130: How Adventure Shapes Greatness – With Easy Pay Direct Founder, Brad Weimert

For the first time in Beyond A Million history, we’re flipping the script. Today’s guest is … me, Brad Weimert.

Over the course of 125+ episodes of BAM, listeners often reach out to ask questions about my journey. So today, I recruited my friend Thomas K.R. Stovall, an entrepreneur and the founder of Mindset to Money, to pull my story out of me.

After becoming the #1 sales representative at Cutco by age 20, I started Easy Pay Direct in 2009 as a way to help entrepreneurs and eCommerce businesses accept payments without interruption.

Over the last 15 years, we’ve worked with more than 30,000 businesses, including clients like Tony Robbins, Grant Cardone, Hal Elrod, and more.

From climbing the equivalent of Mt. Everest 2x in 36 hours to bicycling across the country to learning how to turn periods of stagnation into 50%+ annual growth for Easy Pay Direct, today’s episode shines light on the experiences that have shaped both my business and my personal life.

Inspiring Quotes

• “One of the biggest lessons if you’re going into a situation that has the potential for a bad outcome, is to decide before you start how you’re going to handle that thing.” – Brad Weimert

• “When you know something is going to happen, it does feel easy, it feels effortless, and you don’t struggle with it. It’s in that uncertainty that you challenge your own character about what you’re actually capable of doing.” – Brad Weimert

• “You have to find that balance. You have to figure out how you can play the long game with the intensity that you can sustain. And figuring out what that level of intensity you can sustain is a personal journey — and that’s the fun and challenge and frustration of life.” – Brad Weimert

• “The absolute worst is rarely going to happen. Plan for the likely worst-case scenarios.” – Brad Weimert

• “If the goal is too big, most people get demoralized and never start. And if it’s too small, it doesn’t create enough fire inside you to feel like you actually have to drive.” – Brad Weimert

• “The worst mistake that I could make is to piss away time.” – Brad Weimert

• “With a lot more resources, the game just becomes more fun.” – Brad Weimert

• “Sometimes the most productive thing that I can do is nothing.” – Brad Weimert

• “When you get good at something, you internally stop seeing it as tremendously unique and valuable because it’s just something that you do. What you don’t realize is that most people don’t do that.” – Brad Weimert

• A twist on this week’s episode
• How Brad got into extreme adventuring
• Climbing the equivalent of Mt. Everest twice
• How to go from impossible to probable
• The biggest mistake entrepreneurs make
• Transforming flat periods into 50%+ growth
• How outside coaching can push you past barriers
• Can entrepreneurs turn off the drive to build?
• The most productive thing Brad does
• How to make impactful introductions
• Why experts underestimate their knowledge
• What Brad wants people to know about him

Brad Weimert: Today, we’re going to do a unique episode of Beyond A Million. I’m not really sure why, actually, but I have a great friend, Thomas K.R. Stovall, who is going to interview me. And we’re going to dig into I have no idea what but it seemed relevant that at some point with Beyond A Million people that are watching and listening got to know me and a little bit about who I am. So, here we go. I hope it’s not boring as hell. Thomas, thanks for carving out time.

Thomas K.R. Stovall: Well, you know what? Thank you, Brad. And it’s going to be hard for this to be boring because and I say this sincerely, man, you are the most interesting person I know. Period. Point blank. Full stop. And that’s not for the sake of this episode. I was honored when you reached out and said will I interview you? And I needed to check in to see if you’d ask other people first before I really took it in. And once I found out it was just me, man, I feel great about it. So, there’s three things, though, that I want people to really leave this episode understanding about you is like Brad the Human, Brad the Businessman, and Brad the Adventurer. And I think you’re probably my only friend who’s an adventurer like in the realest sense of the word. So, let’s actually start back in the day and tell me how you became Brad the Adventurer. How did that happen?

Brad Weimert: Well, first of all, I’d like to say that I asked you to interview me because I knew you were going to call me really interesting, but actually, the reason that I wanted to have you interview me is because you are very good at digging in deep with people in general. Sometimes I find it irritating. In fact, when I’m with you, I’m like, “Oh boy, we’re down this f*cking rabbit hole already.” But with us, we end up having conversations way too late into the night because there’s no ending point. And I think that most conversations are a, I mean all conversations, but conversations are a two-way activity, at least. And so, our dialogue keeps me engaged and interested. So, I love that. So, really, I’m saying that to say that I just didn’t want to get bored with somebody interviewing me. And I think if I’m talking to you, then I’m just going to have fun and it won’t feel like an interview.

Thomas K.R. Stovall: I like it.

Brad Weimert: Yeah. In terms of the question, how I became an adventurer, I grew up wanting to play sports. I wanted to play everything and I wanted to have adrenaline-rich things in my life, snowboarding, skydiving, whatever thing was new and exciting and sort of edgy. I wanted to experience life. I wanted variety in life. But I think kind of the pivotal moment where it went from that sense of just exploring what life has to offer to really pushing the envelope was in 2007. I was at a charity event. My buddy, Jon Vroman, runs this group called the Front Row Organization, and I go through these different periods of drinking or sobriety, and at the time I was not drinking. Even if I’m in long stints of sobriety, I hold true to the sentiment that charity events are much more boring if you’re not drinking.

And I’m walking around and I see a friend of mine, Carl Drew. And Carl was already way deep into adventure. I mean, he had climbed K2. He’s climbed 50 mountains. He kayaked through the Florida Everglades by himself for two weeks. The dude’s crazy. And so, as I walked around sober, I ran into him and I said, “Alright, Carl, so what’s the next crazy thing that you’re going to do?” And he said, “Well, I organized a few people and we are going to ride our bicycles from Los Angeles to Boston.” And I laughed at him. And as I walked away, I thought, “You know, I know how to ride a bicycle.” And that was my logic for pursuing that particular adventure. But this going from never being on a road bike ever before in my life and thinking, “Oh, I can ride a bicycle. I can do this,” to riding a bicycle from Los Angeles to Boston, I think was really the entry point to real adventures and figuring out what could be gained from going through adventures or participating in them.

Thomas K.R. Stovall: It’s awesome, man. I’m on an adventure right now. And as you see, I’m in Stonehenge, and it is amazing. I need to pause for a second and get out of here because it won’t let me switch my camera.

Brad Weimert: I see you’ve got a camera.

Thomas K.R. Stovall: So, let me jump out and come back again. I apologize.

Brad Weimert: Here we go. Here we go. Here he is.

Thomas K.R. Stovall: I do always keep a second 4K webcam on that just in case you never know what happens, so.

Brad Weimert: That’s wise. That’s wise. It has taken me several incidents before I started to do redundancies on all of the things with recording.

Thomas K.R. Stovall: This looks better anyway, honestly. No fancy blur though.

Brad Weimert: That’s true. That’s okay. You’ve got some fancy blur going on in the picture behind you. I don’t know what the f*ck that thing is.

Thomas K.R. Stovall: Back to you. Was that your first adventure, or have you done little stuff before that?

