If you want to pump your body and expand your mind, there's only one place to go. Mind pump, mind pump, with your hosts. Sal DeStefano, Adam Schaefer, and Justin Andrews. You know, I'm kind of liking this, just you and I, dude. Mm, what do you think? It's not as fun. You think so?  I don't know, I feel like we could be fun. Fun-ish, you know what I mean?  He brings the cake to the party. He does, he is, he is the cake-eater. Ha, that's not what I said. He's the cake-eater for sure. We've been poking at him a lot lately. We have been. It's good for him now. He's a good kid. Yeah, builds a character. I like him, he's a good kid. Yeah, yeah, builds a character. So, let's talk about Brian. Hey, you know what? Pappy. Yes, Pappé. Do you say it, Pappé? I think it's Pappé. Pappé. Yeah, Pappé. Brian Pappé. He's a cool guy. Very cool guy. Right away when we first met. Very cool guy. Right away when we first met, you can just tell, right?  It's true. And right away, I know if I'm gonna like you.   You leave immediately when you leave. We talk about you.  Or we're like, cool guy or cool girl. So he got the cool. Yeah, he got the pass. Yeah, he's a cool cat. Right away. Entrepreneur, great entrepreneur story. Also a philanthropist. I mean, one of the things that motivates his company, MIR, is the philanthropy. They're helping bring fresh, clean water to people to impoverished areas of the world. What I really love is that, and I've never seen anybody else do this, is you can actually see your money at work. Right, a lot of these companies, they do something like that. And then it's like, oh, you buy this product and we donate it here or we give it to this. And it's like, okay, cool. But that's all, that's where it ends. Where all their product, you can actually, I believe it because of a little code on it, right? You can track, you go look up and see your money at work. Which I think that's really neat. I think it's a cool way. And I think that, and we talk about this in the podcast. We get to talk on this episode. You know, if you're an entrepreneur right now and you're building a business or you currently run a company, the importance of this. I think it's more important today than it was 10 years ago. Oh, for sure. Yeah, it's a part of the formula now or at least the consumer is actually demanding it. That's what it is. And they talk about that in that book that I'm reading right now. IGEN is they talk about that the consumer today wants, they, when they look at a product because there's so much competition, there's so, it's so easy to rank other companies. Like, obviously he's not the only company that makes tumblers and mugs and, you know, cups and thermos is like, a lot of companies do that. But the consumer now wants a top notch product and they wanna know if they're spending money on it. Like, what's this company stand for and where's their money going? And I think he recognized that at a very early age because of what he grew up in, being a part of his, it's his grandfather, right? It's his grandfather, yeah. He started Papaya. So I think that. He calls Mirror a product to project company. So I mean, they make these very clean looking products that, you know, good function, they're simple, they're high quality. But then, of course, behind it is, you know, what they're trying to do by helping people. And I agree, I think that's the way you gotta run business nowadays, which I like. Now he's genuine, they're genuinely trying to do this, but I think the future of business is, genuine or not, you gotta do this. Yeah, I agree. They wanna see that you're actually helping people besides providing good products and good services. And their products do provide a lot of value. They showed us an incredible hospitality when we did our live event at one of their locations. Very good people, great staff, just all around good guy. You're gonna enjoy this conversation with Brian. Now you can look at the Mirror products and see what they have to offer when you go to mirror.com. That's with two eyes, M-I-I-R, dot com. Also, I do wanna remind everybody, if you are interested in any of our maps programs or maps bundles where we take multiple programs and put them together and discount them, you can find them all at mindpumpmedia.com. And I guess that's it, right? Without any further ado, here we are talking to Brian Pepe of Mirror. Enjoy. We need to make this place a little bit pretty. It was all, it's all, I do.  I want like a rhinestone mic, like I want it to be cool. A bejewel. Yeah, I do. That's why I say I want to bedazzle my mic, man. I want something hella custom. Nobody has. I know what they say about guys getting big trucks. Yeah, yeah. Same thing about thrones. And bedazzled microphones. What do they say about the guy? I just want a chair.  Have you seen those? I almost did that. What is that? I almost did that. Of course you did. I almost did that. I feel like if you have a lifted truck, you have to at least consider it. Yeah, but it's like. It's on your face.    Those are the balls. That might have been why I didn't do it. See, my strategy was like, huh, if that's what people think, I'm going to drive a Jetta, which is what I still drive. Which is like repellent for most of you.   It's the number one vehicle driven by gay men.  I'm just comfortable with myself. Yeah, you own it, man. I like you guys a lot. I secretly loved it when folks wagon just got their asses handed to them on the TDI. So many of my friends were like, look at me and my TDI. I've got my turbo diesel. It's saving the world. And then boom. Right. Did you see three times as bad as Gatsby? Have you seen the documentary Dirty Money on that? No. Oh, you got to watch it out. It goes in depth. Yeah, it goes in depth. I love documentaries. Dude, you will. It's called. If so, have you not seen that makes you angry. It's a six part documentary called Dirty Money. And that whole I didn't realize how far back that go. That's a big scam that was like, like decades or yes. Yeah. Yes. And they game the system. You've got to watch it.  Like, I think that's the name of it. Somehow they're able to like lower the emissions indoors, right? And so they knew that you'd test indoors. But then outdoors it was like. Exhausted, like tricked it or something. Yeah, they had some scam going with the testers and they were just, oh, it's a great document. I had no idea about it. And then I didn't know the history of it and how that all came up. It goes all the way back to like Hitler. Oh, the Volkswagen? Yeah. People's car. That's a Hitler. The Hitler, I mean, that regime created the Volkswagen Beetle. It was a Nazi car. What a first start. Now, the irony, let's think about this for a second. The irony, it became hippies. Exactly. It was a Nazi car and then the counterculture buys Volkswagen buses and is like, peace and love. It's like, yeah. The documentary, there it is, right there. The documentary gets all into that. It's great, man. Is it on Netflix? Yeah, it's on Netflix. And I'm trying to remember what other, didn't you guys watch it, too? I did watch it, yeah. The whole environmental market is so crazy. Like any market, once it gets a lot of steam, you get this crazy cronyism involvement, like the train that they're building in California that they're saying, oh, it's this fast rail, it'll save so much, whatever. It's costing so much money and it's not saving anything at all. It's actually extremely inefficient. It's not going to help anything. But because the contractors, the people who are getting paid by the state to make it, they've got their connections over it. And they'll find some endangered insect and halt, you know, all production. Well, I remember when I was shopping, I don't know if I've told the story on MinePump before, but I remember when I had my big lifted truck that got a whole like eight miles to the gallon. And at that time, like I ran on baby seal meat. Well, I remember with the subs in the back, right? Yeah, yeah, yes I did. I had two jail audio subs in the back. Panda fur chair. TV screen that flipped out and everything. Yes, I had all that. But I remember at that time too, I was snowboarding a lot. I was on the lake a lot, wakeboarding. I was doing a lot, so I was traveling from the city. And I wasn't really paying attention to my gas. And I look up on my Wells Fargo like track, you know, when they first started separating your bills, like your grocery gas. And I was spending like 8.50 a month in gas. And I was like, holy shit, that's a lot of gas money, right? And I thought, you know what, if I could just, if I went out and got like a Prius, you know, that gets 50 miles to the gallon or whatever, literally the payment would be negated if I just drove it half the time. Like if I just bought a new car, drove this. It should more than pay for it. Right, it should more. So literally the next day I went down and bought a car. But I was going to go buy the Prius, but I realized what a scam that was because they marketed it as this great way to save gas money. But then it's 10 to $15,000 more than the Toyota Corolla. And the Corolla got me 35 miles to the gallon versus 50. And when you do the math out, it would take 10 years before I would make up the difference. And then I walked away with the Corolla that day.  Well, nobody talks about the actual CO2 emissions to go and get the minerals for all the batteries in the EV vehicles. And then what they do with the batteries too, right? After like 10 years or whatever. I mean, the battery technology should get good enough. I mean, look at Tesla, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. I think well, self-driving cars, when that becomes a big thing, then you'll see that be a big thing with batteries because then they'll just, the fleets will go out, do their driving, come back, charge at a station. It'll be much more efficient. Do you guys know anybody that actually has a Tesla and has put one of the charging stations in their house? The battery wall thing? Or the charger, the charge, the wall? Yeah, the actual charger, right? So I was just telling somebody how I want a Tesla and they're like, well, maybe before you do it, make sure, because we're house shopping right now too, they're like, you might want to look into what your insurance will go to. Supposedly, if you get one of those in your house, like your home insurance goes like. Why, they're afraid it's gonna explode? Yeah. Oh, wow. Yeah, I didn't know that. It's a real concern. Let me put a nuclear reactor in my house. It'll totally save my energy costs. Your mortgage is 2,000, the insurance is three. Yeah. A month, you know? Yeah. Just so you could drive this car around. Well, California is passing a law that new houses being built have to be, have to have solar panels on them now. I saw that. Oh, really? Yeah, and some people are looking at that being, oh, that's great. It's gonna be great for the environment, but a lot of people don't realize that there's backroom deals going on between the state and the solar panel manufacturers, and that's why these deals kind of get through. But they put it through on the guys of, oh, it's to save the environment. Yep. Now, it's funny we took this conversation this way because Brian's a perfect guy to talk to and ask this about, do you feel like there's a lot of people in a similar space as you that do the giving back thing as just like publicity and to make their company look good? Oh, 100%.  Oh, wow. So there's so many people out, and so many that have just gone up and died. Oh, really? Yeah, and it's, I mean, I think we talked about it a little bit up in Seattle, but fundamentally, if you're not adding value with your product or your product is amazing and you're trying to build your brand on the back of doing good, it's going to fail. At some point, I think it will legitimately fail and or struggle, right? Like, look at Tom's massive growth and now they're struggling big time.  Yeah, yeah. Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. You, I mean, rule number one in business is you got to provide value to your customers. Totally. Now, part of that value is in today at least because it wasn't like this even just 15 years ago, but part of that value is what your brand stands for, maybe what the CEO and the founders are all about. And that became much more apparent. I think Apple was the first company to really make a big difference with that in the sense that people really gave a shit about Steve Jobs and kind of idolized him. And that was one of the reasons why Apple did so well, but they also had tremendous value and did such a good job with their product. Do you think that was intended that way or do you think that's just because he was so brilliant and so groundbreaking that people were interested in what he was doing? I think that started the whole thing. Right, because I don't feel like that was like a strategy by Apple or any of those guys. No, I think that was, he was...  No, I think it started like that. Like he's just got an interesting story, got kicked out of his own company, came back, blew it up, like the whole thing eccentric and kind of exemplified the new market, the tech market and what it kind of stands for. But now you're starting to see people are really interested in those things and it's part of the value, but it's not all of the value. You know what I'm saying? And I think what you're saying is some company make the mistake thinking, oh, that's all the value and then we'll just, on the side, we'll make this shitty product.  It's like, cool. Yeah, Seattle all that. I can give behind that. Do you have a podcast that's informing about why it matters or food supply or is ocean plastic getting up in the whales, which is affecting whatever you eat? Is there more value than just like selling a shirt that says save whales? I mean, it's a micro example. Brian, you have a very interesting story and you've told us a couple of times but our audience isn't familiar with your story. And I think it needs to be told because it's kind of interesting and it starts off with you saying before there was an event that happened, but before that you said you were kind of a dick. And then something happened. I feel like this is actually appropriate. Let's get more into that part of it. So I used to tell a story, I'd be like, back in the day I was a total douchebag and my wife hates that word. She hates the word. She'd go, this is podcast. She'd be like, you can't, you said you wouldn't say that word and I'm like, babe, it was mind pump media. It was totally okay. It fits here. It fits here. They pulled it out of you. They pulled it out. And so I think the word now is tool, dick, whatever you want. Pre-2006 was just, it was all about me. It was like, what could I do to make myself better, make more money? That was like my vision of like, how do I do stuff for me? Right? Where do you, did you grow up affluent privilege? Did you have like lots of things provided for you? And is that, do you think that contributed to your attitude? Yeah, I think yes and no. So like good example. So like my grandfather started a company, the PAPA Group on the West Coast, starting Eugene after World War II. And actually he was the original shoe giver. So Blake from Tom's, he likes to talk about him being the original shoe giver. My grandfather, World War II, over in Europe helping build bridges would collect shoes and milk. And when they go into a community after the Nazis were defeated, he would hand out shoes to the kids because they didn't have them. Oh no, sure, that's awesome. Which is a story my grandma told me recently. So I thought, he was the pioneer on shoe giving.  