0:00
This is Undaunted Life Man's Podcast, I'm your host Kyle Thompson.
0:23
Let's get into it.
0:24
All right, guys, we've got a special guest on the podcast today.
0:26
His name is Josh Smith.
0:28
So Josh is a master blade Smith and he is the founder owner and CEO of Montana Knife Company.
0:32
And so a lot of you guys are familiar with Montana Knife Company because they have exploded
0:36
over the last several years, especially this last hunting season.
0:39
Everybody was talking about the knives that they were putting out there.
0:41
Joe Rogan's wearing their hat on his show.
0:43
Really the brand just exploded overall and a lot of it started with this knife here.
0:47
This is the speed goat.
0:48
And guys, you know, in this particular podcast, I tell you a lot about kind of where I'm at
0:52
in life like, okay, you know, I'm learning how to do the outdoorsy stuff and the camping
0:56
and the hunting and all that in my 30s, right, because I just didn't grow up doing any of
1:01
those things.
1:02
And so I'm like finding different brands and, you know, I've got a lot of, you know, great
1:05
friends in this area.
1:06
You know, we got the, you know, Stevenson knives guys and, you know, I've got a sanity blade
1:09
here that my dad got me and, you know, that's sitting here at my workstation, but talking
1:13
to a guy like Josh who has been into the knife making game since he was really like a little
1:18
kid.
1:19
He had a like a little league coach tell him about how to make knives and like he started
1:22
at a very early age and this isn't a guy that just knew he was destined to make knives
1:26
in his life.
1:27
It was just something that he liked to do.
1:28
And so in this podcast, we talk about that entire story of like from the moment you became
1:32
interested in making knives to right now when people are literally bending over backwards
1:36
trying to do everything they can to get their hands on one of your knives, like what happens.
1:39
But then also now that this is your business, now that you're growing M K C, you're growing
1:44
this entire knife empire, you know, what are the struggles that you're having?
1:47
What are the things that you're looking to do?
1:49
Like what are the limitations that you have, particularly on your brand?
1:52
And then at the end of the interview, we talk about misconceptions about knives, like what
1:56
people do wrong when they go out and buy knives for particular purposes and things like that.
2:01
But he just gave us a lot of insight into what's happening at Montana knife company,
2:04
what they're doing as they move forward into the into the future.
2:07
And one thing when you talk to anybody that's in this knife knife making world, sure there's
2:10
a little bit of competition, but these people just love each other.
2:13
They want each other to, you know, use their knives and to abuse their knives and give
2:17
them ideas. And that's one thing that came through in this interview with Josh is like,
2:21
he wants feedback from the people that use his knives. Like if you're on a hunt, it
2:23
doesn't work out well for you. And there's something that you wish the blade could do
2:27
that it's not doing right now in its current form. He wants to know that information. But
2:30
guys, I really, really enjoyed my time with Josh. We're certainly going to have him back
2:33
on to talk about other things at a later date. But for right now, I'm not going to keep him
2:36
from you any longer. So let's get after it. Let's get into it.
2:39
Josh Smith, welcome to Don to life of man's podcast. Yeah, I appreciate it, man. It's
2:43
an honor to be on here. I'm excited. Yeah, I'm excited to have you on because you and
2:48
I've talked offline about some of the things that you have going on. And I'd love to kind
2:50
of bring that to my audience, but we need to start small. We need to start easy. Two part
2:54
first question. What was it like growing up in Montana and how has the show Yellowstone
2:59
ruined your home state? I feel like those two things have to be talked about the same
3:03
time now.
3:04
Yeah. Yeah, it's, it's, it's actually, well, growing up in Montana was amazing. I grew
3:11
up in Lincoln, Montana, small town on the edge of the Bob Marshall wilderness. Just just
3:17
kind of on the edge of that Bob Marshall where it's just kind of rough and cool country from,
3:23
from Lincoln all the way to Canada, there's nothing but basically moose and grizzly bears.
3:27
So really cool place to grow up small town. Actually home of the Unibomber, which I don't
3:34
know if that's really a great one to have on your business card, but you can put it on
3:38
there and see how people respond to it. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. But no, it was a really cool
3:44
place growing up. Real small town fishing and hunting, parents own excavation business,
3:50
but definitely Yellowstone has, has definitely been having an impact. It's been, it's been
3:56
wild. And you know what's amazing is you've never seen a Yellowstone episode with snow.
4:01
Ain't that funny? Because they always shoot in the, in the summer because they don't want
4:05
to deal with what's going on. Yeah, it's like Kevin Costner doesn't want to ride his horse
4:09
in when it's 20 below in January. So yeah, it's kind of wild. It's, it's almost like they
4:15
make it look like our weather is like Hawaii year round, which would be nice. But right.
4:20
Well, I mean, it's good for tourism and good for stuff like that. But then, you know, for
4:23
the locals, it's like, all right, guys, like we get it. Those boots are really new. Those
4:27
Wranglers are really new. But obviously growing up, being around fishing, being around hunting,
4:32
it kind of, I guess led you towards what you're doing now as a business. But my understanding
4:36
is that you got into knife making at a very, very early age. So as I understand it, 11
4:41
years old, that was kind of one of your coaches got you into knife making. Is that correct?
4:45
Yep. My little league baseball coach, he was actually an outfitter, L, L cutting out fitter.
4:51
And he was a little league baseball coach and parents bought me one of his knives for Christmas
4:55
and then he invited me up to make one. So, you know, again, real small area, kind of
5:00
everybody knows everybody and was really cool that, that he was willing to let me come into
5:05
a shop as a little kid and work with him. So you're working with him as a little kid.
5:10
But you know, for a lot of little kids, you do something once like I remember going to
5:13
VOTEC when we were in like seventh grade and, you know, some of the class went over here
5:17
to, you know, work with some PVC pipes, some of us went over there to work with some welding.
5:21
But not most of those kids were like, yeah, I really want to come back and do this. But
5:24
it seemed like there was something in the process of making blades that just, I mean,
5:28
to not sound too ethereal, but like spoke to you at a very early age, like, what, what
5:32
do you feel like drew you back to that? Because I mean, you could have made a blade and then
5:35
moved on with your life, but you kind of made it your life, you know?
