Episode Transcript
Kristin: You're listening to the Channel Mastery Podcast, where business leaders in outdoor recreation learn what's working today to reach, engage, and convert their target audiences on the channels they prefer. My name is Kristin Carpenter, and I'm your host and the founder of Verde Brand Communications, the presenting sponsor of Channel Mastery.
Tune in every week here on Channel Mastery to learn how to earn your consumers' attention and how to build the all important emotional connection to your specialty brand. Thanks for listening, and subscribe today.
Welcome back, everybody, to another episode of the Channel Mastery Podcast. I have such a fun guest to share with you today. Welcome to the show, Jeremiah Bishop, who is an athlete ambassador and also a co-founder of a fantastic content series that I love, The Impossible Route. We're going to talk all about that today. Welcome to the show. It's so awesome to have you here.
Jeremiah: Thanks, Kristin. Thank you so much for having me on.
Kristin: Oh, yeah. We're going to have a great conversation today. We're right here at the beginning of December 2022. A lot of the people in the audience are building their budgets and plans for the coming year. You're a perfect person to tap into for insights and expertise in terms of what is it like out there?
I feel like what you're doing is documentary filmmaking for cycling and endurance, but you also are an athlete ambassador for Canyon. I love that brand. You do a lot of other things, you're a coach. So, I thought we could start by doing an introduction and then go into the way that you see your career going in 2023, because we're in such an accelerated period of change, still. But you're creating a lot of traction and growth through that change, so I thought you'd be a great person to talk with today. Tell us about yourself.
Jeremiah: Thank you. I'm a fan of sports marketing and communication. I was an advanced placement art student in high school. I was going to go to Maryland Institute of Art, but I found that I was really distracted with this passion for cycling and adventure. I was a little ADD too, so I just decided, hey, I'm going to try racing for a few years, see if I can do okay, and I started to do really well.
I had my ups and downs, big challenges. I've had a career that definitely exceeded my wildest imaginations. I've traveled the world. I won a couple national titles for cross country mountain biking, marathon, Pan American Games, and then later on got into long distance mountain bike race racing with Topeak-Ergon, Canyon Factory Racing, racing Cape Epic Transalp, a lot of these adventure oriented races which I really loved.
I loved the adventure travel aspect of it. Some of the teams that we were on, the better job than others of getting the message out, getting the story out. Lucky for me, I was part of a documentary called Off Road to Athens.
Kristin: When was this?
Jeremiah: That was based around the 2006 time period.
Kristin: Okay. That's why I didn't see it because I had a baby and a toddler at that time.
Jeremiah: I'll send you a DVD. I'm a little prepared because I was so young. I was rookie of the year and traveling the world, no idea what I was doing.
Kristin: Dave Wiens must have been on your team at that point.
Jeremiah: That was way before I was on Topeak-Ergon. I was racing for Trek-Volkswagen. It was way the kill end.
Kristin: Awesome.
Jeremiah: Yeah. Travis Brown, Sue Haywood. It was really kind of a wild time in mountain biking. We see these ebbs and flows, dips and peaks for interest in different areas of cycling, but I think exposure to that filmmaking process and the storytelling was formative in some of my later projects, and then ultimately, in The Impossible Route.
I've always had an interest in the creative side of it, but I didn't really know how to do it and what to talk about. I got a little lost in that for a little bit and just made sure I was always posting videos on Facebook and stuff like that, but I didn't take it seriously. It was an afterthought, that creative side and photography side. But then, really I think, with The Impossible Route itself, I had actually pitched a documentary to Canyon about. It's called All Time High.
Kristin: Before you get into this, how long have you been with Canyon?
Jeremiah: Eight years. Several years before they were in America, I was one of the guys on Dave Wiens's team. People would ask, hey, where do I get the bike? I'm like, well, sorry, they don't sell them in the United States. My, have we come a long way since.
Kristin: Yes, you have. You've seen fire and rain.
Jeremiah: It's really wild.
Kristin: Sorry to interrupt you.
Jeremiah: No worries. I do quite a bit. I did a bit of this, obviously, racing, but then I also worked with Blair Clark, the Canyon CEO on some of their needs for events. Drew was also kind of co-piloting Canyon's North American seedling effort. I knew Roman Arnold a little bit and his brother, Frank Arnold, who runs Ergon, because we were Topeak-Ergon and Road Canyon bikes. It was really, really interesting.
