Jesse Thomas: Work Hard, Play Harder & Love Hardest

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

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Rich Roll?

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• 0:44Rich Roll?

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• 1:04Speaker 01

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

• 1:47Speaker 01

  And so if you don't listen to those things, listen to your body, then ultimately you're just kind of like plowing through on this thing that doesn't make any more sense.

• 1:54Rich Roll?

  That's Jesse Thomas, and this is the Rich Roll Podcast.

• 2:09Rich Roll?

  The Rich Roll Podcast. Hey, everybody. How you guys doing? What's happening? My name is Rich Roll. I am your host. This is my podcast. Welcome or welcome back. Got a great show for you guys today. Happy to be with all of you. Today's guest is not only one of the world's most accomplished professional triathletes, he's also one of the most popular, one of the most likeable, grounded, funny, and dynamic professional athletes I've ever met. His name is Jesse Thomas. He's super rad. He's super fast, but oh, so much more than meets the eye. And it all begins with him as a standout track and field athlete at Stanford.

• 2:53Rich Roll?

  But the story really starts in 2011 at something called the Wildflower Triathlon, which, for those of you who are unfamiliar, is a very prestigious triathlon race. And at the time, Jesse was a complete unknown in this sport. And yet, on a borrowed bike and a pair of $9 aviator sunglasses that he bought at the drugstore, outright wins the race. He absolutely crushes it. And to give you a sense of how shocking this was in the triathlon community, the announcer, the race announcer, actually asks him as he crossed the finish line, like, who are you? In any event, since then, Jesse has gone on to become the first person to win that very same race three years in a row.

• 3:38Rich Roll?

  And along his circuitous path as a pro, he has podiumed at some of the most prestigious races in the world, including a coveted third at the Challenge Roth Ironman Distance Event last summer, which is an extremely prestigious Ironman race. But the reason I wanted to share Jesse's story has very little to do with his somewhat, I guess you could call it, unrelatable ability to exercise better than the rest of us, and so much more to do with who he is as a person. This guy who is alchemizing in real time this insanely demanding training and racing schedule with what I think is a more relatable experience of dealing with the pressures of being a present dad.

• 4:22Rich Roll?

  A husband, a podcast host. Check out his show, Work, Play, Love. It's great. And a CEO. He's an entrepreneur who, at the same time, is running this company called Picky Bars, which is a performance nutrition company. They make great stuff, gluten and dairy-free energy bars and granola and oatmeal, which he co-founded with his wife, Lauren Fleishman, who herself is an incredibly successful former professional runner. She earned more All-American accolades than any other athlete in Stanford history. So this is a power couple. In any event, Jesse's super witty. He's a great storyteller, and those stories are coming up in a few. But first.

• 5:08Rich Roll?

  Okay, Jesse. So what do we talk about? Well, we talk about a lot of stuff. We talk about Jesse's beginnings as a track and field and cross-country star at Stanford, how he became the first person to win the Wildflower Triathlon three years in a row, what it's like to run this entity, Picky Bars, and how that works symbiotically with his life as a professional athlete, what it's like to work with your wife professionally, the challenges that athletes face, retiring and grappling with the loss of purpose. We talk about the power of athletes' storytelling and how it's kind of incumbent upon professional athletes these days in the modern Instagram era to do that very thing. And we talk about

• 5:50Rich Roll?

  working with a coach. He has a legendary coach, Matt Dixon. We talk about that. We talk about his podcast and how he made Aviator Shades a thing. Oh, and one final note. I have zero financial entanglement with Picky Bars. They're not a sponsor of the show. It is great stuff. I love it. Bars, granola, oatmeal, everything is nutritionally balanced. It's tasty. It's all plant-based, although I think a few products have honey in them. So make sure you check the nutritional facts label. But I eat their stuff all the time. And Jesse, out of the kindness of his big heart, did want to gift you guys a little something special for listening today. Payback, I guess, for us feeding him lunch on the

• 6:33Rich Roll?

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

• 6:56Rich Roll?

  Good to see you.

• 6:57Speaker 01

  Yeah, good to see you too.

• 6:57Rich Roll?

  Thanks for coming out.

• 6:58Speaker 01

  Absolutely.

• 6:59Rich Roll?

  We're doing a double header today.

• 7:00Speaker 01

  I know, you are.

• 7:02Rich Roll?

  I was joking with Colin that you guys brought the Oregon weather. Two Oregon triathletes on the same day.

• 7:07Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 7:07Rich Roll?

  It's crazy.

• 7:08Speaker 01

  Yeah, and we did. The rain is pretty bad out there right now, but still pretty, still nicer than we, as we were talking, still a lot nicer than Bend is right now.

• 7:16Rich Roll?

  You had like 11 degrees out the other day.

• 7:18Speaker 01

  Yeah, so I got to run outside today for the first time in two weeks, which even though it was downpour, you know, thunderous downpour the entire run, it was a lot nicer than running on the treadmill.

• 7:28Rich Roll?

  Why do all these professional triathletes live in places with inhabitable weather? I don't understand.

• 7:33Speaker 01

  You know, I don't, that's a good question. It's nice a lot of the year, but yeah, it is. It can be a drag. You get, you know, I discovered Nordic skiing. Nordic skiing is super fun. It's a nice way to spend the winter. And then, and then you're kind of forced to change it up a little bit, which is nice, you know? I think if I, if I could actually swim, bike and run all year outside, I would be much more likely to hurt myself probably.

• 8:00Rich Roll?

  I think that's true.

• 8:01Speaker 01

  Or burn out.

• 8:02Rich Roll?

  You hear these stories of guys that like moved to Hawaii for that reason, right? And then, and then nothing happened. You think like, oh, that'll be like this Archimedes lever that's gonna make their career, you know, fantastic, but it never ends up that way.

• 8:14Speaker 01

  Yeah, and ultimately you just gotta be where you want to be, you know? I mean, for me Bend is home and that's, it's family. Yeah, and that's like, that just trumps everything else, you know? And it's not all about triathlon either. I mean, you know, it's like, where, where does it make sense for my family to be? And, and where do I want to be long-term as I pivot away from it as well, you know? So, yeah.

• 8:37Rich Roll?

  Well, you're in a really interesting moment in your career.

• 8:40Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 8:40Rich Roll?

  Which I think is super interesting to explore. I mean, we, we've only met once. It was super briefly. It was out on the bike, like right in this neighborhood.

• 8:47Speaker 01

  Pretty typical.

• 8:48Rich Roll?

  We were trying to figure out when that was. It was like 2013.

• 8:51Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 8:51Rich Roll?

  I remember that, uh, I remember, what I, here's what I remember about that.

• 8:56Speaker 01

  Okay, yeah, please.

• 8:57Rich Roll?

  I remember I was riding by myself and I was riding up Rock Store.

• 9:00Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 9:01Rich Roll?

  Which is just down the way here. It's like one of the, you know, more well-known climbs.

• 9:04Speaker 01

  Iconic climbs.

• 9:05Rich Roll?

  And I'm just doing my thing and then suddenly this freight train of like 20 people just passes me like I'm standing still and I'm like, fucking. What's going on here? And I realized it was Matt Dixon's Purple Patch Fitness

• 9:20Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 9:20Rich Roll?

  Camp. And then you guys were just gone. And then later on in the ride, I was like down in Westlake or whatever, and I spied, I spied you, and I think you were riding with Luke Bell.

• 9:30Speaker 01

  Luke Bell, I think, yeah.

• 9:31Rich Roll?

  And I caught up to you guys and we chatted a little bit.

• 9:33Speaker 01

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

• 10:05Rich Roll?

  Yeah, I know.

• 10:06Speaker 01

  Later on on that, because it was hours later.

• 10:08Rich Roll?

  Right. It was hours later, and I would have figured you got, you must have taken a different route. I don't know how. And you weren't with the rest of the group at that point.

• 10:14Speaker 01

  No, we had split up. I remember actually very specifically, because that ride was the ride that Luke Bell and I just pretty much like pummeled each other on the next climb after we, like, on the way back from the, from the ocean.

• 10:28Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 10:28Speaker 01

  I can't remember what climate was, but I just remember I was super psyched, because I was riding next to Luke Bell, which was basically it. And I knew he was working hard, and I was working hard. And it was, and for me, as like a young, you know, first or second year professional athlete, that was like a highlight training moment for me, that I was

• 10:46Rich Roll?

  Guys are legends.

• 10:47Speaker 01

  Holding strong with Luke Bell. Yeah, exactly. Small schoolroom. Yeah.

• 10:51Rich Roll?

  Yeah. And since that moment, I mean, you've gone on, you've made a, you know, huge impression on the sport, which I want to talk about.

• 10:57Speaker 01

  Thanks.

• 10:58Rich Roll?

  But before we even track it back, like, let's talk about what's going on right now, because you're at this interesting intersection between professional athlete life and, you know, not retirement, but a different phase of what that looks like for you as, you know, a parent, as a husband, as a business owner, and as an athlete.

• 11:19Speaker 01

  Yeah, I think, you know, after eight years of, of, you know, pedal to the metal.

• 11:29Speaker 01

  Athletic pursuit while still doing those things that you just mentioned as well. I mean, I got married right before I started racing triathlons. So I was married and then about four years, five years into it, we had our first kid. The whole time, we've had a business that was going on as a side project, but really had taken on a life of its own. So this last eight years, it's been, I've been doing the business and the family thing under, to a certain extent, under, family's always kind of top priority, but you know what it's like. It's under the context of, I'm trying to be a world-class professional triathlete. And that's like, when I wake up, that's the main goal of the day, is world-class professional triathlete.

• 12:14Speaker 01

  And then I'll do the other stuff as best as I can in that day. And I think after the last, after feeling a couple of things, feeling like I'd accomplished a lot of what I wanted to accomplish in the sport, you know, won some Ironmans and done, you know, raced fast, had raced at a really high level and felt like I had garnered the respect of a lot of the guys, which meant a lot to me. And then feeling like I really pulled towards the problems and the interesting like challenges of the business, more so than like trying to win another race. You know, like all of a sudden, there's like these challenges that are kind of, you're like more interested in them.

• 12:59Speaker 01

  And then, but most importantly was the family piece. It's like, man Jude, my son, who's five now, he'll be six in a couple of months. I mean, his dad was like a grandpa, you know, that's, that's how I, that's how I talk about it to people, because that whole time, I was in the peak of my career. And when I came home every day, I was just smoked. So it was like less time and the time is worse that you're spending with them. And I just was like, I just don't want to do that anymore. Like I want to be able to go, he's now capable of doing things. I want to go do those things with them and enjoy it with them. So it's a combination of those three things that I've, you know, feel like I'm starting to just pivot away, pivot away from this being.

• 13:42Speaker 01

  A world-class professional triathlete, and I don't really like the word retirement, but like, you know, I'm gonna, the focus is different.

• 13:50Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 13:50Speaker 01

  You know?

• 13:51Rich Roll?

  It's a different phase.

• 13:52Speaker 01

  It's a different phase, exactly.

• 13:53Rich Roll?

  Uh huh.

• 13:54Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 13:55Rich Roll?

  So, a typical day in the life of a professional triathlete, I mean, you're training 25, 30 hours a week, I would imagine.

• 14:03Speaker 01

  Yeah, I think like, in the early years I was, and then as the business and family thing came on, it was more like 15 for me, which is, like you just said, probably about half of what a lot of the guys that I was racing against were.

• 14:15Rich Roll?

  That's, that's a lot lower than I was.

• 14:17Speaker 01

  A lot lower, yeah. I mean, you know, I probably hit 20 a couple of times in the big, in the big weeks, but, um, you know, but yeah, I mean, regardless, even if it's 20 hours or 15 hours, it's a lot of time. And that's, as we were talking about earlier, that's not, that doesn't include the extra time you need to sleep and all your physical therapy and all the to and from and everything. So it's a lot.

• 14:41Rich Roll?

  And the lack of energy that you have.

• 14:42Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 14:43Rich Roll?

  You know, because you're just exhausted all the time.

• 14:45Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 14:46Rich Roll?

  But, but what is unique about you is that you started this business, Picky Bars. When did you guys originate this?

• 14:54Speaker 01

  It was 2010.

• 14:57Rich Roll?

  2010.

• 14:57Speaker 01

  Yeah, so about eight years, nine years ago.

• 14:59Rich Roll?

  And so as you make this segue, you actually have this like thriving, ongoing concern, you know? Well, it is, it's like, I mean, I think it's super, look, I think it's super impressive for anybody to launch a business and make it successful. You know, I know a little bit about the food industry. Like, I know how difficult and competitive it is. It's crazy. You're entering a market where there's a million competitors.

• 15:20Speaker 01

  Absolutely.

• 15:21Rich Roll?

  Like, there's a million reasons why, you know, this thing would have failed right out of the gate. And you've made it successful while you're also this world-class professional triathlete.

• 15:30Speaker 01

  Thanks.

• 15:30Rich Roll?

  You know, but now that you have the energy and the bandwidth to, you know, shift your focus, you have something to be, you know, the receptacle of that passion and that energy.

• 15:41Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 15:42Rich Roll?

  When I kind of canvass, not just triathlon, but a lot of, you know, world-class athletes across the board, especially in sports where, you know, it's not a financial thing. Like, I'm not making a ton of money.

• 15:53Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 15:53Rich Roll?

  But it's so all-consuming, and then they, they hit that retirement point, and they're like, well, I don't know what to do. You know, like, what do I do now? I've never thought about it because my whole life and focus was about being the best athlete that I, that I could possibly be.

• 16:05Speaker 01

  Yeah. It, it's hard, and I wish, you know, it'd be nice if I could say that. Yeah, that was all part of my grand plan, you know, but it's kind of just something that happened. And I feel, and I'm very lucky and fortunate that it's, that I do have this path, this really obvious, not only like just an obvious job, but like something that I'm legitimately passionate about and interested in. That, that is kind of the coolest part of it. Because I think you can go get a job and you can do, you could find a way to make a living. But as you know, from your, you know, from, I mean, from your life, you know, it, so much of life's fulfillment is about pursuing things that you're passionate about and that you're interested in. And that's the thing that maybe I feel most excited

• 16:50Speaker 01

  about is that regardless of how big or successful or, or whatever it, it becomes in those terms, it's, it's interesting to me. And, um, and it is very lucky. I mean, I remember writing, I wrote an article about it for triathlete magazine, uh, like four or five years ago, when I was kind of halfway through my career and I'd been in the career long, in my career long enough to have half the guys that I raced against retire. And just seeing them, seeing the varying paths and, you know, quote unquote, success or personal fulfillment or whatever it is that you're looking at and making this realization like, man, how,

• 17:34Speaker 01

  how do you do this? If you've been doing this for 10 to 12, a lot of these guys longer than I have, from a much younger age. It's a hard transition. You know, you have really clear goals, really, really clear, uh, you know, passion and, and then all of a sudden you're like, well, what's next? And it's tough.

• 17:51Rich Roll?

  It's like an existential crisis, I think, for a lot of people. And you see a lot of people who, you know, then kind of struggle, you know, they, they end up partying too much, or they end up in, you know, jobs that they really like. And, and, you know, I think that not just triathlon, but all sports could do a better job of, you know, creating, uh, you know, organizations or institutions to help athletes, guide them through that process of transitioning from full-time athlete into civilian.

• 18:21Speaker 01

  I agree. I mean, you know, a sport like triathlon has a long, you know, a long, long way to go before something like that exists, I think. But I totally agree. I would hope, I would hope some of the major sports have something like that, you know, because those, those kids are even. To a certain extent, well, I guess maybe better and worse, you know, they probably have made a lot more money. So then maybe, maybe it just doesn't matter. They can sit on it.

