Hunting Gear Podcast - Montana Knife Company

0:00This episode of the sportsman's empire is brought to you by interstate batteries. Since 1952, interstate batteries has been evoking compassion and a trustworthy spirit into the surrounding communities. Interstate batteries is a mission driven company fueled by purpose and guided by their values. If you need help locating a specific battery, stop into your local interstate batteries retail store and speak with a battery specialist. They even offer cell phone repairs. Interstate batteries outrageously dependable. All right, everybody. This is the hunting gear podcast. I'm your host, Dan Johnson. And today, our guest is Mr. Josh Smith from Montana Knife Company. Josh. Welcome to the show, man. Yeah. Thanks for having me on. Appreciate it. Absolutely. Absolutely. Okay. You live. I take it by the name of your company. You live in Montana. That's correct. Okay. All right. My question, though, is the weather in Montana because here in Iowa, especially in the

1:04spring, this March, April timeframe, it can be hot as balls or it can be, we can get six inches of snow around this, you know, between now and April. What's the weather discrepancies like in Montana this time of year? Yeah, especially in the spring, it tends to be a little bipolar. Yeah. We've had the most insanely warm mild winter, I think on record here. I mean, it's been crazy. I don't know how many days in January, we had it at 60 degrees. It was 60, oh, plus degrees the last couple of days. But now it's the rains coming in and now it's both start snowing a little bit. But yeah, this time of year, it can be, you know, 10, 15 degrees in snow, or it can be 60 degrees and it can, which like that in two days, it's crazy. Yeah. Do you keep an eye on the, the drought indicator at all in your state?

2:04A little bit. I definitely, I tend to kind of watch the snowpack levels and just see where we're at. It's kind of funny for how mild our winter has been. It's weird. It's weird. The snowpack reading, say, we're actually in a pretty good spot. I think all the snow's up high, as we have no snow in the valley. I think I've shoveled my sidewalk once or twice all winter, which is crazy. You know, everybody says like, you know, well with a year, you know, a low snow year that the forest fires are going to be so bad or whatever. Man, we've had huge snow fires where in July and August, we're all on fire anyway. I mean, the forest fires really all come about whether, because whether or not we get rain in July and August or not, that's that's key. But what's what's legit is concern around river flows for fly fishermen, you know, they'll they'll show you, you know, noon every day because the water temperatures get, get up

3:09and it gets stressful for the trout. And so that really affects the fly fishing guides. That's a big industry around here. And there's pretty big concern, you know, each of the last few summers, they've in July started shutting fly fishing down at noon and, you know, so it gives you a six or seven hour window in the morning to fish and then they shut it off, which is a big impact to our people here. Dude, and that man, that water has impacts on all wildlife, not just the fish, man. I've talked to a handful of wildlife biologists and marine biologists over the course. And just like when you start talking about temperature of water and how certain fish use temperature of water to spawn or it kicks off different cycles of their life. When you're running temperatures hotter or colder than normal, dude, it can throw off a lot of stuff. Well, yeah, it's, it's temperatures and then also just enough flow.

4:12So yeah, dry that those fish can't get up or down them. And, you know, we'll find fish cotton pools and stuff in the, in late summer, you know, and those fish die in those little pools. If the creek actually dries up enough towards stops flowing. The other thing that's big is if, if we're low on snowpack, the springs that dry up, which make the elk and deer have to travel a lot further for water, you know, you'll find where one boat sees and you'll be out and there'll be wallows that you hunt every single year and the elk using my crazy and then you'll get a really dry year and you'll go timber and they're just bone dry and they're not using them, you know. So yeah, it forces those elk to really have to change their patterns. Yeah, and that's what we're concerned about here in Iowa is I believe work 20 inches under our average snowfall this year or something like that. I mean, just a ton, a ton of,

5:14no moisture days, right? We'd have one big snowfall in November and then trickle throughout December and January and not very much in February and so now our soil moisture is down which means our rivers are going to be low and now we have that always talked about EHD potential again. So it's just, I just feel like I'm hoping this spring is not monsoon but wet so that we can get some moisture back in the ground. Yeah, exactly. No, it's, it's needed man and it's I don't know. Our winners seem to be later and later and kind of shorter and shorter. And I'm not, you know, warming up all these things and the causes and whatnot but I just know it's definitely different than it was when I was younger for sure. Our winners are everybody thinking mountain winners and we like to keep that up because keep moving here but it's not necessarily a reality anymore lately. Yeah, all right. Cool. All right. Now we're

6:17going to talk a little bit about Montana knife company before we do that. I have to send a huge shout out to the partner on the hunting gear podcast and that is reveal trail cameras. If you are looking for a high quality, high functioning easy to use cellular trail camera, go check out tactacam.com slash cameras and check out the new ultra. They have done a ton of updates to that camera. They've done a ton of updates to their app. They've added like photo organizing mapping software. It's really a one stop shop for basically documenting all of your the deer or wildlife that you're trying to catch on camera helps you with your strategy. So again, go download the app, go scan a QR code and now it's very simple to get a camera setup and you have a fully functioning cell cam tactacam.com slash cameras. Check out the new ultra. All right, Josh. Have you been a Montana resident your entire life?

