Episode 379: Jonathan Levitt - The Business Of Running

Jonathan Levitt hosts, "For The Long Run" podcast. Jonathan's career has given him insights into the athlete, creator, and company side of engaging with runners. In this episode we dive deep into how all three of these groups engage with the running community, as well as the future of running content and engagement. 

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Check Out My Endurance Series:

Episode 337: The Long Run Considering the Variables 

Episode 344: Endurance Training Simplified

Episode 346: Short Intervals Simplified   

Episode 348: Long Intervals Simplified   

Episode 352: Proper Aid Station Navigation

Episode 356: Easy Run - Simplified 

Episode 363: Mental Training For Endurance

Episode 366: Race Course Specific Training 

Episode 369: Speed Work Distribution & Double Threshold Sessions

Episode Transcript

That project, I guess you call it. And so he's going to attempt to do the first ever, uh, 1s so like, I guess human powered cross Antarctica. So he's pulling his own sled, own supplies, and the whole deal. Oh my God. And it's going to take like, I'm trying to remember what he said. I think 100 and 110 days or something like that. And it's just pure white. So it's almost nothing. Yeah. So he did this like darkness. He did a darkness retreat, a ten day darkness retreat just to prepare, like the mental stuff of having like, essentially your visual stimulus turned off. Oh my God. And it's just, like, mind blowing. What are some people doing these days? Yeah, because there's nothing there. There's nothing to look different. That's so crazy. So are you doing most of your podcasts in person though? I'm trying to. Yeah, I'm it's one of those things where remote is probably a necessity to some degree if you want to have full access to anyone. But Austin is great for it. Yeah. And then this time of year with trees. Yeah. Someone like yourself is coming through town. Yeah. Bring them in person. Cool. Yeah. How's your podcast doing? It's good. Um, I'm like 5050 remote and in person. Um, and. Yeah, I'm launching a I think we're re chatting about car dealerships. Yeah. So. Yeah. So I'm going to live with Volkswagen on Friday. Um, and like, stoked on that. Yeah. Talk about, uh, electric and, um. Yeah. Like really growing on the, on the revenue side, on the listen side. And like the ability to create interesting content from the, from the episode. So just more than just the audio but video clips and um, really just trying to, trying to grow it in different ways and sort of see what sticks. But I have a team that does everything besides talking. So it's fun to be able to just have conversations. And then at some point, those they show up live. Yeah. Yeah. So yeah, that's probably my next step is to offload some of that stuff I've been originally wanting to do because it was like this might be a skill set. I want to learn. Yeah. And I do like kind of tinkering around with this stuff. But then at a certain point you start realizing, I can probably just record more episodes if I offload some of that. So yeah, getting the podcast studio setup was step one. So we'll see when step two happens. But how long have you been recording podcasts? Five years. Five. Oh, wow. So you've been to 300 episodes in January. Okay, nice. Yeah, we're probably on a similar timeline then I am. This will be like, let's say I just released 376 today. Wow. And I guess it's probably been about five years for me too. It's hard to believe it's 2023. Yeah. I keep thinking, like I've been doing this for a couple of years. No, no, I think I might. I started in 2018, January of 2018, right around the same, um, out in Flagstaff for my first two recordings. Really? That's where mine was too. Oh, cool. Yeah. That's awesome. Yeah, 20 would have been, I think, April of 2018, maybe somewhere around there. No, it was a little earlier than that because it was snowing. Yeah. So it had to be it probably. Yeah. Who knows. Maybe we were on the exact same day launching our podcast, or maybe mine was 2019 because I couldn't. Yeah. Anyway, it's 4 or 5 years. Yeah, whatever it is, long enough to have 300 plus episodes. So I wanted to have you on to talk about just a variety of different things, but kind of maybe centered around just the running industry. Yeah. And just the way that that has kind of shaped over the years, because I think, I mean, your podcast is pretty much running specific. Yep. And you've been doing it for a while, so you've probably seen some trends change. I mean, we think of running as an obviously really old sport. Yep. You think of running in the modern era. There's just been such a huge growth curve with the access points to it. Like everything really with the access points to it, with media, social media, podcasting, that it's just kind of a fun conversation to have. It's like, how is that shaped running? Yeah. How does uh how does like other companies coming into running now that running's got maybe a little more of a spotlight on it really change things, I guess. Yeah. I mean, it's been fascinating to see. I had a conversation with Grayson Murphy about this. He was a guest on the podcast a few weeks ago. And she was like, yeah, I feel like, um, sponsorships are drying up for pro athletes a little bit. And, um. 1s And then on the creative side, or ambassador side or influencer side, if you want to use that word, like things are strong and their budgets for that kind of stuff. So it's sort of like it depends on who you ask. Um, and then coming from it also from the brand side with, with what I do, my day job. Um, it's fascinating to see how we've evolved in where we spent, like, can we spend money, how we how we spend money, where we spend money, and then how we evaluate the spend of that money. And so I think a lot of brands are looking at it from that standpoint. And so you look at like Dylan Bowen posted that, uh, there's an apparel company, a fashion company that's, that's U1 supporting, uh, I think it's a Hong Kong 100. Oh, yeah. And, um, and you have, uh, dossier sponsoring YouTube. And so you have all these, like, major, like billion dollar brands sponsoring trail races, and then you have the, the running brands, like backing out of athletes, sponsorships and slimming down the athletes that they work with. And it's fascinating because a lot of these brands that are lessening or tightening the belt on pro athletes are going the way of influencers. I was talking with Ken Rideout this morning on a run and he's like, I don't understand it. And I was like I was like, well, you fit the profile of someone who is like. 1s Like really good at athletics and an average guy at the same time, like he's a self-proclaimed average guy. I don't think he's average at a 228 marathon at 52 years old. But, um, the piece that makes him relatable is that he is just really good at being consistent, and he's relatable because people can see, oh, I wanted to work hard and he got better over the years. He's not an elite athlete. He's not. Maybe he's an athlete. He's not a professional athlete. And so people and brands see someone like that as the like. That's someone that I'm 1s where I was going with this was he was talking about shoes and he was talking about how so many influencers got the Adidas shoe and he didn't see a lot of, um, he didn't see a lot of pro athletes promoting the Adidas shoe besides the ones who who ran in the race. But you have all these running journalists and, and, um, people with a lot of Instagram followers getting this shoe and I was like, well, the 204 guys are not great at talking, right? They're just really good at running things fast. And that's not relatable if they're not good at sharing their story. And so the brands from at least from my point of view, the brands are seeing the like the Laura Greens, the, the um, Aaron Azar's like these people who are, you know, have a family and potentially kids and, and don't run professionally as like, hey, that could be me. Like, my life is hard like theirs appears to be. Which isn't to say the life of a pro athlete is not hard. I'm sure you can attest to that. Yeah. And but they're seeing they're seeing themselves in these people. And the brands are seeing a return on their investment of the money they're spending on amateurs or influencers. Um. And that trend is shifting. And then at the same time we see. non-Indian brands coming into the space, and they're looking at, um. They're looking at how I match my customer persona with where I can find those people. Right. So. So if you look at the demographic of a trail runner, it's similar to people who are interested in golf, with the exception of like one runs and one group doesn't. But, um, that's why there are car brands that are sponsoring. Yeah. I mean, that was really interesting. You actually dug into a few things that I hadn't necessarily been thinking about with that specific topic that I think it'd be fun to unpack. And I think even if you get a step away from the non relatable brands in terms of like the non shoe brands running apparel brands and all that stuff, and you just look at the running world as a whole. At the end of the day, these companies, they're investing in athletes to some degree to sell shoes or to sell shirts and shorts and socks and whatnot. And it's tough to put a number on. What is it worth? How much is an athlete who wins? Western states win the Boston Marathon? Worth goes to the Olympics worth like, what's the dollar sign on that? And I mean, you can quantify it to some degree, but I can much more easily quantify, oh, if X influencer is wearing my shoes when they're doing their speed work video or whatever it happens to be, I know X number. You're going to see this I know x number. People are going to click on the link that they put because they send me the report afterwards. And on top of it all it is, is writing a check and having them plug it into the thing that you've already vetted, which is their Instagram formula, more or less. So like if I'm a running brand, if I'm a shoe brand, I'm like, what would I like to see my product on? I can go back on their Instagram and say like, okay, this is what their routine looks like. Would my product fit in there nicely? If the answer is yes, I wrote them a check. I don't have to send a video team out there. I don't have to send out like a PR team or spend any more money other than the money I'm giving them, because they already have that already in place. You're plugging it in. So what's fascinating is that I've had a lot of these conversations here at Tyree, the running event um, around exactly that. So. 1s Right? So a few years ago, it became really popular for pro athletes to be a part of a team. And I was like, okay, but any of these setups, northern Arizona Elite was doing it right from the beginning with content. And they were posting, they were sharing the story, they were doing all this stuff and they like to have media training that