[00:00:00] Joe: Welcome everybody to the Live Ultralight podcast, powered by a little company called Outdoor Vitals. This podcast is all about inspiring you to get Outdoors. Showing you how to lighten your pack and build your confidence. So you can start living your life full of Adventure. I am Joe content creator here at Outdoor Vitals. And I have with me on the program, someone you've probably heard before a couple times. If you listen to
[00:00:24] Joe: us Tyler, how's it going to
[00:00:27] Tyler: good?
[00:00:27] Joe: VP of operations, right?
[00:00:27] Tyler: Yep,
[00:00:27] Joe: Outdoor Vitals. So Tyler. Is VP of operations for an outdoor gear company. So I figured that might be kind of interesting people who are super fans of Outdoor Vitals, who are the people large, majority of the people listening to the show, might want to hear some more about you, and your life adventure, and possibly a little bit of the businesses that you've you've made, and of
[00:00:58] Joe: course of this one that you helped
[00:01:00] Joe: run. So, Tyler, where did you
[00:01:04] Joe: grow up?
[00:01:04] Tyler: I grew up here in Cedar City Utah, Southern Utah. So
[00:01:10] Joe: you just been here the whole time.
[00:01:10] Tyler: No,
[00:01:12] Tyler: not the whole time. I served and LDS mission back in North Carolina. Then my wife and I when we got married, we moved to Texas for a while.
[00:01:12] Joe: What you move to Texas for
[00:01:12] Tyler: my first sales job?
[00:01:12] Joe: Yeah,
[00:01:28] Joe: do you want to get into that?
[00:01:29] Tyler: It was just kind of a normal like door-to-door sales job. It really taught me a lot about working for myself because it was 100% commission and I kind of like tested my metal there and found out that I could do well with that and so that that led into other things later. But it wasn't. I I did not enjoy living out their much, it was a little too Urban and Few less
[00:01:59] Tyler: mountains than I would like so yeah,
[00:01:59] Joe: I came into this
[00:02:03] Joe: company and I just found a whole bunch of introverts that don't like people. That's what,
[00:02:08] Tyler: I like I mean, honestly Texas was a great place to live and and the like kind of North Dallas area that we lived was it was nice city. So as far as living in big cities go I enjoyed that more than some of the others but okay. But yeah, I just have to be around the mountains for all of my hobbies and All of that.
[00:02:08] Joe: So were
[00:02:32] Joe: you around any mountains in North Carolina?
[00:02:32] Tyler: A little bit. We were I lived near Asheville for a little while which which gets you closer to the smokies and things like that. So but it feels more mountainous back on the East Coast just because there's so many trees and so many Hills, you know, honestly in North Carolina, it didn't seem like I ever saw Sunset because the trees were so tall and so thick.
[00:03:01] Joe: Yeah, it's interesting being out here, it's different definitely different mountains in the Rocky Mountains. And the Appalachian. So growing up out here and Cedar City. I
[00:03:14] Joe: know that I know the answer is but you do you. How, how much was the outdoors, a part of your life? Growing up. It
[00:03:22] Tyler: was a massive part of my life. If you guys saw the video of us taking down Becker through the Virgin River rim trail, not trail goes right past the cabin that I grew up spending every single weekend at I grew up. Riding horses. Fishing hunting hiking doing boy, scouts all that kind of stuff, with my dad in the mountains, every week, sometimes, three or four times a week, depending on the season.
[00:03:53] Tyler: And Yeah, I just really learned to love them and appreciate them and respect the mountains quite early on
[00:03:53] Joe: cool. Um, so,
[00:04:06] Joe: I guess, kind of Side tracking. Going back into your sales job. How did that turn into rugged materials?
[00:04:13] Tyler: Yeah. So Do you want the long answer or the really long answer, the
[00:04:20] Joe: long answer or the really long? Whichever one's better. Yeah.
