Today we sat down with David & Danny who are co-founders of Iron Apparel, veterans, entrepreneurs and brothers. The core thread of our conversation is one of encouragement, and the key take away is that if you are alive, you are capable of the extraordinary. Additionally we discussed Iron Apparels origin story, and how the pursuit of building their business has helped David & Danny to live more fulfilling and intentional lives. Highlights include: - Your body is a presentation of your mind. - People desire acceptance over excellence... - Iron sharpens iron. - The power of friction and discomfort. - You are capable of more. - We compliment each other. - Fork in the road, facing life changing decisions. - Don't ignore your unhappiness to stay comfortable. To learn more about David & Danny check out their business here: IRON APPAREL. Did you find value in today’s conversation? SHARE IT!

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08;06;40;05 - 08;06;20;15

Jon

Well, hello, good morning, everyone. Today we're joined with David and Danny, who are brothers, co-founders of Iron Apparel and veteran entrepreneurs and one of you still your active Air Force Reserve, which is about as goochy as you can get.

08;06;20;14 - 08;06;13;19

David

It's probably the only job in the military. It gives me the maximum amount of time to work on a business.

08;06;13;12 - 08;06;12;19

Jon

Yeah, heck yeah.

08;06;12;18 - 08;06;08;27

David

It's the most flexible job I've had the whole time. I've been in the military, so that's awesome.

08;06;07;21 - 08;06;02;11

Aaron

You guys are so, so iron apparel. So who are you guys? What are you guys doing right now?

08;06;02;10 - 08;05;52;24

Jon

Real quick, if you don't mind. Yeah, because I like to own things, because I think that's fun. So it's really hilarious because we have the best five minute conversation no one will ever hear, ever.

08;05;52;22 - 08;05;50;25

Aaron

Oh, I thought he was just going to skirt over it. But you're going.

08;05;50;25 - 08;05;49;23

Jon

To. No, no, no.

08;05;49;08 - 08;05;48;22

Jon

Know we're going to.

08;05;48;22 - 08;05;47;24

Danny

Address the elephant in the.

08;05;47;24 - 08;05;46;21

Jon

Room and it's happening.

08;05;46;16 - 08;05;31;19

Jon

The elephant in the room is here we are, and all of a sudden we're noticing it's not recording for whatever reason. I'm not going to blame anyone except myself. And we had to jump back in. So instead of like trying to regain that rhythm, let's just say, Hey, at least we're not using the computer, Mike.

08;05;31;11 - 08;05;28;03

Aaron

That's true. That's yeah, that's something we have actually done.

08;05;27;06 - 08;05;26;15

Jon

So at.

08;05;26;11 - 08;05;25;26

Jon

Times.

08;05;24;23 - 08;05;23;29

Jon

So having called.

08;05;23;29 - 08;05;21;06

Jon

That spade a spade? Right? I can see we're all smiling.

08;05;20;22 - 08;05;20;02

Danny

Mike's here.

08;05;19;28 - 08;05;19;08

Jon

Yeah, good.

08;05;19;00 - 08;05;07;09

Jon

Well, when we were Jeremiah who you guys introduced us to, which was part of that great conversation, no one gets to hear. We asked him, Hey, does it look pretty legit? And he's like, Yeah, you guys look super religious.

08;05;07;09 - 08;05;06;09

David

You like credibility.

08;05;06;09 - 08;05;05;26

Jon

Established.

08;05;04;24 - 08;05;03;20

Jon

It's not plugged into anything.

08;05;03;20 - 08;04;58;26

Jon

That gives you the right ambiance. None of these mikes work.

08;04;58;11 - 08;04;52;07

Jon

And it's amazing how close to not working they consistently are. So it's like, OK.

08;04;51;22 - 08;04;50;11

Aaron

Which one of you guys is the older?

08;04;49;17 - 08;04;48;29

David

I'm older.

08;04;48;28 - 08;04;48;23

Jon

Yeah.

08;04;48;22 - 08;04;47;08

Aaron

All right. Well, how many years apart?

08;04;47;07 - 08;04;44;00

Jon

Well, so we're three years apart, three.

08;04;44;00 - 08;04;43;16

Danny

And a half.

08;04;43;13 - 08;04;39;11

Jon

Years. three have the year for my brother. The same solid. OK, we've.

