No Empty Chairs

November's Core Value is Gratitude.

At MTN OPS, we say: "Gratitude for both our successes and our challenges helps us have joy in our current circumstances while facilitating our growth and progress toward an even brighter future."

This month, I don't want to write about gratitude. I want to share it. So this Conquer Corner is a letter, written to the people I am most grateful for in this business. To our customers reading along, I hope you'll see a little more of who is behind every order you place and every meal it provides.

Dear MTN OPS Team,

The Apostle Paul once wrote a letter to the people he had labored alongside, and he opened it this way: "I thank my God upon every remembrance of you, Always in every prayer of mine for you all making request with joy, For your fellowship in the gospel from the first day until now."

From the first day until now. That is exactly how I feel about each of you.

To Our Customer Experience Team

Each of you has faced your own individual struggles in life. Yet you show up as a team and make others' lives better.

On several occasions, I have seen members of our customer experience team jump in their cars and meet hunters and customers at trailheads, just to make sure they had MTN OPS fuel for their adventure. Amazing. This is how it is done.

Every message you answer is somebody's first impression of MTN OPS. For a lot of people, you are MTN OPS.

My wife's own grandmother calls MTN OPS just because she loves talking to you all. You make her day by helping her feel heard and loved. Thank you. 

When a customer says, "This company actually cares," they're talking about you.

Customers love you, and I love you for it.

To Our Product Team

For years, you've been relentless in making sure our products stand the test of time, with flavors that keep people coming back for more. I have seen the stress over deadlines, and the Slack messages sent at all hours of the night. I have seen how much you care about our customers, always wanting to give them the very best experience a product and a brand can offer.

Even as I write this, a new MTN OPS chair in development sits in our MTN OPS gym. For the last week, another 45 lb plate has been set on that chair each day. It is undergoing a stress test to see how much weight it can hold. I know this team wants as many people as possible, of all shapes and sizes, to be able to sit comfortably in our new chair.

As my family would always say, "No empty chairs." Not at our table, and not at the MTN OPS table.

I know you feel a lot like that chair. New product ideas and opportunities for growth keep getting stacked on top of you, plate after plate. And you never give up, just like that chair never gives up or gives way to the weight placed upon it.

To Our Marketing and Brand Teams

You make us look so good. Wow.

It takes so much to stay in constant contact with our customers. Telling stories. Educating on product. Creating exciting giveaways that bless the lives of the customers who experience adventure with us. Analyzing the numbers that help steer us in the direction we need to go. Managing budgets to keep us financially sound. And doing all of it while holding to a strict brand guideline, so our customers know we will never stray from who we are. We will only build upon and strengthen who we are.

You balance the look, the feel, the message, and everything that goes into it with true professionalism and tenacity.

You've been trusted with the most fragile thing we have, our story. You tell it in a way that's honest and never overpromises, always honoring our foundation. 

You make other people the hero: our customers, our ambassadors, our partners, even me. Your own names rarely end up in the story. Today and always, I want you to know I see you.

Thank you for caring enough about the story God has given us to share it the way He intended it to be experienced.

To Our Accounting and Finance Teams

I cannot thank you enough for treating the funds we have to work with as sacred.

I have always considered the money coming in and going out of MTN OPS as sacred. When you really think about it, every dollar that comes in came from the hard work and dedication of an individual who created that resource for themselves and their family. We have the great honor of providing something of substantial value that blesses their life physically. And by becoming part of our community through that purchase, we get to help impact them not just physically, but emotionally and spiritually.

That same resource gives us the ability to run a business and to support the families involved in it. This has always weighed on me, especially having been on the end of not being able to support a family. What a blessing it is now that we all get to help support each other and our families. Truly a sacred and honorable opportunity.

You have spent countless hours organizing the team's finances, creating budgets, following up with departments as the year goes along, and managing inventory to keep up with demand, all with incredible attention to every detail. We are able to pour back into our community because you have helped us know where we are, where we have been, and where we have the opportunity to go.

To Our Sales and Sales Ops Teams

You have been incredibly hard at work, and I want to thank you for the many, many hours you have poured into building the momentum we are feeling right now.

Most people don't understand the timeline and the intensive nature of building a retail sales funnel that is thriving like the one this team has created. It is years and years in the making. Marketing builds an incredible brand in the community with the support of the entire team. Then the sales team builds and establishes relationships that never happen overnight, but that, with diligence, desire, and temperance, begin to take root and grow.

I trust each of you. I have witnessed your passion, your preparation, and the incredible relationships of trust you have built with our retail partners. The momentum being built right now is a demonstration and a result of your sacrifice and care.

To Our Operation Conquer Hunger Team

We have an amazing story to share, with products that are changing lives. I am grateful for a product that blesses the lives of those who use it. And I am so grateful for the resource created through the sale of that product, because it allows us to support someone much more vulnerable and in need within our communities. Someone who could never fathom buying supplements for their nutrition. But through Operation Conquer Hunger, we can love them with a meal.

Thank you to our amazing Operation Conquer Hunger team, and to those who for many years now have tackled this mission with love inspired by God. A big Conquer Hunger event often brings challenges with it. At times we are buying $50,000 worth of food, and logistically, not everything falls into place when we would like it to. This team has learned that nothing will stop this work and our love from progressing. The miracles have been numerous, because you have trusted not just in your own abilities, but in God's ability to make all things right.

Tighten Your Boots and Climb

I believe there is, at times, an adversarial effect on those who are working to do good for God's children. This team is working tirelessly to bless God's children, and we are keenly aware that doing so does not mean things will always go perfectly smooth. Many times, to the contrary, we will feel, see, and experience an uphill climb.

But that's what you all do at MTN OPS. You tighten your boots, and you climb.

To Your Families

I see and recognize your families as well. For many reasons they are the reason the MTN OPS brand is thriving.  Thank you. 

This journey is not just the Farnes family journey. It is the Ward journey. The Yates journey. The Sivera journey. The Nichols journey. The Mantell journey. Its each of your incredible journeys. 

I have watched your families show up to parades decked out in MTN OPS to represent us to a community. I have watched them spend days in your absence while you travel the country meeting with suppliers and retail partners.

I have also watched as one of us receives tragic news, is confronted with illness, or faces depression and struggles of many kinds. And every time, you have come to each other's aid. You have prayed for each other, cried with each other, and lifted each other back to a position of strength.

*"Bear ye one another's burdens, and so fulfill the law of Christ." (Galatians 6:2)

That is the chair in our gym. That is this team.

Thank You

Thank you all for being considerate, kind, compassionate, and caring toward each other. We spend so much time with one another, sometimes more time than we get to spend with the people we would most prefer to be with. But you have made it all, for me, such a privilege and an honor.

I am proud to be a member of your team. Of our team. Of the MTN OPS team.

I am beyond grateful to call you all friends and colleagues.  You have been such a joy in the journey Jenna and I are on. This letter could never be enough to express the smallest portion of how we feel. 

With love and gratitude,

Trevor

A Challenge for Our MTN OPS Family

To everyone reading this, here is my challenge for November. Before you sit down for Thanksgiving dinner, write one letter of thanks to someone you work alongside. A coworker, a boss, an employee, a business partner. Be specific. Name the moment. Tell them what they carried and that you noticed.

You may never know how much weight they have been holding.

God bless.

Keep Conquering.

Trevor Farnes

Founder | MTN OPS