#99： Conquer The Gauntlet with David & Stephen Mainprize
Episode Stats
Words per Minute
223.56076
Summary
In this episode of the Art of Manliness podcast, we talk with two brothers, Steven and David Mainpeter, founders and owners of the tough mud mudder, Conquer the Gauntlet. They talk about the history of the race and what it takes to run a race that has over 30 obstacles and the logistics involved in running a race like that.
Transcript
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brett mckay here and welcome to another edition of the art of manliness podcast so mud runs
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obstacle races they're all the rage right now it seems like they've replaced 5ks as the thing you
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do on the weekend the big ones you some of you probably done some of them spartan race tough
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mutter warrior dash what's interesting besides these big national international obstacle races
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that are going on there's also several regional obstacle races that you can only go to them in a
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certain area of the country and there was actually a regional race here in tulsa oklahoma it's called
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conquer the gauntlet it's owned and operated by two brothers stephen david main prize and i really
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enjoyed it was it had a lot more obstacles than i than some of the other mud runs that i've done
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but what i liked about it there's just a little more low key had more of a community feel to it
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than some of those big giant ones that i've been to and so after the mud run i wanted to get them
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on the podcast to talk about the business of regional obstacle races and mud runs and what
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it takes to run and set up an obstacle race so here on the podcast we're going to talk about
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why these guys started conquer the gauntlet and what's involved in running a race that has over
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30 obstacles and the logistics that it takes to put something on like that so let's do this
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steven and david main prize welcome to the show thank you so much we're glad to be here we're
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pumped about it we're we're grateful that you let us be a part of the all the manliness that's going
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on over there well i can see you uh in the video you guys can't see me my camera's not working but
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one of you has an awesome beard that's steven hey i'm working on it david you got a lot of
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catching up to do yeah i just started all right so you guys are the founders and owners of an
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obstacle race um called conquer the gauntlet uh it's based out of uh i guess that is out of tulsa
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oklahoma all right so um how did you guys tell me the story why did you guys start an obstacle race
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when there's a whole bunch of different obstacle races out there i mean what's the background
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well we started in uh probably late 2011 uh early 2012 when we actually kind of formed the business
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uh and kind of around that time that these races were kind of picking up in popularity
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but uh at that time there was really only races that were backed by really big corporations really
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big companies that uh kind of cared about one thing and that was making a profit at the end of
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the year there was basically the really big ones you know your tough mud or your spartan your warrior
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dash really those three and then there were local ones which were kind of seen as a mud run or a joke
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like they weren't really for the elite runner so we kind of wanted to start one that wasn't based on
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like how do we make 70 million dollars a year but more how do we connect with 70 million people and make
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and push themselves and not be worried about how much money we make so i think that's kind of where
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the the passion for why we started it yeah was there something in particular that i mean i guess did
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you do mud runs before you started the the gauntlet we i we had all talked about uh doing the warrior dash
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when i think first came to tulsa in 2010 or 2011 i'm not sure but you know at the end of the day we were
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like well that costs a lot of money it looks like a lot of lines a lot of fees and not a lot of really
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cool obstacles and so we decided well why don't we make something that has as many obstacles as
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maybe a 10 to 12 mile race like a tough mudder but it's maybe a little bit shorter and running
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distance um that's kind of where the the melting of the idea came from and then we just kind of went
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from there and it just snowballed okay so yeah whenever i look at these obstacle courses i've done
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a few of them and i whenever i look at them from like a business perspective i'm like
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these things look like they're just crazy to put on i mean the logistics look nuts you have to find a
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location uh i mean can you tell us what goes on into putting on and a conquer the gauntlet obstacle
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race uh you wouldn't believe the logistics i actually it's funny you bring that up the the
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find the land is sometimes the toughest when you got to find 200 acres that also has parking uh with
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someone that's cool with you you know digging up huge 25 by 10 foot wide mud pits um and all that
