Miles Calderon Eats Banana in All Forms

Hello everyone and welcome back to the Blazerown Trail podcast. My name is Jordan Mendoza. I'm your host and today I've got an incredible guest. His name is David Pac-Haus and I'm gonna have him tell you a little bit about who he is and what he does today. Well, thank you for having me Jordan. I appreciate it. People probably know me most for being the real person that a movie war dogs was based off. So if people have seen war dogs, then there's two guys who are the main characters played by Jonah Hill who's like the fat one and Miles Teller who's the skinny one. I'm a skinny one in the movie. So Pac-Haus that Miles Teller is playing in the film. And so I guess that that is my claim to fan. These days I am so yeah, so the movie was based on me because about 20 years ago when I was in my early 20s, I got into government contracting and we wanted to use contracts one in particular the $300 million contract to supply the country of Afghanistan with ammunition. But these days I am I have a few different businesses. My main business is I create products or musicians. Hence the musical artwork behind me. This made out of my CD collection that I realized one day I didn't own a CD player anymore, but I had a lot of CDs. So I turned it into the start piece. But I actually make products for musicians. I'm a musician myself and I design guitar pedals for musicians for the musicians in the audience. And they my most famous product is called the beat buddy like your buddy that plays the beat. And it's a drum machine in the form of a guitar pedal that allows you to control the the ends free while you play your instrument. So that's my main business that I've been building for the past 11 years and more recently just in the last two years started a new business called war dogs Academy. That's the the mug. And what we do in war dogs Academy, it's an online course and community to teach people how to do government contracting, which is the business that we got famous for in the film. It's how to win contracts with the government to sell things goods and services to the government. And that's been going for the past two years and it's been an incredible ride. So far we've helped over 800 students win government contracts over 20 million down in student wins. And yeah, it's just a super grad and that came out of the movie of course because everyone ever since the movie came out people were always asking me, you know, like please teach me this. It's not an easy business to learn. There's a lot of technicalities to do a lot of details. But so yes, that's how why I started with the two partners with mine who built their own successful government contracting business as well. And it's been just really gratifying to see people find their own success in the government contracting. Very cool. Well, I appreciate the intro, you know, congrats on having a movie made after you. I don't think many people in their lifetime get to say that. That is true. A full deck of a movie. And so for that alone, folks, he is a trailblazer. But my favorite part of the show, David, because it's, you know, the success you have today, it's all great. It's all fine and dandy, but our listeners want to know like what are you made of? What have you been through? What is the trail look like to get to this version of you? Because I know it's there had to been some bumps on the road. There had to been some adversity along the way. And so let's go ahead and take that rewind. So where were you born and raised? And then what kind of kid were you? We're talking elementary middle to high school years. Sure. I was born in St. Louis, Missouri, but didn't live there for very long only when I was a baby. My family moved to Israel. My family is Jewish. My dad was a rabbi. So like a Jewish priest for people who don't know that is. And I'm one of nine children. My family was very religious. I'm number three out of nine. And my parents always wanted me to become a religious leader like my father. And so there was always a lot of pressure for me to study Bible all day. I went to a very religious school. I didn't talk to a girl who wasn't related to me until I was like 17. It was a extreme environment for people who know what Orthodox Jews are. They can understand what that is. It's kind of like a little bit on the spectrum like towards Amish. Orthodox Jews are Amish one day a week on the Sabbath. We can't use like electricity and drive a car and stuff like that. So my parents were always pressuring me to be very religious and to grow up and to study Bible and everything. That was not really something that I was particularly interested in. And when I was eight years old, we moved to Miami. And my very religious school was was right on the edge of South Beach, which is where like all the tourists and all the parties happen and everything. So it was a real kind of dichotomy of going to a literal button down school, all boys school where we would start prayers at 730 in the morning and study Bible most of the day. And study all the way until 630 at night. And it was like it was a very long day, mostly studying religion. I didn't like it. So I started rebelling in my teenage years and I started questioning the orthodoxy of the religion and eventually that kind of led to a big deal with my family. They fought it very hard because they were concerned that if I left the religion, I would be of that influence on my younger siblings. And they were absolutely right about that. After I left the religion of my six younger siblings, five of them became not religious. In my opinion, I'd led them to freedom. It was leaving the religion was the, I think the single best decision I ever made for myself in my life because none of the things I've done in my life would have been possible if I had stayed in that culture. On its own, I just was an extremely painful but very necessary trail that I had to blaze that nobody really showed me how to get out of how to get out of that and where to go. I mean, it was terrifying because the religion was all I knew and I didn't, you know, it's a very eyesolationist cultural. So I didn't really know how to behave in the wider world or how to or what was expected and what were the norms or how to talk to people because all I knew back then were other people who were exactly like me. And so when I left the culture, the religion kind of had to figure it all out on my out and that was, it was a painful and long process, but I'm very glad I did it. So what, what did you end up doing, right? So you kind of had this essentially sounds like a path was laid out for you of like what you were going to do, how was going to be done in the timeline. And then you decide to kind of go your own direction right now, now obviously I could tell you're a creative type, you have a big imagination. So like, did you how did you start to harness that and leverage that in your teenage years was there was there something that