A short interview with Jeremy Andrus (President & CEO of Traeger Grills) in which he shares life and business strategies: keeping perspective during stress, two books that influenced him (Mini Habits; Solve for Happy), his practice of creating annual "mini habits" instead of formal goals, a consistent morning routine (warm lemon water, meditation, reading, workout, driving daughters to school), a business habit of tracking meeting cadences, prioritizing family time as his best investment, and a desire to mentor others as part of his legacy.
Chapters
If you would just take 30 seconds. Introduction. If you would.
Sure, yeah. Jeremy Andrus, President CEO, Traeger Grills. Bought the business about five years ago. Live here in Salt Lake City with my wife and six children. Before that, built a brand called Skullcandy. And just loving life.
As an entrepreneur, you mind sharing maybe some mantras or sort of personal mottos you have that have either gotten through hard times or just, just keep you, keep you afloat.
You know what I remember during a tough period at Skullcandy. We were a public company. I was a young CEO. We were the highest shorted stock on the nasdaq. I had a moment where I was feeling the weight of this pressure. And my wife said something to me that resonated. She said, jeremy, I love what you're doing. I'm proud of you. But you gotta remember you're selling headphones, not saving lives. And I think it's. As an entrepreneur, you can very dangerously take this stuff so seriously that it hurts your, your quality of life. And I just think perspective is important.
Sure. Perspective in books. What are two or three books that have given you perspective? Or maybe better, you'd recommend that everybody.
Read two, three books. So I'll talk about two. One is a book called Mini Habits. And it's a really simple concept of identifying small habits that are impactful to life. And they're habits that are so small you cannot fail, but so important that they change you more than your New Year's resolutions. And the example in the book is, if you want to work out, don't set a New Year's resolution. Go work out too. Two hours a day, take off 20% of your body fat, all these sorts of things set a mini habit. When you roll out of bed, do one pushup, two things happen. Number one, it's so small, you're going to do that one push up. You're going to do it every day, and you will always do more than you decided you were going to do. So, mini Habits. There are a number of mini habits in my life. I actually don't set goals anymore. I create mini habits every year and I decide what are the one or two or three things that I want to start doing this year that I will never stop doing. The second book is called Solve for Happy. It's Mo Gaudit. Mo talks about this very impactful experience of losing someone important in his life and how he really solved. He's an engineer who solves the equation for happiness. And it's about determined. It's choosing to be Happy as opposed to allowing life's events in this little voice in the back of your head that tends to be more critical than constructive. Allowing those things to make you unhappy. And life's all about happiness.
Excellent. Two or three habits you think have been your most important habits that have driven kind of who you are today, you know.
So number one, my morning routine. I wake up in the morning and I very predictably, I do the same thing every day. I have a glass of warm lemon water, I meditate, I read, I have, I think I work out from six to seven. I drink protein shake and I drive my daughters to school. And that, that those mini habits, I call it my morning routine. It is so consistent between 5 and 8:30 in the morning that regardless of what happens in my day, I've done the most important things by 8:30 in the morning. So that's important to me. The other mini habit is more professional. It's how I run my business and it's creating, I've created a spreadsheet of all of the important, important meetings that need to happen in the cadence in which they need to happen. So my weekly, my monthly, my quarterly, my annual meetings. And my assistant and I sit down every week and we say we hold ourselves accountable and we look back at the week and we check the boxes and we look back at the month and the year and we ensure that it's a very. It takes us 10 minutes to do, but it holds us accountable to do the most important things that actually give me some semblance of control over kind of a chaotic, fast growing business.
Best investment you ever made? Not necessarily financial, could be relationship, spiritual motion, whatever.
You know, the boy investment. The best thing I do is family. And I would say to even get more specific, the most important thing that I do for my family is take time away. With my wife Kristen, she loves to travel. Last week I was in our Copenhagen office for Traeger and she met me in Croatia. We rented a car and we trekked around. We saw countries that were not on our itinerary and we just traveled and about talked, talked and reconnected. And I would say that is the most important investment of time in my life. It makes my relationship stronger, my family better, and you know, ultimately success in life all starts with your most important relationships.
Final question. In terms of legacy, think billboard word or phrase you'd like to be on a billboard that sort of pass on as a legacy. What word or phrase would that be?
Boy, I want to be helpful. I want to be a mentor as an entrepreneur. I didn't have mentors early on, and I struggled through some difficult times in my career, and I get inbound messages on LinkedIn, and I just can't say no. And so my hope is that within this entrepreneurial ecosystem that I live in, that somehow I can be helpful to someone going through that difficult moment. Not only because you need a sounding board and you need moral support, but I've made plenty of mistakes, and I've learned from those, and I gladly share them with anyone who needs help.
