Vertical Integration, Palantir, and Pickleball | Tom Barnes | #28

Awesome. All right, Tom, thank you so much for coming on the podcast. I just start us off. I want to know why you wanted to involve Tesla within the design for pickleball paddle. It sounds like way to like a stance of over-engineering bars of pickle paddle go. So why'd you decide Tesla had to be involved? Man, it was a little bit more organic than that. I'd made a friend at Tesla, kind of on the sales side. And then for fun, I made a few hundred paddles that were like Tesla branded paddles and just sent to him to give away and give to his crew and stuff like that. He, I think you ran a few tournaments with them and giveaways and then I think go shortly after that, we're like, oh man, like what if we can make actually legit paddle and work with like Tesla on it and work with the design studio and then we could. And my, my thought was like, okay, that would be cool. Like what do we get in the store, which is like the Tesla lifestyle sort, which is something that if you don't know you go to shop to Tesla.com, they have all sorts of stuff. Like a lot of it's like like fun stuff like toys and crazy, crazy gimmicky stuff. And so therefore, like something like pickleball paddle, they Tesla could actually sell. So me practically was like, man, like, yeah, let's make a pickleball paddle. Well, it's actually like, you know, sell it to make us money off it. And I went from that to talking to them and a heavier over there who runs the design studio and he they're super into pickleball. Literally it was him. He told me him and Franz one home house and their lead designer was him and him that played so much pickleball. We're seeing like Franz injured himself like a stress injury. They loved pickleball over there at the studio. So yeah, it was an easy kind of in there. And then, yeah, we just kind of thought let's do this and then got some weird, we were trying to do a few things and got some real engineers involved and put one of them project managers on it and then came real product. Yeah, so it's more organic than like, hey, I'm going to reach out to cold called Tesla and see if they want to build a paddle with me because that's normally doesn't work, right. But so, yeah. Did you guys get a lot of response from it? Like, did you see a lot of people buying them and testing them? Dude, so can you scare forward a little bit? Yeah, I've said doing that. So I don't think I was supposed to divulge how many units and what the revenues were, but we launched the product. It was let's say like over a thousand paddles or close to it. And they sold out in like two hour about two hours was zero advertising zero prep zero warnings. They just sold out. And then we did we dropped like the next like big batch of paddles and they sold out in manner like in like I think like five I was told five minutes. So like we had people like 350 that's too much it's the most expensive pickable pedal in the market right now retail. And people like, you know 350 like that's insane but it's like sold out in five minutes and it was not 50 units so it's like I think we pressed it okay. And they're they were selling eBay for like 900 bucks 1200 bucks so it's like yeah yeah so that that was a big one is like the criticism of the price and but it's like it's cool came with a really cool back looks cool it's a one off it's a limited edition. And yeah, yeah, if it's if you don't like the price is not for you but apparently a lot of people did so you guys licensed it which is sweet. Yeah, yeah, what we did was we licensed like part of our technology and then they let they did the design and then we licensed our name and then they we technically licensed their name at the same time right. Okay, so it's like the cross licensing of both technology and brand and so that was fun. I didn't never expected to do that with a trillion dollar company. So yeah, what was your connection with them again because you said you sent them pickle wallpattles like just for fun. I had a friend, I had a friend who works at Tesla and he runs like a bunch of the stores and the kind of the western region. Okay, and yeah, and then I got him some paddles for fun and then it just kind of went from there and like I said talk to the design studio lead and then that's when we decided to make a product that sell through Tesla. So yeah, that makes us without the question. I don't want to be like redundant, but not you're good. Yeah, so what about coming out of the Marines and then going to work for soccer exports. How did that? How did you get that transition in? Yeah, so basically before I joined the Marine Corps, my brothers ran a business out of our basement or houses basement. It was airsoft business. Okay, mostly imported. So it was an import business largely and then kind of turned in to more focus on retail. And then that got sold and then right everyone that got sold. I joined the Marine Corps at 17 and then they my brothers and my dad started sell Kirk business while I was in the Marine Corps. Okay, but as soon as I got out of the Marine Corps, I like dropped to reserves, which is not active dude anymore. I started working in the company mainly is like a basic contractor figuring out how to build stuff because at the time we're basically only doing assembly, which is like part of manufacturing just putting parts together. Yeah, we weren't doing any like manufacturing really other than assembly except for like we're doing like what you call like subtracting manufacturing like machining and we weren't doing printing. So I basically bought the first CNC machine for us and then we learned how to run it and we started milling and routing our own paddles and then I bought like our first like industrial printer and we use that printer own paddles. So I'm kind of more on the manufacturing side. Okay, and then my dad ran like the assembly side, which we call and like that getting parts out the door. So what do you need to see and see machine for using a paddle? I assume it would be like plastic. Are you guys making aluminum paddles? So today there's two major uses for what you call generically called CNC machine. One is one of the types of technology the paddles they come in this four by eight sheet good think like a sheet of plywood or sheet of drywall. It's anywhere from a half inch to three quarter or three cents to three quarter inch thick and what we do is we got this this sheet and now we got to cut pickleball paddle out of it right. So we'll cut the profile of a shape of the pickleball paddle out of that four by a sheet and we'll get like 45 paddles out of these four by eight foot sheets. And it's a sheet of like carbon fiber. It gave you what the first material we started with was the deck material for a 737. So when you walk on a 737 that flats part you're walking on that is a sheet of either composite fiberglass or more commonly fiberglass in order generations or or carbon or carbon fiber or graphite. So in our case we had these fiberglass sheets and they were using the deck material that believe the 737 wants some commercial airline. So when you go walk on a plane that flat thing you're walking on it's a it's a strong substrate. It's a substrate of fiberglass composites or some other carbon composites or mixture and then there's these honeycomb cells which are like straws that hold it up and give a big void in the middle. Then there's another substrate of of like what what can be a rigid material which will likely be what's on the other side. Is that hard to do makes it really light and strong that makes sense. It's called a sandwich panel and we call it like an aerospace sandwich panel. Space sandwich panel. I don't think they don't call it that but that's what we call it because it's an aerospace aerospace derived. Okay is it easy to get is that I'm assuming Boeing has a manufacturer