, ah, no, man, I want to eat. You know, he's all cool. He's from New Orleans. Ah, good.

But I'm like, cool, get something to eat. So he goes, get something to eat. And then, you know, we mosey over. We get something to eat. And we sit down. And Don Jr. sat with us for a little bit. He ate with myself, Branch, and Max. And it was really cool just sitting there kind of rapping with those guys a little bit

and some of the Secret Service guys. And then they take you in. And it's really a surreal moment. You know, they have the whole setup and the whole bit. And, know super charismatic dude it was an honor to meet him and like i said last night one of the coolest things about about meeting the president is one that there's a sitting president but two i really enjoyed that donald trump jr took the time to introduce you because you may meet someone and they don't know who you are you know it's like hey how you doing buddy moving on to the next one but don was like you know here's you know john bartolomew ceo of alcoa you know his

branch warren professional no that's like it's really cool yeah it's hard to like you don't want to like toot your own horn to the i mean be where you're taking up his time and yeah it's cool to get an intro like that definitely a cool moment so you get a couple minutes to chat with him you we had a few minutes kind of shaking his hand and chatting a little bit there was probably the most personal time and I kind of lost my train of thought because he looks at Branch and then he looks at me

and of course we're next to each other in the offering line and when he says bodybuilder, you know, Don Sr. looks at me and he goes, can you beat him? And I'm like,

of course I can. So, you know, kind of had a little back and forth there but I did want to ask him if the hair was real but I thought that was maybe not a good opportunity.

Man, we could have really got somewhere with that question. We could have got to the bottom of that. We could have got the hot information. What's it like owning a company like this in these times when there's these school shootings and these random acts of violence going on? Well, I think it goes without saying that we all, in the firearms business,

don't condone any of these acts of violence. I think it goes without saying that we all, you know, in the firearms business don't condone any of these acts of violence. I think it goes without saying they are totally done by people that are soulless people, really, that are fanatical and that are radical. And, you know, no firearms company is going to condone that. But I think, you know, it's really difficult to legislate morality. If somebody isn't of sane mind, of sound mind, you're not going to be able to legislate that. So nothing you're going to do politically to change a law or to change something on the gun is going to stop a fanatic. I think you said law with an R somehow thrown in at the end. So, you know, you're not going to stop, you know, you're not going to stop these

fanatics from doing what they want to do. So owning a company or, or, or trying to run a company in these times makes it very difficult as the government literally every week or every month is changing laws right in front of you. Uh, as in California, you guys know one day it's the grip the next day, it's the trigger the next day day they want to put a bullet button on your gun. And, you know, it makes it incredibly difficult to service our customers and to service the folks that we feel have a right to own those firearms, that have obeyed every law, have done everything right, and there's no reason for their rights to be infringed. And I think it's really sad what the government's doing because I think that they're ignoring the real problem. And by the government, I mean the Senate, the House of Representatives.

I think what they need to focus on is figuring out what makes these people tick and what makes them do the things that they're doing. Because a criminal is going to perform a criminal act if they want to, period. And you're not going to legislate morality. Yeah, and it probably comes down in at least a lot of these cases, it seems like it comes down to maybe a mental health issue and not necessarily a gun regulation issue. Yeah, I mean, to say I'm going to put a bullet button or I'm going to change a stock or change a grip on a firearm

and that's going to stop somebody from walking into a school and shooting the school up. The only thing that stops a violent act of somebody who's fanatical is another violent act. Period. Period. So you see these great stories. So even if you took away a gun, they might make a bomb. Oh, sure.

Or run people over like you're seeing sometimes. Absolutely. And, you know, you see these folks come out there and you stand on a pulpit, you know, they get their 15 minutes of fame and they start to rant and a pulpit, you know, they get their 15 minutes of fame and they start to rant and rave about, you know, we need to regulate this and we need to stop that. If somebody wants to get a knife out of the kitchen and stab somebody, they're getting a knife out of the kitchen.

You know, it starts an escalation of cutting into all those rights and that's where, you know, you're going to lose anybody. What do you think that some of the solutions to this, there probably has to be some regulation of some sort, right? Absolutely. I think that in the process, I think one of the things they should examine is definitely the mental health crisis in the United States. I think it's, we can all attest that it's been tremendously neglected. I think what they have to focus on.

Spillage. A little spillage. Aisle nine. I think we have to focus on the mental health problem. Got me all excited. I think we have to focus on the mental health problem in the United States and really start to regulate that process and how we evaluate people and evaluate their mental health. I don't think that, I don't think for anyone, you know, in the United States that goes to buy a firearm does so with the intent of harming somebody unless they have that type of problem. And I think that there has to be a measure put in place to manage that. We got a little wipe up a little bit over here.

Thanks, Smokey. Johnny on the spot here. How long have you been training for and how did that all start? So training is something that's very near and dear to me. I, since lifting weights, starting out about 14, 15, probably like everybody else in this room, you know, finding a gym, starting to, starting to lift some weights. Uh, you know, it's, it's been super important to me to make sure I was always trained or training.

Right. And then once I kind of outgrew the weight thing, I was like, okay, you know, I'm lifting weights. It's really cool, but I want to do something else. So, you know, that's when I discovered firearms. So I'm living in Boston, grew up in East Boston. And I'm like, you know, where do I go from here? And I start shooting some guns and I start messing around with that.

I get into knives, get into all that stuff, you know, kids love. Go to college, play sports. After, I'm like, geez, I don't know, you know, I need something more. So as I was mentioning to you last night, you know, when I started doing all this shooting training and everything else and the tactical training, I got out of the police academy and I said, they said, hey, why don't you go down to Miami and see this guy? You know, it might be really cool. You know, see what he's all about.

And I go down and I train and it's Tony and it's real world tactical. Oh my God. Yeah. He wasn't real world tactical yet, but he was getting there. So, you know, I had a good, good opportunity. I went down and trained with him a bunch of times. After that, we came very close, almost like brothers. And I, you know, I had a great, great time training with him.

I had trained with some other notable trainers in the firearms business, um, all, all across the country. Trained with, you know, former SEALs, former special operations guys. And just through my job, got the opportunity to be on the range and be around guys that, you know, similar to you that had never, you know, never had that up. People normally wouldn't have that opportunity to train with. So it was a lot of fun. Yeah, that's really cool. And you're, uh, you hang out with Branch Warren quite a bit. Yes.

Uh, and he's kind of a crazy bastard, right? Yeah. Maybe not even kind of, he's just a crazy bastard period. I think, I think, uh, I think Branch is one of the most intense individuals you will ever come across. I think when you have him on this podcast, the answers will be a lot quicker. He'll probably get a little less talking, Mark. He'll be like, when he says, do you like training? He's just going to give you like a yes, motherfucker.

Yeah. Branch is a solid dude, one of the best guys. If he tells you that's how it is then that's how it is and he's he's very honest very forthright what's it like training with that guy he seems like he goes all out yeah so so the branch story you know after tony and i've been training together a little while you know i said to tony i said hey uh you know um uh we'll go to train with branch warren and uh tony goes well like we're gonna train with branch we're gonna go down to metro flex and he was like you know we get to talking he's like you know of course how do you know him

comes up you know like i'm like he's a gun guy you know like he's a gun so we were going back and forth so we get on this plane we go down there and branches one caveat was you train with me in the gym but we're gonna train on the range together too i'm like all right you know bring it you know so we get down there for four days we do four days of training four days of shooting everything and uh we were exhausted we We were wiped. We threw the kitchen sink at each other. So it's super intensive. If you ever get the opportunity, you know, and I know he's, he's semi retired now. He likes to say, uh, to get in the gym with him, it is an intense experience. I mean, he doesn't waste a rep waste to set, you know, there's no

walking away. There's no quit. And just when you think you're done, it's five more reps. And when you think it's over, it's five more reps and you will leave sweaty. You will leave tired. You will wring your shirt out. You know, you will earn that post-workout meal for sure. That Metro flex gym seems kind of gross.

Yeah. It's so fucking hot out there in Texas, right? Yeah. He said he got like the one fan blown and it just seems like it's making it hotter in there and stinkier. The one box fan from 1985 that was in every one of Brian's videos or Ronnie, you know. So, you know, it gets really hot there.

It's really some of the most extreme conditions. You know, I was used to it a little bit down training in Miami and in Florida a lot. But I'm a cold weather guy. I like the cold. But, you know, Branch, I became very, very close when I go down there. I stay at his house. I stay with him, stay with Trish. Branch and I became very, very close.

When I go down there, I stay at his house. I stay with him, stay with Trish. And he's really been a really good mentor to me in the fitness industry and showed me kind of the right way to handle things, the right way to do things, to work with companies. Even when I had the opportunity to work with Blackstone and Gasp, it was like bringing the band together. Myself, Tony, Guy, Sister Reno, Branch. We all got to train together and work together.

It was a lot of fun. How's that intensity in the gym? How's that transferred over into other aspects of your life? So, you know, um, we all, all of us, you know, in, in any, any, you know, leadership position or any, anything in companies, you know, we get accused of being alpha or being, uh, intense, you know, anytime we're around people. Bunch of assholes. Bunch of assholes. You know, I didn't want to say it, but, you know, uh, I think when you go in the gym and you, you blow some steam off and you, you get that energy out. I think what you try to take from the gym is that you're not done until the job is done until the rep is done until the set is done. So you take that, you know, and you hear a similar mindset from guys like Dom Rosso at Dynamis.

You have similar mindsets from those people get a good rep and they're not just talking about the gym and i say that to my folks when i'm in the shop or in falcor i'm like if you're gonna do your job get a good rep get it done you know if i give you a task see it to the to the end i can't go in a gym with you or branch or anybody and do you know a half-assed rep you're gonna be like no give me the full rep all the way down all the way up so one of the things you learn just in that gym culture is to to see it all the way to the end, see it to the finish. Yeah, it makes a lot of sense. And I, you know, I think that people sometimes lose track of the fact that you can, you can train your mind, you know, for other things. And when you're doing these workouts that, that we're showing some video of here, um, you're pushing yourself to a, to a limit and then you're going beyond that.

Like it's, it's where you thought you could go. And then you guys are yelling at each other, encouraging each other to take it that much further. That's, that's actually Clint Hanson in that video there. He's talking about the cross section between firearms and fitness. He's one of the head guys at Ballistic Advantage and Aero Precision. So Clint came out and he, he wanted to train with Branch. So yeah, I mean, you just, you see the intensity,

you see what, what the gym can bring to the table in, in the business life and corporate life and, and everything in between. I don't think you want to leave any rep behind, you know, just like in business, you want to hope to not leave any dollar behind, right? You want to do your job and being, being from new England, that's something that's just burned into my, my blood. You know, I just kind of have that do your job mentality. See it to the end.

God damn new England Patriots. Yeah, I know. Fuck. Love to hate us. Love to hate end. God damn New England Patriots. Yeah, I know. Fuck. Love to hate us. Love to hate us. No, I just hate them. You know. I'm unfortunately a Jets fan.

I've been stuck with it since the time I was a kid. And it's just, it hasn't been easy. I feel bad for Jets fans. You should. You should feel really bad for us. I guess I know like the reverse of. We need a lot of help. I know the reverse of the Yankees Red Sox rivalry.

Cause like you're our Red Sox. You know, it's kind of like, who are they? Like they're over there somewhere. That's right. But yeah, I mean, that's definitely something that does kind of burn into your blood a little bit. You know, I said to the, you know, on one of the podcasts I was on, they say, you know, what's your motto? They always ask. And I just say, I expect nothing.

I blame no one and I do my job. And it's a combination of, you know, some of the things that other SMEs have said to me and I've heard through the years. And I just, I kind of feel if you, you can control two things in life, what time you get out of bed and how loyal you are. Everything else is arbitrary and will change. It will change. You know what I mean? You may move, you may do this, you may do that in life. You may have no money.

You may have tons of money. You can't always choose when you have to take a shit. Yeah. But you can. Sometimes things are going to be inconvenient. But you can control how loyal you are and you can control what time you get tons of money. You can't always choose when you have to take a shit. Yeah. But you can. Sometimes things are going to be inconvenient. But you can control how loyal you are and you can control what time you get out of bed. And if you put in a full day, I can work with a guy

who's willing to do that. Right. Or a gal. You're a huge Patriots fan. Huge. Bill Belichick fan. Have you gone to some games and stuff like that? Yes.

Mm-hmm. What about your, uh, your family? Like your, um, your parents and your brother, you have brothers, sisters. Two sisters. Yeah. Two sisters. So yeah. Everybody's still on the East coast, still on the East coast.

It's hard to get out of that. Yeah. It's hard to get away. It's hard to get away. It's very hard. So when the gun laws got, got crazy in Massachusetts and I moved to New Hampshire to live free or die, I stayed in New Hampshire, which is a great state to live in. Um, I loved it out there. I love, I miss New Hampshire like crazy. Everybody in Kalispell, Montana knows that, but I had the opportunity to go to Montana when I took the CEO gig out in Kalispell. So, you know, I kind of was like, ah, I don't know, you know, you kind of, you went through this. I mean, you're kind of like the East Coast is burned into you and you're like, ah, I've got to get back. I've got to get back.

