Volition America: Attitude, Patriotism, And Entrepreneurship With John Sapiente

In a world full of turmoil, despair and darkness, you need to carry the light. Season three of the Get Attitude Podcast is where we will ignite your mind, your heart and your attitude. And welcome to the Gap, the Get Attitude Podcast. My name is Glenn Bill. I am the host of the Gap and man, we are happy to have you here today. We want to thank you for joining us yet again. We're here knee deep in season three carrying the Light and we have a gentleman today with us who carries the light in a lot of different manners. Please always remember to, you know, share this episode. Tell all your friends that need a little attitude adjustment to follow us on Spotify. If you like to watch it, we're on YouTube and Spotify as well. But please follow us. Continue to build. We were just recognized as one of the top two and a half podcasts in the world by Listen Notes, which we just got a notification on that. Jason, awesome job on that. Thank you my man.

No problem.

And I know that we're also in line for our third communicator award, so God willing the Little Sisters of the poor, our podcast with them be awesome to see a couple 90 year old nuns and us get get a big old trophy for the Get Attitude Podcast. But today we have somebody very special. I, I saw a story about what he did on the Today show and then I started looking into this thing called Volition America. We have John Sapienti, the CEO of Volition America who has worked his way through entrepreneurial depths of brand building, partnership, acquisition and everything in between. Prior to John's patriotic awakening moment in the at the Folds of Honor Gala in 2013, John was the owner of two manufacturing companies, Elgin Demold and the Trident Manufacturing Company. He is an entrepreneur and as mentioned, the CEO of Volition America. Upon attending that gala, John forged a relationship with Lt. Col. Dan Rooney who introduced John to the idea of this thing called Volition America. Since John had has since then John has procured partnerships with several top tier brands like Puma, Cobra, Lizard Skin, Victus, Maruchi, Revo, Luminox and that's just to name a few. He's got a whole bunch of different relationships that he's forged while spending is in impartial explanation of patriotism and donating portions of Volition America profits to aid service people and their families through the Folds of Honor Foundation. This guy's an entrepreneur. He's a leader of what I think is one of the coolest not for profits going in America. There's so much to learn as we dig in Those of you who are leaders, those of you who are entrepreneurs, those of you who may own manufacturing companies, those of you who are running 501 C3. Guys, look, it's time to get some attitude with the one and only John Sapiente. John Sapienti.

Sorry.

John, great to have you on the Get Attitude podcast.

Thanks for being here. Thanks for having me. This is great.

I love it. I love it. So, I mean, that's a mouthful. You're a busy guy. You sound almost like my intro. If you did less, we could have nailed that in like, you know, 50 words. But I think it's important people know who we're talking to and what you do. Let's just start off real quick. Tell us a little bit about Volition America. I'd like to know kind of what that is, what the mission is, and then tell us what it was like, the attitude that it took for a successful entrepreneur, a guy that owns two different businesses, two manufacturing companies, to go, oh, okay, yeah, I'll go ahead and be a CEO. So tell us about the mission and then tell us what's the attitude it took for you to say, all right, I'm going to go ahead and grab hold of this.

Yeah. The, the brand came about from Dan Rooney, the founder of Folds of Honor and Volition America. The idea behind Volition America is volition means the power of choice. So you can, you know, choices you make. Right. The legacy of your life. So the idea was, you know, Dan, Dan lived his whole life around attitude and choices, and he believes that you choose to be happy, sad, love, hate. And he really wanted to start a brand that empowered people to choose America and live a better life. So volition, clearly making choices and making better choices. And then while we were doing that, we had a cause behind it, which is Folds of Honor, which is the non for profit which we give 13% of our revenue back to. Folds of Honor to support the fallen soldiers. That gave us the freedom to have power of choice. Yeah. And that's the idea of the brand. And so it was clearly Dan Rooney's idea. He's the brainchild behind this. I was the vehicle in which he approached me and asked if I would help start this because he didn't want. He didn't have the money to do it. And two, he couldn't use what we call donor money from the charity to start a business.

Yeah.

So he gave me a mission and I was all in. And so I said, sure, I'll go do that. I didn't know what I was walking into. But I said sure.

Well, let's talk about Dan Rooney. I mean that number one, when, when you just look at being, you know, quite simply a leader. So so many of us are faced with great prospects and great projects but yet we try to take them ourselves instead of finding somebody like yourself to make this happen. Tell me a little bit more about Dan, what he does, what he does and maybe what his attitude is or even a little bit of his background.

Yeah. So Dan, Dan is a really incredible American. His first and you know, he started off as a PGA golf pro and decided that he loved fighter pilot, being a fighter pilot. So he ended up with three tours of duty as a fighter pilot and he came home and was here in the country and he flew home one night and was on a plane, I think it was like midnight, everyone was getting off and they had a fallen soldier's casket come off the plane. And he saw what he calls the other side of war. He saw a three year old son watching his dad flag drape coffin come off the plane. And Dan decided that hey, I'm going to get that kid a scholarship. Wow. And that was 20 some odd years ago. And he started folds of honor over his garage. And now they've given $220 million away and 44,000 scholarships to the families of the severely injured or fallen soldiers. And now they're doing first responders too. And how do I explain Dan? He's probably the most inspirational human being you're ever gonna be in your life. Wow. He lives a life of, you know, a mission that is make the world a better place. He gives back. He used me as a vessel. He's pulled together tons of different people to drive this mission. And he's a unbelievable patriot. I mean he's just incredible.

And I'm guessing that's the gentleman I saw on the Today show.

