532: Economic Warfare. The Power of Business In America. Sam Rogers, Joe Cruz, Steve Simar.

Summary

Jocko Podcast #532: Economic Warfare. The Power of Business In America. Sam Rogers, Joe Cruz, Steve Simar.
Date: March 18, 2026

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Episode Overview

In this episode, Jocko welcomes the founders of Symmetry Sauna—Sam Rogers, Joe Cruz, and Steve Simar—to discuss the power of small business in America, the entrepreneurial journey, and the cultural and health impact of sauna. The conversation explores personal backgrounds, business challenges, mission-driven values, the nuts and bolts of building a thriving company, and how discipline and leadership translate from the world of military and sports into successful entrepreneurship.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

The Importance of Small Business & Economic Power

• Jocko opens emphasizing that while military strength is widely discussed, America's economic force, especially through small businesses, is equally if not more impactful ([00:00]).

  • "Small businesses are hugely impactful to the economy in America. They're what drive the economy in America." – Jocko

• Introduction to the guests, three entrepreneurs from diverse backgrounds who built Symmetry Sauna, a custom sauna business that grew from its roots in Idaho to serving clients nationwide ([01:38]).

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The Value of Craft and Aesthetics in Sauna

• Discussion of the saunas built at Victory MMA and why Symmetry focuses on aesthetics as much as function ([02:03]).

  • The salt walls are beautiful but also have health (respiratory) benefits. Ultimately, making the sauna inviting encourages daily use.

  • "Why do we build such beautiful saunas? Because people will use a more beautiful sauna much more often than they'll use that shabby cedar box in the backyard." – Sam Rogers [02:03]

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Personal Backgrounds & Paths to Entrepreneurship

Sam Rogers

• Grew up in rural Montana, fostered independence, and inherited a drive for sports and adventure ([04:12]).
  • Father joined Navy "frogman" program, instilling the ethos of pushing boundaries.
  • Enjoyed an unprofitable but formative stint in pro beach volleyball.
  • Ran a residential painting company for 17 years; bowhunting is a passion.
  • "If you decide to do it and determine ‘I’m just going to do it and won’t be stopped,’ it’s pretty amazing what can happen." – Sam [05:21]

Steve Simar

• Grew up at West Point; deviated into skiing and skydiving, later into commercial photography ([07:03]).
  • Moved into business with Sam in San Diego and later Idaho.
  • Brought visual, marketing, and detail expertise to the team.

Joe Cruz

• Grew up in LA, rough upbringing, left high school early, young fatherhood ([08:46]).
  • Chose a "grind it out" path over repeating his family cycles.
  • Worked his way up in banking, finding his calling in sales through mentorship, before moving into the sauna industry.
  • Experienced and shares stories of facing and overcoming adversity—including gang violence and poverty.
  • Adopted two daughters, both born addicted to meth, sharing openly about the healing journey ([17:13]).

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The Health and Family Benefits of Sauna Culture

• Personal stories about using saunas for family bonding and health, including detoxing children ([21:45]).
  • Emphasis on sauna’s cultural integration in places like Finland (kids sauna young; daily family rituals) compared to the U.S.'s growing awareness ([22:21], [23:04]).
  • "Get your damn kids inside the sauna...there’s far more of a need for them than even for us." – Joe [22:06]

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Building Symmetry Sauna: Risks, Vision, and Execution

Getting Started

• Zero market research, fully bootstrapped, risky but conviction-driven launch ([29:33]).
  • "We did exactly zero market research, drained our pockets of all the money we had and said, let's just do it." – Sam [30:04]

Differentiators in U.S. Sauna Market

• U.S. consumers expect "rustic, basic cedar boxes"; Symmetry innovates by prioritizing custom design, new materials, technology, aesthetic, and direct client consultation ([32:32]).
• Team is deeply health-focused; company culture built on fitness, family, and honesty.
• Claims only a handful of builders globally are on Symmetry's level for design and execution.

Responding to Trends

• Joe Rogan/Huberman and the wellness movement have fueled sauna's U.S. popularity; COVID-19 accelerated consumer demand ([34:15]).

Growth & Vertical Integration

• Company quickly diversified into commercial builds, consultancy for other studios, and new wellness product lines (cold tubs, spa expansions) ([67:14]).

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Company Culture: Friends, Family, and Overcoming Hardship

• Symmetry’s unique "nepotism-friendly" structure: friends and family fill core roles.

  • Critical volunteer help in early days (Josh and Shelly Watkins) evolved into leadership within the company ([56:14]).
  • "When they were coming volunteering, like, we're just like, okay. We didn't know their background...Now they are, they are an intricate, very important piece to the symmetry puzzle." – Joe [58:47]

• Bootstrapped, no outside capital—big sacrifices and delayed paychecks, but loyalty and mission kept the team together ([59:12]).

• Navigating disaster: insurance loophole left them uncovered after a studio flood, but community support convinced them to rebuild and keep their word.

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Customer Experience & Quality

• Symmetry emphasizes white-glove service: from customizing every build, to flying install teams nationwide, to personally resolving issues—even money-losing ones ([60:49], [61:49]).

  • "The commitment we had early on was like, we're not dropping a ball on anyone ever. Whatever we got to do." – Sam [62:40]

• Education of customers is crucial: custom saunas are often as expensive as cars, "buy once, cry once", and are significantly different in performance from mass-market, low-end options ([51:20], [53:23]).

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Key Business Lessons Learned

Go Fast & Listen to Real Demand

• Ignore generic advice to "slow down if things are working."
  • "We had a few business advisors telling us slow down, slow down...And then Joe and I would look at each other and we'd say, let's press the gas pedal harder." – Sam [68:39]
• Scale matched to signal, not fantasy:
  • "Check that demand signal. But if it's there, go get it." – Jocko [71:57]

The Value of Partnership & Ownership

• Pick partners on value and character, not background or quick gains. Weathering thin months and disasters comes down to trust and shared mission ([72:25]-[75:18]).
  • "Pick your partners wisely...Something beyond X’s and O’s. Something beyond on money. Make sure there’s a value drive." – Joe [73:58]
• "Extreme ownership" within the leadership group—no finger-pointing when things go wrong, everyone owns the outcome ([76:05]).

Lessons on Mistakes and Recovery

• Don’t ignore red flags on business decisions or personnel; own the mistake and move quickly to correct course ([77:03]).

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Memorable Quotes & Moments

• On adversity and parenting:
  "There’s a light inside of every human being that, no matter how dim it is, there’s a way to extract it, to make it bright. That’s what I felt sauna was doing for people." – Joe [15:01]

• On market timing:
  "Sometimes in success, timing has something to do with it...The fact that we decided to join forces and do this thing at this time in history is fortuitous." – Sam [34:44]

• On bootstrapping:
  “We are truly bootstrapped from the ground. For every company we built. We had no money starting...We did it out of belief.” – Joe [73:13]

• On partnership and failure:
  "If it all fails, it’s been a hell of a ride. It’s been amazing. And we’ll go to the local burger joint and just take that place over." – Sam [70:57]

• On extreme ownership:
  “It’s amazing how often two or three people...make a decision together...When the decision ends up being a bad decision...instead I say, ‘Well, that was your call, Joe. What are you going to do?’ When people aren’t taking ownership within the ownership group...that’s when things fracture.” – Jocko [75:18]

• Lighthearted:
  Steve’s skydiving world record for the “largest naked vertical formation” ([81:33]), the crocheted chicken gift for Jocko ([03:12]), and jokes about their early website/brand missteps ([41:41]).

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Timestamps for Notable Segments

• 00:00 – Introduction: The economic force of small business
• 02:03 – Why beautiful design matters in saunas
• 04:12 – Backgrounds: Upbringing and career pivots of Sam, Steve, Joe
• 17:13 – Adoption and healing: Personal story on impact and values
• 30:04 – Launching with risk: “Zero market research”
• 32:32 – U.S. vs. Europe: Elevating the sauna experience
• 34:15 – The wellness trend and changing U.S. habits
• 41:41 – Overcoming early business missteps (branding & COVID setbacks)
• 45:52 – Community & resilience after disaster (studio flood story)
• 51:20 – Sauna costs explained ("as expensive as a car")
• 59:12 – Delayed paychecks, sacrifice, and team loyalty
• 62:40 – Customer service: Fixing problems at any cost
• 68:39 – Key lessons: Move fast, bet on real demand, value the right partners
• 73:58 – Extreme Ownership in business
• 81:33 – Skydiving world record humor
• 82:28 – Announcing sauna giveaway
• 90:37 – Jocko Fuel aside & closing banter

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Additional Highlights

• Symmetry Sauna now employs ~40 people ([67:00]).
• Future plans include expanding into cold tubs, full spa offerings, and custom wellness solutions ([67:14]).
• Symmetry plans a sauna giveaway for Jocko’s listeners, with details and legalities still pending ([82:28]–[84:14]).
• Playful closing includes predictions on an in-gym grappling match among the team ([86:45]) and testimonials to Jocko’s protein powder ([90:37]).

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For More

• Symmetry Sauna website: symmetrysauna.com
• Instagram/Facebook: @symmetrysauna
• For Jocko’s products and leadership consultancy: jockofuel.com, originusa.com, echelonfront.com

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Summary by segment is available upon request.
This episode is engaging, warm, and loaded with practical business insight, raw entrepreneurial stories, humor, and hard-won advice—inviting and motivating for anyone on the path of starting or scaling a venture.

Transcript

[A]

This is jocko podcast number 532. And I talk often about, obviously about the military and what the military does and the strength of the military. But there is another strength and another force in the world that is equally, if not even more important and stronger, and that is economic force. And one of the most important type of economic force in the world is Americans. And one of the most important economic forces in America is small businesses. Small, small businesses are hugely impactful to the economy in America. They're what drive the economy in America. Which brings us to our guest for today, three gentlemen from vastly different backgrounds who have built and are continuing to grow an American company. And this company is called Symmetry Sauna. And I met these guys as we were building out the new gym here at Victory mma, which is where we're sitting right now. The new gym at Victory mma. We had a fire, which, incidentally, was caused by our old sauna. So we didn't want to get that old sauna, we wanted a brand new sauna. And we searched around to find who is making the best saunas in the. In the country. And really, in my opinion, the best saunas in the world. And we ended up with Symmetry Sauna. And so once we brought them in and I saw what they were doing, building business, creating jobs, and basically getting after it, which is a huge part of what I like. So Joe Cruz, Sam Rogers, and Steve Seymour, the leaders of Symmetry Sauna, thanks for joining us, fellas.

[B]

Thank you.

[C]

Thanks.

[A]

Yeah, yeah. Sauna looks good, doesn't it?

[C]

It looks really good.

[A]

Yeah. The sauna is a beautiful sauna. That is what you guys do is build these amazing custom saunas. And I know you're expanding right now and doing even more than that, but really impressed with what you guys did here, both the men's sauna and the women's sauna. There's actually two saunas here that you guys built and they' what's up with the salt walls? What's that all about?

[B]

Well, you want to go there is. There are health benefits to Himalayan sea salt when it ionizes at heat, Good respiratory benefit. But we're always honest with our clients. They're beautiful. More than anything, it's aesthetics. And here's kind of the philosophy is, why do we build such beautiful saunas? Because people will use a more beautiful sauna much more often than they'll use that shabby cedar box in the backyard. So if we build it beautiful, people want to go in it every day. And that's the whole goal.

[A]

Yeah, no, the Salt walls. They definitely. Well, they got like a, like a warm glow to them because they're backlit and. Yeah, they're very inviting.

[B]

Yeah, that's it right there.

[A]

So what, you had some kind of something you want to give me? Was that what.

[B]

I'm a father, three kids, but I've got this. The kid in the middle, 10 year old girl, Jiu jitsu killer. But she also is kind of an old soul. She likes to sew and crochet and she. The night before I flew down here, she running out. Dad, dad, Dad, I made something for Jocko. Do you promise to give it to him? I was like, what is it? So she showed me and I was like, oh, I think Jocko's gonna love that. So this is from my daughter, Talia. She crocheted you a chicken.

[D]

A chicken.

[B]

And it's a beautiful chicken.

[A]

It's kind of a little bit of a heart shaped chicken.

[B]

There you go. She. Yeah.

[A]

What's her name?

[B]

Her name's Talia.

[A]

Talia. Well, Talia, this is definitely the coolest chicken that I've ever owned. Nice black eyes. What is this pink little.

[B]

That's the comb.

[A]

Comb on the head? Yeah. That's an amazing piece of, you know. You know, piece of chicken. Yeah. So it's, it's, it's a chicken, but let's face it, it looks like it may have been the forefathers of the chicken nugget. Like, this thing would give birth to chicken nuggets. So anyway, thank you very much, Talia. Appreciate it. This will stay with me, right, for a long time.

