From Peaks to Profits: Lessons in Leadership and Risk with Riley Siddoway

In this episode, JC sits down with Riley Siddoway, the ultimate "operator's operator," at the headquarters of Uphill Pursuits in Bozeman, Montana. From his early days exploring mountain peaks to a decade as a mountain guide, Riley shares the lessons learned in leadership, grit, and decision-making at high altitudes—both literal and figurative. 🏔️

Riley dives into his entrepreneurial journey, offering insights on building businesses that can thrive beyond their founders, the importance of sticking to the process, and why balancing risk is key to success. Whether it’s navigating a treacherous summit or acquiring a business, Riley’s philosophy stays consistent: “Getting to the top is optional. Getting back down is mandatory.”

If you’re passionate about adventure, small business ownership, or just love hearing real stories about perseverance and purpose, this episode is for you. 🌟

🔗 Watch or listen now and join the conversation about what it truly means to be an operator in life and business. #AmericanOperator #Entrepreneurship #Leadership #MountainLife

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Transcript

All right, team, we are in Bozeman, Montana with what I would consider an operator's operator. Riley Siddoway here at Uphill Pursuits headquarters is one of several businesses that he runs, operates and owns. And so good to have you on the show, and thanks for hosting us here at your HQ.

00:00:18:08 - 00:00:19:20
Speaker 1
Yeah, nice to be here.

00:00:19:22 - 00:00:41:08
Speaker 2
Well, I'll tell you, we also got a really great, Bozeman welcome with this. Seems like fresh powder. Two days in a row. It's snowing behind us right now. Opposite of what most people would say both times that we met up throughout these last couple days. Every time you saw the snow, I can see a smile on your face because you're like, oh, this means that, this means anybody who's in the backcountry is excited about getting back out there.

00:00:41:10 - 00:00:55:15
Speaker 1
Yeah, it actually kind of means a couple things to me. It, it means that we can go out and have a lot of fun, but it also means that we, might make some money. So I kind of look at it from from two perspectives of, being happy both ways. Yeah, I just love I love seeing it snow.

00:00:55:16 - 00:01:00:02
Speaker 2
People are inspired to like, you know what? I will go get in this sport today. Let me go. Start by uphill pursuit.

00:01:00:02 - 00:01:18:10
Speaker 1
Yeah. It's it's interesting because, you see a lot of places and people, if it's starting to snow, people are like, oh, I just need to be hunkered down and not move people in Bozeman when it snows, you just the town is happy. Oh, yeah. So everyone's just able to go out and do what they want to do, which is be out in it doing something so that they can play.

00:01:18:16 - 00:01:48:15
Speaker 2
Whereas is a great time. It's a great town. Some of the I mean, I'm from Texas and I would say rivals the kindness, and the hospitality that, you know, folks have here. Just incredible. But like, we're going to definitely talk about your ownership and business journey and what it takes to to successfully operate. But what I think is a unique thing that you've have in your, background and resume, so to speak, something you don't see normal owners have is your extensive experience, not only in the world of adventure, but also your experience.

00:01:48:15 - 00:02:03:03
Speaker 2
Just like as a mountain guide for for a decade, just share a little bit about like, how do you get into Mountain Guiding and would love to learn a little bit more about just kind of some of the good, bad and the ugly about being in that industry for amount of time because I know it's not easy work.

00:02:03:05 - 00:02:21:20
Speaker 1
Yeah, yeah. So while I was, while I was going to, to college in, in Utah, there was a little mountaineering shop nearby where I lived, and I would always drive by there. I guess I should back up. I've been trying to find my way to the tops of mountains ever since I could walk. And so, yeah, five years old I was.

00:02:21:21 - 00:02:38:11
Speaker 1
I was kind of going out behind my house to try to find something to get to the top of. And so that's, that's kind of continued on. So when I saw this mountaineering shop, I stopped in because I wanted to I wanted to go to higher mountains. I wanted to be on snow. I wanted to put crampons on my boots.

00:02:38:11 - 00:03:00:04
Speaker 1
I wanted to do all these things, but didn't have the skill set to, to do it yet. So I went in there and found a group of people who, who were just as passionate about the things that I wanted to do, but yet they had a system to kind of teach you how to do it. And so they had this certification program that would allow you to become ready to go on some of the trips that they put on.

00:03:00:04 - 00:03:18:05
Speaker 1
And so they would do local trips. They would do a, a bigger trip to the Alps or, to even climb one of the, one of the Seven Summits somewhere in the world. And so I wanted to go on those, but you had to. So it was a it was a stepping. It was a stepping stone process.

00:03:18:05 - 00:03:35:18
Speaker 1
You had to you had to prove that you could go on one of the little trips and not be a problem. And then and then bigger trips and bigger trips, and then eventually you had to, to learn how to be a team leader that could that could actually put on a trip. And so I went through the whole entire certification process to learn how to do that.

00:03:35:20 - 00:03:59:11
Speaker 1
And that was really kind of the basis of my training kind of combined with just years and years and years of being in the mountains and being in that environment. And yeah, it kind of led to me kind of doing that. It was kind of an atypical way of doing it versus the traditional way. Nowadays, there are schools that you can go to where it's you actually go to learn to become a guide.

00:03:59:16 - 00:04:01:22
Speaker 1
So I kind of did it in a typical way.

00:04:01:23 - 00:04:03:19
Speaker 2
It's kind of like an apprenticeship, almost like, yeah.

00:04:03:19 - 00:04:21:10
Speaker 1
Yeah, yeah. I would say an apprenticeship is a good way to say it, but learn how to do this. And then almost by happenstance, I would just plan a trip somewhere like I would say, well, I want to go and climb one of the Mexican volcanoes. Yeah. And then all of a sudden, all these people would just come out of the woodwork and say, well, I want to go do that.

00:04:21:10 - 00:04:38:12
Speaker 1
That sounds fun. But they didn't have the, kind of the logistics mindset or whatever it would be to do all the planning. They just wanted to go and just wanted to kind of have someone do it for them. Yeah. So then I thought, well, maybe I can make a go of that and, and can, can do it.

00:04:38:12 - 00:05:04:02
Speaker 1
And so yeah, for a while I guided people on the Mexico and the, the mountains of Mexico, the two volcanoes. So it's caudle and Pico de Orizaba and then, again, I wanted to go kind of go to all other mountains, but, everyone just has this, this obsession with the Seven Summits. And so the Seven Summits, if you don't know, are the seven highest peaks on all the seven continents.

00:05:04:04 - 00:05:23:14
Speaker 1
And so one of those which is in the Americas is called Volcan Kawa, which is in Argentina. And so people would always say, well, let's go to, let's go to Aconcagua. Yeah. Because I want to climb that. I would have preferred to go to Ecuador or go to Peru or Bolivia and do something that's kind of out of the way, but inevitably we just kind of ended up at Aconcagua.

00:05:23:16 - 00:05:25:00
Speaker 1
It was great, I enjoyed it.

00:05:25:01 - 00:05:32:06
Speaker 2
You said it's it's, feels like when you're, climbing Aconcagua, it feels like you're on Mars or the moon, right? Yeah. Yeah.

00:05:32:08 - 00:05:55:09
Speaker 1
Yeah. And it's it's an interesting experience because you, you really start to when you don't see green, you start to appreciate green because you enter that park like 9500ft and it's green there. But pretty quickly it turns brown and all it is, is just rocks and dirt. Yeah. And for a little while, there's this tiny, like, three inch diameter little lichen plant.

00:05:55:11 - 00:06:16:17
Speaker 1
That's the only living thing that's there. And so for yeah, two and a half weeks, you are you're just in this environment that is brown and gray and rock until you get to the snow and yeah, you just you just crave getting back out to a place where you can see flowers and trees and leaves and green and you're.

00:06:16:17 - 00:06:21:05
Speaker 2
Getting up to, I mean, you're starting about 9000ft. You get into a 22,000.

00:06:21:09 - 00:06:46:13
Speaker 1
Yeah, 22,008 hundred, 723. It's right on the threshold of of starting to get what you would then see to be high, high altitude. But you have to go to the Himalayas to, to go any higher to get higher than that. So I can cogwheel. I was often the stepping stone for people who want to go to the Himalayas, because, yeah, you can't go anywhere that's higher than Aconcagua unless you go to the.

00:06:46:15 - 00:06:47:06
Speaker 2
Himalayas.

00:06:47:06 - 00:06:57:09
Speaker 1
Do you? Then you start to get to 7 or 8000. I mean, I was considered kind of a 7000 meter peak, but, then you have to go to. As for the 8000 meter peaks.

