Welcome my friend Albert King here. I, uh, Albert's special to this show because back when salty electrolytes was just first becoming an idea, we were looking for a clever tagline. And, uh, Albert is, he's one of my Jiujitsu buddies. Uh, you've seen a few of those guys on here, we're on the mat one day.
And know, Albert already knew that we were gonna call our electrolyte brand salty electrolytes. Um, and he just used the phrase, Hey, man, I earned my salt today. I right there just said, you know what? I own that now. I'm gonna, I'm gonna use that. And, uh, that to me, Albert, man, that that really stood out as was just a cool moment.
It was one of those moments. so, you know, now come further around that circle the goer in your Salt podcast. You named it my man.
to be here, Riley. Grateful to see all your success with salt electrolytes. And I remember that moment. Um, I was actually pretty tired. It was near the end of one of our training sessions and we were kind of talking about it, and I'm always thinking about earning it. You gotta earn your keep, you gotta earn your pay.
And what happened was all this ex, all this rolling and grappling got me sweaty. I get pretty sweaty. I, and I tasted some kind of saltiness in my mouth and it's like, salt gotta earn it. Earn your salt. And that's how it, that's how it just kind of came out really organically in the moment.
cool thing, man. So I've told a lot of people about that and I've, I've even spoken about it on other people's podcasts
Yeah.
uh, it's, it's really,
me to have you on here and get to say, Hey, this is the guy, this is the one I was talking about. So.
Well, I appreciate it. You know, our relationship goes back, I think, uh, almost four years, three or four years ago.
yeah. Yeah.
Yeah. So when I first started training Juujitsu, which is kind of an interesting story, I didn't have an interest in Juujitsu at all. I actually had an employee who's living in Texas, working remotely and we're going through a one-on-one.
I said, Hey, what are some things that you're kind of scared of, and you're not trying, but you want to do. And you know what he said? He said, juujitsu and he said boxing. I said, when you come back to Idaho, I know a place. I heard this really great place to train called Team Rhino. My kid's been going there for about a month or two.
I'm still kind of scared to try it, but you know what, I'll try a free trial with you and we can go together. So I was thinking about it as like a mentoring opportunity for an employee and he didn't stick around very long, moved to different pursuits. It happens in Juujitsu, right? And so I actually got a, a pretty bad injury early on.
It was, uh, probably about, I. Oh, two months in. So just, just very new white belt. And, uh, I broke three ribs and just kind of, just kind of broke off like that. It was, use your error and back then ri you weren't in an instructor, but you always cared and you spent extra time with all the students, whether we were white belts, blue belts, whether we showed any ability in jujitsu or athletic ability or not.
You're just, you always came by and you cared. And so, um, it was a pretty tough time. So I, I was just getting into it, making some friends and then you're just, you vanish, right? So I had to be off the mats for several months and then when I came back, a part of me thought, man, no one's even gonna remember me.
I'm just, you know, it was just a flash in the pan. I was there for two months. All these other guys had been there for five, six. 10 years and I showed up and you were there, you said, Hey, Albert, the new guy. And that really resonated with me. You know, months later you didn't know me very well, but just that, I think commitment to, um, engaging with people and empathy really shown through with you.
And that told me what kind of character you had. Just remembering my name. And so now fast forward a few years later, here we are.
funny man. 'cause you don't realize that sometimes, right? I didn't at the time think of that at all. I just was, I was excited to see it back. 'cause for, for people who don't know, rib injuries in juujitsu are. Probably a 95 to 98% of people who start juujitsu get rib injuries. That's probably the most common And it usually happens early 'cause your body is just not used to that pressure. Right. Um, and I'll tell you a funny story about your, your rib injury in general. When, when I first heard that you were taking time off for a rib injury, my initial reaction was like, man, we've all been hurt. This guy needs to just get his butt in here. But then like the next day, I saw your x-rays on the, on the Facebook. And I'm like, oh, okay. He didn't just, he didn't just tear the muscle. He, he actually broke his ribs, so, all right. Uh, uh, you know, I, I kind of at that point was thinking Albert Albert's tougher than he looks so.
Oh no, not as tough as 99% of the world, but I think the part of me was, it's something that I started and I wasn't going to quit. And, uh, Keith Owen, right? I am sure he's been mentioned, um, on your podcast, right? Owner, founder of Team Rhino. I didn't know him very long. I just knew him for just a month and a half, two months.
Didn't really form much of a relationship with him. And one of those days I was, I was hurting pretty bad, but I was still coming, uh, to watch my kid Alexander. So Alexander was trained Jujitsu twice a week. I'm not training, I'm kind of disconnected, but I'm coming. I'm sitting out with the parents. And for some reason that day I just, I just felt kind of down.
Now I was a pretty active person. I ran a lot, hiked, did, did all these things, have four kids stay very physically active and with a rib injury, I just couldn't do anything. And I kind of felt sorry for myself. And so Keith came by, like, he always did, said, Hey Albert, how are you doing ribs getting better?
You can get back on the mats. And I don't know, I, I was just kind of down, I was like, you know what? Uh, not feeling too good, you know, I'm not working out and like, not eating well, just, uh, you know, just getting fat and old. I, I remember I said, I was like just getting fat and old and he looked at me and said, never again.
It's like, all right. And that resonates with me even today, having known him so little. Just those words in my mind, I feel that whenever I get a little down about things, I hear that it's
again.
So what was
he saying never say those words again?
I really don't know. So, so I've interpreted, I've interpreted as never again, this is the last time you're gonna feel sorry for yourself. This is the last time you're gonna have this pity party for yourself. Keep moving, advance, go forward. And that's the interesting part of it. I'll never know how we see, you know, you know, Keith's no longer with us, so I'll never know what those words exactly meant, but it's resonated years later.
