On December 6 and 7, 2017, American Grit, the lifestyle publication tied to the Grunt Style apparel brand, ran two posts in its “Grunt Style Professional” series. Each one wrote up a Cigars and Sea Stories episode with a Grunt Style leader as the guest.
Dan Alarik: hustle
The first post covered Grunt Style founder Daniel Alarik. It describes Cigars and Sea Stories as “hosted by Marine veteran Michael Penney and Jeremy Paris,” and says Michael and Jeremy’s questions walked Dan through how “hustle” became a successful business, including the highs and lows of Grunt Style’s early years.
The write-up pulls out a few lessons from the interview:
- Hustle means going out and getting it. Dan tested whether people would buy a product before spending money on anything fancy.
- Sell. The post quotes the line that if you are not selling, you are not in business, you are just busy.
- Stay humble. Before a Las Vegas trade show, Grunt Style was close to shutting its doors. The goal was $6,000 in sales. They came away with $6,200.
The post also mentions Alpha Outpost, Dan’s monthly gear-box company.
Tim Jensen: from carpenter to Grunt Style
The second post covered Tim Jensen, then Grunt Style’s chief operations officer. It opens:
Tim is joined by Bennett Tanton and Michael Penney both fellow infantry Marines and founders of the extremely successful Cigars and Sea Stories podcast.
Team AG, American Grit, December 2017
The post credits Bennett’s reconnaissance background as essential to the show’s growth. Then it tells Tim’s story: a union carpenter in Chicago who left at 31 to use his GI Bill, earned a degree in “creating video games,” and took a job folding shirts at Grunt Style. He rose through the ranks from there, and became known for his “Violent But True Bed Time Stories.”
Why it mattered then
Grunt Style was one of the biggest veteran brands of the time. Its own publication spending two posts on Cigars and Sea Stories episodes said a lot about where the show stood by the end of 2017.
The original audio players did not survive a later site migration, so the episodes cannot be played from these pages. The write-ups are still up.
This post is part of the From the Archive series, which collects Michael’s past media appearances in one place. See the full media archive.
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Marine veteran, TEDx speaker and author of the 5 Paragraph Business Plan. Bring him to your stage, wear the gear, or catch him live.