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Welcome to episode 457 of Behind the Shield podcast.
As always, my name is James Gearing.
And this week, it is my absolute honor to welcome on the show Mike Taylor and Alex Roodhouse.
Now, Mike and Alex were riverines in the Navy.
That was a unit that was made famous in Vietnam, patrolling the rivers in that country,
and then saw a resurgence in Iraq in the conflict at the beginning of this millennium.
And that innovation and entrepreneurial ship that it took to stand the riverines back up,
they carried out when they transitioned from the military into their company, BeaverFit USA.
Now, BeaverFit was founded by Tom Beaver, a SAS reservist from the UK who began making his own fitness equipment.
Now, what you're going to hear from this conversation is BeaverFit has solutions for so many issues,
genuine issues that we face when it comes to putting strength and conditioning equipment and facilities in the first responder space.
So I am extremely passionate about this company.
It's another one that I'm hoping I'm going to be aligned with on the show.
And as you know, I seek companies like this to bring to you.
But having equipment that's trusted by the military, that's able to be outside,
that can create space outside of a building like a fire station or a police station,
I think is invaluable in getting our men and women in uniforms as fit as possible for the profession that we do.
So before we get to that conversation, as I said, every single week, please just take a moment,
go to whichever app you listen to this on, subscribe to the show, leave feedback and leave a rating.
Each five star rating truly elevates this podcast, making it easier for others to find.
And this is a free library for you, Planet Earth.
So all I ask in return is that you help share these incredible men and women stories so I can get them to everyone else who needs to hear them.
So with that being said, I introduce to you Mike Taylor and Alex Roodhouse. Enjoy.
Well, Mike and Alex, I want to start by saying thank you so much for taking the time to come on the Behind the Shield podcast today.
I think you're in two different locations, so we're doing a three way conversation today.
But welcome. Thanks for having us. It's our pleasure.
This is awesome. Thank you for allowing us to join.
Beautiful. So I will kind of point to one or the other so we don't overlap each other.
So we'll start with you, Mike. Where on planet Earth are we finding you today?
For sure. I'm actually down in Reno, Nevada, at the BeaverFit North America headquarters.
We actually have two offices down here. I'm at our sales and marketing office,
which is just on the western side of the city and about five miles down the road.
We have another office where our warehouse is, but I'm sitting in our office kind of looking out the window at the beautiful Sierra Nevada mountains.
Beautiful. And Alex, about yourself.
Yeah, I'm just up the hill from Mike. So I work from home a few days a week and just up the hill in Lake Tahoe,
which is about 40 minutes from Northern Nevada or from Northern Reno where our headquarters is.
Brilliant. All right. Well, I like to do the chronological walkthrough.
I know it's interesting because both of your stories kind of parallel quite a lot.
But let's start at the very beginning. So, Mike, where were you born?
And then tell me about your family dynamic, what your parents did and how many siblings.
I dig it. I dig it. I'm from Syracuse, New York. So I'm an upstater from Syracuse, New York.
And I like to tell folks I grew up in a locker room. You know, I played every sport under the sun.
It was always outside playing, you know, basketball, soccer, baseball, football, whatever, whatever it was.
That's what I grew up doing. My mom was a nurse. My dad has a construction company and a sister.
She was really into athletics as well. You know, I kind of gravitated more towards soccer and baseball in upstate New York,
but just, you know, lived a pretty kind of simple childhood, always outside looking to get after it.
Beautiful. All right. And then when you were at school, were you always dreaming of the military
or was there some other profession in mind back then?
You know, I can't say I was necessarily always dreaming of the military. I had some cousins that I grew up with.
So my dad's brother lived down the road. We all went to the same high school.
And some of my older cousins ended up going to the military academies. My oldest cousin, Brian, he went to the Naval Academy.
The one after him went to West Point. And we kind of grew up playing sports together.
So that's what opened my eyes to the military service was then.
And my granddad was in the Navy, but most academies through my older cousins.
And you ended up getting recruited to play soccer at the Naval Academy.
So that was more of my entrance through some family connections and then really through soccer when they started recruiting me.
And I got excited about going down to Annapolis and playing soccer there.
Beautiful. Now, just as a side tangent, I always ask people this with soccer being their main sport.
An observation that I made when I moved from the UK to here was back home, you have football, you know, soccer.
It doesn't stop when people graduate school or graduate college.
You know, a lot of them play local leagues and well into their 40s and 50s.
When I moved to the States, it seemed like there was a lot of a lot of people that got to an incredibly high level that high school or college level,
then had injuries and then went from zero from like 100 to zero and then became almost not no pun intended,
but almost like a kind of uncle Rico thing where you're just talking about the good old days when you were a high level athlete instead of continuing to to exercise.
What is your observation now, especially with that sport, with that kind of bridging the gap between high school collegiate athletics
and then trying to to continue that road of health and fitness post educational years?
Yeah. So I think it's a great question, James.
And it kind of leads into some of the military stuff.
But, you know, I was very lucky that I played soccer, the Naval Academy, and then graduated, went into the Navy and the Navy continues that in the military.
You know, I obviously continued to train to do my job.
But on the ship I was on or the river unit when I was deployed to Africa, I always played soccer and we had a team on our ship.
And then we would go to different port visits.
You know how it is that the Americans come to port and they want to challenge them in something.
And I played in multiple tournaments across the globe, really, whether it was in Portsmouth, England.
We played a bunch of folks and split Croatia.
When I was deployed to Africa, I would play pickup soccer with the Ugandan Gate guards.
And I would just walk up, give the international sign that I would like to join the game.
And we started knocking the ball around.
So I think soccer being a global sport, and especially being associated with the Navy, was just amazing.
The experiences that I was able to have, even playing the Dabouche national team when I was in Djibouti.
And we had this game at night in their stadium in the city center, just incredible experiences.
And I would say now, I'm probably more into it with my kids, you know, just knocking the ball around with them in the backyard, coaching them.
And then I did get involved in a little pickup soccer league and a futsal league in the wintertime playing.
So I do think soccer is a unique game that you don't need much equipment to play.
You have a ball, you start knocking around.
So it's definitely served me well and helped me make connections, you know, really, no matter where I am.
Beautiful. It's just very cool to hear a story like that.
Obviously, the truce in World War I is a prime example of that.
But also I had Australian SAS guy Harry Moffat on very recently, and he took a cricket bat on all his deployments.
And then he had 11 bats in the end.
They were signed by all kinds of, you know, everything from fellow soldiers to warlords and everyone in between.
But again, that game unified people too.
So I think it's amazing.
Even when Alex and I were deployed to Iraq together, we were in different places.
But my nieces and nephews back home did a soccer ball drive and they sent me soccer balls.
And we would hand them out to the local kids in Iraq when we were deployed there.
So plenty of stories around how athletics and sports really brings global communities together.
Beautiful. All right. Well, then all the way back with you, Alex.
So tell me about where you were born and again, your family dynamic, what your parents did and how many siblings.
Yeah, for sure. That's definitely going way back.
So unlike Mike, who's from upstate New York, I'm more a child of the West Coast.
So I grew up in the San Francisco Bay Area up in Marin County, north of the bay,
back when that was still more of a hippie enclave and less of an extension of the marina as it is today and up at Lake Tahoe.
So where I live today, this was my childhood stomping grounds.
And then I actually went to high school in Oregon, so sort of all over the West Coast, California, Nevada, Oregon.
And I did play a lot of sports similar to Mike, all your sort of usual football, baseball, track and field, your American sports.
But I would define my childhood more as really growing up with my head in a book versus being in a locker room.
Right. Like a lot of my childhood was spent reading and sort of that life of the mind.
And then I would have to pull myself out of a book to go onto the field and compete.
Beautiful. And then did you have any military in your family?
Yeah, absolutely. So my dad actually served in the military, as did my grandpa.
So I'm third generation service.
And it was one of those things that if you'd asked me throughout my childhood, if I was going to join the military, I would have said, no, that's probably not for me.
But as you get older, right, and, you know, get more to that less of childhood, more adolescence and approaching manhood,
it was just something that seemed like a big adventure, right?
Like my dad had served and it was the possibility of getting to put the uniform on and go do cool things around the world.
And it also paid for college, which was a big part of it.
It was not something I was going to overlook.
And so, yeah, as I approached that 18 year old age, I was like, you know what?
This is something I do want to do as well.
Beautiful. Now, I know that you both found yourself in a very unique organization once you entered the Navy.
So I put the mic for either of you to start.
But tell me about the history of the Riverines, why that ended up being disbanded for a while
and then the kind of time period that you found yourselves entering in that specific division.
Yeah, that's a great question. So I'll jump in on that.
So really, if you think about Riverines, another phrase for that is the brown water Navy, right?
So the folks that are in the rivers as opposed to being out in the ocean or the littorals close to shore.
And where it really rose to prominence was Vietnam.
So if you were to Google or look up anything about the Vietnam War, the brown water Navy, that's where it was.
It was a large force. There was a lot of folks serving in that.
And they focused on the Delta and all of the various waterways of Vietnam.
After that, and I don't have the exact dates right, but eventually after that conflict,
the Navy essentially discontinued that capability. And so they just got rid of it.
There wasn't the funding or the focus or the mindset or the need.
And so it ended up the sort of river warfare capability went in two directions.