5:40
You know, I haven't really had anybody ask me exactly that. And it's a good question from
5:45
the standpoint of like, I haven't really thought too deeply about why it is that it stuck with
5:51
me. I mean, yeah, there's a lot of little boys that are into hunting or think knives
5:55
are cool. But I almost want to say that that challenge of kind of chasing like somewhat
6:06
of like perfection, which I was nowhere near perfect then, but like making one, but then
6:10
trying to want to make the next one better. And then I constantly chase that. Well, I
6:15
mean, I still do that, but really for the next 20 years, I just like set these sites
6:21
to try to to kind of achieve a high level of knife making, but it was a long and really
6:27
slow and painful process like you don't you don't get better overnight. And actually when
6:32
I think about it back then, there was no internet, there was no YouTube videos, there was no
6:37
forged in fire on television, there was so the only way that you could could get better
6:43
at something was to go to somebody's shop in person and learn. And I think that actually
6:47
made it a lot slower, because if I have a problem today with anything, I can just Google
6:53
it and I can watch a video and learn exactly what I'm doing wrong right now. And I would
7:00
have to struggle sometimes for months before I would go to like my next knife show, you
7:05
know, he would help me, Rick would definitely help me, but it was definitely a lot slower,
7:09
kind of arduous process of getting better. But I think chasing, I don't know, it's a
7:19
good question why it likes because trust me, I wanted to quit several times like I was
7:24
come home crying to my parents like, yeah, I thought I made this great knife and I would
7:28
show show this knife to you know, this group of knife makers, I respect and then they would
7:32
tear it apart and tell me everything that was wrong with it, rarely ever tell me anything
7:37
was very good. And I'd come home frustrated, like I thought I did something really good
7:43
and all they found were the flaws. And I just kept chasing that and it really was not until
7:48
I was probably 22, 23 years old, that I remember going to the Atlanta blade show and showing
7:55
a knife to a kind of a legend that I'd been asking for critiques for over a decade. And
8:00
he looked at that knife and he ultimately just said, that's a damn nice knife. And that was
8:07
like, like I'd kind of started to actually make it, you know, yeah, it's like your validation
8:12
was 12 years after I started. Well, so let there reminds me of something recently, I talked
8:17
to Bert Soren. I think you're familiar with him and the stuff he does over with Soren X
8:20
and obviously he's a big hunter as well. But you know, when he was growing up, you know,
8:26
because I'm a millennial. And you know, he's kind of on that millennial Gen X line right
8:30
there. There are a lot of people where they got this idea where okay, you've got to keep
8:34
the kids from thinking that they're doing things wrong. And no matter if they've done
8:38
it right or if it's perfect or whatever, you always have to call them along and say,
8:42
Oh, this was so good. Let's kind of do this. But from what it sounds like for you, which
8:45
is similar to how it was for me, it's you had a bunch of people around you that were not
8:49
focusing on the things you did right, but they were only focusing on the things you did
8:52
wrong, which in modern, you know, modern times that's like, Oh my gosh, you're being abusive.
8:57
But that's what led you to do what you're doing now because it caused you it forced you to
9:01
be resilient. It's like, Hey, if you're going to do this, you need to actually do it. Like
9:04
I can't just keep telling you everything you're doing is awesome because one day you're going
9:08
to realize it's not it's probably going to be embarrassing. Does that make sense? I feel
9:10
like it's better that the way you went through it. No, they beat my ass down. I mean, I was
9:15
the little kid amongst a bunch of 30 and 40 year old men. And they, they nicknamed me
9:20
psycho knife boy. And I would like when we were staying at hotels at knife shows, they
9:27
would hand me a whole bunch of change and I'd have to go like run and get the pops out
9:31
of the pop machines, right? I couldn't obviously go on a beer run, but like, Hey, Josh, go get
9:35
ice go get water. I was just kind of like Aaron boy at those shows and kind of like hanging
9:40
around trying to not be the annoying kid though. I'm sure at times I was. But I yeah, they there
9:47
was they were they were good to me. I wouldn't want it. They weren't, you know, obviously
9:50
they weren't abusive, but they they were good to me. They took me along. They let me hang
9:55
with them. But they did not hand out compliments. And in fact, it was more of like, I, I, you
10:02
know, kind of like a hazy and almost I mean, I got a lot of [inaudible]. I got given a lot of
10:06
[inaudible]. And at times where I was like [inaudible] off and almost at the point when I was in high
10:10
school of like, like, you know, I've gotten big enough. There's a couple of you I could
10:14
probably whip your ass, but like, still respectful, still respectful. And finally, like I say,
10:20
when I got into my twenties, I felt like I started to be in really treated as a peer,
10:24
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built subscriptions continue until canceled. Well, and that's a good thing as well, because
10:57
you're you're understanding how to comport yourself around people that are in the business
11:00
that you want to be in. And then you can kind of see like, okay, do I want to model myself
11:05
after what they're doing? Do I want to be a better version? Do I want to be a similar
11:08
version just kind of, you know, maybe over here? But for you, I mean, even in your teenage
11:12
years, you were going through a learning town to be a journeyman blade Smith, right? And
11:17
so I think when you were like 15 before you could even legally drive, you were learning
11:21
to be a journeyman blade Smith, you know, before you turn 20, you know, you earn the
11:25
rating of master Smith from the American bladesmith society, something that most of
11:29
us don't even know exists. We just think, okay, if you want to make knives, you make
11:32
knives. But with all these things, even through your teenage years, Josh, you're having to
11:36
prove yourself to people that are in this business that aren't going to give you that
11:42
stamp, they're not going to give you that rating of master Smith, just because they
11:45
like you or just because, you know, you're really quick on the, you know, the coke runs
11:49
or something like that. So I guess take me through to someone like me who's a novice
11:53
that doesn't know anything about the journeyman blade Smithing world or, you know, getting
11:57
the rating of master Smith, what is it that you have to do before you get to an event
12:01
like that? But then what do you have to do once you get there to show, Hey, this is who
12:04
I am, this is what I've been able to do. Yeah, no, good question. I mean, kind of the overall
12:08
thing is you have to become a member of the American bladesmith society. And that basically
12:13
makes you an apprentice just by kind of paying your dues. But you have to be a member for
12:18
three years before you're eligible to test for your journeyman rating. For your journeyman
12:23
rating, that basically shows that that you can make a high quality knife. It's not perfect,
12:29
but you're, you're kind of moving towards being a professional. You're taking it more
12:33
serious than your average hobby guy. And to get that rating, you have to do a performance
12:39
part first. You have to chop a one inch board or a one inch rope in half and one chop. And
12:43
you have to chop a two by four and half and as many chops as you want, that blade then
12:48
still has to be able to shave after it's done doing that. And then you have to blade bend
12:52
that blade 90 degrees in a vice without breaking it. What that shows is that you have the ability
12:57
to make a high quality functional knife. A knife is supposed to be a tool, right? So
13:03
before that it matters, if they look pretty, the knife actually still has to function as
13:07
a tool. That shows that you have the ability of controlling metallurgy, heat tree, edge
13:12
geometry on your grinds, how to sharpen a blade, things like that. You have to do that
13:19
in a master Smith shop under his direction. He has to witness it and administer the test.
