Welcome to the Borderlands Trail and Ultra Running podcast.

My name is Josh Rosenthal.

I'm the founder of Borderlands.

I'm the host.

I am a committed trail runner who hasn't ran on a trail since I lived in America like five months ago.

My trail shoes are dusty and I thought I'd be depressed about it.

But I am genuinely loving road running right now, so I do have my credibility.

It's just not where I thought that it would be today.

I have a friend that we, we met this summer.

We talked for the first time.

I was walking in the rain through Copenhagen and we had a good long conversation and I was super stoked on it.

His name is Michael Mazzera.

We're going to have a conversation where we're going to be chasing rabbits all over the place.

And I am super stoked.

But first, glad you're here.

Borderlands.

Somehow we're still not learning Borderlands.

We still suck at running.

All right, Maz, owner of Half Marathons.net I would be shocked if you haven't been on that website.

Whether you have intended to or not.

I don't know the numbers.

Those are.

That's his secret.

I'm not going to ask him for the numbers, but I've been on that website.

It's SEO, it's optimized so well.

He's the owner of it.

He also owns Rogue Expeditions, which I think to me, we're going to launch into that conversation first.

I'm really stoked on it.

This episode is going to be moving really quickly.

I mean, so just kind of hang on tight.

If you want to have a conversation with Maze, you kind of got to get in the car and you just got to go.

And we've only talked a few times, but I just know that when we're on, he's firing questions.

I love it.

And I, and I, and I can hang with answering his questions.

But today I'm in the question asking seat, so he's got to hang with mine.

But we've had a great pre show and you're going to really love this conversation.

Like I said, we're going to be chasing rabbits probably all over the place.

I think they're all going to be interesting.

I think they're all going to be material to trail running in general.

To you specifically.

In high school, my friend Cody and I used to chase like rabbits around a field in an old Bronco that had like a 9 inch lift and 39 inch super swampers on it.

And that's what I think this conversation is going to be.

We'll talk about running in the most beautiful places in the world.

Running ultras, halves, half marathons, building better media experiences.

I mean, it's just going to go and it's going to be great.

Before we do, though, I am super stoked to be hosting a run with Billy Yang and Flores Gearman in Salt Lake City on January 18th.

I'm going to be in Salt Lake for 36 hours, and then I got to get back to Paris because my family's here and my kids are in school.

I got to take them all around.

But I'm going to come back and we're going to do a live podcast with Billy, a 5K run with Billy.

And you're all invited.

You just have to go to Ultra signup to register.

I have that link in the show notes.

That live podcast is going to be super cool.

I mean, very few of us can tell our story as ultra runners without mentioning Billy in some way.

So it's.

It's.

It's super special.

I'm stoked to be doing it.

Okay, next up, Maz.

It's too am cold to run.

Too damn.

Too damn.

It's too damn cold to run.

It's too damn cold to run.

All right, man.

I'm stoked to have you here.

Thanks for being with me.

Where are you sitting right now?

I'm in Austin, Texas.

And thanks for having me.

And, yeah, I'll say the reason I think a lot about networking and just reaching out to people.

And I think from owning half marathons.net for the last however many months, years, I'd always been thinking a lot about how to.

How to reframe the race experience.

Yeah.

And I think a lot of times what onboarded me into running was this concept of, like, the marathon.

And it's funny, like, you and Tommy talked about it last time, which is people just kind of like, blindly pick a race distance, and they're like, this is what I'm gonna do.

It ended up being like a.

I mean, a bad thing physically for me.

Cause I thought it was all, like, mind over matter.

Yeah.

But, like, mentally, it actually got me to this place of, like, holy cow.

Like, marathons are incredible as, like, a concept, like an onboarding mechanism where nobody's, like, actually doing the marketing for, like, quote unquote marathons.

And so then, you know, you look at, like, the Abbott World Majors, and you're like, this is unbelievable.

They account for, like, 50% of marathon registrations worldwide.

What a, like, phenomenon.

And then there's just like, this massive gap between everybody else.

And I think we had entered into this age where people had become better at generating content and at creating ubiquity of brand because everybody kind of went to the same, well, you'd go to, like, Facebook or you'd go to half marathons, not Net, and you'd, like, look for races.

Yeah.

And I was like, well, there's clearly a way to elevate races to this perspective by better content activations or, like, how you think about positioning your race outside of distance and location.

And I think you were the first person that I really saw take an entrepreneurial mindset to it with, like, a tremendous amount of, like, storytelling and an exceptional amount of, like, branding wherewithal.

And I was like, holy cow, this guy must be, like, thinking about the same stuff that I'm thinking about all the time.

All the time.

And I think, you know, the hard thing about being an entrepreneur is, like, you develop these theories about the world and then you take a step forward and you input more data and then you reshoot your opinion about the world based on the new data you have.

And you have to, in a lot of ways, not get discouraged by new data that's coming in.

Is my thesis still true?

And, like, how real about the world is this still now that I have these other factors where people are telling me that it's not true?

So I think when, you know, that kind of expression, when real recognizes real.

When I go, I said that to someone the other day, I wasn't sure if that was the right term or not, but it was a guy who post who had a really awesome mustache, and he found someone that looked like him and had the same mustache.

And I was like, am I supposed to say real recognize as real?

And I had to look it up on ChatGPT and it was like, okay, yeah, that's the right term.

So I love hearing you even say that term.

Appropriate usage.

Yeah.

Because if I sit in the vacuum all day and I think, think about those concepts and I socialize them with the world, and then somebody on the other side of the world comes up with the same concept and goes, I think there's a problem here.

I go, whoa, there it is.

Yes.

So I'm.

I.

That was.

That prompted my initial reach out.

And I was just like, there's.

There's a.

Certainly a kindred spirit.

A kindred.

Absolutely.

Yeah.

And I think there's the.

And my mind goes to so many different places, but my initial spot is like, how do you know?

How does anybody know Anything like, like these theories of knowledge and so you, like, break it all the way back and how do you know something?

And a lot of times with entrepreneurship is that it starts with your gut, but then you've got to.

You've got to bring in all these other ways of knowing, like mentors and like, studying and observation and all these sorts of things.

But yeah, the first.

The first thought is always like, oh, man, could I do a better version of that?

Or should I.

Should I buy half marathons.net because I could take that thing and make it better.

I'm not sure that I know exactly, but I feel that I can.

