How an Army Veteran Built a 50-Year American Manufacturing Legacy

China came in and the machines that we used to cast stuff, they didn't even make them in America anymore. And I just had to buy a new one and it came out of Germany. I'm like, what? And using American technology, it just broke my heart.

But we can do any of that. And we've really got into that lately. And here's why. Mike Lynch is a disciplined, principled, and results driven army veteran

and the president of the Western Heritage Company, anchored by his deep commitment to service. He helps uniform personnel in local communities, foster a strong sense of pride and economic resilience, creating a lasting legacy of principled leadership,

steadfast civic engagement and enduring American patriotism.

It's a second generation veteran-owned company

that's manufacturing unique stuff that really you can't get anywhere else on the shelf. If that's your vision, you verified that that vision was a good one. Stay with it and understand you're going to have failure. At the end of the day, no matter how much money you make

or what legacy you live, you know, if you're not doing right by people, you know,

“you're not, you're not, what's the purpose right now?”

So yeah, I'm a jerk, but I made a bunch of money, but you know, that's not what I guess is. [MUSIC PLAYING] Over, I'm telling how we're-- the living your legacy podcast for those who live to live a legacy.

[MUSIC PLAYING] Welcome back everybody to another episode of the Living Your Legacy podcast. Today I am joined by Mike Lynch, Mike, welcome to the show. How you feeling? I'm feeling great.

Yeah. You're on the other side of your interview now. How did everything go in there? That was great. It was good.

Good time. Good, good, good. You know, I don't want to-- you guys can't see this, but you interviewed with Kofi and Kofi's in the room with us.

You guys will never know that, but how was Kofi as an interviewer?

Excellent. Yeah, we had a great conversation. He was very good at drawing out the right information as far as I can answer. He would make a good psychologist, I feel like--

because we play a little bit of devil's advocate. We play a little bit of therapist in here. You know, we're sitting down. We're getting your story for hours and hours at a time. What would you say is the biggest thing

“that the audience is going to learn about you in your episode?”

Well, it's kind of a unique situation. It's a second generation veteran-owned company that's manufacturing unique stuff that really you can't get anywhere else on the shell for. You know, everything's custom-made,

but we also have a lot of really cool designs that we're going to launch in our 50th year. So we turned 50 years this year. Two generations, this will be-- this will be the year when I exceed my father in running and owning the company.

So I feel like you don't see that a lot, which is multi-generational veteran-owned businesses. Yeah, why is that? You know, it depends on what career path that, either that second generation or that first generation

took, right? If somebody were tired out of the military and started a business, then it's too late for their kid to take it over. My father and I both did our time, but didn't make a career out of it.

So I think that's one thing. You've got to have all the stars kind of aligned right for that to work on a timeline, right? Even on a timeline, because you know, if somebody-- a lot of people get out of the military

of a tire, because you can retire in your 40s. And so you've got a lot of life left in you. And so, you know, but by that time, your kids already in their 20s or already started their own career. And so, in our case, it was just really kind of a unique scenario

to do that. And keeping something alive for 50 years is not an easy task.

“No, that's what I was going to lead my next question into that.”

It's like, not only is it a multi-generator, but 50 years is a long time to keep anything running. I can't tell you the number of businesses that I've seen where you're absolutely confident that this is a staple, this is going to be around forever.

And then one day, just, yeah, like, for example, like, look at Blockbuster, right? When I was growing up, I was like, Blockbuster going to be a thing forever, right?

And then Netflix comes along and they're like never mind, right?

When I do in that anymore. So, you mentioned that you're in manufacturing. - Yeah. - Are you manufacturing here in the States? - Oh yeah, yeah.

- That's what I like to hear. Ladies and gentlemen, we have American-made manufacturing

That's what I really feel like, you know, if we're going to, as a country, if we're going to remain competitive, like manufacturing is a huge thing that we need to start getting a leg up on.

So, talk to me a little bit about what, first of all,

what it is that you guys manufacture. And then second of all, like, how you got into that space. - Yeah, yeah. Well, it's a really interesting story.

I mean, the whole thing started, my dad was a forestranger. Didn't, wasn't a business guy at all. And then one year just made a cool gift for his friends that had the Forest Service logo on it.