One, it went towards SOCOM. And so that's where you had the SWIT community.
And the SWIT community, obviously, again, just plenty of people can research what they do,
but they primarily are a complementary element to the SEALs.
And they really focus on more covert insertion, extraction, those types of missions,
versus an overt infantry style ground combat unit.
The other direction it went is more in that direction. It went to the Marine Corps.
And so the Marine Corps established a group called the Small Craft Company that was much more Marine Corps-esque.
If you've ever spent time with Marines, being infantrymen is very much in their DNA.
And so the concept of doing something covertly probably doesn't happen very often
when you've got a Marine kitted up ready to enter anywhere.
So those were the two sort of divergent paths that river warfare went.
Bring it all the way to what we did at Riverine is in 2006,
Big Navy really decided they needed to be more relevant in the fight in Iraq,
which was the main focus at the time. If you go back, Afghanistan was certainly happening,
but was actually sort of quiet up until around the 2010 period.
And so there was a lot of focus on Iraq and then a huge focus, if you remember,
on the Sunni Triangle, the Triangle of Death, Anbar province.
And of course, what defines that is the Euphrates River runs right through it.
And then, of course, the Tigris River comes right down on the other side of Baghdad.
And so that was incredibly relevant to the conflict, incredibly relevant to the geography
and the need to control those riverways.
And initially the Marines took that mission with Small Craft Company.
And that's where the Navy sort of raised their hands and said, Hey, wait a minute,
this is a waterway, we're the Navy, we should be involved in this.
And so 2006 is when they stood that unit up just from scratch.
There was no river capability.
And when we stood it up, they actually reached back to some of the old folks from Vietnam,
the game wardens. And so they actually brought a lot of these guys in
and they worked with a lot of our technical experts, even just concepts as nuanced as,
hey, if you're driving a gumboat up a river, how can you tell if maybe there's an obstruction
or an obstacle in the river? How do you look at the eddy and the flow of how the water's moving
to understand what might be beneath it?
Stuff that you can only run in the field, and then those lessons are lost, right, over time.
And so we really had to build back up all of that subject matter knowledge internally,
and not just that, but do it in the face of a relatively fast stand-up timeline,
because the Navy wanted us to get into the fight as soon as possible.
And so that story is actually a fairly unique one in that they took people from all over the fleet,
volunteers, non-volunteers, and brought them together and then put us through an intensive
ground combat training pipeline, as well as a river warfare training pipeline.
Same time, we're bringing in the equipment, trying to figure out how to use all that stuff.
And then at the very end of our final field exercise, it was great.
Get on an airplane, you're going to Ramadi, and you're going to see how well you learned it.
So that's a quick overview. I don't know if I missed anything, Mike, feel free to fill in.
I think the history background is awesome. And what was truly unique about it is typically when you go to a Navy unit,
there's established equipment and maintenance plans and standard operating procedures.
When we showed up there, Alex and I were one of the first handful of officers that showed up.
We were junior lieutenants at the time, so we were pretty young officers.
And we had a ton of responsibility to not only train our team and get them ready to get over there
and accomplish the mission, but to equip them, come up with maintenance plans.
It was very much like a startup atmosphere at the unit because there wasn't a lot of those procedures in place already,
and the equipment wasn't established.
So it was just a great learning experience for the entire team there at the riverine units when we first set them up.
So one thing that I talk about quite a bit on here is the best military,
but obviously also first responders at police and fire agencies are the ones, in my opinion,
that are always training for the what-if scenario.
It hasn't happened yet, but it could happen.
And they're trying to reverse engineer some really horrific events and what would that look like in the training ground?
It seems like there would be a large element of that in standing up the riverines again,
especially as the battleground now wasn't the jungles of Vietnam, but was the Middle East.
So what was the philosophy, whether it was humility, whether it was adapting lessons from the Vietnam vets,
what was the kind of mindset to allow all the kind of what-if scenarios of this new battleground that you were going to be on?
That's a really good question.
And I think one phrase that helps answer it is putting tools in your toolkit.
That was something we heard a lot during our training pipeline.
And what we did, the way the training pipeline went actually helped a lot with that sort of what-if planning,
is initially it was intensive with Marine Corps ground combat training.
So all of us went through the School of Infantry in the Marine Corps, which is the enlisted infantry school.
So despite one being Navy guys and two, a handful of us being officers,
we all had the pleasure of spending a summer at Camp Lejeune getting our butts kicked going through SOI.
And what that really built in, really ingrained in us was how Marines shoot and move on the ground, right?
What their ground combat movement is, how they communicate.
But then what we did was after that, we went and spent almost the same amount of time,
about a 12-week training pipeline at Blackwater, which was back in the heyday of Blackwater,
when trees were being leveled and airstrips were being put in, and you'd go onto their compound in Moyoc,
and it was just, God, I'm on a warlord's camp. Like, what's going on here?
It was an incredible training place. And that pipeline was really focused on more of
Naval Special Warfare ground combat tactics and techniques.
And so we really got to learn from each of those communities in different ways that they even structure a fire team
and move on the ground. And when they take contact, what do they do? What are their initial reactions?
And so just even in that, you use the word humility. There was a huge amount of humility,
because one, we all knew how green we were, right?
We'd all just been pulled from the fleet and were asked to step into these two communities that were, you know,
lots of time of experience in ground combat and then try to learn from both of them
and then try to apply it to what we were doing. And that came out in a lot of different ways.
We had a FieldEx to try to basically say, hey, these guys are certified for deployment,
and it was being graded by the Marines. And Mike and I actually got called in at one point before.
I don't remember exactly who was in the room. I don't think the CG who was overseeing it was in it,
but it was a couple of the senior Marine officers. And they were going to they wanted to fail us
because they'd been looking at how our teams were moving on the ground and how we were communicating.
And it wasn't straight out of Marine Corps doctrine. And so literally, even as part of these field exercises,
we were evolving the doctrine as we went, because then we sat down and explained,
here was our thought process. Here's why we moved the teams this way. Here's why we're communicating.
Here's why that guy stayed in Overwatch. And it was, you know, a light bulb moment for some of these Marines,
like, hey, this isn't just, you know, typical ground combat. This is very different because it's on a riverway.
So that was a big part of it was just having to define how we were going to operate in this very unique environment
with a lot of the different skills that these different folks had given us that we sort of filed away in the toolkit.
Right. And you would bring those tools out at different times.
One other example that I want to share that I think is very relevant to this.
This is more of an in-country example, but we basically had to write all of our SOPs and TTPs from scratch. Right.
So your standard operating procedures and your tactics, techniques and procedures, they didn't exist.
And one example is as we went in and all the training we were getting on the IED threat as it pertained to the riverways
was that it was going to be more riverbank IDs that would essentially throw shrapnel at you.
And that that was the biggest threat is that you're going to get hit by ball bearings and shrapnel and other things like that.
But because you're on the waterway, it was very difficult, of course, for the IED to do the typical catastrophic kill,
which is to get underneath the vehicle and then explode up into it.
Well, one of our first missions down the Nazair Canal in Ramadi, we came across a waterborne IED.
It was a homemade, it was a propane tank that had been the top cut off and a bunch of just homemade HEI explosives put in there.
And then it was basically sunk on a fishing line that was run across the river, which those lines across the river super common.
Right. It's how fishermen would pull boats across.
And so you couldn't just, you know, go cut every line on the river because the other big part of what we were doing was winning hearts and minds.
And if you're out there screwing with fishermen's way of life, that dude's going to turn around and talk to the insurgents.
And now you've got a problem where you don't need one. So very fine line to walk.
So we came across a waterborne IED. It was going to be command detonated.
So there was actually a guy waiting in a house with a trigger to blow it.
And fortunately, we had air cover that day.
Apaches were running low down the river and they scared the trigger guy off.
And so we found all of this with an EOD tech and we ended up having to map it out.
All the copper wire, the battery where all the triggers were, and then essentially helped.
I mean, he did all the diffusing. We just carried all the ordinance over to the place where he wanted to blow it up.
But basically from that experience, it was, we got back to our tents at the end of that mission and I sat down with the other officer in my detachment.
We said, Hey, we now need a waterborne IED SOP.
And so we just sat down and said, OK, what if that had detonated on the first boat?
What if that had detonated on the second boat? What were our actions going to be?
How are we going to secure the area, get people out of the water, all that type of stuff.
And so that it was a very, I mean, we were we are on the cusp of what these riverine tactics were going to be.
And literally, and I hate to use this phrase, but it's true.
We're just making it up as we went along. Right.
Like you'd see that building SOP and then the next time here's your SOP.
So then when the second riverine squadron relieved us in country, we just handed all that stuff over and said, here, guys, here's our best lessons learned.
You know, try to incorporate this in and train to it.
Anything to add to that, Mike?
Yeah, I think the interesting thing about the unit was that everyone was incredibly focused because we knew what the mission was.
There was a date on the calendar. We knew when we were going to deploy.
So the entire team at the riverine squadron was focused on that day and everyone was bought in.
But on top of that, we had an incredible amount of resources.
So between the intense focus of the team and everyone behind a single mission and the resources, we got the best training out there.
Not only the best training, a lot of it.
We had more rounds and more time on the range than any unit imaginable.
And the training that Alex talked about was from the best folks that have done this before.
