This is the full transcript for Episode #316 of the Wild Business Growth podcast featuring Tom Kubiniec – SecureIt Tactical Founder, Military Weapon Storage. You can listen to the interview and learn more here. Please note: this transcript is not 100% accurate.
Tom Kubiniec 0:00
Don’t waste a moment of your life. Don’t waste time you’ll never get it back.
Max Branstetter 0:18
Hi there. Welcome back to the Wild Business Growth podcast. This is your place to hear from a new entrepreneur every single Wednesday morning who’s turning Wild ideas into Wild growth. I’m your host, Max Branstetter, Founder and Podcast Producer at MaxPodcasting, and you can email me at to save time with your high-quality podcast. This is episode Austin 3:16 and today’s guest is Tom Kubiniec. Tom is the president and CEO of SecureIt Tactical, the global leader in military weapon storage and armory design. In this episode, we cover how in the world, Tom started working with the military how to grow your business with a focus on simplicity and innovation, and that 2,000-foot ice climb in the Canadian Rockies. It is. TK. Enjoyyyyyy the showwwwww!
Allllrightyyyyyyyy we are here with Tom Kubiniec, a name who I’ve rehearsed swimmingly, president and owner of SecureIt Tctical, a business that I don’t even need to do the research is very unique compared to some of the previous businesses we found had on the show. So pretty exciting to speak with you today. Tom, Tom, thank you so much for joining. How you doing today?
Tom Kubiniec 1:53
I’m doing great, man. I’m looking forward to the podcast. And yeah, let’s, let’s have a fun conversation. Yeah,
Max Branstetter 2:01
exactly. We’re gonna get to all things with with secure, at tactical, but before that, I found a fun fact about you that I cannot leave said stone unturned. You were and maybe still consider yourself a heavy metal guitarist.
Tom Kubiniec 2:16
Yeah, I played on the road for about 10 years, 1012, years. Like
Max Branstetter 2:20
many people and like yourself, I I love guitar. I’ve played it a little bit. Unfortunately, there’s like a guitar behind me right now that I don’t touch nearly as much as I really should, and should get back into it. But what’s the difference between being like a heavy metal guitarist and like what comes to mind when people think of a guitarist? I
Tom Kubiniec 2:38
do the style of music. I mean, when you say, I say I played. I played in bands that were heavy metal bands. I’ve also, I’ve played in a big band, swing band. I played in a jazz band. I played in blues bands. I’ve done TV show work, like in a studio, doing soundtracks for TV shows. So it’s back in the 80s, playing in a metal band was the most fun, and it just it was the time I had a ball. I played. Start playing guitar in high school. Didn’t go to college, and I was playing in bars. And I was 17, you know, well, underage. Continued doing that in I graduated high school 1980 and then I got obsessed with playing guitar. You know, I was playing six to 10 hours a day. My parents kicked me out of the house. That’s all I did. A guy at Guitar Player magazine heard one of my demos, and they did an article on me as the best unknown guitar player that they had heard. So I’d never been signed. Wasn’t there any major bands? But I got this article in Guitar Player magazine, and all of a sudden the phone was ringing, and I packed up, moved to Hollywood, and I attended mi Musicians Institute for one year to polish up on stuff, and I could already play pretty damn good and meet a lot of people finish that up, and then started playing. And I developed tendinitis shortly thereafter, and at a point when I was ready to, you know, go audition for Ozzy and just be this rock star I couldn’t play anymore, and that was the end of it, and it was it happened pretty quick. It was pretty brutal, and it took me about a year of hoping it would get better, and it just never did. So after a year after that, I took a job telemarketing typewriter ribbons, because they would hire anybody that job. They moved me to a non sales position because I was so bad at it, but the guy thought I worked hard, I quit and took a straight commission job telemarketing, computer supplies, immersed myself in the world of sales, and said, I’m going to sink or I’m going to swim. I’ve got to I got to figure something out. Took me two years to get pretty good at telemarketing. I quit and started my own company with two partners in a little apartment in a lousy neighborhood, and it was Panorama City outside of Los Angeles. It was a bad neighborhood, but we had this little business. Year and a half later, we had 18 sales reps, and that was my first company sold it, started another company sold that, and eventually started secure it. And now we are. The global leader in military weapons storage and armory design services, and in the consumer world, we’re the fastest growing, one of the fastest growing companies in the hunting and outdoor sports area. So it’s been kind of a crazy ride.
