Ep118 • I will Change How Runners engage with each other and with the sport.
This is what Borderlands Trail Running will look like in the next year and where it will be in 10 years.
Podcast: I will 10x the listeners in 2025 and move from it being all about me to being all about 'we'. I'll build a team of media personalities and distribute them through Borderlands.
Tech: Wylder App - I will release v1.0 + 2.0 in 2025
Events: Salt Lake Foothills Trail Races
Robie House: I will build the ultimate pre-race media beginning at WSER 2025
Apparel: I'm looking for a non-tech apparel company to partner with on an equity level in 2025.
Music: I will release one new song per month
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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.
Josh Rosenthal (00:05.328)
Welcome to the Borderlands Trail and Ultra Running podcast. My name is Josh Rosenthal I'm the host of this episode. I'm the founder of Borderlands. I'm a trail runner. I'm a road runner. I'm just a runner at this point and I'm super stoked on it. Today's episode is all about where Borderlands is going. I think for those of you who've been, let's say either on the bus with me going to where Borderlands is going or you're sort of adjacent and curious about where Borderlands is going, today's episode is hopefully going to make it more clear.
I'm bringing a lot more people on board as I move toward the mission and the vision and everything that I'm trying to do over here. So it's forcing me to be more articulate on where I'm going so I can communicate it better to the people who are helping me get there. And I think that even more than serving them that serves all of you who are the reason that I'm able to go there. So today I'm going to go into depth on where we're going, the mission, the vision, the one year plan, the 10 year plan, everything.
I think it's gonna be compelling. I think if you've liked what I've done so far, maybe this would even help you love it. If you have loved what I've done so far, this, I hope, just kind of keeps you engaged. And if you've disliked it, but you're interested or you're never even heard of it, I think today...
Josh Rosenthal (01:41.97)
I'm hosting a run with Billy Yang on January 18th in Salt Lake City. So I'm going home from Paris where we live now. Gonna run with Billy and Floris Gierman and the team of Path Projects. And then we're gonna do a live podcast at the University of Utah where I taught a class on entrepreneurship in one of the lecture rooms there at the University of Utah School of Business with Billy. This will be my chance to interview him, which is a dream come true. Plus.
Open up the mic to all of you who join me. So you have to find an ultra sign up though. So go to ultra sign up search. You can just search Billy Yang and it'll be the thing that pops up. Make sure you search events. Billy Yang, that person Billy Yang because he's also got a great body of work there as a runner on ultra sign up. So join me on January 18th for the run and then followed quickly by the live and in person podcast. OK, so today today is is I'm going to look at.
the one year plan of Borderlands and the 10 year plan of Borderlands. And it's all gonna be couched in this love of trail running. So what's the mission of Borderlands? I'm a fan of when you're creating a mission for a company that it's gotta be something that a five year old could memorize within one sitting. Because people, you don't give us a lot of time. If you have a mission statement that's like five sentences, or it's even one sentence, it can't even really be a sentence. No one's gonna remember that.
So you can have an internal mission statement that's for you and for your team and then it can be a page long if you want it to be. But external mission statements have to be something that your people who love you can articulate. So if someone says, Hey, what's Borderlands? Well, Borderlands is the heart of trail running. My mission is to be the heart of trail running. The reason that that's important to me is because for when I came into, when, I started to dream about Borderlands, I wasn't seeing a ton of heart. It was out there.
But so much of what was being built, the businesses, the podcasts, everything that was being built was being built around the performance of trial running. And that has its place. There's some great players in that, in that space right now, who are doing media around that and building, businesses around performance and that, that, entails, everything from apparel to media, to nutrition, all of that performance. That's great. We want to perform well when we're out running, but
Josh Rosenthal (04:05.042)
That wasn't the content that's compelling to me, though I would, you know, heavily engage with when, you know, the top ultra trail races of the year, the UTMB in Western states, you know, I would obsess over that coverage and the performances of the elite and all that. But the heart of trail running, and it can exist anywhere in the pack. It's not a back of the pack thing or a middle of the pack. I'm a back of the pack guy. I'm still aspiring to be a front of the pack guy at almost 42 years old. I haven't given up on that. I'm ambitious. I want that to happen. But
I started by telling stories of the middle of the pack and the back of the pack and that was fun and enjoyable. And now the mission of the Heart of Short Running has sort of evolved from saying that only people at the back of the pack have heart or the heart, that's the heart that I most resonate with and I know how to tell that story. They're saying, I'm looking for heart anywhere, not just performance, not robotic performance, not an interview that's about here's how I fueled.
Here's how I trained, I did weight training now, I'm doing some high rocks. am in for all that stuff. It's just not what I'm creating. I'm trying to create something that's for the heart of trail running. That when you watch it, that you are moved by it. Someone who doesn't trail run can engage with the heart of trail running and feel something and understand why many of us are out there. And as Brian with.
with me on Bad Runners Take and now on his own podcast, Wolfie's World, is really trying to explore and articulate and create more understanding around why people run. Even as we work to articulate that, we are still in this space where we can say, we don't exactly know why, we can't fully put our finger on it, but we know that when these stories of heart are told, when they're put on display, that grandma has moved by it, my kids are interested in it.
that heart translates, transcends beyond those who understand what we're doing. And that's incredibly critical if our sport's gonna grow. Right now, the compound annual growth rate of our sport is about people who are participating in it. The growth of our sport is not happening outside of participation. So how does it transcend and go beyond participation for people to consume it, meaning...