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that's one of the tougher things i mean where are we our last event in 2014 was september 22nd this
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year in little rock and on october 1st so eight days later we're already planning our first event
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for 2015 and we are a little bit smaller i'm sure a lot of the other races that have huge overhead have
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people that are just constantly doing that but really it's me david and my wife courtney the three of
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us do everything we don't have any other hired uh people that do anything for us so the logistics of
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just volunteers porta potties trash dumpsters mud pits water trucks backhoes forklifts two by fours
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we're out of screws uh all that kind of stuff is it's definitely it's worth it because it's awesome
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but there's a lot of a lot of that logistics that people don't see uh when they come to the event
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like oh why do we have to wait the line for two seconds it's like well there's 2500 people here so
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we're trying to get them all through this thing in four hours so it's not going to be that's one
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of the things that's frustrating i guess yeah yeah well the funny thing is when we started i mean you
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know it sounds great to have a four mile race with 25 obstacles i mean that sounds pretty awesome who
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wouldn't want to own that and i mean you know we could tell you some more stories from the beginning
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when there was just two of us or three of us or four of us out there trying to set up all night long
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before our first race but you know as we've gone through we've kind of you know created a standard
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operating procedure and we we have a setup that takes you know a certain amount of time for each
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race um you know we show up about two weeks before and it's just really our us and our family and our
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friends that uh help create everything that we do so you guys actually build the obstacles it's like
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you two out there there's not anything out there that anyone else has built it's just us we go to
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lowe's or home depot or maybe a lot of times i try to use local companies here in tulsa m&m lumber is
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one of them we'll just really we call around and search to see who has the cheapest price on
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two by four two by six six by six two by eight whatever we need that day and we'll go pick it
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up in my my beat-up old 1989 chevrolet pickup truck and load that thing up till the tires are about
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to pop bring it back to the warehouse and start designing something well how do you guys come up with
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obstacles because you because i did the the race uh i guess it was in august i think yeah that was
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our last race i think probably our biggest one we've ever had yeah august 23rd was the tulsa one
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yeah and then like some of these things were pretty nuts like i had never seen any things in in like in
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other mud runs that i have done so how do you guys come up with the your obstacles i think uh well me
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and david both played a ton of sports growing up in high school david actually played college uh soccer
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so we're both uh pretty physically fit i do crossfit every day here so we i think we try to
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think of things that'll push us but also that are at least attemptable by someone that's never
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done an event before a lot of people that come to our race have never done
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an obstacle course race that might be their first fitness event ever so we really make
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every effort to be creative in a unique way that young and old extremely fit and those new to
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fitness can have fun doing it but still something that if me and or him were to try it it's going to
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be difficult to do and not extremely easy yeah the one that got me i was doing pretty well and i was
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like i was pretty felt pretty good at myself and i got to the one where it's like it's like stair steps
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but you had to use your hands stairway to heaven stairway to heaven then i got to the other side and
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there was i don't know what you guys had there what what was that devilish stuff you put on there like
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i just slipped and i just fell into the the mud pit it was probably vaseline to be honest that's
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the first event we've ever done that with we've had uh i guess kind of mixed reviews on i will never
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do it again i don't think that was cruel man we had a lot of people complain about it some people
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liked it a lot of people didn't so uh i don't think we'll be doing that again but even without
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that it's still it's still pretty difficult it was beastly and i guess you had some vaseline on
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the monkey bars at the end i didn't have any problem with that yeah but what did you think of
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the five walls in a row was it hard for you that was tough that was really hard um and i mean yeah
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there's some crazy stuff so the monkey bars was pretty it was insane uh the stairway to heaven
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was difficult uh you had one where you had to bust out some american ninja warrior skills where
