June 25, 2025 • 55 mins
In this episode of The Jimmy Rex Show, Jimmy sits down with entrepreneur, author, and mountaineer Reid Tileston, fresh off his incredible climb to the summit of Mount Everest. Reid shares the raw, behind-the-scenes reality of what it takes to prepare for and survive one of the most dangerous and demanding expeditions on Earth.
Beyond the climb, Reid opens up about how pushing his limits physically and mentally helped him break through personal barriers, embrace uncertainty, and reconnect with purpose. From navigating freezing temperatures and altitude sickness to managing risk and self-doubt, this conversation is an honest look at the price—and reward—of going all in on a dream.
Whether you’re chasing your own version of a summit or searching for deeper meaning in your life, Reid’s journey will inspire you to step outside your comfort zone and grit it done.
Beyond the climb, Reid opens up about how pushing his limits physically and mentally helped him break through personal barriers, embrace uncertainty, and reconnect with purpose. From navigating freezing temperatures and altitude sickness to managing risk and self-doubt, this conversation is an honest look at the price—and reward—of going all in on a dream.
Whether you’re chasing your own version of a summit or searching for deeper meaning in your life, Reid’s journey will inspire you to step outside your comfort zone and grit it done.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:02):
Hello, and welcome to another episode of The Jimmy Rex Show.
And today on the podcast, I'm here with Reed Tyleston
and he is the author of Great It Done.
Speaker 2 (00:10):
But he also more recently.
Speaker 1 (00:11):
Just got back from climbing to the top of Mount Everest,
and he's somebody that I've been able to get to
know pretty well through my coaching program. He is a
member of We Are the Day and somebody that is
just one of the most intriguing humans I've ever met,
and I'm super pumped to sit down talk about his
experience climbing Mount Everest, but then also just what He's
also a professor at BYU and has got a million
other things he's done as an entrepreneur.
Speaker 2 (00:32):
So without further ado, let's get to the show.
Speaker 1 (00:35):
By the way, today's show is brought to you by
Bucked Up Protein and this is my favorite go to drink.
I'm drinking one of these during every episode. Now why
not get my protein in while I am podcasting? And
the truth is is it tastes really good, and so
I just like drinking them. But it's also it's only
one hundred calories per can twenty five grams of proteins.
You can pick them up a harmines or anywhere where
you find bucked up products.
Speaker 2 (00:56):
Now let's get to the show.
Speaker 3 (01:06):
Jimmy, I'm just so happy to be here. And on
that note too, I mean, when it comes to athletic performance,
what you put in your body dictates how you perform.
It is as simple as that. So finding things that
are both good for you and you actually enjoy having
as critical.
Speaker 2 (01:19):
It's true as you get older you really figure that out.
Speaker 1 (01:22):
It's if I eat like crap now, I mean I'll
feel it for a you know that whole next day,
I'm a mess. It's I didn't It didn't hit me
at all in my twentiesn't hit me too much in
my thirties.
Speaker 2 (01:31):
But now it's like, I know if I haven't.
Speaker 1 (01:33):
You know, I have to really weigh what I'm putting
in my body and how I go about it. Because
it's true. I mean, you were just on Everest. Obviously
you're climbing a mountain like that. I'm guessing diet is
everything you.
Speaker 3 (01:44):
Have to tell you though, so they actually tell you
because you're responsible. They have more than enough food to
cover you, and the food is actually really good like place,
as you buy it up there or what No, they
like provide it like, oh the people that you hired
to take you yea, I have my full chef's full
shirpa to take care of it. Everything like that, and
the food because they've learned over the years that one
predictor of success on Everest is simply how you treat yourself,
(02:05):
and one critical part of how you treat yourself is
how well you eat. So they give you good food
because good food simply maximizes your chance of success, and
they have a dialed and well, however, you also are
responsible for bringing your own snacks for the mountain right,
particularly for higher elevations, because most people at high elevations
so above like you know, twenty two to twenty thousand feet,
(02:26):
you lose your appetite, you don't want to eat, and
you don't want to drink. So on Everest it's just
a suffer fest. Ninety five percent of people, including the
guides in the sherpas and the clients, are suffering all
the time. You have a headache, your have a stomach ache,
you're nauseous, your body's hurting. Then you couple that with
the fact you don't want to eat, so What they
tell you, though, is listen, bring foods that are both
(02:49):
nutritious and more importantly, that you actually want to eat,
so that when you're nauseous, when you're not hungry, when
eating becomes a responsibility, that you actually want to do it.
So your point about the protein shake is that if
you actually enjoy having it, it's not like a job
or a task AffA taken. You're much more likely to
want to have it, and then you have the positive
(03:09):
outcomes from it. And that was a common theme on
a everest. And in case you're curious, for me, pop
tarts right figs and I love strup and waffle stinger
bars and beef curekey. Those are like my four snacks.
That's pretty good, you know what.
Speaker 1 (03:24):
I one of those foods. It's one of those guilty
pleasures I haven't had for whatever. I don't know why
this reminded me of it with what you just said
with pop tarts, but toaster strudles, bro you throw one
of those in the microft Oh, they are so good.
It's one of those foods you just can't justify though
it's so bad for you. But yeah, if ever I'm
claiming everest, I might try to snack on some toaster streams.
Speaker 3 (03:42):
Well, that's the best part is that high elevations, just
by doing even if you did nothing all day except
lay down, right, you burn more calories than you can
possibly consume. So you have carte blanche to eat whatever
you want to and they do a good job of
providing that stuff. But the interesting thing, though, is that
you burn all these calories right, Yet the ironic part
is at high elevations you're probably going to lose your hunger.
(04:04):
So it's the ultimate annoying situation. You're like, I could
eat whatever I want, want anything and not gain weight,
but I don't actually want to.
Speaker 1 (04:12):
Well, your body's so interesting too, I mean, it craves
what you feed it, you know, on a regular basis
or whatever else. But so how much prep went in
for you? I guess let's start a little bit earlier
than that. I mean, how did you decide that you
were going to go do Everest? I mean, I think
we all have that in the back of our minds,
high achievers, right right, what I do Everest? Would I
actually go do that?
Speaker 2 (04:29):
One day? Yeah? And you decided? How did you decide
that was something you were going to do.
Speaker 3 (04:33):
My journey with Everest starts like so many other people's do,
and it's with that interesting book. It's a great book
called Into Thin Air. What's so end if you write
Into thin Crockauer's book. So Crockauer writes about this disaster
in nineteen ninety six. But krockouur when you wrote it,
his intention was to illustrate to people how dangerous Everest was,
(04:54):
with I think an indirect intention of discouraging people from
doing it. What ended up happening, Jimmy, It ended up
encouraging a ton of people to do it, which was
unintended because I think and people read it and they're like, WHOA,
I guess this Everest thing is really dangerous, right ooh
I want to go off and do it. So Krocauer
had one intention, and in my experience, and this is
(05:16):
no not an academic study on this, I would tell
you though, that seven out of ten people that I meet,
seventy percent when you actually drilled down to why they
want to do. Ever, So how the journey started, it
was with Into Thin Air. So krockauro tried.
Speaker 1 (05:29):
To discritgine many people really literally it might him so fascinating. Yeah, Well,
we forget that certain you know, the world was certain
ways before something changes it. Right. I read that book, gosh,
probably fifteen years ago. I read it a really long
time ago. I remember the dude that got the frost
Bit and was left for dead and then comes alive
and stumbles into camp. Reading that part of the book,
I'm just like, oh my gosh, Yes.
Speaker 3 (05:50):
And he's a Texan, right, so it's those Texans with
the sex mentality she used to die.
Speaker 2 (05:55):
I could see that though.
Speaker 1 (05:56):
I you know, it's interesting because I traveled, you know,
to a lot of different countries. IVE been to one
hundre fourteen countries and one of the things you realize
now a lot of travel places have kind of been
ruined a little bit are not necessarily ruined, but and
you realize that before the Internet, I remember how hard
it was to go to Arizona if you just had
like you didn't have your phone. You were stopping at
internet cafes and trying to get directions to where you're going.
(06:18):
It wasn't as fun to travel. But with you know,
with when Instagram hit and people saw what's out there.
But a really cool consequence, So in one way, it
kind of sucks because so many people, you know, go
to these places now. But a different consequence of that
is I do think people care more than ever about
the Earth and about the universe, you know, the world
that we live in. You know, the first thing they
(06:38):
ever did when they were coming out with Earth Day
is they were trying to get they wanted to get
a shot of Earth because we don't care about things
were not familiar with. And so they finally got that
shot from outer space looking back at Earth, and they
say that was the probably the number one most pivotal
thing to ever get people to start consciously worrying about
saving the planet and actually doing something about it.
Speaker 2 (06:57):
Right, That's where the whole green movement came from.
Speaker 1 (06:59):
Because before that, you know, and I have this saying
it's like, you know, if we forget to go enjoy
how beautiful this Earth can be, if we don't go
and experience it, then you kind of forget that there's
even a reason to save it. And so by experiencing,
you know, like even with Everest, I mean, I'm guessing
before it was on your radar, you probably didn't really
(07:20):
care much about it, but then obviously it got into you.
And now that'll be one of the biggest parts of
your life for the rest of your life.
Speaker 2 (07:28):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (07:28):
Absolutely, And people in the space will always tell you
that Everest changes people one hundred percent of the time,
and it's very one thing they enjoy about it is
seeing the actual changes that come out of climbing Mount Everest.
And for me, there's one very tangible change. I whenever
I go on outdoors or hiking or mountaineer in trips,
I don't shave right, But the day that I get back,
or two days later, maybe a most I go to
(07:50):
my barber and I get one of those old school
you know, like knife razor shave things, and there's so
much fun. Right, So I was thinking, I'm going to
grow this beard out, come back and get it shaved off.
But then as the Everest trip was winding down, some
of the other people were like, dude, you're looking like
pretty good with the facial hair man. And then one
individual is like, some of professors like, you look very
(08:10):
professorial with your facial hair. And I cannot find a
single person that has told me that having facial hair
is a bad thing. They think I look better.
Speaker 2 (08:17):
With it, Oh, you look much better.
Speaker 3 (08:18):
Yeah, yeah, so Everest ironically like, I'm now exploring a
new frontier of masculinity with my facial hair. So that's
one tangible, easy way that Everest changed me.
Speaker 2 (08:27):
I like it.
Speaker 1 (08:28):
So you're a professor, bo, you are they going to
make you shave it? Can the professors have facial hair?
Speaker 3 (08:31):
So I think I'm gonna have to shave it for
the honor code because even the teachers. Yeah yeah, yeah,
yeah yeah, So it looks like it's going to be
short lived being a professor.
Speaker 1 (08:40):
At b YU, dude, because Brigham Young obviously had pretty
decent beard.
Speaker 2 (08:44):
What is going on with ship?
Speaker 3 (08:46):
Yesterday he actually mentioned that he's like Brigham Young had
a beard and everything, so there was like an appeal
process maybe, well we'll dig into that. So I'm totally
digging the facial hair, dude.
Speaker 2 (08:57):
I went to play.
Speaker 1 (08:59):
I was playing soft all at BOU back in the day,
you know, And I never went to BOU, but just
to play on the intramurals. You can play if you're
not a student, if you go to UVU, but you'd
have to obeyed by the honor code still essentially for
facial hair, right yeah, yeah, And I went to I
got kicked out of a game because I wouldn't shave
and I had to run next door, and I'm like,
I didn't didn't have any jail. So I was just
(09:21):
literally like, just you're off, you're raw dog and yeahs
raw dogging it on my face, dude, And so I
could play and they like they were like, you need
a little bit more.
Speaker 2 (09:30):
I was like missing a couple of spots.
Speaker 1 (09:31):
I think it was crazy, dude, but hey, I got
to play, so hopefully they let you keep it, dude.
Speaker 2 (09:35):
I think that's I think it's a good look.
Speaker 3 (09:36):
I'm loving it. I'm absolutely loving it.
Speaker 2 (09:39):
So before you, you know, decide to go do Everest
and everything else.
Speaker 1 (09:41):
I mean, you've already had a lot of success in
the business world, your book Grited Done.
Speaker 2 (09:46):
That was how we first met.
Speaker 1 (09:47):
Max Jolly introduced us because he talked about I think
he was doing a business deal with you or whatever else. Yeah,
kind of just looked at everything that you're doing, man,
Like if you're doing a resume of life, you've got
a lot of things on there.
Speaker 2 (09:59):
Bro.
Speaker 3 (09:59):
I just want to grow and be like you, Jimmy,
And the inspiration, the energy always comes from people that
I meet in the process. Whenever I'm all in and
I'm passionate, I just seem to meet really cool people
and that just inspires me to do more. I can't
tell you that because there's nine people on the Everest trip,
nine clients and a bunch and guides and chirpos and everything,
A bunch more I just meet. I'm like wow. I
came out after doing Everest.
Speaker 2 (10:20):
I was like wow, I.
Speaker 3 (10:21):
Am so stimulated and the other things I want to
do in my life. So it is all about the people.
And that's one reason I love we are the day
because you get people together and just amazing things happen
when you get the right people in the right room
with the right container.
Speaker 2 (10:34):
Yeah, it really is well.
Speaker 1 (10:35):
And so that's one thing that I was going to
ask you is when you know, anytime we get to
a peak in life, it's part of the humor that
God has is in order to stay fulfilled.
Speaker 2 (10:43):
We have to do the next thing. Yeah, you reach
a mountain, Okay, you go to the bottom. It's time
to do your next thing. So you said that you
were inspired to kind of do some other things. What
came to you? What are you going to do next?
Speaker 3 (10:52):
It's hard not to be right. There's like someone on
the trip, for example, who's literally done seventeen iron Man triathlons, right,
seventeen iron Man triathlons, and it goes to show the
power of being niche and unique. He's done the World
Championship in Kona. Oh yeah, but he's very slow. I mean,
he's not a fast Ironman. So it actually turns out
I didn't know this. There was a rule that if
(11:14):
you do if you complete twelve Ironman triathlons, then you
basically automatically get into Kona. So he had a goal
to do the Ironman World Championship, but he couldn't ever
be fast enough. So he just beat it with like
pure persistence by doing twelve straight. So you have someone
like that right. Individuals that you have successful entrepreneurs, guy
that runs like the thirtieth biggest construction company in the US.
(11:35):
You just around some high caliber people. And there's a
dude named Mike Tobin. He's a Fox News anchor in Chicago.
Mike Tobin does a lot of work. He'll go out
and be with Armed Forces individuals. So if they're on
like a carrier in the Middle East, he'll go interview
him so he learned that twenty two veterans think about
or commit suicide per day, commit actually twenty to commit
(11:57):
suicide per day. So here's what he does, right, and
you can find if you just google it. He didn't
even tell us he was going to do this, by
the way, for the most part on the summit of Everest,
due to my group did twenty two push ups on
the summit to make that point. So being around and
he has a second place in Park Cities from Chicago,
so we'll definitely keep that relationship going. But being around
(12:18):
people that just have that kind of mindset, I just
find it to be so so so inspiring.
Speaker 2 (12:23):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (12:23):
So did you have anything in particular come to you
as far as where you want to go next?
Speaker 3 (12:27):
I mean, when I think about next adventures, there there's
three that are top of mind. I love cold water swimming,
I love open water swimming, so I've always had an
urge to do the English Channel. So English Channel swimming
is certainly certainly up there. And it actually turns out
that from what I can tell, there's only a couple
people that have ever done Everest and the English Channel.
