Meet Michael Pierce: film, investing, and entrepreneurship

Jaclyn Strominger 0:22

Hello, everybody, and welcome to another amazing episode of the Unstoppable Success Podcast. I'm your host, 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. And today's guest has built his career by recognizing opportunities others overlooked and having the courage to go all in. So Michael Pierce is a film producer, serial investor, entrepreneur, and CEO, and father. He's producing and financing credits include The Cooler, Running Scared, Flawless. He has he was also an early investor in companies including Thrive Market, Cameo, and Cargomatic. That sounds like it should be like an inventing machine, and you'll have to tell me about that. 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. So important. And across Hollywood venture investing in entrepreneurship, the thread running through Michael's story is clear. Find the opportunity everywhere. Find the opportunity everyone else is sleeping on and commit to the vision and figure out the rest along the way. So get ready for a fascinating conversation about calculated risk, reinvention, leadership in pursuing ideas bigger than your comfort zone. So welcome to the show, Michael.

Michael Pierce 1:58

Thank you so much, Jaclyn. So great to be here. Thanks for having me.

Jaclyn Strominger 2:01

It is such a pleasure. Okay. So I kind of want to kind of just like jump in. So you have built your life finding the opportunity everyone else is sleeping on and having that courage to go all in. I'm really curious where did that instinct come from?

Michael Pierce 2:15

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. Sometimes I feel it's it's kind of genetic because my father was an entrepreneur and he had a similar trajectory. And I was old enough to kind of see him build a company from nothing. 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. 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. 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. And some some sometimes I think that was enormously helpful now, later in life, but at the time it was somewhat dysfunctional. I found myself not assimilated.

Jaclyn Strominger 3:15

Sitting in the boardroom, you know, yeah, iPhone or anything like that to play with then, maybe.

Michael Pierce 3:23

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. I think it's important that you see things. And at that time, I was a teenager, I thought that's actually interesting. Whereas my my friends might have been doing something else. I was just, I thought it was just lucky. So I absorbed as much as I could. So maybe, maybe that's one answer. 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. I guess it's a rebellious streak I may have had or still have. 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. And it doesn't seem that as difficult for me as I know some people struggle with that direction. For me, it felt like a more natural path. Again, maybe that's just how I'm wired. So I don't know what the right answer is, but that's kind of my answer.

Jaclyn Strominger 4:28

Yeah, no, I it's great. It's I I love it. 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? And but one of the things that you said, you know, your dad would share his vision, right? So, and that is such a quintessential part of leadership and doing something and going after something. So you it is, it was built into almost like what you were doing because he he's

A personal loss and a move toward film producing

Jaclyn Strominger 4:56

he shared vision and maybe acted, right? 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.

Michael Pierce 5:11

And it certainly wasn't a direct line from seeing his vision and and then me realizing mine in my life. I've got to be honest with you. So he died suddenly of a heart attack when I was 20, 23. 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. And that set my life on a completely different path. 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. That was almost like people saying, Now, well, I'm going to call, I'm gonna colonize Mars. You're like, okay, it's possible there's a vision there. All right, but at that point it was almost that way for me. Sorry, I'm getting distracted here from someone in my office.

Jaclyn Strominger 6:00

That's okay, that's right. So, so when you decided you're so I'm assuming you didn't take the bar exam.

Michael Pierce 6:08

I did not. So I finished my degree and then said I'm moving to Hollywood and I'm gonna be a film producer.

Jaclyn Strominger 6:15

And uh did you know anything about film producing?

Michael Pierce 6:19

No, I knew absolutely nothing, but I started reading books.

unknown 6:22

Oh okay.

Michael Pierce 6:23

So kind of an autodidact, I guess. I started reading. 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. I have to be be clear on that. It was a not an easy path.

Jaclyn Strominger 6:47

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.

Michael Pierce 6:54

Yeah, they would laugh at that. 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. That's what I learned. That's that's a true story. It's a very difficult business. This changed a lot now. 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. Back then it was actually more of a kind of a pure art form.

Jaclyn Strominger 7:26

I would think, I would think it's gonna be. When I think about producing, all I think is someone's putting in some money, and that's what you got.

