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Ostrander Defense
324 Plays3 years ago
There is no one in the world like Matt Ostrander. And his encouragement to you is, there is no one else in the world like you, either, which means you have something to offer that is valuable and worth something to other people. As the owner of Ostrander Defense, this realization allowed Matt to go from dipping his toes into church security assessments to offering a broad suite of defense and preparedness services to individuals, churches, and businesses.
In this episode, we talk with Matt about his time in the military and how it contributed to his path to owning his own business. Plus, the challenges of valuing your work, especially at the beginning, and how to balance multiple irons in the fire and diversify your business with related products and services.
You can find Matt on social media by searching Ostrander Defense or contact him at ostranderdefense@gmail.com.
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Transcript
Introduction to the Uncommon Wealth Podcast
00:00:00
Speaker
Everyone dreams of living an uncommon life and the best asset you have to achieve your dreams is you. Welcome to the Uncommon Wealth Podcast. We're going to introduce you to people who are living uncommonly. We're also going to give you some tools and strategies for building wealth and for pursuing an uncommon path that is uniquely right for you.
00:00:26
Speaker
Hello and welcome everybody to Uncoming Wealth Partners Podcast. We are here. It's Aaron Kramer and myself.
Meet Matt Ostrander: Military Background and Family Legacy
00:00:32
Speaker
Yeah. And we have a guest. So let me introduce, do the bio. We've got to love bios. Bios are great. Yep. So Iowa native Marine Corps combat veteran from 2002 to 2014, gun side academy instructor from 2016 to present, Ostrander defense owner and operator.
00:00:50
Speaker
In 2018, Matt Ostrandler, how are you, my friend? Good. How are you today? I'm doing well. Thanks for asking. Thanks for being on the show. Aaron, quickly, what do you know about this cat? Because he is the reason why, you're the reason why he's here. Yeah, I'm just trying to have him on. So he was married to my cousin and learned what he did. At this time, I was like, oh, don't mess with Matt, you know? Guns. That's probably smart. But, you know, he's a great guy. He's got his own business going.
00:01:17
Speaker
It's very unique. That's the reason why we wanted him, is let's talk through business. Matt, you and I talked before we hit record. And one thing that I really wanna unpack is how does a business evolve over the years as you're building it? Obviously from 2018, it's about four years in, you've gone through it, but I would say your airplane is up, it's flying. A lot of, as we talk about, airplanes don't even make it off the runway. The cash flow runs out and the business goes no more.
00:01:46
Speaker
But yours is, so I wanna talk through that, but when you were in fifth grade, did you think that you'd be where you're at today? No, no, not at all. Fifth grade, man, I knew I'd have been in the military at this point. I didn't know how that was gonna play out, but other than that, no, I didn't have aspirations to be a business owner. I didn't have anything like that. So this is all,
00:02:13
Speaker
Follow the road, follow the route that, you know, has been put in front of me. Yeah. So yeah, first dude, thanks for your service. Like that is something that I vastly take for granted. I think we all do. So to say that I understand even what it takes, I don't. So thank you as all I can appreciate it. Thank you for your support.
00:02:30
Speaker
Yeah. And you're in studio, which is my favorite way to interview people. So thanks for coming in. No problem. So when you were in fifth grade, you wanted to be in the military. You wanted to serve others. Like how do you feel like that core value was instilled in you? Probably parents. Oh, absolutely. So unique thing about my background and my family is we have traced our
00:02:53
Speaker
family history through all the major conflicts and wars from Clerback Revolutionary War coming forward. So I had grandparents that served during the World War II era. I've had family members served during the Korean War era. My father and uncle served during the Vietnam era and just felt forward up. Matt, that is fascinating. So cool. I just knew. How did you find that out?
00:03:20
Speaker
Just family history. My family is very good at keeping track of our family history. So, you know, while I have all the paperwork set aside and completed, I've never submitted it to be part of the, everybody's heard of the Daughters of the Revolution.
00:03:35
Speaker
not as many people hear of the sons of the revolution, but I have traced the genealogy back enough to be considered for sons of the Revolutionary War. What does that even mean? It seems like you should get like smoke everywhere you go. Direct descent, direct descendants, direct ties to the descendant that served during the
00:03:54
Speaker
a revolutionary war or the Civil War or so on. In this case, I had a ancestor who died, unfortunately, during the fallback, George Washington, General George Washington's fallback out of Connecticut and coming out of New York City. And so he died during that time, but he'd had enough kids at home at that point that he said the name lived on.
00:04:20
Speaker
That is crazy. I feel like I have so many more questions. That doesn't really get us to where we're at. We can have that for another time. That's right. Okay. So fifth grade you wanted to serve, but you didn't think you'd be a business owner. So talk about your service and then how you started to get this inclination that, Hey, I might want to be a business owner.
