#4: The Untold Story Behind NRML MTBer

Summary

In this enchanting episode of the Recon MTB podcast, we uncover the intriguing story behind Normal Mountain Biker (NRML MTBer), a captivating journey of a larger-than-life mountain biker defying stereotypes and leaving a trailblazing mark on the cycling community. Through humorous anecdotes, thrilling adventures, and a passion for the sport, NRML MTBer shares how he transformed from a casual rider to a recognized figure in the biking world, driven by his size-defying antics and comedic skits. The conversation navigates through the nuances of creating content, engaging audiences of diverse interests, and the impactful potential of being a non-traditional figure in a stereotype-heavy sport.

Highlights

• NRML MTBer was invited to Whistler for his first mountain biking experience - a dream debut! 🚴‍♂️
• Public speaking nightmare: NRML MTBer faced a huge audience unprepared, but stayed funny! 😂
• The transition from construction to a biking career involved risks but was worth every challenge! 🎢
• Specialized Bikes partnership was a key turning point, pushing NRML MTBer into the spotlight. 🔦
• Fans have reached out thanking NRML MTBer for inspiring them to get back on bikes. ❤️

Key Takeaways

• Size doesn't define ability! NRML MTBer proves anyone can shred the trails! 🚵‍♂️
• First time mountain biking at Whistler? Talk about setting the bar high! 🏞️
• Even comedic mountain bikers face tough crowds - thanks, public speaking! 🎤
• The bike industry embraces diversity in all forms, from size to skills. 📈
• NRML MTBer's journey from casual rider to full-time content creator is inspiring! 🌟

Overview

In this exciting podcast episode with RECON MTB, we dive into the exceptional journey of NRML MTBer, a mountain biker whose first encounter with the sport happened at Whistler's iconic bike park—talk about setting high expectations! From casual beginnings of building jumps in the neighborhood with his brother to eventually becoming a beacon of inclusivity and humor in the biking community, NRML MTBer's story is one of passion and defiance against common stereotypes in cycling.

NRML recounts how the advent of social media platforms like Instagram Reels brought about an unexpected rise in visibility. His comedic skits and content, highlighting the trials and tribulations of larger bikers, resonated widely, particularly with audiences who felt underrepresented in the conventional sport narrative. This, coupled with strategic brand partnerships, especially with big names like Specialized, transformed his hobby into a career.

Facing challenges from public speaking to overcoming stereotypical views in the biking community, NRML MTBer's narrative is a testament to how authenticity and humor can carve a unique niche in any industry. Through trials, errors, and unwavering dedication, he continues to foster a more inclusive environment in mountain biking, inspiring many to hit the trails, irrespective of body size or background.

Chapters

• 00:00 - 10:00: Starting a Sustainable Career from Passion The chapter explores the journey of an individual turning their passion for biking into a sustainable career. Despite initially being employed, a significant opportunity arises when approached by Specialized for a biking collaboration. The chapter recounts a memorable, albeit challenging, event where the individual was invited to speak by Specialized, which turned into a comedic situation that was nonetheless appreciated. Additionally, the experience of mountain biking at Whistler Bike Park for the first time is highlighted, emphasizing the surprise and excitement at discovering the durability of bikes against their size.
• 10:00 - 20:00: Transitioning from Construction to Full-Time Content Creation The chapter discusses the humorous and sometimes tense experiences the narrator has had while filming videos, including interactions with bystanders. There is a mention of police being called during one filming session, adding a layer of tension. Additionally, the narrator hints at upcoming developments that he cannot fully disclose yet. The chapter also notes the recent completion of an event 'Sea Otter' which was an exciting and busy experience as part of the 'Recon M2B podcast.'
• 20:00 - 30:00: First Exposure to Biking and Whistler In this chapter, the narrator reflects on their recent experience at Sea Otter with Sebastian Sea Bass, mentioning the exhaustion and sunburn they endured. They humorously note their lack of sunscreen use, implying lessons learned from this experience.
• 30:00 - 40:00: Pivoting to Content Creation during the Pandemic The chapter provides insights into the speaker's experiences during an event, marked by personal reflections on self-care and sun protection. The speaker humorously notes their sunburn and the need to consider using a sun hat, alongside sharing their surprise at the hectic nature of what was expected to be a mellow event. Engaging in a constant dialogue with people, the speaker highlights their involvement in filming a substantial amount of content, underscoring a busy, albeit exciting, step towards integrating more into content creation during the pandemic.
• 40:00 - 50:00: Creating Content That Resonates with a Broader Audience The chapter discusses the challenges of creating content that resonates with a broader audience. It highlights the experience of trying to gather content at industry events like Sea Otter, but realizing the challenges in doing so as the focus shifts more towards networking and learning, rather than just documenting or capturing content. As the dynamics within the Normal MTB (Mountain Bike) community evolved, it has become increasingly difficult to simply pull out a phone and capture moments, emphasizing the shift in priorities from content creation to meaningful engagement and learning.
• 50:00 - 60:00: Navigating the Challenges of Filming and Content Strategy The chapter discusses the challenges encountered in filming and developing content strategies, emphasizing the chaotic nature of coordinating between brand requirements and capturing content. It likens the chaos to a 'beehive' in the brain, indicating an overwhelming influx of tasks that results in missing important events while dealing with logistical issues like traffic.
• 60:00 - 70:00: Podcast Break and Recon M2B Ad The chapter discusses the excitement and positive atmosphere at a significant event referred to as 'Sea.' The speaker expresses their admiration for how Sea brings everyone together for one weekend, considering it an amazing, cool event. They mention the large number of attendees, speculating figures like 100,000 people, although they are skeptical about the accuracy of such numbers. The chapter conveys a sense of enthusiasm and anticipation surrounding the event, despite minor inconveniences like traffic.
• 70:00 - 80:00: Importance of Personal Branding in the Digital Space The chapter delves into the origins and personal story of the individual known as 'Normal Mountain Biker,' a figure recognized for comedy and skit videos. The conversation seeks to unearth the story behind the public persona, tracing back to the beginning of their journey, including their upbringing in the North Bay with their sibling.
• 80:00 - 90:00: Expectations in Content Creation and Evolution This chapter begins by setting the scene in a small town in California called Novato, characterized by its small population of about 50,000 people. The narrator reflects on growing up in this humble town, describing the lifestyle as modest, where they never had more than what was necessary. It evokes a sense of nostalgia, harking back to childhood activities such as riding bikes, which marked the beginning of many experiences. The chapter likely explores the themes of growth, change, and the evolution of content creation, drawing parallels between the simplicity of past experiences and the complexities of present expectations.
• 90:00 - 100:00: Discussion on Favorite Projects and Learning Experiences In this chapter, a personal anecdote is shared about childhood experiences in the neighborhood. The narrator recounts playing with neighborhood kids in the front yard using a plastic ramp bought from a local store. They reflect on the fun and memories created while attempting daring feats on old bikes, emphasizing the joy and carefree nature of their youth.
• 100:00 - 110:00: Interactions with Public and Authority Challenges The chapter explores the author's unexpected journey into writing. Initially, the author had no interest or plans to become a professional writer, focusing instead on having fun and spending time with friends. Over time, the author's interests evolved, illustrated by anecdotes of building ramps with friends, transitioning from plastic to a considerably larger wooden ramp built by the author's father, leading to more thrilling, yet risky experiences. This narrative sets the stage for further discussions on interactions with the public and the challenges faced in dealing with authorities, hinting at the unexpected paths and learning experiences in life.
• 110:00 - 120:00: Vision for Normal Mountain Biker and Future Plans The chapter explores the speaker's nostalgia and experiences growing up in the '90s and early 2000s, highlighting the influence of BMX becoming a part of pop culture during that period. The speaker reminisces about playing popular BMX video games like Matt Hoffman BMX games, which sparked their enthusiasm for biking.

