Ep110 • The Future of Trail Running: Community over Competition
Michael Mazarra owns halfmarathons.net + Rogue Expeditions.
He's a firehouse of insight and information and we're all better that he's focusing that energy on trail running through his recent aquisition of Rogue Expedition.
More travel trail running
Less racing, more running together.
Self-expression will drive growth over performance.
Non-elite runners deserve more representation in media.
Robie House Media aims to celebrate non-elite trail running.
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Call RUNMORE649 (786-667-3649). Leave a message for the podcast—hot takes, agreement, anger, or joy.
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Salt Lake Footshills Trail Races. Salt Lake City, UT - May 31, 2025
PATH Projects - My favorite running shorts, Borderlands10 for 10% off.
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Transcript
Josh Rosenthal (00:05.343)
Welcome to the Borderlands Trail and Ultra Running Podcast. My name is Josh Rosenthal. I'm the founder of Borderlands. I'm the host. I am a committed trail runner who hasn't ran on a trail since I lived in America like five months ago. My trail shoes are dusty and I thought I'd be depressed about it, but I am genuinely loving road running right now. So I do have my credibility. It's just not where I thought that it would be today. I have a friend that we met.
This summer we talked for the first time. was walking in the rain through Copenhagen and we had a good long conversation and I was super stoked on it. Same as Michael Mazzara. We're gonna have a conversation where we're gonna be chasing rabbits all over the place and I am super stoked. But first, glad you're here.
Josh Rosenthal (01:05.429)
All Maz is the owner of Halfmarathons.net. I would be shocked if you haven't been on that website, whether you have intended to or not. I don't know the numbers. That's his secret. I'm not gonna ask him for the numbers, but I've been on that website. It's optimized so well. He's the owner of it. He also owns Rogue Expeditions, which I think to me, we're gonna launch into that conversation first. I'm really stoked on it. This episode is gonna be moving really quickly.
I mean, so just kind of hang on tight. If you want to have a conversation with Maz, you kind of got to get in the car and you just got to go. And we've only talked a few times, but I just know that when we're on, he's firing questions. I love it. And I can hang with answering his questions, but today I'm in the question asking seat. So he's got to hang with mine, but we've had a great pre-show and you're going to really love this conversation. Like I said, we're going to be chasing rabbits.
probably all over the place. think they're all gonna be interesting. think they're all gonna be material to trail running in general to use specifically. In high school, my friend Cody and I used to chase like rabbits around a field in a old Bronco that had like a nine inch lift and 39 inch super swampers on it. And that's what I think this conversation is gonna be. We'll talk about running in the most beautiful places in the world, running ultras, halves, marathons, building better media experiences. I mean,
It's just gonna go and it's gonna be great before we do though I am super stoked to be hosting a run with Billy Yang and Flores Gehrman in Salt Lake City on January 18th I'm gonna be in Salt Lake for 36 hours and then I to get back to Paris because my family's here and my kids are in school I got to take them all around but I'm gonna come back and we're gonna do a live podcast with Billy a 5k run with Billy and You're all invited. You just have to go to ultra sign up to register. I have that link in the show notes
That live podcast is going to be super cool. mean, very few of us can tell our story as Ultraners without mentioning Billy in some way. So it's super special and I'm stoked to be doing it. Okay, next up, Maz. Glad that you are with me today.
Josh Rosenthal (03:39.371)
Alright man, I'm stoked to have you here. Thanks for being with me. Where are you sitting right now?
Michael Mazzara (03:43.214)
I'm in Austin, Texas and thanks for having me. And yeah, I'll say the reason I, so I'm, I think a lot about networking and just reaching out to people. I think from owning halfmarathons.net for the last, you know, however many months, years, I'd always been thinking a lot about how to reframe the race experience. And I think
Josh Rosenthal (03:44.523)
All right.
Michael Mazzara (04:10.894)
A lot of times what onboarded me into running was this concept of like the marathon. And it's funny, like you and Tommy talked about it last time, which is people would just kind of like blindly pick a race distance. And they're like, this is what I'm going to do. It ended up being like a, I mean, a bad thing physically for me. Cause I thought it was all like mind over matter, but, like mentally it actually got me to this place of like, holy cow. Like marathons are.
Josh Rosenthal (04:27.261)
Yeah.
Michael Mazzara (04:38.138)
incredible as a concept, like an onboarding mechanism, where nobody's actually doing the marketing for quote unquote marathons. And so then you look at the Abbott World majors, and you're like, this is unbelievable. They account for 50 % of marathon registrations worldwide. What a phenomenon. And then there's just this massive gap between everybody else. And I think we had entered into this age where people had become better at generating content.
Josh Rosenthal (04:41.556)
Yeah.
Josh Rosenthal (04:54.987)
Mm-hmm.
Josh Rosenthal (05:04.309)
Mm-hmm.
Michael Mazzara (05:04.352)
and creating ubiquity of brand because everybody kind of went to the same well. You'd go to like Facebook or you'd go to half marathons, not net, and you'd like look for races. And I was like, well, there's clearly a way to elevate races to this perspective by better content activations or like how you think about positioning your race outside of distance and location. And I think you were the first person that I really saw.
take an entrepreneurial mindset to it with like a tremendous amount of like storytelling and an exceptional amount of like branding wherewithal. And I was like, holy cow, this guy must be like thinking about the same stuff that I'm like all the time. And I think, you know, the hard thing about being an entrepreneur is like, you develop these theories about the world, and then you take a step forward and you input more data, and then you reshoot your opinion about the world based on the new data you've.
Josh Rosenthal (05:43.595)
Yeah, all the time.
Josh Rosenthal (05:57.791)
Right. Right. Yeah.
Michael Mazzara (06:01.166)
And you have to, in a lot of ways, not get discouraged by new data that's coming in. Is my thesis still true? And how real about the world is this still now that I have these other factors where people are telling me that it's not true? So I think when that kind of expression, when real recognizes real, when I go, no way.
Josh Rosenthal (06:21.763)
I said that to someone the other day. I wasn't sure if that was the right term or not, but it was a guy who had a really awesome mustache and he found someone that looked like him and had the same mustache. And I was like, am I supposed to say real recognizes real? And I had to look it up on chat GPT and it was like, okay, yeah, that's the right term. So I love hearing you even say that term. Yeah.
Michael Mazzara (06:37.978)
It's appropriate usage. Yeah. Because if I sit in the vacuum all day and I think about those concepts and I socialize them with the world and then somebody on the other side of the world comes up with the same concept and goes, I think there's a problem here. I go, whoa, there it is. that prompted my initial reach out and I was just like, there's certainly a kindred spirit. Yeah.
Josh Rosenthal (06:55.551)
Yes.
Josh Rosenthal (07:03.475)
A kindred, absolutely. Yeah. I think there's the, my mind goes to so many different places, but my initial spot is like, how do you know, how does anybody know anything? Like, like these theories of knowledge. And so you like break it all the way back and how do know something? And a lot of times with entrepreneurship is that it starts with your gut, but then you've got to, you've got to bring in all these other ways of knowing like mentors and, and empiric, like studying and observation and all these sorts of things. But yeah, the first, the first thought is always like, man.
Michael Mazzara (07:22.095)
Mm-hmm.
Josh Rosenthal (07:33.547)
Could I do a better version of that? should I buy halfmarathons.net? Because I could take that thing and make it better. I'm not sure that I know exactly, but I feel that I can. And then you start to go into the world, go into that, and prove it.
Michael Mazzara (07:49.274)
Yeah. And I think, I think trail running is interesting mostly from a perspective of we don't maybe have to invent anything new yet because the industry is so, is like a little bit younger from its onboarding of new individuals into the industry and into racing and into like the concept that you can take look like models from cycling or road racing and go, well, if I just did that over here.
Josh Rosenthal (08:08.319)
Yeah. Yeah.
Michael Mazzara (08:17.646)
would the same principles apply as opposed to like, if you want to go invent Airbnb or chat GPT, you're going to need a lot more conviction and a lot more money and a lot more stress in order to make your thing into a reality where for us, maybe like, it's already true that these things kind of work and they kind of sustain themselves as businesses and they're kind of good ideas.
Josh Rosenthal (08:25.993)
Yeah. Right.
