A Business Bucket List
Here’s a screenshot of my business bucket list. It’s a mix of ambition, curiosity, and a little bit of crazy. These are all things I hope to do in my career.
The intent of this article is to report on my progress, inspire you to pursue your bucket list, and to share some fun stories (ours and others) on each one. Let’s go!
#1 Take a Company Public
This might be one of the harder ones, as it requires you to either build a company or join a company that’s ready to go public. I did this back in 2021 with Traeger.
It was just as crazy as you expect it would be. Many long nights/weekends. I couldn’t tell anybody what I was working on due to SEC regulations. A million meetings. And ringing the bell on the New York Stock Exchange.
I’m so glad I had the experience, and now that I’ve done it I’m not sure I would choose to do it again. It was just so much work/stress. It’s a good one-time experience, kind of like taking a standardized test. You’re glad you did it, you learned a lot, but now that you’ve passed you wouldn’t go back and take it again.
You can read all the fun details here: The Unwritten Guide to Taking a Company Public: Behind the Scenes of Traeger’s IPO
#2 Tour a Nuclear Facility
I’m just fascinated by nuclear power. Perhaps it was growing up watching The Simpsons (fun watch: Homer eating nuclear waste) or reading about the Chernobyl disaster.
So while I haven’t toured a nuclear facility yet, I have a family member (Jason Richards) who works in one of the four in the United States. I asked him what it’s like, and here’s a summary:
The space is a huge complex of buildings, like a mix of a college campus and a sprawling business campus. It has a nuclear reactor, dozens of lab facilities, and lots of office space. Jason works with Uranium Hexafluoride, which is liquid uranium and allows you to split uranium. As you can guess, it’s highly volatile and is what is used to make nuclear bombs.
He describes different buffer areas for each workspace depending on what you’re doing. Some areas you can’t bring a laptop or a notebook into since the uranium could stick to it. You wear a big, white suit and a double set of gloves!
While my studies and current business endeavors don’t match exactly with nuclear chemicals,I still want to tour a nuclear facility and see a nuclear reactor up close.
#3 Take a Bet on Someone and Watch their Career Blossom
This is one of my more altruistic goals. While I have certainly hired unconventional applicants (I once hired someone who was working in market research for the cannabis industry), I don’t think I have earned the badge of taking a truly big bet on someone just yet.
One of my favorite stories is that of Chris Gardner. This story is widely known thanks to the movie “The Pursuit of Happyness,” starring Will Smith. Gardner was homeless while raising his young son and struggling to make ends meet. He would take his son to job interviews out of necessity.
Despite his circumstances, he managed to secure an unpaid internship at a prestigious stock brokerage firm. The manager, Bob Bridges, took a chance on him, and Gardner’s determination and work ethic paid off. He eventually became a successful stockbroker and entrepreneur.
While I love Gardner’s hard work and incredible story, I believe there’s honor in Bob Bridges for taking the chance on him. I hope to do the same.
#4 Buy a Company
This one always seemed so fun yet out-of-reach. Yet I actually had the opportunity to do this back in 2021.
At Traeger we were working on our next grill, the Timberline XL. We had started to work with this up-and-coming wireless meat thermometer company called Meater to help with our wireless grill probes. After working with them for nearly a year, we started having discussions internally about acquiring them.
After a lot of due diligence, company visits, and countless meetings Traeger acquired Meater for $100M.
I loved working with the Meater team. They were such a nice addition to the company and just thought differently (in a good way) than the Traeger HQ team did. We shared many meals as I traveled to their LA and UK offices. They even took me to a Leicester soccer match, which in hindsight should have been on my business bucket list (“Attend a soccer match with locals”).
#5 Tour an Amazon Warehouse
Here are some things I know about an average Amazon warehouse:
- The average size is 800,000 square feet (that’s like putting 180 NBA courts together!)
- An average worker walks 7-15 miles per shift!
- Every warehouse carries tens of millions of products. Just imagine the breadth of the things in there!
Talking to a friend who worked in one a few years ago, they describe that every bin is full of random objects. Totally random. Like a phone case, a rubber duck, and a plunger all in one bin.
Amazon does this to increase the fulfillment rate of the workers, giving them a little map for each order and reducing the path they need to walk. The robots also drive around and can meet the picker. Here’s how it’s described:
“The robots are bringing the pods, these tall yellow pods that are coded with bins. There are eight different levels and columns with hundreds of items. The pod has four sides and can weigh up to 750 pounds. Before it comes to your station, it’s facing you with the side that has the item. If it has to turn, it will move, come back, and rotate.” -Kyle, Amazon worker
It just seems fascinating to walk through such a huge and efficient operation. And to work with giant robots! It’s something I’ve always wanted to see up close.
#6 Develop a Physical Product
There are SO MANY different types of companies, but for most of my career I have worked at physical product companies. There is something deeply satisfying with seeing your product out in the wild, or better yet to see someone at the store choose to buy your product.
While I’ve worked on many products, here are the two I’m most proud of:
#1: The Nature Valley Wafer Bar
I worked at General Mills and did a lot of the groundwork and consumer testing that led to the invention of the Nature Valley Nature Bar. This was a huge project, where I tested everything from brownie bars to apricot and chocolate chip bars. I analyzed huge datasets, brought in hundreds of consumers, and ate SO MANY CONCEPTS! I often came home so full I couldn’t eat dinner.
Fun fact: Granola bars fresh off the line or from a test kitchen are totally different/better than what comes packaged at the store.
#2: The Traeger Timberline Grill
This grill was created to (1) drive innovation into the grill category, (2) have a wood pellet grill that can sear meat, and (3) be built into outdoor kitchens. I analyzed a mountain of data, traveled the country to interview and cook with a huge variety of people, and tested more features and message iterations than I can count. At the end of the launch, I was given my own personal Timberline as a gift (and still cook on it all the time).
Fun fact: This is the first outdoor grill with a touchscreen and an induction burner.
Conclusion
Part 2 of my “business bucket list” will come out soon, since I ran out of time / space this week 🙂
One source of inspiration for this article was my friend Larry, who at 50 years old decided he wanted to become a professor. He went to school and completed an undergraduate degree, graduate degree, and doctorate degree by the time he was 60 years old. He was later known as one of the most beloved professors at the University of Nevada Las Vegas (UNLV).
We hope you come away inspired to create your own list, however crazy or unrealistic it may now seem.
Anything is possible. Start your list!
