Brian P. Yount: From Armed Forces Champion to Serial Entrepreneur - I Will Not Lose Podcast - #0026

Transcript

[00:00:06.350] Yo, yo, yo, yo, we're going to get started. Good morning. Good evening. Good night. Good afternoon.
[00:00:11.690] Whatever time you're listening in, wherever you're listening from, shout out to my Spotify listenership, Apple and Google Podcasts, Stitcher and YouTube.
[00:00:19.450] If you're watching in, thanks for giving me a reason to get dressed. Coming live from my voice to your phone, headphones, TV or car stereo.
[00:00:27.490] You could have been anywhere in the world right now, but your attention is here. Take a moment to be present and recognize that it is now, right now.
[00:00:36.350] Whether you're right now is working, running, exercising, cleaning, laying down, flying,
[00:00:41.070] driving, let's just be grateful we're alive, baby.
[00:00:45.320] Failure can be frightening.
[00:00:46.760] However, as Winston Churchill reminds us, success is all about going from failure to
[00:00:51.420] failure without losing enthusiasm.
[00:00:54.360] This is I Will Not Lose Podcast, where we set out to prove that everything is learned
[00:00:58.200] from failure if we persevere and recognize it as one step closer to success.
[00:01:03.120] I'm your host, Tony Ortiz.
[00:01:05.400] Let's jump right in.
[00:01:06.300] we got a very special guest on the airwaves today is brian peon thank you what's going on man oh not
[00:01:14.520] much not much i've been wanting to visit here and and do this with you so yeah we've been talking
[00:01:20.890] about this for a few months now i'm a rookie this is my getting my cherry popped here
[00:01:27.470] now you've done radio before though no uh no just like basic stuff for you know companies
[00:01:36.460] i've worked for if if i had television would interview me or something like that but no
[00:01:41.620] not really radio this is my first experience oh man it's live it's live so i know people are
[00:01:51.740] wondering uh what the p stands for in my name yeah it's quite an interesting story it's my
[00:02:00.160] initial for for uh patrick but how how it got started it just became an animal of its own to
[00:02:09.120] the point where i've you know won stuff or or been to places where they've announced my name and
[00:02:18.310] people would come up to me and say they said brian i thought there was somebody different i i thought
[00:02:24.950] your name was Pete. I said, no, my name's not Pete. I said, that's an old nickname that just
[00:02:31.300] won't leave me alone. So how it started, there was a guy when I was in high school
[00:02:37.420] who was a very good quarterback and he played football for a neighboring high school.
[00:02:45.450] And his name was very similar to mine. It was actually, uh, Brian Young was his name
[00:02:52.590] and he he was very successful i think he played for northwestern he was a quarterback very good
[00:02:57.910] and but the funny part was because the morning call would screw up people's names left and right
[00:03:05.110] butcher it shout out to the morning call yeah i loved the paper last time i read it
[00:03:10.610] um and uh so they had all the stats of this poor bastard of everything he did in high school
[00:03:22.080] which was incredible he was an incredible quarterback and whose picture do they have
[00:03:27.460] next to it but mine who played for a rival high school didn't even have a quarterback number you
[00:03:36.730] know i was a linebacker i was number 66 oh man so uh it was funny and i put it on my refrigerator
[00:03:44.170] for a while as a joke some of my friends did this a gag but that's kind of how it started because
[00:03:51.130] i finally when wrestling came around that was my gig that was my sport and they had something was
[00:04:00.210] written up in the paper you know i finally got some press you know i yeah yeah yeah beat some
[00:04:05.130] kid and in a tournament and you know it's probably in sixth place the hell if i remember but they
[00:04:11.570] finally had my name and of course didn't they screw it up the same way they had a write-up of
[00:04:19.450] all these different kids that were going to be uh in this next event and and who to look forward to
[00:04:26.910] and they do a write-up about me and they have the picture of the kid from my rival high school they
[00:04:34.280] screwed it up again so i was at my buddy rick's house and i got on the phone and i don't know
[00:04:40.600] what possessed me to do this i guess i was that age and i called up the morning call and i called
[00:04:49.500] him on it and i said my name is brian p younty so it was maybe about a week later they had
[00:05:02.480] like i don't know if it was an apology or what it was they said a correction
[00:05:07.140] the person who was in that in that um in in the last article was brian p and they wrote it real
[00:05:18.080] big yaunty didn't even spell my last name right so it it was an ongoing joke so if i was ever
[00:05:26.840] introducing myself i would just introduce myself as peyote because of that event and i liked i like
[00:05:34.300] making people laugh and so that stuck with me for that reason to the point where i would even
[00:05:40.080] exacerbate it by making sure i'd spell it p e e so it would be extra offensive
[00:05:46.420] for for people to ask me what the hell
[00:05:49.980] yeah it's short for short for peewee now that's great it would have been great if in the correction
[00:05:57.340] they put you and him next to each other like a street fighter versus bout like i met him i did
[00:06:05.140] meet him i met him i was with some friends at a at a bar in one of those dumps in caddy or
[00:06:14.180] northampton and i bumped into the guy and my friend called him out and said hey that's brian
[00:06:22.380] p younty over there he goes oh man he's like cheers and but that was it that's wow that was
[00:06:32.000] short-lived oh man but that's good i'm glad we could finally get you over here we've been talking
[00:06:38.540] about doing a couple stuff you took me out the big disc golfer and you took me out uh a couple
[00:06:44.720] times last year we're gonna go out a week ago this year but uh got that shoulder injury well
[00:06:51.380] plus we both have adhd so we're procrastinators and by the time the end of the day rolls around
[00:06:57.220] it's like ah i think i got other stuff i need to do yeah i was thinking it would be great to do
[00:07:03.000] maybe throw some discs go down to the parkway after this but it'll probably be dark till we
[00:07:06.880] get out of here we'll see yeah it's what one day quarter after seven now but it's about the it's