Yep.

Okay.

He was on there talking about. So we made a series of T shirts which is what you saw and they were anthem tees and they were all around attitude and things you talked about. But basically we took, I call them Rooney isms. But like Freedom isn't free is one. Obviously that's pretty standard but he has another big one. Maybe as a bottom, you go down a little bit, go before you're ready. You know, he and I always joke we were too stupid to know, but just go, you know. And the body achieves what the mind believes or I believe I can, I will. And those are all slogans and things that we empower volition through your Attitude to try to, you know, make better choices, recognize and give back. Have the belief that you can accomplish things. So we made these anthem tees and they sold like crazy. And so we just restocked it. We actually have a freedom as a free one coming from Mother's Day. But, yeah, they were super inspirational and they're basic and fun, but people are buying them up.

And so there. There are no more left. Or like, what's the website? We can go.

I had to reorder, but the website's volitionamerica.com.

Okay.

We have all sorts of different clothing on there as well.

Good. Volition America.com. guys, I'm telling you, I know those of you who are listening, as most of the people do on our podcast, you want to go check these tees out? These would be awesome, and these would be great gifts. You know, we're coming into Memorial Day, and I'm in Indianapolis, in Indianapolis 500, you know, huge, huge honor and tribute to our veterans and fallen soldiers on that day. Have you ever been to the Indy 500?

I've been once. Very fun.

And that was enough.

Yeah. I go back. Okay, sure.

Cool, Cool. So when we. So, so that's great. He was a. He was a soldier. Is that correct?

Too active. He's still actively. I think he explains himself as Viper and Top Gun now. So now he's an instructor.

Okay.

Yeah, he had three tours of duty. Wow. Yeah, he's incredible human being.

That's.

That's awesome being on your show.

So. Well, we. We appreciate you guys and we appreciate exposing the message because here's the point. After just hearing your opening, I'm like, okay, I'm ready to open the checkbook and get behind this thing. I mean, that's you. You think about the, you know, the visual of a three year old watching his dad. Dad come off of a plane. That doesn't hit you in your gut. I don't know what does. And so you're helping those families. Can you tell me maybe a story about how long have you been doing this? Number one. And what was. Was there one or two? Just one is all we need. That. That man just hit you right between your eyes. Like when you experienced the good you're doing for the first time. I'd love to hear that.

Well, so I guess I'll say this on air, I probably shouldn't because people look down on me a little bit, but for the first 45 years of my life, I took the military for granted.

Yeah.

And I went, so 2013, I went to a Folds of Honor charity gala, and they were auctioning off around a golf with a famous Masters champion, Craig Stadler. And I bought round of golf with. With the Walrus because I wanted to play golf with the Walrus, not because I was that into the charity.

Yeah.

And what I didn't know was I was playing golf on Memorial Day in the Patriot cup, which is a Fold of honor tournament.

Wow.

And I spent the entire weekend with the military and their families on Memorial Day. And I walked out of there like, holy cow. I can't believe I've overlooked this my whole life. And I really became an active Folds of Honor donor, using money, time, and networking, and that became my charity. And the thing for me that was different than other charities, which, you know, I have other things I give to, but it made, you know, everybody. Your mom may get breast cancer or someone may get sick in your family. That becomes your thing. What really resonated with me is we all live under this blanket of freedom, and they're not being taken care of, and so everybody should rally around this. So I became very passionate about it. And as more passionate I became, the better friends Dan and I became. And over the next three or four years, we were just friends, and I was a donor, and that was how I got involved. Wow.

That is so cool. And that's a damn good story. But, uh, could. Could you maybe. Let's just dig one more deep. Uh, can. Can you give us an example of a family that. That maybe just really. That's a good enough answer. But, like, is. Is. Is there just maybe one more story about, hey, there was this kid, and here's what happened, and here's what we did.

The first tournament you play in. So the tournament I played with the Walrus is you play with the celebrity, a donor, which was me, and then a military person. Okay. So you have a active person in there that was injured or whatever that played with us, but then in your cart rides a recipient. So I met one of the recipient family, spent the day with a great kid, and he got. Basically, they give scholarships all levels, from kindergarten all the way through college and grad school. And I got the family, and the wife had five kids. Wow. And the father was gunned down in battle. And darkest day, Folds of Honor came in and helped the family. But there is just. You can't go to a Folds of Honor event and not walk out of there crying. It's unbelievable when they get the recipients and the family and talk about the disaster left behind when they find out and Folds has always been there and rallied around them. So for me, I don't have one story. I'm just telling you, it's just an incredible movement to meet the families and the kids and how much they benefit from getting taken care of. And that's the honor, the legacy is really what they're trying to do is take care of these people's families.

That is. And so this has been going on for 25 years, correct?

I would say. My guessing, I think it started in 07, 16, 17 years.

You know, our producer Jason. And Jason, I'm just curious if you've heard of this. Helping Hands for Freedom. Have you heard about Helping Hands for Freedom? Jason, give John a little commercial on what you did.

Yeah, well, we did a. So I was part of a documentary. There was two of us and we followed two gentlemen across the United States from Atlantic City, New Jersey to San Francisco, California. And it was all an effort to raise funds for a house of healing for military families. Gold Star military families and veterans suffering from ptsd. So that was a four month journey and was just amazing. But they, I forget what the rating system is called, but it's. They, they rated really high and I think they actually won an award for how well they spent their money or like the percentage of, you know, what actually goes with military families as opposed to what they keep for administrative, you know, kind of thing. So it was just an awesome experience. And just hearing the. I know exactly what you're saying. You know, hearing the stories of the Gold Star families, mothers, fathers and just. Yeah, hearing those stories was just so incredibly life changing.