Max Branstetter 5:15
Well, just as you predicted, you’re a star in the heavy metal space, but working with, like, literally, heavy metal items. So you kind of, you kind of factor into it, tendonitis, any itis is a bitch, by the way. I’m surprised you don’t hear that more often. Like, I appreciate you sharing your story that I’m surprised more guitar. And maybe there are, like, once you get into the space, guitarists that end up having tendonitis, or guitar, wrist or guitar, elbow, however you want to call it.
Tom Kubiniec 5:43
It’s not common, that common in guitar. But I was playing, I was working on paganini’s Capris on violin for guitar, which incredibly fast, technical pieces. And I was doing it like a workout at a gym only. I was going at this, you know, three hours, two hours every single day. And if you go to the gym a lot, you know, if you do legs really hard on Monday, you don’t do legs again till Thursday, because your muscles need time to recover. And I didn’t realize that, and I just was basically destroying my arms over time. However, I’ve had tendonitis now for almost most of my life. A year and a half ago, out of frustration because I’m a golfer. I was a six handicap golfer. I became a pretty good golfer, and my tendonitis also flared up bad, and I couldn’t play golf anymore. So I actually developed my own treatment device. I call it the arm bar. It’s a trigger point therapy device, which I’m I’ve got an engineer working on right now. I’m gonna get a patent for it, and I’m gonna market it with a I want to teach people how to treat yourself for chronic tendinitis, which is different than acute tendonitis. The medical world is wrong. They treat it wrong. Besides health insurance, I’ve probably spent $75,000 out of pocket on every possible way to try to cure this, and I’ve now cured myself of it. And it’s simple, but it’s not. It’s just not what you think. It’s just, I took a deep dive on this and spent a year of just researching and reading and learning a lot, so that’ll be something I’m going to launch and do not as a money maker, more as a just helping people out, because I listen these stories and the doctors are just wrong.
Max Branstetter 7:20
Shout out all the doctors who tuned into the show that are punching Well, no, I’m just kidding.
Tom Kubiniec 7:26
I’m self directed healthcare. I don’t go to doctors anymore. I had a lot of health issues in my life, and I took charge of my own healthcare two and a half years ago, when my liver was failing, my blood pressure is through the roof. My arthritis was so bad, I I couldn’t use my hands. It was I had so many things just going sideways, and medical was just try this pill, try that pill. And I switched my diet, after doing a lot of research, to pure carnivore. I eat red meat and water and nothing else. I take no pills of any kind. I’m not taking a pain pill. I had shoulder surgery for an injury skiing, which they did, give me some sort of Oxycontin. But no other than that, I have not taken a medication, and I don’t I do my own blood work. I use chat GPT. I said, here, I type it all in and say, write my report for a 62 year old male 168 pounds in good health, boom, boom. And I do all my own health care and not a doctor, no training, but I’m I’ve never been more healthy in my life, crazy.
Max Branstetter 8:28
So this is where we we say Tom is secretly a doctor, and this is all medical advice. No, I’m just No, no, it’s
Tom Kubiniec 8:35
non medical advice. This is, you know, you do you. I found what works for me. I don’t know if anybody my age has got more energy than I do.
Max Branstetter 8:47
Let’s get to secure it tactical. And I think to do that, we have to kind of touch on your previous business. Like, what was it that, like, you know, that phone call or email that made the jump for you into, like the weapons and armory space.
