Sam Clikeman – From Fireline to Founder: Building a Global Mead Empire from Small-Town Roots

the biggest win is when I give somebody this thing that I created,

from my brain to somebody's hand and watching them drink it and just be wowed.

booze makes culture.

food makes culture, song, dance, know, expressions of humanity And so when we can do that and hits their mouth and they're just like floored.

That feeling never goes away.

That's the ultimate win.

I remember the very first time I saw somebody wearing one of our shirts that I didn't know.

If it's your fault, it's yours to fix.

the good news about that is you don't ever have to do it again.

When it's your fault, you can fix it.

but

I'm a firm believer in the concept of hard to kill.

Your job should be to be hard to kill.

physically, tactically, emotionally, but also spiritually.

You should be spiritually hard to kill

Hey there, and welcome to From the Ground Up Show.

The show where we encourage and inspire the next generation of free thinking leaders by telling the stories of those that have been there, done that, and are still getting it

done.

Building a life that they love with their hearts, their hands, and their hustle.

I'm your host, Erick Loden.

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Today, I'm really excited.

I have Sam Clikeman joining me.

Sam is a former firefighter and the founder of Big Lost Meadery, which he has expanded to two locations in two states, shipping mead to eight states and three different countries.

He has won numerous awards and recognitions such as the SBA Exporter of the Year, Campbell County Entrepreneur of the Year, and Small Business of the Year.

Sam is a husband and a father.

So, Sam, thank you for joining me.

Yeah, thanks for having me, Erick.

Happy to be here.

Yeah, this is exciting.

I don't think I've ever talked to somebody in the alcohol business and definitely not in the meat business.

So this is new territory for me.

Well, I'm excited to learn all about it.

We start every show just getting a little bit of background on you.

So can you tell me a little bit about your childhood and what it was like growing up?

Yeah, so I grew up in Gillette, Wyoming, born and raised.

I spent a few years when I was a little kid outside, but came back by the time I was six.

And yeah, mean, kind of a standard Gillette upbringing, if you will, not a whole lot to it.

You know, played sports, did a lot of outdoor stuff.

My mom was a teacher.

My dad did finance work at L &H, another company in town.

And yeah, that was kind of pretty normal childhood.

It was good.

And then when I was 13, I joined our cadet program, like a youth fire program at Campbell County Fire, and that kind of turned into an itch.

and became my projected career path.

And so yeah, then when I turned 18, went full firefighter, went to college, worked for the Forest Service for a couple years on a hotshot crew.

I mean, just kind of traveled around the country fighting fires.

But while I was doing that, I was living in Utah at the time.

And at the time, Utah had three, two beer only.

I may or may not have been 21 yet.

And we got tired of drinking Utah beer.

So me and this guy, Ned Vashul, decided, you know, we're going to make our own beer.

And so we were living in a forest service cabin.

And uh by the way, if you work for the federal government and live in government housing, you're not supposed to do this either.

But we we decided we're going to make our own beer.

So we went down to Salt Lake City.

We got beer supplies.

We built our own little brewery out of a Culligan jug, fiber tape and some tubing.

We had sporadic electricity at this cabin.

We had no running water most of the time.

And it's this hundred year old cabin.

So we decided we're to brew beer over an open fire.

water we pulled out of the Logan River.

And that's how we started brewing beer.

And since then, Ned has also quit fire service.

He's the head of operations for Wichita Brewing, which is very big company.

but that's how we got our start in brewing.

And fast forward a couple years, I moved back to Wyoming, back to Gillette, joined the fire department there, and I'm just kind of making beer and wine as a hobby.

I spent a lot of time doing that, outside of playing sports still and doing the outdoor stuff and working.

I was a single guy at the time, so I had a lot of time on my hands.

had a guy ask me if I would make mead, and I told him, there's no way, it's too expensive, it takes

too long.

just jokingly said, know, if I ever did it, I'd do like an entire barrel of it because it takes like a year to make.

So I'd hog your carboy for the whole year and I didn't have a lot of equipment.

He's like, well, I got a guy, he'll sell you honey at a dirt cheap price if you just like give him some when you're done.

I'm like, all right.

So I bought 125 pounds of honey off this guy and made a 59 gallon barrel of mead and

Yeah, that got my start into actually making mead, but we'll dive more into that.

But yeah, other stuff growing up that uh I was never really planning on being a business guy.

I was gonna be a fireman, right?

That was my goal.

So when I went to college, I technically went to college for business.

But let's be honest, I drank beer, played rugby for four years.

That's what I did.

Looking back.

for your current career.

Yeah, I got good at drinking beer and got good at sales trying to get people to play rugby with us.

But, you know, looking back, you know, I should have spent a lot more time and paying attention in school than just getting by.

I could actually use the skill set now.

Yeah.

And then other than that, just did a lot of traveling, travel all over the world.

You save up on my vacation, go somewhere.

When you're working as a single guy, have a lot of time and money on your hands to go do things.

yeah, explored a lot of the world, but that all pays dividends to who you are in the future.

Other personal stuff, you know, been...

been married now since 2018 had kids in 19 and 20 so I a five and a six year old son and daughter my wife's from the East Coast so she was on a travel assignment in Wyoming

supposed to be here three months and that was ten years ago and

man, how was that adjustment for her?

know life here in Wyoming is just a little bit different than most other places.

Has she adjusted well?

Does she like it here?

yeah, well we're not there anymore.

So we're in Sioux Falls, South Dakota now, because when we opened the new facility we moved out here a year ago, almost to the day.

And it was a drastic adjustment.

She was in Baltimore and DC prior to Gillette, Wyoming.

So there's not much anything close to that.

But no it was good.

She really enjoyed Wyoming.

She's glad to be back in a city again.

you know, Sioux Falls is a good halfway between like Big City and Gillette.

So no, it's been good.

We're enjoying it.

Kids like it.

good.

Well, what was it that initially got you excited about firefighting?

What was it about firefighting that got you fired up?

Well, so when I was 13, my buddy, his dad was on the fire department and then he joined this cadet program.

said, dude, you gotta come do this with me.

Sure.

So I just kind of started doing it.

And at that time, the cadet program, they just rebuilt it again within the last year.

But, know, this 25 years ago.

ah Things were pretty different back then so like we got to do a lot so we would go to fires We you know we couldn't go inside buildings or anything, but we could you rolling

hose changing air bottles You know just doing stuff on scene.

You we'd go to other calls We do go to car wrecks and rescues wildland fire.

We to do a whole bunch of stuff and You know if you're if you remember what it's like when you're a young man It's it's kind of a big deal when you're around like older guys that

you look up to and of course they love their job

they're excited about it.

So that's all we ever wanted to do is like, yeah, we just want to be that.

And so I never had those challenges as a young man to figure out what I wanted to be.

You know, I've known since I was 13 years old, what I was going to do for work was going to be a fireman.

And that was was what I was going to do.

then, you know, when I turned 18, graduated high school.

The question became, do you go straight into the fire service, do go to college?

I had a fire chief at the time, he said, go to college, it'll pay dividends down the road.

I like, yeah, but I want to work now.

But so I went to college and that's part of why I didn't take it that seriously because I was going to be a fireman.

You don't have to be educated to be a fireman.

At least at that time you do need to now.

And then got the opportunity to work for the Forest Service, which was great because we just traveled all around the United States fighting the biggest, baddest wildland fires

that there are and got a lot of experience.

And I was also a college kid that made a year's salary in three and a half months.

And so the

That's nice.

And yeah, it was good work.

And I still keep in contact with a of those guys, learned a lot.

And as soon as I got done...

I got promoted my third year, so I had to skip a semester of college because I couldn't, because I used to leave the season one, two weeks early and I'd start school two weeks

late every year.

But once I got promoted to an officer position that I couldn't leave early, so I had to take a whole semester off and that's when I started traveling.

But during that year, they offered me another position the next year, you know, full time, you're gonna be done with college, making a full time thing year round.

And I asked my boss at the time, was like, so JP, I gotta ask you, is it worth doing?

Because it's kinda nice, I yeah, you don't see your family for five months.

I mean, you're just gone.

Four or five months, you don't see your wife and kids but every two or three weeks for a day or two, you know.

It's like, but you got seven months to go to school with them, lunch, it's like, you know, is it worth it?

And he's like, nope, not at all.

And you might always want to have a family.

And so that was my catalyst to get out of the forest service.

Because he just said, yeah, it's not worth it.

If you want to have a family and hotshot superintendents, their divorce rate is almost 100%.

I've only ever met two of them that haven't been divorced, that made a career out of it.

And they were both my bosses.

But other than that, every single hotshot superintendent I've ever met, divorce.

And it's a pervasive issue in the industry.

So that's what made the deal to go back and work structural and while in July Campbell County It was a good move

Yeah.

If you could go back and do it again, do you think the choice of going to college was still a good idea?

Or if you were to do it again, would you go straight into fighting fire full time?

I would go back to college, but I would also, I've matured a lot since then, so I would take college a lot more serious.

And it's one of those things that even if you go into something like the trades, like fire work, is being able to understand very well.

profitability of research, understanding your reading, your writing, your math, lot of those skills that you think you'll never need.

Or you end up getting into something like me where I don't fight fire anymore and I run a business.

Well, I guess there's pretty good education in there that you just kind of wasted.

It's not that I got nothing out of college from the academic side, but I could have got a lot more out of it.

Yeah.

I would recommend it, and more and more places in the trades are requiring that to move up and move on and do different things.

And even if you never get into a bigger company where there's promotion but you start your own thing, mean, some of those academic skills are pretty good to have.

Yeah.

I think looking back even clear into high school, I did pretty well in school was a good student, but I regret the wasted opportunity that I spend a lot of money on education

nowadays in a lot of different forms.

And here I had all the time, like you were talking about, a young single guy, you have a lot of time.

And I had free education in front of me with experts that cared about me, wanting to teach me things.

And when I was in school, was all,

just check the boxes.

What do I have to do to get the grade?

And if I could go back and do it again, would leverage those resources to try to maximize the education instead of just checking the boxes.

Well, that's thing is when you're that age and you're in the trenches of it, I mean, if you have a decent capacity for book work and education, you can play the game and get

through it just to find GPA and not actually learn, if you will.

And that's where I was.

It was in the same book.

Now, that being said, you know, with my kids, you know, I'm not necessarily going to push them towards college because nowadays there's a lot more opportunity to gain that

education outside of the collegiate setting.