Biting off your family, we didn't even know that dude. So he grew this successful family company. It's still held by the family of my cousin's CEO. They sell heavy equipment. So like John Deere, Heister Forklifts, a lot of heavy equipment's in construction. So I grew up watching my grandfather and my uncle build this company. And with that came a bit of privilege. My family was able to travel a fair amount. We traveled around the world. But in the sense that like my parents, we didn't talk about it to people around. I grew up in Idaho. So somebody in Idaho who travels to South America and Eastern Europe and all over the place, that's probably a unique code thing. Yeah, so spring break, people were like, where'd you go? And they're like, ah, I went to maybe Disneyland. And that's like a big deal for someone in Idaho.  And I'm like, ah, I went to South America. Yeah, you're up back in two years. So it was one of those things where I was mindful of it. But it definitely contributed. I mean, a good example is some of my homies on my soccer team, my grandma, and this kind of points to like, you're like, okay, he was so privileged. All the money came to him, whatever. And it's in fact, it's not that way. But here's a good example. So my grandparents have a mass wealth. My grandma wants to create this foundation. Part of it's giving money away to communities to really help improve the communities we all live in. But the part of the other foundation is to get the family together. So there's, my wife and I are having our second kid, which will be my grandma's 25th great-grandchild. So I'm the 14th grandchild. Oh wow. My daughter's son, we don't know yet, it's a surprise, will be the 25th great-grandchild. She celebrated her 96th birthday. Yesterday I was in Portland with her and it was incredible. So part of their vision was, let's get our family to travel around the world. So we used to go really cool places. She grew up on the sound, up in Puget Sound. So on the water, her dad built boats by hand, just like really, really good woods craftsmen. So she loved the water, she loved boats. So she ended up starting to rent yachts for like two weeks. So she would rent Bill Boeing's old yacht, the Tachanite, which is this 150-foot yacht.  Oh my God. It was amazing, right? Wow. And I'm in high school and this is not normal. So I know this is not normal. Were you allowed to bring like a chick with you or anything like that? Exactly. Oh my God. Oh my God. It's just slaying in high school. See, that's the move. Yeah, that was, you know? Wow. But in high school I was like, it was weird because we weren't not allowed to date, but it was one of the things we were growing up in like a very conservative household. It was like, you date when you're in college. You date later in life. You don't date in high school because you're also gonna leave Idaho for college. You're not staying here. Like it was one of those things where like, Boise was an amazing town, but it was my parents were like, if you wanna go to school in Boise, you're gonna pay for it. You can go anywhere else and we'll pay for it. Oh, that's interesting. So they knew that it was like, you have to go out, experience in the world. And listen, Boise is great. But in high school I was like, all right, I'm gonna bring my homies on this trip because you were allowed to bring one friend. Well, my best friends were twins. So I called on my ground, hey, Baba called her Baba. I wanna bring a friend on this trip, but my best friends are twins. Can I bring both of them? She's like, yeah, sure, not a problem. And so they've got a couple of yachts and people would fly in and out throughout those three weeks that she was there for the entire time because not everybody can be there for three weeks. We all have jobs and whatnot. And so basically I call my two buddies.  We're gonna look at, we're gonna water ski, hang out, whatever. And they're like, cool. What do we need to do? I'm like, we're just gonna show up at the airport and they're like, okay.  So it's like, things like that.  And I say that in a sense that like, and yet I had to mow the lawn, I had to empty the dishwasher. I had to do all of that. And here's a good example of I think how my parents instilled character in spite of the wealth that my grandparents had generated. First of all, nothing was given to me, first and foremost. The second thing was, and the summer before I went to college, I broke everything, literally everything.  So we built this pirate ship to float the Boise River. Everybody floated the Boise River in the summers.  And so we're like, no, we're gonna build this raft.  Yeah. We floated a cake behind it. Yeah, absolutely. So we were just harassing people. I mean, it was all fun, right? So we get to the end and we're about to pull out of Amorsham Park, raft flips over and on the raft is a cooler with all my dad's tools strapped into it. Cooler opens, tools bottom of the river, gone, you know? I get home like, hey dad, you know, we flipped this raft and unfortunately there are tools in the bottom of the river. And he's like, well, you can either go pick them up or you can buy me new tools. I'm like, seriously? He's like, yeah, you lost the tools, you need to go and buy them. All right, so as a tool, I had to go buy tools. You know, and I had saved up my, so it wasn't like, oh yeah, he just bought the money that his parents gave to him. No, I had to like mow lawns, I had to wash cars. I was filming weddings. I had taken our family's video camera. I was filming weddings at the time. So I'd go and film weddings, save up money and then buy more video equipment. And that's why I have so much respect for this studio is because. Appreciate it.  Or were you already putting it together that, you know?   Cause she had, she like had, she couldn't care less about going on a yacht trip or like going on these trips with my family.  Right. But back, so back to that, back to the summer, that was the start of it. Then I'm mowing the lawn. There's this oil pipe that sticks up because the house used to be heated by oil back in, you know, whatever the 60s, 70s. Put the lawnmower over the top of the pipe, bends the shaft of the lawnmower. Lawnmower is broken. My dad's like, well, you're gonna have to fix it. Like, well, it's cheaper to buy a new one at Home Depot. He goes, no, no, no, you broke this one. You're gonna fix this one. So I have to take the lawnmower to go in and get it fixed at this lawnmower repair shop, which I don't think those exist anymore, but there's a lawnmower repair shop on the way to lawnmower repair shop. Lawnmower's in the back of the suburban. I had secured it. Got unsecured somehow going around the corner. Lawnmower goes out the back window of the suburban. Oh my goodness. And I get home and my dad's like, looks like you're gonna have to repair that window. And so just all of those things added up where it's like, it wasn't just handed to me. It absolutely had to get earned.  Like we always had the worst cars that would always break down. I was like, dad, why can't we just have a new car? And he's like, no, you don't need a new car. You're 18, right? Like that was the mentality.  I want a warranty. When it breaks, I want to take it to dealership. They're gonna fix it. You know, so I really appreciated that. So it was never ever handed to me, so to speak. So it was more of just experiential trips through my grandparents. Were you siblings? Yeah, three older sisters. They definitely kept me in line. Oh, you're the youngest.  I'm the youngest and the dumbest, that's for sure. Oh, they really, really smart. Oh my gosh. My sister has a master's in like food systems. The next sister's a doctor and she's also getting her MBA. And then the sister closest to me went to Stanford and then got her master's in urban education.  Like, I'm the oldest of five. And then sometimes I feel like my two youngest brother and sister, they always are telling my mom, like I'm not my brother and they'd stop comparing me that way. Do you feel, did you ever have that?  And it was like embarrassing. Like, that's interesting, he says, yeah. And so, you know, there's that and, you know, the pressure of high school for me was immense. And I say that because they were geniuses. So they all got four O's, four twos, whatever going throughout high school. And it was the expectation. I remember coming home and being like, oh yeah, my buddy Logan, he gets paid for good grades.  My parents were like, no, you're expected to get a grade. Right, we're gonna discipline you for B's. Yeah, you know, so it was, yeah, so it was things where it was like, you know, there was this like expectation of excellence regardless of finances.  So I really credit my parents for kind of creating that humility growing up. But my sisters had these ridiculous grades. I basically cheated my way through high school. Like, I would find their papers, figure out, you know, how they got an A and reverse it. I was not built for school. And then I got to college and I think I graduated like a 2.0, so. But you graduated. I did, I barely graduated. Now, but how did your parents deal with that? Were they okay? Did they let you kind of find your own path or were they like really hard on you because you weren't living up to those expectations?  I was super into soccer. I got recruited to play soccer at Seattle Pacific. That's ultimately why I went up to Seattle. I was to play soccer up there.  And my dad had played football at Stanford.  And there was this expectation that I would do the same thing. And so fortunately I was able to get a 4.0 in high school. I have no idea how I pulled it off because I'd like cliff notes, it was like barely the internet survived, like come into fruition. So you're at Barnes and Noble reading cliff notes of, you know, whatever book, you know, like Crapes of Wrath or whatever you're trying to say on all that. I used to rent the movie, that's how I used to do it.  Like you said, why did you, why do you say that you were a tool at this point? Like what was it that you would think? I think the ego was massive.  And so in college, you're all trying to figure out, you know, who's who and who has what and what not. And especially in the Northwest, the PAPA name is very visible.   And you're like, well, maybe I'll lean into that a little bit. And so that's what, you know, kind of tool. Which is natural for a kid. Yeah, totally. You're trying to meet people. I think it's a very natural. That's a challenge. It's people don't realize like if, when you, you know, I used to own a wellness studio in a very, very affluent part of the Bay Area where the average, you know, three, four bedroom house is like $3 million, right? Very, very affluent. And there's a high school there. And at the high school, I remember there's like two or three years in a row where there were like suicides, multiple suicides, which are extremely rare. But there's different challenges, I think, growing up, very, very affluent that you maybe don't get in. And I'm not saying it's better or worse or anything like that. I understand that may come across as saying like, oh, you know, being affluent is really challenging. No, it's just that it's just different. It's just different. It's different, you know? And if you have a child. It's a different challenge. Yeah, if you have a kid that's growing up with all these things, I think the challenge as a parent is, how do I raise a kid that doesn't take this all for granted? And who, you know, understands that they need to work for things in life and contribute. And I think that's probably what your parents are trying to. Oh, 100%. And so, yeah.   Now you have kids, they're gonna grow up in a very similar situation. Are there things that stand out to you like, I must make sure that I do this and this with my kids? Yeah.  You know, setting up discipline for whatever it is.  In order to do that, they've gotta do, they've gotta sweep the floors, do the dishes, whatever. Cause those things are valuable, you know, to learn that discipline of like having to clean up after yourself. And I think that's the other thing too is, you know, looking back, like my grandparents are kind of like old money in the sense that like, there was wealth being generated, but there was absolute expectation of excellence and an expectation of manners.  And that's the thing that's a little bit different now is like now with wealth, it's kind of like people flaunt it and they people show it. Back in the day, that was part of it too, where it's like, you would never know. But I mean, our house was nice, but it wasn't just like some massive, massive house.  And so- Plus the charity that they were involved in. They did a lot of charity. Yeah, a lot of nonprofit work. Volunteering, you know, my parents made me volunteer and eventually became a choice, you know. So it was kind of this encouragement, hey, you need to volunteer, like pick something. And then it's like, you learn to appreciate it. Cause if you force somebody, the backfire is that they're like, ah, I'm never going to volunteer again, right? So there's a fine line of like forcing and encouraging. Anything you would do different.   Anything though you look back, you're like, I'm going to do that different, you know. You know, I think the sport thing really, really sticks out. I totally understand by playing sports, like it was a blast, right? I went to college and I was burned out. I quit my freshman year. I was out, I tapped out. And I think it really disappointed my dad. I think it really did. Cause he had had this amazing experience of playing football at Stanford, Rose Bulls, the whole thing. And so he kind of wanted to live that through me. And it really affected me in a, it wasn't so negative where I was like, but I was honestly going to go play soccer for him and not for me. And I quit and after I quit, he was fine with it. The good news is that like he wasn't super upset, but I can tell you he was disappointed. And so I want to make sure that like as I grow, as I raise my kids that when they grow up, it's not, you know, hey, we need to be active. Here are three sports. What do you want to choose? And hey, if you're out, if you're over it in high school, cool. Yeah, you put, you push too hard and they rebel, kids tend to want to rebel when they're finding themselves.  