EP 33 Phil Licciardi

A play on the triumph and losses in performance and life.  The Talent Tank podcast will navigate the inner workings of lifestyle, lives, family, teams, careers, programs, and technology in and around the offroad motorsports industry.  What breeds success with your Talent Tank on full, failures when its on empty.  From the journey to the Starting Line to take that Green Flag, on to exploring trials and tribulations on and off the track in pursuit of victorious achievement and the Checkered Flag.

You are in for it in this installment of The Talent Tank.  We have one of the funniest, good time having characters in all of the Ultra4 Racing family.  None other than Phil Licciardi @liberty_mtn_fab of Liberty Mountain Fabrication in Gardnerville, Nevada.  Some may know him by his old Pirate4x4 name of "SillyNeck", while more recently his customers have started calling him "ShockJesus".  A long time, lifetime member of the Rock Zombies, Phil exemplifies and embraces the outside wheeling lifestyle.  Lives, breathes, eats, sleeps the lifestyle.  When you can't find him hard at work at the shop, you can find him in the pits or on the road for one of his east coast shock tuning tours.  We cover some don't miss ground from recent forest fires and how he and his family dodged losing everything, to what is the Rock Zombie Bikini Car Wash.   

Headshot provided by Lona Scott of Scott's Designs @scotts.designs

After the Checkered Flag-
As many as 90 percent of wildland fires in the United States are caused by people, according to the U.S. Department of Interior. Some human-caused fires result from campfires left unattended, the burning of debris, downed power lines, negligently discarded cigarettes and intentional acts of arson. The remaining 10 percent are started by lightning or lava.  According to Verisk’s 2019 Wildfire Risk Analysis 4.5 million U.S. homes were identified at high or extreme risk of wildfire, with more than 2 million in California alone.   From January 1 to September 28, 2020 there were 44,520 wildfires compared with 39,476 wildfires in the same period in 2019, according to the National Interagency Fire Center. About 7.5 million acres were burned in the 2020 period, compared with 4.4 million acres in 2019. 

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Transcript

Intro/Outro  0:02  
Let's drop the green flag on this episode of the talent tank podcast with your host Wyatt Pemberton bringing you the best, fastest, most knowledgeable personalities and ultra for and off road racing.

Wyatt Pemberton  0:20  
All right, all right. All right. Welcome back. We've got the talent tank. We're here to fill it up. We've got a cop, man, we got an amazing individual looking back at me on the screen today. You guys are gonna get your ears filled with we've got Mr. Phil Licciardi shot Jesus. Hey there. How are y'all? I don't expect a response.

Because you can't hear them yelling at your screen going. Damn it,

get this guy out of here,

man. So you guys are kind of in for it before I kind of roll into it too far. Man, Phil and I have a we've jumped through some hoops to make this happen. Technology has not been on our side at all. We've got between Phil's laptop and Skype and then the recording on my end. So here's what we're doing. We've got Phil on Skype, looking at me me looking at him on Skype, but we're muted, fully muted. But then he's on his cell phone with his Apple earbuds in and we're talking to each other on his cell phone to my cell phone. Which who knows, you know, I've got one bar signal on that thing. We'll see even how good that is. I'm not confident in the audio. The audio is definitely not going to be up to a normal par. But I think the content is going to be worth it right?

Phil Licciardi  1:36  
This is what makes it fun. You know, if you can do it perfect. And then it would probably just be boring. But uh, let's let's make it weird.

Wyatt Pemberton  1:44  
Yeah, well, this is one of those situations where it's like, no matter how much prep you do in the world, when you pull up to the green flag to go, one wheel falls off.

Phil Licciardi  1:53  
Right? Oh, man, I'll tell you when you sent me that questionnaire. All this prep work. I was like was serious, but you're mailing me stuff to do things with. And then I even hours ago, I set it up. I was like, Oh my god, there's even a picture of me on the online. So I figured we were we were good to go. And then sure enough, not quite now. It's like we're watching a movie. Or you know, the the mouths are moving at the wrong speed for the sound coming out. But it'll make things entertaining for sure. It's,

Wyatt Pemberton  2:21  
it's a piece of work. Anyway. Well, hey guys. So like I said, we've got Phil accardi on here today. He runs a business called Liberty mountain fab in gardnerville. Nevada, which is kind of in the the Reno Tahoe area. Clearly on the Nevada side, not the California side. He He is a former California and he escaped. Yeah. When did you get out of there?

Phil Licciardi  2:43  
2013 2014. We've been here for six years and a few months now.

Wyatt Pemberton  2:48  
There you get to see amazing. You guys might know him online. Because he's a character and he's been around rock sports for a billion years. I've known him from pirates since about 2004. But he goes by you know recent names like shock Jesus. But back in the pirate toolbar for days he was known as silly neck. So no, oh, yeah, old school name there and we'll get into how that all came to fruition and how he got that name. He's also known as the searcher of Doug's axels.

Phil Licciardi  3:19  
He got it. Yeah, I haven't found those yet. We got different ones but old gems hanging hanging tight on those torque units.

Wyatt Pemberton  3:26  
Yeah, the axle quests. You go out on a quest and you don't find axles. You're a you're one of the rock zombies. Lamb. What would you call the rock zombies? Exactly. We're gonna get into them here a little bit, but they are definitely a rock crawling rock sports Racing Club these days. That puts on a badass carwash. But well, again, your stuffs Yes. A lot of rock zombies over the years. I mean, like Travis carpenter, I mean, love that guy. And Totally, yeah, I don't mean you guys had just some amazing individuals roll through, roll through there. And then also, if you follow Phil online, he's a political pundit. He's uh, he's he's very to the right. he's a he's kind of a patriot, sticking up for freedoms. Do you see yourself any portion? I think part of me following you is you're a little libertarian.

Phil Licciardi  4:18  
I just want to be left alone. Honestly, let me make my money. Let me let me have my stuff. Let me have my off road. That's my biggest thing is every time we get a call me, you know, running the show. We're just losing a little bit of our freedom all the time. Granted, you know, Trump hasn't been the total be all end all of freedom. But I feel like I have just one trail or seen a bunch of BLM types running around putting up signs and gates since he's been in office either. So that was definitely a thing during Obama's years. You since you moved up to gardnerville we're in California. Were you at your So Cal SoCalGas No, no. was just the other side of the hill from here in the Sacramento area.

Yeah, I was in Citrus Heights. You know, we had a nice little neighborhood out there. And then my shop was in gold River, which is Rancho Cordova almost Folsom.

Wyatt Pemberton  5:11  
I gotcha. And then, six years ago, you bailed to the other side of the Eldorado forest went down the grade and made a new home. 

Phil Licciardi  5:20  
You got it man, man, best. That's been amazing over here, Mason, we're ready to go further now, but that's I love to hear. And kind of your, your current, you know, involvement and claim to fame. I alluded to it your nickname shot Jesus, you're kind of the guy who, you know, the purveyor of a smooth ride? Sometimes, I don't know, it's a shock Jesus thing that that's definitely not, I won't claim that our own that that's, you know, I'd rather be a whole lot more humble than that. Let's just say, I'm better than having no shock to

Wyatt Pemberton  5:57  
you set the bar so low. But I know there's so many people that totally sing your praises. 

Phil Licciardi  6:04  
You know, I've had tons and tons of great results. And like everyone else, I've had vehicles that just fight me, whether it's because of design, or something I'm missing. And you know, I'm still doing this. We got guys that have been shocked tuning since they were little kids. And I wish I would have picked it up 10 years earlier. But that just it didn't it didn't become a reality until I moved here. Because I could tune right out of my yard here. before I'd have to load up and go to Prairie City. And then I'd have a mobile setup. So I'd have to go back to the shop. Take shocks apart properly, put it back together full air not know the difference and then go back out and test again. And it was wrong. And then you just wasted the whole day screwing around. Now it's like them, test them back. Make change, go back out. I don't have to, you know, it doesn't take all day to do it anymore. 

Wyatt Pemberton  6:52  
Yeah, I mean, that was one of the things I learned from like Wayne israelson. Was that's what his key was getting the mobile unit. He once he got the trailer, he was going to Barstow he was going to Parker, he was going to plaster city and helping guys get the junk together. But even him, he didn't start tuning you because Ultra4 tuning and ultra fours really didn't become a thing until 2009. 

Phil Licciardi  7:17  
Right? Yeah, I think he turned with him in 2011. And, you know, he had a lot of people out there. It was a big day, the wind was terrible. We didn't we didn't get to do nearly as much as we would have liked to have done. I was just like, wow, this is a hard, hard thing. And then I also was like there's a huge hole in this industry that could use a little bit of filling.

Wyatt Pemberton  7:42  
So yeah, right.

Phil Licciardi  7:44  
So I did the best I could to try and cover a different territory. I never thought I'd pick up all this East Coast stuff I just was like oh I can just you know take care of my local guys up here that want to go wheeling on the trails and a couple of racers and whatever and then I don't even know what the hell happened. Now I don't have any free time and life is a miserable but it's you know it's awesome man it's awesome at the same time 

Wyatt Pemberton  8:08  
it is something yeah so let's talk about before we kind of get into your life and all in will not just your life and in what you're doing with with Liberty Mountain Fab and and all the shark tuning stuff. Let's talk current affairs really quick and kind of deep dive on that. Where are you living Gardenerville and you know being on the West Coast you know half you know three quarters of the country is kind of you turned and looking at you guys for everything else around us on fire and you just had a you're laughing but you just had a you and you and your wife you guys just had a very very very near miss walk us through that in your life flashing before your eyes and all that that went on this was what two weeks ago through school now. 

Phil Licciardi  8:49  
Shoot man we're getting on two months i think i think it was right around July 4 what happens? Are you right maybe July? I think it was July 5 it happened. Right. That sounds about right. Time Time stood still for me here last month so I do know is monthly. I will definitely say if you said July 5 I'm gonna take your word for it. So that's it my life's a blur I drink a lot you know who knows? 

Wyatt Pemberton  9:13  
Fair enough? 

Phil Licciardi  9:14  
Yeah, anything specifically when we just ran down the whole show? 

Wyatt Pemberton  9:17  
No man Do you could be rolled around down the whole show I think when I saw online was uh, you guys got the you know, they showed up or someone gave me those get out of there and and then from there you guys escaped with like a skid steer the clothes on your back and dogs and then like the have a bunch of security cameras and you got to see the local smoke eaters or whoever. Whoever came in from wherever they came in from, basically work through the early morning hours like midnight to 7am just saving your place. 

Phil Licciardi  9:48  
Right. So obviously, a lot of people know Dan wyrick is another racer. He's got a UFO car, really good friend of mine. He was up doing some golfing in the area and they were

I think we were having some whiskey or something before. Before this all went down. And then he was leaving with his trailer to go up to the next golf situation or something. I hit the couch. It's like seven o'clock, I think. And he calls me He's like, dude, get out here. I was like, EFF you, man. I am. I'm on the couch. We're not doing any of that crap. He's like, no, get out now. Like, okay, obviously, this is serious. I put my boots on, go outside. And I see the black column of smoke. I'm like, Oh, shit, and it's not 200 yards away. Like, dude, this is this is happening right now. And the wind, the wind usually blows to the south, or to the east. And today, it was blowing to the north, which is where we work said Oh, shit. Okay, so I jumped on skidsteer ran up as fast as I could to the neighbor's house, open their gate and start cutting the firebreak as fast as I could. And I don't think I was on that thing for six bucket with before it overran me. And I said, Well, yes, we're done doing that. The neighbors were trying to keep their propane tank. Cool. And then we're like, well, I just we're gonna abort this whole thing. Took off, came back here and started packing stuff up. To get out of here. We had people showing up that I didn't call coming in with trailers and pulling vehicles out of here. Sarah's grabbing like birth certificates and the dogs and whatever and she rolled out then I grab, you know, cash and firearms and then push the buggy on the trailer because my sweet Optima battery was dead again. So that wasn't a plug. Yeah, that was opposite. So hopefully you're not sponsored by them because they're assholes. ended up killing one of my trapdoor tires. And here's a plug. Scott Goforth sent me a brand new 40 inch sticky trap door because I killed that one. And I wasn't in a position to where I was in you know, I was in bad shape and we didn't lose anything and he still I was like, Dude, don't charge before I don't need that. I might need a favor from you at some point. So you're gonna take that tire? I said all right, the man at the bottom of tires from recently so solid dude for sure. 

