Michael Marckx is the founder and CEO of the Belgian Waffle Ride, one of the biggest and most influential multi-surface, gravelish series in the world. He’s a prime mover behind what has become today’s booming gravel scene and wow, this guy has lived what would be 20 lives the average human.
We talk everything that went into the birth of the BWR including Michael’s time as CEO of a publicly traded company, his other career as a professional musician, his other other career as a professional triathlete during the golden age of the sport when Kenny Souza had unrivaled hair and Mark Allen and Dave Scott were battling it out for the Ironman and Michael’s childhood in an environment where running marathons when you were 12 was normal.
Most importantly, we talk about why you should pick something hard to do with friends and go do it. That’s what I did last fall when I did the BWR Kansas Wafer with the No Pressure No Diamonds crew and got a taste of the Belgian Waffle magic then swore I would never go back and am now going back.
Choose the Hard Way is the show about how hard things build stronger humans who have more fun.
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Learn more: https://www.choosethehardway.com/episodes/michael-marckx-bwr
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Mexico was amazing and what was most amazing about it was that that is where this the spirit of gravel has gone to live because it’s like this brand new thing and everyone’s excited about it and everyone is taking care of everyone people take a wrong turn and they come
In and they’re not angry you know they’re oh let’s just time to party um and it was also the largest gravel race in Mexico history which was kind of cool personally I I flew back on the night of the race with a fever and that was three and a half
Weeks ago and I’ve been sick this entire time with one flu or another it’s been uh a challenging month awesome what a great chance to just get to know yourself a little bit better on this this Voyage of illness yeah now I’m sorry to hear that I mean
That also is what typically happens right we kind of get to the end of whatever the thing is you have a an operational pause and that’s when your body reminds you that everything that you’ve done to it for the period of time prior to that and you pay the price yeah
The worst part about that is let’s say you train for a huge race and everything’s going great and then and you’ve put yourself right on the line and then you start to taper and then a few days before the race that’s when you get sick that’s happened to me a lot has
It ever happened at a really inopportune time yeah pretty much some of the most important races of my life what do you think was the most important race of your life um I won the Iron Man qualifier here as a pro in California that was a big race
Um but like literally I finished that race I went into that race having been sick for 3 weeks didn’t think I should do it but they paid my entry in my hotel so I went to go do it came out of the water in about 7th I was like Oh I
Thought I’d quit after the water then I came off the bike around 7th and I was like well I’ll just do the run and I ran down the guy who was leading you could see the the lead Vehicles right around the Entourage of the leader and I caught the guy and I
Knew him and I said to him you blew it and he goes what I go yeah you blew it I’m a Miler there’s no way you can beat me and then um out sprinted him and then I’ve never raced a triathlon since I got so sick with chronic fatigue I didn’t
Get to go and do the Hawaiian Iron Man um I spent the next few years with battling with chronic fatigue that was that has plagued me off and on ever since um and that’s one of those cases where you train and train and train too much and you put yourself over the limit
And then you go and do one big race and that’s it your body just says screw it we’re done and that’s what happened to me that was kind of the mentality at that time in Triathlon I have to imagine some of your heroes must have been you
Know just the legends of the sport that trained with them right I trained with Mark Allen Scott Tinley right Kenny Kenny Souza those guys all live down here we’d raise those other guys but we all week in week out trained and hurt each other it was just mega mega volume
Like what kind of what kind of hours were you putting in at that time I swam six days a week I rode between three and 500 a week and i’ because running was sort of my forte I’d only run three or four times a week but that’s like too
Much as it is and then trying to work um I tried to do all of that and I was playing music so I was playing music at night and then sometimes I go straight to the race having not gone to sleep do the race and then sleep a lot of
Times I would you know go to the pool to swim the 6 am. workout straight from the gig and that sort of Duality living that kind of challenged life challenged in terms of sleep um eventually ruined me but I ended up doing a TED talk about that specific
Dynamic of uh trying to balance being two th being good at two things that that are not you know mutually reinforcing when you were a musician and maybe you cover this in your Ted talk but when you were a musician were you living pretty clean or would you have a
Couple of beverages how did that go for you you know our family we have a Belgian Heritage which was you know inspired the bwr is but I was allowed to drink beer at a young age like I could have beer with dinner at 13 maybe it’s some wine but I preferred
Beer and while I never had an unhealthy relationship with it gigging easily if you’re playing two sets in a night you’re you’re going to drink a pitcher or two of beer every night and uh you know that weighs on you too in a number of ways now going back kind of your peers
That you were training with at the time I’m old enough to remember the legendary triathle magazine cover with Kenny Souza who I believe probably had the best hair in the history of the sport and I know he was more of a do athlete was it hard