goes around being an athlete and, and. 2s There's a huge investment that goes into that. Hoka is paying all this money to create that infrastructure to have it happen. Meanwhile, the work of an influencer or, uh, you know, a single person or entity, media entity can do all of that on their own. So like when I do a brand deal, uh, I have a person that manages brand partnerships, and then under her, somebody who does video and somebody who does social. So a brand can tell us creative strategy that they want executed on. Do we want top of funnel awareness? Do we want middle of funnel consideration? Do you want a bottle of funnel bottom of funnel conversion content? And then we create it and then we send it to them and then it lives for them in perpetuity. They have rights to it. They paid for it. And I'm not doing anything besides being behind the camera. Other people are doing all of this stuff and executing against what the brand wants, or we're operating as an agency at a fraction of the price that you would pay an agency. So it's sort of like doing all of the work for the brand, with the brand not needing to actually do any of the work besides, like, tell us what the content that they want is and tell them and sign a check. Right. And so you have a guy like Mike Kafui who's doing these shoe reviews, and he's like weaving his shoes into, um, into the, the videos that hundreds of thousands of people are watching. And so exactly what you're saying, like they have a calculation, the brand has a calculation of like what is the value of 100,000 impressions? What is the value of integrating a shoe into this review that x number of people are going to see. And then he's creating all that content for the brand. I just spoke with a friend who does shoe reviews and she's like, I, I tracked $1.2 million of shoe sales this year, and that's only what she can track through, like referral links. I'm like, there are few people who can say that, first of all, that they know that number and second of all, that that number is that large. And so. The price of working with someone like that versus anything else. I mean, whatever her price is, is worth it because she's not asking for $500,000 or whatever it is. Right? Like it's it would be crazy to, um. And so when you have this, like, one stop turnkey operation that a lot of podcasts or creators or influencers have, it's really hard to argue for the alternative that like, none of this is charity, right. And so. 1s We we as, as consumers of the sport, like the competitive aspect of running and racing and like, I like watching you race and Nicole and and everyone else that, you know, I've seen at Western States and, um, all these races and I hope we can figure out a way that both can exist in harmony so that we can continue to support people who just want to run fast. And that's like, that's what they care about. And that's great. And there's also the calculable, like, formulaic approach of working with someone who can create content and convert with that content as well. And I hope, I hope both can exist synergistically and grow in alignment. And What's becoming a trend more and more is, is that cross-pollination or the collaboration between creators and pro athletes? Like, I'm hosting this panel tomorrow and it's with a bunch of athletes and it will be recorded, and then I'll splice and dice it and release it, um, and then make it really easy for the athletes to, to release it as well. Uh, or the brand is doing that. And um, so to me that's like the happy medium, right? You have then its leverage that the brand is working with either an agency or a creator or, or both, and leveraging their athletes and creating stories that can be shared in, in like a turnkey, in the turnkey way. So I had a relationship with Puma around the mile race that the podcast sponsored that they also sponsored in July out in Boulder. And, um, the podcast contributed $1,000 to the pro race because I was like, I think it's still incredibly important to support professional athletics. Like despite. Though everything I've said in the last ten minutes, like I both can be true. I agree with that. And I think all these things are on the business side of things. So we contributed $1,000 to the ProRes. It was like a quarter of the purse and produced a video with, um, Jennie Simpson and Sarah Vaughan and created this content that they were able to promote that linked back to their shoe sponsor and makes them look smart and intelligent because they are. And they were sharing great information and they didn't have to do anything besides hit accept on the collaborator tool collaborator thing. And then they have this wonderful content that, um, Tony with Sony produced. I think you know Tony as well and, and was like very well professionally done and they didn't have to do a damn thing besides show up wearing their branded logo and, and speak. And to me, that's the synergy that we'll see more of going forward, where it's the brand connecting a creator or something like that to their pro athletes. And still, like those pro athletes, need to be like, need to speak well and be coherent and whatnot. Um, and so I just think the job is changing. Um, uh, and I'm curious about your thoughts on that, like being in it. Yeah. Being that person. And then also on the creator side. Yeah. Because when I think of it like this conversation I think it is going to be fun because you have two hats, you're the you're a creator. You're also one of the business owners with Insidetracker. You're very much looking at this from I'm a company that is selling a product, and that product is going to have athletes. That product is going to have customers. That product is going to have, you know, everything that goes into that. Right. And then but you're also a creator. So you can sort of like you can feed into one another with that. And then there's the athlete side, whereas I'm where the athlete hat and the creator hat, I don't where the company has. So together we have like all three of those things to one we share and then two the other two is one or the other. So. The way I look at it is, um, you're 100% right. I think, like, the hard part is you're going to probably always see an ebb and flow of money that is coming into like athlete budgets where like, let's say you have a parent company that owns like a, a variety of different brands and they're looking at that parent companies looking at the budgets as like, well, this company, we need to dump a ton of money on because it's time for them to grow. This company is hurting right now, and they're organizing their grand budget around it. So you might see money come in and out of the individual brands, even though the parent company is the one kind of pulling those strings. So I see the athletes probably having a little bit more. And this has always been the case. It's just going to be more apparent now, perhaps because they technically have other options. 1s You might see a few years where a lot of athlete money's there because the companies have money to spend and they're going to spend it. They have a budget and it's that here's the number and they use it or lose it kind of proposition. And they're much more likely to put money on something that doesn't have as clear of an ROI. And then the athlete also has that added benefit of or as a company, I think there is a little bit of we want to see the sport grow on the competitive side. We want to be able to say we are good at sports. Yeah, so they do see that. So I think they're a little more flexible about not having a direct ROI with an athlete. So maybe the athlete has a little bit of an advantage where like say I was just kind of a middle of the pack runner had a really good creator tool with one of my social media channels. Maybe the company isn't all that concerned, whether they support me through a tough time or not, because they know I probably have other options if I just do the following. Whereas the athlete, you know, the athlete has a rough year, they get injured or something like that, can't compete at the level they want. You know, they may be in trouble in that scenario, but have you so have you felt. More. I don't want to say comfortable, but less stress around performance. After launching your podcast and that kind of stuff. Yeah. So maybe I can tell you kind of my trajectory and then that might help kind of you understand the way I'm thinking about or have been thinking about it. So I never anticipated becoming a professional athlete. That was something. In fact, I have a hard time still sort of acknowledging that in my own mind that like, part of who I am is competing at a professional level in like, you know, I was like every kid for the most part. I dreamt of it. But I got to a point where I realized, you know what? The NBA and the NFL ain't happening. Need a little more hype for right? And even the sport. I was good at running. It was like, yeah, I'm not going to the Olympics. And you know, that was clear enough to me at an early enough age. I chose a career path that was not in athletics, and it wasn't until ultramarathon kind of became something I got interested in. And then that's where it started to grow. And I started having some coaching success too, along the way where I was like, you know what? This is a reality. And if I don't take advantage of it now, I can't come back in ten years. I'm meant to do it. Can I be a professional athlete now? Yeah. So it was one of those things where I had enough momentum to take the risk. Um, I signed a three year contract, essentially, and that was like, okay, I can try this out for three years, see what happens if I belly flop? I'm going back to teaching. That was 15 years ago. That was in 2015, 2015. So okay. Eight years ago. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. So then when I did that, my mindset was, okay, I'm a professional athlete, but I'm not a professional athlete who, when I finish my career, whether it be three years, ten years or 15 years, I'm going to be sitting on $1 million. Yeah. So it's like something else has to be developed along the way in order for this to be sustainable. But do you think most are thinking that way? No. Yeah, well I don't they're definitely people who aren't, let's put it that way. Do you think that's a majority? 