Like you feel tethered, you know, I've got to make a run for it. But I've been enjoying my time in Montana. I really have loved it. But yeah, I mean, there's, I've been enjoying my time in Montana. I really have loved it, but yeah, I mean, there's just those old habits, those East coast habits die hard, you know, you just want to keep them. It's, it's hard to make progress unless you're willing to, you know, put yourself out on a limb, unless you're willing to try stuff. And, you know, I just saw, you know, I'm from Poughkeepsie, New York, and I just saw people just doing the same old shit kind of over and over again. Not there's anything wrong with that. I mean, people, you know, they love their family, like to stick around their family

and I have a big family. And so people just, they never, they never get out of that element. But for me, I wanted something different. And I knew that I'd have to have, uh, I'd have to have many changes, uh, even more so than just the scenery, you know? I think the most overused term in, in motivational speakers and any motivation is, is you have to take, you know, I think the most overused term and motivational speakers and any motivation is, is you have to take, you know, you have to take chances, you know, but I think you have to calculate those chances, you know, and I think in life you have to

know, uh, where you fit and where you don't fit, what makes sense and what doesn't make sense. And I process a lot of folks, you know, stories that they've given me through the years. I'm a huge people watcher and I like to talk cause I like to engage in people and I like them to give me so much feedback so I can learn from them as fast as possible. But I listened to stories. Branch would tell me, I'd listen to stories. Other successful folks that I look up to would tell me, and I, I kind of, I calculate my chances based on things they've done in life and what they've shown me they've done.

And you have to not be afraid to sometimes get in the car and just go. Right. And sometimes that's going to be the scariest thing. But when opportunity is staring at you, you know, yeah, you want to make it, you know, that too good to fail or, or, you know, that, but they're not all going to be. Right. So, so what you're saying is like, it's not, you, you are still taking a chance, still taking a risk, but it's a calculated one that you've seen repeated before.

You've seen someone else do something similar. I'm not looking for any opportunity. I'm looking for the right one. Right. You know, and that's kind of the thing I always kind of stress on. And if you're good to people as good as you are to folks, you know, you could get a, one of your guys could get a phone call tomorrow and they get an opportunity to go be the CEO of another company. These guys are not leaving. They're never leaving. And there's always a number that keeps people, right? So, you know, and it's not necessarily a phone number, but it could look like one. So, you know, it just definitely, it definitely depends on the mindset of the person and what they're willing to do. And then some people are happy understanding their

limitations and that's fine too. You know, I think for any successful person or anybody trying to achieve a certain level of success, whether it's lifting weights, whether it's training, whether it's doing any of those things, it all comes down to mindset. You keep mentioning a gun guy. So it's probably, you know, it's probably, um, you're probably fortunate in the sense that the company that you're the CEO of, uh, when you run into people that are fanatical about guns, because people are fucking crazy about guns. Right. And so when you run into some of these people, um, it's easy to make connections with people from all walks of life. Of course. You got people in Hollywood, you got people in politics, you got people all over the place. It's really funny you bring that up because I just, I, I, I don't want to say who, but I was, let's just say I was involved in an interview.

And when they walked out, I said, well, I really hope he's not a gun nut. You know what I mean? And there's levels of nut. Just like there's levels of gym nuts. You might have somebody in here and you're like, he's a real gym nut. But yeah, you meet all kinds of folks. And the term gun guy is something I stole from Taron Butler. Taron Butler, who trained Keanu for the John Wick movies. And he's in upstate California. He's in Semi Valley. Really good dude. He got his big break by being friends with the stunt coordinator for one of the Rambo

movies. So I was like, how did you get to know this guy? He's a gun guy. You know what I mean? So the term gun guy is one of endearment. It's like when you say to folks, he's a gun guy. He's a friend of ours. He's okay.

It's like a good fellow's term. All right. You know? And you do meet all kinds. There are some that are collectors. There are some that are trainers. There are some that, like Tony. Tony doesn't have a ton of guns.

He's not a huge gun nut, but he trains and instructs with firearms. They're a tool to him. Yeah. I'm a little bit of both. I'm a student of history, so I do have a small collection, but I also use every single one of mine, my firearms. But I try to explain to folks, you know, um, enjoy them, use them, uh, don't become too fanatical about it. But there are folks that it's like, they have like this, like a romanticism with firearms where, uh, they have bunkers and they have this and they have that and they're preppers and they're closet preppers so you come across all kinds when you go to a show you've seen some of that oh yeah oh yeah bunkers and different things oh yeah so you come across a lot of that type of stuff i think marcus probably has a bunker he could be he strikes me as that kind of guy yeah

but yeah i mean you come across all kinds of all all kinds of that stuff. And I think that it's, it's really cool in a sense to see different folks' mindsets. And you hear about these actors and movie stars and folks that have like these bunkers and these huge weapons caches as if they, you know, they're preparing for Armageddon. So I find that a little, a little funny, but there are a lot of that. I watch Walking Dead. I mean, I don't know. It could happen. It could happen.

It could be a zombie apocalypse any moment now. I don't believe in the zombie apocalypse theory, but it could, you know, I don't, I don't say never. I never say never. So I think it's a really cool subculture. And I think you can tell the area of the country by the show you go to. So there's a lot of different kind of shows, just like there's a lot of different fitness shows. So you may go to one in like Pennsylvania where you get that walking dead fanatical crowd, you know, or you get those really deep, those hunters,

or you go to some of these shows in California, they're almost subdued or laid back if you can find one. Some of the ones in the Northwest Corridor, you get some laid back folks. But, you know, you can pretty much tell the climate by the show, similar to fitness, you know, the culture you're dealing with. But I think you find fanatics in anything how'd you uh how'd you find out about us how'd you find out about like super training and me and shit like that so you know obviously tony had been on so just disclaimer you know tony had told me about you know how well it went when he had you know he you guys had him

out here and he was like you know he's like there's a lot of fun and mark's awesome and obviously i had followed your brother's journey through the videos and everything else and i would i'd watch that and uh i kind of uh i guess years ago when i'd watch the the videos and stuff like that fell in love with like your family and how they carried themselves and how you guys were willing to put yourself out there you were almost like a reality tv show before there was reality tv shows because you put yourself out there through the documentary and i was like this is really cool. And then, you know, of course it died down for a little bit and you were doing your powerlifting

things for the years and you always follow people, but don't follow them and you pay attention. And then when Instagram came about and social media started, started hitting them, you know, you're kind of like, oh, what's this all about? Oh, Mark's got a company, you know? And then I had, I had met Smokey a little ways back and I realized he's a gun guy, you know what I mean? So I was kind of like, hey, you know.

He's sniffing around for free guns. Yeah. Here's a brother in arms, you know. But it's really cool because it gives you some insight into, you know, we need to come out of the shadows a little bit. Some of us that are proud of our rights and proud of the things that we stand for. And I know that Andy is because she was so passionate last night talking about a whole bunch of topics last night with us. And I think it's really important to get the story out there and not be afraid to hide in the closet, so to speak, anymore. Yeah. And especially like

here in California and yesterday when we were having dinner, we're in Davis. Not everybody's probably going to agree with some of the things that were shared at that table. Do you run into some people that are, uh, that are very pissed off, you know, that you're doing what you're doing every day. Yeah. Uh, that's one of the struggles. I think when I started on social media and everything else, uh, I kind of achieved a certain level of social media fame because I was one of the first people that was doing ads and I was pointing guns at people and I was doing everything that shouldn't be done. I was breaking all the rules, you know what I mean? But there were ads, you know? So when you do ads, there's some stuff that kind of suspends disbelief. And at first people are like, oh my God, you know,

this is crazy. But you run into people that they leave the comments and the term we use is haters. They, you know, they hate that you're, you're, you're brandishing a firearm or you have a firearm out or you're doing this. But then that became the accepted medium for the firearms companies because we don't have commercials. We don't have mainstream media. But then you do come across people at shows and everything else that want to protest or want to talk bad or kind of put the blame somewhere. And a lot of that stems from either they were affected by a crisis or affected by an issue or something that had come up. And you just do your best to just hold your head high and keep moving it's you ever get an opportunity to like actually explain something

somebody where you maybe open their eyes up a little bit or has it been like they're just pissed off and they don't hear anything that you're saying sure no i had an interesting conversation with someone at a dinner table because a lot of times this stuff will happen at the dinner tables. Now, you know, you'll be with somebody or somebody's girlfriend or something. And they'll say, well, you know, why are you with other people's girlfriends? You know, you'll be with another couple or something else. And they'll say, yes, they'll say, they'll say, you know, well, you know, gun, you know, they kind of have that guns are evil thing. It's just, it does never starts out with a direct slur. Just like, it's kind of like they look at you and they're like, you must be stupid because you're

big, you know? So they kind of look at you with that kind of underhanded look. So, and you kind of just want to be like, you know, fuck you, but no, you have to have an educated conversation. You say, well, look, you know, um, it's a tool like anything else. It's a tool like a, like a barbell, like a, like what makes a firearm different? Cause a projectile comes out of it. Is that what makes it different than a knife? is that what makes it different than a knife is that what makes it different than a barbell is that what makes it different than this coffee cup if i throw it off someone's head is it because a projectile comes out of it that when i pull the trigger that's what makes it evil right you know so you kind of have to get into that like let's go here first with your mind well you know anybody can get them

well anybody can get a knife you know in many ways I look at a gun sometimes as a lazy man solution. You know, if you want to do it right, go take a blade course or something, you know. Right. But yeah, I mean, it's a lot of conversation, a lot of education, and just kind of explaining to folks that this is our Second Amendment right. And we take our rights seriously, just like we do free speech. That's why we're here. You know, we're here exercising free speech, talking about any topic we'd like to talk about. You feel that the country was kind of built on some of this, right?

Of course. I wouldn't be here today having the type of freedom that we have. Like I, I always, I mean, I, I don't really get too much into politics because I don't even, I don't even like re I don't even read into it that much, but I mean, I'm thankful that I get to just like play every day. I literally just, it feels, it doesn't feel like I have to really work. I'm not struggling for food. I'm not struggling for anything.

I, you know, we live in a pretty awesome, you know, I mean, a pretty awesome world, you know. I say it all the time. I'm, you know, not a Republican or a Democrat. You know, I vote every election independently. I did vote for Trump this time around. Um, just because I liked that he was not a politician. And what I explained to folks is when I'm voting for someone or why I chose to vote for him, cause that's where it always goes.

It ends up going like, oh, you're a Trump guy. You know what I mean? Cause you like guns. So it stems into that. And I, and I say, well, look guys, you know, he's, he's not perfect. He's not going to be perfect. Similar to what we discussed a little bit, uh, before he's, he's a businessman. And anytime you come from a business background, you're going to make decisions. He's a decision maker, Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, all the way down the chain. A lot of those previous presidents,

they were career politicians. So they wanted to make everybody happy just a little bit. And when you try to go that route and make everybody in the room happy you're not making a decision right you're not making a decisive you're 100 right because everyone is so opinionated about donald trump what was their opinion of like obama like they didn't really have one like lukewarm at best yeah like yeah he's okay i don't know lukewarm at best you know you know he's like cold french fries it's like okay they're there't know. Lukewarm at best, you know, you know, he's like cold French fries. It's like, okay, they're there.

I might eat them, but I could send them back. French fries. Yeah. It always comes back to French fries. Yeah, exactly. You got to bring the food.

Or skinning a cat. We've skinned a lot of cats on this show, like recently. I don't know why that's a thing, but. I think the last two episodes, someone said skin the cat. I think three.

I think it's three in a row. Yeah. We're going to skin the cat. Yeah. So. I think it's three in a row. We're going to skin the cat. Nobody likes cats. Maybe skin a wild boar. Yeah, I've done that. Have you went on a wild boar hunt? So I went on a boar hunt with Branch. We went on a hog hunt

a couple of times actually. A hog hunt? Some people do that at bars. You know, there's, there's a weight limit on the hogs I catch. But, but no, yeah. Branch, I've been on a few hog hunts. If you ever get the chance and you ever trade out with him, when he comes up here to do your podcast, you got to say, I'm going to come down there and we'll do the hog hunt.

Oh my God. You'd have a blast. Yeah. It's a lot of fun. But yeah, definitely. So how the fuck, what's a hog hunt? What does this look like? So I just pictured Branch Warren being all jacked, trying to hide and trying to sneak up on a pig.

Like it just sounds way too weird. So it's, it's a real experience. It's a, it's a whole thing. And I believe, you know, just to, just to give a few names, I believe Flex Lewis has done it. And I believe, you know, just to, just to give a few names, I believe Flex Lewis has done it. Uh, if you, if you get around to having, um, uh, some of those other guys on it, I know guy wants to do it. Sister, you know, and a few guys have done it. It's like a whole thing with him. Um, but you get, go down to Texas, you take like a, you know, a two hour car ride to like, there's this whole setup.

It's a thing. So you, you, you get on these four wheelers, there's dogs, you track them with dogs and you head out there and you do this with your bare hands. So it's a real experience. Oh yeah. So you trap them with the dogs and then you go out there with a blade and that's it, you know?

And you know, I mean, when you have branch on, you know, for your listeners. I'm picturing him like jumping on the back and just like. Well,

that's, there's a whole, it's a thing, but like when you have branch on, you'll get an understanding for his attitude and how he talks and he'll be like yeah if you haven't if you haven't killed an animal with your bare hands you're not you're not a man you know kind of like that whole thing you know so he gives you that whole uh you know that whole feeling of like oh shit i gotta did it make you feel more manly i mean after i felt like you know i mean i i gotta rule and conquer i felt like you you know, I mean, I, I got to admit, I felt like, you know, like, like, like Conan after like about five minutes, I was like, yeah.

