David Packouz - Entrepreneur | The Real 'War Dogs' Gunrunner Who Made $300 Million Trafficking Arms

Once the New York Times created this political scandal, my mug shot and Ephraim's mug shot were on the front page of the New York Times next to a picture of Rusty-looking ammunition. What are the thoughts that are going through your head when you're dealing with this whole process? I might be fucked. That's what I'm doing. Today we have a truly extraordinary guest, a man whose life story reads like a Hollywood screenplay but is entirely unbelievably true. David isn't just another entrepreneur. From a young arms dealer who once navigated the high stakes world of international munitions to becoming the innovative CEO of a music technology company. The United States was fighting the Taliban. That was where most of the stuff I worked on went. I didn't feel bad about that. I thought the Taliban are not great people and the people fighting them should be supported. First thing everyone asks me is was the triangle of death scene real. So the triangle of death scene was based on a real contract. We did have a contract to deliver 10,000 barrettes to Iraq. Unfortunately we actually failed to deliver those barrettes in real life. House arrest turned out to be one of the biggest blessings in my life. That was how I launched my company's singular sound. That's kind of funny how that goes. Every single industry has its own quirks. If you have a specialty, just start with that. It'll work out. Don't stress too much. You can make more money. You can never make more time. Welcome to Success Story. I'm your host, Scott Clary. The Success Story podcast is part of the HubSpot podcast network. HubSpot has been a huge supporter of the show and I'm happy they are because I'm a huge believer in HubSpot. I've used it for everything from this show to all the companies I've ever run in the past. And I know there's a lot of entrepreneurs in the audience. And let me ask you a question. 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Start making major moves with HubSpot. Visit HubSpot.com slash marketers to learn more. Talk to me about some of the first entrepreneurial endeavors, businesses, things that you tried to do growing up. I get to the place to start. Let's see. The first my first entrepreneurial venture was when I was six years old. I was living in in Israel at the time in Jerusalem. And I'm one of nine children. My dad was a rabbi and at very religious household. And we lived in this old apartment building that didn't have an elevator and it didn't have a garbage shoot either. So you'd have to take your trash down the stairs to the ground floor out to the dumpster on the corner and then haul it into the dumpster. And as a little kid, you know, the dumpster was really big. You know, so I'd have to like swing it and get it. And sometimes miss. And you have to do it again. And so anyway, it was a big pain and the dad worked. Yeah. He really did. He really put us to work. And so I remember there is one day my I was playing Legos with my older sister. And my mother, who was like cooking in the kitchen, she asked us to take the trash out. And we, you know, as little kid, my old my sister was like a year and a half older than me. So she was about seven. And she asked us to take the trash out. And we're like, oh, we don't want to take the trash out. And we want to play Legos. And she got annoyed at us. And she's like, I asked you to take the trash out. My dad hears a commotion. He comes by. And she's like, they don't want to take the trash out. And my dad says to us, he's like, you guys are looking at this all wrong. This, you think this is this big hassle, you know, but really, this is a big opportunity for you. And we're like, what are you talking about? How's taking the trash out an opportunity? And he says, well, think about it. All our neighbors, I bet they don't want to take the trash out either. So all you have to do is go to all the neighbors and offer them a service. You can take out their trash. People don't take it out the trash every day. So every other day, maybe three times a week. And you could charge them, I don't know, maybe, you know, a quarter a week. It was a shackle in Israel. It's worth about a quarter. And we're like, oh, that's a great idea. We're going to make money. And he's like, yeah, it is a great idea. Well, now, why don't you practice and take your mother's trash efforts? You're that smart. He's there because there's no arm. He's very smart. And so we went to all the neighbors and we offered them the service and we, I think we signed up eight neighbors to for the service. And we used our mother's like, she had a big like this big cart, this like wire cart that I think she would put groceries in or something. And we'd have to, you know, put the trash in the thing because we were too small to like take the trash out just on its own. And we'd have to like take the cart down the stairs and go, cachunk, cachunk, cachunk, the wheels down the stairs. And then at the end of the week, we went to our town and we're like, you know, this is way too much work. This is so much work. It's not worth a quarter a week. And my dad said, well, what if you got paid twice as much? Would you want to do it then? And we're like, wow, twice the money. That would be worth it. And he says to us, he was like, well, then just tell the neighbors that you raised the price. And then now it's 50 cents a week. And we said, but we can't tell the, we can't just double the price. We just said last a week ago is a quarter. This is, well, you don't raise the price. You're going to quit anyway. So you might as well give him the opportunity to pay what, you know, what what you think is worth to do the service for. And so we went to all the neighbors. And we had one neighbor who who only one neighbor canceled. And from then on, we saw their daughter take out the trash, which we've never seen before. They didn't get to realize why we paying the neighbors kids to do this. We have a perfectly good kid of our own. And one neighbor complained, he's like, he's like, what a, you can't just double the price. Maybe this week, you put it up 10 cents next week, you put it up five cents, double, this is crazy. You know, and we're like, but we stuck to our guns. And he's like, okay, fine, fine, fine, fine. And he, he paid it. And so, um, so yeah, so that was my first business. I built up, um, probably like a few hundred checkers over the course of a few. How old were you again, sir? When you was about six years old. Yeah. Like from the get go. Yeah. And, and your dad, your dad was a rabbi. So he was a very, very religious. Yeah. But when I listen to your sort of your origin story, uh, you can talk about why you chose not to become religious and to sort of like go down that path. But also, he wanted you to become religious. And when, when you said like, was, and this is not for me, pushed you towards, I pushed you towards more traditional, uh, like safer careers. And I'm curious why, why would a parent at a young age who can encourage you to be so entrepreneurial, then when it actually comes time to like figure out your life and career, why is he like go be a doctor or a lawyer? Uh, I think there's a large element in the Jewish community of like traditional, uh, safe career, career paths. Yeah. There's, there's a lot of, a lot of doctors are Jewish, a lot of lawyers are Jewish. Um, and I think there's just a large element of, uh, I think the history of the Jewish people is that, at least the Ashkenazi Jewish people from Europe, um, is that we weren't allowed to own land. So the only thing you could take with you is your education. So there was always a very large, uh, pressure to have high education that could translate into a business because when, you know, they come and try to kill us all and you run away, uh, you know, you can't, you can't take the land with you. So, so that I think that's where it started culturally. That makes it. And that's something that obviously like your dad, your, your dad felt and believed in. And then I mean, it's always interesting like family dynamics. So he did prompt you to be entrepreneurial. Um, and obviously that's ultimately where you ended up. But like other elements of your child, it likes maybe even speak briefly about, because you spoke about religion and why you chose not to be religious and how like even like Jewish culture maybe influenced you as you grew up. Yeah. Yeah, if it better or worse. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, everything has good and, you know, bad things to it. Um, so the, for people who don't know the Orthodox Jewish community is, um, pretty intense. And, uh, I, there's a very, it's pretty much the highest calling in life in that community is to study Bible and religious books all day, uh, particularly the Talmud, which is this enormous body of, uh, work that kind of goes into the nitty gritty details of what the Bible all means and what all the rules and how all the details of the rules and all the corner cases and, and so, and it's like a very complex law text is what it is. And it's written in Aramaic, not even Hebrew, which is like an old dead version like relation to Hebrew linguistically. Um, so I spent many, many years way more than I wanted, uh, studying the Talmud in Yeshua, in Yeshua. Yeah. It's an all-boy school. Didn't meet a girl that wasn't related to me until I was like 17. It was very traumatic, very traumatized. It was very, very awkward as, uh, as a young guy. But, um, but I think the, uh, the advantage of that was that I learned to really grind for many hours at a time on things that were not particularly interesting. Yeah. And tuition is no joke. Yes. Exactly. Like, I, I, I have friends that are, are especially in Toronto. We don't know as many connections down here, but friends that were orthodox in Toronto, orthodox using Toronto. And I can't remember the exact hours that I never really paid attention. I must have done kids. But like, their average school, like, starts way earlier and goes way later. So, yeah, so my, my schedule during high school was, uh, we'd get to school at 730 in the morning to pray. Then we'd eat breakfast and then we'd study Talmud until like lunchtime. And then after lunch, we'd have our secular subjects until dinner time have dinner and then do more studies of more religious studies. Do our homework, go to sleep, wake up and do it again. So it was like, they, they designed it so that you would not have any free time specifically so that you, I went to school right on the edge of South Beach, right? So like, literally a few blocks walk was all the parties and all the clubs and everything. And I was in my button down white shirt and my black hat and, you know, my, my sideburns, you know, coming down. So, uh, you were super religious. I was very religious. Yeah, I'm not by choice, but, but, uh, but yeah, it was, uh, it was a real night and day kind of cultural difference. And then so talk to me about that. So, uh, I think that even, um, choosing to move away from being so religious and, and, and so strict, that also pushed you into different jobs and different avenues to talk to me about that. Yeah. Um, so, I'm one of nine children. As I mentioned, I'm third from the oldest and my older two siblings remained religious. So it was, uh, when I started doubting the religion and started, uh, uh, kind of giving indications, I didn't want to leave the religious lifestyle. Uh, my parents freaked out because they were like, oh, it's kind of the first two worlds. It's the first. Yeah, exactly. He's going to be a bad influence on the other children and they were right about that. You know, uh, it weren't wrong. Out of my six younger siblings, five of them became our religious. So I'm very proud of that. I led them to freedom. So a freedom of the mind. Um, so yeah, they pressured me a lot to, uh, to remain in the religion after high school. They wanted me to go to Israel to study the religion. They're like, oh, you, you know, this is your mortal soul on the line. Don't you think you should take at least a year to find out whether it's true? I'm like, okay, fine. You know, so I went to Israel for, actually ended up staying for two years. Um, but then I went to college and, uh, took a general anthropology class and I realized that everything they taught me was just not possible. Day, you know, it was not because, I mean, the, I'm not saying everything is bullshit, right? Uh, there's plenty of wisdom in, in all religions, right? Um, and, uh, and if they want, I respect people who want to leave, live that lifestyle, it's everyone makes their decisions for themselves. But the claim in Orthodox Judaism is that the Bible is literally true, right? You know, God created the earth six, five thousand seven hundred whatever years ago and, and, uh, you know, in six days and, you know, the earth was made before the sun and it just, it, it goes against science, all of science, not just like one element of science. And so when I went to and took a general anthropology class and I learned how, how they date fossils, how they track the divergence of languages in you and populations and how genetic diversity is tracked and how we know that the Native Americans have been here for at least 20,000 years and Chinese culture has been around for five thousand years and wasn't wiped out in a flood, you know, and like four thousand years ago. So the flood, no as flood never happened. It just never happened. Either all of science is wrong. Like every single branch of science, the radio carbon dating, archaeology, linguistics, genetics, like, yeah, holy different types of science. They have to all be wrong or the flood just never happened the way it says it in the Bible, just, just didn't. So when I took that class, I realized I'm like, there's no, I mean, because I kind of went back and forth throughout my teens because I was really into reading science fiction and science fiction tends to be pretty skeptical about religion. Um, but when I finally learned how the science is done, I realized there's no way that science could be true and this could also be true, the way they portray it. So that was the final nail in the coffin, so to speak. Do you think that do you think that sort of that realization, um, push, like not just pushed you down, like entrepreneurship and building your own thing and, but did it push it away from what your parents wanted for you completely, not just religion, but doctor, lawyer, like everything they envisioned for you. I'm just that's so fascinating because you want to complete 180. Um, and I wonder if it was like that was part of it. It was like everything that my parents stand for and everything at the time, like it's, you know, now I'm sure the relationship has changed significantly, but at the time was that sort of the, um, inflection point that pushed you down the path that you're on? I didn't really reject the traditional route so much because I, I was in, I did go to college and I was studying chemistry, um, and mainly because everyone said, oh, if you want like job security, get a degree in hard science, right? And I was pretty good at math, so, uh, in science, I always did very well in school with that stuff. So I figured, well, if I can, most people can do well in that and I can, I might as well, uh, study that. Um, but it was, but I've always been doing entrepreneurial ventures on the side. So like while I was in, in, uh, in university, um, I started importing SD cards from China to, uh, to sell on eBay. This is not government contract. No, no, this is before I got, this is actually how I got into the government contract later. Um, I started selling SD cards. I started importing bed sheets and towels from Pakistan to sell to nursing homes and hospitals here. So your mind is always thinking on planar. Yeah. Well, it was, it was different opportunities that arose. So I'll give you a very brief of how I got into each of the, because they're so random, you know, they're very, right? They're very random. Yeah. So the SD cards I got into it because I bought, uh, at the time, like digital cameras were becoming a big thing, this early 2000s. And, uh, the SD cards were super expensive at the time. And, you know, I was always looking for a better price and I kept on searching for a better price and the better, the only good prices that I found was if I bought like a hundred of them. And then, and so I had to buy a hundred of them. Like, you know, this is such a good price I could sell the rest of the money. And so I initially just tried to buy one for myself, but then I realized this is a business opportunity. Exactly. And so I started selling that and that there's a great business because SD cards are tiny and easy to ship and don't take a much room. And then I spoke to a friend of mine who I met in Israel and he was, uh, he was doing a, a medical supplies distribution business in the United States, his dad owned a nursing home. And that's how he got into it. So, but he told me he's like, you know, I told him about the SD card business. And he was very impressed. He's like, oh, that's awesome that you found suppliers overseas. Um, you know, I buy all my stuff from distributors in the United States, but I know they buy it overseas. So if you could find me a supplier overseas, I'm happy to buy from you instead. If you beat my distributor's prices. So I started researching it and eventually found a good factory. And that's how I got into the bedsheet and towel business. Uh, and so yeah. And that's, and that's kind of how I got into government contracting because my partner, uh, my former partner, Ephraim, uh, when he heard about my businesses, when I met up with him, he was like, oh, that a lot of stuff you're doing, similar to what I'm doing, searching for suppliers overseas, arranging logistics, doing the paperwork and you would never met him. Yeah. You could have built a very lucrative business. Yeah. Out of all of these. Yeah. Yeah. Importing from overseas. I was well on my way at the time. Yeah. So I mean, so when you, when you, where did you meet Ephraim? Well, we first met when, uh, in our, when we were both in our teens, he's actually four years younger than me. So I think I was like maybe 16 and he was 12 and, uh, our families went to the same synagogue. So, uh, that's how we, and neither of us like to pray. So we'd sneak out during prayers and we'd go hang out like on the basketball courts and stuff. And that's kind of how we, we met. Um, when he was, uh, I think when he was 16 years old, he got kicked out of his, we both went to private Jewish schools, orthodox Jewish schools, but we went to different ones. Um, he got kicked out of school for smoking weed. He got caught smoking weed there. They took that very, back then they thought it was the same as heroin, you know, a smoking weed, you know, that is. So they're all you're going to end up on the streets and you're going to train. They still, they still kind of do. I mean, I'm, I'm panadian. I can't, you can actually just buy weed anywhere. But yes, it's a little bit different in some states. Miami starting to relax about that stuff there, you can actually buy weed, you know, quite a few places here now to legally. Um, I feel like liquor is probably a little bit more, more, uh, dangerous for some people than weed. But yeah, a little, yeah, yeah, uh, oh, yeah. So yeah, trouble. You got trouble. So he got into trouble for smoking weed, got kicked out of school. And so they told him, hey, you know, if you're not going to respect the rules of the school, you're going to find out what life's really about and you're going to join the workforce. And so they, they said to him off to work for his uncle who on this big pawn shop and a warehouse in South Central LA. Um, and his uncle realized he was a good talker. So he put him to work as a salesman in the pawn shop. And as a 16 year old boy, he got obsessed with guns, you know, like, say, you know, teenage boys, any, any zero guy. Exactly. Yeah, they either get obsessed with guns or sports or guitars, you know, that, you know, cars, right? Those are the four major things. I think that teenage guys get obsessed with. I wasn't to guitar as I was a musician. Yeah. And he was a gun nut. So, um, so he got obsessed with guns. He started selling the guns in the store. He's, uh, his uncle was doing government contracting, you know, bidding on mostly local and state police contracts to sell guns to the local and state police. And so he taught F from how to, um, bid on the, on the government contracts, how to work the government contracting system, worked for his uncle for about two years, until they had a falling out. Each claim, the others screwed the other. They're both terrible people. So, you know, I don't look out of aisle. As a, yeah, for real, for real. I think that's where he learned his, his kind of sneaky business tactics. And probably, I mean, that's what he worked with. And his, his grandfather also is notorious for this. His uncle's father. Yeah. Yeah. It's not the entire family because it's, it's interesting because, I mean, his dad who's not related to his dad is, it's his, his uncle is his mother's brother. So his dad is a super sweet guy, like the complete opposite of him. And yes, it's really interesting. But his grandfather is a real, was a real estate billionaire and owned like enormous amounts of South Central. He was a slum lord. And, uh, he gave his one of his sons, uh, Ephraim's uncle, uh, uh, property to set up the pawn shop in. And so that's kind of how that whole thing started. Um, but his grandfather's notorious also for, uh, kind of sneaky business tactics. Like it's not just slum lord is like less than less than above board. Okay. Just, uh, just to give you an example. Um, so his grandfather got into the, into the media by, um, because he'd been married to his grandmother for about 40 years. They had like eight kids together. And after about 40 years, she decided to divorce him. He's this old school Iranian guy. So, you know, I, who knows for the reasons, you know, but, um, she decides to divorce him. And it turns out that she was never married to him legally. He had just married her in the synagogue. So he didn't, there was no legal, like in the state of California. Um, he, and so she, when she, you know, tried to get like, Alimony, because all her kids were grown up, say, well, she wasn't going to get like child support. Um, he offered her zero dollars. And he was a billionaire. And he was like, you get nothing. And so she had to sue him. She sued him for like $700 million. This is the biggest Alimony lawsuit in like history. Um, I think they eventually settled for a tiny fraction of that, but still, but they go to show the kind of person, kind of versillionaire would give the wife of his eight kids, of his eight kids, like a dollar, a dollar. Exactly. So that's, that's the kind of, uh, family. You know, we didn't have, you didn't have a chance. Yeah. Yeah. Well, he, not all his siblings aren't like him. So it's not like, I'm not saying they're all like that. His siblings are actually really nice people. I know them, you know, um, he's, he's a special case. It's, it's interesting because like, I think it, there's like a certain characteristic that runs through the family, but it doesn't get to everybody. So like, he was, I honestly, I'm not like a licensed mental health professional or anything like that. But, uh, from everything I've read about, uh, sociopaths, he fits it to a T. Like, he doesn't like, he doesn't have any, uh, any empathy for people. And I'll give you a really funny story that kind of kind of fun. I've heard this as well that like the, the, the Jonah Hill portrayal is actually like very nice. He, Jonah made him look a lot nicer and then he was in real life. Yeah. But I'll, I'll give you a story of, uh, kind of his mindset. So we at the time, uh, uh, we had a friend who was addicted to heroin and was doing, was very depressed. And, you know, he had been, they corrected a few times. So like, we were really worried that he was going to kill him. So, and, um, we were all discussing. It was a group of us, you know, childhood friends who, including Ephraim, who were there and we're discussing, uh, our friends issues. And he, and Ephraim says, wait a second. Wait a second. You're telling me he's addicted to heroin and he suicidal. Oh, I've great idea. We're going to get a, a life insurance policy on him. And then we're going to anonymously send him a bunch of drugs. Oh, this can't fucking fail. And we were like, dude, you are a piece of shit. That's fucked up. Yeah. Yeah. I was really keen. He was joking, but like, not joking. Yeah. He was kind of happy. He never actually did it that we know of. But I guess you also don't make jokes like that. That's like this. Yeah. Exactly. It was, it was too hard. We'll say that shit. Exactly. You don't think like that. You're like, that's not the first thing that pops into your mind when you hear about your friend who's, you know, suicidal and struggling. No, you're like, how can we get him some help? Like, let's go spend some time with him so he's not alone. That's what we were all saying. And that was where he went. So, you know, it kind of goes to show you the, the minds some, some red flags early, early red flags. Yeah. Um, okay. So then, I mean, then the obvious, the obvious question is, at what point did you cite it after all these red flags that you wanted