Bitcoin Is Dead
Welcome to Bitcoin is Dead, the ultimate Bitcoin variety show where host Trey takes you on a journey through the ever-evolving world of Bitcoin. Each episode brings new personalities, fascinating locations, and insightful conversations with politicians, educators, and innovators shaping the future of Bitcoin. Whether you're a seasoned Bitcoiner or just starting your journey, tune in for thought-provoking discussions, unique perspectives, and a deep dive into the ideas and people driving the Bitcoin revolution.
Bitcoin Is Dead
Bitcoin Is Dead - Rack It Back Armory - Buy guns with Bitcoin
Three business owners, three business, one roof. Join us as we discuss gunsmithing, screen printing, security, airsoft competitions, and of course, Bitcoin. See the links below for contacts.
Rack It Back Armory
RIBA Elite Apparel
Arch Angel Airsoft
Follow us on Twitter - @BTCisDeadPod
Ladies and gentlemen, today I bring you three very special guests Sheridan and Becca Halfacre, as well as Thomas Doyle. Between the three of them, they own three businesses in the central North Carolina area A firearms gunsmith retail location called Racketback Armory, as well as a t-shirt and screen printing company, as well as embroidery, called Reba Elite Apparel and a airsoft field called the Archangel Battle Park, located right here in central North Carolina. All three of them long-term, long-time friends of mine. We we've kind of done a lot in the business world together. We've done a lot on the, you know, across Magic the Gathering together. We've done. We've done a lot together and I wanted to bring them to you. They're Bitcoin-friendly businesses, they are ready and willing to accept Bitcoin, they support Bitcoin, they support small business, they support Central North Carolina and overall they're just a real good group of friends and business people. So enjoy the episode. We appreciate any feedback anyone may have. So if you have comments or if you want to reach out to the group, just find the links in the show notes and enjoy the show.
Speaker 1:A quick round of introductions Three people I know very well. I'm going to call them Halfacre, doyle and Becca, but they all have proper names. I'm going to call them Halfacre, doyle and Becca, but they all have proper names Sheridan, thomas Doyle or Sheridan. Halfacre, thomas, doyle and Becca, halfacre the better half of Sheridan. They all are in their own kind of business world. They all participate and work underneath, kind of the same. I guess you might say group or conglomerate, because they all work together, kind of the same. I guess you might say group or conglomerate because they all work together. But Half Acre, doyle, becca, all run a gunsmithing business, they run a t-shirt company and they have some not paintball, I was going to say paintball, but no airsoft-related businesses. So they're all here in Alamance County, correct, right? The shop is in Alamance, it doesn't cross the Orange County line.
Speaker 2:Technically we're like two blocks away from Orange County.
Speaker 3:The shop is in Alamance and the field is in Alamance.
Speaker 1:So, Alamance County. Everybody we've had on so far has at least been in connection with Alamance County. We haven't had any Orange County folk on yet. I have invited some. They have not responded, probably because they see Bitcoin in the title and just delete the email. But let's start off with the most complicated one, right, at least I would imagine the most complicated one, the gun one. The gunsmithing business you have is not just gunsmithing, you also have retail stuff you have license to. I don't want to misspeak here, oh, go ahead.
Speaker 1:License to sell automatic weapons to no.
Speaker 3:So we have an 0702, 07 being the type of FFL that is a manufacturer, which means we can manufacture things called GCA items or just standard firearms we can manufacture things called GCA items or just standard firearms and an O2 SOT, which allows us to manufacture machine guns.
Speaker 4:SOT stands for Special Occupational Tax.
Speaker 3:Yeah, so Is a specific legal category, if you wanted to get, say, a short-barreled rifle or a suppressor or something like that. That's an NFA item. You have to pay a $200 tax stamp and that's your $200 item. Um, you have to pay a 200 tax stamp and that's your 200 stamp for the rest of your life. Um, we have to pay 500 annually, but it allows us to make as many nfa items as we want. So we can't sell um automatic firearms, but we can rent them out I got you so you guys could make one.
Speaker 1:rent it out. Let people shoot it Correct, have fun with it. What have you? You just can't let it leave your possession.
Speaker 4:Exactly that's from an ownership perspective.
Speaker 1:Yes, that was part of the wedding right, correct? I know that we shot guns, but that activity was legal because of that, correct?
Speaker 2:That documentation that you had licensed. I had the proper licensing. I had the proper licensing. I had the proper people present for that to happen.
Speaker 1:Yeah. So what's business been like for the gun industry at your new location? Previously you were out of range, Now you're in downtown Mebane.
Speaker 3:What's it like now? It's been up and down. How long has it been since you've been there? Two years. We moved in October 22.
Speaker 1:22?.
Speaker 3:Yeah, and it took us about six months or so to get all of the paperwork in order for the move or the new location updated.
Speaker 2:Especially with the ATF paperwork. Yeah, ATF stuff just took the longest yeah.
Speaker 3:And other than that, we've just been rocking it since what march? When's the dogwood festival?
Speaker 2:we had a grand opening during, not last, not this year's dogwood festival, but last year's dogwood festival in 2023, which was april 21st yeah, we had a.
Speaker 3:We had a soft opening a couple months before that and then the grand reopening during the dogwood.
Speaker 4:I'm gonna throw something out there real quick, just to make sure it's out there and everybody knows there's maybe a little political early on, but whatever. Uh, the atf is evil and needs to be abolished and appeal the nfa what um?
Speaker 1:do you find that mevin is friendly towards the business that you have?
Speaker 3:it depends on on who's approaching. So, um uh, for me, big bearded, angry man that doesn't like to talk very much no, absolutely not. Just in general, people tend to shy away from me because I try not to outspeak, I try not to talk too much and I'm just. I guess I look intimidating better than I would, it's definitely the beard, Now that we've got Becca involved they're a whole lot more receptive to us. She's just got that retail brain.
Speaker 2:I'm also the people person. I'm the smile kind of thing. People come through. I'm happy to greet them, I'm happy to talk to them, I'm happy to make them feel comfortable.
Speaker 4:Very, very stereotypical Half an hour. The detail guys, the mechanical guys, the fricking the, the machinist type guys. Becca knows the people, the customer service, the interactions, the, the personal touch, all that kind of stuff, yep yeah.
Speaker 1:But like from a from the standpoint of politically, is Mebane okay with you guys.
Speaker 3:Not particularly. No, yeah, just Mebane, specifically Because you are within the city limits so you do have to deal with the city. We've ran into a couple issues. A lot of the business owners themselves tend to be pretty cool with us.
Speaker 1:Yeah, they're pretty excited that we're there Local, I'm sorry, vocal minority tend to be tend to say a lot of how do they come after you, Like what have you run into it's usually on Facebook.
Speaker 2:Yeah, they talk shit on Facebook, like social media accounts.
Speaker 3:We currently have a couple people who, no matter what we post, they'll go and report it.
Speaker 2:Just because it's on the Mevin pages, right.
Speaker 3:Yeah and no matter. So the way Facebook reporting works is you cannot find out who reports you. There's just no way to figure it out. And in order for them to just stop bots from auto flagging everything that comes out or you paying a dollar amount for auto flagging, it has to be first AI reviewed and then like, actually reviewed, and AIs never go with what we say. They just see a gun or something roughly firearm shaped and automatically flag it for the next level and meta is very anti-gun, so they tend to. They tend to automatically side with things Like we'll have things that are not for sale and just say come check us out and that'll get flagged.
Speaker 2:Right.
Speaker 3:Because we have pictures of firearms. That's our side, but her side's great. Oh, like the.
Speaker 1:T-shirt side.
Speaker 2:Yeah, the T-shirt side. So, like officially, june 1st of this year, it's been an entire year since we purchased that screen printing shop. Originally, that shop was owned by Jay Starnes, who runs Fat man and His Food, when it was located on Clay Street, and he had that there for years. I think he moved into the building we're in now like 2018, 2017, somewhere in there, um, and he sold the business to a gentleman named andy. Um, he was a full-time firefighter. Uh, he ran that for like two years and sold it to us. So, yeah, it's been an official year. It's crazy.
Speaker 1:That's crazy to think about all year yeah, I remember when, when you were buying it, like yeah, into the process and oh, that was terrifying emptying your savings account yeah, emptied, emptied my all.
Speaker 3:I sold all my bitcoin yeah emptied all my savings and convinced her to empty her savings as well.
Speaker 1:I tell people all the time, like, if you're going to sell your bitcoin, make sure that it's for something yeah, not like, not because you want something, not because you're buying something, but you're making a life-changing. Like if you said I've got $100,000 in debt and you're sitting on $100,000 in Bitcoin Life-changing. There is a Sure maybe in five years that'll be $500,000. Maybe.
Speaker 2:But if you let that debt sit there, you may owe $500,000.
Speaker 4:You can change your life.