And then I was like, all right, can we get a cheeseburger on the way home? You know, I was like, I gotta get out of here. But it's, it's, you know, you have to track them and you're going to run into the woods and you're out there until like four in the morning, but it's a lot of fun. I mean, if you ever get a chance to go hunting, my, my hunting background kind of stops at hog, coyotes, small game, uh, fun stuff like that. Anytime with the guys and it's fun, I'm, I'm all set with doing like a 20 mile back country hunt. You know, I'm good with that. But, uh, I, I, I enjoyed that experience. A lot of fun. There's a lot of bonding that goes on. What about some of this tactical stuff? I see you guys like some of those videos doing like herpes and then shooting and so on. So when I

found, you know, or Tony found me or I found Tony, whatever it is, uh, found each other. Yeah. Like, you know, a little Jedi and Padawan relationship.

So I went down there and I had trained and, and, you know, kind of like, I didn't know what it was all about, but I knew I wanted to kind of merge this hybrid between fitness and firearms. So we saw this like clashing of cultures.

So, you know, the common question I get asked all the time is like, you know, first off is why, you know, fitness and firearms, like a lot of people in the firearms industry, like what's with all these fitness guys and all the people in the fitness industry, like what's with all these gun guys coming into our industry? And I always say the same thing.

What other culture, you know, can we go into with firearms and they'd be accepting of us? Because everybody in the fitness industry is like, you know, we want to be badass. We want to be, you know, I'm a real man. I'm a real woman. I lift weights. You know, they're like guns. Those are cool. So, you know, it's just more about bringing more people into the fight, bringing more people into the culture. So go down and train with Tony and Tony had at least in a core structure, merge these two worlds really well. So in his core structure, you're down there, you're doing burpees, you're doing athletic stuff. There's, there's a whole slew of videos out there between his page and my page you can see him jumping around doing all this different different stuff and it's more to build your heart rate so as you build your heart rate what he's trying to

simulate is that moment when somebody you know grabs you well not necessarily us because we're bigger guys but maybe grabs your purse or gets you in that high accelerated situation where your heart starts beating out of your chest and you kind of have to defend yourself and he wants you to get in that mindset and operate through his whole course so you do the burpees you do the kicking you do the punching you do the grappling not necessarily because he thinks he's going to make you this better striker overnight on his course but he's trying to get your heart rate up he's trying to get you out of your comfort zone so once you step out of your comfort zone then he says okay let's pick up the guns let's start shooting you know so it's hard enough to aim as it is.

Exactly. You know? So I always say, you know, if you're going to go take one, Tony always says this, everybody wants to take a real world tactical course. So it's time to go take a real world tactical course because it's, you're going to have, you know, eight to 10 hours of, of some real heat and it's going to be really difficult to do. And it's, it's going to, you know, really put you out of your comfort zone. You're going to be very uncomfortable.

You're going to be on the range shooting. And I had done some of the stuff, but when I found Tony, Tony was just, he was on another level. to, you know, really put you out of your comfort zone. You're going to be very uncomfortable. You're going to be on the range shooting. And I had done some of the stuff, but when I found Tony, Tony was just, he was on another level, you know, doing that stuff. You know, I'd been, you know, I trained with Rob Pincus, who was a notable trainer in the firearms industry. And I had done fit shot training and done a lot of stuff. Does Tony even work out anymore? I think he just sets it up for IG.

I think it's a body suit. I think he puts it on every morning. It's like this, you know, it on every morning it's like this you know it's like he's like i'm gonna put on the tony sentman suit today and that's why i'm gonna go out but you know yeah no he uh he trains his ass off he's jacked yeah he trains his ass off and tony has been one of the few guys i've seen add the body weight and size and still be able to move yeah i was able to do it that size size. You know, he moves like a Panther out there. You know, he's just, he's real quick. He's, he's good on his feet.

Um, you know, when you get into a former football player, right? That's Matt Lear. Matt Lear was a former, uh, Dallas Cowboy in New Orleans Saint, uh, played for the Buccaneers. He got in really good shape. Yep. Yep.

Matt had competed. He had a background in bodybuilding. He actually now, uh, is one of the managers down at a firearms distributor that we deal with. But yeah, we had gone on the range. We had trained. Done a lot of running around. Had some fun. This was part of the four-day train and scene that we had done. So we were trying to get Johnny Jackson out there too. We would have loved to have him. Because you get a lot of bodybuilders too that have these military backgrounds and have these law enforcement backgrounds. Like Ronnie. Ronnie was a police officer.

And they all love the culture. love the industry, you know, and there's Branch taking some shots. So yeah, I mean, it was, it was a lot of fun to get out there and mix it up with those guys and see some of the equipment, some of the stuff that they were using and now to see how they've grown, especially Branch and Matt and some of the guys we've trained with and how they've gotten better. It's a lot of fun. You mentioned, uh, you can control what time you wake up. What time do you wake up? I get up about 4.30 every morning, usually 4, 4.30. Early riser. Oh, yeah. Anyone around me can attest to that. I am up.

I'm ready to go. Have you always been like that? Yeah. For the most part, I always like to get up early. I wasn't working as smart as I like to think I am now. I still don't think I'm working as smart as I could be, but I always knew if I picked up a couple extra hours in the morning, I could be better served throughout the day, you know,

kind of get my mind right, get my head right, get in the game. By the time I have my second or third cup of coffee, whatever it is that I need to get me going, I usually feel like I can conquer the world. I get in the office by about 7. So at 4 a.m. I do my cardio do my my little bit of training and then uh cardio yeah oh my god i know jay cutler said yesterday he said uh nobody likes cardio except for me so maybe you're in that bunch too jay uh jay needs it he's gonna

take some size off that's right i know that's what he's trying to he's trying to he said what is he like 230 now 235 he said he's 235 he looks like he's 270 to. He's trying to, he said. What is he like 230 now? 235? He said he's 235. He looks like he's 270. Yeah. He looks enormous. He's fucking big. Yeah. He is big.

He's trying to size down, but still eating 20 egg whites in the morning with oatmeal and all kinds of other shit. Yeah. He eats a crazy amount of food. He he's. Do you eat a lot? I do. I eat seven times a day, uh, throughout the day.

So in our office, obviously, you know, you Bar guys, Sinister Labs. Yeah, Bruce. Sponsors I work with, Blackstone. We are not in our office at a loss for supplements and for cookies and for snacks and everything laying around, whether it's good or bad. It's everywhere in our office because we've done a lot of firearms for a lot of different fitness companies. Right, and they want to support you and they want to get some stuff out. Oh yeah. I mean,

it's all over our office cause we're constantly, you know, uh, going live. We're on ranges and we always need stuff, uh, to eat and to snack on. So yeah,

I mean that stuff, uh, I get up, go through my routine usually by about seven o'clock. My key hits the office door. I'm in there no later than seven and from seven to about nine, nine 30, I'm working with my team on looking at what we did the day before. I love constantly reviewing what I did the day before or the two days before I beat that

into their head in nauseam. They always say you repeat yourself a hundred times. I'm like, I have to, because you guys don't listen the first time. So I'm always going through what we conquered the day before. And I like to do a lot of what we call like on the range, we call them like debriefs and pre-briefs. So I always like to do at the end of each day, around four or five o'clock before I leave the office, we do a little office debrief. That's really important to me. I like to be like, okay, what do we accomplish today? Where are we? We're, you know, where are we going to be tomorrow? What are we going to hit? So that stuff is just

something that, you know, we took off the range and took out of the gym because kind of post workout, you sit around with the guys, you wrap a little bit, you know, where are we, you know, we took off the range and took out of the gym because kind of post-workout, you sit around with the guys, you rap a little bit, you know, where are we, you know, what do we want to accomplish? So what's the next workout? What's the next workout look like? You know, then I'll hit the iron maybe in the latter part of the day and I head home and have a couple more meals and kind of decompress by watching. My new fascination is I don't have cable. So my new fascination now is watching YouTube and trying to master, you know, why YouTube videos look the way they look and why they're successful and why they're not. So I try to study all that stuff in nauseam.

I think there's like YouTube TV now. I don't know what they're doing with some of that, but there's. Yeah. Red TV or something. It's called YouTube Red. Yeah. I have, yeah, I have YouTube Red, but then there's, I don't know, they're doing a bunch of different stuff right now. I'm trying to revamp it, I guess.

I purposely, I try to do things that are purpose-driven. So like I purposely canceled my cable and I purposely had to be forced to watch a lot of like that YouTube-y, social media stuff, everything else. So now when I'm home, I'm trying to study that stuff even in my leisure. So I'm kind of. I wonder if anybody even gets like the value out of their cable, you know, like, cause you know, I don't think it just seems like people aren't watching TV as much.

I know there's like programs that people can want, people will watch, but you don't really need cable for that anymore. You don't, you know, it pops up on like Netflix and I have a, I have a find everything on YouTube pretty much coming up from the media side. I have a social media belief because of what you're just saying. Like, I think, you know, we saw print die. We're seeing cable start to die. You know, I have a belief that as time goes on and I think this, every media guy, you know, kind of in some way thinks the same way as I do, because it's,

you see it coming. It's as clear as day that you're going to be able to go to your smart TV. It's just going to be a search bar. You're going to be able to search Mark Bell and you're going to be able to watch everything Mark Bell's doing, whether that's on one platform or multiple platforms to an extent you can do it now. But I think it's going to become much more prevalent as time goes on because nobody really cares about Law and Order SVU anymore. Go look at the ratings. I mean, they're terrible. Nobody really cares about any of those shows. I mean, very few of them do well in pockets.

And I think people do want to escape reality and go to a movie or watch some of that stuff. A lot of people have the TV on in the background and they're still not, they're not actually watching it. They're not watching it. It's just on. Other than sports. Sports is saving cable TV right now, in my opinion. I mean, NFL, NHL, all those different avenues to watch sports, I think that's what saves cable TV. And people don't want to watch TV on someone else's time.

No. You know? Absolutely not. watch tv on someone else's time no you know absolutely not so like dvr did help but it's still like yeah it's you can just youtube everything the next day or whatever like i'd much rather watch like if i could like i think you guys should have a live stream in the gym like i'd much rather watch you guys train than i would watch something that's fake you know what i mean like you know that would be much more real to me yeah whenever we do a live stream it it's it's usually pretty successful we do have to try to figure some of that out like

sometimes we get sometimes it gets screwed up because of the music i i'd be willing yeah i'd be willing to bet almost any um any amount of money on anybody the moment that we can stream live and almost create our own reality tv show from like a fixed camera because the biggest pain in the ass is holding the camera once we can stream live from a fixed they got shit that like follow you around yeah stuff right yeah i mean i think you're gonna see most of your cable everything else is start to die you know more with it because i think people want that they want the real experience you know they want the real-time experience so you know especially guys you know the folks that follow you in the powerlifting community and everything

else, they're like, Oh, let's see what Smokey's doing today. You know, and you can type it in and you can watch. Yeah. They want to see what they want to see what you're doing, what you're actually doing, how you're actually doing it, what you're eating. Yeah. They want that. You know, like you look in the fitness industry, guys that are already, you know, getting it, you look at like Michael Hearn. Michael Hearn does a good job giving you that insight that in-depth look he loves his dogs you know you see him around the house hanging out i mean in a way he's a reality tv show right now in itself he's got something like three instagram pages now and he's got you know his youtube and everything else i mean you can watch him and heath pretty much do everything together you know on those channels so

that's really cool i mean i think the guys that are getting it and are adapting faster are growing quicker. You know, Tony gives you some tremendous, Tony is almost all videos now at this point, go to his page, it's all video. So why is his page shot out of a Canon and doing so well? Right. You know what I mean? He's almost 90% video. He saw the value in video and went to it. Yeah. Video is huge. It's huge. What do you guys do with social media? So it's a great question. I'm actually exploring doing a podcast right now, but for the most part of social media departments, really what we've done in the firearms business, I think those of you got your guys that follow us will attest, you know, we don't do that stodgy media that we've seen in the past from certain

companies out there in the gun industry, the Smith and Wessons, other folks that have kind of, you know, become a little flat in their marketing. We try to do more upbeat, more exciting stuff, more range videos, more of the testing videos, which has all been the kind of behind the curtain stuff, you know, kind of peeking behind the curtain, which is always the next evolution of everybody's marketing, right? In the beginning, you see the clean printed package. Here's my slingshot. It's nice and clean. but we kind of evolved it into, we're going to show you us testing the firearms. We're going to show you the good, the bad, the ugly. We're going to show you behind the scenes. We're going to make our customer service person a star. We're going to

make our, like I tell everybody in my office, you can all be, you know, Falcor or social media stars if you want to be, we'll put you on there, you know, but if you don't want to be, that's cool too, right? We'll make you one. But we on there, you know, but if you don't want to be, that's cool too. Right. We'll make you one, but we try to, you know, constantly look at what other industries are doing. I love what you're doing here. You know, I think this stuff is really exciting. It's, it's cutting edge.

I think, uh, podcasts are a great way to go cause they live forever. Right. So I really like that. Uh, I definitely, you know, we're limited. I definitely want to explore, uh, anything outside of print. I'll take a look at, I want to get away from some of the more review-based stuff. I think a lot of that's become hokey and a little bit of Jedi mind trick. Like, hey, Mark, send me your slingshot.

I'll do a review for you. I kind of like, sometimes I'm like, hey, dude, I got real-world tactical on the payroll. You really think I need you to do a review for me? It gets into that place. So I would say we're moving away from some of that more review tne let me try your stuff and tell you what i think like cool but you guys try to be like persuasive in any way like just showing different kinds of people with guns just so uh people are associating it's associating it back to themselves rather than yeah you know like one particular type of guy or that's an excellent question actually um we're trying to get away

from some of the more like what you saw in firearms ads and stuff like that was like on the cover of your book there you have the guy in the fatigues and he's you know he's sexy yes it's sexy so he's clearly a military guy he's clearly you know has to have that rifle in his hand right and i think what scares the shit out of the general public and everything else is a lot of the gun companies are seeing kind of what we did at falco which is a lot of the t-shirt and jeans hey i got a gun and i'm wearing a t-shirt and jeans like whoa like no you're supposed to have a uniform on or you're supposed to have fatigues on you know we're kind of doing that disassociation thing and we have a lot of females obviously that shoot for us And we have a lot of females, obviously, that shoot for us. And we have a lot of, we have a female owner, Melinda Sanju.

