Latest / Hurdle with Emily Abbate / 110. Matt Taylor, CEO & Founder Tracksmith

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110. Matt Taylor, CEO & Founder Tracksmith · Hurdle with Emily Abbate

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Speaker 1: So many factors will go into whether or not you
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Speaker 1: succeed or fail at something. It's not as easy as
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Speaker 1: just being like, I'm going to work harder than everyone else.
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Speaker 1: But if you can sort of just embrace the journey,
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Speaker 1: the highs and the lows, the winds and the losses,
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Speaker 1: I think you can learn a lot from that and
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Speaker 1: gain a lot from that.
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Speaker 2: Hey, Hurdler's Emily Abadi here bringing you episode one hundred
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Speaker 2: and ten of Hurdle, a wellness focused podcast where I
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Speaker 2: sit down with inspiring individuals to talk about everything from
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Speaker 2: their big wins to how they've gotten through some of
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Speaker 2: life's toughest moments. On the show, you can expect vulnerability, motivation,
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Speaker 2: and candid discussions with everyone from top athletes to aspiring
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Speaker 2: entrepreneurs on what it really takes to follow your passions.
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Speaker 2: My mission is simple to inspire you to be your
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Speaker 2: best self, move with intention.
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Speaker 3: And have some fun along the way. This week, I
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Speaker 3: am talking to Matt Taylor. He is the CEO and
1:13
Speaker 3: founder of Tracksmith, a running apparel and accessories company. In
1:19
Speaker 3: today's episode, Matt tells me about his aspirations to run
1:22
Speaker 3: professionally after growing up in Pittsburgh running cross country in
1:26
Speaker 3: high school and then at the collegiate level at Yale.
1:29
Speaker 3: He tells me that his times just weren't cutting it,
1:32
Speaker 3: and so we pivoted to a few different jobs in
1:34
Speaker 3: the sports industry at places like IMG and Puma before
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Speaker 3: launching Tracksmith. At the time, he said that he was
1:41
Speaker 3: frustrated with the appearance of almost all running gear, and
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Speaker 3: after raising some money, he kickstarted the brand with men's
1:49
Speaker 3: apparel in twenty fourteen and has since grown.
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Speaker 2: His team, introduced their magazine meter, and rolled out women's
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Speaker 2: apparel as well. We chat about everything from the date
2:00
Speaker 2: of Running Right Now and the shift of the twenty
2:02
Speaker 2: twenty Olympic Games, to what it was like to open
2:04
Speaker 2: the brand's first brick and mortar store in Boston, and
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Speaker 2: is big hope for the future of not just the company,
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Speaker 2: but of Running Fun fact, when we recorded this episode,
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Speaker 2: I may or may not have discovered a mouse in
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Speaker 2: my apartment, and since them have had serious PTSD, the
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Speaker 2: audio of that component has since been removed from today's episode.
2:28
Speaker 2: But I will tell you that every recording you know,
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Speaker 2: they're each special in their own right, but this one,
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Speaker 2: it is special to me beyondwards A highlight of my
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Speaker 2: last few months for sure. Now, before we get to
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Speaker 2: this week's episode, I want to take a moment to thank.
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Speaker 3: It's Emily at hurdle dot us and I.
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Speaker 2: Do want to throw out there are a huge thanks
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Speaker 2: It makes a huge difference helping Hurdle show up on
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Speaker 2: know it deserves.
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Speaker 3: My favorite quote comes from Ash Cornell last week. She says,
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Speaker 3: Hurdle podcast is my greatest takeaway from the pandemic. So
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Speaker 3: many feel thank you. I appreciate you. And with that,
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Speaker 3: let's get to hurdling today. I'm sitting down with Matt Taylor.
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Speaker 3: He's the co founder and CEO of Tracksmith.
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Speaker 1: How you doing, Matt, I'm pretty good? How are you?
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Speaker 3: I am good? I'm going to start us off with
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Speaker 3: a heart hitting question here, what was your last run.
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Speaker 1: Like on was like two hours ago? And Boston. We
5:04
Speaker 1: are certainly in the sort of fickle spring phase where
5:09
Speaker 1: this past weekend it was actually interesting. Saturday we had
5:12
Speaker 1: like two or three inches of snow. Sunday it was
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Speaker 1: sixty and sunny and beautiful. But yeah, today, forty minutes
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Speaker 1: relatively easy from.
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Speaker 3: My house from my house, so you're located just outside
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Speaker 3: of Boston, and that is where Tracksmith was born. So
5:28
Speaker 3: as we get into the swing of things today, why
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Speaker 3: don't you give me a little clip of what Tracksmith is.
5:36
Speaker 1: Sure, so, Tracksmith is a performance running brand. We make
5:40
Speaker 1: pail and accessories for men and women. We're about five
5:43
Speaker 1: and a half years old at this point, so we
5:47
Speaker 1: when the company started, we were basically at the halfway
5:50
Speaker 1: point of the Boston Marathon in Wellesley, and a few
5:52
Speaker 1: years ago we moved the office and opened our first
5:55
Speaker 1: retail store down by the finish line in the back
5:58
Speaker 1: bay on Newberry Street. So now we're sort of downtown.
6:02
Speaker 1: Although right now, as is everybody, we're all working from
6:05
Speaker 1: home remotely doing the best we can there. But this
6:07
Speaker 1: will pass.
6:08
Speaker 3: This will pass, And what's the meaning behind the name
6:12
Speaker 3: of Tracksmith?
6:13
Speaker 1: The naming and sort of brand identity process was actually
6:16
Speaker 1: quite involved We had a couple parameters for the name.
6:20
Speaker 1: It wasn't so much what it stood for as much
6:22
Speaker 1: as sort of what it like, sort of what kind
6:25
Speaker 1: of feelings or thoughts it sort of evoked. We definitely
6:29
Speaker 1: wanted a name that sounded, you know, easy, easy to say,
6:32
Speaker 1: and used sort of normal letters, so we didn't want
6:35
Speaker 1: to use zs for s's or you know, any of
6:38
Speaker 1: the sort of fancy things that brands were doing back then.
6:42
Speaker 1: Track and Smith when it came together, you know, sort
6:46
Speaker 1: of felt right. Track obviously, you know, one one element
6:50
Speaker 1: of running sort of signifies you know, sort of I
6:53
Speaker 1: don't know, when you go to the track, that's sort
6:54
Speaker 1: of just different thing going for a run, right, It's
6:56
Speaker 1: like you like get get butterflies every time you step
6:59
Speaker 1: on the track. So there's something there that we liked.
7:01
Speaker 1: And then sort of Smith as a to sort of
7:04
Speaker 1: signify sort of you know, handcrafted and a great deal
7:07
Speaker 1: of care and craftsmanship that goes into it. And you know,
7:10
Speaker 1: oddly we were actually Boston Supply Company for several weeks.
7:15
Speaker 1: We were living with that name and that was going
7:17
Speaker 1: to be the name, and you know, near the end
7:19
Speaker 1: we sort of switched to switch to Tracksmith and I'm
7:23
Speaker 1: happy we did.
7:24
Speaker 3: I dig it. I think on your website it's an
7:27
Speaker 3: independent running company that celebrates the competitive spirit exactly perfect. Well,
7:34
Speaker 3: obviously you don't form an independent running company that celebrates
7:38
Speaker 3: the competitive spirit out of nowhere. So why don't we
7:41
Speaker 3: dig into your history, your past. Talk to me about
7:45
Speaker 3: what life was like growing up for you and what
7:48
Speaker 3: running was like for you growing up. I grew up
7:51
Speaker 3: in Pittsburgh, and I was very into sports. My family
7:55
Speaker 3: was very into sports. It wasn't running at first for me.
7:58
Speaker 3: I base was my first love, and then basketball was
8:02
Speaker 3: sort of my second love and running running came third.
8:05
Speaker 3: So growing up, I played baseball and basketball all the
8:08
Speaker 3: time year round and really discovered running. I mean it
8:14
Speaker 3: was one of those things where, you know, I was
8:15
Speaker 3: usually the fastest one on my team in those other sports,
8:19
Speaker 3: which is a story that a lot of runners, you know,
8:21
Speaker 3: fall into. I was listening to your episode with Dez yesterday,
8:25
Speaker 3: and you know, she was a soccer player turned turned
8:27
Speaker 3: to running. You know, it's a similar story.
8:29
Speaker 1: I I I realized I was, you know, was faster
8:33
Speaker 1: than most of the kids, and that led me to
8:36
Speaker 1: you know, run. A couple of races here and there,
8:38
Speaker 1: and you know by high school. I still played basketball
8:41
Speaker 1: all through high school, all four years, but I ran
8:44
Speaker 1: cross country in the fall and track in the spring.
8:47
Speaker 1: I played baseball even my freshman year of high school.
8:49
Speaker 1: So it really came a little bit later for me.
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Speaker 1: You know, my parents weren't runners. They were you know,
8:54
Speaker 1: they played other sports, and so it wasn't something I
8:56
Speaker 1: grew up around, but certainly a very comp hetitive and
9:00
Speaker 1: athletic family background. And you know, in Pittsburgh, sports kind
9:05
Speaker 1: of dominate the culture and in a lot of ways,
9:07
Speaker 1: it's a very, uh, sports heavy town with great history
9:12
Speaker 1: and tradition and great teams throughout the years, and so
9:16
Speaker 1: you kind of grow up around that. It's hard to
9:17
Speaker 1: escape that when you grow up in Pittsburgh.
9:19
Speaker 3: So when you realize that running was your thing, did
9:22
Speaker 3: you know at that point that you were going to
9:24
Speaker 3: head and do that in college?
9:27
Speaker 1: Not right away. It took a little while to you know,
9:31
Speaker 1: really understand that that side of of it again. Growing up,
9:35
Speaker 1: like I dreamed of being a Major League Baseball player
9:38
Speaker 1: and then you know NBA and and so you know,
9:42
Speaker 1: I thought that's what I would do in college, and
9:45
Speaker 1: it wasn't really until I guess my junior year of
9:47
Speaker 1: high school that I, you know, realized that running in
9:50
Speaker 1: college was definitely a possibility. And at the time I
9:53
Speaker 1: had the you know, had the times to you know,
9:56
Speaker 1: get some interest from colleges and coaches across the country.
