Michael Mazarra owns halfmarathons.net + Rogue Expeditions.
He's a firehouse of insight and information and we're all better that he's focusing that energy on trail running through his recent aquisition of Rogue Expedition.
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Call RUNMORE649 (786-667-3649). Leave a message for the podcast—hot takes, agreement, anger, or joy.
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Salt Lake Footshills Trail Races. Salt Lake City, UT - May 31, 2025
PATH Projects - My favorite running shorts, Borderlands10 for 10% off.
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Welcome to the Borderlands Trail and Ultra Running podcast.
Josh Rosenthal:My name is Josh Rosenthal.
Josh Rosenthal:I'm the founder of Borderlands.
Josh Rosenthal:I'm the host.
Josh Rosenthal:I am a committed trail runner who hasn't ran on a trail since I lived in America like five months ago.
Josh Rosenthal:My trail shoes are dusty and I thought I'd be depressed about it.
Josh Rosenthal:But I am genuinely loving road running right now, so I do have my credibility.
Josh Rosenthal:It's just not where I thought that it would be today.
Josh Rosenthal:I have a friend that we, we met this summer.
Josh Rosenthal:We talked for the first time.
Josh Rosenthal:I was walking in the rain through Copenhagen and we had a good long conversation and I was super stoked on it.
Josh Rosenthal:His name is Michael Mazzera.
Josh Rosenthal:We're going to have a conversation where we're going to be chasing rabbits all over the place.
Josh Rosenthal:And I am super stoked.
Josh Rosenthal:But first, glad you're here.
Josh Rosenthal:Borderlands.
Josh Rosenthal:Somehow we're still not learning Borderlands.
Josh Rosenthal:We still suck at running.
Josh Rosenthal:All right, Maz, owner of Half Marathons.net I would be shocked if you haven't been on that website.
Josh Rosenthal:Whether you have intended to or not.
Josh Rosenthal:I don't know the numbers.
Josh Rosenthal:Those are.
Josh Rosenthal:That's his secret.
Josh Rosenthal:I'm not going to ask him for the numbers, but I've been on that website.
Josh Rosenthal:It's SEO, it's optimized so well.
Josh Rosenthal:He's the owner of it.
Josh Rosenthal:He also owns Rogue Expeditions, which I think to me, we're going to launch into that conversation first.
Josh Rosenthal:I'm really stoked on it.
Josh Rosenthal:This episode is going to be moving really quickly.
Josh Rosenthal:I mean, so just kind of hang on tight.
Josh Rosenthal:If you want to have a conversation with Maze, you kind of got to get in the car and you just got to go.
Josh Rosenthal:And we've only talked a few times, but I just know that when we're on, he's firing questions.
Josh Rosenthal:I love it.
Josh Rosenthal:And I, and I, and I can hang with answering his questions.
Josh Rosenthal:But today I'm in the question asking seat, so he's got to hang with mine.
Josh Rosenthal:But we've had a great pre show and you're going to really love this conversation.
Josh Rosenthal:Like I said, we're going to be chasing rabbits probably all over the place.
Josh Rosenthal:I think they're all going to be interesting.
Josh Rosenthal:I think they're all going to be material to trail running in general.
Josh Rosenthal:To you specifically.
Josh Rosenthal: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.
Josh Rosenthal:And that's what I think this conversation is going to be.
Josh Rosenthal:We'll talk about running in the most beautiful places in the world.
Josh Rosenthal:Running ultras, halves, half marathons, building better media experiences.
Josh Rosenthal:I mean, it's just going to go and it's going to be great.
Josh Rosenthal: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.
Josh Rosenthal: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.
Josh Rosenthal:I got to take them all around.
Josh Rosenthal:But I'm going to come back and we're going to do a live podcast with Billy, a 5K run with Billy.
Josh Rosenthal:And you're all invited.
Josh Rosenthal:You just have to go to Ultra signup to register.
Josh Rosenthal:I have that link in the show notes.
Josh Rosenthal:That live podcast is going to be super cool.
Josh Rosenthal:I mean, very few of us can tell our story as ultra runners without mentioning Billy in some way.
Josh Rosenthal:So it's.
Josh Rosenthal:It's.
Josh Rosenthal:It's super special.
Josh Rosenthal:I'm stoked to be doing it.
Josh Rosenthal:Okay, next up, Maz.
Josh Rosenthal:It's too am cold to run.
Josh Rosenthal:Too damn.
Josh Rosenthal:Too damn.
Josh Rosenthal:It's too damn cold to run.
Josh Rosenthal:It's too damn cold to run.
Josh Rosenthal:All right, man.
Josh Rosenthal:I'm stoked to have you here.
Josh Rosenthal:Thanks for being with me.
Josh Rosenthal:Where are you sitting right now?
Michael Mazzera:I'm in Austin, Texas.
Michael Mazzera:And thanks for having me.
Michael Mazzera:And, yeah, I'll say the reason I think a lot about networking and just reaching out to people.
Michael Mazzera: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.
Michael Mazzera:How to reframe the race experience.
Speaker C:Yeah.
Michael Mazzera:And I think a lot of times what onboarded me into running was this concept of, like, the marathon.
Michael Mazzera: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.
Michael Mazzera:It ended up being like a.
Michael Mazzera:I mean, a bad thing physically for me.
Michael Mazzera:Cause I thought it was all, like, mind over matter.
Speaker C:Yeah.
Michael Mazzera:But, like, mentally, it actually got me to this place of, like, holy cow.
Michael Mazzera: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.
Michael Mazzera:And so then, you know, you look at, like, the Abbott World Majors, and you're like, this is unbelievable.
Michael Mazzera:They account for, like, 50% of marathon registrations worldwide.
Michael Mazzera:What a, like, phenomenon.
Michael Mazzera:And then there's just like, this massive gap between everybody else.
Michael Mazzera: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.
Speaker C:Yeah.
Michael Mazzera: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.
Michael Mazzera: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.
Michael Mazzera:And I was like, holy cow, this guy must be, like, thinking about the same stuff that I'm thinking about all the time.
Josh Rosenthal:All the time.
Michael Mazzera: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.
Michael Mazzera:And you have to, in a lot of ways, not get discouraged by new data that's coming in.
Michael Mazzera:Is my thesis still true?
Michael Mazzera: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?
Michael Mazzera:So I think when, you know, that kind of expression, when real recognizes real.
Josh Rosenthal: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.
Josh Rosenthal:And I was like, am I supposed to say real recognize as real?
Josh Rosenthal:And I had to look it up on ChatGPT and it was like, okay, yeah, that's the right term.
Josh Rosenthal:So I love hearing you even say that term.
Michael Mazzera:Appropriate usage.
Michael Mazzera:Yeah.
Michael Mazzera: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.
Michael Mazzera:I go, whoa, there it is.
Speaker C:Yes.
Michael Mazzera:So I'm.
Michael Mazzera:I.
Michael Mazzera:That was.
Michael Mazzera:That prompted my initial reach out.
Michael Mazzera:And I was just like, there's.
Michael Mazzera:There's a.
Michael Mazzera:Certainly a kindred spirit.
Josh Rosenthal:A kindred.
Josh Rosenthal:Absolutely.
Josh Rosenthal:Yeah.