Wyatt Pemberton  12:08  
We like to take care of those that take care of us. 

Phil Licciardi  12:11  
I do appreciate it. So we got out when we were leaving. I mean, I don't know some people have seen pictures of my house my property whatever. So there's a container at the back corner of my shop where my race trailer with my entire livelihood sits the fire was like at the container on the mountain. When when we were leaving the front of the property is totally fire prep the back of the property is a mountain no matter what picture you look at it doesn't look it looks like it's a flat ground but it's not vertical but it's not I mean you only just drive up there and a skid steer or something you know it's some work to declare that so I hadn't done it so that's what was burning there weren't any units down here anything when we left I'm just like well we lost our house it's gone hopefully the shop doesn't burn with all the race cars and shit in it but luckily they had a couple of units on that thing all night they just kept the house cool while everything burned around it and not a thing happened to the shop there's no smoke damage to the house are they the only thing that got hurt is the looks of the mountain behind the house so that you know no big deal and I got a day off out of it so it was pretty sweet

Wyatt Pemberton  13:17  
well now you all that tinderbox that was you know up the hill behind us now gone it got utilized 

Phil Licciardi  13:24  
yeah as long as it doesn't mudslide this winter we're looking pretty good.

Wyatt Pemberton  13:29  
Yeah, that is some concern. So yes, so then the rest of the states burning in you're kind of okay. 

Phil Licciardi  13:35  
Yeah, and you know, they it was gonna be like, you know, our local law enforcement guys most of the dudes I'm pretty good friends with and they're their days into this investigation. They're like it's arson and this it's arson, that blah blah blah. We got all this stuff sorted out and then BLM comes thrown in there like it was a semi truck diesel particulate filter apart and nothing to see here. Please be on your way and I was pissed that first but it turns out that you know they've been building the case against the arsonists and they've been picking up arsonists damn near daily dozens most of these fires granted lightning has done some work too but it's mostly arson 

Wyatt Pemberton  14:13  
Yeah, that's that's the sick that's the sick and disgusting part about it that that we've seen is that it has been arsonist and they picked up a ton of them and and then we're still having to listen to the talking heads and the you know the alphabet media saying things along the lines of you know, climate

Phil Licciardi  14:32  
global warming 

Wyatt Pemberton  14:33  
and it wasn't forestry mismanagement. It wasn't you know, again arsonist nefarious This was none of this was nefarious. This is all of us in our gas guzzlers and, you know, burning burning fuel and, you know, cow farts and what it read 

Phil Licciardi  14:50  
doesn't make you I mean, they will assemble more. Okay, you want it? Let's do it. 

Wyatt Pemberton  14:55  
Terrible. Well, you know, that all said I'm glad you know, you guys were blessed to have

Some fire crews that absolutely were you know saints they really literally you know walk on burning fire to to save your property. I think those guys kudos to those guys the smoke eaters this time of year that's all they're doing is you know sleeping on the ground, you know sleep on the hard ground a couple hours here a couple hours there and then just killing it the rest of time and those guys are bad ass heroes. 

Phil Licciardi  15:22  
Right I'll give another shout out to one more guy who might actually hear this because he's in the in the industry. It's Brody, zinc, a lot of people seen him because he's got a wagon here on 40s. And it's like yellowish whitish wood ish. And he's been in some magazines and whatnot. Super cool dude, and he has a hot shot is he was marching around that mountain for days after it happened. Putting out fires and you know, he was taking pictures and send them to me that night. He's like, I think you're okay, dude. You know, a bunch of other friends are saying that too, which was just super cool. Super cool that we could kind of know what was going on when no one else was know what was going on. 

Wyatt Pemberton  15:58  
Yeah, you know, now that this comes out, this is actually my memory. This you know, flashing back to this. I remember waking up the next morning and the nice thing about the towel tank and the insiders group. And you know how far the reach in Ultra4 is. I know, you know, I don't have responsibility, but I do I feel like I have a responsibility. I put out a What did we do? It was a it a PayPal. It was just a just sending PayPal to Sarah. I can't remember how 

Phil Licciardi  16:22  
you guys did I think you guys did a PayPal and I think someone fired up a GoFundMe. And I was like, Oh, man. I mean, that was huge, huge. 

Wyatt Pemberton  16:29  
I felt like it went off like wildfire. But then you guys got up, you got around the house and have been okay. And every single dollar went right back everybody in your life. Thanks. But no, thanks. We got it. 

Phil Licciardi  16:41  
And I'm wondering, one person wouldn't take the money back. And I'd have to ask Sarah who it was. And they said, just pass it on to. And maybe it was even you that said pass it on to somebody else who wasn't as fortunate. And that did get passed on there was there was a family that lost everything on the other side of the hill. And the reason why they lost everything is because they were helping a neighbor save everything. So they were I mean, I don't think their GoFundMe went went as hard as it could but you know, we gave everything we could to them, you know, in addition to what was passed on to us. And you know, it's just it's just the most unfortunate thing I think in our our whole 18,000 acre fire.  Man, I think only for housing structures actually burned. We know there's a lot of Indian land out there. That's all gated off and everything and no one might ever know what happened out there. But you know, that we know of that, you know, a lot outbuildings died, but not not too many main structures. 

Wyatt Pemberton  17:42  
I'm glad you guys came out. Okay. And we'll talk about your wife, Sarah, here, here here in a little bit and figure out how you got so lucky. 

Phil Licciardi  17:49  
Right? 

Wyatt Pemberton  17:50  
Growing up in Citrus Heights. Mom, Dad, clearly, 

Phil Licciardi  17:53  
you know, I didn't grow up there. I grew up in Massachusetts. I only lived in Citrus Heights with my wife. 

Wyatt Pemberton  17:59  
Okay. 

Phil Licciardi  18:00  
I don't know if maybe I didn't have that noted in there. But if 

Wyatt Pemberton  18:04  
you did not, you didn't note the damn thing. I knew you're from California, and then you move. But that was only from my memory from way back. 

Phil Licciardi  18:12  
Oh, 

Wyatt Pemberton  18:12  
you're way back when? So I was you know, I'm totally going off memory on that part. But so Okay, so you're from Massachusetts, let's go into that. Everyone would like to hear that they that you? You followed in the footsteps of the Dave Cole going from the East Coast? Or Shannon Welch going from East Coast going to California. Right, growing up in Massachusetts. Tell us about that. 

Phil Licciardi  18:31  
So honestly, where I grew up, Massachusetts was called Plainville. And it was.  The reason I moved to gardnerville is because it reminded me so much of how playing the laws when I was good, it's not like that anymore. It's a total it's total City. In that area. Everything's built, developed and you can't do anything. But back then when I was kid, we can ride your dirt bike to school, dude riding her bike to the store. You can do whatever you want. In the winter, there's people ripping up and down the street on snowmobiles. I mean, it was there wasn't a lot of law enforcement to mess with the back then it was just an absolute ball. And we grew up on a little bit of land and we had tons of I wouldn't call it public land because that wasn't really a thing. But there was tons of vacant land that we could go do whatever you want to on, which was pretty much off road anything. It was honestly just great. That's that's what drew me to my area. Now. I don't know if you have another question in the middle. Well, yeah, yeah, absolutely. was, was there any sports you were into at that at that point? And when did you get into you, obviously, you're in the dirt bikes way back then. You know, the only sport I was into was dirt bikes. I was forced to play a lot of sports. My parents are quite a bit fancier than I am. And they, they forced me to play tennis. And I was really, really good at it. And I just wanted to see the other kids that weren't get out of their stuff cry. So I just beat the living crap out of them that that sport, won a lot of tournaments did what I had to do so I was able to ride their bikes. It was it was miserable. I play

Soccer. I played baseball. Soccer was alright. I didn't care for baseball. Hey, tennis.

Wyatt Pemberton  20:07  
This is cracking me up because Ryan Miller was this past week's, you know, talent tank episode. And he was also a tennis player. And I just never saw that coming.

Phil Licciardi  20:20  
I don't think we wanted to do I don't know about him, but I didn't want to be. I don't want anything to do with that, man. I was like, What? What my wearing right now is ridiculous.

Wyatt Pemberton  20:30  
So did you end up deciding what what was the point? And what was for some of those listening the inflection point now? What was the point where you decided you were going to end up going to California? And how did you set along where you end up in California.

Phil Licciardi  20:44  
there's a there's a step in the middle. My dad worked for a big company in Massachusetts that did bloodwork testing this and the other and they were bought out by another huge company, who paid my dad to not work for two years. Basically not work for a competitor for two years, when that two years was up, instead of retiring or hanging out even on my mom's you know, 1010 year teaching salary. I mean, we could have just stayed there, he decided that we were going to move on to something else. So he found a really cool gig in his eyes with guards, Mark Incorporated, and that was in Memphis, Tennessee. So we've lived there for a couple years and guards mark, if you've ever seen the movie, the farm that was based on this guy, the owner of that company, it was a paranoid schizophrenia IQ. And it just got really weird. Everything got really weird. So we're out of out of Memphis in a couple years without going into any potentially legal details on that. And then a couple of guys my dad worked with in Massachusetts, started a company in California. And that's how the long and short of how we ended up in California.

Wyatt Pemberton  21:53  
Okay, very cool. Now, so as you made your way through high school, you did go to college for a while did but you didn't finish? I

Phil Licciardi  22:01  
did not. No,

Wyatt Pemberton  22:02  
no, no, I knew didn't finish. But what cracked me up as I'm reading this, you are like 12? You know, you're a semester shy of graduating with a degree in philosophy.

Phil Licciardi  22:14  
Yeah, I thought I thought that'd be funny. If I had a degree, I really wanted a doctorate in philosophy, because I was like, Well, I'd be a Dr. Phil, Dr. Phil. And I. I mean, and I was I mean, I was drunk the entire time I was in Chico. So pretty much whatever was funny was what I was doing. And then obviously, that came to a screeching halt.

Wyatt Pemberton  22:40  
And you bounced out. So when in there, did you start getting into street bikes? Was that a? It was a byproduct of being a dirt bike guy. What was the point where you start picking up riding on the street?

Phil Licciardi  22:53  
skate question? I don't know what, what started it, I think. I mean, I had a street legal two stroke at 360. Which, I mean, anybody that's into dirt bikes, you can get a streetly or two stroke. That's, that's not the most comfortable thing to ride on the road. But sure is cool. And I had that and I was like, this is pretty cool. And then I don't know, I probably saw a YouTube video if you didn't even exist enterprise. You saw something online. Back in the day, I was like, What are these guys doing with these huge motorcycles? Something sparked that. And I was like, You know what? I'm gonna get one of those. So I found a totaled, totaled Oh, two, six or 750. Suzuki, and kind of fixed that thing up and started writing. And then one thing led to another. wheelies are cool, check stick wheelies. There we are today.

Wyatt Pemberton  23:44  
And you were just as you are stunner. And I remember that's what I remembered about you from the part four by four days was, you know, wheelie stoppies. Everything. You're always posting either videos or like magazine cover shots at you on the cover of how many how many magazine covers did you do?

