The Rich Roll Podcast - Jesse Thomas: Work Hard, Play Harder & Love Hardest

Episode Date: May 20, 2019

“There’s just no substitute for working hard.”  Jesse Thomas He's one of the world’s most popular and accomplished professional triathletes. But that's just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to this week's guest — a humble athlete, proud dad, devoted husband and dedicated entrepreneur with a unique success equation: Work hard. Play harder. Love hardest. His name is Jesse Thomas. He's rad. And this is his story. It begins with a stand out track and field career at Stanford and the Olympic steeplechase dream cut short by a career-ending injury. While later pursuing a masters degree in mechanical engineering, he picked up a bike and progressed so rapidly he entertained a professional cycling career. But that dream too was crushed when a spill left him with a fractured C1 vertebra, nine months in a neck brace, a plate and 4 titanium screws to hold it all together. Life as an athlete was over for Jesse. Or so he thought. Spending the next several years as a tech entrepreneur, Jesse got itchy. He didn't like being out of shape. So he decided to do something about it. Fast forward to 2011. The stage was Wildflower, a prestigious and formidable half-ironman distance triathlon set in the idyllic rolling hills of central California. A complete unknown amateur, Jesse nonetheless won the race outright, shocking the triathlon community by dominating an impressive professional field on a borrowed bike and a pair of $9 aviator sunglasses he bought at the drug store. The victory was so unexpected, as Jesse crossed the finish line the race announcer had to ask, Who are you? The story is legend. And the rest is history. Jesse went on to become the first person to win that race three years in a row. And along his circuitous path as a professional, he has graced the podium at many of the most lauded triathlons in the world, including 3rd at the coveted Challenge Roth ironman distance event last summer. Jesse's ability to out-exercise the rest of us is impressive. But it's only a somewhat unrelatable fraction of what truly interests me about him. It's who he is that compels me most — a person successfully alchemizing an insanely demanding training and racing schedule against the more relatable pressures of being a present dad, husband, podcast host (check out Work, Play, Love) and CEO of Picky Bars — the performance nutrition company he co-founded with his wife Lauren Fleshman, herself a prolific former professional runner with the most All-American accolades in Stanford athletics history. How does he do it all? Today we canvass a life in motion — from the Wildflower race that changed his life to his symbiotic relationship with entrepreneurship and family that fuels his purpose. We discuss the importance of coaches. Leaning on mentors. The challenges faced by the retiring athlete. And the conundrum of replacing sport with newfound purpose and passion. We explore the career importance of storytelling in the era of social media. Why he decided to start a podcast. And — most importantly — how he turned a cheap pair of aviator shades into a global multi-sport fashion trend. But more than anything, this is a conversation about balancing work, play, and family at the highest level of elite sport. It's about facing and overcoming obstacles. The mindset required for success. And the work ethic entailed to achieve your dreams. Enjoy! Rich

So much of life's fulfillment is about pursuing things that you're passionate about and that you're interested in. And that's the thing that maybe I feel most excited about is that regardless of how big or successful or whatever it becomes in those terms, it's interesting to me. The biggest thing I think as an athlete for most people is having the confidence to pull back when things aren't going right. Your training plan is only perfect on the day that you make it. And then there are all these other variables that come in like, oh, my kid kept me up last night, or I had this really stressful phone call with a supplier, whatever it is. And those things affect you.

And so if you don't listen to those things, listen to your body, then ultimately you're just kind of like plowing through on this thing that doesn't make any more sense. That's Jesse Thomas, and this is The Rich Roll Podcast. The Rich Roll Podcast. Hey, everybody. How you guys doing? What's happening? My name is Rich Roll. I am your host. This is my podcast. Welcome or welcome back. Got a great show for you guys today. Happy to be with all of you. Today's guest is not only one of the world's most accomplished professional triathletes, he's also one of the most popular, one of the most likable, grounded, funny, and dynamic professional athletes I've ever met.

His name is Jesse Thomas. He's super rad. He's super fast, but oh, so much more than meets the eye. And it all begins with him as a standout track and field athlete at Stanford. But the story really starts in 2011 at something called the Wildflower Triathlon, which for those of you who are unfamiliar is a very prestigious triathlon race. And at the time, Jesse was a complete unknown in this sport. And yet, on a borrowed bike and a pair of $9 aviator sunglasses that he bought at the drugstore, outright wins the race.

He absolutely crushes it. And to give you a sense of how shocking this was in the triathlon community, the announcer, the race announcer actually asks him as he crossed the finish line, like, who are you? In any event, since then, Jesse has gone on to become the first person to win that very same race three years in a row. And along his circuitous path as a pro, he has podiumed at some of the most prestigious races in the world, including a coveted third at the Challenge Roth Ironman distance event last summer, which is a extremely prestigious Ironman race. But the reason I wanted to share Jesse's story has very little to do with his somewhat, I guess you could call it, unrelatable ability to exercise

better than the rest of us, and so much more to do with who he is as a person. This guy who is alchemizing in real time this insanely demanding training and racing schedule with what I think is a more relatable experience of dealing with the pressures of being a present dad, a husband, a podcast host, check out his show, Work, Play, Love, it's great, and a CEO. He's an entrepreneur who at the same time is running this company called Picky Bars, which is a performance

nutrition company. They make great stuff, gluten and dairy-free energy bars and granola and oatmeal, which he co-founded with his wife, Lauren Fleshman, who herself is an incredibly successful former professional runner. She earned more All-American accolades than any other athlete in Stanford history. So this is a power couple. In any event, Jesse is super witty. He's a great storyteller, and those stories are coming up in a few. But first.

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is your partner in starting that journey. When you or a loved one need help, go to recovery.com and take the first step towards recovery. To find the best treatment option for you or a loved one, again, go to recovery.com. Okay, Jesse, so what do we talk about? Well, we talk about a lot of stuff. We talk about Jesse's beginnings as a track and field and cross-country star at Stanford, how he became the first person to win the Wildflower Triathlon three years in a row, what it's like to run this entity, Picky Bars, and how that works symbiotically with his life as a professional athlete, what it's like to work with your wife professionally, the challenges that athletes face retiring and grappling with a loss of purpose. We talk about the power of athlete storytelling and how it's kind of incumbent upon professional athletes these days in the modern Instagram era to do that very thing.

And we talk about working with a coach. He is a legendary coach, Matt Dixon. We talk about working with a coach. He has a legendary coach, Matt Dixon. We talk about that. We talk about his podcast and how he made Aviator Shades a thing. Oh, and one final note. I have zero financial entanglement with Picky Bars. They're not a sponsor of the show. It is great stuff.

I love it. Bars, granola, oatmeal, everything is nutritionally balanced. It's tasty. It's all plant-based, although I think a few products have honey in them. So make sure you check the nutritional facts label. But I eat their stuff all the time. And Jesse, out of the kindness of his big heart, did want to gift you guys a little something special for listening today. Payback, I guess, for us feeding him lunch on the day he did the

interview, perhaps. In any event, you can get 30% off Picky Bar products when you go to pickybars.com and use the code RICHROLL at checkout. It's a great deal. I'm not an affiliate. I make zero money off of this. I'm just passing it along and it really is good stuff. So enough. Here's me and Jesse Thomas. Good to see you. Yeah, good stuff. So enough. Here's me and Jesse Thomas. Good to see you. Yeah, good to see you too. Thanks for coming out. Absolutely.

We're doing a double header today. I know, you are. I was joking with Colin that you guys brought the Oregon weather. Two Oregon triathletes on the same day. Yeah. It's crazy. Yeah, and we did.

The rain is pretty bad out there right now, but it's still pretty, it's still nicer than we, as we were talking, still a lot nicer than Bend is right now. Yeah, it had like 11 degrees the other day. Yeah, so I got to run outside today for the first time in two weeks,

which even though it was downpour, thunderous downpour the entire run, it was a lot nicer than running on the treadmill. Why do all these professional triathletes live in places with inhabitable weather? I don't understand. You know, I don't know. That's a good question.

It's nice a lot of the year, but yeah, it is. It can be a drag. You get, you know, I discovered Nordic skiing. Nordic skiing is super fun. It's a nice way to spend the winter. And then you're kind of forced to change it up a little bit, which is nice. You know, I think if I, if I could actually swim, bike and run all year outside, I would be much more likely to hurt myself probably. I think that's true. Or burn out. You hear these stories of guys that, that like moved to Hawaii for that reason. Right. And then, and then nothing happened. You think like, oh, that'll be like this

Archimedes lever that's going to make their career, you know, fantastic, but it never ends up that way. Yeah. And ultimately, you just got to be where you want to be, you know. I mean, for me, Bend is home and that's its family. That's where you grew up, right? Yeah, and that's like, that just trumps everything else, you know. And it's not all about triathlon either. I mean, you know, it's like, where does it make sense for my family to be? And where do I want to be long-term

as I pivot away from it as well? Right. Yeah. Well, you're in a really interesting moment in your career, which I think is super interesting to explore. I mean, we've only met once. It was super briefly. It was out on the bike, like right in this neighborhood.

Pretty typical. We were trying to figure out when that was. It was like 2013. I remember that, here's what I remember about that. Okay, yeah, please. I remember I was riding by myself and I was riding up Rock Store, which is just down the way here.

It's like one of the more well-known climbs. Yeah, iconic climbs. And I'm just doing my thing. And then suddenly this freight train of like 20 people just passes me like I'm standing still and I'm like, fucking what's going on here? And I realized it was Matt Dixon's Purple Patch Fitness camp.

And then you guys were just gone. And then later on in the ride, I was like down in Westlake or whatever. And I spied you. And I think you were riding with Luke Bell. Luke Bell, I think. And I caught up to you guys and we chatted a little bit. Yeah, I remember that.

I remember specifically, because I had seen you, we had mutual friends, I think, or kind of through Stanford, Stanford Swimming. And so I knew of you, had heard of your book, I think at that point, I can't remember exactly what had or had not been published by that time. But so I recognized you when we, I think when we, even when we first went by and I was like, I think that that was Rich Roll, but I didn't know for sure. And then when we saw you,

it's pretty crazy actually that we saw you again later on on that, because it was hours later. Right. It was hours later and I would have figured you got, you must've taken a different route. I don't know how, and you weren't with the rest of the group at that point. No, we had split up. I remember actually very specifically because that ride was the ride that Luke Bell and I just pretty much like pummeled each other on the next climb after we, like on the way back from the, from the ocean. Right.

I can't remember what climb it was, but I just remember I was super psyched because I was riding next to Luke Bell, which was basically it. And I knew he was working hard and I was working hard. And for me as like a young, you know, first or second year professional triathlete, that was like a highlight training moment for me that I was holding strong with Luke Bell. Yeah, exactly. Small, small world. Yeah. Yeah.

And since that moment, I mean, you've gone on, you've made a, you know, huge impression on the sport, which I want to talk about. But before we even track it back, like, let's talk about what's going on right now, because you're at this interesting intersection between professional athlete life and, you know, not retirement, but a different phase of what that looks like for you as, you know, a parent, as a husband, as a business owner, and as an athlete. Yeah, I think, you know, after eight years of, you know, pedal to the metal athletic pursuit while still doing those things that you just mentioned as well. I mean, I got married right before I started racing triathlon. So I was married and then about four years, five years into it, we had our first kid. The whole time we've had a business that was

going on as a side project, but really had taken on a life of its own. So this last eight years, it's been, I've been doing the business and the family thing under, to a certain extent under, family's always kind of top priority, but you know what it's like. It's under the context of, I'm trying to be a world-class professional triathlete. And that's like the, when I wake up, that's the main goal of the day is world-class professional triathlete. And then I'll do the other stuff as best as I can in that day. And I think after the last, after feeling a couple of things,

feeling like I had accomplished a lot of what I wanted to accomplish in the sport, won some Ironmans and done, raced fast and raced at a really high level and felt like I had garnered the respect of a lot of the guys, which meant a lot to me. And then feeling like I really pulled towards the problems and the interesting like challenges of the business more so than like trying to win another race, you know, like all of a sudden there's like these challenges that are kind of, you're like more interested in them. And then, but most importantly, it was a family piece.

It's like, man, Jude, my son, who's five now, he'll be six in a couple months. I mean, his dad was like a grandpa, you know, that's, that's how I, that's how I talk about it to people because that whole time I was in the peak of my career. And when I came home every day, I was just smoked. So it was like less time and the time is worse that you're spending with them. And I just was like, I just don't want to do that anymore. Like I want to be able to go.

He's now capable of doing things. I want to go do those things with them and enjoy it with them. So it's a combination of those three things that I've, you know, feel like I'm starting to just pivot away, pivot away from this being a world-class professional triathlete. And I don't really like the word retirement, but like, you know, I'm going to, the focus is different. Right. You know? It's a different phase. It's a different phase. Exactly. Yeah. So a typical day in the life of a professional triathlete. I mean, you're training 25, 30 hours a week, I would imagine. Yeah.

