About Us

I started my first business in 2019 with a beef jerky company. A couple of years in, while trying to afford better packaging for the jerky, I began building Bluetooth speakers out of .50 caliber ammo cans. With almost no money and a strong work ethic, I hustled to make those speakers a success. They quickly became popular and provided much-needed revenue that helped keep the jerky business afloat.

To keep up with demand, I started sourcing grade 3 shitty ammo cans from a supplier in Missouri. I would drive down, load up my vehicle (and later a trailer), bring them home, and repaint them OD green in my parents’ garage. I quickly learned that hand-painting ammo cans is an incredibly time-consuming and frustrating process; one I highly recommend avoiding. Matching colors perfectly is nearly impossible, and masking the seal properly is a nightmare I never fully solved. I also don’t recommend cutting holes in them with a 4-inch hole saw on a drill press.

Eventually, I began selling the empty ammo cans and started attending gun shows. At one out of state show, I met a wholesaler who became both a supplier and a close mentor. He encouraged me to buy a batch of .45 ACP Gold Dot jacketed hollow points from another vendor, telling me I’d double my money. With only about $2,000 to my name at the time, I was nervous, but I trusted him, bought them, and flipped them successfully. That experience sparked something in me, but I still owned a beef jerky company and had no clear path into ammunition.

Then COVID hit and ammunition became extremely scarce. I saw an opportunity to solve a real problem. Illinois law created a unique situation where out of state buyers couldn’t easily purchase ammo from big box stores due to FOID card requirements, while most in-state hunters didn’t buy large quantities of rifle ammunition. I leveraged that gap, I relied on friends and drove across the state buying every box of ammo I could from Walmart’s, Cabela’s, and Bass Pro before purchase limits were imposed. I probably cleared the shelves of close to 50 Walmart’s. I then transported the ammo to states where it was in high demand for hunting, marked it up fairly, and sold out quickly at gun shows.

Through constant travel and gun shows across the country, I built strong relationships with gun shop owners and mentors, who helped me source pallets of ammunition through their networks. In 2021, I did 46 gun shows in 7 different states and put over 100,000 miles on my truck. It felt like another deployment.

During this period, I gradually stepped away from the beef jerky business. I had always planned to return to it once COVID passed, but I never did. I officially closed it last year.

Since starting in 2019, I have never taken a real salary from my business. On paper, it shows I pay myself $15,000 per year, but this will likely be the first year I do so. Every dollar I’ve earned has been reinvested back into the company. I purchased auto-drive reloading machines, brass sorting and washing equipment, and massive quantities of brass and other supplies. People often asked why I didn’t pay myself. The answer was simple: I knew the traveling show life wasn’t sustainable long-term. Fuel costs, wear and tear on my body, and increasing competition from local dealers made it clear I needed a better model.

After two intense years on the road, I was completely burned out. I wanted to build a business I could run from home, one that was consistent and scalable. I also realized during the shortages that if you can’t source the components, you can’t shoot or make money. That lesson drove me to pour everything I had into building a brass sorting and processing operation.

Today, while I am still selling ammunition, my true passion and bread and butter is brass. I can remember times during covid that people in my life were so tired of hearing my father and I talking about brass. The sorting and processing work challenges me every day. Because few people do what I do at this scale, there aren’t many off-the-shelf solutions for the problems I face, so I’ve had to invent and build many of my own tools and processes. The work is often monotonous and mind-numbing, but it provides the consistency I need when the rest of life feels chaotic.

I now have a website that I sell on, along with a few other platforms I sell on. Well I still do shows, it’s no where near what I once did. Honestly, I’ll never not do shows, hanging out with the community that surrounds this industry is something near and dear to my heart.

Thank you for reading my story. I am living the American dream.