So, you know, a lot of the ads and a lot of the marketing we're doing is to relate to the everyday person. Just making it less complicated. Less complicated. Just having the barrier of entry into it, just being like, all you gotta do is buy it. Yeah, but we're trying to relate to the guy going in the gun store That's going to have jeans and a t-shirt on, you know, and he's going to want to purchase a firearm and go to the range. And what's he going to wear to the range battle fatigues. No, he's going to wear jeans and a t-shirt, you know, he's going to have a good time. He's going to be comfortable. He's going to shoot some rounds. He's going to enjoy himself, but that's what we market towards. You

buy with your eyes, you know, you buy with your eyes. When were you first exposed to guns? So the first time I started shooting regular at a young age, obviously I, I had shot firearms in the, in the past, but I really didn't get headlong into, into shooting until I got to about college. So I was out in UMass and Amherst and I'm out in Western Mass and I had a couple of roommates that shot regularly and, and own guns. So I started shooting and I was like, ah, this is, this is fun. Like it's a good stress relie stress reliever you know like pj braun the owner of blackstone labs he says it's like his best stress reliever since he discovered it so you know it's a huge stress reliever for for folks so started shooting then and then uh joined clubs and would go to the range probably from 21

to about 25 i had done it fairly consistently almost every weekend, you know, I was on a range or doing something. So yeah, that was about my first exposure to it. And, uh, I started out shooting shotguns. Then I, you know, bought all the wrong stuff. Then you buy all the right stuff and you go through that gamut, you know, that exercise and started learning as I trained with more folks with the right things to buy and what made sense to buy. And that's always a debate. Were you pretty curious about like how they were made and stuff like that? Were you looking at them and maybe over a period of time you were like, I wish they did this to this one. I would start to pick them apart in my mind. I think we all do that. Some people build their own gun, right? Some people build their

own stuff. 80 percenters. A lot of folks uh uh like like that they call it the diy market the do-it-yourself market there's a lot of folks that like to do that stuff uh we don't necessarily cater that market but i love it myself i love tinkering and toying around i wish i was a better gunsmith i'm not i hire much better gunsmiths than myself but uh yeah i mean i I would look at firearms and I would look at different things and I'd be like, geez, this would be cool if this had this, or geez, this would be cool if this had that. And then I would go to ranges and I would use them and I would use them in an abusive

way that I felt that they would get used similar to some of the videos you saw when I was training and I would realize what worked and what didn't. And the term like ounces becomes, become pounds, becomes really real when you're out there in full gear and it's like 110 degrees and you're trying to run around and, you know, do all that stuff. That's what, uh, Jason Harrison was talking about on the podcast, the owner of Kuyu. He was, uh, you know, he was mentioning that

they had to make things lightweight and you have to do something similar with the guns. Oh yeah. Especially when you go on those back country hunts where Kuyu, Kuyu markets to that, you know, deep woods hunter that's going to go deep into, into a hunt. Be gone for several days.

Yeah. You know, and Branch does some of those. He can, he can talk about that. And I know Melinda at Falco has done some of those. They, uh, they really want to design fabrics and things that'll stand up to all weather conditions to everything else.

And anytime you're buying gear or anytime you're exploring buying gear, I think you can attest to this with your stuff. You want to make sure it's durable. You want to make sure it stands up to the mission and you want to have gear that's mission specific. So whether the mission is doing a bench press, you're going to have a set of stuff that suits that need it. Whether the mission is walking to the mall.

Like I, you know, Tony and I had this talk one time, we went on for like 20 minutes, like, where do you carry your gun when you go to the mall? Do you carry it at the appendix or do you carry a three o'clock, you know, and why? And like, where do you prefer? And sometimes we'll get into these debates and not know we're kind of geeking out for like 20 minutes about that stuff. And then I'm like, Whoa, you know, back to normal. What are you eating tonight? You know? But I think you, I think all that stuff starts to play into it when you start to hyperanalyze things. But, you know, I look at things as, especially in the firearms world as, well, what the first question they ask, people will say, well, I want to buy a gun.

They say, what should I buy? I say, buy the gun. You can shoot accurately and you can conceal the best. How about that? We start there. Well, the gun I shoot the most accurate, it's an AR-15. Well, that's not going to work because you can't conceal it. So what should I look at next? You know, and most of the time, that's why, you know, you see people that they always say Glock 19, you know, because it's the most concealable and most accurate gun that most people can fire. And it makes the most sense to buy from a cost-effective standpoint. But I think for the most part, you want to always analyze things based on what's the mission, what's in front of me. You know, do I have to, if I have to run at a certain time, if you say, John, we're going to go out there, we're going to train and I want to see you give me 50

reps, you know, okay, well I need my wrist wraps for that or what do I need? So it's always mission specific and anything. And Kuyu would be huge for that because their clothing is going to be based on where you're going, what you're hunting. Do you think everyone should own a gun? No, no. It just kind of depends on, you know, whether people are into it? No, no. It just kind of depends on, you know, whether people are into it or not, or. No, I think that there's certain folks, whether it's through mental disability or through, uh, uh, some type of, um, uh, what's the term I'm looking for? Uh, mental incapacitation.

I don't think that they should, I think everybody should have the right to and that right should that right should be determined based on mental health, number one. And I think number two, the ability to perform the basic functions, which would be passing a basic NRA test or passing any type of fundamental exam. Yeah, that's what's required by most states. But no, I do not think everybody should. What's some basic gun one-on-one, like how the hell do these things work? What's the technology behind them? So, uh, there's a bunch of different firearms out there, you know, for, for years, you know, uh, we, we were used to the Browning 1911 as a handgun. Then, you know, it evolved into polymer and what we call polymer as plastics and

plastics polymer so polymer would be like your glock and things like that and then obviously the big demon out there people call an assault rifle which is a a made-up term is the ar-15 and the r-15 platform the ar-15 is a gas gun um it's a it's a stoner design it you know has the ability to take a box magazine and and fire a projectile two two three five five six the most common then it goes up to 308 and then it goes six five creed more you see guys with 300 wind mag and the biggest thing debated in the gun industry or what's discussed like ad nauseum is like caliber you know you get on these forums you get in these places and people want to debate caliber all day well i carry a nine millimeter and a lot of the older guys like well i carry a 45 because stopping power so you get on these forums, you get in these places, and people want to debate caliber all day. Well, I carry a 9mm, and a lot of the older guys are like, well, I carry a.45 because stopping power. So you get into these caliber debates, and they're always fun.

And every time I get on my live, I think Smokey's seen it a few times. I'm like, I'm not getting into a caliber debate tonight. We're not doing calibers tonight because someone will chime in. You've got to come up with this or you've got to come up with that. But some of the basics of firearms, I think if you're buying a firearm for the first time, people always say don't consult the guy behind the counter. I would tend to agree with that. I would say first go and shoot a bunch of guns. You know, go to the range, find a friend.

Everybody has a friend that is into it. Go shoot a bunch of guns, see what you enjoy, see what you like, and then decide what you're going to be. Are you going to conceal carry? Or are you going to be someone who's a hunter? Are you going to be someone that's going to, you know, just be kind of someone who goes to the range, you know, is like a range guy. For all those people, I think the application usage, what you're going to buy is going to be different. You know, the application use is going to dictate what you're going to buy. So I would say first start there and then have a budget. I mean,

you can spend a lot of money. I know any of you guys that own firearms in here and Smokey can attest to, you can spend a lot of money real quick, real fast on firearms. So I would say come up with a budget that makes sense. And then, um, you know, kind of after you get your head around what it is you want, don't be afraid to be wrong. Right. And go back to the drawing board and, and find something else. But I would say grip and i would say um you know how you hold the gun and how you conceal it especially if you're going to conceal carry so you're going to be most important getting your getting a good positive grip on the firearm and then how you're going to conceal it and uh and get into the range and getting rounds down range because the only way to get better at anything whether it's lifting weights or shooting is reps gotta get reps you gotta Gotta get the reps. So, you know, go take a course. There's a lot of

good instructors out there. You gotta start somewhere. That's kind of how I started. You know, I would go and I would sit through like a training or I would sit through, you know, like a concealed carry course and I would kind of absorb what the guy was telling me. And you start out local and then you find like the really good shooter at the club. Just like you find the really good lifter at the gym and then you kind of attach yourself to his hip for a little while you learn from him and then it goes upstream a little bit you know what i mean uh there's a lot better shooters out there than i will ever be there's a lot better pros out there than i will ever be there's a lot better tacticians than i'll ever be

but i like to say i'm a student of of a of the games. You know, I kind of studied them all a little bit and I know a lot of the players involved in it. And I kind of made my selections and my personal choices based off of that. And I think that's what anybody should do is kind of figure out what you like, figure out what you can conceal, figure out what you enjoy shooting

and back into it from there. Are there guns just everywhere where you work? Oh yeah. I mean, yeah, of course. All over, you know, you walk around Falcor and, you know, we're always testing stuff. We're always looking at stuff. We're always, you know, kind of staring at things like, I like that or that way this looks or I don't like this. So we have stuff laid out almost every day.

Kind of like you guys do here. It's another tool. It's another part of the job. And we're constantly analyzing what we like, what we don't like on something. Even though it's common, you guys probably still get super excited. Oh, super. Yeah. I mean, new, right? You're probably like, Oh yeah. And we're looking at other companies stuff. So we're always bringing in other companies. So that's one thing since I've been at Falco, we've done a ton of is bring in other companies stuff. I have no problem, you know, making sure that we have the best SIG has

to offer or Smith and Wesson or Colt or whoever else. And we'll, we'll bring it into the office and we'll try it out ourselves. And I'll be like, geez, I really like what they did. Yeah. Why not? Someone else is executing well on it. It's not a shameful to admit it. Yeah.

I mean, I, and if they're doing it wrong, we want to make sure, you know, we don't do the same thing. I mean, I have my opinions about a lot of companies about a lot of the ways they do things, but, uh, I always like to think we're doing it the best because we're getting to the range a lot more and similar to in here you know you guys have a gym right in the facility so you can go right out there and get right to the the testing and evaluation process and that's the same for me i mean we get to the range constantly we try to get to the range even more than we do uh but our guys shoot all the time i mean where does this all start like, somebody like draw a picture of it or

like, you know, is how, how does it, how does it start? Like the, from start to finish. So. What does it look like when you make a gun? It's a great question. Seems confusing. It can be.

So we're working on something right now without getting too into it. You know what I mean? Without staying, you know. Giving away your. Giving away some of the secret sauce of what we're working on. We're working on something right now that literally we've, we've started from the ground

up. So you start with kind of like, what are we missing in our SKUs or what do we, what do we feel like we could have, or we could really rock with? And what is the industry demanding? You know, that's kind of the process with, I think anything, right, Mark. So you think you look at what is the industry asking us for? thing right mark so you think you look at what is the industry asking us for and we i'm trying not to say we're working on something that's that's the industry's been demanding for a long time and we've seen the rise of what we call like pistol caliber carbines and smaller range pistols

like the sig mpx like the mp5 that you know the diehard gun you know all that stuff so we kind of wanted to develop something that we felt we could stand by and that made a lot of sense and we literally just started with a caliber so we said here's what we want to do and then from that we started talking about size and weight and how big we want it and where we wanted the hand guard then we start to slowly chip away at what makes sense to kind of add to it. And, well, somebody might want to put a rail here, or somebody might want to put a light there, and we have to start to think about those things,

and then where are we going to put the stock. And you kind of, a lot of times you end up designing rifles and stuff around the magazines, what magazines you have available. So if you're going to design a.223 or a.556, you're going to design it on the AR-15 platform. Why? Because of the acceptance of the magazine associated with it. So a lot of people who have done pistol caliber carbines or 9mm design them around the Glock magazine. You see that big stick mag shoved into it. So I think you start with kind of the

caliber and the direction you want to go in and what you feel you're missing. If you have tons of pistols you're going to design a rifle. If you have tons of rifles you may design a pistol. So we looked at what we were missing and what made sense and then it goes to machining. You know you take the print and you do the CAD, you do the design and you go to machining and then you design a bolt which is the trickier, you know one of the trickier parts. You have to design a bolt and then you have to fix it with a barrel. See the barrel's already available so the companies make the barrels. What's kind of the most expensive process in the whole thing r&d no question r&d because you're gonna make a hundred mistakes i don't care who you are you've made them i mean you're gonna

scrap a bunch of things just like you probably have a scrap pile a mile long absolutely so scrap is probably the biggest thing good thing about scrap in the firearms business is it's metal and that has a redeeming quality because you can make a little money back off some of your scrap. But, uh, yeah, I would say R and D would be without question. Yeah. How long does it take to make a gun from kind of start to finish when you're making a new product? I, I, I would say if you're, if you've done it in under six months, you probably broke every record. Yeah. I would say six to eight months would be a fair assessment to get it to testing. Right.

And then when you get it to testing from there, if you feel like you have something like everybody looks around the room and it's not going full auto, it's not banging, it's not, um, you know, it's not malfunctioning and you have something that works, then you go to mass production. And then from there it could take you another two or three months, but anything under a year is

a total home run. You may tease it similar. Our show structure is similar to yours. You may tease something at SHOT Show and then, you know, you may have it by the following year. Do you guys share like, obviously you're not going to share like all the technology,

but do you guys like on your website or on YouTube, you guys have like, you show machine, do you show the guns coming off the machines or anything like that? A little bit of stuff like that. Once we get to a final and, and it's, there's patents and trademarks involved and there's all kinds of people crying patent thief and crying trademark that you go through.