So they really ingrained the discipline in us to conduct rehearsals.
And like Alex said, after action debriefs, after every single mission, because we knew our SOPs were so new that we had to go back and always change them.
And I just feel like that's different.
There's a lot of units, whether it be first responders in the military, that are ingrained in the way they always did things.
And we weren't ingrained in that because there wasn't really SOPs and changing something was easy because we're the ones that came up with it.
And we were open minded that we always want to improve and get better.
So that combination of being open minded, have an intense focus on a single mission.
And the big one is the time and resources that the Navy provided us to go all in and make sure that we were ready for the mission that came upon us.
Beautiful. I mean, there's a lot of obviously parallels with the first responder professions.
And the one common denominator is the good equipment, the time, the train, all those things that sadly we don't see in a lot of the responder professions.
And it's so backwards.
Well, Alex, you touched on the riverine story.
One thing I like to talk about and then we'll talk about transitioning out and kind of the strength and conditioning journey.
But I think it's very important to get the perspective of every veteran that's seen combat on here.
As a citizen, even though as a responder never in the military, we get a very polarizing story via our social media, media, everything on war.
Very pro-killer mode. God saw them out. Very anti bunch of baby killers. Not much normality in between.
So what I like to kind of pull out are the through your own eyes, boots on the ground stories of what you saw.
So regardless of why our men and women were sent there, when you got there, were there any moments, were any things that you saw where you realized, OK, at this time and place, there are some bad people.
And I reiterate this. Usually it's the citizens of that country that are being the victims of a lot of this atrocity.
Were there any aha moments for you where you realized, OK, there are some horrible people that we've got to get rid of, regardless of the politics that put us here originally?
Yeah, that's a really good question. And look, in the build up to going overseas and being an 18 and 19 year old with the uniform on, there's always that very testosterone driven, hey, let's kill them all and let God sort them out.
Right. I mean, and that's that is universal, probably in the lead up to any given conflict in the history of time.
Right. I think some of the aha moments or the things that have honestly stuck with me since the very first time I remember when we landed in Al Asad. Right. So we came in from Kuwait.
They flew us into Al Asad. It was a few days there while they're getting logistics together for us to hop on some helicopters to get down to Ramadi.
And it was the awareness just in one of the transient personnel tents that we were sleeping in, the awareness that there was an organized group of people that were just outside that wire, that when we went outside, it were proactively looking for ways to harm us.
And that was, if you think about that, you think, well, yeah, of course, but that doesn't exist at any other time in your life. And so knowing that another intelligent entity, a person in this organization was going to try to find ways to hurt me and my men was this.
It was just this like sobering realization of, hey, this is it. Like this is not a sports game. This is not and is not an evaluation exercise.
Like the stakes are what the stakes are and you need to be prepared for that. So that was one moment of that. The flip side you asked, hey, do you ever see really any horrible, evil things?
I want to answer a different way of that is what I really take away now and what I think a lot about now is the people of Iraq, not the horrible, evil things that were perpetrated upon them.
But just understanding the degree to which, hey, it's so easy to demonize the enemy. And yet when you get over there and when we would be going into houses or villages or clearing rooms and looking for insurgents or just trying to gain intel and you just slow down and look at these other people, they're just people.
They're just trying to make their way through life. And you're a foreign soldier in their land. And boy, are you foreign. I mean, you're looking at shepherds with flocks and mud huts along the sides of rivers and a lifestyle from an infrastructure standpoint that hasn't changed in a thousand years.
And here we are, kitted up. We must look like aliens from outer space, helmets, goggles, face masks. I mean, we are just covered in gear. We're out in 120 degree heat, but still operating when they're hiding in the shade, wondering what is wrong with these Americans.
It was really, again, eye opening to see it from their perspective and realize that, hey, we're the foreigners here and that most of the people in this country are not our enemy.
And that was something that really had to be internalized and was a message I talked to my guys a lot about is you cannot demonize the people that were coming across.
We need to keep mind like, hey, we're genuinely here trying to help them. And frankly, they would rather have us not be here.
So that's a very humanizing part of it. In terms of some of the evil look, there was a lot of very ugly things that happened in war.
I remember there was a Iraqi police station that got blown up very close to us when we were coming back from a patrol.
And the ram, like just the physical ramifications of what that even does to the, you know, just confronting the reality of that visually, right, is a very difficult thing.
And seeing what other people can do to other people and forgetting their humanity is a very difficult thing.
So it's I guess my biggest takeaway from that was that when we make the decision to go into a conflict and again, not no politics involved here at all.
But the people making that decision and frankly, the young soldiers and Marines and airmen and all those folks who are going to be on the front end of that, if they haven't done it yet, is people need to be very aware of the enormity of what that decision is.
And going into combat is not romantic and it's not rah rah. And it's not something that the movies portray it to be.
It is a harsh human reality and it's something that should be avoided at all costs.
So that's again, I don't know how much that answers your question, but that's some of the moments that stuck with me from that experience.
And I think that answers it very well and it's funny because I always ask the human side as well would be my second part of that question. So Mike, same thing for you through your eyes.
Yeah, it was interesting. I actually had the opportunity to deploy to Iraq in 2007 and then almost 10 years later, had a deployment to East Africa in Djibouti, Somali, Tiberias.
And similar experiences both times. I think number one, stepping back and realizing that the countryside and the environment is just gorgeous.
Like the riparian environment along the Euphrates River and all the history that was there was interesting to realize.
You know how actually like we always, you know, kind of don't really pay attention to the history behind these areas that we're going into and the environments and the culture and stuff like that.
So I think that was interesting. The other thing is for the human side of it, a lot of these folks, whether it's, you know, ISIS, al Qaeda in Iraq or al Shabaab, whatever these organizations are.
I think Alex and I are both very much apolitical. But what was interesting to me is, yes, there's a lot of bad actors, but there's also a lot of folks that are just looking for a way to provide for their family and safety and security for their family.
And that they end up in these organizations the same way that folks in the States or in Mexico or wherever in the world end up in gangs or cartels.
It's really not that much different. And I think that was an interesting realization that it's just a way of life.
There's trying to provide safety and security for their family. And this is a good, this is an option.
So I always felt when we were there, what are we doing outside of the military conflict to create other paths for the young kids that are coming up?
Education, helping them establish businesses and build industry so that when this next generation comes up in these countries that we've been deployed to, there's a multitude of options for a way of life to provide for their families instead of joining one of the insurgent organizations.
Well, again, thank you for your perspective, because we don't get to hear these, like you said, apolitical politics shouldn't come into it.
These are, you know, sending young men and women in to mitigate a situation.
Hopefully there's a good reason behind it. But at the end of the day, you're there inserted as the foreigner.
You know, and I think the hearts and minds philosophy is good if it's applied properly.
And I like to reverse engineer a lot of these, not that I have the solution, but to look back.
And, you know, when we hear about the opium fields in Afghanistan and the history of drug prohibition, that maybe, you know, reverse engineer that if we stop empowering, you know, the the the underworld, maybe that would have positive change in a lot of these things, too.
But I think the more stories we hear from the ground and what you see in the humanity amongst the Afghani people, amongst the Iraqi people that are being terrorized by the minority, the same way as we're having issues here with race and other things by the minority.
I think it's a very important picture for anyone who hasn't put that uniform on and stood in a foreign land for us to hear, because otherwise we're just going to hear these squeaky wheels that occupy all of our televisions at the moment.
Absolutely. The human stories are awesome.
And obviously there's plenty of stories out there of, you know, people in the military or outside of the UN, you know, helping to establish these other pathways outside the insurgent groups. And, you know, it's yeah, we're on the sidelines now.
And it's, you know, those conflicts are still going strong. So it's kind of crazy that our whole generation has, you know, kind of been through it.
And, you know, obviously currently we're backing out of some of these locations. So it's just being on the sidelines now, but still, you know, kind of having a lot of friends that are involved in it.
It's interesting to see how it's all developing.
Yeah. Well, obviously you're going to end up in a very proactive place helping members of the military and first responders that we'll get to now.
What were, we'll start with you, Alex, again, what was your decision to transition out? And I think it's important as well that people hear about that. There seems to be an area that a lot of people struggle with in the military and first responders, whether they choose to leave, whether it's an injury, whatever it is that sends them out.
What was that transition experience like for you personally?
Yeah, and the military transition is a critical issue and I don't think it's one that's ever going to go away. It's to some degree timeless with the structure we have where most of our military does only do a couple tours and then transfers back to the civilian world.
For me personally, it really had to do with a couple things, two main factors. One, what we got to do at Riverine was very unique, incredibly unique. I was an 02, a Lieutenant JG.
The officer above me was an 03, a Lieutenant, and that was it. We were in Ramadi with us and 48 guys. And the freedom we had to plan our own missions, to run our own missions, to coordinate with adjacent units was essentially absolute.
We would sit down, dream up a list of potential missions, read intel reports, reach out to whatever, hey Navy SEALs, you want to do this one? Nope. Hey Army guys, you want to do this one? All right, let's do it. Come ride our boats. Let's go get these bad guys.
It was an incredible command to be at as a junior officer. And realizing, coming back from that, that the next commands that would be in front of us would be shore duties, desk jobs, staff jobs.
