Finding Purpose Through Hunting

Thanks guys for another round of the Hunt for Success podcast. Today I’m actually kind of starstruck. I’ve watched so many videos of this guy. Christian Zeron, he likes all the things that I like. He likes entrepreneurship, business, watches, and hunting and fishing. I started watching his videos and I just became one of his super fans. He’s agreed to be on the show and I really appreciate it. Thanks, Christian, for coming on.

Thank you so much for having me, man. It’s a pleasure.

Just tell everybody, kind of get into your business for a little bit. What got you into business first, then we’ll talk hunting and stuff after that.

Jeez. I come from a long line of entrepreneurs in my family. Not too many uber successful entrepreneurs. I think what they got out of entrepreneurship was independence. My uncles and all these folks were able to provide for a family, but it really wasn’t ever about anything more than that. It was independence and providing for a family. I think that has changed a lot in culture, at least where I live. Metropolitan New York, I think all metropolitan areas, that sort of understanding about entrepreneurship is somewhat outdated. It’s still the understanding that I subscribe to, very specifically. That’s why I love entrepreneurship.

So that’s what drew you to it early.

I knew a lot of guys that just had happy lives and worked for themselves and were industrious, and I think there was something so masculine about that and so strong. Even as a young man I was very attracted to that. I looked up to all these older guys that, it seemed like nothing could get them down. It seemed like they were very resilient, and I think that until today, that is really what attracts people to the space, hopefully, if you’ve got it, that level of resilience and intestinal fortitude. It’s certainly not always easy. Every entrepreneur, unless you’re truly insane, has definitely had moments where you say, “Okay, well, this could be easier and I wouldn’t mind.”

So how did you get started?

As a boy, that’s what I always looked up to. I was 19 years old and I stumbled into the watch hobby, so wristwatches, vintage watches. My mom kind of nudged me a little bit to buy one. She actually loaned me a couple of bucks to help fund that purchase. I almost immediately had to materialize something there and justify this purchase. So I tried to buy another one and flip it and make some money. Then I realized very quickly that the only really effective way to do that would be to build a brand and build content funnels. I started the company as a freshman, I believe, in college called Theo and Harris.

That was my first company. Just buying and selling vintage Rolex and Omegas from the ’60s through the ’90s. I started with 10,000 bucks and had very low expectation and aspiration. I did not think that I’d still own that company 11 years later by any stretch of the imagination. But 11 years later, I still do. It’s a great company, an evolving company. Been through peaks and valleys. About five years ago, I started up a marketing firm, and that’s really what I do about 90% of my day now, which is small and mid-size business consulting, and then production, commercial production for television, B2B sales assets, all those things.

But really the beginning of it was just creating little videos to sell watches back when I was 19. That’s really how it all started.

I love watches. I got into watches a couple years ago and I’ve got an unhealthy habit now. It’s kind of like I saw you start getting into guns, and it’s the same. I have an unhealthy habit with guns myself too, as far as buying them.

Well, it’s nice. They’re nice hobbies because if you’re doing it right, which, there’s plenty of temptation to do it wrong, particularly with watches, but I know with guns as well, you can get to a place where you’re collecting for the wrong reason. There’s too much societal pressure, social pressure. You’re stretching yourself beyond really your reasonable capability. You know that you almost have an addiction, whereas we use the word addiction very lightly, and I use it for myself with watches, and it’s just a passion. It’s a real intense feeling and you love expressing yourself through these products. You love snagging one that you know you may not find again. That’s big in vintage.

Without dramatizing it too much, there’s something really amazing about seeing something, knowing you’re never gonna see it again, feeling really lucky that you got the opportunity to find it first before the next guy, buying it, making it your own and making a million memories with it. Because in watches, money doesn’t always beat you to the race. It’s not faster than feet sometimes. You get lucky. So that’s the vintage world. There is a gamble to it. There’s an Indiana Jones esque hunt to it. It’s a nice hobby.

Business is one of those things where I always correlate hunting and fishing with business, because you don’t always win, and that’s part of the learning. With your business, you said you had ups and downs, just like everybody with business. Can you talk about that? Because intestinal fortitude, like you were talking about, the guys you looked up to had it, but I think they have to develop it if they make it.

Of course. For sure. It’s so difficult. Speaking personally, especially on social media, and that’s really what I can speak to specifically, you get these big rushes of adoration and compliment, which are nice. They’re certainly nice. But then you get bizarre, sometimes undeserving criticism, critique.

And sometimes that’s coming in a moment where a business happens to be, in an unrelated event, slow. So you get this dramatization, you get these emotions in a tornado. It’s a bizarre world that we live in if you run an online, content-driven, personality-driven business. It makes you scratch your head, for sure. It’s a tumultuous emotional journey. There’s no doubt about it. The way that I try to reconcile it, and the way I’ve always tried to, sometimes not always successfully, is you know when you’re doing the right thing generally, and you know when you’re not.

