I’ve known Chris Piper for a couple years now, ever since a mutual friend put us in touch and he told me he wanted to get into the hunting industry. I didn’t think that was a terrible idea — okay, I kind of did — but this guy’s skill set is legit. He’s built marketing and ops departments for a $5 billion car company, ran point for Cody Sanchez at Contrarian Thinking, and now he’s out on his own helping companies bridge the gap between marketing and operations.

But this episode isn’t really about business tactics. It’s about the whole arc — losing the fighter pilot dream to asthma, racing Formula cars and street racing through his teens, becoming a dad at 21 with zero parenting rights and fighting his way back from that, and grinding through corporate America to build the life he actually wanted. We get into whether buying “boring” small businesses is a real path to freedom or just a fancy way to buy yourself a job, why being a generalist beats being a specialist in the AI era, and what losing a neighbor to a sudden brain tumor taught him about “someday.”

We also talk hunting — his first elk hunt, what he picked up from a week at Cliff Gray’s Elk Camp, and why patience in the mountains is the same skill as patience in business. If you’ve ever felt like you’re behind, or like you’re waiting for “someday” to start living the life you actually want, this one’s for you.

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Sponsors

Bridger Watch This is a project I’ve personally been working on for a long time — a smartwatch actually built for hunting. Everyone told us we couldn’t take on Garmin, but I think we’ve built something amazing. The standout feature is the mapping. On top of all your normal smartwatch stuff — health tracking, fitness tracking, texts — Bridger Watch has the best mapping capability of any wearable out there. You can save offline maps, send them straight to your watch, and pan around right on your wrist with a screen that’s genuinely impressive. And because we integrate directly with onX, you can share your waypoints, tracks, and markups right to the watch — so if your phone dies or you lose it in the field, you’ve always got a backup. We’re not trying to replace your phone maps. We’re trying to give you redundancy in a wearable you’ll actually use every single day of the year.

bridgerwatch.com

Maven Optics (Note: the ad copy for Maven wasn’t in the transcript I was given, so I’ve written this based on Maven’s general brand positioning — swap in the actual episode read if you have it.) Maven builds premium hunting optics — riflescopes, binoculars, and spotting scopes — and sells direct to the hunter instead of marking everything up through a retail middleman. That means you’re getting glass that goes toe-to-toe with the big legacy brands, at a price that actually makes sense, backed by their unconditional lifetime warranty.

mavenbuilt.com Use code TRO at checkout for a discount.

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Chapters

• 00:00 – Cold open: onX Hunt’s new Go Track “share your location” feature
• 01:00 – Sponsor: Bridger Watch
• 03:00 – Welcome Chris Piper, how they met and reconnected
• 05:15 – Chris’s original dream: Air Force pilot, shut down by asthma
• 08:30 – The street racing years — the helicopter chase story
• 12:30 – Becoming a dad at 21 and the custody fight that followed
• 17:00 – Choosing responsibility, insurance sales, and the climb into corporate America
• 21:00 – Director of Market Strategy at DriveTime and the biggest lesson from his 20s
• 25:30 – Chasing money vs. mastering a skill — building a “Swiss Army knife” career
• 30:00 – Generalist vs. specialist in the age of AI — why curiosity is the real edge
• 35:30 – Leaving corporate for Tucker Max, moving the family, and near-jail custody stress
• 41:00 – Joining Cody Sanchez at Contrarian Thinking, buying “boring” businesses
• 47:00 – Is buying small businesses real, or are you just buying yourself a job?
• 53:00 – The most successful (and surprising) small businesses to own
• 57:30 – Specialists vs. operators — why the best welder shouldn’t run the company
• 1:00:30 – What Chris wants his 40s, 50s, and 60s to look like — the forever ranch and an elk tag in every western state
• 1:04:00 – Losing a neighbor to a sudden brain tumor and why “someday” isn’t guaranteed
• 1:07:00 – Where the audacity to go get what you want actually comes from
• 1:08:30 – Wrap-up: Cliff Gray’s Elk Camp, patience in hunting vs. business, and where to find Chris

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Three Key Takeaways

1. Disappointment comes from unmet expectations, not from reality itself. Chris talks about resetting his expectations daily instead of holding himself (or his team, or his family) to a fixed standard 24/7. Some weeks call for going all-in on the business; other weeks, the win is just showing up as a present dad. Adjusting the bar to the moment isn’t lowering it — it’s being honest about what’s actually needed right now.
2. In the AI era, being a curious generalist beats being a narrow specialist. Chris didn’t get ahead by mastering one skill — he stacked social media, SEO, PPC, PR, and operations, then learned to move fluidly between marketing and ops. The real leverage now isn’t knowing one thing deeply; it’s having enough taste and curiosity to judge what AI (or anyone else) hands you and say, “that works” or “that’s BS.”
3. Buying a small business can absolutely change your life — but it’s still a job, just a different kind of hard. Chris saw thousands of people go through the acquisition process at Contrarian Thinking. Some genuinely built freedom and equity; others just bought themselves a demanding new job with their name on the door. The difference wasn’t the business model — it was whether the buyer had real operating leverage (sales, marketing, or ops chops) going in.