7:22Basically, my parents actually immigrated to Canada two days after I was born for about six months. When my grandpa lived away up north, he was logging in the bush in northern BC and he was telling them about how incredible that area wasn't. So they moved up there in 1981 for a summer, but interest rates were like 18, 20%. The economy was rough and there was basically no jobs up there. And so I actually pitched a penny on the map of Montana because they knew they wanted to move back to Montana. That's where my mom was born. My dad was from a ranch in Colorado. The penny landed on the town of Ovando, which they'd never heard of and they drove to Ovando the next day and there was nothing there because it's a tight road and they went down the road 20 miles to Lincoln, Montana. They plugged their camper in into campground and the next day their pipes frozen broke and

8:23three days later they bought a house. So I've been there since I've been here since I was six months old, but to somebody born in Montana, of course I'm still out of state. Pretty much my whole life, but you can run for president because you were born in the United States. I'm kind of angry at my parents for not just driving up to Canada and having me so I could have a dual citizenship and then I could sheep hunt up there. A dual citizen thing would be real nice to be able to buy big horn sheep tags and moose tags. Did you have any brothers while you were living in Canada? No, just a sister a couple years later here in Montana. Okay, so you don't get the Canadian resident a hook up. I believe in Canada, if you have a family member, you can come in and they can fill out like a guide sheet if you're related or something like that. Yeah, so I told my wife,

9:28if she ever leaves me, I'm marrying a Canadian next just for a fan. Love it. Okay, um, and so were you always in the outdoors? I mean, yeah, pretty much. Pretty much. Grip and the excavation world with my dad and stuff, but on I was young, you know, my dad didn't really hunt. We worked, frankly, but my uncle always elk hunting deer hunted. He started taking me when I was a kid. We lived in a river bottom, which was really cool and I and, you know, along the Blackfoot River and I don't understand all these technology things here. So now my computer's ringing. Sorry about that. It grew up in the Blackfoot River bottom and so I started kind of learning about tree stand hunting and bow hunting from some guys in town from my uncle. And so basically as soon as I was old enough to hunt, you know, I think back then,

10:29I could get a tag when I was 11. I started tree stand bow hunting white tail deer just in our river bottom. I could walk out and house and walk down to the river and set up a tree stand and then I would tag along with my uncle. I shot my first elk when I was 12 with him. You know, I will say it's really, really cool. There was a few guys in town that were not relatives. They were just guys in town and I think I asked enough questions about hunting that they offered to just take me. And I will say, man, if you have young kids, young boys or girls that are asking you a lot about hunting and whatnot and they're from a family that don't. Man, you know, if there maybe it's a buddy of your sons or something, take those kids hunting because that can be such an impact to a young boy that maybe doesn't have the opportunity or doesn't have that. I look back now, I took it for granted now and I think about like Bruce Wood, you know, Carl Temple, these guys that took time

11:33to just take me hunting and pick 5 a.m. and take me up to their elk spot and teach me how to elk hunt. They didn't have to do that and I probably slowed them down and I probably was a pain in their ass, but they did it anyway. It was very impactful to me. Awesome. Awesome. Hey, real quick, do me a favor. I don't know what you're doing with your hands, but the speaker must be on the table of your computer. And so if you could just keep your hands on your lap, I'm getting some distortion there. So appreciate that. So yeah, having a good mentor is huge. You know, like I know a lot of guys who like for me, I grew up in it outdoors the family through camping and hiking and stuff, but I taught myself how to hunt across the board. And so I thought I always thought it would be would have been nice to have someone kind of show me the ropes a little bit more than the the people that I did. Now with turkey hunting, I had my uncles,

12:34but when I started bow hunting, it was all on my own, dude. Yeah, and that's kind of how like guys would tell me about how to do the treat, but I actually kind of put it in my laugh and I think I would never let my son do what I did because I I bought a tree stand at a garage sale. This whole made piece of crap. And I went back and I took a steep big steel nails out of my dad's like screw nail shed. And I just pounded them into trees and climbed up. And I don't know how I got that tree stand in the tree. I didn't have a safety harness or anything. I ratchet strapped it up there somehow. I have no idea how I didn't fall out of a tree and kill myself when I was a kid. But and I said I set those tree stands up in the wrong places. I didn't understand wind. None of that stuff. But it took me a couple of years, but I ended up killing a couple different deer and actually a couple coyotes from my tree stand. And man, that sense of accomplishment when

13:35you're 14 years old and kill a deer by yourself. And honestly, too, I look back at the bows that I was shooting back then with thick aluminum arrows. I just want the logs, you know, oh, yeah. My favorite on those old school arrows was if you didn't have the right rest, like if you're if your rest was off, when you would draw back, it would just be like, sounded like you're on sheath on a sword. Exactly. Exactly. So fast forward a handful of years. Um, what where do like what were you doing? I don't want to talk about the moment that you have this idea. I want to start a knife company. I want to talk about the moments before that. What were you doing in the quote unquote real world before you started Montana knife company? Well, really, it does go back to when I was in that honey age of 11 and 12. My little league baseball coach invited me to his shop to learn how to make a knife when I was 11 and he was an outfitter. He was an

14:38outfitter there in the Bob Marshall wilderness and he was my little league baseball coach and he'd bring his knives to practice and show people the the the the dads show them like the knives that he was building. And and honestly, they were a pretty simple honey knives at that point. He was kind of getting started in his knife making career. Yeah. There again, another mentor that just invited my parents bought me a knife for Christmas 1992. He invited me up to a shop to make a knife. I made a couple knives up there. And then I think his way of getting rid of me was telling me if you want to be a knife maker, you have to have your own shop. And so, uh, I bought a belt grinder and I started buying equipment and put it in my dad's shop. And by the time I was 13 years old, I had you know, a working knife shop basically. I mean, it was very simple rudimentary. Um, and then I got real serious about it before and after school. I made knives like crazy. And when I was 15 years old, I became the youngest journeyman knife maker in the world when I

