Well, hello ladies and gents, Robert Sykes, Keto savage.com
and today I've got special guest Corey Anderson on the podcast.
I'm not sure how exactly I found out about Corey.
I think I found him on Instagram, but he's doing some
awesome, awesome stuff. He's very passionate about the
skills that have built our society, the metalworking
skills, fabrication, the welding, He owns a foundry and
he just doing some awesome stuff.
He's rebuilt an old school steam fired tractor and he's he's got
an academy's taught people how to build these things and
develop these skills. He makes kettle bells,
dumbbells, things of that nature.
He started that business when COVID was going on and there was
a shortage of that very successful entrepreneur, very
cool individual doing some awesome, awesome things.
I just wanted to bring him on the podcast and talk about his
story, his passions and his skill set.
Got no doubt that you will take something from this so that
further delay. Sit back, relax and enjoy the
conversation with Corey. We are live, Corey.
How are you, brother? Doing awesome man, how are you
doing? I'm good.
I'm excited to be chatting with you man.
I honestly don't know how we connect.
I know I sent you Adm on Instagram, but I don't remember
how I found your profile to begin with, but somebody
recommended I follow you, I think.
And like the first glance at your profile, you're just doing
all kinds of cool stuff. And I'm like, man, I got to get
this on the podcast and just dive into it.
So that's what we're doing now. Nice.
Well, thank you. I appreciate the invite and
looking forward to talking with you here.
Yeah, 100% man. So give me some back.
So I know you make you've got multiple different business
outlets. You're you make like gym
equipment, but you've also got a lot of, you know, old school
machinery, like you've got a steam traction tractor, whatever
the official name for that is. It's super cool.
I've been like just doom scrolling, looking at all the,
the steam engine work you're doing.
So what, what is it you do exactly?
Like give me some breakdown of your your history I guess.
Yeah. So a little background about
myself, I was raised kind of in, in a family where preservation
of history and hard work was, was really a passion and I would
say like a core value. And so bit I've been around the
preservation of history my whole life, like growing up around
antique tractors, steam engines, cars, and as a young boy
listening, you know, really that environment allowed me to grow
up around a lot of old timers who were, you know, passionate
about preserving history. And so those guys kind of became
my influencers growing up as a little boy, You know, now we
have social media influencers nowadays, but even before social
media, we, we have influencers in our life, right?
And, and to me it was, it was those old timers and I just, I
love to listen to their stories and was just inspired by them.
And, you know, all they talked about was working hard and, and
keeping history alive and, and doing good, you know, doing good
things and helping other people. And, and I just, you know, so
that that kind of became really a core of, of what I believed in
ever since, ever since I was really young boy.
And, and that that passion for preservation of history led me
to bring to life one of the largest steam tractors that was
ever produced. And that became basically it was
a childhood dream of mine to bring the 150 case back to life
because it was the largest one ever produced.
And none of them survived the the test of time.
They were originally built in 19 O 5 and and none of them
survived. They all got scrapped.
And so as a childhood dream like that became kind of my mission
is, Hey, I want to eventually have the resources, the, the
shop, the equipment and be able to do that one day and bring
this, this tractor back to life. And kind of that, that dream or
that vision is what propelled me onto an entrepreneurial journey.
Because in order to take on a project like that, I had to
create a lot of resources. I had to, you know, basically
develop and build the means to be able to do a project like
that. And so I started 20, yeah, just
about 20 years ago. And I started started in my
garage with a small manufacturing company just
working by myself doing welding, machining and and started with
nothing. Took out a loan from Wells Fargo
for $11,000 and worked worked in my garage for a couple years.
Eventually started hiring some employees and moved out of my
garage into a existing factory that was empty and just started
growing, growing my business and in manufacturing, primarily
doing welding, engineering, machining, metal fabrication.
And yeah, within the first eight years grew, grew to a couple 100
employees and about 50-60 million in revenue.
And, and at that point, then I, I kind of had developed the
resources to be able to start on that big project of building
that tractor. And, and so around 2016, my, my
shift kind of focused to focusing on bringing that
tractor back to life. And, and, and I worked on that
for like a year and a half pretty much as a full time, like
almost like a sabbatical. I mean, I still had to keep my
companies running, but I had had teams and people in place to, to
really help support that at that time and just worked 100% on
bringing this tractor back to life, designing all the parts,
casting everything, machining them myself.
And with a, you know, I had a handful of friends that, that
pretty much helped me ball as volunteers, just friends helping
me along the way. And we built that big tractor
and in about a year and a half working on it full time.
And so that was a pretty, pretty amazing feat to, you know, make
up, make over 3-4 hundred parts, you know, and cast them, machine
them, bring everything back to life.
And this tractor weighs about £75,000.
And so there's a lot of a lot of lot of iron and steel to to make
and, and bringing that to life. I.
Love it man. Yeah.
And so that's kind of like my, my, you know, just a high level
journey in, in entrepreneurship and kind of my background and,
and history, the preservation of history and skilled trades, like
the skilled trades. Obviously, I, I grew up in the
skilled trades passion, you know, had apprenticeship
programs who worked under masters of machining and
welding. And, and that was kind of my
journey. I would say from when I was like
16 until I started my business when I was 22.
There was like a six year period where my, my, my only focus was
on learning as much as possible from anyone who would, you know,
let me work alongside of them and learn from them and
developing skills to be able to do ultimately to build, to build
that tractor, but those skills ultimately, you know, be became
valuable in business as well. Totally.