Brad Weimert: I mean, skydiving, snowboarding, little stuff, but nothing that would, I think people throw around words like epic pretty loosely and I usually want to smack those people when they call a night out epic or something but riding a bicycle from Los Angeles to Boston I think fits into that bucket in my head of like an epic experience, an epic journey.

Thomas K.R. Stovall: Yeah. Are your parents adventurers as well? Is that where it came from?

Brad Weimert: No. They’re just horrifically confused by me, I think. They’re confused by the entrepreneurial pursuits. They’re confused by the endurance athletics. I think the extreme endurance stuff is confusing to them. I think they saw from an early age that I had a desire to do different things and kind of experience things and be a little wild. But the thing that goes with endurance athletics is some sort of loose screw and type of crazy paired with discipline, and you have to have the discipline because you cannot get on a bicycle and ride 15 hours a day for a month without some sort of prep and without having some internal discipline to do it.

Thomas K.R. Stovall: Sure. That reminds me of a story you told me about. I’m not sure if it was who the guy was. You have to fill it in but with your Everesting x2, when you went and climbed the height of Mount Everest, not just two times but a number of times, the background on that was a nutty story of you out in the middle of debauchery and getting into a chest pumping match, basically, and saying, “Of course, I can do it,” and then immediately going home and beginning to train. Can you tell me a little bit about that? Because that like, number one, the story is amazing and so inspiring. But what I found the most interesting about the whole thing was literally how you turned on the switch and started training like, literally the next day, stairwell. Tell me about that.

Brad Weimert: Yeah. I will and I will say that Tony Robbins talks a lot about in conditioning, he talks about decision-making and choices. I think one of the things that became a reference point for me in life was him saying, “Making a decision is not a process. It’s a moment.” And there is a moment when you choose and then everything moving forward shifts. Sometimes the catalyst of those moments is tragedy. And for a lot of people, you hear about rock bottom being that pivotal moment to shift but it doesn’t have to be. It’s just a choice when you cut off all other decisions and say, “This is the path forward for me right now.” The backdrop of this is that I was part of this mastermind group called War Room, which has since disbanded, but I was in it for years, and I was standing in the back of the room drinking tequila, as I do sometimes.

And I was watching this guy Jesse Itzler speak. And Jesse was the founder of Marquis Jets, Zico Coconut Water. He’s married to Sarah Blakely. It’s a powerhouse couple, entrepreneurs. And he’s talking and he also is known for doing some endurance running. He did a 100-mile run at one point, which was like a huge mile marker for him. And so, I’m listening to him talk and he’s doing a Q&A at the end. And somebody raised their hand and says, “Hey, so what’s the next crazy thing you’re doing?” And Jesse says, “Oh, well, I’m glad you asked. I rented a mountain and I’m challenging a bunch of my friends to climb the mountain enough times for it to be the height equivalent of Mount Everest, which is 29,029 feet. In this particular mountain, you have to climb 17 times in a row to equal the height of Mount Everest.”

And I had a visceral reaction in the back of the room. I think that I had like some little Tourette’s spasm, and I was like, “Ah, f*ck,” because I knew that that was my kind of crazy. I was like, “Oh, I have to do that thing.” And so, later that day, I went on their site and entered my name but it really was like an application process. And I entered my name and then kind of forgot about it. I thought about it and kind of forgot about it. A month or two pass. I’m at another event in Denver and I’m sitting at the bar at this event drinking Manhattans as I do sometimes. And because no good story ever started with a salad, this journey launched. And I had a call with Jesse’s partner, Mark. And Mark and I immediately connect on the phone. He’s telling me about the experience. I’m telling him about my background. He’s poking to see if I’m going to be a good fit for it. And I realize that we’re just the same kind of crazy.

And so, I’m asking questions and I say, “Hey, so, Mark, how long does it take to get up the mountain? Because it’s 17 laps you have to do. I’m trying to put together how difficult this thing’s going to be.” And he says, “Well, we think it takes about an hour.” And I said, “You think?” And he goes, “Yeah. Well, I did it once and Jesse’s done it twice.” And I was like, “Whoa, whoa, hold on. So, nobody’s done it 17 times. And the only person that’s done it more than once is Jesse, who’s done it two times?” And he’s like, “Yep.” And I said, “Okay. Well, if it takes an hour and we’re doing 17 laps, how long are you giving people to do this event?” And he says, “36 hours.” And I said, “36 hours?” And he says, “Uh, do you think that’s not long enough?” In my drunk ass, I said, “Motherf***er, I could do that sh*t twice in 36 hours.”

As soon as I said it, as soon as the words escaped my mouth, he goes, “Oh, yeah?” and I thought, “Well, I’ve had a few Manhattans. Maybe I’ll tell you in the morning.” And Mark says, “Yeah, or you could step the f*ck up and get your foot out of your mouth.” And I was like, “Oh, sh*t. Yep. Okay.” And so, I continued to drink my Manhattans that night. And in the morning, I woke up and I realized I was seven weeks out from the event. I went rock climbing that day with somebody locally in Denver, and the wheels started to turn and I started to map how I could do this. And there’s a long version of kind of mapping out that plan to do this but the condensed elements here that, I think, give some actionable takeaways are if every lap takes an hour, I’ve got 34 hours of climbing to do 34 laps because I’m committed to doing it twice. It’s 36 hours that we’re allowed to do this in.

So, it sounds like, at first listen or glance, you’ve got two hours to spare. Seems like a lot of time. Well, two hours divided over 34 gives me four extra minutes per lap. So, I have a buffer time of four minutes per lap to eat, drink, sh*t, piss, rest, maybe. Now, that doesn’t sound like very much. So, that’s the beginning of the Everesting thing. When I got there, so I spent, I guess. Yeah. So, I guess I’ll tell you the bullets of training and kind of the end of this event. So, I had seven weeks to train. And just like frame of reference for people, most people when you talk about endurance athletics, talk about Ironman races, the first question I get when I mention endurance or somebody mentions, “Oh, yeah, Brad is an endurance athlete,” people say, “Have you done an Ironman?”

And I haven’t, and there’s a part of me that’s like, “F*ck you,” because I want to do one just to do it but an Ironman race cuts off at 16 hours. Ironman races cannot be more than 16 hours. And I’m going into this thing that is going to be 36, right? So, in most people that train for Ironman races, the standard training time is nine months to train for a 16-hour race, and I’ve got seven weeks to train for something that’s going to be 36 hours. This is not a good idea but I have to figure out how I’m going to do this. So, I start to break it down. And if you do too much, too soon, you get injured, and that ruins everything. So, the first weekend, I start climbing stairs, and I basically need to get my endurance level up as quickly as I can. There are no mountains in Austin. So, it’s not a great place to train for this so I start climbing the stairs in high rises.

I’m living in a 35-story building. My neighboring building is 60 stories at the time. So, I start climbing the stairs. First weekend I do an hour Saturday, an hour Sunday. This is important because I know that this is going to span two different days. And so, if I sleep at some point, I want to train and produce this simulation of killing myself the first day, getting a little bit of rest, waking up feeling like sh*t, and doing it again. And it’s important to train as close to the circumstance of the actual event as you can. Next weekend I do two hours Saturday, two hours Sunday, and I’m doing stuff in between, right? I’m training every day in between. The following I do three hours, then I do four, then I do six, then I do eight.

