The Rich Outdoors

Man, I don’t know how else to say this — this one got me. I sat down with Christian Zeron, the guy behind the Theo N. Harris Instagram, and what started as a watch-world conversation turned into one of the most honest, wide-open talks about hunting, identity, manhood, and what it means to find something that actually moves you. That’s the kind of episode this is.

Christian grew up in New Jersey selling vintage Rolexes in college and built a marketing company around it. He’s sharp, he’s articulate, and — up until about six months ago — he had zero connection to the hunting world. Then a client invited him on a hunt in Kentucky and, well, here we are. He killed his first turkey this spring, he’s already got hog hunts lined up in Texas and a dove trip to Argentina on the books, and the guy is all in. Completely, unapologetically, joyfully all in.

What I love about Christian is that he brings this fresh set of eyes to our world. He’s not pretending to be someone he’s not. He’s a Ralph Lauren, vintage shotgun, lever-action rifle kind of guy who gets genuinely emotional talking about his late grandfather while butchering his first bird. That’s real. That’s the stuff hunting is actually made of, and it’s the stuff that’s really hard to explain to people who haven’t lived it.

We go deep on the watch world and what Rolex figured out about aspiration and identity that most brands never do.

We talk camo as identity, Sitka vs. First Lite, Yeti coolers, LVMH, Omega, Casio — and somehow it all connects back to hunting, brand building, and what it means to be a man who collects experiences instead of just stuff. Plus, we dig into what I’m trying to build with Bridger Watch and Christian gives me some real, unfiltered marketing advice on how to position it against Garmin and Apple.

This is the kind of conversation that makes you want to call your old man, fire up a steak, and go outside. Strap in.

Episode Sponsors

onX Hunt

If you’re serious about hunting out west, onX isn’t optional — it’s foundational. We’re talking land ownership, access layers, terrain intel, and a full suite of tools built for every phase of the hunt: planning, preparation, and execution. The difference onX makes is simple. It’s confidence. Confidence that you’re in the right spot. Confidence that you’re legal. Confidence that you can find your way back to the truck when the day goes long and the country gets weird. Download the onX Hunt app and become an Elite member today.

Use code TRO for 20% off your membership.

Website: onxmaps.com

Bridger Watch

I set out to build a better smartwatch for the hunting community — plain and simple. I was frustrated. I kept pulling my phone out 100 times a day to check onX in the field and thought, why can’t we just have the map on our wrist? So we went down the rabbit hole and built what I genuinely believe is the best smartwatch ever made for hunters. If you’re a watch guy and a hunter, this was built for you.

Use code TRO at checkout.

Website: bridgerwatch.com

Timestamp Chapters

0:00  —  Intro & Sponsor — onX Hunt

1:45  —  Sponsor — Bridger Watch

3:00  —  Welcome Christian Zeron | Who Is This Guy?

5:30  —  From Jersey to the Deer Woods — How a Watch Guy Found Hunting

9:00  —  Building a Marketing Company on the Back of Rolex

12:30  —  Christian’s First Turkey: Buck Fever, Clown Makeup, and Grandfather Moments

17:00  —  Why Hunting Hits Different — The Emotional Depth Non-Hunters Don’t Understand

20:30  —  Serving Elk Steak & The Pride of the Harvest

23:00  —  Where Does Christian’s Hunting Journey Go From Here? Argentina, Texas, Bear Hunts

26:30  —  Identity in the Hunting World — Camo Brands, Sitka, First Lite & the Yeti Effect

30:00  —  Decor, Taxidermy, and Why Rural Men Are More Aesthetic Than Manhattan Bankers

33:30  —  The Smartwatch Debate — Where Does a Luxury Watch Guy Land on Wearables?

37:00  —  Marketing Advice for Bridger Watch — What Rolex Got Right & What We Should Learn

40:30  —  The Watch World Deep Dive — Omega, Tag Heuer, LVMH, Casio & Vintage Markets

44:00  —  Lever Guns, Grandfather’s .35 Remington, and Planning Future Hunts

46:00  —  Wrap Up — Follow Christian & Final Thoughts

3 Key Takeaways

1. Hunting Connects You to Something Bigger Than the Kill

Christian’s story about his late grandfather flooding back while he was butchering his first turkey is one of the most honest descriptions of why hunters hunt that I’ve heard in a long time. The harvest, the meat, the field dressing — it all becomes this vessel for memory and emotion and people you’ve lost. And it’s something you genuinely cannot explain to someone who hasn’t felt it. If you’ve ever felt your dad or your grandfather or someone you loved in a duck blind or a wall tent, you know exactly what Christian is talking about. That feeling doesn’t go away. It doesn’t get old. That’s why we keep going back.