And it's

And especially, you know, if they want to go into something like the trades or they want to go to business ownership, I mean, I wouldn't necessarily push them towards college to

do that, because if you're adept at reading, you have a passion for learning and education, you can do all that.

What you're doing right now, I mean, you don't have to do that in college setting.

And it doesn't start them off with nowadays $120,000 in debt going into this with astronomical interest rates.

Especially if you don't know what you want to do, you know, I think you get a lot more value out of learning to enjoy learning and go travel the world and get some real world

experiences to make you a more well-rounded person.

Or go join the military, the Civilian Conservation Corps, you go do something in service and gain some worldly experience will make you a much more valuable employee or owner down

the road.

Yeah, that's some good advice and I think that the specific education you're talking about, even business education, I mean, you can go audit a class.

You don't need a diploma to be in the trades or be a business owner.

And if there is a skill or a specific education you need, it's a lot cheaper to go audit a business class than it is to pay for a full bachelor's degree.

It is, and mean, frankly, in the employment world now, I mean, the value of a degree is not there anymore.

You know, it's not like it was in our grandparents' generation or our parents' generation where that meant something.

But I mean, we've watered down what a degree is, but I won't get on my soapbox of the education system as it is, I could.

I have a lot of...

uh

like Gillette Wyoming where you know most of the kids they're they're not going to go into professional fields you know they're going to go into blue collar productive labor but I

will okay I have one soapbox thing I got to get it off my chest but it's absolutely criminal the way that we look at this in school to where

You know, we spend 12 years telling this kid that's good at his hand, he's good with his hands, right?

And he can understand it, but we spend 12 years essentially calling the kid stupid because he's not good enough to get into college.

But meanwhile, he's gonna graduate high school, he's gonna go into the trades, he's gonna become a journeyman, he might become a master, you know, going to whatever it is, you

roofing for instance.

He's gonna make really good money with no debt and he's gonna be just fine.

Yeah.

But we as a system have people that, you know, they're the stupid kids in class, right?

The kids that hang out in the VOTEC room.

It's like, no, these guys are being very, very productive in society and very good at themselves.

We should encourage and develop that.

That's a good thing.

Sorry, there's my brief soapbox for education.

100%.

When I go see a doctor, I hope that that doctor had an excellent formal education.

And when I call a plumber, I don't really care if he had a diploma or not.

I want to know if he can stop the water dripping under my sink.

you know, the...

m

Yeah, I won't ever talk down on education.

I think there's a time and a place for it, but there's been such an emphasis put on it in the last couple generations that, like you said, it's watered it down.

When you funnel everybody into that same track, it loses its value.

And there are so many wonderful opportunities for a great career, a great income that just don't require it.

Yeah, they do.

And I think we need to understand the difference between education and learning.

True learning and growth is not necessarily education.

Yeah?

you can go, I mean online you can do a lot of learning right now.

I got a buddy of mine, never passed eighth grade, and you know his, and he's a very successful businessman, but his thing is like he spends a lot of time dealing in, what's

his current topic right now is theoretical physics.

He loves theoretical physics.

And so he spends a lot of time learning on theoretical physics, has an eighth grade education.

But he went and he learned and has a desire for learning.

raciously feeds, he's very good at what he does, but he spent his time doing practicality.

And so if you want to learn American history and you don't want to become a PhD educator in academic setting, go be a plumber and do that as your hobby.

You can learn as much American history as you want and be great with it.

Scratch that itch.

man.

Yeah, and with AI on the scene now, it's just become that much easier.

What used to be a full day of research you can plow through in a couple hours.

um It's kind of just changed the game for education.

Great.

even my firemen that I would train, know, those guys like mandatory reading, like you guys have got to learn to read.

Enjoy it.

Learn, learn, learn because that's the most valuable thing you can do.

Yeah, good stuff.

Well, imagine as a hot shot traveling the country fighting fires for a number of years, you probably had a few exciting incidents and uh maybe even outside of work, few uh

exciting, yeah, incidents traveling the country with a group of guys and getting to see a lot of different things.

Are there any memories that stand out at the top of your mind that you would share with us?

I mean there's a lot from the fire specific side, things that got real hot and heavy, big fights we had, things like that.

But this particular environment, so you figure, think about it this way, have 20 guys, mostly guys, we had a few girls on the crew, but you spend 24 hours a day together for

months on end.

Even on your days off, you all live together in the same housing, same garbage housing.

But they tell you when to wake up, they tell you when to go to sleep, they tell you when to shower, they tell you where to walk, they tell you what to wear, they tell you

everything in your life is regimented.

It's a hyper paramilitary environment.

And so it's kind of nice.

So the only thing you ever do is focus on your job, whatever your job is.

And if you're not the food guy, you don't worry about food, because they're going to tell you when you're going to eat and what you're going to eat anyway.

So you don't even think about it.

So you get very, very good at what you do.

And you put 20 people together that do that.

day in, day out, day in, day out all the time is the connections you make are very, very strong.

And so you see a lot of this in the military environment as well.

But the caveat there is you're with the same guys usually for six months, 12 months, eight months, till you get moved to new MOS, new job, whatever.

But in the fire service, you do that oftentimes for years at a time.

And so it's even more so when you get on the structural side.

It's not as regimented, but you're with the same guys for years.

I was with guys for 20 years.

those are the things that you really remember is how close you get to these guys.

mean, you go through a lot of trials and tribulations together.

I mean, you think of...

you know, the trials and tribulations that you go through as a married couple, you know, that's why you're close to your spouse.

You're not close to your spouse because you're infatuated with her.

You're close because you go through trial and you come out ahead and that's where you learn who you really are.

And when you start to rely on other people like that outside of a marital setting, it's a very unique thing.

And that's part of why guys, they stick with it forever.

Even if they ever get, you know, distraught with the job or they get fed up with the politics or whatever, they still stick with it because you

very close to these guys and you love what you do you know you can rely on them and you're do really cool stuff in the process you know go to fires and explosions and save people

and do rescues and so I know that's not an exact answer to your question of like you know some great fires and whatnot

I guess I can give one, one infamous fire was the, it the last stand at Batley Ranch or up in the middle fork of the Salmon River in Idaho.

And we had this fire and so there's a whole bunch of other things that made this fire very special that had happened prior to this point.

But we're sitting there in this river bottom and we're in this town.

There was supposed to be two crews there, the town of Mackie Bar.

But one of the crews timed out, so it was just us.

So we split our crews who were under strength, have a big wind event that comes through.

were trying to save all, we'd been spending like a week prepping all these buildings with sprinklers and we sprinkler bridges and the only way to get across one part of the river

is like a trolley car and a cable.

So you'd sit in this car and a guy would push you across.

I've been there since like, don't know, the 1880s or whatever.

You can only get to this place by boat or plane.

And so we helicoptered in and well anyways, my crew, my squad, we're on one half of it and the fire's gonna come down.

We've been prepping, we're ready for the big stand.

We're gonna save all these buildings.

And me and this, my buddy Clink, he's like 40 feet away.

We're in like waist high grass.

And I see this little tiny spot, it's about this big, start smoking.

So me and him both run towards it, 20 feet from each other.

The wind hits.

By the time we make it about 10 feet each, this thing's about, know, size.

of 40 foot by 40 foot at that point then the wind hits and it's off to the races.

And so you know this fire proceeds to jump the river a couple times if you've ever been on the middle fork of the salmon it's not a small river it's a fairly large river.

so this thing's jumping you know there's buildings burning and then our lookout she gets burnt out she's coming down so we had to look out for a while well then the fire hits the

crew that's two miles down the road and you know our fire passes through we end up saving like half

buildings on our side with the nine of us.

And so we start going while our escape routes keep getting cut off as we're trying to get to this other crew.

But we eventually make it down there and meanwhile they've got all hell breaks loose.

There's propane tanks going off.

They lost like 10 buildings out of the 25.

And so it ended up turning into this.

It was a 39-hour firefight.

Just active non-stop.

39 hours.

And we finally get to the next day.

after we'd gone through all night, gone through most of another shift, like, all right, you guys gotta sleep for like three hours before we do it again, because everybody just

gasped.

So yeah, we just slept on the river that night, and we didn't save every building, but we saved a lot more than we should have.

Like, our plant worked.

So it was overall a success.

Had we had another crew there, we probably would have had a shot at saving a lot more.

But that fire, you know, it was crazy for us.

It was a big fire, right?

that fire went that day it blew up 27,000 acres in our zone and you know the whole fire ended up burning for two months and then it burned 300,000 acres but

couple years later I was at class and this is by the time I'm back in Gillette and I was at a wildland class that I was taking and there was a guy I wanted to shot cruise in

was like was there 2006, 2008?

He's like were you at the last stand at Mackie Barr?

I was like yeah I was like what'd you call it the last stand at Mackie Barr like everybody knows about that you know at the time we didn't even you know we just it was a firefight

but turns out it like went off

into the whole hot shot lore world and became the last stand at Mackie Bar.

And for years people knew about that fire because of what we did up there.

For us it was just, yeah, it was a big memory, but I'd gotten out of the world after that, out of shot world, and so I didn't realize how much that story had traveled.

Yeah, that's awesome.

That's pretty cool.

So we kind of covered growing up and your firefighter career.

You said you got into making mead somewhat reluctantly.

uh How do you go from there to launching a business?

Yeah, so I was never gonna do a booze business at all.

I'd started a little business in college, got shut down by the FAA.

So this is back 2009.

2008 2009 but I was gonna do Unmanned aerial vehicles on fires so UAVs which nowadays they're everywhere at the time It was illegal to have a for-profit company that could fly

over 400 foot AGL But me and this guy out of Newcastle We decided we're gonna start this UAV company.

So I had meetings with like the head of BLM aviation I had heads of Forest Service aviation like it was like yeah, this would be hot because nobody was talking about it back

then it would built our own plane and

We could do, we could fly at night, we could fly through smoke, we could do infrared, could do pilot, unpiloted flights.

So the safety factor goes way up.

But then I got a call from the FAA and they shut my ass down.

And so that kind of shut it down.

And a few years later, it became legal in 2013, I think.

2012, 2013, but by that time our competition was Raytheon and Boeing.

Yeah, that's not gonna happen.

Hahaha

money in R &D and they could make a way better product.

But it was a good idea while it lasted.

But anyways, I'd always had kind of a sense of wanting to do a business.

I had a little business in college too.

I'd throw parties for money.

Have you ever seen the movie Van Wilder?

That's kind what I did but not near as cool.

Didn't make that much money but provided beer money for the week.

And so I had this kind of sense of doing business, always sounded fun.

