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Persistence Behind the Breakthrough with Michael Pierce · Unstoppable Success Podcast

• 0:22
  Jaclyn Strominger: Hello, everybody, and welcome to another amazing episode of the Unstoppable Success Podcast.
• 0:28
  Jaclyn Strominger: I'm your host, Jaclyn Strominger.
• 0:30
  Jaclyn Strominger: And on this podcast, we hear from amazing professionals who share their leadership insights, success strategies, and the real stories behind how they have created unstoppable success in their business and in life.
• 0:45
  Jaclyn Strominger: And today's guest has built his career by recognizing opportunities others overlooked and having the courage to go all in.
• 0:55
  Jaclyn Strominger: So Michael Pierce is a film producer, serial investor, entrepreneur, and CEO, and father.
• 1:01
  Jaclyn Strominger: He's producing and financing credits include The Cooler, Running Scared, Flawless.
• 1:07
  Jaclyn Strominger: He has he was also an early investor in companies including Thrive Market, Cameo, and Cargomatic.
• 1:14
  Jaclyn Strominger: That sounds like it should be like an inventing machine, and you'll have to tell me about that.
• 1:18
  Jaclyn Strominger: Today, Michael is the founder and CEO of American Gun Owners, where he is working to simplify and rebuild experience for first-time firearm virus.
• 1:29
  Jaclyn Strominger: So important.
• 1:30
  Jaclyn Strominger: And across Hollywood venture investing in entrepreneurship, the thread running through Michael's story is clear.
• 1:35
  Jaclyn Strominger: Find the opportunity everywhere.
• 1:37
  Jaclyn Strominger: Find the opportunity everyone else is sleeping on and commit to the vision and figure out the rest along the way.
• 1:45
  Jaclyn Strominger: So get ready for a fascinating conversation about calculated risk, reinvention, leadership in pursuing ideas bigger than your comfort zone.
• 1:54
  Jaclyn Strominger: So welcome to the show, Michael.
• 1:58
  Michael Pierce: Thank you so much, Jaclyn.
• 1:59
  Michael Pierce: So great to be here.
• 2:00
  Michael Pierce: Thanks for having me.
• 2:01
  Jaclyn Strominger: It is such a pleasure.
• 2:02
  Jaclyn Strominger: Okay.
• 2:02
  Jaclyn Strominger: So I kind of want to kind of just like jump in.
• 2:05
  Jaclyn Strominger: So you have built your life finding the opportunity everyone else is sleeping on and having that courage to go all in.
• 2:11
  Jaclyn Strominger: I'm really curious where did that instinct come from?
• 2:15
  Michael Pierce: You know, I get asked that a lot, and I don't even know what the right answer is, but I'll give you a number of possibilities.
• 2:21
  Michael Pierce: Sometimes I feel it's it's kind of genetic because my father was an entrepreneur and he had a similar trajectory.
• 2:28
  Michael Pierce: And I was old enough to kind of see him build a company from nothing.
• 2:33
  Michael Pierce: With I didn't see the genesis of the idea because I was too small, but when I kind of was in the more formative years, I kind of saw his vision and he would talk about it a lot.
• 2:43
  Michael Pierce: And I watched, you know, 10 or 15 years of him realizing this vision and and I got a back kind of a front seat view on what it took.
• 2:51
  Michael Pierce: I traveled a lot with my dad, and I was privy to board meetings and meetings with investment bankers and marketing people and headhunters at an age where most kids were probably not doing that.
• 3:03
  Michael Pierce: And some some sometimes I think that was enormously helpful now, later in life, but at the time it was somewhat dysfunctional.
• 3:12
  Michael Pierce: I found myself not assimilated.
• 3:15
  Jaclyn Strominger: Sitting in the boardroom, you know, yeah, iPhone or anything like that to play with then, maybe.
• 3:23
  Michael Pierce: I could have been, you know, doing more proverbial things with my peers, but I had I had kind of this example of a father in front of me like, listen, you're gonna travel with me to New York.
• 3:32
  Michael Pierce: I think it's important that you see things.
• 3:34
  Michael Pierce: And at that time, I was a teenager, I thought that's actually interesting.
• 3:37
  Michael Pierce: Whereas my my friends might have been doing something else.
• 3:40
  Michael Pierce: I was just, I thought it was just lucky.
• 3:41
  Michael Pierce: So I absorbed as much as I could.
• 3:43
  Michael Pierce: So maybe, maybe that's one answer.
• 3:45
  Michael Pierce: And I think also having worked a few jobs when I was younger, some some jobs that were somewhat tedious, like every every young person should do, and working for other people, kind of in it was ingrained in me that I wanted to be my own boss one day.
• 4:03
  Michael Pierce: I guess it's a rebellious streak I may have had or still have.
• 4:07
  Michael Pierce: And some people are just more inclined to want to go out on their own and take chances and try to bring an opportunity to to fruition.
• 4:16
  Michael Pierce: And it doesn't seem that as difficult for me as I know some people struggle with that direction.
• 4:21
  Michael Pierce: For me, it felt like a more natural path.
• 4:23
  Michael Pierce: Again, maybe that's just how I'm wired.
• 4:25
  Michael Pierce: So I don't know what the right answer is, but that's kind of my answer.
• 4:28
  Jaclyn Strominger: Yeah, no, I it's great.
• 4:29
  Jaclyn Strominger: It's I I love it.
• 4:30
  Jaclyn Strominger: But and one of the things, as you're talking, the thing that I that you know that I'm thinking about is, you know, we you know, we see what our parents are doing, right?
• 4:40
  Jaclyn Strominger: And but one of the things that you said, you know, your dad would share his vision, right?
• 4:44
  Jaclyn Strominger: So, and that is such a quintessential part of leadership and doing something and going after something.
• 4:50
  Jaclyn Strominger: So you it is, it was built into almost like what you were doing because he he's he shared vision and maybe acted, right?
• 4:59
  Jaclyn Strominger: Share, act, and so you're like, ooh, you know, and I don't, you know, maybe you saw some of the things that didn't go great, but it was so you see that and it does, it becomes ingrained in you.
• 5:11
  Michael Pierce: And it certainly wasn't a direct line from seeing his vision and and then me realizing mine in my life.
• 5:16
  Michael Pierce: I've got to be honest with you.
• 5:18
  Michael Pierce: So he died suddenly of a heart attack when I was 20, 23.
• 5:21
  Michael Pierce: I was in my second year of law school the day before my final exams, and I got the phone call from my mother, obviously, a phone call never forget.
• 5:29
  Michael Pierce: And that set my life on a completely different path.
• 5:33
  Michael Pierce: So that's why I moved to Hollywood and said, you know what, I've always wanted to be a film producer, and that is very far-fetched from where I grew up.
• 5:41
  Michael Pierce: That was almost like people saying, Now, well, I'm going to call, I'm gonna colonize Mars.
• 5:45
  Michael Pierce: You're like, okay, it's possible there's a vision there.
• 5:50
  Michael Pierce: All right, but at that point it was almost that way for me.
• 5:54
  Michael Pierce: Sorry, I'm getting distracted here from someone in my office.
• 6:00
  Jaclyn Strominger: That's okay, that's right.
• 6:01
  Jaclyn Strominger: So, so when you decided you're so I'm assuming you didn't take the bar exam.
• 6:08
  Michael Pierce: I did not.
• 6:09
  Michael Pierce: So I finished my degree and then said I'm moving to Hollywood and I'm gonna be a film producer.
• 6:15
  Jaclyn Strominger: And uh did you know anything about film producing?
• 6:19
  Michael Pierce: No, I knew absolutely nothing, but I started reading books.
• 6:22
  unknown: Oh okay.
• 6:23
  Michael Pierce: So kind of an autodidact, I guess.
• 6:25
  Michael Pierce: I started reading.
• 6:26
  Michael Pierce: I did have a law degree, but I didn't have you know any other formal training, and I studied a lot of media law, but I just kind of seemed somewhat logical to me on how you go about doing this, but it took many years of struggle to have any even small measure of success.
• 6:42
  Michael Pierce: I have to be be clear on that.
• 6:44
  Michael Pierce: It was a not an easy path.
• 6:47
  Jaclyn Strominger: Yeah, so you didn't basically land in Hollywood and you know, like pull up to the studio and be like, all right, I'm here to produce.
• 6:54
  Michael Pierce: Yeah, they would laugh at that.
• 6:55
  Michael Pierce: They're like, okay, pal, get in line at the mail room where there's 500 applicants for 10 spots to be in the mail room, a lot of whom have law degrees, just like you.
• 7:05
  Michael Pierce: That's what I learned.
