Faces of Marketing podcast: Tim Goldsmid, VP Marketing of Jack Link’s

I had the chance to interview an old friend who I nearly killed (youthful bravado + inexperience) in a mountaineering climb up Mt. Hood 20 years ago — Tim Goldsmid, VP of Marketing at Jack Link’s, the largest and tastiest beef jerky company in the country.
Tim shares his story of a life turning point in college where he took a year off during college to work in Crested Butte, Colorado. From that point onwards, his career has taken off! Tim shares his take on how major consumer brands will need to adapt to hyper-personalize their marketing efforts to be relevant in the near future.
Tune into this podcast interview between Tim and me on the Soundcloud audio file above or on Apple Podcast, Stitcher, Google Play, or most other podcast players.
Transcript:
Ryan: Hey there, welcome to the Faces of Marketing podcast where we talk about the human stories and lives of different people and perspectives in the marketing profession. This is your host, Ryan Buchanan, and I’m here with my friend Tim Goldsmid, who is VP of Marketing for Jack Link’s, which is the largest and tastiest beef jerky company in the country. Welcome to the show, Tim!
Tim: Thanks for having me!
Ryan: Awesome. So just to give the audience a little bit of background, Tim and I worked together 20 years ago in Hillsboro, Oregon for a little company called Intel. Neither one of us were in marketing at the time — both Financial Analysts right out of college, and our paths converged 20 years later. And here we are. I’m in his Jack Link’s office in Minneapolis, Minnesota, which is surprisingly similar to Portland, Oregon in a lot of ways.
Tim: That’s right.
Ryan: We always start at the beginning of your life — kind of like you, your parents, your Mom is from Wales, Dad is from England and you moved here when you were five to Indiana and yet you have no British accent, like how does that work and what were you into as a kid?
Tim: So as a kid, when you come over with a British accent, the first thing that happens is all your good friends point it out to you. And I have a nickname called Timmy Teetime — back from my childhood days. So when you’re called Timmy Teetime, you tend to lose the accent pretty quickly. And what’s really funny is I can’t even put it on. So when I’m back in the UK or go abroad, I’m the most American of the Americans. I can’t even pretend. And as a kid, I was into what most kids like outdoors, being active, like I love to play soccer. I grew up playing tennis and all kinds of different sports. So, I’m a sports nut even to this day as you know from our shared passions.
Ryan: That’s right. Yeah. So Tim and I, yesterday I was gonna say we were in the polar bear club, but Minnesota lakes in the summer are actually really warm and we did a over a mile lake swim, which was awesome, right at sunrise which was killer and we just, we’ll go through that later. But we’ve done six sports together and we’re trying to figure out what the seventh one is. So, so you did all of this sporty type stuff, but like give an example of kind of what home life was like. You have a brother, and both grew up in Indiana? What was it like growing up in the Midwest?
Tim: Yeah, for me it was a, it was like the most idyllic kind of a childhood, small Midwestern town, but enough that there was big enough, there was enough going on and I’m just kind of your typical station wagon, suburban home life — which is kind of perfect because I got to do all that I wanted to do. We traveled a lot though. So I spent a lot of summers over in Europe and in the UK and my parents love to explore the USA, so we would pack up the station wagon and go to Florida and the Carolinas. We never made it out west. We tended to stay on the eastern side. I don’t know if the wagon can actually go over the Rockies. But, it was great. I’m still tight with my parents to this day and I love going back there, still in the same area in southern Indiana. I’m a big John Mellencamp fan too as a result.
Ryan: You’re going to sing one of his songs, right?
Tim: I’d have to have a lot more to drink to do that.
Ryan: And you and your brother tight as well growing up.
Tim: Yeah, very tight. And I’m still to this day, so even though he doesn’t live in the US anymore, we still stay very connected.
Ryan: He’s in Portugal, right?
Tim: Yeah. Not Portugal the Man…
Ryan: I think they’re a Portland band. Anyway, when you were a kid, what were some of the favorite European trips that you, would you go to the Alps or like where in Europe did you go?