#4: The Untold Story Behind NRML MTBer Transcription

• 00:00 - 00:30 There's nobody that's my size that's riding a bike. How did you turn this into like an actual sustainable thing? Cuz I was still technically like employed and then one day Specializ reached out to us for that bike. Didn't Specialize invite you out to do like a speech on it. I don't know how you know that story, but that was one of the worst moments of my life. That was terrible. Yeah, you messed up. But it was funny. They liked it. This guy's funny. We rode Whistler Bike Park as the first time we ever did actual mountain biking. I wish my first time was in Whistler. That would be so sick. And I never knew that bikes could withstand me
• 00:30 - 01:00 and which technically they're they don't really withstand you. Have you ever had any funny interactions while you're filming a video? Hey, uh just want to let you know we called the cops on you. Some other stuff that I I can't say just just yet, but you know you know what I'm talking about. You know what it is. The audience should one of the few people who know what's happening soon. So, all right. We are live here with the Recon M2B podcast. We just finished up Sea Otter. It was a wild week. And we're
• 01:00 - 01:30 here with Sebastian Sea Bass, normal MC Beer. How's it going, dude? Phenomenal. Phenomenal. It's always a an interesting one. You know, the couple days after Sea Otter because everyone's absolutely burned out and, you know, you've probably done more sun walking around and and just sunburns and dehydration than probably any other time in your life. So, I know. You know, it's it's a recovery. It's we're almost in the recovery phase. It is a recovery. My neck is so sunburned. I didn't apply sunscreen once all week. It was Yeah, probably a bad idea. You got, you know, I've learned over the years that like I
• 01:30 - 02:00 got myself a cowboy hat now. So, I walk around with that thing and I I'm I'm a little bit sunburned, but you know, I not nowhere near as bad as it's been in the past. That kind of made me realize I need to take care of myself a little bit more. So, I might I might need to get a sun a sun hat or something like that. Something of that sorts. I mean, honestly, this is my first sea otter. It was kind of crazy. I thought it was going to be a lot more mellow and a lot less going on, but like just constantly talking to people constantly. We filmed so much stuff. I don't know if you filmed anything this week, but I filmed
• 02:00 - 02:30 precisely zero stuff. I didn't pull my phone out once or anything. We just went this year just to walk around, you know, see what's new in the industry, talk to some companies, you know, kind of reconnect with friends and whatnot. Um, you know, again, just kind of learning for us over the years. We've many many times in the past we've tried to go to sea otter to do content and you know um as things have been kind of moving forward with normal empty beer it's become a lot harder and harder and harder every time to do that where we want to go do something oh solemn's
• 02:30 - 03:00 happening you know let's go and get some stories for Instagram or whatever right but then it's like you know 3:00 4:00 pops up we're still standing in the same spot still talking to people still doing you know like the brand wants to talk over here that that that it's just like it becomes so much like it's it to me it feels like a like a beehive in my brain of like things happening constantly. It's like next thing you know it's like 5:00 and you missed like all the all the main events and now it's time to go get dinner, you know, and then you've got like 3 hours of traffic to sit in. Oh yeah. Yeah. Don't even remind me of the
• 03:00 - 03:30 traffic, you know. But but in general, I'm not I don't want to rag on Sea. It's it's an amazing such a great event. It's cool that it exists. Like seriously. So it's so cool that just everybody gets together for one weekend. It's great. Yeah. It's wild. I don't how how many thousands of people come to it. It's got to be something insane. I read a number that said 100,000, but I kind of I feel like that's very far off. I don't know what Google Maybe that's the number they tell to companies that want to, you know, buy a spot there. I don't know. Yeah. Exactly. I'm just excited, dude. I
• 03:30 - 04:00 want I think a lot of people could are interested. They see you doing skits. They see you doing comedy videos. And I feel like a lot of people just don't know don't know who the man is behind normal mountain biker. who is normal mountain biker. So, I just want to dig into that. What's your story and just kind of learn some more? Well, how about back to how how far back do you want to go? Let's go back to the beginning. I mean, how did how did this start? What were you doing before normal mountain biker? Yeah. So, um you know, we we grew up in in like my brother and I when I say we, we grew up in the North Bay in
• 04:00 - 04:30 California. Uh little sleepy old town called Noado, California. Man, that's the that's the happening right there. But, uh yeah, man. small town, you know, 50 or so thousand, you know, people growing up in that town when we were there. And and, you know, it it really all started back when we were kids. Um, you know, we we grew up in a somewhat humble, you know, uh, you know, lifestyle growing up. Never had, you know, more than what we needed. And, um, you know, it was, it started off with, you know, just riding the bikes with the
• 04:30 - 05:00 neighborhood kids in the front yard, right? We were, you know, I think at some point my my grandpa or dad or someone had bought a uh one of those like plastic ramps from uh from from from Walmart or Target or something. Yeah. Oh. Oh, the lethal plastic ramps, right? And um yeah, we were just in the front yard with the neighborhood kids just seeing how far we could send it on those things on our clapped out old target bikes and you know, just just you know, it was just having fun, right, when we were younger, you know, just making that those memories as kids, right? And you know, it was never
• 05:00 - 05:30 anything where I never wanted to be a professional writer. You know, I never wanted to do anything like this. You know, it wasn't even in my in my sights of, you know, as a child. It's just I just want to go have fun, be with friends, right? And um, you know, they kind of just evolved over the years to, you know, went from, you know, the plastic ramps to, you know, then my dad built us a uh a wooden one and we got really hurt on that quite a bit. You go a lot further on a wooden ramp. you know, a lot further, especially when it's like three times the size that it used to be. So, but uh but yeah, no,
• 05:30 - 06:00 it's it went to that then, you know, we I I just saw like most kids in like the early 2000s, you know, cuz I I grew up in the '9s, early 2000s and and uh you know, BMX started become a you know, a more pop culture type thing around that time. And so, um you know, playing the video games like you know, the Matt Hoffman BMX games and and all that kind of stuff, right? Dave and all that, right? So, it was really cool to play those games and I was always like, man, that's really
• 06:00 - 06:30 cool. I want to get a BMX bike. And, you know, then I I what BMX technically was what actually got me into like cycling. That was like like like the more cooler end of cycling. Less casual. Yeah. Less c Exactly. Less casual. Right. And um but we were never into like mountain biking, right? That was never a thing. I didn't even think at the time that like, oh, you can go to that mountain and there's a trail and you can ride down it. Right. I didn't know anything about that. Right. And um it actually took uh when we were kids um our parents had a uh uh this clapped out old camper, like
• 06:30 - 07:00 an old RV, right? And they would take us everywhere on that thing. I mean, we went to to Mexico, we went to the Grand Canyon, we went to, you know, Seattle, whatever it was. Like our our parents always made a point to show us the world. they wanted to like rather than go to Disneyland, let's go see what's happening in this part of the country, you know, or let's go to like let's go to the beach in Mexico or something and live out of the camper parking in grocery store parking lots and stuff, right? And so that was a lot of our childhood. And one year they got the idea, they're like, "Oh, we haven't been
• 07:00 - 07:30 to Canada yet and it's not too far away, you know, let's go." And uh there's this, you know, British Columbia looks nice. They got nice mountains there, right? Yeah. And um we didn't know, like I said, we didn't know anything about mountain biking at the time. And so we go on this road trip and we go, you know, hang out in Vancouver and then work our way up to Squamish and, you know, watching the cool, you know, see some bears, you know, see the, you know, the we saw like a wood cutting, you know, competition and they're like, "Oh, there's this town like right up the road called Whistler and that's where the apparently the Olympics was at. It's a
• 07:30 - 08:00 ski town, right?" We're like, "Oh, that sounds fantastic." So we go up the road and we we we stay there for a few days and you know if you have ever been to Whistler, you know it's like it's the village and it's a beautiful scenery, mountains and stuff, everything. It's phenomenal place if you haven't been there. And we're walking around the village and there's a very distinguished moment when you're walking around the village when you leave the shops and the restaurants and then you open up to the to the patio that shows where the bike lifts are and where the Rampage or not Rampage, sorry, the the the crank works
• 08:00 - 08:30 course is, right? and you see all the riders coming out and we come around the corner and we see that just imagine being a little kid that like knows a little bit about about bikes, right? And just enough to be like, you know, just captivated by it and we see this and I was, you know, my brother and I were like, "Oh my lord, we have to we want to do that." You begging mom and dad like, "Please, please, please, can we go ride our bikes? Can we please go over there?" And uh, you know, they said yes. And they they found they were worried we were going to get hurt, right? So, of course. So, so they found a a course, you know, the one of those like camps
• 08:30 - 09:00 that you could take, you know, just for the day, and they took us out there. And I'll never forget it, man. The the old Kona shreds, like the Kona bikes. Oh, yeah. The boxy old frames, man. And I've I've been looking for that. So, if anyone's listening that has an old gray Kona shred, let me know. I'll buy it from you. Like, I've been looking for one forever. We need one. Yes, we got to get one. But yeah, we we went up there, went did a class with an instructor and you know, we rode Whistler Bike Park as the first time we ever did actual mountain biking and that's that that was the end right there. Like from there it
• 09:00 - 09:30 was mountain biking was like the main priority in my life. That is crazy. My first time mountain biking was on a flat trail in Missouri next to a river. Wow. I wish my first time was in Whistler. That would be so sick. Hey man. Well, it's it's the memory that counts, right? is, you know, but uh but yeah, no, that's that's kind of where the mountain biking thing started, right? And you know, fast forward many many years after that, right? And um all the way to 2020 when um when you had the weird stuff happening in the world, right? You know,
• 09:30 - 10:00 we were uh at the time I was working in construction. So um I was working for a company and uh doing like project managing, supervising, stuff like that. I was doing a ton of traveling just all around the country. I mean, I did a stint where I lived in in Hawaii, you know, for a year. Like I was right on the I was on the beach. You know, they had literally they put me in a house on the beach and I was working on a on a probably shouldn't say where it was a military base, but I probably shouldn't say exactly where I was, but you know, we were doing some kind of, you know, uh projects for for solar and we were building solar systems and um and so
• 10:00 - 10:30 yeah, so I kind of got went all over the place. I did it for many years and it was great, you know. I mean, the the money was phenomenal. You know, it's like when you're constantly on the road, constantly doing overtime, you know, and you're put in a position where you have a pretty pretty, you know, important job. Obviously, that's going to manifest into a good amount of funds, right? And then 2020 hits and uh everything kind of changed because I know it's the most generic story in the world, but I stopped working, you know, because I couldn't work anymore. It's like everyone had to deal with that, right?