15:42tested and passed that test. So uh, yeah. What's that like? How do you beat? How do you even know? Like, hey, I just want to go ahead and start building knives in my garage to, hey, I think I want to be this certified master knife maker. Yeah. Uh, you know, there again with Rick's mentorship, he, I think he recognized my kind of love for that and craziness for it. So he told me, hey, you should join the American Bladesmith Society. And in a couple of years, you could test for the journeyman test. And I, and I was reading all the magazines and I was, you know, back, that was before the internet. Um, so I was getting knife magazines in the mail and stuff and reading all these articles about these master knife makers. And I was like, man, I want to be a master bladesmith someday. So I mean, and then I started going to knife shows and, and meeting all these different knife makers and, uh, you know, once I became a journeyman, then four years later, I became a master

16:45blade smith and did that whole test. But it was really again, to go to guys as shops and you had to go to knife shows, you had to walk up to people's tables and be like, hey, can you tell me how you did that and ask for tips and the knife community was very, very willing to show and teach me anything. I rarely had a guy tell me to buzz off as a kid. Yeah. Yeah. That's awesome. Because usually what happens in any industry, uh, a whipper snapper starts coming through the ranks and everybody hates them because they value experience over whatever else that, you know, this, this young guy is doing. So that's, that's awesome that they open the doors up. Um, did you run into a guy, another person, you know, you had your initial mentor who helped you, you know, kind of plant the seed, but along the way as a young man, did you run into another mentor of sorts

17:46who has like helped you like refine your already honed skills? That's a really great question. So yes, I did. So little did I know that the guy was starting to teach me actually, you know, it was actually very frustrating because I kept trying to get, you know, my skills up to where I could make something as good as he was making them, but he kept getting better. And little did I know, he would later on 20, 25 years later become one of the best knife makers in the world. So the whole time I was trying to catch him, he's getting better and the goal post kept moving. Yeah. Um, and he's still a phenomenal knife maker today. His name is Rick Dunkerley that there was a whole other group of knife makers. Actually, the knife industry nicknamed Montana, the Montana night, five of them at the time that were just blowing the doors off the knife world. And they nicknamed us the Montana mafia. And they wrote articles about it and stuff. And then there were other knife makers. There's a guy in Texas Harvey Dean, Tim Hancock in Arizona, Larry Fagan in Arizona,

18:50among others that were phenomenal knife makers. And they took me under their wing as well. So I would actually room with these guys at knife shows. And we would share hotel rooms to save money. And I would pick their brains till one in the morning on how they were doing what they were doing. And I was just driven to become try to try to get on their level, uh, which took me probably into my mid 20s before I, I really felt like I got there. Yeah. Okay. What mid 20s is still fairly young, you know, like whenever I hear of a, I'm going to put knife maker in the same category, just for conversation as maybe like a blacksmith. Okay. And when you talk about who are some of the greatest of all time in whatever, uh, these traditional ways of metallurgy or whatever it is,

19:51you think of some old timer who's in their 70s, who's just like, I took me 50 years to figure out how to do this one thing. Um, and then being able to say like, you felt confident enough that in your mid 20s, you, you, you figured it out. I was like, then I go, yeah, and I don't want to overstate that because I still had a ton to learn. I, I became a way better knife maker in my, my mid 30s and, and now in my mid 40s. So, you know, I got there, but I, I definitely don't want to say like that was the end of the learning curve. Like you're right. Still the guys I still look up to today are in their 60s and 70s. They're the legends of the industry, I believe. Nothing replaces time and reps, you know. Yeah. Um, yeah. But yeah, today is so much different. There are so many young knife makers that are incredible because the access to information is like it never was in the 90s.

20:56Yeah. You know, I was one of, basically, nobody else that was that driven as a young, young kid. There was one or two others maybe. Um, most kids, you know, kind of flamed out because it took, it was so much effort to get information today. You don't have to go to a nice show. You don't have to step in a guy's shop. You can open up YouTube. And if you have some ability and some drive, you can learn any technique out there. Uh, you know, because there was some gatekeeping. Like, guys would tell you how they're doing something, but they might leave a few little things out. Like, you know, it's like, yeah, if you want to get this good kid, you got to figure it out a little bit yourself. Yeah. God, now the internet, everything's out there. And so you, you see these young guys come out of nowhere. It's like, who's this guy's been making knives five years and he's doing incredible stuff. Yeah. You mentioned like knife shows and knife competitions and, um, and becoming the great, you know, like, you know, becoming good. How,

22:00how do people judge knife makers? Yeah, it's a good question. Um, so for the journeyman and master Smith tests, it's a two part. One is performance because at the end of the day, I don't care how pretty the knife is. It's a tool. It's supposed to function for a job. So the performance test is the first part of it. And you have to forge a 10 inch blade or less that and, and finish it off or whatnot. And then it has to chop a one inch rope and half and one chop, which just shows sharpness. But then ask the chop a two two two by four and half twice as many chops as you want. But when you get through two two by fours, it still has to shave hair off your arm. And then at, you have to bend that blade 90 degrees and advice without breaking it. So that shows an incredible control over metallurgy, heat treat, uh, edge geometry, all the most important things that later on in life when I started Montana knife company play into the factor of how we build our knives. Um, and so that's

