I recently almost triggered an avalanche when backcountry skiing near Breckenridge. In reflecting back on it, it taught me an important business lesson too.

Apologies if you experience a slight clicking during this episode. I recorded it on AirPods while driving in my car.

Transcript

Hey, what’s going on everybody? So I am currently heading up towards the mountains to spend a few days at the ski cabin for the weekend that we’re renting for the winter. And as I’ve been driving along, I’ve realized that I learned an important lesson a few weeks ago that I think might be relevant to all of you as well.

There’s a lot of entrepreneurs, and freelancers, and agency owners, and that sort of thing listening to this podcast. So I think this is relevant.

A few weeks ago we were up in the mountains, and we went backcountry skiing. So my wife and I love to ski in the winter. It’s our thing and we do a lot of backcountry skiing, so a lot of touring where basically you put things on the bottom of your skis called skins, and that lets you climb up the mountain wearing your skis.

So we basically have these special bindings that we put the part of our boots into. They’re called pin bindings. And the rear, our heel, is free. So these aren’t telemark skis, they’re backcountry skis. We can flip the heel piece around 90 degrees and tamp down our heels and ski down regularly. But so basically we do this.

Part of the fun is climbing up. We call it earning your turns. You’re climbing and you get to the top, and it’s a beautiful run, right? Untouched powder.

Because it’s not officially a ski run, it’s just a mountain, and you climbed up that snow on it that you’re going to ski down. And so we went out onto this slope that we’ve been out on quite a few times now, and we had our daughter with us. We pulled her up, and I believe my wife pulled her up in her little [inaudible 00:01:50 ] chariot behind her.

And so Courtney was going to hang out down in the meadow while I went up with the dog and skied this slope. I was going to come back down, hang out with Tatum so Courtney could go and do it herself.

So there’s been a lot of snow this year in Colorado. We’re actually over 300 inches already in Breckenridge, which is the earliest that they’ve hit that mark in 15 years, or something like that. So it’s been a phenomenal snow year. I’ve gotten in great shape from shoveling snow, let me tell you what.

And so we went out to the meadow, skied up there, and then the dog and I kind of take off and we’re skinning up. And I’m like, man, the snow’s a little crusty, right?There’s kind of some layers here as I’m walking up, and taking my ski pole and punching through, just to kind of feel where the layers of snow are. I feel there’s maybe a layer that’s kind of weak, and the top is a little gnarly.

It’s a little crusty, but it feels okay down lower. And so I’m skinning up through the trees and I start getting off and I’m like, man, that face that we usually ski, it’s not super steep. And so basically when you’re skiing up like this, and then you’re going to ski down these slopes, you’re looking up for avalanches, right? And I’m going to say an avalanche is a bad thing. If you get caught in it, you can die. We’ve had avalanche training and you know… so I know what to look for and I know this… the contour of the slope, we’ve seen it a couple times. It’s beautiful, and we… but these are the… You go over this one knoll, and then it’s kind of a divot, for lack of a better word. And then you go up the next one, and you get to the top.

It’s usually a cornice up there. You know, you kind of want to avoid, don’t want to break that off inside the slope. And I was looking at the middle part, and I’m like, man, that’s kind of wind loaded, so I’m not going to go up that. I’m going to go up this other face, which is a little more southwest facing than the one we usually ski, but it’s like south-southwest, so it’s basically South.

And I’m going up there, I’m kind of traversing back and forth across, taking my angles and going. And I’m going up with the dog, he’s coming behind me. I’m like, all right, I’m going up and I’m [inaudible 00:04:01 ], it’s still a little sketchier the further we go. But it’s feeling okay, and I think I can ski it. And I’m going and I get up [inaudible 00:04:12 ], I’m going to that tree.

I’m only going three quarters of the way up. I’m not going to try to go all the way to the top, because it’s pretty exposed. It was windy that day. And I get up there to the tree, and I’m looking back, kind of in the shelter of the tree to my right, skiing slope is to my left. And looking back and the dog’s behind me, kind of shoved into the snow, because, like I said, there was a lot of snow and he’s kind of sinking in. And all of a sudden I felt a [floof 00:04:39 ], and it was a [whoop 00:04:43 ]. It’s the snow settling, and I drop about six inches. The snow settles down about six inches, which is like, this thing is going to go. This thing is going to slide if I’m not really, really careful.

And so I turn around and I’m just like, holy crap. And I used stronger language than that. But my adrenaline spikes through the roof, get this sinking feeling in my gut. I haven’t even taken my skins off yet. And I turn around and I yell at the dog, “Butter, back up.” And he sees me and I start kind of moving towards him, as controlled as I can, back in my same track that I’d take him before, that I had just skimmed up.

And long story short, we were fine. We backed off. I backed off a couple of turns. I took off my skins and I skied down, and honestly it was horrendous snow. I’m punching through, trying to turn and punching through this crust. And my boots are getting caught by this crust, and… I get back down and Courtney was like, yeah, we’re out of here.

And you know, I think this is an important lesson in business. As you’re going, you’re moving forward and you’re like, yeah, I’m doing this thing. I’m working on this new product, or I’m working on this new offering, or I’m trying to get this new business off the ground that… A lot of times it’s fine, and you’re going and it’s not a risk to anything. But sometimes things just go awry. And I’m not saying this because something has gone awry in my business lately. We’ve been through a lot in the last few years, but nothing’s gone awry in my business lately.

But at some point, you just have to cut your losses. In business, often there is this. And a lot of people feel this and tell me about it as well. And I’ve felt it before. It’s called the sunk cost fallacy. Where you’re like, I’m in this thing. I’m ready. I’ve already put in all this effort, or time, or budget, or I’ve got a person on it.

You know, a lot of skiers honestly get into this when you’re in avalanche training. They are… It’s called your AIARE levels. There’s level one, two and I believe three. So AIARE level one, A-I-A-R-E, is the first one that you take, and they tell you about… It’s a lot about decision making as a group, where people will get in and we’re like, man, we just climbed this ridge, got to this thing, and man, the snow looks horrible. But we’re already here. Right? How bad can it be? And that’s when you really, really get into trouble. And so it’s called the sunk cost fallacy. I’m ready to [inaudible 00:07:31 ], I’ve already done this budget, or put this budget towards it, these people towards it, all this effort, and we [inaudible 00:07:37 ] this thing. It tested and it’s ready to go.

But it’s not going to work. It’s essentially going to be quite dangerous to your business, [inaudible 00:07:47 ] to your life, but to your business. And sometimes you just have to cut your losses and say hey, this isn’t working, and if I put more effort into this thing, the upside just honestly is not there. And I’m going to risk a lot by doing this.

So I had this happen a couple of years ago actually, [inaudible 00:08:11 ] where we’d get a lot of people coming to us asking basically if we’d be a recruiter. Like, could we help them hire a director of marketing? I’ve had people offer me… They’re like, we will pay you half… We’ll pay you 50% of this person’s first year’s salary, or we’ll give you twenty grand if you help us recruit this person.

And I was always like, you know what, that’s not the business we’re in. And it’s still not the business we’re in. And so eventually I’m like, man, people are asking us for this thing. Let’s just… Let’s build out a job board, right? Full-time jobs board, Credo can become the solution for hiring all these different things. You need an agency, we g