Military Service and Transition to Business
00:04:38
Speaker
Oh man. So, um,
00:04:41
Speaker
2002 happened you know 9-11 happened I knew I was a couple semesters in at DMACC at that point like every other kid right out of high school right and so you know 9-11 happened I by March of
00:04:58
Speaker
In 2002, I had enlisted, and so I was in the Marine Corps by then. So did that for my first four to five years. Never really went in thinking it would be a career. I was still just enlisted.
00:05:12
Speaker
and made it ultimately up to the rank of sergeant. I went in as an infantry guy, so I was right where I wanted to be. If you're gonna go into the military, you might as well do the military thing, right? And so did that, and then go figure, Department of Defense, Marine Corps, military, they upset you to the point where you're like, oh, I'm gonna go ahead and get out, and you know, enough of this. But during those initial five years, I had finished my bachelor's degree.
00:05:40
Speaker
And so that, so that was in March of 07, I got out of the Marine Corps. And then so, but recruiters start, they know all the right buttons to push, all the right things to say. Long story short, September of 07 found me in Quantico, Virginia, going through Officer Candidate School for the Marine Corps. So I went back in and luckily I had enough,
00:06:04
Speaker
time or not enough time out of service that I didn't have any stop loss on my service time. So I didn't lose anything. So I just kept on serving and picked up lieutenant captain and eventually got out as captain, but spent all of that time attached to the infantry as an intelligence officer, you know, deployments, different places around the world. My last deployment was in Afghanistan and I got injured. So that was a Medivac home.
00:06:34
Speaker
Couple years of that going through all that process ended up medically retiring me out at in 2014 So that was 12 years of service. Yeah, and then just got out that way and So during that time, so I had a lot of downtime between me getting Medivac home and then them deciding what they wanted to do with me Started thinking about
00:07:00
Speaker
church security
The Birth of Ostrander Defense: Security Training Inspiration
00:07:01
Speaker
of all things. I saw back at that time, religious places, places of worship were starting to get pinpointed, starting to get it kind of attacked a little bit. So.
00:07:10
Speaker
I thought, man, somebody needs to come in and really start teaching these people how to defend themselves instead of depending on police force instead of looking outside the box or this old mindset, oh, it's never going to happen here. It's not going to not going to happen to us. It is going to happen to you.
00:07:30
Speaker
And so, you know, I started thinking about that clear back in 2012 and thought, well, man, maybe there's something there. Maybe I can use my training and experiences from different cultures around the world to help bring all this together and do something for them.
00:07:48
Speaker
So, that was really my foundational idea for a business decision. I was very acute, very pinpoint, got out of the Marine Corps, ended up going to a place called Gunside Academy. It's the oldest privately owned gun fighting school in the nation. It was one of three.
00:08:11
Speaker
I think it's one of one now. The only one left, yeah, 42, 43 years old now. It's been going on for a long time. And I say gun fighting school because they don't teach you how to shoot there. They teach you how to fight with firearms. Wow. That's a whole other deal. That's a whole other deal. Different. Thank you very much. Different level of doing things. So went there as a student and continued going there as a student.
00:08:34
Speaker
if they like what they see or you might not even be aware of it, they're looking at you, evaluating you, you get an invitation to participate in an apprenticeship program. Well, I got invited to do the apprenticeship. They liked what they saw. He's a bad man. And if you saw his beard, you'd be like, yeah, I get it. It's just starting to come in. Ended up going through the apprenticeship program, been on the instructor cadre there since,
00:09:06
Speaker
2016 really so yeah, I've been doing that so I go down there from anywhere from a couple weeks to You know six weeks at a time down there and love it I have very much found that if I can't be the one on the line pulling the triggers now
00:09:22
Speaker
I like to be the guys or teaching the ones that know how to do that. So it's a little bit of everybody. You can have everyday civilians that nobody has ever handled a gun before all the way up to law enforcement, SWAT team guys, special forces guys looking for tune ups before they go back overseas, things like that. So we see down there the whole gamut of all that.
00:09:44
Speaker
So I've been doing that, started doing that. And then I thought, well, I can start bringing some of my experiences and my training and all of that back to Iowa, to the Midwest. And so all of that came into play. So I started taking all these different experiences, all this different training that I had and bringing it into the world of places of worship and religious organizations.
00:10:10
Speaker
And that's where I started. Ostrander defense was, you know, uh, church security and doing risk assessment and trying to help them figure out ways to manage and mitigate any risks that they had. And then if something should, the worst case scenario ever happened, how do we respond to this? How do we recover from that? And all of that sort of just kept
00:10:36
Speaker
snowballing over the, you know, since 2018, over the years, everything starts snowballing. Well, now that leads into more self-defense and mindset training. And now we start getting into active shooter instructor certifications and stop the bleed certifications and first aid CPR, AED, Red Cross certifications. I could see how it would go to that. It just kind of keeps snowballing and snowballing. And I knew,
00:11:04
Speaker
I thought, man, I kind of want to add firearms into that, and I want to eventually get to the point where I have my own place, so I have a place so I can offer training.
