Transcript
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Loud Proud.
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American's greatest challenge and biggest risk has been completed, and today we recap the adventure and discuss the details.
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How did it go, and was the rewards worth the risk?
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Let me tell you something Everybody struggles.
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The difference is some people choose to go through it and some choose to grow through it.
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The choice is completely yours.
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Which one you choose will have a very profound effect on the way you live your life.
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If you find strength in the struggle, then this podcast is for you.
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Do you have a relationship that is comfortable with uncomfortable conversations?
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Uncomfortable conversations challenge you, humble you and they build you.
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When you sprinkle a little time and distance on it, it all makes sense.
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Most disagreements, they stem from our own insecurities.
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You are right where you need to be Back on time.
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We can fight the world the whole day gone by.
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Ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh.
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What it do, what it hot, it's did-a-dee-do.
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Good Lord, almighty, am I so excited to be back with you.
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Oh, it's true, it is damn true.
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I miss you.
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I miss all you beautiful, voluptuous, sexual, now proud Americans out there, and I mean that in the most politest and politically correct kind of ways possible.
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I love y'all.
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How can I not love you?
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We are.
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This is episode 244?
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Question mark.
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I believe Y'all believe that we're approaching 250 freaking weeks of the podcast and this week I am coming to you absolutely freaking tired.
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Wow, am I blistered right now?
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I am beat.
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I'm certain I sound like shit.
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I can barely breathe through my face, I've lost my voice and I feel like my lungs are filled with Florida dust.
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I don't really know.
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I don't know what's happening, but it is my commitment to you, my dedication to y'all, that has me standing here today, proudly back with you, recording another episode of that podcast, beautifully, perfectly precisely named Share the Struggle, because everybody struggles, and this week we are going to recap the greatest, most recent struggle for myself, my family and my brand, loud Proud American.
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If you have been listening leading up to today's show, you know all the risk versus reward, all the analysis that went into us deciding and committing to and working our way towards Daytona Bike Week.
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If you've been listening along over the past few weeks, you've heard me announce that we got accepted and we were going to Bike Week.
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You heard me come back here, tuck my tail between my legs and tell you Lord, almighty, I can't afford it.
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And I had to get creative and push things and pull things and close more business than I possibly thought I could to make up the financial means to get there.
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I had to formulate a tag team partner scenario, build a team that was willing to put their lives on hold to help me and my brand and my family to achieve a bucket list dream.
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So before I go any further, I really need to wholeheartedly give the biggest, greatest, most amazing winning.
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Wednesday weekly shout out To my brother from another mother, brian Pomelo and his amazing son, zach.
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Brian and Zach Pomelo they put their lives on hold to help Loud, proud American achieve new heights.
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I can't thank you enough.
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Brian's been telling me since I started the brand.
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Me and BP used to work together at the Harley-Davidson dealership and we've just stayed in contact and touch in our relationship, I would argue, has gotten even better since our years of working together.
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It's amazing to think how strong it is now and how important that we are to each other.
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So when I launched this brand and I launched this podcast, brian's been extremely supportive.
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He's been a champion for the brand and I launched this podcast.
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Brian's been extremely supportive.
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He's been a champion for the brand.
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He was the first ever person that I asked outside of my family to help the brand to run the tent to sell merchandise.
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Him and his wife, christy, were the first people I ever asked to help.
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And Brian said to me this entire time the moment you decide to travel with this brand, you let me know.
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I want to help.
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And I reached out for Daytona and I fully expected I would take this journey on my own, because it's a lot to ask man.
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It is a lot to ask.
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We had to leave here on a Monday, drive through the night, get to Florida on a Tuesday and we'll recap this in a little bit have Tuesday to get settled in and Wednesday and Thursday to set up.
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Then you run bike week Friday, saturday, sunday, monday, tuesday, wednesday, thursday, friday, saturday, sunday and head out.
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That's a huge commitment.
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You're away from your family for a long time.
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You're away from your income for a long time.
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You're not just taking an enjoyable vacation, you're also doing this to bust your ass and to help me try to make something of this brand and this event.
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Brian and Zach put their lives on hold and I can't I can't thank them enough and, to be honest spoiler alert here.
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We're going to get into some of the risk and some of the rewards at the end of this episode, and one of the greatest rewards for me personally was getting to spend as much time as I did with Brian and Zach and to put this in perspective for you guys.
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If you know me and you've been listening on, if this is your first episode, then some of this is going to be new to you, but if you've been listening and getting to know me and my story and my family and our struggles, then you know that it's been just over a year since I lost my dad.
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To be on a road trip a father and son road trip.
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To be part of that road trip was incredibly powerful and inspiring.
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I will be transparent as all hell and I'll tell you there was times when, when they were sleeping and I was driving, we all would kind of take shifts and I'm thinking about them and I'm thinking about my father and that I lost my father and that what I would give for this type of experience and journey with my dad, so to be a part of their experience, to make the memories, to build stories that are going to last a freaking lifetime.