to work with him? Well, so when I met, when I bumped into him and decided to work with him, I hadn't seen him for a few years at what age were you now? I think I was 22 when we first met up. And yeah, I was about 22, 22, 23. And yeah, it's 22. Yeah, because he was 18. And we bumped into each other at a mutual friend's house and he asked me what I was doing these days. And I told him about the SD card business and, and the, you know, the bedsheet business. And he's like, oh, you know, you're doing a lot of stuff. You're doing the same thing. I'm doing, you know, finding suppliers, arranging logistics, licensing, financing, etc. He's like, but I bet I'm making way more money than you. And I thought I was hot shit at the time. I was like, I had made about like in about a year, year and a half, about a hundred grand, which at the time was very, very young. Yeah, I was young, all legal, you know, that's a caveat, exactly. And, and so I thought I was like, I was doing pretty well. I was making way more money than any of my friends. And, and I'm like, well, I mean, you have much money. I asked him like, how much money have you made? And he goes, he's like, oh, he's like, I'll tell you what I'm going to tell you, but only to inspire you, right? Because he wanted me to work with him. And he's like, I'm not bragging here. He opens up his computer and he shows me his bank of America. Count yet $1.8 million in the bank at 18 years old. And I knew his like parents were not giving him money or anything like that. Like I knew his family. So I was like, holy crap. I thought I was doing pretty well by making a hundred K. He made almost two million dollars in a year. So I was like, he's definitely doing way better than me. And he knows, he knows something I don't. And so he's like, yeah, we should, we can make way more money working together. You should talk and we're really at this point. What he was doing was all legitimate. Well, completely legitimate. Yeah, everything was legal until it wasn't, you know, that's as the famous saying goes. But yeah, so I was like, okay, I'm in, you know, when I saw I was super impressed. I couldn't believe that he had done that all of that by himself. And so that's how I got into the government contracting business. And then like, what was the first to contract that you guys take on? Like, what was the first, like, how do you even, so he, he knows the business, he's teaching you the business. What's the first thing that you do successfully? He's done a few successfully already. You're new to this. Right. So he's special, because he was a gun, he specialized in small arms and ammunition. And this is in 2004, 2005, 2005, when we actually started working together. And so this was like, right after the United States invaded Iraq and Afghanistan. And so the idea there was that we were going to build a democratic country. And so without work, I didn't work too well. That's late plans. So again, because we destroyed Saddam Hussein, and now we were trying to build up like the country of Iraq. So the idea, so we can leave. And part of that was building up their military and police force. And they needed lots of equipment for that. So he was bidding on all these contracts to supply small arms and ammunition. And that's how he made his $2 million. He did that very well. So that was his specialty. And so the idea when I started working with him was that I would do something in a different field to expand the business. And so I started working on fuel contracts because that's an enormous amount of business. It's very fungible. You know, it doesn't gasoline here is same as gasoline there. Right. You know, so it's not, you don't have to worry too much about quality. And it's, and there's, it's consumable. So they're constantly needing more of it. So my first contract that I ever won in government contracting was for 40,000 gallons of propane. And I delivered it to a Air Force base in Wyoming. And how do you do this? Like how do you go about finding 40,000 gallons of propane? Because that only many people know it's actually simpler than you think. You just Google, you know, propane wholesalers. And in the area, because logistic, you have to give them a delivered price. The government always wants a delivered price. So the, all costs and all costs and, you know, so transportation included any licensing, whatever, you know, all costs you have to figure out and then give them a delivered cost. So I just Googled propane wholesalers in the general Midwest area. And, you know, a lot of people ignore you, a few people give you prices, some people give you referrals to other people. Eventually I got a pretty good price and, uh, and also got a pretty good price on the transportation, you know, put it all in all the possibilities in a spreadsheet, figured which combo is the best price. And then everyone was an amazing negotiator. You could really talk, you know, so he would got on the phone and he negotiated them down to the rock bottom. And I, William, this is the game. The game is relationships and negotiate as soon as if you just Google. Absolutely. Your, your margins are going to be like razor thin because everybody's googling. And I'm sure after people watch your movie, a hundred other thousand people wanted to do the same thing, but it's about how do you get this personally even the lowest possible price? Exactly. And so he was, it's all about negotiation and relationships. And occasionally you get really lucky and you can buy something like, uh, in a liquidation sale and make enormous margins. It's not necessarily always razor thin margins. Um, to, to jump ahead a little bit, you know, with, uh, um, uh, you know, with my business war dogs academy, uh, one of our students made a 40% margin on, on, uh, something because he bought, he bought it wholesale from someone who was doing a fire sale. You know, so you can, there, there are, you can make enormous margins. You just need to know the business. You need to know the industry. You need to know what's available out there. So, you know, the, the government doesn't really care how much margins you're making. They just want the lowest price out of the available options. And so usually if you don't know the business, you don't know the industry, you're going to bid it at a very low profit margin because you don't know who your competitors are. You don't want to lose, right? Because otherwise you get zero. It's better to get a little bit than zero. But if you know the industry well and you know what, uh, the other suppliers have access to and you know that you have access to, you know, let's say, like there are certain items that they, they can be sold underneath manufacturing costs, like clothing, you know, that go out of style, you know, the, the next season they're trying to get rid of them. They'll, they'll sell it for anything. You know, it doesn't matter. It was a ninth that is zero for that. Exactly. Otherwise, it goes in the trash ammunition that militaries, you know, is coming towards the end of their official shelf life. Uh, they're happy to get rid of it at very low prices. And when you're in this game long enough, you start to see those opportunities. Exactly. You say it. The more we know the industry, well, I was going to say, is there like, um, like outside of this is just like smart business and the right relationships, right connections and sort of like looking for the opportunities? Like, do you need to be licensed to do this to sell to the government? You need to be registered with the government, meaning you need to have a company, you have to have, you can't do it individually, you have to have do it under a corporate structure. And it could be a US company, it could be a foreign company. It doesn't, people think only US citizens or US companies can bid this not true. As long as you're not like a company and like Russia or North Korea on or a wrong. Yeah. Yeah. Any of our enemy countries, that's going to be a don't incorporate in North, oh yeah. So yeah, don't incorporate in North Korea. I don't even know if that's an option. But, uh, but yeah, but as long as you're in like a friendly country to the United States, you can register your foreign company to do business with the US government. There are certain advantages to four certain US companies. Like, you'll they'll have what they call seticides. So, uh, set aside is, uh, the government sets aside a certain amount of money to go to special categories of business. So for example, small business is a big set aside. I think I forgot the exact numbers, but something about like 20 to 30% of all money needs to be spent, needs to be, needs to go to small businesses. These are businesses that do like under 10 million of revenue a year. That's how they. And I've got right. So yeah, I only know one other person who's played in government contract. Actually, no, sorry, a friend is an investor in government contracting and defense and then another friend who actually does it. And she was saying that she, she's trying to figure out how to keep her business under a certain dollar values. She's not to compete against like Lockheed Martin and Boeing and she could qualify for the small bill as set aside. So this is exactly what you're tossing it out. Yeah. And there are other seticides. There is, there is, uh, if you're a veteran known business, a disabled veteran known business gets special set aside, a woman owned business, a business that's in an economically disadvantaged zone, right? So like if you're like in a rural area, they classify certain areas as economically disadvantaged. And then you get, there are certain contracts that only these, uh, companies with these designations can bid on. So like Lockheed Martin can't bid on a contract that is a set aside for small business. So there are certain advantages for these various categories. But other than that, you just need to register your company with the federal government to bid on contracts. And depending on what items you're shipping to them, what you want to bid on, you may need other licenses. Like if you're shipping like machine guns, you may need a class three, uh, federal firearms license. Understood. So this, that was your first contract. Yeah. Went well. Business is going like it. And when you start to work with that from like what are, I mean, obviously there's red flags throughout your entire relationship with them. But you've gone into business with him where they're like red flags right away that you noticed outside of being a good negotiator, which I mean, yeah, a gift of gab, whatever, like, uh, but talk to me about like some of the things you noticed when you were like building this bit, like a cool AY with them. Yeah. So there were two major red, well besides the story with the, because when I first started working with them, I'm like hung out with them in years. So you know, the kid that I knew from years ago, he didn't have those red flags. He was just, he was pretty much just a joker, you know, like he was like the class clown, so to speak. He was a very funny guy, you know, very, uh, very entertaining. Love to play practical jokes on people. That was like his, but he's not doing anything, but he's not doing anything like a sociopathic or anything like that. So there were a few red flags that that I noticed somewhat early on that kind of gave me pause. Uh, one was this, uh, one was when we went to like a gun show in, in, in Orlando. And we were driving on our way back to Miami. And he was driving and we were going down this highway, this like really long highway with, and didn't have any, laid at night, and it didn't have any street lights. And it was one of those highways where it's very straight, but like there's only one lane going one way and one lane going the other way, no real median. And so their cars come and buy us. And, and I told him like, Ephraim, you have to turn your brights down when there's cars coming at us. He had his high beeps on exactly. And he said, he's like, why? I need to see the road. And I'm like, yeah, but you could blind the other driver and they can crash. And he's like, who cares? I need to see the road, you know? And I said, yeah, but Ephraim, they could crash into us. And he's like, oh, that's a good point. That's a good point. And then he turns the high beams down. And I was like, and he did this completely seriously. He wasn't joking, you know? Like he was like, oh, like it just dawned on him. Oh, I should care about that. That was very self-serving completely one heart. It didn't even occur to him that he should care at all about that person crashing into any into, you know, and losing their lives, only if it affected him. So that that was like, whoa, this guy is not normal, you know? And the other big red flag that I that really struck me like within like about two months of working together was he, you know, I we were working out of his living room and he didn't have an office. So we were working out of his living room. And I was working on like fuel contracts and and but he loved talking on the speaker phone, you know, like he would always do that. Side here is conversations. And he got a call from like one of his contacts in the industry who was trying to supply the King of Nepal. The King of Nepal at the time had a whole bunch of pro-democracy protests in his country. And the King of Nepal was trying to buy attack helicopters, riot gear, heavy machine guns, tear gas, et cetera. Was the King of Nepal like dictator? Yes. Yeah. He was using King. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. This sounds like a load of democracy. Yeah. A classic King, you know, and he was he was facing down pro-democracy protests. And the King was trying to buy all these these pretty serious crowd control methods, you know, with the entire range of nonlethal all the way, the very lethal, like attack helicopters and heavy machine guns. And Ephraim got super excited. And he's like, I'm going to put together a save the King package. And I'm like, Ephraim, that's kind of fucked up. But that's illegal, no? So and that's what I told him, like Ephraim, are you sure that that's illegal? Because I'm pretty sure the State Department isn't going to be happy about you supplying the King to brutally crush the pro-democracy protests. And he goes to me, he's like, just work on your fuel contracts, bro, you leave this shit to me, all right? And I'm like, whoa. So there's like zero moral compass zero. And also, I was, I mean, besides the moral compass, I was like, this guy might be doing some serious illegal shit. And yes, I mean, moral morals the first ESAC put then out of that. It's like, yeah. And I'm like, fucked up any legal stuff. And I might get caught up in this. And I was like, oh, and so that really kind of scared me. There's only two months in, like two months in. How long is it like the whole life of the working together? How long was that? About a year and a half. It wasn't very long. No, not that long wasn't very long. And were you a little under two years? Because I know like in the in the movie, like the whole last scene is about the contract and like, like you, you and air quotes, like don't get paid out. Did you only have contract or you want like the cap table? Like were you equity owner in the business? No, I was, we had a commission agreement. Okay. So you did not. So technically liability should not be as as incumbent on you as on him, because you were not co-founders of the business. I did not own any of the business, but I was involved in the activities. You know, I was a co-conspirator. I understand because I'm trying, I was trying to figure that out. I'm like, if you didn't do anything illegal and my business partner did, but I was a co-founder in the business and technically, the business entity was doing illegal shit. And even if I didn't know that he did it, there's a chance that I could still be liable. But if I was an employee and my boss was doing illegal shit, then hopefully I wouldn't be. But if you collaborated with him in that he does illegal activities, then you are liable. And if you don't own the business, I understand. Well, no, no, if it's illegal, a ton of percent illegal. I mean, if you didn't know what he was doing, he was doing some shady shit on the side or whatever. Okay. So then this is too unsent. It's already getting spicy. Okay. So then, you know, the whole, the whole movie is about this, like 300 million dollar deal. When does that actually take place? Just to finish up the, the, the, the Nepal issue, he worked on it for like two weeks really hard. So he was seriously, oh, QA, so yeah, yeah. No, he had sources lined up. He was working on logistics. He had a whole fucking, he didn't know shits that it was completely illegal zero. And then he got really pissed because as he put it, peace broke out. And he's like, ah, peace broke out. The king made a deal with the protesters. The deal is dead. And I was like, that's probably a good thing for him. It's a very good thing. Yeah, it'd been in jail. Yeah. A lot earlier. A lot or any are negative longer. Yeah. Possibly. It's so, it's so interesting because you hate the term, like warlord. Yeah. Or like warmonger or whatever. Yeah. I mean, it's not accurate, I would say. No. Yeah. Like what he was trying to do. Yeah. That was more closer to that. Yeah. Super fun. Like it's so, it's not funny. It's, it's, it's, it's just interesting because it's almost like he was like a walking cliche for arms dealer. Because there's a lot of people that are arms dealers that kind of like what you did, you sold to the US government. It's completely above board. Whether or not you agree or disagree with what the US does globally, it's a, it's a business. You are selling to a, a Western country like Lockheed Martin, Lockheed Martin, going, they all do the same shit. It's so strange to me that it seems like he watched Lord of War and is like, I want to cause play as an arms dealer. Even though there's more money than you know what to do with by selling to the US government, it's just so strange that you would want to put your, like start a business to put yourself in an illegal position before you even made like any significant amount of money. It doesn't, like, it doesn't compute. But then this goes back to your point. He's not thinking like the rest of the rest of anybody who would do this business. He did love Lord of War. That was his favorite movie because it seems like he watched these. I'm going to be an arms dealer like that and I'm going to sell to all these countries all over the world that the US does not approve of me selling to. Very interesting. Anyways, so, so this was like the first sort of red flag moment. Deal fell apart good because then you would have been in trouble too. So what's the next, what's the next, like, major deal? Were there other major deals before this $300 million deal? It was, so the first arms contract I worked on when I made the switch from fuel to arms was he had won a contract to supply the special forces with a bunch of rare gun parts and like weapon systems because the special forces train on a whole bunch. They pretty much tried to train on everything. So because they don't, when they're out in the field, they don't know what they're going to come across. What kind of equipment is going to exactly. So they train on Old World War II, Error stuff, on Soviet stuff, you know, on, you know, everything. So he knew the industry well enough that they was this contract goes, I think it's like 130 different types of like weapon systems and gun parts and they're all rare and like historical and very hard to source. And so he put a very high profit margin on it because he knew almost nobody was going to be bidding on this. And he put a very profit, high profit margin without actually locking down the sources. And so he won the contract without having the sources lined up. So he told me he's like, look, I know we have enough margin on here. We can definitely deliver on this profitably, but you need to find the sources to these items. So I don't want to do this. This is going to be way more work than I want to do. Why don't you work on this? And so I still. So you know, I was like, okay, I mean, he already won the contract. All I have to do is deliver at least at least there's that, you know, there's because with government contracting, it's like a role of the dice. It's a casino. You don't know, you can put all this work into bidding on a contract and then lose. And so I knew at least he won the contract. Now I just have to find the sources for the, you know, for the supplies. So that was the first arms contract I worked on. It took me like a good two something months to deliver all on that. I had to pretty much contact every little gun shop in America. It's like 70,000 of them, you know, and I went down the ATF's FFL list. And you know, they actually publish the phone numbers of all the federal firearms license holders, the ATF. I downloaded a spreadsheet and it's like 70,000 businesses. And I pretty much called up every single one and try to, you know, see what they had. It was an enormous amount of work. But I made a decent amount of money. And so that was like the, the first like my first foray into the arms business. Were you ever uncomfortable going into arms? So I wasn't uncomfortable with that stuff, you know, I wasn't uncomfortable supplying the U.S. government. You know, I definitely didn't agree with the U.S. government's policies. Yeah, you know, with a lot of polytheists agreeing with policies. Yes. And and saying like it's a business. That's true. Yeah. That's true. It was at the time the United States was fighting the Taliban. I mean, that was where most of the stuff I worked on went. And I didn't feel bad about that. You know, I thought Taliban are they're not great people and the people fighting them should be supported and and all that. So I didn't feel bad about that. But and also, you know, and this is something that anyone who wants to make excuses says, but like an army camp fight without bullets, they also can't fight without fuel or food or, you know, jeeps or any million other things. So, you know, it's it's people kind of focus on the arms as being like you're enabling, you know, military operations, but really all aspects of the support, you know, enabled that. It's just as much. I think they, yeah, you're probably right. You know, people think about like dealing in munitions. Right. Okay. Maybe there's like a slightly negative undertone to it, but ultimately if you're doing food contracts or medical supplies for the U.S. Army, right. It's also important. The same in all the same thing. They wouldn't be able to do what they do without all those items. Yeah. So whether it's the bullets or the food, army marches on its stomach, as they say. So, I mean, you didn't like, obviously, Ephraim has his own sort of idea about what he can do with his business. Were there other points where he tried to do shady shit, like deal with other countries like Nepal? There, I think there was a moment where he almost got involved in supplying the FARC in Colombia, but he didn't end up doing that. That was that was a step too far for him. It's a no. