Why Companies Fail: Lessons in Grit from NoBaked’s Jimmy Feeman

In this episode, Adam Callinan and Jimmy Feman dive into the realities of entrepreneurship, grind culture, and the challenge of finding true balance in life. They share candid stories about personal projects, the ups and downs of working with a spouse, and how cultural perspectives shape the way we approach work and success. The discussion explores freedom versus wealth, the shifting landscape of direct-to-consumer strategies, and why embracing physical challenges can fuel mental resilience. Through real experiences and lessons learned, Adam and Jimmy emphasize the power of small wins, the need for systems that support sustainable growth, and the mindset shifts that keep founders moving forward.

Chapters

00:00 The Importance of Grit in Business
09:18 Navigating Competition and Staying Focused
12:23 Building Resilience and Overcoming Adversity
15:05 Finding Joy in Daily Habits
18:09 Work-Life Balance in Entrepreneurial Partnerships
21:07 The Dangers of Grind Culture
30:37 The Impact of Lifestyle Choices
36:46 Redefining Success and Freedom
42:27 Navigating Entrepreneurship Challenges
54:18 Building Resilience Through Physical Challenges
01:05:30 PodClose.mp4

https://nobakedcookiedough.com
https://pentane.com

Creators and Guests

Host

Adam Callinan

Adam Callinan is the founder of Pentane, a financial and advertising command center that empowers brands to drive predictable revenue and intentional profit. Previously, Adam co-founded BottleKeeper, a bootstrapped consumer brand that scaled to $8M in sales within three years – without employees – and was later acquired in 2021 as an eight-figure business with a team of four, marking Adam's second successful exit.

What is Growth Mavericks?

This podcast dives deep into the tactical moves that drive business success, as well as the mental and physical resilience required to sustain it.

Hosted by Adam Callinan, a seasoned entrepreneur with multiple exits, an avid outdoorsman, and an family man with crystal-clear priorities, each episode unpacks real-world challenges, actionable insights, and the mental and physical disciplines that fuel long-term personal and professional growth.

Whether you’re scaling a startup or refining your mindset, disrupting your default is how business and life strike a balance.

Adam Callinan (00:56)
Conversation today is with Jimmy Femen from No Baked. Jimmy just moved here to Montana recently and we got connected and hit it off so you'll hear some friendly banter from friends in the episode. I will warn you that we spent the first seven and a half minutes talking about car stuff. I bought a 1994 Land Rover Defender 110 pickup recently that I've been doing some things to and adding some of my...

and love to get it ready for a Montana winner. I left that in there, frankly, because for some reason, some of my best performing content on LinkedIn and the other socials revolves entirely not around business things, but around the things that we do in life in Montana, which includes that truck. So I left it in. If you don't want to hear about it, skip the first seven and a half minutes. After that, we get into talking about why companies quit.

why founders of companies quit and businesses die. We spent a lot of time talking about the sort of American grind mindset that is part of the reason the United States is as successful as it is, is because of that grind culture. But at the same time, there is, like all things, a healthy balance of accomplishment.

versus that grind. And we do spend some time talking through that in based on a post seated that went viral on LinkedIn talking about a French lifestyle. So we also spend a fair bit of time talking about something that is near and dear to me as of late, which is working with your spouse, something that I have never done within a business that I've ever owned or been a part of, but I'm now starting to do. And Jimmy and his wife, Megan started Nobaked.

And he has some really good insight on how to navigate that world that is a new thing for me that I do know a lot of people deal with.

So I hope you enjoy this conversation with Jimmy Femen.

Adam Callinan (02:48)
The car, yeah, the cars is good. got all the suspension replaced in my garage, which was a hell of a process. If you intend to ever do car stuff and don't have an impact drill, spend 150 bucks and buy an impact drill. is a game changing piece of equipment for taking apart, particularly on old rusty 30 year old things. But yeah, it's, it's completely.

Jimmy Feeman (02:47)
I agree.

Adam Callinan (03:14)
Now functional, I had to redo the brake lines in the back. I to, blew up the fuel pump doing a, which is good because it means it was weak and I want to know that it's weak and it like blew up on my street at 75 degrees, you know, in August. So I got to redo the fuel, replace the fuel pump, which was a massive pain in the ass. Um, but it's like road safe now, which is good.

Jimmy Feeman (03:36)
That is good. Yeah. I mean, that's, dude, that's always the thing that happens with old cars. think we mean you texted back and forth about it, but like there's weird stuff that you don't expect to go bad. Um, I bought this like mint condition Range Rover in 2020 because I was like, I'll buy this car. It's cash. It's like a 2000 it's, but it's not going to break. This old guy had it in his garage and it only has a hundred thousand miles on it. That's pretty crazy for a 20 year old car. Everything broke on that car except the things that matter.

But everything matters. It's like coolant lines, fuel lines, anything that really was made of rubber, ⁓ it all broke. Everything else, the engine, the transmission, the suspension, everything was great. Just not that.

Adam Callinan (04:09)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah, I'm trying to put I drove a lot this weekend. I was out at a

It was kind of an entrepreneur thing that turned into a taking a bunch of guys from out of town out elk hunting at 530 in the morning thing. They brought a camera crew, which I had never done before. I mean, I see the footage will be epic because I called in two bulls up this hill and they were, you know, they were like bugling in the background and we got within like 35 yards of one of the two bulls. I didn't actually see it. It was in really thick cover, but one of the other guys said, ⁓ but I drove that truck.

like 40 miles on the highway out there way up into the mountains. And it's like that kind of stress. It's all just stress testing it. Just like pushing the things. I want to break one of the guys like open the door and the door handle broke off. It's like, I want to break that. I want to break that stuff now while it's 65 degrees and lovely outside so that it doesn't break when it's negative 10 and nighttime and snowing.

Jimmy Feeman (05:14)
Yeah,

I wanted to ask you this, is it a diesel? So what's the, yeah, what's the plan for winter with that?

Adam Callinan (05:18)
Yeah, so that comes with all sorts of other stuff. I know.

I mean, I'm driving it. And I mean, it'll like we have another car. So like, yeah, when it's it'll stay in the garage and, know, when it's ridiculous, like I have another car. It's not a big deal. ⁓ But but I'm spending a lot of time right now in the combination of of pressure testing and like literally let's talk about this. This all of this shit applies exactly to entrepreneurship and building companies. Right. So it's like I'm pressure testing all the things to break the things that are weak.

Jimmy Feeman (05:26)
Drive in. Keep it warm.

Yeah.

Adam Callinan (05:54)
so that I can fix and replace them before it's winter time, before like it actually matters and becomes a potentially dangerous situation. I mean, we've talked about that before, like people die in Montana, not from bears and mooses and mountain lions. They die from the cold. They die from getting into situations where the weather shifts quickly and they're not prepared for it and they get stuck. That's how you die in Montana. So I'm literally, I'm starting one of the many projects today. I have to replace

all of the liquids in the entire car with lower temperature rated liquids. So I have to replace all the differential fluids, the gaskets, they're all kind of drippy, drippy and droopy because they've probably never been, I mean, I'm sure they have it's 35 year old truck, but it's all dripping. So replace all the gaskets in the differentials, replace all the oils to a low, like a 30 negative 30 degree rated oils, replace the gearbox oil,

and that that's just like the minimum stuff I need to pull apart the entire inside of the car like pull out all the carpets the roofing panel all the seats because I don't think any of it I know there's like one strip in the back seat on the floor where the floor is insulated But I don't think any of the rest of it is and they don't come insulated like you have to add the insulation So I think it's I think it's all just like bare steel with you know, like a piece of felt on top of it

Jimmy Feeman (07:05)
Yeah.