you dove into whether that was the music side of things or I love just to get to what route did you actually go down sure. Well, with with entrepreneurship, it was actually my dad inspired me to start my first business when I was six years old. So that was he was, I mean, he was, my dad is a great guy. He passed away five years ago six years ago, but yeah, thank you. Now he was a wonderful man and a great father. He just was an extremely religious person and with all that implies. But he was always very encouraging of entrepreneurship and very encouraging though his ideal was for me to become a religious leader, yeah, a second choice would be to become a professional entrepreneur something. So he was always very encouraging that that when I was six years old, he suggested I was playing with my sister. We were playing legos by older sisters like a year and a half older than me since she was like seven and a half. We lived in an apartment building that didn't have a garbage sheet and it didn't have an elevator. So we would have to walk the garbage downstairs to the dumpster on the corner and my mother asked us to take the trash out and we were like complaining about it and he was like, we guys see this as a hassle, but this is really an opportunity because all the other neighbors don't want to take their trash out either. So why don't you guys offer a service to take out their trash and you'd be charged and like a subscription fee like a quarter a week or something. So we did that and we had like eight neighbor signups and we're making like two bucks a week for, you know, six year old is big money. And then my sister quick because she didn't want to do the work and so I was making double and I eventually built up a like a few hundred dollars that I sent all on ice cream. So I became a little chunky kid at that moment because the ice cream truck would come by every day and so that was like my first experience I had with entrepreneurship. So that was very encouraged by my dad. My mom is a musician. She plays guitar and she's a singer as well. So when I was 15 years old, I wanted to learn how to play guitar. I was actually inspired by by Nirvana. I listened to smells like teen spirit that rocking guitar with in the beginning and I wasn't allowed to listen to that music. I was listening to it secretly because it's, you know, non religious music. But so I couldn't ask my mom to teach me how to play that, but I wanted to learn how to play guitar. So she taught me some like basic like open up chords and she actually taught me the first time she taught me was Bob Dylan blowing in the wind. I guess she. Approved of Bob Dylan. He was more wholesome than Nirvana. So my mom taught me how to play basic guitar And I started getting really into guitar and start hanging out with like some musician friends and and that kind of became like a part of of I I guess the rebellion process is that you know started playing like rock and roll and and started you know hanging out on the beach I grew up in Miami Beach So the beach was like a walk away and we like steal wine from the synagogue and get drunk and and So that was kind of like my teenage years and my dream was to become the rock star of course because you know rock stars I've all the money and and all the women and and here I was a religious boy You didn't even know how to talk to a girl so that you know that seemed like the coolest thing ever and so that really inspired me to Really work on my guitar and singing skills But when I got to college I realized that I needed a I need to get a job because my parents work in support me and so I my friends were like all doing minimum wage jobs and and I did not want to do that and I realized that And I had talked this was like when I was 20 years old I had I went to Israel when I was 18 just my parents It was like a last ditch effort my parents wanted me to become religious again So they sent me off to Israel to study in like a religious school for two years. It didn't work but at the time I met like a girl and she We were at a at a festival and there was a massage tool there that was getting out like free massages to everyone the students We all got a sausage and she I had this huge crush on this girl who I had no idea how to talk to you But like she after we were coming out of the free massages. She was like oh my god. That was amazing any guy I'm really fast to know how to give a good massage and That right then I swore to myself. I'm gonna learn how to give an amazing massage Oh when I was 20 years old and was looking for a job I was like you know massage therapists they make like 75 to 100 bucks an hour I could do one massage in a day and make more money than Then all my friends were making doing the whole days of work like waiting tables or you know like working as a cash Year whatever and so I went to massage school and I got a massage therapy license and I was working as a massage therapist and You know while I was doing a college I was studying chemistry and and I also started a few side businesses as well as I said I'd always been entrepreneurial so I This was back when Digital Canada is coming dating myself. This is in the early 2000s Digital cameras were first becoming a big thing and and the SD cards were super extensive So I didn't want to spend a lot of money on SD cards I kept them looking for a better price eventually. I found a source in China that was connected to the factory that made SD cards So I bought but of course they would only sell like a hundred minimum So I bought a hundred of them and I started selling the rest of them on eBay and started making some decent money And so started selling SD cards Then a friend of mine was impressed that I was able to find a source overseas and he was selling bedsheets and towels to to hospitals and nursing homes So he's like so if you could find me a factory overseas that makes bedsheets or towels I'll buy it from you If you can give me a better price and my distributors So I started I found a manufacturer that did that started importing bedsheets and towels as they show that part in the movie But of course in real life I it wasn't the way they showed in the movie I wasn't uh I didn't like buy a bunch of stuff and fill up my apartments and get stuff with a whole bunch of boxes of bedsheets I would I was only brokering so I wouldn't even buy the stuff until I already had someone to To buy it for me and then I would just collect the commission in the middle Oiler alert folks for those of you that haven't seen it yet, all right. Yes, he's actually Exactly so that business started going pretty well and that's when I bumped into my friend Affirmative Rowley who will the movie is played by Jonah Hill and he asked me what I was doing and I told him that I was You know doing the bed the bedsheets and linens importing thing that's decarct stuff and he was like oh, you know Like that skill set is kind of the same thing that I do in my business. I sell to the