The Rich Outdoors

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.

EP 678: Darin Hardy Level Seven High Terrain

“You can’t half-ass walking on uneven ground—and that lesson translates to everything: relationships, fatherhood, business, life.”

What’s up everyone! This week I’m sitting down with Darin Hardy, and man, this conversation goes places I didn’t expect. Darin is a former Marine Corps special operations guy who spent 20 years and 13 deployments in the military, and now he’s using horses, nature, and even AI to help executives and leaders transform their lives. Yeah, you heard that right—AI and horses. Stay with me here.

This episode sits right at the intersection of ancient wisdom and cutting-edge technology. Darin breaks down how he’s using emotionally intelligent AI to help distill his thoughts and experiences in the field, then using horses as living mirrors to reflect back what people need to see about themselves. It’s wild, it’s different, and it’s honestly one of the most unique approaches to coaching I’ve ever heard.

We dive deep into what Darin calls “window moments”—those rare experiences in nature where you feel like you’re between worlds. He shares two incredibly powerful stories: one about syncing with a horse at 16 years old and losing all sense of where he ended and the horse began, and another about a forked-horn mule deer that walked within arm’s reach and taught him he had permission to forge his own path. These aren’t just cool hunting stories—they’re formative moments that shaped how he shows up in the world.

But this isn’t all woo-woo spiritual stuff. Darin gets tactical too. He talks about hitting the wall on day five of an elk hunt, using “I am” statements to shift from doing to being, and how those three words helped him arrow a bull when he was ready to quit. We also get into the difference between power over versus partner with, why he cried in a pasture when three horses wouldn’t let him catch them, and what that taught him about 20 years of narratives he’d been carrying.

One of my favorite parts of this conversation is when Darin talks about being “porous”—how life doesn’t just happen to you or for you, but through you. And how as outdoorsmen, we’re naturally land-informed and nature-informed, which gives us this unique lens to filter everything else in life. It’s the same reason I believe elk hunting teaches you more about business and life than most MBA programs ever could.

If you’re someone who’s looking for transformation, willing to get uncomfortable, and open to the idea that horses and mountains might teach you more about yourself than any boardroom ever will, this episode is for you. Darin’s work is for people who refuse to live small lives—people who want authentic experiences, not hand-fed success.

https://www.level7highperformance.com/retreats?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss

Sponsors

Tricer – I run Tricer gear for a reason. One of my favorite products is the RP Bipod—a legit hunting bipod with all the high-end features you’d expect. At 10.5 ounces, it’s lightweight enough for any hunt. Comes with long legs, short legs, works on Picatinny or Arca. For $350, it’s a no-brainer. I’ve shot a ton of critters off mine. Head to tricer.com and use code TRO to save 10%.

OnX Hunt – The new weather feature is a game-changer. Instead of checking weather for the nearest town, you can tap anywhere on the mountain and get hyperlocal weather data that takes topography into account. See wind variations across different parts of your hunting area. Become an Elite member at onxmaps.com and use code TRO to save 20%.

Timestamps

00:00 – Intro: Ancient tech meets AI

05:15 – Darin’s military background: 20 years, 13 deployments

11:30 – From infantry to special operations

16:45 – Transitioning out and the two things he promised himself

22:20 – How passion becomes your job (whether you want it to or not)

28:40 – Being “porous” – life flowing through you, not just to you

34:15 – The horse window moment at 16: losing boundaries

40:30 – The mule deer at arm’s reach: permission to forge your own path

46:50 – Hong Kong beach: glowing plankton and Disney magic

52:10 – Flow state in the red zone: from doing to being

58:35 – Using AI to distill “I am” statements

1:03:20 – Day five of the Idaho hunt: hitting the wall

1:08:45 – Three horses that wouldn’t let him catch them

1:12:30 – Power over vs. partner with

1:16:00 – Level Seven High Terrain and authentic experiences

1:20:15 – Cow elk hunts as transformation: range day to butchering

Three Key Takeaways

Shift From Doing to Being – Darin uses AI-assisted coaching to help people create “I am” statements instead of “I do” goals. When he was exhausted on day five of an elk hunt, ready to quit, he repeated “I’m resilient, I’m flexible” as he climbed—pointing himself back to a state of being rather than performance. Ten minutes later, he arrowed a bull at 20 yards. The power isn’t in what you do, it’s in who you are. Those qualities remain true regardless of whether you punch your tag or eat it.