Josh Rosenthal:And I think there's the.
Josh Rosenthal:And my mind goes to so many different places, but my initial spot is like, how do you know?
Josh Rosenthal: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?
Josh Rosenthal:And a lot of times with entrepreneurship is that it starts with your gut, but then you've got to.
Josh Rosenthal: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.
Josh Rosenthal:But yeah, the first.
Josh Rosenthal:The first thought is always like, oh, man, could I do a better version of that?
Josh Rosenthal:Or should I.
Josh Rosenthal:Should I buy half marathons.net because I could take that thing and make it better.
Josh Rosenthal:I'm not sure that I know exactly, but I feel that I can.
Josh Rosenthal:And then you start to, like, go into the world.
Josh Rosenthal:Go into that and prove it.
Michael Mazzera:Yeah.
Michael Mazzera:And I think.
Michael Mazzera: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.
Michael Mazzera: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.
Speaker C:Yeah, yeah.
Josh Rosenthal:So we'll say if you're looking for a half marathon, if you haven't already, check out half marathons.net.
Josh Rosenthal:it's a way to find a new half marathon.
Josh Rosenthal:But more interesting to me right now, I want to make sure that we don't miss over.
Josh Rosenthal:This is this Rogue Expeditions acquisition that you've made, you know, front and center on the website.
Josh Rosenthal:It's running the most beautiful places in the world.
Josh Rosenthal: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.
Josh Rosenthal:Give me the high level about rogue expeditions.
Josh Rosenthal:Like, what exactly are you doing?
Josh Rosenthal:What is your approach to taking people all over the world to run in the most beautiful places?
Michael Mazzera:Yeah.
Michael Mazzera:In the simplest way, it's like a running vacation.
Michael Mazzera:And I think so.
Michael Mazzera:One thing that happened to me was every time I would participate in a marathon, I would get injured every single time.
Michael Mazzera: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.
Michael Mazzera:And I really felt like a very much of a loss that I loved training so much.
Michael Mazzera:I loved hitting 20 or 22 miles on a long run.
Michael Mazzera:I entered into this euphoria that is only induced by being like a very primal, like, human, like, running experience.
Josh Rosenthal:Oh, I know.
Michael Mazzera:And then when I got to the end of training, people would go.
Michael Mazzera:Or when I was in training, people would go, what are you training?
Michael Mazzera:Like, what race are you training for?
Michael Mazzera:And then like, what you.
Michael Mazzera:Your goal time?
Michael Mazzera:And it felt like the entire scope of participating in a running activity was the end goal of participating in a race.
Michael Mazzera: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.
Michael Mazzera:So when you get an iPhone, you don't see all the suffering that went into creation, creating that process.
Michael Mazzera:You see the end goal.
Michael Mazzera:So we're really good at recognizing end goals.
Michael Mazzera:So if you trained for 10 years and ran one marathon, people would be like, like, what's your marathon time?
Josh Rosenthal:Right.
Michael Mazzera:And.
Michael Mazzera: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.
Michael Mazzera:And I.
Michael Mazzera:I consistently thought that I was doing this in a suboptimal way.
Michael Mazzera:Yeah.
Michael Mazzera:And I noticed in cycling, a very small percentage of people who cycle participate in cycling races.
Michael Mazzera: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.
Michael Mazzera:And I had thought to myself that was something I wanted to do as a trail runner or as a runner.
Michael Mazzera:And I didn't necessarily need to participate in the races.
Michael Mazzera:Like, you can do the Tour Medoc.
Michael Mazzera:I go drink wine every mile.
Michael Mazzera:It's an amazing concept.
Josh Rosenthal:Yes, it is.
Michael Mazzera:I love that.
Josh Rosenthal:Yes.
Michael Mazzera:And how is there only one that's so popular?
Michael Mazzera:How, when it comes to a themed race, like a culinary focused race, why is it like Disney or the Tour de Mont Medoc?
Michael Mazzera:Like, I don't get that.
Michael Mazzera:So it felt to me like that was missing in trail.
Michael Mazzera:And I think there were two globally that were really, really focused on this for an extended period of time, like over 10 years.
Michael Mazzera:One was run the Alps that specifically focused on the Tour de Mont Blanc.
Michael Mazzera:And I think that's a really crowded area because it is the Mecca.
Michael Mazzera:And UTMB grows.
Michael Mazzera:It gets about 25,000 submissions for about 6,000 spots.
Michael Mazzera:Those are the tremendous amount of excess demand for limited supply.
Michael Mazzera:The rest of the world also has really exceptional places to run.
Josh Rosenthal:Yes, yes.
Michael Mazzera: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.
Josh Rosenthal:Yeah.
Michael Mazzera:And there had been a company in Austin, Texas that had been doing for about 12 years.
Michael Mazzera:The, the wife who was the founder was a former professional or like Olympic qualifying marathon runner.
Michael Mazzera:And then the husband was just more of an outdoorsman.
Michael Mazzera:And they combined their love into a We're going to go on take people on running vacations to go to Morocco.
Michael Mazzera:And since then it's turned into 15 or 16 locations, 30 trips a year.
Michael Mazzera:We'll probably do 40 next year.
Michael Mazzera:And my belief is that you can uncouple your training experience, the expression of your training experience from a racing experience.
Michael Mazzera: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.
Josh Rosenthal:That's right.
Michael Mazzera:And if you're doing comrades, it's kind of the same way there's a race experience.
Michael Mazzera: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.
Michael Mazzera:And those people are not pring, they're out, they're being consistent and they're looking to optimize an experience of running.
Michael Mazzera:And it's not no bad things about Indianapolis, but is it a bucket list thing to go run in Indianapolis?
Michael Mazzera:I don't know anymore.
Michael Mazzera: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.
Michael Mazzera: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.
Speaker C:Yeah.
Michael Mazzera:And when you go to the Dolomites, it's one of our most popular trips.
Michael Mazzera:We'll do three trips this year.
Michael Mazzera:They're all sold out eight months in advance.
Michael Mazzera: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.
Michael Mazzera: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.
Michael Mazzera:We'll take you on different routes.
Michael Mazzera:We'll do the Trichime and the Cinque Terre, and then we'll drive you from one location to another.
Michael Mazzera:We'll make sure you have five quality meals.
Michael Mazzera: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.
Michael Mazzera:And she owns the place and cooks all the meals.
Michael Mazzera: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.
Michael Mazzera:So I acquired that company in August of this year.
Michael Mazzera:And yeah, personally, it's been a dream, just a blessing to be able to do something like that.
Michael Mazzera:But the same way that you think about creating something new in the world, it's also pattern matching.
Michael Mazzera:It's also force of will.
Michael Mazzera:It's also, this is a new narrative by which I'm introducing to the world.
Michael Mazzera:And so going on podcasts like this that is really well respected within the industry is such an important component to it.
Josh Rosenthal:Well, what are these?
Josh Rosenthal:I mean, rogue, what are you selling?
Josh Rosenthal:I mean, it feels like, yeah, the experience has to be smooth, but, like, in the end, like, what's the outcome?
Josh Rosenthal:Like, what's the sell?
Josh Rosenthal:What are you selling?
Josh Rosenthal:You know what I mean?
Josh Rosenthal:Like, it feels like what I'm getting at is that it's not running, but they are running.