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you could just uh yeah it's like a board that wouldn't cross like a pond and you just had to like
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like do it rambo style like a balance beam pretty much yeah but with your hands turned up on it oh
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yeah that was like a that's a dead man's drop yeah that was hard too that was tough yeah that was
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difficult one of my favorites is that is one called tarzan swing it's kind of like the the monkey bars
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but it's just one like olympic type ring on a on a chain you just swing from it and grab the next one
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that one's that's kind of a fan favorite oh yeah i bit the dust on that one too yeah that one's uh i mean
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kind of back to your question um steve's really the the master of the course if you will he's the
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brains of the operation when it comes to obstacles um and so he kind of came up with a lot of the
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the marquee ones that we have you know our big ones and and going back to kind of our overall theory
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we didn't want to have small obstacles you know kind of the way we broke in in the market was having
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so many and having them not just be you know oh there's a little mud hill or yeah you crawled under
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some barbed wire like you got to have big boys out there and that's kind of what we want to be known for
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yeah that's i i love that um so yeah i was talking about some of the things that we kind of hit on
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them a little bit um but the big difference is between you and the other mud races out there
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so for starters you're you're four miles long uh but you cram in 25 to 30 obstacles that's correct
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yep and the tulsa race you did we had 32 actually which tulsa will usually have one or three or four
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more because it's just less money to transport you know everything so we can save cost on transporting
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our tents and tables and maybe throw some more obstacles up but we we've never had an event
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with less than 25 okay and um i mean how what's the average on other mud runs your competitors
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the average on their mud runs well your your warrior dash is going to be nine to twelve
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um the spartan races they have three races spartan those um and they range from probably nine to twenty
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uh i know tough mudders claim is 25 but i've done some tough mudders the ones i did had
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21 or 22 so i would definitely say we have the most obstacles um of a race especially one that
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travels around you'll occasionally find one in some nook and cranny in some kind of weird place in the
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country where they just have a standing piece of land and they do their event like five times a year
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and that's a little different because they're not coming and setting it up but i think the average is
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probably between 10 and 20 let's say for for most so we're we're trying to i mean you've got you've
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got your 5k basically races that have 10 obstacles and then you know like your spartans or your
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tough mudders they're going to have longer races with more obstacles ours is kind of we want to you
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know pack everything into a smaller uh area of running if that makes sense yeah yeah and i i when i did
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that i've done a couple of the other ones and i feel like with some of the other ones i feel like i'm just
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doing a lot of running yeah yeah you know i'd be like we wanted to cut out was if you want to you
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want to go run 12 miles find a treadmill if you want to do an obstacle course race come do like
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you're going to at the heart you're getting an obstacle two every quarter mile maybe even two
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every eighth mile um at the ones that have 30 obstacles so you're not just jogging and like you
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know mindlessly running for a mile without seeing anything which is i think why tough mudder people think
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it's tough it's the tough thing about tough mudder isn't the obstacles it's that it's a half marathon
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yeah none of the obstacles are that tremendously difficult compared to you know like a spartan
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sprand or even our race it's just when your legs have to do 12 miles of running that's you're going
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to seem tired but it's not that necessarily the obstacles themselves that for some reason i think
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they can charge 200 because they're setting up 20 obstacles because they found a piece of land that
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has 12 miles while running on it yeah so let's talk about that so you have it's more obstacles but
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then your pricing is you know refreshingly different from the other guys can you talk a bit
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about your pricing model um compared to the the big guys yeah what we did was we found out what we had
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to do just to stay in business and uh didn't try to make it so much more than that as far as the profit
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side of it um another thing that you'll find with the other races is sometimes people go to our website
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and go oh it's it's 59 right now or 54 to sign up for conquer the gauntlet they'll hop over to maybe
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wordash and go oh it's 55 for wordash too but what's overlooked is that pricing model is kind of