It's resonated with me.
like what he probably meant. You know, he heard that pity party, and I tell you, we have all been there, man. If, uh, if you've ever been injured, if you're a physical, active, athletic person and you've ever been injured, well, man, that depression's real. And I think Keith was a good enough coach where he probably recognized that in you.
No, it was those good stuff, good memories of him. Just really good people too. I think. Um, what I found to be the best thing about Jiujitsu was really finding a tribe. Again, I think there's a challenge with people, especially when we grow up. We become adults. We're not part of those sports teams anymore, whatever it may be.
We don't have the jersey. It's sometimes hard to find your tribe. It's hard to find those people that help motivate you, challenge you, love you, trust you, and I think we walk alone a lot. And, and I found that again with Juujitsu. Um, and, and it's been a minute. I worked for the Forest Service for five years and you all wear the shirt that says fire on it.
Everyone knows what tribe you're on.
They do.
Yeah, I, I, uh, I do, I I want to get into the, uh, fire service with you because you've, one of the other reasons I asked Albert on this podcast was partly because of your background, man, you've had some. Really cool career choices, but then some vastly different career choice. Like they, it wasn't like you sort of bled from one to a similar one.
It was, it was like full on 180 changes and you've done it a couple times, uh, just since I've known you, yet you continue to, to, uh, perform at a high level. And I, and so I want to, I wanna go through that with you. For those of you who, um, we haven't talked about this yet, but those of you who are watching Albert, tell us about your growing up first, and then I want to go right into fire service, if you would. I.
Yeah, absolutely. So I'm a East coast kid. I know we're having this conversation in the Great West Idaho, great state of Idaho, but I grew up just south of Baltimore in Maryland. It couldn't be any more different than than Idaho. Uh, my parents are immigrants from Korea. Couldn't speak the language well, but they overcame it by working harder than anybody.
You know, they owned a little restaurant called Steak and Fries in Westview Mall in East Baltimore, route 40. Tough place to own a business. Um, the food business is, it's notoriously rough. So they're working 16 hour days, seven days a week. Myself and my sister, who's four years older, you know, we're trying to live out the American dream for them, right?
So for them, they come to America, they're, it's hard to find a job. They're just trying to figure things out. They're, they're working at this restaurant and they just really stressed education and hard work. They're like, we can't give you more guidance than that. 'cause we don't know how it works here. But we do know if you work hard and you strive to be the best in whatever you're doing for them was academics, you may have a shot, right?
And.
Yeah,
For,
Right.
fortunately for my sister, she followed their advice myself. On the other hand, I went a different way. Um, so, uh, I was kind of a wayward kid. I think for me, my parents were around, but they were working so much. My sister was four and a half years older, so I was getting to high school. When she was leaving high school.
I was trying to find my way with the wrong people, with the wrong things. Um, not really having role models on a day-to-day because my parents were just working so hard. And so, um, a lot of people don't know this, but I'm a high school dropout. So I dropped outta high school my senior year. Uh, gone into a lot of trouble, you know, all self caused and, uh, ended up getting my GED uh, doing the community college route working school.
Just really an underachiever. So I got to age 22, 23. Nothing exceptional about me, nothing special. Uh, quite the opposite. I felt like everything I touched failed. Everything. I tried failed. I realize now, looking back, I always quit too soon, right? I, I quit a month before something could have got me to the next level.
I quit when my ego got hurt at a job and never was able to advance. And I blamed other people. I quit too soon at school because I didn't see the value in it, in the moment. It, and it was just a really tough time for me. Um, here I am, I'm 23, going on 24. Graduated college. Uh, got accepted to to law school.
And here's the thing, I, I wasn't an exceptional student. I was just applied to a lot of law schools and ended up getting into one. Um, I was flipping through channels on TV back when you could do that. And there's this firefighter in California, there's in, in the brush slams. There's a air tanker flying by and he's hosing down.
And I just looked at that here, here I'm a kid from Baltimore. I was like, wow, that seems like so far off and farfetched. And I felt like I just needed a change. Like I just desperately needed something different to maybe kickstart my life. I felt like I was just so far behind, you know, 23, 24 other people are graduating college and, um, having, starting their careers or going to grad school.
And so I was like, okay, where do I start? So I went to the library 'cause that's where you get internet access. I looked up, uh. Forest service, fire jobs, you go on USA jobs and I went through this whole system and there's a section where you click on seven different preferred locations. So I started clicking on Alaska, um, California.
I just kind of clicked click and clicked. So I went through six of 'em and I hit a random location for number seven. I didn't even remember at the time. It just clicked just to fill out the box. A month, went by, didn't hear anything. Two months went by, didn't hear anything. I'm like, oh shoot. I'm gonna have to go to law school.
And. Be a very average or below average attorney.
I was kind of succumbing to my, my fate and then I got a, got a call. So here's the thing with the forest service, most firefighters are seasonal temporary employees, right? They get hired for three month, or four month stretches. It's, it's vastly different standards for hiring city or structure firefighters.
There's no written test. There's, there's none of that. Initially I got a call, um, his name's Levi Golf. Later on we'd call him Iel 'cause he's so evil. We just switched his name in reverse and he called me and said, uh, hey, uh, Albert Kang, um, we have a slot for you. The crew started about two weeks ago. Can you come out here on Monday?
And it was a Friday. And I said, yes. He said, all right, we'll pick you up at the Boise Airport. And I, wait, wait, Boise Airport, where are you calling from? And he said, Lowman Ranger District, Idaho. That was number seven. That's what I clicked. I had no, no clue. I never even,
for people who don't know about Loman, Loman is, Central Idaho and it's like in the sticks, man. There's not anything for 40 miles in any direction around Loman.
nothing. Nothing. And I said, Boise Airport, how about Tuesday? I can make it there by Tuesday. So I had a backpack, I had one shirt, um, couple socks. I didn't have the right kind of boots. I didn't have anything. And I took a one-way flight from Baltimore, BWI, airport to Boise. And I got there. I'm looking around, uh, this guy literally became a buddy of mine.