They certainly turned the industry on its head with direct to consumer style. But I think more importantly than that, it really kept true to their passion for cycling and really speaking their customers' language when it comes to giving people the tools that they need to go out and do awesome stuff, get back in shape, go on big adventures, chase their first triathlon.
As the story evolves, I've taken different roles. One of the things I jumped off of was that sort of initial pitch to do an adventure documentary, but it really didn't have a lot of the tools in place. I think they were maybe a little uncertain if it was worth thinking money into, this documentary about this Twilight year pro who wants to go and do a crazy expedition and climb the world's biggest cycling hill climb, but then I kept that on the back burner.
I was doing Canyon's demo and expo tour, doing appearances, doing races still, but it came back. We had this trip to Hawaii, a family trip. I remember thinking, that's one of the world's biggest hill climbs. It might not be the biggest. I think I found a bigger one in the Atacama region of Chile. We went and I invited the vegan cyclist who's got a rabid following on social media, love or hate him.
Kristin: Tyler Pearce.
Jeremiah: Yes, Tyler Pearce. He is hilarious, he is self-loathing, he's comical. He's very relatable.
Kristin: Yeah, he's awesome.
Jeremiah: Yeah, and then camera presence is important for this stuff. It's one of those things where, on my side, I had a lot of experience being in front of the camera, being extra for a few film projects, commercials, stuff like that. I'm pretty comfortable in the camera. I think that, combined with Tyler, in social media, that's what you're doing. You have basically five seconds to get people's attention on an Instagram story or TikTok. You have very little time, so you have to be able to capture people's attention or have a good editing.
Anyway, he's got a lot of skills that I did not have. I said, hey, well, if I invite him along, it'll be a win-win. He doesn't know a damn thing about expedition planning, logistics, survival, and really the mental side of ultra endurance. I was like, yeah, we'll check it out.
Kristin: Tell me when this was. Hold on, I have to help the audience follow along here.
Jeremiah: It's 2019 right at the beginning of the pandemic. I hadn't even gotten budget approval from Canyon. I just said, I'm putting this on their credit card, I'm doing it. I don't care. We'll just see if they want to support it after we produce it. It was one of those things, kind of a leap of faith. If you really believe in something, it's a lot easier to just say, I will make it happen.
Kristin: Which was the first one, Jeremiah?
Jeremiah: That was the first one, in Mauna Kea. That's the namesake of The Impossible Route, the actual route that we did. To bring the viewers up to speed, we went to Hawaii. I talked with our guide and local expert, Alex Candelario, about doing this East approach of Mauna Kea. It's a 14,000-foot hill climb from sea level to the top of this majestic volcano.
He said, well, I mean, that's pretty cool, but it's been done before. You guys should do the impossible route. My eyes lit up, I'm like, okay, what is that? That's where we got the idea. There were some people planning on coming back in a couple of months to do it.
Barry Wicks, one of my former colleagues and national champion, and there were some other people in the hunt to do it first. Someone had failed just a few months earlier, ran out of water, I don't know what happened. But the name combined with the fact that it was conceivably possible, really became the template, but also the namesake of the series.
Kristin: I love it. That's awesome. Just bring us through the ride. That was the pandemic. Everybody was all about content. You couldn't really travel, but how did you keep this going? It's like a fledgling thing that you needed to feed and nurture. How did you build it through the pandemic?
Jeremiah: What happened was we were right on the front edge of it. It was February of 2019. It was right before things blew up in the US. We sat on the footage for a bit, edited it, produced the episode, and it came out during the summer during the peak of lockdown. People loved it, half a million views, and it was really cool. We set up a separate channel on Instagram for sharing kind of the content, and it was successful. '
During the first year of the pandemic, though, we were definitely reluctant to go and film an episode. We definitely had to think about it and take some risks on, okay, well, we wanted to make sure to be able to produce an episode but be able to do something that we could do with it contained. Tyler, I, and the crew, we all pre tested and arrived in Death Valley to film our next episode, which was really incredible. Seven days across, basically, one of the most hostile environments in the world.
We started near the Mexico border and rode all the way, crossed Mojave Death Valley, Titus Canyon, up to Bishop California on the east side of the Sierra. It's a fantastic episode. There was so much challenge to filming it. I definitely got some gray hairs.