Michael Mazzera:It is running.
Josh Rosenthal:Is it belonging?
Michael Mazzera: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.
Michael Mazzera: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.
Michael Mazzera:It's just.
Michael Mazzera:It's like another planet.
Michael Mazzera:And when you go run around a city, you've been doing a bunch of road running in France.
Michael Mazzera:Yeah, you get this certain level of, like, intimacy with a city.
Michael Mazzera:Like, you look in bakeries and you see this.
Michael Mazzera:It's a totally different experience than.
Michael Mazzera:And I ran the New York City Marathon and I didn't see a single thing.
Michael Mazzera:And I cried the whole time and I cramped.
Michael Mazzera:You know what I mean?
Michael Mazzera:And I was lucky that I'd been living in Brooklyn for 10 years, that it didn't really matter.
Michael Mazzera: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.
Michael Mazzera: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.
Michael Mazzera:And like, that's the, that's a way that you can run and, and you don't have to do it by yourself.
Michael Mazzera:And it's not something you have to piecemeal together from your all Trails experience.
Michael Mazzera:Instead, we've been meticulously planning these routes for like a decade.
Michael Mazzera:And you can trust that it's going to be really, really good.
Michael Mazzera:So I think.
Michael Mazzera: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.
Josh Rosenthal:Got, you've got local fixers on all this stuff.
Michael Mazzera:Oh, smooth.
Michael Mazzera:Yeah, real smooth.
Michael Mazzera:So I think, I really like.
Michael Mazzera:That's the value proposition.
Michael Mazzera:And I'd say in some ways, I think about it, a really good mindset is if you're.
Michael Mazzera:I love hearing you go, I'm in my 40s and I'm still pring.
Speaker C:Yeah.
Michael Mazzera:And I think when you can't go faster anymore, maybe you go further.
Michael Mazzera:And then if you can't go further anymore, you're kind of at a loss.
Michael Mazzera:You index our experience a little bit more.
Josh Rosenthal:That's right.
Michael Mazzera:So this is that experience.
Speaker C:Yeah.
Michael Mazzera:And.
Michael Mazzera:And so that's what it's really trying to build up.
Michael Mazzera:And it's becoming more popular and I'm seeing new shades in the trail industry that get me really excited about the innovation.
Michael Mazzera:Borderlands, obviously doing a bunch of cool stuff.
Michael Mazzera:Love Trails is this amazing if you've heard of Running man in the United States sort of by Jesse Itzler.
Michael Mazzera:But yeah, I love love Trails.
Michael Mazzera: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.
Speaker C:Yeah.
Michael Mazzera: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.
Michael Mazzera:But the trail running is and the nutrition and the hydration or the recovery platforms are.
Speaker C:Yeah.
Michael Mazzera:So I love what they're doing there.
Michael Mazzera:And I think as Trail becomes bigger.
Michael Mazzera:And I'd love your take on this, actually.
Michael Mazzera:Yeah, I think during the pandemic more people got onboarded into run just from a concept.
Michael Mazzera: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.
Michael Mazzera:Like, like things on top of a podium.
Michael Mazzera:And I think that was unattractive to a whole group of people that actually were onboarded into running and maybe didn't like that.
Michael Mazzera:Yeah, was their experience.
Michael Mazzera: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.
Michael Mazzera:So the journey was rewarded.
Michael Mazzera:Trail also felt a lot like that, which was the process of being out in nature, moving slowly, all these sort of things.
Michael Mazzera:It became the reward and I, my race experience became uncoupled from the time.
Michael Mazzera:And I'm curious to know if you feel the same way about how people got into trail or how trail will evolve.
Speaker C:Yeah.
Josh Rosenthal:So I just released an episode as we speak right now.
Josh Rosenthal:I just released it today.
Josh Rosenthal:By the time this releases.
Josh Rosenthal:I just released an episode last week.
Josh Rosenthal:And that the idea is.
Josh Rosenthal:So we invented something.
Josh Rosenthal:So I did it with my dude, Brian goes by Wolf Runner and I call it Wolfie's Razor.
Josh Rosenthal:So it's a heuristic that says that nowadays assume that someone runs for self expression first until proven otherwise because everyone.
Josh Rosenthal:So I got to give Brian credit for the way that he broke this down.
Josh Rosenthal:But I'm using it from now on and he knows that.
Josh Rosenthal:But that's why we called it Wolfie's Razor.
Michael Mazzera:Yeah.
Josh Rosenthal:Okay.
Josh Rosenthal: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.
Josh Rosenthal:Meanwhile there's 92 to 95% of the people who are over here doing it for other reasons.
Josh Rosenthal:However.
Josh Rosenthal: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.
Michael Mazzera:Yeah.
Josh Rosenthal:But basically I was saying, hey, I'm running because I want to feel strong.
Josh Rosenthal:I want doing this for my, my mind.
Josh Rosenthal:I need the chemicals, I need all this sort of stuff.
Josh Rosenthal:And Brian's saying, no, it's not even just that.
Josh Rosenthal:It's.
Josh Rosenthal:There was a whole class of people that emerged that ran as a means of self Expression.
Josh Rosenthal: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.
Josh Rosenthal:Skateboarding culture was truly like punk rock, a means of self expression.
Josh Rosenthal: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.
Josh Rosenthal:I'm going to assume that most people now are in this.
Josh Rosenthal:It's like I run.
Josh Rosenthal:This is the way that I show myself who I am in the world, who I am.
Josh Rosenthal:I run as a means of self expression.
Josh Rosenthal:So that's my, that's, that's, you know, the stuff that's kind of like swirling in my head right now.
Josh Rosenthal:And I think I agree with it.
Josh Rosenthal: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.
Josh Rosenthal:Even though I disagree that they're getting skateboard culture.
Josh Rosenthal:I think they're, they are touching it, but not close.
Josh Rosenthal: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.
Josh Rosenthal:But it seems like, gosh, I think of sore, I think of whom I think I had the founder.
Josh Rosenthal:I'm, I'm embarrassed.
Josh Rosenthal:The Danish company Copenhagen, yes, say Sky.
Josh Rosenthal:I think they're all in the running of self expression, but I don't think any of them have nailed the skateboarding.
Josh Rosenthal:But yeah, so seems like most of those people who are, who are out front and then run clubs, I think fall into that.
Josh Rosenthal:It seems like run club feels like self expression more than it feels like accountability.
Josh Rosenthal:You know, it feels like it's a place to belong and it's a means of self expression.
Michael Mazzera:So then, okay, here's an interesting observation.
Michael Mazzera:When it felt like skateboarding was around, it felt grunge, it felt punk rock, it felt counterculture.
Michael Mazzera:It did not feel premium.
Josh Rosenthal:No, it wasn't luxury.
Michael Mazzera:It wasn't luxury.
Michael Mazzera: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.
Michael Mazzera:Yeah, why?
Josh Rosenthal:Good question.
Josh Rosenthal: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.
Josh Rosenthal:Like there was, there was diy components to it.
Josh Rosenthal:So I think what the brands are doing is they're playing on that and making their stuff look DIY like moth tech.
Josh Rosenthal:Stuff like that.
Josh Rosenthal:They're playing in that world, but it's not like authentic.