Horses and Nature as Mirrors – Horses don’t lie. When Darin returned to Montana after 20 years in the military with this narrative of “this is my pot of gold,” three well-trained horses wouldn’t let him within 50 feet. He broke down crying in knee-high grass because they were reflecting back his energy—he’d come with an agenda, never asking what the horses’ agenda was. The next day, he left the halter at the gate, walked into the pasture with just a brush, and said “I’m here with fresh, if anyone wants something, come get it.” Within 10 minutes, all three horses were standing around him. Power over vs. partner with—that’s the lesson.

Give Yourself Permission to Feel Something Different – Transformation isn’t about knowing what to do differently. It’s about giving yourself permission to feel something different. When you’re willing to accept the pain of change more than the pain of staying the same, you’re ready. Darin’s “window moments” in nature—with horses, with deer, with glowing plankton on a Hong Kong beach—gave him permission to see himself differently. You can’t half-ass walking on uneven ground, and that lesson translates to everything: relationships, fatherhood, business, life.

EP 677 Josh Smith – MKC

What’s up! This week on the Rich Outdoors Podcast, I’m sitting down with Josh Smith—founder of Montana Knife Company and honestly one of the most inspiring entrepreneurs in the outdoor space right now. This is a podcast I’ve been wanting to do for a long time, and we did not disappoint.

Josh went from being a lineman for the power company, making knives on the side in a 200 square foot shop in his horse pasture, to building one of the most beloved brands in the hunting industry from the ground up. No investors, no conglomerates, no selling out. Just a guy who refused to quit and built something that hunters actually care about.

We talk about the origin story of MKC, why he saw a massive hole in the hunting knife market, and how he quietly infiltrated the hunting community like a Green Beret special ops team before anyone even knew he was there. We get into the Benchmade lawsuit and why his entire team cheered when they found out they were getting sued. We dive deep into building company culture at scale, hiring the right people, why listening to your customer beats watching your competitor every single time, and why most people have no idea how many hunters have never even heard of a brand they think everyone knows about.

But this one goes way beyond knives. We talk about Bridger Watch, building a product in a category dominated by giants, the parallels between what Josh built and what we’re trying to build, and the advice he gave me that I’m going to be thinking about for a long time. We also talk about legacy—knives that get passed down, stories behind the blades, and why sometimes the most important tool isn’t the most impressive one, it’s the one that means something.

This is one of those conversations that reminds you why you started. Whether you’re a hunter, an entrepreneur, or both—this episode is for you. Let’s get into it.

Interested in the Bridger Watch?

If you heard us talk about the smartwatch we’re building for hunters and want to be the first to know what we’re up to—head over to bridgerwatch.com and get on the list. Three years in the making and we’re just getting started. Go check it out.

Episode Sponsors

Tricer Tripods – They make gear that’s fast, light, and simple, from amazing tripods to bino mounts, panhead truck mounts, and now even bipods. Trier just dropped their new updated AD and BC tripods, and I got to test the new Tritech technology this year. The center post is now a T-post, which makes it pack down smaller and cleaner—Drew is a mad scientist and he just keeps innovating. If you want to use code TRO, it’ll save you 10% at checkout. Go support a great company. Head over to tricer.com.

Stone Glacier – If you’re in the market for a new pack, I ran the Sky Archer 6400 this year and packed out a lot of animals with it including a couple of elk. What I love about Stone Glacier packs is they work great whether you’re on a 10-day backpacking trip or day hunting from the side-by-side. Minimalist, tough, and they work. You don’t need to own multiple packs—this thing does it all. Check it out at stoneglacier.com and use code TRO for a discount.