• 10:30 - 11:00 But uh no, genuinely, we we were we were stuck, you know, we were like, "Okay, well, there's no projects. Everyone's freaking out right now." And at that point in our lives, we were we were my brother and I were living with our parents and, you know, back in California. And, you know, we we moved back in and were, you know, living there and waiting for this whatever's going on to end. And, uh, in the meantime, I was, you know, I I had a little bit of experience with uh, photography and and and film making and stuff like that cuz I'd actually worked in the bike industry prior to my construction job. Just as a
• 11:00 - 11:30 little side thing, when I was in high school, I was, you know, doing uh uh videos for race recap, race recap videos for the California Enduro series. And um you know, we were just traveling around doing those races. So, I had some gear, you know, that I had left over that I never sold or got rid of. And uh my brother and I are sitting at home and we're like, you know, let's do like Instagram. Let's go take some Instagram photos. And um originally it was actually my brother Jersey that was the main focus of the channel. Like if you if you were to go back, you know, all
• 11:30 - 12:00 the way down like through the last thousand posts or whatever, you'll see that the first few posts are actually my brother Jersey of him riding. It's it's the trippiest thing. And um that was, you know, it was literally just kind of like a hobby type thing that we're like, "Ah, maybe maybe one day we'll have a company send us a bike or something." It was like like that was the most that we ever thought into it. And like, you know, originally we kind of wanted to do like merch, like a t-shirt or something or like a like some like kind kind of a merch brand or something around it. And it changed very very quickly cuz around
• 12:00 - 12:30 the same time like Instagram reels became a thing. Like that was never a thing until about 2020 2021 roughly somewhere in that time period. And just for whatever reason I was like oh like you know we were out trail building one day and there was some of our local trails and and you know I was just like I have an idea to just like they I threw my iPhone to my brother and I'm like dude film me coming down this trail here you know I want to just like see what that would look like right so sure enough he films me coming down we do a couple more shots coming around BMS and
• 12:30 - 13:00 stuff some slow-mo you know some like shreddit type stuff right and uh and I threw it together and and and put it on uh on the Instagram stagram reels like like maybe a day or two after they had been released like open to the public, right? And like instantly Well, actually, you know what? I may have been wrong about that. There may have been a couple random reels that we had done prior to that. Yeah. But it was like within a short time, so maybe not like a day, maybe like within the within the month, right? Yeah. And um and dude, we
• 13:00 - 13:30 we posted it and like I put like a a Suicide Boys song to it and like it just exploded. Like for whatever reason this video just like like people seeing like a bigger dude riding a bike and like doing some jumps and like very like very basic video like there's nothing special about it. It was just what was being shown was what what really captivated people. And that kind of clicked like a light bulb in my in my mind and I was like uh like that's really strange. like all these all these pictures that we posted and and this content we put out
• 13:30 - 14:00 there barely got like maybe a,000 views and then all of a sudden this one's at like a 100,000 views like within the first day and I was like this is really weird like why did this happen? And then it put two or two together that like oh there's nobody that's my size that's riding a bike. Like you got people like Kyle Strait who's like a big dude and he's a big muscular dude but he's like compared to like when I stand next to him like you know we're heightwise but I'm like I got girth you know I sat on his bike at Rampage once and it like
• 14:00 - 14:30 sunk down. I was like, "Oh, you're you're running this stiff, but I I need a little bit more pressure in my shock." You know, but uh but yeah, so so there there really wasn't anybody in the in in the bike world that was doing content from the perspective of like a bigger dude, like a dude that weighs over 300 lb that's like, you know, like so big that he has to pump his tires up to 50 PSI to be able to get good grip, you know, then and and it just kind of turned into what it is now where you have now it turned into comedy and, you know, we're doing all whatever we're doing now. That's kind of I mean people
• 14:30 - 15:00 like everybody on Instagram, they're watching pros like and these these riders that are super fit, super human fit and like in reality most there's there's other riders out there that are like larger and it's just on Instagram you don't see that. There's not many people and like you're able to reach those people through comedy and content. So it's it's super cool. Well, yeah, it's just one thing if I can add there. It's it's really interesting that the biggest eye opening moment when we were kind of around that time and everything was kind of, you know, kind of really
• 15:00 - 15:30 starting to come up. Um, we I got so many DMs and I still to this day like DMs and and and messages on whatever platform it was of people reaching out to tell me, hey, I'm also like 6'5 and I'm also like 300 and something pounds and I never knew that bikes could withstand me. And which technically they're they don't really withstand you, but we make it work, right? It it'll work. But um you know I got so many people being like hey I didn't know I could do this and because I saw your videos like I got myself a bike and I
• 15:30 - 16:00 went out and I rode and it was the best time of my life ever. You know like so many times we've had that and it's so cool being able to read that cuz it's like oh we're not just making funny videos like it's like this is actually like some people are like seeing a new realm that they didn't know existed. You know it's impacting people. Yeah. Yeah. It was it was cool. It's it's been really cool seeing that. That's so cool. I know with my own content, I mean, I started off I started mountain biking actually because like as a kid I was super small for my age and like I couldn't play team sports. Like the obvious path is to start playing soccer or start playing football and I I tried
• 16:00 - 16:30 that. It wasn't it wasn't very it wasn't very pretty. But I mean I got into mountain biking and that was just kind of like my my thing was like you don't have to like fit a certain image to to ride a mountain bike or like be super fit. like you can just go out there and just have fun like anybody can. So, how did actually I want to dive more into this. So, how did your how did your uh work in the bike industry before normal mountain biker before the construction stuff? That was in high school, correct? Yeah, that was in high school. It kind
• 16:30 - 17:00 of manifested a little bit before like kind of when I was transitioning from middle school to high school. Um it really kind of it was one of those like right place, right time kind of situations, right? one of my one of my closest longtime friends that I've you know one of my closest friends forever. He uh he was actually a professional rider. So way way way back, you know, now we're talking like freshman year of high school. Um he kind of wanted to go down that path of a professional racer like enduro racing back when Endura was just starting off. I mean back then they called it uh like all mountain or
• 17:00 - 17:30 something like that. Like it was like back in those days. There was another word for it but I'm totally forgetting the word. Um, but yeah, back then, you know, and and that was when the kind of YouTube scene and the edits started to become a popularized thing, you know, like back when Pink Bike had uh the the video of the day, right? You know, so it was always our goal like, ah, we got to make the video of the day one of these days or movies for your Monday or something, right? And um and and me and my buddy like we he was really good at riding. I mean, he's one of the fastest people to this day that I still, you know, I'm very close with, right? And um
• 17:30 - 18:00 even though he doesn't ride anymore, which Matt, you should ride still, but but um no, he uh he was just really starting to come up in the industry, he was starting to get some sponsorships, you know, and um and we were we would just go out every once in a while and we'd film edits, you know, it was with him first and then it kind of, you know, we had a couple other riding buddies in our area, you know, that were also trying to be professional riders. So I'd go and film them and I'd go and film the the bros just on a on a ride, right? And um that kind of got me into the the the content production side of things where it was literally just like me with my
• 18:00 - 18:30 Canon 70D, you know, or a two a 2Ti or whatever 2T2i or whatever it used to be called and like just going out there with the most basic equipment, you know, just something that my mom was nice enough to buy me from Costco, right? you know, just just going out there and making shreddits, you know, and you know, on the on the crappy old laptop that I used to have, you know, lagging every every time I try to press play on the on the playback menu, you know, it's like and um and yeah, and one thing led to another and and I just kind of, you know, was brought into a circle of
• 18:30 - 19:00 people who were, you know, either professional writers or people who were already working in the industry. And keep in mind, this is what I'm like, you know, freshman, sophomore year of high school. And uh on top of that, one little detail that I left out of that is that um where I grew up in Noado um for people who are super into the bike bike world, they know that like Novada is actually one of those not only is Marin County, which is the county that Noad is in, but it's the m the the quote birthplace of mountain biking. So we have a lot of people that are pretty
• 19:00 - 19:30 significant in the bike industry that live in that area, but um I was actually neighbors with Mark Weir. My parents still are to this day. So Mark Weir lived like right down the street and then you had you know a few other people like Marco Osborne who he's a he's a racer nowadays. I knew all those guys growing up like you know I looked up to all those guys grow still do today. Those guys are awesome right and like um so I had opportunity to you know I did an edit for Marco Osborne one time years and years ago and you know got kind of access to trails that you know I wouldn't have been able to see otherwise