You know when you’re mailing it in. You know when you’re not reaching your potential, or when you kind of got lazy, and sometimes you know when you did something that was really remarkable, whether it was received or not. Sometimes it takes a level of confidence, and that word, intestinal fortitude, to say, “No, I’m right about that. In the content world, that was a good piece of content. Maybe it only got a nominal amount of views. Maybe it got really no social impact, but I’m proud of that. That was a hard day’s work, and I’m proud of that.” Even if it didn’t equate, or ultimately yield a big payday.

There’s still a lot to be proud of. And back to the way I opened my thoughts here on entrepreneurship, that’s changed a lot. I think people have a hard time being proud of a hard day’s work, because everything is about what does it yield. What did it yield? Did it get us closer to our growth goal? How much more money did we make? It’s just this insatiable appetite, craving for growth and money. And not to say that I’m not a capitalist, because I am. I love business. I love profit, of course. But you need to balance it too with just an internal sense of worth and pride, and I know that’s really difficult for everybody, but specifically for entrepreneurs, there’s no doubt.

You have to balance that because sometimes doing the right thing means losing.

Absolutely. Being principled, listening to yourself, it means losing. There’s no doubt, and I struggle with that all the time. There are certain content opportunities that I know that if I somewhat betrayed who I am, without being dramatic, I know I would get a lot of views and a lot more clicks, and I know that on a stat level I’d be better, stronger, own a richer asset. No question. But it’s important to be able to put your head on a pillow at night as well and say, “This is who I am, and I’m not being stubborn.”

“I’m being flexible, and I’m being truthful, and I have faith that even if I don’t see the pathway forward, I have faith that this is going to work out just fine.” It takes that humility to say, “Okay, it’s all gonna be okay. And I don’t understand it necessarily right now, but it’s all gonna be okay.”

It takes a level of success, I think, and time to have that viewpoint. Because in the beginning you lay awake at night going, “What’s…” You know, all the time.

You have to learn to trust your instincts as well. You’re 100% right. When you’re green around the gills and when you’re just starting, I mean, woof. You said it right, sleepless nights. When you’re laying there and you’re saying, “What have I done? I just invested so much money.” And if not money, even pride. I told people I’m gonna do this. I told people it’s gonna be good, and now, is it? Does anyone care? Does it suck?

It’s tough. I’m big on that one because you just don’t wanna let yourself down, or the people around you. Pride is, they say it’s a downfall, but I also think it helps steer people right, sometimes in the same direction.

Absolutely. I think it’s a very large word, obviously, with some seemingly conflicting meanings, and it can be used in different ways. But no, pride and principle, these are good things. Being proud of yourself and trying to hold yourself to that is invaluable.

It’s funny, when I first saw you on Instagram, you were wearing something. It was like your first hunting jacket or something. And then I’ve watched a bunch of videos since then. When you started making that kind of content, how recent was that? Was that something new for yourself, or was that something to kind of build a brand?

Completely new for myself. And this is the thing, you go back and take a look. Not that you should, but it’s amazing that it’s all on record. You look back and you say, “Oh, wow, this is so interesting.” So I’m not just relying on my recall and my instinct. I can actually go back and look and see what was in my mind a year ago. And a year ago, September 1st, I was completely divested from content creation.

Completely. I grew up as a content creator. I was 19 when I started my first business and made my whole living based off of creating content, information, entertainment. We never had super large channels, but they were deep. We had, despite our limited reach, a lot of depth, and we were able to generate what was by any measure a good income. But I soured on it. I really soured on content creation, for a lot of reasons. My opinion on social media went from something a little bit more lukewarm to something a little bit more with distaste. I don’t love social media very much.

So my opinion there kind of had an influence. I also never, and this is on an identity level and on a confidence level, I never wanted to be a content creator. I never wanted to be an influencer. I always looked at that, and I’m criticizing myself, by the way, in a very immature way, I looked at that as a career that was childish and immature and not very becoming. I always wanted to be an older man, even since I was a boy, looking at my uncles and looking at these established gentlemen that always looked beautiful and coiffed. I’m like, “They would never hold a camera in front of their face and tell the audience what they’re wearing.” They would say, “Get that camera away from me. Leave me alone.”

So I never liked content creation for many reasons. Coming from YouTube, an odd space, very different than Instagram, a lot of negativity. There were a lot of reasons I didn’t like it. So I was emotionally divested for a long time, probably a year and a half. Obviously I have the marketing business, so my income did not rely on how invested I was in content creation, at least in that moment. Looking to the future, I’ll be very glad that I started creating content again, for sure. But at the moment, I was like, “I’m making my nut. I’m good. What do I have to worry about making content for?”

I lost the passion, but then when I went hunting in January, I made one piece of content that was hunting-related. It was kind of funny. My personality was in it more than almost any piece of content that I had made in years. My heart was in it in that moment. And it did really well. It got like 800,000 views, which for me is a lot. For a lot of influencers that’s not that much, but for me, that was like, “Whoa, that’s crazy.” And I said, “You know what? Let’s not let this momentum go to waste. Let’s continue to create content.” I did. I enjoyed it.