And then you start to, like, go into the world.

Go into that and prove it.

Yeah.

And I think.

I think trail running is interesting mostly from a perspective of we don't maybe have to invent anything new yet because the industry is so.

Is like a little bit younger from its onboarding of new individuals into the industry and into racing and into, like, the concept that you can take, look like models from cycling or road racing and go, well, if I just did that over here, would the same principles apply as opposed to, like, if you want to go invent Airbnb or ChatGPT, you're going to need a lot more conviction and a lot more money and a lot more stress in order to make your thing into a reality where for us, maybe, like, it's already true that these things kind of work and they kind of sustain themselves as businesses and they're kind of good ideas.

Yeah, yeah.

So we'll say if you're looking for a half marathon, if you haven't already, check out half marathons.net.

it's a way to find a new half marathon.

But more interesting to me right now, I want to make sure that we don't miss over.

This is this Rogue Expeditions acquisition that you've made, you know, front and center on the website.

It's running the most beautiful places in the world.

And when you look at the list of places that you could run with rogue expeditions, I think you prove that, at least on paper.

Give me the high level about rogue expeditions.

Like, what exactly are you doing?

What is your approach to taking people all over the world to run in the most beautiful places?

Yeah.

In the simplest way, it's like a running vacation.

And I think so.

One thing that happened to me was every time I would participate in a marathon, I would get injured every single time.

And it was also because I hadn't really discovered trail before, but I would like, you know, cramp or fall off a sidewalk or just get injured.

And I really felt like a very much of a loss that I loved training so much.

I loved hitting 20 or 22 miles on a long run.

I entered into this euphoria that is only induced by being like a very primal, like, human, like, running experience.

Oh, I know.

And then when I got to the end of training, people would go.

Or when I was in training, people would go, what are you training?

Like, what race are you training for?

And then like, what you.

Your goal time?

And it felt like the entire scope of participating in a running activity was the end goal of participating in a race.

What I felt was amazing recently was the shift to celebrating the journey, which is like, I would say run clubs are partially that in a lot of ways, humans are not really great at nuance.

So when you get an iPhone, you don't see all the suffering that went into creation, creating that process.

You see the end goal.

So we're really good at recognizing end goals.

So if you trained for 10 years and ran one marathon, people would be like, like, what's your marathon time?

Right.

And.

And so it's the sort of thing that I went to Japan on my honeymoon and I went to, like, the Mie Prefecture in the south, and I was running around on trails and I got lost.

And I.

I consistently thought that I was doing this in a suboptimal way.

Yeah.

And I noticed in cycling, a very small percentage of people who cycle participate in cycling races.

A tremendous amount of them go on cycling tours and they go to Majorca with their friends, and they go with Ngamba or Backroads or Du Vine.

And I had thought to myself that was something I wanted to do as a trail runner or as a runner.

And I didn't necessarily need to participate in the races.

Like, you can do the Tour Medoc.

I go drink wine every mile.

It's an amazing concept.

Yes, it is.

I love that.

Yes.

And how is there only one that's so popular?

How, when it comes to a themed race, like a culinary focused race, why is it like Disney or the Tour de Mont Medoc?

Like, I don't get that.

So it felt to me like that was missing in trail.

And I think there were two globally that were really, really focused on this for an extended period of time, like over 10 years.

One was run the Alps that specifically focused on the Tour de Mont Blanc.

And I think that's a really crowded area because it is the Mecca.

And UTMB grows.

It gets about 25,000 submissions for about 6,000 spots.

Those are the tremendous amount of excess demand for limited supply.

The rest of the world also has really exceptional places to run.

Yes, yes.

And I also had this belief that as other races became as popular as utmb, when you get Killian Jornay that goes run and runs in Zegama and then you capture footage from that, it inspires this new found love for these locations as trail destinations.

Yeah.

And there had been a company in Austin, Texas that had been doing for about 12 years.

The, the wife who was the founder was a former professional or like Olympic qualifying marathon runner.

And then the husband was just more of an outdoorsman.

And they combined their love into a We're going to go on take people on running vacations to go to Morocco.

And since then it's turned into 15 or 16 locations, 30 trips a year.

We'll probably do 40 next year.

And my belief is that you can uncouple your training experience, the expression of your training experience from a racing experience.

And if you go to UTMB and you're doing racing for somewhere between 19 and 43 hours, you're really not going to get to see the trails.

That's right.

And if you're doing comrades, it's kind of the same way there's a race experience.

But also, you know, the Strava recap just came out I think yesterday and it was saying that it's still boomers and Gen Xers that are contributing the most miles.

And those people are not pring, they're out, they're being consistent and they're looking to optimize an experience of running.

And it's not no bad things about Indianapolis, but is it a bucket list thing to go run in Indianapolis?

I don't know anymore.

And so I think as the running industry and specifically trail kind of evolves, I my belief was that this is a huge opportunity to kind of create a new vertical within running.

And you and Tommy had talked about it last time, which is if you uncouple the process of racing from the concept that you can actually enjoy being in a place and running safely, having somebody do the scouting and the tours for you.

Yeah.

And when you go to the Dolomites, it's one of our most popular trips.

We'll do three trips this year.

They're all sold out eight months in advance.

You'll the most common thing to do is the Altavia and you'll do somewhere between like 15 and 20 miles on that per day.

And you know that's kind of your vacation is you Stay in Refugios at the top of the mountain, and with us you get this versatility in the experience.

We'll take you on different routes.

We'll do the Trichime and the Cinque Terre, and then we'll drive you from one location to another.

We'll make sure you have five quality meals.

Our final night, we're doing between a seven and a nine course meal at this hotel Anita, run by Anita for the last 60 years.

And she owns the place and cooks all the meals.

And it's just this deeply authentic within trail culture, within the Dolomites culture that I think I felt really like was missing from what I wanted to see for myself in my running experience.

So I acquired that company in August of this year.

And yeah, personally, it's been a dream, just a blessing to be able to do something like that.

But the same way that you think about creating something new in the world, it's also pattern matching.

It's also force of will.

It's also, this is a new narrative by which I'm introducing to the world.

And so going on podcasts like this that is really well respected within the industry is such an important component to it.

Well, what are these?

I mean, rogue, what are you selling?

I mean, it feels like, yeah, the experience has to be smooth, but, like, in the end, like, what's the outcome?