They're really leading men in combat. The chance to get to do that again was really far in the future, if at all, for where we were in the Navy, right? Because that community was, when the Iraq War ended, the relevancy of the Navy Riverine community to some degree ended as well.
And it's evidence today, it's been disbanded. It doesn't exist again. So maybe at some point in the future, Mike and I will be the old guys showing up, telling our war stories and trying to help the young guys figure out how to make their way on a river.
But that was one part of it was, it was never going to be as good again. Like that, there's never going to be that good of a military experience. And so it just realizing, hey, when you leave at the peak of your game, when you're having fun, don't go keep chasing that. That was part of it.
The other part was this very deep sense of feeling that there was other chapters to write in life, right? Like that was it. Did two tours, served my time in the military. And there was now other things I wanted to go do in the world. And that was part of it. That was how my dad served. And that was how his dad served.
And there is, I mean, if you there's plenty of books on generational service in the military, and there's a lot of folks where they'll do full careers, the grandpa, the father, the son, the grandson, they're all doing these full careers in the military. And there's other military families that are more like mine where they all do the
sort of, you know, four years or five years and outside things. So that was, that was really the motivation is I just had other things to do.
The other big piece of that was the current timeframe we're in and it's easy for how the people sort of forget this stuff. But those mid 2000s were really ugly time to be in the military, the op tempo was very high. My friends in the Marine Corps were seven months on seven months off seven months on it was a really tough time.
And there was a really big real mindset and this is a bunch of 25 year old men and women who typically think they're invisible, invincible. And yet there was this just genuine mindset of I don't know if I'm coming back from this one very fatalistic way of viewing the world that you typically
see in people mid 20s. And I wanted to, I wanted to get married and have kids. Right. And I just didn't want to bring that dynamic into it overseas multiple combat tours type experience. And so it just seemed like, Hey, you did this. It's time to go let some other 21 year old be a fire breather and kick indoors. And now at the wise old age of 25. It's time to get out and get married and have kids. So that was a lot of it.
To the transition itself question, trans that transition is tough, no matter what. It's a big part of our mission that be roofed it now which we can talk about when we talk later more about like our current state but in helping service members make that transition, even if it's not to us, right.
When we're interviewing folks, even if they don't end up coming to be your fit. It's just being that sort of reassuring steady hand like hey look, this will work, you will get through this there's a lot of places to land with good people that understand where you're coming from.
I think the best story that illustrates how difficult the transition can be was when I was interviewing for one of the first jobs I got outside the military. And it's always tough. The first thing military guys struggle with is how do I translate my resume right.
And so you think well maybe I should be a police officer I should go into security or something with firearms because that's what I just did. And for some people they love it and they do and that's a great transition. But there's that struggle. How do I make my experience relevant to this commercial world.
I remember I was in this interview, and you know the the woman interviewing me was taking me down normal questions and I'm answering them and she says okay well tell me about your leadership experience. And so, awesome. This is an easy one. I got lots of this.
And so I gave her an example. And she goes on on on on on she goes that's military. That's not real leadership. I need to hear an experience of real leadership.
And I was stunned at that statement, and frankly, super angry right just inside just like this is a Stanford graduate San Francisco company, you know just very removed from the world I had just been in.
And her explanation I said what do you mean by that just can you clarify that her explanation was well in the military, people have to do whatever you say no matter what, and that's not leadership in the civilian world that's not true.
And what anybody who's been in the military knows is that's not true.
If you're the type of guy and I'm sure it's true and first responders if you're the type of leader that just thinks you tell people what to do and they do it. You're not going to last long as a leader.
And it is it's leadership by example and it's leadership from the front and it's servant leadership and each of those different terms.
We could unpack for a while.
But the bottom line is it's, you have to be authentic and genuine. There is standing in front of a group of 12 guys briefing them on the mission that we're going to do the next day and we're going to go raid a house looking for, you know, potential insurgent that Intel reports say could be there and you know it's going to be danger.
And that's what leadership is. If there's anything in you that isn't as fully committed to that as they are, they're going to see right through you right that's that is leadership is being willing to go first and and do everything crawl through the mud with your guys.
And so I think that's the example of that type of question it what it highlights me was the incredible cognitive gap between the civilian war civilian world and the experience I just had and how truly difficult it was going to be to even be myself to openly share Oh these are my experiences that I had in the military.
And just a super quick anecdote. I've gotten picked up from the airport by a member of that team and executive assistant who's driving me into the office for the interview. And I've had my day pack right like every guy that you carry all your old gear with you for a long time and I'm finally
ready to go back to the military gear anymore but for the first few years that was all my stuff and and you still I mean you it takes a long time to get out of that mentality of just a warfighter this what I do and so I had my day pack on it so my name and my blood type and all that critical information on it.
And this girl she turned me and she's like hey you think it's probably time to stop carrying that thing around. And it wasn't like I didn't feel ready to let go of that it was it's almost like your security blanket in a way but that was also interesting me to is just the
people had a view was so off from who you really were and what you really did. And that remains to today. Right. At the Irrfit we have surrounded ourselves with fellow veterans for a lot of reasons primarily because you know the best people that served in the military make the best team members.
Right. That is our secret competitive advantage. And when we step outside of that comfort zone there's still so much you know misunderstanding and misperception of what it means to have served in the military that still makes you uncomfortable.
So it's the transition is ongoing. It really is. There's not a moment that you can say oh I'm good. I've made it in the civilian world. So yeah that's been my experience with them.
You have all that said there's some great stories woven into that. Thank you. So Mike same thing with you.
Yeah, I think I was touched on a couple of the key ones and you know one of them being that we truly had the best job. Like we were literally spoiled with the amount of resources we had and responsibility that was placed on our shoulders shoulders as a junior officer and in the community
that we were in that opportunity wasn't in our future again. We would have had to go back and be department heads or executive officers on large ships and not had a level of responsibility to lead you know young men in combat like we did with those sorts of resources.
So it was going to be hard to find that again. So like Gauk said we figured we'd go out on top. And then the other thing and as you know getting older now and realizing that we both have families at home and what it was like for
our team members at that time that deployed and left families at home.
You know it's crazy. I don't think that you know when I was that young officer I didn't have the amount of respect for the senior officers or other folks that were that had you know wives and kids at home and you know the sacrifice that those family members made.
And that went into the decision to get out and it was time like hey I think Alex and I were actually both engaged to be married when we were deployed to Iraq.
We didn't have you know kids or anything like that at home and then my second deployment much later in my career as a reservist. I did have a kid at home at a two year old boy and it's a different experience like that.
So you know as we were transitioning that a lot of it went into one hey I just had the best job ever that's never going to happen again and two like Alex said I'm ready to go to the next phase of my life and have a wife and kids and you know don't really want to leave them behind you know on their own.
Through deployments even though that happened to me anyway so that's a different story.
And then the transition, you know, I'll be honest like I was quite spoiled, and I think this is something that's really important to help people and they transition.
I had a great support system, you know, my wife and my parents and my sister and everyone like that. And then I had a group of friends, you know at the Naval Academy and you know I was serving with.
And I also went to grad school at night so it was like I was still in the military but I was dipping my toe into the civilian sector and learning about it.
So I had more of like a systematic approach but the big thing is that support system. And I think that as veterans are transitioning.
They need to focus on that support system, and it can come in a number of different ways, it can come you know reaching out to people that have already transitioned.
Your family and communicating with them about you know your decision making process and pulling from from their experiences, or maybe friends that are already in the civilian sector.
Don't be afraid to ask questions and admit that you don't know what you want to do with your life.
And I think that the military is getting much better about that, yet, you're fit are supporting a lot of those but they have this program called the skill bridge internships, where when you're still getting paid by the military in your last few months of service,
you can actually go and do an internship with a company and learn about the civilian sector and what you want to do when you grow up for lack of better words so I think that we're getting better at it but I would, you know my only recommendation is, you know, I hate the word networking
it really pains me to say it so I'm not saying go out there and network, but focus on your support system, surround yourself with people that have been through it so you can lean on them and ask questions.
And don't.
Don't feel like you have to get it right right away. It's okay to make mistakes and learn and admit those mistakes and adjust fire or adjust your course, based on what you learned in the transition and that's, you know, kind of what worked for me as I was, you know, come out of the
military and jumping into the civilian sector.
I actually want to emphasize something Mike just said there which is to be patient, right like be patient with it like it's okay if you have a full starter to your time in the civil world it's a big long runway to figure out what you want to do, and what's going to be the right
thing to do so definitely be patient. And also to remember that you are not the only person going through this, you have lots of brothers and sisters who have worn the uniform who've gone through this and trust me they're out there in the civilian world that they will help you
through it, and that's where it is whether it's networking or just understanding who you can reach out to.
Because it's for as unique it is for each person going through it. It's not unique, like we've all been there and there is light on the other side of it and so it's just be patient and know that like this transition you will get through it and you will find solid ground on the
other side and on that other side or other people who have gone through the same thing and you will find you are light years ahead of folks who have never put a uniform on.
So that's the bottom line in terms of loyalty teamwork dedication. Just discipline and attention to detail and focus and mission orientation, all these things that are so ingrained if you wear the uniform, you don't even think about it, you have to pause to actually
call those things out and realize they're part of your character now.