And the weekend that I do eight, I actually go out to Utah to climb an actual mountain to get, again, get acclimated to that actual thing, get my calf muscles, my shin muscles working on the actual incline pace or incline grade. And I’m doing crazy sh*t because I don’t have enough time, so I’m wearing an oxygen-deprivation mask. I’ve got a weight vest that I’m using in the stairs. And I’m shooting videos this whole time, which are just me in a stairwell of sweat. Brutal. So, I don’t get injured. I finally get to the event, and at this point, I’ve kind of mapped everything out. But the event is not made for somebody to do it twice, so they’re not accommodating me in any capacity. And as we go up to the event, I’m talking to Mark and talking about like, “How can we manipulate things a little bit to make this possible for me or plausible?” And everything’s going the opposite direction. It’s like a new hurdle pops up.

The mountain, the first night they kept the mountain open through the night. So, the way this worked is you would run up the mountain and then you take a gondola down, run up the mountain, take a gondola down. They couldn’t get a permit to keep the gondola open in the middle of the night. So, the first night, we’d run up the mountain, and as soon as, maybe like I think as soon as dark at 8 p.m. or something, you would jump in an SUV and take that down. But as you might expect, the speed at which the SUV drivers drove would vary wildly, and they didn’t know how many people were going to go straight through the night. It’s a brand-new event. And I’m the only idiot that’s trying to do this twice. So, I’m like heavily concerned with how long it’s taking each driver to go down because, remember, I only have four minutes per lap.

So, I go through this whole thing through the night where I’m tracking the time on every lap. And sure enough, each lap is taking about an hour. I go from 2 p.m. on Friday, all the way through the night until about noon on Saturday. And so, at this point, I’ve been going for 22 hours and I’ve been awake now for 32 hours or something, 30 hours. And at this point, we went from 45 degrees in the middle of the night to 85. And I’m still wearing this full black armor and a hat. And I’m just going and I start to get this shooting pain in my left leg. Like, every single step, I just get this chsh, chsh, chsh. And as you can imagine, there were quite a few steps involved in going up this f*cking mountain. Every step it’s radiating up my body and I start to think, “I wonder if I’m going to do permanent damage to my knee.”

I’m 22 hours into this athletic experience, and this is a very rational thought. I have not trained enough to do this. I absolutely could do damage to myself, but I got stuck in this loop in my head for a period of time where I fast-forwarded to my 75-year-old self. I’m walking around with a cane limping and I run into somebody and they say, “Hey, how did you hurt your leg?” And I said, “Well, I felt like I needed to climb this f*cking mountain 34 times in a row when I was 35 years old.” And I think that’s a terrible thing to have happened. But when I started training for this event and I knew that I had seven weeks to do it, I decided that not only was it okay if I got injured doing this, but it was likely that I was going to. And that decision before going into the event is what released that thought from my head after 22 hours of endurance with this agonizing pain in my knee. It’s okay if I get hurt doing this. It’s likely that I’m going to. And I stopped thinking about it.

The pain didn’t go away but the ruminating thought of, “Should I quit?” went away. And one of the biggest lessons in if you’re going into a situation that has the potential for a bad outcome or the likelihood of a bad or challenging dynamic is to decide before you start how you’re going to handle that thing. Preplan for what I like to do is preplan for the worst-case scenario but kind of let that one go because the absolute worst is rarely going to happen. I like to pull it in and plan for the likely worst-case scenarios. You do need to know what you’re going to do for the likely worst-case scenarios. So, you fast forward through that, and about an hour later, I get delirious. I didn’t sleep through the night. I don’t do well not sleeping. Didn’t sleep through the night. And in retrospect, I realize that this is a nutrition problem. I was not fueling properly or hydrating properly. Thought I was but I am now like mentally not there.

And so, I’m going up the mountain on lap 22, 23, 24, and I remember passing people and I would talk to them. And then afterwards I would think to myself, “Did I say that out loud? Or was that in my head?” And then I would keep going and I go, “Am I talking to myself out right now?” And I touched my lips because it was not clear to me if I was verbalizing or just having internal dialogue. So, I get to the top of the mountain and somebody sees me doing some weird sh*t. Like, one of the staff members sees me doing weird sh*t on the mountain, and I get to the top and Mark is there. He’s one of the organizers. And he grabs me by the shoulders and he goes, “Hey, man. How are you doing?” And I was like, “I’m fine, man.” And he goes, “Are you within yourself?” And I looked at him and I was like, “Mark, I don’t know what the f*ck that means, but I got to go. I’ve got four minutes.”

He then radios down to staff again and he follows me to the gondola. It’s the middle of the day, 85 degrees. And he says, “Hey, man, you’ve got to go take a break, have some lunch, drink some water, get hydrated. You need fuel. How much are you eating?” And he’s like quizzing me. I’m like, “Yeah, yeah, I got to go, man. It’s time to go.” But I do listen to him. I get to the bottom. I eat some food but what had happened is we refer to this as bonking. In cycling, in particular, people call it bonking, but it happens in all endurance. You have depleted all of your resources. You have no fuel reserves internally, and if you don’t keep putting them in, your lactic acid builds up and your body just stops and there is no recovering from it. You go too far past the threshold of lactic acid build-up, you cannot fix it without resting.

So, fueling is a tremendously important part of endurance athletics. So, I sit down, I have lunch, I have water, and I struggle through about two more laps. But now these laps are taking me like an hour and a half. So, they close the mountain. They won’t allow us to go through the night, Saturday night, close the mountain, and I go have dinner at 6 p.m. I have only done 24 laps total now, and they’re opening it again at 6 a.m. So, I’ve got 6 p.m. to 6 a.m. to rest, sleep, whatever. I immediately get off the mountain. I had an ice bath, I get in a hot tub, I take a shower, I eat food, and I try to go to sleep. And we’re glamping. We’re sleeping in these luxury tents, which is code for I’m sleeping on a cot in a tent. And there’s a Bob Marley cover band playing because they decided it’d be a good idea to have like a party on night one. Well, I guess this is night two because most people, a bunch of people have finished their 17 laps. Well, actually, only about 50% of the people that attempted 17 laps finished, period. So, there were still a bunch of people going on Sunday but they only had a few laps to go or whatever.

Thomas K.R. Stovall: Did they see you on the mountain? Did any of these people see, like, who is this guy that we keep seeing up and down? Did they notice?

Brad Weimert: Yeah. I didn’t know this until the end of the event but it was made clear to me that there were a fair amount of sh*t talkers. Like, there were people at the event that were like, “Who the f*ck is this guy? What’s he trying to prove? Like, why is he flexing like he has to do it twice or he’s special?” But to me, I was having brief conversations with people, and I was like a horse with blinders on. I mean, as soon as I passed people, they were out of the picture. I wasn’t sticking around to talk to them. I had a pace. I had a goal. And I was measuring it the entire way through. And I really wanted the f*cking Bob Marley band not to play because they were just – I could literally feel their bass in my cot. So, I crash and my body is so sore that in order to roll over, I had to like reach over and pick my arm up and move my other arm over to roll my body over.