For you to be around hair that was at that level no it wasn’t because um my hair game challenged Kenny’s okay um I had a nose ring so I I was beating him in in the rock and roll sort of thing but my hair was at least his length and
Had a bit of a wave to it slightly sexier than Kenny’s but Kenny had a faster 10,000 meter time than I did because Kenny could uncork he could go 2845 for 10,000 so he’d beat me by a minute plus Kenny had some pretty strong highlights if I remember correctly were
You in that game no no highlights all natural okay all right so you get out of the you get out of the triathlon game I think you know something that people who go do your events I think a lot of them at some point in the event question like
Like what’s wrong with this guy why did he do this to me and why am I here for you how did it all get started how did we end up in this place where we all want to go do your events now well I suppose we have to go back a
A long way um as a child I was the oldest of four my dad was the oldest of six um I had asthma so my dad’s like no son of mine’s gonna have asthma so his his remedy was start running that build up my lungs and make them stronger um
Fortunately we also went to the doctor who prescribed medicine medicine back then kind of screwed you up was was lame but my dad got me running so I started running I could usually make it about a half a mile before the asthma kicked in but over time with the medicine um and some
Dedication uh I could run and I would get better and as with all things in life as we start to get better whether it’s playing the guitar running writing a bike it’s inspiring to us we want more of that moress and uh I I found it interesting and so
In the seventh grade when I was 12 I ran my first marathon and um which isn’t saying much because my brothers ended up doing it when they were eight and nine years old my sister did it when she was 14 and several other times my parents did it so
There was this natural thing in our house to go and do crazy [ __ ] um that same year when I was 12 I did my first road race on a bicycle um and I think the thing that sticks out in my mind um that took many years to germinate as a seed of
Inspiration was one time I was late to get to school and I took my road bike in the dirt because there was a shortcut and I went down these whoops then across this field past the big bullies in the eth grade and uh made it
To and one of them yelled you can’t ride that bike in the dirt and uh I said I just did and uh that became that was something that stuck with me then later in life I used my running skills and love of cycling to do
Cycle cross and became a at a UCI Pro card to race cross I loved it but I thought hm I really like longdistance races I have this Belgian Heritage I love Belgian waffles I love Belgian ale even more why not combine all those things into one festive weekend or at
Least one day of racing so it’s like a six seven8 12h hour cyclocross race um that’s bracketed by Belgian waffles and Belgian ale um and then over the years it’s been 13 years bikes have advanced tires have advanced so I’ve been able to make with with my partners in crime we’ve been
Able to make the courses more and more challenging more and more Dynamic and um you know I think at one point we reached a threshold where it’s like 146 miles and you know 15,000 ft of climbing or something that was ridiculous and we’ve we’ve backed it off a little bit to find
Kind of the sweet spot right around 130 miles of unroad insanity maybe that’s your sweet spot I think mine’s mine’s more in that wafer range at this uh this point in my athletic trajectory that’s fine that’s a 4our plus race that U mimics all the pain and suffering of the waffle yeah
What were you expecting to have happen when you had the first event what expectations did you bring into it um well there were I invited 136 people of note um who I thought would enjoy the experience I created a course and a dynamic that I wanted to expose the guys that do the
Group rides that never do any work and then all of a sudden they’re there for the Sprint you know that annoying guy there were quite a few of them in San Diego and I thought let’s make something that exposes them so we did that and
Basically at the end of it 118 of them finished and I just asked them to say hey look we’re going to do this again next year it’ll be harder um but tell people let them you had a good time and we’ll grow this thing together and so
This community built up from there and it it the next year had twice as many people and the next year had twice as many people and it kind of grew By Word of Mouth there’s been really no marketing we the marketing I do now is email and social
Media um and occasionally somebody does a banner ad or something for us but really it’s been Word of Mouth that started from that initial race 133 years ago was it commercialized at that outset did you have a relationship with sponsors or was it just like truly an
Organic thing where you got some Pals together and gave it a shot um I was actually the president and CEO of spy optic and I created the event as a a marketing um exercise that was to be replicated in all the different silos so we do photo and snowboarding and so each
One of those silos would have its own unique sort of Belgian waffle ride ass thing um so that was really sponsored by spy but pretty within the next year there were other brands that wanted to be a part of it and again like the growth of it was hey we’d answer the fax
Machine and somebody was interested in partnering with us and how long they came when you put something into motion like that and give it a shot for the first time and you know that’s of course not the first time anybody had ever put a bike race together it was the first
Time someone had put that specific type of bike race together though so when you actually had it what did you learn from it and what was not expected that happened um you I learn something every time so that that one I learned the most the thing that was fascinating to me