Tim: We spent most of the time — because my parents are from England and Wales — we spent most of the time just in that general area. My biggest highlights — we actually grew up playing tennis and so, um, it’s a little bit harder this day and age. We would just go over and we’d go spend a couple of days a Wimbledon and you could walk the outer courts and then go into center court. And my biggest highlight is seeing one of my favorite athletes of all time. Yannik Noah, if you remember him, his son is in the NBA, like watching Yannik play on center court. So it’s just such a cool environment and just to show up and hang out and watch Wimbledon and be on the grass courts. And then we’d go all over the countryside and drive around. I used to get very car sick though, which was the other deal because my dad is a passion for Formula One racing and uh, he used whenever he was back in the UK, he drives like Nigel Mansell or one of these famous formula one drivers and are used to get just famously carsick as we’re going around the roundabout and accelerated and all those people. Yeah. So, that was one of the highlights of my summer — when I’m throwing up on the road.

Ryan: You had to be tough in your family to just make it. Okay. So ten-year-old Timmy, we’ll just stick with Tim, ten-year-old Tim, an adult would come and say, “Tim, what do you want to be when you grow up?” What’s your immediate response?
Tim: As a 10 year old boy, I wanted to be — that is a great question — I can’t even remember, but I’m going to go with two. At first, I wanted to be a professional tennis player and when I realized that that wasn’t going to happen, probably not there quite yet at 10. Then, it was a lawyer and only because my uncle was a lawyer and then I used to watch like some of the TV shows like Matlock. And I was like, that seems pretty cool to go into court and argue. So for a long time, I thought I was going to be a lawyer, but then quickly realized as I got into high school and college that that wasn’t going to be something I wanted to do.
Ryan: I wish you kinda just stopped at being a tennis player. I have lawyer friends. Yeah. It’s okay. But I wanted to be a point guard in the NBA even though that was a long shot. And this is your dream but you — your 6'5", I could see you have a tennis body. Like I could, I could see that. Did you play in high school?
Tim: Yeah, I was all-state tennis in high school, so yeah. Then I could have gotten to play at a smaller college but didn’t quite have the skills to play at a Indiana at the powerhouse team, so I had to give up on my dream at that point in time, but I still, tennis is a great sport.
Ryan: Did you go to a big high school and you played tennis there — you are super into sports, you’re pretty academic from what I remember in college and stuff like that. Were you just kind of like that all-around kid or were you the smoker wearing all black?
Tim: I wasn’t a smoker wearing all black, but I definitely wasn’t the academic either. And in high school, for me that was the first couple of years of high school were very different than the last two. Like I really didn’t really know what I wanted to do with my life. I was just kind of hanging out. I was an average student — just kind of getting by. I love to play tennis and hang out with my friends and just like, have fun, get in trouble — a little bit, not too much. Stuff you would do as a teenage boy back in the 80s, like finally gotten a driver’s license, driving around. So yeah. So I was just kind of average, like there wasn’t anything special about Tim Goldsmid at that point in time and that I could play some pretty good tennis and hang out with my friends.
Ryan: So what happened halfway through high school where you got special?
Tim: Yeah, I just got more focused. Like actually I got a part-time job to pay for a car. My dad and mom wanted me to make sure I had responsibility so they were very clear like if you’re getting the car, you’re going to have to pay for the car and take care of the car. So I got a part time job at of all places, the library. But what that did force me to do is actually learn to prioritize. Just like I had to learn to get my schoolwork done, to have time to play sports and then to also the job and just start to manage that and by having a little bit more responsibility, it just, it helped me mature and figure out how to, how to do things, which are skills, right? That you’d take take forward in the rest of your life.

Ryan: So you and I both have two daughters and my oldest daughter is a couple of years older than yours is. So I am in this mindset as this like awareness as a dad who’s going to have a daughter in college. And so I’m asking you this question both how you were in your junior, senior year of high school and as you think about your oldest daughter in the next couple of years, getting there, what were all of the. What were your parents expectations for you to go to college and what was the decision process of, okay, I’m going to high school in Indiana. Like I’m definitely just going to go to University of Indiana. Or did you look all over the country? And that was like the best fit. And then what do you, what do you think will be different about how your daughters a college search and decision making process is going to be?