00:06:57:13 - 00:07:15:04
Speaker 2
Yeah. No, it's still an accomplishment. I mean, tell me about the. I'm just kind of on the mountain guide thread here, like from the outside looking in, folks. So go, man, that sounds like a dream job. You get to climb mountains all day long and hang out and be out in nature. What are some of the dark or ugly parts about that you've learned or experienced?

00:07:15:04 - 00:07:18:17
Speaker 2
A decade of mountain guiding. One of the things that people probably don't see.

00:07:18:19 - 00:07:27:07
Speaker 1
The, the way that I would describe that is if you, you're really good mountain guide. If you like to babysit adults.

00:07:27:09 - 00:07:28:22
Speaker 2
And you don't, like, see them in their worst moments.

00:07:28:22 - 00:07:46:20
Speaker 1
Right? Yeah. If you don't like to babysit adults, then, guiding is in any form, whether it's ski guide or rock climbing guide or, mountain guide, anything. Or even if you're just kind of taking people on, a trek, whatever. If you don't want to babysit adults, then it's not the place for you. Yeah, you have to.

00:07:46:21 - 00:08:12:13
Speaker 1
Yeah, you have to learn a lot of patience and you have to, just kind of understand that in mountain, mountain environments especially, you're going to often see people at points when they're not at their greatest. Yeah. Because they're suffering. They're probably hungry. They're not sleeping very well. They are not paying attention to what their bodies are telling them, because they're just trying to breathe in and out.

00:08:12:15 - 00:08:19:17
Speaker 1
And sometimes that's a really difficult thing when you're when you're at, 14 to 20,000ft.

00:08:19:22 - 00:08:21:23
Speaker 2
Yeah. Not everything's clicking or not.

00:08:21:23 - 00:08:22:22
Speaker 1
Everything's clicking.

00:08:22:22 - 00:08:38:00
Speaker 2
And so you told me you had to like, it's not wasn't an uncommon thing at altitude to help somebody who is a very experienced doctor just get their shoes tied back on, or get their boots with the crampons hooked back in. Just basic functions.

00:08:38:00 - 00:09:09:09
Speaker 1
Yeah. And and they're even accomplished. Mountaineers and still. Yeah, yeah. One of my last times on Aconcagua at, 21,000ft, I'm having to take off my gloves, and it's freezing cold because one of the doctors can't figure out mentally how to go through all the steps to put crampons on a pair of boots. And so, thankfully, either because of genetics or I don't know what, I can function pretty well at altitude, no matter what it is.

00:09:09:11 - 00:09:31:10
Speaker 1
I don't typically lose my appetite like people do. I? I can still think completely straight. I can tell them there, but, I can also move pretty well at altitude so it doesn't bother me. And so when I see this, my brain is working exactly the same as it is at 10,000ft or 5000ft. But there's for some reason they can't figure out how to do this.

00:09:31:10 - 00:09:44:15
Speaker 1
And so yeah, yeah. So when you're trying to help an adult do a fairly a fairly simple operation, but at 21,000ft, then yeah, it's.

00:09:44:17 - 00:09:46:01
Speaker 2
Starts kind of reexamines. Yeah, yeah.

00:09:46:01 - 00:09:48:18
Speaker 1
Yeah, yeah. You start to kind of question, why am I doing this?

00:09:49:00 - 00:10:15:01
Speaker 2
Because what I, you, you told me about a time you were taking a group up there on Aconcagua and, just shy of the summit, you saw somebody passed away there. Just. Can you walk me through a little bit of that scenario, and then also love to get in your brain about how you kind of thought about managing their expectations or setting them up for success to kind of move beyond that, because if there's nothing more real than seeing that situation, I don't know what it is.

00:10:15:05 - 00:10:42:15
Speaker 1
Yeah, that was actually, that was actually the first time that I had encountered a, a dead person that had died from either injuries or exposure due to altitude. And so it was only about I was only about 50ft from the top. And, inevitably. So I lead the group and will sometimes be ahead of them, just kind of scouting out, making sure that there aren't any obstacles that, that I need to go back and make them aware of.

00:10:42:17 - 00:11:17:16
Speaker 1
And so kind of coming up and over this little knoll there, there was, actually learned that it was an English guy, just there on the side of the trail. Someone thankfully had put, put a piece of fabric or something over his face, but, yeah, he had died because of, exposure to altitude. Yeah. And so for me, it wasn't that shocking because I've been around the mountains, and, and have an understanding of what the dangers can be that it wasn't shocking to me to see someone who had died.

00:11:17:18 - 00:11:40:12
Speaker 1
It it happens on Aconcagua all the time because people just go up too quickly. And so then I had to turn around and basically say, okay, walk back and say, okay, understand this may not this may or may not shock you, but there's there's a dead human that's on the side of the trail here. And so just be ready for that, because it's probably not a normal place that you would encounter.

00:11:40:12 - 00:11:50:06
Speaker 1
A dead human is on the side of a trail. Yeah, usually it's probably more an environment that they're used to, which is a hospital environment where it's completely normal but not normal there.

00:11:50:08 - 00:11:51:21
Speaker 2
Did you find that most of them took it okay. Yeah.

00:11:51:21 - 00:12:09:21
Speaker 1
Yeah, yeah, I think everyone was okay. They were glad that, to have gotten the warning, but it was just one of those things that just basically reminds you that this is not just something that you can just kind of get out of the car, toss, toss a coat on, toss pair boots on, and just go do that.

00:12:09:21 - 00:12:33:07
Speaker 1
There's, there's risk involved. And I think risk risk obviously kind of permeates life all around. But, especially in that environment where it can be quite harsh and people just aren't meant to, to live or survive at altitudes like that. And so, yeah, the reality is, is that sometimes that happens.

00:12:33:09 - 00:12:57:00
Speaker 2
I didn't I got to imagine that years of doing even there was a bit of babysitting at times. Did that inform at all, just kind of your leadership philosophy on how you think about teammates? It was probably not unrealistic or rare that Riley is typically far enough ahead. You know, that's kind of what a great owner or, operator founder does.

00:12:57:00 - 00:13:10:10
Speaker 2
They'll they'll kind of charge through and machete through the jungle. Did I give you any insight just kind of this decade of of being a mountain guide, kind of thinking about how the, how the rest of the teams interacting with your mountain climbing. Yeah.

00:13:10:13 - 00:13:38:08
Speaker 1
I guess it kind of highlighted two things. I would say one good, one bad on the good end. It, yeah. Just it, it show. It basically showed me that, that I am never afraid of being down in the trenches doing the same work that everyone else does, and that that kind of becomes my expectation. Hey, if if I'm willing to be in there getting my feet dirty, then my expectation is, is that you can do the same.

00:13:38:09 - 00:13:56:08
Speaker 1
And that we'll do it together. I don't care if we're doing it together, but, I'm not afraid to be down in there doing it so that that's one thing kind of leading by example and just, just basically saying, okay, if something sucks, that's fine, but I'm willing to do it. Let's do it again. Are you willing to do it?

00:13:56:11 - 00:14:14:20
Speaker 1
Yeah, yeah, we'll do it together. And so that that was probably the good part. The bad part is, is that, part of my leadership style is I just expect people, you know, I hire people to do a job, and I expect them to do it, and I don't, I don't like to micromanage. I'm not a good micromanager.

00:14:14:22 - 00:14:36:22
Speaker 1
And so it's kind of. Yeah, you do. And if you need help, let me know. I'll help you. But my expectation is just that you do it. And thankfully, I didn't take that into the mountains because their their expectation is, is they need someone to sometimes do some handholding, which in the case of kind of helping her put her crampons on, she didn't have the capability at that point to do that.

00:14:36:22 - 00:14:57:05
Speaker 1
Yeah. And so I couldn't just expect her to just do it and know not have any role in that. But, yeah. So in kind of the regular part of business. Yeah, I just have expectations that people do the job that they're supposed to do and and just do it. And I don't need to be there standing behind their shoulder to watch every second of it.

00:14:57:05 - 00:14:57:15
Speaker 1
Yeah.

00:14:57:18 - 00:15:13:15
Speaker 2
Do you feel that that kind of determination that you've had that, that can do you attitude, that grit, that drive that you have, was that learned like, did you learn that from somebody, watch someone in your family be that way, or is that just Riley sit away like, hey, I was kind of born this way, and I don't know any other speed.

00:15:13:15 - 00:15:38:19
Speaker 1
I think it was. I think it was, I think it was kind of three parts, just born that way and maybe two parts. Kind of just having to learn to do things that I didn't want to do sometimes. And that helped kind of form, this capability to, just get things done no matter how hard it is or when things do get hard, it's like, okay, that's fine.

00:15:38:20 - 00:15:51:11
Speaker 1
Just have to figure out a way to, to get through it and figure out the solution. So I think it's kind of created, an ability to think think about the solutions rather than focus on the problem.