But there's also the guy in Utah that has actually
(12:49):
done Everest and the English channel as well. So I
haven't reached out to him yet, but we have to
create a relationship. Let we push that forward.
Speaker 1 (12:55):
I love how like, you know, because Everest, I mean,
it's still very unique. There's a few thousand people have
ever climbed it, but it's also there's a few thousand
people now, and so everybody.
Speaker 2 (13:04):
Always finds the thing that goes with.
Speaker 1 (13:06):
It, right, Like I had one guy he's like, I
was the first ever cancer survivor, and the other one
was like, you know, the first I actually interviewed on
my podcast, this kid named Jordan. He was the youngest
person ever do the seventh Summits. Yeah, And it was funny.
I was dating this girl and she was, you know,
just super cute girl. But she just her network was
about zero. I guess I don't think she knew a
single person. I hadn't introduced her to her at the time,
(13:28):
and or so I thought. And one day I was
talking about interviewing.
Speaker 2 (13:31):
Something for my podcast.
Speaker 1 (13:32):
She goes, I my friend went to Mount Everest. Would
you want to talk to him? And I'm like, what's
his name? She says, yeah, And I can start googling this guy,
and I'm like, you're friends with him? And he anyway,
she texted him and he hit her right back. He
actually had moved to Utah and so there's a lot
of Everest connection to ut Toe. I ended up having
him on the podcast Jordan Romero and he he's an
incredible story.
Speaker 2 (13:51):
But yeah he was he was twelve. Yeah did Everest.
Speaker 3 (13:53):
That's amazing, absolutely amazing. I think someone this year first
American to do all seven summits. Yeah, and seventeen years old.
Done all seven summits by seventeen So absolutely amazing. And
they say there's about two dozen ever summitors in Utah,
so one individual I know who has someone it evers like, yeah,
we gotta do in the barber we have someone new
that did it. So again like the fun part about
(14:13):
doing things like this just to people.
Speaker 1 (14:15):
Yeah, you mean incredibly human beings doing that kind of stuff.
What was your business background before? Because you got hired
to be a professor BII. What do you teach there?
Speaker 3 (14:24):
I teach people how to buy businesses.
Speaker 2 (14:25):
That's what I teach.
Speaker 3 (14:26):
Opnership.
Speaker 1 (14:26):
Your whole thing is instead of trying to build a business,
acquire is that yeah?
Speaker 3 (14:30):
Yeah, something that already works and acquire it versus start
something from scratch.
Speaker 2 (14:34):
So why should somebody acquire a business? And what are
the Avengers doing that instead of trying? Because I think
that scares people to pay.
Speaker 1 (14:40):
Money because then you're getting a loan for the or
you're putting out your life savings or whatever.
Speaker 2 (14:43):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (14:43):
Yeah, I mean the ten year startup failure rate in
the US pretty consistently has been about sixty five percent.
The failure rate of buying something that currently exists is
a heck of a lot lower.
Speaker 2 (14:52):
Cody Sanchez has been talking about that a lot lately.
Speaker 3 (14:54):
Yeah, yeah, Well, the crazy part is is that this
became really popular and really sexy. I would tell you,
like about eight to ten years ago, the influencers Cody
Sanchez got into it. Walker Diible right wrote by the build,
there's been a ton of attention to it the last
few years, which is I won't say it's either good
or it's either bad, but buying businesses has just been
(15:15):
around for a very long time and it's just this
unique niche of America. Being a small business owner that
I will tell you is the twenty first century version
of the American dream. You have autonomy, you control your calendar.
Whatever principles Jimmy matter to you. If you own your business,
you can live to those.
Speaker 2 (15:34):
Right.
Speaker 3 (15:34):
If you want to pay your team members, you know,
above market wages because you want to fight inequality, you
could do that.
Speaker 2 (15:41):
Right.
Speaker 3 (15:41):
If you're like I'm a Milton Friedman man and I
want to maximize profit because that's good for the world,
you can do that. Whatever your values are, you can
live and you have this high level of autonomy. What's interesting, Yeah,
go ahead.
Speaker 2 (15:53):
No, I was gonna say, I've keep going. Actually I
want to hear what rest you thought on that?
Speaker 3 (15:56):
And now, Yeah, And what's so fascinating with it is that,
by the way, in academics, you know, it's almost like
a rule that people that are self employed are happier.
But the first study that illustrated this, I think is
so unique. It came when the Berlin Wall fell, because
you had East Germans who for the first time could
be business owners and entrepreneurs. And they tracked a variety
(16:18):
of East Germans, some that took jobs in the government,
some that took jobs at big companies, some that became
business owners. And it's a very controlled sample. It's all
East Germans. And they can show when you control for
amount of money made, you control for aid, you control
for a number of kids, families, all those things. Who
do you think was.
Speaker 2 (16:34):
The happiest of a by law in their own business? Yeah?
Speaker 3 (16:37):
The business owners, right, So that kind of set off
a bunch of ninety.
Speaker 1 (16:40):
Percent of millionaires are business owners too, like you know,
I mean whether they also have other things, of course
they do, but own their own business in one way
or another.
Speaker 3 (16:49):
Yeah, And it's it's a great and it's a great
cor option. It's very interesting now because as more individuals
are retiring, business owners are retiring, there's this huge wealth transfer.
So there was a lot of a lot of m
and a deal that's been going on. But the truth is,
when it comes to business ownership, it was a great
career choice twenty years ago and I was lucky. Right
out of school. I became in Anytime Fitness, multi unit
(17:11):
tap performing franchise e. So I've been in this space
since I was twenty two and a half years old, right,
and I've just I've done a lot in it. But
I can tell you as a good option back then,
I can tell you it's a good option now. But
it's also not going away right, it'll be it'll be
a viable career option in ten, fifteen, or twenty years.
So the key takeaway to people is do it when
it makes sense for you, right when you have enough
(17:33):
money saved up, when you have spousal alignment, right when
it's the right time for you. Because this whole buying
of business thing, it's not going anywhere, so I think
it's a great way to go.
Speaker 1 (17:42):
Well, it's interesting, I've pitched careers where it's a great
self employment type thing, but not necessarily a great small business.
Speaker 2 (17:48):
So, for example, it's a realtor, it's a really difficult
business to sell. You don't really have something you can
sell because you are the business. I did about as
well as you can do.
Speaker 1 (17:56):
I partnered with, you know, my real estate partner, Tyler Bennett,
and I get a portion of every deal we do
with my clients, and I kind of stay in touch
with them a little bit, and so it's kind of
a way to not really sell it, but like almost
hand it off but get paid for that and then
with weird that they you know, it's I never built
this to sell it, but as I've kind of.
Speaker 2 (18:16):
Starting, I'm a love I'm a creator.
Speaker 1 (18:17):
I love the creation process, so to me, I've kind
of built this thing up so like even this year,
for example, I do this Fourth of July party.
Speaker 2 (18:24):
Every year.
Speaker 1 (18:25):
I've done it for literally I think seventeen eighteen years
in a row, and I'm not doing it this year
and a couple of years and to invite me so no, no, no, no.
But there's a couple of reasons for that.
Speaker 2 (18:34):
Is.
Speaker 1 (18:34):
Number one is it was so fun when it was
raw and I was creating it, and it was kind
of messy.
Speaker 2 (18:39):
Right last couple of years, it was super corporate. It
was all paid for upfront, like.
Speaker 1 (18:43):
Everything was just kind of done for me, and it
just kind of lost that as an entrepreneur.
Speaker 2 (18:49):
That kind of thing was just like, I'm like, I don't.
Speaker 1 (18:51):
Want to just do some corporate fire recommend and so
instead we have the weird that they uh Summerfest, which
is July eighteen. Draper Days does a ginormous firework show
what's right by my new house. So I'm doing a
barbecue pool party at my house, which you've already been
invited to, and then we're just gonna watch their fireworks.
Speaker 2 (19:08):
So I'm like, I'm as well, just do that.
Speaker 1 (19:10):
But my point is is with weird that they even
I was like, man like, I kind of I'm getting
the itch to you know, I need more creation. I
just love to create. So I was like, Okay, what
would it look like if I did want to sell
this business? And I've started taking a few steps and
it's not again, I don't ever plan on selling it,
but maybe you never know if like somebody came an
offered it to me.
Speaker 2 (19:29):
But I had to. I realized that I've never even
tried to set up my business so that it could
be sold.
Speaker 1 (19:33):
So one of the things I've done is you have
to replace yourself. And so this next group, I'm opening
Group number seven. I'm going to co run it with
another guy, and then after about six months it I'll
kind of phase myself out. He's going to take the
new group, and then Group eight and Group nine. I'm
also training somebody else to take it. And it's kind
of sets the company up in a way where all
of a sudden.
Speaker 2 (19:51):
It's not dependent on me.
Speaker 1 (19:53):
Then I have a business that I could actually value
and sell. And so one of the nice side benefits
of taking myself out of it is it does set
it up if.
Speaker 2 (20:01):
I want to to eventually sell the product. Yeah.
Speaker 3 (20:03):
Absolutely. And one thing that we're doing so I teach
at BYU, I teach a case western as well. I
teach people how to buy businesses. Okay, But one fun
thing we're doing at BYU this summer August fourteenth to
sixteenth is we actually have a three day three intense
days of red Tileston and a bunch of guests right
where it's we're actually doing a class for individuals that
are that are looking to position their business for sale.
(20:25):
Not hey, I want to do a transaction like in
the next six months. I mean they're invited to, but
more so three years out, five years out, ten years out,
thinking about the various options. And what's interesting is that
there's a lot of education for buyers out there, and
there's a lot of there's a very strong ecosystem for sellers,
but it tends to be for Hey, sign up for
(20:45):
my you know, use my investment bank, use me as
a broker, you know, do an ESOP, and then use
me as like the consultant. I don't really see a
lot of actual education for sellers that.
Speaker 2 (20:55):
Is completelyhimidating, like how do I sell a business?
Speaker 3 (20:58):
Which is completely unbiased and then all well, So the
course will be fun because we'll bring in people that
have sold businesses, those that are satisfied, those that aren't satisfied.
We'll bring in all the vendors as well. It'll be
very cool to actually give some education for sellers, people
that are thinking about selling at some point. So I'm
like a kid in the candy shop talking about this.
Speaker 2 (21:15):
Now.
Speaker 3 (21:15):
We have a course for buyers which is August seventh
to ninth, and the seller one is a fourteenth to sixteenth.
It'll be it'll be a lot of fun. And I'm
right and high because I teach this at Case Western
as well the same three days, and I'm so stoked. Jimmy.
The last course I taught, I got four point nine
one out of five, and I was like, how do
I improve this? Just this morning I got the feedback
(21:36):
from last weekend. I got four point nine to four.
So I'm thinking, I just got to go for perfection.
I got to go perfection for the next one because
one of my favorite sayings in life, which I first
heard it attributed to Lou Holtz. I don't know who
originally said it, but it's so addicting good better best,
never ever rest until good is better and better is best.
(21:56):
I think that is the right way to live life
and everything.
Speaker 2 (21:59):
Yeah, I had of thought.
Speaker 1 (22:00):
When I was a real estate agent, I just said
I wouldn't be able to sit down in front of
a client and with honesty be able to say, hey,
I'm your best choice to do this, I'm your best
option to sell your home er, I'm the best option
to buy a home.
Speaker 2 (22:13):
Through if I didn't truly believe it.
Speaker 1 (22:15):
So I said, if I'm not the best, how am
I going to convey that to my clients? If I
think they have a better option, I'd feel like an
imposter to tell them they needed to work with me,
And so I worked to be my very best. When
I was at the peak of my career, I went
and got more training, more education.
Speaker 2 (22:31):
Yeah, you know.
Speaker 1 (22:32):
But also the day that I realized that I probably
wasn't in it one hundred percent anymore is when I
said I need to turn over. And you know Tyler,
oh my gosh, he's literally ten times better than I
ever was with clients. He's so good at what he does,
he cares so much, and so it was important to
me that all my clients still working with me, got
a better experience, not a worse experience if I ever
(22:52):
was to trade them off right or hand off.
Speaker 2 (22:55):
So you've been teaching at BU for how long? Now?
Speaker 3 (22:59):
This will be about a year and a half.
Speaker 2 (23:00):
Year and a half. Yeah, and what's the what's the
what is it? Do you know? I did one semester
at VEU as a professor.
Speaker 3 (23:05):
I was an add I did not know that.
Speaker 2 (23:07):
Yeah, I hear b YU and it's pretty tough for
me to be.
Speaker 3 (23:11):
Clear at byuom an adjunct professor as well.
Speaker 2 (23:13):
Fair enough, but still even that, it's tough to get
in over there.
Speaker 3 (23:16):
Yeah, I mean, my my belief in I mean, it's
not what you know, it's who you know, right, And
the way that I actually got hired at BYU is
I was trying to I was trying to get in
there and do my thing with like very limited luck.
And then one I knew somebody a professor at b
YU who I knew from Case Western. He's a professor
there as well, and he had an undergrad student reach
out to him and say, Hey, I want to set
up like an entrepreneurship through acquisition website for our undergrad
(23:39):
student group, and then he said, oh, we should talk
to Read and then we made that connection. And it
was through that student, after I'd been trying to get
in there for a for a while, that the introductions happened.
And then I've just been persistent since that point, and
I have so much fun at BYU. I love BYU undergraduates.
The biggest reason I enjoy them is that I think
(23:59):
that there's an entitlement mentality in the US, and it
is especially in that age group, but relatively what I've
seen BYU undergraduates, they're just not that entitled. They will
go out there and they will have a mentality of
just be action oriented and getting things done. I think
doing the missions is a big part of that. Church
values are a part of that. So I've had students
undergrad students in classes i've taught at BYU acquire businesses
(24:24):
during the actual term, and I've had a number of
them do it now, and it is absolutely amazing because
the thing is BYU does not leave them with much debt,
if any. They can also go out and do summertime
door knocking jobs and make significant amounts of money. My
TA for next term is literally knocking doors in Colorado
as we speak right now, making money so that he
(24:46):
would have enough capital to go out and acquire business.
So they have no debt, they have money from their
door knocking jobs. They have a low, very unentitled mentality.
They just go out and do things. So I think
BYU undergraduates are absolutely amazing entreal ecosystem that exists there,
in my judgment, in some ways it is unrivaled anywhere
in the US.
Speaker 2 (25:05):
So great, I agree. Then they're just very hungry too.
It's a very competitive school. And I know my buddies
that went there, I mean they knew how to work,
I'll say that. Yeah. So did you have to take
time off as the professor?
Speaker 1 (25:17):
Was it after the semester because it's pretty long, it's
pretty long process to climb Everest.
Speaker 3 (25:21):
Yeah, yeah, for me, it was six weeks. The timing
was perfect. I finished teaching on April sixteenth, I believe,
and this expedition I left on I left an April
twenty third. Oh wow, the timing was perfect. And ironically
I had the teaching at case Western last weekend, so
I got back about a little bit less than a
week before that. So the timing for Everros this year
made complete sense to do so.
Speaker 2 (25:41):
From bottom to the top. How long did it take you.
Speaker 3 (25:44):
From base camp to base camp, from base camp to
the top of the mountain.
