089 Tom Kubiniec | Failure Is Your Friend ~ Man of Mastery

12:51AM Aug 16, 2021

Speakers:

Michael Bulloch

Tom Kubiniec

Keywords:

people

safe

gun

firearm

business

company

home

big

security

year

secure

run

armories

industry

called

gun safes

mindset

system

fire

rifle

In an apartment, our offices were little cardboard boxes every morning pull the cardboard box out that was your office with a telephone and you start calling businesses.

Do you ever watch a spy movie or a heist movie like The Italian Job or maybe the Thomas Crown Affair, and go like man, those would be so cool skills to have just, you know, just in case I ever need them. Well, in today's podcast, you're gonna learn how to break into a home safe in just a few seconds. or more importantly, you're going to learn why your home safe is that easy to break into today's guest, Tom Kubiak is the founder and CEO of secure it tactical, they are revolutionizing the home safe business. And this is a super interesting guy for so many reasons beyond having a discussion about Home Security, what a typical break in looks like what thieves look for and where they go, how much time they spend, and instead going with a decentralized home storage approach. In addition to all that, we're going to talk about business in general. I mean, Tom is a guy who knows how to pivot knows how to work hard grind, look for opportunities, and then seize them. As he said, failures your friend, fail fast, go after it, you know, get out there and try different things and then adapt. And he has a great story to tell from going from guitar musician in in the 80s in LA hanging out with slash and poison and all kinds of 80s bands to a music career abruptly ending and then having to figure it out in the business world. You know, the old startup of working off the cardboard boxes a desk, and then just seizing opportunity after opportunity to wear security tactical is now the go to for armories in US Special Forces and around the world. He is an authority in that space. And now he's bringing it to the consumer space. So we're gonna talk about that mindset and business. We're going to talk about what put security tactical on the Inc 5000 list. And just have a great conversation today with Tom kubek. All right, we are recording Tom, this is Tom kubek. He is a CEO of a very fast growing company. You're on the Inc 5000 list I believe, which is some of the fastest private growing fast growing private companies in the country. You are the founder, CEO, visionary leader and it's called secure at tat nickel, Inc, you've got an awesome, interesting background. We're gonna get into all of that today about what you did before, how you got to where you are, what you're doing now and just have a fun, fun conversation. I'm really looking forward to it. Welcome, Tom. Well, thank

you very much. It's been a you know, I always tell people, I just I didn't have a path. I just kept turning over rocks and seeing where it led me.

That's awesome. I want to hear about that. Because we we started talking a little bit off air about it. I said, let's just record because this is the sounds like a really interesting journey. But let's let's just briefly start with an intro of kind of where we are today. And what security tactical is what I know about it, is you do weapons, guns, firearms, weapons storage systems for the public sector, meaning meaning us commercial, residential type of stuff, as well as the defense industry where you guys are, I think, quite a quite a leader in that space as well. So does that position what you do? Yeah, we

started off in the defense industry building armories. We started I started in 2002. And by 2008, we were the largest supplier to the US military. It's a small niche market to market, we only have a patented system that they just love. And we now globally that we build armies all over the world. Again, it is it is a niche market. Our big growth right now is in the consumer, civilian market, we taken our cradle grid technology, our military system, adapted in the cabinets for home use, and we're we're really taking on the gun safe industry with a whole different mindset that we bring from, you know, we're not in the consumer, we were in that military arena for so long. We're bringing that mindset. And you know, I would say what works for the military works for civilians, and it works very well. And is that growth in the retail side that's driving the company sales right now this guy is 55,000 This guy is as this just really rapid trajectory of growth.

Yeah, that's awesome. Yeah, congrats on the Inc 5000. That's, that's a huge recognition. So this has got to be this is pretty interesting, right? to disrupt any sort of industry come along with with new technology or disruptive approach. And I want to get into that and kind of how you got here very creatively, which Probably talks about why you're a disrupter. But I do think this is a really important conversation, you know what we cover on this podcast, it spans so many different things. But ultimately, it's about that journey for self improvement, self betterment and life in in all kinds of ways. And clearly, there's lots of data out there, that says a lot of people are interested in have been for the last few years. firearm sales are up dramatically, people who are interested in in lots of different ways to get better at being secure, being safe, protecting themselves protecting their family. So you know, sometimes on the show, we talk about money, sometimes we talk about breath, sometimes we do all kinds of stuff. This one's different. I'm excited to have you on to talk about this because it's clearly an important topic for a lot of people who are buying firearms. And a big part of that is knowing how to use it proficiently and safe safely and then storing it safely and having access to it safely. But before we get there, let's start back with what you were doing when you lived out in LA something very different than running, running a Fast Company.

I graduated high school in a little town of Batavia, New York near Buffalo, and I was a guitar I was playing in bands as a guitar player since I was probably 16. And I graduated high school and pursued music I played all over these coasts. In 1984. Guitar Player magazine did an article on me as a you know, a young up and coming one of the best unknown guitar players out there who was a that's all I did was play moved to LA and back when there were magazines. Exactly, yeah, magazine was the magazine at the time. And I moved out to LA I attended musician's Institute, which was a one year vocational, very intense music school play with a lot of people did some instructional videos. It's something just started getting going and I developed tendinitis so bad my arms, I had to stop playing professionally. And it was a tough year, but it forced me to head to do something. I took a job telemarketing, computer supplies in this cruddy little company. It's great boss little company. He was just getting started. He's actually gone on to build $100 million a year b2b office in business supply company. But he got me started in sales. I two years into that job. I quit with two others. We started our own business, telemarketing computer supplies. In an apartment. Our offices were little cardboard boxes every morning pull the cardboard box out that was your office with a telephone and start calling businesses and just ground away at it. We had no money. We lived on rice and beans and this is

like late 80s maybe 1987 8788 around there quick one on the on the music industry before we jump past that. So late mid late 80s la what style of music were you playing? Like were you

at that time? I was a metal head I had hair down. That's my waist. It was a Yeah.