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We lived basically like we're supposed to live right, like just flying off the seat of your pants, taking things day by day, enjoying every opportunity, balancing good and bad and just being thankful for all the memories that we had.
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That was us, man.
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We lived like kings with little resources.
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I don't know if that makes sense to you guys.
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We're building fires to make food.
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We don't have serving spoons.
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We're creating spoons out of bush light cans.
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We're doing man shit.
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You understand, we were just living L-I-V-I-N and I loved every freaking minute of it.
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I'm so incredibly thankful for the relationship I was able to form with young Zach because I hadn't seen him since I worked with Brian, which was shoot well over 10 years ago.
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So it was incredible.
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It was incredible to have that experience, that connection.
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So, brian and Zach, this week's Winnie Wednesday weekly shout out something I have not done in a very long time goes to you too rightfully so.
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I love you boys.
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I can't thank you enough.
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Y'all are family.
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I hope you understand that and I'd feel bad asking you to go somewhere else again because of all we went through, but I kind of want to do it because we had an amazing time and I love you guys and I can't truly thank you enough.
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I don't know how I'm going to find the words or the ways to repay you, but I will do the best I possibly can, and it starts today by saying thank you, thank you, thank you so damn much.
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You helped me and my family put my brand on the map in a way we never thought possible, and that's because you put your lives on hold to help carry me.
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And there's really no words to express how grateful I am and I just wanted to put it out there to the universe.
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So if any of you listening you know Brian and Zach or you happen to meet them at an event, make sure you thank them for me and helping to build this brand.
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So thank you, boys.
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I really truly, truly appreciate that.
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And to get things kind of rocking and rolling, as you can tell by my voice and where I'm at, I'm really in recovery mode.
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I am absolutely smoked.
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I am so ever loving, tired.
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Our schedule there has been insane.
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Like the way things went was absolutely insane.
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To kind of, you know, sprinkle a little, I guess I should say, paint the picture here now that we sprinkle some time and distance on it.
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It's crazy.
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We left on a Monday I want to say 9, 9.30 in the morning, we hit the road and we got to Florida the next day at 10.30, 11 o'clock, right.
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So we drove straight through the freaking night.
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I have so many stories that we can get to at another time, but I really just kind of want to give you a screenshot, snapshot of how this went.
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So I'm going to kind of run fast, I'm going to run through a timeline to kind of give you guys a little insight as to what happened.
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But we drove straight through.
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We were in, I want to say, virginia and I started looking up hotels and I said, fellas, I got a room right here for about 60 bucks 70 bucks.
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We can crash a few hours and get back on the road.
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And Brian said, dude, we shouldn't waste money and we should get there as soon as we can, because who knows what's going to happen?
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And if you started doing the timeline on things, if we stayed in the hotel for too long and then left by the time we got to the place we were going, there'd be nobody to check us in, so we couldn't unpack the bus, we couldn't make camp, we couldn't find a place to sleep, so it would really create us having to really buy two hotels.
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So we said you know what?
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We're going to run it.
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We're going to drive straight through the night and BP is a road warrior.
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That dude can drive like a champ.
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He just loves a road trip and loves powering through.
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The experience is made in a freaking school bus, a 2011 school bus driving I don't even remember the mileage right.
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A couple thousand miles, right?
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Amazing.
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There was some nervousness because the bus has never run for more than two and a half hours straight.
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It decided to do 26 hours.
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Out the gate.
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She ran like an ever-loving champion.
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The new Loud, proud American Battle Axe business wagon professional freaking awesomeness is fantastic.
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Things went so well.
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I'm looking forward to making improvements to it, but I could not be happier with the way things went.
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Brian nicknamed the bus Large Marge as we were navigating traffic out there, and Old Marge took great care of us.
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Man, we had an absolute blast and it ran so well, so pretty excited about that.
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So, about 26 hours in we get to Florida and, um, actually, let me back up a little bit and tell you that I left Maine and obviously you're going to go Maine, new Hampshire, massachusetts, connecticut.
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We got into Connecticut and got pulled over by a state trooper when he came up to the door.
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I opened the door and, uh, cause you open the side door to kind of let him in, cause it's just around the side of the interstate.
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And he says you know why I'm pulling you over.
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And I said no, I was right down.
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And he says you have an iceberg on the top of your bus that will literally kill somebody we thought we had.
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You know, I'm going to tell you this.
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We had about 15 inches of snow and ice on the roof and I shoveled all that I could off on a ladder.
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Some of it was frozen in the middle and we tried to get it off, leaving here.
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Apparently said, iceberg made its way to Connecticut.
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Yes, that's a commitment, folks, that's a real commitment.