00:11:18
Speaker
Man, so that led to me to get my federal firearms license, which I never thought I would get. Never really wanted to dabble in that world at all. You know, that's a whole nother bottle of wax and I didn't want to get back involved with the federal entities. But here I am doing that. And then, you know, meanwhile, like any gun guy or any
00:11:40
Speaker
any enthusiast of anything i mean even if you go hiking you like to maintain your own gear you find what's things that start working for you yeah or even automotive stuff whatever you're into you start tweaking your own gear and equipment
00:11:54
Speaker
And so I start doing this for myself with firearms. Well, now that leads into gunsmithing. And now I'm doing work on customer guns. Well, good thing I have my federal firearms license, because it's still legal to do that. So here we are in this whole thing now. So now I don't only get my retirement compensation from the Marine Corps. Now I'm not just teaching down at Gunside Academy.
Business Expansion and Educational Endeavors
00:12:20
Speaker
Now I'm not just running my own business.
00:12:22
Speaker
On a whim, I decided to put in an application down here at Iowa Valley Community College. They weren't even hiring. And I thought, well, I'll just go in there and help them out as best I can. I like guns, and I like to teach things about firearms. So they have the only gunsmith program in Iowa. And it's one of the only ones in the Midwest area. And it's less than 10, probably right around six, for a residence associate's degree.
00:12:52
Speaker
gunsmithing program in the nation. Huh.
00:12:56
Speaker
2020 happens, bottom of the world falls out, but by the time they start bringing their staff and faculty back on, my predecessor didn't want to do it anymore, they offer it to me. Here you are. So here I am. Now I'm leading the Gunsmith program at Iowa Valley Community College. And so all of this then, again, comes back around full circle. Everything that I can starts funneling back into my business. What have I learned? What works? What doesn't work? What experiences do I have? All very synergistic though.
00:13:23
Speaker
Right. It all revolves around the same industry. Yes. Right. Which is brilliant. And it's something that I think a lot of business owners, especially starting out, have this big audacious goal to handle all of those and they don't do one right. Right. So I would love to hear how the retirement like from the military has helped you like catapult. Cause like, obviously it's cashflow. That's fairly consistent. Oh yeah. So that took care of everything. So there you go.
00:13:51
Speaker
man, that took all of my worries and everything off the table because the way the military is set up or even guys that are a hundred percent disabled through the VA, right? You get not only your compensation, you get insurance, full coverage insurance for yourself and for family members, all of your medical and dental benefits.
00:14:13
Speaker
I would say that that's one of the biggest reasons why people don't end up doing a business is because of that. Right. That's huge. And then being military perks, all of your dependents are have their education paid for up to the age of 26 for your children. And then for you and your spouse.
00:14:31
Speaker
That's huge. That's how I was able to help Morgan get her master's degree was through my benefits of that package. So that was the game changer for me. Once I had that 100% disability rating and got my full compensation from the VA and from the military and all that,
00:14:54
Speaker
that opened up so many doors, because now I can focus on what I was wanting to do, which was church security and small business risk assessment. And you weren't worried about the dollar bill. You were just like, I'm here to help. I'm here to help at that point. And then slowly things have just gotten better and better, and here we are where we are today.
00:15:13
Speaker
I want to talk about your wife. How long have you been married? Uh, since 2017. So we just hit our five year mark. Okay. Nice. What was her thought process through this whole transition? And maybe because she was supportive, it was like, okay, yeah, do what you want to do. So at the time we didn't have any kids. Okay. And so she was still working full time and she knew she wanted to work full time until she started having children and then transitioned to being at home. So she was at the harder job, the harder job would be in the mother. Yeah.
00:15:43
Speaker
So she was absolutely supportive of me. Instead, obviously, hey, don't stay home and do nothing. Well, now I have something to show for it, right? So that's what I did. So she was hard job for her to have to go to work. Her commute was horrible. It was walking across the street every single day, because we lived in a small town where she could just walk across the street every single day. But all that to be said, so she went to work every day.
00:16:10
Speaker
I was at home building this thing, which I wasn't really sure what it was going to be at this point. And you know, that, that was, I thought to be said, she was very supportive.
Overcoming Business Challenges and Evolving Models
00:16:21
Speaker
Good. What about pricing? Like when you first get into something like this, how do you price it for a church? Like your first one is like, I don't know how to do this. Yeah, right. Okay. So I really undersold myself. Yeah, everybody does. So
00:16:36
Speaker
I don't know what I'm worth, I don't know what this information that I have is worth. If I know it, obviously everybody else knows it, right? So, although we just heard all your credentials, it's like, no. Nobody knows. Well, now when you look back, but at the time you're like, nobody else knows what, everybody else knows what this is. Nobody's gonna pay for this. So you undersell yourself. I think my first job was, hey, I will build you a church security team for 750 bucks.