08;04;39;11 - 08;04;25;11

David

Got six kids in our family, actually. So we're we've got kind of like you with your four sons. four boys and two girls in our family. So we're the two youngest. I'm five and he's six. And it basically went every two years until we got to me.

08;04;25;11 - 08;04;23;08

David

And then it was like three and a half for Danny. So.

08;04;23;07 - 08;04;22;15

Aaron

Oh, nice. OK?

08;04;22;13 - 08;04;13;07

Danny

Yeah, it's my wife's oddball. Yeah, nice. Like, we're going to do it scheduled in consecutive and then they're like, Oh God, what happened? We have this one now.

08;04;12;12 - 08;04;07;25

Jon

And there's no giving him back. That's amazing.

08;04;07;06 - 08;03;51;10

Aaron

So you guys decided to get in business together. So like, you're doing this whole mission thing, like I can't imagine just even an early in my life having to do one thing with my brother and staying on the same page like, it's amazing that you guys are on mission together.

08;03;51;07 - 08;03;45;15

Aaron

What? What made you kind of made the gravitas come together and say, Hey, we're into this together was.

08;03;45;03 - 08;03;30;11

Danny

Kind of organic. I mean, we've always just hung out a lot and been pretty close. But I think really you were off at college and I was still at high school and we still talked over the phone a lot and like Facebook Messenger or whatever.

08;03;28;15 - 08;03;21;02

Danny

But I wouldn't say that there was like any specific reason that we were like, Hey, let's do this together. It just kind of organically like.

08;03;20;25 - 08;03;10;12

David

What it was doing. It was basically, I mean, like, yeah, we basically went against all conventional wisdom, everything you read online. I never go into business with family.

08;03;09;17 - 08;03;08;20

Jon

And we did it, but.

08;03;08;20 - 08;02;51;01

David

It basically started by. I've been designing and printing t shirts my for since I was really, really young and tell the whole story. I'll try to just highlight the the main points. But basically, I fell in love at a young age with designing.

08;02;51;01 - 08;02;35;17

David

I've always been like an artist, so I draw pictures and all that kind of stuff. And really, what sparked the T-shirt thing for me was an hour when I was in high school on a wrestling team. We went to a real small high school out in eastern Colorado, and we had a really good wrestling team one year

08;02;35;17 - 08;02;23;07

David

and we were just annihilating everybody. And all of the mascots from all the schools that we were competing with were all these animals. So like the bison, the tigers, the lions, the eagles, the hawks, you name it, we were the Indians.

08;02;23;07 - 08;02;18;05

David

So I drew this really cool like comic book picture of this really ripped looked a little bit like Jonathan.

08;02;17;19 - 08;02;16;15

Jon

In chief with this.

08;02;16;15 - 08;02;11;11

David

Spear, with all these like dead animal carcasses piled up that we had, like, annihilated.

08;02;11;02 - 08;02;08;29

Jon

And of course, all the mascots.

08;02;08;25 - 08;02;07;22

David

The mascots? Yeah.

08;02;07;14 - 08;02;06;13

Jon

So so we had.

08;02;06;13 - 08;01;57;09

David

This really small school newspaper or whatever, and they were like, let's put it on the front page of the high school newspaper. So, you know, I had a graduating class like 80 people like really small school like they.

08;01;57;06 - 08;01;56;13

David

My artwork made it.

08;01;56;13 - 08;01;54;21

Jon

On the paper. That's awesome.

08;01;54;12 - 08;01;43;15

David

And then we had a dad from one of the one of my friends on the team was like, Can you put that on a T-shirt? We want to wear it, like for the regional. All the parents want to wear that design to the regional competition or whatever.

08;01;43;15 - 08;01;29;26

David

And I was like, I know nothing about T-shirts. I wouldn't know how to do that. She was like, all right, I'll figure it out, so he went to Walmart and just bought this little iron on Transparent, and he bought a bunch of blank red T-shirts and ironed on this cool picture.

08;01;29;26 - 08;01;22;27

David

And the shirts looked horrible because like after you wash them one time, it's just like that. It looks like you have just a piece of paper.

08;01;22;13 - 08;01;21;15

Jon

You know, they.