Michael Pierce 7:33

Yeah, if only it was that easy. 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. So people basically analyze the story and see if it has marketing potential. And does it click all the quadrants on the marketing plan, like four quadrants, uh studio marketing people like to say? And if it does all this, then only then will they think about kind of the creative is secondary to the commercial prospects. 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. 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. And you saw, I think, a golden age of cinema that's different now. Now everything is based on you know pre-existing IP where it's a safe bet. There's already been five uh five iterations of this movie. Now the sixth one is based on all the previous five. 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.

Jaclyn Strominger 8:42

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. 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.

Michael Pierce 9:16

Well, that's that's that's our more our generation, right? And that's kind of what I'm saying. 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. You know, that's it's different, unless you go to a smaller budget independent film. And those are very difficult for anyone to see now because those movies don't get big theatrical releases anymore.

Jaclyn Strominger 10:01

Right. They don't get that. So part of me is thinking to myself, because I just I listened to podcasts. Um, if you've ever listened to Acquired, it's a great podcast. I'll put a link to this, but they did a two-part episode on Disney and the Disney flywheel. 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? So you know, right? 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. So it needs to have all these additional pieces, where before it was a movie. It, you know, I mean, like we we it was like a beautiful story that was coming out, and you

The Cooler and three years of rejection

Jaclyn Strominger 10:47

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.

Michael Pierce 10:55

Yeah, it's all true. 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.

Jaclyn Strominger 11:03

So, what was the first movie?

Michael Pierce 11:04

That was The Cooler with Alec Baldwin and William H. Macy, and it it did really well for Lionsgate. Lionsgate was a small distributor back then, and this was a huge hit for them. It was a very small movie and it had a fairly modest theatrical release. It did fairly well, and then had a huge video recruitment that it made tens of millions of dollars in profit for the studio. And that allowed me to make a ton of other movies because once you have a hit back then, at least it was different. It was like, okay, what do you want to do next? And I had a good producing partner, a great director, writer, director. 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. I made I make nine or 10 movies, I made a lot of movies.

Jaclyn Strominger 11:50

Wow, that's okay. So I'm just kind of curious. So so what was like what was the one thing that almost like that helped you get that movie? Like, was it the you know, was it the persistence? The was it the you know, standing in front of somebody with like a bag of donuts or something, you know?

Michael Pierce 12:06

That's funny. You just you just read my mind, Jaclyn. That was the word that was gonna come to mind, and I think that word I will use many times during this podcast. If there's one bit of information I wish I had been told earlier in life, is persistence, perseverance. I basically try to get that movie made for three years. I sent it to hundreds of people, my my partner and my team and I, and everybody passed. And they passed for a myriad of different reasons. Oh, it's a is it a comedy or is it a drama? Is it a dramedy? 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. No, pass, pass, pass, pass, pass, pass. And then finally, you know, one one day, the the story I've read about these stories, but it happened to me. I had given up. I literally was like, okay, I gave it a solid try. Three years of trying to get a movie made. I gotta make a living. I can only trade stocks for so long here on the side, it's a side hustle. 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. Went with some jungle tribe for like three weeks. I'm like, wow, this is really going out there. Got in by canoe, motorized canoe. 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. 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. I'm like, oh wow, someone actually is interested in making the movie. It turns out they were, and they did make the movie. It was a very famous producer named Edward R. Pressman, and they brought most of the money. I put together the rest of the money, and the movie was made for like two and a half million dollars.

Jaclyn Strominger 13:56

Wow. I mean, by movie standards, that's that wasn't a lot.

Michael Pierce 14:00

Even then it was nothing. Now it's still, you know, it's very low budget, and the rest is history. So my phone rang, so to speak, finally.

Jaclyn Strominger 14:10

Okay. I okay. Listen, there's two things. Number one, I you have to take this persistence is so important. 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. Use the phone for what it is actually. 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. It's really funny. But it's true, big be persistence, have the grit, you know, find the numbers. You know, that's actually to me one of the best things about AI right now is that you can find numbers anyway.