I think like in the early years I was, and then as the business and family thing came on, it was more like 15 for me, which is like you just said, probably about half of what a lot of the guys that I was racing against. That's a lot lower. A lot lower. Yeah. I mean, you know, I probably hit 20 a couple times in the big weeks. But, you know, but yeah, I mean, regardless, even if it's 20 hours or 15 hours, it's a lot of time. And that's, as we were talking about earlier, that's not,

that doesn't include the extra time you need to sleep and all your physical therapy and all the to and from and everything. So it's a lot. And the lack of energy that you have, you know, cause you're just exhausted all the time. Exactly. But, but what is unique about you is that you started this business Picky Bars. When did you guys originate this? It was 2010. 2010. Yeah, so about eight years, nine years ago. And so as you make this segue,

you actually have this thriving, ongoing concern. Well, it is. I mean, I think it's super impressive. Look, I think it's super impressive for anybody to launch a business and make it successful. I know a little bit about the food industry. I know how difficult and competitive it is. It's crazy.

You're entering a market where there's a million competitors. There's a million reasons why this thing would have failed right out of the gate. And you've made it successful while you're also this world-class professional triathlete. Thanks. But now that you have the energy and the bandwidth to, you know, shift your focus, you have something to be, you know, the receptacle of that passion and that energy. And when I kind of canvas, not just triathlon, but a lot of, you know, world-class athletes across the board, especially in sports where, you know, it's not a financial thing, like you're not making a ton of money,

but it's so all consuming. And then they hit that retirement point and they're like, well, I don't know what to do. You know, like, what do I do now? I never thought about it because my whole life and focus was about being the best athlete that I could possibly be. It's hard. And I wish, you know, it'd be nice if I could say that,

yeah, that was all part of my grand plan, you know, but it's kind of just something that happened. And I feel, and I'm very lucky and fortunate that it's, that I do have this path, this really obvious, not only like just an obvious job, but like something that I'm legitimately passionate about and interested in. That is kind of the coolest part of it. Because I think you can go get a job and you can do it. You could find a way to make a living. But as you know, from your, you know, from, I mean, from your life, you know, it, so much of life's fulfillment is about pursuing things that you're passionate about and that you're interested in. And that's the thing that maybe I feel most excited about is that regardless of how big or successful or whatever it becomes in those terms, it's interesting to me.

And it is very lucky. I mean, I remember writing, I wrote an article about it for Triathlete Magazine like four or five years ago when I was kind of halfway through my career. And I'd been in the career long, in my career long enough to have half the guys that I raced against retire and just seeing them, seeing the varying paths and, you know, quote unquote success or personal fulfillment or whatever it is that you're looking at and making this realization like, man, how do you do this? If you've been doing this for 10 to 12, a lot of these guys longer than I have from a much younger age, it's a hard transition.

You know, you have really clear goals, really clear, you know, passion. And then all of a sudden you're like, well, what's next? And it's tough. It's like an existential crisis. It is. For a lot of people. And you see a lot of people who you're like, well, what's next? And it's tough. It's like an existential crisis for a lot of people. And you see a lot of people who then kind of struggle.

They end up partying too much or they end up in jobs that they really like. And I think that not just triathlon, but all sports could do a better job of creating organizations or institutions to help athletes guide them through that process of transitioning from full-time athlete into civilian. I agree. I mean, you know, a sport like triathlon has a long, you know, a long, long way to go before something like that exists, I think, but I totally agree. I would hope,

I would hope some of the major sports have something like that, you I think, but I totally agree. I would hope, I would hope some of the major sports have something like that, you know, cause those, those kids are even to a certain extent, well, I guess maybe better and worse, you know, they probably have made a lot more money. So then maybe, maybe it just doesn't matter. They can sit on it. Well, I think some of the NBA and NFL have, have like programs to help them learn how to manage their money and all that kind of stuff. Yeah. It's different though. Because most of those careers are way shorter than you think.

Super short. You know what I mean? And they're so young when they're done. Yeah. Yeah. Well, one of the things that you've talked about or written about and have opinions on is the unionization of athletes in triathlon. Yeah.

Which seems to me like a no-brainer and a long overdue idea, especially when the sport is so tiered that there's a very, very tiny percentage of people at the very top who are doing very well, but just poke just beneath the surface there and it's like a real struggle. It's really soft.

And for anybody beneath that, I don't know how they survive at all. Yeah, the stats, I've written articles or an article or two about this too. The, you know, the, when I kind of pulled, when I had been in the sport long enough to know all the guys, you know, at least all the men and a lot of the women in the sport, it was like, hey, if you look at Kona, Kona's getting, you know, 40-ish women and 50 to 60 guys. And there's 10 of those on each side that are making pretty good money, more so on the men's side. On the women's side, you could take all these numbers and probably divide it by half. Three or four. Yeah, exactly. And then there's, so there's this kind of top 10

threshold. Then there's like another 15 that are making a decent, you know, like a living. And then after that, the whole second half of even the Kona field is probably subsidizing money from a significant other or a government thing or they've, or they're coaching on the side or whatever it is. And so it's really, really steep. And that's, that's like the top 50, 60 men in the world. And for women, it's even worse. These are the best Ironman distance athletes in the world. And the sport's so expensive. There's so much travel to all these fancy places

and there's so much gear. And I'm sure all those people get their gear given to them gratis by kind of ambassador deals. But there's this mistaken belief that there's a lot of money going around. This is not the case. It's a really small, it's, you know, it's an inherently small sport, you know, and, and there's more mainstream money and advertisers coming into it. And I certainly benefited during my time from, you know, the first race that I won in 2011 to last year, 2018, a lot of money coming into the sport and like growth of the sport. And that was, you know,

beneficial to me from on the sponsorship side, but, but yeah, it's tough. It's tough to make a living. And, and I think, you know, back to your original question, the, the unionization of it, it's one of those things, and it's not just tri the unionization of it, it's one of those things, and it's not just triathlon, it's every Olympic type sport where you have individuals as opposed to teams. And there's no league that is organizing how those people become pro, like legitimately pro.

And what you end up having is all these athletes that spend all their time, all their energy, all their money for these one or two performances in an Olympics or at a world championships or whatever it is. And the sport itself and the governing bodies of that sport benefit immensely, much more so from those moments than the athletes typically do themselves. Of course. You know, unless you're one of the

transcendent athletes that really made it and you were on a Wheaties box or whatever, and you're, you know, you're doing it, but there's so many, that's so few. And beyond that, in triathlon, you have an organization that's profiting wildly off just the participation. You know, it's the one sport where, you know, the amateur is competing right alongside the pro. And it's an incredibly, you know, the WTC is sitting upon on top of mountains of money. Yeah. That could be allocated in a much more equitable way. Presumably, yeah.

It seems like that. I think that until professional triathletes make it as abundantly clear as possible how stake a claim in terms of how important or unimportant they are to the production of the sport and to the soul of the sport. It's going to, it's hard for, you know, the business, the business isn't going to react to it any other way than just do the best that they can for their, for their business. Yeah. And their response is, has sort of historically been like, listen, you know, our, our audience and our customer base is the amateur, not the pro. Yeah. But you're, you're interchangeable. That's kind of that, that seems

they're using the, but they're using the pros a lot to help market the sport. And, you know, like the NBC broadcast is heavily driven by the pro race, although they do interweave a lot of, yeah, they do interweave a lot of inspirational stories in there. You know? Yeah. It's, it's an interesting, it's an interesting deal. Ultimately, if you're, if there's no organization that exists, if the pros don't organize themselves, then you have no leverage. I mean, it's just like a basic business deal, you know, and that, and that's ultimately what it comes to. And until that coalesces, it'll be hard to enact a whole bunch of change, particularly in triathlon where you do have,

strip away how fair or unfair or whatever you think WTC and Ironman is. The fact of it is, is that they hold a monopoly on the sport, which is super unique to triathlon. That doesn't exist in the marathon. It does exist a little bit in the Olympics with IOC and USATF. So you see a lot of the same problems, but in triathlon, it's really specific there. So are you optimistic that you think that there'll be some organization here? I hope so. It's one of those things where

it's really tough. There's probably an economic way to describe the problem, but the basic problem is the people that have the most influence have the least to gain, right? Just like we were talking about, those guys, the guys at the top, they have the least to gain by unionization of the athletes. And then the secondary problem is you have a constantly like replenishing workforce. If you want to call it that versus the company itself is static, right? WTC is there. They have all, they know what they're doing. They've got their shit together. The athletes are new every three to five years. You have this arc where you don't even know what's going on. Then you know, what's going on. Then like, similar to me, you're like out of the sport.

Yeah, you're kind of like, oh, well, what do I do now? And that happens every wave. So I don't know. It'll be interesting to see what happens with it. There are some people that are working on it. I was part of a pro triathlon board that ultimately failed like a lot of boards do because it was all volunteer-led organization that just couldn't coalesce enough energy to like organize, to make meaningful change. But there's some people that are, that are working on it now. So.

Well, there was one board at one moment that was organized around trying to have more parody in the women's field at Kona, right? Yeah. and I don't know. That was a movement at least. I'm forgetting the name of it right now. 40 something. Yeah, yeah, yeah. 40 to Kona. Right. Or 50 to Kona.

I can't remember what. But yeah, and I don't know what the result of that was, to be honest. So let's track it back. The result of that was, to be honest, is, you know, yeah. So let's track it back. Yeah. You start off as this standout track and field star,

Steeple Chase. Hardly a star. I don't know, man. You end up at Stanford, you set the school record, right? Yeah, that's true. I did. I mean, come on. I don't know.

I guess I was running at that time. At that time, Stanford was so good. The track and field team was so good that I honestly kind of felt like I was an underachiever on that team. And by most accounts and measures, I probably was. So this is the, you kind of came in on the heels of like Ryan and Sarah Hall, right? Yeah. They were a little bit older than you? No, I was older than them.

Oh, you're older than them. Yeah, yeah. So they were, but I was in between this window of the, like I started in 1998. And so in 96 or 97, Stanford won the cross country national championships. And then we had this run from like 98 to 2000 to Ryan hall through Ryan hall, 2004, 2005, where we had lots of national championships, lots of individual national champions, guys going one, two, three in the 10K, you know, and then even, and then maybe even more impressive than any of that is two to four men making the Olympic team. I mean, as collegiates, you know, in, in various events. So it was a crazy competitive Olympic team. I mean, as collegiates, you know, in various events.

So it was a crazy competitive. So, I mean, I won a Pac-10 championship. You know, I ran, I was eighth at NCAAs, which is a pretty, which I'm very proud of. Yeah, NCAA All-American. Yeah, yeah, which I'm very proud of, but it definitely was like, you know, a second fiddle for sure to those guys

that were making the Olympic team. Right, so it wasn't like, okay know, a second fiddle for sure to those guys that were making the Olympic team. Right, so it wasn't like, okay, I'm going for the Olympics. This is gonna be my path to glory. I actually thought I did, when I got eighth that year, I was 22 and then I had, and then I went to USAs and actually did better. I was like 11th or 12th at USAs. So I was like the fourth or fifth collegiate guy.

And- So you're in the game. I was in 11th or 12th at USA. So I was like the fourth or fifth collegiate guy. So you're in the game. I was in the game. I was like, hey, if I pass nine more guys in two years, I'm on the Olympic team. And that felt possible within the realm of possibility to me. And then, but then the following fall, I got a stress fracture in my foot. I had a fifth year of eligibility in cross country

and got a stress fracture in my foot. I had a fifth year of eligibility in cross country and got a stress fracture in my foot. And then training for trying to cross train, I was riding my bike a whole bunch and I went over the handlebars of my bike and broke my neck about like six or eight months later. Wow. Yeah, and then that was basically the end at that time time, kind of like the legitimate end of my athletic career. So, yeah.

And that was while you were, what, doing like co-term at Stanford? Yeah. I was doing a bachelor, master's, co-term. So I was kind of finishing up my master's degree and had started working a little bit with a group of guys that were going to start a fuel cell company. But had literally just, I think, a day or two before told their CEO, like, hey, I'm probably not going to do it. I think I'm going to try to race bikes or do whatever. And then I went over my handlebars and I was like, actually, cool. As soon as I'm out of the hospital, I'll come join your guys' startup.

Yeah, enough of that. One crash and I'm out of the hospital, I'll come join your guys' startup. Yeah, enough of that. One crash and I'm out. And just to kind of paint the picture of Stanford at this moment. I mean, this is entrepreneurship central. The internet is blowing up. Everybody's founding startups. And so you're like, I want in on this. Yeah, yeah, I think so.