[00:04:24] Tyler: so, once my wife and I got the chance to move back to Cedar from Texas, I started to go to college at Southern Utah, University, which is where a lot of us that work here went and At first, I was studying. I can't remember I think at first I went into psychology because they had this huge itch to like find a job that helped a lot of people but then the more
[00:04:55] Tyler: I got into the Academia of psychology I realized it was like not a whole lot of helping people and just a lot more of just like kind of research and and observations on. Yeah, it was just really abstract. I'm sure there's a lot of good that gets done there but so then I dabbled in the business program and I had some professors actually turned me off to business based on, on their
[00:05:24] Tyler: mentality towards business. And it was only one Professor, but it was a lot of the students that bothered me. So then I went back to engineering, which was kind of funny because that's what my my original scholarship was for but I had Given that scholarship up to explore other. Other Majors so that tends to be how I do things. I always do things the hard way but, I I went into engineering
[00:05:53] Tyler: was doing well in the program. There really enjoying like this digital modeling and design side of things. And so, I was spending all day long on the computer and I would go home and I had a, I had a decent job. I was working full-time at a factory, like, making decent wages while I was going to school and my wife and I were lucky enough to be able to buy a house
[00:06:19] Tyler: while we were still full-time students. Mostly, because the housing market was so low after that 2008 crash. But so the house that we bought had a huge Workshop, like, it was, it's awesome. And I kind of always had this itch to like, make things and sell them. So, I would go home and I was making all sorts of stuff. I rescued old motorcycles from my grandpa who owned a motorcycle shop and
[00:06:46] Tyler: I was rebuilding those into like cafe racers and kind of like, desert sled bikes and I was selling those. I was doing a lot of leather work because I learned of doing what I grew up learning how to do leather work, with my dad, to support our horse riding and then I was just doing random other like Furniture building and I was just kind of selling it all on Etsy and and
[00:07:15] Tyler: playing around with things, but I saw this Kickstarter campaign come up and this was 2012, I think when I saw this come up, Kickstarter was pretty new back then, and It was like, kind of a weird thing to most people at that point, but I saw this campaign come up, and this company had been making handmade selvedge denim jeans that were supposed to be like, super, high quality and Awesome Fit and
[00:07:43] Tyler: cut. And, and all this, they had been making them by hand in San Francisco and selling them. In like little Boutique shops for like 280 dollars, a pair and they, they wanted to go on to Kickstarter because they wanted to change their business model and sell directly to their end. User, take out the retail markup and sell their pants for 82 dollars, a pair and I backed the campaign, it was the
[00:08:13] Tyler: first Kickstarter campaign I backed and it was like there was literally less than 1,000 projects on Kickstarter when this was happening. So it was like really new and budding and and they ended up raising half a million dollars. Um, which gave them the the validation to switch their business model and just go full force into this direct to Consumer thing. And they delivered pants, and I thought they were great and I
[00:08:42] Tyler: was like, you know, I can do this with leather goods. I can make heirloom quality men's messenger bags and backpacks and briefcases and belts and wallets and sell it the way that these guys sold it. So I spent the better part of a year prototyping and designing and testing and and just like playing around with all the different, The Collection that I was putting together for Kickstarter and showed it to some
[00:09:13] Tyler: of my professors and my old business professors that I like and they all thought it was crazy and just kind of thought it was like a they just thought it was like a fun hobby I guess I put it on Kickstarter and we pre-sold well over 100,000 dollars worth of product and and,
[00:09:33] Tyler: It was the biggest Kickstarter campaign in Utah at the time and it got a lot of attention and I was like, oh wow, I now I have to make all of this product like by myself. So so I that was the end of a semester. So I ended up not re-enrolling for summer semester, or for the fall semester. And I just built out my shop hired people, and we were just Off
[00:09:58] Tyler: to the Races. And so from there, from that was the summer of 2013. To the fall of 2017. I was full-time on rugged material. Just designing, leather goods and Selling them. Online. All right
[00:10:18] Joe: and still around. Yeah,
[00:10:21] Tyler: yep. So I actually met Jason because he started out to Rivals at a similar time. Just nine months after I started and in the same town, we were part of entrepreneur groups. And so our businesses were both like selling direct to the end user online. So we had a lot in common and we would meet like every Friday and we would swap secrets and talk shop and celebrate each other's successes and
[00:10:50] Tyler: commiserate our challenges and, and all of that together,
[00:10:54] Joe: like a mastermind group kind of a thing.
