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May 30, 2025 • 68 mins
Jason Murff owner and founder of grillyourassoff.com. Jason is a former Army Infantryman who started a company with a mission. A mission to make your meat the best tasting thing you have ever put in your mouth. Each of their products is designed with a military theme so it can give you and a friend a laugh or bring back a great memory. Every one of their bottles is made in Texas with pride so you can taste the freedom.
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Episode Transcript

Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (01:36):
Hello, everyone, and welcome to another episode of There We Go.
Rob moved up to.

Speaker 2 (01:41):
Doing the nun.

Speaker 1 (01:41):
Here we are three, episode three sixty four on I
Guess the last Thursday, last show of May. And we
have ironically someone back. It was ironically guys, but we
have Jason back from Grill your Ass off dot com.
Jason Murph is the founder and creator of that army
vet himself your true blue of Truman like myself. And

(02:05):
we last had Jason on five years ago, I think
around May twentieth, so we are just a few days
over the five year May twenty first we last had
you on. Jason, Welcome back to the show.

Speaker 3 (02:20):
Yeah, I appreciate you having me on. It's crazy, the thing.
It's been five years, so it doesn't feel like it whatsoever.

Speaker 2 (02:26):
Yeah, you don't look at you don't look five years
older at all. I mean, but you were five years ago.
How's that?

Speaker 4 (02:33):
No, I appreciate that.

Speaker 1 (02:35):
It was a crazy, RESTful time in May of twenty twenty.
I think we were pasted. We were pasted. Let it
flatten a curve for two weeks. I think we were passed.
Give us a little bit longer. I think right now
we were in the don't dare go outside or go
the wrong way in the Walmart line because you can
kill Grandma. I think that's the phase we were in

(02:57):
in the end of May of twenty twenty.

Speaker 2 (02:59):
That sounds about right.

Speaker 4 (03:00):
Yeah, no, And that was right Shortly.

Speaker 3 (03:05):
A little bit before that was the time that I
was telling everyone who worked for the company, I don't
know how long we can keep this going for.

Speaker 1 (03:16):
Yeah, I would imagine it was. It was pretty scary
for you and many others. Obviously, many many things came out.
The government was able to provide, you know, loans and
things like that for small businesses to keep going. And
I'm sure that was helpful if you took I know
it was for a lot of other businesses. But the
good thing was if you were gonna isolate or keep
social distancing, at least you know, you could grow at

(03:39):
home and you didn't have to go out, and you
could make some great stuff thanks.

Speaker 2 (03:43):
To grayorassoff dot com.

Speaker 4 (03:45):
Yeah, yeah, no, it was.

Speaker 3 (03:48):
It was pretty wild, you know, the first two three
weeks of especially like during Lockdown's it was one.

Speaker 4 (03:53):
Of those things.

Speaker 3 (03:55):
I was almost stuck in Vegas during the beginning of
it at a buddy of mine's bachelor party. We went
out there for that, and then like everything got real,
real serious, like the last day that we were there,
to the point where it's like they're canceling flights left
and right, and we're just like, well, we might as
well just make Vegas a bender at this point and
just stay out here and party hard.

Speaker 4 (04:16):
You know, we got a got on a flight back,
made it back.

Speaker 3 (04:20):
You know, lockdowns were very very strict serious at that time,
and you know, about two three weeks into it, it
was like I said, making the phone calls and talking
to the team like hey, I'm gonna keep this going
as long as I possibly can, but right now, no
one knows the future of anything, and we only have
so much cash that we can you know, expense until

(04:42):
it's all gone. And then right around the you know,
three to four week mark during the lockdowns, I guess
that's whenever everyone figured out like, hey, I'm stuck at home,
just like you said, I can still cook, I can
still grill, I need spice is And that was that
was the start of it to where it was like, Okay,

(05:04):
there's there's a lot of people wanting to you know,
cook at home. And then oh, okay, hey, this was
a record breaking week. Okay, this was the record breaking month,
which then you know, proceed to turn into a record
breaking quarter year. And yeah, it was just it was
madness because not only was all the retail stores closed
except for you know, the essential walmarts, and you know

(05:29):
those businesses. All the suppliers that you know, make the
plastic lids, make the pet bottles that we utilize, make
the induction seal liners, all that stuff, they're all their
factories are closed. So there's only a so much surplus
of all of these products, even down to uh, you know,

(05:52):
our lead time went for labels from about seven days
to nine weeks. So once all of a sudden we
had this huge, huge growth, it was just a huge
amount of headaches.

Speaker 4 (06:02):
To go along with it.

Speaker 1 (06:04):
Yeah, absolutely, and uh no, I mean you hit a
good point is that you know where a lot of
people were, you know, catching up on their tiger king
and you know, taking time off and getting paid to
sit at home. It sounds like you were one of
the folks that you never got a chance to probably
catch up on that for a while.

Speaker 2 (06:22):
It was it was there was no.

Speaker 1 (06:24):
Two weeks slip to just relax at the house, like
most of the kids were that were still in school,
if you'd call it that, or most of the workers,
you guys just going you know, you had to fill orders, right.

Speaker 3 (06:35):
And yeah, I mean that was it. I honestly didn't
even know that Tiger King existed until my next door neighbor,
me and him ended up just I'd lived there at
that place for almost a year at that point, you know,
I'm twenty four to seven on the go, and then finally,
you know, the COVID lockdowns and having a beer in

(06:57):
the middle of the street because we're just tired of
being cooped in the house. His wife actually came out
while we were talking started talking about Tiger King. So
I was like, let me turn this song while I'm
packing some orders, and that's how that's how I saw
Tiger King. So yeah, there's there's like, you know, two
weeks of downtime, but it was more not of downtime.
It was more stressful time of the hell am I

(07:19):
going to keep the ship going?

Speaker 2 (07:20):
Right? Yeah?

Speaker 1 (07:21):
It was like you got this this new business venture
off the off the ground and and made it happen.
And then I was like, it's some weird chinavirus or
something else gonna you know, it's the world ending, it's
gonna end it all. But you know, if the world's
ending at all, okay, But as we know that that
didn't happen, and people still need to eat and uh
and like you said, yeah, I would imagine I don't

(07:43):
know what you heard it, but I would imagine as
people were locked in and restaurants were shut down and
people couldn't go out, I could I.

Speaker 2 (07:50):
Could guess that people that probably weren't foodies or.

Speaker 1 (07:53):
Didn't venture into new things or whatever, probably started experimenting.
And it may I could have guessed it was making
people more adventurous in cooking at home, trying new recipes,
doing things like that. Maybe where they went out to
some steak chain to always eat a steak or a
barbecue place. You know, maybe they started you know, you know,

(08:13):
toying around with stuff at home because we got the
stuff in the cupboard. Might as well, you know, we're
not going to go out there. It make them grow more.
Hopefully hopefully you saw more business because of it.

Speaker 4 (08:24):
No, we did. We saw a huge increase.

Speaker 2 (08:27):
You know.

Speaker 3 (08:27):
Ironically, it was like right before the lockdown, we started
doing a huge B to B push and then all
of a sudden, that just abruptly stopped, and our B
two c is shot back through the roof and we
saw it across the board. Not only was the orders
of but also all of our social media, our recipes,
everything like that. So everyone who was wanting to learn

(08:48):
how to cook just expressed it even more so then
that just gave us more opportunity to be able to
give the customer. You know, hey, not only are we
providing a product, but we also have hundreds of recipes
on our website. How two guides all this kind of stuff.
So it's like heck, yeah, like buy the product and
we're going to teach you how to cook. Like, how
where else do you get that? Right?

Speaker 2 (09:08):
Right? That's funny you mentioned.

Speaker 1 (09:09):
I had one of my was talking about one of
my new employees the other day a couple week ago,
and she was telling me how she's she's trying these.

Speaker 2 (09:14):
Different types, like she's she mastered.

Speaker 1 (09:16):
It took her about a year or so to learn
how to really cook good Indian food and master, and
now she's working on Korean and stuff. And she told
me that she started at during COVID. As we're picking
cuisines and just reading about him, studying about it and
just trying to master cooking everything, you know, being being
as good as she could cooking these these you know,
these cuisines and and flavors that you know, normally she

(09:38):
never would have tried or or never even attempted to try.