Josh Rosenthal (08:40.171)
Yeah, yeah, so we'll say if you're looking for a half marathon, if you haven't already, check out halfmarathons.net. It's a way to find a new half marathon. more interesting to me right now, I to make sure that we don't miss over this is this Rogue Expeditions acquisition that you've made. know, front and center on the website, it's running the most beautiful places in the world. And when you look at the list of places that you could run with Rogue Expeditions, I think you proved that, at least on paper. Give me the high level about
Michael Mazzara (09:07.322)
Mm-hmm.
Josh Rosenthal (09:09.481)
rogue expeditions? Like what exactly are you doing? What is your approach to taking people all over the world to run in most beautiful places?
Michael Mazzara (09:18.266)
Yeah, like in the simplest way, it's like a running vacation. I think, so one thing that happened to me was every time I would participate in a marathon, I would get injured every single time. And it was also because I hadn't really discovered trail before, but I would like, you know, cramp or fall off a sidewalk or just get injured. And I really fell like a very much of a loss that I loved training so much. I loved hitting 20 or 22 miles on a long run.
Josh Rosenthal (09:28.907)
Okay.
Josh Rosenthal (09:47.508)
Yeah.
Michael Mazzara (09:47.736)
I entered into this euphoria that is only induced by being like a very primal, like human, running experience. And then when I got to the end of training, people would go, or when I was in training, people would go, what are you training? What race are you training for? And then like, what's your goal time? And it felt like the entire scope of participating in a running activity was the end goal of participating in a race. What I felt was amazing recently,
Josh Rosenthal (09:54.555)
Yes. I know.
Michael Mazzara (10:16.44)
was the shift to celebrating the journey, which is like, I would say run clubs are partially that. In a lot of ways, humans are not really great at nuance. So when you get an iPhone, you don't see all the suffering that went into creation, creating that process. You see the end goal. So we're really good at recognizing end goals. So if you trained for 10 years and ran one marathon, people would be like, what's your marathon time? so it's the sort of thing that I went to Japan on my honeymoon.
Josh Rosenthal (10:19.304)
Mm-hmm.
Josh Rosenthal (10:31.549)
Right. Yeah.
Josh Rosenthal (10:38.248)
Right.
Michael Mazzara (10:45.186)
And I went to like the Mié Prefecture in the south and I was running around on trails and I got lost. I I consistently thought that I was doing this in a suboptimal way. And I noticed in cycling, a very small percentage of people who cycle participate in cycling races. A tremendous amount of them go on.
Josh Rosenthal (10:58.057)
Yeah.
Michael Mazzara (11:11.054)
cycling tours and they go to Mallorca with their friends and they go with Engamba or back roads or DuVine. And I had thought to myself that was something I wanted to do as a trail runner or as a runner. And I didn't necessarily need to participate in the races. Like you can do the tour of Madoc and go drink wine every mile. It's an amazing concept. I love that. And how is there only one that's so popular? How, when it comes to a themed race or like a culinary focused race,
Josh Rosenthal (11:30.333)
Yes, it is. Yes.
Josh Rosenthal (11:37.985)
good point.
Michael Mazzara (11:40.164)
Why is it like Disney or the Tour de Mont-Medoc? Like, I don't get that. So it felt to me like that was missing in trail. And I think there were two globally that were really, really focused on this for an extended period of time, like over 10 years. One was on the Alps that specifically focused on the Tour de Mont-Planck. And I think that's a really crowded area because it is the Mecca. And UTMB grows.
Josh Rosenthal (11:44.222)
Mmm.
Josh Rosenthal (12:05.451)
That's right.
Michael Mazzara (12:08.512)
It gets about 25,000 submissions or about 6,000 spots. Those are the tremendous amount of excess demand for limited supply. The rest of the world also has really exceptional places to run. And I also had this belief that as other races became as popular as UTMB, when you get Killian Jornet that goes running and runs in Zagama, and then you capture footage from that.
Josh Rosenthal (12:12.041)
Hmm.
Josh Rosenthal (12:19.979)
Yes. Yes.
Josh Rosenthal (12:33.259)
Mm-hmm.
Michael Mazzara (12:36.428)
It inspires this new found love for these locations as trail destinations. And there had been a company in Austin, Texas that had been doing it for about 12 years. The wife who was the founder was a former professional or like Olympic qualifying marathon runner. And then the husband was more of an outdoorsman and they combine their love into a, we're going to go on, take people on running vacations to go to Morocco. And since then.
Josh Rosenthal (12:42.122)
Yeah.
Josh Rosenthal (12:54.43)
Yeah.
Michael Mazzara (13:05.366)
It's turned into 15 or 16 locations, 30 trips a year. We'll probably do 40 next year. And my belief is that you can uncouple your training experience, the expression of your training experience from a racing experience. And if you go to UTMB and you're doing racing for somewhere between 19 and 43 hours, you're really not going to get to see the trails. And if you're doing comrads, it's kind of the same way. There's a race experience, but also.
Josh Rosenthal (13:29.963)
That's right.
Michael Mazzara (13:35.47)
You know, the Strava recap just came out, I think yesterday, and it was saying that it's still boomers and Gen Xers that are contributing the most miles, and those people are not PRing. They're out, they're being consistent, and they're looking to optimize an experience of running. And it's not no.
Josh Rosenthal (13:41.064)
huh.
Josh Rosenthal (13:53.502)
Hmm
Michael Mazzara (14:00.728)
you know, bad things about Indianapolis, but like, is it a bucket list thing to go run in Indianapolis? I don't, I don't know anymore. And so I think as the running industry and specifically trail kind of evolves, I, my belief was that, this is a huge opportunity to kind of create a new vertical within running. and you and Tommy had talked about it last time, which is if you uncouple the process of racing,
Josh Rosenthal (14:06.613)
Yeah.
Michael Mazzara (14:30.875)
from the concept that you can actually enjoy being in a place and running safely, having somebody do the scouting and the tours for you. And when you go to the Dolomites, it's one of our most popular trips. We'll do three trips this year. They're all sold out eight months in advance. The most common thing to do is the Alta Via. And you'll do somewhere between 15 and 20 miles on that per day.
Josh Rosenthal (14:36.549)
Mm. Yeah. Yeah.
Michael Mazzara (14:57.786)
You know, that's kind of your vacation is you stay in Rufusio's at the top of the mountain. And with us, you get this versatility in the experience. We'll take you on different routes. We'll do the trichime and the sinchitere. And then we'll drive you from one location to another. We'll make sure you have five quality meals. Our final night, we're doing like between a seven and a nine course meal at like this Hotel Anita run by Anita for the last 60 years.
Josh Rosenthal (15:25.291)
Yeah.
Michael Mazzara (15:25.914)
and she owns the place and cooks all the meals. And it's just this deeply authentic within trail culture, within the Dolomites culture that I think I felt really like was missing from what I wanted to see for myself in my running experience. So I acquired that company in August of this year. And yeah.
Josh Rosenthal (15:32.917)
Hmm.
Michael Mazzara (15:53.85)
But personally, it's been a dream, just a blessing to be able to do something like that. But the same way that you think about creating something new in the world, it's also pattern matching. It's also force of will. It's also, this is a new narrative by which I'm introducing to the world. And so going on a podcast like this, that is really well respected within the industry is such an important component to it.
Josh Rosenthal (15:57.451)
Yeah.
Josh Rosenthal (16:18.773)
Well, what are these, mean, Rogue, what are you selling? mean, it feels like, yeah, the experience has to be smooth, but like in the end, like what's the outcome? Like what's the sell? What are you selling? Like, you know what I mean? Like it feels like, what I'm getting at is that it's not running, but they are running. Is it belonging?
Michael Mazzara (16:38.678)
It is running. I think it's the ability to experience the most beautiful places on earth in a way that you could only do it on foot through your runs. And if you think about that, like Tokyo is beautiful, but if you go out to like the Japanese Alps, you're just like, I can't even believe this exists. It's just like another planet. And when you go run around a city and you've been doing a bunch of road running in France,
Josh Rosenthal (16:58.707)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.
Josh Rosenthal (17:06.975)
Yeah.
