Strange Donuts Jason Bockman; drugs, escaping a cult & running businesses | Vance Crowe Podcast 020

Jason Bockman [00:00:00] I was 14 and I lived in like, people call it a trap house, you know, like we sold crack out of this house. I was 14 years old and I was like, I was as big as I am now when I was 14, right? Kind of a big on like six four. Like I wasn't, I'm like two 30 now. I wasn't that filled out then, but I was still big kid. But I would throw people out, like if they ran out when they ran outta money, you know, and wanted more crack. Jesus. And they didn't have 14. Yeah, they didn't have stuff to trade or whatever. They'd be like Bach and get 'em out. So I'd, I'd throw these people out.

Vance Crowe [00:00:29] This is the Vance Crow podcast. Welcome back to the podcast. I'm glad you're here. This week's interview is with the owner of a company here in St. Louis called Strange Donuts. And you may be asking yourself, why would I listen to this? What am I going to find out from this? But I can tell you that of any interview I have ever heard in my life, I have never heard a guest be as open and as candid as my guest Jason Bachman was on this week's show. It was absolutely unparalleled. And I found myself being grateful and feeling a sense of joy as he was willing to open up and talk about things that most people will never talk about. Not only because they'll never have these experiences, but that even if they did it would be really tough for them to share these things. But you can tell from the very beginning that Jason is an extraordinary and very different sort of guy. He not only owns a donut shop, but he actually has an internationally recognized furniture company and is a beloved member of the St. Louis community. But as that opening clip showed you, this is not something that came easy or natural. He had to figure it out and learn it all along his hero's journey. So what you are about to hear in this interview is one of the most extraordinary hero's journey stories I have ever heard. I am really excited for you to listen to this as we head into this interview.

Vance Crowe [00:02:01] I wanna let anybody that is interested in agriculture and knows anyone at all in college right now that I'm going to be giving a talk at South Dakota State University between October 11th and the 13th. I believe I'll be giving one on the 12th. The convention is the Collegiate Farm Bureau of South Dakota State University. And the group is a group of young people that decided we wanna have a convention put on by college students for college students. We want to talk about what we've learned about communicating about agriculture online, about how to talk about genetic engineering and pesticide use, and animals, all sorts of issues that are important to consumers. How can these farm kids get better at explaining their point of view? So they are holding a conference. It is for collegiate students all over the Midwest. I know they're bringing in people from animal science and plant science. And so if you know a kid that you think would benefit from growing their network, meeting a whole bunch of interesting and driven people, and really developing their skills in agriculture and communications, go check out their event Bright Page. I will leave a link to it in the show notes here on the podcast, and also up on my website. I really hope you check this out. I think this is one of the most interesting and intriguing conventions that I've been invited to. So I think it'll be a great time. Without further ado, I'm going to head over to the Jason Bachman interview. I should point out, if you didn't catch from the beginning that this has some pretty heavy topics in it.

Vance Crowe [00:03:33] So if you've got kids in the car after the first maybe 10 to 12 minutes, probably not appropriate for just a lot of young ears, but for you adults, buckle in. This is going to be an adventure. Not only will you hear about his hero's journey, but it should help you think about how to be a better person, how to be a better leader, and what you want out of, out of your life. I think Jason does a great job there. So we'll talk with you later. Jason Bachman, welcome to the podcast. What's

Jason Bockman [00:04:07] Up? Glad to be here, Vince, good to see you. Thanks for having me. Dude.

Vance Crowe [00:04:09] It was great to run into you. I, I know who you are. You are the guy that runs Strange Donut, and I've seen you in the gym for Low these many years and, but we hadn't seen each other in a while. Ran into one another, right.

Jason Bockman [00:04:23] Started

Vance Crowe [00:04:24] Talking and you told me a statistic that blew my mind. Yeah.

Jason Bockman [00:04:29] And

Vance Crowe [00:04:29] I, I thought, man, I ought bring him on the podcast. 'cause if you can pull that statistic off, there is something to learn by talking with you. And the statistic was how, what the percentage of turnover that you have at your donut

Jason Bockman [00:04:42] Students. Yeah. So less, we have less than 2% turnover per year. Right. That's insane.

Vance Crowe [00:04:45] It's

Jason Bockman [00:04:45] Crazy. No, it's, it's, I think about it all the time. I'll still think sometimes, like on the way this morning I was thinking, man, why do people work for me? You know, like in the, you know, there's opportunities all over the place and, and people could go, I mean, like, we hire an employee like bright, nice, outgoing, attractive people, you know, who have real depth, depth, attractive depth to them. You know what I'm saying? And I'm not saying attractive, like physically attractive. I'm saying like, you want to be around these people.

Vance Crowe [00:05:14] Yeah. Magnetic,

Jason Bockman [00:05:14] You know?

Vance Crowe [00:05:15] Yeah.

Jason Bockman [00:05:15] And so the, I'm like, man, why do they stay with me? You know? And I, and I think about it a lot, and I read about it a lot. Not, I mean, not until recently. I, I, that's a lot. I don't read about it a lot. But we started doing this. I got picked by WashU. I went to WashU and I got picked by their business school. They're doing a case study. All the incoming business students do a case study on me and Strange Donuts. And that was one of the things that they teased out a few months ago was that, you know, in quick service restaurants, turnover is a roughly 130%, almost 140. So the crew that you start with will have turned over three times by the end of that year, you know? And so I'm like, man, we're really doing something right. And I've known that we've been doing something right for a long time with the people that stay with us. And a lot of people I talk to when we hire them, I, you know, I'm like, look, if you're, if you're working here in a couple years from now and we haven't created a new opportunity for you, like, I don't want you to stay here. Like, come here, learn what you need, get what you need and go, or, you know, it puts the pressure on me to expand and create opportunities for those people. So, yeah.

Vance Crowe [00:06:26] So Strange Donut for people in St. Louis is an iconic brand. It's one that almost everybody around here would know, but for anybody that is not familiar with Strange Donut, describe what you are and, and how you came about.

Jason Bockman [00:06:39] Yeah, so we're a donut shop. We have four locations in St. Louis. We've done some stuff outside of St. Louis, outside of the country also. But we're a donut shop. We're open seven days a week. We do all kinds of crazy donuts. We do a lot of just classic stuff. But our menu consist of, you know, 12 different options. Some drinks and stuff, a lot of merchandise. You can buy our merchandise on launch Strange donuts.com, check it out. And we do collaborations with, you know, big brands. We just did something with Anheuser-Busch. We've done stuff with Japanese clothing companies, bands.

Vance Crowe [00:07:12] And when you say that, you're describing like, we make a cool donut, that is unlike anything, you're gonna find

Jason Bockman [00:07:19] Any other cooks. Yeah. So the, the products themselves, like the donuts that you consume, they might be, you know, grilled cheese, or they might be, you know, a caviar custard that we did with the niche food group. Right. It could be anything. And so some of the stuff is like aspirational, you know, like we, we did something with like, specifically we did with a niche food group, which is a, a a, you know, they have places in Nashville mostly focused in St. Louis, but they do events, drug craft, drug craft. Yeah. They do stuff all over the world, literally. Right? And so, you know, a 17-year-old, like the, like the line that weekend was funny. There'd be like a kid smelling like weed standing right next to, you know, people that came from the symphony that are in tuxes, right? And so it was like, for those people that are in the tuxes, it's like, man, I wanna, I wanna be a part of the, the cool thing, you know? And then for the kid, it's like aspirational. Like, man, I can't drop 250 bucks on dinner, but I can go for five bucks to Strange Donuts and get this caviar custard donut. And it's aspir, it's a fake Louis Vuitton bag. You know what I mean? Like, I, I can get this now. I will have that when, you know,

Vance Crowe [00:08:29] I think you were just getting started when I first moved. So I moved here in like 2012, I think. And I think you would, were you 20

Jason Bockman [00:08:36] 2013? So we started doing some pop-up stuff towards the end of 2012. And then 2013, October 11th, actually we opened our first store. But we did done pop-up shops leading up to that.

Vance Crowe [00:08:48] I remember thinking, there's no way you could keep up this level of creativity. And I was totally wrong,

Jason Bockman [00:08:55] Dude. It's fun. I mean, you gotta put yourself in you, like we throw the ball way out there, right. And I think that there's like some, like right now, honestly, I feel like I'm slacking with the stuff that we're doing. I mean, it, it was just a month ago, I think two months ago, we did a collaboration with, with Anheuser-Busch. Right?

Vance Crowe [00:09:11] I heard you did one with Charlie,

Jason Bockman [00:09:13] With Hot Charlie, Charlie, just this past weekend. Yeah, dude, he's the homie. He's

Vance Crowe [00:09:16] Telling me that.

Jason Bockman [00:09:16] Did he tell you that? He, he texted me, he said, Hey man, I heard you're gonna be on the podcast. And he talked about being a priest. I've known him for a couple years, I think.

Vance Crowe [00:09:22] Yeah, dude,

Jason Bockman [00:09:23] He's in the Priesty Boys band. He, he was,

Vance Crowe [00:09:25] He was, he was in a Priesty Boys band. I don't know that, that's

Jason Bockman [00:09:29] What he told me that. And he quit a week after the Priesty Boys, which sounds weird to say out loud, the Priesty Boys. But

Vance Crowe [00:09:36] He, he started the path towards seminary, and yeah, so, yeah. Yeah. So his podcast just ran the week before. Okay. Yeah. So he, that one's wild. Funny

Jason Bockman [00:09:46] Dude. He's a good guy. But the, the, the Anheuser-Busch, we did that like a month and a half ago, right? We had merchandise released, they tweeted about it, you know, it's seen internationally. We're shipping shirts to Japan.

Vance Crowe [00:09:59] What do you, how do you make a Anheuser-Busch donut?

Jason Bockman [00:10:01] So I came up with, there's another brand here locally that I won't talk about, but like, they were not, that we're not friends, just whatever. I'm not trying to embarrass anybody or be weird. No, no beef here, right? So, like I said, Hey, they, they had had some trouble recently PR stuff, and I just said, I was like, man, maybe we can help 'em out. I'm like, do you guys want to, we'll make a glaze outta your beard. Do you guys, we're making some glaze outta beer. Do you guys wanna be a part of it? And the yeast and the beer can replace some of the yeast and the donuts when we bake it so it tastes differently. It's a little, you know, hoppy.

Vance Crowe [00:10:32] Oh, that's really clever. Right? Yeah.

Jason Bockman [00:10:34] So the, they said, not now. And I walked in, we're doing a photo shoot right then, and I said, get that, get that outta here, right? And I said, go next door and buy some bush. Right? So I'm like, we bought some bush beer. And then I, you know, tweeted a little picture about it, and then an ab, like the marketing team said, Hey, why don't you come in? So,

Vance Crowe [00:10:54] Wow.

Jason Bockman [00:10:55] I went and met with them, dude. And then, you know, and

Vance Crowe [00:10:56] Those are the big, that is big dogs. Huge. Yeah.

Jason Bockman [00:10:59] So it's cool. I mean, that was awesome. And that like, and that honestly, like, so that happened. And so some of it's, I mean, opportunity through motion, you know what I mean? Staying consistent. A lot of people bring ideas to us, and, but I feel like, so that just happened. I think a lot of people might hang their hat on that, you know, like for the year, you know, oh, we got ab and, and I'm like bored now, you know? I'm like, man, what is next? And it's always like, what's next? And I think that's like a blessing and a curse that I feel like I'm that way is like, I don't know. I talked to a counselor, dude, you know, I went and talked to a counselor. I was like, man, we won. Like, I won, like, you know, like a life, a lifetime achievement award, right? I, my, my daughter was born, she's healthy. I like closed this big deal. I got a bunch of money, I won all these awards for our products. And I'm like, man, I should be happy. I should feel happy or like fulfilled and I'm not, you know, and you

Vance Crowe [00:11:57] Know, you are the third person to come on here and say like, I, I'm bored. Really? And, and all three of them have all, all three of you have been extraordinary, like, have accomplished things that other people dream about,

Jason Bockman [00:12:12] Getting

Vance Crowe [00:12:13] Millions of subscribers on YouTube or, you know, building up a national brand. And I, I think that this is an interesting conundrum of, of really driven people, which is what what goal could you be striving towards that would allow you to feel progress? Because progress is the thing that we all love, that that is fulfilling.

Jason Bockman [00:12:35] I don't know. And I've thought about it. I've, I've, I've started saying like, for a long time, I will like, accomplish something or get some money or get some accolades. And I'm like, when I get there, I will do this with those assets, right? And I keep pouring it back into what I want to do, right? Like, so I said, you know, I have a Rolex, right? I have this watch and it's tight, and I wanted it forever. I grew up just a Hoosier. And if you're not from St. Louis, Hoosier just ba it amazingly means white trash, right? So I grew up, like, you know, windows kicked into my house, broke down Camaro in the front yard. Really? Like, like, like,

Vance Crowe [00:13:13] I would never textbook guess that.

Jason Bockman [00:13:15] I know nobody does, but like, textbook Hosier dude. And the, I was locked up a lot. I got tried as an adult for some stuff, and I was like 14 years old. And well,

Vance Crowe [00:13:24] You can't just glaze over that. What'd you do?

Jason Bockman [00:13:26] Oh, a bunch, dude. So some of the stuff, I like a bunch of stuff. So most of it was like drugs and guns. And I got, some of my friends were involved in like, some shootings and stuff, and robberies, and the, so

Vance Crowe [00:13:42] You weren't just like, oh, we're smoking cigarettes out back by the alley, and mom and dad don't like it.

Jason Bockman [00:13:46] Like, serious. Oh, it was real. Yeah. Like, legitimately, dude, most of my friends are, are like, dad are in prison, right? So like, sometimes I get mad at myself for not being grateful, you know, like, man, think of where you could be, you're so blessed to be where you are. I have this awesome life. I have a beautiful wife and kids, and, you know, a nice house that I never thought I'd live in, you know? And I'm like, and I have to remind myself and really focus on, on gratitude. And then when I don't have it, I feel I get, I, I'm like, turn that inward. I'm mad at myself for not being grateful, which is so kind of productive, you know? It's stupid. But yeah, man. I

Vance Crowe [00:14:23] What do you think is the difference between you and your friends that didn't make it?

Jason Bockman [00:14:27] Some of it's, I think some of it is like grace, honestly. You know, I think that some of it, I, I'll tell you the story, and I don't, I don't ever tell this story. Like I, a few people know it. Some of the people that work with me know it. But I got tried as an adult for some stuff. Like, again, drugs and guns, and stole a car. I did a robbery. The people were home, right? So I'm like a, I mean, like, now I think back about it, I'm like, I was a child, you know, I was a kid. And some of it, like political, I mean, whatever, I don't like go off some crazy tangent about this stuff. But like, had my name been Antoine, you know what I mean? I'd probably be, you know, in, in prison for 30 years, you know, like the stuff that I did. But I did a bunch of stuff. And then my, I had a public defender who said, you know, you're gonna get 10 years, right? And I was like, all right, isn't there, there's like a plea deal though, right? And he's like, no, that's the deal. You know? And so I was gonna do 85% of the time. And he said, 'cause you know, when you have a violent offense, like a lot of people think, oh, you go to prison or whatever, and then you're out in a couple months. But it just doesn't work like that. So for some people it does, for some people, you do 15% of your time. So you get 10 years, you're gonna do a year and a half, right? Not a big deal. And the, I was locked up like two and a half years, but I got 10 years. And my public defender, I was doing like drugs at the time, narcotics, right?

Jason Bockman [00:16:01] And he was like, you know, if you take this habit into prison, then you're never gonna get out. You know? So like, if you were, you know, shooting dope or smoke crack or whatever, like in prison, you're gonna re-offend while you're there. You know what I mean? You're gonna get caught with drugs and do crime to get more drugs. You're gonna whatever, and you'll just never get out. And so I, he said, you know, not that it's gonna lessen your sentence, but you should, you need to go get help before you go in. I ended up going into a treatment center. I, and I ended up getting cleaned up. I got out, I, so you go to, I went to, I'd already been to sentencing where they said, you know, 10 years, and then you go back and that's when you go away, right? So when I went back to get taken away, I gave everything away that I had, which wasn't much. But the, I gave everything away. I'm like, hug my friends and family. I'm like, all right, bye. You know, I'll see you in a decade. And I walked in the court and the judge looked at me. He is like, Mr. Bachman, he'd seen me several times before. Some of the stuff is kind of hope high profile stuff that happened.

Vance Crowe [00:17:10] It was on the news. I mean, it's crazy stories, dude.

Jason Bockman [00:17:13] But the,

Vance Crowe [00:17:15] You can Google it

Jason Bockman [00:17:16] If you want. There was a shootout and like a minivan. I'm not laughing about it. I just, it's so crazy. My friends jumped, I

Vance Crowe [00:17:23] Jumped outta this minivan. I mean, this is really shocking because like, you're the happy, nice lifter at the gym. Oh, are like, Hey James. Hey James.