• 19:30 - 20:00 and it was just a really cool time to be in the industry cuz YouTube hadn't really kicked off yet. you know, it was still starting kind of starting to bubble up, right? And um I kind of kicked myself because I wish that I would have stuck with it back then. Yeah. You know, because after I did that, I kind of got bored with it. I did the racing, you know, I did recaps with racing and like we made some money, you know, as a high schooler, you know, roaming around, traveling around the country, getting, you know, our trips paid for or whatever. You know, it was pretty sick. It was cool, right? You know, it was like I come back to school, you know, the after we had been done, you know, it's like, oh, I went where were you this weekend? Oh, I was I was
• 20:00 - 20:30 in, you know, Big Bear or whatever. You know, like just random stuff, right? uh like no one else was doing anything like that when I was growing up. So, it was it was pretty cool to do it. But, you know, it kind of um it kind of just fizzled out, you know, nothing really came from it. And and I, you know, I was at that transition period in my life where it was like, "All right, well, high school's about to end pretty soon." And uh I got to get a real job. Got to become an adult. I got I got to go to college and I got to go do all this stuff, right? And uh so it never really turned into anything, you know, and and uh until, you know, a few years later,
• 20:30 - 21:00 obviously, you know, I finally do the whole like never went to I went to college, but I never finished anything, you know. Um you know, had a bunch of random jobs and then eventually, you know, did the construction job I was telling you about and that then catches right up to to 2020 and when we towards the end of 2020 when we started this whole thing. So that is crazy. So that clearly taught you how to how to work a camera and how to how to kind of like work with other people in the industry at that time. And obviously it's changed a whole bunch. Now it's a huge shift. Now people are even pros, the best pros
• 21:00 - 21:30 in the world. If they're not making videos, if they're not making content that people want to watch, not just a GoPro video, then like their sponsors are going to start start questioning. They're going to start maybe taking some double some thinking twice. But I mean, how did how did you figure out how to kind of like take it the step beyond just videoing stuff? Like you mentioned you had the shreddits once you once you started to get back into mountain biking and back into the back into the creating videos. So, was it was it really just like did it really just click with that
• 21:30 - 22:00 one video? It not 100%. It made me realize that there's more to it than what I've been seeing. Right. It was that first like aha moment of like, oh, I didn't know videos. I've never had like literally up until that point I'd never had a video go beyond like 10,000 views ever on anything ever, right? And seen it hit like the 100,000 views and then the 500,000 views, you know, that was like the moment where I realized like, oh, something I did in this video, something happened in this video to make people want to watch it. Yeah. And and you know, that that kind of took me down
• 22:00 - 22:30 this path of obsession of, you know, I was genuinely obsessed with how how do I make like what why do videos go viral? like why why is this person able to consistently get, you know, 100 million views per month whereas this person who works just as hard is only getting like 10,000 views a month. Exactly. You know, and and and and really trying to figure out what that dynamic is and what I should do. And to be honest, I haven't really fully figured it out yet. I I think there's so much and there's so much change that's happening constantly every single day that you can get pretty
• 22:30 - 23:00 clo pretty close like what Mr. Beast says, you know, he has like a whole bunch of stuff how he talks about how he goes viral, right? But but the thing is like I don't make the same content as Mr. Beast does, right? I'm not in the same niche as him. So it's like what what might work for him. Obviously there's a bunch of fundamental things you want to do, but what might work for him may not work too too well for me, if that makes sense. Right? So it was just kind of finding that that full balance and and and just obsessing about over okay, we would post a video and we'd see how it would work and I'd literally watch it. Well, the moment I post it,
• 23:00 - 23:30 I'd see kind of like how many views it got within like the first 10 minutes, like within the first hour. I'd keep I'd keep mental note of all that stuff. I'm like, "Okay, so this one got like a thousand likes in the first hour, you know, but then this one over here only got like 150 per in the first hour. Why?" And then I fine-tune it over time, right? To the point where I kind of got down to, you know, a system that worked like figuring out the hook, you know, and figuring out like how like how do I keep people engaged through the whole video? Like are they gaining any value from this video, you know? Um, and
• 23:30 - 24:00 that's all changing, right? Like I said, I don't know the whole thing. I worked for a good period of time and now it's like okay things are changing again. Now it's like, okay, what's the next thing on the horizon? And and I think that's what's interesting is that like so many people find one thing that works and then they only stick to that and they never want to evolve. And that's why you have all these channels nowadays that are just completely dropping off and they're just disappearing out of nowhere. And then you see a video that pops up, you know, after them not posting for a month and then they're like, I got a real job, you know. It's
• 24:00 - 24:30 like, what do you mean job application? I'm selling my van, you know. So yeah. All right. All right, we're going to take a quick pause right now and explain a bit more about Recon M2B. So, we're a mountain bike media company and an e-commerce store where you can buy any of your mountain biking products. We have over 10,000 of the best mountain biking products that you can get for your bike. And we want to make purchasing your bike products fun and give you something in return. So, every single dollar you spend gets you one entry into winning your dream bike every single month. So, next time you need to pick up something like a tire, new knee
• 24:30 - 25:00 pads, or anything for your mountain bike, just head over to reconm.com and let's get back to it. you've clearly cracked it pretty well. I mean, what what's your take on just like the shift that's happening right now? Like, do you think everybody has to do this or is it just just the people that can't hit 110 foot jumps at Darkfest or do you think everybody's got to start doing this? Like, what do you think? Well, it's interesting cuz I I consider myself to be on the complete opposite of like someone at Darkfest doing 110T backflip, you know? Right. It's like those guys have an immense skill that I probably
• 25:00 - 25:30 will never be able to do or nor be willing to do because I'm not going to put myself through that, right? Uh so I'm very much on the other side of the spectrum, right? So I think in general you have to have a brand for like your own personal brand. No, no matter what no matter what you want to do, you have to have something that people know instantly who you are, right? You have to be able to walk into a room and not have people continually ask who you are. Yeah. Right. And that's that's the most important thing. And it sounds very vain and it sounds, you know, narcissistic,
• 25:30 - 26:00 but the but the reality is that, you know, it's a lot easier to accomplish things that you want to do. Those dreams that you had when you were a kid are a lot easier to accomplish when people know who you are. Yeah. So, if you're able to build that up and create a a brand that not only, you know, is memorable, but also makes people feel a certain way, um, that's going to be pushing you forward faster than anything else can. And that's that's different per person, too. I mean, I I would hope that there's not two brands that the same. Obviously, you can take notes from
• 26:00 - 26:30 other people, but you want to create the brand of who you are, right? Exactly. And and and that's the that's the thing that kind of one of the the harder things that that for me, right? Is is who what is my identity? Like who like who am I as a creator in the space like how do other people think about me? It's like all these different questions you have to ask yourself and they all kind of bundle into this one this one thing that's an ever morphing, you know, substance of of hunk of meat that's just like floating in the ether, right? That that that's portrayed to everybody out there in the world, right? It's what
• 26:30 - 27:00 it's what they think of when they hear normal mountain biker, you know, like it's it's the first thing that comes to their mind is your personal brand. Like for for a racer, downhill racer like Jackson Goldstone, he's doing much different stuff than what you and I are doing. He's his whole thing is that he's extremely fast and people can really look up to him in the the way that like he's grown up riding bikes. He was this this kid we watched him grow up and people can really get inspired. They can see especially young kids that want to get fast or they want to get become a better rider. They've like they can
• 27:00 - 27:30 almost see themselves in the footsteps of him and be like I want to I want to do that. So I think that everybody has to have their own unique kind of stamp on it. Yeah. Yeah. I know it's interesting. Jackson Goldson is one of those people that I really hope one of these days he he starts like a proper vlog YouTube channel or something where he shows his personality more cuz the dude the dude is awesome. You know I I've I've only ever you know met him in passing but he probably doesn't even remember. I just I just hired him one time in Whistler but you know in in in serious passing right but uh but no I
• 27:30 - 28:00 really hope that he he starts some kind of channel one day just so that he can you know put his his his personality out there more cuz he's a funny dude. Like the clips that I've seen of him, you know, on socials is like it's like, "Oh, dude. Oh, you're you're a kid. You're hilarious." Like, he's got a personality. Yeah. He's not just this noof face person that like is just really good at riding bikes. Like that's one thing that I think a lot of people have gravitated towards him through the years is like back in back in 20 2017 when Pink Bike was posting videos of him or like whoever it was, they were