How old are you, Corey? I'm 41.
Nice. Yeah.
You feel like you were born in the wrong era.
Yeah, yeah. Everyone always jokes that I was
born 100 years too late, but I, I, I have a unique, like, I, I,
I, I kind of love the time frame that I'm, that I'm born in.
And, and also I'm glad that I was born before technology had a
huge influence. Like, you know, I grew up going
through high school and we didn't really have cell phones
and, and you know, I graduated high school in O2, so kind of
before, really grew up without much technology.
And I think one thing that being so passionate about the
preservation of history gives me an advantage in, in my business
and how I've applied things is because what one of my mentors
always said, you don't know where you're going unless you
know where you've been. And you know that passion and
my, my respect and wanting to learn from history helps me to
also be very for like foresighted in what it, what is
coming in the future. So like throughout my business,
even throughout my personal life, like I'm my passion is
preserving history, but I'm extremely forward thinking when
it comes to using technologies like in our manufacturing
company, trying to trying to use the state-of-the-art software's
manufacturing equipment. You know, personally, I'm into
all the future things a lot we do, I do a lot with AI
cryptocurrency, like a lot of just a lot of the future, you
know, so just kind of kind of being able to be the bridge in
in and my passion for that history to also learn from how
technology involved and the impacts it had throughout
history to what is coming out today and what potential impacts
might that have. So even though, yeah, it would
have been, I would like to have seen a lot of the stuff 100
years ago and how they did it, it would have been a, it have
been a damn tough time to be alive, you know, compared to
what we're the way we get to Live Today.
Now the the preservation of history is cool though, man,
before I fell in love with bodybuilding and
entrepreneurship, my my passion, like my first real passion life
was Native American history. So after I graduated college, I
was either going to start my own business or I was going to go to
Alaska and live as a mountain man.
I probably watch way too many Jeremiah Johnson movies or
something, but that was my thing, man.
Like, I loved it. I'd, I would, I'd made bow, bow
and arrows. I'd, I'd made my own buckskin
leggings, like all this traditional Native American, you
know, wisdom that I just wanted to bring back to life because
that's what I was all passionate about.
Like I just, I really appreciated how far we had come
and what all things were like back then.
And I feel like we just as a society, I'm so far removed from
it that we just lack the perspective that it brings, you
know? Right.
Exactly. Yep.
No, I I hear you. Exactly.
But not that's that's cool, man. So talk to me about the the
manufacturing business. Like what is that entail?
Exactly what what are y'all typically produce?
And I know you've got the, the kettle bells and everything, but
what, what is the what, what is the primary manufacturing you
are doing? So our our core business is
really our largest, our largest business by revenue is, is the
iron foundry. So at the at Dakota foundry, we
we basically meltdown scrap iron and steel and we realloy it to
make it a a good high quality either ductile or Gray iron.
And then we're pouring, you know, basically pouring molten
iron into, into sand molds and we, we are producing castings
for OEM manufacturers. So whether it be like
construction equipment, power transmission gearboxes, you
know, Department of Defense stuff, fitness equipment,
anything that's basically an iron casting, you know, we're,
we're producing for, for customers to their
specifications. And so that's, that's really our
core business. We also have, I also have like a
number of products that I've designed and have patents on
that are primarily in agricultural or oil and gas
industries. And so we actually manufacture
like do the metal fabrication, do the welding and machining
and, and build out and, and sell those products directly to
whether it's, you know, farmers or drilling rigs rental
companies. So we have kind of our own
little product line stuff that we that we build those products.
I used to, so how I started in manufacturing as I used to do
just contract manufacturing, welding and machining.
And we did that for about 12 years.
And I actually decided to focus all our contract manufacturing
into iron foundry rather than welding and machining to just,
you know, grow 1 core business. And also there's a lot less iron
foundries than there are welding shops in, in the US And so
there's a lot, lot higher demand and, and need for that.
And so as far as welding and machining anymore, my my rule is
I only pretty much only build something that I've designed.
So we only do our own products in that aspect.
Nice. Is soup and then.
Like metalworking fatification in general.
Like one of my best friends is a master blacksmith and I'll go
over there and he makes like these crazy ornate, you know,
staircase cases. He just made this elevator for
this multi gazillionaire's house.
But like seeing what he can do with metal is just, it blows my
mind. And it's so malleable.
You can create anything with it. And obviously it's pretty
robust. But I mean, like, I just got
much respect for the skill involved in creating something
of that caliber and being able to do so at scale.
Yeah, yeah. And it's, you know, I, I grew up
with that passion as well. And, you know, even grew up
around other blacksmiths and, and blacksmithing is, you know,
one of those things that is becoming a lost art.
You know, understanding how to form metal, how you know how to
how to treat it, how to hammer it, how to harden it, you know,
anneal it and all that type of stuff is, is getting to be
really a lost art. I mean, there's very few guys
who understand that level of detail anymore.
And when it comes to metallurgy and, and working with steel and,
but yeah, I, you know, having that kind of passion growing up
for growing up with that and then embracing the technology
is, is really what the technology is really critical
in, in scaling that type of business.
You know, like it's hard to scale if, if, if you're, you can
be the best blacksmith in the world, but you, you, you only
have the capacity of your two hands, right?
And, you know, it's hard to scale unless you started
implementing some technology with, with that.