Yeah, we're like are you coming up with other guitarists that have continued in the industry and

I could tell you some funny stories there. I used to play with Paul Gilbert a lot. Back Back in the day he was a Mr. Big. There are a bunch of guys I mean, Guns and Roses were unsigned. They were we considered them dirtbags guns and posers I remember a visual of slash. It's two o'clock in the afternoon we're all sitting around a pool of the Royal the apartment building next to ours. This is not a great Street. This is cheap, cheap living. Those guys were there and their slash the stupid hat on and people swimming in the pool. He just unzipped it says peeing in the pool. And we were just laughing but we had no respect for these guys. And there are a lot of guys like that though. But then their album came out I heard it out just like oh my god these guys are gonna be huge. And

Appetite for Destruction was probably

roses guy at the time. You had like, you know motley crews on the street. Guns and Roses or poison was the first glam band we you know, again, we had no respect for those guys. They were just like a bunch of girls. Yeah, it's pretty funny.

It was Yeah, fun times, I'm sure. And then, ya know, I was kind of chuckling to myself and you're talking about pulling out the cardboard box and telemarketing. Right. I had I took a telemarketing job. A little bit late maybe like 9091 where you know same kind of deal right? Just open the phone book. And and call and we were we were selling installed. Car phones right so out of like stereo radio shop. Hey, you know, you know cellphones are the next big thing guys like there was the brick phone, there was a flip phone like we're gonna install this thing in your car. Come on in, we'll install it, you take it for a test drive. If you don't like it, we'll take it back out. I don't know if anybody ever uninstalled a car phone. So yeah, I love that right, just pick up the phone and getting past that fear and making those phone calls.

It's, I'd say what it is intensive sales training because you're, you're literally making 100 calls a day. And you either develop skin like an alligator, or you're you you, you know, we used to hire a lot of people, because you go through so many. And we had a on the company's full of employee folder, there was a Rs, we put out a folder for some people, and that was ran screaming, and that's people who came in and within the first before lunch, or their first day, they just disappeared, because they just couldn't handle it, it was it you could get beat up, you had to be able to put up a wall and just grind through it. But you know what? We saw b2b, and you build up accounts of people who would reorder supplies from you on a regular basis. And we had guys that were building up big portfolios, I ended up selling my business I I sold to my partners started on my own the same same type of business as Greenline data. And I sold that to my first boss. And the guys that were working for me to have them continue to grow their last I knew they were making about 400,000 a year selling supplies over the phone just mean just killing. It is just crazy.

And what like what a great life skill, right just to be able to grind like that. And you know, hang up the phone, put the rejection aside. The next phone call is a brand new phone call, you know, you can just like any kind of mistake or failure or whatever in life, you can quit, like the turnover you're talking about. Or you put it behind you see what you learn from it and make the next phone call.

Yeah, it's you hit on the failure thing. And we talk in my business. Now I talked about that all the time is, you know, if you're an entrepreneur, failure is your friend, I fail more than anybody and anybody I know, I would say guys look, fail fast. Learn from every failure and fail fast. There's speed Trump's accuracy in business, you're better to move fast, making mistakes and correcting and learning than you are to sit there and keep thinking about decisions. It's kind of like to tell people the analogy, you're driving on a road going 16 you come to a fork in the road, you don't jam on the brakes and go which way to go. You pick away because there's traffic and you pick away and then you evaluate Is this the right way. If you're wrong, you make it you turn head over back to the right way. And that's how business you know, successful companies should be run that way of you know, gather data as best you can but make you don't don't delay decisions, make fast decisions, and then evaluate the results quickly and course correct. And just keep going.

Yeah, not not analysis paralysis. So were you doing b2b office supplies all the way up to 2002. When you I was in

I was by I supplemented that in the late 90s. I got into the internet early days of the internet. I started creating websites I just thought was cool. And I learned HTML was writing my own websites. I the company Greenland, we had at that time, probably about 15 employees or so this is slowly growing business. It was stable company. And I just fascinated with the internet. And with SEO and the fact that people could just find you and I started creating websites. Now the idea of let's make a website for computer supplies. I made a 30 websites for all sorts of stuff to see what would show up. crossbows supply all sorts of crazy stuff. I had a website for tape, the other big metal racks that held computer tapes. If you had a big business, you're backing up your computer on tapes, and you had to archive those and companies had 1000s of them. And they buy these big metal racks. They're expensive to store all these tapes. I had a website tape rack com started getting SEO. So I came up as number one in SEO and Greenline data, we became one of the largest seller of tape racks and tape storage in the country. It was huge. That morphed into laptop storage. When the HIPAA laws came out. We started looking at cabinets for storing laptops, because this was all new. Nobody knew it. We had laptop storage, calm, secure laptop storage, calm. I had about 30 websites all kind of cross linked. And it was through those websites that a guy called me and said, Hey, can you store an MP five? And I'm like, sure. What's an MP five? He goes, it's a little machine gun. I go Who is this? And he goes, I'm with the FBI. I said, you know, I'm sure we can. Let me let me do a little research. And I just started looking a little bit and very quickly came across this realization the military had a problem they were transitioning from the M 16 to the M for a standard battle right To the enforce a much more modular gun differently barrels, different stocks. There's a lot you can do with this. It's going from a rifle to really a weapon system. All the racks they had didn't work. So we started looking at weapons storage. I was not a big gun guy at that time. I mean, this was all new to me. But not being in the industry was a huge advantage for us. We kind of BS our way into a contract with at the time use effect, which was US Army Special Forces Command to do an assessment of why their armories were failing. We passed ourselves off that I came out and said, you know, Tom kubek, the leading authority on weapons storage and armory design. Nobody was out there. So we just claimed it. And they said, Oh, this is the guy come on. And we won that contract and spent almost two years traveling and touring all the SOCOM or the use effect armories, all the Special Forces armories. We had access that nobody gets in.