Like, what's the sell?

What are you selling?

You know what I mean?

Like, it feels like what I'm getting at is that it's not running, but they are running.

It is running.

Is it belonging?

I think it's the ability to experience the most beautiful places on earth in a way that you could only do it on foot through your runs.

And if you think about that, like, Tokyo is beautiful, but if you go out to, like, the Japanese Alps, you're just like, I can't even believe this exists.

It's just.

It's like another planet.

And when you go run around a city, you've been doing a bunch of road running in France.

Yeah, you get this certain level of, like, intimacy with a city.

Like, you look in bakeries and you see this.

It's a totally different experience than.

And I ran the New York City Marathon and I didn't see a single thing.

And I cried the whole time and I cramped.

You know what I mean?

And I was lucky that I'd been living in Brooklyn for 10 years, that it didn't really matter.

But if I went to another place, I'd mostly be stressed and try to hit a time and What I'm saying instead is, man, the most beautiful places on earth in a lot of ways are on top of mountains, they're right next to lakes, they're on ocean sides.

The end of the run, you come to a place where it's going to be featured on chef's table because it's a multigenerational taco stand right on the beach of Playa del Carmen.

And like, that's the, that's a way that you can run and, and you don't have to do it by yourself.

And it's not something you have to piecemeal together from your all Trails experience.

Instead, we've been meticulously planning these routes for like a decade.

And you can trust that it's going to be really, really good.

So I think.

And there's safety and security and, you know, not having to like haggle about whether you need to pay the taxi driver a tip and if he's going to rip you off and think you've.

Got, you've got local fixers on all this stuff.

Oh, smooth.

Yeah, real smooth.

So I think, I really like.

That's the value proposition.

And I'd say in some ways, I think about it, a really good mindset is if you're.

I love hearing you go, I'm in my 40s and I'm still pring.

Yeah.

And I think when you can't go faster anymore, maybe you go further.

And then if you can't go further anymore, you're kind of at a loss.

You index our experience a little bit more.

That's right.

So this is that experience.

Yeah.

And.

And so that's what it's really trying to build up.

And it's becoming more popular and I'm seeing new shades in the trail industry that get me really excited about the innovation.

Borderlands, obviously doing a bunch of cool stuff.

Love Trails is this amazing if you've heard of Running man in the United States sort of by Jesse Itzler.

But yeah, I love love Trails.

And I don't know if that's what it will end up being because May right now it's like we take the concept of Coachella, so we take our pattern there and we try to adapt running into it.

Yeah.

It might be more obvious for it to just be a trail running festival and to less index on music because that isn't everybody's cup of tea.

But the trail running is and the nutrition and the hydration or the recovery platforms are.

Yeah.

So I love what they're doing there.

And I think as Trail becomes bigger.

And I'd love your take on this, actually.

Yeah, I think during the pandemic more people got onboarded into run just from a concept.

I think that when you look at running media, it's really, it's very predominantly focused on reporting on elite performances because those things market well.

Like, like things on top of a podium.

And I think that was unattractive to a whole group of people that actually were onboarded into running and maybe didn't like that.

Yeah, was their experience.

So they found new avenues, one of which was run clubs by which the destination of or your outcome of racing or running became showing up to a run club.

So the journey was rewarded.

Trail also felt a lot like that, which was the process of being out in nature, moving slowly, all these sort of things.

It became the reward and I, my race experience became uncoupled from the time.

And I'm curious to know if you feel the same way about how people got into trail or how trail will evolve.

Yeah.

So I just released an episode as we speak right now.

I just released it today.

By the time this releases.

I just released an episode last week.

And that the idea is.

So we invented something.

So I did it with my dude, Brian goes by Wolf Runner and I call it Wolfie's Razor.

So it's a heuristic that says that nowadays assume that someone runs for self expression first until proven otherwise because everyone.

So I got to give Brian credit for the way that he broke this down.

But I'm using it from now on and he knows that.

But that's why we called it Wolfie's Razor.

Yeah.

Okay.

So the, the original manifesto of Borderlands was the trail running industry is only running in one direction and it's, and it's only going with really 5 to 8% of the people.

Meanwhile there's 92 to 95% of the people who are over here doing it for other reasons.

However.

And I would, I was framing it within mental health, which I think mental health needs to be redefined because it's been, it's been turned in, it's, it's been like sort of, it's like mushy and ill defined at this point.

Yeah.

But basically I was saying, hey, I'm running because I want to feel strong.

I want doing this for my, my mind.

I need the chemicals, I need all this sort of stuff.

And Brian's saying, no, it's not even just that.

It's.

There was a whole class of people that emerged that ran as a means of self Expression.

So all of these brands that have come out and tried to say, you know, we're, we're like the skateboarding culture, I would say I have not seen anybody who's doing the skateboarding culture.

Skateboarding culture was truly like punk rock, a means of self expression.

But there is a whole class of runners who are not going to be paying attention to utmb, who, who in fact will actively not pay attention to UTMB or to western states because they fall in this bucket that I think is most people.

I'm going to assume that most people now are in this.

It's like I run.

This is the way that I show myself who I am in the world, who I am.

I run as a means of self expression.

So that's my, that's, that's, you know, the stuff that's kind of like swirling in my head right now.

And I think I agree with it.

And you see brands that are marketing as means of self expressions as the ones who seem to be most out front right now who comes to mind satisfy.

Even though I disagree that they're getting skateboard culture.

I think they're, they are touching it, but not close.

I think path because Flores Gearman used to work for Tony Hawk and is, you know, with Jeff Rally and all these people, like he gets skateboarding culture.

But it seems like, gosh, I think of sore, I think of whom I think I had the founder.

I'm, I'm embarrassed.

The Danish company Copenhagen, yes, say Sky.

I think they're all in the running of self expression, but I don't think any of them have nailed the skateboarding.

But yeah, so seems like most of those people who are, who are out front and then run clubs, I think fall into that.

It seems like run club feels like self expression more than it feels like accountability.

You know, it feels like it's a place to belong and it's a means of self expression.

So then, okay, here's an interesting observation.

When it felt like skateboarding was around, it felt grunge, it felt punk rock, it felt counterculture.

It did not feel premium.

No, it wasn't luxury.

It wasn't luxury.

And now in running or in trail with those brands that you just mentioned, counterculture and luxury in those brands particularly feel somewhat synonymous and.

