Underneath The Kimono: Episode 001

Whoa… it’s been a while. But we’re back.

The Budo Brothers Podcast has been reinvented and rebranded as Underneath the Kimono.

This time around, we’re stripping things down, taking ourselves a little less seriously, and giving you more of a behind-the-scenes look at what’s actually going on in our world—what we’re building, what we’re thinking about, what’s challenging us, and what’s inspiring us.

This is a place for us to connect and catch up. We’ll talk entrepreneurship, martial arts, creativity, innovation, new ideas, the ups and downs of building Budo Brothers, and, of course, plenty of jiu-jitsu.

We don’t know exactly what the cadence of the podcast will be yet—and that’s kind of the point. We want to keep it loose, genuine, and fun.

In this first episode back, we catch you up on what we’ve been doing over the last couple of years, where Budo Brothers is headed, some of the new products we’re working on, and the concept of Sutemi—full commitment with no turning back.

If you enjoy the podcast and want to support what we’re doing, check out our book Joy-Jitsu: The Art of Living a Joyful Life.

We wrote Joy-Jitsu with our good friend David Badurina as a practical guide to applying many of the lessons we’ve learned through martial arts to everyday life. It’s about perseverance, gratitude, authenticity, purpose, overcoming adversity, and maintaining a white belt mentality—staying open to learning, growth, and evolution no matter where you are in life.

Grab Joy-Jitsu here:
https://www.budobrothers.com/collections/home-page/products/joy-jitsu-book

Want to connect with us more directly? Join the Budo Brothers community on Skool to connect with us and other like-minded martial artists, entrepreneurs, creators, and people committed to continuing to grow.

Join us on Skool:
https://www.skool.com/budobrothers

And if you want to check out the gear, apparel, training tools, and other things we’re creating at Budo Brothers:

Shop Budo Brothers:
https://www.budobrothers.com

Welcome to Underneath the Kimono. We hope you enjoy the ride.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

We have officially burnt the boats and there's no turning back. And I, like you said, Kyle, I am never going to go and get another J O B.

unknown 0:11

No.

SPEAKER_00 0:11

It's not for us. No.

SPEAKER_01 0:13

It's not for us. And I know there's a probably a few people out there who are maybe on the fence or hate their job or hate their life because they're working in a certain space. You can build up enough courage in order to chase what it is that your heart tells you to do, what your soul tells you to do. At least no matter what, you're going to be at peace within yourself. And there's nothing that is worth that peace. I would rather be broke under a bridge and have that peace within myself than to be in torment in a location or vocation that is unauthentically me and kills my soul. And as two guys who are blessed in order to have found something that we love, I hope that for anybody listening, that you could get to that space too.

SPEAKER_00 1:08

We are back. The Budo Brothers podcast is back and we are rebranding it as Underneath the Kimono. What's going on behind the scenes? We're just gonna get raw, no plan, just wing it, slap a studio together, have some fun, pour a drink, and join us.

SPEAKER_01 1:28

Two guys on lawn chairs talking about what's going on. We are inherently builders. We love to build things, and we wanted to build this podcast and bring you along on the journey, talking about what we're doing, the energy, different things with martial arts products. But most of all, this is a perfect way for us to connect to the community.

SPEAKER_00 1:46

Now it has been a while since you last heard our voices on the Buto Brothers podcast. So I feel like we have a lot of catching up to do. The podcast, when we were running it, we got up to 160-something episodes, and we were having a weekly beat, and then so much got thrown on our plate, and we had so many things on the go, and all these new products that we're working on got to the point where something had to give. And to be honest, we haven't had a whole ton of traction with the podcast, but I do know some of you guys really miss it, miss hearing what's going on behind the scenes and hearing our perspective on the challenges that we go through as martial artists, as business owners, and just as people.

SPEAKER_01 2:31

And what had to give was us. We are a three-man show now. We picked up another person, Tiffany, and the workload became a lot. And we figured out what we're good at and what people want to see us most for is our products. So we decided to focus on bringing out products. And it has not been easy. The current economic climate with trade wars and uh tariffs and everything has made it hard to bring out products big time.