We called him Worm. There's a lot of nicknames in fire. So his name was Worm, WORM. And he was like, Hey, are you Albert? Like, yeah. Like, let's go.
Hour and a half later we're just driving and driving, like, like you said, right? Going to middle of nowhere. And here I show up, kinda the city kid and it felt like I was, I was old too.
'cause I'm, I'm 24 now.
Um, four. The rookies, 18 years old, 19 years old, 18 years old. There's one guy, I'm not gonna say his name, but he was about my age, but I'm the only one there. I don't have a vehicle, I don't have anything. And I was getting nervous, right? I was like, you know what, what did I get myself into here?
And right off the bat, within two hours I got all my gear, uh, got my Nomex, those yellow shirts, green pants, hard hat, line gear. Feeling kind of weighted down is 90 degrees out. Got a tool in my hand, got a Pulaski and they're like, we're gonna go for a conditioning hike. You ready? Baltimore? Actually, my boss at the time called me Philadelphia like, Hey Philadelphia, you ready for a conditioning hike?
Like, let's go. And I fell out all that hike. It wasn't, it was probably 10 minutes in. There was a big gap. I fell way behind myself and this other rookie and I got back to the barracks and I felt a lot of shame and, and I was starting to think this is the, the quitter in me. All those times I quit before then, I was like, man, if I had a car, I'm just gonna drive off tonight.
And so I'm glad I didn't have a car. Now what's interesting is the other person took off.
The other person who fell outta the hiking, he lived in Boise. He just took off that night. He just drove off, was like, this isn't from me. I. I can say now, I, I probably would've done the same thing,
didn't, 'cause I didn't have a choice.
I didn't have the opportunity. And that set the course for me in the last 22, 23 years I've lived here in Idaho, was it break the cycle of me being a quitter. It break the cycle of me when things get a little hard, when things get a little uncomfortable that I say hell with it. Someone else's fault.
you've mentioned this a couple times of having this, um, this stigma of quitting. You feel like, I'm gonna do it again. Here we go again. You know, and now you've put yourself in this situation where there's not a way out, man. You're just there, you know, you're, Uber's not a thing yet, right? So I can't even call an
Uber's not a thing.
how have you taken that lesson of, not, not not having a convenient way out and put that into practice in life.
Yeah, well now I've done it so many times. I get that. I still get the feeling, you know, that funny feeling you get in your stomach. Anxiety, fear, low self-esteem, whatever it may be. You know, those times I'll sit in the car, in the parking lot outside Jiujitsu thinking, do I really wanna do this? And they're all my friends.
Should I just turn? Should I just leave? I think I've done it so much now. It is, yeah. I've done it so much now where I get that feeling and now I don't get scared by it. It, it almost triggers me to move forward. It's like, okay, this is, this is fear for me. The fear of maybe failure, the fear of looking dumb or embarrassment.
But now I know on the other side of fear for me, I. Everything I want..
And now I choose that path. Like if it, if I'm scared by it, and if it makes me feel uncomfortable, I'm gonna lean into it. Not because I feel more comfortable about it. I've done it a lot, but because I've seen the results of it, the results are, I see the positive that happens from it.
Um, I always felt like I'm, I'm always behind. It started when I dropped outta high school, right? I dropped outta high school. I lost a year. Other people are living their lives and I always felt like I'm one year behind. I'm two years behind. And I've started to realize it's never too late to become the person you're meant to be.
It's never too late, whether you're 24, 34, 46 like I am now. And like you mentioned, Hey man, you, you changed a couple things. Yeah. You know, when I, when I was a firefighter, I thought that's what I was gonna do for 20 years. I thought that's what I was gonna do for 30 years. I met my wife in fire. Um, her brother's a smoke jumper.
Her dad spent 40 years in the forest service. My wife was, was a firefighter when I first met her. Tough, smart. And I had a lot of experiences there where worked on a hand crew where we hike into fires on foot, you're digging 16 hours a day. You're hot, you're uncomfortable. We work on these little fires in the middle of nowhere.
We go to these project fires where there's 2000 firefighters in California. Um, I end up working on a fire engine and up, uh, my last year working on Boise Hellac, uh, as a Hellac Repeller. And, uh, I just thought I'd just keep going. You know, I'm scared of heights. Ri
my wife knows that I, I, I can't even go up on, I can't even go on a roof.
I, I, if there's a light out on, on a ceiling. Light. My wife knows she's just gonna grab the ladder and she's gonna take care of it. I start trembling and there's something that really appealed to me to either be a smoke jumper or be a repeller on a hell attack crew. And, and that's what led me through my journey and fire to get on a, on a hell attack 📍 crew.
So, um, you know, repelling out a helicopter, 250 feet in the air, you're back on the skids of that helicopter. I, this is my break and I ju I get, I try to get down to the ground as fast as possible, so others are like, wow, Albert has no fear. Look at him. Just go. And it's, and it's the fear that got me down and it's the fear that got me up.
so interesting, ma'am, because you know, you, you may not know this, but you, um, met you as an adult, right? And you had calmed down a lot apparently, because the scuttlebutt is from the guys who worked with you, that you're a wild man.
📍 I was a wild, wild man. So speaking of nicknames, I was Captain Chaos because wherever I went there was chaos and I, I was always in the middle of it.
so, uh, tell me more about that. Man. Captain Chaos is a fantastic name. Had I known that, would've been your Jiujitsu fight name for sure.