9:59
Speaker 1: And so, yeah, it wasn't something I knew right away,
10:03
Speaker 1: but certainly by you know, my junior year of high school,
10:05
Speaker 1: I realized that was certainly a path that I I
10:08
Speaker 1: was probably headed down.
10:10
Speaker 3: So where were you off to college?
10:13
Speaker 1: I went to Yale.
10:14
Speaker 3: Talk to me about what life was like at Yale.
10:16
Speaker 1: For you I mean, it was great overall. My experience,
10:20
Speaker 1: you know, in hindsight was amazing, and I feel very
10:23
Speaker 1: fortunate that I had that opportunity. But I would be
10:26
Speaker 1: lying if I said it wasn't a little bit of
10:28
Speaker 1: culture shock when I when I first went there. In
10:31
Speaker 1: what way, I don't know. I just you know, growing up,
10:35
Speaker 1: I didn't the IVY League education, Ivy League schools. It
10:38
Speaker 1: just wasn't something that I knew about. It's not something
10:41
Speaker 1: that we you know, talked about. It really wasn't until
10:45
Speaker 1: you know, again, junior year, I guess is when you know,
10:48
Speaker 1: I got a letter from you know, Penn and from
10:51
Speaker 1: Yale and from Harvard and from the coaches that I
10:55
Speaker 1: even considered a school like that. And you know, I
10:59
Speaker 1: grew up in a you know, pretty modest, you know,
11:04
Speaker 1: Pittsburgh suburb, and you know, my my dad uh worked
11:10
Speaker 1: in the steel steel mills until they closed down in Pittsburgh,
11:15
Speaker 1: and my mom's whole side of the family worked in coal.
11:17
Speaker 1: And you know, just culturally that Ivy League education just
11:21
Speaker 1: wasn't part of our our thinking and our world. So
11:23
Speaker 1: there is certainly a little bit of of culture shock there.
11:26
Speaker 1: And you know, but again, like the opportunity to go
11:29
Speaker 1: to a school like that and to meet people that
11:31
Speaker 1: I met who are now my closest friends, and certainly
11:35
Speaker 1: being part of a team, I think, is you know
11:38
Speaker 1: something that made that experience a lot easier for me.
11:42
Speaker 1: I think, you know, cross country and track teams are
11:45
Speaker 1: very unique in their closeness and their culture and all
11:49
Speaker 1: of those things, and you know that certainly was something
11:52
Speaker 1: that made that experience easier for me. I don't know
11:54
Speaker 1: if I if I didn't have that experience, I probably
11:56
Speaker 1: would have been quite lost in a in a place
11:59
Speaker 1: like that. But I found my rhythm and you know,
12:02
Speaker 1: and friends and had sports. You know, in college, you're
12:05
Speaker 1: competing all three seasons, you know, cross country and then
12:08
Speaker 1: indoor track and outdoor track, so you know you're pretty
12:10
Speaker 1: much embedded with with that group of people year round.
12:13
Speaker 1: So but yeah, it was a great, great experience. Though.
12:16
Speaker 3: Did you have a favorite distance in college?
12:18
Speaker 1: I really loved the steeplechase, which is kind of an
12:23
Speaker 1: obscure track event. It's three thousand meters, so just under
12:26
Speaker 1: two miles, but you jump over hurdles every lap, and
12:31
Speaker 1: one of them has a water pit after it, so
12:33
Speaker 1: you know you're jumping basically off of a large hurdle
12:37
Speaker 1: and into a water pit. So it's one of the
12:39
Speaker 1: more unique running events in track and field. But that
12:42
Speaker 1: was my favorite event. But I really loved the middle distances.
12:45
Speaker 1: So I ran the fifteen hundred and the mile and
12:48
Speaker 1: the five k and occasionally would drop down to an
12:50
Speaker 1: eight hundred, but you know, pretty squarely in that middle
12:53
Speaker 1: distance category.
12:55
Speaker 3: And what are you studying when you're at Eale?
12:57
Speaker 1: So I was pre med for about I don't know,
13:01
Speaker 1: six weeks, nine weeks, as as many people are, and
13:04
Speaker 1: I ultimately realized that wasn't what I wanted to do.
13:07
Speaker 1: I think is just one of those things. You know.
13:09
Speaker 1: I had a grandmother who every time I saw her,
13:12
Speaker 1: which was a few times a year, told me I
13:13
Speaker 1: was going to be a doctor or a lawyer when
13:15
Speaker 1: I grew up, and so I just, I don't know.
13:17
Speaker 1: I was, Okay, i'll be a doctor. Let's see what
13:18
Speaker 1: pre med is like. And but yeah, that wasn't for me.
13:21
Speaker 1: But I actually, really I've always liked sort of physiology
13:25
Speaker 1: and biology, and so I stayed sort of in that
13:28
Speaker 1: general area. My majors a mouthfuls behavioral neuroscience, but it
13:32
Speaker 1: was a combination of sort of the biology and psychology
13:35
Speaker 1: departments and disciplines. And I kind of went through college thinking, I,
13:40
Speaker 1: you know, wanted to do research around physiology, you know,
13:44
Speaker 1: like a dream job. When I was a sophomore in college,
13:46
Speaker 1: I was thinking, I go work at like Gatorade or
13:49
Speaker 1: you know, something like that. So that's kind of where
13:51
Speaker 1: I my path started down.
13:53
Speaker 3: It's funny because I feel as though, when you're growing up,
13:56
Speaker 3: you have all of these ideas of things that you
13:59
Speaker 3: want to do, and you go to college and you're
14:01
Speaker 3: supposed to have it all together, right, Like you're supposed
14:03
Speaker 3: to know exactly what it is that you want to
14:05
Speaker 3: do with your life and exactly where you're going to
14:08
Speaker 3: go with it. But then you get older and you
14:09
Speaker 3: think to yourself, wow, there are so many things that
14:12
Speaker 3: could have been useful to have in this quest for
14:16
Speaker 3: what it is that I really want to do.
14:18
Speaker 1: I know that's very true. And you know, sometimes in
14:22
Speaker 1: hindsight you realize you did have some of those moments
14:26
Speaker 1: or were exposed to those things, but at the time
14:29
Speaker 1: you just weren't able to put the dots together.
14:32
Speaker 3: So when you're at school, do you think I want
14:35
Speaker 3: to take this running thing past New Haven, Connecticut? Or
14:39
Speaker 3: do you think to yourself, all right, I'm ready to
14:42
Speaker 3: get into the business world.
14:43
Speaker 1: No, I mean I wanted to. I wanted to go
14:45
Speaker 1: to the Olympics. I wanted to keep running. I wanted to.
14:48
Speaker 1: I'm to a fault and extremely competitive. I have a
14:52
Speaker 1: very competitive personality, and yeah, I want I really wanted to,
14:55
Speaker 1: and I just you know, I wasn't good enough to
14:59
Speaker 1: do that. But yeah, no, I absolutely I viewed in
15:03
Speaker 1: a way, sort of viewed college as a stepping stone
15:06
Speaker 1: to that next step athletically, and you know, and again,
15:10
Speaker 1: looking back on it, I probably should have spent a
15:13
Speaker 1: little bit more time thinking about career decisions and choices,
15:16
Speaker 1: because I certainly was ill prepared when I when I graduated.
15:20
Speaker 1: But yeah, no, I didn't think about the business side
15:23
Speaker 1: of things for a long time. But I did have
15:27
Speaker 1: sort of you know, my mom was an entrepreneur. She
15:30
Speaker 1: owned a store. She was an interior designer. She owned
15:33
Speaker 1: a store, ran a store for a while, sort of
15:35
Speaker 1: interior decorations, country store sort of place, and then became
15:39
Speaker 1: a you know, sort of started doing interior design on
15:43
Speaker 1: her own with her own clients and stuff, and so
15:45
Speaker 1: I sort of was exposed to that. And my brother,
15:48
Speaker 1: who's two years older than me, is you know, an
15:51
Speaker 1: amazing craftsmen. He's lives in Asheville and makes furniture and
15:56
Speaker 1: you know, guitars and is an absolute brilliant builder of
16:01
Speaker 1: things out of wood. Amazing. I have none of those
16:04
Speaker 1: skills that they had, but I certainly was sort of
16:06
Speaker 1: exposed to that and always felt quite entrepreneurial. I just
16:10
Speaker 1: didn't really know what that meant or what to do
16:13
Speaker 1: or how to do it. So, but yeah, I was
16:15
Speaker 1: not sort of ready for the business world right away.
16:19
Speaker 3: Was there a particular moment or event that made you
16:25
Speaker 3: come to terms with this idea that you weren't going
16:29
Speaker 3: to be able to be that falls to the wall
16:32
Speaker 3: all in athlete that you had hoped to after college.
16:35
Speaker 1: No, it wasn't like a particular moment. I think it
16:38
Speaker 1: was just like a gradual realization that that wasn't you know,
16:43
Speaker 1: wasn't in the cards for me. And I think in
16:46
Speaker 1: a lot of ways it took me a long time
16:49
Speaker 1: to transfer my mindset from that to business. But I
16:53
Speaker 1: think ultimately that's sort of what you know has helped
16:58
Speaker 1: start and build and get Tracksmith off the ground is
17:00
Speaker 1: I've just sort of re focused those energies and those
17:04
Speaker 1: desires into something else. But it did take me a
17:07
Speaker 1: while to sort of like to do that and come
17:09
Speaker 1: to grips with it. And you know, I sort of
17:12
Speaker 1: floundered for a while after college in terms of what
17:14
Speaker 1: I was going to do professionally, and it took me
17:17
Speaker 1: a while to make that transition.
17:19
Speaker 3: So we graduate from Yale and we're moving on to
17:21
Speaker 3: the next thing, and what's the next thing?
17:24
Speaker 1: So my first this is one of my favorite favorite stories.
17:29
Speaker 1: My first job out of college was at IMG, which
17:31
Speaker 1: is the big sports management marketing firm started by Mark McCormick. So,
17:36
Speaker 1: my senior year of college, most of my friends had
17:40
Speaker 1: had their shit together. They were going to Wall Street
17:44
Speaker 1: or consulting firms, or you know, law school or into
17:49
Speaker 1: the government. And I had no idea. I had no
17:52
Speaker 1: job lined up. And Mark McCormick was coming to school too.