Michael Mazzara (17:07.33)
you get this certain level of like intimacy with a city. Like you look in bakeries and you see this, it's a totally different experience than, and I ran the New York city marathon and I didn't see a single thing and I cried the whole time and I cramped. You're like, you know what I mean? And I was lucky that I'd been living in Brooklyn for 10 years that it didn't really matter. But if I went to another place, I'd mostly be stressed and try to hit a time. And what I'm saying instead is, man, the most beautiful places on earth in a lot of ways are on top of mountains.
Josh Rosenthal (17:10.601)
Yeah, you're right, totally.
Josh Rosenthal (17:20.649)
Yeah.
Michael Mazzara (17:36.686)
They're right next to the lakes. They're on ocean sides. The end of the run, you come to a place where it's going to be featured on chef's table because it's a multi-generational taco stand right on the beach of Playa del Carmen. And like, that's a way that you can run. And you don't have to do it by yourself. And it's not something you have to piecemeal together from your all-trails experience. Instead, we've been...
Josh Rosenthal (17:36.81)
Yeah.
Josh Rosenthal (17:45.482)
Yeah.
Josh Rosenthal (17:56.096)
Yeah.
Michael Mazzara (18:04.438)
meticulously planning these routes for like a decade and you can trust that it's going to be really, really good. So I think, there's safety and security and, you know, not having to like haggle about whether you need to pay the taxi driver a tip and if he's going to rip you off and things.
Josh Rosenthal (18:11.785)
Hmm.
Right.
Josh Rosenthal (18:19.475)
Yeah, yeah, you've got local fixers on all this stuff. Yeah.
Michael Mazzara (18:23.058)
smooth, real smooth. I think I really like that's the value proposition. And I'd say, in some ways, I think about it a really good mindset is, is if you're, I love hearing you go, I'm in my forties and I'm still PRing. And I think when you can't go faster anymore, maybe you go further. And then if you can't go further anymore, you're kind of at a loss, you index our experience a little bit more.
Josh Rosenthal (18:30.26)
Yeah.
Josh Rosenthal (18:39.679)
Yeah.
Josh Rosenthal (18:49.447)
Yeah. Yeah, that's right. Yep.
Michael Mazzara (18:52.794)
So this is that experience. And so that's what it's really trying to build up. And it's becoming more popular. And I'm seeing new shades in the trail industry that get me really excited about the innovation. Borderlands obviously doing a bunch of cool stuff. Love Trails is this amazing, if you've heard of Running Man in the United States, sort of by Jesse Hitzler, but I love Love Trails. And I don't know if that's what it will end up being because it may.
Josh Rosenthal (18:55.454)
Yep.
Josh Rosenthal (19:07.243)
Thanks.
Josh Rosenthal (19:13.331)
Yeah. Yeah.
Josh Rosenthal (19:17.972)
Yes.
Michael Mazzara (19:22.434)
Right now it's like we take the concept of Coachella's, we take our pattern there and we try to adapt running into it. It might be more obvious for it to just be a trail running festival and to less index on music because that isn't everybody's cup of tea, but the trail running is and the nutrition and the hydration or the recovery platforms are. So I love what they're doing there. And I think as trail becomes bigger and I'd love your take on this actually. I think during the pandemic, more people got onboarded into run.
Josh Rosenthal (19:28.565)
Yeah.
Josh Rosenthal (19:37.962)
Yeah.
Josh Rosenthal (19:41.684)
Yeah.
Michael Mazzara (19:52.764)
just from a concept, I think that when you look at running media, it's really, it's very predominantly focused on reporting on elite performances because those things market well, like things on top of a podium. And I think that was unattractive to a whole group of people that actually were onboarded into running and maybe didn't like that was their experience.
Josh Rosenthal (20:18.419)
Yep. Yep.
Michael Mazzara (20:20.814)
So they found new avenues, one of which was run clubs by which the destination of or your outcome of racing or running became showing up to a run club. So the journey was rewarded. Trail also felt a lot like that, which was the process of being out in nature, moving slowly, all these sort of things became the reward. And I, my race experience became uncoupled from the time. And I'm
Josh Rosenthal (20:23.615)
Mm-hmm.
Josh Rosenthal (20:33.717)
Yep.
Josh Rosenthal (20:42.602)
Mm-hmm.
Michael Mazzara (20:48.334)
curious to know if you feel the same way about how people got into trail or how trail will evolve.
Josh Rosenthal (20:54.507)
Mm-hmm. Yeah, so I just released an episode as we speak right now. I just released it today by the time this releases. I just released an episode last week. And the idea is, so we invented something. So I did it with my dude Brian. It goes by Wolfrunner. And I called it Wolfie's Razor. So it's a heuristic that says that nowadays,
assume that someone runs for self-expression first until proven otherwise. Because everyone, so I gotta give Brian credit for the way that he broke this down, but I'm using it from now on and he knows that, but that's why we called it Wolfie's Razor. Okay, so the original manifesto of Borderlands was the trail running industry is only running in one direction and it's only going.
Michael Mazzara (21:25.454)
Ooh. Ooh.
Michael Mazzara (21:38.051)
Yeah.
Josh Rosenthal (21:50.911)
with really five to eight percent of the people. Meanwhile, there's 92 to 95 percent of the people who are over here doing it for other reasons. However, and I was framing it within mental health, which I think mental health needs to be redefined because it's been turned in. It's been like sort of, it's like mushy and ill-defined at this point. But basically I was saying, hey, I'm running because I want to feel strong. I'm doing this for my mind. I need the chemicals. I need all this sort of stuff. And Brian's saying, no, it's not even just that. It's...
Michael Mazzara (22:09.198)
Yeah. Yeah.
Josh Rosenthal (22:20.511)
there was a whole class of people that emerged that ran as a means of self-expression. So all of these brands that have come out and tried to say, you know, we're, like the skateboarding culture. I would say, I have not seen anybody who's doing the skateboarding culture. Skateboarding culture was truly like punk rock, a means of self-expression, but there is a whole class of runners who are not going to be paying attention to UTMB who, who in fact will
Michael Mazzara (22:41.69)
Mm-hmm.
Josh Rosenthal (22:50.417)
actively not pay attention to UTMB or to Western states because they fall in this bucket that I think is most people, I'm gonna assume that most people now are in this, is like I run, this is the way that I show myself who I am and the world who I am, I run as a means of self-expression. So that's my, that's stuff that's kind of like swirling in my head right now and I think I agree with it. And you see brands that are marketing as means of self-expressions as the ones who seem to be most out front.
Michael Mazzara (23:19.322)
who comes to mind.
Josh Rosenthal (23:21.333)
Satisfy even though I disagree that they're getting skateboard culture. I think they're they are touching it but not close I think path because floris gehrman Used to work for Tony Hawk and is you know with Jeff rally and all these people like he gets skateboarding culture But it seems like gosh I think of sore I think of whom I think I had the founder I'm embarrassed the Danish company Copenhagen
Michael Mazzara (23:43.193)
Yeah.
Michael Mazzara (23:50.362)
FaceTime.
Josh Rosenthal (23:51.581)
Yes, say Sky. I think they're all in the running a self-expression, but I don't think any of them have nailed the skateboarding. yeah, so it seems like most of those people who are out front and then run clubs, I think fall into that. seems like run club feels like self-expression more than it feels like accountability. You know, it feels like it's a place to belong and it's a means of self-expression.
Michael Mazzara (24:14.298)
So then, okay, here's an interesting observation. When it felt like skateboarding was around, it felt grunge, it felt punk rock, it felt counterculture. It did not feel premium.
Josh Rosenthal (24:24.563)
Yeah. It wasn't luxury.
Michael Mazzara (24:28.812)
It wasn't luxury. And now in running or in trail with those brands that you just mentioned, counterculture and luxury in those brands particularly feel somewhat synonymous. And why?
Josh Rosenthal (24:33.045)
Yes.
Josh Rosenthal (24:44.863)
Yeah. Good question. Because in punk rock, the thing was to go to the thrift stores, the thing was to find belts and then go to Tandy leather and get studs and then hammer into your belt and put studs in it. Like there was DIY components to it. So I think what the brands are doing is they're playing on that and making their stuff look DIY, like moth tech, stuff like that. They're playing in that world, but it's not like authentic. Authentic was...
Michael Mazzara (24:52.92)
Yeah.
Michael Mazzara (25:05.934)
Yeah.