[B]

She'll be stoked.

[A]

I. I will have to protect it from my dog. My dog will definitely think that this chicken is amazing looking and try and eat it. So I'll keep it safe, Talia. Thank you. All right, so let's get a little bit, a little bit of background from you guys. Just, just quickly like how you guys grew up and then, and then we'll kind of talk about how you guys got linked up. Where do you guys want to start? Who, who, who goes first?

[B]

I'll start.

[A]

Let's hear it.

[B]

Yeah, I. I grew up a small white boy in Montana. Montana, outside of Great falls.

[A]

Okay.

[B]

About 100 acres of land.

[A]

Nice.

[B]

And just a good life. Two sisters, mom and dad. All this land, horses. I basically grew up on a horse with a.22 rifle and a fishing pole. Just like Huckleberry Finn. And I'll tell one quick story I told my dad I would tell on here. So he, when he was 17, he joined the Navy.

[A]

Nice.

[B]

And when he went to the naval recruiting, he said, if I sign up, can I be a frogman? And so this was before Navy SEALs, right. And the recruiter said, if you can, if you can make it through the training, you can be a frogman. So he signed on the dotted line at 17 and it was like a three year tour. So he came out here actually and did training in Coronado. But as soon as they saw him, they were like, you can't be a frogman. He's like, they promised me I'd get a shot. And they said, no, you're nearsighted, you can't be a frogman. So anyway, he became a. He worked on the radios for Blue Angels and the, the fighter jets. But anyway, he wanted you, he wanted you to know that he served in the Navy. Well, and he wanted to be a frogman, but. Yeah. So then somehow, I'll tell the real quick story somehow. I was always in love with sports. That's kind of all I cared about. And my first sport was basketball, but they didn't have men's volleyball where I came from. But when I got into college, I started playing volleyball and I got very addicted to this thing. Eventually moved to San Diego to try to play professional beach volleyball and dabbled in that. I called myself a bottom feeder, you know, played a lot of professional tournaments, but I spent way more money than I ever earned. But it was a good experience. It gave me a lot of confidence in life that if you just put your mind to something you can probably do, go a lot farther than you think you could and so hold on to that experience in business and everything else we do but, and have sort of become delusional from that. I kind of feel like if you, if you decide to do it and determine I'm just going to do it and won't be stopped, it's pretty amazing what can happen. So. And, and you know, met these guys along the way and here we are.

[A]

How you been? How were you feeding your family before? Symmetry. What'd you do for work?

[B]

So I, I started, owned and operated a residential painting company here in san Diego for 17 years.

[A]

Get some.

[B]

And that company's still going, right. I don't have much to do with the day to day anymore, but it's still going. And did that. And then what else? Yeah, the other, the other thing people might be interested or not is, you know, bow hunting. Bow hunting is another driving force in my life, is every September chasing elk in the mountains of Montana, Idaho, Wyoming, Wherever. Wherever I end up. And that's a huge one for me.

[A]

That's the addiction right there.

[B]

Oh, man, that's a good one.

[A]

So awesome. And what about you, Steve?

[C]

I grew up at West Point in New York. My dad was a graduate and came back as a football coach. So I grew up as the cord boy on the sideline. And my dad told me if I went to West Point, he'd buy me a car. But I had to go skiing. So I went to Montana State University and skied a lot. And from there went into youth ministry. I met Sam playing volleyball in Montana

[A]

in the 90s, there was people playing volleyball in Montana in the grass.

[C]

There's not maybe sand there, but sand was the.

[B]

In the 90s, there was about 30 guys in Montana who were unbelievable volleyball players from all over the world. It was. It was a pretty good scene.

[C]

I was not one of them.

[B]

Yeah, Steve was good.

[C]

I was a bottom feeder. I used to play my khaki shorts. Called me the khaki techno. So I moved to San Diego not long after Sam. We got to be roommates and buddies. I was a freelance photo assistant doing commercial photography and really chasing the dream of skydiving. I was a competitive skydiver, but Lake Elsinore and did that for a long time. Started building my own photography business. Long story short, I drove up to visit Sam and the family in Idaho, and then they shut down California behind me. Yeah, so I said, I guess I live here now. So, yeah, complete change in life. Going from commercial photography to. We started a paint company up there when the market was going crazy. And then Joe here kind of talked us into the sauna industry and. And that's been amazing. So, yeah, we started. I mean, like, how symmetry started. It was me designing and building saunas, you know, and those guys building the business.

[A]

And how'd you get in the mix, Joe?

[D]

Yeah, I grew up in Los Angeles and didn't have much background or sports or anything. Stopped going to school about 10th grade and, you know, single mom growing up, giving her best and bunch of siblings. And from there, my girlfriend got pregnant.

[A]

So I go, how old were you?

[D]

Eighteen. She was seventeen. Eighteen, Something like that. And then, yeah, sitting down and kind of had that road in front of me. I'm going to be like my dad. I'm just going to walk away and throw it in, or am I going to grind it out? And for some reason, I decided to grind it out. So, yeah, we ended up. We're in Los Angeles, moved to San Diego, started doing jumped in banking, just entry level, whatever, you know, paper file, pushing minimum wage, close to minimum wage, and then started climbing up the ladder. And the, you know, supervisor, department head, sales and sales is where I found my love. I was able to, you know, start managing and. And yeah, it just all really started developing for me visually. You know, it was very easy. I didn't understand what the complexities were in, you know, in business, so just too naive to know. And from there, after, you know, 2008, I was already kind of looking for something then.

[A]

So how long did you stay in banking for?

[D]

Probably as long as I was in San Diego. Like nine, ten years.

[A]

Okay.

[E]

Yeah, yeah.

[D]

So in there for a while, a lot of fun. We pioneered a bank right here off Claremont Mesa, called fnba, First National Bank, Arizona. Really cool. A lot of fun, a lot of good memories. But my mentor, Jim Patterson, you know, he was a cop, ex cop from Kentucky. And he took me under his wing. He's called me as Brown Hope, because all the other sales guys were, you know, super ambitious and a lot of them were already, you know, fairly well to do. And he saw this guy coming up from nothing, took me under his wing and said, dude, I'm rooting for you. Go out there, kick ass. And yeah, man, I just started, you know, I became top performer and doing my thing. And then when I, you know, everything shaked up in. In that banking industry, I went to Sauna. My buddy Logan, who became a mentor, and he's still in Sauna. Logan Ross out in Los Angeles, super cool guy, and he mentored me, brought me in, and I just hit the ground running.

[A]

Sauna industry.

[D]

Into the sauna industry. Well, I mean, like, sales or doing just sales. I mean, I was, you know, sales at that point in banking. I mean, I was just crushing it in sales. So I knew I had this thing, whether it was just the street vision, street level, from all the crap I've been through growing up and the desire and the hunger to be awesome and, you know, running a young family, a wife at this point, two sons, and just like, okay, I gotta grind. I gotta figure out how to not, you know, be like the rest of my family on the system or cheating the system and just ghetto and, you know, and. And yeah, just kept an elevated mindset.

[A]

What do you. Where do you think you got that elevated mindset? Man?

[D]

I. Yeah, I don't know, man. I think, you know, my mom was fairly crazy, in a good way. You know, she did her best and she was a discipliner. She boxed for a Lot of years, like, so she would whip my ass and all the way up until. I'm not joking, man. Like, punch me in the face. Crazy gang story. If you guys want to hear it real quick. So I was from a LA street gang for 24 hours. I was living in Huntington park, where they say, Huntington park, where it's crazy after dark. And I was actually in high school, probably ninth grade. And, you know, Retro was in. So I wasn't even like a gangster looking guy. I was like in bell bottoms and this and that. I'm not joking. And my. But my whole family was like, from street gangs. And so I was at high school in Huntington park. And they're like, hey, aren't you so and so's nephew from, you know, this gang? And I'm like, yeah. And they, they started beating me up in the bathroom, right? Which they called jumping. And I'm not joking. Not jumping. You know, they call jumping in. And so I got jumped in. And when they picked me up, they're like, all right, you're from. I won't even say it. You're from X gang now. And I'm like, yeah, I am. So I. I belonged, right? I was like, okay, cool. So I went home and all of a sudden, like, within 24 hours, like, I think I might have shaved my head and, you know, wear the baggy pants. So my mother, though. Yeah, yeah, my mom. And my mom, my grandma was a gang member, right? So my mom was also a gang member, ex gang member, you know, turned to Jesus and changed her life. But once you're a gang member, like, you're always kind of a gang member. You always have that mentality. So she ended up finding out, you know, or she found out that I got jumped, jumped into a gang. And she's like, oh, you're not gonna. Because it's her ex gang that they jumped me in. She's like, oh, you're not going down that road. Like, you know, I'll kick your ass. Like, you're gonna get jumped out. So it was within 24 hours. She, like, walked me to the park in Huntington park, like, and a bunch of gangsters are sitting on the table and they're like, well, where are you from? Or no, she said, I want my son out of the gang. I'm so and so from ex gang. And my. My mom's ex gang. Long story short, like, all right, well, just tell him to deny that he's from the gang and he's out. We don't have to jump him out. Poor kids already got beat up and, you know, 18 hours ago, so. So my mom turns to me, she's like, all right, Joe, what gang you from? I'm like, And I threw the gang sign and I told her the name of the gang, right? And she just started beating the crap out of me, like, punching me in the face. I mean, it was so bad, even the gangsters were like, okay, stop. Leave them alone.

[E]

Leave them alone.

[D]

We'll jump them out. So then they, like, move my mom aside, and three of them came and beat the hell out of me for a couple of minutes. Then I was out of the street gang. So, yeah, maybe that helped with the, you know, some of the grit that I have. But now, man, I just. I don't know. I never wanted to be like. Like. Yeah. Like, the people before me who I just felt like, you know, were always elusive, taking advantage of the system, not being honest, not being hard workers, lazy, all this stuff. And it was, you know, my community of, you know, unfortunately, a lot of the Hispanic, you know, community, they're just such hard workers, like, and they grind. And I did see that a lot. I just never saw them getting ahead in business for some reason, right? Whatever it was, right? They're always working for someone. I don't want to work for anyone. I knew that for a very long time. Since dropped out of high school in 10th grade, right? Like, I knew, I don't want to work for anyone. So ended up my. My girl, you know, married her right away. I proposed to her, kind of telling her parents, hey, I'm sorry I got her pregnant, but I'm going to marry this girl.

[A]

How much did you spend on her ring?

[D]

Oh, I. I don't even know if I got her a ring out of her, dude.

[A]

Okay, that's. That's low.

[B]

This was.

[D]

This was. Yeah. I mean, no money. This was 20. I mean, we've been married 26 years, right? So, um, anyway, so found my way out of, you know, into the. Out of banking, into sauna. And then it just. I mean, it was. Right away, I was already able to consult people is Right. Helping people talk about health benefits. I didn't know much. Probably three days being in the sauna industry, I was already selling song. I was like, but it's because I care. Like, I have this passion for human beings to be better, right? There's something. There's a light inside of every human being that, you know, no matter how dim it is, like, there's a way to. Yeah. To extract it, right? To make it Bright. And that's what I felt sauna was doing for people. So it was very, I spoke with conviction, it was very natural. And then I got really good at what I was doing and then I'll end it with this. So my wife and I, you know, after banking and into sauna, like there's more than enough money. Like we grew up super poor, we grew up with nothing. And so, But I did tell my wife, I'm like, man, if this is all life has to offer, I don't know, I don't, I don't know if we're going to last in our marriage. I don't really, you know, shiny stuff and, and bank accounts and like, none of that's bringing this kind of intrinsic value that I'm seeking out. And so we went to a therapist together and she said, if you want to feel this deep, meaningful fulfillment, have this lasting impact in your life, do something, do something together that's going to change the world without you getting any money or accolades or anything like that. And my wife and I love, you know, we love children and we're good, pretty good parents. You know, we're not perfect. And so we're like, dude, let's adopt some kids. We just, let's adopt some kids. Let's like change somebody's world. Like hands on and not just any kids. Like, let's get the kids that are like thrown, not thrown in the trash, but nobody wants like the ones addicted, born addicted to drugs and this and that. So we ended up, yeah, getting, you know, going through all the trainings, getting a call from, getting a call from LA county saying, hey, we got one for you.

[A]

How long did that process take?