We are in short supply in the civilian world, there is not a crucible that forms people in that. So when you have a 21 year old that goes straight to some private sector job and then at 27, they may be, you know, X in a promotion level.
And you may have to start behind them when you get out, you're going to run past them so fast it's not even funny because those life experiences you have are irreplaceable, and most people don't have them.
Well something that popped in my head as well that I've talked about a little bit on here is using retirees, using their knowledge. I mean you have in our profession, 20, 30 years of experience that walks out of a fire station or a police station one day, and that's it.
So, did you ever get a sense of some of those Vietnam vets that you brought in as consultants, connecting with you guys again, kind of seeing that healing or that tribalism as a positive thing within those veterans themselves?
When you say tribalism actually that is a great phrase to use and it reminds me of a book by Sebastian Younger, right, called Tribe, which you've probably read and if anyone hasn't read it, you should read that book.
It is incredibly insightful on this issue and many others. Yes, exactly.
That's the second one.
It's coming out in about two weeks.
He gets it. He gets it. And in specifics, no. I mean none of the folks that we specifically trained with, did we necessarily build those relations? I personally did. Maybe some of our guys did.
There really wasn't actually, I did not end up having a mentor to help me through the transition. We just sort of like, you know, bulldog through it on our own.
But I think what you highlight is a critically important thing, is it's the reach back. It's that, hey, once you're out and established, you owe it to the folks coming behind you to help them make that same transition and there has to be that focus and that sense of responsibility.
One, personally, it's a self-interested one.
Again, military team members, former military, they make the best team members. That's just a reality and I feel very comfortable saying that.
Flip side is, look, we all serve with dirtbags in our units. Everyone knows that just because you put a uniform on doesn't mean you're squared away. So you have to sort through that and find the right people.
But that's one part of it. But I think it is. There's a responsibility. You can't just take care of yourself and then be good to go.
And that's been interesting for us because when you get out as a 25-year-old or anywhere along the lines and you sort of still think of yourself that way in your mind.
But then you look back and you look at all these young guys and young girls wearing the uniform today and going through an incredibly similar experience to what we went through.
And when you look at culture as a whole, that's not that common, right? Like a 45-year-old and a 25-year-old really don't have similar experiences today. They're in different generations. They grew up differently.
The world looks different to each of them from their perspectives.
But when we have that commonality of experience of being in the military, it's incredible. It could be an 85-year-old today and it could be someone who's just getting out.
Yet their experience is more similar than that 25-year-old's to his peers or to her peers.
So there's that responsibility that it's a full life cycle. And for the veterans that are out there in the business world, they need to take that responsibility on because one of our realizations was who is going to take care of us except for ourselves, right?
Let's stop looking around and saying someone should do something for the veterans. We should do something for the veterans. Who knows better how to do that than us?
And that's essentially what we've been trying to do and both personally and professionally. And I don't think there's really much more important than that, quite honestly.
Beautiful. No, I agree 100%. I think that's a great way of putting it. I think in our professions, we have exactly the same responsibility too.
After we retire, to help the transition and also those in the profession, making sure those who are retired are okay because from a mental health standpoint, I think that transition is very hard for someone that's seen death and destruction for 20, 30 years in their community and then one day they're just off the books now.
Not even classified on any of the statistics as a firefighter or as a police officer as they end up whichever way they end up.
Well, I want to make sure that we visit the story of BeaverFit. I know it's a fellow Brit where it all started.
So tell me about the genesis of that and then kind of both your journey through TRX and into forming that company over on the other side of the Atlantic.
Yeah, you referenced TRX. That's a good place to start. That's where Mike and I both landed post military service and what our focus there. And so for those who don't know TRX is sort of that yellow and black strap. You've probably seen it everywhere. The suspension training.
Our jobs there were to help get that product into the military. And so that's where we learned how to, as a vendor, go back and introduce capabilities and help to sell those back into the military. And that was our focus.
As a part of that, we spent time overseas in the UK trying to do the same thing with the MOD, the Ministry of Defense over there. And that's where we met Tom Beaver.
And at the time he had just come up with this concept for a container gym, right?
Essentially a shipping container that had squat racks affixed to the outside and then customized storage on the inside to hold all of the weight equipment and all the racks.
And anyone who's been in the military and served overseas, or I would say, and I apologize to any first responders, our experience just happens to be military. But I'm sure a lot of this is universal to first responders in that you're at facilities where all of your equipment to do your job is.
But maybe there's not fitness equipment. Oh, but guess what? You still have to maintain peak fitness for operational readiness. So good luck with that.
That has always been a challenge in the military service. And everyone's seen pictures online of the sort of jerry-rigged fitness things that people make up, you know, a steel bar with sandbags on the end or any number of ways that you find a way to sort of lift and move weight while you're overseas.
So when we saw the container gym, it was an instant light bulb of, oh, this is it.
Because again, overseas, you eat in shipping containers, you sleep in shipping containers, you buy DVDs from third country nationals out of shipping containers. Everything is in shipping containers.
And yet there wasn't an expeditionary fitness solution. And so that was really the light bulb of, oh, this is the next thing in fitness.
And so that was where when we saw it, it was just, hey, Tom, like we got to bring this to the US military. And so that was really the genesis of that. About a year after meeting Tom, Mike and I left the company we were at and said, hey, let's do this.
Let's start BeaverFit in North America. And then it's just been a rocket ship ride since then.
And I'll put it over to you in a sec, Mike, but just as a backstory. So Tom's dad was a bridge builder, is that right? So I'm assuming he had the iron work kind of connection there. And then he was also SAS Reserve.
So Tom had gone through the SAS Reserves up until the point of being commissioned and then did not opt for the commissioning program. And I think you may end up talking to him. So I'll let him tell his story.
But yes, so Beaver Bridges, which is what his dad was the second generation on Beaver Bridges, that was their family company. And so Tom grew up welding and fabricating and learning how to do steel structural work as part of the bridge building business.
And that was really important to us when we started BeaverFit here in North America, because that was the knowledge, the engineering knowledge. Mike and I are not engineers, right?
I think technically Mike has a Bachelor of Science because he went to the Naval Academy, but I can tell you neither of us are math and science people.
And that was a huge help to have that engineering background, to have that professional steelworking background. And it was really important to us.
And I think one of that is why when we started the company here in America, it was sort of a no-brainer, like, yeah, it's BeaverFit because of that heritage with Beaver Bridges and that background.
And honestly, in our early years, when it was just the two of us running around trying to make something happen, that really helped.
When we would sit down with folks and we would explain, well, we're back, there's this bridge building company and they do the engineering work and they back what we're doing.
And now we have a full-time team of five to six engineers and all kinds of professional engineering firms that we work with on the outside. But at the time, that history was critically important to what we were doing.
So, Mike, from your perspective, I want to get to the first responder profession because I can tell you a million reasons why there are so many areas of what you do now will benefit our professions.
But supply and demand, what were the needs that you started seeing yourselves being able to meet within the military specifically?
James, for sure. I'll start off by saying one thing that we really pride ourselves in BeaverFit, whether it was that initial container gym idea or we had a footlocker that we called the gym box, is we're not the type of company that's going to sit in a conference room and whiteboard our own ideas out.
We want to go out there in the field. We want to be side by side with our customers, whether that be military first responders or CrossFit gyms or commercial gym owners and talk about what are their challenges?
What are they trying to overcome and how can we come up with solutions to help them overcome those challenges?
So, and that container gym is the perfect idea, like literally, like, hey, how do we get fitness equipment in the Expedition environment so we can maintain peak readiness anywhere in the globe, no matter where we are?
And that's continued to happen, you know, even as we've expanded our product line at BeaverFit. We now do rappel towers.
We do full on facility build outs because people are looking for a little bit more than just a container gym. They want a recovery area.
They want more strength-inducing equipment. They want cardio. So now we build, we call them Beaver domes. We take our containers and we line them up, you know, 60 feet apart and we cover them with a tension fabric structure
and build out like a division one strength and conditioning facility. So it's just crazy to see the requirements continue to move around and expand.
And even in the first responder space, to be honest, James, we've sat down with those customers and sometimes they have limited budgets.
So we work with them and say, OK, what are some of your other training tasks or in the military we call mission essential tasks that we can build out this multifaceted solution.
So you can still do your strength and conditioning training, your cardio, but in the first responder space, you can do your forceful entry training or your breaching.
We have an entanglement trainer. We have ladders. You can do ladder drills. So we really take pride in that requirements based design, not sitting in our offices.
Let's get out there in the field. Let's train with our customers. Let's suffer with them and understand what some of their challenges are.
So we can at the end of the day, design something that can help them win.
So through through your lens, what have been some of the challenges in the first responder space as a vendor that you didn't seem to have the same issues with in the military?
I had one of them. One of them was budget. It's a challenge because the DOD obviously has massive budgets for training equipment, travel, all sorts of different stuff. And there's pots of money that you can pick from for performance equipment or tactical training equipment.
On the first responder side, a lot of it is sometimes funded through grants at different organizations or there's multiple approval levels to get something funded. So I would say funding was a big one. A space is another one.
A lot of these locations in the first responders, they don't have space for this sort of equipment. So we were always trying to come up with, like I was saying, unique solutions. They were multifaceted.
So it helped them justify the budget. And then two, we're space conscious or we're able to create training space outside of the firehouse or the police station so they could accomplish this sort of training.