Adam Callinan (07:12)
So they're just a lot. Replace all the glow plugs in the motor. I there's some aftermarket systems you can do to keep it warm. Wobasto is this company that makes a heating system that you build into the engine that pulls fuel. So it actually runs on diesel. So you can like, you do? Sweet.

Jimmy Feeman (07:14)
Yeah, there's a lot there.

Yeah, I actually have one of those. have one of those in all in

our schoolie and then all the vans I've been building. Like we I use Webasto. Well, they're they're just better. It's a more reliable system than you can go on Amazon and buy like the knockoff from China. But I hear bad things and I don't.

Adam Callinan (07:43)
Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. I have strong opinions on knockoffs from China after my bottle keeper days. But but there's also like, yeah, so you save, you you save 500 bucks and then you die in the wilderness because the truck won't start and that thing doesn't work. It's like a problem. It's a problem.

Jimmy Feeman (07:50)
Yeah, I'm sure. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah,

that there's either that or like, you know, it catches on fire or you literally it's a heater. It's a heater that's connected to your fuel tank. So it's like, let's not buy the cheap one. That would be a bad idea.

Adam Callinan (08:06)
Yeah, or that.

Jimmy Feeman (08:14)
So ⁓ I invited myself on this podcast, if anyone's wondering, because Adam was down the street from me and my friend went on and I was like, Hey, Adam, you should have me on your podcast. So you told me, Adam, what are we supposed to talk about?

Adam Callinan (08:15)
Stop.

Hahaha!

No, it's a great,

it's a great fit. we talk part about entrepreneurship and part about all the hard things that we do. And you do to become comfortable being uncomfortable, which is a wildly important part of being able to survive entrepreneurship. Cause like company companies fail when people quit. So how do we keep you from quitting?

Jimmy Feeman (08:35)
Good.

It is. I agree with that.

Adam Callinan (08:49)
to get to that inflection point. That's the thesis.

Jimmy Feeman (08:50)
Yeah,

they do. saw this post, probably like five years ago, and it made a really big impact on me at the time, which is that companies commit suicide. They do not get murdered. Like they don't, they don't, they don't get like taken out. Like nobody's coming for you. Really the things that are coming from you come from the inside, which is pretty crazy. And if it's, you know, a solopreneur or a small team, it's literally like one person not having it anymore.

Adam Callinan (09:09)
Mm-hmm.

Jimmy Feeman (09:18)
and not having like, I guess, either the grit or whatever you'd want to define it as to keep going, it ruins everything. Which is crazy because it's like, I think people tell themselves when they get started. And then also when you have fears when you get started, Megan and I started an edible cookie dough company when it was popular to do that. And I think that there were a lot of other people that like fast followed us, copied us, know, did a bunch of stuff that was essentially copying.

You probably had a similar experience with Bottlekeeper. Like you said, the Chinese knockoffs, things like that. And there was this company that opened across the street from one of our scoop shops, or at least we thought they were going to open across the street. And then they ended up doing it at different locations. Same town though. And ⁓ I remember how, like not annoyed we were, but how like afraid. And it was a very strange thing. So we were 18 months into doing this. very young. And...

You have this moment where you've convinced yourself like they're going to steal my business. Like they're going to be the reason that we don't do well. When really the reason you don't do well would just be you. And at the end of the day, they ended up failing for probably a number of reasons. And then we ended up driving, but it was like that had nothing to do with us. We didn't take them out. We didn't steal their customers. We didn't do anything that probably impacted them in that big of a way. And they probably also did not impact us that larger way. was just.

you guys are running the same race, like on a track, you're not gonna throw rocks at the other runner. That would be psychotic. But yeah, what you said reminded me of that, because it's true. It's like you only go until you can keep going. You'll be the one that quits.

Adam Callinan (10:51)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah, I think, you know, there are so many opportunities in a startup and maybe what I'm about to say is more relevant in the earlier stages, but I mean, the earlier stage can last a decade. So let's be clear about that. Where having blinders on is so valuable. Like I get, you know, I hear this in Pentain and we're a couple of years into it. It's like, you know, what if what if XYZ company does L like I don't fucking care.

don't give a shit. Like, great. I hope they do that. I hope they help more companies by doing some of the things that we're doing. That is the point. Like the pie is big. We really need to like spend all our time worrying about how we're going to defend this massive, our piece of this massive pie. Like when you become public, I guess that becomes a problem because you have to, you have to increase your stuff every quarter or there are issues, but that's not where we're at.

Jimmy Feeman (11:55)
No, for a private company, think so much of the time. And I've heard a lot of people talking about this recently, and I am I recently jumped on board with it. It's why I'm in Bozeman. But there is a there's a good thing to staying small and there are good things to staying like in your lane. And having like a small piece of a very large pie is actually pretty awesome if you're an individual person. So like, of course, like meta has to focus on like.

quarter-over-quarter revenue growth, but you Adam do not have to focus on that like if you'd like to stay in the same spot for the rest of time you could and it would be fine and Also to your point about like I hope they do that. It's like yeah, and I hope they validate what you're doing. That's awesome

Adam Callinan (12:39)
Yeah, it's like, it's effectively like free press. I yeah, I've just never, I've never really understood that. Stay in your lane, stay focused, just do good. Do good shit and you'll be all right. Again, as long as you can stay in the game for as long as possible. Cause there are times, you know, they go like this. A lot of the time you're down here and that, that hard stuff, those uncomfortable places, you know, are where things fall apart or where people implode and, and give up.

Jimmy Feeman (12:43)
Yeah.

They are. And like, if you're giving advice to like younger entrepreneurs or people that are getting started that have not necessarily done the thing before, like they've been working a nine to five job or whatever it was prior. ⁓ I find that so often, like the best advice is just like simple skills or habits to like get out of the funk that inevitably happens when you are down here. ⁓ I've been asking people that question on my own podcast, cause it's interesting. It's like everybody has their own like little thing, but

Adam Callinan (13:32)
What are-

Jimmy Feeman (13:38)
You know how this feels. could have like objectively your life can be amazing. And like if you told someone 50 years ago, like what you do every day, they'd be like, wow, your life is amazing, but you have a bad day and like letting that bad day ruin the rest of your stuff is not good. And eventually it will become a disease that kills the whole thing. So yeah, it's like you have to have like little habits that get you out of that funk.

Adam Callinan (14:04)
Let's go tactical for you personally, plus what you hear when you ask other people that question that you find particularly interesting. What are some of those things?

Jimmy Feeman (14:15)
The so I had this happen for the first time during right before the pandemic. So it wasn't during COVID. Megan and I started the company in 2017. I had two years of what I would call too much success. I say that like not we were not making like millions of dollars. So that's that's back up. But for a 23 year old kid that didn't come from much like I was making a lot of money that I did not necessarily know to do with.

everything became really, really easy, especially when you didn't build a lifestyle based on that. So you make like multiples more than you spend. ⁓ You put yourself in a mindset of nothing can go wrong very quickly. And it's a bad mindset to get into in early days. And you'd mentioned before, like the startup usually lasts a long time. For us, it lasted a very short period of time. And then the scale happened very quickly, which is not great.