I mean, for better and for worse, you know, I think like I went through, I had this terrible accident and I went from kind of being a, you know, national class athlete and building a whole bunch of my identity around an athlete to literally just not being able to do anything

for months and months and months. I was on my mom's, I flew home after the surgery, a week or two after the surgery, and I was on my mom's couch just 24 hours a day. And so then I was like, what am I going to do? You know, I can't race. I'm not, I can't even be physical. I may as well try to, you know, use my brain, I guess, and be a part of this thing. And that's what ended up happening. Right. And so you do that for a couple of years. Like, how does that play out?

Yeah, we were, you know, like I like to say, we were like a lot of startups, a lot of the startups that you don't hear about. We raised a lot of money and made almost none. Yeah. No one tells that story. Yeah, exactly. We gave away all our equity.

I've got lots of friends that went to Stanford that have been very, very successful, and I was not one of those. Right. At least not with that. At least not with that. No, not with that. It's a great group of guys. I worked really hard. And I basically went the, maybe typically I went to the other end of the spectrum

where I had been, I was serious about being an engineer at Stanford. I mean, you have to be to be an engineer at Stanford. You can't float through it. But I was also running and running was the most kind of the most important thing. And when I went, when I didn't have to run or didn't have to do anything athletically, I went full gas into that startup. And then for better and for worse experienced what it was like to be full on engineer, product developer guy and working 80 to a hundred hours a week in San

Francisco in my mid twenties and sleeping at the office when I could sleep and being, you know, treating my body terribly, you know, and just kind of seeing that other end of the spectrum. And there were a lot of, there were a lot of great times during that time too. It was just, it's kind of just like this interesting meandering of, you know, life. And you kind of test, I think ultimately I was kind of like testing that extreme of the, of myself, that extreme side of myself of like, if I just work, work, work all the time.

Right, what does that look like? What does that look like? Yeah, what does that feel like? Do I feel fulfilled from it? You know, cause there's, cause there's still like this, you're striving for a goal, right? You've got the big goals. It's just not the athletic goals anymore.

It's like, there's this big business goal. But ultimately that ended up feeling wrong as well. Did you have that self-awareness though? That, okay, I'm testing myself in a different way now. Or you're just 22 and you're like, we're just doing this thing. I'm just 22 and I'm just like, I'm just gonna do everything full on. And that's what you do when you're 20.

Classic, triathlon mentality. Exactly. Well, if I'm gonna work, I'm gonna work 100 hours a week. And that was it. And then it was, maybe I guess like not surprisingly, like reconnecting with Lauren,

my now wife, who was my kind of, maybe I guess like, not surprisingly, like reconnecting with Lauren, my now wife, who was my kind of, I like to say, um, on again, off again, but mostly off again, girlfriend in college. Were you guys in the same class? She was one year younger than me. Yeah. And so we dated off and on at, at Stanford. Um, you know, the story goes, I broke up with her kind of multiple times for terrible reasons. Mostly just, I think actually in all honesty, just feeling insecure about how successful she was. It was a big part of it, how successful of a runner she was. So she was, she ran 5,000 meters. Yeah. She was a 5k runner. And I mean, you could basically say

the most successful Stanford, you could almost say the most successful Stanford collegiate athlete of like any sport almost. I think she won the most All-Americans of any sport in Stanford school history and a bunch of NCAA championships and a really nice person. But for me, I think that was hard Bunch of NCAA championships and a really nice person, you know?

But for me, I think that was hard seeing her have so much success and then me feeling like I described, not like I wasn't really being as successful as I wanted to be. And, you know, being very much in love with her, but then also feeling down about myself because that was who I was comparing myself to. And when you're 18, 19, 20 years old, that's a really tough mental check for this kid that comes from a small town, you know, ego and everything in it, you know. Right. And it, you know, yeah.

So. So do you think like, it's interesting. Do you think like, like, were you intimidated by her or do you feel like there was some self-sabotage there? Like. I think there was a little, I think there was a little bit of self-sabotage where, um, I think that's probably a good way to put it. Uh, I think I was just becoming, trying to become comfortable with it, which, and it sounds so silly now, so many years later, but just trying to become comfortable with not being the best at whatever I was trying to become comfortable with it, and it sounds so silly now, so many years later, but just trying to become comfortable with not being the best at whatever I was trying to do. And that was, like I said,

I grew up in this little town, Central Oregon and Bend. And I was lucky. I was good at the number of things that I did and to not feel like I was- You were used to being like the best. Yeah, yeah, kind of, you know, and it's feel like I was used to being like the best. Yeah. Yeah. Kind of, you know, and that's, and it's so silly to think about that now that, that, that mattered to me so much at that time, but it was, but it was a, you know, I was young and that was, that was my headspace

in the, at the time. And, and it took me a lot. It took me, I guess it took me ultimately becoming not that person that I was, where I was, where so much of my identity was wrapped around athletic success or even just success in general to feel comfortable being with Lauren because I wasn't comparing my success or failure to hers. Right. And then throwing yourself into the startup culture and thinking like, I need to distinguish myself in this world in the same way that I did on the track. Yeah. And then ultimately, I guess, like through that kind of bouncing from one extreme to the other extreme, understanding ultimately that my actual own happiness and fulfillment lies in the middle.

actual own happiness and fulfillment lies in the middle. And that I do actually want to have both of these things in my life. I do want to have a professional side and an athletic side. And I want to do the best that I can to balance those two and not feel like I'm so far into one that I'm completely neglecting the other. And then that ultimately set up, you know, my path for what I ended up doing in triathlon and everything else. Yeah, well, it's interesting kind of being on the outside, looking in on your life, which is, you know, look through the lens of what you choose to share

on social media or write about. But the appearance is of somebody who is a family guy first, who happens to be this amazing athlete married to another amazing athlete that's also running this business. It's a complicated equation. It is. With a lot of moving pieces, but there appears to be like a healthy sense of balance and understanding of what's most important in terms of priorities from the way in which you kind of share this experience with the world of what it's like to be involved

in all of these different things and attempt to be successful and healthy at the same time. Yeah, I think that that's been a long work in progress over the last, let's call it 15, 20 years. It started at Stanford 20 years ago. And navigating through these, what you might call success or failure in certain areas, ultimately to find out, hey, what do I ultimately care about? And what ultimately makes me happy?

What do I ultimately care about and what ultimately makes me happy? And like you said, it's actually in the subtle balancing of those few things. And a really easy or kind of dumb analogy to make it is to use is that ultimately, if you want to be the best triathlete, you can't, you got to be good at all three. You got to be good at swimming, biking, running. And that's, that's, you can't be so good at one and then so bad at the others is that's, that's not going to be, you know, that that's not going to be competitive. And that's kind of the way that I feel like I've, I've, I've spent my life now, the last four to six years is really trying to be like, how can I be the best person for me? That's balancing like seven disciplines as opposed to three. Well, yeah, yeah. I mean, I, I grew up with, you know, family, sport and business, you know, those are kind of the three things that are

the, the, the focal points for me and, um, and finding the balance between those and, and how it ebbs and flows through the year and through, uh, you know, cycles in your own life and things like that. But, but yeah, it's been, it's been good. Yeah. I mean, I think there's this sense that if you want to be the best triathlete in the world or maybe the best athlete in any discipline, the best way to do that is to live by yourself in a cabin in the woods and just be a monk and just all you do is do your thing.

You know what I mean? Yeah, rocky up. But if that was true, then every gold medal winning athlete would be living that lifestyle. Yeah. Clearly it's not true. Like I had this conversation with Kerry Walsh Jennings about this very thing.

Like she's married and has kids and, you know, she will say that they're, look, it's been a bumpy road. But ultimately she believes that she's a better volleyball player long-term by having this robust life that on a surface level would look like a distraction from her being the best volleyball player that she can be. And I think I agree with that. I would qualify it with just saying, you know, everybody's different and everybody has their different capacity of what their fulfillment, where their fulfillment, where their happiness lies and how much they feel like they need to balance those things. And, but ultimately, yeah, probably for Carrie is similar to me

than that if I get too far away from family or even from the business, then I start to feel one dimensional. I have less energy. I'm less fulfilled. And ultimately because of that, my training sacrifice is sacrificed and my racing is sacrificed. And, um, and the same thing goes with the other two as well. You know, if I, if, you know, I'll be the first to say as a dad with two kids, if I'm,

if I spend all day every day with my kids, I drive myself nuts, you know? No, I'm sure it's like, look, please go out and go running now. Yeah, exactly. Like, I'm not a good person at the end of those few days. You know, I'm not, I'm not my best person. So. Back to the first, you know, startup, you're working a hundred hours a week. At some point, you realize like, hey, I need, I need this kind of fitness, athletic, competitive aspect of my life to return a little bit. Yeah. And it was a little bit, yeah, what ended up happening was I ultimately just woke up, you know, when Dan was like, man.

And it was presumably after a long night of hanging out with my friends and drinking beer and whatever else. It just was like, I feel terrible, you know, and I need to start being active again. My neck had healed. I could run. I could ride a bike even a little bit. And I just need to reconnect with that side of myself. I started doing that. I got interested in triathlon because I had swam a little bit as

rehabilitation for my neck and did a triathlon. And then in that first race, just rediscovered this little Saturday morning community thing where everybody's out there at 7.30 in the morning and it's not crazy competitive, but it's competitive enough. And you exercise really hard and then the sun is up and you're done at 9.30 and you eat the peanut butter and jelly sandwiches at the end of the thing and everybody's psyched. Yeah, yeah. And I just, I had forgotten about that, about that experience. And then that really got me back into it. Was it that thing where you win. And then that really got me back into it.

Was it that thing where you win the first race that you ever entered? Probably typical. Yeah. Yeah. It was, it was definitely, yeah. So I was going to skip that part, but, but yeah, but it was that, you know, I mean, you know, you come from an endurance background, you got a lot of, you know, you got a lot of background in that. So, but it would, but for me it was, you know, yeah, there was validation that, Hey, this is fun. But, but at that time it wasn't, it was more just, it's just fun being active, you know? And then it was, and then I, then I actually, that kind of made me think, started to make me rethink, rebalance my life and moving away from the startup, reconnecting, like I said, with Lauren. Lauren was moving to Eugene, so I went to business school there

and kind of actually paused on the triathlon thing for a couple years because I didn't feel confident enough at that time in my life that I could do something as irresponsible, I guess, as trying to be a professional triathlete. Does that make sense? It's like, oh man, no, I can't do that. I can't do that. I gotta be getting my MBA or whatever.

It's a little bit of time. That's the burden of privilege. You know, it's like you graduate from Stanford, it feels indulgent and irresponsible to like shirk that degree to like go pursue some, you know, weird thing that's probably not gonna be that lucrative. Yeah, that was exactly it.

And ultimately it was after I'd finished business school, Lauren was racing professionally and I had gotten enough kind of contacts through business school to do some consulting work where I could make some money on the side. In addition to the economy had just completely imploded. So there were like, you know, a hundred thousand MBAs had been laid off in the five months before I graduated. Yeah. that was literally, yeah, summer of 2009 was when I graduated, when I got my MBA. And so I started consulting and then talked with Lauren

and was like, hey, I think maybe I wanna try seeing if I can be a professional triathlete. I didn't even know what that meant. How many races had you done at this point? I had done just, I had done one, that one little season where I did the thing, you know, and then it was an age grouper and that was it. And so what I ended up doing was

I spent the summer with Lauren. I was consulting and then through the winter. And then I signed up for Escape from Alcatraz the following year, 2010. And I went down there as an amateur and I finished like sixth or seventh in the pro field as an amateur. I had the fastest run.

And that was the first time where I was like, oh man, maybe, you know, oh, if I had been in the pro field, I would have won $750 today. You know, like, wow. Which gets back to the unionization issue. Exactly. But, you know, but that was,

that was a, felt like a taste of success. And then that, and that was like this little bit of validation that was like, okay, maybe I can continue to do this. And that's what, that was, it was after that that I got, that I hired my coach and everything else and started going.

Was that Matt Dixon from the get-go? From the get-go. He's always been your coach? Yeah, Lindsey Corbin, who's a very successful American pro. She was a high school classmate of mine. And then Matt Lieto. Oh, wow. I didn't know that.

Yeah, Lindsey and I went to high school together. We were on the cross-country team together. So those were the, wow. I didn't know that. Yeah, Lentino went to high school. We were on the cross country team together. So those were the two people that I knew in triathlon and they were both coached by Matt. And so I talked to Matt. I really liked him. We clicked quickly. And then he started coaching me

kind of at the end of that 2010 year. And then 2011 was when I started my pro career. And so there's this, you know, mythic story about the birth of your professional career. I'm sure you've told a million times, but, but it is amazing. Right. So walk me through the whole wildflower thing. Yeah. So, I mean, the story goes that I spent the whole winter training with a real coach and kind of was part of this team. And I went down to Galveston, actually, 70.3 to race my first half Ironman. And at my first half Ironman as a pro, I made every mistake you can make in the book.