SPEAKER_00 3:01

Now, the last episode we ended on was probably a couple years ago, and there has been so much that has happened in that time span. I'm gonna take you back. We moved in, so Buddha Brothers, we started this about 10 years ago, and we were running it out of my condo for the first seven years, and we basically converted my nice condo into an industrial wasteland and had DHL trucks delivering 300 hood geese to my living room. My neighbors thought I was a drug dealer because I was wheeling in boxes and looking all sketchy-eyed. So we knew this wasn't sustainable and we started getting a lot of momentum with our products, and we got to the point where I had to call Kyle and be like, Kyle, stop posting. I can't fulfill these orders. We broke our business, and that's when we knew we had to burn it down and rebuild it back up.

SPEAKER_01 4:05

And it's just such a valuable thing that we learned is that you don't know what you don't know. And we are having to reiterate ourselves so many times. And maybe you find that with yourselves in your martial arts journey or just in life. This your current skill set only gets you to a certain point. And at that point, it's almost like you need to let go of everything that brought you to that point, all of the skills that got you there, reevaluate what to keep and what to go forward. And I think right now we're on the third iteration of our business. We've had to destroy our business and rebuild it. And this going on the first third time. The first time, just two young bucks with a side hustle running an e-commerce business. Second iteration was a lot of content creation, but we were doing it full-time and we had a good business growing. And now we've grown to a point where now we need to focus on the products. And this next phase for us is about something called vertical integration within our business. Because it's so hard for us to import stuff from China or all of these other places, we decided to really take on building our own stuff.

SPEAKER_00 5:24

And so, how did we get here? We moved out of my condo and into our very first location. A family friend said, you know what? I've got some extra warehouse space, you guys can set up shop. We weren't even, he wasn't even charging us rent for the first few months. And I'm like, I feel like a freeloader can at least pay something. He's like, Yeah, sure. You know, 800 bucks a month, how's that? I'm like, 800 bucks a month, you got it. So we got a smoking deal. It was too good to be true. Almost as if it was too good to be true. Then one day, we were there for two years, loving it, feeling great. I technically still had a day job when we first moved into this spot. And then when we hired Tiffany, I was trying to manage an employee at my cushy engineering job. And that's when we knew this is I gotta go. I gotta burn the boats. Now you're lying.

SPEAKER_01 6:20

We hired a boss. We hired a boss, we hired our boss. Tiffany's running the show. Tiffany runs a show. We are too Space Cadet to be all over the place, but continue.

SPEAKER_00 6:31

I just wanted to back check good, good clarification because she has been such a pivotal part of our growth that we did promote her to the CEO of Buddha Brothers. So all of a sudden, I live leave the company that I was working for. I absolutely loved it, but duty was calling. So I jumped ship and we were there for about two years. And then all of a sudden, I get a phone call from another guy who's subleasing out of the space. And he's like, Eric, the sheriffs are here. They told me I have 10 minutes to gather my belongings. What do you want me to grab you? And I'm like, is this a joke? You can't be, this isn't real. And he was like, I have no idea what's going on. Nobody can get a hold of the landlord. And so we're, I nobody knows what's going on. We get down there. He grabbed my computer, grabs some random things, they changed the locks. And turns out the gentleman that we were renting sub-leasing space out of hadn't been paying his rent. And to the point where the landlord has said, hey, this is a cool story. Everything in the building is now mine. I'm gonna auction it off to pay for your unpaid rent. Locked absolutely everything. Our life's work, all my prototypes. We just bought a new CNC machine, we just ordered a bunch of product. We had everything. Literally, this was a potential kill shot.

SPEAKER_01 7:57

It was a kill shot. At that moment, Bruno Brothers was over. Like it's official. All of our stuff, all the computers, everything that we own is locked away, and the government now owns it, or the security company, or whatever the hell it was. We thought that was it, kill shot. So Eric with his wheel and dealing ways started sweet talking the people and smiling and dialing and just explaining to them that this person takes advantage of us. And we were we we shared the invoices that we were paying them rent, which we weren't supposed to be doing because of their lease. But regardless, Eric sweet talked them into us coming and grabbing our stuff.

SPEAKER_00 8:35

But we had 24 hours, not even it was a day. We you it literally was like six hours. It's like, hey, you can come in from this down to this time and get all your stuff. So we had to call in all hands on deck, rent a U-Haul, and all family members, rip things out of there and just throw it in the back of the U-Haul. And we had no idea where we were gonna put it. All we knew is thank goodness we are not bankrupt because that was a very real possibility.