Now we’re nine months in, and short form still is not my favorite thing to do. It’s not. I don’t like posting a video and then checking all day how it’s performing. It’s not healthy. I just don’t like doing it. But I do still enjoy making the content. It got me back into content creation, and that’s great, because I’m getting so much enjoyment every day now out of content creation, whether that’s podcasting, whether that’s long form video, whether that’s anything. I’m back into content, and it’s all because of hunting. Specifically, exclusively because of hunting.

Awesome. Well, let’s back up. So January was your first ever hunt you ever went on?

It was. It was a duck hunt in Louisiana.

So where did you get into that? What brought you to it?

A client who throughout the relationship with the business became a friend of mine, about five or six months before that, said, “Hey, do you wanna come hunting? It’s a business thing, but we’re all just palling around. Do you wanna come shoot ducks?” And I was like, “Well, I can’t really say no. He’s a client. Even though this is in a friend capacity, I can’t really say no.” So I agreed. And from the first minute, essentially, at the duck camp, it was just awesome. I was like, “All right. This is the best.” I legitimately knew before dinner on the Friday that I was gonna do this.

I knew that this was gonna be a part of my life. It just felt right.

And so now you’ve done turkey, you’ve done upland, and I know you went to Argentina.

I’ve done hog. I went to California for my first hog, which was great. I’m flying out to Michigan tomorrow for some geese. I went to Argentina for dove. It was a blast. Not as much adrenaline as turkey or as hog for that matter, so not as much my thing. I’m definitely a little bit more of an adrenaline guy. Within the realm of, like, there’s no risk here. I’m not jumping out of an airplane, okay?

But turkey hunting is just, your heart is in your throat. It’s so crazy. So I do prefer that, but I had a blast in Argentina. It was fabulous. I definitely recommend it.

Everybody always asks me, “What do you hunt?” I’m like, “Whatever they’ll let me shoot.” But yeah, turkey is very fun. If you like adrenaline, I’ve got a hunt coming up in February where we’re doing hogs out of a helicopter.

Oh. In which state? Texas?

Texas, yeah. It’s pretty much the only place you can do it. It’s gonna be adrenaline. And I’m going to Canada for three weeks next week, after moose. You know, moose kill more people than bears.

So is it your first moose? Oh, man. I’m biased obviously, but even before I was into hunting, 100% sure, I just don’t know what is cooler. Being a pilot’s really cool. Being a hunter’s really cool. Fisherman’s really, I can’t even think of other…

Being Pablo Picasso was cool, but being an artist in general can be cool, but not always. Being a hunter is so cool. And that’s part of it, kind of touching or reclaiming or being adjacent to, which is kind of the way I look at it. I’m not pretending to be someone I’m not. I’m not a cool, mysterious outdoorsman. I’m just a guy that’s happy to be adjacent to it and happy to be enjoying it. You do pinch yourself a little bit. You’re like, “Are you kidding? This is so cool right now. I’m hunting a moose?”

Like, what a rich life. That’s to me such an exciting part of hunting. I think that the kids today would call it aura. You’re building aura. It’s true. I love it.

The culture, the gear, there’s all these things. So you go to duck camp the first time, you kind of got one of the best experiences you can have in hunting, which is the camp. That’s a great experience, especially for your first time.

One of the reasons I do this now, and like you said, I’ve not been great at creating content. Matter of fact, most of my businesses, I’ve done my best to be like no one knows who I am. I’m so far removed back, like I can walk through it and they’re like, “Who’s this guy walking through the building?”

Well, that’s kind of funny, and on the list of reasons why I didn’t wanna create content, that was right there, and I can’t believe I forgot that. So thank you for bringing that up. My dream, coming from having a vintage watch retail store that specifically and exclusively made money because of my kind of gesture, clapping and making jokes and educating, it was based off of my personality.

The company had very little worth outside of my personality. Very profitable, but very little worth outside of personality. My dream was to own a business that had nothing to do with me. It operated because I designed it and whatever, but I wanted to be totally removed from the public. People probably wouldn’t guess that because my business is so public. But if I had my druthers, I really probably wouldn’t be public. But that’s just what it is. The business will be stronger. I will be able to generate more revenue and pay my people so they can be here forever, and we can build a family if I bring in more clients. And I can bring in more clients most efficiently if I’m public and educating and speaking about things.

With the same spirit that I did when I was 19 about vintage Rolex, but now in a different space, about business and strategy and navigating social media platforms and building relationships with influencers, navigating all of these waters that so many businesses don’t understand. I wasn’t thinking that when I started the marketing firm. I was thinking, “How do I get off the internet? How does my face disappear entirely?” But you make a plan and God laughs.

Exactly right. I tell everybody, they’re like, “What’s your five-year plan?” I’m like, “It’s to get to the next five years.” Because it changes every five years it seems like.