But I was going to be a fireman.

My entire goal was retire as a fireman.

That's all I was ever going to do.

Well then in 2013, my product I'd been making, it starting to get fairly good.

And people were liking it, especially on the Mead side because it was so different.

And so I decided, you know what, let's start an alcohol business.

and initially I was going to do a brewery but at that time everybody in their dog had breweries and there was really good beer being made in Wyoming, around the country.

figured if I'm going to do it I don't want just a small tavern.

I want to make a business out of it, large business.

And so I was like how about mead?

Nobody else is doing it really.

And so instead of trying to steal market share from all these companies that are very good at what they do, how about we just create our own market out of nothing?

And so I started

started looking at real estate and Gillette, trying to get loans.

It was just me at the time.

yeah, I secured a bill so I put together my final plan the summer of 13 and then closed on a loaner to building January of 14.

That's when it started.

Okay.

Awesome.

still gonna do both.

was not gonna be, leave the fire service, go do business, was never the goal.

Gotcha.

Okay.

So where does the name Big Lost Metery come from?

Is there a story behind that?

There is, so within our branding there's a whole bunch of stories and so I'm gonna give you two different stories on that question.

So one, big lost is this concept.

And so like on the back of all of our labels, I even think I have one in my office, there's this big lost cabin.

Wait, actually I do.

I happen to have a poster in my office, but there's this cabin here that's on the back of all of our labels.

And that's the Big Lost Cabin.

And so it's this cabin way out in Western Wyoming that we've never actually been there, but we heard it exists.

And like all of our characters, the wild man, the crazy woman, the island gypsy, the demented grandpa, the tipsy cousin, they all have stories behind them.

And somehow their stories, they wind up at this cabin.

And they are written stories.

Yeah, so they make it to this cabin and that's where it's of, it's this cabin in the middle of the mountains.

There's a warm fire going.

You know, it's a place where everyone's just having a good time, but you can just kind of get big lost.

You know, enjoy the moment for what it is.

Get rid of all this external stimuli.

Get rid of all this other random stuff in your lives.

Just enjoy this moment, right?

And so that's kind of become what big lost is.

And it translates into even our buildings.

You know, there's no TVs.

quiet music, forbid people have a conversation again, it's built like an old cabin.

So all the furniture is random, it's whatever we could acquire or build, it's not a nice polished, modern industrial look.

It's wood, it's random furniture, and so that's kind of what Big Lost is from the marketing sense.

The other side of that story is how we actually got the name.

I lived on Big Lost Drive in Gillette.

so would, know, brewing at my house, my whole basement essentially turned into a brewery.

had hundreds of bottles of wine and beer and everything that I was making down there.

And we would just jokingly call it the Big Lost Brewery.

And

As I started looking more into a business, I just kind of used it as a placeholder.

But starting to build the brand around it actually made sense for a good brand.

And so that's where the whole concept of Big Lost came.

And then the street itself, I mean, that's also a unique name.

But the street itself, our whole subdivision was named after things in Idaho.

And so the Big Lost River is in Idaho, which I found out after the company started.

Gotcha.

that's kind of where all that came from.

Cool, cool.

And so you're launching your mead business and also firefighting.

At what point did you decide to go all in on the meadery?

Day one.

I mean, was always gonna be do both.

But I mean, was day one of the company.

was like, we're going all in.

So like that first year, so I spent 10 months renovating an old building downtown.

It had been burned down in 1895, burned down again in 1929, was rebuilt in 1931.

It was the original Daily General Store in Gillette.

But I gutted the whole building.

I took over 30 tons of material out of the building.

and then rebuilt everything on the inside.

We did all the utilities.

um Everything I could legally do myself I did because I didn't have any money.

And so paying contractors, I didn't have a lot.

And of course, whatever friends and family would be willing to hang out and help.

Yeah, I bought a lot of beer to like, hey, come help me do this.

And there was a few guys that really took a heavy, heavy hand in that.

Because yeah, I didn't have any other ownership.

or anything at that point, no staff.

And then we opened up in December of 14, by the time I had, and I got hired eight people out of the gate.

But one of the guys, Bob Hewitt Gaffney, he's now my business partner, so he came in the picture about halfway through construction.

He started dating my sister, he was a teacher by trade, a math teacher.

But I didn't have a great history with all of her boyfriends, so she really liked this guy.

So she'd send him to come hang out with me at the metery while I was doing construction to come hang out with me, get on my good side.

But he also had a background in carpentry.

And so yeah, he just kind of, he morphed into my right-hand man for about everything.

And then once he decided to marry my sister in 16, I brought him on as partner and then started training him to do all the production operations while I ended up taking all the

administrative side.

I'm sure we'll get in some of the growth stuff.

Yeah, the plan was always to grow big out of the gate, but it was going to be to do both.

Eventually that wasn't feasible.

Gotcha.

So what was the straw that broke the camel's back that caused you to leave the fire service?

medical retirement i have a choice so otherwise i'd still be there but yeah it was one of those things that that's medical stuff for my ability to actually fight fire anymore was

diminished so i was going be gone anyway and also just it happened to time out with our Sioux Falls expansions so that was kind of the impetus to only do me to not fire anymore

Okay, all right.

What has been your most difficult step so far?

I would say our weakest...

It's kind of two different questions, so...

One of the more difficult things in this is not coming from any type of retail, hospitality, business.

I'm a fireman by trade, right?

And so there's a lot of little things that have been very expensive lessons that had you spent any time in the industry would have been non-issues.

But it's also a boon too.

So, know, it's little things like if you order 50,000 labels and you don't give barcodes, did you know you

can't sell any of those bottles at liquor stores.

Little things like that that are very expensive mistakes and so for the first 50,000 bottles we had to hand label barcodes get them separate printed for an extra 21 cents a

bottle figure out how to get them registered so you can actually sell them in chain stores and then we had a hand label first 50,000 bottles.

You know, little things like that were huge learning curves that, like I said, if you spent any time in that industry, would have, well yeah, no duh you put barcodes on your

bottles or they're not gonna sell them.

We didn't think about I thought it was cool, I had a label, I had a bottle, cap, I had good product in it, I'm gonna go sell it, awesome.

But with that, that also brings up the other thing of part of why we've been successful is we had no background.

So we didn't know what you could or couldn't do.

And so there's a lot of things

did on the marketing side even in product development which made our product extremely unique because we just didn't know any better and so there was no preconceived box to work

in and so it allowed us to be creative and do different things that people had done before in anywhere in the industry.

Other big difficulties is not coming from the industry is we had zero connections.

And so when you're in this business, especially when you want to get into distribution and production on a larger scale, if you don't have anybody else to sell your product, you

legally can't sell it in the United States.

And so like I can't go sell to a restaurant in Minnesota by law.

I have to find another company that's willing to sell it for me to that restaurant because of three tier laws.

And so we had zero connections.

And so trying to get into some of these distribution relationships, you don't stand a chance.

Like, you're some small company in Gillette, Wyoming, you don't have a poll regionally, nobody knows who you are, da da da da da.

Versus if you have somebody that's willing to get you that introduction, gets your foot in the door, our sales rate's very high.

We just couldn't ever get our foot in the door.

It's like our first distribution relationship we set up.

Once again, I didn't know any better.

So I just walked into this guy's office one day with two bottles of mead in my hand.

I didn't even have a bag.

I had a business card and two bottles of mead.

Drove out to Sioux Falls, South Dakota, walked into this guy's office.

It's like, hey, do you guys want to try some mead?

What?

You don't do that, by the way, in this industry.

I didn't know any better.

But they gave me five minutes and an hour later we're still talking.

They liked who we were and brought our product on.

We've since become pretty good friends with those guys, but he still tells me that story.

He's never had anybody walk into his office like that before, ever.

It worked.

just, yeah, we didn't know, didn't know any better.

So it was both a positive and a negative.

But I'd say the most difficult things is not knowing some of the technical side and then just not having any connections to work with.

Because connections are everything in this industry.

It's huge.

Yeah.

Do you have an example of maybe one of the creative things you guys were able to do simply because you didn't know that that wasn't supposed to be done?

Yeah, so I part of it is the product that we make

So we make it much differently than most meaderies around.

And so we put a ton of honey into it in the beginning.

It's substantially more than we ever needed.

And had we done a lot of the industry, it wasn't a great business practice to begin with, but it ended up creating a very unique product that nobody else makes.

There's only maybe a dozen of us in the world that make a style like this, but we didn't know that.

so not just with the amount of honey,

but also think the water we were using, we used Gillette City Water.

which if you've ever been into brewing is horrendous for brewing, it's horrendous for winemaking, it's fantastic for mead making.

And had we been professionals prior to that, we never would have even touched Gillette water.

We would have built our own water profile, done everything that we do on the beer side now.

But we didn't know, so turns out there's all these hard compounds, like the stuff that makes our water very hard is actually good for facilitating honey fermentation.

honey lacks nutrients.

And so we had this really unique water profile that nobody in their right mind would touch with 10 foot pole that we just stumbled into because like, it comes out of the tap, it's

water, it's clean, like, let's use it.

And it ended up creating a really good product.

And then we also did things like when we first started, we served everything in cow horns.

So literally just drinking horns out of oak barrels.

had no glassware.

We only had me.

We served out of barrels.

It was this really cool thing that, yeah, well, we wouldn't recommend it now, but it gave us a lot on the marketing push of just being something completely off the wall.

But now we have glassware because, you know, horns aren't for everybody, but it gave us a really good marketing push in the beginning.

And then like when we would do sales, we didn't know what we're supposed to do and what we're not supposed to do.

So I'd literally just start walking into liquor stores, walking into restaurants.

Hey, I don't know you, but I want to know you.

Here's what I sell, that's awesome.

You're willing to taste it.

so we had no fear.

And so yeah, I'd spend thousands of miles a year just driving to liquor stores and saying, hey, I'm Sam.

I've got mead in the back of my car.

Let's do business.

And it's worked out, but it's been, yeah, it's, yeah, we just didn't know any better.

man, I can only imagine that'd be, yeah, that'd be quite interesting, I'm sure, for the liquor store owner or the distributor to have somebody walk in like that.

uh

know, salespeople have to do that to an extent, but usually they like working with distributors.

They like people that they know.

They want to know of your brand to an extent.

But to just cold call people with booze in the back of your car is way off the wall.

Usually it comes from a warehouse or a delivery guy or something like that.

And so that's it allowed us a lot of growth.

That's awesome.

hit everything from the highest end place to like the bow down dirty bar.