Josh Rosenthal (25:12.339)
My pants are way too big because the thrift store only had this size and all I want to do is be skating and I don't want to be naked. So this is the stuff I could find.
Michael Mazzara (25:20.826)
So it almost feels so different in that not that skateboarding was anti-capitalist, but it was definitely not at, it was thrifting. It was on the cheap. then Satisfied leans into that a little bit. And I met the team at the running event. And one thing I really fell in love with was they did this thing where they would go to thrift stores and get old marathon shirts. So like the New York City Marathon from 1984.
Josh Rosenthal (25:35.54)
Yes.
Josh Rosenthal (25:47.859)
Yes. Yep.
Michael Mazzara (25:50.616)
And I'd always had this dream that you could start a brand called Golden Era Running, where you just took those designs from the New York City Marathon and then took out the New York City Marathon on it and just print the nostalgic Golden Era designs. they had done that. There's some IP and popular, yeah, there's like stuff you can't do.
Josh Rosenthal (26:08.043)
That's great. But okay, we after this stop, I got to tell you an idea, but I'm not gonna say it on the air. There's something I'm headed generally in that direction on something, but you just put it on steroids. And so I have to let I have to bring you in on it. can't on the air though. Keep going. is that that was brilliant what you just said.
Michael Mazzara (26:17.302)
Michael Mazzara (26:24.19)
wow. So let's end the podcast. No. But then they, so that's maybe a $15 t-shirt. And then they put a little monogram on it that said it was from Satisfye. And then it got marked up, you know, 10X. And I'm very pro doing that because they think, mean, pro as in like, I'm pro doing interesting and creative thing.
Josh Rosenthal (26:36.127)
Yeah. Yeah.
Josh Rosenthal (26:46.219)
That's right, yes.
Michael Mazzara (26:48.804)
But it's just interesting to see that the only way to be punk rock is to also spend a lot of money on it. One thought could be it's a smaller, total addressable audience. And so in order to invest into a higher quality material and a better design, it actually just costs more to do. And the people getting into trail and doing ultras and longer distances in general, maybe are people, as we know, that are just more affluent. And so those two things, that's kind of work.
Josh Rosenthal (27:15.945)
Yes. Yes.
Michael Mazzara (27:18.49)
The difference between buying a Nike shirt for $35, which is somewhat commoditized and feels a lot like the Nadeedah shirt versus a Satisfied shirt is worth five to 10 times more. It's an amazing business concept.
Josh Rosenthal (27:30.665)
Right. And because we're, you know, if people in their forties that we were skateboarding in the nineties, we all have careers and we make money. And so we want to feel punk rock. We want to feel skater kid again. But I don't want to actually buy, pay five cents for my pants. I want, I'm willing to pay for that feeling now. So what they're selling is the feeling. And on that level, I think they're doing a great job. They sold the feeling.
Michael Mazzara (27:37.165)
Mm-hmm.
Michael Mazzara (27:41.786)
Sure.
Michael Mazzara (27:52.26)
Sure.
Michael Mazzara (27:57.636)
Sure.
Josh Rosenthal (28:00.255)
But to say that we are skateboarding culture, yeah, to me is, they're not close. But on the feeling, which arguably is the most important piece, they're pretty close. People who have budgets who are in their 40s will pay 300 bucks to feel the same way they did when they were 14, buying that pair of, know, Deckers khakis, you know?
Michael Mazzara (28:11.78)
Yeah.
Michael Mazzara (28:21.336)
Yeah. An interesting question would be that, so you and I are in the bubble. We think about this all the time. mean, people listening into this podcast are probably also in the bubble. So then if you're getting into trail, I think one thing that has historically been a, and Brian Metzler has talked about this from outside and I think he's a wealth of knowledge about it, but in some ways that ultra distances have maybe held back new people getting into trail.
Josh Rosenthal (28:26.163)
Yeah. Yeah.
Josh Rosenthal (28:48.491)
Mm-hmm.
Michael Mazzara (28:50.904)
Because the perception is you can only do something on trail if it's, you know, a hundred miles or a 50 K or something like that, which is intimidating and not worth getting into. And then it's cool and interesting to see the rise in shorter distances. And David from Ultra Sign-ups is actually the biggest growth is in like the Cirque series, which is much more manageable, but then feels a little bit more.
Josh Rosenthal (28:59.241)
Yeah. Yep.
Josh Rosenthal (29:12.905)
Yeah.
Josh Rosenthal (29:17.194)
Yes.
Michael Mazzara (29:19.994)
you're running for performance and there's a time element and then there's you got to buy your normal running shoes and it's that. Then there's this other concept of you get into trail and then the brands that maybe speak to you are niched down already. It's Satisfye, it's SaySky. Where's the 95 % sitting at? If you look at road running,
Josh Rosenthal (29:21.876)
Yeah.
Josh Rosenthal (29:40.201)
Yep. Yeah. Yep.
Michael Mazzara (29:50.272)
You get a whole bunch of, you know, 25 million people that just buy Brooks Ghost running shoes and Nike Pegasus, and they run their neighborhood 5K and they're really happy with it. And it seems like in trail we've niched down already before hitting a maturation point, which I think is interesting. And, but where is everyone else? Where's the 95?
Josh Rosenthal (29:57.994)
Yeah.
Yeah. Right.
Josh Rosenthal (30:08.468)
Yes.
Josh Rosenthal (30:12.33)
Yes.
Josh Rosenthal (30:16.425)
Yeah, okay. So this is, I have not said it that way. This is how I've said it. but it's one of those things that we've both arrived at are, independently. It's that we, I've said it as we've centralized too soon. It's too much about our Viper already. It's too much about UTMB already. I like that so many different organizations are trying to be like the world series, the world championship. I want that as a fan, I want that one race.
Michael Mazzara (30:28.217)
Mm-hmm.
Josh Rosenthal (30:44.351)
That's going to be the place that says, if you win that race, you are the best, just like the world series in baseball or, know, they have the championship and we can declare it. in trail, we're not, we've centralized too quick. need more chaotic growth, which it's happened. There's some chaos happening naturally, but at the same time, know, Jamil Curry's name's on another thing. It's him again. You know, it's like good for him as an entrepreneur. I would never.
Michael Mazzara (30:47.672)
Yeah.
Michael Mazzara (31:00.195)
Yeah.
Josh Rosenthal (31:11.637)
want to see anybody do anything other than succeed, even if I don't see the vision myself. I don't need to. I always want them to succeed. And so there's opportunity and it's bringing, we've talked about this offline, it's bringing entrepreneurs are in the space. They're all over the place. They're doing things, they're getting their hands on stuff. I'm coming up with tech. I'm trying to come up with media ideas, all this sort of stuff. But we need more chaotic growth before we centralize.
Michael Mazzara (31:36.568)
Yeah. Yeah. I think that's so interesting. And I guess it's a good transition, but I think a lot about the race experience for a new runner in trail. And I think how much power the portfolios have UTMB, Cirque Series. And I think what you're doing with the power of good content activations.
Josh Rosenthal (31:54.057)
Yeah. Yeah.
Josh Rosenthal (32:05.291)
Yeah.
Michael Mazzara (32:06.274)
is the ability to transcend portfolio because it becomes borderland portfolio, right? And it's very interesting within road running. And I like having these comparisons, having spent two years just studying how road running works. If you launch a half marathon or marathon and you just take the city's name and you launch the Duluth marathon, you for some reason might have more credibility than grandmas within a few years.
Josh Rosenthal (32:09.771)
Yeah, yes.
Josh Rosenthal (32:27.744)
Mm-hmm.
Yeah.
Michael Mazzara (32:35.522)
years, just because people believe it's credentialed by the city. And it's a little hack to growth. So you see the biggest ones in all these states and is like up Portland and Seattle and what, even though the other ones are way better. So the problem with race discovery is that there's an insider and outsider community by which outsiders look for shortcuts to understand whether a race is credentialed. And hopefully half marathons does that. We've added a whole bunch of new.
Josh Rosenthal (32:36.308)
Right.
Josh Rosenthal (32:40.607)
That's right.
Yes. Yeah.
Josh Rosenthal (32:57.3)
it
Josh Rosenthal (33:01.726)
you
Michael Mazzara (33:03.662)
You can search for oceanfront or how many people run it and whether people like it or not. And yeah.