Josh Rosenthal (06:26.374)
We're growing because there's more runners. I'd love to see our sport grow because there's more people who just want to watch it and consume it because it's such a beautiful, beautiful struggle and a beautiful suffering that, that we can start to shed light on and articulate. So when I'm, when I'm building this, I'm looking at a one year plan and a 10 year plan. had a really a distinct pleasure of having
a one-on-one lunch with a guy named Fred Mosler. Actually, there were three of us there, my friend Andy, who set it up, which was amazing of him. Had lunch with Fred Mosler. Fred Mosler was employee number one of Zappos. If you've ever read Delivering Happiness, Fred wrote one of the chapters. Just an icon in the industry. I Zappos sold for I don't know how many billions to Amazon. Tony Hsieh, he worked very closely with Tony Hsieh.
I was sitting down with him because it was thinking, could he be an investor in my coffee roasting company? I'm really interested in this meeting. And if you're an entrepreneur or if you're just aspiring to grow, I hope that you have these moments like I had with Fred, where sometimes your ass just gets handed to you. And as a result, you could either lick your wounds or you can move forward and trying to be better for it. He gave me plenty of reasons why he wasn't going to invest in what I was doing. But in the end, I was just looking to understand
more, I mean, in the end, my takeaways were like, okay, how do how do these billion dollar companies, how do these people think? And it was super enjoyable on that level. And what I take with me this day is not, hey, here's where Borderlands wasn't I mean, where LaBarbara Coffee wasn't ready for investment. My takeaway was, this is how I need to be thinking about building and growing. He said, Tony never had a three year business plan, never had a five year business plan. He always had a one year business plan and a 10 year business plan.
And one year plan was, this is, so this was how I then articulate it. Cause I spent, spent a lot of time thinking about it. The one year plan is, is stuff that's actually conceivably doable. Things that you think, Hey, maybe I've got the cash resources to accomplish these things. I've got the ambition. I've got the drive. I've got the skill. I've got the know-how it's, in my crosshairs. I can see it. I can accomplish it. Let's do this over the next year. And it's not necessarily that it's like perfectly doable or easily doable. It's just conceivable.
Josh Rosenthal (08:52.242)
It's not crazy to think that X, Y, and Z could happen. That's your one year plan. Your 10 year plan is like, hey, this is so absurd. There's no outside of miracles. There's no way this can happen. And that is sort of your North star. lives underneath your mission statement. So if I'm going to say, I'm to be the heart of trail running, I'm going to give you my 10 year plan here in just a sec. So if I'm going be the heart of trail running, the heart of running, this is what that could look like.
in 10 years if miracles happen, if capital happens, if the right people come on board, if I do a good job with all my one year business plans. So one year is conceivable and doable. 10 years is supposed to be just absurd and like compelling and to show all the people around you like, hey, I got ambition and I'm going there. And what does ambition do? Ambition compels people who are with you already to say, my gosh, I'm gonna stay on this bus because I wanna watch it happen. And what else does it do? It brings the best people to come.
who want to join your team. Cause if you think, I'm going to lay out this 10 year plan. It needs the best possible people. can't do my 10 year plan by myself requires incredible people. hopefully what I lay out here just says is like a dog whistle to the most talented people in all of the areas that I'm trying to grow to say, Hey, I want to join borderlands because borderlands is going to do this absurd, you know, 10 year plan. So even before I articulate them,
Need your help today one way you can help me today is by wherever you listen to this podcast if it's YouTube Spotify Apple all of the other one percenters out there Platforms if you'll follow if you'll if you're on Apple that allows you to leave comments. Will you leave a comment? Anything that you can do on that level to say to show all the algorithms that you're an interested and engaged listener and participant in what I'm doing that's tremendously helpful and then beyond that
to just simply share it with other trail runners. But I know that the onus is on me in order for you to want to share with other people. I've got to create compelling stuff. So don't share it just to share it. But just in case it's not in your imagination to be sharing this podcast, like if you come across something compelling and you can think of someone who would also enjoy it, please pass it along to them. That is incredibly helpful.
Josh Rosenthal (11:17.134)
Okay, so 10 year plan, this is where I want to be in 10 years. It's 2025, this is I want to be in 2035. I'm gonna redefine running media, I'm gonna create meaningful connections, I'm gonna create meaningful communities, and I'm gonna elevate the global running culture. I'm gonna do that through tech, through better storytelling, I think there's a massive, massive opportunity in storytelling, massive opportunity in creating useful tech.
live experiences, which is a big part of my background, that I have not initiated yet with Borderlands because it is so exhausting and I'm waiting for the right time. And when I do, I do believe that it will be special, not quite there yet, live experiences. And I will change the way that runners engage with each other and with the sport itself. That's where Borderlands going. And I, and I feel like I can get us there. if miracles take place capital.
is around and the right people come on to join me. So this, my 10 year goal is something that we can't do. I mean, really that last piece is it. I will change how runners engage with each other in the sport itself. That's where my head is. That's where my heart is. And I want to change it because I think it can get better and better. Someone is going to do it. Here's the hard part for those of you listening and like, man, don't, don't entrepreneur my sport and ruin it. Like I just want to be this dirt bag trail runner. Well, I do too.