Phil Licciardi  24:02  
I think I only did one magazine cover. But multiple stories, multiple coverage. Back then fairly print media was a thing, right? It was man and that was so much fun to be I'll get your hands on that stuff. And I mean, we still got a few things posted on on the wall here. You know, just kind of I just walked by it every day. I don't really give it much thought. But yeah, it was. It was really fun back then. Man. It was it was a ball. I mean a lot of videos I was in a lot. No movies. I never did the the whole Screen Actors Guild tables have a ton of videos. That was that was just loads of fun. Where you guys want shows where you track did you make to the point where you are traveling doing shows? Yeah. There was a couple of years there. I mean, so I stopped going to school. Probably in Oh, three. And I had been I'd already got the bike and I've been riding quite a bit. And then I think my first competition is oh four. I went all the way to stop wars in Florida. I was in Chico, California, we went all the way to Lakeland, California for that. And if you ever see anything on TV about Lakeland, California or whatever, I don't know what County, Polk County or what that is, but you'll see that the sheriff's department is in just the police presence there is absolutely huge now. And I would say that was from Oh 3207 Star Wars that cause that. Because that, I mean, everyone's been to parties, everyone's been hammers, you know, stuff gets a little while and yada yada yada. You know, it never gets as wild as somebody with a 50 cc dirt bike up on top of the Hooters Hotel and Restaurant launching that motorcycle into the pool and night. It never gets that crazy with thousands of people around. It's just the that was the most wild scene I've ever been in in my life. It was nuts.

Wyatt Pemberton  25:54  
But you got to experience it, though. And you lived a lot.

Phil Licciardi  25:58  
I yeah, man that I wouldn't take those years back for anything.

Wyatt Pemberton  26:02  
That was that was a ball for sure. So at what point in their? In what point? Did you end up meeting meeting your wife, Sarah?

Phil Licciardi  26:09  
So I met her July 5 2006.

Wyatt Pemberton  26:17  
Was that kind of the end of the stunting?

Phil Licciardi  26:22  
Yeah, yeah, that was and it wasn't because she wanted me to stop it was because I, I mean, I was aware of what that scene was all about. And it was full of solid temptation. Not not drugs, by any means. But there's plenty of ladies readily available, ready to ruin your relationship. So I knew what was going to happen. And I immediately bailed out of that whole scene. I think I did a couple more shows. And I just shut it down. At that point. I was like, This is the woman I'm gonna marry. And I need to get my shit together.

Wyatt Pemberton  26:56  
And I'm gonna get off a little bit of a tangent here. Somewhere in there. You started fab fabricating, you start fabbing back then, right?

Phil Licciardi  27:03  
I started fabricating in 99, maybe 9898. Yeah, even on my parent's garage back before I went to college,

Wyatt Pemberton  27:12  
I think you started is about the time you start fabricating, like for a living around that like industry by keener or was that always two

Phil Licciardi  27:20  
means that you know, the street bike stuff was just I don't know if you'd call it fill in time, or what it was. I mean, it made decent money from time to time. But I was always fabricating. I mean, I'd be home like, when I started traveling for stunt riding, I'd be home a week a month probably. And I just knock out a couple jobs and get few bucks to go down the road, pay my pay my rent and my shop rent and head on down the road again.

Wyatt Pemberton  27:46  
What was the genesis behind your pirate screen name back then.

Phil Licciardi  27:50  
I was going back before that happened. So I guess we would have been gearing up to start my senior year of high school. And that would have been 98 and 98. I was in the downhill mountain biking to a little bit. And we're at this place called Northstar, which was a play you know, it's a ski resort, but in the summertime, it's downhill mountain biking. I was going down this trail at a high rate of speed being an idiot, as usual. Usually worked out for me except for this time. And they for whatever reason they had like, you know what's no netting looks like that orange, no netting.

Wyatt Pemberton  28:25  
Yeah, yes. No fence.

Phil Licciardi  28:27  
Yeah, imagine that as a tape. So it's just a single strand of squares. And then they've got it on this PVC pipe, and it's slid over rebar. And it's all the way across the bottom of this trail. And I don't know how you're supposed to go down the face of this trail. Under 50 miles per hour. Well, the this, the snow fence tape was kind of like funneling you off to this little side chute that if you entered that at 15 miles per hour, you're doing superhero stuff. So I come down this thing going Mach whatever, no signs above what, there's nothing telling me that this was going to happen when I got down there. And I immediately got clothesline by that stuff. And I did a full gainer onto my stomach couldn't breathe for a little while and life was not ideal at the moment. Senior year was starting that Monday. Yeah, I went into senior year with like these purple squares with like white centers all around my neck. You know, you got that you got the jerky boys. The rest is history. And there we have it. Silly neck.

Wyatt Pemberton  29:33  
All right. Yeah. Well, but you didn't break your neck.

Phil Licciardi  29:37  
I might have I don't know. I never got checked. I broke it a lot since then.

Wyatt Pemberton  29:42  
I do recall. Yeah. What do you mean that many years ago you broke it?

Phil Licciardi  29:47  
Yeah. 2013 Yep.

Wyatt Pemberton  29:49  
What do you do there? I should remember the story but I don't.

Phil Licciardi  29:52  
I was a big Dune transfer at Sand Mountain and came off the face. super high. And chose not to kill one of my spotters on the landing. So I kind of cracked out in the air and put me on the wrong side of a razor back like I could, I had a nice rolled landing to the right or razor back to the left and I chose left because the right might have pulled me out in the rocks or killed the dude couldn't get my front tire over the I was like nine feet away from getting my front tire over the Razorback, which might have been a different story we're talking about right now, if that went like that, and then bouncing out into the flats, got paralyzed and broke nine vertebrae and damaged the shit out of long. Oh, it was just it was not not a cool day. tell you that. One.

Wyatt Pemberton  30:40  
I just have to laugh you. You can't do anything but laugh when you look back at that and laugh at that because you're still here today from it.

Phil Licciardi  30:48  
Still here still walking. I mean, I didn't get knocked out or anything I was I mean, I was legit paralyzed for a few minutes. And I was like, well, I'll get my gun. Like someone else gonna have to pull the trigger. That's not gonna work. And then no one went got my gun. But my legs started working first I was like, Okay, I know how this works. If my leg stopped working, my arms are gonna start working. And I started getting feeling in my arms. And I actually, after everything started kind of working again. I actually rode my dirt bike back to camp open, like, yeah, someone was trying to put me on the sand rail. Like, they're like, oh, we'll give you a ride. I'm like, dude, I can't bend like that. It's like somebody stopped my bike and helped me on it. I'll get back to camp. I got back to camp, sat in the chair for a minute. I was like, this is the most hurt I've ever been. This isn't okay. And shortly thereafter, Sara took me up to the hospital where I went in to the hospital under my own power. pretty proud of that, because they didn't believe how bad I was. And then they took x rays. And they're like, Oh, this is not okay. So they life flighted me to Reno after giving me some morphine. And then yeah, then then I got fixed up kinda. How close were you to be in a truly permanently paralyzed, close? I mean, it could have gone either way. Man. I crashed a few weeks earlier, at a track called MMX. I had some 16 year old type punk wanting to want to show the old man what's up on the track and he ended up crashing in front of me, which took me out pretty bad. I broke see for a sci fi neck and a rib and probably did some other permanent damage I don't know about. I didn't even I didn't go to the hospital for that one either. I just kind of fought through it. Worked, did my thing and then went to saying that when I was feeling better, so I found out c four and C five were broken inside of degenerative bone disease in my neck there. That's where I got my stinger. And then they just told me when they did all my x rays and CAT scans and MRIs in Reno. That's what it happened. So a hot mess. I try not to be as dumb now.

Wyatt Pemberton  32:55  
Well, are you 40 yet are your Did you have you had your

Phil Licciardi  32:59  
40th birthday? I haven't. That's next March and 39. Right now.

Wyatt Pemberton  33:03  
You're already you know, a walking cripple, right?

Phil Licciardi  33:07  
Yeah, I don't move so good anymore. It's uh, it's depressing. Sometimes. Some days are better than others. I mean, the reason why I move at all is because a Cairo sport in Auburn. I, buddy, Dr. Glen Jeffrey Barney. He put me back together the first time. I haven't had any surgery or anything. Nothing. I'm actually pretty good for my situation. Wow.

Wyatt Pemberton  33:28  
Oh, that's super impressive. So back back to Sarah and Bo getting married and all that stuff. And you guys have been together for you guys have been together for 14 years. 15 years? Someone? Yes,

Phil Licciardi  33:39  
sir. Yeah.

Wyatt Pemberton  33:41  
Yeah. And then how long have you guys actually been married though?

Phil Licciardi  33:44  
We've been married since Oh, eight. So we got married April 19. Yeah, yeah. We just had our 12th wedding anniversary this April. Congratulations. Appreciate that. Yeah, that's a I guess that's a rare thing these days.

Wyatt Pemberton  33:57  
It actually kind of is my wife and I are. We're 15 I think we've been together for 18 I think is what she was telling me. I have to listen to her. Just tell me. I remember some days like I remember like our, our wedding date is, you know, the, you know, the day after tax day. So I know right? We're all pay taxes. Then I have to do an anniversary. I get it, you know. So but I was Sarah into was Sarah in offered offered stuff. Or did you murder or how did how did you meet this lady that uh, you weigh out kick your punt coverage. I mean, when I see her online, her presence what she has to say. She's very outspoken. She's political as well. well spoken at that. And then you actually see pictures every night, man Phil. I mean, not that you're not like a good looking dude. You're pretty good looking dude, but she's hot.

Phil Licciardi  34:50  
Well, you're looking at me right now. You see my current situation things are not ideal.

Wyatt Pemberton  34:54  
No, you actually look like shit.

Phil Licciardi  34:57  
I feel like I get run over by a bus.

Wyatt Pemberton  34:59  
You're Your hair is extra special but but that doesn't mean that your your wife isn't Are you always put together.

Phil Licciardi  35:06  
She was she is she, I married way, way out of my league. She found me on MySpace and stalked me. And then I caught her outside of my house taking pictures. Now, that didn't happen. But she definitely found me on MySpace, sent me a message. And I was like, Oh my god, who's this lady that wants to meet me. And we had a bunch of mutual friends. And it's funny because now we recount all the different times all the different parties over the years that we might have crossed paths might have met. I don't know that the stars would align. Like she wasn't a long term relationship before me with a drag race guy. On paper. He looks cool. But he's not that cool guy. So not as cool as me because I won.

Wyatt Pemberton  35:47  
Right? Yeah, absolutely.

Phil Licciardi  35:49  
Yeah. So it's good that that we didn't meet at the other times, because we're both in different places in life. And I mean, I I settled down because of her. I don't think I was in any I don't think I was planning on settling down. She probably saved my life, I'd say, I don't think I'd be facedown in a gutter, my own urine. This point.

Wyatt Pemberton  36:09  
It's funny how that works, though. Right? completely fine. That works. Yeah. So you guys, uh, uh, you know, outside of, you know, outside activities. I think you had another commonality with Ryan Miller. And it was a you guys like it? I mean, or is this just a Arizona Nevada thing where you guys like hunting ghost towns, old mining towns?

Unknown Speaker  36:30  
You know, have you ever done it?

Wyatt Pemberton  36:32  
No, no, I'm in Texas now. And I'm on the Gulf Coast. We have nothing. There's nothing old around here. Well, I mean, kind of I live on a where I live is an old plantation. So we do have so yeah, so we do have there is some old older buildings where they would render the sugar cane Hill I live near, you know, the area of Texas I live in when there was a lot of sugar plantations. That's what they were and they would render the cane into sugar. But it was slaves. I mean, it was slaves. So this is the PC version. The politically correct. bs world we're living in. It seems crazy. Everyone is, you know, snowflake, whatever this is. My neighborhood was called, and has been called since it was developed Sienna plantation. Oh, wow. They dropped the plantation four or five months ago.