Speaker 2 (09:41):
So yeah, it makes that makes sense.

Speaker 1 (09:43):
Uh, I know Toby has talked a lot.

Speaker 2 (09:46):
He's I know, he's a frequent guest. He can't be
with us here tonight like he was last time.

Speaker 1 (09:50):
But uh, but he's always telling me about different seasonings
and different things like that that.

Speaker 2 (09:54):
He's ordered and has tried out.

Speaker 1 (09:56):
So uh, he's I'm sure he's pushing it down in
Mexico where he is right now, Cabo. But if you've
see any orders going down there, it's probably all him.
I don't know if you guys shipped to Mexico or not,
but oh.

Speaker 3 (10:07):
Yeah, we ship worldwide, so especially if I catch the name,
we'll uh we'll.

Speaker 4 (10:12):
Make sure to put a nice little note on the
outside of the package.

Speaker 2 (10:16):
There we go, there we go. Well, Hey, that's that's
been awesome.

Speaker 1 (10:19):
So what is uh you know, you are you are
like I said, you're you're you know, veteran infantrymen for
our people that maybe haven't uh, viewers and listeners who
haven't met you before seen you were listening five years ago.
Can you give us kind of a quick overview some
of your just kind of your military background and yeah,
grow your ass off or what, Kate, what gave you
the inspiration to start it?

Speaker 2 (10:40):
Oh?

Speaker 4 (10:40):
For sure?

Speaker 3 (10:41):
You know, I served just over three and a half
years as a love and Bravo, was medically discharged, had
a botch surgery over Walter read by a wonderful Navy doctor,
and then has since then. Last year actually had my
final surgery to fix that and was the first time

(11:02):
since twenty fourteen that I've actually been able to stand
up and not been in extreme pain. So that's been
an awesome transition since we've last talked. But yeah, got
out twenty fifteen, served at the Old Guard at Arlington
National Cemetery and did a lot of fun stuff there,

(11:24):
a lot of not so fun stuff there. Tried to,
you know, go out use the GI bill like a
lot of other veterans do, went to actual commercial aviation
school with the GI bill, and then realized pretty quick
that flying a school bus in the sky is pretty
boring whenever you go from being in the infantry, So

(11:45):
what in the biggest fan of doing that or college itself?
And you know, I started making a lot of the
seasonings just at the house because I was stationed in
d C and coming from Texas up north. Sorry for
everyone who's up north, there's a severe lack of flavor
up there. So I was already making seasonings and toying

(12:06):
around with the idea, just never thought it would ever
be of anything. And then as soon as I got
the uh, you know, the urge to drop out of college,
I had another business going on at that time, had
enough money saved up to where I could float for
about eight months, and I was just like, no, screw it,
dropped out of college, moved back to Houston, went in
both feed forward, and didn't give myself any reason to

(12:28):
be able to quit doing it. So here we are
eight and a half years later, five years since we
were last on this podcast, and we've we've grown drastically.

Speaker 1 (12:37):
Yeah, yeah, what can you give us, like viewers, listeners,
kind of a percentage? Obviously we disclosed all the numbers,
but just what what did your percentage look like? And
you know, We didn't prep you to say, hey, get
your stats from five years ago, but roughly that hit
has grown as far as you know, quantity.

Speaker 2 (12:55):
Of products shipped, or or how your.

Speaker 1 (12:57):
Revenues have have then, or just you know how you're
Comeani's expanded.

Speaker 2 (13:00):
Right.

Speaker 1 (13:01):
Did you start off with five things? Now you have
forty five? That kind of stuff.

Speaker 3 (13:06):
So we actually started off with four products. There's four
seasonings that we launched with, and that was the kind
of goal behind that was like, how do we cover
just your basics for any kind of meat that you
would be cooking. And that was our Madu steak seasoning,
our Infidel pork row, our Willie Peat chicken seasoning, and

(13:26):
our Claymore Cajun seasoning. And one of my favorite things
about like the actual names and why we called it
what it was is I actually called the guys that
I served with a lot of them were still in
and collaborated with them.

Speaker 4 (13:39):
Back and forth.

Speaker 3 (13:41):
And that's how the original four came to be, and
the original bottles that were ever made was actually sent
to them and it's like, hey, like I want you
guys to be the ones who were the first ones
to try it. Give me feedback all that kind of stuff.
So we started off with four. Now we have over
one hundred SKUs that we currently stock inside the warehouse.

(14:04):
Business Wise, we've grown over four hundred percent uh and uh,
you know year over year revenue and it's been a
steady incline since then. You know, last year, a lot
of people were kind of weird about the economy, didn't
know what was what to expect or anything like that.
We actually had a very very solid year last year.

(14:27):
And then honestly, if anything, you would think that politics, elections,
all that kind of stuff would decrease a company, especially
with previous people in office, but last.

Speaker 4 (14:40):
Year we actually crushed it. And then the beginning of
you know, Q one this year was slow for everyone.

Speaker 3 (14:47):
Everyone that I've talked to in business, Uh, no one
really knew what the markets we're gonna do. There's huge
change in shifts going on, and we we were able
to beat last year's Q one this year and we're
off to a the solid start Q two.

Speaker 4 (15:01):
So very very happy with everything right now.

Speaker 2 (15:06):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (15:07):
Q one is definitely tough, uh, as everyone watched out
how the election panned out and how the market we're
gonna we're gonna respond to that I work in the
cybersecurity industry and we've seen the same thing across the
board from you know, customers and commercial, government space and everything.
So you went over one hundred scus and you've got
some interesting ones. I mean you've ventured into some some
new things. You've gotten outside of just seasonings for meats. Right,

(15:28):
you've got here. Now you have a you have a
bloody Mary mix that uh, near and dear to my heart.

Speaker 2 (15:35):
I'm a big fan of bloody Mary donkey punch buddy
Mary mix. Uh.

Speaker 1 (15:40):
You know, we won't get into where that term comes
from or whatever, but I'm curious of how you came
up with it and uh what what got you.

Speaker 2 (15:46):
Into doing something like this.

Speaker 3 (15:49):
So we actually had a very We have a VI
I P customer group that we call Elite pit Masters,
and we hold them near and near to our heart
and treat them very very well because those are our
top tier customers and those are the ones who support
the brand. And we actually share a lot of the
back end working on what we're doing on developing products,

(16:09):
all that kind of stuff to help them actually have
a say and where the brand goes and where what's
the next products that we're doing, and right around three
years ago, we had a giant Google meet and just
invited all of them in and did a whole entire
warehouse tour with them. We just moved into this facility

(16:29):
that we're in now and just said, hey, we want
to know anything and everything that you want. And so
Diane actually came up. We'd chatted about it beforehand, but
she was like, hey, let's do a bloody Mary mix.
And I was just like, all right, yeah, you know,
we've thought about it. We don't really know what we're
going to go with, because if you don't know shipping

(16:51):
things that are in liquid and glass jars are not
fun to ship. So we've perfected the sixteen mason jar
to be able to get it too a customer and
not be destroyed. Currently we're at like a ninety nine
point eight percent success.

Speaker 4 (17:06):
Rate on that.

Speaker 3 (17:08):
But if I shipped you a sixteen ounce mason jar,
that's really not a whole lot for you to drink.
For a bloody Mary, that's a drink if that, so
you're not gonna want to pay the shipping all that
kind of stuff. So we kind of scrapped that, went
back to the drawing board.

Speaker 4 (17:22):
And then.

Speaker 3 (17:24):
We kind of dabbled with a couple ideas of doing
just a dry, bloody Mary mix. And we were actually
in Mississippi for a trade show and a good friend
of mine l from Soldier Socks, who's another great company,
and every time somebody buys a pair of their socks,
they donate a pair of their socks to soldiers. And

(17:47):
she was like, Hey, why don't you call one of
your products donkey punch. And as soon as she said that,
I literally grabbed James, who's standing or sitting right next
to me at this restaurant, and I was just like,
that's what we're calling. And he's just like, I don't
know what you're talking about, but I like it, so
we went immediately. I went to my artist, I said, hey,

(18:10):
I need a donkey that has black eye, a chunk
of his ear bitten out. We have the Mike Tyson
Fight coming up, Like, let's let's get this thing prepped
ready to go. So we like, we scrap everything else
we're working on. We're full steam ahead on this. We
get it done, we get all the product shots done,
everything's ready to launch, and then they scrap the June Fight.