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Man, this one’s special. Doug Champion is back on the show for round two, and honestly, this is exactly why I love doing this podcast — you meet someone, you have a great conversation, and a year later you’re picking right back up like no time passed at all.

If you don’t know Doug, he’s the guy behind Champion Living, building the first real athlete development system for rodeo — fitness, nutrition, mental training, the whole thing — because for way too long rodeo has been behind the curve compared to sports like motocross when it comes to taking care of its athletes. His brother Richie Champion is a legend in bareback riding, nine-time NFR qualifier, and Doug just watched him ride his last horses ever at the Calgary Stampede. That story alone is worth the price of admission — chills, dude.

But this conversation goes so much deeper than rodeo. We get into the real stuff: what it actually costs to build a business that’s bigger than you, the guilt of missing time with your kids while you’re out chasing elk or building something for your family’s future, losing a dog that raised you into adulthood, and the discipline it takes to stop lying to yourself about why things keep going sideways.

We also get into hunting — my brutal 2024 season, tracking a bull nine miles after he got up and walked off, Doug’s buddy Travis and the giant mule deer that got away (and then didn’t), and why I’m changing my whole approach this year to actually see more animals instead of just walking more miles.

This is one of those episodes where we start talking about rodeo and end up talking about life. Grab your coffee, settle in, and let’s get after it.

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Sponsors

onX Hunt Big shoutout to onX for this episode. They just rolled out a new Share feature inside the Go Track section of the app — think old-school Garmin Rino “see your buddy on the map” tech, but done right for 2024. You and your hunting partner can now share your live location with each other right in the app (works when you’re in service, so keep that in mind). It’s a small feature but a genuinely useful one if you hunt with a crew. 👉 Check it out at onxmaps.com and use code TRO for a discount on your membership.

Bridger Watch This one’s personal — I’ve been building this thing for a long time and I’m proud of what it’s become. Bridger Watch is a smartwatch built specifically for hunters. It does everything a normal smartwatch does (health tracking, fitness, texts) but the mapping is where it separates itself — best-in-class offline maps on a wearable, and a direct integration with onX so you can send waypoints, tracks, and markups straight to your watch. Park your truck, drop a waypoint in onX, send it to your wrist — now if your phone dies or you lose it, you’ve still got your way back. It’s not trying to replace your phone maps, it’s the backup you didn’t know you needed. 👉 Go check it out at bridgerwatch.com

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Timestamps

• 00:00 – Sponsors: onX Hunt’s new Share feature & Bridger Watch’s smartwatch/onX integration
• 03:30 – Welcome back, Doug! Catching up a year later
• 05:00 – Doug’s all-in on hunting now — the struggle of finding time to scout with a growing business
• 10:00 – Burnout, growing a “lifestyle business” into a real company, and redefining what leveling up looks like
• 14:00 – The guilt of stepping away from the kids, and why the newborn years might actually be easier
• 18:00 – The 40th birthday Baldy lap story — missing fireworks, and what your kids actually see when you chase big goals
• 21:00 – What’s driving the business boom — investing in mentorship and the Alex Hormozi workshop
• 24:00 – Richie Champion’s final rodeo at the Calgary Stampede — the 90-point ride, the old horse, and an ending you couldn’t script
• 30:00 – Losing a 16-year-old dog, leaning into faith, and the journaling/affirmation practice that changed everything
• 36:00 – Business wins piling up — the Hooey collab, PBR partnership talks, and the new Montana State rodeo development program
• 39:00 – Why rodeo culture is behind other sports on fitness (and the motocross parallel)
• 44:00 – What actually separates great athletes at 22 — fearlessness, trainability, and coming to terms with risk
• 47:00 – Doug’s comeback from a broken back — seven years off, CrossFit, and the best ride of his life
• 50:00 – Cody’s rough 2024 season — a release malfunction, and tracking a bull nine miles after a bad shot
• 53:00 – 2024 plans: Utah spike hunt, general tags, Travis’s giant mule deer story, and using LandTrust to find new ground
• 56:00 – Closing thoughts on staying present, choosing positivity, and where to find the Champion Living x Hooey collab