government um and You know, but you were pretty much doing the same thing looking for suppliers overseas arranging logistics and financing and licensing and all that And he's like, but I've been on making way more money than you so you should come and work with me I could use a smart motivated guy and we'll make a lot more money together and I'm like well I mean, I thought I was doing pretty well for myself at the time sounds like wow How much money have you been making and he goes to means like well, I'm gonna tell you But not to show off. I'm just gonna tell you to inspire you And he opens up his laptop and he shows me his bank account and he had one point eight million dollars in his bank account And he was 18 years old at this time and he'd been working on his own for like one year. He Use about the term 90 the way he learned the business is he need each other from one we were kids But he got kicked out of he got kicked out of his he was also a worth it out to you He also wanted to a religious school and he got caught smoking weed in high school And so he got kicked out of high school and his parents said well if you're not gonna follow the rules of the school You're gonna learn what real life's to doubt and you're gonna join the workforce you're gonna go work through your uncle and L.A His uncle owned his big pawn shop his uncle so this in government contracting so he learned how to Uh, sell to the government and he got obsessed he became a gun that a while working in the pawn shop He also would also sell guns to the customers and so he learned government contracting and the arms business from his uncle And then his uncle he works for his uncle for about two years and then he had a big falling out with his uncle They each cloning the others screwed the other one, you know and they both stand back And then he came back to Miami and started his own company started working on his own and started bidding On federal contracts and this was in like 2004 Right during the ramp up after the Iraq invasion and the United States was pretty much trying to build a democracy over there And after taking out sit on the scene and part building the democracy was supplying them with massive amounts of equipment And like they're to their police force and their army and and everything else So there were these there was like literally a trillion dollars being spent to try to build Iraq into a functional state And he was bidding on these contracts because he already had connections with the small arms industry in the United States So he was bidding off things like pistols and rifles and and and in addition and bulletproof vests and helmets and stuff like that and he was Obviously did pretty well for himself who made about two million dollars in this first year And so when I saw that I was like holy crap this guy I mean I was doing pretty well for myself doing the bet she's in litus but I wasn't making millions So I said okay It sounds like you know something I don't so I'm in teach you what you know and that's when I got into government contracting the whole war dog story happened And so tell me Well very cool story of just kind of how it all came to be I'm sure when you looked at that bank account you're like Is this legal? I'm probably the first one of the first nods is this legal and then obviously the proofs and the pudding As you know successfully clues you've got to know something I don't know yes When you started to dive in How much more did he know that you didn't know? Oh he knew a lot I mean he knew the whole system worked and that's how I learned it. It's government contracting So for just to give a little bit of background for people who don't know about it It's not a commonly known thing The way the government buys things the US government and most governments around the world is that The US government is required by law to buy things on competitive basis right so let's say they want to buy You know to give an example you know 100 million rals of ammunition They are required by law to put it out for open bid so that all the companies who are able to make or supply You don't have to necessarily manufacture it you can buy to someone else They don't really care where you get it as long as legal which is you know kind of it goes into part of my story But as long as as you can get it the required goods or services that they don't care where you whether you make it yourself or you get it from someone else If you have just a broke so they open it up for open competition and everyone who is Qualified to bid on it you have to register your company first and you can submit a bid to the government And then the Beverly gets all the bids by the deadline and then they review all the bids and they have a scoring system Depending on the kind of contract it is they will care about different things You know, it's a small contract. I mean these days of anything under $250 And dollars is considered a small contract so you could win a contract under a quarter million without any What they call pass performance or truth that you've done this business you to be a brand new business Not know anything and still win a quarter million dollar contract with the government Anything above a quarter million dollars they get in they have requirements as far as like pass performance You have to show that you've done this business in the past and then they aren't they they look at the kind of task performance You have and they try to verify and and they give you a score on how reliable they think that you are compared to all the other people And then they balance the different factors of how reliable a person the the company is the quality of the goods You know how closely it matches what they're looking for the price and based on that scoring system They decide which is the best offer for all the competitors and they award the contract to that Contractor and then that person that company delivers the goods or services they get paid by the government they get their profits So that's kind of how the whole system works now There is a lot of data detail to it, but there is the government, the end of the government. They have a lot of rules and regulations and a lot of references that you have to look up and a lot of formatting things that they really care about. And like you can make one little mistake and you don't include this document or you didn't fill out this thing correctly and then they just disqualify you and all the work you did to create the proposal goes down the trash. And that's actually one of the reasons why so many people asked me to teach them this is because it's not a easy business to learn. There's a lot of money. It depends on probably the amount. It probably depends on the country. It probably depends on a lot of variables that come into play. There's a lot of variables. There's a lot of ways to mess up. And it's not an easy thing to get into on your own just by doing, you know, what googling or something. So