Speaker 1:Maybe it's worth it, especially if you're somewhat knowledgeable or you're experienced in the Bitcoin world and you can get more. If somebody gave you like $10,000 in Bitcoin and you sold it to pay off your debt, that's one type of person. But if you accumulated that over time, you understood what you were doing and you knew that, hey, now it might be a good time to sell, because the way the market is and I'll buy some more later and you're selling it to specifically change your life, then, yeah, maybe it's a good idea.
Speaker 2:You make me want to buy bitcoin just to get rid of debt. Well, actually, yeah, it's funny you say that because we've been talking about it so much.
Speaker 3:Um, I actually logged into my, my stash account. Just like you know, I don't have any bitcoin right now, but let's see what my other, the stuff, the other things I've invested in are are doing. Um, so that was uh, it was just funny.
Speaker 1:You mentioned investing and all that well, bitcoin will always be, I think, at least until something drastically changes. If it ever does, uh, will always be something that I'm probably messing around with, but what I found is that, even when I thought I was deep in bitcoin, I wasn't yet oh well, like seriously, like I bought that boat, you know yeah, yeah, and I was like I'm gonna buy a cheap boat and just get it running and put it on the lake and then now I'm like I should have never bought that damn boat I should have bought some fucking
Speaker 3:bitcoin like this is ridiculous. When was the last time you?
Speaker 1:brought that thing out.
Speaker 3:I never brought it out it's still sitting in the same place I parked it oh, no shoot.
Speaker 2:But I mean, that's typical redneckery, right?
Speaker 1:I gotta have at least one vehicle in my possession that doesn't work properly.
Speaker 3:I was actually talking to, um, a new sort of business partner that we have um you I don't think you've met him, but his name's eric corda. He actually you met him at the dogwood, um, and I was telling him how, like yeah, human beings, man, we're gaseous. We're gaseous creatures, like how gas works, we expand to fill whatever volume that we're in, and that's just how people work with money, like. So, like hey, you've got everything, all your ducks, in a row. Everything makes sense with $40,000 a year, you can make it, everything's fine. And then you get that, you know that, that upgrade, and you're, you're, now you're, you're at $75,000 a year.
Speaker 1:Yeah, Now you got a different lifestyle. Now you have a different lifestyle.
Speaker 3:Now you're going to have, you know yeah, yeah, would you have like financial creep?
Speaker 1:Yeah, lifestyle creep, financial creep.
Speaker 3:And I and I specifically.
Speaker 2:Hey, it is summertime, yeah, well it runs.
Speaker 1:but the problem is the starter. Remember I told you guys, the bolt that screws, that holds the starter on Mm-hmm, that bolt, the hole that it threads into that hole is stripped.
Speaker 3:Okay.
Speaker 1:So the starter will spin and the motor will start to turn over. But all of the gyration that the motor and starter go through during that process immediately pulls the starter off of the little gear that starts it, and so I've got to fix that. Uh, the the bottom end of the of the motor, where the um propeller and everything is the guts of that need to be rebuilt because a leaky seal and it's got seawater in it so it's got a number of problems. I should sell. That's just what it boils down to.
Speaker 2:I should have never bought it.
Speaker 1:But now I'm like oh, I got to spend $40 on something. I'm like maybe I could just buy Bitcoin instead.
Speaker 3:Just do that instead We'll call it good, we'll pretend like we did it. That's the cool part about getting old. You kind of start to like oh, I know a guy.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so let us take a look. Well, yeah, I mean you guys can take a look at it. This reminds me of this book that I'm reading right now, something that I immediately, when I read it, I was like I've got to talk to these guys during the podcast about it and it's unrelated to the gun side. We'll get back to that. But there was a point in history that the author at least proposes.
Speaker 1:The reason that people never understood probability or calculated risk before, say, the year 15, 1400, somewhere around there, was in large part because the future was left to the will of the fates and luck. You couldn't influence it, so thinking about it was not even a concept you could really handle. Right, you couldn't even generate that concept because it wasn't in your control anyway. And he presents it in a way that basically describes when your life is tied to repeating cycles such as winter, spring, summer, fall, harvest, plant church, no church. All these repeating cycles there is no future to look to because you already know that it's not in your control and you can't stop spring, you can't stop winter, so there's no planning for that and mathematically, this was all before the number zero was really discovered, so before zero was very difficult to make financial calculations because you're writing out roman numerals or you could only count to.
Speaker 1:You know a certain limit, uh, like zero to nine or one to nine. You couldn't just hop into 10, you didn't understand decimal places. So calculating out like complex algebraic formulas were possible, but the average person couldn't do it because, like what's the number 1242 in Roman numerals? Yeah, it's just becomes very difficult to do, like weird translations, and I'm only like three or four chapters into the book. But when I read that I was like that's interesting. People couldn't think about the future because they just didn't believe that it was even within their control. And I tie that back to Bitcoin. I would question that a little bit.
Speaker 4:Because at the time you said up to like $1,400, $1,500?.
Speaker 1:Yeah, zero was invented before that, but up until $1,400 or $1,500, we never tried to mathematically calculate risk in order to enhance decisions in the future?
Speaker 4:Yeah, but people would make long-term plans at the time.
Speaker 3:Oh yeah, An excellent example of that is a cathedral. How many years did it take to make the pyramid of Giza?
Speaker 1:Yeah, but you're not thinking you're only thinking in the, in the terms of something that's already happening.
Speaker 4:Right, you know that the cathedral is happening because it's already being built, yeah, but whoever started the building had to plan that out, and often most cathedrals took like 100 plus years to build.
Speaker 1:Yeah, but this is more referencing the average person.
Speaker 4:like the regular person, Somebody's not planning cathedrals yeah, maybe the average peasant or something.
Speaker 1:And he also said that after the number zero it made it to where riches no longer exclusively came from either the church or from government, that it was possible to build a business, because you could forecast, you could look down the road and say okay, in two years this business will be, you know, able to generate enough revenue anyway this side note.
Speaker 2:What was the title of the?
Speaker 1:book it. It's called Against the Gods. Against the Gods, yeah. It starts off with the premise of like the Greeks discovered all of this, a lot of this math, but they never applied it Because they didn't believe at least the author's opinion was, they didn't believe that they could control the future. It wasn't about how do we do anything. The Greeks had a lot asked the question when they found these mathematical formulas.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:They asked the question of why is it this way? Not how do we implement these formulas?
Speaker 2:Right, right right.
Speaker 1:A whole lot Outside of the golden ratio. They got the golden ratio down pat pretty well.
Speaker 2:I wonder if fate is discussed in that book? It is. Fate and luck are the two things that govern the future Interesting.
Speaker 1:And then, once the churches uh, once christianity came around, post-judaism, you could talk about the future in terms of heaven or the future in terms of hell, but that wasn't. That was again something you could only have a certain amount of control over. Right, you do all the things that were right, so you thought you would get to heaven, but ultimately, wasn't your decision right? There was a. There was Right right, that's interesting. A gate guard.
Speaker 4:Most modern science and mathematics has its genesis from the Catholic Church.
Speaker 1:Except for numbers. Research Numbers started like, according to this author at least.
Speaker 4:Maybe numbers specifically Proper numbers. I know most freaking even most of the applications of a lot of that math, a lot of architecture, almost all Western art and stuff like that had its genesis from the Catholic Church. Most freaking basic microbiology and stuff like that that came from basically Catholic monasteries and such. We'll get into this. I'm sure.
Speaker 2:Doyle would be the person we can go much greater detail On the gun side where?
Speaker 1:where do you guys go from here, like what hurdles are in front of you right now, what, what, what can Mebane do to make it better? And and what hurdles do you face in Mebane?
Speaker 3:well getting a lathe yeah yeah, yeah, uh, it's. It's actually super interesting because I uh, I talk about a Doyle to Doyle all the time and I still marvel about it. We've gone from hey, we need to make $80 a day. We make $80 a day, we've not only paid all of our bills but all of our overhead's done, everything's good, and we put a little bit back into the business and now $80 is like yeah, it's not Chump change.
Speaker 3:We need to be making $500 a day and it's super interesting to see how, like, oh yeah, that one hour of bench time that helped pay for everything, and now one hour of bench time is just chump change. It sucks, but we still will never turn our nose up to even a small job, because that all adds up. But the hey, I want to go get a fancy drill bit to go do this one job. That's what it used to be. Now it's like all right, cool. What kind of heavy equipment can I get a hold of? How can I change the infrastructure of my building so I can fit that heavy equipment?
Speaker 2:How can we make it more fast, efficient and safe?
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Are you guys selling guns now? Yeah, like on a regular.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I knew before you were doing mostly gunsmithing. We do a lot of consignment actually.