Is the the fact that people would cheat um even in a small group of 136 there were people that literally just cut the course and then claimed that they finished and then that became something that happened every year and that part you know I really didn’t enjoy
Because then you have to start like putting timing mats out and the first few years I would personally check everyone’s straa to make sure they did the whole course and that was kind of lame too like even having to second guess somebody like dude show me your
Straa um so that that part’s weird to me that people would you know intentionally cut the course the other thing is excuse me um you for such a long race you really got to have like the police there you got to have traffic control you got to have safety measures in play and
Every year we spend more and more money to to provide that you know not only police escorts but traffic control at at most every intersection um and just tons and tons of volunteers are needed to make sure they don’t turn right here or um another thing that’s fascinating to me is we
Mark the course course and then people move the signs or take the signs so we end up marking the course several times at every venue doesn’t matter where we are people move the signs so what we do in the morning of the race is we send
Out in advance guys on motos to do the course to make sure all the arrows are there they’re there in advance of the race enough to like move the signs but sometimes it’s within seconds of the leaders getting there then they jump back on their motorcycle and go down to the next intersection
That that stuff kind of intrigued me too and then there was like local people that would intentionally screw with the writers and move the signs like that Were Somehow didn’t like the race being there that that part you know it’s irritating yeah it’s definitely irritating and it’s kind of axiomatic it
It seems to happen it pretty much every event that’s in this uh kind of rotor gravel category it happens a lot unfortunately for the you know for the participants of that initial event which s you know was kind of the best kind of experiment getting motivated people together that are competitive that
You’re friends with and seeing what happens and like you mentioned some of it was uh unexpected like people cutting the course equally did you have a sense of of the type of experience that uh you hoped people would have and how it might be different from you know like you
Mentioned Triathlon for example or cyclocross which can be a lot of fun what kind of experience did you want people to have with this type of event though um yeah I wanted it to be more familial in the sense that there’s a pageantry to it so in the morning I
Wanted everyone to break bread or in this case waffles together I wanted that to be a part of it um not just hey show up for the race maybe you’ll have a waffle or not no sit down meet some new people have a waffle listen to the
Pre-race musings and then go do the race and be out there for six seven 10 12 hours then when you come back break some more bread tell stories drink some Belgian ale and commiserate or otherwise celebrate with everyone that made it back to the finish line so for me it’s
This long protracted fun party that has breaking of the bread at the beginning and the end um so it’s the cele celebratory day that um people of all stripes and all abilities enjoy so you can sit down with Pete STNA and have a waffle or you know name your favorite
Gravel racer and that thing that to me is very special while this has been going on for the past 13 years what’s been going on with you and your personal relationship with Endurance Sports uh when I left spy like seven years ago or maybe more I just started Consulting with different
Brands um because I have a history in action sports I did end up working with a variety of Brands so I I did work with 100% but then I also helped Billabong and Quicksilver merge into one company I ran a division of U for Adidas I ran their Global watch
Division um and worked on Myriad projects but all the while nurturing the Belgian waffle ride still doing doing racing of my own I can no longer run so all I’ve been doing the last you know 20 years is race my bike um but I that’s that’s it I can’t do
Triathlons anymore so everything for me endurance related is getting on a bike and going to try and find new UN roads to share with other people that’s what it’s been about what do you get out of doing that well for me one there’s the advant
Ure of the hunt um you know I’ll I’ll scour the map and like what about this one and then I’ll go there and find it and it’s magnificent except it’s got a big yellow gate in front of it or you know you go out and find something else
And it’s private property but sometimes you go there you find that it’s magnificent that it’s private property and in the past I’ve like gone to the the property owner and said can we please go through your property and many times they’ve said yes which has been
Great so for me it’s the adventure of Discovery so that I can come back and share that with somebody else and we’re still doing that to this day yeah hearing you describe it I hadn’t actually thought about it this way until until this moment Great Courses I think are they’re
Like great tracks because you know like there’s the break or the drop it’s unexpected it does something to you or makes you feel something that you didn’t anticipate was going to happen and then there’s perhaps like some calm or a sense of renewal in between those
Moments and I don’t know if you have you ever thought about it that way and like the musicality of what you’re building and sequencing uh yeah I I often because I’ve made a lot of films over the years excuse me so many times I’m thinking about what song would go with
This particular part of the race or this particular part of the scenery and then a lot of times you come back and you’re looking at all the b-roll and all the stuff that’s going to go into making a film and then you start to think about