Like we hit it all.

We're a little more targeted now, but.

That's great.

Well, I imagine throughout the course of building your brand, building your business, there's been a few scary moments.

What was the time that you were most afraid?

So the biggest fear that comes in, especially with what we do, is cash flow.

And so you have a lot of companies out there that have great concepts, they're good at what they do, but cash flow can kill a business, right?

I mean that can usually be the single biggest killer a lot of times is you may have, if you have let's say $100,000 in AR but you got $80,000 of bills for right now, that's a

problem, right?

If you can't make rent, can't make payroll, can't make whatever.

And so for us cash flow has always been a big issue because you can't just get honey year round.

And so for us, we have to really good relationships with our honey suppliers because they pull honey once or twice a year, depending on the year.

That's when you got to buy honey and secure your honey contracts.

And so if we don't have enough cash flow coming into July and all of a sudden we're to get hit with a $50,000 honey bill and we don't have it, then we got to go figure out

financing, do whatever, which, know, the first time or two you do that, it's not as big of a deal.

But with the banks like, why are you coming again?

You do this every year, like do not manage your cash flow.

They're not going to give it to you.

You go find alternatives.

So, you know, that's always been an issue.

But I'd say probably the single biggest one was COVID.

hands down.

So we were shut down, I remember it was March 17th, I was in Sioux Falls getting ready to go on a sales trip to North Dakota and I get a phone call from Bob saying, hey, the city

just shut us down for COVID.

I was like, all right, well, at that time, know, everybody didn't know what was going on and everything else.

And so was like, well, I'm driving home.

I'm going to skip the rest of the sales trip.

I'll be home.

Let's figure out what we're to do.

And so we were completely shut down.

We had a beer distribution company at the time as well, which most of our product was kegs, which kegs weren't doing anything because nobody was serving anything on draft.

We couldn't sort of sell any of our beer.

We were a hundred percent kegs internally.

And so.

the way the laws are written in Gillette and in Wyoming, there was no legal way for us to sell product at all from our door.

So like if you were a restaurant.

you were able to do like they put some to go provisions in there for restaurants and bars.

But because we were a winery and a brewery, there was no legal avenue to do that.

Like it got down to the minutia of like, okay, my legal sale stops at the threshold of my door.

They're not allowed inside.

I'm not allowed to...

give them stuff unless they're inside.

But what if they set money inside the door, like blow, like push it in and then I have product that I push out because the transaction has to legally be made on the premises.

Okay.

can't have the exchange of money and booze unless you're inside the threshold, but their hand can't cross the threshold.

mean, just dumb stuff like this, right?

And so I went toe to toe with the mayor, with the city attorney, with the city administrator, like, because we were the only business in all of Gillette that this

affected that way.

Everybody else had options to make the transaction, but because of our type of license, there was literally nothing we could do legally.

It's like, well, I'm just going to break the law then and do it because otherwise I'm going to go out of business.

Like well don't do that.

It's like I mean what are my options here like either I break the law and chance it and stay in business or I go out of business like I don't really have much of a choice but the

problem is like uh in the state of Wyoming city councils and local municipalities own your license so they're the ones that determine whether you keep your license or not and they

do this every year and so if I create too much of a fuss you're gonna pull my license anyway so finally I was like okay how about this how about

I just open up against the governor's orders against health care and I'm just going to go open and see what happens.

We started talking around trying to get some other places to do that We had a few on board and then one bar in the county they opened up and just said screw it we're going for it

and It was kind of nice because the sheriff came up and wrote him a ticket.

It like here's the deal I'll write you a hundred dollar ticket You pay it you can stay open the rest of the day since I did my job you guys do your thing It's like that's

awesome and the county said they wouldn't hold it against their license Well, we didn't get the same thing from the city

they wouldn't commit to not holding it against our license.

It's like, dude, I'll pay a hundred dollar fine all day long, stay open.

But if you hold it against my license, I'm not gonna have any business.

And we still had enough distribution to justify keeping it, you know, not risking at all.

And I think it was three days after that that we just opened up against the governor's orders and then a couple other bars did.

He had the city council and the county commission got together with police chief and the sheriff and they said, we're just not going to enforce it in Gillette, Wyoming.

Awesome.

America is still alive.

But yeah, I would say COVID was probably the single biggest one because we weren't sure what was going to happen.

We ended up growing like hotcakes during COVID, but that first month was, I didn't know if we were gonna make it out of it.

But we ended up having it as one of our best years for because of COVID.

And then one thing that we did too is that year on 4th of July, we said we're gonna throw a freedom festival.

just because I was so fed up with the government by that point.

And so we put a band, shut down downtown Gillette, put out a band for like 900 people on 4th of July of COVID year 2020, brought in a cannon, like a howitzer to like fire blank

cannon shots down like a full-size howitzer.

And just as a side note, if you ever, uh there is an ordinance in the city of Gillette that you have to have a handwritten note from the mayor to fire artillery in city limits.

Apparently that's been a problem at some point in past.

So yeah, we had to get a note from the mayor to fire a cannon by ordinance.

But yeah, but COVID ended up being a really good year because at that time, you know, not so much where we were in Wyoming because, people just kind of disregarded all of it.

But like in our Colorado markets and our other cities was very different, especially Colorado.

But it was nice because you figure most of your people that drink, you know, they go to their local bar, they know their bartender, their bartender knows what they drink.

You know, half the time the things sit in there by the time they even show up.

And so they never really venture outside their standard.

you know, the bustle of kids and work and sports and they go to the liquor store, they beeline to what they want, they might look around two or three different beers, but hey,

they're gonna grab it, they're gonna go, they're on their way.

Well, in a lot of these cities where you couldn't do anything other than go to the grocery store or the liquor store, they would go in as a social outing, so they'd spend 30 minutes

just wandering around the liquor store.

And so they found people like us that they never would have found otherwise, like, that's a cool label, like, let's try it.

And, you know, they expanded their palates.

grew like hotcakes during COVID.

It was awesome.

But the first few months was a pancake.

Huh, man.

Yeah, I can only imagine.

sounds like you've spent a lot of your business career fighting government of one type or another.

I tell people if you want to hate the government, start a business.

If you want to really hate the government, start a liquor business.

Because we're regulated by cities, by counties, by states, by federal.

About every two years I get super pissed off and start writing letters to senators and representatives.

We've done some lobbying work because there's a few things that we did that had never been done in the state of Wyoming before.

Like put a brewery and a winery in the same building had never been done.

So we had to work a lot with our regulators to

figure out.

how to legally do that and it's all nuance.

So anybody that ever been to our old bar, we had this random board over the bar that made no sense whatsoever.

But it's just a random two by eight that just is up there.

Well, because the way the Wyoming law was written is to have a serving area, you have to have a header and a footer and it's in a separate room with like a half wall and a

walkway.

Like it's very obviously a different room, but it didn't have a header.

And so we had to like put this random board up top to legally signify you're in a different room.

There's another brewery that when they did there so they could have youth in the bar like they just bolted a two by four to the ceiling and painted it the same color.

But it's legally a header and so it's little things like that that you're always dealing with.

You know a lot of businesses are very familiar with dealing with you know building code and fire code and some of those.

So we have all that stuff as well but then we had the liquor regulators which at the state and

level they're pretty good.

mean Wyoming is an easy state to work with.

Some other states are not but the feds are absolutely atrocious.

Yeah.

man, I thought I got frustrated with governments as a contractor, but just hearing a little bit about what you go through, I can only imagine.

I don't know that I'm cut out for it.

oh

code and there's a lot of people that specialize in that and it's pretty black and white.

You know, there's some, you know, variance and subjection, but in liquor and specifically the mead world, there's not a lot of statutory law.

And so it's constantly subjective interpretation by whoever you get that day.

And they're not on the same page for your federal regulators.

So like we had one process, like one of our bottles had been on the market for four years.

And we go, cause all of our labels have to be approved by the federal government.

So everything that's on the label, what's in the product, there's a whole process to get a product on the shelf.

And so we put a new label in and it took us a long time to get the first one.

And so we make everything exactly like the old

label we just changed the legally required stuff for what's in it alcohol percentage well they come back like yeah this label is wrong because of this this this and this and every

time you do that you have to get it off to marketing it's another cost every time you change it and so I made the mistake because I didn't know any better of

Well, you guys approved all of these things on our last label.

Like, why can't we do that on this one?

And she comes like, oh, we approved that in error.

So now you have to recall everything that's on the market and you have to reprint, redesign and re-approve all your formerly approved labels.

And it was going to be like $100,000 of cost.

And course, you know, they don't care because they don't pay it.

I'm the one that has to pay it.

And that's that whole concept where regulation becomes a tax.

And so yeah, it was one of those that was like, well, I don't know what we're going to do.

So I'm just not going to recall them and hope you never find them because I can't afford to do that part of it.

And so then we went through the whole label approval and redesign.

It still costs us $10,000 when I'm supposed to work on their approval.

But that's it's all subjective interpretation on whoever you get that day.

And that's usually the kind of stuff that sparks me to start writing letters and getting all fiery pissed off.

Yeah, I think I'd be writing some letters as well.

So, well know you guys have grown significantly from starting as a small metery in Gillette, Wyoming, now to distributing nationally and even internationally.

Did you have a specific growth strategy in mind or, I mean, what does it look like to grow and pursue growth?

No, so we had an objective in mind, but not necessarily a route to get there.

Part of that just not knowing how the industry worked.

But you know, the goal was we always wanted to, I mean, our singular goal is we want made in Gillette, Wyoming on our products on more shelves than any other meadery in the

country.

That's our goal.

I want to put made in Wyoming on as many shelves in this entire country as we can.

We want to be the biggest.

We want to have the most pervasive shelf space.

That's the goal, right?

But to do that, know, once again, we didn't have connections.

We didn't really know how to deal with the distribution.

And we're still going through these challenges because we're still not big enough compared to other alcohol companies to get really hard looks.

Like people don't pursue us.

You know, once you get to a certain size, distributors pursue those brands.

But the problem is, you know, we're a very large company when it comes to meaderies but meaderies are so small compared to

breweries, wineries, distilleries that they don't really go out of their way to pursue meaters.

So we have to do this on our own and try and convince them that this product is good.

A, we'll support it, we can support it, we can support it by production, by sales, by marketing, all these other things.

And so we have to fight tooth and nail for every distribution contract we get.

And the other thing that has happened in our world is you've had a lot of meaderies get on the market.

know, the first meadery these companies have picked up, but they don't have the support capacity or the production capacity or the product doesn't sell for whatever reason.