17:55
Speaker 1: I think he went to Yale Law School. She was
17:57
Speaker 1: an alumni, and he was coming to get a talk,
18:00
Speaker 1: which I went to. And then afterwards they would often
18:03
Speaker 1: when they would bring a speaker to campus sort of
18:06
Speaker 1: have these smaller, more informal settings in one of the
18:09
Speaker 1: residential colleges, and so I went there after the main talk,
18:13
Speaker 1: and you know, spent another hour there. He was just
18:16
Speaker 1: telling these, you know, amazing stories about how he got
18:18
Speaker 1: involved in sports and working as an agent and working
18:21
Speaker 1: with some of the you know, best athletes in the
18:23
Speaker 1: world and working with these you know, huge fortune five
18:26
Speaker 1: hundred brands, and I was just fascinated, and I thought, Okay,
18:29
Speaker 1: this makes sense to me. This is something I can
18:31
Speaker 1: wrap my head around. So, you know, the talk ended,
18:34
Speaker 1: I introduced myself and said thank you and you know whatever,
18:38
Speaker 1: and I left and I went back and that night
18:42
Speaker 1: I wrote a letter to him, and I just sort
18:46
Speaker 1: of guessed what hotel he would be at, because there
18:48
Speaker 1: were really only two on campus back then. And the
18:51
Speaker 1: next morning I went and dropped off a letter at
18:53
Speaker 1: the front desk of the hotel. This is nineteen ninety four,
18:57
Speaker 1: I think or five, basically just saying, you know, I
19:01
Speaker 1: loved your talk, I would love to work in sports industry,
19:05
Speaker 1: you know, one of those sort of desperate college letters.
19:08
Speaker 1: And dropped it off and went home and thought nothing
19:11
Speaker 1: of it. And two weeks later went to my mailbox
19:14
Speaker 1: and I had a letter back from him that said,
19:16
Speaker 1: you know, thank you for your letter. And his son
19:18
Speaker 1: at the time was running sort of the interactive division
19:21
Speaker 1: of the group up in Boston, and so he had
19:23
Speaker 1: arranged for me to drive up to Boston and have
19:26
Speaker 1: an interview. And that's how I got my first job
19:29
Speaker 1: out of college.
19:31
Speaker 3: Was that the longest two week period of your life?
19:34
Speaker 1: Like, just honestly, I actually know because I thought there
19:38
Speaker 1: is zero chance that I'm going to hear back from him.
19:40
Speaker 1: So I just sort of went about my you know, day,
19:42
Speaker 1: panicking what I was going to do, and graduation rolled around.
19:45
Speaker 3: I think that that's such a good lesson though, right
19:47
Speaker 3: about nothing happens if you don't try, Like that wouldn't
19:51
Speaker 3: have happened if you didn't put yourself out there and
19:53
Speaker 3: go for it.
19:54
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's very true.
19:55
Speaker 3: It's really special. Okay, So you go up for the interview.
19:59
Speaker 1: Yeah, so I go, I go interview, I get the job,
20:02
Speaker 1: I graduate from college, I move up to Boston, and
20:06
Speaker 1: I'm I'm in heaven thinking I'm working at this you know,
20:09
Speaker 1: huge sports management firm, and I was involved. You know,
20:13
Speaker 1: I was obviously super young, and I didn't really do
20:15
Speaker 1: anything important, but I was exposed to a lot of
20:17
Speaker 1: really interesting things at the time, you know, that group
20:20
Speaker 1: that I was working and we were sort of like
20:21
Speaker 1: we were building websites for you know, Manchester United and
20:26
Speaker 1: the New England Patriots, and we were working with brands
20:28
Speaker 1: like you know, Ford that had all of this you know,
20:31
Speaker 1: advertising budget, but you know, the Internet at the time
20:35
Speaker 1: was still a little bit of the wild wild West
20:37
Speaker 1: on the on the sports side of things, and so
20:40
Speaker 1: working with sort of those those brands to to figure
20:43
Speaker 1: that out, and so it was just great exposure and
20:46
Speaker 1: I really enjoyed it, and enjoyed it so much that
20:50
Speaker 1: after about a year I decided to leave to try
20:53
Speaker 1: to start my own company with two other guys in
20:56
Speaker 1: sort of the the web services space. So you know,
20:59
Speaker 1: in hindsight, I really wish I would have stuck that
21:02
Speaker 1: out and I would have learned a lot more. But
21:05
Speaker 1: I sort of dove right into my first attempt at
21:08
Speaker 1: a startup, which did not really succeed.
21:12
Speaker 3: What does did not really succeed? Really mean?
21:15
Speaker 1: Actually, I mean, yeah, it's all it's all relative because
21:19
Speaker 1: the time, you know, then versus now, I mean it
21:22
Speaker 1: was four of us, three of us and then four
21:24
Speaker 1: of us. We were you know, building websites and web
21:28
Speaker 1: apps and you know, for clients. And you know, wasn't
21:32
Speaker 1: we were using you know, our own money. I wasn't
21:35
Speaker 1: pitching in. It was other people. But it wasn't you know,
21:37
Speaker 1: it wasn't funded by anybody. It was it was sort
21:41
Speaker 1: of a lifestyle business, and you know, it didn't really
21:45
Speaker 1: take off. But one of the guys, sort of the
21:48
Speaker 1: main guy behind it, actually ran the business for many
21:52
Speaker 1: many years sort of as a as a lifestyle business.
21:55
Speaker 1: He had it just became basically an agency and he
21:58
Speaker 1: had some great clients and was able to make that work.
22:01
Speaker 1: But it wasn't ever going to be you know, something
22:04
Speaker 1: much bigger. And so yeah, so I I eventually sort
22:08
Speaker 1: of left.
22:09
Speaker 3: How do you pick yourself up from that?
22:10
Speaker 1: I didn't really at first, I really panicked. I went
22:13
Speaker 1: through a phase where, you know, again a lot of
22:16
Speaker 1: my friends at this point, you know, two or three
22:18
Speaker 1: years out of college, were you know, quite successful and
22:23
Speaker 1: had been working in good jobs and you know, and
22:28
Speaker 1: and so I really didn't know what I wanted to do.
22:31
Speaker 1: And I thought finance maybe because that's what a lot
22:35
Speaker 1: of people were doing. I thought maybe I should go
22:38
Speaker 1: get an MBA. But you know, who's going to offer
22:41
Speaker 1: admissions to someone with with my two years of post
22:44
Speaker 1: college experience and an MBA program? And so I worked
22:49
Speaker 1: in finance. I somehow got a job in finance for
22:53
Speaker 1: a period of time, and you know, it definitely wasn't
22:57
Speaker 1: for me. And then ultimately I did. I did get
23:02
Speaker 1: into Babson's NBA program and I started that program, but
23:07
Speaker 1: I didn't finish because my wife got into law school
23:11
Speaker 1: at Georgetown, and you know, sort of a hit agreed
23:13
Speaker 1: if she got in there that we would move down there.
23:16
Speaker 1: I was doing just to go back to the Babson thing.
23:19
Speaker 1: It's kind of a maybe relevant. I applied to the
23:22
Speaker 1: full time MBA program and was accepted, and once I
23:28
Speaker 1: was in, I emailed the track and cross country coach
23:31
Speaker 1: and I just said, hey, I'm going to be a
23:32
Speaker 1: student here. I would love to help out, volunteer my
23:35
Speaker 1: time and help out with the program if you need
23:37
Speaker 1: any help. And he said, yeah, that'd be great. Come
23:39
Speaker 1: to campus, let's meet have a coffee. So I met,
23:42
Speaker 1: and you know, we hit it off, and I was
23:44
Speaker 1: going to sort of help out around my schedule. And
23:47
Speaker 1: about a month before, month and a half before school started,
23:50
Speaker 1: he called me and said, you know, I just want
23:53
Speaker 1: to let you know I resigned today. I got another
23:56
Speaker 1: job at another college. I think you should apply for
23:58
Speaker 1: the Babson job. And I was like, WHOA like college coach,
24:02
Speaker 1: That's an amazing opportunity. And so I went in and
24:05
Speaker 1: met with the athletic director and you know, interviewed and
24:10
Speaker 1: was offered that job. And so Babson was great. They
24:12
Speaker 1: let me switch to the part time program. So I
24:16
Speaker 1: coached and was doing my part time MBA and so
24:19
Speaker 1: that's why, you know, it was not a two year plan.
24:21
Speaker 1: It was going to take me a little bit more
24:23
Speaker 1: than that. And so when my wife got into law
24:26
Speaker 1: school at Georgetown, you know, we we decided to move
24:28
Speaker 1: down there, and then that sort of you know, put
24:33
Speaker 1: me on a slightly a slightly different path and really
24:36
Speaker 1: got me into sort of I think my second uh
24:40
Speaker 1: sort of you know, entrepreneurial opportunity or or it wasn't
24:43
Speaker 1: really a business, it was more of a project. But
24:46
Speaker 1: I I yeah, that put me on a new path.
24:49
Speaker 3: What would you say it is about your personality that
24:52
Speaker 3: caters to being an entrepreneur.
24:55
Speaker 1: I don't know. I I mean part of it, like
24:59
Speaker 1: I said, there was so there's a little bit of
25:01
Speaker 1: it from you know, at the time I was a kid.
25:04
Speaker 1: I wasn't putting these pieces together. It's only in hindsight
25:07
Speaker 1: that I realized sort of how impactful growing up in
25:12
Speaker 1: that period for me was. When you know, your dad
25:16
Speaker 1: loses a job and you know, bounces around for a while,
25:20
Speaker 1: and now being a father, like I can only imagine
25:23
Speaker 1: what that was like for him. As again, as a kid,
25:27
Speaker 1: I wasn't really paying attention to it, but they made
25:30
Speaker 1: it work. And I do feel like the one thing,
25:33
Speaker 1: the one trait that I think has helped me quite
25:36
Speaker 1: a bit is I always think like the worst case
25:39
Speaker 1: scenario is not that bad, right, Like the worst case
25:42
Speaker 1: scenario of something fails is okay, you go back and
25:46
Speaker 1: you sort of pick yourself up and you figure it out,
25:48
Speaker 1: and you know, this isn't a thing. Like you know,
25:51
Speaker 1: all my families have a ton of money, and so
25:54
Speaker 1: that a lot of times entrepreneurs have that safety net
25:57
Speaker 1: of you know, family wealth, and that's not a knock.