I mean, I'm the owner's always, you know, everybody's always crying about lawyers, uh, of course, cause they cost a fortune. And then, uh, you know, once you patent everything and you have everything down or you have the trademarks and everything, even trademarking the name on the guns becomes a thing. Cause you don't want to tease too much and give the name away. Cause then, you know, someone's going to go out there and trademark the name before you do. And then it becomes a whole asshole thing, but you have to, you have to be very careful about that. But we do show a lot of stuff coming off the machines, showing the process. And we want people to see our stuff is made in Montana.

It's made in the USA. It's manufactured right, you know, in the, in the, in the great state of Montana, right there on the floor. We want to tell that story. That's really important to us that everything is made in the USA. What's been the biggest change moving from Boston to Montana? People. Yeah. No question.

Obviously being from the East coast, we move fast. You know, um, we like to get things done. We like to get through our day. We like, you know, there's a little more skipping our step. There's a little more hustle. There is something to be said about the laid back West coast lifestyle. I mean, it's almost like you, uh, just kind of have anxiety, you know, being from the East coast. Cause you know, there's gonna be like traffic and you know, like you just know it's going to be like,

you just feel like you have to go out and like get a bunch of shit done. Yes. Always. It's not that same urgency. Yeah. In Montana, you know, I have like a Walmart and I have like a target, you know? So, but I do get my, like I said,

I get my dose back a little bit when I go down to Boca and I go to Blackstone, at least I'm near Miami and I'll go down Miami or I go back home. So I get my dose, but but yeah definitely the people definitely i've had a hard time adjusting to the people because everybody's just kind of like a little bit slower a little bit more you know and i'm kind of like come on like we gotta get this done have a sense of urgency how long you've been living there for now now i'm there six seven seven months okay you've been there for a little bit what's your training like?

So. Are you bodybuilding? Are you powerlifting? You mentioned powerlifting earlier. I know you trained with Branch and stuff. Yeah. I hate the term power bodybuilding. I don't know how you feel about it.

Yeah. I hear it all the time. I hear it all the time. I think it's like one of those weird. Well, it's a little weird. Yeah. Because like anyone who's ever powerlifted, that's what powerlifting is.

You powerlift with the main movement and then you always, I mean, forever, like I've been in power lifting for almost 30 years and, uh, we always did bodybuilding after our main movement. So it's, it's always been, you know, it's always, it's always been that way. Yeah.

I, I, there's something about the term just feels icky to me, but I, I, I like, I like to think my training is a little bit of hybrid training where I'm doing my core movements. I'm doing my bodybuilding stuff, and then I'll get into some, some of the, the more, uh, uh, fitness or what I call like, uh, hit training, you know, I'll do some of the high intensity athlete type stuff. So I'll get out there and I always make sure cardio is a big part of part of my day. It has to be because if I'm going to go down and train with Tony and train with these guys, I have to be able to move. If I can't move, I'm, I'm dead for lack of better

words. What, uh, what kind of car do you mix up your cardio or is it just like you're on a step mill or something? So I did the step mill for a long time. That was kind of my go-to now I kind of go outside my building and I've been doing sprints. I've been doing a lot of that stuff. So, uh, I live in like a community. So like, I'll go out there and have a side street and I'll do like my 10, 20 sprints in the morning, you you know that's a stay like a certain body fat percentage or is it it's more it's more so to keep my quicks that's the term i like i keep my quickness keep my first i gotta have that first step especially when i go to the range and you're doing a lot of those you know dynamic type movements where you might have to move with the gun or draw or pull up a rifle

i have to have like a little bit of my quickness uh Uh, I'll do a little bit of, uh, uh, like lunging. It's actually a really, uh, very intuitive because, uh, people that are quick, people that are fast, uh, tend to live a long life because if you're quick and you're fast, it usually means you're healthy. Yeah. When I played sports, I got up to, I ballooned up to about 250 pounds, 260 pounds. I was getting fat. You know, I was getting, you know, I carried all that weight. As I've gotten older, and I think you probably can attest to this, I felt carrying the weight was a detriment.

Right. I wanted to lose, trim back some of the weight. And that doesn't mean I have to be ripped to be, you know, a bodybuilder. But then, you know, when I started doing more in fitness and PJ called me and I started doing the Blackstone thing and the Sinister Labs thing. I, they, they were kind of like this one catch, you know, you got to get in shape. So, you know, I kind of had to start to, you're like, what? I was like, you know, so I had to shred it. I had to find my abs and I had to find my, my stomach and I had to find, you know, the things that work. So I got a lot of good advice from branch, you know, and from those guys and his guy, sister, you know, and Tony and everything else and kind of refined my training

and got a little bit of both. So found my training a little bit, my supplementation and, uh, you know, I kind of was like, okay, I got this kind of dialed in. It kind of makes sense, but the pop tarts are over here. So I need, you know, so I kind of had ditching the sweets was the hardest part though.

I mean, I was, I was a sweet junkie. I like my snacks. Do you cheat now? I've been known to dabble with the occasional ice cream or anything else. I keep in my freezer the, uh, M&M ice cream deals. So I can swear by that. I still do like to have like, there's nothing better than like a toasted muffin in the morning or something, you know, and just little things like I miss.

Right. For my fat days. Uh, Sundays are still a little bit for pizza. I feel like you have to have, I know you do the big no carbs thing. I don't know how much of a, uh, diehard or you are about the no carbs, but I do my best. Yeah. I do a good job. I think I like to think I do it better than most.

I mean, I'll go two weeks hardcore where the carbs are just like oatmeal, a few things. And I think that if, if people, if people could make it that long, um, I think that most people would be in shape. I think that, uh, you know, uh, anywhere between a 10 and 12 day window of, of eating, uh, really well, whatever that means for you, like it might mean something different. Like I don't have anything against carbs.

I think that, um, for, uh, being functional and for being strong in the gym and for performance that carbohydrates are, uh, 100% needed. I've always had a hard time keeping them in there because I tend to want to overeat them. Yeah. I think we've all been asked at one time in this room, you know, what, how do I eat healthy by somebody? And my answer is always simple. I said, eating healthy is like a budget. If target doesn't sell it, don't buy it, you know, always simple. I said, eating healthy is like a budget. If Target doesn't sell it, don't buy it, you know, eat light white meats, you know what I mean? Clean. And if the liquid, you can't see through it, it's probably not good for you. You know, if it's not clear, but light white meats,

clear liquids. And I always say just rice or what carbs should I have? Rice and oatmeal, rice and oatmeal. You know, that's a template for almost anybody. Yeah. You know what I mean? If you start with that template, I think you'll be okay. You know, if you're talking about getting on stage, that's different. You know, that's totally different stuff. You know, I'm not talking about getting on stage. I'm not talking about competing. I'm talking about a basic fundamental day-to-day template. Now you can get into the whole debate of potatoes versus rice and everything else and how much fat and all that, you know, bullshit. But it's, it's really just a matter of if you're 300 pounds and you know, you need to lose 200, start there and back into it from there. And then I think you'll

get to a point where eventually you'll be able to refine it a little bit more. But for me, it was really a struggle giving up the sweets and things like that. But as I did, and I got the supplementation down and I knew what to be taken, when to be taken it less is more and all that stuff. I really was dialed in andy galpin mentioned something on the podcast i thought was really funny because he's one of the smarter people we've ever had on the show he said if you stare at somebody long enough they'll know about nutrition so if somebody was like hey you know you know every night i have a cup just a couple slices of pizza is that okay and he said i just i just fucking stare at them and they'll come up with the right answer and

it's kind of it's kind of funny because I think, you know, what you're saying is that, uh, at this point we should know, we should have it. We should have a decent idea of the things that are harming us and the things that are, uh, the things that are good for us. And when it comes to, uh, the drinks that you have, I mean, we, we already know that you shouldn't be having drinking soda multiple times a day. Can you drink it and can you be fine? Sure, you can, but you can't abuse it. Yeah.

You got to really pay attention to what you're putting into your body. I think especially if you're going to be doing any type of high intensity training, anything that's going to involve elements, heat, anything else you're going to be sweating, putting your body through the paces, anything you're going to be doing, I think you really have to be aware, especially now with us too, we travel so much. Like that's one thing Branch, Tony, myself, we're always talking about, like we travel so much, we're on the road so much, you have to really be aware of what you put in your body. Even when you go to dinner, you can make smart

choices when you're out. You can get a steak, you can get a piece of chicken. Does it have to be prepared dry with no butter, no nothing? I mean, I'm not stepping on stage tomorrow, so the answer, my short answer to that is no, but I think you should be making, like you said, smart choices. You know, don't look at the menu and order the blooming onion and, you know, four potatoes and a side of fries.

I mean, chances are that's not going to be healthy for you and it's not going to work out. Right. If you can even get something that represents a seven out of 10 in terms of your performance with your diet. I mean, that's normally that's good enough. I mean, if you have some sort of metabolic problems, you may have to train hard. And I think we all can attest this. If you train really hard and by hard, I mean,

I have to train on a branch. I know what hard training is. If you train hard and you put your body through the paces and you like, you know, I'm not saying you need to go do a Tony workout or a branch workout, but if you're leaving there and you're sweaty and you need to change your shirt, that's my definition of training hard. You know, you need to change your clothes and you need to take a shower. You train hard. If you train hard and you burn the calories and you put the time in,

can you get away with a seven out of 10 or even a six out of 10? Of course you can. Cause you'll make up those other two points through the hard training. Now, if you're training at a two, okay. If you're training at a two and you're not leaving there sweaty and you know, you're, you know, you got your makeup on still and you leave pristine, you better go, you better, you better be your diet better be at a 20. Yeah. I mean, it better be chicken and rice measured at that point. You know what I mean? Because you can get away with it.

I've trained with a lot of pros that I walk away and I'm like, that dude's a pussy. I'm like, holy shit. I thought I was, you know, I suck. Yeah. And like, you know, Branch or somebody would just look at me and be like, yeah, I know. They suck. You know, whatever. But like, yeah, you know, you see it.

I've seen it, you know, and I'm sure you've seen it. I don't have to tell you. I mean, you walk away and you're like, that guy was weak as shit, you know. Right. But they diet well. They get other things well. Right. You know, they do the other things right.

And you can get it. That goes for anything. I mean, that goes for the gym. That goes for the range. There are guys who take really good shots. And then there are guys, the minute their heart starts beating and they start running around, they can't do it. What's up with your love of Coke Zero?

I do have a love of, I knew that I was going to bring that up above my ass. I was going to do some CYA, but I do have a secret love of Coke Zero. So I justify it by saying the bubbles get my belly nice and full. If that, if that works, I don't know if that'll work, but, uh.

That's beyond bro science. Yeah. Bro science. I don't drink seltzer water and I don't drink a lot of, uh. They've like changed the name of Coke Zero. It's like Coke Zero Sugar or something, right? Yeah. Like, I don't know that people were confused by it or something weird.

I don't know, but I did have some. It does taste good. I, yeah. I haven't had it yet. I, the first Coke Zero I had actually was down in. Tastes almost just like regular Coke. It was down at Icon. Not far off. Is this a commercial? No. No, no, no. No, of course not. The first Coke Zero I had actually was down in. Tastes almost just like regular Coke. It was down at Icon Meals.

Not far off. Is this a commercial? No. No, no, no. No, of course not. The first Coke Zero, of course. Wait, are they paying? What?

The first Coke Zero I had was down at Icon Meals. It was down there and they had a few on the table and I had one and I was like, oh, this is good. You know, I'm like, there's nothing in this. And I think Brian Shaw was down there, you know, whatever he's eating in the corner. And I'm like, ah, this is good.

When I get another one, I think Brian was like, no, leave, you know, but I'm like, no, really good.

And I was like, I got home and I had to find these things. So yeah, every, make Sprite that way too. Don't get me started, but I think, you know,

every conference room I'm in now, I make sure it's stocked with Coke Zero. So I can have something that'll fill me up. So if I get the urge to reach for like a cookie or a brownie, so you talk about making smart choices, and I know I'm going to go that far because my brain's going there and I need it, I'm going to have a Coke Zero instead

because it'll fill me up. Yeah, it was your buddy Sam Cummins, he tipped me off to Coke Zero. Sam knows because he's in my office. Yeah, he's saying that everyone back in the shop is watching and listening along right now. Well, I'm glad everyone back in the Falcor shop. Shouldn't they be fucking working? Jesus Christ.

Back to work. I want to say hi to everyone in the shop, though. Sam, Jen, Jacob, who I know is sick, and Casey. And I know Derek is probably out of the office, probably homeworking. And Michelle, Melinda, and Jason. It's important to have a good team, huh? Oh yeah. I mean, definitely important to have a good team.

You have to have a team that's engaged constantly and they all are and they're excellent. Makes it fun to get to go to work. Oh, I love it. You look forward to it every day, right? I want to hang out with them all day, but I can't, you know, it's a, you know, I love my team. I think we have- You can't let your guard down too much.

You can't let your guard down too much. You know, they're a great crew, you know, similar similar to here they have a lot of fun they get to enjoy themselves as long as the work gets done that's always the most important thing but they'll tell you i repeat myself seven times a day like i always say because i have to get the point across them because they want to grab the nerf guns they want to run around the office just like you get a little lottery set up back there and everything else so yeah but they're a great crew oh that's really cool yeah it is important to have a good, uh, a good crew around you. Um, when it comes to, uh, you know, like, um, you know, like artificial sweeteners and

stuff like that, you hear people makes it a big deal about it for some reason in the bodybuilding, uh, world, uh, guys don't seem to care about it as much. I think maybe just because their overall health is probably headed in the right direction because they eat so well and they just have a lifestyle. Right. But are they healthy? I don't know. Yeah.