One of us got Covid and brought to our RV that we were basing this stuff out of. It would have just been a disaster because we have kind of one go at it. We're on a very low budget as far as filming anything is concerned.
Kristin: I like that, though. I like that you don't like to retake stuff. If you guys haven't seen it, it is literally like you're listening to a story as if you're just my brother or my friend telling me, you just got back. I think this is what we used to do with slideshows back in the day, but now you're creating a video that is nicely produced, for sure, but it really feels like a true story, like it isn't produced. You know what I mean? It's actually happening as you're watching it. I think that's one of the things that is so compelling and so sticky about it.
Jeremiah: Thank you. I think the obstacle is the way in this example because we didn't have a lot of budget. I've worked with some larger projects that have big fancy cameras and the booms. We wouldn't have been able to get permits to do that in the national forest or in the sections that we filmed in the national parks. It wouldn't happen, for one.
But then also, by virtue of this hybrid style filming, it makes you feel like you're on a zoom chat or on a FaceTime call, because we go from a cinematic, fantastic drone shot in areas where we can shoot, some panning cinematic shots, some really cool artistic shots, but then we're talking to the camera. Tyler's begging me for food and water or I’m trying to coach him to keep on going, these real gritty moments. I think we kind of just stumbled on that. It's really just one of those things. We discovered people liked it and ran with it.
Kristin: Yup, and it's long form content. It's very real. It's very gritty, but it's well produced. I think you do a good job representing your brands in a very subversive way. It feels natural. I just love it. As a cyclist, I love it. But as a person who does brand and marketing for a living, I think it's really great. It's very well done.
Jeremiah: They said, hey, we don't need this to be a Canyon commercial. Oh, this is the latest, new SLX Carbon, or you need these awesome DT wheels. I honestly think we don't say the word Canyon in the episodes. I don't think we do.
Kristin: I don't think we do either. You definitely don't get into, this is the most compliant mountain bike I've ever ridden. I would literally turn it off if you did.
Jeremiah: Yeah, it's really one of those things. We bring people along on a journey. We invite people to come ride with us and encounter these crazy things. I think it really allows people to feel a connection with the content, with our choice of equipment. We do dive into equipment. In fact, I'm working on a bike feature, which is this going to be going into our gear and tech and some of our selection for the routes? People are genuinely curious about that.
Kristin: Yeah, for sure, the way that you're kidding out your bike and everything. Depending on the one you did in France recently versus the one you did in my backyard in the San Juan's, that would be two very different kits. Plus, you had to ship everything internationally. I would be curious to watch that separate from an actual episode as bonus content or whatever.
Jeremiah: Exactly. We're working on some behind the scenes episodes. I think what's neat is we've got so much stuff on the cutting room floor. It's the funny stories. Ben Saheb who you may know, a videographer from Colorado, we had this one scene where he's flying the drone. We're like, all right, we've got this really beautiful drone shot, it goes over the stone bridge. We're flying the drone, and then you just hear the truck crash into the bridge, but we have no drone for the entire rest of the trip.
Kristin: You must have been so bummed.
Jeremiah: Oh, we were ready to cry. We thought we had lost the SD card, because the actual footage is more important to us than the drone, but we got all the footage, so we were still good. All these crazy production things I would have never dreamed about that we have to anticipate everything from lost footage to bad weather, to part of the crew calling in sick, for safety. Things like that are all super important.
It's a lot of hats to wear. But I think to step back to your point, we've really been given some artistic license from Canyon, and I really appreciate that. I think it really allows us to help build community, help deliver on their promise of welcoming your customers to a family and really be a part of something cool.
In that thread, we also do some really neat community based things like our Strava challenges. In the spring, we did a Strava challenge with 150,000 participants. It was super cool. We've got a Strava club. Go check out The Impossible Route Strava club. We've had group rides, things like that. We've had red carpet premieres, for instance, at Sea Otter and at the Belgian Waffle Ride San Diego. That was a really fun time with stickers, posters, and stuff like that.
We really had a good time with it and really tried to close the loop. But in regards to what we do for the sponsors, we try to also really curate some good usable material for them. If we've got some assets they can use, we send out a Google Drive with photos we have on our capture list aside from some short reels and things like that that are product specific. We actually have some detailed shots of almost all of their bags that they can use on social.