Yeah, why?

Good question.

Because in punk rock, like the thing was to go to the thrift stores, the thing was to find belts and then go to Tandy Leather and get studs and then hammer into your belt and put studs in it.

Like there was, there was diy components to it.

So I think what the brands are doing is they're playing on that and making their stuff look DIY like moth tech.

Stuff like that.

They're playing in that world, but it's not like authentic.

Authentic was.

My pants are way too big because the thrift store only had this size.

And all I want to do is be skating and I don't want to be naked.

So this is the stuff I could find.

So it almost feels so different in that.

Not that skateboarding was anti capitalist, but it was definitely not at.

It was thrifting.

It was on the cheap.

And then satisfied leans into that a little bit.

And I met the team at the running event, and one thing I really fallen in love with was they did this thing where they would go to thrift stores and get old marathon shirts.

So like the New York city Marathon from 1984.

Yeah.

And I always had this dream that you could start a brand called Golden Era Running where you just took those designs from the New York City Marathon and then took out the New York City Marathon on it and just print the nostalgic Golden Era designs.

And they had done that.

There's some IP and copyright is like stuff you got.

Okay, we, after this, stopped.

I got to tell you an idea, but I'm not gonna say it on the air.

There's something.

I'm headed generally in that direction on something, but you just put it on steroids.

And so I have to let.

I have to bring you in on it.

I can't on the air, though.

Keep going.

That was brilliant.

Let's end the podcast.

I got it.

No, but then they.

So that's maybe a 15T shirt.

And then they put a little monogram on it that said it was from satisfy, and then it got marked up, you know, 10x.

And I'm very pro doing that because I think.

I mean, pro as in, like I'm pro doing interesting and creative.

That's right.

Yes.

But it's just interesting to see that the only way to be punk rock is to also spend a lot of money on it.

One thought could be it's a smaller total addressable audience.

And so in order to invest into a higher quality material and better design, it actually just costs more to do.

And the people getting into trail and doing ultras and longer distances in general maybe are people, as we know, that are just more affluent.

And so those two things just kind of work.

And the difference between buying a Nike shirt for $35, which is somewhat commoditized and feels a Lot like an Adidas shirt versus a satisfying shirt is worth five to ten times more.

Yeah.

It's an amazing business concept.

Right.

And because we're, you know, if people in their 40s that we were skateboarding in the 90s, we all have careers and we make money, and so we want to feel.

Sure, punk rock.

We want to feel skater kid again.

But I don't want to actually buy pay $0.05 for my pants.

I want.

I'm willing to pay for that feeling now.

So what they're selling is the Feeling, and on that level, I think they're doing great job.

They sold the Feeling.

But to say that we are skateboarding culture.

Yeah.

To me is.

Is they're not close, but yeah, on the Feeling, which arguably is the most important piece, they're pretty close.

People who have budgets who are in their 40s will pay 300 bucks to feel the same way they did when they were 14 buying that pair of, you know, deckers khakis, you know.

Yeah.

An interesting question would be that.

So you and I are in the bubble.

Yeah.

We think about.

I mean, the people listening to this podcast are probably also in the bubble.

Yeah.

So then if you're getting into trail, I think one thing that has historically been a.

And Brian Metzler has talked about this from outside, and I think he's a wealth of knowledge about it.

But in some ways that ultra distances have maybe held back new people getting into trail, because the perception is you can only do something on trail if it's, you know, 100 miles or a 50K or something like that, which is intimidating and not worth getting into.

Yeah.

And then it's cool and interesting to see the rise in shorter distances.

And David from Ultra Signup says actually the biggest growth is in, like, the Cirque series, which is a much more manageable, but then feels a little bit more.

You're running for performance.

Yeah.

And there's a time element, and then there's.

You got to buy your normal running shoes, and it's that.

Then there's this other concept of you get into trail, and then the brands that maybe speak to you are niched down already.

It's got a spy.

It's say, sky.

Where's.

Where's the 95% sitting at?

Where if you look at road running, you get a whole bunch of, you know, 25 million people that just buy Brooks Ghost running shoes and Nike Pegasus and they run their neighborhood 5K and they're really happy with it.

Right.

And it seems like in trail, we've niched down already before hitting a maturation point, which I think is interesting.

Yes.

And.

But where is everyone else?

Where's the 95?

Yeah.

Okay.

So this is.

I have not said it that way.

This is how I've said it.

But it's one of those things that we've both arrived at independently.

It's that we.

I've said it as.

We've centralized too soon.

It's too much about our Viper already.

It's too much about UTMB already.

Yeah.

I like that.

So many different organizations are trying to be like the World Series, the world Championship.

I want that as a fan.

I want that one race that's going to be the place that says if you win that race, you are the best.

Just like the World Series in baseball.

Or, you know, they have the championship and we can declare it in trail.

We're not.

We've centralized too quick.

We need more chaotic growth.

Yeah.

Which it's happened.

There's some.

There's chaos happening naturally.

But at the same time, you know, Jamil Curry's name's on another thing.

It's him again.

You know, it's like, good for him.

As an entrepreneur, I would never want to see anybody do anything other than succeed.

Even if I don't see the vision myself, I don't need to.

I always want them to succeed.

And so there's opportunity and it's bringing.

We've talked about this offline.

Like, it's bringing.

Entrepreneurs are in the space.

They're all over the place.

They're doing things.

They're getting their hands on stuff.

You know, coming up with tech.

I'm trying to come up with media ideas, all this sort of stuff, but we need more.

We need more chaotic growth before we centralize.

Yeah.

I think that's so interesting.

And I guess this is a good transition, but I think a lot about the race experience for a new runner in trail and I think how much power the portfolios have.

Utmp, Cirque Series.

Yeah.

And I think what you're doing with the power of good content activations is the ability to transcend portfolio because it becomes Borderland portfolio.

Right.

Yes.

And it's very interesting within road running.

And I like having these comparisons, having spent two years just studying how road running works.

Yeah.

If you launch a half marathon or marathon and you just take the city's name and you launch the Duluth Marathon, you for some reason might have more credibility than grandma's within a few years.

Just because people believe it's credentialed by the city and It's a little hack to growth.

So you see the biggest ones in a lot of these states is like up Portland and Seattle and even though the other ones are way better.

So the problem with race discovery is that there's an insider and outsider community by which outsiders look for shortcuts.

