- [Narrator] Previously on Go Forth.
Matthias nailed his speech as TEDxBerkeley
that he hopes will kick off a whole new direction
for his career.
- It's really cool because it feels like
my craft is proceeding in a positive way.
- [Narrator] Lizzie has been hustling to sell out
her opening weekend.
- You're trying to convince 32 people
that what you've created is worth spending
nearly $600 to come to.
- [Narrator] And hit the road
to climb the moonlight buttress.
Jesse decided to pull the plug on Mt. Taylor quadrathlon.
- [Jesse] Every few minutes it's just a really sharp pain
and is rethinking what being pro means.
- I like to challenge myself
in basically everything that I do.
Moonlight Buttress is graded at 12+
and has six pitches of 512.
It's my favorite style of climbing at the most difficult
level that I've ever done it in one of the most
beautiful landscapes you're ever seen.
Of course I wanna try it.
I feel mentally prepared to push today.
If I can pull out the best climber in me
there's a chance that I could do it.
- It's hugely important to visualize your success.
If you approach a challenge whether it be
something physical or something business oriented
or even mental if you have any doubts about it,
that's what's going to happen.
My advice is that you block out all the what ifs
and that you focus on the how to.
(upbeat music)
- [Narrator] After nearly four hours on the wall
climbing the warm up pitches of the route,
Lizzie makes her way to the base of the corners.
The corners are the two hardest pitches of climbing
on the Moonlight Buttress and will push Lizzie
to the limit of her skill level.
- Fuck me.
- Today is moving day.
It's gonna be nuts, we'll see how it goes.
Hopefully we get through it all.
About two or three months ago we found out
that our warehouse which is where we were storing
about 80% of our product in was being sold.
We were super lucky to find a building
just four or five blocks from where we are now.
We've got office on this side, warehouse over here.
It's super rad that we found a place that had a real office
connected to a real warehouse.
Moving offices has actually provided this super tangible
transitionary feel from what Picky Bar was in our old office
in this little space to this big warehouse
more legitimate office space.
I have my own office for the first time at Picky Bars
which also makes it feel more professional.
We think the warehouse is big enough to get us
to seven to eight million dollars a year of business
which is more than double of where we are right now.
It's a nice transition.
This is where the next phase of Picky Bar starts.
There you go, empty.
Now I'm a little bit nostalgic.
A lot of memories in this place
but also a lot of new fun memories to be made.
Good job Jarred.
- [Narrator] It's 4:00 am and Matthias is heading out
on a ski based training mission
in preparation for his upcoming project in France.
- What's really tricky as an athlete is managing your time,
it feels like there's not many hours in the day
between prepping for speaking engagements, sponsors,
dealing with contracts, organizing the logistics
for your trip and then also performing,
you have to find the time to train.
That's the main reason why I wanna ski BASE jump now
so I don't go to Alps and be like, how do I that again?
(Matthias laughing)
- There be times when you feel scattered
and you've got way too much going on
and those are the times that you have to prioritize.
I make sure that I have at least a few days a week
to skate two or three hours because
that's what I enjoy the most and that's what keeps me sane.
- Before you go out on a mission you're checking the weather
every hour to see how the weather forecast is evolving.
It's not just checking the conditions
and being let's go, it looks good.
It's not a perfect science.
By the time you show up things might line up
or things might not.
Ideal conditions for a ski BASE jump
is absolutely no wind.
Right, no go.
Too much wind.
There's always a 50% chance of getting it done
and a 50% chance of turning around.
Can't just think of doing it no matter what
because this is how you get hurt or die.
In the end the mountains decide,
you're not the one in charge.
That's what makes it beautiful because when you're a
mountain athlete you cannot take things for granted.
- [Narrator] The first corner pitch
is Lizzie's first 512 pitch of the day.
The most difficult climbing on the route so far.
This is where the exposure of the climb
starts to play a big factor as she's now over 400 feet
off the valley floor.