I got down there, saw how flat the course was, decided that I needed to be more aerodynamic. So I lowered my, the front end. Changed your seat position. I lowered the front. Oh, you just slammed it? Yeah, I just brought it down. I was the last person out of the water, biked out, biked back as hard as I could. It was making up time, but basically my whole back and my, like my glutes, like everything seized up on the end of the bike. I was, I was actually literally riding out of the saddle for the last like three or four miles of the bike ride. And then ultimately it dropped out because I was hurting so bad on the run.

And so it was super disappointed, kind of had these aspirations of this is my debut, I wanna go do this. And didn't really know what to do next, but it turned out that Matt, um, the guy I mentioned, Matt Lieto was going to head down for wildflower just two weeks later. And he basically was like, you should come down to wildflower with me, mostly because he knew I would be in bed and I would drive with him. So he would have somebody

that could drive half the, half the way. Um, and, uh, I head down there and just the day before we left, the other piece of the story is I was out on my last training ride and my bike, I went through a pothole and my bike broke. And so the carbon actually cracked. And so in a last minute deal, I got a friend's bike, threw it in the van, borrowed a bunch of, you know, stuff from Matt. I'd never worn an aero helmet before. I didn't have a wetsuit, had this kind of hand-me-down unbranded triathlon race kit. And then these, you know, gas station aviators that I was wearing. And then- Little did you know. Yeah, and as the story goes,

I swam pretty poorly like I normally do. I had a decent ride and rode up into about 10th place. And then- And it's a really challenging cycling course. Very slow, very very challenging which was really good for me because it just meant another 20 minutes on the bike to try to catch up from the swim and then the run is about as a heart of a half iron man run as you get and so the run is also let's say 10 minutes long so you have three you have 30 more minutes of doing the stuff that I'm good at in the

race than a normal race. And, um, and the run was this, like, I still remember it very vividly. It was like, I get off the bike and I hear, as I'm leaving the, as I'm starting the run, I'm in 10th place. I was like, Oh my God, I'm in 10th place at Wildflower. Like I'm super, this is really exciting. And I start passing people just bit by bit, you know, eighth, ninth or eighth, seventh, sixth. I remember seeing Jordan Rapp in fourth place, a few hundred meters in front of me being like, wow, that's fourth place and that's Jordan Rapp.

And I can't believe I'm having this great race. And then I get all the way through and I move into second place with a mile and a half to go. And I can see the guy in the lead. You know, he's still a long ways up, but he's hurting. And people, as I'm running along, they're like, I actually remember Tim Carlson who works for Slow Twitch. He was taking pictures of me and he kept coming back and he was like, who are you?

Who are you? What's your name? Did you get lost? He's trying to like text the race organizers to let them know because they don't know who I am. I passed the guy right at the beginning of the steep downhill towards the, with about less than a mile to go. It was a Clayton Fatel out of Australia, a super strong swim biker and

who had this massive gap. And I got, and I came down and I just, I remember I crossed the finish line and they, the announcer goes, and here he is our men's champion. And then he holds a microphone away from his face. And he's like, dude, what's your name? And, and the, the reason they didn't, they literally didn't know who I was is because I had signed up so late. They'd given me a number that was like after the women's numbers because they were kind of out in numbers and it just didn't get entered into the system.

So for people that are listening, I mean, Wildflowers, this legendary race has been going on forever. And it's quite an event. You go, you camp, most people stay in tents or RVs or hotel or anything like that. Super challenging course, you can't, you can't, most people stay in tents or RVs or hotel or anything like that. Super challenging course, but, but a really prestigious like early season race. Uh, and to go from

anonymity to winning that race, it's just like, that doesn't happen. Like, so suddenly overnight you're like this, like, who is this guy? Like you're the next greatest thing. Well, yeah, it was, it was kind of, yeah, it was an interesting- And it was the whole story, sorry to interrupt, but it was the whole story of like, you borrowed the bike. It's like, this guy doesn't even have his own bike and he's wearing like gas station. Like triathletes are the most geeked out in terms of their gear and the sunglasses they're wearing.

I mean, it's ridiculous. The whole thing's ridiculous. It is totally ridiculous. But the idea that somebody would be wearing like aviators from a gas station is just like, that doesn't compute at all. Yeah. It was, it was bizarre. And then I think the thing that kind of like sealed it, that ended up, you know, going

viral within the sense of going viral within the triathlon community, which is not really viral, but yeah, it's like 10, 10 or 12 people shared it was this, this, this finish line interview that I had where I was just freaking out about, um, you know, Oh my God, my buddy's going to shit his, he's going to shit his pants when he finds out I won wildflower and Nick who let me borrow his bike, you know? And so there was kind of, there, there was this legitimate, like authenticity about it, which was legitimately there. That was kind of like a cool, there's an innocence. Yeah. There was an innocence to it. And, and, uh, people latched onto that and that was really awesome. And, um, it, it, there was no better way for me to come onto the scene

than that thing. And then ultimately, uh, that race then ultimately ended up meeting even so much more to me down the road. But that, but that really launched my career and gave me the tools, the foundation necessary to actually make a living in the sport because of the story more so than the actual wins. Right. You know, back to what we were a little bit, what we were talking about is like, you know, making it, making yourself an actual, like somebody that people want to follow,

regardless of they won X race or whatever. Well, that's a new thing in the development of becoming a pro athlete. Like what is your story and how are you telling it is almost as important as your race results. You could argue in the Instagram influencer age that we're in, it's more important. And then actually, I'll tell you from a business side,

that it probably is. In terms of businesses looking to spend money on advertising, basically. Well, certainly it's incumbent upon every pro athlete to think of themselves as, as a business and how are they, you know, how are they sharing their story? How are they telling it? What is it that they have to offer that somebody else doesn't and taking that seriously, like shouldering that responsibility. And, you know, we've talked in the past, I mean, this is something that I think that you've done very well, but not in a, like some kind of contrived sense. It's like a natural outgrowth of who you are. Like, I feel like you and Lauren together are natural storytellers. Like, yeah, thank you. You're very funny. And like how you share, like, like the thing that's on your

Twitter now, like about the carb sticker and then like, you know, Jude gets in the car and drives up. Like, it's like, like this is just this clearly, this is like your sensibility, you know, it's fun. And it's very authentic to who you are, it's natural. But when I look at that and I kind of like, okay, I'm deconstructing this. I'm like, he's like really good at like sharing something

that allows people who are interested in what you're doing to like emotionally connect with what you're up to. Wow, thank you. I appreciate that. And, you know, that's, I always, way before I ever got into racing or doing any of this stuff that I'm doing now, my family, I'll attribute that to my dad,

my dad's side of the family. My dad was just a, and his whole family are just storytellers and, you know, kind of like gather around the fire or around the dinner table, just telling bullshit stories about, you know, them growing up and stuff like that. And I always, those are some of my favorite memories, just having my dad and kind of my dad and my dad's brothers kind of go around the horn telling stories. And I grew up listening to stories like that and then retelling them myself. And then, so I get a lot of joy,

legitimate joy out of telling those stories, making them funny, making them entertaining, joy, legitimate joy out of telling those stories, making them funny, making them entertaining, also making them, also, you know, telling the truth, I think. And talking about the, you know, being honest when I have a, not just a shitty race,

but like a heartbreaking race after training, you know, for a year for something. And to a certain extent, that experience of telling those stories, I think has made the sport for me, not only more interesting, but more sustainable, both as a person and as a professional. And so it's been a really lucky and great discovery to go through, I think. Well, when you're a storyteller, it takes the – you're able to take those low moments and just translate them into something else that's valuable, right? Like everything's a story. So I have a shitty race.

Well, what can I make out of this that I can share with other people? Like I know you're still writing the column for Triathlon Magazine. I'm not anymore. You did for years, though, where you would do that very thing. Yeah. And in a lot of ways, the tough, you know, the stories, the unsuccessful quote-unquote stories are more interesting and more powerful to most people.

Yeah, because they can connect with your humanity. Exactly. It is. And they're harder to write, but then they're more with your humanity. Exactly. It is. And they're, and they're harder to write, but they're, but then they're more fulfilling too. When you put, when you put them out there. So yeah, it's interesting. So you go on to dominate wildflower for the better part of a decade. You've won that race like six times, right? Yeah. Thank you. That becomes like your thing. Yeah. And then this whole aviator shades thing becomes like a thing, you know, everyone's out wearing aviators all of a sudden.

And for years, you were still wearing like the shitty gas station versions. For sure, because I lose them all the time. But then like interstage left, Roca, Stanford guys, Stanford swimmers. Yeah. I go way back with those guys too. I mean, I'm much older than them, but I remember the very early days when they launched this company and it was just, you know, it's the classic,

you know, out of our garage kind of thing with one wetsuit. And now they've built it into this brand that's quickly, you know, becoming, you know, it's like they're slowly broadening the aperture of this thing to become a lifestyle brand, to transcend triathlon, to become like an Under, to transcend triathlon,

to become like an Under Armour sized kind of thing. But you've been collaborating with them from the very early days. So talk about that relationship a little bit. It's really funny. That relationship goes back, like you said, to the Stanford connection. I had a friend of mine introduce me via email to Rob and Kurt, who are the co-founders of Roka. And he said, hey, these guys are starting a wetsuit company and they want to try to make you faster, which to me was amazing because I was like terrible swimmer. Yeah. And so no swimming companies, they're literally paying me to not wear their wetsuits, right? And so for these guys to come to me and be like, we want to build a wetsuit for the average swimmer, which is you, try to make you faster.

That was interesting. We started working together. They were just two of the most, I don't know, brilliant and hardworking and simultaneously hardworking people I'd ever met. Well, Rob was like working in a law firm as a lawyer throughout most of this development in like the early days of the company.

And they're both, yeah, he was. And he was just working his ass off, has been for probably his entire life, Rob. And then Kurt's like incredibly creatively talented. So like the two of these guys, you get Rob's kind of like efficiency. He's like one of the most efficient people I know in terms of his output.

And then Kurt, who's one of the most creative people I know, you get them together and just like, it was a great match. Yeah. And we started working on this wetsuit. The wetsuit was phenomenal. We launched it. I was kind of their first athlete. And they, um, we started working on this wetsuit. The wetsuit was phenomenal. We, you know, we launched it. I was kind of their first athlete and, uh, and, um, kind of part of the original kind of barely formation of the company. And then, uh, and then because I was wearing this,

these aviators thing, I remember on a long drive back from a race, I was talking to Rob and it's like, you know, I would, I would really like to, I think there's something to making an actual aviator that has, that's has performance characteristics in it. Like something that you could wear casually, but that you could wear that you feel comfortable wearing casually, but that you would wear as a, that you could legitimately wear running or cycling. And, um, they, they were like And they were intrigued with the idea too, but it was kind of like, hey, we got wetsuits. We're going to work on this. But then it was a couple few years later

when they started to grow and Rob raised some money and he was like, I think we're going to look at glasses. Are you interested? And we started talking about it and started making an actual aviator, which is nuts to think about now. Can you believe that we're actually doing this? It's insane.

We're going to convince all these people to wear aviator shades when they, when they go running. It's so insane. I mean, really it is, but, but it's, it's kind of awesome. You know, like it, it's probably, it's something that I'm very, that I'm very proud of, you know, and then the, and then the, the, the cool kind of story of the original Roca performance aviator phantom is what it's called. The, um, is that Kurt literally had the first prototype shipped directly to me from Japan to Lanzarote, to Ironman Lanzarote in the Canary Islands in 2016.

And I got them as I was leaving to check in my Ironman bag. I tried them on, they fit great. I moved my face around, they didn't fall off. I was like, they looked awesome. This is better than the garage door. Yeah, I'm like, okay, I'm doing it. Throw it into my transition bag.

The next day I swim, bike. I'm in like sixth or eighth place. I get into my transition bag, put on my shoes and I put on my Roka Aviators. And I ran down, I ran down Jan Frodeno, who's one of the best triathletes ever and won that race. And, you know, I will always qualify that with saying it was kind of a training race for Jan. I'm not equating myself to Jan, but it was a great race for me. One of my best moments ever. And I won

this big Ironman against a strong field, you know, literally running my first 26 miles ever in those, in those shades. So it was pretty awesome. That's awesome. Yeah, it was cool. And then, you know, hundreds of thousands of people later, everyone suddenly the next day, everybody, yeah, there are. It's like you have created this fashion, you know, movement with these people. It's something I never in a million years would have ever thought as a guy that, you know,

Lauren gives me shit as the guy that was still wearing, you know, pleated jeans all through college. Yeah, the irony that you'd be- That I'd have a fashion statement. Yeah, but no, it's good. And still working with those guys today, right? Yeah, definitely. Yeah, they've been great.