13:24
And then you go to the Atlanta blade show and you present your five knives to a panel
13:28
of judges and they judge fit and finish. And they decide if you're making high enough
13:33
quality knives in the way of appearance and style. Once you pass that, then you have to
13:41
be a journeyman at least two years before you test for master. I wasn't ready in two
13:46
years with high school and sports and working for my folks. So I actually didn't test until
13:51
it was 19. I waited four years. And the same kind of test applies, but this time you have
13:57
to do it with a Damascus steel blade that you forged has to do the rope and the boards
14:01
and bend 90. But then you also have to go back to that blade show. And at this point
14:06
you present five knives, one of which is a quillion dagger. And that quillion dagger
14:12
is a very difficult knife to make it's with the symmetry involved, the carving that has
14:17
to have the gold wire on it, things like that. And they judge you very harshly at that point,
14:23
there's really no room for for error. And so yeah, I was able to pass the journeyman
14:30
at 15 and the master Smith at 19, like you said, became the youngest in the world at
14:35
that point there were about 80 in the world. Now there's about 140. And so it's it's a
14:42
tough test. What I will say, there's definitely knife makers out there that could probably
14:46
pass it that just have chosen not to go on that path. What I will say, it's a little
14:53
bit like somebody who's very, very, very fit and clearly an amazing athlete and a good
14:59
shooter saying, I could pass buds, I could become a Navy Seal, like I could go through
15:04
the buds and pass it. And it's like, that might be true. And you're clearly a very fit
15:09
person, but you didn't do it. You haven't done it. And, and it's one thing to say you
15:14
can do something. It's another thing to actually put yourself out on the line and be judged
15:18
by your peers. And, and I always say that that's something I really respect people even today
15:23
that do that. While those guys don't maybe necessarily have to business wise, I don't
15:29
think it necessarily grows a guy's business today, huge that passes it. But it's an accomplishment
15:35
of putting yourself on the line, you know, and, and being willing to be judged by your
15:41
peers. Yeah, I mean, you're laying yourself bare. You're literally like, look at all this
15:45
work I've been doing. And like, look, if it doesn't bend the 90 without breaking, like
15:49
it just kind of is what it is at that point. So I'm curious for you, because I'm sure there
15:53
are people that have gone through the process you went through that didn't make knife making
15:57
their career. They didn't build this enormous knife making business. I guess where where
16:01
along the pathway for you was it when you were a teenager was after that where you're
16:04
like, okay, this isn't just a hobby anymore. Like this is what this is what I'm called
16:09
to do. This is what I was putting on this planet to do. And let's just see if we can
16:12
make money at it. Like where where was that line for you? You know, all those old guys
16:15
all along were telling me not to go full time at it. You know, they were telling me go get
16:20
a good job benefits paid vacation the whole nine yards, and do knives as a hobby have fun
16:25
with it. Enjoy it because it's a hard way to make a living. It's a starving artist situation.
16:30
Right. And this was really before the internet before social media and marketing yourself
16:35
was hard. I was in a lot of magazines and stuff. A lot of those magazines were really
16:40
good to me. But you kind of had to get somewhat lucky to get that kind of stuff otherwise
16:44
you had to buy traditional style advertising. And it was tough. You had travel to shows.
16:51
So I kind of took their advice for the first couple of years out of high school. I'm like,
16:55
well, I'm going to go get a degree. I kind of duck kind of my way out of college. My
16:59
heart wasn't in that. I decided to go back and work in my parents' excavation business.
17:05
I'm I'm very good at operating equipment. I'm very good at doing all that kind of work.
17:09
So I thought, well, I'm going to help my folks just take over. I'm going to take over their
17:14
business. It was a very viable option at the time. But my dad kept telling me, go find
17:20
something that's not so seasonal. You know, the excavation world in Montana, especially
17:24
in Lincoln is tough. It's you don't work from the first of November until April 1st. So
17:29
you work like a dog. We'd work seven days a week, you know, like dogs from April 1st
17:35
to November 1st because you had to have enough money to survive the winter. So I got married,
17:40
like moved into Missoula. And I went to work for an excavation guy here in town. And at
17:46
this point, I was just like, I have to scratch this itch. Like, and of course, like any
17:51
young man, it's like, those old [inaudible] don't know what they're talking about. Like, they're
17:55
just doing it wrong. I'll figure it out. I'll be better than them. I'm a better business
18:00
person. And so I did go full time in 2002, got a home loan on our first home and the day
18:08
after we closed on it, I quit my job and went full time making knives. And I was full time
18:13
for about 10 years. But I definitely found out that it's a tough way to make a living
18:20
making, I was making very high-end knives, you know, $1,000 to $5,000 a piece. Sounds
18:26
like a lot of money and it is for a knife. But it's like one knife a month, you know,
18:32
or you're working on something and then you screw it up and you lose all that time. And
18:36
the economy started crashing in 2010. You know, the housing market, that whole thing.
18:42
And I had a buddy that was working for a local power company. And he was like, man, he was
18:46
telling me about his paid, paid vacation and all his benefits and his time off. And it's
18:51
like, that sounds pretty nice. So I actually applied and got a job there as an operator,
18:56
a backhoe operator kind of back to my roots. And, you know, kind of run you through that
19:02
kind of long story short as I, in the beginning, it was a relief, like going to work. God,
19:09
you just showed up to work. There was something on the sheet told you where you had to go.
19:12
You just go do your job. If it doesn't go well, or things aren't going well. Yeah, you worry
19:18
about it tomorrow. It's not your problem, right? Or they'll pay you double time to fix
19:22
it and work overtime. And it's like, man, this is a relief compared to the stress I've
19:26
been under. But I also had this like, I want to say a little sense of failure, but also
19:33
a sense of like, I still had an ultimate goal of a knife company I wanted to build. And
19:39
I was realizing as a full time maker, I was never going to get the money built up to afford
19:44
the time to start Montana knife company, which was the production business I always wanted
19:49
to start. Well, that lineman, I ended up progressing and going away from operating there. And I
19:56
got a an apprenticeship and it became a journeyman lineman at that same utility. And that lineman
20:02
job was good money. And it also provided me, you know, plenty of time after work, you know,
20:08
home at five o'clock. Hell, there's five or six hours left in the day. And so every night,
20:13
when I got remarried, I started working on prototyping and thinking about Montana knife
20:19
company and getting back into making knives that I kind of taken a little hiatus from.
20:24
And and I just had this itch at work every day that it wasn't fulfilling. And then if
20:30
I didn't chase that dream, I was going to regret it forever. You know, I talked about
20:35
Montana knife company with a friend of mine, his name was Nick Salter, a hundred times,
20:40
if not 200 times about this business I wanted to build. And I'd sit in a bucket truck and
20:45
talk to the lineman I was working with about this outdoor business I wanted to build and
20:49
this knife company. And we talked about it for years. And it was turning into one of
20:54
those things like you're either going to talk about it forever. Yeah, or you're going to
20:58
freak and do something. Right. And I'll tell you what the game changer for me was when
21:03
I got remarried, I'd gone through divorce, my house had burned down is basically a country
21:09
song, you know, my dog ran away, all that stuff. And when I got remarried, all of a sudden
21:16
was married to somebody who instead of like feeling like I was paddling into the wind,
21:22
all of a sudden I'd wind in my sails, right? And she was, she was like, I told her about
21:26
my idea of this company and she was like, well, you should quit your job and do that.
21:29
And I was like, well, slow down. Not just yet. And she was like, well, let's do it. And
21:35
so she's, she's like, I have the house. I got the laundry. I got the kids. I got dinner.
21:41
You go to your shop and you figure this [inaudible] out. And honestly, she's the one that enabled
21:46
me to get out of my shop and start to actually build Montana knife company. And you know,
21:53
I launched that in this in 2020, which was COVID, actually at Bert, at Bert Soren's place
22:01
that you talked about Bert. Yeah. At Winter strong, I showed some prototypes around. And
22:08
that group of people that group of individuals was just they were just like, Hey, we got you
22:15
more behind you. And I came away from there of hanging around like minded or actually,
22:22
I felt inferior in that crowd actually I was hanging around incredibly accomplished people.