2. Identity Is at the Core of Every Purchase Decision — Hunting Included

Christian has been living inside luxury brand psychology for over a decade, and watching him apply that lens to the hunting world is genuinely eye-opening. Whether it’s Sitka gear, a Yeti cooler, or a vintage duck camo jacket — we are all making identity statements with every piece of kit we buy. And what’s fascinating is that hunters, who largely pride themselves on being no-nonsense, practical people, are actually some of the most identity-driven consumers out there. The trophy room, the curated camp setup, the brand of camo you wear — it all means something. Knowing that isn’t a bad thing. It’s human nature.

3. Lead With the Tool — Let the Lifestyle Follow

Christian’s marketing insight for Bridger Watch — and honestly for any product in the outdoor space — is worth writing down. The temptation is to lead with the vibe, the lifestyle, the beautiful photos. But for a product that has genuine technical superiority in a specific use case, the smarter play is to lead with education and product proof first, and let the lifestyle layer build behind it. Rolex works because it’s 90% signal and 10% tool. A hunting watch should be the opposite: 90% tool, 10% signal. Prove what the product does for real people doing real things, and the identity follows naturally.

Look, I’m not gonna sugarcoat it — life got in the way and we missed a week. But we’re back, and this one was worth the wait.

Joe Epple is one of those guys who doesn’t fit neatly into a box. Retired professional football player. CFL veteran. Director of Business Development for Wild TV — Canada’s largest hunt and fish TV network. Co-host of The Edge, now in its 17th season. Father of two boys. Columbia blacktail hunter. Stone sheep chaser. A 6’8″ giant of a man who grew up in Squamish, British Columbia, hunting for meat and mushrooming in the rain just to make ends meet — and who somewhere along the way figured out that all those lessons in the wet coastal bush were actually building the foundation for everything that came after.

This episode goes deep on what it really means to make the transition from professional athlete to serious hunter, and why the skills that make you elite in sports — goal-setting, resilience, the ability to learn from getting your ass kicked — translate directly to the mountains. Joe talks about growing up in a logging family that hunted out of necessity, not recreation. About being the fat, knock-kneed kid who nobody bet on, who started going to a rusty prison gym at 13 and never looked back. About how hunting blacktails in the miserable, soaking wet coastal bluffs of BC taught him to push through discomfort long before any football field did.

We get into the mental game of hunting — specifically what it looks like when you’ve got 14-day fly-in stone sheep hunts on one end of the spectrum and a four-year-old who snaps every branch and asks to go back to the truck every five minutes on the other. How do you stay present? How do you keep the long game in mind when you’re sitting in the gutter on day 10 of a backcountry hunt wondering why you’re not home with your family? Joe’s got a framework for that, and it’s worth hearing.

We talk about Kristen’s bear — a giant boar that’ll likely crack the top 15 all-time in the province. About Joe’s most-prized blacktail taken at 12 yards with a bow. About why archery hunting teaches you more about your weaknesses as a hunter than anything else. About what it’s like to hunt stone sheep as a resident in BC for a fraction of what nonresidents pay, and why he still hasn’t punched an archery tag on one. And about the pressure social media puts on new hunters to skip the learning curve entirely and shoot a 200-inch muley on their first trip out.

Joe’s a straight shooter (pun intended), genuinely humble, and packed with perspective from both sides of the fence — the elite athlete world and the deep wilderness backcountry. This one’s got range. Turn it up.

Episode Sponsors

onX Hunt

If you’re hunting out west and you’re not running onX, I don’t know what to tell you — it’s not optional at this point, it’s foundational. Land ownership, access layers, terrain intel, route planning — onX does it all. The difference it makes isn’t just convenience. It’s confidence. Confidence that you’re in the right spot. Confidence that you’re legal. Confidence that you can find your way back to the truck when things go sideways. That’s what elite membership gets you.

Website: https://www.onxmaps.com?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss  |  Use code: TRO — Save 20% on Elite Membership

Bridger Watch

This one’s personal — I built Bridger Watch because I was frustrated. I was pulling my phone out 100 times a day just to check my onX, and I thought there had to be a better way. So we went down the rabbit hole and set out to build the best smartwatch for hunters. Maps on your wrist. Built for the field. If you’re a watch guy and a hunter, this is the one you’ve been waiting for.