They just, that, and not to overplug the glasses, but they just got a big PR shout out from Popular Mechanics as like the best running sunglasses. So it's just, it's like you said, if I take a step back and I'm like seven or eight years ago to think of that, like I just never would have thought that that would happen. Well, yeah, that's not ending up on the whiteboard. No, yeah, that's yeah, it's cool. So I'm very, very proud of it.

Yeah, and very happy and proud of those guys. I mean, really they did all the work, you know? Right, right. So you've did all the work, you know? Right, right. Yeah. So you've had all these wins, you know, Lanzarote and Wildflower. You had an incredible race at Roth last year. You were third?

Yeah, third. You ran like a 2.44 or something crazy marathon. Like that's like insanely fast. Thank you. And, you know, I look at your race results and I follow you on Strava and I see these run workouts that you do and I can't even fathom being able to run that fast.

It's like so amazing. And yet in the context of triathlon, it's like it's all about Kona, right? Everything's about Kona. If you're not winning Kona, no one knows who you are, are you relevant or whatever? And I think it's, I'm interested in your perspective on how all that works.

It kind of goes back to what we were saying before. There's this very, very thin top tier level of people who are winning Kona. And then there's just below that, there's guys like you who are just incredible at what they do. And yet, because it's all about Kona, there's this sense of like, um, being an

also ran or something like that. Yeah, it is. It's a really hard, I didn't realize, I didn't understand the kind of Kona centric mindset of triathlon when I got into it. Cause I, to be, I'm one of those rare guys that got into racing professional triathlon who didn't know shit about triathlon until I was 30. It just wasn't on the radar for me athletically. And so I didn't know about the history of Kona. I didn't know about the history of Ironman or anything like that. And when I went to Kona the first year to spectate, I was like, wow, this is really – this is a pretty big deal. the first year to spectate, I was like, wow, this is really, this is pretty big deal.

And then really when you start to learn about it through the professional side of the sport and understanding where all the bonuses are for sponsorships and all the incentives are, they're all built around a Kona centric model. Like that's where you can get paid. Everything else is kind of, like you said, like an also ran kind of lead up to Kona. Most of the sponsors want you to be in Kona. And to break even on Kona as an athlete, you have to get top 10. I mean, no doubt, even the way that they have it right now, seventh, eighth, ninth, you're probably pretty close.

I can't remember exactly what the prize money is, but it's in the low thousands of dollars. And it's so expensive to get over there. And just on the trip itself, much less the whole year, right? Going into it. And then so then, and you're not getting bonuses for top 10 at Kona.

You're getting bonuses for top three to five tops. And the opportunity cost of not racing elsewhere because all your eggs are in that basket. And you're not getting bonuses for top 10 at Kona. You're getting bonuses for top three to five tops. And the opportunity cost of not racing elsewhere because all your eggs are in that basket. So it's really hard. So I mean, so for better and for worse, as a business guy, in the first two or three years of my career, I was like, man, unless I think I can win Kona,

which to be honest, right off the bat, I'm like, I can't win Kona. That's, you know, it exposes all my weaknesses as an athlete. The heat, the swim is a bigger deal. It's a grouped up bike ride. There's not as much chance for me to make up time. So I can't win Kona. Unless I think I can win Kona, I better not make Kona the focus of my career because it's going to be, I'm not going to, first of all, I won't be happy. And second of all, I'm not going to make any money doing that. Like you can't, you put all your eggs in that basket. It's not going to pay out. And so for, you know, for better and for worse, I steered away from that for a long time until about, I even wrote one of my most popular articles

was I'm not an Ironman and that's okay, right? Yeah, yeah. Yeah, and that really resonated with people. Having to apologize for it. Yeah, exactly. That really resonated with people. And then, and ultimately the reason I wanted to do Kona was not because of the financial implications of it

or anything like that. It was just, it was really just like, I just felt like if I hadn't, if I had gone through eight to 10 years of being a professional triathlete and I hadn't done Kona, I would have regretted it. You know, even though I knew it wasn't going to be a great race for me. And, but I, and, but I could still try to do the best I could there. And that was what I tried to do. But, but yeah, but it was always really important for me to make my career about other challenges, um, both externally and internally, you know, to, um, to feel more fulfilled and more, I guess, more, more balanced and just pursuing things that I was, that I was interested in. Right. Yeah.

Yeah. Well, let's talk about the training and what it's like working underneath Matt. I guess, first of all, what is it that you've gleaned the most from working with such a legendary coach? How to train for these things. I think Matt's, what I like about Matt, you know, and I'll qualify this by saying, you know, Matt for better and for worse has been my coach my whole career, right? So I haven't experienced really anybody else. But I think the thing that had clicked with Matt was that he, even when I started triathlon, I had picky bars as a business. I was already like less of a focused, full gas, professional triathlete.

I still had this other thing and I was married. So he knew right away, I wasn't going to be training 30 to 40 hours a week, living the Rocky monk style. And he got that and he understood that. And he's like, I think we can, I think you can be a good, a better athlete even because of this balance that you, but it, but it's going to take a different training philosophy, a training philosophy that doesn't put all the value on tons of time training. It puts it on this kind of balanced physiological stress throughout the various aspects of your life and balancing heavy training load with light life load, heavy life load with light training load.

And that was like the fundamental thing that I liked about Matt. And then as I progressed through my career and ultimately became more successful, both in racing and on the business side and, and more demands with family, that interweaving and inner balance just became more and more so important because it was like, everything was just operating now at a higher level. So, so, and I think that, and I think if, you know, if I could differentiate Matt from other coaches in the space, I think that's really his sweet spot is coaching.

Like he says himself, the time starved athletes, you know, guys that are executives or family guys or whatever that are trying to, that are still have goals. They're still trying to do something great. Maybe they're trying to qualify for Kona or do whatever it is, but they're balancing it with legitimate demands on their time and energy elsewhere. Yeah. Yeah. Which is basically almost everybody.

Yeah, it is. I mean, really, totally. Very few who are just completely turning their entire lives over to this thing. Yeah. So a training block for you, I mean, what would that typically look like in terms of the balance between the kind of zone two aerobic work versus intensity, tempo type training?

What is that combination generally? It is, let's see. I'll tell you what it's like it's really go by feel and particularly the last like three to four years and

or I guess I know I know they want to know like 60% zone 2 33% zone 3 it's not that guys I'm sorry

that's just not you know what it ends up being is a couple few hard days a week, a couple few easy days a week and mixing in some volume. And, but so much of it is, is based on how I feel, you know? And that really is to me, the crux of, I think being successful in any athletic endeavor, but also the crux of the success of the relationship between Matt and I is his confidence in me to make my own decisions day to day to manipulate his plan. And then my confidence in him to build a plan that is manipulatable and that ultimately I can communicate back to him, this is what works and what doesn't. So in other words, he doesn't just say,

here's your 12 workouts for the week and you do them when I say you do them, it's more like, make sure you get, you hit these kind of general areas or benchmarks and however you can work that into what your schedule looks like for the week. You're like, that's up to you. That's pretty, that's a lot. That's what you described at first was how it started. And then really over the last like three or four years as picky bars really grew, I had my first kid and then my second kid. It was more like, here's kind of, here's what I would like you to achieve. And then I'd look at my schedule and I'd be like,

well, I've got this meeting on whatever and I'm traveling this day. So I'm going to do Wednesday's workout on Tuesday and I'm going to make my easy day, whatever. And then if I feel like shit on Tuesday, then I'm going to just do that one. I'm going to scrap And then if I feel like shit on Tuesday, then I'm gonna just do that one. I'm gonna scrap it or if I feel good, I'm gonna gas it.

And that's ultimately what it's become now. I think the ability to really go on feel, as you say, comes with experience. You have a tremendous amount of experience. So you have like years of understanding what that means mixed with, you know, having done enough work to understand the nuance of that. Right. Like, like when, when am I being, being a puss, you know, and when, when, when am I really like butting up against like maybe putting in too much training, you know, like those things only come with like years and years and years of having done this. Yeah. It's, it's totally true. You know, so it's not, I wish there was a, like an easily,

more easily like gleamable or understandable, like tidbit I could give to, you know, listeners trying to try to, trying to find that line, but it does come from experience. But I would say that the way that I would qualify that is that most endurance athletes, competitive endurance athletes or aspirational endurance athletes have a bigger problem with knowing when to pull back than when to push forward. And at least that's been my experience

with the many, many age groupers that I've interacted with and done articles with and talked to and whatever else. So a lot of it is, the biggest thing I think as an athlete for most people is having the confidence to pull back when things aren't going right and not burying yourself. It's a different kind of discipline. Yeah.

But it is still a discipline. It is, it definitely is. And I think what happens with the more time crunched, you know, among us is they have a set amount of time and they feel like they have to, the only way that they're really maximizing that is if they just go full blown. Just full gas.

Yeah, for sure. So even if they only have 45 minutes, every day or something like that, you can't gas it out like that every day. You're gonna have a problem. You're gonna get injured. Absolutely. So it's just not the way to go.

What are some of the other, I love asking pro triathletes. Yeah, that's fine. What are some of the other things that you see, like the typical amateur triathletes or multi-sport athletes out there doing where you're like, what are they doing? Yeah. I mean, the most typical thing is related to what we just talked about, but it's basically just not taking your easy days easy, right? That's

the number one problem in amateur triathlon nowadays. People go out, they do their hard workouts. Great. That's hard. You're gassed from that. But then they go out riding with their buddies and somebody's going out for a Strava segment or whatever. I had the Strava guys in here the other day and I was like, listen, I had to like get off the platform because of that, you know, for a while. They've ruined the easy thing. Yeah. You can't go easy. It is. And so that's problem number one. And then I think more generally, it's finding just an appropriate amount of building an appropriate amount of recovery in general, such that the load of each week isn't building on itself to where you then get to the end of week eight and you're just smoked.

And you can't recover in time for your race. And so I think those are the two main things that people do. Finding some way to periodize what you're doing. Yeah, exactly. You can't do it as scientifically as the way like Matt and you would do it for your schedule. I mean, you know, and that's where I think so much of it comes back to feel, you know, because you, because there are so many other things at play. Like your, your, your training plan is only perfect on the day that you make it, you know? And then there are all these other

variables that come in like, oh, my kid kept me up last night. Or, you know, I had this really stressful phone call with a supplier, whatever it is. And those things affect you, you know? And so if you don't listen to those things and listen to your body, then ultimately you're just kind of like plowing through on this thing that doesn't make any more sense. Yeah. When you're rigidly holding onto that training routine, come hell or high water, you're going to have like an emotional problem. And that's usually an ego thing.

You're doing that because you feel like you're being weak by letting go of the plan. Or you're so afraid. Yeah. Yeah. Oh yeah. I'm not going to be able to finish this race unless I do exactly, you know, according to this plan. Yeah. It's hard. And all that kind of stuff. How do you, what's your relationship with all the devices and the self-optimization movement? So as much as, you know, uh,

I am a go by feel 100% person, but I'm also an engineer. You're an engineer. Yeah. So I can, I, you know, I like geeking out on the data. Um, but what data ends up being for me is like a kind of like this post workout catharsis thing more than it is like a gotta hit this or else my workout is a failure type of thing. I like to go back. I mean, I love Strava. I love Zwift. I have a power meter on my stuff. I track my heart rate and my pace most of the time. Do you use other crazy programs like Golden

Cheetah and all that kind of stuff? No, I don't know that one. No, no. Yeah, you gotta- It's like- Thereetah and all that kind of stuff? No, I don't know that one. No, no. Yeah, you got to. There's more levels. I mean, the graphs are only a mechanical engineer could understand that. Yeah, that's funny. No, but I do. I mean, I do like that stuff.

You know, I'll go out. I'll do Strava. You know, what I'll do now. I mean, I'll integrate Strava into my workout. If I have some thing where I'm doing three times 12 minutes, man, I'll go find a 12-minute segment and try to get my fastest time or get a KOM up that thing. Because what better motivation on your 12-minute segment than having something like that? So yeah, usually try to use that stuff. Try not to pay too much attention to it, but definitely using it. I would suspect though, that somebody with your engineering background and somebody who's so connected to your own physical body and the experience that you've had, that you can be wearing, you could have the power meter and the heart rate monitor, all that kind of stuff.