But here's the reality is that someone is gonna do it. Someone's gonna do the stuff that I'm saying. And I want it to be me because I'm coming from a position of my mission statement is gonna, no one's gonna have that same mission statement that's about the heart of trail running. So if someone's gonna change the way that we engage with each other and the sport itself on a global scale, I want it to be someone who cares about the heart of trail running and not the performance. So those things are gonna end up being pulled apart.
Performance is going to probably have its own clear lane and heart is going to have its own clear lane. Just like and one had its own lane and the NBA had its own lane and I'm building the and one. But what I'm hoping is that unlike and one and one ended up falling apart, ended up losing its place. Great documentary on it on Netflix. I highly recommend. Well, what I'm hoping is that I'm going to challenge the way that the performance people do their media and accomplish their goals because
Josh Rosenthal (13:41.924)
What I want to build over here is going to have such an impact. So again, why do I have that ambition? Because I believe that the heart of trail running should be the ethos behind how this sport changes and evolves globally. And I want to have a part of it. So there's my ambition on the tenure. The one year plan, this is the stuff that I think is actually conceivable, doable.
need capital to do it, need to increase revenue to do it. But this is the stuff that I think over the next, let's say year or so that it is doable. not easy, but it's conceivable that in my imagination that with a play, my cards, right. I get lucky on a few scales, few levels that this stuff will happen. So here's, here's where I'll start is that is what the podcast, the podcast, mean, maybe even just
by way of review. started it less than a year ago as I recite this podcast now. Started on my 41st birthday, January 13th-ish. I released my first episode with Elsa Jaworski. And since then, I've done 117 episodes. This episode, when I release it, will be episode 118 of the podcast in less than a year. With my one-year anniversary podcast is gonna be the Billy Yang.
podcast that I'm going to do that I'm going to do in person with him in Salt Lake on January 18th and all are welcome to join. every one that I reached out to almost everyone, and I'm going to call out the PR one of the PR people who said no, the only person that I can recall that said no, and that's Taylor spike who I really admire and also trust that he didn't, didn't feel comfortable with it. I'm calling him out because I like him so much. He's a great follow on Instagram. He's an inspiring dude. He cares.
He's the only person that hasn't come down and came on the podcast that I invited. I invited everybody that I could think of. And I had Mike Versteg, who I really admire, Candice Burt, who I think doesn't get enough credit for what she's done and the way that she has changed the sport. I don't know that anybody has had a more marked and obvious impact on the sport than Candice Burt. And
Josh Rosenthal (15:59.174)
The impact that she's had that the credit that she deserves has been given to other people in the sport in my opinion. And I hate that because I think she is an absolute baller in what she's done. And I love that she's pushing the envelope again with the Arizona monster 309 miles to the Arizona desert and mountains and wherever that thing goes. Chris McDougall who wrote Born to Run join me which was incredible. My Carrera lead singer of MXPX which was gosh I was a kid in a.
Candy Store, was so stoked on that. Mickey Rayfield, who played harmonica with Willie Nelson. So many notable and non-notable people who are all about this mission of the heart of trail running. At least that's what I was pulling from them, was heart, heart of trail running. And that won't stop in the coming year, but what you're gonna see in the podcast over the next 12 months is a very clear movement from me, Josh, to we, as a team of people doing.
podcast. So I'm moving from me to we in the podcast. And my goal though is to 10x the listeners of the podcast by this time next year. My path to do that is yeah, I've got to do better content. My content alone, you can have horrible everything but great content. It can be poor quality but great content and it could 10x. So the onus is on me. I've got to get better with my
titles, my SEO, my SEM, any of you out there who are experts on that with podcasts, know, DMs are open, hit me up. I'm trying all the time to figure out how to title better all the stuff that allow people who are searching for podcasts to find them. But everything's got to elevate. I've got to elevate for my episodes, quality's got to get better, content's got to get better. But then I'm going to bring more people on. So you've seen me do this with Brian Peterson, WolfRunner.