[D]

Yeah, so about a year. Took about a year. You know, we had to be diligent in the classes and. But it took a year. And then, you know, they, we went and met our daughter Sage and she was born addicted to methamphetamines. But right when we saw her, it was so beautiful. Held her and I just knew like, yeah, this, she's mine, she's ours. And yep, took her home and on her adoption party after a year, the process to, you know, from foster to adopt, we got a call from the, from the social worker because we told them we can only have one. Like we have no space, we have nothing else, you know, we can do. We only have a five seater car. And they ended up calling us on her adoption party saying, hey, birth mom had another one, you know, and we knew the family that if we didn't take her the family was gonna. She was gonna go to. So I looked at my wife. My wife's crying.

[B]

She's like, you know, I can't tell

[D]

them, no, you're gonna have to do it. And I said, vic, well, I'll get a little religious or sorry I'm confronted with this news, but we can't do it. We have a five seater car. You know, like, we're not in a big enough house. We'd have to move. You know, savings is still, you know, I'm wild in my investments and, you know, everything isn't perfect. You know, as. As I would go in, so money up, money down. And this was a time where money was a little down. And I just told her, I said, yeah, we can't do it. So I go outside and I'm sitting, you know, kind of there in the balcony, just. But I did hear in the back of my head, it's like, look at the birds in the air. Look at the lilies in the field. You know, they're clothed, they're fed. How much more do I love you? How much more will I take care of you? And so I walked in and I told Vic, I'm like, hey, we. We don't have the space, we don't have the cash, we don't have the this, we don't have the that. So let's do it. And we did it. And we brought her on. And when we brought her on, Jules, since we brought. Also born addicted, you know, to the. To the methamphetamines and such. But when we brought her on, our entire world changed. Since that day, we've never really had a financial struggle, worry anything. Right? And so for me and us and our little family there, you know, what we're trying to do is. Yeah. Impact the world. Impact lives. So now we have four children, two biological sons, 26, 21. 21. And then our adopted daughters, Sage and Jules. So It's Eli, Zane, Sage, 13, Jules, 11, and seven grandkids. So both my sons got married at 17. They're following the good old Dawn. Yeah, I'm trying. So, okay, how the.

[A]

How's, like, what's the medical recovery or how do they. How do they wean a kid that's born addicted to meth? What is that process? And where do they end up? Do they. Do they end up with deficits later on in life? Can they fully recover? How's all that work?

[D]

Right. Well, there's obviously the predisposition to it, which, you know, as any parent, you're gonna Be concerned, right? Like, if there's a predisposition to it and they get older, you know, they start just even touching the stuff, they're way more prone, more likely to get addicted, that spiral. So in the beginning, yeah, we brought them, you know, Sage, she had, you know, muscular issues in her mouth, so she. She had to have a tube. She couldn't suck on the bottle. And so, yeah, it was a, you know, a lot of muscular issues, right. Mobility issues, things like that. Those are some of the bigger problems that we face. There's some, you know, some sensory stuff, you know, know that they'll deal with. Detachment.

[B]

The.

[D]

The crazy one is the detachment, you know, when we grabbed Sage and I held her there and I. I looked at her, my wife's like, bring her close to your face. Watch what happens. So she's looking at me. I start pulling her in close to my face, and she turns her head, turns her head, and this is. And I'm like, okay, pull her back. She looks up, and we're talking weeks old, and she turns her head. And so the nurse was like, hey, these kids who, like, you know, are born like this, or they. They have abandonment, you know, or detachment things going on. It. Weeks old, she doesn't want to get close, so she'd turn her face every time we brought her close. So that's probably been the hardest thing to work through. But a cool thing is going back to sauna. These girls, we started when they were just months old, putting them in our infrared sauna at our house. Like, we'd leave the door cracked open. We'd have them in there, their little cheeks get rosy and flush. But we started putting them in there at months old for the detoxification purposes. And this was years ago, right? But, yeah, so cool to see now the world, you know, the west especially, start to evolve in some of these more, I don't know, alternative, you know, wellness paths that they're taking. I think an area that a lot of people are missing, that, you know, symmetry and where we are focused on and some of our marketing is geared toward is get your damn kids inside the sauna. Like, get them, you know, using it very, very young for detoxing purposes.

[B]

Far.

[D]

There's far more of a need for them than even for us, right? The toxins, you know, from food, environment, name it, right?

[A]

Over in Europe, when do they start going in in the sauna? Kids?

[D]

Oh, I don't know.

[A]

Do they start young over there?

[B]

It's part of the culture. I mean, the kids go, you know, Kids, their sweat glands aren't fully developed yet, so they can't take the super high heat for a long time, like we can. But they come in and out. They'll go in for five, seven minutes, come out. It's just part of the family culture. Like, we sauna daily. Yeah.

[D]

If you go. Yeah, if you go to Finland, you, you know, there's more sauna than people. And it is cool. You'll see, like, on a Friday night, right. The kids getting out of their, you know, whether university or their school, young kids. I mean, we're talking junior high age, junior high age, high school age, and they're, you know, getting together as groups and they're going to the public sauna. They're just going to the saunas down the street. And that's how they get their weekends going. And so it's just already ingrained in their culture. And it's one of the reasons they're very, very healthy people.

[A]

We have legit sauna, like family events at my house. My whole family's in the sauna. We do this big factory reset thing where we'll do like 25 minutes in and then we'll do ice bath and another 25 and then ice bath, another. But we do that a lot like the fam. There's definitely. We've adopted some of that Finland activities of getting in the sauna as a family, hanging out. Because you're, you know, when you're in the sauna. I mean, I actually, when I go in alone, I always stretch in there. But if you're not stretching, then what are you doing? You're like, at least be able to talk to someone.

[B]

Great conversation.

[A]

It's like a time where you're going to. I'm going to spend the next 25 minutes with my wife. What are we going to do? Like, well, we're going to talk about stuff and hang out, and that might not happen in a normal busy day where stuff is going on. So that's definitely beneficial. So then did you. How did you end up going from the other sauna company? How did you end up with. With the symmetry thing? Did you move to Idaho, too?

[D]

Yeah, great question. So, ended up some in LA with my mentor, Logan and Kim, and, you know, they're, they're teach. I went from infrared sauna when I first started working for a fairly large company. And then, you know, Logan and I went to traditional sauna. So, you know, started learning traditional sauna. Got that pretty quick. And then we wanted to scale, you know, the goal was to Scale the company that we were at. And it just didn't end up being something that aligned with my vision. I'm like Sam and Steve, fairly delusional. And I'm always globalizing every single thing. I don't want to. I don't want to be here to just be a competitor. Like, I want to dominate on a crush. Right. So I didn't sense that from ownership of that company. And just salt of the earth people. Really cool. But I had to go my own way. I had to take my own chance. So my wife and I are just like, okay. And we've always been the type, like, we're not risk adverse, whatever. Like, if we make a decision to do something, we're doing it. Like it doesn't matter. Right. So I look at her and let's get out of California. All right, so where do we go? And literally, like, you know, kind of blindfold and. Okay, there. Oh, that's Spokane, Washington.

[C]

Right.

[D]

So, yeah, a couple months later, we have our car packed and, you know, the pods and send us up to Spokane. I was working from home already, so it's easy. So I was still consulting and working, you know, the sales with my buddy Logan. And so it was nice because I did have the liberty to just get up and go if I wanted. So we go to Spokane, but I could only live there for a handful of years because Spokane has been voted a couple of times the. The city with the ugliest people in the country. So I'm like, dude, we get out of here. We got to get out of there. So we end up going to Coeur d'. Alene. And shortly after that, I met Sam.

[B]

Yeah.

[D]

And I've already consulted some sauna studios, like these commercial places where it's like, oh, come on, pay $45 and, you know, use a sauna. And. And so I. I already consulted some of those places. So it was already in my mind to do something like that. Up in Cordelane. It seemed. Right. So connected with Sam. And then we're like, dude, we started just really him and I got together and it was like instant. Oh, my gosh, we can take over the world. But we only had the ideas. We didn't actually know how to do this stuff. So that's where Steve had to come in.

[B]

Yeah. When I met Joe, I had been using sauna for several years now. And your buddy, Joe Rogan Podcast 2017, 2018. I heard all these health benefits of sauna, so I was like, I got to start using one. So I did. And Yeah, I love it. It was life changing, right? And so then we moved up to Idaho from. We were living in Oceanside was the last place my wife and I lived with three kids. But I was tired of being stuck in traffic all the time, because I was right. Still running the paint company, Paint bids all the time. And I was just stuck in traffic all the time. And told my wife. I was like, we're going back to Montana. So I took her on the tour of Montana, all the places I thought she might want to live. And she was like, well, we had a couple friends who had moved over to Coeur d' Alene a few years earlier. So she was like, let's go visit them in Coeur d', Alene, Idaho. And so I was like, let's go. So we went over there, and we got there, and after two days, she was like, I would move here. And, you know, I. Because I grew up in Montana, that was kind of. I had blinders on for going back to Montana, but I was like, coeur d', Alene, Idaho. I'd move here, too. So 30 days later, I had a house, accepted offer, and I told her. I was like, hey, 30 days of u Haul is leaving. Hope you're. Hope you're in it, because we're going. And a lot of that driving factor for me was elk. Like, I wanted to be close to where I could elk on every fall without having to travel, you know, so far from San Diego. And then. And I, you know, having grown up in Montana, San Diego was amazing place to live for the whole journey I did, but I was just kind of. It had run its course for me, and I think I was kind of ready to go back home.

[A]

And did you have a business in mind when you moved up there?

[B]

No. You know, that's crazy is I had hired a general manager, trained him for a year to run my painting company, and he was running it great. We had, like, 17 employees, just. And I was. So I was getting a pretty handsome monthly paycheck doing nothing. And I told my wife, I probably shouldn't have said this. I was like, did I make it? Am I retired? Like, are we okay? Because we're making good money, you know? So I called it my first retirement. And then. And then Covid hit, and guess what's not essential in San Diego, California, during COVID Painting people's houses is not essential. So within about, you know, it was about six to nine months before you could start going out and giving paint bids. Well, all our guys were gone by then. You didn't have employees left, like there was. So it was basically done.

[A]

So you just got annihilated by Covid,

[B]

just completely shut the business down. And so then I'm. Now I'm in Idaho with no income and all of a sudden, you know, and that's when Steve came up to visit and we, we started a company up there called Bullet Painting. But I told him, I was like, hey, what it took me 10 years to do in San Diego we can replicate in three months. Because now I know exactly what to do, what not to do, how to market this. So we, we launched a painting company and I mean, within weeks we were selling contracts, getting guys, trying to get it going. We painted a few houses at first ourselves, and we just built a business kind of at scale very, very quickly, but became a name in that town really quickly with that business. And now we still, we still own that, but we hired a general manager to run the painting company. So that's still going. But.

[A]

And so who was the. Who. When did the sauna start?

[B]

20. I, I met Joe in 2019. We started, I mean, within months we were talking about what if we were to build a sauna studio where members would come and use our saunas. And, and, and we were like, yeah, this is, it's a great idea. We had the question though of, is Coeur d' Alene population density big enough to actually support this? And so I always tell people. So we did exactly zero market research, drained our pockets of all the money we had and said, let's just do it.

[D]

Yeah.

[B]

And that's, that's when. But we knew like Joe and I are, we're kind of visionaries, we're forward thinking, we're both really good at sales and talking and blah, blah, blah. But we have no skills in building a website. In marketing, in all holding tools. I have some tool skills. Just don't let me touch electric. Yeah, yeah, but, but I, I messed up one of our first builds really badly. I, I wired something wrong and everything went. I was like, oh. And so now they won't let me.

[A]

Last time doing this.

[B]

Oh yeah.

[D]

Oh yeah.

[C]

He was teaching us a lesson.

[B]

But Jocko, I tell them, I was like, I'm probably the safest guy now. I'm never going to repeat that mistake again. I learned it once. But we brought Steve in, who, you know, you see all of our marketing and our website and the beautiful things, photography and videography and all of that. That's him. He's, he's the detail guy.

[D]

So I'M I'm backing it up though, you know, like, and again, something that we saw that I don't think a lot of the, the sauna people, business people have seen is they're opening up these studios. So we talked about, hey, let's open up one of these sauna studios. I know the monthly fees. I already consulted several, you know, across the country on how to do it. So I already had it in the bag. I said, but let's make the sauna studio a showroom for custom saunas. So, and so let's make every sauna very different. Let's make it ourselves because I'm telling you guys, like, this is gonna be a showroom that members are gonna pay for. Right? And it became exactly that.

[C]

Yeah.

[D]

So the studio was running successfully and then really successfully, actually. Then we had our little suite upstairs in the Dingle, the Dingle Dangle building. And then as soon as we launched that, you put together that landing page. I, I said, dude, once we put this landing page on, people from all over the country are gonna be contacting us. So we were, we called ourselves Northwest Custom Sauna. Right? Was that it?

