Podcasts about liftopia

The Storm Skiing Journal and Podcast is a reader-supported publication (and my full-time job). To receive new posts and to support independent ski journalism, please consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.WhoJoe Hession, CEO of Snow Partners, which owns Mountain Creek, Big Snow American Dream, SnowCloud, and Terrain Based LearningRecorded onMay 2, 2025About Snow PartnersSnow Partners owns and operates Mountain Creek, New Jersey and Big Snow American Dream, the nation's only indoor ski center. The company also developed SnowCloud resort management software and has rolled out its Terrain Based Learning system at more than 80 ski areas worldwide. They do some other things that I don't really understand (there's a reason that I write about skiing and not particle physics), that you can read about on their website.About Mountain CreekLocated in: Vernon Township, New JerseyClosest neighboring public ski areas: Mount Peter (:24); Big Snow American Dream (:50); Campgaw (:51) Pass affiliations: Snow Triple Play, up to two anytime daysBase elevation: 440 feetSummit elevation: 1,480 feetVertical drop: 1,040 feetSkiable Acres: 167Average annual snowfall: 65 inchesTrail count: 46Lift count: 9 (1 Cabriolet, 2 high-speed quads, 2 fixed-grip quads, 1 triple, 1 double, 2 carpets – view Lift Blog's inventory of Mountain Creek's lift fleet)About Big Snow American DreamLocated in: East Rutherford, New JerseyClosest neighboring public ski areas: Campgaw (:35); Mountain Creek (:50); Mount Peter (:50)Pass affiliations: Snow Triple Play, up to two anytime daysVertical drop: 160 feet Skiable Acres: 4Trail count: 4 (2 green, 1 blue, 1 black)Lift count: 4 (1 quad, 1 poma, 2 carpets - view Lift Blog's of inventory of Big Snow American Dream's lift fleet)Why I interviewed himI read this earlier today:The internet is full of smart people writing beautiful prose about how bad everything is, how it all sucks, how it's embarrassing to like anything, how anything that appears good is, in fact, secretly bad. I find this confusing and tragic, like watching Olympic high-jumpers catapult themselves into a pit of tarantulas.That blurb was one of 28 “slightly rude notes on writing” offered in Adam Mastroianni's Experimental History newsletter. And I thought, “Man this dude must follow #SkiTwitter.” Or Instabook. Of Flexpost. Or whatever. Because online ski content, both short- and long-form, is, while occasionally joyous and evocative, disproportionately geared toward the skiing-is-fucked-and-this-is-why worldview. The passes suck. The traffic sucks. The skiers suck. The prices suck. The parking sucks. The Duopoly sucks. Everyone's a Jerry, chewing up my pow line with their GoPro selfie sticks hoisted high and their Ikon Passes dangling from their zippers. Skiing is corporate and soulless and tourist obsessed and doomed anyway because of climate change. Don't tell me you're having a good time doing this very fun thing. People like you are the reason skiing's soul now shops at Wal-Mart. Go back to Texas and drink a big jug of oil, you Jerry!It's all so… f*****g dumb. U.S. skiing just wrapped its second-best season of attendance. The big passes, while imperfect, are mostly a force for good, supercharging on-hill infrastructure investment, spreading skiers across geographies, stabilizing a once-storm-dependent industry, and lowering the per-day price of skiing for the most avid among us to 1940s levels. Snowmaking has proven an effective bulwark against shifting weather patterns. Lift-served skiing is not a dying pastime, financially or spiritually or ecologically. Yes, modern skiing has problems: expensive food (pack a lunch); mountain-town housing shortages (stop NIMBY-ing everything); traffic (yay car culture); peak-day crowds (don't go then); exploding insurance, labor, utilities, and infrastructure costs (I have no answers). But in most respects, this is a healthy, thriving, constantly evolving industry, and a more competitive one than the Duopoly Bros would admit.Snow Partners proves this. Because what the hell is Snow Partners? It's some company sewn together by a dude who used to park cars at Mountain Creek. Ten years ago this wasn't a thing, and now it's this wacky little conglomerate that owns a bespoke resort tech platform and North America's only snowdome and the impossible, ridiculous Mountain Creek. And they're going to build a bunch more snowdomes that stamp new skiers out by the millions and maybe – I don't know but maybe – become the most important company in the history of lift-served skiing in the process.Could such an outfit possibly have materialized were the industry so corrupted as the Brobot Pundit Bros declare it? Vail is big. Alterra is big. But the two companies combined control just 53 of America's 501 active ski areas. Big ski areas, yes. Big shadows. But neither created: Indy Pass, Power Pass, Woodward Parks, Terrain Based Learning, Mountain Collective, RFID, free skiing for kids, California Mountain Resort Company, or $99 season passes. Neither saved Holiday Mountain or Hatley Pointe or Norway Mountain or Timberline West Virigina from the scrapheap, or transformed a failing Black Mountain into a co-op. Neither has proven they can successfully run a ski area in Indiana (sorry Vail #SickBurn #SellPaoliPeaks #Please).Skiing, at this moment, is a glorious mix of ideas and energy. I realize it makes me uncool to think so, but I signed off on those aspirations the moment I drove the minivan off the Chrysler lot (topped it off with a roofbox, too, Pimp). Anyhow, the entire point of this newsletter is to track down the people propelling change in a sport that most likely predates the written word and ask them why they're doing these novel things to make an already cool and awesome thing even more cool and awesome. And no one, right now, is doing more cool and awesome things in skiing than Snow Partners.**That's not exactly true. Mountain Capital Partners, Alterra, Ikon Pass, Deer Valley, Entabeni Systems, Jon Schaefer, the Perfect Clan, Boyne Resorts, Big Sky, Mt. Bohemia, Powdr, Vail Resorts, Midwest Family Ski Resorts, and a whole bunch more entities/individuals/coalitions are also contributing massively to skiing's rapid-fire rewiring in the maw of the robot takeover digital industrial revolution. But, hey, when you're in the midst of transforming an entire snow-based industry from a headquarters in freaking New Jersey, you get a hyperbolic bump in the file card description.What we talked aboutThe Snow Triple Play; potential partners; “there's this massive piece of the market that's like ‘I don't even understand what you're talking about'” with big day ticket prices and low-priced season passes; why Mountain Creek sells its Triple Play all season long and why the Snow Triple Play won't work that way (at least at first); M.A.X. Pass and why Mountain Creek declined to join successor passes; an argument for Vail, Alterra and other large ski companies to participate on the Snow Triple Play; comparing skiing to hotels, airlines, and Disney World; “the next five years are going to be the most interesting and disruptive time in the ski industry because of technology”; “we don't compete with anybody”; Liftopia's potential, errors, failure, and legacy; skiing on Groupon; considering Breckenridge as an independent ski area; what a “premium” ski area on the Snow Triple Play would be; why megapasses are “selling people a product that will never be used the way it's sold to them”; why people in NYC feel like going to Mountain Creek, an hour over the George Washington Bridge, is “going to Alaska”; why Snow Triple Play will “never” add a fourth day; sticker shock for Big Snow newbs who emerge from the Dome wanting more; SnowCloud and the tech and the guest journey from parking lot to lifts; why Mountain Creek stopped mailing season passes; Bluetooth Low Energy “is certainly the future of passes”; “100 percent we're getting more Big Snows” – but let's justify the $175 million investment first; Big Snow has a “terrible” design; “I don't see why every city shouldn't have a Big Snow” and which markets Snow Partners is talking to; why Mountain Creek didn't get the mega-lift Hession teased on this pod three years ago and when we could see one; “I really believe that the Vernon base of Mountain Creek needs an updated chair”; the impact of automated snowmaking at Mountain Creek; and a huge residential project incoming at Mountain Creek.What I got wrong* I said that Hession wasn't involved in Mountain Creek in the M.A.X. Pass era, but he was an Intrawest employee at the time, and was Mountain Creek's GM until 2012.* I hedged on whether Boyne's Explorer multi-day pass started at two or three days. Skiers can purchase the pass in three- to six-day increments.Why now was a good time for this interviewOkay, so I'll admit that when Snow Partners summarized the Snow Triple Play for me, I wasn't like “Holy crap, three days (total) at up to three different ski areas on a single ski pass? Do you think they have room for another head on Mount Rushmore?” This multi-day pass is a straightforward product that builds off a smart idea (the Mountain Creek Triple Play), that has been a smash hit at the Jersey Snow Jungle since at least 2008. But Snow Triple Play doesn't rank alongside Epic, Ikon, Indy, or Mountain Collective as a seasonlong basher. This is another frequency product in a market already flush with them.So why did I dedicate an entire podcast and two articles (so far) to dissecting this product, which Hession makes pretty clear has no ambitions to grow into some Indy/Ikon/Epic competitor? Because it is the first product to tie Big Snow to the wider ski world. And Big Snow only works if it is step one and there is an obvious step two. Right now, that step two is hard, even in a region ripe with ski areas. The logistics are confounding, the one-off cost hard to justify. Lift tickets, gear rentals, getting your ass to the bump and back, food, maybe a lesson. The Snow Triple Play doesn't solve all of these problems, but it does narrow an impossible choice down to a manageable one by presenting skiers with a go-here-next menu. If Snow Partners can build a compelling (or at least logical) Northeast network and then scale it across the country as the company opens more Big Snows in more cities, then this simple pass could evolve into an effective toolkit for building new skiers.OK, so why not just join Indy or Mountain Collective, or forge some sort of newb-to-novice agreement with Epic or Ikon? That would give Snow Partners the stepladder, without the administrative hassle of owning a ski pass. But that brings us to another roadblock in Ski Revolution 2025: no one wants to share partners. So Hession is trying to flip the narrative. Rather than locking Big Snow into one confederacy or the other, he wants the warring armies to lash their fleets along Snow Partners Pier. Big Snow is just the bullet factory, or the gas station, or the cornfield – the thing that all the armies need but can't supply themselves. You want new skiers? We got ‘em. They're ready. They just need a map to your doorstep. And we're happy to draw you one.Podcast NotesOn the Snow Triple PlayThe basics: three total days, max of two used at any one partner ski area, no blackouts at Big Snow or Mountain Creek, possible blackouts at partner resorts, which are TBD.The pass, which won't be on sale until Labor Day, is fully summarized here:And I speculate on potential partners here:On the M.A.X. PassFor its short, barely noted existence, the M.A.X. Pass was kind of an amazing hack, granting skiers five days each at an impressive blend of regional and destination ski areas:Much of this roster migrated over to Ikon, but in taking their pass' name too literally, the Alterra folks left off some really compelling regional ski areas that could have established a hub-and-spoke network out of the gate. Lutsen and Granite Peak owner Charles Skinner told me on the podcast a few years back that Ikon never offered his ski areas membership (they joined Indy in 2020), cutting out two of the Midwest's best mountains. The omissions of Mountain Creek, Wachusett, and the New York trio of Belleayre, Whiteface, and Gore ceded huge swaths of the dense and monied Northeast to competitors who saw value in smaller, high-end operations that are day-trip magnets for city folks who also want that week at Deer Valley (no other pass signed any of these mountains, but Vail and Indy both assembled better networks of day-drivers and destinations).On my 2022 interview with HessionOn LiftopiaLiftopia's website is still live, but I'm not sure how many ski areas participate in this Expedia-for-lift-tickets. Six years ago, I thought Liftopia was the next bargain evolution of lift-served skiing. I even hosted founder Evan Reece on one of my first 10 podcasts. The whole thing fell apart when Covid hit. An overview here:On various other day-pass productsI covered this in my initial article, but here's how the Snow Triple Play stacks up against other three-day multi-resort products:On Mountain Creek not mailing passesI don't know anything about tech, but I know, from a skier's point of view, when something works well and when it doesn't. Snow Cloud's tech is incredible in at least one customer-facing respect: when you show up at a ski area, a rep standing in a conspicuous place is waiting with an iPhone, with which they scan a QR code on your phone, and presto-magico: they hand you your ski pass. No lines or waiting. One sentimental casualty of this on-site efficiency was the mailed ski pass, an autumn token of coming winter to be plucked gingerly from the mailbox. And this is fine and makes sense, in the same way that tearing down chairlifts constructed of brontosaurus bones and mastodon hides makes sense, but I must admit that I miss these annual mailings in the same way that I miss paper event tickets and ski magazines. My favorite ski mailing ever, in fact, was not Ikon's glossy fold-out complete with a 1,000-piece 3D jigsaw puzzle of the Wild Blue Gondola and name-a-snowflake-after-your-dog kit, but this simple pamphlet dropped into the envelope with my 2018-19 Mountain Creek season pass:Just f*****g beautiful, Man. That hung on my office wall for years. On the CabrioletThis is just such a wackadoodle ski lift:Onetime Mountain Creek owner Intrawest built similar lifts at Winter Park and Tremblant, but as transit lifts from the parking lot. This one at Mountain Creek is the only one that I'm aware of that's used as an open-air gondola. Get full access to The Storm Skiing Journal and Podcast at www.stormskiing.com/subscribe

In this episode, Amanda Natividad, VP of Marketing at SparkToro, talks about some of the low points in her career, the toughest feedback she's ever received, how she navigates burnout, and how she's been able to find her authentic voice as a leader.In this episode, you'll hear about:1. When Amanda was told ““Wow. Rand opened up a lot of doors for you!”2. Amanda's boss said it was obvious when she didn't know what she was doing3. When Amanda was told “You're too junior” and “You're too direct”Things to listen for:[06:34] When Amanda was told “Wow. Rand must have opened up a lot of doors for you”[15:39] During the pandemic, she was furloughed from her job at Liftopia[19:01] Amanda felt powerless in her personal and professional life…[27:29] Being told “It's so obvious you don't know what you're doing” by a manager[31:11] Seeing feedback as positive and her co-workers wanting to help[32:38] Being told “You're too junior” and “You're too direct”[39:34] “I don't know” shows maturity and awareness on a personal level[45:57] The skills she wishes she worked on earlierResources:- Connect with Amanda on LinkedIn- Check out SparkToro- Connect with Andrew on LinkedIn- Work with Andrew- Learn more about Appcues

This podcast hit paid subscribers' inboxes on Dec. 28. It dropped for free subscribers on Jan. 4. To receive future pods as soon as they're live, and to support independent ski journalism, please consider an upgrade to a paid subscription. You can also subscribe to the free tier below:WhoJon Schaefer, Owner and General Manager of Berkshire East, Massachusetts and Catamount, straddling the border of Massachusetts and New YorkRecorded onDecember 6, 2023About the mountainsBerkshire EastClick here for a mountain stats overviewOwned by: The Schaefer familyLocated in: Charlemont, MassachusettsYear founded: 1960Pass affiliations:* Berkshire Summit Pass: Unlimited Access* Indy Base Pass: 2 days with blackouts (reservations required)* Indy+ Pass: 2 days, no blackouts (reservations required)Closest neighboring ski areas: Eaglebrook School (:36), Brattleboro (:48), Hermitage Club (:48), Mt. Greylock Ski Club (:52), Mount Snow (:55), Jiminy Peak (:56), Bousquet (:56); Catamount is approximately 90 minutes south of Berkshire EastBase elevation: 660 feetSummit elevation: 1,840 feetVertical drop: 1,180 feetSkiable Acres: 180Average annual snowfall: 110 inchesTrail count: 45Lift count: 7 (1 high-speed quad, 2 fixed-grip quads, 1 triple, 1 double, 2 carpets – view Lift Blog's inventory of Berkshire East's lift fleet)View historic Berkshire East trailmaps on skimap.org.CatamountClick here for a mountain stats overviewOwned by: The Schaefer familyLocated in: Hillsdale, New York and South Egremont, Massachusetts (the resort straddles the state line, and generally seems to use the New York address as its location of record)Year founded: 1939Pass affiliations:* Berkshire Summit Pass: Unlimited Access* Indy Base Pass and Indy+ Pass: 2 days, no blackouts (reservations required)Closest neighboring ski areas: Butternut (:19), Otis Ridge (:35), Bousquet (:40), Mohawk Mountain (:46), Jiminy Peak (:50), Mount Lakeridge (:55), Mt. Greylock Ski Club (1:02); Berkshire East sits approximately 90 minutes north of CatamountBase elevation: 1,000 feetSummit elevation: 2,000 feetVertical drop: 1,000 feetSkiable Acres: 133 acresAverage annual snowfall: 108 inchesTrail count: 44 (35% green, 42% blue, 23% black/double-black)Lift count: 8 (2 fixed-grip quads, 3 triples, 3 carpets – view Lift Blog's inventory of Catamount's lift fleet)View historic Catamount trailmaps on skimap.org.Why I interviewed himMight I nominate Massachusetts as America's most underappreciated ski state? It's easy to understand the oversight. Bordered by three major ski states that are home to a combined 107 ski areas (50 in New York, 27 in Vermont, and 30 in New Hampshire), Massachusetts contains just 13 active lift-served mountains. Two (Easton School and Mount Greylock Ski Club) are private. Five of the remainder deliver vertical drops of 400 feet or fewer. The state's entire lift-served skiable area clocks in at around 1,300 acres, which is smaller than Killington and just a touch larger than Solitude.But the code and character of those 11 public ski areas is what I'm interested in here. Winnowed from some 200 bumps that once ran ropetows up the incline, these survivors are super-adapters, the Darwinian capstones to a century-long puzzle: how to consistently offer skiing in a hostile world that hates you.New England is a rumbler, and always has been. Outside of northern Vermont's Green Mountain Spine (Sugarbush, MRG, Bolton, Stowe, Smuggs, Jay), which snags 200-plus inches of almost automatic annual snowfall, the region's six states can, on any given day from November to April, stage double as Santa's Village or serve as props for sad brown Christmas pining. Immersive reading of the New England Ski History website suggests this contemporary reality reflects historical norms: prior to the widespread introduction of snowmaking, ski areas could sometimes offer just a single-digit number of ski days in particularly difficult winters. Even now, even in good winters, the freeze-thaw cycle is relentless. The rain-snow line is a thing during big storms. Several times in recent years, including this one, furious December rainstorms have washed out weeks of early-season snow and snowmaking.And yet, like sharks, hanging on for hundreds of millions of years as mass extinctions rolled most of the rest of life into the fossil record, the surviving Massachusetts ski area operators found a way to keep moving forward. But these are not sharks – the Colorado- and Utah-based operators haven't plundered the hills rolling west of Boston just yet. Every one of these ski areas (with the exception of investment fund-owned Bousquet), is still family-owned and operated. And these families are among the smartest ski area operators in America.In October, tiny Ski Ward, owned for decades by the LaCroix family, was the first North American ski area to spin lifts for the 2023-24 ski season. Wachusett, a thousand-footer run by the Crowley family since 1968, is a model home for volume urban skiing efficiency. The Fairbank family transformed Jiminy Peak from tadpole (in the 1960s) to alligator before expanding their small empire into New England (the family now runs Bromley, Vermont and owns Cranmore, New Hampshire). The Murdock family has run Butternut since its 1963 founding, and likely saved nearby Otis Ridge from extinction by purchasing the ski area in 2016 (the Murdocks also purchased, but later closed, another nearby ski area, Ski Blandford).The Schaefers, of Charlemont by way of Michigan, are as wiley and wired as any of them. Patriarch Roy Schaefer drove in from the Midwest with a station wagon full of kids in 1978. He stapled then-bankrupt Berkshire East together with the refuse of dead and dying ski areas from all over America. Some time in the mid- to late-aughts, Roy's son Jon took over daily operations and rapidly modernized the lifts, snowmaking, and trail network. Roy's other son Jim, a Wall-Streeter, helped the family take full ownership of the ski area. In 2018, they bought Catamount, a left-behind bump with fantastic fall lines but dated lifts and snowmaking.None of this is new or news to anyone who pays attention to Massachusetts skiing. In fact, Jon Schaefer has appeared on my podcasts twice before (and I've been on his). But in the four years since he joined me for episode nine, a lot has changed at Berkshire, at Catamount, in New England, and across skiing. Daily, the narrative grows that consolidation and megapasses are squeezing family operators out of skiing. My daily work suggests that the opposite may be happening, that independent operators, who have outlasted skiing's extinction event of the low-snow decades and perfected their mad alchemy through decades of swinging the pickaxe into the same mountain, have never had a better story to tell. And Jon Schaefer has one of the better ways of telling it.What we talked aboutEarly openings for both ski areas; what it means that Catamount opened before Berkshire East this season; snowmaking metaphors that I can guarantee you haven't heard before; letting go of things you love as you take on more responsibility; the power of ropetows; Berkshire East's new T-Bar Express, the ski area's first high-speed quad; why Schaefer finally came around on detachable lift technology; the unique dynamics of a multi-generational, family-owned mountain; the long-term plan for the three current top-to-bottom chairlifts; the potential Berkshire East expansion; yes Berkshire is getting busier; the strange math of high-speed versus fixed-grip quads; that balance between modernizing and retaining atmosphere; the Indy Pass' impact on Berkshire and the industry as a whole; whether more mountains could join the Berkshire Summit Pass; whether the Schaefers could buy another ski area; whether they considered buying Jay Peak or are considering buying Burke; assessing the overhaul of Catamount's lift fleet; talking through the clear-cutting of Catamount's frontside trails; parking at Catamount; expansion potential for Catamount; and Catamount being “one of the best small ski areas in the country.”Below: first chair on the new T-Bar Express at Berkshire East:Why I thought that now was a good time for this interviewIf I could somehow itemize and sort the thousands of Storm-related emails and Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook messages that I've read over the past four years, a top-10 request would be some form of this: get Schaefer back on the podcast.There are a couple of reasons for this. One is that Jon is, in my opinion, one of the more unfiltered and original thinkers in skiing. His dad moved the family to Berkshire in 1978. Jon was born in 1980. That means he grew up on the mountain and he lives at the mountain and he holds its past, present, and future in his vision like some shaman of the Berkshires, orchestrating its machinations in a hallucinogenic flow state, crafting, from the ether, a ski area like no other in America.Which leads to the second reason. Because Schaefer is so willful and effective, it can often be difficult for outsiders to see into the eye of the hurricane. You kind of have to let the storm pass. And the past four years have been a bit of a storm, particularly at Catamount, where Covid and supply-chain issues collided with an ambitious but protracted lift-fleet upgrade.But that's all done. Catamount has five functioning chairlifts (all of which, remarkably, were relocated from somewhere else). Berkshire just opened its first high-speed quad, the T-Bar Express. Both mountains are busier than ever, and Berkshire is a perennial Indy Pass top 10 by number of redemptions. And while expansion and a lift shuffle likely loom at Berkshire, both ski areas are, essentially, what the Schaefers want them to be.Which doesn't mean they are ever finished. Schaefer and I touch on this existential reality in the podcast, but we also discuss the other obvious question: now that Catamount's gut-renovation is wrapping up, what's next? Could this ski family, with their popular Berkshire Summit Pass (which is also good at Bousquet), expand with more owned or partner mountains? There are, after all, only so many people in America who know how to capably operate a ski area. You can learn, sure, but most people suck at it, which is (one reason) why there are more lost ski areas than active ones. While I don't root for consolidation necessarily, if ski areas are going to transfer ownership, I'd rather someone proven sign the deed than an unknown. And when it comes to proven, the Schaefers have proven as much as anyone in the country.Questions I wish I'd askedAt some point over the past few years, the Schaefers purchased a Rossland, B.C.-based Cat skiing operation called Big Red Cats. Their terrain covers 20,000 acres on eight peaks. I'm not sure why we didn't get into it.What I got wrongI said that Indy Pass had 130 alpine partners. That was correct on Dec. 6, when we conducted the interview, but the pass has since added Moose Mountain, Alaska and Hudson Bay Mountain, B.C., bringing the total up to 132.Why you should ski Berkshire East and CatamountWhile age, injuries, perspective, volume, skiing with children, and this newsletter have all changed my approach to where and what I ski on any given day, the thing I still love most is the fight. Riding the snowy mountain, in its bruising earthly form, through its trees and drops and undulations, feeling part of something raw and wild. I don't like speed. I like technical and varied terrain that requires deliberate, thoughtful turns. This I find profoundly interesting, like a book that offers, with each page, a captivating new thing.Massachusetts is a great ski state, but it doesn't have a lot of what I just described, that sort of ever-rolling wickedness you'll find clinging to certain mountains in Vermont and New Hampshire. But the state does have one such ski area: Berkshire East. She's ready to fight. Glades and bumps and little cliffs in the woods. Jiminy and Wachusett give you high-speed lifts and operational excellence, but they don't give you (more than nominal) trees. For a skier looking to summon a little Mad River Glen but save themselves a three-hour drive, Berkshire East goes on the storm-chase list.But unlike MRG, Berkshire is a top-to-bottom snowmaking house, and it has to be. While the glades are amazing when you can get them, the operating assumption here is that, more often than not, you can't. And that means the vast majority of skiers – those who prefer groomers to whatever frolics you find in the trees – can head to Berkshire knowing a good day awaits.Catamount, less-snowy and closer to New York City, gives you a more traditional Massachusetts ski experience. More people (it seems), less exploring in the trees (though you can do this a bit). What it has in common with Berkshire is that Catamount is an excellent natural ski mountain. Fall lines, headwalls, winders through the trees. A thousand vert gives you a good run. Head there on a weekday in March, when the whole joint is open, and let them run.Podcast NotesOn Schaefer's previous podcast appearancesSchaefer was the first person to ever agree to join me on The Storm Skiing Podcast, answering my cold email in about four seconds. “Let's do it,” he wrote. It took us a few months to make it happen, but he joined me for episode nine. While he showed up huge, the episode also doubles as a showcase for how much better my own production quality has gotten over the past four years. The intro is sorta… flat:A few months later, Schaefer became the first operator in America to shutter his mountains to help stop the spread of Covid-19. He almost immediately launched an organization called Goggles for Docs, and he joined me on my “Covid-19 & Skiing” miniseries to discuss the initiative:The next year, I joined Jon on his Berkshire Sessions podcast, where we discussed his mountains and Northeast skiing in general:On historic opening and closing dates at Berkshire East and CatamountWe discussed Berkshire and Catamount's historical opening and closing dates. Here's what the past 10 years looked like (the Schaefers took over Catamount starting with the 2018-19 ski season):On Berkshire SnowbasinSchaefer discussed the now-defunct Berkshire Basin ski area in nearby Cummington. The ski area operated from 1949 to 1989, according to New England Ski History, and counted a 550-foot vertical drop (though the map below says 500). Here's a circa 1984 trailmap:Schaefer references efforts to re-open this ski area as a backcountry center, though I couldn't find any reporting on the topic.Stan Brown, whom Schaefer cites for his insight that skiers “are more interested in how they get up the mountain than how they get down” founded Berkshire Snow Basin with his wife, Ruth.On high-speed ropetowsI'll never stop yelling about these things until everyone installs one – these high-speed ropetows can move 4,000 skiers per hour and cost all of $50,000. A more perfect terrain park lift does not exist. This one is at Spirit Mountain, Minnesota (video by me):On when the T-bar came out of Berkshire EastSchaefer refers to the old T-bar that occupied the line where the new high-speed quad now sits. The lift did not extend to the summit, but ran 1,800 feet up from the base, along the run that is still known as Competition (lift F below):On Schaefer's past resistance to high-speed liftsShaun Sutner, a longtime snowsports reporter who has appeared on this podcast three times – most recently in November – summarized Schaefer's onetime resistance to detachable lifts in a 2015 Worcester Telegram & Gazette article:The start of the 2014-15 ski season came with the B-East's first-ever summit quad, a $2 million fixed-grip "medium-speed" lift from Skytrac, a new U.S.-owned lift company. The low-maintenance, elegantly simple conveyance will save millions of dollars over the years. Not only was it less than half the cost of a high-speed detachable quad, but it also eliminates the need for $300,000-$500,000 grip replacements that high-speed lifts need every three or four years.So what changed Schaefer's mind? We discussed in the podcast.On the potential Berkshire East expansionWhile Berkshire East has teased an expansion for several years, details remain scarce (rumors, unfortunately, do not). Schaefer tells us what he's willing to on the podcast, and this image, which the resort presented to a local planning board last year, shows the approximate location of the new terrain pod (around the red dotted line labeled “4”):While this plan suggests the Mountain Top Triple would move to serve the expansion, that may not necessarily be the final plan, Schaefer confirms.On “the gondola side of Stowe” When Schaefer says that the Berkshire expansion will ski like “the gondola side of Stowe,” he's referring to the terrain pod indicated below:Stowe has two gondolas, one of which connects Stowe proper to Spruce Peak, but that's not the terrain he's referring to. The double chair side of Plattekill also skis in the way Schaefer describes, as a series of figure-eights that delightfully frazzles the senses, making the ski area feel far larger than it actually is:On Indy Pass rankingsBerkshire East has finished as a top-10 mountain in number of Indy Pass redemptions every season:On LiftopiaSchaefer references Liftopia, a former online lift ticket broker whose legacy is fading. At one time, I was a huge fan of this Expedia-of-skiing site, where you could score substantial discounts to most major non-Vail ski areas. I hosted founder and CEO Evan Reece way back on podcast number 8:Sadly, the company collapsed with the onset of Covid, as I documented back in 2020:…the industry's most-prominent pure tech entity – Liftopia – has been teetering on existential collapse since failing to pay significant numbers of its partners following the March shutdown. A group of ski area operators tried forcing Liftopia into bankruptcy to recoup their funds. They failed, then appealed, then withdrew that appeal. Outside of the public record, bitter and betrayed ski area operators fumed about the loss of revenues that, as Aspen Snowmass CFO Matt Jones wrote in emails filed in federal court, “were never yours to begin with.” In August, Liftopia CEO Evan Reece announced that he had signed a letter of intent to sell the company.That new owner, Liftopia announced Friday, would be Skitude, a European tech outfit specializing in mobile apps. “The proceeds from the sale will be used to pay creditors,” SAM reported. In an email to an independent ski area operator that was shared with The Storm Skiing Journal Reece wrote that “…all claims will be treated equally,” without specifying whether partners could expect a full or partial repayment. The message also indicated that the new owner may “prioritize ongoing partners,” though it was unclear whether that indicated preference in future business terms or payback of owed funds, or something else altogether.Whatever the outcome, this unsatisfying story is a tale of enormous missed opportunity. No company was better positioned to help lift-served skiing adapt to the social-distancing age than Liftopia. It could have easily expanded and adapted its highly regarded technology to accommodate the almost universal shift to online-only sales for lift tickets, rental reservations, ski lessons, and even appointment times in the lodge. It had 15 years of brand recognition with customers and deep relationships within the ski industry.But ski areas, uncertain about Liftopia's future, have spent an offseason when they could have been building out their presence on a familiar platform scrambling for replacement tech solutions. In addition to the Liftopia-branded site, many ski areas used Liftopia's Cloud Store platform to sell day tickets, season passes, rentals, and more. While it is unclear how many former partners shifted to another point-of-sale system this offseason, several have confirmed to The Storm Skiing Journal that they have done so.I'm not sure how Liftopia would have faired against the modern version of the Indy Pass, but more choice is almost always better for consumers, and I'm still bitter about how this one collapsed.On CaddyshackMovie quotes are generally lost on me, but Schaefer references this one from Caddyshack, so I looked it up and this is what the robots fed me:On the majority of skier visits now being on a season passAccording to the National Ski Areas Association, season pass holders have surpassed day-ticket buyers for total number of skier visits for four consecutive seasons. Without question, this is simply because the industry has gotten very good at incentivizing season pass sales by rolling the most well-known ski areas onto the Epic and Ikon passes. It is unclear whether the NSAA counts the Indy or Mountain Collective passes as season passes, but the number of each of those sold is small in comparison to Epic and Ikon.On the Berkshire Summit PassThe Schaefers have been leaders in establishing compelling regional multimountain ski passes. The Berkshire Summit Pass has, since 2020, delivered access to three solid western Massachusetts ski areas: Berkshire East, Catamount, and partner mountain Bousquet (on the unlimited version only). It is available in unlimited, Sunday through Friday, midweek, and nights-only versions. An Indy Pass add-on makes this a badass cross-New England ski product.On Burke being great and accessible even though it looks as though it's parked at the ass-end of nowhereThe first piece of ski writing I ever published was a New York Ski Blog recap of a Burke ski day in 2019:Last week, winter seemed to be winding down, with above-freezing temps forecast clear up to Canada before St. Patrick's Day. Desperate to extend winter, I had my sights on a storm forecast to dump nearly a foot of new snow across northern Vermont. After considering my options, I locked onto a hill I'd overlooked in 20 years of skiing Vermont: Burke.I'd read the online commentary: steep, funky, heavily gladed, classic New England twisty with high-quality snow well-preserved by cold temps and a lack of crowds. But to get there you have to drive past some big-name ski areas, most with equal or greater vertical drop, skiable acreage and average annual snowfall.Further research uncovered a secret Burke advantage over its better-known neighbors: unlike other mountains that require a post-expressway slog of 30-plus miles on local roads, Burke sits just seven miles off Interstate 91, meaning it was actually the closest northern Vermont option by drive time.As 10 inches of snow piled up Sunday and Monday and areas to the south teeter-tottered along a freeze-thaw cycle that would turn ungroomed trails to granite, Burke looked like my last best shot at mid-winter conditions.Two days after the storm, on the last day of below-freezing temps, I left Brooklyn at 4 am and arrived at 9:15. Read the rest…On Burke's (mostly) hapless ownership historyWe talk quite a bit about Burke Mountain, one of those good New England ski areas with a really terrible business record. Schaefer refers to the unusually huge number of former owners, which, according to New England Ski History, include:* 1964: Burke Mountain Recreation (Doug Kitchel) buys area; eventually went bankrupt* 1987: Paul D. Quinn buys, eventually sells to bank after his bank goes bankrupt* 1990: Hilco, Inc., a bank, takes ownership, then sells to…* 1991: Bernd Schaefers (no relation to Jon), under whom the ski area eventually went bankrupt (for the second time)* 1995: Northern Star Ski Corporation (five owners) buys the ski area, but it eventually goes bankrupt for a third time* 2000: Unidentified auction winner buys Burke and sells it to…* 2000: Burke Mountain Academy, who never wanted to be long-term owner, and sold to…* 2005: Laubert-Adler and the Ginn Corporation, who sold to…* 2012: Aerial Quiros, who engaged in all kinds of shadiness* 2016: Burke becomes the property of U.S. America, as court-appointed receiver takes control of this and Jay Peak. While Jay sold last year, Burke remains for saleOn media reports indicating that there is a bid on BurkeI got excited earlier this year, when the excellent Vermont Digger reported that the sales process for Burke appeared to be underway:Michael Goldberg, the court-appointed receiver in charge of overseeing Burke Mountain ski resort for more than seven years, has an offer to buy the scandal-plagued ski resort in Vermont's Northeast Kingdom.News of the bid came from a recent court filing submitted by Goldberg, predicting that a sale of the property would take place “later this year.”The filing does not name the bidder or the amount of the bid, but the document stated that Goldberg wants to continue to seek qualified buyers, and if a matching or higher price is offered, an auction would be held to sell the resort. …“The Receiver has received an initial offer, and expects to file a motion with the Court in the next month recommending an identical sales process to the Jay Peak sale – a ‘stalking horse' bid, followed by an auction and a subsequent motion asking the Court to approve a final sale,” Goldberg stated in his recent court filing regarding Burke.Well, nothing happened, though the bid remains active, as far as I know. So who knows. I hope whoever buys Burke next, this place can finally stabilize and build.On the West Mountain expansion at CatamountSchaefer discusses a potential expansion at Catamount. New England Ski History hosts a summary page for this one as well:A lift and a variety of trails are proposed for the west side of the ski area, crossing over the Lower Sidewinder trail. The lift would climb 650 vertical feet from a new parking lot to the junction of Upper and Lower Sidewinder. 6 trail segments would be cut above and below the lower switchback of the Lower Sidewinder Trail. All of the terrain would be located in New York state.Here's a circa 2014 map, showing the proposed expansion looker's right:The Storm explores the world of lift-served skiing year-round. Join us.The Storm publishes year-round, and guarantees 100 articles per year. This is article 113/100 in 2023, and number 498 since launching on Oct. 13, 2019. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.stormskiing.com/subscribe