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a lie because by the time you get through like that all of the i don't know which other races you sign
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if you sign up online you go through the steps of the registration process and creating a profile and
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but that by the time you get done with it that 55 turned into 72 because there was an eight dollar
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mandatory like insurance fee or some type of uh convenience fee for online registration which is
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the only way to sign up which is ironic and so by the time they're 55 it's not the same as ours if
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ours says 55 it is 55 and the sign up page is one you just oh we need your information your name date
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of birth what's your shirt size are you a dude or a chick oh okay pay us 55 now to do the best run
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you're going to all year so i think it's that's one thing it's a big difference is like even spartan
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it says 60 bucks but you by the time you're done there's a 13 dollar insurance fee and a seven dollar
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um convenience fee so that now you're you went from 70 to 90 and you pay 20 bucks or parking 20 bucks
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for your spectators i mean yeah that's good there yeah i thought that was nuts um about the um
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the spectator fee you know people paying i think one of them charged like 40 bucks yeah yeah and it's
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just weird and we had a we had my wife's uncle did a tough mutter and he kind of he did a wrote a
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review about it on our site and he just thought it was weird that they're charging 40 to see like
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people trump around in the mud yeah and he's like you could go to the boston marathon and see
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world-class athletes for free yeah yeah yeah it is true those big races they they got to make money
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for the corporations behind and that's what it's all about well i mean i guess one argument they say
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is that these things are so expensive to put on they have to do that i mean is that i mean has that
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been your case and you've seen that in your case i mean they are expensive to put on sometimes people
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they're like they'll look at your race and go oh my goodness you had a thousand people pay you fifty
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dollars you just made a boatload of money it's like yeah that's fifty thousand dollars but an
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event itself costs between 50 and 60 so for us if we have a thousand people me and dave and courtney
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we got to work for free that race and we're that's the thing like we're not just going to start charging
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spectators but the thing is when you get tough mutter they get 10 000 runners that paid 120 plus
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parking you look at the money they're making they don't need to charge spectating to make a profit
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that's pretty much a bunch of malarkey gotcha the thing the thing the other thing that was
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important to us is having a a place where people could come and encourage and cheer on their family
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and friends and really become part of the conquer the gauntlet family and community three of the
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things you'll always find our website is character commitment community we want to provide an
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environment where people could show their character enhance their commitment and connect with
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their community and it's really hard to connect with your community if you're charging your
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community just to come watch so since community is such a big thing for us i don't need to make
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money off someone that wants to come cheer for their husband if their husband was maybe overweight
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two years ago and he trained for a year and a half just to be able to do it i want his wife and his kids
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to come be able to cheer for him and be proud of him not have to fork out 80 bucks to do that
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gotcha and another thing i appreciated about you guys was that you kept the heats pretty small
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whenever we looked at breaking into this market i mean we didn't just do it on a willy-nilly
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we we had a lot of time and and planning and that went into it you know first of all you've got the
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the shorter distance race with as many obstacles as we have and you've got the lower price with
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less fees and then you've got you know just what happens there on race day we we time everyone most
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races actually don't think any races do that anymore so every single person gets a timing chip and then
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you've got those every 15 minute waves so instead of just hurting you know 600 people together
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every hour we break it up which is a lot harder for us and more expensive but it gives i think
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people a lot better race experience there's no lines out there you know you're not just running
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with 600 people at one time and so that that's those have kind of been those couple of keys the
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ones you're hitting on are the reason why we've kind of seen the growth that we have yeah the the
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being timed i really appreciate it because we've done the warrior dash before it's for several years and
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they timed you and then like last year they just like there's no timing chip and we were like