23:06the performance part. Once you pass the performance part, you have to do that in front of another master Smith. You then go to the Atlanta blade show and you present five finish knives to a panel of master Smith judges and they judge fit and finish. So, you know, do you have big gaps between your guard and your handle material or, you know, as the blade crooked or the grinds. Did you leave a bunch of scratches on it? Like is it finished? Well, there's a lot of different criteria with that. At the journeyman level, uh, you know, there's a certain amount you can maybe kind to get away with, but then at the master Smith level, if they find one thing on any of your five knives, your failing and the the past fail rate is, you know, the pass rate is pretty low. Yeah, probably probably less than 20%. Um, you know, so when I did it, there was like 85 in the world. Now there's like a hundred, um, you know, so it's a, you know, it's a smog. Yeah, I got a, I got a weird question. Have

24:09you ever competed on a television show of knife makers? Yeah, I was on forged and fired a couple times. Okay. Okay. Now I'm, now I'm putting the piece of the puzzle together. That's, that show is crazy. Like all the stunts or the, not stunts, but like the obstacle course that these people have to do. Like how do people come up with that? Because any store, any knife I go by in the store isn't going to just like all of a sudden be ninja chopping one, you know, one or two inch piece of rope breaking like big blocks of wood and concrete and stuff like that. Right. Yeah, I know, you know, guys come up with all kinds of different stuff to test blades and, and you know, kind of depends on what a blade's being made for. I mean, even with what we do with MKC today, you know, what you make the way that you make a blade to, you know, to chop is going to be a lot different

25:11than you're going to make a blade to cut tomatoes and vegetables in your, in your kitchen. And so you cater your heat treat, your steel selections, your edge geometries, all to the intended job. That's why, you know, you see us have lots of different models of knives. And to the untrained eye, it might be like, well, that knife's basically the same as the other one. But it's like, well, no, this one's 25,000 thicker. It takes however many more pounds of force to break it. It's more designed for, you know, what I send to Afghanistan, you know, with a Delta operator or a deployment is going to be a lot different than, you know, what I'm going to put in your backpack to go take out sitting your tree stand for a deer hunt, you know, or a goat hunt. And so there's a lot of different factors are, you know, that go into, you know, the blades that we make. Yeah. So what were you doing as your full-time gig as your, you know, how do you make money as you're going through the process

26:20of becoming a master knife builder? Well, the fortunate thing that I had gone for me is I lived at home because I was a kid, right? When I actually did my master blade Smith test, I was actually in college. I was in the, well, kind of, I was in the middle of failing out of college because I was thinking I duck-hunted weight, basically every day. Our professor asked us to not come to class in our waiters anymore. So we didn't go to class anymore. That's hilarious. Yeah. We literally, that's the day I quit college. I was sitting in a duck blind and we were just like, you know, I'm already failing like birds are flying. I'm done with college. But so I was doing that. After, after college, you know, after a few different things, I ended up going full-time making knives as a custom knife maker. It's like a starving artist situation. I mean, it's tough. Like I was making my knives were between two and five thousand dollars a piece. You're making one at a time. You build some

27:23knives up. You go to a show. You come home with a lot of cash in your pocket and then you pay your bills and, you know, you're back to kind of being broke. It's, it's, it's a tough gig. One question. Yeah. Who is buying a two to five thousand dollar knife? The same person that's buying a two to five thousand dollar painting or bronze or, you know, collecting art in any other way. It's people that appreciate the craft and understand of taking some time to understand just how much, how many years of dedication it took to get to the point where I can make a knife like that. And they're buying that. It's like functional art. I mean, some of these guys actually carry them and use them. Other guys actually just display them in their homes and shadow boxes and, you know, instead of buying and painting on the wall, they're buying a knife that they can take off the shelf and and show and use. And they like the idea that it was forged at 2,500 degrees and hand filed and made and blood sweat and tears. So,

28:26fortunately, there's a lot of wealthy people in this country that appreciate craftsmen. Maybe they are a lawyer or a business person and they don't have any actual ability to do anything with their hands, but they appreciate people who do have that skill. Gotcha. So, you know, I was making knives full-time. The 2008 crisis happened with the economy 2009. Quit my, quit making knives full-time. I had four young kids and I got a job, I got a job as a, as a, I mean, originally I thought I was going to be a welder for the power company. I was operating back. I was for them. And then I actually moved over to the lineman side, the electric side, and I got an apprenticeship. And I went through, you know, three and a half year apprenticeship and became a journeyman lineman working on power lines. Gotcha. So, that was kind of my, I was, I was looking around when I was going to these knife shows and seeing that a lot of my heroes in this world were 65, 70 years old, making the knives I wanted to make someday. And they were

29:32just as broke as I was at these knife shows needing to sell a knife. And I was like, man, I'm not sure that's where I want to be when I'm 70. Like I got four kids. It's one thing to be 25 years old and broke and needing to sell a knife really bad. I don't want to be 65 and being that spot. And so I took a job with, you know, benefits and 401K and paid vacation. It was like, that's the first time in my life I'd ever had paid vacation. I'm like, wait, I get to go honey and they're going to pay me. This is insane. But I always had, I always had the dream of Montana knife company. And in fact, I registered the name Montana knife company when I was 19 years old. Okay. And I always wanted to start a honey knife company. But I had no idea how to scale like I said, a thousand dollar knives, one knife a month, two knives a month. How do you scale and make hundreds or thousands of knives