• 18:46Rich Roll?

  Well, I think some of the NBA and NFL have have like programs to help them learn how to manage their money and all that kind of stuff. But which

• 18:55Speaker 01

  It's different though.

• 18:55Rich Roll?

  Because most of those careers are way shorter than you think.

• 18:58Speaker 01

  Super short and they're so young when they're done. Yeah.

• 19:00Rich Roll?

  Well, one of the things that you've talked about or written about and have opinions on is like the unionization of athletes and triathlon.

• 19:10Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 19:11Rich Roll?

  Which seems to me like a no brainer and a long overdue idea, especially when the sport is so tiered that, you know, there's a very, very tiny percentage of people at the very top who are doing very well.

• 19:24Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 19:25Rich Roll?

  But, you know, just poke just beneath the surface there. And it's like a real struggle. And for anybody beneath that, like, I don't know how they survive at all.

• 19:33Speaker 01

  Yeah, the stats, the stats, I've written articles or an article or two about this too. The, you know, the, when I kind of polled, when I had been in the sport long enough to know all the guys, you know, at least all the men and a lot of the women in the sport, it was like, hey, if you look at Kona, Kona's getting, you know, 40 ish women and 50 to 60 guys. And there's 10 of those on each side that are making pretty good money, more so on the men's side. On the women's side, it's, you could take all these numbers and probably divide it by half.

• 20:07Rich Roll?

  Three or four.

• 20:07Speaker 01

  Yeah, exactly. And then there's, so there's this kind of top 10 threshold. Then there's like another 15 that are making a decent, you know, like a living. And then after that, the whole second half of even the Kona field is probably subsidizing money from a significant other or a government thing, or they've, or their coaching on the side, or whatever it is. And so it's really, really steep. And that's like the top 50, 60 men in the world. And for women, it's even worse.

• 20:35Rich Roll?

  These are the best Ironman distance athletes in the world. And the sport's so expensive. There's so much travel to all these fancy places and there's so much gear. And I'm sure all those people get their gear given to them gratis by ambassador deals. But there's this mistaken belief that there's a lot of money going around. This is not the case.

• 20:57Speaker 01

  It's a really small, it's inherently small sport. And there's more mainstream money and advertisers coming into it. And I certainly benefited during my time from the first race that I won in 2011 to last year, 2018. A lot of money coming into the sport and like growth of the sport. And that was beneficial to me on the sponsorship side. But yeah, it's tough. It's tough to make a living. And I think, back to your original question, the unionization of it. It's one of those things, and it's not just triathlon. It's every Olympic type sport.

• 21:41Speaker 01

  We have individuals as opposed to teams. And there's no league that is organizing how those people become pro, legitimately pro. And what you end up having is all these athletes that spend all their time, all their energy, all their money for these one or two performances in an Olympics or the world championships or whatever it is. And the sport itself and the governing bodies of that sport benefit immensely, much more so from those moments than the athletes typically do themselves.

• 22:19Rich Roll?

  Of course.

• 22:20Speaker 01

  Unless you're one of the transcendent athletes that really made it and you were on a Wheaties box or whatever and you're doing it. But that's so few.

• 22:29Rich Roll?

  And beyond that, in triathlon, you have an organization that's profiting wildly off just the participation. Yeah. It's the one sport where the amateur is competing right alongside the pro. And it's incredibly, the WTC is sitting on top of mountains of money that could be allocated in a much more equitable way.

• 22:52Speaker 01

  Presumably, yeah. It seems like that.

• 22:59Speaker 01

  I think that until, until professional triathletes make it as abundantly clear as possible how, you know, stake a claim in terms of how important or unimportant they are to the production of the sport and to the soul of the sport, it's gonna, it's hard for, you know, the business, the business isn't gonna react to it any other way than just do the best that they can for their, for their business.

• 23:26Rich Roll?

  Yeah, and their response is, has sort of historically been like, listen, you know, our, our audience and our customer base is the amateur, not the pro.

• 23:34Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 23:35Rich Roll?

  Like, you're interchangeable.

• 23:36Speaker 01

  That's kind of, that, that seems, they're using the, but they're using the pros a lot to help market the sport and, you know, like the NBC broadcast is heavily driven by the pro race, although they do interweave a lot of-

• 23:52Rich Roll?

  Inspirational stories.

• 23:53Speaker 01

  Yeah, they do interweave a lot of inspirational stories in there, you know? Yeah, it's, it's an interesting, it's an interesting deal. Ultimately, if you, if there's no organization that exists where, if the pros don't organize themselves, then you have no leverage. I mean, it's just like a basic business deal.

• 24:07Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 24:07Speaker 01

  You know, and that, and that's ultimately what it comes to. And until that, until that coalesces, it will be, it'll be hard to enact a whole bunch of change, particularly in triathlon where you do have, strip away how fair or unfair or whatever you think WTC and Ironman is. The fact of it is, is that they hold a monopoly on the sport, which is super unique to triathlon. The marathon, that doesn't exist in the marathon. It does exist a little bit in the Olympics with IOC and USATF, so you see a lot of the same problems, but, but in triathlon, it's really specific there.

• 24:45Rich Roll?

  So are you optimistic that you think that there will be some organization here?

• 24:49Speaker 01

  I hope so. It's one of those things where it's really tough. It's, it's, um, there's probably an economic way to describe the problem. But the basic problem is the people that have the most influence have the least to gain.

• 25:01Rich Roll?

  Uh huh.

• 25:02Speaker 01

  Right? Like, just like we were talking about, those guys, the guys at the top, they have the least to gain by unionization of the athletes. Um, and then the, and then the secondary problem is you have a constantly like replenishing workforce, if you want to call it that, versus the company itself is static, right? WTC is there, they have all, they know what they're doing, they've got their shit together. The athletes are new every three to five years. You have this arc where you don't even know what's going on, then you know what's going on. Then like, similar to me, you're like, out of the sport. Yeah, you're kind of like, oh, well, what do I do now? You know?

• 25:38Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 25:39Speaker 01

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

• 26:03Rich Roll?

  Well, there was one board at one moment, uh, that was organized around trying to have more parity in the women's field at Kona, right?

• 26:11Speaker 01

  Yeah, and I don't know, I, that, that was a movement at least, um, I'm forgetting the name of it right now.

• 26:18Rich Roll?

  Forty something.

• 26:18Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Forty to Kona.

• 26:20Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 26:21Speaker 01

  Forty to Kona, I can't remember what, but, but yeah, that, um, and you know, I don't know what the, the result of that was, to be honest, is, you know, yeah.

• 26:32Rich Roll?

  So, let's track it back.

• 26:33Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 26:33Rich Roll?

  Uh, you start off as this standout, um, track and field star, Steeplechase.

• 26:39Speaker 01

  Uh, hardly a star.

• 26:40Rich Roll?

  I don't know, man, you end up at Stanford, you set the school record, right?

• 26:44Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's true, I did.

• 26:45Rich Roll?

  I mean, come on.

• 26:46Speaker 01

  I don't know, I guess I was running, at that time, at that time, Stanford was so good. The track and field team was so good that I honestly kind of felt like I was an underachiever on that, on that team. And by most accounts and measures, I probably was.

• 27:01Rich Roll?

  So this is the, you kind of came in on the heels of like Ryan and Sarah Hall, right?

• 27:08Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 27:09Rich Roll?

  They were already a little bit older than you?

• 27:10Speaker 01

  Right. No, I was older than them.

• 27:11Rich Roll?

  Oh, you're older than them?

• 27:12Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah. So they, they were, but I was in between this window of the, like, I started in 1998.

• 27:17Rich Roll?

  Uh huh.

• 27:18Speaker 01

  And so in 96 or 97, Stanford won the cross-country national championships. And then we had this run from like 98 to 2000, to Ryan Hall, through Ryan Hall, 2004, 2005, where we had lots of national championships, lots of individual national champions, guys going 1, 2, 3 in the 10K, you know, and then even, and then maybe even more impressive than any of that is two to four men making the Olympic team. I mean, as collegiates, you know, in, in various events. So it was crazy competitive. So, I mean, I won a Pac 10 championship.

• 27:59Speaker 01

  You know, I ran, I was eighth at NC double A's, which is a pretty, I'm very, which I'm very proud of.

• 28:05Rich Roll?

  Yeah. NC2A All-American.

• 28:07Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, which I'm very proud of, but it, but it definitely was like, you know, second fiddle for sure to those guys that were making the Olympic team.

• 28:14Rich Roll?

  Right. So, so it wasn't like, okay, I'm going for the Olympics. I'm, this is going to be my path to glory.

• 28:20Speaker 01

  I actually thought I did, when I got eighth that year, I was 22. And then I had, and then I went to USAs and actually did better. I was like 11th or 12th at USAs. So I was, I was like the fourth or fifth collegiate guy. And.

• 28:34Rich Roll?

  So you're in the game, you're in the mix.

• 28:36Speaker 01

  I was in the game. I was like, hey, if I pass nine more guys in two years, I'm on the Olympic team. And that's, that was, that felt possible, within the realm of possibility to me. And then, but then the following fall, I, I got a stress fracture in my foot. I had a fifth year of eligibility in cross-country and got a stress fracture in my foot. And then, um, training for, uh, trying to cross-train, I was riding my bike a whole bunch. And I went over the handlebars of my bike and broke my neck about like six or eight months later.

• 29:09Rich Roll?

  Wow.

• 29:09Speaker 01

  Yeah. And so, and then that was, that was basically the end. At that time, I was kind of like the legitimate end of my athletic career. So yeah.

• 29:18Rich Roll?

  And that was while you were, what, doing like co-term at Stanford?

• 29:21Speaker 01

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

• 29:51Rich Roll?

  Yeah, enough of that. One crash and like, I'm out. And, and just to kind of, you know, paint the picture of Stanford, you know, at this moment, I mean, it's, you know, this is entrepreneurship central. The internet is blowing up. Everybody's founding startups.

• 30:08Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 30:08Rich Roll?

  And so you're like, I'm, I'm, I'm, I want in on this.

• 30:11Speaker 01

  Yeah. Yeah, I think so. I mean, for, for better and for worse, you know, I think like, I went through, I had this, this terrible accident and I went from kind of being a, you know, national class athlete and building a whole bunch of my identity around an athlete to literally just not being able to do anything for months and months and months. I was on, I was on my mom's, I flew home after the surgery, a week or two after the surgery and I was on my mom's couch just 24 hours a day. And, and then, and so, and so then I was like, what am I going to do? You know, I can't, I can't race. I'm not, I can't even

• 30:52Speaker 01

  be physical. I may as well try to, you know, use my brain, I guess, and, and be a part of this thing. And, and that's what ended up happening.

• 31:00Rich Roll?

  Right. And so you do that for a couple of years. Like, how does that play out?

• 31:03Speaker 01

  Yeah, we, we were, you know, like I like to say, we were like a lot of startups, a lot of the startups that you don't hear about, we, we raised a lot of money and made almost none, you know?

• 31:17Rich Roll?

  Yeah. No one tells that story.

• 31:19Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 31:21Rich Roll?

  We gave away all our equity.

• 31:23Speaker 01

  I've got lots of, I've got lots of friends that went to Stanford that have been very, very successful, and I was not one of those.

• 31:31Speaker 01

  And

• 31:33Rich Roll?

  At least not with that.

• 31:34Speaker 01

  No, not with that. And but we it's a great group of guys. I worked really hard and I basically went the, you know, maybe, maybe typically I went to the other end of the spectrum where I was had been I had been I was serious about being an engineer at Stanford. I mean, you have to be to be an engineer at Stanford. You can't float through it. But I was also running and running was the most kind of the most important thing. And when I went, when I didn't have to run or didn't have to do anything athletically, I went full gas into that startup. And then for better and for worse, experienced what it was like to be full on engineer product developer guy and working 80 to 100 hours a week in San Francisco in my mid 20s and

• 32:16Speaker 01

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

• 32:47Rich Roll?

  Right. What does that look like?

• 32:48Speaker 01

  What does that look like? Yeah. What does that feel like? Do I feel fulfilled from it? You know, because there's, because there's still like this, you're striving for a goal, right? You've got the big goals. It's just not the athletic goals anymore. It's like, there's this big business goal. But ultimately, that ended up feeling wrong as well.

• 33:05Rich Roll?

  Did you have that self-awareness, though? That, okay, I'm testing myself in a different way now? Or you're just 22?

• 33:10Speaker 01

  I'm just 22 and I'm just like, I'm just going to do everything full on.

• 33:16Speaker 01

  And that, and that, and you know, that's what you do when you're

• 33:18Rich Roll?

  Classic.

• 33:18Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 33:19Rich Roll?

  Triathlon mentality.

• 33:22Speaker 01

  Exactly. Well, if I'm gonna work, I'm gonna work 100 hours a week.

• 33:25Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 33:25Speaker 01

  And, you know, and that was, and that was it. And then it was, you know, maybe I guess like not surprisingly, like reconnecting with Lauren, my now wife, who was my kinda, I like to say, on again, off again, but mostly off again, girlfriend in college.

• 33:42Rich Roll?

  Were you guys in the same class?

• 33:43Speaker 01

  She was one year younger than me. Yeah. And so we dated off and on at Stanford. You know, the story goes, I broke up with her kind of multiple times for terrible reasons. Mostly just, I think, actually, in all honesty, just feeling insecure about how successful she was. It was a big part of it, how successful of a runner she was.

• 34:05Rich Roll?

  So she was, she ran 5,000 meters, right?

• 34:08Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 34:08Rich Roll?

  That was her thing?

• 34:09Speaker 01

  Yeah, she was a 5K runner. And, I mean, you, you could basically say the most successful Stanford, you could almost say the most successful Stanford collegiate athlete of like any sport, almost. I think she, she won the most, the most All-Americans of any sport in Stanford school history and a bunch of NCAA championships and, and a really nice person, you know? So, but, but I think for me, that I think that was hard, seeing her have so much success. And then me feeling like, like I described, not like I wasn't really being as successful as I wanted to be. And, you know, being very much in love with her, but then also feeling

• 34:50Speaker 01

  down about myself because that was who I was comparing myself to. So, and when you're 18, 19, 20 years old, that's a really tough mental check for this kid that comes from a small town, you know, ego and, and everything in it, you know?

• 35:04Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 35:04Speaker 01

  And it, you know, yeah. So.

• 35:07Rich Roll?

  So, do you think like, it's interesting, do you think like, like, were you intimidated by her? Or do you feel like there was some self sabotage there? Like?

• 35:15Speaker 01

  I think there was a little, I think there was a little bit of self sabotage where, I think that's probably a good way to put it. I think I was just becoming.

• 35:29Speaker 01

  Trying to become comfortable with, and it sounds so silly now, so many years later, but just trying to become comfortable with not being the best at whatever I was trying to do. You know, and that was, like I said, I grew up in this little, in the little town, Central Oregon in Bend, and I was, you know, I was lucky, I was good at the number of things that I did, and, and to not feel like I was-

• 35:51Rich Roll?

  You were used to being like the best.

• 35:52Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, kind of, you know, and that's, and it's so silly to think about that now, that, that mattered to me so much at that time. But it wa, but it was a, you know, I was young, and that was, that was my headspace in the, at the time. And, and it took me a lot, it took me, I guess it took me ultimately becoming not that person that I was, where I was, where so much of my identity was wrapped around athletic success, or even just success in general, to feel comfortable being with Lauren, because I wasn't comparing my success or failure to hers.