Tim: Yeah. So for me, for my decision in search process, it was pretty easy. Like I grew up when you grow up in southern Indiana in the eighties, there’s only one team to follow. It’s not football, it’s your baseball. It’s like Indiana basketball. And even my parents got hooked on it from an early age. So I knew I’m like, I just want to go to Indiana and we live so close to Bloomington, Indiana, which is the best college down in the US. And we can debate that later in the show too if you want to…
Ryan: Charlottesville is not bad either.
Tim: Yeah. So, um, so for me that was an easy kind of decision. I knew I wanted to go there. I did look at another school, um, Butler for tennis opportunities, but all my friends were powerhouse. Now they weren’t at the time, but now all my friends were going to Indiana to. So it’s something that I always wanted to go where I wanted to go. So that was a very easy decision for my daughters though. I want to be able to like have them have the opportunity to go wherever they wanted to go and be an instate. If they feel like they want to stay connected to their, some of their friends and then there’s the right programs here. We have some absolute great programs here at the University of Minnesota and other local local universities or if they want to have the ability like they want to go away to school and other locations and it’s right for them. Then I’ll just try to support that when we get there. I have one that’s already said like, Hey, I want to move far enough away that I can be away during the week and come back and do laundry on the weekends. And the other one who’s like, I’m going to Harvard. And I was like, okay, well I’ve seen your grades and they’re really good but like we’ll support you. But it’s going to take like everything you’ve got to go get it.
Ryan: Totally. Yeah. That’s really similar to the I have with my wife and our daughters about what they want to do. It’s like the sky’s the limit, but you’re really going to have to start thinking about it. And I, I’m a big proponent of visiting colleges when they’re younger, like not waiting till, like in junior year or whatever, because then they can really — it sinks in, they can visualize it and it becomes way more real.
Tim: Yeah. That’s great advice. Yeah. Cool.
Ryan: So you went to Indiana and were there any, when you think about your high school and college years, were there, was there a moment where there was like a big life event that was either an obstacle or a hump you had to overcome that gave you the confidence and like any life moment, like maybe it was like for me it was the summer after my freshman year when I worked at Glacier NP. You know, it was described like any kind of, uh, that like coming of age story
Tim: Yeah, that one’s really easy for me. So I went to Indiana for my freshman year and I don’t know if you remember this, but then I was doing okay in school having a good time and then. But I just decided like, well I don’t know if it was like November / December. I was a little burned out or whatever and I’m like, I’m just going to take next year off. I’m gonna go work at a ski resort. And so I remember talking about it and I talked to my dad and my parents were like, yeah, we’ll support you. You could take a year off school if that’s what you want to go do. You just need to go figure that out and we’ll support you. So I remember in January when you used to get magazines, right?
Tim: What a novelty. I have a Ski magazine and I went through and I looked in the back and I went through and I skied out west, like in different places and I saw Crested Butte, Colorado and I called them up and started talking to them and they’re like, “well, we actually have a program where people can take a year off school and we set up the housing, they can work on the mountain and you can live together with other folks that are doing the same thing. And then we give you $500 to go back to school.” I was, I’m all in. I’m like, okay, this is perfect because I was set up for a year or so as they talked to them. And then I was a lift operator for a year in Crestview, Colorado. And I know it sounds like I did the Classic Ski Bum thing where I would ski like three days a week.
Tim: And then also had to work as a lift operator. But what it really was — it was one of the big inflection points in my life because the guy that I worked for out there was actually, he was a senior exec at Honeywell and had really been super successful and at the age of 38, he’d basically taken everything that he’d made, invested in real estate and decided that he wanted to go work at a ski resort for a few, like 10 years. And then finally kicked back and retire. And he taught me a lot about pursuing my dreams and being who I wanted to be. His name was Mike Morris. And that connection with him really kind of helped in infusing when I went back to college to say, okay, you know, I really want to get into finance and business and to go after and pursue it aggressively. And then the other piece that was really cool is like, you and I have such a shared passion for endurance sports in particular. Like that’s when I started to get into like mountain biking and running and skiing and everything because I really wasn’t into it at that point actually. I was way overweight coming off freshman year from all the beer consumption.