26:01
Speaker 1: Just some people were in that in that situation where
26:03
Speaker 1: they have that. I didn't have that, But what I
26:06
Speaker 1: had was this realization that like, bad is not that bad.
26:09
Speaker 1: You know, bad is okay, working a couple of jobs
26:12
Speaker 1: and figuring things out and ultimately feeling confident that that
26:16
Speaker 1: you will figure it out. That's certainly, I think is
26:18
Speaker 1: one of the one of the biggest things is like
26:22
Speaker 1: if you if you feel like you have a safety net,
26:25
Speaker 1: and that can take a lot of different forms. I
26:27
Speaker 1: think taking risks becomes a lot easier, and certainly you
26:32
Speaker 1: like want to take risks at the right time, and
26:33
Speaker 1: they want to be calculated. And you know, I've taken
26:36
Speaker 1: some early in my career where I didn't know what
26:38
Speaker 1: I was doing, and you know, tracksmith to me felt
26:41
Speaker 1: like a super calculated and timely and the right risk
26:44
Speaker 1: to take. But that's the one thing, just feeling like, Okay,
26:48
Speaker 1: the worst case is it doesn't it doesn't work out,
26:50
Speaker 1: and then you go and you figure out figure it out.
26:52
Speaker 3: So so what's the next risk you take in your career.
26:57
Speaker 1: I don't know if it was a risk per se,
26:59
Speaker 1: but when I when I when we moved to d C,
27:02
Speaker 1: I I did a project where I basically spent eleven
27:06
Speaker 1: weeks at eleven of the top cross country programs NCAA
27:11
Speaker 1: program So I was at you know, Notre Dame and
27:13
Speaker 1: Colorado and Portland and Georgetown and you know, all these
27:17
Speaker 1: amazing schools, and I basically documented the lifestyle of the
27:20
Speaker 1: athletes on the team. So this was you know, early
27:22
Speaker 1: days of online you know, blogging, and I was taking
27:26
Speaker 1: photos and writing and doing video sort of all by myself.
27:30
Speaker 1: I just traveled, you know, week to week, went to
27:32
Speaker 1: a new school and lived with athletes on the team,
27:35
Speaker 1: and you know, it was a very very very very
27:39
Speaker 1: very niche audience that I was I was looking for.
27:44
Speaker 1: But for those people who were really into the sport
27:46
Speaker 1: of running and specifically cross country, there was nothing like it,
27:50
Speaker 1: and so I learned a lot from that experience. I
27:52
Speaker 1: learned a lot about storytelling and what people were really
27:56
Speaker 1: interested in, and you know, things that I thought that
27:58
Speaker 1: might be the most interesting thing turned out not to be.
28:01
Speaker 1: And so it was just a really good experience and
28:04
Speaker 1: that led that project then led to another one where
28:08
Speaker 1: I was following a lot of the top Kenyan marathoners,
28:12
Speaker 1: lived with them in ten Kenya for a while, and
28:14
Speaker 1: then in Boulder where they had a training camp, and
28:16
Speaker 1: then you know, they went to race Chicago and New
28:19
Speaker 1: York and all over the world, and so sort of
28:22
Speaker 1: you know, those those projects and one kind of led
28:26
Speaker 1: to another and then another, and ultimately that led to
28:30
Speaker 1: an opportunity to go work at Puma in about two
28:33
Speaker 1: thousand and seven or eight, and so that you know,
28:36
Speaker 1: like I said, it wasn't a business, it wasn't a company.
28:38
Speaker 1: It was just a series of projects that were very
28:41
Speaker 1: entrepreneurial driven and in the beginning solo efforts, and then
28:45
Speaker 1: as they progressed, I was able to bring in some
28:47
Speaker 1: other people to help.
28:48
Speaker 3: But how did it feel to be around all of
28:50
Speaker 3: those athletes in a different capacity, Like did you feel
28:53
Speaker 3: as though you had a little bit of fomo. Were
28:55
Speaker 3: you kind of scratching an itch? And at times was
28:58
Speaker 3: it difficult for you to be back in the scene
29:01
Speaker 3: but not actually in the scene.
29:04
Speaker 1: You know, at the time, I don't think so. I
29:08
Speaker 1: think I was like, I think I was okay with that.
29:14
Speaker 1: You know, I was still running a lot, and I
29:16
Speaker 1: looked at it more as that opportunity, which you know,
29:20
Speaker 1: like being around athletes of that caliber and being able
29:25
Speaker 1: to go out on an easy run with them or
29:27
Speaker 1: even try to, you know, do a workout and you know,
29:29
Speaker 1: get destroyed, you know, especially like with the Kenyan athletes,
29:33
Speaker 1: having that experience to go to Aten Kenya and you know,
29:36
Speaker 1: go to their training and you know, driving the car
29:39
Speaker 1: with the coach and handing out water bottles and all that.
29:41
Speaker 1: I mean, it was. It was fascinating and amazing, and
29:46
Speaker 1: so no, I didn't. I actually felt like in a
29:49
Speaker 1: way I was in it, you know, I was. I
29:53
Speaker 1: was in it in a different way. But it wasn't
29:55
Speaker 1: like fear of missing out. It wasn't on the outside.
29:58
Speaker 1: I was on the inside, and I you know, it
30:01
Speaker 1: was amazing opportunity and a great experience and it was
30:05
Speaker 1: it was really fun.
30:06
Speaker 3: So I mean it sounds like you have a pretty
30:09
Speaker 3: cool gig, and is it this gig that inspires you
30:12
Speaker 3: to start thinking about what would become Tracksmith.
30:16
Speaker 1: Yeah, definitely there were you know, Tracksmith was never this
30:20
Speaker 1: sort of singular light bulb moment. It was an accumulation
30:24
Speaker 1: of sort of all of these experiences and ideas and
30:27
Speaker 1: being involved in the sport in so many different capacities,
30:30
Speaker 1: So being an athlete, you know, being a participant, working
30:33
Speaker 1: in the industry, you know, documenting, you know, the top athletes,
30:37
Speaker 1: being exposed to the top athletes, you know, all of
30:39
Speaker 1: that sort of led to it. But yeah, certainly, at
30:41
Speaker 1: least like the storytelling side of it was definitely sort
30:46
Speaker 1: of honed during that period. And you know, after that,
30:51
Speaker 1: like I said, I ended up working at Puma for
30:53
Speaker 1: a while, which was much more of let's say, like
30:55
Speaker 1: the corporate and business side of it, and so there
30:57
Speaker 1: were just a lot of different pieces that ultimately came together.
31:00
Speaker 1: But yeah, I did start thinking about it then more seriously.
31:04
Speaker 1: But at the time, you know, it wasn't it wasn't
31:08
Speaker 1: concrete in my mind. It wasn't an apparel brand. It
31:11
Speaker 1: wasn't you know, obviously called Tracksmith. It was just this
31:13
Speaker 1: idea that I wanted to do something in running to
31:16
Speaker 1: elevate the sport, to you know, bring the sport. It
31:20
Speaker 1: was really around like the presentation of the sport, you know,
31:22
Speaker 1: and how how can that be improved? How can we
31:25
Speaker 1: draw more people into the sport as fans and as
31:28
Speaker 1: athletes and as participants, And so that definitely was sort
31:31
Speaker 1: of a crucial part of the road to Tracksmith.
31:40
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31:56
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31:58
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32:02
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32:42
Speaker 3: In fact, it tastes better than the other artisan coffee
32:46
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33:04
Speaker 3: dot com slash hurdle to get fifteen percent off your
33:07
Speaker 3: order today. And I think it is pretty distinct the
33:18
Speaker 3: storytelling that Tracksmith does today. I know you guys have
33:22
Speaker 3: the journal and as a journalist who often has conversations
33:28
Speaker 3: with you know, big brands about how they can be
33:31
Speaker 3: doing storytelling and smart and effective ways, I look to
33:35
Speaker 3: the kind of content and the stories that you guys
33:38
Speaker 3: are telling and I am floored from you know, the
33:41
Speaker 3: stories you have leading into the Olympic trials to how
33:45
Speaker 3: runners are handling the coronavirus pandemic right now, and it
33:50
Speaker 3: just it's extensive there, and I think that's really special.
33:53
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean it's definitely something we think about a
33:56
Speaker 1: lot and spend a lot of time on, and we
33:58
Speaker 1: have you know, great people on the team that are
34:01
Speaker 1: able to sort of bring those things to life, you know,
34:03
Speaker 1: from the photography to the writing. You know, really like
34:06
Speaker 1: at the end of the day, you have product and
34:09
Speaker 1: then you sort of have photos and words and that
34:12
Speaker 1: that is sort of, you know, your brand. And so
34:14
Speaker 1: that's just something that we've you know, over invested in
34:17
Speaker 1: in a lot of ways, and you know, just just
34:20
Speaker 1: takes very very seriously.
34:22
Speaker 3: So from the get go, you knew that you had
34:24
Speaker 3: a passion for running, you knew that you wanted to
34:27
Speaker 3: bring something to life. You had experience at Puma, So
34:30
Speaker 3: did you think, all right, it's going to be a
34:32
Speaker 3: clothing brand or where we headed?
34:34
Speaker 1: That took a little while. So I really was looking
34:37
Speaker 1: at the industry as a whole, you know, apparel, footwear, accessories.
34:40
Speaker 1: I was looking at media and technology events, you know,
34:45
Speaker 1: I was looking at sort of everything that was out there,
34:47
Speaker 1: and the thing that really stuck out through that process
34:50
Speaker 1: was men's running apparel. You know, having had the experience
34:54
Speaker 1: at a at a big brand and having friends that
34:56
Speaker 1: worked at the other brands, it was very clear that
34:59
Speaker 1: footwear dominated, you know, the landscape. Take out lou Lemon
35:03
Speaker 1: and under Armour and the rest of the sort of
35:05
Speaker 1: like and even those two brands aren't true running brands.