But when you're out doing intervals, you know, if I was to say to you after each repeat, like, you know, what was your, what was your power on that? You'd probably tell me without looking, like you would know within a degree. Been enough there. So at some point that's like with that experience, the feel comes in because you're so connected. Like, you know what your heart rate is,

you know what you're putting, what you're throwing down and you can gauge that more accurately. I think so. And as importantly, it's like if the prescription for the workout is 350 Watts or whatever for whatever interval and I get out of that first or second interval and 350 Watts just isn't happening,

then it's just, I just changed the prescription. You know what I mean? That's the thing. Like I might be looking at the power meter, but it's not like. Yeah. It's going to do it until you finally. Yeah. That's, that's not it. You know, that's the thing. I mean, but then there might be days where 350 Watts is the prescription, but Hey, I feel good at 400. So just keep it going. You know what I mean? And, and that, and that, that's the, that's the flip side of it. What's the recovery routine for you? Nowadays it's, you know, fuel first, obviously, eating healthy and then spending time,

spending as much time as I can with my kids. You know, that's the main thing. There's not, to me, nothing is better than watching a movie with my like five-year-old, you know, watching some cartoon reliving. We watched Aladdin the other day, which, which was like right in the prime for me in terms of, I probably watched that 50 times when I was growing up, not 50 times, but a lot. A lot that 30 years later, I still remembered a lot of the lines, which is crazy. I couldn't believe it while I was watching it, how many of the lines I knew were coming

before they said it. So that, I don't know, that's recovered. How old is your daughter now? Daughter's one and a half. Yeah, and she's great. She's super, super fun. It's been, it's actually been a very different relationship with her. I think partially because she's a girl, but more importantly, because I'm more present with her than I was with my kid when he was that age, you know,

Zadie was born five days before Kona, my second Kona, which was brutal. Then I left for Kona, came back. And then, but then since then, you know, I've been a much, I've had much more time with her than I did with Jude during that stage. So it's been, so the connection is different, you know, it feels a little bit deeper in a, in a weird way, but my connection with Judah is fantastic, but it's just a little bit different. Yeah. Um, but there's some, there's something special about girl dads and girls. I think there, there must be right. Yeah. I mean, yeah, you know, yeah, there must be like, um, yeah, it's a little bit different. There is like a more naturally, you know, protective and supportive vibe there as opposed to kind of, you know, getting the little guy to like cut his chops or whatever.

Yeah, there's a sweetness. Yeah, there is. Yeah, there really is. It's, yeah, yeah. She lights me up. She's amazing. So let's talk about nutrition a little bit. Yeah, yeah, of course.

Because it also like dovetails into picky bars and what you're doing. Yeah. We're in the midst of this like low carb keto craze right now. I was gonna bring you a shirt and I forgot it. The I love carbs shirt. I know, I meant to, I will say- You gotta mail that to me.

I'm gonna mail you one because I spaced on it right as I was leaving. And when I got on the plane, I that to me. I'm going to mail you one. I, cause I spaced on it right as I was leaving. And I, when I got on the plane, I was like, oh crap, I forgot Rich's shirt. So talk me through like your perspective on all of this. Well, I mean, you know, so my wife, Lauren is the, she's really the, the nutritional foundation of our company. She comes from a human biology background, Stanford educated for long time pro athlete. Right. And I'm more of like the business, you know, business marketing guy. Um, but, um, but so, but our, our general philosophy is as a family is just healthy, sustainable balance, you know, and, and to, and to us, and that's our, that's our philosophy in life, right? I mean, all this stuff that we've been talking about, like going a hundred

hours a week doing this or 40 hours a week training and, um, ultimately not feeling like you're the best version of yourself in either of those things. I ultimately think that the dieting industry is exactly that. It's prescribing to the diet of the month or whatever that's some extreme thing. And because it's extreme, it's easy to grasp. And that's what's nice about it. Right. It's easy to grasp. It's easier to live in that space for a short amount of time

than it is to be sustainably healthy for a long time, right? Because that's vague and can't be marketed in a way where anyone can specifically profit off of it. It's like going off a feel. People want to hear, well, I need to have 60% of doing this, 30% of doing this and whatever. I need to have this many carbs,

or no carbs. I need to eat zero carbs. I'm going to power my multi-sport career without the one thing my cells actually need to generate energy. I've got this idea. I'm going to, and it's so dumb. I feel dumb even mentioning it because it's just a dumb, funny idea. But I want to make the picky diet for picky bars.

You know, just a funny like campaign that's basically like, you know, everything's on the picky diet. Just don't be an asshole. That's the crux of the whole thing. Is ice cream on the picky diet? Yeah. Just, just don't be an asshole. Right. You know? And so, but I mean, that's, so that's our general nutritional philosophy is like, you know, we avoid extremes. We try to eat generally very sustainably healthy. And by sustainable, sustainable in and of itself means avoiding extremes, you know? And so that's a mix of healthy, you know, foods and as natural and unprocessed as possible. But there's room, you know, I think there's room in every diet for a bit of everything, you know, and just in healthy moderation.

So, but the bars are all dairy-free and gluten-free, right? Yeah, they are. Yeah, we avoided those things primarily because of the impact that they have on people's digestion system when you're exercising a whole bunch. That was the original bar that Lauren created was basically like, what's the healthiest real food bar that I can give to Jesse when he's exercising a ton that will be the least upsetting on his stomach? And those two things tend to be the most upsetting. least upsetting on his stomach. And those two things tend to be the most upsetting. And was this born out of having issues with other products that were available? Because you have to have your brain examined to say like, I know the business we're going to go into.

We're going to enter this market where there's like a thousand competitors. It wasn't a business thing. It was just a legitimate need that Lauren sensed, you know, and the, and the not so savory part of the story was basically, I was having a bunch of, bunch of stomach issues that Lauren wasn't very happy about, you know, in and around the house and training a ton and eating a ton. And Lauren was like, man, I gotta find something for you to be eating. If you're eating a bunch, you know, every day, you gotta have something that's better on your stomach. And, and so the idea was kind of taking something for you to be eating. If you're eating a bunch, you know, every day, you got to have something that's better on your stomach. And, and so the idea was kind of taking the best of, you know, at that time, what existed in like a power bar, which is like sports performance,

nutritional principles, but then marrying that with like a Lara bar, which would be like a, you know, just, just basic like fruits and nuts. Yeah. And kind of taking, combining those two things. And that's ultimately what became a picky bar and Lauren created them for me and then had, um, and then her and her and our other co-founder, our friend, Steph just started selling them to their friends at this random, like local running workout that they, that they kind of coached every Thursday night. And people started buying them. And that was the, that was the genesis of the whole company. And so it definitely wasn't, ironically, I just finished business school. Right. And so I had just gone through all this, like, here's your,

here's how you do your business plan, your financial model, yada yada none of that SWOT analysis no no that there was none of that and uh it was just you know and I'm glad that there wasn't ultimately because it would have discouraged us from doing it yeah um because it is the best things percolate up organically it's just it you know yeah it's been and that's what it's been. And, um, it's, it is a industry I would never encourage people to get into. It's so competitive. It's so cash intensive, particularly now with the investment that, that's, that's been coming into it. You know, we're talking about, um, I'm down here, I'm in LA for Expo West, which is the, which is the largest food trade, I think the here, I'm in LA for Expo West, right? Which is the, which is the largest food trade. I think the largest food trade show in the U S and it has to be, it has to be, it's

so big. Um, and so you can, even just in the brief number of years that I've been going down there, I can see the growth of it through the investment that is being had by private equity firms and everything else. So for us, we're still a completely independently owned and operated company by just us. And that's- You haven't taken any outside investment? We haven't, not yet. Angel funding or anything? We haven't, yeah.

It's something I'm evaluating now. But because we're reaching the point now where we're big enough, we're starting to barely play in those big fields against the big guys. And it's pretty hard to do that on your own. So you're in this position now, you got what, like 10 employees?

Yeah, 10 employees, yeah. And you're selling some retail, right. But you also have this direct to consumer model. So you're kind of playing with both of those. Yeah. I mean, the cool thing that the, I think maybe the most interesting or unique part of our business, because the bar, the, the bars and, and the, and the oatmeal and the granola there, there are, they're great products, but if I'm to be, if I'm going to be totally humbly honest and say like, is this totally uniquely differentiated in this sea of products? It's pretty hard to do that. Right. But what I do think is unique about our company is that we started it online through social media and through our own racing and PR and like the, the, the stories that we've talked about and, and even

more so with Lauren. And, um, and because of that, we have this e-commerce, we have, we have this e-commerce presence, but I would call it even more, humbly call it more than that, is like a community of people that support the company and support the products online. Yeah, you kind of position it like you're a member of a club. It is, yeah. We literally have a thing called the Picky Club, which is a monthly subscription to any of our products and at any interval that you want it to get and you get a discount. But that is, that has, there, there has been a legitimate community that is created

around that. We get T we get t-shirts to those guys. They get a, we're just sending out an email today where they get a help us design our next thing. They help us with our, all of our new products go through the picky club before their, their launch. So, um, it's cool when I go to races and I see, and people come up and they have a picky club shirt on. I mean, that's like, that's a cool deal. And that's the most unique aspect of our business. So that's, well, it goes back to storytelling. It does. It really does. Yeah. Um, and you have a very authentic story, uh, that you can tell around that and that you continue. I mean, like, I love it when you put those, like, you have your board meeting and you're in your wetsuit and shit like that.

Like, it's fucking awesome. You know what I mean? Like, who does that, you know? Yeah, thank you. And I think that stuff is really cool and it speaks to, you know, the authenticity of the brand. Yeah, thanks. And the more, like what I'm learning just talking to you here is like, this is really a conversation about balance. Like, I feel like there's a cultural discussion happening right now about like balance and what does that mean? It's like, forget about balance, be present.

And then when you're talking to like endurance athletes or ultra endurance athletes, it's like, these are not balanced people. But I'm getting like this super balanced vibe from you. Like that you feel like you're doing your best when everything is kind of operating. Like when, when all these gears are kind of churning, you know, in a healthy way. Yeah. I don't, yeah. I mean, you know, maybe, I don't know if balance is the right word for it or not, but I think it's, I think it is like a healthy interweaving of various aspects of life, you know, and, and ultimately feeling, you know, at the same time, you could say my life is not balanced. I don't rest that much. Right. You know, you're a professional triathlete, an entrepreneur, you got two kids, one is one and a half, so you're probably not sleeping at all.

Like this is not a, this is not. Yeah, so it's not like, you know, it's, I'm working really hard. I'm doing a lot of stuff. But I think what I'm trying to do is not, is simultaneously not sacrificing so much of one thing at the benefit of another. so much of one thing at the benefit of another, but then simultaneously allowing some sacrifice of each of those things to benefit each other. You have to be okay. Yeah, exactly.

Things kind of going sideways in every category a little bit. A little bit, yeah. To maintain your sanity. Yeah, exactly, yeah. So what have been some of the big lessons that you've learned along the entrepreneurial journey that you've been on?

Oh man, I mean- Like starting a business. Oh my God, it has been such, What have been some of the big lessons that you've learned along the entrepreneurial journey that you've been on? Oh, man. I like starting a business. Oh, my God. It's been so hard. Because it seems like really straightforward. Like you have a recipe, you make these bars, you wrap them up, and you sell them. The number one, and it's funny because Lauren called me on the way here. I was in the car for an hour and a half on the drive over here.

And she was like, you should feel comfortable saying whatever you want. And the number one thing, the number one lesson I've learned is, if possible, don't start a company with your wife. You know, in all fairness, you know, and Lauren is amazing. And she knows that I, that I believe that and incredibly talented. And she brings so much to me personally and to piggy bars and everything else. But man, that is, there are a lot of hats to wear when you're trying to balance that in a business. And as this business has become more than just us, like you said, now 10 employees, you know, thousands and thousands of customers, it's, there are stresses that go along

with that, that are almost impossible to completely separate from the house, you know, and that, that has- You can't come home and turn it off and- It's so hard. Yeah. And so that's been really tough. That's been the hardest, the biggest downside of it for sure is the toll it's taken on Lauren and I's relationship. And then to a certain extent, I'm super proud of how we've, to be perfectly honest, how we're still together and how we've navigated that and still strong and healthy

as a result of that, but it has not been easy. So that's been one of the biggest things. I mean, as somebody who works, I work with my wife as well, not on everything, but on some things. Yeah, totally. Yeah, it's super challenging and hard. We're very different people. And then when we're home, it's like,

it's very difficult to talk about anything else. And you have to make a really conscious effort to create boundaries around that kind of stuff. Because if you don't make cultivating your relationship, the first priority, then it's all house of cards. It's all going down. It's a ticking time bomb. And it's even worse, as you know, when you have kids too, because that amount of time that you get together is compressed even more, you know? And then there's all this pressure that amount of time that you get together is compressed even more.

And then there's all this pressure that it has to be meaningful. Yeah, that's true. Yeah, totally. Lauren and I are doing our date nights. We do a date night every week. And at first it was kind of, it felt a little bit pressureful,

like, oh, this is our one chance. We've got three hours here. And now we've luckily settled into a groove where it's like, okay, let's just do what we want. It's no big deal. I can't remember what was her, you shared, like you went and saw the Sundance shorts for one of those date nights.