To understand whether a race is credentialed.

And hopefully half marathons does that, we've added a whole bunch of new.

You can search for Oceanfront or how many people run it and whether people like it or not.

Yeah, quick plug.

You just released a new version of it.

So to me, it felt like a Craigslist.

And I don't mean this in a bad way.

I think Craigslist is brilliant for staying 1.0, you know, Web 1.0 and its vibes.

But you just did a really great refresh on half marathons on that.

So just a call out, you know, make sure people are checking it out.

I'll put it in.

Yeah.

The only thing I'll say about it, which was the real labor of love is calendars, in a lot of ways are just commoditized information organized based on.

It's a specialized search engine where we organize races on locations and dates.

And in some ways that's a crowded space because it's easier to do.

And the thing that I realized runners were searching for was they would Write in to infofmarathons.net Can I bring my dog to this race?

And I'd be like, what race?

Yeah, sure.

They, they.

A lot of people legitimately think we are the be all, end all source to just ask questions about half marathons.

So we get thousands of people writing in per year just being like, when's the price increase?

And whoa.

And what people care about is if you're going to spend your money to travel for a race, you are indexing on the quality of your experience.

You're indexing on scenery, the maybe the race price, the swag, the post festival.

And they're outside of looking at a whole bunch of complex searches where you look at Texas and you're like, okay, Houston or Dallas.

And then which one's bigger or better?

It.

That information was never really clean.

So for about six months, I had a team of 25 people look at every half marathon race page in America and index based on course difficulty and things like that.

So hopefully that becomes a new precedent by which other races can.

People can find races based on the quality of experience they're looking for.

But in trail, it doesn't seem like it's that easy.

You can't just launch the Salt Lake City Trail Half Marathon and be the best race there.

It seems like there's a lot more nuance and.

And these for a new runner, you're maybe introduced through a credentialed portfolio through the fact that, I don't know, Hard Rock and Leadville carry a lot of the panache.

They have a lot of demand for the amount of supply that they have.

Yeah.

And then there's this whole landscape of how does any other race hit somebody's radar?

And I love.

And I hope we.

I hope you can talk about at least a little bit more on this.

Yeah.

I've always been really obsessed with the idea of the content activation, which is if you take a similar model that's worked on talk radio, like what you're doing here, or an interview show, could you transport that to a new location, a new venue and have people be like, oh my gosh, this is Jay Leno interviewing somebody at the finish line of Hard Rock.

And they're asking questions like, what are you running from?

Totally.

Man on the street.

Man on the street type stuff.

Yeah.

Or back of the pack, where you go with the last person with a little handheld micro and you're like, how are you feeling?

Like, what's.

What's going on with your feet right now?

We're going to call that sweeper cam.

It's just such a fun.

It adds this level of the human experience to the race experience in a way that's non podium based.

And it is so powerful when the value of trail is to be outside and to move as a human.

And I, and I.

And so I'm really curious about how you think about these content activations.

Yeah.

And so this is, what you're alluding to is a dream right now called Robey House.

Real, real quick though, your discussion about race discovery, how do people find races?

Like, in all of my market research, which I obsessed over, you know, part of the reason I'm in Paris is because I'm surrounded by such awesome entrepreneurs here that I really love their energy and excitement.

We were all building at the same time.

We all had our own expertise, but this one market research guy named Bertrand just taught me how to really, like, approach market research like a professional.

And the thing that I found that people want the most is race discovery.

And I've talked to Run signup, I've talked to the guys at Ultra Signup.

It's like, man, people want to find.

It's.

You think it's easy, but it's because we're in the bubble.

But if we're going to grow the way that we need to grow, how do people outside the bubble find a new race?

I am working on some solutions to that, but that to me that is crazy.

That points back to we can't centralize too quick.

Even though I love Ultra Signup.

Yeah, but if it all centralizes around Ultra Signup and Ultra Signup doesn't have a race discovery tool, then all of a sudden how do people find out where to find a new race?

It's like those that highly centralized moment they become, they get to pick the winners.

We're too young to let Aravaipa pick the winner.

To let Ultrasonic pick the winner, there need to be some other things that can come in and sort of like democratize race discovery on a larger scale.

Okay, close parentheses the media activation.

Robey House.

So if we go back to that, okay, 95% of the running world, the content I don't think is nailing them.

I think that's interesting to the top 50%.

It's nailing the top five, top eight, nailing it.

That you know what Free Trail does at Western states, I love it.

I obsess over it.

But if we look at what I want to do is I'm going to take the excitement around western states, the energy there and that the world, it's kind of getting this media.

It's making it beyond the normal, let's say standard deviation of the mean of who's paying attention.

It's making it beyond at least one standard deviation.

And so people are paying attention.

I want to leverage that energy and bring in the best way I can characterize it is if Free Trails coverage is like a puzzle piece.

It's got a unique odd shape and that odd shape encompasses and explains everything they do.

I want to build something that just comes up and fits neatly up against it.

Zero overlap.

So Free Trail dominates and nails the elite version of the sport, the performance version of the sport, going back to Wolfie's Razor.

But if the assumption is that everybody there, that you're in it for self expression, no one's nailing coverage for self expression.

Sure.

No one's covering how do you cover western states in a way that's about health, mental health, all that sort of stuff, like all these other reasons that people do it.

And so I'm going to build an activation around that by with a lot of different ways.

But the ultimate goal is to celebrate everything non elite about the sport in a fun way.

The Way I've characterized it is imagine David Letterman has a baby with jackass and it's a non elite runner.

Like it's just.

And that encompasses a lot of.

We want to laugh, we're out there having a good time and, and I just want to do.

I'm gonna let free trail be free trail.

You know, let that be what, let I run far, do what they do because they do it well.

But there's a whole piece that's missing and that's the piece that I want to come in and be a part of.

I'm so interested and if there's, I mean any way I can help.

But I think the content that's always really grabbed me and then I'll send around to non runners is non elite content.

Yes.

Lucy's dad, if you've watched that one, which is about Ash Bartholomew, who's Lucy Bartholomew's dad.

Yes.

I think he ran maybe western states.

Yeah, yeah.

It was about him dnfing but it was a story about a 65 year old father and his relationship with his daughter.

And he came in after the cut off, he didn't win anything.

And I, it was the only thing where my mom was like I could do a race and this is brilliant.