Josh Rosenthal (33:06.347)
Yeah, that's cool. Yeah, a quick plug. You just released a new version of it. So to me, it felt like a Craigslist. And I don't mean this in a bad way. I think Craigslist is brilliant for staying 1.0, know, Web 1.0 in its vibes. But you just did a really great refresh on Half Marathon's on that. So just a call out, you know, make sure that people are checking it out. I'll put it in the show notes. Yeah.
Michael Mazzara (33:14.66)
Yeah.
Michael Mazzara (33:24.888)
Yeah, thank you. The only thing I'll say about it, which was the real labor of love, is calendars in a lot of ways are just commoditized information, organized based on, it's specialized search engine, where we organize races on locations and dates. And in some ways that's a crowded space because it's easier to do. And the thing that I realized runners were searching for was
Josh Rosenthal (33:40.649)
Mm-hmm.
Josh Rosenthal (33:52.491)
Mm-hmm.
Michael Mazzara (33:53.76)
they would write in to info at halfmarathons.net. Can I bring my dog to this race? And I'd be like, what rates? A lot of people legitimately think we are the be all end all source to just ask questions about half marathons. So we get thousands of people writing in per year, just being like, when's the price increase?
Josh Rosenthal (34:01.227)
Yeah, sure.
Josh Rosenthal (34:15.349)
That's really funny.
Whoa.
Michael Mazzara (34:19.436)
And what people care about is if you're going to spend your money to travel for a race, you are indexing on the quality of your experience. You're indexing on scenery, the maybe the race price, the swag, the post festival. And they're outside of looking at a whole bunch of complex searches where you look at Texas and you're like, Houston or Dallas, and then which one's bigger or better. It, that information was never really clean. So.
Josh Rosenthal (34:28.34)
Yeah.
Josh Rosenthal (34:47.381)
Yeah.
Michael Mazzara (34:48.026)
For about six months, I had a team of 25 people look at every half marathon race page in America and index based on course difficulty and things like that. So hopefully that becomes a new precedent by which other races can, people can find races based on the quality of experience they're looking for. But in trail, it doesn't seem like it's that easy.
You can't just launch the Salt Lake City Trail Half Marathon and be the best race there. It seems like there's a lot more nuance. these, for a new runner, you're maybe introduced through a credentialed portfolio, through the fact that, I don't know, Hard Rock and Leadville carry a lot of the panache. They have a lot of demand for the amount of supply that they have. And then there's this...
Josh Rosenthal (35:21.556)
Yeah.
Josh Rosenthal (35:34.889)
Yeah.
Michael Mazzara (35:41.562)
whole landscape of how does any other race hit somebody's radar. And I love, and I hope we, I hope you can talk about at least a little bit more on this. I've always been really obsessed with the idea of the content activation, which is if you take a similar model that's worked on talk radio, like what you're doing here or an interview show, could you transport that?
Josh Rosenthal (35:52.969)
Yeah. Yeah.
Josh Rosenthal (36:05.108)
Yeah.
Michael Mazzara (36:08.868)
to a new location, a new venue and have people be like, my gosh, this is Jay Leno interviewing somebody at the finish line of Hard Rock. And they're asking questions like, what are you running from? Or back of the pack where you go with the last person with a little handheld mic and you're like, how are you feeling? Like what's going on with your feet right now? You look like you're.
Josh Rosenthal (36:11.594)
Yeah.
Josh Rosenthal (36:18.173)
Yes. Yes.
Josh Rosenthal (36:23.435)
Totally man on the street man on the street type stuff. Yeah.
Josh Rosenthal (36:32.458)
Yes.
Josh Rosenthal (36:37.299)
Yeah, we're going to call that sweeper cam.
Michael Mazzara (36:39.702)
It's just such a fun, it adds this level of the human experience to the race experience in a way that's non podium based. And it is so powerful when the value of trail is to be outside and to move as a human. I, I, and so I'm really curious about how you think about these content activations and you're in for
Josh Rosenthal (36:49.481)
Yes. Yes.
Josh Rosenthal (36:58.069)
That's right.
Josh Rosenthal (37:02.793)
Yeah. Yeah. So this is what you're alluding to is, is a dream right now, called Robie house. Real, real quick though, your, your discussion about race discovery, how do people find races? Like in all of my market research, which I obsessed over, you know, part of the reason I'm in Paris is because I'm surrounded by such awesome entrepreneurs here that I really love their energy and excitement. We were all building at the same time. We all had our own expertise, but this one market research guy named Bertrand just taught me how to really like approach
market research like a professional. And the thing that I found that people want the most is race discovery. And I've talked to RunSignUp, I've talked to the guys at UltraSignUp, it's like, man, people want to find, you think it's easy, but it's because we're in the bubble. But if we're gonna grow the way that we need to grow, how do people outside the bubble find a new race? I am working on some solutions to that, but.
Michael Mazzara (37:37.838)
Mmm.
Josh Rosenthal (37:57.119)
That to me, that is crazy. That's how that, that'll, points back to, can't centralize too quick. We, even though I love ultra signup, but if it all centralizes around ultra signup and ultra signup doesn't have a race discovery tool, then all of a sudden, how do people find out the re who, where to find a new race? It's like those, that highly centralized moment. They become, they, they get to pick the winners. We're too young to let our Aviva pick the winner to let ultra signup pick the winner.
Michael Mazzara (38:04.815)
Yeah.
Michael Mazzara (38:22.426)
Yeah.
Josh Rosenthal (38:24.107)
There need to be some other things that can come in and sort of like democratize race discovery on a larger scale. Okay. Close parentheses. the media activation, Robie house. So if we go back to that, okay, 95 % of the running world, the content I don't think is nailing them. think that's interesting to the top 50%. It's nailing the top five, top eight, nailing it that, you know, what free trail does at Western States.
I love it, I obsess over it. But if we look at, what I want to do is I'm going to take the excitement around Western states, the energy there, and that the world, it's kind of getting this media, it's making it beyond the normal, let's say, standard deviation of the mean of who's paying attention. It's making it beyond at least one standard deviation. And so people are paying attention. I want to leverage that energy and bring in, the best way can characterize it is,
If free trails coverage is like a puzzle piece, it's got a unique odd shape and that odd shape encompasses and explains everything they do. I want to build something that just comes up and fits neatly up against it. Zero overlap. So free trail dominates and nails the elite version of the sport, the performance version of the sport. Going back to Wolfie's razor. But if the assumption is that everybody there that you're in it for self-expression, no one's nailing coverage for self-expression.
Michael Mazzara (39:33.987)
Yeah.
Michael Mazzara (39:49.914)
Sure.
Josh Rosenthal (39:50.003)
No one's, no one's covering, how do you cover Western States in a way that's about health, mental health, all that sort of stuff, like all these other reasons that people do it. And so I'm to build an activation around that by with a lot of different ways, but the ultimate goal is to celebrate everything non-elite about the sport in a fun way. The way I've characterized it is imagine
David Letterman has a baby with Jackass and it's a non-elite runner. it's just, and that encompasses a lot of, we want to laugh, we're out there having a good time. And I just want to do, I'm gonna let free trail be free trail, know, let that be what, let iRunfar do what they do, cause they do it well, but there's a whole piece that's missing. And that's the piece that I want to come in and be a part
Michael Mazzara (40:19.642)
Mm-hmm. Yes.
Michael Mazzara (40:40.462)
so interested and if there's, mean, anyway, I can help, but I think the content that's always really grabbed me and that I'll send around to non-runners is non-elite content. Lucy's dad, if you've watched that one, which is about Ash Bartholomew, who's Lucy Bartholomew's dad, I think he ran maybe Western States and it was about him DNFing.
Josh Rosenthal (40:51.584)
Mm-hmm.
Hmm. Yes.
Josh Rosenthal (41:01.224)
yes.
Yeah, something like that, Yeah.
Michael Mazzara (41:09.668)
But it was a story about a 65 year old father and his relationship with his daughter. And he came in after the cutoff. He didn't win anything. And I, it was the only thing where my mom was like, I could do a race. And if you
Josh Rosenthal (41:29.621)
This is brilliant. I've never thought of it this way. The stuff that you share to non-runners is the non-elite stuff.