Speaker 2 (18:35):
That's right, they pushed it yeah, and.

Speaker 3 (18:38):
It was just, uh, it's a lot a lot of
hard work. And then they scraped that and we were like,
you know, it's screw it. Let's just go ahead and
launch it. I mean most people they see the black eye,
they don't see the ear bite out of the donkey.
So we still have a blast with it. And you know,
the goal with like you know, all all of our products,

(18:58):
my biggest thing is once you have that product, you
don't need anything else. Uh.

Speaker 4 (19:04):
There's a lot of other products out.

Speaker 3 (19:05):
There that are very short in that say uh to
where it's like, oh hey, once you have this, now
you need X y Z. I want to make a
product to it where we've already thought that through to
where we make cooking as simple, easy fun as possible.
So that way we're challenging people to cook, and we're
not challenging the people of like you have.

Speaker 4 (19:27):
To be a culinary artist for this.

Speaker 3 (19:29):
No, I just want you to like go out there
and enjoy cooking, have people around you, and create a
community with that. So with the spicy Bloody Marry Mix
donkey punch, it's got everything you would want in a
bloody Mary except for the out you know, crazy stuff
that you see people put in.

Speaker 1 (19:45):
There and then afterwards, right, that's all the that's all
the accouterment that gets Yeah, no, one hundred percent.

Speaker 4 (19:52):
So this has all of your deal inside of it.

Speaker 3 (19:54):
It has your horse radish, it has your dehydrated wish
tire sauce, so it had your has all of that
in there. So all you need is a tomato juice,
a alcohol and then if you want to go crazy,
we have donkey balls. Donkey balls are green olive stuff
with a hab and era. We have atomic dongs, which
is a dill pickle spear marinated in the have an
aerra garlic brine. So yeah, we we really started and

(20:18):
that what started it was we started off with just
a seasoning line and then we added on three different
barbecue sauces. We did a original, a bacon bourbon, a
honey habin era.

Speaker 2 (20:29):
Uh.

Speaker 3 (20:29):
Then we added on a salted vodka glaze. Then next
thing got a wild hair out my ass and I
was like, hey, let's start selling beef jerky. Who came
out with six flavors.

Speaker 2 (20:40):
I'm a venison Jerky is one of my masterpieces. Anyone.
People just begged me to sell it. Tot of stuff,
and I don't, you don't I do it.

Speaker 1 (20:48):
I do it from field to table and and so
I'm I have been making.

Speaker 2 (20:52):
It for years and years when I lived in Alaska
and now down here.

Speaker 1 (20:55):
So I saw the jerky mixes and I'm like, I'm
pretty I'm pretty loyal to the mix as I use.
But I saw that was impressive that I may have
to just give a grew your ass off a chance
and do a five pound package and see how that
works out.

Speaker 4 (21:08):
We won't disappoint.

Speaker 3 (21:09):
But I mean, we have twelve different you know, jerky
flavors now that you can pick from and choose. And
then you know, outside of that we started. The biggest
thing for me is, I don't we don't really look
at what other.

Speaker 4 (21:24):
Competitors are doing in our space.

Speaker 3 (21:26):
We want to have a clear mind space of what
we want and also take feedback in on what our
customers want. So that's how you know our ranch dips
came to be. It's like, hey, let's create a single
serf spice pack of ranch that you can mix with
sour cream or playing Greek yogurt. If you want to

(21:46):
go lighter on calories, you have a chip and a
vegetable dip. Now we have recipes to be able to
turn that into ranch dressing, which is phenomenal. Then we
did a spicy ranch and then you know, later on
down the road, we did a whiskey smoked sea salt,
one of our newer products to go with the like
gourmet smoked spice line, as we did a whiskey smoked sugar.
So if you love old fashions, you love baking cookies, anything,

(22:10):
now you can have a sugar that has the aroma
and the flavor of smoke. We also just created, since
we're talking about spicy bloody mirrimix, we have a lime
beer salt, the chili lime beer salt. So a lot
of people who like ta Heem, but they want to
get away from all the preservatives that are in it
and the artificial flavoring. Ours actually have real lime that's

(22:31):
been dehydrated and crystallized, so as it hits your tongue,
you're actually tasting that lime rehydrate. You get crazy flavor
with it.

Speaker 2 (22:42):
Now, do you guys?

Speaker 4 (22:42):
Also go ahead?

Speaker 2 (22:44):
You do crying, You do all the crushing of the ingredient.

Speaker 1 (22:46):
I mean, do you do you have a manufacturer helps
you make that and you just come up with the.

Speaker 2 (22:50):
Mixes and the flavors or do you do you guys?
Is it okay? Yeah?

Speaker 3 (22:56):
So we do a lot of the R and D
in house, but we also have a lot of partners
that help us and work more specialty in certain fields.

Speaker 4 (23:05):
Because we wouldn't be able to do it all in
house now.

Speaker 3 (23:08):
So it's you know, a lot of the R and
D is finding or working with the right partner on
the actual resources.

Speaker 4 (23:15):
And then once we have a lot of those resources.

Speaker 3 (23:18):
It's just test test test, test tests. Then once we
nail it down, we're good to go and full steam ahead.
But even you know, that's one of the things that
no one sees is you know, nailing down a sample
of you know, say a one pound ranch mix is
different than running ten thousand pounds of.

Speaker 4 (23:39):
A mix.

Speaker 1 (23:40):
So you have a master like you know, a lot
of distiller, any big whiskey distillery, they at least a
master taster.

Speaker 2 (23:47):
Is that a thing for industry? Is that?

Speaker 1 (23:48):
Because you know, obviously some people taste, you know, try
different things and it's like, okay, they taste salt, pepper,
they mostly taste spice. I mean, do you have someone
or is it you that has a palette that you
can sit there and distinguish tastes. I drink a lot
of whiskey. I'll just make it right now, a lot
of brown water. But I to me, good whiskey is
a good whiskey. And I'm pretty very pretty vague on
either smooth, it's got a bite. I got this, but

(24:11):
where other people are like, oh, it's got earthy vanilla
with a slight touch of oak, And I'm like, yeah,
I don't taste all.

Speaker 2 (24:16):
I got whiskey. That's what I got.

Speaker 4 (24:19):
Starting off, I was in the same boat. I'm like, cool,
it tastes like seasoning.

Speaker 3 (24:27):
Like obviously there's certain flavors that overweight other ones, and
you can taste that. You know, some of the people
that we worked with in the very beginning, and I've there,
there's some crazy outliers that I've met since we've been
in this industry to where they will literally pick up
a seasoning blend, take a pinch of it, put it
on their tongue, and then just kind of swirl their

(24:49):
tongue around and then they will tell you, Okay, it's
got this, this, this, and this, And I can tell
you that because it's hitting my taste buts here.

Speaker 4 (24:56):
It's doing this, it's doing that, and.

Speaker 3 (24:58):
It's like it's it's mind blow and it's like, oh,
they're achieving this flavor profile by using these three ingredients
right here, and I'm just like, dude, what do you do?
Like just mind blown? And I'm nowhere near that good
at it, but I am getting better and better. So
it's like my palette has developed now to where, for instance,

(25:23):
I won't say what it's going to be, but we
just tasted. I made the entire team taste test a
new product yesterday that's not the most fun to taste test,
and it was. That was another thing yesterday as soon
as they made me taste tested after they did, and
I was able to pick up you know, hey, this

(25:44):
is happening because of this, And now I'm explaining to
them this is this is what you're experiencing, and this
is how you pick up on the notes. Again, I'm
not great at it, I will say I'm one hundred
percent better. Our warehouse manager, Dylan, he's a Marine Corps veteran.
I've blind taste tested him on so many different products,

(26:04):
and every time I can give him the same exact
product that he just blind taste tested, and he will
give me a different result every single time. So we've
ruled him out of all taste testing. I don't know
if it's the crayons or what.

Speaker 1 (26:19):
The crayons kind of dumb down the taste buds, but
you know it's like, look, I'm my whole family that
can sing their great singers and all that stuff. I
did not stand in that line, and I you know,
I'm tone deaf. You know, I just don't have that
kif right, So I'd imagine again as you we talked about, right,
there's people that can taste a whiskey or taste any
kind of liquor or anything like that, and they can

(26:41):
spice that thing up in seven different you know layers
like you talked about.