- [Steven] Nice work.
- Fuck me.
Just remember you're mantra is you are fucking strong.
Steven, off belay.
- [Narrator] The second corner pitch is rated 512+
and is the crux of the Moonlight Buttress
meaning it is the most difficult pitch on the entire climb.
- [Lizzie] Dude, so fucking hard.
- [Narrator] This is a long, narrow section of crack
that requires incredible endurance.
- [Lizzie] Wow.
Fuck me.
I just stopped having fun.
I think I've just pushed through a lot today.
I think I'm worn out at sucking.
I just don't have it in me to keep sucking right now.
- [Narrator] After struggling on the pitch
for over an hour Lizzie decides to call it quits.
- I don't know this technique super well
and it completely shut me down.
It doesn't feel impossible but it's something that I'm gonna
need to put work into.
- The cost of doing something new is multiple failures.
- For the next five days the forecast is predicting rain.
Today is not how I wanna end my time on the route,
that's for sure.
Rain on sandstone is a really bad ideal.
One, it damages the rock and it makes it softer
so if I do take a fall, then I can rip gear out of the wall
damaging the rock and potentially hurting myself pretty bad.
- [Narrator] With rain in the forecast
Lizzie will have to make the choice if it's worth risk
to continue climbing.
- I'm super psyched.
Today we've got our first visit with Village Family Capitol.
Investors are gonna come over,
I'm gonna show them the place.
- Hey.
- [Jesse] Hey.
- Hey, what's up man, how are you?
- Welcome to Picky Bars HQ.
- [Investor] Glad to be here, looks great.
- This is it.
They are kicking the tires, is the term that everybody uses.
Making sure that we are what we say we are.
- Maybe if you could walk us through the process.
Where it comes, how it goes, where it flows,
where it goes out.
- Yeah, totally.
I found that I'm looking for one to two million dollars.
Somebody that's comfortable with us paying down
some of our debt on the investment which is really important
and somebody that's looking for more moderate growth goals
in that they're not expecting us to 10 or 20 X their money
over the next four to five years at the risk
of bankrupting ourselves.
- What about the quality check in terms of
do they get the right bars in the right box?
Do you guys have much?
- We have very low error rate.
- How does this rank?
Are we at the front end of a shipment?
Where are you?
- We're stocked right now pretty heavy.
Vetting investors is painstaking.
It takes a lot of time and you're just
getting to know these people, you're potentially asking
them for a lot of money.
It's like dating.
- [Investor] So you gave away 13,000?
- No, we didn't give away anything.
We sold 757 bundles.
78 of those people have become Picky Club members.
- You're partnering up with someone on a business,
it's important to build a relationship with them,
a personal relationship, because you wanna make sure
you're on the same wavelength and you have the same value
system and it's not just about making money.
If that's what it's about
you're going to clash along the way.
- Cool, well thanks for coming guys.
Let's head out and go grab a beer.
- Sounds good.
- [Jesse] Sweet, that's great.
- [Narrator] Back in Zion the rain has stopped,
the sun is out and Lizzie is going to give
the Moonlight Buttress another shot.
- So here we are on top of Moonlight Buttress
and Katie came.
She was a few hours away and decided to come down
to provide some comic relief with me and Steven.
- Moral support.
(both laughing)
- There's no point in my mind of attempting the route again
from the ground up unless I can climb the crux clean.
So the goal is to be able to...
- [Narrator] What Lizzie was trying to say is today she will
be climbing the upper pitches, the highest and most exposed
pitches of the route.
- The difficult thing with sandstone is that you can't climb
for 24 hours after it rains because the rock
gets really soft, you can break off holes.
It will ruin the climb and is dangerous for the climber.
It's really rational to be afraid of failing
because you don't place the right kind of gear
you can potentially die.
For me it's reminding myself that I know what I'm doing
and that I'm strong enough to do it and to commit.