00:15:51:13 - 00:16:08:08
Speaker 2
Was that something when you were younger, did you have any exposure early on to doing a bunch of things? That sector wasn't so fun that just kind of allowed you to just kind of embrace that process. I'm just curious about, like, that's not a common thing. You don't usually hear folks to go, well, if it sucks, you just got to do it.

00:16:08:08 - 00:16:09:09
Speaker 2
Sometimes.

00:16:09:11 - 00:16:33:01
Speaker 1
Yeah, yeah. Well, I grew up on what I would call kind of a hobby farm. Yeah. And so my parents always wanted my brothers and I have three, three younger brothers, always wanted my brothers and I to have kind of a project to take care of. And so they would, we would be raising we would be raising calves or we'd be doing something to I have to take care of some kind of animal.

00:16:33:01 - 00:16:56:00
Speaker 1
And so when everyone else had to get up just to get themselves ready for school, I had to get up and go outside and make sure that the animals were fed and that they had water and that they had bedding in the winter time or whatever, or else they wouldn't survive. And so was kind of forced to, to kind of learn the responsibility of taking care of something that couldn't take care of itself.

00:16:56:01 - 00:17:26:05
Speaker 1
Yeah. And there were many times that I would have just rather stayed in bed or just gone to school and not worried about it, but, but I didn't have that choice. And so I look back on that and I'm incredibly grateful for that experience, because it taught me just over and over and over again in caring for those animals and for that kind of all the other things that go along with that hobby farm that, yeah, being a being kind of a farmer is, is tough.

00:17:26:05 - 00:17:50:11
Speaker 1
There's there's no days off because animals don't take a day off from eating or, or needing a drink or, eating hay given to them or whatever the case may be. And so, so, yeah, just had I just had to do it and so it was I often tried to figure out how to, how to do some, do something easier so that it was, an easier way to do things.

00:17:50:11 - 00:18:11:18
Speaker 1
So I'll give you an example. So what we typically do is, we, we lived in an area that had a lot of dairy farms. And so dairy farmers, they don't like the male calves because they want the female calves because those can then, eventually have a calf of their own, and then they produce milk. The male calf doesn't.

00:18:11:18 - 00:18:33:04
Speaker 1
And so they don't, they don't want those. And so they would either just either give them away to us or we would buy them for 25 or 50 bucks. And then my dad would pay for the feed. And then by the end when we would sell them, then we, we learned a pretty quick at a pretty early age, what it meant to have revenue and expenses.

00:18:33:05 - 00:18:33:17
Speaker 1
Oh, we use.

00:18:33:17 - 00:18:36:04
Speaker 2
Like the bank. Yeah. Yeah, he was the bank. He was giving you all and.

00:18:36:04 - 00:18:54:13
Speaker 1
And then we had to pay it back to him. And then whatever was left we ended up getting. Yeah, but a calf doesn't know how to a calf drinks from its mother. And so you have to simulate that with a bottle that has a nipple on it. And so that takes a lot of that's you have to hold that.

00:18:54:15 - 00:19:17:17
Speaker 1
And so what we figured out how to do is we figured out how to train a calf to drink from a bucket. And so we would make this milk. And then you basically, we figured out that if you put your fingers in the calves mouth, yeah, obviously wants to suck on your fingers. And then you put that down into the milk in the bucket, it figures out how to drink from a bucket.

00:19:17:19 - 00:19:26:16
Speaker 1
And so now instead of having to, be there and hold this bottle for ten minutes, I just put the bucket there and the calf takes care of the rest. So it.

00:19:26:20 - 00:19:30:02
Speaker 2
Did at some point where you just able to put the bucket in front of you, always have, you.

00:19:30:04 - 00:19:45:14
Speaker 1
Know. Yeah. At some point they put it there and they knew exactly what to do. And so we had built these stands and all you had to do is put the bucket in there and they couldn't knock it over, and then they would take care of it, and then we could be done. And so something that would take half an hour then took five minutes.

00:19:45:14 - 00:19:59:12
Speaker 1
Yes. So it was trying to also figure out how to problem solve from just how to make something you need needed to accomplish a task. If there's an easier way to do it, there's there's no penalty. Yeah. For doing it easier.

00:19:59:12 - 00:20:01:08
Speaker 2
No I mean you're accomplishing everything. Yeah.

00:20:01:08 - 00:20:11:07
Speaker 1
You do. So so we we figured out how to do that. And that was, that was one of the ways that we could kind of re-engineer the system to make it so that it didn't take all morning.

00:20:11:11 - 00:20:35:10
Speaker 2
Now it's, it's something that I, it's funny how many those type of things when you look back on your life, probably make a much more meaningful impact in kind of how you operate day to day than you probably give it credit for. I got to imagine that working outside, being a mountain guide, that's probably what's heavily influenced kind of your, entrance into kind of your own business ventures and those kinds of things.

00:20:35:10 - 00:20:51:09
Speaker 2
I mean, it seems to me that, I mean, heck, even here we're here uphill pursuits. You guys got a, you know, an adventure company out there in Colorado? Just curious. Like, was that, like a known factor? You're like, hey, look, I spent all my time outdoors. I love the mountains. I'm definitely doing a business in this space.

00:20:51:09 - 00:20:58:03
Speaker 2
Or was this just kind of a a natural progression into something by accident? I'm just curious. I had a rally get into this world.

00:20:58:05 - 00:21:22:23
Speaker 1
Well, my, my parents owned a grocery store, which was also kind of a love hate thing when I was young because I was stacking videos, stocking shelves, which I hated. But I had to do it whether I wanted to or not. But I learned I learned for a pretty young age how business worked because my dad was one who, he was just he was an entrepreneur himself.

00:21:23:00 - 00:21:43:14
Speaker 1
Whether he would call himself that, I don't know if he would, but, the place that he worked, he, he put vending machines there. And so in the summer times, I would work there. And so I had to I had to, like, fill the vending machine, so there, so but then I would see because he would show me, well, we would go to the store and buy, buy all this stuff.

00:21:43:14 - 00:22:01:20
Speaker 1
And he would say, I can buy this case of soda for this, but then I can go back and sell each one of them for a dollar. Yeah, it cost me eight bucks to buy it, and I can get, $24 for the case or whatever after I sell it pretty quickly. That math started making sense to me.

00:22:01:22 - 00:22:29:06
Speaker 1
And so I had a I had an understanding of how business worked from a pretty young age, and then just from either exposure or just kind of had that, that, that intuition myself. I just started starting little businesses of my own, like a young 12 year old kid. I had a lawn mowing business for a while, and, and, so did all kinds of things that, started to learn how to make money for myself.

00:22:29:08 - 00:22:50:21
Speaker 1
And I think, I think the adventure side and then just that exposure to business showed me that there is risk, but it also showed me that if you can manage your risk, then you can still go out and accomplish what you want to accomplish. I mean, take the the take. Climbing a mountain. Yeah. The risks to getting to the top.

00:22:50:23 - 00:23:06:21
Speaker 1
Your goal is to still get to the top. You just have to find the best way to get there. That mitigates risk as much as you possibly can. And so if you have if you have one way that you can go around a cliff, or you have the other way that you go up the cliff, both ways are going to lead you to the top.

00:23:06:23 - 00:23:13:11
Speaker 1
But going around the cliff is the smarter way to go. Yeah. Because you you see the risk and then you just manage it.

00:23:13:13 - 00:23:26:20
Speaker 2
Yeah, you're looking at and you're probably also thinking about a lot of factors that come into that, your teammates who you're bringing along, how you, how you want to get there, what type of foundation you want to establish. It reminds you of just even time when I was, when I was in the service and just how.

00:23:26:20 - 00:23:43:12
Speaker 2
Yeah, I think a lot of folks would they don't think through. They kind of see the stuff in the movies, you know, you see free solo and you see guys climbing around and that whole thing, or you see war movies and there's guns and stuff shooting. There's an immense amount of thought process that goes in before the first step is even taken.

00:23:43:14 - 00:24:03:00
Speaker 2
And that's really where it's one. It's in the planning in the recon room, not in all those other things. Do you find yourself still doing that today, where you spent a good amount of time kind of just sitting with next steps, or do you find it now that's built enough kind of, natural kind of muscle reaction that you're good with doing less of that?

00:24:03:02 - 00:24:27:10
Speaker 1
I think I think it's it's, I still go through the process. I think it's much I wouldn't say much less. It's more refined the process now, but I still go through it every single time. I still so look at evaluating to buy a business. I still go through the same process of building the models and looking to see is, is this really real or is there something in there?

00:24:27:12 - 00:24:49:20
Speaker 1
I still look through all the financial statements and still comb through those things to see if there's something hiding in there that, that might be might be a risk that I just want to avoid. And so I think that, I think that there could be a tendency to, to say, I know I've got this. I understand this well enough that I can I can avoid that.