08;01;21;15 - 08;01;09;26

David

Looked horrendous, but everybody wore them to like our regional tournament. And I remember looking up and seeing like all these parents wearing that artwork on their shirt, and that was kind of from that moment. I made T-shirts for our football team.

08;01;09;13 - 08;00;54;20

David

All the military units that I was a part of, I did ROTC through college, and so I did them for my unit and school and all that kind of stuff. And so Danny approached me while I was in college and was like, Dude, let's you're always making T-shirts for all the clubs and sports teams and stuff that

08;00;54;20 - 08;00;50;26

David

you're a part of. Let's make like a T-shirt brand. And so this idea.

08;00;50;26 - 08;00;31;02

Danny

And you were doing all these like side get David's always been a hustler and like, really good at wheeling and dealing and getting deals on Craigslist and just always been a hustler in that regard. So he was making these designs and going on to like Facebook groups that were these niche markets and posting them.

08;00;31;02 - 08;00;21;26

David

And just I just try to sell like, you know, the hiver was right at the moment, you know, for a while it was, yeah, one of them was like a bracket when Peyton Manning was the quarterback for the Broncos.

08;00;21;26 - 08;00;18;13

David

And he was saying Omaha, Omaha, I made a Omaha shirt and.

08;00;18;07 - 08;00;10;13

Jon

It may have cost Omaha my last part of my past. Extremely proud of, but.

08;00;10;03 - 08;00;00;13

David

Try to just sell, you know, I sold 100 shirts or whatever, and when I was in college, I was like, Dude, it was this huge, huge amount of revenue that I was able to make real quick and put together like a little Shopify store or whatever.

08;00;00;13 - 09;59;48;17

David

I just take orders through PayPal and then I'd print them all up and then I'd ship them all out. But it just wasn't like a recurring business model. It was just like, Oh, you're just trying to take advantage of whatever is high at the moment, make a quick buck.

09;59;48;17 - 09;59;45;28

David

And then then he was like, Dude, let's actually turn this around.

09;59;45;27 - 09;59;30;04

Danny

I saw all these guys, you know, grunt, style or like, yeah, whatever YouTube channels that grew their business, I was really into the gym, as always, a weak little sissy, and I was trying to get bigger. So on the off season for wrestling, I was always trying to lift weights and get bigger, which I never did.

09;59;29;29 - 09;59;28;16

Jon

But that was the goal.

09;59;28;15 - 09;59;27;15

Jon

He never lifted weights.

09;59;27;15 - 09;59;26;07

Danny

You never know. I never got back to.

09;59;26;01 - 09;59;23;02

Jon

The weights all the time that a lot of weight just never got bigger.

09;59;22;11 - 09;59;07;21

Danny

But so, you know, it's all those YouTube channels that were growing their channel and then they'd sell merch. And I was like, Man, why don't? Why don't we just do that? Like, you're always making these shirts? Aren't we like, make an actual brand and sell recurring designs and stuff?

09;59;06;12 - 09;58;52;16

Danny

And that's kind of where it all started and began. That was back in Mike's senior year of high school, I think. And then things kind of went crazy from there. But that's yeah, that's pretty much the start of it.

09;58;52;08 - 09;58;51;27

Jon

Yeah.

09;58;51;19 - 09;58;46;09

Jon

one thing I love is this is by far the best branded episode ever on the.

09;58;46;09 - 09;58;44;27

Jon

Ground zero flag all over.

09;58;44;27 - 09;58;41;24

Jon

We have swag. one thank you for the shirts. These aren't even released.

09;58;41;24 - 09;58;38;06

David

Yet right now. Oh yeah, those are coming. I feel Typekit super special.

09;58;37;28 - 09;58;37;08

Jon

I'll even just show.

09;58;37;08 - 09;58;35;24

Jon

It on the back of a quick Can you.

09;58;35;24 - 09;58;35;01

Jon

See it? I'm wearing.

09;58;35;01 - 09;58;32;08

Jon

Shorts. Is God.

09;58;32;08 - 09;58;30;21

Aaron

Family country solid.

09;58;30;21 - 09;58;29;14

David

God, family country.