00:17:03
Speaker
Is that fair? And you're really nervous about it. You feel bad giving them the bill, right? And now it's grown over the years into where I can itemize it. You can do an a la carte with me, and this is how much it costs. This is how much it costs. Or if you want the all-inclusive package, here's yours. Take it or leave it. And one thing that I have learned
00:17:29
Speaker
is that if you go, because I have done this in North Carolina and I've talked to other churches in other states, and if you want me to come do this for you, you supplement my travel and my board. Absolutely. And I found out that's not uncommon. Not at all.
00:17:46
Speaker
And so for anybody who doesn't understand that, that's not uncommon. Don't be afraid to ask for them to, Hey, reimburse my travel and put me up in the hotel while I'm there working. And then you're going to pay me however much you do. Right. So that isn't the only thing you don't do is just, I want to pretty him for food. That's what you can maybe add next time.
00:18:05
Speaker
Yeah, so I learned that that wasn't uncommon because I learned of a company that was Similarly doing things like this and they were charging and this was this was my eye-opener for my pricing they were charging almost three times as much as I was and He had like you said his per diem and his his room and board was all set up Yeah on top of his fees right going
00:18:30
Speaker
I want Aaron to ask the next question, but before we get into this, I have a good friend at my church, Josh Dunwoody, and he does the safety team stuff. And he had somebody come in and they did like a live shooter training. And so this is how I found out about it. I was kind of greeting people at the beginning of the church, and this guy had like something on his face. And I was like, dude, hey, you all right? And he's like, yeah, we had this first perdition shooter training yesterday, and they had like
00:18:57
Speaker
like airsoft guns or whatever. And he was like, yeah, totally got taken out, but how cool is that? And then, so what happened is they get all the people from the safety training people there. And he ended up showing a picture. He's like, I wouldn't show this to a lot of people because they're in the church, right? Like it's kind of alarming to see somebody come in, but they had somebody, one of my friends, Sam, that's on the team was like, Hey, come in. He's like, do you want me to be trained or untrained? Cause he's, he was in the military. He was like, well, let's, let's go trained. Whoever the trainer was like, yeah, let's go trained. He took them all out.
00:19:28
Speaker
So then he's like, okay, go back, not trained and see how they go. And, uh, but what I was, I was actually really thankful that they would take enough time to think through this and not like think like, well, this will never happen to us. Let's, let's actually pretend it does. So you just react when it happens. That's what we're looking for. And so what you're doing is super valuable. Um, and, and I know that there's value there that people will pay for and they should, because this is real stuff.
00:19:56
Speaker
It is. It's very real. And unfortunately, most places you can't afford to ignore it anymore. And what I'm finding out, and I'll give one final piece and then Aaron can ask me his questions. It's gone beyond the church security now. Now I'm helping other small businesses. Like I've done a couple of the Chick-fil-A's.
00:20:18
Speaker
around town now so you know help them out with their active shooter training and so it's again it's branching out and doing things like that yeah but uh but yeah you can't afford not to think about it now yeah this is totally off topic kind of little bit but like did you guys just hear like the other day that uh someone shot a kfc person like at the drive-thru because they didn't have corn
00:20:41
Speaker
Sounds about right. It's getting more and more like, I guess the point is like, we need to get trained. People are, you know, yeah, stupid things are happening. Things are happening. And it's just more and more tension is building. It is just seems like more and more people are frustrated. Mental health is real. Yeah. And you just don't know what that can do to somebody. Right. And so it's never bad to have somebody who's trained. No, that's absolutely true. And, you know, and,
00:21:09
Speaker
We'll get into it a little bit, a little bit, just, we won't get into it a whole lot, but a little bit. So many people think, well, police force, police force, police force. And don't get me wrong. I love the police force. I'm not one of those people that are anti-cop at all. Hey, I have a lot of friends that are police. They are like the average in Des Moines right now is six minutes away. That's the average. That's right. Not the best. And that's not the worst.
00:21:34
Speaker
But six minutes is a long time. Your life can change in six minutes. Most of these incidences are over in 30 seconds or less. Yep. Right. And you have to make irrevocable decisions in 30 seconds or less. And so six minutes is huge.
00:21:50
Speaker
And it's not always fair. So these guys, these cops, they're out there every single day. And I run into this a lot and it's totally fair to them. Five, six days a week, they're cops, 12 hour shifts. When they go to church, they don't want to deal with that anymore. They want to shut off and they should be allowed to shut off. And so I am very much a firm believer in that a lot of people need to start taking more responsibility for their personal protection, whatever that looks like.
00:22:14
Speaker
But, um, but yeah, so all that to be said, cause I know that's the number one thing. So I said, well, that's what we have police force for. That's great, but that's not really fair. Right. And six minutes is a long time. Right. So let's say they're the best and it's three and a half. Right. Still like the average instance is 30 seconds.