Website: https://www.bridgerwatch.com?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss  |  Use code: TRO — Exclusive discount

Timestamp Chapters

0:00 — Intro & Sponsor: onX Hunt

1:30 — Sponsor: Bridger Watch

3:00 — Welcome & catching up — the missed week, quick intros

5:30 — Joe’s roots: growing up in Squamish, BC — logging family, pine mushrooms, coastal blacktails

10:00 — Why Joe pursued athletics instead of the outdoors — the unlikely path to pro football

14:30 — The transition: retiring from pro sports and returning to his outdoor roots

17:00 — Joe’s current life — Director of Business Development at Wild TV, The Edge TV show

20:00 — Raising kids in the outdoors — Walker and Wyatt, making it fun vs. making it serious

26:30 — Cody’s excavator story — how to build positive associations with hunting for young kids

30:00 — Spring bear hunting as a family — dance parties in the mountains and Kristen’s record-book bear

36:00 — The fat kid with a doctor’s note — Joe’s aha moment at 13, the rusty gym, and building self-confidence

42:00 — Growing up with zero sports culture in the house — how a 6’8″ kid ended up at Washington State on a full ride

47:00 — Blacktail hunting as the foundation — why the gray ghost builds hunters who can do anything

51:00 — Joe’s most prized blacktail — the 12-yard bow shot, the branch deflection, and the bluff recovery

54:00 — The mental game of backcountry hunting — learning lessons on every trip, reframing failure

57:30 — Archery vs. rifle — why Joe hunts with a bow even when he doesn’t have to, and what it’s cost him

60:00 — Dream archery hunts, stone sheep with a bow, and where to find The Edge on Wild TV

3 Key Takeaways

1. The Outdoors Builds the Foundation — Not the Other Way Around

Joe flipped the typical narrative. Most people assume athletic success leads to outdoor opportunity. For Joe, it was the blacktail hunts in the BC rain — the cold hands, the wet wool pants, the days you saw nothing and came back a prune — that built the grit that eventually carried him to pro football. The outdoors taught him to show up when it sucks, because the lesson is in the discomfort. If you’ve ever wondered why some people can push through brutal hunting conditions while others fold, this conversation gives you the answer: it’s not a hunting skill, it’s a life skill — and you build it long before you ever draw a tag.

2. Play the Long Game With Your Kids

Joe and Cody both land in the same place on this one: the goal isn’t to turn your four-year-old into a stealthy, branch-free hunting machine. The goal is to make sure they ask to go again. Unlimited bubbly water. Bring the toy excavator. Let them jump on every frozen puddle. Have a dance party in the mountains before you sneak over the ridge. The association you build right now — “hunting is fun, hunting is where we laugh and eat good snacks and do dumb stuff together” — is worth more than any lesson you could drill into them about staying quiet. The discipline will come. The desire to be out there has to come first.

3. Stop Writing the Story Before It’s Over

Two or three days without seeing an animal and most hunters start mentally packing it in. Joe’s been there on 14-day fly-in hunts when the wheels come off and you start questioning every decision. His counterintuitive advice: that’s the point. That’s the adventure. The highs wouldn’t mean what they mean without the lows, and things change in a moment — a bull materializes, a bear steps into the open, the hunt you’ve been grinding finally breaks your way. The story isn’t finished until you’re back in the truck. Stay in the field. Stay sharp. The last two days have a funny way of making up for everything that came before.

EP 681: Connor Koch

Some episodes just take a minute to get right. We lost the first version of this one — somewhere out there is an SD card with what I’m sure was a hell of a conversation — and you know what? Maybe that was the universe telling us to go again. Because this one hit different.

Connor Koch is one of those guys who just operates on a different level. Arc’teryx ambassador for seven years, a man who’s climbed every 14er in the lower 48, skied big lines from Alaska to the High Sierra, and survived an 1,100-foot avalanche ride in ways that defy explanation. He’s the real deal. And now? He’s deep in the hunting rabbit hole, chasing elk solo through grizzly country with a bow he just learned to shoot, logging 70-plus days in the field and coming home with the kind of stories that remind you why we do all of this.