Ryan: Yeah — I can’t see that because you are fit as hell!
Tim: And I didn’t really exercise and it was like from that point too, it was like fitness and endurance sports, which I think is so key to who I am. Like I just love that passion. If I could feel that then I can do anything. So that experience where they went back to school, I was just so much more focused and content. It’s like I found myself my passions and what I wanted to do.
Ryan: Yeah, I mean the, the maturity you gained from being in the real world for, for a year and your story sounds similar to the book “Rich Dad, Poor Dad”, it was kind of you had this mentor that was like, “Hey, it’s great to be academic, but here is a personal finance education that is going to maybe change your path”, which is cool. My story’s a little bit different, but I can definitely relate to that. So you came back and you all of a sudden we’re like, okay, I want to have a Finance and an undergrad business focus.
Tim: Yeah, yeah, yeah. And actually what? I remember, Indiana has a awesome business school program and so I remember my freshman year talking to my advisor at the time and I’m like, I want to do business. He’s like, “yeah, I’m not sure I’d recommend that for you” because we’ve talked about my grades just kind of being okay at the business. School was famous for people for trying to get in and not getting it in. And it was like, okay. And then like, and, and I went out West, they came back and it was like I’m knocking this down easy, and then actually graduated like the top of my class. Like it was like, it just clicked. It turned.
Ryan: That’s awesome. That’s cool. Yeah, from. Yeah, for me it was that. Oh, that’s what I was thinking when I was listening to your story is the before my inflection point of getting all this maturity and driving solo out west and not knowing a soul and then like finding my community, finding my way. I came back to college and it was like I had this awareness like certain natural human, um, reactions, like whenever people would want to do an activity, they always had to do it with tons of other people. Like they could never do anything on their own. And I found like the independence that I gained, I could take that with me anywhere. And it sounds similar to like, hey, like I’m not gonna let someone tell me I can’t do something just because of my average grades before, like I’ve got this.
Tim: Yeah. Yeah. It’s like a level of self confidence and independence.
Ryan: That’s cool. Okay, so then you got your degree in finance and did Intel come and recruit you on campus or did you have to like seek out that job?
Tim: Yeah, they were actually a big recruiter at Indiana. So as I was looking at finance opportunities, I always knew it’s like I want to move out west and then wow, what an awesome company. Portland, Oregon, I’m all in as soon as they came on campus and so I sought them out pretty aggressively.
Ryan: Because most people that I interview in the marketing profession, it is a more circuitous path to their first job. So yours was just like — jump right in at Intel finance and then you went and got your MBA soon after. Did you first work for the Winter Olympic Committee before you got your MBA? Is that right? And so then did you think you were going to be in Park City forever or how did that work?
Tim: I knew when I went to the Olympics, like after leaving Intel after two years that I likely wouldn’t stay in Utah, that we would, I would go get my MBA somewhere. So that was always a game plan and I would have gotten my MBA sooner if it weren’t for the Olympic opportunity. It was just such a cool thing to like be a part of the Olympics and also to live in Utah in Park City and some the area. So I was open to doing that for a few years and then I knew I also wanted to get moved into marketing from finance before I even started to work at the Winter Olympics.
Ryan: Did your girls come into the world when you moved back to Indiana or did that start to happen in Park City?
Tim: My first daughter was born in Indiana. So after two years of Grad School in Indiana, she was born there.
Ryan: Got It. Okay. Notice how I was like really restraining from asking really personal questions. So then you’ve been on this path and I don’t want to go through your Linkedin profile journey and have you walk me through your resume. But, I think it can be really helpful for, for people in the marketing and creative professions to know that, you know, you can come at it from different angles like finance or analytics or program program. There’s so many ways to get into marketing. Did you go into marketing right after you got your MBA? Is that Kinda how that worked? And then you worked up through the larger brand route versus startup. So maybe just describe overall how you started getting interested in marketing in your MBA program at Indiana.