And they get burned by these meaderies.

And so then they just look at it like, well, you're just another meadery We don't want to touch it.

because they've had bad experiences with other ones.

And so we're still not fully to national level distribution yet.

We've got eight states.

We got a few more in the hopper that we're trying to work with right now, some different contracts we're trying to get through.

But we're still not quite big enough to where that's an easy road to hoe because people aren't pursuing meaderies.

But yeah, so the growth strategy is still in development.

But we've got you know a couple guys were working with right now that we can pull off about two or three more of these at that point will become big enough that it becomes a

much easier sell and the other thing is with our international distribution kind of kind of fell into our laps to an extent But what that does is it gives us legitimacy in the

domestic market?

So even if I only ever sold one bottle a year to Taiwan

When I go to Texas, like, well, if you can figure out logistics to Taiwan and sell there, like, you can figure out Texas.

And so that's helped us a lot building our domestic market by having this international legitimacy, if you will, that makes us a bigger company than we are by volume.

Gotcha.

Okay.

Interesting.

So I know you guys do ship to a few other countries Taiwan and being one of them How did you develop those relationships or did you do that intentionally or how did you get into

those markets?

Yeah, so it's actually a hyper pertinent conversation right now with what's going on in Wyoming legislature.

In 2018, the state legislature set up the Asia Pacific Trade Office in Taipei.

And what it was, it was designed initially to support agricultural exports to Southeast Asia to get in the market.

And so they hired a person, two people that live in Taiwan, that are native Taiwanese, to promote Wyoming goods in Southeast Asia.

Well, we called them pretty soon after they opened and be like, hey, you what do you think about alcohol?

It's an agricultural good.

It starts from ag.

and gets value added and turns into it.

It's like, we hadn't really looked at it, but we'd be interested if you are.

So yeah, we're interested.

We wanna do it.

And so I started working with those guys and I've taken a trip to a in a big trade show, Food Taipei, in 2019.

and brought some product along, doing tastings, we're meeting with distributors and people that would sell it in Taiwan.

We had some really good traction there.

We were getting ready, we had a contract set up and then we were set to do full-scale distribution in March of 2020.

And of course, COVID hit, that all went to crap We lost that one and that company didn't make it through.

They didn't make it through to make it through the COVID times because Asia shut down hard, especially Taiwan.

man.

then we had to start from scratch again, but we had this, know, the Wyoming Business Council and Asia Pacific Trade Office to help us make new connections.

And so in 2023, we set up some more connections and went back over there.

And now we're working with that distributor who's been increasing their value quite a bit.

We had to do a complete rebrand in Asia, had to completely...

do all new branding, all new marketing.

But yeah, so that started to expand and that is since we picked up Hong Kong during that, we've got some things that we're kind of working on in mainland China, Singapore, Japan,

but the goal is kind of use Taiwan as a jumping point to the Southeast Asian market.

But yeah, and the reason I say that's pertinent right now is because the Wyoming legislature, the Joint Appropriations Committee just decided to cut the entire Wyoming

Business Council budget last week.

So we've been actively involved in government and politics again, because economic development is a good thing, not a bad thing.

It's not like these guys have given us hundreds of thousands or millions of dollars to do this.

think I've...

I think I made $4,200 off of a federal grant to help me travel once, but that's it.

It's more so they have the connections, the expertise to help companies like us grow and build the Wyoming culture and the Wyoming brand and all these things that we do.

And so that's why pertinent timing that those guys are in play right now.

Yeah, with all your frustration with government, do you ever foresee getting involved in government at any level in your future?

Yeah, so for a couple years I was the vice chair of the Republican Party in Campbell County.

So I spent a lot of time in politics there.

I even did the second shortest stint in the history of Wyoming legislature as a representative.

I didn't quite get the shortest.

I wasn't there, but...

Ha

Yeah, I was 12 days.

I to solve a political problem and fill a seat.

But, you know, there's been some talk of it.

I enjoy politics.

I don't enjoy government, but I enjoy trying to make it work better for the people who do things.

But now that I live in South Dakota, that calculus has changed quite a bit.

You know, we're still pretty active on the lobbying front in Wyoming, especially with this stuff going on right now with the legislature.

So we've been writing a lot of letters and doing things to try and get some promotion.

done for the state of Wyoming.

But yeah, we will see.

I've had a few people reach out here in South Dakota.

But yeah, probably at some point, but right now I've got kids to raise, I've got a business to run, and I'm okay with that.

Yeah, yeah that's probably enough for now.

Was there something that significantly delayed your growth that you would do differently if you had a chance to do it again?

honestly, I think I would spend more time researching whatever it was that we were doing prior to just like, you know, we have an idea, we're flexible, we can pull the trigger.

you know, especially things like, like growth specifically is really getting, spending some time with people in the industry that understand the politics and logistics behind

larger scale distribution instead just trying to figure it out on our own.

Okay.

to build some of those connections, is significantly expedited things.

I will say that staying in the fire service did not expedite things either.

Just because, mean, you know, it's not like we work 40 hours a week.

You work shift work, you work fires.

You know, was on an incident management team, so there'd be times where two hours notice, I'm gone for three weeks.

And you have very limited capacity to manage your business when you...

are not there and you're in a place with no cell coverage fighting fires for weeks at a time.

So that did hamper growth.

I wouldn't have done that part differently.

But I'd say the biggest thing is really finding some mentors in the industry and finding people that really know it.

That would be one of the big things.

And think another thing too is, you know, we did everything on like the shoestring of shoestring budgets.

You know, if it would break, we'd fix it.

We'd build it and then money for parts.

I mean, we manufacture parts.

We build furniture.

We built our own tap system, built our own roof.

We built everything we could.

But at the same time, you know, I think looking back, spending a little more time on financing out of the gate to get some more working capital to avoid that problem.

probably would help growth as well because you know every hour you're spending fixing something yeah you might save the 45 bucks or the 200 bucks in labor but could that time

have better spent making 500 doing sales right

understanding the value of your time

Yeah, there's some wisdom there.

I think there's a balance.

Starting out, lot of the time, capital's tight and like you said, managing cash flow can be one of the most difficult things for small business owners, but also, like you just

said, every hour you spend saving money is an hour you're not building your business.

Exactly and it's one of those that you know sometimes you do it out of lack of choice because you just don't have money right?

But at the same time you know if you start to learn that and understand it better like we do now You just become more valuable with your time

Yeah.

There's some wisdom there.

That's some good input.

Is there something that you held a strong opinion about early on that you've changed your mind about through building your business?

Let's see...

If you haven't learned yet, I'm fairly strongly opinionated in general.

Ask my wife.

but that I really changed about.

Yeah, there's one significant one.

I think this ties into anybody that grows a business beyond themselves.

And so this was a big challenge internally for me personally, not so much within the company, but within me personally is when you bring on staff, when you bring on a partner,

understanding that your way is not the only way, right?

And so I think a lot of business owners get hyper frustrated with their staff.

They get hyper frustrated with their employees because they don't do it their way.

They don't do it to their standard.

They don't do it to, you whatever it is.

You have to understand it's not their baby and that they are not going to be as passionate as you.

They can't be.

You should never expect that of them.

And I think a lot of business owners, you know, I had my times of this where I forget that.

and just like, don't you get this through your head?

Like this is why this is special and cool and da da da.

And I've been very, don't get me wrong, I've been very fortunate.

My staff has been amazing.

I think I've only ever flown one or two jobs since we opened.

I mean, I've got very loyal staff.

They're great.

But you know, there's been times where I get super frustrated, but then I have to turn back.

Like, no, Sam, that's not, that's an unreasonable expectation of your staff.

You can't do that.

Yeah.

same thing is when you bring on a partner.

And I'll give Bob a lot of graces on this is he understood that, you know, for several years, it was just me.

And so every decision I make, there's no second guessing.

There's nothing you have to do.

Like, this is it.

We're going to go for it.

You guys come with me, right?

I'll help you along, whatever.

But once you're on a partner, that dynamic changes and it's no longer like, Sam, you can't do that.

Like you now have somebody to talk to about this.

And I'll give Bob a lot of grace that he was really good.

about adapting to that and not making a big deal when Sam would just go do Sam things and bulldoze his way through it.

And that was one big one that took me a little while.

took a, I'd say that was probably...

a year to transition of being fully invested in a partnership versus it's my way or the highway because I'm the only one I don't have anybody to negotiate with and Bob was really

good about giving me the grace to like let that go you know he'd eventually he'd get a little like that's a me decision too Sam you know you need to understand that and he was

good about giving me the time to psychologically get through that transition and it was good

It went really well, but that was one thing that, my opinion is my opinion and there's nobody to say boo crap about it.

But not that that was wrong at the time when you're your only one, but transitioning to having that, you can't carry it to staff and you can't carry it to your partner.

And so that was a very valuable lesson that I think a lot of emerging business owners struggle with because it is their baby.

They're the ones with everything on the line.

You know what it's like.

You're the one that all the expenses are going to go to or all the costs if it fails.

But it's also part of that mindset is liberating.

Part of the reason I like owning my own business is

Not only is if it works, your vision, your whatever is good.

You did it, right?

But the antithesis is also true.

If something fails in your business, it's also on you, which is a nice thing to have.

It's not like working, you know, as a fire department, as a fireman, I worked for the government.

So there's failures we would have that it wasn't my fault.

You we didn't get the funding, we didn't get the staff.

know, whatever it was, there's somebody else to blame.

Not always.

But a lot of times there is, you know, there's systematic things.

There's, this guy didn't do whatever.

But when it's your own business, there is nobody else to blame.

If your staff did something that gets you sued or you get a bad review or you lose a sale, guess what?

You didn't train them well enough.

You didn't give them the

Resources you didn't do XYZ.

It's your fault and that's a good thing to have and understand Because I do think a lot of managers supervisors a lot of owners we we have a tendency to blame staff whatever But if

they don't understand your vision if they don't understand they don't have the resources or they made a bad decision The odds of that being entirely on them are about this big

It's your fault.

I like being able to take control of my own faults.

And we've had them.

I've had a lot of them and my staff have had them, but they don't get the brunt of it.

I'm the one that made the failure.

And so it's a nice thing to have, but that's one of those things it takes a while to grow out of.

Yeah, it's yours.

If it's your fault, it's yours to fix.

I had that conversation with my four year old recently.

He was upset about something.

I was like, dude, this is your fault.

You put yourself there.