SPEAKER_01 9:07

Now that's half of the story. The other half is when you take stuff out of there, you have to have a place to move it. So while all this is happening, I'm searching desperately for a location big enough to house us in a place that we can afford. But luckily, the way of the escaping rat doing anything possible in order to survive, we figured out we found a place in our city that is absolutely perfect for us. And we call it the Buddha bar. Now we're sitting in it right now, and we found it that day or the day before and moved in the next day.

SPEAKER_00 9:47

Insane. And so this place is everything we could dream of, more than enough space for us to really lean into this next phase of growth. And so we are basically so happy at this point that oh, that was such a close call. I thought that was how we were gonna die, but luckily that part of the story had a happy ending. We moved into the Buddha barn and we have been operating out of here ever since. We've been here for almost, yeah, almost two years, two years now.

SPEAKER_01 10:16

Yeah, yeah, it's just a nice structure out in almost the country of where we are. It's got got a lot of cars around compared to where we used to, and we love it. We're able to test prototypes, smash things, do whatever we want, and nobody bugs us. It's been such a blessing to move into that. And that's kind of the lesson we learned there is like the hardship always leads to blessings. The the moment of hardship always ends up delivering fruit after it.

SPEAKER_00 10:48

And it'll never make sense until it's in the rear view. But it's happened so consistent, so consistently that we have learned to instead of go into that downward spiral of why me and how what else could possibly go wrong, accept it like it's destiny because it is. And as soon as you welcome the challenge, you are met with support. The universe has a wild way of working, but I guarantee if you look at your own life and some of the darkest times blossomed the roots that yielded a tree of fruit that you can't even imagine. And of course, you're grateful for those turmoil beginnings that was the origination of the beautiful outcome.

SPEAKER_01 11:46

And we're big believers that if you're in line with the divine or on purpose, as other people would say, the universe conspires in your favor. Not saying that it's easy, but saying it will test you in the right ways in order to sharpen your blade or sharpen the steel enough so that you are capable of taking on the tasks that it wants you to. And that's what's happening to us right now. And we can feel it. We can feel that the hardship around us, because we get we are now a year since our business went up in smoke and tariffs, and and the amount of things that we've built and structures and systems that we've put into place, we're absolutely loving the future plans for the business.

SPEAKER_00 12:37

And so that was kill shot number one. Luckily, we got past that. We're growing, things are rocking and rolling. We launched the blocker jacket. That thing was a smash hit. We came up with this cool idea for a jacket with a carbon fiber shield in the forearm. So pang, pang, pang, you can block swinging bat. And legit, we did some testing where I held out my hand and Kyle broke a golf club over it, and you can't feel anything. It's insane. The carbon fiber shields are next level. So this we didn't know. Is this are we are we insane? Is anybody gonna think this is cool except if it turns out Smash hit? It went nuts. We sold out in one weekend, and two weeks later, the tariffs hit and our product, we have an incredible manufacturer out of China that is making the top this is insane quality. We have, believe me, we've looked all over the world, but no one can beat our manufacturer in China.

SPEAKER_01 13:41

Which is a fourth kill shot we'll bring to you to later, but yeah.

SPEAKER_00 13:45

So we're as soon as we're like, finally we got we're we're killing it, we're gonna reorder the hood geese, we're gonna launch kids youth hood geese, we're gonna launch the women's hood gee line, we're gonna, we're gonna, we're gonna, we're gonna. And then effective immediately, 148% tariff on made in China goods.

SPEAKER_01 14:09

So for those who are maybe new to our story or just being brought in, there's been a few products that we've dropped within our company, two major ones, actually three, that have really changed the landscape of our business. The first one was the hoodie. When we dropped the hoodie, it changed how everybody viewed us and it took off. It was a massive success. It grew our company, it was a hit. The blocker was the next one. The blocker, when we dropped it, hit like a massive amount of following, sold out on opening. What a logical business would then do is double down on the success, back up the truck. There's demand fulfill the supply. The tariffs kill that. And for those who may not understand how the tariffs work because it is quite complicated. For an e-commerce business such as ours, the first initial tariffs were 148% on the sales price. So let's say the hood geek was a hundred dollars, you would be adding a hundred and forty-eight dollars to the sale cost in order to sell it, sell it. And that's not obtainable. So we had to take both of our alpha products and just put them on the shelf.