Speaker 2 (25:48):
Well, it's interesting, is what you do is you went
back to base camp. Yeah.
Speaker 3 (25:51):
Well, what you do is that you do rotations, right,
So you start a base camp with the seventeen thousand feet,
then you go up to a certain point twenty three
thousand feet in particular kind of tag it. Then you
go back down because that's how that's how your body acclimatizes.
It's not a limit thing where you go from fifteen
to seventeen to twenty to twenty two to the summit.
You go up destroy yourself. Then this year in the recovery,
(26:14):
when you're spending time at lower elevations that you actually recover.
So that's how you kind of work that. Then, so
you have base camp, you have really six camps on
the north side of Everest. You have base camp with
a seventeen thousand, and you have an advanced base camp
which is twenty one thousand. On the summit run, it
is essentially four days. You go from advanced base camp
to the next camp. Then you go immediately with no
rest to the next camp, then the next camp, then
(26:36):
you sum it, and then you go all the way
back down to advanced base camp, which is anywhere from
a sixteen to eighteen hour day.
Speaker 2 (26:43):
Wow.
Speaker 1 (26:44):
Yeah, I mean yeah. We did similar type thing at
kil Manjaro. You do the you know, the acclimization hike.
Speaker 2 (26:49):
We would go that late afternoon and do another hour
up the mountain or two and then come back down.
Speaker 1 (26:53):
Not as intense obviously, But what was there ever a
moment when you didn't know if you were going to
make it?
Speaker 3 (26:58):
You know, I just have a mentor, and I chose
out this mentality that with one hundred percent certainty I
was going to get to the top of the mountain.
Right in the back of my head, I knew that
if that didn't happen this year, it would happen next year, right,
And when I thought about budgeting Foreverest, I very much
was ready to have to have that commitment to pay
for it twice.
Speaker 2 (27:16):
Right.
Speaker 1 (27:17):
It's actually a good way to do it, because they
say a lot of the people to get in trouble
it's because they don't want to have to go back,
or they can't afford to go back, and do it again,
so they push themselves when they shouldn't have and they
end up dying.
Speaker 3 (27:26):
Absolutely. And also to the kind of people that are
climbing everest are not people that are used to not
being successful in life, right, So you really have like
the alpha type, a go get her personality, and a
big challenge that guides have. I'd say the biggest challenge
of being a guide is dealing with that personality type
and having to tell somebody, tell the overachiever, tell the
type a personality you have to turn around, give up
(27:49):
your dream and come back down. I mean that is
hard to do, and it's really interesting to watch how
various guides go about doing that, right, how they they
lay it almost like a sales process.
Speaker 2 (28:00):
Right.
Speaker 3 (28:00):
You have to kind of like prime the client for it,
you know, get there, buy in, be nice, but be
firm eventually sometimes you just have to steamroll them with it. It
is just so interesting to see how that how that
plays out.
Speaker 2 (28:11):
Yeah, I mean, you got to protect people from themselves
sometimes essentially.
Speaker 3 (28:14):
Right, one hundred percent. And I know myself so when
I climb kill them and jarrow by the way, I
don't like to take any medicine, so I decided I
was going to try to I was going to see
how my body reacted to elevation. And I was like,
I'm not going to take this, you know, medicine, diamox.
I'm going to see and climbing Mount kill them in Jarrow.
The morning that I did it, about literally twenty minutes in,
(28:35):
I knew I had ams. Within forty minutes, I couldn't
hold down water or food, and I could feel my
heart beating out of my mouth right and I know
my body pretty well. Wow, And I was like, huh,
this is like literally within forty minutes of just starting, right,
which is very early in that climb. And then at
that point I was a lot younger, and I'm like,
you know, Tyleston, if you push yourself so much that
(28:56):
you kill yourself on kill them and Jarrow, are you
gonna be okay with that and believe it or not?
The answer was yeah, yeah. So I pushed myself and
I blocked out, so I don't remember a fair portion
of the hike. I really pushed myself, made it to
the top and went down from there. So the reason
I'm mentioning this and it was very very very very painful,
is that I know myself well. I know that when
(29:16):
push comes a shove, I will push myself to the brink.
So I surrounded myself with a guiding company.
Speaker 2 (29:22):
That wouldn't let you, not let me do that.
Speaker 3 (29:25):
And I tell that story. I tell other stories about
cold water swimming and things like that, and I made
very clear that, you know, I really want to push myself,
but I will need that protection from myself in those situations.
And that was that was laid out in advance.
Speaker 1 (29:39):
So yeah, I mean that's an important piece. It's you know,
I had one of the guys that I know that
climb Mount Everest. He watched somebody die on there an
avalanche channel. Yeah, and that's obviously a whole different thing.
But I interviewed another woman her dad a couple of
years ago. You probably no I'm talking about. He got
to the summit and then died like ten feet later
on his way.
Speaker 2 (29:57):
It was his name. I don't remember his name right now,
but he was from Utah.
Speaker 1 (30:00):
It's like Holy Cow, like you know, it's you can
that mountain eats people every I think five or six
people died this year. I mean, that's the reason I've
never climbed Everestince. I'm like, no, I don't want to
actually die. And it's one of those things. I do
a lot of things that has the appearance of danger,
but it's a lot safer than it.
Speaker 2 (30:15):
It seems like killman jars relatively safe. You know, you
die on that mountain. Something went seriously wrong.
Speaker 3 (30:21):
Well, the crazy part is that the people that die
on Everest don't wake up and say I want to
go die.
Speaker 2 (30:25):
Today, right, No, but that's my point. It just happened.
Speaker 3 (30:27):
It happens. And on the south side there's don't quote, man,
I believe there's thirteen bodies that you see as you
you know, on some outside. Well, on the south side
I went to Tibet. Yeah, on the north side there's
there's three, so we do. I didn't see them in
the dark, but coming back down it's like, hey, there's
this person, there's and there they are because you can't
take them off. It is virtually impossible to take them
(30:48):
off the mountain because the bodies freeze, They freeze the mountain,
they're heavier, it's a whole quagmire, so the bodies generally
stay there.
Speaker 2 (30:55):
It is.
Speaker 3 (30:56):
Yeah, it's very interesting to see.
Speaker 2 (30:57):
Yeah, I know that's fascinating. Man. What did you learn
about yourself climbing Everest?
Speaker 3 (31:01):
You know what I learned about myself climbing Everest is
that I, again, I don't like taking medicine. So my
plan for Everest was not to take any medicine.
Speaker 2 (31:09):
Right.
Speaker 3 (31:10):
So I start not taking medicine, and I start to
develop this cough, right, and then I start to develop
more of a cough, and then I start to get
a little bit coffee's a little bit wet, right, And
this is called high altitude pulmonary edema. It sounds very woohoo.
You know, oh, this is like a huge thing. It's
nothing more than a cough that just develops.
Speaker 2 (31:28):
Right.
Speaker 3 (31:29):
But what happens with and it's called HAPE for short, right,
how through the Prominent Redeemer. What happens with HAPE is
that it's highly lethlold elevation. And it actually happens sometimes
you'll just go to bed and you won't wake up. Right,
So I got I got a case of hape.
Speaker 2 (31:43):
Sounds pretty serious.
Speaker 3 (31:44):
Yeah it was. It was serious. And here's how you
know how serious it was. The debate was all right.
Next day, you know, you're a at twenty one thousand feet,
we're going to put you on oxygen for medical reasons,
and the next day you're going down the mountain. Right,
the question was would I be forced to use oxygen
or were they going to put me on a yak? Right,
It was like, so they were basically saying you're done.
(32:04):
They were saying I was done. They were saying you
again because client management. Right, They're saying you are going
down to lower elevation and you're going to have a
challenge of being able to recover, to come back and
you know, go back up the mountain. I'm not a
patient person at all in any capacity. I think that
life should have been done yesterday. So I had to
leave the main group right, go down the mountain with
(32:28):
with my with my guide, and I had to spend
eight days in base camp essentially with me, a guide
and a couple you know and like the cooks. Yeah,
just recovering. And it was not fun. It was very annoying.
My day was, you know, eating three meals a day,
getting up and going for a twenty minute twenty minute max,
you know, walk around base camp and then to dealing
(32:51):
with that. And I was throwing the book at that point.
At recovering. I don't get sick very often, so cough
drops ginger in my tea, hot water with honey. If Chat,
GBT or Google thought it was a cold remedy, I
was on it right, So I was doing everything I could,
but it was having to deal with that, like the
patients of it, how I maintained mental sanity. I love
cold plunging, so I actually would get at base camp
(33:15):
at seventeen thousand feet get in the freezing water for
a little bit of time. They have like a yeah, yeah,
there's a river, right, oh, So I found a cool place,
a cool place in the river where there was a
bridge and there was a little bit of a current,
so I could go there and like actually swim in
place against the current of the stream.
Speaker 2 (33:31):
So you were cold plunging on everest.
Speaker 3 (33:33):
I was cold plunging at base camp, and you know,
no one supported me doing this. None of the guides
or the staff. Some of the other clients thought it
was kind of cool, but everyone's like, this is like
the most terrible idea. You know, you have like a
cough and you're doing this. It's a terrible idea. But
I needed it to stay mentally stable because I would
be depressed before I cold plunge. I would go cold plunge,
(33:53):
I'd come out and then I was like, we got
this right. But even during that time, it was never
a question of like, am I going to Summont Everest.
I am. I just always kept that positive, that positive mindset,
because I'd been coached that the two common factors of
people that don't summit Everest are one those that get
anxious right and second, certain people just start to believe
(34:14):
that they're not going to summit. They get that negative mindset.
So I just took the opposite and said, I'm just
going to believe I'm going to sum with one hundred
percent certainty. If you know, I don't, the guides will
stop me and force me to turn around. Then I'll
come back next year. So it was never a question
of if it was going to happen. It was just
one hundred percent certainty in my mind, and I visualized it.
I visualize the details of the summit and everything like that.
(34:34):
So I was able and lucky enough, I was able
to recover, get back up there, and as I like noting,
you know, there was nine people in the group, five
eventually summitted, but even after my setback, I was the
fastest and first one to the summit in four hours
and forty one minutes, so I had a nice little
recovery story after it. So so that was a that
was a challenge overcome.
Speaker 2 (34:53):
Was it as satisfying to get to the top as
you hoped it would be.
Speaker 3 (34:57):
It was satisfying, But it's nerve wracking because when the
most accidents and bad things happen on Everest right at
the summit, right on the way down. On the way down,
going to the summit is easy. Coming down is the
real quagmire.
Speaker 2 (35:08):
Why is that?
Speaker 3 (35:09):
Well, for among other reasons, you're just tired, right, You're tired,
you know, And I think that people just my guess
is that after the summit, your temptation is to let
your guard down, right, because you've accomplished your big goal,
you got it all done, you let your guard down.
In addition, the bad weather tends to come in the
afternoon as well, So yeah, bad weather, your guards down,
(35:31):
you're tired, that is when. And don't quote me on
the number, but I think ninety or not most bad
things on Everest happen if you get to the summit
right after you summit and go down. So the real
ballgame is not the summit. The ballgame is what happens
after the summit. And so you can be excited. You
can be I can be excited. I can be stoked.
I got my flags, I got my pictures. I climbed
(35:53):
into bets. I'd never been to Nepall though, so I
made sure to walk an extra five feet, you know,
down the mountain to say I've been in the paul.
Even though my passport's not stamped, I have a picture
so I can verify it. Everest grows every year, so
when I was up there, I made sure to jump
to give myself a little bit of buffer to be
at the world's highest point for a little bit of time.
So we had all kinds of fun. How long were
(36:13):
we at the We had pretty good weather, which was
negative eighteen degrees, about twenty five thirty kilometer an hour winds,
which is very good by ever standards. So it's probably
up there for about a half hour.
Speaker 2 (36:21):
Oh wow, that nice looks.
Speaker 1 (36:23):
Is it crowded on the top or is there plenty
of room up there? Once you're up there, it can
be crowded.
Speaker 2 (36:27):
For us.
Speaker 3 (36:27):
We waited till the very last day to summit, May
twenty seventh.
Speaker 2 (36:32):
Oh that was late.
Speaker 3 (36:33):
Yeah, we were the absolute last ones the summit.
Speaker 1 (36:35):
So most people went around like the eighteenth and nineteenth
this year, didn't they, Yeah, okay.
Speaker 3 (36:38):
Yeah, yeah. And the twenty fourth a lot of people
on the South side went very early, and people generally
go early because for whatever reason. But yeah, the twenty
seventh was an absolutely epic day to be up there,
and there was us and a couples from the South
Side as well, including a German lady who did it
with no oxygen. And there's been about don't quote me,
but I believe it's two hundred and two people.
Speaker 2 (36:59):
That's kind of the that's the real that.
Speaker 3 (37:02):
And so the three things that fascinate me one English
Channel swimming, two debating doing the rest of the seven summits.
But what really intrigues me, but I will tell you
is very is nerve wracking. Is doing no oxygen climbing
right now on Everest. Most people start oxygen at twenty
three thousand feet with a flow rate of four liters, right,
(37:22):
more auction easier it is, obviously, I will tell you though,
that even at twenty one thousand feet, I personally know
what it's going to feel like. I think to be
ninety years old. Wow, because everything, Jimmy is just difficult.
Laying down and getting to the point of like just
getting like your backup takes energy. Walking ten to fifteen
(37:46):
I say meters now because I was there, So ten
to fifteen meters from the tent to the dining tent,
which should take you thirty seconds to elevation takes three
minutes with two stops, right, and you're completely out of well.
Speaker 1 (38:00):
I remember on Kilman Jarman, it was only nineteen thousand
I think feet, But I mean I remember at one
point I helped somebody. We had one guy with one lego.
I helped him for about a minute. And what I
tell me, if this is kind of what you experienced me,
it's like normally, when you lose your breath, you're okay,
you take a few breasts and you get it back.
It doesn't come back, so you just start out of
(38:21):
breath for like, I like, for like an hour, I
really like an hour, and I was just like holy shit,
like I can't get my breath back. And that was
the part that really like told you know, showed me like, man,
this is yeah.
Speaker 3 (38:33):
You can't. And you realize that the ultimate, you know,
form of doping is oxygen. Right, Without oxygen, nothing works.
It's a complete it's just a complete quagmire. And the
other interesting part about it is that, yeah, your breath
just does not come back. The only way to get
it back is to go down the mountain.
Speaker 2 (38:47):
Right.
Speaker 3 (38:48):
Then, of course, when you go down the mountain, Wow,
life gets so good so quickly with an oxygen back.
But the other thing about being at that elevation is
that recovery days aren't really recovery days. Your body gets
weaker even if you do nothing. So it is a
war of attrition right from the minute that you get
(39:10):
to base camp. You're not really ever replenishing yourself. You're
just you have your reserve and the question is how
much of it gets depleted. And that's why I talked
about the food thing earlier, and that's why self care,
you know, not getting sick, sleeping, if you get a blister,
make sure you take care of it, right, if you
have an injury, take care of it. Because a ballgame
(39:30):
on Everest, it is surviving a war of attrition, and
self care and attitude are the critical part of that
much more so than any mountaineering skills or any of
that stuff. So, yeah, that was the interesting part about it.
There's no rejuvenation, there's just survival basically.