• 36:26Rich Roll?

  Right, and then throwing yourself into the startup culture and thinking like, I need to distinguish myself in this world in the same way that I did on the track.

• 36:34Speaker 01

  Yeah, and then, but then, and then ultimately, I guess, like, through that kind of bouncing from one extreme to the other extreme, understanding ultimately that my, that my actual own happiness and fulfillment lies in, in the middle. And, and that, that I do actually, I do actually want to have both of these things in my life. I do want to have a professional side and an athletic side, and I want to, I want to do the best that I can to balance those two and not feel like I'm so far into one that I'm completely neglecting the other. And then that, that ultimately set up, you know, my path for what I ended up doing in triathlon and, and everything else.

• 37:18Rich Roll?

  Yeah, well, it's interesting, kind of being on the outside, looking in on, on your life, which is, you know, look through the lens of what you choose to share on social media-

• 37:27Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, of course.

• 37:28Rich Roll?

  ... or write about, but- The appearance is of somebody who is a family guy first, who happens to be this amazing athlete, married to another amazing athlete, that's also running this business. It's a complicated equation.

• 37:43Speaker 01

  It is.

• 37:44Rich Roll?

  With a lot of moving pieces. But there appears to be like a healthy sense of balance and understanding of what's most important in terms of priorities from the way in which you kind of share this experience with the world of what it's like to be involved in all of these different things and attempt to be, you know, successful and healthy at the same time.

• 38:05Speaker 01

  Yeah, I think that, you know, that's been a long work in progress over the last, let's call it 15, 20 years, you know. I was, I started Stanford 20 years ago. And navigating through these, what you might call success or failure in certain areas ultimately to find out, you know, hey, what do I ultimately care about? And like, what ultimately makes me happy? And then, and like you said, it's actually in the in the subtle balancing of those few things. And the way, you know, a really easy or kind of dumb analogy

• 38:47Speaker 01

  to make it is, to use is that, you know, ultimately, if you want to be the best triathlete, you can't, you gotta be good at all three. You gotta be good at swimming, biking, and running. And that's, you can't be so good at one and then so bad at the others. Is that's not going to be, you know, that's not going to be competitive. And that's kind of the way that I feel like I've spent my life now the last four to six years is really trying to be like, how can I be the best person for me that's balancing?

• 39:17Rich Roll?

  Like seven disciplines as opposed to three?

• 39:19Speaker 01

  Well, yeah, yeah. I mean, I group them in with, you know, family, sport, and business. You know, those are kind of the three things that are the focal points for me. And finding the balance between those and how it ebbs and flows through the year and through, you know, cycles in your own life and things like that. But yeah, it's been, it's been good.

• 39:50Rich Roll?

  Yeah, I mean, I think there's this sense that if you want to be the best triathlete in the world, or maybe the best athlete in any discipline, the best way to do that is to, you know, live by yourself in the cabin in the woods.

• 40:03Speaker 01

  Right, be the monk.

• 40:04Rich Roll?

  And just be a monk.

• 40:05Speaker 01

  The Rocky.

• 40:06Rich Roll?

  And just all you do is do your thing.

• 40:07Speaker 01

  Yeah, Rocky.

• 40:08Rich Roll?

  But if that was true, then every gold medal winning athlete would be living that lifestyle.

• 40:14Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 40:15Rich Roll?

  Clearly, it's not true. Like, I had this conversation with Kerry Walsh Jennings about this very thing. Like, she's married and has kids, and, you know, she will say that they're, look, it's been a bumpy road, but ultimately, she believes that she's a better volleyball player long term by having this robust

• 40:32Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 40:33Rich Roll?

  life that on a surface level would look like a distraction from her being the best volleyball player that she can be.

• 40:38Speaker 01

  And I think, I agree with that. I would qualify it with just saying, you know, everybody's different, and everybody has their different capacity of what their fulfillment, where their fulfillment, where their happiness lies, and how much they feel like they need to balance those things. And, but ultimately, yeah, probably for Kerry is similar to me than that if I get too, if I get too far away from family, or even from the business, then I start to feel one dimensional, I have less energy, I'm less fulfilled, and ultimately, because of that, my training is sacrificed, and my racing is sacrificed.

• 41:21Speaker 01

  And the same thing goes with the other two as well. You know, if I, you know, I'll be the first to say, as a dad with two kids, if I'm, if I spend all day, every day with my kids, I'm driving myself nuts, you know?

• 41:34Rich Roll?

  No, I'm sure it's like, look, please go out and go running now.

• 41:37Speaker 01

  Yeah, exactly. Like, I'm not a good person at the end of those few days.

• 41:41Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 41:42Speaker 01

  You know, I'm not, I'm not my best person, so.

• 41:44Rich Roll?

  Back to the first, you know, startup, you're working 100 hours a week.

• 41:49Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 41:50Rich Roll?

  At some point, you realize like, hey, I need, I need this kind of fitness, athletic, competitive aspect of my life to return a little bit.

• 41:58Speaker 01

  Yeah, and it was, it was, it was a little bit, yeah, what ended up happening was... I ultimately just woke up, you know, one day and was like, man, and it was presumably after a long night of hanging out with my friends and drinking beer and whatever else. I just was like, I feel terrible, you know, and I need to, I need to start being active again. My neck had healed. I could, I could run. I could ride a bike even a little bit. And, um, and I just, I just need to reconnect with that side of myself. Started doing that. I got interested in triathlon because I had swam a little bit as rehabilitation for my neck and, um, and did a triathlon and then, and in that first race, like just rediscovered

• 42:42Speaker 01

  this, this little like Saturday morning community thing where everybody's out there at 7:30 in the morning and it's not crazy competitive, but it's competitive enough. And you exercise really hard and then the sun is up and you're done at 9:30 and, you know, you eat the, the peanut butter and jelly sandwiches at the, at the end of the thing and everybody's psyched.

• 43:07Rich Roll?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 43:08Speaker 01

  And I just, I had forgotten about that, about that experience. And then that really got me back into it.

• 43:13Rich Roll?

  Was it that thing where you win the first race that you ever enter?

• 43:17Speaker 01

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

• 43:59Speaker 01

  a couple of years because, um, I didn't feel confident enough at that time in my life that I could do something as, um, as a...

• 44:12Speaker 01

  Irresponsible, I guess, as trying to be a professional triathlete. Does that make sense? It's like, oh, man, no, I can't do that. I can't do that. I gotta, I gotta be getting my MBA or whatever. It took a little bit of time.

• 44:24Rich Roll?

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

• 44:39Speaker 01

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

• 45:18Speaker 01

  And so I started consulting and then talked with Lauren and was like, hey, I think, you know, maybe I wanna, I wanna try seeing if I can be a professional triathlete. I didn't even know what that meant.

• 45:31Rich Roll?

  And how many races had you done at this point?

• 45:34Speaker 01

  I'd done just, I'd done one, that one little season where I did the thing, you know, and then it was an age grouper and that was it. And so the, so what I ended up doing was, um, I spent the summer with Lauren, I was consulting and then through the winter, and then I signed up for Escape from Alcatraz the following year, 2010. And I went down there as an amateur and, um, and I finished, uh, like sixth or seventh in the pro field as an amateur. I had the fastest run. And that, that was the first time where I was like, oh, man, maybe, you know, oh, if I had been in the pro field, I would have won $750 today.

• 46:13Speaker 01

  Like wow, I really

• 46:13Rich Roll?

  Which gets back to the unionization issue.

• 46:16Speaker 01

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

• 46:34Rich Roll?

  Was that Matt Dixon?

• 46:35Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 46:36Rich Roll?

  From the get go?

• 46:36Speaker 01

  From the get go.

• 46:37Rich Roll?

  Always been your coach?

• 46:37Speaker 01

  Yeah, Lindsey Corbin, who, you know, is a very successful American pro. She was a high school classmate of mine and, and then Matt Lieto.

• 46:50Rich Roll?

  Wow, you went to, I didn't know that.

• 46:51Speaker 01

  Yeah, Lindsey and I went to high school. We were on the cross country team together. So those were the two people that I knew in triathlon and they were both coached by Matt. And, and so I talked to Matt. I really liked him. We, we clicked quickly and, and then he started coaching me kind of at the end of that 2010 year. And then it was, and then 2011 was where I, when I started my pro career.

• 47:15Rich Roll?

  And so there's this, you know, mythic story about the birth of your professional career.

• 47:20Speaker 01

  Right.

• 47:21Rich Roll?

  That I'm sure you've told a million times, but, but it is amazing, right?

• 47:25Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 47:25Rich Roll?

  So walk me through the whole wildflower thing.

• 47:27Speaker 01

  Um, yeah. So, I mean, the story goes that I went, I spent the whole winter training with, with a real coach and kind of was part of this team. And I went down to Galveston, actually 70.3 to race my first half Ironman. And at my first half Ironman as a pro, I made every mistake you can make in the book. I got down there, saw how flat the course was, decided that I needed to be more aerodynamic. So I lowered my, the front end.

• 47:57Rich Roll?

  Change of seat position.

• 47:58Speaker 01

  I lowered the front.

• 47:59Rich Roll?

  Oh, you just slammed it?

• 48:00Speaker 01

  Yeah, I just brought it down. Was the last person out of the water, biked out, biked back as hard as I could, was making up time, but basically my whole back and my, like my glutes, like everything seized up on the end of the bike. I was, I was actually literally riding out of the saddle for, for the last like three or four miles of the bike ride. And then ultimately it dropped out because I was, I was hurting so bad on the run. And so was super disappointed, you know, kind of had these aspirations of this is my debut. I want to go do this. And Didn't really know what to do next, but it turned out that Matt, the guy I mentioned, Matt Lieto, was gonna head down for Wildflower just two weeks later. And he basically was like, "You should come down to Wildflower with me."

• 48:44Speaker 01

  Mostly because he knew I would be in Ben and I would drive with him, so he would have somebody that could drive half the way. And I head down there and on the way, just the day before we left, the other piece of the story is my, I was out on my last training ride and my bike, I went through a pothole and my bike broke. And so the carbon actually cracked. And so in a last minute deal, I got a friend's bike, threw it in the van, borrowed a bunch of, you know, stuff from Matt, I'd never worn an aero helmet before, didn't have a wetsuit, had this kind of hand-me-down, unbranded triathlon race kit.

• 49:25Speaker 01

  And then these, you know, gas station aviators that I was wearing and then-

• 49:33Rich Roll?

  Little did you know.

• 49:35Speaker 01

  Yeah. Yeah. And, you know, as the story goes, you know, I swam pretty poorly like I normally do. I had a decent ride and rode up into about 10th place and then-

• 49:50Rich Roll?

  And it's a really challenging cycling course.

• 49:52Speaker 01

  Very slow, very challenging, which was really good for me because it just meant another 20 minutes on the bike to try to catch up from the swim. And then the run is about as hard of a half Ironman run as you get. And so the run is also, let's say, 10 minutes long. So you have 30 more minutes of doing the stuff that I'm good at in the race than a normal race. And the run was this, like, I still remember it very vividly. It was like, I get off the bike and I hear as I'm leaving, as I'm starting the run, I'm in 10th place. I was like, "Oh, my God, I'm in 10th place at Wildflower." Like, I'm super, this is really exciting.

• 50:34Speaker 01

  And I start passing people just bit by bit, you know, 8th, 9th, or 8th, 7th, 6th. I remember seeing Jordan Rapp in 4th place, a few hundred meters in front of me, being like, "Wow, that's 4th place and that's Jordan Rapp and I can't believe I'm having this great race." And then I get all the way through and I move into 2nd place with-

• 50:57Speaker 01

  A mile and a half to go and I can see the guy in the lead.

• 51:03Speaker 01

  You know, he's still a long ways up, but he's hurting. And people, as I'm running along, they're like, I actually remember Tim Carlson, who works for Slowtwitch, he was taking pictures of me. And he kept coming back and he was like, who are you? Who are you? What's your name?

• 51:20Rich Roll?

  Cause you get lost like your name.

• 51:23Speaker 01

  He's trying to like text the race organizers to let them know, cause they don't know who I am. I passed the guy right at the beginning of the steep downhill towards the, with about less than a mile to go.

• 51:35Rich Roll?

  Who was leading?

• 51:36Speaker 01

  It was Clayton Fattell out of Australia, a super strong swim biker and who had this massive gap. And I got a, and I came down and I just, I remember I crossed the finish line and they, the announcer goes, and here he is, our men's champion. And then he holds a microphone away from his face and he's like, dude, what's your name?

• 52:01Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 52:03Speaker 01

  And the reason they didn't, they literally didn't know who I was is because I had signed up so late, they'd given me a number that was like after the women's numbers because they were kind of out in numbers. And it just didn't, it didn't get, it didn't get, yeah, entered into the system.

• 52:20Rich Roll?

  So. So for people that are listening, I mean, Wildflowers, this legendary race, been going on forever and it's, it's quite an event. You go, you camp, most people stay in tents or RVs or a hotel or anything like that. Super challenging course, but, but a really prestigious like early season race. And to go from anonymity to winning that race, it's just like, that doesn't happen. Like, so suddenly overnight, you're like this, like, who is this guy? Like you're the next greatest thing.

• 52:49Speaker 01

  Well, yeah, it was, it was kind of, yeah, it was.

• 52:52Rich Roll?

  And it was the whole story, sorry to interrupt, it's the whole story of like you borrowed the bike and it's like this guy doesn't even have his own bike and he's wearing like gas station, like, like, triathletes are the most geeked out in terms of their gear and the sunglasses they're wearing. I mean, it's ridiculous, the whole thing's ridiculous.

• 53:08Speaker 01

  It is totally ridiculous.

• 53:09Rich Roll?

  But the idea that somebody would be wearing like aviators from a gas station is just like, that doesn't compute.

• 53:16Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 53:16Rich Roll?

  At all.

• 53:17Speaker 01

  Yeah, it was, it was bizarre. And then I think the thing that kind of like sealed it, that ended up, you know, Going viral within the sense of going viral within the triathlon community, which is not really viral, but yeah, it's like 10 or 12 people shared it, was this finish line interview that I had where I was just freaking out about, you know, oh my God, my buddy's gonna shit his, he's gonna shit his pants when he finds out I won wildflower and Nick who let me borrow his bike, you know, and so there was kind of, there was this legitimate like authenticity about it, which was legitimately there that was kind of like a cool.

• 53:54Rich Roll?

  It's like there's an innocence.

• 53:55Speaker 01

  Yeah, there was an innocence to it and people latched on to that and that was really awesome. And it, there was no better way for me to come on to the scene than that thing. And then ultimately, that race then ultimately ended up meaning even so much more to me down the road, but that, but that really launched my career and gave me the tools, the foundation necessary to actually make a living in the sport because of the story more so than the actual wins.

• 54:28Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 54:28Speaker 01

  You know, and that, back to what we were, a little bit what we were talking about is like, you know, making it, making yourself, you know, an actual like, somebody that people want to follow, regardless of, you know, they won X race or whatever.

• 54:45Rich Roll?

  Well, that's, that's a new thing in the development.

• 54:48Speaker 01

  That was, that just was just starting.

• 54:49Rich Roll?

  Becoming a pro athlete, like what is your story and how are you telling it?

• 54:53Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 54:54Rich Roll?

  Is, is almost as important as, you know, your race results.

• 54:58Speaker 01

  You could argue in the Instagram influencer age that we're in, it's more important. And then actually from a, I'll tell you from a business side, you know, that it probably is, you know, in terms of businesses looking to spend money on, you know, advertising, basically.