• 28:00 - 28:30 showing him on camera. It was this kid who was talking to the camera like he was an adult. Like people loved it. this kid wasn't shy and he was just putting himself out there. I I want to see more pros do it because I think their personalities are just so so almost vibrant. Like Matt Jones, he's killing it. Him and his brother with the almost the universe. It's like the the multiverse of of Matt Jones where he's got he's got Hellfire, he's got Mavericks now, which is super cool, his video game and he just vlogs every
• 28:30 - 29:00 single day or not every day, but he vlogs quite often and just doing cool stuff. He's he's an overall really nice guy too. Like yeah, Matt Jones is awesome. Yeah, it's interesting. The first time I ever met him like it was at Seotter last year and uh I just went up said hi but he didn't he didn't like recognize me at first. We're like walking away and I hear like hey and like I see him running up and he's like he's like oh dude I know who you are. Like we just like chatting for a little bit like genuinely like really nice guy like all those guys. You know, I I haven't met Jonno yet, but uh but I know that like they're twins, so I'm sure
• 29:00 - 29:30 they share some of the personality. The personality, right? But yeah, it's so sick. He brings everything everything mountain biker loves like cool cars, cool bikes, building dirt jumps, all of this stuff into into one channel and I think people really resonate with them. Like that's his personal brand is just doing cool stuff. The thing is we we we we see these professional riders through just the lens of the race events or the competition, the crank works, the or the YouTube, right? And um it's so many of
• 29:30 - 30:00 these dudes like when you get to know them, they're rad. Like so many of them like like the utmost, you know, like they have some of the coolest personalities. They have like some of the most crazy lives, too. some of the stories you hear from them and like their travels and all this stuff, you know, and it's just like, dude, like why aren't you sharing this with the world? Like this is stuff you could write a book about, you know? It's like let alone like a YouTube channel. But yeah, no, I think the personal brand, going back to your original question, I think that's super super super important for these guys because like with with
• 30:00 - 30:30 someone like Matt Jones, I mean, how many kids do you see like nowadays that watch his videos religiously that want to be someone like Matt Jones, but they just don't have a person to like put them down and be like, "Hey, this is how you if you want to be someone like Matt Jones, do step one, step two, step three, step four." Right? It's there there's not much that's available right now in the world for that. You know, I got lucky because I had some friends that were already in the bike industry, you know, that I was able to, you know, on rare occasions call them and be like, "Hey, like, do you have any advice?" Yeah. You know, but not everyone has
• 30:30 - 31:00 that, you know. I was in a very lucky position to be able to do that and and u and then just the trial and error constantly, you know, of like, you know, figuring out like what's the best thing here, like how do I navigate this problem? How do I navigate that? You know, there's no one really to to to tell that to you. I started off really young. I actually started I posted my first mountain bike YouTube video the month I got my first mountain bike and I kind of just started doing YouTube videos for for a few years until I kind of got almost burnt out of that because I was putting so much into it and just like kind of like wasn't seeing anything
• 31:00 - 31:30 back and I was like okay kids kids at high school are kind of kind of teasing me for it like I'm just going to maybe step back from it. And then I started doing more short form content and it caught back on and I just reapplied the stuff that I learned with YouTube. And I mean, it's it's kind of almost a natural path for some people. And I mean, not all the not everybody's lucky enough to kind of fall into that path. And it's it's almost like you need somebody to just sit you down and like tell you like this is what you have to do. Yeah. You either go the the really hard way of figuring it out for yourself, which will
• 31:30 - 32:00 take decades or or you can have someone tell you. Someone tell you, right? Yeah. That's the thing. I hate it when people gatekeep, you know, information, right? I mean, that's that's the toughest thing cuz you could you could you could ask pros like, "Hey, how did you become a pro rider?" And they could just say they'll probably give you something like, oh, just ride your bike faster, right? In simplified form, that's what it would be, right? But they don't tell you about how you got to make sure that you meet this kind of person. You know, you got to make sure you have someone that's going to be able to get you into events. You want to make sure you have someone that's going to be able to connect you with the bike companies or, you know, someone that that is going to
• 32:00 - 32:30 know when it's time for you to move on to a different, you know, brand or something like that, right? Like all these things are really, really important. And it's like if you don't have guidance there, then you're just going to be going in with with the wind, letting the wind just kind of take you in whichever direction. That may or may not be a good good situation for you. I know. You could get lucky or you could get unlucky with it. Yeah. And it's like you're better off like like luck. So luck favors those who work hard. Yeah. And and that's that's the hardest thing for so many people to to to at least comprehend at the very
• 32:30 - 33:00 least, right? Because it's like we it's so easy to see someone like Matt Jones and be like, "Ah, well, he's just a rich kid and his parents bought him all those cars and the Ferrari and the ranch and the jumps in the backyard and and Jamie helping him out and all," you know, it's it's like, "No, no, no." Like, Matt Jones worked for that. Like, he he had to spend hours and hours and hours and hours building up the brand that he has. Exactly. You know, and he may have gotten help from people, but the point is that he stuck with it and he built something and posted thousands of videos. Literally thousands. Yeah. It's
• 33:00 - 33:30 crazy to think of. Yeah. I mean, the more shots on goal you take, the more likely you are to get lucky. You got to put yourself in that position. I mean, all right, I want to I want to take a shift right here and I want to kind of dive into some of your some of your favorite videos you've ever made. So, that's a that's a pretty big question, but what's out of all of the videos, it could be long form, it could be short form. What's what's your favorite video you've ever made? Do this I the answer has shifted, you know, as the time has gone on, right? because we're always doing new stuff and I I tend to when I
• 33:30 - 34:00 think of the favorite I think of like the most memorable and the most memorable is one of the hardest ones we've ever filmed and that was uh a few years back uh when we were working with Specialized the the Levo SL came out and uh at the time when that dropped it was like I mean that was the hottest bike on the market you know it's like everyone wanted one and and and we had to keep that thing secret for a very long time but we filmed the video with Cody Kelly on behalf of Specialized and dude That video was insane to film. It was a full-on YouTube video, you know, full
• 34:00 - 34:30 production. We had multiple camera guys out there. We had the whole nine yards, like outfits, the whole thing, right? And uh we went to a little town called Oakidge up in uh in Oregon. And Oakidge, for anyone who hasn't been there, is in the middle of nowhere. Like it is a tiny town that connects the Eugene area to the Bend area. And that was that's like it's in the mountains and that's it. You know, they have like two restaurants and a grocery store and that's it. And um yeah, man. That that project was so hard cuz we were out there for I think about a week and every day we were waking up
• 34:30 - 35:00 super early before the sun came out heading out there waiting for golden hour, you know, out on the mountain the whole day. Like even if the lighting wasn't good, we were like, "All right, let's go over here and do this. We got to get this done that that let's do a thumbnail. Let's do all this kind of stuff." And um man, that that project just killed me. Like absolutely killed me. I think I I I couldn't move for like maybe a week after I sat and did nothing for like a week because it was we were doing so much stuff, so much climbing, you know, we were probably covering
• 35:00 - 35:30 maybe 20 miles per day like easily while filming while filming. That's like it like from the sun up. It may may not seem like that much like 20 m a day. I can do that on my ebike, no problem. But it's like no no like we're doing 20 miles a day of like traversing but not including every shot that we did back and forth. Like that's 20 m of ground covered, you know? So, so it was it was brutal, man. And and the only thing we would have for dinner at night is like a pizza place that was still open by the time we were done. So, we were eating like this like mediocre pizza just fueling you for the week. Yeah, that was
• 35:30 - 36:00 all we had going for us, you know, and some Gatorades or something, you know, and and but that was brutal. But, it was like the payoff was amazing cuz it's the most to this day one of the coolest videos that I think I've ever done because it's like we had this cool creative idea and I was pretending to be Cody Kelly and uh it kind of turned in. had a voice over of some country dude and like it was just super super cool. It was a great experience and like it kind of it really that really taught me, you know, when now we're on the subject of like learning stuff that that really taught me how much work goes into some of these edits that people are making. And that was a mild one, too, compared
• 36:00 - 36:30 to other productions out there. So, hats off to the guys that are filming videos every single day doing that stuff. So, it takes so much longer than people think realize when you're filming and doing something like I used to I used to film myself building a lot of a lot of backyard features and I had a series on my YouTube channel. It takes so much longer when you have to set up every single camera angle, start recording, and then even even after that, you take a cut and you're like, "Oh my gosh, that was a horrible camera angle or something like this. You got to redo it." It just it takes forever. Mhm. A lot more goes into it than people realize. Yeah. Yeah.