for it so you just reach out to the manufacturer was it there's some strings that's correct so Boeing doesn't manufacture directly we used to use. Gosh what was our first supply I don't remember where the first supplier is but yeah Boeing doesn't manufacture it themselves not directly so we just there's an aerospace supplier and these things are also these materials are going into other things right like so but mostly mostly airplanes and. And like the boring stuff like flat deck material so nothing it's not fusilage it's not really part of the airframe it's just to give you flat surface and hold the seats in. But yeah we reached out to one of those suppliers is actually a local one they're they're in the at the quarterly airport the right out there that so I'm like it on the name but. Don't need to spot him we don't use him anymore so but yeah what do you guys use now. So now we use a similar a more high performance version of that from a different supplier and then we and then the other so that's like the main use is this for bite she could. Cut it out into profile and that's what we call like use that that's routing these machines that they just route out there to the simple. Same thing you'd use make cabinets for instance so it's a lot like a beefy woodworking machine the other major reason to use a CNC milling machines are CNC machines general for milling machines is tool making. So tool making can be anything from you think tools you're thinking you jump in like over inches and stuff like that in our case tools are like things like molds right so we're using we're doing composites molding. We're mostly working with we call pre prep composites fabric so pre impregnated which means it's pre impregnated with the adhesive which is the which in our case is generally an epoxy so glue. And that comes they have to be refrigerated so we get these refrigerated are frozen rolls of this epoxy pre impregnated normally carbon fiber material it's a it's straight strands we call it you need directional and you take these straight strands in a fabric and then you take another sheet of straight strands and put it 90 degree and then normally we'll take one more sheet and that's our that's our three layer. Unidirectional composite and then throughout all that there's basically like not melted but impregnated through all that dry fiber being pregnant epoxy and then you take all that up it goes through something called hot melt machine or I forget the other term but normally through hot melt machine rolls up into a big roll have to keep it cold because basically deals epoxy. are heat activated as easy as you think about it and big rolls have to be refrigerated and then they show up and we put them in a big big like walking freezer or a big box freezer and then that's what we normally work with and then what we do is now okay we have this fabric it's literally fabric think textiles think clothes now we have to take that fabric and turn it into a shape like normally in for our case a relatively complex shape because we're not just doing flat pieces and what we'll do is we'll use a milling machine to take a block of aluminum or preferably tool steel which is a very hard steel that doesn't shrink or expand too much so low coefficient of thermal expansion and we'll now mill out of that use a CNC machine to mill out of that the negative profile of pad right so I think like a like a you know ice mold right so we need to make a Cuba ice it looks like this so we need to you know mill out the negative of that like what that shape is and now we can take that we we cut out a swatch of that of that pre-prank composite and then we lay that into there and then we kind of trim it to make sure it fits the profile and then we shove it into the tool and then we have another tool that's normally like a reverse side of that tool and then we do the same thing we pack it with material we'll pack it with the core material we'll put all these little strips and all these reinforcements and different kind of thumbs in our case or our honeycomb core and then we'll put those two halves together and then we'll put it into a press to not only squeeze it but also to heat it up so we have this these press are called a platinum press and it's a press that can apply hundreds of the man tens of thousands of tons of force and so not only to close the tool and keep it close and flat but also to heat it up because it has all these these these heating elements through the through the plate so that's a two made man has a really long explanation but those are the two major is like we get these four bay sheets that get cut down to profile yeah a lot like woodworking and the otherwise we use like a more advanced aerospace style more traditional mold it using tools or molds to make those house those are called in our industry we generally call those thermo formed it don't like that terminology because most most paddles are thermo use heat to form but and then the other technology is like a cold press technology or we call it maybe like a genuine technology and how many employees do you guys have right now about 200 yeah okay yeah so how do you take this now you're when you switch materials you have to figure out how to make a process so that you can teach that to other people so other people can help make that for you how were you involved in that process what was I like for you guys yeah so I run I run R&D and like a portion of the manufacturing so that is that's our does a key process so in that case I was kind of a seven more like a knowledge transfer kind of question but also we have to I hired a like an aerospace guy who's a who's a born guy triple seven project is what he worked on and we brought him in to like for us fundamentally understand deposits right yeah and like the truth is let's say the traditional like the stuff that everyone is using and everyone is mostly using today and and we have to make them make parts that are that are different than what go on airplane and that's that's tricky because if a few screws up his job in his old job you know 150 people follow the sky so therefore an aerospace it's it's common they grossly overbuilt and make everything really redundant really overbuilt and then as they improve that airframe they figure out where they can take out weight mass and improve the design right and make it more efficient early on that they're in the aerospace though innovation can can have any deaths so therefore innovation and aerospace is really slow because there's zero zero deaths are acceptable so therefore they cannot they move really slow techniques are old very tribal knowledge e which is surprising to me given its aerospace unless you're in military programs is a whole different thing because therefore in military programs zero death is acceptable because having better weapons is more important than losing a few test pilots at the end of the day which is sad but it's it's it's pragmatic but in like commercial aerospace like you can't have any margin for error so like working with him the hard thing is like early on was hey we can't overbuilt this and we have to move that because pickle balls really fast so therefore we had to figure out new techniques for making paddles efficient and effectively and also not taking like a year to do that right so we we got that we had this aerospace guy who's amazing that that really brought us our game but then we realized a point like we're at a point today where aerospace materials and aerospace techniques aren't sufficient for what we're trying to achieve uh not that like we your paddles more advanced not that it's just not those material sets they'll work for aerospace they're always work for aerospace uh they're they're space doing crazy stuff but like we can't do like advanced aerospace because it's too expensive like the materials will cost more than we could