2s Um, because that's I would yeah, I would say the majority isn't thinking about it enough. At the very least, I think they may be thinking about it passively, and they may be putting some kind of low input effort into trying to do something like that. But it's not anything to the scale that I would feel comfortable with. So for me it was like. I'm curious. So I started out with coaching and running and then that turned into, oh, I love going on podcasts. So I went on a bunch of podcasts, and I really leaned into that world early. So as a podcast host, I'm five years old, but as a podcast guest, I started doing that in like 2011. So really early in podcasting and, and, you know, I've had a lot of success with that. I've been on Joe Rogan twice, Lex Friedman's podcast. So I've been on some of the biggest podcasts in the world as a guest. And to me, I was thinking to myself, where are the inputs that can work alongside what I'm doing as a professional athlete, that I'm interested in enough in that I'm not going to get so sick and tired of it that I hate my job. When it becomes my job, if it becomes my job. I didn't have I. I'm starting to appreciate social media a lot more now in the last few years, but originally I didn't. I kind of didn't like it much at all. So I leaned into podcasting, leaned into coaching a little bit more, and then kind of used social media as something that I've been trying to do better over the last couple of years. But since I had a lot of success with podcasting in athletics and stuff, some of my social media accounts have gotten decent enough momentum where they're there for me as long as I decide to engage with them. Yeah. Uh, but yeah, I was the whole time I was terrified of, like, essentially you break your foot or. Right. Yeah. Or just, you know, you I mean, athlete contracts are very you would think there would maybe be a little more organization behind them, but there really isn't a degree where sometimes you're getting the news in the 11th hour. Yeah. I mean, I've had scenarios where it's December. I don't have a firm answer from an athlete contract. And it's like, at this point I should have been exploring alternatives months ago if I really wanted a reasonable list of things to have to counter with, because some of it is a counter thing to where it's like, if I go and say, hey, I want this, like, okay, we get you want this, but this is what we're going to give you. Unless I can come and say, well, no, I'm going to go over there because they're going to give me that. If you don't, you don't you don't have any leverage. So I think leverage can be hard as an athlete because you're in the middle of a racing season. You also have to be thinking about, I mean, you can have an agent, I guess, for ultrarunning that is available, but it's not something that's very common, I guess. Um, but you're, you're, you're thinking about that stuff. So, I mean, I was just always terrified that, like, I would get to say November, December and they'd be like, turns out we're not going to pay you anything anymore. Or like you said, break your leg or or take me, for example, I've had a string of injuries the last couple of years where I haven't put up nearly the results I had earlier in my career. You know, thankfully, I've kind of got some momentum back on that front, and I'm really looking forward to racing next year. Uh, but had I not had the outputs from my podcast, social media coaching and guesting on podcasts. You know, I don't know that if I were my sponsor, I would have kept me around. I would have probably at least given me a pay cut. Yeah, but when it comes to the end of the year and they're like, okay, like, give yourself a grade. And you know, that's sort of a conversation I can say. Here's the download numbers. Here's the Instagram engagement. Here's my coaching business. Here's the number of podcasts I went on. You know, here's where you would expect to get from, uh, reach standpoint. Uh, if I go on to X podcast and mention your product and things like that, and that all has grown for me along the way. And it's been something where I've leaned on those different inputs in different degrees along the way. But I've always known I needed them there, and I've always known there's going to be a day where I'm no longer valuable as a competitive athlete, and it could be sooner than I'd like it to be. So I need to have something in place that's sustainable to the degree where eventually where I would say I got here maybe in the last couple years, where now, like if I lost my athlete sponsorship. I mean, I don't like losing money, like, but if I did, I wouldn't lose sleep over it. I would just be like, you wouldn't be on the streets. No, not at all. Not even close. So yeah. So I've gotten to the point now where, like, the athlete contract stuff is like, you know, I want to get paid. What I'm worth for that. And I want to still lean into that when I can, um, like any person with a business is going to want to try to, like, leverage as much as, yeah, maximize your potential there. But I also know that, like for me, the major growth opportunities going forward that don't have a ceiling on them are the other metric stuff. So then it just becomes a balance. You know, I wouldn't say it's easy because I definitely stay really busy. There's times where I think to myself, it'd be a lot nicer to be relaxing right now versus, you know, you know, doing coaching stuff, editing podcasts, creating social media content and things like board. I get the sense, yeah, like people have asked me this week and they're like, how do you or this week, how do you have a full time job and a full time podcast? I'm like, I don't know, but I don't know. I don't. First of all, the podcast is not full time. And I don't know that I would be satisfied with like having copious amounts of free time. And you feel it feels like you're in a similar boat. You know what the one of the best things I learned. So when I was, I was teaching for about five years before I kind of went pro athlete coach podcast and all that stuff I just talked about. And, you know, teaching can be stressful, but if you're not an administrator, there's 12 weeks where you can do whatever you want and they're not asking you to do anything, really. I mean, there's some professional development, but most of the professional development with teaching is better done during the school year because you actually have the actual hands on side of things because you're actually in the classroom doing it. So building your professional development stuff around the things you're actually doing in the classroom tends to be more productive, in my opinion. So I had essentially three months where I could live as a real professional athlete even before I was one. And what I learned was every year by August, I was starting to really crave something different, because there's only so much running you can do before the margin of diminishing returns kicks in there, and then you're just kind of like, all right, you know? And and then if you have a bad workout, you're just sitting there like, yeah, thinking about when do I get to the next one, how do I remedy this? And heaven forbid you have a bad race. And I just didn't like the way that felt. So I always knew I needed to be doing other things too. So it was kind of what works. Well, what am I interested in? Where can I kind of exercise my curiosities that also can feed into a career of some shape or form? Cool. 1s Yeah. Yeah, it's. But I mean, I guess to go back to kind of the topic, it's I'll be interested because I hadn't necessarily thought it to the degree you did with the non running related stuff to the degree where it could be a scenario where. Let's let the athletes have the shoe sponsorships and let the creators have the car. I mean, I've felt guilty at times over working with, like, I have a couple of endemic sponsors and I've felt guilty because, again, like I have a full time job and. 1s I like. Part of me is like, okay, that's like eating from the same piece of pie or same pie. And should I leave that for the people who need it to put food on their table? And then the other piece of it is like, I really like being the first at things and establishing like, this works, you should scale it. And so like with the solar company, for example, I said to them there based in Austin, I said to them when I met with them in Austin, I was like, I'm not unique. Like, we're going to do this, we're going to crush it, and then you're going to sponsor other athletes. And that's exactly what they did, including people who are full time athletes. And so to me, that was incredibly validating that like this thing that I had a hypothesis with worked and that now that they know they can ten x it and pay more people more money. And that was really rewarding for me to do similar things with, with um. Sponsors in the running space. Um, and it's not like a new sponsored podcast anymore. But some brands are still new at sponsoring podcasts. And so it's like creating a structure with them of what does this look like? You come to us with what your goals are, and we basically put together something, um, that we think will work and, and aim for, you know, 2 to 4 x return on ad spend. Sometimes it's ten x, sometimes it's as high as 13 x, and then it's like a land and expands for them. Like they do something, they test it and then they grow. We had a conversation with a shoe brand, uh, about this, um, two hours ago. And I was like, you want to talk to five creators at the same time? We can pull it all together and we'll be the one stop shop for you to execute against all of this. And, um, like, they've not done it before. They're a big climbing brand and a big, big ski brand and so I really liked the process of being the first and and like growing it with, with the brand and then showing them that again, I'm not unique and that there are plenty of other people that can do something similar in that. Um, in that process, I keep saying I'm not unique, but the person who helps me with the podcast, Emily, would say you are unique. But anyway, um, and so but yeah, I do still have that guilt around. Like, sometimes I think that the pro athletes should get the running brands, but there's no use in harping on that because like there's no union, there's no consensus. And it's like a total free for all. Yeah. And so the other piece of the puzzle is that some people are just willing to work for handouts and, and you know, they get a pair of socks and they're stoked on making social media posts and, and ad reads on, on podcasts. And so some of it for me is like I want to establish. Value and and force the brands to understand that like podcasting it is a channel similar to radio, similar to TV and all the digital versus traditional media, like it's real and it's not it's not like a value in kind trade unless the value is truly valuable. And it's, you know, more than just like a $50 product. And so some of it is like, I want to protect the people who are willing to give it away, not protect. I want to like, encourage them, encourage them to not do that. Right. I've had a lot of conversations with Tina meier about this, um, with Laura Green, with all these people who, like, truly command the value that they deserve and are working against the people who would do, like a year deal for 500 bucks for or like trading a couple of pieces of consumable stuff in in exchange for like dedicated social posts or ad reads. And there's so much of that stuff happening, and the more that it happens, the more it it cheapens the experience for professional athletes and for people who are full time