[C]

There's a few of them, yeah. Yeah, that was the, that was the install dot com.

[D]

Yeah, something like that.

[C]

Yeah.

[D]

And then we learned really quick, really quick that, you know, calls are coming in from all over the country and, and as they'd speak to us, they realized on the phone at least, you know, as we're consulting, both Sam and I, we were there to solve problems. Problems that the sauna industry and, you know, that they weren't, they haven't been able to solve for the 50 year old industry that the, you know, sauna is in the US like, so us being able to jump on the phone straight away, solve problems, do really cool, innovative things.

[A]

What was it? What's the biggest issue that Americans had compared to overseas?

[D]

Yeah, so Americans are kind of locked into this, this box of, I don't know, rustic lumber, like grandma, grandpa, dingy. This is kind of what a sauna is supposed to look like. And so, you know, being partnered with Steve and, and knowing that, I mean, Sam and I can at this point visually, right, write any check we wanted and Steve would have to cash it. So we're just telling people like going like, what would you like a sauna to look like? So just the limitations in the U.S. it's like, it's all cedar, it's all this and just kind of looks, I don't know, ugly.

[B]

It's also hard to find.

[C]

It's also hard to find someone that builds saunas. You know, like in most towns, there's a guy, there's a carpenter, that's this thing and it's kind of word of mouth. They don't, they're not marketing and advertising out or you kind of have your, like you said, the basic cedar boxes, you're going to pool world and you know, seeing whatever they can make for you. So elevating the sauna experience from the build side and design side is we're kind of offering that to way more people and, you know, and being visible

[D]

and making sure the materials that we're using, you know, are more sustainable, they're better, less maintenance, you know, things we're thinking on, you know, how to make salt walls. Because salt walls have been made, you know, before our, our time here, but they're always made with these ugly looking little bricks. And so we said, hey, let's do bigger bricks, let's do white bricks, let's do, let's make it easy change out. Let's just elevate what the other guys are doing. And we started doing that. And you know, the really cool thing is the organization that we've built. When you get on the phone with someone at Symmetry, you're guaranteed that you are talking to someone who is very convicted about health, meaning not only their words, but we're all in fantastic shape. There's nobody in our organization that you would not say is in really, really good shape, which is crazy.

[A]

And would you guys say you were ahead of the power curve or ahead of the popularity? This resurgence of sauna that's come in the past. Like, how long has that resurgence been? Like, you talked about Rogan talking about obviously Huberman talking about it. Like people have been talking about it in the past. How long has that been? I'm. I don't, I can't remember. Like, was it. Is that like five years or something?

[D]

Like upward trend? Is price seven. You know, it's at seven, eight years. It started and then right when Covid hit and it really did take off.

[B]

Yeah, sometimes in success, timing has something to do with it.

[A]

Oh, for sure.

[B]

And the fact.

[A]

And failure as well. I mean, like when you have a painting. Painting business and Covid shows painting control.

[B]

But yeah, the fact that we decided to join forces and do this thing at this time in history is fortuitous. It was very good timing and also though. But you know, and Joe having the most experience in the sauna industry overall, it was like, when we build this thing, we don't want to do it like everyone else. There are all these other sauna companies out there who are doing plain Jane saunas. So we have to. We're going to present ourselves as very different, and we're going to build things that are very different from what anyone else is doing. And, you know, we found there's two or three other sauna companies in the us, Four or five worldwide, that are kind of, I think, on par with what we're doing with the design, with. Actually, we have teams that are our people that travel all over the US to the Bahamas, to the UK installing saunas now. So, you know, we're. We're. We are looking to go global with this thing, and it kind of fits

[D]

the way we've built the business, right? Like, internally. You know, we. We've. I guess there's a brain trust that says, you know, do it this way and so on. A lot of the, you know, I call them dinosaurs. You know, some of them are my friends. Sorry if you're listening to this, but, you know, who run other sonic companies, they're just dinosaurs, right? They're not. For some reason, they're just. It's not clicking. So for us, we've been built. Not only we. Not only do we build saunas, like, outside the box, right? But our organization, we've done kind of backward. Like, we're all big on the nepotism. Friends and family first, right? Let's lift our people up first and let's build a powerhouse, you know, backward, right? But it. It's worked. It's gotten us to, you know, heights that I don't think we even imagined we'd get to. So, you know, our saunas kind of fit our. Our demeanor. And these guys came up with a stupidest name. They wanted to call us the Bebops. The bad. The Bad boys of Sauna. And I was like, dude, that's so lame.

[B]

This is just as Joe's boy band sauna name that we rejected very early on. He also. He also did spike his hair for this podcast. Just so everyone knows, I told you

[D]

not to talk about hair.

[A]

All right, what was the. Where did you guys come up with the name Symmetry? Where'd that come from?

[D]

Hit that.

[C]

Well, wait a minute.

[B]

Wait a minute.

[D]

He didn't ask how much it cost.

[B]

We brainstormed a bunch of ideas. Now, I have to give credit to my oldest son, Justus, who just turned 13, because about two months before we chose the name Symmetry, at home at dinner one night, I was like, hey, everyone, write down 10 names that you think we should name this Sonic company? Well, right there on Justice's list is Symmetry Sauna. Now that kind of got shuffled to the side and then we.

[C]

That's a piece of history. That's right.

[B]

Steve will fill in the rest. But. But when I announced the name Symmetry Sauna, justice brings me his paper and

[A]

he's like, he wants a cut.

[D]

Pay me.

[B]

That's the royalty. I had to pay him $250 cash for the name. And he was pretty happy.

[A]

Were you called something before Symmetry?

[C]

Yeah, we were. We were Northwest Custom Sauna, and we were starting to build outside of the Northwest. And so people in San Diego, like you guys actually do work down here. I was like, now is the time to change the name before we go any further. And so I've, you know, been being in the creative industry and branding and design. I've got good friends and my buddy Sean Ritzenthaler, who designed all of our stuff. We did a whole brand, you know, study with him. And it is hilarious that we land on one that. That 13 year olds.

[A]

Good instincts.

[C]

Yeah, maybe Sean, maybe he was, you know, in contact with Justin behind the scenes. You know, we wanted something that sort of split, spoke to one, the beauty of it, like two, the, you know, I mean, obviously the, the body's symmetrical. Health and wellness is symmetrical, you know, and it's kind of, it's beyond just on itself. You know, Obviously we do cold plunge. We do lots of things in the wellness space now. And so we just thought symmetry was beautiful and.

[A]

And then you suck with it.

[C]

That's what we do. We stuck with it.

[A]

Yeah. What was the. How do you start getting traction out of the gate? Like, this is a pretty, you know, how is somebody even in Idaho when they want to build a sauna? How are they finding you? Is that via the website? Out of the gate?

[C]

Yeah. And yeah, I mean, we got the landing page.

[D]

I mean, it was just a landing page. I told these guys, I said, dude, like, if we put up a landing page, we're gonna start getting calls from all over the country. I don't know if they didn't believe me, but he put up a quick landing page and almost said that was very ugly.

[C]

Yeah, yeah. But, but that just speaks to the need, you know, like when we first started, when we built our studio, it was sort of kind of before the wave, I think is just from a marketing standpoint, people weren't finding a. Looking for a sauna place. Right. The whole. The phenomenon of sauna studios is pretty New. We're early in that. So that when people were coming to town, they weren't searching for sauna place. So we had to have big sauna, you know, on the window and do all kinds of social media marketing and, you know, signs up front.

[B]

I remember when he put out the splash page, Northwest Custom Sauna. I was on a call with a guy from Scottsdale, Arizona, and he was a business guy, and he was like, so do you guys only work in the Northwest? And I go, where are you, sir? Scottsdale. I go, well, that's northwest of somewhere. Correct. And I was like, so we'll certainly come down and build your sauna too. But he said, you know, how long you guys been around? About a year. He's like, if you were ever going to rebrand, because it might be a good time if you're going to expand, you know, through the whole US And I was like, yeah, we've been thinking about that. So he planted that seed again. I can't remember his name, but shots out, yeah, shout out to that guy from Scottsdale. But yeah, once we. And here's the other thing. When we finally got the website done and it was launch day for Symmetry Sauna. I remember we're in this tiny office. Joe, Steve, myself, and your son. Eli.

[D]

Eli.

[B]

And they launched the page. And so, you know, we're just basically staring at each other. And it was within a couple hours, ding, ding, a lead comes in. I was like, whoa. And then. It has never stopped since.

[D]

I mean, or slow down.

[B]

I bet now we average about 30 really good qualified leads a day. And so we've got 10, 10 sauna consultants on the phones banging or video calls all day, every day. It's wild. It's kind of like, you know, we took a tiger by the tail and we're just hanging on sometimes. And, well, we've taken a. Not letting the ball drop.

[D]

We've taken a lot of missteps. I mean, you kind of mentioned it before. You know, when we opened up what was called heatpraxia, it was now Symmetry Sauna Studio, but it was Heat Praxia was our studio. This. This member paid showroom. I remember it was during COVID that we, you know, started building our prices. The prices on everything we're going to purchase went up like, I don't know, 65%. Sam and I are funding this thing out of our pocket.

[C]

Hey.

[D]

And Steve's funding it with his sweat equity. He's building all this stuff, right? We're just shouting out the money.

[C]

17. I put into this.

[D]

That is true.

[C]

That's all I had, though.

[D]

That's all I had. And so we get done with this thing. We're way, way over budget. We're just like, all right, we're ready and we unveil it. We take off the window wrapping and we're standing on the outside looking at it. And I'm like, it says heatpraxia. And I'm like, oh, my God. We didn't do any marketing. How do people know this isn't like a heated air conditioning company? So people are just. It's on boulevard, right? People are just walking by like they have no idea. So what is this? Yeah, Steve jumped on it pretty quick, but that was a big misstep. And, you know, you get to learn from these things.

[A]

None of us have Praxia mean.

[B]

Well, you know, the practice of heat is literally what it means. It was a made up word that

[C]

we thought it would be fun to have a unique word.

[D]

It started.

[C]

It was pretty cool. People started pronouncing it wrong, not knowing what it meant.

[A]

Did you. How long did it take you to decide to change that?

[C]

We did that after this last year, actually.

[D]

That's recent.

[A]

And did you get membership in there, out of the gate? Do people start coming in? We did.

[C]

It was slow. It was slow because we. We're right on this beautiful little downtown street in Coeur d' Alene, and people are looking for bars or tourist stuff and souvenirs. So they're not really in the I'm gonna go get sweaty vibe. But still, we built up a really, really amazing little community. And then our tragedy was one of the weeks that it was minus 15, the pipes above us in the building burst and flooded our whole total studio.

[D]

We're about 1400 square feet throughout the tiny little place. But it.

[A]

Did you have insurance for it?

[D]

Oh, go ahead and talk about that one, Steve.

[C]

Some. I'll just say that there was some.

[B]

Well, not enough.

[C]

No.

[B]

But by all, by all first glances, we were completely covered. And then on page 178, section 2.1a, if a water pipe frozen breaks because of low temperatures. Frozen pipe, you're not covered.

[D]

You get, you get, you get $6,200.

[B]

We didn't know that clause was in there. Yeah, so we got hosed.

[A]

Like I mentioned in the beginning of this, you know, we had a fire here that was due to electrical in the sauna. And thankfully we. We had like full insurance and that's how we were able to rebuild. And I mean, it's a. It's a massive, massive bill to rebuild this place. Without insurance, we would have definitely, but we would. I doubt.

[C]

Well, we were more or less without insurance, but we chose to do it anyway. So we found a new location. We have about 3,800 square feet. Feet now, and we completely rebuilt, and it's been really amazing.

[D]

We were faced with a decision in that, you know, we. Because Symmetry Sauna manufacturing and symmetry build has taken off all over the country, become this, you know, juggernaut. And now we have this little studio, and we're just like, why are we going to redo this again? And. But the thing is, you know, we made a promise. Number one, we made a promise to our general manager, Heather Gallego. Shout out to that, you know, as we poached her from her old company, we said, hey, we're gonna take you as far as we can take you. And, you know, and you play it right, you know, you could be an owner with us someday. And we just weren't BSing. So as we flooded out, we were out several hundred thousand dollars, you know, out of pocket. We're sitting there, Symmetry, you know, sauna manufacturing's taken off. It's like, why are we gonna do this again? And then Heather came to us, and she's like, hey, there's a bunch of members who are leaving their auto payments on for us to rebuild. Like, oh, my God. You know, so we're sitting there, we're like, dude, this. This isn't the. The cow. You know, that. That manufacturing is. But a lot of people started crying out, you know, how the studios changed their lives, helped them, you know, stop drinking, stop smoking, blood pressure, all these benefits that they were experiencing because of what we had exclusively in downtown Coeur d'. Alene. So kind of like the adoption thing, right? We looked at each other like, well, we don't have the funds to really do it. Why should we do it? Okay, let's do it. And we did it. And we made actual Heather. You know, we made her. We kept to our word. And, you know, we took her from just an employee to. She's now an equal partner with us in the studio, you know, lifting her as high as we could get her.