• 7:07
  Michael Pierce: That's that's a true story.
• 7:09
  Michael Pierce: It's a very difficult business.
• 7:11
  Michael Pierce: This changed a lot now.
• 7:12
  Michael Pierce: When I started, actually, it was it's different than it is now, and now it's so corporatized, owned by you know multi-billion dollar multinational corporations.
• 7:21
  Michael Pierce: Back then it was actually more of a kind of a pure art form.
• 7:26
  Jaclyn Strominger: I would think, I would think it's gonna be.
• 7:28
  Jaclyn Strominger: When I think about producing, all I think is someone's putting in some money, and that's what you got.
• 7:33
  Michael Pierce: Yeah, if only it was that easy.
• 7:35
  Michael Pierce: It's actually more that way now, just because you know it's it's it's run so much more corporate, it's like a big business.
• 7:41
  Michael Pierce: So people basically analyze the story and see if it has marketing potential.
• 7:46
  Michael Pierce: And does it click all the quadrants on the marketing plan, like four quadrants, uh studio marketing people like to say?
• 7:53
  Michael Pierce: And if it does all this, then only then will they think about kind of the creative is secondary to the commercial prospects.
• 8:00
  Michael Pierce: And that wasn't the way it was when I started, kind of in the mid-90s, late 90s, 2000, where it was like, oh, this is a really great story, and let's see if we can tell it in a very creative way.
• 8:09
  Michael Pierce: And the people who were in charge of studios were famous for taking enormous gambles on just a hunch and on an actor and a story that's never been told.
• 8:18
  Michael Pierce: And you saw, I think, a golden age of cinema that's different now.
• 8:23
  Michael Pierce: Now everything is based on you know pre-existing IP where it's a safe bet.
• 8:27
  Michael Pierce: There's already been five uh five iterations of this movie.
• 8:31
  Michael Pierce: Now the sixth one is based on all the previous five.
• 8:34
  Michael Pierce: So we know we have a built-in audience, and it's not such a risk for the studio, and you get a lot of derivative work, in my opinion.
• 8:42
  Jaclyn Strominger: So right, yeah, and no, I feel like the movies, yeah, and as you're well, I should say, as you're speaking, I'm thinking this is the reason why I think I like so many more of the older movies because there's a true story behind it, you know.
• 8:55
  Jaclyn Strominger: And I when I say older, I I mean I was just watching like a movie from 2004, you know, 19, like you know, 19, you know, 99, like the older, I mean, I'm dating myself here, but they're they just seem to have more, they were original.
• 9:16
  Michael Pierce: Well, that's that's that's our more our generation, right?
• 9:20
  Michael Pierce: And that's kind of what I'm saying.
• 9:22
  Michael Pierce: If you talk to young people now, though, you know, they don't necessarily make movies for people like you and I anymore, unfortunately, especially not theatrical-driven movies, they're very much special effect driven or based on a comic book, or you know, a best-selling series of books, or something like that, or they're also not necessarily as story-driven as they are, more visual and appealing to people who have grown up playing video games their whole life, or based on a video game.
• 9:51
  Michael Pierce: You know, that's it's different, unless you go to a smaller budget independent film.
• 9:54
  Michael Pierce: And those are very difficult for anyone to see now because those movies don't get big theatrical releases anymore.
• 10:01
  Jaclyn Strominger: Right.
• 10:01
  Jaclyn Strominger: They don't get that.
• 10:02
  Jaclyn Strominger: So part of me is thinking to myself, because I just I listened to podcasts.
• 10:06
  Jaclyn Strominger: Um, if you've ever listened to Acquired, it's a great podcast.
• 10:11
  Jaclyn Strominger: I'll put a link to this, but they did a two-part episode on Disney and the Disney flywheel.
• 10:16
  Jaclyn Strominger: And so as you're talking, part of me is also just thinking, like back, you know, the producing set is like, okay, what do you like how many parts of that wheel can we monetize from it?
• 10:25
  Jaclyn Strominger: So you know, right?
• 10:27
  Jaclyn Strominger: So, you know, so you we need to do the release, the second release, the how many, you know, what is the um swag that we can, you know, produce from it.
• 10:37
  Jaclyn Strominger: So it needs to have all these additional pieces, where before it was a movie.
• 10:42
  Jaclyn Strominger: It, you know, I mean, like we we it was like a beautiful story that was coming out, and you were looking at the box office hits because it would people would go to the movie theaters, and and that's that's so fragmented now, too.
• 10:55
  Michael Pierce: Yeah, it's all true.
• 10:56
  Michael Pierce: And I just happened to get lucky that the first movie I made was a big hit, or I probably wouldn't have been making any more movies to be candid with you.
• 11:03
  Jaclyn Strominger: So, what was the first movie?
• 11:04
  Michael Pierce: That was The Cooler with Alec Baldwin and William H.
• 11:07
  Michael Pierce: Macy, and it it did really well for Lionsgate.
• 11:10
  Michael Pierce: Lionsgate was a small distributor back then, and this was a huge hit for them.
• 11:14
  Michael Pierce: It was a very small movie and it had a fairly modest theatrical release.
• 11:19
  Michael Pierce: It did fairly well, and then had a huge video recruitment that it made tens of millions of dollars in profit for the studio.
• 11:28
  Michael Pierce: And that allowed me to make a ton of other movies because once you have a hit back then, at least it was different.
• 11:36
  Michael Pierce: It was like, okay, what do you want to do next?
• 11:38
  Michael Pierce: And I had a good producing partner, a great director, writer, director.
• 11:41
  Michael Pierce: And so we got to make a whole bunch of movies, and then I was lucky I got to kind of go along that journey for 15 years.
• 11:47
  Michael Pierce: I made I make nine or 10 movies, I made a lot of movies.
• 11:50
  Jaclyn Strominger: Wow, that's okay.
• 11:51
  Jaclyn Strominger: So I'm just kind of curious.
• 11:52
  Jaclyn Strominger: So so what was like what was the one thing that almost like that helped you get that movie?
• 11:58
  Jaclyn Strominger: Like, was it the you know, was it the persistence?
• 12:01
  Jaclyn Strominger: The was it the you know, standing in front of somebody with like a bag of donuts or something, you know?
• 12:06
  Michael Pierce: That's funny.
• 12:07
  Michael Pierce: You just you just read my mind, Jaclyn.
• 12:09
  Michael Pierce: That was the word that was gonna come to mind, and I think that word I will use many times during this podcast.
• 12:14
  Michael Pierce: If there's one bit of information I wish I had been told earlier in life, is persistence, perseverance.
• 12:24
  Michael Pierce: I basically try to get that movie made for three years.
• 12:29
  Michael Pierce: I sent it to hundreds of people, my my partner and my team and I, and everybody passed.
• 12:35
  Michael Pierce: And they passed for a myriad of different reasons.
• 12:38
  Michael Pierce: Oh, it's a is it a comedy or is it a drama?
• 12:40
  Michael Pierce: Is it a dramedy?
• 12:41
  Michael Pierce: It fits between two genres, and I like it, but I don't know how to make it, I don't know how to market it.
• 12:46
  Michael Pierce: No, pass, pass, pass, pass, pass, pass.
• 12:48
  Michael Pierce: And then finally, you know, one one day, the the story I've read about these stories, but it happened to me.
• 12:56
  Michael Pierce: I had given up.
• 12:57
  Michael Pierce: I literally was like, okay, I gave it a solid try.
• 13:00
  Michael Pierce: Three years of trying to get a movie made.
• 13:02
  Michael Pierce: I gotta make a living.
• 13:03
  Michael Pierce: I can only trade stocks for so long here on the side, it's a side hustle.
• 13:07
  Michael Pierce: And I left Hollywood and I went to central, I went to South America with my friend to hike in the jungles of Ecuador with no, there were no cell phones, then there was no electricity.
• 13:18
  Michael Pierce: Went with some jungle tribe for like three weeks.
• 13:20
  Michael Pierce: I'm like, wow, this is really going out there.
• 13:22
  Michael Pierce: Got in by canoe, motorized canoe.
• 13:25
  Michael Pierce: And then I went after that's a heavy and of itself, but I'm just yeah, not that much happened actually down there, but it was uh interesting.
• 13:31
  Michael Pierce: I came back three weeks later and there was a message on my answering machine, because that's what we all had, saying, Yeah, I want to talk to you about this project you had, the cooler.
• 13:40
  Michael Pierce: I'm like, oh wow, someone actually is interested in making the movie.
• 13:44
  Michael Pierce: It turns out they were, and they did make the movie.
• 13:46
  Michael Pierce: It was a very famous producer named Edward R.