Yeah. Had a cape. 📍
pretty
do, do you guys pretty, is pretty good and, and there's a lot to being a new guy from a mentality standpoint, but I had a cape, uh, captain K Kate that ended up catching fire one night, um, through some shenanigans with fire Jenga. But, uh, you know, it was all fun. It was a lot of fun. Here we are, um, firefighters at night we're.
Uh, you know, doing those things that young people do with little care in the world. And as we, as I progressed in my career, you know, uh, my second year I was down in Mississippi after Hurricane Katrina and Rita saw a lot of devastation there. Uh, you know, fires to California, Santa Barbara, San Diego, uh, we call it Wiley on urban interface.
So it's not just those fires in the middle of the mountains and nowhere, it's, it's fire that's, that's touching people's lives, 📍 right? It's really touching their lives. And, and back in those days, we didn't have cell phones like this, right? So if we had those disposable cameras that we just throw in our packs, I remember going out to the witch fire.
I think that was oh seven. And at that time it was the largest evacuation in US history of, of people or San Diego County. We we're coming in on engines and everyone else is leaving. And I remember someone pulled out the disposable camera to take pictures. A young guy, it's like, uh, uh, maybe a first or second year.
And I looked back at him and said, Hey, uh, put that down. You don't want to have other people's misery become your memories,
because that was already starting to happen to me.
So when you say that was already starting to happen to you, are you talking about, 'cause there's a, you see it a lot of time in, in soldiers, police officers and firefighters where there's almost a that starts to happen. Is that what you're referring to?
Yeah. So people now know me as being just smiling and happy and positive all the time. And I was like that too in those, in those early days. Um.
Mississippi changed me a little bit after Katrina, you know, in the forest service and wildland fire, you're not subject to type of human trauma that a city firefighter sees or a police officer sees, or the expectation of death and casualties that a soldier sees. It's just not, it doesn't come part of the equation of being a forest firefighter.
Um,
but it happens.
Yeah,
It happens. But
about how you, you know, you go from Loma Idaho fighting fires up there to Santa Barbara, very different.
yeah.
What?
all over the place and, uh, you know, it's helicopters are unforgiving. Helicopters are just as unforgiving as, as fires can be. Which is kind of ironic 'cause I ended up working on a helicopter crew and we lost three, um, across the, he attack, uh, their ship went down at the end of the year. I think that was oh oh six.
They went down. And so one of the firefighters on that helicopter, she actually had the same crew I had to that point. She worked on crew five, I worked on crew five, and we all knew the same people. We hung out, we, we were friendly. And earlier that summer we, she and some other firefighters actually survived, um, a shelter deployment in Montana.
fire got them. They deployed.
Shelter deployment
So in wildland fire, we're, we're not. Carrying oxygen masks or anything else like that. Um, we carry this little fire shelter, which it looks like the silver blanket in our line gear. And it's meant in the case that if a situation arises where you, you know, make the bad decision or nature makes a decision for you and you have no escape route, you have nowhere to go and fires coming on you, you deploy your fire shelter and you put it over you and you hunker down, you know what kills you isn't necessarily to direct fire.
It's the super heated air that one inhale in, turns your lungs into ashes, right? And so they had a deployment, uh, it was a little Venus deployment, uh, incident and the fire didn't touch them directly and they survived it. It was a miracle. We had a big party about that when they got back. And, uh, and one of them, you know, lost your life.
At the end of the year.
In the helicopter,
Yeah. That was outside of Cascade. And here's the thing, like we're just like, okay, her brother actually worked on the crew with me. So it is, it's kind of a big family. And we had this big memorial in Brundage and I'd say there's actually, you know, there are tears, but you can kind of tell there's some people are getting a little bit hardened to things, you know.
So the year before I started, there was a Kramer fire incident, uh, two firefighters, one from Salmon, Idaho where my wife is from. Uh, there were an Indian Nola hell attack and they were killed. Uh, my father-in-law was one of their T-ball coaches growing up as a kid. So this is just a few years after that incident, this happens.
And now we just keep marching on. Right. Just keep marching on. And, uh, 2008 ended up being my last year in fire. I was working on Boise Hill attack, um, bell two 12. So that essentially is kind of a civilian version of a Huey. And this was my last actual wildfire incident. So we're at the Iron Creek Complex outside of Redding, between Redding and Weaverville.
And it's kind of boring duty 'cause the helicopter and the pilot's doing all the work on this one. This is a big project fire. There's probably a thousand firefighters there. Big, big, big fire. And so we're just hanging out, um, saying hydrated, doing some hookups on the helicopter. They'll fly off, uh, pick up water, do bucket drops.
And so I was getting kind of bored. So myself and a, and another guy on the he attack crew, we volunteered to go walk the line and count a bunch of hose lays. So there's, there's sometimes hundreds of miles of hoses that are just kind of all over the place in these big fires. And we just we're, we're pretty fit.
And we wanted to get out and just walk around. So, um, I'm not gonna say his name 'cause I haven't asked him, but we went out and we walked probably six, seven miles or walking the, the perimeter of this fire. And here's the thing about forest fire. You have federal employees, forest Service, BIA, um, department of Interior, and then you have this whole group of private contractors, right?
So they come in, they're not highly trained, they're on call, they meet the absolute minimum qualifications to serve on a fire line. And typically their jobs are trying to grunt work. Here, we're gonna take out a bunch of hose, uh, we're gonna do some rehab work and clean up some line. They're not in thick of it.
And, um, and they're all over the place. You know, they, they're, they make the backbone of the, the, the fire service. And so myself and this other firefighter, we're done walking the line. And unbeknownst to us. So every 10 days we do, um, repel proficiencies. So whether we're on a big fire or not, um, we'll go up, we'll repel all of our helicopters just to get our proficiency and, and, and make sure we're good.