I think, I think that starts to stem into the debate of like, you know, um, lesser of two evils, you know what I mean? And that's kind of what I was getting at with the Coke Zero. You know, I think that's, that's where that's going. Uh, I've been known to have a splendor in my coffee every now and then. Do I still have a little cream in my, in my, my coffee? Absolutely. I do have a little, little sweetener. I just think that things matter less when you're, when you're healthier. I even think that, uh, body fat, I think is a sign is a sign of, of poor health. Like when you have excess body fat. Yeah. I think as you get older, carrying it becomes a detriment, you know, when, when you're

younger, can you get away with it a little bit? Absolutely. I mean, I think, you know, it was that your brother joked, it was just a fat kid from Poughkeepsie, you know, I think you can get away with it a little bit when you're younger and you still have that quick first step, or you have that ability to still go in the gym and rip weights and you have your wind, you know, but I think as you get older, 25 turns into 35 turns into 45 carrying any extra weight, it's going to become a real problem. And I think as you get older, 25 turns into 35, turns into 45, carrying any extra weight is going to become a real problem. And I think it's going to become a detriment. I mean, it'll make, I no doubt, I feel younger. I mean, what am I, 37?

And I feel like I'm a lot younger because I took the time to train and to eat right over the years and take care of my body. I run into friends from high school. I run into friends I haven't seen in 20 years and they, they look like shit. I mean. They look like shit and they're in tons of pain too all the time. It's amazing. They're like, oh, I've had a back surgery and

I had this and I had that. And you're like, from what? Yeah. And they're not even training. And I'm working out. And I'm out there running around on ranges, getting run over, getting kicked by Tony, getting thrown in a, you know, in a cage by

branch, you know? So I'm like, I'm saying to myself, you know, geez, you know, what am I crying about? You know? But yeah, I think, I think if you stay healthy, you take care of your body, you take care of your diet and you, you walk that line and I don't buy into the bullshit that people like, oh, it's easier for you. And I'm sure you get that. It's easier for you.

Why is it easier for me? You know, why is it easier? I still have to get into the gym for the same amount of time that's necessary. I still have to prepare my food just like everybody else. Well, you have someone who sends you meals. Well, yeah, I have Icon meals that get sent to my house, but at the same time, I still have to,

you know, prepare me. I, 20 years I prepared meals. I didn't always have that. Right. You know, I'm traveling the country. I was living in my car practically. You also, you also earned it. You know, nothing's really actually free.

Yeah. You know, people would be like, ah, free food. You know, it's really actually free. Yeah. You know, people would be like, oh, free food. You know, it's like not really, it's not really free. It's like I've trained for 20 years and then somebody sent me some free fucking meals here and there.

Oh, you get a box of cookies and the haters come out. Forget it. So, you know, it's like. How about that Icon popcorn? It's unbelievable. Dude, what's up? Todd Abrams is an asshole.

Why'd he make that? Todd is a genius at finding, I said. I hate him. He's up? Todd Abrams is an asshole. Why'd he make that? Todd, Todd is a, is a genius at finding. I said. I hate him. He's thrown me off my diet so many times. What? Fucking popcorn. So one of the, one of the endearing terms in the business industry of success is, is

you produced, you know, popcorn in a movie theater. So like, you know, like you did for gym stuff. It's like popcorn in a movie theater. He actually made popcorn, you know, that's perfect. You know, so the markup on popcorn, in case anybody doesn't know, is like 11,000%. Oh my God. Nobody cry for Todd.

Poor guy. Popcorn. Popcorn is a weird, I've always felt popcorn is a weird overrated thing until I had his popcorn. It's awesome. Cause popcorn is just like a transport system of butter and salt. I could sit there with a spoon and have butter

and have the same enjoyment. I've never heard it put that way. That's all it is. I mean, you know, I'm going to write that down. I've heard that said also about salad, you know, salad, just a transport system for unhealthy shit. Cause people put a ranch dressing and a bunch of other weird shit on it.

Yeah. But I, yeah, that's a great product. And he changes the flavors all the time, you know, and you go down there, he knows what he has. You go down there, he pours it in giant bowls. He's like, yeah, have a party. You know, and I'll see those guys. But he's lean as shit. I think he's just trying to throw everybody off their game.

Well, he was just training with O'Hearn. So he probably trained for like six weeks before he went out to train with Mike. Cause Mike's like, oh, you're 6% body fat. That's three too many. Yeah. You know, in good shape. You know, you look at guys like Mike and Mike gives, you know, we're talking about transformations and bodies and diet.

Mike has like one of the, one of the worst before and after photos in history because he's always been in such good shape and he's like 50. So he gives me, I look at guys like him and he gives me hope for the next 10 or 15 years that I can actually stay in shape. Yeah. What was he like? Maybe at like 15, he was super jacked, right? Yeah.

Yeah. I think for a little while he did have a little bit of a powerlifting thing going on where he was a little bit thicker, but he was never fat. Yeah. He was a little lost, but you know, in the powerlifting mix, but I think that was part of that early nineties powerlifting craze and it died again. Yeah. And you know, you kind of resurrected a little bit more.

He probably saw the, uh, barbarian brothers in Gold's gym. Yeah, exactly. He probably saw the, uh, Barbarian Brothers in Gold's Gym. Yeah, exactly. And probably wanted to, uh, lift more weight. That, that early nineties, but the popcorn. Yeah. I mean, cause you know, I mentioned Mike, he's, he's a part of that Icon family with me, Brian,

a few of us, but yeah, he, that stuff is awesome. If you get a chance, you ever get a chance to get a bucket of it delivered to your house. That's amazing. What's your favorite movie? Oh man, that's a loaded question. My favorite movie of all time? I would say a movie I could watch over and over again and laugh,

Big Trouble in Little China. And I'm sure the boys back in the shop are laughing because, well, you have to understand, Falcor's theme is dragons and things like that. It has that Eastern influence. So we always joke that we're going to dress somebody up like lopin at one of the shows or something like that so big trouble little china is a huge you know cult movie in case anyone hasn't seen it but i'm i'm a huge fan of like stupid bad 80s movies that you know you like airplane and uh oh god naked gun and shit absolutely i love that all that stuff i could talk about them all day, you know, back to the future, all the hokey lines.

You know what? I actually, I actually think I've seen back to the future probably. And I would say I've probably seen it like a hundred times. Not even intentionally. Yeah. If it's on, you'll just leave it on. It has to, it has to stay on. If I was to pick like a kind of quasi action legitimate movie that I would say is my favorite, I would have to say Die Hard.

Yeah. Die Hard's great. I'm a huge John McClane fan in my opinion. I actually think that, I think that Back to the Future might be the greatest movie of all time. I really do. It could be. It's, it's just so clever and like fun and like it's, it's family oriented. It's a fucking cool movie.

I always love that part when he's like the Libyyans, they found me. And they chase after him. But yeah, Back to the Future is absolutely excellent. And I even like starting to dig into who was originally cast in the movie and who wasn't cast in it. Isn't that shit kind of funny? It's so funny. Yeah, I heard with Rocky, there's this story of Apollo came in and Carl Weathers, he did a reading and uh he was like hey i you know apologize i i think i would do a lot better job if you know if you guys actually had rocky here and uh the guy's like that's him that's sylvester stallone he wrote it he wants to be in it too and

he was like oh whoops yeah he just thought stallone was was so bad and they uh cast like uh hurt burt reynolds yeah you know what i mean like imagine burt reynolds being rocky like that would just fuck everything out it was yeah there's another one that a huge one was that tom selleck was supposed to be indiana jones yeah that was like the big one you know he turned that down to do magnum pi or something that was you know one of the biggest ones like oh god you know bad decision so yeah it's crazy to think about. The Back to the Future, the one where they go back to the Western days. Oh, that's the third one.

It all goes downhill after this. Things started to go. Just making sure. When you said it was the greatest, I didn't know if you meant all three or just the first one. No, just the first one. And that Hill Valley set was like, they say, they call it Spielberg's universe. That's where Gremlins was filmed. If you attention like that's where like a lot of other movies were filmed so you start to go into that et spielberg universe i've actually been right where that

clock tower is because my brother filmed the movie there a long time ago and there was nobody on the lot and i could just hang out i fucking climbed up there and shit and it was save the clock tower yeah take a picture save picture. Save the clock tower. Yeah. That was. Yeah. I love. So I, I do love movies though.

I watch, I go to the movies a lot. So I'll always watch movies and, uh, you know. Honey, uh, Romba, he mentioned, uh, he loves going to the movies. It's a good stress relief for him. So he just, you know, puts his phone away and just chills. Honey's a gun guy. Yeah. There you go.

He's a big gun guy. I know he's into cars. Cause he talked about that quite a bit when he was, uh, on, on the show. Yeah. Honey's a gun guy. Yeah, there you go. He's a big gun guy. I know he's into cars because he talked about that quite a bit when he was on the show. Yeah, Honey's a gun guy. And yeah, movies are definitely a good release and I love going. I'll go to a bunch of friends. I don't like to go by myself. I think it gets a little depressing at that point.

I threaten to go by myself all the time, but I never end up there. I think it gets a little. People always come with me. I'm not with the ones that are like a restaurant. I don't know if you can wrap your head around those. Oh yeah.

Yeah. Like you can sit and you can have like a full meal and watch a movie. Deliver shit to you and stuff. I don't know how I feel about that just yet. I'm not, I'm not ready for that kind of party. Just, you know. What about Deadpool?

Do you get to see Deadpool too? The Deadpool one comes up a lot and I know where we're going. We're going to end up at John Wick, but the Deadpool one comes up a lot and I'm not into it going. We're going to end up at John Wick, but the Deadpool one comes up a lot and I'm not into it. I just can't wrap my head around Ryan Reynolds. I can't, I'm sorry. He's pretty jacked. He's in pretty good shape. I just, it's too annoying for me. You can't handle it. I cannot get my head around it, you know, and I guess. I liked it a lot.

I liked the second one a lot. I just saw it, uh, well, I saw it twice. I think it's funny, you know but the the best interpretation of firearms and firearms manipulation you know you watch movies like heat are good and like like i i watch too much deadpool stuff and i'm like all right he lost me at like flipping upside down and like shooting a gun and like all that stuff right but like uh i i enjoy obviously the john wick movies because keanu took a lot of time in his training and it was it was a big deal to him to get it right. So that's always been...

The first John Wick movie was a huge... Everybody in the gun industry was like, yeah, finally one movie that got it right. You know what I mean? And then the second one was a little over the top where everybody's an assassin and kills everybody with his finger. It gets a little ridiculous. I'm sure by the third one, it'll be a little over the top. Do you like any of the superhero movies?

I really liked the idea of an ensemble cast, the Avengers, and putting that together. Because I honestly, I watch it more like, geez, it's cool to see all these different actors come together and how they gel on the screen. I'm enjoying some of those movies, the Avengers movies. But sooner or later, they all get hokey-mocked. Like by the third one Or fourth one It's like okay It's a little too much

But yeah I mean I definitely enjoy Some of the Avengers movies I did enjoy the Wolverines I thought those were Really good I was a big fan of them And I thought Hugh Jackman

Did an awesome job And especially the last one Was really dark And I liked that dark stuff Yeah that was sick And the Batman ones Were pretty good The last three

Yeah What about Guardians of the Galaxy? Funny galaxy funny yeah reminiscent of the 80s you know kind of brings me back into that uh he's got the tape the tape player yeah brings me into that 80s mindset it'd be interesting to see where they go with the next one i know they're coming over to guardians of the galaxy 3 i believe volume 3 i agree with you though yeah they do uh they do fall off like i like i always like when it's not really revealed that the guy's a superhero yet or like the making of the superhero i like that part and that the development of the character that part of the story is so much better than when it actually turns you know and i'm sure like like smokey would agree with this like i could

spend three movies watching how batman trained for the league of shadows keep there. I would rather stay there and see the development because giving that like one little 20 minute segment in the movie gave it no justice. I'm like, I really want to see when he dropped out of, you know, Bruce Wayne drops out of Stanford, goes to the league of shadows trains and he becomes Batman. Keep me there for three movies.

You know, the Joker was excellent, but keep me there. But everybody follows that similar arc in movies now where they come out with their Star Wars, then they come out with their Empire Strikes Back. Then you lose me at the Ewoks. You lose me at the Ewoks. You just get lazy and you chop a Wookiee in half

and now you have an Ewok. Harry Potter was pretty good. And Harry Potter, I mean, but that was a book, so it's a little different, but Harry Potter was pretty fucking, I like Harry Potter a lot. Harry Potter, Harry Potter is interesting. What are there, seven of them or eight of them or something? Yeah.

I have no idea. A shit ton of them. I think that like you can watch one and really get into it and get engaged as an adult. But as you get older, you're kind of. It's a little nerdy. As the episodes went on, they didn't know if there was some confusion as to who they were trying to appeal to. They didn't know if they were trying to appeal to the young crowd or the older crowd in some of them. And I was kind of like, make an effing choice choice make a fucking choice and go with it and stay there because

either like try to appeal to me it's kind of like i really like to what's the cartoon one with the superheroes the family there are superheroes uh uh incredibles incredibles i really like the incredibles is awesome and i'm saying to myself geez this is is this for me or is this for kids but i i accepted that it was for me and I really enjoyed it when it stayed there. When they start to, you know, either become for just the kids, make a choice. There's eight Harry Potters. How good is Megamind? That's one of my favorites. You know, it's my favorite scene. One of my favorite scenes in any, in any film, and it's in the Incredibles is the training montage

where he's like trying to make a comeback and he's getting all jacked. He's getting in great shape. And then he pulls up to that thing and a lady could see his face through like the surveillance camera. And she looks and she looks, she takes her glasses down and she looks closer and she goes, oh my God, you've gotten fat.