22:29
And when people like that, whether it's business, sports, military, whatever, when people like
22:35
that are like, we got your back, we believe in you, you can do this. I came home and I
22:41
had this attitude of like, we're freak, I'm going, we're freakin going, struggling with
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when you subscribe at prolonlife.com slash now. So okay, you're off. So you that I really
23:18
appreciate all that because you really covered a lot of things that I wanted to get into because
23:21
it's like, you're right, a lot of people have that idea that they're capable of doing, but
23:26
they're scared or the timing's not right or they don't have the funding or, you know,
23:29
they've got a drag on their life, you know, it's an it's an actual ball and chain kind
23:33
of a situation. And so it seemed like a lot of things kind of coalesce together and kind
23:37
of clink together in the same time period. But I mean, looking at the calendar, it's the
23:40
beginning of 2023. You just launched this in 2020. But I swear to goodness, it seems
23:44
like your brand is everywhere. I mean, we we see your hat, you know, Joe Rogan's wearing
23:48
your hat on the show. I'll talk to random people. Like I remember when I got sent and
23:52
we're going to talk about speed go in a second, but I got sent one of these before I knew
23:55
what it was. I sent a picture of it to a few buddies. I like knives and like, where did
23:59
you get a speed go? How in the world did you get one of those? I'm like, crap, I don't
24:02
even know what this thing is. So I guess I was going to ask you, was there like a big
24:06
break moment? But it seems like since 2020 has just been y'all have been growing at break
24:11
next speed. I mean, and you've far outpaced your ability to make knives and we'll get
24:15
into the expansion of the facility. But I guess what have the last couple of years plus
24:19
been like for you? Because it seems like you went from nothing to something really fast.
24:23
Yeah. And I will say by talking about my brand for years, I had plenty of time to really
24:30
formulate in my head what I wanted my brand to look like, right? And what and how I thought
24:36
I would go for it. And and I think by allowing instead of trying to kick that off when I
24:42
was 21 years old and at that age, you can kind of think you know everything. I think
24:47
by waiting until I was 39, because I actually registered the name Montana Knife Company
24:51
with the state of Montana when I was 19. But I didn't launch it until I was 39. So I thought
24:58
about it for 20 years on the dot. And and what I will say about being older is I think
25:05
when we're older, we're a little bit more willing to admit what we don't know and where
25:09
we need help. And the one thing that I knew right away was that I needed help to build
25:15
this brand and I needed on the marketing side like I kind of had the knife side. I was going
25:20
to figure out the production side. I didn't know [inaudible] about making production knives.
25:25
But I got lucky for sure at that winter strong event at Bert Soren's, I asked his his cameraman,
25:32
Hey, do you know somebody that takes photos like up up maybe near Montana? I need a I
25:37
need a camera guy to take some photos. And I want to start this company. He's like, yeah,
25:41
actually I do his name is Brandon. He lives up in Kalisville. And I'm like, Oh, it's two
25:45
hours from me like what are the odds right in South Carolina? This guy knows. Well, I hired
25:49
Brandon to come down and take some photos. And he was like, well, I can build you a website.
25:54
I hired him to build me a website. And through that process, I started realizing this guy's
25:59
freaking good. Like he gets my vision. He's fast. He's really good, experienced. And I
26:06
even at that point didn't know just how good. And so I couldn't afford to pay him to do
26:12
it all the time full time. So I offered him a partnership. And actually gave up 40% of
26:17
my company on the spot. And I said, we're going to be 60 40. But I'm doing that because
26:23
I want you to be all in. And if we're either going to fail, and it won't matter, or we're
26:30
going to crush it. And even if I gave up 40% of my company, I'm still going to do well.
26:35
And I'm going to be happy. And and by relinquishing that side of it and giving up that ownership
26:42
and admitting what I didn't know, really was kind of that big break. Because quite frankly,
26:47
we didn't have the big break that I think you're referring to, like we just started
26:51
to grow, right? And we started seeding knives out and we started doing things the right
26:56
way and talking to people and using relationships. And we had an incredibly helpful support crowd
27:02
from that Winter Strong group and other brands. And instead of one big aha moment, it was
27:10
more like the hits just keep coming, right? And this brand support us and that person
27:16
and Joe Rogan's running our stuff. And then this happens. And it just hasn't stopped. And
27:21
in fact, we just kept pouring gas on the fire. And then all of a sudden, you know, we didn't
27:26
have any money for brand. I didn't take a paycheck. Well, actually, I finally quit
27:31
my full time job January 1st of 2021. So that was the point where it's like, we're all in,
27:39
right? Yeah, let's burn the ships. Let's do it. And we brand and I didn't take a paycheck
27:43
for half of that year. We didn't have a marketing budget all of last, all of last year, even
27:48
in 2022. We didn't, we really didn't spend any money on marketing. We gave knives away
27:55
to what we thought were badass people. And, and I feel like if you want a badass brand,
28:01
you have to collect badass talent and, and legit people not just based off Instagram followers,
28:08
but like the dude has 500 followers, but he's freaking legit. And, and he has a lot of friends
28:14
that respect him. And, and next thing you know, that dude's got Joe Rogan following him, right?
28:21
And, you know, somebody like that starts to take notice or a cam Haines or people like
28:25
that. So it just, yeah, it just, it absolutely took off like a rocket ship, you know, and
28:32
we, I think our goal for the first year was to do, um, I think we told the insurance
28:37
company, we'd be happy if we did 100K in the whole year and we ended up doing 1.9 million
28:42
that year. Dude, that is, that is so incredible. And, and your marketing looks great. Like
28:48
that's one of the things about y'all's brand is like everything you do, all the pictures
28:52
you put out, like there's one picture that y'all need to turn into like an enormous poster.
28:56
And it's the one that it's of a sheep that you have, uh, one of your knives across the
29:00
horns of the sheep. That's a gorgeous photo. You should put that everywhere. You should
29:03
tattoo that across your chest. It's amazing. And so like everything you do is on such a
29:07
high level. All right. That's awesome that you found a guy that was willing to partner
29:10
with you because that's the thing that people don't really understand, Josh is for the people
29:13
that are employees out there, which is the most of the people out there. If that's what
29:17
you're wired for, you have your own set of problems that you have to deal with, but it's
29:21
a different set of problems when you're signing the front of a check as opposed to the back
29:24
of a check. Whenever you have people dependent upon you and those people have people dependent
29:28
upon them, wives, kids, you know, extended family, you know, elderly folks, it becomes
29:33
a major, major issue. It's not just about building some cool brands. So you can be Mr.
29:36
Cool Guy on Instagram. It's like, no, we're changing lives. We're changing the foundational
29:41
structure of these people that need money to survive. So you have this explosion. You have
29:47
all of this, you know, stuff that you're able to send out the door. Basically, every time you
29:51
have something in stock, it's gone. Dude, I went on your site. I'm on it right now. I was on here,
29:55
like before, I don't know any if I can buy anything, right? Because all the boys are sold
30:00
out. I mean, I could buy a t-shirt and a hat, but I guess take me through that because like,
30:04
everything's always sold out. You have these drops that you do, which is actually really
30:08
cool because it gets people excited for, I got to make sure I'm buying my computer at 4pm on
30:12
Thursday so I can buy the stone goat or whatever. But take me through kind of the stock. Are you
30:17
keeping the stock low so people are checking the website all the time? Like, just take me through
30:21
all that. Yeah. So that's actually, you know, when it goes back to launching the company, again,
30:28
I had a little bit of money that I, you know, my savings that I could start with. So I started
30:33
with 200 knives, which to me was a lot of knives at that point. We made those. It takes months to
30:39
make those. I actually made a lot of mistakes. You know, I hand ground every single handle on those
30:44
and I started realizing like, that's not scalable, right? And so we ended up selling those and then
30:51
we ordered another 200, right? And then they went pretty fast. And so I was like, all right,
30:56
well, we got a little bit more money. So we ordered, I want to say 300 or 400.