Tim: One of the reasons that I went to Indiana and I was looking at other marketing programs at the time as I wanted to go into brand management, so researching all the opportunities and areas, brand management is also synonymous at companies like where I was at General Mills as well as Proctor & Gamble or Kraft as being general manager of the business. After my experience at Intel, that’s where I knew I wanted to go for my next job was I wanted to make sure that I was driving decision making and brand management really was that pathway across the entire business, so only in everything from product to pricing to positioning to everything in terms of a go to market standpoint. And so that was my draw into marketing, not like creative or advertising or consumer behavior, but it was sort of everything and the plethora of different elements that you could get involved in with a brand management slash marketing career.
Ryan: So it’s almost like there’s a potential as your path right now, you’re VP of marketing, maybe the future holds for you as chief marketing officer and there, but like you’re almost going to like draw on all of your financial background for not only like return on investment stuff, but also like how P+L (profit and loss) works you’re going to pull from 20 years ago of, and you’re probably pulling on that now all along the way. It’s helpful to have that financial background.
Tim: Yeah, absolutely. I mean the first key, the keys in all the roles that I’ve had is understanding the P+L, the general management aspect. I mean, this morning I was working on pricing for our new products and then from there I was heading into a creative meeting with our agencies on like a social audit and what’s going on or social community. So it runs the gamut. Then you’ve got to be able to be the Jack of all trades, which is really cool — versus a specialist, right? That’s another pathway within marketing, but that’s not what intrigued me. It’s the, I love the buffet of being able to be participated in, in kind of different courses and different meals. If I want a little dessert one day and go heavy, then I can do that.
Ryan: Okay. Let’s talk about dessert. Can you tell us about a really memorable campaign that you’ve worked on or or that you’ve seen, like what has inspired you, I’m in say the past decade of a campaign that like had the most meaning to you or maybe just like a surprise you and how much it connected with consumers?
Tim: Yeah, the one that I love and it’s really from the simplicity is the Google search campaign because it talks, it’s basically where I’m at on an don’t remember the exact details, but I know a couple of times they’ve done that even during the Superbowl where they’re typing in what it searching for and it kind of leads through the entire life from like your kid as a little kid too. Growing up to vacations, to school and everything and it just brought to life like how something so simple can be so powerful that it literally all takes place within the Google homepage that we all know and love and probably use on a hourly or if not at least daily basis. Right. And in our lives. And so I think that’s been great work that’s truly inspired and then I think from my side is more academic, if you will, or a peer in some of these like I am not the biggest consumer of Red Bull, but I think the way that they go to market and their marketing is like the best in class in terms of consistency, how they show up from a package standpoint across the board, how they then bring that to life with their content and how then their TV advertising is very different than a lot of their content, but yet it works and they just continue to stay true to all the different elements.
Ryan: What was the [Red Bull] Space Jump the thing that stands in your mind is just Wow. Like, that is so risky. That’s so crazy.
Tim: That one was really cool. Yeah. And then the base jumping and some know the parachutes come out. And of course it’s like red bull and the athlete sponsorship and I’m big into watching extreme skiing and some of the sports, too. And the way that they associate in a credible way like it’s there if they don’t have to be, hey, drink red bullets, it’s a part of the lifestyle. And now they mean now they paid it off because they make money out of their content and they commercialize it. But just the ability to do that, to see their brand and the everyday consumer life, which is, you know, the same opportunity I think we have here at Jack links with our brand. And so I look at that brand is a sort of a brand to aspire to.
Ryan: Yeah, no, that totally resonates with me when you were talking about Google, I think what’s amazing is when that kind of campaign gets adopted into culture like the movie “Lion”, did you ever see that it was, um, a, a kid in India who real, uh, finds out that he’s adopted by. Well, I think he knew he adopted, but he uses google products basically to and Google maps and google earth and all this stuff to find how he was separated from his brother and family at four years old. And just this crazy journey, but I just think it’s, it’s when you have a product that is that pervasive across like every human behavior, it can be powerful to show it in a way that connects.