Michael Mazzara (41:34.97)
Holy cow, I will watch it maybe two or three times a year and send it to new people just because I go, isn't it incredible? Isn't it incredible that humans can do this? Isn't it incredible that this story transcends trail? And you were talking the other day about having like a football game type thing on the holiday. One thing I thought about that was, unless you're the Bartholomew's,
Josh Rosenthal (41:45.706)
Yeah.
Yes.
Josh Rosenthal (41:52.681)
Yeah.
Josh Rosenthal (41:57.757)
Yes, yes, yes, yes.
Michael Mazzara (42:03.832)
It's hard to think that there's a multi-generational love of trail running where that everybody could sit around and watch the same thing. And in the same way that football where your parents and parents' parents were all Steelers fans. And in that...
Josh Rosenthal (42:07.86)
Right.
Josh Rosenthal (42:11.571)
Yeah. Good point.
Josh Rosenthal (42:17.395)
Yes. So you gotta figure out multi-generational appeal. That's exciting.
Michael Mazzara (42:21.498)
Totally. And that's such a cool concept. And so our multi-generational parents and parents' parents understand talk show formats. They understand human interest. They don't, there's just a growing contingent of people that don't really particularly care about performance or how much to, like how many carbohydrates you need in order to properly fuel. They wanna know that it is a radical sense of self-expression.
Josh Rosenthal (42:31.637)
Yeah. Yes.
Josh Rosenthal (42:42.537)
Yes.
Michael Mazzara (42:50.596)
They wanna see people break down and push past that. And they don't need to know anything else. And that's amazing storytelling.
Josh Rosenthal (42:50.73)
Yeah.
Josh Rosenthal (42:54.387)
Yeah.
In fact, the gym doing circumnavigating the UTMB in 19 and a half hours is lost on them.
Michael Mazzara (43:07.578)
Totally. But you see the world's most impressive ultra runner at mile 17, somewhat delusional, in a lot of pain. And you go, this race must be so hard if the best person who's ever run this race is having this much of a problem. And it just gives you a different sense of what your children or what your friends are going through when they go out and do this stuff. Because otherwise, I have a
Josh Rosenthal (43:21.673)
Yeah.
Josh Rosenthal (43:25.619)
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Michael Mazzara (43:37.444)
friend who ran Moab 240 and he's been such a source of inspiration. And just the fact that he did it is in 40 or 50 hours. And if I saw him in his lowest moments or throwing up at points or things like that, I would just be astounded that the human body could handle that much pain for that much period of time. And it would inspire me the same way that marathons did to just be like, got, I got for some reason I got to try it.
Josh Rosenthal (43:44.798)
Yeah.
Josh Rosenthal (44:00.021)
Yeah.
Michael Mazzara (44:07.214)
And then you'll do one and you'll decide it's not for you because it's too hard and you didn't actually enjoy it. And you'll turn out and you'll find something else for you, which is either belonging to your run club or going on running vacations or something like that. You need that. You need that access point that humans aren't great at that nuance of being like, I'd like to run with no objective. It's like, maybe if you lose weight, if you don't lose weight and you don't have an objective, your turn rate is going to be exceptionally high compared to.
Josh Rosenthal (44:07.262)
Yeah.
Yeah. Yeah.
Josh Rosenthal (44:17.811)
Yes. Yeah.
Josh Rosenthal (44:27.173)
Mm-hmm, that's hard. Yeah.
Michael Mazzara (44:36.666)
if you signed up for a marathon and you're 150 bucks in the hole on the Salt Lake City Marathon.
Josh Rosenthal (44:43.019)
Yeah, dude, that is brilliant. So the stuff that I want to do, like as I've been floating this deck around to brands and to personalities to come join me because, you know, I'm going to get brands to support it if I have the personalities, but I can't get personalities to commit without the money. So I need the brands. And so it's like a chicken or egg thing I'm working through here trying to figure out. But I do have the Robie house secured. And what's cool about that is that
My best friend who's done the documentaries that I've put out, he's, when I was a music professional musician, he was my lead guitar player for 10 years. His name is Ben Roby. And I, then I get into trail running and in like, you know, 2011, 2012 and learn about Robie point and Wendell Roby. And last year it occurred to me. I was looking at a, an article and it's something about Wendell Roby is from Auburn and I knew Ben's dad was from Auburn. so I, you know,
Screenshotted send it to Ben like hey are is this are you related to Wendell Roby and he sends it to his dad He's like, yeah, that's our cousin. That's my cousin. I was like, wait a second. So the guy who started the hundred mile Endure like wanted to make Auburn the endurance capital of the world the origin of the hundred mile distance. That's your cousin It's like yeah, it's like is that and then he has a cabin in Tahoe and I was like, hey that cabin in Tahoe That's owned by the Roby family. Is that a Roby like it's like yeah Wendell owned a lumberyard. The house was prefabricated at Wendell's
Michael Mazzara (45:42.83)
Mm-hmm.
Josh Rosenthal (46:04.585)
lumber yard and then taken over there. And we played on the American River all growing up that Wendell gave us a key and access to his. I was like, my God, can I use that for a Western States activation? And they were like, yeah, so it's it's booked. It's set. I've got the production film crew. I've got everything like set. I need the people to come in and I need the money. But to do it at the Robie house, my dream would be that Western States reaches out and says, Hey, what makes you think that you can use the Robie name?
Michael Mazzara (46:12.666)
Mm-hmm.
Michael Mazzara (46:16.015)
Wow.
Michael Mazzara (46:32.793)
Mmm.
Josh Rosenthal (46:33.387)
To which my response would be, no, what makes you think that you can use the Roby name? Cause this is the actual, like this guy started the Tevis cup that becomes the, becomes Western States 100. He was the one that, so Gordy Ainsley didn't run. Wasn't the first person to run the a hundred mile distance at the Tevis cup. It was this group of military guys of a couple of years, like the year before two years before Gordy Ainsley only ran 80, 89 miles. He didn't do the full a hundred miles.
Michael Mazzara (46:42.127)
Yeah.
Michael Mazzara (47:01.892)
Mm-hmm.
Josh Rosenthal (47:02.037)
So there's all sorts of like interesting story components to this that is countercultural.
Michael Mazzara (47:06.52)
Yeah.
Josh Rosenthal (47:08.287)
that I'm like the towing the line of I don't want to be disrespectful to it, but I also want to be like, look, Wendell Roby and Gordy wasn't the first and all this sort of stuff that just sort of like encapsulates and brings in all of this interesting stuff that represents everybody else in the sport. Hey, we're having fun here. There's a David Letterman component. There's a Jackass component. There's a group run component. There's, you know, a
daily bad runners take with like legends of the the sport that transcend just the elite. And it's it's a it's just an all day media thing and then some in person stuff and we'll do like a wine dinner and like, like this is I used to do this stuff at Sundance I when I owned a coffee roasting company. I would do coffee shops on Main Street of Sundance and it would just be absolute chaos activations with Airbnb and I don't remember who if we did it for four years in a row. That's when I bring all that energy to Western states because it deserves it.
Michael Mazzara (47:39.802)
Mm.
Michael Mazzara (47:51.386)
Sure.
Michael Mazzara (48:04.57)
Yeah, those Sundance and all the film festivals have such a, I mean, there's also Davos and I've known some people who worked for the World Economic Forum and they said like 600 people are actually invited to Davos, but there's 40,000 people like Metta that rent out houses in new activations and host people and do things. And I think
Josh Rosenthal (48:27.999)
and they do activation type stuff.
Michael Mazzara (48:34.372)
The amazing thing is some of that exists already around UTMP and there's a lot of these pop-up experiences, but bringing it as a consistent experience by which, runner's world will do it at the New York City Marathon. I don't really know if it has an identity or a personality or I think to know worth showing up for. And if I went to Western States this year, maybe the dream outcome is that it's the sort of thing that people want.
Josh Rosenthal (48:51.135)
Yes.
Michael Mazzara (49:04.068)
to show up next year, even if they're not participating or spectating or whatever, because the Robie houses is such a fun experience into trail culture without being too intimidating.
Josh Rosenthal (49:06.601)
Yes.
Josh Rosenthal (49:10.485)
Yes.