And it is kind of unique because the shortage of those skilled
trades is creating a high demand.
So somebody who's a very talented blacksmith, I mean,
they can make, you know, multiple 6 figure incomes just
working by themselves in a, in a, in a garage, just because
they have a talent that is very rare and people will pay, you
know, good money for that. Why do you think there's been
this massive decline in that skill set?
Obviously with technology, you got a lot of people, you know,
working, you know, desk jobs and working from a computer
non-stop. But I mean, there's still the
demand for the products that come from that skill.
So what what's happening on a macro level with just that trade
in general, like fabrication in general?
Is it just all going the route of robotics and a lot of stamped
material? It's not, as you know, resilient
to time. Or what do you think's going on
there on a deeper level? Well, I mean, my kind of my
belief is that it, it kind of all stems back to the 1980s
when, you know, a lot of a lot of college universities are
government funded, right, Land grant universities and stuff
like that. During the 80s there was a, you
know, the universities weren't doing very good.
So that's when they they kind of started coming out with these
programs where it was like, you know, trying to appeal, trying
to motivate people to go to university rather than going
into a skilled trade. So they had, you know, like
micro talks a lot about this, you know, those old posters
where, you know, they have the guy in the lab coat who went to
university and he's got a big smile on.
And then they have the picture of the, you know, the, the blue
collar guy with his lunch pail who looks sad and miserable.
And they're like, well, if you don't go to college, you're
going to be this guy with the lunch pail.
And so there was, there was a big over the last 30-40 years,
there was really, I don't know, kind of this war on getting
people, you know, moving people from skilled trades into getting
them into universities. I mean, that's then there's a
whole political debate about that, right?
You can, I mean, how much money does it cost the average person
graduate with student debt nowadays, right?
So there's, there's obviously advantages to getting people to
go, go rack up $100,000 in student debt.
But aside from that political piece, you know, I think we just
really made it and, and we, you know, over the last 20 years
taking technology, the, the science and technology classes
out of high school. So basically, you know, telling
probably 2 generations of kids like these jobs are so
unimportant, we're not even going to show them to you
anymore. And it wasn't until I would say,
you know, the last five years that we've realized like we're
going to have a huge problem in the United States because the
baby boomer generation is really the last large generation who
are in the skilled trades. And for the last two or three
generations, we haven't put kids, We we've been detouring
kids from going into skilled trades.
So now there's now there's a huge shortage of supply, but the
demand is still there. And so that's why it's like, you
know, if if you tried to build a house or try to do a
construction project or anything, even try to hire a
plumber nowadays, it's like 1, if you can get somebody to show
up, that's one miracle. And two, they're just getting,
they can charge you whatever they want because there's such a
shortage for capability in, in these, these trades nowadays.
Yeah. And I would imagine from like a
manufacturing standpoint like we've outsourced so much of it
overseas, like there's not near the in house production that
there was either. Right.
And, and that was yeah, since since early 2000, we've
outsourced, you know, a lot of lot of the manufacturing got
sent out to Mexico, to China, you know, and, and like if you,
if you look at just iron boundaries, for example, we only
have about 500 iron boundaries left in the United States and
compared to about 33,000 in China.
So I mean, that just shows the demographics of, you know,
we've, we've spent so much of that work into other countries
and basically we've shut down those operations here.
Besides the ones who were able to adapt and withstand just, you
know, the pressure from the cost pressure from over, you know,
competing with overseas markets and the different and the
regulations, right? The, the, the, you know, in, in
the US to compete, you know, you've got the EPA, you've got
OSHA, you've got a lot of regulatory arms that cost a
business a lot more money than it does to operate in China or
Mexico where, you know, they, they don't really care about how
much pollution goes into the air or as much about the safety of
their workers as, as we do mandate over here.
Right, And I feel like a lot of people over here, unlike you,
they they haven't really, or many of them haven't really
embraced the technological component of it.
So like the idea of having a website, marketing, social
media, like that's all kind of foreign to a lot of these
skilled workers. So like, I mean, if I was to,
you know, restart like for my kids, for instance, like if they
want to get into, you know, mowing yards and chopping
firewood like I did growing up for money.
Like if I just come up, hook them up with like a website and
like a social platform and like make it legit, I feel like they
would already be the light years above the competition who is
still maybe handing out business cards if if they're even doing
that. Right, they're calling people on
the Rolodex. Yeah, yeah.
It's crazy, yeah. Talk to me about Iron Warrior.
So you've got, so you've got the, the code of foundry.
That's where you're basically melting all this down, putting
into the molds, generating whatever you need to from a
fabrication standpoint. But then you've got the Iron
Warrior of the, the gym production.
I guess that's primarily the the the dumbbells, the kettle bells,
gym equipment, things of that nature.
Right. Yep.
I'll, yeah, I'll give you a little background on how Iron
Warrior came about. So the concept of Iron Warrior
started about 10 years ago in, in my head when I was, we were
hiring a lot of people in the skilled for skilled trades jobs
who didn't have any experience in skilled trades because, you
know, there, there's not a lot of kids going into tech colleges
or community colleges and learning skilled trades anymore.
But we, we still needed to grow our team.
And so one thing I recognize is we were, we were having a pretty
high success rate with just identifying a key character and
value ideals that somebody had to align with and then bringing
that person in based on their character and their values and
then training them on the job, basically on the job training
for skilled trades. And we were able to basically
bring, you know, most skilled trades people in within a couple
of months and get them from zero to 80% effective.