00:24:49:21 - 00:25:14:13
Speaker 1
Yeah, but I don't think it's wise to avoid, avoid the process that, that leads you to success. If it's led to led you to success in the past, then keep following the process. Yeah. If you can make the process easier. If you can teach the calf to drink myself. Yeah. Then, Great. Then by all means, do it and see if you can make some of the process better.

00:25:14:15 - 00:25:20:00
Speaker 1
But, at the end of the day. So you gotta get the cow. Yeah, you still have to. You still have to do the work.

00:25:20:06 - 00:25:40:01
Speaker 2
Do you fan rally when you're, I gotta believe this resonates. But, like, in service, what I used to do is, I used to tell my my subordinate leaders their. Hey, let's. After we kind of put the whole plan together and we've done initial reviews, something out of it was go, okay, now let's look at how we would kill ourselves in this scenario.

00:25:40:02 - 00:26:00:08
Speaker 2
Do you find like, the same thing? I'm sure that happened on the mountain, right where you kind of like plan around everything else and then you go like, alright, how the mountain kill me now. Like, if I had to do this right, do you find that's a critical step that's missed when folks are kind of evaluating a new venture or a new chapter in their life, they're kind of looking at all the rosy parts about growth and all these things and not sitting there going, now, how would I kill myself here?

00:26:00:08 - 00:26:27:22
Speaker 1
Yeah, you don't want to. By nature, we as humans want to look for only the best and we want to ignore the things that might be might be challenging or could lead to failure. And so that early on taught me that you have to do a stress test. So you have to build a stress test into something to basically say, yeah, everything's worked really well up until this point, but what if something happens?

00:26:28:00 - 00:26:48:00
Speaker 1
And so you have to figure out where that point where the thing will break, and then you then you have to basically say, okay, now it's time to look at all the external factors that could contribute to going to that point. What could happen? We could have some kind of economic stress. We could have something in the industry that might fall apart.

00:26:48:00 - 00:27:07:13
Speaker 1
We could have, yeah, some kind of banking, something where money's not available. There could be all kinds of things that could lead it to get to that point. You don't know what those are, but you have to you have to basically have to say, okay, if it's pushed all the way to this point and we lose this much revenue, is it still going to work?

00:27:07:13 - 00:27:30:14
Speaker 1
Yeah. Or is it going to go beyond that. And then what you have to be able to do, and this one's also difficult, is that you have to have the ability because this starts to become emotional. You start to become emotionally tied to something because you see, and this thing is making a bunch of money and it can keep making a bunch of money.

00:27:30:16 - 00:28:09:04
Speaker 1
But you get distracted by that and you start letting emotions start to take over things that you would say, hey, there's a there's a mine coming up that I need to avoid, or you just get to the point where something just doesn't feel right and you need to be able to have the you need to have the ability to say no, even though you've put in thousands of hours of work and you may have paid lawyers a whole bunch of money or, consultants a bunch of money to, to get you to that point, you have to be able to say, nope, that's some cost and we're not doing it.

00:28:09:06 - 00:28:11:16
Speaker 1
Yeah. It's, and that's a difficult thing.

00:28:11:17 - 00:28:13:19
Speaker 2
Oh, it takes an incredible amount of discipline.

00:28:13:19 - 00:28:32:01
Speaker 2
I found that from the very best mountain guides, the very best military operators out there and business folks, the other ones that can be 100 yards from the summit and say, we got to turn around and you're just like, but it is right there. And it's like, I understand that, but this is how you end up as a dead person.

00:28:32:05 - 00:28:45:16
Speaker 2
Yeah. Hanging out there right before the summit, what have you done? Just kind of like it's just experience that keeps you grounded in that discipline. Like how do you force yourself? Is it just a promise to the process? Just what forces you to just stay kind of diligent about that?

00:28:45:20 - 00:28:53:22
Speaker 1
Yeah, I mean, if you kind of take the mountain climbing example, getting to the top is optional. Getting back down is mandatory.

00:28:53:22 - 00:29:04:09
Speaker 1
There's no choice. And so if you have and what typically happens to to people and again, you can you can, you can say this across anything that you do.

00:29:04:09 - 00:29:21:10
Speaker 1
You put in so much effort to get to the top of a mountain, to get to the point of an acquisition, to get to the point of, of, of creating a new product, whatever the whatever the case may be, that you think that there's no turning back

00:29:21:10 - 00:29:26:17
Speaker 1
and the the mountain's a is a great example because you can see the top, you

00:29:26:17 - 00:30:01:19
Speaker 1
see it right there. It's only it's only 200 yards away. Yeah. But you also because you've planned this, you've when you, when you're climbing mountains, you have a turnaround point. You basically say, okay, if we have not reached the top by 1 p.m., for example, then no matter where we're at, we're turning around. And that is difficult for someone who's spent a year preparing and exercising and doing all of the planning, saving up the money, whatever the case may be to climb this mountain.

00:30:02:01 - 00:30:18:14
Speaker 1
And again, you can apply this to anything you've whatever it is that you're doing. Yeah. That you've you've spent all this time, effort and money to do this. And it's only 200 yards. And isn't it going to be okay if we just instead of 1 p.m. let's just go. That's probably going to take us, what, 45 more minutes.

00:30:18:15 - 00:30:31:08
Speaker 1
Let's just and that's 145. But what you don't know is sometimes the storms start coming in after 145 or after 2:00, and then you're descending in a storm and then it's it's bad.

00:30:31:11 - 00:30:33:22
Speaker 2
Yeah. You're going to regret every decision you make.

00:30:33:22 - 00:30:49:07
Speaker 1
How do you. And then you're having to go faster and your decisions aren't as good. And then disaster start to happen. And it's the same thing with anything because you've again you've put in money, effort, whatever. And then you're saying, I've gone too far. Yeah,

00:30:49:07 - 00:30:54:18
Speaker 1
I'll overlook this little thing. That kind of bothers me because I've put in all this effort, this money.

00:30:54:18 - 00:31:04:10
Speaker 1
I can't let this go now. But you you can't. You have to you have to stay disciplined to the point where you are willing to let it go

00:31:04:10 - 00:31:10:17
Speaker 1
in order to, to kind of save, save yourself, save the system, save the business, whatever the case may.

00:31:10:17 - 00:31:30:05
Speaker 2
Be, fight another day. Do you does that mean that you've gotten that the process becomes more important to you than the actual getting to the summit? I mean, how do you think about. We were talking to somebody who's kind of venturing into this world of like, hey, you want to go own my own thing? You know, is your advice to them?

00:31:30:05 - 00:31:36:08
Speaker 2
Like, hey, fall in love with the process, not so much the proverbial like, summit.

00:31:36:10 - 00:31:53:07
Speaker 1
Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, and I enjoy the process, especially of acquisitions. I really love I love talking to people who have started businesses and have made them successful. And I also I love looking at financial statements. And so, I said, what you think.

00:31:53:07 - 00:31:56:07
Speaker 2
You'd hear from a former mountain? Yeah, yeah, yeah.

00:31:56:09 - 00:32:23:18
Speaker 1
Yeah, because I'm also an accountant. And so, I love in kind of finance and accounting are kind of my favorite things. And so I love looking at financial statements. I love finding things in financial statements and whether they be good or whether they be bad. And so, yeah, you have to you have to honor that process. Because if you don't, then you're just you're letting kind of being naive win the day.

00:32:23:18 - 00:32:31:15
Speaker 1
And that's not that's not good for anyone. Yeah. And so I've gone through process where I've spent many, many hours

00:32:31:15 - 00:32:47:18
Speaker 1
looking at a business, talking to the owner, doing the research whatever, and then find something that's, that's just this is not, it's not good. And so then you basically just have to say, the process has been told me that I say no at this point.

00:32:47:21 - 00:33:06:12
Speaker 1
Yeah. If I didn't go through the process, then everything just looks shiny. And then you you just ignore you ignore the skeletons in the closet because they're the one thing. And I'll tell you is, no matter how good you think something is, there always some kind of skeleton in the closet?

00:33:06:14 - 00:33:07:08
Speaker 2
Always hair on the.

00:33:07:11 - 00:33:09:08
Speaker 1
Yeah, yeah, there's always something there.

00:33:09:08 - 00:33:29:02
Speaker 1
So you have to. And a lot of times I've learned that the hard way that, that there are skeletons. So you just have to assume they're there. You don't know what they are, but you have to assume they're there. And sometimes sometimes all the due diligence in the world may not sure will show you a good portion of those.

00:33:29:02 - 00:33:47:23
Speaker 1
You're going to see them, but there's always going to be something that's not there. And if you don't honor that process, if you don't go through the process, then, I mean, I've gone through acquisitions where there have been skeletons and they've we've overcome those. Sometimes it's been a challenge, but we've overcome them.