SPEAKER_00 15:33

That shrunk to 75% of our sales. It killed us. We got an email from our shipping forwarder, effective immediately. Products made in China will no longer be accepted. And so we are sitting here counting what the effect of 75% of our revenue going to zero is going to do. And we're like, oh my God, this is how we go bankrupt again.

SPEAKER_01 16:03

Not to mention, months later, they were calculating the codes wrong and hit us with a malt tens of thousands, multiple check. We got a 40,000 pay tomorrow bill on the shipping costs.

SPEAKER_00 16:19

So when this is all going on, they finally get it figured out. We are now here's the other crazy part. We're the ones paying the tariff just to keep it on the shelf. Yeah. And so our profit went to, we were actually losing money on every sale. It it's we were a non-profit. We were literally No, we were worse than a non-profit. We were we were a we were we were paying people to take our products. We're paying our customers to enjoy our products, which is obviously not sustainable. Yeah, and so we were just hoping that this would resolve itself, and by the time, you know, this can't go on forever, because oh, there's gonna be so many businesses that are gonna go bankrupt from this, and it just turns out it went on forever, it's still on, and so this we had to think fast, and we had to start thinking local. How can we get out of this? What is it that we could make here locally? We're not gonna set up a sweatshop of sewing machines. No, like that's not a thing. And so, but what we have been experimenting with a lot is in the wood weapon market, and so we were experimenting again, another product that got tariffed 48% was our rattans. So we had to eliminate our rattans, yeah. 48% on rattans. We already have premium rattans, the best rattans in the world. They're expensive, and now they're a hell of a lot more expensive to the point where no, that's not realistic. So we had to kill our rattans. So we had to come up with a replacement, and that was where we invented the hickory hybrids, the hickory hybrid Kali Hickory Hybrid Serata. We took hickory, which is one of the strongest woods in the game. There's a reason why they make axe handles out of it, baseball bats. It is just incredibly durable and incredibly strong. So we took, we were making the dowels here locally, and then we have a proprietary handle installation system. It's top secret, and it is actually quite slick, but it permanently affixes a silicone handle onto the collie stick. The grip has our signature wave pattern on it, and it feels so incredible when you swing it, and rattan's pretty light. Uh uh, hickory is pretty light, almost like rattan. So when you're swinging it, oh man, lasts way longer than rattan, feels better, hits harder.

SPEAKER_01 18:57

To me, it's alpha in every way. The only thing that the rattan has a little bit of an edge, it's safer. Yeah, it doesn't hurt. Rattan is safer, it doesn't hurt. But if you're an experienced Filipino martial artist, there's there's no degree in my mind where rattan is better. If you I can see for sparring for sparring, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 19:14

You know, yes, yes, the the safety. That's it. Safety is safety, the safety is it. Once you feel the so we launched those, that was at least a saving grace. We could keep the lights on, and then we started growing that product line. It and it was a hit. People were loving it because it was an innovation. We got backed into the corner and we innovated ourselves out, and that got us at least to the point where we can pay our bills. We can't pay ourselves, but at least we can keep the lights on and pay rent. So that was a struggle. Then we keep moving, we're keeping on developing. We bought the CNC machine, it's a little desktop CNC machine because before any of this happened, I always had the vision of being able to make our own products and bring our own creations to life. And there's no better way to do it than to actually have the capability to take what's in your head and have the power to birth it into the universe and bring it into reality through the means of design and engineering and equipment. So we purchased a desktop CNC machine, and the first product we came out with was the Tonto trainer. Easy enough.

SPEAKER_01 20:28

Not to mention you had to learn G code and everything.

SPEAKER_00 20:31

So had to learn how to do G code. Uh, my background's in engineering, so I came out of the box with design capabilities, but I had no idea how to do cutting tool paths and feed rates and all kinds. So ChatGPT, turns out, is an epic instructor. Hey, ChatGPT, I've never used Fusion 360 and I don't know anything about G code. I want to make this part. What do I do first? Great, let's get started. First, click here. I'm not seeing it. Screenshot, where do I click? You see that top right hand corner there? Yeah, just hit that drop down and that's where you're gonna find it. I'm like, this is insane. I'm doing a two-year diploma in six weeks, and in six weeks, I am making my own parts. This is nuts. If you're not leveraging AI, you're gonna be left behind. There's gonna be businesses that use it and leverage it to get the torque, to get that traction and to fast track their initiatives, and ones that are, I'm never gonna use AI, are gonna be left in the dust.