09;58;29;14 - 09;58;20;09

Jon

I love it. And then I saw that you set that up there. I felt like it was intentional. So if we want in the shot, just pop that bottle to your your laughter. We bet. Gotcha. I'll tell you when it's in the shot.

09;58;20;08 - 09;58;14;21

Jon

There you go. There you go. So you guys have some pretty cool stuff going with your brand. Yeah. And thank you for the shirts.

09;58;14;14 - 09;58;13;27

Jon

Absolutely.

09;58;13;27 - 09;58;10;02

Jon

Yeah, yeah. I'm going to do some crazy stuff with these gifts. That's awesome. You just wait.

09;58;10;00 - 09;58;07;09

Aaron

I thought that was one of the conditions of their podcast.

09;58;06;19 - 09;58;04;23

Jon

Yes. Have. Yeah. Yeah.

09;58;04;20 - 09;58;03;04

Danny

Everything has to be iron apparel.

09;58;03;02 - 09;58;02;09

Jon

Yeah, it's a.

09;58;02;09 - 09;57;59;07

Aaron

Long email expectations before you came into the room today.

09;57;58;08 - 09;57;53;01

Jon

I mean, 17 initial blocks before the signature, that was insane. 17 were initial blocks on the contract.

09;57;52;15 - 09;57;52;07

Jon

Yeah.

09;57;51;07 - 09;57;49;17

Aaron

Sorry. I couldn't find the blue Eminem's guys.

09;57;49;16 - 09;57;44;00

Jon

But Brianna, thank you. And yeah, and this is good. I'm loving.

09;57;44;00 - 09;57;31;08

Aaron

It. It's really classy what you guys are doing and you're putting out there. It's funny. It seems like something. So, you know, whatever, it's a T-shirt or whatever, but we were talking off air before we realized we weren't recording.

09;57;29;26 - 09;57;12;04

Aaron

Is that is that you're seeing like hats at the zoo on random people like, Oh, that's our merch? Like, where did that come from? You know, John, finding you guys kind of randomly through somebody else is wearing one of your shirts like it's out there kind of making a message and making it kind of a it's certainly

09;57;12;04 - 09;57;02;22

Aaron

attracts people even conversation. I mean, that's kind of provocative saying God, family country. Like, Yeah, they get brings people together. There is a coagulated effect to what you guys are doing. It's more than just merch, I.

09;57;02;22 - 09;56;47;15

David

Think, right? Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. Well, in the message, so like we had this idea, like, let's start a T-shirt brand, but then the next thing was, OK, what's the message going to be? We've got to have an actual and I studied business in college and all my classes of time were about the thing that separates you as

09;56;47;15 - 09;56;31;03

David

a business is brand like. There's a reason that Pixar can, you know, sell X number of movie tickets versus these other company. Is that you never heard of? It's because they've developed the Disney brand, that Pixar brand. That's the reason that Nike can sell a shirt for $60 versus, you know, whoever else.

09;56;31;03 - 09;56;19;27

David

So. So it was all about, OK, we got to build a brand. And what's that message going to be? What's that foundational message of that brand going to be? And it was iron sharpens iron. I don't even think it took us too long to really come up.

09;56;19;20 - 09;56;19;11

Danny

It's like.

09;56;19;11 - 09;56;18;24

David

As a.

09;56;18;24 - 09;56;13;29

Danny

Day, we were just. Throw in stuff at the wall, and it immediately stuck between.

09;56;13;29 - 09;56;00;06

David

Fell in love with because we had heard it all our lives growing up. Our dad's a pastor, so we heard it in church, both on wrestling teams. We went to separate high schools. Actually, when I graduated, went to college, my parents moved up to Washington.

09;56;00;06 - 09;55;46;13

David

So Danny went to a different high school than I did, and we broke off on my high school wrestling team. We would do this thing every year. It was called the intrasquad scrimmage, where they were the first duel of the year was you'd separate our own team into another team and a B team.

09;55;46;13 - 09;55;33;20

David

They just go, You're a you're B. And we were they rolled out the math. They had the spotlight, they had the cheerleaders. They treated it like it was a regular season duel and it was our team wrestling each other.

09;55;33;20 - 09;55;21;00

David

It was us against us and they gave a little medal and on the back of the medal, it said iron sharpens iron. And that was the whole idea of we are taking our team separating it and we're wrestling each other and we're going to make each other better.