But the good news about that is you don't ever have to do it again.

When it's your fault, you can fix it.

but

yeah.

Yeah.

He's got a few years to learn those lessons.

Yeah, my five year old's going through the same thing.

I'm like, all right, man, here's the deal.

Here's your options.

You can do this and this happens, or you can do this and this happens.

I'm gonna do this.

Here's the consequence, man.

Yup.

man.

It's tough.

It's tough watching them make those hard decisions and learn those lessons the hard way.

I guess it's better that they do it at five than 15.

Well, especially because every

bone in your body is saying, help them, help them not feel pain, help them, you know, help them be happy, right?

Every single bone in your body is telling you that.

But logically, like, no, they have to learn.

This one's gonna hurt.

It's not gonna be good.

But they gotta learn.

Otherwise, you're just doing them a disservice.

And you also cannot treat your kids like your employees and you definitely can't,

That's one more leadership thing I should talk about.

Growing up in a paramilitary environment where...

You you can't afford to have every conversation or order discussed, right?

I mean, there's times where I say you do, that's just the way it is.

There's no, we have very short timeframes, have emergency situations, like things have to happen now.

And so your entire career in the fire service is structured around this hierarchy.

And it's very strict, it's very paramilitary for a reason.

And...

when you go to having bartenders or people working at the brewery, by the way, Sam, you can't act that way.

So your natural inclination of like, this is how it's done, this is what we're going to do, there's no questions about it, you can't do that.

And so having to learn to transition hats, sometimes in the same day, you know, transitioning between those two hats, that's a huge learning curve for me personally that

I had to get over is

I can't treat my bartenders the same way I do my firemen.

And you shouldn't.

There's a reason you shouldn't do that.

And so there's times where even just the lingo and the way you carry yourself, I have to put on happier face, a little more bubbly, a little more, I gotta deal with feelings a

little bit differently.

that's a good thing, it keeps me on my toes and helps me develop internally as a leader.

But that's a transition that can be tough.

And you see that with a lot of guys that come out of the military too, they get into civilian life and they have a hard time transitioning both not only as supervisor but also

as subordinate because you look at your leaders the same way.

And so in the private business, when I'm dealing with somebody who's...

for lack of a term, my supervisor in this operation, or dealing with downtown politics, or the Main Street program, or other ancillary things that we do outside the business itself,

understanding that as a subordinate, can't just, yes, sir, for everything.

It's expected to have some move back and forth, and that was a fun one.

Well, you brought up wins and losses.

What has been your biggest win as a leader or a business owner?

So there's a couple ways to categorize that question.

So I'm gonna phrase it this way, I'm gonna tell you a story.

So when I first began, there was a guy, very successful business guy in Gillette, and he asked me this question.

And he's like, Sam, how will you know you've made it?

And I like, and I had the answer, I've thought it my head, I was like, well, I I figure.

If I'm $100,000 a year, that means I'm doing a million dollars a year in sales.

At the time, that was my compensation model that I thought, it's like I'll take 10 % of profit, right?

So I figured if I could make $100,000 a year, that means we'll have a million dollars a year in sales.

That means I've made it.

And he's like, are you sure about that?

I was like, what do mean?

He's like, I'm not gonna give you the answer, but I'll tell you that that question has nothing to do with money.

And I was like, that kind of, hmm, that's interesting.

Went on with my day, right?

Fast forward a couple years and I got to thinking about that a lot more.

I've had that question in my head a lot.

How do you know you made it?

So, you know, people ask me this, like, man, you're successful.

Like, you've been small business export of the year for the SBA region A.

You've been this entrepreneur of the year, business of the year, you're exporting, you're, you know, a lot of the same things you said.

And you're like, dude, you've made it, right?

You made it.

And that is not correct.

Like we've done a lot of big things.

We've had a lot of big wins and we've done some really, really cool stuff for the state, for Wyoming, for our business, for our families.

And we've been involved, we've done some cool things, but I still wouldn't say that we've made it.

You know, there's still, there's always financial instability that can happen at any time.

You know, we've got this huge growth thing and massive risk we're taking in Sioux Falls right now with the brick and mortar.

You know, we're still not, we haven't hit our objective yet of being our need with Made in Wyoming's on more shells than anybody else in United States.

We haven't hit that yet.

So we haven't made it.

But then I think more about it is, let's say we get to that point.

I would say within the next five years, that's very possible that we will be that.

That puts us as the biggest meadery in the United States, right?

That's a very real possibility.

But once we get there is...

will we think we have made it, right?

We hit that initial objective, but knowing the way I operate, the way the company operates, there's gonna be another one on the horizon.

And so it starts to look more like the way you made it is you're doing the thing, right?

You're doing the thing that you're passionate about.

Are you living the lifestyle?

Are you doing the thing?

And at that point, that's why we do what we do is...

that and so that's kind of a roundabout way of answering that question but I will tell you there are some specifics that stand out in my mind of big wins.

So I remember the very first time I saw somebody wearing one of our shirts that I didn't know.

Yeah.

thing of like, there's a guy that buys my product, supports my brand, and I have no idea who they are.

It's not a friend, it's not a family, it's not somebody doing it because they like me.

Like, that was a big deal.

You also remember the very first time that you hear somebody talking about your product in a good way that doesn't know you're in the room.

So like, you know, I'm at this bar in Rapid City, South Dakota.

on sales trip and I'm just walking through and I hear these two guys like, dude, if you had that big loss stuff before, it's awesome.

They're going off on how great this stuff is.

You gotta try it.

They have no idea who I am.

don't know I'm not branded at the time.

And just sitting there, these are big wins.

then still to this day, the single biggest win we have is when I can give somebody this thing that I created, this thing that I found a way to build and market and

and sell and all the things that go into getting from my brain to somebody's hand and watching them drink it and just be wowed.

That's still like, that is the ultimate why we do what we do.

It's because booze makes culture.

It's one of those things, know, food makes culture, booze makes culture, song, dance, know, expressions of humanity and booze is one of those ways that just happens to be our

way.

And so when we can do that and somebody doesn't know what to expect, they don't know what it is, hits their mouth and they're just like floored.

When they get, you just get that wow factor like.

It's awesome.

That feeling never goes away.

And it's really cool when you can get your staff to buy in on that.

And so where they just get so excited when they see that person be wowed.

That's the ultimate biggest win.

I know that's not a great business question.

per se on the hard business side, that really is, those are the wins that you really remember.

I remember getting the awards, I remember the first time going to Taiwan, but those little ones are really the big wins.

Yeah, that's awesome.

I can tell you care a lot about your craft and the art that it is.

Yeah, mean, think art's important because there's a lot of ways to make money, there's a lot of things to do, but doing something...

that you're passionate about, it's worth a lot more.

It really is.

It's part of why like the fire service.

I I could have made a lot of money in coal mines a lot more than I did in the fire service, but I loved doing what I do.

And you see that in people too.

You see it in the trades.

You see the guy that lays drywall and the guy that's passionate about drywall.

It's a night and day difference in the way they operate, the way they look at their craft, the way they enjoy it, the way they become masters of it.

And that's just really valuable to a society and it's valuable to a culture.

Yeah, 100%.

I think that's one of the biggest things that was lost.

We talked at the beginning about education and maybe the cultural or societal view of the trades that we grew up with is it robbed a lot of kids of that.

There's a lot of value.

There's a lot of dignity in serving people well, providing value with your skill, whatever that is.

And, you know, there were a lot of trades, there were a lot of positions

that kind of got shunted to the side or there's a whole generation that grew up thinking that was a plan B life when it doesn't have to be.

And people that have passion for what they do, they can make a lot of money, they can have a very fulfilling life, they can serve their community, they can serve the people around

them by using the skills that they have and the personality that they have rather than trying to fit into this cookie cutter

personality that does well in school and can sit still and pay attention and get good grades and does well on a test.

Yeah, and not only that, but I mean, like when people are truly passionate about their work, whatever your vocation is, I mean, you could be the painter, you could be in the

trades, you can make booze, you could be a teacher, you could be a lawyer, I don't really care what it is, but whatever your vocation is, when you're passionate about it, like it

makes that thing better, it makes that thing more beautiful.

I mean, you've seen the advent of modern architecture, right?

Where they're like, let's just throw up slab buildings, because they're cheap, they're effective, and think of how much beauty and art we lose.

from guys that were just passionate tradesmen and they're putting craft into their stone, into their wood, or I'm sure you've seen one electrician versus the other electrician.

When you walk in and you just see the beauty of all the wires are perfectly put together, the pipe is straight, it looks like it's supposed to look, or a welder when you see, yeah,

this is effective, but this is beautiful.

And I think beauty is an important thing that doesn't always have financial value, but it has massive implicit value in people's lives.

that's a great way to put it.

I might steal that and use that again.

What has been your biggest resource to grow as a leader?

So I was fortunate because in the fire service we spend a lot of time developing leadership and management skills.

mean, the uh local county government spent a lot of money training me to do that world.

And plus I was in a position of very formal leadership.

You my last position was a battalion chief and so that's all I did every day.

And then between that and running a business is I was fortunate to have a lot of very explicit resources over 25 years to develop that skill set that a lot of guys, when you're

in the private industry, especially if you're in a smaller company, so I take a roofing business for instance, you can't spend 20 years training managers from the ground up and

you don't have the money to send them to classes and like,

most of your time is spent doing the work.

That's what you have to do to continue.

But in the fire service, there's times where you may not run a call for several hours and we can focus on this or I need you to be better developed to do this job so we have money.

We're sending you to training.

We're sending you to do this.

We do lot of internal.

We do external.

And I was in the training environment so I spent five years essentially in a classroom.

and a training environment, that's all we did.

So I was fortunate to have a lot of that skill set already in place that I could, from very, very formal styles.

But stuff that I've utilized probably more so than anything outside of my formal training is reading.

Reading, reading, reading, like be a voracious reader.

I cannot stress that enough.

I mean, you look at, have you ever met,

like a very, very high up general by chance, know, three, four stars, secretary-less, something like that.

So if you ever meet these guys, they're hyper-dialed in, And so I never met him in their official capacity, but the first guy I met, he was just at a funeral and we both had a

relative by marriage that had died.

And so I'm talking to this guy and this guy is, he's very straight and narrow, every man you're

him is dialed in everything he does is dialed in just the way that he operates like how this guy this guy is unique and so I started talking to him and you know it's changed

names like oh firemen and what do you do is I was in the army and retires what do you in the army is like and I can't remember what he said but something like

Something like I did off-command staff work or something like that.