⁓ I don't think for young or inexperienced people that are surrounded by what I would call like not the greatest human beings is what happened to me and Megan. But the first time I faced adversity was at the tail end of that. We had borrowed a lot of money to open a lot of stores. ⁓ We had paused franchising for a moment, but we had a bunch of new franchisees come out and board. And it was like December, January of 2019, 2020. And

At the time I was doing a lot of meetings with our current franchisees because people sales, same store sales were down. It was the winter. ⁓ They had just opened their stores the year before. We had, we'd gone from one to almost 10 stores in less than two years. ⁓ And we were out guns. And I started to get into a funk simply based on the fact that I was like, I, for the first time ever I'm facing adversity and I feel like a failure.

And like, that was a weird feeling for me because I had started building up in my head. Like no baked success is my success. am no baked at the time when I was 25 and this had all happened. I wasn't working out anymore. I didn't have anything outside of work that I did. No hobbies and zero hobbies. It's not work out. I did not do anything. Nothing. I, my hobbies were drinking and partying and spending the money that I was making, but most of the time I spent working. And so.

I had that first moment in experience and it was very difficult for me to get through and what I realized about like one or two months into it, best way to get out of this is I'm gonna like get out of the house, start meeting new people. I realized I had no mentors in my life. And this isn't as tactical as it could be, but the tactical part of it for me was I was gonna try to meet a new entrepreneur every day. ⁓ I've done something like that recently. I've done it many more other times in my life. Usually when I'm trying to figure things out, I find that making more connections actually helps.

Adam Callinan (16:51)
.

Jimmy Feeman (16:58)
A lot of people look at it as a waste of time, but it's how I met you. It's how I met a lot of people in a new period of Bozeman. That period of time in my life in Nashville, I was just like, Hey, I don't know anyone who else is in my shoes. Literally. Like I know some other people who are giving me advice, but they're never been in my shoes. And maybe I should try to find someone who's been in my place before. That really helped to me. I met a lot of really great people. Those people ironically helped us do what we did with the company in 2020 and 2021 and pivot to direct to consumer.

Adam Callinan (17:09)
Thanks.

Jimmy Feeman (17:28)
Um, it was all very ironic and you know, you could say that like things happen for a reason, but that helped a lot for me, um, because I'm a social person. The other thing that helped is I had a mantra and I continued that from that winter of 2020 literally till today, which is that every day I will do something that I enjoy doing every day. Um, I think people take that. I had this argument, I remember with Megan at the time where she was like, well, that costs money. And I was like, no, it doesn't. It does not have to cost money.

Adam Callinan (17:33)
Yeah.

Jimmy Feeman (17:56)
Um, yes, most people's hobbies cost money, but my hobby could just be like, I'm going to go for a run or I'm going go for a walk in the park. I'm going to walk my dog in the park outside of the city because I like being outside. That's free. I mean, yeah, I've had gas to get there, I guess. But like, the point is like, you can find a little tiny thing, a piece. Maybe you like to cook. Maybe you like to, I don't know, just hang out with your friends and talk. Maybe you like to play board games. Maybe like new puzzles. These things are like pretty low cost.

Adam Callinan (18:07)
Thanks.

Jimmy Feeman (18:26)
You have to find something in your life like that, that no matter what is happening around you, no matter if it's one of those days where your bank accounts at like negative $15,000 and the AR hasn't come in yet and you have to make payroll, like you can still just do that one thing. And like that has nothing to do with work. has nothing to do with being an entrepreneur. It has everything to do with being a human. You are going to die. Therefore, why would you spend one day not doing just a little thing that you like doing? And that's actually become a lot more helpful when I had kids. ⁓

Adam Callinan (18:52)
you

Jimmy Feeman (18:55)
Because as you know, like kids take up a lot of time. ⁓ And they're a lot of work. And I think that you like, I constantly hear people say like, I lost myself and my children and I stopped doing things I enjoyed doing. And it's like, well, you didn't have to be like an absent father to do things that you liked to do. You and I actually had a conversation about this, like just pick something and you do that thing for yourself, but like don't spend too much time on it, but spend some time on

Adam Callinan (19:09)
Thanks

you

Jimmy Feeman (19:25)
⁓ for you, think it's hunting for me, mostly like working out. ⁓ I like to run a lot. ⁓ and yeah, you have to have like a thing like that. That's a habit, especially a daily habit that like sits with you. I remember that winter, the, this is the silliest thing in the world. But the thing for me was I would sit in the hot tub at our apartment at night and, ⁓ do the books because I found it to be relaxing. So that is kind of related to the business, but like, I found it to be like fun.

⁓ it's not fun. No one, no one should be that insane. but yeah, you have to have little things that are, you're doing for yourself, not for other people.

Adam Callinan (19:57)
Yeah.

Yeah, I mean, I completely and totally agree. Whatever the hell that is for you. Find, find little ways to just get little tiny wins and those little tiny wins like add up and they feel amazing and they, they don't have to, I agree. Like don't have to cost anything. Just get outside, go, go look at a bird, go literally hug a tree. And I mean that literally like go hug a fucking tree. It actually feels nice. It's weird. It's this weird thing.

Jimmy Feeman (20:12)
Yeah.

might

try that later. That's not actually sounds nice as you're saying it. I yeah, now that you're saying like little wins, it's like, yes, you go out, you find those little wins, you stack them, and you get to change the game. Because like, life doesn't have set rules. I mean, our culture tends to direct us in one direction or another of like, the rules for you are like success for you may look a certain way because of your family, their expectations, the background that you live in. But

Success can look however you'd like it to look and tiny teeny win successes can look however you want them to look and if you gain a fire life you can stack those wins and that does feel pretty great.

Adam Callinan (21:07)
Yeah. And they, you know what I found? I don't remember where I read this. I had a really difficult year in 2000 and 16 going into 17. And it was similar to what you're talking about. Like we had so much success at bottle keeper so quickly. were literally printing money. We had no investors. We had no employees. My wife and I were out of the country for four or five, six months of the year screwing off in Africa and Europe and Asia. was like, we were

on for all intents and purposes. Like we did it like we won. And I found we were in. ⁓ We were in Italy after being in Austria or I'm sorry, in Switzerland for Christmas, we were in Italy for New Year's with friends and I was a freaking disaster like we had just crushed. We did five, four or five million dollars in revenue in December with no employees. We had crushed and I was so depressed and an absolute disaster. And it was like that was my rock bottom in this epic place.

doing fun things with friends. So I had to make a bunch of changes. And I remember reading somewhere that one of the ways to get that really, really quick when that's free is literally to just go do something nice for somebody else, for nothing that you don't know, that you expect nothing in return. It can be really, really simple, ridiculous things like holding doors open for people, like really simple things. And it's amazing how much, how good that feels and how much it can really positively impact your mental, like fast.

like immediately. It's pretty incredible.