30:35a month or a year? Right? Yeah. I had zero idea how to do that. And unlike the custom knife world, you can't go to Benchmade or Gerb. How do I do this? Right? And get mentorship. They, it's impossible. I've found to try to get information. And so when I It was a basically figure out everything I'm doing wrong. And just every single day try to get better and build this. Yeah. Yeah. Especially when you're, I don't know what the term is per se. So I'll just say you're trying to jump in with the big boys at some point. Yeah. You know what I mean? And they got there probably the same way that you got there by failing a thousand times and then creating a brand that, you know, is what it is today. Like, for example, Gerber, right? Huge, right? So when, when you said, man, like, I want to do this. I want to, I want to give it a

31:44shot. What was that moment like? It came after some hardship. You know, my, is about 11 years ago now. I got divorced. And then about a year later, my house burnt down. I was living in a camper in my driveway with four kids. I was an apprentice lineman and I was broke as shit, man. Just so broke. And about a year and a half, two years later, I met my new wife, Jessica. I met her sort of date and her kind of explained my dream of Montana knife company. We were talking about this knife thing. And she's like, well, you should do that. And so we talked about it for a couple of years. And I was getting my feet on my under me a little bit better and working as a dream lineman at that point. And in 2019, her dad passed away. And she inherited about 20 grand, $18,000 actually to be exact. And she said, you should take that

32:46money and buy, buy the steel that you need and start your knife. And so that's exactly what I did. I went and bought some steel. And I got it water jet cut out. Again, I did everything wrong. But this was in 2019. And I made some prototypes. And in February of 2020, I took them out to South Carolina to Bert Sorens at Winner Strong, he owned Sorenx. And I just showed him around as some people that were at this really cool event from the outdoor industry and business world. And I hung around these incredibly accomplished people for three days that have had incredible success. I mean, Olympians, professional athletes, business people, outdoor industry, you know, big time names. And they were all like, no, we believe in you. Like, you should do this. Like, start your company. And as we were flying home, I told my wife, I'm like, let's freaking go. Like, let's do this. I was so motivated after that. Well, that was February of 2020. We are flying home.

33:52And COVID was hitting like at that moment. And unlike 2008 and nine, when the economy crashed and they were telling us, we're going to go into a depression. And I quit making knives in 2010 because I was a bit scared of the way the world was going to go. This time, I just ignored the news of the day I ignored COVID. I didn't watch the news. And I'm just like, I'm going to build my company. And so through 2020, you know, we built a website. I made a couple hundred knives, met my business partner. He helped on the marketing side. And we we sold our first knives in like August of 2020. And by the end of 2020, I was still a full-time lineman. Like, we were selling quite a few knives and it was going well. And my wife kept telling me, you got to quit your job and do this. And I'm like, boy, I don't know. Like, it's, you know, that's a good job that I've got with benefits. I needed the last day of the year off to go meet Thomas Rhett, the country music singer. He wanted to buy a knife. And I and I was out of vacation. My boss

34:55would not work with me. And so I quit. And so January 1st of 2021 was my first day of like, this is Montana knife company. And so for six months that year, we didn't take a paycheck. I just lived off savings. And every knife that we sold, we put that money back in the MKC to grow it. And, you know, our goal for that year was 100,000 in sales. And we ended up doing 1.9 million that year. I hired and then later that year in 2021, my wife went to go back to be in a school teacher after summer. And they told her she was going to have to wear a mask again because of COVID. And she came home and she's like, either you hire me or I'm going to go get a job somewhere else, but I quit. I'm not where it's cool. And so I hired her to do our customer service and our fulfillment, which was super scary because now both our incomes are counting on MKC.

35:55And now today she's still running all the fulfillment customer service. But, you know, we hired a high school kid and spring of 21 to help part time. He's now managing 40 people downstairs. And today we have like 110 employees. So, and just crazy. That's crazy, dude. That's awesome. That's a success story if I've never heard one. But I have a, you might have asked you a personal question. Sure. How important is it to have your wife be one of your biggest supporters? Like, what did that do for you? Where it sounded like she was like pushing you to do this as opposed to being a skeptic of the ability? It's the only reason that this has even happened. I am a major believer that we as men can accomplish about anything that we can set our minds out to do. But you need some wind in your sales. And having a good woman standing behind you, she told me

37:02back then, like, I've got the house in the kids. Like, you're working a full-time job. She's like, when you get home, go out to your shop, build it. So, after work, I was out in my shop. Before work, I was out in my shop. I was figuring it out. And I knew she had things dialed in the house and the kids and everything was straight. And to have that confidence, in fact, she was the one trying to get me to quit all of the, through the entire fall of 2020. Most wives would be like, you're making 100 grand a year as a lineman with paid vacation and benefits. Like, you're not going to quit to start a freaking knife company. No way. And she was the one telling me, and we'd sit in the hot tub and I'd be like, babe, I can't quit my freaking job. Like, we got four kids. And she just kept saying, like, there's something here. You've got to do it. Like, I believe in you. And, man, it's, and we all know, guys who live the opposite of that, you could probably accomplish great things.