creators, because you can't put food on your table with value in kind trades unless it's like a deal with Whole Foods and they're giving you $100 a week. Yeah. If. Yeah, that would be a fun one. Yeah. Seriously. Um, shout out to Whole Foods in Austin. Like maybe there's your. Yeah, there's your thing. But, um, yeah. So some of it is, is that like, I know. 1s In a way that many people don't like. The value of that type of exposure. And having been in this space for over ten years and working at a company that I like. 1s First company I worked with. We developed a brand ambassador program. Before an ambassador programs were common. So this was a novel idea back in 2012. And. 1s And like now it's like a real thing. And it's a channel. There are people at companies who are solely focused on this. They have KPIs that are related to it. So if it's professionalized on one side, it should be professionalized on the other. So I like to think that I'm helping to push the professionalization of what you can get from doing something like that so that people don't get taken advantage of, because that's been happening for as long as these types of things have existed. Mhm. Yeah. Yeah. It's interesting. I mean I do want to go back to what you were talking about too, and just kind of like the synergy between the influencer and the athlete because it is one of those things where like if you hop online, right, you can see the king of the I sometimes I like, I'll follow some discussion that is like people are trying to say, like they're almost putting like a moral thing upon it. And it's like, if you're a professional athlete and you find yourself in a situation where you're bashing influencers because, oh, this, this, this guy broke three hours in the marathon, but he carried that GoPro. The whole just just run the race and enjoy the it's like it's like that's going to create a chasm between the influencer groups and the athlete groups when they should be like what you were saying, finding ways to congruency. Yeah. Because when I have my experience with the influencers, um, like on social media, uh. It has been very positive from the when I have my athlete hat on in terms of just they want to talk to me and they want to hear about just, you know, what goes into running. 647 pace for 100 miles and stuff like that, that I'm doing because they know what it feels like to run hard. They're not just out there with their cameras. A lot of the run fluency ers are actually doing a fair bit of running themselves. And some of them have like, uh, really cool goals. Like, I just had a guy, Jeremy Miller, on the podcast and, uh, he's, uh, he's, he's kind of like a bit of a hybrid athlete. But, you know, he ran sub 245 at Chicago and that was born out of blowing up at his first marathon, going out too fast and just working hard. He's got a great Instagram page. I'm really good at it. And I love doing engagement stuff with him. And you know, when he has a question about, hey man, I'm doing this 100 K race, how should I do this differently and stuff like that. There's a lot of mutual back and forth sharing and stuff like that. Where I find it to be like, this is kind of cool. I'm learning from you because you obviously know how to do this Instagram thing, and you're learning for me because I know how to do this running thing, and I think there's a lot more opportunity there and there should be conflict. So I hope you're right about that. I hope it gets to a point where, like, maybe even companies work with directly with influencers to say, here's our athlete team, let's get them all kind of in a position where they're doing what they can be doing on and building like what we were talking about, where they have something other than just race results to lean on. Yeah, I mean, that's what that's what I'm, that's my relationship with Puma. It's like leveraging athletes as part of it because their platforms are much bigger than mine. And I have the capabilities that I have capabilities that through the people I work with that they don't have. Um, the other piece is. 2s There was something I wanted to say previously and I forgot what it was, but, um. Yeah, I just think that it's the. Oh, yeah. About the, like, competitive amateur runners. So much of my time on the professional side has been working with athletes. Right. I'm a three hour marathoner but I've trained hard or and I've trained hard. So we'll be like oh that's really fast. But to people that I like some of the circles I'm in, like that's a, that's a jog, right? For you. That could be a jog in the long run. Yeah. Right. Yeah. Exactly. And so but the process of that for me is. At least from where I from my understanding is relatable in in that if you're a five hour marathoner and you want to get after it and and brake for 45, or if you're a 230 marathon or as a woman and or as a guy and want to, you know, get down to OTC or your 245 woman that wants to get to 237, like whatever your relative. Like a big goal, the process is pretty similar across the board. The time investment for improvement at the high end is obviously much bigger, but like it's why I can run with gold medal winning Olympians and have them be curious about my training and the workout I did last week. And if I were just, you know, jogging around without goals, um, which is fine. Like if that's what gets you out the door and that's what makes you happy, that's great too, to me, like that. That doesn't satisfy my itch. And that's why the process that I take when I'm training can be relatable to the athletes. So there's so much room for, for, overlap in the storytelling of that. And that's why I started my podcast because I wanted to get better. I was stumped on this three hour barrier, and I was totally obsessed with it. And I was like, I have a lot of really smart people in my circle. And I was having conversations with it was actually a conversation with Zach Miller in 2018. That led to me thinking about making this podcast, making my podcast. Initially, he was running 150 miles a week. At the time, I had just seen him and Hayden race. I was actually running a ten K at North Face in 2016 when they were racing each other. Epic throwdown, by the way. Yeah, and I got passed by Zach at the end. I was running six miles and he was running 50, and he blew my freaking doors off. And the sounds that were coming out of that man were just nuts. And so then later in 2018, I saw him, uh, we did the incline in Colorado Springs, and then we got dinner afterwards. And that man put on a clinic of eating and climbing stairs. And I asked him. I was like, why do you do this? How do you keep going? And he put his fork down and talked for ten minutes. And that came out of the curiosity of how do you dedicate that much time to one thing? And in the pursuit of getting better, I was. 1s Attempting to do the same thing, meaning a similar process of getting better. I wasn't trying to run 50 miles at a six or whatever pace. Mhm. Um, but to me that's the, that's the relatable aspect and that's, that's why the athletes, that's why athletes who are sharing their story can weather the storm of not having the performances they're looking for because they're interesting. People like you are interesting people. You have a personality. You have all these things that you're doing. You have, you know, a desire to engage in conversation with people who are a fan of you. All these things. Like, that's why you continue to get contracts despite not having the performances that you would like. If you didn't have that, you probably wouldn't have those contracts. And I wonder if like, those are conversations that have happened with, with sponsors or not, but like that's the essential part of the athlete puzzle to me, of working with a brand as a pro athlete or working with a brand as a creator, like it's all about the story and the connections. And what can you do to like, talk about something that is so silly? Running. Why do we do it? You ran 100 miles at 647. Pace like that must be really freaking hard. You didn't. Nobody was making you do that, right? So why did you do that? Talk about that kind of stuff. Like, that's the stuff that's interesting. Not the fact that you did it, but why you did it, how you did it. And then what did you do next after hitting this epic goal and. Those are the people that are interesting. Those are the people that people want to follow, and those are the people that will keep getting these contracts. Yeah, it's really interesting stuff. I do want to go back to just understand a little bit more about kind of your, your side of things, because you mentioned it a couple times and how, how it all kind of maybe came to be. So you reach out to Puma and say, hey, I have this, this situation where I can help you and your athletes. How does that actually maybe take me back to like, what was the general, what started that to the point where you were able to reach out to a company like Puma and even offer something like that. Yeah. So I reached out to a friend who worked at Puma at the time, um, via another friend, um, who, like, kept suggesting a shout out to Sarah Pardus. Um, so I connected with my friend Hannah, who's like, oh, I'm actually leaving, but here are the people you should talk to. And so I spoke with them. Um, and then we're like, what are your goals? Oh, we're really interested in, um, growing in running. We're getting back into it. Uh, where are you interested in? Oh, Boston and Boulder. Oh, I happen to, like, live in both places. Um, this is great. So it was like meeting them where they were literally and metaphorically, in that they were looking to connect with people in the running community in two very specific places. I happen to have a house in one, an apartment and another. And I was spending a lot of time in both. Um, and then they were focused on the Boston Marathon. I love the Boston Marathon. And, um, they wanted to highlight the stories of their athletes. So we were talking about electric vehicles for trail running, matching the audience with the customer or the customer, with the audience, with a brand, with the with the customer. This was the exact same thing. I had everything that they were looking for in the ability to distribute content or speak to runners in the places that they were interested in. So if that weren't the case, it probably wouldn't have worked. And so then that led into a discussion around like, how do we how do we make it? Clear that this brand is doing cool stuff in the sport. Well, let's talk about it on the podcast. It doesn't necessarily matter if you're attending, you just should probably know that they're doing cool stuff, and that was valuable to them. And then there was value in like, I hosted a kickoff dinner with their entire company and or a panel with their athletes at their kickoff dinner around the Boston Marathon, and then hosted two group runs. And their athletes were part of it. And we videoed interviews with them and then