Tom Kubiniec 9:02
It’s interesting because I had, I had sold my first company, then I started my second company was green line data, which was a telemarketing computer supply company in the late 90s. I got into the the internet was brand new, and I taught myself HTML. I had, at that time, probably 10 sales reps working for me, and I was spending most of my time writing websites and learning and basically I just taught myself how to make websites, and I started registering domains and making websites for all sorts of products. Instead of sourcing a product and try to sell it, I was making websites and seeing if I could get hits on things. I had crossbow.com online supply at all these different websites. And tape rack.com started getting we started getting leads for people looking for racks to store tapes. Back in the day, a company would have a big computer system, and you’d back it up on these little tapes, and they weren’t high capacity. So companies have 1000s of tapes that had to be stored and organized, and then these big metal racking systems for doing it. And tape rack.com Com, over the course of two years, became one of the largest sellers of tape racks in the country. HIPAA laws came out. So I created secure laptop storage.com hospital. This was the laws that required hospitals to lock up all personal data, all, you know, patient data, so all the laptops had to be locked every night. So securelaptopstorage.com and powered laptop storage.com became wildly popular, and we sold millions of dollars in laptop storage to hospitals. And it was that website that I got a phone call once. The guy said, Hey, can you store an MP5? I’m like, Sure. What’s an MP5? I’m thinking a computer. He goes, it’s a little submachine gun. And I said, I laugh. I go, Who is this? And he was with the FBI, and I said, you know, I’m sure we could. I talked to him for about 20 minutes, and I said, Give me a week, and let me do a little research. And I called a guy named Steve Moulton, who he owned the company that was making my laptop cabinets. I said, Steve, I got something crazy for you. What do you think about trying to make weapon racks? He started laughing. He said, Tom, I’m already working on a design for the Canadian government. His company was based out of Canada. So we shared notes, and we came together with a design. This was in 2002 now secure. It at the time, was secure. It selling lap was it was a brand for my laptop, cab. I was going
Max Branstetter 11:17
to say, because, because I researched this part. I was like, is it it, or it was
Tom Kubiniec 11:21
originally secure it. And then we started doing the the weapon storage, and it became secure at the web. We moved it was slow, into it this steep learning curve, doing government contracting. We knew nothing about this. And I was, I was a dealer for a Canadian company making weapon racks. I shared a lot of design work with him. He and I did a lot of work together, but he owned that company, and we were a dealer that was in 2002 2007 we became aware of a contract that was about to be about to be put on solicitation US Army Special Forces Command wanted to hire a company to survey all their armories and prepare a detailed report as to why they’re failing art, why they’re failing all their inspections. We heard about this through the grapevine and secured a meeting with a colonel down in Fort. Bragg, we’re a three person company at this point. Gary Myrick, my sales guy, and I flew down there. And you know, we had no idea what we were doing, but we had nothing to lose. So we’re walking into this we had our hotel where, like, our shirts wide enough, do I do? Do we look good? Can we do this? Walking through this base and into these offices? There goes third group US Army Special Forces Group, into the Colonel’s office. And it just hit me as I’m walking through the hallways, and I walked into his office, introduced myself and just said, Good evening, sir. My name is Tom Kubiniec. I’m considered the leading authority in small arm storage and armory design. I think my company secured is the company to do this for you. And Gary introduced himself. We sat down. We talked for 20 minutes. We left, and Gary’s out in the Parkland. He goes, What the hell was that? I looked at him, he said. I started laughing. He goes, leading authority. And I started laughing. I said, Gary, nobody knows how to do this. There’s no company that does this. We just walked in to the guy and said, We are the pros from Dover. Nobody can refute us. And that’s a business lesson. If there is no expert in your field, you can claim it now. You got to back it up. But we simply claimed to be the best. And there was nobody out there. We won the contract. We were up against like l3 and Harris and these big companies probably put millions of dollars on their, on their, you know, on their bid, we came in at probably half a million dollars of actual, I mean, it was very economical. We were able to do and for 18 months, I traveled all over the country. I spent a day in each armory with the armorer, lots of photographs, shot, video, got interviewed. These guys, watched the workflow. And over the course of that 18 months, I became the leading authority on small arm storage and armory design. And it was that during that time that we designed and patented our tactical weapon storage platform, what we simply call cradle grid now, and that was patented in 2008 by 2011 we are the primary supplier to the US military. When we just it just took off in 2010 I bought my first gun. I’d never owned a gun, and I designed the system, having never owned a gun, my very first design I’d done, having never seen a an armory. In this case, you know, people say you’re really thinking outside the box. I’m just like guys, we didn’t know there was a box. You know, we were so far removed from this. You’re
Max Branstetter 14:34
reinventing the box. Well, we came into it.