And sometimes you realize, oh, okay, I don't need to rebel that way. But you typically will rebel at first. Well, this is totally a stroke.  I want them to learn and be able to, you know, want to get better at their sport and practice and all that kind of stuff. So how do you sort of present that to where, you know, you lay it out where they want to learn and where they want to be invested in the sport. You're already thinking of that as far as options. You know, it's kind of like, you never ask your kid what they want to wear because they'll never decide or it'll be hilarious. And maybe it's funny, I don't know, but you just like, do you want to wear the jeans or the red pants? Like, which one? That's a basic sales technique, by the way. Yeah. It is. It's called the alternate advantage. Yeah, exactly.  All right, we're going to try skiing. You're going to try karate or whatever, you know, you get to pick. You get an attraction there. Yeah, you get to pick and it's, you know, and then they get to figure it out and test it. Hey, you don't like it, cool. Move on to the next thing. Secretly, though, is there things that you want them to be into, though? Is there a certain... Skiing, for sure. I want that, like, and I took my two-year-old daughter, Sienna, skiing this winter and she loved it. Like, she was just straight. That's going to get you so excited. I was pumped. I skied like one day that she went with her and I was like, you know, it's fine. People are like, oh, bummer. And I'm like, it was also kind of sweet. Do you find yourself having to calm down a little bit? Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah, it was like, it was sunny. She was stuck, because you never know. You're like, all right, is she going to like it? Do we know she's going to panic because she's in these boots and this weird experience? We kind of played with the boots and one of my friends had the best advice, basically put the boots on your kid a day or two before, let them play in the snow with all their stuff on, let them have fun. So we went sledding with her boots on, went outside, in and out. So then when we got to the mountain, it was like, all right, we're putting on your boots, we're going to have fun. And it wasn't long. You know, we were out for like maybe two hours and went in the lodge and had hot chocolate, came back, you know, and she was just like, now it's like, and then we have this property in Eastern Washington where there's like a small hill and so it gets about two feet of snow in the winter. So we skied out the property. And so, you know, we're hiking up, walking down ski and she loved it. So now it's like, hey, C.C., we call her C.C. for short. We're like, hey, C.C., we're going to go out to the ranch and she's like, ski, snow, ski, snow. And we're like, well, there's not snow right now, but we will. That's cool. Yeah, yeah. What has your daughter taught you so far? Because I mean, kids teach you so much as a parent. About yourself, you mean? Oh, yeah.  She is obsessed with airplanes. And it's like in the city, you're like, yep, there goes another airplane and she's just like, airplane. And just like so focused. It's magic. Yeah, it is magic. So I think, you know, kind of like opening my eyes to re-seeing the routine of the world because you get in your grind and it's like you walk to and from work or whatever and you just see the same things, you don't think of anything, all of a sudden she'll be like, flour. And you're like, yeah, there is a flower. That's a cool looking flower. So like slowing down, reflecting on actually what's around you. And she has, you know, it's interesting as you raise a child and you're looking around at like diversity and inclusion and some of these things, you realize that kids have like little to no bias. You know, especially early on, like they're not scared. You know, I mean, there is a stranger danger at some point, but like in the two year old, it's like, man, they'll smile at anybody. They don't care.    So. Yeah, that's a huge lesson I learned with my kids is just seeing how they enjoy just the moment and you tend to forget that. Are you a very hands-on father? Oh yeah. Very involved. Like I come home from work and it's like play time. It's really fun. And I think like laughing, I probably laughed more in the last year than I have in a long time. That's cool. Just cause like you're wrestling with her, she loves it, you know, she loves to be like tossed on the bed in the pillows, you know, and she'll be like, again, again, you know. Now being the CEO and founder of a growing company, a large company, how do you find balance in, cause I find that to be a question people tend to ask me quite a bit. I have two children myself and it's like, how do you find the balance in being, you know, hands-on, excellent father and also running and growing a big business? Yeah, it's, you know, it's tough cause people, you know, ask me oftentimes the same thing of like, what does balance look like? And I'm probably the worst person to ask about that because there's very little balance. And what I mean by that is my wife, Becca, she works at the company too. So we work together, we live together, everything. Like we literally live and breathe near all day every day. And so the challenge now is, how do you create time and space for you to separate yourself from the business where you can like be in the moment and be present? Cause it's one of those things that's like, it's hard, it's, you guys get it. It's hard to explain to somebody how ingrained it is into your DNA when you've been doing it for however many years. For us, it's been 10 years at Mira that we've been working on the business.  And it's good, but the challenge is that if you're doing that while you're trying to take your daughter's scheme, it's, you're not living fully in that moment. So it's less about a balance, but more about actually being present than what you're actually doing. Cause if you're present when you're at work, you're gonna be more effective. If you're present when you're playing with your daughter, you're not thinking about all the stressful things that have to happen. So like it's, I kind of reframe it in a little bit different way. So it's not necessarily a balance, but more of just being present in the moment and making sure you create time. So the balance piece is like time, right? Do you have rules and stuff you put on yourself? Your practices you've implemented to help you there. You know, it's kind of an ebb and flow. You know, like some nights my wife and I'll be like in bed, both laptops just crushing, you know, just working on stuff. And then other nights it's like, it's just communication too. Like, hey, tonight let's close the laptop. Let's watch a show. Let's just like zone out, you know, and it's, but you know, it's, and it's interesting as like the stress goes up and the growth is gone. I've had to be more aware about how I'm affecting my family. And recently, and this is why I love my wife so much. Like I think it was a couple of weeks ago.  Shooting you straight. Recently you haven't been enjoyable to be around. You're gonna love that though. You know what I'm saying? Yeah. It's like it sounds like my wife. Yeah. And you're like, and usually I know when it's coming. I'm like, yeah, yeah, yeah, you're right. And this time was like, the thing that was scary for me was that like I hadn't recognized it yet. You're like, I thought I was being cool. Yeah. And I was like, wow. Okay, so then it's like, all right, self-reflection, let's go through this. Well, what was it that, why were you so, like why was it so not cool being around you? What were you doing? You know, there's just like what you're not doing probably. You know, is not being present. You know, so taking the stress of work and like relationships and the tensions, like we have a lot of healthy tension right now at our company. And I say healthy tension because people are always wanna like, I have this idea that like, oh, it's all good when nobody is like arguing or fighting and like we mine for conflict at our company in the sense of like, we want people to disagree and like challenge. Like we wanna do that.  And I was letting it eat at me, taking that, carrying it home and just like zoning out and not being present, not actually being fully present at home. So that was like a big like, okay, gotta reflect, gotta leave, gotta leave some of those things. I gotta say, I've met you now a couple times, we've been on the phone once. You don't seem like a egotistical individual at all. You seem like a very down to earth, you know, cool person, somebody I would probably hang out with. Oh, thank you.  So I want your phone number, no. No, no, but it's- Make some plans. You said earlier how you had a big ego in college and I know you told us twice now, once when we did the event at your company and another time over the phone, that there was an ego checking event that happened.  Totally. What happened? Yeah, man, it's interesting to think about this action that if it didn't happen, who would I be today? And I'm kind of thankful that it happened in a weird way. Like I almost died, which is scary to think about. And now I'm less scared about death than I was then, but ultimately what ended up happening. So 2006, you know, kind of tool age, like massive tool, or you said less awesome. What was it? Awesome, less awesome. Yeah, that's the reframe, right? I was less awesome then, right? So kind of a major tool. And I think the thing that played into it is I was having early success as well. So while my grandparents had started this company, had success and there was kind of this wealth generation for my grandparents, I had also had personal success. I had picked up our family's video camera, filmed weddings, saved the money, would start making ski films and rinse and repeat. So, you know, as an 18 year old, I had $5,000 video equipment in my dorm room, you know? And so like one of my best friends now, like the first time he saw me, he's like, this guy's a tool, man. He's got like dual monitors, like CRT flat screen monitors, like 2003, like mini DV tapes, you know, like that was the era, right? And so I had had success of like making money and like tasting that. I'm like, yeah, I can do this, I'm 18. I can make my own money, you know? So fast forward, I'm making ski films. Literally thought I was living the dream. How well did you do? Did you make decent money doing it or? Yeah, you know, I was probably making like, gosh, I don't know, $20,000 to $50,000 a summer. Yeah, that's great. Yeah, I've been doing it on PSAs, yeah. That's great. Yes, it is exactly. So you're like, man, I'm not working at wherever, I'm making $10 an hour, I'm killing it. You're like, I thought I was cool and I proved it. Yeah, there's my evidence. Yeah, there it is. And then it compounded, right? So this is like pre-social media. And yet like here I am hanging out of helicopters as like a 19 and 20 year old, you know? Like filming ski films. Do you guys follow Chase Jarvis from Creative Live? He's a really famous creative. Doug knows him. Yeah, so I was actually Chase Jarvis's first videographer. Yeah, so like I got connected to him. He had this small studio, he was kind of up and coming, was doing video work for him, Steven's Pass. Anyway, we're filming at Steven's Pass April 15th, 2006. And we're on the front side, trying to post up for a shot, dropped a cliff, got back seat, had to get out of this like really narrow alley of trees out of this bowl. And when I skied, I didn't ski with poles. I had my camera tucked into my jacket and a harness. So I kind of, you know, poles really help for balance. And so I didn't have any balance, got back seat, ended up splitting two trees. And what happened was my ski hit something on the ground, like a twig or something, it opened up my leg and my thigh took an absolute, just header right into this giant tree, snapped my femur in half, spun me around. People that don't understand. That is a very hard bone to snap the femur. And it's a dangerous bone to snap. And it is a dangerous bone. So it's interesting because ignorance is kind of bliss, right? Like if I had broken my femur and not known about your femoral artery bleeding to death internally, I would have had a very unique life or death experience, but I might not have known that you could have died, right? And so my roommate at the time, he had done it two years earlier at a different mountain. He had lived, he survived, came back and said, hey, never break your femur, because if you do, you can hit your femoral artery and essentially bleed to death internally in about 10 minutes.  Now you knew it was broken because you looked at it yourself.  Yeah, like if you go to my Instagram, it's like, it's probably buried in there, but like every year in April, I celebrate, it was my, it was a, what? I can't do math, I'm not good at math. 12, yeah. Neither can we, so you're 12 year old, buddy. Yeah, this April is my 12th year anniversary of kind of like living again, right? And so like every April, my wife and I celebrate the day that I almost died as like a celebration of life that like I am alive. And just like we usually go skiing or we do something that we're grateful for. So my leg is off to the right. I mean, it's completely like, my boot is like twisted on the side. It's brutal.  Oh, it's just, oh my gosh. And you know, like it was funny too, cause I was against the tree and I'm yelling back up to my buddy, Kevin who's skiing and Chris who's our marketing director at Stevens Pass and I'm like, help, I broke my femur. And my buddy, Kevin was like, you're getting attacked by a beaver?  And so it was like, you know, it's chaotic at the very beginning, but then I got really calm and it was weird because like I just had this moment of clarity. Like absolute moment of clarity in a short period of time. So what did it feel like?  Yeah, it was literally like, I don't know if the, and the leg's swelling naturally when you do something that like that, but I don't know how fast it swells if you hit your artery. So it was one of those things where I was like, oh my gosh, I literally could die.  