But on the way down on that 24th lap, I did a Facebook Live that I’d never done before at the time. And I’m explaining, “Tomorrow, I only have eight hours available, but I have ten laps to do, and every lap I’ve done has taken at least an hour. So, mathematically, this thing is no longer possible.” And one of the mistakes that I made was while I decided it was okay to get hurt doing this, and it was likely, I did not decide that I had to do 34 laps. I decided that I had to make this thing happen but I didn’t set parameters around when it was okay to say, “Well, I can’t do it now.” So, I had lots of thoughts in that moment of do I even bother? Right? Like, I can no longer do 34. It is no longer possible mathematically. So, as I’m coming down, I have two people, I have a bunch of people in the Facebook chat that are like, “Ra, ra. You can do it!” sitting on their couch.

And I’m like, “This is not a motivation issue. This is math. This is just math. Like, I just can’t do it anymore. It’s not possible.” But I had two people reach out. One of them called me. Cameron Herold left me this five-minute message, voice mail, around creative ways to potentially get this done. Taking a helicopter down, going through the night, like all these things, just brainstorming. The other was this guy, Curtis Christopherson. And he texted me, and what I remember of the text is not totally accurate but what I remember was basically him saying, “Hey, so I know that every lap is going to take you an hour, but if you just did all of them in 30 minutes, you could finish it in time.” I’m so dismissive in this moment. I’m reading it as I get off the mountain and I’m like, “This motherf***er.” And I just kind of like swipe, get out of here, do the ice bath, shower, sleep.

But I wake up at 5:30 in the morning to go hammer as many calories as I can and hit the mountain again. I do eggs, pancakes, and a protein shake. And for people that haven’t done endurance, the last thing you want to do while you’re in the middle of these things is eat. Your body is not able to digest the calories the way they do when you’re resting. So, in the morning, I’m trying to stuff in as much as I can because during the event, you burn about 800 to 1,000 calories an hour, but you can only digest something like 600 calories when you’re in movement like this. So, you are necessarily operating in a deficit once you’re past about four or five hours of exercise, maybe three for some people. It’s like a marathon you can do with no fuel and make it happen. Anything longer than a marathon, fuel becomes a really, really, really relevant consideration to the equation.

So, I get to the starting line at 6:00 am, power down some food, and I think about Curtis’s words and I think, “All right. Well, I’ve got ten laps to do. There’s no way that I can do this. But let me see how fast I can do one lap. Let me just pretend that I’m only doing one and see what I can do.” So, I bust out of the gates, running, literally running. And the incline gets super steep. I just keep going, pushing it. My heart is now like bursting out of my chest, just thumping. The grade continues to get steeper. I’m climbing. I’m moving. I’m moving. I’m dripping sweat. And I finally get to the top out of breath and I look down at my watch, 32 minutes. And I think I have this like split-second of celebration in my head. And then the rest of that second was, “Well, I can’t f*cking do that nine more times.”

So, I get in the gondola, take it down, get to the bottom. In the gondola ride down is a mixed blessing because it provides a little rest and solace but it also lets all the lactic acid settle and your body cools off. So, every restart is a little bit more of a b*tch than it needs to be. So, I go to the starting line again, start running up the mountain, and I think, “Alright, let me just see if I can do it one more time.” Heart’s racing, pumping out of my chest, dripping sweat, hyperventilating almost at the top. Look down at my watch, 31 minutes. Same thought. Except I have no celebration this time. I just think, “Well, I can’t f*cking do that eight more times.” So, I go down and the day continues like this. Every single lap I just think, “Let me see if I can do one more.”

And I keep waiting for my body to give out. I keep waiting for the moment when I’m not going to be able to do it. But I’m also now being more deliberate about cramming calories into me and pounding water every time I’m going down in the gondola and while I’m going up the mountain. I get to about four laps remaining. And now the math is almost there. And so, I’m coming down the gondola with four laps remaining. And there are people in the car, in the gondola car, and I’m like, “Hey, how many laps do you have left?” And one of them says, “Oh, I’ve got one left.” “Oh, I’ve got two left.” And they’re like, “How many do you have left?” And I was like, “Four.” And they all just get silent and they don’t know that I’m doing it twice, right? And they just get silent. And I was like, “That sounds like a lot, doesn’t it?” And they were like, “Yeah.” And I was like, “Yeah.” And I just kind of sat there with it but I knew in that moment that it had become possible.

And so, I run up for the fourth lap, same thing. I get around the 30-minute mark. Now, I’m coming down at three and I come down with three laps remaining in a gondola by myself. And now the math works. Now, I’m on dead target. If I can do these last three laps, yeah, I’ll make it. And when I’m coming down, I just break down crying by myself alone. And this is a very strange experience for me because I can’t, aside from this moment, the number of times I’ve cried as an adult is probably a disturbingly low number. It’s just not my emotional response, usually. And so, my first thought was, “Why the f*ck are you crying?” which is what my head does. And the only thing I could come up with was I was proud of myself, that I was in this state of complete disbelief that this thing was possible at all and I did it anyway, and I made it happen. And I had not actually made it happen, but I knew I could then. At that moment, I had like almost 100% confidence that it was going to be possible. And the next three laps were par for the course. It was just the next two actually were like possible.

And I’m not going to say they were easy, but once I knew, I was just like, “This is going to happen now.” Now, when you know something is going to happen, it does feel easy, it feels effortless, and you don’t struggle with it. It’s in that uncertainty that you challenge your own character about what you’re actually capable of doing.

Thomas K.R. Stovall: Every time I hear the story, man. Every time I hear the story, it’s unfathomable to me that you’re not on stage as more often telling this thing. I have told this story an immeasurable number of times. And as you were talking just now, I took notes. I took notes because it’s a masterclass. I’m going to just run down the series of lessons that I took from this thing.

Brad Weimert: I love it. Well, let me give you a point of closure to it because I think probably that one of the most important things for me was as I get down to the bottom and Mark wanted to run, who’s one of the organizers, wanted to run the last lap with me, and I was both excited to do that because I was like happy to have an opportunity to do a lap with him. He hadn’t done any f*cking laps all day, though, and also like, “Get the f*ck out of here. I need this moment of silence for me. And you want to chat and your legs are totally fresh.” And he’s also an endurance athlete so he’s totally fresh like dancing up the mountain. And I’ve been doing this for two f*cking days, you know? But he’s awesome. And we get to the bottom of the mountain and pretty much everybody’s left.