Josh Rosenthal (49:15.955)
Yes. And so it's not because it's done. So I don't mean this in a negative way, but it's not me getting the top five favorite men, the top five favorite women and sitting down and having a strategic conversation about what their plan is. There's a place for that and people are already doing it really well, but let's not forget that this sport is fun and that 95 % of us suck at it. And so what, you know, it's fun to watch them. want to see, we want to hear about how great they're going to be, but man, there's so much more to the sport and
Michael Mazzara (49:31.396)
Yeah.
Michael Mazzara (49:37.849)
Yeah.
Josh Rosenthal (49:45.395)
If there's all this attention already on Western States, what if we can capture some of that? And then we do an in, in, we're not going to an necessarily live in race. We're going to do a, an ABC wide, wide world of sports thing where we get in and we follow back at the pack. If we can get media credentials, follow the back of the pack, sweeper cams, interviews with, you know, all the stuff that I paced the guy at Western States one year. And you know, you watch it and you don't realize how that it's still a hundred miles and how hard it is because the elites make it look so easy. And my guy DNF.
Michael Mazzara (50:00.281)
Mm-hmm.
Josh Rosenthal (50:15.135)
And we were toward the back it's like, my God, this is a really hard race. But when you see Jim running a six minute mile past the elementary school, it's like, you don't realize how hard it is. So let's show off how hard this is and like get in with all those people who are suffering and struggling. And those are the, like now using your words, like those are the, that's the multi-generational part that translates to anybody, regardless if they're in the sport.
Michael Mazzara (50:24.024)
Yeah.
Michael Mazzara (50:39.009)
Yeah. What's the dream outcome for specific, if every, if you've got the guests that you wanted, formats that you wanted, and at six months after it happened, you could, in some metaphysical way, have all the data on what happened because of that activation or how you impacted consumer sentiment or how many new people started running or racing.
Josh Rosenthal (50:53.259)
Mm-hmm.
Michael Mazzara (51:07.672)
What's the answer to that for you? Or is it okay being undefined and ethereal?
Josh Rosenthal (51:10.795)
no, my dream, unfortunately, it's like this is a test of concept. So then I want this to be immediate concept for hire, essentially. However, I, you know, I really want to go do it whether there's this. the way to do this is, you know, rogue is to go in after it and not be officially affiliated with the race. So whether I can formally do it with Cirque or not, like I had Julian
Michael Mazzara (51:22.479)
Mm-hmm.
Josh Rosenthal (51:38.621)
on the podcast a few weeks ago, I think that is the best event in the country. Everybody should run a Cirque Series race because anybody can. And it's short enough distance, but their energy is insane. So I ultimately want to bring this whole energy to as many races as I can around the world. So if we can really, truly build like a really fun David Letterman, Jackass type thing.
Michael Mazzara (51:49.188)
Mm-hmm.
Josh Rosenthal (52:08.469)
I want to do it in as many places with as many personalities leading it as possible. And then we would call that Robie House Media. And yeah, so the goal is not infinite, but close to infinite scale to large events. I mean, then go do it for Iron Man. Do it anywhere. Anywhere needs to have more fun.
Michael Mazzara (52:14.34)
Yeah.
Michael Mazzara (52:28.078)
Yeah. A really interesting thing to think about, which is mostly from a business perspective, but where does non-elite media work right now? And so if you're starting a media company, the barriers to entry are really low. And the most obvious thing to go to do is to go after the people at the top 1 % because the top 5 % really like watching the top 1%.
Josh Rosenthal (52:46.56)
Yes.
Michael Mazzara (52:57.274)
And the reason that's somewhat sustainable is because the top 5 % is likely to spend the most amount of money. So then advertisers are most likely to want to get in touch with the top 5%. At the non-elite level, you have to go scale, right? Like you can't be Netflix and charge $7 a month if you only have a million subscribers, because then you can't generate new content to exclusively be on the cap. You need 75 million people.
Josh Rosenthal (53:13.642)
Yes.
Josh Rosenthal (53:26.291)
Yes. Yep.
Michael Mazzara (53:26.308)
subscribing to that. So then the interesting question is, is RobiHouse a scale play for the 95 %? Is this content for anyone else?
Josh Rosenthal (53:36.299)
Is this content for everyone else?
Michael Mazzara (53:40.674)
Is this content for everyone else? the non-five per... I don't know. It's like a very interesting what business... And it doesn't have to be that well-defined and you can kind of invent your own thing. But I think of it when you liken it to Jackass or when I watch vice documentaries, the OG ones with Shane Smith going into North Korea. I go, holy cow, I can't believe on a shoestring budget and...
Josh Rosenthal (53:45.29)
Yeah.
Josh Rosenthal (54:02.643)
Yes.
Michael Mazzara (54:07.918)
just one amazing personality like a Josh Rosenthal, we pulled it off, right? Like it's so inspiring and it was documentaries for everyone else. It was the skateboard culture, punk rock documentaries for everyone else. That's an interesting business case.
Josh Rosenthal (54:11.083)
Right, right.
Josh Rosenthal (54:21.866)
Right.
Yes.
Josh Rosenthal (54:28.851)
Yeah. Okay. So if, if Jackass, Jackass, okay. So this is where I get back to like the skateboarding thing. Cause it all, this is all woven together. Jackass was like what these guys were doing in between sessions in between skateboarding. That to me is not captured into use Flores Gehrman's words. What's not being captured in show running for all these people claiming skateboarding is what it was like to be in the van on the way to skate and on the way back. And that's what Jackass put on display. So if that's what.
Michael Mazzara (54:43.731)
Yeah.
Michael Mazzara (54:51.502)
Mm-hmm.
Josh Rosenthal (54:58.515)
skateboard when we all talk about growing up skateboarding we were all jackasses we were all You so you got this rebellious feeling that Satisfies tap and tapping into but we were rebellious and having a blast and I don't sometimes it's it's it's all just too serious. So I think you know when Debo's interviewing Jim about what he plans to do in the race like I'm all over it I'm on every word because I think I think the elite athletes open up to Debo and he gets very unique
Michael Mazzara (55:12.729)
Mm-hmm.
Michael Mazzara (55:22.86)
Yeah.
Josh Rosenthal (55:29.011)
Interviews with all of them. I've told him that I loved his post UTMB when Jim won and With Jim and with Zach he gets him to open up in a special way. So I am NOT shitting on what's already out there. I'm just saying Jackass was fun. Was Bam Margera a good skateboarder? Kinda ish. No one cared but he was skate but he was like he was the culture and so was Johnny Knoxville I don't think I think he was a garbage skateboarder Jason Lee. I mean he was
Michael Mazzara (55:47.162)
Yeah.
Josh Rosenthal (55:57.367)
Before like mall rats. He was a professional skateboarder, know, there's some great old VS VHS tapes of him So the spirit of all of that and and so I'm not looking to like put put people in roller skates and put them in the back of a box truck and Drive around town, even though that's some of the funniest stuff out there, but it's to figure out I think life can be explained in Venn diagrams. It's somehow to figure out like that jackass feeling of We're skateboarders. This is fun and funny. We love this and like
Michael Mazzara (56:10.425)
Right.
Josh Rosenthal (56:26.173)
the overlap of being a jackass and trail running. What is that? And that's what I want to tap into. So I hope to do that. So if I don't have Jim in the studio, which would be fun if he wanted to come, but on my terms, how am going to get the eyes and ears? It's basically like going after everybody out there who is an influencer, who isn't going to watch Western States. They're not going to post about it. They're not going to care.
Michael Mazzara (56:38.202)
Mm-hmm.
Josh Rosenthal (56:53.321)
and get them to all come and be under the same roof, putting out content simultaneously to where we're getting two million, three million eyes and ears on what we're doing.
Michael Mazzara (57:01.678)
Yeah. Yeah. I, in a lot of ways, I mean, I love Devo and what I'll say is it's so hard to go from non-business to business or athlete to media. Those, we have the fortune of being able to have a lot of discerning judgment and being able to pattern match on running a coffee company or a festival company or something in the past where we can kind of
Josh Rosenthal (57:28.469)
Ahem.