Michael Pierce 14:56

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. Yeah, I never really got that. I find it harder and harder to do that now that I'm a lot older. It's like, wow, it really is tough. Back then, I kind of just had so much energy. I like I got no a hundred times, and the 102nd time I came back for more. Thank God I did. 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. Nine out of ten fail.

Speaker 2 15:37

Right.

Michael Pierce 15:37

And so that is a bitter pill to swallow. 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. And I talked to people who are successful. And what I realized is people that are much, much more successful than me in every way. That was a quote I got from one of them. I'm not going to name drop who it was, but it was some, I mean, it's a very impressive person. And I was like, wow, I never really thought about that. Yeah, you got to keep your enthusiasm level up. And because even people at the very top who you read about every day, you know how much they fail? You don't think about it, they fail so much. And I never thought about it. So I don't feel so bad now when I fail. It's okay, it's a rite of passage. You can't succeed without first learning to fail. And there's such this sounds like such proverbial statements. And when I was younger, I never really digested it. But now I teach this to my children every day because it's hard out there. No one has instant success in anything.

Jaclyn Strominger 16:33

Right. Nobody has instant instant success. 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? Because it's like you don't see the buildup. 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. So it's like at the 15-year overnight success until unless you hear the story of somebody, you know, right. Right?

Michael Pierce 17:10

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. And it used to just be so flowery and see them driving their Ferrari and pulling up to their mansion and all this. 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. And one who comes to mind is Tom Brady, because he's lived such a charmed life. And you think, oh, the guy's got everything. I hate him. But then he realized you see the man behind all that. This is a guy who was drafted way back. I didn't even think about this back. I didn't know who he was. I didn't follow football. It was a long time ago. He was like a skinny guy who no one gave any had any faith that he would ever be a good quarterback. And he he kept like went to camp. 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. And everyone just kind of laughed at him. Cut to the end of his career, he's the greatest quarterback of all time. If that isn't the perfect example, yeah. And now I never even thought about that, how it relates to my own life. 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. It's not the actual win or the success or the monetization, it's the journey, it's the ride. And I never again really understood that till as I was an older man. And Tom Brady seemed to articulate that quite well too, that it was just that journey that he embraced. I find that very powerful personally. It's people that are listening to your podcast. I love your on your unstoppable. You want to be unstoppable, these are things you should keep in mind.

Jaclyn Strominger 19:04

Right. Well, and those are the things. 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. And actually, somebody shared that earlier today on the podcast. 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. 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

Why persistence also requires discipline

Jaclyn Strominger 19:35

highs and lows, but you have to work through them if you want to keep it going.

Michael Pierce 19:40

That's true, but I'll push back on that a little bit because you can't be in love all the time. And even with your passion, I defy you to find one. Oh wow, what's that?

Jaclyn Strominger 19:54

We got some built, we got some balloons.

Michael Pierce 19:56

Awesome. Balloons went up. How did that happen? But I love it.

Jaclyn Strominger 19:59

Because you didn't you went like this.

Michael Pierce 20:00

You didn't know what does that mean?

Jaclyn Strominger 20:01

Oh, with with with Zoom and depending upon you have them, sometimes like I don't I turn mine off. So if you go, if you put your see, there's confetti.

Michael Pierce 20:10

I love it. Oh, that's so cool. Let's do it anyway. So, yes, it's not always fun. This is the thing that I also have to tell people that it's hard. You have to have discipline because you know, discipline is the bridge between goals and accomplishment. That is a really great proverb. Again, I'm stealing it, I don't know where it came from. I say that again because I want listeners to hear like that's not discipline is the bridge between goals and accomplishment. Yeah, and it is one of the most important components of perseverance. You've got to be perseverant, sure. But if you don't have discipline, I don't care who you are, you ain't gonna succeed. Not one person I know ever in the history of my network has succeeded without unbelievable discipline. 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. And discipline can be the little things like Tom Radio, perfect example. He just practiced his art and his craft many multiple times more than anybody else did. He will tell you what he did. 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. 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. He never he he minimized his mistakes. I'm using this football analogy only because I think it's an easier one to digest. Yeah, and it's the same in business many and in life too. I mean, marriage is is amazing. I love my wife dearly, but it does require some discipline. I mean, it sounds crude, but it requires discipline to be a good husband. Every business and Ever I've ever done being an investor requires incredible discipline. 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. So anyway, I'm big on discipline. And I'm not saying like drill sergeant discipline, like oh 700, get down and give me 50. No, not that. That's a form of discipline. 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. And that I don't care what anyone sells tells you, takes discipline. And it's not always fun.