Speaker 3:Yeah, that's the overwhelming majority of what we do. So, like quick rule of thumb, there's roughly 11% let's say it's 10% for easy numbers 10% return on firearms. So if it costs me $1,000 to get this rifle and put it on the wall, we can roughly expect about 10%, maybe $100, off that job. And it's really difficult for him and I to logistically sit $1,000 on the wall and not utilize it until it finally sells for maybe an extra $100. So we rely heavily on consignment for the retail aspects of everything. But yeah, most everything is gunsmithing working on Trying to plan plans for long-term manufacturing. We have plans to make our own shit and getting the correct brains and the correct chairs at the right time.
Speaker 3:That's one of the things we're focusing on, sort of like gunsmithing itself. We have an apprentice that we can trust. We have somebody who can do a lot of that, or I can teach him that and he can run the majority of the smaller things that come in and that leaves me a little bit more wiggle room to focus on the more in-depth projects or machining and things like that and also admin and trying to go get those big machines. So before it was, I need to make all of the ends meet. Now it is. I have somebody who is helping me make the ends meet. How can I expand? What can I do to expand? How can I lay?
Speaker 3:the groundwork for the expansion.
Speaker 1:Are you guys talking? You're not talking about expansion, physically like to different locations, physically, are you?
Speaker 3:not to different locations.
Speaker 1:Like like multiple like, not outside of your current establishment. Yeah, Not um what's the word?
Speaker 3:Uh, no, no sister locations or things like that yet. But was it yesterday? Yes, I think yeah, yesterday. Yesterday, um, I did a concealed carry class and while we were there was like all right, cool, let's do it.
Speaker 1:But we broke ground, yeah, where, at the field, field and actually officially started chopping down trees yeah, so you guys still plan on operating a range out there kind of? Full time yeah yeah, has that been. I know that last time I was there. The lane there's lanes there.
Speaker 3:There is, so there is there's one lane one big lane and it looks like a bag of ass. Um, I'm not particularly proud of it. I don't, I don't like it, I don't, I don't like anything in regards to it, and I hate, because you know. Your store, your location, is a representation of who you are as a person, or who, or more importantly, who you are as a company. Right and right now, if you come into our shop, it's a little messy, but, like we work, yeah we're always working and practically live there yeah.
Speaker 3:And there are times where sometimes it gets a little more messy, a little bit cleaner. You know it ebbs and flows, but I'm still always very happy with how the store looks Like, even if it gets messy like. It's not like disgusting, it's not like a hoarder lives there it is. Yeah, I'm working on this one project. That's why there's a bunch of tools out. Yeah, yeah, I'm working on this one project. That's why there's a bunch of tools out, whereas the field, the current location that we're shooting at it, just looks like shit.
Speaker 1:Are you going to tighten up the field, the shooting portion? We're moving.
Speaker 3:So you saw the parking lot and then off on the right side there's that lane, the shooting lane. Yeah, the property actually goes very far and left and right. Yeah, and we're pushing off to the left and just creating a whole new lane like entirely purpose built range.
Speaker 1:Well, I probably won't be able to help you in time, but I might have a lot of tires one day.
Speaker 2:We know a guy Look at that, we're getting older.
Speaker 1:Um, now in in previous conversations there's been a lot of talk about the other gunsmiths, the gun community from a business perspective, in the region or in the area. In the Bitcoin world, I've learned that Bitcoin miners are very friendly. They vary wildly in their expertise, but the one thing that matters, that matters, is that they, they cared. It's it's all about revenue, it's all about the bottom, the dollar, right, not the dollar, but it's all about the making, making your marks, meeting, meeting the, the expectations, getting new sources of energy, and they're not going to be friendly necessarily to another bitcoin miner going after the same set of resources. It is competition. It is some people are not nice. My understanding is the gun community from a business standpoint isn't that far off from that yeah, it depends on specifically what side of the business.
Speaker 3:That's actually the whole reason why, one of the many reasons why um doyle and I plan to diversify and instead of just gun smithing we're focusing on gun smithing and gun sales and then completely separate from guns the spring printing and embroidery apparel things like that um completely separate from that a range, um, you know, but still sort of tangential to the, the gunsmithing things.
Speaker 3:Um, what we've learned with, with, um, like just gunsmiths in general, um, almost all of them they're. They're pretty much exactly the same as us. Almost all of them. There are a few people who don't care for it, but, um, hey, my work stands on its own. There's plenty of fish. We do not care.
Speaker 1:What about business-to-business relationships? Yeah, pretty good yeah.
Speaker 3:The old gray beard that we all look up to, that we all aspire to be, is Double H Gunsmithing Ken, not H&H.
Speaker 4:Double H. If you type H&H, you're going to get some weird whatever. It's Double H Gunsmithing. Mr Ken Barfield, he's around here.
Speaker 3:He's up in Providence. Okay so what do you think?
Speaker 4:like an hour and a half or so it's not an hour and a half, I don't think More than an hour away. It's a good drive.
Speaker 3:Yeah, from where we are and he sends us work, we send him work. He is the established guy. He is an alumni of the same program that we went to and when he got set up he was a perfect storm. Right, he had enough experience, he had enough money and enough time and he made it work. And he's just been building that empire ever since. But he's not expanding. He doesn't have any plans to go build a range. He doesn't really get into machine guns, he does gunsmithing his. That's what he's happy to do and we're happy to keep each other where we are. So, um, there are times where somebody's like, hey, I need a very precise thing lathed in a very specific way. Um, we send work to his way, whereas the inverse. His average turnaround was like 9 to 13,. 9 to 12 months.
Speaker 4:I think it was 9 to 12 weeks.
Speaker 3:Asking somebody to put their gun away for 3, 4 months. It's a big ask. If they ever want it faster, that's normally when he pushes it our way.
Speaker 3:And he normally doesn't even really pick up the phone for less than a grand. Not that he's an asshole or anything, he's just like yeah, you know, I've got he's doing fancy, high-end work, 500 projects and they're all going to be bringing me at least like a couple hundred bucks to a grand I could. I don't really need that $25 gun cleaning. Well, hey, I'm more than happy to take that $25 if they're willing to drive down their way. You know you want to fast, you want to do well and you want to cheap. You know we're not all three of them, but fast and well done. That's normally where we found our niche.
Speaker 4:He's the high-end racing shop where you bring your Formula One car to get it fixed. We're your local oil change place.
Speaker 3:Or local chop shop. Yeah, there you go.
Speaker 1:Is there a lot of competition in the general area around here for the services that you guys provide?
Speaker 3:Yeah, actually he's an hour or so away, you said right so one thing that I've learned, especially with the older crowd, it doesn't matter what distance. Distance is literally not a factor. If they find a good gunsmith, an older gentleman will drive four, five, eight hours plus just for a gunsmith.
Speaker 2:You've even had people come from Maryland that only trust you and want you to work on their stuff.
Speaker 3:Like my grandfather, Great dude. But he's like yeah, I'm glad that you're doing that, I'm not setting him at work. I've got my gunsmith up in Pennsylvania that I drive to. I make it a weekend trip. I don't trust you, although I ask.
Speaker 2:Thanks, Grandpa.
Speaker 3:He's got a smith that he's been working with for the past 60 years, so it's hard to break that 60-year level of work.
Speaker 1:There's a relationship there.
Speaker 3:But the other thing, gunsmithing, is in a really weird spot here. We're not the triad, what would you call us?
Speaker 1:I thought we were in the triad. I thought we were in the triad, not in the triangle were in the Triad, Not in the Triangle, but in the Triad. The Triangle is like the Raleigh-Durham area, where the Triad is like Raleigh.
Speaker 4:I think the Triad is Greensboro, Burlington and.
Speaker 1:Winston-Salem. If you draw a triangle, don't we fit within that triangle?
Speaker 4:I don't think so I'm going to Google it. I believe Mebane is becoming popular because it's smack in the middle between the triangle.
Speaker 3:Well, that, and it's right next to fucking the Tanger.
Speaker 4:Well, the Tanger is in Mebane. Yeah, tanger is part of Mebane, but yeah, I think, I think that's why Mebane is popular, because it's right, smack dab in between the two.
Speaker 3:So let's say North Carolina, right? So uh, central North Carolina, it is the tribe.
Speaker 2:Uh, so the triad is, uh, the largest cities in the region, including Greensboro, winston Salem and high point.
Speaker 3:Wow.
Speaker 3:So, yeah, that's further out West, yeah, so um, central North Carolina is is really interesting because there is this, this super odd phenomena of there is a hyper like there's there's a drought of gunsmiths and also a hyper saturation of gunsmiths. So, um, there are, there are two schools for gunsmithing, two very, very well, well recognized schools uh, two of the only schools in the united states one in piedmont, uh, in roxborough you Piedmont Community College, and one in Montgomery, north Carolina, or Montgomery Community College. So PCC and MCC, those are two of the top schools in the country, well, probably honestly in the world. Because where else do you find this kind of gunsmithing? Yeah, and you know they're all over. There are students from those schools all over this place.