What isn't one of the challenges it was during that bell up there cradle grid system during that time, and coming from the outside was a huge advantage. We use the term Home Depot development, I went to Home Depot. So how do you store stuff. And that was the model, we looked at what's in the aisles of Home Depot. And we made a system that's compatible with a lot of the products in Home Depot and presented to them and they just loved it. And that was in 2008 2006. By 2008 2010, we were we were the guys and scale very quickly. Then we got until Obama and the sequestration years for the forced military cutbacks. And our company that we shot, the 6 million dropped down to a million backup the 4 million we're just going, you know, hiring people laying people off, it was just nuts, and very stressful. And so about four or five years ago, we decided to go into retail, and start taking our products and bring them to the consumer market. That's a much more stable markets, much bigger market. Gun storage is probably $600 billion a year industry. And we're, you know, we're just the young little upstarts, but we're really bringing a whole different mindset to firearm storage in the home. And it's resonating. And it's our we spend almost zero on advertising, zero and marketing. We're growing like crazy. And it's all word of mouth. Our customers, you know, our salesmen, they tell the show them Hey, guys, you got to check out what I got my this is so cool, cuz it's so different than a gun safe. And it's absolutely snowballing right now.

I know I saw some pictures of it, we'll have to get some pictures out on my website with this episode for people to be able to visualize this. But I love the story about just coming into something taking, you know, taking the space making yourself the authority. And suddenly you just, you know, you went out with a very curious mind problem solving, and had a fresh set of eyes on and came up with something revolutionary. So what is different about the cradle grid? And what does it mean for for the consumer market? What does that look like?

The gun safe industry gun seats were designed back in the 60s and they've never changed. It's a very static stable. If you know what a gun say, a open door up, there's a like a plate in the middle with all these little W's that your barrels Go on, you might be able to adjust the height of that, you know, 50 years ago, your grandfather hunted or he had a shotgun, lever action gun, maybe a couple of bolt action gun and they're all pretty close in length. And they're all pretty much similar in form factor. You flash forward to today and guns ranged from tiny little from tiny little rifles to all sorts of strange handgun configuration pieces up to very long shotguns, it's a lot of different lengths, shapes, sizes, everything is modular, you know, if you're, if you're in the AR platform firearms, you've got a lot of different things you can do with these guns. Gun safes can handle that our system is a very simple tool, really, that allows you to build the storage solution you need. It's a back panel inside the cabinet with a cradle that holds a rifle it's fully adjustable to properly hold each end of each rifle. With our system. The cabinets are shallow, they're not deep gun safes are very deep. Ours are very shallow with one row of guns. You open the door with one arm, you remove a rifle with one arm, you close the door and can lock it very quickly and cleanly. Everything we sell is fast access. Part of you know part of our mindset is how you secure and store firearms directly affects your safety, your security and their performance. If you're going to own firearms, store them in a manner that gives you an advantage. And we talk a lot about like the principles of decentralized storage The concept of locate guns in your home where it makes sense. A big gun safe is no longer secure. The idea that this big heavy you know 1200 pounds safe is somehow giving you security. It's just not reality anymore. I've got videos I take a simple it's a DeWALT cordless 20 volt saw with a modern carbide blade the blades designed for cutting rebar at job sites in this in the concrete industry up to half inch thick rebar cuts through a quickly I walk up to a big like a Liberty Safe. I cut it completely in half. in under two minutes, I can cut a 12 by 12 hold the side of it in under 20 seconds. This is America's top number one selling gun safe and I cut through it like butter. Because it wasn't designed for this you know the security ratings of these safes go back to the 1970s and they're rated to block access for the UL rating as class RSC residential security container blocks access for five minutes from one person with a screwdriver or pry bar of less than 18 inches, a hammer of less than three pounds and a small hand drill. That's an 1860s threat level. I take modern tools to a gun safe and I opened them up like just as easy as you can. Now our safes aren't any more secure. But instead of buying one big heavy gun safe with our system, you buy several small cabinets and you locate them with thieves don't look for front hall closet, kitchen. Guest bedrooms, a lot of locations at home that the guns are safe and secure. But you've also got fast access and places where you're going to want fast access in the event of a home invasion if you're truly concerned about safety and security in your home.

So it's really about home protection. Put them around different places where you might need them but they still are going to be secure if it's from a theft perspective. You're saying you're not any better than the five minute deterrent. But instead of being five minutes times one safe where everything is it's five times however many you got around it is and also the the gun safe finish is crazy. You look at a brochure

and I show this beautiful safe, dark Maroon. All this lettering in a wild wild west look to it and they show it next to a pool table a big stone fireplace and this man is beautiful room. You know you've got deer on the wall. It's like you guys are advertising you put your gun safe right in the open. Anybody in that house says that's where the valuables are. It's crazy. cornerstone of security is secrecy. Our cabinets are small, easy to hide. If you look at FBI crime data. Thief breaks into your house he's going to go master bathroom master bedroom drugs valuables home office then dining room keys out typically less than 10 minutes typically during the day when you look at so look at storing valuables your bedroom is the least secure room in your house. It's where people sleep with our system, small cabinet under your bed, one rifle or a handgun, front hall closet, I've got I've got a pretty good gun collection. So I've actually got a cabinet in that closet holds eight rifle, one of which is a defensive firearm The rest is part of my collection. kitchen pantry, I've got a small cabinet I've got six rifles in it, one of which is ready to roll. It's an AR 15 very fast access. I've also got an exit point for my home. In the event of a home invasion, I could armed myself and leave the home guest bedroom is the bulk of my collections in a closet that bedroom is you open the door. It's a made bed, a nightstand with a lamp, a chair and a piece of generic art on the wall and nothing else in the room. If a thief is running a home, he opens the door. He's not spending any time in there. The time is is his biggest problem is time. So he wants to be in and out quickly, guestroom he's gone. That's where the bulk of my collection is. And we've got a lot of information on our website breaking down in detail some of these principles of decentralized storage and turning your home into something that is truly defendable. You know, if you're living in one of these cities, where there defend the funding Police and Crime is going through the roof. It certainly is something you want to consider. I'm fortunate I live in a town where you know, I'm not sure I locked my door. I just live in a tiny little town that everybody knows everybody and it's pretty safe and secure. But I think that level of security is becoming more and more a reality for a lot of people now.