[E]

So.

[D]

And this. This is now? Yeah, it's our pet project. You know, the studio.

[B]

She just texted us yesterday in a big publication in Coeur d', Alene, Idaho, that symmetry sauna studio, voted best business in Coeur d' Alene for that year, which was solid. Dang, that's pretty solid. And, you know, it is cool. Now too. There's a sort of a generational shift happening with a lot of these young people in their 20s. They're kind of entrepreneur minded. They're really into health and fitness and they're not going to the bars and drinking. They're coming to our studio.

[A]

I forget the number, I just read it two days ago. But people are like the younger, younger generation.

[B]

They're not drinking, they're taking care of themselves.

[A]

They are awesome health and fitness. They're like, like I was talking about my family. You know, my kids are in their 20s and they're on a Friday. What are they doing? Oh, sauna and ice bath and working out and going to jiu jitsu. Like, that's kind of so cool. That's kind of the, the new deal. And so I, I'm really glad. I mean, I never would have gone into the alcohol business, but the alcohol business is. I know people in the alcohol business. It's a rough business right now. It's a rough business because the younger generation, they're just not drinking as much as the older generation did. So that's, that's pretty cool. And. Yeah, and not surprising. I mean, as you learn, as people learn, have learned so much more about what alcohol does to your system and, you know, not to mention all the other drugs. I mean, it's, it's like horrific to think about, you know, what, what your kids went through. Being born addicted to meth. Like, how addictive has something got to be that you'll jeopardize your child, your unborn child's life? Like, can you imagine how just demonically field. Yeah, that just, just is insane to think about that. You know, that's. I was gonna say this when you were talking about that, because you talked about they are kind of predisposed to be addicted. And that's one thing that I've told many people, but especially young people. Look, there's 8 out of 10 people, they can drink alcohol perfectly fine and be social and carry on and it'll never be a problem for them. Right. And there's two people out of that 10 that it's going to negatively impact them. One of those two is going to wreck their life. And I'm like, and you don't really know where you are. So what, you know, why you want

[D]

to risk the chance?

[A]

Yeah. Why take the chance when, look, can it be fun for a young person to go out drinking at night or whatever? Do they have a good time? Sure. But they could also have a good time if they didn't do that, have a good time doing a million other things. And there's no risk of ruining and destroying your life. And by the way, when you destroy your own life from alcohol, you pretty much destroy everyone around you as well. So I'm a huge supporter of sauna.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

In the replacement of that. So when someone calls up you guys, what's the, you know, they, they call up and say, hey, I'm building a house. Or I got this space in my house. Here's what I need, here's what I want. And then you guys go through the design process. How's that work?

[B]

Yeah, yeah, they'll call up. You know, it depends how far along they already are. But let's say they have a floor plan from their architect. Yeah, son is already drawn in. It's a seven by seven. And so we have a whole, you know, design book and all of that that we can book a call with them on video, go through all the different lumbers we could put in there. Do you want salt walls? Do you want this? All these different benching profiles we can do. And people basically get to pick and design their own sauna to the aesthetics that they love. And then we'll do some professional drawings, send those over, get them a quote. If it goes to that next phase, then they're going to pay us and we're going to get that sauna into production. Once it gets into production, we prefabricate everything up in Idaho. We're gonna box it in these gigantic crates that are gonna be trucked to their home. Once it's delivered, about five days later, our build team will fly out, boots on the ground, and then we'll install that thing and, and go through safety checks and do all that.

[D]

And it used to be, it used to be a majority of homes. Now we're about 50, 50 commercial. We do a ton of commercial, and that's actually growing even more. The cool thing is, you know, considering we have a studio, I can't tell you how many competing studios we've actually built out. Right. It's with our stuff. But, you know, there's plenty of meat on the bone, plenty of people who need to get healthy and, and places all over the country that we probably can't touch. So, you know, yeah, we're, we're more than happy to support these commercial places that just have a dream. And, you know, there's even been points where we've consulted, you know, some of these spaces for studios. Yeah, come on, fly down and we'll teach you the ABCs of how to build a successful sauna studio. So I think that's the cool thing about us. We're not just trying to hoard it all and being the guys on top, peeing on everyone else. We want everybody to rise together.

[B]

Yeah. And in, in the US market, they say they think the saturation rate of saunas per House is 0.6 of 1%. So whereas in Finland it's just about 100%. Right. So there's more saunas than people in Finland. So in the us even though it feels like we're in this parabolic rise, we are at the very, very beginning of a very big thing that's, that's coming in the next 10 to 15 years later.

[A]

Saunas are expensive. They're more expensive than I think people expect them to be because when you look at them from the outside, you go, it's a box with a heater in it. Right, right. And, but then when you recognize the fact that you got to put special materials in there, you can't use certain materials, you can't have glues, you can't have certain, like treatments on the wood. Like there's a whole bunch of things that fall into place and they end up. I was trying to think of a good way to say this. They're about as expensive as a car.

[B]

There you go.

[A]

And guess what? Can you get a car for five grand? Yes, you can. And you know that car is going to be a five thousand dollar car. Can you get a car for a hundred thousand dollars? Yes, you can. Is that going to be a really nice car? Yes, it is. And saunas are kind of that way. You can spend anywhere from five grand or, or all the way up to 150 grand to. Yeah. And higher. You know, you can spend, I mean it's, it's a, it's a small room with very particular materials in it. And then it's got to be designed a certain way. So yeah, they can be very, very expensive. But, and that's what you guys can do. Any kind of anything in that spectrum. But you know, if, I'm just saying this, if somebody calls up and they think they're going to spend 3,200 bucks on a custom sauna, it ain't happening. Like they're, they're, they're definitely more expensive than I think people are used to or people expect them to be. Especially because you can see, you know, you can go online and there's some, there's some, you know, sauna in a box that's got 900? Yeah, for, for cheaper. And there's some, I think there's. I haven't tried one of these, but there's some of these saunas now that are kind of like portable saunas. Like they're like, if you're a fighter. Yeah, you put on a sauna, your hotel room or something like that. So I guess those are options too. But. So that's the process that you guys go through and do your people go and install them and build them out

[B]

now, not on everyone. Sometimes people have a GC who is experienced in sauna building and they want him to do it. And then we're going to get him full elevations and shop drawings to help him have an easier install. But we're finding that, I don't know, 65% of our custom saunas, they prefer to hire symmetry to come out. It goes. And honestly, our cost to do that, I find is about the same as what their GC was going to do it for anyway. And then I'm like, we're gonna do it three days faster than him. This is all we do. We don't touch, we don't build anything else anymore. Sauna, sauna, saunas. So, you know, like, like you guys in the Navy seals specialists, right? We are specialists in this thing. So it seems to go better when we do it.

[D]

Yeah, I like the, yeah, the analogy used there. You know, it's usually when the, when you buy the five thousand dollar car, right? Your goal is to get to the hundred thousand dollar car at some point. So for us, you know, we get calls all the time of, hey, I bought this sauna and it's not, I'm not sweating in it anymore, right? I'm like, oh, well, what's, what's the temp you're using it. Well, it only goes to 130 degrees, right? So Sammy's turn me on to this point of, you know, buy once, cry once, right? And what we're trying to do when people call in is we're trying to, you know, walk them through their needs. Like we don't want them to design and build something so big that, you know, three weeks later they're like, crap, right? Like I shouldn't have got it so big or I shouldn't have got it so small, right? So we're really trying to curtail our conversation and what we're trying to get to, you know, or what they need, right? What's the best value for you? We're never gonna overcharge for sure. We're gonna give you Value for value. But yeah, I think buy once, cry once. A lot of the stuff people buy, they'll end up, you know, we have tons and tons of people who have either infrared saunas or barrels who are calling us like, yeah, I don't like this anymore. And what they've acclimated. Right. They can only get so hot in some of these saunas. So for us, we're really focused on the, you know, the overall heat impact percentage, you know, the hips that they're able to fill, and we make sure we build it right. So, yeah, so we're going to be priced higher for sure. But you're only going to do it once.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

At what point did you guys know you, like, had a winner? Like, basically, at what point did you guys realize you had a winner of a business and what, who, who called or, or what business or what? What came through where you were like, oh, this is, this is happening.

[C]

I'll say, I'll say. We were finally able to pay ourselves. That was, that was the moment.

[A]

There's many. How long did that take?

[C]

Oh, shoot. We realized, we realized pretty quickly from the studio that we weren't going to be able to get a paycheck from this little tiny 1400 square foot studio. So it was a year and a half, two years.

[A]

Population of Coeur d'. Alene.

[E]

50, 60,000.

[D]

Yeah.

[A]

So even the best business in Coeur d' Alene with 60,000 people.

[D]

Yeah. One of the cool, one of the cool things about how we started, right? So I got to bring up Josh and Shelly. So again, we're doing it backward, right, from how most businesses say to, you know, stay away from friends and family and business. And we're like, dude, all we have are friends and family at this point. And so we were just, we had studio running. We were just launching the custom, you know, custom Sonic manufacturing. And we're drowning already. So two people from our home group, so we weren't getting paid, like none of us were getting paid. We're just, you know, working as hard as humanly possible. This is several months we're going through it and a couple husband and wife from our church, you know, a little church group, said, hey, we want to come and help you guys out. We'll just volunteer a little time every week and, you know, we'll see where it goes. Something and.

[B]

Oh, cool.

[D]

They seem smart. You know, we never worked with them in a business capacity. They're just like church people. They show up with their little briefcases, husband and wife on, on a Monday they stay there for eight hours. It's like, wow, dude. They did a lot of work today.

[A]

Doing what? Answering the phone.

[D]

Of just typing stuff. Answering phone, Buying stuff.

[C]

We weren't sure.

[D]

We weren't sure.

[C]

But it looked impressive.

[D]

And they look busy.

[B]

They really don't have anything to make

[A]

sure I understand this. So you guys have your business?

[D]

Yes.

[B]

Yeah, it's.

[A]

And how many employees do you have at this point?

[D]

Well, at this point it's just four of us. Four of us.

[B]

Okay.

[E]

So.

[A]

And some friends of yours.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

From church said, hey, can we just come in and work voluntary.

[D]

Yes.

[A]

At your business.

[D]

They came in on a Monday for eight hours. Then they showed up the next day for eight hours. Then they showed up the next day for six months. So Josh and Shelly Watkins, huge shout out. We wouldn't be here without you guys. For six months they worked for Symmetry with zero paycheck grinding with us.

[A]

How are they feeding their family or whatever?

[B]

They had another contract. They had a long term contract doing marketing stuff. Marketing and computer work for a company. Who would win. That company had something for them to do. They were like on retainer. They would send it their way. And they're like, they haven't sent us anything for six months. We have time on our hands. We want to come and help you guys out. And, you know, turns out Shelly now runs our entire procurement.

[A]

Must have been a government contract. No work is being done. Right.

[B]

She. She orders all the lumber, the heaters that. I mean, she orders all materials for our fabrication team. And then Josh is. He's a savant in building systems. He's now our chief of operations.

[D]

Yeah.

[B]

Like, he built all the systems of how does Asana Sale communicate through the company to where it finally ends up to where it's supposed to be with the right people on the ground. And he's built automated all of these systems and now he's using some AI to help automate things. Even better. The guy's a genius.

[D]

What? Little did we know right when we. When they were coming volunteering, like, we're just like, okay. We didn't know their background. We just figured they know how to use a laptop. Right?

[B]

Right.

[D]

But yeah, Shelley was a procurement specialist who worked in tech. Josh is. Yeah. This savant and, and. And now he's like into the AI with Eli and they're building our infrastructure. That's why we're able to go into other verticals now. Right. We have other businesses because we have the power team. We literally have the group of people we could, if we wanted to uplift and place in any industry and be awesome. Like there's zero doubt about it in my mind. But just the, the fate, right, to get them volunteering their time for six months. Then we started giving them a paycheck.

[E]

So.

[D]

And now they are, they are intricate, very important piece to the symmetry puzzle that we've laid out.

[A]

Awesome. So how long did it take before you guys cut yourself a paycheck?