And, you know, versus. So then why would you go to two
years of tech college if you can get paid to do it in two months
at a company, right. So, so that was this concept of
Iron Warrior actually came about when when I was starting to
understand like, hey, there's a huge demand for skilled trades
and there's huge demand for people who have the right
values, who have the right work ethic, who can be a team player,
who have grit, mental toughness, resiliency, accountability, all
these things. And really that's the most
important thing because the skills you can teach anybody who
has a lot of those the right values.
And so the Iron Warrior actually came about as a idea for an
apprenticeship program. And now now since it's evolved
into a 5O1C3 nonprofit that, that we operate where where
basically that we do just that. We, we create opportunities for,
for younger kids who have an interest in the skilled trades
and basically run them through. It's like a blend between a boot
camp for character development and and a skilled training
program like apprenticeship. And so that's where Iron Warrior
comes comes about as iron skills warrior character.
I like and yeah. And during so that that had been
kind of something that I've been brewing for, for an
apprenticeship system over the last 10 years.
And then COVID happened and, you know, I'm personally have always
been into fitness and, and, you know, focusing on training
myself and just always sharpening the axe, you know,
and COVID happened. There's there, there's a huge
shortage of fitness equipment. Gyms are shutting down.
People aren't able to go work out at the gym.
A lot of people are trying to buy equipment to work out at
home, but a lot of, you know, 90, like 98 and over 98% of the
fitness equipment at the time of COVID was all produced in China
and obviously China shut down. There was impact to logistics
and getting product here. So they're just, I don't know if
you remember you were trying to or you tried to buy anything at
that time, but it was just almost impossible to get your
hands on fitness equipment for a while.
Yeah I I remember buying I got a whole rack of dumbbells that I
got for $0.79 a pound and then COVID happened and everything
was non existent or like 4 bucks a pound plus.
Right. Just crazy.
Yeah. So when that happened, you know,
at at the same time, you know, COVID impacted all of our
customers, a lot of lot of them manufact, big manufacturing
companies that had to, had to shut down for a while or
whatever. You know, a lot of our customers
ended up down, you know, 5060% that year.
And so basically I thought, well, I either have to lay off
my people or cut their hours back, you know, to kind of
survive this, this downturn with, with the economy and, and,
and our customers being impacted.
Or I can find something else that we can make and try to
quickly invent a solution that's going to keep, keep my team busy
and keep everybody going. And so recognizing there was an,
a need for fitness equipment, that was one of the only things
that there was a need for at that time.
You know, I, I was like, hey, I mean, we, I can design and make
tooling for, for the patterns and gear up and start producing
fitness equipment and, and basically, you know, supply a
demand and a need out there in this current time.
And, and then also keep my people, my team going through
throughout. And so that's what I did.
And we started, started with kettle bells.
And then since so many people were working out at home, you
know, not a lot of people have room at home for a big gym.
And so I was trying to think of like, how could I come up with
something that's, you know, pretty multifunctional,
basically a new innovative approach to a piece of fitness
equipment. Like how can you use one, one or
two pieces of equipment and do a lot of multifunctional movements
with it. And so that's when I actually
designed and invented the War Bell.
And I'm not sure if you've seen that product on our.
Yeah, I'm going to. I'm going to buy one.
Man, that looks super sweet. I'm going to get one.
Yeah, yeah, it's, it's, it's and that that ended up really taking
off too, because it's just, you know, so multifunctional, you
don't need to have a lot of a lot of pieces of equipment.
And so that really just helped us as a team, like overall as a
company and a team just ride out that challenge of COVID and,
and, and that economic downturn. But then as a result, we created
a whole whole nother product line and a whole nother business
around that. And, you know, since the Iron
Warrior concept I had in my mind from the from the Academy and
the skilled training and, and there was kind of a lot of
connection, you know, that just made sense that the brand
products with the Iron Warrior because it's, you know, they're
iron products, they're made by people who have that Iron
Warrior mindset. And, you know, we also support,
do a lot of military support and supporting warriors with the
proceeds from that Iron Warrior business.
And so, yeah, that's, that's just kind of how that came
about. And, and now we just, you know,
we, we're still still making the Iron Warrior products and, and
still continuing to grow that business as well is.
It still growing pretty good now that COVID is totally over.
Well, the demand, I mean the demand is quite a bit different,
you know, now with, with a lot of the supply now.
Now it's more, you know, it's more price, price competitive.
So you know, you can, and even some of the other companies like
Rogue and some of them actually came out with, you know,
American made product lines as well to compete with the, the to
not just sell China or, or offshore equip fitness
equipment. But yeah, it's, it's more, it's
more competitive based on price now than it is than it was
obviously during COVID. But with the war bell and stuff
that we stuff that we have that's unique, there's certainly
a lot of, you know, just continued growth and interest in
that. So, So what all the Have you got
the kettle bells? You got the war bell?
What? What else does that leg of the
business create? Well, we, we do have.
So that's the main stuff that we that we sell.
We do, we do have a line of plates and some other products
that that we actually don't have on the website.
We, we kind of use them mainly for, you know, sponsoring gyms
like, you know, whether it's a high school gym or a, or a law
enforcement gym or a military base or something.