[00:07:13.440] about the journey not about the destination right if you have not played disc golf i recommend you
[00:07:19.660] at least try it anyone out there who's listening it's a lot of fun and when i first saw it first
[00:07:29.850] time i ever played it i thought this is the dumbest thing i've ever seen
[00:07:33.470] and that was because my friends kicked my ass in it very badly and i don't like to lose i'm a sore
[00:07:42.860] loser so i said that it was uh it was for pussies and then i played with some people who could throw
[00:07:55.160] that thing like two football fields and i said holy man so there is another level to this it's
[00:08:04.490] not just with your buddies losing by you know one to ten strokes and i started to learn you know how
[00:08:13.480] to throw it that far just to try and do that you know i didn't really care about the score and then
[00:08:20.080] once i figured out how to throw it really far then i started caring about the score and then i started
[00:08:25.240] having fun and won a couple tournaments and yeah i was gonna say you were telling me about some
[00:08:30.080] tournaments i want to just go along for the ride i got no no uh will to win a tournament but i would
[00:08:38.220] go just to participate in one that would be real fun yeah and and you can that's probably the most
[00:08:44.920] beautiful thing about it is it's the thing that i was amazed at with it and what made me fall in
[00:08:51.400] love with it i've been doing it 20 some years now is it's such a huge community it's in every single
[00:08:58.060] state like there's so much of it in the lehigh valley but and in pennsylvania alone but we're
[00:09:04.100] literally one of the weakest states for it so you can go to new york you can go to california you
[00:09:09.860] can go to florida you can go to all these other places and they have more courses there than they
[00:09:13.600] do here and every single course is different sometimes it's some dinky little nine hole
[00:09:20.020] course that somebody made behind a school another one will be a beautiful 27 hole course it looks
[00:09:27.640] like a country club and 99 of them are free to play so it's definitely an experience i'd recommend
[00:09:35.800] for anybody oh man free to play it can't be that that's the original the original free to play
[00:09:43.090] you know what uh i just had a thought man if you had a disc golf video game like you remember tony
[00:09:50.660] hawks we had tony hawks pro skater and everybody like the reason why i think that game had
[00:09:57.120] something to do with skateboarding being in the olympics now because it just became so popular
[00:10:03.220] so popular and then around the world everywhere you know what i mean yeah if if there would just
[00:10:11.710] be a bunch of gamers getting into disc golf oh man i don't know i don't know man it got pretty
[00:10:17.610] popular late 70s into the 80s that's when it really kicked in that i saw and remember i had
[00:10:25.320] a good friend of mine from high school went pro and we had a couple kids from my town of katasako
[00:10:31.700] that that went pro is it in the olympics uh disc golf not disc golf i'm talking about skateboarding
[00:10:39.300] oh yeah yeah you did say you're no yeah disc golf is nowhere even near the olympics um it's still
[00:10:46.300] just a small unknown game that just keeps growing rapidly every year but you were saying you're pro
[00:10:53.710] skateboarding buddy from your town yep the kid that got me to retire from skateboarding
[00:11:00.010] danny pencil if you're out there love you brother um he had a i guess they called it a three-quarter
[00:11:07.260] pipe or because it's a half pipe but it's not real big and danny at the time wasn't real big
[00:11:15.200] either shorter than myself and he was a really good skateboarder and i thought i was a really
[00:11:22.720] good skateboarder at but i had only skated on the street and i saw some of these humongous ramps
[00:11:30.160] that guys had and there's no way i would ever even drop in on one of those but so danny's ramp
[00:11:36.940] gave me confidence and i went up to the top of it and he was trying to warn me about how steep the
[00:11:44.560] drop in is he's telling me squat down you know squat down even more i'm like shut up danny just
[00:11:51.700] get the hell out of the way i got this you know i'm street skater brian man i dipped in i thought
[00:11:58.560] i was gonna ride that thing to the other side already contemplating my head like am i gonna
[00:12:03.020] am i gonna try and do you know the 180 when i get up there you know i'm thinking way ahead
[00:12:08.540] i drop in boy i i surfed on one foot on that skateboard for about three feet
[00:12:19.780] kicked that thing up in the air hit my shoulder and my back so hard it knocked so much wind out
[00:12:27.440] of me i mean i sounded like a zombie oh just
[00:12:32.020] danny is laughing but at the same time i can see he has concern in his eyes
[00:12:40.300] probably more concerned like is this kid's parents gonna sue my dad um but yeah oh at least
[00:12:49.460] she got up for it man what doesn't kill you makes you stronger i think i gave danny the skateboard
[00:12:54.140] after that because i know i i definitely hung it up after that i was not skateboarding i realized
[00:13:00.560] that there was danny's level and then there was my level and if i couldn't get to danny's level
[00:13:05.900] i was done i i can i can i can understand that we had actually my buddy johnny's better than me
[00:13:14.370] but we had a we would ride around i have a lot of fun skateboarding now it's a johnny melendez uh
[00:13:23.020] negan williams i think he's out in texas wow no uh trying to think jose sosa i don't know that
[00:13:31.330] anybody went pro danny got sponsored danny was uh kevin cucker danny skated for five borough
[00:13:39.150] was was who made his decks that's dope yeah he was he was a street skater for them competition
[00:13:47.910] street skater you know who picks up decks now my son he got uh he got like a twenty dollar he goes
[00:13:55.290] look at this dad it's had like the american flag on it or something but he's like these are forty
[00:14:00.030] dollar trucks on it i paid 20 bucks for the whole skateboard the deck's probably 40 bucks i can
[00:14:04.930] probably get he's all into seeing what stuff is i wonder what brand it is because i found out
[00:14:12.640] there's a whole hidden market for skateboard decks old school ones okay like literally if
[00:14:18.260] you had an old powell peralta one somebody would give you 650 bucks for it plus huh i've seen like