distributed that content over the next couple of weeks. So for them, it was like, this is what we're interested in and we think you can help us execute on that. And then. We did it again in July. And so I went to them and I said, hey, I've got this. Actually, the goal came about because we were doing A5K series, A5K time trial series with another partner at Boulder Boulder. And I was like, oh, could you send me a pair of fast shoes? And they're like, oh yeah, how fast is how fast are we talking? And I was like, oh, as fast as legal. Like jokingly, yeah. They're like, oh no. But like, what distance do you mean? Because we have a really fast shoe, um, for like a mile and track stuff. And I was like, well, I've never broken five in the mile. Maybe we should do that. So that led to a conversation about how do we do a fun event in Boulder centered around breaking five in the mile? And I was like, why don't we have your pro athletes pace? Um, and so originally it was going to be Jenny Simpson and Sarah Vaughan pacing. Unfortunately, it didn't end up working out due to scheduling, um, and fitness levels, I guess. Um. 1s Mostly. It's mostly a joke on that, because either of those two women could jog a five minute mile at any time. But Jenny was getting back to marathon training, so she wasn't doing high end work. And Sarah was whisked away to Hawaii for an anniversary weekend. But she was originally planning to pace that. So we were going to leverage Puma athletes as pacers for a bunch of amateurs trying to run sub five in the mile. And that's the race that the podcast sponsored, the pro race. Um, and then we created, uh, a seven minute video on why do we do hard things that was centered with, uh, Jenny Simpson and Sarah and, um, a couple of amateurs, a guy from Boulder who's like, 40 something years old, and his kids make fun of him for being over the hill. And his agreement was, as long as I can break five annually, I'm not over the hill. Yeah. And and so like we had and then we had a conversation with, um, another runner, uh, Flannery Davis Love who actually won that. So we had a breaking five heat in the mile high mile race. And she won the heat. She broke five. And then she ran three two, 3652 at the McCurdy Micro Marathon to qualify for the trials with an eight second buffer. So shout out to Flannery on that. Um, but that one was all about creating content around, like, why do we do hard things? And Jenny really anchored that. And so that aspect of it was like, hey, I want to highlight your athletes and, and the wisdom that they have and the popularity that they have. Jenny in particular, Sarah also, and particularly in Boulder, um, to really highlight and like to use it as a teachable and motivational video. And then they shared it and I was like, this is great. Like, you're giving me access and I'm giving you exposure. And it's being leveraged by the athletes with a lot more reach than what I have, but I'm serving it up on a platter for them to just hit accept. And I kept going back to them with this idea. We're doing something here at, um, Tre that they approached me for. Um, and so it's just like the whole part is, is delivering the whole like. 1s The whole enchilada is like, how do you deliver value? You have to know what somebody's looking for. And so if you know what somebody is looking for and it matches up with skills that or features and benefits that or capabilities that you have, that's a one plus one equals three scenario. I'm constantly looking for these opportunities. Um, whether professionally and what I do in my day job or through the podcast or just life in general, to me that's like, that's the fun stuff. So is most of the stuff that you're, like proposing to companies like Puma through the podcast episodes and then social media stuff and, and in person activations too. That's kind of like a three pronged. Yeah. So like an example, we're having a conversation with Hyde Park today. Hyde Park makes great water bottles and things like that. You can put your ass fuel in it. Um, and, and uh, they're, they're promoting Cutlass Racing. And so I said to them, I was like. We haven't agreed on this yet, so they're getting a bonus here. But anyway, what I said to them, I was like an athletic brewing guru initially because they put a call out to their ambassadors and customers to ask your local bartender if they are athletic. And so they're like, okay, we have like a large sales team basically going out and selling for us. And so they were able to grow the purchase orders from bars nationwide by putting out a call to, um. 1s To their customers and their fans. And so I said to hydropower, I was like, what if we did something similar like, ask your favorite race to go couples and maybe do it with hydropower. And they have this whole program where the race gets 300 free cups and this and that. Um, and so part of it is like pitching ideas that are non-traditional, right, that like, nobody else is doing that. Um, I guess besides athletics. I hate being boring and I hate just doing what everyone else is doing. So that's why, for the most part, I like to have the thought that like, oh, maybe I should leave the sponsorship dollars for pro athletes or, or people who do this full time. And then the other half of it is like, well, I'm not doing it in traditional ways. And it's also a business decision for the brand that delivers on what they're looking for and helps drive their business forward. And so for me, it's like I'm not just pitching, oh, do you want 5000 impressions per episode? Let's talk. It's like, no, my thing is sustainability and motivation and mental health. And these things like there are a couple of things I care a lot about and that's where I center. Um. The partnerships and discussions about promoting other brands and things like that. And if something fits into that, I feel very strongly about doing it. Like I met this company that does some really cool stuff for people who like to be outdoors. And I was like, well, yeah, that's great. That's like bullseye. And it's like it helps with health and safety and, and emergency preparedness and this kind of stuff. I was like, everybody should learn about this. Um, and so for me, it's not interesting to just support a brand because like, oh, this table, let's sell ten of these tables. Like, that doesn't get me going. Yeah. And so for me, it's about like, I understand and value the trust that the audience has and your audience has in you. Um, and trust is what is being said. Trust is earned in drops and lost in buckets. And so like there's a lot of, um. 1s There's a lot of power in that and a lot of responsibility in that. And so I feel that responsibility to be to to work with brands that are interesting and do it in creative ways. So yes, it's with the podcast. Yes, it's social. Yes, it's with some in person stuff. But it's not just like, oh, here's a podcast with 5000. Like how do we do this differently? How do we have some conversation that's not currently happening? And so I've had a lot of conversations with pro athletes about sponsorship. And so Finn Melanson and I did a podcast like, I don't know, a year and a half ago now. And we talked about sponsorship and the state of affairs and running and whatnot, and we both made an offer like, oh, we'll give 30 minutes of time to the first ten people who ask. And both of us did that for ten athletes. And those kinds of conversations were fascinating because people had no clue what to do. And I was just like, I spoke with a couple of people and I saw one of them yesterday, and he was like, man, my, this is a professional athlete. He's like, I'm like, good for next year. From the ideas you gave me, like, I'm gonna be able to do this and this is someone who's running professionally and that's all he's doing. Um, and. And the guidance is like, look at what you're wearing. Look at what you're consuming. Look at what's in your bedroom. Look at what's in your kitchen like, what are the things that you care about that you're buying that are easy for you to represent. Reach out to those brands. 1s And just tell that story and it works. Yeah. You actually brought up something interesting at the end there that I wanted to ask you about, too, because I find that if you just look at advertisement across like the history, I guess, or even the spectrum of it, you kind of have like the more traditional radio TV advertisement where there's really no connection point between, say, Fox and the brand that's advertising on Fox or, you know, you name it and signing checks. Yeah, yeah. So it's basically, yeah, it's just like, here's how many eyeballs are going to see this program. That's what it costs. You pass this and we run your 32nd ad and in podcasting you have some of that. I think there's like, you know, you'll get like a podcast where it's like, oh, I'm going to read some ads at the beginning of this. Right. But I think most of it is going towards what you were saying, where it's like, let's find something where there's an authentic usage piece there versus it being like, oh, you make this product, I can sell it type of a relationship. And I find that, um, since I've been since I've been doing the podcast solo now it's a lot easier, obviously, because now you're, you're it's really just you and your interest versus, well, if the co-host has something that they like and they want to well, we'll do one for them. And then if I have one and then we kind of have a little bit of a two person agreement with that. But um yeah. So now it is like that. It's like I rather have a situation where it's like one, not like, oh, let's just do a dozen ads. Let's. Just do an annual partnership and catch this thing. So it's more like that it's more likely to tell your story versus just catch like, like some random person who might buy your product and then who knows if they even use it, right? Versus here's your product, I use your product. This is how I use your product. Here are some resources that you can use to find out if the product would be good for you, and if it is how you would use it versus how I use it. So two things there. One that's called value selling. Like communicating value about something like I'm a salesperson and there's like a scarlet letter. Scarlet words like people think salespeople are slimy. Some people think that. And the way I see it is like I'm helping you find a solution that works for you with something that is going to be extremely valuable for your life. Otherwise, I wouldn't be selling whatever I'm selling or promoting. And the other piece is, yeah, it's like if you have this ethos that you hold true to, first of all, if you stray from that, it's going to be really confusing. But if you stick to it, it's going to be a lot easier and additive anytime you add something else to it because you're building trust. That's why I've gone with solar, with electric, with couplets like those are the things that I care about, right? Like if you were to cycle your water bottle, it's probably not going to help very much. But unless every single person on the planet does it. But most things don't get recycled appropriately. So it's like, uh, filling the ocean with a, with a, um, straw. Whereas things like solar or removing, I don't know, hundreds of thousands of cups from races like that seems impactful. Um, uh, reducing, uh, gasoline consumption and, and, you know, using components that are sourced in America versus in Europe or Asia and put on a ship and sent all the way across the world, like removing those components of, of the supply chain, seems to me to be beneficial, sort of separate from the fact that like 90% of carbon emissions come from like 50 companies. Like we should get after that too. But like, I don't have any control over that. I could do that like, uh, again, filling a, um. The ocean with a straw. But I feel like I can have influence over things that seem like they are strong enough. 