But everyone watches that. So those who aren't in helicopter, they're like, whoa, look at those guys. Like, I'm want be one of those guys that they're, they're, they're the cool ones, right? And, uh, we ran across this group of contract firefighters. The how I knew is, uh, right, they're, I don't wanna sound egotistical with this, they, they're, their physical standards just weren't our physical standards.
So it was just different. They have a, they have a different mission. They have a different mission. You know, they're smoking and joking. Not many of us are smoking. We'll, we'll have her chew in our mouth, but it was just different. And I remember walking up on them and we were a little tired, so we were just kind of drinking some water.
And one of them, uh, talked to me and said, Hey, are you one of those hell attack guys? Yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm one of the sell tag guys, and he said, oh, how can I be one too? And you know, what's challenging is that
in my mind, this is five years in, been on a hundred plus fire, felt like I've proven myself time and time again. I let ego take over me. And in my mind I thought, man, why are you asking me that? Like, don't you know who I am? Like I, I, I felt like almost like I'm better than them or better than this person.
You know? I gave a very respectful response. Like, oh, you gotta apply. You know, uh, if there's healthtech base close by to where you live, stop by, talk to the guys. But in my mind, it's like, you know, why are you even asking me this? You, you have no shot.
That haunts me.
You know, those days there's no emotion with me, right? There's no tears to be shed. There's no, there's no none of these kind of moments. The, the next day, a
seven of them died,
Wow.
plus two pilots, seven crew members, uh, gray back forestry, two pilots, nine were killed. Four survived.
There was a Sikorsky S 61, it's kinda like a Marine one. You see Marine One transporting the, the president from the White House, these big, big ships and the foresters, we call 'em type one ships and carry a lot of people. So that night off Helispot 44, uh, picking up a group of firefighters, taking them down to a different location to, to kind of hunker down for the evening.
Um, there's a lot of controversy about what happened actually. Uh, the contracted company for that helicopter, I think their vice president or COO someone went to prison for it, for overstating, uh, the, the weight capacity that this ship could handle to win the contract. It, it, it became a thing, but apparently the ship went up, went down.
Crashed for escaped. Think about this. The other part of the crew watched it. They're still waiting for that ship to go and come back and pick them up.
So.
those are real, those are real. It's challenging days, those real challenging days. And my helicopter manager at the time, I'm not gonna use his name either, but um, he was part of all three wildfire helicopter fatality recoveries that happened up to that point. And we're all in the, the hangar in Weaverville.
And this guy comes out, and this was post incident now, and a lot of, a lot of rules were broken.
A trauma counselor came in and he said, Hey guys, um, you know, I used to be a smoke jumper. I'm in, I'm in trauma counseling now. If you guys need to talk about anything, I'm here. I, I know what you guys have been through or what anyone's been through. Just wanna, uh, get a chance to talk to you. I'm talking to everybody and no one, no one even looked up
Yeah,
and he just turned around and walked out.
Now everyone handles these things differently. You know, for me it wasn't the reason why I left. I actually was engaged to my wife at that time and, uh, we were ready to get married that, that September and kind of start a new phase of our life together. It just so happened that that was my last fire.
Since then, right? Transitioning. So I went firefighter, I'm transitioning at age 29. Here I am. I had fire on my, my shirt. All was a big deal. Just trying to figure out life again. So I come into Boise, I don't know anybody. I have no network. I have, I felt like no skills to offer, but I learned the skill that I have was I could handle a lot, I could work hard.
And I started, um, you know, I was a TeleTech firefighter. I went to an unpaid internship and I went to this job where I was making 12 bucks an hour and lost my community, lost my tribe, was just trying to figure out what's next. But I never stopped and I kept going forward and someone asked me and said, I.
It is actually, uh, Jake Furini, he ended up playing jujitsu with this. I, I've known him since he was 18 years old as a rookie firefighter. And, uh, he said to me, he was like, and he calls me Al, you know, I'm Albert, but he calls me Al. He's like, Al, what are you gonna do now?
funny you
are you gonna do?
Al that for a while and I didn't know who he was talking about. He kept saying Al and I'm like, who? Who is this? Al? Yeah. I put it together finally, but it, I'm way too slow on that.
And I just thought to myself, I just gotta keep pressing forward. I don't know what the finish line looks like. I had no idea it wasn't going to be from firefighter to, um, salesperson to banker to, uh, working at a technology company. I didn't know what the finish line was, but the thing was, keep going.
Don't quit on yourself. Keep getting better and understanding the things that drive you to be scared or nervous or may cause embarrassment. 'cause you're still learning new skills don't quit. And that's what got me through this tough transition. Uh, ended up in banking of all things. Right? Here I am. And now I'm finally making my parents proud.
They're like, we thought, we thought we were gonna get an attorney. As a son, he became a firefighter. That's hard to brag about in certain immigrant communities.
Uh, you got me a doctor, a lawyer or attorney, a banker.
Oh,
And so, uh.
now, now they this is one of the transitions I wanted to talk to you about. 'cause that's a, that's a flip man. Talk about what that was like. This, this, you're going from this action packed, you know, lots of, uh, danger and tragedy and
Yeah,
banking, which we don't usually put like high on the excitement list.
no. The thing about banking, banking is an exercise in risk mitigation, right? So what financial institutions do, they're money traders, they get a dollar for this amount, and they lend it out for a higher amount, and that's what they do. They're always assessing risk and maintaining that spread vastly different from those firefighter days.
And it really had to, I had to adjust, I had to evolve. And I kept thinking about, do you ever do this? Where sometimes you think about leaders. That you've had in the past and the ones that weren't really good stand out the most like, oh, I'll never do what that person did. Oh, that, that person's terrible.