Speaker 1 (39:46):
Well, you know, I think the thing that makes us
happy in life, happiest in life, and give us the
most confidences, and we set out to do hard things
and we accomplish them.
Speaker 2 (39:54):
And so I'm guessing the person you are before, I mean,
you've already.
Speaker 1 (39:56):
Done so many things in accomplished so much, but something
like this is where you, No, you really had to
push yourself. And I think even people that hire professional
companies and pay six figures, I think it's less than
twenty five percent make it to the summit, even people
that are planning on, you know, really getting there. And
so I'm guessing you've probably had a sense of accomplishment
that's been helping you in other areas of life since
(40:18):
then too. I mean, what's been your experience since you've
been back.
Speaker 3 (40:20):
Yeah, absolutely, and a couple of things. Right, So, I
think if you could the actual statistics on Everest, it's
they say like sixty to seventy percent make it. But
then again, I'm a big fan of what I'll call
high touch human diligence on the ground, when you really
talk to people in the space and you actually conditionally
look at Okay, if you're a foreign climber and you're
not a sure bow that does this, you know every
single year's and you're not like a mountain guide that's
(40:41):
like done this seven times, right.
Speaker 2 (40:42):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (40:42):
But if you're like a foreign climber that's not a
professional climber. I mean you've climbed, You're good. That's where
it was like, Okay, you talk to a number of people,
it's like, yeah, twenty five percent of the people like
you basically make it every single year. Because on Everest,
what is in the news and the perception is not reality.
And I could have guessed that before, but I can
tell you with the one hundred percent certainty because I
(41:04):
was there and I know things that have been said
online that I know are categorically, in a black and
white way not true. To answer your question directly, though,
what I really learned about myself on this trip is
that I can be imperfect. I can make mistakes right,
like not taking medicine, getting hape, all those things. It
can be a complete quagmire. It can be very chaotic.
(41:27):
But ultimately that does not have to My imperfections and
my mistakes don't have to stop me from doing like
great things. I'm doing hard things. So the key takeaway
is that it's totally fine to be imperfect. Don't let
that slow you down. Just be imperfect, keep on putting
one foot in front of the other, and good things,
good things will come from there. And then being back
(41:48):
Everest made me a dumber person. I had every intention.
One thing I'm working on now is a PhD, the
country's first on entrepreneurship through acquisition buying businesses. And I
have to do a couple three intense days of eight
hours of essay writing oh at the end of this month, right,
and I have to read a lot of academic articles
before that, and academic articles are hard to read. It's
(42:10):
like reading philosophy. Basically, I had an intention to read
for like an hour or two one academic article a
day at twenty one thousand feet. Because I have a
little bit of downtime, I can tell you that my
brain could not do that. I can force myself, Jimmy
to do a lot of painful, hard things. I could
not force myself because I'd read and I'd be like
(42:30):
I read a paragraph, I don't remember like any of it,
and I'm like, this is just And I tried a
couple times. I could not, like do intense academic mental
work at that elevation. Like being at elevation made my
mind just work at forty percent of capacity. And that
lasted even after I got back. I had to spend
about two weeks. I feel I'm not pretty close to
one hundred percent now, but I spent like two weeks
(42:53):
like working back, and the same with my body. I
lost so much coordination that when I was coming back,
and like the first time I lifted weights, like two
days after Everest in China, I was like lifting a
twenty pound dumbell, and I thought I was going to
fall over. I can do a ton of pull ups, right,
I couldn't do a single one. But it wasn't because
of the strength in my body. It was because my
(43:15):
brain just couldn't balance. Really, So Everest, and I'm forty one,
I take health and fitness very seriously. Everest messed with
my body, and it messed with my mind, and there
it may mess with my brain. And that showed up
in both my body and my mind, And there's some
academic research it shows And again this isn't something that
that people are saying, We're going to throw billions of
dollars at researching, you know, impacts that elevation have on
(43:38):
mental health. But there are a couple studies and it's
crazy being at elevation has negative impacts on body and
on mind. And I believe some of the stuff that
I read about and I hear that these could have
long term real impacts. So I think no oxygen climbing
is like such a cool challenge. It really intrigues me.
Just one foot in front of the other, take the pain.
(44:01):
The failure rates are significantly higher, the death rates are
significantly higher. Right, if you want to maximize your chance
of dying on everes, to do it with no oxygen.
Speaker 2 (44:09):
Yeah, it is a.
Speaker 3 (44:10):
Huge challenge and a huge challenge. And it's interesting too,
is that people that do it without oxygen, you have
no extra oxygen on you.
Speaker 2 (44:18):
They don't actually carry it, no just in case.
Speaker 3 (44:20):
But guess why, well one, I mean there's two reasons.
Speaker 2 (44:22):
Why. What do you think it's heavy?
Speaker 3 (44:23):
It's heavy? Right, So I mean those things weigh when
they're full. I mean they weigh like, I mean, they're heavy,
trual weight. Second thing is that if you have it,
you're going to use it, right, They have to deny
themselves the ability to get easy help because it is
that painful. So I'm really passionately intrigued about no oxygen climbing.
But I can tell you because I experienced it firsthand,
(44:44):
and I can see the academic research, the limited economic research.
I really believe that doing that could have lifetime impacts
because it's.
Speaker 2 (44:52):
Just because of what you experienced, even with oxygen.
Speaker 3 (44:54):
Because when you're the individual that's like a twenty pound
dumbell and I want to fall over because of my
lack of balance or I can go from doing you know,
forty pull ups right too, I can't do a single one.
I literally was able to hang on the bar for
like fifteen to twenty and maybe I can get like
seventeen seconds, and even that was like super painful. But
it wasn't because of my muscle strength, right, it was
like it was it was just my head. I couldn't
(45:15):
I couldn't balance it. So that was interesting. And then
people are generally positive about everest as well, which is
pretty cool.
Speaker 1 (45:21):
Well, it's super impressive. Man, You've done so many different things.
I mean for you, you know what, You're obviously built a
little bit different. But I think somebody sees you or
listens to you and they're like, man, that guy, that
guy's just built differently. Like for the person that can't
get themselves motivated to do things that you know, maybe
pushed him, Like what advice or what do you think
it is that makes you have that ability to just
(45:42):
want to even push yourself at the limits that you do.
Speaker 3 (45:44):
Yeah, I mean it's it's two things, right. I could
we could get very vulnerable about some of the you know,
some of the dark areas I go into to find motivation, right,
But what I would say is David style, Yeah, David gogginstyle, right,
because I believe I believe that there's there's there's some
truth in that stuff. For sure. You have to find
that dark place, find that vulnerability, and tap into it.
I think though, two simple things to do for people
(46:06):
is one, just surround yourself by people that do hard things,
and whether or not you intentionally want to or not,
just by being in their presence, you will start to
do hard things and you will start to achieve. It
is as simple as that. I think that that what
you do with we Are the Day is a great
example of that, So check that out. There's others out
(46:27):
there as well. Just find a group of people that
you can surround yourself with that will bring out your
ideal self and allow you to do hard things. That
is the simplest first step to take. You will become,
whether you want to or not, like the people that
you will surround yourself with. Secondly, more tactically, you know,
I wrote a book Grid at Donne about buying and
buying small businesses, but there's also some life coaching and
(46:50):
motivational stuff.
Speaker 1 (46:51):
I's going to ask because that's an interesting name for
a book that's all about mind business because it sounds
more about a kind of like a mindset type book.
Speaker 3 (46:57):
Well, the issue is that what we're we're right perceive
there is a gap in the literature and the buying
a business space, both in books and with some of
the content that you see, which is all good like
what Walker Diible does, what Cody Sanchez does, all the
influencers do in the space is absolutely fantastic. What is
a good addition to it, though, which is a reason
for writing Grid. It done. Is that write a business
(47:19):
is actually very challenging, right, And I think that people
can run the numbers, look at the financing options, see that, Wow,
I can pay a little bit of money down and
buy a cash flowing business. But I don't think people
always realize what it's actually like to run them. So
I wrote a book that has the frameworks for how
to buy one, but also as the anecdotal stories from
all my years of doing it about what it's actually
(47:40):
like to be in the trenches running one, right, the
pleasure and the pain of people.
Speaker 4 (47:45):
Right.
Speaker 3 (47:45):
I mean, I tell a great story about how two
days before I close, I have to meet a key
person for a business that I'm buying.
Speaker 2 (47:52):
What kind of business was?
Speaker 3 (47:52):
This was a dirty industrial services business and this individual
we'll call him, we'll call him Doug, Right, Doug, you
know who key to the business. Knew everything about him,
but Doug, when I first met him, he said, what
have you done read in your life to rationalize you
buying this business?
Speaker 2 (48:12):
Right?
Speaker 3 (48:13):
So I had to navigate that, you know, and navigating
having to hire people, having to fire people, all those things, right.
So I wanted people that were thinking about buying a
business before they go off and they, you know, enroll
for a course and pay ten twenty thousand dollars a year,
or decide that hey, I want to do this and
invest their time and researching and everything to actually know
(48:34):
what it's like to run a business. So I cam
bine the frameworks that I use successfully with the anecdotal stories.
And the reason I called it grid it done is
that that was our mantra at the company. I had
a great team member, an entreneurial employee. I call him.
Speaker 2 (48:48):
Name.
Speaker 3 (48:50):
Name was An We'll say your name was Ann. Right,
one night, Anne was working really hard tackling this very
challenging issue and I and it was like it was late.
It was not ten o'clock at night, I believe, And
we also had a really busy day the next morning,
so she was going to come back the next morning
to come back to work, and I said, you know,
and you are amazing, you are awesome. You really know
(49:13):
how to grid it done right, So randomly set it
and then it just kind of took off from there.
So the point is climbing everest is a challenge. Buying
a business is a challenge. Operating businesses a challenge, Having grit,
having a grid at done mindset is critical for that endeavor.
Speaker 1 (49:29):
What is I love that word, you know, there's a
couple of books that talk about that very thing, grit.
Speaker 2 (49:35):
What does that mean? Like, what does it mean to
have grit?
Speaker 1 (49:37):
Yeah?
Speaker 3 (49:37):
Great question. This goes to to the second advice I
would give people. One is just join the right peer
group for you. That'll help you level up. Second thing
is that what grid it done means to me, It's
very simple, do exactly what you don't want to do,
precisely when you don't want to do it. If you
live your life that way, great things are going to come.
Speaker 2 (49:56):
It's so true.
Speaker 1 (49:57):
It's like, it's so easy to do it when you
feel like doing it right, but you really find out
who you are in when you don't feel like doing it.
Speaker 3 (50:04):
There was an email that I really didn't want to
write this morning because I knew with one hundred percent
certainty that the ask I was going to make was
going to get rejected. Right, I knew it one hundred
percent certainty, one hundred percent, not even nine to nine
point nine, Jimmy, I knew I was going to get rejected,
and I knew that rejection was going to hurt right,
because there's like some emotions in this email I was writing.
But I know that if I continue to write these
(50:25):
emails and continue to make this ask like a hundred times,
five hundred times, it is I have faith that's going
to lead me to a better place, and I very
well might eventually end up getting what I want to
out of the situation. So I didn't want to write
the email. I wanted to do everything else. I wanted
to prepare for this podcast. I wanted to go swimming.
I wanted to do everything else except write this email.
(50:46):
But it's the first thing that I did this morning
because I knew I didn't want to do it. And
if I live my life that way, every night I
rate myself on a scale of one to ten on
how well did I do the things I didn't want
to do, because what.
Speaker 2 (50:59):
I find yourself every night on that.
Speaker 3 (51:01):
You know Chris from our group, Yeah, yeah, so we
he's my and by the way, on Everest, I'm glad
I almost got to mention this on Everest. Even on
Everest we do a thing where he sends me three
things he's grateful for. And then what I do is
I have my own unique twist on it. I rate
myself on a scale of one to ten onto how
well I did what I didn't want to do that day.
Then I write three things I'm grateful for. Then I
(51:22):
write three things or three things I did well that day.
Then I write three things I'm grateful for in the world.
And then I write, like, what thing I want to
focus on most tomorrow that I don't want to do.
And we do this every night. He texts me, I
text him at night, he text me in the morning.
And we did this all throughout Mount Everest. Even when
I had no reception. I would still write down the
(51:43):
stuff and I would still text even though it wouldn't
go through, and he would do the same. So when
I got back to reception, I had, you know, like
twelve text messages from him. So I'm a big believer
in the power of habit. So I literally rate myself
every night on that metric, because what I find is
that when I do hard things, it just leads to
more joy because it sounds like fun. So it's like,
you do hard things all the time, Yeah, fair enough,
(52:05):
But when I do hard things, I always find this deep, immense,
intense joy that I would not otherwise have had if
I didn't do hard things.
Speaker 1 (52:17):
You've hit on something that I think is one of
the biggest concerns that we have as a world with
AI and everything that's coming. We keep trying to make
the world easier in so many different ways so that
people don't have to do hard things, and there's a
lot of things that used to be really hard that
aren't anymore, right, but there is this idea is like
when we do hard things, we're happier people. I think
(52:40):
you can find the farmer that's out there just grinding
or whoever, is probably going to be happier than the
person that you know, all the luxuries are given to,
and it's just you're going to be happier the more
you do hard things. And so it's this weird space
that I think we're in as a universe where it's
like a lot of things are easier now, but a
lot of people are not as happy. And you know,
we've probably never had more access to the luxuries quote
(53:02):
unquote of life. But you know, also the happiness scales
very much shows that people the more luxuries they're having,
the less happy they are.
Speaker 3 (53:09):
And the crazy part is, I'm like every the human
being I want to maximize utility. I want a joy,
I want happiness like I desire it. I want all
those same things. It's just that I've learned that the
easiest way for me to get that is actually to
do hard things. As counterintuito as it sounds, but when
you actually peel back the onion, Okay, how do you
appreciate true joy unless you have pain?
Speaker 2 (53:31):
Right?
Speaker 3 (53:31):
The power of opposites. So when I'm in a stressful situation,
I try to I try to train myself to be
grateful of like awesome, being in pain right now. It
just means that when that joy comes, oh, it's going
to be the best, the best thing ever.
Speaker 2 (53:43):
That's so true.
Speaker 1 (53:45):
Well, dude, I think a lot of people can learn
a lot by following you or falling onto your journey.
Speaker 2 (53:49):
Where's the best place for us to send them?
Speaker 3 (53:51):
Yeah, I'm active on LinkedIn, so follow me on LinkedIn.
Read Tyleston and you can put the link in the
show notes, and then also Grid at done dot com
check out the book. It's designed for people that want
to become entreneurs. You acquisition and there's some very fun
personal stories in there as well, so certainly certainly check
that out and thank you so much for having me.
I found you to be a highly inspiring person that
(54:13):
allows me to live closer to my ideal self. And
I'm just thankful for the opportunity to get to know
you well.
Speaker 1 (54:19):
You're such an important person man, and not only just
for our coaching group, but in just in general, because
you inspire people to realize, like, you know what, there's
more things that I could do that I'm not doing
and it makes me think that and so just keep
being you man. That's all I can say is the
world needs more people like you, just pushing yourself at
the limit that you do and it's inspiring to all
of this.
Speaker 2 (54:36):
So thank you.
Speaker 4 (54:36):
Thank you again for listening to The Jimmy Rex Show.
And if you liked what you heard, please like and subscribe.