09;55;21;00 - 09;55;06;05

David

And that same message was painted in the wrestling room at Danny's high school, and their high school was extremely good. There are all these mount. He went to some school in the middle of the mountains up there. All these, like all of his friends, were loggers and all these crazy dude.

09;55;06;04 - 09;55;02;20

Jon

They would have lived it up. They were every.

09;55;02;20 - 09;55;00;02

Danny

Single dude was exactly like you, just an absolute.

09;55;00;02 - 09;54;56;20

Jon

Psycho. John's like, What are you saying? OK, OK.

09;54;55;11 - 09;54;48;28

David

But like back to back state champions all the time. I mean, if you weren't a state champion in this high school, you were kind of like the odd man out.

09;54;48;19 - 09;54;48;11

Jon

Here.

09;54;48;11 - 09;54;47;13

Danny

Which I wasn't.

09;54;47;11 - 09;54;44;11

Jon

So I was the odd man. It was just that message.

09;54;44;11 - 09;54;34;16

David

And then we heard of the military when I started getting into the exposure of I did Army ROTC through college and it was mentioned there. So it was like, What's so special about this message, this theme that so.

09;54;34;16 - 09;54;33;25

Jon

Many different.

09;54;33;25 - 09;54;16;10

David

Enemy fighters, weightlifters, wrestlers, military people in church are all like kind of like, there's this appeal to this message that iron sharpens iron, and a lot of people don't know that it stems from a Bible verse, which is kind of cool because you can kind of like take like the we've kind of tried to take like and

09;54;16;10 - 09;54;02;10

David

I think you guys are a little bit similar like the Chick-Fil-A approach, almost where like people go to Chick-Fil-A because they make really delicious chicken sandwiches and they've got phenomenal service, but they don't really realize or always make the connection that you go in there and there's Christian music playing.

09;54;02;09 - 09;53;45;23

David

They don't play any lyrics, they just play the whatever the. What's that called when there's no instrumental instrumental? So it's like if you know that it's a Christian company, then like, you know, that's super obvious, but they're just out there, they're not beating it over people's heads there.

09;53;45;23 - 09;53;35;22

David

This is our message. We're making a great product. It's kind of the same approach that we've taken with iron sharpens iron. We meet a ton of people that don't know. And then it's a great conversation starter because people are like, Oh, shoot.

09;53;35;13 - 09;53;23;00

David

Iron sharpens iron. I heard that before, you know, yada yada yada. And it's like, Oh, well, actually, did you know this comes from a Bible verse? It's it's just it kind of opens that door as opposed to just repeatedly beating people over the head with the Bible and trying to get that type of thing.

09;53;22;29 - 09;53;06;03

Danny

We've kind of had numerous conversations about like, we're not necessarily a church brand, although a lot of people resell our products in churches and a lot of people know our brand because iron sharpens iron and come from churches, that's a lot of our consumer base.

09;53;06;03 - 09;52;45;16

Danny

But kind of the idea behind why we did it is because we want to reach people that aren't churchgoers, right? We want to hit the different demographic and get them in that door if we can or just get them to get me to be good people and understand the message not necessarily hit the same demographic that's heard

09;52;45;16 - 09;52;44;01

Danny

the same thing over and over again.

09;52;43;29 - 09;52;32;18

Aaron

Yeah, that's a lot of the core message on the grit there is that we're in no matter what your backdrop is, sort of your faith bases everyone who could agree that sharper iron is more useful. And that's life, right?

09;52;32;08 - 09;52;20;20

Aaron

And that's what we're trying to get people to is that I love. It's like, it's sort of a violent analogy iron sharpening iron. I mean, if you think about that, we talked, we've talked about the forge. Often it's like, Hey, this this hurts.

09;52;20;20 - 09;52;08;16

Aaron

This is difficult. Yeah, that's part of the process of growth. Yeah, but what? I like what you said with your wrestling team, what a great analogy, because now you have it's iron sharpens iron. It's not styrofoam sharpens iron or whatever.

09;52;08;12 - 09;51;55;13

Aaron

It's like you have both sides and say, Hey, look, we're dedicated to getting better and stronger. The same, we're both iron, you know, different levels of maybe sharpening, but we're going to do it to each other, right? And we're on the same mission to doing it together.