• 36:30 - 37:00 A lot of a lot of waiting, too. Like waiting for for weather to align, waiting for bikes to get shipped in, you know? It's like sometimes you have an edit planned or a video planned that's like supposed to happen next week and then it's like, "Oh, the product got delayed. It's stuck on a ship somewhere." and you're like, "Okay, well, got to wait for that." And then like wait for the editing to happen, wait for the release time to happen for when we finished that video, that bike, we filmed that like over a year before the bike came out. Like, we were sitting on it knowing about that bike for over a year. It was so hard to keep a secret
• 37:00 - 37:30 for so long. I'm not even joking. Yeah. Yeah. I don't know. There was some there was some kind of issues with with getting it to market. So, I don't know exactly what happened, but eventually it it got to market. Everything was fine. But just sitting on the Secret for that long of like such a sick bike, it was painful. Absolutely painful. Correct me if I'm wrong, but for that bike, didn't Specialize invite you out to do like a speech on it and you you showed up and there was like 200 people waiting waiting for you to give a speech and I don't know how you know that story. I don't know how you know that story, but that was one of the worst moments of my
• 37:30 - 38:00 life. That was terrible. Yeah. No. So, so there was, like you said, there was an event at the uh at the Specialized headquarters in down really close to us, actually here in San Jose, like down in I don't know where, somewhere over there. It's like an hour from here. And um yeah, so so Specialized does this like big event. We we get invited. They want me to do some kind of speaking portion. And I'm thinking, you know, this is going to be, you know, just a handful of people, like no big deal. We get there and it's this giant auditorium
• 38:00 - 38:30 like this massive massive room with a big stage up front and projectors and like bunch of seats and like a like a little food bar thing and I'm just like oh no like I was like cuz I don't I I haven't public like like done public speaking since I was a kid. So, I didn't I hadn't spoken to like a crowd that big and people just start pouring in. At that certain point, it's like it fills up so much there's no more seats available and there's people standing around the edges, right? And to make things even worse, when I was supposed to go up was the very last thing they were doing. So, it was like 2 hours of
• 38:30 - 39:00 just the most mundane like business talk for like literally 2 hours. And then I'm sitting in the back like like going over my lines and what I'm going to do and like freaking out just pan full panic mode and and so I finally get up there and like we had this whole thing where I was going to jump up on stage and it was going to be this whole, you know, thing, right? No pressure, no pressure at all, right? In front of every every important person ever, right? And so we jump up on stage and I do the thing and I get up there and I made the mistake of like
• 39:00 - 39:30 completely just like letting my anxiety take over and I looked down and there was like a there was like apparently they were running on Zoom and I remember looking down and there was like a laptop that had Zoom open and I saw it was like 600 people or something on Zoom and I'm like oh man on top of like the 300 that are in this room there's like 600 people on Zoom as well. So, it's like now the audience just effectively doubled or tripled, right? So, so I get up there immediately forget everything I was going to say, like completely bonded.
• 39:30 - 40:00 Everyone's looking at me just like, "What the hell is this guy doing?" Like, "What is wrong with this guy?" And I'm up there just choking up and like I'm looking over at the guys that are like running the thing. And yeah, long story short, I kind of got I stumbled my way through it and eventually, you know, did it, but it was like supposed to be like a five or 10 minute long thing. It was like 30 seconds, dude. Like, it was terrible. Like I just got up there and said some gibberish, you know, stood in the corner and just hoped no one would notice I I bombed it that bad. Yeah. So this was for the the launch of the Levo SL. Yeah, it was it was there uh when
• 40:00 - 40:30 they let everyone in the company know what's happening. It's I don't know there's a specific word for it, but they they kind of tell bring everyone together, tell them, hey, this is what's been going on. This is the new stuff. This is the information you should know about it. And you know, they had a bunch of retailers as well. So that's what people were on Zoom for is they were a bunch of retailers all over the country. So you have all these CEOs of all these bike shops all over the country watching me just fumble, right? So So now everyone knows me as the guy that went to Specialize and got totally jacked up, you know. Oh my gosh. Yeah. Yeah. So it
• 40:30 - 41:00 was Yeah. one of the most worst moments of my life, but also a a great eye opening moment cuz I the amount that I learned about myself there was like, all right, I clearly have panic like when I have to talk to people, you know, in public like that. So yeah, it's it's crazy. Like you you think you'd be like so like me personally too I struggle so much with just like getting up in front of a crowd like I'll get through it but like I'm terrified of it. It's it's scary. But I'll I'll talk to a video and that'll go to like it'll millions of people. It's like no problem. Like
• 41:00 - 41:30 whatever different. Yeah. Totally different. It's it's amazing how that's the the contrast there cuz it's like you start to look like the town I grew up in is only 50,000 people. You know you see 50,000 views on a video I'm like oh that's terrible. That that video did horrible. Right. That's an entire town. That's a whole town, dude. And then you have videos that like millions and millions. It's like that's whole states. That's whole countries right there that are watching your video, man. It's like I know you've had some videos that have gone berserk. Like absolutely berserk. It's like you really comprehend that it's like oh like 10 million people watch this video. Like that's bigger
• 41:30 - 42:00 than the capital or the the the the country of Usbekistan or something, you know? It's like a whole country just watched this video. Like what? Like it's hard to comprehend, right? When it's numbers on a screen, it doesn't really equate to like you can't you can't think about it. It doesn't even make sense in your head. That's crazy. Unreal. Unreal. So, did they like prepare did Specialize prepare you? Like did did they give you the notes or were you supposed to make the speech? Like a little both. It was like do something creative for my part and then for them it was like tell this
• 42:00 - 42:30 information, right? Um like I said, I fumbled it all and none of that actually got out, but I got I got good feedback from the crowd. They were like, "Yeah, you messed up, but it was funny." They liked it. This guy's funny. We just wanted to see you go up there, you know, and it's Yeah, that's cool. Yeah. All right, I want to dive more into kind of So, we've gotten we've gotten how you uh kind of grew up riding bikes. You grew up riding bikes around the neighborhood, then you ended up somehow riding at Whistler, your
• 42:30 - 43:00 first time ever actually mountain biking, which is crazy to me. And then you kind of started filming stuff with your friends and with some pros and getting into the bike industry. and then kind of kind of took a step back from it when you had to go become an adult or adult an adult. Yeah. And then you get back into it through uh through just posting some videos. But how did how did you turn this into into your full-time job? Like what was the what was the moment that you were like you obviously weren't working through that through the starting periods of normal mber just because of the co and but how did you
• 43:00 - 43:30 turn this into like an actual sustainable thing? Yeah, it was uh quite frankly it was kind of a big risk. Um, you know, like I was saying, we, you know, during the 2020 time, right, late 2020, you know, early 2021, um, we kind of were at a point where it's like, okay, things are kind of leveling out, right? You know, it's maybe at some point, you know, they're going to start wanting us to go back to work or the projects are going to pick up back up again cuz I was still technically like employed during the beginning times of
• 43:30 - 44:00 this. Um but it just wasn't working, you know, and um you know, it kind of got closer and closer to where we're like, uh the world is kind of chilling out now, you know, maybe it's time to go back to work. And uh my brother and I made the con the decision that we're like, you know, let's just send it, you know, let's just fully commit because we were we were getting pretty decent views at that time. Um not nothing like what it is today, but you know, it was enough to to to give us a glimmer of hope, right? And um we were in a you know, fairly good position. and we had, you
• 44:00 - 44:30 know, money saved up and all of this was, you know, we had invested a bunch into the business and whatnot, but um, you know, we just made the decision that, okay, let's just go full in like if we're going to commit, we're going to do it now. We're not it's not going to this isn't going to last if we if we wait till next year, you know. Uh, so we just took a took a dive. And um one of the things that really kind of helped that move forward was the fact that you know we had been working with some some brands here and there, you know, uh nothing too official, you know, just
• 44:30 - 45:00 some product or, you know, small stuff like that. And um and then one day Specializ reached out to us. And uh and that was kind of the thing that we were like, all right, if a company as big as Specializ wants to work with us, maybe there's something here. Maybe there's something that that the more value that we see. Yeah. That we're not necessarily seeing right now. And we that happened kind of at perfect timing and uh that ultimately let us, you know, uh make it a full-time thing. Um then obviously
• 45:00 - 45:30 there was a lot of ups and downs. Nothing's ever smooth, right? You know, there's there were some times where we were very not not wealthy. Like we're still not like wealthy, but like there was sometimes we were dead broke. Like it was it was kind of sketchy sometimes, you It was like um you know and and we're living at our parents as well, right? So it's like you know we had a good good foundation but there was there was some moments where we were like all right we might have to go back to work you know and um uh no we just stuck to it and and just like you know we just got lucky with when it was time to
• 45:30 - 46:00 really think about our future. Then all of a sudden the next level came and you know then we had that uh the seat dropper video which um which that one we I took this the the seat off my seat dropper and like it went stupid viral like that I think I stopped counting it about 400 million views like that thing was shared like everywhere. Oh my god, dude. Dude, it was crazy, man. We had we had like rappers in Europe were sharing that video. We had Shaq shared the video. Like it was wild. Like that thing got reposted. Most of those views didn't