I love that. It's like, he's training, he's all pumped up. He's so excited about himself. And, you know, he goes to get fitted for his suit and the, right when she sees his face, she's like, oh my God, you've gotten fat. I love that little training lady. I love her.

The one that designs the suits and everything. She's just, she's a riot. I think they're coming out with another one. Yeah. The trailer was just out and I watched the trailer. Like I was like, ah, give me more. You know, I was like, I was at the movies

recently and I was like, that looks so badass. My son was like, how old is that movie? He's like, I remember us watching it together. I think he's like, I think we went to the movie theater together. I'm like, I don't know if that's possible. I think the movie's like 15 years old. I think it might be like eight years or so between the first one and now. There's got to be some time gap.

The movies are a great release. Anytime you do high intensity training or you're on the range or anything else. Tony loves movies. One thing you guys might not know, he's a movie junkie. Every new movie, he's seen it already. 2004. A really good movie.

If you haven't seen it, Margot, you get a chance to- Long ass time. If you get a chance to go see it, it was The New Death Wish with Bruce Willis. I haven't seen it. Yeah, really good. Very well done.

I walked away like, like damn i hope they do another one i like the equalizers with denzel you ever get hired for any movies like to you know sometimes they need a gun guy there yeah uh i don't do this there are i'm friends with some of the guys that run some of the prop studios and some of the technical advisors so there's groups out there uh that you can actually have on set that'll consult and a lot of them are based out of la uh i know with the growth of movies in Boston and on the East coast, there's a couple of sets and prop stuff.

I have done a small, a couple of small movies for a buddy of mine as an extra stand in stuff. Um, one was an Australian rules football based movie, which wasn't really a stretch for me to put pads on and run around in the background. But, uh, yeah, I've done some of that stuff, but, uh, never anything with, with firearms. A lot of them go through, um, I've done some of that stuff, but never anything with firearms. A lot of them go through...

Like an agency. Like an agency. Yeah. That's the way it works. We've given firearms, and we've donated stuff to those agencies. So, like, one of the things, like, I thought would have been a really good fit for us,

and we made a little bit of a law before, was to get our firearms in Avatar, the new Avatar that's coming out. It didn't really pan out, so I can talk about it a little bit, because I thought like hey you know pass me my falcor would have made sense in that movie like that was the appeal like you know what i mean because it was a futuristic movie and our name sounds a little futuristic i thought it fit in and our guns would have fit in but um you know the the it just didn't work out right right of it yeah they don't

do uh advertising like that like they used to in the movies, like, you know, especially like early and mid eighties, it would just be like a big, like there would literally be a banner in the background sometimes. There was like, there was like,

there was like kayfabe in movies. It was like, it was like, it was there, but no one talked about it. Now kayfabe's gone and it's like, everything's very open and discussed and you don't see it like the way it used to be those

blatant ads. It's more comes up or it's in passing. see it still in pro wrestling term yeah it is so you see it still in uh in sitcoms and in tv shows right yeah you still yeah you still see the kind of blatant because we we get solicited a lot by movie prop houses a lot and you can pay like a vig almost to be in the movies this group's like the leviathan group and stuff like that that you can hire and they'll bring you props they'll bring all the guns you want what about tv shows so so one of the most notable ones recently is the punisher so everybody's been lobbying to get their firearms in the punisher uh recently a company called

seacans precision had their firearms in the punisher movie. We looked at a lot of that. I haven't seen it as a huge benefit. Just fun. It's just fun. Yeah. I mean, we know the 92FS, the Beretta, is like the lethal weapon gun, is the diehard gun. It's hard to get that type of recognition in a show. Maybe for the nutrition movie, maybe me and my brother can shoot a bunch of carbs.

Whatever you want. Provide the guns for us. Of course. Yeah. You definitely want. I can shoot up some pizza and stuff. You ever see that video from furious Pete? No.

It was thing was 11 pizzas. Stop the bullet. 11 frozen pizzas. I definitely, uh, I definitely would do that for sure. Cause that would definitely work. But yeah, we've looked at a few TV series. Like, Hey Chris, hand me that Falcor gun.

Yeah. Let me blow this apart. Yeah. We looked at all that stuff, but I just have to see the ROI. If it makes sense. A lot of times it's hard to, to get that lightning in a bottle. Like they did with die hard and like with, with, with a lethal weapon. How do you make sense of that sometimes?

Cause sometimes it's not always about that, right? It's not. I think it comes down to who's going to be in the movie. What's the depiction a lethal weapon. How do you make sense of that sometimes? Cause sometimes it's not always about that, right? It's not, I think it comes down to who's going to be in the movie. What's the depiction of the weapon. A lot of time we don't want. I just meant like in general, like even away from movies, just like in general, like business decisions, like, you know, you might do something

just to like, sometimes you might want to just do something just cause it's fun or just cause it's supportive of somebody else. It's hard, you know, in the, in the firearms business, there's like, I was saying a little bit last night, like you're never tactical enough. You're never SWAT enough. You're never special forces enough.

You're never a Navy SEAL enough. You're never cop enough. It's our industry is very like, it's kind of like what bodybuilding is going through right now. They'll say like, well, he's not a pro, you know what I mean? He doesn't have the right to have a sponsorship. He's not a pro bodybuilder. And a lot of those guys are standing on their heels.

So, you know, I think it's really important to kind of separate the two and really understand that you may make a decision to do something just because it is fun. And you may make a decision, like Demolition Ranch on YouTube, they do a lot of fun stuff with firearms. And, you know, we've given them Falcors. And a lot of times, like, we may make the decision to say, we'll give them the gun to do it. We won't do it directly with our marketing. So a lot of companies build these huge in-house marketing outfits, but there's still stuff we want to outsource to other people

because we want that plausible deniability. Well, they did it with one of our guns. We didn't necessarily authorize it, but maybe we did. Yeah, you didn't know what they were going to do with that gun, right? Yeah. I mean, I think you go through that here. It's like, yeah, I'll give you a bunch of wrist straps and slingshots if you want to put 9,000 pounds on the bar and you blow your legs out. I mean, that's on you.

So I think it's hard. I think you look at every situation. You don't want to, as a company and something we're putting out in our media, we don't want to do something that may really be too far for us or be something that's not industry accepted, that's a little beyond safe. If somebody does it with success, whether it's a trick shot or blowing something up or whatever, and it's cool. Speaking of trick shots, how about Three Amigos?

That's a fucking great movie. Hey, hey, hey. What happened to Martin Short is i don't know where is he now i don't know i always i always uh i always liked him three amigos is not a good depiction of firearms handling and imagination but a funny movie another great 80s classic for sure do you have a favorite gun? That's a good question. Yeah, or favorite gun movie. That's two. So my favorite gun, I'll take the last one first. My favorite gun movie, well, my favorite gun, of course,

is of all time would have to be the Glock 19 for a whole number of reasons. But that gets into like the simplicity of it, the technical of it. A bunch of people right now are so mad. Everyone's so passionate about it. Everyone's so passionate about it. I have and always will love that gun just because of the simplicity and the story behind it after reading the book. But my favorite gun will be the next one that we come out with at Falcor. Bam.

Makes sense. Very Tom Brady of you. It'll be the next one. It'll be the next one. Yeah, it was. That's what he said about championships. He said, what's your favorite championship? And he said, the next one. it'll be the next one yeah that was that's what he said about uh championships they said what's your favorite championship and he's at the next one and he's people are like huh my my favorite gun movie or a favorite like scene of like i was like wow that was that was really something i really liked when i when uh when jesse the body had the gatling gun and predator i thought that was cool how damn good is that and they mowed down the

forest you know i think every guy was, I just want to do that once. You know what I mean? I want to mow down a forest. It's a nasty habit you got there. He's got that big thing of chewing and he spit on the guy's boot. Yeah, with the Gatling gun. Flexing the triceps as hard as possible. As hard as possible.

Got to get the pump. I think there's so many cool scenes in movies like in Terminator when he goes down in Terminator 2 when he goes down to the weapons cache. And he's got everything down there. like a fucking gun out of the i look at it i'm like where's shotgun where'd she get all the money for that it's expensive all the ammo everything else because it's not a 9 millimeter everywhere sighting everywhere yeah and then uh i you know i i love like looking at movies like like die hard's one of my favorite movies so i love looking at movies. Diehard's one of my favorite movies, so I love looking at the different firearms in that movie. There's a meme that passes around the gun industry that Hans is getting thrown out the building. Somebody memed and they said,

I've got to be honest, I would have grabbed the HKVP out of his hand before he jumped. There's just so many iconic guns. My favorite firearm of all time from movies, which is a little bit of what you were asking too, is the Brand 10. The Brand 10, which is the Miami Vice gun. If you remember, you know, Miami Vice, you had that big, you know, silver nickel plated. Yeah.

10 millimeter course. I was like, damn, I want that gun. And then, you know, the patent went out the window. They stopped producing it. And then Voltor bought the patent and we haven't seen the gun since. I know who owns the patent because I'm still trying to rough them up to come out what about tombstone love tombstone excellent movie excellent that's so good yeah it's an excellent movie tombstone uh that's one of my faves it's funny yeah that that's definitely

an all-time favorite kicks ass yeah the brand 10 i love that gun if i could have one i sold uh uh i had a um an fn scar that i had all done up and smoky knows because he probably follows me i sold it and i'll tell you the inside so i sold it for a girl so i sold it to buy home yeah i sold it to buy a ring for a girl so idiot yeah it was an ultimate you know stupid move stupid move, but I sold it. And to this day, I'll never get that, that gun back the way that it was built and the way that I had

set it up because it had the full Volta kid on it. It was all done up and I just really loved it. Like it was just an awesome guy.

Remember that scene in Pulp Fiction after the gimp and Bruce Willis is looking for like a weapon, right? And what does he start out with like a baseball

bat and then it just, it keeps evolving. He finds like a samurai sword and like, I forget even what he settles on, like a chainsaw or something. Like a chainsaw. Yeah. He has a little bit of like that doom scene where it's like, he's picking up everything that is laid down. But yeah, I definitely, Glock 19, I could tell stories about for days, but I love all playing around all kinds of stuff and seeing what's out there and seeing what the market comes out with and seeing what changes. I've seen some weird stuff. I've seen some stuff that I'm kind of like, oh my god, I can't believe they came out with that or

I can't believe they tried to come out with that. Do you guys make anything else? Yes. Like holsters or anything like that? Oh no, holsters are kind of like their own separate thing. We make mag extensions, we make accessories for firearms. I thought you were getting into some of the missile stuff and everything else so we do some of the defense stuff but uh mainly uh accessories for firearms missiles that's cool yeah i want to make a missile jeez what about uh grenades no we don't make grenades no we don't make any what's the deal with the missiles that i mean that must be like some sort of government type thing.

So we get subcontracted to do a lot of subcontract government work. It's for the military, I assume. So, yeah, that's exciting work. What does a missile look like? How big is it? It's tedious. It could be the size of your arm. It could be the size of the desk.

It depends on what you're housing. Damn. Yeah. Rocket. That's pretty crazy. That's got to be cool to see one of those things. Yeah, it's a very cool process, and it's something our owners take very seriously. They love being involved and working for the government and doing all that stuff, like the AIM-9X and some of the stuff with the Tomahawk.

They enjoy all that stuff. Can you light gunpowder on fire like they do in the cartoons and make a trail? Like the Rambo scene? you get to like does that work yeah it's it's very explosive you can only have so many pounds in one place at one time technically you know what i mean you could you could face a real fire try that out it's a fire department thing yeah i mean you could have a real problem gunpowder is highly regulated highly regulated how much you have and where you house it and whether or not it's safe. It's explosive.

Of course. Yeah. Of course. Yeah. What do you got going on in here? Yeah. So yeah, no gunpowder. Uh, definitely like, it's funny, all those

reloading components, they're very hard to get. They're very expensive. Reloading's expensive. It has a, it has a lot of regulation. What kind of gun did Elmer Fudd have? We have that double barrel shotgun, right? Yeah. Yeah.

Does that work? If y'all there have seen from Pulp Fiction. I barrel shotgun, right? Yeah. Yeah. Does that work? If y'all have seen from Pulp Fiction? I think it was a Falcor. Yeah. He had a Falcor. For sure. I don't know if that works like it does in the cartoons where they just put their finger over it and then it shoots backwards at the guy, right?

I wouldn't recommend trying it. It wouldn't fall under the guidelines. Oh, there's the chainsaw. Gun safety, yeah. There you get the chainsaw. My poor son scarred for life. He watched this movie with me. Oh, there's the chainsaw. Gun safety, yeah. There you get the chainsaw. My poor son's scarred for life. He watched this movie with me. Oh, no.

Probably when he was like 11. Yeah, Bruce Willis is great. I mean, he's phenomenal for these movies. I'd much rather watch him than Liam Neeson any day of the week and twice on Sunday. Yeah, why is Liam Neeson beating people up? You know, I don't understand. Who decided on that?

One, I don't understand that. And two, he's very anti-gun. So I would much rather, and I'll go on record and say that the entire movie industry run Liam Neeson out of the action genre, period. Yeah. If he doesn't like guns, what does he do? If you're not, if you're man enough to make money off him, but you're not man enough to carry him or to be a supporter of the industry, please leave.

