Big dreams are mountains. Climb anyway.

_{Day 117/100}

Hey—It's Tim.

It’s Sunday.
Coffee’s still cooling.
Google Maps is already zoomed-way-in on a squiggly grey line that rises from 1,750 m to 2,310 m.

That’s a 560 m (1,837 ft) vertical gulp.

The locals call it a “5-hour round-trip.”
I call it “Tim’s hiking to the top of this mountains”.

Translation: Bring snacks.
And a spare battery - I’m stopping for photos.

Big plans, tiny stomach

The second I dropped that red pin on the summit, my gut did a back-flip.

Same flip I felt last week when I said (out loud, to real humans, in this very newsletter in fact):

My co-founder nodded.
I re-opened Slack.
Brain: “Who do you think you are?”

Big plans do that.
They look romantic from the coffee shop.
They look murderous from basecamp.

Trail maps ↔ Roadmaps

Mountains and product sprints share nasty habits:

My survival kit for both journeys:

1. A date. “Next weekend” beats “sometime this year.”

2. A buddy. (Or 4,000 buddies on this list who’ll roast me if I bail.)

3. A Camera. Proof you were there - and fuel for the next climb.

Mountains are my oldest friends.

Some rise from granite;
others start as a half-sketched roadmap,
a blank Figma frame,
or a number in the revenue column you haven’t reached yet.

Whatever their form, they all demand the same ritual:
pack light,
breathe deep,
commit to the long haul,
and keep moving when the air gets mean.

Real rock leaves blisters, but so does shipping a v1 that flops, pitching investors who don’t get it, or rewriting copy for the tenth time because it still reads like cardboard.

Big, messy, impossible-looking work - that’s a mountain.

Peace doesn’t wait at the summit; it hides in the slow grind upward,
in the deliberate scrape of sole on shale,
in the moment you spot the next ridgeline and feel that lightning-bolt want.

So pick a peak. Could be 2,310 meters of trail or a moon-shot product launch.
Gear up, get accountable, and climb till the oxygen tastes thin.
Because big dreams are mountains, and mountains are meant to be climbed.

I’ll never stop climbing.

✌️ Tim "Climb Mountains" Hanson
CMO @Penfriend.ai

Same brain, different platforms: X, Threads, LinkedIn.

P.S. I’ll bring back photos from the top.
I’ve said it before. Public accountability is stronger than coffee.

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