• 46:00 - 46:30 go to me, which sucks because everyone just stole the video and did their own thing with it. But yeah, I I I was keeping track of it. The amount of views that thing got was insane. And that video ultimately was like the okay, this is 100% what we have to do. Like this is there's no we're at the point of no return now. Like, and that's when it started becoming like, you know, we're not just like some guys that are making YouTube videos. It's like, okay, this is we're actually monetizing off of this now. Like, and we started to figure out how to monetize. And it was like, okay, we can't like I'll go to the grocery
• 46:30 - 47:00 store and people will recognize me. I go to a bike shop, you know, and it's like everyone's like, "Oh, it's that guy." You know, I go to the trails to a ride and there's people that are like taking pictures of me without me seeing them taking pictures of me. It's like stuff like that, right? And um and that's where it really started to to truly snowball to the point where it's like, "Okay, now we got to really think about like product deals, like company deals, you know, we got to think about like commercials. We got to think about like, are we going to travel to this event? are we, you know, where, you know, it's like who's comping this, you know, and
• 47:00 - 47:30 and everything really starts to become an actual business at that at that point where we're no longer just making YouTube videos or Instagram videos. Now it's become an actual business where like we have to strategize so that like if this company wants to work with us, we want to make sure we deliver for them and and they're happy and we're selling their products and and and X Y and Z as you know very very well. Exactly. Yeah. I mean, a lot of people think it's just like you get views on a video and then that's that's the business right there. But Instagram doesn't pay anything. Tik Tok pays like a little bit and YouTube
• 47:30 - 48:00 pays a little bit like if you're in the if you're monetized on them. But I mean, you have to really kind of go that extra step and turn those turn those eyeballs into into whether it's brand deals or your own product or whatever you decide to kind of do to make it into an actual an actual business because that's what it is. Yeah. Absolutely. Absolutely. And it's it's interesting. One of the things that people don't really to add to what you're saying is like there's this this stigma that you you'll see like really big creators, you know, like the Paul brothers or whatever on on on YouTube and they're like, "Oh, well, they're
• 48:00 - 48:30 super rich and they get a bunch of views." You know, there's there's also the the niches on YouTube where it's like, yeah, they're doing very generic stuff. You know, we're we're doing a very specific niche of mountain biking that you can't really sell a lot of stuff like AdSense can't really bring you much money for those views, right? So, so much of the revenue comes from those brand deals and from our own personal brands like merch and whatnot, right? Yeah. Um, this is one of the things I actually talked about in a recent video because people always ask me like, "Oh, what kind how much money you guys are making? All this kind of stuff." And it's like I finally broke it all down. It was like, "Okay, all the
• 48:30 - 49:00 all the money comes from this, this, this, this, and this, right? And deals cost this much. This costs that much. YouTube does, you know, pays about this much. Instagram doesn't pay anything, you know?" And it's like hearing people's reaction to that. It's like they think that, you know, it's like, oh, they're making millions of dollars off of Instagram. It's like, nah, that'd be nice, but no, that's not what's happening. Instagram doesn't pay anything. Yeah. Yeah. What's your favorite platform to post on then? I got to say YouTube. YouTube by far. Yeah. I mean, I love the the meta platforms cuz that's where we started from, right? Uh
• 49:00 - 49:30 Tik Tok was that next step that we took that really kind of like brought us into a whole new audience because of the the generation, Gen Z or Gen X or whatever that they're using as the Tik Tok platform. Um, but YouTube has been very consistent. They don't play with algorithms, you know, like so many of the like Instagram, I feel like every month they have a new algorithm or algorithmic change, you know, and same thing with Tik Tok. Like you have to just work so hard to get a video to get good views on those platforms. Whereas YouTube is, you know, they tend to they
• 49:30 - 50:00 want to show those videos to the audience that cares about you and they don't really veer beyond that. I mean, little things here and there, but it's like been fairly consistent. and the fact that YouTube pays us too. So, I like that. When you get a video that gets like 500 million views or when you can attribute it to that like tracking across all the people that are resharing it, is it that's mainly not mountain bikers, right? No, no, no. I mean, because there's not 500 million mountain bikers in the world, right? It's um it's most I would say most of our audience is is going to be the people who want to
• 50:00 - 50:30 mountain bike but either don't have the money for it or don't have a place to do it. like they, you know, they may live in a place where there's literally nothing for bikes at all, which is a lot of places in the world like that, right? Um that want to one day or they might, you know, go to a bike park sometimes and rent a bike and stuff like that, right? Um and it's really generally a very small amount of of of the follower base that's actually a proper like mountain biker. They're serious and whatnot. So yeah. Yeah, that's Yeah, it's kind of cool. I feel like I I know from just like being kind of like seeing
• 50:30 - 51:00 people do comedy in other spaces like the car space and just spaces that I'm kind of a little bit in but like not nearly as much as in mountain biking. And I feel like I almost learn more through the people that do comedy and kind of almost like make fun of themselves, make fun of other people in the space like exactly what you do. You kind of you're making you're poking fun at all the all the things wrong about Ming. All the all the people that are that's what people find funny. So, I feel like you can almost like if you're kind of like that just general viewer that like knows about it, but you're not really that into it, then like you can
• 51:00 - 51:30 learn almost more about it through that than like actually diving into the sport and Yeah. Yeah. stuff like that. Well, the thing is it's so intimidating to look at people who are on the World Cup circuit and and racing and like smashing through rocks, right? It's like the average person can't comprehend that mindset. I can't even comprehend that mindset. and so it's like trying to make something relatable to people, right? Ultimately, what I what I want to do is is get it to the point where, you know, bring as much people as I can into
• 51:30 - 52:00 biking, even even if it's just a weekend warrior, right? You just go out, you know, once a month, even if it's that, you know, it's like I want people to hit the trails because it it it achieves a bunch of different things that I kind of want to see in the world, right? I want to manifest the world that I want to live in, right? And so, it's like get people out to nature, you know, get them fitter, even though it's very hypocritical of me saying that, get more in shape, right? You know, it's like it's like have a connection with something beyond like just your couch at home, you know? It's like breathe fresh air. Like imagine how much better our
• 52:00 - 52:30 world would be if people would just go every weekend just to go breathe air. Like don't breathe city air. Like don't breathe that like laptop work air, you know? It's like get out of the cubicle. Like go do something, right? Go ride your bike. Yeah. And and on top of that, it's like if you get into the bike industry, a lot of these pros, you know, obviously right now there's a lot of weird tension in the bike industry because you have, you know, all these pros that that rightfully deserve to be paid more and and so on and so forth. So, it's like having, you know, more people involved in the industry, more of the regular everyday people, like not
• 52:30 - 53:00 these athletes and these influencers and stuff. It's like that helps move everyone forward. It does, you know, it it really does. It's like I'd love to have one day where we see bike companies, you know, offering NBA type sponsorship or or or deals, right, to athletes, right? I'd love to see someone like Matt Jones or, you know, uh, you know, anybody the Rampage guys getting a deal for like $10 million to do Rampage, you know? It's like, how cool would that be, right? Um, and I I know that it's possible, but we just got to get more people out there and and just bikes in
• 53:00 - 53:30 general, like most people in the world have a bike. Yeah. They don't have cars, they have bikes. Yeah. Yeah. It's like you can do this. Like maybe don't take your like clunker out, you know, your cruiser out to hit rampage. But no rampage. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. But you you know what I mean, right? Yeah. Exactly. Comedy is a much easier way to It's It's a much more like approachable way to like consume and learn about mountain biking when you don't really know that much. Yeah. Absolutely. It gets It seems like it gets that person that just kind of barely knows about it to to get out
• 53:30 - 54:00 on the trail. Yeah. And it's and it's like what you're saying to your original point is is like it's it it makes it less intimidating, too. Yeah. It's like, oh, there's some there's some sense. Those guys wearing the the the full face helmets, you can't see their eyes. It looks scary when I look at them on video, but you know what? Maybe maybe they're all right. Cuz have you noticed that there's like, you know, uh there is kind of like that aura, right, with biking where you want to be like discreet, mysterious, like
• 54:00 - 54:30 oh, he's wearing the striped shirts. Oh, that's his style, you know? It's like it's like get out of here, bro. It makes it intimidating. Yeah. It's cool, though. I mean, everyone wants their own style, but it's like it's like just looking off like when you're at a bike park and you see people like like you think someone's like staring at you, but they have the goggles on, so you can't see where they're looking. You're just like like, "What the hell's going on? Did I do what's wrong with me? You know, like so. Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. All right. I want to I want to talk about something that that I I've got some funny stories from, but Okay. What's the What's the
• 54:30 - 55:00 Have you ever had any funny interactions while you're filming a video in public and somebody rides up on you on the trail or maybe walks past you and sees you like, "What the heck are you doing?" Dude, it's there's there's a lot, you know? Uh, nothing too extreme, but I will say that like one of the things that cons continually happens is like when if we're out and about filming, we started gravitating towards going to less populated areas just because like there is like that that that real stigma of like ah here's some YouTubers, you know? It's like the what's up YouTube?