Jason Bockman [00:17:29] It, how's it going? Good to see you, dude. I, I'll talk, I think, I think some I'll, we could talk about that too. But like, my friends jumped out of this minivan and smashed through a blockbuster video, right? And everybody got away, ended up getting caught the next day. But I ended up going into court and the, the judge, you know, Mr. Bachman, I said, yeah. And he's like, there's something different about you. And I was like, you know, okay. And he called up the public defender, they had all talk, and he just said, I'm gonna su I, I've never done this. I've never seen this done. I'd already been found guilty. I had already been sentenced.

Vance Crowe [00:18:10] And he said,

Jason Bockman [00:18:11] I'm gonna, but I was on a bond. I bonded out for 400 bucks. That's a sad, crazy story too. But the, but I went, he said, I'm gonna suspend this. I'm throwing this case out. And he said, if you, if I see you for a traffic ticket, you're getting your 20 years, which is my original sentence. You're getting 20 years. And I'm like, 18, 19. Whoa. Yeah. He's like, you're getting your 20 years. And, and then I just stood there and he was like, go. And I was like, I don't have a ride. You know? And so I just, I ended up walking like 15 miles to get home. But just thinking like head spinning, like, man, what just happened? You know? I was fully prepared.

Vance Crowe [00:18:58] That truly is grace. That's, that's mercy, dude. Dude. Yeah. That's

Jason Bockman [00:19:02] From the highest. And I think about it, I'm like, man, I remember thinking then like, this shot won't be wasted on me. You know, I had friends that were even younger than me that got, you know, they went and I didn't snitch on anybody, or there was none of that, you know? It was just, boom, I don't know. The judge saw a change in me. And, and I, and I left there and I was like, I felt so lucky. And like, this shot won't be wasted on me. And I think that for a long time it was like me against the world was my feeling, right? And some of this has subsided. Like, I'm like, happy go lucky, feeling grateful guy. But like, I'm like, I will, I'm so competitive, you know? I'm like, I will kill anybody. You know what I mean? To like, to advance like what we have and for my team and just for me. And for a long time I felt so alone and ashamed of that past, you know, I mean, I ended up like going to school in China, right? I got in this, this budding scholars program, and I'm over there with all these Ivy League kids, right? It's me where John Hopkins, Johns Hopkins University. And like my, before this, my reading and math were like a, I quit school in eighth grade. It was like a sixth grade level. I'm thinking like super basic math. And now I'm over there

Vance Crowe [00:20:27] Because I started

Jason Bockman [00:20:28] Speaking Chinese, right? Because of, again, some crazy story. And this, I know this podcast goes on for a while. So like, we can

Vance Crowe [00:20:35] Talk, take all the time you need, man. This is great. So this is kind of tight. This is, I'm shocked. Yeah. So

Jason Bockman [00:20:40] Like, but any questions you wanna know, I'll tell you, dude. But I ended up getting into this program. Like right not long after that, I started like doing what I could to pour good stuff into my head. And I started like listening to NPR, right? Because this, I saw this girl. I'm like, what do you, she was beautiful and cool and smart, you know? And I'm like, what do you do for fun? And, and, and whatever She's talking about NPR, I'm like, well, probably lemme try to listen to NPR, you know. And it was like, I went to this interview.

Vance Crowe [00:21:08] It's a totally different experience if you've been listening to music and whatever, talk radio. And now all of a sudden they're talking about the B, b, C and international news, right? And all kinds of shit. It blows you away when you first touch it. A

Jason Bockman [00:21:21] Hundred percent. Yeah. And I'm like, oh, there's, so, the world is so much bigger than me and my problems, you know? And, and I ended up, before I went into this interview, which is like this panel of people, like, one was from Harvard and one was from MIT, one was from uc, Berkeley, and another one was from Boston College. And they interviewed me. I walked in, I was so nervous, dude, I sweat through my sport coat, right? So I took my sport coat off and you could see my nipples. I had this white button on shirt. I was just soaked. And they wouldn't even shake my hand. But right before I went into the interview that I knew I wasn't gonna get, they said on NPR, they're like, 35% of China's water is lost in its five major sitter cities due to poor infrastructure. Namely from leaky pipes. Right? And I've always had this like, kind of creepy sense of memory, right?

Vance Crowe [00:22:22] And so

Jason Bockman [00:22:23] I walk in, I go to shake their hand. They didn't, they like lean back. They wouldn't shake my hand.

Vance Crowe [00:22:27] 'cause you were so sweaty. Because

Jason Bockman [00:22:28] I was so sweaty, dude. No way. Yeah, dude. And I don't know if they were like posturing or whatever to try to make it more serious. That's or uncomfortable suck. Doesn't,

Vance Crowe [00:22:36] There's no, there's

Jason Bockman [00:22:36] No

Vance Crowe [00:22:37] Cultural thing that makes it okay to not shake a, a guy's hand.

Jason Bockman [00:22:40] Yeah. I, I bumped, I gave this dude a hand bump the other day at the gym. He's like, naked. And he went to shake my hand. I'm like, I'm not shaking your hand while you're naked, dude. And I bumped him. But anyways, the,

Vance Crowe [00:22:49] I

Jason Bockman [00:22:49] Felt weird for not shaking his hand.

Vance Crowe [00:22:51] Okay. I, fair enough. You found the one scenario where I'll back that off. I, I agree. So

Jason Bockman [00:22:55] Dude, this, they, they said, what do you know about Chinese infrastructure? First question, right? And I'm like, well, did you know that 35% of China's waters lost through its 500 cities

Vance Crowe [00:23:05] Structure,

Jason Bockman [00:23:06] Namely through leaky pipes? And they were like, holy shit, man. Like, I just bow. And I was like, thanks NPR. So that happened. And now I'm in China feeling

Vance Crowe [00:23:14] Like,

Jason Bockman [00:23:16] So outclassed literally outclassed, you know, like, these people were like, you know, I'm like lower to lower middle class, and these people were rich, man. And, and I just, I worked harder. And I wasn't like, I, I think that that, that, that stuff that happened growing up, like literally, man, I mean, a lot of the stuff I was ashamed of and I didn't talk about, but I'm like, man, there's so many Jasons out there that like, need to hear like, oh, this was real and this dude really did this and this is where he is. 'cause it's still crazy to me that kids walk up to me and like literally want my signature. I was at a, a restaurant and Carlos Beltran was sitting in a booth in front of me, and Yadi Air Moline was sitting in a booth behind me with his family, right? And I'm

Vance Crowe [00:24:02] Like, oh my God, this yacht here Molina, that's Carlos Beltran.

Jason Bockman [00:24:06] And somebody walked up to me and asked me for my autograph,

Vance Crowe [00:24:10] Man.

Jason Bockman [00:24:10] And I was like, what?

Vance Crowe [00:24:12] And in this town, that's a really, dude, those are, that's Jesus.

Jason Bockman [00:24:15] And, and,

Vance Crowe [00:24:16] And Paul, Moses,

Jason Bockman [00:24:17] You know what I mean? And Moses, right dude. So like the man, I was like, this is crazy, dude. And that's how people think of me. 'cause I still think, like even still sometimes think of myself as that little white trash kid, you know? But like, when I was, I was 14 and I lived in like, people call it a trap house, you know, like we sold crack out of this house as I was 14 years old. And I was like, I was as big as I am now when I was 14, right? Kind of a big on like six four. Like, I wasn't, I'm like two 30 now. I wasn't that filled out then, but I was still a big kid. But I would throw people out, like if they ran out when they ran outta money, you know, and wanted more crack and Jesus, and they didn't have 14 Yeah. They didn't have stuff to trade or whatever. They'd be like, Bachman, get 'em out. So I'd, I'd throw all these people out. And I think now, like in situations where people would typically be afraid and respond like abrasively, you know what I mean? Like me and you talking, it doesn't matter what we're talking about. I'm not, I'm not afraid of that, you know? Right.

Vance Crowe [00:25:18] So I can look people in the eye and like

Jason Bockman [00:25:20] Be calm and calm people down and, and, and portray like confidence and, and be cool. So I'm over there like in China, like, man, what do I got to lose? I'm already over here on this full ride, like everything paid for, you know, like, I can't lose. And that was where one of like my first like successful ventures developed is that I met these people that manufactured furniture. Right? And so I came back here. Before I did that though, I was a counselor. And that's a funny, weird story, dude. But I was a counselor at this place in the desert, which turned out to be a cult, right? And so I'm in this place in the desert in Arizona, and they were basically, man, I was like, man, I don't want to go back to where I came from.

Vance Crowe [00:26:07] How did you, how did this cult find you to, to bring you on

Jason Bockman [00:26:09] As a concert? So I end up cleaning my stuff up, right? And I was like, school was bad, right? So I I quit school in eighth grade, like I said, and I ended up cleaning, cleaning up, and then an opportunity came like, oh, I can go work for this drug abuse program in Arizona, right? I'll go to school.

Vance Crowe [00:26:37] I looked

Jason Bockman [00:26:37] At the curriculum, dude, there's no math, no, nothing really, you know, know, it's just like, you gotta care about people basically, right? So I'm like, man, I care about people. And so I ended up going out there, and then it got so turned around, dude. It was basically like, I could tell these funny stories that just won't make any sense for a long time. But like, I had, my teeth were all busted up from fighting and just hard living right? Growing up. And I was the Hoosier, my teeth were all crooked. I ended up getting some braces. I got my braces taken off right before I went down there. And the,

Vance Crowe [00:27:12] Wait, so you were the crack enforcer?

Jason Bockman [00:27:14] Yeah. With

Vance Crowe [00:27:15] A mouthful of braces?

Jason Bockman [00:27:16] No, I didn't have braces then. Oh,

Vance Crowe [00:27:19] Opposite dude. One time

Jason Bockman [00:27:19] I was locked up and I got my tooth broken. You would make hot, you make tea. But really it was jolly ranchers in hot water, right? So you get hot water. I put a Jolly Rancher in the, in the tea, in the, in the hot water to make some Jolly Rancher tea. And the Jolly Rancher like hardened up. And I already had a broken tooth from, I was like walking, counting money and to buy some drugs. And the, I walked through this backyard and I walked into a, a swing set and it busted my front tooth out. Anyways, I ended up getting that fixed. I got it broken out in jail by the Jolly Rancher tea. 'cause the Jolly Rancher like hardened up when I went and took a bite of the Jolly Rancher and it broke my stupid tooth out. And then I got it fixed while I was in there for $7. And the, the dentist and the dentist assistant, I think were prescribing everybody drugs and taking them themselves. Like the nurse would kept nodding out and like, ha like

Vance Crowe [00:28:19] Stabbing

Jason Bockman [00:28:20] The sucker down my throat, the spit sucker. So I, I just took the spit sucker from her and I put my hand on her forehead and I pushed her back over the chair. So she's like,

Vance Crowe [00:28:27] Oh my God.

Jason Bockman [00:28:28] Yeah. And the, the, the dentist, have you ever gotten teeth fixed where they, like they put this UV ray on your tooth to harden this

Vance Crowe [00:28:35] Resin? Yeah, yeah,

Jason Bockman [00:28:36] Yeah. The epoxy stuff. The epoxy. So the guy kept nodding. He would like do it and then nod out and then wake up and not where he was in the procedure. So he'd put more epoxy. My tooth ended up being like a half inch thick right front to back. It was, it was massive. I couldn't close my mouth. Anyways, I'd get outta there, dude, working my ass off. I've worked like four or five jobs, no shit. I'd be like, you know, I'm on a roof. I, so I, I would roof, I worked at Subway, I did some landscaping stuff, and then I'd valet park cars. And that was like at one sitting, right? I'm like doing all that, just nonstop. And I just thought that like, you know, I can earn my way out of that way of life or something. And I didn't know how to work smart or I didn't have any examples of people that like, oh, this is how you like, leverage, you know, your time or your assets or, you know, delayed gratification. I was just like, all you do is just work more, you know. But I ended up saving money. I got some braces, and then I get the braces removed right before I go to this training in Arizona. And I, bro, I was playing air hockey and I had the retainer in my pocket and I broke the retainer. And this is the first time that I was like, man, this is sounds a little weird. I was like, Hey, I broke my retainer. I need to go get a new retainer. And they're like, if you're spiritually correct, your teeth will straighten themselves. And I was like, that's bad. Which seems like, oh dude, it seems weird at the time to say, dude. But I was like, oh, okay. I guess that makes sense. You know, I don't, you know, so I ended up, my teeth got all wonky again, but I don't remember where I was going with that.

Jason Bockman [00:30:11] So you were out in this cult, oh dude, I'm in this cult and like, man, it was, I can't even tell you. Like, so I'll try to like, 'cause if I start talking about it, I can go forever and it just won't make any sense. Trust me. All right. So here's the, like the short reason why I left another problem with my tooth. I have a, so you get, you work like 20 hours a day, right? Legit, like doing like manual labor or like leading groups, right? And so people are, you know, vulnerable and they have kids that, you know, have drug problems. And they'll, like, if you say you got a solution, they'll pay you. You know what I mean? So I'm working in this, running this outpatient program for these kids. And I had a, I needed a root canal and I like it. The pain would get so bad, literally I'd like, like power down, right? I'm like, I would just shut off and pass out. And I was like, man, I need to get a root canal. And he is like, well, you know, go see how much that is. And I'm like, it's $1,100. And they didn't pay us hardly anything. I, I might've got 400 bucks a month, right? And working 20 hours a day, seven days a week. No lie, no exaggeration. But the, the place did give me, I, like, I did walk away with some big positives, like maybe extreme positives, you know, like ownership, like anything that happens to you and around you is your fault, right? So like, your mom dies from cancer, that's your fault. You know, like you spiritually attracted that into your family.

Jason Bockman [00:31:43] Kind of weird to say out loud, but I end up, I'm like, I'm like, you know, this root canal is $1,100. And I'm like, well, we're not paying for that. And so I save up for, it took me like a, it is eight months or something to save 50 bucks to get insurance. I go back, it's $400. And I was like, man, I thought, like, so they said we're not paying that. So I said to the, you know, the orthodontist like, can you just bill me or something? 'cause I don't, you know, I don't have the money. And I'm like passing out a few times a day from paint. Oh my god. And he said, he said they'd bill me. And it started, I started thinking like, man, you said that you guys were gonna take care of me and I'm working a lot for you guys and you're saying that I'm a star and then I'm doing all kinds of great stuff for you guys. And, but I'm not seeing any of the returns. Alls I want is like to stop passing out and to get my tooth fixed and you won't pay for it. And I happen to know, know that, you know what I mean? 'cause there's 20 kids in my group, those that, that's like $8,000 a kid. It's 160 grand a month. You can't find $400 for me.

Vance Crowe [00:32:49] Right.

Jason Bockman [00:32:49] You know, and all the costs were like soft costs, you know, it wasn't like there was a bunch of crap that went into like each one of these kids where there was, you know, anything fixed that, that, I don't know. It was, it was cheap. It was mostly profit. Right. And so they're paying for my labor and they're not paying me anything. And I asked questions about the money, right? And that's when there was like, yeah, dude, you're on your way out. I ended up being in this group one night. I had this girlfriend, which God, it's so weird to talk about dude. But I was in this like, arranged relationship with this girl. I didn't like, she didn't like me from,

Vance Crowe [00:33:25] From the cult. They were like

Jason Bockman [00:33:26] From the cult, you were gonna

Vance Crowe [00:33:27] Be cult together.

Jason Bockman [00:33:27] This is, yeah. You guys are gonna be together. And,

Vance Crowe [00:33:30] And how far did they expect that to go?

Jason Bockman [00:33:34] So whatever. We're adults, dude. I'm like, there's kids listening to turn it off. But like, we go on a date and then the next, we went on another, we went out another time, this girl and I, and then she came to my apartment where I live with like six dudes in a two bedroom apartment, right? And they were like, she's like, Hey, I need to like, take care of you. And what, what Shannon said, and Shannon was like one of the big dogs, right? They didn't believe that like, women in being in positions of authority or management, but like, this is like as high as a, a woman could go in this organization.

Vance Crowe [00:34:17] So much weird stuff, dude.

Jason Bockman [00:34:19] But the like, so, so she had to like, not had, like, she said, I'm supposed to take care of you. Shannon says, I need to jack you off, right? And I was like, whoa. Like we've been on like two dates. Like I'm cool with that. But like, you don't have to do anything that you don't want to do. Is this something that you want to do? And she's

Vance Crowe [00:34:42] Like, how old were you?