[00:10:56] Tyler: Well, is it he and I because no one else got what we were trying to do. Like interesting for those first couple years. E-commerce was pretty like, like starting your own brand through eCommerce was still kind of a new idea and the other just wasn't a whole lot of people who are on our same thought waves. So yeah, I I actually, I wanted to Pivot away from the leather goods around 2017.
[00:11:26] Tyler: We're having our first daughter and I was pretty burned out on trying to run my own business, trying to do all 100% American made direct to Consumer like, and and I just kind of like worked myself into this, really bad burnout. So I actually paired all the product line, way down, had my brother kind of running it and and put it on autopilot and Took a good pay cut that way, but
[00:11:59] Tyler: went to work for another company here in town and then after a couple years, I found a buyer for the material, so they bought it. And then I was On to the next thing
[00:12:11] Joe: you're free. Well, that's really cool. It's always really cool to hear. Someone's like Kind of business from nothing story. Yeah.
[00:12:24] Tyler: It's, I mean, I learned a whole lot of what not to do, I
[00:12:29] Tyler: had I had one missed email cost me more than 50,000 dollars. I had, you know, I I made just about every mistake, you can make with employees like with hiring and how to structure things with employees and how to lead and just all that kind of stuff. I learned a lot of what not to do, but somehow we were always profitable enough that we could, like, shake off my mistakes and keep
[00:13:02] Tyler: trudging along. but, It just ended up consuming me and not allowing me to have a healthy family life and stuff like that.
[00:13:02] Joe: So what made you decide to join OVI?
[00:13:02] Tyler: Well, I think when I, when I went part-time on rugged material, that fall of 2017 tasting and I Like kind of It kind of went unspoken but I think we would have been happy to work together then in 2017, but at that
[00:13:33] Tyler: point, his team was small enough and the company was manageable enough that it didn't make sense for me to come help because we were both good at the same thing. We're both like experience in the same things. So when I went to work for this other company here in Cedar, they were about double the size of what Outdoor Vitals is now. And I got a leadership position right off the bat there
[00:14:00] Tyler: and then I ended up working my way into the, the top level of leadership there. And I got to gain a ton more experience on how a business with five times the employees that we have at our vitals like how that runs how it looks? What's good, what's not? And so then A year ago. Tasting and I were, at a different Mastermind networking group, where we speak with other business owners and
[00:14:34] Tyler: stuff. And I was just seeing all of the growing, pains that taste in was having and I like he would ask all these different things and I started to have the answers because of the other business that I was working at. And so
[00:14:52] Tyler: then like it made a lot more sense for us to start talking about me, coming to help it out revivals and it worked out well because I've used OV products from the start, I've always been kind of an unofficial tester and gotten to See, it Grow from the very beginning. So for me to be able to sell rugged material, leave the other company and come here and focus 100% on it has
[00:15:22] Tyler: been, it's been awesome. It's been really fun. And we've seen some good successes with it.
[00:15:28] Joe: Yeah. Um so tell me since joining OB or I guess ever what are to bring it back to the outdoors a little bit? What are some of your favorite Trips that you've ever gone on. Backpacking. Outdoors.
[00:15:50] Joe: Ever. Yeah. Well, what have been your favorite ones from movie?
[00:15:50] Tyler: Yeah, I can probably work backwards easier. All right
[00:16:00] Tyler: so Every trip with Obi has been a good time, like they've all had their different challenges or, or different values to me, but I really enjoyed these monthly company trips and some of the bigger ones, The High Line that we did. It was really a bummer that we got completely snowed out and didn't feel like we could safely finish it but even without finishing it Highline was awesome. The fast pack that
[00:16:33] Tyler: we did through the touchers. Was a pretty sentimental trip for me because that's where I've grown up hiking and and riding horseback and hunting with my dad. And so I got to take everyone up some of the Lesser known Trails, the most people don't hike, but I knew because of the because of my family's efforts to go and clear the trails and use those as they ride and things like that. So,
[00:17:01] Tyler: those were my favorite obvious trips, and a lot of my favorite memories in the mountains, have been there in the mountains with my dad all so, but We've done some amazing hiking trips. Just through Hawaii had some pretty awesome, like, kind of volcanic hiking trips and getting to go do that. I've done some pretty amazing trips through Idaho. I have a real love for the Sawtooth. and, I don't know. I've we've,
[00:17:47] Tyler: I've kind of hiked and backpacked and fished and hunted in all the western states.