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right you have to be in the elite wave at that point to get a timing chip with warrior dash i
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believe now and and the thing that's cool for us is like you know it doesn't matter if you're
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running a two-hour time you still want to know yeah you still want to know so you see if you beat
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yourself exactly you want to get better and you want to see your name on that list of someone who
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conquered the gauntlet you know that's important people definitely so uh here's a question i have
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right now you guys um limit your races to a pretty small geographic location where you got where
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your race is at right now we're in kansas city oklahoma city wichita kansas pulsa oklahoma
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little rock arkansas and then this october we're planning either a tennessee or a texas event we're
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kind of we're actually in the next three weeks we'll be running some pre-registration ads just to
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see if there's interest in those areas and then really between uh kind of looking at three spots
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memphis nashville or kind of like a west texas area whichever one of those we have the most people
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wanting our race we'll bring it to them um so planning six events next year but yeah kind of
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in this i guess you'd call it like a midwest slash southeast area um that's kind of i guess that the
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feel of tulsa is kind of like a southern slash midwest and we kind of everything right around there
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is where we'll go so it's because it costs us you know because we're not getting 10 000 runners but
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we try to we're hoping to get 1500 to 2500 runners and keep growing on those numbers because they're
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not huge we can't pay as much as other races to go everywhere also another thing people forget when
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they're looking at your cost is is your marketing a lot of other races will spend between 80 and 90
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thousand dollars on one event on online ads we obviously don't have that budget so we have to do a
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lot more grassroots marketing things uh to get people to hear about us and then hope that they'll
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sign up for usually when people sign up for ours uh they'll come back we have a tremendously higher
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return rate to every other race because a lot of other people are let down whereas ours they come
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once like that was really fun and affordable so i will be back so that's one thing that we do save
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costs on is return customers return runners but uh the initial marketing is so expensive if you say oh
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i'm going to go to 20 events you better have a lot of money for those for each event you're better
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have it just to market with and that's kind of one reason we're a little bit smaller i think also
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just we just don't want to get we don't want to get too big and just that whole idea of smaller waves
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less races is good too sometimes in america it's seen as bigger as better and we don't agree with
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that necessarily i think it's quantity over over the uh or quality over the quantity we want to have
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more great races and not just have junky ones that are just put on just a oh tough hunter does this
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tough hunter is going to have a race in oklahoma this year i'll guarantee you that's not the same
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race they're putting on a new york city they're going to put on a much smaller race with less
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obstacles less staff and spend less time setting it up than their race in chicago la or new york
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because if they can get 8 000 people in oklahoma to do it they don't that's not as big as if they
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can get 17 000 people to do it in new york city we don't want to do that we always want to anything we
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do we're going to put our whole heart into it and make it as good as any conqueror they're not
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big to go to yeah i mean i was i'm curious about that because as you guys grow in popularity and
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it's it's it's nice to hear you guys say you're you're okay with not getting too big too fast but
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it seemed like with some of these mud races as they've gotten bigger the quality has gone down
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in the race there's been some there's been some big name high high dollar races that have completely
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gone out of business um the ones that had million dollars backing them you know and we started
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with literally an idea and a pickup truck and we kind of had to slowly build sort of to where you
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know you see these races they might have 3 000 people at a couple of their runs and then they
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decide to try to go to 30 cities well those races don't even exist anymore yeah you know when we go
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into a city we want to be able to obviously put on a good race but then there's i mean we can't market
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at 20 new cities it's not possible so that's kind of that's kind of how that works good deal so uh
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staying small is part of the plan that's great being able to just just expand one or two cities
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a year and being able to do those in a quality way to where people will come back that sounds like a