31:01
And boy, by the time, like, it takes months to kind of get through the process of making that
31:06
many knives, right? And we were learning the process a lot. So we were slower. And God,
31:12
we launched those and they just at that point, now they just sold like in minutes.
31:16
It's like, well, and it would be arrogant for me to think like, Oh, well, let's go make 10,000,
31:22
right? So like, yeah, you know, at that point, I was like, well, all right, let's make another
31:26
like five or 600, right? And I remember when we got to the point, we're like, dude, should we order
31:32
a thousand blades? And what's scary about it is you have to put all that money up front in that
31:37
process the whole way along before you sell one blade, much less all of them. But we did it the
31:43
old school kind of bootstrapping way. And instead of being super greedy, and trying to get out
31:49
over our skis, I was I refused to put money on a credit card to do it. We just let every knife
31:56
sale help build the next knife sale. And and we did, we're going to take investment money and
32:03
all that stuff and spend that out over a couple years. Honest to God, every time we were ordering
32:11
blades to get cut, you know, from our laser to cut these blades out, we thought it was like enough
32:19
knives to actually be in stock on our website. And we would drop those and Kyle, those suckers
32:23
would sell. It was absolutely crazy. And the other part of it that was a real struggle for
32:28
a first year and a half was the fact we're in COVID. And the supply chain issues were a problem.
32:32
Getting steel was a problem. You know, everything shipping it was a problem. So
32:39
spend that forward to today. We've we've we've upped our drop tempo, we have more knives going,
32:47
we've hired last Christmas, you know, a year ago at Christmas, our Christmas party consisted of
32:54
my wife and Brandon and I and two employees. This year is my wife and Brandon and I and 14
33:00
employees. So we're growing, we're making knives faster. And a lot of people might think we're
33:05
actually like playing funny business with the numbers and like holding knives back. It's
33:10
actually not true at all what we're doing is we're building as many knives as we can to set
33:13
amount of time. And we're dropping those. And then we're working on the next set of knives. We did
33:19
drop speed goats in December on December 9th. And we thought this is going to be like, and we
33:27
marketed it this way, we told people for months in December, we're gonna have speed goats in stock
33:32
full time. Right. And we launched those December 9th. And I was certain that we would have those
33:38
knives till like into summer probably. And we and we also have a plan to backfill where we have
33:44
blackfoots coming in stock full time in March. We launched 4,000 blades and they sold out in 28
33:52
days. There's just no way for me to understand or know that that's going to happen. And so I
34:01
actually had a guy email like super [inaudible] off and saying like, you guys are a joke, you're liars,
34:06
you just did marketing, you said you were going to be in stock. And it's like, dude,
34:09
it would be super arrogant for me to even sit here today and think that, what am I going to do? Go
34:16
cut 20,000 blades and think that they're going to sell out. Like, it's just, it's been super
34:23
humbling. And it's also been really cool and exciting. And quite frankly, we're just learning
34:27
every day. And every drop, I'm as nervous as I was for the first one. Because quite frankly,
34:33
it feels like, God, any moment is this just going to end, right? Is this a dream? Like,
34:39
so that's where we are today. We still, you know, we had one guy buy in for a real small percentage
34:46
of the company more to we wanted to add his experience to the board because he's a very smart
34:51
businessman. And I need help on the business side. And but we don't have big investors. It's still
34:58
just Brandon and I really making the decisions. I have a new director of operations I heard from
35:02
Amazon to actually help us on the production side of leaning our process out so we can make
35:07
knives faster. But one thing I've told people all along, I will never sacrifice our quality
35:14
for the sake of just trying to get more knives out to make more money or speed it up. We'll deal
35:20
with some angry emails. But really quite frankly, for every email we've ever gotten that's angry,
35:27
we'll get a hundred or a thousand that'll say, I love watching what's happening and your company
35:33
so cool. And it's American made thank you for making things in America. You know, all those employees
35:38
now, year two in our company, we have a 401k matching program. We have paid vacation. We have a
35:46
clause in our handbook that says do epic [inaudible]. And we'll support you. We I want this to be a place
35:53
that people want to work at. And then it's a career, not just a job. You know, well, and the cool
35:59
thing in this goes along with the guy that you're doing the marketing with is people want to be
36:03
attached to something that they believe in. You're wearing an origin hoodie right now, right? Every
36:07
part of that hoodie was made here in the United States of America, which doesn't make a big
36:11
difference to everybody on the planet. But there is a strong segment of the population that they
36:15
will spend however much extra they're gonna have to spend on that hoodie because they know it was
36:19
made here in the United States with American hands. And so that's why they can build out, you know,
36:24
hunting gear and the gees and then do all the stuff on the Jocko fuel side. But the other thing
36:28
about that's interesting for the marketing side is we can watch you on Instagram as everything goes.
36:33
So you know, nobody knows this except you and I, we were supposed to do this about a week or two
36:37
ago. But y'all had a problem with like, what was it, the dust collection system and your new
36:42
facility? Well, guess what? The very next day, that's up on Instagram, like, Oh, here we are,
36:47
like, trying not to fall off the roof, but in this dust collection thing in. And what you do is,
36:51
you're giving people a peek behind the curtain, but you're also not showing them this super
36:55
sanitized version where everything always works out great. You're always sold out and no one ever
36:59
makes a mistake and no one ever accidentally cuts themselves. So it's the authenticity of it that
37:04
I think speaks to what y'all are trying to build. And we as consumers, we can look at that and be a
37:09
fan of what you're doing and then support the drops when they come. So one quick question to kind of
37:14
on the expansion, because obviously you've got an expanded facility, you're expanding out your
37:18
workforce. Do y'all have like a plan in place? Like, Hey, by Q1 of 2024, we will have speed goats in
37:26
stock. We know it because we're going to do X, Y and Z is the guy from Amazon that you mentioned,
37:30
or are y'all kind of working towards that? Are y'all just going to keep doing drops and leaving it the
37:35
way it's been going? No, we're actually working towards it. And quite honestly, I mean, it's super
37:39
cool that all those speed goats sold out that we launched in December. But we actually need
37:43
knives in stock to be able to measure metrics. So if we run a marketing campaign, if we do an ad,
37:50
if we do a podcast, or whatever we do, the way we're running now, we have no way to convert.
37:58
So you just said, you come to my website, there's nothing there to sell. Well, we might have just
38:04
lost a sale. And it's a real problem. If Kyle, if you want to go and buy a knife for your dad for
38:09
Father's Day, and you're like, Oh, Father's Day is five days away, I need something,
38:14
I'm going to get a knife and you go there, we don't have something, you're still going to go
38:17
spend that money somewhere else, right? So no, we absolutely, you know, that's where I think people
38:25
think we would do this on purpose. We're playing games like we need knives in stock. We still want
38:31
to do like the limited drop thing on things to test products out, to test colors out, to test new
38:36
models out before, like, if I drop a new model, and I'm like, ah, let's cut 50,000 of them,
38:42
right? And we drop them and people hate them. Or maybe we get halfway through the process and
38:48
we're like, these holes are drilled at the wrong side, this blades hard, and we can't fix it, right?