35:08
Speaker 1: The true running brands all started with footwear, and footwear
35:11
Speaker 1: is king. And then because of lou Lemon and Athleta
35:14
Speaker 1: and some other brands, you know, women's apparel started to
35:17
Speaker 1: become more competitive and so internal resources were starting to
35:22
Speaker 1: be dedicated more to that area, and then you had
35:25
Speaker 1: sort of men's apparel at the bottom. It was getting
35:28
Speaker 1: the least amount of resources and attention. And you know,
35:31
Speaker 1: if you walked into a running store or sporting good
35:34
Speaker 1: store in two thousand and six or seven or eight
35:37
Speaker 1: or nine or ten, I mean literally everything looked exactly
35:40
Speaker 1: the same. It was the same color palette each season.
35:43
Speaker 1: You know, they were all using the same color trend forecasting.
35:46
Speaker 1: So you all had orange tech tees one season and
35:49
Speaker 1: then yellow tech tees the next season, and there was
35:53
Speaker 1: not a lot of differentiation that went into the product.
35:57
Speaker 1: And so that became the clear leader to me as
36:01
Speaker 1: a place where we could come in and create something
36:05
Speaker 1: very distinct from what was on the market in a
36:09
Speaker 1: you know, relatively short period of time to establish the
36:13
Speaker 1: brand and its ethos and its identity, you know, but
36:17
Speaker 1: the vision was always much much broader than you know,
36:19
Speaker 1: just men's apparel. And when we launched the brand in
36:23
Speaker 1: fall of twenty fourteen, you know, we had already been
36:26
Speaker 1: working on the women's first women's collection as well, so
36:31
Speaker 1: it was you know, it wasn't even something we're really like,
36:33
Speaker 1: we're a men's brand. It was always we are a
36:35
Speaker 1: running brand. You know, it's just men's apparel, limited resources,
36:39
Speaker 1: you know, at that point, three four people on the
36:42
Speaker 1: team to get that done. We just focused on that,
36:45
Speaker 1: you know, launched the brand, established the brand, and have
36:48
Speaker 1: slowly sort of expanded not just the product offering, but
36:51
Speaker 1: you know, the storytelling and the events and everything else
36:54
Speaker 1: that we that we do. So it didn't start out
36:56
Speaker 1: as apparel, but that became the pretty early became the
37:02
Speaker 1: opportunity that I that I saw.
37:04
Speaker 3: I think it's really impressive to be able to really
37:09
Speaker 3: identify a need and home in on exactly who it
37:13
Speaker 3: is that you are. Even in you know, establishing a
37:17
Speaker 3: personal brand, you think, okay, well, if you're trying to
37:21
Speaker 3: serve everyone, then you're not really serving anyone. So for
37:24
Speaker 3: you guys to come to this conclusion, or for you
37:27
Speaker 3: personally to come to this conclusion that, you know what,
37:30
Speaker 3: I want to be a brand for runners and beyond that, like,
37:34
Speaker 3: I'm not trying to make the next great sneaker. I'm
37:36
Speaker 3: just trying to give you the stuff that you need
37:37
Speaker 3: to wear to get out there and perform your best.
37:40
Speaker 1: Yeah, and some of it is by accident and some
37:43
Speaker 1: of it by design, you know, And because you're right, like,
37:46
Speaker 1: especially in the beginning, I think it's really hard to
37:50
Speaker 1: be for everyone and everything. Right, that's just like a
37:54
Speaker 1: that's a I mean to do that, you have to
37:57
Speaker 1: you have to strip away I think the things that
38:00
Speaker 1: make you really unique and differentiated, because to appeal to everyone,
38:04
Speaker 1: you sort of have to go to the lowest common denominator.
38:07
Speaker 1: So we you know, we we certainly were very specific
38:12
Speaker 1: and considered with the brand and you know who we
38:15
Speaker 1: were for and communicating with and supporting, and you know,
38:20
Speaker 1: that's certainly has evolved over five and a half years.
38:23
Speaker 1: But I went into it with that very and my
38:28
Speaker 1: co founder very conscious decision of like listen, in the beginning.
38:31
Speaker 1: We're not going to be for everyone, and there are
38:32
Speaker 1: people who are not going to like what we're doing,
38:35
Speaker 1: but the vision we believe in, and over time we
38:38
Speaker 1: think that this is you know, this is this is
38:42
Speaker 1: you know, I mean this sounds crazy, but like we
38:44
Speaker 1: really want to change the sport and the industry and
38:46
Speaker 1: the way people think about it and the way it's perceived.
38:49
Speaker 1: And so we're going to present it in a way
38:51
Speaker 1: that that we really believe in and over time, you know,
38:54
Speaker 1: if we're successful and lucky, that will work, you know.
38:57
Speaker 1: So that that's how we approached it from the beginning.
39:00
Speaker 3: What is it that you think that you want to change?
39:02
Speaker 1: So when I was a kid, running was a sport, right,
39:07
Speaker 1: it was covered. You could open a Sports illustrated you know,
39:12
Speaker 1: you could read a Runner's World magazine or Running Times,
39:16
Speaker 1: and it was about the sport and the athletes. And
39:20
Speaker 1: over time that sort of went away. And and there's
39:26
Speaker 1: reasons for that, and they're not right or wrong, but
39:29
Speaker 1: you sort of had. As the brands that supported that grew,
39:35
Speaker 1: they you know, had their at one end of the spectrum.
39:39
Speaker 1: They always wanted athletes who could make Olympics and win medals, right,
39:43
Speaker 1: because everybody wants the best athlete associated with their brand.
39:47
Speaker 1: But then they also as they were growing, they realized, Okay,
39:50
Speaker 1: runners know who we are. Core runners know who we are.
39:54
Speaker 1: We need to get the people who are new to running.
39:57
Speaker 1: We need to go to that, you know, to the
39:58
Speaker 1: far other end of the spec drum. And it left
40:00
Speaker 1: this huge void in the middle of people who were
40:05
Speaker 1: passionate about running. They were committed to running, they self
40:08
Speaker 1: identified as runners, they were out there training and wanting
40:12
Speaker 1: to get faster. We really wanted to sort of focus on,
40:16
Speaker 1: you know, that that part of the that part of
40:19
Speaker 1: running and that part of the sport and not shy
40:22
Speaker 1: away from competition and not shy away from you know, achievement.
40:26
Speaker 1: Those are not bad things to celebrate, but they they
40:30
Speaker 1: became sort of like, you know, is that is that
40:33
Speaker 1: too aggressive as a brand to sort of talk about
40:35
Speaker 1: those things. And so that's really like just getting back
40:37
Speaker 1: to that, like, let's celebrate the sport for for what
40:41
Speaker 1: it is. You know, it's it's you can you can
40:46
Speaker 1: be a runner, you can be competitive and not be
40:51
Speaker 1: the best, but still be interested in that. And you know,
40:56
Speaker 1: is the sport went away and I like to think
41:00
Speaker 1: like it really only came out every four years during
41:02
Speaker 1: the Olympics, that's when running sort of takes center stage,
41:05
Speaker 1: and in the off years it really if you were
41:07
Speaker 1: a general sports fan, you knew nothing about the sport,
41:10
Speaker 1: and so it's a very we're very small and we're
41:14
Speaker 1: doing you know, very yeah, it's it's we have very
41:17
Speaker 1: little impact right now as a brand, but we the
41:20
Speaker 1: way we photograph running, the way we talk about running,
41:24
Speaker 1: the way we activate events around running, you know, those
41:28
Speaker 1: are the things that we want to sort of elevate
41:30
Speaker 1: and bring a bit back there, put a bit more
41:33
Speaker 1: time and effort into those things so people can really
41:36
Speaker 1: fall in love with running. And if you fall in
41:38
Speaker 1: love with running, you're going to start following it. You're
41:40
Speaker 1: going to be interested in what's going on. And then
41:42
Speaker 1: there's a whole slew of things that the sort of
41:44
Speaker 1: very professional, elite side of the sport, in the way
41:47
Speaker 1: that you know, track meets are run, TV broadcasts are presented.
41:51
Speaker 1: It's it's horrible, it's the it's the worst sport in
41:55
Speaker 1: the world to try to be a fan of the
41:57
Speaker 1: way that it's organized at a global level, and so
42:01
Speaker 1: that's not anything we're interested in now. But it's certainly
42:04
Speaker 1: something to think about for the future.
42:06
Speaker 3: It's almost as if you're trying to create clothing that's
42:08
Speaker 3: so good that you can get back to the focus
42:11
Speaker 3: of being on the athlete instead of being on what
42:13
Speaker 3: everybody's wearing and maybe these days what people are wearing
42:16
Speaker 3: specifically on their feet.
42:17
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, we I mean, it's it's never been about
42:21
Speaker 1: the shoes or the clothing, right, It's always been about
42:23
Speaker 1: the individual. I mean, you know, running is a very
42:27
Speaker 1: very intrinsic pursuit. It is just by nature. Although teams
42:31
Speaker 1: and clubs are amazing and they add to it, at
42:33
Speaker 1: the end of the day, it's sort of you versus
42:35
Speaker 1: yourself or you versus the clock. It's not a team
42:38
Speaker 1: sport and you know the way we think about team
42:40
Speaker 1: sports or ball sports, and so it does make it
42:42
Speaker 1: a very individual pursuit. And that's that's who ultimately is
42:47
Speaker 1: driving you know, driving yourself forward. Is you?
42:52
Speaker 3: So how do you drive yourself and your idea forward
42:55
Speaker 3: into being a cohesive brand?
42:57
Speaker 1: I mean great people, my co founder you know, and
43:00
Speaker 1: I you know, in the early days just really we're
43:04
Speaker 1: at our you know, like just one of those times
43:06
Speaker 1: where everything was like really working well, and I think
43:09
Speaker 1: we were able to sort of get to a great
43:11
Speaker 1: place and then as more people have come in the
43:13
Speaker 1: company be able to you know, refine and improve and
43:16
Speaker 1: expand on that. And you know, it's it's teams are hard,
43:20
Speaker 1: Like teams in sports. I've been you know, on teams
43:23
Speaker 1: my entire life, and like that part seems easy, but
43:26
Speaker 1: teams and companies are a lot harder. And but I've
43:29
Speaker 1: enjoyed that challenge of sort of building you know, the
43:32
Speaker 1: team attracts with and we're still, you know, relatively small,
43:35
Speaker 1: but we've grown a lot over the last two years,
43:37
Speaker 1: and so that's been a new and fun challenge for me.