[C]

I think it was about two years. I mean, as well, I mean there was a couple is a little hand to mouth there. Like, you know, I was at the, for the first couple of years, it was me designing and building the saunas. Like, and I bring help, you know, but it was like, okay, we can take $1,000 each from this one.

[B]

You know, during that time I was still running bullet painting full time business and you know, and so Steve and I were owners of that, but any profits we made off that, we would just roll over here so we could get a couple thousand dollars. And then when I, when we finally got our general manager, Adam to run bullet painting, then I came in full time, right at the time we launched the symmetry sauna website and I, I was getting paid a whopping $4,000 a month to take care of my family in Cordling. Until, until we just started making sales, which happened quickly. I mean, within the first month it was like, ding, ding, Saul. Ding ding. Sad.

[D]

Well, that's the stomach you have. That's the stomach you have to have, man. I mean, you've got to, you know, everybody says, you know, they want to, they want to hit it big. They want, it's 1%'s going to get there. But are, are you going to go through the grind of what it takes when. Yeah, your wife's like looking at you like we have zero dollars in the bank. Why is, you know, my. Again, we're, we have a lot of friends and family, so we're big into the nepotism. And I, you know, my little brother, I had, I hired, you know, to be a sales guy. He was getting, you know, my brother Dan, he was getting more paid more money than me. So my wife, yeah. Middle of the night, she's like, how's your brother making more than you? You're the CEO. I'm just like, hey, this is what it takes, right? And so it's a sacrifice. So before you want to go jump in and you know, run, run your mouth about how you want to, you know, be this big shot, man, you better be ready to pay the price because it is a heavy, heavy price.

[A]

Yeah, no, they, you're the one that's getting the call when something goes wrong. By the way, what do you guys do about that, you know, sauna set up somewhere? You know, something stops working, something breaks. What's your, what's your protocol on that?

[D]

Right, so we've actually built. So we have Symmetry Sauna manufacturing, we have Symmetry Studio, and we have a separate company now, a symmetry build. Right. And so Tony and Vera, they run that entire division and they're so awesome. They run that entire division. So we go out, we send our team out. If anything goes wrong, you know, we're on the phone, we're helping sometimes. Yeah, right. And even though it dips into our margins or even though we go on the red, right. On some projects, we committed to do something and do it right. So we're going to see it through. So, yeah, Tony, him and Vera are running that entire division. We have several teams that fly out of Coeur d'. Alene. We have teams in Florida. We have. So we have people all over that. This is what they do full time. In our queue right now. Just, I don't know if it's for the next month. We have like 70, 80, 90 builds like that are. That we got to go fulfill again. We're writing, Sam and I are writing all these checks and luckily we have the people surrounding us who can cash them.

[B]

But, you know, now, now we have, you know, full time customer service person. We've got the build team that can travel. But early on, we did a beautiful outdoor sauna for a guy in Encinitas and our team built it. A couple weeks later, I get a call from him like, hey, the sauna's not heating up. I don't know what's wrong. So Steve and I, next morning we're on an airplane to San Diego. We come down, it took Steve five minutes. He's like the electrician didn't tighten the wire tight enough. So we did that. Everything was fired up. We got to jump in the ocean, two hour surf session, back on a plane that night, back to, back to Coeur d'. Alene. So that, that was kind of the commitment we had early on was like, it doesn't. We're not dropping a ball on anyone ever. Whatever we got to do. So we would hop on planes and be in the middle of nowhere doing a five minute fix. Yeah, you know, that was costly. But at the same time, you get

[A]

so many dividends on your reputation because if, you know, everyone hears this, you know I have a bad experience with symmetry. I call my friends. Don't use them. They suck.

[E]

Right.

[A]

You know that, that is so much worse. But when you take care of someone, man, that's so beneficial because they spread that word too. Like, oh, you should do 100% go with these guys. I had this issue, they flew down there, fixed it, you know, all good. That's what you got to do. That's, that's how you maintain the reputation of the business. And on the, on.

[D]

Yeah, on the thought of when I feel like I felt, you know, we, we made it or we got something big on our hands. Yeah. I don't think it was when we started getting paid. I think it's when I'm sitting there myself writing a $6 million, $6 million contract, you know, like plain attorney. Because I'm still at that point, I don't think we could afford an attorney. I'm just like, oh, my God, this contract looks good. And we get. And then, you know, it comes back and it's signed. I'm like, this is like a six and a half million dollar single contract. And we're doing it like we're playing attorneys, we're playing sauna builders. We're doing it.

[A]

Was that for one sauna?

[D]

It was. No, no, no. It was for big, big

[C]

world record sauna.

[D]

Yeah, no, it was for a franchise. You know, studio location. We're just, you know, we're contracting to make several hundred saunas. But, man, that's when I, when we were writing out that contract and then I was like, okay, these bigger contracts, you know, we're going to be able to get. And we've been able to secure some crazy relationships. And again, I don't know what's attracting it or, or to us. Right. I just know, like, our partnership is probably something that, it is a bit magnetic. You know, we're all characters and funny, but we're all very honest right about. And straight out as they like to call us, the bad boys asana. So we're just going to tell you the truth regardless, you know. And so we. I think that's when I realized, like, yeah, that big contract, that first one was like, okay, we're, we're, we're in this thing.

[B]

And I had a, this year, a moment where I was like, have we made it? Because I get an email and the name is Lara Trump. And I'm like, nah, that's not. It's someone with the same name. How crazy. So I email back, hey, you want to book a video call? Over this, and we can help design your sauna. Sure enough, get on the call. It's Lara Trump. And I'm like, okay. I was like, first of all, I thought you would have an assistant doing this stuff for you. She's like, no, I like to be involved in it. And I was like, how'd you find us? Did someone tell you about us? She was like, just looking at custom saunas. Found your website. Clearly, you guys are the ones who are doing this the right way. I was like, well, hold on, before you go there, like, let us do it for you and then tell the world that we're doing it right. But, yeah, so she. We. We have a sauna in fabrication for Lara Trump, and then they want us to do the Trump Winery after that to redo the saunas there. So it was, you know, that when moments like that hit, you're just kind of like, imposter syndrome, right?

[C]

Like, Jocko, how did you find us?

[B]

Yeah, that's a good question.

[A]

Nikki found. Nikki found. Okay, so Nikki, who is doing the rebuild here, and, you know, he's a. He's, you know, one of our. One of our. 1. A part of our family at Victory, and he was, you know, tasked with building the best sauna we could possibly build here. And so he. He came to me and told me about you guys, and that's kind of how it. How. How.

[C]

And you say you sent him up to Idaho? That was. Right.

[A]

Yeah. Maybe.

[B]

Let me tell the story from my perspective really quickly is. Yeah, Nick called, and I answered the phone up in Idaho, and he said, hey, we're. We got a gym down here in San Diego, and we want to put saunas in. And I was like, what kind of gym? He was like, oh, it's an MMA gym. And I said, that's. Is that Jocko's gym? I said, I heard the place burned down from the sauna. Is that true? And he said, yeah, I'm Jocko's gc. And so, you know, we started talking, and he sent me the dimensions and everything, and we did this. I sent him a quote. Nick calls me back about a week later, and he says, jocko wants to know why the saunas are so expensive. And I said. I go. I go, nick, Jocko owns Origin Clothing, right? And he goes, yeah. And I go, I want you to ask Jocko a question for me. Why are jeans so expensive? And he goes, well, they're made in the usa. I go, you know where our saunas are made in the usa? And he goes, oh, Jocko's gonna like that. So that was kind of how it went, but yeah. And, and here we are.

[D]

So.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Kind of crazy.

[A]

So what are the, how many employees do you guys have right now?

[D]

What are we close to 40?

[B]

Yeah. 35 to 40, something like that.

[A]

Yeah. And then what's the, what's the, what's the goal? Like, what's the next big thing that you guys are doing?

[D]

Oh, who. Yeah. Silence.

[B]

Go ahead.

[D]

Yeah, so we've, we've moved in a few different verticals. I think we are, we're going into more the spa. You know, I think that's where it's taken us, the overall spa. So not just limited to sauna, you know, the different modalities. We're, we're launching a cold tub, very custom, you know, to match. Let's say you get an outdoor sauna and you had it build, you know, certain way. We can custom build the cold tub to match exactly that aesthetically. So we're in that game now. We've been, we've been building our own cold tubs. We did in studios, so we feel like we have a decent handle on that. Then we're getting into what you call the IV.

[C]

IV wellness.

[D]

Yeah, IV wellness.

[C]

Dr. Luke and Nick and.

[A]

Right on.

[C]

And maybe Jocko, too.

[D]

We'll see.

[A]

Right on. And if you guys look back, you know, you, here you are, you, you know, you may not have made it to where you want to make it to, but you certainly are on step. You're all getting paychecks. Right. You know, that's, that's a positive thing. When you look back, like, what are the, what are the big lessons? Let's go through each of you, like, what's the big lessons learned that you, if you were doing this again or you were going to tell someone that's out there, look, everyone's, you know, out there trying to struggle, trying to make things happen. You want to take away or give somebody one piece of advice that would really have been helpful to you. What do you got?

[B]

I'll go first. And we, we had a few, I'll say, business advisors or people kind of speaking in our ear, telling us, slow down, slow down. You guys are going to make mistakes. You can't grow this fast. You can't expand this fast. And then, you know, Joe and I would look at each other and we'd say, let's press the gas pedal harder. Because there we knew that we're not slowing down. We are here. You know, as Conor McGregor said, we're not here. To take part. We're here to take over. And it's just the way we roll, like big vision. And we're going to go 100 miles an hour and we're going to find the people and we're going to train them and we're going to build the systems and we're going to do the thing. And then if I have to be on a plane late at night to go somewhere and fix something, then I'm going to be the guy that does that. But we're just, we, we don't roll slow. And we just saw the potential of what this can be. And so some, some, you know, classical business advice is, you know, build super slow. Do. We had one guy say, let's just do three saunas a month and we'll do those three perfectly.

[D]

Best advice.

[B]

And you know, and I was like, there's some of us who have to get a paycheck the. At. At some point. And I was like, we could do 30 saunas this month. Why would we not do that? And then just work 24 hours a day to make sure it goes well. And so, you know, so we just. And the other thing that I would

[D]

do, you're gonna steal my thunder a

[B]

hundred times over is everyone always says, do not go into business with your friends or family, right? And, and I always say, no, no, no, know who your friends are. And because at the end of the day, yeah, making money is great because you need it to live, but the motivation isn't money. And I know these guys so well and we've all been dirt broke and completely happy before. And I was like, if I'm broke again, that's fine because it's not going to change who I am and it's not going to change Joe. It's not going to change Steve. So. But being in business with these guys and there were times in the last couple years where we had almost no thousands in the bank. And we're just looking at each other like, this could be it. Like, are we gonna make payroll this month? And we were always just like, high five. If, if it all fails. It's been a hell of a ride. It's been amazing. And we'll go, we'll go to the local burger joint and just take that place over. So just, just resiliency.

[A]

Yeah. One point I give people is, you know, you need to listen to the demand signal. And sometimes people falsify the demand signal in their own head. Right? They. No, of course, everybody wants a, you know, Bulgarian waffles, you know? And you're like, no one's ever heard of Bulgarian waffles. Nobody wants them. I just made them up my head. Whatever. So one thing that's important is, like, as you. You get demand signal for 30 saunas. There's no, like, you said, like, find a way. Like, okay, if you only have demand signal for three and you build 30, guess what? You're going out of business. Yeah. So you need to pay attention to that demand signal. But if demand signal is there, you know, do everything you can to fulfill it and, and grow based on demand signal. Don't grow b. Based on your fantasies. I'm not. You got to have a vision, right? There's a difference between a vision and a fantasy. And sometimes people's fantasy is not matching reality. So check that demand signal. But if it's there, go get it.

[B]

Right on.

[A]

What do you got, Joe?

[D]

Yeah, so I, Sam stole a little bit of my thunder, but it's okay. I was reflecting not too long ago, maybe a month ago, and I did share with these guys. I brought up that exact fact, right? I said, hey, man, when the sauna studio, when the heatpraxia. The water pipe broke and we. The insurance didn't cover it, and we're out several hundred thousand dollars, we could have easily turned on each other. Like, you didn't.

[B]

What?

[D]

Why didn't we? Not once. Same thing, you know, as we're building manufacturing and bank account goes way, way, way, way, way up. We're like, yeah, we did it. And then it goes way, way, way, way, way down. Like, what's happening? Not. I called Sam into the office, and Steve, I'm like, I know Sam. He was there. Steve was at studio working there. And I said, hey, Sammy, come here. Want to see something cool? He's like, yeah, check this out. And I pulled up my computer screen. It was not many thousands in there. And we had, you know, a hu.