Tom Kubiniec 14:37
We didn’t know what we were doing. So we just said, what do we you know, people are looking at weapon stores and weapon racks, and we’re just saying we’re storing basically metal pipes with a lot of gear. And we went to Home Depot and just started walking the aisles, looking at stuff. I called it home depot development, and our idea was, don’t make it proprietary, make it compatible with as many things in the world as possible. So our cradle grid system, we have a patented storage system for the guns, but then for all the gear, and that’s the hardest part. We supply storage bins, but they can go to Home Depot, any hardware store, and buy storage bins, baskets, trays that will go into the rack and adjust very easily. My competitors in this space were all proprietary. We crushed them because of that level of flexibility. And again, we designed something to make the war fighter safer and better prepared, not something to guarantee us more business. And I think that you know when you operate out of what is the absolute best thing you can do for your customer is a much better way to build a business than what is the absolute best thing we can do for profit? I mean, yes, you want to generate a profit, but you broadly, the companies that win big win big because everything they do is designed around customer satisfaction first and then making sure it’s profitable before they really launch it.
Max Branstetter 15:58
Yeah, there’s some great lessons there. It’s funny, totally different space. But like, your your lesson about claiming the space and being like, Hey, I’m the person here, and then continuing to build around that. You know, way back in it was around episode 50, we had Sue B. Zimmerman on, who is, like, the Instagram expert, like she however you say it, I’m so bad at these things. Stuck, stuck her claim, took, made her claim, and like said, one year early on in the era of Instagram. Hey, I am the Instagram Expert. And she literally is, like, built her entire business and like, career off of that, and so totally different space. But it’s if you do it confidently, and in your case, to a colonel, it could do some wonderful things.
Tom Kubiniec 16:37
The thing that a lot of people need to realize is your customers, if you know, if they don’t know your company well, if they’re unsure, people don’t want to make a bad decision, and they don’t want to think, Wow. I mean, again, I wasted my money. Really comes back to I made a stupid decision. And if they’re trying to choose what business for a level of service, when they see somebody, a persona or something on a website saying the leading authority, and whatever it is. An example, I’ve got a friend that had a business high pressure hoses and hydraulic fittings, and they’re custom made on the, you know, real quick turnaround for factories, for people that had to keep equipment running. And I said, Take one of your techs, get a cool photograph of him, and just put, you know, his name, and put considered the leading authority in high pressure hoses, and talk about how long he’s been with your firm and why your firm is better. But build it around a persona. So when people see the website or see they’re just gonna say, Oh, the dude works here. I gotta buy from here. You can do it. I mean, if there is no authority, the first person to claim it, typically, is the authority. Maybe it takes a little bit of guts or balls, or whatever you want to call it, but you
Max Branstetter 17:45
know what? Yeah, I’ll give you credit for both of those in that story, you mentioned cradle grid. And for anybody who’s not as familiar and like, I, I know next to nothing about guns, basically, in the military context. Like, like, what benefit does like cradle grid, for example, provide for like a military unit compared to like how they used to
Tom Kubiniec 18:02
operate. Okay? So what we do the military transition from an M 16, Vietnam era battle rifle to the m4 during the Gulf War. The m4 is a modular, really a weapon system, lot of different attachments. You can configure the gun in many different ways. The form factor changes, especially in Special Forces per operator. Also, you’ve got a whole lot of high value gear associated with soldiers, from night vision to thermal imaging to radios to all this technology, and that all has to be locked in the armory because it’s such high value or secret type gear. So armories from Vietnam coming into the Gulf War were all simple metal frames holding all the same size gun and no gear. All of a sudden, this change happened. And my two competitors that were making weapon racks that were modular racks, and inside the rack, you had all these different brackets for all the different guns, and you had all these different bins for all the different gear. One competitor had a rack system with 125 different components. The other one was 270 different components. And when they build an armory, it’s perfect, but the minute something changes, the Army has to go back to that company and buy the new bracket or buy the to hold that gun and military spending doesn’t work that way. Contracting doesn’t work that way. So what happens is they end up making do with what they have, and the racks slowly become worse and worse as the parts are mismatched and you end up what we call a bird’s nest, which is just a mess of guns and gear packed into these boxes. Cradle grid is one moving part. It’s one patented piece that will hold everything from the smallest sub