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. He was a step too far. He did try later when he went, when he went, was in prison. He tried to revive that deal in order to entrap the guy who was doing it. So he could get him. He was elf out. Look, a deal with that. Yeah. That's to. Yeah. He was trying to entrap the guy. So it was a guy named Harry Chang who's based in Miami. He had done a whole bunch of business with. And Harry Chang tried to get him involved to do this business to supply the FARC. And to his credit, he said no. But then when he went to prison, he tried to get his dad. There's actually a phone recording on YouTube where he's talking to his dad, trying to get his dad to revive the deal with Harry Chang to do this, to supply the FARC, so that he could entrap Harry Chang so he can get time off his sentence. I have that. Is this normal that dudes in Miami are supplying weapons to like dictators around the world? Is this buzz? I hope not. No, but in all seriousness, like this is two instances of, so now you have this Harry Chang guy. And then you have Frem as well who was even thinking about in Nepal. Is this like a big issue? This is wild. Well, Miami is particularly in the US. Do you have a lot of homegrown like weapons dealers that are doing under the table shady shit? Well, if it's if it stays under the table, you don't find out about it, right? So I have no idea. But but there have been quite a few people arrested for these kinds of deals. Yeah. So they're just see money and dollar signs. They see money and they either don't know that it's illegal or they don't care. I imagine it's more that they don't care. Like my background like the company that the company that acquired my software company, they do hardware. And I use their sales team a lot like a lot of a lot of the like when we were acquired, like we were training our sales team on product and services and whatnot. And like they weren't allowed to talk to people in certain parts of the world. And they were selling cameras. Yeah. And like it was like it's not like it wasn't like confusing or it wasn't like it wasn't known. Like everybody knew that we cannot sell to people that either represent certain parts of the world or come from certain parts of the world or have connections, certain parts of the world. And this was because it was like a large act our regulation. Yeah. I mean, it's like very well known and yeah, film equipment. Yeah, not weapons. Right. Yeah, I didn't know there were restrictions on film equipment. I know there's a lot of restrictions on like night vision goggles and things like bulletproof vests. Which makes sense. So yeah, it makes sense. Like I was hearing like if it's like if it's something is a non dangerous as a camera. Right. I mean, right, right, right. Yeah, yeah. No, there are there are regular anything they call dual use technologies. Right. You know, anything that could be used for military purposes, they put restrictions on where you could sell it. And if you do that, you can get in a lot of trouble. So yeah, you know, I don't want to say that this is a super common thing, but there's but it does happen, you know, that people violate it are and they go to prison for it. And that's why it's not enough money in the US government. Like, oh, there's more money than anywhere in the US government, right? It seems silly. It seems like you're almost like an idiot for trying to to sell to other countries. I would definitely agree. I mean, the United States government has a budget, I think, of something like seven trillion, you know, it would not have another money, which is more than most other countries combined. Yeah. This is all the California, more than most country. Yeah. California on its own is like the fifth biggest economy in the world. So it's the United States is so much people don't understand how wealthy the United States is and how much money the government spends. It's by far the biggest customer in the entire world by many times over. I think that the appeal of dealing with these other countries is that when you're doing government contracting and selling to the United States, you're playing the casino, right? You are you're you're doing a whole bunch of work. You're submitting the bid and then you oftentimes lose, right? In fact, it's more often than not. You lose, you know, you win a minority minority of the contract you bid on. That's just normal. And it could be very disheartening to people that they put a lot of work into something and then they get no payoff for it. So when someone calls them up and says, Hey, I've got this deal to whoever shady character oversees, all you have to do is supply. There's no bidding process. Just fucking do it. You know, then it's like, Oh, easy money. And and end up in jail. Yeah, except you will. It's small little. It's the worst money you can make because that'll that'll that might get your your life destroyed. Yeah. So what so what happened with your your your 300 million dollar deal? Where did that come from? And how did you find it? And how did you source it? And even the thought process because up until this point, you seem like the most above board like you you get the shit isn't perfect with Ephraim. But you're keeping him in his lane. Everything you're doing is above board. Everything you're doing is clean. And there's like not like a series of of like points in your past where you've like tried to do shady businesses. You try and build real own businesses that actually that are fully compliant fully above board. So what was the thing about this particular deal that sort of swayed you? So well, I mean, that deal was above board until it wasn't. Again, but yeah, the 300 million dollar deal that that that was kind of like the main focus of the film war dogs was it started. We we site posted on on on the government website, which is sam.gov. Now they call it the we saw that about I think was about nine months after I started working with Ephraim about eight nine months. And Ephraim saw this this solicitation posted on the site. And he he was like, Oh, you know, this is all the stuff that I've already delivered in much smaller quantities to Iraq. This was mostly Warsaw packed munitions in for people who don't know there's two major style of of weapon systems. There is the West NATO standard. And there's the former Soviet Union countries called the Warsaw packed standard. And like the AK-47 is Warsaw Pack M16 is NATO. So they were supplying Afghanistan and Iraq with Warsaw packed weapons and munitions because that's what the Iraqis and Afghanis were used to. They were already trained on that. And it also happened to be as way cheaper than the United States. So these are old audio weapons. These are also old Soviet weapons, which the United States doesn't manufacture much of. So when they wanted to this was in mid to late 2006 where they put out the contract, they this was like towards the end of the Bush administration. And the Bush administration was super unpopular in the United States at the time. And they figured that because you so unpopular, the next president would probably be a Democrat, which they were right. Obama was the next president. But they also thought that the Democrats would pull out of Afghanistan immediately, which they were wrong about, took until Biden to do that. But so their plan was that they were going to arm the Afghanis like for the next 30 years so that they could hold off the Taliban and any other terror groups that try to set up shop in Afghanistan. And so they put out a contract in Iraq. They had they were supplying the Iraqi army and they had split their needs amongst a whole bunch of suppliers and it became a big cluster fox. So they they wanted to avoid that that logistical nightmare. And they decided to do the their entire needs and through one contractor. And that's how this 300 million dollar contract got put out. It was every it was munitions. It wasn't weapons. It was everything from like pistol ammo to tank rounds anti aircraft rockets grenades pretty much the entire spectrum of munitions that an army and police force would ever need for like the next few decades. And they decided to put it out all through one supplier. So Ephram had already delivered a lot of these items to Iraq on a much smaller scale, which meant that we technically qualified to bid on it. Because the way that works is that if you if the contract is above a certain amount these days, it's a if it's above $250,000 in value, you need to have a certain amount of past performance history, right? You know, proof that you've done this business before and the bigger the contract, you're bidding on the more past performance they require. And he had lots of past performance because he did a whole bunch of small contracts with this type of munitions. So we technically qualified. And so he's like we qualified to this. We have to bid on it. Most likely general dynamics or one of the big players is going to win, but we have to at least try. And he says to me, he's like, look, I've got, you know, five really good sources for this stuff. You know, don't, you know, these are my five sources, these companies don't talk to them. But I need you to go and pretty much find every single source that's available on the internet in the world. Because you know, that's the only way we even have a shot of winning this thing is if we are super competitive and we pretty much look under every rock and, you know, make sure that every potential source of supply is is accounted for. And so the other contracts for the fuel stuff, we were splitting the profits 50, 50 because I did all the work. And then he did everything under his company and financed it and did the final negotiation. So so it was a good split. But he says to me, he's like, for this, you know, this kind of my bread and butter, you're pretty much filling in the gaps. So we'll do 75 25. And I was like, that's fine. This is going to be an enormous contract. I'm going to if we win it. Right. But we didn't actually, we didn't really think we were going to win because it was just such an enormous contract. But we figured we had to try. So I worked my ass off for like probably about two months for during the bidding period. They give you like a deadline of when you need to submit your bid. And it was a major pain to get to get quotes for this because it was most of the source because of the Warsaw Pact stuff. So most of the sources were from the former Soviet Union who don't have the greatest customer service or English language skills. And at the time, they didn't even have a lot of them didn't even have emails. They just had fax numbers. So you had to like fax everything to them and call them up. Make sure in their phone lines kept them going out. So yeah, it would like stop halfway through the fax. You have to like make sure they got all the pages. You call them up and they have to find the one guy in the factory who speaks a tiny bit of English to confirm they got everything. And they always treat you like you're really bothering them by asking by trying to give them business. You know, like it's like the very, the communist mentality of like, you're not happy to do your job. You're just trying to skate by with the minimum. You know, so it's it was a real pain to work with them. But eventually I got I filled in all the cracks, so to speak. And it's actually some of the most profitable aspects of that of that contract were from sources I got like the grenades. We made most of the money from like the grenades. We just had really good margins on it. And but it took about two months and we submitted it to the government. And then we didn't hear from them for like another three months. And we were like, okay, we definitely lost this thing. And then they called us up. And they're like, we have to do a few audits on your company. And we're like, Holy crap, we're still in the running. And it ought to means like what I said, yeah, it means that they're going. So before they give you a very big contract is a small contract. They don't do this. But for a very big contract, they do like a little investigation into you before they award you the contract. And it's a few different aspects. They call it an audit, right? Kind of like the IRS gives you an audit. But so they have a financial audit. They want to make sure you have enough money to because the government only pays you 30 days after you deliver. And if so if you're delivering a lot of stuff, you need a lot of money to finances. They want to make sure you have the money. They want to make they actually ask you to list all your sources of supply. So they they we told them who we were buying everything from. They want to see what companies you're going to use for transportation. Just then everything's above everything. They want it. They want you to pretty much lay out your entire plan to deliver on this contract so that they're not wasting their time and that this isn't going to end up in a disaster because it's such a big contract. They need to feel comfortable that you have a real plan and that you have a real shot at success at this. And they want to make sure that you're doing your accounting system correctly. And it's funny because like Ephram had never done any of his accounting. He just did everything by the seat of his pants. So he had to hire a forensic accountant to come and look at all the deals he'd done and create a financial record. And he and to back data to make it look like he had done it at the time to make him look more responsible. And we didn't even they wanted to send a contracting officers to our to our office to do a facility inspection. And we didn't have an office. So he quickly rented out a place in Miami Beach hired a few like a young girls off Craigslist act as like you know a receptionist. So it looked like we had people working there. You know, put up a sign. And like within like a space of like a week we're like okay, you know, we're ready for like our site inspection. And they it was all like is like a group of like four middle aged older ladies. And all ladies for some reason. And they walk into the office. And Ephram says to them, he's like, you know, for the inspection. He goes he's like, oh, ladies, I couldn't tell over the phone how beautiful you all were. You know, if it wasn't completely illegal, I'd buy you all diamonds right now. And they're all like laugh and chuckle, you know, and they gave him glowing reviews. And so a couple months later, he's an amazing talk. Yeah, he's an amazing talker. You know, I have a lot of shit to say about Ephram, but you know, he is a very talented, very talented at the gift of gab. He could talk anyone into anything, including me. So yeah, so about two months later, they awarded us the contract. I just want to take a second and thank the HubSpot podcast network for supporting success story. Now if you enjoy success story, you're going to love other podcasts and their network like business made simple hosted by Donald Miller. If you've ever wondered why some businesses take off while many struggle, Donald Miller takes the mystery out of growing your business actionable strategies that you can implement today, whether you're trying to build a stronger team, craft a clearer message or boost your bottom line business made simple delivers the frameworks that you need to succeed. Listen to business made simple wherever you get your podcast. That's insane. It's absolutely insane. So like when you I want to know where it all went wrong, but also when you look at like the movie, what parts of this were accurate versus not accurate. So the first thing everyone asks me is was the triangle of death scene real, right? And it's the funny thing is that it was half real. Well, it was a real story, but it didn't happen to us. So the triangle of death scene was based on a real contract. We did have a contract to deliver 10,000 Beretta's to Iraq. Unfortunately, we actually failed to deliver those Beretta's in real life, but the the the story is based on the the screenwriter of the war dogs film Stephen Shen. He he wanted to interview these two American contractors who were on the ground in Baghdad back in like 2004 2005. And so he wanted because he was writing another screenplay about them. And so he tried to get a flight into Baghdad, but there were no commercial flights. So he flew into Jordan and he hired a Jordanian driver to drive him to Baghdad. And this driver wanted to save money on gas. And so he stopped in Fallujah to fill up. And he got shot at by insurgents and narrowly escaped and got saved by the US Army. That whole thing actually happened to Stephen Shen. And so when when Stephen was writing the screenplay for war dogs, Todd Phillips, the director, he's like, yeah, these guys are in the office all day. We need some action here. Why don't you put your story in you know about you? You know, so that's how that got in there. Just a point that you mentioned like that one deal with the Beretta's like, why would that not have worked out? So the so it was actually true that at the time after we won the contract, the the Italian government passed a law for bidding all arms sales to Iraq. And so we were kind of stuck because we had sourced the Beretta's in Italy. And now they they weren't allowed to be exported exactly. So I mean, we tried to get them to accept a substitute or equal they call it, but they refused. They're like, Beretta's or nothing more like way you can't, you know, get any sources of Beretta's here. So there's some parts that were accurate. Some parts were not so. So are there other things like major differences that between the movie and what actually happened? Well, the the weed deal where he's firing a machine gun into that never having if you fire machine gun in Miami, you're going to get arrested. We did have machine guns in the trunk of the car that we were licensed to have them as a a class three federal firearms license. And we would go to like the gun range with like a pair of Uzi's and everyone else is popping off pistols. And suddenly you'd hear and suddenly everyone else would stop and they'd like who the fuck was that? A hundred percent. Yeah. Yeah. So that was fun. Let's see. What other parts? They they add the whole aspect of my girlfriend, you know, you know, me lying to my girlfriend about the business. And she, you know, dumps me because I'm I'm lying to her. She knew the whole time. She had no problem with any of it as she as she put it to me. She's like, as long as you're making money. That's what you cared about. As long as you've been here. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. She's very supportive. He's very supportive. She really didn't care about what business I was doing as long as I was bringing in the money. Yeah. Classic Miami. The very classic way. I mean, okay. So 300 million dollar deal. Everything sounds like you were doing it right. Yeah. Again, until it doesn't go right. So what happened? So the the contract was for like 30 different items, right? And as I said, everything from pistol ammo all the way up to anti aircraft rockets. We had the biggest logistical headache. We knew was going to be the ammo for the AK 47 7 6 2 by 39. And it was also one of the least profitable aspects of the contract. It's just high volume low margins. We had sourced this ammo in Albania through a Swiss arms dealer named Henry Tome in the movies played by Bradley Cooper. They changed his name to Henry Gerard. But in real life, he doesn't in the movie, Bradley Cooper looks really rough. You know, he's like thick glasses, unshaven beer, you know, like screaming, you know, do your fucking job. You know, like that kind of like in real life, he was a very clean cut. He looked like a Swiss banker. I never heard him raise his voice ever. You know, he was a real professional. Like he had been in the arms business since like he was eight dollars. It went to. No, no, no, Henry. So Henry was real slick, you know, he was on the, I think Amnesty International's like watch list. Okay, that doesn't sound so legit. No, it was not. They never proved anything, which was why it was legal for us to do business with him, right? And the United States government knew we were doing business with him because we listed him as one of our suppliers in the audit that they gave us. So they knew we were doing we were buying through him. Amnesty International put him on a watch list because they suspected him of supplying some warlords in Africa with various things, but they could improve it. So was he never got officially legally banned. But he'd been doing business in the arm. He'd been in the arms business since he was like 18 years old. He was like in his 40s by the time we were doing business with him. So he was very, very connected. He set up a deal, a deal for us to buy the AK 47 ammo from the Albanian government who at the time was trying to join NATO. And one of NATO's requirements is that they get rid of all their old Soviet weapons and ammo. And so they were going to have to pay to dismantle this stuff. And so they were thrilled to sell it for pretty much anything. And Henry was really good friends with the Albanian Prime Minister's son. And that's how he like set up this deal for us. So at the time, we didn't know anything about Albania. Who knows about Albania, right? It was a tiny little country. Most people haven't even heard of it in the United States. So we signed the contract to buy this stuff. And we at the time there was an enormous spike in oil prices in early 2007. And we had to fly everything into Afghanistan by air freight because Afghanistan is landlocked and it's Pakistan on one side and Russia and the Central Asian countries on the other side. And so and surrounded by warlords who would just love for a big shipment of ammunition to go through their territory that they can grab. So we had to fly everything in an 80, 90% of the air freight is fuel costs. So when the fuel when the oil prices spiked, we were like underwater on this aspect of the contract. We were going to lose money here. Now a professional company like general dynamics, they would have hedged, right? They would have bought like a fuel hedge, but Ephraim doesn't run like that. You know, he doesn't need that. So we were kind of screwed. We were like, how are we going to do that? But it was only on one part of the con. It was only on one part. The rest of it was very like the grenades and the larger caliber stuff was very profitable. But we didn't want to lose money on this. So you know, we were actually debating, you know, maybe it's better to lose money on this aspect of the contract so we could deliver on the other aspects and overall we'll make money. But of course, that was like Ephraim was allergic to that. He's like, no, we're not losing money. You know, and so I had the idea. I told Ephraim, like, you know, we, because we got pictures of the, you know, of the ammo and we're like, this is, they were stored in these in these metal sardine cans, which were vacuum sealed. And the metal sardine cans were put into these heavy wooden crates. And I told him like, Ephraim, we don't really need to ship the wooden crates. We could just take the sardine cans out and scrap them to the pallet and we'll save some weight. Maybe that'll be enough weight to make this profitable. And he's like, oh, that's a great idea. So I told him, okay, I'll ask the Albanians to weigh the crates. He's like, oh, you can't trust those motherfuckers. We have to go to Albania ourselves and weigh it. And he's like, but not you. I need you in Miami. You're dealing with the guy. I was dealing like nine different suppliers. I was also dealing with the with the government who based at a Rock Island arsenal in Illinois. So all these different time zones, he's like, I need you in the office taking care of the contract. He's like, we need to send someone. So I had a really good friend of mine, Alex, at the time he had just done a stint. He's a dual citizen with France. So he had done a stint in the French military. He had a degree in international relations. He's trilingual, very smart guy. He was looking for a job. And I said, well, why don't we send, you know, Alex can take care of this. And so we send Alex over there. And he calls me up and he's like, he's like, yeah, I weighed the crates. These are the numbers. And it turned out the wooden crates were super heavy. And so it put us back into profitability. And he's like, but you do know this stuff is all Chinese, right? And I'm like, what are you talking about? He's like, yeah, there's like Chinese markings all over the boxes. And I'm like, let me tell Ephraim. And he Ephraim's like, oh, shit, that's, that's a big problem because our contract specifically said no Chinese ammunition could be delivered under this contract. And why? Because there is a arms embargo against, in 1989, there was the Tiananmen Square Massager. And in Central of Beijing, a bunch of Chinese college students were protesting for democracy and the Chinese government rolled in tanks and soldiers and killed a lot of people. There's a very famous picture of a guy standing in front of a line of tanks. So that was on international TV. And because of that, the United States placed the Chinese government on an arms embargo. So it's illegal for US citizens companies to do military business with the Chinese. So our contract said no Chinese ammunition could be delivered delivered. It's not from China directly or indirectly, they spoke directly or indirectly. Now, the reason they put that in was as a reference to the embargo, but they didn't reference the embargo in our contract. So the ammunition that was in Albania had been given to the Albanians by the Chinese in the 70s. Because Albania pulled out of alignment with the Soviet Union, made an alliance with China. It was run by this crazy dictator who was a true communist believer. And he thought that the people in the Kremlin were a bunch of self-serving assholes and not true communists, but the Chinese were. He liked Chairman Mao. So he made an alliance with the chairman of the now extreme communists. And so when he pulled out of the alliance with the Soviet Union, he thought the Soviet Union would invade him as they did with like Czechoslovakia and other places. They don't like it when you pull out. And he thought because he's communist, NATO would invade him too. So like the two big superpowers of the world were going to invade his tiny little country. And so he decided that his strategy was to create a massive network of underground bunkers all over the all over the country to be safe from bombardment and pack them full of weapons and ammunition so that if he gets invaded, all his citizens could become soldiers and everyone fights to the death. That was his plan. He called it total war. And so he got his weapons in ammo from his new best friends, the Chinese. In the 70s, before there was an arms embargo against the Chinese. So this ammunition did not violate the arms embargo, but it did violate the terms of our commercial contract with the US Army because it's just said no Chinese directly or indirectly period, not no Chinese that violates the arms embargo. So at the time when we discovered that this was Chinese, we had a discussion. We're like, okay, we have two options here. We could tell the army and they can and ask for a waiver. We're like, hey, you wrote our contract a little vaguely. Can you just specify that it's just Chinese that violates the arms embargo post. Yeah. Post embargo. Yeah. Post embargo ammunition that we can deliver. You know, and we thought, well, if we do that, they could say yes. And in retrospect, they probably would have. Because it turned out they knew the whole time what we were delivering. The