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Boss Uncaged Podcast Overview

“Things don’t just happen by chance, they just don’t. And if you guys think it does, it doesn’t. It comes again in the mind. And when you put it out there and you live by faith. Having that faith as small as a mustard seed as I know, we’ve heard that so many times, that’s the thing. I mean, even Jesus says, you know, he talked about this so many times about belief for anybody that puts their heart out, their God will reward a man according to what his deeds go after, according to his deeds deserve. But you have to do it through faith. The mindset of just knowing, you know what, I’m shaking in my boots, but I’m just going to take this leap, I’m just going to do it. That’s the point. That’s the crossroads life is doing. When I went to that event, a time I even shared that, I really mean it was hard for me to be safe and be who was on a cover and say, you know, in the section, start a road and these intersections happen. You have it was hard to watch.”

http://www.theultimateknife.com

Boss Uncaged Podcast Transcript

S1E21 – The Founder Of The Ultimate Knife: Ladislao Mandiola AKA Lad – powered by Happy Scribe

Things don’t just happen by chance, they just don’t. And if you guys think it does, it doesn’t. It comes again in the mind. And when you put it out there and you live by faith. Having that faith as small as a mustard seed as I know, we’ve heard that so many times, that’s the thing. I mean, even Jesus says, you know, he talked about this so many times about belief for anybody that puts their heart out, their God will reward a man according to what his deeds go after, according to his deeds deserve. But you have to do it through faith. The mindset of just knowing, you know what, I’m shaking in my boots, but I’m just going to take this leap, I’m just going to do it. That’s the point. That’s the crossroads life is doing. When I went to that event, a time I even shared that, I really mean it was hard for me to be safe and be who was on a cover and say, you know, in the section, start a road and these intersections happen. You have it was hard to watch.

Boss Uncaged is a bi-weekly podcast that releases the origin stories of business owners as they become uncaged Trailblazers, Unconventional Thinkers, Untethered Trendsetters and Unstoppable Tycoons. We always hear about overnight success stories, never knowing that it took 20 years to become a reality. Our host S. A. Grant conducts narrative accounts through the voices and stories behind uncaged bosses in each episode, guest from a wide range of backgrounds sharing diverse business insights. Learn how to release your primal success through words of wisdom from inspirational entrepreneurs and industry experts as they depict who they are, how they juggle their work life with family life, their successful habits, business expertise, tools and tips of their trade release. The Uncaged Boss Beast in you welcome our host S. A. Grant.

Welcome back to Boss Uncaged podcast. On today’s show, we have Lad, Lad is one of these people that I like to refer to as a serial entrepreneur. I met this guy. What was it, like 2019 December at a mastermind workshop where I met him. He was pretty much having a conversation and he was talking about one of his businesses. So let me give our viewers a little bit of who you are and what you do?

OK, A little bit of who I am. Well, basically, I am an entrepreneur like anybody else would be, in a sense, but a little bit different. My path was very different and I’ve had a lot of experiences, especially over the last few years. It’s been pretty interesting. But anyway, entrepreneurial nonetheless, been on my own now when it comes to not working a nine to five job for about 18 years. And that’s the length of my marriage. So, yeah, that all happened when we got married.

So, I mean, the fact that you survived, that’s a good point, right? I mean, you survived 18 years of marriage and 18 years of being an entrepreneur, which is usually a heavy task to juggle both those items.

Yeah, yeah. And leading humbly as a man in the relationship, that’s another one. And it wasn’t easy for me because it put a lot of pressure. You know, I got to say, it just puts pressure on a guy, regardless of how people act today and how they respond to who’s better than the other person and whatever. I never looked at it that way. I always looked at it as the man provides Jodrell and he doesn’t just provide monetarily, also provides through humility, through serving, through loving giving. There is a lot more responsibility for a man to lead in that way and to serve in that way. Just tell you right now that’s not a woman’s role. That is a man’s role to be an example for that woman, because women honestly, you know, have their own thing that they want to do, have a desire to do, but they ultimately need to be led and want to be led. That’s their desire. At least on that end, if they’re going to get into a relationship, they truly want to be able to see the man lead in that way. How humble is he going to be? How loving, caring is he going to be? I didn’t even realize that aspect until you just brought that up, because that to me is a culmination of not just my entrepreneur mindset in my business or whatever. I also had a family with two boys. One’s now 14, the other one’s now 16. We’ve been married now for 18 years. It’s been an interesting ride, but I never look at it. From what you said, you only survived 18 years of marriage. I don’t look at it that way. I look at it from a very successful standpoint that God’s allowed me to have this tremendous relationship with this incredible woman that I’m grateful to be a part of. In this way, God’s the head. He is the first of why I only do what I’m able to do without him. This relationship would never work.

Got you. So it’s I mean, more so I was looking at it from, you know, when you have an entrepreneur and I could tell, like when you pick up something and you decide that you’re going to go for it, you’re going to go three hundred percent into it. Right. So as an entrepreneur, I was more so making a statement of surviving a marriage, because I know that you’re one hundred percent ingrain, whatever it is that you’re doing right now. The next question, how do you define yourself in three to five words?

My ADHD can’t do that one, but I’m going to try to intensely obsessed and committed so that I think that’s what I would put.

Got you.