Speaker 2 (26:45):
You know, people taste a little.

Speaker 1 (26:47):
Pinch of something and they can break all that down
where I just taste, yeah, spicy, Oh, I got a
little smokiness in there, like I go about that deep.
You know, I can taste a few things like some lime,
you know, very distinct taste, but some people can can,
you know. I imagine it's got to be just a
gift that people have, for sure.

Speaker 3 (27:02):
Yeah, it's it's something you can train yourself over time,
but not fully compared to some of these people that
I meet, Like I can read an ingredient label and
tell you what it's gonna taste like, but I can't
pick up a pinch of something and tell you the
exact ingredients and ratio is that it's gonna be at.

Speaker 1 (27:19):
So you've gotten in a jerky. You've got it, by
the way, just curious, so package a jerky? I was,
I was looking at you that is that for five
pounds of meat. I couldn't find one there like anything.

Speaker 3 (27:28):
Oh no, no, no, it's actually fully finished cure jerky. So
you're actually getting meat.

Speaker 1 (27:32):
Oh it's not the men Oh okay. I thought it
was like the powdered mix to make your own jerky. Okay,
so it's actually it's packages a jerky. Okay, got you?

Speaker 2 (27:41):
Yeah?

Speaker 3 (27:41):
So yeah, now it's straight up packages is a jerky.
One of the things that we did just come out
with that is super cool. We launched a salsa line
last year that's actually been received very very well by
our customers. We have a mild right, a mile Tomatia,
and then a roasted Carolina Reaper which was my personal favorite.

(28:02):
And again we prioritize flavor over just making stuff stupid hot,
because anyone can do that really easy.

Speaker 4 (28:09):
But we just launched.

Speaker 3 (28:11):
Our most recent product is Bag and Tag, which is
a wild game seasoning that we partnered with Military Mobility
on which is an amazing nonprofit based out of Wyoming,
and we actually kind of communicated back and forth with
them on you know, hey, we want to do a
collaborative product just like we did, which I guess has

(28:32):
been a while since we last talked. You can see
the Sailor Jerry spice rum bottle up there and we
actually co branded that right there. The Ironsides barbecue sauce
was Sailor Jerry, which was an awesome process. We did
fifty of every bottle goes back to the Independence Fund

(28:52):
and that was something that we turned around and did
with our.

Speaker 4 (28:54):
Bag and Tag wild Game Spice.

Speaker 3 (28:56):
And with that Wild Game Spice, I wanted to keep
in mind of all the hunters and especially the guys
who are out there, you know, trekking in the mountains
for elk and a lot of the wild game.

Speaker 4 (29:08):
There are a lot of the guys that are processing.

Speaker 3 (29:10):
The meat themselves at home they're making their own sausage,
they're making their own jerky. And so with the formulation
of bag Intago, super fun because we were able to
formulate it to where you get a great earthy herb
style taste, you get smoky, you get sweet, you get
spicy from the curry powder inside of it. But it's
also low enough in salt to where if you need

(29:33):
anything to add curing salt to it, you have the
room to do that and it's not overly salty. So
it's one we're currently working with right now, a local
meat market company out of Houston, to actually develop a
sausage with them on that. It won't be available on
our website, but it'll be available at their meat market

(29:54):
whenever you get.

Speaker 4 (29:54):
To that point. So super fun, cool product.

Speaker 3 (29:57):
And again fifty percent of every bottle sold goes back
Act Military Mobility to help them out on what they're doing.

Speaker 2 (30:03):
Yeah, that's awesome.

Speaker 1 (30:04):
If I could give you a recommendation, Yeah, you could
find a way too, because you've done the seasonings and
you got the sauces and things for people.

Speaker 2 (30:13):
You talked about hunting a big proponent of that, doing
a lot of it. But if you guys looked at
if you have it making your own jerky mixes.

Speaker 1 (30:22):
And stuff like that, for people to do their own
because obviously they're at the hunt right people go buy
ground beef and go buy whatever and make their own
jerky out of that. I don't understand that I'd rather
kill it, but you know that could that?

Speaker 2 (30:32):
Would you know one? Because obviously so many in military
community hunt that.

Speaker 1 (30:37):
Could provide that could turn out to be pretty pretty
impactful too.

Speaker 2 (30:41):
Maybe something to look at when you look at new products.

Speaker 3 (30:43):
No, for sure, that's something we've talked about before. Currently,
right now, we'll let it out here hopefully in about
two months as long as there's no delays to it.
We're actually revamping and completely changing our whole entire jerky line.
Some the flavors will stay the same, but we're changing
the way that we actually cut the meat.

Speaker 4 (31:04):
We tend to rize the meat, we marinate the meat.

Speaker 3 (31:06):
So I'm super pumped on that because here in just
a few months, yeah, we're gonna have an awesome relaunch of
all of it, and then it's just gonna be an
even bigger, better product for our customers. On that, I
will say one thing that you'll get humor out of
I don't know if you're able to pull up the
salsas that photo that you had, Yeah, right there.

Speaker 4 (31:29):
So it's kind of hard to see from this.

Speaker 3 (31:31):
View, and for subtle things, we try and hide it
to where it's hard enough to see, but once you
look at it, you can see it.

Speaker 4 (31:39):
So with recon red.

Speaker 3 (31:43):
Right behind his byodes, it actually says Pogue on his
plate carrier as a pope to everybody.

Speaker 4 (31:51):
Rangers Reaper.

Speaker 3 (31:52):
We wanted to do the quad nods, make it, you know,
a cool guy kind of thing.

Speaker 4 (31:58):
We actually put on his plate carry it says death.

Speaker 3 (32:01):
Dealers, which is, uh, what are the platoon I was
in was the nickname for. And then if you look
in the very middle we were trying, we couldn't. We
were like stumped, like for freaking.

Speaker 2 (32:13):
Week, I know where you're going, I see it all right,
go ahead.

Speaker 3 (32:18):
On on what to call the toe Matias. Also we
were like, man, do we call it like commando? We're like, no,
that's gay, And we were just like we couldn't do anything.
And we were actually driving to Albuquerque and we were
crossing through Roswell and we saw a little alien billboard
and we were just like, bro, let's call it invader.

Speaker 4 (32:39):
And then we were like, all right, well what are
we going to do?

Speaker 3 (32:41):
And then we're like, let's do a little donkey flying
a UFO and abducting a cow by its ass. First
that was the thing, and then as we got further
into it, it's like, all right, let's make a little
poket space force since that was a newer trend. So
if you actually look on his vest, it's got the space.

Speaker 4 (32:59):
Force low go on there.

Speaker 2 (33:01):
I was. I was.

Speaker 1 (33:02):
I saw the cows ass, and I thought I had something,
you know, invader like probing and all that kind of stuff.

Speaker 4 (33:06):
That's oh no, that's definitely all there. Like yeah, we
were like, we can't.

Speaker 3 (33:13):
Have a cow get abducted without its ass going first,
like all day long.

Speaker 1 (33:18):
So yeah, I have a great palette making and innovative
and all stuff. Uh you also have an awesome sense
of humor and a great artist. So I don't know
who's doing all your artwork, but uh yeah, I hope
all that kind of stuff because the donkeys where it's
at that that is for sure? Has that always been

(33:39):
your mascot per se from the start.

Speaker 3 (33:41):
Yeah, from the start, you know, the very very first
I deal with it. The first drawling, I ended up
pulling the trigger on grill your ass off.

Speaker 4 (33:52):
You know, my dad was the one who came up
with the idea of the name.

Speaker 3 (33:55):
I I truly didn't think that it was going to
be something that a lot of stores would carry, so
I kind of slept on it and then had some
guys that I served with come in town. We all
got you know, hammered and my apartment at the time,
and I jumped on fiver and paid a kid fifteen
bucks in Venezuela and I just wrote him on five
I was like, yo, draw me a donkey on a

(34:16):
grill with grillier ass off around it, and he like
gave me this horrible, horrible pencil sketch. I mean, it's
it's very, very bad, but I was just like, you
know what, there's something here.

Speaker 4 (34:28):
And then I took that. We went to a better.