Phil Licciardi  37:23  
So, man, we're just planted. It happens so quick. Like the changes we're seeing happen so darn quick. It's just crazy. I don't know. But I mean that everything's got its history, man. I mean, I'm sure there's there's all kinds of stuff that well, least used to be in that area that was worth checking out. But I mean, for us, nothing decays quickly here. There's no moisture. So things if you build something, and people don't destroy it. It might last for centuries. I don't, I don't really know. But we go. I don't know. I think the coolest thing about that is most ghost towns have a bar that's still open. So we're gonna drive on some dirt to this bar. And then not really break laws on the way back as a result? I don't know. There's I don't know. I just like driving fast on the dirt and with my friends. And if we have a good time. On the way there back. Hey, that's always a good time. So there's hot springs up in that area. Everywhere. Yeah, probably cuz there's like nuclear waste in the ground or something. But yeah, there's there's all kinds of hot springs that are some that are just, just few minutes behind our house that we frequent, quite often.

Wyatt Pemberton  38:37  
What's the temperature on them? Is it like 120 or 100 or 90? Or, you

Phil Licciardi  38:41  
know, they vary but the ones that are nearest us that we're at most often are pleasant. They're miserable in the summer, you're not going to go out there when it's 80 degrees in the winter if it's snowing or 3040 degrees whatever they're probably like 100 203 like just perfect hot tub temperature you can regulate them yeah you can you know the water probably would like to come out quite a bit hotter but the way most of those are set up I mean you can you can bleed them off or bring in Creek water whatever regulate the tamp. It's pretty cool.

Wyatt Pemberton  39:14  
Oh, wow. Yeah, nothing like that in even where I grew up in Kansas, there was nothing like that. So nothing to compare it to. I've been to you know, like of course wheeling Colorado and like you Ray and they have you know, their big hot spring pool and absolutely love that wish or something like that around here. But yeah, no, that's cool. You guys can just roll out roll on up behind the house and right there easy to get to. That's pretty that's that's pretty cool.

Phil Licciardi  39:42  
Yeah, we love it here, man. It's, you know, there's just, I don't know, Nevada is more vacant than it is populated. I mean, as soon as you go east of where I'm at, there's I mean, there's a couple towns here and there, but you can just go Dirt, dirt, dirt, dirt all the way to Utah. And then Utah runs A lot of that same program to pretty cool. And then Colorado as well. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, the vacant West. I'll take it.

Wyatt Pemberton  40:08  
So you guys take Sarah's jeep Out, she drives a pretty built Jeep, right? Like it's like on tons and everything.

Phil Licciardi  40:14  
Yeah, it's a JK with a. Those Spicer Ud 60s. It's got 40 inch toys on it. It's got rad flow, three, two bypasses, you know, PFC, hydrosystem raceline wheels and anti rocks, man. I mean, and honestly, the thing is 98% bolt on, and it freakin jams and we spend I mean, it's got like 20,000 miles on it, I'd say. More than half of that's in the dirt.

Wyatt Pemberton  40:45  
Oh, that's a good leaf looking.

Phil Licciardi  40:48  
Yeah, we just, that's what we do. I mean, we got that the gladiator and we still spend more time in the JK, I haven't got the gladiator quite as tuned in yet. In time. I think I'm gonna get one of those handy ones though. Isn't there an option?

Wyatt Pemberton  41:00  
I can't get behind the gladiator. I'm sorry. I look at him. I see him in traffic. Yeah, even see the ones on 30 sevens? God they they're just terrible to me. They look so ugly. Like Yeah,

Phil Licciardi  41:10  
it's definitely a love hate hate for a lot of people. I love it personally, and I prefer it on 40s. But this one I wanted to build and and do some suspension development with ABS for it. So keeping it stock ish and bolt on ish. Is was the goal of this one. But the next one. I think the next one is going to be you know, one times 40s eight shots trailing arms the whole show make it just really dumb.

Wyatt Pemberton  41:40  
Yeah, I could see like, you know, trailer in arms and independent for a drive front suspension and just get it to where it floats.

Phil Licciardi  41:47  
Right You know, that's a total pickup about point but right. You know, you could you I don't know that. There's so many angles, different ways you can go but it in my I've almost had this one for probably, I don't know, eight months now. And I've put 13,000 miles on it. And I'll go out on a limb I will tell you it is the perfect vehicle. It's perfect.

Wyatt Pemberton  42:10  
It's just as everything you can just load your two dogs in there and go right.

Phil Licciardi  42:14  
I love the dogs in there. I can load all the camping gear in the bed. I can put the tent on tent on the rack in the bed in two minutes. I can haul tube with it I can haul plate material bottles, shocks, driving wherever the hell I want. It still gets damn near 80 miles per gallon. You know, I see something that looks like a trail I can hang right and go send it up that trail and it is possibly the perfect vehicle which is you know 180 compared to my vision of it but man No, I I think the guys that are there enjoying it. There's a special breed I think your social read.

Unknown Speaker  42:51  
jeeps gonna live someday.

Wyatt Pemberton  42:54  
jeeps gonna listen to the smell. Yeah, we're never gonna get that guy money.

Phil Licciardi  42:57  
Yeah, maybe they'll give me money though. I love the gladiator.

Wyatt Pemberton  43:02  
Give me the me one. So man, you got you and Sarah no kids, but you guys have two pretty awesome dogs. I like their names.

Phil Licciardi  43:08  
Yeah, yep. Got Waylon and Jessie Whalen was just in here a minute ago. I don't know if you saw his head pop up in camera but I did not know he was coming to visit Waylon seven now Jesse six. And it's kind of sad because they're, you know, they're putting the years on but Time flies and have fun, right?

Wyatt Pemberton  43:24  
I mean, 76 that means they're just midlife at this point. They're probably only trained right?

Phil Licciardi  43:29  
Yeah. waylynn is pretty good. Jessie. She's yours. Oh, her. She does she doesn't she's very stubborn. Very sweet, sweet dog. But she she is set in her ways.

Wyatt Pemberton  43:39  
And so it was that was that planned on names that you had a Waylon and then you decide, oh, we're gonna name this one Jessie. Like, like, was it truly like Waylon Jennings and Jessi Colter or

Phil Licciardi  43:50  
just You got it? Yeah, no, that was the plan. They're, they're from two different breeders. So while their bloodline is probably a little bit inbred, they technically can be husband and wife. It's fine. We had a whole theme, we had whole theme going we I mean, man, back in the day, we're in contract. With a we're supposed to get a Newfoundland way back in the day, like years before we got whaling. We were in contract for like two years for this Newfoundland, and they kept having Parvo and all die and terrible, terrible things kept happening. And we're gonna call that big brown fluffy beast Merle. And obviously, we're gonna have we're gonna have a whole bunch of country stars as our animals. And that never panned out and then just recently we got that little I don't know if you remember seeing that many Aussie that we had got. We tried to name him Myrtle and that I don't think we kind of barrel dog just didn't Bad dog didn't jive with us at all. Went back to the breeder Saturday ever. No terrible. Yeah, I didn't even know that was a painting. I was like, I thought you could just train any dog to be like a normal dog and this one just wasn't wasn't Having it so Merle Merle, we won't have any more dogs named Merle.

Wyatt Pemberton  45:04  
So man, so you started a Liberty on five in 2013? Did you start it on the other side of the mountains? Or did you start it when you guys made it to gardnerville?

Phil Licciardi  45:16  
So yeah, Liberty mountain fab was a function of moving here and having to start a new business license, all that stuff. I mean, obviously, you know, the name silly fab from back in the day. Silly fab, didn't get it was great amongst friends, whatnot, but it didn't get the professional How to say that. It wasn't polished. It wasn't polished. And when I when I had jobs for because I did a lot of industrial fab to back then I get these like, odd. It's like, I don't know what that stands for is like occupational safety hazard, blah, blah, par. So I don't even know what all that stands for. But I did a bunch of jobs for them. And at one point, they're like, well, we're not paying a company named silly fab. I'm like, I mean, you're not paying me. It's a business license. totally legal. All certified. Everything's legit. What do you mean, you're not paying me? They had me on a big old conference call. So I was like, Okay, well, you guys owe me lots and lots of money, or what in the fucking fuck is in OSH pod? And I was just like, started talking shit about that. And then I ended up changing it to SFS industries to get paid. Really fab service industries. Yeah, that makes sense. No, they were totally fine with paying me for that. So I kept the kind of funny and then I moved up here. I was like, Oh, I better just pick something rebrand make it more legit and rock it out.

Wyatt Pemberton  46:38  
Here we are. turn over a new leaf. But then today you you know it is fab you can fab you do fab you built chassis. You built full cars. But you don't do a ton of fab these days. Right?

Phil Licciardi  46:51  
I don't you know, David Apple is working for me. These days. And he he handles almost all things fab in shop. Some days. I'm only making the shop man sometimes just in the house, on the phone selling or doing whatever all day. You know, I think I still know how to fab but I don't think I'm any good at it anymore. We'll see if I build this Ranger.

Wyatt Pemberton  47:12  
I don't think you ever I think that's like fallen, you know, like a Brighton bicycle. Like, you never fall off the wagon on that, like you. I think it's like riding a bicycle. I think you can get back on. Maybe you'll be a little bit rusty. But I don't think it goes away. If you had it. I think you keep it.

Phil Licciardi  47:29  
I hope so. I you know, I was never super good at it. I mean, I just I could build things I could get by everything worked. But I'm not like, you know, these Instagram superstars out there that that make the the finest stuff ever was well born and whatnot. I don't know, I don't have that skill set. I just, I can make things they come out. Okay.

Wyatt Pemberton  47:49  
Hey, there's still a good spot for that. It still goes the same speed across the lips.

Phil Licciardi  47:53  
That's That's the goal.

Wyatt Pemberton  47:55  
Right? So hey, man. So along those lines as we start talking about whoops, and going fast and making cars go fast. What got you what was the turning point? What was the point is that you was just strictly going out with those guys. And in recognizing that there was this black hole of tuners for offered suspension for ultra for type vehicles. Was that the thing that happened that you said, You know what, I'm going to do this or did you kind of ease your way into doing the tuning work picking up the shock work? And then we'll talk about your travels across the country doing a tuning jobs, your tuning tour,

Phil Licciardi  48:33  
I dove in as hard and fast as I could when I saw that there was a possibility that I could do it. I think it was kale h 20. k lakes 2014 because we hadn't moved yet. I had worked on Doug's car, his Doug's axles, the Oji,

Wyatt Pemberton  48:52  
original car, and we're going to tell the Doug's axle story.

Phil Licciardi  48:56  
Great, great. You haven't

Wyatt Pemberton  48:57  
Well, I'm sorry. You're gonna tell Doug's axle story. We just haven't got there yet.

Phil Licciardi  49:00  
Okay, I can set the record straight for all these internet assholes. I think they know everything about it. Cool. Yeah, right. Yeah, it was Doug's original car. I built it I thought it was gonna be the shed we put Fox on it paid out the nose for it. We were promised the world to get it tuned. You know, they had they had their people know no names I recognize today worked for Fox at the time didn't do anything like he's he just kept telling us to go change our preload go change or springs never open the shock. never made any changes. And then he like broke his side by side anyone to work on that not work on Oh shit. And it was one of the more disheartening experiences of my life. You know, after we had worked with Wayne for a little while, and Wayne definitely got the front end of the car working quite a bit better. But then there wasn't any time for the back end. So we just kind of, you know, it was just it was a really tough deal. And I thought to myself, I was like, man, there's got to be a better way. So after the fox debacle, I was like, Well, I don't know what to do. And I started hearing really good things about rats. So they're like, you can talk to the owner of rad flow, which is Glenn is fantastic human and, and definitely was one of the reasons why I ended up in this situation, I was able to ask him a million questions, he could solve whatever problem I had at the time and just help push me in the right direction. So we put rad flow on the car. It wasn't especially fast out of the box, couple people tried to tune on it a little bit, there wasn't a lot of time didn't get a lot better, then I put a lot of time into it, not knowing what the hell I was doing. And got it going quite a bit faster. I mean, I think I had it in this one section, we were testing, I think it was like 70 miles per hour. I was like, I was really happy with that speed at the time, considering the car and I was going like 40 or 50 out there. And then we had another professional tuner come in. And he ended up dialing the car all the way back to 55. Right there. So when he left, I'd turned it back up to where I had it. And we're back up into the 70s. I was like, Okay, I think I understand this a little bit. So I started doing it for free for everyone. I could get my hands on all my friends, whatever, I'd turn their stuff up just for the cost of materials. Everything went faster, and then felt better and and that's what started it. Here we are, man. I mean, it just, it just took off like wildfire. When people found out there was someone in their area that could take care of stuff on the East Coast thing I'll put down James can trial, he started these coasts program, he wanted me to come there to everybody stuff and that I flew in for one trip and that was that was amazing.