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southwest airlines approach yeah it's similar to their business model yeah the thing is even as slow
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as we're basically trying to grow at our rate not the rate that our competitors are or maybe
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other maybe our runners like man why don't you come here when you come there it's like we just can't yet
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and so instead of sacrificing that quality just to have another event we'll take our time and grow
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at our pace but at the same time we kind of have a cap like we're not ever going to be a 40 events a
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year even if we took 10 years to do it we just don't desire to be that because you have to think
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about there's 52 saturdays every year if you're doing 40 events that's just back to back to back to
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back and it's like it just you just turn into it you're just running people through you're just
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cattling people like herd or like just people are going through like cattle you're hurting them
00:22:05.440
and that's what we don't want to be we want to be if you come to our race you're an extremely unique
00:22:10.580
conqueror and this is your day to get our best event the best we had so we would probably never go over
00:22:16.120
uh 10 to 12 events even if we got the 12 events we wouldn't really do more than that we wouldn't do
00:22:21.680
more cities than that we would just focus on making those events better as opposed to trying to go to
00:22:26.540
one place it's definitely unique and it's kind of odd and i'm sure spartan owners were listening to
00:22:32.220
this they were morons but we just want to be different than them those other events that go
00:22:36.600
everywhere already exist there's at least five of them that's another thing is we just they exist if
00:22:41.300
you want to go do a 5k and act tough at a warrior dash and then chug a beer at the end you're more than
00:22:46.140
welcome to that event already exists we don't we didn't see the need in duplicating that event for the
00:22:51.100
50th thousandth time every other events pretty much the same come run get a watered down experience
00:22:57.080
here's a beer not that there's anything wrong with that that's just why ours is different because if
00:23:01.620
you want to do that it already exists we didn't see the point in duplicating it again in the cities
00:23:06.100
we go to very cool um so here's a question i have it's sort of personal because i've always wondered
00:23:11.280
about like how do you train for these things because like i'll sign up for one and then i i kind
00:23:15.180
like i i'm a pretty fit guy but you know obstacle races are different from you know your typical
00:23:22.560
i don't know how do you train for this so that you know you can manage every obstacle you're about to
00:23:27.300
handle yeah i mean i think i think first of all i mean you've got to have the cardio you've got to
00:23:33.160
be able to run four miles at a good pace and another thing is like you know what are you trying
00:23:38.040
to do are you trying to have a an elite time or are you trying to just get through it you know
00:23:42.300
with our race i would say grip strength is probably an upper body strength are tested in our race more
00:23:48.440
than any other race in the world i i would venture to say yeah it was tough that's that's what i went
00:23:54.240
out on i think there's 10 walls in our race if not more uh you've got the monkey bars you got the
00:23:59.280
steroid of heaven you got the tarzan swing not to mention whatever else is out there dead man's
00:24:03.000
drop that's a lot of grip strength so i mean pull-ups i mean anything that you can work on your
00:24:07.620
grip strength with um upper body strength you know being as lean as possible the the big
00:24:12.100
football type player guys that come out there you know you're six foot three 210 pound massive guy
00:24:16.920
230 pound whatever he's gonna have more trouble than your five nine 160 pound guy so i think you
00:24:24.340
want to be lean you want to have grip strength and upper body strength and see what do you have to
00:24:27.540
add to that i think the key is as far as what you're going to train for train doing body weight
00:24:32.500
things that's going to be tested um if you're i mean not saying you have to totally drop lifting
00:24:38.260
weights if you're a big lifter but go to like more push-ups as opposed to just bench press
00:24:41.920
instead of throwing that mass on it so again if you're if you're just coming through with some
00:24:45.300
buddies do whatever you want to do to get through it but if you want to have a good time and improve
00:24:49.380
on your time from last year pull-ups do pull-ups do pull-ups do pull-ups because that's going to
00:24:54.360
help your grip strength and it's going to make you want to lose weight if you can shed five pounds that
00:24:58.420
that's hit five pounds you don't have to lift everything you're doing a pull-up so i think body
00:25:02.820
weight stuff's the key doing like air squats push-ups pull-ups and then i think another thing
00:25:07.680
people train they go to planet fitness or you know whatever ken jim or one of these just like
00:25:13.260
10 bucks and i just jump on the treadmill and jog four miles jogging four miles outside is completely
00:25:18.740
different than the treadmill with the tv on that terrain we put you on yeah running on grass uh is
00:25:24.620
is huge too some people even run we don't have obviously our race isn't on asphalt there's only
00:25:28.920
one goody race i've ever heard of trying to do that and they went out of business but uh as far as
00:25:33.880
off sport race um but uh doing it on grass i think is key running on grass that's what you're
00:25:39.340
going to be running on trail running trail running doing stuff like that is it's a key to to it body
00:25:44.640
weight stuff cardio running on grass pull-ups if you do that you'll be fine another thing is how
00:25:49.080
different is it to run a couple miles versus running a couple miles wet yeah people forget how
00:25:54.860
bogged down your shoes are going to get when they get wet closure time so maybe jump in a pool then go
00:25:59.260
run a little bit all right so what do you guys uh think is the future of obstacle racing this has
00:26:05.940
been around for i i mean i guess would say five years six years i think six years yeah i think 08
00:26:12.080
or 09 was when they actually started kind of ramping up and people really started getting into i mean do
00:26:17.380
you guys think this is a fad or you think this is something that's going to stick around for a while
00:26:21.300
i mean i'm sure you guys think about that all the time right as as business owners like how long is
00:26:25.820