Speaker 3 (34:30):
Artist, got it redrawn, and then it's gone through four
different cycles now to where we have it now, and
we have our current artists that's doing everything, and he's
revamped a lot of the stuff, especially since last time
we talked, to make it look way better. So now
all of our products have different donkey characters. We hide
certain donkeys on certain bag products that say funny sayings.

(34:54):
We try to hide little Easter eggs and a lot
of the a lot of the labels. We don't have
it on everything, just because that kind of stuff takes
a very very long time to plan out and do
without getting us in trouble.

Speaker 4 (35:06):
But yeah, we get to have a lot of fun.

Speaker 2 (35:09):
You know.

Speaker 4 (35:10):
We we hit some stuff in whenever we launched our battleship.

Speaker 3 (35:13):
Brian was one We've never done anything for the navy before,
so it's like, all right, we need to hide in.

Speaker 4 (35:19):
Some stuff for the semen out there.

Speaker 3 (35:22):
So anyone who has a Brian bag you'll see it
once you look hard enough for it. But we're trying
to do that more and more.

Speaker 4 (35:29):
Is just.

Speaker 3 (35:31):
You know, everything's so serious with politics, with life, with
all of that, and you know, really your ass off
got started because humor got us through a dark times
of service. So I always want to as serious as
we are as having a quality and a great product,
we want the humor to come through and for everyone
to just you know, laugh, smile, have fun. Life's hard enough.

Speaker 1 (35:55):
Yeah, Well it's interesting, right because not only are you
you know army instrument and a lot of it's army focus,
but in the spirit of inner service rivalry and the
fun rival we have.

Speaker 2 (36:06):
You know, you're now reaching out and making other products,
uh in in.

Speaker 1 (36:12):
Dedication to other uh to other branches, but you're also
making fun of them because that's what we do. We
rag whether you know, so, I expect to see something
else with it marine eating crayons, right or so?

Speaker 3 (36:25):
We actually this was a product that never released and
maybe whenever we have I have time to visit enough
on it. But we actually made a dessert seasoning that
looked like crayons at one point.

Speaker 2 (36:41):
There we go and I'm sure it was gonna have
a marine reference.

Speaker 3 (36:46):
We recreated a pack of crayons for the logo, like
we went full board.

Speaker 4 (36:52):
We just didn't have the right right partners to work
with on ingredients for it. So it was it was
a great idea, but I just didn't have the execution
and be able to pull it off.

Speaker 3 (37:02):
So, uh, maybe one day down the road we'll get
back into it. But yeah, no, that was definitely something
we attempted. It was a failure, and yeah, we definitely
need to get back because I remind Dylan every morning
whenever we get to the warehouse that the Navy paid
his paycheck.

Speaker 2 (37:18):
That's it. That's it.

Speaker 1 (37:19):
So you've gotten You've got saucey, you got the jerk,
you got the mixes, and you're also getting other things
like chili.

Speaker 2 (37:24):
So tell us a little bit about the Texas chili?
Is it? And how did that come about to create that?
Is that a mix?

Speaker 1 (37:30):
That's just a seasoning also, and you tell them what
ingredients to have and that kind of thing, or how
does that work?

Speaker 3 (37:34):
Yeah, So again, like you, we try to make it
stupid easy. So whenever you flip that bag over on
the backside, it's got a simple chili recipe. And if
you want to make it more complicated than just a
simple chili recipe, we have recipes on our website that
you know, you can do it over the top smoke chili,
which if you haven't done and you have a smoker,
you're drastically missing out on. But it was one of

(37:56):
the things to where we just and a lot of
it's we listen to our customers and I continuously just
got pounded by my customers like why don't.

Speaker 4 (38:05):
You have a Brian, Why don't you have a brine.

Speaker 3 (38:07):
And then finally it's like, all right, let's pull the
trigger on the Brian and then our customers ran.

Speaker 4 (38:10):
Away with it.

Speaker 3 (38:11):
So it's like, we wanted to do a chili, so
we decided, you know, hey, let's go back to the
drawing board what truly makes the Texas chili? So we
looked at all the different ingredients and then it's like, okay, now,
like what's our actual like selling proposition?

Speaker 4 (38:27):
So we able to call it a Texas chili.

Speaker 3 (38:29):
So we stuck true to you know, Texas style chili
roots to where you know, we don't put beans in
our chili, not that.

Speaker 4 (38:37):
There's anything wrong with that other than you're wrong if
you do.

Speaker 3 (38:41):
But also it's like, let's make a chili pack that's
actually worthwhile.

Speaker 4 (38:46):
So if you actually follow the.

Speaker 3 (38:48):
Direct recipe on the back of that bag, it'll make
fifty five bowls of chili in that one bag.

Speaker 2 (38:53):
Wow.

Speaker 1 (38:54):
Okay, So it's a it's a deal because I think
I saw that's you know, that's that's what ten eleven rough.

Speaker 2 (39:03):
Yeah, that's that's quite a bit. Yeah, your price, the
prices aren't bad.

Speaker 1 (39:07):
I mean you've got a ton I mean, you know,
you got jerky bundles that when you look at what
people pay for who knows how a lot of I
don't buy a lot of jerky.

Speaker 2 (39:15):
I'll be honest to make it all. But but you know, I.

Speaker 1 (39:17):
Look at people what it costs for you know, a
two ounce package or four ounce package is crazy.

Speaker 2 (39:24):
What that costs.

Speaker 1 (39:25):
And I mean you could get a bundle of six
different packages for you know what some people pay for
a big pack if you would.

Speaker 2 (39:32):
Yeah, And the.

Speaker 3 (39:33):
Biggest thing is, you know, we we keep that in mind,
and you know we're we're not a jack link, so
we're going to be a little bit more expensive than them.

Speaker 4 (39:40):
But at the same time, we're also not.

Speaker 3 (39:44):
Forming a bunch of molded, ground up stuff and water
log and get into certain shapes and trying to make
it taste like something. All of our stuff comes from
a high quality cut top round, uh, and then we
will actually marinate it in a vacuum tumbler and then
cure it inside of an oven. So it's quality product

(40:05):
and you can actually see it whenever you see the
muscle fibers running through the pieces of jerkey.

Speaker 2 (40:10):
Yeah, that's awesome.

Speaker 1 (40:10):
Now you know you you have some distribution I see
you're selling in stores and mostly it looks like in
the Austin area Austin metroplex, are you working other to
try to get it, you know, distributed out to other
you know, brick and.

Speaker 2 (40:23):
Mortar stores or grocery stores or chains, or is most
of your business pretty much being is it smarter to
just keep it online?

Speaker 3 (40:30):
And so we actually do, uh, we still do a
majority of our business online, but that's also just due
to our amazing customer base on that. But you know,
we're slowly growing nationwide with Ace Hardware right now, so
the majority of your Southern Ace Hardware's and your southern

(40:50):
states are going to stock our products. If they don't,
it's as simple as asking your your manager inside of that.

Speaker 4 (40:56):
Store to get it for you, or just jumping on Ace.

Speaker 3 (40:58):
Hardware's website or during it and they'll actually deliver it
to your store for free. Fun fact on that as
well as we're a huge partner with Hallmark, the greeting
card company.

Speaker 4 (41:10):
Always have to say that part because most people.

Speaker 3 (41:12):
Have that same facial reaction of like oh wow, yeah,
so and you know it's always funny to me because
you can walk in by Grandma a birthday card and
a Jared Donkey Balls at the same time, Like.

Speaker 2 (41:25):
I mean, what grandma doesn't want that? I mean, I'm
just saying, yeah.

Speaker 4 (41:29):
Right, so we have that.

Speaker 3 (41:32):
But also, you know, we're just over a thousand independent
mom and pop retail shops across all fifty states that
I'll carry the product, So we're getting closer closer to
having twenty one hundred stores across the US that carry
the product. Most of them are available on our retail

(41:53):
locator on the website, but we're consistently we're currently running
at like I think a seven month aclog on getting
the new locations added and doing our retailer shout out.
So if you'll follow us on Facebook or Instagram, every
Tuesday and Thursday, we shout out a new store that
carries the product on there and then get them added
to our store locator.