machine gun up to a 50 cal machine gun and like big shoulder launch Carl Gustav and shoulder launch weapon systems, one piece of just on the fly with no tools so the armor can walk up to the cabinet with a gun in hand, whether it’s a. Small rifle, a machine gun or something larger, adjust the rack, put the gun in it, and walk away on the fly. Instantly, nobody else is ever going to do that. And then all the gear we supplied to simple plastic bins and trays that are available at Home Depot for all the gear and that gave the armor the ability to take each one of our weapon cabinets and configure it to do exactly what they want. The Marine Corps out at Pendleton called it the Tetris rack. They start at the bottom and building. And then the guys at third group called it the Lego rack, because it was like Legos, and we set up racks for these guys build this whole armory out purse some specs and get it all done. Say, this is absolutely perfect. I’d come back to a walk through three months later. It’s completely changed, because the armor is like, Oh, dude, no, I change this look by putting this over here, and I can do this. They had the freedom. The armors had the freedom to do whatever they wanted. And in the military, how those guns are stored. Are critical, because they’re that’s one of the highest activity areas issuing your returning guns can be a real bottleneck, especially like for a security force unit. If you’re doing base security, like an Air Force Base, they do a shift change. They got 20 guys coming in, 20 guys going out, and all these guns are passing through this window in this armory. You know, I’ve seen armories where it takes them 45 minutes to do a shift change. With my system, it takes three to five, you know, we’re just saving them so much time. And then our system properly stores the gun so nothing is ever touching if you’re not a rifle, if you’re a gun guy, you zero a rifle, meaning you got a rifle with a very high powered scope, like a sniper rifle, you’ve got that thing dialed in so the scope absolutely matches where that bullet is going. If that gets hit, gets banged in, if something hits it, you could lose that zero when a sniper goes into combat, he’s quite often, he has one chance to make one shot, and if he misses, people get killed. I mean, it’s critical that his his equipment, performs perfectly in our system. Pretty much guaranteed that, as I got more into this, I became fascinated with some of the science around it and all the stuff that these guys were doing. And you know, I didn’t serve in the military, but I thought, here’s a way that I can, I can make a contribution. So we just kept honing this system and spending a lot of time with operators, just getting giving them a system that allows them to be as safe as possible, as flexible as possible, and basically put them in a position to win.
Max Branstetter 22:32
Yeah, Can Can you expand on that? Like, like, what’s your research process look like in terms of developing new products and, like, making things sharper and more efficient and safer. It’s
Tom Kubiniec 22:41
funny. It’s just the opposite of what everybody listening would think,
Max Branstetter 22:45
you play some guitar.
Tom Kubiniec 22:49
It’s no it’s our process is out of simplicity, is we? I reduce things down. I’m a big believer anybody can make a complex system that solves a problem. But when you look the simplest solutions are the one who withstand the test of time. An example, if you got a junk drawer in your kitchen, that one all the usually a pair of pliers, duct tape, a screwdriver. People keep the simplest tools handy because you can solve the most problems. So we look at weapon store if we want to make the simplest tool possible so it can solve the most problems how we do product development. So Marine Corps puts out a solicitation. We won the contract to rebuild Okinawa. Was an $8 million project, and it is taking our system into what they’re going to call armory of the future. And we’re looking at about $256 million contract with the Marine Corps, which would be huge for us. We’re still working out the logistics of trying to make this thing work, but we had our system, and we’re designed. We’re putting this, these proposals together for this Okinawa project in the gunnery sergeant, Master gunnery sergeant, Okinawa’s like, Tom, Tom, no, no, stop. I want the guns to snap into the rack. They got to snap in so they can’t fall. You want this thing goes? They got to snap in. How are we going to solve this problem? I’ve got three other companies bidding on this. They all took months to figure out how to snap guns in. I sent out two groups of two. I said, go to Lowe’s. Go to Home Depot. Look in the broom aisle. I want to find things that will hold brooms against a wall, just things that we push a broom in, or rakes. Look at garage stuff. I want something that was just snap it against the wall, buy whatever they’ve got and bring it here. We got all these different brackets and components that can you see in those things you push it on a wall, and the little roller is closed. Okay. So we found this 3m product. This is kind of cool. So I cut it and I went and glued it and just butchered it. We call these Franken brackets, onto one of our saddles. And then I took bonded it, sanded it down, cleaned it up a little bit, painted it black, and shot a video of it with a gun snapping in, and I sent it to the master gunnery sergeant. He took that video and sent it out. It went viral