Jaclyn Strominger 22:53

Well, I've always said before, too, that it's true, like discipline, it does take that. 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. Right. 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?

Michael Pierce 23:25

That's so good, Jaclyn. 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. And it's like, I'm not really, I just a realist. I know kind of what it takes. And I'm not the most successful guy. 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. And one of the biggest problems I have on making, you know, moving a company forward from nothing is it is kind of boring. The increments involved right now in trying to build an e-commerce business that's in the gun space. 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. I marvel at what the engineers are doing every day. 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. And it's super boring. It just is boring. But I have to be involved in every day. I have to understand it. I have to be there alongside these guys. And it's pretty effing boring. Making a movie. People have no idea how hard it is to make a movie. I had no idea. I just had I looked at it through rose-colored glasses. Oh, movie those just so glamorous. And then I got making this movie. It was like six days a week, 18 hours a day. It was absurdly difficult. And I liked it, but I can't say every moment of it was joyful.

Jaclyn Strominger 25:00

Yeah, you weren't sitting on the movie set sitting there drinking cocktails all day long. I mean, you're working, and it's like that's right.

Michael Pierce 25:06

You know, it's a hard process to make a movie. It's on a shooting schedule. Often you shoot late into the night, then you have a very short, what's called turnaround. You have to be up in the morning on set again because you have a finite amount of money. You have to fix, fix, fit that schedule into as short a time period as possible, you'll run out of money. You don't have a hundred million dollars. Even on the big movies now, people don't understand. It's very corporatized. 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. We had nobody uh over our shoulder, it was just our own money and our investors. So if we if we ran out of money, well, you're you've screwed up. So that's it. Yeah, you have no more money and you have a shitty movie, you've lost all your investors' money. Okay, shit.

The customer problem behind American Gun Owners

Jaclyn Strominger 25:51

Right, right, right. You better do it, you better do a good job. So so let's talk about this company that you're getting started. You know, it's American gun owners. 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. 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? I don't know.

Michael Pierce 26:24

Okay, you know, you're getting you're getting closer. So uh this I love answering this question. 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. But I'm happy to tell you the story. Yeah, the genesis of doing this company is my wife. 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.

Jaclyn Strominger 26:55

Where it's I would never have heard that on the news. I'm just kidding.

Michael Pierce 26:58

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I know you never would have heard that. So never people like my wife who live in the suburbs don't feel safe in their homes anymore. 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. Number one, there's less policemen than ever in Los Angeles on the beats. There's 8,200, depending on who you want to believe, to 8,600 policemen in LA County right now. On LA, sorry, LAPD. LAPD.

Jaclyn Strominger 27:31

LAP so 8,000 8,000 8,500. Okay.