43:41
Speaker 1: But yeah, it's just it's been it's been great people
43:44
Speaker 1: and you know, great execution by by those people.
43:48
Speaker 3: What was it like for you to shift from direct
43:51
Speaker 3: to consumer model to then opening up in Boston as
43:56
Speaker 3: a flagship.
43:57
Speaker 1: It was natural, It wasn't that difficult. We were never
44:03
Speaker 1: a DTC brand that you know, said we'll never do retail.
44:07
Speaker 1: Retail is dead, Retails the enemy, you know, that certainly
44:11
Speaker 1: was the mantra of a lot of the brands that
44:13
Speaker 1: led the way for the direct to consumer space. But
44:16
Speaker 1: running has always been a grassroots you know, shaking hands
44:21
Speaker 1: sport and industry, and so starting online is just the
44:25
Speaker 1: reality is it's the easiest, quickest, and least expensive way
44:29
Speaker 1: to establish a brand these days. You know, it's expensive
44:32
Speaker 1: to open retail stores and build community physically in a
44:36
Speaker 1: single location. And so we always knew we would open stores.
44:39
Speaker 1: We always knew we would have community, we would do
44:43
Speaker 1: run clubs, we would you know, come to the major marathons.
44:46
Speaker 1: It was just more a matter of when that timing
44:49
Speaker 1: felt right. And you know, we've taken a pretty conservative
44:52
Speaker 1: approach to that. And so yeah, opening the store was
44:57
Speaker 1: you know, challenging for sure, but it felt a very
44:59
Speaker 1: now victual extension of what we had always planned.
45:03
Speaker 3: I'm curious, early on, as you know, you're trying to
45:07
Speaker 3: build not only this company but a bit of a movement,
45:11
Speaker 3: what is it that keeps you going and what are
45:14
Speaker 3: you using as benchmarks for success, because early on, I
45:18
Speaker 3: mean those can be a little bit all over the place.
45:20
Speaker 1: They're definitely all over the place. I mean benchmarks were
45:23
Speaker 1: just some objective and some subjective. I mean, we were growing, right,
45:28
Speaker 1: so you can obviously that's one nice thing about you know,
45:31
Speaker 1: having the data we have as leaders these days at
45:35
Speaker 1: companies is we can see the web traffic, we can
45:37
Speaker 1: see the revenue, we can see those things, and so
45:40
Speaker 1: objectively we could see that. Subjectively we were hearing very
45:47
Speaker 1: positive things, you know, and as an online brand in
45:50
Speaker 1: the beginning, that is one thing that I really struggled
45:52
Speaker 1: with was, you know, you can't interact with your customer.
45:56
Speaker 1: You can't you know, having worked in a physical retail
46:00
Speaker 1: environment where you could sit in a store and see
46:02
Speaker 1: how people walk through the store and what they pick
46:05
Speaker 1: up and what they talk about and what questions they
46:07
Speaker 1: asked to go to an online environment where you you know,
46:10
Speaker 1: you're just seeing you know, oh, someone's on the website,
46:13
Speaker 1: someone bought something, But you can't sort of interrupt that
46:16
Speaker 1: process and ask them a question, or you're not there
46:18
Speaker 1: for them to ask you a question. So you know,
46:20
Speaker 1: that was certainly a bit of a challenge early on
46:24
Speaker 1: just to sort of figure that out. But subjectively we were,
46:27
Speaker 1: you know, hearing from people that you know, just very
46:29
Speaker 1: positive feedback. And so running certainly has a nuance to
46:34
Speaker 1: it in that, you know, people need to believe in
46:39
Speaker 1: the product, in the brand. There's sort of this authenticity
46:42
Speaker 1: and credibility component that no brand and running has ever
46:46
Speaker 1: succeeded sort of from the outside in. They've always started
46:50
Speaker 1: from the inside and gone out. And what I mean
46:52
Speaker 1: by that is they've started with core runners, people who
46:55
Speaker 1: who know it and who have been running for a
46:57
Speaker 1: long time, and you you just have to build you know,
47:00
Speaker 1: credibility with that with that customer base. So we were,
47:05
Speaker 1: like I said, very conservative and deliberate, and you know,
47:09
Speaker 1: we certainly didn't do everything right and it never went
47:12
Speaker 1: always according to plan. But I think consistently over the
47:17
Speaker 1: five and a half years, we have just been able
47:19
Speaker 1: to continue growing. And I think consistency is probably the
47:23
Speaker 1: single greatest attribute that we've we've had as a brand.
47:26
Speaker 1: We have been very, very consistent for five and a
47:29
Speaker 1: half half years, and that's that's helped us.
47:31
Speaker 3: Consistent in what we.
47:33
Speaker 1: Just in our approach, you know, consistent in what we
47:37
Speaker 1: how we communicate, what we communicate. We are painfully considered
47:42
Speaker 1: as a brand. I know that people get frustrated with
47:45
Speaker 1: me and roll their eyes with me internally because I
47:49
Speaker 1: want everything to be as close to perfect and I
47:52
Speaker 1: don't like to jump into things right away without sort
47:56
Speaker 1: of having as much information as we as we can,
47:59
Speaker 1: and so we might move a little slower than other
48:03
Speaker 1: you know, startups and other direct to consumer brands where
48:06
Speaker 1: they're just constantly you know, on on Instagram. They could
48:10
Speaker 1: feel like one brand one month and then feel like
48:12
Speaker 1: a totally other brand, a different brand the next month,
48:15
Speaker 1: and you know, winds blow this way and so they
48:17
Speaker 1: go that way. And I think that we have stayed
48:20
Speaker 1: very consistent to what our vision is, what our mission is,
48:23
Speaker 1: our identity, how we approach you know, everything from photography
48:27
Speaker 1: and the words that we write to the products that
48:29
Speaker 1: we that we make and sell.
48:31
Speaker 3: Has there been a point since the brand started where
48:34
Speaker 3: you wondered if you'd have to throw in the towel?
48:36
Speaker 1: Oh, yeah, a few. There's always those moments, you know,
48:42
Speaker 1: there's you know, we have raised outside capital to help
48:46
Speaker 1: launch the brand and grow the brand, and when you
48:49
Speaker 1: do that comes with you know, different challenges, and so
48:53
Speaker 1: much of that is timing and in some ways also luck,
48:57
Speaker 1: and so yeah, there were some times where you know,
49:01
Speaker 1: it wasn't so much like throwing the towel as it
49:04
Speaker 1: was what is this ultimately going to be and how
49:07
Speaker 1: are we going to get there? And you know, we
49:09
Speaker 1: as a you know, the other thing that's really challenging
49:11
Speaker 1: with uh, you know, companies that have physical products is
49:15
Speaker 1: like you I won't get into the details, but like
49:17
Speaker 1: the working capital needs of buying your inventory before you
49:21
Speaker 1: can sell it is challenging. You need and as you're growing, especially,
49:25
Speaker 1: it becomes very challenging because you need to buy all
49:28
Speaker 1: the inventory before you start collecting any of the revenue.
49:31
Speaker 1: And if you grow, you know slowly, you're you can
49:35
Speaker 1: sort of support that more easily. But when you're growing
49:37
Speaker 1: quickly and you know, doubling year over year, your demand
49:42
Speaker 1: for the cash for that inventory grows pretty quickly. And
49:45
Speaker 1: so we've just had some some moments where you know,
49:49
Speaker 1: managing that cash and that cycle of our cash has
49:52
Speaker 1: been challenging. And I've certainly had sleepless nights over that.
49:56
Speaker 1: So that's been Yeah, that's been a challenge. But you know,
49:59
Speaker 1: we've gotten through all of those, all of those instances
50:03
Speaker 1: and again never felt like we were like ready to
50:06
Speaker 1: throw in the towel, but certainly had some stress for sure.
50:11
Speaker 3: And I mean, aside from the esthetic of tracksmith, which
50:13
Speaker 3: I feel like we haven't touched on and we're you
50:15
Speaker 3: know already so far in here but aside from the
50:18
Speaker 3: esthetic being it's hard not to call it varsity. And
50:21
Speaker 3: I'm sure that stems a little bit from your time
50:24
Speaker 3: at an Ivy League school, right it does.
50:27
Speaker 1: I mean, I wouldn't even say it's necessarily specific to
50:31
Speaker 1: Ivy League schools. I think it's teams, you know, that
50:35
Speaker 1: team heritage, and especially in New England. Right after college
50:39
Speaker 1: I came to Boston. I've been you know, I've been
50:41
Speaker 1: living here basically since then, other than a short stint
50:44
Speaker 1: to DC. But you know, here you've got this tremendous
50:47
Speaker 1: legacy of collegiate sports and club sports, and then also Boston.
50:52
Speaker 1: You know, the Boston Marathon has its own ridiculous history.
50:56
Speaker 1: It's you know, eighteen ninety seven was the first Boston Marathon,
50:59
Speaker 1: and it's the heart and soul of the global running community,
51:03
Speaker 1: and it's the race that still holds probably the most
51:05
Speaker 1: reverence around the world for marathonors. And so, you know,
51:09
Speaker 1: it was much more the aesthetic was much more driven
51:13
Speaker 1: by you know that, I just personally I love I
51:17
Speaker 1: love classic sportswear. It's they're the pieces that still are
51:23
Speaker 1: wearable today. They're timeless in their simplicity, they're durable, and
51:28
Speaker 1: their material and construction techniques, you know, and you know,
51:31
Speaker 1: we have a product, the Gray Boy, which is a
51:33
Speaker 1: great example of that where I had started collecting like
51:38
Speaker 1: vintage team issued teas, and my father in law ran
51:43
Speaker 1: at Yukon and he still had, you know, his gray
51:47
Speaker 1: cotton you know, gray marl cotton T shirt with UFC
51:51
Speaker 1: literally hand stamped on the front of it that was
51:53
Speaker 1: issued to him as a freshman on the team, and
51:56
Speaker 1: he's what he trained in every day. And you know,
51:58
Speaker 1: those that shirt has literally been worn and washed hundreds
52:01
Speaker 1: and hundreds of times and it's still in great shape
52:04
Speaker 1: and it's still something you can wear today. And so
52:07
Speaker 1: that really drove a lot of the sort of esthetic
52:10
Speaker 1: in the style was just that very timeless and classic
52:14
Speaker 1: and yes, varsity and sometimes people will use vintage or retro,
52:19
Speaker 1: which you know, we don't really think of it that way,
52:21
Speaker 1: but certainly there's a lot of inspiration from the past.