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After talking with the officer, he said if you can get it off the roof, I won't give you a ticket, I'll just give you a warning.
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And Brian said hell yeah, be right out there.
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And we grabbed Zach, threw him on the roof, he shoveled it off and came flying back down the other side, which in retrospective, I think the officer did not expect us to put a human on the roof of a bus on the side of 95.
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I wanted to get a photo or video at this moment, but I realized he might not think this is funny and, uh, he probably doesn't want that traveling around him losing his job, so we just moved about our business, all right, so we get to florida, we get to uh cackleberry campground.
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Cackleberry yeah, that's, we gather the locals kind of call it, I think, but they were drunk when we were talking to him, so that might not be really how to pronounce it, but it is cackleberry campground.
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Okay.
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Now, the way Daytona is set up and we learned more about it after being there is there's little segments of Bike Week that kind of happen in different locations, like main attractions, like Main Street, the local racetrack, like the Speedway for the 500.
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There's some Harley dealership that has a big area, there's some big bars that have areas for vendors and stuff, and then we're at this campground across the street from the Cabbage Patch, which is world famous for coleslaw wrestling, and there's a lot of vendors there.
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There's entertainment there.
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So when we got there, they set us up, showed us where we were going to be under a tree in the field, you could see the main stage.
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We had a bar right in front of us.
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There was a big wheel of death behind us, or wall of death, and we thought this is a great location.
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As we were to learn, I should have thought more about this, because one thing I've learned being on the road and being a vendor is that when people are shopping and they're at a fair or a festival.
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As crazy as this might sound, they're lazy.
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People are lazy, they like to follow patterns.
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People will get out and they will walk the perimeter.
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They will look at the middle and then make their decision from the perimeter as to whether they're going to go to the middle.
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So, connected to us, we had a guy that was selling some knives and then there was some religious groups that were, you know, blessing motorcycles, handing out Bibles, things like that, and people were just not coming over to us at the rate in which they would have had we been on a perimeter.
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So that was strike one for us when it comes to business.
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But in the beginning we really hadn't really thought that right.
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But that ended up having a major effect on us.
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But for our first time we felt that we stood out and it was a good spot for us.
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Our camping scenario we were able to put large marge and a pretty awesome camping spot.
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We had some shade, some flat area, some trees.
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The boys set up some tents.
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We had a pretty nice little ponderosa set up.
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Initial thought on that was hey, this is a fantastic camping site.
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Upon further review, the problem with said camping site is.
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It is right next to the road and every freaking person at Bike Week wants to do a burnout or to hammer on their motorcycle, which just happens to be flying by your head while you're sleeping, if you're sleeping.
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And the other thing that has happened is there's some locals that do not appreciate Bike Week apparently happening in their town.
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So they decide to take some vigilante justice into their own hands and they want to protest bike week.
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So one Karen or as we politely now begin to label Karens in our state, janets one particular Janet decides every morning at six in the morning to roll by the campground laying on the horn, literally just hammering on the horn, to wake everybody in the campground up, to then get their coffee, turn around and come back and do it again.
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So every morning at like six, six oh five, janet rolls by on the horn to wake you up, get her coffee, you hopefully start to fall back asleep.
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And here she comes, right back again to wake your ass up again.
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If y'all want a full frontal confessional right now, I'll put my hand on Cabello's catalog.
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Be the little eyes of the sky that choose from this guy.
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We made a plan by the end of the week.
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When we're leaving on the last day, we know what time old Janet's coming by.
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I'm going to pop out of the damn bushes and I don't care if it's a.
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If it's a potato, an egg or a turd, it's coming at your van.
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Okay, probably your minivan.
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That was the plan.
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What I didn't count on is that the last day we'd be there as a Sunday and Janet decides that she makes coffee at home on Sunday.
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So you avoided us this time, janet.
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Anyways, that is our thought process versus reality.
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We thought we had a great location for the business and a great location for camp.
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Reality is, yeah, they both had their challenges.
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Okay, so we end up arriving at our location a few days early, which is like we planned it.
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We didn't know if we're going to run into the kind of hiccups, what the situation might be, and for us to make camp we had to really empty the bus.
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So we set up the shell for the vendor display right for the Loud Proud American booth, put a bunch of things on the wall.
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Then we go back, set up camp and on our first night we go out and meet some locals.
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We go across the street to the Cabbage Patch and just kind of celebrate the fact that we've made it have a few drinks and then come back and shut it down.
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But that gave us Tuesday right.
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That's Tuesday night.
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Bike week doesn't start until Friday.
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We have Wednesday and Thursday and what was pretty awesome is that Lisa from Bentley Saloon Bentley's girlfriend Lisa.
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She had called and checked in to see how we were doing and she said you know what?
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I know?
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You guys are kind of confined to where you are.
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I'm going to be your tour guide, I'm going to take care of you.