Michael Pierce 27:36

And the last time the number was that low was the mid-1990s. But the city is growing much bigger than that. So they have a real shortage of actual police on the streets. Policing in a giant, complicated city. There should be like around 11,000, is what I'm told by experts. 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. You're held to a high standard, you have a camera on you all the time, you make mistakes, it's very dangerous. It's it doesn't pay that well. Who wants to be a cop in LA? And it turns out not a lot of people. So that's one reason. Then you have a myriad of other problems. You've had all the racial unrest, right, with the Rodney King. 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. This has now been changing the last few years. You have a new administration, new new DA. 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. 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. They were never that worried about it. 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. And so they want to arm themselves responsibly and safely and confidently, including my wife. So my wife came to me one day. 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. So I feel safe when I'm around. She knows we have guns, but they're locked up and they're appropriately stored. But I am skilled and instructed on how to use a gun if I needed to. She doesn't like guns, but now she feels unsafe. 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. 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. There's literally hundreds of guns to choose from. 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. She goes, Well, what gun do I buy? I don't have an effing clue. And also, where do I get instruction? There's nowhere I know where to get instruction. Well, you go to YouTube and watch a video, or you can watch a manual, right? Or you can go to the NRA website, but I don't really know what the NRA is. I don't affiliate with the NRA. I doesn't feel good to me. I don't know what to do. So that's an opportunity. That was a white space, and she wasn't alone. I started researching it, and this is what I do. 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. This is another problem. It's expensive, it's hard to qualify. You have to actually take and have some instruction. You can't just go and get a gun, like say in Texas. 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. California requires a cooling off period. It's very expensive. They put all these impediments before you, but people want guns. So I said, you know what? I am going to create a space now for people who are normal people who don't necessarily want to have anything controversial. 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. No, no, they're far from that, but yet they don't believe that everyone should not have a gun. They're not on the far left saying, no, no one should have a gun in the city. Well, if that matters, we have the second amendment in this country. Everyone has a right to have a gun. And I want to exercise my rights, but I am somewhat moderate. And I couldn't find any company or any site that spoke to that demographic. And that's why we started American Gun Owners. 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. 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. 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. And these instructors are mostly based on National Rifle Association instructors. There's 128,000 of them nationwide, and they're all built in. We built the API for them. So when you put that zip code in, you have access to all those resources. And it's discounted and it's very simple. We have a recommendation engine. 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. I say, I don't know what I want. And then there's like six questions. You just click on the first one. Do you live in an apartment or a house? What's your physical stature? Have you ever owned a gun before? Do you have children in the house? All these practical questions. 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. And that's that's that simple. So we're marking.

Jaclyn Strominger 33:20

I actually I totally love it. 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. But what was interesting is living, I I grew up in Massachusetts. 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. 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. 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. It made you like pause, right? And made me think, and and I will say, so that was a little, I don't know, I found it was odd. Like I'm thinking, like, why aren't they? Why aren't they? I mean, they're behind a counter, but anybody could just jump that counter and I don't know. It was just kind of a thing.

Michael Pierce 34:34

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. My generation, I I would go to a gun store because I was comfortable, I knew what I wanted. And typically it was an older white guy behind the counter, and I could relate to him. 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. 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. He's gonna sell you the car that has the best margin for him, but not necessarily the car that you want. And it's even more pronounced in the gun world. So you walk into a gun store. 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. And you're like, Really? Okay, you're not gonna know any better. Right. But that gun may be the wrong gun for you. 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. So we take all that guesswork and all that silliness out of the equation. Like, nope, the recommendation is gonna give you the gun that's right for you. We guarantee it at the best price. 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. It's not that complicated.

Jaclyn Strominger 36:08

Yeah, no, I absolutely love it because it and I will say, you I think you're spot on with people. 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. 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. 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. It's like the um, you know, driving a car, right? You have to go through a process of you don't just get behind the wheel, you do have to right.

Michael Pierce 37:08

And this is where it gets interesting, Jackson. I have to tell you, because it's been somewhat controversial doing this whole thing. We're just getting started, and I'm kind of prepared for what's coming on the left and the right. And I will say this to us a gun is not political.

Jaclyn Strominger 37:24

No, it's not.

Michael Pierce 37:24

The gun is a utility, it's there for you to defend yourself. But our politics has got so wacky in this country now with the far right and the far left. I want nothing to do with that. We are just providing a you a piece of metal that is a utility for you to protect yourself. I don't want to hear arguments from the right or left. I I care, but I don't care in this context. I want everyone to understand that. I grew up on a cattle ranch, and the gun to me was used to hunt deer to feed us. 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. And now all of a sudden the gun's so political. And so that's I'm clapping back against that. We're American gun owners, but we're not political. We're just providing a utility for normal people to be able to defend themselves. It's that simple.

Jaclyn Strominger 38:16

And I think like to me, it's like the gun, the car, the AI. It's a tool. 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. 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. 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. But that's because that that's a different type of a problem.