00:22:32
Speaker
And then we go one step further and we hire cops on hand to be there in person all the time. If they don't go to the church, they really don't know who's supposed to be there, who's not supposed to be there. If I come up to you and you're law enforcement and you're not really there, hey, where do I take my child for nursery? Well, I don't know. There's a whole different dynamic. There's a whole different personal relationship there. Well, like you said, you greet people at church, right?
00:23:01
Speaker
People that aren't from the church don't really know how to do that. And so that is a personal connection that you may not get if you hire a professional. I'm not saying that don't hire a professional. That's not what I'm saying. It's just that's some other things to think about. Absolutely. So anyway.
00:23:16
Speaker
Well, to draw back, I got a question here.
Balancing Multiple Roles and Future Aspirations
00:23:19
Speaker
I know I talked to a lot of entrepreneurs, and we usually tend to have a very free mind, and just can go off on whatever. Sometimes that's why we fail, right? Because we can't concentrate. But for you, having all these different avenues that you're starting to make money for, and when you started, how are you organizing that? And then when you started tackling this, putting your application into being an instructor at a college,
00:23:44
Speaker
you're putting all these little, starting all these little fires and now that they've all taken off. How are you managing all that? It's a good question. I'll let you know when I figure that out. Tell me more. I've got like three full-time jobs going right now. So when I come home and I'm getting better at it, I try to allot so much time. So I obviously have to give so much time to the college because that's what they demand for their money. When I am down in Arizona,
00:24:11
Speaker
I give them all of my time because that's what they want for their money. So I have to find, unfortunately sometimes it's afternoons, evenings, weekends, that I can fit my personal business stuff into. Or like right now we're going into the holiday season so the school just shut down today
00:24:32
Speaker
for Christmas break. Well, now is my time to get all of the end of year business taxes done and everything else. I just have to go back in. As long as I do it at least once a month and maintain my finances and the online software, then it's fairly simple, right? That's just one aspect of it. Fielding emails, I've gotten better at that because of this horrible little device in my hands. You know, if I could go back to a dumb phone,
00:25:00
Speaker
And just something that flips off or something, I would in a heartbeat. But that thing has become very much a lifeblood for small businesses. Serving others. Absolutely. So you got to be in contact all the time. And I can't afford to not answer a call that I don't know or a phone number that I don't recognize.
00:25:16
Speaker
you know, anybody and everybody's a business. So yeah, to juggle all of that has been a little bit of a stretch on my time. And there have been times where I don't get the traditional weekend because I have to kind of squirrel myself away in my office to work on business related stuff. And then how I
00:25:41
Speaker
schedule, so if somebody wants training or something like that, or church wants training, I have to schedule that on a weekend, which works because most people don't have, or only have weekends off anyway to do things. But I have to get creative with the scheduling for my business right now. And I've always promised myself that if I start making more at my business than anything else,
00:26:06
Speaker
then I'm going to just focus on that. I will turn down the others. Again, I can do that because I have my retirement, I have my benefits. So I can, if I have to make that decision, I can turn around and just focus on my business and when that time comes. And that's what I want ultimately to happen. I don't want to be,
00:26:22
Speaker
going in a hundred different directions for the rest of the world. Have you had to build any software? Because in our line of work, there's so many companies out there that offer us organization and things like that on top of things, but you're in a very small niche thing. Before you enter that, how many employees do you have? Or is it just me? And then anytime I have to do any specialized training, I have a
00:26:47
Speaker
a couple of people that I can go to for like just 1099 stuff. So I can contract them out. Sure. Okay. All right. Answer the question. Sorry. So for organization like softwares or like, or like how do you track who you've worked with and then, you know, who you're going to work with and like your service models and you're keeping on top of everything that you promised them.
00:27:08
Speaker
So like you said, it's very small niche and because it is small niche and I have a lot of repeat customers, I usually, it's very, it's easier than it seems. It's not like your traditional business where I am working with this person and then I'm look, you know, recruiting for the next customer and for the next customer. I have gotten enough now or enough,
00:27:31
Speaker
Enough of a name for myself now with my business that I either have a lot of repeat customers or Especially with like say firearm sales Yeah, you are listed on a lot of these different websites that you can order firearms from but you can't just ship them through the mail, right? you can't you they got to go through a
00:27:48
Speaker
an FFL dealer in order for them to do all the proper chance for paperwork in the background checks and so on and so forth. So I can be listed on all these websites and then those companies will send me if they say have a customer buy something they will send them to me and then that's how I get again my little piece of the pie so to speak is because now these people are coming to me to do all the legal part of the business they have to do.
