About Raise The Flag
Welcome to the Raise the Flag Podcast! We have one simple goal, to bring you some helpful and educational content about the great outdoors and wilderness skills…sometimes we actually accomplish that, but there is a whole lot of shenanigans in between!
Join us every Monday as we recount stories from our experiences, talk with special guests from self-reliance communities, and give you a behind the scenes look at what it takes to run successful businesses.
We are all real people and we aim to give you a real experience! We don’t pull punches, have a tendency to be brutally honest, and we definitely aren’t wholesome (except for Heather) so you probably won’t want to tune in when you’re hanging with the kids.
Meet Your Hosts
Nicholas Italiano
Nicholas Italiano is the founder of Black Flag Survival. He has a diverse background, including holding advanced degrees in environmental and biological sciences, and spent many years working in the Financial Services Industry, helping small business owners achieve their dreams. Currently, Nicholas works in the publication industry as the Associate Editor of RECOIL OFFGRID Magazine
Nicholas loves the great outdoors and spends much of his free time roaming around the woods with his wife and 2 children in rural Connecticut. He is passionate about developing survival skills. Nicholas is always looking to develop his skills by taking courses in wilderness first aid, escape and evasion, urban and wilderness survival.
Tom “Nuge” Nugent
Tom is the owner and sole knife maker at Knives by Nuge. Before going into the knife making business full time in 2023, Tom spent many years working as a first responder and later as a police officer. Tom designs and makes purpose driven knives that are built to work. Each design is created to serve as a vital tool to an active outdoors person and is throughly tested to ensure it does just that!
Tom has spent his life enjoying the outdoors. He was involved with the Boy Scouts in his youth and achieved the rank of Eagle Scout. Today, he enjoys camping and is an avid hunter and fisherman. His experience as a first responder and career as a police officer has given Tom a very practical approach to developing wilderness skills, incorporating all available tools and resources to get the job done.
Heather Saulsbury
Heather Saulsbury is the owner and co-founder of PNWBUSHCRAFT, a family business she started with her husband in 2014. They focus on creating amazing handcrafted outdoor gear that you can depend on. They want you to be able to pass it onto the next generation, so each product is made with care and an eye for detail. It’s very important to them that they introduce a sustainable product that will help create years of wonderful experiences and not end up in a landfill after a couple of uses.
The family lives on 11 acres in the beautiful foothills of Mount Baker in Washington State, where their shop is just a short walk from the house, and the forest is their backyard. Heather has always been an adventurous spirit with a creative streak. She’s been creating as long as she can remember and is the illustrator and author of three children’s books, a mixed media artist, and a photographer. All of her self-taught skills have allowed her to develop and grow her current business. Heather is passionate about getting people outdoors and hopes to encourage lots of women to experience what nature has to offer. She hopes that by sharing her experiences, more people realize how accessible the outdoors really is.
Black Flag Survival 