Speaker 1 (42:16):
Well, yeah, I was so when I went checked out
the map, right, it was just kind of zero it
in on Austin. Uh, and I started backing out. I was, yeah,
I mean I should have looked at that first. You
guys just red dots all over the country. I mean, yeah,
including I'm into Western New York. Buffalo, there's three locations
right here. I mean it's uh, you guys have have
quite a reason. Now, you just got to hit the Cabellas.

(42:38):
That's what you gotta go. You gotta land that Cabella's deal,
and then you would be you'd be all you you know,
you would be hitting every place that people want that
kind of stuff at.

Speaker 3 (42:48):
Yeah, And this is where you know the backside of
business that a lot of people don't see is like
a lot of people think, you know, hey, you hit
Cafellow's Beast Pro Shop, like you're gonna be making so
much money and doing so well in the grand scheme
of things. You know, they they have about forty locations.
So then you start thinking about doing numbers and the

(43:09):
amount of money that you make actually selling B to B,
especially to distributor who has multi chain locations, has a
name like Cabella's pass Pro Shop is going to dwindle
you down to every single penny that they can get
out of you to where now you're making you know,
pennies on the dollar selling your product to them to
have them then resell it versus to where you go

(43:30):
to say a you know, an ACE Hardware who's rolling
on six thousand locations. Then the numbers drastically change. And
trust me, I've been beaten down the damn door and
Cabela's and Bass Pro Shop for a while now, and
the biggest thing is just get the right time, right

(43:50):
opportunity to get your foot inside the door with these buyers.

Speaker 2 (43:54):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (43:54):
So Doug in the chat legend he brought up Athees
what about the Aphees locations?

Speaker 3 (43:59):
So we're currently and I wouldn't even That's my bad.
I had the live chat on or the private chat on,
not the actual chat, so Doug, I can see it now. Yeah,
so we are, ironically enough, we are on aphis on
their website. We are in early stages of talk of

(44:22):
potentially getting inside a store, but traditionally a lot of
people see our stuff inside of ACE Hardware. Now the
conversations with Ace actually started in twenty twenty two, okay,
and we're just now getting some decent rollout to.

Speaker 4 (44:40):
Let people in.

Speaker 3 (44:41):
Especially you know, with our line having ass in the
name no pun intended, it can be a pain in
the acid times.

Speaker 4 (44:50):
So there's that.

Speaker 3 (44:51):
We're we are. I see Costco. I just sent an
email today to some.

Speaker 4 (44:58):
People at Costco.

Speaker 3 (44:59):
So as as I always say, like nothing's done until
there's money in the bank account. So I'm not holding
my breath anytime soon, but hoping.

Speaker 1 (45:10):
I mean, how is it it would you? I mean,
obviously the bigger distribution you have things like that. I mean,
you have to rank ramp up manufacturing to a point.
Imagine at some point there's there's you've got to measure
or temper to say, we can only go so big
so fast, right, You've got to be able to still
put the product out well.

Speaker 4 (45:26):
And that's where it comes to, you know, making sure you.

Speaker 3 (45:30):
Have the right partners and play and making sure you're
gonna be able to hit that capacity of not only
just providing the product, but the funds that come with
it too.

Speaker 4 (45:41):
That's what most people.

Speaker 3 (45:42):
Say, you know, like whenever they a lot of our
friends saw us jump on with Fox News, They're like,
oh my god, that's the greatest thing in the world.
And it was yeah, like it was amazing. But at
the same time, most people didn't know that. You know,
the second I'm off that Fox News set in New York,

(46:04):
I'm on a plane going back to Texas and I'm
pulling my hair out on that plane trying to figure
out how logistically we're going to pull off the fulfillment
of you know, the thousands of orders that just came in,
and how I'm gonna put that bill to buy the product,
and how much product do we buy based on what

(46:25):
the customers bought, How much of a taper are we
going to go off of, how much of a high
of Fox News that we're gonna ride on. It's a
lot of that. So and uh we traders Joe's will
be a hard one. I feel like they're a little
bit more leaning away towards our brand values.

Speaker 4 (46:43):
HGB is another one.

Speaker 3 (46:47):
So a lot of and this is just I guess
while we're on this subject, for these a lot of
these retail store chains, unless if you're like mad TikTok viral,
like the number one in your category, it's very hard
to get picked up on for them to reach out
to you. So for CHIB to give you guys an idea,

(47:08):
I've been reaching out to them for the past three years.
We currently have product on the review for the twenty
twenty five review, which I believe is either happening in
August or September, so we're finally on the review slot.

Speaker 4 (47:22):
We have brokers that have.

Speaker 3 (47:23):
Been beating them down. I've been beating them down. I
see them at trade shows and we've been beating them down.
We've given them numerous products, all the head buyers of
all the beat departments for CHIB like swear by our product.
If that gives you any kind of idea on how
hard this stuff is. There's a Giant gas station brand

(47:43):
with a animal mascot that I'm sure a lot of
people know of.

Speaker 2 (47:47):
Giant was pretty key.

Speaker 3 (47:48):
Yeah yeah, like super super clean bathrooms, a lot of
gas station pumps. It's now outside of a Texas brand
only that you know I've rub going to because you know,
I'm a textan through and through. Thank you Doug on
the name, because I'm not going to drop it. But

(48:09):
after the years of me talking to their buyers all
this and that kind of stuff, one day I got
a phone call and it was one of their buyers,
the spice buyer to be specific, and I'm like, it's happening,
Like we're gonna make it go. They were calling me
to see if I could rip off somebody else's salsa
and sell it to them for cheaper.

Speaker 2 (48:30):
That's that's that's all they wanted.

Speaker 3 (48:32):
Yes, they said, oh no, we would never carry your
brand because of the word ass so, but we want
to see if you can rip off this other vendors
product and sell to us for cheaper. So that's how
you get with a lot of these larger corporations unfortunately.

Speaker 1 (48:44):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, for sure. The well, so we got
coming in. We are like I started at, you know,
almost an hour ago, right where at the end of May,
which means we are about a month away from you know,
the biggest grilling day there is, fourth of July. What
do you what do you guys have any plan? Do
you have any big deals or sales coming up? Specials?

Speaker 2 (49:04):
What do you got going on? How do you prepare
for something like that?

Speaker 3 (49:08):
Uh? You know, truly Memorial Days kind of like the
tail tale on.

Speaker 4 (49:15):
I agree with you on that comment, Doug Is, he's
too terribly far into it.

Speaker 3 (49:19):
But yeah, I agree with you all the way there.

Speaker 4 (49:23):
Some people can't handle word play too much.

Speaker 3 (49:27):
But no, we Memorial Days typically the telltale on how
the summer is going to roll out. You know, we've
we haven't done a Memorial Day sale here, gier ass Off,
because I I truly believe that, you know, we need
to focus on what Memorial Day is and it's not
a sale. It's turned into that, which is unfortunate, but

(49:51):
you know what, at the same time, the people who
did you know, give their life for our freedom, gave
their life for us to have freedom.

Speaker 4 (49:57):
So if you want to have a.

Speaker 3 (49:58):
Sale, you run that sh but our brand's mission guidelines
says different to that. So one of the things that
we will be doing is a fifteen percent off site
wide sale for fourth of July for everyone getting it going.
We do have a Father's Day sale going on right
now as well. The code is Dad's a Grill. It's

(50:23):
also right on the home page of the website. And
then we did revamp the Box of ASS so now
you get a cool Ammo crate style box that it
comes in, so for anyone who's looking to pick up
the you know, our eight best selling seasonings, you can
pop that in right there. We also have a really

(50:44):
cool bundle builder on our website too that we just
introduced for this summer, to where if you don't want
the Box to ASS and you want to make your
own bundle, you go full sin and make exactly what
you want on there, and you.

Speaker 4 (50:58):
Can be able to do that there. But no memorial.
They really kind of tell us the tail.

Speaker 3 (51:04):
But most of our stuff now we're producing in such
a volume to where we're looking, you know, six months
ahead to be able.

Speaker 4 (51:14):
To plan for financial budgets.

Speaker 3 (51:17):
We're all goods and making sure that we have everything
in stock to where whenever shit does hit the fan
or prepared for it, we have the labels, we have
the bottles, we have you know, silly things like induction
seal liners and things like that. They or even date
code printer ink that you wouldn't think would be that
big of a deal. But whenever you have those huge

(51:39):
moments of sales and next thing you know, you're three
week turnaround time to be able to get proper ink
for your day code printer, it's like, oh man, this
is gonna be painful.