00:33:47:23 - 00:33:48:13
Speaker 2
Yeah.

00:33:48:15 - 00:33:58:17
Speaker 1
But it would have been a lot easier if, if I would have just let the emotion go and just say, I can see that and I shouldn't do that.

00:33:58:19 - 00:34:07:14
Speaker 2
Is the is a skeleton an absolute no go or just kind of like the fact is you want to find the skeleton and then be able to decide if that's something you can live with or not.

00:34:07:16 - 00:34:20:10
Speaker 1
Yeah, it's it's kind of yeah, it's kind of okay. There's some risk now what I now I've now identified the risk. Can I overcome this or can I not overcome it. And the

00:34:20:10 - 00:34:41:07
Speaker 1
biggest risk that I often find in, in, in kind of acquisition based entrepreneurship, which is what I call that, is that, you have to ask the question over and over and over again, is the business the business or is the owner of the business interesting?

00:34:41:09 - 00:34:45:18
Speaker 2
How do you talk about that some more? Why is that an important question to ask?

00:34:45:20 - 00:35:15:18
Speaker 1
So the reason why I ask that question, and I want to get to the bottom of that question, is because one day if you buy this business, that owner is going to be gone because they've sold the business, they're moving on to something else. And if the business was based off of them, once they're gone, then you have you have a mountain to climb to get over that, because customers are used to dealing with, with, John Smith.

00:35:15:18 - 00:35:27:02
Speaker 1
And once John Smith is gone, hey, where's John Smith? That's that's who I'm used to dealing with. He always he always gave me this kind of a deal or or, I was used to the way he was working.

00:35:27:04 - 00:35:31:00
Speaker 2
Or he kept all these notes in a secret ledger over here. You just.

00:35:31:00 - 00:35:51:13
Speaker 1
You know, whatever you knew about. Yeah. Whatever the case may be. Yeah, you you start, you start to realize, oh, okay, this is going to take some work to get over that. But if the business is the business, then it doesn't matter whether John Smith's there or not. John Smith's created the processes. And you like the processes, but it doesn't matter if he's there.

00:35:51:15 - 00:35:58:10
Speaker 1
And so I also look at that from a buying perspective, but also from a selling perspective.

00:35:58:10 - 00:36:13:03
Speaker 1
I want to create a business that has the capability of being sold right from the get go. The so it's kind of beginning with the end in mind. Always think about the end. What do I want to do? Do I want to like this.

00:36:13:05 - 00:36:32:12
Speaker 1
We probably will just keep keep this and just hold on to this forever. Just because it's it's a labor of love. We like this. It kind of fuels our own gear. Yeah. Addictions. So but, but there are lots of other businesses that I fully intend to, to sell them. And so it's, it is beginning with the end in mind.

00:36:32:14 - 00:36:51:09
Speaker 1
So that then if someone asks that question, I can say, no, I've built this thing so that it doesn't depend upon me to be there every single day, or for me to be the one who interacts with the customers or me to, to make sure that, that the doors are unlocked every single day. That's not me.

00:36:51:11 - 00:36:54:09
Speaker 1
And then that's attractive to a buyer, especially if it's true.

00:36:54:14 - 00:37:09:05
Speaker 2
Yeah. No, especially when you can think about and it's it's not just do you have the right POS in in system and everything else. It probably has a lot to do with the human capital here. T right. Like, you know who's managing the place day to day, you know, how is your hiring going like all that kind of stuff.

00:37:09:07 - 00:37:27:01
Speaker 2
What you're saying is it doesn't necessarily scare you. If you find a business that doesn't have all that laid out, but you want to be able to look at it and either say, I can put something in place, I know what to do here to make that so, or go now. This thing is so wound tight around that single owner that it's basically like starting a new business again.

00:37:27:01 - 00:37:29:13
Speaker 2
In that case, it may or may not be worth taking on.

00:37:29:13 - 00:37:50:06
Speaker 1
Yeah, yeah. Because what you're going to have to do, so in an instance where something is, pretty closely tied to the owner who started it, the founder, you have to figure out, okay, what what steps are going to have to happen in order for that to not not be the case anymore. And the first word that comes to my mind when I start thinking about that is change.

00:37:50:08 - 00:38:10:11
Speaker 1
There's going to have to be a lot of change that happens. And we as humans are just built from our DNA to not like change for whatever reason, I don't know. I think that there are some people who like change, I, I like change, but, in some ways, in other ways, I'm a complete creature of habit, and I don't like change.

00:38:10:13 - 00:38:27:08
Speaker 1
But, but that's what you're going to have to do is you're going to have to go through a whole bunch of steps of change. And what does that going to do that's going to affect two groups of people. Change is going to affect employees, and change is going to affect customers. And to what is what extent does it affect that?

00:38:27:09 - 00:38:47:17
Speaker 1
So if we take the example, change to employees, okay. If you start to put in, a new round of systems and they don't like that, what's going to happen? You're going to have some attrition, you're going to have people who are going to leave. And you can you can hire more people. But you don't want to lose.

00:38:47:17 - 00:39:10:19
Speaker 1
I mean, part of what you've bought is this knowledge base that goes with these employees. You don't want to lose them unless they're just not necessary. But generally, I find that the, the employees that you that you inherit from the system, you want to keep them. And so if you have to, if you have to introduce a whole bunch of change into the system to make it so that it can work the way that you want it to work, you might lose some employees.

00:39:10:19 - 00:39:20:10
Speaker 1
So that's some risk that you have to take. And then over and then now you have to bring someone new in. And can that person then do what that other person was doing?

00:39:20:10 - 00:39:27:16
Speaker 2
Is that about like, have you found this in the change part of it? Is it about kind of easing them into it, like creating some bind at the beginning? What is the process there?

00:39:27:16 - 00:39:34:03
Speaker 1
The process for me is don't do anything for about 6 to 12 months, okay?

00:39:34:03 - 00:39:35:03
Speaker 2
That's a pretty good chunk of time.

00:39:35:03 - 00:39:56:15
Speaker 1
Yeah, yeah. You're just so the fact that the business has been sold, that's change enough right from the get go. You don't want to introduce a whole bunch of other things. I mean, you look and see why most mergers fail is because you have one giant company acquiring maybe an equally, sized giant company or a smaller company.

00:39:56:20 - 00:40:10:03
Speaker 1
And then the very first thing they want to do is say, now you're going to be under our systems, now you're going to be under our our platform. Now you're going to be under our health insurance benefits. You're going to be under our pay structure and bonus structure, whatever the case may be right from the get go. Yeah.

00:40:10:03 - 00:40:18:06
Speaker 1
And then time after time after time when I was still working in corporate America, seeing that happen, the very first thing that happened was there was a brain drain

00:40:18:06 - 00:40:45:06
Speaker 1
because they didn't like that. You like I'm out. Yeah. They had they'd gotten used to the way things were. And I think if they would have just kind of sat there and watched for 6 to 12 months and just kind of figure out what the culture is, figure out what those employ, what's important, important to those employees, what what are those employees or what are they doing that has made this company successful to begin with?

00:40:45:08 - 00:41:04:09
Speaker 1
And just look and listen and watch and learn. Then I think you have a better chance of being successful in an acquisition or a merger than just coming in and just having the arrogance to say, nope, we already know how to do this. And there are some, there are some places where that will work. I don't say that you have to wait.

00:41:04:09 - 00:41:18:14
Speaker 1
I've I've watched many private equity companies come in to a business and have exactly a system that they use to make them successful, and they can do that and it works. I would call that the exception versus the rule.

00:41:18:20 - 00:41:38:02
Speaker 2
Yeah, you it sounds to me, just with you saying that, it sounds to me like there's a bit of a let me build some like Riley's new guy coming in, starting as the new owner. Let me just build some trust with this guy just as a human. And then after eight months of Riley being a good dude, not changing a bunch of things.

00:41:38:02 - 00:41:55:07
Speaker 2
And you know what? They ain't so bad, you know, then it's like when Riley introduces something, it's like, well, he's been a good person to me. He's been a great new owner. It's been way better than I expected. Yeah, okay. Maybe it's a decent thing that I'm happy to buy into, right? Versus because you've probably found him. Things that are change for the better.

00:41:55:09 - 00:42:10:08
Speaker 2
Hey, this is a better health benefit. It's like, well, yeah, but now I gotta go change doctors. I gotta go do this thing and I gotta go log in and put my info over here. Sounds like a hassle than anything else. Even something that could be objectively a good thing can still end up being changed that people aren't okay with.

00:42:10:08 - 00:42:11:09
Speaker 1
Exactly right.