You have you just triggered a lot a lot of questions for me in there. And some of them are probably very basic or stupid questions, but I'm gonna ask him anyway. The one about counting, do you have a terms of sales data for where you guys are? are finding people are buying your technology just in terms of what you're saying of one of the drivers of needing a more versatile system than the classic Hey, everything's kind of the same rifle length and configuration. California when you're saying like rifles coming all the time. lengths and not so much out here. Not so much in California. Do you find? Is there any is California an abnormality for you guys in terms of maybe not driving the same need? Or sorry? One state that we shipped to is California. Okay. All right.

It's, it's, I think it's more the urban population number we do. Our safes are all referred to as ultra light gun safes, and we've eliminated the weight, we've got the same security level without the weight. And that allows for people in condos and apartments, a lot of condo systems and places like that the homeowners association documents prohibit the ownership of heavy saves, because in the event of a fire incident to store force, a wood structure, they don't want to heavy say break into the floor. So our system is very popular in these locations. We also sell where the firearms are as well, you know, it's our sales track, firearms ownership, which is changing in America over the last year and 1618 months of Delaware, seeing the greatest increase in firearms ownership, it's the state that owned the least guns per capita in the country. But after the whole defund police mode, movement, all these things were happening. Now a lot of people who were who historically were anti gun people, looking at what's happening, saying, you know, what, all of a sudden, it's like, Wow, my personal security is my responsibility. I was under this mindset, you know, people are like, only the government, only the police should own guns. Well, that's great, except there's riots in the streets, and your leaders are saying, Let's get rid of police. Well, now, all of a sudden, it's back to while security is my responsibility. I believe in America. You know, we have individual freedom, individual liberty, with that as individual responsibility and individual accountability. And it's up to us as individuals to if you want to be secure, be secure, do it right, get the train, if you're going to own a fleet, owning a firearm, buying your first firearm is a life changing event, you will never be the same, you should now have the ability to take another life very easily. With that firearm comes a lot of training practice and mindset, and you just got to make sure you're willing to commit to that. Or if you're not willing to commit to it statistically, you're better off not owning a firearm. Right?

Right. Yeah, I can, I can very much relate to it. And, and relate to that, you know, shift in mindset of, of wanting to take ownership of the responsibility to be our own, our own first responders, you know, to the best to the best that we can, whether it's that type of safety, whether it's, you know, medical, trauma response, you know, the the stats on how long it's going to take for response from, whether it's police, whether it's EMT, whatever it is, you know, those can be those can be minutes that that can cost a life or, you know, major injury. So what you know, why not, why not be prepared, right? And why not

be so I encourage everybody, if you're going to own firearms, take a trauma course take a course in, in, in, you don't need to become a full on EMT but there's a lot of good courses out there for you know, it was trauma response where you can potentially save someone lead because you're there and you know what to do in the event of a serious injury cut artery something, you know, something going on where this guy is going to die in minutes if I don't act, so So.

Yeah, I'll give you like a, like a spin off of that. I took some trauma stuff. And you know, after that, I started putting putting tourniquets everywhere you know, in my car med kits in my car, in my in my backpack, all this kind of stuff, right? So now I've got them everywhere. And the combat medic that taught us this course. We're sitting here in San Diego and he's like, you know, this, this dry mountain geography Rocky? A lot like Afghanistan. He goes, you know, there's rattlesnakes everywhere. Here. He goes, I would carry that tourniquet when you trail run. And if you or somebody else gets a rattlesnake bite, here's what you do with the tourniquet you know so this isn't a major arterial bleed This is something else you can use the same equipment for like awesome I would not have ever thought about that if I didn't go do a trauma medicine course now I've got an extra bit of hopefully never need it but some some protection out on the trails hiking jogging rucking stuff like that.

Well it's it's preparedness meet meeting use Word opportunity. It sounds like positive but being at the right place at the right time with the right equipment can save someone's life makes you a hero. You know, it's not it's not just a random Oh, wow, we're gonna happen. No, you're prepared. You put yourself in a position to save someone's life. Given a certain set of circumstances that are possible, very rare. Most people don't bother to take the time. And I don't know there's a level of confidence you have in yourself. When you know you have the skills and you have the material Ready to handle a wide variety of situations?

Yeah, totally agree with that, you know, it extended also to things like situational awareness, you know, other forms of personal self defense training. And to a degree just like the same thing with decentralized storage or other things that are ultimately, they're not fail safes, but they're deterrence. So the harder a target, the less convenient you can be. Right? Generally, thieves criminals are going to look to be lazy or take the easiest target the easiest way out, right? So the more prepared you can be, I'm convinced that not only does it make you a little bit of a harder target, there's just some kind of an error that comes with it of like, I look at that guy, I look at that guy, I'm not gonna mess with that guy. He looks like a little bit more squared away, or he's just paying attention. Right?

I'll tell you what, it's interesting, because it's like the old thing with the with a bunch of people in the woods in a bear shows up, you don't need to be the fastest. Don't be the slowest. But I'll tell you know, for all the listeners stuff, if you look, if you're considering Home Security, you think you might be buying a firearm and think about the simplest thing you can do for Home Security, make sure bushes are cut back away from the front of your house, put a motion sensor lighting on your house and put a video doorbell system on your house are not expensive. They're very affordable. That right there smooth approaching your home. It's not hidden by plant by vegetation horribly, it's dark spots, it's fairly open. And the minute they approach a light comes on

right there.

They're gonna move to the next house, they're looking for an easy target. They do not want to conflict. They don't want to fight. They don't want to be videotaped. They don't want you know, they're looking for easy. So

yeah, exactly. I was just trying to find this, this quote, I found it for you. This was something that I saw from a coach and a friend the other day, when it's time to perform the time to prepare is over.

Yeah. It's what is the success is when preparation meets opportunity. And, you know, in keeping with your, you know, mastery comp, I was telling us, I work with a lot of young people in the company, people trying to get results, I always share with everybody that results come in big spikes, you know, you'll see like people from playing guitar to playing golf to in sales results. Somebody else says, holy cow, well, you just in the show these big Quantum Jumps, but they don't know the preparation side of it, the work is linear. And you're working up this curve, the straight line of Harder, harder working, learning gaining, but the results come in big steps. And don't you know, trust the process of learning, trust the process of, of training of working and the results will be there. But you might you won't see the results is incremental as you'll do the training.

