(upbeat rock music)
- [Tony] The challenges you face
in chasing your dreams are the ones that will carry you
through the rest of your years.
- [Narrator] 85% of us work at jobs we hate,
but there are daring individuals
who break the mold to shape their own careers.
- I haven't really ever been driven by money.
Ultimately for me, it's about happiness.
- Sharing your passion is really important.
I think that if you have the ability to make it a career,
then why not?
- [Matthias] You know where you want to go.
You have to think of sounded details along the way
but not get overwhelmed by that.
- [Narrator] Go Forth follows
the lives of three inspiring entrepreneurs
that dare to live life differently
and prove that you can turn your passion
into a business inspired by adventure.
This season we'll join their journey
as they each attempt to accomplish a major business goal
and a personal athletic challenge.
- Anything that goes wrong,
it doesn't matter whose fault it is.
It's like it's on me.
- [Narrator] Along the adventure,
we'll learn from Go Forth expert, Tony Hawk.
What gives these entrepreneurs the edge
to push their businesses forward
and rethink the way we think about work?
- No one wants to repeat the same thing
every single day for the rest of their life.
Even if it's not the most financially stable
or successful thing that you can do
you're living the dream because you're loving the work.
(upbeat intro music fades)
- [Narrator] Lizzy founded She Moves Mountains,
a rock climbing guide service,
run by women for women.
She's on a mission to change the face
of the outdoor industry from the ground up.
- The mission of She Moves Mountains is
to confront the lack of female presence in the guiding world
and to provide opportunities for women to learn from women.
- If you're creating a brand just to make money
that is a disservice,
because if you really have a passion
you can also make that a purpose.
- There are a lot of misconceptions
about what a climber looks like being like strong and tough
and almost manly to succeed in this sport.
And we started She Moves Mountains to create opportunities
for women to learn from women
that you don't have to conform
to what has been to participate in the outdoors.
- Lizzy. She wants to empower women
and be more inclusive and break barriers.
That's the perfect example.
- My goals this year are
to essentially double our revenue.
And that looks like doing two times the amount of retreats
that we did the year before and raising prices about 15%.
I've had to invest a lot more upfront.
We have to book the house we want to stay in,
which costs me thousands of dollars,
we have to book this huge retreat center
that we're going to use for our opening weekend.
I booked out the tower theater and I'm paying a lot money
to a lot of guides to commit their time to me.
I am responsible for paying my side of things
regardless of how many people sign up.
It's really risky for me,
but the rewards of it
if it actually works are incredibly high.
It's kind of like the amplifier in some ways.
- [Announcer] At the finish line, out of nowhere,
a gentleman starts running down the chute.
Nobody had any idea who this guy was.
Wearing number 87,
which is a race number that was given
after the actual event has started,
Jesse Thomas out of Stanford.
- [Narrator] Jesse is one of the world's premier triathletes
when he's not training or winning Ironman,
he's hustling to grow his start-up energy food brand,
Picky Bars in Bend, Oregon.
- When I started my professional triathlon career,
I had a whole bunch of stomach problems.
My stomach problems were the result
of me eating a whole bunch of processed food
in and around my exercise.
Picky Bars creates food products for athletes
including energy bars, oatmeal, and granola.
So balanced for performance made with real food ingredients.
So the best of a PowerBar and the best of Lärabar
and we sell them primarily through our website
and through a subscription service called Picky Club.
- If you're just in the market making products
that are similar to other products.
How are you going to be unique?
Well, just like Jesse with Picky Bars,
he had a niche because it's something that he wanted.
When I started Birdhouse,
the skate industry was all full of a lot of infighting
and everyone was grappling for a very small market.
I didn't want to be part of that war.
I just wanted to stand out
because we had good products and good skaters.
And that is what I chose to focus on.
And as simple as that seems, that was our niche.
You got to be recognizable above the noise.
- So we've got a few big goals for 2020.
We're going to look at taking on investment
for the first time ever.
We've done it all ourselves.
And this would be a huge decision for us to make.
Second would be we're launching a brand new product
that's completely different than any of the products
that we have right now.
And we'll be launching it
in a different way than we've ever done.
And there may or may not be seven other things
that pop up at the same time.
- [Narrator] Matthias Giraud is a professional skier
and BASE jumper.
He has turned his passion
into a persona called Super Frenchie
and puts out some of the wildest adventure content
for brands all over the world.
- [Matthias] Ski-BASE jumping is really
the most drastic evolution you could have as a skier.
And all of a sudden you can look
at mountains completely differently
and turn them into an actual playground.
I know what the meaning to make distances is just
being a mountain guy
and ski-BASE jumping is literally
the most hardcore materialization of that.
- If you can find something you absolutely love doing
and is your meaning for living
and you can turn that into a business, that's it.
That's the top of the dreams right there.
- Oh my God! I did it!
I'm super excited.
I'm definitely on a high right now.
You know, watching the US premiere of my movie
but you don't want that high to, you know, last too long.
You kind of want to get your head in the game again.
You know, I got some big ambitious goals coming up.
When you're a professional ski-BASE jumper,
you're the CEO, the CFO, and the product all at once.