If only we could get access to that David Bowie track or you know like getting access to music that’s been in the cultural Zeitgeist that’s been inside of our brains that makes us feel a certain way like adding that to the the scenery or the at least the
Documentation of it is um a dream but more times than not like literally on some of the films we’ve made I’ve just used my own music uh inside the film because it didn’t cost anything or you know you have to you have to sign publishing deals or you off the-shelf
Music that you pay a minimum for um I’m not sure that that was your question but that’s my answer no I mean I think that’s a really that’s a really interesting consideration as well is what music might go with the visual experience of what’s happening I I think
The way I’m thinking about it which may not actually make any sense is you you know you have these like I’m thinking about bwr Kansas where you have moments where it’s rolling terrain it’s Hills it’s wind you have directional changes in wind is which you know that might be
A verse then there’s like a chorus and then there’s an unexpected break where like oh man now we’re going into single track I didn’t think that that’s where this track was going to take us and uh it makes you it makes you feel something like there’s like a very
Viseral emotional feeling that I personally have in a race in response to the composition of the elements and how they’re sequen yeah there like sorry musically musically you can like look at Nirvana and the formula of eight bars and eight bars and like here’s this quiet verse
And here’s this loud chorus and um you could see cycling is often that way it’s like intermittent bike racing is inter intermittent meaning you’re plotting along packs going until someone attacks and then you have to respond I’d always hoped that the Belgian waffle rides would be more like a king gizzard and
The lizard wizard track that goes on for 40 minutes and it goes all over the place and and shifts time signatures goes from reggae to speed metal uh into something totally melodic or even classical like that’s how I look at the Belgian waffle rides yeah I haven’t experienced a lot
Of Belgian waffle rides but with what I have experienced that’s exactly the experience that I had where sometimes another element gets fled on you’re like oh wow like that’s that’s happening right now and it is you have to be present to it you have to live through
It and then there’s something on the other side of it when you think about the types of courses that maybe you haven’t yet been able to put together is there anything that you kind of have a fantasy about or a dream about assembling or do you feel like you’ve kind of
Found the composition of elements that feels pretty spot-on um I always hearken back to like a Perry rube where you’ve got 30 some odd sectors they each have a name they each have a difficulty like they’re they’re the the race is punctuated by three dozen sectors and everything else
In between is kind of the the either the pallet cleanser or the frenzy before that um so I I go back to like wanting to have something like that but then each sector each named and sector that has its own difficulty um could be single track could be Dismounts could be sand could
Be water um so not necessarily cobblestones but challenges that force people before the race to consider what tire what bike what tire pressure um all the things that would make it either for some people more comfortable to finish or make allow them to more likely finish or
On the other side someone that’s racing is like what’s the minimal Tire I can get through I can use to get through the sand and the rocks and the single track um and enjoy this Dynamic of however many sectors so I would say to answer your question I look forward to going to
New venues that have a Avid cycling base there that we can bring something that adds to that community and then working with those people there to come up with a concoction of unroad sectors that sort of mimic what I just mentioned with you know always using the reference of Perry
Rube as the classic Benchmark for asphalt and then some onroad feature and back to Asphalt and some onroad feature that’s how I look at it you know Michael you’re highly accomplished as a business person as a musician as an artist with what you’ve done with bwr at this point in your trajectory as
A human and with your career what brings you satisfaction and what do you want more of from what you’re doing professionally you know I used to dream about World Tour Racers coming and um we used to joke about the bwr becoming a UCI race at some point which you know it
Could have or maybe it could it’s not really of interest to us anymore for me personally um The Joy I get is from people that tell me about their experience like hey I signed up for the Belgian waffle ride and I haven’t raced my bike in 30 years and it literally transformed my
Body and my mindset and it’s those stories that I want to hear more of like how the Belgian waffle ride has allowed people to live more meaningful lives or it got them out of depression or got them out of some spiral and um the more stories the more
People I connect with the more it makes me want to provide that opportunity for people to reach grow aspire to more um and less about like the best racers in the world I think if the best racers in the world are doing it it inspires
Others to want to do it so those two go hand inand but I’m most inspired by people like you and I that through the prism of the Belgian waffle ride have enriched their lives this is not Belgium waffle ride related You’ mentioned that you had your UCI Pro card for
Cyclocross which is a sport that I used to love participating in and that I still enjoy watching it also you know is in very steep decline in the United States and yeah it was really interesting watching the national championships which was a great race and