Josh Rosenthal:Authentic was.
Josh Rosenthal:My pants are way too big because the thrift store only had this size.
Josh Rosenthal:And all I want to do is be skating and I don't want to be naked.
Josh Rosenthal:So this is the stuff I could find.
Michael Mazzera:So it almost feels so different in that.
Michael Mazzera:Not that skateboarding was anti capitalist, but it was definitely not at.
Michael Mazzera:It was thrifting.
Michael Mazzera:It was on the cheap.
Michael Mazzera:And then satisfied leans into that a little bit.
Michael Mazzera: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.
Michael Mazzera: e New York city Marathon from: Speaker C:Yeah.
Michael Mazzera: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.
Michael Mazzera:And they had done that.
Michael Mazzera:There's some IP and copyright is like stuff you got.
Josh Rosenthal:Okay, we, after this, stopped.
Josh Rosenthal:I got to tell you an idea, but I'm not gonna say it on the air.
Josh Rosenthal:There's something.
Josh Rosenthal:I'm headed generally in that direction on something, but you just put it on steroids.
Josh Rosenthal:And so I have to let.
Josh Rosenthal:I have to bring you in on it.
Josh Rosenthal:I can't on the air, though.
Josh Rosenthal:Keep going.
Josh Rosenthal:That was brilliant.
Michael Mazzera:Let's end the podcast.
Michael Mazzera:I got it.
Michael Mazzera:No, but then they.
Michael Mazzera:So that's maybe a 15T shirt.
Michael Mazzera:And then they put a little monogram on it that said it was from satisfy, and then it got marked up, you know, 10x.
Michael Mazzera:And I'm very pro doing that because I think.
Michael Mazzera:I mean, pro as in, like I'm pro doing interesting and creative.
Josh Rosenthal:That's right.
Josh Rosenthal:Yes.
Michael Mazzera: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.
Michael Mazzera:One thought could be it's a smaller total addressable audience.
Michael Mazzera:And so in order to invest into a higher quality material and better design, it actually just costs more to do.
Michael Mazzera: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.
Michael Mazzera:And so those two things just kind of work.
Michael Mazzera: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.
Speaker C:Yeah.
Michael Mazzera:It's an amazing business concept.
Speaker C:Right.
Josh Rosenthal: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.
Josh Rosenthal:Sure, punk rock.
Josh Rosenthal:We want to feel skater kid again.
Josh Rosenthal:But I don't want to actually buy pay $0.05 for my pants.
Josh Rosenthal:I want.
Josh Rosenthal:I'm willing to pay for that feeling now.
Josh Rosenthal:So what they're selling is the Feeling, and on that level, I think they're doing great job.
Josh Rosenthal:They sold the Feeling.
Josh Rosenthal:But to say that we are skateboarding culture.
Speaker C:Yeah.
Josh Rosenthal:To me is.
Josh Rosenthal:Is they're not close, but yeah, on the Feeling, which arguably is the most important piece, they're pretty close.
Josh Rosenthal: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.
Michael Mazzera:Yeah.
Michael Mazzera:An interesting question would be that.
Michael Mazzera:So you and I are in the bubble.
Speaker C:Yeah.
Michael Mazzera:We think about.
Michael Mazzera:I mean, the people listening to this podcast are probably also in the bubble.
Speaker C:Yeah.
Michael Mazzera:So then if you're getting into trail, I think one thing that has historically been a.
Michael Mazzera:And Brian Metzler has talked about this from outside, and I think he's a wealth of knowledge about it.
Michael Mazzera: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.
Speaker C:Yeah.
Michael Mazzera:And then it's cool and interesting to see the rise in shorter distances.
Michael Mazzera: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.
Michael Mazzera:You're running for performance.
Speaker C:Yeah.
Michael Mazzera:And there's a time element, and then there's.
Michael Mazzera:You got to buy your normal running shoes, and it's that.
Michael Mazzera:Then there's this other concept of you get into trail, and then the brands that maybe speak to you are niched down already.
Michael Mazzera:It's got a spy.
Michael Mazzera:It's say, sky.
Michael Mazzera:Where's.
Michael Mazzera:Where's the 95% sitting at?
Michael Mazzera: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.
Michael Mazzera:Right.
Michael Mazzera:And it seems like in trail, we've niched down already before hitting a maturation point, which I think is interesting.
Josh Rosenthal:Yes.
Michael Mazzera:And.
Michael Mazzera:But where is everyone else?
Michael Mazzera:Where's the 95?
Speaker C:Yeah.
Josh Rosenthal:Okay.
Josh Rosenthal:So this is.
Josh Rosenthal:I have not said it that way.
Josh Rosenthal:This is how I've said it.
Josh Rosenthal:But it's one of those things that we've both arrived at independently.
Josh Rosenthal:It's that we.
Josh Rosenthal:I've said it as.
Josh Rosenthal:We've centralized too soon.
Josh Rosenthal:It's too much about our Viper already.
Josh Rosenthal:It's too much about UTMB already.
Michael Mazzera:Yeah.
Josh Rosenthal:I like that.
Josh Rosenthal:So many different organizations are trying to be like the World Series, the world Championship.
Josh Rosenthal:I want that as a fan.
Josh Rosenthal:I want that one race that's going to be the place that says if you win that race, you are the best.
Josh Rosenthal:Just like the World Series in baseball.
Josh Rosenthal:Or, you know, they have the championship and we can declare it in trail.
Josh Rosenthal:We're not.
Josh Rosenthal:We've centralized too quick.
Josh Rosenthal:We need more chaotic growth.
Michael Mazzera:Yeah.
Josh Rosenthal:Which it's happened.
Josh Rosenthal:There's some.
Josh Rosenthal:There's chaos happening naturally.
Josh Rosenthal:But at the same time, you know, Jamil Curry's name's on another thing.
Josh Rosenthal:It's him again.
Josh Rosenthal:You know, it's like, good for him.
Josh Rosenthal:As an entrepreneur, I would never want to see anybody do anything other than succeed.
Josh Rosenthal:Even if I don't see the vision myself, I don't need to.
Josh Rosenthal:I always want them to succeed.
Josh Rosenthal:And so there's opportunity and it's bringing.
Josh Rosenthal:We've talked about this offline.
Josh Rosenthal:Like, it's bringing.
Josh Rosenthal:Entrepreneurs are in the space.
Josh Rosenthal:They're all over the place.
Josh Rosenthal:They're doing things.
Josh Rosenthal:They're getting their hands on stuff.
Josh Rosenthal:You know, coming up with tech.
Josh Rosenthal:I'm trying to come up with media ideas, all this sort of stuff, but we need more.
Josh Rosenthal:We need more chaotic growth before we centralize.
Michael Mazzera:Yeah.
Michael Mazzera:I think that's so interesting.
Michael Mazzera: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.
Michael Mazzera:Utmp, Cirque Series.
Speaker C:Yeah.
Michael Mazzera: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.
Michael Mazzera:Right.
Speaker C:Yes.
Michael Mazzera:And it's very interesting within road running.
Michael Mazzera:And I like having these comparisons, having spent two years just studying how road running works.
Speaker C:Yeah.
Michael Mazzera: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.
Michael Mazzera:Just because people believe it's credentialed by the city and It's a little hack to growth.