And sometimes the ones who are really good get kind of, aren't thought of as quickly as, as some of the bad ones. And I started thinking about leadership, the impact on people that leadership can provide. And I saw it. I saw on the fire lines, I saw effective leadership or ineffective. There's only two kinds, effective or ineffective.
That's it. There's no middle ground with leadership and became a real student of it. And so whether it was banking or other things, I realized that I can make an impact on people. But the thing is I have to keep growing and developing myself to make that kind of an impact. And then over the years. Uh, I ended up spending 10 years at one financial institution, became a vice president, uh, real comfortable job.
I could have wr written it out for another 20 years, right?
I had this mantra that I used for all new employee orientations and sometimes organizations have their vision and mission statement. I couldn't tell you what it was at the last place I worked, but I think some of my team members and employees will remember the three virtues that I talk to them about.
please give us the three virtues.
Each time a new employee would come on board, I'd make a promise to them, and the promise is, my expectation of you and your expect expectations of me always is to lead by example. I. Self-sacrifice for the greater good and demonstrate and know that each person can make a difference.
And it was a promise. It was a promise that they can expect those three virtues from me. And if I'm not living up to it, let me know. I also expect those three from you. Now, going back to those virtues, I was always driving to develop, have the team grow, get outta their comfort zone, and then I found myself starting to get a little comfortable.
I went back to those virtues and I was thinking, am I leading by example here? You know, sometimes I don't know if you're a guitar player or not. You know, you think about me too. You know, there's always that kid in the neighborhood who knows two more cores than you do, and you think he's Jimi Hendrix
It's jujitsu.
yeah, that's, yeah, that actually gets you. But that's so many different things. And so I felt like, you know what? I'm two steps ahead, not because I'm better just 'cause I've been just doing it longer and I've had more repetition while I was feeling comfortable. And so through different relationships and, uh, an opportunity came about to shift from the banking space to kind of quasi within the financial institution space.
But, uh, I went to a company called, uh, investi. And so it's still dealing with the financial institutions face. But it's a challenge. And it was a challenge that I felt that if I'm leading by example, that that's really something I believe in, that it led me to, to taking that leap.
And there's no easy days.
comfort zone, right? It's so easy to get there and I, I don't know if you realize this about me, but my, that was part of the reason I started SALT was my other company running so well that it doesn't require much of me, and I just found, I just kind of bored and I was getting, you know, mentally soft with it.
Just like. comfortable. You mentioned that earlier. Right. And man, I needed a project and the salt has provided that project.
Remember you mentioning that Ri I remember that. You're like, oh, I have things, you're like, I have things pretty dialed in with my business. And then, uh, I was like, why don't you go and just start another business? You just created all this, uh, uh, headache for you. But it's, it's a, it's a similar vein of challenge and growth and knowing that comfort comfort's not necessarily a good thing.
It can feel good.
It can definitely feel good.
Yeah,
Yeah.
That's a temporary thing, man. I, I love to hear you talking about that because I, it's nice to build things to where we are comfortable. 'cause that's the goal, right? Is the whole reason I put things in place in my, my other company. I. Know was to make it as much as it possibly could run by itself. But man, there's something about that when all of a sudden I'm not needed anymore, there's a little bit of ego hit, you know, all of a sudden decisions are being made without me. And, I find out about it later and it was a good decision. I just wasn't part of it. So now I feel kind of put out a little bit, you know, and then, the, the boredom really started to catch up with me where I was like, man, I need something to do.
I just need something to put my mind on and something to scare me a little bit. Something to make me uncomfortable.
Heck yeah. And so I, I didn't mention it, but I went from a, a financial institution that's been around for almost 90 years, rock solid, stable to a startup.
No, and
Now we're doing really well as a startup, but as
saying it for a reason, but I, you know, you did go from exactly that, something very solid and, and you know, it's Pretty, uh, a legendary institution in our community here, but two, yeah. Startup. So, so talk about what that's done.
Talk about how, what emotion you've had with that, but also what, how, how's your, your wife handled this transition?
well, I think the biggest part of it is that we're a remote first company. So I'm working remotely outside of some travel for work, and my wife works remotely downstairs for her company that's based in California. So I think that's, that's been the biggest transition is every once in a while, we'll we'll kinda see each other when we're going to the kitchen, whereas before.
I'm outta the house nine, 10 hours a day, and then I come back home and kind of, kind of do that thing, that, that was actually the biggest transition. But I'll tell you this, with my wife, all these changes that have happened in our 18 years together, she's always been supportive. She always says, go for it.
And that type of support,
it's really unmatched. I, I like to say I'm doing it all myself, but if I didn't have her saying, go do it. I know you want to do it, go try it. That gives me that confidence to know that there will be no failure, there will be no failure. Right. It's like juujitsu, you know, the My, my Glorious Juujitsu tournament record of oh and five.
It's, uh, you know, they say win and learn, lose and learn. I don't know about the winning part. I. I'll tell you this, losing and learning. I used to tell people, Hey, uh, your first six months or three months on a job is kind of challenging because you're not quite up to speed, but you're getting paid. And someone will say, oh, I feel kind of guilty getting paid for this.
And I was like, Hey, you're, you're getting paid to learn. You're losing and learning. Not necessarily they're losing, but just kind of overall, right? Is that we're always learning. And sometimes the best opportunities to learn something is when you're on the other side of the victory. On the other side of the metal stand.
Yeah, man, I, uh, I've been meaning to ask you, and it's a little off subject, but it's kind of, kind of part of what's going on here, and I'm, I, uh, I wanna know you this term going your salt. What does that mean to you now? Because I, you know, some years have passed since, since I had that interaction.