38:03And they, they have sand in the gears. And my wife was the grease in the gears, for sure. Yeah. That's awesome, man. That's, yeah. That's, uh, that's awesome. Um, so what was that moment like? And, and you said your goal was like 100,000. And you did way more. Like, was there this? Because for me, with starting my business, I have a similar, a similar story, not the same, but similar where I had started this network, the sportsman's empire network. Um, and I was building it while I was working, you know, the, the typical, I put the kids to bed and I was up till one, two in the morning, then I was getting up at five to go to work. And like the, the whole thing, right? And they pulled me into a room with a whole bunch of other people and they said, today's your last day. Oh, wow. You know what I mean? And so,

39:05I started going all in. So all my time and energy then became my business. And I had one of those, oh, shit moments where I believe I had like under $10 in one of my accounts. And my wife was like, Hey, can you transfer some money so we can pay this bill? And I was just like, Yeah, give me a sec. You know what I mean? Like, and then all of a sudden, like two weeks later, boom, my first big jet came. And I was like, it was a huge sigh relief for me. Talk to me about the moment where maybe the stress didn't necessarily disappear because with success comes new stress. But the moment where you were able to just take a breath and exhale for a moment. Yeah. It's hard for me to say if I had that moment because I'm also the person that's just constantly

40:07worrying that this is all going to end. Yeah. And I do, I think it was probably like we had done a couple drops of knives where like we made 200 knives and took me a long time to make them because I, again, I was doing everything wrong. So we did several of those drops. And then I remember Brandon, I talked and being like, I think we could make 500 and probably sell them. And so we ramped it up like more than double made and we made 500 blackfoot knives, which was a big undertaking. And we put them up for sale. We finally dropped them. And the reason we were doing drops is used. I saw too many of my friends over the years, whether it was outfitters that took deposits or knife makers who took deposits and then started mismanaging that money and living off of it. And then they ended up in a real bind financially. So I'm like, I am not going to pre-sell knives because if I pre-sell 500 knives and I screw up 100 of them, I now have 100 people's money

41:08and I don't have a product, right? So made 500 knives. And I remember we put those knives up for sale. And I was just like, man, that's a lot of knives. Like we got so much money into this in time. And they sold out in under two minutes. Wow. It's like, oh god. Like we just made double what we've been making more than that. And they sold faster. And that was where it's like, there is something happening here. And when I hired my wife in fall of 2021 in August, it felt I was like, man, we can only pay you like $45,000 a year. And I told her, I'm like, you have to understand. If I tell you in two months, you have to go get a job. Like you have to go get a job. I just don't know if we can afford to pay a two months later. My thought was, oh my god, thank god we hired her because we were getting so busy. And she was doing so much and taking so

42:13much off our plate. And I started to realize, that's when I started to realize like, wait, if you hire the right people and you're hiring people for the right things, they double your efforts and they use it. You grow. And hiring has been the best thing that we've done. Like everybody likes the bitch about employees and whatnot. I absolutely love my employees. Now we are hard to get a job with. We interview really hard and culture is huge to us. Right. And I tell people, you will not be the poop in my pool. Like, you know, I'll scoop you out. You have to be an additive to our team and fit the culture well. But we have the best team. And it's why we've been able to grow. I've just got in Christ piece. Yeah, that's awesome, man. That's awesome. Yeah. Let's talk about the product here for a moment. Okay. Yeah. Well, leading up to the product, right. When you, you know, you were talking about, hey, how do I scale? Right. And so a lot of times, and I'm not saying every time,

43:20you talk to a guy who's passionate about a thing. He knows he has an opportunity to take that thing to the next level. And now he has to scale his business. And there are instances where that thing, that product, the quality lowers because the number you need to make to hit that goal to have a business that required number is higher. How did you balance that and manage that? That's a great question. It was actually, well, two things. One, when I was telling people, I was going to start a hunting knife company sell knives for hunting knives for $300. So many people told me like, that's impossible. I mean, you can buy these Chinese made knives for $29 on the end of the end cap at Walmart, right? Then also the scaling thing of how do you scale? And I kept running into this, well, you can get it done in China for this. You can get it done in China like, I know some knife makers that are actually doing some short run stuff in China. And

44:25and they get some really nice quality stuff like that China is known for crappy stuff. But if you actually pay well, you can actually get some good good work done over there. Yeah. And I just kept saying no, like I want to show that it's possible to make an American made product, right? What I started learning was just, you know, how to find processes to actually elevate the product and finish it. And we just refused to do anything like there were opportunities where I had some things that I could have done that would have allowed me to scale from 200 knives to 2000. But like you said, I would have had to have changed maybe hand them material or construction process and stuff. And I'm like, absolutely not. What what I actually found was in the beginning, I had none of this equipment and I had no employees. I was getting things made outside of house

45:27all over the country, right? In machine shops around the nation. When I started hiring and deciding to bring process in house, I started realizing that if you hire really, really good people, you can actually do it better yourself because you actually care to your own product. We were getting some parts and pieces in from these other machine shops that were subpar. And when we started making them, and I will tell you today, now that we're making basically everything in house, our product has actually gotten better for quality controlling it. But it's a challenge. And there are times where it's just like, yeah, I could have better margins. Absolutely. I could be making more money. But I just refused to like do things to like I'm not going to go injection mold something in China. I just refused to go overseas with any of that stuff. Yeah. Well, then you lose who you are, right? You lose what what makes Montana knife company like