it's much easier when you have someone else who knows what they're doing to teach you, which is how I learned it from F from and why our students really love us at Wardau's Academy because we make that ramp up a million times easier to set them up for success. So yeah, so he knew a lot and that's how I learned with this and he was obviously already successful. I already made a few million dollars. I started bidding on contracts and what the first time track I ever won myself was not even for any additional weapons or anything like that. It was 40,000 gallons of propane that I did on it was going to the Air Force delivered it to. What was your margin on that if you'll may, might me ask him? Yeah, so we made, but with the total value of the contract was off hand. But I do remember the profits between, we were split at the time. We were splitting at 50, 50 because our deal was that I would pretty much do all the work and he would come in at the last at the end and negotiate everyone down in price, paying pretty fair margins as well as examine all my work, supervising and make sure I'm not messing up so that we have the highest chance of actually winning the contract in the government and of course he would bid it under his company's name, which had come to pass performance. So our deal was that that means split profits 50, 50 and on that first contract we each paid $8,000 and that was that was the first contract and it was about three weeks of work, some not so bad. Yeah, and what year was that was that in '05, '06? That was in '06, that was 2006. Yeah, so not bad. And that was kind of the icebreaker, right? There's always that first sale where you got to break the ice. And so when did you start getting into ammunition? Did it take long after that to get into ammunition? So I worked on a bunch of, as I said, the government buys everything, right? Little of the everything. The biggest single biggest customer in the world by far, they spend like 300 billion dollars every month on contracts. It's insane. They put out 30,000 new contracts every single day on sand.gov. The sand.gov is the website where they post all the contracts, like Uncle Sam. Quick question. And this is just listener curiosity, but also my own curiosity. If someone were to join your academy, like let's say in this episode they decide to join your academy, you've had 800 students get to success and you've paid out, I think you awarded a couple million in deals. 20 million in contracts. That's not what it's reporting to us. Yeah. How much of the timeline do you feel like you're collapsing by them coming to you versus Google and YouTube and Reddit and all these forums and stuff like that? The enormous amounts. Let's all I couldn't tell you what the average of people doing it on their own is, right? Because obviously there's no way to know that. But we do have some anecdotal evidence of people trying it on their own and then joining the academy. So like one guy that was actually he wrote a trust pilot review for our academy, which was awesome. It's up. Anyone who wants to see people's experience, I highly recommend they check us out on trust pilot to see the reviews of people who've been through the process. This one particular one of my favorite reviews actually was this guy who was a vet. By the way, anyone who's a vet gets additional advantages in government contracting. There are certain contracts that are set aside for vets. Also women don't business or if you live in an economically distressed area, it's called Humsum. And we teach you how to get all those classifications as well as part of the accounting. But this one guy, he wrote this review that he was a user vet and he'd been dabbling on and off trying to get into government contracting for 15 years. 15 years. Now he said he was on and off. He would try. He would work really hard. He'd lose. He'd give up. He'd come back to it like a few months later. But on and off for 15 year, he says he joined the academy and within two months, he won a contract. He won two contracts back to that. So I mean, I think that that shows you the comparative. But I do know that as far as our students go, the average that our students, the averages of our students have been, again, I always have to say that have been reported to us because we know that a lot of people know when contracts they never tell us about it, you know? So we know the numbers are much higher. But of the students that have actually been reported to us of their success, the average student wins a contract within the first 90 days. Some do it sooner, some do it later. We've had quite a few students who've won the first contract that they ever did on. That's unusual, I would say, you know, but but it does happen. And the average, so the average student wins at their first contract within 90 days, the total value of the contract average is 8,000 with an average profit of 13,000. And that's just on the first contract. And of course, every other contract gets easier and more profitable from there because he started building up your past performance, you build up your sources, your supplier sources. And so you have to do less work on the following contracts and you get better at reading the solicitations and filling out the proposals and understanding what all the terms are. So you save a lot of time. So each contract that you've been on becomes easier with time like anything in life. You know, the first time you do anything, it's the most difficult in the second time. It's a little easier, a little easier. So yeah, so we have our averages for our first first contract wins. And we've already had quite a few students who won multi-million dollar contracts too. And that must seem goes because we have one student, his name is Gavin. He was like, he had just left, he had just graduated from college, he didn't want to get a normal nine to five. And he had zero business experience, didn't know anything about it, but he saw the movie, he was super inspired, he was starting to join the academy. And I think and he keep it on and this is just such a great story because I think he'd been, I forget the exact number, but I think he did on something like 15 contracts and he lost all of them. And then like on the teeth, he won like a 1.5 million dollar contract. And yeah, and that just right there, and he had like good margins on it too. He made quite a few hundred thousand dollars on that contract. And so and right then, yeah, he just, he was like, boom, he's he's set and he's and now he's working on bigger contracts. And and we also have him, he's so like grateful to us for helping and get into this that he helps us with our other students as well. So he's like in our, we have a forum, a community where all the students get interact and talk to each other. We also have an in-house team of experts that are there to help the students. So it's not just a course and you know, goodbye and good luck. We have retired contracting officers, people