Amanda is the VP of Marketing at SparkToro, an audience research platform. Along with teaching content marketing at Maven, Amanda also publishes a marketing newsletter called The Menu. She is a contributor for Adweek, an incredible chef who trained at Le Cordon Bleu, and a former journalist. Amanda previously led marketing for Growth Machine, led marketing for Liftopia, built Fitbit's B2B content program, and led content and communications for NatureBox.   We talk about: Defining product-led content and it's growing importance Nuances in target audience How to think about distribution  Optimizing for both reach and resonance Content-specific KPIs and business impact   Where to find Amanda:  https://amandanat.com/ https://twitter.com/amandanat https://amandanat.substack.com/ https://www.linkedin.com/in/amandanat/ https://sparktoro.com/audience-research-newsletter   We discuss:  https://sparktoro.com/blog/   Where to find Patrick: https://www.linkedin.com/in/pcmoran/   — (02:39) Defining product-led content and its purpose (03:42) How product-led content has developed over the last few decades (07:20) Thinking about the different components of product led growth through the marketing lens (10:38) Content through the various journey of the customer lifecycle  (11:13) Middle and bottom funnel content specific approaches  (14:20) How content fits various growth motions in different companies  (18:45) Defining audiences and identifying sources of advocates and influences   (23:22) Writing for certain audiences and providing value    (26:30) Thinking about distribution from the very beginning   (30:54) Framework for content distribution through various platforms  (34:32) Creating for both reach and resonance  (38:00) Developing primary forms of content and structuring for various content channels and being authentic to those channels    (42:51) Looking at content marketing KPIs that signal utility and strength and tying to business metrics  (45:59) Where to find Amanda!   

This podcast hit paid subscribers' inboxes on August 7. It dropped for free subscribers on August 10. To receive future pods as soon as they're live, and to support independent ski journalism, please consider an upgrade to a paid subscription. You can also subscribe for free below:WhoDanielle and Laszlo Vajtay, Owners of Plattekill Mountain, New YorkRecorded onJuly 14, 2023About Plattekill MountainClick here for a mountain stats overviewOwned by: Danielle and Laszlo VajtayLocated in: Roxbury, New YorkYear founded: 1958Pass affiliations: NoneReciprocal partners:* 3 days each at Snow Ridge, Swain, Mont du Lac, Ski Cooper* 2 days at HomewoodClosest neighboring ski areas: Belleayre (28 minutes), Windham (41 minutes), Hunter (46 minutes)Base elevation: 2,400 feetSummit elevation: 3,500 feetVertical drop: 1,100 feetSkiable Acres: 75 acresAverage annual snowfall: 175 inchesTrail count: 40 (20% expert, 20% most difficult, 40% more difficult, 20% easiest)Lift count: 3 (1 triple, 1 double, 1 carpet)Why I interviewed themThink about every ski area in the country that almost everyone knows. Almost every one of them has a smaller, less-well-known, slightly badass neighbor lurking nearby. In LA, it's Baldy, forgotten in the shadow of Big Bear and Mountain High. In Tahoe, it's Homewood, lost in the Palisades Tahoe circus. We can just keep going: Hoodoo/Bachelor; White Pass/Crystal; Mt. Spokane/Schweitzer; Soldier/Sun Valley; Snow King/Jackson; Sunlight/Aspen; Red River/Taos.In New York, we have a few versions of this: West and (currently closed) Hickory, adjacent to Gore Mountain; Titus, intercepted by Whiteface as cars wind north. But the most dramatic contrast lies in the Catskills. There, you find four ski areas: Hunter, recently expanded, owned by Vail Resorts and flying two six-packs; Windham, two new investors on its masthead, an Ikon Pass partner that runs three high-speed lifts out of its base; Belleayre, owned by the state and run by the Olympic Regional Development Authority, or ORDA, with a shimmering gondola that no other ski area of its size could afford; and Plattekill.Plattekill is owned by Laszlo and Danielle Vajtay, former ski instructors who purchased the bump in 1993. They have added snowmaking to one of their 40 trails each year that they could afford to. Their lift fleet is a 1974 Hall triple and a 1977 Hall double, moved from Belleayre in 1999. It took the Vajtays three years to install the lift. The parking lots cling layer-cake-style to the mountainside. Plattekill is open Friday through Sunday, plus Christmas and Presidents' Weeks and MLK Day. Access is down poorly marked backroads, half an hour past Belleayre, which sits directly off state route 28.It's fair to ask how such a place endures. New York is filled with family-owned ski areas running vintage lifts. But only Plattekill must compete directly with so many monsters. How?There is no one answer. There's the scrap and hustle, the constant scouring of the countryside for the new-to-Platty machines to rebuild to glory. There's the deliberate, no-debt, steady-steady better-better philosophy that keeps the banks away. There's the 1,100 feet of pure fall-line skiing. The vast kingdom of glades. The special geography that seems to squeeze just a bit extra out of every storm. There's the lodge, rustic but clean, cozy, and spacious. And there's the liftlines, or miraculous lack of them, for such a ski area just three hours from the nation's largest city. And there are the midweek private-mountain rentals – Platty's secret weapon, a $8,500 guarantee on even the feistiest weather days.That algorithm, or some version of it, has equaled survival for Plattekill. When the Vajtays bought “Ski Plattekill” in 1993, the Catskills were crowded. But Bobcat, Scotch Valley, Cortina, Highmount, and Sawkill all vanished over the decades. Plattekill could have died too. Instead, it is beloved. Enough so that it can charge more for its season pass - $779 early-bird, $799 right now – than Vail charges for the Epic Local Pass ($676 early-bird, $689 today), which includes unlimited access to Hunter and most of the company's 40 other resorts. When a harder-to-reach, smaller mountain running 50-year-old lifts can charge more for a single-mountain season pass than its larger, more up-to-date, easier-to-access neighbor whose season pass also gets skiers in the front door at Whistler and Breckenridge, it's doing something mighty right.What we talked aboutPlattekill's “surprisingly good” 2022-23 ski season; building a snowmaking system gun-by-gun; 2023 offseason improvements; how the Vajtays have grown Plattekill without taking on traditional debt; what killed independent skiing in the Catskills; private mid-week mountain rentals; a growing wedding business; why Plattekill was an early adopter of lift-served mountain-biking, why the mountain abandoned the project, and whether they would ever bring it back; assessing Platty's newest trail; potential terrain expansion within the existing footprint; plans to moderate the steep section at the end of the Overlook trail; the potential lift and terrain expansion that could make Plattekill “a big, big player in the world of ski areas”; considering outside investment to turbocharge growth - “the possibilities for the mountain are that it could be a lot more”; “I don't have an interest in selling Plattekill”; Snow Operating; assessing Plattekill's Hall chairlifts; “anybody taking out a lift, please don't cut it up and throw it in the Dumpster before contacting” small ski areas; the lightning strike that changed Plattekill's summer; helping save Holiday Mountain; competing against the Epic and Ikon passes; competing against state-owned and taxpayer-funded ski areas; how New York State could help independent ski areas compete against its owned ski areas; Liftopia's collapse; the Ski Cooper season pass; and reconsidering the Indy Pass.Why I thought that now was a good time for this interviewThe Vajtays have appeared on The Storm Skiing Podcast before, in episode two, which I released on Oct. 25, 2019. They'd agreed to do the interview without knowing who I was, and before I'd published a single episode. I will always be grateful to them (and the other seven folks* who recorded an episode when The Storm was still gathering in my brain), for that. The conversation turned out great, I thought, and fused the podcast to the world of scrappy independents from its earliest days.But in the intervening years, I've gotten to know the Vajtays much better. Laz and I, especially, communicate a lot. Mostly via text, but occasionally email, or when I'm up there skiing. In May, he joined a panel I hosted at the National Ski Areas Association (NSAA) convention in Savannah, Georgia. Alongside the general managers of Mt. Rose, Mt. Baker, and Cascade, Wisconsin, Laz articulated why the Vajtays had so far elected to keep Plattekill off of any multi-mountain pass.The NSAA's convention rules forbade me from recording that panel, but the conversation so closely aligned with my daily pass-world coverage that I knew I had to bring some version of it to you. This is installment one. Cascade GM Matt Vohs is scheduled to join me on the pod in October, followed by Mt. Rose GM Greg Gavrilets in November (you can always view the upcoming podcast schedule here). I've yet to schedule Mt. Baker CEO Gwyn Howat, but I'm hopeful that we can lock in a future date.So that is part of it: why has Plattekill held firm against the pass craze as all of its better-capitalized competitors have joined one coalition or the other? But that is only part of the larger Platty story. Vail was supposed to ruin everything. Then Alterra was supposed to ruin it more. Family-owned ski areas would be crushed beneath these nukes launched from a Colorado silo. But this narrative has been disproven across the country. Because of a lot of things – the Covid-driven outdoor boom, the indie cool factor, the big boys overselling their passes – small ski areas are having a moment. No one, arguably, has a tougher hill to defend than Platty, and no one's proven themselves more.*Those six people were: New England Lost Ski Areas Project founder Jeremy Davis, Lift Blog founder Peter Landsman, Boyne Resorts CEO Stephen Kircher, Magic Mountain President Geoff Hatheway, Killington President Mike Solimano, and Burke GM Kevin Mack.What I got wrongI said that The New York Times profile on Plattekill's private-rentals business ran in 2018. It actually ran Jan. 4, 2019.Why you should ski PlattekillI can endorse all four large Catskills ski areas. Hunter holds a crazy, possessed energy. Impenetrable on weekends, you can roll 1,600-vertical-foot fastlaps off the sixer on spring weekdays. Belleayre throws past-era vibes with its funky-weird trail network while delivering rides on a top-to-bottom gondola that is the nicest lift in New York State. Windham's high-speed lift fleet hides a narrow and fantastically interesting trail network that, when wide open with new snow in the woods, feels enormous.So Plattekill is not, for me, a family-diner-versus-McDonald's kind of fight. I probably ski all four of those mountains about the same amount. But I will make an appeal here to those New York-based Epic and Ikon passholders who are scanning their mountain menus and deciding where to ski this winter: take one day and go to Plattekill. Make it a day that you know will be miserable at Hunter or Windham. A day when the lift queues can be seen from space. A holiday, a Saturday, a powder day. I know you already invested in your pass. But suck up one more lift ticket, and check out Plattekill.Here's what you will find: no liftlines, ever. The parking lots simply aren't large enough to accommodate enough skiers to form them. A double chair with this view:At the top, three choices: loop green-circle Overlook all the way around, thread your way down through the tight and narrow blues, or ride one of four double-blacks all the way back to the valley. I prefer the blues because they lead to the glades, unmarked but maintained, funky, interesting, tap-shoes required.The triple side is more traditional, more wide runs, especially Upper Face. Powder Puff is fabulous for kids. The snow doesn't stick to the triple side like it does to the double side, but when it's deep enough, wild lines through the trees lie everywhere.Plattekill is littered with curiosities. A rock quarry. An old T-bar terminal. An overgrown halfpipe in the trees. Abandoned MTB trails still signed and useable for skiing. More than any ski area in New York, Plattekill rewards exploration and creativity, enables and encourages it with a permissive Patrol and line-less lifts. Twenty or 25 runs are possible here, even on a big day. Just keep ripping.In some ways, Plattekill is a time machine, a snapshot of a Catskills otherwise lost. In others, it is exactly of this moment, stripped of the pretense and the crowds that can seem like skiing's inevitable trajectory. The bozos who can't stand a fixed-grip lift ride longer than three minutes don't come here. They would rather stand in a long line for a fast lift. But you don't have to. You can come to Plattekill.Podcast NotesOn Platty's singular atmosphereNo one has written more on Plattekill than Harvey Road, founder of the fantastic New York Ski Blog. I asked him to share links to his five favorite Platty write-ups:Return to Plattekill Mountain – Jan. 8, 2013“Those intangible forces pull me inexorably to Plattekill. Don't get me wrong, Plattekill has some solid tangibles too: lake effect powder and steeps and trees and beautiful views are important to people who love to ski.  But there's also something more. A simplicity of purpose that fills my soul with an exuberance I have a hard time capturing in my nine-to-five life.”Plattekill: The Life of Riley – March 5, 2018“Later in the morning the snow and the wind really picked up. It must have snowed two or three inches an hour well into the afternoon. By noon all traces of the bottom were gone and Plattekill was 100% open for business. Twist and Ridge were deserted and any tracks you left on that side of the mountain were gone by the time you returned.”I'm Done Skiing Alone – March 20, 2018“When I was a little kid living on a farm, I'd play by myself in a big tractor tire that served as a sandbox. I developed a reputation for playing alone. ‘Harvey doesn't need playmates, he's happy all by himself!' It wasn't true, down inside I didn't like it, but I didn't know myself well enough to push back.”Chasing Plake – Feb. 4, 2019“Around 10:00 am we headed into the lodge to give our legs a break, hydrate and warm up a little (it was maybe -1 F at this point). As we got to the door, we saw the man himself. ‘I was wondering when you'd show up.'“'Hi, my name is Glen!' he said, offering his hand. I introduced myself and my son and asked if he'd been skiing yet.“'No, we kind of take our time on Saturdays. I love to watch a mountain wake up and come alive.'  We chatted about Tahoe and the weather for a couple minutes. I asked if we could take some pics. Of course we could.”Plattekill: Five Days Later – March 11, 2019“We skied down to the double and Sam the Smiling Liftie let us step around the rope and head up early with Patrol. At the top, a new character was introduced. Maybe he'd seen my custom skis, as he said ‘Road? I'm Soule. Jeff Soule.'“I use the word character in it's broadest sense. Gregarious and engaging, with homemade poles he'd carved from tree branches, Jeff had switched to tele this season and was absolutely ripping, hucking everything in sight.”On the lost ski areas of the CatskillsWhen the Vajtays purchased Plattekill in 1993, the mountain was one of six family-owned ski areas in the Catskills. One by one, the other five failed. Here's an overview of each:Highmount, circa 1985Bobcat circa 1996Cortina, circa 1995Scotch Valley, circa 2004I don't think a trailmap exists of Sawkill, which was basically one or two runs and a ropetow on 70 vertical feet.On that ominous New York Times article from the ‘90sLaszlo referred to a New York Times article covering the Vajtays' disastrous second season as owners – that article ran on Jan. 21, 1995. An excerpt:A sign posted at the Ski Plattekill resort here warns against packing the cozy, wood-paneled cafeteria beyond its capacity of 242 people. That has hardly been a problem this winter.With a third of the ski season already over, this resort in the central Catskills has yet to open a single one of its 27 trails. The reason is plain: it has barely snowed this winter, and whatever snow has fallen has been washed away by driving rains and unseasonably warm temperatures. When Laszlo Vajtay, the owner of Ski Plattekill, looks out at his mountain, all he sees is brown grass."It is depressing," he said, as he trudged through the mud blanketing his steepest trail, Blockbuster, on this 52-degree afternoon. "Look at how warm it is. It's like summer. Winter's just not here yet."Mr. Vajtay's experience is the starkest example of what has been a disastrous season for skiers and ski areas across the Northeast. Of the 50 ski areas in New York State, all but nine closed down late this week, hoping to preserve their remaining snow cover for the weekend, according to Ski Areas of New York, a trade group. Things were not much better in New England, where nearly 60 percent of ski resorts reported being closed.On The New York Times article on private mountain rentalsPlattekill has offered private mountain rentals for 15 years. That part of the business really took off, however, after The New York Times profiled the ski area in 2019:Plattekill, in turn, has branded itself as an intimate, old-fashioned resort for expert skiers and families alike. Most important, however, it has been able to guarantee income on the slower weekdays, by becoming a private mountain of sorts. Four days a week, it puts itself up for rent. Any group can have exclusive access to it for just a few thousand dollars a day.In their early years as owners, the Vajtays were obsessed with two things that were not always compatible: making snow and avoiding debt. In the summer, they opened up the mountain for camping, music festivals and mountain biking. They took what they earned and invested it into snow-making equipment.Eventually, a new business idea came from Plattekill's regular skiers, who visited the mountain every time it snowed, even when it wasn't open. (The mountain was and is only open to the public Fridays through Sundays.) This became so common that the Vajtays decided to open the mountain, regardless of the day, following a major snowfall. Typically, about 500 paying customers would show up for the event, called Powderdaize.Powderdaize led to another idea: renting out the entire mountain to groups. Some Plattekill regulars so enjoyed the quiet setting of the last-minute weekday openings that they intimated to Ms. Vajtay how great it would be to have a “power day” to themselves, she recalled. The couple knew of a few members-only mountains in the United States but these were fancy, expensive resorts like the Yellowstone Club in Montana and the Hermitage Club in Vermont. Why not rent out their humble little mountain?In 2008, they started to do just that, charging $2,500 a day for exclusive use of Plattekill Monday through Thursday. (The price has since increased to $4,500.) Clients have ranged from corporations, like Citigroup, to religious organizations. Every year since 2010, Jehovah's Witnesses congregations from New Jersey and New York have met there once a year.On being “The Alta of The Catskills”Laz referred to an old Powder article that glossed Plattekill “the Alta of the Catskills.” The author, Porter Fox, also visited Hunter and Belleayre, but here's the Platty section:Two lifts rose 1,100 vertical feet from the base of Plattekill Ski Resort to the 3,500-foot summit. Between them were a few lift enclosures—designed to mimic gambrel barn roofs in the valley—an oversized base lodge, dirt parking lots, a dirt driveway, and about 200 skiers lapping trails as fast as they could.Plattekill is the Alta of the Catskills. The Little Ski Area That Could has fewer trails but gets more snow than most resorts in the range, averaging 150 inches annually. It is easy to forget that New York State borders two Great Lakes (Ontario and Erie), and that lake-effect storms often carry all the way to the Catskills. Sitting on the northwestern fringe of the range, Plattekill rings out most of the moisture before storms warm up and dry out.The mountain's 38 trails are only open Friday through Sunday. (You can rent the whole place for $3,500/day midweek.) If it snows 12 inches or more, the staff will get the chairs spinning midweek as well. Last year, “Platty” opened on a Monday after receiving four feet of snow in one dump. It wasn't a fluke, resort owner Laszlo Vajtay told me as he pulled up National Weather Service radar images of the storm. Precipitation spanned all the way from Manhattan to Albany in the image. The red dot in the center of the maelstrom was positioned precisely over his mountain.Vajtay, 56, started skiing at Plattekill when he was 7 and never left. He taught skiing, met his wife, Danielle (also an instructor), proposed and got married there. In 1993, he bought the place. The Vajtays didn't have deep pockets, so when their ancient DMC 3700 groomer broke down, they hired a nearby mechanic, named “Macker,” who learned how to fix it. He fixed all of the groomers on the hill, then refurbished an older model that Vajtay bought for a song. In 2014, Plattekill became the only authorized Bombardier service center in New York and Pennsylvania.Meanwhile, one of their snowcat clients asked them to work on their snow guns as well. There was no snowmaking at Plattekill when Vajtay bought it; the Platty crew cobbled one together from used guns and pumps they salvaged from old fire trucks. They took the job on and now part of Plattekill's business is also repairing snow-making equipment and lifts throughout the Northeast. “We run this place like they run farms in the valley—no debt,” Vajtay said. “The one time we had to borrow, we asked our skiers to chip in for a new lift. We paid them back on time, with interest.”Vajtay's standard look is one of excitement, or shock. His clear blue eyes are penetrating, and his gray hair is usually messed up by a ski hat or helmet. The “shock” part is real. He is genuinely amazed at how well he and his crew have done with a small ski area in an era when many others have gone belly up. Sixty-five resorts in New York have closed in the last 40 years, according to the New England Lost Ski Areas Project.In the new world of mega resorts, Plattekill is a time capsule of the way things used to be—steep runs, wild-eyed locals, friendly staff, boot cubbies, $2 frozen pizza slices, and an oversized base lodge bar, where auburn alpenglow settles on the last skiers of the day cruising down. The hand-hewn rafters, deer antler chandeliers, stained pine paneling, antique snowshoes and skis hanging on the wall reel the clock back to the 1980s, '70s, '60s —when televisions received three channels, every car had 300 horsepower under the hood, politicians were accountable for their actions, and all anyone in the Northeast wanted to do in the winter was sleep and ski.Laszlo Vajtay is not just the owner of Plattekill, he grew up skiing there. He and his wife, Danielle, run the ski area like a farm--debt free. They also run it as a family. Above,It's easy to fall into that world at Platty. The day we arrived was the Friday before the annual “Beach Party.” The ticket-seller-bartender-receptionist-office-manager-landscaper gal took a break from blowing up balloons and unfolding last year's tiki decorations to give us tickets before Vajtay took us on a tour of the grounds. Here was the PR-mountain-ops-ticket-sales-manager's office; there were the ski lockers; there was the cafe and the cabinet-sized ski shop run by George Quinn—who wrote two books about ski history in the Catskills and knows the range better than anyone since Rip Van Winkle. Lastly, Vajtay showed us the main eating hall, where a circular fireplace flickered in the middle of the room, itself an actual invention of the 1960s that now absolutely vibes the place with a '60s aura.Out the double picture windows at the northern end of the Blockbuster Lounge was a quiver of double-diamond runs Platty is known for: Blockbuster, Freefall, Plunge, Northface, all of which are pitched straight down. At the top, a long, wooded ridge hems in the resort.Vajtay had rounded up a scrappy crew of locals who were anxious to go, including Scott Ketchum, a longtime local who moved to Phoenicia the same week that Jimmy Hendrix played at Woodstock a few miles away and grew up skiing Simpson's rope tow. After a quick introduction, Ketchum offered to show Reddick some leftover powder in the trees while Vajtay and I talked.Turned out that, at Platty, “leftover powder in the trees” was code for: traverse 45 minutes east across the ridge; find a foot of fresh a week after the last storm; plenty steep and plenty of vertical; bad route-finding at the top; a thicket of trees so dense it became impossible to simply get down; multiple over-the-handlebar moments; broken pole; run-in with an ornery neighbor who had fired a shotgun over someone's head the week before; a few laughs; and, finally, a smelly pig-pile ride in a pickup truck back to the resort.On Snow OperatingLaszlo referenced a podcast episode that I recorded with Snow Operating CEO Joe Hession. Listen here.Laz also talks about Hugh Reynolds, who joined me on a different podcast episode. Listen here. On the Olympic Regional Development AuthorityWe talked extensively about the Olympic Regional Development Authority (ORDA), which manages three ski areas owned by New York State: Belleayre (which is right down the road from Plattekill), Gore, and Whiteface. Recent NPR reports detailed the stunning level of taxpayer funding channeled into ORDA's coffers over the past six years:Standing in the boardroom of New York's state-run Olympic Regional Development Authority in Lake Placid, CEO Mike Pratt spread out photographs of Olympic sports venues in Beijing, Berlin and Sarajevo that lie abandoned and in ruins.His message was plain: This almost happened here.Pratt convinced New York state to bet on a different future, investing huge amounts of taxpayer cash rebuilding and modernizing the sports authority's venues, most dating back to the 1980 Winter Olympics."The last six years, the total capital investment in the Olympic authority was $552 million," Pratt said. "These are unprecedented investments in our facilities, no question about it. But the return on investment is immediate."NPR found New York state has actually pumped far more dollars into the organization since Pratt took the helm, with government documents showing the total outlay closer to $620 million.You can read more here. It's an incredible story.On Ski Cooper's controversial season passI asked Laz and Danielle about Plattekill's longtime reciprocal partnership with Ski Cooper and where they stand on the controversy around it. I've covered that extensively here, here, and here.On Mount Bohemia's $99 season passI've covered this extensively in the past, but my podcast with Boho owner Lonie Glieberman goes into the whole backstory and strategy behind the mega-bargain pass at this ungroomed glade kingdom in Michigan's remote Upper Peninsula. This year's season pass sale is set for Nov. 22 to Dec. 2. The $99 pass no longer includes Saturdays – skiers have to level up to the $109 version for that. Bohemia also sells a $172 two-year pass and a $1,299 lifetime pass.The Storm explores the world of lift-served skiing year-round. Join us.The Storm publishes year-round, and guarantees 100 articles per year. This is article 67/100 in 2023, and number 453 since launching on Oct. 13, 2019. Want to send feedback? Reply to this email and I will answer (unless you sound insane, or, more likely, I just get busy). You can also email skiing@substack.com. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.stormskiing.com/subscribe