Of course. You’re so right. Literally an astute observation. And if you’re not an entrepreneur, you probably wouldn’t think that. A lot of people would think, “Well, these entrepreneurs, man, they are just seeing five, 10 steps ahead. They’re not making decisions for tomorrow. They’re making decisions for 20 years from now.” It’s like, well, listen, I’m just trying to get through. Get through well, but get through.

I don’t think guys have that long a plan. They have a plan, like you said, and it changes. It course corrects on a pretty regular basis.

Exactly. I said this yesterday, I got some pretty cool news that was not in any way tied to incoming revenue. I thought it was going to be, but it’s not. But it was amazing news, an amazing investment. Not financial, but on a social level for business ultimately. And I said, “Wow, this will be a fabulous part of my resume when I look back in five years and 10 years. This will absolutely tie to growth, no question.” But sometimes you’re just like, “Well, I really just prefer great news right now about revenue next month.” Like, okay, terrific. I will be much more successful at 40 because of this.

I don’t really need that right now. I actually need revenue tomorrow. So that’s just business. We were laughing internally about it, which I guess is a good position to be in where you can giggle a little bit. You’re not actually sweating, but you are. It’s hard to play micro sometimes when some things are out of your control and they’re just larger plans.

That’s entrepreneurship. That’s it. There’s not that control. You just kind of got to learn to adapt.

For sure. Even this whole hunting thing, this creation of content, this whole new journey. Obviously, if we were to sit down, not that we would need to because it’s so unobjectionable, obviously there is value in my doing this. But it is in no way at this moment tied to revenue. I don’t even have plans to monetize it. For me, this is just hobby. It’s amazing. It’s enriching my soul. It’s making me happier. But of course I’m gonna meet people and do more business and grow my company. Of course. But could I draw that line directly right now?

No. But that’s part of being an entrepreneur. You can’t draw the line to revenue always. You need to just continue to be doing the right thing that you know is right, and then have the confidence to not let any internal voices say anything else.

Well, you know you’re onto something. It’s funny, I told a buddy of mine, big watch guy too, that you were gonna be on the show. And he was like, “I watch that guy on Instagram.” He’s not a hunter at all, but he’s like, “I watch this guy’s stuff all the time.” People identify with you, I think.

If I get on there and talk about hunting, because I’m from rural Alabama, everybody goes, “Yeah, that’s just a normal guy. All those rednecks hunt.” But here’s this guy from New York talking about his first trip. I love the fact that you’re really into the personal pieces of guns and things, and the memories. To me you’re like a real hunter, because I see some guys online and it’s all about the newest, baddest gear. I can’t say I don’t like some of that stuff, but we all have these traditional values.

Most of our guys have been hunting all their lives. It’s about the memories they share with their dad or their uncles or whoever got them into it, and their guns. I hunt with my dad’s gun all the time.

100%. I think what has resonated is, I am a complete outsider, a novice, green around the gills, put it however you want. I know nothing about hunting. But it’s so obvious that it’s something that is eternally valuable and it speaks to your soul. So you’re connected to it, but you just know nothing about it, and so you are objectively an outsider, and it’s a relief to almost just admit that. I feel like so many people walk through life, whether it’s in hunting or in anything, in business, in boardrooms, feeling like they have to pretend that they do know.

What a terrible way to go through life. What a way that is surefire to give you tremendous anxiety and self-doubt and self-loathing, because you’re constantly being dishonest. I see it all the time in the corporate setting. All the time. You see people and I’m like, “Oh my God, someone throw that person a life raft,” because they’re not a liar by nature, but they don’t have the confidence to speak up and say, “Guys, I don’t understand a word that’s being said here.” Because usually that person that’s out of their depth, not always, but often that person has every reason to be out of their depth. Whatever’s being said in a lot of these rooms makes no sense anyway.

A lot of it is gibberish, a lot of really long roads to get to a short point. And I say, “Wow, I feel bad for that person.” They feel like they’re swimming in the middle of the ocean with really no piece of land in sight. Like, how am I gonna get out of this? I take the exact opposite approach. I’m like, “Guys, I know nothing. Anyone that can give me some good advice, great. This is kind of what I like. I really like these side-by-sides. I think those are cool. I’m not stupid.” And then people are like, “No, you’re not stupid, man. Those are the best. My grandpa had one.” That approach I think just resonates with people no matter what space you’re in.

Everything but politics, I think.

Everything but politics. Yeah, exactly. Have you been welcomed with open arms into the community?

Completely. It’s been unbelievable. I have received so few negative remarks. I have way more negativity in the watch industry. Not even close. I like the watch industry. I really love watches. I will never stop collecting watches. I have made some of my best friends in the watch industry. It’s a great place. That being said, objectively, and I’m a marketer, so it’s always about understanding community truth.