And I thought, and this highlights how much of a tool I was, right? So like, here I am dating my beautiful wife for three years. And granted, we're young, right? Like I met my wife when I was 18, when we first got to school. But it was like that moment finally solidified for me. I was like, you know what, if I lived through this, like I need to marry her. Like she's incredible for who she is and like believing in who I am as a person. So it literally took me like breaking my leg to convince me that I should marry my wife. Do you think if that didn't happen, you would have just dated her and stretched it out as long as you could? Probably. Oh, wow. Okay. Or I would have continued to be on a tool and she'd be like, you're a tool, I'm moving on. Did your sisters like your wife initially? Oh yeah. That had to be a process, right? Like you dating girls and bringing them back in. Oh yeah, she was, you know, there was a girl that I dated.  Then I broke my leg and we ended up getting married. And the galley brought it, the galley dated between my wife and I and my sisters were like, no, no, no. Like she was into the tool, Brian and my sisters were like, no, not cool. So you're sitting there busted leg moment of clarity. Busted leg, I need to marry my wife. Second thing was I honestly thought about my funeral. It was weird. I was like, if I died, what would people say about me at my funeral? And that's what struck me. I was like, oh man, like nobody will get up and say like anything positive about me. I mean, people will get up and be like, Brian was funny. Like I put a Volkswagen Beetle bug on top of our roof in high school. Like I led our senior prank. Like I was a jokester, right? Like that comes along with being a tool, right? Like those were the things.  And I was like, man, who was the last funeral I was at? And it was my grandfather's funeral in 96. And I remember his funeral, so he passed away far earlier than he should have. People were lined about the door talking about how he had impacted their life. He was the type of guy who created this company from nothing, right? Every single store that he would go into, he didn't go into the front door and talk to the general manager of the location. He would come in the back door and he would talk to every single mechanic, greasy hands, shake their hands. He didn't care. And every single manager that I've met, because I worked there in college a little bit, always shared that.  Because he knew that was the lifeblood of the company. And so that always stuck with me too. So that was just a weird side tangent. But that was what I thought about is how people lined up for him. And I was like, nobody would do that for me. And it struck me. I was like, man, I gotta get it together. I gotta use my talent and experiences to make the world a better place. So you get pulled off the slope. Are you telling anybody about this? Or are you still processing this? Like, when did you start to communicate this? Like, okay, I had this moment of clarity. Yeah, so my wife at the time was, or we were dating at the time, she was in Europe studying abroad. So she was in England. And so there's like a whole funny story between like getting off the mountain and whatnot. Like they were gonna do a helicopter medevac, but they were like, right. He didn't hit his artery. So we're gonna ambulance him down. So we get in the ambulance and ski patrol didn't do traction. The ambulance didn't do traction. We went to the small hospital halfway between the mountain in Seattle, the small town Monroe, if you're over there, don't go to the hospital, it's awful. We get there, they have a new x-ray tech. New x-ray tech. I go in and out of the x-ray room three different times, off the bed, onto the x-ray thing, back three times, moving me around, trying to get the shot. They couldn't get the x-ray. They finally got after three times. And they're like, no, we have an on-call orthopedic surgery, we can do it here. And I'm like in and out of it, you know, just totally hopped up on adrenaline and drugs. And I'm like, I don't think this is a good idea. And Chris, may he rest in peace. So Chris, we'll get into this later, but he was a good friend, he was the marketing director at Stevens, he ended up losing his life in an avalanche years later, which is kind of an interesting experience. And so he's there, and he's like, no, we're calling his parents. So my parents are like, absolutely not. Take him to Swedish, which is the main hospital in Seattle. And so Swedish shows up, and they're like, has nobody done traction on this guy? And everybody kind of looks at each other like, you didn't do traction? You didn't do traction? So traction is essentially where you strap this like, metal thing, this metal plate to your ankle and your hip, and they crank your leg apart. Strengthen, stretch. I'm looking at the picture right now. Yeah, there you go. That's a clean gnarly break in the bones right next to each other. Yep. And so you gotta pull it apart and get it back together. And because those bone fragments, kind of on the right side, you see how it's kind of sharp? Like it's just sharp. That's a floating around while we're getting off the mountain on the ambulance in and out of the X-ray room. So literally like within all of that, it could have hit the artery because nobody did traction for those like three hours. And so these Swedish guys are like, are you kidding me? So we do traction, we get to Swedish, it ends up being all good. But we had this again, pre-internet, I think I had a flip phone. And my wife and I always, she had like a calling card. You remember those things? Yeah, yeah, yeah. I love being an old man. $10, $20 calling card. You use it on the pay phone? Yeah, on the old pay phone. And we would talk at like, I think like 8 a.m. Pacific time, which was her evening or whatever.  So I literally changed my voicemail to, hey babe, it's me, everything's fine. Just wanna let you know that I had an accident, Steven's passed, ended up breaking my leg and I'm gonna be in surgery when you call. So call Ryan, my best friend. I was like, call Ryan, he'll give you the download, but everything's fine. She gets in, she's like, oh my God! Do I need to fly home? Yeah, so. So that, you know, she flew home and then really that summer it started getting serious. It was like, I think we should start talking about getting married. We love each other, this is where we wanna kinda take our lives and so I went to her dad and asked for her hand in marriage because I'm very traditional in that sense.  And he was interesting because Phil, Dr. Phil, he's not the doctor. Well, he is the Dr. Phil, he's not the Dr. Phil.  And I kind of, you know, kind of proven with my career and so that I wanted to kinda get into this, so. Now did you keep doing the filming after that or did you decide I wanna do something else? Yeah, so I was kinda doing three things. I was filming for Stevens Pass, I was the first employee of a company called Little Hotty's Hand Warmers, which is those air activated hand warmers that you go skiing or whatever. And then I was also working for Chase Jarvis as his first video guy. And so this is, so I graduated college 2007 and it was interesting because 2007, I mean, the economy was booming. So I literally had three job offers. I had an offer from the ski resort to like do all their video production. I had an offer from Chase Jarvis and had an offer from Rick at Little Hotty's Hand Warmers. And I was like, I love video production, Chase is this amazing creative, super insightful, like I could see myself there. The ski pass was like a lifestyle choice, it was like, I'm gonna not get paid anything but it would be amazing because I'd ski every freaking day. And then the last one was, man, there's a small business, I could get sweat equity. What an interesting choice that you had to make there. It was super bizarre, you know, super bizarre. And Rick, who I had worked for him for about a year.  We had just landed the Costco account. And so it was kind of this tough decision but it ultimately came down to like, I was learning the most at Little Hotty's Hand Warmers, business wise, strategy wise. And so I literally took Chase's offer and then went back to Rick and I was like, hey, I got this job offer from this guy over here to make this much money, like, you know, can you beat it?  So that was, it was actually kind of cool to like leverage it back against Rick. So I ended up working at Little Hotty's Hand Warmers from 2006, 2009. 2009, we ended up selling the brand to a company on the East Coast, had a good exit, made some money from that. And so that's ultimately how I started Mirror was, I took the money that I'd made from the sweat equity at Little Hotty's Hand Warmers and started off with Mirror. What were some of the things that you learned from that company? You said that you made it sound like they were better as far as the three, as far as the structure of the company and what you could get from it. What were some of the things that you took from it that have now probably benefited you from Mirror? Oh man, you know, I got so lucky and it's funny too, because we have interns and they're fantastic, right? But like at the age of 1920, I was flying to China with Rick first and then it was like me, it was just me going to China to work with our suppliers because Rick had to go into China.  He's like, I had it under control. And he's like, you earned it, man.  You know, like that was probably the biggest thing of listening to Rick, listening to people who have more advice. And I think one of the biggest takeaways from Little Hotty's Hand Warmers was not getting preconceived notions kind of stuck in your head. And what I mean by that was the success of Little Hotty's Hand Warmers was predicated upon the fact that Rick was the first person to go to China to source a hand warmer. And you're like, what's so special about a hand warmer in China? Well, two companies, it was a small industry. There were two other companies. They had both hammered out. One was specialty and one was mass. One made it in America and one made it in Japan. And China had been making hand warmers for 20 years as well. So these companies were 20 years old, kind of in their lanes. Rick comes along, it's another long story. He figures out how to source a hand warmer from China. But the biggest difference we found out was none of these other two competitors had ever gone to China. They had, they'd gotten samples from these factories. But in Asia, they liked a long soothing heat. And in America, we liked a six hour blazing hot heat. And so Rick just said, well, can you change the formula? Whereas our competitors were like, oh, it's China, it's cheap. They make shitty products. We're not sourcing from there. So without even asking. Yeah, without even asking. Wow. And that made a big difference. Multi-multi-multi-million dollar mistake on both those brands. Because we ate their lunch for three years. Wow. I mean, literally the price of our hand warmers was astronomically cheaper than their cost. I mean, it wasn't even fair. Like literally, we just cleaned house for three years. And then sold the company. Because it was 2009, the economy started changing. Actually, we had been approached by our competitor and another company before the market started melting down. So we're in negotiations. We chose this other company that wasn't our competitor because they had a better offer and a better kind of exit deal. The economy's melting down as we sold the company. So it was one of those things where like, we had really, really lucky timing. Because if we had not sold it, we would have figured out how to stay in business. But man, those were scary times. 2009, like everything's melting down. Now, what brings you to, what brought you to Mir at this point? Yeah. So the idea was, so Rick and I, we sold little Hottie's hand warmers. He had a one year earn out where he had to be there for an entire year or maybe it was two years. We negotiated it where like, we kind of made it look like I wasn't that strategic because I was gonna go off and start the next business. And then Rick after that was gonna come and join me. And so we started looking at SIG bottles. The Swiss like fuel canisters that turned into bottles and they were like 30 bucks at REI and Rick and I are like, are you kidding me? These things are just a bottle. Now was it the lesson that you learned from China that made you kind of think like that? Yeah. Where you were just like, this is so overpriced. Yeah, I was like, this is overpriced. We can do better. And I was like, and then I started researching and now Jean was super popular. I grew up on now jeans. And I was like plastic, you know, there's some things about BPA that are coming out. The SIG bottle was aluminum, which is toxic, but then they wrapped it in a plastic liner. So you have this aluminum bottle with a plastic liner and I'm like, that doesn't make very much sense. So then we started looking at the stainless steel market.  And this is 2009. So this is before, I mean, there's so many bottles in the market. Now there is. Now there is, yeah. So this is 2009 that we started working on the brand. And so I was like, you know what? I'm gonna head off and do this.  And so ultimately it ended up Rick left and did his own thing. He has a super successful brand that he sells in Nicosco and Amazon. But we talk weekly and it's fun because we have different perspectives. What is that? What is he doing? It's called Cascade Mountain Tech.   He's a Costco ninja. Like he just, he's a product guy. Like he comes in and he's just like, he'll look at something on the shelf and be like, I can do it for better, faster, cheaper. And then he does it. Costco must love it. Oh my gosh, she is. I mean, so he's like, he's built a good brand but I'm on the opposite end. So you know, I don't know exactly what his margins are, but you know, he's on thin margins but he just knows how to hustle it through Costco. And that's his model and just absolutely throttles it.  And then on our end, not that we're not strategic but we're more on the branded side. You know, we're on a premium branded product.  And like that's our angle that we're going after. Now over the course of this, the 10 years that you've been building this, have there been, have there been major milestones of things that you've implemented or started doing example, i.e. like the podcasting?  Have you noticed that? Yeah, you know, I think, I think reflecting backs, we started the water bottle similar to this one on the table. You know, and I think one of the things that is my superpower is basically looking and observing the market and seeing either what's missing or where the opportunity is, right? So like the camp cup for us, for example, everybody had those grandpa's enamel, those enamel and grandpa cups that you go camping with, right?  