I stole that term from you. uh, what, uh, what does it mean to you now because you, you've experienced. life stuff. Um, you've experienced those situations you talked about with the fire and the, overcoming this stigma of you, you had quit a few things in life and you carried that along kind of in the back of your mind there, that gave you doubts whether or not you could achieve certain things. But now you come up with this phrase, you know, gore in your salt, and what does that mean to you?
Burning for salt for me. Things don't quit. Keep going forward. Sweat, grind, grit, and thinking about salt is, I don't know if you've talked about it on this podcast, I was a history major. Back in the day is that salt was like gold, right? There's, there's value assigned to it and anything in life worth receiving a value takes effort.
You gotta earn it. So think about those things in life when you're, maybe you're a kid and so your parent just give you some, some teddy bear at the store 'cause he cried for one second about it. He's like, here's the teddy bear. Shut up. Right? Or whatever it is. What happened to that teddy bear? That teddy bear got left behind somewhere 30 seconds later got fed to the dog.
Something else like that? What if you had to earn it?
You know
becomes that teddy bear becomes a lot more valuable.
I was thinking about that recently and it was, it was something that I had been. When my father passed away, we were just cleaning out his shed, you know, and there was some tools in there, and there's a couple tools in there I found. I was like, oh, this would be cool to have, I put 'em in my shed, right? It occurred to me one day I'm out in my garage and I'm working on a project. I was like, it'd be really cool to have one of these tools. I didn't realize I had that tool in my shit. I had forgotten about it because I didn't earn that thing, right? I had just received it and it, it was in the chaos of, you know, the, the mourning and the passing and the, all the work it is to deal with an estate and all that kinda stuff, and it, it made me think about exactly what you're saying is that didn't earn that thing, and so I had no real value to me.
I forgot I even had it, and I, went and bought another one before I happened to see it out there, and I was like, oh, crap man. I almost just went and bought a tool that I already had because I didn't value the thing I already had because I didn't earn it. But all the tools that I've paid for. All the experiences in life that I've, you know, uh, triathlons and marathons and the hard stuff that I had to earn.
I remember every one of those. I exactly what I had to do to get there, you know, so. That's awesome,
Yeah.
fantastic. What, um, some lighter questions you wanna go for, for that.
go for it.
Okay. Uh, your favorite pastime
Favorite pastime. It used to be juujitsu when I would go more often, and then I got that blue belt. I'm barely go anymore.
I'm definitely that stereotype.
in the Jiujitsu culture. Blue. The blue belt is the second belt, and it's a, it's just a common kind of a meme that when somebody gets their blue belt, they quit jiujitsu. And know, Albert, you haven't quit jiujitsu yet. You're still
I was there on Monday, so technically I have not quit.
anymore.
No, I, I was telling some of the guys on Monday, um, we're doing a drill and someone kind of sat down on my calf a little little bit, that's just jujitsu. And he was like, whoa, whoa, whoa, sorry about that. I was like, Hey, no worries. I'll be back in a month. And I'm just, I'll just be fresh just like a daisy. So you, you, you put in the pressure, you sit on the calf, you do whatever you need to.
Next time you see me, I'm gonna be fresh. Don't worry about it
because it won't be,
to
I got a month between classes. It's all alright. Yeah, I'd say right now. It gets more challenging, right? We have four kids under the age of 10. My wife is a very high functioning professional too. And it's, and it's one of those things that's just, uh, the pastime I'd say lately is
still working on things, right? And working on things. We talked about earn your salt and we talked about some, uh, some tangible things like a teddy bear or tools and things like that. Relationships, you gotta earn those every day too. You gotta work on those every day. Whether that's relationship with your spouse, your kids, your aging parents.
That's an interesting dynamic in and of itself. Your friends. It's hard. It's, it's challenging. You get older. Uh, when you get busy, you gotta be intentional with friends and family. 'cause if you don't just like anything else, you're not earning it. And it's gonna wither away or, or you're not going to value,
you're not gonna value that relationship.
So I know you're trying to go light, but I went heavy again,
turn that right back into heavy. No, I love it. I love it, man. You're dropping some wisdom here. Um, okay. you're eating a hamburger in, in the restaurant you go to, puts the freaking veggies on the bottom. Is that acceptable?
I don't eat veggies. I'm a plain cheeseburger kind of person. I've always been a plain cheeseburger. And, and here's the thing. I don't wanna be a blaming type of person, I wanna take full accountability. But my parents own steak and fries restaurant. So hamburgers, cheeseburgers, steak subs. They would come home at night with four or five cheeseburgers.
And the thing about it was they're always playing. 'cause you, if you throw on some mayo, if you throw on some tomatoes that gets soggy and can go bad quickly. But you just have those plain cheeseburgers. Good to go. And if you wanna kind of hear a little bit of a gross out story, I'll tell you this, in my rookie year in the forest service, uh, we're going out to middle of nowhere, Nevada.
You know how middle of nowhere Nevada can be? And we're day three, day four on a fire. We're eating MRE. So meals ready to eat these little meals out of a bag and they're terrible. And someone pulls out a stinking cheeseburger, like a McDonald's wrapper, cheeseburger. We've been out here for a couple days, it's a hundred degrees.
And they start eating that cheeseburger. I'm like, wait, wait, are you, when did you get that cheeseburger? He was like, I don't know, like a week ago. I buy 'em. I just stuff in my pack. And he said, the secret is get the plain cheeseburgers. 'cause they last longer. And so later on when we were going on assignments to fires, if I had the opportunity and we're stopping somewhere, I'd pick up 5, 6, 7, 8 plain cheeseburgers throwing in my line gear.