We cover a lot of ground in this one. Connor grew up in a tiny San Diego-area town, never saw mountains until his Nissan’s transmission blew up somewhere near a place called Zzyzx on the way to Colorado. He pulled into Vail Pass, jumped out into the June air, and knew — at a cellular level, he says — that he’d found home. That moment launched a decade of elite mountain pursuits that would shape everything that came after.

We dig into what it’s like to be a master of one discipline and a beginner in another — and how humbling it is when all your fitness and mental toughness still can’t outwit a wily bull elk. Connor talks about burning a shot opportunity 45 minutes into his first day of bow hunting, running 70+ days solo in the backcountry, getting his camp ripped apart by a known problem grizz the same night he hit a bull high, and why he doesn’t regret any of it. That’s the journey. That’s the process.

But it goes way deeper than hunting. Connor opens up about the avalanche that changed him — a full slope that fractured wall to wall, a 1,100-foot washing machine ride, karate-chopping blocks of wind slab before getting obliterated, and emerging from the toe of the debris alive while his partners tunneled out around him. He talks about what that does to your relationship with risk, with the mountains, and with yourself. And then, the hardest decision of his career: turning down a prepackaged invite to ski 8,000-meter peaks in Pakistan, not because he couldn’t do it, but because he finally understood that some pages in your book are okay to leave blank.

This is a conversation about reinvention, risk tolerance, the courage to step off the ship when it’s time, and what happens when a man who spent a decade trying to conquer mountains starts learning to be conquered by elk season. Oh, and also — he’s catering his entire wedding with two cow elk and some deer he harvested himself. That’s the kind of dude Connor Koch is.

Pull up a chair. This one’s worth every minute.

This Episode Is Brought To You By

onX Hunt

If you’re serious about hunting out west, onX isn’t optional — it’s foundational. Land ownership, access, terrain, and a full suite of tools built for every part of the hunt: the planning, the prep, and the pursuit. The difference is simple. It’s confidence. Confidence that you’re in the right spot, confidence that you’re legal, confidence that you can get back to the truck. That’s what onX gives you.

Become an Elite Member today and save 20% with code TRO

Visit: www.onxmaps.com?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss

Bridger Watch

This one’s personal — Bridger Watch is Cody Rich’s own company, so yeah, shameless plug incoming. It’s a full-feature smartwatch built by hunters, for the hunting lifestyle. Not just for the hunt, but for everything that surrounds it. Training, mapping, texts, and most importantly: insane battery life. Because battery life matters in the backcountry, full stop. If you’re a watch guy, you already get it. No compromise, no fluff. Just a watch built the way it should’ve been built all along.

Visit: www.bridgerwatch.com?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss

Timestamp Chapters

0:00 — Intro & Sponsor Reads — onX Hunt and Bridger Watch

2:15 — The Lost Episode: A Cop, a Bow, and a County Line

4:00 — Connor Gets His Life Back in Order — Four Months of Spring Skiing

5:00 — The Purcells and the High Sierra — Whitney, Muir, Langley, and a Broken Binding

7:00 — 30,000-Foot View: Arc’teryx, Mountain Pursuits, and a Big Boy Job

9:00 — Climbing Every 14er in the Lower 48 — And Why the Number Is Arbitrary

10:30 — The Origin Story: Erik Weihenmayer, a Blown Transmission, and Finding Home in Colorado

14:00 — Arriving at Vail Pass and Knowing — The Moment That Changed Everything

15:00 — Identity, Selfishness, and the Next Chapter

17:00 — Close Calls: A Rubber Band, a Carabiner, and 200 Feet of Air

19:00 — How Hunting Fills the Gap — And Gives You a More Complete Relationship With the Landscape

22:00 — Vert Records, Big Days, and Getting Old

23:00 — Bringing a Mountain Athlete’s Mindset Into Elk Hunting — Asset or Liability?