Jimmy Feeman (22:36)
Yeah, I actually agree with that. Um, and it's not something that I've ever like read. It's only something I experienced and never thought about actually until you just said it, but it's true. Like one of the things for me that makes me, uh, I don't know, just have a good day, a good time is if I'm able to like do anything at all for someone who else is like in a, I guess a different part of their entrepreneurial journey, especially people that are getting started. Um,

Megan and I have like worked a lot with the entrepreneurship program at our university that we went to. And Megan's an entrepreneur in residence there now, which is interesting. She has to fly back to Nashville to do it, but it makes us no money. Like really, it just does not. Like we don't get paid. There's not great. mean, Belmont pays her a little bit of money, but like it's not worth it. She literally just does it she likes it. And I end up going and helping out.

for free. And I'm just like, I actually just really enjoyed this. I enjoy seeing people at the beginning of their journey who are actually taking action. And you can like tell them something that's like, hey, like maybe you should try this like thing. And they'll come back to you like a month later. And they're like, I tried the thing and it's actually working. And you're like, wow, cool. Like, I did something that like actually made someone's life better. That's that's pretty great. ⁓ It's not often that you actually get to do that.

And like you said, it's probably like even small things like opening the door for somebody, just being a polite person in general, everyday life, being kind, because that's free. ⁓ Yeah, things feel pretty great.

Adam Callinan (24:13)
Yeah. How this is, I'm to go selfish here for a minute. How do you and Megan, and I know you've made some changes recently and we can talk about that, but like, how do you structure working together? And I will caveat that selfish question with in Pentane, our kids are now fully in school. So my wife, Katie is now has a lot of extra time that she has, hasn't had in a very long time. And so she's starting to help.

Jimmy Feeman (24:18)
Do it. ⁓

Adam Callinan (24:42)
me because I have plenty of stuff I need help with and it's and it's we're only two weeks into it and it is extremely helpful but I do fear like the longer term we live in the same house my office is out of the house where like work just becomes and things around pentane and whatever social media all these things like just become part of our all the time discourse when when I leave my office I expect to not have to talk about those things it's like how have you guys structured that for I you've been doing it for a while

Jimmy Feeman (25:11)
The thing you said at the end is actually the, I think the most important. And I read this originally in a James Clears atomic habits, which is that like you can like, your brain is really good at geo locating, which is why they tell people not to work at home. But if they do work at home, don't work on the couch or don't get on your laptop in bed because that's psychotic. Anyone listening to this, don't do, don't do that.

Adam Callinan (25:32)
Yeah. Yeah, it's a

terrible idea.

Jimmy Feeman (25:36)
You'll have sleep like I did last night. And I have a six month old who is sick for the first time in her entire life, which feels like a sniffling nose, but she didn't sleep all night. and to answer your question, what we've done recently and what we've had to learn to do is to geolocate work away from the places where we do not want it to be. ⁓ Megan has a lot more experience with that than I do, ⁓ because your parents

Adam Callinan (25:46)
Yeah.

Jimmy Feeman (26:04)
owned a business together for a whole entire life growing up. And I would say it didn't work out in the same exact way that it worked for me and Megan. Our parents are still together. I don't know how. Just throw that out there. And it happens to a lot of people. It's probably why you're asking me this question. It becomes all about work. Work wasn't the passion. And then that's the problem. So that's kind of the other solution that Megan and I found is like, I have always been that guy.

that I didn't work in the corporate world for very long. So it was kind of silly for me to say, because we don't know if I would have always been this way. But when I was younger, I would talk about my dumb job with my friends. I liked my job. I always liked the jobs that I had. I was very passionate about them. I like to hop into things. I also ended up becoming an entrepreneur because I became very frustrated with my jobs because they didn't give me enough control. And I think control is like an important like piece there.

The way that that relates back to like working with your spouse is you just have to figure out like what kind of person are they. ⁓ So like if you're the kind of person Adam, where you want to leave work in your office, like a specific space in your house, then you guys just have to both be that way to communicate it. And then you have to just like do it together and work to not, it's like anything else in like life or marriage or whatever, they just work to not talk about it outside of that space. Megan and I have gotten very good at it. ⁓ I think a lot of other couples are not good at it.

And then the second piece, this is kind of like, this is an ongoing process. I am very passionate to work. Like I mentioned before, so I do end up talking about it all the time. ⁓ The thing I've told Megan is it could be something unrelated to you and I'd still be talking about it all the time. So you kind of like, when you, when you got me, which she got me before Nobate, ⁓ I was like, you knew what you were buying. I'm that guy. Like I talk about work, it's fun.

Adam Callinan (27:33)
you

Jimmy Feeman (28:01)
I like, enjoy it. That's, that's what I enjoy doing. Like I said, with my, think we all go through like a toxic period in our lives. And like my toxic period was like, I love a couple things in life a lot. I love working and I love alcohol and I liked to party. So like when I was 25 and 24, those were my favorite things to do. Um, and even before that, so like, it was just easier than said money. So like, think

Sometimes people fall into like their toxic habits and like those were mine. Um, now they no longer are. Um, I mean, you, I actually, yeah, we had dinner the other night, uh, at that barbecue place here in Bozeman. And it's like, drink an athletic brewing. I, I avoid alcohol now, um, on purpose and I still drink just so everyone knows. I'm not an alcoholic, but like, I know that like, I shouldn't be doing that all the time. Similar that I know I shouldn't be talking about work all the time. Not everybody likes that.

The kids don't want to talk about no baked with me. They don't want to talk about investing in companies. That's not their favorite. They want to talk about whatever they're interested in. So really part of that's just becoming like a better person. And I mean, you kind of already have the tools to do that, but that's those are the cautionary tales. I think is you see people talk about it too much. Like you already said, or you see them like not geolocated at all. And then even people who are single and they're running your company by themselves.

You see them get really depressed and like really really exhausted really fast I don't know if you have any friends that have like They're that guy that like they would work from anywhere like on their phone laptop like in their bed. It messes with your brain

Adam Callinan (29:31)
Yeah.

Yeah, I mean, there's a, there are unfortunately a, an incredible number of people like that. And I, know, and I, I saw this recently, ⁓ from a friend, actually a Bozeman friend who was, he basically, he's a VC and he shit posts about other VCs that do ridiculous things. And it was a post from, you know, from like Y Combinator or something ridiculous like that, where some 22 year old

kid was quoted in an article as saying that they're living this 996 culture. It's the new grind culture where they work from nine to nine six days a week. All they do is eat meat and steak and eggs and lift heavy and that's it. And it's like you guys are fucked. That's awesome. That's all we need is a bunch of people that are super miserable and maybe wealthy, but probably not like that sounds awful.

Jimmy Feeman (30:33)
Yeah, I mean, you might be healthy.

I mean, maybe you'll be healthy. They probably won't. You're not going outside. You're not going outside. That's not good.

Adam Callinan (30:37)
Like, no. Yeah.

Yeah. So let's let's segue that to you had in the last couple of weeks, you had a LinkedIn post that I'm going to read that went a little bit nuts. Yeah, I think you just muted, but yeah, it was basically you quoted another another post, and this was effectively like half of why you took a break. But the post was.

Jimmy Feeman (30:54)
Yes, I did.

Adam Callinan (31:04)
There's an American making $400,000 a year. And the quote is, I grind for 30 years and make enough money, I can retire and spend my afternoon sipping espressos on the Mediterranean. And then the next piece of that is French guy living on $23,000 a year in benefits. And the quote is, I should get some coffee this afternoon. Maybe I'll walk around the beach. Now this resonates with me wildly because I've spent a lot of time in these places and the lifestyle and culture are just fantastic. Why?