So I would say the two is budget and space were some of the challenges within first responders.
I would jump on that and add two things. The other piece I think we sort of just earlier is the sort of Byzantine framework of how it's structured. Right.
There's no clear, if we want to work with the army, you can see the hierarchy from any given company in the field to its battalion, to its brigade, to its division, right, to its core.
I mean, you go all the way up. And so the military can really act from an enterprise level. And that's clearly not the case in first responder, right?
Local, state, volunteer, non-volunteer, there's so many different aspects of that. But then the other piece is the culture. And that was something we had to sort of come to with humility.
There was this mindset of, oh, well, we're in the military, first responders, that's sort of like the military. We'll just we'll talk to them like they're the military.
And that didn't resonate. It clearly didn't. And we had to learn that humility of, look, our experience, the relevant is different than the first responder experience.
And certainly the military and first responder experience have more in common than the civilian experience, but they're different.
And that the the life cycle and the world that first responders live in is in a lot of ways more intense than military.
Everyone thinks, oh, the military is so intense. The amount of combat time in a combat tour is a fraction of that time.
The real mental stress, I think, of a military deployment is precisely that always like waiting for something to happen.
Is that piece of garbage going to explode? Is that piece of garbage going to explode? You know, a nine hour convoy can age you age you 30 years just just worrying about that.
Even when nothing happens, it's almost easier when things go kinetic.
But the first responders, I feel like that's that's every day and it's nonstop and you almost live on a deployment.
And so that that was another big thing that we're still frankly learning is the how to truly communicate with that community, because we're a very military centric company.
That's our world view. And so we've had to try to learn some humility and figure out how to speak to the first responders as if we were first responder, not as if we were the military.
James, one quick example that I think is really interesting and highlights some of the differences is in the army.
They've come out with a new fitness test, the army combat fitness test.
And previous to this test, it was just push ups, sit ups and a run.
And now they have to do a deadlift, they have to do a med ball throw, they have to do a couple of leg tucks, which is basically elbows to knee.
And they have to do a shuttle run with a sled.
Every single person in the army has to do that. Everyone knows the standard.
First responders, and that comes with the top down.
First responders, every single first responder unit has their own test and their own standard to meet to.
So it's hard to understand what those different requirements are when we're talking to the various units, because I don't mean to say this in a negative way, but sometimes the standards are all over the place.
And the intent of that unit can be very much different than the one down the road.
Whereas in the military, we know what the standards are and it's easy to identify what some of the gaps are in meeting that standard and provide solutions to help them get across those standards.
Yeah, and I think you're absolutely right.
And one of the frustrations I have is the best departments have a high level entry test. They have annual tests. Some might even be punitive at the absolute pinnacle, but a lot of them don't.
And it's funny, I just had a couple of lifeguards on recently and I used to be a lifeguard back in the day.
And of course we had annual tests. If you can't swim, you're not going to be a lifeguard. If you can't make the toes, make the rescues.
But sadly, in first responder professions, a lot of us have one to get hired and that's it.
You may have some sort of kind of almost like facade of a fitness test, but it's non-punitive. It doesn't mean anything really other than if you take a job seriously, then you compete against your friends that actually also take it seriously.
But you have this complete spectrum of ownership and leadership in the performance space. So therefore you have a spectrum of the amount of priority given to strength and conditioning in certain departments.
One thing that I think is completely understandable though is a lot of these departments have trailers, have very old fire stations, are in the middle of a busy city wherever it is and space absolutely is an issue.
And it's something that I've kind of conceded as a reason to be a barrier somewhat for some crews when it comes to strength and conditioning.
So I think what's cool about what you guys have are solutions to that. If you have a couple of parking spaces in the back, if you have a wall that can have things anchored into it, there are some great options.
So just kind of painting the picture, let's say a suburban department built a certain way, it's not going to have any expansion, but has a decent amount of land in the back, some concrete slabs and parking areas.
What are some of the solutions you bring to these departments when space is a challenge?
James, I think you nailed a couple of points. All we need is a couple of parking spots and we can turn that into a functional training space that you can perform the strength and conditioning program to make sure you're ready to do your job.
So we have whether it's a single container or you take two containers and you put a shelter between them. And then one of our newest products that we're coming out with is a trailer based product.
And I think the advantage of that is now maybe you have a couple of those at your schoolhouse, your headquarters unit.
And if you have some peer fitness leaders within the first responder unit, they can drive that around to some of the outline posts and conduct workouts with that similar equipment so that there's the same standard at those different posts.
So we just have a multitude of solutions. And then the other one I think has been more popular with the first responders is we call it a gym box.
Basically a two foot by four foot box that looks like a foot locker that would be at the end of your rack that you store equipment in. Well, you can attach a squat rack to that and have all your equipment on the inside.
And the great thing about that, it's good for flexible use spaces. So if you have some place that is a meeting room or a storage area for a vehicle, okay, cool.
Have this push off the side against the wall, pull that vehicle out, and then you could quickly set it up and run your workout.
So now that maintenance space that you use to maintain your vehicles can quickly be converted into a workout space for a couple hours a day.
And people can come in and train and then it can be quickly packed up and pushed off to the sides of your vehicles can get back in there.
So I would say that between that gym box and then being able to convert a couple outdoor parking spots into a training space or a mobile trailer, we've got a number of solutions that are pretty unique and can help the first responder.
The first responder units get after their physical mission.
Yeah, no, I've seen, I saw the YouTube video, the gym box, and it's amazing because you end up having, is it four pull up bars on that too? Have I got that right?
Yeah, you can do the dual racks. You can put them back to back and then yeah, you'll have four pull up bars, two squat racks, and you have storage for your equipment.
And the great thing is, it's like, same thing with our container gyms is the boxes themselves act as the anchor for the racks.
We've all done pull ups or squats on freestanding racks or you always have to bolt them into the ground.
I think the unique thing about those couple products is the box is the anchor.
So you have an incredibly stable training platform to squat or do bench press off or do your pull ups or your suspension training type of movements.
Absolutely. Well, I mentioned as well, there's all these different equipment suppliers.
Some I've seen very obviously don't really align in any way, shape or form to our professions.
Some, you know, some do. There are some that in all honesty are low bid, low quality.
And so I've seen people fight and fight and fight for a budget finally for a wellness initiative, only to have half the equipment broken a year later and then a bunch of told you so's after that.
So the equipment itself is also very important. So tell me about Greyman gear.
Well, if I could jump in, I think what you nailed in that question is that when you're looking in the military is going through this exact issue right now.
This sort of paradigm shift is there has been a commercial fitness industry in America in this country that serves commercial and consumer fitness needs.
Right. It's designed for those box retail gyms. It's designed for the home or garage gym user.
The big names you referenced off leader in consumer equipment leader in division one sort of S and C strength rooms. Right.
Those are their target markets. That's who they're catering to.
That is not the first responder community. It's not the military.
And that's been the big realization of the last eight years of building beer fit here in the States is that's who we are is.
We're catering to those environments. We're not catering to box commercial.
We're not catering to the home user. It's not that our equipment doesn't have applicability there,
but that's not our starting point. It's not our focus. Our focus is Mike talked about requirements based design.
It's looking at what does the usage pattern look like for service members. And so what is that like specific? What does that mean?
Well, training outdoors. Right. That's a big part of it. First responders. Your space limited.
What train outside in the military? You train outside anyway. You're an expeditionary environment. That's where you're going to go.
The other issues is use usage patterns. You put a kettlebell or a medicine ball in somebody's garage.
They're using it for what? A couple hours a day, three to five days a week. That equipment is going to last a long time.
The quality of it doesn't have to be as high for that usage pattern of one person fast forward all the way to like military where you have a company of soldiers falling in on a piece of equipment and using it for an hour.
And then an hour later, another company falls in and does the same thing. And then you repeat that all week.
They can destroy equipment in a heartbeat that could take even a year in a high use commercial gym to wear out.
And so as opposed to doing what you said is having people fall on the sort of, oh, whoops, I just, you know, really wanted this really great equipment.
And now I got really cheap stuff because maybe there's a bid process that's the lowest priced.
And so I just got junk out of the market. Or even when you go and buy the high end equipment from, say, the best brand for a D1 strength room.
But you but you need to put it outside and then it rusts in a year. Right. Like it's not designed for what your usage is.
And so that's really what has driven both the large sort of infrastructure be refit equipment.
But then Greymane gear, that's our accessory line. Accessory line. So everything that we put into a locker.
So a container gym, med balls, barbells, kettlebells, jump ropes, all of those types of items that make up a functional strength training gym.
Over time, we have developed our own line of those specifically catering it for outdoor use and specifically only making it here in the States.
And so that's what Greymane gear is. It's equipment that is requirement based design specifically for outdoor use for tactical users.
So first responders in the military. And it's all sourced here in the States.
And so again, what does that mean? Hey, you say it's designed for outdoor use, but how is it? So take the med ball.
Med balls for a long time, but just leather. Right. You slam a leather on the ground. You're leaving leather out in the sun.
Your seams are going to burst. It's going to get destroyed. I mean, the sun destroys everything, but it's really going to rip through that.
Somebody did a Kevlar med ball. Sounds great. Kevlar markets well, but it's still the seams will still burst if anything.