which has been an absolute delight on my end to have him. He's become a voice of Bad Runners Take, which was initially my conception to how I want to infuse my voice into current events in running. And he's joined me and he's made it better. He's great at thinking up conversation topics. I mean, just gifted on so many levels. And so we've just released Wolfie's World. So when you subscribe to Borderlands on Tuesdays, you'll get Wolfie's World. So Borderlands is now
Josh Rosenthal (18:19.61)
me and then on Tuesdays it's Brian and then Brian joins me sometimes on these other episodes but I want to bring on more people like that who maybe they have a day job but they have a voice they have ambition within being a voice, intro running, in running and I want to bring them in and put them on the feed so I you know Borderlands does the editing does all the all the content production all the promotion and the talent like Brian
spends time focusing on what he wants to say and how he wants to say it. I want to people like Brian grow, develop their ability to communicate, articulate their ideas, and then just give them the eyes and ears, give them the platform. I trust Brian to bring content that all of you would enjoy. And I'm looking for more people to do that with, in as much as they fit the ethos. Brian and I fancy ourselves as free thinkers, meaning
We really try to think about things for ourselves without just regurgitating what's been given to us. We are, you know, untethering ourselves from brands so that brands can't control us. So if we don't like satisfy, we can say we don't like satisfy. If we're sponsored by path projects, but we don't like something about path projects, anyone who's, know, within the realm of the podcast and is a voice in that can absolutely say negative things about them. we,
I enjoy free speech. think it's critical, you know, that someone who you don't like says something that you don't like. So if you don't like me and I have an opinion about something.
I want to create a community of podcasters and voices within short running that will say what's on their mind, not just for the sake of being negative. And to Brian's credit, he says it this way, like, if we're going to break something down, we're always going to rebuild it. If we're going to deconstruct, we're going to reconstruct. But it's important that we are a place where people can say whatever they need to say. We are not a group of podcasters and personalities who desire to be liked, or at least we're not going to live in that space of
Josh Rosenthal (20:26.758)
being liked is the most important thing. Being disliked is okay because the reality in business and from a marketing standpoint, you can't be loved unless you're hated. No one is loved unless they are also hated. And so we are looking to build personalities who are saying meaningful, articulate, thoughtful, sometimes wrong, sometimes right things about the space in their own way. So Brian is like the...
in his own words, like pre-fontaine meets Anthony Bourdain. So pre-bourdain is what I call him. And I love that vision because there's no Anthony Bourdain of trial running right now. And there's no one in trial running that is fully embraced the ethos of pre-fontaine. and so Brian is looking to live in that space and that's what we're developing there. And I think that's how I 10 X the podcast reach is by bringing more people in. I've got to make it less about me and more about we, I'm building this team of personalities. And I think that's going to be.
not only a lot of fun, but useful to the community of trail runners in general. Okay, so that's the podcast itself, and that's available on Spotify, YouTube, Apple, it's available anywhere you can find a podcast, and you help me tremendously by subscribing on YouTube, by subscribing on any of the platforms, leaving a review when they allow it, all that sort of stuff tells the algorithm that what I'm creating is useful.
Now, if you don't think that what I'm creating is useful or good, don't do any of that stuff because it doesn't help me for you to follow me and then also not continue to listen. So again, that's where I keep coming back to. I've gotta make better content. I've gotta make content that compels you to immediately click follow, but if it hasn't crossed your mind, hopefully it has now. Okay, next, I'm gonna accomplish that crazy 10-year goal. My one-year.
path to get there that's conceivable, that's doable within tech is wilder. You've been hearing me talk about it for a long time. It was born out of my first time living in Paris, which was just a three month window with a group of 75 other entrepreneurs from 35 or 40 countries. I can't remember exactly. And we were all working on our own things. And for me, I was most concerned with runner safety. How do we make runners safe? Well, in general, runners
Josh Rosenthal (22:44.71)
don't wanna be safe themselves. They think other people should be safe, but on average, they're not safe themselves. I asked them on a scale of one to 10, this was, asked a thousand runners this, scale of one to 10, how important is it that other people are safe when they run? And it was like 9.2. Other people should be safe. And then the question was, okay, on a scale of one to how safe are you right now as a runner? Do you carry?
you know, a Garmin inReach. Do you run with somebody? What do you, you know, how do you handle yourself in the wilderness? Right now, and the average was like 3.2. So the belief was that other people should be safe, that we ourselves, we don't need all that stuff that we think other people need, because we're gonna be fine. And that is the plague of ultra trail runners. When I was conceiving this, a friend of mine, Ken, told me that his, one of his best friends,
son Went on a trail run in the La Plata. I think it's the La Plata mountains. It's called the La Plata enchilada. It's a trail trail and Maybe Durango I apologize for not nailing exactly where but point being he went on a run by himself and never returned a snowstorm showed up and Who knows if he was with somebody maybe that would have solved it. Maybe it wouldn't have but since runners
And so my heart went out to Ken, my heart went out to the community. And then again, while I was at this program in Paris, two other people had died on the trail. And I just thought, you they don't want to be safe. So I can't build tools to make you safer. The Garmin inReach works to a degree, but it's quite an investment. someday I want to be able to change that. We came up with so much hardware ideas that I thought was interesting things that we could.
put in shoes and foam and stuff like that that would force runners to have technology on them that would make them findable in the event that they were lost. That was a lot of fun to think through, but in the end it was runners just don't want to invest in being safer. And so then I thought, well, how do runners, how are runners safer? It's running together. And this was, think the run club boom was just getting going. And so basically I wanted to build tools that enabled people and help people run together more often.