through the Marine Corps, and they just lit up. And so now we won. Contract. I said, Okay, so we’ve got a 3m proprietary piece glued onto one of our pieces. Now we got to make one of these that actually works. We took the concept there and we went to an I actually brought in an outside engineer saying, who’s a on the industrial side of engineering. He said, Yeah, tell him what you want is a wire form. Using our existing bracket, we were able to use a wire form piece with two rollers, and it’s still a piece we sell all the time now, and it came out perfect. It was really simple, but all of our product development always traces back to what is the actual thing we’re trying to solve. What’s the simplest way to solve it? Okay, define that. Now. How do we make this into something that’s ergonomic, that’s pleasing to look at? It doesn’t require directions, and that’s where things get harder. Sometimes, as simple as solution tells us, you know what? We don’t need to make a product for this. We should educate people that it already exists. We’ve done that before. With some of the stuff we do, we’re like, Hey, Tom I want to store this and this and this. Yeah, I’ll forward Home Depot. They actually have, again, we’re not going to make a product that already exists. It’s not with how, you know, secure it. We’re known for being very innovative, but it’s really just the most efficient, simplest way to achieve an outcome. You know, in this case, it’s storage. Again, in the consumer world, consumer products is now 85% of our business. It’s the fastest growing part of our business. We were Inc magazine’s fastest growing companies in America twice in three years, and that was all consumer growth. You know, the gun safe industry has been around since the 60s, and they’re all the same, and we come at it with this radically different way of doing guns. You know, gun safes are heavy. Our safes are lightweight and ultra lightweight. Everything we we do is in conflict with what a gun safe is. You know, in this case, our sale is trying to educate people that everything you know is a lie, everything you’ve been told is wrong, it’s gun safes have been this way forever, not because it’s the best way. It’s just because they have so we’re really challenging people, challenging the status quo on what is the best way to store guns in your home. And as it works out, a big, heavy gun safe in your basement is a really bad way to do it. We would prefer small, lightweight, modular safes located throughout your home. You know somebody comes into my house, you would never know that I own firearms, yet I can be armed in two and a half to three seconds. Again, we’re coming into the consumer products strictly from everything we learned from 20 years of military, and everything we do is based on that level of performance. And we’re saying, No, it makes no sense. Do it this way. It makes more sense. Here’s why, and we’re winning the battle. We are. I’m hoping we’re going to get to a tipping point. Have you ever read Malcolm Gladwell book the tipping point? Yeah, that’s classic. I think that we’re approaching a tipping point with what we do, because our we spent very little on advertising, yet we’re growing like crazy. It’s all word of mouth, you know, getting the right what was the term he used from the communicators, the people that bridge all this, this communication, and yeah, the right buzz going we I see it happening. And there’s a point. We’re going to struggle to get to 9% market. And the market’s going to space it. We’re going to struggle to get the 35 40 million, and then the market will chase us to 100 because that’s when we go from early adopter buyers to your majority. Your early majority, late majority is right around nine to 11% market penetration for a new product coming into a market, and we’re just about there. Well,
Max Branstetter 28:40
congrats on the growth and all the incredible innovation. I think simplicity is always, always, always a good, smart route to go, simplicity and efficiency. There’s a lot of huge, huge businesses that have been built on that. So it’s really cool to hear that’s, you know, a core principle for you as well.
Tom Kubiniec 28:59
Innovate. When you walk in here, the first sign you see is innovate and simplify. And I just talk to people about all the time is, again, anybody can make complexity. The beauty of what jobs did with Apple was he came up with the iPhone. There were no directions, just use it. I gave my mom an iPad. You know, she’s in her 70s. I go, Mom, just use it. There’s no directions, just use it. And you come back a day later and they’re just using it. And that’s the beauty of that, that system, the simplicity, there’s always ways in every business to make things easier to understand or easier to use. And I think consumers, they might not talk about it, but they appreciate it.
Max Branstetter 29:43
Well. In the spirit of simplifying things, if I could pronounce simplifying, let’s wrap up with some rapid fire. Q, A, you ready for it? Sure? All right. Short and sweet, let’s get wild. What is the hardest song to cover on guitar that you’ve ever attempted? Acoustic
Tom Kubiniec 30:00
I do a finger style version of Layla by Eric Clapton. I’m playing the melody and the rhythm at the same time on acoustic guitar, and I’m playing the piano part at the end. It’s on, if you YouTube, kubenek, Layla, dad, D, A, D, G, A, D, it’s out there. I practiced that religiously for two years before I could play it.