It really helps me to get better guests, to be
able to get the.
Speaker 2 (54:45):
Type of people on this podcast. It's going to make
it the most interesting.
Speaker 4 (54:49):
Also, want to tell everybody about my podcast studio, The
Rookery Studios, now available in Salt Lake City and or
in Utah. If you live in Utah and want to
produce your own podcast. We take all of the guests
work out of it for you and make it so simple.
All you do is you come in, you sit down,
you talk and leave. We record it, edit it, even
(55:10):
post it for you. If interested in doing your own podcast,
visit our Instagram and send us a DM Rookery Studios,
or go to our website, The Rookery Studios dot com
Hello, and welcome to another episode of The Jimmy Rex Show.
And today on the podcast, I'm here with Reed Tyleston
and he is the author of Great It Done.
Speaker 2 (00:10):
But he also more recently.
Speaker 1 (00:11):
Just got back from climbing to the top of Mount Everest,
and he's somebody that I've been able to get to
know pretty well through my coaching program. He is a
member of We Are the Day and somebody that is
just one of the most intriguing humans I've ever met,
and I'm super pumped to sit down talk about his
experience climbing Mount Everest, but then also just what He's
also a professor at BYU and has got a million
other things he's done as an entrepreneur.
Speaker 2 (00:32):
So without further ado, let's get to the show.
Speaker 1 (00:35):
By the way, today's show is brought to you by
Bucked Up Protein and this is my favorite go to drink.
I'm drinking one of these during every episode. Now why
not get my protein in while I am podcasting? And
the truth is is it tastes really good, and so
I just like drinking them. But it's also it's only
one hundred calories per can twenty five grams of proteins.
You can pick them up a harmines or anywhere where
you find bucked up products.
Speaker 2 (00:56):
Now let's get to the show.
Speaker 3 (01:06):
Jimmy, I'm just so happy to be here. And on
that note too, I mean, when it comes to athletic performance,
what you put in your body dictates how you perform.
It is as simple as that. So finding things that
are both good for you and you actually enjoy having
as critical.
Speaker 2 (01:19):
It's true as you get older you really figure that out.
Speaker 1 (01:22):
It's if I eat like crap now, I mean I'll
feel it for a you know that whole next day,
I'm a mess. It's I didn't It didn't hit me
at all in my twentiesn't hit me too much in
my thirties.
Speaker 2 (01:31):
But now it's like, I know if I haven't.
Speaker 1 (01:33):
You know, I have to really weigh what I'm putting
in my body and how I go about it. Because
it's true. I mean, you were just on Everest. Obviously
you're climbing a mountain like that. I'm guessing diet is
everything you.
Speaker 3 (01:44):
Have to tell you though, so they actually tell you
because you're responsible. They have more than enough food to
cover you, and the food is actually really good like place,
as you buy it up there or what No, they
like provide it like, oh the people that you hired
to take you yea, I have my full chef's full
shirpa to take care of it. Everything like that, and
the food because they've learned over the years that one
predictor of success on Everest is simply how you treat yourself,
(02:05):
and one critical part of how you treat yourself is
how well you eat. So they give you good food
because good food simply maximizes your chance of success, and
they have a dialed and well, however, you also are
responsible for bringing your own snacks for the mountain right,
particularly for higher elevations, because most people at high elevations
so above like you know, twenty two to twenty thousand feet,
(02:26):
you lose your appetite, you don't want to eat, and
you don't want to drink. So on Everest it's just
a suffer fest. Ninety five percent of people, including the
guides in the sherpas and the clients, are suffering all
the time. You have a headache, your have a stomach ache,
you're nauseous, your body's hurting. Then you couple that with
the fact you don't want to eat, so What they
tell you, though, is listen, bring foods that are both
(02:49):
nutritious and more importantly, that you actually want to eat,
so that when you're nauseous, when you're not hungry, when
eating becomes a responsibility, that you actually want to do it.
So your point about the protein shake is that if
you actually enjoy having it, it's not like a job
or a task AffA taken. You're much more likely to
want to have it, and then you have the positive
(03:09):
outcomes from it. And that was a common theme on
a everest. And in case you're curious, for me, pop
tarts right figs and I love strup and waffle stinger
bars and beef curekey. Those are like my four snacks.
That's pretty good, you know what.
Speaker 1 (03:24):
I one of those foods. It's one of those guilty
pleasures I haven't had for whatever. I don't know why
this reminded me of it with what you just said
with pop tarts, but toaster strudles, bro you throw one
of those in the microft Oh, they are so good.
It's one of those foods you just can't justify though
it's so bad for you. But yeah, if ever I'm
claiming everest, I might try to snack on some toaster streams.
Speaker 3 (03:42):
Well, that's the best part is that high elevations, just
by doing even if you did nothing all day except
lay down, right, you burn more calories than you can
possibly consume. So you have carte blanche to eat whatever
you want to and they do a good job of
providing that stuff. But the interesting thing, though, is that
you burn all these calories right, Yet the ironic part
is at high elevations you're probably going to lose your hunger.
(04:04):
So it's the ultimate annoying situation. You're like, I could
eat whatever I want, want anything and not gain weight,
but I don't actually want to.
Speaker 1 (04:12):
Well, your body's so interesting too, I mean, it craves
what you feed it, you know, on a regular basis
or whatever else. But so how much prep went in
for you? I guess let's start a little bit earlier
than that. I mean, how did you decide that you
were going to go do Everest? I mean, I think
we all have that in the back of our minds,
high achievers, right right, what I do Everest? Would I
actually go do that?
Speaker 2 (04:29):
One day? Yeah? And you decided? How did you decide
that was something you were going to do.
Speaker 3 (04:33):
My journey with Everest starts like so many other people's do,
and it's with that interesting book. It's a great book
called Into Thin Air. What's so end if you write
Into thin Crockauer's book. So Crockauer writes about this disaster
in nineteen ninety six. But krockouur when you wrote it,
his intention was to illustrate to people how dangerous Everest was,
(04:54):
with I think an indirect intention of discouraging people from
doing it. What ended up happening, Jimmy, It ended up
encouraging a ton of people to do it, which was
unintended because I think and people read it and they're like, WHOA,
I guess this Everest thing is really dangerous, right ooh
I want to go off and do it. So Krocauer
had one intention, and in my experience, and this is
(05:16):
no not an academic study on this, I would tell
you though, that seven out of ten people that I meet,
seventy percent when you actually drilled down to why they
want to do. Ever, So how the journey started, it
was with Into Thin Air. So krockauro tried.
Speaker 1 (05:29):
To discritgine many people really literally it might him so fascinating. Yeah, Well,
we forget that certain you know, the world was certain
ways before something changes it. Right. I read that book, gosh,
probably fifteen years ago. I read it a really long
time ago. I remember the dude that got the frost
Bit and was left for dead and then comes alive
and stumbles into camp. Reading that part of the book,
I'm just like, oh my gosh, Yes.
Speaker 3 (05:50):
And he's a Texan, right, so it's those Texans with
the sex mentality she used to die.
Speaker 2 (05:55):
I could see that though.
Speaker 1 (05:56):
I you know, it's interesting because I traveled, you know,
to a lot of different countries. IVE been to one
hundre fourteen countries and one of the things you realize
now a lot of travel places have kind of been
ruined a little bit are not necessarily ruined, but and
you realize that before the Internet, I remember how hard
it was to go to Arizona if you just had
like you didn't have your phone. You were stopping at
internet cafes and trying to get directions to where you're going.
(06:18):
It wasn't as fun to travel. But with you know,
with when Instagram hit and people saw what's out there.
But a really cool consequence, So in one way, it
kind of sucks because so many people, you know, go
to these places now. But a different consequence of that
is I do think people care more than ever about
the Earth and about the universe, you know, the world
that we live in. You know, the first thing they
(06:38):
ever did when they were coming out with Earth Day
is they were trying to get they wanted to get
a shot of Earth because we don't care about things
were not familiar with. And so they finally got that
shot from outer space looking back at Earth, and they
say that was the probably the number one most pivotal
thing to ever get people to start consciously worrying about
saving the planet and actually doing something about it.
Speaker 2 (06:57):
Right, That's where the whole green movement came from.
Speaker 1 (06:59):
Because before that, you know, and I have this saying
it's like, you know, if we forget to go enjoy
how beautiful this Earth can be, if we don't go
and experience it, then you kind of forget that there's
even a reason to save it. And so by experiencing,
you know, like even with Everest, I mean, I'm guessing
before it was on your radar, you probably didn't really
(07:20):
care much about it, but then obviously it got into you.
And now that'll be one of the biggest parts of
your life for the rest of your life.
Speaker 2 (07:28):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (07:28):
Absolutely, And people in the space will always tell you
that Everest changes people one hundred percent of the time,
and it's very one thing they enjoy about it is
seeing the actual changes that come out of climbing Mount Everest.
And for me, there's one very tangible change. I whenever
I go on outdoors or hiking or mountaineer in trips,
I don't shave right, But the day that I get back,
or two days later, maybe a most I go to
(07:50):
my barber and I get one of those old school
you know, like knife razor shave things, and there's so
much fun. Right, So I was thinking, I'm going to
grow this beard out, come back and get it shaved off.
But then as the Everest trip was winding down, some
of the other people were like, dude, you're looking like
pretty good with the facial hair man. And then one
individual is like, some of professors like, you look very
(08:10):
professorial with your facial hair. And I cannot find a
single person that has told me that having facial hair
is a bad thing. They think I look better.
Speaker 2 (08:17):
With it, Oh, you look much better.
Speaker 3 (08:18):
Yeah, yeah, so Everest ironically like, I'm now exploring a
new frontier of masculinity with my facial hair. So that's
one tangible, easy way that Everest changed me.
Speaker 2 (08:27):
I like it.
Speaker 1 (08:28):
So you're a professor, bo, you are they going to
make you shave it? Can the professors have facial hair?
Speaker 3 (08:31):
So I think I'm gonna have to shave it for
the honor code because even the teachers. Yeah yeah, yeah,
yeah yeah, So it looks like it's going to be
short lived being a professor.
Speaker 1 (08:40):
At b YU, dude, because Brigham Young obviously had pretty
decent beard.
Speaker 2 (08:44):
What is going on with ship?
Speaker 3 (08:46):
Yesterday he actually mentioned that he's like Brigham Young had
a beard and everything, so there was like an appeal
process maybe, well we'll dig into that. So I'm totally
digging the facial hair, dude.
Speaker 2 (08:57):
I went to play.
Speaker 1 (08:59):
I was playing soft all at BOU back in the day,
you know, And I never went to BOU, but just
to play on the intramurals. You can play if you're
not a student, if you go to UVU, but you'd
have to obeyed by the honor code still essentially for
facial hair, right yeah, yeah, And I went to I
got kicked out of a game because I wouldn't shave
and I had to run next door, and I'm like,
I didn't didn't have any jail. So I was just
(09:21):
literally like, just you're off, you're raw dog and yeahs
raw dogging it on my face, dude, And so I
could play and they like they were like, you need
a little bit more.
Speaker 2 (09:30):
I was like missing a couple of spots.
Speaker 1 (09:31):
I think it was crazy, dude, but hey, I got
to play, so hopefully they let you keep it, dude.
Speaker 2 (09:35):
I think that's I think it's a good look.
Speaker 3 (09:36):
I'm loving it. I'm absolutely loving it.
Speaker 2 (09:39):
So before you, you know, decide to go do Everest
and everything else.
Speaker 1 (09:41):
I mean, you've already had a lot of success in
the business world, your book Grited Done.
Speaker 2 (09:46):
That was how we first met.
Speaker 1 (09:47):
Max Jolly introduced us because he talked about I think
he was doing a business deal with you or whatever else. Yeah,
kind of just looked at everything that you're doing, man,
Like if you're doing a resume of life, you've got
a lot of things on there.
Speaker 2 (09:59):
Bro.
Speaker 3 (09:59):
I just want to grow and be like you, Jimmy,
And the inspiration, the energy always comes from people that
I meet in the process. Whenever I'm all in and
I'm passionate, I just seem to meet really cool people
and that just inspires me to do more. I can't
tell you that because there's nine people on the Everest trip,
nine clients and a bunch and guides and chirpos and everything,
A bunch more I just meet. I'm like wow. I
came out after doing Everest.
Speaker 2 (10:20):
I was like wow, I.
Speaker 3 (10:21):
Am so stimulated and the other things I want to
do in my life. So it is all about the people.
And that's one reason I love we are the day
because you get people together and just amazing things happen
when you get the right people in the right room
with the right container.
Speaker 2 (10:34):
Yeah, it really is well.
Speaker 1 (10:35):
And so that's one thing that I was going to
ask you is when you know, anytime we get to
a peak in life, it's part of the humor that
God has is in order to stay fulfilled.
Speaker 2 (10:43):
We have to do the next thing. Yeah, you reach
a mountain, Okay, you go to the bottom. It's time
to do your next thing. So you said that you
were inspired to kind of do some other things. What
came to you? What are you going to do next?
Speaker 3 (10:52):
It's hard not to be right. There's like someone on
the trip, for example, who's literally done seventeen iron Man triathlons, right,
seventeen iron Man triathlons, and it goes to show the
power of being niche and unique. He's done the World
Championship in Kona. Oh yeah, but he's very slow. I mean,
he's not a fast Ironman. So it actually turns out
I didn't know this. There was a rule that if
(11:14):
you do if you complete twelve Ironman triathlons, then you
basically automatically get into Kona. So he had a goal
to do the Ironman World Championship, but he couldn't ever
be fast enough. So he just beat it with like
pure persistence by doing twelve straight. So you have someone
like that right. Individuals that you have successful entrepreneurs, guy
that runs like the thirtieth biggest construction company in the US.
(11:35):
You just around some high caliber people. And there's a
dude named Mike Tobin. He's a Fox News anchor in Chicago.
Mike Tobin does a lot of work. He'll go out
and be with Armed Forces individuals. So if they're on
like a carrier in the Middle East, he'll go interview
him so he learned that twenty two veterans think about
or commit suicide per day, commit actually twenty to commit
(11:57):
suicide per day. So here's what he does, right, and
you can find if you just google it. He didn't
even tell us he was going to do this, by
the way, for the most part on the summit of Everest,
due to my group did twenty two push ups on
the summit to make that point. So being around and
he has a second place in Park Cities from Chicago,
so we'll definitely keep that relationship going. But being around
(12:18):
people that just have that kind of mindset, I just
find it to be so so so inspiring.
Speaker 2 (12:23):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (12:23):
So did you have anything in particular come to you
as far as where you want to go next?
Speaker 3 (12:27):
I mean, when I think about next adventures, there there's
three that are top of mind. I love cold water swimming,
I love open water swimming, so I've always had an
urge to do the English Channel. So English Channel swimming
is certainly certainly up there. And it actually turns out
that from what I can tell, there's only a couple
people that have ever done Everest and the English Channel.
But there's also the guy in Utah that has actually
(12:49):
done Everest and the English channel as well. So I
haven't reached out to him yet, but we have to
create a relationship. Let we push that forward.
Speaker 1 (12:55):
I love how like, you know, because Everest, I mean,
it's still very unique. There's a few thousand people have
ever climbed it, but it's also there's a few thousand
people now, and so everybody.
Speaker 2 (13:04):
Always finds the thing that goes with.
