Tell me a little bit about that.

Yeah, you know, I think a lot of guys go through something similar, and most people will call it like a midlife crisis, right? And I don't, you know, midlife crisis or whatever.

I think it's really just kind of like discovering who you really are, and you kind of find out, wait, I might not be the guy of the life that I'm living right now.

And, you know, I'm actually reading a book on like mastery and stuff like that.

And it kind of alludes to when you're a child, when you're a kid, you know, thing that really lights you up and really gets you going.

Sometimes you may lose sight of that, but it may come back later in life.

And that's kind of what happened to me as I. I've always been kind of entrepreneurial.

How do you recover from that in general?

Walk us through it.

Yeah.

Well, uh, let me preface.

Anybody that has kids and ha- definitely has a teenager, you know that when they hit that teenage age, there's not a lot of communication with mom and dad anymore.

Like, you know, "Dad is, Dad doesn't know anything anymore," and, "He's, uh, you know, embarrassing to be around." And so, you know, I don't get to hang with my teenager that much.

And, and she grew up hunting with me.

I took her on whitetail hunts and, you know, and we had a f- she loves hunt, she, well, let me take that back.

You're fine

For sure.

So I was feeling that time kind of set in.

And at the moment, if I look back when I was 39 turning 40, I owned a lot of different businesses.

And one thing I learned by that is if you do a lot of things, you probably don't do very many of them well.

And I didn't learn also the lesson of being able to build a business that runs without my input.

So I was very stretched and pulled into a lot of different directions of my businesses that still needed my input.

And then, as you know, being an entrepreneur, you you don't it's not like You're the fireman.

Why was that important to you?

Mm-hmm.

And, uh, archery hunting's a little bit different than rifle just because it's different times of the year.

So archery hunting, you're killing them in velvet a lotta times, and it's a spot and stalk hunt.

And they're not, they're not moving a whole lot.

You know, they're, they're, they're in their patterns.

They know what they wanna do.

They get up, uh, and feed, they go to water, they go to bed.

Yeah

Mm-hmm.

And, uh, archery hunting's a little bit different than rifle just because it's different times of the year.

So archery hunting, you're killing them in velvet a lotta times, and it's a spot and stalk hunt.

And they're not, they're not moving a whole lot.

You know, they're, they're, they're in their patterns.

They know what they wanna do.

They get up, uh, and feed.

Yeah

plan.

Oh my God.

Yeah.

If you want to lose some weight, come elk hunting with me for sure.

Because you're hiking many miles.

You're going up mountains.

A lot of times I'm hunting at 12 to 13,000 feet.

But what are some of the more memorable trips that you've had?

... like, "Ooh, make sure you have this with you"?

Yeah.

I'll, uh, you know, I look at all the things that's gonna stop my hunt, right? So obviously being dry is important, so everything needs to be dry.

If you get wet and cold or something goes sideways, something to make a fire.

So I always have a lighter in my kit 'cause I have a Jetboil.

That's what I use a lot for my cooking, right? So I always have a lighter, but I always have a backup plan of how to make a fire, whether it be like fire putty or, or something like that.

Um, that's really crucial.

Where, where were you doing that one?

Is there a certain hunt that should become before another hunt? Is there something you should do first, go after a groundhog before you go after a boar? Does it matter?

That's a really good point.

I think it really comes down to who the hunter is.

But in general, what I see a lot now is I call it adult-onset hunters, where adults are getting into and curious about hunting, and then they listen to a show like Joe Rogan, who does archery elk hunting.

And I'm like, that's what I want to do.

I want to go archery elk hunting, which is the hardest hunt you can do on the planet, pretty much.

be disappointed no only maybe five to ten percent of people that actually normally hunt kill an elk so they're pretty disappointed so you know a person like that probably should start with like a turkey hunt um a deer hunt something a little bit easier than that some higher success that you can be excited for them to get into hunting more they're going to be pretty discouraged You know, on a mountain, getting beat up, not seeing any elk, right? And then you get the youth.

What are your thoughts on those and in particular the environmental questions about hunting something that's actually scarce as opposed to something or herd that needs to be culled a little bit?

You just move on to the next no one watches your video.How did you, someone who had no experience in this space, how did you get beyond that? How did you mentally tell yourself, "Okay, maybe it didn't give me the results I wanted view-wise or number-wise, but I learned something, or I can do something and apply it to the next video that I upload." What was your strategy as far as getting through that aspect of it?

I think the thing I struggled with is the volume piece, is wrapping my head around how to do volume, and I still struggle with that even after five or six years of doing this.

I still struggle with figuring out how to put long form content out on YouTube at volume.

So that was probably the biggest thing is like, "Okay, I'm gonna do this," and then I do one video and then four months later I'm trying to get another video up, and that just doesn't work.

And let's, let's relate this to an entrepreneurial standpoint.

As I know growing businesses, it takes reps to learn, right? So whatever business you're in, you have to dig into it, and it takes you a long time of struggling in that business to learn the correct way to do the business, and then you can figure out scaling after that.

So without the reps, you're not gonna learn.

What experiences have you had or conversations that you had that you've known has made you a better creator?