46:33I mean, everybody's wearing your hats. Now everybody's wearing your t-shirts, right? And you don't get to that level if you're just horse shit. Now people are wearing those hats in shirts not necessarily because of the knife. It's because of the idea of the American dream is still alive. And that we're showing that like no, you can go make a $300 product and not everyone's going to appreciate it. And absolutely, there's going to be people all over, you know, the forums saying, you know, I feel is with that and my $60 knife works fine. That's fine. Like I don't need everybody in America to be my customer. But there are plenty of people in America that appreciate that they can come to our building. They can look through the windows. They can meet our employees. They can see the product being made. They see the investment. Last year, we built this building that I'm sitting in. We just moved in about three weeks ago. I had my, my CFO yesterday. They just wrapped up the numbers. I wanted to find out what we spent in the local economy to build this building. We had, I just found

47:36these numbers out yesterday. In this entire project, 18 month project to building this 51,000 square foot building, we used nine vendors that were not Montana based. Nine out of this entire building. And we spent $10 in Montana last year building this building. Now, and we have a hundred now and 110 employees that were paying benefits to 401k paid vacation, all that. And they're spending that money in our, in our economy as well. When you $300 knife, you're supporting that. And I hope to see more Montana knife companies, whether it's in any industry popping up in small towns all over the nation. Because when you buy American made products, your recent dollars into our own nation, not over in China or in some big corporation, you know. And so when people are wearing those hats, that's what they're representing. They're

48:37representing that, not just the knife. Yeah. From a, from a business standpoint, when it comes to scaling as the person, so like, I don't know, you're one of your average employees at the company. He didn't have to go through what you went through. He, he doesn't have the same passion for the success of this company like you have, right? Maybe he does. Maybe you have this awesome culture, but he doesn't have your experience. How hard is it as the boss to relinquish control to somebody else in order to help you accomplish the dream of Montana knife company? Yeah, that's a really great question. I think had I started this knife company when I registered the name at 19 years old, I would not have done it. I would not have delegated. I would have probably been a little bit and feeling like I can do everything. I'm going to, I'm going to do this. And

49:37now I don't, I think when it, when I, by launching it when I was in my late 30s, I knew like, I don't know everything I need help. I think what I did the best thing that I probably did was really taking the time when I hired my initial people to find absolute rock stars that did buy in that actually treat it like owners. And now I've given those people equity and they are owners. Yeah. And so now my director of operations is an owner, if I, is an owner, my marketing guy, even Tristan who was a senior hired him is now an owner in the company. And so they have ownership. Now those guys are actually in charge of the hiring under them. They have the same passion. I do. Yes, not all 110 employees probably have the passion that we do. But that's part of our hiring process is is when we get 200 applications for a jobs here, we weed it out and we try to find that guy that

50:42actually does have that pride. That's why we ask him, what do you do on the weekend? When I find out a kid on the weekend gets up on a Saturday morning and goes and hikes to the top of a mountain, goes, goes mountain biking, goes fishing, does stuff like I want doers in my company. Yeah. You know, I've guys that go kayaking, they go fly fishing, they do whatever. Those are people to me that take pride in like getting up and getting something done. And then they take pride in their work at work. I also believe by having these windows in this new manufacturing facility, when you come into our coffee shop, it's a black rifle coffee shop that we put in where retail store is, you look through the windows and you can see the entire manufacturing floor. And so I tell I tell our employees, our customers are watching you. They they want to see who's building this product and you need to take pride in every square inch of this building in how you look. And you know, we might build a couple thousand knives a week, but you never know almost every knife that we make is going to be incredibly special to somebody.

51:45They might give that to a guy who just finished a 30 year career in the Navy. They might give it to their father who, you know, or their son who they're going on a hunt with like every single knife that we put out means something. And that's why also when you buy a $300 knife, you're buying something that you're going to pass down. Like do you really want to pass down a $29 knife to that's made in China? Does that the soul? But when you buy a knife as men, traditionally, we've always passed down knives and guns. And you know, maybe a few other things, a watch or an old car or something, but this world is made. The society is made. Everything's made to throw away. And what are you going to give to your son, your grandson? It's going to have a story of like, man, I've taken this knife to Alaska four times on a hunting trip. And I have these guys walk into my shop and they're like, hey, will you sharpen this pocket knife? It was my grandfather's heat carrying it in Vietnam. I guarantee you when that guy was carrying Vietnam, you wasn't thinking

52:47about who was going to have it 60 years later, right? When you carry a knife on a hunting trip next fall, you're not thinking about what that knife might mean. You might tragically be killed next month and your young boy or your young daughter or something. The only thing they might have is the hunting knife you carried last week on a hunting trip, right? We don't know when our time is coming, but when you truly look around your house, what do you have that the next generations will actually care about? And the reason they care about that knife or that gun and some of that is because it was your hands that actually used it, it was you carried it, you used it. You put experiences on it that the next person can go and put their own experiences on that same thing. Yeah, like that. All right, product time, what makes your knives the best that you feel are that are the best? Why? Sure. Well, I think it's that culmination of 30 years of trying

53:50to strive to become one of the best knife makers in the world. I'm not the best. I want to make sure. I don't want to sound arrogant. There are guys that are just incredible that I look up to, but I've gone through that testing. I understand metallurgy. You can't tell me that the CEO of Gerber or Benchmade know how to make a knife because they don't. Okay. Our company is led by a master blade Smith. I make the knives like I know every part of this process inside now. We use premium steel premium materials. We actually know how to heat treat this stuff. We know exactly what the other thing I'll say, the door was left open for Montana knife company to kick the door down because Benchmade, for example, was making pocket knives and selling pocket knives at REI and their hunting line was an afterthought. They're out in Portland, Oregon, and they've got some hunting knives, but they're not hunters. They're not actually out using the product. I saw