00:42:11:11 - 00:42:27:00
Speaker 2
Do you? Before we kind of talk about, you know, kind of being a staple here in town, I want to get into that because you can feel it here when you're visiting. You just people have this. There's already a sense of community. I want to go back to something you said earlier. Just burned in my brain.

00:42:27:02 - 00:42:37:19
Speaker 2
You said your debt. You said I don't think my father would consider himself an entrepreneur. What do you mean by that? Like, what is the. Is it, do you find that to be too fancy for his liking? I'm just curious what you meant by that.

00:42:37:23 - 00:43:07:22
Speaker 1
That's a that's a that's a good question. I was actually the first, the first person in my family to graduate from college. And so my dad didn't go to college. He was still incredibly successful in, everything that he did. Yeah, he was kind of one of those that prove that you don't need college to do it, because he created a lot of wealth just from, being really smart with money and then making some calculated risks and then just being a hustler, just a hustler.

00:43:08:00 - 00:43:30:03
Speaker 1
But yeah, I think, yeah, I think if you asked him, he probably wouldn't have said that that's what he was, because that term might have been too big for him where it had too much packed into it. It might have meant like, you hear the word entrepreneur and you generally think, oh, that. And probably even today you'd hear the word entrepreneur, that that person probably has an MBA.

00:43:30:05 - 00:44:02:14
Speaker 1
Yeah. And he would probably think, well, I'm not that I didn't even go to college, but yeah, he ended up creating more wealth and probably more more on most entrepreneurs too, because he parlayed all the things that he did into a bunch of real estate and into that grocery store that he ran for the longest time. These other little things that he just always had something going on that, he probably would have embraced the word hustler, probably more than an entrepreneur entrepreneur now, because, yeah, I think it would just been too big for him to.

00:44:02:14 - 00:44:03:10
Speaker 1
Oh, I like that.

00:44:03:11 - 00:44:27:14
Speaker 2
Oh, I think it's too big for a lot of us, man. I just Jesse's opinion on this thing. I think the word entrepreneur has gotten a little bit fancy, you know, and I think it puts folks I'd be curious to see what you think about this. I think it puts a lot of aspiring operators in this weird kind of spreadsheet mode, you know, where it's like they're going to strategize their way into building or growing this business.

00:44:27:16 - 00:44:40:05
Speaker 2
Whereas I think about folks like my mother, my father in law, folks that I've known in my life that I would they would not consider themselves a reason to resonate. I think it burned is because they also I don't think I was I was thinking you said then I go, yeah, I don't think they would call themselves entrepreneurs either.

00:44:40:08 - 00:44:56:11
Speaker 2
They'd call themselves owners, you know, and I think they mean that. But that also means I saw you doing it today. You're moving shells and stuff, right? You don't have to be doing that is just who you are. I think there's a bit of that industrious kind of like.

00:44:56:13 - 00:45:14:06
Speaker 2
There's something tactile, I think, about being a really great owner and operator that you get that aversion to being entrepreneur, probably because it means that you're not involved. And what I hear you saying about your father is like, yeah, he was involved. And when a lot of that success is directly tied to his sweat. Yeah. Is that an ethos you continue to take with you today?

00:45:14:06 - 00:45:20:09
Speaker 2
Obviously, I saw you doing it and, you know, you weren't. There's no cameras on it. I wasn't like you were doing it because that was around.

00:45:20:09 - 00:46:08:08
Speaker 1
Yeah, yeah. I would if you actually kind of think about it. And now that I do think about it, I would probably say the same thing. I think if you're so if you're so dedicated to the word, then maybe you're not. Maybe the word sounds sexier than the process. For me. It's just I just like business. I, I like the problem of, I like the problem of coming, like, we came into Bozeman and basically said, we think that there's a market here for, x number of dollars that that's available from a top line revenue standpoint that we think that there's some demand for what we have as an idea.

00:46:08:09 - 00:46:31:01
Speaker 1
We don't know for sure, but we think that that's what it is and then start just pursuing that. And if all of that's fun to you to to go through that process and try to figure out, okay, how do I capitalize on that? So just throw out a number. If you if you think that there's, for something, if you think there's $5 million worth of a potential there.

00:46:31:03 - 00:46:51:22
Speaker 1
Okay. Now what do I need to do to capitalize on that to I mean, it doesn't matter what the bottom line is at that point. You just have to get the $5 million and then figure out the bottom and figure out everything below that to get to the bottom line. But you have to figure out the you have to love the process enough to figure out how to do that.

00:46:52:00 - 00:47:16:14
Speaker 1
And I think it's probably easy to say, yeah, I'm an entrepreneur. I can do that. I don't I don't think of it like that. I think of it as I love the process and I love to win. Yeah, and I don't. And and this, this is a really, really important lesson that I've learned that really shows me that I truly do love the process.

00:47:16:16 - 00:47:38:22
Speaker 1
If I don't think about the money, if I just I don't even care at this point. I don't even care about the money. Why do you care about is the process I care? I care that I'm enjoying myself and then I'm having fun, even though it can be really, really hard and that there are lots of problems. But I like to, I like to embrace the process.

00:47:38:22 - 00:48:01:04
Speaker 1
I like to embrace the the game, if you will, of business. Yeah. And and I think that if you look at that and go back and compare and really kind of apply that to anyone who's been successful, I think that that is probably I think that's probably the focus. I don't know that for sure, because that's just what I do.

00:48:01:06 - 00:48:16:07
Speaker 1
But, my hunch is that if you just focus on that and forget about the money, you're probably going to be more successful than if if money is the focus, go be a doctor or something like that. They make lots of money. Yeah.

00:48:16:07 - 00:48:38:17
Speaker 2
And you don't necessarily need to go set something up, do you? Is the money become it? Was that something you kind of grew into? Like did you did you find that, that you kind of were able to establish yourself in the corporate world and stuff first to kind of go like, okay, I'm okay. I've kind of figured out how to live a life that's humble enough here and kind of work on.

00:48:38:17 - 00:48:50:08
Speaker 2
I had a great business mentor, and still one that used to tell me, if you want to be a really great owner, operator, or entrepreneur, get your family in check first and then you can go.

00:48:50:09 - 00:48:50:21
Speaker 1
Yeah, yeah.

00:48:50:23 - 00:49:05:02
Speaker 2
And I remember going like, what does that even mean? And he was he's so right. Like so many things are driven by lifestyle creep with folks find that it is you kind of establishing a good baseline there that just kind of allows you to go like family is good. Now I can just kind of have fun building this thing.

00:49:05:04 - 00:49:27:08
Speaker 1
Yeah. And I'll give you a funny example. And this is, this is just this is for me only. But this was and I'll explain why I created this, this, this kind of life mantra of mine or this, this kind of line in the sand that I drew, that I basically said that I would never own a luxury brand car.

00:49:27:10 - 00:49:31:09
Speaker 1
And that's that's kind of a funny thing, isn't it, to say that it's a not a goal.

00:49:31:09 - 00:49:34:16
Speaker 2
People are. If anything, that's usually the opposite. I will own this luxury car.

00:49:34:16 - 00:49:38:20
Speaker 1
Yeah, yeah. And I have specifically said that I do not want to own that brand. And the reason.

00:49:38:20 - 00:49:41:12
Speaker 2
Why I can attest to that. You pulled up in a for today.

00:49:41:12 - 00:50:01:23
Speaker 1
Yeah, yeah, for the Ford truck. But, the reason why I said that is because I know in my mind what that would do to me if I did it. So if I all of a sudden bought, I mean, doesn't even whatever the brand. Yeah. If I bought X brand of a vehicle, then that's going to change me.

00:50:02:01 - 00:50:25:12
Speaker 1
And I don't want to I don't want to be that person that I know that I could be by having that, because I think that there's there's also, I don't know, there's just some humility that I think has to come through this process that you have you have the chance to affect people's lives. Like, I have lots of employees.

00:50:25:14 - 00:50:45:18
Speaker 1
I have a chance to make their lives miserable, or I have the chance to make their lives as, as good as they possibly can be. I kind of look at it as as the kind of the Richard Branson model, you if your goal is just to take care of the employees, the employees take care of the customers, the customers take care of the bottom line, and everything else is okay.

00:50:45:23 - 00:51:18:17
Speaker 1
And I have found that to be true over and over and over again. So I focus on them. And I think that if I, if I kind of let money be what I see money become for some people, then I think I may not be as generous or kind of a person to employees or just to other people, and just someone who may not try to make the world does make the world a better place than otherwise.

00:51:18:19 - 00:51:29:05
Speaker 1
So that's why I've that's that's just that's my line in the sand. And I will never do it because again, I could, but I know what it'll do. And I don't want to go there.