Those would be the three words. I mean, beyond that, I mean, if you want to understand what happened and how it all started, for me, even as a kid, by the age of 14, I was working a job bagging groceries and fast forward all the way to the age of twenty three. I went through already of probably about six or seven or eight part time jobs here and there. And after graduating high school, when the military I got married when I was 19, married young. The girl who I was with was not what she was supposed to be in the sense of committed on drugs, everything else and not wanting to stop. And I left. I did not want to have children with somebody that was going to continue on this route. So I left. We were married for eighteen months. So I realized my issues and what I created in that relationship as well. So moving forward and then moving on to different jobs, I did not have a formal college education, with the exception of two years of commercial art design skills that I went to school for at the time to call the commercial art. I actually was going to school to be a graphic designer. That’s what they started calling it right when I graduated, because computers started coming into the mix right around that point. And right at twenty three, I knew some friends that had a Mac computer and I noticed that they had a couple of art programs, Photoshop and Illustrator, and they came out initially when Mac came out and I said, wow, this is incredible, what can I do to learn from this? And I pretty much taught myself through the manuals. Not an entry level position, sort of working for a label company. Then I started working for another company. I actually work for my church, which was incredible. The church I went to nondenominational church, and I’m still part of it for 30 years, but worked as a book cover designer and interior layout designer as well for the books and got mentored by somebody who is a phenomenal font creator. The guy was a designer and an incredible traditional commercial and graphic designer. Amazing, amazing mentor. I couldn’t have asked for a better guy and tremendous, tremendous help. His name is Chris Costello. So I think if you ever typed in Chris Costello Treasury, he actually works with the Treasury and he does coins now. He designs the coins are American coins. That’s how talented this man is, a tremendous friend, just an incredible guy. But anyway, I moved on from there and then I had many other jobs in between that. That was probably my longest standing job. I did an interview back in New York with The New York Times on an article about people who have ADHD and, you know, how many jobs did you go through? Because a lot of people go through quite a few jobs. I counted every single job that I’ve had since 14 up and to the point where I was working for my church doing graphic design work. I literally had fifty three jobs. A lot of people look at that and they think that’s crazy. But it was right after I left that job to go to New York to be with my girlfriend, who I got engaged to because my plan was to marry and being thirty four. Thirty three, thirty four. I’m like, I can’t, I don’t want to wait anymore. I just, you know, that was my desire for that. And went to New York, landed a job that landed for some time. But the moment we got married, I knew that my career in the sense of doing design work was diminishing because jobs weren’t paying that much anymore. Everybody and their grandmother thinks it can be a graphic designer now. And it’s just like, OK, forget it, I’m just not doing this anymore. So I got out of that facet of that industry and I looked into an audio book. It was called Cash Flow Quadrant from Robert Kiyosaki. And that’s when things started to open up. I didn’t read Rich Dad, Poor Dad. In fact, that was the last audio book that I listened to. I went through all of his thirteen series of books at the time and I just did audio books. That’s all I did. And I listened to all of them. When I listen to all of them, the one that really got me the most, his favourite written book. But he stated it was my worst selling book and I knew why, because people don’t want to listen. They don’t have this desire to listen to reality. They want to Fluffernutter type of book that makes them feel good and rich dad, poor dad, although it explains the truth, is more of a Fluffernutter in a sense for people to have me feel good and as well as it’s laying out the truth. But if you really took the time to listen to both books, Prophecy was the book because he talked about the demise of our current financial situation and the crash that was going to be coming in September of 2008 and lo and behold, to the month and the year he was dead on. But it wasn’t him. It’s because of the information that he gathered from other people because that was all planned. But that’s another topic of conversation. So with that said, four years prior, here I am hustling and I found real estate as my PhD friend because I was able to rehab. I was able to flip homes and do all the crazy stuff that some people just can’t do. But my brain could handle it that round peg in a square hole, that nine to five thing that didn’t fit well, this fit perfectly and it took off from there. But it all happened, too, when the market was not doing well. So it was a bit strange for us to be able to make a ton of money. And the market was pretty much frozen in New York, but it was still kind of growing in Texas. So we moved to Texas and started doing more the real estate stuff over there. But then something else happened. It didn’t do so well because obviously the crash did. Then came it came right in September 2008. So we cashed out on everything and we got our money. We didn’t lose anything, but we got involved with a franchise that unfortunately we found out was a fraud choice. And too bad I can’t coin the word because when I looked it up, I said, oh, shucks, somebody else has that word. Problem was, is that the guy that we bought a franchise from? I’ll just say this, it was playing trade video games, Ron Simpson, the guys don’t know who that guy is, type in Ron Simpson play letter in trade. That was a total fraud. And a lot of people lost everything. And we lost some stuff we had to file because it was a humbling experience for me. We had to give up our house. So when we moved into another place to live in the same neighbourhood that we in the master plan community here in Houston, we moved to another house. The thing that saved us was my wife , because my wife was still a career person in that way and she still had her job. And so here I am trying to figure things out again. And that put a ton of pressure on me. But the great thing is it just dawned on me, what can I do to pay something forward I can help people and yet still make a living during this downturn economy. And this was September, October of 2008, where this all started to hit me. I went to bed one night and it just dawned on me right when I was about to go to sleep home security and personal protection products. And I looked into the home security camera business saturated, didn’t do well with it, tried it for about six months. But in between all of that stuff, I was at the Houston gun a knife show trying to sell my wares. And I was trying to sell camera equipment, flashlights or whatever. And I’m looking at this guy behind me and he’s pulling out this knife. And I couldn’t figure out what the heck is this product that he’s pulling out. So I waited about six or eight weeks. I would go there every four weeks. I used to have this show and I think it was a second or third time that I went to the show. That’s when I started to introduce myself to him. And I wanted to find out what this knife was all about because it was a menacing looking product. But it wasn’t big. It was a karambit knife. It was a curved, talon shaped blade. And so I was like, let me dig into this. And with my obsessive compulsive nature, I, I spent the next four or five days, probably about 20 hours a day. I didn’t get much sleep for four or five days straight. I come to find out that there is no better one handed deployable defense knife on the market. And I’m like, why is nobody talking about this particular type of knife? And how come I found a company that’s in Italy that cut a deal with the guy who created the patent to kind of sublet his patent and also sell their knife for less than half the cost of what he’s selling his knife for? That made no sense to me. So I was going to Billy Mays the heck out of this thing. I was like, man, this is going to be awesome. I’m going to love this. Nobody knows about this knife. So what I did was I ordered both knives and Ernest Emmerson is the king and no one hard use knife maker in America. He’s got about 60 plus knives that he developed, but he has this little catch feature on the edge of the knife. And I’ll just show you, since I’m already kind of on camera, but this right here is a cat feature. And so this catch feature catches right open. Now, mind you, this is one of my knives, but his knife, that’s how he discovered it, because what he was looking for was a blade catcher. So in a knife fighting situation, you’re looking to catch a blade so you can turn it around, get it out of your way so you can do your business to get it back at your enemy. Well, he went home and he deployed it out of his pocket. And when he pulled it out of his pocket, he was just amazed. You couldn’t believe that this particular and I’m going to move this so you can kind of see it on this particular thing just popped out of his pocket like that because it caught on to the edge of the. Huh. It couldn’t figure out what the heck he did it a couple of times and then that’s it. History was made for him. He developed a patent for it and made a boatload of money selling his knives. His knives are insanely well-built. Well, I mean, structured. They’re just awesome. Thing is, is that he decided to allow his patent to be used by two or three companies. But initially he worked with a company out in Italy and Managua, Italy. It was the name of the company is Fox Nice. And so I found all this stuff out and I said, well, his knife is two hundred and seventy dollars at the time. Now it’s three hundred and ten dollars, but their knife is one hundred and thirty dollars. And I was like, why is it less than half the price. I ordered both knives put them through the rigorous. I beat the crap out of these knives. They both held up well and I kind of figured because I said you have German and Italian made product when it comes to knives, that’s what Europeans are known for, especially Italy and Germany, their knives. And I’m thinking, wow, this is fantastic. This is a high quality knife, just as good as Ernest Emersons. Not better, but just as good. And I want to do the right justice by marketing the heck out of this product. So I did it on an alternative news media show because at the time I was listening to Alex Jones and man, that dude’s intense. I contacted his team, sent out the knife and I started advertising. And, man, we were killing sales initially, but then he got so big that he started upping his advertising costs. And it put me kind of out of the affordability range. I couldn’t do it. So I went back down to zero right when I was just starting to get noticed. And then I contacted a YouTube tactical review site company that did reviews on tactical equipment. I thought they had a website or whatever. They said, no, we just strictly do YouTube video reviews. And I said, well, look, I got a knife. I told them about it. I’m down to my last dollars. I didn’t tell them how much I had. I only had about eleven thousand dollars left. And they were going to do a series of four videos with this particular karambit knife with Fox knife. And they were going to do this and they were going to charge me ninety seven fifty. I said, well that brings me pretty much down to nothing. They promised me the world. They said everything was going to work out and I said, yeah, whatever. I kind of just for me it was just going balls out. At that point I said it’s either this or this either works or doesn’t, or I go look for a job as a programmer. And that’s literally what I was going to get into. Gave me the knife. They came back, they contacted me. They said, we’re going to give you a Jimmy video. I said, What do you mean we’re just going to give you something, a 30 second video. Just let us know how it works. We’re still going to do your other four videos. We’re just going to give this one to you for free. I said, OK, sure, they did it. They came back. I saw the video. I thought it was really cool. And within three weeks of them releasing that, I made my ten thousand dollars back. And it didn’t stop, dude, it took off the problem that I had, though, a massive lesson to learn, don’t share everything.