38:53
Like, you know, we're going to start small, we can't afford as a brand to make a huge mistake.
38:58
So we have to start small, prove our processes, and then grow it, right? Well, the existing knives
39:06
we have, we've proven it, we've gotten our time to where we now know how much time is to make these
39:12
knives. I think it's March 2nd or 3rd, something like that, we plan on dropping blackfoots in stock
39:20
full time. We thought we were going to speed goes until then and then have more. So our plan is to
39:26
drop stone walls in stock full time in September. So to your point, we actually have our drop
39:32
calendar mostly laid out through the rest of this year. And we actually had meetings all day
39:38
yesterday with a man that actually we just asked and he accepted he's going to join our board of
39:44
directors. But he's an executive at Gore-Tex and he works for Sicka Gear. And his prop, his job
39:52
there is product development and like scheduling and forward thinking. And the reason we're trying
39:58
to add people like that to like our board of directors is to help us because like, man, I'm
40:03
telling you, I'm just a regular dude. I've never had to think about what products I'm going to be
40:07
dropping in 2025. So I feel like my job as the owner and CEO is to go find people that are smarter
40:16
than me, which isn't very hard. But if I can add really good people around us, I think you're going
40:24
to see our brand grow up a lot in the next year or two, just by adding experience, adding those
40:29
puzzle pieces in because I could try and figure it out. I've definitely figured a lot out on my
40:33
own in the last two years. But that's also why we've maybe been slow at certain things, right? So
40:39
yeah, it's a very exciting process. It's super cool. There's a ton of planning that goes on behind
40:47
the scenes that might appear as though we're just kind of like, oh, we're just going to make
40:50
these and sell them. There's definitely a lot of planning involved. Absolutely. And I think the
40:57
thing that's also, it reminds me of an interview I did with the guys from Casey cattle company.
41:02
For those people, like they blew up overnight because there was some big magazine that did an
41:05
article about their Wagyu hot dogs. And it's just like, well, they didn't have those in stock for
41:09
the amount that they sold. So they just right from the beginning, they sent out an email and said,
41:13
Hey, we want to fulfill this order. We don't have it on hand. If you can wait, I forget how long it
41:18
was six, seven weeks or something like that, we'll get them to you. And he said, overwhelmingly,
41:22
the people are like, Oh, yeah, we'll totally wait. We just want to do what we can to support you.
41:25
Again, being often like being authentic with people from the very beginning and just showing
41:30
your cards, even if you know, you have your, you know, your pockets out or something like that,
41:33
it's like, look, we're going to make this happen, but just come along on that journey with us. But
41:37
one thing I want to do right now, so obviously we've mentioned the speed go several times. And if
41:41
you're watching this on YouTube or rumble, I'm holding it up in front of the screen right now.
41:44
This thing is it showed up all over the place during whitetail season last year. Everybody's
41:48
like using this to take care of business. I sent you a picture of the first duck that I'd ever shot
41:51
before. Yeah, I took care of the breast with this knife here. So I want you to walk us through
41:56
this knife. Okay. So guys, you can see it. It's got the paracord handle. It's got the sheath. Even
42:01
the sheath has, you know, this is the old sheath. You know, you have a new sheath now. But it's not
42:05
the leather sheath. There's a lot of reasons for that. So just take us through this knife bit by bit.
42:10
Why did you name it the speed go? What was the idea behind this? Why paracord on the handle? Because
42:15
that's not something that I was really familiar with. Why the thin blade? Just take us through this
42:18
whole thing. Yeah. So that speed goat knife, I wanted to design an ultralight knife for people
42:25
who like to count ounces who are going into the backcountry hunting or hiking for that matter.
42:30
And for a lot of guys, I mean, these guys will cut handles off of toothbrushes. They'll cut
42:37
weight in every way that they can. And, you know, I was seeing a lot of people carrying like
42:42
replaceable blade knives, stuff like that. But I still think you have to have a fixed blade knife.
42:47
If you're going to be going days away from, from civilization and into the woods, you should have
42:52
a way to really, you know, survive out there, start fires, do things like that, break down animals.
42:57
So I want it to be light and needed to be big enough to take care of big game and small game.
43:03
It needed to have a point on it to be able to cape out an animal if you needed to cape it out
43:07
and pack that out of the mountains. And what I like about the paracord is the fact that it's
43:14
light and it actually serves dozens of other functions. So if you get in a bind where you need
43:21
some rope and maybe you didn't pack rope in your pack or something like that, you can actually
43:26
unwrap that rope, that paracord off that knife, and that blade will actually go back into the
43:31
sheath without the cord on it. And so you can use that cord to tie up antlers on your pack if
43:38
you've successfully harvested something, tie up, meet in a tree, guy out a tent, fix a boot lace,
43:44
whatever, maybe your button breaks on your pants and you're not wearing a belt.
43:48
Like, like things like that that are really dumb that could really be a pain in the ass
43:53
when you're five or eight miles from your truck. Right. And drag out an elk. I did that with my
43:59
daughter. And again, people might, it's funny. We don't actually really create much content around
44:05
here. We just video what we do. And my daughter and my son shot an elk, my son's elk ran down into
44:11
this north face timber. I cut that elk in half with that speed goat gutted out, cut it in half,
44:16
including through the spine, through the ribs, everything. I cut that elk in half with no saw.
44:21
And then I took all the rope off that knife, tied it around its leg. And my kids and I,
44:28
you know, I use that rope and the kids were hanging onto the elk. And we drug those two halves out
44:32
of the woods with that piece of rope. It's 550 pound test strength. So you physically as a man
44:38
are not going to break it. You can't pull hard enough to break that rope. So you can even use
44:44
that stuff if you had to, which that's a short piece of rope, but you know, for repelling or,
44:49
you know, more than likely you're not going to use it for something like that. But there are a lot
44:54
of survival situations, tying up things for a shelter, things like that. So I love the paracord
44:59
for that reason. That blade when you unwrap that, that paracord is actually skeletonized to take
45:05
more weight out of the handle. And then to me, the thing that's often overlooked, and I think
45:11
we're changing the game, is the sheath that you talked about. Nothing drives me more crazy than,
45:17
than seeing a, you know, a blade in the store that you're going to buy. And they hand you the
45:24
sheath after you purchase the knife and the sheath is a complete piece of [inaudible]. You have to be able
45:29
to carry that knife accessible, not buried in your pack in the bottom, but on your belt or on your
45:35
pack strap. Or even if it is in your pack, it needs to be a secure sheath that holds that blade tight.
45:41
That belt clip on that knife will actually turn 90 degrees. So you can carry that knife horizontal
45:46
or vertical, you have it set up for a vertical carrier right now. You can take that clip off and
45:52
just tuck that, that, that knife and that sheath into like a, like a vinyl harness pouch. You can
45:58
take that, you can take rope and run through those holes and tie that sheath on to something
46:03
if you'd want with the holes that are in it. So that sheath also has an adjustable retention screw.
46:08
The other, the last thing I'll answer that you asked me is why is it called the speed go?