Do you know what "zero click content" is? Our guest on this show coined the phrase and her approach to content development is super interesting. You might be reconsidering your social media strategy after hearing her on this one! "But if we're posting valuable content -- that people can consume just bite-sized pieces of -- or get that discrete value from just by scrolling through, we're going to increase our impressions. And then over time, ultimately, drive more traffic to our site or increase conversions from those impressions." The creator economy continues to evolve and Amanda Natividad will help us to be refreshing! Join us to explore a modern way to approach content marketing. Our guest Amanda Natividad Amanda is VP of Marketing for audience research startup, SparkToro. In her spare time, she writes a marketing newsletter called the Menu (with over 10k subscribers) and teaches Content Marketing 201. She's also a contributor for Adweek, a Le Cordon Bleu-trained chef, and a former journalist. Amanda previously led marketing for Growth Machine, led marketing for Liftopia, built Fitbit's B2B content program, and led content and communications for NatureBox. Resources from Amanda: Original post on Zero-Click content Being refreshing, not different  Zero-Click marketing Amanda's book reco: "Lost and Founder" by Rand Fishkin ~._.*._.~ We are "Making a Marketer"... in all ways. Check out episode 130 - and please take a minute to follow, rate, & review us on your podcast platform of choice & get each ep. when it drops... Also, share with your friends & colleagues! https://bit.ly/mamITuneNEW ::: This episode is made possible by Powers of Marketing - emPOWERing amazing podcast experiences & online and in person events ::: **ALSO: Our editor Avri makes amazing music! Check out his music on Spotify!**

This podcast hit paid subscribers' inboxes on April 22. It dropped for free subscribers on April 25. To receive future pods as soon as they're live, and to support independent ski journalism, please consider an upgrade to a paid subscription. You can also subscribe for free below:WhoDoug Fish, president and founder of the Indy PassRecorded onThe majority of this conversation took place on April 3, 2023. Three days later, I left for a Montana ski trip, with the intent of releasing this either on the trip or when I returned. A week later, however, news broke that Indy would (at least temporarily) cease pass sales for 2023-24 products on April 11, making a small portion of our conversation irrelevant. Fish and I then recorded a new segment focused specifically on the decision to halt pass sales, on April 20, 2023. This section also includes a recap of the top 10 Indy Pass resorts for the 2022-23 ski season.About the Indy PassIndy Pass is the coolest thing going. If Indy were a person, everyone would gloss him “IP.” In the ‘80s, IP would have rolled in a Firebird with T-tops off and a flame-eagle emblazoned upon the hood. Or in a door-less Jeep with his boys gripping the rollbar, feathered-hair and sunglasses cool. Or rocking a skateboard, Walkman, and jean jacket, Michael J. Fox-style, transforming into a werewolf or traveling through time in a f*****g DeLorean. IP's not the most popular kid. In fact the cool kids, in their poloshirts and loafers, don't care much for the interloper at all. But we all see a bit of ourselves in the young rogue, middle finger aimed at the social-status gatekeepers and their lackies, flouting conventions of deference and sobriety, in possession of secret powers that will scare them once they know. IP is our hero because we are him. Or he's a supercharged superhero cartoon version of us. Or because he is whatever the hell he wants to be. IP rules!Or, if that doesn't work for you, how about this: IP is a season-long ski product that delivers up to 210 days of alpine skiing for four dollars more than the price of a one-day walk-up peak-day lift ticket at Vail or Beaver Creek. “Yeah but it's not Vail or Beaver Creek, Man – don't you get that?” I sure do, Biff. And I love both mountains, but give me the choice of one serving of caviar or a pizza every day all season long, and I gotta roll pizza, my friend (this is the 2022-23 roster; ignore the prices, ignore the blackouts. The robots are still fighting my efforts to update this chart for 2023-24. The only ski area that we know will change as of now is Snow Valley, which ran off with the Ikon Pass):More partners are inbound. Perhaps not as many as the 58 new ski areas (25 alpine, 19 cross-country, and 14 Allied), that signed onto Indy over the 2022 offseason. But I already have a partial list, and it will be at least a dozen. Perhaps many more as Indy looks to turboboost its XC roster.Too bad you already missed the best price: $279 for renewing passholders, $299 for waitlistees, $319 for the disorganized masses. Indy is currently off sale. It may come back in the fall. How will you know? Subscribe to their notifications, and they will send you eight to 12 emails and texts per day about it once the time comes. In the meantime, activate learning mode and enjoy this IP 101.Why I interviewed himDoug Fish is one of skiing's class acts. He's built a product that works. For skiers, for ski area operators, and for him and everyone working for him. This is not Liftopia 2.0, an online discount center where money falls into a blackhole. When you buy an Indy Pass, 15 percent of that money goes to Indy, the other 85 percent goes directly to the ski areas. You get a bargain, they get paid. Everyone wins.This whole thing could have been a scam. Or a crock. Or a fiasco. It could have disintegrated in a storm of partner and passholder anger over dysfunctional tech or missing paychecks or unregistered skier accounts. It could have been Fyre Ski – show up and there's nothing there.That was my fear the first time I cashed in my Indy Pass, at Caberfae, Michigan, on Friday, Nov. 29, 2019. I approached the ticket window and informed the clerk that I had an Indy Pass. She stared at me as though I'd just asked her which way to the kitten fur-hat section. Indy had just launched – I probably redeemed the first lift ticket in the ski area's history. But Pete Meyer, part-owner and GM, was standing right behind her, and he nodded and I nodded (this was the month after The Storm launched, and we were not yet acquainted), and I attached my metal wicket ticket to my jacket and went skiing.I've never had an issue cashing in an Indy Pass ticket since. Neither has anyone else that I've talked to. That's why the passholder base is exploding to the point that Indy has suspended sales. And that consistency – in the form of (mostly) hassle-free redemptions and steady paychecks, is why 104 out of 105 alpine partners are returning to the pass for the 2022-23 ski season. The only exception is Snow Valley, a two-season partner that surely would have returned had it not been devoured by Alterra Mountain Company and notched into the Ikon Pass ammo belt.For someone who has built something so transcendent, Fish remains modest and humble, at least in his public dealings and those with the media. He answers texts and emails. He takes hard questions. He owns his mistakes. He fulfills his promises. He gives everything he has to making this thing that he created work.The Indy Pass could have come from just about anywhere. It could have been a monetized version of the Powder Alliance or sprung from an alt-world Liftopia or formed from a regurgitated M.A.X. Pass or been some sort of quirky Wal-Mart version of a 1980s Christmas catalogue special G.I. Joe boxset – a cool niche product that is kind of hard to get but coveted by those whose existence is defined by their fringe knowledge.That IP came from Portland Doug, with his West Coast chill and self-aware need to preserve peace in Skidom – and, by extension, his own reputation – is a blessing to us all. This career marketing guy with a love of Hood pow and a knack for actualizing good ideas turned out to be exactly the shepherd indie skiing needed.Because of this remarkable thing Fish has created, he's been on the podcast four times. But I've never bothered asking about his story until now. Who is this person that spun the Indy Pass out of his imagination? Where did he come from, and why did he turn out to be the proper hero for the moment, not only creating this ark but steering it through the asteroid belts of Covid and evergrowing Epkon Pass sales? That's a big part of what I was after here, and Fish, as always, delivered.What we talked aboutWhy Fish sold the Indy Pass, how he's feeling about it, and what his role is now; “the only reason you start a business is to someday sell it”; the hardest part of walking away from Indy; the highs and lows of creating and managing the Indy Pass; Indy's mass adoption; Entabeni Systems, Indy's new owner; Indy's plan to massively expand its Nordic program; the first year of Indy XC; the most popular Indy XC resorts; how close Indy was to partnering with a tech company other than Entabeni, how Entabeni won the contract, and how that switch set Indy up for long-term business success; the first non-Western ski area to join Indy; what may or may not change in how the Indy Pass works; how often skiers actually use their Indy Passes; the surprising ownership alternative that Fish considered for Indy; the challenge of scaling the Indy Pass from 10 partners to 139 in four years; the impact of Indy's 40 percent  2021-22 price increase in retrospect; comparing what the Indy Pass is currently to what Fish thought the Indy Pass would be five years ago; whether we could see more density in already-dense Indy regions; are oversold Epic and Ikon passes benefitting Indy?; can Indy Pass last a decade or longer?; what could ruin the pass; Portland and the Mt. Hood ski scene, in the 1960s and now; “if you envy someone for what they do, then you should be doing that thing”; the advantage of starting something huge in your 60s; why Indy will switch to a physical pass for the 2023-24 ski season; how Indy has been able to largely retain its ski area partner roster and how important that is; how Jay Peak changed the pass forever; why Indy Pass signs one-year contracts with its partners, and whether that could change; oh Dear Lord what have I done I used the word “brand equity” without irony sorry; what would have happened had Indy lost Jay; why Indy kept Jay even though it is now part of a small ski area conglomerate; whether Jay owner Pacific Group Resorts could add any of its other five ski areas to Indy; why Indy may not announce any new partners until fall; what Indy Pass blackout tiers will look like for the 2023-24 ski season; how Indy Passes sold during the renewal, waitlist, and general public sales periods; why Indy limited and ultimately cut off pass sales for the 2023-24 ski season; the problem that blackouts can't solve; trying not to break the machine; how Indy will determine whether passes will go back on sale in the fall; new partners inbound; the top 10 Indy Pass partners by number of redemptions for the 2022-23 ski season; and the newest member of the Indy top 10 club.Why I thought that now was a good time for this interviewFish appears on the podcast as regularly as the snow melts.May 27, 2020 (Storm Skiing Podcast #16):April 27, 2021 (Storm Skiing Podcast # 45):May 9, 2022 (Storm Skiing Podcast #85):So every 40 podcasts or so. And here he is, back again exactly on cue, with podcast number 125. He would have been here no matter what, to discuss the ever-evolving, ever-fascinating Indy Pass. We could probably fill an hour every month of the year. But this year is different: in March, Fish sold Indy Pass to longtime tech partner Entabeni Systems. Wow. It seemed like IP just rolled into the party. And now all this. What gives, man? And why can't my boy Stiles scoop up an Indy just because he was busy picking out his new speakers at the boombox store for the past three weeks? And why are you mailing me a pass like it really is 1985? And do I still get my two days at Jay Peak? And when are you actually gonna add Tahoe man cause my cousin said it was sick out there? And since you're mailing a pass can you throw in some stickers Brah? So much to dig into.Why you should consider the Indy PassWell do you like skiing? Do you like selling your grandmother's heirloom candlesticks to pay for skiing (terrible example, actually, as candles and all related paraphernalia out to be recycled into a giant bouncy ball and shot into space to create a second moon). If you answered “yes” to the first question and “no” to the second, then the Indy Pass might be for you.One of the worst takes in skiing is that there's nothing on the Indy Pass “worth” traveling out West for. I would have to walk into a McDonald's and observe people eating their rancid food to witness a dumber idea. Indy's northern Rockies kingdom is stacked with launchpads larger than anything in New England: Mission Ridge, 2,250 vertical feet on 2,000 acres of skiable terrain; Mt. Hood Meadows, 2,777 feet/2,150 acres; Lost Trail, 1,800 feet/1,800 acres; Brundage, 1,921 feet/1,920 acres.That's just the start of the list. If you're an eastern or Midwestern skier who lives anywhere within the Indy orbit, this one super-cheapo discount product can give you an over-the-top amazing ski season. Buy an Indy Pass. Then hit all your locals. Then hit them all again. Then fly or drive of #VanLife your way west and loop the circuit. You get the western pow and the western vibe and the wide-open western glades without the western destination-town alienation and crowds.For years I was that guy who flew west and blew right past Loveland on my way to Copper or Keystone or Breck or Vail. But I'm not that guy anymore. I still love – will always love – the megaresorts of the American West. But last week, after an outstanding six days at Big Sky, I angled east toward Red Lodge, seated on the Montana side of Beartooth Pass. It was sprawling, gorgeous, glorious and empty. Admittedly, the conditions kind of sucked. But they'd sucked the day before at Big Sky too – a storm had cargoed in three inches after a big thaw. Dust-on-crust? More like dust-on-concrete. But that, according to everyone I spoke with at both ski areas, had been the first thaw all winter. This is Montana high country, oases rising out of the flats. The architecture of the mountains, the dreamily spaced trees, the steady fall lines, the broad ski-everything kingdom, promised something glorious another day.I found it the next day, at Great Divide, a little-known but riotous locals' bump off I-15 outside of Helena. A 1,500-foot vertical drop on 1,600 acres, split into three or four treed bowls served by open-basket Riblet doubles. Four or five inches from an overnight storm, mostly smooth base below. A half-dozen whooping runs. What felt like limitless lines. No liftlines at all. Even on a Saturday. Just skiing. Skiing skiing skiing. All day long in the Montana backwoods.Great Divide is not an Indy Pass partner, but it could (and should) be. Family-owned, rich in vibe and attitude, complex and glorious in its sprawling terrain, empty of pretense and a knick-knack souvenir veneer. If you want a cheeseburger, it's $8.50. If you want a T-shirt, you buy it in the rental shop, which is also the ticket desk, which also appears to be the main office. There's a good chance one of the four owners will be there working the register. I think this is what Fish means when he describes a mountain as “authentic.” Which seems to mean people running a ski area like it's a family sandwich shop, with everyone doing what they can at all times to make it work.This version of skiing is not for everyone. Some people really want that #ExperienceOfALifetime hashtag on their Instapost. But if you're a little bit over that, or just want a break from it once in a while, well, jump on that IP email list and plan to pick one up this fall.Podcast NotesOn retro IndyRetro Indy is a funny notion, as the website flipped live less than a goldfish's lifetime ago. But a look at this landing page, captured by the Wayback Machine on March 17, 2019, underscores how fast Indy has grown:On SnowvanaFish talked about his Northwest “stoke festival,” Snowvana, which has become an annual Portland tradition. You can learn about it here.On Peak Performance agingOn a 10-hour drive from South Tahoe to San Diego last month, I streamed an episode of The Reinvention Project with Jim Rome that featured author Steven Kotler. He'd recently written a book called Growing Old, Staying Rad, which exposes myths around physical and mental degeneration and aging. One giant takeaway: your skills only decline if you let them. I brought this up in the context of Doug's career because he created the Indy Pass at age 62, a cultural waypoint at which most Americans are hypnotized to believe their most productive time is past them. And here Fish creates one of the greatest products in skiing in his seventh decade. It's a remarkable anecdote that proves Kotler's point and underscores the incredible power of moving forever forward.I have been listening to Jim Rome's daily sports talk radio show for decades, and my interview style largely mimics his. This one is well worth a listen if you're at all interested in aging with style:On the Indy Pass top 10In the podcast, Fish lays out the top-10 most-redeemed Indy Pass ski areas for the 2022-23 ski season. Here they are:1)    Jay Peak2)    Waterville Valley3)    Cannon Mountain4)    Pats Peak5)    Bolton Valley6)    Saddleback7)    Magic Mountain8)    Berkshire East9)    Powder Mountain10) Lutsen MountainsAnd here's what the list looks like year-by-year since Indy's inaugural season:Most of the sliding around between this season and last can be attributed to blackout dates: Lutsen and Pats Peak increased theirs and thus slid in the rankings. Cannon reduced theirs and so advanced. And then there's Saddleback:On Saddleback blackoutsFish notes that Saddleback was a first-time entrant into the Indy Pass top 10. There was no mystery as to why: “A lot of resorts in New England added blackouts, Saddleback took theirs away,” for the 2021-22 ski season, Fish tells me on the podcast.Saddleback General Manager Jim Quimby and I discussed exactly this, and how crucial Indy Pass has been to the mountain's renaissance since re-opening in 2020 after a five-year closure, in our recent podcast conversation (1:28):Honestly though just listen to the whole thing. Quimby delivers the rich history of Saddleback with an unforgettable series of anecdotes, reflections, and emotion. One of the best episodes I have to offer.The Storm explores the world of lift-served skiing all year long. Join us.The Storm publishes year-round, and guarantees 100 articles per year. This is article 38/100 in 2023, and number 424 since launching on Oct. 13, 2019. Want to send feedback? Reply to this email and I will answer (unless you sound insane, or, more likely, I just get busy). You can also email skiing@substack.com. Get full access to The Storm Skiing Journal and Podcast at www.stormskiing.com/subscribe

Great content is like an amazing dish—it's meant to be remixed and shared!That means a great blog post should also be:Visualized and explained in a webinar.Rewritten as a Twitter thread.Discussed in a podcast.Doing so makes it easy for people to consume your content how they want to—whether attending a live webinar or listening to a podcast while at the gym.That's exactly the content strategy that Amanda Natividad, VP of marketing at SparkToro, uses to maximize the reach of the content she creates. Today, Amanda discusses how she repurposes SparkToro's popular office hour webinars attended by thousands of marketers into blog posts.She even believes that starting with a webinar before writing a blog post might be better:“As you're presenting your ideas, you can pick up on how the audience are reacting. For example, people in the chat might be saying, ‘Oh, that's a really good example.' They could even tell you if they're confused. Those things give you clue to improve your content.”In this Marketing Powerups episode, you'll learn:The benefits of repurposing webinars into blog posts versus the other way around.Amanda's detailed process for turning webinars into blog posts.The art of coining terms like “zero-click content.”A resume tip that's helped Amanda transition from a test kitchen chef to a VP of marketing at a fast-growing startup.

To support independent ski journalism, please consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. This podcast hit paid subscribers' inboxes on Sept. 26. Free subscribers got it on Sept. 29. To receive future pods as soon as they're live, please consider an upgrade to a paid subscription.WhoKris Blomback, General Manager of The Mighty Pats Peak, New HampshireRecorded onSeptember 19, 2022About Pats PeakClick here for a mountain stats overviewOwned by: The Patenaude familyPass affiliations: Indy PassReciprocal pass partners: NoneLocated in: Henniker, New HampshireClosest neighboring ski areas: Crotched (30 minutes), Mount Sunapee (30 minutes), McIntyre (30 minutes), Veterans Memorial (50 minutes), Ragged Mountain (50 minutes), Granite Gorge (50 minutes – scheduled to return this season), Whaleback (50 minutes), Gunstock (1 hour), Storrs Hill (1 hour),Base elevation: 690 feetSummit elevation: 1,460 feetVertical drop: 770 feetSkiable Acres: 115 acres      Average annual snowfall: 100 inchesTrail count: 28 trails, 9 glades (17% double-black, 12% black, 21% intermediate, 50% beginner)Lift count: 11 (4 triples, 2 doubles, 2 carpets, 1 J-bar tow, 2 handle tows - view Lift Blog's of inventory of Pats Peak's lift fleet)Why I interviewed himLiving next door to Vermont is probably a little like being Hoboken. Nice town, great location, all the advantages of city life, but invisible in the orbit of Earth's most famous island. Did you know that the population density of Hoboken is about double that of New York City? Probably not. It's fine. Most people don't. Nobody cares about Hoboken.That's how it seems the ski intelligentsia sometimes views New York, Massachusetts, and New Hampshire, the three ski states bordering Vermont. By whatever accident of geology and meteorology, the Pretentious Beer State possesses most of the region's biggest ski areas and its most reliable snowzone: the Green Mountain Spine. Along this rim sit your headliners: Killington, Sugarbush, Mad River Glen, Stowe, Smugglers' Notch, Jay Peak. If you tried to tell me these were the six best ski areas between the Atlantic and the Mississippi, I'd probably be like, “OK” and go eat my Pop-Tarts.But if The Storm was just a documentary tool for places where New Yorkers vacation, then I would have wrapped this project up two years ago. This is a big New Hampshire house, and always has been: the heads of Loon, Cannon, Gunstock, Waterville Valley, Whaleback, and Ragged have all made podcast appearances. Still, the Vermont interview tally is 15, even though I ski New Hampshire as often as I do Vermont. Clearly I have work to do.So here we are. A New Hampshire ski area with the best attributes of New Hampshire ski areas: service- and snowmaking-oriented; steep and varied; busy because it's close to everything; lots of lifts; lots of community and tradition. If you don't think all that fits into 115 acres, you haven't skied New England. The Mighty Pats Peak jams it all in just fine.What we talked aboutReaction to the Jay Peak sale;Ragged Mountain; Pats Peak in the early ‘90s; a brief history of Pats Peak; Blomback's 100-point list to modernize Pats Peak; “when you operate a ski area 60 miles from the Atlantic Ocean, she's got something to say about that”; how Pats Peak survived when so many Southern New Hampshire ski areas died; the overcorrection that nearly wiped out Pats Peak's competition; the problem with debt; thoughts on the pending comebacks of Granite Gorge and Tenney; why the ski area has dubbed itself “the mighty Pats Peak”; knowing who you are; cheapskate expert skiers; who owns Pats Peak; the value of autonomy; what's kept Blomback at Pats Peak for 31 years; Magic Mountain in the ‘80s; why Pats buys used lifts; where Pats' current lifts came from; which lifts are next in line for an upgrade and what may replace them; the poor-man's detachable; a history of (non-mechanical) high-speed lift fails in New England; the “magic length” of a detach; ski areas are littered with dead halfpipes; some unique attributes of Mueller lifts; whether it's a pain in the butt to have chairlifts made from a half-dozen different manufacturers; why Vortex rarely has liftlines even when the bottom triples have 20-minute waits; how Pats Peak crushes its larger competitors in snowmaking on a regular basis; the ski area's audacious goal to go from nothing open to every trail open in 48 hours; the history, purpose, and experience of Cascade Basin; additional trail and glade expansion opportunities; snowmaking in the glades; why Pats Peak was an early Indy Pass adopter; Pats Peak is the third-most redeemed Indy resort and I mean damn; why Indy draws so many first-time visitors to Pats Peak; a new reason to hate Liftopia; Indy Pass D-day at Pats Peak; reaction to Vail entering New Hampshire; competing with the Northeast Value Epic Pass; “skiing is an experience”; the logic of over-staffing; “service and experience is what sets Pats Peak apart”; and competing against Vail's $20-an-hour minimum wage.Why I thought that now was a good time for this interviewAs the Indy Pass settled in over the past three years, an interesting pattern has emerged: New England absolutely crushes the rest of the country in total redemptions. During the 2020-21 ski season, six of the top 10 resorts by number of Indy skiers were in New England. Last season, that number rose to seven of 10. With long, cold winters; generation-spanning ski traditions; and incredible population density, these results weren't surprising so much as affirming of what anyone who has skied out here already knows: the Northeast loves to ski.But there's data within the data, and surprises abound. Those seven New England ski areas do not stack up according to vertical drop or skiable acreage or average annual snowfall. Sometimes, as in the case of perennial Indy number one Jay Peak, mountain stats – especially 349 inches of average annual snowfall – do trump distance. By the statistical standard, no one is really surprised to see 2,020-vertical-foot Waterville Valley sitting in the two-spot. But statistical assumptions break down after that, because instead of 2,000-plus-footers Cannon or Saddleback claiming the third spot, you have the Mighty Pats Peak, with a third of the rise and a bunch less snow.There are a few obvious contributing factors to the ski area's Indy rank: Pats Peak is the easiest mid-sized ski area to reach from Boston; the mountain had zero Indy Base Pass blackouts until this coming season; Crotched, its closest competitor, was constrained in operating hours and open terrain last year; it's open all the time – nearly 90 hours on peak weeks. But those attributes alone aren't enough to explain how a 770-vertical-foot mountain finished number three out of 82 – 82! – Indy Pass partners for total redemptions last season.A succession of bigfoots were expected to stomp Pats Peak flat over the past three decades, Blomback tells us in the podcast. SKI, Peak Resorts, Vail. But business has never been stronger. The product on the snow doesn't just matter a lot, it turns out – it matters more than anything.Questions I wish I'd askedI already have a bad habit of keeping my guests way too long, but, believe it or not, there are almost always un-asked questions remaining at interview's end: why are all Pats Peak's trails named after winds? How important is it to retain some New England indies as Jay Peak joins a conglomerate? How can Vail make sure Crotched is as good as Pats Peak from a snowmaking and open-terrain point of view? How are season pass sales going? And on and on. Somehow I usually have the sense to keep these under two hours, but that rises more from guilt over time theft than any sense of personal decency.What I got wrongI think I mispronounced “Patenaude” – the last name of the ski area's owners – about every way that it could be mispronounced over the course of an hour-long interview.Why you should ski Pats PeakAs you can imagine, I possess a lot of ski passes. And despite the lack of an in-town bump, I can reach around 150 of them within a five-hour drive. So my options on any given day are fairly vast. While my travels – well documented on Twitter, Instagram, and the “this week in skiing” section of the weekly-ish news update – may seem random, I am almost always chasing snow and conditions. Who, within that vast radius fanning off New York City, is firing? Eerie? Ontario? The Green Mountain Spine? The Whites? And what's the path of least resistance? If the Catskills get hammered, I'm unlikely to plow through to the Adirondacks. If the Poconos get their once-every-five-year dump, I'm going. Almost any ski area can deliver a riotous day with the right conditions. The secret trees pop open. The jumps and drops are more forgiving. The ice evaporates and for one afternoon you can close your eyes* and pretend you're in Utah.But sometimes it doesn't snow anywhere. And I still have to ski every week because you know why. Last December-to-January we hit just such a hellstreak in the Northeast. The kind that makes you wonder how long an industry reliant upon temperatures below freezing can stitch together sustainable seasons. The fats were all in various states of open but many of the littles sat brown-hilled and empty over Christmas week. No one was offering anything resembling their trailmaps.Except Pats Peak. One hundred percent open by the first day of 2022. And why? It was weird. Its base elevation is 690 feet. The mountain sits in Southern New Hampshire, outside of the major snowbelts. Unlike similarly sized Crotched, right down the road, it's not owned by a CorpCo that can helicopter in snow from the Wasatch. It's just a 770-foot local bump owned and operated by locals.And yet there it is, routinely the first ski area in New England to pop its full menu open for the season. How? “We often joke we're a snowmaking system with a ski area attached,” Blomback tells me. Go there and you'll see it. That's what I did in January. And there: Unimaginable snowmaking firepower. Gunning anytime temperatures allow. Day or night, chairlifts spinning or idle. A plume of white powder erupting from the stubborn brown hills around it.And guess what? The skiing is pretty good too. From the parking lot the ski area erupts, fall lines apparent. Lifts everywhere. In the backyard a hidden pod, Cascade Basin, like a second miniature ski area of its own. Glades tucked all around. Weekdays it's all yours. Until school lets out. Then it belongs to the kids. Busloads of them, learning, racing, messing around. To the baselodge, and one of the great bars in New England skiing.Just remember to make your Indy Pass reservation first. The information era has been good for the mighty Pats Peak. Real-time weather and trail reports have made it obvious who's mastered the snowmaking game. Pats Peak isn't the only snowmaking killer in New Hampshire. But I'd argue that there's no one better. I'm not the only one. The place parked out for the first time last season. Blomback and team quickly adjusted, limiting Indy Pass slots and bringing back the Covid-season reservation system. This year, Pats Peak will have Indy Base blackouts for the first time. But these won't matter in mid-December when the big bombers are five percent open and Pats Peak is breaking out new terrain out daily.*Actually maybe don't do this.Podcast NotesBlomback notes that, “at one time, in southern New Hampshire, we lost King Ridge, Ragged, Whaleback, Crotched, Temple, Highlands, and Pinnacle.” Ragged, Whaleback, and Crotched are obviously back, and Pinnacle is orchestrating its second comeback as Granite Gorge. But here's a quick look at the others:King RidgeVertical drop: 775 feet; Lifts: 2 triples, 1 double, several surface liftsThis was a terrific little ski area that made the mistake that just about every terrific little ski area made in the ‘80s: it decided that snowmaking was a fad. Then it dropped dead. Really the important thing about King Ridge though is that it has the single greatest trailmap ever printed (circa 1994):TempleVertical drop: 600 feet; Lifts: 1 quad, 1 doubleThis little spot, just down the road from Crotched, ran for 63 seasons before shutting down in 2001. The quad now stands at Nashoba Valley, according to New England Ski History. The state purchased what was left of the ski area in 2007 and let it fade back into nature.HighlandsVertical drop: 700 feet; skiable acres: ; Lifts: 1 triple, 2 T-bars, 1 pony, 1 ropetowHighlands stood as a ski area from the late ‘60s to the mid-90s. Today, it's the only lift-served mountain-bike-only area in New England (the rest all offer wintertime skiing). This one, seated just a few minutes off I-93, seems like a good candidate to re-open for skiing at some point, perhaps with a parks focus.Crotched EastWhile Peak Resorts famously resuscitated the then-long-dead Crotched in 2003, they did not revive all of it. The ski area was once a two-sided operation, consisting of Crotched East and West (also known as Onset or Bobcat). West is present-day Crotched. East sits right next door, liftless, fading away. I doubt Vail has any ambitions to revive it, though they could certainly use the extra capacity. Crotched circa 1988:And this is what survives today:Similarly, Magic Mountain, Vermont has an abandoned ski area on the backside (which you are still allowed to ski, though the lifts are long gone). Here's what the place looked like in its 1980s ultimate form, when Blomback worked there:Magic today:Blomback and I discussed the phenomenon of the Vortex double chair, which terminates just alongside the Hurricane and Turbulence triples, but rarely has a line, even when the other two are backed up for 20 minutes. This, Blomback says, is because the double loads above the lodge, rather than continuing the 50 vertical feet to the true base at the Peak chair. The same phenomenon happens all over, but the similar instance we discussed was Sunday River's Locke and Barker chairs. Locke, a triple, rarely has a line, while Barker – a high-speed quad – often has lines longer than the gestational cycle of several species of mammal. Why? I don't know. There is a lot of terrain crossover between the two lifts. The main difference is that one is faster (and racers often commandeer large chunks of Locke). I've always wondered what would happen if Sunday River were to bring the Locke loading station down beside Barker? Unless they upgrade it to a high-speed lift, I can't imagine it would matter much – which is fine with me, as I'll lap the slow lift with no line all day long:The Storm explores the world of lift-served skiing all year round. Join us.The Storm publishes year-round, and guarantees 100 articles per year. This is article 102/100 in 2022, and number 348 since launching on Oct. 13, 2019. Want to send feedback? Reply to this email and I will answer (unless you sound insane, or, more likely, I just get busy). You can also email skiing@substack.com. Get full access to The Storm Skiing Journal and Podcast at www.stormskiing.com/subscribe