1s Uh, magnitude of impact. And so, like Tina Meyer, I mentioned her before. Like, her whole thing is sustainability. She wrote a book with Zoe Rome about becoming a sustainable runner. Like this is a great book, both a sustainable runner related to running and being a human that lives on planet Earth. And to me, those things are important as well. And it's cool how she's built her whole persona and online personality in real life, personality around like this core thing. And I think people respect the hell out of her for it or like. Couldn't care less, but you're on one side or the other or the other. And if you are someone that cares about something like that, you will take her word over someone else's. Because you're your. You align with, with them as a, as a person and what they're putting out into the world. So that's sort of how I, how I go about it. Like there are things I care a lot about and there are things I don't give a shit about. And I am very clear with where I spend my time and the products and brands and services that get promoted. And I also don't think that people have. Like, I don't want to say like. 3s You just, like, have to care about something. Right? Yeah. You know, you know what I've started doing differently when it comes to, like, partnership agreements rather than going in thinking, this is what I need. How am I going to do whatever? How am I going to figure out what you want and so that you'll give me that right to like, a cause, like, you know, early on, how can we help each other? You're right. Yeah. Early on as an athlete, it was like, you know, well, what race should I do? What should I target? You know, how am I going to make you happy with this result? Now, what I do is I go in, I'm like, this is what I'm going to be doing, right? And where do you fit in here? So it's like, do you fit in in the podcast? Do you fit in on the way I'm structuring my Instagram account? Do you fit in on the races that I'm going to want to target and everything that goes into all of that? And if a company has a product that I would like to use, because obviously I have to be able to use it. Right. And they say, well, we like that, that and that. Well, that's the whole catalog. Right. So then we're going to work well together because you're going to fit in authentically versus like I go to another company, they say, you know, we really do like the podcast, but we don't really care about the running. We don't really care about your social media account. We don't really. Or maybe we care, but we're not going to spend any money on it. And it's like, well, you're less interesting to me because we don't even have we're not even aligned. Right. And so there's plenty of data that suggests that a multi-channel approach is more effective. So the brand gets better value. And they also have to work with fewer people to get a bigger impact. So. A brand would rather work with one person who has a podcast and newsletter. Instagram all these things because that's one point of contact for 4 or 5, uh, channels. And if you're seeing something in one place and another place is another place, and the message is cohesive, like the principle of, you need 5 to 7 impressions. Now it's probably 10 to 15 impressions because we're bombarded with this kind of stuff. Um, if you can do that in one place, that's that's valuable. And so then on the flip side, this idea of like collectives or like you bundling up with a couple of friends and saying, hey, brand XYZ, like, I'll be your point of contact if you want x number of impressions. I had a conversation with fidelity about this. And fidelity has a $50 million marketing budget. So my 5000 podcast impressions are like peanuts to them. Like them they can't even have a meeting to talk about that because it's so small. But if I bring ten podcasts together for a reach of 500,000 or something like that, then it's interesting and then you have one point of contact that they're all aligned. Then you go broad and have that reach that's meaningful to them. They don't really care because they're looking for impressions of a traditional brand like that. Um. 1s That's that same multichannel approach through one point of contact. And so I think we're going to see more of that kind of stuff. In theory, agents could be doing this in sort of like bundling their athletes together and remaining the one point of contact gets kind of hard. Um, but I think we'll see more of that kind of stuff as more traditional and large brands move into this space. Again. We saw a car company, a fashion company. Um, I think it's just the tip of the iceberg and that people are going to realize that, like, there's a huge opportunity here within running and we're just getting started. Mhm. Yeah that's for sure. Yeah. Yeah. We are just getting started I think when it comes to just the growth of the sport and you know I'm doing a podcast series right now where it's just like the hybrid athlete or you talk to Eric Henman not yet know. Oh I know who that is. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Um yeah. He's big into that. Yeah, yeah. I haven't spoken to him. Yeah. Have you had him on, on, on your podcast or. I haven't had him on the podcast. I spent 45 minutes in the sauna yesterday. Oh really? Getting to know him. Yeah. Um, he's on a cranks and gets really hot. And it was like, okay, like, this is a great conversation, but I need to get that all out of here. Yeah. Um, but yeah, people like that. And he would have a really interesting perspective on all these questions as well. Yeah. I mean, what made me interested in it actually was the coaching arm of what I do as I started getting a lot more requests from people who historically would have never decided to do an ultramarathon. I had a division, a former Division one offensive lineman, reach out to me because he wanted to run an ultramarathon, and I was the person that he decided was going to help him get there. There were a couple of those guys that, uh, Broncos players that ran Leadville this past year. Uh huh. Yeah, yeah, it's wild. Like I have, uh, I would say probably half of my coaching clients right now are non-traditional runners, like they came from another sport. And I'm super interested in that. Like, what is it that's bringing all these people into running? And then even more specifically, to some degree, ultramarathon running. And from what I can gather, a lot of it is sort of similar to what we've been talking about. We've had these big brands, which I would consider like The Joe Rogan Experience, Cam Haynes and everything he does. Those are brands, they're big. And you take someone like Cam Haines who has got his he. I mean, if you're a hunter, you know who Cam Heinz's. So the campaign says if you really want to be a hunter, get out of the deer stand and do an ultramarathon so you can hike into the backwoods. So now there's hunters that want to become ultramarathon runners because of campaigns. And then you get David Goggins is probably even better. And you going on Rogan or or Kourtney going on Rogan. Yeah. It's like the meeting of the worlds, essentially. It's like, here's the more traditional runner, the more like the person who's kind of been in it, like Courtney and done quite well, obviously. Uh, yeah. As a connection point of like a representative of the sport that gives these people another point of contact other than the person like Goggins or campaigns who first put it on their radar. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it's interesting to me because, like, you have the sport growing because we have I mean, I'm sure you are following all the Utmb stuff where, I mean, it's been a story for a while now where that's a big organization. I mean, it's not Utmb, it's Ironman essentially. 1s Just basically take not taking over the sport, but creating a much larger footprint on the sport than what would have otherwise been done by one organization. And with that comes, you know, problems. I think before, like the whole YouTube Gary Robbins situation, my thought would have been more along the lines of, okay, Utmb is big, they're here, they're not going anywhere. They're going to create a ton of buzz around the sport to people who would have otherwise never heard about it. Utmb is not cheap. That race isn't cheap. It's not cheap to get into YouTube. It's not cheap to get the races. You need to even enter the process of doing Utmb. There's gonna be a ton of people who are interested in doing ultramarathons who just are not going to be in the budget of the Utmb experience, so where do they go? They still want to do an ultra marathon. Well, local mom and pop ultramarathons will stand to grow by catching that portion of the sport too, so I thought this could work out. Um, obviously there has to be, I think at least some sort of, uh, authenticity. Maybe you say in terms of like, let's be mindful of how we do business between the big and the small, which kind of, in my opinion, got encroached on a little bit with Gary Robbins situation. But, um, you take that part away. You know, if you fix that piece, the like, the kind of, like, shady backdoor dealing type stuff. I think it can work. And, you know, I think just like, yeah, the growth. I can't remember what we were talking about when I got on this tangent, but uh oh, I was talking about the hybrid athlete. Yeah. So like, yeah, I'm interested in just kind of talking to people who kind of are coming to the sport from that. And that brings in a whole bunch of different, like, listeners and different brands that would be maybe more interested in, like, say, someone who's a multipurpose athlete versus someone who just runs. Yeah. And then there's the aspect of that type of person being more functionally healthy. And I mean that metaphorically and literally. Right. Like, yeah, I am in my 20s, it was all about speed. And now I'm like, I want to do this for a long time. And at the same time, like I put in a wood stove last week. And so we got a bunch of wood and I bought an ax, and I was out there