• 55:15Rich Roll?

  Well, certainly it's incumbent upon every pro athlete to think of themselves as, as a business.

• 55:20Speaker 01

  A marketing tool.

• 55:21Rich Roll?

  And yeah, and how are they, you know, how are they sharing their story? How are they telling it? What is it that they have to offer that somebody else doesn't and taking that? Seriously like shouldering that responsibility. And, you know, we've talked in the past. I mean, this is something that I think that you've done very well, but not in a like some kind of contrived sense. It's like a natural outgrowth of who you are. Like, I feel like you and Lauren together are natural storytellers.

• 55:46Speaker 01

  Yeah, thank you.

• 55:47Rich Roll?

  Like, you're very funny and like how you share like, like the thing that's on your Twitter now, like about the carb sticker and then like, you know, Jude gets in the car and drives up. Like, it's like, like, this is just, this clearly, this is like your sensibility. You know, it's fun and it's very authentic to who you are.

• 56:02Speaker 01

  Thanks.

• 56:02Rich Roll?

  It's natural.

• 56:03Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 56:04Rich Roll?

  But when I look at that and I kind of like, okay, I'm deconstructing this. I'm like, he's like, really good at, at like, sharing something that allows people who are interested in what you're doing to like emotionally connect with what you're up to.

• 56:18Speaker 01

  Wow, thank you. I appreciate that. And, you know, that's, I always, way before I ever got into racing or doing any of the stuff that I'm doing now, my, my family, I'll attribute that to my dad, my dad's side of the family. My dad was just a, and his whole family are just storytellers. And, you know, kind of like gather around the fire or around the dinner table, just telling bullshit stories about, you know, them growing up and, and stuff like that. And I always, those are some of my favorite memories, just having my dad and kind of my dad and my dad's brothers kind of go around the horn telling stories. And I grew up listening to stories like that and then retelling them myself.

• 57:03Speaker 01

  And, and then, so I, I, I get a lot of joy, legitimate joy out of telling those stories, making them funny, making them entertaining, also making them, also, you know, telling the truth, I think. And talking about the, you know, being honest when I, when I have a, not just a shitty race, but like a heartbreaking race after training, you know, for a year for something. And, and to a certain extent, that, that experience of telling those stories, I think has, has made the sport for me, not only more interesting, but more sustainable, both as a person and as a professional.

• 57:47Speaker 01

  And so it's been a really

• 57:51Speaker 01

  Lucky and great discovery to go through, I think.

• 57:54Rich Roll?

  Well, when you're a storyteller, it takes, it takes the, you're able to take those low moments and just translate them into something else that's valuable, right? Like, everything's a story. So, I have a shitty race. Well, what can I make out of this that I can share with other people? Like, I know you, you're still writing the column for Triathlon magazine?

• 58:12Speaker 01

  I'm not anymore, yeah.

• 58:13Rich Roll?

  You did for years, though, where you would do that very thing.

• 58:15Speaker 01

  Yeah. And, and in a lot of ways, the, um, the tough, you know, the stories, the unsuccessful, quote unquote, stories are more interesting and more powerful to most people.

• 58:29Rich Roll?

  Yeah, because they can connect with your humanity.

• 58:31Speaker 01

  Exactly. It is. And they're, and they're harder to write, but they're, but then they're more fulfilling, too, when you, when you put them out there. So, yeah, it's interesting.

• 58:39Rich Roll?

  So, you go on to dominate Wildflower for the better part of a decade. You won that race like six times, right?

• 58:45Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 58:46Rich Roll?

  Um, that becomes like your thing.

• 58:48Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 58:48Rich Roll?

  Uh, and then this whole aviator shades thing becomes like a thing, you know? Everyone's out wearing aviators all of a sudden. And for years, you were still wearing like the shitty gas station versions.

• 59:00Speaker 01

  For sure, because I lose them all the time.

• 59:02Rich Roll?

  But then, like, enter stage left, Roka.

• 59:05Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 59:05Rich Roll?

  Stanford guys, Stanford swimmers.

• 59:07Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 59:09Rich Roll?

  I go way back with those guys, too. I mean, I'm much older than them, but I remember the very early days when they launched this company and it was just, you know, it's the classic, you know, out of our garage kind of thing.

• 59:20Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 59:21Rich Roll?

  With one wetsuit. And now they've built it into this brand that's quickly, you know, becoming, you know, it's on the, it's like they're slowly broadening the aperture of this thing to become a lifestyle brand to transcend triathlon, to become like an Under Armour sized kind of thing. But you've been collaborating with them from the very early days. So, talk about that relationship a little bit.

• 59:42Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's been, it's really funny. The, that relationship goes back, like you said, to the Stanford connection. I had a friend of mine introduce me via email to Rob and Kurt, who are the co-founders of Roka. And, um, he said, hey, these guys are starting a wetsuit company and they want to try to make you faster, which to me was amazing, because I was like terrible swimmer.

• 1:00:04Rich Roll?

  Swimming's not your thing.

• 1:00:04Speaker 01

  Yeah. And so, no, but no swimming company is, they're literally paying me to not wear their wetsuits, right? And so, um, for these guys to come to me and be like, we want to build a wetsuit for, for, for the average swimmer, which is you, try to make you faster, that was interesting. We started working together. They were just two of the most,

• 1:00:25Speaker 01

  I don't know, brilliant and hardworking and simultaneously hardworking people I'd ever met.

• 1:00:30Rich Roll?

  Well, Rob was like a, working in a law firm as a lawyer.

• 1:00:33Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:00:34Rich Roll?

  Throughout most of this development.

• 1:00:36Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:00:36Rich Roll?

  In like the early days of the company.

• 1:00:38Speaker 01

  And they're, they're both, yeah, he was. And he was, you know, just working his ass off, you know, has been for probably his entire life, you know, Rob. And, and then Kurt's like incredibly creatively talented. So like the two of these guys, you get Rob's kind of like efficiency. He's like one of the most efficient person people I know in terms of his output. And then, and then Kurt, who's one of the most creative people I know, you get them together and just like, it was a great match. Yeah. And they, um, we started working on this wet suit. The wet suit was phenomenal. We, you know, we launched it. I was kind of their first athlete and, uh, and kind of part of the

• 1:01:21Speaker 01

  original kind of barely formation of the company. And then, uh, and then because I was wearing this, these aviators thing, I remember on a long drive back from a race, I was talking to Rob and it's like, you know, I would, I would really like to, I think there's something to making an actual aviator that has, that's has performance characteristics in it, like something that you could wear casually, but that you could wear, that you feel comfortable wearing casually, but that you would wear as, uh, that you could legitimately wear running or cycling. And, um, they, they were like, they were intrigued with the idea too, but it was kind of like, hey, we got wet suits, you know, we're gonna work on this. Yeah. And so, but then it was a couple few years later when they started to grow and,

• 1:02:03Speaker 01

  Rob, uh, raised some money and he was like, I think we're gonna look at glasses. Are you interested? And we started talking about it and started making the, making an actual aviator, which is nuts to think about now.

• 1:02:15Rich Roll?

  Can you believe that we're actually doing this?

• 1:02:17Speaker 01

  I know.

• 1:02:17Rich Roll?

  It's insane. We're gonna convince all these people to wear aviator shades when they, when they go running.

• 1:02:22Speaker 01

  And then we, it's so insane. I mean, really it is. But, but it's, it's kind of awesome. You know, like it's probably, uh, it's something that I'm very, that I'm very proud of, you know? And then, and then the, the cool kind of story of the original Roka Performance Aviator, Phantom is what it's called, the, um, is that Kurt literally had the first prototype shipped directly to me from Japan into Lanzarote, to Ironman Lanzarote in the Canary Islands in 2016. And I got them as I was leaving for,

• 1:03:02Speaker 01

  to check in my Ironman bag. I tried them on, they fit great. I moved my face around, they didn't fall off. I was like, they looked awesome.

• 1:03:10Rich Roll?

  This is better than the garage store.

• 1:03:12Speaker 01

  Yeah, I'm like, okay, I'm doing it. Throw it into my, into my transition bag. The next day, I had swim, bike, I'm in like sixth or eighth place. I get, I go in, get into my transition bag, put on my shoes, and I put on my Roka aviators. And I, and I ran down, I ran down Yon Ferdeno, who's one of the best triathletes ever, and won that race. And, you know, I will always qualify that with saying, it was kind of a training race for Yon. I'm not equating myself to Yon. But it was a great race for me, one of my best moments ever. And I won this big Ironman against a, a strong field, you know, literally running my first 26 miles ever in those, in those shades. So it was pretty awesome.

• 1:03:52Rich Roll?

  That's awesome.

• 1:03:53Speaker 01

  Yeah, it was cool.

• 1:03:53Rich Roll?

  And then, you know, hundreds of thousands of people later, everyone, suddenly the next day, everybody, yeah, there are. It's like you have created this fashion, you know, movement, these people.

• 1:04:04Speaker 01

  Something I never in a million years would have ever thought. As a guy that, you know, Lauren gives me shit as the guy that was still wearing, you know, pleated jeans all through, all through college.

• 1:04:15Rich Roll?

  Yeah, the irony that you'd be.

• 1:04:16Speaker 01

  That I, that I have a fashion statement. Yeah, but no, it's good.

• 1:04:19Rich Roll?

  And, and still working with those guys today, right?

• 1:04:22Speaker 01

  Yeah, definitely. Yeah, they've been great. They just, that, that, you know, and not to overplug the glasses, but they just got a big PR shout out from Popular Mechanics as like the best running sunglasses. So I, it's just, it's, like you said, when I, if I take a step back, and I'm like seven or eight years ago to think of, like, I just never would have thought that that would happen.

• 1:04:41Rich Roll?

  Well, yeah, that's not ending up on the whiteboard.

• 1:04:44Speaker 01

  No, yeah, that's, yeah, it's, it's cool. So I'm very, I'm very, very proud of it. Yeah. And very, and very happy and proud of those guys. I mean, really, they did all the work, you know?

• 1:04:53Rich Roll?

  Right, right.

• 1:04:54Speaker 01

  So, yeah.

• 1:04:54Rich Roll?

  So you had all these wins, you know, Lanzarote and, and Wildflower. You had an incredible race at, at Roth last year. You were third?

• 1:05:04Speaker 01

  Yeah, third.

• 1:05:04Rich Roll?

  Third there. Ran like a 244 or some crazy marathon. Like, that's like insanely fast.

• 1:05:12Rich Roll?

  And you know, I look at your race results and I follow you on Strava and like I see these run workouts that you do and I just like, I can't even fathom being able to run that fast. It's like so amazing. And yet, in the context of triathlon, it's like, it's all about Kona, right? Everything's about Kona. If you're not winning Kona, no one knows who you are, you know, are you relevant or whatever? And I think it's, you know, I'm interested in your perspective on how all that works. It kind of goes back to what we're saying before. Like, there's this very, very like, thin, top-tier, you know, level of people who are winning Kona. And then there's like, and then there's like, just below that, there's guys like you, who are just incredible at what they do. And yet, because it's all about Kona, there's this sense of like, being an also ran or something like that.

• 1:05:57Speaker 01

  Yeah, it is. It's a really hard, I didn't realize, I didn't understand the kind of Kona-centric mindset of triathlon when I got into it. Cause I, to be, I'm one of those rare guys that got into racing professional triathlon, who didn't know shit about triathlon until I was 30, you know? I didn't, it just wasn't on the radar for me athletically. And so, I didn't know about the history of Kona. I didn't know about the history of Ironman or anything like that. And when I went to Kona the first year to spectate, I was like, wow, this is really, this is a pretty big deal. And then, really, when you start to learn about it through the professional side of the sport, and understanding where all

• 1:06:39Speaker 01

  the bonuses are for sponsorships and all the incentives are, they're all built around a Kona-centric model. Like, that's where you can get paid. Everything else is kind of, like you said, like an also ran, kind of lead up to Kona. Most of the sponsors want you to be in Kona. And to break even on Kona as an athlete, you have to get top 10. I mean, no doubt. Even, even the way that they have it right now. Seventh, eighth, ninth, you're probably pretty close. I can't remember exactly what the prize money is, but it's in the low thousands of dollars. And it's so expensive to get over there.

• 1:07:21Speaker 01

  And, you know, just on the trip itself, much less the whole year, right? Going into it. And then, so, so then, you know, and you're not getting bonuses for top 10 at Kona. You're getting bonuses for top three to five, tops.

• 1:07:33Rich Roll?

  And the opportunity cost of not racing elsewhere because all your eggs are in that basket.

• 1:07:38Speaker 01

  So it's, it's really hard. So, I mean, so for better and for worse, as a business guy, in the first two or three years of my career, I was like, man, unless I think I can win Kona, which to be honest, right off the bat, I'm like, I can't win Kona. That's, you know, it exposes all my weaknesses as an athlete. The heat, the swim, the swim is a bigger deal. It's a grouped up bike ride. There's, there's not as much chance for me to make up time. So I, I can't win Kona. Unless I think I can win Kona, I better not make Kona the focus of my career because it's gonna be, I'm not gonna, first of all, I won't be happy. And second of all, I'm not gonna make any money doing that. Like you can't, you put all your eggs in that basket, it's not gonna pay out.

• 1:08:21Speaker 01

  And so for, you know, for better and for worse, I steered away from that for a long time until about, I even wrote one of my most popular articles was, I'm not an Ironman and that's okay.

• 1:08:34Rich Roll?

  I remember, yeah, yeah.

• 1:08:35Speaker 01

  Right? Yeah. And, and that really resonated with people.

• 1:08:38Rich Roll?

  Having to apologize for it.

• 1:08:39Speaker 01

  Yeah, exactly. That really resonated with people. And then, and ultimately, the reason I wanted to do Kona was not because of the financial implications of it or anything like that. It was just, it was really just like, I just felt like if I hadn't, if I had gone through eight to 10 years of being a professional triathlete and I hadn't done Kona, I would have regretted it. You know, even though I knew it wasn't gonna be a great race for me. And, but I, and, but I could still try to do the best I could there. And that was what I tried to do. But, but yeah, but it was always really important for me to make my career about other challenges, both externally and internally, you know, to, to feel more fulfilled and more, I guess,

• 1:09:24Speaker 01

  more balanced and just pursuing things that I was, that I was interested in.

• 1:09:27Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 1:09:28Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:09:36Rich Roll?

  Well, let's talk about the training and what it's like working underneath Matt.

• 1:09:42Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:09:43Rich Roll?

  I guess, first of all, what is it that you've gleaned the most from working with such a legendary coach?

• 1:09:52Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:09:52Rich Roll?

  About how to train for these things?

• 1:09:53Speaker 01

  I think Matt's... What I like about Matt, and I'll qualify this by saying, Matt, for better and for worse, has been my coach my whole career. Right? So I haven't experienced really anybody else. But I think the thing that clicked with Matt was that he... Even when I started Triathlon, I had picky bars as a business. I was already like less of a focused, full-gas professional triathlete. I still had this other thing, and I was married. So he knew right away I wasn't going to be training 30 to 40 hours a week, living the Rocky Monk style. And he got that. He understood that. And he's like, "I think you can be a good, a better athlete even because of this balance that you...