Speaker 1 (13:06):
It, right, Like I had one guy he's like, I
was the first ever cancer survivor, and the other one
was like, you know, the first I actually interviewed on
my podcast, this kid named Jordan. He was the youngest
person ever do the seventh Summits. Yeah, And it was funny.
I was dating this girl and she was, you know,
just super cute girl. But she just her network was
about zero. I guess I don't think she knew a
single person. I hadn't introduced her to her at the time,
(13:28):
and or so I thought. And one day I was
talking about interviewing.
Speaker 2 (13:31):
Something for my podcast.
Speaker 1 (13:32):
She goes, I my friend went to Mount Everest. Would
you want to talk to him? And I'm like, what's
his name? She says, yeah, And I can start googling this guy,
and I'm like, you're friends with him? And he anyway,
she texted him and he hit her right back. He
actually had moved to Utah and so there's a lot
of Everest connection to ut Toe. I ended up having
him on the podcast Jordan Romero and he he's an
incredible story.
Speaker 2 (13:51):
But yeah he was he was twelve. Yeah did Everest.
Speaker 3 (13:53):
That's amazing, absolutely amazing. I think someone this year first
American to do all seven summits. Yeah, and seventeen years old.
Done all seven summits by seventeen So absolutely amazing. And
they say there's about two dozen ever summitors in Utah,
so one individual I know who has someone it evers like, yeah,
we gotta do in the barber we have someone new
that did it. So again like the fun part about
(14:13):
doing things like this just to people.
Speaker 1 (14:15):
Yeah, you mean incredibly human beings doing that kind of stuff.
What was your business background before? Because you got hired
to be a professor BII. What do you teach there?
Speaker 3 (14:24):
I teach people how to buy businesses.
Speaker 2 (14:25):
That's what I teach.
Speaker 3 (14:26):
Opnership.
Speaker 1 (14:26):
Your whole thing is instead of trying to build a business,
acquire is that yeah?
Speaker 3 (14:30):
Yeah, something that already works and acquire it versus start
something from scratch.
Speaker 2 (14:34):
So why should somebody acquire a business? And what are
the Avengers doing that instead of trying? Because I think
that scares people to pay.
Speaker 1 (14:40):
Money because then you're getting a loan for the or
you're putting out your life savings or whatever.
Speaker 2 (14:43):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (14:43):
Yeah, I mean the ten year startup failure rate in
the US pretty consistently has been about sixty five percent.
The failure rate of buying something that currently exists is
a heck of a lot lower.
Speaker 2 (14:52):
Cody Sanchez has been talking about that a lot lately.
Speaker 3 (14:54):
Yeah, yeah, Well, the crazy part is is that this
became really popular and really sexy. I would tell you,
like about eight to ten years ago, the influencers Cody
Sanchez got into it. Walker Diible right wrote by the build,
there's been a ton of attention to it the last
few years, which is I won't say it's either good
or it's either bad, but buying businesses has just been
(15:15):
around for a very long time and it's just this
unique niche of America. Being a small business owner that
I will tell you is the twenty first century version
of the American dream. You have autonomy, you control your calendar.
Whatever principles Jimmy matter to you. If you own your business,
you can live to those.
Speaker 2 (15:34):
Right.
Speaker 3 (15:34):
If you want to pay your team members, you know,
above market wages because you want to fight inequality, you
could do that.
Speaker 2 (15:41):
Right.
Speaker 3 (15:41):
If you're like I'm a Milton Friedman man and I
want to maximize profit because that's good for the world,
you can do that. Whatever your values are, you can
live and you have this high level of autonomy. What's interesting, Yeah,
go ahead.
Speaker 2 (15:53):
No, I was gonna say, I've keep going. Actually I
want to hear what rest you thought on that?
Speaker 3 (15:56):
And now, Yeah, And what's so fascinating with it is that,
by the way, in academics, you know, it's almost like
a rule that people that are self employed are happier.
But the first study that illustrated this, I think is
so unique. It came when the Berlin Wall fell, because
you had East Germans who for the first time could
be business owners and entrepreneurs. And they tracked a variety
(16:18):
of East Germans, some that took jobs in the government,
some that took jobs at big companies, some that became
business owners. And it's a very controlled sample. It's all
East Germans. And they can show when you control for
amount of money made, you control for aid, you control
for a number of kids, families, all those things. Who
do you think was.
Speaker 2 (16:34):
The happiest of a by law in their own business? Yeah?
Speaker 3 (16:37):
The business owners, right, So that kind of set off
a bunch of ninety.
Speaker 1 (16:40):
Percent of millionaires are business owners too, like you know,
I mean whether they also have other things, of course
they do, but own their own business in one way
or another.
Speaker 3 (16:49):
Yeah, And it's it's a great and it's a great
cor option. It's very interesting now because as more individuals
are retiring, business owners are retiring, there's this huge wealth transfer.
So there was a lot of a lot of m
and a deal that's been going on. But the truth is,
when it comes to business ownership, it was a great
career choice twenty years ago and I was lucky. Right
out of school. I became in Anytime Fitness, multi unit
(17:11):
tap performing franchise e. So I've been in this space
since I was twenty two and a half years old, right,
and I've just I've done a lot in it. But
I can tell you as a good option back then,
I can tell you it's a good option now. But
it's also not going away right, it'll be it'll be
a viable career option in ten, fifteen, or twenty years.
So the key takeaway to people is do it when
it makes sense for you, right when you have enough
(17:33):
money saved up, when you have spousal alignment, right when
it's the right time for you. Because this whole buying
of business thing, it's not going anywhere, so I think
it's a great way to go.
Speaker 1 (17:42):
Well, it's interesting, I've pitched careers where it's a great
self employment type thing, but not necessarily a great small business.
Speaker 2 (17:48):
So, for example, it's a realtor, it's a really difficult
business to sell. You don't really have something you can
sell because you are the business. I did about as
well as you can do.
Speaker 1 (17:56):
I partnered with, you know, my real estate partner, Tyler Bennett,
and I get a portion of every deal we do
with my clients, and I kind of stay in touch
with them a little bit, and so it's kind of
a way to not really sell it, but like almost
hand it off but get paid for that and then
with weird that they you know, it's I never built
this to sell it, but as I've kind of.
Speaker 2 (18:16):
Starting, I'm a love I'm a creator.
Speaker 1 (18:17):
I love the creation process, so to me, I've kind
of built this thing up so like even this year,
for example, I do this Fourth of July party.
Speaker 2 (18:24):
Every year.
Speaker 1 (18:25):
I've done it for literally I think seventeen eighteen years
in a row, and I'm not doing it this year
and a couple of years and to invite me so no, no, no, no.
But there's a couple of reasons for that.
Speaker 2 (18:34):
Is.
Speaker 1 (18:34):
Number one is it was so fun when it was
raw and I was creating it, and it was kind
of messy.
Speaker 2 (18:39):
Right last couple of years, it was super corporate. It
was all paid for upfront, like.
Speaker 1 (18:43):
Everything was just kind of done for me, and it
just kind of lost that as an entrepreneur.
Speaker 2 (18:49):
That kind of thing was just like, I'm like, I don't.
Speaker 1 (18:51):
Want to just do some corporate fire recommend and so
instead we have the weird that they uh Summerfest, which
is July eighteen. Draper Days does a ginormous firework show
what's right by my new house. So I'm doing a
barbecue pool party at my house, which you've already been
invited to, and then we're just gonna watch their fireworks.
Speaker 2 (19:08):
So I'm like, I'm as well, just do that.
Speaker 1 (19:10):
But my point is is with weird that they even
I was like, man like, I kind of I'm getting
the itch to you know, I need more creation. I
just love to create. So I was like, Okay, what
would it look like if I did want to sell
this business? And I've started taking a few steps and
it's not again, I don't ever plan on selling it,
but maybe you never know if like somebody came an
offered it to me.
Speaker 2 (19:29):
But I had to. I realized that I've never even
tried to set up my business so that it could
be sold.
Speaker 1 (19:33):
So one of the things I've done is you have
to replace yourself. And so this next group, I'm opening
Group number seven. I'm going to co run it with
another guy, and then after about six months it I'll
kind of phase myself out. He's going to take the
new group, and then Group eight and Group nine. I'm
also training somebody else to take it. And it's kind
of sets the company up in a way where all
of a sudden.
Speaker 2 (19:51):
It's not dependent on me.
Speaker 1 (19:53):
Then I have a business that I could actually value
and sell. And so one of the nice side benefits
of taking myself out of it is it does set
it up if.
Speaker 2 (20:01):
I want to to eventually sell the product. Yeah.
Speaker 3 (20:03):
Absolutely. And one thing that we're doing so I teach
at BYU, I teach a case western as well. I
teach people how to buy businesses. Okay, But one fun
thing we're doing at BYU this summer August fourteenth to
sixteenth is we actually have a three day three intense
days of red Tileston and a bunch of guests right
where it's we're actually doing a class for individuals that
are that are looking to position their business for sale.
(20:25):
Not hey, I want to do a transaction like in
the next six months. I mean they're invited to, but
more so three years out, five years out, ten years out,
thinking about the various options. And what's interesting is that
there's a lot of education for buyers out there, and
there's a lot of there's a very strong ecosystem for sellers,
but it tends to be for Hey, sign up for
(20:45):
my you know, use my investment bank, use me as
a broker, you know, do an ESOP, and then use
me as like the consultant. I don't really see a
lot of actual education for sellers that.
Speaker 2 (20:55):
Is completelyhimidating, like how do I sell a business?
Speaker 3 (20:58):
Which is completely unbiased and then all well, So the
course will be fun because we'll bring in people that
have sold businesses, those that are satisfied, those that aren't satisfied.
We'll bring in all the vendors as well. It'll be
very cool to actually give some education for sellers, people
that are thinking about selling at some point. So I'm
like a kid in the candy shop talking about this.
Speaker 2 (21:15):
Now.
Speaker 3 (21:15):
We have a course for buyers which is August seventh
to ninth, and the seller one is a fourteenth to sixteenth.
It'll be it'll be a lot of fun. And I'm
right and high because I teach this at Case Western
as well the same three days, and I'm so stoked. Jimmy.
The last course I taught, I got four point nine
one out of five, and I was like, how do
I improve this? Just this morning I got the feedback
(21:36):
from last weekend. I got four point nine to four.
So I'm thinking, I just got to go for perfection.
I got to go perfection for the next one because
one of my favorite sayings in life, which I first
heard it attributed to Lou Holtz. I don't know who
originally said it, but it's so addicting good better best,
never ever rest until good is better and better is best.
(21:56):
I think that is the right way to live life
and everything.
Speaker 2 (21:59):
Yeah, I had of thought.
Speaker 1 (22:00):
When I was a real estate agent, I just said
I wouldn't be able to sit down in front of
a client and with honesty be able to say, hey,
I'm your best choice to do this, I'm your best
option to sell your home er, I'm the best option
to buy a home.
Speaker 2 (22:13):
Through if I didn't truly believe it.
Speaker 1 (22:15):
So I said, if I'm not the best, how am
I going to convey that to my clients? If I
think they have a better option, I'd feel like an
imposter to tell them they needed to work with me,
And so I worked to be my very best. When
I was at the peak of my career, I went
and got more training, more education.
Speaker 2 (22:31):
Yeah, you know.
Speaker 1 (22:32):
But also the day that I realized that I probably
wasn't in it one hundred percent anymore is when I
said I need to turn over. And you know Tyler,
oh my gosh, he's literally ten times better than I
ever was with clients. He's so good at what he does,
he cares so much, and so it was important to
me that all my clients still working with me, got
a better experience, not a worse experience if I ever
(22:52):
was to trade them off right or hand off.
Speaker 2 (22:55):
So you've been teaching at BU for how long? Now?
Speaker 3 (22:59):
This will be about a year and a half.
Speaker 2 (23:00):
Year and a half. Yeah, and what's the what's the
what is it? Do you know? I did one semester
at VEU as a professor.
Speaker 3 (23:05):
I was an add I did not know that.
Speaker 2 (23:07):
Yeah, I hear b YU and it's pretty tough for
me to be.
Speaker 3 (23:11):
Clear at byuom an adjunct professor as well.
Speaker 2 (23:13):
Fair enough, but still even that, it's tough to get
in over there.
Speaker 3 (23:16):
Yeah, I mean, my my belief in I mean, it's
not what you know, it's who you know, right, And
the way that I actually got hired at BYU is
I was trying to I was trying to get in
there and do my thing with like very limited luck.
And then one I knew somebody a professor at b
YU who I knew from Case Western. He's a professor
there as well, and he had an undergrad student reach
out to him and say, Hey, I want to set
up like an entrepreneurship through acquisition website for our undergrad
(23:39):
student group, and then he said, oh, we should talk
to Read and then we made that connection. And it
was through that student, after I'd been trying to get
in there for a for a while, that the introductions happened.
And then I've just been persistent since that point, and
I have so much fun at BYU. I love BYU undergraduates.
The biggest reason I enjoy them is that I think
(23:59):
that there's an entitlement mentality in the US, and it
is especially in that age group, but relatively what I've
seen BYU undergraduates, they're just not that entitled. They will
go out there and they will have a mentality of
just be action oriented and getting things done. I think
doing the missions is a big part of that. Church
values are a part of that. So I've had students
undergrad students in classes i've taught at BYU acquire businesses
(24:24):
during the actual term, and I've had a number of
them do it now, and it is absolutely amazing because
the thing is BYU does not leave them with much debt,
if any. They can also go out and do summertime
door knocking jobs and make significant amounts of money. My
TA for next term is literally knocking doors in Colorado
as we speak right now, making money so that he
(24:46):
would have enough capital to go out and acquire business.
So they have no debt, they have money from their
door knocking jobs. They have a low, very unentitled mentality.
They just go out and do things. So I think
BYU undergraduates are absolutely amazing entreal ecosystem that exists there,
in my judgment, in some ways it is unrivaled anywhere
in the US.
Speaker 2 (25:05):
So great, I agree. Then they're just very hungry too.
It's a very competitive school. And I know my buddies
that went there, I mean they knew how to work,
I'll say that. Yeah. So did you have to take
time off as the professor?
Speaker 1 (25:17):
Was it after the semester because it's pretty long, it's
pretty long process to climb Everest.
Speaker 3 (25:21):
Yeah, yeah, for me, it was six weeks. The timing
was perfect. I finished teaching on April sixteenth, I believe,
and this expedition I left on I left an April
twenty third. Oh wow, the timing was perfect. And ironically
I had the teaching at case Western last weekend, so
I got back about a little bit less than a
week before that. So the timing for Everros this year
made complete sense to do so.
Speaker 2 (25:41):
From bottom to the top. How long did it take you.
Speaker 3 (25:44):
From base camp to base camp, from base camp to
the top of the mountain.
Speaker 2 (25:48):
Well, it's interesting, is what you do is you went
back to base camp. Yeah.
Speaker 3 (25:51):
Well, what you do is that you do rotations, right,
So you start a base camp with the seventeen thousand feet,
then you go up to a certain point twenty three
thousand feet in particular kind of tag it. Then you
go back down because that's how that's how your body acclimatizes.
It's not a limit thing where you go from fifteen
to seventeen to twenty to twenty two to the summit.
You go up destroy yourself. Then this year in the recovery,
(26:14):
when you're spending time at lower elevations that you actually recover.