I've never thought of it this way.

The stuff that you share to non runners is the non elite stuff.

Holy cow.

I will watch it maybe two or three times a year and send it to new people just because I go, isn't it incredible, Isn't it incredible that humans can do this?

Isn't it incredible that this story transcends trail and you were talking the other day about having like a Super bowl, like a football game type thing on the holidays.

Yes, yes, yes.

I thought about that was unless you're the Bartholomew, it's hard to think that there's a multi generational love of trail running where that everybody could sit around and watch the same thing.

And in the same way that football where your parents and parents.

Parents were all Steelers fans and so.

You got to, you got to figure out multi generational appeal.

Totally.

And that's such a cool concept.

And so our multi generational parents and parents, parents understand talk show formats.

They understand human interest.

They don't.

There's just a growing contingent of people that don't really particularly care about performance or how much to like how many carbohydrates you need in order to properly fuel.

They want to know that it is a radical sense of self expression.

They want to see people break down and push past that and they don't need to know anything else.

And that's amazing storytelling.

In fact, the gym doing circumnavigating the UTMB in 19 and a half hours is lost on them totally.

But you see the world's most impressive ultra runner at mile 17, somewhat delusional, in a lot of pain, and you go, this race must be so hard if the best person who's ever run this race is having this much of a problem.

And it just gives you a different sense of what your children or what your friends are going through when they go out and do this stuff.

Because otherwise.

I have a friend who ran Moab240, and he's been such a source of inspiration.

And just the fact that he did it is in 40 or 50 hours.

And if I saw him in his lowest moments or throwing up at points or things like that, I would just be astounded that the human body could handle that much pain for that much period of time.

And it would inspire me the same way that marathons did, to just be like, I got.

I got.

For some reason, I got to try it.

And then you'll do one and you'll decide it's not for you because it's too hard and you didn't actually enjoy it.

And you'll churn out and you'll find something else for you, which is either belonging to your run club or going on running vacations or something like that.

You need that.

You need that access point that humans aren't great at, that nuance of being like, I'd like to run with no objective.

It's like, maybe if you lose weight.

Yeah, if you don't lose weight and you don't have an objective, your churn rate is going to be exceptionally high compared to if you signed up for marathon and you're 150 bucks in the hole on, you know, the Salt Lake City Marathon.

Yeah.

Yeah, dude, that.

That.

That is brilliant.

So the, the stuff that I want to do, like, as I've been floating this deck around to brands and to personalities to come join me, because, you know, I'm gonna.

I'm gonna get brands to support it if I have the personalities, but I can't get personalities to commit without the money.

So I need the brands.

And so it's like a chicken or egg thing I'm working through here, trying to figure out.

But I do have the Robey house secured.

And what's cool about that is that my best friend who's done the documentaries that I've put Out He's.

And when I was a music professional musician, he was my lead guitar player for 10 years.

His name is Ben Roby.

And I then I get into trail running in, in like, you know, 2011, 2012 and learn about Roby Point and Wendell Roby.

And last year it occurred to me I was looking at a.

An article and it's something about Wendell Roby.

It's from Auburn.

And I knew Ben's dad was from Auburn.

And so I, you know, screenshot it, send it to Ben, like, hey, is this.

Are you related to Wendell Roby?

And he sends it to his dad.

He's like, yeah, that's our.

That's my cousin.

I was like, wait a second.

So the guy who started the 100 mile endure, like wanted to make Auburn the endurance capital of the world.

The origin of the 100 mile distance.

That's your cousin.

It's like, yeah, it's like, is that.

And he has a cabin in Tahoe.

And I was like, hey, that cabin in Tahoe, that's owned by the Robie family.

Is that a Robie?

Like, he's like, oh, yeah, Wendell owned a lumber yard.

The house was prefabricated at Wendell's lumberyard and then taken over there.

And we played on the American river all growing up that Wendell gave us a key and access to his.

I was like, oh my God, can I use that for a Western States activation?

And they were like, yeah.

So it's, it's booked, it's set.

I've got the production film crew, I've got everything like said, I need the people to come in the money.

But to, to do it at the Robie house.

My dream would be that Western states reaches out and says, hey, what makes you think that you can use the Robey name?

To which my response would be no, what makes you think that you can use the Robey name?

Because this is the actual.

Like this guy started the Tevis cup.

That becomes the.

Becomes Western states 100.

He was the one that.

So Gordy Angley didn't run.

Wasn't the first person to run the 100 mile distance at the Tevis Cup.

It was this group of military guys, a couple like the year before, two years before, Gordy Angley only ran 80, 89 miles.

He didn't do the full hundred miles.

So there's all sorts of like interesting story components to this that is countercultural.

Yeah.

That I'm like toeing the line of.

I don't want to be disrespectful to it, but I also want to be like, hey, look, Wendell Roby and Gordy wasn't the first.

And all this sort of stuff that just sort of like encapsulates and brings in all of this interesting stuff that represents everybody else in the sport.

Hey, we're having fun here.

There's a David Letterman component, there's a Jackass component, there's a, you know, group run component.

There's, you know, a daily bad runner's take with like legends of the, of the sport that transcend just the elite.

And it's, it's a, it's just an all day media thing and then some in person stuff and we'll do like a wine dinner and like, like this is, I used to do this stuff at Sundance.

I, when I owned coffee roasting company, sure, I would do coffee shops on main street of Sundance and it would just be absolute chaos activations with Airbnb and I don't remember who, if we did it for four years in a row.

I just want to bring all that energy to western states because it deserves it.

Yeah, those Sundance and all the film festivals have such a, I mean there's also Davos and I've known some people who worked for the World Economic Forum and they said like 600 people are actually invited to Davos, but there's 40,000 people like Meta that rent out houses in activation type stuff, do activations and host people and do things.

And I think the amazing thing is some of that exists already around UTMB and there's a lot of these pop up experiences.

But bringing it as a consistent experience by which runner's world will do it at the New York City Marathon.

I don't really know if it has an identity or a personality or I think to know, worth showing up for.

And if I went to western states this year, maybe the dream outcome is that it's the sort of thing that people want to show up next year even if they're not participating or spectating or whatever.

Because the Robie Houses is such a fun experience into trail culture without being too intimidating.

Yes.

And so it's not because it's done.

So I don't mean this in a negative way, but it's not me getting the top five favorite men, the top five favorite women, and sitting down and having a strategic conversation about what their plan is.