State Department in Albania obviously knew because they know the history of Albania. And you know, but we also thought if we tell them this, then the army could say something along the lines of, well, you know, in general dynamics and your other competitors, they were very upset. You won this contract and they really were. We had met with the leader of the brokering group in general dynamics who was working on this and he told us, oh, yeah, we're very confident we're going to win this. So you don't have to worry about that. You know, you don't, don't, don't, don't put too much work into this. And so we knew that they were really pissed. That's a lot of money even for them. Yeah. Even for them, $300 million. Well, I think they bid it at like $500 million. So we beat them by quite a lot. Yeah. Yeah. That's a half a billion dollar contract that moves the needle even for general dynamics. So so we were worried that the army would say something along the lines of, well, you know, you know, all your competitors had to bid under the terms of the contract with no Chinese period. It's not fair that we changed the rules after. So we're going to take this contract away from you, put it out for open bid and you could bid on it correctly this time. And good luck. Do you believe truly though? Because when I look at that situation like outside looking at it and you know what the army would and wouldn't do, when I think about that, I would just think they would say, no, please go source the ammunition somewhere else. We don't want to just read. Who wants to put an R of Neo to study? They don't want to do it. The problem was and in retrospect, they definitely would have said that first, right? The problem is is that there is a, it takes a while to move arms, right? You need to get the licensing and the overflight permits and all that. Every time you, if you fly military gear over a country's airspace, you need to ask permission from that country and they need to give you a license to fly or military stuff over. And I think there was like 12 or 13 countries between Albania and Afghanistan. And so it took us like a good like two, three months to get all that lined up. And by the, and so if we were going to switch sources, it was going to take us another bunch of months to do that. And at the time, there was a, there was a, so Afghanistan has a fighting season because they have really tall mountains. And in the winter, it fills up with snows and you can't, it becomes impassable. So this was like April time. So fighting season started because the snows were melting and the Taliban was attacking and our Afghan allies were running out of ammo and the army was yelling at us, get that shit over there. So they were very, they were very high sensitive. And we knew if we were going to switch sources, that was going to delay things at least another two, three months. Now, in retrospect, them rebitting out the contract would have delayed it even more. So, but we didn't make that calculation. You know, so in in in retrospect, they knew the whole time anyway because our Alex actually would met with one of the representatives from the State Department in Albania. And he mentioned, he's like, Oh, yeah, that stuff's all Chinese, but it's great. The Albania is trying to get rid of it anyway. And our Afghan allies need it. It's just a win, win, win for everybody. Exactly. So the the State Department had no problem with it. We were just worried that it would that some bureaucrat in the army, you know, is going to be like, Oh, well, this violates, you know, the terms of our bidding process, et cetera, et cetera. And you bid this under false pretenses and accept, you know, like, and you got us to put all these licenses for stuff that doesn't, it's so, but that's wild that even though they were most likely okay with it, you still got in trouble for something that they were most likely okay with just because you didn't ask. Yeah, which is absolutely why like you think that that would come into play when they were actually looking at what did these guys do wrong? Right. And it's like, well, yes, maybe it's like a fine, or, or, or you can't bid for a period of time. But if you were okay with it to begin with, why are you sending guys to jail over what is really a technicality and contractual language? That's what's very interesting. Well, they weren't going to. And they actually knew, they, okay, so where this, I'll go through, I'll go through as a little mystery jumping around. Yeah, yeah, excited about this. Yeah, yeah, it is. So the way the whole thing went down, so we decided to repackage the ammo. And, and to hide the fact that it was Chinese, just to, so we wouldn't take the risk of triggering some bureaucrat to cancel our contract. We hired some Albanian guy to do the repackaging. He was going to charge us like a hundred grand to repackage 150 million rounds. And we were saving like three million in air freight costs, so it was a great deal. But of course, Ephraim wanted to make more money. So once it started delivering on a regular basis, he decided to try to, he tried to cut Henry out of the deal, to negotiate directly with the Albanians. The Albanians told him, no, we're not cutting Henry out of the deal, probably because he was paying off the politicians who said this whole thing up. Not that we knew about it, but that's probably what was happening. And, um, but the Albanians, uh, they told, they told them it's like, but if you give us the contract to do the repackaging, then we'll give you a discount on the ammo because we were using some third party Albanian. And so Ephraim was like, yeah, great. That guy's fired. You're hired. Let's do this. You've got a small discount on the ammo. The guy who he fired got stuck with $20,000 worth of boxes that Ephraim refused to pay him for $20,000, $20,000. And you've just refused to pay him. He's like, yeah, fuck that guy. What's he going to do? He's not going to do anything, you know? And I told him, like, I probably should probably pay him. He knows everything. He's like, don't worry about him, you know? And so that guy got really pissed, as you could imagine, and he told the New York Times what we were doing. So this, this guy had the, the foresight thing, I'm going to fuck these guys over by going to the New York Times. Yeah. And he actually recorded from secretly while talking to him on the phone and got him to admit that he thought that the guy he was dealing with was part of the Albanian mob, which has actually turned out to be true. It's like the guy who was the, like, I don't know how his involvement got there, but the guy who was connected to the, to the Prime Minister's son turned out, a guy named Mikhail Deliorgi, he turned out to be, like, the leader of the Albanian mafia. And so the, the, the, the box guy, Costa Trebyska, he called up Ephraim, and he's like, you told me that this guy, Deliorgi is part of the, the Albanian mob, right? I mean, he was like in trapping, and, and the role is like, yeah, I think he is, but yeah, I don't want to know, you know? Not my business. Oh, my God. Yeah, this conversation is on YouTube. That's so funny. Um, not really for you. Yeah, yeah, I didn't know. I mean, now it's funny. Yeah. So yes, anyway, so Costa got pissed. He told the New York Times, and even bigger miss, he, the thing where he really went wrong is he told the local Albanian press that the Albanian politicians were doing kickbacks. And a week after that article was published, he winds up dead in a really mysterious, he, like, he was, they found him in a field. Yeah. In the dirt field on a dirt road, and his car had somehow run him over. Very suspicious, very suspicious. It got, but the government ruled it an accident. Oh, dear. But nobody thinks it was an accident. Most people, I was going to run them over. Yeah, it's it. Yeah, I'm not really sure how that, I guess they claimed he was trying to fix his tire, and then it went into neutral. I don't know what the mental gymnastics. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, over 20 grand over 20 grand. Yeah. So then, you know, so the feds, so after, after that whole, that whole thing happened, the contract was being delivered on a regular basis. We had like four aircraft loads flying into Afghanistan every week, and then from comes into my office, and he says to me, he's like, you know, a lot of the guys on the office are saying that, because at this point, we had about 15 employees, you know, we had like a little boiler room going, and he's like, a lot of the guys around the office are saying, you're not pulling your weight around here anymore. I'm like, what are you talking about? The thing contracts going well. And he says, well, you know, yeah, yeah, our Afghan contracts going well. But we're really struggling on these Iraq contracts, and you're not helping with that. And I said, well, I'm not getting a commission on that. I only get to commit, I'm not your employee. And he's like, yeah, but if, if you don't, if our Iraq contracts go down, the whole company could go down. And that takes your Afghan contract with it. So you need a, you need to like help out with everything. And I said, well, you want to give me a piece of the company. And he says, you know what? David, I've been thinking about this a lot. You're a big reason why AUI is doing so well. AUI was the company, you know, is the why we're doing so well. And I own 100% of this company and never thought I would give anyone a piece of it. But I'll tell you what, I'm going to offer you $100,000 a year, executive salary plus one percent of AUI. And I said to him, well, you know, the Afghan contract is going to make us like 90% of the money going in the next few years. And I'm supposed to get 25 percent of that. So I think I'll stick with that, you know, and I'm going to make, you know, I don't know about like $15, $20 million of it. So you're 100 grand a year salary. I'm good. I think I'll stick with you. And he goes to me, he's like, well, how about zero? Because that's the only offer on the table. And I said to him, well, in that case, go fuck yourself. And I'll see you in court. And so I walked out. And about a month, we started to do it at the time. Yeah. This is when the article's being published. No, not yet. Oh, not yet. That is later. Okay. Yeah. So I'll give you the chronological order. So I quit AUI. I decided to, you know, we negotiate. I was getting ready to sue him. My lawyer told me, well, he, you know, he's, this is going to take years to go through the lawsuit, better to just negotiate something so you can move on with your life. We negotiated like other things like 300 K. And he owed me about four million dollars at the time of what we had delivered. And I was like, you know, what I want to get him out of my life. I want to move on. You were that willing. I would, you know, eat what I was about to go bankrupt because I had been, I had been living off because I hadn't pulled a penny out of this the entire time because every time I'd win a contract, he, we were about to win another one by the time we got paid. And he's like, Hey, I'm using my money to finance this contract. You just made a bunch of money from this contract. So why don't you roll your money into the next one to finance the next contract? I'm like, Oh, I guess that's fair because he, but what was the deal with the financing? Like you should take your 25% out. So he was using all his money to finance the business owner. That's too bad, right? Yeah. So that was, that was how he portrayed it to me. Is that I'm using my money to finance it? You just made a bunch of money. It's only fair. You should use your money to finance it. It was still a tiny fraction of the money he was using. So he's like, I'm still financing most of it. But you know, you got to have your skin in the game too. So I wasn't pulling any money out of this. And I was slowly using my 100 grand that I had in savings at the beginning of this. And I was down to like 20 grand. And, um, and so I realized, man, if I don't make money soon, I'm going to not be able to make rent. Uh, and so, and I had a kid that was, it was about six months old. So I had to start supporting my, my daughter. And, uh, and I realized, you know, like after I was like super depressed after he, you know, I, because I went from, I thought I was going to be a multimillionaire to, I'm about to go bankrupt. And I realized, well, I know this business. I don't need him to do it. I can start bidding on contracts myself. But I needed money because I was, you know, that takes quite a few months to win your first contract, usually. Um, and there's no guarantee. And I had a kid to support. And I, you know, it was, it was, it was, it was, it was, it was, it was, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And exactly. So I was like, you know what? I could either chase him for years to try to get the millions of dollars he owes me. And even if I win, I knew that he had, uh, uh, offshore accounts in the social islands and other places, he's probably gonna hide his money. Everything he does is just like really shitty. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So like I had zero doubt that he would try that even if I won the court case, he would pull some shenanigans to avoid paying to hide the money. And I thought, well, if we come to an agreement, yes, it's a tiny fraction of what he owes me. But at least it's guaranteed and I'll have enough leeway to support myself and my kid until I get my, you know, my feed off, you know, the underground business running. Exactly. So that's, so that's why I agreed to it. It was not because I thought it was fair. You know, it's that super dirty. Yeah. That's so shitty. It's just this horrible. Yeah. So the, the day we were supposed to sign the contract to, uh, for our, uh, agreement in our settlement of the Fed's rate is office. And then my lawyer tells me you can't take any money from him because then it looks like you're paying, he's paying you off. So the Fed's rate is office. They, um, they find on his desk, um, a handwritten note to do list. And one of the items on his handwritten to do list is repackage Chinese ammo. He didn't have, he could have said repackage ammo. He wrote repackage Chinese ammo, repackage Chinese ammo in his handwriting on his desk. And, and so I thought, okay, well, this is gonna, this is all going down from here on out. Um, but then they didn't do anything, right? For like six months, they kept on take the army kept on taking delivery of the Chinese ammo after this. Uh, and, and I was like, okay, maybe they're not gonna, you know, go after and do the Fed's communicate with you. Yeah. So they, so they, um, they contacted me and my lawyer, the first thing my lawyer told me, he's like, okay, the first thing you have to do is go through your emails and see if there's anything incriminating in there. And so I searched Chinese ammo, repackage, and there were a whole bunch of emails. And it was all very incriminating. At first, we, he had said when we first started this whole thing, he was like, oh, we're always talking on the phone. Nobody's writing emails. But then he, he, um, he had insisted Alex, uh, send him pictures of the, of the cards, because he didn't trust Alex's assessment that this was Chinese characters. He wanted to see himself. So there is an email out of pictures of the Chinese boxes that he sent to, uh, for him and to me. And then one of our investors, Ralph, um, he, um, he had sent us an email, uh, with step-by-step instructions, how to sand Chinese markings off wooden crates. And there was like pictures, and it was very incriminating. Uh, so we knew, uh, the second I saw those emails, I'm like, there's no way I'm going to win this in court. And so my lawyer told me, he's like, well, um, how much justice can you afford? And I'm like, how much does this get out of you? Do you have an adversarial system? Yeah, exactly. And, uh, and he's like, yeah, because like, even it, he's like, look, maybe we can get you on a tech off on a technicality, but it's going to cost you at least, like 300 K. Do you have that? I'm like, no, I don't have that. You know, I'm about to go fucking bankrupt because this guy can't pay me. And, uh, he's like, well, in that case, he probably plead guilty because you don't even, you can't even put up a good fight. And anyway, there's a lot of evidence against you. So, uh, but at this point, you don't even like the feds raid, but you don't know that the feds are actually going to charge you with anything yet. No, so, but they wanted to talk to me. And then the question was, do you stonewall them or do you, or do you talk to them? And you start to, and so are to play ball. Yeah. So my lawyer told me, is like, your only option here is to talk to them because you don't have enough money to defend yourself. And there's a lot of incriminating evidence against you. So is my professional opinion, you should talk to the, to, to the agents, be completely honest with them, tell them everything you know. And hopefully they won't go too hard on you. And so I did that. Alex also did that. Um, and, but then they told us they're originally the feds were like, oh, we're not going after you guys because you didn't even make any money from this. Really have from as the target. And, but then, you know, they interviewed us. We told them what we knew. And then we didn't hear from them for like six months until February of 2008 or March 2008. Uh, the New York Times finally publishes their front page article about us. And it wasn't flattering. My mug shot and Ephraim's mug shot were on the front page of the New York Times next to a picture of Rusty looking ammunition, which wasn't even the Chinese ammo. It was actually Bulgarian ammo that Ephraim had bought site unseen for a very low amount. He didn't, it was like such, it was like only 30,000 rounds. Different deal. You know, completely different deal. So he, the way that, so the way that picture got on the front page of the New York Times was, um, we had a, um, we had the grenades were coming at a Bulgaria. And we had some extra room on the aircraft. And he had gotten off for like 30,000 rounds of AK 47 ammo, um, for very, very cheap, even cheaper than the, than the, like a quarter of the price of the Albanian, uh, ammo, which was already super low. And, but it was such a small quantity of ammo. It wasn't worth flying over there to inspect it. And he's, and he figured, you know, if it's good, we'll make an enormous margin. If it's bad, I'm not paying that much for it. So why not? He rolled the dice turned out. Obviously was crap. And it got to Afghanistan, the receiving officer took one look at, and he's like, I'm not paying for this garbage. And, but of course, there's no, they didn't want to pay to ship it back. And there's no ammunition, recycling facilities in Afghanistan. So they just shoved it to the side of the airport and left it there. And it just kept on corroding in the open air and the rain. And so by the time the New York Times sent a reporter over there too, and that's getting you and all the stuff that you've done. And they asked someone, can you show us some stuff that AUI delivered? They pointed to that. And that's the picture that ended up on the New York. And it's like really corroded nasty looking stuff. And the way they wrote the article that implied that all the stuff we delivered was of similar quality, which was not true. In fact, the Army stated in court later on that they were completely happy with the quality of the ammunition. So, but like still, that doesn't tie together why the feds decided to charge you because the article comes out. It's just because, is it just because it's embarrassing? Yes. You feel like you genuinely believe that that article didn't kind didn't come out. Absolutely. And so what happened with the article comes out. It creates a massive political firestorm. There were hearings in Congress. There's a YouTube videos out there of some like Senator with one of those big easels on the floor of Congress and with a picture of me and F from on there. He's like, and this is a 21 year old, you know, the company is owned by a 21 year old whose vice president is a licensed massage therapist. I was working as a massage therapist back then. And, you know, and this, these are the gentlemen who the Bush administration is entrusting to supply a critical, you know, component of the war on terror. You know, so it became a big political scandal and like a way to embarrass the Bush administration and the Army like a two days later put out a statement. We had no idea any of this was happening. We're taking canceling the contract and it came out later in court because Ralph took it to court. Ephraim and I and Alex all played guilty. But Ralph took it to court. So there was a lot of discovery that came out during that process. And so the email there was after the feds rated the office in August of 2007. They had sent the Justice Department sent an email to the US RV telling them this stuff is Chinese. You may want to stop taking delivery on it. The Army sent them back an email saying this ammunition is critical to the mission in Afghanistan. And if you want us to stop taking delivery on it, we're going to need a letter from the attorney general of the United States instructing us to stop taking delivery. And that letter never came. So they kept on taking delivery for another six months kept on paying Ephraim with every shipment. And even after they were directly informed in writing that it was Chinese ammunition, they didn't care. And because as far as they were concerned, it met all the qualifications of what they needed. And it's the Justice Department's job to enforce the laws. And they were not telling them to stop at least not officially. So they said, you may want to stop. They kind of give it as a suggestion. And they're like, well, we're not going to take your suggestion because this is important. We need it. But if you want to order us to stop, it's going to need to come from the attorney general. And the attorney general never decided to send that letter. So why do you think still they proceeded with with charging you even even though they knew that this was happening behind closed doors. And even though the ammo was because they wanted to cover their own asses. That's the once the New York Times created this political scandal. Yeah. They had to look like they were doing something about it. Right. So that's why the Army canceled the contract. And then about a week later, the Justice Department came back to my lawyer and they said, hey, you know, I know we said that we wouldn't charge you with any of this. But we're sorry. You're too close to the to the and also Alex. He was on the ground in Albany. You guys are just too close to the and and too essential to the whole operation for us to charge Ephraim and not charge you. And so the way they charged us was they said, you guys delivered 71 aircraft loads of this Chinese ammunition to Albania. And in each aircraft, you supplied with the with the ammunition a document called the certificate of conformance. And the certificate of conformance listed the type of ammunition that was on board the quantity, the year of manufacture, and most importantly, the place of origin. And the place of origin line, you put Albania and you knew it was really China. And not only did you know it was China, you had a whole operation to disguise that it was China. So this submission of this document is an act of fraud. And you did the 71 times 71 counts of fraud and each one could get you five years in prison. So you're looking at 355 years in prison. If you fight us, but if you plead guilty, we'll combine all those 71 counts into one as prosecutors. They've got the power to do that. And so the max you're looking at if you plead guilty is five years in prison. But because you plead guilty, we're going to tell the judge that, you know, you you you cooperated and that you regret your actions. You'll be a good citizen from now on. And so we'll recommend to the judge that they that the judge give you the low end of the guideline. So maybe you'll get one, maybe just probation, you know, up to the judge, not our call. That's very scary. They're dealing with it. Exactly. So that's the choice they give you. You want to spend the rest of your life in prison or maybe nothing. But you have to know when they're going through this whole process, like it's not like they haven't arrested you or anything like that at this point. Like it's a very like almost like a negotiation over your life. Yeah. It's it must be interesting. I mean, I hopefully not a lot of people that are listening to this have ever gone through it. I don't recommend it. But you're actually just like like what is it? What are the thoughts that are going through your head when you're dealing with this whole process? I might be fucked. That's that's what I'm thinking. I my entire life could be ruined right now. I can miss decades of my life. You know, I can miss my daughter growing up. It's I may have just royally fucked myself over in my entire life and let everyone down. That's that's what was going through my head. And so you agreed to pleading guilty. Of course I would agree to pleading guilty. That was not me really much of a choice. Even if I wanted to fight them, I didn't have the money to fight them in court. Because as my lawyer said, I didn't I couldn't afford much justice. This was kind of a bullshit