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Three Key Takeaways

1. Discipline beats intensity, every time. Both Doug and Cody hammer the same point from two totally different worlds (rodeo and elk hunting): the guys who succeed aren’t the ones grinding 80 hours a week or hiking 20 miles a day — they’re the ones being methodical, controlling what they can control, and getting a little better every single day. Effort without direction just burns you out.
2. Presence is a practice, not a personality trait. Doug’s shift toward journaling, writing daily affirmations, and consciously catching negative thought patterns didn’t happen overnight — it took months before he noticed a real shift. The takeaway: rewiring how you show up for your business, your family, and yourself is trainable, even if it feels slow and unglamorous at first.
3. The guilt of chasing your goals doesn’t mean you’re doing it wrong. Whether it’s missing a birthday for a training run or being gone during hunting season, both guys wrestle with feeling like they’re stealing time from their families. But as Doug’s own kid showed him — sometimes what looks like absence to you looks like inspiration to them.

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Alright, so this one’s a good one, dude. I sat down with my buddy Reid Cross — former Army Green Beret, ODA commander, and now the author of Nation Fall — and we get into it. Reid’s got one of those paths you don’t see every day: went from being, in his own words, a full-blown 22-year-old alcoholic bombing around Chicago in outside sales, to walking into a recruiter’s office in a cheap suit and eventually commanding a Special Forces detachment. We talk about that whole transformation, what it actually takes to get selected, why he thinks the ODA is the best job in the entire military, and how that “figure it out with what you’ve got” mentality from the teams translates directly to being a better hunter.

Speaking of hunting — Reid tells the story of his first elk hunt out in Arizona, and it is an absolute heartbreaker. Bugling bulls everywhere on night one, a 320-class six-by-six at 71 yards on the last morning… and a homemade arrow fletching that picked the worst possible moment to fail. We talk trad bows, why some military dudes never touch archery, bowhunting versus rifle hunting out West, and the mindset shift you need to actually be good at either one.

We also get into his new book, Nation Fall — a novel that pulls straight from his time in some of the roughest corners of the world and asks the question: what would it actually take for something like that to happen here at home. Reid gets real about how he wrote it (three months, three to four hours of sleep a night, while working full time and still hunting season), his “burn the ships” mentality, and why he thinks more guys should just start writing instead of overthinking it.

Oh, and he’s about to be a dad — to twins. So we open with a little bit of that too. Buckle up.

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Sponsors

onX Hunt

This episode is brought to you by onX Hunt. If you remember the old Garmin Rino days where you could ping your buddy’s location on the map — onX basically reinvented that with their new share feature. Head into the app, go to the Go Track section, and hit Share Your Location With Friends, and you and your hunting partner can see each other on the map in real time. Only works when you’re in service, but for the hunts where you are, it’s a genuinely useful new tool.

👉 Check it out at onxmaps.com

🔭 Maven Optics

This episode is also brought to you by the good folks at Maven Optics — a direct-to-consumer optics company out of Wyoming that I’ve personally run for years. Binos, rangefinders, rifle scopes — Maven consistently delivers the best bang for your buck because you’re skipping the big-box-store markup that comes with most glass. Great optics, great people, great company.

👉 Shop Maven at mavenbuilt.com and use code TRO at checkout for a special gift.

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Timestamps

(Note: adjust final timestamps slightly once you drop this into your editing software — approximate placement based on segment flow for the ~65-minute runtime.)

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3 Key Takeaways

1. Persistence beats talent, in the mountains and everywhere else. Reid’s first elk hunt is a masterclass in things going wrong — six days of rain, a busted stalk, a fletching failure at the worst possible moment — but the real lesson is that the guys who succeed (in the military, in hunting, in business) aren’t the lucky ones. They’re the ones who keep absorbing failure and adjusting instead of quitting.
2. A rigid plan is a fragile plan. Whether it’s a Special Forces operation or a week-long elk hunt, the plan is never what actually happens. Reid’s take: plan hard anyway, because the planning process sharpens your ability to improvise when — not if — everything falls apart.
3. Identity crossroads happen more than once in life, and you get to choose which way you go. From leaving a directionless sales job to join the Army, to leaving active duty and finding a “void” that led him to write Nationfall, Reid’s story is a reminder that big life pivots (military transition, career changes, becoming a parent) come with a real risk of drifting — and the antidote is throwing yourself fully into the next thing instead of half-assing it.