You'll see them reposting a lot of stuff that we sent through. For instance, orange seals. We try to make sure that we get some really cool photos of us resealing our tires and things like that so that they can use it on social. That really creates some value for them. Otherwise, they need to hire a photographer or agency to get something.
Kristin: Life Time Sea Otter Classic Summit 2023 is joining Verde Brand Communications as our sponsor for this new year. The goal is to deliver the solutions in best in class resources presented to executives in the outdoor recreation industries at the summit to you every week on the Channel Mastery Podcast. We couldn't be more excited to exceed your expectations on that goal every week.
At the summit earlier this year in April 2022, right before the Sea Otter Classic, we gathered over 200 executive leaders from the outdoor bike endurance and vehicle supported adventure markets for two days of business intelligence specialty market resourcing and pure networking. It was awesome because it happened right before the Sea Otter Classic, which literally had about 80,000 consumers there. Guess how many people camped at the Sea Otter for multiple nights, almost 7,000.
This is a very special consumer event. To have this right before it is huge. We're going to share all the details on the 2023 summit in a very near term episode here, and watch. We'll be announcing things from a marketing standpoint, but I wanted to make sure and thank Life Time and Verde Brand Communications. Thank you so much.
Let me ask you a few questions, because obviously, you must be in planning. You just released a film, which we'll talk about here in a sec in terms of the France most recent episode. But as we're looking at 2023 with you and Tyler and also with you working with Canyon, are the platforms that you're choosing to work on and focus on changing at all with all of the crazy shenanigans that are going on with Meta and Twitter, et cetera, as we're in December of 2022? What's your thought on that?
Jeremiah: The channels that we use evolved. If you stay ahead of it, that's not necessarily a bad thing. I think it's definitely in flux right now, for sure. As the cycling industry is in flux, it's a bit of a Covid whiplash, if you want to call it that. But when we look at our core community and our core cycling fans, we need to take care of them because they're right in the mainstream of our customer band, if you want to call it that, versus during Covid, we had all these new people. We're really just kind of reaching out to a lot of new people.
Now we have added a lot of those people to our core constituency. Continuing to talk to them is going to be really important. I think where you see some drop off in Twitter, you see actually a really interesting ramp up in content on Strava, Strava just integrated a video posting functionality. When you do a Strava post, you can now upload short videos, it's like 15 seconds. I use these just like an Instagram story.
If you check out my Strava, you'll see I'm posting action videos rolling down a gravel road. A lot of people don't really know how to use it yet, but hey, I just say turn the camera on, tell people where you're riding, what bike you're using, and a little bit of action, three little short clips. It's super cool. While we might have some people retracting from some platforms, other ones are growing.
Kristin: Right. That is so smart, and I'm so glad you brought that up. I also just think it's important to point out just the chemistry between you and Tyler, because oftentimes, people will look at anything called the impossible route. If they're into endurance, that is immediate, I'm interested in that. The same way you were when the person in Hawaii was like, you should do this route and you're like, of course I should. We want to feel like we can belong to that.
The thing that's so great about your dynamic, and I'm talking about this specifically for people who are staffing and making selections on content next year, is it's not necessarily that you reflect exactly who Canyon's going after. Oftentimes, a brand will be like, okay, I need to really focus on where we're trying to grow this new segment with this consumer, and they'll actually show that they'll cast that person for the visual assets.
What I love about the chemistry of you two is you're obviously a vetted professional cyclist, but affable. You don't take yourself too seriously. Tyler just is a really amazing athlete, but he's a perfect complement to you. He keeps you laughing and more available, even though you have your pedigree. He's out there. He's amazing at what he does and the fact that he gets as far as he does, but he's just like, I can't finish this or whatever.
It's not a big deal to him. Or this most recent film where he's racing you at the beginning of this huge thing, I'm like, this dude's burning matches like crazy. Watching your relationship develop, watching how he's growing as an athlete, and you're growing as a creator, the way he kind of came into it, it's just been really fun to watch.
Even though I don't see myself in either one of you, because I'm obviously female or whatever, I feel like I can relate with parts of your personality. Either people like you or you just are a fun fit. I just think that also is part of the reason why it works. It's really important to spend time really looking at who you're casting and who's representing your brand.
Jeremiah: Yeah, I think that's a good observation, for sure. In this case, we've got enough time with the long format to get into our personalities. It's a subplot, really. I met Tyler at a demo event. I was like the grunt driving the truck. He didn't know me from Joe.