26:00 — Going Solo: Three Months, a Bow, and the Backcountry

27:00 — Losing a Bull on September 15th — The Shot, the Rain, and the Grizzly

31:00 — What It Means to Really Want Something and Not Get It

33:00 — Elk Hunting Is Not Meritocracy — And That’s the Point

37:00 — Visualizing Success: How Pre-Prep and Commitment Breed Confidence

38:00 — Confidence in the Face of Doubt — The Dark Arts of High-Exposure Terrain

43:00 — A Duty to the Animal: Why He Never Considered Leaving Camp

45:00 — Hunting as a New Relationship With Death — Feeding His Wedding on Wild Elk

47:00 — Wild Pigs, Weddings, and Getting Attacked at the Worst Possible Moment

49:00 — The Honest Ratio: 70 Days to One Elk

52:00 — If You Only Had 10 Days: The Discipline of Slowing Down

55:00 — Day One, 45 Minutes In, Five-Point at 42 Yards — And Why He Let Him Walk

58:00 — The Advice No One Wants to Hear: Passing Elk Builds the Best Hunters

1:00:00 — Confidence on the Skinny: Why Doubt Has No Place on Exposed Terrain

1:01:00 — The First Avalanche — Skiing Into a Rock Wall and Getting Shepherded Out with One Hand

1:03:00 — The Second Avalanche — An 1,100-Foot Ride, a Bag of Costco Mangoes, and Everyone Lives

1:11:00 — Redefining Risk and Stepping Back From the Edge

1:13:00 — Stealing Fire, Broken Necks, and the Identity Shift Into Bow Hunting

1:16:00 — The Pakistan Trip He Had to Turn Down — And Why He’s Finally Okay With Blank Pages

1:21:00 — What It Means to Move Into the Next Chapter

1:22:30 — Final Ask: Try the Thing That Scares You

1:23:30 — Wrap-Up and Watch Plug



3 Key Takeaways for Listeners

1. Your Greatest Strength in One Arena Can Be Your Biggest Weakness in Another

Connor came into elk hunting as an elite mountain athlete — faster, fitter, and more mentally tough than almost anyone in the field. And it nearly worked against him. He was blowing out animals by moving too fast, pushing wind when he shouldn’t have, covering miles that didn’t need covering. The hard-won lesson: hunting rewards patience and animal knowledge above all else. Fitness is a tool, not a cheat code. The most valuable thing a hunter can develop — that gut intuition built from thousands of hours of observation — can’t be outworked or outrun. Know what you bring to the table, and be honest about where the gaps are.

2. The Process Is the Point — Not Just a Cliché

Connor spent 70+ days chasing elk solo and came home with hard-earned lessons he wouldn’t trade for anything. He let a five-point walk at 42 yards on day one. He lost a bull to a high hit, a rainstorm, and a problem grizzly. He laid in his shredded tent for days still searching. And he says he doesn’t regret any of it. Not because it sounds good, but because every one of those moments compounded into something real. The hunters who last — and who eventually become consistently successful — are the ones who decide early that the journey is the whole thing, not a detour on the way to the outcome.

3. Knowing When to Step Off the Ship Is Its Own Kind of Courage

One of the most powerful moments in this conversation is when Connor talks about turning down an invite to ski 8,000-meter peaks in Pakistan — a trip he’d been dreaming about for years. Not because he was scared. Not because he couldn’t do it. But because he finally understood that some chapters have to close so others can open. He’d survived avalanches, close calls, and years of operating on the edge, and he arrived at a place of genuine peace with leaving certain pages in his book blank. That kind of self-awareness — knowing your season, honoring your current chapter, and resisting the pull of old identity — is rare. And it applies way beyond the mountains.

EP 680: Jeff Peel | Tactacam

What does it actually take to build something from nothing in the hunting industry?

Not the polished version — the real one. The trailer-hooked-to-the-back-of-a-Buick-Enclave, sell-your-house, answer-customer-service-calls-at-4AM version. That’s exactly what Jeff of Tactacam pulls back the curtain on in this episode, and man, it’s one of the more refreshing conversations I’ve had on this podcast.

Jeff and his wife Tara started Tactacam with almost nothing — a plastic folding table, a dream, and an obsession with taking care of customers in an industry that had largely forgotten how. What started as a point-of-view hunting camera has grown into a 500-employee powerhouse that now dominates the cellular trail camera market. But the part nobody tells you? It took 10 years of brute force to make it look like an overnight success.

We dig into the pivot from software to hardware (and why everyone told him not to), the customer-first philosophy that drives a $2 million monthly CS budget, and the launch of Habitat IQ — a genuinely exciting AI-powered platform that takes the collective knowledge of the country’s best whitetail property managers and turns it into actionable data for your specific ground. Think SimCity meets your food plot plan meets 20 years of Jeff Sturgis notebooks.

And yeah, we talk about dream hunts. Jeff’s answer? Polar bear with a bow on frozen ocean where you’re the bait. His wife thinks he’s crazy. I get it.