There's a place for that and people are already doing it really well.

Yeah.

But let's not forget that this sport is fun and that 95 of us suck at it.

And so what you Know, it's fun to watch them.

We want to see, we want to hear about how great they're going to be.

But man, there's so much more to the sport and if there's all this attention already on Western states, what if we can capture some of that and then we do an in.

We're not going to do a necessarily live in race.

We're going to do a, an ABC Wide World of Sports thing where we get in and we follow back of the pack.

If we can get media credentials, follow the back of the pack, sweeper cams, interviews with, you know, all the stuff that I paced a guy at Western States one year and you know, you watch it and you don't realize how, that it's still a hundred miles and how hard it is because the elites make it look so easy.

Yeah.

And my guy dnf and we were toward the back and was like, oh my God, this, this is a really hard race.

But when you see Jim running a six minute mile past the elementary school, it's like you don't realize how hard it is.

So let's, let's show off how hard this is and like get in with all those people who are suffering and struggling and those are the, like now using your words, like those are the.

That's the multigenerational part.

That's, that translates to anybody, regardless if they're in the sport or not.

Yeah.

What's the dream outcome for specific.

If every, if you got the guests that you wanted.

Yeah.

The formats that you wanted.

And at six months after it happened, you could in some metaphysical way have all the data on what happened because of that activation or how you impacted consumer sentiment or how many new people started running or racing.

Yeah.

What's the answer to that for you?

Or is it okay being undefined and ethereal?

Oh, no, my dream, unfortunately, it's like this is a test of concept.

So then I want this to be immediate concept for hire, essentially.

However, I, you know, I really want to go do it, whether there's.

So the way to do this is, you know, rogue is to go in after it and not be officially affiliated with the race.

Yeah.

So whether I can formally do it with Cirque or not, like I had Julian on the podcast a few weeks ago, I think that is the best event in the country.

Everybody should run a Cirque series race because anybody can and it's short enough distance, but their energy is insane.

So I want, I ultimately want to bring this whole energy to as many races as I Can through around the world.

So if we can really, truly build like a really fun David Letterman Jackass type thing, I want to do it in as many places with as many personalities leading it as possible.

Yeah.

And then we would call that Robey House Media.

And yeah.

So the goal is not infinite, but close to infinite scale to large events.

I mean, then go do it for Iron Man.

Do it anywhere.

Any everywhere needs to have more fun.

Yeah.

A really interesting thing to think about, which is mostly from a business perspective.

Yeah.

But where does non elite media work right now?

And so if you're starting a media company, the barriers to entry are really low.

And the most obvious thing to go to do is to go after the people at the top 1%.

Because the top 5% really like watching the top 1%.

Yeah.

And the reason that's somewhat sustainable is because the top 5% is likely to spend the most amount of money.

So then advertisers are most likely to want to get in touch with the top 5% percent.

Yeah.

At the non elite level, you have to go scale.

Right.

Like you can't be Netflix and charge $7 a month if you only have a million subscribers because then you can't generate new content to exclusively be on the count.

You need 75 million people subscribing to that.

Yeah.

So then the interesting question is, is Robey House a scale play for the 95%?

Is this content for everyone else?

Is this.

Did you say is this content for everyone else?

Is this content for everyone else?

Like the non 5?

I don't know.

It's like a very interesting what business.

And it doesn't have to be that well defined and you can kind of invent your own thing.

But I think of it when you liken it to Jackass or when I watch Vice documentaries, the OG ones with Shane Smith going into North Korea, I go, holy cow, I can't believe on a shoestring budget and just one amazing personality, like a Josh Rosenthal pulled it off.

Right.

Like, right.

It's so inspiring.

And it was documentaries for everyone else.

It was the skateboard culture, punk rock documentaries for everyone else.

That's an interesting business case.

Yeah.

Okay, so if.

If Jackass.

Jackass.

Okay, so this is where I get back to like the skateboarding thing, because it all this is all woven together.

Jackass was like what these guys were doing in between sessions, in between skateboarding.

That to me is not captured.

And to use Flores Gearman's words, what's not being captured in trail running for all these people claiming Skateboarding is what it was like to be in the van on the way to skate and on the way back.

And that's what Jackass put on display.

So if that's what skateboard.

When we all talk about growing up skateboarding, we were all jackasses.

We were all.

So you got this rebellious feeling that satisfies tapping into.

But we were rebellious and having a blast.

And I don't.

Sometimes it's all just too serious.

So I think, you know, when Debo's interviewing Jim about what he plans to do in the race, like, I'm.

I'm all over it.

I'm on every word because I think, I think the elite athletes open up to Debo and he gets very unique interviews with all of them.

I've told him that I loved his post UTMB when Jim won.

And with Jim and with Zach, he gets them to open up in a special way.

So I am not on what's already out there.

I'm just saying Jackass was fun.

Was Bam Margera a good skateboarder?

Kinda ish.

No one cared.

But he was skate.

But he was like, he was the culture.

And so was Johnny Knoxville, I don't think.

I think he was a garbage skateboarder.

Jason Lee, I mean, he was before, like Mallrats, he was a professional skateboarder.

You know, there's some great old VHS tapes of him.

So the spirit of all of that.

And so I'm not looking to like, put, put people in roller skates and put them in the back of a box truck and drive around town, even though that's some of the funniest stuff out there.

But it's to figure out, I think life can be explained in Venn diagrams.

It's somehow to figure out like that jackass feeling of we're skateboarders.

This is fun and funny.

We love this and like the overlap of being a jackass and trail running, what is that?

And that's what I want to tap into.

So I hope to do that.

So.

So if I don't have Jim in the studio, which would be fun if he wanted to come, but on my terms, how am I going to get the eyes and ears?

It's basically like going after everybody out there who is an influencer, who's not who.

Who isn't going to watch Western States, they're not going to post about it, they're not going to care and get them to all come and be in the under the same roof putting out content simultaneously to where we're getting 2 million 3 million eyes and ears on what we're doing.

Yeah, I.

In a lot of way, I mean I love Debo and what I'll say is it's so hard to go from non business to business or athlete to media.

Those we have the fortune of being able to have a lot of discerning judgment and being able to pattern match on running a coffee company or a festival company or something in the past where we can kind of really articulate and understand trade offs and strategy and where like if you.