ever possibly sell it for okay and they're really hard to work like ten times harder work we're working today so we have to find like now the next problem is like the material science problem we have is getting a material that's outperforms all of our normal aerospace stuff in almost every regard workability cost you know adaptability all those things and you know be able to do that quickly and we that thing has to exist we can't necessarily like invent a brand new plastic right so that that's what kind of where we're going next like you're talking like techniques like moving on to the next technique now our big next thing is like we have to find new materials and new materials and we did that with foam we uh us and one other company popular as is working hard to popularize use of foam which is foam plastic in in paddles and um that's like the big next generation of going both foam rather than using the honeycomb cell right I'm curious um how you when I think of like an effective network I want to be able to call someone and pull an expert into something like a project that I'm doing and what you've done with Tesla and this Boeing guy that you brought into work on your main factory that's that an exact that's a great example and effective network how did you kind of build that cultivate it um it was this Boeing guy that you brought in was that a cold email or do you know him as well no he came in he came in cold it was just a job listing I put out a detailed job listing for what I called an advanced composite engineer okay so like indeed no we we have a like an internal kind of head hunting team so we have an internal hiring team more than just throwing it on like for us like we need we have a higher performance team we need high performance individuals um we uh it's really hard to find those people organically and through like just putting out a monster com whatever if that's the thing and uh are like LinkedIn because so we will put out detailed job listings that are very specific and there's busy two things like either you have to get a lot of you put something out a lot broader either like it's a larger space larger industry more candidates and brought in now process a thousand candidates right or on the flip side that's one like major problem there is in recruiting for us and any company really is like oh man like customer service rep like there you can there's a million people in the Northwest I can do that job so it's like how do we find ours and and then the other side of the other problem in that side in recruiting is I need to find this like guy that I don't know if it exists like this advanced composite engineer that will come work for me because this guy should be working at Boeing Sky should be working at Boeing or Raytheon or wherever wherever else right so like why would he come work for pickleball so I had to get one of those guys to work for us be able to afford it and also get my use out of that expensive engineer right because the composites engineers aren't cheap getting a Boeing being a tenured Boeing engineers not cheap we had to be able to justify that and get our use out of that right in the short period of time what did your headhunting team do like how does how does that work all man scrolling on LinkedIn until their connections are like oh yeah that like guy looks cool like there's a really great book that I'll recommend that's how we based our recruiting on it but I gotta I can add as a reference later but I gotta pull it up I don't remember I'll go ahead I pulled up pull it up find it yeah that's exactly what we want out of these things I got a book recommendation from the last episode we love those and this one this guy is very extremely data driven and he he runs some sort of man don't quote me on this but he runs some sort of firm I don't think it's a PE firm but it's something like that and his his approach recruiting is insane and he wrote a book he did Ted talk about how they recruit and it's it's it's very non-conventional it's not like it's insane it's not like backwards and but it's it's very non-conventional but it's extremely extremely data-driven very test driven okay evidence based recruit is the book is the book by Adi Taki okay okay TTI oh Adi Tarky that's good we could here it is but how did you hire for the high-performance hiring team oh so oh man so we we at the time we he's no longer with us but we hired a guy who was the he was like an ex do you know like Foxcon I dug China a apple apples Foxcon Foxcon is the manufacturing company for Apple it's okay who actually makes all the apples got you so he was if I remember correctly he was like responsible for building that team out there for Apple and he built some like the Google Mexico team or something like that so we don't always like the Fortune 500 types like the high-speed Fortune 500 types a lot of times they can be overpaid and then under leverage but he he was really great we brought him in a mix of like what he knew and the people he was able to bring in the skills he will bring in and us applying like a non Fortune 500 approach like an agile approach right okay because A good example of why to be careful about Fortune 500 types, like thing developer. You get some guy from Facebook, and he's a dev, and we did this, we made this mistake once. You bring him in, you got to pay him obscene amount of money, and he doesn't get anything done. All he wants to do is build controls, and 20, 50 different controls to bring anything to production. And that's what he wants to do is put in controls, and he doesn't actually build stuff. So we had a big problem where like a lot of the high paid, like, "Oh, let's get this guy from over here. Let's get this guy. It's just really cool resume. You bring him in, and they want to rebuild their previous company. They want to rebuild exactly how they had it before, and it's very hard to find people like that that are agile and open-minded enough to be like, "Oh, what does this company need?" Okay, this is a much smaller scale, so I can't build an environment that we use that Apple, because if we built that here, we'd go bankrupt trying to build the HR team, right? So it's like, you have to be very specific, and it's very hard to bring in people that are, it's the same thing with Boeing engineers. It's hard to bring in somebody who's used to all this structure, all these controls, and a high risk environment, high risk of Boeing, you screw that up. Billions, even trillions of dollars, and people die. Apple, Billions, and trillions of dollars, it'd be really screwed up, right? So it's like, we high, high impact jobs. So it would be appropriate to say that you guys want someone that can increase the, I say like failure circle, like speed. Like try something, fail, iterate, try something, iterate. You want someone that can do that fairly quickly. Yeah, so that's the key. So there's a lot of themes you hear in entrepreneurship and buzzwords and stuff, and like fail fast is one, right? It was funny, there was something, I don't want to take too many sides, because that's all this podcast will be, but I was listening to a podcast, there was some entrepreneurship podcast, much like this. And the guy who went on there, he was bragging, the theme was felt fast, and he was bragging how he just put a snops on, he was bragging how he ran the first seven companies he had into the ground. Like the first seven companies had when bankrupting, he was bragging about it. That's weird, right? And it was all other people's money, they're all VC funded, endeavor. So it's like, dude, it's like, that's freaking stupid. That's not, that's not failing fast to get, and it's like his eighth company work, but it's like, dude, like you throw enough darts to the darkboard, you're going to hit center sometime, and how many millions of dollars did you have other people's money to