00:28:12
Speaker
So that has been helpful a lot. I would like to at some point get into having my own website. That's one thing that I have not done yet. Really? I do not have my own website. That's surprising to me. I have so far have been 100% social media. And referrals. And referrals. That's also really impressive. 100% social media and I feel like I'm starting to
00:28:38
Speaker
max out that growth a little bit there on the social media side of things. There's always more to grow numbers wise, oh I got so many followers. But I kind of feel like I'm starting to max out my outreach on social media and that's my next step. I need to get into the website world of things.
Marketing Challenges and Business Growth Goals
00:28:58
Speaker
Unfortunately, uh, like you and I were talking earlier before we started recording, not everybody wants to work with you and help you. People want your money. And then they, you know, I've had people tell me until, and this was when I was first starting out, you know,
00:29:15
Speaker
Hey, when you start grossing 30,000 in profit minimum, then you come back and we'll help you build a website. I know. Well, how do I do that without your help? Right. And you know, and at the time when you're first starting out, you're going 30K gross. I'll never get there. I'll never get there. Like when we start in this business, everybody comes to you like, yeah, well, all these awesome things you can get to help you grow your projects. Awesome.
00:29:41
Speaker
Premium dollar. How am I gonna get there? How do I get there? So I have to be successful to get successful. Right, exactly. And there's a lot of that with other businesses as well. You want our support, you buy this much of our product, and it's like...
00:29:57
Speaker
150, 200K, there ain't no way I can move that much product, right? And do it ethically, then I feel like I'm gonna sleep well at night. And then in this business, you gotta stay on the up and up. Absolutely, it's one of the more regulated businesses, as it should be. Thankfully. So you have to jump through all these extra hoops, but you're like, whoa.
00:30:27
Speaker
So it's got its own unique challenges, but you know, I'm still here and doing it, you know, and I always thought, well, man, if I, if this doesn't work out, you know, I'll give it a few years, no problem, no harm, no foul. And then, you know, but here I am and I'm still going. All right. So give me your ultimate goal was Ostrander defense. Like what is the ideal,
00:30:51
Speaker
place for Matt, for your business, like what would you be doing every day? Let's talk. If I had to do that every single day, I don't ever want to lose the FaceTime with my customers. I absolutely like being there. Good teaching. Good. Right. So what I would like it to see is be 100%
00:31:09
Speaker
sustainable and that I not only can provide for myself and maintain a standard of living that I've come accustomed to, but I can drop off. That beard doesn't grow itself. No, the beard, don't take care of itself, right? But also to be able to finance everything and then to continue to grow. And that's ultimately where I would like to see the business go. I'd like to have all the other stuff drop off within a reason, and then just have my own business.
00:31:37
Speaker
That's really good. And here's why I say, cause a lot of people are probably going to be listening to this podcast cause they don't know Phillip or Aaron, right? And uncommon wealth partners like who are these people and like just not to make a commercial at us, but like we want to get people in a place where they are thriving, where every day they go up, wake up and get excited about what they do. Right. We also want to get you paid for that. And if you could do that and get paid for what you're passionate about, when would you want to stop doing that?
00:32:02
Speaker
The answer is never. Right. And so let's stop thinking about having this big account that we're trying to build up to, but let's start trying to really focus on what you're excited about. And then let's start using your skills and gifts to get you there. And there's times where you're just going to have to take nights and weekends and figure it out. Right. But it seems like you're starting to turn a corner of like, what is it, what is it that I really want to do? And was it that just kind of doing it for the cashflow?
00:32:26
Speaker
Right. And how can I maybe even hire people to then have a business like this is where you need to get where you could be sitting in Hawaii on the beach. Right. Your wife, your wife's going to hear this and be like, yeah, Matt, I want that. And then you know, your business is still growing, still moving behind you. But here's the deal. At the end of the day, you're going to get done out of that beach, fly home and you can't wait to jump back in. Right. Right. That's where you want to try to get. And I think that's, you're getting closer to that. I'm getting closer to that.
00:32:53
Speaker
I'm not there yet, but absolutely. I wouldn't mind taking on employees. I wouldn't mind expanding. I mean, that's why we're here, right? Is to continue to do this. Serve others. Right. Serve others and, you know, make a living at it. Unfortunately, we all have to make a living. So yeah, we have to be a little bit selfish and say, yeah, we want to make a living at it too. Right. And I want to make a comfortable living at it. Yeah.
00:33:11
Speaker
And honestly, like, I don't think that's bad. I feel like people who pay for your services value it even more than like, it's $750. Like, no, the price has changed. Things have changed a lot. And people are okay paying it. And like, oh yeah, you want a stipend? You want me to fly you here? Like, we'll love it. Like, we just appreciate the expertise that you have. So good for you. Yep. Yeah. You're not paying, customers aren't just paying for a product. They're paying for your knowledge.