Whether you’re a hunter who loves to nerd out on habitat, an entrepreneur trying to figure out how to break into the outdoor industry, or someone who just wants to hear what it actually looks like to bet everything on something you believe in — this one’s for you.

Timestamp Chapters

0:00 Intro & Sponsor – OnX Hunt

1:30 Sponsor – Bridger Watch

3:00 Welcome Jeff Peel | Catching Up on Spring Hunting Plans

5:30 The Origin Story – From Cemeteries to Cameras

9:00 Meeting Ben Stern & The Decision to Go All In

12:00 The First Employee, the First Trade Show, the Buick Enclave

15:30 Why They Won – Customer Service as a Competitive Moat

20:00 Advice for Entrepreneurs Looking to Break Into the Outdoor Industry

24:30 The Pivot to Cellular Trail Cameras – Did He See It Coming?

29:00 Hardware is Hard – Why Everyone Said Don’t Do It (And Why He Did Anyway)

33:30 Building the Tech Team & Why the CTO Was the Most Important Hire

37:00 Habitat IQ – The Genesis of an AI-Powered Property Management Tool

43:00 How Cameras & Habitat IQ Work Together to Track Real Deer Movement Data

47:30 How Far Should Technology Go in Hunting? Drawing the Line

52:00 Dream Animals – Polar Bear with a Bow on Frozen Ocean

55:30 Tara’s Retirement Season – 5 Deer, All the Jealousy

57:30 Why Billings, Montana? Elk. That’s Why.

59:30 Where to Follow Tactacam & Wrap Up

Episode Sponsors

OnX Hunt

If you’re serious about hunting out west, OnX isn’t optional — it’s foundational. Land ownership, access, terrain, and a full suite of tools not just for the hunt itself but for the planning, the scouting, and everything that goes into being a backcountry hunter. The difference is simple: it’s confidence. Confidence you’re in the right spot. Confidence you’re legal. Confidence you can get back to the truck. Download the OnX Hunt app and become an elite member today.

Use code TRO to save 20% on your membership.

Website: onxmaps.com

Bridger Watch

This one’s personal — Bridger Watch is Cody’s company, and it’s a full-featured smartwatch built by hunters, for hunters. Not a general-use watch with a camo skin slapped on it. A purpose-built tool designed for the hunting lifestyle from the ground up. It trains with you in the off-season, maps your hunts, handles your texts, and delivers the one thing every backcountry hunter knows matters most: insane battery life. No compromise. No fluff. Just the watch the hunting world has been waiting for.

Use code TRO at checkout for a discount.

Website: bridgerwatch.com

3 Key Takeaways

1. Overnight successes take about 10 years.

Jeff was told at a trade show early in his career: “It was an overnight success — in only 10 years.” He sold his house, hooked a trailer to his wife’s Buick, and drove the country hitting every dealer and trade show they could find. If you’re building something and it feels like it should be further along by now, this episode is a reminder that the grind you’re in right now IS the success story being written.

2. Customer service isn’t a cost center — it’s your moat.

Tactacam spends $2 million a month on customer service and has a 98% retention rate that rivals Netflix and Spotify. In a world where most companies have made it nearly impossible to talk to a real human, simply picking up the phone and knowing your product is a genuinely unfair competitive advantage. If you own a business — any business — this is worth writing down.

3. Habitat IQ could legitimately change how average hunters manage their ground.

The idea behind Habitat IQ — scoring your property, simulating changes like new food plots or bedding improvements, and connecting it all to your real camera data — is genuinely one of the most useful applications of AI for hunters I’ve heard of. This isn’t tech for tech’s sake. It’s taking the collective knowledge of the best whitetail minds in the country and making it accessible for the guy with 80 acres and a weekend to hunt. Keep an eye on this one.

EP 679: Logan Chierotti

Alright, let’s be real — most supplement companies are just slapping a label on a generic capsule and calling it a day. Logan Chierotti didn’t do that. The guy bootstrapped Physician’s Choice from nothing — literally from the ashes of a failed energy mint company and a basement mugshot removal hustle — into the number one probiotic brand in the world, pushing $300 million in annual sales. No VC money. No trust fund. Just relentless grinding, a willingness to look failure in the eye, and the smarts to go all-in on one thing when everyone else was trying to do everything.