Speaker 1 (51:49):
Yeah, yeah, I mean it's I mean, like you said,
you kind of started out you were going to be
a pilot. I mean, you know, college wasn't look alike yet,
but you have definitely turned into quite the businessman and
entrepreneur I was. I mean, did you take additional courses?
Have you just learned it that are a trial by fire?
You know, have good mentors along the way. I mean
because you're running a very successful business.

Speaker 3 (52:11):
No, it's there's a couple of different factors. So Ever,
since I was one years old, my parents had bought
a hardware store that the guy who they bought it
from said, a hardware store will never be successful here,
and now it's one of the most successful ACE hardware
in the state of Texas. I stepped away from that
business whenever I was sixteen, started my own business and

(52:35):
then went and worked at a machine shop doing three
D cat engineering that I learned.

Speaker 4 (52:40):
How to do in high school.

Speaker 3 (52:43):
Saved up a bunch of money doing that, went and
worked at a diesel shop for a while, opened up
my own diesel shop at seventeen. So I had a
couple of different fireworks stands across Houston that I'd hustle fireworks,
you know, ten days on the fourth of July, ten
days during New Year's stepped away from the family business.
And honestly, a lot of that was the fact that

(53:05):
everyone just assumed growing up, like, oh, You're just gonna
take over your family's business and be handed everything.

Speaker 4 (53:10):
So I was just like, you know, I'm too stupid.

Speaker 3 (53:12):
To accept that, and I'm gonna go out and do
my own thing like that. That was their passion, that
was their dream. I'm going to go live out mine.
So started off with my best childhood best friend ended
up getting on house arrest, and I bought a firework
business so I could sign his PO papers and get

(53:33):
him off of house arrest because we found out if
I own a business and I'm seventeen, I could sign
his PO papers. So that's how it really kicked off.
And was like, oh, we can make money while we
do this too, So let's go set some fireworks. Let's
see what snakes, snakes and sparklers are all about.

Speaker 1 (53:49):
You've always been entrepreneurs, I mean, that's this is not
You've never had fear to try something new or try to.

Speaker 3 (53:55):
Get and that was the thing, you know. I saw
that with my parents, you know, so neither one of
them were home a ton. They were consistently working the
store and whenever they were home, they were still working.

Speaker 4 (54:09):
So I always had that work ethic.

Speaker 3 (54:11):
And then once I kind of had the cards dealt
to me that I wasn't going to go full time
professional with motocross racing, and I was like, all right,
let's start getting in business and so I can fund
you know, fun hobbies. And with the two thousand and
eight financial kind of collapse, a lot of my money
that I was making was selling like high end diesel

(54:34):
performance parts, and a lot of these guys worked out
in the oil field and in the housing markets, and
whenever both those collapsed, I went back to, all right,
now I got to change oil, change suspension, do the
stuff that I don't find fun. And why I didn't
start doing that, And that's whenever I stopped, and I
was like, you know what, Ever, since I was a
little kid, I wanted to be in the military, So

(54:56):
let me go join the military. So as soon as
I got out the military and realized, you know, college sucks,
that's why I started earlier ass off and started going
right back into this business. And then one of the
fun things that not a lot of people get to
know about me is I, before leaving for the military,
was actually denied community college because they said I wasn't

(55:19):
smart enough. In twenty nineteen, right before I came on
your show, I went and gave a entrepreneurial speech at
that college.

Speaker 2 (55:29):
Did you tell him that that was my opening line? Oh?

Speaker 1 (55:34):
Really, I'm sure that got a few chuckles and probably
a few nut chuckles from people sitting behind you.

Speaker 3 (55:39):
The administrative staff gave me a very very deep and
long stare.

Speaker 4 (55:44):
I just smiled right back and continued with my speech.

Speaker 3 (55:47):
But yeah, no, it was cool because that was, you know,
in two thousand and nine, and then in twenty nineteen
I went and spoke.

Speaker 4 (55:54):
At that college.

Speaker 2 (55:55):
So I'm assuming they've never asked you to come back. No,
get one shot. Did they give you that?

Speaker 1 (56:03):
When they get like give you an honorary degree and
all that kind of stuff, is like a thank you?

Speaker 2 (56:08):
How that works?

Speaker 4 (56:09):
No, it was pretty much in college.

Speaker 2 (56:11):
I don't I don't know how that works.

Speaker 4 (56:13):
It was a pat on the back and we'll let
you know if we want you to come back.

Speaker 2 (56:18):
Yeah, there we go.

Speaker 3 (56:19):
But yeah, I've never gotten a phone call to come
back to that one, So I'm fine with that.

Speaker 2 (56:24):
There we go. Wow, that's a that's a good one. No.

Speaker 1 (56:28):
So look, you've got a lot of product. I hope
people check out greyor ass off dot com. You've got gear,
you got tumblrs, T shirts, hats, salsa, jerky, you know everything.
I mean, it's it is definitely you know when I
started this, we started this tonight I was talking about,
let's talk about how far you've grown since five years ago,
and it's I mean, when it comes to product, you

(56:49):
went from four and I remember those original four two.
I mean, now you've got to search for a while
to find him.

Speaker 3 (56:55):
That's one of them right there. Yeah, that was from
the initial original batch. And ironically enough, I found that
in my grandma's spice cabinet about four years ago, unopened.

Speaker 2 (57:10):
Oh that's sweete. Yeah.

Speaker 4 (57:13):
Yeah, so I was like, you know what, she won't
even notice that this is gone. I'm going to take it.

Speaker 3 (57:17):
She still hasn't, so I'm waiting on the day that
she calls me and yeah, no, it's It's been a
phenomenal ride. I'm greatly appreciative of people like you the show,
other amazing veterans, and just Americans.

Speaker 4 (57:33):
In general that support us.

Speaker 3 (57:34):
You know, the more and more that we get supported,
the more veterans we get to hire. One of the
super cool things, one of the veterans that I actually
met while I was going to flight school.

Speaker 4 (57:43):
Both of his sons now work here at the warehouse.

Speaker 3 (57:47):
We have military spouses, we have first responders that work here.
So we've been able to build an amazing team in
a community and we're only I mean, we're just getting started.

Speaker 4 (57:58):
It's been eight and a half years, but you know,
we're we're just getting started on it.

Speaker 2 (58:02):
And where where you located at? Where's your warehouse at.

Speaker 3 (58:04):
Isledo, Texas. It's about hour north of Austin.

Speaker 2 (58:08):
Yeah, yeah, you know.

Speaker 1 (58:09):
Well, I mean I'm in Austin quite a bit because
of work and uh if I actually I was just
through there in Salado on my way up the Temple,
but uh, going up that way and I'm in. I'm
in with Doug, with Georgetown a lot. I'm always over there.
Toby lives there and stuff like that, so I try
to get over there. But no, man, that is uh,
that is phenomenal. I've got to definitely get my order in.

(58:32):
You know, grilling season is here, and if not, I know,
I've found three locations right here in Western New York
that I can check out.

Speaker 2 (58:38):
But I know the next day the dude.

Speaker 1 (58:40):
To help you out, we need to reach out to
our boy, Pete P. D. Hag Seth, who you know,
Big Front of the Show has been on many times.
You know him well, and I think he probably needs
to reach out to whoever handles all of his UH
dining facility contracts. I think they need to grow your
ass off and uh in all the defects in d
O D. I mean, why not support a veteran owned

(59:03):
business and and that would be that would be good
to be nice global presence, to have you know, some
seasonings back there. Maybe those Army cooks can start doing
something besides uh just boiling burgers and tea rats.

Speaker 2 (59:17):
You're actually cooking something.

Speaker 3 (59:18):
Yeah, something other than Salisbury's steak every night in the
chow hall.

Speaker 2 (59:23):
Exactly.

Speaker 1 (59:24):
Yeah, it's I'm convinced after my last tour in Afghanistan
that I used to joke that, you know, Army cooks
school must have been shrunken down to one day. They
just teach him how to boil shit and then they
then they cut open the can and that's it, because
I don't see him doing much else in that.

Speaker 2 (59:41):
No.