use on the route there? So like my thing is like, yeah, don't be afraid to fail, but also when you fail, you need to like look at that and learn from that and then not do that again. Because like, don't be afraid to fail, but if I see you failing and failing and failing and failing, then it's like, dude, like, eight, get some help, like talk to somebody, talk to me, talk to left, look, look right, get some help on this. But if I see people like, aren't afraid to fail, and then they constantly fail, and they fail, and it's like, okay, that's a dude. But if it's someone like, oh, I failed, oh, here's why, let me not do that again, and move on adaptability, then that's like super good. Like, yeah, like agility to put it plainly, agility is like, that's another buzzword, right? Like, what does that mean? Like, move fast. If you move too fast, it's confusing, and everything breaks down, it turns into chaos. But like, the ability to adapt and pivot, and change your paradigm on things, like change the way you think, change the way you see things. And then when you do have failures, like learn from those quickly, overcome that further quickly, and then move on, and then execute, right? Either abandon that project, or figure out how to get the project to work, versus like, people like that, people, adverse failure, say aerospace, versus failure. People never can do, they have to fall the script, you know, they're still using the same engine, those, all the planes, they're still using the same engines from the 80s that are just, that are just optimized. So they're not, they're not putting out crazy new technology, you know, the few slages, the most of the approaches, they're super advanced, don't get me wrong. Like aerospace, insane industry, right? Trilling dollar industry, obviously what they're doing is incredible. But like, they can't, they cannot move fast. They're super slow, they're super, it's like the incumbent problem, right? Like incumbents and monopolies can move slow and be dominant. But like, it's really hard to, and it's really hard to, you know, how you get them build the next volume, like, good luck, right? Like, you have to have, like, Elon level lock and money, like, you know, be able to make that happen. So, um, it's the adaptability you're talking about, like, do you see it as being more of a personality straight when you're hiring? Or is that something that you're actually training these people to do? Like a Boeing engineer you're saying is, like, did he come in and you're like, wow, I see, you know, some aspects of that, I can teach him more and kind of encourage him in that direction, or is it kind of like, oh, he kind of already has that. Let's hire it. No, I see that's kind of two separate, that's two separate traits, like one is like, let's say you got a, so you got a young guy who doesn't know anything. He's a fresh graduate or no, no trade specific knowledge in what you want to do. But he's like a go getter, we call him entrepreneurs like he's entrepreneurial, he can figure stuff out. He's super autonomous, super clever, super clever in that way. And then you got another, another set of the problem, which is like skill knowledge had like skill from a failure and training and whatever else experience experience. You got experience and then you have like, let's just say personality to put it vaguely. You kind of have to have both, right? In my case, like the Boeing engineer, what am I hiring for? I'm hiring for highly technical skill. I'm looking for knowledge transfer. So I care way more about experience here. And he doesn't, but he doesn't have to be like a hot shot go getter, like wants to take over the world in five years kind of guy, right? And in that case, he wasn't, which was fine. He was extremely skilled, but he didn't want to take over the world. And that's fine. I don't need both in every person. But like if I'm doing something new, like we have to do this new project, no amount of experience will really help here. We just have to get it done or just any my general hires. I generally want that personality of like the go getter to say, but if you can get it's really hard to find both because generally older people are not go getters generally speaking like on an average. And then younger people generally are go getters, but they don't have much experience, right? So it's really hard to find both. And most of the ways I find both through my hires is encore careers, like guys that have a lot of experience, but they wanted the last job was boring and they want to do something fun. And I get them into a fun job that's fun to them. And then they just they go hard like a military guys to like we have a lot of we have a lot of like 20 year vets that are just like what they did was maybe fun, but it's like it's military hard. A lot of times it's boring, especially when you get there in the ranks. And they're now they get to be done with all of that, let's say paperwork and all of this structure and all you know all the formalities and now they get to like working a pickleball company and get to stay at home with their kids and stuff like that, you know, on the weekends. And then I have to travel the world. We have a lot of those guys are like crazy crazy go getter. So like encore career guys and then young young smart guys like as our he hired. How do you make it a fun place to work to attract those people? It's a good question. We have a bit of an advantage because we're in sporting goods and we're play. We can play pickleball for work like that. That's a big advantage to be fair test paddling lunch break. Yeah. This is how my mind works. I couldn't I couldn't do this kind of company in any respect. Like if we were an actual real firm, you know, like actual are insurance. It's like the guys who set the odds. Like it's like the guys who figure out like what is your risk, you know, how much what's the risk, what's risk management. It's when it's like, you know, it's it's the guys behind insurance. It sets the rates. Like what is a risk here is all number crunching. It's probably the most exact math max guy might enjoy it more, but it's like the most exacting and my way my brain works boring, possible job is being actual. Your whole job is completely data-driven assessing risk by the numbers. And it's it's it's not so that if you run an entire company was you're an actual real firm, that would be really hard to make fun. Like I don't know how to do that unless you got guys who love crunching numbers, which exists, but in a way that's very like objective base. But in our case, we're advanced because we're sporting goods. Can you skip forward again? Oh gosh. Yeah, keep it right. You need to sing to follow me. But man, yeah, so that's an advantage. And then I don't know like we just have good people, good personalities. One thing that happens like back on the personality side, when we have go getters, go getters that end up being high achievers, they're go getters, they want to go after it, we, we equip them in a way to get after it. Like we give them the resources they need. We put them in the position to succeed. We can make it clearer than what they need to get done. And like what we're trying to do here. And we try to hire the person we think can actually make it happen. So we start out as a go getter to get it and then become high achievers, really high output individuals. And then. And we have a lot of those. So it's interesting when you have a culture of go getters that become high achievers. And then basically they're like there's no ceiling on what you can get done. You know, we like the way to go principle. If you, if you make us a bunch of money, you save us a bunch of money. We're going to pay you a bunch of money. So we try to get weight and gold people. It's hard to some, some areas are hard to weight and gold because you don't know how much to