To see I think greater than 60% of the athletes in the top five in the men’s and women’s Races they were on gravel bikes actually I thought I was like wow this is really interesting I mean the guy who won uh the men’s national championship
He was on yeah Eric was on a gravel bike right the pivot volt which is a great bike um what do you think’s H why has that happened why is cyclocross in Decline and where do you think that branch of the sport is going I don’t
Know it’s such a sad thing but you could also say the same for road racing yeah um we here in San Diego used to have tons of road races there there aren’t I mean there’s may be one now and it’s very not well attended yeah southern California used to have
Lots of cyc cross races and then for whatever reason people stopped going I think and you know it the statistics support this is that yeah people came into bike riding um but they no longer wanted to race Criterium or road races and they gravitated towards doing doing cycle CR or sorry gravel races
Same thing with cycle cross the Advent of gravel racing coincided with the decline in cyc cross racing which those two should go hand inand the exciting thing about what’s going on now is with Nika and mountain bike racing for kids all of a sudden you have this um youthful
Surgence of participants that will eventually become gravel Racers I’m hoping Road Racers and cyc cross they’re just entering through the prism of mountain biking um but I think the general trend has been away from riding bikes on roads and getting hit by cars more into the gravel where it’s more of
An adventure and less pressure yeah yeah I think that makes a ton of sense and I think also at the participant level I mean a lot of pro athletes have said this who race cyc Crossing and race gravel I’m sure you hear it from your athletes all the time
That all the equipment that you need to do cyc across which I actually think is kind of a fun part of the sport you do have to have a lot of resources to be able to do that which makes it a bit less accessible but you know that’s a
Fun component of the sport it’s also really expensive the racing itself as we know is AB it’s just absolutely brutal and and I think it’s actually you know it’s it’s quite hard on your body it’s probably not a lifetime sport unless you’re Don Myra or Justin Robinson or
Some of the other cats that we’ve seen out in California who are uh who are still getting after it and you know I mean maybe that’s part of it too is you go to a pwr you get together with your friends you know like you said it’s just
Kind of it’s this holistic experience with the community and you know cyclocross has a bit of that Vibe too there’s definitely a a good vibe in the parking lot and everything but it’s it’s one hour and then you kind of got to take your three bikes and and what four
Sets of wheels and get out of there yeah I I do hope that somehow we get back to cyclocross being a popular sport or more popular in the US because you know you go to Europe and it’s it’s it’s a party and they’re eating waffles and they’re
Drinking beer and some people are racing but 20 30 40,000 other people are just there for the party yeah definitely when you look beyond the uh kind of the sphere of the bwr ecosystem that you’ve created are there other events or races in the United States that either you’ve
Participated in or have watched that you’re intrigued by um as a kid I always enjoyed this thing called called the Catalina Marathon which was a a trail Marathon that went from zero elevation to 1500 back to zero to 1500 back to zero to 1500 really challenging running on
Trails with Buffalo chasing you um you started at one end of the island so you camped out then you did this whole crazy race and then finished in downtown um uh on Catalina at Avalon sort of this romantic destination and it’s a full-on adventure for a weekend I love things like that um
I also appreciate some of the races that um are considered gravel races too you know there’s um like the mid South um I think that SBT does a great job like there’s some other um there’s a lot of really great race directors putting on quality events
That I I appreciate there’s also a lot that don’t do they do a lot of gravel races but they’re not very good I sort of hope that they go away and that that allows the really good ones to serve more people um yeah so I’m and I’m also always intrigued by
I’m intrigued by the stuff that Heather Jackson is doing like she’s you know getting after ultra distance running which is thing I used to do in the past things like the western states 100 that have been around for decades those the the the the mythology behind those
Things um and those races and the progression of times for all those things that fascinates me yeah Heather Jackson is definitely a fascinating athlete and what she’s doing with her program now I find to be pretty intriguing I don’t know Heather but I’d like to have her on the show and learn
More about oh you should I can make the introduction she’s amazing and tough and able to suffer like no one’s business yeah that’d be that’d be awesome I’d love to have her on the show I’ve been following uh the way she’s kind of putting together this interesting menu of events and
Experiences and it’s it’s definitely interesting and different yeah I’m excited because she’s doing the Triple Crown of gravel too which um it’ll be very interesting to see how the top Riders mix it up over three very different courses yeah absolutely so when you’re looking ahead to um to
2024 what kind of feedback have you been getting from athletes you know the past couple of years how’s that shaping what you’re doing or not and you know what are we going to see that’s potentially new or different we definitely try to avoid creating any pinch points because we’ve
Had a few pinch points in our race that you know affects people and that’s like the number one thing on the course we try to avoid like is it going to be safe can we make sure that we got enough traffic control and the the right um things in place to make