Max Branstetter 30:22
Oh my god, I’m picturing you like an octopus now, like,
Tom Kubiniec 30:28
I recorded that for a guitar I was actually selling. I wanted people to hear what they could. It was a good, all very, very high and fine guitar. I just recorded that song and threw it out as part for the sell the guitar, and I put on YouTube also people like, Hey Dude, that’s awesome. So it’s, it is out there,
Max Branstetter 30:44
all right, what is your favorite military movie or TV show of all time?
Tom Kubiniec 30:50
Oh, military guys. Are so many good military movies or war movie. Call it war movies. More common, yeah, war movies. Kelly’s Heroes, Clint Eastwood, tellies. It’s a comedy, black comedy movie, brilliantly done. That’d probably be the, be the one that I would still, I don’t watch a lot of TV, but I’ll go. I’ll sit and watch that one for a while.
Max Branstetter 31:11
We’ll give it to you. All right. What is a band that or or performer who’s probably no longer performing in concert anymore, but who you wish they could come back so you could see him live again, or just live in general.
Tom Kubiniec 31:26
It’ll be Jimi Hendrix without doubt. Oh yeah. People don’t realize how, how far ahead he was what he was doing. And it wasn’t till very much more recently. Uli Roth, early guitarist with Scorpions in the 80s. And now he’s solo career. He’s getting pretty old. Is the only guy that has approached what Hendrix was doing.
Max Branstetter 31:46
That’s a great answer. He I’ll go like, I don’t know, months or a year without listening to Jimi Hendrix. And then when it comes on shuffle, I’ll pick, oh, my God, I need to listen to his entire catalog again. I’ll tell
Tom Kubiniec 31:58
you what you know. What’s close is Stevie Ray Vaughan, respected as a great blues guitarist. Oh, one of my dad’s technical from a technical standpoint, his command of the keyboard goes way beyond blues and I mean, I was pretty critical of most guitar players. I was known for super technical, super clean playing, and I can’t play his stuff. I can’t play Hendrix. I mean, I can play the notes, but I can’t sound like that. I just don’t have it. There’s a magic there. It’s hard
Max Branstetter 32:25
to not put a smile on your face when you’re just listening to Stevie Ray Vaughan, like there’s just some some, like, the best vibes with it, all right? And then last one, your big skier, hiking, all sorts of outdoor stuff. What’s like, the craziest outdoor adventure that you’ve ever been on,
Tom Kubiniec 32:40
uh, north face of Mount Athabasca.
Max Branstetter 32:43
I was gonna guess that. I just couldn’t pronounce that. No, just go. That’s a 2000
Tom Kubiniec 32:46
foot ice climb in the Canadian Rockies. I did in 1991 and it was I was a rock climber into that. That was my first big ice climb, climbing with a Brit who was one of England’s top mountaineers. He happened to be dating my business partner, and it was a, it’s a moment that changed. There’s a moment on that mountain that changed my life forever, that was a just, I was either going to survive or I was not going to survive, and it was a very dangerous situation, and I was by myself, and I can’t it’s a longer story, but there’s a point where all of a sudden I got scared, because if I fall, I got a rope going to me, but the guy had topped out. He was off to the side, 2045, degrees that way. He could not hear me. The wind’s howling. If I fall, I’m gonna swing, hit a wall of rock and ice, be hanging and there’s no way he dead lift me over this cornice of ice. So I knew I couldn’t fall, and I had to climb. I had to top out, meaning top of this, I’m on ice above me. I’m reaching above my head and just sliding this ax and set a hook on something. I got to commit to it. So I’m sitting there. I started getting nervous, and the voice came over and just said, it’s worth it. I just hit me just like that. I calmed right down. I pulled a camera out of my pocket, shot two images over my shoulder, off this mountain, put the camera back. Was a little film camera. Reached up with the AX, slid it, you know, I couldn’t see what I was doing. It’s over the top of this ledge. Slid it, and it hooked on something, put the other AX up there, walked my feet up cantilever and, you know, pull my crazy on these axes. If they’d popped, I would have been done and got up. And I never mentioned that to Kevin. I just got up, topped out, walked up. We hiked down, took us about three hours of hike down. And that’s really the last time in my life I was ever afraid of anything. And I’ve just I’ve never been afraid of anything. I don’t do stupid things, but fear doesn’t keep me from doing anything. I have the two photos still. I have one of them, they framed, and it’s not a great photo. Nobody knows why I have it, but it’s mine