Well, we get to talking, the guy's a three-star general, which explains it.

Because those guys spend, in that world, they spend 30 years training for that job, right?

And so they're very dialed into formal leadership and management, but the other thing they do is they're hyper-voracious readers.

And so I talked to him, you know, what should I be reading was one of my questions.

And I asked him, you know, what he's reading right now.

And we talked about books, but you look at some of these guys like, you know, General Mattis, you know, the Bulldog Marine General.

They say that guy's read 30,000 books.

30,000, if you think about that, that number's wild.

Yeah.

But you look at, you your best speakers, your most successful business people, almost all of them are hyper voracious readers because in our world, we can only process so much

through experience.

If you want to grow, you have to go off the experiences of other people.

You've got to learn.

You've got to understand that knowledge and gain everything you can from others because you don't have enough bandwidth in your timeframe to gain all that on your own.

And so would say reading would probably be the single biggest one.

Yeah,

I read voraciously.

Do you have a favorite author or a favorite book that kind of helps you in the leadership or the business realm?

My favorite author has nothing to with leadership.

He's just a really good author.

But I keep a list of every book I ever read.

And so I've always got a laundry list to go in.

Because people ask me a lot about reading, especially when I was doing training.

So I'd always have book lists ready to go.

But I'd say when it comes to leadership books, I'm a big biography guy.

uh I'll tell you, one of the big ones that I got was from that general specifically.

is there's a four book series on General George Marshall.

I don't know if you're familiar much with Marshall.

So he's a five star general during World War II, but he essentially ran the entire US military strategy and command for all of World War II.

Probably the single biggest military command in history.

and it's a four-part series by Forrest Pogue on his life.

And so it took him prior to the war, through the beginning of the war, the end of the war.

and then right after the war when he was Secretary of Defense and then after that when he was Secretary of State.

And so it's his life story.

That's probably one of single best biographies.

He also talks a lot about logistics.

was a logistical genius and you know never had a lot on the battlefield command.

He never did much.

He never had a true battlefield command.

even though he planned like the Musar gone offensive as a major and he planned most of World War II never had an actual battlefield command.

The only five star general never have a battlefield command.

But yeah, that's a good one.

Also a lot of...

Yeah, I mean, it really depends what your interest level is.

I'm not big on the business help books.

I don't read a lot of those.

I read some of the inspirational books every now and then, but I don't get a ton out of them.

I'm more so looking at what people done, why they did it, how they do it.

Because you'll notice a lot of those self-help books and business leadership books and things like that, they have one good point and they write a whole book about that one

sentence.

But it's really like, it could be done in an article.

And it's a lot of repeat verbiage to try and reinforce the same thing.

There is one really good one though that's down that route called It's Your Ship by James Absaroff.

And so he was a Navy captain that adopted this just not real good crew and boat.

that eventually elevated to the single best performing ship in the entire US Navy.

And it's all about taking ownership in what you do and getting your guys to take ownership in what they do to develop the entire concept as a whole.

Yeah, that one's really good, but I also recommend, mean, read technical books.

you know, things on science, read things on art, read things on biology, read things on, read on fiction, mean read everything around because it helps develop your lexicon, it

helps develop your ability to write, it helps develop your ability to process information.

And it's one of those things that if you're reading something there's always somebody to talk to.

yeah?

Yeah?

Awesome.

So if you ever want a list, I've got a list.

We'll send it over any time.

I do have a go-to reading list for people, but it's kind of all over the board, depending on what they're doing.

Gotcha.

and peruse through other people's lists too.

I'll always peruse other people's lists.

Do you have some?

well I just love comparing lists.

I have a list of some awesome books that I've read and I like having that discussion of kind of going back and forth.

Yeah, there's a lot of books, like you said, that you can kind of get the gist of it by reading the summary and talking to somebody that's already read it, you know which ones

you need to read and which ones you can read the cliff notes.

yeah.

book to recommend to people?

man, probably kind of like you depends on the topic.

I have a few leadership books that I like.

Pat Lincione has some good stuff out.

John Maxwell's of course is kind of the king of leadership stuff.

I love biographies like you said so I've got a few biographies.

of military leaders that kind of incorporate their war stories with some leadership lessons and those are a lot of fun for me.

Get some of the excitement of the war story along with the lesson along the way.

yeah.

What's your best biography?

Or your favorite biography?

gosh, that's tough.

I guess it wasn't necessarily a biography, I like Jaco's extreme ownership.

ah Pete Blaber, The Man, The Mission and Me, that was a fun one.

He had a lot of really unique stories.

They definitely weren't leadership books, but uh The River of Doubt.

Roosevelt's or a biography about Roosevelt.

wasn't an autobiography but biography about him Endurance with Shackleton um

I'm drawing a blank on the name, but there's a fantastic biography about Lewis and Clark that has some pretty key leadership principles and then just tells the story of their trek

across North America that, man, that one was just mind blowing.

I couldn't put that down.

was a big book and I think I did the whole thing in like a day and a half.

That was fantastic.

Yeah, those are a couple off the top of my head.

I've got a pretty good list as well.

I try to keep track of everything I've read.

Yeah, it's fun to go back and reread some of them.

Three of those books are on standard leadership list for fire service.

Uh-huh.

Yeah.

Extreme ownership for like younger officers.

The man, the mission and me.

And then, oh, was the one you said right before, the man, the mission and me.

Yeah, what was, uh, you just talked about it.

So you had, yeah, Jaco's...

drawn a blank.

Yeah, just, yeah, it was the one right before you said the man, the mission and me.

Okay, yeah those are all on, I have a list of like eight or ten kind of for uh specific to leadership and those three are all on that list as well.

yeah those are, yeah those are some good ones.

Well, I know you've uh fought some pretty hard battles uh learning a new industry starting from scratch, no connections, fighting with government at many different levels.

What is it that motivates you and keeps you pushing when things get hard?

I like doing it.

I honestly, I enjoy doing what I do.

And like you said, you kind of alluded to it earlier, but if you're really passionate about what you do, the trials are all just speed bumps to get where you're going, right?

mean, that's even the, nobody likes doing taxes, nobody likes doing paperwork, nobody likes dealing with the government, but that's all, those are just part of the things, I

mean.

I guess to put it in comparison, it's not a direct correlation, but it's very close is.

Why do you keep changing dirty diapers on your baby?

Nobody likes doing that.

But you love this kid.

It's a thing that you do as part of raising this kid, right?

And so that stuff's not gonna stop you like, I'm not gonna have a baby because I'm not gonna change diapers.

Nope, not gonna do it.

And so I look at it the same way as like, yeah, mean, all these things that we do that aren't fun or battles or whatever, that's just, that's part of the game.

mean, that's, if you want to do this work, these are things that come along with it.

You know, if you want to go work for the forest service and travel over fire and great fires, guess what?

You're going to eat cold food.

You're not going to shower.

You're going to sleep on the ground.

Like that's.

You just make the fun out of it.

Things like fighting the government, actually pretty well enjoy that now.

I get a kick out, I get a rise out of it.

And even when you're doing things you don't want to do, like working on your taxes, your accounting, but make a game out of it.

I finished it, you know what?

Screw you Uncle Sam, but you know what, at least I got it done.

I did it efficiently this year.

Didn't have any major problems.

So yeah, mean uh it's not hard to keep going when the vision is sound.

And so all those things just become, that's part of the game.

Awesome.

Yeah, that's a great answer.

This is my favorite question I ask everybody.

Are you a person of a particular faith tradition?

And if so, how has that shaped your leadership journey?

Yeah, so I'm Catholic.

I'm very, very practicing Catholic.

I just like, you know, I was a cradle Catholic for a long time and then became Catholic eventually.

And my mom has nine aunts and uncles that were priests or nuns.

So she comes from a staunchly Catholic family.

But I mean, we're very active in the church.

But as far as like how that does with leadership, it does a couple of things is I'm firm believer that

Do you ever read Augustine

I guess I haven't read much of his actual writings

Yeah, so he's got a quote, it's very end of his book that, my heart will not rest until it rests in thee.

And so what that means, I look at the world a lot that way is where faith causes peace, And faith is not designed for you to have an easy life.

It's not designed for you to go through life.

without any trials and tribulations.

Once again, you cannot hone the stone unless it gets heated by iron.

I can't hone the iron until it gets heated by fire.

And so it's one of those things that like when your faith is strong, you have something bigger and badder than you are, substantially bigger and badder than you are.

And everything else is a lot less of an issue after that, right?

And so you take those things that it creates peace.

And so it's one of those where you don't have to get super worked up about the stuff that honestly doesn't really matter that much.

Even my business does really matter that much.

I'm passionate about it.

I think it matters a lot.

But at the same time, there's still something bigger.

So it helps put things in perspective.

And so, and if you're strong enough, like in my world, if you're strong enough in your faith life and it's something that's sort of an active pursuit, A, you have something to

take your mind off business, but you also, helps teach discipline.

I it helps learn to be good.

It teaches you things that are hyperproductive in your environment.

And if your vocation is aligned with where God wants your vocation to be, it's gonna be okay.

I don't know if I'm aligned with where God wants me to be or not.

I hope I am.

But at the same time, that is the primary pursuit.

And with that becomes pursuit of your family because you can ask business owners all the time.

If there's no peace in their family, do know how much peace there is at work?

This much, right?

And if there's no peace with your faith, do know how much peace there is in your family usually?

About this much, because there's a key component of your life that's missing.

And so if you have that, that you can constantly pursue, everything else gets a lot better from that.

Because

I'm a firm believer in the concept of hard to kill.

Your job should be to be hard to kill.

And by hard to kill, mean physically, tactically, emotionally, but also spiritually.

You should be spiritually hard to kill because otherwise it's pretty easy to find ways to take you out.

So that's my answer to that is yes, it's important, but because it causes peace, there probably are some, you know,

more explicit things when it comes to leadership and passivity and things like that but more so it puts you in the right mindset understanding that your business is not the end

all be all.

There's other things that are a lot bigger and if you're doing your business for the sake of the business you're not going to have a very meaningful life and if you don't have a

very meaningful life all you got is your business.

Yeah.

Yeah, that's a good way to put it.

I like that.

oh

you answer that question?

Or can I ask?

Sure, yeah, I'm a devout Christian, a follower of Jesus, I think similar to what you said, that informs every aspect of my life.

So that means that I believe there is one God, creator of all things, and that we were created by Him in His image, within eternal spirit.

I believe that we have all sinned, separating us from the perfect loving God.