SPEAKER_01 21:32

I want to take a side quest on that too. It has to be used tastefully. Right now, in our industry, there are so many, in particular, martial artists all using the same AI goy slot to market their stuff. And it it's ruining it's ruining it's ruining the enjoyment of social media.

SPEAKER_00 21:54

It is everything's all these stupid flyers that all look the same. You just puke sick. logo bro and people making themselves look like like models and like it's just like whoa like your ai poster made you look way more different than you look way more exact yeah you look like Fabio now you look like I don't know what it's gotten excessive so yes leveraging in that area is laziness and it's that's not what I'm talking about I'm talking about the real a good example is learning a skill leveraging it to learn skills leveraging it to do deep research leveraging it to do market research that would take you a week and give me the top 10 blah blah blah blah bam it's incredible for that but to make a flyer for your weekend seminar nobody cares everybody's tired of it stop yeah and it's it's kind of like nobody needs another 100 page book written by AI. Exactly right exactly now my thesis is because we have so much AI slop everywhere being real being authentic setting up some lawn chairs cracking a beer and turning on the camera is our best bet. The reason we had been putting off this podcast for so long is we had this grandiose vision. We were gonna make a six studio we're gonna have the epic lights and man I want to have a wall with all our weapons and have like a museum and then and then surprise it's never gonna happen. And so we finally got to the point where let's stop that that level of effort to achieve a result when the whole point is for us to just be real and so let's pull up some lawn chairs crack a beer and have a convo.

SPEAKER_01 23:42

And that's it so many times you could get paralyzed by it having to be perfect and we caught ourselves in that loop we're like man if we bring the podcast back it has to be perfect. It has to be a certain look it has to be that we said forget it like we will never start if we're always chasing that perfect moment to start so threw the lawn chairs down and threw up a couple lights and and here we are so after the hickory hybrids we then came out with another innovation and that was the carbon fiber indestructible Kali Serrata and the most recent member of the family the stubby stubby stubby stubby so that was another big hit and thankfully it was because the last two years have been an absolute slug fest and it hasn't stopped and it's not going to stop.

SPEAKER_00 24:33

So instead of resisting it we are now welcoming it welcoming it as if it is destiny because it is and what we've learned is as soon as you be grateful to have these challenges we are lucky enough we are fortunate and blessed enough to have these challenges to be playing this game so thank you for these opportunities because that's what they are the kanji in the Japanese kanji for crisis is the same kanji for opportunity. They had this figured out a long time ago in crisis there is opportunity and that is exactly what we are treating this. So as soon as we figured we need to be making more and more of our own stuff we need to burn down the whole business and rebuild it from the ground up again. And that's where we are now and we burnt it down.

SPEAKER_01 25:28

One thing that has given us a lot of success is to be contrarian to be counter to what everybody else is doing in the moment when we first started Buddha brothers 10 ish almost 10 years ago maybe more than 10 10 years ago when we were filming we were the only ones with a camera in these events and it was even uncomfortable for us to film each other or talk on camera because there was nobody else doing it and that allowed us to scale and grow exponentially and to get a crazy amount of followers because we were the only ones doing that. Flash forward to today there's too many people doing that it is just over saturated if you are an influencer now you know what I'm talking about it is hard to make a name for yourself when so many people are trying to do the same. I mean Osmo Pocket sales are through the roof because everybody has something that they would like to share. Now I'm not saying that it's important that people shouldn't be sharing but with us looking at our contrarian view we said hey rather than be influencers or go digital or focus on school or building these digital platforms or making digital products or go into coaching or other people how to become martial arts influencers we said let's go the reverse let's go contrarian let's move atoms let's get dirty let's make products and our new journey is to become an amazing manufacturer here locally and use AI robotics technology in order to do that in a way where a small scrappy business can output the same quality and quantities as a massive manufacturing plant. The other thing we did was rather than sit here and take it from the government and mope and cry and say oh it's so hard we decided to go hunt for new manufacturers. We are looking now in areas where there are no tariffs are no trade deals and we've got multiple horses in the race because last time we were only had one manufacturer and it really screwed us that country got tariffed and now we aren't able to sell things so we've recently been in we've been in talks with Peru and we're working on bringing out the hoodie light with some amazing Peruvian fabric and we're also in El Salvador working on some new products as well too I I gotta spill the beans I gotta let you in we're so excited about this we are bringing out a machete and this is not just any machete we have pretty much re uh redesigned reimagined what the machete could be and without giving away too much we're going exotic metals like just insane this is going to slice through pig feet like nothing.