Speaker 3:Right, you know you'll have people who graduate or go to it, stick through it for a little while and then leave, and then they're like, I'm gonna start my business. So they start their own little gunsmithing business or something like that, or a side, side hustle or something like that, or a side hustle. And normally what will happen is either like, yeah, it's not as lucrative as we thought, or it's not as busy as we thought, or it was just a side hustle. My other gig, my main gig, is taking off, and then those guys, kind of they don't die out, but they kind of fizzle out and you'll see a ton of them.
Speaker 3:You just Google gunsmiths in the area. There's a shitload of them. There's also a drought, in that the overwhelming majority of those people, like we said, fizzle out. There's only two, three actual gunsmiths within a couple hundred miles of around. Here Is RAD a gunsmith. No, they're not. They said that they offered gunsmithing. They have a guy.
Speaker 2:So it's sort of like Distinguished Pistol.
Speaker 3:Distinguished Pistol wasn't a gunsmith. They had a person on site who was a gunsmith, correct, we were our own business. Rad is the same way. They have their own thing and they offer gunsmithing services, but it is a separate company. That's there.
Speaker 3:And he's sort of kind of fizzled out Rad or the gunsmith, the gunsmith I don't know much about it. I'd love to talk to him and pick his brain, but he's similar to us. He's doing 07-02 stuff and he's manufacturing machine guns, but I think that's almost entirely what he's focusing on now. He's not doing too. He does like small things and then making machine guns, whereas we're trying to do all the small things, all the big things, all the weird shit and also make machine guns. But the the machine gun side has has definitely seen, you know, been an impact. We've definitely scaled that back just because it doesn't make much money right now.
Speaker 1:But we have a range. Yeah, as I say, I'd imagine that there's probably just not enough people that know about it, because if you told me you can have a bachelor party in Charlotte or you can have a bachelor party at a machine gun range, yes, Automatically. I'm looking at the gunsmith or the machine gun range automatically, yeah, so.
Speaker 3:So with that, like, there isn't a ton of competition because we all kind of stay in our own lane, um, and we all kind of have our own like claims to fame, right. So I have print test under Maverick way back in the day and I learned a lot of good things and a lot of bad things from him. Um, he's still a great gunsmith. Um, he's still a great gunsmith, but he does take his sweet damn time and he'll tell you exactly that he sends us work because somebody wants it done faster, so he'll send work our way, he's in Mebane still yeah, he's north 119 oh, but he's not down where he was correct, so he was right there right across from Lowe's.
Speaker 3:A couple years ago he got robbed.
Speaker 2:Somebody broke into his business.
Speaker 3:And he had been bouncing between two locations because he can't shoot there, he can't do any test fires there.
Speaker 1:And that's incredibly important if you're trying to do gunsmithing and he was just like how do you guys do test fires at your?
Speaker 3:We have our range. You just go down to your range.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's not that far away.
Speaker 3:But we're also trying to do eventually we will buy a pop box. Well, it's not actually a pop box, it's a giant like a bullet catch and it looks like a big I don't know bookshelf, but it's filled with rubber and different versions are rated to different different types of ammunition.
Speaker 2:I can't remember the brand, but they they do make like yeah, it's called like bullet bunker. I believe, yeah, yeah, and it's patented and and all that, all that jazz, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 3:Bullet.
Speaker 3:It just looks like a big ass briefcase, or I'm sorry a bookshelf or a safe or something and we just, we just shoot into it. There's a pretty popular company that I cannot remember the name of, in a similar vein to us, but they just, they just make mini guns. That's their whole thing, you know. And just like, the motor for one of these mini guns is like 60 to 80 grand, so it's it takes a lot of money to get into the business. So you know, they spent a lot of time and money getting into that niche and that is their niche.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 3:And they test fire all of their mini guns into one of these bullet bunkers.
Speaker 1:Wow yeah you guys have the shop downtown where you do your work. You have the range where you can test your work and other people can come shoot machine guns. If I wanted to rent a machine gun and I didn't have a place to shoot, is there a rental fee associated with using the range? Or do you guys say you rent the gun? Shoot wherever you want to, we'll just be on site.
Speaker 3:So the plan is we bring, bring into our range because we know, hey, we've done aerial, you know, and sat images. We know the lay of the land, we know where those rounds are going to impact, we know that there's no damage that can be done to another person so everybody.
Speaker 1:So if you rent a machine gun, it's kind of, unless otherwise discussed, you're renting it to shoot at your range, correct, correct?
Speaker 3:now we will. We will do other locations like per request, but it has to be like, hey, give us, give us a couple weeks of of research to determine whether or not this is actually a safe location we'd have to be able to scout the site and yeah and scout the site.
Speaker 3:Yeah, um, find a good place. That's why we were able to do the wedding location, the wedding venue, because the guy who owned the venue, he hunts there all the time and he was shooting. I think he was shooting like 30-odd-six or something like that. So, hey, we're not doing anything near 30-odd-six. We know we're going to be good.
Speaker 2:And he had like a little mini berm on the property anyways.
Speaker 1:So we were shooting under the berm anyway, Now you're the only gun company that I know of in the world that 100% for sure has accepted Bitcoin for a gun. At the time April, march what was that?
Speaker 2:October. No, it was March. I think it was March.
Speaker 1:Yeah, because I remember the sign now.
Speaker 2:It was cold. Yeah, it was still cold outside.
Speaker 1:March 2022, I think.
Speaker 2:I think 23. 23? 23.
Speaker 3:Yeah, because it was right before we opened.
Speaker 1:Ah yeah, so one of your first sales of a gun in that facility was to Bitcoin. Yes, would you do it again? Yeah, would you do the Bitcoin sale again?
Speaker 3:Yeah yeah, it's complicated and we need to figure out the proper way to do it.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 3:Because we took a pretty big hit on that Only because you sold early. No, no, I mean like transferring from Bitcoin to our wallet and then so it was like Bitcoin, and then from my wallet to this other wallet, and then from that wallet to cash, and then from that location to our bank account.
Speaker 1:Yeah right, so we got hit like three or four times yeah, there's easier ways to do it, but if if you had to held on to it, it would be. I don't remember how much. The gun was 600-ish, yeah, 600. So that would be about 1,500 now.
Speaker 1:Hell yeah, that's the problem with Bitcoin, though, is it limits your liquidity unless you really want it. So if you're running a business for Bitcoin, you need to be able to either convert that into dollars quickly and cheaply or you need to have the reserve funds to not have to convert it into dollars. A company out of California, a healthcare manufacturing company, is now the second company in the United States to say they're going to put Bitcoin on their asset sheet as a treasury reserve.
Speaker 1:So, instead of holding cash in a bank account, they convert cash into Bitcoin.
Speaker 3:That's pretty cool.
Speaker 1:Well, their stock's up some like 20 or 30% since they announced this. So they come out and say we're going to buy. I think their first buy was like 17 million dollars worth of bitcoin and then they just came out and said we're gonna raise 100 million. We're gonna raise 100 million dollars just to buy bitcoin. And so, like you're starting to see ones and twos and threes of entities doing this, where they're like we want this as a reserve asset, we want this to maintain value, and they're like we want this as a reserve asset, we want this to maintain value, and they're buying it up faster than we're producing it. Hell yeah, today we're producing 450 Bitcoin a day and, like June 4th, the ETF spot 12,000.
Speaker 1:So there's a supply crunch coming, but anyway, you being one of the only gun companies that accepted Bitcoin, what I think is really cool is there's situations like this where the Bitcoin community is like, hey, let's go look at the Bitcoin store map so you can figure out in your area who accepts Bitcoin. But unless you're kind of looking for it, you don't necessarily come across those businesses, necessarily come across as businesses. But to say that you're a unique business in the fact that you offer firearms which I mean. Let's tell the truth, there's a lot of headwind against firearms politically, socially, so opening that business number one is tough. But then number two, to say that you accept Bitcoin, that kind of puts you in the 1% of firearms clubs. You're one of the only firearm manufacturers and or retailers that accepts Bitcoin in the world.
Speaker 1:So if anybody's listening and you want to deal with somebody who accepts Bitcoin and does good work, you should probably come talk to racket back armory and Mevin, not to completely derail, but I wanted to cover a little bit about what Becca and the t-shirt side and what all you guys do for the t-shirt stuff, because that's the other half of this. Right, that's the other half. I know if I walk into your building, one half is a gunsmith shop and I go in the back and it's a completely different business. It's a t-shirt company.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:So how? How did all this work out? What do you guys got going on?
Speaker 2:So, you know, when we purchased the business originally well, still to this day it was meant to kind of fund the gunsmith side because, like, at the end of the day, like that's where the guys started back in 2019.