And I believe that Jesus Christ is God incarnate, taking on human form to live the perfect life that we could not live.

and suffering the death and punishment that we all deserve.

I believe that He died and rose from the grave, and that only by grace through faith in Him we can be restored to right relationship with God, saved from the bondage of sin, and

get to spend eternity in His presence.

ah I believe that the greatest aim of man is to

strive to live a righteous life in alignment with His will, that everything we do might bring Him glory.

And that informs everything that I do.

ah The way that I live as a husband, the way I parent my kids, uh the way I run my business.

the way I treat employees and try to conduct myself

So, you know, I try to live my life by Jesus' example.

try to...

love others around me and I'm seeking his will of my life.

So like you said, trying to align my life with his will for my life and serving and loving the people around me as best as I can and living a life in pursuit of him.

yeah.

Yeah, and I think that

Yeah, like you said, that's the foundation that provides peace from which we pursue all other things and it brings everything into perspective.

I think in life it's really easy to get focused on what's right here, what's right in front of you and problems get blown out of proportion and when you can step back and view

life through a different lens and realize that there are things bigger and more important than you and in your life there's things bigger and more important than the problem right

in front of your face and then zoom out even farther to kind of, you know, eternity.

The problem right in front of you gets to be a lot smaller.

brings a lot more peace to life and a lot more purpose.

If our life is just all about us and what we get and where we're going, that's kind of an empty existence.

So yeah, there's something bigger and better that I live my life for.

Have you ever asked that question and not got a positive answer?

no, I guess.

I mean, I have interviewed a few people that don't subscribe to any faith tradition.

You know, so they kind of have a soft answer there.

But no, I've never asked somebody that that was like, oh man, yeah, I'm a Christian or I'm whatever and it ruined my life.

So.

Well, I was thinking more so the opposite of like, faith has no dealings with whatever.

no, not really.

Even the people that do not have a faith tradition that they ascribe to or say they're non-religious usually have a, you know, but I have this moral compass or I have these

standards that I kind of try to live to or yeah.

I think somebody that really is just totally hedonistic in their living and does not recognize

something greater than themselves, whatever that is, uh those people are rarely very successful.

ah Yeah, I think...

You know, my view, I think we are created for community.

We are created to be in community with God and community with each other.

We are created to love and serve one another.

And so uh a life fully lived is a life serving those around you and loving those around you.

And divorced from that life is pretty empty.

So.

out there that talks about that very thing.

It's a big book.

It's about this big.

Yeah, yeah, it's good stuff.

So, awesome.

So where do you go from here?

I know you're still pursuing being the biggest metery in the United States, well on your way.

You said maybe within five years you think you could get there.

What's above and beyond that?

What's next for the big lost metery?

Yeah, mean, you right now we're getting this Sioux Falls brick and mortar off the ground.

know, February will be a year that we're open.

You know, we're still in the trenches on it.

We still got a ways to go, but we're getting there.

But I mean, you know, some of the plans are to help pursue that vision is, you know, if this one works well enough, you know, we plan on building more of these.

and building out some brick and mortar expansions across the United States, get a half a dozen or so of these going.

Because that's all brand building for our distribution network.

Because as soon as you put one, now people are paying me to do tastings and not me paying myself or other people to go out and pay to do tastings and get in their mouth.

They come here to check it out, which just builds your distribution platform.

And so in order to get that distribution model, either you have to set up distribution or, know, since we haven't been hyper successful in that because of our size and dealing with,

you know, right now all the distribution companies are all conglomerating to big super companies that are kind of shutting out on little guys anyway.

We either have to continue on this expansion route of brick and mortar going that way.

But we've also been working with trying to set up a new model of distribution in different places with like

hyper-botique distributors, because we're the only product in the United States that requires somebody else to sell it for us.

And so like if I had, you know, the legal ability, I would put people in all these different states and just start selling it ourselves and set up warehouses and do all

logistics, make it all internal, but that's against the law.

And so it's one unique thing that our industry has to do that not other industries don't have to do that.

And so a lot of them don't quite understand, you know, they see the benefits of distribution as advanced logistics.

But for us, like we can't even be in the market unless somebody else says yes.

and they have their choice to say yes or no.

And if everybody says no, you just don't get to be in the market at all, even if your customers want it.

And so we're looking at some alternatives of distribution, just going with really small boutique distributors that hyper focus on a core set of products.

And so like, if you go with a big company like Republic National, you might have 42 states, but they have 10,000 products and you're one of 10,000.

How about I go with a small company that runs one state that only has a hundred products and I get a hundredth of their time versus a 10,000th or a hundred thousandth of their

time.

And so we're looking at some of those like that's when we just opened up in Virginia or Maryland and DC and we're getting ready to open up Virginia over there in that model as

well.

And yeah, so we're kind of looking at that as really once we get through this growth phase of the Sioux Falls operation, then we start hammering into building out these little

distribution networks with more boutique companies.

And then we're starting working on the next brick and mortar until

hit that vision and once we hit that vision that's like okay now what do we do it's just we'll see when we get there because that one's big enough to shoot after that that'll keep

us occupied for a while.

Okay, good stuff.

Do you have anybody that you'd like to see on the show?

Somebody that's in a unique industry, has a unique story, somebody that you'd like to learn a little bit more about?

yeah, let think.

I'm trying to think of somebody that would be as good.

Somebody that I think would say yes or somebody that I don't know very well and want to see.

Those are two different questions.

Yeah, yeah, I'm open to either answer.

So there's a guy that I think you would he would do well in this show his name's Seton Smith I'll send you over his contact.

I think he would do it too.

So he Actually, I'll just send you an email with an introduction to him.

So Seton exports to Taiwan as well and He he started this gluten free gluten free snack company

And then now he's gotten into medical devices for diabetics.

And so he's manufacturing in combination between here in Taiwan with...

this essentially a gluten-free testing kit that can be done on the fly.

It's a really cool concept that has required a lot of different partnership between like the University of Wyoming, I think it's Taipei University, business industries in Taiwan,

in Wyoming, but it's been a really good uh partnership across the ocean that's pretty unique.

It's very, very unique actually.

I think they have the only one in the US market.

Okay.

they're going through some rapid growth phase right now to get that up and running, but it's been several years in the process.

He'd probably be pretty interesting to have on the show.

And I think he would do it too.

And he's got a good personality for something like this too.

That helps.

And then you don't want the dry guy.

Another one, if you can get it, I don't know if he would or not, is Mike Wandler from LNH Industrial.

I don't know if you're familiar with LNH.

Ha-uh.

&H is a company, they started in the 60s in Gillette, but they're multinational company now.

And so they do mining, manufacturing, repair for mining parts, but they've got operations on four continents.

and they got multiple shops and then they're starting to get into micro nuclear reactors and Mike has been real big, he's the president of the company, but he's been real big into

economic development and.

business education trades craft absolutely fascinating is very very well first hundred times more well-versed business and i'll ever be and he started off like welding there

when he's like fifteen and he's done some really really cool stuff but he uh...

if you can get him he's worth sending a message to try and call down L and H uh...

he'd be really worth getting on

trying to think there's another guy that might he might be a good one I don't know if you would do it or not he's pretty busy guy but Steve Van Buskirk he's here in Sioux Falls he

him and his brothers own a big company that does real estate

property development and construction.

have like three arms to this company.

It started off as construction company and then know their dad kind of built it out and these three have really expanded it into something else.

He'd be worth talking to but yeah I'll send you some names that they're worth reaching out to.

But I'll put you, I'll send an email.

I gotta get Seton's email.

I think I've got his card here but I'll uh...

Yeah, I'll put you on an introduction with Seaton from me that that'll help, he'd be a good one to talk to.

Yeah, that'd be great.

I'm always looking for interesting stories.

So, well, our last question to kind of either fuel or settle the debate.

If you have a job to do and need a cordless tool, which brands do you prefer?

I'm gonna say DeWalt.

The only reason being is I've had a DeWalt since high school.

Like I still have batteries from 2009 that are still working.

just, had to talk one the other day but, but I also have zero preference.

That's just what I've always had.

So I just keep getting the same things.

Cause I already had the parts and pieces for them.

ah But I really don't it's just like if you were to ask me about Ford or Dodge I could care less.

For me they're tools they get me from point A to point B just like a tool like if it if the drill works Great if I can get the screw in I'm happy if I can get the board cut I'm

happy like I really don't I'm not a good one to ask

Yeah, well, my personal opinion, I think most people just end up buying what they first got or first liked or what somebody sold them on.

But yeah, some people get real riled up and, know, I said, you're a diehard Ford guy or a diehard Dodge guy and they'll fight over it.

DeWalt and Milwaukee are kind of running neck and neck here.

So we'll see who wins over the next few months.

Yeah, well it's like that guy, you see that guy that puts the two drills together and puts them on go to see which one's more powerful.

He made a whole Instagram channel out it.

I'm sure he's making pretty good money.

By the way, this is me and how she came to visit.

My 10 month old puppy who's 100 pounds.

my goodness, what kind of a dog is it?

English master.

Oh boy.

just got her a couple weeks ago and she's she's massive.

I got uh yeah she's a good girl though.

Yeah, I love dog.

cool.

Well, Sam, thank you so much for joining me.

It's been a pleasure getting to know you and learning about Big Lost.

If people want to reach out to you or if they want to get a hold of some of your product, uh where is it available and what would be the best way to get a hold of it?

Yeah, if you want to get a hold of product, if you go to the BigLost website, we have a Mead Finder.

And so you can just click on the Finder and it'll show up.

You can zoom in like on Google Maps and see what stores it's at.

You can always get it in Gillette and Sioux Falls at our retail locations.

If you need to get a hold of me, I'll just put my cell phone out here.

I'm easy to get a hold of.

307-660-3199.

Now, if you end up getting two million views on this, I might edit that one out.

ah

yeah.

Yeah, but I mean right now like yeah people that are watching your show like they got questions for me feel free calling I uh, I got time.

I answer my phone from any zip codes.

So

I'm more than happy to reach out if anybody's got questions or if the other thing too is we've helped a lot of businesses in the past with if you're thinking about getting into

export or you're having problems with the government, I'm always looking for a fight for the feds.

if you want to fight, dude, let me know.

I will write letters all day long.

But yeah, if there's anything that we can help with, we would love to.

And of course, if there's anybody out there in distribution land, give us a call.

We're always in for that.

Awesome.

Well that sounds great.

I really do appreciate it.

And

thank you guys for joining us here on From the Ground Up Show.

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