Jason Bockman [00:34:43] I was probably 21. Wow. Right. It was weird, dude. It was so weird. And she's like, I could, you know, and I was like, are you sure you like, do you, if you wanna do this, like of course, like I'm always down, but like, I'm not trying to make you do anything you don't wanna do. And it like, I don't know why I'm telling you about this dude, but it stayed there. We could, we ended up going out for like close to a year and couldn't have sex. Right? So like, they would like monitor what we did. It's so weird to talk about. I'm telling you

Vance Crowe [00:35:12] Dude. And so, so you're going through this cult, you're, you first get out there thinking, hey, this is the easy route, boom. But you ended up finding out like, I left one hell and went into a different one and

Jason Bockman [00:35:24] It, but the promise of not going back was strong there. I'm like, I'm here and this is better than where I came from. You

Vance Crowe [00:35:33] Know? That was better than where you came. Oh

Jason Bockman [00:35:34] Hell yeah, dude. I mean it was,

Vance Crowe [00:35:36] Well I guess they're sending people over to take care of you at your apartment,

Jason Bockman [00:35:40] Right, dude. So it was so weird. But I ended up like the leader, like the national leader of this cult ends up coming to the, to there one night. And like, I, like you basically cut ties with your family. My little sister was graduating high school and I was like, Hey man, I wanna go back and see my sister graduate high school. And they're like, well, you can't go, you can't go now. Like maybe like in a week or two weeks you can go. So the dude who ran the like chapter that I was at ended up buying me a plane ticket to go. The national dude comes in, he says, we told you not to go. And I was like, no, Josh bought my plane ticket. And he's like, you saying Josh is a liar? And I was like, Josh, tell him. And the dude Josh just like literally turned his back to me.

Vance Crowe [00:36:21] And I was like, oh my

Jason Bockman [00:36:22] God. And I felt all betrayed, you know what I mean? Like, I, I had like been alone, you know, being locked up as like a kid, you know what I mean? 14 years old, I'm locked up with grown ass men. And no, no weird sex stuff ever happened or anything like that. I could fight. I fought a lot and, but I was alone, you know,

Vance Crowe [00:36:38] And just being exposed to, to men that are, that are in, that are that level of society. And you're 14 years old.

Jason Bockman [00:36:45] 14. And I was just like them, but I was younger, you know what I mean? And less experienced. And so like, man, it could have got real bad, but it didn't, I mean, it was bad for sure. I saw some, some of the worst stuff, you know what I mean? But the,

Vance Crowe [00:36:59] So then how did you end up getting out of there?

Jason Bockman [00:37:01] So I'm there that night this, so I thought that I had found my people. I'm like, these people support me, they love me. I'm like one of many, you know. And then that night it kind of like turned, I'm like, they turned on me. You know what I mean? And I'm pretty sure it had to do with me questioning the money and the allocation of resources and stuff. And the 'cause they were getting paid. I mean like, the leaders were like mansions and Mercedes and, you know, and which is fine. Like I'm not opposed to people having stuff. But the, the, the national leader guy was like, I'll shoot. He's like, I'll shoot you and then I'll call the cops and tell them that you raped Maria. Right? That was who was my girlfriend at the time. And

Vance Crowe [00:37:44] I was like, what? I was like, dude.

Jason Bockman [00:37:46] And the guy jumped, he stood up and started coming at me like to like intimidate me. I knew he wasn't gonna do anything, but

Vance Crowe [00:37:55] I, wait, how can you say that? How, how can you say he wasn't, he was, he was upping

Jason Bockman [00:37:59] You. So I think this guy was a fake tough guy, right? I think that he ruled this thing through fear, but really like, looking back on it, he was not real, you know? And I think that he lied a lot about where he came from and the things that he had done. 'cause I really did those things. And some of the stuff that they talk about everybody back, Ooh,

Vance Crowe [00:38:30] Ah, oh my god.

Jason Bockman [00:38:31] And I'm like, man, that does not match up. You know? And so this guy started walking at me and I jumped up like, I'll fucking kill you man. You know, like, and everybody was like, oh my god, you're talking to Jesus like that. You know what I mean? Like, this dude was like, David Koresh, you know, really that level? Oh that a hundred percent. And I was like, you know, I don't, anyway, so that night, like everything changed when I was like, you know, I felt threatened and like all the like indoctrination and stuff went out the window when the guy like really tested me. And so I felt threatened and I was like, like, Hey man, like I'm not, you know, I don't know remember my exact words, but I was basically like, I don't play like this. And so he, I ended up driving. I was gonna go to Chicago because I didn't nowhere where else to go. I was like, I'm gonna drive to Chicago and like start over, you know? And I called my friend who happened to be in Vegas at the time and he said, why don't you come to St. Louis and live with me? And I drove from St. Louis. Were you from St. Louis for kind of, I was born in Arizona. I was born in England rather. I was born in England. My dad was in the Air Force. I lived in Arizona and then I moved to St. Louis for a while. When you got in all that trouble, were you here? I was in St. Louis. Okay. But then I was like all over the country, like in those institutions and stuff, you know, so you get sent wherever and so like, based on your crimes and like how big you are and all this stuff, right? So I was always in like the worst places 'cause I was doing like bad stuff and I'm big, right?

Jason Bockman [00:40:05] So I'm like in these bad places with big people. Anyways, I drove to St. Louis singing row, row, row your boat, literally the whole time. Right? Like trying to like stay. I was so insane trying to, and Mike, I got back here and one of my friends said, Hey man, I'm going to school. You're gonna go to school too. He basically, like, he's my best friend. His name's Scott Levy. He's the man, he's the godfather of my kids and saved me, man. And so he was like, we're gonna go to school. I ended up going to Marma Community College. And I was literally in his math classes. It was like, you know, if you have two red crayons and one blue crayon, how many total crayons do you have? Right? And I like, wasn't getting a hundred percent okay. And so that's where it started for me. I ended up getting into a business class and I, I started this hotdog vending business. 'cause there was a, there was a hotdog vendor in Arizona where I used to go all the time, you get two hot dogs, a bag of chips and a drink for four bucks. And I was like, I can, I can afford to eat that. Right? So that's what I eat all the time. And I just tried to learn about this hotdog vending. It was always intriguing to me when I came back here, I started a hotdog vending business. And it was like, I was making literally, I mean, my first night out I made a pillowcase full of money, right? I dumped it out on the ground and I just looked at it like, oh my God, this is insane. You know? And I think that like, people being afraid, like I again, I'm like, man, what do I got to lose? You know what I mean? I don't care. Like, people were like, man, you're gonna be like the dirty guy out there on the street.

Jason Bockman [00:41:37] Like St. Louis doesn't have hotdog vendors, you know? And I like Were you outside of bars or where were you outside of bars? Like we had a couple spots in the Grove, in the Grove, south Grand Bush Stadium, the Loop dog town. And then we do events all over the place. And my first night out was Mardi Gras. Oh man. Yeah, dude. So I like crushed, you know, I, I like made more money than, you know, I made a, a, a pillowcase full of money and I just didn't care. You know, like, and I, most of the, and that's where like, what do you mean you didn't care? I didn't care that, you know, people would see me like be in the hot from my neighborhood. Yeah. You know what I mean? And they're like rich from selling drugs, you know, or like some hot sorority girl, like, you know, like I'd be in the loop and there'd be like all these like rich kids, you know? And, and they would, you know, poke fun of me or whatever. And I, I, I just like, I started reading this stuff and it was like, you know, I'd look, I'd recognize the good in people I like look in their eyes. And this reading that I read, it's called Emmett Fox. This dude's Awesome. Emmett Fox is like one of like the first thought leaders around the turn of the 19th century. And he was, he's like, and I'm not Christian, but he was like a c Christian like radical thinker, right. And CS Lewis was one of his best friends. And together they did a bunch of different works. But he talked about looking people in the eye and recognizing the good in them and how it dis the god in them and how it physically changes them, right?

Jason Bockman [00:43:09] So I would look at people who I'd be afraid of or intimidated by or want their approval, you know? And I'd look in their eye and like I'd say there is God or there is good in that person. And then I'd be like, Hey, how's it going tonight? You know, we got hot dogs here, blah, blah, blah, blah. I give my little spiel and, and I didn't care. I mean, like, I was already a loser, you know, so what do I care that I'm like out here in the street selling hot dogs at four in the morning? And I ended up like doing really well with that. And I learned like hands-on business, right? Like price elasticity. I learned, you know, I, I had so many concepts that I was, I was studying eventually at Merrimack, right? The community college in St. Louis. And I would cr like none of the te none of nothing made sense to me in school. And then I started, like I'd cross out widgets on an economics test, you know, and put hotdog hotdog buns. So I turned my test back in and it would like, it'd be like ketchup, onions, like I'd cross out everything and they're like, what the hell is this? And I was like, this is just the way it makes sense to me. And so I ended up, you know, doing good in school because I had something that I'd, I'd read that day, that night. I'd go be like, what happens if I make these a quarter? You know, I'm gonna sell it too fast. Like newsboy modeling. Right, right. Like all kinds of crap. So

Vance Crowe [00:44:33] Did you learn things, costs, things in school? Did did that help you?

Jason Bockman [00:44:36] Some things like the break even analysis, right? Like, which is a basic, you know, thing that you learn. So break even that made sense to me. And that's something still that's like really basic that I tell kids. Like, you should know. Like it's not, I buy it for five, I sell it for 10. Like, there's something in between there. So, you know, and so like a, a breakeven analysis. I really, I learned price elasticity makes a lot of sense. I ended up taking, when I went to Wash Shoe A but I learned about management really at this hot dog cart. And I think that that'll we maybe we can lead that into Yeah,

Vance Crowe [00:45:11] Yeah.

Jason Bockman [00:45:12] Into low turnover of people. So, but WashU, what was I saying?

Vance Crowe [00:45:18] Well, so you had been studying in business, you're handing in these, oh,

Jason Bockman [00:45:21] Okay. So I went, so I ended up going to WashU right after I'm went to China, all that stuff. I go, I get accepted. I go to grad school at WashU. 'cause I had this

Vance Crowe [00:45:27] One of the best business schools, the schools in the country.

Jason Bockman [00:45:30] In the country, dude. And so I was there and literally this happened. Dude, sometimes I cry when I say this and I don't care, but like, I'm there and they're talking about like, well we have, you know, this like war hero, you know, Michael Sanders stand up, you know, and they're like, if anybody has a heart attack in class due to the stress, you know, Sandy is a cardiothoracic surgeon, right? Like literally these are the people that I'm class in in my, you go through in groups, right? In the Washington Business School. So one of my, the dudes in my class, he was, he worked with Jim McKelvy, started a lot of that crap with Jim McKelvy. Not crap, but you know what I mean?

Vance Crowe [00:46:03] Yeah.

Jason Bockman [00:46:03] Like big stuff, you know, square Twitter, like, like this dude was the man went to Harvard, went to Cornell. And, and I ended up just telling him like, I'm like free with, I'm like, man, I'm like really intimidated that you're in my group, man. Like, you're probably one of the smartest people I've ever read about. And he was like, me, I was intimidated about you. He's like, you were China, you got this furniture business using the hot tub. Like, and he is talking about all this crap. And he is. And, and I was like, oh, well people are just people. You know what I mean? There's no, like, there might be some outliers, you know, like Martin Luther King or Steve Jobs or those people for the most part. I'm like, man, we're like afraid or insecure about the same stuff, you know? And we do, we probably like, maybe through our upbringings or education or like psychosis, I don't know, like we're better than other people at masking some of those things. But for the most part, everybody we're on the same playing field, man. They ended up, they said, we have a person who we're very proud to have in our program. And they were like, you know, Jason negotiates, you know, multimillion dollar contracts for, you know, futures on school furniture and all this crap. And, but when they were talking about me, I was like, man, what the fuck am I doing here, dude? Like, I almost got up and went to the bathroom and left. This is an orientation. So they were like, here's this guy. And they're talking about all this dude's accolades and they're like, Jason Bachman, please stand up.

Jason Bockman [00:47:35] And I was like, oh my God, dude, they're talking about me. Right? I still have this view of myself that I'm that kid and the, you know, the enforcer kid that doesn't know anything that's destined for nothing. And here are these people who are like legitimately smart people. You know, I didn't get there by accident. It wasn't, they needed to fill a spot. They wanted me to be there. And, and that ha that there, that was probably the best thing I learned at Wash u. I took an operations management class that taught me about, you know, throughput and like all, you know, all this stuff about manufacturing that ends up really helping me t tons more than, I mean so much. I mean, I like, you know, restaurants like, so I own some donut shops, right? Like restaurants that have way higher sales, way higher ticket prices, average ticket cost than me. Like we make more money than them because of operations management, right? Like time and production and, and all, all these different things, right? So I learned about operations management and you can't learn about that really. Like, it'd take a, you know, a really long time to learn. But like success leaves clues, right? And like I'm learning and reading about all these companies, Toyota and all these people who like really are masters of those things. And I'm like, how do I apply that to this furniture business? So

Vance Crowe [00:49:00] Success leaves clues that, that is, that's a really insightful phrase.

Jason Bockman [00:49:05] Oh, thanks dude. Yeah. I don't, I don't know. I'm sure I reads somewhere. Is that your, I don't know. I'm sure I read it somewhere, but maybe it's mine. I don't know. But I think that I, people get caught in their own lane and like too big a fans of their own accomplishments that they won't look at other people and take cues from them, you know? But I've just thought that like, man, what do, what are these other people doing right. And how can I learn from it?

Vance Crowe [00:49:31] Yeah. I think that that's one, one of the best things that ever happened to me in life was I had a really good friend. We used to joke and call him that he was the most interesting man in the world. And it was like a thing that we would say behind his back. 'cause he was like a ship captain. He knew how to drive, like, while shooting a gun out the window and he was off the oil fields in Angola. Like, he was just amazing, right?

Jason Bockman [00:49:52] Yeah.

Vance Crowe [00:49:53] And one time I was, I was talking with him and I brought it up and I was like, yeah, you know, captain Gordon, Greg, you're the most interesting man in the world. And his face totally dropped. He, he went from being like really happy and, and he was like, oh my God. And I could tell something was wrong. I'm like, what? What are you embarrassed of? And he was like, I have my entire life always sought not, not to be the most interesting person, but to be the most interested. And all of a sudden it hit me. The reason everybody loved him was not 'cause he had all these crazy stories.

Jason Bockman [00:50:26] It

Vance Crowe [00:50:27] Was 'cause he cared about what you had to say. And so you would sit there and hear his things, but you wanted to know it because he wanted to know so much about you. Like, and that, that opened up the world for me. It made me way more comfortable asking other people questions. 'cause you realize like, we're not in a competition. Like, if I'm interested in you, something good will come out of that.

Jason Bockman [00:50:48] I'm so glad you said that, dude. 'cause that's like, that's our, our like, founding principle, you know? And we tell everybody that we hire at Tran Donuts, if you ever get a chance to go to Tran Donuts, you'll probably be more impressed with our staff than you are our product. And I couldn't be more happy with that.

Vance Crowe [00:51:06] And we talk about that,

Jason Bockman [00:51:07] Like, and some of that is like, so what I did at the hotdog stand, and this is like through studying some other people, you know, how to win friends and influence people.

Vance Crowe [00:51:15] Yeah.

Jason Bockman [00:51:15] You know what I mean? Like,

Vance Crowe [00:51:16] As much as people make fun of that, that is, that book is dead on dude. A hundred percent.

Jason Bockman [00:51:21] You couldn't, there's some stuff that needs to be updated, but like, people wanting to be acknowledged will never go out of style.

Vance Crowe [00:51:29] That's right.

Jason Bockman [00:51:29] You know, and so what, at the hotdog stand, I would ask people, you know, like, I'm like, man, the hotdog's gonna sell itself. You're drunk. It's three in the morning. I got this hotdog right here that smells ridiculous, you know, and you, and it's cheap. You can buy it. You know? And the I knew, so a couple things happened. One thing happened, I was a service this at a restaurant while I'm doing a hotdog thing, going to school, all this crap. And this guy says, Hey, you know, you forgot my coke. And I was like, oh, sorry, I'll be right back, sir. I walk a table away and somebody said, Hey, blah, blah, blah. They, I took an order from him real quick. I walk right back by the guy's table and he's like, my coke. And I was like, be right with you, sir. You know? And he's this little, like, I wanted, I punch him in his chest, you know, like little bitch ass dude. And I was like, man, I'll be, I'm like, I'll be right with you, sir. I'm sorry. I'll be right back. My apologies. So I give the dude his, I get go back at his coke later that day. I, I'm at the gym, I'm lifting weights. This dude walks by the guy, the Coke guy. And I'm like, oh, now we're like both at the gym, you know? And like, I'm like a dude, you know, not like the server. And he was like, oh, you know, like looked at me and shook his head and I'm like, oh,

Vance Crowe [00:52:50] He's still upset about the coke.

Jason Bockman [00:52:52] Because to him, I am a server. I am not a person. I am not an equal. It doesn't matter that we both go to the same gym, that we live in the same area, that we speak the same language, that we look similar. You know what I mean? We might have the same interests. I am in a box to him. And I was like, man, I need to, and Danny Meyer, he wrote a book about it called Setting the Table. I think it's, it's about restaurants, but it's probably one of the best business books I've ever. And, and so he put words on it that I couldn't, but I was like trying to do this for a long time. He talks about collecting the dots and connecting the dots, right? So at the hotdog stand, I started doing this, collecting the dots, right? So I'd get pieces of information about people, right? So, oh, where are you from? Oh, I'm from Baltimore. Oh, crazy. Where at? My grandparents live in Baltimore. Right? Oh, they're like on East Street. Oh my god. My granddad grew up on E Street. Do you know this hill? We used to roll tires down that hill. Right? Now, all of a sudden, dude, I am not the dirty hotdog salesman, you know, who's standing out there at three in the morning, like I am his buddy. You know what I'm saying?