SPEAKER_00 28:43

Okay and we are going to test this and I cannot wait to bring you along for the ride but then what's so cool is we don't have the ability to make blades we're not blade makers we don't have a forge we're not hammering blades but when we were in El Salvador we found an incredible blade manufacturer I have never seen anything like this this is a monster facility 870 employees this is an operation this is the number one machete manufacturer in the world they crank out 5000 machetes per month bananas and they've been doing it they supply the globe they have distributors everywhere they have perfected I've never seen anything like it it is I've never seen workers cranking things out forge quenching bang bang off to the next station it was like something out of a movie and they are set up to basically make anything we can dream up. So now we're in the blade game but what we're what our model is we're gonna get them to make the blades ship us the blades and then we are going to do all the finishing put the handles on put the exotic wood sheaths get really creative with how we bring these products out but this opens up an entire new world I'm talking nagi nata yari all kinds of crazy products katanas wakazashis live tantos out of any metal we can cut any metal that they can source so this is a complete unlock now to to scale up what we've already started with our local little desktop CNC machine that was the intro that was the introduction and we believe in shooting a bullet before you load the cannonballs. That actually comes back from the English Empire the cannonballs there's only so many cannonballs on a ship and if you're up against another ship that has cannonballs and you shoot a cannonball before you can hit the ship with a bullet you're wasting cannonballs and you're going to be sunk. So the rule is shoot a bullet and if you can hit the target with the bullet load the cannonballs because now you know you're on target. So we have really put that into our ethos and our operating system. We shot a bullet by buying the little desktop CNC machine and figuring out is this even possible? We don't know what we don't know but we're gonna find out turned out I had to do a two year diploma in six weeks thank you ChatGPT and now we are weapons hot anything we dream up we can make on this little dinky desktop CNC and so now it's time to load the cannonballs. Everything we've launched has been a smash hit. We've sold out so the problem is a supply problem we cannot produce enough high quality scalable craftsmanship is what we are going for. We are trying to do something that is theoretically impossible. How do you scale ridiculous quality how can you scale mass produce craftsmanship where you can tell the energy of a human made this and that's going to be our objective so when this next phase which we're just getting into right now Kyle and I are putting our life savings on the line yeah everything we own and it all comes down to timing and cycles we're learning now that the more mature we get into business we're starting to see patterns and cycles and we have a concept it's in a lot of people's vocabulary about burning the boats.

SPEAKER_01 32:52

Just burning the boats no options suitemi full commitment just going for it with with everything you have and right now logically emotionally it feels like you should be scared hiding shelling up not sticking your neck out just from past cycles previous businesses now is precisely the time when you need to invest everything in yourself and to fully commit to your ideas and have faith in yourself that what you're doing and what you've chosen is right. The way that we've been able to do it is because in our minds like what else would we be doing we found something that we enjoy so much that it's like it's a it's a no-brainer let's fight for this there's there's nothing else I would rather be doing.

SPEAKER_00 33:50

Yes so why not go all in and yeah we had to lever down we had to take on debt more debt leverage in order to purchase capital equipment and make a bet on ourselves one that if we lose it's gonna be painful but if we win it could change everything and I am so excited about this next phase because we are sinking all of our life savings into a monster CNC machine this thing is five feet by eight feet working area rotary axis this thing is we went all out we went top of the line best brand all systems go so we are we have officially burnt the boats and there's no turning back and I like you said Kyle I am never going to go and get another J O B.