So that’s my next question for you is like, what’s your worst experience you’ve ever had? I mean, you told a story of how you got into that business, how you develop it, you show the success of it. So my next question is, I kind of know the story to a certain extent, right? Yeah. What was the worst experience like? What was the negative side effect of this?

So the best of my worst experience, it gained popularity. The worst of it was I told the wrong person. That is something that I had to learn and embrace. It took me a while to embrace that because I didn’t I was very embittered. I was angry at myself. I told him, man, this thing is taken off. Dollar signs were ringing in his mind because he too is a capitalist and I probably would have done the same thing. But anyway, regardless, we started doing more videos and then as we did more videos, it grew in popularity. So his site was gaining traction because I was gaining traction. It was a synergistic thing that worked together and that combination was incredible competition. My website did really well with it. He was doing great with the videos. But the unfortunate part of that was when I told him what I told him. Again, those eyes of greed, man, it was just triggered. Right then, of course, I didn’t know this. I had no idea what was going to becoming.

And so hold up. Was he a business partner of yours?

No, he wasn’t. What he was was a videographer. His partner left the video company. I’m not going to reveal names, but his partner left. And what happened was I didn’t realize until later why he left. That was part of the reason why. And it was because I don’t know if I was that main trigger or not. I probably could have been that he just couldn’t take that anymore. So he took over the greedy guy and he took over. But he was an editor. He was a filmography editor. He was great. Oh, my God. The guy was incredibly talented so I could knock him for that at all. Thing was, is that now I contacted him, still unaware of what his plan was. And I said, look, I know we’re using this one knife guy who’s wielding the product, but I’ve been really trying to get in touch with this other dude. And for the last year and a half, I finally found out how to contact him. I sent him some knives and I sent my knives to this guy. He was just within an hour. He contacted me after I received it. You know, he’s flipping around the knife, doing his dance with the knife. And he said, man, this thing is incredible. When can we do some videos? I said, I’ll hook you up with him right now. Now, of course, he lived in Toronto, Canada. The other guy lived in right on the border of New York and Canada is only about a four hour drive. He drove out there. They both hooked up. They did a series of four videos for me. It was done, dude, I went from zero to over a million dollars in gross sales within less than three years, but going back to where things failed, where it started to fail was I got to open about what I was making now. He wanted a piece of the action. The other guy that was wielding the product.

Who’s he talking about?

The video market. You know, I’m talking about Doug Markéta, the knife guy, the guy who was wielding the product. And so what happened? And I’ll tell you more about Doug later. Unless some of you people already know the name Doug Markéta, you probably know and I’ll tell you who he is. But through the videos that I was paying for and I paid for everything. Mind you, I was paying for everything. Neither the filmography company that was doing all the videos at Tactical Company nor Doug, nobody put any skin in the game, except they just did some videos, literally a handful of videos that took a day, day and a half of work to do. The rest of it made its money on its own because of reoccurring playing on YouTube, people watching it and then going to my website and buying my product. So with that said, at the end of all of it, he came back and he said, OK, we want to develop another knife because he knew we couldn’t get money off the initial knife. He was trying to build another knife because he got that idea from Doug. Doug says, I want to take the same handle, but I want to create a different shaped knife can you design something like this? And he took some pictures and combined it. And so I designed the knife for him and submitted it to Fox. I designed it with Fox. We did it together. I did everything to expect presented it to Doug. Doug said, OK, that’s great. Can you do something just a tad bit different on this. And I made a certain different cut on a particular part of the knife. I did what he asked, redesigned it, submitted to Fox. Fox came back with the actual prototype, sent me the prototype, sent him the prototype. We fell in love initially with it. He was happy with it. So was I. Great. We put his name on the knife, although I designed it with Fox. We put it on there, got it out there, and we did some videos and boy, did we blow up even more but now there’s a contingency. Now we’re splitting it not just with a small percentage. I was still paying for the videos and they wanted a third of not the wholesale of the product, the retail. Nobody did that in the knife industry, but I did. So now I’m splitting money three ways. When there was no skin in the game with these guys, all they said was my name, my name, my name. I am huge. I am going to be the face of the product and it’s my name with no skin in the game. That’s how I termed it as and that’s how it was. So it totally still blew up. We did great, but I was starting to get upset with what was going on because I was just making it. I wasn’t able to bank the way I was desiring to. So I started coming out with other designs and I was trying to build my brand. But what happened is they got into a falling out. And right when that started happening is when Doug got discovered. After I spent probably about two hundred and fifty thousand dollars on all the videos Doug got discovered by the History Channel, which is now on the number one unscripted TV show called Forged in Fire. That’s the history now of him. He came back and he thanked me for all the work that I did to get him discovered and all that. And I said, that’s fine. You don’t have to say that. I already know that there’s no arrogance on my part because he still had talent himself and he was great on screen. You watch that TV show. He’s great with what he does. He wields a product. Well, he’s good at what he does. Great personality. He’s not one of these guys that you have take fifteen, twenty takes on a video. He’s usually one take. That’s it. He’s really good. So for a guy that can do stuff impromptu right on the spot, I tell you directors and producers and editors love that stuff because they don’t have to spend a whole lot of time going over it again and again. So his talent really reined in that area. So I don’t not that what I knock was the selfishness on both of them, because we were supposed to do another set of videos because we had an improved product that we made on the knife that I designed with Fox that had his name on it. And I said, all we need is another day of film. That’s it. Filming. That’s all you have one day. That’s all I asked for we were going to get a set of seven or eight new videos. Whoa, dude, that would have made two, three million dollars off of that. I already know it would have, but unfortunately, that’s not what he did. He didn’t care. He was getting bank off the show, broke the contract and left and then left me hanging. And I had to start from scratch, so I don’t blame him, but, boy, did I was happy for him, but I was angry at the same time. So it created a lot of bitterness in my heart and it took me a year and a half to get over that. And that’s the other thing I had to learn that, you know what, when things happen, how am I going to deal with stuff? How am I going to handle this emotion? Because things are going to come. I can only look at what I created. I reveal too much information when I shouldn’t have and I should have had a backup plan, which I didn’t I didn’t have a contingency. I banked on this to work. Now, I did have somewhat of a backup plan, but it wasn’t aggressive and it wasn’t the same. And so my business, although it’s doing OK, it’s not where it was before.

So that’s my question to you, is like, how did you overcome that? I mean, you’re talking about you potentially had a business that was generating anywhere between one to three million dollars annually. And obviously you had a three way split. So that cut into your margin significantly. Then a period after that. Then you lost the main guy. Right, to kind of like the face of the brand to a certain extent, which dropped on your business even more. So is that business still active? And how did you recover from that setback?

Well, the business is still on, but it’s slow. It’s not the same. And the reason why there’s another added reason why this is not to spite Google, Facebook or whoever. Look, they’ve got the rules. And I’ve had to learn how to adjust to those rules, even though I couldn’t advertise using AdWords because of the word knife, because they deem the word knife as a weapon. And it doesn’t matter. Even if you’re selling cutlery knives, you can’t advertise a word knife. And the same thing with Facebook. You can’t use Facebook boost at the time. You can use that. And you couldn’t advertise on YouTube. But what you could do was you could show pictures, you can show videos for free. That’s where that worked. But there’s a limit to that because in the small outreach that you have, there is a cap and you definitely need to pay for advertising to make that happen. Had I been able to do that with that product of mine that I still have. Oh, I know. I’d be sitting on 10, 15, 20 million dollars right now.

