May 1, 2025 • 42 mins
In this episode, Jason steps away from just talking calls and hunting tactics to share a more personal side of the journey. Building Phelps Game Calls, chasing bulls every fall, being a dad and husband, and trying to juggle it all—it’s not always as clean or easy as it might look from the outside. He talks about burnout, learning lessons the hard way, what success really means to him now, and how his priorities have shifted over time. It’s a real conversation about the pressure, the passion, and trying to build something that lasts beyond the next bugle.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:11):
Welcome back to another episode of Cutting the Distance. Today,
I'm here with just myself. I want to do a
little bit more of a personal episode. There's a lot
more to people than hunting, right everybody gets to see,
you know, Jason Phelps, the elk hunter. Jason Phelps, the
guy that gets to go on some dream hunting trips,
and you know, the guy that started a successful elf
(00:32):
hunting brand and then eventually branched out in the turkey
and deer and predator and so on and so forth.
But this is going to be just a little bit
more of a of a personal list of questions that
I get quite a bit, and I'm just gonna elaborate.
You know, some people message me this week on Facebook
and kind of said, hey, I think that'd be something cool.
You know, they were asking me questions and I was
(00:52):
able to help them or or give some advice, and like, man,
you should really talk about that. So it kind of
inspired me to talk about that and kind of sparked
this converse. So, you know, one of those things everybody's like,
what's the and when you say the cost of chasing
elk dreams, you know the cost of chasing this dream.
But they're not talking about cost and and the sense
of money. There is definitely cost involved, which fortunately a
(01:15):
successful business can can help along the way. But for me,
it's more of that cost, you know, of the family,
cost of time away from my kids, time away from
my community, time away from these other things that I do.
You know, for those that don't know, I've coached every
single sport my kids have played, both boy and girl
(01:38):
from the time they started until this year is the
first year I'm no longer coaching their rex sports, but
instead I took on a high school basketball coaching jobs.
So you know, late November, I'm I've now you know,
I'm I'm in the gym. I'm with my other coaches.
We're with our team throughout the summer. But you know
I've did that. I'm on the school board. I'm you know,
(01:59):
I've helped with the Youth Baseball Association for the last
five or six years. Is a treasurer, you know. I
try to be very active, but it does then you
throw on top of that a busy schedule both in
the spring and in the fall, and so these I
don't take for granted. Last year, especially twenty twenty four season,
(02:21):
I started to miss my family more than I typically have,
and it wasn't that busy of a year. So I
don't know if I'm getting soft in my old age
or what. But the cost for me is those long days,
you know, seven to ten days gone, and a lot
of times we will stack those back to back to back.
My wife is a rock star. She'll never jump on
(02:42):
the podcast. I thought this would be an interesting podcast
with her, but she's not interested in any of this stuff.
But you know, Sondy has to take care of everything,
you know, running all the kids to practices, you know,
cooking dinner, you know the stuff that we typically share in.
You know, I love helping cook dinner. I love helping
take care of the house, you know, whatever it needs
to be done. But you know, during that time, it's
(03:04):
all her and we do get some one thing that
that is very nice. Stayed very good friends with my parents.
There actually are next door neighbors. They help out a
ton with the kids, which is you know, the the
tough part with with busy schedules. And you know, Sondia
puts in long days here at phelps game calls. She's
always the first one here, the last one to leave.
You know. Fortunately, I I'll never miss any major milestones,
(03:28):
but I do miss some of my daughter's volleyball games.
She understands, you know, this is this is dad's job.
She's super grateful when I'm there. And and if I
have any chance to make it home early for a game,
you know, make it home early for my hunt, so
I can, you know, take pictures with my boy before
he goes to homecoming. All of that. But that's the
(03:48):
biggest cost. Yeah, there's there's always a financial but I
would just hunt different hunts and and and that that
financial cost is different, but there's no replacing, you know,
missing out on those special family events. You know, some
people call me crazy, but I I've grown to love
just sitting around on the couch at night, but where
we're all whinding down and you know us kind of
all joking and giving each other a little bit of
(04:10):
guff about the day or making jokes about each other.
I just I like that. And so why I love hunting.
Don't get me wrong. I get to live a dream life,
get to hunt all of you know, as much as
I want, those things do start to wear on you
a little bit. I had a question from from a
guy expecting, you know, with his first kid. And he said, well,
how did how did being a dad or you know,
(04:32):
how did having these extra responsibilities change, you know, the
amount you gotta hunt and how you think about it
and the financial responsibility and taking care of your family.
And that was probably the hardest time because I was
hunting a lot prior to having my first kid, and uh,
you know, the first kids always a little more difficult.
But I would say until he was about five, like,
that was probably the most tension I had on leaving
(04:54):
you know, my wife, you know, taking care of a
young kid. And then we had our second kid, you know,
slightly after, just just right after two years, so we
had a you know, a zero and a two year
old in the house and that was the tough time.
And and things were just starting to get going at
that point, and so it was a real interesting time
to like push forward on our dreams. And you know
a lot of times we would just sit down and
(05:15):
talk about it, like is this the right thing to do?
Is this you know, do you need to be pushing
this hard? Should you spend more time at home? Should
you be hunting? And ultimately we made it work. But uh,
fatherhood you know, being a dad definitely kind of it
put everything in check a little bit, and you know,
my responsibilities of a dad kind of kicked in took
care of those. But then I still did try to
(05:37):
get out in the field as much as I could
without feeling guilty. You know, like I say, Sony's a
rock star, she'd let me hunt a lot. But you
do feel guilty that, you know, you you get to
throw away your responsibilities or put your responsibilities along the
side and put it all in her. Why you know,
you get to get to come home and go do
(05:58):
what you want to do. So definitely kind of crip
things back and things get for us. At that time,
things got a little bit tight, so there wasn't as
much money to be, uh, you know out there out
there hunting as much as I was prior to. And
then after that things got kind of rolling again. But yeah,
and like I say, going back to last year, I
(06:18):
started thinking about, oh, you know, I would check my watch,
but oh, it's it's a Monday night. My daughter's got
a volleyball game. Wonder how she's doing, you know, and
you let those thoughts, you know, kind of get into
your head and it's not like, you know, the mental
thought of just I want to go home because I
want to quit. It's a mental thought of like, all right,
I wish I was at the gym watch my daughter
at least for that a little bit of time, and
then I'd love to be back out here. So those
(06:39):
things start to creep in. You start to miss your
wife and kids and family and friends, and and uh,
it get it gets at you a little bit. This
was a question we I had a great conversation with
my buddy Matt Schmidtz prior to the day I killed
my my bowl here in Washington this year. We were
sitting there having a whiskey on the back of the tailgate.
(07:00):
I had just had a hard day and my buddy
Tyson went home. We were kind of switching hunting partners,
guys that wanted to hunt with me, And He's like, man,
how what's it like having the pressure of being you
on this hunt? And I hadn't really thought about it,
but it was easy to explain. I was. I was
starting to think about, like, what will people think if
I kill this and here? Or what would people think
(07:22):
if I don't kill the big bull? Because I was
starting to get some pressure I'd already went through all
of my time I could hunt with a rifle and
I had to switch over to a muzzleoder. Now Like
not that it wasn't going to happen, but things were
getting more difficult. My weapon was getting more primitive. By
the time I could pick up a rifle, we were
going to be kind of out of the rut. And
so he brought up this questions like, what's the pressure
(07:43):
of being you on this hunt? And you know, people
expect some certain level of success, And I talked through it.
I'm like, yeah, man, it's as much as I'd like
to say it doesn't bother me, it was bothering me
on that hunt a lot. I wasn't getting excited about
you know, bulls. Ten years ago that would have got me,
you know, Jack, I'd have been running over there for
a chance to kill a bowl like that. And I
(08:05):
started to think, like, am I doing this for myself?
Am I doing this for the right reasons? And I
told Matt that night, I'd be like, you know what,
I'm glad you brought that up because it got me
back to a spot of I'm just gonna go hunt
and whatever gets me going. If it's a small bowl,
that beagle's big if it's a small bull that tears
down a tree on his way in, Like, I'm just
gonna go hunt to have fun. I'm gonna go hunt
(08:26):
for the reasons I always have. And on that hunt, thankfully,
that morning we did run into the biggest bowl and
he played the game right, and he beagled enough and
he was pushing cows all over the cut and the
alpine patch there, and you know, so we had that talk.
Ultimately I was able to finally kill the biggest bowl
we had seen on that hunt, thankfully, But it was
(08:48):
a tough, trying hunt, and I really had to get
back to a place of do this for the reasons
you love it. Do this for the reasons you you
love to be out here, and don't worry about, you know,
anybody judging, you know, anything that you do. So this
one I could write maybe a book on, and it
would probably not be a very good book, but I
could write a book on, you know, lessons that I've
(09:08):
learned from being in business, and lessons that I've learned
from working with people in the hunting industry and how
they've improved my life or affected my life, and vice versa.