Michael Mazzera: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.
Michael Mazzera:So the problem with race discovery is that there's an insider and outsider community by which outsiders look for shortcuts.
Michael Mazzera:To understand whether a race is credentialed.
Michael Mazzera:And hopefully half marathons does that, we've added a whole bunch of new.
Michael Mazzera:You can search for Oceanfront or how many people run it and whether people like it or not.
Josh Rosenthal:Yeah, quick plug.
Josh Rosenthal:You just released a new version of it.
Josh Rosenthal:So to me, it felt like a Craigslist.
Josh Rosenthal:And I don't mean this in a bad way.
Josh Rosenthal:I think Craigslist is brilliant for staying 1.0, you know, Web 1.0 and its vibes.
Josh Rosenthal:But you just did a really great refresh on half marathons on that.
Josh Rosenthal:So just a call out, you know, make sure people are checking it out.
Michael Mazzera:I'll put it in.
Michael Mazzera:Yeah.
Michael Mazzera: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.
Michael Mazzera:It's a specialized search engine where we organize races on locations and dates.
Michael Mazzera:And in some ways that's a crowded space because it's easier to do.
Michael Mazzera: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?
Michael Mazzera:And I'd be like, what race?
Josh Rosenthal:Yeah, sure.
Michael Mazzera:They, they.
Michael Mazzera:A lot of people legitimately think we are the be all, end all source to just ask questions about half marathons.
Michael Mazzera:So we get thousands of people writing in per year just being like, when's the price increase?
Michael Mazzera:And whoa.
Michael Mazzera: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.
Michael Mazzera:You're indexing on scenery, the maybe the race price, the swag, the post festival.
Michael Mazzera: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.
Michael Mazzera:And then which one's bigger or better?
Michael Mazzera:It.
Michael Mazzera:That information was never really clean.
Michael Mazzera: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.
Michael Mazzera:So hopefully that becomes a new precedent by which other races can.
Michael Mazzera:People can find races based on the quality of experience they're looking for.
Michael Mazzera:But in trail, it doesn't seem like it's that easy.
Michael Mazzera:You can't just launch the Salt Lake City Trail Half Marathon and be the best race there.
Michael Mazzera:It seems like there's a lot more nuance and.
Michael Mazzera: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.
Michael Mazzera:They have a lot of demand for the amount of supply that they have.
Speaker C:Yeah.
Michael Mazzera:And then there's this whole landscape of how does any other race hit somebody's radar?
Michael Mazzera:And I love.
Michael Mazzera:And I hope we.
Michael Mazzera:I hope you can talk about at least a little bit more on this.
Speaker C:Yeah.
Michael Mazzera: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.
Michael Mazzera:And they're asking questions like, what are you running from?
Josh Rosenthal:Totally.
Josh Rosenthal:Man on the street.
Josh Rosenthal:Man on the street type stuff.
Speaker C:Yeah.
Michael Mazzera: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?
Michael Mazzera:Like, what's.
Michael Mazzera:What's going on with your feet right now?
Josh Rosenthal:We're going to call that sweeper cam.
Michael Mazzera:It's just such a fun.
Michael Mazzera:It adds this level of the human experience to the race experience in a way that's non podium based.
Michael Mazzera:And it is so powerful when the value of trail is to be outside and to move as a human.
Michael Mazzera:And I, and I.
Michael Mazzera:And so I'm really curious about how you think about these content activations.
Speaker C:Yeah.
Josh Rosenthal:And so this is, what you're alluding to is a dream right now called Robey House.
Josh Rosenthal:Real, real quick though, your discussion about race discovery, how do people find races?
Josh Rosenthal: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.
Josh Rosenthal:We were all building at the same time.
Josh Rosenthal: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.
Josh Rosenthal:And the thing that I found that people want the most is race discovery.
Josh Rosenthal:And I've talked to Run signup, I've talked to the guys at Ultra Signup.
Josh Rosenthal:It's like, man, people want to find.
Josh Rosenthal:It's.
Josh Rosenthal:You think it's easy, but it's because we're in the bubble.
Josh Rosenthal:But if we're going to grow the way that we need to grow, how do people outside the bubble find a new race?
Josh Rosenthal:I am working on some solutions to that, but that to me that is crazy.
Josh Rosenthal:That points back to we can't centralize too quick.
Josh Rosenthal:Even though I love Ultra Signup.
Josh Rosenthal: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?
Josh Rosenthal:It's like those that highly centralized moment they become, they get to pick the winners.
Josh Rosenthal:We're too young to let Aravaipa pick the winner.
Josh Rosenthal: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.
Josh Rosenthal:Okay, close parentheses the media activation.
Josh Rosenthal:Robey House.
Josh Rosenthal:So if we go back to that, okay, 95% of the running world, the content I don't think is nailing them.
Josh Rosenthal:I think that's interesting to the top 50%.
Josh Rosenthal:It's nailing the top five, top eight, nailing it.
Josh Rosenthal:That you know what Free Trail does at Western states, I love it.
Josh Rosenthal:I obsess over it.
Josh Rosenthal: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.
Josh Rosenthal:It's making it beyond the normal, let's say standard deviation of the mean of who's paying attention.
Josh Rosenthal:It's making it beyond at least one standard deviation.
Josh Rosenthal:And so people are paying attention.
Josh Rosenthal: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.
Josh Rosenthal:It's got a unique odd shape and that odd shape encompasses and explains everything they do.
Josh Rosenthal:I want to build something that just comes up and fits neatly up against it.
Josh Rosenthal:Zero overlap.
Josh Rosenthal:So Free Trail dominates and nails the elite version of the sport, the performance version of the sport, going back to Wolfie's Razor.
Josh Rosenthal:But if the assumption is that everybody there, that you're in it for self expression, no one's nailing coverage for self expression.
Josh Rosenthal:Sure.
Josh Rosenthal: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.
Josh Rosenthal:And so I'm going to build an activation around that by with a lot of different ways.
Josh Rosenthal:But the ultimate goal is to celebrate everything non elite about the sport in a fun way.
Josh Rosenthal:The Way I've characterized it is imagine David Letterman has a baby with jackass and it's a non elite runner.
Josh Rosenthal:Like it's just.
Josh Rosenthal:And that encompasses a lot of.
Josh Rosenthal:We want to laugh, we're out there having a good time and, and I just want to do.
Josh Rosenthal:I'm gonna let free trail be free trail.
Josh Rosenthal:You know, let that be what, let I run far, do what they do because they do it well.
Josh Rosenthal: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.
Michael Mazzera:I'm so interested and if there's, I mean any way I can help.
Michael Mazzera:But I think the content that's always really grabbed me and then I'll send around to non runners is non elite content.
Speaker C:Yes.
Michael Mazzera:Lucy's dad, if you've watched that one, which is about Ash Bartholomew, who's Lucy Bartholomew's dad.
Josh Rosenthal:Yes.
Michael Mazzera:I think he ran maybe western states.
Josh Rosenthal:Yeah, yeah.
Michael Mazzera:It was about him dnfing but it was a story about a 65 year old father and his relationship with his daughter.
Michael Mazzera:And he came in after the cut off, he didn't win anything.
Michael Mazzera:And I, it was the only thing where my mom was like I could do a race and this is brilliant.
