{"type":"rich","version":"1.0","provider_name":"Transistor","provider_url":"https://transistor.fm","author_name":"The Grit Factor Podcast w/ Karl Jacobi","title":"The Thing Saving You Is Already in Your Hands with Bart Merrell","html":"","width":"100%","height":180,"duration":4142,"description":"Episode Summary\nBart Merrell grew up on a pig farm in New Mexico with a father who had his hands in a dairy in Idaho, a mushroom warehouse in Utah, a produce warehouse in Arizona, and the Pork Producers Association, all simultaneously. Nobody sat Bart down and taught him the birds and bees of business. His father showed him by example that you could do many things at one time and that opportunities were everywhere if you trained yourself to see them. That programming never left.\nHis first big dream was the FBI. He studied accounting on an FBI agent friend's advice, hated every minute of it, scraped through a degree, then discovered that corrective eye surgery he had gotten to improve his vision had quietly disqualified him from federal service before he ever applied. Devastated. No plan. A college town in Utah. A friend who jokingly asked if he wanted to go to Japan to help set up a bungee tower. Bart said yes without knowing what he was agreeing to. Three months later he was pushing little Japanese people off an eight-story tower for a living and loving every second of it.\nWhat followed was a life built entirely on saying yes to things he did not know how to do, figuring it out, and then asking the same question he asks about everything: how can I monetize this? Bungee towers led to sky coasters led to freefall rides led to building a custom coaster in Japan. A Japanese big rig driver friend led to twenty-nine years of importing camping trailers and Ford diesel trucks into Japan, still running today. Nine hundred and eleven wiped out several hundred thousand dollars, so he bought a truck he could not afford, drove to Indiana, and came home with a contract pulling trailers nationwide. His wife's cancer scare in Japan eight nights of not knowing the results taught him he needed multiple income streams before life needed them. An eight thousand dollar dog training course to handle a ninety-pound Rottweiler turned into almost a hundred thousand dollars in his first...","thumbnail_url":"https://img.transistorcdn.com/bvg3em96AOxVPLqwVao5_m5h-Qdbm8H6_VrYU8WT40M/rs:fill:0:0:1/w:400/h:400/q:60/mb:500000/aHR0cHM6Ly9pbWct/dXBsb2FkLXByb2R1/Y3Rpb24udHJhbnNp/c3Rvci5mbS8yZGQ2/MDBlNjNiYWJmZTM5/NjczNjA3OTA5OGJk/YjFhZi5wbmc.webp","thumbnail_width":300,"thumbnail_height":300}