Ron Schneidermann is the CEO of Alltrails, where he spent the past six years helping grow the company, which is now one of the top five health and fitness apps in the Apple App Store and Google Play Store. Before joining Alltrails, Ron led growth teams at Yelp and co-founded Liftopia, the global leader of ski lift ticket bookings. Ron shares that the two most important things for any company are momentum and culture. If you lose either of them, they are impossible to rebuild. Have belief in your business model and look at the advantages in context. When you cannot control certain aspects of the funnel, let full-funnel growth (across all stages) be the central driver of your business. If your app is “content-centered,” your data sets hold the power to convert and retain users. First, focus on improving the quality of data you can provide to your audience. Don't get attached to results because any growth experiment can fail. Instead, focus on learning from successful and failed experiments. Find and monitor feedback loops based on what your users respond to. The key to growth is to keep adapting as your audience adapts because they are the chief driver of your business growth. Re-engagement via push notification may put you at risk of annoying your customers. People may forget that they have the app installed, so it's always better to focus on outside-the-app strategies such as SEO, personalized content, and reminders via emails to drive re-engagement through deep links into the app. Try not to depend on one platform because it can make a huge dent in your growth charts if the platform changes. Try to own your channels of growth as much as possible. Daily and sometimes even weekly metrics may be distracting. Monthly metrics provide a more accurate view of your audience's changing consumption habits and are a healthier way to monitor growth. Ron shares that to maintain culture momentum during growth, your company's senior leadership has to be the culture vanguard and train the rest of the leadership across the org. This becomes easier if people in your organization have a personal connection to your mission and stay longer. Ron's final advice: be honest with yourself when making important decisions because you will be proud of the practical decisions you make and reactionary paths you avoid after you retire. Having a personal set of core values helps identify opportunities and enjoy the process of executing them.

Amanda used to wish there were more women creators for her to look up to. But she realized two problems: 1) It was her own fault for not paying closer attention, and 2) She could be the change she wanted to see. So she took her Twitter account seriously and started publishing online. One year later, she grew herTwitter following from 1k to 60k. And she would love to share her learnings with you. I will be interviewing her this Thursday at 12pm EST on LinkedIn LiveWhat you will learn:Why the world needs more women to create and publish onlineHow to uncover your personal "why"Redefine the typical audience building goalsDefine and create your content strategyHow to deal with trolls (and red flags to look for when engaging online)Bio:Amanda Natividad is VP of Marketing for audience research startup, SparkToro. In her 9-year marketing career, she has managed B2C and B2B marketing teams across consumer packaged goods, software-as-a-service, and agency side. Earlier in her career, Amanda created Fitbit��s B2B content program and helped build their B2B marketing team. She also led marketing for ski lift ticket company Liftopia and for SEO content agency Growth Machine.Amanda has spoken at marketing events like Demand Curve's Growth Summit, and guest lectured at Columbia Business School and Cornell University. She is also a contributor for Adweek, a Le Cordon Bleu-trained chef, and a former journalist.

Ron is the CEO of AllTrails, the most used and trusted outdoors platform in the world. Before becoming the CEO of AllTrails, Ron was Head of Growth at Yelp Reservations, Co-Founder of Liftopia, and Head of Business Development at Hotwire. The mission of AllTrails is to help people explore the outdoors with hand-curated trail maps along with photos, reviews, and user recordings crowdsourced from an ever-growing community of millions. Initially, Ron was hesitant to accept the role of CEO that was offered to him, but after some soul searching he decided to accept - and ever since the growth of AllTrails has been undeniable. Ron and I discussed: The origins of AllTrails Why he was reluctant to accept the role of CEO Understanding their end-user Why COVID was such a boom for their success Why UGC is a critical component Potential future features The importance of the outdoors for mental health Why inclusivity in the outdoors is their top priority Hitting the 1 million subscribers goal Why culture starts at the top And much more... Ron Schneidermann My Take: Even though we are getting more technologically advanced by the hour, the outdoors are and always will be an integral part of us. Finding a way to marry the two is the type of innovation necessary for this day & age. As someone who uses this app regularly, I can attest to how much easier and safer it makes my hikes - while allowing me to find trails I may not know of otherwise. How To Start A Podcast Support The Podcast

Amanda Natividad is VP of Marketing for audience research startup, SparkToro. She's also a contributor for Adweek, a Le Cordon Bleu-trained chef, and a former journalist. Amanda previously led marketing for Growth Machine, led marketing for Liftopia, built Fitbit's B2B content program, and led content and communications for NatureBox. In this episode, we talk about Amanda's path into marketing, her advice for growing your Twitter following, her new live talk show on YouTube called The Menu, and what she's doing to encourage more inclusiveness online. Learn more about Amanda Natividad Follow Amanda Natividad on Twitter Learn more about SparkToro Join the Creative Companion Club

In this episode we chat with Ron Schneidermann, the CEO of AllTrails, which is the most trusted and used outdoors platform in the world.  The Company is frequently ranked as a top-5 Health and Fitness app and has been downloaded by over 40 million people worldwide. AllTrails has raised over $225 million in funding and is backed by Permira, Spectrum Equity, and others. Prior to joining the Company as COO in 2015, Ron was the Head of Growth at Yelp and before that was Co-founder and CMO of Liftopia.  He began his career as a business consultant with Accenture. We hope you enjoy the show.

Today I'm joined by Ron Schneidermann, CEO of AllTrails — a guide to the outdoors.    In this episode, we discuss the company's content flywheel, free app, and subscription product. We cover the intersection of technology and the outdoors, as well as the company's recent $150M funding round, fueling community, personalization, and international expansion.    More from Fitt Insider    Fitt Insider helps operators stay informed and make better decisions. We produce a weekly newsletter and podcast, curate an industry jobs board, and invest in early-stage companies.   *** Subscribe to our newsletter: https://insider.fitt.co/newsletter/   *** Visit the jobs board: https://jobs.fitt.co/   *** View current investment and get in touch: https://insider.fitt.co/investments/   More from Ron    Ron Schneidermann is an entrepreneur who is passionate about building great companies that help people have authentic, organic, real-world experiences. He is the CEO of AllTrails, the most trusted and used outdoors platform in the world. In 2005, Ron co-founded Liftopia, the global leader in ski lift ticket bookings, and was Head of Growth at Yelp Reservations. Ron attended UCLA, earning his bachelor's degree in Communications, and lives in California with his wife Jenny, their three children, and their dog Sally Toodle the Golden Doodle. Ron loves riding his mountain bike, but his all-time favorite trail is the Na Pali Coast Trail in Kauai.

On the show today is Amanda Natividad. Amanda is the Marketing Architect at SparkToro and previously the Head of Marketing at Growth Machine.I wanted to bring her on because Amanda is a prolific marketer with experience in content marketing across B2C brands like FitBit and Liftopia as well as B2B with Growth Machine and their client base. She's amassed a Twitter following of over 36k. And she's an expert in all things digital PR and content strategy.You'll hear about the idea of permissionless co-marketing, product-led content, and how SparkToro is leveraging live Office Hours to move the needle on product adoption and retention.More on Amanda: @amandanat on Twitter amandanat.com The Menu newsletter SparkToro Office Hours Audience research newsletter Mentions: Wealthfront's career building companies Demand Curve Sponsored by Riverside — It's what I use to record both my podcasts, Everything Is Marketing and Default Alive, but I was using Riverside long before they became a sponsor. I used to use Zoom until someone interviewed me using Riverside and I knew I had to switch. I love it because they take local recordings on each side, which gives you a reliable connection and the highest quality audio and video tracks. Separate HD recordings, an iOS app, automatic transcription… It's made specifically for podcasters. Folks like Guy Raz from How I Built This, Courtland Allen from Indie Hackers, and even Hillary Clinton uses it if you can believe it. Check them out and all the other features they have at riverside.fm