I don't know if this is your end goal with Wilder but if you think about the concept of Wilder you then go into this concept of saying hey, run clubs don't have organization.

Are run clubs the best way to actually make money?

No, because they're traditionally disorganized.

Maybe they have some dues but those go towards like supporting the run club in some pretty non essential ways.

Yeah.

So what's another way to monetize that business?

Well, if discovery of races is pretty hard then doing it from a perspective of where does.

Where is my crew without having to text every single person or have a group thread or an email chain, what's all on their calendar for the year so I can maybe hop in or coordinate travel or something like that.

And then is that valuable to races?

That is a.

The club organization or club or social discovery is a loss leader for something much more valuable which is.

Yeah.

You know what I mean?

Yeah.

That's a pretty sophisticated non one to one model that you go, oh, we're going to get everybody onto a face online, Facebook and then 10 years down the line it's going to be an advertising company.

It's one of those things.

Right.

I think the other content stuff I really love thinking about is Dave Portnoy and he is not a culinary expert.

No.

And he has pizza reviews.

Sports expert.

But for some reason he's innovated in personality and format enough where that after the 11,000th pizza in 30 seconds, you know his standard that it's credentialed and people will flock to the things that he says or does because he's just kind of established credibility and he stands behind those principles and they're all really helpful data points.

It's all really interesting to go and say does Trail have its Dave Portnoy right now?

Yeah.

What does Dave offer to the pizza or the sports community and is that something that Trail would be interested in or could be leveraged for Trail?

I like the fact that Robie House is kind of this flexible concept by which it's activations, it's engagements with athletes.

But I could see a future where you are seeding your athletes into it to story.

They're good athletes, but maybe they're greater personalities the same way.

It's like a Tim Tollefson comes to mind.

Fantastic personality, great runner.

Exactly right.

So you're not.

You're everybody else's story.

You're the Ash Bartholomew of the world.

And we can't all be Killian Jornay.

And.

And if you had a roster of this, I mean, that's how Nick Bear started with his company, and then he puts races on the map.

So I think we're in a very powerful position with how you're thinking about this.

Yeah.

My guess is it's going to be painful for a little period of time while people go, I don't really get it because it doesn't look like the other things yet.

And I haven't seen it.

Yeah.

And so your life cycle is going to be longer.

Yeah.

But I think you're right.

My hope.

My hope on that is that the right people are on the bus.

Yeah.

To where there's Grace.

Because if it's like, oh, that guy.

I don't get this, but that guy's there and I've trusted him for a long time.

I've trusted her for a long time.

So I'm going to take that.

That's.

I mean, that's how I'm pursuing this.

All the people I'm pursuing to come be there with me is like, they're trusted.

So.

And when I explain it to them, I'm thankful at this point.

They're not saying, wait, give me more detail.

It's just like the high level.

They're just like, okay, you're trying to talk to everybody else.

You're trying to talk to who I talk to and at scale.

And we're going to bring people in and hopefully there's going to be like, the.

The outcome is going to be greater than the sum of its parts.

Like, okay, I'm into that.

So that's what I'm hoping is, yeah, there's going to be this weird, awkward, slow start.

But there's the right people on camera.

My technical director, Ben Roby, right people behind the camera.

And then I'm placing the right, like, writers in place and con, like conceptors of content.

Because it's.

It's not just going to be all right.

We got to get the right people in the room.

And then it's a really great question asker.

Yeah.

Like that that's being done.

We got great question askers out there.

It's got to be more programmed than that.

And so it's going to be like unintentionally cringy as we're working through it.

And then we're going to have to have the right people there to say, okay, I don't mind looking a little stupid, let's try this.

Does it make sense?

So Borderlands is obviously the ability to experience Josh and what Josh, how he's high integrity and what kind of questions he asks and what's it like to experience him interviewing somebody and what's it like to be on camera.

Yeah, I don't think I've really seen shades of that for what you articulate.

Like, I think there's a disconnect between Borderlands and the concept of the Robie House right now.

Maybe because it's under lock and key and you're still perfecting it.

And there's something else there, but I would guess that a sampler or starting to introduce that new concept.

Yes.

Early on.

Good point.

People go, now it's a content activation.

Give him some.

Give him some imagination now.

I don't need to wonder what's going on, whether it's brand safe and that's smart.

Then you come up with a segment or a talking point.

If you watch I love the barstool Sunday conversations with Kayla Presley.

Those are painful.

Yeah.

Oh, my God.

They're so fun, though, because he's like, do you mind if we do a new segment presented by Mommy Test?

And he'll do it like three times.

And they're like, I thought we just did the segment.

Yeah.

And the dude eating the ice cream, I so want to rip that off.

Like, that just makes that so funny.

So smart.

So funny and endearing.

And I watch everyone within the seconds that it comes out.

But also, I love the way they integrate advertisers.

I'll watch every ad read.

I just listened to Mr.

Beast go to Antarctica and he climbed up to a mountain that had never been climbed before in Antarctica, and he named it Shopify Mountain.

And he was naming it on the way up the mountain.

I was like, I gotta watch this ad read.

And I think you'll get to a point.

Or I'm excited to see you get to the point where you can take these amazing content creators or these formats and you can introduce them through your own goodwill that you've been building here in terms of people believing in you as a content creator and that you're here for the long haul or whatever.

People actually want to see.

Yeah.

What they want.

But, dude, that's so smart to say, like, get pointed.

Point at something.

Yeah, that's so smart.

That's the way to do it.

That's the way to think about it.

It's a thought.

Could totally be wrong.

It's a thought.

It's.

It's my thought.

But that's all I can really say about it now.

Hey, we got to do this again.

This is.

This is too good.

It was as expected.

There were rabbits.

It was fire hose, like.

But always energizing and always good to talk with you.

So let's.

Let's get another one of these on the calendar.

Yeah.

No, I appreciate it.

And for everybody listening, you should go to rogue expeditions dot com.

It's 1E instead of 2E.

So R O G U E X.

The other one is a nice guy who trips that.

There's a lot of hunting in it.

And so that's not us.

If you.

If you land on that page, it's not us.

Morocco and Patagonia and Alpia Drea, which is inside Slovenia and Croatia and the Dolomites and the Balkans.

And if you have any questions about it, you can reach out to michaelrogexpeditions.com right on.

Well, man, thanks for joining me.

Do this again soon.