They're cool to look in, they're nostalgic because your grandfather used them, but like they're not functional. And I was like, these things like could be so much better. Always had my coffee and a ceramic cup. That's great, but then you gotta throw in the microwave. You gotta throw in the microwave. You gotta throw in the microwave after it cools down, right? So I was like, why don't we just make a badass camp cup and kind of replace that. So that, and that was like one of our, this is one of our most successful products. And then, and that was like three years ago we launched it and Hydrofloss just launched theirs like six months ago, yet he just launched theirs. So things like that, it's like paying attention, observing is like where we've seen kind of the needle move for the business. Some little things like we became a certified B Corp. B Corps are kind of a layered on assessment for your company. So any for-profit company can become a B Corp. And so it stands for Benefit Corporation. So you take this massive assessment about customer supply chain, governance, employee retention, diversity within workforce. And you get the score out of 200 points. If you score above an 80, you can be a B Corp. We're like a 117, like Ben and Jerry's B Corp. Patagonia was a founding member of B Corp. Now what are the real advantages for a company to do that? Yeah, I mean, I think it's, I think now it's still super niche, it's getting there. But you'll see, you'll see in Whole Foods a lot. You'll see it on like some of the premium brands of like organic, non-GMO, a lot of healthcare or a lot of beauty supplies that are like non-cruelty, things like that. Who grades it? Who scores it? So there's B Lab. So B Lab is this nonprofit, I think they're out of San Francisco and New York and they have this massive assessment. I mean, the amount of questions is unbelievable. And then you- I've never heard of this. Yeah, you should check it out. You guys should be, you should check it out. But there's this like-minded group. So like I was in Portland at this B Corp conference speaking, but then you meet other people.  So it's very community-minded. So we decided, it's funny because they tracked us down at a trade show. They're like, you guys should be a B Corp. I'm like, you know, that's interesting. But we have this give code on the bottom of our product, customer registers that we show them exactly where we're giving, how much money we're giving. Like we're already transparent. And they're like, yeah, but we're a third party. We can help certify that you're doing good. And I was like, I don't know. And so we ended up filling out the assessment and I forgot about it or something. And Andy called me up from B Corp. And he was like, hey, you've got like a week or it's gonna expire. And I was like, all right, fine, I'll fill it out. So we fill it out, we get certified. And I kid you not like, a month later, Patagonia emailed us. Oh, wow. And they emailed us and they go, at first, we didn't have a phone number on our website at the time. So like it was just an email address because there was like three of us, right? We're like- See Taylor, not everybody has a great website right off the gates, bro. See that? A lot of multi-million dollar companies start off with a shitty website, Taylor. Interesting.  I'm like, bro, priorities, dude, right now. Oh man. Yeah, we're changing. If it's selling, it's cool, right? Right, we're changing the world right now. Let's fix that. We'll go back and look cool later. We'll clean it up. Yeah, we'll clean it up later. We at least had our phone number on there, you understand? Yeah, we had our phone number. I don't know what the hell we're thinking. So we get this email from Paul, who's a good friend of mine now, and Paul's like, hey, this is Paul from Patagonia. Not sure if you've ever heard of us. No, not at all right now. And I was like, and I'm like crapping my pants in the office. You know, Hayley, our customer service gal, was like, someone from Patagonia just emailed us?   And this kind of points back to like, my parents could have easily decked us out in Patagonia, you know, but we were in like Columbia, like everything was on sale that they bought, you know? So it was like, I aspired to buy Patagonia because it was the best, you know? And so like, when I had my own money, started buying Patagonia because I'm like, I want to buy the best, right?  Right, right, right. Are they, are they? Making more Columbia. Are there any tax benefits to be? Are you being in a B Corp or anything like that?   Like, like, let's say, let's say like, you guys are like, how do we, how do we give back in our business?  We want to really instill fitness in urban areas where there's not much activity. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And so you create a special mind pump, fitness package for people living in like this zip code, and it's super discounted because you believe fitness will help transform their lives. That would actually be part of their, part of the assessment where you would get points for selling to underserved communities at a reduced price or something like that. So like, they're, they're super creative ways because you have everything from like banking to products to services. Yeah, interesting. Yeah, because this is the direction we've been talking about going where we want to figure out how we can give back through charity or through something like that. Now is the goal for you to just maintain that over 80? Are you always trying to increase that score? Yeah, that's what's, that's, that's where like I think the cool factor of this is is that there's a baseline of assessment for all companies to take. And then you're kind of competing against yourselves and you're competing against others. So like Clean Canteen, one of our competitors, they have a 99 out of 200, 100 out of 100 or 200. Anyway, we're better than them. In case you didn't get something. Bottom, bottom line. That's the bottom line in there.   They'll be like, oh yeah, Clean's a beat corpse too. I'm like, they sure are. And we're sure better than them. But when that happens, like when we compete against each other in that capacity. Really serving others and helping others. Everybody, like their employees are better for it. Our employees are better for it. So it's really this cool thing where like every year we're like, all right, how are we going to get better? Like, and some stuff you just, you're like, I can't answer this. Like when we first started, we had a desk inside of a company, inside of a company. So it's like, how are we going to manage or measure our energy usage? Not, you know, like NA, so you don't get any points on that.  So like our flagship stores in a lead platinum certified building, I don't know if you guys noticed the little signs above the urinals that say rainwater, don't drink. Yeah. Like why would I drink out of urinal? Yeah, cause that's why I like to get my water. Yeah. Yeah. I'm so glad they put the sign there. Yeah. So that, you know, that was kind of a noticeable marker of us becoming a B Corp. And part of it was just serendipitous. Patagonia reached out at the same time.  Like it authenticated what we are already doing. Did you, did you fund MIR when you first started out of your own money? Did you have, okay, so now when did you start profiting?  Oh yeah, four years.  Four years. So what are you, like nothing? Nothing. Yeah. So we basically, so I, so I wanted to give from day one. So we were gonna, we were giving at the time, we give now 3% of revenue and we were giving about 3% to 5% of our revenue. Because back in 2010, we were giving a dollar for every bottle.  Or you know what I mean? So we kind of normalized it to revenue because like a dollar on a growler is way less than a percentage than a dollar of a pint cup that's five bucks, right? So we normalized the 3% of revenue recently. So we built in giving from day one. So right away. So right away. Yeah, it was almost like cost of goods, you know? Like we're gonna bake this into our model and not think about it like at the end of the year, if there's anything left we're gonna give. Because I knew that there wouldn't be anything less for years to come. Because anything that we were gonna make was gonna go right back into the company. Sure. Because we're looking at the long-term view, you know? It's like, we're playing the long game here. We're not trying to flip it in three years or 10 years or whatever. So it's so important that people understand that because people might look at Mirror Now and be like, oh shit, great company, it's big, you know, it's successful, making a lot of money.   Oh yeah. And it's important people understand that because I think a lot of people, especially today, I'm looking at statistics now and for the first time in a long time, more kids now wanna be entrepreneurs than before. It's like a new thing. Like I wanna be an entrepreneur. Yeah, it's like a popular thing. It is, and I know why. You know, obviously tech lowers the barrier into the market and they see a lots of popular, you know, entrepreneurs that are coming out through social media and stuff like that. But they don't realize like, unless you're extremely lucky, you're probably gonna be really poor and work a lot for a while. It's gonna break you. And everybody thinks about like overnight successes, right? I mean like Mind Pump, right? Three-year overnight success, right? But it wasn't those three years because like think of all the stuff you were doing before that that all led up to this, right?  I'm like, bro, 10-year overnight success, you know? So yeah, I mean, for us, it was just eating it for four years. Any time during those four years where you were contemplating like, fuck, maybe we're not gonna do this thing, dude. Were you ever like that? Or did you always like, it's okay.  I can see the long goal. Or were you like at one point going, fuck, this might not reevaluate again.  The way we had set it up, so I think I'm trying to remember how much I made from little hotties, like 100 grand or something like that. Literally put it straight into the business over those four years. And my wife was working at Morgan Stanley at the time. So she was bringing home the bacon. So that's how people are like, how did you make it work? How did you pay rent? It's like, well, my wife paid rent. She wrote the checks. So that was huge. I mean, for her to be able to make money. And then eventually, after we started becoming profitable, she came over to the business, and now we work together, which is super fun. But there was a point, maybe we share this on the phone, but there was a point in 2012. So this was before Patagonia. As soon as Patagonia signed up, I was like, off to the races. Like, if Patagonia's signing on to what we're doing, like, we can make this work. Yeah, that's validation. And we had, so Becca in college had nannied for Jason Kyler, who was the founder of Hulu. So we beta tested Hulu back in 2009. That's crazy. Which is crazy. So we were over at their house having dinner or something, and he was like, hey, I've been working on the secret project. Couldn't tell you about it. Were you that impressed when you first saw it? I was like, oh, this is cool. You don't have to like, because I always thought the idea of cable was ludicrous, right? As soon as you saw YouTube, you're like, why doesn't everybody do this? So for it, I was like, this is brilliant. You can watch your shows whenever you want. On my time. On my time? And then I was like, how did you get all these networks to agree? And I mean, that guy's a gangster. The amount of deals that he had probably put together to get everybody to be in the same room is super impressive. They're really accelerating right now. It's fun to watch them. They're killing the game. They're killing it. So there was a point where Jason had reached out through somebody in the organization and said, hey, there's this opening. We think you'd be really good for it. It's in Santa Barbara, or Santa, no, sorry, Santa Monica. And it was at the time where I was like, man. Like, I want to see this through. And I'm kind of like, I put a bunch of money in this. But man, Hulu's taking off. We could move to SoCal for a couple years, see what it's like there. We've been living in the rain.  See now, why didn't you? Why didn't you make that? Because a lot of times, I think people look at entrepreneurs, and just some entrepreneurs are like this, where they're driven by opportunity. Money, opportunity and money. Like, I read this article once. I thought it was absolutely brilliant. And it talks about entrepreneurship and how there's an element of artistry and entrepreneurship. And people, they made a scale and they said, you know, on one end of the scale, you have artists, on the other end of the scale, you have pure entrepreneurs. And a pure entrepreneur is someone that builds up businesses and sells them and doesn't really care, just wants to make the money and take that. And that's also, that's very valuable to society. And that's just a different type of person. Then you have artists who believe in what they're doing so much that they'll do it forever, making almost no money because they believe so heavily in what they're doing. So they tend to not take those kinds of opportunities. And sometimes we see successes like that, but we don't see a lot as a failure. Cause obviously if you mirror your idea for too long, sometimes, yeah. So what made you not go to Hulu?  Obviously it's a big company now. What made you decide to stick with mirror and make no money? You know, I should, that's a good question. I should go back and look at my email and see what I wrote back to them. Cause I remember writing back to like one of the hiring managers as to why. Oh really? Yeah, I should pull up here. But you know, I think it was a gut check. It was, it was how much do I actually believe in this? You know, and I think ultimately part of the reason I'd created my own company because the idea to me that like having to show up in an office at 8am and leaving at five or six and getting two weeks paid vacation was ludicrous. Oh yeah. I was like, that sounds awful. Yeah. You know, and we're trying to be as flexible as we can within our own organization.  