charge. Like it seems like it was a bullshit charge because it's just covering everyone's eyes. Looking back, you still feel that. Yeah, I mean, if they really cared about it, they would have brought charges against us when they first found out about it. Not six months later, right after the New York Times article got published. The timing there was just too suspicious. You know, it wasn't like they were preparing to bring charges. And then they just happened to be ready one week after the New York Times published. That's unlikely. It's they probably prepared that the case. They're like, you know, we could bring this case. Maybe we shouldn't bring the case. The army seems to feel this is important that this continues. So we'll kind of let it slip under the rug. You know, no harm. No foul. But until there was until it became a political football until it became a scandal. And then everyone career bureaucrats need to cover themselves. That's that's kind of how. How do you prep for this? I mean, you have a you have a kid. You were married at the time. So how are you prepping for this like going into this? Because at the end of the day, you got seven months probation or house arrest. How's the rest? How do you prep for this kind of event? You mean like this is like the sentence saying like, it's the whole of the whole like walk me through that. Right. So the way it worked was they brought about like a week after the New York Times article got published. They brought charges against us. You know, we negotiated. We pled guilty. Ephraim took, Ephraim tried fighting them for another like few months, but then realized that it was lost cause. You think that's why you bought more time? No, no, there's a reason why he got more time than me. And there's that's a whole other story. It's actually kind of a funny story. But to me, not to him, I'm sure. But so I'll get to that. Yeah, no, I'm dealing with it. So Alex and I pled guilty immediately. I really have a choice. Ephraim tried to fight him for another few months. Eventually he pled guilty too because he realized the evidence against him was too strong. But Ralph decided to take it to court, our investor. And because he decided to take it to court, they didn't want to sentence us until his trial was over. Because in case they wanted to call us as witnesses in his trial, they wanted to have leverage against us. They didn't want to sentence us. So we were kind of stuck in limbo until his whole trial was over. He went to trial twice. The first time was a hung jury. Then they did the whole thing again and finally convicted him. Took three years that entire process. So during that three year period, the prosecutors told us, you guys have to stay out of the arms business. You can't do government contracting. And my lawyer told me, go get a job that will make you look good to the judge. And so I got a job at a nonprofit at a food bank. Yeah, that's about as good as you. Exactly. I was terrified. I was looking at decades in prison. I got a job at a food bank. I went back to school, started studying mechanical engineering. I even started doing massage therapy again. You're just praying for what's on the other side. Exact hammer that's coming down. I didn't know how long this process was going to take. I was hoping my lawyer said, oh, it could be anywhere from six months to a couple of years. You don't know. Exactly. And so I did that. And Ephraim has a hired tolerance for risk. So he officially shut down his arms business. But he had his newest lackey. So after I quit, he hired someone else to take over my job. He ended up screwing that guy over too. That guy quit. And then he had another guy who replaced that guy. That guy. He got to start a company under his own name. And he started doing the arms business under his lackey's name, corporate name, using it as a proxy. Exactly. As a proxy. He tried to do this. But the thing is when he's a real control freak, and he's really good at negotiating. So when it came down to actually negotiating the deal, he'd grab the phone and start talking himself. And so he tried to do this deal with a with a gun dealer who's based out of central Florida. The gun dealer, after he started talking directly to Ephraim, realized who Ephraim was. And he called up the ATF, now called tobacco firearms administration who regulates firearms in the United States, called up the ATF and told him, hey, I have this because Ephraim was in the newspapers and all that. See, it's like, I have this convicted arms dealer who's trying to do an arms deal with me. What should I do? Because he probably thought Ephraim's trying to entrap him into something to get a reduction on his sentence. You're very reasonable assumption. And so the ATF tells him, well, why don't you introduce one of our undercover agents as your partner? The gun dealer does that. And undercover agent tells Ephraim, you know, I'm the kind of guy who needs to look you in the eye and shake your hand before we do a deal. And Ephraim goes, oh yeah, I'm that kind of guy, two years, how men do business, you know? And he's like, he's like, he's like, so why don't you come up to the Orlando area and we'll meet and we'll close this deal. And, you know, and he knew that Ephraim was out on bond and not allowed to leave the Southern District of Florida. That would not allowed to do business. And definitely not allowed to do this kind of business. And so Ephraim's like, okay, I'll be up there next weekend. You know, so he goes up to the to meet the agent, not knowing he's the undercover agent, right? And the undercover agent meets with him, pops the hook, the trunk of his car. And he says, hey, check that out because he knew that Ephraim was already a convicted felon right because he had pled guilty. And in the United States, it's illegal for a felon to be in possession of a firearm. You can get up to 10 years in prison, just for picking up a gun as a convicted felon. Now, it's also illegal for someone to knowingly hand a felon, a firearm. So what he does is he pops open the trunk of his car and he says, check out that gun I've got in there. It's the latest, greatest HK on the market. And Ephraim who's a gun nut says, oh, I heard about that thing. Let me see that. Let's go to the range and fire off a few rounds. What can I say? Once a gun runner, oh, is a gun runner? Am I right? The agent slaps the cuff son of him. He's really, you're a felon in possession of a firearm. And you're under arrest. And he could have gotten 10 years for that because he violated the terms of his bonded and give him another bond. So he had to spend like a year in county jail in central Florida, which is no picnic. And eventually, he could have gotten five, he had, and he had invalidated his plea agreement, right? Because part of the plea agreement, you make when you plead guilty, it's an agreement with the prosecutors. He's very sentencing. This is pre-sentencing, right? Ralph had not been finished his trial yet. So he hadn't been sentenced for the gun for the fraud charge. And part of the plea agreement is you will commit no more crimes before you get sentenced. Because how are the prosecutors going to tell the judge that you're a reform individual? You know, you're a good citizen from now. And if you're going out there and committing more crimes before you even get sentenced. So he invalidated his plea agreement. The prosecutors said, oh, you should throw the book at this guy. He respects, doesn't respect the law. And he needs to learn a lesson. So he could have gotten five years total for the fraud charge that he had pled guilty to another 10 years for the gun charge. He hired the best lawyers in Miami. They negotiated hard. They got it down to four years. So instead of 15 years total, he ended up getting sentenced to four years for both things. He ended up serving like he three and a half years got out for like good behavior drug program. And now he's out at about on the streets of Miami, screwed people left and right. You think so? Oh, I know so. Because he, I every few years, I get someone call me up. And they're like, I made a big mistake of going into business with him. And now I have to sue him because he just screwed me in this that in the other way. And nothing's changed. Nothing's changed. He's the same guy. He's the same exact guy. What businesses does he do now? So from what I've heard, he is in the business of financing lawsuits. Because so many people have sued him. And he's sued. He's done a whole bunch of frivolous losses. He sued. I think it was like Glaxo Smith climbed the big pharmaceutical company because he claims his psychiatric medication turned him into a drug sex and gambling addict. And that he lost millions of dollars doing all that. While he was waiting sentencing, he's from what I you can sue a drug company for that. Well, I don't know if he was successful, but he did sue them. But you probably look it up. Yeah, yeah. You probably didn't look it up. Yeah, yeah. That's wow. Yeah. So at least it's crazy what you can sue for. Oh, you could sue for anything. I'm Canadian. This is very, I don't think I know anybody that sued anybody for like having too much fun on the weekend for us to anyone. So he got really good at suing and being and he got really good at getting out of lawsuits because he screws everyone over. You know, so he everyone sues him eventually. And so he got to know the legal system really well. And so now he finances lawsuits. And I have no doubt that the deals he makes, it probably he gets like 90% of the winnings and then he figures out some way to screw the guy out of the last 10%. So, you know, because that's just how he rolls. So that's what he does now. I've heard he's trying to get into some other businesses, but I don't know, you know, whether you're going to invest. Yeah, them. I would not recommend anything to go into business. Have you spoken to him since the only time I spoke to him since he went to prison was, uh, I sued him years later and we who went through a deposition. And so there, so I saw him in a room in a deposition where we had our lawyers in the room. We ended up settling, you know, for way less than I should have just because the there was some evidence that had been that mysteriously disappeared that made my case weaker. And it was going to cost me a lot of money to do an investigation. I didn't want to like spend the time. I was already moved on to other businesses and I just wanted him out of my life. So, so yeah, we ended up settling for a tiny fraction of what he owed me, but, uh, and the truth is, I don't regret it because I'm just glad he's not in my life anymore. Yeah, that's, uh, that was a hectic year and a half. Yeah, yeah, it was. And then three years fall out, three years fall out. So I got sentenced, but, uh, I, so I got sentenced to seven months of house arrest, which is probably like the best possible. It was the, I was, I felt extremely fortunate. Yeah. Did you, uh, spend any time in jail at all? Uh, just so when they, when they brought charges against us, uh, you have to go in to, uh, to get the judge to issue you a bond. So they have like a way to, you know, to get you back in court if they want to. And so, but they didn't, it wasn't like in the movie where they sent the FBI to our house to arrest us. We are already in negotiations with, uh, with the prosecutors through our lawyers. So the prosecutors, uh, told us, oh, just do a self surrender. They call it. So you just walk down to this. This is a non-violent non. Yeah, yeah. Exactly. When they don't think that you're a flight risk. Yeah. So if they don't think you're a flight risk and you haven't committed anything violent or anything like that, they'll, and you're already in cotton. It's not going to be a surprise. You know, they, you're already in negotiations. They'll be like, you could self serve, they give you the option to self surrender, they call it. You just walk down to the courthouse. They kept, they come in, in like a little holding cell for a few hours. They put you in cuffs. Yeah. And you walk out to the judge. The judge looks at your case as, okay, your bond is X amount and, you know, so they did the same thing for him. Um, but then later on, he got arrested, you know, through the, the sting operation with the ATF and then they kept him in jail. New thing he would have gotten same amount of jail time as you if he wasn't an idiot. I think he would have gotten more than me just because he was the ringleader and the, you know, the kingpin, they call it, but he definitely would have gotten a lot less than four years. Yeah. 100%. If I had to guess and it's just a guess because you don't know what the judge would have given him, he probably would have gotten a year. And that's, that's what I think he would have gotten. So seven years house arrest. This is when you said our 70, sorry, am I going to seven months house arrest. This is when you start to figure out what's next in your life. Exactly. It was when you started. Yes. Other businesses. Yeah, correct. Yeah. It was actually so the house house arrest turned out to be one of the biggest blessings in my life. It's kind of funny how that goes. You know, uh, I was under house arrest and which I felt very, very lucky to get, uh, because house arrest is heaven compared to prison. House house. People do some people do anyways. Exactly. Exactly. It's you have your own, yeah, you can watch TV. You have your own refrigerator, your own bathroom, you know, very important. Don't have to worry about dropping the soap, you know. So, um, yeah, I felt very, very lucky that I got only that I avoided prison. Uh, you know, got to spend a lot of time with my daughter, which was really nice. Uh, but I was bored. You know, as I played a lot of guitar, I'm a guitarist. So, and it wasn't like a COVID style house like lockdown where people can't visit you. That a lot of my musician friends come over. We jam. It wasn't so bad. But of course, no drummer is going to bring his drum set over my house because it's a massive pain to move a drum set. So I really miss playing with the drummer. So, uh, you know, the drums are give the, the music, the energy, you know, you dance to the beat. So I bought a, uh, a drum machine, which is this electronic device. It goes on the table. It's mainly designed to compose beats. It's got a bunch of buttons on it. Each one makes a different drum sound. You can make the beats on it. And then it plays it back in a loop. It's what like a producer would use. Yes. Exactly. It's what producers use to make beats. Yeah. Uh, but I was using it. So I'd have beat to play to with my guitar. But every time I wanted to change the beat, like when you go from verse to chorus in a song, the beat gets usually guitar. So I'd have to stop playing my guitar, press the button on the machine to change the beat and go back to playing my guitar and interrupted the flow of the music. And I was like, this really sucks. I wish I could do that hands free. Like I, I wanted a drum machine in the form of a pedal on the floor. So I could control it hands free. And so I went, I was sure someone made something like this. So I went online to look for it. And I couldn't find anything. And I asked my musician friends if they'd seen anything like that. And they're like, I'd never seen anything like it. But when you find it, let me know because I want one too. That's not super cool. And so I thought if nobody's making it, everybody wants it. You know, I should make this thing. And I, of course, I'd never made any electronic product in my life. I'd never developed anything. So I knew nothing about it. So I started googling, you know, how to develop electronic products. And I found a whole bunch of engineering firms that promise to take your idea from napkin sketch to store shelves. That was the, that was the, that was a good fit. Yeah, it's a good fit. But there were a lot of them. And I didn't know which one to pick and the price ranges were like all over the place. It was like, for this particular product, I ended up calling it the beat buddy, like your buddy that plays the beat. And it was like, I got the lowest price was like $30,000 to develop it just for the engineering, not manufacturing. The highest price was about $300,000. So so I had about at this point at about like $25,000 saved up from like doing massages. And because I had spent all my money on lawyers to keep me out of prison. And even to plead guilty, it cost me 30 grand. Really? Yeah. Yeah. To do the negotiations. Yeah, to listen to your dad and I just get, you know, it's, I've, in business, I've met lawyers who charged like $1,500 an hour. And I'm like, no engineer in the world charges that much. I mean, when the horses are so silly. Yeah. If you can't agree, yes, you're going to spend, I mean, the lawyers get all the money. It's incredible. The lawyers always win. The lawyers win. Yeah. Yeah. So anyway, I had no idea which one to pick. So of course, I made the classic mistake just going with the cheapest guy. He ended up wasting like nine months ended up not. I realized he wasn't going to build it. I managed to get my money back because I had hired him through it was called ODesk, which is similar to Upwork, like one of these sites. And so I had some leverage on him. But then I realized, you know what? I'm going to pick the guys who seem like they are the most competence instead of the cheapest. And it wasn't even the most expensive. These guys were like 130 grand. They're Canadian company actually out of Montreal. And they, but of course, I didn't have 130 grand. So I told them that. I'm like, yeah, I only have 25 grand. And but I'm planning on doing the crowdfunding campaign to do manufacturing. So they told me, look, we really want to get into this field because all of our other projects have been for like big companies B2B or governments. And we want to do something consumer facing. And this is a super cool product. And the founder of their company, the lead engineer was a drummer. And he's like, I know this is going to do really well because I have so many friends want to jam with me. And I don't have time to jam with them because I'm running an engineering company. But they're going to love this thing. So he made me a special deal, which is an incredible deal. I'm very grateful for it. I gave them all my money pretty much every penny I had 25 grand as a down payment. And they built me a functional prototype that I could then take to crowdfunding. And the deal was I would use the crowdfunding money to pay them back. They held the engineering files as collateral so that I couldn't run off and not pay them. And if I, I would use the crowdfunding money to pay them back. And if I didn't make enough money on the crowdfunding, they would do the manufacturing and get a cut of the profits until they got paid back everything. Yeah. Which was an incredible deal. And that made me feel really confident they were going to do a good job because if they didn't make a functional product, they weren't going to get paid the rest of the money. So I was like, these guys are going to do the job. And they did an amazing job. And so I created that product. The crowdfunding campaign raised $350,000 in one month. How do you know? Because that's a great crowdfunding campaign that's super. And your past entrepreneur experience, I mean, really, you haven't had to find product market fit for anything yet until this. But usually when, I guess it's because you solved the problem you had, that was solved the, that was probably what allowed you to do. I knew I wanted it. And I knew I wanted it really badly. I was like, this would be so much fun to play with. And I could use it to practice at home to write songs to do like little one man band gigs like in coffee shops. Like I'm and every musician I talked to about it was like, that's a great idea that I can't believe nobody's made that. That was the, those are the same line. I can't believe it. He's like, are you sure nobody's made anything like the boards that lying? Yeah. People were like, are you sure nobody's made? I thought I saw something. I'm like, oh, find it. Let me know. And nobody, they're like, everyone thought someone made it, but no one actually made it. So I knew, I knew that it was going to be a successful product. And my only question was how much it was going to have to cost and whether people would be willing to spend it. And for that, I got a whole rate because I'd ask every musician I talked to about him, like, what would you pay for this? And I got everything from like, I wouldn't pay more than a hundred bucks to I'd pay, oh, this is awesome. I'd pay 500 bucks, or even some people said a thousand dollars. And then it turned out that I had to, to make it profitable. I had to, it had to be around the, a little under $400. And which was still in the range. And luckily, most musicians thought that was, that was a great price point. And, and this was like, and we did our crowdfunding campaign in early 2014, almost 10 years ago. And, and it just like took off. So the, you know, I posted in the, it wasn't even me, like, other people were really excited about it. 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When you have your customers marketing it for you. And I think that everything you did, it's so funny because so many people go through so many versions of entrepreneurship and so many failures before they figure out some of these things that happened for you or because of you or whatever. But a lot of people are forcing products on the market and there is no product market and there is no customer base and you're doing all the right things. I mean, good on you for figuring this out. But I mean, you're interviewing people, you're speaking to the customer, you're solving your own pain points, you're finding these niche communities that nobody that will market for you and evangelize your product for you. So it's very smart, very, very smart. Because I don't think a lot of people intuitively do that when they try and start really their first product company. Right. Yeah, it just made sense to me. Very time. Yeah. So yeah, I mean, I think the idea of the product was strong enough that it sold itself. And I think that's why it was so successful because it addressed such a need in the market than nobody else was doing. So yeah, so that was my first product, my first invention. I got a patent for it in less than a year, which was unbelievable. Usually it takes like two to three years. And that was how I launched my company Singular Sound. And since then, I've created a whole bunch of other music related products for the musicians out there. I've made the world's most advanced looping pedal. It's called the Aeros Loop Studio. And it talks to the beat buddy. And you know, you can like, they talk with MIDI to each other. So everything's like lined up the loops and the beats. And we also created one of the best MIDI foot controllers, which controls the other products. We also created the Cable, which is this cable winding device because it's all for issues I had. Like I was playing shows and I had a whole bunch of cables. And it was taking me forever to wrap it on my, I'm like, I need just a little wheel that I can wrap it up. And so yeah, so that was like, that's our cheapest products, like a $20 product. And when you when you try to build a business like this, so you crowd funded, you got some initial traction. I mean, like we don't do it through every single component of building a business. But when you think about like sales marketing distribution, what was the strategy that worked really well for you? So we started because we started with crowdfunding. We started with direct to consumer, right? So like even after the crowdfunding campaign ended, we continued taking orders on our website. And by the time we actually manufactured and delivered the product, we had, I think we had, we went from like 350,000 in sales in that first month to about like a million and a half, like like eight months later on that. Yeah, yeah, knows that's pretty year one. Yeah, year one. And before the product even hit the market. Yeah, that's actually not bad. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Which was so that gave us enough money to do the manufacturing. I spent like three months in China to make sure they were doing it. It was supposed to be one month, but that's how it goes. You know, to spend a lot of time in China to do the manufacturing. And we delivered the first beat, but a unit to customers almost exactly 10 years ago. And we're actually about to release our 10 year anniversary edition. It's going to be really cool. How's the business? So how is the business grown? Yeah, because that's a, that's, yeah, you have production in China. You have to manage that supply chain. I'm assuming that it's a, it's a hardware business. So it's not like super high margins compared to other types of businesses is software. Yeah. So like, how have you grown that? But like, like, think about like the main strategic items that really help take that business to where it is today. Right. So it's, we started with the beat buddy as our core flagship product. And then we kind of built from there on, and my, where the strategy I used was when people would say, oh, I really wish I had like our customers would say, I really wish I had this. So the way I came up with the Aero Sloop Studio, for example, was people were like, the beat buddy's awesome. It's an amazing drum machine. I'm trying to sink it to my looper pedal, right? A looper pedal for people who don't know is a device that records your instruments music and plays it back in a loop. And if that loop isn't the same length as the, as the beat loop, then they go out of sync every time they cycle around. And then it sounds like shit. So you, uh, there are, there is a protocol, a digital protocol called nitty, where which musical devices use to talk to each other. But the loopers on the market, they weren't particularly good at this sinking device. So they're sinking system. So people were complaining, oh, you know, I wish I could do this, this, this, and this with my looper pedal, but I can't, right? Like, you know, I wish when I switched, uh, uh, song parts from verse to chorus, it would go to a different loop because, you know, it doesn't make sense. But you're talking to customers the whole time. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. You, you build these feedback loops. Exactly. Exactly. Exactly. Yeah. Because we sold mainly directly to consumer rep first. We had a pretty big mailing list. And, uh, and we also created a forum on our website where people can interact with each other because the beat buddy, you could put your own content on there too. You could make your own beats. You could make your own drum sets. Uh, we have software that you could organize it into the beat buddy format. So people make a lot of content, make a lot of beats and drum sets, and they post it on the forum for other people to download. So there's a lot of constantly evolving and increasing content. We also make professional stuff that we build the whole community around. Exactly. We built a whole community. So we get a lot of feedback through that community. A lot of feature requests more than we can ever work on. But, but, you know, but, but occasionally we'll be like, oh, that's a good idea. That's a good idea. And then we kind of like sift through all the requests. And we're like, okay, this is going to make the biggest difference to the community to the customer base. And that's kind of how we decided development goals. And, um, so that, you know, people were complaining about the loopers on the market. How they were difficult to use. They weren't functionally working well. And so, and I, that I'd never done looping because I'm a singer songwriter. I'm more like singing and doing songs, covers and stuff like that. So looping is more of like an instrumentalist kind of thing. So, uh, I'd never really done looping, but I bought a few loopers to test it to see because people were complaining about it. And it was just such a pain to use these loopers. I'm like, oh, I could easily make a way better looper than this. It's like, like just the biggest, uh, exact feature that's noticed that people realize that made me realize this was, um, loopers, right? They, uh, before we came out with our product, uh, they didn't have like any screens on them, right? So when you record a loop, especially if it's a long loop, you kind of have to know where that seam where the loop ends and begins because like, let's say you're switching to a different loop, it'll only switch at the end of that loop. And if you have a song, like if it's a rhythm section, that's the same few chords a few times over, you can lose track of where you are in the loop. And then you think you're over at like the second measure, but you're really on the fourth and, and then you'll mess yourself up. So I realized, well, there's already like these, uh, um, you know, Dawes, right? Digital Audio Workstations where you see the wave form on the screen. Why don't we just put that in the looper so you could actually see what you're recording and see where, how close you are to the end of the loop and gives you that visual feedback. And so that was like the big innovation that, uh, we came up with for the Aorus Loop Studio is that it's a actual visual looper. That's, that's one thing. It was, we've had very wide a few different things. And that's right. Like when you think about these new inventions that you bring into your product line, are there, are there outside of speaking to your customers? Because again, you get so many different feature requests and product requests. Is there a signal that one is going to be a hit? Like, like, how do you measure that signal in the market? Sorry that one is going to be an absolute hit. And that's what you focus your time and energy on. Yeah. It's, um, it really goes to like how many people are asking for this? Like what, like, how big is the pain point? Right? And how big is the market? Really? Right? And it's sometimes a little difficult to tell to, uh, assess the size of the market, especially in the niche markets. So the, we've done very well, you know, in, uh, it's a multi-million dollar business now singular sound. Um, and we've won a whole bunch of industry awards and a lot of famous musicians use our products. And it's really kind of, we have a pretty good reputation in the market. Um, and we've done that because, uh, we've addressed the common complaints that musicians have about products. So people have been complaining for years about how drum machines are too complicated and, you know, not easy to use. And you have to read a huge thick manual and nobody will like, nobody likes to read, right? Except as a Germans, the Germans love to read manuals. There's the rest of the world here, right? Especially Americans read any manuals. It's either, uh, you know, like a quick start video. Yeah. And I said, yeah, I don't even want to read anything. So you have to make it super dead simple to use. Um, and so, uh, that, that's kind of how we address things. When we see a lot of complaints in the market, and I have an idea to address that issue, if there's enough complaints about it, uh, then I know it's a good thing to work on. But the issue with the, and I'm not complaining because we've done so well in the niche, but my brother who helped me build singular sound. So I'm, I'm one of nine children. And so, um, after my whole falling out with Ephraim, I was like, uh, I was like so traumatized from like having such a bad business partner. I was like, I need someone I could trust. And so I partnered with one of my brothers to help me build singular sound. He's not a musician, but he's a very methodical organized person. And so he, like I had the idea and he would break it down into steps and sub steps and like he's like one of those PB, he loves spreadsheets. He's like one of those guys. So useful. I really am my kind. Neck. Me, we all, we all play our role. Yeah. So I can't deal with spreadsheet. Not very useful, but you, but it's good to be partners with someone who does. Yes. Correct. Uh, so he, so he helped me build singular sound. And we're, we had a great partnership, but he was always complaining to me that that are, we're in a niche business. And there is only so far you could grow because only like 10% of people are would consider themselves musicians and maybe 10% of musicians want to get really high-end, you know, sophisticated gear like what we make. So our addressable market is like 1% of the population. Um, when we still done, have done very well because we filled that niche very well. But he was always complaining to me, we need to get, we need to invent something for the mass market. And so more crowded. Yeah. It's more crowded. But if we can come up with something innovative, the market size is literally a hundred times bigger. And so we were hanging out at my house a few years ago. And we, uh, we were, we were smoking some weed. And we got the munchies and we ate, uh, we ate some mango because mangoes sweet and delicious. But of course, you get the fibers of the mango. Of course, uh, why can't you? Yeah, you can go. That is literally the only reason I can't stand that. Exactly. It's so annoying to get out of your tea bag. Exactly. And so afterwards, he asked me for some dental floss. We'll go to my bathroom to floss our teeth. And I complain like, oh, this is such a pain in the ass. I hate flossing. If we could invent a machine that flosses your teeth for you, that would do. And he looks at me, he's like, oh my god, everyone would buy that. We have to come up with something. And so we started spitting, bawling ideas. Eventually, we landed on a product on a design called, that we called insta floss, like Instagram, but flossing. And here, I actually have a, uh, one of the, our big, our big innovation is the head, right? So let me see that. Yeah. Honestly, here. I'm so curious. Yeah. Yeah. How does this work? So, so this is just the head. Oh, all right. Yeah. Yeah. What is it? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. This is just the head. So it's a water but it's just a single stream of water. And the problem with the water pick is that you have to, you have to do it 90 degree to the gum line because if you go into the gum line, it irritates your gum. If you go down, it does not affect it. So if you go 90 degree to the gum line, you have to trace your gum line, uh, you know, the gum line top bottom and even more difficult on the inside pointing out to get a complete floss. And most people, when they use this, they, uh, you know, they, they make, they spray, they make a big mess. And they're like, by the way, I, I have you on. Yeah. And not only have we stopped using it because the little spray thing snapped off besides that. But when I did use it, like the, the bathroom would be like just water, ever, you have water everywhere. Yeah. And so that, that's the problem with, that's why most people don't use water flossers is because it makes a big mess unless you use, you learn to use it properly. And it has a bit of a learning curve and it takes some time, you know, so what we did is we created this thing, which uses like an H shape manifold. And we have to, instead of one water jet, we have 12 water jets pointing on either side of the tooth, top and bottom. So all you have to do and understand is that you just feel like this. Yeah. Yeah. All right. Yeah. All right. You will. And that's it. That's so, so I'm buying it. And it gets you totally buying what it gets top bottom and both sides of the tooth outside and inside all at the same time. And so you could have a complete effective, comfortable floss in 10 seconds without making a huge mess. You just lean over the sink and all the water goes down in the sink. How do you, like, I mean, you have the idea to tackle this market. Yeah. I find, I find inventors fascinating because it's like, you have to figure out the mechanics of building this physical thing. I come from a software world where you can, you, you create software to solve a problem. But it's like, it's like a, it's usually like a workflow problem in somebody's business, for example, this is like, you have to find a physical thing and you have to find the right, I mean, in software, it's like servers, servers and code. That's it. You, for this, you got to find material, you got to find supply chain, you got to find material manufacturer and you got to source that from. So the insta floss was the hardest product I ever worked on. By far, like, even though like the beat buddy is a sophisticated product, it's like a little computer in a, in a pedal and it has firmware and software and it's electrical design and all that. But insta floss was actually way harder because there were so many details that we had to figure out. First of all, we had to figure out if it was effective, right? The way this is going to be gross. But the way we, the way they do tests on dentist dental items, they use pig's teeth because pigs actually have very similar teeth to humans, strange but true. And so we went to a butcher shop and we bought the pig heads and we had them cut it lengthwise. So we'd have access to the teeth. So there was like a, like about a half a year where we had a bunch of like frozen pig heads in the freezer of our office and we were like using that to do testing. We'd like die the teeth and then use the machine and see like how well it would remove the die. And so we had to do a lot of testing on that. We had to really experiment with like the spacing of the device of like how close to the teeth it needs to be. We had to experiment with the shape of the channels that the water goes through so that the water droplets hit your gum line at a specific like like with enough pointiness because if it's too broad, it's not doesn't have enough pressure. We had to experiment with how much water pressure, how much water volume, what electrical motors to end like the the assembly characteristics of how you put all these things together so they don't leak over time because you're using a lot of water pressure and vibrations. And so there was it was like a Rubik's cube that every time you fix one thing, you break another and that's why it took us a very long time to actually and then and then this is mass market. So different kind of take to market strategy. So people kind of treat their teeth the same way and they have been treating them for for years and years and years and and behavior modification in business is very difficult because I've tried to build things that have not been successful due to behavior modification. So how do you have to learn creatures of how it is very much so very very much so so how do you like how do you make this is it success? Yeah. Oh yeah. It is. Let's go. Yeah. How do you make it how do you make it successful? How do you do well? We did actually we did a crowdfunding campaign for this too. Why do you do that for your businesses now? It is supposed to just well because we we uh we needed the money. But I mean you have one business. You didn't want to like blur the lines and so fund the so well first of all is developing new products for that business is it which takes a lot of money. So I while we were developing InstaFloss we were also developing the Aeros looper and which is was our by far most sophisticated product that we've ever made and it took quite a few years to make it and took a lot of engineering money and then once because it's a hardware business you have to make the molds and you have to make the the first production run and that all takes a lot of upfront money before you can start selling it and actually pull money and so that's why we did a crowdfunding campaign. But we it went very well we raised about a million dollars on Kickstarter with the with the InstaFloss crowdfunding campaign and and we just started delivering InstaFloss actually just a few months ago to our first uh to our first customers and uh and we've already gotten people writing us back my dentist says he can't believe how good my gums are you know so it's amazing yeah yeah and when you think about like first of all it's a fabulous product I didn't realize it was so recent yeah um but I've been working on it for a long time yeah I know but it just hit the market recently so this is not like you're not you're not paying me to say this but I I'm gonna get I'm gonna get this so if I can go buy it tell me what it work in you get it at InstaFloss.com okay cool like like Instagram of flossing I love the floss.com when you think about marketing or taking to market these products outside of Kickstarter which is going to lead to like your first customer base and word amount um for products like this do you think we're gonna go to the Wal-Mart's and the Costco's of the world probably not right away we don't have revenue yet you go through distributors we go through uh channel partners we go through uh dentist we could go through influencers like there's a million different ways to market a company when you're hot when you have a mass market product where do you go first so our strategy is we're going direct to consumer first which is we did through the crowdfunding campaign and we're also selling it direct through to consumer through our website and the reason we do that well first of all you have the highest margins right because you don't have to give Wal-Mart a cut and the distributors a cut and all that uh shipping costs we have shipping costs yes but you still Wal-Mart takes like half of your money you know so it's the shipping cost there's a small amount of that um it is storage costs you still make way more money if you sell it directly it all depends on how much a cost you to market that of course you know you can spend unlimited amounts of money on marketing so all your profit margin could go into marketing but um but another reason we wanted to do direct to consumer first is in case there were any issues with the product we would have that direct line of communication people say hey my product is not functional in this way or I have this problem I wish it did this different and we've had a few of those issues um there's always manufacturing issues in the beginning and so we've had to fix a few of those and that's why we're glad because Wal-Mart would have just sent the entire shipment back and you burned our relationship and you burned the relationship so we wanted to really dial it in and make sure that we we had you know the entire product perfect before we start scaling up and so we're actually currently right now in the stage where we've finally nailed down all the manufacturing issues and um we're ready to start scaling up so yeah we're actually in the middle of raising a fundraising round your direct consumer uh from what I've heard from people that have launched consumer brands and direct consumer brands um the traditional way that you'd sell direct to consumer because you don't have a channel like amazon that's distributing it for you don't have organic reach per se so aside of jumping on podcasts you rely a lot on ads right and ads in 2024 post iOS update it's very hard to get positive row ads on ads for cheaper products so how do accept if they have a high lifetime value or there's a there's a subscription product or something like that so how do you make it profitable how do you make a product like that it's kind of like a one-time sale or is it I don't know so we do have uh we do have a recurring revenue for it because you do as with all dental products like your toothbrush you do need to replace the head that's the part that looks well built so how it is you replace so you're so the recommended uh uh replacement rate by dentist for any oral hygiene product is every three months you're supposed to change your toothbrush every three months not everyone does it but you're supposed to change it every three months because eventually like bacteria builds up and it can clog things and plaque and and things and and like this has like little channels the water goes through and uh things can build up inside over time minerals and so which can uh interrupt the water flow so I mean this is a it's not expensive it's like you know like $10 for replacement head but if you're replacing it four times a year that's you know $40 of recurring revenue per user per year uh we're also uh planning on launching a which we haven't done yet uh we're planning on launching a um concentrated mouthwash that you could add to the uh to the reservoir so that you could have like mouthwash at the same time as you floss your teeth so that's an additional uh uh recurring revenue so you have that recurring right for the model yeah and and we also have a few other hygiene related products that um in the pipeline that I'm not ready to talk about yet but are in the same um in the same uh uh field so that we can use our mailing list and use all our previous uh customers as an additional cross-sale and and and can you get positive row-as when you when you're running ads what's oh yeah yeah yeah yeah it's it's very profitable what is it you know especially with all the other uh aspects of it very smart and I think that's I mean like you you can you've nailed it like a lot of people that are just selling consumer goods products or whatnot and they focus on the one-time sale that's where it's hard to be profitable what you have that recurring revenue stream all of a sudden in terms of it makes it makes it much more profitable yeah uh yeah and then the head is the biggest profit margin so many a thousand percent yeah yeah so so there's uh there's a there's a quite a lot of recurring revenue from that how do you manage uh well not we'll talk about the third business you have how do you manage multiple businesses and and for example why would you not try and exit uh singular sound before raising uh what was the name of the actual sorry I have it that's my bad so it's it's insta floss or excuse me why would you not exit singular sound before you raise for insta floss well I I was running uh I am running singular sound on the CEO of singular sound and when we came up with the idea for uh and I have multiple projects going with singular sound multiple um products that we're developing uh so it's not like it's just coasting we're we're constantly developing I have a development team that's working on new projects and new products um with uh with insta floss the idea was because my brother uh he he's not a musician but he wanted to uh get into something more mass market so he became the CEO of insta floss and so he is he's taking the lead on that uh and of course you know we both help each other out with both businesses because we're both co-owners but um but that's how we we're doing it he's the CEO of insta floss and that makes sense and I think that that's actually I mean I think there's so much it's such a super power to be able to build business with family because you solve for the trust factor immediately and that is if you've never built a business that is like so underrated yeah absolutely I mean as I learned the word way oh because like it doesn't even man not even business partners it could be it's not even like let's make the assumption that most business partners don't want to fuck you over even though they do but let's make the assumption that they're still good people it's like you're human and you'll always have reservations about being super candid with people that are not your own family and you cannot just explicitly trust them and and those two factors like that radical candor and and being able to trust that person with your life I mean it's like you just like hacked business because those two things kill more businesses than anything else um yeah I feel very fortunate yeah my great relationship with all my siblings after this whole life of of all these ups and downs and everything with even like the work you went into how did that affect the relationship with your family uh well I so as I said I have eight siblings there's yeah I have us all together I've been including the parents in that too yeah yeah so my parents um when when we first started like when we first won the contract or three hundred million dollar contract my parents were super proud of me right they're like oh he's gonna be successful you know and then of course when the New York Times published their article they were a little less proud um my dad actually called me up and he's like oh I have a lot of my friends are calling me up asking me if I'm related to and I said yeah he's my son and they're like oh we're so sorry and so he my dad was somewhat well-known in the Jewish community uh so he he and we have a very uncommon last name I've never met anyone with my last name that would not it's not like a normal Jewish last time it uh it pack out is a Latvia name actually originally Latvian but my ancestors from like a hundred years ago came from like Latvia and Poland and Russia and my family's been in the United States about a hundred years but uh but yeah our name is very uncommon so when people saw it in the in the New York Times they're like he must be related to rabbi common pacos you know so and so he started getting calls from from his friends all over the world wishing him condolences and uh so yeah so that did not go well but uh but then when you know like I launched the beat buddy you know that that was kind of like my redemption you know I was like I could show I could build a legitimate business yeah that you know my dad could be proud of and so that was that was really nice and and when the movie came out my dad loved it because all his friends thought it was super cool that you know that his you know there's a movie about his son and uh my mom refused to watch it still she still not what hasn't seen it she what she told me was I don't need Hollywood to tell me about my son oh my goodness that sounds like a that sounds like a mom it sounds like actually exactly exactly uh my dad loved the movie except for one part which I thought was hilarious uh he got there's this one part in the movie where um when when Miles Teller and Jonah Hill like meet for the first time like in in the funeral which is not how we we actually met at Alex's house smoking weed but but in them you know they wanted to make it look cooler so they had to meet at the funeral um and so uh they uh there's there's this one line where like Jonah Hill tells Miles he's like I was tried to get uh you know I didn't have your number I tried to get it from your mom but she wouldn't give me your number and Miles Teller goes what you you're talking to my mom and Jonah goes yeah man I was fucking her huh you know I can see why do that with like that line my dad just means like the what he said about your mother it's just it wasn't funny there's like out of the why he think thought it was that