So what’s the name of the website?

The websites called The Ultimate Knife.Com. The Ultimate Knife. And that’s my initial site. The newest site is Mendiola Defense. That’s where I really gear more and more of the new people that I want on that I have a desire to get on. There is mandiola defense.Com. So mandiola is spelled Man is a man D as in David I o l a it’s pronounced the way it’s spelled. Mandy Olá Defense Dotcom. So you get on there and that’s where I developed and co develop my next knife, which were improvements on the other knife. And the cool thing that I like about this knife is that I decided to take a Tonto Blade and a karambit blade and do a recurve. So I patented the design with a tooling feature that actually can use any quarter. Hex Snibbe. I see it and you can put the attachment on there and then you can take the attachment off. And now you have what they would call a notch feature that catches on the edge of your pant loop. So it’s two purposes and one, a tool and then a one handed deployable defense knife so you can deploy it with one hand. And then I created, you know, I have two knives that I have right now. So that’s what I have. I have a traditional karambit called the short for cold, dead hands karambit. And then I have another one. I see a smiling face and then I have another one called the Toronto. It’s a Tonto Karambit. And I combined the two words trademarked that call that the Toronto. So Mike Wellcamp, who I’ve known GS for over ten years, had been the one that initially got me into all of this because he worked with Fox knives. I got a really good friendship with him. He’s an amazing knife designer, traditional CAD designer. He’ll make a knife from start to finish. Now, me, I do everything in Photoshop and Illustrator. Beyond that, that’s it. I don’t understand cad. I have to submit myself the I should say I have to submit the line design drawings to a company like Fox or to someone like Mike Lacamp and then get the knife produced physically so I can actually have a prototype. But Mike designed the patent that I purchased, which is called the Vex Drive, which is at tooling feature. So we could actually have not only a tooling feature, but also a sketch feature that’s we developed. And so that’s what I have right now.

I mean, I don’t think I have a Toyota Corolla because is my life of choice. So like, when it comes down to like tactical hand-to-hand combat, I mean, only really make sense in that environment. It’s not a really big defense knife, but it’s a great offense knife. So I was looking at it. There’s definitely a pretty sweet design.

I want to add this and I say this with the right kind of pride. So forgive my arrogance. There is nobody in the knife industry that has the fastest one hand, a deployable defense knife with a tooling feature for the money that you can spend, utilizing still one fifty four cm stainless steel. Now it’s a particular grade of steel because you have four forty C and it’s to educate you a little bit for forty C doesn’t rust. It’s a great deal. We have it in our silverware. It’ll outlive us more than likely. Use the knives and forks that we have if we buy a good quality knife and fork set for our household. Usually those knives go through dishwasher, whatever, never rust, usually never tarnish. They’re fantastic to use. But the thing is, the retention doesn’t hold as well as better compound steels. And in Taiwan, your better compound steel over four forty C is what they call s thirty V now. S thirty V is a better grade steel because it has a better edge retention. And when I mean by that is that it holds a better edge for a longer period of time that you don’t have to sharpen it constantly. Now here in America, one fifty four cm stainless steel. Is of the same quality as Taiwanese made steel, American steel has the same kind of quality in the sense of edge retention, and then you have in Italy, they utilize what they call an 690 cobalt stainless steel, and that’s they’re better made steel. So here you have these three steels that are equal to each other in strength. And we’re talking about now there’s a thing called a Rockwell hardness and Rockwell hardness on the edge of a blade for 40 see is right around fifty two to fifty six. The higher the number, the better the edge retention. And when you’re dealing with the next edge of better attention with all those three steals that I mentioned from those perspective countries, you’re now talking about fifty eight to 60 and the Rockwell hardness, a higher number of the best steel you’ll ever own, which is incredibly expensive, is El Max. L. Max Steel, we’re talking anywhere from sixty two to sixty-fourr. You’re not going to get any better than that, and if there is a steal out there, I don’t know it. But now we’re talking about malleable steel. When you’re talking about retention, you’re better, Steeles, really are, when it comes to sharpening and this I got from my village camp, he said, Honestly, lad, I’m going to tell you the better steal for me that I love is one fifty four cm. And it’s Niagara Specialty Company in New York. They’re the only company in this country that makes that steel. Well, guess what? Ernest Emersons been using that from the beginning and what I decided to do with his three hundred and ten dollar knife that he sells. Now, mind you, he’s got a ton of other knives that he sells. I decided to use that same steel from that same company. I exported it out to Taiwan and had my knife made. So my knife, with the exception of the liner part of my knife. Now the liner is the inside of the knife. Ernest Emerson uses titanium. I use regular stainless steel now, when you’re talking about this type of real estate and the size of the real estate that you’re dealing with, the rigidity and strength doesn’t make a difference. It’s negligible. So you don’t have to use titanium. I think personally, using titanium would be better, of course, in a sense of, you know, that’s an upsell, but it becomes very expensive because it is. So I decided, you know what? I’m going to make something that’s going to be able to handle the same kind of rigors and the same kind of quality. And we’re going to use one fifty four cm stainless steel and look at my price. One hundred and twenty nine ninety five for this knife, nobody not even on sale sells this knife for this price. Nobody has it, nobody. And like you said, the karambit knife for self-defense purposes. You know what? Every time I see a fight scene in a movie, I’m like, wow, that could have ended really quick with a karambit. They would have been done so fast with a karambit knife. Why? Because you don’t have to take your eye off of the situation that’s coming at you. When you’re being assailed, all you have to do is reach back with your index finger and pull the ring finger because it’s all memory, muscle reflex, MMR memory, muscle reflex we’re talking about. Your fingertips are like your eyes. When you look for your wallet, when you look for your keys, you already know where to go with your hands because your mind picks up on it very quickly. And as you’re groping, you immediately feel that knife and then you pull it out, catches on that pant loop and a bang. You’re wicked fast, which makes a split second before you can make contact. When you pull it out and you make contact with the assailant that’s coming at you, it’s a done story. It really finished.

But so I could definitely and this is one of reasons why wouldn’t you want to share your passion? Whatever you’re talking about is going to pour out and is literally one of those things. It’s like an open faucet without a cap and you’ll just spit that information out. Is that something that you picked up from like ancestors and your family? More so from the entrepreneurial background side of things. Is anybody in your family have that aspect or is that just something that you just grew into on your own?