[00:17:47] Joe: Your favorite.
[00:17:58] Joe: Just to go back to you over and over.
[00:17:58] Tyler: Yeah, I mean honestly I don't
[00:18:03] Tyler: Yeah, they all have such cool unique nuances, but it's all. It's all new ones like The western states just have big, awesome mountains, the eastern states, what I can have done back there through the Appalachians and stuff. That's all great too. So I don't know if I have a favorite but I also feel like, Every time that I go out in Utah, I see a new Ridgeline, or a new Summit, or
[00:18:37] Tyler: a new pass that I haven't been to. So I'm I'm pretty happy trying to explore all of Utah.
[00:18:45] Joe: There's definitely a lot to explore. Yeah, in Utah. Yeah,
[00:18:48] Joe: I'm just learning things. Just moving down here. What are the? What are the interesting things about backpacking with you? So you have in this area, specifically is how you have like a story of like all these plots of land. Yes, like, oh, this family owns that area. These people on that area. They do this, you know, these trees used to look like this. Now, we have a beetle problems and now the
[00:19:12] Joe: trees are falling here, and Stuff like that. Yeah,
[00:19:15] Tyler: that comes From my grandpa and my dad, my grandpa Conde was a biologist and the parking Ranger here in southern Utah. And so everywhere we went, he was telling us the scientific names of plants and animals. And she knows about the GI, the geology and and everything. And so then my dad has, he's passed that down a lot as well and So, that's that's where a lot of that. You
[00:19:47] Joe: want to tell him about the cabin. Barely like touched over the cabin.
[00:19:47] Tyler: Yeah.
[00:19:51] Tyler: So that's actually my other grandpa that build that cabinet, but
[00:19:55] Tyler: yeah, that cabin is up on Cedar Mountain. It's only about 40 minutes drive from here. Which is pretty awesome, but my grandpa. From my mom's side and he was one of the first people to bring snowmobiles to Utah back when that was like a new invention and he was obsessed with with that area in the mountains because it was great snowmobiling back then. And So he least a plot of land from
[00:20:28] Tyler: the forest service and bought some big saws and cut down the lumber on the plot milled, all the logs and build the cabin, just all right. In one operation, it took him like 15 years I think to build it completely himself, but it's a it's a pretty cool work of art because it was built in a rustic way. But it's still Holding up great and our family still uses it constantly.
[00:20:57] Joe: It's pretty cool. It's pretty cool going up there with the whole theme and Dan Becker. Obviously, we talked about that video earlier, just go up there and being like wow dude. Yeah dude, just build a cabin. Yeah, just
[00:21:09] Tyler: basically with I mean not you probably saw the saw that was back behind the shed there, but it just had like a three foot tall saw blade and then that ran off of just like this crazy generator Contraption. And that's what they would Mill the logs with and yeah, we've had to do a good amount of maintenance on it and things, but it's It's holding strong. Yeah,
[00:21:37] Joe: it's really cool. Do you have any sort of like bucket list trips? as far as backpacking is concerned, all right, I guess any sort of trip Yeah, I mean our we are broadening this to Adventure and travel and yeah.
[00:21:52] Tyler: I have. An unhealthy unmanageability. So that's kind of a hard question. As far as bucket list, backpacking trips goes. Brigham's. Got me stuck on the Kingsway.
[00:21:52] Joe: What's the Kingsway?
[00:21:52] Tyler: So it's um and I don't know very much about. I just know that when Brigham does it. I'm gonna like Go away with him and go do it. But from what I understand you hike from the Arctic Circle all the way through the
[00:22:28] Tyler: Mountain range through Sweden to the south end of Sweden. And it looks amazing.