Our guest today is Ron Schneidermann, CEO at AllTrails, the ultimate guide for outdoor adventures. AllTrails was early to the consumer subscription space, launching a $3/month premium tier way back in 2012. Ron joined as CMO and COO in 2015, and then took over as CEO in 2019, helping to grow AllTrails to over 1 million subscribers and tens of millions of active users worldwide.On the podcast, we talk with Ron about the magic of consumer subscriptions, experimenting with freemium strategies, and how private equity isn't always as bad as you've been led to believe.In this episode, you'll learn: How to refine and optimize your freemium strategy Two things you need to keep an eye on as a founder The pros & cons of outside funding vs. organic growth How Ron fast-tracked AllTrails' profitability Links & Resources Accenture Hotwire Yelp Liftopia Alex Honnold Spectrum Equity Ron Schneidermann's Links Ron Schneidermann's LinkedIn page AllTrails Celebrates 1 Million Paid Subscribers! (January press release) AllTrails' website AllTrails is hiring Follow AllTrails on Twitter Follow us on Twitter: David Barnard Jacob Eiting RevenueCat Sub Club Episode Transcript00:00:00 David:Our guest today is Ron Schneidermann, CEO at AllTrails, the ultimate guide for outdoor adventures, AllTrails was early to the consumer subscription space, launching a $3 per month premium tier, way back in 2012. Ron joined as CMO and COO in 2015, and then took over as CEO in 2019, helping to grow AllTrails to over 1 million subscribers and tens of millions of active users world.On the podcast, we talk with Ron about the magic of consumer subscriptions, experimenting with freemium strategies, and how private equity isn't always as bad as you've been led to believe.Hey, Ron! Welcome to the podcast. 00:00:59 Ron:Thanks for having me.00:01:00 David:Yeah. Really looking forward to the chat today. I wanted to kick it off, and most people know what AllTrails is, and it's a fantastic brand. It kind of tells you what it is right there on the tin. What's your pitch? We're in 2021, post pandemic.Give us the short version of what AllTrails is. What does it mean? 00:01:21 Ron:Yeah. So AllTrails is a free app and website that helps you find trails all over the globe, so you can spend more time enjoying the outdoors, and spending time in nature.00:01:34 David:That's awesome.00:01:35 Jacob:That's a very nice mission. That's way more beautiful than helping developers make more money. Both are important, but I can smell that. It smells, “piney” and I like it.00:01:46 David:Yeah, it smells like the Colorado forest. I haven't been hiking forever, and doing all the research to chat with you today was like, oh man, I need to go hiking more.00:01:55 Ron:I heard there's a great app for that.00:01:57 David:I heard that.So, I did want to also ask about your journey to AllTrails. You got there fairly early, and then grew in, and you're now CEO. Tell me, off the bat, what led you to AllTrails way back in 2015 when it was just six people?00:02:20 Ron:Yeah. To answer that I'm going to go a little bit further back in time. My first job right after college was at Accenture, at a global management consulting firm. It was great. A good jumping off point, and I learned a ton. I didn't know anything going into that job. You know, you get the rubber stamp and it opens doors.By the end of my third year there, I kind of had a realization. Epifany is a little too strong a word, but I just kind kinda realized I can't take a job just for money again. The amount of time and energy that I was putting into it, and the lack of work-life balance, it really made me rethink who I want to be. Who does working Ron want to be?So, I was able to parlay that Accenture job into a biz dev role over at Hotwire, an online travel company. That was really where it opened my eyes. Like, I am so much happier, and I am honestly so much better when I'm working at something that I'm just personally passionate about.That guiding principle has really held through throughout my career trajectory. From Hotwire, I want to do my own startup in the ski space. I love to ski. So, I did that for nine years. It was a ton of fun. Then I was over at Yelp, doing growth for a bit. I love finding non-chain restaurants, and supporting mom and pop businesses, and stuff. I live in Yelp, so that was great.Then, when the opportunity for AllTrails presented itself, it was just kind of a no-brainer. Of course I'm going to take this.I'll say this to you, one little addendum, one of the things I learned along the way, too. I am not a zero to one guy. That is not when I am at my best. It just causes me stress and anxiety, and just, figuring out how to keep the lights on for another day.So, again, knowing kind of that sense of self knowing. Like, alright, I'm best at B to C. I'm at my best when I'm using products I personally want to use and like talking about. I like hypergrowth, and I think that's probably my sweet spot.So, it starts to all align when AllTrials showed up.00:04:34 David:Yeah. And then how did that go from? You joined the company as COO, right? And then, what was the progression inside the company to eventually taking over as CEO?00:04:45 Ron:Yeah. So if you want to demo and COO, I dunno why I really wanted to have both, like, I didn't want to just be CMO in a vacuum, but not have any ownership or agency over kind of team composition and strategy and stuff. So I thought that it was really. Really important. And when you're a six person company, it's pretty easy to grab titles.It's not like how to take it from anyone.00:05:08 Jacob:I was going to ask, like, I mean, it's, it's not like you see this a lot where it's like a six person company and they had like five C-levels and you're like, okay. Yeah, sure. Like, like my title, for example. But like, I'm kind of curious, like, you know, you like your background, you founded a company, like you were like a real CX whatever.Right? Like it's not like it was fake. So how did, how did that, how did you go as like an executive, like choosing your next thing? That'd be a hell of a pitch to get you to like join a tiny little like, team like that.00:05:36 Ron:You know, I think I, I spent a lot of time thinking through again. I don't know, I, to be perfectly honest, I was, I was a little bit bored at the end of my tenure at Yelp. I love Yelp. It's a great company, but it was just, it was too big for me. And so I spent a lot of time thinking through what's next again?That whole question, like zero to one. Do I need, do I need to start something myself or what? So the smallness didn't bother me. I actually really liked the smallness cause it was almost like, it was almost like a cheat code. Like I got to do a startup, like basically from scratch, but I didn't have to do it from scratch.And then.00:06:09 Jacob:They had, they had a kernel of something at00:06:11 Ron:They did, they did. And you know, it was actually to, to give my predecessor credit. It was, it was actually more than that. Like they had, they had solid product market fit from a monetization perspective. And then what really got me across the line with their product channel. And I feel like that's often overlooked and that's something you kind of pick up in time.Like it's not just like, is this a product people are willing to pay money for, but just straight up, how are you going to get this out to market? And can you, can you do it in a way that is, you know, viable and scalable and, and ultimately, you know, going to be, be more efficient than, you know, it's kind of like net out, right?Like the whole LTV to CAC thing and everything that00:06:49 Jacob:Yeah. It's, it's something more efficient than paying for every single install. Right.00:06:53 Ron:Exactly. And so. You know, I, it felt like there was good bones, you know, maybe it was like a fixer upper kind of house. but it had good bones, like it had, it had the foundation in place. And I could see, you know, back in 2015, the product sucked, it sucked. and, and what was shocking after I came was how bad the data was.I didn't realize that when I was kind of doing my own diligence, but it was00:07:20 Jacob:You mean like analytics on the internally, what the company knew about itself or you mean like the, the, the trail00:07:25 Ron:The trail data, like the trail data that we were showing, you know, and that's that's subs high consequence. and so that was like a hard pivot, within a couple months, like, all right, this is, you know, all hands on deck thing.We're not doing anything else until we figure this out. but again, it just, it felt like there was a diamond in the rough, in this one. You know, I've been here six years now and I can say like, unequivocally, this is the highlight of my career. Maybe I just got lucky. I don't know. But, man, like, yeah, this has been a really, really great run so far.00:07:59 Jacob:I was just going to ask about the, that channel and monetization fit. I mean, I guess this was maybe I'm jumping ahead in our agenda here, but, but yeah, they were already charging a subscription before you got there. Right. And in terms of like monetization, maybe like describe that model a little bit and, and how that has changed.00:08:20 Ron:Yeah, I had never done this subscription business before coming here. So this was my first subscription business. And I'll tell you, you guys already know this. I'm sure your listeners already know this too. subscription businesses are magical. Oh my goodness. Compared to like e-commerce or you're trying to re when, you know, the transaction every single00:08:40 Jacob:I know I was looking at Hotwire just now, when you mentioned it. And I was just thinking about like, how many of those there were at that era, right? Like, and still are like, when you had to book a hotel on Google and they're like, oh, here's 15 different sites. You can actually like book it through it's like Wolf,00:08:53 Ron:Oh, so tough. Same with Liftopia. Liftopia the ski startup. There was the same thing. Right. you know, but, but with a much smaller niche and segment, and then, and then Yelp is, you know, they're, they're kind of the media model and then trying to, you know, kind of pivot more towards like B2B and subscriptions for businesses and value added services and stuff.And coming here doing a consumer subscription business, an annual subscription, the auto renew. It's like an annuity, like it just builds up every single year. Like obviously, like you can't take retention for granted and I'm sure we'll talk about that, but you know, just, if you're able to kinda, you know, do a, do a pretty good job on the retention side and you see this thing build up And just.Raise the tide every single year that I've been here and have it just, is that much more momentum that just gets like brought into each new fiscal year for us. It's just, it's incredible. It is incredible. the leverage that it offers. So that was cool. That was definitely a, 00:09:51 Jacob:One of those good bones.00:09:54 David:Yeah. And that's what I was going to ask you say the bones were good. Yeah, AllTrails had launched their subscription in 2012. So about three years before you joined, what was the state of that? And that's really early in the kind of consumer subscription software space. Was there a lot of push back was like, how was traction, chargebacks and things like that was the bones were there, but were there some serious doubts or questions in your mind as to how this subscription app space was going to play out? 00:10:28 Ron:Yeah, I mean, so can I share a secret with you guys? I honestly didn't know that our subscription business loss in 2012, until you guys showed me the research that you did leading up to this, I had always thought that, it launched with our ass. We launched our apps in, I think early 2015, I joined in September, 2018.And I just lumped everything together just in that, you know,00:10:53 Jacob:Yeah. It's yeah,00:10:54 Ron:Yeah. So I, I, I had always thought that it, that we had launched it when our apps launched, but I guess we were on the cutting edge, the bleeding edge, the subscription space here.00:11:05 Jacob:So, so, but that, then I'm, then I'm correct to assume that, you know, if you launched a description 2012 was on the web, if you didn't have apps until 20, 20, 15. Right. Right. Which, I mean, my, my experience, I guess I've been on old trails website, but like my vast majority of experience has been on the web.Right. Because I'm like, or sorry on the, on the phone because I'm going for a hike and I'm like, I need a map and like, boom, there's AllTrails. Right. Which I guess is that channel fit. You're talking about.00:11:27 Ron:Yeah. And that's been, that's been one of the cool things when I started. So a couple, a couple, I guess, data points, just to show like, sort of that, that snapshot in time of 2015, we probably had 20,000. subscribers at that point, maybe a million cumulative registered users since 2010, when we first launched and maybe 20,000 active paying subs.And in January of this year, we put out a press release. We don't normally do that, but it was two pretty cool milestones. We had cracked 25 million registered users and a million paying subs at the start of this. So, you know, again, like the, the, the unlock has been really cool and very, very powerful. but the other thing, like you said, like this was, you know, a web driven subscription business.At first, when I, when I first started here. probably 70% of our, of our web traffic was desktop desktop to mobile 70 30. And obviously that's inverted, since then, and then Mo the, the, the mobile apps, the native apps are by far the best form factor for what we're trying to do. Like you said, Jake would like take it with you on the go, the navigation, the GPS stuff, everything baked in there.And so that's become really the workhorses of, of subscription business and, and of our overall, UDC flat.00:12:42 Jacob:Yeah. I mean, it's so helpful. you guys have good SEO when you search a trail, it comes up on AllTrails. Right. But that's, I would imagine like this stage probably mostly like demand gen for the app,00:12:53 Ron:That's exactly it. No, that's exactly it. Right. So our se our legacy SEO, this is what, again, one of the beauties of being around for 11 years and counting, we have this amazing legacy SEO and that's, that was that product channel fit that brought me here was the sales pitch was he just showed me Google analytics.And he just like, look, look at all of this for your00:13:12 Jacob:Just like a hyper-local very valuable data, right. Index. And if you're, if you're the winner, that's a great real estate to00:13:20 Ron:I know. And, and so what we've been doing obviously as, sort of consumer behavior has changed and gone mobile first is, we're able to parlay all of that mobile first SEO traffic it's, incremental organic app installs, and that's a huge driver. Of our business. We get millions and millions of incremental app installs that we don't pay a dime for every mom's.00:13:42 Jacob:Yeah. And going back to your point, like yeah. Not having to push. Up the hill completely is a bit, you know, you think about a Compounding annuity analogy as you made, right? Like the cost of that compounding really, you know, if you net out the whole asset, right? Like that's going to be a big part of it is like, how much does it cost to push that that, that, that flywheel up a little bit. 00:14:02 Ron:It's a moat for business too, you know, you're around long enough and you're doing something good. You're going to see a ton of competitors start flooding into the space, which is great as validation of what we're doing, but the product market fit product channel fit conundrum is, is real.It's real. And you know, I see really great products, you know, beautifully designed products that just crank can't crack the code on either of those. And then they kind of, you know, whether on the line, right? Like see it all the time.00:14:31 David:No, that was actually my next question is that in those early days, and you already said when you joined and when y'all launched the apps in 2015, they were crap. So take me, how did you go from this crap up and what experimentation, what pain, what suffering did 00:14:53 Jacob:There's some, there's some old, there's some like a old guard at, at all trials that are going to listen to this and be like, crap. They were great.00:15:00 David:But what did it take and what was the approach to, to find you, you had some level of product market fit, but then to actually build a great product around those early signs. 00:15:12 Ron:There, there are a couple of philosophical things that we decided immediately. One was around funding. Do we want to go take funding, and try and do this faster? Do we want to do this kind of organically? And my predecessor had done a small seed round. I think he raised 3 million bucks in 2012.And we were still kind of drafting off of that. And then there was a little bit of subscription revenue and then a whole bunch of just, you know, classic entrepreneur head on the swivel stuff. Like let's throw a bunch of shit up on the wall. Like, let's see what we can do. So there's, you know, a media play and programmatic ads.Whatever, right. Just trying to buy time more than anything. Right? Like keep the servers running for a little bit longer. But we decided we very intentionally decided not to take funding. We wanted to control our own destiny. And part of it to be clear, part of it was the handshake agreement with the original founder, was to grow it and sell it.He wanted us to, to, to sell it. And so, so then if that was kind of the. The Mandy. And I was like, well, why would we even just, you know, deal with the, the opportunity cost and the headache of going out and trying to raise funds, as a pain in the ass. So, you know, it was like, let's just, let's put our heads00:16:22 Jacob:Especially, especially for our consumer subscription company in 2015, like00:16:27 Ron:Right? Yeah.00:16:28 Jacob:Ben kind of been party to that. It's not, it wasn't easy. Let's put it that way.00:16:32 Ron:Tried doing it in 2005, by the way I was with Liftopia was insane anyways. but so we decided to put our heads down and just say super scrappy, super scrappy, super lean. And so, it just came down to like relentless prioritization and essentially what we ended up doing was triaging sort of a different funnel metric each quarter.Right. So one quarter is. We've got to tackle bounce rate. All right. Now we've got to tackle signup rate and now we've got to tackle pro conversion rate. And now we've got to talk over attention and we just kind of spent cycles, through 2016 and through 2017, just each, each quarter, just like laser focus in on that one metric and do what we can and then move.And it worked because by the end of 2017, we actually achieved profitability. Which was cool, which was really, really great. You know, like we wanted again, when you've been around the block long enough, you talked to enough entrepreneurs, you've seen, you've seen enough. there's so many examples of people going and getting too much funding too soon, and then they develop bad habits, right?Yeah. Let's get a little hot in here. Is it.00:17:36 Jacob:I never heard of that.00:17:39 Ron:So, you know, but so you see it right? Like that you, you get the, unsustainable growth channels, again, the product channel fit question, like how are you actually going to bring this to market? And how are you going to do it when that VC money dries up? Like, is this actually00:17:50 Jacob:Five X that VC money, right.00:17:52 Ron:Right? Is this sustainable?Or you're just connecting yourself to the next round of00:17:56 Jacob:You can put yourself in a, in a dead man's corner, right. Where you're not your, market's not big enough, whatever you end up killing and otherwise like really great business,00:18:05 Ron:Totally. And I, you know, I'd seen that, I'd seen that. I really didn't want to do that here. It felt like because so much of our growth was coming through SEO. It felt like obviously there's an opportunity, which we later unlocked on the ASO side of things. It felt like even beyond both of those though, it's just like word of mouth and PR and viral loops and network effects.00:18:27 Jacob:Product market fit as a broad thing, right? Like growth kind of have you have a really good product and it serves a niche, like grit just starts to start to go.00:18:36 Ron:And especially organic growth, right? Like, and that was really the big key as like, do we need to be like one of these DTC companies and just raise millions of dollars for Instagram ads? Or can we, can we do something that's more sustainable for the long haul? And that was, that was one of the bats.The other big bet that we placed was, from a brand positioning perspective. You know, when I came in the app was definitely geared towards like the through hikers and search and rescue and, and the hardcore, like, you know, back country folks. And the challenge with, with, with that segment is that there's always these, you know, really esoteric and extreme product requirements that they want because they're they're edge cases.They're by definition, all edge cases. And in this space in particular, a lot of them. Kind of living the, you know, the van life, life, you know, trying to live as frugally as possible. and so they don't want to really pay you any money either. It's like this isn't a good growth segment. We got, we gotta rethink this one.And so, I've told this story a lot, you know, this strong man to this day still is, is my wife where like she likes going outside with me. You know, she's always down to go on a high. you know, spend time outside. We have three kids, totally trying to raise them on the trail. we have a dog who loves being on the trail and, but, but if I'm not there, you know, she's, she's not going out there.Right. So it's like, okay, okay. Maybe here's the play. Like what, what if we use technology? Kind of tear down the barriers for entry, like instill confidence, whether through like product functionality or content, but really make it so that someone like my wife and the hundreds of millions of people around the globe, like her who, who know that they feel better when they time spend in nature.They're just a little scared to do it. Like, can we help augment that? Can we help supplement that? And I think that's going to be the unlock. And that was the big bet. That was the other big bet that we placed in 2015. And you know, 00:20:30 Jacob:And just to summarize that, I understand it's like to kind of not ignore these like extreme users that are on the edge on the edges, you know, serve them, but maybe not in the way that they would want, but like let's focus on, you know, this larger segment. I mean, I think that's the thing, even some good founder advice is good for founders.Sometimes doesn't always apply. Like B to C stuff sometimes where it's like, yeah, like, listen to your most vocal users often. There's something there, but like with an ounce of like moderation, because yeah. They can lead you in really strange places. And think about the network. Think about the like user.Maybe you're not talking to her, her the next year saying next a hundred million users that you have to get. and that's potentially a much bigger surface area. And that doesn't mean you're going to abandon those court users. Like they might grumble a little bit and they might not be totally served by your use case.And like, that's maybe just life. but, but you know, you've now potentially, like if you think about the, you know, the mission of just getting people outdoors, like you've achieved that much better by going for this much larger market segment. Right.00:21:31 Ron:Yeah, and they're not mutually exclusive. It's just which one are we prioritizing? Which one are we preferencing? And how are we, you know, what kind of language are we? Are we using lingo or not? Right. Are we making this accessible for everybody or not for imagery? Right. Are we doing like, you know, Alex, Honnold like dangling one handed off of a cliff,00:21:51 Jacob:Or just, or just a picture of the N the end cap at an REI, Right. Like,00:21:56 Ron:Yeah. Yeah. Or, or just like, you know, a family like smiling and having fun out in nature together, you know, like, all right. It doesn't cater to the core, but they're not necessarily going to like walk away because they see that stuff either. 00:22:07 Jacob:Right. I mean, and that comes to. Channel fit As well, right? Like not your products fit and your products oriented for, and that like B to C you kind of, you can't divorce the two, like you can't have totally independent marketing and channel channels for the product itself, which maybe you could get away with a little bit in B2B.But, but, but they, but they don't necessarily have to be like completely like linked, you know, you can kind of serve both niches on the, on the product side to your point.00:22:34 David:And speaking of getting more folks out in the mission of AllTrails. I'd love to hear about your freemium strategy, because that's a huge part of it. Like what early on, what was your approach? And then how did that evolve over time? As far as what features you do give away for free to kind of reach the broadest audience possible, and then what things you pay wall to actually get paid? 00:22:57 Jacob:And, and, and I'd like to highlight how Ron, when we asked you to describe AllTrails, you put free in the name, which I'm sure was very intentional. Right? You said it is a free app, right? It is not a premium app. I mean, it is a premium app, but the highlight the free. So00:23:09 Ron:Yeah,00:23:10 Jacob:That framing, what, what, tell us about your free app.00:23:13 Ron:There's, this is a, this is, an ongoing. Like not debate, but, it's an open question always. And we're constantly like asking our employees and our board, like let's challenge our assumptions here just because we did something a certain way last year. Doesn't mean we need to do it this way.Like let's constantly reevaluate this, for us, there's sort of three main buckets we have. Free on authenticated users and then we have free registered users. So kind of that registration wall is like the first key funnel, metric. And then there's, pro subscribers, right? So we have two, two kind of core, success metrics.One is registration rate and one is pro conversion rate. And then what goes in front and behind the paywall and the red wall, the registration wall. Constantly influx constantly. And plus we actually just did this really fun workshop a couple of weeks ago, internally here. It was like the history of AllTrailss pro and just showing kind of which features started when I, you know, again in 2015, like what was the pro feature set?How much of those? We actually ended up pulling in front of the red wall and new features that we put back behind the paywall. So I feel like we're constantly in a state of experimentation here. we've been, we've been experimenting with that since day one. We've been experimenting with pricing also on day one.And there's still, I don't feel like we've cracked the code at all at all. When I, when I first started here, I'll chose pro was 50 bucks a year and I spent the first, like two months just trying to get as, as much like, obviously all the quant data that I could get my hands on, but as much qualitative data as I could get to.So reading every app store review, every Reddit thread, every blog post. Talking to customers, all of it. And aside from everyone telling us that our data socked and, you know, we can, we got them lost. So we got them tickets from the park ranger for telling them to bring a dog when it's not that currently, whatever it was.The other piece of feedback that we got was like 50 bucks, like it's way too much. And so we immediately started testing pricing and, and, and we tested it at 30 bucks a year and we tested that 15 bucks a year to kinda all right. If we really just take that price down is, the in incremental, purchase rate, gonna offset, you know, the, the change in that revenue per transaction.They were about to wash it, which was really interesting from a net revenue perspective, 15 bucks a year versus 30 bucks a year was, was basically flat. But we went with 30 because it gave us more maneuverability. We could do more. for the folks who were like price sensitive, do do discounting, intro offers, whatever.At 15, we really couldn't go any low, lower. So it's just like, this is it for everybody all the time. but even that we're revisiting now and thinking through like, all right, maybe are there other different tiers? We've never done monthly before. So what is, what is a world in which there's a monthly price?I don't, I don't love it. I mean, again, annual is magic. Like why mess with a good thing, but there is a cohort of users, especially outside of the U S where that's a pretty high00:26:16 Jacob:Oh, I mean, I live in the Midwest. Like I would, I only need your app from, from April to November. Right. Like I really don't need to pay all year.00:26:24 Ron:For the two weeks in00:26:25 Jacob:Yeah. I, but I mean, I think there's the counter argument there of the simplicity. It's like, yeah, sure. But. Whatever your value is. So your, your, your, this is the price.I really, I I've seen that effect before on the price experimentation, you just end up with the same area under the curve. Like, no matter how you move it, and some apps are like that, some apps are not. but I do think it's really fascinating, the wisdom of crowds, right. And just how, like, they know like the, the, the, the masses have priced and valued your products.And then just like showing that like, it's very efficient, right. No matter where it goes, then you can come down to like, It's almost a good place to be. Cause then yeah, you have that like opera, you can choose where you want it to price. You can basically, you're freed from the like fiduciary duty of like maximum extraction.And you can like, like, just focus on like, okay, what's gonna what's right. For us for some of those goals on company growth and stuff like that. If it was right for the mission. And then like also give yourself some like tactical opportunities in terms of discounting and other stuff like this, and then positioning as well.Like what is it? I think that's almost as important. It's like, how do you use. How do you see all trials? Like how do you see it as like, what's the value of perception? Like a $30 skew and a 50 and a 15, those are very different. Right. And those are, you know, I think about consumer goods on those scales.That's like each one of those things has like a different, like, feel to it.00:27:43 Ron:Totally. And, and then on top of it, though, our business is driven by UGC, right? We have this classic UGC flywheel. And so obviously we know our pro users are more engaged, but a ton of engagement comes from our free users as well. And so you can't kind of, turn the squeeze on them too hard without like really fundamentally damaging the business.00:28:05 Jacob:What kind of user generated content? Is it like pictures and updated and stuff or what? What's00:28:10 Ron:Yeah, ratings, reviews, photos, recordings, you know, and then there's this also this virtuous cycle that we have, this beautiful relationship we have with our users, where they, they help us create as well as Curie our trail Content. So that's the thing with trail content, just to go down this rabbit hole for a second, Joe Content, super fluid, like it's not like streets that are, that are relatively static.You know, a trail is you get, you get flooding, you get fires, you get maintenance, you get development, down trees, whatever. Like they're constantly in a state of flux. And it's really, really hard to stay on top of it. We can't do it alone. And so we00:28:49 Jacob:And there's no, it's not like, it's not like roads where there's like a national database, right. Of like uniform data00:28:55 Ron:Yeah, no, not at all. Right. so we, we do. We have this like really beautiful symbiotic relationship with our, with our users, you know, and, and it's kind of like, we both get value from each other and we're both very transparent about like the relationship, like you guys help us and you help the community.Right. And we'll package it. We'll, we'll keep improving and investing in the product experience and everything else. and again, like, this is where it seems to be working, but this is when, when we were talking about. Th th the choke points in the funnel and that, that red wall and the broken version Weill, this is the thing that's top of mind over all of it. 00:29:30 David:Yeah, that's great. I did want to move on and talk about in 2018, AllTrails raised, 75 million led by spectrum equity. And so I'm curious about that, about that story. So, I know, you know, the plan was to sell and then you've shared on other podcasts that, part of that was the founder taking, taking some money kind of his exit event.But I'm really curious just from like a company building perspective. I think so many founders and entrepreneurs think, oh, if I can just. More money. If I can just hire more people, everything's going to be easier. but I imagine that's not the full story. So I'd love to hear about the raise, but then also kind of how that changed the company and changed the trajectory.00:30:18 Ron:Yeah. So like I said earlier, right. That the handshake agreement was to grow and sell it. So we knew going in exactly what the deal was. and once we hit profitability in 2017, it kind of felt like, all right, it's probably next year. It's probably our year. And we got an inbound from one of the big tech companies early, you know, probably end of Q1 of 2018.And so I was like, all right, game on, right? This is it. We'll go get a bank. we'll run a formal process here. And we started going through it. We started going through it. This was actually, it was fun, right? Like I got to put together sort of like, all right, here's our top 100 strategic partnerships broken out by category, broken out by vertical.Here's like the, you know, the accretive value here is, you know, the, the investment credit. It was like a really fun thought exercise. You know, we're talking to online travel companies and real estate companies, and obviously like the retailers and just so many different types of companies out there. And we ran a process and it was, it was fun.But, and as we were going through it, well, a couple things happen. One is our business really took off. Like it was a breakout trajectory year for us. So that always helps. Anytime you, you meet with someone, you share your plan and then you come back a month later and it's like, Hey, actually, Outperforming outpacing.So your price just went up. so that was, I mean, that was great. Like a great position to be in. I've never had leveraged like that. And the other, the other thing was like, we could walk away at any point. If we, if we didn't like it, I had done a lot of fundraising before and that I've never had a position of, of leverage like that.So that was cool. But as we were going through the process and talking to these different strategic acquires, the other thing that kept jumping out was like, I don't want to just go be middle management at some big company that I already like have chosen not to work out anyways, because it doesn't align with what I want to do with my time.And so, you know, we're kind of going through, it's like, is this really, is this it is this the only path? and we're talking to our bankers about it and like, you know, there's a, a huge ecosystem of financial investors that are really excited about this consumer subscription space. let's, let's do a spike there.And so we started talking to somebody. Different financial firms out there. And that's where it got really, really interesting. you know, I think, I think we all probably have preconceptions about like private equity groups, like, you know, I know, right.00:32:36 Jacob:Just, it then the light dimmed here. When you said00:32:39 Ron:I know, cause a lot of the classic ones, they're just there in your shorts about like your bottom line expenses and micromanaging and telling you to cut costs and00:32:47 Jacob:That's, that's the, that's the, the stereotype at least.00:32:50 Ron:Totally right. but there's this whole class of growth equity shops out there and, and we, we sort of plugged into it and I would squarely put spectrum equity and that one, and the first time we talked to them, it was so clear. They're like, you guys, aren't thinking big enough. It's like, what? I love that.Okay. Let's talk growth. You know, like you guys need to be thinking global. Right. And it was just like, there was so much alignment around. This, this opportunity in front of us. And instead of like pulling the rip cord and just kind of being absorbed and integrated into something else, it's like, how about, like, we really make a, make a run at this.And so the more we talk to them, the more it's was like, yes, hell yes. And it wasn't just from like, a funding perspective, you know? Cause if it was just that like again, then you just do an auction and you just see whoever's the highest. But we really wanted, like I needed a partner. I wanted a value added partner that I wanted someone who could bring in, you know, a sense of community, not have to reinvent the wheel all the time.That's always nice when you can plug into our portfolio of similar companies and just pick their brain. All right. Like how did you guys00:33:54 Jacob:Yeah. I mean, that's an under, that's an underappreciated aspect of raising versus like going at your own. It's like the network, like it's, I think feces oversell it, but maybe founders undervalue it. Right? Like00:34:05 Ron:A hundred percent. Couldn't agree more. It does. It really does. and so yeah, we kinda went, yeah. I, I feel incredibly fortunate that we were able to partner up with spectrum equity. And so David two question, I have, it's like it for us, it was this huge unlock. It was this huge online. Like we have another partner, we're going to be more formal, with our board structure and, you know, the, the sort of like metrics, which is great, like we needed to level up, and our corporate diligence and everything.And they've been, they've been a partner and we've, we've grown the board. We've added more expertise. And again, like the, the portfolio being, being sister companies with, with like Headspace and the not worldwide and survey monkey, whatever, like these cool companies that I respect and be able to, you know, hit up the CEO and be like, okay, how did you guys deal with this?Because like you said, like there are a ton of challenges that come when you're going through that, you know, that the slope of the curve at that point, right? Like the true hyper-growth curves. All right. You know, we can't fall back on, on money as an excuse, you know, like it's purely an execution play and how do we do more faster?And that's honestly like, that's my, I think one of the coolest things I can say about my board, that the single biggest piece of feedback I get from them where they're just like yelling at me all the time and a great way. It's like, you gotta do more faster. Why aren't you doing more faster? Right. Like that is the mantra here because everyone sees this opportunity.It's ours, it's ours to go take. Right. But we got to execute and do it as fast as we can.00:35:33 Jacob:Yeah. That's that's, I mean, I'll say as somebody recently constructing a board, like that was sort of my cause as a founder and as a CEO, like you're always, you're just, you're you're at, you should be at the limits if you're doing your job. Right, right. Like you should be kind of feeling at least like thinking, you know, what your limits are and what the company's limits are.And it's nice. Even if there isn't anything more you can do. It's nice to have some people who like, ostensibly are aligned with you to be like, Are you sure there's not more right? Like, is there anything like, are you doing like, could, could you change this? Like, could you go go faster potentially? And sometimes the answer's no, but it does always kinda, you leave those board meetings going like, like maybe there is like, maybe there is some way we could do this, like better or faster, right.00:36:10 Ron:Yeah. And then you build a team, right? And that leads back to like the team growth. And this, you know, this is our third year in a row of, of doubling head count. Hopefully next year will be our fourth year in a row. And all of the leverage, I'm a big believer, like two things are the lifeblood for companies like ours.One is culture and the other is momentum. And you can't, if you lose either of them, Right. Like, you cannot take your eye off of either of those as a CEO, as a founder, whatever it is. and so like building both, you know, they, they got to go hand in hand, or you can sacrifice culture as you're doing the internal hypergrowth.00:36:43 Jacob:Have an exit strategy, right?00:36:45 Ron:Exactly.00:36:46 Jacob:Going to last very long.00:36:47 Ron:Because you'll never get it back. That's exactly right. But, but generating momentum through like value added hires and raising the bar or bringing, you know, a bringing in a plus, I love being the dumbest person in the room. That's my favorite thing at all. Choose walking in there. It was like, all right, I'm going to learn something.Someone's going to teach me something cool. and building a team.00:37:06 David:So it sounds like the biggest unlock for y'all taking the money was just the ability to hire faster, hire better folks, offer better pay. but was there anything else that you feel like taking funding helped unlock for AllTrails? Did you, were you able to spend Mo did you start spending more on, on user acquisition or ramping anything else out? 00:37:27 Jacob:Can I ask a clarifying question without like you sharing your term sheet or whatever, but like D w like these, these deals can be very different than like a venture deal, right. Where like, almost always all of it hits the books and it's dilutive, meaning that the company gets the money, but this was like kind of a buyout for the founder as an alternative to a sale.It's like, did you guys structure it? So some hit the books and not, or was it all to the founders or how did it, whatever you're comfortable00:37:50 Ron:We, we hardly took any primary capital in 2018. I didn't, I didn't want it. I don't want it. Like I liked our organic trajectory. I didn't want. And obviously I've gotten to know spectrum a lot better. They're not built from the CNA, but you take money from a VC. And the expectation is like the success metric is suspended as hard and aggressive as possible because they're incentivized to keep you hooked, you know, on the next round.And I wanted to, you know, accelerate more like on the product development side of things, but I didn't want to get stuck in a, a growth model that's dependent on unsustainable paid acquisition. Right. So. almost the entire deal with secondary capital, which was great, which was00:38:33 Jacob:And for the financial illiterate IME, like 18 months ago,00:38:37 Ron:Yeah,00:38:38 Jacob:The company gets the money. Secondary would be somebody who's already a shareholder gets the00:38:41 Ron:Exactly the people on the cap table. so it was buying out the founder, buying out the original investors, like really cleaning it out. It was a new chapter, a new book altogether. At that point and, you know, start sort of starting together. I think, you know, to the question earlier, in terms of like the other value as like, I really can't stress enough, just the strategic value add that I was able to get like, again, because as a founder or as a CEO or as an example, You're kind of stuck in your own head a lot and you can talk to other founders, but you know, there's this like culture, especially in Silicon valley, like, oh bro, coaching it.Yeah. I mean just crushing it, you know? No, one's, you know.00:39:19 Jacob:I didn't, you didn't have to put air quotes around culture there, but like, I could hear the00:39:24 Ron:Yeah.00:39:24 Jacob:I'm called.00:39:25 Ron:You know, and very few people are like really open and transparent, about the challenges and what have you. And so being able to go in. and have this board that I trust that I feel like we're all aligned. I've had boards, you know, especially VC backed boards, where you get like a different, you know, venture capitalists from every round that you do.Like you have a lot of misaligned incentives. You have a lot of sharp elbows in a room.00:39:47 Jacob:I was gonna say, there's a lot of, you know, these are all competitors in a lot of cases, right? Hopefully you pick well, and you have people that are professionals, but like you can totally end up in a situation where you have frenemies,00:39:57 Ron:Yeah, you're watching your back at your own boards. That's a horrible way to live. Whereas with this one, it was so clean. It was like, we were owned by spectrum. This is great. I work at on their behalf. This is great. We've got the two of them there's me. And then, and then, but to their credit, they're like, let's bring on two more operators.And so, you know, they didn't care about like, well, we have to have 51% plus of the seats. It was just like, no, let's just surround ourselves with really awesome. And so we got, you know, we got the former CEO of ancestry, who, you know, they know a thing or two about, subscription businesses. And then we got the COO of Robin hood and obviously like they know a thing or two about hyper-growth and everything else.And again, like, so it's almost like it's this team, you know, it's like this dream team we're just collectively, like they're helping me chart stuff. Like see things. I wouldn't have been able to see on my own, whatever the pattern00:40:45 Jacob:Yeah.I mean, I think it's, it's, it's a good story in the sense that like, I think, I think we think too terminally sometimes about companies, right? Like it's like, they're born, they are grown and then they get sold and then they die usually like nine times out of 10, right? Like it's, it's not often that an intern, like I say, all goes well and the integration goes, well, some spectrum of results.Right. But this is a result where I think you, you guys have a company that's two important. To let die, right? Like if you had sold, I don't know what, you know, your fangs or whoever was like, I'm sure I could see any number of massive tech company wanting this to be a part of their data set or part of their like social, like aspect of whatever.It's just, I could see a plugging into a lot of things, but you know, to get Google's exciting acquisition today and not saying you guys. Talking to Google or not, but as an example, like their exciting acquisition today is tomorrow is like, you know, happy trails, blog posts, right. That actually a good name for the, the shutting down AllTrails, acquisition at Google blogposts.But, but the, you know, and this is a, this is a path where, you know, people who are passionate about the mission, the employees and the users, like can kind of, you know, get that exit that people are looking for. But without like jeopardizing. Thing that's important. And like, maybe this is very hippie, right?But like, I think there is some aspect of companies that's beyond like the capital value and beyond like, even like the culture, but like actually achieving the mission and, and making that change in the world or providing that service. That's, that's, that's more important than, you know, Hypergrowth or whatever.And look, I mean, we should get into talking about now, like posts around, but it sounds like you guys are in hyper-growth anyway. Right. So it didn't, it's not like it's, it's this false dichotomy of right. Like either you're like raising for venture and you're like going at it really hard or Like you're a lifestyle business or, you know, whatever.And it's just like, Maybe, whereas maybe us like lampooning, this straw man of a false narrative has like most of the talking about this to like make that is the, the, the totality of the false dichotomy is us talking about it. But I really think this is a great example of like one of those like interesting, you know, outcomes and, and stories.So it tell us about what's happening now. 00:42:52 David:I appreciate you sharing that specifically because even in researching it, I listened to a couple of your other interviews. I still assume that that the. A pretty big primary chunk that, that went into the balance sheet of the company and then it accelerated it from there. So it's an even more interesting story to me that that raise was mostly secondary.So from the $3 million seed way back in, whatever it was 20 12, 20 13, it really has been an almost bootstrapped company and becoming what it is today on. Little capital is really incredible and it really kind of speaks to consumer subscription space and, and how you can operate and go big without spending a ton of money.If you do it right. If you don't, if you don't just plug into Instagram and blow $5 million of VC money acquiring the wrong users, if you actually talk to them and build a good product and everything else. but I did00:43:55 Ron:Well, and I was just stay on top of not only that at the first board meeting that we had with. I, I walked in and I said, Hey, you know, this is great high five super-stoked, we're also, I think we should donate 1% of our revenue to environmental causes. I know you guys just shelled out a whole lot of money, but would that be okay?And to their credit, they're like Yeah, let's do it. Let's do it. And you know, one of the first things we did post-transaction was signing up for 1% for the planet, you know, like there there's totally a different path here. I didn't realize it. And I think it's cool for people.I don't know. I, I wish I heard this earlier in my career. Like there are, like you said, like there's not a dichotomy, like there's so many different ways to do this. I think we have. Fetishizing almost, or like putting on a pedestal this whole like massive VC round kind of stuff, you know, and there's a time and a place for it, for sure.But like, that's not the success metric in and of itself, like more often than not, especially for earlier companies, the death knell. And so I think that, I'm always, you know, I get, I get hit up by people, you know, for whatever I'll all the time talking about this kind of stuff. And so I was like, dude, if you can boot shop, if you can control your own destiny, like do it, you know, find right partners that are gonna unlock growth and everything else.Don't fall, don't fall victim to that. Like, just that story that you think is like the classic Silicon valley startup story, which is you go out, you raise a big round and you have an IPO. It never works. It never works that way00:45:19 Jacob:Who would do that?00:45:20 Ron:To too many man.00:45:22 Jacob:We're running out of time. I do want to know. So you're talking about like doubling and so I'm guessing like the pandemic, like we've seen across the ecosystem has been really, especially, I can imagine there's two aspects to it, right? Like one your digital service.And then secondly, like you're very good compatible with like, social distancing. So did you like think you would be having this conversation for whatever four years after the spectrum, deal like doubling every head count every year? Cause that's typically not what private equity companies growth rates look like.00:45:51 Ron:I know. No, it was, I mean, so I'll preface this by saying we were incredibly fortunate during COVID and sometimes you just get lucky. Sometimes you get like, there's a ton of great companies out there that just like how to pull sales reps out of the field, or we're an equip for like the supply chain issues or whatever it was.Right. Like, Well, like you said, we're digital first company. we, we already, we had a somewhat distributed workforce, so we already like using zoom and slack and going fully remote. Like we, we saw no, no drop in productivity. Now granted like when, when the world shut down mid-March that was a little bit scary.But we knew it would be temporary. I, you know how long no one really knew. Bye bye. Mid April, we were going to our board and saying like, look like, I know things look a little bleak right now. Like the, the machine has fully ground to a hall, but we think actually like this is going to be an insane accelerant.Once things open back up, there's nothing to do. Like you said, it lends itself perfectly to social distancing. You know, people who can't travel anymore. Like, all right, we're going to explore our local state parks now, you know, like we'll scratch that. It's that way I got three kids and you know, school is canceled and obviously, you know, summer camps forget.What are we going to do? What are we going to do with these kids? And it's like, we're going to run them ragged on the trail, you know, every weekend we're just going on the trail and we're running them ragged and00:47:10 Jacob:There's a good ad campaign in there. Just00:47:11 Ron:Totally right. And so,00:47:13 Jacob:Sleeping kids in the back of a Subaru Forester and it's like,00:47:16 Ron:Yes, exactly. So, I mean, you know, we made, we did make a big strategic decision, to get in front of it and, and start hiring like crazy, and just make, you know, make a play, make a play. And, and again, Sometimes you get lucky. you know, that works, that works all these companies around us, that we were never able to like really poach from or whatever.Something like we're able to go grab their talent. Like not just from people who are like, oh, but people were actively working there who were just like, I don't want to do this with my life anymore. I like spending time outside. I had the number of people, the number of inbound applicants that like write in their cover letter.I was looking at which apps I use the most. And I just started applying to those jobs. You know, I think that there really is. It's like really. Great. And I applaud it and I love it. And I hope it never stops people like taking more agency and control over their career and not just like reactively, you know, just doing whatever leftovers00:48:10 Jacob:Yeah. I mean, the geographic unlock of remote, I think is a big part of that. Right. Cause suddenly like you're, you can just literally go on your phone and pretty probably today, nine times out of 10, you're going to be able to work for that company depending on your like, you know, locale or like time00:48:22 Ron:Totally.00:48:23 Jacob:It wasn't that way two years ago,00:48:25 Ron:Not at all, not at all. Exactly. So, a lot changed. A lot has changed in this time. With all of that, with the big accelerant they were seeing on the usability side through 2020, there is, I think David, you had asked this like pre pre-show, you know: there's two big questions hanging over our business as we went into 2021.One is, are the registered users who we got last year during COVID are they going to convert to pro like our conversion to pro happens over time? We look at a lot of stuff through a cohorted basis, and it goes up and to the right. It will take years for some users across the line to go pro, but it's great.It just keeps going up. So, are the folks who signed up when there was nothing else to do, are they ever going to convert to pro or not? The other big question is: all the folks who converted to pro in the height of the pandemic in 2020, once the world opens up, are they going to retain? Or, are we going to have the bottom drop out from under us?These were two questions hanging over our heads. We have a seasonal business, it follows the sun pretty much. So, as we headed into May, June, July of this year, thankfully that the answer for both was a resounding “yes.” The folks who signed up last year are converting at a higher rate than normal.The folks who subscribed are retaining at higher rates than normal, too. And I think it's kind of more of a testament to how the zeitgeists has changed a little bit post pandemic. Being outside just makes people feel good. I guess it's that simple. It's not very complicated.You feel better when you spend time outside, and people are just incorporating it into their regular routines.00:50:08 Jacob:Yeah. It's interesting. For positives and negatives, I think you came up three cherries, right? It just really lined up, and then it's continued. You're talking about the hiring thing, too. Like a lot of habits changed during COVID, and I don't think anything will necessarily go back. Especially if people have found a new, happier, maximum for their lives. You guys are part of that. That's great. and that seems like, I dunno, we don't have total good analytic quantitative data on this, but it doesn't seem like the whole boosts from last year totally collapsed.It seems like it just was like an accelerate, and I think other industries would sort of back that up. 00:50:54 David:Yep. Well, we're coming up on time. Is there anything else I should've asked you? 00:50:59 Ron:No, this was fun.00:51:00 Jacob:You guys are probably hiring, right?00:51:02 Ron:We're hiring like crazy right now. Yeah, absolutely.00:51:06 Jacob:AllTrails?00:51:07 Ron:Yeah.00:51:08 Jacob:There you go.00:51:08 David:Any particular roles you want to shout out? 00:51:11 Ron:We're always starving for great engineering talent. Android, iOS, front end, back end dev ops, security, all of it. PMs, product designers, mapping designers, customer support, the full gamut. The entire company, every department is hiring right now.00:51:28 David:Well, it sounds like a really fun company to work for. We'll put links to your job page and to your personal LinkedIn, and a few other places in the show notes, but this was really fun chatting with you today, Ron. Thank you so much for taking the time. 00:51:41 Ron:My pleasure guys. Thanks for having me. This was fun.

