Cameron HeroldFounder of the COO Alliance & Invest In Your Leaders Training

The Everest Blueprint for Business Exits | Rob Follows

20 May 2026 · 0 min

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Rob Follows, who summited Mount Everest, shares lessons from high-altitude climbing that apply to building and exiting family businesses. He emphasizes the importance of expert guides and strategic planning, drawing parallels between conquering the mountain and scaling a company.

I'm curious because I just got back from Nepal recently. You've been to the summit of Mount Everest. Yes. Yeah. Tallest, 29,008 feet. You've been there.
Yeah.
What's one big lesson that someone who is building a family-run company or a wine kind of company can learn from your journey of summiting Everest?
So I have written a book about that. Seven different types of life planning and seven life planning lessons. The principle is get the best guides and in the inverse, This is, you know, very much a guide-dependent— I never thought of it this way, Cameron, but it's guide-dependent. If you're— we are expert guides at STS, and that would be if we had to do an STS to be Sherpas to your summit, and we help people on the road from success to significance. And the key is through selling to strategics, which are all our brands, of course. If you don't have the best guide, your value drops, the positive nature of the experience drops. And so getting the very best guides.