52:24
Speaker 1: But you know, if you looked at your if you
52:28
Speaker 1: took your closet, you know, in two thousand and eight,
52:31
Speaker 1: and you put everything that you wear to work out
52:34
Speaker 1: with friends on the weekend, and then you hung your
52:37
Speaker 1: running clothes at the end of that you know, row
52:40
Speaker 1: of hangars, like your running clothes do not fit in
52:42
Speaker 1: with the rest of that aesthetic, right, The color palettes
52:45
Speaker 1: and all of those things were not consistent, and so
52:49
Speaker 1: you know, we just went to a much more yeah, timeless, subdued,
52:54
Speaker 1: understated color palette, but really invested a lot in the
52:58
Speaker 1: materials and the raw materials that go into the product. So, yeah,
53:03
Speaker 1: style and aesthetics is certainly a huge factor, and it's
53:09
Speaker 1: certainly inspired by Yeah, classic collegiate sportswear. I think that's fair.
53:14
Speaker 3: The other thing that I love that you guys do
53:17
Speaker 3: are the custom marathon posters, which I am sitting in
53:20
Speaker 3: front of three of them right now. They're my favorite
53:25
Speaker 3: thing for the listeners and I get so many messages
53:29
Speaker 3: about them whenever a glimpse of them goes on social media.
53:32
Speaker 3: Y'all have decided at every major marathon to pop up
53:37
Speaker 3: and do on the house custom stamped marathon posters, and
53:42
Speaker 3: I think that is exactly what you were talking about
53:46
Speaker 3: when it comes to truly servicing your consumer and also
53:52
Speaker 3: being a brand for runners by runners who get what
53:56
Speaker 3: an awesome thing it is that these people just did.
54:01
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, certainly every race has its you know,
54:05
Speaker 1: giveaways and you know expos and those just never felt
54:09
Speaker 1: great for us. And so you know, we we really
54:13
Speaker 1: thought about that, and I think we did it the
54:15
Speaker 1: first Boston Marathon that we popped up at, so we
54:18
Speaker 1: didn't have the story yet, so it was twenty fifteen,
54:22
Speaker 1: and you know, we every so yeah, every race, we
54:25
Speaker 1: create a custom design for a poster and at the
54:29
Speaker 1: bottom we leave room for your time. And after the
54:32
Speaker 1: race you can come to the pop up or the
54:34
Speaker 1: store and you know, we you know, look up your
54:37
Speaker 1: official time if you don't know it whatever, and we
54:40
Speaker 1: we handstamp your your time because you know, marathons, any
54:45
Speaker 1: race really, but marathons are such a commitment from a
54:48
Speaker 1: training perspective and time perspective, and a lot goes into
54:52
Speaker 1: it for the individual runner, and so we would we
54:56
Speaker 1: wanted to sort of you know, give something back and
55:00
Speaker 1: have this sort of momento that celebrated or in some
55:03
Speaker 1: cases commiserated, right, like you don't always pr It's not
55:06
Speaker 1: always a time you want. And you know, we often
55:08
Speaker 1: have people come in and they're you know, they're bummed
55:11
Speaker 1: because it was a bad race, and they say, can
55:12
Speaker 1: I just put you know, last year's time or can
55:16
Speaker 1: I just have the poster without my time, And we
55:18
Speaker 1: always check like encourage people like no, like put the
55:21
Speaker 1: time on there, like six months from now, this will
55:23
Speaker 1: be a source of inspiration. You know, something didn't go
55:26
Speaker 1: right today and you know, just just be okay with that,
55:29
Speaker 1: you know. And so those posters, it started as a
55:32
Speaker 1: very small thing that first marathon, and the response to
55:34
Speaker 1: them has been so positive and so now I mean
55:37
Speaker 1: we literally, you know, the two days after all the majors,
55:40
Speaker 1: I mean, we're stamping posters. Unfortunately we usually run out
55:45
Speaker 1: because it just keeps growing. But yeah, it's a great
55:47
Speaker 1: also just a great opportunity to talk to runners and
55:51
Speaker 1: talk to our customers. You know, they're standing in line
55:53
Speaker 1: for a little bit, why we stamp for them? And
55:56
Speaker 1: you know, you know runners after a race there there chat.
56:00
Speaker 1: They want to talk about the race. They want to
56:01
Speaker 1: hear about your race. You know, they want to commiserate
56:03
Speaker 1: about the weather and how bad it was or how
56:05
Speaker 1: great it was. And so it's just like the running
56:09
Speaker 1: community at its best is right after a major marathon.
56:13
Speaker 3: I love that. I love that. I think to your
56:16
Speaker 3: point about you want to be able to reflect on that,
56:20
Speaker 3: I mean, I have three of them in my apartment,
56:23
Speaker 3: and the slowest time would be my Boston twenty eighteen time.
56:28
Speaker 3: But it is my favorite poster because I look at
56:31
Speaker 3: this four oh one thirty seven and think about that
56:35
Speaker 3: day and the grit and how awesome is it that
56:37
Speaker 3: I have a reminder of what I am capable of
56:40
Speaker 3: and it doesn't have to be my fastest time sitting
56:43
Speaker 3: right on the wall in my living room.
56:45
Speaker 1: I mean Boston twenty eighteen. You like, you will remember
56:49
Speaker 1: that race for the rest of your life, maybe even
56:52
Speaker 1: more so than your best race or your second best
56:54
Speaker 1: race or your best race, right like, that was something
56:57
Speaker 1: truly unique and yeah, so to have that moment to
57:00
Speaker 1: hanging there is amazing.
57:01
Speaker 3: What inspiration would you say that you have brought with
57:04
Speaker 3: you from your running career, perhaps a lesson that you
57:08
Speaker 3: learned as a college athlete now that you are running
57:13
Speaker 3: this company.
57:15
Speaker 1: I feel like running and running a company are so synonymous.
57:19
Speaker 1: You know, running, especially distance running. You know, you don't
57:23
Speaker 1: wake up one day and go do it the first day.
57:25
Speaker 1: It takes a long time to build that foundation. That's
57:28
Speaker 1: sort of the transfer of being a runner to running
57:31
Speaker 1: a company. That has been the most obvious for me
57:34
Speaker 1: to sort of what can I draw from my experience
57:37
Speaker 1: as a runner to bring to this is that, you know,
57:38
Speaker 1: the concept of delayed gratification, you know, the idea that
57:42
Speaker 1: we're doing something now, not for tomorrow, before months or
57:47
Speaker 1: years from now, and that can be a hard thing
57:49
Speaker 1: to do, especially the world we live in where everything
57:51
Speaker 1: is so immediate and so short lived and you know,
57:56
Speaker 1: can be boiled down to one hundred and forty characters.
57:59
Speaker 1: To sort of have that discipline and confidence that okay,
58:02
Speaker 1: this is you know, we're doing the right thing, but
58:05
Speaker 1: we may not see the results of this for some time.
58:08
Speaker 1: So that certainly that approach and that mindset has been
58:12
Speaker 1: one and then the other is just sort of like
58:14
Speaker 1: you know, when you're training, you're not all out all
58:18
Speaker 1: the time. There's a cycle to it, and there's a
58:19
Speaker 1: cadence to it, and there's you know, even within a
58:22
Speaker 1: week or a month or a year, there are peaks
58:25
Speaker 1: and valleys to your training. And I think that our
58:28
Speaker 1: organization and our team sort of does that naturally. It's
58:31
Speaker 1: sort of just I don't know if it's something that
58:33
Speaker 1: as runners we've brought to it, but it's you know,
58:36
Speaker 1: there are moments attracts Smith that are super hectic and
58:39
Speaker 1: chaotic and we're all working like crazy, and then there
58:41
Speaker 1: are moments when you're sort of like, huh, are are
58:45
Speaker 1: people working enough? Do we have enough going on? But
58:47
Speaker 1: I think it's just that that natural cadence where we
58:50
Speaker 1: get super into executing, you know, something major, a pop up.
58:54
Speaker 1: You know, pop ups are really really hard to execute
58:56
Speaker 1: with a small team when you do it all yourself.
58:58
Speaker 1: We don't outsource that. We do everything from finding the
59:01
Speaker 1: space to building it out to you know, staffing it.
59:04
Speaker 1: We do that all ourselves, and so it's a big
59:06
Speaker 1: effort for the team. And then afterwards we get a
59:09
Speaker 1: little bit of a down period, you get your off period,
59:11
Speaker 1: you know. And so those are the sort of things
59:13
Speaker 1: from running that definitely have sort of come to Tracksmith
59:18
Speaker 1: from the sort of management and operation side of things.
59:22
Speaker 3: I also think that you mentioned before that people might
59:25
Speaker 3: get on your case a little bit for being a perfectionist,
59:28
Speaker 3: but when it's something that you've created and something that
59:31
Speaker 3: you're so passionate about, I would almost expect nothing less.
59:36
Speaker 3: When you think about running your company and you think
59:39
Speaker 3: about showing up for all the people that work for you,
59:42
Speaker 3: you have to go into it with a certain amount
59:45
Speaker 3: of wisdom and a strategic approach, and to do that
59:49
Speaker 3: you probably have to look to mentors every now and again.
59:52
Speaker 3: So when you think about the best advice that you
59:54
Speaker 3: have been offered in this phase of your career leading
59:58
Speaker 3: up this company, what would you say has been the
1:00:01
Speaker 3: best piece of advice.