Wyatt Pemberton  51:32  
You've done multiple trips now. I mean, I'm gonna come the tuning tours, right? You take your big trailer, you load up all your crap, everything you you. And you can't haul everything. But you you haul a lot. And then you had you had east. I think you just got back from one of those trips a few weeks ago. Right.

Phil Licciardi  51:48  
And just last week, actually I was in I guess Yeah, maybe. Was it last week? Just two weeks ago. It all runs together anymore, man but I yeah, I just got back from Kansas and Missouri. Just doing a quickie. You know, got some decent results. I don't know, I'm pretty much handing the East Coast. Chris Wyatt did his big block Ray shop. Super cool, dude. He's taken quite an interest in this and the markets just too dang big for me to serve as everybody. So we just kind of work hand in hand, I answer some of his questions. He buys stuff from me. That's more or less our agreement. I mean, he doesn't have to he could he could run away anytime he wants. But he's a super solid Dude, you know, is making it worth my while and I'm making it worth his while. So it's worked out. Good.

Wyatt Pemberton  52:33  
Now that is good to hear now. So is it harder, more difficult to find locations, you know, west of East to Colorado to tune if you're in Kansas, I'm from Kansas, how? How are you finding hits, so to speak, to tune off of

Phil Licciardi  52:49  
the Kansas spot was at Tom Johnson's house. And that was, I mean, it's just this property's just got some, some climbs there. And with a couple ledges and whatnot, I mean, it's just basically like rock bouncer stuff you do except it's right there on his property. So we're able to tune a couple of vehicles there and get them kind of ready to go do their thing. And it wasn't a big deal. So I don't know where else should go but that definitely worked at his place.

Wyatt Pemberton  53:20  
Also, okay, now you're opening my eyes up so you're tuning for for rock bouncing guys as well.

Phil Licciardi  53:26  
You know, when I go back east, I would say not exclusively, but this trip I didn't touch at all for car, I guess. And I touched one XL for car, which was the old blue torch car that Anthony owns now Okay, yeah, yeah, he did. I mean, he did a lot converting out to make a rear engine saw axle car go up hills, it does frickin awesome.

Wyatt Pemberton  53:50  
Well, I mean that that's kind of the the thing that we've talked about, you know, I certainly talked about with kantele just recently was exactly that the just the evolution of the ultra for guys. Their evolution, the impact it's had on the rock bouncer guys where you've had guys like Rick Mooney ham or Eric Miller. James can trail show up. Derek West. I almost forgot Derek because, I mean, Derek has won so many events down there. They've taken over four cars 4400 cars, and they've shown up at Rock bouncing events and you know when they slam into the the transition to go vertical they soaked it up and they're able to write you know, get horsepower to the ground versus for so many years it was a the the rock bouncer guys were just like they get a, you know, set of coilovers or cold carriers slap it on and that was it.

Phil Licciardi  54:38  
Oh, yeah. No turning off the shell shock. So, I mean, I don't know if they ever would have been called that. If they had been shot shooting from the get go. It'd be a different sport.

Wyatt Pemberton  54:46  
And those guys open the eyes. You know that that? Well, I mean, I got reached back to 4400s and ultra fours, you know them leveraging as much as they could off of the past 50 years of desert racing, but then raking make, you know that was nice but then making a solid axle do that and all the time that I know have been around when israelson and you know, all the time Wayne spent doing things that guys like eBay and company couldn't now those don't be wrong like eBay Mike Kim all those guys they've all caught on they've all you know when your brain works a certain way, it's kind of hard to turn it off you know they they want to make the car faster no matter what type of car it is. So they've all gotten on the you know the solid axle on board with soft axles and gotten on board with a four wheel drive, I guess cars as well, which now we're seeing those go faster and faster and trophy truck. They're t ones or whatever that are now four wheel drive. Right? They're making those handle differently as well those handle differently and they tuned differently than a two wheel drive. So it's cool to see the rock bouncing crowd the southeast United States be able to leverage what's been going on out in over four.

Phil Licciardi  56:02  
Yeah, absolutely. You know, and that sport is evolving now which is making it way harder for me or anybody that's tuning in for that matter is that they're adding short course to the bottoms all these climbs to make it way more entertaining for the spectators or just add another element of time to the runs. So now we're taking these rigs that are purpose built to go straight up a mountain and now we're trying to jump over double jumps and we're talking like Dana at steer axles and no way behind rear axle and like just a few gallons of fuel and an engine that's over the front axle and a foot up in the air and it's just absolutely doesn't want to jump properly it just wants to front flip off everything and oh man it's just it's Chris watts problem now yes you get all the best Yeah, as I think more people are gonna start looking like ultra for cars over there with the more the more they change everything it's just gonna it's gonna be a reality it just has to happen

Wyatt Pemberton  57:07  
was their course evolves right i mean if the course is strictly an uphill drag race with some legends in it then yeah then that's what we have today that's what we look at the jungle gyms I call it you know jungle gym the rock the rock racers today. It's all you know, there's some aesthetics to it, but it's mostly protection. Yeah, yeah, you're trying to protect equipment and parts and driver and at the same time make it to where it doesn't want to. Exactly Pogo backwards off the hill on everything.

Phil Licciardi  57:39  
Right? it you know, only makes sense. Yeah, it's just got to be tough. Like if they put the double jump on the mountain, you know, okay, it's a smooth part of an uphill cool put the jump up there. Don't put it in the flats. We don't want to jump these things down. Not cool.

Wyatt Pemberton  57:53  
Yeah, they just go ass over teakettle.

Phil Licciardi  57:56  
Right, yeah. And it's like, LS, you got all your rock crawlers that have no up travel. Everybody, like uses the term unload, and then you go to the east coast. And now No one's got any down travel anymore. And it's all up travel. And great. It's great for taking hits. But jumping, not cool because you just strap out immediately and then the thing you know, just adds to that front front flip effect. It's, uh, things are gonna change, people are gonna have to change their programs up big time to evolve with the sport for sure.

Wyatt Pemberton  58:28  
Well, I think but that's also all motor sports, right? Once everybody can get you once you tap out, you need to change the game may is you take the same course and you just move the cones or you run the course backwards, or whatever it takes to continue to challenge the people that are coming out and pay money to run their cars on it.

Phil Licciardi  58:47  
There you go. I mean, look at the last 10 years of Ultra4 Wow, what a change. Yeah, wild.

Wyatt Pemberton  58:53  
Yeah. And we can talk about you know, just at King of the Hammers, you know, toughest single day racing in the world. Yeah, but I don't know Is it is it if you never get out there, you know, the, the rock trails are beating pretty good. There's bypasses on any of the hard stuff. So you can get, you know, 50 50 feet up the side of the canyon, there's a nice superhighway built in out there. I mean,

Phil Licciardi  59:17  
that's the game of strategy to you know, if you're pre running game and your course marketing is on point. I mean, you've got an advantage over the competition for sure. And there's a lot of luck, you get caught in a traffic jam. I mean, obviously, the way they've routed the course lately, has made it way better for not getting these log jams that were just completely ruining people's days.

Wyatt Pemberton  59:42  
Oh, complete takes, you know, half or three quarters of the field completely out of contention. So I absolutely have to give you know JT and Dave and company major kudos on that. But at the same time, it's like man, is it still really the heart single hardest day race? I don't know. Yeah, I I don't know. I still love the hell out of it that my home. You know those guys are they created their own industry and it is incredible. Absolutely. So actually kicking the hammers is actually the first place I met you. You were coming back from and you probably won't remember this because it was in such passing. It was pitch black. The way the spotlights were going, you were walking into spotlights and I was going away from them so I could see your face as I'm approaching it on my fill. And you're like, Yeah, man, and I was like, Hey, Wyatt Pemberton and we shook hands. And then Nice to meet you. Nice to meet you. And I headed to the head into the fire pit and you were headed north in the you know the routier part of hammer town not not not south of the fire pit where it's like retirement homes and Miller racing and the Gilbert's Oh,

Phil Licciardi  1:00:53  
yeah.

Wyatt Pemberton  1:00:54  
The quiet you know, that. You know, they're a bit in bed by eight o'clock and there's a Luby's on the corner, you know?

Phil Licciardi  1:01:04  
Yeah, I mean, depends what it was in my hand. Now. Yeah.

Wyatt Pemberton  1:01:10  
I think it was it was pretty late to but that was the only time I've actually really ever met you in person. But I made it a point to Yeah, made a point to grab your hand and say something. And then I think from there, maybe 10 or 15 minutes later, I had the, you know, the amazing opportunity to meet a fellow rock zombie, actually a bunch of fellow rock zombies of yours. Danny Edwards. Oh, boy. And oh, yeah. Well, Danny, and it was sideways. From there. Danny and I actually almost fought the first time we met. No, I love him. Yeah, we almost got to fight. Yeah, actually, I was wearing a SDH que, floral print hat.

Phil Licciardi  1:01:48  
And oh, no. And, and he,

Wyatt Pemberton  1:01:50  
and he's like, oh, you're from Texas. And he kept trying to put put my hat on, take my hat off my head and put it on. And I was like, who the EFF is this asshole. And it kind of went sideways and then all sudden, it didn't go sideways. We end up being buddies, and now you know, message with him. Every handful of days, something will come from him. Or I'll send him something and they're never something that you'd ever show a significant other that you care about or your wife let her read him. You'd never that these aren't messages that I would forward it to you Phil.

Phil Licciardi  1:02:24  
Standard standard Danny activities. Great guy. And fantastic.

Wyatt Pemberton  1:02:31  
And you got another buddy in there that I know. He gets a you know. Well, I want to I want to congratulate him on the Tom Hanks this but Tom Lou.

Phil Licciardi  1:02:38  
Oh, yeah.

Wyatt Pemberton  1:02:40  
Tom Lou now Did he just finished fire training

Phil Licciardi  1:02:44  
isn't not finished that he's going to be doing fire and paramedic stuff? Probably through the rest of the year. And then I think a little bit of school in the spring. But yeah, but he's

Wyatt Pemberton  1:02:56  
far along though. Like he, once he went in like a probie or whatever that whatever his little deal. You know, the initial start of his fire training. He got off social media. He walked away from everything. I was like, man, I had to send him a message. text him like, dude, I'm proud of you. That's awesome. Well done,

Phil Licciardi  1:03:13  
right? Yeah, man, I'm stoked for the guy. I mean, in Morgan are just building an awesome life. They live about 30 minutes from us a little further out than we live, when Tom is, you know, finishes all his stuff. And he's a legit fireman working 48 hours on and the rest of the time. He's just off. You know, obviously you can take shifts or you can do whatever he wants, but you know, he'll have a little bit of commute to, to get the money where he wants to work. But then you know, he'll be off four or five days a week, just living the dream out here. And Morgan Morgan picked up a job with Lyon County Sheriff's Office. She's a dispatcher there. Yeah, that's just cool watching their lives. Build.