orthodox who was grabbed by that's uh yes okay so I get it so that was the one part of the movie he didn't like everything else he thought was great you know he loved the movie but he didn't he didn't like that part so after all of this after all this like I mean now you've like rebuilt that relationship yeah you read that's beautiful that's that's beautiful I think that's right I get very important I mean like what's the point of building anything if you don't if you don't have family around um so you've so now your brother manages and and as CEO Vince the floss you CEO singular sound you shared resources does other family involved or no so yeah we have uh three other brothers who work in our company between the two companies yeah yeah so after these two companies singular sounds been around for 10 years now it's doing very well it's it's are you eventually going to sell or are you I'm considering it sometime in the future uh you know you don't when you when you go you don't build to sell no I I mean like look if someone gives me a really good offer I'll take it you know I'm not I'm not like emotionally you're not seeing a private equity or strategic buyer not yet definitely not yet I've got a few other you know grand slam products that I'm waiting to come out with first so to get that valuation up uh so yeah I'm not like actively seeking but if someone came to me now and offered me uh I've got a number but you know but if someone gave me that number I'd take it um but uh but yeah I'm not like in a rush to sell singular sound I actually really love working you know this business well the reason why yeah the reason why I think the first thing I said in this interview was like you don't seem like an entrepreneur that would have gone into like arms dealing right because you really do seem like a very creative entrepreneur that has a business mind but you do love like creative endeavors that's my favorite thing is to create new things and to yeah because the the arms business uh for all this glamour right is really just logistics that's really all it is you buy from one place yeah move it to another is no you know there's no creativity there I mean you can get creative but that's where you get in trouble right so uh and and government contracting is the same you know people think government contracting and arms are the same thing it's not government contracting is a enormous field it covers every industry um and as I said like my first contract was for fuel it was for propane and I worked on contracts for food and for clothing and cars and and I did all sorts of stuff uh we just happened to specialize in the arms business and that's kind of now people associate government contracting with the arms business but overall the government contracting field is a logistics field right you're you find the best possible price you find the best possible logistics you bid on a contract you win it you deliver you collect the money and there's nothing wrong with that and there's an enormous amount of business I just personally enjoy a more creative aspect of the bit I like the blue ocean businesses you know so like I like creating products that don't exist I just enjoy that more um so uh yeah I mean that's that's why I got into you know singular sound and it's the floss and I have I have like a spreadsheet of like 30 different ideas I have no doubt you do I have no doubt you do is there is there anything any any lessons any like business or entrepreneurial lesson that you did take from arm's dealing that have helped you in in seflosses and gular sound well I would say not necessarily from arms dealing as a as an industry but from from my experience doing that is and it's going to be super cliche but like I definitely learned the value of the grind and hard work and I think a big source of why of why we were successful was that we outworked everybody else like we were we were really working our asses off like you know it's not in the movie they kind of make it all glamorous and you get the montage right but you don't actually spend 18 hours you know sending emails and going down like like Google results and going through directories and calling people up and following up and it's a it's a grind you know it's a grind and you have to accept that if you want to be successful in that business it's it's it's a grind so I would say work ethic yeah I'll talk a lot of shit about Ephraim right but one thing I admire about him is that he has incredible work ethic right he works is and I would say too much to be honest like I think it he works to an unhealthy level I think everyone needs to find the the balance right where you can work your you know to what's necessary the level that you need to work to be successful but so that you don't burn yourself out because if you burn yourself out you're not going to be successful over the long term you need to find the maximum amount of work you can do on a regular basis and that's different for everybody and Ephraim had a had a incredible work ethic um he did go in like kind of spurts and like he'd work his ass off for like you know like a week and then pass out for three days and like be no unreachable and extremely unhealthy and from people I know who still know him he's still doing that so it's extremely unhealthy and I don't think it's it's not a good long-term strategy like on a personal level for anybody um but he you know one thing I always admired about him was that he could work his ass off and he was willing to work harder than pretty much anyone else to to an unhealthy level and and that's so like I learned that's a good thing but there's definitely a limitation to that and you need to be able to have balance in your life and have take care of other aspects of your life you are not your work right you there are more things that go into making a human than just making money all day and that's very important but if you don't address the other aspects of your life it's going to affect your business too it's only a matter of time it's only a matter of time so that's so that's a big lesson that I learned is that you have to work at your ass off there's no such thing as an ease as easy money you know everyone wants to get rich quick get rich easy almost never happens right it could happen I'm not saying there are people who get lucky all the time but like in the vast majority of the cases it's going to be a slog and it's going to take you way longer than you thought right that's just how it is every product I've developed has taken the about on average three times longer than I thought it would and probably three times as much money yes and yes that's not just not just time not just time energy and he's already exactly exactly you have no more hair oh I do you know I used to have beautiful hair all that stress so yeah I would say that's the biggest the biggest lesson I took away from that is is having to work hard and yet balance it because as I said I learned a lot of things to do from f-room which is you have to work hard but also what not to do is to be completely obsessed and have nothing else going on in your life except for that and you know as well as other things that you shouldn't do a lot of other a lot of other things that you should do yeah one thing that I'm a huge fan of this this this concept that I'm a huge fan of is seasons of your life and understanding which season of your life that you're in because I do believe that for somebody to have a large financial success or entrepreneurial success there'll be a season of your life where a portion of it maybe is working like that for him and is working and and yourself too like not just him and you're just kind of like balls of the wall you're putting everything into this thing that you're trying to build but then you have to understand okay so maybe that's before I have kids or a wife or a family and then I do have kids and a wife and a family and if you carry that season into that next season that's when you're going to be yeah it can be a lot of problems and it's and you could ruin your life like that so I don't like the term like work life balance I do like work life integration but I also think that depending on the season of life that you're in the scale should tip one way or the other and I think that's a very healthy way to look at entrepreneurship and when you're looking at your life and you're like you're stressed about when you were getting when you were getting like charged and sentenced you're not stressed about oh I'm not going to be of course it's underline I'm not going to be able to make money while I'm in jail but ultimately it's like I have a family and I think that's a beautiful thing and it takes the focus away from you the focus on the family then that was like one of the biggest realizations I had when I was looking at decades in prison it's like I might miss watching my kid grow up you know I've got like a little baby and like I when I come out she could be an adult you know and not only will I miss out on my whole life but I'll miss out on my kids life and and there's really there's really nothing that's worth that you know like you can make more money you can never make more time that's just how it is I think if people spend as much time figuring how to make money as they do trying to do shit the wrong way I think they'd be very successful I mean if that from just focused on doing like even like your your situation is like a very specific situation but if you put that much energy and effort into almost any business anything yeah you're gonna be you're gonna be pretty well off you know he could just tweak a few things about his strategy by if he just didn't fuck over every single person he came in contact with I think he would be way more successful you know that I've heard I've heard listen I have a lot of friends now in Miami and I've and I have a lot of friends that have made quite a bit of money just through through interviewing them become friends with them people that have had massive exits and his reputation is not good in the city yeah from other people way before I met you it's very interesting because I mean I've I don't care I don't know the guy at all but it does your ration proceeded it really does it really do yeah yeah yeah it's it's absolutely wild and you have to be careful the world is very small yeah absolutely the world is very very I'll give you one one little antidote that just really encapsulates his problem I would say um I did another podcast called uh inside true crime and it's with I'm not you Matt Cox yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah Matt Cox Matt Cox was in prison with Ephraim he met Ephraim in prison oh yeah Matt Cox wrote Ephraim's memoir he was his ghost writer now it half of his memoirs literally a work of fiction actually he oh there's a whole story behind Ephraim's memoir it's called once a gun runner from the line he used when he got arrested but um there's a uh it's it's a semi entertaining book extremely self aggrandizing and and ecotistical uh one of the first lines in the book he's like he describes himself because he's like supposedly the author of the book right he's Ephraim Diverouli who was handsome by anyone's standards you know like he got there's like unbelievable line in the book it's a line in the book he also he also claims that all the prostitutes he slept with ended up falling in love with him and refused his money and you know it's completely unbelievable and ridiculous yeah I know it's it's hilarious um so uh and and also Matt uh combined Ephraim was using that book as a way to sue Warner Brothers for like stealing his story so he was trying to get his book out before the movie was published and Matt didn't have enough time to finish the book so uh Ephraim Matt was in jail yeah yeah Matt was oh Jenny was out uh you know yeah Matt eventually got out yeah but no knowing while he was writing like oh how can you publish a book so he was he was using I think the jail had like a computer like time or something and he he had to like it was a big pain in the butt obviously to get it out but he managed to write uh the book in jail but he didn't have enough time to finish the book the right way so uh Ephraim who wanted to get the book out uh before the movie came out he said oh just you know like take one of your other unpublished works of fiction and combine it with this to it haven't so he took like literally a novel he wrote yeah that was completely fictional and just changed some of the names and combined it into Ephraim's memoir this is what Matt told me and um so like literally Ephraim's memoir is a good like is literally a work of fiction and even the parts that were based on true story are like that I that I know of like he changed things around completely to make himself win win that box was like whatever I don't care I'll publish it anyway yeah so he didn't want to but like he but Ephraim insisted and so uh so yeah so anyway so while he was while Matt was writing this is the the part that I want to tell you about well Matt was writing Ephraim's memoir yeah and Ephraim was telling him all the stories he's like oh and then I screwed this guy in this way and then he was very proud of all these you know like ways he pulled you know he screwed all these people out he's yeah he thought it made him look smart you know like he's I outwitted this guy in this way and then I screwed over that guy in that yeah and and so Matt told after like the like the seventh eighth story I in this similar fashion you know uh Matt looks at Ephraim and he's like you know Ephraim you can't really just keep on like burning all your bridges man and Ephraim looked at him and he says Matt there's a lot of bridges out there and Matt told me he's like and that's the moment I knew he was going to screw me over too and he did he did he screwed Matt out of every penny he promised him for writing his book of a course he did he just can't he can't stop he can't stop even hit small he can't stop it doesn't matter how small the money is but that's that is to your point like that's like a sociopathic thing yeah yeah it's not like he's it's not like this is like he he was consciously doing it but that's not a normal way to react no no he's not a normal person I mean you know so yeah so yeah I mean that's I think that kind of encapsulates his problem like if he didn't have to burn every bridge he would be way more successful because people would keep on doing business he probably is smart and does have work as a smart he does he does that you know like and he doesn't go on interviews or no he doesn't want to because I mean I assume because he doesn't want people recognizing him in public you know uh and he also keeps where he lives a secret because a lot of people try to sue him and he tries to avoid getting served and all that stuff there's not a good way to live now yeah I always looking over your show are you ever worried that I mean you speak about him very much shit about him all day yeah yeah I'm not worried I'm not scared of him you don't think I'm gonna sue you sue me was he gonna sue me over you know saying the truth yeah that's better than not worried about it I'm not worried about it um I mean he could sue me he's he's a he's the king of frivolous lawsuits that's what I was what yeah and and you don't want to be hide up in that because you know I don't but I'm not gonna prevent myself from telling the truth over that either you know I'm not scared of him you know I mean look if he sues me I'll count or sue him you know maybe I'll actually get some money out of him finally you know whatever you know like I'm not luckily I'm in a good position in life now and I'm not like completely defenseless like I was back then you know I'm not gonna I'm not gonna be desperate you know or anything to get rid of him you know if he wants to sue me I'll sue him right back you know so fuck him you know I don't care I don't care um but I'm definitely not gonna hold myself back from saying the truth and telling the story and everything like that I didn't know so I didn't know all these parts of the story this is absolutely phenomenal in the worst way possible like I got a fuck off to say yeah yeah Jonah Hill is uh Jonah held that him yeah I think he did him a service yeah I think he made him a lot more likable did you ever ask him like like why he screwed you over so Matt asked him Matt asked Matt asked Matt Cox asked Ephraim why did you screw over packhouse and Ephraim told him he said Matt told me this you know while I was on his podcast and he said you know Ephraim told me he's like you know at first I thought that the deal I made with packhouse was a good deal because you know if we don't make any money then he doesn't get anything no risk on my end and if we make money yeah he gets a commission but like you know he uh but like he only gets that if we're actually making money so it's only in that positive but after we won the contract I realized man I'm gonna have to pay millions of dollars to packhouse and I could hire someone else to do this for less than a hundred K a year so why should I pay packhouse millions of dollars when I could have someone not a vision screw someone well in his mind it was so pretty much the reason the reason was he didn't want to pay me that's the reason that's the reason there's that there was no bad blood no he didn't think you did anything right no he's just like well I have two options yeah pay him or not and I rather go with the not pay off make more money if I don't pay him that that was his reason yeah I'll never be successful no I'll never be successful no no that's insane he'll never build anything long term I'm sure he can screw people and he has screwed people over you know uh on deals and made money in the short term but he's never gonna build a long-term business because to do that you need to actually build partnerships that work for more than just yourself yeah who cares about who cares about four million dollars yeah when you have the up and you're winning three hundred million dollar contracts yeah and we could like one more contract right there excitedness is phenomenal yeah absolutely phenomenal yeah anyways yeah yeah yeah it's a no it blows my mind too it doesn't make any sense when you like what like hearing it yeah I'm like like you had a great business absolutely outside of the fact that and and I would be fucking furious if I got got for a bit get sent to jail and and lost tens of million hundred and millions of dollars over 20 grand yeah I'm mad for you yeah oh I was pretty mad myself uh yeah it's it was just unbelievable uh I would have paid the guy myself the 20 grand but I'm about to pay this guy 20 yeah yeah I was I was actually seriously considering it at the time but like at the time I was down to like my last 30 grand and I was like I'm not gonna give it a guy you know out of my pocket you know like almost all the money I have left uh so yeah in retrospect maybe I should have but then again he wouldn't have paid me anyway so you know I would have had to chase him and and yeah it was it was not a good thing that's too bad that's very yeah that's it's a it was a great movie but in real life it's like kind of a sad yeah yeah but you know I am personally very grateful for where I am now you know like you wouldn't change anything I wouldn't change anything because you don't know you can't maybe test the universe isn't they say you know like you can't like yeah if we had done something if we had paid the box guy right we would maybe it would have gone on maybe the at that point you would have tried to screw the mafia over directly and maybe we would have been ended up dead in mysterious circumstances it could have happened very easily it could have happened he was so close to doing that you know while he was in Albania he tried to but then you know like they they weren't happy to they they they they they they saw right through him he tried to show them fake documents and yeah yeah he doctored a whole bunch of quotes and he's like you have to give me a better price because these guys are gonna they're like yeah those documents are fake don't show me those fake documents you know they the mob you know and so yeah I mean he uh who knows what would have happened I'm very happy with where I am today I'm working with my family members you know I've I um I'm building businesses I'm proud of actually creating products that people really really love you bring them to the value yeah that I believe there's nothing wrong with nothing wrong with with brokering businesses you are bringing value by providing a service for less money but it's just for me it's fulfilling and and it's one of the most we haven't talked about it much what I want to talk yeah yeah so so my latest business uh which literally just started a few months ago um and I'll tell you how this this uh came about ever since the movie came out I've had a lot of people contact me on social media pretty much begging me to teach them how to do government contracting and uh I was banned from doing it for like 15 years there's still banned no I just got off I'll just like literally last year um and but I was I hadn't done it in like 15 years and of course you know I figured they probably maybe they changed some of the rules you know some of the procedures and so like I wasn't gonna like teach people how to do this I figured my knowledge was a bit out of date um and anyway I was busy building singular sound an insta floss and so it's not like I had time to teach people this stuff anyway so I um but then about like a year ago I had a uh this guy named Logan he contacted me out of the blue I think was on Instagram and he told me send me a message he's like hey just want you to know that about six years ago my partner James and I we were 21 years old and we were dead broke working on a farm in Australia picking bananas you know just because they had run out of money after traveling in Thailand and they were gonna build save some money to continue traveling and they were they were picking bananas on a farm literally dead broke and the farm had a movie night and they showed war dogs and they thought to themselves man these guys are our age they're 21 22 if they could do it why can't we do it and so they got obsessed with it they learned how to do the business they bid on a whole bunch of things they managed to win like a small laundry services contract and then they won a bigger laundry services contract and a bigger one and then six years later they have a multimillion dollar business specializing in laundry services providing it to like a military bases all over the world they're flying to like Europe and taking care of contracts in Germany um and they they're very successful now and they just reached out to me to say thank you you know for the inspiration you know they're like without war dogs we would have never done this and so I thought these guys are currently have multimillion dollar contracts they're bidding on new contracts there is up to date as you can be about government contracting side told them like hey guys first of all I'm super inspired that you guys taught yourself the business not many people can do that it's not it's not a simple business it's complex it's not hard but it's complicated especially when you're learning from scratch um much easier when someone else is teaching you as I had with Frem and Frem had with his uncle so I said I was very impressed with these guys that they taught themselves the business and so I said why don't we everyone's I've literally hundreds if not more than a thousand people in my DMs asking me to teach them this why don't we start a course to teach people how to do this and so that's how we launched war dogs academy it's an online course step-by-step guide video formats as well as written you know we have like a textbook that goes with it but you could do everything in video and uh and we also have a community like a forum where all the students can uh make business connections with each other and we have and interact with us with the founders and ask us questions every week we have uh twice a week live question and answer sessions so anyone who has any questions they can ask questions and get and listen to other people's questions and learn that way and we hired I think one of the one of the biggest value ads for the community is we hired a couple of um retired contracting officers people who used to work for the government deciding who wins the contracts now they work for us and they they coach our students they review their proposals before they submit it to the government to make sure they're not missing anything they answer any questions they don't understand and because of that actually just in the last few months we've had over 50 students win their first federal contracts that's amazing some of them in the hundreds of thousands of them and these are this is like pure like starting to build the business from scratch yeah crash and uh uh a thing that we're really excited about we also made a deal with the financing company to finance our students federal contracts so one of the big limitations in government contracting is that the government pays you 30 days later after you deliver which means you need to float that that uh financing if you're buying from the you know most suppliers will require you to pay up front before they ship and then you have to pay the logistics company to ship it and then you have to wait 30 