Speaker 2:Um, but in return, uh, I got to find my niche in life, I feel yeah, yeah, it's a cool feeling, I do, I do sometimes, you know, sometimes I get frustrated with when, when machines break or you know, things don't go as planned, but um no, it's been super rewarding and um yeah, uh how do you, how do you like operating in mebane from the, from a business standpoint, comparatively to the gunsmith business?
Speaker 2:from a business standpoint. A lot of people come in and you know they don't know I exist there. I think I finally got some new signage on the building recently, so that's exciting, because not a lot of people realize that there's like multiple and they don't know I exist there. I think I finally got some new signage on the building recently, so that's exciting, because not a lot of people realize that there's multiple businesses within that establishment. It's almost like its own shopping center mall. If you will Like, come in get a gun or two leave with a T-shirt or a sticker.
Speaker 2:Go bowling across the parking lot you know um, but as that, as that parking lot becomes kind of like the buffalo plaza, so to speak, um I hadn't heard that the buffalo plaza, um it is.
Speaker 2:It's becoming a place where a lot of people are coming to and they're realizing we're there and with the signage, people come in and they're like oh t-shirts, uh, because I have a lot of customers. People come in and they're like oh t-shirts, uh, because I have a lot of customers who come in and they're like guns yeah oh gosh, am I in the right place? And I'm like, yep, that's my husband's side come over.
Speaker 1:It's like walking into a cooking class, except one person's dressed up like a stripper. It's like one thing stands out really heavily, that's the guns.
Speaker 3:And then you realize like oh, there's other really good things going on right here, yeah, and we and we have lost some customers due to it.
Speaker 1:Not as many as we expected. You've lost some t-shirt customers because you are also a gun business.
Speaker 3:Nowhere near as much as we expected. Obviously, the majority of them have been schools. With schools.
Speaker 1:They kind of draw the line in dealing with guns I've always advocated forated, for if you own a business, you should sponsor a sports team, you should do all these things to help your community. If you're a community-based business but guns, it would be hard to imagine pulling up to the PTO meeting and they'd be like sponsored by Rack of. Backfire, Not because it wouldn't be a good match just simply because of the connotations.
Speaker 2:Yeah, people just imagine, yeah, people just imagine guns and think like rob, yeah kill right right, but you know, with with reba, you know apparel like reba standing for racket back armory a lot of people think my name is reba and not rebecca, so I get a lot of people who email me and they're like hey, reba, nice to talk to you earlier today and I'm like and I'll sign my email, you know, like rebecca half acre and um they won't like, I won't correct them because I'm not trying to be rude or anything like.
Speaker 2:Call me reba, I don't give a shit yeah, yeah but, um, uh, yeah, it's, it's. I haven't experienced too many people like not wanting to deal with us. I do experience a lot of people who just kind of call around and price check right, because my side of the house we are heavily in deep with a lot of other screen printers around. There are a lot of companies and most people they're going to call around and price and I try to stay as fairly priced as I can.
Speaker 2:You know I'm not trying to. I still want to make a living, but like I, you know, I still want like the business at the same time. But I'm also not that person who's like I don't want a customer, just to want a customer, Like I want to build a rapport. I want to know you by the first name. I want to hey. Oh, you need that order again.
Speaker 1:Gotcha, gotcha, we doing this again. All right, cool. Well, hey look, I could flat out tell you everybody I've had on here. I'm looking at the, the little um piece of artwork we got over there outside of racquetback armory. That's already on there for doyle when he was here originally. There's willow tree, uh, muffler, there's also. Uh, there'll be another signature on there soon from the guy who runs willow tree. His grandson, evan, runs his lawn care business nice so there's willow tree lawn care.
Speaker 1:Uh, obviously tax man's up there, I'm up there, but there's also you guys know, probably know these guys now a meb and Electric.
Speaker 3:Right there in the parking lot you had Meb and Electric in here I had Jim from Meb and Electric.
Speaker 1:He's actually my most listened to episode. I think it's because people read the episode title. If you read it quickly. It looks like it says Electric Jim.
Speaker 1:Instead of like Electrician Jim. If you just glance at it it's like Electric Jim, but he's my most listened to episode. I think Wayne is number two. Ed Priola he's running for Alamance County, commissioner, but of all the people that we're going to have in here, they'll all be business related, or at least most of them will be so as time goes on. It'd be great to connect you guys from a t-shirt perspective and a gun perspective, you know, if that serves the case, but connect you to those businesses because they probably don't even know you're here, like Willowtree Muffler probably doesn't know that you're here and he probably doesn't know.
Speaker 1:You own a gun store, yeah, right, and I guarantee you Wayne from Willowtree wants to buy some guns, right? I just based on my conversations with him, I think he likes guns. So I think that people hearing that you're there, that you support firearms, that you support all these other things that we kind of talk about on here, I think as we grow, that will help you grow.
Speaker 2:That makes sense. So, like, as far as like the business model aspect, like with the apparel side and the gunsmithing side is, you know, we kind of consider ourselves like a mom and pop shop, so to speak, not to like discount, like our business partners by any mean, but like people come in and they're like ah okay, sheridan, rebecca, one one runs one side, the other one's the other side. That's cool, they're local, hell yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I mean it's really cool. It is kind of mom and pop-ish. You have almost like a dividing line down the middle of the building.
Speaker 3:And I get to go have lunch with my husband. That's awesome, actually. So I can point directly to a specific instance very recently that mom and pop shots tend to be able to like, from an entrepreneurial point, they can pivot very, very quickly. Perennial point they can. They can pivot very, very quickly that, if you look at those, those larger corporations, that's not physically possible. Yeah, and we just landed a contract, a pretty decently sized contract, on the gunsmithing side. That was completely unrelated to gunsmithing because we also do laser engraving and I don't want to put any names out because I think that we have to start signing ndas. But part of the reason we landed that contract was because we were a mom and pop shop and the guy came in hey, can you engrave this? And I was like, yeah, sure, and he's like, okay, I'll be back in a couple days to see what you do.
Speaker 3:It's like no, let's just go do it right now. Right now, yeah. And he's like, okay, he was very, very, uh, flabbergasted that. I was like, all right, let's do it right now. And then he's like, oh, you know, that looks really good. Let me go talk to my you know, the higher ups and get some more information.
Speaker 3:And he came back the next day with two blank items for us to engrave, and I'm guessing the first one was just like a shot in the dark. Hey, can you do this? Can you engrave it? Cool. And then the second interview, so to speak, was a proof of concept. Hey, this is exactly what we need engraved and we want to see I want to, like the higher ups want to see what it looks like. So we did two full run engravings for this guy. And he walks in and he's like hey, I have these two things for you to engrave. Can you, you know, can you engrave them? I was like, yeah, sure, let's go ahead. And he's like, cool, I'll, I'll go ahead and drop it off, I'll, I'll see you in a couple of days.
Speaker 2:No, man, let's go sit down right now, you know it's.
Speaker 3:It's very easy for me to you know at the program than I am, but I've gotten pretty good at the laser engraving program and I was able to zap it for them. It probably took less than 10 minutes to get them both done and they were incredibly impressed with just how fast it was and how flexible that we are as a company. Because I know one of my biggest complaints when I was working with other gunsmiths was yeah, I work on ARs. Hey, so I've got this cool 1911. No, no, no, no, no. Let me stop you there. I work on ARs.
Speaker 3:That is it, that is the only thing I do, whereas we're the exact opposite. We're jumping like, hey, I've never worked on an air gun, let me go study air guns, and I'm going to go learn how to repair an air gun.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 3:I've never worked on a black powder gun. Let me go, you know, learn how to repair one. Um, I've never run a screen printing or an embroidery company but I let me hire my wife.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I can see how it is very lucrative.
Speaker 3:You know, let's, let's get into that, yeah. So yeah, it's been Well.
Speaker 1:Doyle, obviously you cover both gunsmith and the airsoft side. Yeah, do you have involvement with the t-shirt side? I know?
Speaker 2:not necessarily legally. He swung some ink for me once.
Speaker 4:I'll help out when I have time.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I'll go in there and help out what's kind of on your plate. From the business perspective, the airsoft thing is a whole different field.
Speaker 4:Yeah, that's a whole different ballgame, yeah.
Speaker 3:So my main involvement in it is uh, how do you always put it in the shop, sugar daddy?
Speaker 4:yeah, so yeah I, I work uh a lot of time at a security company is available. I am single but I work. I work mostly at a security company which, uh, also has an office in that same building, which is how that whole relationship came about and, for the most part, I'm making money so that I can get some of the last pieces of heavy equipment that we really need to be able to do everything.
Speaker 3:Yeah, pretty much entirely self-sufficient, so you need a lathe. Yes, what?
Speaker 1:kind of price range is that falling into?