Chapter Timestamps

0:00 – Intro & Sponsors

3:45 – Welcome Josh Smith: Driving Across Montana for a Podcast

6:30 – Why Josh Started Montana Knife Company

10:15 – Seeing the Gap: What Was Missing in the Hunting Knife Market

14:00 – Authenticity from Day One: Building Community Without Money

18:30 – Sending Knives Out with No Ask: How Word Spread

22:00 – From the Horse Pasture to 11 Employees: The Growth Timeline

26:15 – The Green Beret Strategy: Quietly Taking Over the Hunting Space

30:00 – Getting Sued by Benchmade (And Why the Team Cheered)

34:30 – Don’t Watch Your Competitor, Listen to Your Customer

38:15 – Scaling Fast Without Losing Culture

42:00 – Hiring Doers: What Josh Looks for in Employees

46:30 – The Pizza Rule: Why You Can’t Manage Too Many People

50:15 – How MKC Uses Transparency to Build Employee Buy-In

54:00 – Taking on Giants: Parallels Between MKC and Bridger Watch

58:30 – Most Hunters Have Never Heard of You (And Why That’s Exciting)

1:02:15 – The Legacy of a Knife: Stories Behind the Blades

1:07:00 – Building a Family Heirloom vs. Building a Gadget

1:11:30 – Josh’s Advice for Bridger Watch

1:15:00 – Don’t Quit Your Day Job Yet: How to Chase a Dream Responsibly

1:18:30 – The People You Surround Yourself With Matter Everything

1:21:00 – Final Thoughts & What Josh is Most Excited About

Three Key Takeaways

Listen to Your Customer, Not Your Competitor – One of Josh’s most powerful pieces of advice: don’t open your competitor’s website every day and react to what they’re doing. Your product roadmap should be driven entirely by what your customer is telling you they need—not by what the big brand is doing. By the time you react to a competitor, you’re already behind. The companies that win are the ones so locked into their customer’s needs that by the time the big guy realizes what happened, it’s too late.

Most People Don’t Know You Exist—And That’s the Opportunity – MKC ran surveys recently and the percentage of hunters who had heard of them was shockingly low. Most companies would find that depressing. Josh and Brandon found it energizing. If you’ve built something great and most of your target market still doesn’t know you exist, you have an enormous runway in front of you. Stop assuming everyone knows your story. Tell it again. Tell it to the 3,000 people in that gymnasium down the road who’ve never heard it.

Culture Is Built Intentionally or It Isn’t Built at All – From bringing employees to trade shows as a reward, to reading the Attaboy box out loud at company meetings, to bringing in bankers and health insurance reps to teach employees about life—Josh has built a company where people feel cared about. That doesn’t happen by accident. It requires intentional decisions every single day to treat your people the way you’d want your own kids to be treated. And when people feel that, they go the extra mile and they keep the culture alive even when you can’t be in every room.

EP 676 Heart Rate, VO2 Max, and Hunt Readiness with MTNtough

What’s up! This week on the Rich Outdoors Podcast, I’m sitting down with Jason and Nick from MTN Tough Fitness to talk about something we’ve been geeking out on for a while—health metrics, performance tracking, and what “hunt readiness” actually means for backcountry hunters.

As we’re building the Bridger Watch (yeah, the smartwatch for hunters), we’ve been having deep conversations with the MTN Tough crew about what metrics actually matter when you’re training for elk season. Because here’s the thing: most fitness wearables are built for runners, cyclists, and gym rats—not for hunters humping 60 pounds on their back through deadfall at 9,000 feet.

Nick is a MTN Tough coach and physical therapist who programs their daily workouts, and Jason is one of their athletes who’s joining the Bridger team. These guys know what it takes to train for the mountains, and more importantly, they understand the difference between sustained Zone 2 cardio and getting absolutely crushed by a 42-minute Mountain Tough workout that leaves you laying on the floor.

We dive into what a “hunt readiness score” could look like, how to measure work capacity beyond just heart rate, why rucking strain is completely different than cardiovascular strain, and how we can use wearables to help hunters stay in that 80-90% efficiency zone all day long. We also talk about the mental side of fitness—how to make better decisions under fatigue, why discipline in the gym translates to discipline in the mountains, and what happens when you’re on day two of a hunt with frozen boots and a broken water filter.