Josh Rosenthal (25:05.714)
And so that's Wilder. Wilder is a place to house your run club and to find new run clubs, to find people to run with, that are safe, that are verified, all of this sort of stuff. So Wilder 1.0 is going to come out in Q1 of 2025. We did the beta last year. I did all the designs on it. I did all the Figma and my friend Tim did all of the development. It was far from what it needed to be, but what we learned from the beta itself was encouraging enough.
to invest in and build Wilder 1.0. I was able to bring on two partners. My product partner is Sam DeRegger. He's the head of product. He actually founded LaBarbcaffee with me back in 2012, but his core competency, and it is quite impressive to see up close, is his ability to a product. And so for those of you who were part of the beta with Wilder, first, thank you. Second, you're gonna be blown away by what's gonna be.
coming out. It's everything that I had dreamed of times 20. And then I had brought on a tech partner who has to remain anonymous because he has a day job and it's not in his best interest right now to be publicly named. But he's plugging away over the holidays and he's getting ready for the launch of version 1.0. And in 1.0, it'll be a place where if you're a run club captain, it'll be a place for you to house your run club. If you're someone looking
to run with somebody, there's going to be a place to find run clubs. So you can hop in and say, Hey, I'm in Paris right now for the weekend. And run clubs will pop up and you can look, find a run club to join. If you're moving here, if you're just here for a weekend for a run, there'll be a place where run clubs can just post runs. So let's say there's a club that runs along the San river here in Paris on Saturdays at 8 30 AM. And they run at a pace of 10 minutes and
30 seconds and afterwards they're gonna go have coffee at Starbucks. You can hop on and look for that while you're visiting to say, I don't wanna go run alone. I don't know where to go run. I wanna run with a trusted group, a verified group of local runners who can show me somewhere cool. And you can hop on and you can do that. So that's what's coming. If you're a run club captain or a manager or you're the leader of a run club, our hope is that you will bring that run club into Wilder.
Josh Rosenthal (27:32.304)
Because at version 2.0, as we look to monetize Wilder, and this will happen in 2025 as well, we are looking to monetize not through the initial tools that we deliver of finding run clubs, finding runs, and housing it, but it's in, if you're a manager of a run club that has a hundred members and that's really difficult to do, we're gonna allow for things like for runners to pay dues. If they do pay dues, you know, that
that they'll be able to pay directly to you through the app. And we would have a, take a small chunk of that, you know, a place for run club captains. If you want to create and sell merch, like they'd be able to do that right in the run club. There would be a lot of things in that vein that we want to monetize one that, I don't know if we'll make it in 2025, but I'm extremely excited about. Some of you might remember that Borderlands used to do something called tequila highway events.
These were these virtual events where I gamified your training. So if you're training for Western States 100, let's have a group of a hundred of you join me this March for 31 days and see who can get the most mileage and there'll be prizes involved. And the goal was the value proposition of it is let's gamify your training. If what I love so much about the actual race itself,
It's hard to find that in training. I don't always love the process. I love game day. I don't always love the process. That's probably part of my problem is how do we make part of the process feel a little bit more like game day. And that was through tequila highway. was wildly successful. it kept me too busy. And so I thought, okay, this is great. Now I need to, be able to scale this. And so we're going to put it the app and make it, and, we will monetize our goal is to monetize off that. But the thing we won't monetize is bring your run club.
You'll be able to communicate with them. You'll be able to schedule runs. You'll be able to banter back and forth, share together all the stuff that you love about your run club. When you're not running, you'll be able to do it there. But the ultimate goal of the app is to get you out of the digital world into the physical world running together. And again, that running together piece to me was my small sort of entrepreneurial contribution to trying to increase safety.
Josh Rosenthal (29:53.316)
If we can enable tools to make it easier to run with other people, then maybe you'll just, even if you're just 1 % safer, that's a win for me. Long-term, I hope to bring in more tools that are increasing runner safety. Okay. Next events in 2025 events are heavy lift and I had to bring on two partners with that as well. I had to, I did to my best friends. Like this was a dream. We were sitting around having beers one night and it was like, gosh,
How in the world is there not a 50K in the Salt Lake foothills? There's a bandit race up there. I run it. I love it. The Bo show. Beyond that though, the house are not like a sanctioned race that's partnered with the city, that's partnered with the visitor's bureau and aimed to be, you know, a massive, massive event in the Salt Lake foothills. Those of you who live in Salt Lake know that those Salt Lake foothills trails,
World-class they're not just like nice convenient. Isn't it crazy that it's so close to downtown They're not good for their proximity to downtown which makes them great. They're great in and of themselves They are wonderful. It's a wonderful trail system Salt Lake City has done an incredible job of building out those trail systems are owned by the city and so we were having beers when I thought hey, why don't we do a 50k and we are the first We were gonna name it the mountain Or what we're gonna call it
The Meadow, the Mountain Meadow Massacre is a thing from history in Salt Lake. So we had a funny name for it that we decided not to go with. It was probably in the best interest to not go with. And so we ended up saying, hey, what do we want to be with this race? We want this race to be what Salt Lake City Marathon is to Salt Lake. We want this race to be trail, the trail version of that. So we came up with a name that we thought, hey, this is kind of boring, but we also want to
make it the Salt Lake City race. So it's called the Salt Lake Foothills Trail races, very inside the box. You know, I love to name things. We had industry trail teams and Tequila Highway and Wilder and Borderlands. This was very much outside of my character to name a race something so simple. But if Salt Lake Marathon is the road marathon for people who live in Salt Lake City and love Salt Lake City, we wanted to build the trail race for people who live in Salt Lake City and love trail.