[00:14:25.400] the old mark gonzalez one go for you know six to eight hundred bucks there it's no joke it's
[00:14:31.080] the collector's market oh man you you know the stuff with collector you know i've seen your
[00:14:38.380] disc golf collection man yeah i uh it all started with wrestling shoes was how i got into collecting
[00:14:47.930] that's what you you did i think you tell me again i had and that's part of the reason why i love your
[00:14:54.670] podcast so much. Um, the, I will not lose podcasts because I have the same mentality and I, I, I like
[00:15:02.490] to encourage that mentality and I like others that encourage that mentality, but it was a time
[00:15:08.170] in my life where my business went under and my wife and I were ready to, to move on and to move
[00:15:16.430] to new york to help her with her education um and to make a long story short i was broke and
[00:15:26.000] by the way my wife's internship was in manhattan so those don't go together it was like not only
[00:15:34.340] was i broke but i was just digging my heels into the mountain i was about to try and sprint up
[00:15:40.840] in the next six weeks. So, um, but there was one thing that I really wanted to accomplish before
[00:15:50.400] we went on that journey. And that was, I really wanted to propose to my wife
[00:15:56.140] and I really wanted to get her a ring that was at least one carat or more. And I wanted the diamond
[00:16:06.270] to be clean. I looked into it and there's ways you can cut costs. You know, there's like
[00:16:10.590] manufactured diamonds, all kinds of crap that's out there. And I didn't want that because it
[00:16:15.590] needed to symbolize what I felt for this woman. And also, you know, the, the, the solidity of
[00:16:23.670] my marriage. So I started as a coach when I was coaching at Catasauqua, there were a lot of kids
[00:16:33.030] on the team that didn't have wrestling shoes. And I was tired of seeing kids at practice roll
[00:16:38.930] their ankle because they had to wrestle in their socks or their bare feet which is even more nasty
[00:16:43.190] you know a lot of these hillbilly kids scrapping with one another got some nasty feet so i tried
[00:16:50.830] to get as many cheap wrestling shoes as i could and back in the day it was like all right ebay
[00:16:55.450] and i found some here and there six eight bucks picked up a bunch had them in my cart and just as
[00:17:03.750] i'm about to check out like ah i wonder what my old wrestling shoes that i had from high school
[00:17:10.870] wonder wonder if they got a pair of those i'll see if i can purchase them and dust those old
[00:17:16.210] things off man they didn't have them in my size but they had the exact red white and blue combat
[00:17:25.890] speed adidas pair that i had was selling for 136 dollars some odd cents there was like 68 bids for
[00:17:36.800] it so i knew the guy started at 99 cents because that's what everybody did back then and people
[00:17:42.640] were going nuts for it and then the light bulb went off wait a minute when i wrestled for the
[00:17:50.060] army i knew that the lehigh valley was way more advanced in wrestling than any place else
[00:17:56.940] just just by reputation alone so i knew a lot of the mom and pop shops around us would still have
[00:18:04.700] these old school shoes so i started doing my research started looking up all the old pairs
[00:18:10.660] i could think of that i might be able to get my hands on and they were selling for three to five
[00:18:14.800] hundred dollars a pair oh shit so i went to every single sporting goods store that i could find
[00:18:22.420] and i said do you have yeah these shoes are nice i like what you have on the wall
[00:18:28.570] i'll take that one i'll take this one if it was old enough but most of the time i would ask them
[00:18:35.190] do you have anything older like some old stock in the basement because i i need these for kids
[00:18:41.110] you know for for the wrestling this guy snake oil sales dude so they would say oh yeah i'd go down
[00:18:51.060] there and i would say what do you want for them you know because they're already cracking jokes
[00:18:57.100] as you're going down the steps what do you want for them eight twelve a pair maybe those i would
[00:19:06.480] say 20 you know and then they look at you like you know trying to see are you gonna take it yeah
[00:19:13.690] i would just look at them i would politely say that's a fair price i'll take all of them and i
[00:19:20.100] would lay my credit card down and that those store owners especially back then when you know
[00:19:25.460] sporting goods stores were still alive they were dying so you know you got a guy that's coming in
[00:19:31.080] to throw six hundred dollars down eight hundred dollars that's a great sale in that business for
[00:19:36.480] them so it was a win-win in that regard but lord knows i never went back and said hey yeah can i
[00:19:44.120] get some wine so i always made sure that i bought out as much stock as i could because those business
[00:19:49.820] wouldn't be around that long but yeah i raised well over i think i made 14 to 16 000 bucks
[00:20:02.880] in a time of about eight months of just selling off shoes that i found and then
[00:20:11.410] say the numbers again you said 14 000 yeah well probably 14 to 16. um and that was in about six
[00:20:23.740] to eight months and that was because there was a seasonality to it especially when i got a big
[00:20:31.060] chunk of them so i was literally photographing and sawing through 30 pairs that i would list a day
[00:20:40.750] yeah and then had my own ebay store and then kicked it to the next level which i realized
[00:20:46.350] was easier on me because then people could email me and then people could make at that time that's
[00:20:51.470] what you had to have in order for people to make an offer to you like a best buy offer and
[00:20:58.510] i cleaned out all those shoes to the point where we could even before we left to live in manhattan
[00:21:05.390] we had some money to help us but also could join the family to go to the beach for a couple days
[00:21:11.790] and you know do little things here and there and still pay still pay the bills oh man i'm
[00:21:19.950] I'm a hustler. I will not lose.
[00:21:22.010] I'm a hustler. This is, I will not lose investment advice and career.
[00:21:28.070] That's, that's good, man. This is a,
[00:21:31.370] I think somebody will definitely be able to gain from that because I'm just,
[00:21:36.290] I'm doing the math there. I mean, that's most and most,
[00:21:39.490] that's more than you could make waiting tables some places.