• 13:48
  Michael Pierce: Pressman, and they brought most of the money.
• 13:51
  Michael Pierce: I put together the rest of the money, and the movie was made for like two and a half million dollars.
• 13:56
  Jaclyn Strominger: Wow.
• 13:56
  Jaclyn Strominger: I mean, by movie standards, that's that wasn't a lot.
• 14:00
  Michael Pierce: Even then it was nothing.
• 14:01
  Michael Pierce: Now it's still, you know, it's very low budget, and the rest is history.
• 14:05
  Michael Pierce: So my phone rang, so to speak, finally.
• 14:10
  Jaclyn Strominger: Okay.
• 14:10
  Jaclyn Strominger: I okay.
• 14:11
  Jaclyn Strominger: Listen, there's two things.
• 14:12
  Jaclyn Strominger: Number one, I you have to take this persistence is so important.
• 14:17
  Jaclyn Strominger: You know, you know, make you and then the other thing is this thing I'm holding up if you'll if you're listening to this and you're driving your car, you can't see it, but it's a phone.
• 14:29
  Jaclyn Strominger: Use the phone for what it is actually.
• 14:32
  Jaclyn Strominger: You press buttons, it rings, and somebody on the other end answers and you leave a message, or you actually talk to somebody, do it, use it, toss somebody.
• 14:43
  Jaclyn Strominger: It's really funny.
• 14:45
  Jaclyn Strominger: But it's true, big be persistence, have the grit, you know, find the numbers.
• 14:50
  Jaclyn Strominger: You know, that's actually to me one of the best things about AI right now is that you can find numbers anyway.
• 14:56
  Michael Pierce: But so I love that persistence, grit, you know, that's and I have to say, my definition of success, this is not original, I think it's Winston Churchill, is stumbling from one failure to another with no loss of enthusiasm.
• 15:09
  Michael Pierce: Yeah, I never really got that.
• 15:11
  Michael Pierce: I find it harder and harder to do that now that I'm a lot older.
• 15:14
  Michael Pierce: It's like, wow, it really is tough.
• 15:16
  Michael Pierce: Back then, I kind of just had so much energy.
• 15:18
  Michael Pierce: I like I got no a hundred times, and the 102nd time I came back for more.
• 15:24
  Michael Pierce: Thank God I did.
• 15:25
  Michael Pierce: But I honestly now have a tougher time bouncing back because I'm stumbling from failure to failure all the time as a venture capitalist, as an investor at early stages.
• 15:35
  Michael Pierce: Nine out of ten fail.
• 15:37
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 15:37
  Michael Pierce: And so that is a bitter pill to swallow.
• 15:39
  Michael Pierce: And that that success definition I recently found somewhere, a couple, maybe a year and a half ago, because I was trying to figure out how do I stay doing this.
• 15:46
  Michael Pierce: And I talked to people who are successful.
• 15:48
  Michael Pierce: And what I realized is people that are much, much more successful than me in every way.
• 15:54
  Michael Pierce: That was a quote I got from one of them.
• 15:55
  Michael Pierce: I'm not going to name drop who it was, but it was some, I mean, it's a very impressive person.
• 15:59
  Michael Pierce: And I was like, wow, I never really thought about that.
• 16:01
  Michael Pierce: Yeah, you got to keep your enthusiasm level up.
• 16:04
  Michael Pierce: And because even people at the very top who you read about every day, you know how much they fail?
• 16:08
  Michael Pierce: You don't think about it, they fail so much.
• 16:11
  Michael Pierce: And I never thought about it.
• 16:13
  Michael Pierce: So I don't feel so bad now when I fail.
• 16:15
  Michael Pierce: It's okay, it's a rite of passage.
• 16:17
  Michael Pierce: You can't succeed without first learning to fail.
• 16:19
  Michael Pierce: And there's such this sounds like such proverbial statements.
• 16:22
  Michael Pierce: And when I was younger, I never really digested it.
• 16:24
  Michael Pierce: But now I teach this to my children every day because it's hard out there.
• 16:29
  Michael Pierce: No one has instant success in anything.
• 16:33
  Jaclyn Strominger: Right.
• 16:33
  Jaclyn Strominger: Nobody has instant instant success.
• 16:36
  Jaclyn Strominger: I mean, you know, I always say, I always, you know, kind of will say something like to the effect of it's like the 15-year overnight success, right?
• 16:42
  Jaclyn Strominger: Because it's like you don't see the buildup.
• 16:46
  Jaclyn Strominger: You know, if we're seeing somebody's, you know, hit the mainstream media with a movie or an athlete or a business, nine times out of 10, we're not seeing those first 10, 50, 5, 10, 15, whatever years it took for them to get there.
• 17:03
  Jaclyn Strominger: So it's like at the 15-year overnight success until unless you hear the story of somebody, you know, right.
• 17:09
  Jaclyn Strominger: Right?
• 17:10
  Michael Pierce: Like, and we see that now more with a lot of I think sports programming is really expanded in the last five to 10 years, where you see behind the scenes lives of some of these great athletes, whether they be quarterbacks or basketball players.
• 17:27
  Michael Pierce: And it used to just be so flowery and see them driving their Ferrari and pulling up to their mansion and all this.
• 17:33
  Michael Pierce: And now you had these more common, candid conversations where some of these people are more inclined to open up about how difficult it has been.
• 17:41
  Michael Pierce: And one who comes to mind is Tom Brady, because he's lived such a charmed life.
• 17:45
  Michael Pierce: And you think, oh, the guy's got everything.
• 17:47
  Michael Pierce: I hate him.
• 17:48
  Michael Pierce: But then he realized you see the man behind all that.
• 17:51
  Michael Pierce: This is a guy who was drafted way back.
• 17:54
  Michael Pierce: I didn't even think about this back.
• 17:55
  Michael Pierce: I didn't know who he was.
• 17:56
  Michael Pierce: I didn't follow football.
• 17:58
  Michael Pierce: It was a long time ago.
• 17:59
  Michael Pierce: He was like a skinny guy who no one gave any had any faith that he would ever be a good quarterback.
• 18:06
  Michael Pierce: And he he kept like went to camp.
• 18:09
  Michael Pierce: He said this, and he's famously said to Robert Kraft, I think the owner of the Patriots, I'm the best decision you've ever made.
• 18:15
  Michael Pierce: And everyone just kind of laughed at him.
• 18:17
  Michael Pierce: Cut to the end of his career, he's the greatest quarterback of all time.
• 18:21
  Michael Pierce: If that isn't the perfect example, yeah.
• 18:23
  Michael Pierce: And now I never even thought about that, how it relates to my own life.
• 18:27
  Michael Pierce: But now that I've had some retrospection, having kids, and and as I've had some time to think about the things I've done, most the most time that you have is the journey.
• 18:39
  Michael Pierce: It's not the actual win or the success or the monetization, it's the journey, it's the ride.
• 18:45
  Michael Pierce: And I never again really understood that till as I was an older man.
• 18:50
  Michael Pierce: And Tom Brady seemed to articulate that quite well too, that it was just that journey that he embraced.
• 18:55
  Michael Pierce: I find that very powerful personally.
• 18:57
  Michael Pierce: It's people that are listening to your podcast.
• 18:59
  Michael Pierce: I love your on your unstoppable.
• 19:01
  Michael Pierce: You want to be unstoppable, these are things you should keep in mind.
• 19:04
  Jaclyn Strominger: Right.
• 19:05
  Jaclyn Strominger: Well, and those are the things.
• 19:06
  Jaclyn Strominger: It's like you keep those stories in mind because you have to you have to always be in love with what you're doing.
• 19:13
  Jaclyn Strominger: And actually, somebody shared that earlier today on the podcast.
• 19:16
  Jaclyn Strominger: You, you know, you if you don't love what you're doing and you're not, then it's going to be hard to be able to keep that momentum going all the time.
• 19:24
  Jaclyn Strominger: You have, I mean, you have to be passionate about it, and you have to know that and remind yourself along the way, just like in relationships and in life, there are there's highs and lows, but you have to work through them if you want to keep it going.
• 19:40
  Michael Pierce: That's true, but I'll push back on that a little bit because you can't be in love all the time.
• 19:45
  Michael Pierce: And even with your passion, I defy you to find one.
• 19:52
  Michael Pierce: Oh wow, what's that?
• 19:54
  Jaclyn Strominger: We got some built, we got some balloons.
• 19:56
  Michael Pierce: Awesome.
• 19:56
  Michael Pierce: Balloons went up.
• 19:57
  Michael Pierce: How did that happen?
• 19:58
  Michael Pierce: But I love it.