Josh Rosenthal (32:16.24)
And so we have two distinct targets with that race. It's happening May 31st. We've partnered with visitor Salt Lake and sports Salt Lake, and we're really looking to bring people in from out of the country. Year two last year, we had people from 13 states come run with us. We want to up that. We don't necessarily want more states, but we want more visitors to come in and see how great the thing is that we're building here. Path projects has come on to join us as a sponsor to invest in our vision for Salt Lake.
And it's because they've actually just moved their headquarters to Utah. And so it's really great alignment. We can, you know, bring them eyes and ears and legitimacy within the Utah running community. And they in turn, are providing us with just elevating our, our, our whole race experience. So we've got a 10 K half marathon and 50 K, our 10 K we're really targeting locals for that. want local high school runners. We want people who live downtown. You'd be surprised in Salt Lake city. have like.
14 ski resorts within an hour and a half of each other. How rare it is, you'd be surprised at how rare it is. It's not rare, but you'd be surprised at how rare it is that someone who lives in Salt Lake City doesn't go up and ski, doesn't go up into the snow, doesn't go up into the mountains. It's very common. How many people live downtown who've never even hiked on the Salt Lake Foothills trails, which if you live in the heart of downtown, you're on these trails in 10 minutes. So we want, we're really targeting at least to the 10K as many
High school kids as possible downtown. We've applied for a grant because we want to scholarship 50 high school kids Who are cross-country runners to come run our race for free and come enjoy it? Because the assumption is if we're right about our assumptions and our hypothesis That very few people downtown actually run we want to we want to say hey just come run this 10k with us It's on us. You're gonna get a free hat out of it from path projects You're gonna get a medal and you're gonna get a day that you just won't forget
You know, the first time you pushed yourself really hard in the foothills of Salt Lake City on this beautiful route. So we want locals who've never been in the mountains before to come run this race, come, to come step foot on these incredible trails, to show off what the city of Salt Lake has invested millions of dollars into recently. So we want to elevate it on that level. The next thing we want to do is the half marathon.
Josh Rosenthal (34:34.938)
And the 50 K like those are two races that are a bit more inside the box. People will travel more for the 50 K than, than for the half marathon. But we are, we call ourselves open range races and the mission of open range races is to essentially support what's happening in Salt Lake City to make Salt Lake City a trail running capital of the world or of America. others have that ambition as well. I've lived there since 2002.
We were a part of that in the food industry, opened 13 restaurants in Salt Lake. Like we were really concerned and cared for elevating culture in Utah. and so I did that through starting five nonprofits there, churches. I released 10 albums as a musician there and I never wanted to move to LA or Nashville because I just wanted to be rooted there. Opened all these restaurants or coffee shop, two cocktail bars, all this sort of stuff. bookstore.
We did a lot of stuff in Salt Lake because we felt like it wasn't getting the recognition that it deserved. And we wanted to be a part of this Renaissance, not even a Renaissance, this awakening. It had never been alive. We wanted to be a part of this awakening of bringing all this stuff to Salt Lake. And so now we're just leaning into doing that within trail running. It's a poorly kept secret because you see people moving there all the time. Elites are moving there all the time from Dakota Jones to Tyler Green and Rachel Drake, which I love seeing these people.
coming to Salt Lake City and loving it, like that's, that really makes me happy. And so our goal is just to continue to do our piece in that. We want to show this off through storytelling and great events of just why Salt Lake City deserves to be A, if not the trail running capital of North America. Okay, next, Robie House. Robie House is the next thing that we're doing this next year. And as we,
As I conceive it, I'm in this place right now where I'm really having to ask for outside help. So I've brought on Andrew Hankey to help me with monetization as the head of monetization. Robi House is a nod to Wendell Robi. And my business partner in that is Ben Robi, who's directly related to Wendell. So what Robi House is right now is it's an experiment that we're gonna do at Western States. And it's gonna be, it's what I'm,
Josh Rosenthal (36:58.222)
aiming to do with it, which is too ambitious to be honest with you. I'm trying to figure out the best way to do this right now. But my mission with this is to be a college game day if you're a football fan, to be inside the NBA, if you're basketball fan. Essentially right now is to be a part of this pregame, to be like the fun, exciting, energetic, compelling pregame, pre-race entertainment.