I had the Canyon truck, setting up at Rasputitsa, this gravel event in Vermont very early on in the whole thing, and he had a bike being shipped out and it didn't show up. Here's this famous YouTuber come strutting up. I guess he expected me to know who he was.
He's like, yo dude, can I borrow a bike? I'm going to post a video, I'm going to get a lot of viewers, it'd be really good. I'm like, yeah, I'm doing a job here. I know if we get a bike under this guy, he's going to produce a good video. I'm not supposed to technically lend out bikes for races, but it was a different thing. It was a media bike, right?
To bend the rules a little bit, I lent him this bike, and he brings it back completely covered with dirt. He posted this video. It was all good. The video gets a lot of views. Then I make a little cameo in the video and there are people commenting like, you don't know who that is? What the heck, dude.
All this chatter and I am just chuckling because I'm like, oh, I don't care. But then I get this phone call and he's like, hey, man. I just wanted to say I'm sorry. I don't really follow mountain biking. If there's anything I can do to make it up to you, you just let me know. I was like, no, don't worry about it, I don't expect anybody to know who I am. But now that you mentioned it, how about you come to my Gran Fondo and do a video?
We hung out. We had a good time. Porsche sponsored the event and we had some display cars. We got to drive cars around a little bit, ride bikes, hung out for a couple of days, and it was fun. We're very different birds to be honest.
Kristin: I think we can all see that.
Jeremiah: Yes. I'm going to kill him half the time, and he wants to kill me the other half the time, but then we somehow still have to get to the finish so we teamwork. We put down the sword and just get to business trying to get to the finish and hug it out at the end. It's this funny thing. But really that first episode, I wanted to kill him and leave him on top of that mountain.
My goal was to make sure you get snuff video, but then. It's been interesting. The rest of them, though, we've stuck together. Most of the episodes, I think we were on different pages with Ryan Petry. He's a really phenomenal high altitude rider that joined us through.
Kristin: Yes, I know who he is. He's amazing.
Jeremiah: Really, really good. Natural. He was also in just a really stellar form at the time. Tyler didn't acclimate, of course, because he's Tyler. Yes. Watch the video. They will not need any further explaining, you'll completely get it.
Yes, it's a big part of the narrative of what is maybe a little bit more dynamic than the first set out to make it. It's been really fun. I've had a ton of experience traveling to Europe racing for years. I thought, man, it really would be funny to bring Tyler to Europe.
Kristin: Okay, tell us. This is awesome.
Jeremiah: He shows up expecting everybody to speak English.
Kristin: Which is exactly what you should do in France.
Jeremiah: Yes. In any case, I almost feel like I need to apologize to the people of France. Pardon-moi.
Kristin: And you're in these tiny, beautiful little villages. They are not Paris. They hate not speaking French in Paris, but I think it's not even an option in these places you were.
Jeremiah: It's less. Yes, for sure. Once you get in countryside, there's much less English speaking going on. If you put in a little effort, je ne parle pas francais, then they're like, okay, we'll help you out, you're trying. But Tyler just has no idea how to communicate.
I think it was really good for him in so many ways just to understand how big the world is and to really get an appreciation of cycling culture there is really different. Everyone appreciates the Tour de France. Cycling is part of the national identity there. It's like American football or baseball. There's this legend behind it. It's not just big, it's not just on TV. There's not a lot of money, but there are legends behind it, so I thought that was a part of what I wanted to write into the episode.
I create the episodes, write them, and come up with the routes themselves. That's been really interesting. This one was going out on a limb. I was kind of nervous, like, hey, can Tyler capture that much of the tour? Can we do it without having to pay ASO $50,000 or $100,000? I was bummed to see how much it was going to cost just to have a few seconds of the tour, even the old tour from 10 years ago or five years ago.
I thought I was going to really put a dent in our episode because we're talking about the past and we're doing this ride across France. In actuality, it's interesting because it allowed us to really focus on trying to recreate that experience that the riders had in the 1920s. Of course, everybody that wants to see the tour can watch this year's tour highlights. It's very easy to find.
There was another scenario, where, really, what was in our way became okay. It was okay to work within the confines of that and really allowed us to tell more of the story of that route, the terrain, the hardship. It was a really neat, really special episode.
Kristin: I highly recommend it. We'll have links to everything in the show notes here today. End to end, how long did it take for you leaving your house and then getting home to do that episode in France?