Vance Crowe [00:53:58] Right. Connecting from Baltimore. That's boom.

Jason Bockman [00:54:00] So like, I gather these pieces of information about people. And now like, so some people would say, man, I can buy a whole pack of hot dogs for $3, you know, and like go home and cook 'em myself. Like why? And that's the truth. If, if, if you at, at Strange Donuts, if you run through the wall, you know, at our crieve core location, you're in the, if you're strong enough, you could bust into the donut case in Berg's, right? Which is the grocery store that's next door to us. And they have donuts over there, 59, 79, 90 9 cents. You know what I mean? And ours are a dollar 25 to 25, $3 and $5. Right. And I'm like, so why do people like come here? Right? Why do people not go there and get a product that's inferior? It is. I mean, there's some stuff with the product, but really they're buying from their friend. You know, we tell people a strange donut's, like when we hire them, I tell 'em a, like a little story. And I'm not the person that hires people anymore, which is a good thing for a lot of different reasons, you know? But like, we hire people based on like, personality and, you know, them being able to like, riff with people and have a conversation and just something interesting about them. I mean, there's a bunch of people that we hire that we have hired in the past, you know, they're like, you know, either special needs or, you know, bordering on, on, like, needing a lot of extra help. And we teach them because they're willing or have like a cool personality, you know, or we teach them. Like, this is how you interact with people. And so like to bring it to like, so these people are buying hotdog from their buddy now. Right? Right.

Vance Crowe [00:55:29] I end up getting like,

Jason Bockman [00:55:31] So many girls, like at the hotdog stand, which always made me question them. I'm like, man, I'm the schlep at the hotdog stand. Like, how cool can this girl be that she's with me? You know what I mean? Like, I wouldn't date the hotdog girl. You know what I mean? Or maybe I would, I don't care.

Vance Crowe [00:55:43] Yeah. But if you're getting after it, right? Dude, girls, like the guys you

Jason Bockman [00:55:46] Can get after it. That's for sure. Yeah. The

Vance Crowe [00:55:49] The right girls. The right.

Jason Bockman [00:55:50] No, no, for sure. For sure. And like, and it, and it'll being awesome. It was great. But that, like people, I hear all these studies, you know, and one of the professors at WashU was like, yeah, you know, people that are entrepreneurs have, you know, a high level of self-esteem and self-assuredness. And I was like, man, it could have been more opposite than that for me. I had nothing, you know, I did this thing and maybe there was something in me that like allowed me to take this risk, but after I started like stacking up wins, I, that's where my confidence came from. Not from like thinking I'm awesome. I thought, I think I'm a piece of shit. But like, there's evidence that's contrary to that. Right? And so now I

Vance Crowe [00:56:29] Have these

Jason Bockman [00:56:29] Wins and like, just in, in my personal life, like, and I think everybody can relate to this, you know what I mean? Like, I'm trying to watch football. My wife comes in, I bought this green dress, I really don't care about the green dress. Right? And I'm like, I could be like, I don't give a shit about a green dress. You're standing in front of the tv. You know what I mean? It's fourth quarter. Like I'm trying to watch my football game. And then, you know how that goes.

Vance Crowe [00:56:51] Right?

Jason Bockman [00:56:52] You know, it's a fight. It's stupid. I gotta clean it up afterwards. I feel bad about the way I treated her. She

Vance Crowe [00:56:58] Doesn't get to celebrate the green dress.

Jason Bockman [00:57:00] We fight. And I don't even get to see the fourth quarter anyways. Right. You know, so I started saying this, and this is like what you're talking about, like, being interested in other people. There's a, there's this prayer St. Francis of a sissy. Right. It's better to be under, to understand than to be understood. Like, I read a bunch of that stuff. And again, I'm like, not this religious dude. You know what I mean? But I'm like, I try to take from where I can, but I'm like, so I start, this is what I start doing. I'm just like, I'm experimenting. I'm like, three questions. Boom. So I'm like, so I make it a rule in my life. I didn't know what you did forever. We were like in the gym forever together. 'cause I'm like, Hey man, what do you do for fun? You know? And you tell me you like to ski or whatever you do judo. You know? I'm like, oh, how, how long have you been doing that? You know, like, do you think that you could, are you good? Could you beat up most of the people in the

Vance Crowe [00:57:47] Gym? You know what I mean?

Jason Bockman [00:57:48] Yeah. And then that's cool. Like, that's so much better than what do you do? And then you're like, I'm a plant scientist. Oh,

Vance Crowe [00:57:55] Where do you go from

Jason Bockman [00:57:56] There? You know what I'm saying? So like I tell, I do this with my wife. Where'd you buy that green dress? Oh, I bought it at TJ Maxx. It was on sale. I got it for $75. Crazy. Did they have any other colors? Yeah, they had, I was thinking about it, getting a blue one. There was some purple ones that had a yellow one. The yellow one was ugly. But I got this one. I'm like, oh, crazy. Where do you think you're gonna wear that? Like, oh, I'll probably wear it to Jenny's party or something, you know? And I'm like, you're gonna look great in that babe. Right. That even with me explaining it took 15 seconds. She walks away like,

Vance Crowe [00:58:29] Everybody wins. Everybody,

Jason Bockman [00:58:31] Dude. And I'm watching football. Yeah.

Vance Crowe [00:58:33] And

Jason Bockman [00:58:33] So we do that now. We tell people in strange donuts, you know, like, and it's not scripted. You know, like, we, like, just, so like, so we start out saying with, for new people, when someone comes in, ask them what they have going on today. Like, 'cause we hire some awkward people, you know what I mean? Yeah.

Vance Crowe [00:58:52] Like

Jason Bockman [00:58:52] Some weird people, man, that whatever that,

Vance Crowe [00:58:56] And that's just different enough of a question to, to knock somebody off of their, oh, nothing's going on. Or whatever. Boom.

Jason Bockman [00:59:02] Yeah.

Vance Crowe [00:59:02] And there's some reason you come into Strange Donut, right? 'cause if, if you're going to that donut shop, as opposed to just integrating it into your, your run to the grocery store. Right. Something's going on. So

Jason Bockman [00:59:12] I'm like, that's what I tell, I'm like, people are coming here to buy the donuts. You do not have to sell them the donuts. Right. What we're selling them is a little bit of a break in their day. Right. So we, like Disney does a good job, right? Of like disconnecting you from the reality out there to the reality in here, you walk through this big long tunnel. Now you're in Disney. You know what I'm saying? There's a physical separation. We can't, you know, because of the money we have, we can't provide a physical separation from the real world to our donut shop. You know? 'cause that square footage is costly. And, but maybe at some point we do. I don't know. But we provide like a mental tunnel. You know what I mean? What do you got going on today? Oh, I'm probably gonna go to the park or whatever. Oh,

Vance Crowe [00:59:50] Crazy. What park do you go to?

Jason Bockman [00:59:52] I go to this park, man, I love that

Vance Crowe [00:59:54] Park. I take my dog there all the time.

Jason Bockman [00:59:55] Right? Boom, boom. And so now that person's like, and they're like, oh, what do we got here? You know what I mean? Like on the donuts, we ask them free questions and they're, and you gotta feel it out. And people get better at feeling out about it. You know what I mean? Some people just want their donut. They want you to shut up. They want their stuff and they wanna go. You know what I'm saying? But then, I mean, we, we form relationships with these people. You know, we're like, I can't tell you how many weddings we've done. Hundreds, literally hundreds of weddings we've had.

Vance Crowe [01:00:24] Isn't that amazing? No less than, isn't that amazing? Like literally the, the, the night that people want to create the most passionate memory that lasts for the longest, the most special experience for those guests so that they'll remember it and they want you,

Jason Bockman [01:00:39] They choose us. Dude,

Vance Crowe [01:00:40] That's, that's phenomenal.

Jason Bockman [01:00:42] It's insane. It's still so crazy to me. I mean, there was like, like somebody, a dude passed away recently and they came in and this lady made a, a special order for some raspberry donuts. And it was something specific. And I just said, you know, ask that lady why she wants these donuts. And it turns out that her husband of like 50 years died and for the past six years, like he's been slowly getting worse. And our raspberry jelly donuts like brought like took this dude back to his childhood, right? So I said, call that lady back and give her all those donuts, right? It was like a hundred donuts or something, you know what I mean? Cost us, you know, 225 bucks in lost revenue or whatever. But I was like, man, whatever. Like, we're, you know, how big of an honor is it that like, at this,

Vance Crowe [01:01:25] At

Jason Bockman [01:01:26] This memorial, like everybody's like, because this was, this dude's like favorite thing and reminded him of a time he was happy.

Vance Crowe [01:01:35] And that's it. That's the final memory marking moment. That is amazing, man.

Jason Bockman [01:01:40] So from kids being born to, you know, I mean, cancer survivors, they ring the bell and they come to Strange Donuts, you know, to celebrate to, you know, memorials to, I mean,

Vance Crowe [01:01:52] And you would, you would chalk this up in large part to people being interested in the customers as they come in.

Jason Bockman [01:01:58] That's it. To people being interested in the customers when they come in. If you're selling just the product, we could focus on the product way more. Right? And we do make, and we win best donuts. You know, we won best donuts in the United States. We win best donuts all the time. Feast Sauce, all these food publications and stuff. We were in the New York Times. I was an entrepreneur magazine. I'm in all this stuff, you know what I, I mean for the product itself. But like, we can focus on the product and have the best product, but like, man, screw up that product one time. You know what I mean? With the, with like the art of baking. You know what I mean? You can have a shit product. Sometimes our donuts are trash, you know? And so like, screw that up one time, dude. You don't have a relationship with the customer. Good luck seeing them again.

Vance Crowe [01:02:38] Right.

Jason Bockman [01:02:38] You know? So 100% it's because of feeling interested or them feeling like we are interested in them. And the key is we truly are interested in them. Right? I tell people like, you know, these, like asking people these three questions, being honestly interested in other people will bring you, you know, more sex partners, more money, more opportunity, more fulfillment in your life than anything else that you will ever do in your life. You know what I mean? No amount of education, no amount of money, you know what I mean? Will give you the return on investment that then like, genuinely being interested in people.

Vance Crowe [01:03:17] So this actually maybe brings up a good, a good question for you. What, what is something that you're interested in now or you're, or you're beginning to get curious about?

Jason Bockman [01:03:27] So I am, what am I interested in right now? I like art. I like cigars. I like

Vance Crowe [01:03:35] Speaking of art.

Jason Bockman [01:03:36] Yeah.

Vance Crowe [01:03:37] Do you, do you play chess at all?

Jason Bockman [01:03:39] I have. I know how

Vance Crowe [01:03:40] So, you know, right now the, the world Chess Hall of Fame is in St. Louis, Missouri. Right?

Jason Bockman [01:03:44] Right.

Vance Crowe [01:03:44] They right now have literally the best art exhibit I have ever seen, period. Really? In the entire world. Okay. It's the Mc Escher exhibit. What? And I it's gotta be almost ready to be gone. You, you know, MC Escher? Oh yeah, of course. Well, what they do is they have it on two floors. I'm so excited You said art. Okay. 'cause I, because almost nobody ever does. So I've not been able to talk about this yet. Yeah. So you have two floors at the world. Chess Hall of Fame. And the first floor, they have his opening works, right. Where he's like, just figuring things out and they have like different perspective things like Mc Escher is the guy that ultimately drew the hands that drew hands. The hand drawing hand. Yeah. And or the one where there's like an orb sitting in the, like a metallic sphere and you can see him drawing it. Well in the first floor they have, what was it like when he started his original works where you're like, Hey, that line's not very straight, or the perspective just doesn't look right. And so you walk around the first section and you're like, okay, he's learning. And then you go upstairs and you see a room of masterpieces. Most people only ever see the masterpieces, But you get to go and look and see how did see the progression? Did you develop this thing aion? It is, it is so mind bending. I have never seen anything else like it in my life.

Jason Bockman [01:04:58] Thank you for selling me, dude. I'll check it out. I'll go today. It

Vance Crowe [01:05:01] It, it was, and it was a profound experience. So if you know anybody at the world Chess Hall of Fame or anybody that, because I've tried to contact them. 'cause I want to get whoever curated that, 'cause all the plaques read every single one of 'em, because it's totally worth it to explain what's going on there. Th that was amazing. But herein lies, that's art is an amazing thing to be interested in because it's a reflection, not just of what the artist said, but like, whatever you have going on in your life, you see that.

Jason Bockman [01:05:29] Oh yeah. In

Vance Crowe [01:05:30] The art,

Jason Bockman [01:05:30] Most of it's up to interpretation, you know what I mean? Like most artists, when you ask them, or I'll try to ask them, you know, like, and I have, I have a cool story about asking three questions and an artist, I'll tell you in a second. Like, I'm like, Hey, they'll talk to you about, you know, where they were when they like, so next to our store in Maplewood, there's an art gallery next door where they have some notable people come and display art and do live art. Right? Oh

Vance Crowe [01:05:54] Yeah.

Jason Bockman [01:05:54] And so it's tight. And so I started like getting really into art then I've always had an appreciation for it, but like, really knowing more of what I'm looking at and reading into some stuff. And I'm just like, you know what the, what it does to me. So the artist will say like, you know, some artists will say, I'm like, what is this about? And they're like, I'm not gonna tell you. You know what I mean? What do you think it's about? You know? And they'll put it back on you. And I, I so appreciated that, you know what I mean? That it's not just hand fed or spooned to you. And then some people now I, you know, they say, do you want to know what this is about? I'm gonna said, I don't, you know, like looking at this thing's about to make me cry, you know what I mean? And I just, I don't want to be perverted by what you were trying to do with it. It means something to me, you know? And the, but dude, I'll tell you this crazy story. And we got time, right? We're Oh yeah, man, we're just ripping right now.

Vance Crowe [01:06:42] Yeah. This is great.

Jason Bockman [01:06:43] You're a good dude to talk to.

Vance Crowe [01:06:44] Yeah, dude. When you're done, I have another thing I wanna show you. This is how you know it's good. 'cause I'm like, oh, I wanna show Jason this.

Jason Bockman [01:06:50] Hell yeah, dude, check this dude. I'm in New York with my wife and like, you know, you Google Jason Bachman's wife or whatever. My wife is so hot, dude. She's, she was a L'Oreal model, right? Like, okay, she was, you know, she represented Johnny Walker for South America, you know what I mean? Like was she's beautiful, dude. She's Venezuela. She's like five seven, just crazy hot and so much cooler and like nurturing than she is hot, right? And just, I i I way outta my league, dude, I'm in New York with her on the highline walking, and there's a dude in a, in a, in a tuxedo playing the cello. And there was a little girl dancing in front of the, the guy. And I'm like, and I just start looking at the guy. I'm like, oh man, this dude's like playing the show out here. This is tight. Like, man, I'm so like, happy to be here on the high line. And it just opened. I was like, this

Vance Crowe [01:07:40] Is sick.

Jason Bockman [01:07:41] I can't

Vance Crowe [01:07:41] Believe I'm here, dude.

Jason Bockman [01:07:42] And I'm watching the dude play the cello behind me. There's this homeless dude painting. And I was like, the dude on the cello stops playing. And I had made all these assumptions about who he was and what, you know, his backstory was. And here's like this hard up guy who you know, is out here busking, you know what I mean? Trying to make a little bit of money and like, good thing for this guy. Here's this girl. Like, you know what I mean? That has stopped en enjoying his music. He stops playing and she's like, can you like keep playing daddy? Right? So this girl was the dude's dad. He was in like the New York Phil Harmonic, right? He was walking home with his daughter and his daughter begged him to play something. So he stopped and played for her. Wow. Right? And everybody's like, yeah, clap. And like, he had this huge audience, you know what I mean? I asked the dude who he was and he's like, oh, blah, blah, blah. And I wish I remembered his name, but like, the dude was like, you know, big time. You know, big time. He is a thoroughbred in the classical music.

Vance Crowe [01:08:44] Even if you said his name, it wouldn't, wouldn't mean anything. It wouldn't mean

Jason Bockman [01:08:47] Anything. Right, dude. But the dude's big time, right? I go, I turn around to the, the homeless dude. I'm like, Hey man, I was like, this man, this is a cool experience, huh? He's like, yeah, this is, that was pretty cool. And I was like, I like where you're painting. And he's like, thanks man. I was like, that stuff's real cool. How long have you been, how you're doing this? And he is like, oh, just today. And I was like, man, it looks really good. Can I buy something from you? And he's like, no, no, I'm just outta your painting for me. And I was like, all right man. Well I really enjoyed seeing it, dude, thank you. Right? And it was like this intersection of like this crazy culture, right? Like, I don't know about, you know, the Highline or, or New York or the cello or whatever. And then I walk, I go, I walk away, I'm like, Hey man, have a good night to the homeless dude. And he's like, Hey, come here. You want something? And I was like, he's like, he's like, take this. And he just gives me the painting. And I was like, no, no, no, no, no. I'm not gonna, I wanna take it, dude. I'll pay you for it. What do you want for it? You know? And I went to give him, I don't know what I went to give him. He's like, no, no, no, just gimme two, gimme 20 bucks. And I was like, all right, you sure? Yeah man, that's cool. Thanks for being so nice to me. And I was like, of course, dude. Like, we gotta be good to each other. I'm in Wynwood, I think in Miami, right? It's like all these art galleries. I walk into this art gallery 10 years later, dude. And here's this painting on the wall. It's Marilyn Monroe, it's all day glow and her boobs are Mickey Mouse heads, right?