I go like this 'cause it was a keychain. And he just gave him tool for Christmas. He's like, this is kind of cool. These guys will appreciate this. Well, then those startups spreading around everywhere

and folks were like, I don't want one, I don't want one. And then he's like, well, I'm going to have to charge you for it.

“And he kind of just accidentally got into business, right?”

And didn't know anything about metal casting.

And then he designed what became the first U.S.

Forest Service official belt buckle. So, if you've ever seen a forestranger with a belt buckle, or really either the official one or any of the other buckles on one, federal government, natural resource agency folks.

So, that's Forest Service, Fish and Wildlife Service Park Service, Department of Interior. We made it. I'm just almost guaranteed. - That is incorrect, 'cause that's a large supply.

There's a lot of people within those organizations. - Yeah. - For you to be the official manufacturer for anything along those lines. Do you go by the route of like government contract

and how does that even work? - Well, so how this worked is that my dad came up with this design in the '70s. And then sent it to the copyright office. And in the '70s, the U.S. government

did not protect any of its insignia with copyrights. - It's easy. - Yeah, so you could... - They didn't catch onto that until what? - The 90s?

“- No, this could've started it honestly.”

And this was in '76, right? I think it was probably '78 when that whole deal went down. And yeah, so the deal was, like the copyright office called the Department of Agriculture and said, hey guys, somebody's basically trying to copyright

your logo. And by the way, you don't have a copyright on it. So the concession was that that would become the official buckle. Now, and it's not as big as you would think, right?

That market, I mean, we couldn't survive if that's all we did. And so we evolved. So then eventually my dad learned how to cast, and you know, learned how to manufacture stuff from scratch, you know, not didn't go back to college.

You think of that? He learned it on the fly. And then now that's kind of become what we do more than anything else is just-- So it's primarily casting, metal work,

little bit of welding here and there. Talk to me about like, outside of, you know, creating that logo and having it be the official logo and official belt buckle for all these different organizations. Talk to me a little bit about what's on the other side

of the manufacturing piece, what else are you guys crafting? That is probably not our main market nowadays. We've already done 'em all, right? So if they want to reorder-- - You may as many as you needed to make.

- Right. - Well, and they'll reorder when you get new employees in or whatever, but you'd think, oh my gosh, you're servicing the government. That's not that big a deal.

And the way we, back to the way we do that. So we, though we are the exclusive manufacturer, I couldn't sell you one of them, even though I'm maybe-- - Really? - Yeah, so it has to, that goes through a government contractor.

- Got it. - So it gets a little interesting. Which, like, broke our heart, what? We can't sell our own product. So we supply the government contractor.

So we don't, we don't play with government contracts at all. If they want something they come and find us, it's, and if they're asking for it, not us trying to push it on them, then they don't need a contract.

- Got it. - And so like fire departments, while fire agencies are probably our biggest one, it's folks that want to be identified in a group. And so they actually have like codes,

you can't get one of these if you're a firefighter unless the commander says you can or whatever.

“I mean, then there's a secret code that you have to give”

when you call one in.

- I always think stuff like that is so interesting.

Like the way that, on an organizational structure, standpoint, like having those little like secret codes, I worked, you know, when I first got out of high school, I worked in the restaurant industry for a long time. And we always had like secret menus

and those stuff like that. I love if you know, you know, could kind of deal. - Yeah, well for these guys, it's a point of pride, right? It's, you know, we've taken all the uniform, you know, the force service used to be,

you know, everybody were uniform. You know, we still have all these uniformed agencies. Those have kind of died, but now the buckle is now kind of there, that says on part of the crew. And so we hand numbered every one of these buckles.

And so guys will come when they're meeting each other,

but that's 70,000 over 50 years. So that gives you an idea, like, okay, I mean, if that's all we do. - But is there a thing now where they're like, what number are you?

- Exactly. - Exactly, yeah, yeah, yeah. And they do that with the different fire crews. And so those are folks that, you know, that means that they're part of that organization.

So we're not doing a lot of uniforms in these agencies anymore, they're kind of like, okay, what number you got. - Everybody is kind of very t-shirt and cargo pants nowadays. I mean myself included. Talks to me a little bit about, you know,

what are some of the just the day-to-day goings on

“in that industry, like, what is a day in your life look like?”