Make it easy for people to ride through avoid those those pinch points and then like where’s the fine line between ever and stupid in terms of technically challenging stuff across rocks or sand or anything that you know you don’t normally encounter in your day-to-day writing like basically trying to make
Courses that you can rip through but still require technical expertise endurance got to stop and eat um and you know the mixture of those things without without it being too challenging for an average Rider to complete and sometimes our courses get pretty challenging so this next year
We’ve really been spending time to hone in on what the most rippable courses are which of your courses do you think is the most challenging I think uh North Carolina is because of the amount of climbing that’s involved and then you know there’s some challenging gravel stuff there
Um San Diego is the most dynamic between all the different terrain that we have including sand but lots of single track and you know technically challenging things um those two are probably the most challenging I think Kansas was the most rippable um just in terms
Of it’s up and down and up and down and twisting and turning but like there’s a certain flow to it so you get to one of those challenging single tracks uh and you make it through that then you get back to the twisting turning flowy stuff um I really enjoyed
The courses we created there beyond the courses themselves anyone who’s done one of your events gets to experience the uh I think the world of the the brand and just the brand and the event it’s it’s incredibly immersive and there’s such a high degree of attention to detail to every element
And what goes into creating something that comprehensive which is highly intentional I would think um what rephrase that for me sorry yeah just uh you know whether it’s the race Bible the course itself the way you curate the experience it’s pretty different from what you’re experiencing I mean there’s some events that
That uh strive to put together that kind of experience but yours is kind of on a different level so behind the scenes yeah like what’s going on to put together something that’s that immersive for the participant yeah like if we’re firing on all cylinders and we’ve got a new course
Which I always try and do new course ideally what I do is okay here’s a new sector it’s got a Flemish name it’s a funny name we film it and talk about it and you know there could be 30 of those but within the race and then what I used
To do is on a weekly basis send out hey here’s a new sector and here’s the video of it here’s the explanation of it you probably want to quit now you know that kind of a thing to uh both Inspire and and um freak people out um
Now all of that gets then turned into 140 page Bible that talks about each sector what they’re going to what you’re going to experience during the race what maybe you should reconsider your tire choice or whatever weaving in our sponsors weaving in all the things that you’d want to talk about um especially
If we’re like going on Indian land let’s talk about the Indian people and you know their Heritage and what they’re about like let’s let’s give a little bit more detail to where it is we’re writing um the various things that we’re going to go through there and celebrate the
Entirety of that experience as as um enjoyed through the prism of writing on these challenging sectors and aside from what you’re doing with with bwr you know you’ve got a family um you’ve been a professional musician at this point in your life how do the like how do you
Balance all this because like you’ve got a lot of stuff going on now it’s just about rooting the kids on um our daughter’s a sophomore at Columbia our son’s a senior at NYU so it’s like let’s just get them to the Finish Line hopefully they’ll play as
Much soccer as they can and play music um and basically for me my main worry is how do I make enough money to keep him in school um and then professionally I’d like to you know just go back to just being a drummer I’d like to just do that
The rest of my life that would be fun and riding the bike too um and you know I’m making steps towards that uh what did playing in bands throughout your life teach you that you’ve brought into the world of business well you you got to be able to
Talk the talk walk the walk and what I mean by that is let’s say you get hired in this case by a band uh their drummer was strung out on heroin so you get hired to be their drummer you have to know the material inside and out you
Have to show up ready to go not waste anyone’s time and nail it and then once they become comfortable with you you can suggest hey you know that bridge why don’t we do that in halftime and do it a lot longer and then that’ll give you a
Chance to do a solo on the Guitar let’s extend this out because I’ve when I listen to this song it it just it’s asking for more um and that way you’re adding value so you’re doing your job but then you’re adding value now go to the professional world you get hired to
Do a job and at some point in time you want to do that job so expertly that then you can bring new Solutions new ideas new inspiration to that organization Inspire other people which then affects the culture and otherwise makes for um better business
So th I I I can liken those to that way and that you have to come into it um with discipline with the ability to read the room and know when you should suggest something and when you shouldn’t and then ultimately how do you add value to that
Enterprise um and how do you do so how do you communicate that to get everyone to buy into it those two things are very similar what have been some of your favorite moments as a musician that you found to be the most satisfying um when you a lot of the stuff that I
Play now is more loose like jazz stuff mhm so funky jazz where if it was an 8 minute song last night it could be 12 minutes tonight and when you’re on stage having a conversation with your bandmates in front of a large audience and that conversation is being witnessed by them