So that's how you kind of work that. Then, so
you have base camp, you have really six camps on
the north side of Everest. You have base camp with
a seventeen thousand, and you have an advanced base camp
which is twenty one thousand. On the summit run, it
is essentially four days. You go from advanced base camp
to the next camp. Then you go immediately with no
rest to the next camp, then the next camp, then
(26:36):
you sum it, and then you go all the way
back down to advanced base camp, which is anywhere from
a sixteen to eighteen hour day.
Speaker 2 (26:43):
Wow.
Speaker 1 (26:44):
Yeah, I mean yeah. We did similar type thing at
kil Manjaro. You do the you know, the acclimization hike.
Speaker 2 (26:49):
We would go that late afternoon and do another hour
up the mountain or two and then come back down.
Speaker 1 (26:53):
Not as intense obviously, But what was there ever a
moment when you didn't know if you were going to
make it?
Speaker 3 (26:58):
You know, I just have a mentor, and I chose
out this mentality that with one hundred percent certainty I
was going to get to the top of the mountain.
Right in the back of my head, I knew that
if that didn't happen this year, it would happen next year, right,
And when I thought about budgeting Foreverest, I very much
was ready to have to have that commitment to pay
for it twice.
Speaker 2 (27:16):
Right.
Speaker 1 (27:17):
It's actually a good way to do it, because they
say a lot of the people to get in trouble
it's because they don't want to have to go back,
or they can't afford to go back, and do it again,
so they push themselves when they shouldn't have and they
end up dying.
Speaker 3 (27:26):
Absolutely. And also to the kind of people that are
climbing everest are not people that are used to not
being successful in life, right, So you really have like
the alpha type, a go get her personality, and a
big challenge that guides have. I'd say the biggest challenge
of being a guide is dealing with that personality type
and having to tell somebody, tell the overachiever, tell the
type a personality you have to turn around, give up
(27:49):
your dream and come back down. I mean that is
hard to do, and it's really interesting to watch how
various guides go about doing that, right, how they they
lay it almost like a sales process.
Speaker 2 (28:00):
Right.
Speaker 3 (28:00):
You have to kind of like prime the client for it,
you know, get there, buy in, be nice, but be
firm eventually sometimes you just have to steamroll them with it. It
is just so interesting to see how that how that
plays out.
Speaker 2 (28:11):
Yeah, I mean, you got to protect people from themselves
sometimes essentially.
Speaker 3 (28:14):
Right, one hundred percent. And I know myself so when
I climb kill them and jarrow by the way, I
don't like to take any medicine, so I decided I
was going to try to I was going to see
how my body reacted to elevation. And I was like,
I'm not going to take this, you know, medicine, diamox.
I'm going to see and climbing Mount kill them in Jarrow.
The morning that I did it, about literally twenty minutes in,
(28:35):
I knew I had ams. Within forty minutes, I couldn't
hold down water or food, and I could feel my
heart beating out of my mouth right and I know
my body pretty well. Wow, And I was like, huh,
this is like literally within forty minutes of just starting, right,
which is very early in that climb. And then at
that point I was a lot younger, and I'm like,
you know, Tyleston, if you push yourself so much that
(28:56):
you kill yourself on kill them and Jarrow, are you
gonna be okay with that and believe it or not?
The answer was yeah, yeah. So I pushed myself and
I blocked out, so I don't remember a fair portion
of the hike. I really pushed myself, made it to
the top and went down from there. So the reason
I'm mentioning this and it was very very very very painful,
is that I know myself well. I know that when
(29:16):
push comes a shove, I will push myself to the brink.
So I surrounded myself with a guiding company.
Speaker 2 (29:22):
That wouldn't let you, not let me do that.
Speaker 3 (29:25):
And I tell that story. I tell other stories about
cold water swimming and things like that, and I made
very clear that, you know, I really want to push myself,
but I will need that protection from myself in those situations.
And that was that was laid out in advance.
Speaker 1 (29:39):
So yeah, I mean that's an important piece. It's you know,
I had one of the guys that I know that
climb Mount Everest. He watched somebody die on there an
avalanche channel. Yeah, and that's obviously a whole different thing.
But I interviewed another woman her dad a couple of
years ago. You probably no I'm talking about. He got
to the summit and then died like ten feet later
on his way.
Speaker 2 (29:57):
It was his name. I don't remember his name right now,
but he was from Utah.
Speaker 1 (30:00):
It's like Holy Cow, like you know, it's you can
that mountain eats people every I think five or six
people died this year. I mean, that's the reason I've
never climbed Everestince. I'm like, no, I don't want to
actually die. And it's one of those things. I do
a lot of things that has the appearance of danger,
but it's a lot safer than it.
Speaker 2 (30:15):
It seems like killman jars relatively safe. You know, you
die on that mountain. Something went seriously wrong.
Speaker 3 (30:21):
Well, the crazy part is that the people that die
on Everest don't wake up and say I want to
go die.
Speaker 2 (30:25):
Today, right, No, but that's my point. It just happened.
Speaker 3 (30:27):
It happens. And on the south side there's don't quote, man,
I believe there's thirteen bodies that you see as you
you know, on some outside. Well, on the south side
I went to Tibet. Yeah, on the north side there's
there's three, so we do. I didn't see them in
the dark, but coming back down it's like, hey, there's
this person, there's and there they are because you can't
take them off. It is virtually impossible to take them
(30:48):
off the mountain because the bodies freeze, They freeze the mountain,
they're heavier, it's a whole quagmire, so the bodies generally
stay there.
Speaker 2 (30:55):
It is.
Speaker 3 (30:56):
Yeah, it's very interesting to see.
Speaker 2 (30:57):
Yeah, I know that's fascinating. Man. What did you learn
about yourself climbing Everest?
Speaker 3 (31:01):
You know what I learned about myself climbing Everest is
that I, again, I don't like taking medicine. So my
plan for Everest was not to take any medicine.
Speaker 2 (31:09):
Right.
Speaker 3 (31:10):
So I start not taking medicine, and I start to
develop this cough, right, and then I start to develop
more of a cough, and then I start to get
a little bit coffee's a little bit wet, right, And
this is called high altitude pulmonary edema. It sounds very woohoo.
You know, oh, this is like a huge thing. It's
nothing more than a cough that just develops.
Speaker 2 (31:28):
Right.
Speaker 3 (31:29):
But what happens with and it's called HAPE for short, right,
how through the Prominent Redeemer. What happens with HAPE is
that it's highly lethlold elevation. And it actually happens sometimes
you'll just go to bed and you won't wake up. Right,
So I got I got a case of hape.
Speaker 2 (31:43):
Sounds pretty serious.
Speaker 3 (31:44):
Yeah it was. It was serious. And here's how you
know how serious it was. The debate was all right.
Next day, you know, you're a at twenty one thousand feet,
we're going to put you on oxygen for medical reasons,
and the next day you're going down the mountain. Right,
the question was would I be forced to use oxygen
or were they going to put me on a yak? Right,
It was like, so they were basically saying you're done.
(32:04):
They were saying I was done. They were saying you
again because client management. Right, They're saying you are going
down to lower elevation and you're going to have a
challenge of being able to recover, to come back and
you know, go back up the mountain. I'm not a
patient person at all in any capacity. I think that
life should have been done yesterday. So I had to
leave the main group right, go down the mountain with
(32:28):
with my with my guide, and I had to spend
eight days in base camp essentially with me, a guide
and a couple you know and like the cooks. Yeah,
just recovering. And it was not fun. It was very annoying.
My day was, you know, eating three meals a day,
getting up and going for a twenty minute twenty minute max,
you know, walk around base camp and then to dealing
(32:51):
with that. And I was throwing the book at that point.
At recovering. I don't get sick very often, so cough
drops ginger in my tea, hot water with honey. If Chat,
GBT or Google thought it was a cold remedy, I
was on it right, So I was doing everything I could,
but it was having to deal with that, like the
patients of it, how I maintained mental sanity. I love
cold plunging, so I actually would get at base camp
(33:15):
at seventeen thousand feet get in the freezing water for
a little bit of time. They have like a yeah, yeah,
there's a river, right, oh, So I found a cool place,
a cool place in the river where there was a
bridge and there was a little bit of a current,
so I could go there and like actually swim in
place against the current of the stream.
Speaker 2 (33:31):
So you were cold plunging on everest.
Speaker 3 (33:33):
I was cold plunging at base camp, and you know,
no one supported me doing this. None of the guides
or the staff. Some of the other clients thought it
was kind of cool, but everyone's like, this is like
the most terrible idea. You know, you have like a
cough and you're doing this. It's a terrible idea. But
I needed it to stay mentally stable because I would
be depressed before I cold plunge. I would go cold plunge,
(33:53):
I'd come out and then I was like, we got
this right. But even during that time, it was never
a question of like, am I going to Summont Everest.
I am. I just always kept that positive, that positive mindset,
because I'd been coached that the two common factors of
people that don't summit Everest are one those that get
anxious right and second, certain people just start to believe
(34:14):
that they're not going to summit. They get that negative mindset.
So I just took the opposite and said, I'm just
going to believe I'm going to sum with one hundred
percent certainty. If you know, I don't, the guides will
stop me and force me to turn around. Then I'll
come back next year. So it was never a question
of if it was going to happen. It was just
one hundred percent certainty in my mind, and I visualized it.
I visualize the details of the summit and everything like that.
(34:34):
So I was able and lucky enough, I was able
to recover, get back up there, and as I like noting,
you know, there was nine people in the group, five
eventually summitted, but even after my setback, I was the
fastest and first one to the summit in four hours
and forty one minutes, so I had a nice little
recovery story after it. So so that was a that
was a challenge overcome.
Speaker 2 (34:53):
Was it as satisfying to get to the top as
you hoped it would be.
Speaker 3 (34:57):
It was satisfying, But it's nerve wracking because when the
most accidents and bad things happen on Everest right at
the summit, right on the way down. On the way down,
going to the summit is easy. Coming down is the
real quagmire.
Speaker 2 (35:08):
Why is that?
Speaker 3 (35:09):
Well, for among other reasons, you're just tired, right, You're tired,
you know, And I think that people just my guess
is that after the summit, your temptation is to let
your guard down, right, because you've accomplished your big goal,
you got it all done, you let your guard down.
In addition, the bad weather tends to come in the
afternoon as well, So yeah, bad weather, your guards down,
(35:31):
you're tired, that is when. And don't quote me on
the number, but I think ninety or not most bad
things on Everest happen if you get to the summit
right after you summit and go down. So the real
ballgame is not the summit. The ballgame is what happens
after the summit. And so you can be excited. You
can be I can be excited. I can be stoked.
I got my flags, I got my pictures. I climbed
(35:53):
into bets. I'd never been to Nepall though, so I
made sure to walk an extra five feet, you know,
down the mountain to say I've been in the paul.
Even though my passport's not stamped, I have a picture
so I can verify it. Everest grows every year, so
when I was up there, I made sure to jump
to give myself a little bit of buffer to be
at the world's highest point for a little bit of time.
So we had all kinds of fun. How long were
(36:13):
we at the We had pretty good weather, which was
negative eighteen degrees, about twenty five thirty kilometer an hour winds,
which is very good by ever standards. So it's probably
up there for about a half hour.
Speaker 2 (36:21):
Oh wow, that nice looks.
Speaker 1 (36:23):
Is it crowded on the top or is there plenty
of room up there? Once you're up there, it can
be crowded.
Speaker 2 (36:27):
For us.
Speaker 3 (36:27):
We waited till the very last day to summit, May
twenty seventh.
Speaker 2 (36:32):
Oh that was late.
Speaker 3 (36:33):
Yeah, we were the absolute last ones the summit.
Speaker 1 (36:35):
So most people went around like the eighteenth and nineteenth
this year, didn't they, Yeah, okay.
Speaker 3 (36:38):
Yeah, yeah. And the twenty fourth a lot of people
on the South side went very early, and people generally
go early because for whatever reason. But yeah, the twenty
seventh was an absolutely epic day to be up there,
and there was us and a couples from the South
Side as well, including a German lady who did it
with no oxygen. And there's been about don't quote me,
but I believe it's two hundred and two people.
Speaker 2 (36:59):
That's kind of the that's the real that.
Speaker 3 (37:02):
And so the three things that fascinate me one English
Channel swimming, two debating doing the rest of the seven summits.
But what really intrigues me, but I will tell you
is very is nerve wracking. Is doing no oxygen climbing
right now on Everest. Most people start oxygen at twenty
three thousand feet with a flow rate of four liters, right,
(37:22):
more auction easier it is, obviously, I will tell you though,
that even at twenty one thousand feet, I personally know
what it's going to feel like. I think to be
ninety years old. Wow, because everything, Jimmy is just difficult.
Laying down and getting to the point of like just
getting like your backup takes energy. Walking ten to fifteen
(37:46):
I say meters now because I was there, So ten
to fifteen meters from the tent to the dining tent,
which should take you thirty seconds to elevation takes three
minutes with two stops, right, and you're completely out of well.
Speaker 1 (38:00):
I remember on Kilman Jarman, it was only nineteen thousand
I think feet, But I mean I remember at one
point I helped somebody. We had one guy with one lego.
I helped him for about a minute. And what I
tell me, if this is kind of what you experienced me,
it's like normally, when you lose your breath, you're okay,
you take a few breasts and you get it back.
It doesn't come back, so you just start out of
(38:21):
breath for like, I like, for like an hour, I
really like an hour, and I was just like holy shit,
like I can't get my breath back. And that was
the part that really like told you know, showed me like, man,
this is yeah.
Speaker 3 (38:33):
You can't. And you realize that the ultimate, you know,
form of doping is oxygen. Right, Without oxygen, nothing works.
It's a complete it's just a complete quagmire. And the
other interesting part about it is that, yeah, your breath
just does not come back. The only way to get
it back is to go down the mountain.
Speaker 2 (38:47):
Right.
Speaker 3 (38:48):
Then, of course, when you go down the mountain, Wow,
life gets so good so quickly with an oxygen back.
But the other thing about being at that elevation is
that recovery days aren't really recovery days. Your body gets
weaker even if you do nothing. So it is a
war of attrition right from the minute that you get
(39:10):
to base camp. You're not really ever replenishing yourself. You're
just you have your reserve and the question is how
much of it gets depleted. And that's why I talked
about the food thing earlier, and that's why self care,
you know, not getting sick, sleeping, if you get a blister,
make sure you take care of it, right, if you
have an injury, take care of it. Because a ballgame
(39:30):
on Everest, it is surviving a war of attrition, and
self care and attitude are the critical part of that
much more so than any mountaineering skills or any of
that stuff. So, yeah, that was the interesting part about it.
There's no rejuvenation, there's just survival basically.
Speaker 1 (39:46):
Well, you know, I think the thing that makes us
happy in life, happiest in life, and give us the
most confidences, and we set out to do hard things
and we accomplish them.
Speaker 2 (39:54):
And so I'm guessing the person you are before, I mean,
you've already.
Speaker 1 (39:56):
Done so many things in accomplished so much, but something
like this is where you, No, you really had to
push yourself. And I think even people that hire professional
companies and pay six figures, I think it's less than
twenty five percent make it to the summit, even people
that are planning on, you know, really getting there. And
so I'm guessing you've probably had a sense of accomplishment
that's been helping you in other areas of life since
(40:18):
then too. I mean, what's been your experience since you've
been back.