That makes sense. Please leave. What's your favorite, uh, favorite part of running this business? Uh, my favorite parts of people. You get to run into some of these people at trade shows and different things like this. My favorite part, no questions asked, hands

down as the people. What does a gun trade show look like compared to like the Arnold classic? 10 times the size. I would imagine. 10 times the size, a lot more, a lot more companies involved in it, uh, for a number of reasons. A lot less fanny packs. A lot more companies involved in it for a number of reasons. A lot less fanny packs.

A lot less fanny packs. And you really see a clashing of multiple cultures at them because what you're starting to see is kind of like the old dusty buckle and boot guys start to fade off. You know, the out of shape guys. You've seen a lot more in shape guys. Like you see Lou Ferrigno walk around the gun shows. He's a huge gun guy. You see him, you know, pal around. Fucking incredible Hulk.

Yeah, of course. And you see him you know pal around fucking incredible hulk yeah of course and you see him walk around you see a lot of the guys from tv shows like the csis like ice t is a huge gun guy so you run into these people and they're kind of moseying around the shows um tend not to bother them you know try not to unless i know them or have a relationship with them but uh they're huge they're enormous the boots are enormous yeah i remember branch coming to his first shot show i believe it was shot show and he goes you know you're right this is 50 times bigger than fibo you know like he was like blown away by it like is like wow this is really big and it's you can never see it all in a week and i'm talking about a whole week the show

is so you can you can get you say one of the shows like 10 days? Yeah. The great American outdoor show in Pennsylvania. If you're ever in the Pennsylvania area and you go to the great American outdoor show, it is like, if you have to work it, it is a pride swallowing experience. But, uh, if you get to go and walk around it, it's not too bad, but, uh, it's 10 days long. I mean, some of these shows they're, they're long, but you get a chance to go there.

And, and there's, there's so many people that get into this like gun show loopholes and you can buy a gun. You can't, I mean, I've never left with a firearm at any one of those shows. So I don't know where these people are going. They must be going like to the local Shriners to buy these guns. Cause it's shot showing at the NRA show. You can't buy the gun there. At least I've never bought one. I don't know who's buying these guns at shows.

So I feel like the media creates a lot of these myths around like what a gun show is and what, what goes on. Most of it's industry stuff and you might sell accessories or you may sell some things, but the shows are huge. The presence is, is big and it's great to see a lot of foot traffic.

I mean, every year it's record foot traffic, you know, NRA in Dallas this year was record foot traffic. What's new that you can talk about that you guys have? A few things. We've done brand new mag extensions. We just revamped our entire mag extension line, which I'm pumped about.

So those are Glock acceptable mag extensions that we put on the market. We are talking about and going forward with a lot of our bolt action stuff. That's really not a mystery that eventually we're going to get into the bolt action game. I don't think that's a secret because we release bolt action barrels. Then we pull them off the market to develop our chassis and to kind of refine our process a little bit. I definitely, our clothing and our branding and how we're going to be doing a lot of our soft goods is going to be changing

and we're always evolving that and we're trying to get everything right about the brand. The knives, the blades. We're doing a collaboration with Topps Knives. So we do a lot of blades in collaboration with different knife companies but tops has been one of the ones we've done a lot of collaborations with so that's something that we're excited about because i feel like it gets us into a different space um and eventually we will be getting and i will say this we'll be getting into a smaller caliber that's not necessarily a rifle caliber very, very, very soon. And then I'll talk about we're doing a 6.5 Grendel round, which is a small medium game round. It's a cartridge.

We're excited about that. That's going to be an AR-15 platform. And then we're also going to be doing very shortly, it's Tony's rifle. It's going to be called the Standard. This is going to be a rifle that's going to be slightly more affordable. That's going to make sense. Because one of the biggest hits that we've taken as a company is people say, well, you're so expensive.

Your stuff is so expensive. And I'm like, yeah, it's expensive. I'm like, it's good. But we want to make something that people can get their hands on. That looks pretty damn slick. Yeah, the limited edition woodland Cerakote there. There's the Petra. What do you do for stress?

Whack off, read a book, meditate, masturbate? All that. All the above? No, usually to de-stress or to wind down, especially after training the way that we do or getting in the gym and getting on the range and stuff like that. Movies was the first thing to kind of wind down, watch a good movie.

But really, I don't mind once in a while getting in the car and going where there's no phone reception. I did this this past weekend and my team, if they're watching, they'll test this. And sometimes when I'm out of the office, I won't answer any messages because sometimes you just need that wind down. Like, it's like, no offense, don't take it personal, guys. I'm just, I need like three hours of just, you know, I sleep two hours a night hugging the phone as it is, as most media people do, because you never know what's going to happen. Somebody's going to say something negative.

Somebody's going to comment. Someone's going to leave a message. I got to get back to them. So you have to take those pockets of time, those little bit of wind windows of like, you know, what's it that people say uh so last weekend i went up and went camping and i did a little fishing did a little hanging out you know start a big campfire was down on glacier national park and out that way and i just you know just need to turn it off for a little while and i think everybody should do that i think you know i said that i actually have a video i haven't posted yet and i posted on instagram at some. It's the fire crackling. And I'm just going to talk

about like, if you haven't taken a few hours to just get out of town and turn your phone off in the last couple of months, you need to, I think every 90 to 120 days, if you don't do that, chances are you're headed towards like a little bit of a breakdown or a blow up because everybody burns out. And I think it's about avoiding burnout. Yeah. And I think that if you're, you know, running a company, uh, it's important to figure out ways of how do you continue to run? Like, how do you continue to keep, keep things moving forward? And the only way to move things forward is occasionally step aside. Right.

Yeah. And I think you have to have a good team, you know, and I think, you know, I use the term sometimes mental health days, and I'm sure you have like, there might come a day where you just wake up, you're not feeling it at all. I tell my guys the same thing. I'm like, look, if you're going to, I'd rather you be in here and work hard till 3.30. And if you feel like you got to walk out after that, or you just walk away, go home, go get a cheeseburger. You want to come back in, you know, whatever, whatever it is.

Cheeseburger solves everything. Yeah. Whatever it is, you have to turn it off and you have to take some downtime. And I think everybody needs that. You know, I'm a huge advocate of like, take a vacation, take a week off. Nobody, I'm sure, I hope you do this with your guys.

Like you don't want anybody to grind them into the ground. It's like, you don't come back with fresh ideas. If you just live in this bubble of slingshot and super training, you're not going to, your guys aren't going to be going out and getting new fresh ideas. If you just live in this bubble of slingshot and super training, you're not going to, your guys aren't going to be going out and getting new, fresh ideas. Can't expand.

It can't expand. You know, even when I'm out on the range, sometimes like I'll shoot other companies. You actually mentioned that last night. You said, uh, you said there was a company that accepted a government contract and they were just stuck in it for a decade and they never came out with anything new.

Yeah. I mean, I, I, like I used the, cause they were, they were turning out so much work and so much inventory and all the resources went towards that one thing. They didn't have time to pop their head up and look around. Yeah. I mean, I think if like, sometimes those things are blessings and curses, you know, when you get that, that, and I won't use the firearms company's name, it was just a hint. It begins with a B, but when you have that huge government contract and you're, you're, you're stuck in that rut of just servicing that one thing, I think you lose the ability to grow and expand. And we've seen it so many times with companies, they have these huge growth spurts and

then they lose their ability to innovate. And I think when you lose your ability to innovate, you're dead. That's why sometimes having fresh faces, bringing in a fresh body, or even if you don't want to hire new people, bring in a consultant for a little while. A lot of people don't use their sponsored athletes the right way either. You know, they don't bring them in as consultants the way that they should bring them in and be like, what have you seen out there? What have you used over here? What other company did you use that you liked? Or tell me about how the shirt feels on you, you know? And I think that sometimes we get egos and we're afraid to accept like, Hey, this doesn't work too good. Or, Hey, I don't like this.

I'm constantly sending barrels out and guns out to people. Cause I want the feedback, you know? And they're like, Oh, I'll post a picture. I'm like, motherfucker, I don't want you to post a picture. I want you to tell me what you think of it and tell me what you feel and tell me, you know, how it shot or tell me what you think, you know? And if a lot of my, you know, people I trust in my side of the industry, give me a good, honest opinion, a good, honest, uh, feedback. I'm going to take that and I'm

going to put it into my process, but I think it's good to take time off and good to go see what's out there. And sometimes I'll just walk around gun stores or I'll walk around a Cabela's or, you know, and just kind of see what the industry's doing or see what people are doing out there. And I think, uh, it's good to do that. I think you'd want all your guys to get in a different gym, get, try some different equipment out. I think that's so important. Yeah.

I think it's important. Fresh perspective, you know, fresh perspective. And I, I have no doubt in my mind that my team does that. My team's always out there shooting different stuff, getting feedback, knowing what's right and wrong and time off is critical. It really is to self-development.

All right. Got anything over there, Andrew? Yeah. Sam, John, and Casey said they're going to take the rest of the day off for a mental health. No. The short answer is no. What the fuck are they talking about? No.

You were just saying that just to be on the podcast, not actually meaning it. No. But that's all I got, Mark. Yeah. Does your team go out and shoot? Yeah. Do you guys do other stuff to try to get people out of the office yeah we we try not an easy thing to do but no it you know what it is it's tough to hurt everybody and i'm sure you go through this and it's tough to coordinate things we we just had a big range day fairly recently we have weather

conditions up there we have a an indoor range we do a lot of stuff at too uh i'd like to do more i'd like to probably be at the range four or five times a year at a minimum at a minimum uh to test stuff to evaluate so as far as quick testing stuff goes they're on the range you know anytime we have to test something somebody will run out but as far as large scale type things uh four or five times a year we do a large scale get all hands on deck get everybody to the range kind of thing, because it's, you got to feed them. You got to get them there.

You got to get them home. You gotta make sure everybody's safe and, you know, take all the firearms there. It gets, it's a process. Right. You know.

All right. I think that's all the time we got. Where can people find you? So a few, yeah, a few things. Of course you can find me on my Instagram page at John Bartolo at John dot underscore Bartolo.

Sorry. And then you can find me on my instagram page at john bartolo at john dot underscore bartolo sorry uh and then you can find me on my youtube john bartolo everything is pretty much my name facebook i'm on all the channels and then of course uh you'll find me or see me on different ads with blackstone labs with gasp with sinister labs uh of course uh with you guys from time to time i'm always kind of bouncing and actually looking at some of these facts here. And is this true? You won some powerlifting meets? Yes. Oh, my God.

How come we didn't go over that? What's your best bench? How much a bench? The most I ever did in a gym touch and go was five and a quarter. The best I ever did in a competition that I believe is still, and you can check, it's on EPF, the Elite Powerlifting Federation, which was a New England Federation. Like I said, a dog show federation. Sounds made up. Yeah, pretty much. But it was there. England federation. Like I said, a dog sounds made up. Yeah, it's pretty much, but, uh, it was there.

It was real. And I, I walked in and competed at five Oh five there. Nice. And what body weight? Two 42. That's great. That's a fucking awesome bench. Yeah.

It was pretty good. Uh, what about squats and deads? You get into that stuff heavily too. Yeah. So I think I was, uh, I was high sixes on squat, uh, dead lift at one point on squats. I was doing a five and change. Nice. Yeah. There's some good numbers. Yeah. So I think I was, uh, I was high sixes on squat, uh, dead lift at one point on squats. I was doing a five and change. Nice. Yeah.

There's some good numbers. Yeah. It was solid. I mean, I, I was, I was by no means on your level or some of the pros out there, but I was just, uh. Nobody's on my level. Nobody. Uh, you were a teacher and you used to play bigger, stronger, faster in the class.

Yes. Was that just for your own enjoyment? Like kids, you're going to watch what I watch. No, no, no. So, um, I was always very open about drugs and sports and about, uh, the performance enhancers, things like that. And, uh, one of my former, uh, associates.

I can just picture the kids running home. No, no, no. This is a college, this is a college course. Mr. Bartolo's on steroids. No, no, no. This, I want that, that's. So when I would view, when's on steroids. No, no, no. This, I want, that's, so when I would view, when I would show the video, it was more,

my former associate athletic director was teaching at LaSalle College out in Mass. So the Massachusetts LaSalle College, it's in Auburn, Mass, I believe. And he would say, hey, would you mind coming in and doing like a round table with the, with the kids and talk about like supplementation and drugs and sports, things like that.

And I would show segments of your brother's video because here's a documentary that gets it really right, guys, if you want to do some research. And it was more to educate them on, don't fool yourself. It's there, you know, kind of thing. Because I think when people leave school, they kind of have the veil over their eyes like, oh, I took, you know, creatine and I look like this. And I'm like, come on, dude, you know, let's be real. So education, a little bit of education. So we would show segments of the video, talk about it and what made sense. And I said, come on, dude, you know, let's be real. So education, a little bit of education.

So we would show segments of the video, talk about it and what made sense. And it would always come back to, it was funny. It would always come back to the Valentino segment. Of course, you know, we would talk about that and like, is that real? Is that not real? You know, but, uh, Valentino always had a nice way of putting it. So, uh, of course, uh, it made sense. And I did teach, I, I, when I first got out of, uh, college, the, the teaching portion

was I was substitute teaching and teaching at, uh, at my old high school when I was coaching football. So when I first got, I was like, what am I going to do? You know, my football, former football coach is like, come home and, you know, you can coach and help me out and do some classes. And you're just trying to figure out life at that point. You know, how do I make a buck and where do I go from here? All right.

Strength is never a weakness. Weakness is never strength. We out.