That's right, that's putting in the reps. It's it's grinding it out. And then you you see those stepwise types. Like one day, you all of a sudden you're you're running, you're running and you're doing all sudden one day you're like, holy cow. I've

not, you know, three minutes off of a mile run. So it's like you're shocked but it didn't happen overnight. But the results sometimes will happen overnight.

Yeah, yeah, it's kind of a compound interest effect. So on the on the safes, in terms of being ultra light, do they come assembled or they ship and then you assemble them at home

we do both we've got our number one is the Agile it ships flat you assemble it's it's we the system is patented, is called slide lock technology. Again, very, very simple. And once bolted together, it's incredibly strong. You know, everything we do when you when you walk in our office, on the wall says innovate and simplify. If you you know, making something designing something cool isn't that hard, but making it so it's really simple and easy to use, can take a long time, a lot of effort. There's a famous writer, I can't remember, he made the statement, I would have written you a shorter letter if I'd had more time. Right. And it's this idea that to get things simpler and smaller takes time and you know why? Look at our solution. If I'm presenting to a military group I always start off with if you got a junk drawer in your kitchen, all week, all the stuff ends up in that drawer typically what do you have in there you got a screwdriver, pair of pliers, a hammer, maybe some duct tape, you keep the simplest tools nearby because with the simplest tools you can solve the most problems. When you look at our gun storage solution. It's extremely simple tool allows you to solve a lot of problems and the lightweight aspect of what we do comes from we don't use any drywall we don't use any of the carpeting. We don't use any of these materials. gun safe industry will tell you they've got drywall in their safe lining all their safes for fire protection. It's nonsense. The drywall It's safe to add weight, because their doors are so heavy when you open the door, the safe would tip over. So they fill a full of drywall to offset that weight. Now the doors are really heavy because they're marketing to you the idea that this door is secure, it's got all these bolts, it's got played Steel's with crazy locking system, this door is a vault, that's great with modern tools, I ignore the door, I'm gonna cut a hole in the side of the safe, it doesn't matter. But they're tied to this mentality, and it doesn't appear that they're willing to change. The other bad side of this is the fire rating they talk about is a myth. If any of your readers Google the California wildfires and gun safes from like five years ago, there's tons of articles, there's not a gun safe that survive.

Okay, it was gonna be one of my questions on fire rating,

the gun safes don't survive a hot fire. The way they test the safe, they put it loaded up with sensors, temperature sensors, they put it into an oven, and they raise the temperature to 1300 to 1400 degrees, and they just wait. And if the safe goes 30 minutes before it reaches 350 degrees, it's a 30 minute rating that goes an hour it's an hour rating at 350 is where wood and paper start to burn. Problem is a fire in your home a raging fire, the air currents are moving at 60 miles 70 miles an hour. They're just whipping in there. If you've got your oven, you're cooking a pizza, set your oven to 450 500 degrees, put your hand in that oven, you're gonna hold your hand static with no air movement in that oven for probably three or four minutes, maybe longer in is hot but not burning. Put your hand in front of an exhaust of a car raging at 500 degrees going 60 miles an hour, you'll third degree burns and seconds. It's the same thing the convective nature of a fire, a one hour rated safe will go maybe three to five minutes in a really hot fire. It's a myth. The other side of it though is the odds of a fire in your home are almost zero. If you look at insurance, if you look at insurance data, and that's what drives all the data that fire insurance is almost all fires that 88 90% of all fires occur in the kitchen or in a contained within a pod or contained within the oven and it just something burned out in the stove. The reason there's a fire claim is because smoke damage and they come in the I get rid of the smokes. Now the bulk of all fire damage is smoke. Actual heat related claims is extremely rare. And in most of those cases, it's isolated. It's careless, it's cigarettes, it's a candle in us that's isolated to one corner of one room in your home. Rarely does a home burned to the ground. It's just anybody listening call your fire department say what's your response time to my home, give me your address. If you've got a paid firefighting force sponsz time is going to be two to four minutes. I live in a town of a volunteer firefighting force. My response time is nine to 11 minutes. My house is not burning down. It's just not so it's

so I don't worry about fire. Our biggest thing I hear be you mentioned wildfires, right. It's a real thing. Yeah, it's a unfortunately does overtake some, you know, some neighborhoods, some some areas. In that case, it sounds like well, no safe. It's gonna No no.

No, I lived in Chatsworth during the Northridge earthquake and the Chatsworth fires. And we had we had our house packed up, and they'd let the fires burn right up to our housing development, and the bread and then they doused it all and we were like loaded up ready to roll. We didn't have to, but it's been 20 years in California. No, well, if you're in those areas, you've got a big gun collection. safest thing you can do is buy a car get a conex box, which is the it's like an ISO shipping container only smaller and bury it. See, I mean, it sounds crazy, but they're, they're watertight, they're not that expensive. It takes a little bit of work, but if you're truly concerned about a very valuable gun collection, do an underground vault. We don't do them. We've sold systems to guys who have installed them you know, lining the walls with our stuff, but that's those fires

are their water they're watertight so if you didn't want to like bury something permanently Could you just seal that up toss it in the swimming pool?

I don't know if I do you have any possibly you could do that means I'm looking more for safety security long term and underground vaults. Walk involved is is unbeatable. Nobody even knows

that'd be the ultimate man cave. Absolutely. What about from that same perspective? What about ammo storage?

You know, any kind of heat on ammo destroys the ammo whether it cooks off or not. We sell ammo cabinets. It's punch steel fully vented. So in the event of a fire the ammo just burns off. We do see in the market. Liberty makes it's called the ammo locker or the ammo Canada it's a safe for ammo, and it is lined with drywall. And it's a solid no venting is problematic. We're actually doing a test this summer we're going to fill it full of old ammo and took it off. It's my contention, I can't prove this. Yep, I think it's going to happen that because they've got some insulation in there because they the way they built the safe, the internal temperature is going to go up, but it's going to work more gradually, the ammo is going to heat up a little more gradually, it'll reach its critical mass critical burn point a lot, but at the same time that once it starts going, I think the site blows up like a pipe bomb. I'm gonna test that this summer, we've got the cabinet, we're trying to figure out how to actually set up safely the cooktop and set cameras in place, because it's gonna be a big boom.