My father’s from Santiago, Chile, and my mother is from Warsaw, Poland. And so my staff are American, so my kids are confused. Anyways, I look at my parents and they’re great. I love them. My dad, he came up from Miami and he got off the boat and he is eighteen, worked his way up to Boston, Massachusetts mother. She literally ran for her life because of the war back in World War Two. I just remember her story because that briefly to tell you, she lived in a building that was going to get bombed. And my grandmother, her mom obviously knew the bomb was coming. The planes were coming to bomb that area because the Germans were coming and literally grabbed her, threw her over her shoulder. And as they were running out of the building about two blocks down, she saw the bomb hit that building and it tumbled down. So her life obviously got saved. She would have died and she was two years old. And so when those memories hit you at that age, that’s shock value. You’re not going to forget that. So anyway, she came to Watertown, Massachusetts, by the age of nine. They found their way to get to America, the great place that we all live and the great idea of freedom that we have. I’m very grateful for both. My parents found each other through a friend that mutually knew the both of them introduce them. And so one thing led to another that got married. My brother came and then I came next. But through that time, as I was growing up, my dad nine to five, my mother nine to five. But then my mother got laid off and she was trying to figure out how can I do my own thing? So she started a consignment shop where we had people come in, bring in their clothes. She would make some profit, they would make some profit. And so that’s how she did her business. And she did that for about six, seven years. And through that time, I grew up with that, seeing my father being as boisterous and as loud as he was. And same thing with my mother, of course, in many arguments that they had. I don’t know if any of that had anything to do with who I was. But regardless, I learned a lot from the both of them to a degree. But I was still staunchly taught that I needed to go to school, get good grades. And then finish school, go to college, get a good job, and then go from there and I’m thinking, why are you telling me this, Mom, I can’t figure this out here. You aren’t doing what you’re doing. And I only told her this years later. But you’re not thinking of this when you’re 16, 17, 18, because your mind’s not knowing how to decipher, at least for most people to be able to say it sounds hypocritical. You’re telling me to do something you’re not doing. All I did was I just paid attention to what you just said, because these are my mentors. These are my influences and my parents. So whatever they say, I guess I just have to do. And so that’s the reason why I went through all those jobs, because, again, round peg in a square hole doesn’t work. And God was trying to lead me down a path was like, all right, I’m going to keep on showing you this path. You’re just going to be hard headed about it. You got something in you. You can do this. I was just lacking confidence. That’s what the issue was. And then when I started experimenting and thankfully just got to tell you, my wife was in for her, this would have never happened. She was the one working while I was taking care of the boys. So as soon as she got the boys out of her man and she’s back to work here, I am taking care of two babies. And I’m trying to figure things out on my own entrepreneurially, and that’s where it all started, and then that’s where I gained most of my confidence.

That’s a good Segway, too. So how do you juggle your work life balance today? Right. So, I mean, you talk about in the beginning, you’re saying you have a six year old and a 14 year old. Fast forward 18 years of marriage. How do you juggle your entrepreneurial hustle with your work life in today’s world?

Well, you got to be flexible. I think that’s the main thing my wife gets on me so much like you need to go to bed earlier. Well, my brain doesn’t work that way. I’m up till four or five o’clock in the morning. Sometimes I try to go to bed at three. Know that’s still like a lot of people, but I get six hours of sleep regardless. I get up at 9:00. If I go to bed at three, I get up at 9:00. If I go to bed at four, I get up at 10:00 and I’ll go to bed at five. I get up at 11. I still have my organized time of what I do. So I have a regimen that I’ve been holding on to staunchly because we have a as you know, we have a great mentor and the guy that is mentoring us now, his main thing, it’s about structure.

So it’s I mean, what’s your morning habits like you to go and break that out?

My morning habit. And it’s been this way for, well, nine months now. I honestly had to take a break from listening to Alex Jones. Believe me, that was part of my morning routine, which wasn’t helpful. Not that what he was then sharing isn’t true. I mean, the stuff he shares in the people he gets on, I’m like, oh, my gosh, is this. And he’s very intense. So if you can handle his intensity. But what happened is it brought a lot of negativity and a sense of the reality of what we’re facing even right now with all the garbage that’s going on in this world, all the stuff he predicted years ago. It’s all happening now and it’s not even his prediction. And people on the show saying what was going to happen. Of course, some of those guests have disappeared. So anyway, with that said, I had to take a break. So I made a decision in December. I’m not listening to this anymore. I already know about what’s coming, already know about what’s here. I need to focus on what I need to do for my life, my walk with God and my walk with my family, because this is not helping me right now. It’s not serving me. I had to find things that were going to serve me so I could serve that purpose better. And so my morning routine right now is I get up. I literally do the same thing I teach my kids, get up, wash your face, brush your teeth, drink some water, get some breakfast in your system. And then go and pray and meditate, take 15, 20 minutes out of your day. I don’t care if you read a scripture or passage or story in the Bible, I don’t care if you pray or meditate. Do one of those three things. Mostly I’ll meditate and pray and read through some scriptures that help me, but that is my morning routine. And then I’ll come in and organize my time because it helps me to focus. Believe it or not, people that have to deal with their ADHD to that extent, really, I’m going to tell you right now, as much as you might think it’s corny, meditation is insanely incredible, really helps your mind to focus. And if you stay away from sugar, you’re mostly on protein, vegetables and water. And really, that’s my main staple of diet. If you’re doing that, dude, your brain, even though you battle with distraction here and there, is going to deal with focus so much better. So for me, that’s what helps me. And so my morning routine beyond just meditation gets in to figure out, OK, what was I going to be doing for this week and what am I going to be doing today? Of course I have a monthly goal or have an annual goal, but that’s how I start my routine to figure out what I’m going to plan out for the day. Things do get toward it sometimes and you have to figure out other things. You know, we had a death in our family have to sell the house now for my mother in law. And I have to deal with helping my wife because now she’s in mourning, yet she’s having to deal with title issues, stuff. So things happen, things come through and not how can I be a better support? What can I do to get the house fixed, prepped up and all that? And what do I do to need to move boxes and move furniture, sell stuff? And we’re all tag team together, try to handle this stuff while she’s in mourning. And I’m like trying to figure all this stuff out with her. But see, that’s good because you’re better preparation is through meditation. And then what is your daily goal that you’re going to be reaching today? That is basically what I do. And that’s what’s helped me to get to this point right now where I’m able to move forward and deal with things better without being anxious.

Yeah, I think part of that is what you brought up, mentorship. And we’re talking about tycoon, right?

Oh, yeah.

And obviously I’m coming after you. You’re going to have to get you on the show sooner or later. So I’m just going to put that out into the cosmos and

I’ve got to get him.And I knew you on the show together. Oh, dude, that would be awesome. Anyway, so, yeah.

I mean, I think he was one of the beautiful things about Ty’s mentorship is obviously he’s teaching you how to make money, teach you how to make wealth online. But he really goes back into how do you maintain and hold on to that money. And part of your morning routine is part of that. Right. You have to kind of take the information in. And one of the books, which I think and grow rich, which was part of his mentorship, talks about that the mastermind principles is essentially what you’re talking about, right?