Right now I'm about to have a conference call
with the curators of a TEDxBerkeley.
I'm in a very crucial point right now.
In my career I'm established,
but I'm also in the process of looking
to diversify a little more
and solidify the speaking side of things.
And that will eventually,
over time lean towards more consulting.
First of all, I enjoy it.
It's very rewarding,
but it's also a way to diversify my income
- Well, no matter how far you get or how successful you are,
it's always good to think about other avenues of incomes
because you never know what's going to happen.
I mean, especially in our world,
you can get hurt and it's over the next day,
- I'm trying to chisel away at the big cliché
of the adrenaline junkie kind of thing, you know.
It's really cool because it feels like
my craft is perceived in a positive way
and feel like you could be empowering and helping people.
- I think it'd be great to, you know,
just go through the whole talk.
- When I got the email, I was like, "Oh God, here we go."
I have to give the biggest speech of my life
at TEDxBerkeley.
I definitely want to solidify
the speaking side of my business
but all my speaking engagements have been from, you know,
a crowd of 10 company executives to 350 people.
And speaking in front
of a crowd of 2000 people is incredibly nerve-racking.
- I think, especially when you're an outdoor entrepreneur,
it's incredibly important to keep a balance
between your work life and the sport that you do.
Because for me,
the reason I got into any of this was
because of my love for rock climbing.
- If you're not participating in the thing that you
were passionate about in the first place,
you'll lose yourself and you'll lose your focus.
- So what are we training for?
- I'm going to try Moonlight Buttress in Zion.
- Oh, sweet.
- Yeah.
- Moonlight Buttress is a huge climb in Zion National Park.
There's no single pitch
that is graded harder than something that I've done,
but it is going to ask me to do
the hardest thing I've ever done six times in a row.
- [Narrator] Lizzy has reached out
to her friend and rock climbing coach, Brady, for help.
- Moonlight Buttress is a very difficult route
especially when you're talking about the endurance it takes.
No one at average level of climbing could do that.
- Two.
You get one more. Alright.
- Two.
- I did two.
- Sweet.
We got a lot to work with there.
- I need to be stronger.
I'm not physically fit enough right now
to go climb 5, 12, like one after another,
I'm just not physically fit enough.
I feel that the assessment kind of went
how I thought it would.
So I'm excited to have identified these things
and to get better in those areas.
- I can't make you stronger.
I'll give you the workouts.
If you follow them and give a hundred percent,
you will get stronger.
- Yes.
- My broken foot allowed me to bike.
I thought, you know what, maybe this was a sign.
Maybe I'm supposed to turn into a cyclist.
Maybe cycling is better for me.
I rode my bike 15 to 30 hours a week.
I was climbing the ranks fast,
thought I might be in the Tour de France.
Just a day before a massive race,
I was riding through a parking lot with a buddy of mine
went over to the handlebars and landed on my head
and broke my neck in five places.
I took my broken neck and my broken body
to my first startup.
This is the first time in my life where I was forced
to think of myself as not an athlete.
I literally could not be an athlete.
I couldn't move.
I could barely do anything.
Started a company, we raised $3 million.
I spent 70 to 100 hours a week in an office
for three and a half years with four of my buddies
thinking this was going to be our big break,
got within a week of a major acquisition,
but we had this little bug in our prototype.
It set things back.
It never, never happened.
It failed.
- Morning.
How's it going?
- Good.
I've broken 17 bones over the course of my life.
I had a sciatic injury.
I had shoulder injuries,
knee injuries,
and other foot injuries that were not broken bones.
I'm super familiar
with being injured and working through it.
But this time period feels just a little bit worse.
In that it's really keeping me
from doing stuff that I'm trying to do.
- The deterioration in the cartilage, the chondral fissure,
isn't anything that you can reverse.
You can only move forward.
I want you to be able to have your activity life
as much as you can,
but ending activity,
you shouldn't be feeling
swelling or discomfort for days after.
But what I'm thinking is the more you get this,
the better this is naturally going to feel anyways.
- Okay.
Athletically, my goal is to kind of transition
from my world-class professional Ironman career
to doing some really fun, challenging, adventure racing,
and one race that I've had on my bucket list
for a couple of years is this Mt. Taylor Quadrathlon
in New Mexico.
And I'm really excited to try to take a crack at that one.
- Go right back in for 10 in a row on both sides.
Okay?
- Yep.
- If you have a big goal in business or athletics,
are you ready to put in the hours?
Are you ready to work for it and train for it?
I always tell people if you're going to try something,
you're going to get into business,
or you're going to try a new sport,
or new activity learn all aspects of it.
- Ski-BASE jumping is the combination
of skiing and BASE jumping.
So you put a parachute on your back, you click on your skis,
you ride down the full mountain,
and at the end, there's, you know, 5 or 600-foot cliff.
Well, you should just jump off, fly through the air,
open your parachute, fly down, and land softly on the snow
all James Bond style.
After TEDxBerkeley, I get to go to the Alps.
This is when I get all the images that are
worth the experience for the rest of the year.