I look forward to seeing the video on that. That sounds fascinating.

That'll be a viral video when we that's probably going to be sometime in August is when we're going to do that.

How does your you know you're openly kind of calling out what the industry has sold for a long time. You're innovating and doing it differently. You're doing it better? How's that look in your industry? Like what kind of reaction you get from these competing

companies? For the most part, we're pretty much ignored. The industry is pretty arrogant. They're pretty interested. I mean, if you look at all the gun safes, and there's you know, there's 20 different gun safes convert more in America, most gun safes come out of China, there's a handful of us manufacturers, but once you open the doors of all of them, they're all the same. They really mean there's some little nuance differences here and there. Some companies have a few little interesting storage things inside, but for the most part, the industry just copies each other. And interesting fact that I learned when we first decided to go into retail, my first thought was partner with a safe company. I knew nothing about this. And I actually went and met with the senior management teams of a couple of large us safe manufacturers. And you get the corporate talk what you're doing boom, boom, then they give you a plant tour. And that's usually with a production manager, some lower level person, and those guys tell you everything. So I'm pumping this guy for information and was interesting. safes are designed to look good empty. Gun safes are sold in safe dealers, there's no guns involved. So the safes are all what they want is when you open these doors, they want their safe interior to look nicer than the competitors safe next door. And that's what they're designing for. They're not designed with the gun in mind. They're designed to look at empty In fact, one of America's largest safe manufacturers, their senior leadership teams, like nine people, three of them own no firearms, not one of them owned a modern sporting rifle. They had no these guys didn't weren't gun people at all. These were executives, corporate guys that run their business with a spreadsheet and most of America's big saved companies are now owned by wall street investment firms. It's all about generating that bottom line dollar we don't sell our safes and stores for the simple reason our sales don't look good empty. You open up my sale next to a gun set a gun say wow carpeting leather, look at those mines like it's a metal box with some brackets. When we're at shops or big trade show we're the only company that shows up where every single one of our cabinets is maxed out with guns. You go to the Liberty booth or the cannon safe booth. All their safes are beautiful, they're all empty. They can't show them with guns because they're 36 guns safe only holds about 12 rifles it really I mean there's nowhere near the capacity people come to art with no like holy cow look at this stuff. And we can't sell them a store that because they won't put guns in them. So that's one of the reasons that we are a direct to consumer business. Also, if you're going to sell to Bass Pro Bass Pro wants to make 40% margin on their sale. Well, I don't need to pay Bass Pro so I want my customers to pay a higher price. So Bass Pro makes money we're trying to offer them you know ours Our goal is to make America safer, better prepared if all guns in America were properly locked. A lot of tragedies would be avoided it would make this place a lot safer.

Yeah no doubt that's that's super interesting. Okay, so I have to come see you guys at SHOT Show and check it out.

Otherwise everything is through your website is that when we say direct to consumer purchase through your website is secure it there's secured gun storage calm is our retail site secure tactical calm is our military site and that's more designed for us for the for military law enforcement community.

Awesome security gun stores calm and just tell me a little bit more I you know, we're talking about process offline and how processes can show up in life for consistency of personal practice and how it shows up in businesses and quality businesses and cultures. And you start talking a little bit about kind of the mastery journey in whatever it is you focus on. How big is your company how you know, tell me a little bit about process by which you need and run

right now. We are growing a 6062 percent per year. It's growing really, really rapidly. We are employee wise, we've doubled number of employees in the last two years. And it's grown like crazy. Now we run our business with EOS, which is entrepreneur, entrepreneur, entrepreneurial operating system. And it is a, it's a method of running a company that a group of guys put together, it's based on a lot of business, you know, very successful business books, they took all this data, put it together as a method to run a company. And it all comes down to the processes by which you do things. And everything is structured, and how we run our company, we have a process for everything, and all of our processes are documented, so that we train people say, this is how things happen. And when I first saw it, it's like, I was intrigued this, that sounds really boring. But it's, it's actually it's fascinating. When you really focus on the processes by which you do things, you get so many more things done. The next thing you realize is well, I've got so much more time to think creatively about what we're doing. You know, we run this company, our leadership, our management structure is I am, I am the vision, my position as CEO, but I'm the visionary in the company, underneath me as our Chief of Operations CEO, but his actual his job he's called the integrator. below him is our senior management team. So I've got a person between me and senior management because innately, he's the guy that makes sure everything gets done. And it really allows me to really, you know, be doing shows like this to be fit. I mean, I project my back to the company, and I'm projecting outward, whether I'm telling story you explain talk about what we do, or I'm engaging with people in the industry to learn more, or just creatively thinking, working on the creative side of the business, the EOS management solution, the company runs just brilliantly, and I don't get involved in the day to day operations of my company, we're not that big of a company people like, That's nuts. How do you not I said, I trust my process, and it works. Everything if I need to know, I know if I don't need to know, I don't want to know.

I love it. I'm glad you said that, because I just heard about us for the first time about four weeks ago, okay, and jotted it down in a journal from the event I was at, but it had not gone back to that. So I'm glad you brought that up as a reminder, so I can go look at that.