We'll, we'll make some products that we kind of more or less
donate to applications like that, but we don't necessarily
sell them because it's, you know, to be competitive with,
you know, per pound basis with China and stuff like that, it
gets to be pretty low margin. So it's, you know, it's, it's
stuff that I'm passionate about, like doing, but it's, it's
better in the right situation for us to almost, you know, give
that away and support a good cause rather than to, to try to
compete at that on something like that.
Yeah, totally. So with regards to The Academy,
Is it like a specific age demographic you're primarily
working with? I would say our target, our
target age demographic is 18 to 24 is kind of kind of that
target demographic that we're looking for.
Just because that seems to be the right age where, where, you
know, the, the, the candidates are the most moldable yet.
And also starting to be become hungry and, and wanting, you
know, wanting to get a, a career, wanting to make money,
wanting to, you know, get a life and, and, and stuff kind of
planned out and set up and ready to set goals and that type of
stuff. What do you?
See, like with the people, that kind of our demographic.
Oops, sorry. With with the people that are
going through that, like what are some what are some common
denominators that you're seeing? Like, are you like impressed by
the work ethic as a whole or is it kind of like, man, I got to
really get these these young kids up to par?
Like what? What's kind of just the overall
vibe you're getting from the people coming in these days?
Yeah, it's, I mean, my, my perspective is sometimes a
little bit biased just because I, you know, I was, I was raised
almost two or three generations older, older than than even I am
was just my mindset and how, you know, the, the work ethic, the
drive, the attention spans, A lot of that is, is definitely
challenging for sure. And, and that's, but that's also
where we see the biggest opportunities, you know, and,
and that's also where we see the biggest need in the workplace.
If, if, if somebody, if somebody can come in with grit, mental
toughness, integrity and accountability into any company
nowadays, they're, they're in a, they're in a category of that's
pretty rare now, you know what I'm saying?
Yeah, it's kind of crazy, man. Like we've had several employees
at our operation and like now as it sits currently, like the vast
majority of my workforce is twice my age because I've just
been more impressed with the older than the the younger
people. But it's like, you're absolutely
right, man. If they come in, they've got
those core fundamental values. It's like it's they're in a
class all their own. Right.
And, and the opportunities for them, like when we, when we, you
know, if we have a, a, a person like that, that joins our team
or they went through the Iron Warrior program and then
decided, Hey, we want to, I want to stay on for a longer term
apprenticeship or, you know, stay on potentially permanently.
Like when they have those values and, and, and that drive, I
mean, they're, they're the ones you invest everything into, you
know, and that's, and that's just, you know, they get the
most opportunities because they're showing the most
interest and effort. Totally.
You've got kids, right? I think I saw a picture on your
Instagram with some family members there.
Yep, I've got a 18 month old girl and then my wife and I have
another one coming in May next year.
Nice nice, I got a 2 1/2 year old and one on the way as well.
Nice. How, how has your upbringing
personally kind of be like this old soul, so to speak, But also
with what you've experienced with technology nowadays and how
you've been able to leverage that, coupled with just how
you've, you know, seen your workforce, how you've seen
people throughout the Academy, Like how has all of that shaped
you from a parenting standpoint? It's kind of young now because
18 months, you know, you, it's, it's weird because like you want
to install these things, but at the same time at 18 months,
they've only got, you know, so much bandwidth that you can put
on them. But like.
As they get older, how has what you've learned?
How are you going to implement that into your parenting
strategy I guess? I think one of the, probably one
of the key elements that I've learned just through working
with generations of different people is that is, is really, I
would say that key element is the importance of discipline and
raising, you know, and, and raising kids with, with the
right amount of discipline to where, you know, they, they're
respectful, they're, you know, they're accountable, they, they
understand what's, what's expected and they work hard to
try to achieve that. I mean, I know it's discipline,
the one word that covers a lot of things, but it kind of starts
just by just by maintaining that discipline and setting those
boundaries and, and, and holding accountability to that.
And, and that's something, you know, my wife and I are, are
both very much aligned on is, you know, trying to stay
committed to maintaining a high level of, of discipline with,
with how our, how our kids are raised.
Not that, I mean, not that we're, and I don't mean that
we're just, you know, spanking them every time they turn
around. I don't mean that type of
discipline, but just that they are raised discipline in in
everything that they do. How do you think y'all will
approach like like education for them?
Like, you think you'll put them through the public school
system, home school, college? I mean, what?
What's your thoughts on that? I, that's a good question.
I mean, I personally am not a huge fan of college.
I, I, I ended up dropping out of college after three years.
I was also work doing an apprenticeship in skilled trades
at the same time. And I just college to me and,
and I'm, I mean, there are certain areas, certain
backgrounds where it is, I'm sure you know, necessary, but
in, in kind of the line of work and where my, where my path
fell, it was, it was so much better to learn from the people
who were actually doing the work and learning, learning kind of
on the job rather than learning like the theoretical behind
everything. And especially when it comes to
engineering and manufacturing. So I, I, I definitely would not
be forcing them to go to college as far as public education, that
that's a tough question, you know, because the alternative
with homeschooling is creates other, you know, other
challenges. You know, we're, we're as a
family, very Christian based. And so, you know, I know
there's, there's also some where, where we're at in
Montana, there's, you know, like Christian kind of private
schools, which a lot of people around here have been pretty,
pretty happy with and successful with.
But I think, I think the future becomes a hybrid of
homeschooling in a community format, because what I, what I
would be afraid of was just strict homeschooling is losing
that social interaction. And, you know, I look at my, I
look, I, I, I reflect on my background growing up in high
school. I was never, I was never really
interested in school except for history and science, but I was
never really interested in school.