Michael Pierce 39:04

Yeah, but also remember, we're not selling right all types of guns. It's very, I have to be honest, it's quite calculated. We're just selling a revolver or a pistol or a self-defense shotgun. That's it. This is a very clear message.

Speaker 3 39:17

One, two, or three. Right.

Michael Pierce 39:18

If you want those other guns, the controversial ones, fine, go buy them. I'm not saying you can't buy them, but that's not what we're selling. Right. We're selling for people that just are feeling unsafe and they need instruction so they can get confident with their gun. That's important.

Speaker 2 39:32

Right.

Michael Pierce 39:33

Not trying to restrict or enforce any rules or laws or question anyone's devotion to the second amendment or opposition to it. I don't care. Right, right.

Jaclyn Strominger 39:41

Yeah, no, to be able to defend your. And I I think it's great. 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. And as you said, get comfortable, get comfortable with it. 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.

Michael Pierce 40:02

Well, confidently is the word we like to use. Yeah, you want to be confident. Yeah, that's a that's a dangerous thing in your hand. It's gotta be you know used carefully. Yeah. If you have to use it.

unknown 40:13

Yeah.

Michael Pierce 40:14

So anyway, that's that was the story. It's a true story. You know, it's this all came from my wife, and she felt quite strongly about it.

Jaclyn Strominger 40:22

Yeah. But what I also really love is that you're applying the principles of other, you know, other businesses to this. You know, one of the, and I think this is actually it's one of those things. If you you don't need to reinvent the wheel, you just need to make a better wheel.

Speaker 40:36

Yeah, well, I'm not I don't know if I'm that arrogant to think I hope I hope that I am. It's hard to do, but hopefully that's what we're striving to do.

Jaclyn Strominger 40:43

Yeah, no, I think it's actually really right. So, do you, you know, when you're thinking about this, I mean you're is it gonna start nationally? Are you just starting locally in California?

Michael Pierce 40:55

Yeah, good question. 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. So we're just kind of we're to where we are geographically. That's kind of a jurisdiction that we know because it's very complicated too. Every state has different laws. So we had to then build the software in conjunction with a software that already existed. So when you put in your zip code, we'll only sell you a gun that's compliant in the jurisdiction that you live. That took a lot of time and effort to figure that out. Because in California, for instance, you can only buy certain guns that are on what's called the California roster. 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. And like, that's not where I live because you live in a state that the gun's not compliant in. I mean, it's all sorts of complexities in this business. So that's been keeping me busy for about a year and a half now. We're finally launching, but man, has it been hard.

Jaclyn Strominger 41:57

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. Every state has a different, you know, rule. I mean, when it comes to to those things. So starting, you know, on the western side. 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?

Michael Pierce 42:25

Absolutely. I think that there's uh and particularly in in blue states, a big segment of the population that is not being treated fairly. This is a little bit political. I'm gonna go there anyway with you.

Speaker 2 42:38

Okay.

Michael Pierce 42:39

They don't live in gated neighborhoods, they don't have private security. Maybe you're a single mother with a couple of kids and you live in an apartment in a lower income neighborhood. It's a neighborhood that's very slow police response time. And maybe your ex-boyfriend or husband has a restraining order out against him, but he continues to threaten this person. Those people have a tough time getting guns like anybody else, if for all the reasons that I've mentioned. And I feel they deserve to be able to have their gun to protect themselves and their family. And right now it's not easy in a lot of blue states, in particular, for that individual to feel safe. And that doesn't sit well with me. That's really driving a lot of why I did this. 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. And I met lots of people who were in that unfortunate circumstance. 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. 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. Because I've got all these other circumstances that make me feel unsafe. And then I get clapped back at you know, some of the very wealthy elites in Los Angeles. 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. Neighborhood who tell me no one should, you're just making gun ownership, you know, available to more and more people. That the last thing we need is more guns in this country and this society. I'm like, okay, that's easy for you to say. Where do you live? Like great for you that you're there. Maybe you earned that money, I'm happy for you. But a lot of people don't have that luxury, and the police aren't going to get there. And all of the aforementioned that they live under that constant fear. 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. 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. The police really honestly aren't there to help them. And it's hard for them to navigate this process. And so they just want to be able to exercise their rights under the Second Amendment to defend themselves. I think that's pure pure pure pretty noble. And if I can make that easier for these people, then that's really my goal.