Like just get the job done. You know, so, and the challenge is then you have to like really define the job. So they know what they're supposed to be doing. But I think that was part of it too. I was like, I really thought through it and I was like, okay, Southern California is really expensive and I'm going to have to like be confined to this corporate work environment, which isn't necessary. It's not bad, you know, it's, it's Just not for you. It just wasn't for me. So I think, I think that was part of it. You know, How important is autonomy to you being able to control your own destiny? Super important. Just being able to like see, like see a path and then be able to pursue it. I mean, that's probably the greatest satisfaction of running your own company is that like you get to set goals, meet it and achieve it. Like, like just this morning, I kid you not, I'm in the security line and somebody in front of me has a mirror bottle in their backpack. And it almost happens every time. Do you say something? Do you like, hey. It's hit and miss. Like sometimes if they're like busy. Yeah, yeah, yeah. How do you like it?  Oh yeah. Yeah, mine too. I'll see you later. Yeah. Usually it's, I'm like, hey, nice bottle. And it's, it's funny too. Cause most people are like, oh thanks. Like. I have no idea who you are. Yeah. Majority of no idea. And every once in a while I'm like, hey, nice bottle. And they're like, wait, didn't you start mirror? And I'm like, yeah, yeah, yeah, I did.  You know, we selfie it out. And that's, that's. That's great. That's so, selfie it out. Never heard that term before. We don't hug it out. We selfie it out. But, you know, that autonomy is so important, I think too. It's funny. I had a conversation a long time ago with a friend of mine. I've been an entrepreneur since I was 22 or 23. So real young and we were having this conversation and he's like, man, he's like, you know, it sounds cool, but I could never do it because it's so risky and statistically, you know, you fail and, you know, I like having the security of working for someone else, knowing when I can take my vacation time and knowing that I'm going to get paid certain amount. But for me, it feels the opposite. If it's like working for someone else, I'm not in control necessarily what's going on. Like I feel like if I work for me, if I succeed or fail, it's much more determined on me. Like, so I feel more secure in that sense. Is that, do you identify with that? Or does that resonate with you? Total 100%. And I think that's the great part of that. I think that's what helps make the world go around, right? Like we need people who want to be number two and want to be number 10 at the company, you know? And I think that's the challenge of this day and age while information and technology has been democratized. And so there's access to it. Like anybody can like use their iPhone, source something from Alibaba, flip it on eBay, flip it on Amazon and make some money and that's great. But like to truly be an entrepreneur, like stick it out and like see something and it's not for everybody and that's okay. You know, I think that's the misconception now is like, it's glamorized of like, oh, you get to work for yourself and you get to make more money and blah, blah, blah. Like most of that isn't true.  You're paying everybody else.  But the way I've told people is I'm unemployable. And I don't mean the unemployable in a sense that I don't have skills and whatever. I'm unemployable that I just don't want to work for anybody else. I'm motivated by that. Yeah, and I think that that's a... What do you guys see that's really different now because what's neat, I love getting in a room where there's this many entrepreneurs that have been doing it for as long.   Like that's really different today about building a business than what it was like building as a kid that's completely opposite or different than what we were when we were younger. I mean, for starters, it's like cool now, which is good and bad.  That's just an observation. Like people think it's cool to be an entrepreneur.  Like it's not for everybody, you know? And that... It's not for most people. And it's not, yeah, I'd even go as far as it's not for most people. And that's okay, you know? He always talks about it's better to be number seven at Facebook than number one at Nobook, you know? Like, if money is, you know, if money is your sole thing. But I think that one of the biggest things is access to everything, right? You have access to factories. You have access to online, you know? If you want to start a company that does a million a year. And again, I don't want to sound arrogant that like anybody can do it. But literally, like if you have a decent idea and there's a significant amount of customers out there and you can show up with a quality product and serve the customer, you'll probably make it to close to a million dollars. And there's nothing wrong with a nice book of business of a quarter of a million dollars, million dollars. And you can do it from your phone. The whole four hour work week with Tim Ferriss, I mean, he admits that the title is basically to sell books, but the concept of being able to work anywhere in the world. Like I have a buddy who like lives in Thailand and sells coconut oil and travels the world and sources coffee and loud. Like, you couldn't do that 10 years. Dude, Brian, I tell you, like- Liberating. If you were to view it as a picture, the barrier to enter the market before, 15 years, 20 years ago, was massive. Like you had to start a storefront, what it cost you. Six figures to invest to start this thing, then to float it and then you're limited by the amount of reach that you have. Today, look at the equipment that we have in this studio to record video, audio, quality stuff. 20, 30 years ago, this equipment would have cost close to seven figures. Yeah, totally. Today it's like, if you got 10 grand, you could probably buy amazing, amazing video and recording equipment. And maybe even less. Doug's probably thinking, that's a lot of money. And it's true. Well, not really. We spent a little more on that. But you just bought a drone for that. Well, dude, the camera on your phone, how much would that quality have cost 10 years ago? I mean, we started this business. We don't share this often, but we all put $1,000 in. That's awesome. I love that. Everybody put $1,000 in and we didn't pay ourselves for a very long time. Over a year. Yeah, and I think that's the biggest difference is if you wanna be an entrepreneur, and I think that word entrepreneur has expanded, which is fine. Like people who wanna own their own destiny. So like, you have gym owners and people that wanna be like, there's now a wider spectrum of entrepreneurs of like people who are self starters or wanna work for themselves. It's almost like the consultant is kind of creeped in entrepreneur, which is totally fine. If you wanna be an quote unquote entrepreneur, now more than ever, there is no excuse not to try, at least try it. Because here's the reality.  Are you, do you have a fear of failure at all? Are you cool with it? No, you know, it's funny.  And by no means do I ever want Mirror to not exist and we wanna keep growing and doing well. But I am 100% comfortable that if Mirror goes bankrupt tomorrow and I have to move in with my in-laws and eat rice and beans for a year to get back onto my feet, like I'm honestly okay with that. And it sounds weird like people are like, I wouldn't live in my in-laws. But like, I honestly am okay with that. If I had to live in their guest bedroom, Sienna has to sleep in our same room. I'm totally fine with that. I think that's what makes you feel, that attitude is what makes you feel, not fearless but okay with being afraid. You know what I'm saying? Like, it's almost like you're, you know. Oh, getting comfortable with the worst case scenario. Yeah, it's like getting in a boxing match. Like you're okay with getting punched because you know that's part of the fight and you're gonna hit the guy harder or whatever. You have to be okay with getting punched and expect that it's gonna happen. And you're not gonna make decisions based on fear. Now the check is you have to have people around you who are like, let's make, let's make good risk. Like our CFO always talks about good risk. Like there's bad risk where it's like, too many product lines, too many- Calculated. Yeah, calculated risk of like, you know what, we're gonna ramp up inventory because we're seeing this trend happen. That's probably a good risk to take if you wanna grow your business. Now how important Ryan, do you think it is for you to have staffed or people around you that actually would run a business differently than you or have different type of strategies or mindset? We talked earlier about the, Sal brought up the artist and then the, what'd you say the other person? Just in pure entrepreneur. Yeah, just in pure entrepreneur where they would wanna flip it, sell it, just make it profitable. Do you have people within your company that are like that that are kind of polar opposites? Oh man, yeah, we had a great, great, I don't call it an argument, it was more of like heated discussion recently with our leadership team. And it was fantastic because we have one of our leadership team members who is so seasoned, such a brilliant guy.  So like super duper ops guy and super process it oriented. And they have me on the other end who's like, I love room for serendipity and coincidence and like the flexibility. More artist side. Yeah, so a little bit more of the artist side. And so something in the middle is probably a healthy balance for us. And so Nick's always pushing for like more purpose and meetings and why are we doing this and structure, structure, structure, which can be good. And I'm kind of more of the antithesis of that of like, yeah, we need a good process and whatnot, but also like things happen when you don't have every minute planned to a T, right? So there's kind of a good middle ground, I'd say our CFO is kind of in that middle ground. And the thing that like connects those two pieces together for us is basically being able to trust each other. And that's cause if Nick and I don't trust each other it's not gonna work. But if we trust each other and the rest of the team trust each other we're gonna meet somewhere in the middle about how are we gonna move forward? How are we gonna make decisions? What product are we gonna launch next? It's that open communication. It's that you encourage the disagreement. I love that. I think that we've built that within this company too. It's respect.  And I think it's super pissed, you know? Well, I mean it's gonna hurt my ego and all it does, right? But I respect them enough to stop and be like, okay, well, I respect them. They're smart people. Maybe they're right. So let me consider what they're saying. And I think that's important. That's excuse me. So far the businesses that we've met in this podcast allows us the opportunity to meet some really incredible companies and businesses. And so far the most successful ones are the ones that we really enjoy working with the most have a blend of that. Like you can clearly see like there's the artist there's the business guy and there's the organized person. The accountant over here. Yeah, and they all kind of understand that and work together and respect each other. And I think that's an important aspect. Well, I learned that lesson in like my early 20s like leading teams of people that were between 20, 30 people underneath me. And early on in my early 20s, I had a lot of success by myself. And so I would seek out others like me and try and develop them to be as good as me. And that burned a lot of people out and I had to work really hard all the time. I was still successful, but I found that it was a lot of work for me to do that. When I started to look at my staff and my team more like a football team and recognize this is my quarterback, this is my wide receivers, my running, but this is my defensive end like and how different all those players on a team are. And to be okay with that, I can't I know that even though we're all going in the same direction, my defensive end is not going to know how to quarterback the ball. So don't try and force it. And you don't want them to. Right. And you don't want them to and to be okay with those different positions. It took me a while before piece of it. Once I did, I realized how much more success I had and then how much easier the success came. So I think a lot of people make that mistake. I think we try and hire or try and look for people that all agree with us or have the same exact vision where, I think where we're at we're more seasoned entrepreneurs that we know that, listen, I want the guy who thinks completely different than me and then the other guy who's polar opposite and I want to pit them against each other and I want us to be able to take the greatest parts of each of them and then together the company grows. Absolutely. But Brian, what are some of the biggest mistakes you've made so far? You guys have been in business now for 10 years. You're successful.  We have so many good ones. I think like the most boneheaded mistake that probably like quantifiably, you can actually be like, this cost us this much money is so funny. It's so embarrassing. I've only shared this a few times. So this would be good to share again because it's just like, it's super humiliating. So we had, so in addition to bottles, at one point we also had a bike line that we sold to REI. We had kind of commuter bags. We had journals. So we had this kind of active lifestyle portfolio and then since then we've focused which has been kind of a good, so not a mistake because we've had some really good nuance with some of those product lines of like how we grew the company. It was interesting and intriguing but we've really gone, okay, what do we world class at? Let's lean into that, right? And let's focus on that. Great lesson right there by the way. Yeah, just really leaning into that. But my fear was that everybody was getting the bottles. So I was like, oh, we gotta pivot and do all these other products. And in fact, it's like, no, no, no. Even if everybody's getting into it, we're still the best, right? Like don't just get shaken just because other people are copying Hydra or you or Yeti or whatever. But one of the most bonehead mistakes I made, I think this is like, gosh, 2013, 14. So we were making this kid's balance bikes, you know those bikes without training wheels. It was a super successful product that we were selling in REI. Every bike that we sold would help get refugees in the US or like kids who couldn't afford bikes on a bike. So like super noble, message resonated, really good margin, really good product for REI. And this is just wild that this happened. So our supplier in China, most suppliers don't have like at bikefactory.com. It's like, they have like Yahoo, but it's called 123. So. What do you mean, what does that mean? Meaning like over here, you guys have like, Adam at mindbuttmedia.com, right? Right, right. Over there, it's usually like at yahoo.com or at 123 is like a yahoo over there. So they have these emails. So a lot of people don't have company emails. Oh, I see. At factories, if you're like at Starbucks, yeah you have a Starbucks email address over in China, right?  