But I, I loved school because I loved the, you know, I loved
sports because I loved the team. I loved the teamwork.
I loved the, the competitiveness that it taught me.
I loved the discipline that it required for training to, to be
competitive. And then I just, you know, loved
the social interaction of, you know, a lot of in high school, I
was getting in trouble a lot, you know, doing, doing things
that my parents probably would have, you know, had a heart
attack if they knew that we were doing that stuff.
But it just it created, created a lot of experience where, you
know, you know, I learned to take risks.
I learned to, you know, you learn to negotiate, you learn to
sell, you learn, you learn a lot of skills through that social
interaction and a lot of the intangible stuff that comes with
going to a school with a group of people and having a
community. So I don't know yet exactly what
we're going to do. We're still kind of seeing how
how the options are shaking out, you know, over the next four or
five years. But I think in general, it has
to probably move to some sort of a hybrid approach where, you
know, good, good programs are taught in a community based
thing, but it doesn't require so many individual teachers to do
it because it's, you know, basically using, using a
platform. Or maybe it becomes AI.
Maybe all the teachers become, you know, are, are AI and
they're just the people are the kids are just learning that way.
You know, I, I think it's going to significantly change though
from the public school that you and I grew up with.
Yeah, it's it's tough, man, because like when I was in
school, I mean, we had like a shop class in school.
So like my last period we were like, you know, welding and
stuff in high school. And I don't think high schools
even, they probably don't have liability insurance to do that
anymore. I don't know.
But now it's like the community component.
I don't even think is there so much because people at school
are just looking down their phones the whole time.
Right. Yep.
Yeah. And that's, you know, I mean
that that piece of technology has certainly impacted the
social skills and that community aspect and just connections and
relationships and in a in a very negative way for sure.
I mean, so that's where it comes down to that, you know, setting
those boundaries and having, having discipline because you
know, I think I think it's important not it's, it's
important to understand how to utilize technology, but it can't
become, you can't become the only thing that you have a
relationship with. Yeah, I think the homeschooling,
I mean, especially now with all the advancements in
homeschooling, like back when you and I were kids,
homeschoolers were the weird ones.
But like now, in fact, there's just so many opportunities for.
I mean, there's so many different homeschooling
curriculums. They've got so much.
They just have so many resources at their fingertips.
And I feel like from an exposure and a community standpoint, like
when you are just exposing them to people, which you would buy
you would be doing by default, having employees, having the
Academy, having people that your kids are constantly seen and
interacting with, I feel like they would be able to kind of
capitalize on that interaction standpoint kind of as a default.
Oh, for sure, yeah. And I mean, that's, you know,
that's how I grew up too, you know, growing up around the
Steam shows and, you know, my parents, between my parents,
friends and people that they were working with, I mean, those
all of those interactions certainly shaped, you know, you
learn from those conversations where you're just sitting at the
dinner table and listening to people talk, you know, and, and
having that exposure to all sorts of that type of stuff is
certainly beneficial for them as well.
Yeah. What do you think?
It's kind of like a loaded question.
Nobody knows the answer to it. But like with you having kids
with you know what you know from the history, but then also
leveraging everything that we have at our fingertips from a
technological standpoint with AI, with your interest in
crypto, with your background and you know, firm faith in your
beliefs spiritually. Like, are you more or less
optimistic about where things are headed?
Like not to be doom and gloom, but are you you feeling positive
about the the trajectory of our society as a whole or you feel
like we got a lot of work to do? There's a lot of things that are
very positive. I, I mean, I would say in
general, I see the technology, the, the shifts and in all the
technology, you know, with AI, with, with decentralized
finance, which is cryptocurrency reducing a lot of government
regulation type stuff through some of these opportunities.
I, I, I see a lot of the technology aspect very positive.
The biggest challenge I think is going to be as humans, how we
adapt to such a massive shift in technology and how, how the
world operates. And I think that's going to be
very challenging. I think it's going to require,
you know, a lot of the easy jobs are going to become AI or
automated and it's going to require people if they want to
become successful to have to put in the work.
And, you know, either either going into skilled trades, going
into going into some, some job where it requires innovation, it
requires thought, it requires, you know, physical work, all the
things that can't easily be automated.
I think there's going to be huge opportunities and that's going
to be where all the money is made because, you know, a lot of
the other stuff is getting going to become very low cost, You
know, when it comes to what you can do with AI versus, you know,
paying, paying somebody to do that role.
So I, I, I'm a little bit fearful how, how fast we can
adapt as humans. And you know, we, we, we went,
if you look at just the last century, you know, from start
out, from 1920 or The Dirty thirties, 1930s, right?
Like that was some of the hardest periods of time to live
through with The Dirty 30s with World War 2 and it and it formed
some of the hardest men and women who who survived those
times. And then, you know, from the
80's, the 90s and 2000 we have technology has advanced so
rapidly that it's arguably really easy to live in in in the
United States anyway. And you have pretty much every,
every experience, every entertainment, anything,
anything you could ever desire you, you almost have at your
fingertips for a relatively low cost.
And so just over the last 100 years, you know, we have had to
transform from hardened, you know, very, very survivalistic
mindset to, I mean, not many people today living in the US
are waking up wondering if they're going to survive the
day, right, from a, from a food, water and security standpoint.