Jason Bockman [01:10:18] And I was like, man, I have that painting, you know, and I look close and it's this dude Ron English, right? Who, like, if you, he is most famous for like a smiley face that is smiling real big and you can see a skeleton through the mouth.

Vance Crowe [01:10:36] Okay.

Jason Bockman [01:10:36] Okay. So like, I'll

Vance Crowe [01:10:38] Find that, we'll put

Jason Bockman [01:10:38] Some like iconic stuff. We'll put it on there. Yeah. So boom, they're selling this painting for $60,000, dude, at this gallery in Miami. And I was like, oh my God, dude, I got that thing. I got that thing at home. And I got it just by being like, Hey man, how's your night going man, dude, this is awesome, man. You know what I mean? The dude was gonna give it to me. And it turns out he was just doing out there, out there doing color tests, you know, for these paintings. So I have like the artist proof, you know what I mean? Like the, of this $60,000 work, which

Vance Crowe [01:11:05] Is like, oh, that is unbelievable.

Jason Bockman [01:11:07] So like that's a, that's I, that's like a direct example of like, ask three questions, be genuinely interested, be a good person, offer to pay for value. You know what I mean? And so,

Vance Crowe [01:11:19] So that, that painting right there is, it was given to me when I was a deckhand and when I was a deckhand, you, you, it was on this ecotourism ship. So it was a flat bottom ship and there were only like 140 passengers, six deckhands. And you would have to go stay stand gangway watch, which means you'd have to stand at the bottom. So if the passengers wanted to get on and off, they could. Well we were in this shitty port because we were taking on fuel and food. And so it is a broke down place. It's like, you don't want to go out, the passengers aren't even on the boat. And I'm down. Did you go all over the world? Yeah. This was all over like the western hemisphere. Okay. So it was like from Vancouver Island all the way down to the Panama Canal and through, and so it's, this is in Honduras and I'm sitting down there and I always made it a practice of two doing two things. One is I always had cigarettes and I gave them to the guards. Okay.

Jason Bockman [01:12:12] And

Vance Crowe [01:12:12] I made friends with the guards. 'cause you never knew like, hey, if something shady is going on, you want these guys to be your friends. I used to do it with bouncers when I would go into a bar when I was down in Central America. And anyway, I ended up talking to this guy for like four or five hours. And then he like, is like, oh, you're leaving, but not until tonight at 10 o'clock. Right? And I'm like, yeah. And he's like, I'll be right back. And you see him go and get on a bike and then start like biking and there's like nothing out there but mountains. Right?

Jason Bockman [01:12:40] He

Vance Crowe [01:12:41] Comes back, I dunno, six hours later racing. And somebody comes down to the crew holds and is like, Vance. There's some guy out front and he, and he wants to see you. And so I come out there and he's holding this painting and he's written on the back of it. You can't see it 'cause it's covered up. My wife framed it and it says in the back, like me, Primera amigo from Honduras de Honduras.

Jason Bockman [01:13:05] Yeah.

Vance Crowe [01:13:06] And it was his dad's last painting before he died.

Jason Bockman [01:13:08] Wow. Dude.

Vance Crowe [01:13:09] And the guy went and gave me the most valuable thing he could think of. 'cause we'd had this conversation for a few hours and there was some American, and I have traveled for years and years and years I own, when I got married, I owned like nothing. I own like nothing. I own like a suitcase of stuff because I, I'd moved around so much. I didn't have the money to move it. I didn't have a car, didn't have anything. But I always managed to keep that. And that's the power of art. Right? Right.

Jason Bockman [01:13:32] He

Vance Crowe [01:13:32] Gave me something and it now sits, you know, in the most treasured room in my house. And, and I love it. And it'll live forever. I, it doesn't have to be valuable at all, but it's got the story and it's embedded into that.

Jason Bockman [01:13:44] Well, Val, I mean, you think about like value in that, right? Like, think about that. I don't know how long it took that guy, like cost of goods on that thing is probably like 90 cents maybe. Right? Right. Like there's a bunch of effort and time that was put into it. But like once you hit a certain point, you know, MC, Escher, like you mentioned, like he could probably bang those things out one after another. Right. Once he had perspective and he was a master of his craft, that really means nothing to him. Right. Like, not nothing to him, but like it's inconsequential. It's not costing him a bunch to give you this work of art, but to you, I mean, the arbitrage in that is insane, right? Oh,

Vance Crowe [01:14:17] Absolutely.

Jason Bockman [01:14:18] And same thing back to other people. Like, it does not cost me anything, dude. You know what I mean? To like be genuinely interested in people. I would and say, and you never know who you're helping, you know? I mean,

Vance Crowe [01:14:33] That's why I think like the, the, the, you know, I was referring to you as like the super nice guy at the gym. To me, there almost everybody that is in the gym is on a hero's journey of, of some course, right? Because you go there to suffer. Maybe some people go there to like see their friends or whatever, but you're doing it as a sacrifice to get somewhere else, whether that's to tune up your body or to get over an injury or whatever.

Jason Bockman [01:14:58] Right?

Vance Crowe [01:14:59] And I can remember, like, we didn't sit around and we had the same like, entry level conversation probably three dozen times. But just being nice to somebody at the gym. Like, you wouldn't know this, but I didn't know how to lift at all before I started going there. And like, you know, just to have somebody be like, Hey man, you know, one of the big guys at the, at the squat rack be like, Hey, what's up? That makes a huge difference to people. I

Jason Bockman [01:15:22] Remember saying something to you, and I said this the other day actually. I'm like, man, you know, I was like, dude, you look like a completely

Vance Crowe [01:15:27] Different person. Yeah.

Jason Bockman [01:15:28] You know, like, what are you doing? And you're like, well, Kwang and me and blah, blah, blah. You know what I mean? And then like, you're genuinely excited about that. You know what I mean? And I'm like, that's a weird thing. That's a weird voyeuristic thing to see and say really like, you know, you're like working out. You know what I'm saying? Like, here's how strong I am in front of everyone. Right. You know what I'm saying? And so like, I think to be able to say to somebody and then like, you be cool enough to like respond, like, man, what do you, I'm like, what are you doing dude? Because you look great. You know what I'm, I'm I hitting on you or nothing. I'm just like, let me tell this dude that like he's doing good and I notice and how do I learn from this guy?

Vance Crowe [01:16:10] Right,

Jason Bockman [01:16:10] Right. Like, whatever you're doing is working. How can I learn from that?

Vance Crowe [01:16:15] By the way, dude, you're jacked. What happened?

Jason Bockman [01:16:18] I'm doing this thing right now. I've always lifted weights. I've always been kind of strong dude. I'm like average guy strong. I think I can bench like three 40 or something.

Vance Crowe [01:16:28] That's not average guy strong.

Jason Bockman [01:16:29] No, that's all you, dude. Listen to this stuff. Three 40, I could squat 3 85, almost 400. And then I can deadlift like 400 now. Right? So like my totals, that's now I'm kind of into this deadlift like Yeah. Powerlifting thing. If you haven't watched it.

Vance Crowe [01:16:43] Deadlift is killer. Dude. That'll, that'll destroy you. Be

Jason Bockman [01:16:46] Careful out there. I, yeah, there's this dude, west side versus the world. It's on Netflix, it's so tight. Okay. So, but now I say like, average guy strong. 'cause now I'm like, I was like out with these people. Like Strange Donuts is sponsoring powerlifters now. Right? Because I like, because I like want to be like, I try to invest in the things that I'm interested in, right? So like art, we sponsor art shows all the time, dude. You know, where literally that might just mean like, Hey man, let me give you some donuts so your people that are coming through there have something to eat. And let me tell people about your show, right? Let me tell people that you have this show going on. That's great because how hard is it? You know what I'm saying? Like,

Vance Crowe [01:17:18] And you can make all the difference for, for an artist that's trying to get their name, name out there that's trying to do something.

Jason Bockman [01:17:22] Yes. And and

Vance Crowe [01:17:24] How long do they get ignored?

Jason Bockman [01:17:25] Forever, dude. Right?

Vance Crowe [01:17:27] Forever.

Jason Bockman [01:17:28] And even, I mean now it's crazy with

Vance Crowe [01:17:30] Instagram and

Jason Bockman [01:17:30] Stuff, but most artists, you know what I mean? Like, you're, you, you die and then you might get noticed. You know what I'm saying? But like that stuff, some of that stuff is speeding up. But like the, again, valuing, you know, or like, like paying for people's value. That's a easy thing. I mean, the people that like, do you know, photography for us? You know, like, I can't pay, you know, there's a, there's agencies in town, you know what I mean? $20,000. And you know, they'll give you two photos literally at the end of the day, you know, not at the end of the day, but like, it'll be a couple weeks to turn around those two photos. And I'm like, I can't pay for that. I'd love to do that stuff. How can I make this happen? But I'll tell people, you know, I'll, I, you can take a couple photos from me, I'll give you, you know, 200 bucks or something for 'em. And that's a bunch of them. And I'm like, you tell me what you want and I'm not gonna negotiate with you. You know? And most of those people, you know, as opposed to like, go to people in the like creative arts, you know, they get hammered all the time. I do this painting, it took me four days. I want 10,000. I'll give you 900. Okay. I need to eat. You know what I mean? But, so, you

Vance Crowe [01:18:36] Know, you're talking about, about with sponsoring the artists. And my brother has a phrase that really is, it means a lot to me now. And he is like carrying water for somebody.

Jason Bockman [01:18:45] Oh yeah, dude.

Vance Crowe [01:18:46] And that, that, like, you know, you, you look around in the, in the people that you are most grateful to in your life are the ones that picked up and carried water for you at some time when you need it. They, they went out and told people, Hey, strange donuts is really good. Or Oh, that guy that's doing those hot dogs. Or they open up a door to connect you with somebody else. And you think about how that made you feel. Yeah.

Jason Bockman [01:19:07] And

Vance Crowe [01:19:07] If you can carry water for somebody else, once you realize like, oh wait a second, I can do that for somebody else. I can go open up doors for them. I can go make something happen. A

Jason Bockman [01:19:17] Hundred percent. You're

Vance Crowe [01:19:18] Like, this is one of the greatest parts of life,

Jason Bockman [01:19:21] Dude. There's two things. And have you ever, do you ever listened to the M-F-C-E-O podcasts?

Vance Crowe [01:19:26] No.

Jason Bockman [01:19:26] Everybody listen to this podcast should listen to the M-F-C-E-O podcast. It's entrepreneurship podcast. It's awesome. It's a dude in St. Louis St. Andy Sela. You're

Vance Crowe [01:19:33] The second person. Do you know him

Jason Bockman [01:19:35] Loosely? Yeah. Kind of. I do see the second, second

Vance Crowe [01:19:37] Person that's told me about that podcast,

Jason Bockman [01:19:38] You should listen to it. Okay. The dude's the man. But he talked about the the gas man being the gas man, right? Like gassing people up. Like you can do it. I'm gonna help you. How can I help? You know? And, and like the payoffs from being the gas man costs you nothing, you know? But I mean, there's a guy in town who owns a place called Sugar Fire and they're super successful, right? They're all over the United States. They're, you know, they're big. And he was one of the first people to talk about strange donuts, you know? And so it, like he talked about us in a, in a food publication. I'm excited to hear about like these guys. He came and gave us a bunch of food that we did our first stranger with called Briskets and Gravy. And he gave us like 15 gallons of brisket gravy that we ended up making like biscuits and gravy out of. And the, and I was like, went to pay him. And he is like, no, what? Like, it's free dude. Like I wanna see you successful. And we end up, like, I try, we try to do that in turn now, right? There's a, the farm called Rolling Lawns Farms that was like on the brink of like extinction and selling their cows and folding up, you know? And it was crazy. All the stuff I learned about farms. I'm into farms right now, like two farms a day, two dairy farms in the United States a day go outta business,

Vance Crowe [01:20:48] Right? It's rough right now. I had a dairy farmer on the podcast. Who was, it's who was it

Jason Bockman [01:20:52] Rolling Lawns? Was it Michael?

Vance Crowe [01:20:53] No, no, it's a, it's a buddy of mine from out in Washington state. Okay. Doing Faber,

Jason Bockman [01:20:57] Dude. So Faber, what's up? Yeah.

Vance Crowe [01:21:00] The,

Jason Bockman [01:21:00] So I was like, man, I think

Vance Crowe [01:21:01] He's cool. He has a hilarious T Twitter feed. Like he's a hilarious comedian. Wasn't

Jason Bockman [01:21:06] Twitter,

Vance Crowe [01:21:06] It's just DFA 84 DFA 80 H 84. I'm

Jason Bockman [01:21:09] Gonna follow him, but d

Vance Crowe [01:21:10] We'll get it

Jason Bockman [01:21:11] All dude. So we're in it. I'm like, Hey man, you guys seem cool. Can we sell your milk? And we're like, oh, I don't know. Like, well bottle up dude. We'll sell it. He is like, how much do you think you could sell? I'm like, I don't know man. We could probably do like 1500 gallons a month or something, you know? And he was like, what? And it was, it was like cool. And then like I was like, look, we're gonna bring a camera crew out. We're gonna shoot a video. We're gonna tell everybody about you, dude. And so, like, the dude now is like Jason, I can't tell you like how that changed what we do. But what's happening is this man, I get my milk directly from a cow that I sunshine. You know what I mean? I know like the cow's names, right? That milk is, comes out of these cows at six in the morning. It's at my shop at nine in the morning. I pay a little bit of more money for the milk, but the shelf life of that milk now is much longer. 'cause it's not going from distributor to distributor to distributor where I get it. And I have five days to sell it before it goes bad. I get it. I have 21 days, I'm paying a little more. The product is way better. And oh, we're helping this family who's like the best people ever who've had these cows since 1904, who like are pulling their hair out, not knowing what to do. And I'm like, now we can help them and guess who they talk about all the time now. You know, we're buddies with them. And so it's awesome. I mean like carrying water for other people like now. And I, I,

Vance Crowe [01:22:37] That's the way I felt about this podcast. It was like, you know, in the travels that I've done, I have a chance that if I wanted to, I could do all of these on Skype. It could be super easy for me to, you know, make a, make a quick phone call and be talking with a professor or something like that. And I was like, you know, I like the idea of having somebody in front of me, seeing who they are, what they're doing. And then most of the time they're here in St. Louis. And most of my listeners aren't actually from St. Louis, but the ones that are,

Jason Bockman [01:23:06] They

Vance Crowe [01:23:06] All get to meet all these other cool people in St. Louis that they never met, didn't know anything about. And you see like, well, like you came up and started talking to me Bec about the podcast. Yeah, dude. Like, it's a great thing to be interconnecting connecting dots. Like, to make your point earlier, collect

Jason Bockman [01:23:20] The dots. Connect the dots. Yeah. Dude, the, how long have you been doing this? You like really, you are really good at this by the way.

Vance Crowe [01:23:26] Oh, you are the 21st interview. So my commitment has been, I wanna do one every week. I started in May and then I was like, I wanna do one every week for the rest of the year. And each week I wanna figure out a way what's like one thing I can do better.

Jason Bockman [01:23:43] So

Vance Crowe [01:23:43] It's great to hear you say that, that you're enjoying this. 'cause like, I didn't know what I was doing. I just started,

Jason Bockman [01:23:48] Oh dude, you're so good at it. Like the, I feel like I'm talking too much, but you like, ask a question and let me finish and then ask another question or interject like some awesome experience of your own dude. Like, it's, it's a pretty natural back and forth dude.

Vance Crowe [01:24:03] We, I mean I think this is 'cause you're, this is cool, man. I can't, we should have met like, we should have been hanging out years and years and years ago,

Jason Bockman [01:24:10] Forever ago.

Vance Crowe [01:24:11] You know, how do you know how we actually did get connected? It was when Strange Donut, because I knew who you guys were, but you guys at some point started talking about Bitcoin.

Jason Bockman [01:24:20] Yes.

Vance Crowe [01:24:21] And so I got super into Bitcoin. Yes.

Jason Bockman [01:24:25] And

Vance Crowe [01:24:25] I wrote some articles about it and I put out some stuff and, and CNBC ran an article that I wrote about, you know, Warren Buffet is wrong on Bitcoin. Yes.