And sometimes it was worse than the leather because the type of pressure the Kevlar would put as it resized in the sun and getting wet and getting dry could burst the seams faster.
So what do we do? We have and Mike, you could speak to this probably more depth,
but we use a rubber type of med ball from a supplier in the industry that up until this point was making marine buoys. Right.
So they're creating buoys in a maritime environment that are designed to handle.
I mean, there is no more corrosive, worse environment than a buoys in. It's in salt water and it's in the sunshine. Right.
Or it could be freshwater. But they had to come up with technology to protect that equipment.
So we use that technology specifically in our gray man gear med balls.
There's UV additives in the rubber that help prevent the breakdown from sunshine. Right.
That's just one example of the type of very detailed product focus that goes into this accessory line because it's designed first for the tactical first responder and not for the commercial gym.
So we always use that round peg square hole analogy.
If you're a tactical person and you're looking to the commercial fitness industry for equipment, you're going to get around peg.
They're going to try to say this carefully. They're going to try to put into a square hole.
And that's not what we're doing. We are creating our equipment to fit into the need first.
Hey, then if it has applicability to the commercial user, great. Let's go apply it there.
But our starting point is always the folks that put on the uniform and what do they need from an equipment perspective.
Beautiful. Well, the other thing just on the inventory that you've got, I know that you ended up supplying a lot for the Army physical test.
And there's some great tools even within that. The hex bar thing is great for deadlifts and farmers carriers and things like that.
But you also have the sandbag and you have the sleds and the kettlebells, even the kettlebells. I got big monkey hands.
So the design of your handle, the regular design, my pinky knuckle can never fit in. I have to have it on the outside.
Just seeing the tools that you have again shows that with that being the focus, I think sleds and sandbags are amazing for fire specifically police as well.
But I mean, for us, we push pull, we drag, we carry. So those are all tools that are pertinent to our professions as well.
James, I think you nailed it. And I would say that, you know, on top of what Alex said, that, you know, our team and the team that we build here is all in.
And we always tell people that, excuse my French on this one, but we have a high give-a-fun factor.
So we're not in it for the single transaction with our customers. We're in it with them for the long haul.
And we're going to listen to those ideas. Like I said, a lot of these products and even that kettlebell and the design to it, we didn't sit by ourselves and come up with that.
That's getting out there in the field saying, hey, what are some of the challenges with the product on the market?
Oh, wow, I leave my med ball outside and it fails. Or I'm doing mobility work on a kettlebell and it has a skinny base on it.
Whenever I'm smashing up my calf on it, that kettlebell tips over. Okay, let's get a wider, flatter base on that kettlebell.
So those are the type of things that the team that we have is just deep into that stuff.
They want to geek out on them with our customers. And then we are also spoiled.
I tell people all the time that our engineers and our fabrication team is just incredible because they can take the craziest caveman paper napkin sketch of an idea,
turn it into a photorealistic 3D rendering that you can really envision what that product would be.
And then once we slap the table on it, our fabrication team and some of our other suppliers have the ability to make that stuff come to life.
And I think that that's different. We're trying to remain agile to that.
And as companies get bigger, sometimes that innovation or that work side by side with the customers to design something specific to their needs gets harder and harder.
And I'll be honest, as we grow, that is getting harder. But it's something that is at our core that we're going to continue to do is make sure that we're side by side with our customers,
have that high give-a-fuck factor to design solutions that are going to help them meet their mission to win.
Well, another area that really struck me was you mentioned the entanglement maze, the breaching prop.
One of my pet peeves is we go and do what in the real world will be a very high stress environment.
Maybe we've climbed 10 flights of stairs before. Maybe we've had to hump a lot of equipment, you know, two, 300 meters to get to wherever we're going.
But in the training setting, we're under an easy up. We're waiting until our turn comes and we go and do whatever the skill is.
And then we high five each other and then go get some Gatorade.
I love the fact that you have the combination of the strength and conditioning equipment with some of these props.
So you're able to create a level of stress, whether it's physical first and get the heart rate up and then perform those skills under duress.
So tell me about that combination and some of the applications you've seen in the first responder professions.
Yeah, James, you obviously are right on board with kind of our mission and intent.
And that's why we came up with the tactical line is exactly what you said.
Hey, you know, we're sitting there, we're breaching a door and you're just standing in line behind somebody, then go and you hit it with the operational.
You're actually environment during a high heart rate environment before you do that.
So that entanglement trainer, we call it actually the firefighter safety and survival locker.
It has a squat rack and rope climb tower. The inside has all your kettlebells so that you can get in that high heart, high, high heart rate, high stress environment before you go and perform those tactical applications.
And it's amazing seeing the difference of somebody that's pretty smoked out under a lot of stress trying to get through that entanglement trainer with all their gear on compared to just walking up and standing in line for a while before you do it.
So it's we're passionate behind it. We think it's incredibly important that combination.
And it's probably a phrase that's overused these days, but you have to train like you fight.
And we know that's what happens in the operational environment.
So what can we do to best simulate that in a training environment? And that's where we get the combination behind the human performance and the tactical side of your fit.
And to echo that, what you put your finger on, James, is the normal way that people split is they split your human performance training.
So how you're training your body from, say, your sports specific skill training, right?
Or your tactical specific skill training.
So you may train in the gym to get your body ready, but then you're going to go out and train a different day on a training apparatus.
But that's not how it works in real life, as you pointed to.
And so that's the hybridization of sports specific or mission specific skills combined with human performance all wrapped into one device.
And you reference, I mean, I think of like the Mandalay Bay situation and how the first responders, they had to climb however many flights of stairs so they could get up there.
Right. One, you're climbing stairs, you're going to be smoked.
But two, you're climbing stairs under heavy load while adrenaline is pumping, which is going to just drain you that much more.
How can you replicate that? Right.
That's been the challenge is how do we bring those two things together?
And it's part of a motto that we use at the company for some of our products, which is prepare, train, execute.
And that's not just some fancy marketing term.
Trust me, the one thing we're not great at is fancy marketing.
I'm not either.
But we're doing better. For sure.
We're doing better there.
But when you think of that, prepare, train, execute, it's really it's prepare the body, right?
Train for the actual mission or point of view, and then you go execute.
And so we're always trying to hybridize and bring together that prepare and train because that's where it all needs to happen at the same time.
I mean, the isolated gym, that's where you get the movement right.
Right. That's how you learn how to move and how to get strong.
But you do need to do that isolated because what you don't want to do is load up the wrong movement in a dynamic environment.
And that's how you lead to injury.
So there's a time and a place to separate those. But when it comes to really being an experienced sort of high level performance team, you've got to start bringing those things together in your training.
And that's that's a lot of what our equipment seeks to do.
Yeah. Well, I think the other thing that, again, you know, just seeing the application and we're eating my having this conversation is because I agree with them with, you know, your philosophy.
And you have this high level military background and you have Tom's high level engineering background, his high level operator history as well.
But it's just application. So for me, say you're doing a collapse or, you know, entanglement scenario and you're able to use the sled.
OK, this is the push is now going to simulate advancing the hose line.
All right, you've made it here. Now we're on the step. We're going to climb X amount stairs.
Now maybe we'll do some sort of breaching prop or something, who knows? And then, you know, now we're going to do a drag.
We're pulling someone out and then now there's a clap.
So now by the time you get to that collapse maze, you're already at a steady rate of fatigue or the breaching prop rather than fighting your way in.
Maybe you're fighting your way out. Maybe, you know, the Mandalay Bay scenario, the guy's still alive and he's, you know, coming at you with some sort of weapon, you know.
So creating those scenarios, I think, can paint a picture for responders and take away the fear of training.
Because what I see with the more let's say let's take CrossFit and I love CrossFit.
I coach at a gym here, but let's say it's the snatch. It's the Turkish get up.
It's some of these things where a lot of my peers are scared of looking stupid doing, scared of showing people, hey, I'm not as strong as you thought I was.
I'm not as fit, which no one cares. The point is that you're showing up in your training.
But with the sleds, with the sandbags, with the kettlebell carries, you're able to get people to simulate what we would in a real world scenario.
You don't have to pull a bunch of stuff off a fire engine and then we get a call and now we have to load it all back up before we can go pull someone out of a burning building.
And so, you know, the combination of the kind of strongman tactical athlete training with some skill scenarios where we have to have that kind of acute motor control,
I think is a really, really good way of training under duress without needing an entire drill tower or all the gear off the fire engine, for example.
Yeah, a lot of times we can keep it simple and show, you know, the team members that we're training with the why behind it.
I think, you know, that sort of stuff like, hey, why do we do some of those movements that are popular and cross-fitted?
I think if we can do that side by side, you see that connection and people understand the why behind they need to train that way.
So that we talk about a little bit, but we want to be operational ready and perform our jobs.
But also, injury prevention is a huge one, whether we talk military or first responders.
And if we know that we're going to have to do those movements operationally, let's train to them in the in the training environment.
And so we can simulate them to try to prevent injuries and maintain our force, whether it's the first responder force or the military force for longevity.
So we can have a better, healthier career, you know, as we continue to operate at our older age.
We're all similar age here on this call and we're experiencing that.
And we know that that sort of stuff is so important these days to pay attention to the loads that are going to be in our body and make sure that we're prepared to handle those.