I'm going to keep it short. I'm not in I'm
not going to tell people how to run a business.
I've learned kind of the school of hard knocks. I
didn't know a lot about it going into it. I'll
(09:30):
keep it pretty high level. I built what I wanted
to use. I took feedback well. I had empathy for
all my customers. If they didn't like something, if something
wasn't up to their standards, I took care of them.
And it was people don't believe me. I'm like, it
was very easy. I just designed a bunch of calls
that I liked to use and I thought were easier
or better or more consistent than other calls out there.
(09:52):
What really kind of god at me was when it
got the big business. You know, just selling online was fine,
you know, selling it to the the small pro shops,
the small vendors. My biggest hurdle or my biggest like check,
you know, kind of getting checked up on business was
when I went to the bigger vendors, you know, the
(10:12):
sportsman's warehouses, the kabelas, you know, all of this stuff,
and there's all these vendor compliance guides and there's all
these things you have to do right, you have to
package them right. That's what I decided. I didn't like
that part of the business. I was gonna go back
to designing calls and hire somebody that can do that side.
You know, my my wife and then my business manager,
Corey handle most of that stuff and I'm able to
(10:34):
just focus on the marketing, the business side that the call,
design that side, and not have to deal with the
day to day you know, warehousing, shipping, all of that stuff.
But I'm I'm convinced that business. Yeah, there's rules, and
there's numbers, and there's math, and there's margins, and there's
making sure you're profitable and you're doing things in an
efficient way. But business is really about being a good
(10:55):
person and understanding like your end customer and for me
being a diar hunter, knowing what I wanted when I
went to buy a product or you know, something to
use in the pursuit of you know, hunting. I just
applied that and took care of everybody, and it made
my life pretty easy as far as the business goes.
(11:16):
This one is how do you go about building something
that lasts beyond the call? So how are you building
a legacy with values? Around it. I'm just hoping that,
you know, I always always tell everybody I hope I
don't cross anybody that's actually met me, actually got a
chance to talk to me. Everybody has their opinions on
the internet. They can say what they want, But if
(11:38):
you've met me and got a chance to talk to me,
I want you to walk away from that conversation like
we might not you know, we may be in business
against each other, but Jason Phelps is a pretty good guy,
right Like that that to me, and so I treat
every conversation like that. I want it to be true.
Like I want to take care of everybody. I don't
want to ever walk away from a relationship, a conversation
(12:00):
and interaction, whether they use my calls, whether they like
my calls, whether they don't like my calls, whether they
like me, whether they don't like me, whether they know me.
Be like, hey, that that changed my opinion of him,
or that changed who I thought he was. And by
me being honest and just being the guy that I am,
I want people. You know, I always joke about what
(12:22):
I want on my headstone. I'm like Jason Phelps, a
pretty nice guy, you know, Like never did me wrong,
and that's important to me. Like you're only as good
as your word, You're only as good as is what
you say and what you do. And so that's what
I want my legacy to be. Is a good guy
that took care of his customers and you know, built
(12:43):
a pretty dang good call in the process. Is something
that's very very important to me. So that was kind
of those that was four or five high level. And
then we're going to get into like these twenty random
kind of those personal, thought provoking questions just to like
I say, dive in a little bit more. I'm going
to try to keep these all to a minute, minute
and a half and skip through them here. So how
(13:06):
do you stay grounded when you're constantly in the spotlight
within the hunting world? Was a question I got in
the and uh and I think it was an Instagram
message and I copy and pasted it in in here
and grounded for me, let me say there was a
there was a time and being completely transparent when I
(13:27):
first started, you know, quote unquote building calls, posting on
social media, I started to get a big head and
started to get a little bit of a chip or
an attitude. I would argue with anybody, and then there
was I would say, it was a short time, you know,
and my and my young my my mid twenties, right,
you're full of pisson, vinegar, full of testosterone, whatever you
(13:49):
want to call it. And then I slowly realized that
that's not the right way. There are a lot of
good hunters out there. There's never going to be a
best hunter. And and it's just what happens when you
take a lot of guys and some you know, some alphas.
The majority of guys that are, you know, that way,
they've got that mindset. I just always remind myself is like,
(14:11):
why did we do this? Why did why did Grandpa
get up early every morning, you know, brew too, two
big Stanley thermoses full of coffee. Why did grandpa wake
all of his kids up every morning, you know, throw
them all in the rig and go hunting. It was
for them to spend time together, and it was to
fill the freezer. And I always remember why, you know,
(14:31):
the Phelps family hunted and why we did that. And
even though my path is completely different than than the
family of loggers that I come from that have lived
here and logged and hunted forever, just remember where I
come from why we do it, and don't let any
of quote unquote the spotlight get to you. It's not
(14:54):
why I do it. I hunt because I absolutely love
love the process. I love the the challenge. I love
being in these wild places. I love pursuing them where
they're at. How are you able to grow the business
and then still be able to spend as much time
in the field, And that was that was one of
my biggest struggles. Was all right, our busiest time of
(15:17):
the year is during fall hunting seasons. But yet I'm
not going to be here for the fall hunting seasons,
you know, or not very often. And so what finally
had to happen I mentioned it a little bit earlier,
was I just had to build a team around me.
A team that could handle production, a team that could
handle all of my emails, all of my business related questions.
(15:38):
They could handle all of our account you know, maintenance,
all of those things, which then gives me the chance
to go out and do what I'm good at, and
is to go hunt, Go test the product, go show
off the product, go put the product to you, so
I can say, hey, I think we need to make
a tweak to this call or that call, you know,
wore out a little bit premature, or this or that.
(15:59):
So I need to be out in the field as
much as possible so that I can I don't lose
that connection that I'm just a guy that's designing products
because there's a business that can be had around it.
I want to be the guy that hunts harder more
days than everybody else. And so I'm now the authority
on what needs to be designed, what needs to be tweaked,
and whatnot. What sacrifices have you made to chase your
(16:22):
passion and are they worth it? The one thing that changed,
and I would say, when I was twenty five years old,
So what is that? Twenty two thousand and six, two
thousand and seven, my friends were all partying. You know,
they were all big Seahawks fans. They would spend all weekend,
you know, drinking, watching the games, partying party and Friday
(16:44):
night party and Saturday night. Me and my wife, I'm
introverted anyways a little bit, so it is easy for me.
But like we kind of stopped going to those events,
those you know, weekend parties, those things, and we kind
of fully or at least I did at the beginning
when I didn't need help. I was I was on
social media doing my marketing. I was on my call
(17:06):
press building calls. I was on out in the woodshop
turning barrels on my lathe. I was trying to you know,
design new tone boards. I was working on you know,
new diaphragm designs. So that there was a six to
eight year period where not that I didn't have any
friends but my old friend group and myself, me and
my wife, we didn't really hang out that much. It
(17:27):
was it was me burying myself in work so that
it was my my number one and you know, aside
from my wife and my kids, the business was my
my other priority, you know, And and just kind of
buried myself in that and and that was my biggest sacrifice.
I feel like I made my family. I feel like
(17:50):
had to make additional sacrifices, you know, as I was
traveling to do a seminar, you know, one day seminar
in Salt Lake City and then doing a seminar down
in New Mexico or whatever it may be, Like I
was flying all over the place, you know, and it
takes a day or two here, and a day or
two there, and by the time you looked at my
summer schedule, I didn't have a whole lot of time
left on the that wasn't already booked. And so thankfully
(18:13):
I was able to take my kids to some of
these events. My my wife would go to some of
these events, and we were able to make it a
little bit more, you know, it was a little easier
for me with them there versus me always being gone
by myself. That was that was the biggest sacrifice. Was
was just the time and then just kind of leaving
(18:34):
my friend group so that I could develop something that
I was very passionate about on your mind on my
mindset and growth. What does mental toughness mean to me
outside of the mountains, Man, I tackle everything, and a
lot of a lot of it comes from my my
dad's side of the family. My grandpa was in the Marines,
(18:54):
very very strict, very demanding grandpa, not so much to
me the grand but to my dad and my uncles.
That mental toughness was then relayed down to us through sports,
through hunting, through chopping firewood on the weekend, through whatever
we did there was you were never tired, you were
(19:17):
never too sore, you were never and and I don't
know if these guys tricked you into believe and they
never got sore, because now I'm their age and I'll
get sore. But they they just powered through like it
was a It was a And sometimes people say pride
is a bad thing, and I think it it is
most of the time, but there is some good pride
that like I'm just not gonna I'm not gonna show
(19:40):
any signs of fatigue or soreness or and and so
with that said, I think just watching my dad and
and some of my uncles that logged and you know,
get up at get up at four in the morning,
and you know, get up and go work in the
you know, freezing cold rain all day to make a living.
And as soon as they would get home, they would
(20:01):
just put ten hours in in the most miserable conditions ever.