Speaker 3 (40:20):
Yeah, absolutely, and a couple of things. Right, So, I
think if you could the actual statistics on Everest, it's
they say like sixty to seventy percent make it. But
then again, I'm a big fan of what I'll call
high touch human diligence on the ground, when you really
talk to people in the space and you actually conditionally
look at Okay, if you're a foreign climber and you're
not a sure bow that does this, you know every
single year's and you're not like a mountain guide that's
(40:41):
like done this seven times, right.
Speaker 2 (40:42):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (40:42):
But if you're like a foreign climber that's not a
professional climber. I mean you've climbed, You're good. That's where
it was like, Okay, you talk to a number of people,
it's like, yeah, twenty five percent of the people like
you basically make it every single year. Because on Everest,
what is in the news and the perception is not reality.
And I could have guessed that before, but I can
tell you with the one hundred percent certainty because I
(41:04):
was there and I know things that have been said
online that I know are categorically, in a black and
white way not true. To answer your question directly, though,
what I really learned about myself on this trip is
that I can be imperfect. I can make mistakes right,
like not taking medicine, getting hape, all those things. It
can be a complete quagmire. It can be very chaotic.
(41:27):
But ultimately that does not have to My imperfections and
my mistakes don't have to stop me from doing like
great things. I'm doing hard things. So the key takeaway
is that it's totally fine to be imperfect. Don't let
that slow you down. Just be imperfect, keep on putting
one foot in front of the other, and good things,
good things will come from there. And then being back
(41:48):
Everest made me a dumber person. I had every intention.
One thing I'm working on now is a PhD, the
country's first on entrepreneurship through acquisition buying businesses. And I
have to do a couple three intense days of eight
hours of essay writing oh at the end of this month, right,
and I have to read a lot of academic articles
before that, and academic articles are hard to read. It's
(42:10):
like reading philosophy. Basically, I had an intention to read
for like an hour or two one academic article a
day at twenty one thousand feet. Because I have a
little bit of downtime, I can tell you that my
brain could not do that. I can force myself, Jimmy
to do a lot of painful, hard things. I could
not force myself because I'd read and I'd be like
(42:30):
I read a paragraph, I don't remember like any of it,
and I'm like, this is just And I tried a
couple times. I could not, like do intense academic mental
work at that elevation. Like being at elevation made my
mind just work at forty percent of capacity. And that
lasted even after I got back. I had to spend
about two weeks. I feel I'm not pretty close to
one hundred percent now, but I spent like two weeks
(42:53):
like working back, and the same with my body. I
lost so much coordination that when I was coming back,
and like the first time I lifted weights, like two
days after Everest in China, I was like lifting a
twenty pound dumbell, and I thought I was going to
fall over. I can do a ton of pull ups, right,
I couldn't do a single one. But it wasn't because
of the strength in my body. It was because my
(43:15):
brain just couldn't balance. Really, So Everest, and I'm forty one,
I take health and fitness very seriously. Everest messed with
my body, and it messed with my mind, and there
it may mess with my brain. And that showed up
in both my body and my mind, And there's some
academic research it shows And again this isn't something that
that people are saying, We're going to throw billions of
dollars at researching, you know, impacts that elevation have on
(43:38):
mental health. But there are a couple studies and it's
crazy being at elevation has negative impacts on body and
on mind. And I believe some of the stuff that
I read about and I hear that these could have
long term real impacts. So I think no oxygen climbing
is like such a cool challenge. It really intrigues me.
Just one foot in front of the other, take the pain.
(44:01):
The failure rates are significantly higher, the death rates are
significantly higher. Right, if you want to maximize your chance
of dying on everes, to do it with no oxygen.
Speaker 2 (44:09):
Yeah, it is a.
Speaker 3 (44:10):
Huge challenge and a huge challenge. And it's interesting too,
is that people that do it without oxygen, you have
no extra oxygen on you.
Speaker 2 (44:18):
They don't actually carry it, no just in case.
Speaker 3 (44:20):
But guess why, well one, I mean there's two reasons.
Speaker 2 (44:22):
Why. What do you think it's heavy?
Speaker 3 (44:23):
It's heavy? Right, So I mean those things weigh when
they're full. I mean they weigh like, I mean, they're heavy,
trual weight. Second thing is that if you have it,
you're going to use it, right, They have to deny
themselves the ability to get easy help because it is
that painful. So I'm really passionately intrigued about no oxygen climbing.
But I can tell you because I experienced it firsthand,
(44:44):
and I can see the academic research, the limited economic research.
I really believe that doing that could have lifetime impacts
because it's.
Speaker 2 (44:52):
Just because of what you experienced, even with oxygen.
Speaker 3 (44:54):
Because when you're the individual that's like a twenty pound
dumbell and I want to fall over because of my
lack of balance or I can go from doing you know,
forty pull ups right too, I can't do a single one.
I literally was able to hang on the bar for
like fifteen to twenty and maybe I can get like
seventeen seconds, and even that was like super painful. But
it wasn't because of my muscle strength, right, it was
like it was it was just my head. I couldn't
(45:15):
I couldn't balance it. So that was interesting. And then
people are generally positive about everest as well, which is
pretty cool.
Speaker 1 (45:21):
Well, it's super impressive. Man, You've done so many different things.
I mean for you, you know what, You're obviously built a
little bit different. But I think somebody sees you or
listens to you and they're like, man, that guy, that
guy's just built differently. Like for the person that can't
get themselves motivated to do things that you know, maybe
pushed him, Like what advice or what do you think
it is that makes you have that ability to just
(45:42):
want to even push yourself at the limits that you do.
Speaker 3 (45:44):
Yeah, I mean it's it's two things, right. I could
we could get very vulnerable about some of the you know,
some of the dark areas I go into to find motivation, right,
But what I would say is David style, Yeah, David gogginstyle, right,
because I believe I believe that there's there's there's some
truth in that stuff. For sure. You have to find
that dark place, find that vulnerability, and tap into it.
I think though, two simple things to do for people
(46:06):
is one, just surround yourself by people that do hard things,
and whether or not you intentionally want to or not,
just by being in their presence, you will start to
do hard things and you will start to achieve. It
is as simple as that. I think that that what
you do with we Are the Day is a great
example of that, So check that out. There's others out
(46:27):
there as well. Just find a group of people that
you can surround yourself with that will bring out your
ideal self and allow you to do hard things. That
is the simplest first step to take. You will become,
whether you want to or not, like the people that
you will surround yourself with. Secondly, more tactically, you know,
I wrote a book Grid at Donne about buying and
buying small businesses, but there's also some life coaching and
(46:50):
motivational stuff.
Speaker 1 (46:51):
I's going to ask because that's an interesting name for
a book that's all about mind business because it sounds
more about a kind of like a mindset type book.
Speaker 3 (46:57):
Well, the issue is that what we're we're right perceive
there is a gap in the literature and the buying
a business space, both in books and with some of
the content that you see, which is all good like
what Walker Diible does, what Cody Sanchez does, all the
influencers do in the space is absolutely fantastic. What is
a good addition to it, though, which is a reason
for writing Grid. It done. Is that write a business
(47:19):
is actually very challenging, right, And I think that people
can run the numbers, look at the financing options, see that, Wow,
I can pay a little bit of money down and
buy a cash flowing business. But I don't think people
always realize what it's actually like to run them. So
I wrote a book that has the frameworks for how
to buy one, but also as the anecdotal stories from
all my years of doing it about what it's actually
(47:40):
like to be in the trenches running one, right, the
pleasure and the pain of people.
Speaker 4 (47:45):
Right.
Speaker 3 (47:45):
I mean, I tell a great story about how two
days before I close, I have to meet a key
person for a business that I'm buying.
Speaker 2 (47:52):
What kind of business was?
Speaker 3 (47:52):
This was a dirty industrial services business and this individual
we'll call him, we'll call him Doug, Right, Doug, you
know who key to the business. Knew everything about him,
but Doug, when I first met him, he said, what
have you done read in your life to rationalize you
buying this business?
Speaker 2 (48:12):
Right?
Speaker 3 (48:13):
So I had to navigate that, you know, and navigating
having to hire people, having to fire people, all those things, right.
So I wanted people that were thinking about buying a
business before they go off and they, you know, enroll
for a course and pay ten twenty thousand dollars a year,
or decide that hey, I want to do this and
invest their time and researching and everything to actually know
(48:34):
what it's like to run a business. So I cam
bine the frameworks that I use successfully with the anecdotal stories.
And the reason I called it grid it done is
that that was our mantra at the company. I had
a great team member, an entreneurial employee. I call him.
Speaker 2 (48:48):
Name.
Speaker 3 (48:50):
Name was An We'll say your name was Ann. Right,
one night, Anne was working really hard tackling this very
challenging issue and I and it was like it was late.
It was not ten o'clock at night, I believe, And
we also had a really busy day the next morning,
so she was going to come back the next morning
to come back to work, and I said, you know,
and you are amazing, you are awesome. You really know
(49:13):
how to grid it done right, So randomly set it
and then it just kind of took off from there.
So the point is climbing everest is a challenge. Buying
a business is a challenge. Operating businesses a challenge, Having grit,
having a grid at done mindset is critical for that endeavor.
Speaker 1 (49:29):
What is I love that word, you know, there's a
couple of books that talk about that very thing, grit.
Speaker 2 (49:35):
What does that mean? Like, what does it mean to
have grit?
Speaker 1 (49:37):
Yeah?
Speaker 3 (49:37):
Great question. This goes to to the second advice I
would give people. One is just join the right peer
group for you. That'll help you level up. Second thing
is that what grid it done means to me, It's
very simple, do exactly what you don't want to do,
precisely when you don't want to do it. If you
live your life that way, great things are going to come.
Speaker 2 (49:56):
It's so true.
Speaker 1 (49:57):
It's like, it's so easy to do it when you
feel like doing it right, but you really find out
who you are in when you don't feel like doing it.
Speaker 3 (50:04):
There was an email that I really didn't want to
write this morning because I knew with one hundred percent
certainty that the ask I was going to make was
going to get rejected. Right, I knew it one hundred
percent certainty, one hundred percent, not even nine to nine
point nine, Jimmy, I knew I was going to get rejected,
and I knew that rejection was going to hurt right,
because there's like some emotions in this email I was writing.
But I know that if I continue to write these
(50:25):
emails and continue to make this ask like a hundred times,
five hundred times, it is I have faith that's going
to lead me to a better place, and I very
well might eventually end up getting what I want to
out of the situation. So I didn't want to write
the email. I wanted to do everything else. I wanted
to prepare for this podcast. I wanted to go swimming.
I wanted to do everything else except write this email.
(50:46):
But it's the first thing that I did this morning
because I knew I didn't want to do it. And
if I live my life that way, every night I
rate myself on a scale of one to ten on
how well did I do the things I didn't want
to do, because what.
Speaker 2 (50:59):
I find yourself every night on that.
Speaker 3 (51:01):
You know Chris from our group, Yeah, yeah, so we
he's my and by the way, on Everest, I'm glad
I almost got to mention this on Everest. Even on
Everest we do a thing where he sends me three
things he's grateful for. And then what I do is
I have my own unique twist on it. I rate
myself on a scale of one to ten onto how
well I did what I didn't want to do that day.
Then I write three things I'm grateful for. Then I
(51:22):
write three things or three things I did well that day.
Then I write three things I'm grateful for in the world.
And then I write, like, what thing I want to
focus on most tomorrow that I don't want to do.
And we do this every night. He texts me, I
text him at night, he text me in the morning.
And we did this all throughout Mount Everest. Even when
I had no reception. I would still write down the
(51:43):
stuff and I would still text even though it wouldn't
go through, and he would do the same. So when
I got back to reception, I had, you know, like
twelve text messages from him. So I'm a big believer
in the power of habit. So I literally rate myself
every night on that metric, because what I find is
that when I do hard things, it just leads to
more joy because it sounds like fun. So it's like,
you do hard things all the time, Yeah, fair enough,
(52:05):
But when I do hard things, I always find this deep, immense,
intense joy that I would not otherwise have had if
I didn't do hard things.
Speaker 1 (52:17):
You've hit on something that I think is one of
the biggest concerns that we have as a world with
AI and everything that's coming. We keep trying to make
the world easier in so many different ways so that
people don't have to do hard things, and there's a
lot of things that used to be really hard that
aren't anymore, right, but there is this idea is like
when we do hard things, we're happier people. I think
(52:40):
you can find the farmer that's out there just grinding
or whoever, is probably going to be happier than the
person that you know, all the luxuries are given to,
and it's just you're going to be happier the more
you do hard things. And so it's this weird space
that I think we're in as a universe where it's
like a lot of things are easier now, but a
lot of people are not as happy. And you know,
we've probably never had more access to the luxuries quote
(53:02):
unquote of life. But you know, also the happiness scales
very much shows that people the more luxuries they're having,
the less happy they are.
Speaker 3 (53:09):
And the crazy part is, I'm like every the human
being I want to maximize utility. I want a joy,
I want happiness like I desire it. I want all
those same things. It's just that I've learned that the
easiest way for me to get that is actually to
do hard things. As counterintuito as it sounds, but when
you actually peel back the onion, Okay, how do you
appreciate true joy unless you have pain?
Speaker 2 (53:31):
Right?
Speaker 3 (53:31):
The power of opposites. So when I'm in a stressful situation,
I try to I try to train myself to be
grateful of like awesome, being in pain right now. It
just means that when that joy comes, oh, it's going
to be the best, the best thing ever.
Speaker 2 (53:43):
That's so true.
Speaker 1 (53:45):
Well, dude, I think a lot of people can learn
a lot by following you or falling onto your journey.
Speaker 2 (53:49):
Where's the best place for us to send them?
Speaker 3 (53:51):
Yeah, I'm active on LinkedIn, so follow me on LinkedIn.
Read Tyleston and you can put the link in the
show notes, and then also Grid at done dot com
check out the book. It's designed for people that want
to become entreneurs. You acquisition and there's some very fun
personal stories in there as well, so certainly certainly check
that out and thank you so much for having me.
I found you to be a highly inspiring person that
(54:13):
allows me to live closer to my ideal self. And
I'm just thankful for the opportunity to get to know
you well.
Speaker 1 (54:19):
You're such an important person man, and not only just
for our coaching group, but in just in general, because
you inspire people to realize, like, you know what, there's
more things that I could do that I'm not doing
and it makes me think that and so just keep
being you man. That's all I can say is the
world needs more people like you, just pushing yourself at
the limit that you do and it's inspiring to all
of this.
Speaker 2 (54:36):
So thank you.
Speaker 4 (54:36):
Thank you again for listening to The Jimmy Rex Show.
And if you liked what you heard, please like and subscribe.
It really helps me to get better guests, to be
able to get the.
Speaker 2 (54:45):
Type of people on this podcast. It's going to make
it the most interesting.
Speaker 4 (54:49):
Also, want to tell everybody about my podcast studio, The
Rookery Studios, now available in Salt Lake City and or
in Utah. If you live in Utah and want to
produce your own podcast. We take all of the guests
work out of it for you and make it so simple.
All you do is you come in, you sit down,
you talk and leave. We record it, edit it, even
(55:10):
post it for you. If interested in doing your own podcast,
visit our Instagram and send us a DM Rookery Studios,
or go to our website, The Rookery Studios dot com
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