Jeremiah: Two weeks.
Kristin: Okay. That's manageable because you have a young-ish family, you're married. You must have a very understanding spouse.
Jeremiah: Yeah.
Kristin: For those of you not watching, he's nodding his head earnestly right now.
Jeremiah: Yes, for sure. It's one of those things. It's a lot, but for me, a compact shoot when we do the shoots, I always try to get home as soon as I can. But then also, we're trying to keep costs down, too. It's pretty good that we have this style, I think.
I kept thinking after we did our first episode, we need to go, we need to pre ride the routes, know all the challenges that will come up, have little drop pins on our map for Google Maps for the videographers, where to be, and what shots to get. But to be honest, I think that takes some of the magic out of our reaction when we see this massive...
Kristin: Absolutely. I'm very happy to hear you say this. Don't ever do that because I think it'll change the spirit and just the whole experience for us as your viewers. We love that you're just sending from your land there and you send, and you do what you need to do in between.
Jeremiah: It's on our toes. It's part of what makes it so difficult too. In rock climbing, what do they call it, flashing a route. Rock climbing, you have a huge advantage if you know where the holes are and where your setup is or maybe your right foot, right arm.
Anyway, flashing a route is way challenging because you just don't know what it's going to be like, what's the rock going to feel like, what holes are you going to have? Will you be able to reach the next move? This is very much like that. We'll get to a section where there's like a road construction and we're like, ah, what do we do? There's no bridge. Literally, the route was good last week.
We get there, we’re walking through waist deep water, hopping over a fence or whatever. Now that I realize how much people like to watch a train wreck, it doesn't matter. As long as we get it on camera, there are going to be things that are crazy, sideways, flat tires, crashes.
Kristin: This is why you have your sponsors. That's the stuff we can relate with. You don't have someone there fixing it for you. The gear either works or it doesn't. I want to make sure that I'm steering you toward a couple of things I want to capture before we run out of time.
I want you to go back to talking about your film premieres, because I love that you have this growing audience online. You're utilizing video, you're doing a great job with long form storytelling, but now you're also creating opportunities for people to gather and celebrate like new adventures being born. I'm curious, you've done two. Is that something you plan to do more of? Were those successful? Do you think that's a key attribute to your strategy for 2023?
Jeremiah: I think they're fantastic. For 2023, we want to do new places, new sports, new faces. Try to really just have more guests, possibly work with FKT King, King Jason Hardrath. The guy's a nut. We met online and the guy's just a fantastic cyclist. He happens to be a Canyon rider, and he's a mountain running phenom.
We've got this idea for an episode. I'm not going to spoil it, but some neat ideas there. Back to in-person activations is what the Canyon marketing team calls them, not that it's a throw around lingo, but it's the language. I think it's really fun to be able to interact with fans in person. I think it's fantastic. We kind of doubled down on those, though.
We had the premiere, for example, at Sea Otter, at Stoker, and Tandem Coffee. We rented the place out. We've got these film premiere banners. We've got several. You'd like to see these. They're really cool, brightly colored. We had a graphic designer make them and have all the sponsors on them. We have sponsor stickers. We have our Impossible Route sticker collection. We've got a group ride that we do, The Possible Route.
Kristin: Everybody who's listening, all of this are ways that we get to join in and be part of it when we're at the cycling events, which are our impossible routes. If you think about it that way, the Leadville and Life Time portfolio, we work with a lot of events there, I started to do those before we even worked with them for just one year, but then got to meet them. We ended up working with them, which has been an honor.
They're all about the rider, the experience they have, and the fact that the family has to get the person ready. Look at the crew stations when you're at these events or the rest stops and everything else. That's where you see just how big of a deal it is for these people to either go back year after year and go after something or choose that and have it be something super meaningful for them as a fundraiser. I think that's one of the things that we love to watch about what you're creating and who you are as an athlete, frankly.
You've done a lot of great things, but now you're doing what we do at a very high level. You're bringing us all over the world as you're doing it. It's almost like you're taking the spirit of what we love about our events that we sign up for. You're giving us content that puts it in the context of just crazy places all over the world without a script and without rehearsal. That feels really similar to what we're showing up for at 6:00 AM as we're starting these events. We have no idea WTF is going to happen that day.