• 19:59
  Jaclyn Strominger: Because you didn't you went like this.
• 20:00
  Michael Pierce: You didn't know what does that mean?
• 20:01
  Jaclyn Strominger: Oh, with with with Zoom and depending upon you have them, sometimes like I don't I turn mine off.
• 20:07
  Jaclyn Strominger: So if you go, if you put your see, there's confetti.
• 20:10
  Michael Pierce: I love it.
• 20:11
  Michael Pierce: Oh, that's so cool.
• 20:12
  Michael Pierce: Let's do it anyway.
• 20:13
  Michael Pierce: So, yes, it's not always fun.
• 20:17
  Michael Pierce: This is the thing that I also have to tell people that it's hard.
• 20:21
  Michael Pierce: You have to have discipline because you know, discipline is the bridge between goals and accomplishment.
• 20:26
  Michael Pierce: That is a really great proverb.
• 20:27
  Michael Pierce: Again, I'm stealing it, I don't know where it came from.
• 20:29
  Michael Pierce: I say that again because I want listeners to hear like that's not discipline is the bridge between goals and accomplishment.
• 20:37
  Michael Pierce: Yeah, and it is one of the most important components of perseverance.
• 20:42
  Michael Pierce: You've got to be perseverant, sure.
• 20:44
  Michael Pierce: But if you don't have discipline, I don't care who you are, you ain't gonna succeed.
• 20:48
  Michael Pierce: Not one person I know ever in the history of my network has succeeded without unbelievable discipline.
• 20:54
  Michael Pierce: I mean, I'm pretty disciplined, but when I see some of the my role models and I see how they've lived their lives, they are very disciplined.
• 21:00
  Michael Pierce: And discipline can be the little things like Tom Radio, perfect example.
• 21:04
  Michael Pierce: He just practiced his art and his craft many multiple times more than anybody else did.
• 21:11
  Michael Pierce: He will tell you what he did.
• 21:13
  Michael Pierce: He would be so accurate, he would never make mistakes, he's never gonna make the greatest play, he's not the greatest athlete, he's not the strongest guy, he doesn't run that fast, he doesn't throw the ball as far as someone else.
• 21:24
  Michael Pierce: But on the highest percentage passes that make the difference between winning and losing a game when it's third and nine or third and six, he's always gonna put that ball exactly where it needed to be.
• 21:36
  Michael Pierce: He never he he minimized his mistakes.
• 21:39
  Michael Pierce: I'm using this football analogy only because I think it's an easier one to digest.
• 21:42
  Michael Pierce: Yeah, and it's the same in business many and in life too.
• 21:47
  Michael Pierce: I mean, marriage is is amazing.
• 21:50
  Michael Pierce: I love my wife dearly, but it does require some discipline.
• 21:53
  Michael Pierce: I mean, it sounds crude, but it requires discipline to be a good husband.
• 21:58
  Michael Pierce: Every business and Ever I've ever done being an investor requires incredible discipline.
• 22:03
  Michael Pierce: What I'm trying to do now, starting another company, direct a consumer from scratch, is so hard, requires so much discipline from my entire team every day to get up and try to move that rock a little bit higher up the mountain.
• 22:18
  Michael Pierce: So anyway, I'm big on discipline.
• 22:20
  Michael Pierce: And I'm not saying like drill sergeant discipline, like oh 700, get down and give me 50.
• 22:25
  Michael Pierce: No, not that.
• 22:27
  Michael Pierce: That's a form of discipline.
• 22:29
  Michael Pierce: But no, it's like you know you have to at some point during whether it's a day or a week, whatever increment is applicable to what you're trying to accomplish from it, you better have some plan that you're following to move that process forward.
• 22:47
  Michael Pierce: And that I don't care what anyone sells tells you, takes discipline.
• 22:51
  Michael Pierce: And it's not always fun.
• 22:53
  Jaclyn Strominger: Well, I've always said before, too, that it's true, like discipline, it does take that.
• 22:58
  Jaclyn Strominger: And at some point, if you're building a business, in some ways, it's boring in the sense that right like that is correct.
• 23:05
  Jaclyn Strominger: Right.
• 23:06
  Jaclyn Strominger: You have to do the same small task things that you're going to do, and it can get boring, but you have to know that that those repeat, and I always say income-producing activities, because you could organize your office, whatever you can do, but what are the things that you're going to be doing to move the needle?
• 23:25
  Michael Pierce: That's so good, Jaclyn.
• 23:26
  Michael Pierce: I I totally like your message because sometimes people get down on me and they say, Oh, you're too hard on people, you're too hard on yourself.
• 23:35
  Michael Pierce: And it's like, I'm not really, I just a realist.
• 23:37
  Michael Pierce: I know kind of what it takes.
• 23:39
  Michael Pierce: And I'm not the most successful guy.
• 23:40
  Michael Pierce: I don't even purport to be, but success that I've managed to eke out, these are some of the principles that have really helped me.
• 23:47
  Michael Pierce: And one of the biggest problems I have on making, you know, moving a company forward from nothing is it is kind of boring.
• 23:56
  Michael Pierce: The increments involved right now in trying to build an e-commerce business that's in the gun space.
• 24:04
  Michael Pierce: There's so much friction to that, requires repetitive action trying to manipulate an algorithm and open up all of our outlets to market this product.
• 24:15
  Michael Pierce: I marvel at what the engineers are doing every day.
• 24:18
  Michael Pierce: They're writing code, they're working with Google and Meta and trying to unlock the algorithm and start doing all the SEO work on our marketing plan.
• 24:28
  Michael Pierce: And it's super boring.
• 24:30
  Michael Pierce: It just is boring.
• 24:31
  Michael Pierce: But I have to be involved in every day.
• 24:32
  Michael Pierce: I have to understand it.
• 24:33
  Michael Pierce: I have to be there alongside these guys.
• 24:35
  Michael Pierce: And it's pretty effing boring.
• 24:37
  Michael Pierce: Making a movie.
• 24:39
  Michael Pierce: People have no idea how hard it is to make a movie.
• 24:42
  Michael Pierce: I had no idea.
• 24:43
  Michael Pierce: I just had I looked at it through rose-colored glasses.
• 24:46
  Michael Pierce: Oh, movie those just so glamorous.
• 24:48
  Michael Pierce: And then I got making this movie.
• 24:50
  Michael Pierce: It was like six days a week, 18 hours a day.
• 24:53
  Michael Pierce: It was absurdly difficult.
• 24:55
  Michael Pierce: And I liked it, but I can't say every moment of it was joyful.
• 25:00
  Jaclyn Strominger: Yeah, you weren't sitting on the movie set sitting there drinking cocktails all day long.
• 25:03
  Jaclyn Strominger: I mean, you're working, and it's like that's right.
• 25:06
  Michael Pierce: You know, it's a hard process to make a movie.
• 25:09
  Michael Pierce: It's on a shooting schedule.
• 25:10
  Michael Pierce: Often you shoot late into the night, then you have a very short, what's called turnaround.
• 25:14
  Michael Pierce: You have to be up in the morning on set again because you have a finite amount of money.
• 25:17
  Michael Pierce: You have to fix, fix, fit that schedule into as short a time period as possible, you'll run out of money.
• 25:24
  Michael Pierce: You don't have a hundred million dollars.
• 25:25
  Michael Pierce: Even on the big movies now, people don't understand.
• 25:27
  Michael Pierce: It's very corporatized.
• 25:28
  Michael Pierce: So you have a budget, you have people from the studio that are on set every day, making sure every page is being shot the way they want, on time, on schedule, and not over budget, or you'll never make another movie if you were.
• 25:39
  Michael Pierce: We had nobody uh over our shoulder, it was just our own money and our investors.
• 25:42
  Michael Pierce: So if we if we ran out of money, well, you're you've screwed up.
• 25:45
  Michael Pierce: So that's it.
• 25:46
  Michael Pierce: Yeah, you have no more money and you have a shitty movie, you've lost all your investors' money.
• 25:49
  Michael Pierce: Okay, shit.
• 25:51
  Jaclyn Strominger: Right, right, right.
• 25:51
  Jaclyn Strominger: You better do it, you better do a good job.
• 25:53
  Jaclyn Strominger: So so let's talk about this company that you're getting started.
• 25:58
  Jaclyn Strominger: You know, it's American gun owners.
• 26:01
  Jaclyn Strominger: And so talk talk a little bit about like did you wake up one day and be like, I gotta, I, I gotta get more guns into people's hands.
• 26:14
  Jaclyn Strominger: Like, what was the what was the like I or or is it more like American gun owners, we need to get the right guns into the right people's hands?