Tim: Yeah. And then I think the other brand too that my team would be like, well “tim, you didn’t talk about under armour and like remember the Rio Olympics and the Phillips, the Phillips spot.
Ryan: I am not allowed to talk about them now. Nike is our largest client, but anyway, it’s cool.
Tim: Nike does great stuff too, but in terms of that campaign, the leverage of Phelps in leading it. And that’s, that creative I thought was just unbelievable. It made you literally want to get out and go after whatever you were doing. Like hard-core.
Ryan: That’s cool. Uh, I, will we take inspiration from a competitor brands for sure. For sure. Um, cool. So, dream a little with me here on where you think a marketing and design or just marketing is going. So the next three to five years, you know, in the digital space, I know you have a much greater purview. Digital is just one component of, of all the things that Jack Link’s does. Um, but, but there’s been so much innovation in the marketing space. It’s been the new new thing in business as a whole. Um, as we look at all these social platforms at all, uh, all this behavior change among consumers, how, how do you think it’s going to show up in the next three to five years? Like they talked about, you know, mobile changing the game for like 15 years, and then all of a sudden it was just like, okay, it’s here and it’s everything now. Like augmented reality, virtual reality, all of these platforms, how much of it it’s all talk and what do you think’s gonna really stick in three years.
Tim: Yeah, I mean I don’t know what technologies and platforms are going to stick in three years, but to me as a marketer that’s trying to reach consumers, connect with them and tell them about our brand and get them to buy our products, the ability to target and to go from scale conversations to one to one — very personal conversations and target. That’s where I think that’s just gonna continue to rapidly evolve like we’re seeing that now, right? With addressable TV and tons of other capabilities where we can, where we can go in and target consumers. I think that’s just gonna continue to rapidly evolve and so then I’ll be able to continue to and then the ability to service that with content that can be customized and be able to do that too in a way that’s meaningful. I think that’s where the evolution is going to be, so it’s going to continue to go from mass.
Tim: I think to much more personal and then we as marketers, especially in my business, which is a mass business, I’ll just have to continue to balance that out. Like we still have a lot of investment in TV, but that TV investment is quickly becoming more video content investment across Youtube, on Hulu or some of these other different channels or wherever. And that will continue to evolve too. So now I can go target like Ryan Buchanan and I can serve you up wherever the best place to meet you is the right piece of content at the right time. You can just see the acceleration and for a while, TV will continue to hold up. I just keep telling my team that it’s a tipping point at some point. Like it’s just gonna go like that. And we’re going to be rapidly shifted. I mean we’re making moves now, but I feel like it’s just gonna rapidly tip at some point.
Ryan: Yeah. It seems like bigger brands have almost have more obstacles than smaller brands coming up. Um, because to really execute on that extreme personalization and a single view of the customer, all your systems has to have to talk to one another which is unbelievably hard and like point of purchase and digital and this. And is it, do you think that can happen in the next three years where it’s going to be like really seamless and will Jack Link’s have like really personalized conversations with their millions of consumers.
Tim: I think it’s going to have to for us to continue to stay relevant and I think it’s just gonna be an evolution and a spectrum. Like is it going to get all the way to one to one in certain elements or certain aspects? Yes. But then in others it’s just getting, might be more targeted. And so absolutely I think there are certain companies that are out in front in terms of doing that and there are other companies that are trying to catch up. I guess a lot of the bigger cpgs are investing in that too. And they’re, they’re building it out like, um, in terms of their database is. And being able to target consumers and bringing the men, but clearly smaller companies that are starting up and if they’re, if you’re an econ venture and you have a direct to consumer model, you’re already inherently wired in easier to target that consumer than it is for us that we came out of the convenience store channel and now we’re developing in Walmart, we’re developing in other grocery channels. Finding those consumers is more challenging than if I built it out of the gate on a one to one basis.
Ryan: Okay. So I’m going to take the risk and innovation conversation to a personal level. You personally do some extreme sports and endurance sports and give us a couple like near death experience stories from maybe your twenties till now. Um, because I know you’re a huge cyclist and know you and I have had a particular mountaineering experience that I may have guided you astray on. But tell us maybe like two or three stories of just some, some crazy things that you’ve done.