How do you how do you build more hype around a race? There's obvious limitations to this that I'm dealing with right now So, you know my vision casting is a little bit uninspiring at this exact moment because I'm so focused on like, How do I'm coming out of the clouds and trying to pull it into reality? But what we're gonna do is some version of programming at Robie house For my it's my friend Ben's house, but it was assembled or it was built off site at Wendell Robie's lumber yard
And we are kind of piggybacking on the Roby name and the Roby family to bring what I think is a very different type of pre-event hype to change the way that you would engage with the race leading up to Western States. For those of you who don't care about it, you're going to really want to tune in because it's going to be something so different that you don't necessarily have to love Western States to do it. For those of you who do love Western States, you want to tune in because we're going to give you different perspectives and different advantages of
of what's happening at Western States. I want to, I don't, I'm not going to interview Jim Walmsley or Killian or David Roach. I'm more interested in who Ultra Sign Up thinks is going to finish last in that race and how do we interview them before? And how do get a camera on course that can do interviews of people at 50 % at 75 % right now, when you consume Western States, the elites are so good that they make it look easy. And for those of us who've run races like that, you know, we know that it's not.
easy at all. And so I want to, I feel like the story that's missing from Western States is how genuinely and legitimately hard the race is. It's story is incredible, but I don't think it translates to how hard that race is and why people DNF coming out of the canyons and all of this sort of stuff. Like you can kind of, you kind of know it if you've run it, but the media doesn't exist around it. And I think the bulk of us who engage in this sport are going to resonate with those stories more so than Jim's.
Josh Rosenthal (39:22.374)
That said, I will consume when Free Trail interviews Jim and Katie and Courtney hopefully and Killian and everybody, I'm gonna engage with that because I love that and I care about that. But not everybody does. And the stories that are missing are A, interviewing them from the perspective of the heart of trail running and B, all of the heart that's happening in the middle and the back of the pack and the front of the pack at Western States. So.
building a media, a viral media event, I'm going to attach a conference to it of running podcasters, quite niche, quite specialty that would come and join me at Robie house. There's going to be more information on that soon as well, where we can work together, collaborate together, learn a lot together and really just sort of band together as running podcasters to all get better. And again, grow the reach of this sport beyond just the same like
always playing a zero sum game of other running podcasts. Like let's push out beyond what we're doing as podcasters and running and who we're talking to and see if we can grow that and we can put our heads together to dream about how we could actually do that. Okay, the next piece is music in 2025. Music is an interesting thing. know, I've been trying to find, so this is.
another moment of me calling BS on trial running brands who say that they are the skateboarding of Trail running I mean a lot of people it sounds so sexy to say no one is even I think touching it people are reducing it They're wearing like let's say skateboarding face. They're just putting on some stuff. It's like, okay well, let's use a low-resolution camera with a with that either naturally like glitches in an analog way or
that we put a filter on that glitches and you know, let's make sure it's de-saturated and let's make it look like it was shot in the 90s. I don't see much beyond skateboard face. I don't actually see like what makes skateboarding so magical and what made it so strong that it paved the way for Tony Hawk Pro Skater, the video game to destroy the gaming industry and make millions and millions and millions. No one is even in the ballpark of that.
Josh Rosenthal (41:39.954)
One of the elements of that that I so aspire, the only reason I so aspire to have an impact on it is because there's a gap here. Like when you skateboarded, when I was skateboarding, this was 95, 96, 97, there was music attached to that. There was such an ethos, such a culture that music was attached to it.
Right now you see like lot of people lean toward Cold War Kids. Somehow Cold War Kids is becoming, I love Cold War Kids, especially the album that's front and center. I'm sorry, Cold War Kids, what the hell is that? War on Drugs. I don't know, gosh, I gotta fix that. Right now you're seeing War on Drugs seems to be popping up in a lot of different places as a prominent voice. I was trying to get licensing on one of their songs, When Satisfy Did and.
Message briefs like hey, this is hilarious. I was trying to get licensing on that and you know, did a great video incredible video with it but when you skateboarded it was punk rock like there was a sound that was attached to it because there was an attitude to punk rock because To skateboarding because when you would skate you were almost by definition if you were street skating You were doing it somewhere that it wasn't allowed. So there was a rebelliousness inherent to skateboarding trail running. There is no rebelliousness inherent
to trail running. fact, it feels like it's on the other end of virtue signaling. There's virtue within trail running. know, no one's going and running off trail. No one's running in a place or in a way that they might get arrested if they get caught. Skateboarding videos, inevitably. The VHSs that we passed along, inevitably someone was getting put in cuffs because of where they were skateboarding. So the reason I don't think any brands are hitting on it is because there's no rebelliousness.
that they're attaching themselves to. It's the inverse of that. It's the other end of that. They're attaching themselves to virtue, which is inherently not skateboarding. It's not punk rock. And I was in it when it was just punk rock, but there was also a lot of hip hop. I wasn't a part of hip hop. I was a West Texas kid doing it. We weren't big on hip hop, but we were listening to bands like MXPX and H2O. We loved the misfits to a degree, a little bit of Ramones.