And it was like, heaven on earth. Three, four days into a fire, biting into that. And I'll tell you this, the bread stays pretty good. The cheese stays good, especially when it's a hundred degrees every day. Still it has a little melted feeling to it, but man, I remember pulling out a cheeseburger from under, uh, the seat and one of the, the rigs ones.
It could have been there for two weeks, I don't know. But I ate that sucker. Its good.
know, it's funny because there's that Netflix documentary where they talk about how a cheeseburger, a McDonald's cheeseburger lasts forever in this class case, you know, and doesn't change. And, and they talk about it as a negative, but you're bringing a positive light on this man benefit
it brought a smile to my face. Yeah, have a weak old cheeseburger and some Copenhagen. Life was pretty good.
is funny, man. tell me this, have you ever been in a fight.
I've been in one-sided fights, uh, meaning as a kid I got bullied a lot, got picked on a lot, got got all these kind of things, and, uh, low self-confidence. I didn't know how to defend myself and so, uh, less of fights, but more of beat downs
Oh
and that was all as a kid, as a grownup, you know, I'm not going to attest to anything I may or may not have been a part of When I was under my pseudonym of Captain Chaos, I'm sure it was all just good times with my Kate and stuff.
And so I can just say I don't recall any in my adult life past 18 when I was a little kid, you know, just got beat up here and there.
Were you ever kicked outta school?
I kicked myself outta school.
So, so part of that was, was you, and part of it was the, uh, administration or what, tell me,
They, they weren't sad to see me go. They weren't sad to see me drop out of high school.
Holy
if, if I could only go back then, uh, everyone would be very surprised. I think that life is like seasons. We change, right? And it's okay to keep changing in our lives. That doesn't mean that we're a different person.
That just means sometimes we're maybe a better person, I hope.
what, man, I've interviewed a whole bunch of business owners over the years. Um, not on the podcast, but just I love to sit down with successful people and see what makes 'em tick and the amount of really successful that did not do well in the school system. It's, most of them, know, they, they just figure out a way to, to make life work and, and it's, it's not that rigid routine, you know, they're just
Yeah.
not cut out for that sort
Um, what's a bucket list challenge? Something you wanna do in the future?
Of all the things that I continue to strive to try to do and conquer fear, I think competently swimming is on my list. I can do the doggy paddle a little bit. I can cheat underwater and just push my legs out and beat all my kids in swimming, but I can't really swim. And so that's something that is, uh, is on my list to make sure that I become in this latter stage of my life is becoming a competent swimmer.
friend, you're talking to a competent swimmer. We should do that sometime. I,
That's.
it was funny
I, I mentioned triathlon earlier and that's the one event that I. Pretty dang good at the other stuff. The running and the biking. I'm, I'm very, very marginal, but swimming man, I can swim,
All right, we'll find each other in the pool. Then.
in the pool.
That'd be awesome. Um, tell me a, book that you recommend everyone should read. I
It may be a bit kind of outside of the conventional, but I'd say, uh, kitchen Confidential by Anthony Bourdain. It just shows the wildness that happens in these, in these Michelin star restaurants. Just the madness, the chaos that happens behind the scenes. And then what gets delivered is this perfectly plated meal.
So sometimes.
kitchen chaos. Right.
It's just an interesting process that all these different ingredients, um, just the chaos that can happen in the kitchen with all these disparate personalities that are drawn to working in a, in a hectic kitchen environment can produce things of such beauty and taste and refinement. Like how do you go from there to there?
It is just really fascinating to me, and I think that's what we focus on a lot in life is the output. Here's the output. Riley is the founder and CEO of Saul Electrolytes, he made it. Albert is whatever this is, he made it right, but they don't see all the, all the madness that's happening in the kitchen every single day.
They just see that perfect plated food that's getting a Mifflin star rating from the food critic. And that's why that book really resonates with me is that you gotta keep grinding. You gotta keep fighting through the chaos, but you have to deliver, right? You have to produce as well.
Man, you just brought that around to what you were talking about in the beginning, right? grind.
It's grind.
I love it,
Well, listen, um, what are you gonna do next? What's, what's next? You just started this new venture with, with invest five, but what's the what, what do you got in mind for the future?
What's nice is that I have those three virtues to guide me. I. Lead by example, self sacrifice for the greater good. Each person makes a difference. Here's the thing, sometimes life isn't linear. Life may not present itself right now to what that next finish line looks like. Now I have those objectives.
From a business perspective, I have different objectives and goals from a family perspective, but there's, it's okay to leave some things to chance, but don't put your behavior, don't put your discipline. Don't put your focus with development, with leading, with leaving your ego at the door, knowing that you can learn from everyone.
Each person can make a difference. You keep focusing on those things and ensuring that every time you have that funny feeling in your stomach, you decide to glean into it instead of lean out to it. I feel like only good things can happen.
that's beautifully said, man. Well, Albert, I thank you for being on here today, man. I, I was, I've been looking forward to this conversation for a while, and I, uh, I was super jacked able to have this, you know, podcast as a, as a way to talk to you. And again, I am thinking about you coming up with our tagline. Uh, it's that, that meant a lot to me, man. I, uh, I don't think you intended it that way. I just think that's kind of, when I heard it, it was the thing. And I, I, uh, yeah, I appreciate you a ton, appreciate your friendship
appreciate
yeah.
the If people, people don't realize what, what Juujitsu does for, for dudes and um, for the ladies too, but, you know, there's that. trusting each other. You mentioned that in the conversation before we hit the record button here, you have to trust people, man. And uh, when somebody's got a hold of your neck, you gotta trust
Which Riley does often or has done often?
rumors.
No. I'm grateful to be here with you, grateful for the friendship, and I can really say authentically, you know, you're one of the, the most real people, empathetic. You care about people, selfless and whatever you need. My friend, I'm here.
dude. Albert, go earn your salt, man.
.