You know, just evolve. They're young. And

Wyatt Pemberton  1:04:02  
so tell me I didn't quite finish what I want to talk to you about shock stuff. But I'm gonna stay on the rock zombies here for a little bit. What year did you join the rock zombies?

Phil Licciardi  1:04:11  
Day One man. I was I was right there at the beginning. Big Rob and Jeremy deck. Were the founding members and I was the first member. So you know, I was I guess I was probably 18 or 19. At the time it was we were doing stuff rock zombie type stuff. 99 or 2000. Real early on, but everyone was hammered drunk. So we can't really pin it down. So I think we pretty much just say two. I think we've pretty much to say 2000 now was when it was a became a thing. How many members are you guys today? No one knows. No one knows. I'd say we're active probably 20 to 24 members but there's there's a lot of oh geez and stuff that you know pop up now and then and or we just don't hear from them at all, but we know they're still alive and might want to come on again someday. So There's probably 30 ish people that are associated with the club as members I guess,

Wyatt Pemberton  1:05:07  
much smaller than I thought.

Phil Licciardi  1:05:08  
Yeah, I don't know. I mean then you got the imposters running around like Colorado like rock zombie outlaws or something. I think it's our C club. But we haven't got to fight them yet so Oh, well

Wyatt Pemberton  1:05:19  
they haven't won the same you know the same bottom rocker on their on their 30

Phil Licciardi  1:05:25  
now, pull it off yet, but when that time comes, we'll we'll do work.

Wyatt Pemberton  1:05:31  
Sick Danny Edwards on?

Phil Licciardi  1:05:33  
Oh, yeah, that'll be our worst nightmare.

Wyatt Pemberton  1:05:37  
Damn straight. So with that, though, the one thing that you know, I think everyone who's familiar have even heard the rock zombies name. Not Not that just that you guys are an off road club. But the you guys put on this amazing, amazing, amazing car wash every year. How do you can even get your wives to put this thing on? And girlfriends?

Phil Licciardi  1:05:58  
But oh, how? Well, I don't know. I think everybody wants to go out there and shake it. So you know, but it's just a party. And most of the cars getting washed are people we know anyways, at least in in the industry. Not too many randoms no stalkers yet. At least not too bad. It's not super tough. It gives us all a reason to eat good for a couple of months and try to get our acts together and you know, go out there and ham it up for everybody. But the I mean, the fact the girls I mean we didn't do one for a couple of years I don't think and then this last year, I mean all the girls put in just tons and tons of effort to just get get in killer shape for that and it was just awesome. Everybody was stoked everybody's happy with themselves and raised a bunch of money and were able to donate it just it was it was a great event. I hope to do more.

Wyatt Pemberton  1:06:52  
No I think it was I mean it looked awesome it was the only part I found was that was a little awkward was once you came out in the G string as I think that was like you took it a little too far but I mean

Phil Licciardi  1:07:03  
feel like that wasn't this year or last year.

Me I'm not saying it didn't happen I just don't know when

Wyatt Pemberton  1:07:11  
I'm not saying I didn't just make it up either. So

Phil Licciardi  1:07:15  
I know I've done before I just don't know when

Wyatt Pemberton  1:07:19  
I think that's a really cool really cool fundraiser you guys do Who do you guys end up donating the funds to?

Phil Licciardi  1:07:24  
Um, I think this time I'm a big Rob would definitely be a better person. Or probably anyone else in the club that is more familiar with it, but I think this went to Eldorado county for the new pumper truck for pumping the toilets all over the Rubicon. So that's Yeah, and with as much rousse use as the Rubicon sees it's it's a disaster. We just gotta wait we need that kind of stuff out there because people obviously can't clean up after themselves properly so it's just it's just gonna have to happen.

Wyatt Pemberton  1:07:59  
Yeah, I mean, I love humans and I hate people.

Phil Licciardi  1:08:03  
You got it. You got That's it?

Wyatt Pemberton  1:08:05  
I think humans are amazing. We do amazing stuff but people people suck especially in Greek Yeah, the word we're filthy we just are we're terrible even when we try like you know Yeah, you got it. Oh man. Well hey, let's jump back to I did there's one big piece of shock work that that I left off I let you know I've got to start here on my sheet here that I want to talk about but it's the long shocks the Oh 4800 class yeah you're kind of a this probably where the shot Jesus name came in. But this was your own design. No, you're wrong. People can go Google up what a coil passes and it's kind of similar. But you took this technology that you created by marrying and mating a whole bunch of parts together to create something that was class legal. Packaged, good. And got the damn job done. And now you've sold 40 sets now

Phil Licciardi  1:09:09  
like we're getting there. There's there's a few in the in the shop right now on deck. And I you know, man, I thought I had created something that never been seen before. I was like, I'm going to absolutely break the internet and half with this. It's it's going to be the best thing ever. You kind of did though.

Unknown Speaker  1:09:27  
You did. You did break it.

Phil Licciardi  1:09:29  
Yeah, it broke the internet but not not the way I wanted it to. But it has been amazing. watching all the haters that said none of it was gonna work all this stuff wasn't gonna happen yada yada yada. It's just not it wouldn't fly right? And then we got out there and we tested and tested and tested and and not one of them has got hurt yet. All the ones that have been running some of that race for years now and trail wheeled and whatever and not one of them is damaged.

Wyatt Pemberton  1:09:56  
So tell us exactly what it is. Tell us exactly what the the theory You had the rules and constraints you had to operate in, and then what you built and then how it works.

Phil Licciardi  1:10:06  
Okay, so hopefully most of the listeners know to bypass shock is whether you're talking internal bypass or external bypass. Well, internal bypass is a limited shock in in a way. Yes, you can tune tune, tune, tune, tune until it's perfect. But it's almost all internal tuning, you can have your compression clickers on the outside on your reservoir or whatever, maybe some other little doodads here and there, but for the most part, it's internal tuning on the back of a vehicle, something that might go from short course desert, you're probably going to want to make some changes to that rear shock, the front is limited, it can get by can do whatever it needs to do pretty much in the same form, but it wasn't in for short course or desert. But the rear needs some changes. And external bypass shock allows for that, that's your no compromise shock. That's what's gonna be on any HR car, pretty much any desert truck, any trophy truck, whatever is gonna have a bypass shock on it, obviously, you know, they vary from in quality. What I've built here is it's just a just a bypass shock that holds coils. There's nothing, nothing particularly crazy about it. Everybody thinks it does all kinds of witchcraft, he things that it doesn't do. It was just a way around the rules to make a shock that really does a good job for the application. And it's really, really, really simple. And now that I don't sell a ton of them, I don't really care if people figure out how they work at this point, but it's it's not doing anything crazy. Like if I wanted it to be a regular bypass shock again, take my thing off, but regular I let back on. It's a regular shock again, it doesn't. not crazy, but it's worked out in my favor for sure if you can dig my cargo real good. Awesome.

Wyatt Pemberton  1:11:46  
Well, yeah, I wasn't trying to get you to give up any of the secret sauce or anything like that. But I do know you initially when you kind of came out with this you had? Well, you obviously knew you were doing something, right? Because when you know you're doing something right means you have haters, and people try to knock you off.

Phil Licciardi  1:12:04  
You got it? Yeah, there's a lot of haters, only one knockoff guy. A lot of haters. But, you know,

Wyatt Pemberton  1:12:12  
most of the time, the knockoff guy never seems to execute at the level needed.

Phil Licciardi  1:12:18  
Yeah, I mean, it was, it was doomed from the start just with the parts he was using. And pretty much everybody on the internet saw what that is. I don't think I even need to mention the manufacturers parts. But yeah, you can guess?

Wyatt Pemberton  1:12:35  
Well, I mean, when you have a team of engineers.

Phil Licciardi  1:12:39  
Yeah, team of shock tuners and engineers working around the clock to make you the finest thing ever.

Wyatt Pemberton  1:12:44  
Yeah. We saw and saw through that pretty quickly, which parlays us right into a discussion on things in the internet world in the social media spectrum that are viral, that go one way or another way. Let's call it a social proof. Let's call it a little bit social justice. But let's talk about your good friend, Doug Evans. He's the one who got you into ultra for racing back in roughly 2011. Doug, we talked about him a little bit ago in the show, and he's dirty money racing. And Doug, Doug was building a new car, put down a whole big wad of money on some axles and, you know, people have heard of Doug's axles. I mean, they're almost as famous as Randy's donuts.

Phil Licciardi  1:13:30  
Yeah, yeah. That was a good

Wyatt Pemberton  1:13:33  
Oh, no, no. Yeah, that's, that's that's the opener right there. I don't even know if I'll leave it up to you. If you want name. name, the name of the company in the story around Yeah, as a full story. I don't think I know the full story. I think I know that Doug got ripped off.

Phil Licciardi  1:13:47  
Oh, yeah, I'll dish it. Here we go. Alright, so Doug being dug, he's gonna want the baddest of the baddest for parts. As new things come out. They'll research him some, check out whatever's new, cool, whatever. I think we're in this all started was dug up mass Motorsports. And he's like, I'm building a thing. I'm getting some stuff. So he gets an 850 horse trophy truck engine for the 4800 class. Super cool idea. He's gonna have all the motor in the world and he gets a hold of maximum transmission and has a turbo 400 sH 400 read case bill to the nines like the nothing else you can do to it, baddest thing ever a hero three speed and then his label what kind of axles kind of top this thing off with to have just the most killer package ever. Torque 14 volts is what he came up with. So pork, agreed to build Doug like to basically use Doug's funds more or less to finance building a high pinion 14 volts so he's going to have high opinion fourteens front and rear. This is going to be like the newest hottest thing 16,005 hundred dollars gets wired over to Jim Jackson of pork. It's the lowercase torque, not the torque masters not the good people. It's the lowercase ones, the bad ones, Utah. So Jim takes the money. Jim doesn't do anything. Two years goes by, and I'm sitting here I got Doug's chassis done. I've got his motor here for a year. I've got his trainee transfer case, various other parts, tires and wheels, everything. Everything's here, made some axles. And two years goes by I'm like, Doug, can we, uh, we let the dogs out on this one yet? And he's like, Oh, just give it another another minute. another minute. And then I think I think Jim blew smoke up his ass one last time. Doug's like, Alright, do it. And I had no idea it was gonna go like that. I just made that that one post kind of showing what was going on. And you know, we had two or three people right? That's not how it went down. I've had perfect there's that the other with them. He does lying dog doesn't go blah, blah, blah. So yeah, we just had a few of those. Everyone else was like, let's kill the bastards. We're gonna have pitchforks. And yeah, yeah, you're right. We're, we're ready to go. And it didn't. It definitely lit a fire under Jim's ass. You know, he didn't do a goddamn thing for Doug. But he did get a whole lot of other people's orders out the door. Probably trying to save a little face because he knew he wasn't gonna do anything for Doug. And Doug was like, Okay, well, I'll take my money back and the guy's like, Nope, can't do that. And then he's like, I can give you a low pinion 14 volt rear so he was gonna have a whole rear built out and dude kept stringing along stringing along weeks, months, whatever never happened. He's like, I'll do it if you get Phil to stop. And Doug's like, well, Phil, can Phil's his own person. He's not going to stop until I get an axle or money. I was like, Yeah, no, I don't plan on stopping ever. Like, go ahead, try to try to sue me try to do whatever you can. I don't know what their current status is. Like, what what their reality is, but just a couple weeks ago, their company showed closed, which was pretty cool. But that that con artist has his fingers and a whole lot of different, different stuff. And if you'll remember, and I didn't know this, but torque was portal tech back in the day, your portal sec. Also screwed everybody. So you know Jim Jackson, man, you know, his day of karma is coming. I don't know how it's gonna get served him. Like, it's gonna be like the Oh Doyle's roll moment in the shadow for Alice. Yeah, he's gonna slip on a banana peel and land on a knife in his through his forehead, but not die yet and then walk into a bus or something I don't frickin know. But it's gonna suck when that day comes, because that is a bad bad dude.