this going to last and how can we make it last i mean what are your guys's thoughts on that
00:26:28.780
i think it will it will last a long time if the events become more quality i think just like
00:26:36.780
anything if if every time people start keep signing up to you then putting their 50 of faith or 90 of
00:26:43.100
faith in into that a run will be fun challenging and unique and they go to someone they aren't what
00:26:49.460
they expected or they didn't have the obstacle they did that's going to turn those people away from
00:26:53.740
doing the quality ones like we think ours is the more companies that just try to go big and just
00:26:58.260
you know we're just going to have 50 events one every saturday and go to every big city in the
00:27:02.720
u.s to try to make money they're actually hurting the small guys because they're putting on events
00:27:06.540
of less quality and the the common public it's not your obstacle course racer they're just going to
00:27:12.880
see that like oh that's what all those events are i guess so they're they're all kind of just like
00:27:16.420
trying to get my 50 and put on a quick cheap thing i think that's the only thing that could really
00:27:21.180
hurt it necessarily but i i it's grown so much we already haven't you know in just the runners
00:27:27.560
because we have hundreds of runners that come to each of our events that they do seven or eight
00:27:32.000
events a year and it's almost like that's their fitness training it's they they try to do eight
00:27:36.240
to ten a year and it's what they look forward to doing so those kind of runners we love because
00:27:40.960
they come to us every year and they come and say hey your event's still my favorite i did three
00:27:44.240
spartans a tough mutter two worried ashes and yours is tougher you just don't have the money to
00:27:48.260
market it but i wish you did because you're just so much the run is so much more challenging
00:27:52.260
so i think staying quality is something that everybody needs to focus on probably us included
00:27:57.220
there's ways we could improve our quality as well but i don't see it as a fad either way i think
00:28:02.240
5ks and marathons have been around for decades and decades i mean marathons for hundreds of thousands
00:28:07.540
of years and then more recently just five like your local 5k there's there's one a month in every city
00:28:12.260
and all these are just like a 5k or more with more fun stuff so if 5ks didn't die out i don't see
00:28:19.080
how these would really very cool i think with any market you're going to see you know you saw the
00:28:23.840
explosion and then last year a lot of even somewhat bigger and a ton of more regional races went out of
00:28:30.120
business to where you're going to you know you're going to get your cream to rise to the top and you're
00:28:33.100
going to have your your couple of races that everyone is going to know about and you'll of course you'll
00:28:37.160
have newcomers as well but you know i don't think it's an industry that's just going to
00:28:40.720
disappear entirely but i mean it will it will wean itself out kind of like the dot-com boom in
00:28:46.460
the early 2000s it kind of went huge and then it bursted and the guys that were really good state
00:28:51.000
i think that's what's eventually going to happen to this is um there's going to be a kind of when
00:28:56.080
the smoke clears in the next decade there's going to be the really good ones left that were able to
00:29:00.360
provide a great product every time they had runners show up they'll still be there and there'll be some
00:29:05.360
of the other ones that will most likely not be so do you think there do you think there's like room
00:29:10.420
for like like regional is that kind of like where the future is for you where you like you guys you're
00:29:15.300
kind of keeping it geographic in your location is that kind of where you think uh the future is where
00:29:20.880
you can actually provide a quality race to a pretty decent size locale but it's not the whole entire
00:29:26.740
country i mean i think i think i mean not to not to be extreme i think you'll always have your tough
00:29:30.720
mother and your warrior dad and spartan race likely i mean those guys are insanely big you know but
00:29:35.740
having a regional race like ours is is i think one of the best ways you know to provide a quality
00:29:41.520
product and make money while at the same time you know sticking around for a while ones like us out
00:29:47.840
there and they're they're some of the most there are a lot that yeah we respect a ton that are that
00:29:51.320
are really really good and they're doing the right thing and and i'm not even i'm not saying like
00:29:55.080
toughner doesn't put on a good product they do i'm just saying it's harder to do 40 good events as
00:30:00.080
opposed to 15 i kind of think of it this way as well when you're going on a 10 to 12 hour road trip
00:30:06.380
there's not a lot of really quality clean gas stations with a great employee manning them
00:30:12.740
but when you go to houston when you go to like tulsa we have a great quick trip uh company here
00:30:18.860
called quick trip they have our great great gas station but you know regionally there's a lot of
00:30:23.000
like really quality gas stations but there's not anyone that has a great gas station that's nationwide
00:30:27.460
because they just kind of get run down they get turned into the bathrooms are dirty the guy
00:30:32.580
working was shooting meth 30 minutes ago no i'm just i'm just generalizing obviously but um you kind
00:30:40.300
of the farther outside of big seas you get the gas station qualities go down i kind of compare it to
00:30:44.400
that maybe it's a bad comparison but just nationwide is really tough to do and stay extremely quality
00:30:50.120
well for our listeners because we have a you know listeners who live all across the country are there
00:30:54.420
some like other regional um races like you guys like in the northeast or northwest that you're aware
00:31:00.320
of um i i know in in the southeast um and they're actually kind of getting into our area but um so i
00:31:08.060
don't want to promote them too much but savage race is they're amazing extremely legit they i would
00:31:13.080
openly admit just because i'm an honest man they have better obstacles than we do um and they're in
00:31:18.040
the farthest west there is texas they're mainly florida georgia i think they're doing in ohio now but
00:31:23.440
they do about seven or eight events a year they went to 12 or 13 one year and they've backed off
00:31:28.620
now to about seven and they're all really really good they bring their a game every time uh for i
00:31:34.220
mean i've never done one i i wanted to do dallas last year it was a conflicting date with some other
00:31:38.280
stuff i had going on but they they're and they're kind of like i guess they're six miles and they're
00:31:42.340
25 to 30 obstacles so they're a little bit more mileage but uh then as far as the southeast they're
00:31:47.460
probably the best local run in that florida georgia area and they do ohio i don't know too much about
00:31:53.260