46:14
People that maybe don't live here don't know, but that's a slang term for an antelope. So an
46:20
antelope in eastern Montana are like one of the fastest species on the planet. I mean, they run
46:26
like crazy and they have an incredibly keen sense of vision. They can see like, like no other animal.
46:34
So I feel like that speed go knife has a really keen sharp edge and it's light and it's fast.
46:41
And I like to name stuff after Montana. So I chose speed goat as the name.
46:46
Well, it's, it's a nice ode to even your upbringing. Because obviously that's something that that's
46:51
terminology views your entire life that isn't weird to you, but it's weird to someone like
46:54
me who's never heard it before. But you know, I'm one of those guys now and I talked to Burt
46:58
Soren about this as well. Like I'm getting into all this outdoor stuff, hunting stuff as an adult.
47:03
Okay. So I didn't grow up in a family that did that. So I lived in Oklahoma, but I was playing
47:06
sports all the time. So we weren't out camping. We weren't out hunting any of those types of things.
47:10
I didn't do any of that until I got into my twenties and now in my thirties, I'm really starting
47:13
to try to hone like, I don't know what to put on my pack. I don't know what's ridiculous to take
47:17
with me. I don't know what's awesome to take with me. Like I just got, you know, good origin
47:21
hunting gear. I'm experimenting with different knives and doing different things in certain ways.
47:25
And whenever I was in Colorado last year on a black bear hunt, that was one thing about this
47:29
particular she is like, okay, here's the pack that I have. What would be the most convenient way to
47:33
have this to where I could get to it immediately, because I was the guy that would either wear it
47:37
on my belt, which again, that's, you know, a blade that, you know, would come out. It's not a fixed
47:40
blade, or I would have it in my pack. And it's the exact same situation. I'm digging in the bottom
47:45
of my pack, looking for my, you know, knife and sheath. That's the same color as everything else.
47:49
This wasn't the most convenient thing. So the interesting thing about the speed goat is well,
47:53
Josh, as it seems like you're using the speed goat as the foundation to build other stuff as well.
47:59
You did a drop recently of a mini speed goat. And so this is more so what guys would maybe
48:04
carry in the appendix position, you know, having a fixed blade on them, the stone goat, which is a
48:08
combination of a couple of different knives, but it seems like you're using like that, that paracord
48:13
handle and kind of the lightweight frame and everything is kind of like a foundation to do
48:17
other things. Is that something you're going to keep doing into the future? Or was that just kind of
48:21
an accident with a stone goat in the mini speed goat? Yeah, you know, I'd like to say that I'm super
48:25
smart. And that was planned from the beginning of my company. But really, quite frankly, it was more
48:29
about listen to what our customers say, and then just responding. So the speed goat, there were
48:36
people that were telling me like, honestly, that thing's even a little long for what I need. Like
48:41
imagine how light that thing would be if it was an inch shorter, inch and a half shorter and just
48:46
smaller and I could actually put it in my pocket. And I was like, that's a pretty damn good idea.
48:51
So I built it, right? And honestly, that mini speed goat has become super popular for even like
48:57
women, you know, girls that go off jogging or hiking up trails, men who go out jogging,
49:03
things like that to actually kind of have a way to have a self defense weapon on you. But it's not
49:08
something that's, you know, you're not running with a pistol or some big, you know, crocodile
49:14
Dundee knife on your side. It can tuck inside the waistband of a pair of leggings or in a sports
49:19
bra or in your gym shorts or whatever. And you really won't even see it. Yeah, it would make me
49:25
feel a lot better if I knew my college age daughter was out hiking a trail and she had that speed
49:30
goat on. It just makes me feel better. Plus it's handy, right? And a lot of people carrying those
49:36
at work cutting open boxes and stuff. The stone goat was a response to people saying, ah, the point
49:42
on that speed goats to pointing for me, I like a knife with more belly. And it's like, hey,
49:47
there is not one knife out there for everybody. That's a great idea, more of a skinning profile.
49:53
And we kind of had that knife, but it was in a bigger blade with our stone wall. So our stone
49:59
wall knife and our speed goat had a baby and we called it the stone to go. And so yeah, I'm actually
50:07
trying to get to a point where we do more strategic planning as a company, one and two years out.
50:12
But I'll be honest with you, I think any brand that's smart is going to listen to their customer
50:18
first and foremost. So even if we develop a strategy as a plan, and this is what we talked
50:22
about yesterday, I'm just kind of laying out like, like you say, I'm kind of real. This is what we're
50:27
like literally talking about. My board is full right now of year 24. We got culinary hunt. We have
50:37
tactical, like all these things written up there. And we're trying to plan. And I said yesterday,
50:44
this is great. It's great to have a plan. But we have to continue reading our DMs and our emails
50:51
and our texts, watch in our Instagram comments. And when we start seeing a theme of like, hey,
51:00
this guy's saying this is a problem, or this would be a good idea. We need to listen to that stuff.
51:05
Yeah, I would absolutely agree with that. Because again, it's like I told you like,
51:09
okay, when I if I had started doing all this hunting stuff, whenever most of my friends did,
51:12
when they were, you know, five, six, seven, eight years old, like your brain's like 20 years away
51:16
from being fully developed. And so you can only know so much. And so you just kind of go with it.
51:20
But as a 30 year old, I have a really good idea now of what I like to do, what's comfortable,
51:24
what's uncomfortable. Hey, I really need this for this exact moment. And you're going to see that
51:29
through experimentation when people go on different types of hunts and different types of areas,
51:33
or they have different things on the work site that's going to really be all. That's something
51:37
that a lot of companies would pay, you know, an organization to go out and gather all this data.
51:41
People are just just dying to give you this data as to, Hey, I would want to do this. And
51:45
can you maybe look at that? But Josh, I know you got some other stuff going on. So I want to kind
51:48
of start to wind this to a close. One thing is you're listening to a lot of guys now, you know,
51:52
we're almost an hour into a conversation mainly centered around blades and knives. But there are
51:56
a lot of misconceptions out there about what types of blades are good, what is good to have on you,
52:02
what's good to have in or on your pack. Also, you know, the best way to sharpen a knife like,
52:06
you know, some people, they only stick with the stone or some people just do the belt. Some people
52:10
do any number of things. I know a guy that's got like a $2,000 like professional sharpening kit and
52:15
like everyone's got their own things about knives. I want some idiosyncrasies from you,
52:20
someone who's spent his life thinking about blades. What are some of those misconceptions?
52:24
What are things that, you know, if they're not buying a Montana knife company knife, what are
52:27
things that they should consider when buying a knife? What's the best way to sharpen it? Just
52:31
anything you want to do to give us a little bit more wisdom on that. Yeah, no, I appreciate that.
52:35
And actually it kind of goes back to you like getting into honey and not sure what to take or
52:39
what to pack and things like that and kind of learning. I really want to start developing our
52:43
company more and more and we have plans of doing this into being kind of a, what would you call it,
52:50
a resource, a resource. And if I don't know the answer, I have a cool network around me of people
52:57
that I will tell you like, I'm not an expert in that, but you should go listen to this guy's podcast
53:02
or or go check out this guy's Instagram because he's really good at that. And I'm going to be always
53:07
very honest in that way. Like with the lightweight backpacking stuff and packing stuff like Aaron
53:13
Snyder with Kefaro and his podcast, like go down through that gear stuff and he does a pack dump.