And then they're all like about horrific. Oh, the Oscar shorts. Nothing against the people that created those films, because I can, you can say they're great from a filmmaking standpoint, they're great films. The, but the Oscar, the live action Oscar shorts, I mean, four of the five movies were about like violence to young, to like kids basically in some way, shape or form happening. And it was just like, as a parent, that's just like, that's like the last thing you want to see, you know, you know, it exists,

but you don't want to be sitting through the theater, like watching that. And that's part of what makes, maybe it's part of what makes the movie so powerful. But at the same time, we're like, man, we're on a date night. This is, so we don't want to be doing this. So what have you had to rely on to get through, you know, those tricky moments of, you know, trying to find some equanimity in your marriage? We, you know, friends and family, but also professional advice. I mean, we've been to counseling together for it, you know, for sure. And just a lot of communication. And luckily, like ultimately this kind of foundation,

it's like rock solid foundation to our relationship that it's like, oh man, even if we're deep into screaming or whatever about something, it's still there. And you just do your best not to navigate it as positively as you can. And I think hopefully, luckily, we're through the worst of it. As the business grows, it does get harder and harder. But Lauren has done a,

we've been really conscientious of, I mentioned to you before, we started of removing her from the daily operations. So the business can be at least on a day-to-day level mine and she doesn't really need to think about it. And I don't really need to interact with her on a day-to-day basis on it. So that's been very conscientious. And hopefully even as we, you know, continue to grow a whole bunch will be,

that will set us up for, you know, success. Yeah. Well, Lauren first came on my radar probably around the same time that you did. And it was by way of her incredible blog. Like she's an amazing writer. It's like her facility with words and her ability to kind of like relate these concepts

around female empowerment and sport are amazing. And it's like, I'm just waiting for her to write a book. Yeah, I'm glad that I got on your show first because then I don't have to follow Lauren. But she- I would have had you guys both at the same time, because I think it'd be interesting for you guys to be together to talk about how you balance all these things. Yeah. And we've never done that. Um, well, you have your own podcast now. Well, yeah, that's true. Yeah, that's true. Yeah, we do. We have a

podcast now. Um, yeah. Work play love podcast, which has been really fun. It's actually going back to the date night thing. The, um, part of the reason we started that was just to set aside an hour every week where we just talk to each other. My wife and I have that same joke. It's like, in order for us to actually have a real conversation, we have to create this music on and do this. Like let's answer some people's questions because then we will talk to each other. And honestly, ideally, and for our own benefit, talk to each other about not our problems, about other people's problems. And then what do we learn through that? And so that's been really good. Well, now I'm going to write in a question for your podcast.

You should. We're going to have all about like your guys' problems together and force you to confront that. No, it's good. It's good. But no, yeah. I mean, back to your, Lauren's a great good. It's good. But no, yeah. I mean, back to your, Lauren's a great writer. She's, she's working on some stuff right now. And, you know, she is, you know, she's very, very busy. She's coaching and she's a mom and

she's still working with her company Wazelle up there in Seattle. And is she one of the founders of that company? I mean, I knew she was there from the very beginning, but- She's not a founder, but she was their first kind of pro athletes. She's a partner there. It's very much a piece of what she's doing now. Right. It's a really cool company.

So it's all around female empowerment and celebrating female athletes. Yeah, it's women. Yeah. That's exactly it. The products are women's running apparel specifically, running an athletic apparel, but the soul of the company is exactly what you just described, you know, and started by a female. Sally Bergeron? Bergeron? by a female, yeah, Ferguson, Ferguson. Yeah. Female founder, super staunch, you know,

supporter of, you know, women's rights, women's empowerment, feminism, and Lauren very much so as well. And the whole ethos of the company now is around that. And it's a great company. They make great products, but what they stand for and, you know, what they message, the importance of what they message to women and to, to girls and, uh, everything else is great. You know? Yeah. It's really cool. So she is working on a book though.

She is working on a book and I can tell you that, you know, she's right now, you know, the process a lot better than I do, but right now she's just kind of writing little, you know, tidbits, little chapters here and there of like various places in her life, you know, little frames. And a lot of it's around her dad who passed away, A lot of it's around her dad who passed away, who was a super important piece of her development, her life, and then just her athletic journey and then ultimately like her personal journey. And it's very good.

Obviously, I'm very biased. She's my wife and I think she's incredible. She's an incredible writer. The bits that I've read are very, very good. So I'm very biased. She's my wife and I think she's incredible. She's an incredible writer. The bits that I've read are very, very good. So I'm excited. It's a long ways out. It's a long ways out, but it's cool. It's fun for me to see her have this legitimate project that she's really sinking her teeth into that she's getting a lot of value from personally. And where do you want to see Picky Bars go? Like what's the five, 10 year vision for this? My vision, the long-term vision for me would be that Picky Bars grows and becomes a, what I like to say, a company that Bend is proud of, right?

So it was born and raised in this town, central Oregon, Bend. A lot of people have heard about it now. It's been on the cover of Outside Magazine and much to the chagrin. This is the place that you should move. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm sure a lot of people have moved there.

Yeah, a lot of people have moved. What's amazing is that when you think of Oregon, you think of Portland, rain and all that. And it's actually very arid. It's very temperate. Yeah, it's nice. And incredibly beautiful. Very sunny.

And it's like an outdoor paradise. So I'm like a unicorn, cause I was born there, back when it was like 10, 15,000 people, it's over a hundred thousand now. But for me personally, the most proud I could feel about something, a result of the company of Picky Bars

would be the impact that it could have on that community and basically be like, can we be a hundred person company there that's making great products, that impact people positively, telling stories that impact people positively, all of our customers, but then also that's impacting the community with awesome jobs and giving back. And so to me, that's like the end goal, the dream. You know, there are some companies

that exist like that, Ben, that are modeling some of it off of. And so, you know- Do you do all the manufacturing and co-packing and everything there? We don't now, yeah. We don't have the scale. I would love to do that eventually. And that would bring a whole bunch more jobs into Central Oregon, which would be awesome. In addition, it would be cool just to have 100% control over our supply chain top to bottom.

But, you know, but you have to be, you have to be quite a bit bigger, which is, which is the plan, you know? And so, I mean, we're hoping, you know, we're hoping to grow. We're really focused on that, on building that picky club community ultimately. And that like that e-commerce side, because the, well, for two reasons, one, because it's so, it's so ludicrously expensive to be, to get into distribution because you're competing against all those guys that have 10, 15 million bucks behind them. And then, but secondly, because that's our wheelhouse, you know, building and creating that connection, creating that community online.

Like that's what we know. You know, I'm not going to pretend to know how to be in Safeway, you know, but- Well, and being on the shelf in Whole Foods, it's so, there's so many middlemen. It's so cost prohibitive. It's so expensive. It just becomes like an advertisement.

You're not making any money off it. It really is. And we've experienced that, you know, bits and pieces, because we do have some distribution here and there. But so I'm really focused on that e-commerce side, that picky club specifically, that kind of the content and the community curation that goes into making that.

Right now, it's a very valuable and I think cool and unique subscription service that does have some value outside of this subscription to the products itself. But I really want to build that into like something that's much, much more than just the delivery that you get, you know. What are some things that you've learned from your experience being a professional athlete that have benefited you as an, as an entrepreneur, as a business owner? The biggest thing, um, would just be just to keep going, you know, just push through like, cause you're gonna, you know, we have had, I've, you know, I've had lots of ups and downs. You're puking on mile 12, but like, you know, like, Hey, this could change and I feel good again. Yeah. Or, or even, or even from like a bigger picture perspective, you're, you get an injury or you, or you did completely fuck up your big race or whatever happened. You had a

shit house race. Keep going because down the road, there's going to be something else could happen that you don't even expect that could end up being bigger and better than whatever it is you thought you were trying to do. And that that's, I've experienced that athletically now multiple times. And I've have now experienced it in business multiple times as well. We've been through some really hard stuff, you know, some of which was our fault, some of which was other people's fault and times where I thought the business was right at its edge. And then, but ultimately, you know, we kind of go through those, those down moments and keep striving and things come out, you know, brighter on the other side,

and things come out brighter on the other side, hopefully. Do you feel like you tap into your experience as an athlete more than you tap into like what you learned in business school? Yeah, like what's more informative or helpful to you? The business school stuff is helpful, but just that general vibe of like, um, working hard to solve a problem or to overcome an obstacle. I mean, that's, there's just no substitute for it. You know, nobody has, nobody has the crystal ball, you know? And, and, um, I think one of the struggles that I had as a

young entrepreneur coming, particularly coming from an engineering side, was feeling like I really wanted to or needed to have a plan, a model, an algorithm that said, if I do this, this, and this, my business is going to end up this. It's all going to work perfectly according to some spreadsheet. Exactly. I wanted a spreadsheet that would tell me all the answers. And what I've learned now in business and then through sport as well is just that you cannot anticipate the many, many variables that are coming down the road. And so you just need to pick a direction and try until you run into the wall and then turn and then go a different way. And I try to do that more and more often in business now. So you have Matt Dixon as your coach for your athletic career. Do you have mentors or people that you rely on

for guiding you in the entrepreneurial journey? Definitely. Yeah, some really, really great ones. Kevin Rutherford is the CEO of Noon in UUN, the hydration company. Great personal and professional mentor to me. Scott Allen is the CEO of Hydroflask. They make the insulated water bottles. Both those guys have been awesome,

very impactful to me on a professional level. And I've got a few others. I've got Al Cochran as a guy from my business school times who's still an advisor to me. And I reach out to people a lot, way more than I used to. I used to be really, really feel like I needed to be able to figure it out on my own. And now I'm like, as soon as I, I've all probably almost annoyingly. So as soon as I run into a problem, I'm like, Oh, who do I know that knows this? And who can I reach out to? I think those relationships are

really important in business though, because particularly owning and operating a company, important in business though, because particularly owning and operating a company, because it's so, it's so unique. There are so few people that are at that level of it that it's, it's, I just find it very valuable to get insight from people that are experiencing those same things. Weather that same scenario. Yeah, exactly. So when you're talking to, you know, young business, you know, business school students or entrepreneurs, other than like, look, man, you gotta like stay in it to win it.

Like what is some of the guidance that you like to, wisdom that you? Well, I mean, the one, I mean, those two things that we just mentioned would be the next two most important, which is seek out mentors. You know, that's super, super important. next, the next two most important, which is seek out mentors. You know, that's, that's super, super important. I think a lot of young kids, particularly in the digital age, feel like they can just Google it themselves. And there's, you know, I can't,

I can't overstate the value of just talking to someone personally to help figure out whatever problem it is you're trying to solve. And then the second thing was related back to what we said, which is don't get hung up on trying to know all the right answers. I think that's the biggest thing that keeps young entrepreneurs from just trying something is feeling like they need to have it all figured out. And even you could relate that to young athletes too.

You know, aspirational triathletes. I get that question, like, how do I start? Well, pick a couple of races and give yourself six months and just see how it goes. And in six more months, you'll know five times more than you do right now. And in business, I think it's the same thing. It's just like pick a direction, validate as quick as you can and move on to the next decision with the new

information that you have based on that validation. My mom had this, and I'm sure it's probably a famous quote from somebody that I should know, but it's, it's a, it is forever emblazoned on a cartoon magnet that goes on my mom's refrigerator that says, sometimes you just have to jump and build your wings on the way down. Right. And that's the way, that's the way that I feel about business. Sometimes it's like, well, you, you know, you got to go down. So you're not really sure how you're going to land, but like, let's just start going down like let's just start going down we'll find more as we get along well that's like your first wildflower too it is yeah totally

like getting the bike on the way not knowing anything about anything and just figuring it out on the go and I like how you didn't just go out and raise a ton of money there's a lot of private equity out there you know from going to Expo there's a lot of money out there this business of healthy natural food there's a lot of private equity out there. Like, you know, like from going to Expo, like there's a lot of business of like,

you know, healthy, natural food. Like there's a lot of money floating around out there. I'm sure had you wanted to, you could have gone and raised some massive amounts of capital. Yeah. But to keep it like, you know, contained in that way. Yeah, I'm very proud of that.

And I think that's a combination of, you know, direction and then also limited time where I'm just like, I'm not going to get somebody behind this thing while I'm doing it 20 hours a week while I'm racing, you know, and training 20 to 30 hours a week. And now as I evaluate, you know, as I'm spending more kind of full time in the business and I evaluate options, now it's like the, I think there is some legitimate benefit to me trying to achieve that vision by getting some appropriate partners behind it. But the key question is going to be, do those people align with that vision or are they, okay, yeah, I'll help you accelerate the business,

but then we want out in three to four years, and then it's just chopped up and gone. The strategic smart money. So it's finding people that are like, yeah, we're excited about what you're trying to do here, and we're excited about the impact it can have on the community and those types of things. So ultimately, that's what I'm looking for here. And we're excited about the impact that can have on the community and those types of things. So ultimately that's what I'm looking for now,

but we'll, you know, we'll see. If we don't, you know, I don't know. I mean, it could just be that we keep doing it ourselves. I mean, we've made some really great gains just even in the last six or seven months that I've been working on it full time. And, you know, so I'm going to at least give myself a year of doing it full time and see what happens.