Yeah. Yeah. That was one of the books that he suggested for us to read. And I said, I’m thinking to myself, man, I remember reading that book and I don’t read books. I do not read books. I was terrible with that. I of course, with my ADHD, I’d get past the first chapter and I go, what the heck did I just read? You know, so but the one book that really captivated me and kept me engaged was Think and grow rich. I literally read it cover to cover two or three times. Thing was, is that I only implemented a few principles. I didn’t do really all of it. And I was twenty three when I read that. Here I am. Fifty three. Fast forward thirty years later and I’m like, wow, I’m listening to this again. Like it’s a new thing for me. And that book is incredibly helpful, even though it was written in nineteen thirty seven still online. And one of the other books that he mentioned which really took me, it was like Think and grow Rich 2.0 was a happy pocket full of money written by David Cameron. Good Condee. Now I’m a little different than Ty Ty. God he spent a whole summer he said I must have listened to that audiobook. He said like 60 times is like, wow, I listened to it like thirty, thirty plus times. I’m probably about almost fifty times into it. That is one of again that’s part of my morning in daily routine. I’ll pick a chapter or two and I’ll listen to it while I’m working to get the mindset going. It’s all about how to reprogram the mind and how to talk to your subconscious even out loud and saying, no, I’m not going to listen to that. And literally saying that my wife was like, no, I’m just talking to myself, babe, that’s all. Forgive me, but I talk to myself. She thinks I’m bad, crazy. And I’m like and I was sharing that. And I said, oh, we’re doing the same thing. All right, you know, so it’s one of those things that like minded people, you start becoming a lot like them. And I didn’t realize how I’ve been able to be mentored and imitate what he’s doing in that way because, hey, you know what? This dude’s making three hundred thousand dollars plus a month. That’s worthy of whatever he’s doing in his routine, worthy of imitation, you know, and if it’s good and it’s going to help and it’s edifying and it’s going to help you grow, then why not learn from somebody who can. You and I decided, I said, man, as driven as I am, I’m like, I got to find a way to get in touch with this candy guy. I got I don’t know how to do this. And I’m, like, going crazy trying to figure out how to reach out to him. I figured it out. I emailed him. I didn’t know it was him that I was emailing, but it was and contacted three and a half weeks later, I get this email. Hey, lad, good to hear from you. And you add these programs, add to that. And we went back and forth and then I said, hey, here’s my Skype information. I don’t use it. I use WhatsApp and I go, Oh, OK, I’m new to WhatsApp. I’m using it too. But let me give you my contact information. Boom, we hit it right off and we got a friendship. Dude, he contacted me last night. He was needing some information and we were able to talk to each other. But I appreciate now that I have a friendship with him and he’s really a great asset to have. The is insanely incredible, but very busy. So to me, I’m kind of shocked that he’d even contact me. But again, I’m very thankful for that. And so what I did was I decided to say, hey, Ty, I was able to get in touch with David and Candy. I’d like to see if we could set up an interview. And so we did. We set up that time. And we have a mentoring group that you’re a part of as well. It’s a twenty five K group. You know, the KCF, it’s a Kindle cash flow caf, twenty five K Group Mastermind group. And we got together, did a great interview, loved it and would love to do it again. But I’m telling you man. Tie and the mindset and the sessions we’ve gone through, this guy is full dedication and the thing that I appreciate about the most and the thing that irritated me initially the most, I’m like, get onto the lesson. Why are you talking about this mindset?This is not it’s not serving me

he to make sure you keep the money.

Right, exactly. So I’m thinking just teach a lesson. You know what was so great about it? Every session he would spend 30, 40 minutes getting into the mindset before he laid out his plan and his goal about here’s what I’m going to be doing today, guys. But it was so great. And that he’s still doing it today because at the end of the day, really, guys, it’s about mindset and about getting this working. You don’t get this working right. You’re not going to know what to do for have an idea, but you’re never going to fulfill it. It’ll never come to fruition and believe in whatever you want to believe, universe, God, whatever. I put my hope in God, ultimate creator. He is the universe. He’s our creator. And something had to create this anyway. I won’t get too deep into that. But I’ll just say this. My thing is, is that my connection with him is constant and without that connection through meditation. And through prayer, there’s no way I’d be even here, there’s no way. I know for a fact I’d be homeless

last bit of information that you just gave us, I mean, we touched on a couple of different things, right? And I think if I was actually the next question, I would think the first and foremost answer would be your brain is one of the probably greatest assets that you use on a daily basis. What are the tools besides your brain that you use on a regular basis? You would not be able to do your business without

networking. That is vitally key. That’s how I got to know you tional true. I’m an initiator. I network like crazy. I just put it out there. It’s kind of like going fishing. You just have to cast your rod and your bait. You just cast it out there. You’re not going to know until you put it out there. You’re not going to know if that’s going to be a place where there’s going to be some fish or not that you can catch. And there’s other resources. One of the things that Robert Kiyosaki taught and this I never forgot, you can’t be John Wayne and do it by yourself. You just can’t you’re headed for total disaster if you do that. And that’s where my ADHD shines. How that facet of my brain works is that I’m able to pinpoint notice other people’s talents that I don’t have and how can I utilize their talent where it can serve me as well as them? And how can we network together so they benefit and I benefit. And that’s another thing Robert taught me. You don’t think that you’re going to come into something and that somebody is going to help you without some skin in the game, buddy.

Hmm.

And that’s how he did it is like I didn’t have any money, but I got my time, I got my resources and I guarantee if I pitch myself to this person so I can get their resources, they’re going to want some of my resources. And that’s just networking talent. He says, I’m not the smartest guy in the world. I was a horrible writer from what he said, and look at I got the best selling books. Why? Because I had other people helping me and there’s no way that I could have got where I’m at today without other people’s help. And he found out what his talent was, which helped me find out my talent, which was very similar. He just knew how to find other people that were better than him to do his work that he needed. So if you needed some legal assistance, he found the right attorneys. Of course, he had to build his way up because he could only afford so much. In the beginning. He got better attorneys as they came along. Now he’s got top notch attorneys handling his business. Same thing with a CPA, you know, started small, worked his way up. So that’s exactly what I have done and what I continue to do today. This is the reason why I’ve been able to land on my feet and get myself set with a better foundation, because it’s not just me. I have a network of people that I work with that help me with their perspective talents that I don’t have.But we work with each other synergistically to make things happen.

I think one thing that you left out of it, I mean, I know for you you’re looking at it from a very linear standpoint about you just go out there and network. But I think the bigger thing is that you’re fearless with that. Right? A lot of people, Bastia intuition. They bite their tongue because they’re scared of what the results may be if you don’t give a shit. You just get it done.

And I apologize for not sharing that, because that to me is a given. And if you don’t have that mindset, I just say this. Get over yourself. Really, just get over yourself. You know, when someone says you can do it, you’ve got to tell yourself that. I have a little picture in the back here in my office. Just says I am. I just printed it out. I am. And that’s a happy pocket full of money statement. And being in that I am and being statement in that mindset, you got to be in that being mindset. You are great. So I just have to put the attachment. I am great. I am worthy because God knows I am I am a loving husband course and my wife will tell you different. Probably I am a loving father. I am a great money earner. I am an entrepreneur. Put whatever attachment you want to put on there. I am working on continually being humble. When you attach the I am find those other words. It’s not going to be easy initially because I sat there and I said I don’t know what to say because I was so downtrodden, because of my failing business with my knife business, because I thought I failed. I had people come up to me and say, Lad, do you know what you just did? I said, No. You were able to do what? Ninety nine percent of the people will never be able to experience, you went from nothing and in less than four years you were making over a million dollars and that was just you and your shipper and a few good videos. You should be ashamed of yourself. You’re a success. I didn’t see it that way because all I thought is I got another failed business. I’m a failure. God, you must hate me. I’m a loser. I deserve what’s coming to me. Well, guess what, God answers that prayer, and if you continue to think that way, as a man thinketh, so is he. Well, guess what? That’s where I was that I had a few friends that came up to me that actually helped me to get to the point where I was just like, you know what? I got to give this up. I got to get back on the train of where God wants and desires for me to be. And that’s when I made that decision. It wasn’t easy. It’s not going to be. But, man, as soon as I went to that session when I was with you at the Learning Center two weeks prior, I made that decision. There is no turning back. I watched Ty, actually, I watched him it was August 17th when he put out that video with ethnic group and there was something about Ty that was different from any other person that I listen to. I said, why do I trust him? Now, I know we’re not supposed to put our trust in man, because we’re not. Why do I trust what he’s talking about? And the way he’s conveying this information. I knew immediately when he was on screen, I said, this dude’s an introvert, and then he even said he was. He said, I’m an introvert. I would have just kept this information to myself. But I kept on getting encouraged not to because I was so good at it. You’ve got to teach other people if you really want to get big at what you’re doing. So he was battling with his own confidence issues. But the thing that I appreciate it brought back to me. I can do this, and he’s about the same age as I am. He’s forty eight. I’m fifty three. We’re not too far off in age here in the last ten years where I went from rags to riches, back to rags. Here he is, rags to riches and he’s still growing. Obviously, he’s doing something I need to imitate from