And then he'd come chop firewood for two hours because
that was what needed to be done. And then watch
him after that go down and coach my basketball practice
or my football practice or my you know, baseball practice,
whatever it was. He was still there. And so it's
like you start to see like what people are capable
of when you're not lazy, and when you're not, you know,
(20:22):
you don't need an hour on the couch or two
hours on the couch. You start to realize just what
you're capable of. And so I think I just got
my mental toughness, you know, from from watching men in
my life, and you know, competition through sports and just
learning whether even if it's false confidence or you're you're
(20:43):
faking some of this, or you're faking mental toughness, Like
faking mental toughness is still toughness. So's it was more
of that, like you train yourself to push through, and
that's helped a lot. If I ever been burned out,
(21:08):
and how it was I able to pull myself back up.
I can remember one one trip in particular, I was
still hunting off of a bike here in my backyard,
so to speak, and I remember being like, you know what,
this sucks. I'm not we aren't killing anything, Like, I'm
just going home. I'm not hunting to night. And I
can remember sitting at home that night just being like,
(21:29):
how did you get here? You wait all year for
this opportunity, that's all you want to do, but yet
you've only got a twelve day season and you've just wasted,
you know, at one twenty fourth of it by not
hunting tonight and just kind of had a real conversation
with myself. I'm like, don't ever let yourself do that again.
And so for me, it's like these little internal battles. Now,
(21:50):
that was me hunting by myself. Now, if I'm hunting
with a buddy. I've said this before numerous times. I've
got one of the most diehard group of hunting partners ever,
and we are all pretty mentally strong, and we can
all feed off of each other. So if one guy
is down, the other guy knows his jobs to pick
him up. And once again, it's almost back to that thing,
like you could never be the second guy to say, yeah,
(22:12):
I think we should leave, or I think we should
throw the talent. You're always trying to like show your
buddy how tough you are, and you just say, nope,
we're sticking it out. I think this is gonna work.
And that's kind of how I don't get burned out
too much. I love the whole pursuit of it. I
know that there's limited time throughout the year, and so
(22:33):
I don't have to do that very often. But I
remember that one time, very vividly, where I rode my
bike down, went home and did not hunt that evening,
and I almost didn't let myself kind of forgive myself
because it was just it was frustrating once I thought
about it. From you, you dream about this all the time.
Is there a failure that I'm especially thankful for now?
(22:54):
In hindsight, I've one thing about failure, and you don't
talk about it as much. But I've failed over and
over and over and over, especially when it comes to
being in the woods making decisions. I've failed over and
over and over on call design attempts. I've you know,
we've we've tried to do something it doesn't work. We've
(23:15):
tried to do something doesn't work, you know, and then eventually,
one of these days you're going to come up with
something like the easy sucker or something to that effect.
That's that's revolutionary kind of an emerging technology nobody's did,
and you're like, all right, it was all worth it.
But yeah, I'm thankful for all of my failures. And
this is an easy answer, right, But what I what
(23:36):
I'm able to do, or what I do or I
make it a point to do, is that failure is
worthless if I don't learn from it, if I don't
step back what happened. How do we not do that again,
whether it's to a manufacturing process or getting something made,
or you know, trusting that somebody will do it and
then I didn't check up on it. You know, one
thing I I read early on and creating this business
(23:58):
is extreme ownership. And you know Jocko wrote that, and
it just whether you need to think like that all
the time, but it never lets yourself off the hook
for anything. Any failure that happens within this business, whether
I truly have control over it or not, should be
under my control. And so I try to put my
I make myself liable for everything in this business. Whether
(24:20):
I truly have input or not on that specific thing,
it ultimately ends up on me. And so you learn
from all my failures. Maintaining ownership over everything that happens
with this business has been a big, big help. How
do I measure success these days versus how we started?
(24:46):
Everybody calls me out on that, not calls me out,
but they're like, you know, I can always kind of
see them roll their eyes and say, sure, success for
me was those stories I would get early on, success
for me was somebody asking how to run a diaphragm,
me providing what I thought was good feedback, and then
learning into how to run a diaphragm. I never you know,
(25:09):
a lot of people would relate success to financial success
or growth of the business. I was just passionate about something,
and this something allowed me to hunt more and without
as many financial restrictions. Is all I really cared about now,
not so much my own measuring stick, but like the
company corporate measuring stick is, we are trying to hit
(25:32):
sales numbers, We're trying to hit targets, which changes my
mindset a little bit, But man, I still get a
big old grin on it. When people send me, you know,
success stories or something that I personally did to help
them be successful in the field, I always tell them like,
I'm just I'm just some information. I just build a call,
Like you're the carpenter that's using all these tools, You're
the one that made it happen. Like I'm just happy
(25:53):
I could be a part of it and that you
trusted us with being a part of it. So what
do I fear more? Failure in the field or failure
as a leader as a leader for sure, even more
so failure as a father, and even more so like
failure as a husband, you know, like all those things
are are more important. Like failure in the field. It stings,
(26:16):
but the I don't fear that as much I want
to be I want to be the best GM and
leader of Phelps game calls that that we can. It's
it's very important to me that people have jobs to
come to, especially in my small town appeal. There's not
a lot of jobs that have benefits like these, that
have you know, somewhat flexible schedules. So it's very very
(26:37):
important that I don't fail as a leader, more so
important that I don't fail as a father. You know,
you get eighteen years with these kids plus you know,
plus or minus to to kind of mold that. And
then you know, I want to be known if you
went to up to my kids, like the most important
thing to me is like you have a good dad,
and they answered it yes, and and they would have
(27:00):
good reasons why, you know. And then even more importantly
than that, uh, you know, we're getting down that this
this rabbit hole of you know. Then then being a
good husband to my wife, you know, taking care of
the house financially, you know, being a good, good partner,
sharing and things around the house, you know, having fun together,
being best friends. That sort of thing is important, you know,
(27:21):
more so than than those other things. So until I
get those in order, then yeah, failure in the field sucks,
but not that worried about it in reality. So this
one I talk about all the time, and people with
a business degree don't like it. Trusting my gut versus
following data or market trends. You don't confidence in cocky.
(27:48):
There's that, There's a fine line between it, and I
always want to be confident but not cocky. Right now
in the ELK call world, like I feel like I'm
we are as a Phelps game calls, as a brand,
me and my team, we're setting the market trends within
ELK calls. I don't need to follow anybody, and so,
(28:09):
like I said, I want to be confident in that,
not cocky. I don't pay too much attention to other
brands within the ELK call world. Now we do pay
attention to some other brands. We're still the new kids
on the block when it comes to Turkey and Deer.
But what we've really did on that was we set
the bar very high. We you know, we're one of
the few building acrylic CNC machine the tone boards for
(28:31):
our deer calls. You know. The only other place you
see that is in your your Duck calls, you know,
some of your Goose calls, but the majority of those.
And we brought that high level of design into our
deer call line, you know, our Turkey call lines. We've
we've we've joined with the right people you know that
that know more about Turkey calls than me. At times
(28:53):
I would stay, I stay. I would say I'm a
very good sounding board on what the users out there
want to use as far as like ease of you
sound quality, you know, how easy they already use right
out of the box, that sort of thing. But we
work with some amazing, amazing people on the Turkey call
side that have really helped us out. What part of
(29:16):
Phelps go switching gears, what part of helps game calls?
Am I most proud of? Not the products, but the culture.
Man Like the best example, I want to say, the
people that we have representing the brand, the people that
you see the brand attracts. So I always tell everybody
go if you were to ever go to one of
our consumer shows, whether it's a Pacific Northwest sportsman show,
(29:37):
the Western Hunt, you know, the Mile High, any of
these ones we're at. If you can't go to our
booth and get treated with the utmost respect, no matter
who you are, what you've accomplished, if you can't leave
there laughing at somebody or laughing with somebody, maybe laughing
at yourself, laughing at one of us, laughing at me,
laughing at Dirk, if we're all in the same place, like,
(29:58):
I would be very, very surprised. Like we want to
be fun, we want to be educational, we want to
be entertaining, entertaining, we want all of these things. And
I feel like the group of people we've we've attracted,
the people that use our calls, number one, they're they're
all excellent callers. Everybody that's in there is excellent callers
(30:20):
or has an excellent knowledge of the call, the the
brand and what to recommend. But more importantly than how
good you can call, is the quality of people, Like
is that the person I want representing the brand? Is
that the person I could trust that if I'm not
in the conversation that's talking to a young kid just
getting into it. That that conversation, that kid's going to
walk with a big smile and he's going to have
(30:42):
the best information he can get. Is he going to
be treated right by everybody? You know? One thing I
check is I don't want anybody representing my brand ever
publicly bad mouth and other brand. Now you can you know,
we can say things like that call just doesn't work
for me, or I really struggle to get that call
to work, or you know, at the worst. Yeah, I
mean I just had some consistency issues with something. But like,
(31:02):
we never bad mouth another call company. We sometimes recommend
the other call companies, like there's another option that may work.