Interesting.

Yeah, the Folds of Honor, same thing. It's a, it's a guide, Gold star charity. I think they give 91 cents on the dollar to the recipient.

That's.

That's good. That's damn good. So let me ask you this. Being an entrepreneur and running this, You've been the CEO for how long?

Since 2016.

Okay. Wow. That's a stint. Seven years. What's the attitude been for you? How is it different? You have an attitude and goals and mission in running a business. And you have an attitude, goals and mission in running this Folds of honor. Is there a difference and what is that?

Well, for me the difference is, you know, I have two stable businesses where you're dealing with normal business things on a daily basis. And then I decided to start this for Dan, with Dan. And you're a one man band and you don't really know what you're getting into until you start going forward. And it's been an attitude, really, of just continue to forge ahead because, you know, you're doing good and you're bringing, you know, you're giving back despite all the obstacles and things. As a startup that I've never had to deal with. Yeah. So this business, for me, it's been intellectually, it's been challenging because it's in a totally different segment of the world that I've never had to deal with. So the whole brand building and partnerships and all that, that not anything I've ever been exposed to. So it's been a big learning thing and I've had to just keep my head down and forge ahead, even though sometimes it's like, oh, my God, why am I doing this hard?

So let's talk a little bit about what were the biggest obstacles and how did you overcome them? Like, let's. Let's just take branding. So you're sitting here, you're going, okay, because there's a lot of people probably listening to this, going, yeah, I got this great idea, but I don't know how to start. I don't know how to brand it. So what I guess I'm looking for is maybe a playbook or a little. Little check sheet. Hey, if. If you were in my shoes right when I did this, here's like five or six things that I would probably encourage you to do.

Well, first and foremost, the idea is that you don't know anything is probably the best thing that you can do, is go into every meeting. I always tell people in every meeting, I'm the dumbest guy in the room, so you'd have to explain it to me. And so part of the success of the brand is I really listen and learn from people who do this every day. Ultimately, I validate that. I agree. I use a quote in my business that just because they're a doctor, an accountant, or a lawyer doesn't mean they're right. And what I mean by that is it's great information, but you need to validate it. So the other thing is, if you think starting a business you're just. It's going to just be all downhill and great, you're sadly mistaken. Super hard. Because you dealt a ton of unforeseen obstacles, and you got to be strong enough to work around them and find alternate ways to do it. But for me, what's really interesting about this brand was we started in one path and it was ultimately impossible to build it, and I had to totally pivot 180 degrees. So when Dan came to Me, I think at the beginning of the show, I talked about as a fighter pilot, Dan wanted to make T shirt jeans, a belt buckle, and a hat. So if you're visualizing that, he visualized Tom Cruise and Top Gun.

Right.

I was sent to. That was my mission to go make that, and let's go sell it. Wow. And if you think about jeans, we've been to a jean store. There's long jeans, skinny jeans, 30. 30. I'm thinking, for now, I'm in my manufacturing hat as how am I making this? How am I inventorying this? I have no idea what I'm doing. Right. Then I met another gentleman, and he said, you know, who owned a big brand. He said, yeah, don't make jeans. It's really hard. And then he kind of started bragging to me about all the problems he had with design when he started. And I realized, I don't know what I'm doing. Yeah. So I said, okay, I don't know how to make clothes, so I'm gonna find a partner. So that was my first. What we'll say is a pivot. And then the second pivot is. We went into golf first because Folds of Honor is really big in golf, very big with the PGA and big active with golf tournaments. So the other thing I realized is that, yeah, there's all sorts of golf stuff. Clothes, hats, golf clubs. But the other thing I realized is 80% of the sales in golf come from pro shops. So, you know, as I mentioned, I have a day job with two companies who's driving around with a bag of polos. I, at the end of the day, I had no manufacturing, no design, no distribution, and no time. But we had a great idea. So we decided that what if we try to license it? And we went to Puma. We met a couple different companies. We went to Puma, met CEO of Puma North America, and he fell in love with it, and we signed a collaboration with them and licensed golf to them. Since 2017, Puma has been our partner, and they made a exclusive clothing line for golf. And then we've added Cobra for equipment. But they're our golf partners, and they sell exclusively to the golf market. They proved the whole beta, that people love it. And what's really interesting, we had in 2018, this is super cool. We got a call. I don't know if you guys know this guy, but his name's Gary Woodland. Gary is a PGA professional. He called us. He had just finished his Under Armour contract, asked if he could wear our stuff on tour while he was getting a contract. Wow. And ended up wearing it and being in the finals in the PGA Finals with Tiger. And our sales went crazy. And then he came to us in 2019 after the six months and decided he wanted to sign with us, and we signed with him. He won the US Open wearing Volition America clothing. And ever since then, there's been no looking back.

Wow. Something to be. Something to be said about karma and doing the right thing. And, you know, I was sitting there going, how do you get in to talk to the, you know, CEO of Puma and Cobalt and all those.

Yeah, yeah. Cobra Networking. Using your resources. Sometimes I joke, too stupid to know. You shouldn't be asking for that. Right. But it's just a mindset that you're going to get to them, and it's an attitude. And so a lot of people, you know, I. They call it being falling under common assumption or failing because of common assumption. They assume the answer is going to be no. So they just don't ask.

Right.