Do you want to learn how to do audience research & cold outreach? Listen to this interview with Amanda Natividad of SparkToro, where we discuss: – How to do cold outreach – What audience research is and how it's different from market research – SparkToro's approach to content – A case study with one of SparkToro's customers Timestamps 00:00 How Amanda got into marketing and joined Sparktoro 17:25 Sparktoro's content strategy 25:13 marketing metrics tracked by Sparktoro 27:30 how to do cold outreach right / how Amanda gets an 80% open rate on her cold outreach emails 34:06 subject line 37:00 What is audience research and how is it different from market research? 40:02 use cases vs case studies 40:49 case study of a Sparktoro client 48:40 using spark toro for audience research 54:00 how to use Sparkscore to determine how engaged an influencer is, and if they're the greatest fit to do co-ma 57:38 lessons from marketing at Fitbit 60:00 Resources Amanda recommends for marketers About Amanda Natividad Amanda Natividad is Marketing Architect for audience research startup, SparkToro. She previously led marketing for SEO and content agency Growth Machine, led marketing for Liftopia, built Fitbit's B2B content program, and led content and communications for NatureBox. Amanda is a contributor for Adweek, a Le Cordon Bleu-trained chef, and a former journalist. Resources Mentioned: SparkToro's Office Hours – https://www.crowdcast.io/sparktoro_official SparkToro's newsletter – https://sparktoro.com/audience-research-newsletter Jeremy Moser's copywriting course – https://www.copycourse.io/ Demand Curve's teardowns – https://www.demandcurve.com/teardowns Amanda's personal site and newsletter – https://www.amandanat.com/ Connect with me: - Join the Authentic Influence community: https://www.simplecreativemarketing.com/community/ - Subscribe to my newsletter: https://anferneec.com/newsletter - Want free coaching? Submit your question: https://anchor.fm/authenticinfluence/message #authenticinfluence #b2b #podcast --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/authenticinfluence/message

Dave Pell has been writing online for almost as long as the internet has existed. His popular newsletter, NextDraft, has over 140,000 subscribers. NextDraft covers the day's ten most fascinating news stories, delivered with a fast and pithy wit.Dave has been a syndicated writer on NPR, Gizmodo, Forbes, and Huffington Post. He earned his bachelor's degree in English from U.C. Berkeley, and his master's in education from Harvard.Besides being a prolific writer, Dave is also the Managing Partner at Arba, LLC. For more than a decade, Arba has been angel investing in companies like Open Table, GrubHub, Marin Software, Hotel Tonight, Joyus, and Liftopia.In this episode, you'll learn: How Dave merged his two writing passions into a successful product The key to building a strong relationship with your audience How Dave dramatically increased signups to NextDraft Links & Resources Flicker Unsplash Fareed Zakaria Jim Rome The Skimm Morning Brew The Hustle Spark Loop Sam Spratt Dave Pell's Links Dave Pell on Twitter NextDraft newsletter Dave's new book: Please Scream Inside Your Heart NextDraft app PleaseScream.com Episode Transcript[00:00:00] Dave:If you have something to say in one way or another, the internet is a great place for people to figure out a way to receive it. So, that's pretty powerful and still excites me. I still press publish with the same enthusiasm now than I did when the internet first launched.[00:00:23] Nathan:In this episode I talk to Dave Pell, who has been writing for basically as long as the internet has been around. He's been an investor since the early days. He's been writing since the.com bust, and even before then. He writes his popular newsletter with 140,000 subscribers called Next Draft.We have this really fun conversation about writing. His writing process. How he grew the newsletter. Bunch of other things that he cares about. Even a few things that I was interested in, like he doesn't have his face in photos on the internet very much. He has his avatar instead. So, just getting into why that is.He also has a book coming out soon. It's called Scream Inside Your Heart, which is a fun reference to some memes from 2020. So, enjoy the episode. There's a lot in there.Dave. Welcome to the show.[00:01:12] Dave:Thanks a lot for having me on.[00:01:14] Nathan:Okay. So you've been doing this for a long time. You've been writing on the internet since the .com era. So, I'm curious maybe just to kick things off, what have you seen—I realize this is a giant question.What have you seen change? What are some of those trends that you've seen, that you either really miss from the early days, or some of those things that you've held onto from the early days of the internet, that you're really still enjoying?[00:01:46] Dave:Yeah, that is a pretty huge question, but I'll give it a shot. The thing I miss from the early days of the internet is that our democracy was not being destroyed by the internet in the early days of the internet. So, everything we thought we were building, basically it turned out to be the opposite of what actually happened.The part about the internet that I still feel is there, although a little bit less so because of the big companies have sort of taken over all the platforms and stuff, is just the idea that someone can have a passion or a creative output that they want to share with the world, and they can mold internet tools to fit their skills, and then use the internet to broadcast that out, and still become sort of pretty popular withour the “OK” of some gatekeeper at a publication, or at a television studio, or whatever.The indie spirit of the internet still lives on. It ebbs and flows, and has a lot of different iterations. But that was the thing that excited me the most when I first played with the internet. And that's the thing that continues to excite me the most now.[00:02:57] Nathan:I always think of the newsletter, and your newsletter in particular, is that indie spirit. Is that what you see most commonly in newsletters? Or are you seeing it in other places as well?[00:03:10] Dave:I see it in podcasts. I see it in newsletters. I see it in people sharing their art, sharing their photography on Flicker, and up through the more modern tools. I go to a site called Unsplash all the time to look at images, and it's just basically regular people sharing their images.Some of them are professional photographers, some aren't, and they're getting their work out there, and then some of them probably get jobs out of it and stuff like that. So, just the idea that you can have some kind of creative output and have a place to share it. And try to get an audience for that is really inspiring.It's a lot harder than it used to be because there's a few billion more people trying to get attention also, and because there are more gatekeepers now. So, you have to, hope that your app meets Apple's guidelines, or that different products you might want to share on the internet have to meet certain classifications now, whereas they might not have in the very early days of the internet. But in general, if you have something to say in one way or another, the internet is a great place for people to figure out a way to receive it.So, that's pretty powerful, and, still excites me. I still press published with the same enthusiasm now that I did when the internet first launched.[00:04:32] Nathan:Yeah. So let's talk about the main project that you have right now, which is Next Draft. Give listeners the 30-second pitch on Next Draft, of what it is.[00:04:46] Dave:Sure. Basically I call myself the managing editor of the internet. What I basically do is a personality-driven news newsletter where I cover the day's most fascinating news. I cover 10 stories. A lot of times in each section there's more than one link. I give my take on the day's news, each individual story, and then I link off to the source for the full story.When I first launched it, I called it Dinner Party Prep. I provided enough information for you to sort of get the gist of the story. And if there's topics you want to dig deeper, you just click and, you know, go get the story yourself. So that's sort of the overview of it.[00:05:27] Nathan:Nice. And you said that you're obsessed with the news maybe in a somewhat, even unhealthy way. why, where did that come from?[00:05:36] Dave:Yeah. Well, nothing, nothing about my relationship with the internet is only somewhat unhealthy. it's all extremely unhealthy, but, both my parents are Holocaust survivors and, when I was growing up, news was just a very big part of our daily lives, especially when my three older sisters moved out and it was just the three of us, that was sort of our mode of communication.We talked about the news. We watched the news together. Fareed Zakaria is basically the sun my parents always wanted. but so I got really into the news and being able to connect the news to, our everyday lives, which of course my parents had experienced as children and teens and Europe during world war II.And also reading between the lines about why certain politicians might be saying something, why stories are getting published a certain way. So I just got really into that and I've always been into a and college, you know, I, I majored in English, but if we had minors at Berkeley, I would have minored in journalism.I took a bunch of journalism courses. I've always been really into the media, but not so much as quite an insider where I go to work for a newspaper, but more observing, the news and providing sort of a lit review of what's happening and what has momentum in the news. So I sorta got addicted to it and, Also as a writer.My favorite thing to do is counter punch. I like to have somebody give me a topic and then I like to be able to quickly share my take, or make a joke or create a funny headline about that content. So I sorta took those two passions of the way I like to write. I like to write on deadline. I like to write fast and I like to counter punch and the content that I like, which is news, and I sort of merged those two things and created a product, and a pretty cool suite of internet tools to support that.[00:07:35] Nathan:Yeah. So that makes sense that you've identified the constraints that match your style and made something exactly that fits it. the deadline, like having, he, you know, coming out with something on a daily basis, is more than a lot of creators want to do. so what's your process there?[00:07:55] Dave:Yeah. I mean, I should emphasize that I do it every day. Not because I think it's some incredible draw for readers to get Daily Content. I do it every day because I'm addicted to it. If my newsletter had five stories in it, instead of 10, it would do better. If my newsletter came out three days a week instead of five days a week, I'm sure it would do better.If it came out once a week, it would do even better then you know, also if I had a more marketable or not marketable, but a more, business-oriented topic that was more narrow, it would do better. I used to write a newsletter that was just on tech and it was. Really popular in the internet professional community back in the first boom, I had about 50,000 subscribers and there were probably about 52,000 internet professionals.So I just like writing about what I want to write about and I'm addicted to pressing the publish button and I'm just addicted to the process. So I do it because of that. I'm not sure that would be my general advice to somebody trying to market or promote a newsletter.[00:09:01] Nathan:Yep. Are there other iterations, either ever before or things that you tried that you realized like, oh, that's not a fit for your personality, your writing style?[00:09:09] Dave:Yeah. When I first started it, I actually, I'm an angel investor also and have been since, probably right after Google and Yahoo launched. so a while, and I used to, my passion has always been writing, so I wanted to mix writing into that, process. So I would send out 10. Daily stories, but they were all tech news related to the CEOs of the companies I worked with and a few of their employees, so that they wouldn't have to spend their time reading the news or worrying about competitors or worry about what the latest trends in tech, where I would give it to them.And they could focus on doing their jobs and that sorta got shared and got out. so I did that for a few years. really, that was my iteration. I should've kept the brand. It was called David Netflix. not that it was a great name, but I've shifted brands about 40 times in my life. Cause I love branding and naming.I that's another, maybe this is more of a cautionary tale than a lesson and newsletter marketing. I would stick with a brand if anybody has the possibility of doing that, that was a big mistake I've made over the years is having multiple brands. But when the bus came, the first internet bust, I basically was writing an obituary column every day and about companies that had failed.So I just decided, I wanted to expand it and I knew I was interested in much broader topics than just tech news. So I expanded it to all news, a critical point that, really changed Next Draft and got it to catch on and become more popular was when I decided to focus on making it more personality driven and less, less overwhelmingly, providing an overwhelming level of coverage.I used to think that I had to provide all the news in the day because people would sort of, depend on me to provide their news. I was sort of selling myself as your trusted news source. So I would include a lot of stories that I didn't have anything to say about because they were huge news, you know, an embassy closed in Iran or whatever.That was huge international news, but I didn't necessarily have anything to say about that that day. So after a while I decided, no, I'm not going to do that. I'm just going to limit it to 10 items. And I'm going to focus that on what I think is the most fascinating and think of it less like a curation tool and more like, a, modern day column.I think if the column newspaper column were invented today, it would look a lot like Next Draft people would sort of share their takes and then provide links off for more information. once I did that, it was a big change. People started signing up much more readily and, once I stopped trying to be exhaustive.[00:11:56] Nathan:That makes a lot of sense to me. I think that that's something you see from a lot of creators is that they're, they're trying to find some model. That's like, this is my idea of what people should want, you know, rather than what they end up doing, eventually it's coming to, it's like, okay, forget all of that.This is what I want. And I'm going to make that. And then people like me can find and follow it. And people who don't can, you know, do their thing. Can you go find one of the other million sources on the internet?[00:12:21] Dave:Yeah. When I think of the people that I like to follow or have followed forever on the internet, all of them are that ladder. They just do it their way. They have a design, they want, they stick to their guns. They say what they feel like saying. they decide. what the personality of the product is.And, they move within that. I always find that to be the most interesting thing, especially when it comes to something like newsletters. I really think newsletters are more like a radio talk shows than they are like other internet content, podcasts to a certain degree as well. But I always feel like I listened to are used to listen a lot to this radio, sports caster named Jim Rome.And whenever he would have a new city that he was launching and he would always give the same speech on the Monday that they launched saying, just give me a week. You might not.Get the vibe of what we're doing today. You might think it's okay, but not great, but just give it a week and listen, and then decide if you like it or not.And I sort of feel like that's how newsletters are your relationship with your readers sort of creates this, sort of insider-y voice and communication that, you, it takes a little while to get into the rhythm of getting it. But once you do, then it's like this familiar voice or this familiar friend that you feel like, even if you didn't read it for a few weeks, you can start a conversation with that person right away easily.That's how I think the voice of a newsletter is most effective. So that's why I've always thought of it. More of what I do is sort of a textual talk radio, more so than a blog or some other format[00:14:01] Nathan:What do you think, or what would you say to someone who maybe had 10 or 20,000 subscribers and felt like their newsletter had gone a bit stale and maybe their relationship to it had gotten a bit stale or they're in this, this position of writing things that no longer have their voice, how would you coach them through like bringing their voice and personality back into it?[00:14:22] Dave:I mean, it's definitely hard. it's hard doing something that you do alone and, something that is often hard to really get off the ground or get to grow, especially when you're on a platform like the internet, where every day, somebody does something and 10 seconds later, they're like internet famous and you're trying day after day.So, I mean, the first thing. Is that you really have to be interested in what you you're passionate about. and focus in on that, because that will alleviate a lot of that stress. Like, do I feel like sending it today? I'm a too burnt out. What's the point? I mean, not that those feelings don't happen. I had those feelings as recently as an hour ago, when I press publish, I have those feelings and disappointments constantly, you know, that's part of being a creator of any kind.Maybe that word is sort of, sort of goofy, but anybody who's putting themselves out there and putting content out, you know, you have that feeling all the time. If you're an indie, and you're doing it all day in front of the computer by yourself, then that's even more powerful because, you know, if you work at a big company or everybody's working on the same goal, or even in a small group, you can sort of support each other and, maybe even bullshit each other at some cases where, oh, no, this really matters.You know, where, if you're by yourself, that has to be pretty self-sustaining or self-sustaining. I do have a friend or two that I always share blurbs with who, one of my friends Rob's, he proves almost all of my blurbs, so it's nice to have that virtual office mate. He's not really officially part of Next Draft, but you know, I don't think I would do it as easily or as, for as long if it weren't for him because he's like my virtual friend on the internet that says, oh, come on, let's get it out today or whatever.So I think that's helpful to have a support team or a couple people you can count on to sort of give you a boost when you need it. But the key really is, is that it's gotta be something that you are passionate about, both in terms of the product and in terms of what you're focusing on, because if you feel strongly about it, then it really.I don't want to say it doesn't matter if people enjoy it, you should take cues from your readers. What are they clicking on? What are they reading? What are they responding to? But at the core, it's gotta be you because that's what gets you through those down points? you know, I had a weird thing because I write about news.The general news, world basically benefited dramatically from the Trump era because everybody was habitually turning on their news, 24, 7, and refreshing and Whitey and Washington post and checking Twitter every two seconds to see what crazy thing happened next. And we're all poor sorta,[00:17:01] Nathan:Wreck to watch.[00:17:02] Dave:So everybody was really into it and it created.Unbelievable platform for people to become media stars. You know, Trump was bad for democracy, but he was great for media. Great for creating new voices out there. whether we like it or not. for me, it was different because I wrote about all news. I wouldn't say I was apolitical, but I wasn't heavily political.The Next Draft had plenty of readers from both sides of the aisle. when Trump came around, it was like one story every day, basically. So it really limited. I would get emails from longtime readers all the time that said, Hey, can't you cover something other than Trump every day?And I say, Hey, if you can find the story for me, I'll cover it. This is what every journalist is on. Now, the people who used to cover the secret service around Trump, the people who used to cover sports are not talking about Trump because of a pandemic relation ship to it. The people who aren't entertainment are talking about Trump because they can't believe that anybody voted for him, whatever the issue was, every dinner party was about Trump.So it was really a bummer for my brand and my product. Actually, it became boring in some ways to me to have the same story every day. And it became, I think frustrating to my readers.But during that era, when it was happening, I had to make a decision. Do I become more political and go full on with this?Or do I sort of try to. Do what I would call a falsely unbiased view or a, you know, false equivalence view that we saw in the media where there's both sides to every story. And you have to pretend they're both accurate, including one guy saying to put disinfectant into your veins. And the other person's saying to wear a mask and take a vaccine, but those things get treated as equal somehow because the president said it.And I really decided, you know, more important than keeping readers is that I'm true to my own sort of ethical standards. In a moment that called for it, at least for me. So I became more political. went into it and I said, what I believe and still believe is the truth, you know, about what was happening with Trump and Trumpism and our slide towards authoritarianism.And I know that this is a podcast more about newsletterish than it is about politics or news, but I'm just sharing that because that's the kind of thing that kept me going. and the people who really cared about what I was writing, appreciated it and would email me and say they got something out of that.And most importantly, my mom would say, yeah, you made the right call. Or my dad would say, yeah, you got that. Right. And ultimately, When it became a sort of a bummer period for me, which I would say 2020 was because of all the horrible news. And, I was writing a book about the year. So I was like living, July of 20, 20, well writing about March of 2020, which I don't recommend for anybody's emotional health.And I just had to think like, what's really important to me. Yes. I want to be funny, which I try to be in my newsletter every day. I want to be read my narcissism is as strong as ever, but ultimately I want to be able to look myself in the reflection of the, darken screen on the rare times that it is dark and say like, yeah, you told the truth and that kept me going there.So I think whatever your brand is, you know, it can be a newsletter about guitars, but if you have that sort of passion, And you have something you want to say, and you think is important to say it sort of gets you through those levels and your motivation. And if it's not getting you through the lows and the motivation, there's nothing wrong with saying, Hey man, this is not worth it.I'm going to go try to make something else. You know, it doesn't have to be, you don't have to beat a dead horse.[00:20:51] Nathan:On the political side. Are there specific things that you felt like it costs you opportunities that it lost you? Because I think a lot of creators, whether they talk about, you know, finance or photography or whatever, I'll see these things. And they're like this either directly relates to me and my audience and I feel like I should take a stand on it.Or it's like a broader macro issue that I feel like we should talk about. And when you do, then there's immediately, you know, somewhere between three and 300 responses of like, we didn't follow you for the politics, you know, or like something like that. And your Instagram, DMS, or newsletter replies or whatever.[00:21:24] Dave:Yeah. it costs me a lot. Definitely it costs me readers or subscribers. It costs me, psychic pain because I was locked into a story that was just overwhelmingly, emotionally painful, really, and shocking and difficult to understand all the things that cause you sort of emotional exhaustion. We're in the Trump story, especially in 2020, when it became a story about our own health and our kids' health.And the frustration level just went through the roof. for me, professionalizing that content actually helps create a bit of a barrier to the feelings about it. Some of my good friends were probably more bummed during 2020 than I was because when the latest crazy story or depressing story would happen, I felt I had to. Ingest that content and then come up with, something cogent to say about it. And maybe hopefully funny to make it a little bit of sugar to take the medicine and then get it out to people. So I've always felt that being able to do that, sorta created a barrier between myself and actually feeling something.So that's another thing I like about the newsletter probably at least unconsciously. but yeah, there was a lot of costs in terms of readers, for sure. Hate mail. but there always is, you know, Today. I would say I get much more hate mail from the far left. If that's what you want to call them. People who feel like every joke is like an incredible triggering a front to their existence or any hint that you mentioned somebody as attractive.I've gotten hate mail because I implied that Beyonce is appearance was part of her brand. I mean, it's totally crazy, but, It's those extremes. You have to be able to turn off. You know, a friend of mine used to work at a major, be the editor of a major American newspaper. And he said every Friday they would get together and they would play the craziest, calls to the editor.They had a call line. In addition to, you could send a letter or you could call, leave a voicemail about something you were upset about in the coverage. And they would just gather around and have drinks on Friday. Listen to this because of course the people who are calling this line are almost self-selecting themselves as a little bit wacko and their takes were usually pretty extreme.The internet, Twitter, social media, Provides, greases the wheels for those people to be more prevalent in our lives. But I think it's really important to know that that's a real minority of people, somebody who sent you a hate mail, that your joke was so offensive, or they can't believe you mentioned that people ever watch pornography on the internet or any of these other things, it's this tiny minority of people.And then it's one step crazier that they felt like they had to contact you. So that's a really hard thing. I think about being split, particularly the newsletter game, because anybody can hit reply and you're going to get many more replies from people with crazy complaints, than you are from people with really thoughtful responses.Not that those don't come and those are valuable and I love getting those, but you get many more from people that just have really bizarre. I mean I could list probably for hours to crazy things that people send me that they're mad about, you know,[00:24:50] Nathan:Is there something specific that you do? Like one thing when I get those replies, if they're just like completely off the wall or abusive or something like that, I just scroll down and then click their unsubscribe link because, you know, they're never going to know, and then I just have to show up in their inbox[00:25:07] Dave:Right.[00:25:08] Nathan:There's something that you do.[00:25:09] Dave:That's not a bad strategy. I like that. I do do that occasionally for sure. occasionally I'll just go to Gmail and just, create a filter for that email to automatically go to my trash. if it's like a hardcore right-winger, that's telling me how stupid I am about ivermectin and that, you know, people should be taking horse dewormer and I'm just not getting the truth.And that Trump is awesome and that, Whatever. I usually just delete, honestly, because I don't see a big benefit to replying to somebody, especially if it's like a rabbit email, you know, they're looking for a reply, they want the conflict. A lot of people sleep easy with conflict. That's one of the lessons of the internet that I learned when I was first starting on the internet, you know, David edix sort sorta became popular because somebody that had a blog with a similar name, that I hadn't heard of, complained that I sort of stole his name because his name was also Dave.And I had got like, probably about three or 400 emails saying, you know, with expletive saying what a horrible person I was. And I also got about 3000 subscribers and at the time I had about 30, so. I didn't know how to respond. I felt like, wow. Number one, I didn't know that guys had the product with the same name.Number two. My name was different enough. Number two or three were both named Dave. I mean, who cares? You know, and plus I don't want to be attacked by anybody. So your first reaction is to respond and a slightly older, although not noticeably these days with my gray beard, slightly older friend of mine who had been in tech a little longer, said, don't respond.This guy lives for conflict. You guys are going to fight. There's going to be this public thing. You're going to be up all night and he's going to never sleep so easy. So, I took that to heart and didn't respond. And I, I think about that a lot when I get rabid emails from people, Mike exception, actually probably my weak point really is from, more my side of the political spectrum, where people who are generally liberal, but are just so extreme for me.In terms of being triggered or having a joke, be every joke, be inappropriate. That those people, I actually do feel like I want to respond to because, I, I don't think I can really motivate or move, somebody who was on the opposite end of the spectrum and is sending me hate aggressive, hate mail, but maybe I can move somebody who's just a little bit different than me, or a little bit more extreme.I will respond to those, although I'm usually sorry. The one other thing I always respond to is if people have been reading, they say, oh, I've been reading you for years. And, I wanted to ask you a couple of questions about this book that you wrote before ordering it. And I'm like, just order the damn book. that's probably my most common email to people these days. It's actually remarkable how many people says, wow, I I've been reading you for years. I share you with all my friends. something, when my sons come home from college where it's always talking about, Dave said this, Dave said that, before I buy your book, I just wanted to ask you a couple of questions to make sure it's going to be for me.I'm like I worked on something for an hour and it's like, your family is talking about it. What, just by the thing I worked on for a year, you know? So those kind of things, personal frustration, I respond.[00:28:37] Nathan:Yeah, that makes sense. okay. I'd love to talk about the book some more, but before we get into that, there's two things I want to talk about. The first one is like, how do you measure success for the newsletter? What's the thing that you'd like to, cause I don't think it's, you're pursuing the monetary side for this.It sounds like the monetary side comes from investing and, and then what's success for the newsletter.[00:28:59] Dave:I mean, I have had right now, I I'm just marketing my, my own stuff. And during the pandemic I marketed non-profits, but, that had to do with either the pandemic or, the democracy issues that we were facing. but I have made decent money from selling straight sponsorships. Year-long sponsorships to people, which I highly recommend.I think some of the ads that people put into his letters that go by clicks or whatever, unless you have a massive audience, it's hard to make much money, but if you pitch to some company that is a like-minded brand, Hey, you're going to be my only brand for a year. And anytime you have special events, I'm going to mention it.Then you can say, okay, you have like, you know, 20,000 readers or a hundred thousand readers that can make a difference to a brand to say, yeah, it's like a rounding air show. We'll give you 20 grand or a hundred grand or wherever it comes in there that you can actually make a decent. Living in terms of writing.So that always worked better for me, but no, my, my internet life is really all about narcissism and, clicks, you know, the dopamine, I just want reads. I'd rather you subscribe to my newsletter than pitch me your startup company. I just, that's what I want the most. So more numbers, more opens, more reads, more subscribers.And unfortunately that's probably the hardest thing to get also, especially in a product that is sort of viral. I think newsletters are sort of viral, but it's better if you have a team and some tools to really get it going. That's, you know, sites like the Skimm morning brew and the hustle. They have teams that are really growth hacking and focusing on that and having rewards programs and ambassador programs.The reason you see that is because.Newsletters themselves are not really inherently that viral. Yes. Somebody can forward it to one person or whatever, but it's not as viral as a lot of other forms of content where you can click a button and share it with all of your followers, like a Facebook post or a tweet.So yeah, the thing that matters to me most is probably the hardest to get in the newsletter game, but that's the truth[00:31:10] Nathan:Yeah. Well, I think the, the point on like newsletters don't have a distribution engine. There's no Facebook newsfeed, YouTube algorithm equivalent for newsletters. And so it really relies on either you posting your content somewhere else, whether it's Twitter or YouTube or medium or something that has an algorithm or your readers saying like, oh, I read Next Draft.You should too. There's not really something else in there. Have you looked at, or I guess if you have thoughts on that, you comments on it, but then also have you looked at launching an ambassador program or, or an actual referral program?[00:31:44] Dave:Yeah, I've thought about him. And now over the last year, there's been a few tools that have come out a few. I think X people from sites like morning view Ru, and some other sites that have sort of perfected some of these marketing programs have, sort of come out with these tools. I've messed around with them a little bit.Some of them still require I find, some technical ones. so I, I have like an engineer who works with me on Next Draft, like as a freelance basis every now and then, but it's not always easy for me to launch stuff that requires a lot of a moment to moment technical support, and management, because it's just me using a lot of, they're customized, but they're over the counter tools.So I've thought about a lot of them, but I really haven't tried it that much.I want to though I do want to do that. I would like to do one of those programs, especially where you get credit for referrals. I think that's the best kind of model. So there's one called spark loop.[00:32:51] Nathan:Yeah, we actually, I invested in spark loops, so we[00:32:54] Dave:Okay.[00:32:55] Nathan:Decent portion of that business, so good.[00:32:58] Dave:Oh, nice. Yeah. That one, if it was just slightly easier, I know that it's probably difficult to make it easier because, there's so many pieces. They have to have your subscribers. I have to have my subscribers, but that is, does seem like a good product. And especially if they can, I think expand into like letting a person sell a product or whatever, get credited for sharing products that can be even bigger.But yeah, that kind of stuff is really powerful for sure. And I, I do want to get into that. it's more just inertia that I it's just a matter of sitting there for the, an amount of hours that it requires to get it going.But I do think that's a great thing for newsletter writers to do, and I'm pretty surprised that more newsletter platforms don't build it right in.I think that'll probably change over time too. Maybe you guys will get acquired by.[00:33:48] Nathan:Yep. No, that makes sense. I know for convert kit, we wanted to build it in, it looks at the amount of time that it would take and then said like let's invest in a , you know, and then roll it into our offering.[00:33:59] Dave:Yeah, it's hard. It's hard not to take that stuff personally, too, you know, for people that do newsletters, you think you're going to put a thing on there and say, Hey, you know, it's just me here and you always read my newsletter and click. I know you love me so much. Can you just do this to get a free whatever?And it's, you know, sometimes not that many people click, you know, or other times like they click just as long as there's the free item. So there's a lot of ways to get depressed. Like I had things where I say, Hey, the first a hundred people who do this, get a free t-shirt or whatever next strap t-shirt.And those hundred people will literally do what I asked them to do in like 34 seconds, you know? And then it like stops after that. The next time you ask them, if there's not a t-shirt. But it's not you, you know, if you go to a baseball game or a lawyer game or whatever, you know, people sit there, they don't even cheer as much for the team as they cheer when the guy comes out with the t-shirt gun.So it's like, people love t-shirts more than they're ever going to love you. And you have to go into these things with that in mind. there's no way, even if it's, even if you're XX large and the t-shirt is, you know, petite, it's still worth more than you are. And the average mind of the average person.So you have to go into all of these things thinking, I hope this works like crazy, but if it doesn't tomorrow, I open up the browser and start writing.[00:35:19] Nathan:Yeah. That's very true. I want to talk about the growth of the newsletter. I was reading something, which I realized later was back in 2014, that you were at around 160,000 subscribers. I imagine it's quite a bit larger than that now. And then I'd love to hear some of the inflection points of growth.[00:35:35] Dave:Yeah, I'm not, I'm not sure. I might've, I don't know if I lied in 2014, but now I have about,[00:35:41] Nathan:Quoted it wrong.[00:35:42] Dave:No, you might've got it right. I might've exaggerated. Maybe that was a including app downloads and a few other things. Yeah. I have about 140,000 or so now, so that would be making that a pretty horrible seven years now.You're depressing me.Your listeners should just stop, stop writing newsletters. It's not worth the depression[00:36:02] Nathan:Just give up now[00:36:03] Dave:Yeah. And by all means if Nathan goals do not pick up. no, yeah, I probably have it 140,000 on newsletter. Made my newsletter. It's hard to believe in this era of newsletters actually, but when I first launched Next Draft, I noticed that even people who would send in testimonials or that I would ask for testimonials would say, basically something to the extent that even though email is horrible, this is the one newsletter I I'd sign up for whatever.And I kept thinking, man, that's a bummer that I'm starting out at this deficit, that people have a negative feeling about the medium. So I, since then I've always made it my goal to. Have the content available wherever people are. So the newsletter is certainly the main way that people get next job, but there's an app for the iPhone and the iPad there.That's the first thing I launched because I wanted to have an alternative for people who just hate email too much. So now you go to the landing page, it's like, Hey, if you don't like email, here's another version. I have a blog version. I have an apple news version. I have an RSS version. I'm lucky enough to have a really good, WordPress custom WordPress install that I just push one button and it pushes it out to all of those things.But I am, I'm a big proponent of just meeting people where they are. even, as an example, I recently launched a sort of a substance. Version of my newsletter under the radar. but when I redo my site, I'm going to make that more clear because if people already subscribed to like 10 sub stacks and they're using their aggregator and they already have their email saved and they can just click a button, it's like, I don't care.You know, it takes me five extra minutes to paste my content into sub stack. So I just want the reads. I don't really care about how they read it or whether they read it.[00:37:55] Nathan:Yeah. That's fascinating. So then let's shift gears a little bit. I want to hear about the book. first I wanna hear about the title. Would you have it on your shirt?[00:38:03] Dave:Yeah. That's pretty embarrassing. I swear. I didn't know it was video today, but I do have a shirt[00:38:06] Nathan:You're good.[00:38:07] Dave:Otherwise I wouldn't have worn. This would have worn my Nathan Barry's shirt.[00:38:12] Nathan:That's right. It's in the mail actually. It's[00:38:15] Dave:Oh, good, good.[00:38:16] Nathan:Big photo of my face.[00:38:17] Dave:Yeah. Convert kit. My wife converted to Judaism before we got married. So I have my own convert kit.[00:38:23] Nathan:There you go. Exactly. so I want to hear like what the book is about and then particularly where the title came from,[00:38:30] Dave:Sure.[00:38:31] Nathan:It made me laugh a lot when I heard it.[00:38:33] Dave:Oh, cool. That's good. That's a good start then. yeah, the title comes from, in July of the, of 2020 when the pandemic was really setting in and becoming a reality for everybody. this amusement park outside of Tokyo in the shadow of Mount Fuji called the Fuji queue. amusement park reopened.And they found that even though everybody w everybody was wearing masks, people were screaming so much on some of the rides, especially the Fujiyama roller coaster, which was their scariest ride, that they were worried about germs spread. So they sort of put signs around the amusement park saying, no screaming, you can come, you can ride and have fun, but keep your mask on adults scream.And it sort of became a little minor social media thing in Japan, where people were sort of making fun of them like, oh, they're telling us not to scream. How can anybody not scream on the Fujiyama roller coaster? So in response, the, park management had to have their executives with perfectly quaffed hair and tie and colored shirts and masks on ride the roller coaster with a webcam facing them the whole time without moving a muscle.Cracking a smile or grimacing or screaming. And then at the end of the ride, when the rollercoaster stops, it says, please Scream Inside Your Heart.And that was always my favorite meme of, 2020. It went really viral. There was like t-shirts. aside from mine, there were posters memes. It sort of went crazy for about a week or two, which by 2020 standards is a pretty long time for a meme to last.And I just thought that made sense as a title for the book, because that's sort of how we felt, all year that I dunno if we were screaming in our heart, but we were certainly screaming into a void. Like no matter what we sat or yelled on social media or complained to our family members or friends, it just kept getting worse.The year just kept getting worse. And, so the idea is that this book sort of, now you're free to sort of let out the scream. And the book is it's about 2020, certainly, but it's really about the issues that led us to 2020. There's a ton about our relationship to media and including my own relationship to media and how that got us into trouble.Some of the stuff we're talking about today, how, technology has impacted our lives stuff. I've been sort of thinking about it, writing about for the last few decades, and a lot of the political hate that emerged. and, but it's all within this time capsule of the craziest year.[00:41:12] Nathan:Yeah. Yeah. And so that's coming out early in November, November 2nd. so you're, it looks like you're just starting the, you know, mentioning the promotion tour and all of that. is there a big, big push that comes with it or are you kind of, I, I'm always curious with people's book launches, what strategy they take.[00:41:30] Dave:Yeah. I mean, I'm a newbie, so it's, the whole process has been interesting to me working with a publisher, working with others, is not my forte. so I got used to that or I'm getting used to that and they're probably getting used to it also because working with grouchy 50 something in these is probably not ideal, but, yeah, I've just been promoting it so far in Next Draft, but I've been doing, I have a PR company that's helping me and I've been doing a ton of podcasts and I'm marketing it to my own readers.And then as it gets a little bit closer to the November 2nd date, I have a lot more stuff planned rut, a lot of influencers have early copies of the book, and hopefully they'll promote it. And, I'll call out a few favors from bloggers and hopefully newsletter writers. I feel like that should be my in theory.That should be my secret weapon because, in addition to being fun and creative, nothing moves traffic, except maybe Facebook, nothing moves traffic more than newsletters. I know a lot of people who run e-commerce companies and newsletters are always second, if not first, in terms of traffic drivers.So, I really think that, if some of my friends out there at morning brew in the hustle and the scam and all these other sites that sort of, have surpassed my size by quite a bit, put the word out that, one of their fellow warriors is, has a book out. That'll probably move the needle even more. The media, I'm hoping to get stuff like that, but I really don't know. I'm trying not to get my hopes up too much because, unlike a newsletter, it's not just one day's work, you know, you like worry about one word or one sentence in a book for like three weeks and then you put it out there and people are like, oh yeah, I'll check it out sometime.Thanks. So, you know, that's, you know, whatever that's life as a, you put yourself out there, that's how it goes. So I'm hoping it sells well. And, the more people that get it, I think some people, their first reaction is, oh my God, 2020. I don't want to relive that again. But, hopefully people who know my brand and those that they share it with, know that it's, you know, there's a lot of humor and there's, it's probably 30 pages before we even get into the first event of 2020.So it's, there's a lot more to it and it's sort of fun and crazy and tries to have the pace of a roller coaster. that was the other thing I took from the Fujiyama roller coaster.[00:43:59] Nathan:Yeah. So one thing that I'm always curious about with people who have like a prolific newsletter, you know, in your case of writing every day, and then like, for a lot of people, that would be a lot to handle of staying on top of a daily newsletter. And then you're writing a book on top of that. How did you schedule your time?Were you blocking off like, oh, these afternoons are specifically for book, book writing. Cause you turned it around relatively fast.[00:44:24] Dave:Yeah. the newsletter is sort of like a full-time job. People always ask me, you know, when do you work on, or how many hours do you spend on it? I mean, I'm, I'm always looking for news, whether it's on Twitter or friends, emailing me stuff or texting me stories, or just in conversations with people to see what they're into or what stories are interesting them or what I'm missing.In terms of actual time spent like where I'm dedicating time. I probably do like about an hour every night, because the story has changed so quick. So I'll do an hour of looking for stories every night. And then the next day I sort of lock in from about nine to one, usually, or nine to 12, where I'm finding stories, saving those stories, choosing what stories I want to go with and then actually writing the newsletter.All of that takes about anywhere from like two and a half to four hours, depending on the day I go pretty fast. When it came to the book, that was tricky. It was actually more emotionally tricky because like I said before, I was like, had to go back and write about, you know, Briana Taylor while I'm living another horrible act, you know, or even more so the Trump, you know, one crazy Trump thing and another crazy Trump thing and seeing the pandemic getting worse and worse.So that was stressful. But I found at the beginning I would try to write a lot at night and that was okay. But I found actually if I just kept going, in the day when I was already rolling and had written the newsletter and I was already in the group just to add on an hour or two to that was actually easier and more effective for me than trying to get going.But that's just me. I mean, I just go by my it's almost like my circadian rhythm or something like that, I almost never eat or consume anything before I'm done with next job except for coffee. I would keep that going, you know, once I would like, sort of have a sandwich or whatever, then it's like, oh, let me just take a quick nap and then whatever.So, yeah, I tried to just keep it going. I always find the more consistently busy I am, the less I procrastinate. And if I take a day off or I take a few hours off, even then, between writing, it just, it takes me longer to get going.[00:46:37] Nathan:Yep. That makes sense. The habit that I'm in right now is starting the day with 45 minutes to an hour of writing and that's working much better for me than like slotting it in somewhere else. So I think like w what I hear you saying is like, experiment and find the thing that works well for you.[00:46:54] Dave:Yeah. I mean, if you're going to start experimenting almost every writer, I know not like newsletter writers, but just general writers, all do what you just described. They sort of pick a time in the morning and they get their output done. then the rest of the day, if ideas come to them or whatever, they jot it down, but they're sort of powering in that morning hours.[00:47:13] Nathan:Yeah.[00:47:14] Dave:That's probably a good one to try. Although, you know, some people just do it better at different hours. I'm sure.[00:47:19] Nathan:Yeah. another thing I realized, I've always you for years, and until we got on this video call, I had no idea what you looked like. and which is kind of an interesting,[00:47:28] Dave:Well, I'm sorry.It's by design. I have a face for Panda.[00:47:32] Nathan:Tell me more about, well, I guess two sides, one, has there ever been an interesting interaction? You know, because you're like, Hey, I'm, I'm Dave and people are like, I wouldn't have ever recognized you. Or has there been any other benefits and thought behind, you know, why it have an avatar?[00:47:49] Dave:If by interesting you mean horrible? Yes. There's been many interesting interactions with people. I mean, before, before I had my current, avatar, which is, pretty awesome, actually, a guy named Brian Molko designed it. I had this incredible drawing of a character that looked like me that, had sort of ether net, Machinery and cord going into his head and it was like me, but my head was actually lifted.The top of my head was lifted off and you could see all this machinery and it was an incredible graphic, by this guy named Sam Spratt. Who's now done, album covers and book covers. He's like a super talent. If you want to follow somebody fun on Instagram, he's just incredible. And it was a drawing, even though it looked photo realistic.And I used that for a while and then I would go places and people would be like, you are so much fatter and grayer than I imagined. And so instead of having Sam sort of ruin his artwork, I went back with the more, cartoonish or animated, avatar. So since then I don't get too much of that, but, that was a good move.Although that's the best thing about avatars and the internet is that your avatar never ages. It always looks the same. It stays the same weight. My avatar never overeats he exercises right here. Angie really gets along well with others and doesn't have any kind of social anxiety either. So he's pretty cool.Yeah, it goes a little downhill with me in person. So[00:49:21] Nathan:Yeah. So is it, that's something that like, it gives you some distance between you and readers, or it gives you some anonymity that, you know, you don't want to be recognized in the streets?[00:49:32] Dave:No, no, it's, it's, basically just what I described. It's like, I literally prefer the, the attractiveness of my avatar versus me, but also actually my avatar is really awesome. my logo, so it's also iconic and scalable. so it looks awesome on t-shirts even people who don't know what Next Draft is when they see, by son wearing his t-shirt, whatever, it just looks awesome.So that that's that's as much of it as anything. I thought your response was going to be mad. You seem perfectly attractive to me. I don't know what the issue is, but no, you went with, am I doing that for some other reason? Yeah. So, I get this all the time.Cause my wife is a very attractive person also. So when people meet me, they're always like, whoa, we were once a very famous celebrity came up to me and I said, oh, I'm Gina's husband. And she was like, wow, you did well. Oh, you know? So I'm like, thanks a lot. That helps. So just gave her a picture of my, my icon and walked away.[00:50:31] Nathan:Then that worked. I'm sure that she has it framed in her office, from now on. it's just interesting to me. You're you're sort of at this intersection between personal brand and, like media brand. And I think the avatar helps push you over into the media brand side. and I don't have any real commentary on it other than I find it interesting.[00:50:53] Dave:Yeah, no, I think there probably is some of that. I I've never really been a fan of using my actual face, or my actual person as a logo. I love the process of designing or working with people to design logos and taglines and all that. But yeah, probably at some point there was a, a goal with Next Draft to make it seem bigger than it is.I know a lot of people that are solo operators. They regularly say we, when they're talking about their brand to make it seem bigger, I actually think that's sort of been flipped on its head though. in the last few years where so many people are coming into the space, it's very clear that what they're doing is leaving a big brand, leaving a we and going to an eye.And I think it's actually a selling point in a lot of ways. So, I mean, I, I still get a lot of emails that say, I don't know if anybody at Next Draft is going to read this email, you know, or if you do, can you get this message to Dave? He's an asshole or whatever. And it's like, I'm the only one here, you know, or the other one I always get is when I email back to people that go, oh, I can't believe you actually emailed back.I didn't think this would get to anybody. It's like, you hit reply. And it had my email, like where else would it go? Exactly. You know? But I think actually having people thinking of you as a person, instead of a brand, Is a benefit today. Whereas if you would ask me when I was younger, I probably would have said, make it seem like you have a big company behind you.[00:52:24] Nathan:Yeah. And I think that that indie shift overall, like people are looking for that.[00:52:29] Dave:Yeah,[00:52:29] Nathan:Want to ask about the intersection between your investing and the newsletter. like, are you still actively investing today and doing author.[00:52:38] Dave:Yeah, yeah, no, I, I still invest a ton. I usually follow along with people who are a little more in tune with today's companies than I am. I don't really go out there and brand myself as an investor much, but I've been really lucky. I have very little intersection actually, if any, with my newsletter and my investing and I definitely want people to. To think of me as a writer first, for sure. Not as an investor who has this hobby, because that's definitely not in terms of time or passion, the reality. but I've been really lucky over the years that, I've invested with people or co-invested with them that were cool with me. branding myself as a writer first, but still looking at deals that came through their brands because they were branded as BCS or investors or angels.That's probably a bigger deal now than when I first started. There were like five angel investors, basically. Nobody really did small, early stage seed deals. you know, I mean, we all knew each other that did it and now there's like thousands of them. So you really have to be either a really pretty well-known entrepreneur or you have to. Sort of attach yourself to our organization or two who are really branding themselves well, getting out there and building a stable of companies,[00:53:58] Nathan:Yeah.[00:53:59] Dave:It's pretty different, more, much more has changed about that than the newsletter game, actually, which is pretty much the same as it was the day I started actually.[00:54:07] Nathan:Are there a few of those I'm curious who are a few of those, people that you would tag along with, you know, when they're investing where like, oh, this person puts money into something I'd like to be right there with them.[00:54:19] Dave:I mean, I have some people that are like entrepreneurs and former entrepreneurs that do it, and if they like it I'll do it. but generally I co-invest with, at any given time, a different group of people, used to be a larger group. When I first started out, my whole investing career, I've co-invested with this guy named Bob zip who's much smarter and much wiser than I am about all things business and.Startup world. So that was really great. And he used to work at a company called venture law group in the first boom, and they represented Google, Hotmail. eGroups all the big, huge, early internet companies, and so he really knew the space well. And when he became, I used to get deals from him.That's how you used to get deals actually was by a couple of law firms that focused on startups. I've been co-investing with him all along and he's been generous enough to, he left the law firm a long, long time ago and became an investor primarily. And he had a fund and was well-known guy and well-respected guy.So I got to sit in when he would hear pitches. and we sort of, we weren't investing together out of the same fund, but we would sort of make our decisions together. And we still do that a lot. these days, I almost always follow along with a guy named run-on barn Cohen and a really good friend of mine.He was for many years at WordPress, basically, most of the things that make money at WordPress, he did. and now he's a investor at a VC called resolute. If anybody's looking for a good VC, he's like incredible, like Bob zip much, much smarter than I am about this stuff. Unbelievably ethical, great business sense.Great technical sense. so I mostly just follow him. So if he does something that's usually good enough for me. And if I see something that I think it's good, I'll pass it along to him, but it's mostly that, but I've been really fortunate. I can't express that enough, that I've been able to invest in companies without having to spend all of my time, branding myself as an investor.That's just been unbelievably lucky. So, I've been able to focus a ton of my energy on my six.[00:56:31] Nathan:That's right. I'm writing a newsletter about the news. I guess, as you're looking to grow and continue on, right? Like the next phase of readers and, and all of that, since we can just say directly that we're all narcissists and we do this for the attention. what's what's sort of that next thing that you're looking for, it's going from 140,000 subscribers to say 200,000 and beyond.[00:56:54] Dave:Yeah, well, I'm, I'm hoping that, I'm not just trying to sell my book here. I'm hoping that the book and the newsletter will sort of have, a coexistence with them because the new the book is really an extension of the brand and the brand is that icon to Next Draft. So I'm hoping that the tricky part about writing about marketing a newsletter, like we discussed earlier, there's not really a natural virality to them.So. You Have this piecemeal growth from people telling each other or their friends or forwarding it to somebody or maybe occasionally tweeting or sharing a Facebook link. Oh, you should check this out. But it's all sort of small little blips. If you get a news story or a big blog story about it, or another newsletter recommending you, that's probably the fastest way people grow these days is by, co-sponsoring each other's newsletters or co-promoting them.Those big hits are more rare and they usually require like, I've had a ton of stories written about Next Draft, but most of them a long time ago, because it's basically a similar product to what it was when they wrote about it the first time. So they're like, Hey, I'd love to write about it, but what's the hook.What's the new thing, you know? so I'm hoping that the book provides that emphasis. It's like, we're doing now a ton of people who may by either been on a podcast in the past, or they've wanted to do a podcast with me say, okay, now's a great time. I'd probably want to move your book and, we can set something up.So it's sort of as an impetus. So I'm hoping that that will be the next big newsletter thing that most, most people who write about the book will also write about the newsletter and the two things can sort of grow together.[00:58:35] Nathan:I think that's spot on.[00:58:36] Dave:That's in terms of, you know, marketing and promotion, otherwise, I do want to try, one of these referral programs because people definitely do like products.And, I am lucky that my icon looks really good on shirts so that people actually really want them. And I have a great designer named Brian Bell who makes all of my shirts.[00:58:58] Nathan:There's something like when creators thinking about products, often if you spread yourself too thin, you're like into the newsletter, the book, the podcast, and like the 14 other things that you could make all at once you sort of hinder the growth of each thing, but then if you really build one of them up to a significant level, then at that point it can start to stall out and by shifting to another medium or have it like launching another product in this case, the newsletter to a book, then that book can have a bunch more momentum that feeds back into it.And so there's just sort of this interesting balance of like, no, When to like, keep pushing on the thing that you have versus when to add the next thing that like, then they feed off of each other and go from there. So I think you're doing it with good timing.[00:59:45] Dave:Hopefully it'll work. All that kind of stuff is the tricky part of doing this stuff. Especially stuff like podcasts and newsletters that are—it's really a ton of word of mouth, unless you get lucky and get some press, and word of mouth is just slow.There's some point where you're going to hit a tipping point where you're going to go from five or 10,000 to like 50,000 much quicker, more quickly because instead of three people going home and saying, “Hey, did you ever hear of this newsletter?” there's like 30 people going home and saying that. But, even with that they hit a plateau, and then you figure out what's the next thing. That's why doing something you're into is so important.And I don't think it's bad to try those other mediums or stretch yourself out, because you never know you might've been writing a newsletter three years, and then you do a podcast and it catches on. For some reason, you're like awesome. Less typing, more talking, let's go. So, but it's tricky. I wish I was better and had better advice for people on promotion and marketing.I'm not awesome at it, and it's not in my nature. So, begging for favors or telling people, even in my own newsletter, to buy my own book is very painful for me. I'm very sensitive to criticism about it. So, if people just all bought it and then made everybody else buy it, that would be a huge relief for me.[01:01:13] Nathan:That would be great. Well, along those lines, where should people go to subscribe to the newsletter, and then follow you on your preferred channel, and then ultimately buy the book?[01:01:24] Dave:I don't want like two or 300,000 people taking my site down. So let's go with if your last name starts between A and M you can start by going to NextDraft.com and sign up for the newsletter there. Or, you can also just go to the App Store and search for Next Draft. If you're N through Z, you can start with the book, and that's at: PleaseScream.com.It has links to all the various audio, and Kindle, and hardcover versions.[01:01:50] Nathan:That's good. I liked how you split the traffic, that way there's no hug of death, and we'll do well there.[01:01:57] Dave:I don't want to get fireballed.[01:01:58] Nathan:That's right.Dave. Thanks for coming on. This was really fun.[01:02:01] Dave:Yeah, thanks a lot for having me.