So that was like a long winded I went down
the rabbit hole a little bit. But I tend to
lean on my gut quite a bit and the direction
that we need to go, and then I try to
get the numbers to back that up, if that makes
(31:23):
any sense. So I go with my gut and then
back it up with numbers. But yeah, that, oh, excuse me,
I just reread the wrong question. We were talking about
the culture of Phelps, not necessarily the product. Yeah, so
the culture we built the people are pretty awesome. How
do I stay inspired and creative when everybody's watching our
(31:45):
next move, waiting for the next thing to come out.
I just put on my blinders. I don't pay a
lot of attention to naysayers. I will ask questions on
how come or wide didn't that work. I don't pay
attention to what other call companies doing. We don't chase them,
their their ideas, their designs. Everything we do is kind
(32:06):
of on our own. And so, once again, if I
just shut my mouth open my ears at some of
these sportsman shows where I get to talk to hundreds
and hundreds of hundreds of elk hunters that range from
probably some of the worst elk hunters out there to
some of the best ellk hunters out there, and everywhere
in between. If I just listen and try to fix
(32:29):
everything that they say is affecting their hunt or causing
them not to find success. If we just listen to that,
and I can affect that from a call side, or
if I can affect that from how easy it is
to use, that usually gives my inspiration on where to go,
what to change, what to come back into the end
of the lab or at my desk and start to
design and then the last question on the business innovation side,
(32:53):
what's the biggest myth people believe about growing a hunting business.
The biggest myth I didn't really that it that there
that there's no room. I guess right now, you know, well,
it's like there's always there's always more room. There's always
(33:15):
room for a new widget, there's there's shoot, there's room
for a new call company. I didn't tell you that,
So don't go start one tomorrow. But there's room for
for more people. If you can do something, be a niche,
provide good service. I think there's always going to be
going to be room for you. You know, one thing
I heard early on is it doesn't cost a lot
of money. That I believe is a myth. Getting a
(33:37):
business going without some sort of financial backing is very,
very tough. You know, I did this thing. I cash
flowed my business for a long time. It was very
difficult and was probably the reason that took me so
long to get things going was because of me limiting
cash flow because I was so stinking conservative. Now that
(33:57):
I know what I know, and there's lots of UH
avenues out there for funding, I would I would probably
do it a little bit different, you know, and and
accelerate that. But it is going to cost money. There's
no way into this thing unless you're an e product
developer or something. That's just time. But if you've got
physical material goods, you know, something you hold in your
(34:20):
hand that's either sown, built, welded, anything like that, it's
gonna cost money. Now we're gonna we're gonna finish up
with some hunting questions. The categorize these as like hunting
philosophy questions because your wife are hunting changed over the years,
we touched on this a little bit. It was always
about meat. When I was young, nothing nothing that was
(34:44):
legal ever got a pass. And I grew up in
western Washington, so you know, spike Bucks, two point bucks.
I got to a point where I'd passed spike Bucks.
But you know, most two point bucks were going to
get shot. Fok and horn Bucks. You know, any bowl
was always not going to get past We around here.
We shot every legal goal. So that was just how
it was around here. It's no I still love to
(35:07):
fill the freezers full of meat. It's still my number
one priority. I just have the luxury. I'm a better
hunter now, I'm a more patient hunter. Now I know
what I'm doing, I can kind of assess what my
chances are if I don't shoot that one right now,
what my chances are of filling the freezer at all.
So now hunting has changed more for that challenge of myself,
more for that experience. And when I say that challenge
(35:30):
of myself, like I want to go out and find
a mature animal, like what does this unit have to hold?
Can I find it? And can I successfully take it?
And so that's my why a little bit on comparison
from the beginning to where I'm at now. And then
one thing I've added, which I overlooked early on, was
just how cool of places hunting takes you to. So
(35:51):
I've started to take that in a little bit more
now than at the ripe old age of forty one.
I start to pay more attention to where I'm at,
how pretty things are, how many people have stepped in
this same area, got to see this view on this
sort of lighting that that stuff's starting to become more
special to me. What's my one value I hope every
young hunter walks away with after spending time with you.
(36:12):
I want people to think like my time is not
so valuable that they weren't worth it, if that makes
any sense. So my buddy Tony Gilbertson, great out caller,
he texted me the other day like, Hey, this kid's
been talking about you all day. He'd love to just
talk to you. I'm like, what am I doing right
now that I couldn't do that? So I said, have
him call me on your phone. And so I got
(36:32):
to talk to a kid. They were out fishing, wanted
to talk to me, and we just hey, are you
a better caller than Tony? Are you gonna be a
big outcunter when you get older? Just I gave that
kid two to three minutes of my time that I
I could do why I was doing whatever else I
was doing. But that kid now knows, like, hey, Jason,
(36:53):
his time is not worth more than me. You know,
it's not worth more than my time can he can give.
And so that's very important, like any kid, you know,
not even kid, just anybody that I've got time. Now,
with that said, I'm very busy and sometimes it's tough
to get to things. But if I've got time, I'll
try to make sure that that I can give you
(37:13):
a little bit of it. And help with whatever's going on.
What hunt challenged my identity the most physically or emotionally,
and on that one, the one that changed not challenged
my identity the most, would be my big, my big
Cascade Roosevelt back in twenty twelve. I really wasn't a
(37:35):
backpack hunter at that time. I wasn't doing a lot
of that, and we got closed out of our area
on fire danger. I really didn't know anywhere else to go,
but I had to try to find somewhere on National
Forest Service. So we kind of ended up, you know,
hunting that way. And I would say that hunt was,
you know, was one that challenged me a little bit.
I thought it was all over. I just missed a
(37:56):
smaller Roosevelt prior to being shut out for fire, and
that one, you know, both physically and emotionally challenged me
because I wasn't really set up to hunt that way.
And then one thing that people may or may not know,
in the middle of that hunt, or no, not the
middle of the hunt, towards the end of that hunt,
with two days left, I actually missed that bowl that
(38:18):
I ended up killing. So for me to go up
there spend all that time, effort, energy, and the miss
a bowl that was three hundred and seventy inches. Like
emotionally and physically, I was just in the tank, and
I never thought I would get a chance on the
very last day of season to go in there and
then to be able to kill that bowl. And so
that roller coaster ride of being in the in the
(38:39):
lowest the lows to the highest the highs, and it
just kind of it draws, it kind of pulled together
everything I already know, like it only takes one It
only takes a quick change for everything to change. And
so that's why I like now it's easy for me
to hunt and give it my all all the way
to the end because I know it only takes that
one chance, and we're gonna end it with this one.
(38:59):
If I had to stop hunting tomorrow, what would be
the hardest part to let go of? I think this one.
I would I would struggle with not having fresh dear, elk, sheep, cougar,
whatever the heck I have in my freezer at that time.
But I think the answer is more intended for like
what do I what do I What would I miss
(39:21):
the most, aside from you know, being able to eat
the meat and man. You know some people talk about
like I don't. I'm not there to spend time with
my buddies. I'm there to kill an elk. I'm there
to kill a deer. Man, I could. I would love
doing that. If it's just me by myself, I would
still love that challenge. I love I love being out
there with the buddy, you know, giving each other a crap.
(39:43):
We don't, you know now that we're getting older, we
all got families. Like the best time I get to
spend with my friends now or the most time is
on a hunt. We can sit and talk about everything
going on in each other's lives that you can't you know,
figure out over a text message. You know, people that
were all growing up in different towns where we got
you know, different hunts, but to be able to join
(40:04):
back up on those, like I love hunting with buddies
that that hunt hard. We can share a camp. We
share in the hard work, we share in the packouts
we sharing cutting up the deer and the elk and
the whole the whole thing is a is a shared
experience from start to finish. And if I had to
stop hunting tomorrow, I would miss that because I'd have
to have some I'd have to figure out some other
way to fill in that void of of that experience
(40:27):
with my buddies, and just it's the reset button for
me every year, Like when I come back to coaching
basketball at the end of November, I'm just reset. I'm
ready to kind of you know, you roll into the
Christmas season, that whole process of fall hunting season into Christmas,
rolling into New Year. It just kind of gets me
ready to to kind of take on that next year.
(40:49):
And that's that's what I would miss the most. But
uh no, hopefully, hopefully this episode doesn't doesn't turn you
guys off and and make you run away. It was
just one of those things where it was just kind
of like, what's that life beyond the bagle, Like what
makes me tick? A little bit hunting related, a little
bit of business related, a little bit of family related,
but yeah, for me, it's it's God, family, you know, hunting,
(41:13):
everything else after that. So uh it's important to me
to uh to to keep that in perspective. And uh,
you know, the business side, I it's it's not some
mythical magical thing. I think you learn what people want,
what you would want as a as a customer and
you make those decisions and everything else just kind of
(41:33):
falls in place. So yeah, that's where I'm at. That's
that's what makes me tick. That's kind of who I
am a little bit behind the scenes. And I hope
you guys enjoyed this episode. And I hope you guys
are all having success out there in the in the spring,
whether it's a Turkey Woods or spring Bear or whatever
your chase. Know if you guys are having success, and
uh yeah, tune in next week. And appreciate you all
(41:56):
for listening to the cutting the distances
Welcome back to another episode of Cutting the Distance. Today,
I'm here with just myself. I want to do a
little bit more of a personal episode. There's a lot
more to people than hunting, right everybody gets to see,
you know, Jason Phelps, the elk hunter. Jason Phelps, the
guy that gets to go on some dream hunting trips,
and you know, the guy that started a successful elf
(00:32):
hunting brand and then eventually branched out in the turkey
and deer and predator and so on and so forth.