Did this resonate with you given where you are in life right now?

Jimmy Feeman (31:36)
So here's why it resonated with me. And then I'll say why I think it resonated with the public based on the comments. It resonated with me and I posted it. I've tried since the beginning of the summer, really since March when I made a lot of decisions around like stepping away from nobakes, turning it into something that worked for me. Rather than me working for it, it became clear that like in order to get an exit, I would have to do things that I didn't want to do. And that

then I just, I I kind of re-engineered the problem. And so the reason I liked it is also like you, I've been to those places in real life. I have seen the way people live. I've seen the way that they treat their family, their friends. ⁓ Megan studied abroad in Italy. She's also experienced it more than I have. ⁓

I think people will look at Europe and they're like, well, you guys don't create shareholder value. That's true. ⁓ The trillion dollar, the trillion dollar market cap companies are all based in the United States. I think one of them, I think LVMH maybe passed a trillion and that would be the only one in Europe. ⁓ So you look at these two places and you're like, okay, so you guys aren't creating shareholder value. I would say the tax system probably has a little bit to do with that, but also like.

Adam Callinan (32:31)
100%. Yeah.

Jimmy Feeman (32:52)
They're creating a social safety net so that people can live a life that they would like. The way that they're living, unfortunately, will probably be the way, and this is why it resonates with me a little bit. And then there's a bigger reason. That's the way that people will have to live post AI, most people. You can choose to keep grinding and you can choose to do your thing, but we should focus as a society on making it really great to live a normal life. And what does that look like post AI? Maybe you work two days a week. Maybe that's the standard work week. You work two days.

You're going make normal amount of money. You're not going to make a lot of money. You're have free healthcare. You're to have like some things that make sure that you're okay. And if you choose, because this is America, you choose to continue to apply yourself, you'll probably become wildly wealthy. But if you don't and you just want to raise your kids and enjoy yourself, the cost of living should probably be lower because AI should be deflationary. And I believe that like the automation that comes with it should be extremely deflationary. I mean,

There's no reason people are people already waste so much time at work that it's like, you really working 40 hours? Don't lie to me. Every entrepreneur I know is working more than 40 hours, but like you go into an office, like, what are you, what are you doing? And I know that and they know that that leads us with a lot of questions as a society. The second reason it resonated with me is personally, I stepped away from nobakes because I realized like I can have what I want now.

Adam Callinan (33:57)
Yeah,

Jimmy Feeman (34:19)
So I don't need to have an exit. So the exit is very similar to the person that works a very, long time, grinds away. They sell the company, they have tons of money. There's nothing wrong with exiting. ⁓ Just to be clear, this is not a bad thing to sell your company. What's a bad thing is you saying, I know the roadmap, which is where I was at in March of I need to borrow a little bit more money. We need to run this comand business. We need to get a lot bigger. We need to show positive EBITDA at a certain level. So PE acquires us. ⁓

And that's going to take a certain amount of time and a lot of energy. And I'm not passionate about it. I do not like it. What I'm passionate about is money. Why am I passionate about money? Because I like freedom. Freedom sounds good to me. It sounded good to me since I was 16 and I got to get my driver's license. It was my like creme de la creme, like the thing that I was going after when I was 16. And then it became something else. And then at the end of the day, when I was around 20 years old, I realized I did an epiphany that money equaled freedom.

if it was applied in the right way, money is a tool. So if you say you like money, you're kind of a crazy person unless you define what that means for you. Yeah. And for me, it meant freedom. like, I don't want to have to work. And then I realized, wait, if I re jigger some things at Nobate and we stop working so hard, ⁓ maybe you don't have to work. Or maybe I just have to work a little bit. And maybe I'm happier with that. ⁓ Ironically, like,

Adam Callinan (35:23)
Yeah, you need context.

Jimmy Feeman (35:46)
Here toward the end of the summer, I'm starting to work a little bit more on some other projects that I am interested in. like the fascinating thing was I realized I could be like the French person. I had already acquired that. I had acquired it years ago and I could have kept it. ⁓ Ironically, I just kept trying to grow. A lot of the reason that I now have to like work a little harder and like we don't have as good of a lifestyle is it's like we tried to grow. There's a lot more debt on the books. There's a lot more problems. There's a lot more complications.

because I tried really, really hard, like pushed the gas pedal. ⁓ I'm waking up to this and I'm 31 and like, you know, obviously we've been doing this for almost nine years. It was a nine year journey that had to happen and I had to learn that lesson in real time. I think I can pass that lesson on to some other people. That's why it resonated with me though, because in my own life, like I can, I can choose to be either of those people right now today. Today I'm choosing to be the French dude. It's great with me. I don't make as much money.

⁓ you know, I won't like go throw out the number, but it's like, it's not $23,000. I like, I don't make as much money, but at the same time, like all my bills are paid. I, if I chose to could go on a hike today for the next three days and not come home and nothing would happen. It would be fine. ⁓ it's a very similar to what happened to Tim Ferris and his book. Like when he wrote the four hour work week, I know he had a similar experience where he was like, and I'd read the four hour working. This is the crazy part. I had seen it before.

that like I could do the thing and I didn't want to do it because I didn't want to feel like a failure, but that's cultural. And that is the strangest part. I think I may have referenced it further down in the post, but like we were kind of wired to be like, need more. Like I want a McLaren, like saw one downtown Bozeman the other day and I was like, ah, moved here thinking they didn't have those here. Um, son of a bitch. Uh, yeah. So.

Adam Callinan (37:37)
That's a new thing. That's very new thing.

Jimmy Feeman (37:40)
Then I get in my head, like, I want to buy that car. Like how much more will I have to work to buy the car? And there's this great book called Die With Zero. It written by a hedge fund manager who lives down in Austin or Houston or somewhere down in Texas. He's a commodities trader. I don't remember his name. I'm sorry. I had a post about him at some point, but that's a great book. And the concept of the book is kind of like, hey, you just try to match up what you make with like how, what you will spend and therefore you will die with zero.

And that can include like, want to pass money on to my kids or whatever it might be. But like, you can actually re-engineer the numbers right now. You can say like, hey, I will spend over the course of my life, $121 million. So if I make $121 million and I am 35, I should stop working. Cause you're wasting your time if you keep working after that. You're getting zero value. Every hour of your life, you're either doing like work or play or something. And it's like, you want to be doing the thing you want to be doing.

So that resonated with me a lot and it's why I posted the post and then comment section, like why I think it resonates with the American public right now. It's like, I've had more posts like that. I was like, why don't I just keep down this thread and see what happens? And I posted them on threads. I posted them on X. I posted them on LinkedIn. They went viral everywhere. ⁓ People are feeling sick and tired of trying so hard, I think to aspire to a lifestyle that they may not want. ⁓

And I know you could speak to that even better than I could. yeah, money's not gonna make you happy. Like, that's not the end all be all. It's nice to have and it's definitely needed. ⁓ But it's matched with your lifestyle, it's matched with the things you wanna use it to get. ⁓ And we've created some issues here in the United States that make it a little harder now to say like you don't want it. Like a home now is very expensive no matter where you live. ⁓ Childcare is very expensive, so if you want kids, like you better...