• 1:10:38Speaker 01

  But it's going to take a different training philosophy. A training philosophy that doesn't put all the value on tons of time training. It puts it on this kind of balanced physiological stress throughout the various aspects of your life. And balancing heavy training load with light life load, heavy life load with light training load. And that was like the fundamental thing that I liked about Matt. And then as I progressed through my career and ultimately became more successful, both in racing and on the business side, and more demands with family, that interweaving and

• 1:11:21Speaker 01

  interbalance just became more and more so important because it was like everything was just operating now at a higher level.

• 1:11:27Rich Roll?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 1:11:29Speaker 01

  So, and I think that, and I think if I could differentiate Matt from other coaches in the space, I think that's really his sweet spot, is coaching, like he says himself, the time-starved athletes, you know? Guys that are executives or family guys or whatever that are trying to, that are, still have goals, they're still trying to do... Something great. Maybe they're trying to qualify for Kona or do whatever it is, but they're balancing it with legitimate demands on their time and energy elsewhere.

• 1:12:00Rich Roll?

  Yeah, which is basically almost everybody.

• 1:12:03Speaker 01

  Yeah, it is. I mean, really.

• 1:12:04Rich Roll?

  Very few who are just completely turning their entire lives over to this thing.

• 1:12:08Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:12:08Rich Roll?

  So, so a training block for you, I mean, what would that typically look like in terms of the balance between, you know, the kind of zone two aerobic work versus, you know, intensity, tempo, type, training? Like, what is that, that combination generally?

• 1:12:27Speaker 01

  It is, uh, let's see. I'll tell you what. It's like, it's really go by feel. And particularly the last like three to four years. And the, or I guess.

• 1:12:41Rich Roll?

  Trapezies hate hearing that.

• 1:12:42Speaker 01

  I know. I know. They want to know like.

• 1:12:44Rich Roll?

  This is exactly what you do.

• 1:12:46Speaker 01

  60% zone two.

• 1:12:46Rich Roll?

  And you're gonna use these devices and they're gonna tell you.

• 1:12:49Speaker 01

  It's not that, guys. I'm sorry. That's just not, um, you know, what it ends up being is a couple few hard days a week, a couple few easy days a week, and mixing in some volume and, but so much of it is, is based on how I feel, you know? And that, that really is, to me, the crux of, I think, being successful in any athletic endeavor, but also the crux of the, of the success of the relationship between Matt and I is his confidence in me to make my own decisions day to day, to manipulate his

• 1:13:33Speaker 01

  plan, and then my confidence in him to build a plan that is manipulatable and that, that ultimately I can, you know, communicate back to him, this is what works and what doesn't.

• 1:13:45Rich Roll?

  So, in other words, he doesn't just say, here's your. 12 workouts for the week and you do them, when I say you do them, it's more like make sure you get, you hit these kind of general areas or benchmarks and however you can work that into what your schedule looks like for the week, you're like, that's up to you.

• 1:14:02Speaker 01

  That's pretty, that's a lot, that's, what you described at first was how it started. And then really over the last like three or four years, as picky bars really grew, I had my first kid and then my second kid. It was more like, here's kind of, here's what I would like you to achieve. And then I'd look at my schedule and I'd be like, well, I've got this meeting on whatever and I'm traveling this day. So I'm gonna do Wednesday's workout on Tuesday and I'm gonna make my easy day, whatever. And then if I feel like shit on Tuesday, then I'm gonna just do that one, I'm gonna scrap it or, but, or if I feel good, I'm gonna, I'm gonna gas it. And that's, that's ultimately what it's become now.

• 1:14:41Rich Roll?

  I think the ability to really go on, on feel, as you say, comes with experience.

• 1:14:48Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:14:48Rich Roll?

  Tremendous amount of experience. So you have like, you know, years of kind of understanding what that means, mixed with, you know, having done enough work to understand the nuance of that, right? Like, like, when, when am I being, being a puss?

• 1:15:06Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:15:07Rich Roll?

  And when, when, when am I really like butting up against like maybe putting in too much training, you know, like those things only come with like years and years and years of having done this.

• 1:15:16Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's, it's totally true, you know, so it's not, I wish there was a like an easily, more easily like gleamable or understandable like tidbit I could give to, you know, listeners trying to, trying to, trying to find that line, but it does come from experience. But I would say that, the way that I would qualify that is that most endurance athletes, competitive endurance athletes or aspirational endurance athletes have

• 1:15:48Speaker 01

  Have a bigger problem with knowing when to pull back than when to push forward. And at least that's been my experience with the many, many age groupers that I've interacted with and done articles with and talked to and whatever else. So a lot of it, the biggest thing I think as an athlete for most people is having the confidence to pull back when things aren't going right and not burying yourself.

• 1:16:13Rich Roll?

  It's a different kind of discipline, but it is still a discipline.

• 1:16:16Speaker 01

  It is. It definitely is.

• 1:16:17Rich Roll?

  And I think what happens with the more time crunched, you know, among us is they have a set amount of time and they feel like they have to, the only way that they're really maximizing that is if they just go full blown. So even if they only have 45 minutes, you know, every day or something like that, you can't gas it out like that every day. You're gonna have a problem. You're either gonna get injured.

• 1:16:40Speaker 01

  Absolutely.

• 1:16:40Rich Roll?

  So it's just not the way to go.

• 1:16:42Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:16:43Rich Roll?

  What are some of the other, I love asking pro triathletes, like what are some of the other things that you see, like the typical amateur triathletes or multi-sport athletes out there doing where you're like, what are they doing?

• 1:16:56Speaker 01

  Yeah. I mean, the most typical thing is related to what we just talked about, but it's basically just not taking your easy days easy, right? That's the, that's the number one problem in amateur triathlon nowadays. People go out, they do their hard workouts, great, that's hard, you're gassed from that, but then they go out riding with their buddies and somebody's going out for a Strava segment or whatever.

• 1:17:19Rich Roll?

  I had the Strava guys in here the other day and I was like, listen, I had to like, get off the platform because of that, you know, for a while.

• 1:17:25Speaker 01

  They've ruined, they've ruined the easy day, hard day.

• 1:17:28Rich Roll?

  Yeah, you can't go easy.

• 1:17:29Speaker 01

  It is. And so that's, so that's problem number one, you know. And then, and then I think more generally, it's like, it's finding, you know, just appropriate amount of, building an appropriate amount of recovery in general, such that you're, that the load of each week isn't building on itself to where you then get to the end of week eight and you're just smoked. There's, and you can't recover in time for your race. And so I think, I think those are the two, yeah, those are, those are the two main things that people do.

• 1:18:04Rich Roll?

  Finding some way to periodize what you're doing.

• 1:18:07Speaker 01

  Yeah, exactly.

• 1:18:07Rich Roll?

  Even if you can't do it as scientifically as the way like Matt and you would do it for your schedule.

• 1:18:12Speaker 01

  I mean, you know. And that's where I think so much of it comes back to feel, you know, because you, because there are so many other things at play, like your, your, your training plan is only perfect on the day that you make it, you know? And then there are all these other variables that come in like, oh, my kid kept me up last night, or, you know, I had this really stressful phone call with a supplier, whatever it is. And that, those things affect you, you know? And so if you don't, if you don't listen to the, listen to those things, listen to your body, then ultimately you're just kind of like plowing through on this thing that doesn't make any more sense.

• 1:18:53Rich Roll?

  Yeah, when you're rigidly holding on to that training routine, you know, come hell or high water, you're gonna have like an emotional problem.

• 1:18:59Speaker 01

  And that's usually an ego thing. You're doing that because you feel like you're being weak by letting go of the.

• 1:19:07Rich Roll?

  Or you're so afraid.

• 1:19:09Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:19:10Rich Roll?

  Of like, I'm not gonna be able to finish this race unless I do exactly, you know, according to this plan.

• 1:19:15Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's hard.

• 1:19:16Rich Roll?

  And all that kind of stuff. How do you, what's your relationship with all the, the devices and the, like, the self-optimization movement?

• 1:19:26Speaker 01

  So as much as, you know, I am a go by feel 100% person, but I'm also an engineer.

• 1:19:35Rich Roll?

  You're an engineer, yeah.

• 1:19:36Speaker 01

  Yeah, so, so I can, I, you know, I like geeking out on the data, but what data ends up being for me is like a, kind of like this post-workout catharsis thing, more than it is like a gotta hit this or else my workout is a failure type of thing. I like to go back, I mean, I, I love Strava, you know, I love Zwift, I love, I have a power meter on my stuff, I, I track my heart rate and my, and my pace most of the time.

• 1:20:08Rich Roll?

  Do you use other crazy programs like Golden Cheetah and all that kind of stuff?

• 1:20:12Speaker 01

  No, I don't, I don't know that one. No, no.

• 1:20:14Rich Roll?

  Yeah, you gotta, it's like.

• 1:20:16Speaker 01

  There's not, there's more levels than I can get into.

• 1:20:17Rich Roll?

  I mean, the graphs are only, only a mechanical engineer could understand that.

• 1:20:21Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's funny. No, um, but I do, I mean, I do like that stuff, you know, I'll go out, I'll do Strava, you know, what I'll do now, I mean, I'll integrate Strava into my workout if I have some. You know, thing where I'm doing three times 12 minutes, man, I go find a 12 minute segment and try to get the, get my fastest time or get a KOM up that thing because what better motivation on your 12 minute segment than having something like that, you know? So, um, so yeah, usually try to use that stuff, you know, try not to be, pay too much attention to it, but, but definitely using it.

• 1:20:55Rich Roll?

  I would suspect though, that somebody with your engineering background and somebody who's so connected to your own, you know, physical body and the experience that you've had, that you can be wearing, you could have the power meter and the heart rate monitor, all that kind of stuff, but when you're out doing intervals, you know, if I was to say to you after each repeat, like, you know, what was your, what was your power on that? You could probably tell me without looking, like you would know within a degree.

• 1:21:21Speaker 01

  Been enough there.

• 1:21:22Rich Roll?

  So at some point, that's like with that experience, the feel comes in because you're so connected, like you know what your heart rate is, you know what you're putting, what you're throwing down and you can gauge that more accurately.

• 1:21:32Speaker 01

  I think so. And, and, and, and as importantly, it's, it's like if the prescription for the workout is 350 watts or whatever, um, for whatever interval, and I get out on that first or second interval and 350 watts just isn't happening, then it's, then it's just, I just change the prescription. You know what I mean? That's, that's the thing. Like I might be looking at the power meter, but it's not like.

• 1:21:57Rich Roll?

  Yeah, it's gonna do it until you finally hit those watts.

• 1:21:59Speaker 01

  That's, that's not it. You know, that's the thing. I mean, but then there might be days where 350 watts is the prescription, but hey, I feel good at 400. So just keep it going. You know what I mean? And, and that, and that, that's the, that's the flip side of it.

• 1:22:13Rich Roll?

  What's the recovery routine for you?

• 1:22:16Speaker 01

  Nowadays, it's, um, you know, fuel first, obviously, eating, eating healthy. And then, um, spending time, spending as much time as I can with my kids, you know, that's the, that's the main thing. There's not, to me, nothing is better than, um,

• 1:22:35Speaker 01

  Watching a movie with my like five year old, you know, watching some cartoon reliving. We wa- we watched Aladdin the other day, which which was like right in the prime for me in terms of I probably watched that 50 times when I was growing up, not 50 times, but a lot. A lot that 30 years later, I still remembered a lot of the lines, which is crazy. I could not believe it while I was watching it, how many of the lines I knew were coming before they they said it. So that that, I don't know, that's that's recovery.

• 1:23:06Rich Roll?

  How old is your daughter now?

• 1:23:07Speaker 01

  Daughter's one and a half. Yeah, and she's she's great. She's she's super, super fun. It's been it's actually been a very different relationship with her, I think partially because she's a girl, but more importantly, because I'm more present with her than I was with my kid when he was that age, you know. Zadie was born five days before Kona, my second Kona, which was brutal. Then I left for Kona, came back and then, but then since then, you know, I've been a much, I've had much more time with her than I did with Jude during that stage. So it's been so the connection is is different, you know, it feels a little

• 1:23:51Speaker 01

  bit deeper in a in a weird way, but my connection with Jude is fantastic, but it's just a little bit different. Yeah.

• 1:23:59Rich Roll?

  But there's some there's something special about girl dads and.

• 1:24:02Speaker 01

  I think there must be, right? Yeah, I mean, yeah, you know, yeah, there must be like, yeah, it's a little bit different. There is like a more naturally, you know, protective and supportive vibe there as opposed to kind of, you know, getting the the little guy to like cut his, you know, cut his, cut his chops or whatever.

• 1:24:24Rich Roll?

  Yeah, I mean, there's like a there's a sweetness and.

• 1:24:26Speaker 01

  Yeah, there is. Yeah, there really is. It's yeah, yeah, she she lights me up. She's she's amazing.

• 1:24:32Rich Roll?

  So let's talk about nutrition a little bit.

• 1:24:34Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, of course.

• 1:24:35Rich Roll?

  Because it also like dovetails into picky bars and what you're doing.

• 1:24:38Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:24:41Rich Roll?

  We're in the midst of this like low carb.

• 1:24:45Speaker 01

  I was gonna bring you a shirt and I forgot it.

• 1:24:48Rich Roll?

  I love carbs.

• 1:24:48Speaker 01

  I know, I meant to.

• 1:24:49Rich Roll?

  I will send you. You gotta mail that to me.

• 1:24:51Speaker 01

  I'm gonna mail you one, cause I spaced on it right as I was leaving. And when I got on the plane, I was like, oh crap, I forgot Rich's shirt.

• 1:24:58Rich Roll?

  So talk me through like your perspective on all of this.

• 1:25:02Speaker 01

  Well, I mean, you know, so my wife Lauren is the, she's really the nutritional foundation of our company. She comes from a human biology background, Stanford educated, longtime pro athlete, right? And I'm more of like the business, you know, business marketing guy. But, but so, but our, our general philosophy is as a family is just healthy, sustainable balance, you know? And, and to, and to us, and that's our, that's our philosophy in life, right? I mean, all this stuff that we've been talking about, like going a hundred hours a week doing this,

• 1:25:42Speaker 01

  or 40 hours a week training and ultimately not feeling like you're the best version of yourself in either of those things. I ultimately think that, you know, the dieting industry is exactly that. It's, it's prescribing to the diet of the month, or whatever, that's some extreme thing. That's, and because it's extreme, it's

• 1:26:12Speaker 01

  easy to grasp, and that's what's nice about it.

• 1:26:15Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 1:26:16Speaker 01

  It's easy, it's easy to grasp for, it's easier to, it's easier to live in that space for a short amount of time than it is to be sustainably healthy for a long time, right?

• 1:26:27Rich Roll?

  Because that's vague and can't be marketed in a way where anyone can specifically profit off of it.

• 1:26:33Speaker 01

  It's like going off a feel, you know? Like people wanna hear, well, I need to have 60% of doing this, 30% of doing this, and whatever, you know? I need to have this many carbs, this, this, you know, or no carbs.

• 1:26:46Rich Roll?

  I need zero carbs.

• 1:26:48Speaker 01

  And like.

• 1:26:48Rich Roll?

  I'm gonna power my, my multi-sport career without the one thing my cells actually need to generate energy.

• 1:26:56Speaker 01

  I've got this idea, I'm gonna, and it's so dumb, I feel dumb even mentioning it, because it's just, it's just a dumb, funny idea, but I wanna make the picky diet for picky bars. You know, just a funny like campaign that's basically like. You know, everything's on the picky diet, just don't be an asshole.

• 1:27:14Speaker 01

  That's the crux of the whole thing. Well, is ice cream on the picky diet? Yeah, just, just don't be an asshole.