Yeah, well, just one more thing before we kind of go to where people listening can find out more, you know, maybe even try and get you guys to to come to their facility.
One of the big problems that we suffer from, I think, is just in the fire service side.
I think it's in the country as well, but is that short sighted mentality, the false economy, where for that budget year, well, this set of equipment was cheaper, you know, but then you look over five, ten years, it was a complete waste of money.
What as far as what do you have as far as longevity and guarantees of people that want to invest, you know, looking at a price tag is more than, say, you know, the Sears weight set that they saw
so that they can see that longer picture that's going to be a much better investment for them at a station at a police facility over X amount of years.
I mean, it's always a trade off, right? I mean, you hear the the over said saying you can have something fast, you can have it cheaper, you can have it right, but you can't have all three or you can only have one of them.
I like to think we do two of those, right? We make it the highest quality and we actually can do it pretty quickly.
Our operations team cringes when they hear that. But but but in reality, like you're going to get what you pay for from an equipment perspective.
And I think that there's even more of an awareness now, though, of it's not even just the equipment. It's not about the spec of that equipment.
It's about the company that backs the equipment. What type of commitment are they making to you?
Are they just a company where the leaders there hide behind the facade of it being a corporation and they do the bare minimum and you're just a transaction to them?
That's we're all used to that environment, but that's not today. And I think people, both consumers at every level institutionally, I think government buyers should be thinking this way.
Just like home buyers do is who's the company that I'm participating with? Are these people part of my team? Are they genuinely invested?
Like if I'm a fire department and I just begged, bought, stole, borrowed, whatever it was to get this grant that I just got, how do we avoid that scenario?
Like, you just got a bunch of cheap equipment. Everybody goes, yep, see, told you so you wasted your time. That's that's what you have to seek out.
It isn't just, oh, this kettlebell is better than that kettlebell, right?
Like it's so much more than that, because when you have a genuine commitment from the other team on the other side of the table, that's where our team members are showing up.
Something breaks. Something is not what a customer intended. We put somebody on an airplane and we get them out there to fix it.
Right. Like we make it right because it all boils down to like a sort of another internal mantra that we have, which is you've got to do the right things for the right reasons.
And the transactional arm's length sort of, oh, you bought my product and my warranty says this.
So you're out of luck, man. Screw that. And screw those people.
Like, quite honestly, that's not an honest way of doing business or engaging. And it shows that you don't really care.
And as maybe as sort of Dilbert or silly or naive as that sounds, I disagree.
We've tried to run our company on these principles all along.
And what you see is it motivates the hell out of your own team and it motivates your customers.
And it's a genuine support where we have guys wanting to get on airplanes and go support customers when it's got nothing to do with the sale.
There's nothing in it for us except that the customer is going to benefit. That's what's in it for us.
Genuinely. I mean, we're a for-profit company, clearly, but you have to have that genuine connection to the customer and really want to see them succeed.
Or else it's just a transactional interaction. So I think that's what people should be looking at.
I mean, there's you could look at product specs and pricing all day long.
But are you getting a partner who's going to help you achieve your goals or are you just having a transaction?
We want to provide value well, well beyond the initial purchase and continue to maintain that relationship.
And honestly, sometimes, James, less equipment is better.
We want to focus on the capability that our customer is trying to get out of that set of equipment.
And there's going to be a lot of times like, hey, no, you actually need to buy less because you're going to get the capability to train to your mission or what your goals are with less equipment.
So let's save that money and spend it on something else for right now.
And maybe once you expand your mission set or you want to do more things with your performance program, we can add more equipment.
But we try to focus on that capability. And if you really want to get into equipment specs, we can.
We have a lifetime warranty in our structural steel and welds, 10-year warranty on pretty much any of our equipment.
But all that kind of stuff, I'll be honest with you, I think it's marketing fluff.
Like Alex said, if a customer has an issue, we are going to go above and beyond to make that issue right for them.
And there's proof in the pudding of the number of times we've done that from our customers at the highest level.
When we delivered 18,000 hex bars to the US Army and some of them had defects and we immediately replaced all of them to the lowest consumer that has issues with a single kettlebell, we'll go above and beyond to fix it.
And that goes to what Alex said a number of times, the team and their commitment to being part of that community and continuing to provide value to our customers for the long haul and not just that initial transaction.
And just to chime in on that, James, it actually goes all the way back to one of the questions you asked us in the beginning.
And it may sound strange to make this connection.
But when I talked about when you're going into like a hut in Iraq and you see the other, you see the people sort of huddled up on the floor and they're scared of you and you see the humanity there, that's the same concept with your customer is you have to put yourself in their seat.
You have to see that humanity. This is not a transactional relationship where we just want people's money. We don't.
Right. Like you have to see like, what if I was on the other side of that and I'm a personal trainer and I just got a loan to invest in this $30,000, you know, beyond trailer that's going to enable me to go do training all over the world.
I'm going to go do training all over my area and really open up my business. But that's it. That's my that's my shot. I shot my shot.
Like it needs to work for them. Just getting the purchase order. That's not the end of it. That's the start of the relationship. And then we want to make sure that works for them.
Not sure it's good for us if they succeed. But at the end of that transaction is another person on their journey in life, trying to make their way, trying to build a business to take care of their family.
Just like Mike said, that's really what people are trying to do on the other side of the world, too. So it's that understanding of the sort of common humanity and what we're going through.
And I know that sounds very up in the clouds, but it's incredibly tangible because if you don't have that genuine motivation and everything we're saying is just words and you're just saying it to try to get a purpose.
And that's not the case. So it's it's there has to be that deep level of commitment from the ownership of a company, from the team members, from the from everybody who's involved.
It has to be genuine or else you're just you're just making noise. Absolutely. Well, I mean, that's one of the reasons why I started this podcast, because I lost friends.
I buried friends. That was the foundation of this whole project. And, you know, one of the missions is obviously a physical mission.
Another one is a mental health mission and all these other elements that are attached to become the global healthy human being.
And I hope that after this last year, the more sensible of us are going to realize there was a huge health message behind that. And, you know, we're going to keep adding to maybe better food and more exercise and that kind of thing.
I'm hoping there's a lot of people listening to this that are very, very interested that see a company who is veteran founded international as well, because that's important.
I love the fact this is going to be heard for Beaver Fit in the UK as well.
That understands tactical space, understands that in an engine bay, maybe the barbells won't be put in some pristine gym on the inside and it's not going to fall apart.
So people listening, where are the best places for them to go online to begin the process of finding out how much it would cost to outfit their department?
And as you said, big or small, whether it's a volunteer looking for a single cowbell through to maybe a headquarters of a big department looking for a proper gym.
Yeah, I mean, look, if you're looking for where to find more information on the web, there's two places.
It's Beaver Fit, Google Beaver Fit, Beaver Fit USA dot com or Beaver Fit dot com is going to take you to either our European site or North American site.
And then Greymane gear dot com. That's our accessory line. And those are the two places where there's more information.
What those sites do a really good job of is trying to direct people to where they need to go because really what it is, they need to get in touch with our team.
And so you go on those sites, you look around for the product specs, but really just fill out any of those forms that say, hey, learn more information and our team will get a hold of that.
They'll be very responsive and it's a very consultative type of relationship there.
So they'll get in touch and walk through what works or doesn't work and frankly come up with creative problem solvings, particularly for government entities on how to fund it.
I mean, if you think, well, my fire station will never get funded. Don't give up. I mean, this is our team's job.
Their job is to help find grants and align you with funding. It's not just presenting product specs.
So there's a lot of support that can be found through the website.
And then our team will walk people all the way, start to finish through how to even acquire funding and make the acquisition.
If I need to add to that, Mike.
No, I think Alex nailed it. And, you know, our social media channels are getting better and better.
So if you go to be your fit on Instagram and be your fit USA and then the last one is obviously a form that's getting more and more popular.
LinkedIn. Our team is very active on LinkedIn, sharing, you know, recent installations or just even stuff from the community about, you know, how to train or whether tactically with human performance.
So I don't want to ignore the Instagram and LinkedIn social media channels that were always putting out what I think is great content and trying to participate in that community.
Yeah. Well, just another add on as well. I see there's a UK based fitness group, 22 Smoking Aces that aligns with you guys.
There's Reorg, which is an organization I'm very passionate about, which is the Royal Marines Jiu Jitsu group, who, again, helps a lot of wounded warrior and people transitioning.
And it seems like you guys are aligning with all those as well. So I just want to say thank you so much.
I think it's it's amazing what Tom started, what you guys, you know, carry the torch over here, but it's needed.
You know, there's a huge need for healthier responders, whether it's them being able to perform their job at a higher level and just as important, if not more, them going home to their families at the end of the shift.
So thank you so much for coming on today. Thank you for kind of educating us all, not only on the Riverines, but obviously the the BeaverFit and Greymane products.
And I'm excited to hear from you and see if people reach out, because I think this is a great solution and a great opportunity to eliminate what were excuses in the past.
Lack of equipment, can't put it outside, not enough space. You're bringing solutions to all of these.
So thank you both for being so generous with your time today.
James, thank you. You know what you're doing for the community with Behind the Shield and giving folks a platform to share stories and experiences.
I think it's just incredible. And that's how we can all learn. So just appreciate the platform and the ability to share with the community.
Thank you, James.