• 26:23
  Jaclyn Strominger: I don't know.
• 26:24
  Michael Pierce: Okay, you know, you're getting you're getting closer.
• 26:26
  Michael Pierce: So uh this I love answering this question.
• 26:28
  Michael Pierce: I haven't answered it much yet because we haven't really started, we've only launched like a month ago, and we're just slowly marketing it around the country now, so it's not really even out there.
• 26:38
  Michael Pierce: But I'm happy to tell you the story.
• 26:39
  Michael Pierce: Yeah, the genesis of doing this company is my wife.
• 26:43
  Michael Pierce: So we live in Los Angeles most of the time, and some people around the country may know this, but Los Angeles has faced a real crime wave in the last kind of eight to ten years.
• 26:55
  Jaclyn Strominger: Where it's I would never have heard that on the news.
• 26:57
  Jaclyn Strominger: I'm just kidding.
• 26:58
  Michael Pierce: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 26:58
  Michael Pierce: I know you never would have heard that.
• 27:00
  Michael Pierce: So never people like my wife who live in the suburbs don't feel safe in their homes anymore.
• 27:06
  Michael Pierce: And one of the problems is there's there's a lot of reasons for this, and I don't know what the there's not one singular reason, but here's some things to consider.
• 27:16
  Michael Pierce: Number one, there's less policemen than ever in Los Angeles on the beats.
• 27:22
  Michael Pierce: There's 8,200, depending on who you want to believe, to 8,600 policemen in LA County right now.
• 27:28
  Michael Pierce: On LA, sorry, LAPD.
• 27:30
  Michael Pierce: LAPD.
• 27:31
  Jaclyn Strominger: LAP so 8,000 8,000 8,500.
• 27:35
  Jaclyn Strominger: Okay.
• 27:36
  Michael Pierce: And the last time the number was that low was the mid-1990s.
• 27:40
  Michael Pierce: But the city is growing much bigger than that.
• 27:42
  Michael Pierce: So they have a real shortage of actual police on the streets.
• 27:47
  Michael Pierce: Policing in a giant, complicated city.
• 27:49
  Michael Pierce: There should be like around 11,000, is what I'm told by experts.
• 27:53
  Michael Pierce: But they've had such budget problems, they have low morale, and people don't want to be policemen in LA because it's a very difficult job.
• 28:01
  Michael Pierce: You're held to a high standard, you have a camera on you all the time, you make mistakes, it's very dangerous.
• 28:06
  Michael Pierce: It's it doesn't pay that well.
• 28:08
  Michael Pierce: Who wants to be a cop in LA?
• 28:10
  Michael Pierce: And it turns out not a lot of people.
• 28:12
  Michael Pierce: So that's one reason.
• 28:14
  Michael Pierce: Then you have a myriad of other problems.
• 28:15
  Michael Pierce: You've had all the racial unrest, right, with the Rodney King.
• 28:18
  Michael Pierce: Then you had COVID, and you've had the decriminalization of a lot of things like theft and burglary over the years with a very soft DA.
• 28:26
  Michael Pierce: This has now been changing the last few years.
• 28:28
  Michael Pierce: You have a new administration, new new DA.
• 28:30
  Michael Pierce: So all this has led to people who lived in seemingly safe neighborhoods all around Los Angeles, who before would leave their doors unlocked, now experiencing real crime, a lot of theft, a lot of home invasions, tons of home invasion, mostly driven just by people wanting to rob you of your stuff.
• 28:46
  Michael Pierce: They know that there's jewelry and there's cash and there's stuff, and they people typically aren't you know putting their stuff in safes.
• 28:52
  Michael Pierce: They were never that worried about it.
• 28:54
  Michael Pierce: So the end result is mainstream people who are kind of in the middle of the gun debate, they don't hate guns, but they don't want guns, are now not feeling safe in their home.
• 29:06
  Michael Pierce: And so they want to arm themselves responsibly and safely and confidently, including my wife.
• 29:13
  Michael Pierce: So my wife came to me one day.
• 29:14
  Michael Pierce: I actually grew up on a cattle ranch, so I've been shooting guns since I was young, and I am very well versed with guns.
• 29:20
  Michael Pierce: So I feel safe when I'm around.
• 29:24
  Michael Pierce: She knows we have guns, but they're locked up and they're appropriately stored.
• 29:28
  Michael Pierce: But I am skilled and instructed on how to use a gun if I needed to.
• 29:33
  Michael Pierce: She doesn't like guns, but now she feels unsafe.
• 29:38
  Michael Pierce: And she's one of many, many hundreds of thousands of other people we found in our research that now want to buy a gun for all these reasons, who've never wanted a gun before and aren't going to go and affiliate with someone on the far right of the spectrum and be and go necessarily to a gun show.
• 29:55
  Michael Pierce: And when they go online to buy a gun, there are sites out there like guns.com or Palmetto, which are great companies, but they are designed for people that know what they want.
• 30:05
  Michael Pierce: There's literally hundreds of guns to choose from.
• 30:08
  Michael Pierce: There's accessories, and the customer journey is so long and convoluted that someone like just using my wife as example, because she was the genesis of the idea, she goes on to say guns.com.
• 30:21
  Michael Pierce: She goes, Well, what gun do I buy?
• 30:24
  Michael Pierce: I don't have an effing clue.
• 30:26
  Michael Pierce: And also, where do I get instruction?
• 30:27
  Michael Pierce: There's nowhere I know where to get instruction.
• 30:29
  Michael Pierce: Well, you go to YouTube and watch a video, or you can watch a manual, right?
• 30:31
  Michael Pierce: Or you can go to the NRA website, but I don't really know what the NRA is.
• 30:35
  Michael Pierce: I don't affiliate with the NRA.
• 30:36
  Michael Pierce: I doesn't feel good to me.
• 30:37
  Michael Pierce: I don't know what to do.
• 30:38
  Michael Pierce: So that's an opportunity.
• 30:40
  Michael Pierce: That was a white space, and she wasn't alone.
• 30:41
  Michael Pierce: I started researching it, and this is what I do.
• 30:44
  Michael Pierce: We started finding out that all across the nation, and particularly in a lot of blue states like California, where people don't own guns because they make it very difficult for you to own a gun.
• 30:52
  Michael Pierce: This is another problem.
• 30:53
  Michael Pierce: It's expensive, it's hard to qualify.
• 30:56
  Michael Pierce: You have to actually take and have some instruction.
• 30:58
  Michael Pierce: You can't just go and get a gun, like say in Texas.
• 31:01
  Michael Pierce: It's a constitutional carry state where you can just go down as long as you're a citizen and you can buy a gun and pass a background check and walk out with it.
• 31:08
  Michael Pierce: California requires a cooling off period.
• 31:10
  Michael Pierce: It's very expensive.
• 31:11
  Michael Pierce: They put all these impediments before you, but people want guns.
• 31:14
  Michael Pierce: So I said, you know what?
• 31:15
  Michael Pierce: I am going to create a space now for people who are normal people who don't necessarily want to have anything controversial.
• 31:23
  Michael Pierce: They don't necessarily want to have a, for lack of a better example, an AR-15 with a bump stop that has a hundred cartridges.
• 31:32
  Michael Pierce: No, no, they're far from that, but yet they don't believe that everyone should not have a gun.
• 31:36
  Michael Pierce: They're not on the far left saying, no, no one should have a gun in the city.
• 31:39
  Michael Pierce: Well, if that matters, we have the second amendment in this country.
• 31:42
  Michael Pierce: Everyone has a right to have a gun.
• 31:43
  Michael Pierce: And I want to exercise my rights, but I am somewhat moderate.
• 31:47
  Michael Pierce: And I couldn't find any company or any site that spoke to that demographic.
• 31:54
  Michael Pierce: And that's why we started American Gun Owners.
• 31:56
  Michael Pierce: So if you go online and see it, American Gun Owners.com, you'll see three bundles that you have a choice of buying a pistol or a revolver or a self-defense shotgun.
• 32:09
  Michael Pierce: And each is bundled with eye and ear protection, a lockbox, a subscription for ammunition that's discounted, and an instruction path for hundreds of classes that you put your zip code in.
• 32:20
  Michael Pierce: We'll find the right instructor that's close by you for anything you want to learn, how to use your pistol, how to store it, home invasion safety, target shooting, all these myriad of different instructional resources are available for you when you buy your product from us.
• 32:33
  Michael Pierce: And these instructors are mostly based on National Rifle Association instructors.
• 32:37
  Michael Pierce: There's 128,000 of them nationwide, and they're all built in.
• 32:40
  Michael Pierce: We built the API for them.