You know, there were probably eight people remaining. The event was being broken down. The tents were all being broken down. Jesse was at the base with the people trying to finish their 17 laps that were just finishing. The staff knew what I was doing and greeted me at the top of the mountain but we’re talking maybe five staff members. I get to the bottom and there were a few people remaining that knew what I was doing that congratulated me. And Jesse said to me, “Yeah.” This is when he said, “Yeah, there were a lot of naysayers, a lot of people talking sh*t.” And then he said, “But your actions speak for themselves.” And I was like, “Were there?” It didn’t hit my radar at all that it didn’t matter, right? I was in my own world. But I spent about ten minutes talking to people then I went to my tent, packed my sh*t up like an adult, drove my sh*tty ass rental car back to my hotel room, went to the hotel bar to get dinner that night, went to sleep, got on a plane, went to the office the next morning.

And I bring that up because there’s no celebration for this stuff. The reason that you do this stuff is for this moment right now. The reason you do this is to be able to share the story so that you can share what you’ve learned. But in order to get anything out of it, you need to focus on what you have learned. And every time I tell the story, I remember, right, which is super valuable to me because it pulls back that emotional state and some of those stories from myself. But I would love to hear what you wrote down.

Thomas K.R. Stovall: I’m going to tell you in a minute. But the other thing that always hits me when I hear this story is like, number one, yeah, it’s amazing. It’s inspiring. You have that moment where you get a random text from a guy, “Just go twice as fast like this.” I can’t imagine the flipping, you know, just go twice as fast. Okay. Right. And then you think on it and you can’t get it out of your head because you’re an achiever. You’re somebody who’s like, I mean, I can’t go twice as fast, but what if I could? What if I did? Can I do with just one time? And at the end of that journey, when you’ve done it one time and you’ve done it again, and you’ve done it again, and you’ve done it again and again and again and again ten times, once it goes from impossible to improbable, and it goes from improbable to like possible, and it goes from possible to probable, right?

Once that happens and then you end up doing it in that moment or some point after that moment, you got to think to yourself, “What exactly have I been doing?” Because this was always possible, this pace, this level of achievement that in my mind was literally impossible. It’s always been possible because I’m here now.

Brad Weimert: Yep.

Thomas K.R. Stovall: How did that impact how you view everything else in your life when you’re now looking at the pace you’ve been moving at what you’ve been doing?

Brad Weimert: Yeah, man. I think that that’s a, I would love to say it taught me this grand lesson to never hold back to put everything out on the table and always give it 100%. Those are great lessons to take away. In practice, pragmatically, the challenge there is when you’re doing something that’s scary, that is long, it is pragmatic to think about how to keep something in the tank for the end of the race. And I’ve had experiences where people burn out quickly. It’s a flash in the pan. They’re not there for the race. And it’s because they went too hard too soon. So, you have to find that balance. You have to figure out how you can play the long game with the intensity that you can sustain. And figuring out what that level of intensity is that you can sustain, I think that’s a personal journey and that’s sort of the fun and challenge and frustration of life.

Thomas K.R. Stovall: I think that’s the value in doing incredibly difficult things is you get reintroduced to yourself in those moments where you’re like, listen, I would have thought that the tank was this, and I realized that my reserves look like that. It’s just a different paradigm coming out of that. Let me run down for you some of the handful of lessons that I took from, listen to this, man, because I’m telling you, man, I take this story like it’s mine because there’s so many little nuggets that somebody can apply to just everyday life, especially as an entrepreneur. Number one is you got to have a little bit of crazy.

So, if you’re going to do big things, there’s got to be some part of you that hasn’t planned out every single part of it right up front. You say, I can do that, right? But there’s some level of background of accurate thinking. You didn’t just pull this out of the hat. You might have kind of overstepped it a little bit. However, you’ve climbed mountains before, right? This wasn’t your first time climbing a mountain. You’ve done extreme sports before. This was an extreme endeavor. So, there was accurate thinking inside of that little bit of crazy. That’s that second point for me is there’s got to be something that grounds the assertion.

And if you don’t have those big things, then the next part of that is another piece I took from you, which is the small things, right? Everybody wants to just make those huge swings. But you immediately went to deliberate planning. The moment that you made that big stretch goal, you come home the next day and you start mapping out what little micro actions day by day, starting not with a full 10-hour day, starting with an hour, and then going to two hours, and then one to three hours. All those little considerations, I think, get lost on people when we see the stories of the overnight success. So, the people who made it big, the tiny little actions that are planned out with deliberateness in mind, I think that that unlocks something. I’m going to stop here and let you speak to a little bit, because I know that we were late, well, on deliberateness. Talk a little bit about that.

Brad Weimert: Yeah, well, I think, I mean, there’s a lot there. The first, you have to be a little crazy to do big things and do crazy things. The dance is, if it’s too big, most people get demoralized and never start. And if it’s too small, it doesn’t create enough fire inside you to feel like you actually have to drive. So, it’s got to be something in the middle. And for me, this type of thing of, oh, yeah, I know how to ride a bike. I can ride a bike across the country. Sure, I can just run up this mountain. I know how to run. I know how to climb up a mountain. It’s just moving. But as you start to, and I think that the point there is that you don’t have to have all the answers on the front end. You just need to know that you can start the journey and put together the pieces. And maybe it’s possible.

And the other thing is, you need to f*cking start. A lot of people, it’s very popular when people want to run a marathon, to follow a marathon training program. And when they do that, and there are a ton of these out there. I mean, you Google marathon training program, most of them are basically the same. And the people believe that they have to do that training program to do a marathon. Well, the fact of the matter is, basically, anybody on the planet can get off a couch with no experience and make their body move for 26 miles. Now, how long it’s going to take them and how much it’s going to suck afterwards is really variable, but they have the capacity to do it.

And I bring that up because there are a million different paths from zero training and prep to just go make yourself do it mentally to create a large training plan that is tried and true and tested. Both of those can get you to the outcome of finishing that race. In my case, with this specific example, there’s no training plan. I have seven weeks and I’m going to be on my feet for 36 hours. And I’ve got a base. I’ve been running, but I haven’t been running for 36 hours straight and I haven’t been doing any vert, right? So, there is no true training plan.

What I needed to know was that I had some inkling of it being possible and I had A plan, and I was going to stick to that plan and be disciplined about that deliberate plan. Right or wrong, that plan is what I was going to go with because it seemed like, as I thought through it deliberately, this is the best-case scenario, allowing enough rest, pushing my body enough with the time I had. If I got to in my head through that process, I would have given up, or I might have pivoted and tried to change my training plan mid-swing to my detriment. And so, I think there’s a lot to pick a path and just run that f*cking course, right?

The largest mistake that I see with entrepreneurs in my age group that I grew up with in sales or grew up with an entrepreneurship, and they started something when they were 30 is that they changed their f*cking path 15 times. And when I meet people that I knew when I was 30, I’m 43 now, and they’re like, “Oh, what are you doing?” And I’m like, “Easy Pay Direct.” And they’re like, “Oh, you’re still doing that payment thing.” And I’m like, “Yeah, motherf*cker. And we’re still growing 20% to 50% a year. What the f*ck are you doing?” And some of them are destroying our growth, right? Some of them are way more focused than us and have gotten way further. And some of them change their plan a bunch of times. And so, the one of the lessons with endurance is like, make the plan for training, make the plan for doing, and stick to the f*cking plan.