And the, the, the, the challenge with that is that, you know,
we're, we're kind of at the interim period where technology
has advanced to make things easy.
But the problem is going to be technology is going to advance,
continue to advance to take away a lot of opportunity for those
things that are too easy. And yeah, I'm not sure how.
I'm not sure how we adapt to that.
Yeah. And you kind of want to, I mean,
like, I don't know, like from a generational standpoint, like
the old saying, you know, hard times create hard men, soft
times create soft men. It's like it's skipsy a
generation, so to speak. And you want to, you know, hedge
against that. I feel like entrepreneurship,
building a business and fitness are like 2 very practical,
actionable things that kind of hedge against that natural
tendency to just lean into, you know, convenience and comfort.
Like if you're an entrepreneur, if you're pursuing fitness to
some degree, like it's like a self-imposed hardship that keeps
you sharp. Right, exactly.
Yeah. And, and I think, I think the
transition is going to be, you know, for the, for those who are
willing to put in the work, there's going to be, it's going
to become easier, easier and easier to become an entrepreneur
because there's more, more tools at your disposal.
They're at less cost. You know, I mean, you can have,
you can have an AI executive assistant for very low cost, you
know, just simple, like a lot of those things are going to help
make an entrepreneur's life easier, You know, just allowing
them to focus on more on the core business and to be more
producing more value themselves. So I think there's going to be
more opportunities for, for kind of that entrepreneurish
approach, even though it will limit a lot of the, the other
potentially other jobs, but it will be interesting.
Yeah. And, and how many people are
willing to take on like being an entrepreneur as, as you know is
it's, it's extremely demanding. There's a lot of, there's a lot
more effort that that goes in before the reward comes.
So you have to have grit. You have to, you have to be
willing to stay in the fight when a lot of people would just
want to give up at that point. And you have to just have hope
that everything you're doing is going to pay off in the future.
And so there's a lot of deep rooted, you know, grit and
resiliency that has to be a part of your makeup to be able to do
that as well. Yeah, I think the the barrier to
entry be so much lower, but as a result, there's going to be a
lot more competition at that entry level.
So which creates a lot of opportunity for those that are
the cream of the cop, the crop to be noticed and just staying
far above all that competition because they're no longer
competition at that point. They're just, you know, beneath
it. For sure.
But it's interesting, man. From a societal standpoint, I
feel like with all the technology, all the social
media, all the entertainment, I feel like there's just this, you
know, it's in our DNA to like kind of return to this very
ancestral, deep rooted reality that is just ingrained in our
system. So like there's all this
technology, all this advancement, but I feel like
people are starting to crave and yearn for this kind of old
school approach to things like this nostalgia.
Like just simply sitting around a campfire and have a
conversation, looking at people in the eye as opposed to to an
Instagram DM. I feel like people are craving
that more than ever before right now.
Yeah, I, I agree. And I think, you know, I think,
I think COVID really threw a wrench in, in kind of the
development of, of human progression in a way that like
it, it, it almost forced that seclusion for a while and
really, really rapidly changed a lot of habits.
And I think, you know, we won't know for a while whether whether
that was a good thing or a bad thing.
But I, I definitely have seen more exactly what you're talking
about, more of that, you know, yearning for connection or, you
know, technology resets or, you know, just not having technology
around for, you know, whether it's a half a day, a day or a
couple days, you know, doing retreats out in nature.
Just that that stuff like you, you mentioned is just really
rooted in our ancestry and something that we've, we've, we
aren't really exposed to much anymore.
Yeah, yeah. There's going to be like a a
reckoning at some point or another.
Some whether it comes, you know, from an implosion from within of
us just overcorrecting or or what now, but I feel like at
some point in the law stabilize and we kind of figured out our,
you know, the right path, but who knows what's going to happen
for that catalyst to take place. It'd be interesting for sure.
Yeah, and, and, and in the meantime, you know, the thing
that I, the thing that I'm even though there's, you know,
there's a lot of things that can be frustrating with, with the
development of society today. But the thing that I'm most
excited about is there's, I truly believe there's never been
a better time with more opportunity for those who are
willing to get up and put in the work than there is today.
And you know, it's just those who are willing to work hard,
those who are willing to not quit, who, who are interested in
investing in themselves, whether that's it.
And it really needs to be a combination of fitness, health,
you know, learning skills and knowledge.
If, if you're willing to invest in yourself, you know, outside
of work and, and just growing yourself, there's, there's,
there's so much opportunity out there.
I mean, it's if you're focused on growing yourself and taking
care of you, know yourself physically, mentally,
spiritually like you, you almost can't not be successful
nowadays. Yeah, no, I completely agree,
man. I'm optimistic in that sense for
sure. I mean, when opportunity
abounds, then the the equalizer is just the effort you're
willing to put in. Right.
Yep. So 100% what are what are you
personally excited about? What's what's coming in the
pipeline that this gets you stoked for the future?
So I am currently setting up a couple additional shops here in
Montana and I'm actually going to be setting up and creating
apprenticeship opportunities through the Iron Warrior Academy
for some, for some young people to, to come and work with me.
And, you know, we do training in the morning.
We do like, you know, the physical mental training, but
also just doing learning and doing some hands on skills work.
I'm, I'm pretty excited for that because you know, I, I'm, I'm
really focused on right now. What, what can I do to help pass
on the skills that I have that have been taught to me from, you
know, generations before me? And how do we keep, how do we
keep transferring these skills and creating more people who are
able to keep manufacturing and innovation and those things, you
know, a really prominent force in in America.