09;51;55;05 - 09;51;54;15

Jon

Yeah, yeah.

09;51;54;15 - 09;51;40;13

Jon

I love that because excellence is sexy, right? Like excellence is a good thing. Like, you want to be competent, you want to be capable in, you know, so and if you've never sharpened a piece of iron before, right?

09;51;40;13 - 09;51;28;16

Jon

Because I'm just sitting here thinking, it's like, Oh, I know exactly what this is like, right? Like, I sharpen things all the time and like, I see the metal shavings coming off when I'm sharpening. And so just to kind of paint the picture, if you haven't, maybe you typically go it, but it's really interesting.

09;51;28;16 - 09;51;14;20

Jon

You're you're quite literally taking two pieces of metal in beating and rubbing and scraping off chunks of metal off the thing that you're sharpening. So it's not this like, you know, a stone super smooth and you're sharpening this blade.

09;51;14;12 - 09;51;12;19

Jon

Now it's this violent, you know.

09;51;12;18 - 09;51;11;13

Danny

You're in pain for.

09;51;10;29 - 09;51;10;25

Jon

The.

09;51;10;23 - 09;50;58;19

David

Sparks fly and it's it requires friction. It's yeah. And I were just talking about it on the way over here because on your episode of the Jeremiah, you guys were talking about all these amazing physical feats that you guys were doing in your hardcore athletes.

09;50;58;19 - 09;50;50;22

David

You guys work out religiously. You guys are in phenomenal shape. And we were both a little uncomfortable on the way over here.

09;50;50;22 - 09;50;49;01

Jon

Like both of that, I hope.

09;50;49;01 - 09;50;47;04

Danny

They don't bring up anything about working.

09;50;47;04 - 09;50;44;16

Jon

Out can be terrible, but that even.

09;50;44;16 - 09;50;29;27

David

Just like that small amount of discomfort, like if you want to grow, if you want to get better, sometimes it takes that tough love approach of like, Oh, this isn't going to be fun. This isn't going to be even as siblings when we're trying to encourage each other and make each other better.

09;50;29;27 - 09;50;19;24

David

It's like we're kind of challenging each other a little bit. And there is that friction. There is that he it's not comfortable. It's not a comfortable process when you're sharpening metal. No. And yeah, it's it's.

09;50;19;22 - 09;50;06;24

Aaron

On both sides. I mean, both sides have a degree of difficulty. It's not fun to tell someone. It's really not fun to walk with someone, and it's certainly not to. It's not fun to be the recipient, but both sides have some kind of sacrifice there in it.

09;50;06;16 - 09;50;01;02

Aaron

And that's we talk a lot about the difficulty and sacrifice not being the enemy. It's part of the process.

09;50;01;02 - 09;50;00;22

Jon

Yeah.

09;50;00;08 - 09;49;56;17

Aaron

Yeah, what a great message. In three words like, yeah, the brevity of It's beautiful.

09;49;56;16 - 09;49;55;24

Jon

That's what we.

09;49;55;15 - 09;49;47;27

David

Loved about it is it's like a we didn't make it up. So part of what's cool about it is, you know, there's so many. I could talk about it all day.

09;49;47;27 - 09;49;47;10

Jon

So sorry.

09;49;46;27 - 09;49;44;19

David

I get long winded. And yada yada yada, we're.

09;49;44;19 - 09;49;44;04

Jon

Good, man.

09;49;43;15 - 09;49;26;06

David

I guess I won't really go into that. The the part that's cool. one part that's cool about it is that this isn't something that we imagined or came up ourselves. It was something that was written in a book from 2000 years ago and so by King Solomon in that book of Proverbs that are really even if you

09;49;26;06 - 09;49;22;02

David

aren't a faith person, if you just read the book of Proverbs, there's a lot of wisdom and knowledge.

09;49;21;26 - 09;49;21;08

Jon

It's a wisdom.

09;49;21;08 - 09;49;17;22

David

Book he's often referred to as like the wisest man who ever lived.

09;49;17;20 - 09;49;17;15

Jon

Hmm.