Josh Rosenthal:I've never thought of it this way.
Josh Rosenthal:The stuff that you share to non runners is the non elite stuff.
Michael Mazzera:Holy cow.
Michael Mazzera: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?
Michael Mazzera: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.
Josh Rosenthal:Yes, yes, yes.
Michael Mazzera: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.
Michael Mazzera:And in the same way that football where your parents and parents.
Michael Mazzera:Parents were all Steelers fans and so.
Josh Rosenthal:You got to, you got to figure out multi generational appeal.
Michael Mazzera:Totally.
Michael Mazzera:And that's such a cool concept.
Michael Mazzera:And so our multi generational parents and parents, parents understand talk show formats.
Michael Mazzera:They understand human interest.
Michael Mazzera:They don't.
Michael Mazzera: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.
Michael Mazzera:They want to know that it is a radical sense of self expression.
Michael Mazzera:They want to see people break down and push past that and they don't need to know anything else.
Michael Mazzera:And that's amazing storytelling.
Josh Rosenthal:In fact, the gym doing circumnavigating the UTMB in 19 and a half hours is lost on them totally.
Michael Mazzera: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.
Michael Mazzera: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.
Michael Mazzera:Because otherwise.
Michael Mazzera:I have a friend who ran Moab240, and he's been such a source of inspiration.
Michael Mazzera:And just the fact that he did it is in 40 or 50 hours.
Michael Mazzera: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.
Michael Mazzera:And it would inspire me the same way that marathons did, to just be like, I got.
Michael Mazzera:I got.
Michael Mazzera:For some reason, I got to try it.
Michael Mazzera: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.
Michael Mazzera: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.
Michael Mazzera:You need that.
Michael Mazzera:You need that access point that humans aren't great at, that nuance of being like, I'd like to run with no objective.
Michael Mazzera:It's like, maybe if you lose weight.
Michael Mazzera: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.
Josh Rosenthal:Yeah.
Josh Rosenthal:Yeah, dude, that.
Josh Rosenthal:That.
Josh Rosenthal:That is brilliant.
Josh Rosenthal: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.
Josh Rosenthal:I'm gonna get brands to support it if I have the personalities, but I can't get personalities to commit without the money.
Josh Rosenthal:So I need the brands.
Josh Rosenthal:And so it's like a chicken or egg thing I'm working through here, trying to figure out.
Josh Rosenthal:But I do have the Robey house secured.
Josh Rosenthal:And what's cool about that is that my best friend who's done the documentaries that I've put Out He's.
Josh Rosenthal:And when I was a music professional musician, he was my lead guitar player for 10 years.
Josh Rosenthal:His name is Ben Roby.
Josh Rosenthal: unning in, in like, you know,: Josh Rosenthal:And last year it occurred to me I was looking at a.
Josh Rosenthal:An article and it's something about Wendell Roby.
Josh Rosenthal:It's from Auburn.
Josh Rosenthal:And I knew Ben's dad was from Auburn.
Josh Rosenthal:And so I, you know, screenshot it, send it to Ben, like, hey, is this.
Josh Rosenthal:Are you related to Wendell Roby?
Josh Rosenthal:And he sends it to his dad.
Josh Rosenthal:He's like, yeah, that's our.
Josh Rosenthal:That's my cousin.
Josh Rosenthal:I was like, wait a second.
Josh Rosenthal:So the guy who started the 100 mile endure, like wanted to make Auburn the endurance capital of the world.
Josh Rosenthal:The origin of the 100 mile distance.
Josh Rosenthal:That's your cousin.
Josh Rosenthal:It's like, yeah, it's like, is that.
Josh Rosenthal:And he has a cabin in Tahoe.
Josh Rosenthal:And I was like, hey, that cabin in Tahoe, that's owned by the Robie family.
Josh Rosenthal:Is that a Robie?
Josh Rosenthal:Like, he's like, oh, yeah, Wendell owned a lumber yard.
Josh Rosenthal:The house was prefabricated at Wendell's lumberyard and then taken over there.
Josh Rosenthal:And we played on the American river all growing up that Wendell gave us a key and access to his.
Josh Rosenthal:I was like, oh my God, can I use that for a Western States activation?
Josh Rosenthal:And they were like, yeah.
Josh Rosenthal:So it's, it's booked, it's set.
Josh Rosenthal:I've got the production film crew, I've got everything like said, I need the people to come in the money.
Josh Rosenthal:But to, to do it at the Robie house.
Josh Rosenthal:My dream would be that Western states reaches out and says, hey, what makes you think that you can use the Robey name?
Josh Rosenthal:To which my response would be no, what makes you think that you can use the Robey name?
Josh Rosenthal:Because this is the actual.
Josh Rosenthal:Like this guy started the Tevis cup.
Josh Rosenthal:That becomes the.
Josh Rosenthal:Becomes Western states 100.
Josh Rosenthal:He was the one that.
Josh Rosenthal:So Gordy Angley didn't run.
Josh Rosenthal:Wasn't the first person to run the 100 mile distance at the Tevis Cup.
Josh Rosenthal:It was this group of military guys, a couple like the year before, two years before, Gordy Angley only ran 80, 89 miles.
Josh Rosenthal:He didn't do the full hundred miles.
Josh Rosenthal:So there's all sorts of like interesting story components to this that is countercultural.
Michael Mazzera:Yeah.
Josh Rosenthal:That I'm like toeing the line of.
Josh Rosenthal: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.
Josh Rosenthal: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.
Josh Rosenthal:Hey, we're having fun here.
Josh Rosenthal:There's a David Letterman component, there's a Jackass component, there's a, you know, group run component.
Josh Rosenthal:There's, you know, a daily bad runner's take with like legends of the, of the sport that transcend just the elite.
Josh Rosenthal: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.
Josh Rosenthal: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.
Josh Rosenthal:I just want to bring all that energy to western states because it deserves it.
Michael Mazzera: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.
Michael Mazzera:And I think the amazing thing is some of that exists already around UTMB and there's a lot of these pop up experiences.
Michael Mazzera:But bringing it as a consistent experience by which runner's world will do it at the New York City Marathon.
Michael Mazzera:I don't really know if it has an identity or a personality or I think to know, worth showing up for.
Michael Mazzera: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.
Michael Mazzera:Because the Robie Houses is such a fun experience into trail culture without being too intimidating.
Speaker C:Yes.
Josh Rosenthal:And so it's not because it's done.
Josh Rosenthal: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.
Josh Rosenthal:There's a place for that and people are already doing it really well.
Michael Mazzera:Yeah.
Josh Rosenthal:But let's not forget that this sport is fun and that 95 of us suck at it.
Josh Rosenthal:And so what you Know, it's fun to watch them.
Josh Rosenthal:We want to see, we want to hear about how great they're going to be.
Josh Rosenthal: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.
Josh Rosenthal:We're not going to do a necessarily live in race.
Josh Rosenthal:We're going to do a, an ABC Wide World of Sports thing where we get in and we follow back of the pack.
Josh Rosenthal: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.
Michael Mazzera:Yeah.
Josh Rosenthal:And my guy dnf and we were toward the back and was like, oh my God, this, this is a really hard race.
Josh Rosenthal: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.