Jeremiah: Yes, you're spot on. The goosebumps and the butterflies in the stomach are real. Before our last episode, which I can talk about, we filmed crossing The Dark Divide in Pacific Northwest, which is deep in Bigfoot territory, kind of between Mount Hood, Mount St. Helens, and Mount Rainier corridor in massive trees. We had motocross and BMX. Ace Andrew Jackson joined us, a Canton athlete from the LA area.
I was just so nervous. I was like, I don't know what's going to go wrong. Something is going to go wrong. Sure enough, we had a videographer call in sick two days before. All the flights' booked, sat phones booked, helicopter booked. I was just like, okay ready to rip up a whole bunch of checks? But it worked out.
Luckily, we had Seth DuBois joined and his local videographer. He worked his butt off. He's fantastic. Danny Wang from the DC area who has worked with on some local events and things. We just sent it. We just did the best we could.
Every time I think one of these episodes is going to completely crater and fall into pieces, we have really just an amazing episode or slightly different episode. They've either been good or great, I think in my eyes, because if they inspire people and make them want to go ride and want to stretch their comfort zone a little bit, then that's all I can ask for. I don't care if it gets millions of views, although we have been getting millions of views somehow. Really, my feeling of whether or not they're successful, is whether or not they resonate with people and make them want to ride.
Kristin: Keep in mind too, it helps us feel part tethered to the community. When we're not at our event, we can participate by watching yours throughout the year, support you all, and just get entertainment from everything you're doing. I just really want to thank you. I don't think it was an accident. You've been training for this part of your career the entire time you've been an athlete, and it's really coming to fruition beautifully. I really hope you keep at it and keep building it from your gut instinct, because it's working.
You don't seem like you have a lot of intentionality behind it, but I think because you're just a genuine person, it really is like a genuine vision that you're bringing to life. You just don't really see yourself as a cinematographer, I can tell. I could say you're masquerading pretty successfully as one.
Jeremiah: Thanks. I'm taking it like a pro.
Kristin: Yes. I want you to just let Tyler know, he's such a great asset to this. I love his personality. His videos are great. The ones he does with you and The Impossible Route are my favorite. You guys are just a great team.
Jeremiah: Awesome, thank you so much. I really appreciate it. It doesn't come without its difficulties, challenges, arguments, and realities. I think whenever you look at something worth doing, it's usually difficult. I know you did Leadville a couple of times. I'm sure you had some injuries or setbacks coming into it.
Kristin: Yeah. I didn't finish one time, so that was a pretty huge setback, but it's fine. It makes when you do finish even better. Tell our awesome audience where we can learn more about Canyon, where we can find these episodes. Tell us how to follow you.
Jeremiah: Definitely check out the awesome bikes that we use at canyon.com. We have really, by design, rotated through the bikes. Most people won't notice this, but someone that works in brand marketing, you'll actually notice that we rotate through the grail, the grizzle, the exceed for Telluride, and then the luxe trail for our latest episode.
We play by design. We can tweak the routes. I work with the team and try to make sure we get a variety of different things. Check out canyon.com and @Canyon on Instagram, a lot of really great fun and inspirational posts, and Canyon also on YouTube. We have some short versions of the episodes on YouTube.
We also have theimpossibleroute.com. That's a great portal if you want to see the whole collection of videos. We've got some great articles on Radavist and things like that linked on there. You can check me out on Instagram and Strava, of course. Please join that Strava club and stay tuned. That's where you hear about some of our contests and promotions. You'll also see us on Outside Plus streaming and Outside cable network for next year. Just got an agreement with them to air Season Two.
Kristin: Awesome, congratulations. That's really big news right there.
Jeremiah: Yeah, it's super exciting. I'm really pumped. It's going to be fun just to see how it evolves and keep the style the same. I think the style is cool. I think it's really organic, it's fun, and then we'll have, obviously, new challenges and keep us on our toes.
Kristin: Yup, for sure. Thank you again. I really appreciate you joining us, and we'll be cheering along all of the routes to come. I will have all the links in the show notes. Thank you so much for being here, Jeremiah.
Jeremiah: Thanks, Kristin. I really appreciate you having me on.
Kristin: If you liked this episode of the Channel Mastery Podcast, please help more business leaders find this resource by going to iTunes and leaving us a positive review and also sharing it with a friend or colleague. Thank you so much for listening. Thank you to Verde Brand Communications for being our presenting sponsor. Check us out at verdepr.com.