09;49;16;23 - 09;49;00;20

David

So there's just great little tidbits in there and everything that if you apply your day to day life like you just are going to end up being better anyway. But the fact that that's something that was said 2000 years ago and we're still repeating it today, it just shows that what you do, it's kind of a gladiator

09;49;00;20 - 09;48;45;10

David

. What you do echoes in eternity. Like we really. Do you can do something today, you can have a message in your life today that if you do it right, if you are a good enough person, if you are legit enough people can still be talking about what you did today, 20 years later.

09;48;44;20 - 09;48;31;21

David

So we're taking something that's borrowed. Yeah, that that has withstood the test of time because it is such a simple and profound message and has widespread appeal. We don't really know. We haven't really talked about it too much, but the Olympics couple of weeks ago, right?

09;48;31;02 - 09;48;18;19

David

There's the and I can't remember. I know Sydney McLaughlin, I think, was the and I don't know all the events. They were runners for the U.S. Olympic team doing the hurdles, the 100 meter whatever they won gold and silver.

09;48;18;11 - 09;47;59;11

David

The two U.S. athletes won one gold and ₩1 silver. And they continuously they just talked about they were on MSNBC being interviewed on a mainstream media news platform, and they were just talking about their journey and experience through all the pre qualifying trials and everything.

09;47;59;11 - 09;47;49;00

David

They had consistently won sets of record and then the other one beats that record and the other one beats that record. And they're just constantly they're both on the same team, but they're just pushing each other. Yeah. And they summed it up.

09;47;49;00 - 09;47;47;09

David

They said iron sharpens iron, and I was.

09;47;47;09 - 09;47;43;15

Jon

Just like, you know, shields right now because I was like, You, this is so awesome.

09;47;43;15 - 09;47;29;20

David

And it's not our message. We can't take credit for that, but it's cool that that just demonstrates the widespread appeal that this really simple message has. And when you start peeling back the layers of the onion, it's like that comes from a really, really profound source.

09;47;29;14 - 09;47;28;23

David

So, yeah.

09;47;28;21 - 09;47;11;25

Jon

What I like about it, too, and I just kind of drew this. I just drew this analogy. It's it's a gateway drug to burning off the parts of yourself that shouldn't be there. Right, right. So like I, I really like the idea that there's only a small percent of myself that if I really look in the mirror

09;47;11;25 - 09;46;57;15

Jon

is worth keeping. Yeah, and there's a lot that I want to cut off, burn off, get rid of. Yeah, right? Some call it like deadwood. There's all sorts of mentalities that go around it and it's like, Well, if you don't know where to start on deciding, what do I need, get rid of in myself.

09;46;57;06 - 09;46;40;08

Jon

Find someone who makes you better and who you can put yourself in that uncomfortable thing, and that'll start to cultivate the mindset of improving. Yeah, right? And then you'll be in the position over time to be like, OK, I've seen enough from hanging out with you guys, from doing things with Aaron.

09;46;40;08 - 09;46;30;15

Jon

That's like, I've seen enough here that I don't like this. And now when he's not even here, I'm going to start attacking that. Yeah, and it can grow into this personal evolution. You know.

09;46;30;00 - 09;46;16;10

Aaron

You guys are you guys are brothers and so you've been living. The very iron sharpens iron. I mean, it's amazing how many athletes and how many people who are who who know how to deal with adversity have a brother exhibit.

09;46;15;25 - 09;46;09;19

Jon

Yeah, that's right. About each other. Yeah. You thought you're going to have an easy day? No, no. It's yeah.

09;46;08;22 - 09;45;52;23

Danny

I'm not great at a lot of things, but I would say one thing that we're both pretty good at is we really don't take stuff very personally anymore when we're like, come on at each other or talking about things that need to be done for the business or even in our own personal lives.

09;45;52;23 - 09;45;44;20

Danny

And that's that's a big part of iron sharpens iron, I think is just not taking it personally and understanding like he he's saying this because he cares. He wants me to be a better person.

09;45;44;17 - 09;45;43;19

Jon

Yeah, yeah. And the.

09;45;43;19 - 09;45;42;18

Jon

Constructive piece is.

09;45;42;18 - 09;45;29;22

David

Exactly like once you kind of get in this frame of mind of just digesting what it means that iron sharpens iron, it's like. You just. It helps you have thicker skin, it helps you have a better understanding of this guy's.