Adam Callinan (39:27)
Yeah.

Jimmy Feeman (39:33)
pony up some money. ⁓ So those things are problems. But I think people have a desire to be the French person. And they're mad. And then I think I see this from a lot of later career people on LinkedIn, not as much like extra threads, because those were like mostly positive, or just people agreeing with me. On, on LinkedIn, there's an older crowd that did it. And I think they may regret it. And I'm not going to argue with them about it, because that's not my job. But the

I think the lesson is that you live on time and you can choose to do anything you want today. You do a new business, you could quit your job, can move to Fiji, you can leave your family, you can do whatever you want. No one's going to stop you. ⁓ I think people should live to their values and not to like some kind of like weird cultural background noise. Cause that's what I was doing in my twenties and it was built into me. It's again, it's like not, it's not my dad's fault.

that he was a hard worker. My dad at one point, my dad was a firefighter. He ended up doing very, very well later in his life. Made the right decisions financially. But like my dad bought a business one time. He went bankrupt while I was a kid. ⁓ We, and that was right before the recession. And then like we had two mortgages because like we wanted, they wanted to move to like a better school district. So we and my brother could go to a good school. And then the housing crisis happened and then he's left with two mortgages and car payments.

He's a firefighter. So like my dad at one point worked at three jobs, spent all of his time working and money became this thing where it was like, you need to have that like badly and you need to work your ass off to get it. ⁓ And then also culturally, I live in America. I lived in a very wealthy community. That's where my dad wanted to move and where we did move and other people's parents are very rich and the people around me were trying to go to good schools so they could be rich, I guess. And you start seeing the cycle.

Adam Callinan (41:20)
Thank

Jimmy Feeman (41:31)
of like, you guys are desperate to do this thing and it gets programmed into kids without them knowing it. I was one of those kids. ⁓ And I happen to be very good at like, achieving. If there's a thing that I want to do, I do it naturally. It's not like, it's not hard for me to work 100 hours a week in the name of a thing that I think I need to do. ⁓ So yeah, that's

Adam Callinan (41:32)
Yeah.

Jimmy Feeman (41:59)
That's like the thing that I think is kind of broken in America. And it's, it was been interesting moving to Bozeman, meeting people like yourself, who I think realized a lot of those problems ⁓ in your own time and place. And you realize like, Hey, I want to be able to like live the life I want to live and do the thing I want to do. And I think a lot of entrepreneurs resonate with that because a lot of us start our businesses with that in mind. Like I want to be my own boss. ⁓ They don't start it with, I want to become like,

worth $100 million or whatever it is. That's usually not the desire. least it's usually I want to solve a problem. want to be my own boss for the people that succeed.

Adam Callinan (42:27)
.

Yeah, the difficulty comes from moving down that path. And I think all early stage companies probably go through this. I certainly know that I have. And where you go down that path and you try really hard to not let this happen, but it naturally happens where suddenly you're just a slave to that thing. And there's always this big question of, you working on your business or in your business? Or I mean, you went and started the company and now you literally work

Jimmy Feeman (43:46)
Yeah, that's it.

Adam Callinan (43:49)
for the company. was having conversations this weekend at an entrepreneurship thing here in Bozeman with these early stage Ecoms and their stories are relatively consistent. all like, the business is doing a million dollars a year, which is awesome, but they're manually, personally shipping and fulfilling all the product. It's like, get it. I've been there, but you got to put systems and things in place to be able to separate yourself from that, or you were literally just a slave to that thing.

You're an employee of your own company.

Jimmy Feeman (44:20)
Yeah, you're just a contractor at that point. And I think that it may be even worse because sometimes you have employees and then you like, you gotta pay them. You gotta work because you're part of the machine. Yeah, it's a very, that's interesting. And it's a very tricky spot to be in. I hate giving advice to people on that spot because it is the scariest place to be in my mind as a founder.

Adam Callinan (44:29)
Yeah.

Jimmy Feeman (44:49)
I messed it up bad when I was a DDC founder, ⁓ like botched it hard. And I think a lot of other people do because there's so many things that can go wrong. Like I could not predict what will go wrong for those people, but it'll be something. And at the same time, everything you're saying is completely true. Like you have to build the systems for tomorrow today and you have to have the grit to persevere and continue to work really, really hard to make the dream happen today while the systems are getting built.

Adam Callinan (45:03)
Yeah.

Jimmy Feeman (45:19)
And then you have to make sure you stay profitable or you have to raise money. And you're not, I don't think raising money is a good idea for you to see a company anymore. I've seen too many bad stories for me to think that it's a good idea.

Adam Callinan (45:35)
Yeah. mean, it took a big turn in, you 22 after all the ZERP capital got deployed and things sort of imploded zero interest rate periods. But yeah, I mean, the way that I look, you know, I'm kind of the opposite. actually really enjoy talking to those early stage and helping those early stage operators because it's like, because again, I've been like you, I've been in that position. Like there was a time in Bottlekeeper that at the end of that year, that's when was like, I have to make some massive personal changes.

so that this thing is not so dependent on me. Cause we did $8 million that year and I was, it was just my cousin and I, like I was responsible for all of the customer service, all of the branding, all the paid media. Literally I was running $3 million in ad campaigns.

Jimmy Feeman (46:15)
Wait, were you guys shipping?

Were you guys shipping out of your garage or something?

Adam Callinan (46:20)
were shipping out of my cousin's warehouse. He had a different business and we literally flew our family into Phoenix. We had a order packing party where like we all came in for a week and just crushed pallets of product. My dad, my mom, my sister, my aunts, my uncles, we flew in like everybody we could find to Phoenix, Arizona to pack product. I mean, it's like, okay, there's a problem. I took a dry erase board after that, going into like January when we got back.

Jimmy Feeman (46:42)
Yeah, I mean.

Adam Callinan (46:49)
and wrote out all the things I was doing and just started circling things that I should not be doing customer service. Matt shouldn't be doing fulfillment. I shouldn't be personally managing $3 million in ad spend while I'm also trying to like CEO the company and develop new product and build up, know, optimize a website. but again, but to me, that's just recognizing where those problems are. They're all solvable, but you have to like stop.

recognize the impact those things are having on your business in order to figure out ways to go and solve them. And it's that realization that I think is one of the hard things for me. Again, I had to have like a relatively traumatic event for to get to the point where I was like, oh, shit, this is bad. This is really bad. I got to make some big changes.

Jimmy Feeman (47:31)
Yeah, I had a similar traumatic event that actually drove us to outsourcing everything. They're very, very similar. It was, I think August, really the whole summer of 2020, we were like two weeks behind shipping orders the whole time and we made the product as well as packed it. And I had like a store that had been like, we, kind of like shut the store down and turned it into like a packing facility. It was like 6,000 square feet. So it wasn't bad.

terrible retail store because you should not be paying for 6,000 square feet of prime real estate for a dessert shop that is, that's stupid. was the first shop, it was the first and only shop we ever lost money on. Yeah, we had that moment and then we had this week where I told everyone like, I'll give you a bonus if you can pack all the orders so you can get caught up.