This episode is part fitness science, part backcountry hunting strategy, and part startup talk about building products that actually solve problems hunters face. Whether you’re training for September or just trying to figure out how to not get your butt kicked on your next western hunt, there’s a lot of good stuff in here. Let’s get into it.

Tricer Tripods – They make gear that’s fast, light, and simple, from amazing tripods to bino mounts, panhead truck mounts, and now even bipods. Tricer makes gear that’s fast, light, and simple. I love their gear, and if you’re looking for a new system for better glassing, check out Tricer. Head over to the website tricer.com. They make great products and it’s just a great company. Awesome dudes. Been using the heck out of the bipod—killed a lot of critters with it. Use the code TRO and you’ll save yourself 10% at checkout.

Stone Glacier – I’ve packed out a lot of animals with my Stone Glacier pack this year. The Sky Archer 6400 has been with me to Alaska, British Columbia, Wyoming, Montana, and I love the thing. Whether it’s a 10-day backpack hunt or you’re day hunting from the side-by-side, that’s what I love about Stone Glacier—it’s minimalist, it’s lightweight. You can use it day hunting or for an alpine backpack hunt. Stone Glacier makes an entire suite of hardcore mountain hunting gear. If you’re in the market, head over to stoneglacier.com. Use the code TRO and you’ll save yourself a discount and get some great gear.

Chapter Timestamps

0:00 – Intro: Fresh Off a MTN Tough Workout

3:15 – Meet Nick: MTN Tough Coach & Physical Therapist

6:30 – Jason Joins Bridger: Startup Life with a Kid on the Way

9:00 – Why We’re Talking About Health Metrics for Hunters

12:45 – The Backcountry Boondoggle: Testing Fitness in the Field

16:30 – How Many Miles? Average Archery Season Days

19:45 – Have You Ever Bonked on a Hunt?

23:15 – The Hunt Readiness Score: What Would It Look Like?

27:30 – Heart Rate Efficiency & Staying in the 80-90% Zone

31:00 – VO2 Max vs. Work Capacity: What Really Matters?

35:15 – The Rucking Problem: Muscular + Neurological Strain

38:45 – Measuring Strength Load vs. Cardio Load

41:30 – Subjective Scores & Mental Toughness Training

44:15 – Decision Making Under Fatigue

47:00 – Discipline in the Gym = Discipline in the Mountains

50:30 – Baby #2, Hunt Plans & Balancing Family Life

Three Key Takeaways

Heart Rate Monitoring Can Keep You in Your Efficiency Zone All Day – Most hunters blow themselves out on day one by pushing too hard when camp isn’t where they thought, or the trail is longer than expected. A wearable that monitors your heart rate and keeps you in an 80-90% efficiency zone (based on your current fitness level) could be the difference between being smoked for three days versus being able to hunt hard every single day. It’s not about going slow—it’s about understanding what pace your body can sustain without bonking.

Rucking Strain is Completely Different Than Cardiovascular Strain – Carrying 60-70 pounds on your back for 8 hours isn’t primarily a cardio challenge—it’s muscular, skeletal, and neurological strain. Most fitness wearables only measure cardiovascular load based on sustained heart rate, but they can’t quantify what it feels like to have weight on your frame all day. Building a “hunt readiness score” means figuring out how to measure both the cardio AND the strength components of backcountry hunting, which is why Mountain Tough’s blend of strength and conditioning is so effective.

Mental Toughness is Trainable Through Exposure to Hard Situations – The more you put yourself in challenging situations—whether that’s finishing brutal workouts when you want to quit, or waking up to frozen boots and pushing through anyway—the more you build the self-awareness and discipline to make good decisions under fatigue. It’s not about never wanting to quit; it’s about recognizing that thought, acknowledging it’s normal, and then choosing to push through. The fitness side removes one major stressor, so when other factors pop up (weather, wind, gear failure), you’re not also dealing with being physically smoked.