• 1:27:19Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 1:27:19Speaker 01

  You know, and so, um, but I mean, that's, so that's our general nutritional philosophy is like, you know, we avoid extremes. We try to eat generally very sustainably healthy. And by sustainable, sustainable in and of itself means avoiding extremes, you know? And, um, and so that's a, that's a mix of healthy, uh, you know, foods and, um, as natural and unprocessed as possible. And, um, and then, but there's, there's room, you know, I, I think there's room in every diet for, for a bit of everything, you know? And just, just in, in healthy moderation. So.

• 1:27:57Rich Roll?

  So, but the, the bars are all dairy free and gluten free, right?

• 1:28:02Speaker 01

  Yeah, they are. Yeah, we avoided those things. We avoided those things, primarily because of the impact that they have on people's digestion system when they're, when you're exercising a whole bunch. That was the, the, the original, the original bar that Lauren created was basically like, what's the, what's the healthiest real food bar that I can give to Jesse when he's exercising a ton that will be the least upsetting on his stomach? And those two things tend to be the most upsetting.

• 1:28:33Rich Roll?

  And was this born out of having issues with other products that were available? Because

• 1:28:38Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:28:39Rich Roll?

  You have to have your brain examined to say like, I know, I know the business we're going to go into. We're going to enter this market where there's like a thousand competitors.

• 1:28:46Speaker 01

  It wasn't a business thing, you know, it was, it was just a legitimate need, um, that Lauren sensed, you know? And the, and the not so savory part of the story was basically, I was having a bunch of, bunch of stomach issues that Lauren wasn't very happy about. And in a rain, around the house and, um, training a ton and eating a ton. And Lauren was like, man, we gotta, I gotta find something for you to be eating. If you're eating a bunch, you know, every day, you gotta have something that's better on your stomach. And, um, and so the idea was kind of taking the best of. You know, at that time, what existed in like a power bar, which is like sports performance nutritional principles, but then marrying that with like a Lara bar,

• 1:29:29Speaker 01

  which would be like, you know, just, just basic like fruits and nuts.

• 1:29:34Rich Roll?

  Natural, yeah.

• 1:29:35Speaker 01

  Yeah. And kind of taking, combining those two things. And that's ultimately what became a picky bar. And Lauren created them for me and then had, and then her and her and our other co-founder, our friend Steph, just started selling them to their friends at this random like local running workout that they, that they kind of coached every Thursday night. And people started buying them. And that was the, that was the genesis of the whole company. And so it definitely wasn't, ironically, I'd just finished business school, right? And so I'd just gone through all this, like, here's your, here's how you do your business plan, your financial model, yada, yada, yada.

• 1:30:14Rich Roll?

  None of that.

• 1:30:15Speaker 01

  SWAT analysis. No, that, there was none of that. And it was just, you know, and I'm glad that there wasn't ultimately because it would have discouraged us from doing it.

• 1:30:26Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 1:30:27Speaker 01

  Because it is.

• 1:30:28Rich Roll?

  The best things percolate up organically.

• 1:30:30Speaker 01

  It's just, it, you know, yeah, it's been, and that's what it's been. And it's, it is a industry I would never encourage people to get into. It's so competitive. It's so cash intensive, particularly now with the investment that, that's, that's been coming into it. You know, we're talking about, I'm down here, I'm in LA for Expo West.

• 1:30:52Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 1:30:52Speaker 01

  Which is the, which is the largest food trade, I think the largest food trade show in the US. And

• 1:30:58Rich Roll?

  It has to be.

• 1:30:59Speaker 01

  It has to be. It's so big. And so you can, even just in the brief number of years that I've been going down there, I can see the growth of it through the investment that is being had by private equity firms and everything else. So, so for us, we're still a completely independently owned and operated company by just us. And that's

• 1:31:22Rich Roll?

  You haven't taken any outside investment?

• 1:31:24Speaker 01

  We haven't, not yet.

• 1:31:25Rich Roll?

  Any angel funding or anything?

• 1:31:26Speaker 01

  We haven't, yeah. It's something I'm evaluating now. But because we're reaching the point now where we're big enough, we are

• 1:31:37Speaker 01

  Starting to be, we're starting to barely play in those big fields against the big guys. And it's pretty, it's, it's pretty hard to do that, you know, on, on your own. So.

• 1:31:50Rich Roll?

  So you're in this position now, you got what, like 10 employees?

• 1:31:53Speaker 01

  Yeah, 10 employees.

• 1:31:54Rich Roll?

  And you're selling some retail, right? But you also have this direct to consumer model. So you're kind of playing with both of those.

• 1:32:02Speaker 01

  Yeah. I mean, the cool thing, the, I think maybe the most interesting or unique part of our business, because the bars and the oatmeal and the granola, they're, they're are, they're great products. But if I'm to be, if I'm going to be totally humbly honest and say like, is this totally uniquely differentiated in this sea of products? It's pretty hard to do that, right? But what I do think is unique about our company is that we started it online through social media and through our own racing and PR and like the, the stories that we've talked about.

• 1:32:41Speaker 01

  And, and even more so with Lauren. And, and because of that, we have this e-commerce, we have, we have this e-commerce presence, but I would call it even more, humbly call it more than that. It's like a community of people that support the company and support the products online.

• 1:33:00Rich Roll?

  Yeah. You kind of position it like you're, you're a member of a club.

• 1:33:03Speaker 01

  It is. Yeah. We, we literally have a thing called the Picky Club, which is a monthly subscription to any of our products. And at any interval that you, that you want it to get, and you get a discount. But that is, that has, there, there has been a legitimate community that has created around that. We get, we get T-shirts to those guys. They get a, we're just sending out an email today where they get a, help us design our next thing. They help us with our, all of our new products go through the Picky Club before their, their launch. So.

• 1:33:36Speaker 01

  It's cool. When I go to races and I see and people come up and they have a Piggie Club shirt on, I mean, that's like, that's a cool deal. And that's the most unique aspect of our business.

• 1:33:45Rich Roll?

  So that's Well, it goes back to storytelling.

• 1:33:47Speaker 01

  It does. It really does. Yeah.

• 1:33:49Rich Roll?

  And you have a very authentic story that you can tell around that and that you continue. I mean, like, I love it when you put those like you had your board meeting and you're in your wetsuit and like shit like that. Like, it's fucking awesome. You know what I mean? Like, who does that? You know?

• 1:34:03Speaker 01

  Yeah, thank you.

• 1:34:04Rich Roll?

  And I think that stuff is really cool. And it speaks to, you know, the authenticity of the brand.

• 1:34:08Speaker 01

  Yeah, thanks.

• 1:34:09Rich Roll?

  And, you know, like, the more, like, what I'm learning, just talking to you here, is like, this is really a conversation about, about balance. Like, I feel like there's a cultural discussion happening right now about like balance and what does that mean? It's like, forget about balance, be present. And then when we're talking to like endurance athletes or ultra endurance athletes, like, these are not balanced people.

• 1:34:31Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:34:32Rich Roll?

  But I'm getting like this super balanced vibe from you, like that you feel like you're doing your best when everything is kind of operating, like when, when all these gears are kind of churning.

• 1:34:43Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:34:43Rich Roll?

  In a healthy way.

• 1:34:44Speaker 01

  Yeah, I don't, yeah, I mean, you know, maybe, I don't know if balance is the right word for it or not, but I think it's, I think it is like a healthy interweaving of various aspects of life, you know, and, and ultimately, feeling, you know, at the same time, you could say, my life is not balanced. I don't rest that much, right?

• 1:35:07Rich Roll?

  Well, you're a professional triathlete, an entrepreneur, you got two kids, one is one and a half, so you're probably not sleeping at all. Like, this is not a, this is not a

• 1:35:15Speaker 01

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

• 1:35:39Rich Roll?

  You have to be okay.

• 1:35:40Speaker 01

  Yeah, exactly.

• 1:35:41Rich Roll?

  Things kind of going sideways in every category a little bit.

• 1:35:44Speaker 01

  A little bit, yeah.

• 1:35:45Rich Roll?

  To maintain your sanity.

• 1:35:46Speaker 01

  Yeah, exactly. Yeah.

• 1:35:47Rich Roll?

  So what have you, what have been some of the big lessons that you've learned along the entrepreneurial journey that you've been on?

• 1:35:53Speaker 01

  Oh, man.

• 1:35:54Rich Roll?

  I mean, starting a business.

• 1:35:55Speaker 01

  Oh, my God. It has been such, it's been so hard.

• 1:35:59Rich Roll?

  Because it seems like really straightforward. Like, you have a recipe, you make these bars, you wrap them up and you sell them.

• 1:36:05Speaker 01

  The number one, and it's funny because Lauren, Lauren called me on the way here. You know, I was, I've been, I was in the car for an hour and a half on the drive over here. And she was like, you should feel comfortable saying whatever, whatever you want. And the, the number one, the number one thing, the number one lesson I've learned is, if possible, don't start a company with your wife. You know?

• 1:36:31Speaker 01

  In all fairness, you know, and I, and Lauren is amazing and she knows that I, that I believe that. And incredibly talented and she brings so much to me personally and to Piggie Bars and everything else. But man, that is, there are a lot of hats to wear when you're trying to balance that in a business. And as this business has become more than just us, like you said, now 10 employees, you know, thousands and thousands of customers. It's, um, there are stresses that go along with that, that are almost impossible to completely separate from the house. You know, and that, that

• 1:37:09Rich Roll?

  You can't come home and turn it off and

• 1:37:10Speaker 01

  It's so hard. Yeah. And so that's been, that's been really tough. That's been the hardest, the biggest downside of it for sure, as the toll it's taken on Lauren and I's relationship. And then to a certain extent, I'm super proud of how we've, to be perfectly honest, how we're still together and how we've navigated that and, and still strong and healthy as a result of that, but it has not been easy.

• 1:37:36Speaker 01

  So that's, that's been one of the biggest things.

• 1:37:38Rich Roll?

  I mean, as somebody who, you know, works, I work with my wife as well, not on everything, but on some things.

• 1:37:43Speaker 01

  Yeah, totally.

• 1:37:44Rich Roll?

  Yeah, it's, it's super challenging and hard. We're very different people. And then when we're home, it's like, it's very difficult to talk about anything else. And you have to make a really conscious effort to create boundaries around that kind of stuff. Because if you don't make cultivating your relationship the first priority, then it's all a house of cards.

• 1:38:05Speaker 01

  It's all going down.

• 1:38:06Rich Roll?

  Ticking time bomb.

• 1:38:07Speaker 01

  And it's even worse, as you know, when you have kids too, because that amount of time that you get together is compressed even more, you know?

• 1:38:15Rich Roll?

  And then there's all this pressure that it has to be meaningful.

• 1:38:18Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's true. Yeah, totally. We, Lauren and I are doing our date nights, you know? We do a date night every week and at first it was kinda It felt a little bit pressureful, you know, like, oh, this is our one chance. We've got three hours here, you know, and now we've, now we've, we've luckily settled into a groove where it's like, okay, let's just do what we want. It's no big deal, but.

• 1:38:37Rich Roll?

  I can't remember what was her, you shared, like, you went and saw the Sundance Shorts for one of those date nights, and then they're all like about, you know, horrific.

• 1:38:45Speaker 01

  Oh, the Oscar shorts. Human rights. Nothing against the people that created those films, you know, because I can, you know, you can say they're great. From a filmmaking standpoint, they're great films. The, but the Oscar, the live action Oscar shorts, I mean, four of the five movies were about, like, violence to young, to like kids, basically, in some way, shape or form, happening. And it was just like, as a parent, that's just like, that's like the last thing you want to see. You know, you know it exists, but you don't want to be sitting through the theater, like, watching that. And that's part of what makes, maybe it's part of what makes the movie so powerful, but at the same time, we're like, man, we're on a date night, this is, so we don't want to be doing this.

• 1:39:28Rich Roll?

  So what have you had to rely on to get through, you know, those tricky moments of, you know, trying to find some equanimity in your marriage?

• 1:39:38Speaker 01

  We, um, you know, friends and family, but also professional advice. I mean, we've been, we've been to counseling together for it, you know, for sure. And just a lot of communication. And luckily, like, ultimately, this kind of foundation is like rock solid, you know, foundation to our relationship that it's like, oh, man, even if we're, even if we're deep into, you know, screaming or whatever about something, it's still there, you know? And, um, and you just do your best not to. You know, to navigate it as positively as you can.

• 1:40:23Speaker 01

  And I think, hopefully, luckily, we're through the worst of it, you know? As the business grows, it gets, it does get harder and harder. But, you know, Lauren has done a, has, we've been really conscientious of, I had mentioned to you before, we started of removing her from the, kind of the daily operations. So the business can be, at least on a day-to-day level, mine. And she doesn't really need to think about it. And I don't really need to interact with her on a day-to-day basis on it. So that's been very conscientious. And hopefully, even as we, you know, continue to grow a whole bunch, will be, that will set us up for, you know, success. Yeah.

• 1:41:05Rich Roll?

  Well, Lauren first came on my radar probably around the same time that you did. And it was by way of her incredible blog. Like, she's an amazing writer. You know, it's like, her facility with words and her ability to kind of like relate these concepts around female empowerment and sport are amazing. And it's like, I'm just waiting for her to write a book.

• 1:41:26Speaker 01

  Yeah, I'm glad that I got on your show first, because then I don't have to follow Lauren. So, but she, uh...

• 1:41:34Rich Roll?

  I would have had you guys both on too at the same time, because I think it'd be interesting for you guys to be together to talk about how you balance all these things.

• 1:41:40Speaker 01

  Yeah, and we've never done that.

• 1:41:42Rich Roll?

  Well, you have your own podcast now where you talk about this stuff.

• 1:41:45Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's true. Yeah, that's true. Yeah, we do. We have a podcast now. Yeah, Work Play Love Podcast, which has been really fun. It's actually, going back to the date night thing, the part of the reason we started that was just to set aside an hour every week where we just talk to each other.

• 1:42:00Rich Roll?

  My wife and I have that same joke. It's like, in order for us to actually have a real conversation, we have to create this music to do this.

• 1:42:08Speaker 01

  Like, let's answer some people's questions, because then we will talk to each other. And, and, and... Honestly, ideally, and for our own benefit, talk to each other about not our problems, about other people's problems. And then what do we learn through that? And so that's been really good.

• 1:42:24Rich Roll?

  Well, now I'm gonna write in a question for your podcast.

• 1:42:26Speaker 01

  You should.

• 1:42:26Rich Roll?

  Have all about like your guys' problems together.

• 1:42:29Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:42:29Rich Roll?

  Force you to confront that.

• 1:42:31Speaker 01

  No, it's good. It's good. But no, yeah, I mean, back to your, Lauren's a great writer. She's, she's working on some stuff right now. And, you know, she is, you know, she's very, very busy. She's coaching and she's a mom and she's still working with her company, Wazelle, up there in Seattle and.

• 1:42:51Rich Roll?

  Is she one of the founders of that company?

• 1:42:53Speaker 01

  She's not a founder.

• 1:42:54Rich Roll?

  I know she was there from the very beginning, but.

• 1:42:55Speaker 01

  She's not a founder, but she was their first kind of pro athlete. She's a partner there. She's, it's, it's very much a piece of what she's doing now.

• 1:43:04Rich Roll?

  Right. It's a really cool company. So it's, it's all around, you know, female empowerment and.

• 1:43:09Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:43:10Rich Roll?

  Celebrating female athletes.