I think it’s the circles is this kind of circles. I mean, like Greg Cesar is another person in his circle that actually had opportunity to interview for the show as well. And just speaking to Greg, you can see Greg was like the bug in his ear saying you have to take this content, you have to give it to the world. So I think it was the support of his circle that made tie even bigger to where he is currently right now. I mean, you’re talking about Anick. Raonic is another monster of an entrepreneur and just having his circle of those community of people always saying, hey, guys, you could do more. There’s no way you can fail. They’re not going to let you fail because they’re always going to be tapping on your shoulder saying you could do more.

And the key thing that I see with those three men, and that’s the amazing thing when I listen, Annika said, wow, he’s Robert Kazuki 2.0. He is the new Robert. And even Robert said it, and I can’t find this four and a half minute video that Robert said. He said, man, it took me decades to get where I’m at now. You’re seeing millionaires pop up like out of nowhere. It takes them two or three years. And he said, man, that really pisses me off. It’s like, you know, because where things are at today, it’s so much more different. You can make things in an instant. And I’m thinking I can do this. I know that this can happen. And things don’t just happen by chance. They just don’t. And if you guys think it does, it does it it comes again in the mind. And when you put it out there and you live by faith. Having that faith as small as a mustard seed as I know, we’ve heard that so many times, that’s the thing. I mean, even even Jesus says, you know, he talked about this so many times about belief for anybody that puts their heart out there, God will reward a man according to what his deeds go after, according to his deeds deserve. But you have to do it through faith. The mindset of just knowing, you know what, I’m shaking in my boots, but I’m just going to take this leap, I’m just going to do it. That’s the point. That’s the crossroads. Of just doing it when I went to that event, I even shared it, it was hard for me to share and be humble in front of people and say, you know what, I have to start over. It was hard for me because I was doing what I was doing money wise, and now I’m having to start over again at my age weight, I was supposed to build my legacy. My legacy was already supposed to be built. What happened? Got to get over that again. I had to talk to myself and say, look, that chapter’s done. God’s going to put you someplace different. It’s time to grow, embrace those mistakes and take them as learning experiences that you’re not going to repeat again. You know better now. Now it’s time to take what this man has to teach, that being ty and implement these principles. God was telling me, dude, my son, you got to grow and you got to get reconnected with me. And I am fighting for you. I’d said this very clearly, an exodus, 14 14. And I read it before, but I never quite got it, and then it hit me when I read it like it was the first time God is fighting for you. You need only to be still. And that has stuck with me for the last year. I’m telling you, man, it is incredible what God can do, what our creator can do and what you can do. And what I can do and stay humble about it and not be arrogant, it’s OK to say, you know what, I’m great because God knows I am. There’s nothing wrong with saying that. As long as you have the humble perspective of going after trying to figure out what it is that you are good at. Huh? And then just putting it out there. For people that don’t get it, and I know you were trying to help me to understand where my mistake was, is that yeah, you know what? Not a lot of people have that kind of you know, that old word that we hear gumption. You know, that backbone, that stick to it, witness that faith that it can work. I can do this. This can happen, and then what? Five minutes later, I’m an idiot. I’m a loser. No, no, no, no, no, no. Again, you got to talk out loud. I’m not. I am what God says I am. He’s fighting for me. I just need to be still. I’m not going to let anything that’s going to destroy what I’m working and rebuilding on, and that’s what I appreciate about Thai and men like him don’t worship the guy. No, but I appreciate deeply what he has done to restructure and help mentor us the way he has. He’s really great. I’m telling you, if you guys are looking into getting into a mentoring program that twenty five K group, insanely incredible. He he only committed himself to do eight sessions. That’s what we were paying for. And when we hit into our sixth session I was like. Are we done because we haven’t even started yet and, you know, it kind of came up and he said, guys, don’t worry about it, I’m not going to do to you. What do you think I’m going to give you so much more? And, you know, we’re at right now week twenty three.

Yeah, I was like twenty three. Twenty two,

you know, would you believe it? Week twenty three. He could have stopped a long time ago. He literally teaches you step by step from beginning to end until you get it. And it’s all on video now. So somebody that comes in to Pazin for this program, they didn’t have to wait like we did, like, oh, we got to wait two weeks to get an answer or, you know, five days when we voxer him or we don’t have to you don’t have to be concerned about. Now it’s in the lesson. You can replay the lesson, go to the next lesson. It picks up right from the last lesson. And I’m telling you, he literally teaches you what to do so you can succeed. And now the funnel that we launched, because he does it through click funnels, if anyone doesn’t notice, he utilizes click funnels with his player program that he teaches. And there’s an hour and 40 minute intro session that he does on YouTube that kind of explains that more in full. But I’m going to tell you. Since I’ve launched it, it’s growing. I’m like, wow, I got a new membership, I got a renewing membership and I got more sales coming in now. And so it’s now starting to kick off. And it’s happened in the last two weeks. I’ve had 20 sales and memberships included. I’m like, this is starting to grow. We’re starting to see some success. This is awesome. And what that does, it catapults this to grow even further. I got to build another funnel, got to do another one already. My mind is thinking forward about what to do next so that I am greatly appreciative of WITI.

So anyway, so this next part of this discourse and we’re going to close it out is how good people find you online. I mean, Facebook, Instagram. I mean, you told us about the ultimate life dotcom. What’s your online handles?

But you pretty much set it right there. Anybody that anybody needs to contact me that way. I mean, just type in Ladislao Mandiola . There is nobody with my name. I hated that name my dad gave to me because I was my middle name is Carl and I’m like, everyone calls me Carl.

Your middle name is Carl. What’s your first name? And last name is like multiple syllables,

which I’m like, why would you do that, Dad? He says, Because that’s just what I wanted to do. Carl, I’m telling you, I do what I want. I don’t care. And I just I just lost my name. But you are Chenda. My name. You want me to smack you, I smack you, you know what I mean? I can smack you. So how are you making fun of my language now, huh? That’s nice. That’s great. You’re making fun of my language. So my dad was hilarious, but no, he gave me that name and now I look at it. I’m so proud to have the name, but I had to shorten it to lad. And it’s like, why don’t you use Carl? Because when you’re dealing with business, you have to use your official first and last name. So I just said, screw it. I’m just going to shorten the name. lad that if you want to find me, all you have to do how you can get on my website. The ultimate knife or Mendiola defense dotcom. You can get on either one of those two sites. I got emails, whatever you can email me directly through there. You can call the phone number that’s on there. You can reach me that way. I do have, like you said, Facebook. You can reach me on messenger. I can go even beyond that. If you guys message me, I’ll text you. I’ll even give you my phone number. You can contact me that way. But first, reach out to me, Facebook and Messenger. And then once we get to know each other a little bit, if I feel like I can give you my number, I’ll do that. Then we can contact each other that way. I’m more than happy to network and put myself out there. I’m more so and I hope that’s enough for contact.