[A]

Cover.

[D]

We're halfway through the month, and he just looks at me and I'm just like, oh, that's our bank account, huh? I'm like, yeah, pretty much all the money we have, we had.

[B]

I. I'll share. We had. We had $10,000 in the bank account. And we were about. In two weeks, we were going to have to pay out 300,000.

[D]

Now, keep in mind, we are bootstrapped, right? Like, we are. We are truly bootstrapped from the ground. For every company we built. We had no money starting. Like, we had no loans. We got no. None of it. Like, we did it out of belief. And being too stubborn to take money from the outside saying, we're gonna do this. So at that point, we wished we would add money. Now that we take it from the outside, we're gone. Working capital. What is that? And so we're sitting there, but no blame game, no fingers. Why'd we commit to that? Why'd we spend on that? None of that. And it was. And we got through that, right? Sam did give a speech like, hey man, if this is it, it's been a hell of a ride and we're gonna go flip burgers for a couple of months, then take over the burger stand.

[B]

But I also said, I think we're gonna sell 700,000 worth of saunas in the next two weeks and collect all that money and we'll be fine. And we did.

[D]

We did. It was wild, but, you know, so the biggest takeaway that I'd have if I could replay it or advise anybody is pick your partners wisely and make sure there's a synergy and something beyond X's and O's. Something beyond on money. Make sure there's a value drive, right? Like we had brought on relationships, you know, who were in our ears. And this is how to do it, this is how not to do it. But those guys were X's and O's guys, right? Those guys were how much money? How much? Cha Ching. And that was always for us. We're always, you know, value, you know, Sam, even though he loves to make money and be awesome and competitive, he's out in Mexico and, and building houses, you know, with his family, kids and my wife and I, you know, we're, we're very involved in our time with orphans and, and donate, right? And so it has to be people that align with your values. So get those people, make sure they are not risk adverse, right? Make sure that if you guys agree, right, think long, think wrong, right? You agree, think it's a dope idea. Go right, Build the plane mid air. Do not let the outside noise distract you. Because what's inside that visceral thing, when you connect it with guys who are the same spirit, like, dude, unstoppable, like, and it's not a dysphoria, like my body dysphoria, it truly is unstoppable.

[A]

So yeah, that's, you know, what you just described is, you know, clearly it's something that I believe in the idea of ownership and taking ownership. And it's amazing how often two or three people or business partners make a decision and they make that decision together. And of course, when the decision goes well, sometimes they still stay together. And, you know, even when the decision goes well, some. That was really my idea.

[B]

Right.

[A]

You know, that, that does happen. But where you really see the fractures are when the decision that we made, we sat in a room, we all agreed on this thing. And you know what, Joe? You might have been the one that was like, like, no, no, I, I, this is what we should do. And maybe I was one that kind of resistant, but at the end of the meeting, I said, you know what? Cool.

[B]

We go.

[A]

And it's amazing how that fractures when that, when the decision ends up being the bad decision. And now instead of me going, hey, all right, what are we going to do to fix it? Instead I say, well, that was your call, Joe.

[D]

What are you going to do?

[A]

And when that, when that happens, when people aren't taking ownership within the ownership group, like, together, unified. Because look, man, like, you know, everyone's rolling the dice and, and no one knows what the future is going to be. So it's really easy, it's really easy to, to, you know, that ownership grow, to start pointing fingers at each other. So it's, it's very nice to have you guys sitting here recognizing, like, yeah, you know, it's kind of that thing,

[B]

you know, you go, we go.

[C]

And I can say that's what happened. I was the guy in your story sitting, arguing with my two guys about, we have to make this decision. And I was the advocate, and they went with me on the decision, which decision was us. A bad one. A bad decision. It was about a partner to partner with. And so the lesson there was don't make exceptions for personality for what you think they can do for you.

[D]

Right.

[C]

So that was a big mistake. And, and I can speak from personal experience that these guys are gracious, and they did, they took that we decision, you know, and have not made me. Well, maybe, maybe we had one session.

[A]

I'm not saying they're not on a

[C]

smack talk, but from the extreme ownership standpoint, I also stand up by, you know, you know what I thought at the time? You know, I did think that.

[A]

And so what, you brought in one more person. We did, yeah. And, and you kind of saw some, you guys saw some red flags from the beginning, and yet you saw, like, hey, there's also, I saw some green

[C]

flags thinking this might be an opportunity.

[B]

This guy was a big businessman, very, very smooth talker, and had convinced us that he could take us to the promised land a whole bunch faster than we could get There by ourselves. But there I saw a lot of red flags and then a lot of just personality conflicts. And I was like. And. And I was selling the idea that this guy's gonna hose us. Steve had a much more optimistic view of this person.

[C]

Thank you for phrasing it that way.

[B]

And I think Joe was a little more neutral. But Steve, essentially, Steve, not a sales guy, somehow sold us on the idea. You would think you would do better.

[D]

Hold on, hold on. So we have a rule with each other, and I think it's been from the beginning, and it's called two out vote one no matter what. And that one who's the outlier needs to change their attitude and get on board with the other two. Right. That's in all decisions. So we went to Sam and I said, no on this partner. We said, hey, no. We went and met with Steve at his house, like, deep in the woods, and we said, not going to happen. You know, we just don't feel comfortable. And we left. And Steve didn't have a good attitude about it, didn't let it go. And he called us and he's like, I think we're missing it, guys. Another meeting. And then, yeah, somehow the non.

[C]

I read a few sales books.

[D]

The non sales guy sold us on this partnership. So begrudgingly. Sam was the most begrudging to the decision. I had a lot of apprehensions. Probably a little more grace for this guy could possibly not be what we're thinking it is.

[C]

And we can wrap that up there. But say that, praise God, it didn't tank us. Obviously, it didn't collapse the partnership. We were able to get past it and learn some extremely valuable lessons.

[B]

Yeah. I think even me now, I'm actually happy that it all happened because we will not repeat that mistake again. We learned very early on, and even then, it felt like big financial stakes. But in the big picture, it's. It's small beans. What had to happen to remove that person from the partnership group. So lesson learned.

[C]

And.

[B]

And now, you know, it actually brought all of us even. Even stronger.

[A]

Yeah.

[D]

Together.

[E]

Yeah.

[A]

Yeah. And from that. That perspective I look at, I've. Again, I've seen, because I have a consulting company, we work with companies all the time. And you see, again, you get the senior leadership in a company and one person makes a bad call. And the nice thing is here, Steve, is you had the humility to say, okay, I'm looking at what just happened. I made a bad call. We need to fix it. Like, Yep. But I see the other thing happen. Where? No, you guys just don't get it. No, it's going to get better. Like all the writings on the wall, crystal clear. And yet someone just continues to lie to themselves, right. And, and you can't pull them back. So that's a good thing to do when things start going sideways.

[B]

Hey, you know what?

[A]

Yep. This was on me. I made a bad call. Let's cut ties immediately. It's like with parachuting. You know, with parachuting, you're supposed to make the call if you got a bad parachute above your head. You know, at 2500ft, you go, okay, this thing is not working. And you just get rid of it.

[B]

Right.

[A]

And is there risk or do you get rid of it? Sure, there's some, but there's a lot more risk to keep trying to get that thing.

[B]

It's good.

[A]

So at a certain point, you got to cut that thing away. And so it sounds like you were able to reach back into some of your parachuting life and cut that thing away.

[C]

And truth is, I did read this book probably 15 years ago sitting in my garage apartment in PB, you know, and I talked to Sam about it, you know, because we met on talking about business and life and all these things. And that, that did make have an impact on me. And, you know, they're taking, you know, ownership of, of, of the decisions you make. And it's nobody's fault but mine where I'm sitting. And, and I decided to skydive for 10 years instead of building a business. And so here I am, you know, learning amazing lessons.

[B]

You do have a world record though, correct?

[C]

That's right. That's right.

[A]

Skydiving world record.

[C]

Yeah, I think it still stands. Yeah. One of the largest naked vertical formations ever built.

[A]

How many people is that?

[C]

It was nine of us. Yeah. Nine of us.

[A]

Yeah. You know why it's only nine? Well, because most people are smarter than that.

[C]

This, this may be true, but I still stand by it. It was a proud moment for me.

[D]

It's a world record.

[C]

It's a world record. And, and just to satisfy some curiosity, a lot of people do ask the question, what does a naked skydiver look like? And so we're all fit, you know, good looking people on the ground. But if you've ever seen a truck driving down a freeway with a poorly secured tarp, you know, just violently flapping and waving, that's what everyone looks like.

[A]

I feel like a comfortable center.

[C]

It's not, it was not scenario, but it was worth it.

[A]

And so I Know, I know we were talking before we hit record today doing some kind of gonna give somebody a sauna. Is that the deal?

[B]

Yes.

[A]

Is that on the plate here? So what is it giving away a sauna?

[D]

A special sauna?

[B]

Yeah. We have. And Steve has designed a new prefab freestanding sauna.

[A]

Indoor or outdoor?

[B]

Indoor. Comfortably fit. Two, let's say. If it's an adult jocko size, I would say it's a two person sauna. If it's an adult my size, not quite as broad in the shoulders. I think three of me could fit in there nicely. So. But it's a. Maybe it's a very well built, beautiful sauna and we're gonna give it away to one of your listeners.

[A]

Okay.

[D]

Yeah, this is a rollout that we wanted to do with you and you know, having the opportunity to come hang out with you, we thought, yeah, let's, let's launch a jocko sauna thing. That would be cool. And we're like, why don't we give one away? So we're gonna do that and it's, you know, we'll retail it, I don't know, 14, $15,000 definitely. For any of your followers who or friends who don't win. We'll, we'll do a massive price cut for them. But yeah, that's the goal. We're gonna cool sauna, probably one of the most beautiful in the market. That's what Steve does, makes things very beautiful and yeah, be able to launch that out pretty soon here for you guys.

[A]

I was just told that we're sweepstakes scenario.

[C]

Yeah, it's gonna be an enter to win thing.

[A]

Yeah. It sounds like you guys have never done this before.

[C]

I've given things away before.

[A]

Okay. Yeah, because there's, I don't, you know, there's a lot of like legalities behind this. I don't know if you know, such as. Yeah, like there's a lot of legalities.

[D]

Okay.

[A]

Like who can enter, how they enter. It's a really big deal. We've given a. I've given away stuff at Jocko Fuel before and at origin before. And what you think is like, oh, yeah, just have people sign up and you know, there's a bunch of things. So you're gonna have to look at that over the coming weeks.

[B]

Yeah, we have to make sure that it's my wife doesn't end up winning the song. Right.

[A]

There's all kinds of things.

[B]

Yeah, that's okay.

[D]

Our attorney, our attorney will check it out.

[B]

Yeah, check it out. Yeah, we'll We'll. I guess we'll announce that fairly soon of how people can sign up for this legitimate giveaway. We don't know who's going to win it, but someone's going to. Someone's going to get an amazing. Especially with Joe.

[A]

You're talking about nepotism.

[C]

Hold on. We know Joe. Joe's whole family works for us, so,

[D]

you know, my sons work for us, and they happen to win the Jocko Sauna. Maybe we should make it a Jocko signature Sauna. That'd be kind of cool. Little signature. We actually don't even have a name for the sauna. We. We tend to name all of our, you know, prefabs. This one's so fresh.

[C]

Very moving.

[D]

Yeah.

[A]

Yeah.

[D]

So if any. Any of your people out there have cool names to suggest once they see this.

[A]

Right.

[D]

That'd be really cool, too.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

So what I'll do is, I mean, so people can check out the website, right. Which is symmetry sauna.com. and at some point, you'll put a. Put a banner on there on how to win this sauna. And then I'll. I'll put that out too, so people get the opportunity.

[C]

Yep.

[A]

Because, you know, sauna's good for you. Super good for you. Yeah.

[C]

Your family enjoys it.

[A]

Yeah, no doubt. And this one here at the gym, both of them, the. The men's and women, they're gonna get used like crazy. I mean, they get used like crazy. I mean, this is. This is probably one of the most ripe environments for a sauna, because you got people that are sore, people that are need recovery, and people that are cutting weight. And you put those three things together, right? This on is just like all the time gonna be just getting crushed.

[B]

Right.

[A]

And that's why you need high quality and awesome. So that's where we're at. Zach, get us up to speed. Anything else?

[D]

What else?

[A]

We got a chicken, we got this beautiful chick, we got a sauna that you guys are going to give away, which is awesome. And then if people want to find you, it's symmetry sauna.com. you got Instagram and Facebook. Symmetry Sauna.

[C]

That's right.