Speaker 2:The least 5K at the bottom You're looking Very least 5K on the cheap end A good one what?
Speaker 3:$7,000 or $8,000?
Speaker 2:$7,000 or $8,000 up to about $12,000.
Speaker 3:The prices do vary wildly, but no more than $15,000. So less than $15,000.
Speaker 1:So if I was in the area and I needed a part produced, gun or not absent if. I was in the area and I needed a part produced gun or not absent lathe right now could you still produce parts for machining?
Speaker 3:So we do have a a much smaller lathe, like a benchtop lathe. It doesn't have much ass to it. It has trouble turning very common things that we work with.
Speaker 2:It's good for a pinch, but it's yeah, it is.
Speaker 3:It is good in a pinch and we've learned how to utilize it. So, instead of using, like, the actual proper lathe cutting tools, I do it all by hand. So, uh, sort of sort of like your wood turning lathes yeah right, you know you use a hand tool.
Speaker 3:Yeah, to get it down to to size. I do the same thing, um, obviously different tools, but like, hey, I need to turn this metal to the specific size. That's what I'm going to, and I do it all with, like files and a couple other things. So, until until we get to a lathe where I can actually start utilizing lathe tooling, um, I do it all by hand.
Speaker 1:Are you guys expanding into general machining as a business?
Speaker 3:model? Yeah, we have no issues with it whatsoever. Like we were saying, man like apparel is very, very different than than firearms. Like we were saying man apparel is very, very different than firearms and we had no issues with it. It was just financially a good decision. It came with live contracts. It came with existing customers.
Speaker 2:It came with an employee. It came with all of the equipment the stuff to run the equipment.
Speaker 3:It was a great turnkey operation and it was just a good decision. It cost a lot of money and a lot of time and all that, but as of this month we will have paid off almost the remainder of that cost for that business. We'll have paid off that debt and the only debt remaining is us, to ourselves, to the business.
Speaker 1:What about the Airsoft side? How does that interact with? Does the Airsoft business that you're a part of interact with Racketback? Not directly.
Speaker 4:Not as much the way. The way the airsoft thing works is basically the gentleman who owns the security company also owned the airsoft business and he had some some fairly severe staffing issues that that looked like he might have to close the business down and we use that as a. He was allowing us to use that as a place to test fire and so I was like, whoa, wait, please don't close that down. Um, let me, let me help run that thing and see if we can keep it from collapsing. And there was there's clientele based, there's people who want to come out and play airsoft and everything like that, and that was basically all it took is somebody to go out there and manage the thing in order to keep it from falling apart. And so basically I manage it and got an ownership share of it and in return, we get access to the field whenever we want.
Speaker 1:So to summarize all of the activity inside that building, we've got machining, we've got gunsmithing, proper Yep Like it may include machining, but hand hand tooling, gunsmithing, yep.
Speaker 2:And Cerakote.
Speaker 1:Cerakote Yep.
Speaker 2:Laser engraving Laser engraving.
Speaker 1:Am I missing anything on the gunsmith's hat? Gun retail Would you?
Speaker 2:incorporate Corda into that. Yeah, so that's actually something we've never even mentioned to you. Yet we mentioned, I think him once. I mentioned him once. Is it a knife guy? Yeah, yeah, yeah, I think he's a knife guy.
Speaker 1:So he's his own thing now. Is he out of the same building with you?
Speaker 3:guys. Yeah, he's on our side.
Speaker 1:He rent section from us oh he has a little spot inside the store that he takes care of, and he's running classes he's doing forging classes, knife making classes, where Right there, right in the shop Inside.
Speaker 3:He's doing forging Yep. Well, he doesn't forge indoors he forges outside.
Speaker 2:Outside, there's a safe area where he can do the anvil and stuff like that.
Speaker 1:Back where that generator is.
Speaker 2:Yeah, the one that doesn't even work.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 3:Well, theoretically it works. I'm told that it works.
Speaker 1:I've never seen it.
Speaker 3:So you have knife sales knife sales knife making custom leather, custom embroidery.
Speaker 1:Like available five days a week. Yeah, he's like. He's there all the time.
Speaker 3:He's, so it's not like a once a month gig. He's, he, he, uh, he has like a family and kids that he has to take care of, obviously. Um, so he's getting a. He's actually gonna get like a nine to five.
Speaker 2:Um, hopefully he he's able to get a remote gig so he can actually come into the shop right, work there normal and do the remote, but as of right now, it's it's it's his full-time gig. As of right now.
Speaker 3:No as of yesterday.
Speaker 2:Oh, really yeah, oh, okay.
Speaker 3:He's like all right, cool, I've decided he needs to go get a.
Speaker 2:Gotcha, admittedly, we were very. I know he talked about it.
Speaker 3:We were very lucky in that when we first started. I'm 100% VA disabled, so everything that I don't use to eat or pay my bills goes to the shop, and Doyle was able to take a very similar mindset, but his is much more lucrative being Shop Sugar Daddy.
Speaker 2:I'm going to make you a t-shirt.
Speaker 3:Yeah, you should have an official shirt that you wear, it'll be polo, it'll be a Reuters official.
Speaker 4:I'll wear it.
Speaker 3:We were able to to be very flexible right Two single dudes way back when, like it was easy for us to make happen, Cora opened up the business. Um, we were able to help him out as much as we could, Um, but, uh, he's got, you know, a wife, two kids. Um, his wife is in school waiting to get a job. She's about to finish her job. She's already been selected to work somewhere.
Speaker 2:That's another form of income.
Speaker 3:That's a big free fall period.
Speaker 2:Especially with household mortgage kids.
Speaker 3:He's stepping back to take some time to go do job stuff.
Speaker 1:Are you still going to retail his work? Yep, Some knives guns engraving forging leather work woodwork general machining within your abilities, given the machinery that you currently have. Right Um, CNC, CNC, Uh, I'm trying to think of all the machines t-shirts yeah, screen printing and embroidery. And that'd be hats, shirts, jackets anything, right, anything that even backpacks fits inside the machine that you need.
Speaker 2:Anything that can fit on the hoop in theory fit on the hoop as long as it fits it sits.
Speaker 1:If it fits it prints, yeah. And then Doyle you have. You're on the range, but you're on the range supporting airsoft processes. What's the next big thing for airsoft? With you guys here, you just running your recent, your, your weekend events, weekly events.
Speaker 4:We're just we're open on the weekends, saturdays nine 30 to five. Sometimes we push that a little bit later to five 30. If people want to run a few extra games or something, but yeah, that's. That's pretty much all it is at the moment. We're slowly working up to hosting some events, but nothing, nothing concrete potentially opening up on Sundays.
Speaker 3:Yeah, that's been discussed.
Speaker 2:Y'all are also like trying to organize more themes. What about archery range out?
Speaker 1:there, I mean there's no, no reason.
Speaker 4:We never really tried, or thought of.
Speaker 3:I mean you got the land.
Speaker 1:So that's why I said you got, We've got the land. That's why I said we've got land. It's something we could do. Archery range yeah. So to pull everybody back in, you have one and the security business is under that roof, yeah under the roof and all three of us are involved in it in at least some way.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so it's one collective of people running multiple businesses, kind of all based out of the same location. Yeah, all based out of the same location. All red-blooded, patriotic, local business, not necessarily Bitcoin supporter, bitcoin promoter, but Bitcoin-friendly businesses are right here in Alamance County. Because what I think is hopefully going to happen as we proceed with the podcast and just kind of how you guys are going to grow, is the more of these type of things that you guys get yourself involved with, the more fingers that you have in different parts of the pie, the more people are going to figure out about you, which benefits your businesses. And that just continues to snowball.
Speaker 1:So people listening today might be in California, but they might want a gun and they might want to buy a Bitcoin. Not necessarily want to buy a Bitcoin. They might want to buy a bitcoin and they not necessarily want to buy a bitcoin. They might want to buy a gun and like the fact that you support bitcoin or you support freedom or you support xyz and reach out to you, right. So we cast a little bit wider net, although we're not catching all that many fish as far as listeners are concerned yet. This is an incremental process, like the toyota plant, right?
Speaker 1:like it's just an incremental improvement every episode, but in time I think that the community will eventually be a lot more involved with you, especially on the machining side.
Speaker 3:Yeah, we're planning a pretty big event when?
Speaker 1:Can you talk about it? I guess we can.
Speaker 2:It's been under wraps for a little bit.
Speaker 3:It's been a little under, but some not-so-great things happened which we'll talk to off the air in regards to VFW, and they're all really good people and we realize they also don't have like there is nothing for veterans, veteran-oriented, anything in regards to Veterans Day here in Mebane. So we're going to host the REBA or the Buffalo Plaza.
Speaker 2:Veterans.
Speaker 3:Day event and it will be the entire parking lot.
Speaker 2:Vendors food trucks. Oh wow, raffling off.