Adam Callinan (48:06)
Ha

Jimmy Feeman (48:17)
And we had a team of like 30 people because you're making all this shit. We're hand scooping jars at them, which is psychotic. They still do that at graders, by the way. I don't know if you're familiar with that ice cream brands. This is Tangent. They hand scoop all of their ice cream pints. All of them. I don't know how or why. It's like the French pot method. I don't get it. I'll never understand it, but they do that. Yeah, so we we didn't get caught up that week.

Adam Callinan (48:30)
Yeah, totally.

Jimmy Feeman (48:47)
And everyone was really mad at me, like really angry. I gave them a bonus anyways. I was like, I can't, like, can't withhold this from you. They were, they were like, they were like 50 orders behind or something. They were very close. ⁓ But it was like that moment where I was like, we need to find a 3PL, we need to find a coat packer because this is not my jam. I was being really weird about it too, like.

It was like tracking the cost per order out in labor hours, which was pretty easy at that point. Cause then it was like tracking the labor costs for like creating the product, packing it, repacking it, putting it in the box, shipping it, sending it like to UPS. Um, it was actually very cheap too. It like at one point I had it down to like 3.80 at order, which is insane. Um, to like make the pro those like labor into the product and everything. Um, and the cost of goods on cookie dough is very low.

Adam Callinan (49:37)
Bye.

Jimmy Feeman (49:39)
⁓ But the thing that happened to me and why I say I don't like giving people advice at that point is I then had convinced myself that like we're going up into the right for the rest of time. This is a theme in my early life. And we just took all our extra cash and dumped into ads. All of it. Irresponsible move. I just, thought like it's a money printer. It'll go brrr. And then, and then what happened is we had zero dollars in the bank.

Adam Callinan (50:02)
Yeah, no, we did, we did that too. Yeah, we definitely went through that.

Jimmy Feeman (50:10)
Um, we have one bad week and we freak out. We were like, we can't pay any of our bills. Um, no one's getting paid. And then, uh, and then it would rectify and then it happened again. And then when it happened for the last time, ironically, I was in the middle of raising money. And so it didn't put us out of business, but it hit would have because that was, uh, April of 2021. And our ROAS went from like 4.1 to like 2.8.

in a month. then so then that formula broke down where I was like, dump all the money back into the ads. And we hadn't built any other channels. We have a great email list too. Like we had lots of other things we could have been doing. This is like I, I go down a rabbit hole on like the things I did wrong with DTC. Cause then I spent the next two years like hating on it because I was so angry publicly on LinkedIn everywhere else. Like DTC is trash. If you don't have a hundred dollar AOV, you can't do it.

which I still kind of agree with. ⁓ It's hard.

Adam Callinan (51:10)
Today it's different.

We operated at about a 60, but this was in the early days of paid media where you almost couldn't spend it fast enough.

Jimmy Feeman (51:17)
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, and what you experienced probably, yeah, because you guys were early, way earlier on than us. What you probably experienced back in those early days felt, that's kind of what we felt in the beginning of COVID. It's like, there was one month specifically where we did 13 acts on a campaign and I was like, what? I wish I spent more. What's happening? Where we get more money from? And then we got grant money and we spent that. But.

Adam Callinan (51:34)
Mm-hmm.

Jimmy Feeman (51:43)
Yeah, COVID was wild. D2C is an interesting game because you're right. for people like yourself, think, I haven't known you very long, but you feel like an optimization guy. That's just an optimization game. And if you can keep a really clear head and you're smart, ⁓ I think you can make almost any product business work. I mean, unless the product's trash. If the product is good and it has a market, I think you can make almost any business work.

Adam Callinan (51:57)
you

Thanks.

Thank

Jimmy Feeman (52:11)
⁓ especially now with tick tock shop, Amazon, your own native website, there's so many places to sell your thing and you only have to have a very small part of very big pie.

Adam Callinan (52:23)
Yeah.

Yeah, it is much harder today, particularly, and this is like the word of warning that I ended up giving you a lot of early stage brands building a revenue model today entirely on paid media is just treacherous. It's been a slippery slope for quite a long time and it will continue to be a slippery slope. So you have to think outside of that from a customer acquisition standpoint and the companies that I see that are early on that are doing really well have a really significant content strategy, a really significant organic reach strategy.

And then they use paid ads to sort of sprinkle fuel on the fire, which I think is a much safer way to build today.

Jimmy Feeman (53:02)
It's lot safer way to Even with what like me and Megan are building right now, ⁓ the other things I'm working on, like our goal now is like, how do we, how can we harness organic social to grow more organically? ⁓ Which is ironic because now I'm not like obsessed with that's grow, grow. Now it's like, if we grew just like a little bit, like it's pretty cool. Cause we're not, not putting that like fake pressure on. ⁓

as far as like the things to like give people like advice on like tactically it's like that that that i think is a huge one that more people should like adopt and apply to their life people put a lot of like self-imposed pressure on growth which is very strange ⁓ but i was one of those people for the last nine years not anymore

Adam Callinan (53:50)
Yeah, it's great. So shifting gears real quick. If we talk through, you know, it's obvious through this conversation that you have made some pretty significant lifestyle changes, you know, in order to endure these sweet ups and downs of entrepreneurship. ⁓ How do you look at, I mean, I know you, you've done some hard things like you did an Ironman, which is a fantastically difficult.

physical and mental challenge. How do you look at building hard things? I know you like to run. How do you look at building hard things into your life to sort of keep that discomfort with being uncomfortable?

Jimmy Feeman (54:32)
It's kind of strange for me. Again, this goes back to my childhood, but it is what it is. I don't view some of this stuff as hard. I have an internal voice that tells me it wasn't hard, consistently. I got done with my Iron Man and I was like, could have ran it faster. That's my immediate thought, internal dialogue. And that actually is true. I could have ran it a lot faster. I took advice from all the people.

like probably in your sphere, my sphere, people would do that. And they were like, pace yourself, like have a plan. I did all of those things and I planned way too much and I paced myself way too much. And I finished that race and I was like, let's go like drink some beers by the pool and like hang out. I felt great. It was a half. So it wasn't like, it wasn't hard at all. But that was the fastest half marathon I've ever ran in my entire life. What? Like that means I went way too soft on the bike. Like way too soft. Anyways. ⁓

⁓ I think the way I think about it now is like you should build those things into your life in such a way that you're feeling challenged, but also they should probably be outside of business and they should be a thing that you have control over. So I love to say entrepreneurship is hard. You know, entrepreneurship is hard. You cannot control this game. Entrepreneurship is a chaotic system. First of all, you're building a chaotic system within another chaotic system.

You cannot predict the future. You could do everything right and you could fail. ⁓ I don't find that to be hard. I find that to be frustrating. And so for me, I try to build and I know I'm very, very familiar with the concept of the misogi and I understand you're supposed to be able to fail. But the way that I look at it is it should also be something that you can like easily achieve in reality. Like it's not physically impossible.

I think building a company, first of all, the goalposts are constantly moving. Uh, anything outside of like physical challenge. It's like, is it like, what are we, what are we measuring? Like, what is the game? Like, is it really hard? It's kind of difficult. So for me, it's mostly just like physical stuff. So like Megan looked at me the other day and she was like, bet you can't. She was, I told her, I was like, I want to go to the peak of Baldy, like up the bridge or edge trail. And, uh, she was like,

that's going to take you all day. And I was like, no, it's not like it's not going take me all day. Megan. She's like, that's a really hard jail to me. ⁓ she's like, you are out of shape because I am objectively than I compared to what I was. And, ⁓ she was like, it's going to take you like four hours. And I was like, no, it's going to be three. And then it becomes like, can I get to the top of all the, and back at three hours or can I get faster than three hours? And so for me, that's mostly how I build those challenges into my life.