[00:21:42.270] Yeah. It got scary there for a second, just because of, you know,
[00:21:46.850] tax implications and things like that. But at the time,
[00:21:49.830] i was just at the time i was liquidating my or or closing my um my corporation that i had my s
[00:22:01.340] corporation and so because of the way that i was closing the business i didn't take much of a tax
[00:22:08.960] hit on it either and was able to kind of plead poverty a little bit on it oh shit so that that
[00:22:17.120] worked out to my advantage better than i had hoped that's nico where do you get the like uh
[00:22:22.860] how do you recognize opportunity i guess i have an eye for demand um and i can
[00:22:33.480] and don't get me wrong you know we can all think of of our failures in life where we thought
[00:22:41.620] something was a sure thing but it's all about how accurately you learn from that lesson and then
[00:22:48.000] apply it moving forward. So I've always been able to recognize something that's very similar to
[00:22:55.390] something else and saying, well, that last thing was successful because of X, Y, Z. And if I can
[00:23:07.540] match that X, Y, Z with this future thing, like disc golf discs, which I just discovered people
[00:23:17.640] were really holding onto and really held a lot of personal value to specific ones and specific
[00:23:23.100] ones that were theirs. And, and it's something you lose all the time. So, so that there's your
[00:23:31.000] demand. And I started to see the demand around me. So then learning the lesson that I had learned
[00:23:37.560] previously from the wrestling shoes, which was a gift from God, Allah, Buddha, whatever you believe
[00:23:45.120] in karma um it was a gift that was given to me so i'm not gonna look a gift horse in the mouth
[00:23:52.820] i just started grabbing those discs and throwing them in a rubbermaid container and
[00:23:59.780] keeping them in storage first in my basement then in my mother-in-law's basement then in a storage
[00:24:07.590] locker then and just kept collecting them and then lo and behold go on ebay the most in-demand
[00:24:16.120] ones were the early ones that they made back in the day because people like to hang them on their
[00:24:22.680] wall or they like to throw them and you can't find that exact plastic and that exact design
[00:24:30.040] ever again than those years that it was made so it created a whole collectability market that is
[00:24:36.580] scarcity it's ridiculous yeah i was surprised so give me just some numbers there it doesn't have
[00:24:45.360] to be the most expensive disc you've ever sold if you don't want to throw it out there but i don't
[00:24:49.480] mind saying that so i know people are listening wondering so how much is a disc go for now a lot
[00:24:56.860] of the people that i deal with um they're collectors also so i always give them i always
[00:25:02.620] lean to give them favorable deals um because they'll they'll keep buying from me and so you
[00:25:09.160] take care of those guys um but online if if it's on an auction then let the wolves feast
[00:25:17.760] uh the most expensive disc that i've sold was two thousand dollars
[00:25:23.300] that was for a piece of plastic that was made in 2015 that was valued at that amount and right now
[00:25:34.130] if you go on ebay and you look up disc golf and you see what pops up as far as equipment discs
[00:25:46.390] and you sort that to the highest price and your eyes will pop out of your head and it's because
[00:25:54.770] this game goes all the way back to the 70s and it became extremely popular in the 90s
[00:26:00.690] now to the point where since the late 90s to today they play for over two million dollars
[00:26:08.010] a year in a professional league so some of you are going to try disc golf now
[00:26:14.970] yeah well listen somebody's going to try to make that disc golf game
[00:26:21.870] it's been made out there programming there's a couple of their disc golf games yeah a couple
[00:26:26.970] apps for your phone too oh man yeah i'll have to check it out i mean there's nothing on tony hawk
[00:26:33.810] level i'm gonna give you that that game but gets major prop especially for music wise oh yeah that
[00:26:40.670] that's what made that game more than anything yeah the soundtracks were ridiculous on those
[00:26:46.550] shout out to uh beat of the month podcast they did a video game music and tony hawk got uh
[00:26:52.850] got featured in one of their trivia tournaments or one of the i think it was superman from tony hawks
[00:26:58.690] but uh yeah man that's that stuff's iconic it's so psychotic um but definitely want to get out
[00:27:08.130] there it's got to get a little bit warmer i don't want to i mean i used to i used to run in really
[00:27:14.450] cold weather and i would love it and i just i don't know if i was young i don't know what but
[00:27:20.930] i'm just not in that mindset anymore like i i will not lose but i will also not run
[00:27:26.930] outside in 26 degree weather and i used to scrap with people in a sweaty padded locker
[00:27:37.600] so if i did that as a wrestler and and stuck to it i can be comfortable in just about anything but
[00:27:47.040] i too i'm a fair weather disc golfer and a fair weather outside person too there's no reason then
[00:27:54.540] suffering you know suffer just for the hell of it 50 layers just to say you did it well you said you
[00:28:02.450] uh wrestled in the army yes you want to talk about that a bit yes um i did freestyle and greco-roman
[00:28:11.090] I wrestled at Catasauqua for a little while, was decent. I wasn't great. And I left early. I remember just, the coaches that I had, they were great coaches, legendary coaches, but they were kind of slowing down and were done with it.
[00:28:38.440] and i wasn't seeing the same effort with the team that i was put through as a freshman sophomore and
[00:28:47.760] junior and i was my junior year which is the year that i would have been the best when i was the
[00:28:54.440] strongest fastest and was crushing kids at every camp um i dislocated my knee and i had to sit the
[00:29:01.480] whole season out. But I will go on record saying I did letter that year because snake oil salesman
[00:29:12.460] Brian was so good. I had beefed up about man, 25, 26 pounds. So all they would see the smoke and
[00:29:23.820] mirrors they saw the kid who they remembered who was pretty scrappy a year ago at 119 who now weighs
[00:29:32.120] like 140 pounds and he's got pecs and you know he's he's looking like a beast the kids would
[00:29:39.800] remember me who were on the the teams that i that i was on prior to that they probably shift matches
[00:29:45.480] and yeah and that's great i got four fits yeah and it was bad like i had a this creaky knee
[00:29:54.380] brace on and it was like as i'm walking out for them to raise my hand but yeah at the end of the
[00:30:01.880] year i had a better record than most kids on my team because they were they weren't so solid that
[00:30:08.920] year and uh but yeah and then uh then my senior year you know they they were kind of done with it
[00:30:16.310] and they were supporting one kid who was a good friend of mine um who was a sophomore and i
[00:30:22.750] supported him as well um but i'm like i don't need to be going through these practices anymore if
[00:30:28.770] you're really only coaching that kid because i'm coaching that kid too you know on the side away
[00:30:34.710] from practice and all of that and i kind of lost my luster for it but then when i was in the army
[00:30:43.360] uh i was going in a different direction you know just looking for something that that had structure
[00:30:50.740] to it you know where i could build a career and my whole family has been in the military
[00:30:55.140] throughout history my grandfather was a colonel and uh i was kind of at a crossroads where like
[00:31:04.310] Like, I don't know what I want to do because my original job was on tanks and they had some, they had a wrestling room right after basic training at, at my base at Fort Riley.