Speaker 3:At least one rifle Silent auction. There's going to be indoor venue, outdoor venue.
Speaker 1:Who are you guys bringing in for vendors? Do you know yet?
Speaker 3:During the Dogwood. I actually asked a lot of the vendors there. A lot of them seemed to be very interested. We're going to have axe throwing. Hopefully they're able to get that.
Speaker 2:Hopefully they're available that day, because that would be so cool.
Speaker 3:They already said they would they would be available they're trying to buy a portable axe throwing unit it's not hard to have that there.
Speaker 2:It's a trailer with some cages.
Speaker 3:It's a trailer with some cages and, uh and a backstop, the um I mean you think every other you know fucking vet in the world, oh yeah, viking, blah, blah, blah do that. So like, of course they're gonna chuck, they're gonna love that shit. Yeah, we spoke with the local armed forces recruiting center here in Burlington and they're going to come out Good idea. Marine Corps is bringing out their pull-ups and, funnily enough, nobody else was there for us to talk to.
Speaker 2:Everybody else was busy having the day off, I guess Doing things.
Speaker 3:So only the Marine Corps was there. So who the fuck can thunk it?
Speaker 1:Hey you know, come to think of it, when my recruiting station was multi, I think the Navy was in there as well as the Air Force, I think. And I don't think I ever saw those dudes. I'm not talking bad about them in general.
Speaker 3:I don't think I ever saw those dudes. I saw the Navy once and the army once and uh, I'd never the air force guy was just like have you watched top gun?
Speaker 2:you know what's hilarious? I'm sitting up good as the navy, not the air force, but oh I always thought it was the air force.
Speaker 3:But we're doing, but we're doing this event and um marines, like everybody's, like we have food trucks there, like all kinds of shit, and uh it's um, we actually this is a really crazy one that we had access to Our social media manager. Her husband is in the National Guard.
Speaker 2:I know he's airborne, that's all I know, I don't know what he is.
Speaker 3:He's in the army of some sort and he already like, before we even announced anything, this is technically the official announcement. Yeah, he already reached out to his command and his command was like yeah, sure, we'll bring out the heavy vehicles and all those other things. We'll bring out the armored forklifts and trucks and all that other shit. I was like cool, I just wanted like a Humvee and a Deuce and a half, but they're trying to get tanks out there and all kinds of shit.
Speaker 2:I just want to climb to the top. Brian is going to fucking hate me because he just paid a lot of money to redo that parking lot. Oh, we have to think about that, because that's a lot of money right there. The good news is?
Speaker 3:American tanks have rubber treads, interesting Russian tanks, do not? Russian tanks destroy asphalt, whereas the American tanks were designed to drive on the US highway system.
Speaker 2:Interesting. I didn't know that, yeah.
Speaker 3:Why is the highway system thing? Yeah, it was invented during what? The cold war.
Speaker 4:Yeah, late world war, late world war two, early cold war.
Speaker 3:Yeah, it was. It was to be able to quickly and efficiently maneuver the U S military anywhere in the country. I did not know, that I.
Speaker 2:I did not know that. I did not know that either. Wait, the US military can't operate.
Speaker 1:They can move, but they cannot operate within the US border Unless we're invaded and that kind of goes out the window. Yeah, that's a different story. That was a much bigger threat back then.
Speaker 3:Yeah, yeah, so that was on the menu, but yeah, but theoretically, if they do bring tanks, they're not going to drive them down fucking I-40 or whatever. They're going to put them on trucks and then bring them out there.
Speaker 1:No, that'd be cool. That would be cool. You guys got food vendors.
Speaker 3:Yes, Food vendors. Like you've already talked to Fat man, I'm guessing. Yep, we've spoken to everybody in the plaza.
Speaker 1:Everybody's got to help out. Are they paying like? Is there a charge to be a?
Speaker 3:vendor, yeah, actually. So there's a yeah so to be an outdoor vendor and that'll give you a 10 by 10 spot, and then a hundred dollars to be an indoor vendor and that'll give you, I think, a 10 by 10 spot, but it also gives you power ac, you know, obviously lights I'll be there if I'll buy a spot.
Speaker 2:Yeah, for sure, I'll host the podcast episode. That'd be really cool yeah, what does?
Speaker 1:what does interview veterans? Well, uh would be awesome.
Speaker 3:The fat man, the giant food area at the bowling alley. It is big enough to warrant itself as a commissary, like a FDA regulated commissary. That's actually part of the reason why he's in there, because he did a lot of food truck stuff right In order to exist as a food truck you have to operate out of a commissary, yeah so with all the laws, he's going.
Speaker 3:He's a food. He used to be a food truck. He knows what it's like to run a commissary or to be involved in a commissary. So all he's going to be doing you know, prices and stuff might change, I don't really know. But the word that he gave me was um, he's just going to take a percentage of profits. There's not going to be any cost other than like hey, you know, you can use our commissary and you can be a vendor. We just want a percentage of the of the profit for that.
Speaker 1:Right, right, that's cool. That's a great idea. I think it'll bring a lot of exposure to you guys. It's good for veterans. It's a wonderful idea.
Speaker 3:Yeah, yeah, we're going to try and donate yeah, Do a large portion of what we do like. Obviously, the auction ticket sales, the whole gamut donating to the local VFW, VFW proper or VFW, american Legion. Mike Barr. Mike Barr, VFW.
Speaker 1:In this area, there is a dividing line between the American Legion and the VFW for a variety of reasons.
Speaker 3:I've heard of that. It's weird.
Speaker 1:There are two very different types of people area. There is a dividing line between the american legion and the vfw. For a variety of reasons, it's it's weird it's.
Speaker 3:There are two very different types of people. Yes, it's.
Speaker 1:It's a very strange scenario like there's so many like psychological things that I think are built into it and there's so many it's I'm not going to say it's outright a pissing contest oh, but there's some.
Speaker 2:There's some dick measuring going on at some level I've.
Speaker 1:I'm probably one of the few people who've been kicked out of one or both. I've been physically removed. They didn't handle me, they just told me to leave, oh wow. Yeah, doyle was there for that one. That was one of my classic explosions, yeah.
Speaker 3:But generally the VFW. So it's sort of like the argument between Pogues and Grunts. Right, yeah, so Legion is essentially Pogues and Grunts are like VFW. So the Legion is open to anybody who is served?
Speaker 1:Yeah, who is served yeah.
Speaker 3:Whereas the VFW is very specific. It's almost like into the fucking name Veterans of Foreign Wars. So you have to have served in a foreign Right, in a war they have to have served in a foreign in a war and technically, since what? Like last year, they aren't making any more people who are, who can be a part of the VFW. So, like people who are currently joined, if you were to get out like right now, you cannot be a part of the VFW because you have not been involved in a war.
Speaker 3:Kids are coming out of bootcamp with nothing on.
Speaker 4:There's no ribbon. They don't get the fire watch ribbon anymore.
Speaker 3:It is gone. Yeah, so even even then You're getting your shirt on backwards.
Speaker 1:Yeah, change it up a bit, yeah.
Speaker 3:That's sort of the from. In my experience working with both groups, the dudes who were, who were at the Legion, they were fucking pokes. I'm not talking shit about all of the Legion, but the dudes that I met they didn't really give a shit. They were like yeah, I was a, I'm a veteran, yeah, that's what I am Like, yeah, oh, yeah. But whereas most like dudes that we've seen that served like actually done, you know, been there, done that.
Speaker 1:They don't see why not. Yeah, yeah, I don't have a problem. Whenever I was doing stuff with them that was one thing I always try to say was like anything I do, is open to both.
Speaker 4:Yeah, right, even though I was really only affiliated with the vfw?
Speaker 1:yeah, because at the end of the day, the goal is to improve veterans lives, right? So?
Speaker 1:I think, whatever avenue, more important thing yeah, whatever avenue you have to take to reach them is the one I try to tell the vfw like, look, you want to improve their lives, actually improve their lives.
Speaker 1:Yeah, like, help their wives, do something in the community that helps them, that gives them a benefit. One idea I had was um, if, if, if, joining the vfw at whatever whatever the monthly or annual cost is got me 10 free classes for my wife to go to a yoga studio that the VFW hosted when its doors were closed. I would have joined the VFW 10 years ago because it would have been beneficial to improve my life. Now, in this example, it's improving my wife's life, but it improves my life in relation to that. So if the VFW offered up things like hey, if you're a member of the VFW, you get a discount at the community pool, your wife can come to yoga studios. We're working with the nail salon, just touch on all these little things in life that make your life and your family's life slightly better, instead of saying what are we going to have for dinner next week?
Speaker 3:Yeah, it's sort of like a boys club and we hang out and have dinner.