who used to work for the government, deciding who wins the contracts, analyzing the proposals. We have a team of three of those people who worked for us now. And they their entire job is to help the students. They look at their proposal at the students' proposals, make sure they're not messing up. They explain anything that the students can understand. We have a weekly live question and answer sessions where anyone can just hop on a video chat and hear what the other students are asking and ask their own questions as well as private meetings available with our team of experts as well. If any of the students want to ask something that's more confidential. When we first started it, we I told my co-founders Logan and James and just to give a little bit of background on Logan and James, they were 21 years, this is like six years now they're 28. When they look six, seven, actually it's now losing track of time. Like seven, eight years ago, they were 21 years old and they were like, "Den Probe." And they saw the movie "Word Dogs" and they got really aspiring. They were like, "Wow, these guys are our age. If they can do it, why can't we do it?" And they got obsessed with government contracting and they started trying to do it themselves. And they it took them a couple of years to really learn it, but they did it and a lot of trial and error, a lot of mistakes. They lost a lot of contracts. They could have won if they knew what they were doing, but that's kind of what happens when you learn on your own. But after a couple years, they finally figured it out. And these days, they have one over, I think it's over $25 million in contracts. And their specialty is not weapons or ammo or anything like that. They specialize in laundry services of all things. They won this like small laundry contract with the army and then they started extending for their getting bigger and bigger contracts. I think their most recent contract is a $9 million contract with the Air Force-Basing Germany. And they have really good margins on that too. So they are making millions of dollars and they contacted me about two years ago saying, "Hey, you know, just wanted to reach out and say that if it wasn't for War Dog, we wouldn't be where we Thank you for watching. today. I just want to thank you for the inspiration. And that was what gave me the idea. I'm like, well, I have literally hundreds of people who are like blowing up my DMs, you know, begging me to teach them how to do government contracting. And I'm been banned from doing government contracting for like 15 years by the court. So I had an I was out of the business. I was already inventing products for musicians. I also created another product that I haven't mentioned yet called Insta floss. It's like a water pick on steroids that floss is all your teeth in 10 seconds. I highly recommend everyone to check it out. It's the floss.com like Instagram. But flossing is the floss. Tell me friends. And so I was like in the product development space. I was like, I'd been burned by government contracting. And I was like, I'm not doing that again. I wasn't even allowed to actually just out off the Dan list a couple of years ago. So I could do it again. But they so I I've been out of the game. So speak for a while. And but these guys Logan and James, they have active multi million dollar contracts. They taught themselves themselves, which I was super impressed with. I mean, it's not easy to teach yourself this business. So I said to them, I'm like, guys, why don't we start a business where you could teach people how to do this business? And as I have a lot of people asking me and they thought it was a great idea. And what the first thing that people always ask is like, if it's such a great business, why would you want to teach anyone else this business? Right? Why don't you just get all the business for yourself? And what people don't realize is that as I mentioned before, the government puts out 30,000 new contracts every single day, right? 30,000. That's impossible to even look at let alone work on. And so the and so in order to succeed in this business, you really do need to specialize in a niche. The government buys everything and each thing that they buy has its own unique characteristics. And it's own unique set of rules and things that you need to learn. So one thing our students always ask is what do you specialize in? And I tell them, well, if you have any experience in any industry, start specializing in that because you already have a leg up, right? So like we were talking before we started recording that you have you have experience in the real state market, right? The government spends a huge amount of money on real estate. They're renting stuff. They're building stuff. They have maintenance contracts. I mean, the government has millions of employees. They have facilities all over the world and all over the United States. And more of this money goes into the real estate industry. So I would tell people if you already know any industry whatsoever, the government is probably spending a lot of money in that with that. And if you don't know anything, if you're literally starting brand new like Gavin did, right? I tell them start with stuff that you think would not would be relatively easy to source, right? Don't start working on contracts that have 30 different items because that's going to be a lot of work. I'll start with a content that has a few items that you can find sources for and that are relatively easy to get, right? Like so you don't start working on stuff that I mean, there's certain things that you that they put out there that you would not even qualify for. Like when they want to buy a fighter jet, right? They're not going to put that out for open bid, right? Because only Lockheed Park makes the F-35. So certain things that you qualify for that you could work on and certain things that you have no chance of winning. And that's part of learning the business and learning government contracting is knowing which of these solicitations give you the highest chance of actually succeeding, winning and making money on. And that's part of that's a certain segment of the course that we really focus on. Yeah, I love the fact that it's not based on theory. It's based on actually winning. Exactly. Right. Actually getting to the end goal. Exactly. And I also love the fact that anybody can think of an item. Like let's say they pick hand towels and they find a distributor in China that's sitting with they can get him for 20 cents. Yeah. And they're going to come to the government for three bucks. Anything? Are you honest? Right. So given great example of that with your example of hand towels or clothing, there are certain rules that the government has with clothing and textiles that a certain amount of the material needs to be grown within the United States at a certain amount of the work to put the stuff together needs to be done in the United States. And you need