[00:22:37] Tyler: It looks so cool. I can't remember the, the official name, there's a different name than the Kingsway, but that's what it's translated to. That's easy. Way to remember it. But so that there's a lot that I'd like to do through like the Andes. A lot of that South American stuff is really intriguing. I'm really interested in Mountaineering. As well. So yeah, I would, I don't think that I have my side set
[00:23:13] Tyler: on doing Everest because of the, like, the Crazy amount of standing in line that that entails on the way up. And and just kind of how commercialized it's become. But I do want to do, I don't know if I, if I want to do hiking tours or motorcycle, tours through the Himalayas, but that's a big bucket list thing. And then I don't know, I've got a list somewhere of bucket list type trips, but
[00:23:45] Joe: you have your bucket list somewhere.
[00:23:47] Tyler: Yeah. Yeah. We've I mean so the one of the biggest ones and I don't know how I'm gonna convince everyone to do it with me, but it's called the tour of Idaho. And it's a dirt bike trip. I race dirt bikes quite a lot and I like the endurance races that are like you do 100 miles over two and a half hours or so and your your heart rates spiked at 200
[00:24:16] Tyler: beats per minute the whole time you're racing because it's so intense. And I enjoyed that a lot which comes from my mountain bike racing history as well. But on the dirt bike side, there's a very technical trail that goes from the very south east corner of Idaho, to the very north-west corner of Idaho. and, You, you go completely self-sustaining, like everything that you can pack on your, on your dirt bike. This
[00:24:47] Tyler: isn't like a Touring bike or anything, with all their Creature Comforts. It's like a bike with maybe only a headlight and then whatever you can pack. So you have to go really ultralight. All of our gear is like great to take on that kind of
[00:25:00] Tyler: a trip because you have such limited space and and wait, but they say it takes about two weeks to make it all the way through those different mountain ranges, and make it all the way to the top. And I think it would be Amazing.
[00:25:17] Joe: So you know what I've been seeing because I I've been learning Spanish for a couple years. I got my sights out set on South America, for sure. Yeah. There would be a large connecting Highway if it weren't for the dairy and Gap in between. What are the Panama and Colombia? Yeah.
[00:25:37] Joe: Swamp there. 200 miles long and That's what a lot of people will not a lot of people, but some people have done. It's taken motorcycles through that stuff. Yeah, that seems nuts. Yeah.
[00:25:49] Joe: Not only because of the physical danger. There was, you know, there's a bunch of drug cartels South in that in that jungle specifically. Yeah. I talked why I do that road. There you did.
[00:26:00] Tyler: Yeah, I met a guy who did he did? Did that entire length? He was actually an ambassador for regular material. and I asked him about the drug cartels and he's like, you know, I just tried to always have a little bit of money but all so just try to always have cigarettes and the smile on my face and he said, anyone that he talked to he handed out cigarettes too, and then
[00:26:24] Tyler: just kind of like, Go in before they could say much or do much. It worked for him. He didn't he never had any issues.
[00:26:34] Joe: You didn't have any
[00:26:38] Tyler: know, so the only time he got robbed was in Texas,
[00:26:47] Joe: and that was like,
[00:26:49] Tyler: probably bad timing because he had a flat tire and someone pulled up and Made him, give him his wallet. Wow. Wow,
[00:26:56] Joe: I would like to talk to that person. By the way, I would like to have them on the podcast. This is all about Adventure. Yeah. Yeah,
[00:27:03] Joe: um, well, Tyler, thank you for taking your time. I know you're very busy right now. Trying to build out a showroom for Outdoor Vitals where people can actually come and you know look at product like be able to see it's not just a picture on a website, you know. And you know, you're working on that. We have an expo that were that we have a booth at next week as well and
[00:27:28] Joe: you're working on that. So, yeah, I want to thank you again for coming for coming over here and talking about your life. the outdoors, and Yeah, maybe we'll talk again on the show. We'll see. Yeah, I appreciate it. All right, thank you guys, for listening. If you want any links to our awesome outdoor, vitals gear, that'll be in the description below. Put your comments on YouTube. We'll read them on the podcast.
[00:27:56] Joe: This this episode in the last episode that I recorded with Brigham kind of recording out of orders. So I didn't have comments in front of me, but I will read your comments on the show as well as any positive, iTunes or reviews that you guys give thank you very much. We'll see you next time. Thanks.