Who is this community? What are they about? What are their patterns? What makes them tick? What doesn’t? So you have to look at the reality and not just what we wish and we hope. The reality is, both watches and hunting are both centered around or adjacent to material. They both have expensive items, and they both have collectors, no question. The watch industry is more, the word that we would use, materialistic. It is more transactional. I’m not saying the hunting industry doesn’t have that within it. But the hunting industry has a much larger ingredient naturally of nature, solitude, appreciation for God’s green earth, family. It’s just true.

The potion on the hunting side has a lot more love, I think, than the watch side. That doesn’t mean there’s not a lot of love on the watch side. There are some amazing people. I’ve made some best friends. But the truth is, the communities are different, and I feel much more welcomed. I think everyone would feel much more welcomed in the hunting community than they would the watch community.

That’s great to hear. I grew up hunting, so I’ve always been around it. I’ve had the opportunity to go a lot of places outside of where I grew up, multiple states in the US, a couple other countries. And it’s always the same. I love that too, going to places that are completely different, maybe politically and everything, but when you get in the room with the hunters, everything’s the same.

100%. We’re producing a whole new long form series now. It’s actually the first podcast I’m talking about it on, so it’s kind of cool. We shot one episode about a month ago, hunting hogs out in California, and we’re shooting our next episode this week in Michigan. In California, that first episode, with hunting hogs, we talked about, not just killing hogs, but being closer to the food source, taking pride in that tradition, and what it does to you. And what happens when you remove yourself so far. You only really get the bratty nine-year-old on their cell phone with a half-eaten burger on their plate when the kids are completely removed from any actual food source.

When kids have no idea that ribs came from an animal. They really have no idea. They think they came from the supermarket. That’s it. So that kind of sour reality that we see a lot in metropolitan America, really a lot, is awful. It’s just objectively awful. You don’t need a PhD to know that’s bad when you see someone discard food like that. It’s like a symptom of a society with issues. But you say, well, if we just had a little bit more perspective, if we actually just met some people that have still kind of held to some of the values that built this country to begin with, people that have been ranching and hunting since the 1850s.

Which a lot of these people, these Germans, these Spaniards, have in California, and they still remain there. They still live there. You’d actually probably have a much healthier and fuller perspective on the world, whether or not you think your politics align with these people. People don’t realize how much we, meaning metropolitan people, business people, the savvy, and I’m using that very ironically, have to learn from the rest of Americans. And I’m sure they have stuff to learn from us, too. But we have a lot more to learn from them about life and about the life cycle than they have to learn from us about private equity or human resources.

No, you’re right. That’s a great perspective. I was gonna ask, how have you been eating? What are you finding that you’re liking?

I love to cook. Cooking was probably my only hobby outside of hunting now. But cooking is my thing, absolutely.

Hunters become great chefs. They can cook.

Absolutely. And how cool is it when you cook up something that, when you’re eating it you’re inevitably telling the story of the hunt.

It’s funny. Before I became a hunter, at parties or at dinners I try to make everyone laugh and have fun. But when asked a question about what I’m up to, I generally deflect it, because who the hell wants to talk about how well or unwell their business is doing? It’s so self-aggrandizing. How’s life, Christian? Terrific. We just made a ton of money last week. It’s really been great. That’s essentially how a lot of people ultimately end up answering stuff, because if they don’t have a hobby to talk about, this is what you end up saying. So I end up just generally saying, “Everything’s great. And more importantly, how are you? What’s going on with your thing?”

Now when people ask I’m like, “Well, it’s funny you ask. I was actually just out in Michigan last week and I met this amazing dude, and he hand carves duck decoys, and he does it with his wife and he does it with his two daughters. And man, I just learned so much about not just the craft, but working with your family. I know everyone by us thinks that you definitely shouldn’t work with family because it’s a recipe for disaster. And yet that’s how business was always done forever, and we’ve just gone so far from it.” So now you’re having conversation, because you’re not shy about talking about something that actually has meaning. So I found myself being much more open since I started hunting because the people you’re meeting are fascinating.

And I’m talking about them, but it’s made even my social life so much more fulfilling.

And you always have good stories. You meet interesting people. Some of the most interesting people I’ve ever met were either hunting or hunting adjacent. They were in some little small town where I was at. Even the idea from this show, I was sitting in an elk camp, and the guy that I was talking with had been on the show Alone. He won. And I didn’t even know him. We’re sitting there having coffee talking, and he was a grizzly bear guide and a moose guide in Alaska, but we just happened to be in Colorado hunting elk.

And he said, “You know, if it wasn’t for successful business people, I wouldn’t have a job.” And I thought about it for a second and I thought, why? And he’s like, “Well, that’s the only people that go with me. Your standard McDonald’s worker doesn’t come hunting with me. It costs 25 grand to go do a grizzly hunt. Just getting there is gonna cost you a lot of money, because it’s a plane to Anchorage, then a smaller plane, then a smaller plane.”