I'm just the opposite. I just. Worse that happens. I say no, and you go on to the next thing. So we had a couple other guys involved. They got Dan in front of Bob, and those two hit it off, and it was great. And since then, you know, all the other partners we had, I've been using LinkedIn, Rocket Reach, Cold calls, networking, asking people to connect me to. And once we get the door open and they kind of hear our story. Yeah, they fall in love with it because it opens up a, you know, 75 million proud Americans that want to stand up and say, this is what I stand for.

I love it. And I mean, your product and your mission is tough to say no to. Right. I mean, if you're an American and you love freedom and you have some sense of nationalism or patriotism, that's a real tough ask to say no to. When. When you mentioned, you know, when you hear our story. I think we've heard your story, but I want to make sure, because, you know, my. My goal all the time with our podcast is that this is a piece that you can put on your phone, copy, paste, send a link to whoever and say, hey, if you want to know about us, listen to the Get Attitude podcast. They did a nice job. Is there anything else about the story that we should know or that we don't know that you'd like to share?

I think that. I think the thing that's important about the brand is, you know, first off, we're trying to create something that you go in your closet that you're proud of, that you put on this is this is what I stand for, you know, and the other thing that from the beginning I've been very aggressive about not being because patriotism viewed as a right leaning word. And it's not, it's just a love of country. And so I've been very, very strong on basically making this a non political brand. You can be really far left and love your country. You can be really far right and love your country. The idea is, and I tell people this all the time, is we're not red and we're not blue. We're red, white and blue. So it's a unifier bringing people together with better choices. That's what this brand is about. And the other thing that I think is really interesting is there's a white space for a tasteful brand that's, you know, not, you know, the cheesy flag shirt on 4th of July. We're trying to build a movement 365 days a year to celebrate country in a tasteful, cool way. So as you see our clothes, they're not loud, proud, big flag or big eagle. It's just a tasteful brand that, you know, this is what we stand for and we want to give back to those that helped us.

Jason, if you can get their logo, let's throw it up there because yeah, it is, it's somewhat understated. Right? I mean it's, it's easy. And you're right, it's never been the focus of anything.

But very look in the middle, if you look in the middle of that logo, that's the folded flag for fallen soldier.

Yeah.

And our idea is we're putting wings on and lifting it up and taking it places it couldn't go. It's also the folds of honor that. And so to make that triangle, there's 13 folds in a folded flag. And that is why we give 13% back to folds of honor.

Oh my gosh. How cool. Now that's the story.

That's the story. Pretty cool.

Hey, we got to it. There's no doubt about it.

Super honored to be able to do this. It's been fun and it's been great learning and it's fun to get back.

So you gave us some pretty awesome numbers I think at the beginning. 220 million given away. Can you tell us how many people are in this movement?

Right.

220. What, what are the metrics? Do you have any metrics that you just want to throw out? Just so we know the Impact from.

The golf side of it, Puma has now got volition in 2000 pro shops. Wow. We're in Dick's. We're in PJ Superstore. We now have our. As you guys are seeing our website, we now have our own e commerce platform, which is new this year, where we're bringing all the brands together in one location. And the thing that's so beneficial for a brand is now you're bringing together these huge brands and they're getting a free audience from the other brands. Right. So we're, of course, multiplier for them. Where Puma, you know, all of a sudden is getting the Maruchi audience, or vice versa, or Luminox. So they're getting story, really unique storytelling. They get to give back and they're getting free audiences. So it's a. It's a business benefit for them. It's a goodwill thing for everybody. Its ability to give it so so many layers of this that have been super successful and fun. And it's a little humbling for me just to see it kind of turning into a real brand. I mean, I had no business doing this, and it's super cool now.

I think I saw that there's a newsletter and there's a magazine. Is that true? And, like, what. How many subscribers are on that and how many people are in yet?

We don't have a magazine. We have a newsletter, goes out once a month. We have about. On the Volition side, we have about 10,000. Okay. But the beauty of that is when we send it out and then with our brand partners, it now reaches millions of people. I see. So this is funny because I did this backwards because I was busy with my time. Normally you build a brand, you get it going, and then you go do collaborations. Right? I did collaborations. Really? Because how do I get it to market with one with no time? And so we built up this audience through our brand partners. And now we have our own product line rolling out in probably July or August. We have our own clothing line which will kind of be an activewear type thing. So we use a comment internally at Volition is we want to give you a uniform for life. And the idea of the uniform for life is you go in your closet and you put on something that means something to you. So we'll have our pillar, which is kind of going to be outerwear and activewear. And then anything that we don't offer, we'll do a collaboration. So if you want to go play golf, here you go. If you want to go play Tennis. Here's a partner here. You want to go play baseball or fish? And so we'll partner with best in class brands and bring you best in class products. And what they basically do is. I call it. They take their greatest hits and they volitionize them.

Yeah, there you go.

They take their, you know, like, Maroochy's got their CADX bat, which is best in class, and they'll dress it up and volitionize. It'll be super cool. And, you know, same thing with Cobra drivers and the clothes. And it's been fun to watch.

Yeah, that's so cool. Hell, you fit on our innovators. And what was that? What was our last season? Influencers and innovators that we could have slid you right into the Get Attitude podcast, season two. That's so, so cool. Let's talk about, I guess, John the person. If it's okay, I'd love to know what your definition of attitude is and who is your first attitude coach.