The Storm Skiing Podcast is sponsored by Mountain Gazette - Listen to the podcast for discount codes on subscriptions and merch.WhoMike Kaplan, CEO of Aspen Skiing CompanyRecorded onSept. 24, 2021Why I interviewed himVail may rule the American skiing economy, but Aspen remains king of the nation’s popular skiing imagination. From Aspen Extreme to Dumb and Dumber, the town and its mountains serve as the stand-in for big-mountain Western skiing as a whole, one word that communicates to skiers and non-skiers the essence of the sport. And there is something spectacular about it. This city at the end of the road, hovering just past the gravitational pull of Denver and the I-70 disaster seeping beyond it. Those narrow expert mountains with their unrelenting fall lines and absence of greens. Buttermilk with its lazy empty groomers and lost-in-plain-site underdog patina. The wild labyrinthian variety of burly Snowmass. The city itself, bleeding as one into Aspen Mountain, some invigorating mashup of town and city, luxe and lowbrow, skibum and jetset. Aspen doesn’t have the wildest terrain. It doesn’t get the most snow. It doesn’t have the most vertical or the most skiable acres. But it may just be the best total ski experience America offers. What we talked aboutArriving in Aspen in 1993; how the city has changed over the past three decades; going from ski school instructor to CEO of one of America’s great ski companies; celebrating 75 years of skiing at Aspen; the significance of Aspen’s original Lift 1, the present-day Shadow Mountain lift, and what may replace it and when; the return of Ruthie’s restaurant; the scope and status of the proposed Pandora expansion off Aspen Mountain’s summit; what could be developed on that land if the county denies the expansion permit; what the expansion could mean for the Gent’s Ridge quad and the rest of Aspen’s lift fleet; Snowmass lifts: the new high-speed six-pack on Big Burn, a timeline to replace Coney Glade, the latest thinking on a possible Burnt Mountain lift; whether we could ever see a lift up Highland Bowl at Aspen Highlands; whether the Bowl Cat will return for the 2021-22 ski season; where we could see future expansion at Highlands; how the Deep Temerity expansion at Highlands could inform the Pandora expansion at Aspen; the status of the Golden Horn surface lift at Highlands; a different point of view on Buttermilk; the interplay of the four mountains to create a distinctive Aspen experience; why Aspen didn’t become part of Alterra; the Mountain Collective Pass and Ikon Pass origin stories; why Aspen pulled off the Ikon Base Pass and how the move to the “plus” tier has worked out; the future of the Mountain Collective; what happened with the $2 million that Liftopia owed Aspen for Mountain Collective Passes; Aspen’s plan to “stay in business forever” amid a changing climate; why Aspen is requiring all employees to get vaccinated against Covid-19 prior to the start of the 2021-22 ski season; and the tangle of problems Covid brought along with it last season.Why I thought that now was a good time for this interviewAspen, under Kaplan, has evolved. It is: a leader in the fight against climate change, a model for implementing creative employee housing solutions in the modern mountain town, a crown-jewel of two transcontinental ski pass products, a voice in skiing’s struggles to diversify, and an uncompromising partner in the battle against Covid. There was nothing inevitable about any of this. Fifteen years ago, Aspen was a fun town with a pack of fun ski hills. The Epic Pass didn’t exist and issues of diversity, equality, and environmental catastrophe were minimized or ignored. Aspen could have just kept being Aspen and that would have probably been good enough to keep on existing. But Kaplan had other ideas. Lots of ideas. And while a phalanx of market and social forces, innovators, and disruptors would likely have forced the company into some version of its 2021 self, Kaplan no doubt accelerated the change. Aspen Mountain, by skiable acres, is only the 20th largest ski area in Colorado – smaller than Monarch, Sunlight, Eldora, Wolf Creek, Powderhorn, A-Basin, Purgatory, and Loveland. Yet in its purpose and its presence it is bigger than all of them. Now seemed as good a time as ever to find out why that continues to be true.Questions I wish I’d askedI had wanted to discuss the origin and influence of the X-Games at Buttermilk, whether the locals backlash against the Ikon Pass has subsided as Aspen changed access levels and started giving out a Base Pass with an Aspen season pass, whether Aspen would continue rationing season passes, how the company’s various diversity initiatives are evolving, whether post-Covid employee benefit cuts had been restored, how short-term rentals and urban Covid refugees were impacting the local housing market, Aspen’s employee housing initiatives, how the Covid fallout compared to the aftermath of The Great Recession, whether the company expected last year’s skier visit declines to continue, and which Covid-era operating changes were most likely to hang around. We ran out of time. Next time.Why you should ski AspenBecause Aspen will give you the best total ski week in America. The skiing, yes: the mountains, teetering above the valley, four poles balancing one another like a perfectly assembled sports team. The steeps that are not too steep to manage and the greens that are not too flat to lean into. The lost-in-time-and-space feeling of the Hanging Valley Glades or Deep Temerity or Bingo Glades. But it’s everything else, too. The free and frequent shuttlebus connecting town and mountains. The incredible variety of lodging options that make the place more affordable than you’d think. And the city itself, a pedestrian-friendly human-scaled relic salvaged from Colorado’s Wild West ancestry and outfitted with T-shirt shops, celebrity-chef eateries, weed emporiums, surly bars, grocery stores, Prada shops, and antique stores, like the most bizarre Lego set ever invented. And you go because you have to. It’s just one of those places. If you’re a skier you must ski Aspen because it’s Aspen. I really don’t know how else to say it. Just go.More AspenLift Blog’s lift inventories for:Aspen MountainAspen HighlandsButtermilkSnowmassHistoric trailmaps for:Aspen MountainAspen HighlandsButtermilkSnowmassArchival footage of Lift 1, the single chair that stood from 1947 to 1971 and took 40 minutes to rise from town to the Aspen Mountain summit:Get stoked on Aspen Extreme: Get on the email list at www.stormskiing.com

Amanda Natividad is currently the Marketing Architect for audience research startup, SparkToro. She also a contributor for Adweek, a Le Cordon Bleu-trained chef, and a former journalist. Previously: She led marketing for Growth Machine; led marketing for Liftopia; built Fitbit's B2B content program; led content & comms for NatureBox.