Jaclyn Strominger 44:54

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. 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.

Michael Pierce 45:20

Can I confide something in you and your viewers? I'm gonna make I'll tell you something that's quite personal about my family. One of the other reasons I did this is there, my my wife is the landmark case in Los Angeles County for felony stalking. Oh which means she was the first case that the DA actually prosecuted and got a criminal conviction as a felony for stalking. This was back a long, quite a long time ago in the 90s. So up until that point, it was just a misdemeanor. So she was stalked by her ex, and he threatened to kill her numerous times. 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. I abhor violence towards anyone who doesn't deserve it, particularly violence against women, which I absolutely have no patience for. And she's told me many times how she couldn't even sleep at night. 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. She didn't know how to defend herself. She's never had a gun, doesn't own a gun. Put yourself in her shoes. I can't think of that. I've always had a gun. I want to know how to use a gun. I'm safe with my gun. Uh no one, no one's ever messed with me. I've never had any problems in life. But a lot of people don't have that luxury for, and so that hit really close to home when I met her. And I was really on the tail end when all this happened, but it really I saw the fear in her eye. I'm like, wow. And I didn't realize back then, that was 15 years ago, that this is what I'd be doing now. I never would have dreamt it. 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. 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. They wouldn't even come. Who is she gonna turn to? Who's gonna protect her? Only herself. Only herself. There you go.

Jaclyn Strominger 47:13

Wow. 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.

Michael Pierce 47:33

But let's face it, 90 it's between 95 and 98 percent of all violence is committed by men in America. It's a huge number. It just is. I don't know what to say, but I'm a man. I don't, I'm not one of those 97 or 8% of men who commit violent acts. But if you're a woman, you're you have reason to be scared a lot. 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. I feel sometimes I'm just a protector of women for whatever crazy reason. I just really bothers me. So anyway, I don't want to hijack the podcast over this issue.

Jaclyn Strominger 48:14

But but no, but I but it there's a lot about that. I mean, about I mean, there's so many societal things about where we are with the police and all that stuff. 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. No, you need to be able to take care of yourself. And I've always been that way. 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. 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. So, you know, and that means a lot to me. That means, you know, I I think it's really important.

Speaker 49:20

Thank you.

Jaclyn Strominger 49:21

Important. So, Michael, all right. So, I where can people connect with you to see and learn about you and also this great website?

Michael Pierce 49:29

Well, I mean, www.american gunowners.com is simple. 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. And I actually have a podcast as well called Lock Load and Listen, which I've done in about seven episodes. It's gonna be rebranded actually next month, but right now that's what it's called. So you can you can see some of my conversations with various people there, lockloadandlisten.com.

Jaclyn Strominger 49:56

Okay.

Michael Pierce 49:57

Other than that, my venture firm is Digi Ventures, Digiventures. That's a website too.

Jaclyn Strominger 50:03

All right, so I will put all of those in the show notes. Listeners, please do me a favor, connect, please connect with Michael. 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. There's been great insights, but what Michael is doing is also incredibly, incredibly important. So please share this episode with your friends and family. And if you haven't subscribed on your local, you know, your podcast app, or you know, please make sure you subscribe. And lastly, listeners, please do me the favor and become a supporter of the show. 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. So please make sure you go do that. And that link is in the show notes as well. So thank you, Michael, for being an amazing guest. This has been good to have you on again.

Michael Pierce 51:00

Thank you. Jaclyn, that was so much fun. Thank you for having me.

Jaclyn Strominger 51:03

It's such a pleasure. And listeners, this is the Unstoppable Success Podcast where we help you leap to your greatest success.

Speaker 3 51:16

Here's to your unstoppable success.

Jaclyn Strominger 51:19

You've been listening to the Unstoppable Success podcast with Jaclyn Strawinger. Subscribe, share, and keep building your unstoppable life. We'll see you at the top.