actually it's like IT. Like how do you weight and gold IT? Like it's really hard. But like, like my guys prock development, project managers, sales, like that stuff is sales is a traditional example. It's really easy to figure out how much these guys help us and how much better they are than the guy next to them. But also when you have a bunch of high achievers, there's a study done this. I can't remember off top of my head. But if you have a room full of high achievers and then you have like the 10th guy is not like he's just like an app not bad. He's like a normal guy normal output. What you would expect from a normal company doing normal things and just totally average guy average output. Now he also looks bad. And he he likes sticks out like he's doing a good job, but he sticks out because all these guys are doing an amazing job. So like a big part of this evidence based recruiting goes into this is like you're looking for like the great candidate not a good candidate, but it's like 10 times harder to get to that great candidate. And I see. think when we get so many high achievers in one space and if we get really, really lucky we'll have an entire department full high achievers, which I personally think is like my RD department. I think that's the department of like eight people that's entirely comprised of high achievers. And then there's a few guys in there that are skill-based hires that I need them like good. The guys who keep the ship steady, who run the infrastructure stuff, that's a different question, but also the rest of my team and some of those guys are high achievers too, but the rest of my team are just like go getters. Like again, after, for instance, our lead product designer, I hired him from a being a FedEx driver. And now he is with, he didn't go to, I think he only graduated high school, definitely didn't go to college. And now he's like the most incredible paddle engineer. He is the best paddle engineer in the entire industry and therefore an amazing composite engineer. And he's used a FedEx driver. So it's like we're able to take a guy like him, who's a go getter? And he became a high achiever. And he really loves his job, all the people around them, all the other high achievers like their jobs. And we're able to compensate them accordingly. And that's like the boring way to say it's fun. And then I don't really know, I don't really know, like the vibe is there, but I can't really give you a good culture as hard. Like if anyone, if you ever read a book like here's how you build your company's culture, most of it's full of crap. But I like it just like being a good employer and not being a jerk and being reasonable. I'm very pragmatic. I'm very, I'm laid back in a lot of ways like I only get into stuff that matters like I'm not a micro manager. And then all the people in my team are very toned. So do what you want, do what you think's best. I gave you the tools. You know what needs to get done. I know you're going to what you do. So I'm not worried about it. I just go get it done. And therefore they get it done. They achieve it. Achievement brings, most people brings satisfaction. And because they achieve it, they get compensated for it. They recognize for it. Their product goes out on the market. They get to see that product or that or that tool be used in people's hands. And they see that that brings a lot of joy. So like yeah. So yeah. So it's it's pretty tangible. But again, I think I have a huge advantage because we're in support of this. But I don't, I don't know how to build that in a company. I don't think there's a generic rule for that. But as far as from the employer side, like you're going to be a boss or just have anybody that works for you in contractors, like just don't be a jerk. Pay them appropriately. Don't lie. Like be honest. Be pragmatic. Just be be transparent. And like, oh my gosh, like you're life will be so much. Because that's where you like get respect. The thing military, right? Like as in the Marine Corps, Marine Corps is pretty hardcore. They're guys that don't deserve respect, but they want it. So like, there's a guy who I didn't respect and he knew it and he kicked me in the back. But he was high ranked in me. I couldn't do anything about it. Oh my god. So it's like, well, so that's how he's trying to respect is like the hurt guys, right? And then bringing it out on my other, my, my CEO, let's say, and he was just awesome, awesome Marine, awesome, good guy, awesome dad, and like, like a mentor to me. And like that guy commanded respect, but he never asked for it, right? So like, that kind of thing, like respect, and guarding that, earning that and not forcing that, and just being a pretty good employer and not being a psycho, like, brings a ton of jobs satisfaction. Because when you're when you're a boss of the people you're working with aren't psychos or crazy or like delusional, it helps a lot. So when I ever see the friends, it's like, I hate like, you know, like the normal like office. Oh, like I just never worked. You guys don't look like you've worked corporate yet, but like the normal like office scuttle button gossip and office drama like think, think, think the show of the office, like that kind of stuff. Yeah. Like that kind of stuff, dude. If I see the pranks and stuff aside, right? You can do pranks if everyone's on the same page, but like if you do that kind of stuff like that gossip and that just that trash that the toxic environment, if I see somebody for that, I'll, well, if I if I can leave, if I can legally get away with it, I'll fire like if they're talking behind people's back, talking bad about people and like like creating a toxic environment, I don't care how valuable you are. I'm going to get ready yet. In fact, like I fired a guy not that long ago for just like saying, saying one thing to you, saying one thing to you being two-faced and trying to create drama for no reason. And it's that that that kills culture more than anything is toxic people. But if you see someone's like talks, you got to get rid of them and doing that and being it's like a good boss, like I think that alone is like maybe two principle. Like from the limited amount of experience I have in this is the two principles for like having a what was it a happy work environment? What was the question? Dude, I have ADHD. I go down, I'll go down weird paths. We go like a bell or something. I don't know what like the gauges podcast is, so I don't know what your audience is, but other than entrepreneurial, generically. Yeah. But yeah, sorry. I'm wired on the state stuff. Was there anything that you pulled from being in the Marines you apply to your job now? Oh yeah, man. What's like the biggest one? A leadership. And I might even claim to be like an amazing leader, but just like back to like that, that that that that that in that case, the gunnery sergeant that kicked me in the back that I don't respect and the COI do respect and I understood the differences. Like that was a huge thing for me. Like how do you how do you be how do you be respectful? How do you earn respect? And you don't ask for it. How do you be a good leader? You know, be a good boss basically. And and then just like and it gave me a lot of traits like I know what it is like. And I had a relatively easy job in Marine Corps. It was field combat unit, but I never got shot at. So I didn't use the job in Marine Corps. Well, versus a lot of guys I I knew there. Can you can you fill us out on your MOS is plural? I don't know if you changed MOS or something, but yeah. So MOS is military occupational specialty. It's your job and in the in the case of Marine Corps, other branches call it different things in some cases. But my job was of radio technician ground electronics technician repairman. And basically it's a glorified radio operator that knows how to fix a bunch of stuff. So