[00:31:17.820] And they had a wrestling room that was connected to the main gym, the old gym.
[00:31:22.400] And I went in there and because somebody told me it existed and I watched these guys scrapping back and forth.
[00:31:31.320] And I heard him run in their mouths about this kid was a state champion.
[00:31:36.180] This kid over here was a regional champion.
[00:31:38.740] This kid was that.
[00:31:40.740] And I looked at my buddy and I said, you know, I thought I was putting wrestling in the past, but these guys suck.
[00:31:51.040] And I'm about to have a field day.
[00:31:53.420] I'm going to start dunking these dudes left and right.
[00:31:56.320] Like, watch this.
[00:31:58.260] man i went out to the car i got my gym bag out of my 1991 honda prelude
[00:32:06.000] got my gym bag out threw on those red white and blue adidas and i thrashed these kids
[00:32:14.920] and because i had wrestled freestyle a little bit in high school they had a team um that uh
[00:32:22.580] um that the late Tossie family and uh John Togus used to run um rest in peace to all of them
[00:32:32.010] rest in peace uh and it was called Talon and it was a a great team back in the day where we used
[00:32:38.430] to wrestle freestyle against other kids other schools and also other countries um so I had
[00:32:44.830] experience with it and I just kept tearing kid after kid after kid and then they had a post
[00:32:50.630] tournament. And by the time the post-tournament came around, they had a kid at my weight class
[00:32:56.490] who was already on the all army team years prior, had had an injury, went back to a regular unit,
[00:33:06.250] and then was just practicing down there. Well, it just so happened he was in my weight class.
[00:33:12.200] So not only did I continue to beat those kids, I beat him. Now he was no cakewalk. He was no
[00:33:19.520] cakewalk at all right yeah and very experienced you know somebody who's done international
[00:33:25.580] wrestling is they're like a brick to go against offensively defensively you know i had a lot more
[00:33:33.540] tricks in the bag against him but offensively they're like a brick they're very good at hand
[00:33:38.240] fighting they're very hard to shoot against they're very hard to grapple with what weight was
[00:33:42.580] this at i at that point would have been about 160 like one and it went in kilograms and god if i can
[00:33:55.400] remember what half of them were um but but that gives you that gives me an idea yeah it was about
[00:34:01.040] 160 pounds is where i was i'm gonna say it was a shade under that like 154 which would have been
[00:34:06.040] a college weight um and yeah i so i beat him and then after that was invited to go to fort benning
[00:34:14.000] um wrestle for a bit and wrestled in a couple events here and there and then they had the
[00:34:22.500] armed forces tournament which i won and then i came back and it was kind of like i was done with
[00:34:29.920] it to be honest with you i separated my shoulder real bad in the army yeah well no it was it was
[00:34:38.600] because of wrestling another side story um i came back ran into an old high school buddy who was
[00:34:48.510] running his mouth who played fullback at lafayette college and his frat brothers thought that he
[00:34:56.320] couldn't be beaten and he was a big man definitely 50 pounds more than me at the time i see where
[00:35:03.180] And yeah, you know, stupid alcohol and stupid testosterone.
[00:35:08.560] And I wrestled that kid on the fraternity floor in the basement.
[00:35:13.900] And I guarantee you the Fiji house will not forget because that place was rocking.
[00:35:19.820] They set us up like, like it was King Kong Bundy versus Hulk Hogan or John Cena versus whoever, wherever the hell he used to beat on.
[00:35:31.360] They were going nuts.
[00:35:32.800] And all I remember was waking up on that nasty ass Fiji floor, having no idea how I got there
[00:35:43.860] and why my shoulder was killing me because I had slept on it.
[00:35:50.010] So woke up the next day.
[00:35:51.770] My buddy was sore.
[00:35:52.910] He told me I hit him with a bunch of freestyle moves and he had called it quits.
[00:35:58.110] And then I was hanging out with some of his friends and then, you know, I fell asleep on the floor apparently. So the whole plane ride home shoulder was killing me. I get to practice. I can't even do one pushup and I would lead the team in PT and in pushups and sit ups all the time in the PT score.