I recommend anybody who's running a small business to take a look at it, you can implement it yourself, I strongly would recommend hiring an implementer to help you with the process. It's people say that's so expensive. I'm like, What are you talking about? You know, yeah, it sounds expensive, until you implement EOS, and your company doubles and sales in a year, and then go 60% the next two years, I mean, we are we are off to the races. A big part of that is is me changing from being a manager to being a leader. And you know, as an entrepreneur, I've never worked in a in a management, structured company. As a musician, I drove cab I worked at a canning factory electronics parts. I did every odd job you can imagine I need to make extra money. But I've never worked in corporate America. When I got into business. Every single one of my businesses grew to $5 million in sales very quickly. And they all set at 5 million. And about 10 years ago, I made the realization that I'm a $5 million a year guy. Because my military business took off and stabilize between four and 6 million and go Why can't I get over this? Why can't I get past 5 million because I look back at my whole career. And boom, every single company. So I said it's got to be me. What am I missing? What am I doing wrong? I joined an organization called Vistage which is a CEO peer to peer group and started working with them. I really just started saying everything I know is probably wrong. I'm going to be open up to change and it really came down to a lot of it was process is the process when you're a man when you're a manager you can manage 5 million because you're doing basic manager is involved in doing everything and you're hiring support staff to help. Well when you become a leader, when you've got to you're hiring people to handle these things and you got to step away and not be involved. And it is sometimes tough to let go. But it's so rewarding to trust. Trust the people to hire good people, put them in charge of something and just and say you know what? get this done. If you have a question, call me. Any question any if you need help, let me know. I expect to see the results. So is a week from Thursday. Good. I count you for that great in It'd be done with it. And it took four or five years of work with me to really pushing and we implemented Eos. And that was a final piece that really pushed me away from operations pushed me away from getting my hands involved in the day to day running of the business, and push me above it. And it's worked really, really well.

That's amazing. Yeah, the hiring right is so important. And then obviously having having quality processes in place and letting good people run good process. But yeah, I applaud the the courage to just look within and and question everything and change and, you know, Vistage or other other executive masterminds, you know, that tapping into that collective knowledge, you know, that that saying that none of us is smarter than all of us. Right? So, setting the ego aside and tapping into other smart business guys,

years ago, a friend of mines who, who dropped who was driving a BMW time said, when I just got started in business, a guy told me you want to drive BMWs hang out with people who drive BMWs. And you know, I want to become a business leader, well, joining this ditch, you know, I was the crazy goofball in that group. These guys were all serious CEOs. And I just learned so much, and we are early meeting. And we're all sitting there talking. And I said, Guys, look, I'm the CEO of this company. This is doing well, I gotta be honest, I don't know the CEO, does. They start laughing? I'm saying no, guys, seriously, I've no idea what a CEO actually does. I'm a salesman, you know, and kind of some of the regice summit didn't the guy who runs our group was is a Dave Matina. he's a he's an amazing guy, toughest guy I've ever worked with. And he was able to really help me get through with many conversations where he'd be going, top Stop, stop, stop, stop, stop, stop, stop. Think about what the actual question he's giving me the, you know, to get out of the trenches, and just, you know, think about what is the big picture here and get out of the day that that these dailies, little things. You know, it takes it takes time. But the processes by which you do things, it starts with your process, how you get up in the morning, I look at it, now, everything breaks down for me, I can think about process. It's easy, I can change process, I can modify, I can improve, I can measure the results of process. I don't know how to measure the results of like, mindset or what you're thinking or, you know, are you motivated, I can't measure that. But I know that when I follow my process, you know, at 845, I kick in the front door, and we just rock and roll because that's, you know, this is kind of how I do things. And I I'm not slave to the price change them. But I do follow a process for almost everything I do. And the more stricter I follow it, the better the results I get.

lets you just reminded me of a guy who was on the show, I don't know, year or so ago. It was gotten done some tough, you know, tough stuff and very successful guy. And he said, you know, mindset. That's all that's all bullshit. He goes, you know, like it even for him. He goes, you know, Simon Sinek the power of wine on stuff. He goes, this guy Tom Shea. He's like, why is the worst question I could ever ask myself because it's for him. He says it's not empowering. He is I don't care about any of that stuff. All I care about is I said I was gonna do something. And so I do it. It's, uh, there's, you know, we'd all have to agree, right? And I don't agree with all that, but I love that. Like I said, I was gonna do it. So I'm gonna do it. And then it's no longer a question of if or how or whatever, it's just its execution. Right? So then it comes back to that, that process now it is how do I go do that?

Right in the beauty of habit of thinking about prejudice, thinking about the process by which you do things. And just making some notes about it is improving the process makes life easier. It's you know, life is about getting from point A to point B, whether it be it could be getting from six in the morning and 69 it could be from you know, physically getting but honing your processes. Just I mean, makes you a better person makes it just so much of life gets better. And it's all you know, I guess with that your as you talk to her this comes down to, you know, I said I was gonna do it. So I do it. It's about accountability. If you can't be accountable to yourself, can't be accountable to others. You're probably going to struggle most of your life.

Let me ask you on the on the personal front, so your husband, your father, you have a lot of success running your business and probably yourself with process. How's that go? How's it go over at home as a family that structured? Are they going like Tom I don't want to As much structure in my life

I've made many jokes about structure and family are not. I mean, I wouldn't mean we have some structure I don't try for the other side of me is, I'm a big believer in wild creativity. And I do believe that creativity is people are born as a baby 100% creative. That's all they have is creative. They have nothing but creativity. And it's beaten out of you. By the time you graduate college, you've lost most of it. And you know, simple example is people that kids say, the wildest little kids say, just, you'll as funny as great, it's so innocent, it's so pure, then they go school for the first time, they make some comment that's out there. Everybody looks at in the last year, they get embarrassed, like, well, I won't do that again. And they and they get the Oh, what are you talking about? And so, in our house, I'm pretty big on allowing creativity, just to be there. And my kids were little Our house was a loony bin. Sometimes it was pretty crazy. It was. It was a there was process, but there wasn't structure. Okay, I like things to be fairly unstructured. But my kids are doing well there. You know, when you have three kids, I was it's like, we have three kids. If any one kid isn't with you, it's like me, my wife and any two kids, four of us can do anything, we all get along great. Doesn't matter which two, adding the third kid and all three of them turn the monsters because no matter what happens, the dynamic goes to one one in some subtle way. And it might not be like anger, but it just chaotic. It's a balance. It's just always funny how now there I've got one just graduated college last week, I've got to pick up my daughter in Savannah, where she's in her second year at scad. And my youngest is graduating high school in a couple of weeks. So it's they're getting older now it's getting a little easier, but they're doing well. I don't push hard on my mindset for how I do things with my kids. I asked questions would be that would be that really the most and try not to put my will on things. I'm pretty strong. I mean, I've got a drive to do things. I've got a way I see things. And I can be a bull in a china shop. Just kind of with enthusiasm if I really am conscious of not doing that with the kids letting them figure it out and just say what do you what do you what do you want to do? What do you think? What have you done so far? What do you think? Okay, sounds great. If you need my help, just let me know. And you know, my oldest is pretty turned he's pretty amazing kid he's uh, he's actually I think he's accepted in a program I think he's going to Netherlands for a year and Budapest Hungary for a year for dual masters and global political economy and Eastern European I you know, wow. He operates in a level way he's again, he's a he's a point you shoot kid. He's just like, I want this to what I want to do this is done so far. This is where I can use your help. Like, okay, it's it's