Jason Bockman [01:24:35] And

Vance Crowe [01:24:35] Then you guys said, we are going to sell donuts with Bitcoin. Right. And then me and my buddy Rob Long showed up at your donut shop just randomly on a Saturday morning and to, to your employee's credits. Like they didn't know anything at all about Bitcoin, but they sat at that register, checking other people out, you know, making everything else you, until we were able to buy a donut with Bitcoin. And it was awesome, man. It was, it was like one of the first things I'd ever bought. It was the second thing I ever bought with Bitcoin. And we were like, it's really happening. The future of digital distributed currencies is really happening. What

Jason Bockman [01:25:10] Do you think about it now?

Vance Crowe [01:25:10] Well, I had a guy on for a podcast that's going to air tomorrow, so it a little already aired by the time we're on that he does not think it's going to work out.

Jason Bockman [01:25:21] Hmm.

Vance Crowe [01:25:21] But I, I think he had some good points. It's, it's really difficult to have the, the benefits of having a decentralized currency where everyone keeps a ledger, but there are downsides in that it's not easy to use and it takes a long time to transact. It can take 10 minutes for the payments to clear. But I'm a holder, you know, I bought Bitcoin a long time ago. I made Bitcoin, I had some clients pay me in Bitcoin and then I just, I just have 'em stored away. And I, and I think if it works great

Jason Bockman [01:25:51] And

Vance Crowe [01:25:51] If it doesn't work, it was the mo I mean like, it easily paid for itself

Jason Bockman [01:25:57] In

Vance Crowe [01:25:57] The amount of great conversations I've gotten to have because of it. Oh. Think about

Jason Bockman [01:26:02] I, I mean the people like, to your point, the people that are going to the gym trying to improve themselves, the people in that, like Bitcoin community that are like trying to get hyped about it are people that are pushing the envelope in other areas of their life.

Vance Crowe [01:26:12] Oh, that's a great point.

Jason Bockman [01:26:13] Right? Yeah. Like, you know, there's a big rush of people that were like, oh, I'm buying and selling Bitcoin and all this crap after they see it come. But really, I mean, early on when we started doing that at Strange Donuts, dude, we got contacted, like we're in like a news week or something in Berlin, right? Like, Don not shop and blah blah, blah. That's my horrible German accent, dude. But the, you know, selling Bitcoin, we had like Bitcoin rallies and all the people dude were like young, energetic, optimistic people

Vance Crowe [01:26:42] And applying. This is the thing, like there were people I, when I would go to some of the nicer places in St. Louis and I would talk with like the older, more established people, they'd be like, I don't get the Bitcoin. And they gave themselves permission to sound like idiots because they did not know what they were talking about. But in order to feel confident and secure and above the, the guy that, like me, I was just starting out. I didn't really know they, they would be like, that's just such a piddly little thing. And like, you know, did I make millions off of it? No, but I did pretty, pretty well. And frankly like if you didn't do it, you missed out on years and years and years of thinking about money in a different way, about meeting these people that are figuring out how to make mining rigs in their basement and thinking about where does energy get produced and the quality of, of our current system. Like, it was great. So to me, I want, I hope that as I get older, I don't hit that point where I say like, I know that I, those ideas are dumb. You know? How do you keep yourself from becoming that where you, where you feel safe by blowing off all the new ideas?

Jason Bockman [01:27:53] Ain't it crazy, dude? They're like, it's buggy whip. You know, I'm gonna keep making these buggy whips and like, like you old fat ass rich guy. Like, and again, dude, I love rich people. I hope, I hope my kids are rich kids. You know what I mean? I grew up like hating rich kids. And I'm like walking the other night being like, man, you know what, actually, like, I hope my kids are rich and like the things that I thought were bad about rich people really aren't. Like that was just my prejudice. You know what I'm saying? Yeah. Like, most of these people are great dudes, but like that guy, you know what I mean? That you're meeting at Napoli or whatever to talk about Bitcoin or whatever, or wherever it's happened to be going down. Like, I, I went to some of those things, like your investment things and I'm like, what are you doing with your time? Instead? Like, are you like reinforcing the stuff that you already think, right? Yeah. Man, that sucks.

Vance Crowe [01:28:40] So maybe that's a, maybe that's a great place to go is where do you get your news and ideas now? Like where, how are you making sure you aren't just shoved into a corner?

Jason Bockman [01:28:49] Man, I ask all the time and I question all the time. Like, one in our business, what are we doing? Right? Okay. I'll give you like, here's something dude that kind of screwed me. And I also have a furniture company. It's called BT Furnishings. We sell, you know, institutional furnishings all over the United States. Okay? A lot of people don't know that about me. What? I've done it for 10 years. I didn't know that. Yeah. Right? So at one point it was like a big company, right? Like I'm big, it is a, a decent sized company. It's still a good size company, right? And so here's what happened. So I made connections in China. We're getting furniture and stuff from China. There was a strike on some boats. And when some of my stuff got held up at the, in LA one time, right? So we have like containers and containers of furniture. I needed to land July 30th 'cause I have to install it, you know, before August 11th when the students come back, it's getting held up. Finally my stuff gets freed up and, and the manufacturer says, Hey, you know that 50% that you owe us when it hits instead of being a hundred thousand now is 2 25. You know, oh. Because they, you know, and I'm like, I was like, well screw you keep it right. They're like, oh, whoa, whoa, whoa. You know? And, and I'm like, they're like a hundred's fine. I'm like, well now it's 90 'cause I already found another supplier. You know what I mean? Like, screw you. But at that time I was like, I'm never importing anything again. Right? So we find suppliers in the United States, we manufacture our case goods in Indiana and we get our leather goods from Chino, California.

Jason Bockman [01:30:21] We manufacture mattresses in Iowa, right? We recycle our mattresses in, in Chicago. And a lot of these places, I mean like success or like rigged success, you know, rigged success breeds laziness, right? Like if I know, like, oh, I know that I can charge them whatever, you know, and they're gonna buy it 'cause they're hooked in this deal and 'cause I've given 'em so many lunches or Cardinals tickets or whatever it is, right? And I'm speaking very broadly, you know what I mean? I don't engage in any of that stuff like, you know, pay to play or anything like that. But in a sense, every salesman does, right? I'll just speak clearly about that. Like,

Vance Crowe [01:30:59] Well, sales are about relationships, right? And that you're not a stranger to that idea, right?

Jason Bockman [01:31:03] So we start getting beat, let's just say there's like a $500,000 contract, right? My lumber costs on that is about $300,000, right? My per truck, I pay, you know, between 1800 to $2,500 for that to get from Indiana to wherever it's going in the country, right? I gotta pay people to install that furniture, right? I gotta pay some holding costs on some of that furniture. I have to pay financing for that furniture at the end of the day. Let's just say that my bid is $500,000, okay? We start getting hammered, dude, by, by our competition where we were just crushing all over the United States and I started losing these $500,000 jobs by $200,000, you know, and it's like $300,000 installed and delivered. And I'm like, I'm $500,000 and I have to add install and delivery on top of that, right? So we bring all the labor back in house and I'm like, okay, well we're gonna handle all the labor. We're not gonna mark up any of our stuff. So now we're making, you know what I mean, a smaller and smaller margin. I'm like, man, what the hell has happened? And you know, and we had it written into a lot of these contracts. They needed to be, you know, domestic products and a lot, you know, do like carbon footprint stuff, right? Like my stuff is made here. We use our excess lumber to heat the warehouse. Literally. We do, right?

Vance Crowe [01:32:28] Wow.

Jason Bockman [01:32:29] So like there's no, you know, in the, in the summer, all these doors open, the breeze comes through, there's fans, there's no air conditioning, right? And it's workable. It's good in the winter, you know, you have all this excess wood that's shortcut or dust and you put it in a furnace and it heats the warehouse, right? So like we're lead certified, all this stuff. No one really gives a shit about that, right? Like, when it comes, when they want

Vance Crowe [01:32:52] Is price. When

Jason Bockman [01:32:52] It comes down to it, dude, if they can buy it for $300,000, they're not paying five for it. And I'm like, I was so ignorant to that. There was this, this product called rubber wood, right? So rubber wood, I'm like, rubber, come on, what are you doing with rubber wood? You know, like we got American oak, you know? And so I poo-pooed this rubber wood for a long time, for a couple years, dude. And I don't know how much money it costs me, right? Like a lot of money because I'm like, oh, these people will like those, that product is gonna fail. You know what I mean? This year or next year. And they're gonna come back and I'm gonna say, see, I told you you should have been going with us the whole time American made blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Turns out, man, so I thought tariffs were gonna help us, right? So I relied on some tariffs. I was like, man, if their stuff is costing 20, 27% more, you know, then that more than makes up for our margin. I'm like, stay on this American Oak. Turns out dude, Michelin owns a big part of Vietnam, right? There's all these rubber wood forests. Now tires are made from synthetic rubber. They don't need rubber wood trees. They

Vance Crowe [01:33:53] Need to find another use for rubber.

Jason Bockman [01:33:54] They need another use for rubber wood. Rubber wood grows. I don't remember. I'm sure somebody will look it up like 20, 50 times faster.

Vance Crowe [01:34:01] Oh, you mean actual rubber trees? The the cut them down. Use that for the lumber. Yes.

Jason Bockman [01:34:07] Whoa. Yeah, bro,

Vance Crowe [01:34:08] What's that like?

Jason Bockman [01:34:10] So here's all this, you know, tens of thousands of acres of rubber wood trees, you know, rubber trees that,

Vance Crowe [01:34:17] And they're probably really good at growing, aren't being used. Yeah.

Jason Bockman [01:34:19] And they're everywhere. So, oh, that's why it's so cheap. So I'm going to Vietnam, right? Is, is a short answer, but like, I got fat and comfortable, you know, being like sitting on my morals really? Like American owned, American farmed, American made oak, you know, and I got so focused on that and like our superiority, that I got blindsided, you know, by a product that on its face sounds inferior, rubber wood.

Vance Crowe [01:34:53] Right? So what would you do differently now? Bitcoin?

Jason Bockman [01:34:55] What,

Vance Crowe [01:34:56] What? Yeah. Right, right. What, what, how, what do you know now that would keep you from being blindsided by rubber wood? Next time?

Jason Bockman [01:35:03] Question everything. You think you're good? Check why, you know what I mean? I, I do that on all of our products now. I mean, everything that we manufacture and it's not just, you know, how much does it cost? But the I, I negotiate and I'll tell you like anybody listening to this podcast, you probably already know this, you're priority, successful, and smart. And the thing that'll like save you more money than, than any college or like, make you more money or save you more money, is five words. And I think like a lot of people are afraid of negotiation, but it's five words, can you do any better? Right? Like, you don't need to know much more about negotiation than that. Like that'll like give you a good start. And like, if you just have the balls to say, can you do any better? Right? So like, I'm focusing, I'm going back to like our lumber suppliers being like, man, come on lumber. What's going on here? You know? Are you, yeah, you don't want my business. So I'm just like going back to the same, well, instead of like taking a more broad, I should have known, I should have known if I was a true student of the industry, man, there's tens of thousands of acres of this wood that has no other use anymore. Maybe I can do something with that would, maybe I should have been on in Vietnam five years ago. You know what I mean? 10 years ago if I was a true student, you know what I mean of it. So shame on me. So what I do now, people want vegan donuts. Yeah. Let me see how I can make those for you. You know, oh, people want to pay with Bitcoin. Let me see how I can do that for you.

Jason Bockman [01:36:35] Let me go learn about that. You know? And instead of like following trends, try to set 'em, you know, and that's hard to do, but people, I mean, imagine like you're so hyped about Bitcoin, right? And if I am like, yeah, dude, I'll take that. You know, like,

Vance Crowe [01:36:53] Why would you go, I'm gonna tell everybody

Jason Bockman [01:36:55] Why would you go? Yeah. You're gonna write, you're gonna write about us, right?

Vance Crowe [01:36:58] Right. A hundred percent. You're

Jason Bockman [01:36:59] Gonna be on the news. So that's what I try to do now is question everything. You think you're good. And maybe that's why I'm not satisfied. 'cause I look at stuff now and I'm like, man, that was cool. How could we have done better? You know,

Vance Crowe [01:37:09] You know, I'd, you're making me think that I should get together a, a club for, and, and I mean this genuinely like a club for dissatisfied successful people. Because like, there's something going on with the psyche of a person. I, I think that it, so, you know, I, I, I, when I, I, I went to Northern California, I was in the Peace Corps and I ended up getting knocked out early. I got sick and I had to come home early. It was like one of the most devastating things in my life. I ended up going, you

Jason Bockman [01:37:38] Still regret it?

Vance Crowe [01:37:39] Well, I mean, I, there was, I don't know what I could have done differently, right? In order to stay. But it was like, you know, I'd wanted to be this Peace Corps volunteer. I'd wanted to live way out in the middle of nowhere this happens. So I ended up coming back and my buddy court, just like you had a, a good buddy, he was like, Hey, you're coming back. That's fine. I just bought a boat. And, and by the way, now I'm single. 'cause my girlfriend broke up with me. And it was this old wooden yacht that had had a fire on it. So we boarded it up, we patched it, we went to way Northern California. I had literally no money, like nothing. And there was no one that was coming for me.

Jason Bockman [01:38:14] And

Vance Crowe [01:38:14] So I ended up walking up and down the docks because I was in this fishing village where we're trying to restore the ship. The ship's not making any money when we're restoring it. So I gotta have money coming in some other way. So I walk up and down, I'm like, I'll do any work for you that you let me do. Is it repair nets? Is it, you know, go out crab, I'll scrub your decks, whatever. And there's something, there's a difference that happens when you get to the point where there's no other choice. And it happens to you psychologically where you're like, now I'll do anything it takes to be, to, to be successful. But the problem is, once something like that switches in you, I think it is hard to feel satisfied. I think when you do end up reaching ever higher levels, you start looking around and being like, well, my old victories aren't enough. I need to do something else. And I think that it's probably good to bring together all the people that I know that have reached success, but are getting bored. But, but that's 'cause they don't know what they wanna do next. So that's why I think I'm gonna do that. It doesn't matter. I think I'm gonna have a party

Jason Bockman [01:39:17] Do it, dude. I'll come, there's this thing that I was talking like that I did come up with this divine discontent, right? And I think that there's, like, I think about this a lot, right? I kind of trip out and I'll think like, man, there was a dude that was like living in a cave, you know what I mean? That found the cave and said, this is tight. You know, like, have you ever seen mankind, the story of us all?

Vance Crowe [01:39:37] Uhuh,

Jason Bockman [01:39:37] Dude, you gotta watch it. They talk about like, mankind, the story of us all, but it's like, where do we come from? Right? And I'm like tripping off it. Like, I was like, man, people would like be in these caves and be like, man, there's gotta be something better than this. You know? But like the cave was way better than fighting out in the ice, you know?

Vance Crowe [01:39:57] Yeah.

Jason Bockman [01:39:58] But like, oh, we made homes divine

Vance Crowe [01:40:00] Discontent. That is, yeah. So like, very good.

Jason Bockman [01:40:03] I think there's something that gets into certain people and these people be like Elon Musk, right? Where he is like, fuck this man. Like, that's not a car. You know what I mean? Like, that's cool. But like, I'm not happy with that. You know? Here's a rocket that shoots people into space, man, how can we do that better? We're, you know, like, and

Vance Crowe [01:40:23] You know, that's a good example of, I was asto when I found out that he launched a fucking car

Jason Bockman [01:40:31] Dude

Vance Crowe [01:40:32] Into, into outer space.

Jason Bockman [01:40:34] Yes. And

Vance Crowe [01:40:35] Then there were people being like, that's wasteful. Or Oh, is that stupid? Or whatever. I'm like, how in the world can you see anything other than awe in this situation? Right? Anything other than, oh my God, we should be grateful that people like that exist. Even if that car has nothing to do with, you know, people were like, he could have given that car to somebody else, but he did. He gave it to humanity,

Jason Bockman [01:40:59] Dude. And that's the thing that I'm saying when people say that, like, like, and I used to say that shit when I was a poor hater, you know what I mean? Was like, oh, man, you like, you bought that car. Like, how many people could you have fed with that money? You know? Well, yeah, I fed the, like, the salesman and his family, I fed, you know what I mean? The, the, the guy, the porter, you know what I mean? Who could work at a dealership? Because I bought this car from there, I fed the people that are gonna service this car. And then beyond that dude, like, and right now, whatever, I have a, like a old Honda Odyssey minivan out there. It's a bucket, dude. But I love it. I bought it for like 1100 bucks. So it's like, it's just crazy to me that I'm like, I can have this car. I bought this thing for $1,100. I like literally have shoes that cost more than that. And I'm like, I can take this thing all. Like, it'll take me anywhere I want to go. This is awesome. I love, I have an oh four, oh Odys, you're on mobile. I love it, dude. But the, but like, beyond that, like, I've had some badass cars, right? And like, there's nothing like when a kid, I mean, especially me, like, I see, that's one of the reasons I bought, I bought this watch, right? I bought this watch. I'm proud of this watch. I always wanted one of these. And I felt so guilty when I bought it, you know? I'm like, man, and I lied about, I'm like, oh, somebody lent it to me. You know what I mean? When somebody asked me about it, I'm like, oh, it's my buddies for a photo shoot or whatever, right? My cousin who, whatever, grew up just like me, he saw, he saw my watch and he was like, is that a Rolex?