to know these rules because otherwise you're not going to win the contract. So you can't just buy anything and just offer it to the government. And that's part of the whole process is learning what all the rules are. What you can and cannot buy so that you that you have a higher the highest chance of winning and you don't get in trouble by supplying the wrong thing. I mean if you supply the wrong thing the government slides out about it. They're not going to pay you at best or charge you with crimes at worst. So you know, depending on what the situation is. So it is very important to know what you're doing and understand what the solicitation document is saying. And that is why the course and our team of experts is come so instrumental in this process. And I told Logan and James when we first had this idea to set up word of academy that if we were going to do something, I told him like, look guys, there's an enormous amount of courses out there. Right. And the fast in the jewelry of them are bullshit. Right. And it has a bad reputation because there's a lot of scammers out there selling get rich quick schemes and the fast in the jewelry of it is garbage. Right. I told him we're going to build something we have to build something real. Right. Something that we could prove works and that isn't bullshit because I already have a felony on my record. Right. I got convicted of fraud as anyone who's seen the movie would know because we wrecked the Chinese ammunition and that's a whole other story. And if I get convicted of anything ever again, the judges are going to go easy on me. Right. Because I already have a private record. So I'm like, there I'm taking zero chances here of doing anything shady. I mean, besides that it's obviously unethical and etc. But, you know, but I can't afford any of that. Right. So I told him we have to build something real. Something that our students are going to be really happy about and that and that on its own is going to drive its own success as well as keeping us out of trouble. So that was one of the reasons we came up with the whole World War of the Academy community as part of the course was because it's one thing to learn something in school. Right. It's different to apply that to the real world. There's anyone who's gone that in a college degree will tell you the vast majority of their education starts when they leave college and enter the workforce. That's when you really start learning what the job is really about. And you know, you still need to go to school. You need to learn all the stuff, but you'll really learn how to do the job in the field. So that's why we hire the team of retired contracting officers to help our students apply the knowledge that they learn in the course to actually win contracts. And a lot of our students have told us that that was one of the biggest factors of an actually successfully winning government contracts was because they had that additional help after they finished the course. So they had our team to look over their proposals to, you know, to answer their questions because there's so many unique situations that you'll run into. It's impossible to cover it in any course. And it's constantly shifting. So and a lot of it is a lot of the business is also comes down to to certain social skills as well. Like how do you interact with the contracting officer so that they trust you and give you new contracts? How do you interact with your suppliers so that they trust you and give you good prices? How do you negotiate with them to get even better prices? Right? How do you can you tell when you know someone's full of shit? And I like that. These are all things that are critical in business for the success of your long term success of business that you need to learn that is not easy to learn in a course. And that is why I think the community is one of the biggest strengths of word-aust cabin and biggest factor in our students' success so far. Yeah, I love it. No, I love it. And so where can work in our audience go if they listen to this? Obviously, I want our listeners. If you have not seen the movie yet, go watch the movie because it's going to give you all the context you need. If you want the nitty gritty message, David, on Instagram, or something like that, I'm sure he'll be happy to share some more insights with you. So tell everyone where they can go if they're interested in learning more about the academy. And then I've got one or two follow-up questions before we close out here. Sure. So to learn about the academy, you can go to wardogsacademy.com. We have actually our students, some of our most successful students, they also work as our student advisors, Gavin, for example, that I mentioned earlier. I had a few other people like him get on the phone with prospective students and talk them through like what the whole process is and answer all their questions if they want to ask questions before joining the academy. And for me personally, people can find me on Instagram @datedpackaus, pack.euz, like zebra. And on all social media platforms, but I guess I'm probably most active on Instagram @datedpackaus. Awesome. Awesome. So one question I had, oh go ahead, instafloss.com for my flossing device. And for any musicians in the audience, singularsound.com is my music company. BeatBuddy is my most famous musical product that's probably easier to Google like your buddy that plays the beat beat buddy. So that's for the musicians in the audience, which I'm sure is a small fraction, but the musicians would love it. Absolutely. And we are going to make sure we put all of those links to all of the products, the websites, the academy. We're going to put those down in the show notes that where audience can jump over there and check out those products as well. Question I had for you. Yes. How did the movie idea. - I've never come up out. Did you guys get reached out to individually? Did one reach out to one of you? And then the second part of that question is, what was more profitable, the revenue you made in the business or what you got paid from the royalties of being part of the movie? 