I don't even know. And the attitude coach. I don't know. My general attitude is no matter how hard things get, you got to stay positive and keep powering through it. And depending on where you want to ascend in life, there's going to be obstacles, and you just got to keep getting up and dusting yourself off. And it is what it is. So it's discipline. It's willingness to take negative feedback or body blows and be positive with it. So everything's a learning experience. It's not a negative. And my dad, I guess my dad. I'm thinking of a mentor. I mean, he was obviously my mentor, but he, you know, he. Basically, every. Every problem is an opportunity. Mm. Okay. I just listen to that. And I did that. So that's probably my biggest thing that I had to do. Because when you own a business. Yeah. There's. There's no day in manufacturing. There's not a problem like pulling weeds.

Right.

And everyone has an opportunity to fix it and make it better. And so that's what I would tell you.

What? What'd your dad do?

He owned one of the businesses that I own now, which is Elgin Diamond.

Okay.

So my dad is a founder. Founder of the family business, which was a molding business that made automotive parts. Wow.

Okay.

And so I came to work for him about five years after my career started, and we never looked back.

Now, that's funny. My dad sold steel parts for Steel Parts Corporation down in Tipton. He sold clutch plates all over the world. So he said, glenn, a fraction of a tenth of a penny means an awful lot in my business.

We sell penny nickel dimes at Elgin Diamond. Yeah.

All day long. One thing we always love to tap into is we find sometimes the best attitude stories or the best influences of our guests not only come from mom and pop, but actually from the grandparents. I'm curious if. If you were able to have a relationship with one of the four or all four of your grandparents and kind of like, what was their story and what did you learn from them?

My grandparents, all immigrants, all moved here different places. My Italian grandfather came here, one of 13 kids. Wow. And he basically held down three jobs. And they, you know, they struggled financially, but they instilled the work ethic in their kids, and they yielded one entrepreneur and then one doctor. And it was all about hard work.

Sure.

I mean, that's. A whole family's been about hard work. My dad carried it down. I've instilled about work ethic in my kids. I'm a big believer that you can just outwork people. You don't have to be the smartest.

Right.

And I'm seeing it now in my kids that are growing up that they're willing to put their head down and do the work, and that's show me a kid with a passion to do the work and they're gonna be fine in life.

What's your thought when you. I don't know how old your kids are, but. But do you. You know, I coach football for 25 years. I love teenagers. I love the younger generation. I don't think they're all, you know, pieces of shit like a lot of people do. But what. As you. And I'm sure you don't allow that type that in your life, but when you do look at the younger generation, what do you feel are their biggest attitude challenges that maybe they're facing that you didn't. Or, you know, when you just kind of like, analyze. Because I got, you know, I got kids that are all in their 20s now, but just. Just general thoughts on the younger generation and. And their attitude and what they face. Maybe what you didn't have to.

Don't get myself in trouble. I mean, there's just some. There's a. I've had younger people work for me that do a really good job, but then if you poke something negative at them, it's. How can you say something negative to me after I've done all this good stuff? And I think it goes into everybody's a winner and the trophy mentality that they. We ultimately, we raised everybody. You Know, they say the kids are the problem. We raised them so.

Right.

That's how they're raised. It's on us.

Right.

But yeah, I think it's a little bit of the driving ahead and the work ethic that we had when we were young. It's a little different. Yeah. Now, I'm not saying it's wrong. Who knows, they may invent stuff and make things in the world a better place, but it's definitely different. I actually talked to a lot of the kids that work for me in their 20s about, you know, going that extra hour of work and doing the extra things now while you can, because later on you're gonna have kids and responsibilities out of here. That's what separates you from, you know, your peers. And it always goes back. I'm pretty simple guy. It always goes back to me at work and work ethic.

Sure.

So like you probably see on the football field, he's somebody that'll outwork another guy that's super talented. He ends up winning the job. Yeah. And so I mentor my kids in the same thing is you got to be willing to put in the 2, 3, 4 extra hours and just win. And that's how you're going to do it.

That's attitude booster number four, do more than you're paid for. A concept that our, that our soldiers understand for sure. I mean, and our teachers understand and our first responders understand, but sometimes our lowest paid employees. How many people do you employ?

I employ 180 people at the two manufacturing businesses.

Yeah, so did you. Well, I'm guessing you probably kind of always knew you were going to have 180 employees. What's it like to employ 180 people? And I just think that, you know, people don't. People are listening to this that are employees. There are probably people that are listening this very definitely that employ 180. There's no doubt. Like what's the whole. You probably don't think about it. I don't know. But what's it like to employ 180 and. And is turnover more now? More so now than ever. And are you fighting this thing called I can't find anybody to work.

I've had every, every thing you could think of. It is. It's hard as an employer because you try to. You care a lot about people, you want to care about people. And then when they let. When they don't give it back, you get frustrated and it becomes separation. But overall, we've been blessed with some really nice people that become family, that worked for us for a long, long time.

Yeah.

And so that there's, there's good and bad. If you talk to most business owners, they'll tell you the most frustrating thing as a, as a business owner is managing employees because you, you know, if you have 180, there's always three or four that are creating, you know, stress for you.

Yeah.

And it's, how do you. And as a failure, as a leader sometimes is the job's getting done, but you have a bad fit. And it's easy to live with a bad fit because it seems hard to go find somebody new. And as I'm getting older, I'm learning that you should put the right people in the right spots and the right job. So as a young leader, I was all about accountability. Big really, really good process, hold people accountable. This is how you run a business. Then as I got older, I talked about empowerment. If you empower people to do the job, it frees you up. But the problem is if you hire people that don't care, you can't do that. And so my biggest thing now, and I'm sure it'll change, is hire people that are engaged. Yeah. You hire people that care about your business like you care about it. You don't have to manage them. Yeah. And they manage themselves and they care more about the business as you do. And it's great. And so my role as a, as a boss, I don't view myself as a boss. I view my job is to help them when they have problems, remove obstacles so they can do a good job.