00:51:29:08 - 00:51:51:05
Speaker 2
You know, I can. Those are kind of those ethos that I think don't always come across on a, like a meme or a TikTok or something when you're talking about this. But I do think that, the more and more folks that I engage with are like you, Riley, that have definitively built something, I suppose you could retire if you wanted to and be fine.

00:51:51:07 - 00:52:06:18
Speaker 2
They don't. There's not this aspiration to like they have. They're kind of like, look, if nothing ever changes, I love the game. I don't necessarily need the new fancy things to justify what I am. So I dig that, man. Look, I know we're coming up. I mean, that whole hour just blew by. Now, I could talk to you forever.

00:52:06:18 - 00:52:27:02
Speaker 2
I would love to kind of. Kind of get through our the rest of the convo here, talking about this community that you built here. You see it in everything. And it's not just your customers. We've been fortunate. Hang out with here for a few days. Hang out with your teammates. They're awesome. Just curious. Like it's rare you don't find a place.

00:52:27:02 - 00:52:42:08
Speaker 2
I mean, maybe I'm a gearhead too, so I just, like, walked in here in the smells and the clanking and, like, just all the visual stimuli made me kind of get excited. But you can feel it in the customers and you can feel it in your teammates that like, this is a place that people seek out and they want to hang out.

00:52:42:08 - 00:53:01:02
Speaker 2
I mean, even last night, people were hanging out here for a workshop on a Friday night, man. I mean, now, granted, you got beer taps and stuff, so I'm sure that helps. But, like, folks want to be here. Just just curious. Like, did you set out to build a community within a business? And if you did, has that been important or not to the success of the business?

00:53:01:04 - 00:53:24:16
Speaker 1
It was it was important right from the get go. We knew that, if you kind of look at the products that are here and then you, you kind of back up to you stop thinking about the products, you start thinking about the people who use them. You start to you start to see groups of people, and then those, those groups of people are part of groups of people.

00:53:24:18 - 00:53:47:19
Speaker 1
And then eventually you recognize that there's the community. And if you want to be part of their lives, you can't just be someone who just wants to come and get, get a dollar out of their wallet. You have to be someone who who, who is able to tell them. So nothing. Nothing makes me happier. And I.

00:53:47:19 - 00:54:04:03
Speaker 1
This happens all the time. Is that when we go ice climbing, we'll be up on the, So my climbing partner and I will be up on the ice, and we'll see some people come to join us right next to us or something. And I see that they have our rental boots on.

00:54:04:04 - 00:54:04:21
Speaker 2
Oh that's neat.

00:54:05:03 - 00:54:25:10
Speaker 1
So I can I can tell because they have our logo on the back and I just recognize them anyway, so I know that they've been into the shop and are they've they've already visited us. And so the very first thing that I then say is, I don't I don't I don't go out and say, hey, by the way, those boots that you're wearing, I actually own that shop.

00:54:25:11 - 00:54:44:04
Speaker 1
I don't say that. What what I do is, I basically say, hey, there's room here. Do you want us to set up another rope and we'll we'll pay you or we'll, we'll help you climb something like that. And then, they're like, kind of takes them back because they're not used to. They're not used to that happening.

00:54:44:06 - 00:55:02:15
Speaker 1
But then we do that and then, because not because again, I want to tell them that I own the shop, because I want them to have a positive climbing experience. Yeah, I want them to, I want to I want them to enjoy doing what I love doing. And so I want them to experience that. So I do that.

00:55:02:15 - 00:55:21:13
Speaker 1
And then and then through one way or another, they might find out that, that we own the shop or something. We never said anything, but we just tried to make their experience really good. And and maybe it was when they come back, they see they see us. They're like, wait a second. You were the guy who was up there.

00:55:21:18 - 00:55:43:17
Speaker 1
Yeah. Climbing. And it's like, what are you doing here? It's well, it's our shop. Yeah. And then they walk away with a completely different perspective. They're like. We we try to practice what we preach. We we want people to love it. And so we make it so that they can we try to do everything that we can so that they can have a good experience.

00:55:43:19 - 00:56:12:01
Speaker 1
And then we see those people come back year after year after year because not because of the boots that they rented, but because we blade them on a rope or something like that. And, and didn't tell them that we were there because we wanted them to have a good experience. That's building community, that's, making sure that, that the people who are coming in wanting to go out and have fun in the outdoors are able to do it.

00:56:12:03 - 00:56:42:10
Speaker 1
And it's also making sure that, and this is also just been a just a line in the sand for me that no one can cross, that all of my employees are told that, and I always use the example of, like, an 18 year old college girl who comes in to this really intimidating place that has really intimidating sports like backcountry skiing and ice climbing and, bunch of experts running an ultra distance trail running and all this kind of stuff.

00:56:42:12 - 00:57:06:15
Speaker 1
And you can just see from the second she walks in the door, that's kind of a deer in the headlights, is afraid to even come in the door. And I basically say, I don't ever want that person to come in. They can be afraid for a second, but it's our job to then go to her and basically say, hey, what, what do you love to do in the mountains?

00:57:06:17 - 00:57:15:20
Speaker 1
Yeah. And then just start talking and don't don't ever say the things like, hey, backcountry skiing is probably not for you, or ice climbing is probably not for you.

00:57:15:20 - 00:57:16:18
Speaker 2
You ever done this before?

00:57:16:18 - 00:57:47:03
Speaker 1
Yeah, yeah. Have you ever done this before? Absolutely not. I none of those things can ever, ever happen because I want to come in and like the bindings that are to our right, I want to be able to show someone like that that this stuff is pretty simple. You just need someone to take the time to, to go through and listen to your questions and fully acknowledge that you're going to have questions, and that no questions are dumb questions, because we want you to go out and have fun, and we want you to be safe.

00:57:47:05 - 00:58:02:18
Speaker 1
If you're not asking questions, you're not going to do either of those things because you might end up on the wrong stuff. We see that happen all the time, and so it's making sure that we are getting people out on the right gear for the activities that they want to do, no matter who they are, I don't care.

00:58:02:18 - 00:58:27:18
Speaker 1
Yeah, I don't care who you are and how you been treated in the past. You're going to be treated differently here. I try to do that with with all of our businesses, try to make customer service the, the pinnacle of, of what we do. Because at the end of the day, we are.

00:58:27:20 - 00:58:33:21
Speaker 1
We are not in the ski business. We're not in,

00:58:33:23 - 00:59:00:08
Speaker 1
We're not in the climbing. We're not in the climbing business. We're not in any of that stuff. What we are is we are in the customer service business. And I think if you, if you don't recognize that, then. Excuse me. No, worse than that, that's where that's where. That's where things can go wrong. And you start to think, no, what we're really in is the business selling ice axes.

00:59:00:10 - 00:59:05:19
Speaker 1
No, we're in the business making sure people go out and having a good experience on the ice.

00:59:05:21 - 00:59:32:20
Speaker 2
Yeah. You can you can clearly see that when you're working with your teammates and seeing that there is a, There's a recognition it's a little bit of the, it's like the coolest person in the room isn't trying to be cool. Seems like the wealthiest folks you ever meet are doing it for the money. Yeah, and it seems like the companies that built the right community are doing it with are businesses that operate successfully on our scoreboard perspective.

00:59:32:23 - 00:59:53:18
Speaker 2
Great. You know, good top line, great profits happen to also figure out that they didn't do it at the cost of their customers, and instead they did it because of their customers. Yeah. I mean, I mean, just being here, everybody here you can tell is, there's about it, there's a natural curiosity here, and everybody seems to be like a natural educator.

00:59:53:19 - 01:00:15:16
Speaker 2
They just they want to nerd out with you about whatever you're looking at. The. I think, was that something that you found? Was that it? Take a maybe not for Riley specifically. Did it take a long time to kind of influence your team, to kind of sit in those ethers and not worry about, you know, hey, try to push that snowboard, try to push that ski.

01:00:15:16 - 01:00:29:15
Speaker 2
You know, we got to get it out here or whatever the case may be versus kind of playing the longer game, which is just take care of the customer. Even they don't pick it up today. They'll be back if we treat them right. Is that was that hard to instill, or do you feel like you just found a really great group of people and they ended up doing it?

01:00:29:19 - 01:00:50:12
Speaker 1
I think it was, I think it was pretty easy. And so I should say, this is why we've never had a problem hiring people. Yeah. Because, people people who've come over here often stay with us for a long, long time because we take care of our people. And it's not that way. We're not we're not just trying to push push the products.

01:00:50:13 - 01:01:20:07
Speaker 1
Like I say, we we want to have a conversation with people. We want to talk to them about the things that we're passionate about. If you want to talk, talk about boots. I can talk about boots with you all day long because I love ski boots. Yeah, and I love being in a really great ski boot. And I know what a really great ski boot can do for you, but I don't want, I want, I want to sell the boot because you want to go out and have a good experience backcountry skiing in the mountains.