Dude, this episode hit different. I sat down with Jacob Albaugh Tenet, founder of Tenet Products, and what started as a guy from Ohio racing four-wheelers turned into one of the wildest entrepreneurial grinds I’ve heard on this podcast — and that’s saying something.

Jacob was a national champion ATV racer before he ever picked up a rifle. Then he had a kid, watched his buddy crash at 45 mph, and walked away from racing cold. He poured that same obsessive, pro-level mentality into western hunting — and that’s where this story really takes off. After blowing out his eardrums on a mule deer at 32 yards, losing an animal off a cliff because he couldn’t spot his own shot, and surviving a blizzard SOS situation in Idaho that he says changed his life, Jacob became convinced there had to be a better way to hunt suppressed without sacrificing accuracy.

So he built one. In his garage. With a grinder and a welder.

Five years, 87 iterations, seven pending patents, and a lot of 20-hour days later, Tenet Products exists — suppressors that combine brake-level recoil control with real suppression, at weights (5.1–5.9 ounces) that sound made up until you see the data. We talk about the midnight idea that led to the patented Horizon Brake System, why he thinks outsiders solve problems industry veterans can’t, the torture testing that’s put over 1,400 rounds through a single can, and what happened when Tenet showed up to Joseph Ewing’s massive 145-suppressor shootout in Montana against every serious competitor in the space.

This one’s part origin story, part engineering deep-dive, part conversation about grit, faith, and what it actually takes to build something from scratch when nobody in the industry believes you. If you’ve ever thought about running suppressed in the backcountry, or you just love a good underdog build story — this is a must listen.

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This Episode Is Brought to You By:

onX Hunt

Remember the old Garmin Rino days when you could see your buddy’s location on the map out in the field? onX just brought that idea into the modern era — and made it way better. Head into the onX Hunt app, go to the new GoTrack section, and hit “Share Your Location” to see exactly where your hunting partner is on the map in real time. It only works while you’re in service, but for the hunts where it applies, it’s a total game-changer for staying coordinated with your crew.

 Check it out and get outfitted for your next hunt at onxmaps.com
Use code TRO for a discount at checkout

Bridger Watch

Full disclosure — this one’s mine. Bridger Watch is a full-feature smartwatch built by hunters, for hunters, made for the entire hunting lifestyle, not just the hunt itself. No compromise, no fluff. It handles your training, your mapping (the big one), your text messages, and it’s built with the kind of battery life that actually survives the backcountry — because we know battery life matters when you’re days deep with no outlet in sight.

 Learn more and grab yours at bridgerwatch.com

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Episode Chapters

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Three Key Takeaways

1. You don’t have to choose between quiet, light, and controllable anymore. For decades, suppressor design has forced a trade-off — get recoil control from a brake, or get hearing protection from a suppressor, but rarely both without adding serious weight. Tenet’s approach of engineering the suppressor itself (not just the brake) for shot control is what let them break that curve.
2. Passion-driven problem solving can outperform decades of industry expertise. Jacob had no suppressor background and no entrepreneurial ambition when he started — he was just trying to fix his own hunting setup. His point that someone solving their own problem out of obsession will often out-innovate someone doing it as a job is a great reminder for anyone building something in any industry.
3. Recoil management matters more than caliber size for accuracy in the field. The current trend toward smaller cartridges (6.5s, 6mm) exists because lower recoil equals better shot placement. Jacob’s insight — that you can get that same manageability out of a 7 PRC or 300 PRC with the right muzzle system — means hunters don’t have to give up knockdown power to get accuracy anymore.

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There’s a certain type of person who can’t half-ass anything. The kind of guy who decides to climb the Grand Teton on a whim, rappels off a sheer face having never rappelled before, canyoneers into some of the most remote slot canyons in the American Southwest, and packs mules solo through the dark at midnight to make the opener. Justin Helvik is that guy — and somehow, impossibly, he’s also a 20-year educator who coached high school football and showed up Monday morning with a collapsed lung and six broken ribs, insisting everything was fine.

Justin and I go way back. He was with me on one of my early bear hunts. I helped him build the pole barn that would eventually house the mules he didn’t own yet. Life moves fast when you’re the kind of person who’s always got the next adventure already on the calendar.
In this episode, Justin breaks down his unconventional path from desk jockey to legitimate mountain mule skinner — and I mean that in the best possible way. We talk about what drove a guy with zero ranch background to go all in on mule packing, the gnarly wreck on a Montana mountain goat hunt that left him with a punctured lung and broken ribs (and how his mule, Bella, somehow knew he was hurt and carried him out of the backcountry gently), and what it actually feels like to go from being intimidated by stock animals to packing 80 miles through the Yellowstone Thoroughfare.