• 1:43:12Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's, it's women. Yeah, that's exactly it. It's, it's, the products are women's running apparel, specifically, running and athletic apparel. But the soul of the company is exactly what you just described.

• 1:43:27Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 1:43:27Speaker 01

  You know, and started by a female.

• 1:43:30Rich Roll?

  Sally Bergeron?

• 1:43:31Speaker 01

  Bergerson.

• 1:43:33Rich Roll?

  Bergerson.

• 1:43:33Speaker 01

  Yeah. Female founder, super staunch, you know, supporter of, you know, women's rights, women's empowerment, feminism, and Lauren very much so as well. And the whole ethos of the company now is around that. And, and it's, it's a great company. They, they make great products, but what they stand for and, you know, what they message, the importance of what they message to women and to, to girls and everything else is great. You know, yeah, it's really cool.

• 1:44:07Rich Roll?

  So she is working on a book, though.

• 1:44:09Speaker 01

  She is working on a book.

• 1:44:10Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 1:44:10Speaker 01

  And I can tell you that, that, you know, she's right now, you know, the process a lot better than I do. But right now she's just kind of writing little, you know, tidbits, little chapters here and there of like various places in her life, you know, little frames. And.

• 1:44:30Speaker 01

  A lot of it's around her dad who passed away, who was a super important piece of her development, her life.

• 1:44:40Speaker 01

  And then just her athletic journey and then ultimately like her personal journey. And it's very good. Obviously, I'm very biased. She's my wife and I think she's incredible.

• 1:44:52Rich Roll?

  She's an incredible writer.

• 1:44:54Speaker 01

  The bits that I've read are very, very good. So I'm excited. It's a long ways out, you know. You know, it's a long ways out, but it's it's cool. It's it's fun for me to see her have this legitimate project that she's really sinking her teeth into, that she's getting a lot of value from personally.

• 1:45:13Rich Roll?

  And where do you want to see Picky Bars go? Like, what's the what's the five, 10 year vision for this?

• 1:45:19Speaker 01

  My vision, the the long term vision for me would be that Picky Bars grows and becomes a, what I like to say, a company that Bend is proud of, right? So I was born and raised in this town, central Oregon, Bend. A lot of people have heard about it now. It's been on the cover of Outside Magazine and much to the chagrin.

• 1:45:44Rich Roll?

  This is the place that you should move. I'm sure a lot of people have moved there.

• 1:45:47Speaker 01

  A lot of people have moved.

• 1:45:48Rich Roll?

  What's amazing is that when you think of Oregon, you think of Portland, rain and all that. And it's actually very arid. It's very temperate.

• 1:45:55Speaker 01

  It is. Yeah, it's nice.

• 1:45:56Rich Roll?

  Incredibly beautiful.

• 1:45:56Speaker 01

  Very sunny.

• 1:45:57Rich Roll?

  It's like an outdoor person's paradise.

• 1:45:59Speaker 01

  So I'm like a unicorn because I was born there. You know, back when it was like 10, 15,000 people. It's over 100,000 now. But for me personally, the most proud I could feel about something, a result of the company of Picky Bars would be the impact that it could have on that community. And basically be like, you know, are we, can we be a 100 person company there? That's that's making great products that that impact people positively, telling stories, that impact people positively, all of our customers. But then, but then also that's impacting the community with with awesome jobs and giving back.

• 1:46:41Speaker 01

  And and so to me, that's the, that's like the end goal, the dream. You know, there are some companies that exist like that in Bend that are that are modeling some of it off of.

• 1:46:52Speaker 01

  And so, you know.

• 1:46:54Rich Roll?

  Do you do all the manufacturing and co-packing and everything there?

• 1:46:57Speaker 01

  We don't now, yeah. It's still, we don't have the scale, you know? I would love to do that eventually. And that would bring a whole bunch more jobs into Central Oregon, which would be awesome. In addition to, it'd be cool just to have, you know, 100% control over our supply chain, top to bottom. But, you know, but you have to be, you have to be quite a bit bigger, which is, which is the plan, you know? And so, I mean, we're hoping, you know, we're hoping to grow. We're really focused on that, on building that picky club community ultimately, and that like that e-commerce side because of the, well, for two reasons. One, because it's so, it's so ludicrously expensive to be, to get into distribution,

• 1:47:42Speaker 01

  because you're competing against all those guys that have 10, 15 million bucks behind them. And then, and then, but secondly, because that's our wheelhouse, you know? Building and creating, yeah, creating, and creating that connection, creating that community online. Like, that's what we know. You know, I'm not going to pretend to know how to be in Safeway, you know?

• 1:48:03Rich Roll?

  Well, and being on the shelf in Whole Foods, it's so, there's so many middlemen. It's so cost prohibitive that it just becomes like an advertisement. You're not making any money off it.

• 1:48:12Speaker 01

  It really is. And, and we've experienced that, you know, bits and pieces. Because we do have some distribution here and there. But, so, I'm really focused on that e-commerce side, that picky club specifically, that, that, the kind of, the, the content and the community curation that goes into making that. Right now, it's a very valuable and I think cool and unique subscription service that does have some value outside of this subscription to the products itself. But I really want to build that into like, something that's, that's much, much more than just the, just the delivery that you get, you know?

• 1:48:48Rich Roll?

  What are some things that you've learned from your experience being a professional athlete that have benefited you as an, as an entrepreneur, as a business owner?

• 1:48:56Speaker 01

  The biggest thing would just be.

• 1:49:02Speaker 01

  Just to keep going, you know, just push through like, cause you're gonna,

• 1:49:09Speaker 01

  you know, we have had, I've, you know, I've had lots of ups and downs.

• 1:49:13Rich Roll?

  You're puking on mile 12, but like, you know, like, hey, this could change and I could feel good again.

• 1:49:17Speaker 01

  Yeah. Or, or even, or even from like a bigger picture perspective, you're, you get an injury or you, or you did completely fuck up your big race or whatever happened. You had a shit house race.

• 1:49:33Speaker 01

  Keep going because down the road, there's going to be something else could happen that you don't even expect that could end up being bigger and better than whatever it is you thought you were trying to do. And that, that's, I've experienced that athletically now multiple times and I have now experienced it in business multiple times as well. We've been through some really hard stuff, you know, some of which was our fault, some of which was other people's fault. And times where I thought the business was right at its edge and then,

• 1:50:04Speaker 01

  but ultimately, you know, we kind of go through those, those down moments and keep striving and things come out, you know, brighter on the other side, hopefully.

• 1:50:13Rich Roll?

  Do you feel like you, you tap into your experience as an athlete more than you tap into like what you learned?

• 1:50:21Speaker 01

  In business school?

• 1:50:22Rich Roll?

  Yeah. Like what's, what's more informative or helpful to you?

• 1:50:27Speaker 01

  The, the business school stuff is, is helpful, but the, that just, that general vibe of like,

• 1:50:34Speaker 01

  working hard to solve a problem or to overcome an obstacle. I mean, that's, there's just no substitute for it. You know, nobody has, nobody has the, the crystal ball, you know, and, and I think at, one of the struggles that I had as a young entrepreneur, coming, particularly coming from an engineering side was feeling like I really wanted to or needed to have.

• 1:51:02Speaker 01

  A plan, a model, an algorithm that said, if I do this, this and this, my business is going to end up this.

• 1:51:09Rich Roll?

  It's all going to work perfectly according to some spreadsheet.

• 1:51:13Speaker 01

  Exactly. I wanted a spreadsheet that would tell me all the answers. And what I've learned now in business and then through sport as well is just that you cannot anticipate the many, many variables that are coming down the road. And so you just need to pick a direction and try until you run into the wall and then turn and then go a different way, you know? And that's, I try to do that more and more often in business now.

• 1:51:36Rich Roll?

  So you have Matt Dixon as your coach for your athletic career. Do you have mentors or people that you rely on for guiding you in the entrepreneurial journey?

• 1:51:47Speaker 01

  Definitely. Yeah, some, some really, really great ones. Kevin Rutherford is the CEO of Noon in UUN, the hydration company. Great personal and professional mentor to me. Scott Allen is the CEO of Hydro Flask, so they make the insulated water bottles. Both those guys have been, have been awesome, you know, impact, very impactful to me on a professional level. And I've got, I've got a few others. So you know, I've got Al Cochrane is a guy from my business school times who's still an advisor to me.

• 1:52:29Speaker 01

  And I reach out to people a lot, way more than I used to. I used to be really, really feel like I needed to be able to figure it out on my own. And now I'm like, as soon as I, probably almost annoyingly so, as soon as I run into a problem, I'm like, oh, who do I know that knows this and who can I reach out to? I think those relationships are really important in business though, because particularly owning and operating a company, because it's so.

• 1:52:55Speaker 01

  It's so unique. There are so few people that are at that level of it that it's, I just find it very valuable to get insight from people that are experiencing those same things.

• 1:53:08Rich Roll?

  That have like weathered that same scenario.

• 1:53:10Speaker 01

  Yeah, exactly.

• 1:53:12Rich Roll?

  So when you're talking to, you know, young business, you know, business school students or entrepreneurs, other than like, look, man, you gotta like stay in it to win it. Like, what is some of the guidance that you like to wisdom that you?

• 1:53:26Speaker 01

  Well, I mean, the one, I mean, those two things that we just mentioned would be the next, the next two most important, which is seek out mentors, you know, that's, that's super, super important. I think a lot of young kids, particularly in the digital age, feel like they can just Google it themselves. And there's, you know, I can't, I can't overstate the value of just talking to someone personally to help figure out whatever problem it is you're trying to solve. And then the second thing was related back to what we said, which is, don't get hung up on trying to know all the right answers. I think that's the biggest thing that keeps young, young entrepreneurs from just trying something is feeling like they need to have it all figured out. And even, you could relate that to young athletes,

• 1:54:11Speaker 01

  too. You know, aspirational triathletes. I get that question like, how do I start? Well, pick a couple of races and give yourself six months and just, you know, see how it goes. And in six more months, you'll know five times more than you do right now. And in business, I think it's the same thing. It's just like, pick a direction, validate as quick as you can, and move on to the next decision with the new information that you have based on, on that validation. My mom had this, I'm sure it's, it's probably a famous quote. From somebody that I should know, but it's it's a it is forever emblazoned on a cartoon

• 1:54:56Speaker 01

  magnet that goes on my mom's refrigerator that says, sometimes you just have to jump and build your wings on the way down, right? And that's the way that's the way that I feel about business. Sometimes it's like, well, you know, you got to go down. So you're not really sure how you're going to land, but like, let's just start going down. We'll, you know, we'll find more as we get as we get along.

• 1:55:15Rich Roll?

  Well, that's like your first wildflower too.

• 1:55:17Speaker 01

  It is.

• 1:55:18Rich Roll?

  You know what I mean?

• 1:55:18Speaker 01

  Totally.

• 1:55:19Rich Roll?

  Yeah, getting the bike on the, you know, like not knowing anything about anything and just figuring it out on the go. And I like how you didn't just go out and raise a ton of money. You know, there's a lot of private equity out there. Like, you know, like from going to expo, like

• 1:55:32Speaker 01

  There's a lot of money.

• 1:55:33Rich Roll?

  This business of like, you know, healthy, natural food, like there's a lot of money floating around out there. I'm sure had you wanted to, you could have gone and raised some massive amounts of capital.

• 1:55:43Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:55:44Rich Roll?

  But to keep it like, you know, contained in that way.

• 1:55:47Speaker 01

  Yeah, we're I'm very proud of that. And I think that's a combination of,

• 1:55:54Speaker 01

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

• 1:56:37Speaker 01

  we want out in three to four years and then and then it's then it just chopped up and gone.

• 1:56:42Rich Roll?

  The strategic.

• 1:56:43Speaker 01

  Yeah, exactly. So it's kind of fine. It's finding people that are like, yeah, we're, we're excited about what you're trying to do here. And we're excited about the impact that can have on the community and those types of things. So ultimately, that's what I'm looking for now. But we'll, you know, we'll see if we don't, you know, I don't know. I mean, it could just be that we keep doing it ourselves. I mean, we've made some. We've made some really great gains, just even in the last six or seven months that I've been working on it full time. And, you know, so I'm going to at least give myself a year of doing it full time and see what happens.

• 1:57:13Rich Roll?

  It's just crazy, like to listen to you is like, let's just take a moment and reflect on the fact that you've built this thing and got it to where it's at now by essentially being a part-time CEO.

• 1:57:24Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:57:25Rich Roll?

  Like, what happens when you, when you attune your full attention?

• 1:57:29Speaker 01

  Hopefully, good, hopefully, good things, you know? It's like I was mentioning before, I feel like, you know, to a certain extent, for every problem I solve, I'm kind of like uncovering another couple that I didn't know existed.

• 1:57:40Rich Roll?

  But that's your job as CEO, is solving problems, not like getting to a day where there are no problems.

• 1:57:46Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's totally true.

• 1:57:47Rich Roll?

  That day will never come.

• 1:57:48Speaker 01

  It's very, it's exciting for me. It's a, it's like an athletic journey. It's, it's having this big goal and, you know, and feeling very personally fulfilled to see it like, you know, come to realization, there's all the same data involved, you know, like instead of looking back on my Strava splits, like I'm pulling up my Shopify app and I've got our sales for the day, like how many new club members do we get, you know, like all that, you know, so there's a lot of, there's a ton of similarities.

• 1:58:16Rich Roll?

  You could gamify that somehow on some platform where entrepreneurs could be like.

• 1:58:20Speaker 01

  I mean, I, I look at those apps all the time, you know, and it's the same obsession I had with my, with my, you know, splits or data before. And so, but it, but it's fun, you know, and, and I do, you know, I do legitimately enjoy the, um, the legitimate positive feedback we get back from people, you know, like when we, when we launched that, that I love carbs campaign, you know, with the T-shirts, people really, they really, that really galvanized some people, that made them feel good, you know, they're like, kind of felt like they were losing their voice in the, in some of the, you know, craziness of some of the diet trends that go on and.

• 1:59:03Speaker 01

  And so it's it's cool to, you know, I guess like simultaneously just just mean something to people as well, you know, and that that's

• 1:59:11Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 1:59:12Speaker 01

  That's been really fun.

• 1:59:12Rich Roll?

  And do it in a fun way.

• 1:59:13Speaker 01

  And do it in a fun way. Yeah, totally. We're never taking ourselves too seriously. So

• 1:59:16Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 1:59:17Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:59:17Rich Roll?

  How has, other than like bonding you with your wife, like, how has this podcast journey been for you? You've been doing it for a while now, right?

• 1:59:24Speaker 01

  No, not that long.

• 1:59:25Rich Roll?

  Like, how many episodes you guys have?

• 1:59:26Speaker 01

  I know. It's pretty funny. I gotta tell a little story about Rich because I I called I I talked. I called you maybe like a year ago. And was like, hey.

• 1:59:35Rich Roll?

  Is that long ago?

• 1:59:36Speaker 01

  I think so. I mean, maybe, maybe nine months.

• 1:59:39Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 1:59:39Speaker 01

  You know, 10, 10 months.

• 1:59:42Speaker 01

  But I was like, hey, I think, you know, I'm thinking about doing something, creating some type of content thing and, you know, maybe writing, maybe doing whatever. And I kind of, I feel like I remember you saying something like, well, I definitely wouldn't start a podcast.

• 1:59:56Rich Roll?

  No, I don't think I said that.

• 1:59:59Speaker 01

  Maybe, maybe you did.

• 2:00:00Rich Roll?