I mean, yeah, I think definitely so. So one of my bonus questions for you, and I’m looking forward to hearing your answer for this particular one, is if you can spend twenty four hours with anybody dead or alive, uninterrupted, who would it be and why?

Dead or alive,

dead or alive?

Jesus.

why?.

Yeah, well, he’s got incarnate, so you can’t get any better than that. And again, this goes to anybody, whatever they believe, whatever. The man was incredible. It’s weird. Why would I spend that time? To learn even more, just to be in his presence, the humility that he exuded and the determination that he had, his resoluteness to see justice done humbly by dying on the cross for our mess ups, that is insanely worthy of imitation. And for me, I am indebted to him. And what God’s done to help me to understand that in full by reading his word, it’s a great guide. I know there’s a lot of other guides out there and a lot of other things out there. But what’s helped me to understand greatness is humility. And some people just don’t get that. But I’m so grateful for that because he was a perfect example of that. So much so he died for us. I mean, wow, you know, that to me is incredible. So, yeah. Why and what would I learn from him? I would only know if I spent time with him, but the main thing to me would be I would just give him a big hug and tell him how much I love what he’s done for me, how much I love his commitment to me. And understanding love is so much different than what a lot of people think it is. It’s true commitment. And that’s what he was and that’s what he is. And that’s the reason why I would choose him over anything.

Got you. All right. I got another bonus question for you. This is a little bit of fun bonus question. It’s if you could be a superhero, who would it be and why?

My kids and I go over this stuff. I tell my kids, would you be quiet already? I’m tired of talking about this one. Would I be what would I be? It’s hard, really, if you think about it, as are so many different things you could do. I would choose the power of. Where I could bend and travel in time because, believe it or not, we live in that existence anyway, this time is an illusion, but because we’re human, we can’t fully understand that. But I would choose time. So, Mr. Manhattan. Yeah. To be able to go past forward wherever. Time travel, regardless of past of forward or present, that’s what I would choose as a power and to use that to observe and learn and be an influence in some way, I would choose.

That sounds like Mr. Manhattan. If you’re familiar with the D.C. side of comics, Mr. Minihan.

I’m not I don’t read comics.

So my question. All right, when you get a chance to look up as a man, DC Comic Watchmen is exactly what you’re explaining. I mean, he’s at all times. I mean, he is in the past, present and future in all existence at the same time. So definitely, I assume you went that route. I definitely appreciate you taking the time much data to come on the podcast. I mean, it was definitely an insightful episode. You gave a lot of jewels and a lot of detail information on just what it’s like to really be an entrepreneur through and through.

Yeah, and I appreciate you having me on. Man, I really do. And you know what? I am going to see what I can do to get tie on here. I’m going to box for him. Let’s see what we can do together. And I want to bring David. If the four of us. Holy cow. That would be insane. I would love it. I don’t know if you’re open to that, but, dude, if you are, of course, I would have said that today. I’m going to contact them both today.

So I look forward to see what they say. And this is the part, the podcast, where I just kind of like open up the mikes to if you have any questions for me, just is time to tax.

That’s really hard for me because we’ve talked so much and I wanted to find out what you did in your background, what happened with you, and gave me your history. So it’s really it’s kind of hard to even ask a question. So I’m not prepared for that. So forgive me. I really don’t know what to ask. I’m dumbfounded right now. I’m like, I don’t know.

It’s catching lad off guard. It’s like a one of a million opportunity here.

So hold on. OK, so someone’s trying to get creative here. One of your most intriguing interviews so far to date that you’ve done since you’ve released boss uncaged.

Wow. So I talked about on the recap episode we talked about it was a teacher that I interviewed. But I think in general. It’s kind of hard for me to pick one person because I think I try to keep the podcast episodes diverse as possible. I don’t want to people of the same background to fall consecutively, but I would say. A really good one is probably the next one I’m going to release, which is C. Milano Harding and he’s a hybrid. He’s one of these guys that he’s a creative fashion designer, but he was a model when he was younger. So a model today. But he’s an Ivy League graduate that does a lot of nonprofit work. So just having that conversation with him is kind of like, you know, he’s a creative mind, but he’s highly analytical. He’s an artist, but he’s also an executive. So to have that kind of conversation with him and you can kind of hear he’s very passionate as well. He’s very animated when he speaks about particular topics. Again, fallen into fashion for the good is what he would deem it. So I would think that episode is up and coming. I think that that’s definitely a memorable episode that I’ve had that just as long lasting content, much like your episode, as long lasting content to deliver value, much like you was saying with Richard, that poor that it could be 10 years from now, 20 years from now, this episode is going to hold weight because the topics we’re talking about are evergreen topics.

Yeah. And, you know, that to me is incredible because when you look at young people now, they laud after that book, rich dad, poor dad, they still read it. And I’m like, why not? You know what I mean? You know what I would tell people if you’re going to read any book, really read Cash-Flow Quadrant, that was his next book and then read Prophecy because you’ll learn. Well, why read prophecy? Because the crashworthy came to read prophecy. And there is more to come. There’s a lot more to come. I believe we’re going to be going through a lot more. And this is just a start. It’s going to be bad but good because I believe in 20, 30 things are going to completely take off from that point in a good way. I think a lot of good things are going to come from this. But anyway, that’s all you know, I’m glad you answered that question. I don’t know what other questions I can ask you, but.

No, no, I think that’s a good way to to round out this episode. And again, I definitely appreciate your time and to your point to what actually the three words to describe you. I mean, I think you definitely personifies your three words in this episode. I mean, everybody can see that’s who you are, 100 percent. So,

yeah. Because tomorrow I’ll probably pick three other words. I don’t know. So, you know, there is my ADHD right there. Come on, man.

I definitely appreciate it. I mean, I look forward to continually working with you. And again, by the way, I mean, we got your logo’s back, too, so I’ll be putting the final touches on those and getting those back to you in about a day or so. Right.

Oh, and by the way, guys, use this man. Anybody who listening to this is services because he does local designs, I can do them, too. But because of my time seat, I mean, don’t be John Wayne. Don’t do everything. It’s good to hire other people and utilize the services. Um, that’s another cat in the hat kind of comment because I apply it. I don’t just say it, I apply it. I could easily do this logo myself. But you know what? I need another eye on this. Or how about this? I need some eyes. And he’s got that ability to do it because he’s got a team of people where would just be me and one other person, you know, utilize talent when you can. I would totally use him.

So definitely appreciate it, man. All right. See, Grant over now. Have a good one.

Yes. Yes. Talk to you soon, man.

All right.

Thanks again later.

thanks for tuning in to another episode of Boss UnCaged. I hope you got some helpful insight and clarity to the diverse approach on your journey to becoming a Trailblazer at this podcast. Helped you please email me about it. Submit additional questions. You would love to hear me ask our guests and or drop me your thoughts at asksagrant.com post comments, share it, subscribe and remember, to become a Boss Uncaged, you have to release your inner Beast. S. A. Grant signing off.

listeners of Boss UnCaged are invited to download a free copy of our host S. A. Grant’s insightful book, Become an Uncage Trailblazer. Learn how to release your primal success in 15 minutes a day. Download now at www.Sagrant.com/bossuncaged.