00:33:37
Speaker
and your skills and your abilities. How much is that valued? Like that is, I have a stupid, stupid story. So Matt, hang with me, Aaron, hang with me. So there was a gentleman, this is a fake story, but whatever. Here we go. Is it the mechanic story? No, it's a coffee shop. Somebody sees somebody on the corner of his eye and he's drawing on a napkin. Okay. And
00:33:57
Speaker
he's like, holy cow, that's amazing. And he goes up to the guys like, Hey, like, can I have that? And the guy's like, yeah, I'll sell it to you. $10,000. And the guy's like, are you freaking kidding me? Like, there's no way I'm going to pay you $10,000 for a piece of napkin. He's like, let me tell you how many hours it took for this napkin. Like the expertise and the stuff I had to master to get this napkin out. It's $10,000. The guy's like, I'll never pay that because that's fine.
00:34:23
Speaker
He goes back to his business. The guy ends up grabbing his coffee, takes a piece of paper, throws it away. Here's the point, right? It was Picasso, right? Whoever it is, just put the thing. But that person has developed a life to do an expertise on something.
00:34:38
Speaker
and there's value there. Whether or not this person saw it or not, but eventually, if he would've got that, let's say, this is a dumb example, but if he would've bought it, it probably would've been worth 25,000 or even higher, because it was this individual who put in time and effort to hone his craft into that napkin. That's what you're doing, every church you're doing is like, hey, I've got a lot of expertise that I'm gonna dumb down to your level to understand, to basically make you safer, invaluable. But here's the price that I have today.
00:35:07
Speaker
Yep. And here we were at, you know, just like anything else, whether it's a pilot or anything else, you don't want to pay, you know, minimal dollar for you, that pilot, find that plane. That's a great example. Like, all right, here's the airline ticket price. If you want a person that's only done two of these, right? $65 or here's one 382. You'd be like 382 all day long.
00:35:35
Speaker
You've told your whole story here like through the military coming up going on Yeah, you've learned so you had so many opportunities to learn about yourself and I really dig deeper like now So this is I think probably be hard for you just because like you've had so much impactful stuff before you started a company But now that you've started a company because it's another challenges of different challenges. Mm-hmm What do you think that you've really learned about yourself through this process?
00:36:04
Speaker
that you can do it that you do have something that is meaningful and worthwhile to somebody else that you do have something to offer now I don't mean that I was depressed and low self-esteem or anything like that but you know the fact that
00:36:22
Speaker
You know, because our parents generations, they didn't, they went to work for somebody else. They more and more people today of our generation are building businesses going, why am I going to work for somebody else? And so, but you have to cross that hurdle. Why is somebody going to pay me? What am I worth? You know, I, I know that if I go, you know, into the fast food industry, I'm worth $15 an hour, right?
00:36:47
Speaker
If I go get a degree, then I might be worth $40,000 a year, maybe, right? Or if I go work in some other job outside, then maybe I'm worth, I don't know, $25, $30 an hour, but now I'm opening my own business. What am I worth? Can I do this? Why is somebody gonna pay me? Well that, in turn, I've learned, you know what? There's not that many people like me in the world. There's not that many people that,
00:37:15
Speaker
have the skill sets or the experiences. In fact, nobody else in the world besides me has the experiences that I have to the exact thing. And so how, you know, the fact that I can monetize that, the fact that I can market that and make some capital on that, that's what I've learned that, you know what, people are actually willing to listen to what I have to say. People are actually willing to hear what I have to hear, see what I have to show them, and that,
00:37:43
Speaker
by following your skills and abilities and your interests and your hobbies and turning it into something like this, then you can, you're never gonna go to work. And you can do it. That's the biggest hurdle that I had was,
00:37:59
Speaker
Am I just doing this for nothing? Am I just throwing money, good money after bad? And well, I don't think so anymore. Now we know that we have something that's marketable. There's always that time though of like, oh gosh, what are we doing here? It's funny. I'm sorry, I gotta say this. I'm learning so much more now. Here, we're family and I still am like, I didn't know all this about you. It's so good.
00:38:27
Speaker
Really, we wanted to break it down into numbers. There's probably a very, very small percentage of people in the world who can even do what you do, because to have the skill set and the knowledge and the experience that you've had, percentage-wise, there's a little bit more there, right? Because people can probably share that. But then what really gets it down to like a 1% or even less
00:38:48
Speaker
And then be able to talk to people, you know, connect with people. Good bedside manager, right? Yeah, because teaching is harder. Teaching is very hard. Like, so, I mean, I remember being in college as an athlete, my coach was like, teach your series. I was like, okay. And then I'm like, I don't know how you just do it. I don't know. Right. Right.
00:39:05
Speaker
You just do it. Yeah, teaching someone's a whole nother level. Like, you are the only person, like you said, I love that line, by the way, I'm the only person that knows my experience. And like, it's me, I'm the only one in the world. And like, that is 100% accurate. I love what you just said about like, our parents' generation, I've seen this too, so I'm edifying, our parents' generation kind of got sold the bill of goods of like 401ks, this is amazing, work here for 25 years. I'm not saying that's bad, but what I will say is,
00:39:32
Speaker
all those people don't have as much in their 401k as they once thought they would. Yeah. When they left. Okay. But you know, it's interesting.