And it goes in places that it’s never gone before the audience may not know that you didn’t rehearse that but on stage you’re going oh my God and then when you finally come around to the head of the song or when you’re going to finish it and you finish it and everyone
On the stage turns and looks at each other and just kind of smirks like wow I’ve had lots of those moments because of the kind of music we play now we’ve also had lots of moments where it’s like oh boy someone went this direction and someone went that direction in the
Conversation and then you had to find your way back so it was total failure again A lot of times the audience doesn’t know which is might seem a little awkward but my favorite moments are those moments where you’re you’re treading in New Territory together with other people and you
Survive it and it’s really fun to do so how do you think about trust in relation to that that type of collaboration well the trust a lot of times comes down to the chemistry that you have with that person um so for instance if I’m on stage with my brother
He’s been my brother my whole life and I’ve been playing music with him I don’t even need to look at him when certain things that we’re going to mutually hit so to speak or emphasis um and then there’s other times where you’re playing with a new someone
New and it takes a lot of time playing with them to get that chemistry and the thing that benefits that is also hanging out with them while you’re not practicing while you’re just sitting around talking and getting to know them and their influences and what’s important to them and what they eat and
What they do uh and then that helps in part create the chemistry on stage so for me everything’s about chemistry including the businesses that you run if you’ve if you’re creating a good culture whether within the band or within the business there’s a chemistry that happens that someone else in your team
Knows exactly what you’re thinking or what you want and they make that happen and a lot of times they come back and say and I’ve got an IDE make an idea to make it even better and that’s the best because then the collaboration is working when you’re looking for people
To collaborate with whether it’s music or business and like let’s set aside your brother because like you said yeah he’s your brother and you’ve been playing music together forever what do you do to get a sense of whether they have the qualities that are going to lead to that level of
Collaboration and creating something you know bigger than the sum of its parts I think anytime you challenge somebody with a difficult question um and it doesn’t have to necessarily be Rel related to the task at hand but just challenges in general and how people deal with challenges that’s the thing that I enjoy
Like if I’m running a business a lot of times I’ll I’ll I’ll ask somebody who isn’t in marketing but is in within the organization I’ll challenge them to say hey you don’t have to answer me now but in the next few days come back to me
With an idea on how you think we could better Market our brand and give someone whether they’re in customer service or graphic arts or dare I say sales you know challenge them with okay you don’t like what we’re doing what is it that you’d like to do and what do you suggest
And then see what they come back with I know one thing when I was hired to turn around spy I sent an email to every one the 136 people in the business just four simple questions what’s working here what’s not working here what can we do to fix that and is
There anything else I should know and then from the responses to that I was able to determine who was engaged who wasn’t engaged who wanted more and who didn’t and that helped me realign the business and on this you know a month or two later I fired 32 people all in the
Same day because they were the people that really had no interest in being a part of that male then I was able to hire 28 people to replace those 32 people all of whom bought into the idea of creating happiness and fulfillment and all the things that we were the
Ethos of the Spy brand um and that’s how I end up doing it I just challenge people with some sometimes very simple questions at the end of the day what do you do to turn everything off and down regulate and chill out uh I have a very hard time time with
That I got I had this feeling that might be the case yeah you have a lot of stuff going on man how do you chill out um yeah because I I also run a digital agency with my brother so we’re working with new clients all the time and so I’m
I’m constantly thinking like shoot I could spend more time on that project because it’s exciting but then at some point you got to turn it off and I rarely do I find that taking the dog for a walk can be helpful if I don’t bring the phone because then there’s 40
Minutes there of decompression um a bike ride is probably the best thing for me the first 30 or 40 minutes of a bike ride I’ll still be thinking about work but then once I transcend that I can get into the fun places that a bike can take you on your
Mind um so those are the things that I do and unfortunately I self-medicate with uh alcohol uh to try and you know transition to a less agitated State how much attention do you pay to your sleep quite a bit I use a whoop um and I I because I’ve struggled
With sleep my whole life and then the last few years I had some major stress going on where sometimes I wouldn’t sleep for two nights in a row um I started getting into into the um the science of sleep and and i’ pay attention to my whoop every single day
Multiple times a day have you changed things to try to get better sleep yeah consistency um reading before I go to sleep helps me um if I don’t drink at all that helps but that usually takes time to even get into that state um and then certain things like tea at night
Like the right kind of tea that helps like I try and practice these rituals that help me get into the idea that I’m going to sleep now yeah when you look ahead is there anything do you have any big audacious goals that you haven’t given a shot yet that you want to