54:52when I was telling people, I'm going to start this hunting knife company, well, only two or three percent of Americans have a hunting license. That's a really small niche market to try to launch a company in. I'm like, yeah, but we are hunters. I feel like we can speak to the hunting community, they'll buy our product because we're one of them. That's the other reason why our knives are, I feel like the best hunting knives in the country is because hunters are making them. We understand what you need on a sheep hunt, or a goat hunt, or a bear hunt, or a deer hunt, elk hunt. You can follow any one of our employees and see those guys hunting on their own time, hunting on the weekends. Then lastly, it's just the quality of employees and the care that we put into this building. I feel like we think about the entire package of that knife all the way through and even the sheath. The sheath for companies is an afterthought. Well, it's not an afterthought if

55:52you're trying to have it on your belt and not have it fall out in the woods when you're walking along. There's a lot of factors why I think our knives are the best, but ultimately, I think it comes down to the people around this building and how much we care about it about our customers. Yeah. Yeah. How many out of curiosity, how many when you started the company, how many skews did you have versus how many skews you have today? I had one skew when I started the company. It was the black foot knife. That was strictly out of that's all I could afford. I could only afford to make one knife. The reason I made the black foot and the reason it's still my favorite knife today, I grew up in the black foot river valley and most people in there in Lincoln, Montana are it's pre-rural area and they don't make a lot of money. If they're going to buy a knife, they're going to buy one good knife and they're going to carry it for everything. What knife can I go moose hunt with, deer hunt, upland bird hunt, fish, also maybe carry on the

56:55ranch, cutting bail strings. That black foot will do it all. Now, is it the perfect knife for every job? Is it the perfect knife for butchering and breaking down a full elk? No, but it could do it. So that was the skew we started with and then I started expanding. We went to the speed goat, which was meant for the ultra light, your count ounces, it's a 10 day backpack hunt, a paracord version, super light weight, but strong knife. Today, shit, man, I don't even know how many skews we have. We have a bunch of different knives. Through the culinary world, kitchen, aspect, the meat cutting, butchering, the bearded butchers and that whole thing, breaking down animals. We're making knives for people who actually make a living with knives. So chefs, they're using those as tools every single day. Butchers, using those tools every single day, the military tactical space. They're using knives

57:57every day. Hunters, outfitters, guides, and we're getting ready in this spring to launch our actual pocket knives, folding knives. Nice, nice. So you've put a lot of years into this. What is the next five, 10 years for Montana knife company look like? I think proving that it's not a fad and also proving that, and I've been doing this kind of all along, I don't know how many people, how many times big conglomerates that you would know in the industry have tried to offer to buy us out. And it's still just Brandon and I that own the company and our employees. And I want to prove that you can build a big American brand and you don't have to sell out to conglomerate to be successful. I don't care about passing my kids down tens of millions of dollars. It actually rather hand them something they have to keep alive and earn their way through. So I think over the next

58:58five years proving that we can actually ascend to one of the top brands in the industry without selling out. And then finishing building out our product line through like the folding knife category, culinary categories. But also staying authentic to who we are, like we're a hunting knife company. I'm not going to be ashamed to put a picture with me with a dead elk on Instagram. A lot of these other companies that I've mentioned in this podcast, you're not going to find them with a gripping grant of a dead elk on with their CEO on on their Instagram page because they're not going to sell knives and REI if they have that picture. Like we're not ashamed. I'm not ever trying to be the biggest knife company in America. It's trying to be the best and try and we are a hunting knife company. Even when we make culinary half of the culinary world might not like our hunting pictures. But the other half are going to think they're pretty damn cool. Yeah. Yeah.

1:00:00Authentic being authentic. Yeah. And I asked that, I asked that question to a company that was wanting to work with me several years ago. And I simply asked them, do you have, I noticed that you're trying to break into the hunting space. But you don't, you know, like you're not, you're not posting any pictures with the people on your Instagram feed. And they're like, yeah, well, we don't want to ruffle the feathers of the other people. And then I was just like, dude, I'm not into that kind of stuff. You either, you either are or you aren't type of deal. So that's bench made. Go show me if they have, go show me one gripping grant, which again, we as hunters should take tasteful pictures and be smart about what we post on sole treated. But, you know, they'll have a few feathers or they'll have a picture of a bird dog. Yeah. But, you know, they're not going to sit there with a white tail. Yeah. That they just shot with their bow. Yeah. I'm going brown bear hunting Alaska next spring. I just shot a goat in Alaska with

1:01:04my bow last fall. And we video that hunt like were hunters. Yeah. And if you don't like that, that's fine. There's other knife companies for you. I don't need 350 million Americans to buy my product. I don't even need a hundred million to buy my product. Yeah. Uh, any fraction of that to make a good living have a cool company and, and, you know, grow a neat brand. There you go. There you go. Well, Josh, man, awesome conversation today. I really appreciate you taking time out of your day to hop on and BS with me for a little bit. Um, I believe it's just this simple. If you guys want to go find out more information about, uh, Montana knife company, is it just mkc.co.com? Yeah. Yep. Mkc.com or Montana knife company.com, either one. There you go. All right. Perfect. Well, I appreciate your time, man. And good luck with the future, man. Yeah. Thank you for having me on. I really appreciate it.