'Cause I have never gone on how that side pays out or if they don't, or if it's just branding. I mean, I think there's every contract, I think it's a little different. - Yes, yes. It is, everything is unique. The way that that whole the movie happened was, we first got, I wouldn't say famous, I would say more infamous, when the New York Times published a front page article about us with our munch shots on the front page of the New York Times. This was in March of 2008. It was not a flattery, Margot. It was filled with misinformation, actually. It was telling, it claimed that we were supplying like rusty defective ammunition, which was completely untrue. But it made a big scandal, a big political scandal at the time there were hearings in Congress, did others, there's YouTube videos out there, like some senator, like with one of those easels on the floor of Congress, and he has like our munch shots on the easel, he's like, these are the guys that the Bush administration's been trusting with this critical contract for the war on terror. Like this, the president is the 21 year old, you know, a pa addict and his vice president doesn't have a sash there at this. That's kind of funny. So we got like, yeah, because I think he had gotten like arrested and he got caught with someone need. And so like that was on the record, and that's kind of how it got into the New York Times article. And so our nickname in the press was the Storer Arms dealers. And so the press really ran with that. And then Rolling Stone, of course, loves the story because they're Rolling Stone. This was like right up there, Ali. And so they wrote, they did a whole investigative journalism piece on us. It was actually, they actually stepped into three years investigating the story because there was after the New York Times article got published, they canceled their contract and they charged us with fraud, even though it turned out later, we found out the army knew about the time he's ammunition the whole time. They really didn't care until the New York Times made him with that and then they threw us under the bus. But that's kind of how politics works. So we were waiting, we were like in limbo for three years because one of our I pled guilty, F from pled guilty as well. And I got sentenced to seven months of house arrest so slap on the wrist. He would have gotten a slap on the wrist too because they knew that they were really just doing this to cover their asses politically. But he ended up committing a none. He got it wound up in a sting operation where they tricked him into like kicking up a gun and he had already pled guilty. So he was a felon in possession of a firearm. And so he could have gotten 10 years in prison for that. But he ended up in the gocheting really hard with his best lawyers in Miami and he ended up negotiating it down to four. So he did four years in prison. But one of our co-defendants, Ralph, who was our investor in the means this linger mat over in a Jewish linger mat on the movie in real life is his name really is Ralph but he's actually a Mormon and he owns a machine gun factory, that linger mat. So more relevant. But Ralph decided to take the case to trial and because he took it to trial, we were kind of like stuck in legal limbo. They didn't want to sentence us until his trial was over. In the case they needed us to testifying this trial. So during that entire period, we weren't allowed to talk to the press by our lawyers but Rolling Stone was launched this big investigation. So they spent three years doing an investigation and because there was a trial and there was discovery, the discovery process and the trial is one each side gets information from the other. So Ralph, his legal team was legally able to get the internal emails of the government talking about our deal where the Justice Department was telling the army, hey, this is Charlie B. Zammou and the army was like, we don't care, we need the ammo. You know that they have emails like this that came out. And so Rolling Stone got access to all of it and they wrote this long, really long article about us that they published after we were all sentenced in 2011. And it's a great article. And I would say that that's probably the closest to the real story of anything that's out there. The Rolling Stone article, just Google the Stoner Arms dealers and it'll come up. But Todd Phillips, who is the director of the hangover movies and later he made Joker with Joaquin Phoenix. He was trying at the time to kind of get out of comedy which he was in the middle of filming "Hangover to it" at the time. He was trying to get into drama, which he did with Joker. So he decided to make our story into war dogs which is kind of like what they call a dramatic comedy. It's kind of like half comedy, half drama. So that was like his transition from hangover to Joker. And so that's how the movie happened. He saw the article, he saw the Rolling Stone article, thought it was a great story, decided to option the rights. And the way it works in Hollywood when they want to make a story about you is people don't realize is that in the United States there is the freedom of speech, right? That's like in the Constitution, I think the first of that freedom of speech. And part of freedom of speech is that you can say anything you want about any public figure without repercussion, right? And you can make any art piece you want about any public figure. And what's a public figure? If your name appears in the newspaper or on TV, you are now officially a public figure, right? So because we were written about in the New York Times and in Rolling Stone, we were officially public figures. And so Todd Phillips did not need our permission to make a movie. He didn't need to pay us anything. And he could make a whole movie using our real names, say anything he wanted, whether it's true or not, and make a movie and not give us a penny. That is the law in the United States. However, he wanted to make a movie that's based on a true story. So he wanted it to be kind of close to, at least somewhat close to the real story, right? And so Ephraim was in prison at the time and he's a well-known pathological lawyer and also an enormous nightmare to deal with as a person and in business in particular. He ended up stealing all my money that we made from the deal. He still owes me $5 million plus interest, about 20 years at the interest of quite a lot at this point. I will never see that money. I don't expect it. But Ephraim is a well-known scumbag. And so Todd Phillips didn't want to deal with him. And so he made a deal with Guy Lawson, who was the writer of the Rolling Stone article, who had done all the research. And with me, he bought what they call my life rights or the rights to my story. And the way that works is they give you a small amount of money in the low tens of thousands to option the story. And that means that they reserve the right to make the story within a certain time period. It's usually like three years, right? And if they do start production within that time period, then they give you the rest of the money. It's usually about 10 times what they gave you as an option. And depending on the story, it really depends on-- if there's a bidding war for the story if a few different people want to make it, then that can go up to the millions. But unfortunately, for me, it was only Todd Phillips. It was interested in making the story at times that there was no bidding war. So I took what I could get. And if they don't start production with that, usually they have the option to renew the option. So they can give you another few tens of thousands to get another three years, right? And so at the time when the option was story, I think it was 2011. And Todd was in the middle of making Hangover 2. And he was planning on making war dogs after