I'm a guy who can run radios, but more importantly I can fix it all the way down to the circuit board level. And well, I can diagnose it all the way down the circuit board level, but fixing stuff electrically in the field with sensitive systems like as well as like firmware and software and handling cryptography. And no, this yeah, software stuff. Yeah, but that most of the time it's like, you know, uninstall it. Yeah, normal IT stuff. But no, so like, but I was I'm very good at jerking stuff. So my functional job in the Marine Corps is fixing everything that turned on and fixing I was in tanks. So I'm one A1, A2 Abrams or kind of my baby. I love those things. And so I have my job is fixing things. Yeah, and managing like the so being a also comms chief, which is like your role, but not your job. And that is like running the whole plan and all the systems and the cryptography for the field. So the most important thing on about well, other than the weaponry and the people, the third most important thing is communication, like being able to so you need the people to run the guns, you need the guns to be working and then you need to be able to communicate. So like for me, this is saying at the plan, so that we, everyone can communicate to each other because we can't communicate to each other. People die. And especially something somebody shoot at you. A lot of people will die. If you can't talk to the guy next to you, you can't talk to the tank next to you. And then the next one is now you're talking and you got to talk to you got to talk to airplanes, you know, to drop bombs or give you information. Yeah, you got to talk to these the Spanish crew you're working with over there. I ran some NATO operations. So we worked with like we did a bunch of working with like five six other countries to do an exercise that was as if Russia was invaded a lot via that case. So like being able to communicate to everyone in the air, ground sea, and and 90% of that job is you have to communicate in training. It's can you kids stay safe? Because if there's a guy walks on the range and you can't tell the guy on the machine gonna stop shooting that guy's gonna get that guy. So yeah, so it's communication basically what I did. So including like a range safety officer, that kind of stuff, like keeping the range safe by keeping track everybody. And you say you joined at 17 so before you graduated high school or so I was homeschool. I functionally like never graduate. Home school to Nido. And yeah, I don't know like make it sound bad on my parents, but like I was I was the last child and they kind of forgot about me. And they didn't make me like my dad didn't make me do my homework. He just you knew I was like you knew I was like smart because I could build stuff in my fixed stuff and stuff like that. So he didn't worry about me. Yeah, I mean he knew as good as math and stuff. And so I basically was I've been like in to put it. I this is the I've been auto didactic since I was probably like 14 or 15 almost entirely a self-taught. Oh, okay. So I prefer to self-teach based on problems versus curriculum. I don't like cricket. He's writing that down right now. I do the logical. I don't like it. Curriculum in like since I was like 15 like for real. I don't do curriculum. I go off to a problem. And I again, I pretty I pretty I knew you get I need to get it with that. I'm pretty sure I was a great HD to the problem side that that helps me a lot. I can't read a book, but I can reference stuff and figure out how to fix stuff via book, right? So like I couldn't go like page one two three four five. Yeah, I can't do curriculum. So yeah. You mentioned low leverage employees earlier. How do you make sure that you stay high leverage? By making sure my employees are high leverage like what about like day to day? Like for your tasks and what you do for R&D. Yeah. And like in your personal life. So so basically it used to be where I would do the work. I would invent the things. I would develop the product. I would I would run the machines and fix the machines and like do the work. And as we scale up, we went from no employees to now 200 employees that shifted entirely to where I don't do any of the work. Like I actually told this to my team the other day. that actually this is like a new kind of thing for me, is like going forward. I'm not gonna be really working in the business. I'm gonna be working on the business. I'm not gonna be working in the system. I'm gonna be working on the system. So what I'm doing now almost entirely, actually if I study anything, it's been business theory lately. Like I love like MIT. MIT Sloan School of Business is awesome. Like look at some of the stuff they teach you. I've gone to three or four classes there out in Boston. It's awesome what Sloan teaches when it comes to, but I basically like focusing on all the people that are under me, which it's now have a much, I have a small team. So like direct reports. So it's easy, but like let's say 12 direct reports. And I'm focusing on like, do you have what you need? What's work? I've honed in on frustrations. Like what do you, what do you work on day to day? What takes up your time? What frustrates you? What do you feel like you're doing all day? How much work are you actually able to do on X and X? And I'm looking at that. I'm just looking for things around them and they're like, oh, this guy's really important to me. I really, and or expensive to run day to day, like a high paid attorney or engineer. And also, I need to like wrap people or systems around him to make him more efficient at the things he's good at. So for instance, my best product developer, he's really good at CAD, but it takes time. CAD takes time doing those drawing. So like, I'm going to hire him a guy that just does CAD for him. So it's going to save him time doing CAD and that. Oh, and like, oh, project management. You spend a lot of time project management. You're not a project manager. It's not what you're good at. It's not what I'm good at. Let's hand off all the project management of all your, your independent projects to a different team. And then now they're going to project manage your project. So you can focus on working on the technical. Because I was talking to him like, let's say like, let's say six months ago, his entire job is building better pickable paths. Put it plainly. His entire job is building better pickable paths. I'm innovative. Maybe cheaper to make more reliable higher quality. And I like, how much time do you, how much time do you spend solving problem that are solely around building better pickable paths? And he's like 20% of the time. That's his entire job. It's because project management, it's emails, it's all this, it's CAD drawings, all that stuff. Like he has the idea that he's a genius. He's got the idea in his head. Now, it takes him so long to put on paper because CAD is hard and it's time to study. And he's not a 20 year CAD vet, right? So he can't, he can't do those, those computer designs super, super fast. So like, oh, let me wrap around a, you know, let me wrap around a college intern for the cost me 30 grand a year if that. And our part time kid guy and his entire job is doing drawings for him. Oh my gosh, now that just that 20, 30 grand and doing that immediately will make the company hundreds of thousands of dollars more, right? Like to put it plainly. So it's like a little stuff like that is super, super important. So that's what I focus in on now is like, looking around like what's not working, what's not working, more boring stuff process. Like we do our own software development. We build our entire company on Palantir. So our company's Palantir driven. - Really? - Yeah, we have a whole, we have a two development teams here in Anastonia that we built just to self dev Palantir. - So why is that? - It's a pickle ball paddle