But this is going to be just a little bit
more of a of a personal list of questions that
I get quite a bit, and I'm just gonna elaborate.
You know, some people message me this week on Facebook
and kind of said, hey, I think that'd be something cool.
You know, they were asking me questions and I was
(00:52):
able to help them or or give some advice, and like, man,
you should really talk about that. So it kind of
inspired me to talk about that and kind of sparked
this converse. So, you know, one of those things everybody's like,
what's the and when you say the cost of chasing
elk dreams, you know the cost of chasing this dream.
But they're not talking about cost and and the sense
of money. There is definitely cost involved, which fortunately a
(01:15):
successful business can can help along the way. But for me,
it's more of that cost, you know, of the family,
cost of time away from my kids, time away from
my community, time away from these other things that I do.
You know, for those that don't know, I've coached every
single sport my kids have played, both boy and girl
(01:38):
from the time they started until this year is the
first year I'm no longer coaching their rex sports, but
instead I took on a high school basketball coaching jobs.
So you know, late November, I'm I've now you know,
I'm I'm in the gym. I'm with my other coaches.
We're with our team throughout the summer. But you know
I've did that. I'm on the school board. I'm you know,
(01:59):
I've helped with the Youth Baseball Association for the last
five or six years. Is a treasurer, you know. I
try to be very active, but it does then you
throw on top of that a busy schedule both in
the spring and in the fall, and so these I
don't take for granted. Last year, especially twenty twenty four season,
(02:21):
I started to miss my family more than I typically have,
and it wasn't that busy of a year. So I
don't know if I'm getting soft in my old age
or what. But the cost for me is those long days,
you know, seven to ten days gone, and a lot
of times we will stack those back to back to back.
My wife is a rock star. She'll never jump on
(02:42):
the podcast. I thought this would be an interesting podcast
with her, but she's not interested in any of this stuff.
But you know, Sondy has to take care of everything,
you know, running all the kids to practices, you know,
cooking dinner, you know the stuff that we typically share in.
You know, I love helping cook dinner. I love helping
take care of the house, you know, whatever it needs
to be done. But you know, during that time, it's
(03:04):
all her and we do get some one thing that
that is very nice. Stayed very good friends with my parents.
There actually are next door neighbors. They help out a
ton with the kids, which is you know, the the
tough part with with busy schedules. And you know, Sondia
puts in long days here at phelps game calls. She's
always the first one here, the last one to leave.
You know. Fortunately, I I'll never miss any major milestones,
(03:28):
but I do miss some of my daughter's volleyball games.
She understands, you know, this is this is dad's job.
She's super grateful when I'm there. And and if I
have any chance to make it home early for a game,
you know, make it home early for my hunt, so
I can, you know, take pictures with my boy before
he goes to homecoming. All of that. But that's the
(03:48):
biggest cost. Yeah, there's there's always a financial but I
would just hunt different hunts and and and that that
financial cost is different, but there's no replacing, you know,
missing out on those special family events. You know, some
people call me crazy, but I I've grown to love
just sitting around on the couch at night, but where
we're all whinding down and you know us kind of
all joking and giving each other a little bit of
(04:10):
guff about the day or making jokes about each other.
I just I like that. And so why I love hunting.
Don't get me wrong. I get to live a dream life,
get to hunt all of you know, as much as
I want, those things do start to wear on you
a little bit. I had a question from from a
guy expecting, you know, with his first kid. And he said, well,
how did how did being a dad or you know,
(04:32):
how did having these extra responsibilities change, you know, the
amount you gotta hunt and how you think about it
and the financial responsibility and taking care of your family.
And that was probably the hardest time because I was
hunting a lot prior to having my first kid, and uh,
you know, the first kids always a little more difficult.
But I would say until he was about five, like,
that was probably the most tension I had on leaving
(04:54):
you know, my wife, you know, taking care of a
young kid. And then we had our second kid, you know,
slightly after, just just right after two years, so we
had a you know, a zero and a two year
old in the house and that was the tough time.
And and things were just starting to get going at
that point, and so it was a real interesting time
to like push forward on our dreams. And you know
a lot of times we would just sit down and
(05:15):
talk about it, like is this the right thing to do?
Is this you know, do you need to be pushing
this hard? Should you spend more time at home? Should
you be hunting? And ultimately we made it work. But uh,
fatherhood you know, being a dad definitely kind of it
put everything in check a little bit, and you know,
my responsibilities of a dad kind of kicked in took
care of those. But then I still did try to
(05:37):
get out in the field as much as I could
without feeling guilty. You know, like I say, Sony's a
rock star, she'd let me hunt a lot. But you
do feel guilty that, you know, you you get to
throw away your responsibilities or put your responsibilities along the
side and put it all in her. Why you know,
you get to get to come home and go do
(05:58):
what you want to do. So definitely kind of crip
things back and things get for us. At that time,
things got a little bit tight, so there wasn't as
much money to be, uh, you know out there out
there hunting as much as I was prior to. And
then after that things got kind of rolling again. But yeah,
and like I say, going back to last year, I
(06:18):
started thinking about, oh, you know, I would check my watch,
but oh, it's it's a Monday night. My daughter's got
a volleyball game. Wonder how she's doing, you know, and
you let those thoughts, you know, kind of get into
your head and it's not like, you know, the mental
thought of just I want to go home because I
want to quit. It's a mental thought of like, all right,
I wish I was at the gym watch my daughter
at least for that a little bit of time, and
then I'd love to be back out here. So those
(06:39):
things start to creep in. You start to miss your
wife and kids and family and friends, and and uh,
it get it gets at you a little bit. This
was a question we I had a great conversation with
my buddy Matt Schmidtz prior to the day I killed
my my bowl here in Washington this year. We were
sitting there having a whiskey on the back of the tailgate.
(07:00):
I had just had a hard day and my buddy
Tyson went home. We were kind of switching hunting partners,
guys that wanted to hunt with me, And He's like, man,
how what's it like having the pressure of being you
on this hunt? And I hadn't really thought about it,
but it was easy to explain. I was. I was
starting to think about, like, what will people think if
I kill this and here? Or what would people think
(07:22):
if I don't kill the big bull? Because I was
starting to get some pressure I'd already went through all
of my time I could hunt with a rifle and
I had to switch over to a muzzleoder. Now Like
not that it wasn't going to happen, but things were
getting more difficult. My weapon was getting more primitive. By
the time I could pick up a rifle, we were
going to be kind of out of the rut. And
so he brought up this questions like, what's the pressure
(07:43):
of being you on this hunt? And you know, people
expect some certain level of success, And I talked through it.
I'm like, yeah, man, it's as much as I'd like
to say it doesn't bother me, it was bothering me
on that hunt a lot. I wasn't getting excited about
you know, bulls. Ten years ago that would have got me,
you know, Jack, I'd have been running over there for
a chance to kill a bowl like that. And I
(08:05):
started to think, like, am I doing this for myself?
Am I doing this for the right reasons? And I
told Matt that night, I'd be like, you know what,
I'm glad you brought that up because it got me
back to a spot of I'm just gonna go hunt
and whatever gets me going. If it's a small bowl,
that beagle's big if it's a small bull that tears
down a tree on his way in, Like, I'm just
gonna go hunt to have fun. I'm gonna go hunt
(08:26):
for the reasons I always have. And on that hunt, thankfully,
that morning we did run into the biggest bowl and
he played the game right, and he beagled enough and
he was pushing cows all over the cut and the
alpine patch there, and you know, so we had that talk.
Ultimately I was able to finally kill the biggest bowl
we had seen on that hunt, thankfully, But it was
(08:48):
a tough, trying hunt, and I really had to get
back to a place of do this for the reasons
you love it. Do this for the reasons you you
love to be out here, and don't worry about, you know,
anybody judging, you know, anything that you do. So this
one I could write maybe a book on, and it
would probably not be a very good book, but I
could write a book on, you know, lessons that I've
(09:08):
learned from being in business, and lessons that I've learned
from working with people in the hunting industry and how
they've improved my life or affected my life, and vice versa.
I'm going to keep it short. I'm not in I'm
not going to tell people how to run a business.
I've learned kind of the school of hard knocks. I
didn't know a lot about it going into it. I'll
(09:30):
keep it pretty high level. I built what I wanted
to use. I took feedback well. I had empathy for
all my customers. If they didn't like something, if something
wasn't up to their standards, I took care of them.