[A]

And they can check that out and then go check out Symmetry Sauna and enter this, which will be a legal absolute. All the lawyers will make sure everything is cool.

[D]

Yeah. Right?

[A]

And that'll be that, man. Awesome.

[B]

Cool.

[A]

Right on. Well, thanks for joining us. Thanks for coming down here. Thanks for building out, like, truly freaking most beautiful saunas I've ever seen. Those are the most beautiful Saunas I've ever seen that, that are at Victory mma. Anybody that wants to question that, come and have a look at them and fight.

[D]

Whoever's in this fight, the winner.

[A]

So you guys are having a MMA match. Is it a grappling match? So here's the grappling match for tomorrow. Steve versus Joe. Steve's weighing in at 190. How tall are you? Six two, six two. 190. Where are you at, Joe?

[D]

172, six four. Yeah.

[B]

So he's, he's five, four, five seven.

[A]

Steve has trained for years, let's just say in the past one year, once a week. 10 years ago, 15 years ago.

[C]

It was a while.

[A]

That's, that's, that could be dangerous.

[B]

It might be rusty.

[C]

No one's going to want to watch Joe.

[A]

Two years of wrestling in high school.

[D]

Not only that, my mom was a boxer. So all the combination she gave to

[C]

me, like, this is no striking, Joe.

[A]

Oh, that's right, no striking.

[D]

Biting.

[C]

I need this face. You need that face.

[A]

And you guys are getting to train.

[C]

That's right.

[A]

One of your coaches with one of the coaches for an hour. So this is.

[B]

That'll be a good enough jocko. You and I, as experts in this, we should do quick predictions on who we think is gonna win.

[D]

Come on, the guy's sitting right here.

[A]

Don't make him feel like we were talking about this beforehand. And I think Joe's like, I, this, this, this doesn't sound like a compliment. I'm like, this was not.

[C]

We're not people.

[B]

That's what we heard.

[D]

We're not people.

[A]

It's so mean, weird. The, the, the, the idea that people have in their minds about fighting if they've never actually trained to fight. And even if you got in, you know, some fights growing up, you got in some fights, you have this little sliver of like, oh, there's going to be some adrenaline. But to watch people that don't know how to fight, especially against someone that does know how to fight, which I'm not saying either one of you, because I don't think either one of you not fight Tax.

[B]

This is very.

[A]

So it's going to be. But the interesting thing is it's cool. An hour of training, see who, see who absorbs the most. You're going to have a little bit. Steve's going to have a little bit of muscle memory from his one year of intermittent Jiu jitsu.

[D]

Yeah.

[A]

Small muscles have his intermittent memory of wrestling and his mom's genetic boxing skills

[C]

and getting jumped in the bathroom.

[A]

There's no boxing here.

[D]

That's right.

[A]

So it's. Did you have a prediction you wanted to make?

[B]

Well, it's going to. It's for you to watch them grapple is going to be like me watching football players try to play beach volleyball. Yeah, it's going to be ugly, atrocious and humorous.

[C]

We definitely do. No, nobody.

[B]

I. Joe does not need a confidence boost. So if he wins, he's. He's off the reservation.

[A]

Do you. Your kids train, Sam? Do you train?

[B]

They do. I. I did train twice in the last month.

[A]

Okay. That's not so.

[D]

He could be both of us.

[A]

You.

[B]

But you'd have.

[A]

I haven't trained before that.

[B]

No. I. He came to the class back in the year. I went for probably a month with Steve and then. So now my training is watching my kids and I'm just absorbing it.

[D]

Yeah.

[A]

That's way to learn osmosis.

[B]

My kids still can't beat me. Of course. I outweigh them by a lot.

[D]

Pick a winner.

[B]

Okay.

[D]

But be gentle to him.

[B]

I think. Here's my predict. I think Steve wins on length and

[A]

leverage and he's 20 pounds heavier right now.

[B]

If Joe wins, it's going to be within about the first 30 seconds by neck crank.

[C]

That's it.

[B]

I could see that happening too.

[A]

Exactly.

[C]

But based on the rules.

[D]

Yeah.

[C]

Number of subs. Two five minute rounds.

[B]

Two five minute rounds.

[A]

Number two five minute runs. You guys are going to be so tired.

[B]

Oh, they're gonna be first.

[D]

They're gonna.

[A]

Two minutes.

[D]

Yeah.

[A]

It's gonna be humiliating.

[C]

Yeah. That's why we don't want you to watch.

[D]

Well, no, no, Jocko. To even up the score. So go ahead and pick your winner.

[A]

Oh yeah. Okay. So you're saying I should be rooting for you, Joe?

[D]

No, no, I'm not saying it. I can see in your eyes. You want to go ahead. Let's call it.

[A]

It's gonna be a very disturbing and humiliating day for the.

[D]

Thank you.

[C]

I love that. Thank you for that.

[A]

You know what I should do is I should have my. I should have my daughter.

[C]

Oh, no, no, no. That's right.

[A]

Two of us on one.

[D]

This is perfect.

[C]

I think she'd still win.

[D]

I think that's not.

[C]

That's not safe.

[B]

Yeah.

[D]

Seriously though, Jocko, I was gonna say one more thing. So I've been on a protein journey for a long time and your chocolate protein powder, dude, it is the best, like by far. And it uses the monk fruit. It really is like. I just gotta Say it. I do it too many times. I love that. So I've actually stopped chewing food at this point. I'm just drinking Jocko chocolate.

[C]

Getting weird.

[D]

That's right.

[A]

Right on. Awesome, fells. Thanks for joining us. Thanks for coming after it. Keep getting after it, boys. And with that, Sam, Joe and Steve have left the building and clearly we, you know, the sauna. Good for recovery. We call it hiccovery around here, but you gotta earn recovery. Agreed. Totally.

[E]

I had a half hour conversation just now, second ago with Noah about that.

[A]

About recovery, earning it.

[E]

No, you gotta earn the rest between sets is only useful if you have some sets.

[A]

See what I'm saying? Yeah.

[E]

Otherwise you're just sitting there.

[A]

Yeah, look at you, dude. Metaphors for life, bro. Yeah, look at you. So we got to earn the recovery. We earning it. Training, lifting, running, sprinting, jiu jitsu, clearly surfing, swimming, Just getting after it is what we're doing. So once you earn the recovery, you need to get in the recovery mode. You need the right fuel. We recommend. What do we recommend?

[E]

Yo, look at you.

[A]

Hey, check out jockeyfuel.com. we got everything that you need. We got protein. We got the pro line series, we got the, the muscle drive. A lot of people are into the muscle drive right now. If you're cutting weight for, for whatever reason, maybe not necessarily cutting weight like

[D]

a weight cut for a fight, but

[A]

even if you're just trying to drop some lbs, as they used to say, if you're on a cut, if you're on a cut, you know, the muscle drive will help preserve and strengthen when you're maybe depleting it of a little bit of caloric intake. So that's a good one for that. The pro series protein. Hey, I'm gonna go, I'm gonna go. I'm gonna talk about this thing, which I mentioned already, but it's. I'm kind of going, next level. This, this Greek yogurt thing.

[B]

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

[A]

Greek yogurt. Hey, this is the thing. It's easy to make.

[E]

Yeah.

[A]

You just literally dump Greek yogurt in a bowl, put milk in there, some protein, whatever flavor you're in the mood for, stir it up, the powder. Boom. Yep, you're in there. You're in there just so good. And you get. There's something like 45 or 50 grams of protein when you do that.

[D]

Yep.

[A]

So you need protein. You need protein in your life. Check out jogglefuel.com. get energy. We just finished some energy drinks here. Hydrate. I was. I sweat a Lot, by the way.

[D]

Okay.

[A]

Even when I'm not in the sauna. But when I'm training. I was thinking about it. I played basketball when I was a kid.

[E]

Yeah.

[A]

I don't know if I could technically play basketball right now because if I played in a full basketball game, I think I would just be making the floor just too sweaty and I'd have to just. That's one thing. It's not, you know, Jiu jitsu, that's kind of, I mean, everyone's sweating. Yeah. So you kind of just deal with it. But in basketball, if I was just fully dripping sweat like every play under the basket, people would be slip sliding all up. I get expelled from the game.

[B]

Yeah.

[E]

The little towel guy would have to.

[A]

Dude, he'd be working overtime.

[D]

Yes.

[A]

But when I sweat, get a hydration. Yeah, Jocko, hydrate. So that's what we got. We got all kinds of good. The good stuff for you. Check out joggerfield.com and get some. Also speaking of Jiu jitsu, you need gear for jiu jitsu. Get American made gear. You heard, you heard Sam tell that story. I was like, oh, you make it in America. Cool. We'll figure this out. Look, is Origin gear a little bit more expensive than something that's made by a communist slave? Yep, it is. It is. So that's okay. We're all. We get it. It's gonna be a little bit more pricey as they say. But it's not that much more. I'm gonna tell you right now. It is not that much more. And the quality is better and the soul is there. Yeah. They know someone, something you got from China. So check out originusa.com and get 100%. 100% communist free made clothing.

[E]

It's true. Also jocko store.com. this is where you can get your, your shirts and hoodies and stuff when you're representing on the path. Discipline equals freedom. It's a big one.

[B]

Good.

[E]

Stand by to get some. Get after it. These are all things we can represent while we're on this. But whether, whether you're in the sauna or not. By the way, we got shorts on there.

[A]

Don't need a T shirt in the sauna though.

[E]

That's why I said the shorts.

[A]

Wondering.

[E]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I guess you, you could. No. Right? Not like that's like the protocol. Right. No shirt. It's like supposed to do that.

[A]

Yeah.

[E]

Or you're supposed to have.

[A]

Well, you just be wasting because dripping in sweat. So no point.

[B]

Yeah.

[E]

Isn't it like skin like radiation or something like this. Like this, I think. I don't know. I'll have to look into it. Nonetheless, when you're not in the sauna, you wear a shirt. Hey, might as well represent.

[D]

Anyway.

[E]

Look, check out jocko store.com if you see something on there you like, hey man, represent, get something. Also on Jocko Store is what we call the shirt lock, which is a subscription scenario. Don't sleep on this one. Some good designs. A lot of times I get the muster or something like this, they'll be like, oh, I, I didn't know when did that one come out?

[A]

Or whatever.

[E]

But it came out three months ago just for that month. See what I'm saying? So, yeah, you want to get these new, a little bit more creative designs.

[D]

Boom.

[E]

That's what, that's where it's from. So yeah, it's all on Jocko store dot com.

[A]

If you see if you like something, get something.

[E]

Like something, get something.

[A]

Check out some books. Put your legs on by Rob Jones. Need to lead by Dave Burke. Extreme ownership dichotomy, Leadership discipline, freedom Field manual, Leadership strategy and tactics Field manual and then a bunch of kids books. Check all those out. Also Echelon front, we have a leadership consultancy. If you need leadership inside of your company, your team, your organization, check out echelonfront.com we also have online training. If you want to check out our online training, go to extreme ownership and finally listen. Or not finally. But I want to mention this. In a couple days there is going to be an incredible event in Scottsdale, Arizona. It is Mark Lee's 48th birthday celebration. Mark was killed in Ramadi in 2006. He carried the Mark 48 machine gun. This is going to be his 48th birthday. A couple of his platoon mates lead. Bob Holland, who you've heard on here before, and Jake Kimbom, another stud frogman. They're going to be speaking and telling you about Mark. So if you can march 21st in Scottsdale, Arizona, go to America's mighty warriors dot org and check that out. Also check out heroes and horses dot org also Jimmy May's organization beyond the brotherhood dot org for the interwebs. If you're looking for Symmetry sauna, go to symmetry sauna.com they also have the gram and the Facebook iboha. It's at Symmetry, Symmetry Sauna. And then for us you can check out jocko.com and then on social media, Echo's on there. He's at Echo Charles. I'm on there too. I'm at Jocko Willink. Just watch out for the algorithm. Thanks once again to Sam, Joe and Steve for joining us and sharing some of those lessons learned of building a business here in America. Of course, thanks to all of our military personnel around the world right now, especially those that are over in the Middle east in harm's way. We thank you for your service and your sacrifice and wish you Godspeed in your work out there. Also thanks to our police, law enforcement, firefighters, paramedics, EMTs, dispatchers, correctional officers, border patrol, secret service, as well as all other first responders. We thank you for your service here on the home front and everyone else out there. It's not easy to build something. It's not really easy to build anything. It's not comfortable and it'll cause a lot of stress. But if you stick to it and you put another piece in place and you put another piece in place and you put another piece in place, over time, you can get that thing built as long as you keep working. So go out there and keep working. That's all we've got for tonight. Until next time. This is Echo and Jocko out.