the west and out in california honestly we don't research a ton over there we do research obviously
00:31:59.180
in the areas we're going to yeah um so i'm not completely sure on that one uh there was a good
00:32:05.100
one in in the northeast called the ruckus race and they actually they're one of the ones that they
00:32:11.000
were in the northeast and they were crushing it and they tried to go like kansas city texas ohio they
00:32:16.780
tried to expand way to the west and then one year they went from like eight events to 10 to 20 and they
00:32:22.240
went out of business they went out of this for uh two years now so they were a really good northeastern
00:32:26.980
one that was local and tried to um kind of get too big too fast that's why we do a ton of research
00:32:32.460
and like kind of know who we are sometimes you're mcdonald's and some guys sometimes you're five
00:32:37.300
guys burgers yeah i just have to know what you are we're just you know quality and small and we
00:32:43.080
don't want to get too big and force ourselves out we don't want to cannibalize ourselves and our
00:32:46.780
marketing dollar yeah very cool so what's in the future of conquer the gauntlet what can we see uh
00:32:52.200
expect from you guys in the next uh in 2015 well i mean the most races we've ever had the most runners
00:32:58.480
we've ever had and probably the most obstacles we've ever had i would say for sure every year we
00:33:02.380
increase our obstacles and we usually gain runners and we are adding events look to do six events this
00:33:08.500
year and then 2016 we hope to add to that we're really wanting to do a uh denver colorado event
00:33:15.780
um in early summer of 2016 we're probably going to start in may and in june of 2015 kind of
00:33:24.700
pre-registering for that and letting people know that we're coming that way um that's somewhere we
00:33:29.320
really want to be um present that's a that's an awesome area we have a lot of a ton of friends
00:33:34.020
that we know from going to college with uh in denver denver area colorado area that are kind of
00:33:40.600
begging us to come out there they think we'd be successful so that's that's what we're looking
00:33:44.460
at doing but as far as this year just better obstacles better quality everything uh this year
00:33:49.340
this year we're doing uh actual finishers metal like a metal piece of hardware you get last year
00:33:54.300
we did like a finisher's magnet because we thought our biggest thing is trying to be unique and different
00:33:58.700
and uh we always try to put our our money we get if we get sixty thousand dollars we're going to
00:34:04.540
give you sixty thousand dollars of obstacles and if you need a trinket you can go to the your local
00:34:09.360
thrift store and buy one so we that's why we didn't do metals and we were just trying to be different but
00:34:13.220
you know we also listen to our runners and a lot of we have surveys on our website people said they
00:34:17.200
really wanted the metal so we switched from doing like magnets that go on a car refrigerator or a stove
00:34:22.300
and we're going to do magnets this year so that's something that's definitely going to be new and i think a ton
00:34:26.140
of runners uh are excited about it that's something and we'll always have the best t-shirts in the
00:34:31.580
industry yeah i love you guys our t-shirts are just by far the best i've done the tough butters and
00:34:37.760
it's just a uh got tossed a t-shirt that just kind of fits but we that's something else we want our
00:34:43.100
people to wear the shirt so we'll have more of the good t-shirts more of the obstacles doing metals
00:34:46.700
going to more cities and bringing more people so very cool where can uh people go to find out more
00:34:51.940
about the conquer the gauntlet conquer the gauntlet.com is the website and we also have a
00:34:57.780
twitter handle which is at conquer gauntlet should definitely follow us there um and then follow our
00:35:03.740
facebook page it's just conquer the gauntlet on facebook and we have an instagram yeah it's also
00:35:08.240
conquer the gauntlet so same name different place google conquer the gauntlet and you'll find us but
00:35:13.340
if you type in conquer the gauntlet.com you'll definitely yeah we actually just uh
00:35:17.960
uh 12 13 days ago we launched a brand new website if you haven't been yet i know you ran last year
00:35:24.100
you should go check it out because we've got tons of new video up pictures of every obstacle all of
00:35:29.500
our new obstacles on there tons of quotes from runners at the day of the event um all kinds of
00:35:34.400
new things going on we're about to have a new page added to it probably in january called the
00:35:38.600
conquerors community and we're actually gonna have our runners and uh different event organizers
00:35:44.260
probably vote on and have a conqueror in the month and get a t-shirt away to someone that we feel is
00:35:49.300
really showing that they're a conqueror in their day-to-day lives just a lot of cool things going
00:35:53.000
on that we're pumped about yeah definitely um as you know uh right you know a lot a lot of these
00:35:58.620
companies run constant sales so they might say the price is going up but it's just it's always the
00:36:03.220
same but with us you know we try to start it out at a price and and move forward with the price
00:36:06.740
going out to where people sign up early get rewarded so you know challenge everyone out there sign up
00:36:11.860
early and uh i don't believe anyone in tulsa last year ran it in under 40 minutes so if anyone
00:36:17.020
thinks they're elite come try to uh conquer we've got a 40 minute club in in tulsa if you finish in
00:36:23.240
40 minutes i'll give you your 50 bucks back because you're probably not going to get it because there's
00:36:26.560
so many obstacles very cool well steven david main prize thank you so much for your time it's been a
00:36:32.140
pleasure thank you good luck with everything man keep being manly oh yeah keep that beard it's awesome
00:36:37.520
and you keep working on your beard i will take these guys we'll see you around and i'll definitely
00:36:42.680
be doing the race here in tulsa this year so i'm looking forward to it our guests they were david and
00:36:48.240
steven main prize they are the founders and owners of conquer the gauntlet you can find out more about
00:36:53.880
conquer the gauntlet at conquer the gauntlet.com they've got a few races scheduled already for 2015
00:36:59.200
i'll be doing the one in tulsa on august 22nd so if you're in the area i'd love to see you there
00:37:05.240
and conquer the gauntlet with me well that wraps up another edition of the art of manliness podcast
00:37:13.180
for more manly tips and advice make sure to check out the art of manliness website at
00:37:16.940
artofmanliness.com and i'd really appreciate it if you could give our podcast a rating on itunes
00:37:22.720
stitcher whatever it is you use to listen to your podcast that would really help us out because it
00:37:27.040
helped more people find out about the podcast so go ahead and do that until next time this is brett