But this conversation goes deeper than mules. We get into the philosophy of adventure — what it means to chase that feeling of uncomfortable, why comfort might actually be the most dangerous thing you can do to yourself, and how stacking experiences over a lifetime is the only real way to build confidence that transfers everywhere. Justin talks about identity, ego, legacy, and what Lonesome Dove’s Augustus McCrae got right about living versus dying.

He’s also got a Substack — From Desk Jockey to Mule Skinner — that I’d encourage every one of you to go read. He’s a great writer, and the stories are even better on the page.

If you’ve ever thought about getting into pack stock, or you’re someone who’s wired to always be pushing the next limit, this one’s for you.

Episode Sponsors
Bridger Watch
This episode is brought to you by Bridger Watch — the smartwatch built specifically for hunters, by a hunter. Cody set out to build something better after getting tired of pulling his phone out 100 times a day just to check his OnX map in the field. The solution? Put the maps on the watch.
Bridger Watch is the best smartwatch for hunters, period. If you’re a watch guy and a hunter, this is built for you.
Website: https://www.bridgerwatch.com
Coupon Code: TRO

onX Hunt
onX Hunt is the gold standard for hunting maps, and they just dropped a feature that’s going to change how you hunt with a buddy. The new Share Location feature inside the Go Track section lets you and your hunting partner see each other’s real-time position right on the map — like a modern-day Garmin Rino, but actually good.
Fair warning: this only works in cell service, so it won’t help you in the deep dark. But for those in-service hunts? This is seriously cool tech that a lot of hunters have been asking for for years.
Website: https://www.onxmaps.com
Coupon Code: TRO

Timestamp Chapters
0:00 Intro & Sponsor — Bridger Watch
2:15 Sponsor — onX Hunt: New Share Location Feature
4:30 Welcoming Justin Helvik / Catching Up After Years
6:00 Justin’s Background: 20 Years in Education, Small Town Roots
9:30 The Path to Mules — Pack Goats, Failed HOAs & Bighorn Disease Concerns
15:00 Justin’s Adventure DNA: Ultra Races, the Grand Teton & Canyoneering
22:00 Olo Canyon & Going Where Few Have Been
26:30 The Moment That Made Him Go All-In on Mules (Elk Down, No Help)
31:00 First Experiences with Pack Stock — Intimidation, Trust & Mule Personalities
36:00 Horses vs. Mules: Self-Preservation, Bells & the Classic ‘Brakes Are Broken’
40:30 The Mountain Goat Hunt Wreck — A Collapsed Lung, Six Broken Ribs & Bella
48:00 What the Wreck Taught Him About Ego & Risk
51:00 How Adventure Changes When You Have a Family
53:30 Experience Stacking: The Philosophy of Going All-In Incrementally
56:00 Planning the Lee Metcalf Solo Ride & Why You Need the Next Trip on the Calendar
58:00 Wrap Up — Justin’s Substack: From Desk Jockey to Mule Skinner

3 Key Takeaways

1. Comfort is the real killer — not the mountains.
Justin makes the point that denying yourself the adventures you’re wired for is a slow death from the inside. It’s not just a mindset cliché — he’s seen it play out in his own life. When he’s not planning something that makes him a little nervous, he loses motivation everywhere else: at work, at home, as a father. The takeaway for listeners isn’t to go do something reckless. It’s to identify your version of “uncomfortable” and book it. Put it in the calendar. Then don’t cancel.

2. Stack experiences, not just kills.
One of the most practical threads in this whole conversation is the concept of experience stacking — the idea that every micro-adventure you complete is compounding interest on your confidence. Justin didn’t go from zero to packing 80 miles through the Yellowstone Thoroughfare overnight. He stacked years of backcountry hunting, mule rides with friends, short overnighters, and hard lessons (including that ER visit) until the big trips felt like a natural next step. If you’re waiting until you’re “ready” to do the hunt of a lifetime, you’ll wait forever. Start smaller, go often, and let the experiences compound.

3. The anticipation is half the experience — book the trip.
Justin and Cody dig into something that doesn’t get talked about enough in the hunting world: the happiness that comes from having something on the calendar to look forward to. Science backs this up — humans are wired to find joy in anticipation. The planning, the e-scouting, the gear lists, the late-night what-ifs with your buddy — that’s not just prep, that’s part of the experience itself. Don’t wait for the perfect conditions or the perfect budget. Book it now, figure it out along the way, and let yourself enjoy the countdown.

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