Josh Rosenthal (43:59.27)
but it was really just about going and skating somewhere we weren't allowed to, bringing a boombox along and blasting stuff that cussed. And that was who we were and what we were doing. So I'm on the hunt, but I'm looking for like, what's the spirit of running and can we attach a music to it? I'm gonna contribute my piece of that. I was a musician. All the music that I've ever released, if you went and listened to it, not in the realm of anything that I wanna make anymore. I'm not ashamed of it. It's also, I'm not super.
stoked on it. But what I'm making now is like, hey, what's what is what is music for me sound like that's inspired by trow running? That's what I'm going to be releasing. I'm going to release one song a month for the next 12 months under the under the name Kaval, which is not only my favorite bar in Paris where so many of my friendships were forged in that program a few years ago, but it also means like an ill advised running adventure to run away from something. And it's ill advised. It's a Kaval thing like
cavalry, the cavalry going away. So under the name Kaval, I'm gonna release at least one song a month for the next 12 months. And to me, it's what trail running sounds like musically. Even if it's not a hit, even if it's not gonna be what punk rock was to skateboarding or hip hop was to skateboarding. My goal is to say like this is what running sounds like. And a lot of times it's more contemplative to me. It's not rebellious.
It's being in this space with all the chemicals are fine where there's maybe some gratitude involved. It's like all of the all the bad shit that's inside of you starts to bubble up and leave you or at least you're faced with it. You're faced with this reality that maybe you hate yourself sometimes. And what do you do with that? Like it's music that like that bubbles to the surface when I'm out running. And that's the music that I'm going to release. I'm not saying it's going to be the sound of trail running. But what I am saying is that this
Like their needs, I want to see more musicians create music and I want to distribute their music. I want to see them create music that is directly influenced by their time trail running. So that we can at least start to see music emerge from the sport. So my first one's going to be coming out in the middle of January. The first song coming from Cavallo is going to be in middle of January. I think I'm just going to call it song one and release it on all Spotify, Apple music, all that sort of stuff. No, you'll see a lot more.
Josh Rosenthal (46:22.364)
from that coming up. I do, I am paying attention to music and because so many sports have music attached to them, a style of music, a way of music, especially soul sports feel like they're ripe with opportunity to have that happen. And I want to be one of the ones who makes that happen. All right. Second to last thing here is apparel. I did apparel for a long time.
With Borderlands. It was actually one of them before I was gonna do tech with with Borderlands. I was gonna be you know, non non-technical running apparel. This was what I launched as in 2022 and a lot of people have done it since and I mean inherently the reason that you see that popping up so much is because Creating technical gear is very hard and very capital intensive takes a lot of money So what we're all out there doing is just finding blank shirts and screen printing clever things on
And that really works. And as I was building it, Deathmarche started and they were starting to release stuff. was like, Hey, anytime I see someone doing something that I was endeavoring to do, and they do it better than me, I'm content to stop doing it so that I can rethink it. So I am doing my own thing. So Deathmarche pops up. Love those guys. Had them on a podcast this year, what they're doing, the way that they're doing it.
way that they think kind of the spirit of who they are. I love it. They dropped their street team this year. I'm for it. But I didn't like necessarily what I was building, even though I sold, I don't know what the number was, 4,000, 5,000 shirts and transactions or whatever online. It was good. It was very busy. But I do want to bring apparel back in 2025. But the way that I want to do it is through an existing apparel company that I can partner with.
that I could potentially acquire, that I could come in alongside, they already have distribution, they already have supply chain figured out, and that I could bring design and brand and ethos to what they're doing to grow what they're already doing. And I can use their existing supply chain, existing distribution channels, website, all that sort of stuff. So if you know of any brands like that who are looking for a partner that could help grow them in that way, let me know. That's, that's,
Josh Rosenthal (48:47.346)
within my ambition and is attainable and doable in the coming year. And last thing is social media. So we are doing social. It is important to me. Everything that I'm doing sort of emanates from organic social content. I don't have high engagement. I get good eyes and ears. I get a lot of messages offline, but the posts don't. And again, that's on me. I've got to make better content.
But everything I just named, from podcasts to Wilder, events, Robie House, music, everything is gonna be, it just gets pushed through social. So that's the place and the purpose of social.
that was a mouthful, but that's where we're going. So in 10 years, I want to change the way that runners interact with each other and engage with the sport entirely. And I want to be a part of bringing the outside world into our sport to see what we're doing and to show it off a lot of ambition. And then the next year is going to be an exciting wild ride. Join me as we grow this podcast times 10. But as you can see, it's just a small piece of everything that's happening right now. I've got nine people on board with me who are
working to build within the races, within technology, within the podcast. And so spinning a lot of plates, and that is my specialty, is spinning a lot of plates to build momentum. I'm torque, I can get something going. I'm trying to grow it. And I hope that you are enjoying it. Thank you so much for a fantastic 2024. Going into 2025, I feel like 2025 is gonna be the year we all thought 2020 was going to be. As an entrepreneur,
2020 coming off of an incredible economy in 2019. We thought 2020 was going to be amazing and then COVID hit and right now I'm feeling the same groundswell that I felt in 2019 leading into 2020. I feel that right now too. And so I hope that 2025 isn't sidelined by something absurd though the way the world is going right now you never know but I hope it's not and I wish the best for you in 2025.
Josh Rosenthal (50:57.552)
And again, thank you so much for joining me and following along. I look forward to many, many years to come in this space. It's such a treat. Hope you guys have a great, great week. See you next time.
Josh Rosenthal (51:26.322)
Goodbye.