• 32:42
  Michael Pierce: So when you put that zip code in, you have access to all those resources.
• 32:45
  Michael Pierce: And it's discounted and it's very simple.
• 32:47
  Michael Pierce: We have a recommendation engine.
• 32:48
  Michael Pierce: So if you really don't know what you want, like people in our demo doesn't, you go and you go and click on the recommendation engine.
• 32:55
  Michael Pierce: I say, I don't know what I want.
• 32:57
  Michael Pierce: And then there's like six questions.
• 32:58
  Michael Pierce: You just click on the first one.
• 33:00
  Michael Pierce: Do you live in an apartment or a house?
• 33:01
  Michael Pierce: What's your physical stature?
• 33:02
  Michael Pierce: Have you ever owned a gun before?
• 33:04
  Michael Pierce: Do you have children in the house?
• 33:05
  Michael Pierce: All these practical questions.
• 33:06
  Michael Pierce: And then the recommendation engine will spit out the right self-defense, either a pistol or a revolver or shotgun, whatever you choose for you, and you'll go pick it up at your closest gun store or range.
• 33:16
  Michael Pierce: And that's that's that simple.
• 33:18
  Michael Pierce: So we're marking.
• 33:20
  Jaclyn Strominger: I actually I totally love it.
• 33:21
  Jaclyn Strominger: So I have actually, when I went to overnight camp, I shot a rifle, but and I was comfortable, I actually was pretty good at it.
• 33:29
  Jaclyn Strominger: But what was interesting is living, I I grew up in Massachusetts.
• 33:32
  Jaclyn Strominger: Now living here in Reno, Nevada, which is different, suffice to say, you know, I went, I wanted to check out a pawn shop because I was curious about selling some jewelry and like pricing it out.
• 33:49
  Jaclyn Strominger: And I walked in, I didn't sell it there, but walked in and I looked behind the counter, and there is like this myriad of guns, and I was like so taken back because they were just there, they weren't behind anything.
• 34:08
  Jaclyn Strominger: Like there was no case, there was no, and I was like, oh, I wish I actually had one with me right now because I don't really feel super.
• 34:20
  Jaclyn Strominger: It made you like pause, right?
• 34:22
  Jaclyn Strominger: And made me think, and and I will say, so that was a little, I don't know, I found it was odd.
• 34:27
  Jaclyn Strominger: Like I'm thinking, like, why aren't they?
• 34:29
  Jaclyn Strominger: Why aren't they?
• 34:29
  Jaclyn Strominger: I mean, they're behind a counter, but anybody could just jump that counter and I don't know.
• 34:32
  Jaclyn Strominger: It was just kind of a thing.
• 34:34
  Michael Pierce: Another thing, too, and not sorry to interrupt you, is that people who are younger, and I mean under 30 now, that's not me, but they don't want to go to a store, they won't go to a gun store anymore.
• 34:45
  Michael Pierce: My generation, I I would go to a gun store because I was comfortable, I knew what I wanted.
• 34:50
  Michael Pierce: And typically it was an older white guy behind the counter, and I could relate to him.
• 34:54
  Michael Pierce: Now, if you're a person of color or you're a woman, you're not going to a gun store, you're not feeling comfortable.
• 35:00
  Michael Pierce: And also, gun stores have a reputation, unfortunately, of being like used car stealers, which are incidentally that whole business has been disrupted by Carvana and other really great companies, where it takes that kind of sleaze factor out of the process, because basically you don't want to hang with some used car guy or even someone who's trying to buy your used car or sell you a car because you know what he's gonna do.
• 35:20
  Michael Pierce: He's gonna sell you the car that has the best margin for him, but not necessarily the car that you want.
• 35:27
  Michael Pierce: And it's even more pronounced in the gun world.
• 35:30
  Michael Pierce: So you walk into a gun store.
• 35:32
  Michael Pierce: If you're arguably, let's say you're whoever you are and you don't know anything about guns, he's gonna say, Well, this is a perfect gun for you.
• 35:38
  Michael Pierce: And you're like, Really?
• 35:39
  Michael Pierce: Okay, you're not gonna know any better.
• 35:41
  Michael Pierce: Right.
• 35:41
  Michael Pierce: But that gun may be the wrong gun for you.
• 35:43
  Michael Pierce: Maybe it's a 44 magnum or something that's you know just not appropriate for a first-time gun buyer, and he's gonna sell it because he gets the best margin.
• 35:51
  Michael Pierce: So we take all that guesswork and all that silliness out of the equation.
• 35:55
  Michael Pierce: Like, nope, the recommendation is gonna give you the gun that's right for you.
• 35:58
  Michael Pierce: We guarantee it at the best price.
• 36:00
  Michael Pierce: So it's not like we're reinventing the wheel, we're just taking that concept from other verticals and applying it to buying a gun.
• 36:06
  Michael Pierce: It's not that complicated.
• 36:08
  Jaclyn Strominger: Yeah, no, I absolutely love it because it and I will say, you I think you're spot on with people.
• 36:13
  Jaclyn Strominger: I mean, obviously you've done the research, which so you are, but even people, even people that I've talked to have said, oh, I think I want to go buy a gun and I need to go get I need to go get training, you know, and so there's definitely a lot more people that I know that want to have that.
• 36:30
  Jaclyn Strominger: And then what which is interesting, you know, is as you share, like you all the additional schooling that you can get, you know, whether it's tactical, whatever, being able to put people in and be able to connect people with those classes, it's so important.
• 36:46
  Jaclyn Strominger: And then it goes back to actually to what we were saying with you know, Tom Brady, take the classes, do the do the extra work so that you're you're feeling comfortable with the device that you've now purchased.
• 36:58
  Jaclyn Strominger: It's like the um, you know, driving a car, right?
• 37:01
  Jaclyn Strominger: You have to go through a process of you don't just get behind the wheel, you do have to right.
• 37:08
  Michael Pierce: And this is where it gets interesting, Jackson.
• 37:10
  Michael Pierce: I have to tell you, because it's been somewhat controversial doing this whole thing.
• 37:13
  Michael Pierce: We're just getting started, and I'm kind of prepared for what's coming on the left and the right.
• 37:17
  Michael Pierce: And I will say this to us a gun is not political.
• 37:24
  Jaclyn Strominger: No, it's not.
• 37:24
  Michael Pierce: The gun is a utility, it's there for you to defend yourself.
• 37:30
  Michael Pierce: But our politics has got so wacky in this country now with the far right and the far left.
• 37:35
  Michael Pierce: I want nothing to do with that.
• 37:36
  Michael Pierce: We are just providing a you a piece of metal that is a utility for you to protect yourself.
• 37:44
  Michael Pierce: I don't want to hear arguments from the right or left.
• 37:46
  Michael Pierce: I I care, but I don't care in this context.
• 37:48
  Michael Pierce: I want everyone to understand that.
• 37:50
  Michael Pierce: I grew up on a cattle ranch, and the gun to me was used to hunt deer to feed us.
• 37:57
  Michael Pierce: And I hunted and we ate the meat, and it was great meat, but I never thought about the politics of this gun when I was a kid.
• 38:03
  Michael Pierce: And now all of a sudden the gun's so political.
• 38:05
  Michael Pierce: And so that's I'm clapping back against that.
• 38:07
  Michael Pierce: We're American gun owners, but we're not political.
• 38:10
  Michael Pierce: We're just providing a utility for normal people to be able to defend themselves.
• 38:14
  Michael Pierce: It's that simple.
• 38:16
  Jaclyn Strominger: And I think like to me, it's like the gun, the car, the AI.
• 38:22
  Jaclyn Strominger: It's a tool.
• 38:23
  Jaclyn Strominger: It's it's it's but what you wrap around it and how you treat it, whether you're making it political or it's just it doesn't to me, it doesn't belong there.
• 38:35
  Jaclyn Strominger: You know, there's so many different parts where I believe that politics does not belong in, you know, you know, and at the same time, you know, yes, it's absolutely horrid when you have shootings and things like that.
• 38:49
  Jaclyn Strominger: Don't get me wrong, that is not, I don't feel like that's acceptable, obviously, because that's not what the gun was meant to be used for, to that type of harm, you know.
• 38:59
  Jaclyn Strominger: But that's because that that's a different type of a problem.
• 39:04
  Michael Pierce: Yeah, but also remember, we're not selling right all types of guns.
• 39:08
  Michael Pierce: It's very, I have to be honest, it's quite calculated.
• 39:10
  Michael Pierce: We're just selling a revolver or a pistol or a self-defense shotgun.
• 39:14
  Michael Pierce: That's it.
• 39:15
  Michael Pierce: This is a very clear message.