And so that's, you know, besides, besides, obviously, you
know, being a new dad in May and, and you know, the family,
the family aspect that, you know, that we're growing here.
Like I would say that's probably one of the things that I'm most
excited about is just getting, getting the opportunity and and
having the, the resources and capacity to, to try to invest
more in the in the future generations are.
There like any like specific, you know, skills that like you
will not allow your kids to leave the house without knowing
like basic stuff like, Hey, you got to be able to change your
own flex a tire before you can before you can drive or just
something like that. Yeah, well, they're, they're
going to probably all know how to Weld and some of these skills
they might not ever know need to use, right.
But I mean, I'm going to teach them how to Weld.
I'm going to teach them machining and G code and and 3D
CAD for engineering and designing.
So, so basically, I mean, my, my goal would be that they would
have the capability to build something that they that they
would want in the future. Because I, I really believe, you
know, I don't know if you've ever heard, heard that saying by
Musashi, but where he says to no one thing to know one thing
really well is to know 10,000 things.
And, and he, you know, he, he was a, a master swordsman back
in the, you know, hundreds of years ago.
But basically he said that if you have, if you develop and
become very good at one skill, the, the process that you've,
the journey you went on and learning that skill and also
that depth of knowledge and a skill set and understanding
makes it very easy for you to learn other things.
But also just naturally knowing and, and, and being able to
apply that to other things. So I think even though, even
though my kids may never go into skilled trades, my I will, I
will be very passionate about making sure they are very
skilled because I think that just helps apply to no matter
what they do it it just multiple, it's a multiplier.
Yeah. And if you're skilled at, if
you're like truly skilled at any one thing, like the confidence
that that brings with it that you can then apply to anything
is is hard to argue. Right, so exactly.
Where? Where in Montana are you in?
We are in northwest Montana, Flathead lake nice so up by like
Kalispell Whitefish Glacier National Park area.
That must be how I stumbled on you in the 1st place.
So I've I've been now I'm part of like Rob Bailey's flag nor
fail mastermind group. And then I was following a path
somewhere there I found Montana Knife company.
I think that's probably how I wound up find out about.
You. Yeah.
Yeah, Rob. Yeah.
Rob's only probably about 2525 miles from my place here.
Very cool. Yeah, Montana's beautiful, man.
I've not haunted there. I've haunted all around there.
But I've been through there several times and Montana's like
a whole different spot. Yeah, yeah, it's we, we
certainly love, you know, I, I grew up in South Dakota, so I, I
grew up in the flatlands. You know, we always joke that
you could watch your dog run away for two weeks, you know,
and like moving out to the mountains and, and being kind of
in nature, in the trees, like was always a a dream of mine to
my dream was to have a shop in the mountains where I could have
a wood stove and a fire going in the shop and just be working on
stuff and look outside and see mountains and trees and like
that's that. That was a dream that I really
aspired towards and, and finally, finally got out there.
I. Love it, man, I love it.
Well, you're a freaking inspiration, brother.
I appreciate the fact that you're, you know, not deviating
from our, our history. I think that is very important.
I mean, I've, as, as you said in the very beginning, like you
can't possibly know where you're going if you don't know where
you've come from. And I, you know, having that
passion for history as well. It's like that's what I want to
double down on. So I admire the fact that you're
instilling that in our youth. And I just think what you're
doing super cool as well. So keep doing it man.
Yeah, thank you. I appreciate it.
I've really enjoyed our conversation and and appreciate
the opportunity to visit with you.
Yeah, A. 100% man. So where do people go to to dig
deeper into your world? So you can go to Corey Anderson,
KORY, anderson.com. That's, that's my kind of my
personal website that has links to a lot of our other, other
stuff. But it, you know, it takes you
to either the 150 case project, which we have a, a different,
different site and, and kind of a whole mission there where we
actually take that engine around to different shows and do events
and kind of, you know, bring awareness to the, to the
preservation of history and American innovation and hard
work. And then, you know,
ironwarrior.com is where you can really go see like our fitness,
the fitness side of our business.
And then there's a link there to the Academy where if you have
anybody who's interested in skilled trades, or they don't
even have to be interested in the skilled trades.
You know, in in particular, just a young person who wants to go
through a character development program, learn some skills along
the way and just, you know, have have a good opportunity to be
successful in the future. And that's, I mean, that's what
we're all about there. And so yeah, coreyanderson.com
and ironwarrior.com would be the the two primary locations to
check out some info. Awesome.
I will definitely link out, make it easy for people to find you
and I, I certainly encourage people to check out the case
project that my, my 2 year old son is massively into tractors
and coal-fired locomotive engines.
So like it's a, it's a blend of A2.
It's pretty awesome. Yeah, if he goes to my YouTube
page, there's a lot of videos if he hasn't seen the the 150 case
there yet. But yeah, on my YouTube at Corey
Anderson, we've got a lot of a lot of cool steam steam stuff
and rolling coal on that page. Very cool, very cool.
Well, Corey, keep killing it, brother.
Like I said, I'm out what you're doing.
I appreciate what you're doing and definitely keep in touch
man. All right.
Sounds good. Well, thanks, Robert.
Appreciate, appreciate having me on here.
You bet. See you brother.
Happy holidays. All right, Merry Christmas.
Take care. Christmas bye bye.
Bye.