- Yeah, well, so like I said, this industry really got off-short, a lot of it. So China came in and like the machines that we used to cast stuff, they weren't even making them in America anymore, and I just had to buy a new one

and that came out of Germany, I'm like, what? And using American technology, it just broke my heart. But day-to-day, well, let me back up. So we've also taken that, you know, once we have your logo. So let's say, you know, you guys wanted

an insides-access bell buckle. Well, guess what? Now I know it, now I got your logo, right? I got it digitized, I got it in the format that I want. Hey, what else do you want?

Oh, would you like pocket knife with that on there? Would you like a plaque, would you like? So we do a bunch of other stuff besides just casting. But really casting is the part that is the most unique. I mean, you can go to embroidery shop and get whatever.

But why would you do that when, hey, we just help you design this. So most of our stuff right now is custom. We helped you design that logo and like, oh, my gosh, that looks amazing, like cool.

Let's put it on mugs, let's put it on shirts. Let's put it on whatever else. So this actually leads into something that, you know, I have a buddy of mine, he was my roommate for in college. And he has a fashion company out in New York, where he does

all of his manufacturing here in the States. He gets his materials in from Japan. So it's all Japanese cotton, Japanese denim. But one thing that he obsesses over, like every time I call him, this is all he wants to talk about, is like buttons.

The buttons for all it, because he makes a lot of like custom one-on-one denim jackets for like people for fashion, we can stuff and like all of the buttons have his logo on it. Like small little intricate stuff like that. - Do you guys do that as well?

- Absolutely. - Yeah, matter of fact, we've done a whole bunch of really cool buttons. - I would love to see some of those,

'cause I never cared about stuff like that until I met somebody

that's in that world. And then seeing how passionate they were about it, I was like, oh, all right, there's a whole like world that I'm not understanding here with like how intricate and how details you can get on these little tiny buttons

that go on, everything that you're wearing. But when you see those details, it almost screams luxury at you. It screams attention to detail. And like, I think that's one of the coolest things that if you're a brand out there,

and this has nothing to do with, you know, this has nothing to do with the story that we're trying to tell here. But if you're a brand owner out there, pay attention to detail.

“Like I think that's the most important lesson”

that I can impart on anybody. I don't care what industry you're in, what who you service, whether you're B to B, B to C, pay attention to the details. You're gonna go a lot further that way

than you would, you know, just kind of play everything like they fare. - Yeah, yeah. So the way our process works, let's say we had a brand that you wanted on there.

You'd send it to us. I've got the same graphic artist been with me since day one, 25 years. She will turn that into like an opportunity for you to pick what you want the design,

and she'll do it within the hour, kind of thing. Like you send it in. In some cases, and now what we started to do, and we were one of the first to do this, and we're 3D printing our masters.

So we can get incredible detail on stuff.

So like a button that had, I mean, - That's like, this big. - Yeah, so, and our process for making this model is the same, it's jewelry, it's a jewelry casting process. So, you know, all the fine filigree

that you've ever seen on a ringer in it, we're using the same machines. We're doing this, I mean, Tiffany's does not have anything better than I do in the way of casting. It's kind of an insult for our process

'cause we're making buckles, and they're a little bigger, but we can do any of that. We've really got into that lately, and here's why, 'cause I'm not just doing it, I'm right.

“- Exactly, that's how it's exactly what I was about to say.”

- And they don't want to know what it's doing. - Yeah. - Everybody here, another job that I used to work, but I used to work as mechanic. Like, after I put down the restaurant gig,

I was a mechanic for a couple of years, and we used to work with a lot of CNC machines, right? And to your point, none of those machines ever came from the States. So when one of them needed fixing,

we had to call in the subcontractor here,

and I just want to emphasize that,

“because I think it's so important that we realize,”

and for the people out there that are listening, for them to realize, like, there's so many things that we outsource, that we are perfectly capable of doing here. - Yeah. Like, there's not really a good reason for it to be outsourced.

It kind of, a lot of stuff got off-shored in a period between like the 70s and now. But I just want to say that to your credit, I think we having somebody in here that's bringing that manufacturing back is huge.

- Yeah. Well, we never left.