I love it.

Our culture has been all about finding people that fit the Elgin Dymo Trident culture. And yeah, Covid was a mess finding people. We actually built a ventilator program that helped make parts for ventilator catheters. And I needed 90 people to run and I went through 770 people in six months because of all the unemployment opportunities and they can make more money going home. And today it's softening, but we still people jumping all over the place and I, I don't know where everybody went. Yeah, I'd love somebody to educate me where all the people went.

Well, they probably just stopped working is maybe what a lot of them did and said we're just going to pare down our lives. And you know, they've become minimalists a lot of times.

Not all bad. I mean, there's importance to have a happy life too.

Yeah. Well, and you know, then that begs the question, can I really be happy not reaching my full potential as a person. And that leads to depressed and mental illness. And everybody wonders why we have a mental illness spike in our society. Because nobody is. Not nobody, but, you know, there's a vast majority of people since this paradigm of the pandemic that our studies have shown us that this mental illness thing is really a result of lack of expectation of oneself. And there's nothing more damaging to the human psyche than looking in the mirror and knowing that you're not fulfilling your destiny and becoming the best person that you can become. So there's a lot of that going on and then to try to get them out of that and back to work, certainly not easy. You really hit on it though, earlier when you talked about, you know, creating a family in the business. We interviewed Mitzi Perdue from Purdue Farms, Purdue Chickens. They had thousands and thousands of employees. And he, she Talked about how Mr. Perdue literally flew everybody to their farm and fed them a home cooked meal. I'm like, how many people? Like 2,000 people.

She said.

They're their family. So, yeah, you think about that, you know, and you go, it's amazing. And then I, I had another guy we were talking to from Aon and the, the new word, just so you know, what's coming down the pike from your people is, is harmony officers. They're chief harmony officers. So that's what it's about now. Not about engagement. It's all about harmony. Yeah. So that's, that's what Aon and all the consultants of the world are selling our harmony programs now, which is kind of fantastic. As a leader, number one, what, what's your best coping mechanism like? You know, certainly you've had to step back and go, okay, this is my show here. So how do you, how do you handle the stress and the challenge and, you know, maybe the backstabbing or not being appreciated. What, what's your, I don't know, like, what do you do when things go bad or when you know that, you know, in times of great stress or great decision making, like what, what are you asking yourself? What are you telling yourself?

I am, I'm fairly thick skinned, so the, the attitude towards me doesn't bother me. The other thing I've learned over the years is I've had when you have problems, you stress and you stare at the ceiling and there's a part of owning a business or leading a business that a lot of employees don't see. Like, I joke about the chair I'm sitting in. When I was young, I would come home and my dad Would be up at 4 in the morning having his coffee. And I'm always shook my head why was he up? And I went to visit him. He's 84 now and he sleeps till like 8. And I'm up at 4 and he looked at me, goes, well, it's the chair. And that chair keeps me up at night because you have all sorts of problems and stress and things you worry about. But as I've gotten older, I realize at the end of the day, the next day it's going to be okay. You'll work your way through it. So as I've gotten older, I've gotten more mature. I've gotten less of the. It's a catastrophe and the world's falling and just another part of the thing and you got to deal with it. So that helped me a lot is just work through it and, you know, figure it out. In the end of the day, it'll, it'll work itself out.

I love it. One, one thing that we always like to do. I'm not sure if you've listened to any of our things. We do this thing called knowledge through the decades that, that we want to walk you through your life and ask you about the attitude lessons that you had as you were grow and where you eventually end up now. So if you're willing to play. This isn't. There's no right, there's no wrong answers. It's just a happy, fun conversation just to get inside your head more and to help people, you know, understand who they are and how to help them bridge the gap from who they are to who they want to become, from where they are to where they want to go. There's, there's several people and we'll, we'll, we'll, after we do that, that, you know, are young business owners. So I'm going to ask you this real quick. When you took the helm of this company, right, I'm guessing that this company has grown. Has it grown as much as you thought it has? And like, what are the one or two things that you think really, the principles, I guess, if you will, that really helped that growth, that helped you bridge the gap from where you were to where you wanted to go.

I came into a successful business, which is Elgin diamond in the mid-90s. And in 2001, we decided to go from an old DOS computer system to a new paperless system. And ultimately everyone. We had a large amount of turnover in 01 while we were going live. And so I worked. God, I had to work 80 to 100 hours a week because nothing worked and we didn't have enough people. And it was probably the worst year of my life. And I look back on that, that's probably one of the best things that ever happened to me because it allowed me to learn how the business ran. Coming into a successful business with good systems, it's hard to learn how everything works. Yeah. So that was one of the moments for me that made me really learn how to run a business. And then over the years it's really been, I've grown it really by adding Trident. I bought Trident in 2010. That was basically an insolvent business that I inherited and rolled into the business. Cool. But yeah, it's all been again, I keep coming back to work but that, that 2001 was a big moment for me and I worked my way through it and that gave me the tools to be who I am today.

And now what's scary is we have the cloud, DOS is antiquated and AI is coming. Are you getting ready to do another 2003, you think?

I don't know. I am very interested in the digital technology though because like we're seeing it in the manufacturing world. I see a tremendous modification of using robotics and automation and AI teaching processes that don't work, self correcting. And theoretically if they do what it says it's going to do, you could have the perfect manufacturing system, makes zero defects every day of the week through automation.