Oh, yeah. It’s a tremendous luxury in so many ways. Not all hunting obviously, but so much hunting is a tremendous luxury. And people from all walks of life are doing it. But it’s clearly because they see something in themselves, that they know, okay, this is important, and it’s worth my time and resources. And a lot of these really important people, they’re gonna value their time and resources quite a bit. So if they’re spending seven days hunting in Alaska, that means something much more about Alaska than it does about them and their business or whatever position they have at MasterCard. The thing that’s happening in Alaska is way more interesting.

What I noticed also is it’s kind of like an equalizer. You can be sitting in a room with a multi nine-figure guy or a multi seven-figure guy or a guy who made $30,000 last year, and they could have a beautiful conversation with each other about whitetail deer hunting.

Absolutely. Finding common ground with people of different walks of life, whether that’s economic, racial, whatever, it’s always the place to start. I was at a benefit dinner a couple of months ago. I got sat next to this guy kind of by accident, I think. This super important dude, it was not intentional that I was sitting next to him. Whoever put me there made a mistake. And I’m like, what the heck am I gonna talk to this guy about? I don’t wanna bother him. And I said, “I wonder where he’s from.” Italian last name.

I said, “Well, we’re in New York, and he’s Italian. He doesn’t have an accent, but I bet he’s from an outer borough. And if he is, I can talk about that. My family’s from Brooklyn.” Sure as shit, from Brooklyn, and we talked for 45 minutes about all the old Brooklyn staples, whether that’s roast beef sandwiches or different pizzerias or different families and neighborhoods. Talked about it for 45 minutes. My dad was two seats over from me, and he goes, “What the heck were you two just talking about for so long? I can’t think of three words to say to that guy.” I said, “I’m from Brooklyn.” That was just luck that he happened to be an Italian American from Brooklyn, so he shared that.

But the hunting stand-in is so much more scalable. So many remarkable people from across the country that we can learn from. And I like to hope at least that I’m a favorable ambassador from the metropolitan area, at least when you show up. You be real nice and listen. And hopefully when you leave, they think just as highly or even more highly of all the nose in the air kind of metropolitan guys. Try to build that bridge between the cultures.

I think it’s great that you’re doing this and you’re getting out there. And now you’re bringing light out there that there’s guys from New York, from metropolitan areas. We all must make some assumptions like, “Oh yeah, that guy from New York.” I was hunting with these guys from California, we were mule deer hunting a couple years back, and I was like, “Oh, Californians. Why’d I get…” But they were great guys. So hunting can, it’s good that you guys are doing it, and it’s good that we’re at least shedding light that there’s guys like you out there too.

Totally. It’s funny, over the internet, whether it’s YouTube or Instagram, they used to call it telephone tough guy. That was even before social media. It’s gotten worse with social media. It’s so much easier to be, at a bare minimum, dismissive, or to generalize people.

To just not connect with other human beings. It’s really easy. Which is funny because advocates of social media will tell you the opposite. They tell you, well, the average child 15 or 20 years ago reported they only had two friends, now they’re reporting 11. That’s a metric of happiness. It’s like, well, how about keep your BS statistics? Put them in your pocket. You may be able to say that on a talk show and get away with it if a non-discerning audience is listening, but we all know that is not the picture. Social media has not just increased children’s friend groups by four times the size. That is not a byproduct of social media by any stretch of the imagination.

But in person, it’s funny how nice people are. All those people that were kind of nasty on social media or maybe were inclined to be dismissive, as soon as you’re in person, it’s funny. Very small group of people, if alone and in person, or even in public but in a private setting, no one’s really that dismissive, or very rare. Everyone’s very open and kind, because no one’s hiding behind a computer. And we’re better than that around a table in the lodge.

Oh, I agree with that. When you’re in person, it’s kind of like, you have the balls to say it, you’re a tough guy from Brooklyn, you can talk like that. But when you have the ability to get punched in the face, you kind of watch what you say a little bit more. But like you said, on the computer, online, people will just say all kinds of nasty things.

It’s amazing. And I get it a little bit here and there, and I think the best thing you can do is try to answer kindly, and then you will laugh when you see the remarks retracted almost immediately. Because most people that behave badly are not committed to bad behavior.

They were just behaving badly in that moment, and as soon as you’re kind of nice in return, they’re like, “Oh, God, why was I like that? That was wrong.”

I’ve done that. I’ve been that guy. Where I’m like, “I was not mad at you, I was mad at something else, and you just took the brunt of it.” Wrong timing. So what have you got going? You said you’ve got a hunt in Michigan coming, a geese hunt?

Yeah, I’m doing that this week actually. Next Thursday I’m going dove hunting in Tennessee, which will be great. Really looking forward to it.

Oh, what part of Tennessee?

I don’t know. I’m flying into Nashville, and then I’m getting into a car. Someone’s picking me up and we’re going. I really don’t know.

I live two hours south of Nashville. Our duck season starts, well, I’ll be in Canada, but our season starts the second week of September. I think theirs is the first weekend maybe.