Thomas K.R. Stovall: One of the notes I wrote down was run the simulation, and you spoke to it several times, like, pick the plan and run that simulation again and again and don’t deviate. You don’t know how it’s going to turn out. But what you can do is wake up every day, move your body. In the case of an entrepreneur, move your mind, stay focused on that thing because as an entrepreneur, what clicked for me as you were talking is we are all endurance athletes, but in a different context. And the person who wakes up every day and does the boring thing again and again and again, day after day, month after month, year after year.

At some point, you develop enough of the resources in the relationships because I remember there were some years where your growth in the business, it hadn’t plateaued, but it was not nearly what you wanted it to be. It was just kind of like slow and stay for some years. And then you just kind of hit a point where it was like, boom. And I’ve asked you about that before and you’re like, wasn’t really a magic bullet. There just came a time where you’ve done it long enough and some things converged and people knew you and they’d show up in the room and there’s Brad again. And something goes wrong in business after five years of talking to, like, I understand now why I needed him. And another person moves over and another person moves over, it just as the things converge and after you’ve done it for so long.

Brad Weimert: Well, I’ll add some color to that. So, first of all, this endurance event was during one of those flatter years. And so, it was during one of these times when we weren’t growing as much. And it was a distraction in no uncertain terms. Had I not done this, I would have lost a tremendous amount of understanding of myself and what I’m capable of. And I would have lost a tremendous amount of relationships that I was able to deepen through both the actual event, but the story of the event. But the business would have been further along, or this taught me lessons that I can apply directly to the business, and after doing this, allowed me to drive the business more. I don’t know, but what I do know is that the largest pivotal point with Easy Pay Direct in changing the trajectory from a few flat years early to consistent growth was refocusing on the basics.

And I was talking to a coach of mine about sort of the client experience. And we’re very deliberate about looking at our client experience from the initial ad they see or referral that brings them in or article that they read. A ton of our business comes from SEO and partnerships, all the way through to what their experience is after they’ve been with us for a year, and that client experience had some gaps. And I was talking to my coach and I was kind of waiting for my operations person to do some of these things and plug some of these holes, and it wasn’t happening. And part of that’s just me not doing effective leadership, not being good enough at it. And obviously, I wasn’t getting what I wanted to or expected from the operations person. But as a leader, you have to own that sh*t.

And my coach said, “How long would it take you to just do it yourself?” I was like, “I don’t know. I mean, I’d have to drop all other priorities.” He was like, “How important is it?” And I was like, “Pretty f*cking important that we have a clean client experience to convert clients and take care of them.” And I said, “It’d probably take me two months, three months.” And he said, “Okay, well, why don’t you refocus and just do that?” And so we did. And that refocusing on that client experience was the catalyst to move from a few flat years to this accelerated growth curve of initially, it was 50%, 60%, 70% a year. And then as we got bigger, those increases are tougher, but that was it, those refocusing on the basics.

Thomas K.R. Stovall: That brings me to my next point from your talk, which was intentional constraints and focus, having a coach who brings up the thing that you already know, like you know how important this thing is in the business, but there was a reason why you weren’t necessarily taking those actions. And ultimately, you can’t see the picture when you’re in frame, which is why you got to have people around. You can point that stuff out. But even when the coach said it, you could have done what most of us do, which is, I mean, three months to do that, I’ll find somebody else. The person who I’ve hired has got to step up. You got to look a million different ways. What had you actually hear them say? Yep, I’m going to actually do that for the next three months. The same kind of thing that had you say twice as fast. Can’t do it 10 times. Maybe one. I’m going to go all in on that thing. What is that?

Brad Weimert: Well, I can tell you the specific moment with that, but I will say that one of the scariest things, as I’ve continued to grow and expand and do more things is allocation of time. I’m afraid of investing my time in the wrong thing. I’m afraid of wasting time. It seems like the worst mistake that I could make is to piss away time. But what comes with that is paralysis is this idea of sh*t. I don’t want to invest three hours doing something for three months when I’m not sure what the outcome is going to be. And that has hit me much harder as the value of my time is increased a lot.

But the pivotal moment with me, with the coach, was I was having a conversation with them and I think it was before. It was right around the same time with a flat year. And I was talking about selling the company and he said, “Okay, what would you do if you sold?” And I was like, “I don’t f*cking know.” He was like, “Well, think about it.” I was like, “I mean, I guess I’d probably start another company.” He said, “Okay. So, well, how long do you think it would take you to get to the same point?” And I was like, “Yeah, I would definitely do it faster than I did it the first time, but maybe three years to get here.” And he said, “Okay. So, it’s going to take you three years to get back to this place.” He said, “You know it’s going to happen.”

And I said, “Tell me.” He said, “You’re going to spend three years rebuilding something. You’re going to do it quicker and you’re going to have the same f*cking problem you’re having right now. The problem isn’t the business. It’s you. You don’t know how to move through this phase.” And I was like, “Oh, sh*t. You’re right.” You are positioned in the absolute best way possible to solve this problem right now. You have built an ecosystem around you. You have all these moving parts that are already moving as a machine. You can focus on just this problem and learn how to move through this right now better than any other time, or you can rebuild the whole f*cking thing over three years and get to the same problem. And that was why I decided to spend three months working through that stuff that for whatever reason I’d been bucking, but it was also a huge moment for me to understand that I am building the company to get better as an entrepreneur and continue to grow and learn.

Yeah, all of the other things are important. Yes, we touch more clients. Yes. I have facilitated retirement and wealth. But with that, it’s opened the door to realize what the more important things are. And the more important thing in business for me is learning, understanding, growing, and also much more leverage. Like, now, today, it’s tremendously interesting and important to me to figure out how to make the staff wealthy, and that’s exciting. And I had heard that from entrepreneurs before and heard that was their focus. And I really thought it was lip service, but it took me getting to a certain place before that became a priority for me. And now, I’m waking up multiple days a week thinking, “How do I get them super excited about building wealth inside the walls of Easy Pay Direct to set them up forever?”

Thomas K.R. Stovall: Wow. You bring up a point where, in a moment, you’ve kind of hit this place in your business where the baseline constraints are off now. Survival is no longer a concern. Abundance is actually here and is on autopilot and coming in. And now, your mind is wandering other places. Now, you’re thinking about your staff. You’re thinking about other areas of your life. What are some of the things that for you, when you think about the next five years, 10 years outside of money, when you’re just thinking about life, what does your life look like in 5 or 10 years, if you can imagine out that far? What are the things that are different now that will look totally different then than they did five years ago now, then another five? Just walk me through how you’re thinking about your life.

Brad Weimert: So, there are all these blog post articles, like, there’s probably some secret how to get interviewed and land a job handbook out there. I’m sure there is. But I get questions from that handbook every single time I’m hiring somebody. And one of the questions that people that are getting interviewed like to ask is, “What’s your vision for the company? What’s the 5, 10-year plan?” And I am known to respond to that with, “I don’t know what the f*ck is going to happen in five years.” It’s largely a tech company, like, it’s software sales and service, full-time dev team here. Three years is about as far out as I feel comfortable forecasting for technological shifts and even that, hard pressed.