[00:36:22.770] and also it was i was really tenacious with those tests because it helped you get promoted and
[00:36:29.730] things like that and i could not do a push-up and my shoulder was killing me and they said you need
[00:36:35.470] to go see doc so okay i go in this room there's three trainers in there and that's what they were
[00:36:42.780] they were docs you know medical doctors for the army but more like a sports trainer kind of kind
[00:36:49.380] were like were they mds real cheap no no no ain't nobody floating an md in that room
[00:36:55.920] it was specialist jones and pfc larry eyeballing you up and also got one finger on the
[00:37:06.460] the manual they got in basic training oh man and uh they all three of them look at me
[00:37:13.200] and this is how obvious it was to everyone except for myself apparently
[00:37:17.160] and i said it's out what do you mean it's out i go like you know i'm out for the match or
[00:37:25.900] what are you what are you saying there no he goes your shoulder it's out we can see it it's
[00:37:33.140] it looks like you have a broken collarbone i'm like no it's not my collarbone i said
[00:37:38.420] and i can rotate it and they're like no no no no and i'm sure it's just crunch crunch crunch
[00:37:43.800] crutch shoot so it was one of those moments where one guy gripped me up like we were about to arm
[00:37:53.510] wrestle and the other guy kind of went underneath and they just rotated my elbow just a little bit
[00:38:00.610] and it went well boom popped into place and holy god that was the most pain i had felt and also the
[00:38:09.540] pleasure at the same time because it was released and i got it oh man and i was thinking man
[00:38:15.540] that was like a six to eight hour flight with layovers i had with this thing my god so um
[00:38:26.030] i stopped wrestling um because the army was terrible at medical procedures and somebody
[00:38:32.750] who was on the boxing team a guy named hog was his name a very good boxer uh he showed me the
[00:38:40.430] explorative surgery that the military did on him and he had a scar that was humongous
[00:38:45.510] and he said you get out of here he goes it's just a dot here and a dot there to fix your shoulder
[00:38:51.670] he goes these people don't know what they're doing oh shoot so i got up said i'm not wrestling
[00:38:57.210] anymore which is odd for somebody who just won the championship but then i went back to fort
[00:39:04.250] Riley. And then I helped train a bunch of guys and I really fell in love with coaching and all
[00:39:11.610] the guys that I trained ended up in the finals, um, for this, uh, the post championship, the same
[00:39:17.970] one that I had won previously to get onto that team the year prior. Um, they had all made it to
[00:39:25.220] the finals. None of them won, but they all made it to the finals and none of them expected to get
[00:39:31.120] there and the the shame of it was the one guy who didn't get to compete was my boy uh chief
[00:39:39.810] uh very large native american who wrestled in the heavyweight division chief got so good
[00:39:48.430] from me practicing with him i could not score a point on that kid and i was an armed forces
[00:39:56.880] champion so for me to just teach a guy and him to pick it up that fast he was an extraordinary
[00:40:02.900] athlete well wow chief you know ended up for some disciplinary reason um he he wasn't allowed to
[00:40:14.020] wrestle in the tournament and which was you know some trumped up charges of a sergeant that didn't
[00:40:19.280] like him because chief was the kind of guy to tell you to go pound sand um yeah he didn't get
[00:40:25.460] to wrestle in that tournament but he was the best wrestler i ever met as far as training and
[00:40:30.880] competed against so he is who got my red white and blue combat speeds oh man he brings it back
[00:40:38.500] to the combat speeds yep there's a there's a funny ending to that to the whole thing um there are
[00:40:45.480] some wrestling shoes today that sell for a lot of money but adidas the company caught on to it
[00:40:52.220] they realized, wait a minute, we can't sell the shoes that we got now for 60 bucks. They're just
[00:41:01.080] rotten on the shelves, but there's people paying a thousand dollars for these pairs of wrestling
[00:41:06.900] shoes. We're going to keep our eye on this. And I noticed the shift change all in one year. And
[00:41:15.190] thank goodness it was when I had sold my last pairs. Adidas re-released all the old shoes that
[00:41:24.050] they used to make and a lot they weren't the same exact style some of them some of them damn near
[00:41:31.610] were but it was like a newer futuristic style that i'll be honest with you i'd rock them
[00:41:38.090] they were cool yeah but because they had taken that nostalgia away from it to where to the naked
[00:41:45.470] eye you couldn't really tell so much of the difference unless you really looked at it or
[00:41:51.110] really were a collector and nobody really cared about that no that's when they reprint stuff i
[00:41:57.410] mean i think it's like that with pokemon cards like they you can get stuff that's not first
[00:42:01.670] generation but it just makes the other stuff crazier wrestling really is when you think about
[00:42:08.320] the wrestling shoe thing it really is a very unique market because when you play any other
[00:42:17.690] sport there's 10 million different accent items you can add and don't get me wrong i've seen it
[00:42:25.050] in wrestling too a guy will have like a bright neon colored knee pad or something like that but
[00:42:29.430] that's it let's look at the other crap you gotta wear when you wrestle there is nothing flattering
[00:42:36.200] about the wrestling singlet a singlet that's disgusting it's like a go out here you're
[00:42:46.960] going to be a cirque de soleil performer today and and the earmuffs like i understand the protection
[00:42:54.140] because you know i've seen what the dog-eared gremlin people look like when their ears get
[00:42:58.980] all boxed up cauliflower yeah but i mean you can't tell me in all this time that somebody
[00:43:05.820] didn't dream up a better design or system than the crap that they've been rolling he's got it on
[00:43:14.160] that uh that trophy i got i think he's wearing those big ones they they got a little bit better
[00:43:19.880] they had like the um but i didn't like those ones i preferred the older designs that fit more like
[00:43:26.200] these damn earphones like these earphones are slender compared to that yeah no and then it
[00:43:32.820] stuck around and i had long hair when i wrestled so uh i think for i think my my final year and uh
[00:43:41.540] yeah i would go i would get it braided right before a match like an ass pay my like i would
[00:43:47.940] work overnight to get my hair braided to go and wrestle like i i was living i was living two lives
[00:43:55.020] at the same time i should not have been working in high school but uh anytime high school maybe
[00:44:01.460] but not 10th grade i had coaches i don't know why maybe that was the way caddy coached um
[00:44:09.300] they would encourage you anytime you wrestled somebody that had long hair,
[00:44:15.060] teach them a lesson that use it as a weapon against them. Um, and I'll never forget the
[00:44:24.960] first year I was at districts. Um, I was wrestling against this kid who was really good. I mean,
[00:44:33.760] I really, it, it was immediately in the first period. I realized that this kid was better than
[00:44:40.240] me. I was probably about to get beat and go home early. The referee stops the match. The kid's
[00:44:48.240] kicking my ass pretty good. And he blows the whistle and he goes, ah, I can't have this kid
[00:44:55.380] with his long hair like this. He's going to have to cut that or you're going to need a shower cap
[00:45:01.700] or something like that. And his coaches were like, well, we don't have anything like that.