01:01:20:08 - 01:01:43:21
Speaker 1
This is just a tool to get it done. Yeah. So if you just focus on the tool, you're not focusing on the right thing and you're not asking the right questions. And so that's why it's just all all the time is we we ask questions. We're asking questions over and over and over again. We're asking questions. And it's just something, something as simple as there's kind of to two options here.

01:01:43:21 - 01:02:08:14
Speaker 1
Someone comes in and says, I'm looking for, a raincoat. Okay. You have two choices. You can point over there and say, okay, they're over there on that rack or what we like to do and what I prefer that everyone does here. I'll walk over and I'll show you what we have, and I'll tell you why. Why we have brands that we do and why I like these.

01:02:08:14 - 01:02:22:08
Speaker 1
And then it's basically, okay, what are you trying to accomplish with this? And then I'll point you to the one that I think accomplishes that the best for you. So they're both of them can get a rain jacket out of that. Yeah, out of that circumstance.

01:02:22:12 - 01:02:23:14
Speaker 2
But one of them is more service.

01:02:23:14 - 01:02:46:10
Speaker 1
Yeah. The other one is more community is more service. And so they're going to remember that. And then that generally comes out as a positive review saying these guys care. These guys aren't just trying to push a bunch of equipment. They they care about what they're doing. I try I try to have that be be the ethos through all of the businesses, not just not just this one, because I love these products so much.

01:02:46:12 - 01:03:11:17
Speaker 1
I want it to be that way all the time. Because again, who pays the bills? Yeah, it's customers. Customers. So if if they're not here, then you can't have space. You can't have employees, you can't, buy products, you can't do any of that stuff because the people who bring the money work here. Yeah, it's that's why it's when we kind of think about community.

01:03:11:17 - 01:03:34:09
Speaker 1
It's all the events that are happening in the community that we're involved with, all the organizations that are there that we either donate time or money to make sure that they're successful. And and again, it's not you have to look at the long game there, because if you if you just sponsor something once a few, a few people might see that you're there.

01:03:34:11 - 01:03:55:06
Speaker 1
If you sponsor something for five years and people see you there over and over and over again, and they see that you're there because you care about the impact that that organization has on the community, then that's something that people will remember instead of the money that you've given. Yeah. I mean, that's that's just, it's just, a means to an end, you know?

01:03:55:06 - 01:03:55:17
Speaker 2
That's right.

01:03:55:17 - 01:04:32:22
Speaker 1
But so those are all the components that we thought about when we thought about how do we create community, how do we create a space that will make it so that people want to be here? And that's why we also wanted the space to be an educational space. So that then and we don't charge anything for any of the events that we put on, because we want people to come in and mingle with other people who who do the same things that they either do or want to do, and that they can meet people to go do them with, and that we provide a place for everyone to come and learn.

01:04:33:00 - 01:04:50:04
Speaker 1
And what I love the best is seeing someone who's never been or never done this, come to one of our events and then walk out and say, I can do this. Yeah, either because they've now heard some information or we walked them through the process so that so that it's not intimidating anymore.

01:04:50:06 - 01:05:07:09
Speaker 2
Well, y'all have done that. I mean I can it's just it's very tangible. You can feel it every single second. Here again, we get to witness it several times. As we close out there, rally man you again. I could talk to you for hours. Especially about mountain stuff, man. But one last thing. It's just kind of burning in my brain.

01:05:07:09 - 01:05:28:02
Speaker 2
And if you were thinking about, you know, kind of reflecting on your career, reflecting on your time as an owner operator, mountain got all the things. Is there anything you look back on? And if you could tell your younger self something, just, you know, something that maybe was a mistake or an obstacle that you hit along the way, that if you could kind of tell your younger self like, hey, just keep an eye on this, what is the thing that comes to mind?

01:05:28:03 - 01:05:50:18
Speaker 1
The thing that comes to my mind, and this has taken me a long time to, to get to this point. But the thing that I would tell my, my younger self is embrace who you are. Because for the longest time, I fought against who I was because I would see people who care, who could. So this was kind of early in my career when I was just kind of working for people.

01:05:50:20 - 01:06:21:15
Speaker 1
I would see people who could stay in a job for five, ten, 15, 20 years. And after like two years, I had had enough. I had mastered what they had told me to do, and it wasn't fun for me anymore. I just kept thinking, why can you not just do what they're doing and just just embrace the fact that you, you have a job and that you can just just do it instead, I had to move on to something else that was that was new and shiny and attractive to me.

01:06:21:15 - 01:06:46:00
Speaker 1
And then I would do that for two years. And I just kept thinking, something about that is broken. And what it was was nothing. There was nothing broken. I just had to realize who I was. Yeah. And acknowledge that and basically just say, okay, you like to be in things where things are changing for you constantly, where every day is something new, where the problems are new no matter what.

01:06:46:02 - 01:07:15:23
Speaker 1
And so it never gets into just kind of a dull routine. And that's okay. But just acknowledging if I would have acknowledged that a long time ago, much sooner than I think I would have been much happier and would have been much more comfortable in my own skin to just basically say, yeah, this is who you are, and just go out and do it and just embrace the fact that this is what you are, because when I put my mind to something for two years, I can get a lot done in two years.

01:07:16:04 - 01:07:17:00
Speaker 2
Hard work capacity.

01:07:17:00 - 01:07:35:10
Speaker 1
Yeah, yeah. And then I'm ready to, to to move on to something else. And I think I could have probably accomplished a lot more had I acknowledged that versus, versus thinking, hey, there's something wrong. Why why am I so different than other people? It's rather a lot of acknowledging it.

01:07:35:12 - 01:07:53:12
Speaker 2
I think that's helpful, man, because I think there's probably a lot of folks out there tuning in right now that are going, yeah, maybe that's why I didn't feel right. Like it's maybe it can't work for somebody. Maybe I'm a builder. Maybe I'm somebody who needs to go grow something on my own because I'm not out of energy and just hate putting it somewhere where there's a bit of a prescribed ladder, so to speak, that.

01:07:53:13 - 01:08:19:05
Speaker 1
Yeah. Yeah. And and the other thing that, that has become apparent to me is that, is that I'm now to the point in my life where we're giving back is becoming a lot more important to me. And so becoming a mentor for someone, I try to find those opportunities just so that I can. Because one day I'm going to find someone.

01:08:19:07 - 01:08:39:22
Speaker 1
Young guy. Young girl who looks like the young version of me. Yeah. And I can, I can hopefully then help that person to, to not have to go through that point of thinking, what's wrong with me? But instead figure out how to focus that energy to, to something that can make that person incredibly successful so much sooner.

01:08:39:22 - 01:09:11:05
Speaker 1
And so those are the things that start to go through my mind now is, is how can I give back? And I think that that that for me is kind of the, the pinnacle of success is if you can achieve whatever, great. But what you can give back, then those are going to be the things that people are going to remember you for, not for all the money that you made or the businesses that you built or whatever, but the differences that you made in someone else's life and that that's.

01:09:11:07 - 01:09:40:19
Speaker 1
And it's interesting that titles now are not important to me. The accolades that kind of come along with some of the things that's not important to me. I am happy just to kind of sit back and and just kind of know, okay, I, I'm happy that all of this has been accomplished. Great. But it's better for me to, to then see, okay, who who can I help to accomplish this?

01:09:40:19 - 01:10:01:09
Speaker 1
And so that's actually been kind of my focus in the last three years has been trying to figure out where opportunities to, to mentor people. And that's what I hope that, that's what I really hope that people who are successful in business do is figure out a way to give back, not just figure out a way to spend all of your money.

01:10:01:14 - 01:10:09:11
Speaker 1
Yeah, that's I mean, great, that's great. But, it's kind of, no one's going to remember you for that.

01:10:09:13 - 01:10:12:16
Speaker 2
Yeah, it's kind of a meaningless, end to one's life.

01:10:12:16 - 01:10:26:22
Speaker 1
Yeah, there has to be. There has to be a way that you can kind of look in the mirror and say, is the world a better place because of what I did to it? Versus did I take or did I give?

01:10:27:00 - 01:10:43:21
Speaker 2
Well, right. I can tell you're giving a lot, man. And so we appreciate guys like you in this world that are continuing to build great things, build great teams and doing it for the right reasons. So one, thank you for the hospitality and welcome to walking. You know, there's Texas guys into y'all's Montana family here. We really appreciate it.

01:10:43:21 - 01:10:54:02
Speaker 2
And we will definitely be back. I know that, we probably have some adventures that, we can, enjoy with when we get back out here. But thank you again for your time. Yeah.

01:10:54:02 - 01:10:55:18
Speaker 1
My pleasure. Yeah. It was great to chat with you.