Wyatt Pemberton  1:17:42  
And you got to believe that hat. I mean, we all subscribe to that theory, right? What goes around comes around, back, you know, karma, man. I know a lot of terrible fuckers. And that's my only word form. They have screwed people out of so many things and just been in general bad people. And then we go and we lose, you know, we lose good people, you know, they pass away we lose, you know, pillars and you know, these really great humans. Yeah. And they get, they're the ones that get taken out. Not the guy that you know, as ripped everybody off and it's just embedded just, uh, you know, would would show his mother in front of a bus to pick up a penny, you know?

Phil Licciardi  1:18:20  
Right. Well, you know, there's probably a, whoever's looking down from above doesn't want to deal with that person. Like, yeah, you know, we're gonna delay this as long as we can. That person's gonna suck up here, or wherever they end up. So

Wyatt Pemberton  1:18:33  
what amazing insight that is. Never thought about

Phil Licciardi  1:18:39  
Wales, not even an option. It's just everyone's got to go up there. So I was leaving home. Dude sucks. Yeah.

Wyatt Pemberton  1:18:48  
St. Pete, you know, sitting at the pearly gates. He's like, he's a procrastinator. Who knew?

Phil Licciardi  1:18:52  
Right, right.

Wyatt Pemberton  1:18:55  
Fly do today what I can do tomorrow.

Phil Licciardi  1:18:58  
I hear that. Right with him. Oh, man.

Wyatt Pemberton  1:19:02  
Oh, so? Well, there's a story on Doug's axles, man. So you know, with what you're doing with tuning and in the early days of doing tuning work, you were doing, you know, certainly anyone's car that you get your hand on. Now today, you do it as a business and you're making money out but I you know, I'm friends with the you know, like, like Joshua West. And he does you know, he does engine tuning and talk about you know, how many people hit him up for basically free tunes, not or free tech and, and how that wears his day out. And he's had to figure out ways to balance what may be a sale and not a sale and supporting his customers and supporting maybe a future customer. How is that in the shot tuning world? It has to be everybody. This seems the more magic involved. And the less transparency the more people want for free. Is that fair?

Phil Licciardi  1:19:55  
Yeah. I think you're right man. It's a it's a constant onslaught of people. Asking, basically people who think I haven't heard that line before or something, they're going to ask me in such a way that I'm just going to accidentally give them information that would normally make me money. And, you know, I've got my, I've got my ways around it, I will do consult stuff, and it's not terribly expensive, like, you could basically have me on call for an amount of money, I'll answer all your questions to, to a certain point. And it's not super expensive. And then we get people doing that kind of stuff. And then they'll there'll be people that just tell me what spring rates these things are. And then I'm, like, are what spring rates are for this thing? You know, like, like, super quick. And man I do. You know, I'll do 2030 deals a week. Now, some sometimes a day. I'll have to like, go through all my invoices and look up that day and be like, I don't have anything for that name. I'll be like, so what did you buy me? Did you buy these frames? And they're wrong, like, Oh, yeah, well, I'm like, I don't have an invoice. Can you show me your invoice? Like, where, where I'm responsible for fixing your spring rate situation? And they're like, Oh, well, it wasn't like that. I was just hoping, you know, and it just goes on and on. As always the thing. Always,

Wyatt Pemberton  1:21:12  
always, man, yeah,

Phil Licciardi  1:21:13  
I wouldn't say half my day. But it definitely definitely happens, eats up the productivity,

Wyatt Pemberton  1:21:19  
for sure. And here's the thing, what I've learned, certainly, you know, I, I'm certainly one of those. But like, if you can get something for free, absolutely would take it right. But on the flip side, as I've gotten older in age, I've figured out that people have to, they have to put food on the table, and they have to make their car notes, and they got to pay their cell phone bills. And and if you're not paying them, you're kind of stealing from them. And is is stealing from somebody the right thing. And for me, it's it's a no it's like a hard No. But I didn't learn it. Immediately. It's taken it actually, you know, took some time not that I'm a bad, I'm not a bad person. I'm not saying like, stealing is right, what I'm saying is, I didn't recognize that, that what I was doing was not necessarily on the up and up with the guy that I was doing work, or trying to do work with or get information from, I didn't fully recognize that I just, you know, thought that my time was my time and their time was their time and, and why not help? And now I know it's the money isn't the commodity it's the time is the commodity and the money buys that time. Does that.

Phil Licciardi  1:22:33  
You got it? Yeah.

Wyatt Pemberton  1:22:35  
And that said in like I said it, I think that with age that comes with responsibility that comes it's like when you you know, you go to a restaurant and you you get a meal and you know the server serves and everything and the meal was freakin terrible. Do you not tip? Well, no, you right? You actually still tip you complain. But you still tip because the server that served you had no say in the way that food was made health half the time maybe even the the cook that are the people that are cooking or doing the food prep, they might not even have a say it might have been whoever was doing the procurement and bought shitty food that week or bought, you know, they switched from one company to another company on suppliers. So I get it. I mean, those are life lessons, I guess. But you know, when you don't tip then you're kind of you're kind of screwing people, if you go through life like it with this mindset, that of screwing people knowingly or unknowingly, you know, I think it adds friction.

Phil Licciardi  1:23:37  
I totally know you're saying I mean, and I get it like with, some people just don't understand that. And sometimes you just have to tell them. And that that brings them around pretty quick. But some people just straight up, don't get it. And I'll have to like lay it out in layman's terms. Like, oh, you're, you do heavy equipment service. Okay, come change the seal on my Bobcat RAM, for free? or Why the hell would I do that? But there you go. The same. Why would I tell you my intellectual property has value because you want it you need it because you don't have it. You know, I have to get compensated for that most of the time, you know, and honestly, how someone comes at me is totally determines how my disposition back to them. Someone might ask me in such a way like, Hey, man, I know that this shouldn't be free and feel free to charge me whatever you want for it, yada yada yada. I just need to know this and I'm not in a position to you know, I don't know how to do that. And if they come at me like that, I might just you know, yeah, might only take me two seconds to answer I'm not gonna charge 100 bucks to do something like that when they come at me humble and kind. You know, that's just being a good humans.

Wyatt Pemberton  1:24:48  
Well, I just I just saw this as a it was a it was a Facebook post fairly recently. You know, it might have even been on LinkedIn. It was the guy. The guy sent the company an invoice for $1,000. They sent it back to him and said, Hey, I need you to break down the invoice. And so he sends it back to him. And it's $990 for console $10 for a hammer. And they said, you know, then they responded back, well, we'll pay you for the hammer. And he's like, well, are they asked clarification about the $990? And then why the hammer? He said, Well, the knife the hammers, the tool I needed, the $999 is the experience to know where to hit with. Okay, so I fixed it, because I in you know, they, of course, went to the shop foreman, what he do? Well, he took a hammer, and he hit the thing, and it started working. Oh, that's all he did? Well, we're not going to pay him the thousand dollars. Well, okay, but did you know where to where to hit on the machine with? No. And that's why you that's what you're, you're paying a guy like Phil accardi for and why you're paying for that shock tune is because of the experience, and time and effort that you've put in that you're paying for service, you're paying for exactly what you said. intellectual capital, you got it? Yeah, man, I'll say this. In this way. The things that you guys are able to do with cars, it's not magic, it's not smoke and mirrors. It's, it's it's a lot of very heavy math, along with a little bit of art in the art is visualizing seeing what the car is doing. And sometimes if you're riding it, it's a field thing. But it's taken me years and years and miles and miles, right? To get to where you have that feel. I mean, that's a surgeon's feel. So I see absolute full value in tuning and it's what's been cool is, you know, ultra for coming around to it. And, you know, the late 2000s. As you know, cane hammers type events start coming on in turn start coming on, we weren't really tuning cars back in the XR days x are a days, make sure that's enunciated correctly. But you know, they were doing that in score, they weren't doing that best in the desert at the time. Now, what we've seen is now we're seeing it, you know, the the rock bouncers have seen the value in tuning and the value in, in making our cars handle better. And it's very cool to see a guy like you, who hits also saw the value in it, but also saw that there was this, you know, avoid a very large, you know, vacuum of knowledge and intellect and skill set to handle all of these racecars. And all these offered vehicles that are out on the, you know, the trails today that could benefit from your tuning that you saw that opportunity, you you took it by the horns, and you built a business around it, and now you're going on, and you're going on six years. I mean, that's not an insignificant number. And, obviously, I mean, you're pretty skinny. So I don't know how well you're eating, but I know you're putting some food on the table, right?

Phil Licciardi  1:27:43  
Honestly, man, the last couple years, I couldn't, I'm killing it. And I love that, but I don't have any time. I just don't, I don't have any time. Like my, my life is not my own right now. That's why I look like a frickin disaster right now. It's like, up until, you know, I'm eating and invoicing. And then like this morning, I mean, on my own shipping department and just trying to run the entire show. Over here, short of the fab stuff. It's just killing me. So I'm just waiting for this election to come and go, I want to see how this turns out. And if it goes our way, even if it doesn't go our way, if I don't see a collapse in my business, I'm going to be expanding and hiring people inventory and trying to take some of the load off. So I can, you know, maybe make other people's lives better, and then really focus on that I feel like I'm losing, you know, I'm gonna be losing customers soon, because I just can't service everybody anymore. So

Wyatt Pemberton  1:28:37  
that is the next step. Right. So I do want to talk about the future with you and where that's going. But I want to one more question right here in the middle of where we're at talking about liberal mountain fab. If you had, do you get approached with some regularity for guys pitching and asking for sponsorships?

Phil Licciardi  1:28:53  
Ah, not lately. No, I think people know, I'm just too small to really do anything about right now. And I do I sponsor show there's probably 10 people I sponsor for shock tuning, or I just, they just don't get a bill. And some of them are amazing at shouting me out all the time. And some of them just like, why am I doing this?

Wyatt Pemberton  1:29:18  
But I did. I did see a cool one is the Gomez brothers. You rebuilt shocks for the Gomez. Right?

Phil Licciardi  1:29:24  
Those Yeah, that was a ton of fun. Because they have a lot of shocks. A lot. Yeah, yeah. So

Wyatt Pemberton  1:29:32  
would they do they helicopter delivered or just helicopter picked up?

Phil Licciardi  1:29:35  
Yeah, they they picked up some bypasses on the chopper that day. And that was that was super cool. And if we did it again, they can totally land at our house now. It just we just got stained when they did it before so I didn't want to pick up a bunch of dust right then. So Abed super cool. They landed in the yard, but that'll be for next time.

Wyatt Pemberton  1:29:54  
Yeah, it was a good guys. Yeah, hopefully. Yeah, there is certainly a talent tank interview case. Over there at a mountain f enterprises, but we have yet to get one get a an interview scheduled with them.

Phil Licciardi  1:30:07  
Oh, yeah, you got to do that for sure. Get all three of them in a room and just oh, I

Wyatt Pemberton  1:30:13  
don't know if I can do that.

Phil Licciardi  1:30:14  
That would be a better have some tequila lined up and it's gonna be a party.