But here’s what I do know. Establishing, I can’t remember the words you use, but establishing the baseline comfort if you’re looking at the hierarchy of needs, right? I’m comfortable, not going to starve to death. I can retire comfortably. And so, I look at what the next levels are. And one is, I’m 43 and single, and I have very deliberately through my life decided that I wanted to establish these things. First off, I wasn’t willing to compromise on a partner. I wanted to make sure that the partner was not a misstep. I wasn’t willing to marry somebody early, have kids, and then get divorced 10 years later. Knew I didn’t want to do that.

The other is that there are different paths you can take with this that have different perks and drawbacks. You have kids when you’re 20. By the time you’re 40, they’re adults. And you have a new chapter of life as 40 with adult kids, and you’re close in age, you can relate. Very hard to do that part and also raise them wisely and raise them financially stable and secure environment. So, I wanted to check those boxes first before going into that mode. But I’m very much kind of in that mindset right now.

And to me, now, it’s the beginning of the game. The game is way more fun when there’s more money involved and less critical pressure if you’re still willing to play it. A lot of people get complacent when they get to a certain point and just f*ck around. And I’ve spent the last couple of years doing a lot of that. But with a lot more resources, the game just becomes more fun. So, my father, my whole family, immediate family, or physicians, my father’s an ear, nose, and throat doctor, retired. And he makes these– you’ve seen them, these crazy, elaborate stained glass lamps. And these things take hundreds of hours to make. And it’s his hobby.

And he’s notorious for saying when people are like, “Oh, will you make me one? Will you commission one for me? I’ll pay you.” And he’s like, “There is no way you can pay me enough for this to make any sense. This lamp would be way too expensive. It’s not why I’m doing it.” It’s a hobby for him. It’s a very expensive hobby. That will almost certainly never happen in my life. And the reason for it is that part of the game for me is figuring out how to make the hobby a capitalistic endeavor. And I know lots of people that feel like, if you put a business model around it, it takes the fun out of it and then it makes it no longer enjoyable. And it’s a business.

And I would challenge that person to think about a way to create the business that it doesn’t do that for you. You don’t have to run a business to maximize ROI. You can run a business to other ends. But I don’t see myself retiring and checking out and having shuffleboard tournaments in my retirement home. I see myself not running a major organization, sitting on boards instead, and having sort of a hobby business project that’s enjoyable to me in the future. And I think you and I are very in line on kind of the experiential environmental component of that where, like, who you’re around, the people you’re around are amplified by the environment that you put them in and the circumstances that you put them in, and businesses that revolve around that kind of thing are sort of an interesting next chapter of life because they’re very difficult, time consuming. But if you’re not focused on maximizing ROI or getting rich with them, that sounds super entertaining as the next chapter.

Thomas K.R. Stovall: Yeah, there’s a book called– you probably have read it already, called The Art of Gathering. You read this?

Brad Weimert: I have not, no.

Thomas K.R. Stovall: I think the author’s name is Priya, maybe Shah. I know her first name is Priya. But she talks about this concept of being really, really targeted and specific. So, when you’re creating a gathering, having even one person in the room who’s not the perfect fit, who’s not a clearly aligned, like this is what we said, these five things must be true for this person to be in the room. If four of them are true and one isn’t, it’s a disservice to that person and it’s a disservice to everyone else to have that person be there.

And most folks would look at gatherings, like, “Well, what’s the big deal?” If they’re not a perfect fit, they’re mostly in line. But what happens is that person, when they’re there, they can’t get the full value because they don’t have whatever background or body of experiences that they need to be in the room. They also can’t offer the same value to everyone else, and the more that you compromise on those small things, the more that that room just begins to erode in the value that could have been there. And we talk all the time about curating rooms of people. And most people don’t care about those details.

But when you have a room, I know you’re a relationships over a revenue guy, so that’s what I am as well, which we’ve always aligned on that, it’s so rare you find those rooms. But the higher the food chain go, you find more of those rooms where people do really care about that stuff because your time is literally the most important thing. So, if you’re going to sacrifice 30 minutes, an hour, when you could be with family, you could be working on some substantial, having those rooms that you can trust makes a big difference. What’s the most important room that you’re in right now for the relationships that you have, both on the friend side as well as on the business side?

Brad Weimert: I mean, this is going to sound like some woo-woo fairy bullsh*t, but the most important room I’m in is my living room alone in silence. The realization for me, I had it a couple of years ago and I didn’t follow it enough, but the realization was sometimes the most productive thing that I can do is nothing. If I’m not spending time alone to sit and think in silence, I am doing a tremendous disservice to the people that are around me and to myself.

And second to that is deep work. Second to that is just time alone, period. Focused on other things. That, to me, amplifies the relationships that I have when I am with people. If I’m spending time thinking and working on things and working on myself, I am having deep, reflective thoughts about stuff, doesn’t matter what it is. But when I allow myself to go deep into things or clear away all of the chaos, that shows up in conversations with high performers very directly as a value add. I’ve thought about this stuff, right? I spent time reflecting on it.

And thoughtful reflection on concepts, events, ideas is the differentiator. We can get the information out there. We can get that anywhere. We can get responses from f*cking ChatGPT now. But the thoughtful, reflective stuff from intellectual people is lacking. And so, it’s the same thing of, your question was what room, i.e., are you around a good group of people that’s facilitated in a certain way? And where is it and how do I get in the room, maybe? And my answer today is I’m refocused on trying to be a better person so that whatever room I’m in, I’m able to contribute to that room in a better way, which I think allows you to get more out of the room as well.

Thomas K.R. Stovall: One of the things that’s special about you is, and I’ve told you this before, there’s no one, no one who introduces someone to a group of people better than Brad Weimert. And you don’t even have to seemingly know people all that well. You spend a couple minutes talking to them and then introduce that person to a group, and a guy is looking around like, “What is he talking about? Are you talking about me?” Like, yeah, you do a great job of framing someone, edifying someone, and introducing them into a space, whether it’s 3 people, 15, 20. Is it always been like that? Or is it something that you have actually focused on? Because I try to do that, but I’m not nearly as good as you. I find that most people don’t seem to understand the value of it. Why are you so good at that?

Brad Weimert: Well, I think as a starting point, I am not willing to bullsh*t on introductions, at all. So, if I’m saying something, it’s because I believe it to be true. And I’m not going to give hyperbole. I’m not going to inflate your statistics. I will just try to find the things that are relevant. And if I’m introducing a high-performing business person to an artist, I’m not going to lie and say the artist sells X, Y, Z and is worth $1 billion. I am going to highlight the things that are impressive about that human to me, right? And that might be, I have some of the best conversations with them ever. They are one of the most thoughtful people I know. They’re super intellectual and they have created a life making paintings. It’s f*cking crazy to me. The number of people that are able to make a living from painting is very small and they’ve done this, right?

So, it’s finding the things that I can be authentic about that impressed me. And sometimes they’re little, sometimes they’re big. I think it’s super important. I very rarely do introductions without context. And I take time to do it. And really, I think that I learned it in a– I had a stint for about a year and a network marketing company after I got out of Cutco, this little window, it’s actually where I met Pete Vargas. Pete recruited me into this network marketing company when I was 20, 22 probably.