Try yeah I I’d really like to have our team have the Belgian waffle ride show up in Myriad places in Europe and create something where you think well they that’s the birthplace of the all this stuff but what if we could bring something to them that they don’t
Have uh this pageantry and celebration and something that um could capture the imagination of new writers in Belgium for instance that would be great like that’s a big aspiration for me is spreading the love to Europe and Beyond how far are you from making that happen not that far you want to say
Anything else about that our team’s working on it and I think that things will fall into place in the near future yeah uh and when you make that happen do you see you know like with the Triple Crown do you see it becoming a global
Thing or do you think is that kind of TBD no what I think is there’ll be a Triple Crown in Canada there’ll be a Triple Crown in the US there’ll be a Triple Crown in Mexico and then there’ll be oneoff events throughout Europe and South America um and you know maybe in Europe
The first thing we do is one event and then the next year we do a triple crown right that’s how I see it unfolding and then over time do you see there being a world championship type event from among Triple Crown winners or something like that yeah we’ve you know I work with
Iron Man man in the past so I learned quite a bit and you know it’s sort of an Iron Man model that yeah eventually wouldn’t it be great if let’s just say San Diego because it’s the OG event that that became the world championship you know and and maybe we mve that to
October or something to uh like the Iron Man which is in October and then let all all those events sort of send people to the World Championship or whatever whatever we call it just to go back to something we were talking about at the beginning of this conversation what did other kids think
About you and your brother and your family going out there and running marathons at 8 and 12 yeah well it it goes back to the culture we were immersed in we weren’t that much of an abberation like I remember at my junior high the last week a school they the mar
The the palis FES marathon where I grew up I ran it 31 times in a row at Junior High they would announce every kid that did it you know and back then it wasn’t a half marathon it was a marathon and it was really hard um we
Were a part of a community where the year that I when I was 14 I ran in the 240s for the marathon and won the 14 and under division there were 54 other their kids in that division that ran the marathon that year and that’s just how
It was so we were part of a community that did crazy things so like me paddling my surfboard for 20 miles was just like yeah just you know something you did in the summer um and my brother’s running it when they were eight or nine they were kids that were
Running it when they were six or seven so you know no big deal and I kept at it I kept doing it even though some years I wouldn’t even run between the marathon I wanted to keep my streak alive then I finally had knee surgery and my knee hurt too much but I
Wanted to keep my streak alive so I woke up at like 3 in the morning drove down to the start of the race and started jogging it um I made it about six miles and had to turn around and walk back and drove back home and got home at like I
Don’t know 5 something in the morning morning and woke my wife up she said what were you doing I was like oh I’ll tell you in the morning that was my last dish attempt to try and keep the streak alive and I just I cannot run anymore I
Thought you were going to tell me that you were out there on roller blades Michael I did um direct the first ever inline Marathon championships in 1991 I think it was the year um the same year that I directed The Orange County marathon which started at Anaheim Stadium and then finished at
UC Irvine closer to the beach and went through six municipalities oh wow yeah how did that go it was so interesting in so many ways it was also the US national Marathon championships for wheelchair so there’s all sorts of crazy stuff going on it was November 3rd it was
Unseasonably hot we were struggling to get water you know like it was just chaos going through six different municipalities to go you know point to point we had to like time it so that um there were two different trains that the race had to make it through and they
Were hopefully going to be on time because we started right on the money yeah and got everyone through that was chaotic um because could you imagine like a really long freight train stopping a race I me we see that kind of in tour to France and other races but
Like imagine that for a marathon how do you deal with that I think you’d have all the people running the marathon actually lift the train yeah it would have to be unloaded but I I think that it might be possible if you had teamw little collaboration yeah what does it
Take to be a great race director what characteristics do you have to have I don’t know I’ve never thought about that or um considered um myself that I think you got to be a party planner um and you want your guests to have the best time from the moment they
Get the invite to the moment they get home and lay their head on the pillow and say God that was such a great event um so it it comes down to attention to detail at every facet you know where the py potties are is important how warm the
Waffles are um how cold the beer is how safe the race is make sure there’s no trains in the way like every little thing I think a race director’s job is to think about the known and to anticipate the unknown think about the known and anticipate the unknown I think that
Those are great parting words of wisdom so Michael thanks for being here today and thanks for this conversation I really enjoyed it
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Great interview! Wow, this guy has done it all