There you go. So I’m looking forward to that. And I’ve got two pheasant hunts coming up this fall. I’ve got two or three duck hunts, and a tentative bear hunt in California. I’m trying to see my December schedule before I commit, but that would be a happy way to end the year.

That would be a great one. Are you doing it with dogs or just spot and stalk?

The bear? Spot and stalk. The gentleman that I’m supposed to go with owns a pretty big parcel of land there and has all the tacticam set up.

Nice. It’s a fun hunt, bear hunting. I didn’t think I would like it when I first did it. It’s a little bit more adrenaline. I’d hunted pigs, but I’d never hunted anything that you had the possibility of it hunting you back. It’s a fun hunt.

Well, that would be good, because my one year will be January 20th or something. It would be cool. A bear would be technically North American dangerous game. It would be cool. I’d be on a relatively small list of people that did the whole Argentina and bear in the first year. You came a long way. I didn’t even get my first year back, so I might as well finish heavy.

You came a long way in a year. I think I was 40, maybe 41 years old before I hunted bear. Hunted a lot of whitetail. We gotta get you down. You come down to Alabama, I’ve got property. We can do some whitetail hunting.

I do not have a whitetail yet. I really want one, so that would be great.

Whitetail is good eating. I’ve got places all over if you need help finding hunts. That’s another thing that’s helping me. This podcast has helped me find more hunting buddies, more people.

I’ve got so many different things booked. Because normally that’s the other thing that happens, who’s gonna go with you? If you don’t have buddies to go with. Some hunts you want solitude, but other hunts you want some people with you.

Of course. There’s something so nice about the camaraderie. Even if you hunt with a guy once a year. I’ve got a couple of guys like that now where I say, “Okay, I may not see this guy for a year.”

“But I know we’re gonna have a killer time on a hunt 12 months from now.” You’re gonna laugh, and we were drinking quite a bit, and you laugh and you make a lot of jokes, and what’s funny, over the two or three days you do have some serious talk. It’s nice to kind of build that bond. And I think that we as a people are missing that, for sure.

I definitely, and not to say anything about women, but men really thrive on having some of that. They don’t need to do it all the time, but they thrive on having those events where they can go smoke cigars and talk bluntly and safe, and go hunting, and you get the whole masculine stuff.

You don’t have to ask a man about women’s clubs, just ask a woman about women’s clubs and she’ll tell you the difference. No one shits on women’s clubs quicker than women. It’s funny. But that’s another thing. I’ve been so surprised by seeing how many women are involved in the outdoors, in hunting. Again, coming from a metropolitan area, the degree to which we have the outdoors is a very specific demographic, it’s very partisan.

It’s very left wing. It’s very granola. It’s very crunchy. And that’s it. That’s the outdoors. That’s it. And I’ve kind of looked at this over the last year and said, again, knowing nothing about the rest of the country really, which is embarrassing but true, “This is so odd because the outdoors and preserving nature should be, if there’s one bipartisan issue in the whole world, that should be the bipartisan issue.” That should be the one thing that folks from both sides of the aisle, people, forget about politicians, should be able to say, “Oh yeah, no, no, no. We’re gonna protect this. We may disagree on a million other things, but we definitely know that our kids should be out in nature more.”

That’s a fact. So I’m trying to, through the long form series that we’re producing, that’s kind of the mission. To send a kind of bipartisan message to everyone to say, we have really fallen asleep at the wheel here. We let ourselves become way too disconnected from the outdoors completely, because of our lack of awareness. A lot of it’s been taken, corporatized, whether in New Jersey that’s turned into shopping malls and strip malls, or whether that’s data centers in Michigan. It’s many different causes, but we have really fallen asleep at the wheel.

So let’s just wake up and re-grab the wheel. That’s the mission and goal. And if I get 20,000 views, I’m happy. That’s great. If I get 5 million, that’d be really great.

What’s the name of it?

It’s called Meeting America. Meeting America. For the first time. I’ve traveled the world quite a bit through work and through family, and yet I realized at about 30 years old that I really hadn’t met America. It’s just true. I’d just gone from big city to big city on business and met essentially the same person 50,000 times from different cities, and never really gone outside the big city.

There was a show and it was like small town America. It only lasted a couple episodes. I think you’re onto something, because I love going to small towns and small areas where they have a culture and you kind of get into it and you see how things work, and I think we’re losing that. You said you travel a lot, so if you drive from here to the other side of the country, you’ll notice that every city looks almost the same.

Same restaurants. I always stop at mom-and-pop restaurants. I don’t stop at big chain restaurants. I’d rather eat some, like, Joe’s Barbecue than McDonald’s.

Of course. It’s disgusting. We’re simultaneously, again kind of full circle on the conversation, getting back into content creation, one, because I’m now enjoying it, but also for business. We’re releasing a business podcast series now with a co-host of mine. Great guy. I’ve actually known him forever. He was my dad’s colleague 25 years ago. So the bridging of generations, it’s really great. But our first episode was about private equity.