Hangover 2. But then he decided, you know what? Instead of doing that, let me make Hangover 3 first, because that's a share of money maker. And so that extended out the timeline. So by the time-- so they had to renew the option. And then they started production in 2015 and made the movie came out in 2016. So to answer your question, I did make war money on selling the story that I did in the arms business because I ended up making nothing in the arms business because my ex-combat partner stole all the money from me. Would have made a lot more money in the arms business if he had paid it to me, but it didn't end up making anything from that. So I made-- and you think your royalty is this part of the structure? Or no? Yes and no. Officially, officially, I'm supposed to get 2% of the net income on the movie. That was the deal. However, in reality, there's never any net income. Hollywood is famous, or infamous, I should say, for their so-called Hollywood accounting. It's one of the most successful movies of all time have lost money, still losing money somehow. Gone with the win is still in the hole somehow. Even though it's 100 years old or something like that. I'm maybe not 100, but you get the idea. But yeah, so I never saw Hollywood magic strikes again. Eighth, then I have to be exactly-- so I never saw any additional royalties besides that initial lump sum payment. But what's interesting is that I got-- so I got a cameo in the movie, right? The first five minutes, you see me on screen for about three seconds. I'm playing guitar and singing a song in the old folks homework, where Miles Teller, who's playing me, is trying to sell Ben Sheets to the owner. Because I was in the film, and I'm singing, that's considered a speaking role. And therefore, that qualified me for Sad Afra, the screen actor's guild. And the screen actor's guild negotiates a royalty based on the gross, not the net. right? So me being a you know the subject of the film, the life rights guy, I didn't have any left in because there was no bidding war. I didn't was able to negotiate anything on the gross. I could only get something on the net which everyone knew was going to be zero before the. Unless the movie is making literally billions of dollars right? If it's one of the most successful movies of all time, they can't hide all the money right? But but the most movies officially make zero on the net. So unfortunately there wasn't a bidding war going on. So I didn't have much negotiating leverage. So I have to take what I could get as far as the life rights deal was. But because I'm part of SAG Afra and SAG Afra negotiates as a union, they negotiate on the gross. So I do still get checks at the mail every quarter or so for about a hundred bucks for by three seconds on screen. So we're gonna have to match it. We're gonna tell the audience, go where that movie out. Just press play and leave the house. Yes. Yes. Let's get this man some more mailbox money. That's right. Every time you watch it on Netflix or wherever I get a fraction of the thing, you said please watch it. Let's go. Everybody hit play at the same time and just keep it rolling baby. If you get a thousand dollar check, remember me, David. Yeah, yeah, exactly. I'll have to throw you a good. There we go. Well, hey, listen, hey, I appreciate you taking the time of sharing your story and journey. You've definitely blazed some trails and you know, some of the flames caught up with you for a little bit and now it's it's got to feel good that you're now kind of out of that where if you wanted to, you could go back. But I think you've got such a great thing on the academy side, helping and coaching and training people. And I know there's a lot of fulfillment in that for you because yeah, I think the process probably was most exciting for you. The fact that you know, a, you had the soft skills already and all you had to do is put it in the context of a new framework and learn it. But that framework is really what's helping so many people get millions and millions of dollars in contract. So kudos to you on the success. Any parting words for the audience? I think that just the one thing that I've learned is that you have to find what works for yourself. You know, like there's many, many, many ways of making money and being successful and you have to know what works for you. So like I was able to do the government contracting business because I mean, I saw the opportunity obviously, I mean, the opportunities obviously even more so there. I mean, the government spending thing almost double what they used to stand back then, which which is crazy. But I saw the opportunity and I was, I was, you know, young and hungry and willing to grind. And that's what it takes to work in that business. These days, I really enjoy designing products and it's a very, very different type of business. I enjoy building courses and businesses that help people like warehouse academy. That's a very different business than government contracting. And you can sit seeding in both of those things. And some things require more creativity. You know, they each have their upsides and downsides. But the good thing about government contracting is that the money is there and the money will always be there as long as we have a government, the government will need to buy things. Historically, the budget has only gone up. It's never gone down ever. So the money will continue to be there. But you have to realize the kind of business it is and the kind of skills that are required for it. And the kind of skills that are required for it is the grind, right? You need to be willing to put in long hours to do the kind of work that is not necessarily fun. But because it's not fun, it keeps a lot of other people out. And that's why not that many people go into it. And the people who become successful at it can become very, very successful as we've seen with many of our students. Quite a few of them have made millions of dollars already in just in the last two years. So the potential is there. You just need to have the personality or and realize that it works for you. And if it doesn't work for you, I mean, find something that does, right? Their own own style and their own, their own things that they that they enjoy to do or that are they are good at doing. And you have to find that. And I think that that's the biggest factor of success is lining up what you are doing with your strengths and and really capitalizing on that. The great advice, yeah, tap into your strengths and find what you're passionate about. And it makes work so much more fulfilling and so less stressful when you're doing things to truly enjoy. Thank you so much, David, for coming on the show. I know our audience is going to get value from your story and journey. Folks, if you have not yet checked out our new platform, BYOT group coaching.com. It's your all in one platform for our live calls for building out. Thank you. Thank you, Jordan. Appreciate it.