Max Branstetter 34:53
that is out of this world and takes me back to one of my favorite movies when I was a kid, kind of one of the first more. And I’ll call it adult or grown up scary extreme movies. Was a movie the 90s called Vertical Limit. I don’t know if you ever saw that. Well, it’s like, Vertical Limit was, um, I forget who was in it, but it was, there were scenes like that where it’s like,
Tom Kubiniec 35:13
it wasn’t, it wasn’t with Sylvester Stallone. Was it that? I think that was a cheesier one. I don’t think so. I was way into climbing back then I remember the movies coming out. Chris O’Donnell, oh, Bill Paxton was in it. Okay, yep, yep, yep. Scott Glenn, Bill Paxton was probably, I don’t watch a lot of movies. I don’t pay attention to Hollywood, but Bill Paxton was definitely has to be one of my top five and favorite actors to watch. I miss him. He was, he’s in
Max Branstetter 35:38
legendary stuff. Oh yeah, real quick when you’re on the side of that ice cliff there, what was there something that you like told yourself to kind of No,
Tom Kubiniec 35:47
I sat there. I had a I get to the top, and there’s a rock ledge coming over my head about four inches. Not much, but I just got to reach up around it blindly and hook these axes on something. And I just sat there, and all of a sudden I started getting real scared, going, shit. Kevin, can going, shit. Kevin can’t hear me. I can’t get to him if I fall, I’m screwed. And a voice just it said, it’s worth it. So clear in my head. I don’t know where it came from, but I just completely calmed down, settled right down, sat there for a minute, enjoyed the view, took my photographs, reached up over my head with one of the axes, slid it through the snow, and the axe has a little cleat on the front that loops like back, facing you almost. And it caught I said, All right, so I let go with the other ax. Now I’m committed. Reach the other arm up, and then as I walked my feet up, you know you’re cantilevering, so the farther your feet come up, the harder you’re pulling on your arms, on these little chips, and I just kind of pulled myself some laying on my stomach on top of this ledge, and worked my way up and walked up to the top of the mountain. And, you know, I don’t know what the other outcomes could have been, but
Max Branstetter 36:54
really got one shot better not to think about it. Yeah,
Tom Kubiniec 36:56
as far as we know, we got one shot at life I live now is I just don’t waste time. I don’t watch TV. I don’t do the internet much. I’m I’m out. I’ve got a hunting we got a 500 acre the secure Ranch, we call it, and I’m out there a lot. I spend time outdoors.
Max Branstetter 37:11
But think how many Bill Paxton movies you could watch if you watch more TV. I’m just go. I
Tom Kubiniec 37:15
do miss my Noah. Sam. Was it alien? The second Alien movie? He was just brilliant.
Max Branstetter 37:24
Tom, congrats on all the growth and all the innovation. Thank you so much for coming on and sharing your story and tips and and near near death experiences on a mountain. So pretty crazy stuff. But where’s the best place? If anybody wants to learn more about secure it or to connect with you online. Where do you want to point them?
Tom Kubiniec 37:41
Just Google. Secure it. Google my name, Tom Kubiniec, I’m all over. I come up all over the place. And with the name Kubiniec, there’s like, there’s, I’m related to every one of them, so it’s not
Max Branstetter 37:52
hard. Am I spelling this right? K, U, B, I n, i e, c, i e, c, I mess.
Tom Kubiniec 37:58
That’s the one that gives everybody goof close. But then they’re just Google, secure it, and we’re all over the web. But yeah, I appreciate the opportunity. And yeah, it’s been fun. Yeah, appreciate
Max Branstetter 38:09
it. Back at you. Last thing, Final Thoughts, it could be a quote, words to live by, whatever you want, just kind of one line to send us home here,
Tom Kubiniec 38:16
don’t waste a moment of your life. Don’t waste time. You never get it back.
Max Branstetter 38:22
What a way to not waste the Final Thoughts. Thank you so much, Tom ,for coming on the podcast, sharing your Wild story, and thank you, Wild Listeners, for tuning into another episode. If you want to hear more Wild stories like this one, make sure to Follow the Wild Business Growth podcast on your favorite podcast app and Subscribe on YouTube which is @MaxBranstetter You can also find us on Goodpods, and for any help with podcast production, you can learn more at MaxPodcasting.com and sign up for the Podcasting to the Max newsletter. That is at MaxPodcasting.com/Newsletter Until next time, Let your business Run Wild…Bring on the Bongos!!