53:18
It's brilliant stuff, you know, things like that. I, on the knife side, the one thing that I've
53:27
always kind of seen and the reason I wanted to launch MKC is I always saw knives that were too
53:32
heavy, too thick, a lot of times too big, you don't need a huge blade. That little speed goat
53:37
has broke down more damn elk than maybe any other knife right now in the country this last year.
53:44
If the knife is made correctly, it can be light, it can have nice thin edge geometry, which then
53:49
helps you make it easier for you to resharpen it because you're not removing a lot of steel.
53:54
On the sharpening side, that's a whole nother podcast and video that we could go into. But what
53:59
I will say is I'm trying to change people's minds and make them understand that maybe the
54:05
whole reason that they think they've sucked at sharpened knives their whole life is actually
54:09
because they had the wrong knife in their hand. It wasn't necessarily a you problem. A blade
54:16
that's way too thick and heavy is a very difficult thing to sharpen, especially if you don't have
54:20
the right equipment for it. Our knives are easy to resharpen. We have a YouTube video on that,
54:25
but I also encourage people with our generations program send it back to us will sharpen that
54:30
thing for free. If you get out blood all over that paracord and fat and that nice dull and it's like
54:37
you'd have just had a you've put it in a hell of a run for a season, you send it to us. We'll
54:42
rewrap the paracord for you brand new cord. We'll resharp it. We'll clean it up and we'll get it
54:47
back to you because ultimately I want you to take it next season and crush it again. I don't want
54:53
it to become a problem where like, no, Kyle doesn't really know how to sharpen his knife. So he pitched
54:58
it in the corner and went and got another knife like I want you to put dozens of animals under the
55:04
belt of that knife to where it's an inch shorter someday you've sharpened it down to and you're
55:09
like, I'm retiring this thing and I'm getting a new one, right? That's what I want. This throw away
55:15
society we live in where everything when you walk into target and look around, everything's made
55:21
to throw away. And that bothers me and especially the fact that we were then making knives to throw
55:27
away with our replaceable blade knives. That really bothered me because as men, we've generally
55:33
only ever passed down knives and guns to the next generation. We might pass down jewelry and some
55:39
artwork, but you can't name a lot more that we passed down, maybe a classic car. So we just took
55:46
one of the things that I've had, I've had thousands of people bring knives in my shop to sharpen
55:50
and it was never about the knife, but it was always about who carried it. This was my grandfather's,
55:57
this was my uncles, this was my aunt's chef's knife or my grandma. And though you might not think
56:04
anybody cares about that speed go today of like the fact that you're using it on your hunts.
56:08
In 50 years, if that knife's still around and you've passed it down, somebody's going to go,
56:13
my grandpa used this on his first duck and then he used it on an elk and then he went sheep hunting
56:19
in Alaska and used it up there. Like those are the memories that like someday you're like,
56:27
you're going to be gone and all that's going to be left is a few things that you touched with
56:31
your own hands. And that's what's going to be special to the next generation.
56:34
I think that's such an amazing word, Josh, because you're absolutely right. I'm thinking of one of
56:40
our biggest supporters and earliest supporters of our show and what we do here at Undaunton Life.
56:43
His father has passed away and I was in his office and this is a guy that hunts a lot. He's got
56:48
animals up all over the place. He's got gorgeous knives. I've actually given him a custom knife
56:52
before as a gift. And he has an old case knife that that kind of sticks out from all the other
56:57
ones that are sitting there on display. And I'm like, Hey, what's up with that when he's like,
57:00
that was my dad's hunting knife. And like his dad's gone now, but he's got his hunting knife,
57:05
right? And it's like, it doesn't matter. Like he wouldn't trade, he wouldn't take a million
57:10
dollars for that knife and you're exactly right. That is one of the few things that we can pass
57:14
down. Like that was what I was thinking of. I did think, you know, maybe if you got an old
57:17
Chevelle, you would pass that down to your grandson or something like that. But you're absolutely
57:20
right. I just love the work that you guys are doing. And just another shout out to y'all's YouTube
57:24
channel. There are different things on there. Like if you're a do it yourself or you want
57:27
to sharpen it, guys, they show you on there how to resharpen their knives. If you want to learn,
57:31
you know, if you've used this paracord and you want to learn how to tie it back up again on your own,
57:35
you guys have a video on that as well. So, you know, again, this is just kind of an
57:38
ode to the stuff you're doing on the marketing side and just making yourselves a resource for
57:42
everybody's. But Josh, there's more we can talk about, but we'll have to save that for another time.
57:46
That's all for me. Is there anything else you want to get off your chest?
57:48
No, I actually feel a little bad. Like we could go on for another hour. I know we could.
57:53
But I feel bad with having a meeting coming up. But what I'd like to do is just do it again
57:58
sometime and we'll cover some other stuff. So, no, I appreciate the opportunity. I encourage people
58:04
to get outside with their children. You know, I was talking to a guy yesterday,
58:10
some of the only things that people ever remember down the road about their parents or about their
58:15
childhood. You know, I know with my boy, it's not going to be all the little sports games they
58:20
played in school. It's not going to be anything about what they did with their friends, but it's
58:23
generally going to be something that they did probably outdoors with their uncle or their mom
58:28
or their dad, hiking, hunting, things like that. All this other stuff we're doing, the podcasts,
58:35
the knives we're making, a lot of that stuff. You know, the business moves we're trying to make,
58:40
like a lot of that won't matter down the road. But what will matter to somebody is, you know,
58:45
is the time spent outside doing something with with a loved one. So I'd love to see more people
58:51
get outdoors and and follow along with what we're doing. We're kind of an open book, like you said,
58:57
and frankly, we're just kind of regular dudes trying to figure it out, bring American manufacturing
59:02
back and and do epic [inaudible]. Absolutely, man. Well, hey, this is just the scratch the surface podcast.
59:08
We will certainly have you back on to talk about more stuff. But Josh Smith, thank you for coming
59:12
on a Don't to Life of Man's podcast. Thank you, Kyle. Appreciate it.
59:15
There you go, guys. Hope you enjoyed my time with Josh Smith. But before we let you go,
59:19
we are going to do a quick resilience boost at a Don't to Life. Our mission is equipping men to
59:22
push back darkness with content that for just spiritual mental and physical resilience. So the
59:26
link I've got for you today, I've got a link to the Montana knife company website. So guys,
59:30
from there, you can get to all the information about their products. You can get to their YouTube
59:34
channel. You can get to everything. So go there and check it out. Thank you guys for listening to
59:38
this episode. Wherever you're listening to this, please subscribe, rate and leave us a positive five
59:41
star review. If you want to come speak live at your event or on your podcast, you shoot me an email
59:46
to info@andonton.life. That's I N F O and on to not life. Follow us on Instagram and like
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59:54
keep more content like this coming your way. Just go to www.undonton.life. And as always,
59:59
we want to thank the band August Burns read for allowing us to use their music for our content.
1:00:03
The musical and this podcast is our song, cutting the tides, which is off their 10th anniversary
1:00:07
re-recording of their album leveler. The links are in the description. I'm your host, Kyle Thompson.
1:00:12
Remember, keep pushing back darkness, keep forging spiritual mental and physical resilience.
1:00:18
Keep seeking the lion of Judah.
1:00:37
Your baby resides.