And here it's perceived as like not professional. Right, right. Over there, no one cares. Got it, got it. And we had been communicating over this email address, my email address, their email address. Their email got hacked. So their email address was literally like a string of eight digits at somethingsomething.com. They hacked their email address somehow, sent them an email that said, hey, this is Brian from Mir, my email address has changed to BPmirsomethingsomethingatmirgmail.com. Something where you're like, what the fuck? Like my email would never change to that. Right, but they didn't think anything of it. They didn't think anything of it, they're like, okay, so they started emailing this fake email address. What? And then from that fake email address, they started sending out messages to me that was one digit off of their email address. So then they started hacking you? No, so I never got hacked. They had an intermediary account. So they intercepted the factory, said my email address changed. So this factory's emailing this fake email account. That's not me. Then they're taking their emails, copying them and pasting them, and sending them from the new email address that they created that looked like theirs. With one number off. With one number off. With such a long digit. So like our threads literally like never changed. You know how Google lumps threads? So our emails were on Google. So like all the messaging was still in the same thread even though the email was changed by one digit. I have to say that's brilliant. It was brilliant hacking. And so literally for six months, we got messages back and forth. Photos, PO, or maybe it was like a couple months. It might have been shorter than that. Literally a copy and pasting our responses back and forth. And then as soon as we had to wire money for some of the product, I got an email and I said, hey, just want to let you know on the perform invoice, the bank account has slightly changed. We moved a lot of the deal. And it was one of those things where like, I always sent test money to accounts with a new factory, always. And it was one of those things where like, oh, no problem, cool. Sends to the bank and they like, hey, new bank account on my gear, it's fine. They call me, hey, do you want to authorize $10,000 to this factory? I'm like, yeah, send it, whatever. And three days later, like we haven't received your payment. And I'm like, what? Yeah, it's out of my account. I sent it. And they're like, no, no, no, you haven't sent it. And I was like, no, I sent it. And they're like, no, no, we haven't received it. I'm like, release the goods. Cause like with shipping, there's a bill of lady and they can release it, blah, blah, blah. And so we're like, I'm like, what? And this factory didn't speak very good English.  So I called up, I called my buddy Ellis and I'm like, Ellis, you gotta get on the phone with these guys and figure out what's going on. So we're on the phone and it's like just yelling back and forth, you know, in Chinese. And Ellis is like, they're saying they sent it. I'm like, they didn't send it. And then all of a sudden I'm like, I'm looking through my emails and I finally find like the email where they like the digit changed.  I just got scammed. And so we, so we started to get to the bottom of it. And they're like, deep scammed. Oh, it was, it was crazy. So anyway. You got it. I kind of handed it. I'm like, you got me. You did a good job. You can keep my money. Yeah, you can keep it. So we ended up, we ended up splitting the factory because my, my preface was like, yo, your email got hacked. That's your problem. And they're like, yeah, but you sent the money without calling us.  So what happened? Did you, did they get away with the money? They got away. So Ellis was like, wow, it worked. Your net, like we contacted the bank of, you know, wherever we wired it, China, you're never gonna see that money again. Wow.  Those motherfuckers. Wow.    Listening to that story, like I could have got had the same way. I mean, who's going and actually going scam. Yeah. I have a buddy that and people are more privy to it now, but I had a buddy who got a call from someone was like, this is the IRS. You owe us back taxes. This and that we're gonna, yeah. And they went back and forth and he ended up giving them like eight grand over the phone to pay his taxes. And the problem with this, the reason why he gave into it is because I think a lot of people. It's the fear. Yeah. They kind of cheat a little bit or lie a little bit. So then they feel guilty and they fearful.  Well, they got me. Four grand, I just gotta get out of this, okay? Oh, that's it? Yeah. It was like 20. Exactly, dude. They gave him like eight grand or something like that. Oh my gosh. What's the other one they do where they, the people email you like, oh, I'm stranded over in Europe right now with I lost my, I got stolen. They call that the Nigerian. Yeah, the Nigerian prince or whatever. Yeah. Yeah. If you help me release my money, I'll give you half of my view. Yeah, yeah. Okay. I know people have been. That sounds real. That sounds realistic. Wow, that's crazy.  What is this organization? What do you guys do? Yeah, so what we committed to from day one was we were giving back to Clean Water around the world. So part of the genesis, part of the story is, 2009 when I started, I was like, all right, we're gonna make bottles. And I was like, what are we gonna give back to? And I honestly had no idea. I knew bottles, I saw the opportunity, saw the market opportunity there. And then from where we were gonna give, I was like, I have no idea what we're gonna give to and something, right? And so Hulu, we're beta testing Hulu in what, February 2009. And Jason Kyler had given ad space to Scott Harrison who started Charity Water, which is this really great nonprofit in New York that's addressing the clean water crisis. And so Scott had made this ad that was basically a billion people lack access to clean water and you can help. And it's super affordable. And it was one of the things where you're like, oh man, water bottles, clean water, like, made sense. Let's do this, you know? And so that was kind of the very start was like, hey, we're gonna give back to clean water. Let's give a dollar per bottle because that can make material difference in someone's life in Africa, Southeast Asia, Central America. And so that was kind of the start of it, of clean water. And then from there, it's kind of crazy how we ended up getting to Liberia. So our first giving project was actually, well, maybe our first giving project was Charity Water. So we started funding Charity Water, started sending them money for our sales. I called them up and I said, hey, I wanna go and experience what other people experience. Like, I feel like it's inauthentic for me to talk about giving people clean water when I've never met these people or experienced their struggle. I would love to go on a trip and experience this. And they're like, we don't do donor trips. I was like, oh, bummer, that's, okay, boom, close door. And then that summer, so right as we launched the brand in 2010, so I'm talking to Charity Water because I wanted to pre-fund it. I was like, I wanted to get some good going. So basically I ponied up five grand for clean water and I was like, all right, I know we're gonna sell this much I didn't know, I just had an assumption that I'd sell us much. So we're at this photo shoot and my buddy John Keatley, who is a amazing portrait photographer, he's done the portrait photography for like Howard Schultz book cover, Jeff Bezos, Sarah Palin, it's photographed Annie Leveritz, tons of people, really famous guy. And we went to school together and he called me up and was like, hey, I heard you guys, you're launching a business, I'd love to help you out. And so we wanna do this funny ad campaign. If you actually go to Google and Google Waterbeard or Mirror Waterbeard, we had this idea of like making fun of Nalgene because we were making the bottle so you wouldn't spill water on your face.  So we started taking these photos and at the photo shoot, this gal that John knew who was one of the models, Courtney, she goes, I love what you guys are talking about. Oh, there it is. Yeah, there you go. Yeah, that's Courtney. So we were, that's actually really cool. So you see the Nalgene down on the corner, knocking them, respect, I grew up on Nalgene's. But Courtney goes, hey, I'm not really into networking, but my brother-in-law builds wells in Liberia, like you should talk to him. I'm like, all right, so I'll talk to Darryl. He lived in Seattle, he was a full-time firefighter and on the side he had started this nonprofit building wells in Liberia. How cool. And he'd been doing it for like 10, 20 years. His grandparents were missionaries there for like 40 years. And so when he went over to go visit his grandparents, he was like, what do you need? Like, what is the thing that you need besides Jesus? And they were like clean water. And he's like, all right, I'm gonna start raising money for clean water. So he started doing all these clean water projects. So anyway, Darryl and I, we chat and he goes, hey, I'm going in February, do you wanna go? And I was like, I'd love to go. And so we knew that we'd fund two water projects based on sales. So my dad, my wife, John Keatley and one of my first employees, Travis, who Taylor, you're like his doppelganger. Like, you look like Travis Walls. Everybody needs a Taylor. Everybody needs a Taylor. Yeah, Google Travis Walls. And so we went there and it was like, it was an unbelievable experience. Not only like how we got there, but just like to go there and meet the people that Darryl had been working with for years and years. And so that was kind of the start of it. But we learned a lot there because we'd walk around Buchanan, which is about two hours outside of Monrovia on the coast. And you'd see wells, clean water wells and kind of pits everywhere. And you're like, why don't these work? And they're like, oh, well, you know, UN would come in, dig a well and leave. Nobody knows how to keep it going. Nobody knows how to keep it going. Nobody knows how to fix it. Such a common problem. And you're like, holy cow, you hear about this and then you go and experience it. And you're like, this is embarrassing. Here's all this well-intentioned work just going to waste. And I think it's a super high-status, like 50% of water projects fail within the first couple of years. That's crazy. Well, it's like you're giving them something and then you're not preparing them on how to, or teaching them how to maintain it. And this is a common problem with charities. Totally. Is it Haiti, where we destroyed the rice market? Oh yeah, 100%. Completely killed there, because they had a relatively thriving. Yeah, they had a marketplace. You know, a rice market.  So all the businesses and stuff that grew rice and harvested and whatever, went out of business. And then the people there now don't have rice. Once that rice runs out. And farmers stop farming in the Lansies or something like that. Happened in Africa too. We just gave them so much food that now a couple of generations have gone by that don't know how to farm. And so now they're not, they don't know how to maintain. So what do you guys do differently? Do you guys go in there and train? Yeah, so I mean, it's finding good partners first and foremost. And I think that's potentially a big difference between us and other social enterprises is that when people are like, oh, me, are you building wells? No, what we do is like we make, design and manufacture and sell the best possible product in the world. And that's what we focus on. The giving aspect of it comes out of our desire to be generous as a company. And then we choose nonprofits based on like really strict criteria of like durability, sustainability. How long have they been on nonprofit? What is their results? What is their failure rate? And so two of our nonprofits, Splash and Water First, both have like 98% success rates over the last decade. How do they rate the success rate? So they literally have- If the well keeps going, I would imagine. Yeah, it keeps going, if it's still working. Splash has this incredible system. I can't remember if it's like Salesforce or Tableau on the back end, but you can literally go onto their website and look at the well and see how much water came out of it like yesterday. Or it might even be live. So it's like technology now with like, with just like internet, solar, you can literally get this information like almost real time, which is really cool as far as transparency, accountability, it's huge. So part of it's just picking really good partners. And the really good partners are the ones who are there, who hire locals.  Like that's the complete wrong mentality. So it's going in finding partners who actually know how to implement solutions, how to train on solutions. Did you have to vet a lot of other companies before you found those? Or did you have connections? So it's like, you got to check this company out.  At first, like everybody's like, oh, clean water, we do it.   Maybe we shouldn't. Like, here's a good failure. We funded a water project in, it was a super small project. It was like, I can't remember, like a grand or something like that. It was in Laos. And one of our buddies had been doing it in Laos and successful water project worked. Then the government came in and literally moved the village to somewhere else. For some reason, I don't know if they're logging or whatever else literally moved the entire village out of there. So now this clean water project, it probably works, but like the government moved the village, right?  What does sustainability look like? What does it look like on the ground? Like, who are they hiring? What's the end goal, right? Like, do they want to be there forever? Do they not want to be there forever? How do they basically hand the keys over as fast as possible in a sustainable way to the local communities? Do you still visit or do you ever visit these communities that you guys are? Yeah, yeah, absolutely. So we were, our team was just in Honduras. I wasn't able to make that trip in February. So they were down there in February. I think the last trip I was on was in Myanmar, which was unbelievable experience. That was two years ago, I think, right before our daughter was born. We were in Myanmar, which Cyclone Nargis 2008, I think was when it happened. That massive cyclone came through unbelievable devastation. Literally like this, like near the Bay of Bengal, the sea swelled up to like 12 feet. And when it's already like sea level, you know, you're basically on like roofs.  