But here’s what really got me interested in Logan — it wasn’t just the business stuff. It was watching a guy who built something massive still show up for his kids. Still out there on the mountain with them. Still manufacturing adversity in a life that could easily get too comfortable. That’s the tension I think a lot of us deal with, and Logan’s as honest about the struggle as anyone I’ve talked to.

We go deep on the entrepreneur journey — the early days of getting sued and losing everything, the hard pivot that changed everything, what it means to go all-in on one category, and why your work ethic might actually be your biggest enemy. We also get into the dad stuff — raising kids who aren’t entitled when you’ve worked hard to give them more than you had, and why nature and hard things might be the most important parenting tools we have.

If you’re an entrepreneur, a parent, an outdoorsman, or all three — this one’s for you. Pull it up on the drive or the trail.



Timestamp Chapters

0:00 — Intro & Sponsor: OnX Hunt

1:45 — Sponsor: Bridger Watch

3:00 — Welcome + Who Is Logan Chierotti?

4:30 — Balancing entrepreneurship and being present for your kids

7:00 — Physician’s Choice: 30,000 foot overview — $300M bootstrapped probiotic empire

9:00 — The mugshot removal hustle: Logan’s wild first online business

13:00 — Why business plans almost never survive contact with reality

15:30 — How Physician’s Choice was born: probiotics, a failed energy mint company, and a nagging wife

19:00 — Losing everything: the $1M first-year loss and lying on the floor ready to file bankruptcy

22:00 — How you survive: don’t quit, hire smart people, and get your head around the numbers

25:00 — The all-in pivot: cutting every other product to go deep on probiotics

28:30 — How to pick a category: find what’s working and do it better (the Metamucil / Grüns framework)

31:30 — Hardest lessons learned: stress, lawsuits, key employees quitting, and not taking it home

33:30 — Founder vs. CEO: why Logan will never hire an outside CEO again

35:30 — Balancing family, skiing with kids, and life outside the office

37:00 — Raising kids right: manufacturing adversity, camping, hard things, and the bidet incident

38:15 — Final advice: slow down, you have more time than you think

39:00 — Outro



Episode Sponsors

OnX Hunt

If you’re hunting out west and you’re not running OnX, I genuinely don’t know what you’re doing. This isn’t a plug just because they write a check — I use this thing every single day. Land ownership, public/private boundaries, terrain analysis, offline maps, trip planning — it’s the full suite. The confidence it gives you knowing you’re in the right spot, you’re legal, and you can find your way back to the truck? That alone is worth it.

Become an Elite Member today and save 20% with code TRO. Download the app or sign up at onxmaps.com

Coupon Code: TRO — 20% off Elite Membership

Bridger Watch

Full disclosure — this one’s mine. I built it, our whole team built it, and we built it because every watch on the market was at best “usable” for hunters. That wasn’t good enough. Bridger Watch is a full-feature smartwatch built for the hunting lifestyle — not just the hunt. It does your training metrics, mapping, texts, all of it — and it does it with an insane battery life that actually holds up in the backcountry. No compromise. No fluff. Just a tool built by hunters, for hunters.

Check it out at bridgerwatch.com — use code TRO at checkout.



3 Key Takeaways

1. Going all-in on one thing is a competitive advantage, not a limitation.

Logan turned a flatlining supplement company into the world’s number one probiotic brand by doing something counterintuitive: he cut products that were making money to go deeper on one category. Most entrepreneurs spread themselves thin chasing every opportunity. The real unlock is picking the thing you can be truly elite at and pouring everything into it. Saying no to money today to dominate tomorrow is one of the hardest and most important decisions a founder can make.

2. You don’t need to invent something new — you need to do something existing much better.

Logan’s framework for picking a business or a category isn’t about creating blue oceans — it’s about finding something that’s clearly working (proven demand, clear leader) and identifying the one thing that can be improved. Metamucil is doing $400M in fiber and their product is outdated junk. That’s not a threat — that’s an invitation. The best businesses often aren’t revolutionary ideas; they’re relentless improvements on proven ones.

3. You have more time than you think — stop the rush and be present.

Both Logan and Cody landed on the same insight from different angles: the frantic urgency that drives early entrepreneurs often costs them the things that matter most — time with their kids, their health, their relationships. Logan’s parting advice says it all: your brain will work until you’re 70, there’s always more time to make money, but you can’t get time back. Whether it’s slowing down on the hustle or getting out in the mountains with your kids — presence is the play.