And it was people don't believe me. I'm like, it
was very easy. I just designed a bunch of calls
that I liked to use and I thought were easier
or better or more consistent than other calls out there.
(09:52):
What really kind of god at me was when it
got the big business. You know, just selling online was fine,
you know, selling it to the the small pro shops,
the small vendors. My biggest hurdle or my biggest like check,
you know, kind of getting checked up on business was
when I went to the bigger vendors, you know, the
(10:12):
sportsman's warehouses, the kabelas, you know, all of this stuff,
and there's all these vendor compliance guides and there's all
these things you have to do right, you have to
package them right. That's what I decided. I didn't like
that part of the business. I was gonna go back
to designing calls and hire somebody that can do that side.
You know, my my wife and then my business manager,
Corey handle most of that stuff and I'm able to
(10:34):
just focus on the marketing, the business side that the call,
design that side, and not have to deal with the
day to day you know, warehousing, shipping, all of that stuff.
But I'm I'm convinced that business. Yeah, there's rules, and
there's numbers, and there's math, and there's margins, and there's
making sure you're profitable and you're doing things in an
efficient way. But business is really about being a good
(10:55):
person and understanding like your end customer and for me
being a diar hunter, knowing what I wanted when I
went to buy a product or you know, something to
use in the pursuit of you know, hunting. I just
applied that and took care of everybody, and it made
my life pretty easy as far as the business goes.
(11:16):
This one is how do you go about building something
that lasts beyond the call? So how are you building
a legacy with values? Around it. I'm just hoping that,
you know, I always always tell everybody I hope I
don't cross anybody that's actually met me, actually got a
chance to talk to me. Everybody has their opinions on
the internet. They can say what they want, But if
(11:38):
you've met me and got a chance to talk to me,
I want you to walk away from that conversation like
we might not you know, we may be in business
against each other, but Jason Phelps is a pretty good guy,
right Like that that to me, and so I treat
every conversation like that. I want it to be true.
Like I want to take care of everybody. I don't
want to ever walk away from a relationship, a conversation
(12:00):
and interaction, whether they use my calls, whether they like
my calls, whether they don't like my calls, whether they
like me, whether they don't like me, whether they know me.
Be like, hey, that that changed my opinion of him,
or that changed who I thought he was. And by
me being honest and just being the guy that I am,
I want people. You know, I always joke about what
(12:22):
I want on my headstone. I'm like Jason Phelps, a
pretty nice guy, you know, Like never did me wrong,
and that's important to me. Like you're only as good
as your word, You're only as good as is what
you say and what you do. And so that's what
I want my legacy to be. Is a good guy
that took care of his customers and you know, built
(12:43):
a pretty dang good call in the process. Is something
that's very very important to me. So that was kind
of those that was four or five high level. And
then we're going to get into like these twenty random
kind of those personal, thought provoking questions just to like
I say, dive in a little bit more. I'm going
to try to keep these all to a minute, minute
and a half and skip through them here. So how
(13:06):
do you stay grounded when you're constantly in the spotlight
within the hunting world? Was a question I got in
the and uh and I think it was an Instagram
message and I copy and pasted it in in here
and grounded for me, let me say there was a
there was a time and being completely transparent when I
(13:27):
first started, you know, quote unquote building calls, posting on
social media, I started to get a big head and
started to get a little bit of a chip or
an attitude. I would argue with anybody, and then there
was I would say, it was a short time, you know,
and my and my young my my mid twenties, right,
you're full of pisson, vinegar, full of testosterone, whatever you
(13:49):
want to call it. And then I slowly realized that
that's not the right way. There are a lot of
good hunters out there. There's never going to be a
best hunter. And and it's just what happens when you
take a lot of guys and some you know, some alphas.
The majority of guys that are, you know, that way,
they've got that mindset. I just always remind myself is like,
(14:11):
why did we do this? Why did why did Grandpa
get up early every morning, you know, brew too, two
big Stanley thermoses full of coffee. Why did grandpa wake
all of his kids up every morning, you know, throw
them all in the rig and go hunting. It was
for them to spend time together, and it was to
fill the freezer. And I always remember why, you know,
(14:31):
the Phelps family hunted and why we did that. And
even though my path is completely different than than the
family of loggers that I come from that have lived
here and logged and hunted forever, just remember where I
come from why we do it, and don't let any
of quote unquote the spotlight get to you. It's not
(14:54):
why I do it. I hunt because I absolutely love
love the process. I love the the challenge. I love
being in these wild places. I love pursuing them where
they're at. How are you able to grow the business
and then still be able to spend as much time
in the field, And that was that was one of
my biggest struggles. Was all right, our busiest time of
(15:17):
the year is during fall hunting seasons. But yet I'm
not going to be here for the fall hunting seasons,
you know, or not very often. And so what finally
had to happen I mentioned it a little bit earlier,
was I just had to build a team around me.
A team that could handle production, a team that could
handle all of my emails, all of my business related questions.
(15:38):
They could handle all of our account you know, maintenance,
all of those things, which then gives me the chance
to go out and do what I'm good at, and
is to go hunt, Go test the product, go show
off the product, go put the product to you, so
I can say, hey, I think we need to make
a tweak to this call or that call, you know,
wore out a little bit premature, or this or that.
(15:59):
So I need to be out in the field as
much as possible so that I can I don't lose
that connection that I'm just a guy that's designing products
because there's a business that can be had around it.
I want to be the guy that hunts harder more
days than everybody else. And so I'm now the authority
on what needs to be designed, what needs to be tweaked,
and whatnot. What sacrifices have you made to chase your
(16:22):
passion and are they worth it? The one thing that changed,
and I would say, when I was twenty five years old,
So what is that? Twenty two thousand and six, two
thousand and seven, my friends were all partying. You know,
they were all big Seahawks fans. They would spend all weekend,
you know, drinking, watching the games, partying party and Friday
(16:44):
night party and Saturday night. Me and my wife, I'm
introverted anyways a little bit, so it is easy for me.
But like we kind of stopped going to those events,
those you know, weekend parties, those things, and we kind
of fully or at least I did at the beginning
when I didn't need help. I was I was on
social media doing my marketing. I was on my call
(17:06):
press building calls. I was on out in the woodshop
turning barrels on my lathe. I was trying to you know,
design new tone boards. I was working on you know,
new diaphragm designs. So that there was a six to
eight year period where not that I didn't have any
friends but my old friend group and myself, me and
my wife, we didn't really hang out that much. It
(17:27):
was it was me burying myself in work so that
it was my my number one and you know, aside
from my wife and my kids, the business was my
my other priority, you know, And and just kind of
buried myself in that and and that was my biggest sacrifice.
I feel like I made my family. I feel like
(17:50):
had to make additional sacrifices, you know, as I was
traveling to do a seminar, you know, one day seminar
in Salt Lake City and then doing a seminar down
in New Mexico or whatever it may be, Like I
was flying all over the place, you know, and it
takes a day or two here, and a day or
two there, and by the time you looked at my
summer schedule, I didn't have a whole lot of time
left on the that wasn't already booked. And so thankfully
(18:13):
I was able to take my kids to some of
these events. My my wife would go to some of
these events, and we were able to make it a
little bit more, you know, it was a little easier
for me with them there versus me always being gone
by myself. That was that was the biggest sacrifice. Was
was just the time and then just kind of leaving
(18:34):
my friend group so that I could develop something that
I was very passionate about on your mind on my
mindset and growth. What does mental toughness mean to me
outside of the mountains, Man, I tackle everything, and a
lot of a lot of it comes from my my
dad's side of the family. My grandpa was in the Marines,
(18:54):
very very strict, very demanding grandpa, not so much to
me the grand but to my dad and my uncles.
That mental toughness was then relayed down to us through sports,
through hunting, through chopping firewood on the weekend, through whatever
we did there was you were never tired, you were
(19:17):
never too sore, you were never and and I don't
know if these guys tricked you into believe and they
never got sore, because now I'm their age and I'll
get sore. But they they just powered through like it
was a It was a And sometimes people say pride
is a bad thing, and I think it it is
most of the time, but there is some good pride
that like I'm just not gonna I'm not gonna show
(19:40):
any signs of fatigue or soreness or and and so
with that said, I think just watching my dad and
and some of my uncles that logged and you know,
get up at get up at four in the morning,
and you know, get up and go work in the
you know, freezing cold rain all day to make a living.
And as soon as they would get home, they would
(20:01):
just put ten hours in in the most miserable conditions ever.