SPEAKER_01 34:50

No it's not for us no it's not for us and I know there's a probably a few people out there who are maybe on the fence or hate their job or hate their life because they're working in a certain space you can build up enough courage in order to chase what it is that your heart tells you to do what your soul tells you to do at least no matter what you're going to be at peace within yourself. And there's nothing that is worth that peace. I would rather be broke under a bridge and have that peace within myself than to be in torment in a location or vocation that is unauthentically me and kills my soul every day. And as two guys who are blessed in order to have found something that we love I hope that for anybody listening that you could get to that space too. And it's not easy. It's like don't get me wrong this is this is a lot of work there's a lot of stress involved there's a lot of time we spend thinking a lot of time we think about surviving a lot of time where the business feels overwhelming. But that overwhelm is worth its weight in gold when you're working for or with people that you enjoy that's a beautiful place to end it.

SPEAKER_00 36:11

Yeah I think that's the message.

SPEAKER_01 36:13

Full commitment soon hell yeah I think that is the place to end it wanna fill them in on what's kind of in the queue for what we'll be dropping soon?

SPEAKER_00 36:23

Well we got a bunch of things coming out so right now we're we're really scaling up our incense so that was a hit we launched those first and that's coming out and we're working on the Kiradashi razor now this has been a project that we've been working on for two years now. Like this is very it's a complicated concept and it has just been again one challenge after another the coolest part about this design it's a Japanese utility knife and with this exotic Santos rosewood each one is unique. It's absolutely stunning but the real innovation is there's eight rare earth magnets inside the handle and lid so sh it just magnetically closes turns out magnets were a critically controlled military issue and got banned from exporting out of China for a year. And so that delayed us because we were all ready to go and then no you can't buy magnets it's like can you please just get out of the way so we can run our business luckily we have a two-year supply of magnets 1600 or whatever we ended up ordering because we're just we do not want to deal with these headaches anymore.

SPEAKER_01 37:47

We're tired of being screwed by politics and bickering nations and a whim of totally changing a business landscape so the only way to better control that is lock in our supplies and we control the ability to create our products so that if the world collapses if another pandemic if if if we're cool we're busy talk to me later because we're busy putting inventory on the shelves and that's a powerful asset to have yes and the Kiridashi is going to be another test of trying to make craftsmanship scalable and we have a line that we've been using is making the impossible possible and then systemizing it. Now the Kiradashi all the wood is handpicked everything is done by us we're figuring out the the files the we're sanding everything we are doing it 100% ourselves so it takes a long time for us to figure out a system in order to bring it out at a price point where it's not a thousand dollars and we're currently working on that but man we I'm sitting here looking at what we've done already on them like they're gonna be awesome they're going to be new and it's gonna be our first venture into the knife game and the knife world is it's a crazy it's a big world like we do not want to come in and disrespect it because there's very talented people and amazing knife makers within the community it's intense it's a big boys game yes like woof it's the first time we're stepping into a a big boys game you know there are sharks in like just killers people who do amazing yeah so the only thing we can do is what we've always done which is create our way to success innovate come up with new ideas bring out the Buddha brothers version of whatever vertical we go down and it's worked for us before and I have no doubt it's gonna work for us again.

SPEAKER_00 40:01

And not look at the competition look at what we want to bring out I love this because it's sick and it just so happens that other people resonate with it as well. Rick Rubin said it's like creation is like a journey journal entry. You make it for yourself and it just so happens that other people like it as well. And so that's really what we want to stick to is creating products that we want and love and inspires our inner eight year old that wishes they had that. And that's where we know we're onto something where we're like oh cool that's look at this this is amazing when we feel that we know we're on the right track.

SPEAKER_01 40:47

Awesome so to everybody thank you for watching I'm Kyle this is Eric we are the Buddhist and we look forward to doing more talks like this we're not keeping it serious we don't know when we're going to be doing another one or if this is our last one. We are just going to be sharing our experience our journey with you hopefully you enjoy hit us up in the DMs comic section and more importantly if you want to join us on our product journey or really talk to us about what it is we're doing, join our school community. It's an easy way for us to collaborate. We also post a lot of behind the scenes stuff and we do giveaways it's just a great place for us to communicate with you.

SPEAKER_00 41:26

And the coolest part about this whole thing is the whole episode we've been burning the same S tier agarwood incense and it's right down to the last little bit. So that might be a good way to time these episodes. I like that all right until next time thank you we'll see you again soon