Adam Callinan (57:14)
You

Jimmy Feeman (57:24)
is it's just like things that I actually came up with that I think will be fun. But during the event, I find challenging yourself is like the most important thing to do because like, yeah, you can go up. There are, there are times to hike up the mountain, enjoy yourself. And then there are other times, like maybe once a month or twice a month to say like, I'm going to try to run as fast as I can. Similar to like running, like the way that that works is like, you should not run as fast as you can every single time you run, that would be crazy. You would probably hurt yourself. ⁓

It's very easy to get injured running, especially as you get older. ⁓ Or you're like me and you put on a bunch of weight and you go back to run. Like, it's not great. ⁓ Not great for your knees. So yeah, I think the way I think about it is just like challenging myself consistently in ways that like I find interesting and fun. But yeah, the odds of me actually making it back and forth to the top of Baldy right now in three hours is very low. Did a trial run yesterday.

⁓ went halfway and I, I got back down in 30 minutes because you're too. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So, and I got up there in 70 minutes. So I was like, okay, like this is doable. Maybe I was just gonna have to haul ass on the way back.

Adam Callinan (58:28)
You went halfway, you went up two miles. So you made it past pain rock that that last climb before it flattens out. Okay.

It's yeah, I've done.

Yeah, we can nerd out on Montana trails a lot. That is a great run. And for the listener, Baldi is it's four miles up, four miles down, 4000 feet of elevation climb. And the first, which you did half of the first like mile and a third is 2000 feet of elevation. So you're literally just like climbing up a mountain for a mile and a half.

Jimmy Feeman (59:10)
I wasn't I wasn't running. Yeah, I was was

I was climbing. I mean, I was consistent. But it was funny. I was I was looking down at my heart rate. And I was like, this is wild. Like heart rate stayed at like 165 the whole time. Like I couldn't get my heart rate back down. I would stop. Let it come back down for like 15 seconds. I was like, guys, I can't just like stay here the whole time. I mean, you could.

Adam Callinan (59:14)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Jimmy Feeman (59:37)
But yeah, I tested it out and I was like, okay, I'm going to definitely do this. This is a three hour journey.

Adam Callinan (59:42)
I mean, you, you climbed

the hardest part of the climb. You already did it's mile mile one is brutal. Mile, mile two is mostly brutal. Mile three is flat. I mean, it's epic. It's running through the trees on a single track trail. The last two thirds of a mile is a all out climb up all day. There are three fall summit. So you think you're there three times and you're not, it's a giant mind F. ⁓ but

Jimmy Feeman (59:46)
Yeah.

You know it.

Yeah,

yeah, I'm excited to do it. think I'm going to do it this week, maybe tomorrow. then like the, but the whole point around that is it's similar to what you asked. It's like, what do you need to challenge yourself? It's like, you should build that stuff into your life. And because what it does for me is it opens up like a whole new door of like, you can do this. Like this is possible.

Adam Callinan (1:00:16)
Yeah.

That's the beauty, and I will wrap up after this. That's the beauty of doing the things. I mean, like if we can encapsulate all that into a box, it's the doing the thing that you're not totally sure you can finish. It's not like, and let's be clear that it's all relative to your baseline. Your baseline is different than mine, which is different than my buddy Sam, who's a beast, which is different than my dad. Like we have entirely different baselines. So as you're listening to this,

Understand that your baseline is just different than ours. So it's all about just finding something that you're not entirely sure you can do and the accomplishment the Mental change that comes from actually doing that thing you look down at it and you go well shit. That wasn't that hard And it just wasn't like this big huge hairy thing that you thought was gonna be impossible you once you do it even if it's super hard you look at it differently and That's like again. That's like half the point of this

podcasts and discussion is by doing those things that are hard, it resets your perspective on what difficult is. And there's so much value in that.

Jimmy Feeman (1:01:34)
There is a lot of value in that. And yeah, it does, it does reset your perspective. When you were talking about that, I was thinking about like when I first started running, which was an interesting time for me because the thing that motivated me is I took one of those blood tests from inside tracker and I got the inner age, uh, add on and it said that it was 37 and I was, I, I believe at the time I was 27, was 26 or 27. It's right after Ari was born. Um, my first daughter and

It was a weird moment for me because I was super into longevity. I'd read a bunch of books on it. I was like, ah, so cool into the supplements. But like I was not in shape and I realized like the easiest, the best medicine and I've proven this on paper since then is like best medicines exercise by far. But when I was first getting started to run two miles was so difficult. Um, and then to run four. And then I remember that year that I started running.

And this was in 2021, which was an interesting year for us. So like we, had a lot of weird things happen in the beginning of the year. Our house burned down in Nashville. We moved into the school bus that we now rent out and here in Bozeman, we lived in that for a while. It's how we found out that we liked Bozeman so much. All that stuff had happened. Aria was like one years old. We got back to Nashville. I took that blood test while we were on the road.

that year. And I remember the first run. And then I remember subsequent runs like in the cold because it was getting colder in Nashville. And I told myself I was like, I'm gonna run the half marathon in the spring. Like, that's what I'm going to do. And I remember like, coming into the spring, it was probably February, and we did my first like, nine mile run ever in my whole life, like my entire life. Because I didn't run in high school, I played football, I played hockey.

I never ran nine miles. There's no reason to run nine miles. It's hard to get a kid to do something like that. I'm sure I could have, but it's not something that you do. And so then there I am at 27, 28 years old. Yeah, 28, like running nine miles for the first time in my entire life. And the feeling that I had, it was a perfect day in Nashville. was like, you have these fall springs that happened in Nashville in February.

Adam Callinan (1:03:38)
Yep.

Jimmy Feeman (1:03:58)
And it was like 75 sunny, no clouds. The birds are chirping. There's like flowers coming up. It's like right after Valentine's Day. And I was like, this is the greatest day of my life. But that feeling only happens because you're, I accomplished something that like I genuinely, if you would ask me back in the like fall, I would have been like, no, dude, not running nine miles. That's crazy.

And the crazy thing too is like I ran it at like a nine minute pace and I was just like, this is insane. Like I can't believe I can do this. But I think for most people it's like you, has to start with something like that. I know in the comfort crisis in the book where he like addresses like the Mussogee and everything like that, he describes like a time where he challenged himself to run like 30 miles randomly, just like picked and was like, I'd never ran through him 30 miles before. I I guess I'll try. And maybe it's something like that.

for people where it's like, you just got to pick what have you never done. Give it a shot.

Adam Callinan (1:05:00)
Where do you want people to find you online?

Jimmy Feeman (1:05:02)
All right, guys, if you want to find us online, please follow my company, my brand, my baby, NobakesCookieDough at Nobaked. It's N-O-B-A-K-E-D. And then you can follow me on LinkedIn at JimmyFeman, or you can follow me on threads at JimmyFeman or X. Or any those other places where people post their thoughts ⁓ without a filter. ⁓ But yeah, I appreciate you having me on, Adam. Thank you.

Adam Callinan (1:05:28)
It was super fun. Appreciate it.