Thursday at 3 pm, I'm standing on a bluff 1,500 feet above the Colorado River in the Grand Canyon, looking up. I close my eyes, calculating the brutal reality ahead: 4.5 miles and 3,200 feet of climbing remain. My heart pounds as the familiar realization hits: "I know I'm not going to be happy unless I hurt myself today. At some point, I'm going to have to go for it."

"Well, that's not yet," Peter Lohmann says back to me.

But he's wrong.

The Moment of Truth

It was a familiar feeling. In every ultra race, there comes a point when you lay it all out there and pray you can hold on before completely bonking. As much as I try to hold back, my body wants to find out what I have left. I set off at a blistering pace, determined to climb from near the back of the pack to the front group—likely a mile or more ahead.

The race was on.

One of the most powerful lessons ultrarunning has taught me is something that's also extremely valuable in business. But to explain it, I need to tell you another story first.

The $60,000 Lesson

In 2008, I was sitting in an MBA classroom surrounded by corporate employees about eight years younger than me. I was the only unemployed person apparently dumb enough to pay $60,000 out of pocket for the degree. The real estate market had crashed, and I'd gone from making $600,000 at age 25 to unemployed, renting a family property for $400 per month—all in less than a year.

The MBA seemed like a defensive move, but I had no idea how I was going to support a wife and three kids with another on the way. Sometimes I joke that I paid $60,000 to learn five things. One of those things was about capacity and utilization.

Here's the connection: Everyone knows Warren Buffett achieved compounding returns of 19%+ from 1965 to 2023. But here's the crazy part—he did this with 10-30% of his holdings in cash. Only about 80% of his money was actually invested in companies, while 20% sat in T-bills earning almost nothing.

Why would someone so successful keep so much cash? Wouldn't this drag down his returns?

Here's what Buffett said about it:

The 80% Rule

How do ultrarunning, assembly lines, and Warren Buffett connect?

Success in running, investing, and business has everything to do with preserving resources for maximum gain later.

Here's what we learned in MBA school: an assembly line should never run beyond 80% utilization. If your line can produce 100 widgets per day at max capacity, you should intentionally limit production to 80 units.

This sounds insane, right? Why leave money on the table?

The answer: shocks to the system.

In property management, if I don't see team members occasionally joking around with nothing urgent to do, we have a big problem. At Mark Brower Properties, we ask each PM team weekly about their utilization rate. I want to always see it under 80%, or I need to increase capacity immediately.

The same principle applies to ultrarunning. The optimal strategy is to run slower than the pace you could theoretically maintain over the entire race distance. You have to overcome the psychological challenges of watching other runners pass you, race-day excitement, and the irrational decision-making that kicks in when your brain shifts into survival mode.

The reason is simple: real life isn't smooth.

It's naive to assume things will go perfectly in business, ultrarunning, or financial markets. Unexpected things happen. They always will. And here's the critical part: accepting this reality and changing your behavior to match it has a massive impact on long-term success.

The Four Pillars of Sustainable Success

1. Accept that anything over 80% utilization leads to disaster

2. Recognize that you are a system (your business is a system, finishing an ultramarathon is a system)

3. Say 'no' when you can say yes — preserve that last 20% at all costs. You've already committed it to future problems that will throw you into chaos

4. When you don't break under shock, you retain momentum — this keeps trust high with clients and things moving forward

Bonus insight: Stop swooping in and adding your capacity to problem areas in your business! You're actually perpetuating the problems and making yourself the bottleneck. Let things "soft fail" so you can fix the system instead of risking burnout.

This is the beauty of lean manufacturing and the Kanban method. When you can visually see problems as they happen, you can fix them. Without visibility, you're stuck.

Back to the Canyon

Without replying to Peter, I blow through the rest area alone. I feel the familiar temptation to throw caution to the wind and go all out. While exhilarating, this won't get me to the top in the shortest time.

I want to race, which means I have to time things perfectly—running out of energy exactly when I reach the summit. This is the art of endurance racing: the awareness and discipline to keep effort just under burnout long enough to accelerate through the final stretch of the race.

Forty minutes later, I catch and pass Travis and Brandon from Home Ladder. Twenty minutes after that, I overtake Tony Cline, Pablo Gonzales, Sam and Janina Eddinger. Tony gives me grief for "leaving my friends," but I bury him at that point.

Now I'm burning hot, breathing heavy, barely eating or drinking. I know I'm a ticking time bomb, and my pack feels like it weighs 20 pounds. This is the steepest part of the trail, made treacherous by water and uneven logs.

A hiker coming down tells me, "There is no one else ahead of you." Everyone else is already out of the Canyon, and I still have 1.5 miles left. My vanity kicks in—"At least they'll see how far I came from behind"—but my heart is hammering, my breath labored, my legs screaming.

This is too much. I give myself instruction to back off 5%, bringing me just under certain burnout.

I straddle this line for another hour, moving hard but keeping it just under control. Finally, I spot the lead pack ahead. In my excitement, I want to sprint up to them. I hold back—there's still climbing left.

When I reach them during a short pause, I blow past. Brad Randall and Jason Marcordes latch onto me. We're cooking now, speed-hiking the climbs and jogging the flats. With company, I feel even more compelled to move faster, but once again feel the over-extension and back off slightly.

The sun is low, the trail crowded with hobby hikers coming down. When I see a woman in a red dress, I know we're close. One final push—Brad and Jason slingshot around me to crest first, and I finish strong with a celebratory whoop.

Perfect execution. It feels incredible to push so hard without crashing, leaving nothing in reserve.

The Bottom Line

Ultrarunning and business are incredibly similar. They're both a discipline in maximum sustainable effort. The secret is being honest and disciplined about what that level really is—matching utilization to demand but NEVER exceeding your margin of safety.

That margin of safety is the key to sustained success. Without it, spikes in activity and demand break you and your company. The cost of those breaks far exceeds the small extra productivity you might get by running at 90% instead of 80%.

I want you to win. Winning means you don't write checks you can't emotionally and physically cash. Give yourself permission to operate within a comfortable range. You'll actually feel more relaxed and make more money when you stay in that space.

If you're already over-extended, hire someone really good right away. Don't do what most people do and under-hire someone at a low wage who becomes just another assistant while you remain the main character. Start looking for leaders, pay up for them, and watch as they actually move the needle in your business.

Plaid Update

Last week, I reported getting a ticket while showing off the acceleration to my dad and sister. This week, I drove the Plaid all the way from the Grand Canyon to Phoenix Sky Harbor on 70% of a full battery—something I couldn't do with my last Tesla. I'm super pleased with the range.

I tried using my car as a private screening studio to show one of my favorite running films up at the Grand Canyon, but I couldn't get anyone to watch it. The way everyone kept turning me down made me feel like some kind of predator luring people into my car...