  I probably said something like, like, it's getting crowded. And if you're gonna do it, you should have like, an interesting, unique angle in that's a little bit different from, I'm gonna sit down and interview people.

• 2:00:10Speaker 01

  Yeah, totally. And and I guess like, and so I'll qualify that with saying, in no way, shape, or form, were you at all being like, like, at all pushing back on anything that I was trying to do. You you were, I should actually say, we're also, thank you very much for the incredible support that you have given Lauren and I with your expertise for book, book writing and everything else. So, so we, but, but yeah, we did, ultimately, we did end up doing a podcast. And, um, and it has been, it has been really fun, you know, like, it's it's small, you know, it's, it's not anything, you know, anywhere in the realm of what you're doing here. But it's, it's

• 2:00:47Rich Roll?

  It's not about that, though.

• 2:00:48Speaker 01

  But it's fun.

• 2:00:49Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 2:00:49Speaker 01

  It's fun. And it's, and it's, here's the thing, I think it's, uh, it's legitimately fun and valuable time for Lauren and I, which is cool. It justifies our time into it.

• 2:01:01Rich Roll?

  If you're having fun doing it, and it's, it's adding value to your life outside of any externalities, then that's already a win.

• 2:01:07Speaker 01

  Even if it's just going into a void.

• 2:01:09Rich Roll?

  It connects with one person.

• 2:01:09Speaker 01

  Yeah, exactly. So, and then, and then we're getting, you know, we, we get a lot of positive feedback from the content, too, which is really great. I think the thing that's gonna be tough for us With the platform that we've created where we're answering people's questions is versus like interviewing people is how does it not become repetitive? How are you, how is there enough variation in the questions that you're not? You're always going to be recycling like certain themes, but you're, but it doesn't become like, oh,

• 2:01:42Rich Roll?

  Well, it goes back to the magnet on your mom's refrigerator.

• 2:01:45Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah.

• 2:01:46Rich Roll?

  You know what I mean? Like you just keep doing it.

• 2:01:48Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:01:49Rich Roll?

  And it'll, it'll tell you what it wants to be.

• 2:01:50Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:01:51Rich Roll?

  And you'll intuitively know what those moves are.

• 2:01:52Speaker 01

  Yeah. So, but we're really enjoying it, you know? I mean, it's still, like I said, still very, very small, but, but we really like it.

• 2:02:00Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 2:02:01Speaker 01

  It's, yeah, it's been really fun. It's, it's just a cool reason for Lauren and I to get across from a table to each other and just give each other shit, you know? And talk about, you know, people's stuff and then talk, talk about the last week in our own lives and, and reflect on it, you know?

• 2:02:17Rich Roll?

  There's a, there is a, you know, a thirst for just anything real.

• 2:02:23Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:02:24Rich Roll?

  You know what I mean? It's like, I think if I could, if I would say anything to you, it's just like, don't worry about like how you're lacing it with some valuable takeaway.

• 2:02:32Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah.

• 2:02:33Rich Roll?

  It's just the sheer, just, just you guys having a real conversation in and of itself is like, is the win.

• 2:02:39Speaker 01

  Right.

• 2:02:40Rich Roll?

  And then people will automatically extract from that, you know, something they It's good advice. Yeah.

• 2:02:45Speaker 01

  That's, that's good advice.

• 2:02:46Rich Roll?

  We gotta wrap this up.

• 2:02:48Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:02:49Rich Roll?

  I want to do, before we do that, I want to, I want to talk to you about like this, you just announced that you're going to be doing a marathon.

• 2:02:54Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah, I did. Yeah.

• 2:02:56Rich Roll?

  So this is new?

• 2:02:57Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:02:58Rich Roll?

  Have you ever run like a formal just marathon without?

• 2:03:01Speaker 01

  No, I've run a 244 after a swim and a bike.

• 2:03:04Rich Roll?

  Which is insane. I can't imagine that, but like.

• 2:03:07Speaker 01

  Um, no, yeah. So this was a, um, I was actually really nervous about making that public and that just happened a couple, few days ago on, on Instagram.

• 2:03:22Speaker 01

  You know, just because, you know, I've, even though I've built myself up as an athlete in the space that is pursuing all different kinds of challenges, like this was a big departure for me to actively say, hey, and what I actively said was, hey, I need to spend more time in my business and more time on my family. Therefore, I just don't feel like I can train adequately for even a half Ironman, certainly not an Ironman. And I kind of have given myself a training budget of about 10 hours a week. That's as much time as I feel comfortable allocating to training. And because of that, how do I want to pivot my goals? Is there still

• 2:04:06Speaker 01

  some cool athletic goal that I could try to go accomplish that would still be the best I've personally ever done, that fits within that time constraint? And that was a marathon to me. That was like, I started running a little bit more. I was like, man, I only ran 30 miles a week as a triathlete my entire career anyway. And so can I take some of these things that I've learned, some of this extra aerobic capacity, but then also some of these things that I'm so much better at now than I was, I'm clearly not the same runner I was when I was 23, right? I'm 39. But I've learned so much more. Can I apply that, being able to go off of feel better, having much better nutrition, like

• 2:04:48Speaker 01

  nutritional habits? And can I see what I can get out of myself? And I am supremely lucky in that I have sponsors, like the guys we talked about, Roka, my own company, Desant, Diamond, and Red Bull, who said, yeah, we're cool with you doing that. If you go tell a story. Like, that's super unique. When you come from an industry that's like, we want you to do Kona or nothing. Guy comes in is like, I want to go run a marginally fast marathon. That's not going to be competitive on like a national level at all. But it's just going to be like, hey, what can I do?

• 2:05:28Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 2:05:29Speaker 01

  And maybe people will be

• 2:05:29Rich Roll?

  That I'm not going to win because I'm busy with my other job.

• 2:05:32Speaker 01

  I'm going to train 10 hours a week, but I'm going to tell a story about it. And I think people will be interested in it and they were supportive, which is really cool.

• 2:05:40Rich Roll?

  I think what you're going to find is, is first of all, it's very smart. And forward thinking of these sponsors to get on board with that because what you're going to find is by telling that story in real time as you progress towards it. It is so much more accessible to the average person than like, hey, I'm going to go to Roth and try to win.

• 2:06:01Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, it totally is.

• 2:06:03Rich Roll?

  People can't, they're like, well, that's inspirational, but I can't really connect with that. But hey, 10 hours a week because he's got kids and he's got a business. Like I relate to that. Like, you know, the most I have is 10 hours a week. Maybe I have six hours a week, so I can get on board with this. And you're going to go and you're going to kick ass and you're going to have this amazing result. You're not going to win, but you're going to, you're going to run a fast time. And I think that's going to be a source of a tremendous amount of inspiration and an emotional connection with the people that are following you, which ultimately is much more valuable than

• 2:06:35Speaker 01

  Definitely.

• 2:06:35Rich Roll?

  Some triathlete you've never heard of at an ITU race that is on a podium.

• 2:06:39Speaker 01

  Gang, whatever.

• 2:06:39Rich Roll?

  Who's getting sponsored by whoever.

• 2:06:41Speaker 01

  I hope so.

• 2:06:41Rich Roll?

  And I think that that bodes well for the future of what these corporate sponsor relationships look like for athletes, because it goes back to how we started this conversation. It's about storytelling.

• 2:06:54Speaker 01

  Storytelling, totally.

• 2:06:55Rich Roll?

  Tell a story well and, and, and have it create value for that brand that's taken a shot on you. Then that's really, you know, that's really how you can deliver the most value to those people that have been with you and have believed in you for a long time.

• 2:07:11Speaker 01

  Yeah. And it's, and it's It's infinitely more fun for me.

• 2:07:14Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 2:07:15Speaker 01

  You know, is the other part of it.

• 2:07:16Rich Roll?

  And there's not that much pressure.

• 2:07:17Speaker 01

  No, that's the thing. I mean, I want to do well because I'm, you know, because I'm competitive and I want to get the most out of myself. But it's not, you know, it's not the same as what I was doing before and, but it's also like, you know, it's, it's just like I said, it's, it's a lot more fun. You know, I mean, the, the triathlon, you know, that's hard too. I mean, it's a grind. My body is, you know, wearing down. And, um, and so this just allows me to spend more time with my family and do all those things I talked about while also doing something that's unique. And, and then eventually after I do the, the, the marathon, maybe there will be some other cool challenge down the road that fits within those realms too. And, you know, we'll see.

• 2:07:55Rich Roll?

  Do the swim run.

• 2:07:56Speaker 01

  Oh, man, that's what everybody says. Somebody told me I'd try to do that with you.

• 2:08:01Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 2:08:01Speaker 01

  Somebody was like, you should get Rich Roll and go do a swim run. So somebody said that because I, I honestly was like looking at races or something. And somebody suggested that. I can't remember that, but.

• 2:08:11Rich Roll?

  That would be way too much of a mismatch because like I can't, there's no way I could keep up with you.

• 2:08:16Speaker 01

  And then there's no way I'd keep up with you on the swim either. That, the thing with the swim run for me is that you have to swim, which is kind of a bummer.

• 2:08:22Rich Roll?

  Yeah. You do have to swim, but you actually don't get to run that much.

• 2:08:26Speaker 01

  Is that right?

• 2:08:26Rich Roll?

  It's more like climbing over rocks and stuff like that. I mean, it's obviously completely course dependent.

• 2:08:31Speaker 01

  I mean, it looks cool. I mean, it looks.

• 2:08:32Rich Roll?

  It was fun.

• 2:08:33Speaker 01

  Yeah. It looks like an awesome experience. I mean, and that's ultimately like.

• 2:08:37Rich Roll?

  I just like that now there's this whole thing and there's all these races popping up.

• 2:08:41Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:08:41Rich Roll?

  Mostly in Europe. I mean, starting here a little bit, there's like this guy Lars Feniger has, you know, created a series.

• 2:08:48Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:08:49Rich Roll?

  And I think that's exciting and fun to just see the evolution of multisport and doing different stuff.

• 2:08:54Speaker 01

  Yeah, I think so too. I think is, I think, you know, going back to a little bit what we talked about with WTC and Ironman and kind of the monopolization around that. I think that there's going to be more and more appetite for.

• 2:09:07Speaker 01

  Less, you know, just, just different multi-sport events that, that aren't the kind of cut and dry, half Ironman, Ironman, you know, super duper competitive, you know, whatever. And we've, I've even got, I've got some ideas for events I'd love to, I'd love to have in Bend that, you know, are just kind of off the crazy, you know, weird multi-sport stuff that combines a whole bunch of stuff. You know, there's that one, there's a one in Bend called Pole Pedal Paddle, which is a super fun.

• 2:09:34Rich Roll?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, I've heard of that.

• 2:09:35Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:09:36Rich Roll?

  Did you do that? You did that one?

• 2:09:37Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. So that's like, super fun. It'd just be fun to find some more stuff like that.

• 2:09:41Rich Roll?

  Yeah. Just don't call it a retirement.

• 2:09:44Speaker 01

  No, yeah, I know. Yeah, exactly.

• 2:09:45Rich Roll?

  You're not retired.

• 2:09:46Speaker 01

  Transition. I know. That's what I, that's what I'm saying. I said in that post, I was like, I'm not retiring. I'm also not trying to make the Olympic team. You know, it's just, I'm just gonna go run a marathon as a dude that's running a marathon, see how it goes.

• 2:09:59Rich Roll?

  Cool.

• 2:09:59Speaker 01

  So, yeah.

• 2:10:00Rich Roll?

  But you haven't announced which one yet. You said it's in Eugene?

• 2:10:03Speaker 01

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

• 2:10:32Rich Roll?

  You're doing it for fun.

• 2:10:33Speaker 01

  Doing it for fun. It's like-

• 2:10:34Rich Roll?

  For a pressure release, as opposed to going into a pressure cooker kind of race.

• 2:10:38Speaker 01

  Totally. Yeah. I can have my family there. Picky Bars will be there. You know, it's like, just over the mountains from us. It's a great course. It's, it's where we started Picky Bars, you know? So it's kind of cool to go back there.

• 2:10:49Rich Roll?

  And there's storytelling.

• 2:10:50Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's the thing. Yeah, it's, it's cool. It'll be, so that, that'll be fun. So, yeah.

• 2:10:55Rich Roll?

  All right, man. We'll come back and tell me about it after you do it, all right?

• 2:10:58Speaker 01

  Yeah, absolutely.

• 2:10:59Rich Roll?

  And bring Lauren next time.

• 2:11:00Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, we'll do. Really appreciate it, Rich. Thanks so much.

• 2:11:03Rich Roll?

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

• 2:11:10Speaker 01

  Yeah, Jesse M. Thomas.

• 2:11:12Rich Roll?

  Jesse M. Thomas, that's right. And PikiBars.com.

• 2:11:15Speaker 01

  Yep. PikiBars.com or at Piki Bars on social. So, yeah, we're all out there. Yeah, I appreciate it.

• 2:11:21Rich Roll?

  Awesome, man. Thanks, dude.

• 2:11:22Speaker 01

  Awesome. Yeah.

• 2:11:23Rich Roll?

  Peace.

• 2:11:28Rich Roll?

  Good stuff, people. Hope you guys enjoyed that. Please let Jesse know what you thought of today's conversation. You can find him on Twitter and Instagram @JesseMThomas. And again, you can get 30% off his Picky Bars products when you go to pickybars.com and use the code RICHROLL at checkout. And also, again, I am not an affiliate here. I have no financial entanglement here. It's just Jesse being gracious. So, check that out. As always, please visit the episode page at ritual.com to peruse the copious show notes we compiled to take your earbud experience with Jesse to levels downright erudite people. If you're struggling with your diet, please check out our Plant Power

• 2:12:08Rich Roll?

  Meal Planner. Really proud of this product. It really solves a fundamental problem that I think a lot of people have, which is how to make delicious, nutritious eating convenient and affordable. We solved it, you guys. When you sign up at meals.richroll.com, you get access to thousands of delicious and easy to prepare plant-based recipes. Everything's customized based on an array of personal preferences that you input when you sign up. You get unlimited grocery list. You get grocery delivery in most metropolitan areas and access to a team of expert nutrition coaches seven days a week to answer any questions you have. And you get it all for just $1.90 a week, which is an amazing price considering what we're offering and delivering. It's literally the price of a cup of coffee. So,

• 2:12:53Rich Roll?

  to learn more and to sign up, go to meals.richroll.com or click on Meal Planner on the top menu on my website. If you would like to support our work here on the show, and I hope you do, there's a couple of simple ways to do just that. Just tell your friends about the show or your favorite episode. Take a screen grab, share it on social media. Subscribe. Perhaps the most important thing. Subscribe to the show on Apple Podcasts, on YouTube, on Spotify, on Google Podcasts, wherever you listen or watch this. Leave a review on Apple Podcasts or leave a comment on YouTube. And you can support the show on Patreon at ritual.com/donate.

• 2:13:29Rich Roll?

  As always, I want to thank everybody who helped put on the show today because I do not do this alone. Jason Camiolo for audio engineering, production, show notes, interstitial music. Blake Curtis and Margot Lubin for videoing and editing the podcast and all the short clips that you see on social media. Also Blake, thank you today. He's managing some audio work for us. Jessica Miranda for graphics. DK for advertiser relationships. Ally Rogers for portraits and theme music as always by Analemma. Appreciate you all for listening. I don't take your attention for granted. It means so much to me and I will see you back here in a few days with another great episode with Doug Boepst, who is a former felon turned fitness trainer. Interesting.

• 2:14:13Rich Roll?

  Until then, peace. Plaids, namaste.