And then he'd come chop firewood for two hours because
that was what needed to be done. And then watch
him after that go down and coach my basketball practice
or my football practice or my you know, baseball practice,
whatever it was. He was still there. And so it's
like you start to see like what people are capable
of when you're not lazy, and when you're not, you know,
(20:22):
you don't need an hour on the couch or two
hours on the couch. You start to realize just what
you're capable of. And so I think I just got
my mental toughness, you know, from from watching men in
my life, and you know, competition through sports and just
learning whether even if it's false confidence or you're you're
(20:43):
faking some of this, or you're faking mental toughness, Like
faking mental toughness is still toughness. So's it was more
of that, like you train yourself to push through, and
that's helped a lot. If I ever been burned out,
(21:08):
and how it was I able to pull myself back up.
I can remember one one trip in particular, I was
still hunting off of a bike here in my backyard,
so to speak, and I remember being like, you know what,
this sucks. I'm not we aren't killing anything, Like, I'm
just going home. I'm not hunting to night. And I
can remember sitting at home that night just being like,
(21:29):
how did you get here? You wait all year for
this opportunity, that's all you want to do, but yet
you've only got a twelve day season and you've just wasted,
you know, at one twenty fourth of it by not
hunting tonight and just kind of had a real conversation
with myself. I'm like, don't ever let yourself do that again.
And so for me, it's like these little internal battles. Now,
(21:50):
that was me hunting by myself. Now, if I'm hunting
with a buddy. I've said this before numerous times. I've
got one of the most diehard group of hunting partners ever,
and we are all pretty mentally strong, and we can
all feed off of each other. So if one guy
is down, the other guy knows his jobs to pick
him up. And once again, it's almost back to that thing,
like you could never be the second guy to say, yeah,
(22:12):
I think we should leave, or I think we should
throw the talent. You're always trying to like show your
buddy how tough you are, and you just say, nope,
we're sticking it out. I think this is gonna work.
And that's kind of how I don't get burned out
too much. I love the whole pursuit of it. I
know that there's limited time throughout the year, and so
(22:33):
I don't have to do that very often. But I
remember that one time, very vividly, where I rode my
bike down, went home and did not hunt that evening,
and I almost didn't let myself kind of forgive myself
because it was just it was frustrating once I thought
about it. From you, you dream about this all the time.
Is there a failure that I'm especially thankful for now?
(22:54):
In hindsight, I've one thing about failure, and you don't
talk about it as much. But I've failed over and
over and over and over, especially when it comes to
being in the woods making decisions. I've failed over and
over and over on call design attempts. I've you know,
we've we've tried to do something it doesn't work. We've
(23:15):
tried to do something doesn't work, you know, and then eventually,
one of these days you're going to come up with
something like the easy sucker or something to that effect.
That's that's revolutionary kind of an emerging technology nobody's did,
and you're like, all right, it was all worth it.
But yeah, I'm thankful for all of my failures. And
this is an easy answer, right, But what I what
(23:36):
I'm able to do, or what I do or I
make it a point to do, is that failure is
worthless if I don't learn from it, if I don't
step back what happened. How do we not do that again,
whether it's to a manufacturing process or getting something made,
or you know, trusting that somebody will do it and
then I didn't check up on it. You know, one
thing I I read early on and creating this business
(23:58):
is extreme ownership. And you know Jocko wrote that, and
it just whether you need to think like that all
the time, but it never lets yourself off the hook
for anything. Any failure that happens within this business, whether
I truly have control over it or not, should be
under my control. And so I try to put my
I make myself liable for everything in this business. Whether
(24:20):
I truly have input or not on that specific thing,
it ultimately ends up on me. And so you learn
from all my failures. Maintaining ownership over everything that happens
with this business has been a big, big help. How
do I measure success these days versus how we started?
(24:46):
Everybody calls me out on that, not calls me out,
but they're like, you know, I can always kind of
see them roll their eyes and say, sure, success for
me was those stories I would get early on, success
for me was somebody asking how to run a diaphragm,
me providing what I thought was good feedback, and then
learning into how to run a diaphragm. I never you know,
(25:09):
a lot of people would relate success to financial success
or growth of the business. I was just passionate about something,
and this something allowed me to hunt more and without
as many financial restrictions. Is all I really cared about now,
not so much my own measuring stick, but like the
company corporate measuring stick is, we are trying to hit
(25:32):
sales numbers, We're trying to hit targets, which changes my
mindset a little bit, But man, I still get a
big old grin on it. When people send me, you know,
success stories or something that I personally did to help
them be successful in the field, I always tell them like,
I'm just I'm just some information. I just build a call,
Like you're the carpenter that's using all these tools, You're
the one that made it happen. Like I'm just happy
(25:53):
I could be a part of it and that you
trusted us with being a part of it. So what
do I fear more? Failure in the field or failure
as a leader as a leader for sure, even more
so failure as a father, and even more so like
failure as a husband, you know, like all those things
are are more important. Like failure in the field. It stings,
(26:16):
but the I don't fear that as much I want
to be I want to be the best GM and
leader of Phelps game calls that that we can. It's
it's very important to me that people have jobs to
come to, especially in my small town appeal. There's not
a lot of jobs that have benefits like these, that
have you know, somewhat flexible schedules. So it's very very
(26:37):
important that I don't fail as a leader, more so
important that I don't fail as a father. You know,
you get eighteen years with these kids plus you know,
plus or minus to to kind of mold that. And
then you know, I want to be known if you
went to up to my kids, like the most important
thing to me is like you have a good dad,
and they answered it yes, and and they would have
(27:00):
good reasons why, you know. And then even more importantly
than that, uh, you know, we're getting down that this
this rabbit hole of you know. Then then being a
good husband to my wife, you know, taking care of
the house financially, you know, being a good, good partner,
sharing and things around the house, you know, having fun together,
being best friends. That sort of thing is important, you know,
(27:21):
more so than than those other things. So until I
get those in order, then yeah, failure in the field sucks,
but not that worried about it in reality. So this
one I talk about all the time, and people with
a business degree don't like it. Trusting my gut versus
following data or market trends. You don't confidence in cocky.
(27:48):
There's that, There's a fine line between it, and I
always want to be confident but not cocky. Right now
in the ELK call world, like I feel like I'm
we are as a Phelps game calls, as a brand,
me and my team, we're setting the market trends within
ELK calls. I don't need to follow anybody, and so,
(28:09):
like I said, I want to be confident in that,
not cocky. I don't pay too much attention to other
brands within the ELK call world. Now we do pay
attention to some other brands. We're still the new kids
on the block when it comes to Turkey and Deer.
But what we've really did on that was we set
the bar very high. We you know, we're one of
the few building acrylic CNC machine the tone boards for
(28:31):
our deer calls. You know. The only other place you
see that is in your your Duck calls, you know,
some of your Goose calls, but the majority of those.
And we brought that high level of design into our
deer call line, you know, our Turkey call lines. We've
we've we've joined with the right people you know that
that know more about Turkey calls than me. At times
(28:53):
I would stay, I stay. I would say I'm a
very good sounding board on what the users out there
want to use as far as like ease of you
sound quality, you know, how easy they already use right
out of the box, that sort of thing. But we
work with some amazing, amazing people on the Turkey call
side that have really helped us out. What part of
(29:16):
Phelps go switching gears, what part of helps game calls?
Am I most proud of? Not the products, but the culture.
Man Like the best example, I want to say, the
people that we have representing the brand, the people that
you see the brand attracts. So I always tell everybody
go if you were to ever go to one of
our consumer shows, whether it's a Pacific Northwest sportsman show,
(29:37):
the Western Hunt, you know, the Mile High, any of
these ones we're at. If you can't go to our
booth and get treated with the utmost respect, no matter
who you are, what you've accomplished, if you can't leave
there laughing at somebody or laughing with somebody, maybe laughing
at yourself, laughing at one of us, laughing at me,
laughing at Dirk, if we're all in the same place, like,
(29:58):
I would be very, very surprised. Like we want to
be fun, we want to be educational, we want to
be entertaining, entertaining, we want all of these things. And
I feel like the group of people we've we've attracted,
the people that use our calls, number one, they're they're
all excellent callers. Everybody that's in there is excellent callers
(30:20):
or has an excellent knowledge of the call, the the
brand and what to recommend. But more importantly than how
good you can call, is the quality of people, Like
is that the person I want representing the brand? Is
that the person I could trust that if I'm not
in the conversation that's talking to a young kid just
getting into it. That that conversation, that kid's going to
walk with a big smile and he's going to have
(30:42):
the best information he can get. Is he going to
be treated right by everybody? You know? One thing I
check is I don't want anybody representing my brand ever
publicly bad mouth and other brand. Now you can you know,
we can say things like that call just doesn't work
for me, or I really struggle to get that call
to work, or you know, at the worst. Yeah, I
mean I just had some consistency issues with something. But like,
(31:02):
we never bad mouth another call company. We sometimes recommend
the other call companies, like there's another option that may work.
So that was like a long winded I went down
the rabbit hole a little bit. But I tend to
lean on my gut quite a bit and the direction
that we need to go, and then I try to
get the numbers to back that up, if that makes
(31:23):
any sense. So I go with my gut and then
back it up with numbers. But yeah, that, oh, excuse me,
I just reread the wrong question. We were talking about
the culture of Phelps, not necessarily the product. Yeah, so
the culture we built the people are pretty awesome. How
do I stay inspired and creative when everybody's watching our
(31:45):
next move, waiting for the next thing to come out.