Josh Rosenthal: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.
Josh Rosenthal:That's the multigenerational part.
Josh Rosenthal:That's, that translates to anybody, regardless if they're in the sport or not.
Michael Mazzera:Yeah.
Michael Mazzera:What's the dream outcome for specific.
Michael Mazzera:If every, if you got the guests that you wanted.
Speaker C:Yeah.
Michael Mazzera:The formats that you wanted.
Michael Mazzera: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.
Speaker C:Yeah.
Michael Mazzera:What's the answer to that for you?
Michael Mazzera:Or is it okay being undefined and ethereal?
Josh Rosenthal:Oh, no, my dream, unfortunately, it's like this is a test of concept.
Josh Rosenthal:So then I want this to be immediate concept for hire, essentially.
Josh Rosenthal:However, I, you know, I really want to go do it, whether there's.
Josh Rosenthal:So the way to do this is, you know, rogue is to go in after it and not be officially affiliated with the race.
Michael Mazzera:Yeah.
Josh Rosenthal: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.
Josh Rosenthal:Everybody should run a Cirque series race because anybody can and it's short enough distance, but their energy is insane.
Josh Rosenthal:So I want, I ultimately want to bring this whole energy to as many races as I Can through around the world.
Josh Rosenthal: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.
Michael Mazzera:Yeah.
Josh Rosenthal:And then we would call that Robey House Media.
Josh Rosenthal:And yeah.
Josh Rosenthal:So the goal is not infinite, but close to infinite scale to large events.
Josh Rosenthal:I mean, then go do it for Iron Man.
Josh Rosenthal:Do it anywhere.
Josh Rosenthal:Any everywhere needs to have more fun.
Michael Mazzera:Yeah.
Michael Mazzera:A really interesting thing to think about, which is mostly from a business perspective.
Speaker C:Yeah.
Michael Mazzera:But where does non elite media work right now?
Michael Mazzera:And so if you're starting a media company, the barriers to entry are really low.
Michael Mazzera:And the most obvious thing to go to do is to go after the people at the top 1%.
Michael Mazzera:Because the top 5% really like watching the top 1%.
Speaker C:Yeah.
Michael Mazzera:And the reason that's somewhat sustainable is because the top 5% is likely to spend the most amount of money.
Michael Mazzera:So then advertisers are most likely to want to get in touch with the top 5% percent.
Speaker C:Yeah.
Michael Mazzera:At the non elite level, you have to go scale.
Michael Mazzera:Right.
Michael Mazzera: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.
Michael Mazzera:You need 75 million people subscribing to that.
Speaker C:Yeah.
Michael Mazzera:So then the interesting question is, is Robey House a scale play for the 95%?
Michael Mazzera:Is this content for everyone else?
Josh Rosenthal:Is this.
Josh Rosenthal:Did you say is this content for everyone else?
Michael Mazzera:Is this content for everyone else?
Michael Mazzera:Like the non 5?
Michael Mazzera:I don't know.
Michael Mazzera:It's like a very interesting what business.
Michael Mazzera:And it doesn't have to be that well defined and you can kind of invent your own thing.
Michael Mazzera: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.
Michael Mazzera:Right.
Josh Rosenthal:Like, right.
Michael Mazzera:It's so inspiring.
Michael Mazzera:And it was documentaries for everyone else.
Michael Mazzera:It was the skateboard culture, punk rock documentaries for everyone else.
Michael Mazzera:That's an interesting business case.
Josh Rosenthal:Yeah.
Josh Rosenthal:Okay, so if.
Josh Rosenthal:If Jackass.
Josh Rosenthal:Jackass.
Josh Rosenthal:Okay, so this is where I get back to like the skateboarding thing, because it all this is all woven together.
Josh Rosenthal:Jackass was like what these guys were doing in between sessions, in between skateboarding.
Josh Rosenthal:That to me is not captured.
Josh Rosenthal: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.
Josh Rosenthal:And that's what Jackass put on display.
Josh Rosenthal:So if that's what skateboard.
Josh Rosenthal:When we all talk about growing up skateboarding, we were all jackasses.
Josh Rosenthal:We were all.
Josh Rosenthal:So you got this rebellious feeling that satisfies tapping into.
Josh Rosenthal:But we were rebellious and having a blast.
Josh Rosenthal:And I don't.
Josh Rosenthal:Sometimes it's all just too serious.
Josh Rosenthal:So I think, you know, when Debo's interviewing Jim about what he plans to do in the race, like, I'm.
Josh Rosenthal:I'm all over it.
Josh Rosenthal: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.
Josh Rosenthal:I've told him that I loved his post UTMB when Jim won.
Josh Rosenthal:And with Jim and with Zach, he gets them to open up in a special way.
Josh Rosenthal:So I am not on what's already out there.
Josh Rosenthal:I'm just saying Jackass was fun.
Josh Rosenthal:Was Bam Margera a good skateboarder?
Josh Rosenthal:Kinda ish.
Josh Rosenthal:No one cared.
Josh Rosenthal:But he was skate.
Josh Rosenthal:But he was like, he was the culture.
Josh Rosenthal:And so was Johnny Knoxville, I don't think.
Josh Rosenthal:I think he was a garbage skateboarder.
Josh Rosenthal:Jason Lee, I mean, he was before, like Mallrats, he was a professional skateboarder.
Josh Rosenthal:You know, there's some great old VHS tapes of him.
Josh Rosenthal:So the spirit of all of that.
Josh Rosenthal: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.
Josh Rosenthal:But it's to figure out, I think life can be explained in Venn diagrams.
Josh Rosenthal:It's somehow to figure out like that jackass feeling of we're skateboarders.
Josh Rosenthal:This is fun and funny.
Josh Rosenthal:We love this and like the overlap of being a jackass and trail running, what is that?
Josh Rosenthal:And that's what I want to tap into.
Josh Rosenthal:So I hope to do that.
Josh Rosenthal:So.
Josh Rosenthal: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?
Josh Rosenthal:It's basically like going after everybody out there who is an influencer, who's not who.
Josh Rosenthal: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.
Michael Mazzera:Yeah, I.
Michael Mazzera: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.
Michael Mazzera: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.
Michael Mazzera: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.
Michael Mazzera:Are run clubs the best way to actually make money?
Michael Mazzera:No, because they're traditionally disorganized.
Michael Mazzera:Maybe they have some dues but those go towards like supporting the run club in some pretty non essential ways.
Speaker C:Yeah.
Michael Mazzera:So what's another way to monetize that business?
Michael Mazzera:Well, if discovery of races is pretty hard then doing it from a perspective of where does.
Michael Mazzera: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.
Michael Mazzera:And then is that valuable to races?
Michael Mazzera:That is a.
Michael Mazzera:The club organization or club or social discovery is a loss leader for something much more valuable which is.
Josh Rosenthal:Yeah.
Michael Mazzera:You know what I mean?
Speaker C:Yeah.
Michael Mazzera: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.
Michael Mazzera:It's one of those things.
Josh Rosenthal:Right.
Michael Mazzera:I think the other content stuff I really love thinking about is Dave Portnoy and he is not a culinary expert.
Josh Rosenthal:No.
Josh Rosenthal:And he has pizza reviews.
Michael Mazzera:Sports expert.