[00:45:06.200] and they're like like how much do we need to take off and he he said you just need to cut like by
[00:45:13.360] the length of the neck and this kid had this long rat tail i'm pretty sure he was from lee hyten
[00:45:20.160] and he had this long rat tail and he takes a look at me takes a look at the ref and goes cut my hair
[00:45:30.260] are you shitting me this is good luck for states i'm a track athlete you can have this wrestling
[00:45:39.690] crap good luck kid shakes my hand rips off the velcro things throws him at the referee and just
[00:45:46.710] peaced out and i'm like i hope to be that guy one day yeah i hope to not give a damn about this so
[00:45:54.710] much that i could just peace out and walk off my career off the mat like that i don't know if i
[00:46:01.590] would have made that decision man if you're listening i want to know who you are yeah
[00:46:05.910] mystery man from lee hyten you're probably running a successful car dealership the username is going
[00:46:12.330] to check out in the comments it'll be like good luck rat tail yeah rat tail e245 after hearing
[00:46:20.850] In my prior story, now he's going to want a rematch in front of family and friends.
[00:46:25.410] Ay, ay, ay.
[00:46:28.270] Oh, man.
[00:46:29.750] No.
[00:46:30.510] I don't even know.
[00:46:33.190] There's a lot of guys I couldn't even shout out from matches.
[00:46:38.120] I just don't remember.
[00:46:40.860] Well, I remember the names like yesterday of the kids that were really good.
[00:46:44.480] The kids that put the wood to me.
[00:46:46.540] There's one kid from Northampton.
[00:46:49.620] his name was ryan gumlock and he was he was a class act he was very good but just his his
[00:46:58.380] technique was damn near unbeatable and i know it's not unbeatable because unfortunately he never won
[00:47:04.960] a state title he placed third um but he was every year his record was like 52 and 1 52 and 2
[00:47:14.120] so the guy who beat him was whoever the guy was that made him not become the state champion
[00:47:19.900] yeah or in the running for it and but he was one of the best that i ever ran into
[00:47:26.400] but there were lots of names you know lots of great kids lots of great kids on my team
[00:47:32.310] and i'll tell you some of the greatest kids the greatest wrestlers were the guys who weren't the
[00:47:40.030] state champions some of the greatest coaches uh shout out to randy cruz at bethlehem catholic
[00:47:46.070] high school um one of the greatest coaches and i remember him back then and he like me
[00:47:55.580] had a flair for that's a really cool move i want to learn it and then i want to teach it to this
[00:48:02.920] dude over here because it'd be really good for him he had that compassion to spread it and i found
[00:48:10.040] that that was the poison that actually hurt a lot of people in that sport too is the people who were
[00:48:15.780] too selfish with it who were trying to you know keep all their own secrets in their own bags so
[00:48:20.920] they could make sure that they would win the bout out to be on the team well you're cutting yourself
[00:48:25.980] short buddy because yeah you might be able to make the team but guess what now we're all gunning to
[00:48:33.320] teach him a move to beat you next time so no i i understand i i understood that even then that
[00:48:42.610] And sometimes the best coaches aren't, you know, I mean, don't get me wrong.
[00:48:48.540] There's great coaches that had the record and stuff, too.
[00:48:52.360] But I got to coach with a lot of great coaches, too.
[00:48:56.360] I mean, there were so many.
[00:48:58.480] Coach Crowell at Nazareth did some camps with him, helped him out when he was in between when he before he went to Nazareth.
[00:49:11.000] he uh he was helping a lot of the teams up at banger high school how i somehow got wrapped
[00:49:18.080] into helping some people and he was he was a fun person to learn from uh uh coach togus uh from
[00:49:29.010] parkland he was a he was a legend my my high school coach mike connor from katasakwa he was
[00:49:36.010] another one but there you go uh greg strobel uh who was the head coach at lehigh for many years
[00:49:42.010] that man, every time I was around him, he was one of those coaches that never said much.
[00:49:50.690] Like when he, when he would coach and he coached legendary teams at Lehigh,
[00:49:55.910] the wrestler just had to look at him when they needed advice. And he knew the answer like that.
[00:50:03.000] And I never met a coach like him. I remembered I was at banger and it was a night where coach
[00:50:11.360] Crowell wasn't there. It was just Greg Strobel. And he had retired from Lehigh. He wasn't their
[00:50:18.100] coach anymore. And there was this one kid who was struggling against this other kid trying to pin
[00:50:25.140] him. And the other kid kept getting out. And Greg Strobel saw this kid get him again. And he watched
[00:50:34.510] him fighting, watched him fighting. But this time the kid would not give up. I mean, he's just
[00:50:38.770] hold him on with everything he's got and i came over and i said listen if you keep doing that
[00:50:46.890] you're going to run out of gas a trick i want you to do is take your fingers and dig them into the
[00:50:55.430] mat like claws and you can hold his leg that way and you can hold his his head and his shoulder
[00:51:02.150] that way and greg strobel saw that and he came running over and he goes better yet now take your
[00:51:10.200] fingers and crawl them to one another and i watched this kid just wiggling his fingers
[00:51:17.400] locked it up like it was nothing pin the guy flat that was all he said he did like an about face
[00:51:26.660] he knew it was gonna work before the kid even moved a digit turned around and sat down
[00:51:32.960] and just kind of looked up and went uh yeah and i'm like man there there are people that are that
[00:51:42.080] talented that have just seen it all yeah they see something they see something we don't see
[00:51:47.620] i gotta shout out uh tommy derhammer yes derhammer my coach and uh very can't can't
[00:51:56.350] Shout him out without Birch.
[00:51:59.970] B. Birch.
[00:52:01.330] Ah, Billy Birch.
[00:52:02.470] Billy Birch, yeah.
[00:52:03.690] I'm familiar with both of those gentlemen.
[00:52:06.770] Yeah.
[00:52:07.310] Billy Birch wrestled two people from my high school.
[00:52:11.460] Brad Lauer and Joe Stofko.