Speaker 3 (59:43):
Yeah, And then that's one hundred percent true because whenever
I first came in, we had civilians that ran the
chowel hall and it was actually good food. And the
next thing I know, their budget cuts hit with Obama
and it just went to ship. As soon as the
Army cooks came in Yeah.

Speaker 1 (59:57):
People can complain about Halliburton and floor and all that
kind of stuff, but those those are the companies that
ran mess alls down range and uh and you know
they're not always the ones that run them stateside, but uh,
they run them down range and they they fed troops well.
But yeah, maybe one day we'll see some griwr ass
off uh stuff inside of dining facilities in addition to
a fe.

Speaker 3 (01:00:17):
So especially now with the current administration, it won't be
I mean it won't be too offensive for them hopefully.

Speaker 4 (01:00:26):
So there you go.

Speaker 2 (01:00:29):
Now we got it. So another another idea. I'm just
giving you.

Speaker 1 (01:00:31):
Ideas unsolicited because that's what overturned retired first Arms do
you know now need to come up when you think
about names or like, it'd be cool to come up
with some things honoring like the military met like silver
star sauce or you know, something to do with you know, uh,
you know whatever r COM this or or Medal of
Honor that or or you know, uh, Certificate of achievement desks.

Speaker 2 (01:00:54):
Right, you could do all.

Speaker 1 (01:00:55):
Kinds of stuff, right, you can just make a play
and have fun at some of that stuff.

Speaker 3 (01:00:58):
We've looked at doing some of that and some of
the issue else honestly, outside of maybe like the Medal
of Honor, as you start to lose the civilian side
on the understanding, and we've experienced that huge and you know,
with with the size that we've grown. We also want

(01:01:19):
to keep in mind that a lot of our consumers
are civilians and might not know the tie in with everything,
which is why we have QR codes on our products.
We have the informational videos on all the product pages
to be able to educate the people. We send them emails,
text messages about all of it. So we have we
have dabbled in that. But if, if, and when we

(01:01:40):
do products like that, we want it to be able
to go back to make a difference because I'm not
one to sell a product like say, if we did
a Metal of Honor rub or something like.

Speaker 4 (01:01:52):
That, I'm not gonna keep all the money from that.

Speaker 3 (01:01:54):
I mean, that's you're literally selling the highest you know,
achieat you know award that you can receive in the military.

Speaker 1 (01:02:06):
So there's this bourbon out that I recinentally learned about.
I bought actually to buy in Texas. That's some place
one a few places I can find it called got
Your six and have an NFC chip in the label,
and you scan that, you put your phone near that,
and it takes you to a website and all they
do is honor first responders, heroes, savellans, people that rescued

(01:02:28):
babies out of rivers, military and you scan that, and
then it takes you to a story and they honor
someone's story and the same thing, they give a portion
back and stuff.

Speaker 2 (01:02:38):
My creative mind's just going here.

Speaker 1 (01:02:39):
I'm thinking, if you could have something like that, I
don't know what it would take and the cost of logistics,
but you know, maybe it's not an NFC chip, Maybe
there's a QR code. So they scan that and they
get a little website telling them all what the bronze
stars about or the Silver Star legion to merit and
maybe even highlight someone that's received it for somebody or
whatever valor awards. Maybe you highlight different people, but you know,

(01:03:01):
that may be a way to say, you know, scan
this to learn more about what what the silver stars
really for or what the you know, distinguished service crosses,
you know, what it represents. You know, maybe a way
to cross over and educate some folks and like say,
there's no shortage of military charities that you know you
could you could align to to give something back or
a portion to which you've done already to things. But yeah,

(01:03:23):
just a thought. I thought of theres because it was
that they they ont of this, but they only have
so much label space on a bottle and they just say,
you know, scan this and then learn a lot about
you know, somebody that's done a phenomenal thing.

Speaker 2 (01:03:34):
That you know, that kind of stuff.

Speaker 4 (01:03:35):
So no, I like that idea.

Speaker 3 (01:03:37):
I honestly haven't seen theirs. I was thinking about two
other whiskey lines that I'm sure we both know of
that have done that route before. But no, I like
that side. And then you run into the other problem.
There's label space. It's hard enough to fill up a
label with what you want to say and not run
out a room on that aspect, So definitely on that

(01:04:01):
I love that idea. And that's something that we also
did too, and we're slowly getting more and more back
into it because a lot of it just comes down
to like time, manpower. But we actually did and it's
on our YouTube channel if you just search Young Joe.
We actually did a whole entire letter of someone who

(01:04:22):
is now a veteran writing a letter to someone who
just joined the military, And we did this for a
Veteran's Day a few years ago, and especially if you
were a veteran and you listen to the words and
the impact for that, it hits home super, super hard.
And one of my favorite things that we did is
we turned around to all of our customers and said,

(01:04:44):
we're creating this video. Submit the photos of you and
service with your battle buddies, and we're going to.

Speaker 4 (01:04:50):
Put it inside this video.

Speaker 3 (01:04:53):
So that that was one of the cool things we've
done with something similar to that. But yeah, no, I
love that idea of being able to actually have it
like an FC or QR code on there that actually
links them back to tell the story of someone.

Speaker 2 (01:05:06):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:05:07):
Just yeah, that's that's something just a thought to tie
it end if you go that route. But hey, enough
ideas for me, I know how to get a hold of.
If I come up with more, you probably get no shortage.
But Jason, anything else tonight that we haven't talked about
the want of our listeners or viewers. You know, I know,
we hit a lot of your products and stuff and
a little bit about you and what the company's all about,
but I want to make sure you got a chance
to cover anything else is near due to your heart

(01:05:30):
or any inities that are going on you want to
let people know about.

Speaker 3 (01:05:33):
No, I mean and thank you the response time on
these freaking the images and the links and everything like that.

Speaker 4 (01:05:40):
It's just insane.

Speaker 2 (01:05:41):
He's the best unpaid producer ever. He is.

Speaker 4 (01:05:45):
Yeah, out of him, I'm impressed.

Speaker 3 (01:05:48):
There are certain links that I want to say to
see if he'll actually publish it before he realizes what
it is. No, honestly, check out Girly your ass off
or don't. Just thank you to everyone who listens to
this podcast. Thank you for having me on. It's always
amazing time to be able to connect with other veterans

(01:06:10):
like yourself, share stories, just communicate back and forth. The
next time that you will are in Texas, y'all need
to get the hell up here to the warehouse, check
everything out. I'll make sure to have the girl fired up.
We'll have some kick ass food and some kick ass
whiskey or bourbon with that. So no, just just thank you.

(01:06:30):
If you want to grow your ass off, check it
out on the website. We got a product for literally
anyone out there. And if we don't send it to us,
and there's a good chance we'll make it one day.

Speaker 1 (01:06:42):
And there's a military first responder discount, a great one,
I must say, and on ear so they can take
take advantage of that. But next time I'm down, I
don't know if I'm coming down this summer. I tend
to try to stay away from Austin after a couple
of tours at Fort Hood and down in a lot
away from that place in the summertime.

Speaker 2 (01:06:59):
But I know I'll be back in the fall. And brother,
don't worry. I will be reaching out to you and
uh and getting my way up there.

Speaker 1 (01:07:05):
And i'd love to see the warehouse and meet you
in person, give a give give you a hug on
the neck and uh and hang out for a little bit.

Speaker 2 (01:07:12):
It'd be great.

Speaker 4 (01:07:13):
Yeah, y'all, anyone's more than welcome anytime.

Speaker 2 (01:07:16):
Awesome.

Speaker 1 (01:07:17):
Well, hey, thank you so much, man, appreciate it. Thank
you for giving us your night, and everyone thanks for staying.
I know we started a little bit late, and UH,
and Jason, thank you for for coming on late. Uh,
great episode, and uh, you take care of my friend.
Reach out anytime you got something new. We don't have
to do a full episode. You want to do a
quick little one, we can do that. Throw it up
on the socials to announce something. I mean, we're here

(01:07:39):
for you.

Speaker 4 (01:07:40):
No, I greatly appreciate it, and I hope you all
have a great night.

Speaker 2 (01:07:42):
Thank you again, everybody, have a good night. Thank you
so much. By found bound about seventh time.

Speaker 3 (01:08:06):
By found spun the seventh time by found by spear

Speaker 4 (01:08:16):
Five time, by find spout seventh time
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