Generational Perspectives and the Calling of Security Work
00:39:39
Speaker
The generation that's more like us, which is entrepreneurial, I see is our grandparents. Yes. It like switched a generation. Like I would love to have a conversation with my grandfather who owned a mobile home park of all places. Right. Right. And like,
00:39:53
Speaker
how did that go down? Like, how did you get the loan? What was grandma thinking? Did she ball her eyes out when you put your name on that dotted line? You know, all these things like, man, it's just really cool to see our generation starting to understand like, wait, I have more value than what this company says that my worth is. Right. And it's powerful. And it is also, we could have flexibility. Now there's risk involved. Absolutely. But the flexibility to be able to build something and create something. Right. I feel like you're in your wheelhouse. So.
00:40:21
Speaker
Yeah. Oh yeah. I love it. And I, and you know, I like to see something with my name on the, on the, on the side of the building, you know, not that I have a building, I don't have a building yet, but you know, I have my own logo. And so that's, you know, that's kind of cool that I have that. And you're serving people. I think this is where I will go back to from the, from a young age, you knew that you wanted to serve people. You're not serving like maybe you thought you would, but you sure are serving. Right.
00:40:49
Speaker
impacting others. And to put it into, since we've focused a lot on church security, that is one thing that I've always tried to, when you have a board or a church board, or you have some pastoral staff that aren't quite sure about it, look, this is a ministry or this is a calling like anything else. In fact, you gotta have the right people in the right place at the right time, otherwise it's all for naught.
00:41:13
Speaker
Right. And so it kind of goes in with what we were saying earlier, you know, in order, if you're going to do something for a job, a quote unquote job that, uh, you know, that, but you love doing it, it's not going to be a job. Right. It's a passion. It's a calling. It is right. Okay. How do our listeners hear more about you, the company, tell us how we can get ahold of you if they needed to.
00:41:35
Speaker
Okay. If they needed to, um, they could reach out to me. I can give out my personal cell phone. That's fine. It's a 5 1 5 9 7 1 0 0 2 7. Ostrander defense O S T R A N D E R defense D E F E N S E at gmail.com. You can find me on Instagram. You can find me on Facebook. You can find me on most social media. Yeah. And maybe by the time this airs, you'll have a website.
00:42:00
Speaker
You never know, buddy. I own the .com, the .org, and the .net for all three. I own for Ostrander Defense. And that, if I have one thing for your listeners to think and bear in mind, if you're going to copyright or trademark a name, okay, that's all public information. And there are people out there
00:42:22
Speaker
Not necessarily in the United States, but there are people out there that will get this list of all the new companies and businesses and trademarks and copyright material, and they will go in and they will buy all the domains. Dot coms, dot nets, dot orgs, everything. And so then you end up like me who wanted OstranderDefense.com, but somebody somewhere overseas had it and they're trying to Shanghai me for a thousand dollars just for the permissions for my own name. So did you pay it?
00:42:52
Speaker
No. Oh, how did you get it? I waited and I waited and I waited like over 18 months until the last time that I got in there and I checked with some different companies and it was down below $500 for to buy the domain rights. And that's when I picked it up. Yeah. I just waited it out. That's fascinating.
00:43:11
Speaker
So if I had any one tip, you know, buy it before you go and yep, put it in, put it out in public. Yep, it's good. And did we want to talk LLCs or no? Yeah, do it buddy. Yeah, let's go. Well, I don't want to burn up too much of your time. So for me, I found that it was best to do a LLC, but I tax it as a sole proprietorship.
00:43:31
Speaker
So you can do both. So a lot of people do not know you can do both. And you can. And so that was a huge thing that I learned. And so that was one of the big things that I learned coming through this whole process was, and you want to, if you're going to start your own business, you absolutely want to protect yourself. Have your business entity be separate from your personal entity. You do not want to put yourself out there on the line like that. But also if you're small enough and you're not really ready to jump up into the full corporation world,
00:44:01
Speaker
you have those options. You can go in and tax it as a sole proprietorship. So that's really cool. Good piece of information. Matt, thank you so much for your time. Thank you for your service and keep serving other people because it's important and you're doing God's work and you're also getting paid for it. So you're winning great guests on the show. You're doing your own uncommon life, uncommon path. So thank you for listening to uncommon wealth podcast. Thank you for being on brother. Thanks for having me. Yeah. Thank you for having me. Until next time, go be uncommon. Thanks for listening. Thank you.
00:44:33
Speaker
That's all for this episode, brought to you by Uncommon Wealth Partners. Be sure to visit uncommonwealth.com to learn more about our services. Don't miss an episode as we introduce you to inspiring people who are actively pursuing an uncommon life.