If you missed the last SITREP, click here.

What’s up, guys? I hope you’re all doing well. Just checking in with a new SITREP. If you’re new here, this means “Situation Report.” I like to put these out from time to time to keep you all informed on what’s going on inside our operation, from content creation to business development projects. At the base of this post, you will also notice our “Ops Radar,” so be sure to check that out to stay up on everything we have in the works. We like to keep it transparent here as much as possible. With that being said, here are a few announcements.

APOLOGIES

I’m sorry I have not been pumping out tons of fresh new free content for our YouTube Channel and Blog lately. There are many different reasons for this, but the short answer is that I am one man, and I am spread thin. I am working on it, though. In the early days, when we were just a YT channel, it was easy to stay consistent with content creation. As we continue to grow, we continue to build products and programs and a wide variety of valuable resources. This demands a lot of my time, and unfortunately, as much as I hate it, content creation frequently takes a back seat during this time. However, as I mentioned, I am working on it.

Over the last few years, we have gone through many obstacles and challenging situations. It forced me to take some hard looks at our business’s various aspects to “trim the fat,” so to speak. I’ve been working extremely hard to simplify, automate, and streamline as much as possible to give me back more time to pour into creating free content for our channel, blog, and other social pages/groups. Again, I am one man, and I still run virtually everything here alone. We’re not quite ready for expansion in terms of personnel just yet, but it’s coming. When it does, I will begin to delegate and open up more time for creating. I do all of our filming, editing, planning, etc. Eventually, we will have a team to support these efforts to be more consistent. So, I apologize for the lack of fresh content but know that it will be coming back, and my goal is for that to happen late this year.

SHIFTING GEARS

When 2021 kicked off, I had massive plans to accomplish a lot in content and business development. I still do, but I recently decided to shift my gears to focus on my training dramatically. 2020 put pressure on all of us. It wasn’t all bad, though. It shined a light on the preparedness industry and woke many new people up to the idea of getting prepared. Preparedness is starting to go mainstream, and I, for one, am excited to see it. We’ve been begging people to listen and wake up for decades. In a way, recent events have done a lot to help our industry, and many people in this space have grown a lot. However, we got hit pretty hard in some critical ways. We also weren’t positioned correctly to capitalize on the exposure. Some of you may remember that we were still recovering from some mistakes I made a few years back whenever 2020 decided to kick us in the teeth.

It hurts to say, but we weren’t prepared for it as a business. It enlightened me to many things we needed to fix, though, and while it was the most stressful year of my life, I am thankful to have had the experience of it. It taught me a lot. However, it took a severe toll on my body and mind. The stress and pressure nearly killed me at some points, but in the end, we persevered, and I am so grateful for that.

DEALING WITH LOSS

On top of everything 2020 threw at us, we also lost my good friend, business partner, and personal trainer Eddie Debus around Thanksgiving last year. It hit me very hard, and I’m still processing it and unraveling our businesses. Just two weeks before he died, he delivered the foreword for my book, The Primal Method. We had many plans and projects in the works, and It’s been a lot to handle. Eddie was an outstanding trainer and a proper Viking in the modern age. We planned to change many lives together. It pains me a great deal to know he’s not here to help me do that now, but I will do everything I can to continue carrying the torch.

Needless to say, between 2020 and losing Eddie, I fell off the wagon with my fitness and training regimen. So, it’s time to get right and honor Eddie by getting my shit back together in that department. Instead of trying to balance it and phase it back in slowly, I have decided to take as much of a hiatus from “work” as I can to spend the next 3-4 months almost exclusively focused on my training, nutrition, and recovery. I’ve recommitted to both MMA and weight training. I’ve created a detailed plan to follow and will be starting it this coming Monday.

IN THE MEANTIME

I will be putting many things on pause and pushing some projects into the future to clear the time for my training over these next few months. We will still certainly be operating and active, just not at the same capacity. This is just something I have to do, and I hope you guys understand. We will put out some content during this time, and we will still be working on some biz dev projects, just not a ton. If you would like to follow me personally and keep up with what’s going on, be sure to check out my personal brand, @PrimalOptics.

This brand is the home for everything else I do that’s not under the MASK umbrella. There’s some overlap, but in general, it’s pretty different. I’ll be doing things like music production, tech stuff, videography, photography, consulting, etc. Things that just don’t really fit here. That’s why I created it. There’s a lot more to me than what you see here under MASK. I hope you’ll check it out. I have a lot planned for it. However, just like I’m pumping the breaks on things here at MASK, I am also pumping breaks on everything else I do as well so that I can focus on these next few months. Most of our biz dev projects will still be active, but progress will be slow. Almost all of our general content projects are getting pushed out, though. So it might seem like I am off the grid at times.

WHAT’S NEW?

• Well, my book is now available in all three formats. Paperback, ebook, and audiobook! I even narrated it myself. You can grab it on Amazon right now!
• Our allies over at 3V Gear are launching a brand new line of customizable knives, and they are pretty sick. Be sure to check them out.
• I am working on new curriculum updates for our training course Operation: Optimize and plan to publish them towards the end of this month/early next.

Aside from that, we are actively chipping away at some of our highest priority development projects. You can see them below.

The Ops Radar you see below will be showing many projects over the year. We are building out this project database so that you can see inside our operation, make suggestions, and get a better view of what we are doing. Please be sure to bookmark the (Ops Radar & Milestones Page) to reference from time to time! We will be adding a lot more to it as time passes.

OUR OPERATIONS RADAR