Michael Mazzara (57:30.746)
really articulate and understand trade-offs and strategy and where, if you, I don't know if this is your end goal with Wilder, but if you think about the concept of Wilder, you then go into this concept of saying, hey, run clubs don't have organization. Are run clubs the best way to actually make money? No, because they're traditionally disorganized. Maybe they have some dues, but those go towards like supporting the run club in some pretty non-essential ways. So what's another way to monetize that business?
If discovery of racist is pretty hard, then doing it from a perspective of where is my crew without having to text every single person or have a group thread or an email chain, what's all on their calendar for the year so I can maybe hop in or coordinate travel or something like that? And then is that valuable to races? That is a...
Josh Rosenthal (58:12.991)
Yes.
Michael Mazzara (58:24.378)
organization or club or social discovery is a loss leader for something much more valuable, which is introduction. You know what I mean? That's a pretty sophisticated non one to one model that you go, we're to get everybody onto a face online Facebook and then 10 years down the line, it's going to be an advertising company. It's one of those things. I think the other content stuff I really love thinking about is Dave Portnoy and
Josh Rosenthal (58:29.741)
Yeah. Yep.
Josh Rosenthal (58:42.475)
Right.
Michael Mazzara (58:54.04)
He is not a culinary expert and he is not sports expert, but for some reason he's innovated in personality and format enough where that after the 11,000th pizza in 30 seconds, you know his standard that it's credentialed and people will flock to the things that he says or does. Cause he's just kind of established credibility and he stands behind those principles and
Josh Rosenthal (58:57.235)
No, his pizza reviews. Yeah.
Josh Rosenthal (59:19.187)
Yep. Yep.
Michael Mazzara (59:22.062)
They're all really helpful data points. It's all really interesting to go and say, does trail have it's Dave Portnoy right now? What does Dave offer to the pizza or the sports community? And is that something that trail would be interested in or could be leveraged for trail? I like the fact that Robie house is kind of this flexible concept by which it's.
activations, it's engagements with athletes. But I could see a future where you are seeding your athletes into it to story. They're good athletes, but maybe they're greater personalities the same way that
Josh Rosenthal (59:50.378)
Ehem.
Josh Rosenthal (01:00:06.259)
Right. Yes, like a Tim Tullifson comes to mind, fantastic personality, great runner. Yep.
Michael Mazzara (01:00:12.652)
Exactly right. So you're not, you're everybody else's story. You're the Ash Bartholomew's of the world and we can't all be Killian Jornet. And if you had a roster of this, I mean, that's how Nick Bayer started with his company and then he puts races on the map. So I think we're in a very powerful position with how you're thinking about this. My guess is it's going to be painful for a little period of time while people go, I don't really get it because it doesn't look like the other things yet. And I haven't seen it.
Josh Rosenthal (01:00:38.581)
I don't get it. Yeah. Yeah. Yes. Yep.
Michael Mazzara (01:00:42.638)
And so your life cycle is going to be longer, but I think.
Josh Rosenthal (01:00:44.863)
Yep. I think you're right. My hope on that is that the right people are on the bus to where there's grace. Because if it's like, that guy, I don't get this, but that guy's there and I've trusted him for a long time. I've trusted her for a long time. So I'm going to take that. That's, mean, that's how I'm pursuing this. All the people I'm pursuing to come be there with me is like, they're trusted. So, and when I explain it to them, I'm thankful at this point.
Michael Mazzara (01:00:51.096)
Yeah.
Michael Mazzara (01:01:06.67)
Mm-hmm.
Josh Rosenthal (01:01:11.477)
They're not saying, wait, give me more detail. It's just like the high level. just like, okay, you're trying to talk to everybody else. You're trying to talk to who I talk to and at scale, and we're going to bring people in and hopefully there's going to be like the, the outcome is going to be greater than the sum of its parts. Like, okay, I'm into that. so that's what I'm hoping is, yeah, there's going to be this weird awkward slow start, but there's the right people on camera. My, my technical director, Ben Roby, right people behind the camera. And then I'm placing the right, like writers in place.
and like conceptors of content because it's not just gonna be, right, we gotta get the right people in the room and then it's a really great question asker. Like that, that's being done. We got great question askers out there. It's gotta be more programmed than that. And so it's gonna be like unintentionally cringy as we're working through it. And then we're gonna have to have the right people there to say, okay, I don't mind looking a little stupid. Let's try this.
Michael Mazzara (01:01:41.444)
Mm-hmm.
Michael Mazzara (01:01:49.753)
Yeah.
Mm-hmm.
Michael Mazzara (01:02:06.872)
Yeah. Does it make sense? So Borderlands is obviously the ability to experience Josh and what Josh, how he's high integrity and what kind of questions he asks and what's it like to experience him interviewing somebody and what's it like to be on camera. I don't think I've really seen shades of that for what you are taking. Like I think there's a disconnect between Borderlands and the concept of the Robie house right now, maybe because it's
under lock and key and you're still perfecting it and there's something else there. But I would guess that a sampler or starting to introduce that new concept early on, people go, now it's a content activation. Now.
Josh Rosenthal (01:02:44.619)
Good point. Yes. Good point.
Josh Rosenthal (01:02:52.309)
Give him some imagination.
Michael Mazzara (01:02:55.298)
Now I don't need to wonder what's going on at this thing and whether it's brand safe. And then you come up with a segment or a talking point. If you watch, I love the Barstool Sunday conversations with Keylor Presley. He gets his sponsor. my God. They're so fun now because he's like, you might if we do a new segment presented by Malmitas and he'll do it like three times. And they're like, I thought we just did the segment.
Josh Rosenthal (01:02:57.877)
That's so smart.
Yeah, that's smart.
Josh Rosenthal (01:03:09.691)
huh. Yeah, those are painful. Yeah, that's so good.
Josh Rosenthal (01:03:20.583)
Yeah, yeah. Yeah, and the dude eating the ice cream, I so want to rip that out. Like that just makes, that's so funny, so smart. Yep.
Michael Mazzara (01:03:28.288)
It's so funny and endearing and I watch everyone within the seconds that it comes out. But also I love the way they integrate advertisers. I'll watch every ad read. I just listened to Mr. Beast go to Antarctica and he climbed up to a mountain that had never been climbed before in Antarctica. And he named it Shopify Mountain and he was naming it on the way up the mountain. I was like, I'm going to watch this ad read. And I think you'll get to a point.
Josh Rosenthal (01:03:34.303)
Yep.
Josh Rosenthal (01:03:40.267)
It's so good.
Josh Rosenthal (01:03:47.508)
Yeah.
Josh Rosenthal (01:03:52.478)
Yeah, yeah.
Michael Mazzara (01:03:56.474)
So I'm excited to see you get to the point where you can take these amazing content creators or these formats and you can introduce them through your own goodwill that you've been building here in terms of people believing in you as a content creator and that you're here for the long haul or whatever people actually want to see from.
Josh Rosenthal (01:04:14.013)
Yeah. Yeah, what they want. But dude, that's so smart to say like, get pointed, pointed something. Yeah, that's so smart. That's the way to do it. That's the way to think about it. Yeah. It's a thought. It's it's my thought. But that's all I can really say about it. Now. Hey, we got to do this again. This is this is too good. It was as expected. There were rabbits. It was firehose like. But
Michael Mazzara (01:04:25.85)
It's thought, could totally be wrong.
Michael Mazzara (01:04:35.684)
Right.
Josh Rosenthal (01:04:42.121)
always energizing and always good to talk with you. So let's get another one these on the calendar.
Michael Mazzara (01:04:47.214)
Yeah, no, I appreciate it. And for everybody listening, you should go to rogexpeditions.com. It's one E instead of two E's. So R-O-G-U-E-X. The other one is a nice guy who hosts trips that there's a lot of hunting in it. And so that's not us. If you land on that page, it's not us. And we have Morocco and Patagonia and Alpe Aedrea, which is in Slovenian Croatia and the Dolomites and the Balkans.
Josh Rosenthal (01:04:53.098)
Yes.
Josh Rosenthal (01:05:02.763)
You
Josh Rosenthal (01:05:07.114)
Okay.
Don't go to the hunting page.
Michael Mazzara (01:05:16.884)
And if you have any questions about it, you can reach out to michael at rogexpeditions.com.
Josh Rosenthal (01:05:21.971)
Right on. Well, man, thanks for joining me. Do this again soon.