Jason Bockman [01:42:30] I was like, yeah, dude. And he was like, is that, you know, was that $15,000? And I was like, yeah. And he was like, man, I know you worked so hard for that. I would've cried, dude. But he was like the, like hope that that gave him, right? 'cause he saw me, you know, and what I did, and he knows the work. He doesn't see that I'm wearing $15,000 on my wrist. And man, why didn't I give him that money? He sees, oh my God, I can do that. That's possible now. Yeah,

Vance Crowe [01:43:03] An emblem of hardware,

Jason Bockman [01:43:04] The four minute mile, dude. You know what I'm saying? Like, yeah. Like that. And so I don't, I don't like hide that stuff anymore. You know what I mean? There's like some, I'm like, here's my story, you know? Yeah. I was a piece of shit. You know what I mean? And like, I don't hide. I'm like, yeah, here's my beautiful house. Here's my like, expensive ass art, you know? And like, here's like, here's me, like here, how can I, I'm not Elon Musk, you know what I mean? I don't have a car to shoot in a space yet, but like, I have like different cars that, you know, like I have, I have those things. I can't do that yet now. But how can I make that happen for people with what I have now?

Vance Crowe [01:43:41] I, I remember. So when I got done working on the ship, I bought a house with my friend court, the guy that told me that, that he bought a ship and his girlfriend dumped him.

Jason Bockman [01:43:51] Yeah.

Vance Crowe [01:43:53] He and I bought a house and we're gonna renovate it and sell it. So he put in all the equity and I put in sweat equity. Yeah. And I remember when I would walk between where I was living and the house that we were working on, I would pass by all these restaurants. And in my mind I was always like, who stupid idiots are wasting all that money. They don't even know what real money's about. You know? And I'd go and I'd work all day and I'd walk past and I'd say it again. And I remember one of the first times that I ever went out to a nice restaurant was like, after I got married and I'm out with my wife and we're having a really nice dinner, and my wife is the hardest working per, like, she became an aerospace engineer and, you know, tried out for the Olympics. So she has been hardworking and, and was able to go out to dinners, you know, that was not that big of a deal.

Jason Bockman [01:44:41] And

Vance Crowe [01:44:41] I remember almost like tearing up being like, you can order whatever you want. And I, I can, I can pay for it.

Jason Bockman [01:44:48] I can pay for that. Yeah.

Vance Crowe [01:44:49] And like, that being such an amazing feeling. What, you know, you were talking about your kids growing up and you, you're okay with them being rich, but the thing that made you hard enough to be able to do the things that you're doing,

Jason Bockman [01:45:04] Will

Vance Crowe [01:45:05] Your kids have exposure to things that will make them hard enough to, to face the world when things get tough?

Jason Bockman [01:45:11] So I talk with my kids now about everything. I have a 4-year-old and 3-year-old, right? My son just broke his arms playing at the park, and like, he's a hard charging little kid, right? And I encourage that and I'm, and like I, some of the, I don't know if I'm doing it wrong, you know what I'm saying? We'll find out 20 years from now when I look back and I'll probably see all the stuff that I'm doing wrong right now. But I think that like some of the stuff that, you know, I'm not a victim of my family or where I grew up or any of that, right? I don't, I just choose not to be. But some of that stuff can, wasn't the best. I'll say that. My son broke his arms. I loved him, picked him up, talked to him, and then I, we went, I didn't make him go back to the park, right? A co but we went back to the park very soon after that where he broke his arms and did it again. Right? And so I try to tell him now, and I don't, he doesn't understand it. 'cause he'll talk about like, he's done judo, right? Like, we'd take him to do judo classes or he's a big kid. Is

Vance Crowe [01:46:30] He doing judo or juujitsu?

Jason Bockman [01:46:33] He was doing some judo and then, but we landed on Juujitsu, right? And so he, he's doing

Vance Crowe [01:46:40] Juujitsu

Jason Bockman [01:46:41] And he's like, I don't want to go. I'm afraid I have videos of it. You know, he is like, I'm afraid. And he wouldn't let me take my arms from around him. And I'm sitting in there and I'm like, questioning it,

Vance Crowe [01:46:49] You know, like, man, should he be

Jason Bockman [01:46:51] In here? And I'm like, freaking my kid out. Am I making him do this stuff? And I'd, he'd sit on my lap, I'd go to take my arms off of him and he'd grab my arms and make me hug him again and make him feel safe, you know? And he, I just said after that, and I said, you know, it's okay that you're afraid. You know, it's okay that you're afraid. Everyone's afraid, you know? But what is not okay in this family is to keep, you know, like the fear from you acting and trying, right? And so I try to instill that in him in a, in a, in a safe way, in a loving way rather than like the way I grew up, where it's like, you're afraid 'cause it's dangerous as fuck. You know what I'm saying? Like,

Vance Crowe [01:47:32] Yeah.

Jason Bockman [01:47:32] So like, man, I was afraid. I was afraid every time I fought, you know what I mean? I was afraid every anytime any of that crap happened, I'm terrified. And you learn to react. You know what I mean? If you're afraid, you better make somebody terrified, quick, you know what I mean? Before he gets outta control. I hope he doesn't have that, you know, that like reactionary fear, you know, or violence or whatever. But I won't. He works, you know, like, like he contributes. And I hope that he, what I hope that he has, or I hope that what I'm able to give him is the support and the love and the means to do the stuff that he wants to do to face his fears, right?

Vance Crowe [01:48:15] Yeah, man.

Jason Bockman [01:48:16] And so, I, i if it, you know, if we go broke, you know, if I lose everything and, and, you know, I risked it all and did it wrong, like I know we'll be okay that way too, you know? But what I, and so I, I encourage my son and I was putting him in the, and some of the stuff is whatever, I don't care. This is the stuff people probably don't talk about, but like, I got like hit when I was a kid, like bad. I remember, like, and I don't know, like I can, I'm gonna tie all this back in. We, I came here to talk about turnover, right? Yeah.

Vance Crowe [01:48:50] And

Jason Bockman [01:48:50] So I'm gonna like, I want to talk about all this stuff and like, how it relates to that, right? So here's the story that's real sad from when I was a kid, I used to sit in this little spot, and I don't know who will hear this, but like, and I don't wanna talk too much about my family. Like my mom still lives here and I don't wanna like, embarrass her or anything, but just, she had some problems. I'll just leave it at that. I'm sitting on this couch and I used to, I'll thank you, dude. I used to sit in this little spot where I felt like comfortable and safe and I, I would sit on the edge of this couch and I'd have my feet up against this little bookcase thing. And that was just where I happened to fit. And yeah. Good books here, dude.

Vance Crowe [01:49:31] Huh? You'd like that only in Al, only in Irish Boy, A Ratio Alger. You'd like that? I'll get it. No, I'll, I'll, you can borrow that one.

Jason Bockman [01:49:38] I'll read it. Is it nonfiction?

Vance Crowe [01:49:40] Yeah. It's a, it's Horatio Alger came up as an orphan. He wrote all these books about like how to, how to be the right kind of kid. They're great books.

Jason Bockman [01:49:48] I'll read it.

Vance Crowe [01:49:48] My buddy Travis, gimme that book

Jason Bockman [01:49:49] Right on. I'll give it back to you. I'll read it. I will, the, I'm sitting in this spot, my feet break through this glass, right? This is where I used always to sit, my feet break through this glass where I would like wedge myself into a little kid. Dude, I was like, I was younger than my son is now my feet went through the glass, cuts my legs and like, we didn't have shit. You know what I mean? And I broke the bookcase. That was nice, right?

Vance Crowe [01:50:14] And so,

Jason Bockman [01:50:14] Like, my parents are both hitting me, and I remember thinking like, I'm like, my legs are bleeding, you know, like, hug me. You know what I mean? Like, I'm hurt. And what they were, they were like, and I understand where they came from too. Like, man, this is like, we don't have shit and you just broke the thing that we have. I can understand them being upset, but now,

Vance Crowe [01:50:35] Wow, man, that, that is an understanding person. That's, that's deep. I

Jason Bockman [01:50:39] Try to, it's taking probably a while to get there, dude. But I, I now, now that I have a kid, you know, and like, I, I, I put him in his car seat the other day. He, I don't know, not the other day. Maybe it was six months ago. And he punched me in my forehead. Like I went to, I leaned over to Cle Manny Bow, and he like, knows how to punch. He like turned his wrist and everything and hit me in my forehead. And I like backed up. I looked at him for a second and my instinct was to smack him, you know? And, and I was like, my first thought was, he doesn't know why he did that. You know, he just like smiled at me. He like did it and then smiled at me and I was like, good punch buddy. Right? I was like, that was good. We don't punch our friends and family in the face, you know, if we wanna wrestle, like this is off limits, you know, the head and face is, is off limits. Limits. Which might be a Hoosier way to teach your kids.

Vance Crowe [01:51:41] No, dude, that is like Piaget, like, you nailed it. It's really, kids are always trying to find out how can I exert my strength and what are the boundaries? Mm. And if you pop back at them and make them frightened, now you've just pushed them and said, you know, don't be that strong. Be like this. But you were able to have presence of mind to say good strength apply in a different way. That's dude, that is child psychology. You just hit a 10, just hit a 10. Well,

Jason Bockman [01:52:10] Thanks dude. And that's, that's, so I try to teach him that way, right? And the, and see where, you know, what I like, where we can grow and nothing that he does is wrong. Not nothing. Let me say that again. There's context for everything, right? He's a little kid. He is discovering his dick. You know what I mean? Like, he wants to pull out. I'm like, that's fine at the house. Like that's for the family. You can't show that to other people. You know, he'll like, hear me say crazy stuff, you know what I mean? Mean, which I don't, you know, and I don't like try to get too, I like try to temper myself around him, right? Like, I'm usually like, pretty high strung and like scream and get crazy. And like, for the first couple years of his life, I was like, calm around him. You know what I mean? And I would like, I would, this is, I I, I could talk to you forever, dude. I,

Vance Crowe [01:53:01] We can do this as many times as we want. I, I know you said you had to go in a little bit, but I, I've, I've got you on the time. We're

Jason Bockman [01:53:07] We're good next to you. I would stack stuff up on his head in the shower, right? Like, so we'd stand, we'd stay outta the shower and I'd be like, okay, now we gotta get real still. And I'd stack a shower, you know, a shampoo cap on his head and then like a, and then eventually from the shampoo cap, he could like focus for a minute and like still and keep focus on something outside of himself, right? So that he could be calm. And I'd like, you know, we eventually end up putting like little, you know, shampoo bottles on his head and stuff like that. I'm like, man, this is so weird. But like, the stuff that is important to me now is like being able to like, calm down, being able to turn on the animal. You know what I'm saying? When like, I couldn't turn it off before, you know, of like, you know, I'd get to where I want to be, but everything around me would be smashed.

Vance Crowe [01:53:54] Have you, have you heard of like, Jungian psychology? Carl Young?

Jason Bockman [01:53:57] Carl Young. Yeah, dude, yeah.

Vance Crowe [01:53:58] Integrating his shadow. Like, that's the concept of you are not a full person, particularly a a man in particular until you know what you're capable of doing, but then don't do it.

Jason Bockman [01:54:10] Yeah, dude.

Vance Crowe [01:54:11] Because once, you know, like the, the, you know, it's no virtue to be weak and not fight. You can't fight, you know, rabbit doesn't, isn't a virtuous thing because it doesn't fight, right? It's do you have the capacity in you to know how to exert your will over something like your child,

Jason Bockman [01:54:29] For

Vance Crowe [01:54:29] Example, but then decide, no, I'm not, I'm not gonna do that because that's not actually the way that I want to be then. That, that's a, that's the, the full manifestation of, of being human.

Jason Bockman [01:54:41] Well, you're doing that stuff now. That's what I just realized is you're doing that right now, dude. You could have guided this thing wherever you wanted to go for you, right? And we've gone all over the place and you're like, that's something. I was like, I haven't realized why you're good at this until just now. You said that

Vance Crowe [01:54:55] This is a blast, man. I'm, I'm, I I'm so deeply moved to how open you've been and well,

Jason Bockman [01:55:01] Thanks dude.

Vance Crowe [01:55:02] Like, I, I feel like every time I ask you a que you know, I, I have a, a friend who I'll, I'll invite him on the podcast sometime. A guy, his name is Jared Holst,

Jason Bockman [01:55:12] And

Vance Crowe [01:55:14] He's, he's like, he's so smart that it's intimidating. It's like, you know, we started talking about China and I think I know a lot about it and he knows so much more than I do. And so, you know, maybe that's what's kept me from inviting him on the podcast. But one time I asked him, you know, Hey, what, what do you think of the podcast? And he was telling me, and then he said, what do you think you learned from that interview? And I realized that I had done an interview where I hadn't asked questions that I didn't already know the answer to. And so after talking to Jared, I came to the realization that the podcasts are a lot more interesting. Not if I'm like, Hey, I know this interesting thing that this person knows, so I'm gonna find a way to bring it out in them. But instead I ask questions that I genuinely don't know what you're gonna say. And you have been a rare guest that like, literally, I have no idea what you're gonna say. It's tight.

Jason Bockman [01:56:03] Well, that's you, dude. I mean, most of these things when I do like, 'cause I get asked to speak at colleges or all this crap all the time. And it's always like, how did you start Strange Donuts? You know what I mean? And I'm like, alright, here we go. You know what I mean? It's like the same softball questions. Dude, this has been tight. So like, me being open as a tribute to you. But

Vance Crowe [01:56:20] So to, to conclude, I do wanna wrap it all the way back to that. Yes. That 2%. Yes. Right? Like, you probably don't get a chance to see your employees all the time. You probably have lifted to an area where they don't always get direct access to this person that's become larger than life here in St. Louis and, and internationally. What do you hope that all of them knows about the business that they're working in?

Jason Bockman [01:56:46] One, I think that I know that they know is that one, I love them, right? I love them. And if I can't provide something for them that they, that I will find a way to do some kind of substitute for that. Or that they are encouraged to go somewhere else. And I, there will be no hard feelings. I will be a champion for them to, you know, vouch for them on their next level or whatever. Right? I know that they know, I know that they know they work for a dude that, and I

Vance Crowe [01:57:20] Never say work for,

Jason Bockman [01:57:21] But that's the reality of it. They work for someone that genuinely cares about them and is a giver, not a taker. Right? I posted something the other day, dude. It was like, we're open on Labor Day, right? As a picture of like a, a, a Labrador laying brick, right? And where I'm like, we're laboring hard to be open for you tomorrow.

Vance Crowe [01:57:45] That's clever. Right?

Jason Bockman [01:57:46] And the truth is like, yeah, there's like some physical hard work that goes into baking, right? And somebody said on there, you know, I'll just read it, dude, I'll read this stuff. So this post on Instagram, if you guys wanna look up, you can find us fall at Strange Donuts.

Vance Crowe [01:58:07] Is that you, are you the one that runs The Strange Donut Instagram? Yeah. Which

Jason Bockman [01:58:10] I need to stop. I think I need to like, have somebody else be doing this.

Vance Crowe [01:58:14] Do you? Why

Jason Bockman [01:58:17] So

Vance Crowe [01:58:18] Well, here, read that, read that comment.

Jason Bockman [01:58:20] Well, I can't, so I don't think I have like one X down here as far as,

Vance Crowe [01:58:25] Oh yeah, I get terrible signal down here. It's, it's like a concrete bunker.

Jason Bockman [01:58:29] So the,

Vance Crowe [01:58:30] What's the gist of it?

Jason Bockman [01:58:32] So the gist of it, they're like, like, like if you really respected your employees, you'd be closed and like, you know, celebrate the holiday. And then I just was like, you know what, man, I'm not gonna engage this person. You know? And then somebody else said something, actually, somebody who like works with us. Oh, right. Said, hey, instead of like accusing him of some stuff. Why don't you ask why we're open? Reality is, dude, as I say, do you guys wanna work? And they all say yes. Right?

Vance Crowe [01:59:06] That is a perfect example of you carry water for other people, they'll carry it for you, man.

Jason Bockman [01:59:10] Hey, why don't you ask, you know what I mean? Why don't you ask? Yeah,

Vance Crowe [01:59:13] Why

Jason Bockman [01:59:13] Don't you be a why person? Instead of like, what, you know what I mean? What's wrong with you? Like, be like, why man, why are you doing this? And so somebody that works for me was like, Hey dude, we want to be here. You know? And and I end up saying like, I end up responding to the person, you know, saying like, want next time you're in, why don't you ask? You know what I mean? If, if you can ask anybody estranged donuts, you know, do they feel respected and supported? And so I think that this, all this stuff leads into 2% turnover, right? Square is in St.