Last year I went there for two weeks,
get 4 million views in two weeks, finished a movie,
it's kind of these two or three-week time period
where I'm putting it all on the line.
And that's what's going to determine my whole season.
(Matthias laughing)
- [Narrator] It's officially launch day at Picky Bars
and Jesse and his team are making the big announcement
to their subscribers
about their new all organic stoneground nut butter
called Picky Drizzle.
- You know, like everybody says,
"You have one chance to make a first impression."
Valentine's Day is a great day to launch this,
so we're just going to go over the top
with the copy and the imagery.
We created a whole bunch of innuendo and puns around like,
A Luxurious Mouth Party,
Food's Favorite Spoon Buddy,
stuff like that.
But we do have a clip that I hope we never use
that's just pouring it straight into my mouth.
(Jesse laughing)
It's a different type of product
than anything we've had before.
And we're launching it in a really different way
with making it available
just as a one-time purchase to the subscriber group.
The cool thing about our distribution strategy
like the direct to consumer, the subscription, is
if it fails, we haven't bought, you know,
a hundred thousand units to fill in to the distribution.
We haven't paid brokers to go...
When you're the sole owner of your business
and you're funding it with your own cash
and you have a massive $300,000 hit,
it doesn't get any worse than that.
We are brought on by Trader Joe's nationally in 2016,
placed a massive PO that doubled our sales.
And then they placed another massive PO,
and then three months later, they just turned us off.
I had bills to pay.
I had overhired people.
And it was basically this massive wave
that almost took us out.
We had to front that bill between bank loans
that are personally tied to our homes.
And then, basically all the cash that we had
to put into the business to keep it going.
What investment could mean for us is diversifying
some of that financial risk.
And then also hopefully scale the business
quite a bit faster.
I would feel a lot of personal fulfillment
from growing Picky Bars
to a 10 to $15-million e-commerce company.
That then is also in a position
where our house isn't on the line anymore.
That would be a massive success for me.
- And I said the launch time is when?
- Wait, are we, we're going to launch it right now?
- It's there, they just.
- Ten.
- Alright. There we go.
We just made Picky Drizzle available
on the Picky Bars website.
So it's officially out in the world.
We just learned about 60,000 people now.
I'm feeling like I'd be pretty psyched
with about a thousand sold over the first four to six weeks.
So we'll see how it goes.
(upbeat transition music)
- [Narrator] Matthias and Lizzy are just arriving
at Outdoor Retailer in Denver, Colorado.
One of the outdoor industry's leading trade shows.
- [Matthias] And this is where athletes meet with sponsors,
retailers meet with brands, see the product for next year.
The media is there.
It's like a big mayhem.
- Run.
Bus is coming.
- [Narrator] Lizzy is here to find funding
for her mentorship program that promotes
women's leadership in rock climbing.
And Matthias is here to land a new sponsor
to help fund his future ski-BASE mission.
- This is a really crucial time
in the last 18 months, I lost two major sponsors.
So I'm going to meet with Sweet Protection.
I've been using their products.
I love it.
And I'm trying to set up an official relationship with them.
- How you doing?
- Alright, good. It's good to see you.
- It's good to see you too, man.
I've seen the other list somewhere.
Oh, what's that?
Alright, just want to get a copy of that.
- Just write it down here.
- Okay, thanks bro.
- You don't have to be an elite athlete
to secure sponsorships.
It's more about you're good at storytelling
and that you can convey the story of your brand to people.
It's like Matthias.
Yes, he is an elite athlete,
but that is not necessarily
what is most interesting about him.
It's that he's really good at storytelling
and that he can convey these messages to a broader audience.
- But in the Himalayas, I'm mixing up in this
and we keep skiing and BASE jumping all at once.
You guys went and make the best protective gear,
super light, and I want to work with you guys.
- Yeah, yeah, yeah.
- Yeah, yeah. Exactly.
The product fits exactly what I want to do.
And what's important,
we're on par as far as personalities and how we work,
how we do business.
It's no guarantee but I have a really good feeling about it.
So, it's cool.
- Wait, wait, wait, you got....
- Outdoor Retailer is one
of the most chaotic
and wild environments
I have ever been in.
You got it?
- It's number 4-4-0-0-5
up in that way.
- 4-4-0-0, this way.
I also just realized
that I've never actually pitched in person.
And if I fail,
I don't just let myself down,
I'm letting a bunch of people down.
It is insanely intimidating to go up to a company
and tell them why I deserve their support.
I almost cry before every pitch
because I just I think I really have a hard time believing
that something that I could create is worth
other people's attention
and money.
I love my company and I love working with The North Face.
So I'd love to share about them with you.
- Sure.
- Well, it takes a lot of guts to pitch your ideas
and it takes a lot of confidence.
If you can present an idea or a product
and you are convincing that it's going to work,
that's when they take note.
- [Narrator] Coming up on Go Forth,
Lizzy finds out
if The North Face will fund her mentorship program
and sets out to take on the Moonlight Buttress.
Matthias tries to leave a war with a sweet new sponsor
and steps on stage at TEDxBerkeley.
And Jesse faces some big challenge
training for the Mt. Taylor Quad.