splitting wood and sawing wood and this kind of stuff, and I'm like, I'm a human who also runs. But like, I do these other things too, that I need fitness for. And like, I was so sore from that. So the hybrid athlete aspect like to me that's going to grow as well as we have the, the Sinclairs and the Huberman preaching Healthspan and healthier longer as we talk about it like and and so like to be functionally fit so that I can go out and, and chop wood for two hours and not and be able to use my thumbs the next day and, and not have my forearms feel like they're all jacked up and. Yeah, exactly. And there's like a primal feeling to something like that. Like I'm out there chopping wood with my own two hands, and I'm putting it in this little vestibule that's going to heat, heat my home and keep me warm. And it came from a tree in my yard. And like that, that seems fun and cool and at the same time, like, that's functionally useful training. And so these hybrid athletes, I also think are going to continue to grow, or the interest in this is going to continue to grow as people realize that, like, hey, I want to be able to pick up my kids when I'm older. I want to be able to walk up stairs when I'm 80 or wipe my own butt or like, have sex and like these things that, like, people care about. Now that you take for granted, just running is not going to enable you to do that. It's going to give you a great VO2 max, and it's going to enable you to potentially stave off some of the cardiovascular challenges. But there are other components to health that I think are becoming more clear and more visible, um, as people are getting sicker and sicker. And so, like some of it to me is like we have a microphone and a responsibility to talk about those things too. And like to influence people in non buying related ways to say, like, think about yourself in 50 years, like you are the healthiest you will ever be right now potentially. Might not be the case, but like extenuating circumstances removed, that's probably true. And you have to work really hard to maintain that for a long time. And so through the work you're doing with coaching or through anything like that, that is critical to the health and wellness of society. So I don't know where I was going with this, but I really like chopping wood and. Yeah, and caring water, I guess. Well, and it's almost the reverse or not the reverse, it's just from another angle where you're more traditionally a runner and you're starting to recognize, hey, there's some value here in the strength world and that sort of thing. Whereas, you know, yeah, like so maybe you decide to enter some sort of a competition where you're chopping wood and running and the Ryan Hall. Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. Go to the Grand Canyon and carry jugs of water out of there. Um, do you have time for one more topic? Yeah. Awesome. So I want to kind of get your perspective too, because we've talked about kind of the different kinds of components here with like there's, there's, there's I guess corporations or companies, there's athletes, there's influencers, creators and all that stuff. You are involved with. Insidetracker. So you I don't know I don't know how much of that you maybe do or don't deal with. But, um, do you have like, let's say put your insidetracker hat on? Is there a process? Yeah. Did you bring it on? Is there like, uh, what do you guys do to look at the sphere like I'm imagining you say? Like most companies at the beginning of the year or the quarter, we have this much money that we're going to spend on advertising. Do you go with athletes? Do you go with podcast hosts? Do you go with influencers? How do you actually, uh, splice up that pie if you can talk about it. Yes. So it's evolved to understand who is our best customer, who are the people that have the best experience with us, and how those are the people who are probably interested in using Insidetracker. So it's all about being healthier, longer. We use a blood test to understand your, your, your biometrics and connect wearable and, uh, potentially DNA information to make recommendations. And so those people are often runners and they're often executives. They're often like people who either have seen a family member decline and, and get less healthy or something. And so these people fit a certain persona. And so our average customer is in their 40s. They're not professional athletes. Um, but they're doing endurance sports or they're doing something. And so we look to see where we can find people like that, or people who have an audience like that and work with those people. So like I mentioned, uh, Ken Rideout, like we just started working with him and, um, not because he's a 228 marathoner, but because he's a 52 year old guy who has other people who are similar and interested in getting better. And if he didn't have the people who are interested in getting better, it wouldn't make sense to work with him. Because if you're not interested in getting better, why would you pay money for a service that's going to help you get better? So our process has evolved over time. Initially it was like runners and then it got slimmed down into more of a specific focus around people who are most likely to be interested and, and sort of growing that pie and and then. Lately it's been a lot like science communicators and people who are interested in distributing science related information, who happen to have a large platform that challenges people who are very good at distributing science information, generally don't have a large platform. Yeah. So that Venn diagram is generally two separate circles, not concentric circles. But then you have people like Andrew Huberman, who is incredibly good at disseminating information and making it approachable. I mean, granted, his podcasts are three hours long, so I don't know how approachable that is for all, but, um, the information contained in that is wonderful. And so that's been sort of the approach like where similar to what we're talking about with Volkswagen, how do we find the people who are most likely to have this, resonate with them and then speak directly to them through the mouthpiece of. Someone who likes the product and wants to educate their audience on it. Mhm. Uh that's interesting. I think the funny thing is I just thought this because you were talking about Andrew Huberman in his three hour podcast. The funny thing about that is he's gotten so big and recognizable now there's like an ecosystem around him where like the three hour podcast gets distilled into by people other than himself. Right. Get distilled into these topics that get bantered around social media. So without him even trying, it becomes sort of bite size, smaller pieces of it too. And people have trained AI models on his content. So you can ask a ChatGPT like, What does Andrew Huberman think about fasted training or sunlight or, you know, anything like that? It's crazy and you can get a good response. Yeah, it's pretty wild. Yeah. So, um. Uh insidetracker. They tell me a little more about the services that they just offer in general. Yeah. So it's all about staying healthier longer, as I said. Um, what we do is facilitate a blood test through either Quest Diagnostics or a mobile draw where somebody comes to you, or you can upload data from, let's say you have a physical done with your physician. Um, that's a more cost effective way to do it if you already have that data. And so then we take that, match it with your demographics, your goals, your lifestyle, your nutrition preferences, and basically say, here's your action plan for XYZ goal. If you want to boost, uh, energy, if you want to improve cognition, if you want to improve heart health, here are the 3 to 5 things to do in order to facilitate exactly that in the most efficient way to do it, given all these variables. Right? So when you create an account, you fill out a profile. It catches like a couple of dozen questions. Every single question is used to personalize that experience. So the reason that we got started and running is because we were like, okay, who cares? Most about performance? Well, people who need to improve their performance and have an acute need to avoid bonking and explain low energy and things like that. And as time has gone on, we've realized that it's valuable for running and also performance at work and with family and and like what it really what I realized very quickly is like, there are simple things I can do to improve my sleep that don't involve sleeping more. And so looking at some of the micronutrient levels that contribute to better sleep quality, like it was like that, my sleep improved within like two weeks and I was waking up feeling refreshed. Um, and so many people go through life like, oh, yeah, I just am busy, so I should be tired all the time. And they just, like, submit to getting worse over time. And so we're here to say, like, you can fight stasis and you can fight the inertia of not doing something and, and regression, like you shouldn't, like say, oh yeah, I'm just getting older. Right. That's lame. Um, you should be able to fight that. And so our hypothesis is that if you give your body what it needs, you'll be able to feel healthier, longer, right? So Peter Attia, Andrew Huberman, all these guys are talking about healthspan versus lifespan. The average lifespan is 79 ish years. The average health span is 61 years. Lifespan is your birthday. The difference between healthspan is how? What? At what point you stop living a high quality life. Why is there an 18 year difference in that? That sucks. Like I don't want to be a part of that. Um, my grandfather died like three weeks ago, and he had Parkinson's. Both of my grandfathers had Parkinson's. So I watched this horrible disease consume a man who was this hotshot lawyer, uh, with the Supreme Court, worked with a bunch of presidents, represented countries, um, uh, globally at the highest level. He used his brain and his mouth for his job forever. And he also used it with families. It's a very loud person. And his his, his his thought. You never wondered what he was thinking. And he couldn't speak and he couldn't eat for like a few months. And that was the worst of it. But it was getting worse for like five years. And so that's the decline of healthspan. I watched my other grandfather do the same thing. Right. Like your brain is there when you have Parkinson's, but your body is not responding to what your brain is telling it to do. Your speech is declining and your, your, your motor functions go away basically. And so I'm like, that sucks. I want to avoid that for as long as possible. And this, this gap reduction of, of the healthspan to lifespan component is like you instead of I don't know how many people are watching this versus listening to it. Instead of going like a long, slow, linear decline which seems brutal and awful. You don't really decline all that much. You don't really decline all that much, and