[00:52:14.160] Lost to one, beat the other.
[00:52:17.240] And your coach, Der Hammer, back when I had a trophy and awards business,
[00:52:26.840] i designed his coach of the year award oh yeah for district 11 um which for the last time i saw him
[00:52:37.560] and talked to him at a deer fundraiser for basketball he uh he told me he loves it and
[00:52:44.440] he still has it has his head gear in it so yeah that's nice i remember lasering it in my living
[00:52:51.910] i don't think i saw i don't think i was at the deer of wrestling reunion last year i have to
[00:52:58.370] check that out this year it's like something i like to stick a part of but a bunch of those guys
[00:53:03.830] are still getting together that's cool that you know we i i went to katasakwa and we used to
[00:53:11.450] practice with them every single year we would go over there quite a few times and scrap with them
[00:53:17.950] and i think you said you really didn't do that did did you practice with caddy at all were they
[00:53:23.810] still coming over there not caddy we were practicing with um not saukin valley what's the
[00:53:30.370] other new saukin valley the blue and white southern lehigh not southern salisbury salisbury
[00:53:37.830] that's the one yeah i always get salisbury those three that you just said i always get those mixed
[00:53:44.050] up they're like some shade of blue it's a small town but um no we would go with salisbury we did
[00:53:50.130] central a few times um we would go up to uh penn argile my coach der hammer took us around some
[00:53:58.690] day he would you know and he'd say this sat only on like a saturday we'd go and do something or if
[00:54:04.290] it was before something i think the farthest we went was penn argile uh becca becca we would go
[00:54:10.210] over and train at becca and uh is it sal was salad becca at that time i want to say i was
[00:54:19.050] training with crivalero yeah um i can't remember if he was still with the old guard of coaches yet
[00:54:29.280] or if that was when sal came over there i don't know we'll have to check i go back if i could
[00:54:38.790] go back now like i document everything podcasting but i have three albums that are nowhere to be
[00:54:45.490] found if you're listening to this or if you tag somebody who has my first album i just thought
[00:54:50.030] about that somebody probably we sold like 200 copies my senior year somebody has it stored
[00:54:56.130] somewhere in an old cd case or something i just need it can have scratches on it i'll put it out
[00:55:02.070] with the with the scratches i just want to put it out digitally i want to play it for my son
[00:55:06.630] but um i think we can start landing this plane soon man yeah um one thing you you kind of talked
[00:55:17.160] to me about earlier that i'm sure we'll elaborate on in a future episode but the new the new uh
[00:55:27.380] collectible thing um beyond you know disc golf crap which is something i discovered is definitely
[00:55:40.770] cryptocurrency yeah and and that's a topic that not enough people are diving into and i'd like
[00:55:47.150] to do like an entire podcast episode with you so you could title it as that too to get the yeah
[00:55:52.510] seo for it but uh cryptocurrency is definitely a a lucrative future thing and until you learn
[00:56:02.910] the technology um that then uh if you're a skeptic like i am especially with investments
[00:56:11.500] um you're kind of flying blind and just throwing money in different directions but when you
[00:56:17.980] understand the technology and what the future purpose of it can be you're at a ground floor
[00:56:23.890] of investing that is literally pennies on the dollar so if you're looking for anything out there
[00:56:31.120] to help you to enhance like maybe you got started with a retirement plan late in your life and i am
[00:56:37.520] not licensed or authorized to give this advice so you know what do you mean man this is i will not
[00:56:43.840] i'm not and and you're always supposed to say that so yeah if you lose your ass doing this
[00:56:48.720] because you made stupid decisions go pound sand but no i i mean it like of of all of the
[00:56:57.040] opportunities that are out there it's a 100 time to 300 time uh whatever value of what you're
[00:57:05.170] putting into it and and there are people that are losing a lot of money because guess what we ain't
[00:57:10.530] doing with it like we're not we're not really trading with cryptocurrency yet but the advantages
[00:57:18.540] are so steep versus the disadvantages and it puts so much money back in people's pockets
[00:57:25.740] and takes the crooked banks out of it and i don't mean banks period we always need banks
[00:57:31.980] um the crooked banks the ones that are charging you fees out the wazoo for every breath you take
[00:57:38.640] with your money cryptocurrency was kind of the pirated way away from the banks many years ago
[00:57:47.060] um and it's grown in momentum so much that the united states we are 12th in line
[00:57:58.070] as far as popularity growth and everything there are entire countries that are using this as
[00:58:05.510] currency and have been and that's why new currencies continue to come out that support
[00:58:10.490] different markets so you'll have to do your own homework on the ones that work but if there's
[00:58:15.390] anything if if anyone's out there seeking um an opportunity to to make some money in a future
[00:58:24.290] investment every single one of the apps that sell these things will cash you out instantly so it's
[00:58:32.480] one of the most low risk things that i've ever gotten into but also the most lucrative as far
[00:58:38.100] as investments go and i know my man tony here has started to do it no absolutely and i did what you
[00:58:46.480] said which was research and um i'm not even all the way in there's still more research that i want
[00:58:54.730] to do got a foot just to be able to watch something and and check it out but um definitely
[00:59:01.930] something i want to check out and this is coming from the guy that made sixteen thousand dollars in
[00:59:08.310] seven or eight months realizing an opportunity with something like wrestling shoes and
[00:59:14.530] disc golf so uh discs reselling discs so yeah again this is not advice nobody comes here
[00:59:25.000] for news or advice or anything like this but i think it was great to have you on to find out
[00:59:31.300] who you are thank you let the guests know about it you're definitely welcome to come back when
[00:59:36.620] you have i know there's some other things we've talked about off camera that johnny's phone
[00:59:40.560] we got going on i want to be here to witness this thing
[00:59:44.940] absolutely absolutely but um let's see i don't have my notes up with the exit so i'm going to
[00:59:56.980] completely wing it man this is i will not lose stories of success learned from failure to support
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[01:00:16.560] so i will not lose thanks for listening