days after you've got a big cash flow issue and most entrepreneurs who are just starting out don't have that money and so but the good thing from an investor's point of view is that federal contracts are as as uh safe as it comes right because the government is not going to run out of money they print the money and they and they're not going to screw you because they're not going the contracting officer isn't going to make a penny more if he screws you out of the money right no and you know he pays it's guaranteed against the exact orders exactly yeah guaranteed so as long as you deliver what the contract tells you to deliver you're 100 percent gonna get paid unlike in the private sector we have these nefarious actors who will try to screw you over and make more money and you know you have to sue them you know and all that stuff so so uh we made a deal with the financing company to to finance our students contracts and we get a little percentage of that you know so we have a the good business it's a great business and so we are uh we're very motivated to make sure our students succeed because the more money they make the more money we're gonna make and so it's uh it's uh it's really really gratifying you know that now when people contact me on social media they're like please teach me how to do the business I can actually teach them that is all you need to do exactly as well this is this is this is this is government contract procurement like in a box exactly it's turnkey solution what is like the biggest thing the people screw up they're trying to get into this business um I think that one of the biggest things is that they don't read the solicitations closely because the solicitations are long right this is what the government post exactly exactly yeah so when the government wants to buy something they are acquired by law to post it on their public website sam.gov right anyone can access it and look it up and uh they have the documents there and most of the documents are like 30 pages long right and they refer to a whole bunch of other rules that you have to go look up right and so it's kind of a slog to go through it so the the the the uh the tendency for people when they're just starting out is to kind of just like you know not read the whole thing or if they don't understand something kind of skip over it and that will you know oftentimes people make critical mistakes they won't supply a critical document that the government requires or they won't look at a particular rule and there's lots of rules for everything you know just to give you an example like when the government buys clothing they usually have a rule that a certain amount of the fabric needs to be grown uh in the united states and a certain amount of the assembly needs to be done certain percentages and you have to when you get quotes from your supplies you have to make sure they follow all those things when it's transported it has to be transported on you know if it's like between two American ports it needs to be on an American vessel you know it's like the Jones Act you know so there's a lot of of these rules that have built up over like a hundred years of government. You got to know them all yeah actually you got to know them all and that's why our uh our retired government contracting officers are such an incredible resource to our students because they know all this stuff and they'll like review our students' proposal and they'll be like oh you missed this thing or did you make sure to look up that they know the rules they know all the rules they've been doing it for like decades and so um and I think that's why so many of our students have won contracts so far is because they've had that support what would be the difference between uh starting this kind of business versus anything else that you started anything like like what who's the person that goes into government contracting as a business what are like the nuances for that kind of person so uh government contracting I think you're going to do well in government contracting if you can if you're willing to grind you know I always tell people government contracting is not a get rich quick scheme it's not a get rich easy scheme it is a get rich scheme right you could get rich and a lot of people do and we already have had students who are making hundreds of thousands of dollars you know in business uh uh that have gone through our program they started from zero right so they are already are well on their way to getting quite wealthy from this so it is very possible and it's doable but you have to be willing to uh to grind and you have to be willing to be meticulous in your details be very conscientious right that's one of the most important things and um and be willing to keep on going when you lose right because you're going to lose a whole bunch usually before you win we've had a few students who won the first contract they bid a quite a few I'm surprised you have the frame yeah yeah exactly but we have had a few students who went who submitted 15 bids lost them all and won the 16th and that 16th one made them so much money that they're like oh it just made all that other work that went for nothing worth it because we made so much money on this so it's you have to be willing to to uh deal with that kind of dynamic and that's not for everybody you know some a lot of people they want to put in their hours they want to get a great paycheck you know something solid that's not this business if you're going into this business you have to be willing to like not make any money for months at a time until you hit that big until you hit that big payday right you know my partner is actually uh they told me a story that they actually were doing really well for like the first year or two and then they hit like a dry spell of like six months where they did not win a single contract even though they submitted a lot of bids they didn't want a single contract and they're like oh my god maybe our run of good luck is over maybe we should get out of this business and then they won the biggest contract they'd ever won so you so it's it's a very like tumultuous it's a tumultuous business and you have to you have to make your peace with that and if you're okay with that kind of business and you're willing to do that kind of work then this is for you and you can make a lot of money doing it and the good thing about this business is that well first of all the complexity keeps a lot of competitors out right there's a lot of companies in the private sphere that don't want to deal with government contractor contracting you know that's why there's the room for the middleman right just actually surprisingly some large companies that don't want to even sell to the government because they don't want to deal with you know all the rules and all the paperwork and the financing and all well like even if you're a private company and you have resources like the resource you have you have access to are not like for example the officers that worked in the government like that like you got to go find out how to hire somebody make sure they're not full of shit and make sure they're good at what they do and then once you find that talent then you can and it's like almost like it's just like shiny objects syndrome you're just like like we're already everything over here is working we have a process over here what do we want to mess with that because it's a it's a whole lot it's like I think it's probably more of a mental hurdle than anything else but mental hurdles are real and the card they doesn't want to get into a stop people from doing yeah we're actually just started a B2B service more companies who have the resources and they just want to turn key solution so we have a we're just getting that off the ground we've actually had quite a few relatively mid sized to large companies contact us who they just want they don't want to like spend months training one of their employees to do this they're like just get us registered find out what we're eligible do the bidding for us you know fill out all the proposals yeah and and yeah so that's going to be a whole other element of war dogs academy now very very when for for for war dogs academy like I think that when people get into this kind of business they're always looking for maybe like a unique edge or a certain category that maybe more lucrative than others is there something is that is that the case are some things more lucrative than others like you should they be looking at munitions or laundry or food or medical or can make millions of dollars doing any of those things and and people have there's not one that stands out so I would say that I couldn't tell you that one particular industry is more is more lucrative or more has higher margins than another right because all it takes is one competitor to under bid you if I hit you know so I when when people one of the first the one of the most common questions we get is which what to specialize in right and I tell people if you already have a specialty like if you've worked in a particular field then try that first right like if you if you know the laundry business bit on laundry contracts if you know the food business bid on food contracts because you're already a leg up right you know some details of the business you may have connections for sources you know the the the potential hurdles like with logistics or or issue the rules that you may need to face every single industry has its own quirks right so if you don't if you have a specialty just start with that if you don't have a specialty just throw a lot of things at the wall and see what sticks that's what most people do you know they'll bow obviously you have to identify the things that you have a chance of winning and we do that in the course is to identify because not you're not you're not qualified to bid on everything as a beginner you need certain contracts you need a certain amount of past performance or certain licenses and and so we teach people how to identify contracts that they have a chance of winning and once you bid on a few of those if you bid on enough of them and stick through it and as I said some of our students had to bid on 16 contracts before they won one they won the 16th so you know I I admire them greatly for sticking it through because that's a lot of nose that's a lot of that ill-artisan you get through but required to learn it's required to learn and but if you're willing to do that you could succeed in any industry and we've had students succeed we had one student deliver ice baths to a to an army base because they wanted so things you wouldn't even have thought some things you would never even have thought we had another student delivered drones another student delivered hit no therapy services they literally buy everything the government buys everything another one did janitorial services another one did landscaping services so they they they buy literally everything do you feel like there's a lot of waste in the government I mean there's a lot of waste in any large organization I would say that the main thing and there's of course all the horror stories of like NASA paid two million dollars for this pen for this pen and the paid like a hundred million dollars for some covid app yeah and it was like it was a big deal because this was like garbage oh really sure it was like a two-person company that got this contract that then off-shorted all so it was scandal but yeah yeah yeah I mean there's definitely waste in any government system but I think what we need to do is you of course any system could be improved yeah right I think the most important thing is is that you need to set up the framework for the system to be efficient or as efficient as it can be so the system the United States has for example where they it's like a like a blind bidding system right you the anyone who wants to win these contracts has to submit their best offer and the government is required by law not to tell anyone what your competitors are bidding or if you even have any competitors you could be the only person bidding on that contract and the government is not allowed to tell you that and if you knew that you would put your prices way up right and that's why they're not allowed to tell you that it's illegal for them to tell you that and I think those kind of rules prevent a lot of waste I'm not saying that there isn't waste and there's been plenty of situations in the past infamously like with halibut and you know that they get one a multi billion dollar contracts without a single other competitor even like competing yeah it was a no bid contract which should be illegal and I don't even know why it might have been I don't even know what the legality of that whole situation well I know private like isn't private industry if you're like a fortune one thousand you got to get three bits you have three responses to an RFP or you invalidate the RFP or you shop it around to other companies that don't know about it yet like you got it like so it should be the case and it should be and I think they changed some of the rules after that whole scandal after the the halibut scandal so they're and that's not to say that they fixed all the problems I'm sure there's still plenty of waste going on but I think you have to compare it to other countries right so like infamously Russia has a very corrupt procurement system and we saw that on display in the beginning of the Ukraine war where all their tires were popping in that convoy because someone in their system in their in their procurement system bought cheap cheap Chinese tires that were not mill spec and now and they failed in the field and they probably because that guy was pocketing a few million dollars and that their systems kind of built on corruption as like an endemic systemic issue and that's why they've had so many problems so I'm not saying that we should be comparing ourselves to Russia we're a very different kind of country but but there are ways of building the system to to minimize the corruption and you're never going to get rid of corruption you're never going to get rid of waste 100% all you could do is try to set up the system so that it has the highest chance of minimizing that and I think the United States for all its flaws and for all the bad press that all the bad situations get by and large is a relatively well run system that's that's my opinion I'm sure the people in the YouTube comments are going to be very very strongly disagree with me and I think it right now but I think that when you benchmark it again yeah other countries I think that it's not listen at the end of the day like capitalism democracy was always supposed to be the best of the worst right that was always what it was supposed to be right like listen this is always an experiment so we're trying to figure it out right right it's the worst form of government except for all the other ones the right right exactly at Western Churchill I think if you I mean I want to so we'll put everything in the show notes as well as to like where to send people but just like maybe like one last word of wisdom just for like war dogs academy somebody does want to get into this tell them where to go for the academy but also just other like words of wisdom if they want to start things to think about in contracting yeah well anyone is interested in war dogs academy get a war dogs academy.com well yeah easy enough easy to remember and we also are on Instagram and all that you know all the major social media channels we've got lots of memes good as a warm day yeah yeah exactly got to do they got to do the memes people love the memes apparently it's so funny like we will publish a meme and it'll get like a hundred thousand views and then there's like a clip of me on a podcast ten thousand views yeah he was in dude you know it's okay I'm not too insulted no I deal with this every single day I'm like I started to put out like really smart informative content trying to like help educate you and improve your life and teach you things and then like yeah yeah it kind of fizzles yeah and then you do some stupid thing that's even slightly funny and it just like takes off it's just the way the algorithm works you know so yeah it's it's fine yeah but we try to mix you know we do a mix you got to do a mix you know get people because different people are just discovering it for the first time the memes are good for that and then as they dive in and kind of get more seriously get a little more educated so so yeah so war dogs academy.com same thing on all social media war dogs academy and I would say that if you want to be successful first of all I would say government contracting is a great business right as even though I am it's not I personally prefer businesses that have a little bit more creativity in them you know like inventing products and and things like that and that's my preference there's nothing wrong with doing a competitive business like government contracting and there's quite a few advantages to it so I think there's more I think there's a more advantages than I would say because yeah it's less risky much less risk yeah government always pays a great customer exactly yeah brainstorming and and inventing the product yeah it's hard it's very hard high rates of failure the good thing about government contracting is that the business will never run out and even when the economy and especially when the economy is in the shitter and when there's a big crisis while everyone else is shutting down the government ramps up their spending like with covid you know everyone was shutting down everyone was getting laid off you know but the government really turned on the money printer there and spent more money than ever in history and where does that money go through the government contracting system so the government contracting business is not only recession proof it actually benefits from recession and crises you make more money in those times so there is enormous advantages to government contracting keeps the complexity maybe annoying to deal with that you know when you're first starting out but the more complex it is the less competition you have so there's that advantage that's another advantage of government contracting anyone I do believe not anyone a lot of people can teach themselves how to do this as my partners did but it is a complex business especially to start out with and you will save a lot of time and you'll avoid a lot of mistakes if you have someone you're compressing a time by zoning your academy for 100 000 you'll make a lot more money a lot sooner by investing in that so I think it's a in fact we've been debating about whether we're charging too low I mean yeah I'm just thinking yeah to like if I like because the opportunity to make money in government contracting is so significant that one deal could be a significant lump sum of hundreds of thousands if not we've had a few students win but if I think about if I think about like one thing that I would want to compress time on and even having access to like an officer that's worked in government before like I don't have budget for a salary for that person day zero so that does seem like a really smart yeah I seem to look a very smart way to spend money in my opinion at least I listen to my opinion I guess so I've listened I've interviewed a lot of people that of courses and then they thumb are yeah some are more useful than others right but I can see it's being quite useful yeah and it has been and I think the proof is in the pudding as they say that we've had so many students already win their first contracts and and I told my told my partners in word I was academy I told them when we first had this idea and we were thinking about getting started I told them like good I'm like guys I already have a felony conviction this has to be real this can't be a scam you know the judge isn't gonna go easy on me the second time around so we have to build a real business that provides real value and that really helps this can't be a flash in the pan it can't be a scam and we worked really hard to do that and we we've been iterating on the course as well like as our students have gone through the course and there's been problem issues where they didn't understand certain things or there was certain things that were missing and we've iterated on that and and filled in the gaps to me because as I said the more our students make money the more we make money you know through the financing and as well I had a reputation all the incentives are aligned and so it's to me it's like it's super gratifying because like I kind of turned this period of my life that turned out to be a bit of a disaster for me you know and though I did get a movie out of it with I don't know which is super cool good life and I got good lessons and it ended up being inspiration for my first invention so I really I'm not like I don't regret you know the way it turned out I'm happy with where I ended up but honestly I was kind of allergic to government contracting after that I was just like kind of like traumatized a little and I was like I don't want to do this business ever again and to be able to build something that can actually teach people how to be successful and actually watch our students be successful and some of our students I mean a lot of them are coming from nothing you know they are coming like we've seen the stories like they're you know we've interviewed a lot of our students who've won the contracts and we're of course using that on our social media and a lot of them like they're dead broke you know they're working jobs they hate you know just looking for an opportunity and being able to provide something where they could actually make that happen for themselves and be proud of the work they did it and you know they did and and and get out of that job they hate and actually build a future for their families and you know and be able to be you know proud of what they're building is just super gratifying entrepreneurship is so beautiful yeah and and it honestly I mean I'm like it's just super it's super it's a nice use of your lived experience exactly exactly so it's it kind of feels like I've come like a full circle in a way I feel that I do feel that I mean what you went through again hopefully no one else has to go through that and we advise our students yeah everything legally yeah but at the end of the day like it is a very legitimate business it's a very niche business not a lot of people understand it and I think it's an incredible way to become an entrepreneur because again you are selling to the best customer in the world and all the other BS biggest customer best customer most well financed customer and if you if you want to try other businesses I mean be my guest because I've definitely done them as have you but there's a lot of other things that you're gonna have to figure out and like listen this is this is why I think that I I was you know like when you put the other this academy and I was actually I was very interested bring you on mostly just speak about how you take like your life experience and copy and paste it across other students because I've always been I'm actually a very good example of somebody I'm not an idiot but I've always looked at government contracting and I'm like this is so fascinating but then I'll go to like sam.gov and a bit or you know fuck this like I it's most people yeah like I have enough is stuff to figure out of my while yeah yeah it's difficult to learn it's overwhelming it is very overwhelming it is it is and I think that's and that's why we put so much emphasis on like breaking it into digestible chunks we also have like little tests you could take to make sure you absorbed it like as you're going through the course and the course is I would say it's about 18 hours of material but then a community is really the value immunity is is is is really where you cement all that learning and it's some some of our students they go through the course in like just a few days and then they're like and then they start bidding on contracts and then they do a lot they attend the live events the question answers they they learn even more on top of that and they you know work out all the details some people take a few weeks to go through the course so people learn at their own paces but really what it comes down to is you learn by doing yeah you know and the course will give you a great foundation and the community is going to make sure that you're heading in the right direction you're not making the obvious mistakes that will cost you a lot of wasted time and what other places do you want to send people your social or whatever well if anyone's interested in my social life I'm David Pac-As on all on all social media platforms except for tiktok which is they that nobody uses tiktok I don't really use it that much either but it was David and Pac-As on the tiktok but yeah I would say mostly Instagram and YouTube you know is I'm on there but yeah so from my personal social media handles David Pac-As P-A-C-K-O-U-Z and there's word i was academy.com instafloss.com tell your friends you know you know get one for your mother right and for the musicians in the audience singular sound outcome perfect last question I was like to ask obviously you've gone through a very interesting life if you go back and tell your 20 year old self one thing what would that be it'll work out I like that don't stress too much