then you just fall off a cliff and die one day. You just don't wake up one day. And to me, that's like, that's that's aspirational, right? You can push off that decline as long as possible and then it's a steep cliff and you're dead. 1s Some people might say, I want to live as long as possible, like I want to live in good health as long as possible. And so what we're doing is an effort to support that. And, um, just understanding your numbers so that when you have health, you know, what you look like physiologically and you can strive for being optimal versus your physician saying, oh, you're normal, come back next year. So many runners are like, oh, I'm tired. And they go to their doctor, they get an iron test and their ferritin is 12, and their doctor says, oh, you're it's a little low, but you know, maybe run a little bit less. We'd say that's super low and you should. Yeah. And you should do something about fixing that. 1s Um, and so it's like it's all about the empowerment of people. And so whether you do insidetracker or you just like reading Peter Attila's Outlive or start listening to Andrew Huberman podcast or like any of these little bite sized things you can do to improve your health and healthspan like that's where the conversation is going. And it's become mainstream to think this way. So I moved to the enterprise sales side of things. I'm working with teams and fire departments and police departments and military and corporate wellness. And so I'm talking to these professional athletes, and they're all listening to Huberman. They're like healthspan. And I've been having these conversations for ten years. And the tone has changed, even with these like 30 year old professional athletes who ten years ago thought they were invincible. And it's just so fascinating that it's like this complete paradigm shift and perception of health and that it's not what you look like on the outside that matters. You could have a six pack and be metabolically unhealthy. And this phenomenon is of skinny fat that has been discussed that like you are, you are, uh, skinny or or normal, um, uh, body weight. Um, but you're metabolically destroyed. There's data that's presented in Peter Taylor's book that suggests that those people are often less healthy than people who are obese, yet have have, uh, totally normal metabolic markers, and that the people who are, who are overweight, um, but but have normal lipids and Applebee and these things. Can live longer and healthier lives than people who are underweight or normal weight and are metabolically, uh, a wreck. It's fascinating. Yeah. It is. Is there anything like this? Because, I mean, I would be interested because you must have like a huge data pool of just like on average, people are not doing so great here versus all this probably isn't something we should be too concerned with. Is there anything that kind of stands out with that where it's like, oh, everyone probably should be getting more magnesium in their diet, or you mentioned iron ferritin. Is there anything that really kind of stands out? So what's wild is it like for the most part it's pretty predictable. So it's magnesium. It's vitamin D and like 50% of premenopausal women are iron deficient. In our population we have 100,000 customers. And we've seen some trends that are abnormal or like what you would not expect. And then we've seen what you would definitely expect. So magnesium is one of the most common mineral deficiencies. I think 35% of our customers are, are, um, clinically low in vitamin D with their first test. Um, and that hormone, uh, is related to every single function in the body, right. So like 35% of people are screwed. Yeah. If they didn't know about this and 50% of women are potentially, um, tired all the time and not and they don't know why. That's like a lot of people. Yeah. Um, so let's say we have 50,000 women. 25,000 women are out there just tired. Right? That's a lot of people with room to improve. And the cool thing is we've published one paper and we're publishing a second paper on the validity of this approach and the ability to use algorithm derived guidance to improve, basically, does it work? The answer is yes, statistically, significantly across the board. That is the case. And so now what we're doing is we're going to police and fire departments to say, oh, we looked at our database of first responders. And this is their health profile baseline. They are experiencing increased levels of stress, increased levels of inflammation, increased, uh, cardiovascular risk through Appleby, which is the best indicator of heart health. And their lipids are out of whack. Oh, by the way, they also improve faster than the general population. So. 1s We're having the conversation with the fire departments who are experiencing cardiovascular events that can cost the department $750,000 per person who gets a heart attack to say, okay, well, 47% of our population who tests with high apob initially it improves. So half of the people with high Applebee, which again is the best indicator of heart health, improve. Do you think it would be valuable for your department to think about? Yeah, to think about this. And the answer is always yes. And the answer is either yes and we're doing something about it or yes. And we should probably have a conversation about this. And so that's a cohort where the average lifespan after retirement is five years. That's why their pensions can be so high because they just die. It's awful. Um, and there's no conversation about health and that's starting. And so what's cool is that the data shows that the people who are using the program improve faster than the general population. So these are firefighters or police officers who use Insidetracker. They're improving faster because they have more, more to improve than the general population. And so we have so much data that can be used in such powerful ways to drive better outcomes . We need like 50 data scientists to just be telling us what to do and who to talk to and how to market it and that kind of stuff. We have a couple and they're very great, but like the opportunity is there to learn a lot about society. And so you have all these other companies that are popping up that don't have ten plus years of history and can't make these conclusions and can't talk about data through having 10 million, um, blood data points and almost ten. Uh, I think it's 2 billion DNA data points to reference. And so it's fascinating how you can. Steer conversation with these people who are like, we're talking with entire states about, oh, your state is spending $1 billion on diabetes and it's increasing by $50 million a year. Would you like that to go away? Well, let's see if we can figure out a way to help increase education or help people think about here's a free takeaway. If you walk for two minutes after eating, it's really good for you. So if you are if you have diabetes or are pre-diabetic, that's like the best possible thing to do besides all these drugs that can basically be a hammer versus a feather on the, on the outcomes. Um, but just like two minutes of walking. So how do you influence and how do you motivate someone who is not motivated or doesn't have role models that go out and run 100 miles in 647 pace, like it's very hard and so so the conversation often has to be around like not just the tip of the spear. Um, elite athletes who are using their body as their machine. But like the 47 year old from Iowa who has a onesie of 9.8. Like, how do we help that person? That's a totally different conversation than how do we help you run faster, longer, healthier? Yeah. That's all super interesting. I mean, I think just being able to say like, hey, we have this data on your specific population. This is what you can expect to see when we run these tests. So they know ahead of time what they're probably looking at and how much of an alarm it is. And then they can start individualizing with each person based on their actual results. Uh, what you said reminded me. I got a friend, Mark Bell. You've probably heard of him, uh, former world record, bench press. Just, you know, bodybuilder, strength athlete. He got interested in running. And, uh, I always. I've said this, I think, before, but, like, there's this probably a couple decades ago at this point, they had a Super Bowl commercial where it was a New York and they just had like 50 bodybuilders running. It was just the weirdest looking thing you'd ever see. And then here's this. This is like, it actually is happening. Like so he's getting into running. But the thing I thought was interesting about, about what you said was, uh, here you have a guy who is almost unlike like like if I, if I decide I wanted to start to get strong, I might look to Mark as like, wow, he's like the holy grail of strength and power, but that's a long goal away. You know, maybe in most cases, an unachievable goal. Right? I can do my best, but I'll never get to Mark. So here he comes down and picks a sport he's probably the worst at, decides he's going to try to get better at it. And along the way he's like, hey, let's start this evening walk group where he's like, I don't care if you're £300 and have never exercised in the last two decades, or if you're super fit, you just want to engage with something like a fun community activity. He had these like evening walks where he got like a whole bunch of people that were kind of following him to do these, like, just like, let's put that into the routine. So like when you said, like the two minute walk, it's like sometimes it's just getting something that a person can wrap their head around and seeing it from a person who, you know, is willing to kind of humble themselves to be like, hey, let's find what I'm bad at, since you've all seen what I'm good at and, and really, uh, kind of make it approachable like that. Absolutely. Jonathan, where can people find you? Um. Today. Austin, Texas. 1s Yeah. At your house? Yeah. Um, on the internet at J. W. Levitt. Um, the podcast for the long run. Uh, when you come to Boulder, there'll be an episode, uh, coming from that. Yeah. With you and Nicole. Um, looking forward to that. And, uh. Yeah. Thanks for having me on. Thanks for these questions. It's been a blast. And I'm glad these cameras didn't die again. Yeah, I know, yeah. We're working through the studios, the studio. Everything is still new to me, but Zach's got a sweet setup here, a super professional, and, uh, all the cool gear and lights, camera and action. Yeah. That's right. Yeah. No, it's been great chatting. I was excited about this episode and the topics, and I didn't expect to have it be as good as I thought it would be. So I'm hoping the listeners are gonna love it as much as I did. Cool. Well, if they've made it this far, I assume they've liked it, or they're putting this in the beginning by listening. You can put this as the promo clip. 2s Awesome. Jonathan. Well, thanks. A bunch of taking some time. Cool. Likewise.