It's just crazy, like to listen to you. It's like, let's just take a moment and reflect on the fact that you've built this thing and got it to where it's at now by essentially being a part-time CEO. Yeah. I mean, like, what happens when you attune your full attention? Hopefully good things, you know. It's like I was mentioning before. your full attention. Hopefully good, hopefully good things. You know, it's like I was mentioning before, I feel like, you know, to a certain extent for every problem I solve, I'm kind of like uncovering another couple that I didn't know existed. But that's your job as CEO is solving

problems, not like getting to a day where there are no problems. Yeah, that's totally true. It's very, it's exciting for me. It's a, it's like an athletic journey. It's having this big goal and feeling very personally fulfilled to see it come to realization. There's all the same data involved. Instead of looking back on my Strava splits, I'm pulling up my Shopify app and I've got our sales for the day.

How many new club members did we get? All that. There's a ton of a ton of like gamify that somehow. There really is. I mean, I, I look at those apps all the time, you know, and it's the same obsession I had with my, with my, you know, splits or data before. And so, but it, but it's fun, So, but it's fun, you know, and I do, you know, I do legitimately enjoy the legitimate positive feedback we get back from people. You know, like when we launched that I Love Carbs campaign, you know, with the t-shirts, people really, they really, that really galvanized some people. That made them feel good. You know, they're like, kind of felt like they were losing their voice in some of the, you know, craziness of some of the diet trends that go on. And so it's cool to, you know, I guess like simultaneously just mean something to people as well, you know, and that's been really fun.

And do it in a fun way. And do it in a fun way. And do it in a fun way, yeah, totally. We're never taking ourselves too seriously, so, yeah. How has, other than like bonding you with your wife, like how has this podcast journey been for you? You've been doing it for a while now, right? Like how many episodes do you guys have? I know, it's pretty funny.

I gotta tell a little story about Rich because I called you maybe like a year ago and was like, hey- Is that long ago? I think so. I mean, maybe nine months, 10 months. But I was like, hey, I think I'm thinking about doing something, creating some type of content thing

and maybe writing, maybe doing whatever. And I kind of, I feel like I remember you saying something like, well, I definitely wouldn't start a podcast. No, I don't think I said that. Maybe, maybe. I probably said something like, like it's getting crowded and if you're going to do it, you should have like an interesting, unique angle in that's a little bit different from, I'm going to sit down and interview people. Yeah, totally. And, and I guess like, and so I'll qualify that with saying in no way, shape or form, were you at all being like, like at all pushing back on anything that I was trying to do? You, you were, I should actually say, we're also, thank you very much for the incredible support that you have given Lauren and I with your

expertise for book, book writing and everything else. So, so we, but, but yeah, we did, ultimately we did end up doing a podcast and, um, and it has been, it has been really fun, you know, like it's, it's small, you know, it's, it's not anything, you know, anywhere in the realm of what you're doing here, but it's, it's, uh, but it's fun. Yeah. It's fun. And it's, here's the thing. I think it's legitimately fun and valuable time for Lauren and I, which is cool. It justifies our time into it. If you're having fun doing it and it's adding value to your life

outside of any externalities, then that's already a win. Even if it's just going into a void. It connects with one person. Yeah, exactly. So, and then we're getting, we get a lot of positive feedback from the content too, which is really great.

I think the thing that's gonna be tough for us with the platform that we've created where we're answering people's questions versus like interviewing people is how does it not become repetitive? How is there enough variation in the questions that you're not, you're always gonna be recycling like certain themes, but it doesn't become like,

oh, they kind of already answered this question. Well, it goes back to the magnet on your mom's refrigerator. You know what I mean? Like you just keep doing it and it'll tell you what it wants to be. And you'll intuitively know what those moves are. Yeah, so, but we're really enjoying it. You know, I mean, it's still, like I said,

it's still very, very small, but we really like it. Yeah, it's cool. Yeah, it's been really fun. It's just a cool reason for Lauren and I to get across from a table to each other and just give each other shit, you know, and talk about, you know, people's stuff and then talk about the last week in our own lives

and reflect on it. There's a thirst for just anything real. You know what I mean? It's like, I think if I would say anything to you, it's just like, don't worry about how you're lacing it with some valuable takeaway. It's just the sheer, just you guys having a real conversation in and of itself

is like, is the win. Right. And then people will automatically extract from that, you know, something that's good advice. Yeah, that's good advice. We got to wrap this up, but I want to do, before we do that, I want to talk to you about like this. You just announced that you're going to be doing a marathon.

Oh yeah, I did. Yeah. So this is new. Yeah. Have you ever run like a formal just marathon? No, I've run a 244 after a swim and a bike. Which is insane. I can't imagine that, but like.

No, yeah. So this was a, I was actually really nervous about making that public. And that just happened a couple of few days ago on Instagram. Just because even though I've built myself up as an athlete in the space that is pursuing all different kinds of challenges, this was a big departure for me to, for me to actively say, Hey, and what I actively said was, Hey, I, I need to spend more time in my business and more time on my family.

Therefore I just don't feel like I can train adequately for even a half iron man, certainly not an iron man. And I kind of have given myself a training budget of about 10 hours a week. That's as much time as I feel comfortable allocating to training. And because of that, how do I want to pivot my goals? Is there still some cool athletic goal that I could try to go accomplish that would still be the best I've personally ever done that fits within that time constraint. And that was a marathon to me. That was like, I started running a little bit more. I was like, man, I only ran 30 miles a week as a triathlete my entire career anyway. And so can I take some

of these things that I've learned, some of this extra aerobic capacity, but then also some of these things that I'm so much better at now than I was. I'm clearly not the same runner I was when I was 23, right? I'm 39, but I've learned so much more. Can I apply that being able to go off a feel better, having much better nutrition, like nutritional habits? And can I see what I can get out of myself? And, and I am supremely lucky in that I have sponsors like we, the guys we talked about, Roca, my own company, uh, Desant, uh, Diamond and, and, and Red Bull who said, yeah, we're cool with you doing that. If you go tell a story like that's super unique when you come from, from an industry that's like, we're cool with you doing that. If you go tell a story, like that's super unique. When you come from an industry that's like,

we want you to do Kona or nothing. A guy comes in and is like, I want to go run a marginally fast marathon that's not going to be competitive on like a national level at all, but it's just going to be like, hey, what can I do? And maybe people- That I'm not going to win

because I'm busy with my other job. I'm going to train 10 hours a week, but I'm going to tell the story about it. And I think people will be interested in it. And they were supportive, which is really cool. I think what you're going to find is, first of all, it's very smart and forward thinking of these sponsors to get on board with that. Because what you're going to find is by telling that story in real time, as you progress towards it, it is so much more accessible to the average person than like, Hey, I'm going to go to Roth and try to win. It's like, people can't, they're like, well, that's inspirational, but I can't really connect with that. But Hey, 10 hours a week because he's got kids and he's got a business.

I relate to that. Like, you know, the most I have is 10 hours a week, maybe six hours a week. So I can get on board with this and you're going to go and you're going to kick ass and you're gonna have this amazing result. You're not going to win, but you're going to, you're going to run a fast time. And I think that's going to be a source of a tremendous amount of inspiration and, um, an emotional connection with the people that are following you, which ultimately is much more valuable than some triathlete you've never heard of at an ITU race that is on a podium who's getting sponsored by whoever. I hope so. And I think that that bodes well for the future of what these corporate sponsor relationships look like for athletes, because it goes back to how we

started this conversation. It's about storytelling. And if you can tell a story well and have it create value for that brand that's taken a shot on you, then that's really, you know, that's really how you can deliver the most value to those people that have been with you and have believed in you for a long time. Yeah. And it's infinitely more fun for me. Yeah. You know, is the other part of it. And there's not that much pressure.

No, that's the thing. I mean, I want to do well because I'm, you know, because I'm competitive and I want to get the most out of myself, but it's not, you know, it's not the same as what I was doing before. And, but it's also like, you know, it's just, like I said, it's a lot more fun. You know, I mean, the triathlon, you know, that's hard too. I mean, it's a grind. a lot more fun. You know, I mean the, the triathlon, you know, that's hard too. I mean, it's a grind. My body is, you know, wearing down. And, um, and so this

just allows me to spend more time with my family and do all those things I talked about while also doing something that's unique. And, and then eventually after I do the, the, the marathon, maybe there will be some other cool challenge down the road that fits within those realms too. And, you know, we'll see. You can do the swim run. Oh man, that's what everybody says. Somebody told me I should try to do that with you. Yeah.

Somebody was like, you should get Rich Roll and go do a swim run. Somebody said that because I honestly was like looking at races or something and somebody suggested that. I can't remember that. That would be way too much of a mismatch because like, I can't, there's no way I could keep up with you. And then there's no way I'd keep up with you on the swim either. The thing with the swim run for me is that you have to swim,

which is kind of a bummer. Yeah, you do have to swim, but you actually don't get to run that much. Is that right? It's more like climbing over rocks and stuff like that. I mean, it's obviously completely course dependent. I mean, it looks cool. I mean, it looks- It was fun.

Yeah, it looks like an awesome experience. I mean, and looks cool. I mean, it was fun. Yeah, it looks like an awesome experience. I mean, and that's ultimately like what you're looking for. I just like that now there's this whole thing and there's all these races popping up. Yeah, tons. Mostly in Europe. I mean, starting here a little bit. Yeah.

Like this guy, Lars Finnegar is, you know, creating a series. Yeah. And I think that's exciting and fun to just see the evolution of multi-sport and doing different stuff. Yeah, I think so too. I think, you know and fun to just see the evolution of multi-sport and doing different stuff. Yeah, I think so too. I think going back to a little bit what we talked about with WTC and Ironman and kind of the monopolization around that, I think that there's going to be more and more appetite for less, just different multi-sport events that aren't the kind of cut and dry, half Ironman, Ironman,

super duper competitive, whatever. And I've got some ideas for events I'd love to have in Bend that are just kind of off the crazy, weird multi-sport stuff that combines a whole bunch of stuff. There's a one in Bend called Pole Pedal Paddle, which is super fun.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I've heard of that. Did you do that? You did that one. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So that's like super fun. It'd just be fun to find some more stuff like that. Yeah.

Just don't call it a retirement. No, yeah, I know. Yeah, exactly. You're not retired. Transition. I know, that's what I'm saying. I said in that post, I was like, I'm not retiring. I'm also not trying to make the Olympic team.

You know, it's just, I'm just going to go run a marathon as a dude that's running a marathon, see how it goes. Cool. So yeah. But you haven't announced which one yet. You said it's in Eugene? I think it's going to be Eugene. Yeah.

I looked at Boston, which is a couple of weeks before, and I actually reached out to them and then I didn't hear back right away. And then like over the week or so that I was kind of waiting to hear back from them, I kind of was like, I don't really know if I want to do Boston. And the reason was getting my family all the way out there and everything. It just seemed like more, you know, it goes back to like just a little bit more than I'd want to like put into it.

Eugene is great. You're doing it for fun. Doing it for fun. For a pressure release as opposed to going into a pressure cooker kind of place. Yeah, I can have my family there. Picky bars will be there. It's like just over the mountains from us.

It's a great course. It's where we started picky bars. So it's kind of cool to go back there. And there's storytelling. Yeah, that's the thing. Yeah, it's cool. So that'll be fun. So, yeah.

All right, man. We'll come back and tell me about it after you do it, all right? Yeah, absolutely. And bring Lauren next time. Yeah, yeah, will do. Really appreciate it, Rich. Thanks so much.

Yeah, thank you. Super fun. If you're digging on Jesse, you can, he's pretty easy to find. Yeah. Jesse Thomas on Instagram is probably the best place. Yeah, Jesse M. Thomas.

Jesse M. Thomas, that's right. And pickybars.com. Yeah, Jesse M. Thomas. Jesse M. Thomas, that's right. And pickybars.com. Yep, pickybars.com or at pickybars on social. So yeah, we're all out there. Yeah, I appreciate it. Awesome, man. Thanks, dude. Awesome, yeah.

Peace. Good stuff, people. Hope you guys enjoyed that. Please let Jesse know what you thought of today's conversation. You can find him on Twitter and Instagram at jessemthomas. And again, you can get 30% off his Picky Bars products when you go to pickybars.com and use the code RICHROLL at checkout. And also again, I am not an affiliate here. I have no financial entanglement

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