Vance Crowe [01:59:52] Louis now,

Jason Bockman [01:59:53] Right? They're

Vance Crowe [01:59:55] Hiring people,

Jason Bockman [01:59:58] I don't wanna say with low standards. 'cause everybody there is like, is cool people, awesome people, whatever,

Vance Crowe [02:00:03] Right?

Jason Bockman [02:00:03] But like, it's not like you need some coding degree

Vance Crowe [02:00:07] To work there,

Jason Bockman [02:00:08] Right? Paying well paid lunches, paid insurance, stock options, all this stuff, right? There's a bunch of competition when you hear it on the news all the time. Like, man, why, you know, good luck hiring, you know, there's a labor shortage. Dude, I couldn't tell you how many times a week I get dms or emails saying, Hey, can I work with you? Can I work

Vance Crowe [02:00:36] For you? Oh man, that's fantastic,

Jason Bockman [02:00:38] Right? And so what makes that happen? What makes people stay? So let's just say that on average, people are making a strange donuts between 12 to $18 an hour, right? Some of the people in certain circumstances, I can't afford to pay, I can't afford to have healthcare for everybody, right? So, but like, I'll pay, I'm like, I give them my credit card and when they fill out their Obamacare application, they put in my credit card, right? So I pay for their Obamacare, right? And so I, I don't have health insurance at my place of business. You know, it's not for a lack of trying, but no one wants to pay the half when the half is three 30. You know what I mean?

Vance Crowe [02:01:23] Right?

Jason Bockman [02:01:24] So I'm like, I'll pay your $80, your $120, whatever it is, you know, so it's not money, right? 'cause the people that I, that work with me are very talented and could go do a number of things. We have some musicians that work for us that are insane. Dude. We have, you know, content writers and copywriters and, and programmers and artists that work for us that could go, you know, and do go do crazy stuff. There's a guy that was doing our videos. I was like, man, why don't you like, do, like, I see him doing these little weird videos. I'm like, dude, why don't you make videos for us? I'll pay you X amount of money a month, dude. And I'm, I want you on a retainer. I wanna like, gimme like three things a month, right? Six months into this thing, a huge advertising agency in St. Louis is like, Hey, we want you to be director of TV commercial, right?

Vance Crowe [02:02:18] Wow.

Jason Bockman [02:02:19] And so he's like, dude, I gotta like do this. And I'm sorry. And he's upset. He was upset.

Vance Crowe [02:02:23] And you're like, I just helped you. Like, I'm so

Jason Bockman [02:02:25] Happy. I was like, dude, I am so happy for you. Yeah, go do that.

Vance Crowe [02:02:28] Yeah. And

Jason Bockman [02:02:29] Guess what he says, dude, when he sees talented people that having hard time getting work, he's like, dude, you need to go work with Jason at Strange Donuts. People are, so it's backwards thinking to wrangle your employees and not let them get offers from other places. Like build people up, right? Like, I talk with my employees about these things. Like, you know, some of it, maybe I shouldn't, or some of it maybe this'll bite me. You know what I mean? But like I talk about abor abortion, you know what I mean? What do you think about that? You know, like it's mostly women. We have mostly women that work with us, right? There's some trans people. There's like, there's a bunch of LGB people. There's like, like it's people from all over, right? And like, and like, it's from all over the spectrum, right? And I'm like, Hey, what makes, what do you think about this? You know what I did, dude? We had a, we had a photo shoot. This happened. So there was these, this photographer that was like famous whatever. And then he was, they, then there was these girls that wanted to do a photo shoot in Strange Donuts. And they said, Hey, can we do, can we use your store to do a photo shoot? We've had rap videos shot in in Strange Donuts. We had all kinds of crap happen, dude, it's tight. And so there was a this, I'm like, Hey, there's gonna be a photo shoot there tonight. The store closes at midnight.

Jason Bockman [02:03:59] These people are gonna come at 11. I told 'em they'll be there, you know me for an hour, right? So when you're leaving, they'll be, they'll be leaving. I go in the next day or two days

Vance Crowe [02:04:08] Later and this girl who hadn't worked there long,

Jason Bockman [02:04:11] Not a they them, whatever she says, he, they said, still getting used to that, right? The, they said, Hey, next time I gotta be here till three in the morning, just let me know. 'cause I was up real late and I needed to get up early in the morning. And my like shot back, like my knee jerk was like, I was like, oh, you were here till three then the store should have been cleaner, you know, is what I said to them. And they're like, shrunk down, right? I bullied this person, right?

Vance Crowe [02:04:46] Yeah. Your shadow came out.

Jason Bockman [02:04:47] Boom. So I'm like, we had a meeting the next week and all staff meeting, we do it once a month. And I said, Hey, I've been under a bunch of stress. We opened these two stores like real close to each other. Stuff is tight. I had a surgery, right? That was like a big deal. My father-in-law passed away, put my dog down, right? Like, I was like, I was dealing with a bunch of stuff personally, and I need to say in front of everyone, Mac, I responded to you poorly. This is what I said, and I was wrong for that. I'm sorry. Right? And I was like afraid that they were gonna take this as leverage, right. To, to shame me or, you know. And I think a lot of leaders don't want to be vulnerable with their people because they will appear to be out of control, right? The response was, wow, that's some real ownership. It's all good. I get it. And then everybody else in the room was like, I've done this lately and sorry, everyone.

Vance Crowe [02:05:59] Wow. Right?

Jason Bockman [02:06:00] So boom. So we create this culture that no one's perfect, right? Like, and I don't expect anybody to be perfect. We'll hire somebody. They'll show up late and they're like, I am so sorry. I do, you know, they're like falling on their sword. I'm like, dude, I already forgave you. It's all good. Let's, let's get to work. You know this, do we have this jelly hopper? A jelly hopper is something that fills the, the donuts with jelly. If you've ever seen it, it's pretty cool. Google it. It's called a, a ed hard jelly hopper. If you've ever, I always wondered how jelly gets into donuts, right? There's this,

Vance Crowe [02:06:29] I'd love to come down and

Jason Bockman [02:06:30] See that. Yeah, dude, I'd love to You stab, you stab the donuts with these cylinders and you step on or press a button and it injects a preset amount of jelly into the donut because this company had a patent on this thing for like, forever. These things were like 25, 300, $3,000 right? To put jelly into a donut. And then there's all these things that go on top of 'em. Just the motor's three grand. And the, this dude dropped that. He felt so bad, we fixed it. I'm like, it's all good. Whatever. We

Vance Crowe [02:07:00] Do this,

Jason Bockman [02:07:01] I can't afford to pay people 25, 30 $5 an hour. You know, I can't afford to pay people right now, 45 grand a year. I can't afford to pay people. And I, I want to pay, I genuinely want, I want everybody at strange donuts to be able to afford anything they want. And that means monetarily, time-wise, culturally, I want them to be able to do anything they want. I cannot do that right now. Right? Monetarily, when people show interest. So we, when you work there for a year, you get a week's paid vacation, right?

Vance Crowe [02:07:35] Whoa.

Jason Bockman [02:07:35] Right? So that's kind of weird for donut shop. Yeah, man,

Vance Crowe [02:07:38] You have a

Jason Bockman [02:07:38] Week's paid vacation.

Vance Crowe [02:07:39] Yeah.

Jason Bockman [02:07:39] So we give everybody a week's paid vacation. We do this for this reason. It's called recreation. Recreation is two words. Meaning to recreate yourself, right? Through fun. You do the same thing. You answer the same question 500 times a day. What makes your donuts so strange? You know, everybody comes in and says that. And sometimes I'm like, that's just the owner's name, dude, you know, strange is the owner's name. Like,

Vance Crowe [02:08:01] You know, and

Jason Bockman [02:08:03] The I'll say that and the, but I'm like, you know, you do these repetitive things again and again and again and again. You become a master of that thing, you know what I mean? But man, it wears you down. So like, you have to take you, it's not like you cash in your vacation time and you keep working. You have to leave and we have to pay you. When you have two years, you get a week's paid vacation and we pay for your vacation, right? So the way we pay for your vacation is I have a credit card that I get points on. I try to get everything we buy on this credit card. We get hundreds of thousands of millions of points, right? And so I'm like, where do you wanna go? You're about to be working here two years. Thank you so much. You got a weeks paid vacation and we're gonna, so like, I wanna go to Vegas and I'm to Vegas, 21-year-old dude, right? I wanna go to Vegas. I'm like, boom, dude, here's your hotel. Here's your wow plane, here's your plane ticket.

Vance Crowe [02:08:54] That has to be so mind blowing, has to be,

Jason Bockman [02:08:55] It's, it's nuts, right? They're like, oh shit, here's your vacation, here's your hotel, here's your, here's your plane ticket and here's the money, right? And go, if you go to this restaurant, right? Like Lotus of Siam Siam, if you are in Vegas, go there. Holy shit. Lotus of Siam.

Vance Crowe [02:09:12] I'm going there this weekend, I'm gonna to Vegas Lotus,

Jason Bockman [02:09:14] I'm

Vance Crowe [02:09:14] A talk all

Jason Bockman [02:09:15] Go, bro.

Vance Crowe [02:09:15] All right,

Jason Bockman [02:09:16] Fire. Get these prawns. Anyways, I'm like, if you go here, dude, call me when you're there and I kind of, I'm gonna call 'em, I'm gonna pay for your meal, right? And so we do that stuff, right? It's like, so I can't, so, and then, but more than that, I think like people feel supported. Hey man, I really need this day off. No sweat. I'll come in and do it. And they know I will do any job there and I won't ask anybody to do anything that I wouldn't do. I can make the best donuts myself with my hands. I'll make jelly that will blow your mind. We make everything from scratch, right? I can do that probably better than anybody that works there, right? And they know man, Jason will get in here and work like 18 hours straight and won't complain, you know? And we'll get it, dude, and make us look slow. And so,

Vance Crowe [02:10:09] But rather than rubbing their faces in it,

Jason Bockman [02:10:11] Never. Yeah.

Vance Crowe [02:10:12] What

Jason Bockman [02:10:12] I do is I'm like, Hey man, this is how I do this. You might have a different way to do it, but this is how I do it, you know? And if you can learn from this, that's cool. So one is supporting your people. Don't be that Coke dude. Don't be that guy. You know what I mean? Like, like that's not a, that's not a a a a baker, that's a person. You know, that's a person whose dog might've died. That's a person who might be going through a breakup. That's a person who, you know, might be short on their rent. You know, that's a person who genuinely wants to do the best they can for a company they feel beholden to and they don't know how to act that out. You know? So I don't need to, you know, reprimand people. We don't scream in our kitchen. You know, where like most of these places that are like high tenants, you see it on like, I mean, Gordon Ramsey's screaming at people, demeaning people. And for some people that might bring the best out of 'em, but that's a fraction of people that that really gets you to work for them. Really. Those people you scream at most people, dude. And

Vance Crowe [02:11:18] The only ones that survive are the ones that are, you know, that, that, that, that's gonna predispose, it's gonna select out all the qualities that are gonna make somebody really good at dealing with other people and select for boom, the, the harshest traits.

Jason Bockman [02:11:32] That's it, dude. So the, the customer is always right. The employee is always right more often, right? My employee, my employees, the people that I work with, I genuinely care for them and get to know them. They all have my phone number. We all talk, they come up with ideas, we look at the ideas. Some of them get to the, to the, to the menu. I talk about them at length, right? I tag them in Instagram stuff. I try to make them, you know, I do staff meals and when my employees go places their meals are paid for, right? Like go to wherever, you know what I mean? Like, oh, you work at Strange Donuts, like, here, let us get your meal for you.

Vance Crowe [02:12:23] Oh, that's amazing. Like,

Jason Bockman [02:12:23] They tell me all the time, dude. And that's, that's because like, they're good people, right? And like the things that like I've like tried to cultivate and put into our culture is that culture of like helpfulness, right? So like you go, I mean I, there was a restaurant here lately that was short staffed. It was slammed. Slammed, right? And there's like a dude in the back, my people just like, were like, Hey, we're getting back here and helping, like, not asking like, do you need some help? They know what they're doing. They know what they're doing. Dude, we have a girl that works for us, dude that was a trainer. She trained for the Four Seasons. So the bakers that bake at the Four Seasons were trained by the girl who heads our kitchen.

Vance Crowe [02:13:09] Wow.

Jason Bockman [02:13:10] Right? She was worked to her finger bones, you know what I'm saying? Rode hard and screamed at when she didn't perform works for us, dude. And I'm like, like, it's chill and you're respected and

Vance Crowe [02:13:30] Nothing. Meg, you know what? That, that is the best story probably because it is the, the rich, you

Jason Bockman [02:13:40] Know, you

Vance Crowe [02:13:40] Know, you were talking about being a poor kid, thinking about who rich people were. And you think about what is behind the curtain to make the, the, the four seasons, the, you know, the preeminent service experience. And you think about you grew up, started a company, and you went and hired their best people and you, and you and you, and you made a home for them where they wanted to be and they were proud of. That's the fucking sweetest story I have ever heard. Oh, that's crazy. That is great, man. I, I, I'm, I'm a Swiss watch and I know you told me, get it to get outta here. I cannot express how grateful I am that you came by to do this, and I hope you will come by and do it again. You have, of course, you have an open invitation and if people wanted to carry water for Strange Donuts or for you, what, what, what could they do? Where, where should they go to follow you to spend more time with you? Yeah, how should that work? Everything

Jason Bockman [02:14:32] Is at Strange Donuts. So Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, you could DM me, I handle the, the social media. So if you send a message, you're talking to Jason. And so anything, I mean, we have a store on Strange Donuts, we, Fran, we're franchising, right? So if people want to bring a strange donut to their city, we'll do that. So there's information there, but really, man, I think this is what you can do for us is give institutions a break, right? So you go out to eat sometime and your eggs came out cold, don't get on Yelp and talk about the eggs being cold, right? Like go ask somebody there like, Hey man, my eggs are cold. And see if there was something that maybe went wrong. And I'm sure that those people will be more than happy to make the problem better. I think that we just need to be nicer to each other, man. And I think that people think that Strange Donuts, because of the way we present ourselves is a massive company. And I'm not saying this is about us, right? I know now the dude who runs like the Twitter for Anheuser-Busch, right? And you, when you like, talk shit about Anheuser-Busch,

Vance Crowe [02:15:58] He's the guy that gets it. He's

Jason Bockman [02:15:59] The guy that gets it.

Vance Crowe [02:16:00] Yeah, I was just talking about that today with another friend of mine.

Jason Bockman [02:16:02] And it doesn't matter if that's like,

Vance Crowe [02:16:04] It's a real person,

Jason Bockman [02:16:04] That's a, that's a person man. Yeah.

Vance Crowe [02:16:06] That's paying his rent and, and, and helping his family out by, by taking your shit

Jason Bockman [02:16:11] That is putting so much energy into creating the best thing they can. And man, like, I just know this then this is what you could do for Strange Donuts is if you're gonna send a message, send a happy one, right? Like, if you need to like complain on Instagram or Facebook or Twitter or Yelp or any of that stuff, dude, like, that's cool. Make sure that on the other hand, you're taking as much time to praise people because that's a real person that's getting that. That's

Vance Crowe [02:16:45] Awesome, man. Cool. Thank you so much

Jason Bockman [02:16:47] Jason, for coming by. Thanks.

Vance Crowe [02:16:49] Well that's gonna do it for this week's interview. Thank you so much to Jason Bachman of Strange Donut. If you get a chance, head over to Twitter and Instagram and follow those two accounts, the Strange Donut accounts, and let 'em know that you heard about them on the Vance Crowe podcast. Actually, that's something I wanted to ask about. I am watching the downloads continue to ratchet up. That has been an incredibly humbling experience and I, I want to ask you that if you really like this podcast, then do one of two things. Either go on iTunes or your Google Play and rate it and give it a review and tell other people so that the algorithm can see that this is a podcast that you are hearing interesting and intelligent things that you wanna share with more people. Or if that's not your thing, you don't want to go do a review, then just bring a friend. Just go tell one person about this that you think, Hey, this person of all the friends that I have, they will really appreciate this podcast. Send it to him. Give it, make it so it's easy for them to listen to. Let them know why it is that you wanted them to listen, why you thought of them. That would mean a lot to me. You know, my dad used to have a plaque on his wall when he was a country stockbroker, and it said, the greatest compliment that someone can give me is the referral of a friend. And I think that's really true. And so I'm grateful to any of you that have been sharing this on social media, writing reviews. And if you haven't done any of those things and they aren't your cup of tea, then just bring a friend and we'll start having conversations with more and more of our friends.

Vance Crowe [02:18:25] Thank you so much for tuning in. I wanna remind you that if you're interested in the Collegiate Farm Bureau Convention Conference going on October 11th through the 13th, check it out on my website or in the show notes. We would love it, love it, love it. If not only you could come, but if, if you're not of college age, maybe you can help sponsor and get a kid there. Let 'em know that it's going on. Let your Farm Bureau know that it's going on and get as many kids there as you can 'cause I think it's gonna be a great conference. That's it for now. We'll be back on Friday with a bonus episode. Thanks so much.