And one of the people there taught me the power of edification. And they were like, “Look, when you bring me into a room, you need to edify me. You need to build me up because it gives me the credibility to speak to the room with authority.” And that obviously is just very much gaming the system, but it stuck with me. And it is a night and day difference when you get a third-party endorsement, which is really what that is when you’re doing an introduction, as you’re lending your own credibility to this person that you’re introducing to these people that you’re introducing to each other.

Thomas K.R. Stovall: It’s such a gift to walk into that craft and space. The word is thoughtful. It’s such a thoughtful thing to do, and you do it so well. That’s one of the things that you bring to a space. What is the thing for you that’s like hands down the biggest value add that you consistently bring into any room that you’re in?

Brad Weimert: Man, I don’t know. I mean, I think I’d have to ask friends on that. I think it depends on the room, probably. I think it’s really important to know that. And I wish I had a better answer because I think you most often in life see the two extremes of that situation. You have the people that arrogantly believe that they have tremendous value and just f*cking talk forever and grab the mic when they have an opportunity and just are shameless self-promoters and they offer very little.

And then you have the other end of the spectrum of people that are brilliant, but feel like they don’t offer that value or don’t know what their value is or don’t want to show up in that sort of perception of arrogance by grabbing the mic so they don’t talk at all. I lean more in that direction of, some of the things that– I guess another way to say that is, like, on that end of the spectrum, a lot of the time, we do things and we get good at them. And when you get good at something, you internally stop seeing it as tremendously unique and valuable because it’s just something that you do. What you don’t realize is that most people don’t do that. And that is valuable to share it with them, if that’s the case. And so, I don’t know. I don’t know what my thing is there.

Thomas K.R. Stovall: Let me tell you?

Brad Weimert: Yeah. Please.

Thomas K.R. Stovall: One thing that I’ve noticed with you, and it doesn’t matter who we’re talking to, because we’ve had some of the most random experiences in every conversation. You bring your attention and you bring curiosity. It’s probably less than five times. And I’m actually just throwing this out there, I can’t think of any. But there’s probably less than five times where I’ve been in a conversation with you, with another human being. And you’re not actually some form of present and actually like having a conversation to the point where you can recall things that they’ve said a moment or two earlier. And I actually ask them about, you ask follow-up questions. It’s the little stuff. And I think people feel appreciated when they’re talking to you because you actually demonstrate care. You give your attention.

Brad Weimert: A long time ago, somebody told me, if you find yourself in a conversation and you think the other person is boring, it’s your fault. The sentiment is that it’s your job to be curious and ask questions. Everybody has something that’s interesting and unusual that they do, and it’s your job to find it. I do not see myself as the person that is endlessly curious, that is asking all the questions. So, it is flattering to hear that because it is something that I work on and want to work on. I think that it is amazing to be around curious people that are intrigued and lifting up the little rocks to try to find something. Those people are irritating as f*ck sometimes, too. But the right kind of curiosity is uplifting, it’s uplifting for an introvert.. Most people don’t see me as an introvert, but I definitely want to escape the noise and go get solo time to recharge, but there are some people that actually fuel me, but they’re few and far between. And I think the through-line of those people is curiosity.

Thomas K.R. Stovall: Speaking of curiosity, what’s the most exciting place that you’ve ever traveled? And why?

Brad Weimert: Oh, man. I think that you’ve got all these different criteria, right? It’s like I went to Antarctica a couple of years ago. That’s wild, because it’s so untouched and it’s more touched now than ever, but it’s in the middle of nowhere. When I think about that question, for the most part, I think about esthetic qualities, where something’s astoundingly beautiful. And Patagonia is probably the place for me on that front. So, on the tail end of Antarctica, I went to Patagonia with Cameron Harold and his wife, Ashley.

And we just stumped around Patagonia for two weeks. Patagonia is a third-world country. I mean, we were in Chile and you leave the airport and within about 45 minutes, you go to dirt road. But it’s not like nice packed dirt road. It’s like a f*cking washboard. It’s like, du, du, du, du, du, du, du, du, du, du, du. And initially, when we first hit this, we’re going probably 40 miles an hour. And you feel like you need to slow down because of that noise. And you think, well, I can’t wait for this to be done. And then you realize that’s what the road is for the next six hours and you’re just driving, oh, I mean, just driving on that.

And it’s not the states. There’s no guardrails. You’re whipping around mountains, sheer cliffs. But the glaciers are melting into these crazy turquoise blue lakes that are massive, that you can’t see the other side of, if you look long ways that you can drink from because they’re so pure, that are foggy from all of the minerals that are in them. It’s amazing. It’s a gorgeous, gorgeous place. Waterfalls everywhere. It’s beautiful.

Thomas K.R. Stovall: I got one more question for you, B.

Brad Weimert: Yeah, ask me because I know we’re coming up on time here.

Thomas K.R. Stovall: Yeah. So, what’s the most important thing that you want to leave people knowing about you? It might be something that people really just don’t know at a glance or wouldn’t assume. What’s the one thing, if they don’t know anything else about you, whether it’s about you as a businessman, as a human, whatever, what is that?

Brad Weimert: There’s a big part of me that wants to respond to that by saying, I don’t really give a f*ck what people know about me. And I think that that’s probably the largest through-line is what the f*ck do I care?

Thomas K.R. Stovall: That’s so Brad.

Brad Weimert: I don’t give a f*ck what you know about me. And simultaneously, I think that nobody really wants to be judged harshly. And I do care. I do care what people think on a lot of levels. And so, I think that it’s probably something along those lines of I’ve probably thought about it and reflected on it more than you think and I’m probably on the other side of your judgment before you even made that judgment.

Thomas K.R. Stovall: It’s really a human thing, bro, to share that. It’s like not some huge insight, just like, hey, I’m actually a little bit vulnerable over here. Hey, man, I just want to say I appreciate the time. I love you, bro. This has been great to just get to know you, honestly.

Brad Weimert: I love you, too, man. Thank you so much for carving out time to talk. It’s weird to just talk for an hour and a half. But it’s funny because when I saw it in the calendar today, and literally, I was in a meeting with my director of marketing, I was like, oh, I just get to talk to Thomas for an hour and a half.

Thomas K.R. Stovall: Yeah.

Brad Weimert: That was my response. It was like, normally, when I go into these, I’m like, I have to be on, I have to be so focused. And it’s a deliberate effort, right? Even if I’m excited about the conversation and the guest, it’s a deliberate effort. But over time, I always just– it’s exciting to f*cking hang out with Thomas.

Thomas K.R. Stovall: Yep.

Brad Weimert: Love it, man. Well, let’s get some face time in person sometime soon. But this was great. I appreciate it.

Thomas K.R. Stovall: All right, man, and then you pop on a plane here, I’ll come down there. Let’s figure it out.

Brad Weimert: I love it. Thanks, Thomas.

Thomas K.R. Stovall: All right, brother, talk soon.