And we've succeeded through a tradition, right? So here's the other day, I was like, "Crad, we need to get this cast somewhere else. "We had a machine that was down." I'm like, "Oh, I'll just call somebody to do this."

A, couldn't find them, then I finally did, found one other company in New Mexico, so two States away from us. And they wanted to charge us twice what we were retailing it for, just to make it, and then we'd have to finish it

into all that stuff. I mean, that really opened my eyes that I call them out, because I don't sit around and obsess about competition,

“or who's doing what I'm doing, you know what I mean?”

- Oh, you got your eyes on the prizes. - Yeah. - If you're doing what you're doing, if you're doing anything good in business, who probably don't even have the mobility of your neck

to look left and see what anybody else is doing. - You know what I mean? - Yeah, yeah, so that forced me to do that. I went, "Huh, maybe this is a little more special than I thought, you know?"

But yeah, it's unique, I discovered how unique it is. It's just in the last few weeks, 'cause I try to get somebody else to do it. And using the same machine that mine went down, that they were using the same basically same,

I was a little better, but, and I couldn't, and I'm like, talk to them.

I never talked to a person, but one of my gals,

I was like, see if they can do a better deal, and they would cut it down by like a little bit, but it was still like their best deal was more than we were selling it, read, like, finished out the door with a nice box,

going with things. - Wow, yeah. - Yeah, it's interesting to get a look at, you know, especially because it's two states away and it's in a different market.

Like, you kind of have like, oh, is the demand different over there versus supply? The supply is down everywhere, 'cause anybody else is doing it, right? But it gives you a good bit of perspective

on like, oh, wow, we're able to not only do this, but do it cheaply and efficiently, yeah. And provide, let's you know how much value you're providing

to your clients into the world at large.

As we sort of wrap up here, and guys, if you're still watching at this point in the pod, I wanna make sure that you guys keep an eye out for his episode, which will be dropping shortly after this pod episode drops.

But for the people that are out there, if you could give one message to an aspiring entrepreneur about success and what it takes to be successful, especially over such a long period of time, what would that tip be?

- Yeah, the number one word comes up as tenacity, right? You can't be set back by setbacks, right? You gotta keep on going, and don't be afraid to say, oh, that was wrong, or that was a bad idea. I promise.

- That opportunity to learn something. - Yeah, I mean, you don't learn anything from success. You learn everything from failure. You know, if you just glide through, and I mean, so I just encourage folks to, you know, if that's your vision,

you verify that that vision is a good one. Stay with it, and understand, you're gonna have failure, you know? I mean, I can't tell you the number of times that I did not sleep well because I was worried about money along in the last 25 years, you know, like credit, I got to pay the employees on credit card, you know,

or whatever, you know, like you make it happen. You find it's way of making it happen. - That payroll to get you. - Well, it'll get you every time, yeah. So, you know, it's to stick with it, you know?

And then also, you know, if you're blessed enough to hire employees, treat them good, treat them good. You know, at the end of the day, no matter how much money you make or what legacy you live, you know, if you're not doing right by people, you know,

you're not, you know, what's the purpose, right? - Yeah, yeah, I'm a jerk, but I made a bunch of money, but you know, that's not a legacy. - That's not a legacy. - And it brings up, so any of my clients that I've shot with

that are gonna hear me say this quote, you know, you guys all know this quote, 'cause I say it all the time. I say it in every interview that I do, but it brings up the quote from my Angela, people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did,

“people will never forget the way that you made them feel.”

- Yeah. - And like, I think that's super important when you're thinking about the concept of legacy. Again, this is the living your legacy podcast. So guys, if you stuck around to this point,

at on social media?

- Facebook, Western Heritage Company.

- Western Heritage Company, got you. And there's no like official micro-inch

Instagram floating around out there.

- No, not really. - Gosh, there was, there was.

- Once upon a time, but you know what,

“some things can be private, then that's fine, yeah.”

But guys, again, make sure that you check out my episode, it will be coming out shortly after this when drops, again, this is the living your legacy podcast. I'm your host, Jason Tyler.

“This has been an incredible joy to get to meet”

and speak with you, brother. I hope that everything today has been, just as good as this conversation was. - Yeah, very good. - Yep.

“- All right, we'll catch you guys in the next episode.”

Peace. (upbeat music)