• 55:00 - 55:30 Like that whole thing is so cringe. Like it's so cringe and like people around you feel it too. Like you're vlogging on the trails. Like I like I'll go to bike parks and I just I just won't bring the camera with me, you know? It's like I just like I've learned to separate like where it is where we're going to have fun and just ride and hang and like work, right? And so, you know, just having like weird interactions like that where people are looking at us like what is wrong with these guys, right? You know, I've kind of learned to balance that a little bit. I will say like the public filming is really tough. Like if
• 55:30 - 56:00 you're going to go to a grocery store or something like you get a lot of dirty looks, like a lot of dirty looks. and like grocery stores and stuff like that, they don't want you filming in there, too. So, it's like I'm always worried that we're going to get like arrested or something like that. But to give you a very specific story though, like I'll give you a very like kind of a bad story. Yeah. There was this one time that back when I we were still living in in the Bay Area in California, one of the things that is very problematic about where we grew up is that mountain
• 56:00 - 56:30 biking is super frowned upon. like you you can ride in some places, but it's most single track is illegal to ride. And like there's a very big horse community. There's there's always been a a big clash between like the horse community and the mountain bike community. You know, every every once in a while you'll hear a story of like a biker came down the trail and scared the horse and bucked the rider off and they went to all that. That's happened so many times. But there was this one particular area that I had always known was not a place you want to go if you're a biker. Yeah. And but the problem with
• 56:30 - 57:00 it is it's very scenic. It's a very, very beautiful area. And so we were like, you know, let's go film the video just in the parking lot. We're not going to take the bikes off the rack, none of that stuff, right? So we go over there and we film the video and everything's great. But then as we're packing up to leave, this lady comes up on a horse and she's like, "Hey, uh, just want to let you know we called the cops on you." We're like, "What?" Like, "What do you mean you call? We didn't do anything. What do you call the cops on us for?" And she's like, "Yeah, yeah, no, there's no bikes here." So we called the sheriff. He's coming right now. We're
• 57:00 - 57:30 like, "What?" And then she just gets on our horse and rides away. And we're like, "Dude, no way. You got to be kidding me, right?" And sure enough, we pack up. We're like, at this point, we're like, "Oh god, we got to get out of here. This is not good. I don't want to interact cuz they're going to just ticket us anyway." You know, that's how it is over there. Even though we didn't ride the trails, we didn't do anything. Just ticket us, right? And so, we start packing up and we start leaving. And sure enough, we see the sheriff coming the other way. We're like, "No freaking way." And he just like looks at us and like sees that we're leaving and then just kind of like, you know, didn't do anything.
• 57:30 - 58:00 But it's like that dynamic has always been really tough for filming cuz I've mocked multiple times like the area that I grew up in. I've mocked the county. I've mocked the rangers. I've seen those videos. Oh, I've mocked the hell out of them, right? And dude, like it's gotten to the point where I'll go and go to a park somewhere and the rangers know me by name. Like they will literally say like, "Hey, Sebastian." I'm like, "How do you know who I I've never met you? How do you know who I am?" Right? And that actually really started to freak me out like towards the end when we were still living there where it was like dude like any day they could make an
• 58:00 - 58:30 example out of us like any day they could take this YouTuber that like you know clearly is defying to their rules and you know and he's influencing the youth to go out and have fun on their bikes you know he's making fun of us. Yeah. You know, it it was one of those things where I could just feel, you know, cuz they have done that in the past. Like to continue talking smack about the county I grew up in, but they had done that in the past. Like one of my buddies got caught trail building out there and they tried getting him for over a million dollars. Like they tried finding him over a million dollars and luckily he has some, you know, he has
• 58:30 - 59:00 he's higher places and he has some, you know, for some buddies that know some people who are in the, you know, the legal legal legal space. So he was able to get himself out of that situation and bring the fine way down and and it was like some corruption type stuff like like they were bringing in fake biologists with fake certificates to prove that like to prove that like oh the trail damage was this much and this is how much it's going to cost. Like dude they were trying to make an example out of him and they were hoping that no one would question it and it it came crumbling down like he he ended up bringing the fine way down. He went out
• 59:00 - 59:30 there I think himself and just shoveled all the stuff away and it was fine at the end of the day. It was like, you know, that having that happen to someone that I knew was such a eye opening moment where I was like, "Oh, dude." Like, they want to they want to really take down like they really don't want mountain bikers out there. All right. Well, this has been great. I just want to wrap this up. Like, what's next? What's next for Normal Mountain biker? Well, we've got uh interesting stuff that that, you know, has kind of on the horizon. We, you know, decided to this year we're we're kind of, you know,
• 59:30 - 60:00 we we we ended our partnership with Specialized Bikes and uh so we're actually solo on the bike side of things, which is which is exciting, you know, a little bit scary cuz it's been like, you know, the last four years or so we've been, you know, tied to Specialized and a lot of the reasons why where we are is because of them, right? Uh so we're we're kind of doing this new thing where I want to ride some new bikes, you know, I want to try new products out there, get some new stuff in the videos, freshen things up a little bit. um take the creativity to a whole new level. You know, we've been I've I've been sitting on so many ideas.
• 60:00 - 60:30 You know, I got notes in my phone of like all these video ideas for like long form YouTube content that, you know, that I've never been able to make in the past because it may push the boundary just a little bit too much, right? And and I I tend to believe that like content's kind of getting a little stale in the bike industry right now. So, I want to do stuff that no one has ever done before. like, you know, a couple weeks ago I dropped the video of, you know, me shooting a bike, you know, with a bunch of different calibers with real firearms, right? Like I was shooting that thing and it was so much fun. So, it's like stuff like that where it's
• 60:30 - 61:00 like really pushing the boundary of what has been done in the content world. Um, and you know, that's kind of the main plan moving forward, you know, is is is doing that, you know, becoming a lot more independent. We still work with a lot of great companies like you know OneUp and Heatwave and so on and uh so not not like moving away from brands but you know trying to to to create a nice balance for us you know something exactly you know and and trying to be more collaborative with with more more companies right and I think that's really the the the name of the game nowadays you know trying to find what
• 61:00 - 61:30 fits best for what situation and um yeah it's it's it's great stuff you know there's some other stuff that I I can't say just just yet but you know you know what I'm you know excited the audience should be you're one of the few people who know what's happening soon. So so there's some stuff coming up but uh but yeah I'm hoping that that in the next few months we'll be able to show the audiences and and uh and hopefully it's it's cooler than I I hope it is. So yeah. All right. I'm very excited for you. I'm so happy we got you on the podcast. I'm happy to be here. This was great. So excited for
• 61:30 - 62:00 the future. Thank you for the audience for watching this. And if you haven't, check out this guy's content. You've definitely seen it. If you're watching this podcast and you haven't seen this guy, then you're lying to yourself. You've seen him. But thanks, man. Thank you. It's been amazing. Been a great podcast. Thanks for having me. It's It's awesome. Wishing you guys the best as well. And we want to give you something back. We want to make purchasing your bike parts fun. You're going to buy them anyway, so might as well. This is this right. I was earning way better. I'm
• 62:00 - 62:30 just like this, dude. Or you can make up any job title you want at Recon. I'm CEO of Recon. Oh, whoa. That was I haven't met Jonno yet, but one of these days I know. Hey, guys. Oh, is it? We're all good here. Yeah. You know, they b got bucked off their horse. Oh, and it's to the point where I'll go somewhere and and they Oh, struggles. Podcasting is hard.