That would create a very profitable business.

It would.

Oh my gosh, think about that.

It's scary to think though, because it's scary what's going to happen to all the labor that's used today.

Right.

And how are they going to get trained to handle the new technology? So it's a very interesting thing to watch and understand where the businesses are going. But theoretically what we're talking about is United States may be the lowest cost country in manufacturing in the next five years. And it's through all AI, automation, self learning, IoT, all that stuff.

And yeah, I don't know if you watched the Elon Musk interview, but you know, he said, you know, ultimately the, the real issue with AI is it's going to become superior to human intellect. And then where, then where the hell are we? Right.

I had this conversation last time. My kids, they theoretically could you lock in your house at 11 and turn your cars off and it's scary stuff.

Yeah, they could lock you down. There's no doubt. Well, let's talk about some fun stuff. Let's go. Knowledge through the decades we always ask our people, our guests. I'm sorry, every 10 years of their life, what the attitude lesson is. We always start with childbirth. You. How many kids do you have?

I have four.

Cool. So I have four, too. So when you think about birth, childbirth, either you being born or your kids being born, what do you think the attitude lesson is that you learned or that you felt through birth, through beginning this thing we call life?

I had a lot of fun as a kid, so my early decades were really focused on fun and sports, and I didn't even know what work was and just enjoying life and doing what I'm supposed to do, following rules and processes well.

So, like, specifically, though, about birth, when you. When you saw those kids being born, was there an attitude lesson? Was there something in your head or in your mindset or in your thought process that when you became a father, that either changed or that heightened?

Yeah, it's really the responsibility side of it really was what heightened me. It changed from being able to do what I wanted, whatever. And now these people were, you know, yours idiot. They're not going to turn out very well.

That's him. That's employee number one through four for you.

Absolutely. Yeah. And luckily, my wife and I were both very aligned with, you know, the values that we stand for.

Cool. So I want you to think about being 10 years old, which puts you in, I don't know, fourth or fifth grade. I'd love to know if you learned an attitude lesson when you were 10, whether it was from your parents, from a teacher, from a bully, from a principal, whatever it might have been. Do you remember being in fourth or fifth grade? A story that you said, ah, there's something I probably should have learned.

I was a kid, I had a principal tell me, be cool, not cocky.

Ah, that's good.

I don't know why I remembered it, but I did, and I actually say it to my kids today.

I love it. I always. That's very similar to something I say from the stage all the time, is, do you know the difference between confidence and arrogance? And that's called likability. And how likable are you? I mean, that's kind of the same concept. So, yeah, I like it. What did you. Be confident, not cocky.

Be cool, not cocky.

Be cool, not cocky. I like it. Okay, so 20, you go. I'm guessing you went to college. I'd love to know where you were at, where you went to college.

Rock Chalk, Jayhawk.

Oh, that's right. You told me that. Right. So if you remember turning 20, or maybe 21, the inevitable age. Was there an attitude lesson when you were at. At. At Kansas, when you turned 20, 21 that you got? Okay, there's an attitude lesson for me.

Attitude lessons are like when I was graduating.

Okay.

Looked at my college roommate. I'm like, oh, my gosh, we could have probably worked a little harder. And he looked at me and. And he said, you know what? We could have had more fun. We could. And I had more fun. So that was kind of the aha moment where I started saying, okay, I need to get a little focused here and work.

Interesting. Okay, very good. So now you hit 30, right? Tell me what was going on in your life when you turned 30 and what was your attitude lesson there?

First kid, right around there was my first kid and I was working. And yeah, that's where my life kind of changed to being a parent and a dad. And I took over the family business at 32. So all of it was going to happen at the same time.

Major, major shift, lots of responsibility.

Wow. Work, life, balance became a thing.

Did you ever work anywhere else besides this company?

Yeah, I worked for Cooper Industries for five years. So I worked in their lighting group. I lived in Mississippi, Georgia, and then Chicago. And actually, was. Wasn't. I didn't fit in corporate America because I kind of say what I think and offered me an opportunity to start a business in Miami. And so I told my dad I was moving to Miami to start a business and he didn't want me to move, so he talked to me to come to work for him.

Okay. What was the word? What was the worst job you ever had? Did you. I'm guessing you knowing you, you. Not that I know you real well, but my guess is you probably worked at 15, 16, 13.

I did. I actually, I used to detail cars.

Oh, not fun.

Yeah. No. I started a flyer and I went to the golf clubs and told people while they played golf, I would detail their cars. So guys would drop their car off and I would detail and pick them up at the end of the round.

Now, did you have. Did you have all the machines to detail car or was it a hand detail?

A hand detail.

Yeah. Yeah.

I'll tell you the worst job and I did it while I worked here is when we have reject. My dad used to send me to go sort parts.

Oh.

They sit there for hours looking at thousands of parts and trying to filter them and throw the right one in the box. That was a good part or bad part?

Do you have contacts? Are your eyes completely fried at this Point now.

Yeah, they are now. But as a kid they were like, they're good. So I like it.

Well, hey, let's go to age 40. Tell me what you were doing. What happened at 40 in your life that might have said, hey, there's an attitude.

Well, 40, 20, 10 when I bought Triton. So it's 41.

Wow.

So yeah, now I got four kids, now I got two businesses and that's when chaos started. So it started getting really busy and balancing, you know, being a, being present for my kids lives and kids sports and all that stuff while the responsibilities of starting this one business that I bought and running the day to day business.