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Lisa picked us up and on night one she brought us downtown, showed us Main Street.
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We checked out every single bar.
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We went to all these different places.
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She introduced us into so many people, to so many people.
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We took photos with so many folks.
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She made a connection between me and Doug, who owns Sick Boy, which is a very successful motorcycle rock and roll apparel brand.
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He has a storefront in Deadwood, dakota, and he also has a temporary storefront that opens up right on Main Street during bike week.
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So pretty awesome to meet an inspiration, somebody that started much like we have, that has built a massive empire for himself.
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So that was rather inspiring.
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I really learned a masterclass in promotion and spending two days with Lisa.
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The way she goes about her business.
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She's always looking for a way to market herself and her business.
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She's always pushing Bentley Saloon.
00:18:22.082 --> 00:18:23.765
Everybody ran into you.
00:18:23.765 --> 00:18:31.285
She was so polite to introduce us and mention the brand and try to drive traffic our way, which absolutely helped.
00:18:31.285 --> 00:18:32.469
I learned so much.
00:18:32.469 --> 00:18:33.090
It was incredible.
00:18:33.090 --> 00:18:38.853
So for two days Lisa was our tour guide and she showed us around and it was tremendous.
00:18:38.853 --> 00:18:46.268
We get to see parts of Florida that we never thought we'd be able to because we knew we would be stuck at the campground and just trying to work and get our things done.
00:18:46.268 --> 00:18:47.570
So it was incredible.
00:18:47.570 --> 00:18:51.465
I'm forever grateful to Lisa for showing us around and doing those things and the people we got to meet.
00:18:51.465 --> 00:18:53.952
It was pretty damn awesome.
00:18:55.201 --> 00:19:05.472
I was able to spend a bunch of time with another brother from another mother, dirk, who I met through Bentley himself, and usually Dirk and I we spend time more at the saloon.
00:19:05.472 --> 00:19:08.890
Occasionally we pull off a fun road trip and connect in Nashville.
00:19:08.890 --> 00:19:16.111
But this was another time where I was able to hang out with Dirk, spend a week together, introduce him to Brian and Zach party with him.
00:19:16.111 --> 00:19:23.319
His girl, lori, showed up, you know, and we were able just to kind of have this nighttime relaxation mode right.
00:19:23.319 --> 00:19:29.045
We unplug from work and just kind of hang out and crush beers and share stories and just make up ridiculous things.
00:19:29.045 --> 00:19:31.661
And that was that was a great time, you know.
00:19:31.661 --> 00:19:33.928
And and having your jerk support everywhere.
00:19:33.928 --> 00:19:37.269
As he went, he was putting my stickers out there every day.
00:19:37.269 --> 00:19:39.769
He's pushing a new person to my tent to buy something.
00:19:39.769 --> 00:19:42.789
I met Dirk at breakfast and I need to be in here to buy this shirt.
00:19:43.461 --> 00:20:08.462
That's a support, that's the friendship, and you're going to really hear an emphasis with me on people because spoiler alert that's what this is all about, that's what life's about, that's what the brand is about, it's about people, and this trip really drove that home even more and more from us, because it really comes down to the relationships we've already made and the relationships that we will continue to make.
00:20:08.462 --> 00:20:25.950
And to kind of just spell this out for you, I'm going to get into a couple of fantastic encounters that I feel like are just motivational and monumental for us, but I also want to really sprinkle some emphasis on the relationships that we already have, and without those these things wouldn't be possible.
00:20:25.950 --> 00:20:26.951
And when I say that I mean.
00:20:26.951 --> 00:20:34.377
First off, you think about the relationship between Brian and Zach to help me get there and to make this possible, the relationship with Lisa to show us all around.
00:20:34.377 --> 00:20:50.336
And then the surprising visits that I had while in Florida from customers that either have been buying from us for years, see us at the saloon or follow us on social media, coming in and saying, hi, hey, man, I follow you.
00:20:50.336 --> 00:20:52.692
You, I bought a shirt from you at bentley saloon.
00:20:52.692 --> 00:20:53.954
I saw you were down here.
00:20:54.797 --> 00:20:57.323
So many conversations like this happened during the week.
00:20:57.323 --> 00:20:58.212
It was mind-blowing.
00:20:58.212 --> 00:21:03.171
Uh, former employees of mine coming in to see me and be like man, I'm so happy that you're here.
00:21:03.171 --> 00:21:14.355
Family members stopping in to surprise me and literally like our extended family out in New York Little Paisley Reigns, godparents, lance and Jen, kip and Shelly.
00:21:14.355 --> 00:21:15.898
They surprised us.
00:21:15.898 --> 00:21:22.162
They literally rolled into the tent with a bag full of gifts for Little Paisley and said, hey, I'd rather save on shipping.
00:21:22.162 --> 00:21:23.873
Here's this for the little one.