• 39:17
  Speaker 3: One, two, or three.
• 39:17
  Speaker 3: Right.
• 39:18
  Michael Pierce: If you want those other guns, the controversial ones, fine, go buy them.
• 39:21
  Michael Pierce: I'm not saying you can't buy them, but that's not what we're selling.
• 39:24
  Michael Pierce: Right.
• 39:24
  Michael Pierce: We're selling for people that just are feeling unsafe and they need instruction so they can get confident with their gun.
• 39:31
  Michael Pierce: That's important.
• 39:32
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 39:33
  Michael Pierce: Not trying to restrict or enforce any rules or laws or question anyone's devotion to the second amendment or opposition to it.
• 39:39
  Michael Pierce: I don't care.
• 39:40
  Michael Pierce: Right, right.
• 39:41
  Jaclyn Strominger: Yeah, no, to be able to defend your.
• 39:42
  Jaclyn Strominger: And I I think it's great.
• 39:43
  Jaclyn Strominger: And I love the fact that you're giving people the instruction or the ability to find instruction because I think that's so important.
• 39:49
  Jaclyn Strominger: And as you said, get comfortable, get comfortable with it.
• 39:53
  Jaclyn Strominger: Because you, at the end of the day, if somebody is invading your house or you're not feeling safe, you want to be able to use it comfortably.
• 40:02
  Michael Pierce: Well, confidently is the word we like to use.
• 40:03
  Michael Pierce: Yeah, you want to be confident.
• 40:05
  Michael Pierce: Yeah, that's a that's a dangerous thing in your hand.
• 40:08
  Michael Pierce: It's gotta be you know used carefully.
• 40:11
  Michael Pierce: Yeah.
• 40:11
  Michael Pierce: If you have to use it.
• 40:13
  unknown: Yeah.
• 40:14
  Michael Pierce: So anyway, that's that was the story.
• 40:15
  Michael Pierce: It's a true story.
• 40:16
  Michael Pierce: You know, it's this all came from my wife, and she felt quite strongly about it.
• 40:22
  Jaclyn Strominger: Yeah.
• 40:23
  Jaclyn Strominger: But what I also really love is that you're applying the principles of other, you know, other businesses to this.
• 40:29
  Jaclyn Strominger: You know, one of the, and I think this is actually it's one of those things.
• 40:32
  Jaclyn Strominger: If you you don't need to reinvent the wheel, you just need to make a better wheel.
• 40:36
  Speaker: Yeah, well, I'm not I don't know if I'm that arrogant to think I hope I hope that I am.
• 40:40
  Speaker: It's hard to do, but hopefully that's what we're striving to do.
• 40:43
  Jaclyn Strominger: Yeah, no, I think it's actually really right.
• 40:45
  Jaclyn Strominger: So, do you, you know, when you're thinking about this, I mean you're is it gonna start nationally?
• 40:52
  Jaclyn Strominger: Are you just starting locally in California?
• 40:55
  Michael Pierce: Yeah, good question.
• 40:56
  Michael Pierce: So we're starting in just some western states, it'll roll out over the next year to all 50 states, but right now we're primarily just in western states like Utah and Colorado, New Mexico, Arizona.
• 41:09
  Michael Pierce: So we're just kind of we're to where we are geographically.
• 41:13
  Michael Pierce: That's kind of a jurisdiction that we know because it's very complicated too.
• 41:17
  Michael Pierce: Every state has different laws.
• 41:18
  Michael Pierce: So we had to then build the software in conjunction with a software that already existed.
• 41:23
  Michael Pierce: So when you put in your zip code, we'll only sell you a gun that's compliant in the jurisdiction that you live.
• 41:29
  Michael Pierce: That took a lot of time and effort to figure that out.
• 41:32
  Michael Pierce: Because in California, for instance, you can only buy certain guns that are on what's called the California roster.
• 41:38
  Michael Pierce: And often people go to these gun sites and they they check out and then they realize the then, oh, uh, we can't ship this to you, you got to pick it up here.
• 41:44
  Michael Pierce: And like, that's not where I live because you live in a state that the gun's not compliant in.
• 41:48
  Michael Pierce: I mean, it's all sorts of complexities in this business.
• 41:51
  Michael Pierce: So that's been keeping me busy for about a year and a half now.
• 41:54
  Michael Pierce: We're finally launching, but man, has it been hard.
• 41:57
  Jaclyn Strominger: Oh, I can't, I can only imagine because now when you said that, it's like there are you know, yeah, every state is different.
• 42:02
  Jaclyn Strominger: Every state has a different, you know, rule.
• 42:05
  Jaclyn Strominger: I mean, when it comes to to those things.
• 42:09
  Jaclyn Strominger: So starting, you know, on the western side.
• 42:12
  Jaclyn Strominger: And so, you know, if you're thinking about, you know, five years, is there something that you kind of like think like, you know, that you hope that it helps do X, Y, and Z?
• 42:25
  Michael Pierce: Absolutely.
• 42:26
  Michael Pierce: I think that there's uh and particularly in in blue states, a big segment of the population that is not being treated fairly.
• 42:35
  Michael Pierce: This is a little bit political.
• 42:37
  Michael Pierce: I'm gonna go there anyway with you.
• 42:38
  Speaker 2: Okay.
• 42:39
  Michael Pierce: They don't live in gated neighborhoods, they don't have private security.
• 42:43
  Michael Pierce: Maybe you're a single mother with a couple of kids and you live in an apartment in a lower income neighborhood.
• 42:48
  Michael Pierce: It's a neighborhood that's very slow police response time.
• 42:53
  Michael Pierce: And maybe your ex-boyfriend or husband has a restraining order out against him, but he continues to threaten this person.
• 43:00
  Michael Pierce: Those people have a tough time getting guns like anybody else, if for all the reasons that I've mentioned.
• 43:07
  Michael Pierce: And I feel they deserve to be able to have their gun to protect themselves and their family.
• 43:13
  Michael Pierce: And right now it's not easy in a lot of blue states, in particular, for that individual to feel safe.
• 43:19
  Michael Pierce: And that doesn't sit well with me.
• 43:21
  Michael Pierce: That's really driving a lot of why I did this.
• 43:24
  Michael Pierce: Because I was my eyes were opened up to this from people I've met from different parts of Southern California who gave me these examples.
• 43:30
  Michael Pierce: And I met lots of people who were in that unfortunate circumstance.
• 43:33
  Michael Pierce: And like, I can't even, I don't know how to go to a gun store and get a gun, I don't know what to buy.
• 43:37
  Michael Pierce: And I just want someone to just make it simple for me so I can just click on it and get education and have my gun so I can have peace of mind to defend my family.
• 43:44
  Michael Pierce: Because I've got all these other circumstances that make me feel unsafe.
• 43:48
  Michael Pierce: And then I get clapped back at you know, some of the very wealthy elites in Los Angeles.
• 43:53
  Michael Pierce: I'm not gonna pick on anyone here, but people who are more liberal who live in a five million dollar house in the gated.
• 43:59
  Michael Pierce: Neighborhood who tell me no one should, you're just making gun ownership, you know, available to more and more people.
• 44:05
  Michael Pierce: That the last thing we need is more guns in this country and this society.
• 44:08
  Michael Pierce: I'm like, okay, that's easy for you to say.
• 44:10
  Michael Pierce: Where do you live?
• 44:11
  Michael Pierce: Like great for you that you're there.
• 44:12
  Michael Pierce: Maybe you earned that money, I'm happy for you.
• 44:14
  Michael Pierce: But a lot of people don't have that luxury, and the police aren't going to get there.
• 44:17
  Michael Pierce: And all of the aforementioned that they live under that constant fear.
• 44:22
  Michael Pierce: And I never knew this until my partner in this business, who comes from a very different background than me and grew up in a different way, took me to the neighborhood.
• 44:29
  Michael Pierce: I've met dozens and dozens and dozens of people, a lot of women, a lot of people of color who are just living in fear all the time.
• 44:36
  Michael Pierce: The police really honestly aren't there to help them.
• 44:38
  Michael Pierce: And it's hard for them to navigate this process.
• 44:41
  Michael Pierce: And so they just want to be able to exercise their rights under the Second Amendment to defend themselves.
• 44:45
  Michael Pierce: I think that's pure pure pure pretty noble.
• 44:48
  Michael Pierce: And if I can make that easier for these people, then that's really my goal.
• 44:54
  Jaclyn Strominger: You know, I I I totally love it because I feel like it's just gonna make in some ways, if it can help, if it can help make somebody feel that they can put their head down at night and worry about one less thing, that's something beautiful.