I love that and so much power in a in just a curious question or a good question. I find I love hearing about how well you're doing and you know, really just the the creativity and the fresh look at things that have created the path you're on and suddenly you got a long road successful road ahead of you with security, but I like getting to know you here a little bit. I find it hard to believe that this is where you're gonna stop like I'm just I'm fascinated follow along and see what the next

Yeah, who knows what the future holds. It's always a I talked to my neighbor The other day I said I still don't I still don't know what I want to do when I grow up. Right? cuz I've, I've been on a very strange path. You look back at it compared to a lot of people I know business wise. And I love the random nature of things. I you know, you want to go on vacation. Let's jump in the car and head west. Where you going? I don't know, maybe we should end up in Banff National Park or maybe we can make it to Alaska. Let's just go and just, you know my wife and I years ago before we had kids did that we took a map of the country and put pins of everybody we kind of knew with no plan. We just sat off and just drove around the country. I had a business partner we each took five weeks off that year. And I just drove around the country to visit Can we just it was a greatest. This is the greatest week of so unstructured and all sorts of crazy crap went wrong went right but it was a you know what?

I love that last lap last year, you know, quarantine COVID and everything was was such a disrupter to our social patterns that I often say like people I know that I work with you talking about who you surround your Software. Everyone I asked, was thriving last year. And I think a lot of that is just how is it approached, and it was such a disrupter that it was an opportunity to do the kinds of things you're you're talking about, right? Okay, now all of our structure was hit, hit pause. So now we can do whatever we want.

whenever we want.

It's interesting, because I got lucky a year, but for COVID, I was just frustrated with our computer system. And I just said, Guys, look, I want this company to operate in the cloud, I'd not want any servers, I want to be able to no matter where I'm traveling in the world, log in and be be part of our system. I want to sync all cloud based. So yerba for COVID. That was an initiative that we had completed just before COVID COVID hit and you know, okay, guys on Monday, the company's running remote, and boom, we had a hiccup we had to do a little work with our telecommunications we dialed in, but we went remote very seamlessly. Now, up to that point, I've always been of the mindset that I'm there, I'm the first guy there and one of the last guy to leave, it's my energy that drives his company, it's, it's I bopped around every day I talked to every employee and I'm you know, I'm just really involved with everything that's going on and everybody and just keeping the gears moving. So I thought while we're going remote that Jesus is going over how's this gonna work with the company runs so much better remote we accelerated we went remote and it was a real you know, me kind of go wow it's not about me it's I don't need to do that I don't these people get it and they their own energy and their drive is stronger than mine. And quite possibly working in the office I was a I wasn't negative and I was actually slowing people down. I don't know I mean, of course I would never do that but if the company went remote and we're not going back I've got a business I've got I own a building you know I got three people that I go in the building sites will go in the office many days I've got my warehouse is now an auto shop I restore old cars from my spare time but we're not going to go back and we hired we're building a team in Phoenix I've got people in Austin and then around the Chattanooga area we're kind of hiring and building sells because it's just easier

Well congratulations again on the on the success today and more to come the you know the courage the innovation the creativity it's it's awesome to hear about a business that starts and grows That way I know you got family waiting we got a holiday weekend ahead so I want to wrapped up here and respectful of your time. Let's just wrap it up with you know for people that are listening to this and and want to want to buy from you or explore buy in from you just and where to follow you right and kind of continue to follow this story. So website again, was it security, unconstrained calm

if you just Google security you'll see our YouTube channel you'll see ourselves you'll see all the stuff we do i'm not big on social media myself our YouTube channel is very popular and we've got a lot of great videos on there. I like we haven't we got so busy with Kobe and shot a lot of videos in the last year but we've just we've built a studio now and we're back to shooting videos weekly. So that channel the growing up we still get you know hundreds of 1000s of views on what we put out but yeah, we try to show up everywhere every like everybody else. Yeah,

yeah perfect. All right, well we'll get links to all that stuff and especially the YouTube up with with this episode we know that you're out a SHOT Show and other other events and we're definitely gonna we're gonna be looking for that YouTube video of the ammo safe that you set on fire.

I'm sure that will get millions of views if if what I believe happens happens that's going to be a big boon.

I will be be safe with Alan pleasure talking to meeting today. amazing to hear your story I really enjoyed it.

Well thank you very much it's been a pleasure

okay you know the story show notes for this one links to everything for secure and tactical and Tom qubic are at man of mastery comm slash 089 thank you again to Tom and here's some of his story. I have a feeling it is long from from done. As he figures out how to scale this business step back from being so hands on. Be a leader rather than a manager and just be that visionary CEO that lets process run the business and people run the process. So check out what they have. I mean, this is a really interesting concept. He's disrupting that entire space. I had no idea that the actual fire rating and safety rating or hard to break in rating, whatever you called it was so low such a low barrier on these on these home saves. So Really interesting concept that these things ship, you assemble and then the idea of distributed safes around the house, whatever that might look like for your valuables or your home protection. I'm definitely gonna check it out, hit the links to the show notes to catch up with Tom further on social media and check out secure at tactical. Alright guys, that's it for this week that closes out the month, and we got some other great episodes in the can coming up here in September. Alright, that's it for now. You know the story, get back out there and get after it.