platform stick. Like it just, basically, - Of course it is, yeah. - It's really cool as Palantir. - It allows us to get, so for instance, what we did was us not really knowing the platform, myself, my brother and our perspective dev team went out to Palo Alto to one of their main facilities to do a training they call them boot camp. - Yeah. - And it's like a dev camp, right? Like it's like a one day dev camp. And we built stuff, we built multiple products and that one day that would have taken us months on any other product. - Wow. - We built stuff in a day that would have taken us like so long to self-develop. And at the time we were looking at, like, doing like really expensive ERP tools. Like, if you know what, - Yeah. - So I don't want to get into ERP. But, and we're gonna go with SAP. And that would have been a million dollar implementation and usually just start through the company. Instead, we built a huge dev team and we started paying for Palantir and we saved a bunch of money and we actually self-developed Palantir. I don't recommend Palantir for everyone. Like, it is amazing platform super cool, really high speed, extremely innovative with the ontology and how that, what that does to data and metadata. But, if you, like, you have to build a team around it so it's not something you can just outsource. But man, like, very clean, greeting Palantir under your stack before it's too late. For us was the, like, absolutely the right positions. - Fantastic. As a company with a 200 people head count, I find that kind of interesting. 'Cause you see, you hear a lot about the big players using Palantir, especially the Fed, of course, but that's crazy, I mean. - As far as I'm aware, we're by far the smallest non-defense company that's using Palantir. - Props, that's a full title that I have. - Yeah. - And there's a lot of small defense companies, like real like firm of 15 engineers that, you know, probably do, like, billions of dollars a year kind of stuff, right? 'Cause it's there's the same niches. But, like, I believe, like, Wendy's uses Palantir now, but only for pieces, but our whole company is on Palantir. Like, that is our back, which is really fun. - I was about to ask, yeah. So, what does Palantir actually, 'cause this is a great question. What does Palantir actually do? Is it just the backend processing, or is it like, and you guys are developing the front end yourself and essentially, like, you know, molding it into what you need, like, it's piece, you know, they're the clay and you're kind of molding it, or. - Yeah, so Palantir originally was developed to handle data. Like, it was, it's 100% backend. We're actually literally test-piling with them, run in uses for Palantir. So, it's not really a thing yet. Like, run in customer-facing uses for Palantir, is not something Palantir really knows, or is really comfortable with. Like, literally, they're not comfortable with a lot of the applications. I was like, opening up a Palantir in a direct interface to a customer, right? And I don't know how much of that, they're worried about pen testing, or kind of the adversarial stuff. But that's a very new, so it's absolutely the backend. And primarily with the data, and therefore the ontology structure of the data, it's the ability to associate data, bring data together, associate data sets, or ontological objects to other ontological offices, do that in a way that doesn't make this absurd, standard, a database theory database, right? And so, yeah, the data is the key of it. How the data relates to each other is the other key of it. And combining that with a platform that's extremely easy to develop on, even for someone like me who's a non-developer. I don't develop, I don't build much stuff, but it's more for fun, or like I'm tweaking stuff. But those three things, like the ability to handle, and store, and reference, and associate data to other things, and with that ontology that gives you all that metadata, and the way you can add actions and edits, and writebacks all into the object is really cool, and it's super easy to develop on. At least when you're properly trained, which we put a lot of effort into building a team of talentarian, which is so. But the timing for us was perfect. We were just big enough that we could afford to do this, and we were just small enough to where it wouldn't devastate our company by building a new backend. So if you're an incumbent company, it's very intimidating to rip out your old system and put in a new one, every huge company, good luck. Like all the Wendy's, the Panasonic's, they're all using, it's an add-on to their existing infrastructure. They're probably on SAP, and they have a, they're doing something with data that ontology's really good at, and that's it. - And legacy systems. - Which would just cannot remove exactly. So we were really lucky to hit that window, and we've hit that window a lot with a lot of things, like not too big, not too big enough we could afford it, and it's not going to bankrupt us, and not so big that it's, we're doing things that are irreversible or disrupted, right? - So, did you can throw some at me when I can't? - You're good. We have, so we are coming up on time. I, we have a few more questions for you. I'm seeing a pattern here between you guys, decided to use a Palantir system, and being the smallest non-defense company to do so. Your opinion's on hiring, and then as well, how to like maximize your high performers, and making them more high leverage, and that would be otherwise. Would you like making those decisions, and finding those pathways, would you call that, like First Principles Thinking, or is there a strategy they use for that? 'Cause the pattern is strong and it's effective. - First Principle, and we were doing First Principles before we had heard of that before, like 'cause I brought, I think if you heard a few analogies to me bring this up, it was like, oh, bring in the Fortune 500 guy, bring in the Boeing guy. It's like, okay, great, yeah, you did that for airplanes, but the same airplane. - So you have to rethink, you have to approach it from with a First Principles approach, a blank slate approach, and see if what you're doing makes sense. However, another con First Principles though, is a lot of people overuse First Principles. They re-try to reinvent the wheel, they try to reinvent the mouse trap. The example I use with First Principles is like, you're walking down the road, and you're walking down the street, and your shoe comes in tight. What do you do? You lean down, you tie your shoe for five minutes. If you're being extra safe, you put it double-notted, and you carry on with your day. Now, if you applied First Principles thinking to that problem, you're made, this is a foundational product, and then you go two years down the road, and you're trying to run an innovative shoelace company, right? So it's like, now you've got those back to the future shoes that auto lace, right? You end up with a way to over-engineered solution. So you have to apply First Principles to major, major problems. You know like the Eisenhower chart? - No. - So it's a way to classify things like, think of it to do list, it's a matrix. - Prioritization? - Yeah. - It's urgent, important, sorry. Urgent, not urgent, important, not important. So like when you have things that classify in the matrix, as urgent as important, like that's a big thing you gotta like knock out. So you probably can't take, it's important, so you gotta get it done, and you probably can't take First Principles approach to it because you gotta get done facts, right? So then maybe you can come back to it later, make a V2 and apply First Principles, that do it. So key with this is like when it's important but not urgent, that's when you can kind of like take that step back and apply first principles approach. Now, I'm kind of like over generalizing