Michael Mazzera: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.
Michael Mazzera:It's all really interesting to go and say does Trail have its Dave Portnoy right now?
Speaker C:Yeah.
Michael Mazzera: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?
Michael Mazzera:I like the fact that Robie House is kind of this flexible concept by which it's activations, it's engagements with athletes.
Michael Mazzera:But I could see a future where you are seeding your athletes into it to story.
Michael Mazzera:They're good athletes, but maybe they're greater personalities the same way.
Josh Rosenthal:It's like a Tim Tollefson comes to mind.
Josh Rosenthal:Fantastic personality, great runner.
Michael Mazzera:Exactly right.
Michael Mazzera:So you're not.
Michael Mazzera:You're everybody else's story.
Michael Mazzera:You're the Ash Bartholomew of the world.
Michael Mazzera:And we can't all be Killian Jornay.
Michael Mazzera:And.
Michael Mazzera: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.
Michael Mazzera:So I think we're in a very powerful position with how you're thinking about this.
Speaker C:Yeah.
Michael Mazzera: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.
Michael Mazzera:And I haven't seen it.
Speaker C:Yeah.
Michael Mazzera:And so your life cycle is going to be longer.
Speaker C:Yeah.
Michael Mazzera:But I think you're right.
Josh Rosenthal:My hope.
Josh Rosenthal:My hope on that is that the right people are on the bus.
Michael Mazzera:Yeah.
Josh Rosenthal:To where there's Grace.
Josh Rosenthal:Because if it's like, oh, that guy.
Josh Rosenthal:I don't get this, but that guy's there and I've trusted him for a long time.
Josh Rosenthal:I've trusted her for a long time.
Josh Rosenthal:So I'm going to take that.
Josh Rosenthal:That's.
Josh Rosenthal:I mean, that's how I'm pursuing this.
Josh Rosenthal:All the people I'm pursuing to come be there with me is like, they're trusted.
Josh Rosenthal:So.
Josh Rosenthal:And when I explain it to them, I'm thankful at this point.
Josh Rosenthal:They're not saying, wait, give me more detail.
Josh Rosenthal:It's just like the high level.
Josh Rosenthal:They're just like, okay, you're trying to talk to everybody else.
Josh Rosenthal:You're trying to talk to who I talk to and at scale.
Josh Rosenthal:And we're going to bring people in and hopefully there's going to be like, the.
Josh Rosenthal:The outcome is going to be greater than the sum of its parts.
Josh Rosenthal:Like, okay, I'm into that.
Josh Rosenthal:So that's what I'm hoping is, yeah, there's going to be this weird, awkward, slow start.
Josh Rosenthal:But there's the right people on camera.
Josh Rosenthal:My technical director, Ben Roby, right people behind the camera.
Josh Rosenthal:And then I'm placing the right, like, writers in place and con, like conceptors of content.
Josh Rosenthal:Because it's.
Josh Rosenthal:It's not just going to be all right.
Josh Rosenthal:We got to get the right people in the room.
Josh Rosenthal:And then it's a really great question asker.
Michael Mazzera:Yeah.
Josh Rosenthal:Like that that's being done.
Josh Rosenthal:We got great question askers out there.
Josh Rosenthal:It's got to be more programmed than that.
Josh Rosenthal:And so it's going to be like unintentionally cringy as we're working through it.
Josh Rosenthal: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.
Michael Mazzera:Does it make sense?
Michael Mazzera: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.
Michael Mazzera:Yeah, I don't think I've really seen shades of that for what you articulate.
Michael Mazzera:Like, I think there's a disconnect between Borderlands and the concept of the Robie House right now.
Michael Mazzera:Maybe because it's under lock and key and you're still perfecting it.
Michael Mazzera:And there's something else there, but I would guess that a sampler or starting to introduce that new concept.
Speaker C:Yes.
Michael Mazzera:Early on.
Josh Rosenthal:Good point.
Michael Mazzera:People go, now it's a content activation.
Josh Rosenthal:Give him some.
Josh Rosenthal:Give him some imagination now.
Michael Mazzera:I don't need to wonder what's going on, whether it's brand safe and that's smart.
Michael Mazzera:Then you come up with a segment or a talking point.
Michael Mazzera:If you watch I love the barstool Sunday conversations with Kayla Presley.
Josh Rosenthal:Those are painful.
Josh Rosenthal:Yeah.
Michael Mazzera:Oh, my God.
Michael Mazzera:They're so fun, though, because he's like, do you mind if we do a new segment presented by Mommy Test?
Michael Mazzera:And he'll do it like three times.
Michael Mazzera:And they're like, I thought we just did the segment.
Josh Rosenthal:Yeah.
Josh Rosenthal:And the dude eating the ice cream, I so want to rip that off.
Josh Rosenthal:Like, that just makes that so funny.
Josh Rosenthal:So smart.
Michael Mazzera:So funny and endearing.
Michael Mazzera:And I watch everyone within the seconds that it comes out.
Michael Mazzera:But also, I love the way they integrate advertisers.
Michael Mazzera:I'll watch every ad read.
Michael Mazzera:I just listened to Mr.
Michael Mazzera: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.
Michael Mazzera:And he was naming it on the way up the mountain.
Michael Mazzera:I was like, I gotta watch this ad read.
Michael Mazzera:And I think you'll get to a point.
Michael Mazzera: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.
Michael Mazzera:People actually want to see.
Speaker C:Yeah.
Josh Rosenthal:What they want.
Josh Rosenthal:But, dude, that's so smart to say, like, get pointed.
Josh Rosenthal:Point at something.
Josh Rosenthal:Yeah, that's so smart.
Josh Rosenthal:That's the way to do it.
Josh Rosenthal:That's the way to think about it.
Michael Mazzera:It's a thought.
Michael Mazzera:Could totally be wrong.
Josh Rosenthal:It's a thought.
Josh Rosenthal:It's.
Josh Rosenthal:It's my thought.
Josh Rosenthal:But that's all I can really say about it now.
Josh Rosenthal:Hey, we got to do this again.
Josh Rosenthal:This is.
Josh Rosenthal:This is too good.
Josh Rosenthal:It was as expected.
Josh Rosenthal:There were rabbits.
Josh Rosenthal:It was fire hose, like.
Josh Rosenthal:But always energizing and always good to talk with you.
Josh Rosenthal:So let's.
Josh Rosenthal:Let's get another one of these on the calendar.
Michael Mazzera:Yeah.
Michael Mazzera:No, I appreciate it.
Michael Mazzera:And for everybody listening, you should go to rogue expeditions dot com.
Michael Mazzera:It's 1E instead of 2E.
Michael Mazzera:So R O G U E X.
Michael Mazzera:The other one is a nice guy who trips that.
Michael Mazzera:There's a lot of hunting in it.
Michael Mazzera:And so that's not us.
Michael Mazzera:If you.
Michael Mazzera:If you land on that page, it's not us.
Michael Mazzera:Morocco and Patagonia and Alpia Drea, which is inside Slovenia and Croatia and the Dolomites and the Balkans.
Michael Mazzera:And if you have any questions about it, you can reach out to michaelrogexpeditions.com right on.
Josh Rosenthal:Well, man, thanks for joining me.
Josh Rosenthal:Do this again soon.