1:00:02
Speaker 1: That's a good question, because you get a lot of
1:00:04
Speaker 1: advice when you when you start a company and you
1:00:06
Speaker 1: run a company. I mean I have had, you know,
1:00:08
Speaker 1: really great people around me, and that's been less about
1:00:13
Speaker 1: you know, a particular piece of advice and more just
1:00:16
Speaker 1: support and you know, listeners who can you know, sort
1:00:20
Speaker 1: of help steer you or help you think through a problem.
1:00:23
Speaker 1: The thing I found kind of contradictory to what you're
1:00:26
Speaker 1: asking early on is that I think people often, you know,
1:00:30
Speaker 1: look for a single answer or direction, and so people
1:00:35
Speaker 1: will say they'll take an example of a company that
1:00:38
Speaker 1: has been successful and and sort of say, okay, this
1:00:42
Speaker 1: is the way to do it. And somehow early on,
1:00:46
Speaker 1: I don't know what sparked it, but I just thought, man,
1:00:49
Speaker 1: I'm getting contradictory advice, you know, And the reality is
1:00:53
Speaker 1: there are so much there's so much nuance, and so
1:00:55
Speaker 1: many variables to what we are trying to do that
1:00:58
Speaker 1: there is not a playbook. There's not a single thing
1:01:00
Speaker 1: thing that that we should do or you know, there's
1:01:03
Speaker 1: more than one way that we can be successful. There's
1:01:05
Speaker 1: not a single way to do this. And so I've
1:01:08
Speaker 1: been very open and broad in terms of what I
1:01:11
Speaker 1: read and advice I seek out. And certainly in the
1:01:14
Speaker 1: early days, I would you know, I was bugging people
1:01:17
Speaker 1: to talk to me, and anyone that would, I would
1:01:18
Speaker 1: ask them a lot of questions. But I think at
1:01:21
Speaker 1: the end of the day, you have to be really
1:01:25
Speaker 1: confident in your vision and just sort of stay the course.
1:01:30
Speaker 1: And that's really hard to do because I also don't
1:01:32
Speaker 1: have all the answers and everyone knows that, you know,
1:01:35
Speaker 1: and so you kind of have to show up every
1:01:37
Speaker 1: day and you know, just sort of put your best
1:01:39
Speaker 1: foot forward and say this is you know, this is
1:01:42
Speaker 1: what we said we're doing, and this is this is it,
1:01:44
Speaker 1: while at the same time being valuable and flexible because
1:01:47
Speaker 1: things change a lot. I mean, we're living through that
1:01:50
Speaker 1: right now. Right like no one predicted the situation that
1:01:53
Speaker 1: we would be in now with coronavirus, and so what
1:01:56
Speaker 1: we thought was our plan for twenty twenty has shifted,
1:01:58
Speaker 1: so it doesn't. I know, that doesn't answer your question.
1:02:01
Speaker 1: The only piece of advice that I literally whenever, the
1:02:05
Speaker 1: only thing I can think of, and it's not even advice,
1:02:08
Speaker 1: but my grandfather, who is no longer with us, but
1:02:13
Speaker 1: growing up we would see them a couple times a
1:02:16
Speaker 1: year and he loved to play cards. That's all we
1:02:17
Speaker 1: would do is play cards. And I was young in
1:02:20
Speaker 1: learning how to play this very obscure game that's only
1:02:23
Speaker 1: played in western Pennsylvania called cinch. And you know when
1:02:27
Speaker 1: I think he really enjoyed having me around, and he
1:02:30
Speaker 1: knew that I was competitive and you know, like to
1:02:32
Speaker 1: take risks, and he would always it's a game where
1:02:35
Speaker 1: you have to you have to bet, you have to
1:02:36
Speaker 1: bet what you think you'll win on that hand. And
1:02:39
Speaker 1: he always used to say God hates a coward. When
1:02:41
Speaker 1: I was like, when it was my turn to bid
1:02:43
Speaker 1: and I was thinking, ah, should I bid three or four?
1:02:45
Speaker 1: You know, he just across the table say God hates
1:02:48
Speaker 1: a coward. And it wasn't a specific piece of advice,
1:02:52
Speaker 1: but it really was, like it comes back to what
1:02:53
Speaker 1: I was saying earlier of that, like Yeah, like you can.
1:02:56
Speaker 1: You can take risks as long as the worst case
1:02:59
Speaker 1: scenario failing that is not hurting other people death or
1:03:03
Speaker 1: some other catastrophic thing. It's like, yeah, let's let's do this,
1:03:06
Speaker 1: let's take a risk, let's figure this out. And so
1:03:08
Speaker 1: that's I guess that's my that's my one piece of
1:03:10
Speaker 1: advice that's really stuck with me.
1:03:13
Speaker 3: Take a risk, A smart risk smart is the takeaway.
1:03:17
Speaker 3: So we're winding down here before I ask our final question,
1:03:21
Speaker 3: I'm curious what excites you right now?
1:03:25
Speaker 1: You know, I was really really excited about twenty twenty.
1:03:29
Speaker 1: It's an Olympic year, you know, which is for our sport,
1:03:32
Speaker 1: such a unique event and opportunity. And like I said,
1:03:35
Speaker 1: we had some really big plans around sort of this year,
1:03:39
Speaker 1: and you know, it's the one time every four years
1:03:42
Speaker 1: that the rest of the world sort of pays attention
1:03:44
Speaker 1: to running. And obviously that's all changed in a heartbeat,
1:03:47
Speaker 1: that's all changed, but it won't really, you know, it
1:03:50
Speaker 1: just it just postpones things. And so I'm excited for
1:03:54
Speaker 1: trying to steer us through the situation we're in so
1:03:58
Speaker 1: that we can get to what we were planning in
1:04:01
Speaker 1: twenty twenty one, and that's you know, exciting and terrifying
1:04:06
Speaker 1: and challenging and all of those things. But you know,
1:04:09
Speaker 1: I am really I'm excited to see you know what running,
1:04:14
Speaker 1: how running comes out of this. And you know, I
1:04:17
Speaker 1: don't know the fall marathons. It doesn't look good. Berlin
1:04:19
Speaker 1: was canceled. Who knows about the other now four major
1:04:22
Speaker 1: marathons in the fall. You know, We've got a plan
1:04:25
Speaker 1: for all scenarios. But I think once things do get
1:04:29
Speaker 1: back to normal, I think things will be a little
1:04:31
Speaker 1: bit different. And I'm excited to sort of, you know,
1:04:33
Speaker 1: hopefully be a part of that as a brand and
1:04:36
Speaker 1: support people and communities and clubs and teams and individuals.
1:04:40
Speaker 1: You know, as we start to come out of this
1:04:43
Speaker 1: very weird time that we're in.
1:04:45
Speaker 3: You have an opportunity right now, looking back on the
1:04:49
Speaker 3: time right before starting tracks and at three, maybe even
1:04:53
Speaker 3: just before heading on over to Puma, where you're not
1:04:57
Speaker 3: exactly sure what your path for you a certain hurdle
1:05:01
Speaker 3: moment without a doubt, you have an opportunity right now
1:05:04
Speaker 3: to offer yourself one piece of advice looking back.
1:05:07
Speaker 1: On that time right now, what do you tell yourself
1:05:11
Speaker 1: probably to embrace the journey, I think, and that's another
1:05:16
Speaker 1: parallel to running. You know, at the time when you're
1:05:19
Speaker 1: going through that process, you know you have so many
1:05:22
Speaker 1: different feelings, and you know so many factors will go
1:05:27
Speaker 1: into whether or not you succeed or fail at something.
1:05:32
Speaker 1: It's not as easy as just being like I'm going
1:05:33
Speaker 1: to work harder than everyone else. Like that's not you know,
1:05:35
Speaker 1: that's not great advice that we that we give to
1:05:38
Speaker 1: people because that's not always the reality. But if you
1:05:41
Speaker 1: can sort of just embrace the journey, the highs and
1:05:45
Speaker 1: the lows, the winds and the losses, I think you
1:05:47
Speaker 1: can learn a lot from that and gain a lot
1:05:49
Speaker 1: from that. And it's the same in running. Right it's
1:05:51
Speaker 1: your four oh one in Boston. You know, it wasn't
1:05:53
Speaker 1: your fastest race, but it's just part of the journey.
1:05:57
Speaker 1: And I think if we if we can like stay
1:06:00
Speaker 1: back every once in a while and look at the bigger,
1:06:03
Speaker 1: longer term picture, I think that's probably like the you know,
1:06:07
Speaker 1: looking back on my journey to get to hear I
1:06:10
Speaker 1: think some of the time I've done that well and
1:06:12
Speaker 1: some of the time I haven't. If I could go back,
1:06:15
Speaker 1: I would certainly sort of that would be like a
1:06:17
Speaker 1: mantra of mine to embrace the journey as it's as
1:06:20
Speaker 1: it's going on.
1:06:21
Speaker 3: Embrace the journey. I love it.
1:06:22
Speaker 1: Matt.
1:06:22
Speaker 3: Thanks so much for your time today.
1:06:24
Speaker 1: Thank you, I really appreciate it.
1:06:26
Speaker 3: Please take a moment and leave a quick review of
1:06:29
Speaker 3: the podcast by clicking the link with the description to
1:06:31
Speaker 3: this episode. We all face multiple hurdles in life. I
1:06:34
Speaker 3: want to hear about yours. Reach out to me at
1:06:36
Speaker 3: Emily at Hurdle dot us. Connect with the podcast on
1:06:39
Speaker 3: Instagram and Twitter at Hurdle Podcast. Matt, how do they
1:06:42
Speaker 3: keep up with you? How do they keep up with Tracksmith?
1:06:45
Speaker 3: Give me the details.
1:06:47
Speaker 1: Tracksmith dot com and tracksmith running on Instagram? Me personally,
1:06:52
Speaker 1: you got to email me or write me a letter.
1:06:54
Speaker 1: I'm I'm off the grid social media wise.
1:06:58
Speaker 3: Yeah, but handwritten letters are how you got to where
1:07:00
Speaker 3: you are today. We're bringing a full circle exactly. Well.
1:07:06
Speaker 3: Thanks so much. I am at Emily a body at
1:07:09
Speaker 3: Hurdle Podcast. Another hurdle conquered. Catch you guys next time.