(inspirational music)
Falling.
That was a whipper.
I didn't climb.
- It's okay to fall, it's okay to fail.
That's part of life and that's part of learning.
Ultimately that gives you more confidence.
- [Narrator] In order to climb a pitch cleanly
there cannot be any falls
so Lizzie restarts this pitch again.
- It's like I got out the worst that can happen
and then that gives you the confidence to really push
through these zones of fear because you know what happens
if you don't succeed.
Once you make that decision and then you commit to it
there's no better feeling in the world.
Off belay.
- I did it.
- [Katie] Good job.
- Thanks.
- [Narrator] Lizzie just successfully climbed the 8th pitch
of the Moonlight Buttress rated at 512.
It's a positive step towards one day reaching her goal
of climbing the whole route from the ground up.
- If you can see the small improvements you're making
along the way you will get there.
- It just feels so cool to access a really good part of you.
Tell yourself I know that I can do this and keep moving.
Then before you know it, I think I was in the flow.
I was just in it and just flowing.
The Moonlight Buttress is such an inspiring climb
and I plan on coming back to work on it
until I can send the whole route.
- If you want success you gotta be willing to try again,
to endure the failure and keep going.
I tried 900s for 10 years before I made one.
- As I'm getting ready to go to Europe
I'm getting a call from Camp USA saying that
things have gone crazy in Italy and things are about to be
shut down in France and that I should probably not
go to Europe because I might not be able to fly home.
Europe looks like the worst place to go
in the world at this time.
I'm deciding not to go because it's too unpredictable
to go over there.
I don't know anything about this disease.
I'm not taking any chances for my family
and I just can't take the chance.
- [Narrator] As the global pandemic hits the western US
Lizzie receives some bad news from the title sponsor
of her opening weekend event.
- I got an email this morning from Black Diamond.
Hey lady, so with all this corona stuff going on
we may be canceling our trip out to Smith.
And if we make it, awesome, and if not you still have
the packs and raffle items.
Are you kidding me?
I understand people not wanting to travel right now,
not wanting to fly.
There is a potential pandemic sweeping across the world.
I get it, at the same time this is affecting an event.
I have put a lot of promotion into Black Diamond being here.
I've put a lot into these athletes coming here.
This is the biggest even I've ever tried planning
and it feels like there's so much
out of my control with it right now.
I work really hard and I care about it so much.
I don't know what to do.
I left Zion in a fricken storm to make sure that I was
in a place where I could focus on my business.
I decided to cancel the event because I can't imagine
being a part of contributing to the spread of this virus.
But it's not as simple as that when you're in my position
because everything that I've done in the last six months
of my life and all the effort I put in has just washed away.
Today I had phone calls learning that I'm not gonna receive
$2300 back from a venue we rented.
They're not going to provide any partial refund
or a credit for a future trip.
It's just a loss.
For many people that's not a big deal,
for me that's my income for a month.
It feels so complicated because my work is still requiring
so much of me so I don't have time to get another job
plus there aren't a lot of jobs out there.
I really have no idea what I'm gonna do.
- I was living the good life so to speak, in the late 80s
making a lot of money, owning two houses, living the dream.
All of a sudden skateboarding fell off in popularity
and suddenly I found myself with two mortgages,
a child on the way, no real backup plan.
I got busy hustling and did whatever I could.
I think that I cherished those years the most
because they taught me my resilience.
They taught me that I could figure out other ways
to make a living.
- [Narrator] Coming up on Go Forth, the season finale.
Jesse, Matthias, and Lizzie all face the same challenge.
- It's really hard to know how this is gonna affect
the investment plan.
Right now there's a lot of risk.
- It could shake every single contract that I have,
it could prevent getting sponsors.
- [Narrator] All their previous plans
get tossed out the window.
- Quarantine life is fine but I am doing very shitty.
- Are you prepared to close up shop
or are you prepared to see it through
and to ride out the storm?