Boys right there

Wyatt Pemberton  1:30:20  
do one at a time. Yeah, they are really good guys. All right. So man. Yeah, let's talk about the future. The future is the future is, you know, will with COVID. So you went into COVID you had a pretty big inventory, and you elected not to backfill your inventory, because you just didn't know what was going on. And no one did no one did, you could have gone one way. And it would have gone the other way. Like if you continue to stock up, the economy could have continued to fail, no one would have been buying anything, you would have been sitting on this huge pile of inventory and been broken out of business. You like to go the other route, you didn't restock now you're paying your campaign and price because your inventory people have not stopped consuming. Right. They know they bought you out of house at home practically

Phil Licciardi  1:31:03  
last month was record. sales for me short of I think December last year was my highest sales month ever. And then last month was like record sales for not being that month, which absolutely blows my mind the month before was fantastic too. I can't I can't complain. I don't have steady sales right now, I can tell you that. But what what's happening is, I'll get inundated for like two days in a row. And then like nothing for the rest of the month. It's just it's the craziest thing ever. I don't even I don't understand how it works. But yeah, not having inventory right now. I can't service the impulse buyers, but through some of my different distributors and some of the manufacturers that I use their his product. And a lot of times I get my hands on it. So that's that's handy customers forget about it, you're waiting forever. And then some.

Wyatt Pemberton  1:32:00  
So we got that so that what the future holds is, well as we get through November and and you know, what do we think, you know, what about November, the fourth November, the fifth Cova goes away.

Phil Licciardi  1:32:11  
I'm thinking I'm gonna be. So there's gonna be this NorCal rock race this weekend, people are already making noise about dropping shocks off after for service, then we're gonna have nationals in Oklahoma, and whatever other stuff happens in the middle, I feel like I'm still gonna get inundated with shock rebuilds before co h provided k which is a thing. I think it's gonna I think it's gonna be a thing, right? I think so. You can't imagine that. As greedy as that state is they'd let you know, however many millions of dollars slipped through their fingers that that event produces and that,

Wyatt Pemberton  1:32:48  
but they've done it for everything else, though. They've literally let billions of dollars languish, right. They've really taken everyone's everyone's savings and just let people just ate through everyone's savings, their safety net everything this country so far as he's somewhat, you know, chopped off their nose to spite the face on this deal.

Phil Licciardi  1:33:09  
You know, that's a really good point, man. I didn't think about all the other stuff but going forward, I don't know even our our communist governors starting to open some stuff up again. Get ready for bigger events. We'll see.

Wyatt Pemberton  1:33:21  
It's It's sad. But so yeah, so you plan to get back to restocking, build up inventory, get back where you were adding shocks and springs adding sway bars, adding limit straps, you thinking about getting your own line of limit straps?

Phil Licciardi  1:33:33  
I don't think so. Because my buddy Chris l rod, obviously, Romans pro straps. That's that's one of my best buddies and he produces the finest straps on the planet. So there unless he wanted to do one of my logos on his straps, that'd be the only way I do it. Because I will buy another strap. Fantastic stuff.

Wyatt Pemberton  1:33:53  
Oh, there you go. Well, yeah, that's what you need. You need some, you know, some Liberty mountain specials.

Phil Licciardi  1:33:59  
Yeah, and I'm sure you do it too. You know, he's, he's a great guy.

Wyatt Pemberton  1:34:02  
For sure. Maybe the metal on the end is you know, gold or something.

Phil Licciardi  1:34:07  
There you go. It sounds fine.

Wyatt Pemberton  1:34:10  
And then you're then then I mean, your goals over there is right you you're trying to get to the point where you can buy some time right? You want to buy yourself some time out of there, buy some buy yourself some clarity of mind. So hire hire some folks, you look to be adding adding to your human capital.

Phil Licciardi  1:34:26  
Yeah, I think we're gonna need I need somebody that can bill and run the business side of things like keeping keeping certain things up to date and you know, all the proper licensing and everything that needs to be in place, you know, payroll, etc. all legit making it easier for me to not have to deal with any of that, or the wife does not have to deal with any of that. Taking care of all the swag like if you know if I could remember to restock, like all the T shirts and hats and everything. I mean, I'd make a bunch of money doing that too because everybody always wants that stuff and like oh, failed to order it again. Sorry,

Wyatt Pemberton  1:35:02  
I didn't even know you had hats and shirts, man, I would I need to order a shirt from you.

Phil Licciardi  1:35:06  
Yeah, I guess I'll get you set up. But maybe I can show something back in that Pelican for you.

Wyatt Pemberton  1:35:12  
You don't have to do that. That's that's not how that works. Let's say this is the whole conversation we had about asking your friends for stuff for handouts. Now. That's a that's the opposite of how I work, man. But yeah, right, man, I got one. I've got one more question. At the end of the day. This is this is my last one. And then and then you know if you have any questions, but my last question here is, what are your thoughts on the next steps for ultra for? Where do we go from here?

Phil Licciardi  1:35:42  
Well, I never really gave that much thought. I don't know, man, things seemed good. I'm gonna

Wyatt Pemberton  1:35:47  
kind of bait you on this. And they just kind of feed because we've actually I feel like we've actually in it's actually out of your backyard. Practically. We've actually feels like in rock sports. We've actually seen some regression. We've seen crawling coming back, we've seen crawling competition, we've seen Jesse Haynes. And we've seen Cody Wagner and we've seen these guys come back. And so I feel like maybe there's some regression, I'm not saying trail us all getting back and getting back on the trail is going to happen. But I don't know what the future is for ultra for AI. I feel like we're this COVID thing is a really nice opportunity to kind of step back and go what what are the goals? I feel like there's some big and I'm gonna says there's some big announcements coming out in the next couple of weeks of big name companies getting behind ultra for guys for the 21 season. So there's some people that are absolutely hitting their programs to rocket ships.

Phil Licciardi  1:36:44  
Oh, wow, that's really cool. But the

Wyatt Pemberton  1:36:46  
rest of the rest of everybody, um, this regression rock on so I don't know, I don't know what the next thing is. But I'm asking you, what do you think like, do you think it's, do you think it's sponsors and getting money in its, its media deals, marketing deals? Or do you think it's you you see any places we're gonna see evolution in the cars themselves?

Phil Licciardi  1:37:08  
Man, I mean, I keep getting blindsided by the car evolution what what keeps making the the next thing go bigger, better, faster? I don't know what the next big step is going to be for all that. I do know that the vast majority of people that race alter for don't do it, because they think they're gonna get rich. They don't do it because they want to be on TV. They don't they just do it because they they've got, maybe they don't have money, but they're gonna scrape together and ready to go and duke it out with their friends. And they just enjoy the heck out of it.

Wyatt Pemberton  1:37:41  
That's what I think. I mean, certainly along those lines, that's the folks that are doing it.

Phil Licciardi  1:37:45  
Yeah. And then you'll have your top few percentile that have those big money deals, have that marketing presence, and go for the gusto in that direction. Yeah, that's, that's probably gonna grow. It's probably gonna be more people that are doing it and the televised coverage. I mean, man, I don't feel like I missed the thing from the race, King hammers race that is sitting on my couch last year. I mean, I was home. I was home by the time they're racing, the trophy trucks. So I got to see the entire 4400 race from my couch. And it was fantastic. So I just see the viewership growing, therefore the sponsorship stuff growing evolution of gene who's I don't know who's going to come up with the next thing. Is it going to be a Joe Thompson deal? Campbell? horschel. I mean, have you had horschel on here yet? Oh, man, I want to everybody wants me to will Gentile, hopefully horschel listens to this. But will Gentiles challenged me on that? Like, you know, horschel is an amazing individual. From what I've seen, I've never talked to him, though. I've never met him. I've heard that he would be a difficult interview. So I have that certainly hanging in the back of my mind. But that standpoint, he is really pushed the technical boundaries and the technical, the engineering of the car, he's really pushed the engineering of the car. And we've seen right in Laurens car, and we've seen that in Paul. And Paul is not only as he's a driver, he's also a, you know, a fabricator, and he's also a designer. And when you get a guy that can drive, building his own car, you get you get special things happen, because he knows how it should feel and how it should move and how it should react. And then he changes it until I look at this way and I

Wyatt Pemberton  1:39:40  
this is correct. This is a crazy analogy, but it's like a combination lock an ultra for racecar or actually many things like even life. It's a trillion combination, combination lock. there's a there's a trillion options on this combination lock. And Paul seems to take that And he builds something. And then he doesn't the lock doesn't open exactly the way he wanted it to. So he makes one change, trillion combinations, he makes one change, and then goes and does it again, and then makes one change and does it again. And he keeps doing that. And he's it keeps getting better and better. And mind you, he's gotten it close, and he's just finally tuning it in. And then of course, about the time he gets it perfectly set up for one course then they go race Crandon, and then they go race hammers, and then they go race, Moab, what we just saw in the past month, how amazing how amazing times it is furl for for when we were talking about cars that are built to be able to do anything. They race, Crandon that's a short course I mean, that's dirt short course back in it in the corners, wide open, I mean, that's a place where you're going to pop a motor, you're going to pop a motor, that's where you're going to do that, because you're wide open throttle. And you went from there, and two weeks later, in 14 days. You're racing Moab and it's rocks and ledges and the the stories I heard came out there were guys saying they were more sore after eight laps at Moab than they were after an entire day racing key and hammers and the fourth Friday race.

Phil Licciardi  1:41:21  
So it looks brutal.

Wyatt Pemberton  1:41:23  
And tires and rock ledges and up and down and 40 miles a nuisance rocks and yeah, it's hard to send a car.

Phil Licciardi  1:41:34  
I mean, ultra for is some of the most versatile stuff on the planet. If you want to do it quickly. There's lots of vehicles that would get the same job done. Maybe not in a hurry, though. So

Wyatt Pemberton  1:41:47  
yeah, Suzuki samurai.

Phil Licciardi  1:41:49  
Yeah, so 30 ones. Yeah, yeah. I mean, you'll get a lot done. For sure. It ain't gonna be the same day. But yeah, right.

Wyatt Pemberton  1:41:58  
But I think that's it. Yeah. So when when you asked me about, you know, having like Paul horschel on Yeah, Paul horse's mind. I don't know, Paul. But I do really appreciating value, what goes on in his mind and his way of thinking and his way of developing a car than executing the bill of the car, and then how he drives. He's certainly an impressive individual that I would be remiss if I didn't have him on a list to talk to.

Phil Licciardi  1:42:23  
When the dosa keys guy passes away. I think Paul should probably be that guy. The most interesting man in the world.

Wyatt Pemberton  1:42:32  
Definitely ultra for and just well, because people are curious about something they don't know. Right. Right. And Charlie, and Paul doesn't talk. Right. I think that's pretty cool. Well, you answered, you know, every question I had to throw at you today, Phil, I'm sorry, to our listeners for our technical difficulties, and us not figuring out how to make this happen, that we're watching each other. You know, my normal standard Skype record, except for it's muted. And we're actually just on cell phones, recording what the cell phone say. But did we cover everything you want to talk about? Was there anything else that was left unsaid that you'd like to get off your chest and air out there?

Phil Licciardi  1:43:11  
I can't think of anything, man. I mean, that was a you know, it's it's your show for sure. I'm just I'm just here to answer questions.

Wyatt Pemberton  1:43:19  
You answered a lot of man. Awesome. I because I think it takes a lot to get somebody to agree to talk about themselves for an hour and a half. I mean, that's hard. So so thank you for for doing that.

Phil Licciardi  1:43:31  
Anytime.

Wyatt Pemberton  1:43:32  
Yeah. Well, everybody, Phil accardi Liberty mountain fam. Yep, shock Jesus. We've never even went into how he how he got that name, really. But I think it was just a picture I think is awesome.

Phil Licciardi  1:43:43  
Just the hospital. Yeah.

Wyatt Pemberton  1:43:46  
Hey, everybody. Phil, thank you for coming on. Appreciate you.

Phil Licciardi  1:43:49  
But Glad to be here. Thank you.

Wyatt Pemberton  1:43:51  
Alright, everybody, we are out. Catch you next week.

Intro/Outro  1:43:55  
Thank you for listening and taking the dive into the tail intake. Please like and subscribe on Instagram. For our website, the talent tank.com