• 45:10
  Jaclyn Strominger: And if you can and it's in some ways that's if you can make it so that you know somebody also protects themselves from somebody in their family so they don't get hurt.
• 45:20
  Michael Pierce: Can I confide something in you and your viewers?
• 45:22
  Michael Pierce: I'm gonna make I'll tell you something that's quite personal about my family.
• 45:26
  Michael Pierce: One of the other reasons I did this is there, my my wife is the landmark case in Los Angeles County for felony stalking.
• 45:35
  Michael Pierce: Oh which means she was the first case that the DA actually prosecuted and got a criminal conviction as a felony for stalking.
• 45:43
  Michael Pierce: This was back a long, quite a long time ago in the 90s.
• 45:45
  Michael Pierce: So up until that point, it was just a misdemeanor.
• 45:48
  Michael Pierce: So she was stalked by her ex, and he threatened to kill her numerous times.
• 45:52
  Michael Pierce: And he was physically, I don't want to say too much because this is personal to my wife, and I don't want to betray her confidence here, but that has been a big motivation for me.
• 46:00
  Michael Pierce: I abhor violence towards anyone who doesn't deserve it, particularly violence against women, which I absolutely have no patience for.
• 46:08
  Michael Pierce: And she's told me many times how she couldn't even sleep at night.
• 46:11
  Michael Pierce: She had to go sleep at friends' house for months because he was out there and he would drive by or he would throw something in the window and he snuck under her balcony, threatening to kill her.
• 46:20
  Michael Pierce: She didn't know how to defend herself.
• 46:21
  Michael Pierce: She's never had a gun, doesn't own a gun.
• 46:23
  Michael Pierce: Put yourself in her shoes.
• 46:25
  Michael Pierce: I can't think of that.
• 46:26
  Michael Pierce: I've always had a gun.
• 46:27
  Michael Pierce: I want to know how to use a gun.
• 46:28
  Michael Pierce: I'm safe with my gun.
• 46:30
  Michael Pierce: Uh no one, no one's ever messed with me.
• 46:31
  Michael Pierce: I've never had any problems in life.
• 46:33
  Michael Pierce: But a lot of people don't have that luxury for, and so that hit really close to home when I met her.
• 46:39
  Michael Pierce: And I was really on the tail end when all this happened, but it really I saw the fear in her eye.
• 46:43
  Michael Pierce: I'm like, wow.
• 46:44
  Michael Pierce: And I didn't realize back then, that was 15 years ago, that this is what I'd be doing now.
• 46:48
  Michael Pierce: I never would have dreamt it.
• 46:49
  Michael Pierce: But now it feels good because I don't want you or anyone like you to ever be fearful of someone who's threatening you and you can't defend yourselves.
• 46:56
  Michael Pierce: And she would say many times, I would call the police, they wouldn't come because oh great, another boyfriend, a stalking, ha ha, that big effing deal.
• 47:06
  Michael Pierce: They wouldn't even come.
• 47:07
  Michael Pierce: Who is she gonna turn to?
• 47:09
  Michael Pierce: Who's gonna protect her?
• 47:10
  Michael Pierce: Only herself.
• 47:11
  Michael Pierce: Only herself.
• 47:12
  Michael Pierce: There you go.
• 47:13
  Jaclyn Strominger: Wow.
• 47:14
  Jaclyn Strominger: Yeah, well, like I love what you're doing because I think it's absolutely I think it's I think it's absolutely amazing because it has such it also because it comes from a place of such heart and the place that can help so many, so many women and so many people, well, male and female, because there's you know, people on both sides, you know.
• 47:33
  Michael Pierce: But let's face it, 90 it's between 95 and 98 percent of all violence is committed by men in America.
• 47:43
  Michael Pierce: It's a huge number.
• 47:45
  Michael Pierce: It just is.
• 47:46
  Michael Pierce: I don't know what to say, but I'm a man.
• 47:48
  Michael Pierce: I don't, I'm not one of those 97 or 8% of men who commit violent acts.
• 47:54
  Michael Pierce: But if you're a woman, you're you have reason to be scared a lot.
• 47:57
  Michael Pierce: It's just I live my I have a daughter, I know lots of women friends who have had issues in Los Angeles of being assaulted or being stalked or all sorts of very bad things.
• 48:06
  Michael Pierce: I feel sometimes I'm just a protector of women for whatever crazy reason.
• 48:09
  Michael Pierce: I just really bothers me.
• 48:11
  Michael Pierce: So anyway, I don't want to hijack the podcast over this issue.
• 48:14
  Jaclyn Strominger: But but no, but I but it there's a lot about that.
• 48:20
  Jaclyn Strominger: I mean, about I mean, there's so many societal things about where we are with the police and all that stuff.
• 48:25
  Jaclyn Strominger: But it's true, is that you know, yes, we can, you know, I'm all for being able to, you know, find ways to defend yourself so that you don't have to, it's like I need a man for.
• 48:37
  Jaclyn Strominger: No, you need to be able to take care of yourself.
• 48:40
  Jaclyn Strominger: And I've always been that way.
• 48:42
  Jaclyn Strominger: Like as a female, you know, it's like earn my own money, earn your own money, be able to take care of yourself, don't have to rely on somebody else.
• 48:51
  Jaclyn Strominger: And that's where that's where what you're doing adds to that, so that you know, take, you know, go get one of the guns, get yourself comfortable, make sure that you feel good behind behind the gun, and do the things that you need to do to be able to defend yourself and take care of yourself and your family.
• 49:13
  Jaclyn Strominger: So, you know, and that means a lot to me.
• 49:17
  Jaclyn Strominger: That means, you know, I I think it's really important.
• 49:20
  Speaker: Thank you.
• 49:21
  Jaclyn Strominger: Important.
• 49:21
  Jaclyn Strominger: So, Michael, all right.
• 49:22
  Jaclyn Strominger: So, I where can people connect with you to see and learn about you and also this great website?
• 49:29
  Michael Pierce: Well, I mean, www.american gunowners.com is simple.
• 49:34
  Michael Pierce: That's that's the company, and you can we have social media as well, Gun Owner American Gunner's on Instagram and and Facebook.
• 49:41
  Michael Pierce: And I actually have a podcast as well called Lock Load and Listen, which I've done in about seven episodes.
• 49:48
  Michael Pierce: It's gonna be rebranded actually next month, but right now that's what it's called.
• 49:52
  Michael Pierce: So you can you can see some of my conversations with various people there, lockloadandlisten.com.
• 49:56
  Jaclyn Strominger: Okay.
• 49:57
  Michael Pierce: Other than that, my venture firm is Digi Ventures, Digiventures.
• 50:01
  Michael Pierce: That's a website too.
• 50:03
  Jaclyn Strominger: All right, so I will put all of those in the show notes.
• 50:05
  Jaclyn Strominger: Listeners, please do me a favor, connect, please connect with Michael.
• 50:10
  Jaclyn Strominger: Go to the website, share this, please share this episode with your friends, your family, because it's a very, very it's very important.
• 50:17
  Jaclyn Strominger: There's been great insights, but what Michael is doing is also incredibly, incredibly important.
• 50:22
  Jaclyn Strominger: So please share this episode with your friends and family.
• 50:25
  Jaclyn Strominger: And if you haven't subscribed on your local, you know, your podcast app, or you know, please make sure you subscribe.
• 50:30
  Jaclyn Strominger: And lastly, listeners, please do me the favor and become a supporter of the show.
• 50:35
  Jaclyn Strominger: For $3 a month, it actually helps us do provide great people onto the show, but also you get select special information emails that will give you more background information and special content just for being a subscriber.
• 50:52
  Jaclyn Strominger: So please make sure you go do that.
• 50:53
  Jaclyn Strominger: And that link is in the show notes as well.
• 50:55
  Jaclyn Strominger: So thank you, Michael, for being an amazing guest.
• 50:58
  Jaclyn Strominger: This has been good to have you on again.
• 51:00
  Michael Pierce: Thank you.
• 51:01
  Michael Pierce: Jaclyn, that was so much fun.
• 51:02
  Michael Pierce: Thank you for having me.
• 51:03
  Jaclyn Strominger: It's such a pleasure.
• 51:04
  Jaclyn Strominger: And listeners, this is the Unstoppable Success Podcast where we help you leap to your greatest success.
• 51:16
  Speaker 3: Here's to your unstoppable success.
• 51:19
  Jaclyn Strominger: You've been listening to the Unstoppable Success podcast with Jaclyn Strawinger.
• 51:23
  Jaclyn Strominger: Subscribe, share, and keep building your unstoppable life.
• 51:29
  Jaclyn Strominger: We'll see you at the top.