And it’s really not something that I know a ton about. But taking moral judgments out, it was interesting what I’d learned, and I think that most Americans really didn’t know this, because nor did I. I think it was 85% of the overall private equity investment in the country goes into small business. I believe 76% of that 85% of overall investment is not going into just investing capital in small business. It’s actually just in roll-ups and buyouts of small businesses. They’re just buyout businesses.

Again, take the ethics out of it, take the morals out of it, I’m making no judgment. But it starts to make sense when you’ve got companies, particularly in the HVAC space and the restaurant space and in plumbing, all these different things, and you say, “Well, we don’t really have small business anymore, and whatever we do have left is absolutely vanishing.” One of the most interesting case studies that I found, you have this big company out of, it may have been Texas or Colorado even. Company’s called Apex Service Partners, and from 2019 to now, I think they’ve purchased over 300 companies. 300 of these HVAC companies. And what’s interesting about it is I believe all, and if not all, the vast majority of those 300 companies they’ve purchased have retained their local original branding despite their entire system being completely reorganized from corporate.

It’s just a kind of BS brand. The mom and pop doesn’t work there anymore. But the people don’t know. So it’s funny, America doesn’t even really know how quickly small business has kind of evaporated from our fabric. They don’t even know. So then you wonder why every restaurant feels the same, why every HVAC company seems to quote you the same exact price all of the time. It’s like, how is this happening? That’s what’s happening in the country. And I think that while it’s certainly a complicated conversation, it’s on a level that’s certainly not good.

Once they control everything, then what can they do? I think of airlines for a second. They’re crap to deal with, because they don’t care. Like, what are you gonna do? Go to United? You wanna fly Delta, fly American? They’re like, “We don’t need you. We have so much of the…” I think that’s what’s happened with private equity, definitely working in the HVAC space. Every person I know’s goal is to get to maybe $3 to 5 million in EBITDA and sell. That’s their whole goal. It’s nothing else.

Right. That’s it. And as a consumer you say, “Okay, well what does it look like in 10 or 15 years doing anything?” Our buildings, if you drive around New Jersey. I grew up in a real kind of cute, quaint area. And slowly, slowly, all of the soul and personality of this charming area has completely eroded. The town that I live in is the town, no one ever finds this interesting, but I like this fact, so I continue to share it, it’s the town that Charles Addams, the creator of The Addams Family, is from, okay? This is obviously a famous American show.

And if nothing else, it had a visual perspective. The show visually was interesting. That was kind of the thing. It was dark and it was gloomy and it was Victorian. It was kind of this old Gothic America. It was cool. It was just cool. And this town, year by year, has become more and more sterile, generic, and frankly, poorly built. All of these new cookie cutter homes, a lot of them aren’t even good homes. Several million dollars, but they kind of suck. But you walk through and you say, “It’s not necessarily my right to be able to tell them they can’t build that. I guess that’s fine.”

But it does make me think of vintage shotguns or vintage watches, and you say, “Well, if you wanted a new one, why did you buy an old one and make it a new one? Why did you have to mess up the old one? Why did you have to mess up the 1960 Rolex Submariner? Why couldn’t the 1960 Rolex Submariner exist and you just go buy your new one?” Why did you have to redial it? And the same thing would apply in a gun scenario. Why did you restock the absolutely gorgeous walnut from the vintage rig? Why would you do that? It’s perfect. It’s perfect the way it was.

Put a synthetic stock on it. Ugh.

Right. But it’s just a small example of what happens. The country is absolutely becoming less character driven. It’s becoming kind of a shadow of what it once was in many ways on a visual level and an experiential level, and the evaporation of small businesses is no small cause.

Well, dude, we could talk for the next couple hours on how we can solve the world’s problems. I’d love to reconnect with you again. I’m loving everything you’re doing. I know some people that are watching this are gonna wanna connect with you somehow. How can they find you?

Well, if you’d like to follow along here on a daily basis through my stories, go ahead on Instagram and follow the account Theo and Harris. And then for the full YouTube series, which we’ll be releasing very shortly, called Meeting America, go over to YouTube and type in the same, Theo and Harris. It’s gonna be really incredible. I’m more excited about this than I have been about anything work-related in a very long time.

That’s awesome. Well, Christian, like I said, I enjoyed meeting you for real for the first time, and this was an incredible conversation. I would love to have you back again. We could do a whole episode just on watches, I think. What are you wearing today?

Today I’m wearing a vintage Cartier Tank Francaise. How about you? What are you wearing?

A Vacheron Constantin. I just got this, maybe a month ago in Denver. I love this one because you can change the bands. It’s beautiful. And now it seems like when I bought it, all I see is people talking about the brand. No one was talking about them a couple months ago.

Well, wear it in good health, man. God bless you.

Thanks, man. I appreciate it. Well, signing off again for The Hunt for Success. Christian, once again, great talking to you, man.

Have a great day.