I just put on my blinders. I don't pay a
lot of attention to naysayers. I will ask questions on
how come or wide didn't that work. I don't pay
attention to what other call companies doing. We don't chase them,
their their ideas, their designs. Everything we do is kind
(32:06):
of on our own. And so, once again, if I
just shut my mouth open my ears at some of
these sportsman shows where I get to talk to hundreds
and hundreds of hundreds of elk hunters that range from
probably some of the worst elk hunters out there to
some of the best ellk hunters out there, and everywhere
in between. If I just listen and try to fix
(32:29):
everything that they say is affecting their hunt or causing
them not to find success. If we just listen to that,
and I can affect that from a call side, or
if I can affect that from how easy it is
to use, that usually gives my inspiration on where to go,
what to change, what to come back into the end
of the lab or at my desk and start to
design and then the last question on the business innovation side,
(32:53):
what's the biggest myth people believe about growing a hunting business.
The biggest myth I didn't really that it that there
that there's no room. I guess right now, you know, well,
it's like there's always there's always more room. There's always
(33:15):
room for a new widget, there's there's shoot, there's room
for a new call company. I didn't tell you that,
So don't go start one tomorrow. But there's room for
for more people. If you can do something, be a niche,
provide good service. I think there's always going to be
going to be room for you. You know, one thing
I heard early on is it doesn't cost a lot
of money. That I believe is a myth. Getting a
(33:37):
business going without some sort of financial backing is very,
very tough. You know, I did this thing. I cash
flowed my business for a long time. It was very
difficult and was probably the reason that took me so
long to get things going was because of me limiting
cash flow because I was so stinking conservative. Now that
(33:57):
I know what I know, and there's lots of UH
avenues out there for funding, I would I would probably
do it a little bit different, you know, and and
accelerate that. But it is going to cost money. There's
no way into this thing unless you're an e product
developer or something. That's just time. But if you've got
physical material goods, you know, something you hold in your
(34:20):
hand that's either sown, built, welded, anything like that, it's
gonna cost money. Now we're gonna we're gonna finish up
with some hunting questions. The categorize these as like hunting
philosophy questions because your wife are hunting changed over the years,
we touched on this a little bit. It was always
about meat. When I was young, nothing nothing that was
(34:44):
legal ever got a pass. And I grew up in
western Washington, so you know, spike Bucks, two point bucks.
I got to a point where I'd passed spike Bucks.
But you know, most two point bucks were going to
get shot. Fok and horn Bucks. You know, any bowl
was always not going to get past We around here.
We shot every legal goal. So that was just how
it was around here. It's no I still love to
(35:07):
fill the freezers full of meat. It's still my number
one priority. I just have the luxury. I'm a better
hunter now, I'm a more patient hunter. Now I know
what I'm doing, I can kind of assess what my
chances are if I don't shoot that one right now,
what my chances are of filling the freezer at all.
So now hunting has changed more for that challenge of myself,
more for that experience. And when I say that challenge
(35:30):
of myself, like I want to go out and find
a mature animal, like what does this unit have to hold?
Can I find it? And can I successfully take it?
And so that's my why a little bit on comparison
from the beginning to where I'm at now. And then
one thing I've added, which I overlooked early on, was
just how cool of places hunting takes you to. So
(35:51):
I've started to take that in a little bit more
now than at the ripe old age of forty one.
I start to pay more attention to where I'm at,
how pretty things are, how many people have stepped in
this same area, got to see this view on this
sort of lighting that that stuff's starting to become more
special to me. What's my one value I hope every
young hunter walks away with after spending time with you.
(36:12):
I want people to think like my time is not
so valuable that they weren't worth it, if that makes
any sense. So my buddy Tony Gilbertson, great out caller,
he texted me the other day like, Hey, this kid's
been talking about you all day. He'd love to just
talk to you. I'm like, what am I doing right
now that I couldn't do that? So I said, have
him call me on your phone. And so I got
(36:32):
to talk to a kid. They were out fishing, wanted
to talk to me, and we just hey, are you
a better caller than Tony? Are you gonna be a
big outcunter when you get older? Just I gave that
kid two to three minutes of my time that I
I could do why I was doing whatever else I
was doing. But that kid now knows, like, hey, Jason,
(36:53):
his time is not worth more than me. You know,
it's not worth more than my time can he can give.
And so that's very important, like any kid, you know,
not even kid, just anybody that I've got time. Now,
with that said, I'm very busy and sometimes it's tough
to get to things. But if I've got time, I'll
try to make sure that that I can give you
(37:13):
a little bit of it. And help with whatever's going on.
What hunt challenged my identity the most physically or emotionally,
and on that one, the one that changed not challenged
my identity the most, would be my big, my big
Cascade Roosevelt back in twenty twelve. I really wasn't a
(37:35):
backpack hunter at that time. I wasn't doing a lot
of that, and we got closed out of our area
on fire danger. I really didn't know anywhere else to go,
but I had to try to find somewhere on National
Forest Service. So we kind of ended up, you know,
hunting that way. And I would say that hunt was,
you know, was one that challenged me a little bit.
I thought it was all over. I just missed a
(37:56):
smaller Roosevelt prior to being shut out for fire, and
that one, you know, both physically and emotionally challenged me
because I wasn't really set up to hunt that way.
And then one thing that people may or may not know,
in the middle of that hunt, or no, not the
middle of the hunt, towards the end of that hunt,
with two days left, I actually missed that bowl that
(38:18):
I ended up killing. So for me to go up
there spend all that time, effort, energy, and the miss
a bowl that was three hundred and seventy inches. Like
emotionally and physically, I was just in the tank, and
I never thought I would get a chance on the
very last day of season to go in there and
then to be able to kill that bowl. And so
that roller coaster ride of being in the in the
(38:39):
lowest the lows to the highest the highs, and it
just kind of it draws, it kind of pulled together
everything I already know, like it only takes one It
only takes a quick change for everything to change. And
so that's why I like now it's easy for me
to hunt and give it my all all the way
to the end because I know it only takes that
one chance, and we're gonna end it with this one.
(38:59):
If I had to stop hunting tomorrow, what would be
the hardest part to let go of? I think this one.
I would I would struggle with not having fresh dear, elk, sheep, cougar,
whatever the heck I have in my freezer at that time.
But I think the answer is more intended for like
what do I what do I What would I miss
(39:21):
the most, aside from you know, being able to eat
the meat and man. You know some people talk about
like I don't. I'm not there to spend time with
my buddies. I'm there to kill an elk. I'm there
to kill a deer. Man, I could. I would love
doing that. If it's just me by myself, I would
still love that challenge. I love I love being out
there with the buddy, you know, giving each other a crap.
(39:43):
We don't, you know now that we're getting older, we
all got families. Like the best time I get to
spend with my friends now or the most time is
on a hunt. We can sit and talk about everything
going on in each other's lives that you can't you know,
figure out over a text message. You know, people that
were all growing up in different towns where we got
you know, different hunts, but to be able to join
(40:04):
back up on those, like I love hunting with buddies
that that hunt hard. We can share a camp. We
share in the hard work, we share in the packouts
we sharing cutting up the deer and the elk and
the whole the whole thing is a is a shared
experience from start to finish. And if I had to
stop hunting tomorrow, I would miss that because I'd have
to have some I'd have to figure out some other
way to fill in that void of of that experience
(40:27):
with my buddies, and just it's the reset button for
me every year, Like when I come back to coaching
basketball at the end of November, I'm just reset. I'm
ready to kind of you know, you roll into the
Christmas season, that whole process of fall hunting season into Christmas,
rolling into New Year. It just kind of gets me
ready to to kind of take on that next year.
(40:49):
And that's that's what I would miss the most. But
uh no, hopefully, hopefully this episode doesn't doesn't turn you
guys off and and make you run away. It was
just one of those things where it was just kind
of like, what's that life beyond the bagle, Like what
makes me tick? A little bit hunting related, a little
bit of business related, a little bit of family related,
but yeah, for me, it's it's God, family, you know, hunting,
(41:13):
everything else after that. So uh it's important to me
to uh to to keep that in perspective. And uh,
you know, the business side, I it's it's not some
mythical magical thing. I think you learn what people want,
what you would want as a as a customer and
you make those decisions and everything else just kind of
(41:33):
falls in place. So yeah, that's where I'm at. That's
that's what makes me tick. That's kind of who I
am a little bit behind the scenes. And I hope
you guys enjoyed this episode. And I hope you guys
are all having success out there in the in the spring,
whether it's a Turkey Woods or spring Bear or whatever
your chase. Know if you guys are having success, and
uh yeah, tune in next week. And appreciate you all
(41:56):
for listening to the cutting the distances
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