because it could be a simple problem that with a first principle solution that you can be implementing five minutes. Generally, we're talking like first principles approaches that matter. It's taking it's taking it's a high effort project. That's where you really see it. Like for us, like we are taking a different approach for manufacturing and logistics and production to predict what products we need to build and when and we call it to be in play. That is for us a first principles rebuild and that's very high effort but it'd be very we think it's very high reward. So where we can predict, it's actually not prediction but we can we can figure out what we need to build ahead of time much more effectively than we could with any existing off the shelf model because it's built for us around our environment. Another thing are shipping or maybe they're because our retail shipping. We looked at a model that was Bayzos's model that he actually I believe self developed that's called pick and pass and that's how all of the that's the model for picking products to ship out that Jeff Bayzos uses it's using every brand warehouse and obviously if Amazon's using it's probably good right for for logistics, it's arguably the best. So they use something called pick and pass which is the cutting edge logistics, the cutting edge and shipping and we we decided to take it a step further and we built something called pick and pack. So where we built these custom we use Pound tier to do the back end we built these custom cells where everything around the shipper is within arms reach or one step away and it goes from the order pulls up and Pound tier and the label prints and it shows just very briefly what the person needs to what the person needs to pick like take off the shelves the pack and then and then it'll also suggest them the box size and which is an Amazon thing that's that's existing and all I have to do is grab it like one step put in the box labels right there tape it up and they're done. So literally we can like we can from from no having the order like available to pick to it being packed and labeled within within second right so that's for us is like oh that was a first principles thing Amazon can't do that because I can't have 1500 of these horse of these cells it would take up too much space but we can do that and so we're going to do that and we don't want to employ advanced robotics to do this like oh no not so if Amazon doesn't are bad we don't have to apply super cutting edge like logistics approaches and also we've like slated we first principled our our shipping approach and all our business strategy or product strategy a lot of that stuff have to do a high effort first principles rebuild and then the first principle stuff is easy should come naturally like you shouldn't have to think about right I have a formula on my laptop here I asked GBT about this it's you want deconstruct isolate test repeat that as many times you need to and then de-risk before implementation would you add anything to that I that a very wordy that that one's that I think I like I'm not wordy isn't bad I like this is a paraphrase but I like I think these are like these are I think pretty sure these are from you on roughly is make the requirements less dumb like what are you trying to do like what are you trying to do here don't if you if you need to take if you need to do x don't do x and y don't do x and z if you need it to be 80% don't do 100% don't do 95% do it exactly where it's been so make the requirement like make what you think needs to happen less dumb make it more simple so you simplify um the next step is to let's say like this is paraphrasing this is off top of my head so this isn't from anything other than probably amalgamation of things for me like it's a simplified make requirements less dumb um and then the next step is just the prototype just to test it make something super let's say uh coding uh uh programmers would say minimum deliverable minimum deliverable product yeah so so it's a minimum viable product yes make an MVP make an MVP test prototype and then um and then yeah I guess if the prototype is good I would I would um optimize learn up make make it better make it work well or deploy it then optimize right so in the minimum viable deploy it make sure it works so verify let's say verify then optimize and this might be this might end up being your list just and then um yeah and then from there like automate yeah if you can automate it's good if it makes it automated practical uh AJ do you have a final question uh shoot put me on the spot I did um I want to like a little board maybe oh yeah that's a good one um okay so say you had the opportunity for free to put a a brace on a billboard like downtown Seattle New York anywhere you know NYC Times Square you're sitting there and you got those giant screens you can put anything you want in there five million people are gonna see it's gonna stay there for a whole day what do you put up there oh jeez this is a hard one yeah the business related anything oh man it's a person dude that's a hard one it's difficult the general sense of inspiration as a construct for your decision yeah I don't really like that's a big question uh uncertain things I'm so a lot of things I can make a quick reaction and like a quick decision yeah this one like if I was to actually do that I'd have to my answers I'd have to think about it I don't have to think about it I'm not sure what about a billboard in the entrepreneurship classroom at MIT uh just uh quick it'd be something like question um question which you think you know something like that something like something about cognitive dissidents like back to like first principles back to um like being able to be able to like actually innovate and like progress it'd be had to be something along the rounds like like question what you think you know it's like so like there's a lot of that like be humble realize it what you think you understand how you how you think you understand the world is almost guaranteed to be wrong in a lot of ways so like be willing to not be gullible but be like this is the long turning the lung billboard but uh but uh yeah it'd be something like that like like not not question authority not right but like question um question reality I don't know something like that question yourself in a way question yourself yeah just like like try don't don't be don't be afraid to fail and then in question what you think you know like the opposite of what you think you know and don't be afraid to try it and then don't be afraid to fail and then learn yeah I love that question try fail learn yeah putting it in an NYC right now yeah yeah make a call top thank you so much for coming on man that was you're you're you're very very smart and I love that you're like over-engineering this business at soccer sports it's very fun to hear you explain that I mean we're we're we're very we're very fortunate and blessed to be the number one brand in pickleball and we want to be like one of the maybe we can do it so well that and pickleball keeps going and we can be like one of the one of the big brands and hoarding it someday so that's kind of the kind of the thought so if we want that to happen we got a we can't we can't just copy what what you know Franklin does or what a deedist does even though they do really great stuff in various ways so it's fine that's why the first principle is important for us because like we want to achieve that goal of being like just not the biggest but the best pickleball company or like the best sporting the best of a sporting goods company and like that's what we try to be yeah you can't be the goat and the same what was that you can't be the goat and the same as everyone else no no it doesn't make you so that's right yeah that's like yeah copypaces work awesome thank you thanks