Yeah. Mergers and acquisitions aren't necessarily all they're cracked up to be. Do you live by a mantra again? We, we got a lot of people that listen to this. Certainly you're not the only 40 year old that's like, I got two businesses, four kids and everybody's in the sport. Right. Like what was your litmus test or what was your guide to kind of balance that?

I don't know, I always joke that I was too dumb to know I shouldn't be doing all this. Right. And now, you know, I got all this going on and I kind of laugh like I don't know how I did all this. And now I'm balancing it.

Yeah.

But again, it just goes back to common sense and work and carving out and understanding what's important. I'm in a business group that one of the things they we do often is we kind of try to align our values with what we do every day. Cool. And that's one of the things you write down. Here's all the things that are important to me. And then you look at it and look at what did I do today? And if it's totally opposite, a lot of people say, oh, these are my 10 things that are really important to me. And then they go through their day or their week and they didn't do anything that was important, they just did other stuff. And so I try to do that quite a bit is to stay balanced with how do I carve out time to be home, how do I carve out time for me? Cool. Health, fitness. That's probably fitness. Probably the biggest thing that suffers. Squeezing that in.

Amen, brother. I know, I love your practical. Yeah, I mean, well, we'll get to that. But especially because I'm guessing you're 50.

50. Yeah, 53.

Hey.

All right.

We're about the same age, so this will be your last one. But I loved Your practical answer that, you know what, being there for your kids and balancing time doesn't have to be a calculus formula. Gappers as you're listening to this and I'm sure you caught it, but you know, stop the interview right now and write down what are my 10 values? What are the 10 things that I value most in my life? And then go look at your Outlook calendar or whatever calendar you're operating on and go, is this congruent with what's going on? I mean, that's freaking, you know, that's not hard and that's really good. So thanks for that. So, all right, you had three years ago, you had your 50th birthday. You are where you are. You're CEO of Volition. You got your two companies. What's the attitude lesson of being turning 50?

I am now trying to figure out how to enjoy what I've done.

Yeah.

So I'm all in on work, but I'm trying to now get more balance the other way, which is have more free time to play a little bit. So I'm really working on building the businesses where they run without me on a daily basis. Free me up to play with Volition, build Volition more and. But yeah, that's kind of my focus now. Over the next five years, I'd like to kind of be chairman of both companies and not in the day to day grind of it.

Yeah, that's an admirable goal and one that I think many people share, including the host of the Community Get Attitude podcasts.

So you need to give your old roommate a call, right? The one you had too much fun with.

Yeah. Still talk to him, right?

He can take it over. He can retire at 70 and you can be done at 60.

Absolutely.

Well, John, you've been a delight, man. I mean, you've dropped a lot of bombs, a lot of great advice. I think there's going to be so many people that are going to listen to this and check the boxes and go, number one, we want to help Volition of America. Number two, it's the fold. What's the Folds of Honor. Folds of Honor. That freaking logo, now that I see it and I understand it is super, super powerful to me. And I think our entrepreneurs and business owners and even our employees are going to gain from the time that we spent with you today. We always just love to give you one last thought. To that person that's walking on the beach, that's driving in the car, that's sitting there going, I don't know how I'm going to get through this life. I don't know how I'm going to build this business. I don't know how I'm going to bridge the gap from who I am to who I want to become. Now's just your time. If you could just talk to them on a one on one basis, because this is why a lot of people come to this podcast. What is your message of hope for them? And just what's your overall message? That if you just were sitting down talking to them to give them advice about keeping on, keeping on. We'd just love to hear that.

Yeah. We have a video on our. On our website, on the about page, which is volition. And it ultimately is telling you and empowering you what the power of volition is. And if you ask Colonel Rooney, it's the most powerful word in the English dictionary. It's the power choice. So your life and your legacy will be written by those choices. And that's what the whole essence of volition is. And that actually is one of the first things I did when we made this video is I played it for my kids. Awesome. And I think that just making good choices and living a better life will lead you there. And obviously, I took a lot of a work ethic, and you can get there. And, you know, you don't have to be the smartest person in the room. You just got to be willing to go try and have the right attitude. But I'll tell you one funny story, and then I'll sign off with you guys. Every parent's dream, I went in, or nightmare, actually, I went in their room, and my son had a tattoo card sitting on his desk. And I'm like, you know, what the heck? And my one son, Ryan, looked at me. It wasn't me, it was Connor. So I sold his brother out in, like, 10 seconds, which I thought was really funny. Yes. But you're not gonna be mad, dad? I'm like, yeah, I am gonna be mad. And I talked to Connor, and he took the Volition logo and put it on his chest because it means so much to him. Wow. So I didn't love that he got a big tattoo on his chest, but I really loved that the message of volition and the meaning behind it empowered him to want to have it a reminder on his body every single day. And that's what the idea of this brand is. And so it's really super cool. And I love being on your show today. Thank you for having me. And hopefully everybody out there will check us out if you want to make a donation to Folds of Honor, you can do it through our website. So there's a way of giving, and we see that a lot, where people sometimes just log in and they buy something, and then they support our mission by donating on top of it. But, yes, right there, you can see the choices or just give whatever you want. But, yeah, Folds of Honor is a great organization, and we're proud to be, you know, partner with them.

I love it. The Italian Stallion, John Sapienti came and he talked to us about the power of choice. Ladies and gentlemen. Remember, you always have two ways to view anything, and that's either positive or negative. That's what attitude's all about. That's why we had John on the show. I hope you all enjoyed this episode of the Get Attitude podcast. Thanks, John.