And you're like, what? And you realize that some of these communities like half the population. So 500 people, 250 of them died in the cyclone. And then after they'd band together and create new families. So it was kind of this like interesting, cool thing that happened after, you know, obviously not the dismantling of families and the death, but that people were so resilient, they started new families with people who were left. The challenge is it's brackish water. They're out on the Bay. So they're shrimping, you know, a lot of that sort of kind of trade, I guess. And so you can't dig a well because it's brackish it's saltwater. So people can come by and saltwater. Oftentimes it's contaminated or it's saltwater. That's just a scam. Everyone's starting to scam, man. So what we were doing with this nonprofit was building basically rainwater retention ponds. So half the year it's monsoon, so it rains. So these ponds collect rain for half the year. So it fills up. They have this massive pond that gets them through the rest of the year. Then inside their houses, they have clay filters.  So that's the way that they get clean water out on the peninsula of Myanmar. Do you find it changes your, I guess your perception or sense of purpose when you go to these places? Oh, 100%.  And you start to realize that with a potential amount of success comes the decline of potential joy.  You know, like they're so joyful, they're happy to ride their, you know, they're on their bike, they have education, like the simple things that matter in life are like exposed.  Right, right. Wow, that's crazy. Yeah, they're really humbling experiences because you realize that like joy is not tied to wealth. All right. What did you say you were here for again? You're getting ready to head up to Santa Cruz, right? Yeah, we're going out to Conscious Company Leader Forum. So Conscious Company magazine's putting on a, kind of a leadership forum on how to be a better leader and whatnot and speaking up there, trying to get in some surfing, we'll see. Have you been there before? Have you done this before? I haven't, no. Oh, so this is your first time. And then tell me a little bit about it, like is there a lot of people that show up to this? Is it you sell tickets, do they sell tickets? Yeah, I think they sell tickets on Conscious Company's website. I should be more informed about this. I was honestly focused on this. I was like, I can't wait to see the mind. That's cool. We surpassed him, I like that. Down here to hang out with us. A couple hundred people, you know, and a lot of like-minded companies who are using businesses to improve the world. I love that direction. I feel like it's becoming more cool to do that. And I feel like that's the right direction. Who is it, the founder of Whole Foods, you wrote a book called Conscious Capitalism.  And I feel like as an entrepreneur myself, you know, there's some, you can see a sense of purpose.  And you look at like these people who have a mass wealth or they're creating wealth and it's like, why are they like mentoring that person? Why are they giving to this nonprofit? Cause it's that sense of purpose when you're able to develop and help others, you know?  It's like, Rick taught me everything he knew. I made some money with him, put it in a mirror, had a ton of people come around me and, you know, want to join on the mission and build the company. So it's, there's a lot of purpose in being able to give back and doing something with people, right? Like if you were to do a podcast by yourself it'd probably be super boring, but. Totally. Yeah. No, we are definitely boring. We all agree on that one.  Yeah. I think that's, that is really the magic is that we're also uniquely different that I think by ourselves I don't think that we, the podcast would be nearly as special for sure. Not at all. So when's your boy or girl come into the world? You got a baby on the way. Got a baby on the way. Yeah, August. No reveal party. No reveal party. I've seen those are like, yeah. The reveal party would be like you'd be in the room, so. Woo. You'd have exclusive access for that. It was actually funny, our daughter, we didn't know with our daughter either, which is funny because most people are like, that's super untraditional. Like everybody wants to find out like from day one, right? And everyone's like, well, it's a surprise when you find out. And I'm like, it's also a surprise when you go into your parents' closet and find your Christmas gifts. Like. Yeah, exactly. It's a surprise, but it's also, I don't know, I mean. Are you hoping for one or the other? Does it matter?  And. Because you already have a daughter. I have a daughter. I'd love to see the balance, like just the difference in like how they interact, but growing up with three sisters, you know, my wife, super strong personality, my grandma, kind of matriarch of the family, like I'm around a lot of women, like all the time. Like our CFO is a female, like it's just one of those things where like growing up with three sisters, kind of I'm cool with, like if I had three daughters, I wouldn't be people like, oh, you want your son? I'm like, I'm good, you know? Like, especially, you know, nowadays, like it sounds so cliche to say this, but just like having a healthy family is like P one, you know, and so like, I should be so lucky to just have a healthy baby. Of course, of course. And it doesn't matter what, I mean, what the baby is, boy or girl, once it's there, it's like, you'll love it. Totally. It doesn't really matter. And kids are so different from individually speaking that you have expectations. Well, good luck with that. Totally, totally. But I think it would be cool to have, you know, just a different gender to see, you know, if I had a boy, I'd be interested in having a girl next, right?  Oh yeah. Oh, you know what? Having one and then going from one to two, it's not like, it's not double. It's almost like quadruple. There's a big difference between one and two. I don't know if you can agree with that. Yeah, but still manageable. I don't know how people do three. I don't know how people do three. That's my thing. Yeah, my parents are like four kids. That's two kids. See, I would think that it would be easier with two than it would be one almost. Eventually, right? How do you figure that? Well, that's how it is with my bulldogs. Yeah, they play each other. Say like, I didn't have to train the second one as much as I had to train the first one. It's just like now I can let them play together. They got a built-in buddy. Yeah, that's right. And when does that happen? Like what, seven? Yeah, I would say like, yeah. Well, for my boys, it was when my youngest was four and then they really started to hang out and like play together and go outside, do things together, like build things together. So yeah, it took a while, but once they got to like, you know, a little bit older, it became like their best buds. Maybe it's different because he's got two boys and you have a boy and a girl. No, they play with that. I mean, I couldn't imagine not having both of my kids and I love them. It's just a lot of work. And then a lot of the work is in that, it's always work, right? But in the early stages, when they're infants and you're, and then when they start crawling and you gotta watch out what they're doing, like that whole process, that is a lot of work. Yeah, see, I can imagine that, but then I would think when they start getting to the age of three, four, and they can kind of play with each other. And they're expensive. Where you used to. You know what I mean?  What do they say? Elephant in the room.  Yeah, yeah.    My partner's like, I just went wakeboarding this weekend. He's awesome. What'd you guys do? He said, hey, what'd you guys do yesterday? Cause we just decided to go to the movies. It's like, really? You just decided? You just decided? You didn't get to sit or you just went?  Anyway, I'm just glad the kids don't start walking when they come out of the womb. Like it's good that there's like, Like other animals? Yeah. Yeah. Ah! See, it's weird. You just run off, right? How shocking would that be?  And then all of a sudden it's like the baby's here, but it's, you know, Doesn't move very fast. Doesn't move anywhere. You're just kind of eating sleeves. We give birth to fetuses is what we're doing. Cause of our massive heads and stuff. Otherwise it'd be weird if your kid was born with like teeth. You know what I mean? Like, oh my gosh. One of my friends had a tooth. Their daughter was born with a tooth. Whoa! Yeah. That's possible. Breastfeeding must have sucked. Yeah, I can only not imagine. Well, Brian, you're, you know, when we work with companies, you know, we like to know the people behind the companies cause that's an important part of our partnerships. We have to, I mean, we have to believe in the people and the brand and your company's a great example of that. And I appreciate you and what you guys are doing. And it's been, it's always great talking to you, man.  Oh, thank you. I appreciate you guys having me on the show. I'm bummed when you get into like macros and maps and stuff. Oh God. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Macros, yeah.  Do you train in the gym as well? You did CrossFit for a while. Yeah, I did CrossFit. And then you hurt yourself, right? And then, yeah. That's weird. Yeah, that's weird. Wait, CrossFit hurts weird. That's rare. Super competitive. Yeah. Are you still, do you still lift or do you just do like sports and stuff like that? Both, like I still lift, run a little bit. I don't know, I'm not, I blew out my knee three years ago, point soccer, and so I'm not super into running. I'd rather go biking, like mountain biking or something. Yeah, I'm with you on that, except I wouldn't do all of that. I'd rather not do it. Do you, what are your goal? Do you just like to stay athletic? Yeah, you know, it's, it kind of changed. So when I had my daughter, Sienna, you can take your kid to the gym for like what, four to six months? Is there kind of just chilling? You know, you just throw them in the car seat and hang them from a, not the kid, the car seat.  So that, we were, my wife and I, we were doing like CrossFit two years before she was born, which I mean, my wife was like doing deadlifts the day before Sienna was born, so she was like super fit. That's awesome. And then we got back to the gym right after, I mean, I was in it right away because it was one of those things where like I took some time off of work and it was really important. And my fitness goals now are just to be consistent because I've noticed that like, when I'm down or like joy is depleted, or I'm like stressed, there's two things. It's like, what have I been eating and have I worked out recently? Yep, yep. And usually those map back to like, oh, nope, haven't been working out.  So like right now my fitness goals are like, just to be consistent. But I think it'll start to scale up in the next. Well, considering your exercise history and the fact that you've been very athletic, you know, soccer and skiing, and you know, based on what you're saying, I think, have we given you access to any of our programs? No, I'd love to be programmed. Can you program me? Yeah, yeah, yeah, I'll give you 5% off. No, I'm gonna hook you on the right track.  I think maps performance is probably the program you would enjoy the most. Considering you do crossfit, soccer, skiing, you like function, you like movement. Yeah, you'd enjoy it. You probably like maps performance. So we'll make sure to hook you up with that.  Take care of those joints. So do burpees correctly. There's no burpees in our program. Oh, thanks. I don't think we've ever programmed those. I don't know if it would sell if we did. Burpees just, it's one of those movements that's just for the sake of making you tired. It's a trainer's punishment, man. That's what we used to, it's like every client hated that. Like go sit in the corner and sweat. It's literally like someone's like, what can I do, what can I have someone do to make them sweat and hard?  There you go. Wasn't there a study, though, that showed like, like your length of life is determined based on how quickly you can get off the ground from a flat position or something like that. There's two things. There's actually, because there's a lot of factors, right? That's interesting. I've actually never heard that. Yeah, they're always trying to find a connection between like one thing and longevity. One is how well you can get up off the floor on your own. And the other one is grip strength. So how strong your grip is is a relatively, I say relatively because compared to other things, it's better, good predictor of health. But I mean, really, are they really good predictors? No, because when we're going to go that route, I'll put you on Turkish get-ups anyway, you know? Oh man, that's the worst. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. But they're good. I mean, they, yeah. Way more functional. Way more functional, for sure. Way more functional. Because you slow, you can't do them fast. Yeah, that's what makes them so much better than a burpee. It's just the intention that brings the intention back. Totally, because the burpee, that's how I hurt myself is I was flying through burpees, trying to beat my buddy next to me, you know? Yeah, I'm not competitive at all. You'll like our program, man. Perfect. Well, thanks for coming on the show, brother. Thanks for having me. Appreciate it. Always good times. Always good times. Good show. Thank you for listening to Mind Pump. If your goal is to build and shape your body, dramatically improve your health and energy, and maximize your overall performance, check out our discounted RGB Superbundle at mindpumpmedia.com. The RGB Superbundle includes MAPS Anabolic, MAPS Performance, and MAPS Aesthetic. Nine months of phased expert exercise programming designed by Sal Adam and Justin to systematically transform the way your body looks, feels, and performs. With detailed workout blueprints and over 200 videos, the RGB Superbundle is like having Sal Adam and Justin as your own personal trainers, but at a fraction of the price. The RGB Superbundle has a full 30-day money-back guarantee, and you can get it now plus other valuable free resources at mindpumpmedia.com. If you enjoy this show, please share the love by leaving us a five-star rating and review on iTunes and by introducing Mind Pump to your friends and family. 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