Speaker 1:Most of my experiences with the VFW. The people were pleasant, but the goals were effectively the same as last year, and that's not necessarily a bad thing. But when you're trying to recruit youth, when you're trying to to make the claim that you improve lives, you can't just eat chicken and hand out some money exactly. You got to actually be in your community and do real things that improve real lives, like toys for tots is a great example of something they do that actually improves lives. But that's a ritual every vfw across the county does it. Come up with some new things. Same for the Legion. Come up with new ways to improve lives and people will join you. That's what I think.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I know that's been a recurring complaint that Barr has, and you might get butthurt that I say it. But when he took over, when he joined the VFW, they were very transparent with their coffers, like, hey, this is how much money we have as a post. The dudes that were in charge of that post beforehand oh yeah, let me do whatever I can to spend some money. It wasn't for helping veterans, it was doing whatever they could to spend as much money. Get a discount here, get a discount there. They just demolished those coffers and then Barr took over and he's just been steadily trying to like, increase those. You know that the amount of uh money, because the money is uh, according to him, um, the. The whole point of it is hey, this veteran, he just lost his job, lost his home. Uh, the house burned down and the car was in the garage. Let's just drop half of our coffers to give them somewhere to stay.
Speaker 1:Do something to help out this local vet that I did see the bfw do. Yeah, that I I will give them credit where credit is due. I did see them help specific people.
Speaker 1:Yeah, with with real needs you know like hey, I don't have groceries yeah, or I've been, I've been evicted and we you know the bfw would get them a week at a hotel and then give them some resources to help them get back on their feet. Whether or not they did is immaterial. Yep, it's. It's the opportunity and the help that you're getting, and maybe you get repeat help sometimes. It just depends, but I saw the VFW do things like that and I'm actually I've talked to Mike Barr about having him and talk about the VFW, because that's a community thing, right yeah, and they'd be able to give you a much more firsthand description of what they're doing.
Speaker 1:What I thought about was bringing the VFW and the American Legion on at the same time.
Speaker 2:I was thinking the same thing and just be like there's two knives on the table.
Speaker 3:One of them is loaded.
Speaker 4:We can't stay too late. Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1:I was going to say we could probably wrap it up, but I wanted to give everybody an opportunity to kind of get their last piece out and also tell everybody where they can find out more about either you, your business, how they can get in touch with you and general dates that might be important for anything that's coming up. So half will start with you, if you want.
Speaker 3:Shared in Half Acre.
Speaker 1:How do they find you?
Speaker 3:On Facebook or on the Twitter or in the Instagram.
Speaker 1:I know you said you got somebody doing your social media, but do you still respond to messages?
Speaker 3:some of the messages yeah, absolutely as long as I can, as often as I can?
Speaker 1:What's your business at on Twitter? Is it just Racket?
Speaker 3:Back Home. It is at Reba Gunsmithing.
Speaker 1:Reba Gunsmithing Yep.
Speaker 3:And the website is wwwrebagunspillingcom.
Speaker 1:And you guys are right in downtown Mebane, 202 East Washington Street, right. So if anybody needs the address 202 East Washington Street, doyle for the security company and your airsoft side, what do you got?
Speaker 4:So the Archangel Battle Park if you type that into Google, that'll take you to our location on Mineral Springs Road. We're only open on Saturdays as of right now. There's been talk of opening up on sundays. Nothing concrete yet, but that is something that's in the works. Um, we do have rental gear available. Uh, anybody's free to come out and play.
Speaker 1:You don't need to reserve a spot or anything like that and how can people get in touch with you and or, if they need, they have questions about the the airsoft side, because Is there somebody they can reach out to?
Speaker 2:Probably the Facebook page, right? Yeah, posting questions on the Facebook page would be Because there's a couple of admins on that page. Yeah, that can see it yeah.
Speaker 1:And I wanted to cover one more thing on the gun rental stuff for machine guns. What's the options for people to rent right now, kind of, what are the prices?
Speaker 3:The AK is down. We we had actually an experience with shot show and we cannibalized a lot of our AK parts to go to the shot show job. So we currently have the Barrett 50 for rent and 50 bucks a head, 10 bucks a shot. After that, sort of like getting into a strip club, you pay your entry fee, you get a free drink with it. So you pay 50 bucks, you get one free shot with it, and then you pay for each drink after that. Same thing with the MP5 and the Sten gun. Those are available. Those are at $60. And then the AR bog standard, standard AR. That starts at a hundred. Um, we've got a lot of little onesie, twosie machine guns in the works. Um, a G three, ppsh 41. Um, what else is there? Um, looking at doing an Uzi, a couple of other things.
Speaker 1:Um, every time somebody an Uzi, a couple other things, every time somebody says Uzi, I just think of that. Steven Seagal movie, when I think he was in Jamaica and there was a bunch of dudes, the bubba clot.
Speaker 3:Bumba clot, bubba clot.
Speaker 1:But yeah, we're always making more Sweet. So machine gun rentals, airsoft security what about the security side?
Speaker 4:So, the security side of things, uh, if you're looking for security, uh hit me up. I can put you in contact with our sales folks.
Speaker 1:Um what's the name of the security company signal security. Signal security, yeah, and that's there. You're based out of mevin for your location, but you guys have locations all around um, the main.
Speaker 4:The main office is actually in durham. The mevin office is kind of a satellite location actually, now, yeah, and then the t-shirt side becca what you got.
Speaker 1:How can people find you? What's coming up. The main office is actually in Durham. The Mebane office is kind of a satellite location actually. Now and then the t-shirt side Becca what you got. How can people find you?
Speaker 2:What's coming up? Well, you can find me at the same brick and mortar location as the gunsmith side 202 East Washington Street, Mebane, right across the Bowling Alley parking lot. It's that big brick building in the Bowling Alley parking lot. You can't miss it. They can find me on Facebook at Reba Elite Apparel. They can email me at Reba EliteApparel at gmailcom. They can call my number. Yeah, there's multiple ways to get a hold of me.
Speaker 1:Now, we didn't talk about this during this, but maybe something me and you can get together on the future. You have a whole art side that we didn't even address. I've seen your murals.
Speaker 2:I've seen your, your, I've done a couple murals in meban um I. I've done a lot of painting in my in my day are you open to that type of work or?
Speaker 1:absolutely discussions with people.
Speaker 2:If they have questions, they want to talk to you about it um, I've been an artist gosh, I think professionally like half my life.
Speaker 1:I've seen your work. It's obviously fantastic. Oh, thank you.
Speaker 2:Thank you, but yeah, I do everything from body art, body painting, murals, commission work on canvases. Yeah.
Speaker 1:Sweet.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:So somebody can come into one building and basically find all three of you and get their gun fixed, their T-shirts made, their airsoft going their machine guns rented. You guys are like an anarchist one-stop shop.
Speaker 3:Well, I'm trying to learn how to make bread.
Speaker 1:You bought a drone. Those homestead folk.
Speaker 2:I forgot to mention. I'm sorry to interrupt you. We have a friend of ours. It's actually my brother-in-law's girlfriend, she makes goat milk soap and it's awesome. It's helped with my eczema and stuff like that and we're going to start carrying her soap in the store as well.
Speaker 3:I convinced her to start doing shapes, so she's doing like grenade shapes bullets?
Speaker 1:I guarantee you, there's not a single grenade soap in the planet outside of your shop and you know what?
Speaker 2:It's my favorite one. It's like cedarwood and something it smells so good. Can you make a gunpowder soap? Yes, we do have gunpowder soap. She has gunpowder soap.
Speaker 3:I threw out a bunch of options for potential things like shapes, like gun-related things, and the gun things didn't work too well. Grenades have worked great. She talked me out of bullets specifically because they're kind of phallic and people will put them in places.
Speaker 2:It's kind of hard to shove a grenade up your ass.
Speaker 1:You should come with a warning label that just says. You should just have a warning label that says do not insert, and then in parentheses, unless you want to Do not insert and then in parentheses, unless you want to.
Speaker 2:But in all seriousness, her business name is Butterhoof Bath Essentials. God, that's a mouthful, but Butterhoof Bath Essentials Sweet.
Speaker 1:Maybe we should talk to her too.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that would be awesome. She was actually here today. I had breakfast with her. She was on her way back to Raleigh and I was like, hey, stop in, I'll cook you breakfast Nice.
Speaker 1:Yeah Well, you know how this ends, doyle, you've already signed our canvas. For those of you listening, that might be your first time. You don't know. We have a canvas that all of our guests sign at the end of 21 episodes. We're going to try to auction it off. If nobody bids on it, we'll just go to the Bitcoin core developer community. So after we're done here, if you guys want to drop your names on. You can sign whatever color size, make a drawing whatever you want, so cool.
Speaker 2:Thanks for having me guys. Thanks for coming on, thanks for having us.
Speaker 3:We'll talk to you guys soon.
Speaker 1:Thanks everybody.
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