Tim: So I’m big into endurance sports. My near death experiences are few. The one prime one was definitely with yourself on Mount Hood. Yeah. We were talking last night, 1997 because I know it was the year I got married. So that was a 98. Yeah, yeah, the Spring of 98. Mount Hood.
Ryan: Yeah. We’re invincible — not exactly. And I’ll own this. Not really thinking very safely at all.
Tim: Yeah. So Ryan convinced me that it was pretty easy just to trek up, walk up to the top of Mt. Hood. So I remember we had happy hour I think at the Cornelius Pass Roadhouse across the street and all. Then we went home, packed up, got together and met up at midnight. I think we only had, it wasn’t like we were throwing down beers. I think we had a beer after work, so we are responsible from that standpoint.
Ryan: but we had crampons and an ice ax, but no rope.
Tim: Yeah, no, but I had to go to REI to rent crampons and an ice ax because I’d never used one before. And I think so then we took off at like 2am in the morning and started to trek up by Timberline Lodge, right? Yeah. The resort up to the top of Mt. Hood. You’d done it the year before or something with your friends. So you were highly experienced.
Ryan: And not only that, it was like, oh look, I’ve already done the Hogsback route, which is like the really popular, the safer one. I was like, let’s go like 100 yards over to the left here and do this.
Tim: Oh, okay. I didn’t even know that! Great. Yeah. And then um, so what were you like in the morning? Like 5:00 in the morning, maybe like five or six. You start to go up just as the sun is rising because I think it was light out. I put my eyes like, you’re literally like, well here’s how you use your ice ax self arrest. And then we started going up. I was like, cool. Yeah. And I put my ice ax in, I remember my feet falling through the snow and ice and just dangling there in a mini-crevasse and I don’t know if I yelled or what …
Ryan: No, you’re always calm, man. Like that’s the thing. I was like maybe 25 yards ahead of you and you’re like, oh, I think we should head back now. I think I said, “only a couple of hundred yards up here — to the top” and you said, “No, I kind of fell through — like let’s maybe head back.” I was like “okay, fine.”
Tim: Yeah. Who was the guy that was with us? And I know, I don’t even remember. I know one of the guys was Dino. But then Ryan — you were up 25 yards ahead of me and then and I talked you into coming back down. And then you snowboarded back down the mountain. And I remember getting lost on the way back down the mountain. And whoever that guy was, I made it down and that was my closest to near-death. And then, and we were talking last night, my wife found out about all of this at your house the following night as we tell the story at your Roaring 20’s party — which is an awesome party. Yeah. And then I mean, now I’m big into triathlons and then also cycling as you know. So I feel like I’ve had many near death experiences from cars, some that I may be instigated by giving inappropriate gestures to when people get too close — especially when you’re out in the countryside and some of these rural spots in the Midwest and you gotta kind of watch yourself. So,I’ve separated my shoulder and done some other damage falling down [while cycling]. But that’s probably the closest that I’ve come to another near-death experience like that.
Ryan: Yeah, it’s been fun, man. It’s been fun to re-connect because we, you and I — there was like a 15 year gap where we didn’t see each other because we’re in different places, but it’s been great. I guess the other question I have here. Yeah, yeah. Well you have more hair than me but I’m bald and bald is beautiful. At least that’s what I tell myself. So, uh, so I think you already described it, but if you have anything that the audience or your friends and family don’t immediately know about you that helped shape you. I think you’ve already told that story, but if there’s another one that you wanna share.
Tim: Yeah, I feel pretty good. I don’t know if there’s anything else that would be like surprising or earth shattering for shaping standpoint. I know the first time it had beef jerky, it changed my life, but other than that,
Ryan: The right kind of beef jerky — Jack Link’s. That’s right. Awesome. Well thank you so much for being on the show, Tim. It’s been awesome to get to know you just that much better.
Tim: Alright, thank you!
The author, Ryan Buchanan, is a social and for-profit entrepreneur with starting a racially diverse pathway to leadership program called Emerging Leaders as well as founder + CEO of a data-driven, digital marketing agency, eROI.