Ron Schneidermann is the CEO of Alltrails, where he spent the past six years helping grow the company, which is now one of the top five health and fitness apps in the Apple App Store and Google Play Store. Before joining Alltrails, Ron led growth teams at Yelp and co-founded Liftopia, the global leader of ski lift ticket bookings. Ron shares that the two most important things for any company are momentum and culture. If you lose either of them, they are impossible to rebuild. Have belief in your business model and look at the advantages in context. When you cannot control certain aspects of the funnel, let full-funnel growth (across all stages) be the central driver of your business. If your app is “content-centered,” your data sets hold the power to convert and retain users. First, focus on improving the quality of data you can provide to your audience. Don't get attached to results because any growth experiment can fail. Instead, focus on learning from successful and failed experiments. Find and monitor feedback loops based on what your users respond to. The key to growth is to keep adapting as your audience adapts because they are the chief driver of your business growth. Re-engagement via push notification may put you at risk of annoying your customers. People may forget that they have the app installed, so it's always better to focus on outside-the-app strategies such as SEO, personalized content, and reminders via emails to drive re-engagement through deep links into the app. Try not to depend on one platform because it can make a huge dent in your growth charts if the platform changes. Try to own your channels of growth as much as possible. Daily and sometimes even weekly metrics may be distracting. Monthly metrics provide a more accurate view of your audience's changing consumption habits and are a healthier way to monitor growth. Ron shares that to maintain culture momentum during growth, your company's senior leadership has to be the culture vanguard and train the rest of the leadership across the org. This becomes easier if people in your organization have a personal connection to your mission and stay longer. Ron's final advice: be honest with yourself when making important decisions because you will be proud of the practical decisions you make and reactionary paths you avoid after you retire. Having a personal set of core values helps identify opportunities and enjoy the process of executing them.

Ron Schneidermann is the CEO of AllTrails, and has been building technology that helps people enjoy the outdoors for over 15 years. He's an accomplished entrepreneur and a hands-on leader who devours data and isn't afraid to veer from the standard startup playbook. Many of the folks listening know AllTrails as the outdoor app that helps you find the perfect activity for your preferences, and once you're there, you can take advantage all sorts of detailed maps to keep you on the trail, even when you're out of cell service. AllTrails has been around since 2010, and now hosts over 200,000 trail guides in 190 countries across all 7 continents, and has over 1M premium subscribers worldwide. This isn't Ron's first expedition as an outdoor technology leader. He co-founded Liftopia and built and ran the world's leading ski lift ticket booking tool for 8 years, backed by all-star investors like Marc Benioff, Chris Sacca, and First Round Capital. He also led Growth at Yelp before taking over the reins at AllTrails. In our talk, Ron shares his approach to covering the globe, lessons he's learned the hard way, and the questions he's still chewing on. Here's what we cover: Ron's experience taking AllTrails from 6 people to 100 people, and through a really tough transition period. Carving a non-conventional path as a startup. Going for profitability early, and deciding the early adopters were not the profile to build around. The inflection point that led to the focus on becoming a global company. The pros and the cons of using acquisitions to fuel growth. The pandemic experience - the explosion of hiking, helping people stay healthy, and growing the team during lockdown. How AllTrails approaches international expansion and coverage across all 7 continents. Translation vs. localization, and things that broke when going from one market to the next (even from the US to the UK). Machine translation - when to use it, when to avoid it. How to support one billion end users around the world, and the trade-offs between centralized vs. de-centralized teams. Ron's advice and hindsight for companies going global and maximizing momentum. Hindsight on acquisitions, and things NOT to do to avoid making users really angry and avoid bleeding eyes :). How best to structure your team to get the most out of each market, and to diagnose problems when markets aren't performing as hoped. The aspects of international expansion that are still up for debate at AllTrails, and most likely at many other growing companies.

The Storm Skiing Podcast is sponsored in part by Mountain Gazette - Listen to the podcast for discount codes on subscriptions and merch.WhoBruce Monette Jr., co-owner of Titus Mountain, New YorkRecorded onJune 7, 2021Why I interviewed him Titus is perched at the snowy top of New York, an hour and change past Lake Placid, which for most of the state’s skiers already feels like the edge of the Earth. That remoteness lends a patina of mystery to the place, like the secret labyrinth of a videogame you thought you knew well. Three interlaced peaks drip with tangled mops of trails fused by a fleet of Halls and one under-the-road tunnel, presenting a meandering journey through tree and trail from one distant end to the other. The place it littered with packs of children and sometimes their parents and really no one else. The kind of knucklehead speedster native to Whiteface seems entirely absent here. It’s a joy to ski. But in 2011, Titus was on the verge of being sold off for parts, its alpha lift and snowguns bound for Pennsylvania. That’s when the Monette family, local businessfolk who had never run a ski area, bought the place. To find out how they transformed an operation on the knife-edge of shutdown into a sustainable resort, I wanted to talk to one of the people in charge of making it all happen.Titus from the air - looking across the middle mountain to the upper mountain. Photo courtesy of Titus Mountain.What we talked aboutBuilding the Monette family business empire from a single propane truck; the weekly weakly skier; how a family that “didn’t know anything about anything” in the ski business came to own Titus; echoes of Montage, Pennsylvania; the story behind Titus’ “Michael Jordan, ace-in-the-hole” GM; “barely hanging on” in the first season of ownership; how running a ski area is similar to running a brewery or convenience store; how Titus looked “like Cambodia” when Monette showed up; guess where Brodie’s snowguns ended up?; how the family has improved the mountain over the past decade; the challenges of managing a sprawling three-peak ski area; why the mountain isn’t fully open every day and how they decided on that schedule; rent the upper mountain; sorry no liftlines here; the condition of the fleet of Hall lifts; whether lift II is gone for good or not and where it could potentially move; why there are mailboxes at the bottom of the chairlifts; why the family’s first move was to cut glades across the mountain; the location of the new glade coming in over this summer; potential expansion on the mountain and what it could be used for; Titus’ night-skiing footprint and whether that could ever expand; the mountain’s ski-in, ski-out present and future; how being bad at snowmaking led to the ski area’s enormous maple syrup operation; season pass prices and the philosophy behind that; Titus’ post-Covid refund or deferral policy and how many skiers took advantage of it; how much the Canadian border closure hurt the mountain; the Champlain Valley Ski Card, why Titus joined, and whether it would again if the pass survives Covid; the possibility of Titus joining Indy Pass; Liftopia – so much Liftopia: the mountain’s relationship to the service prior to April 2020; how Monette reacted when the expected check didn’t show up; how much Liftopia owed the ski area; if you bought a season pass to Titus last March, the ski area never saw a penny; why the ski area honored the passes anyway; where the hell did the money go?; thoughts on the attempt at forcing Liftopia into bankruptcy; what former Liftopia CEO Evan Reece was telling Titus during the transition to a new owner; Monette’s reaction to Catalate’s offer to fully repay ski areas who will do business with them; why the betrayal was so shocking in the context of the ski business; thoughts on Reece; Titus’ new e-commerce partner; and skibanas.  The Monette family on the slopes of Titus. From L to R: Bruce Monette III, Ashley Monette, Bruce Monette Jr., Veronica Monette, Nancy Monette. Photo courtesy of Titus Mountain.Why I thought now was a good time for this interview Because after eyeballing the trailmap for years, I’d finally made the journey north to Titus this past winter. Never mind that I made the mistake of doing it as a daytrip from Brooklyn. It’s always an interesting experience to drive for hours and hours past nothing at all, no towns or cars or businesses, and arrive at a distant mountain bustling with families. Where they came from I have no idea, but they made the atmosphere crackle with an unpretentious let’s-have-fun-on-this-holiday-Monday attitude. In a way it felt like a small-town beach in the summertime, where looking good is less important than the act of living an active life. What that scene is to Miami, Titus is to Vail. It’s awesome. Titus was also at the center of Liftopia’s royal jackhammering, looped out of nearly fifty grand that skiers had bought in good faith that the money would go to the mountain and the people running it. While I’ve privately messaged many ski area operators about Liftopia’s implosion, this was the first time I was able to talk about it with one of them on the podcast. We discuss how Titus worked through that loss while dealing with the aftershocks of Covid.Titus on a snowy day. Why you should ski TitusBecause, damn it, it’s a lot of fun. This is a place where you can let your kids wander. They’ll be fine. The terrain is fun but not terribly challenging, just steep enough for just long enough to create the sensation of freefall before moderating. There are some fun tree shots and some fun twisty runs and some long long greens. The lifts aren’t particularly fast or slow, but they are interesting, a fleet of Halls churning reliably up the incline. The place is quirky, rewarding attention and exploration with multi-colored lift towers rising over the bunny hill and mailboxes posted at the base of each lift and little terrain parks lofted into the woods. But no built feature of the mountain better synthesizes the ski area’s singular combination of ownership, geography, severe weather, and freewheeling fun than the skibanas, a row of miniature wooden houses stacked along a rim adjacent to the base lodge. A Covid adaptation built by the Amish for socially distant family shredding, these little shacks are set to become a permanent feature of Titus’ future. Go see them for yourself:Skibanas. Photo courtesy of Titus Mountain.Additional resourcesSome commentary on Catalate, which is basically Liftopia 2.0 after Skitude bought the company following its implosion last springLift Blog’s inventory of Titus chairliftsSome Titus stories from New York Ski Blog and Ice Coast MagazineFollow Titus on TwitterTitus from the sky: Get on the email list at www.stormskiing.com

In this 11-minute audio version of our blog post, “How to Attract Customers, Not Just Readers,” Amanda Natividad, Head of Marketing for Growth Machine, explains how to create content that drives your readers to purchase — in a way that isn’t spammy or salesy. Show Notes: 1:39 - First, uncover the true needs of your customer 5:58 - Try these 4 frameworks for conversion-focused content 9:44 - 3 ways to get started today Links: Blog post: How to Attract Customers, Not Just Readers 300% More Sales in 2 Months (2:04) Buyer Personas (3:08) Kinsta (4:15) WP Engine (4:!5) Gong (6:27) The #1 Signal All Winning Deals Have In Common (6:44) Kinsta Comparison Post (7:05) WP Engine Comparison Post (7:05) Liftopia’s Holiday Gift Guide (7:55) Zendesk (8:58) How We Run Growth Machine (9:20) Contact Growth Machine (10:48)

Ron details growing up in the Bay Area, his first date with his wife at UCLA, and his passion for mountain biking. Listeners also learn about the effort it took to build Liftopia, a ski ticketing company. We end with Ron’s stewardship of AllTrails and the importance of civic engagement, inclusivity, and empathy.

Snow skiing is a very expensive hobby. There are many bargains available for getting to the slopes and skiing. CO and UT are the 2 biggest ski zones. Because of extreme airfare competition in the Denver hub, it's ultra inexpensive to fly to CO. Plus there's been a massive expansion of limited service interstate hotels in CO. So skip the fancy lodges to save. If you stay along a freeway in close proximity to a ski mountain - that's a big savings. For UT, there are 9 ski mountains within close proximity to the Salt Lake City airport, but as a Delta hub, airfare is pricey. But once you get there, there are many affordable hotel options in the Salt Lake Valley close to mountains. Aspen, Vail or Deer Valley lift tickets run around $200 per day, but many other mountains have affordable lift ticket prices. Liftopia.com offers lift ticket bargains. Skiing doesn't have to be so costly. In both markets locals rent ski equipment at better prices than found at the mountains. Clark has called Wells Fargo "a criminal enterprise impersonating a bank". Hopefully new leadership will end the illegal culture there, but even so, Wells Fargo is a big, traditional bank. The bigs, BOA, WF, Chase and Citi have roughly 50% of market share in the U.S. These are high cost operations under pressure to show profits to stockholders. Their business model is to see how much they can take from customers every month. As a result of how the federal government handled the banking scandals last decade, the smaller banks were hollowed out and are mostly gone, changing the equilibrium of banking. More tech sophistication from online banks allows them to offer better deals, and make a competitive impact in the marketplace. If you have money in traditional bank saving or CDs, you're cheating yourself. Because of these factors, credit unions have gone through radical transformation as well, with the smaller players merging into larger ones big enough to get their tech up to date. Younger customers are looking for great apps and online banking features - modern in every sense. The cultural difference a credit union offers remains - a co-op owned by and serving its members. The biggest credit unions offer a mix of online banking assets, branches AND a focus on service. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The Storm Skiing Podcast #8 | Download this episode on iTunes, Google Podcasts, Stitcher, TuneIn, Spotify, and Pocket Casts | Read the full overview at skiing.substack.com.Who: Evan Reece, Cofounder and CEO of LiftopiaWhy I interviewed him: There are some mistakes you only make once. Spending New Year’s Eve in Times Square. Deciding in the parking garage as your exiting your vehicle to go stand in Times Square for four hours that nah I don’t need that ski coat it feels just fine in this flannel and hoodie standing here in this shelter even though I know it’s zero degrees outside. Mixing Captain Morgan and Ice House. Drinking Ice House. Rolling up to a ski area without a lift ticket on a midwinter weekend and just being like yeah let me go pick those up real quick. I had a few years there in the early part of this decade where I wasn’t able to ski much, and that time period just happened to coincide with the Great American Lift Ticket Inflation Epoch. After a regrettable daytrip to the Poconos in which I unloaded an unconscionable sum of money in an exchange that could have been classified as robbery had it not been entirely voluntary, I sought out alternatives. This being a few years before the megapass era arrived in the Northeast, I stumbled upon Liftopia and have been using it ever since. I wanted to talk to the man in charge of the whole operation, mostly because I was curious how the site was evolving in an ski era that is increasingly pass-oriented. What we talked about: Liftopia’s founding in 2005; would you show up at the airport to buy an airplane ticket? Then why are you rolling up to Vail on the day after Christmas to do the same?; how shockingly long it took in hindsight to convince ski areas to sell their tickets online and to vary pricing over time; how difficult it is to break into the industry when you don’t come up as a dude jamming REO Speedwagon while bumping lifts; Liftopia has grown every single year it’s been in business; how the young ‘uns are buying everything else on line so if they can’t buy lift tickets this way they’re like what?; how Europe was way behind in the online ticket game but got certain parts of it right when they finally caught on; how social media and smartphones have changed how people discover and buy things; how ski areas are killing it on social; the mountains that are still around have more or less perfected the physical plant of chairlifts, snowmaking, grooming, etc., but most of them will always be bad at tech and so they really need to contract that piece of it out unless you’re like Vail or something and have money to throw at things like that; hey you probably don’t realize that Liftopia’s running the software that your local bump is most likely using to sell you lift tickets online; why ski shop discount tickets are bad for ski areas; where Liftopia fits into our Epik/Ikonik world; you won’t believe the percentage of Liftopia customers that already have a season pass somewhere; skiing as an adventure; why every ski area no matter how small or off the grid is worth visiting; how Vail landing its fleet around Tahoe turned the whole region into more of a destination and drove up lift ticket prices even at areas it doesn’t own; why the window price is not what skiing costs; how the industry screwed up this whole lift ticket thing so badly; why feeder areas shouldn’t try to drive prices up like the big dogs did; how the broader economy’s concentration of wealth has driven prices so high; how Liftopia is trying to keep skiing accessible; why Evan is afraid that the sport is becoming less accessible; it’s too soon to say if the former Peak mountains (Mt. Snow, Hunter, Wildcat, Attitash, Crotched, and a bunch more) will still be on Liftopia next year, but if Vail wants to team up, Liftopia would make a swell partner; the wild weird world of skiing in China and why Liftopia isn’t going there anytime soon; how skiing in China might be like Top Golf and no I’d never heard of Top Golf before this podcast; Big Snow and terrain-based learning; why the Northeast is such a phenomenal ski market to live in; some of Evan’s favorite Northeast ski areas.Questions I wish I’d asked: I had a line of questioning around displeased online customer reviews that I didn’t have time to get to, just to give the company a chance to respond because while nothing is perfect, it is also hard to gauge the veracity of one-sided raging anonymous online complaints; I also wanted to ask about the quirky fact that there are many ski areas with the same name, like there is more than one Magic Mountain and Shawnee and Black Mountain, and I wanted to know how much of an actual problem that was for Liftopia even though they’re all in different states because people just do dumb things.Why I thought that now was a good time for this interview: We live in a headline culture, where anything eye-popping or shocking or offensive tap-dances to the top of social feeds and defines any given topic for the vast majority of users who never bother clicking through for additional context or information. So this headline from the Aspen Times the other day – “Holiday Lift Ticket Prices Will Hit $219 in Vail, $184 in Aspen” – is going to become immutable reality for legions of outraged back-in-my-day people who remember when you could ski Stowe for 75 cents or whatever. So this is as good a time as any to remind everyone that with just the very smallest amount of effort and foresight, you can get a pretty good ski season for that $219. Liftopia is by no means the only way to achieve this, but it is a very good one and reliable one that is constantly pushing evolution within its industry, in both obvious and less conspicuous ways, and I figured why not talk to them directly about what they’re doing and where they think the industry is heading.Why you should use the site: Because there’s absolutely no reason not to. Not all ski areas are on Liftopia, but enough are that you can stitch together a pretty rad adventure exploring places you may never have thought of otherwise. It can be a great place to find an add-on day for a lesser-known area near a big destination, as Evan says (like maybe you want to tack on a Bolton Valley Day if you’re hitting Stowe or Sugarbush), or to snag a ticket for a place where you have a pass but someone skiing with you does not (I’ll be in the Poconos for MLK weekend, and while I have an Epic Pass, my daughter does not, so I picked her up a two-day lift ticket for Jack Frost Big Boulder on Liftopia at a huge discount). I’m a big fan of megapasses and ski clubs and just general bargain hunting, but whatever you do to get on the slopes without taking out a second mortgage, Liftopia ought to be part of your mix.The Storm Skiing Podcast is on iTunes, Google Podcasts, Stitcher, TuneIn, Spotify and Pocket Casts. The Storm Skiing Journal publishes podcasts and other editorial content throughout the ski season. To receive new posts as soon as they are published, sign up for The Storm Skiing Journal Newsletter at skiing.substack.com. Follow The Storm Skiing Journal on Facebook and Twitter.Check out previous podcasts: Killington GM Mike Solimano | Plattekill owners Danielle and Laszlo Vajtay | New England Lost Ski Areas Project Founder Jeremy Davis | Magic Mountain President Geoff Hatheway | Lift Blog Founder Peter Landsman | Boyne Resorts CEO Stephen Kircher | Burke Mountain GM Kevin Mack | Get on the email list at www.stormskiing.com

On today’s episode, we have Evan Reece. Evan co-founded Liftopia, a consumer platform and back-of-house revenue management system for resorts. Today, the company works with more than 250 resorts worldwide and is the largest ticket sales operation in North America. Tune in to hear us discuss how Liftopia came about, how it works, and why loyal customers are some of the most resort-disloyal people. Topics: [02:44] Before starting Liftopia, Evan had been working for HotWire. [03:25] Before Liftopia, people hadn’t been buying lift tickets online. [04:40] People hadn’t been offering this service, because ski resorts didn’t think their customers bought tickets this way. [05:20] Resorts believed their customers wouldn’t buy tickets this way, because they had never done so before. [07:32] Evan wanted to create a way to reduce risk for the resorts and increase profitability. [08:42] Competitors’ models are similar. [11:30] Multi-resort passes are for adventurers, but they are also the least loyal customers. [13:20] In the end, everyone just wants to ski more. [15:08] Icon and Epic passes are reshaping the industry. [16:02] In terms of passes, Evan doesn’t like to pick sides. [16:40] People often switch season passes from year to year. [17:20] The pass you choose depends on if you drive, fly, or are a destination traveler. [19:33] The most surprising thing found in Liftopia’s consumer survey, is that a lot of season pass holders are using their consumer brand. [21:12] Skiers love to find new experiences and explore new terrain. [21:33] Overall, people are seeking value. [25:50] When regional mountains try to match the prices of larger mountains, they cut out a large community of skiers. [28:04] Skiers love the passes, because they spend the same amount they used to spend on one mountain for multiple mountains. [29:14] Evan has skied less since having a family. [31:30] The industry wants you to buy in advance, as it’s better for everyone involved. [33:39] Skiing isn’t just about carving down the hill, it’s about the overall experience. [34:11] If Evan lived on the East Coast, he’d be spending more time in Europe, as the cost of skiing is lower and it provides a great cultural experience. [35:40] The growth rate has to slow down at some point, because the only way to draw in new skiers is to make the season pass cost less than a day pass. [36:58] The new Epic Day Pass is a great option that can bring the cost down significantly. [39:24] Core skiers used to mean something different than it does today. [41:50] Commit early and be adventurous!

Ron Schneidermann is the COO and CMO of AllTrails, a platform for off-road recreation. He co-founded and was CMO of Liftopia, and also served as the head of growth for Yelp Reservations. Ron joined Lauren and Ian in studio to talk about his background in marketing, why he serves as both COO and CMO, and what it was like to raise money from Chris Sacca. Marketing Trends is brought to you by our friends at Salesforce Pardot, B2B marketing automation on the world's #1 CRM. Are you ready to take your B2B marketing to new heights? With Pardot, marketers can find and nurture leads, close more deals, and maximize ROI. Learn more by heading to www.pardot.com/podcast. To learn more or subscribe to our weekly newsletter, visit MarketingTrends.com.

Josh sits down with Liftopia co-founder Evan Reece. If you've gone skiing in the past decade, chances are you've purchased your lift ticket online. Liftopia is a brand streamlining online ticket sales so skiers can grab and go when they want and save a ton on lift tickets by buying in advance. Reece and his co-founder Ron Schneidermann had their an aha moment to streamline ski ticket sales while working at Hotwire.com and, of course being a HUGE skier himself, it was too tantalizing an opportunity to pass up. Tune in as we listen to Reece's tales of building this Snow Industry Behemoth, what it took to get to where they are today, and a glimpse into Liftopia's future.

While the news swirls about Vail Resorts east coast arrival, a pair of local skiers/businessmen from the Finger Lakes Region are a few years into ramping up operations at their recently acquired local ski areas, Greek Peak (2013) and Toggenburg (2015). Episode 44 is a discussion with co-owner Marc Stemerman, who together with his business partner John Maier, has been navigating this new industry after acquiring Greek Peak out of bankruptcy. After decades skiing the place, now they own the place. Season 3 of Wintry Mix is supported by www.Snowbird.com, www.Worldcupsupply.com and www.Liftopia.com. Subscribe to Wintry Mix on iTunes. Follow the show on facebook, twitter and IG.

The Vermont Slope Posse (VTSP) found each other in Burlington in 1985 thanks to skateboarding. The rest is history. In this episode, AK sits down with Greg Manning, Mike Hayes and calls up Kris Swierz to recollect the days when snowboarding was a seed of the tree it would grow up to be. Season 3 of Wintry Mix is supported by www.Snowbird.com, www.Worldcupsupply.com and www.Liftopia.com. Subscribe to Wintry Mix on iTunes. Follow the show on facebook, twitter and IG. Left to right pictured: Matty L - GMan - Cole B. - Josh Brownlee aka (JAB)

It's not easy to book flights 3 weeks out and still nail a storm cycle. In this episode AK and Adam spend day 1 of the #podpowmission stuck in the lodge at Snowbird waiting for the storm to clear prior to hammering the tail end of a seven foot cycle for three days in a row. Best. Pow. Ever. Season 3 of Wintry Mix is supported by www.Snowbird.com, www.Worldcupsupply.com and www.Liftopia.com. Subscribe to Wintry Mix on iTunes. Follow the show on facebook, twitter and IG.

Since entering the ski business in 1972 at Killington, Chris Diamond led Mount Snow and Steamboat through multiple ownership changes and countless upgrades. Upon retiring in 2015, Diamond set out to document his decades in skiing and has recently released a new book entitled "Ski Inc. My journey through four decades in the ski resort business, from the founding entrepreneurs to mega companies." In episode 41 AK and Chris delve into some anecdotes from the book, his years working with and for Les Otten and what he thinks about the future of skiing. You can purchase the book here: https://skidiamondconsulting.com Season 3 of Wintry Mix is supported by www.Snowbird.com, www.Worldcupsupply.com and www.Liftopia.com. Subscribe to Wintry Mix on iTunes. Follow the show on facebook, twitter and IG.

Discussing I-70, Vail Resorts, marijuana, affordable housing, new ski areas and other mountain stuff with veteran Denver Post reporter Jason Blevins. Season 3 of Wintry Mix is supported by www.Snowbird.com, www.Worldcupsupply.com and www.Liftopia.com. Subscribe to Wintry Mix on iTunes. Follow the show on facebook, twitter and IG.

The season's first bonafide coastal storm is primed to deliver snow and wind to a large chunk of the northeast to bring 2016 to a close. This Storm Track episode grabs Eric Fisher from CBS Boston to chat possibilities and get some takes on naming storms, hoax weather and other hot topics. Storm Track episodes are special episodes that catch up with weather pros when a big snowfall is imminent. Episode 39 is a more traditional episode. Catch that one too. Season 3 of Wintry Mix is supported by www.Snowbird.com, www.Worldcupsupply.com and www.Liftopia.com. Subscribe to Wintry Mix on iTunes and follow on FB, IG or TW for somewhat useful updates.

Fat bikes. Every year there's more. Episode 39 catches up with Dave Ochs, organizer of the Fat Bike World Championships in Crested Butte, Colorado, and Vermonter Brooke Scatchard who has been perfecting his Fat Bike Ski design since high school. Caroline the intern is back too in this wide ranging fat bikes discussion. Season 3 of Wintry Mix is supported by www.Snowbird.com, www.Worldcupsupply.com and www.Liftopia.com. Subscribe to Wintry Mix on iTunes. Follow the show on facebook, twitter and IG.

Last chance to check out all the best holiday lights in Utah, including Luminaria at Thanksgiving Point, downtown and residential neighborhoods. Ethan offers some first hand advice. Also in the season of being festive, Brighton Ski Resort is offering free lift tickets to those who dress as Santa Claus! Maybe dress up isn't your game; Liftopia and Ski 'N See are offering great deals on lift tickets all over the Wasatch. Happy Holidays!

I don't know enough about ski racing. I came up in moguls and pipe. Thankfully Brad Williams and Bob Kimball from World Cup Supply are down to help. Chatted with them at their Bradford, Vermont office and got a tour of the warehouse to learn more about their resort and event supplies business model as well as the state of ski racing from a newbs perspective. Season 3 of Wintry Mix is supported by www.Snowbird.com, www.Worldcupsupply.com and www.Liftopia.com. Subscribe to Wintry Mix on iTunes. Follow the show on facebook, twitter and IG.

There hasn't been a more deserved "beer thirty" than the one enjoyed by Killington staffers on the Sunday afternoon after the massive World Cup crowds departed. They earned it. AK hung out in the VIP zone chatting up the key resort players / former colleagues while consuming a few frosty beverages. This was a euphoric moment in time worth capturing. Enjoy. Season 3 of Wintry Mix is supported by www.Snowbird.com, www.Worldcupsupply.com and www.Liftopia.com. Subscribe to Wintry Mix on iTunes. Follow the show on facebook, twitter and IG.

Our second 'Storm Track' of the season catches up with Josh Fox of the popular Single Chair Weather Blog. A weather pattern change is afoot so meet Josh and get the chilly details for the next few days and weeks. Season 3 of Wintry Mix is supported by www.Snowbird.com, www.Worldcupsupply.com and www.Liftopia.com. And here's a link to his blog. http://madriverglenweather.blogspot.com Subscribe to Wintry Mix on iTunes or follow the show @wintrymixcast.

We've got some healing to do. The recent Boston Ski and Snow Expo had a weird vibe, sort of like America, in the days immediately following the election. Episode 36 serves as a reminder that we'll all do better if we lay off the cruelty and division. Be hopeful. Be kind. Be vigilant. And let's get some snow soon please. Season 3 of Wintry Mix is supported by www.Snowbird.com, www.Worldcupsupply.com and www.Liftopia.com. Subscribe to Wintry Mix on iTunes. Follow the show on facebook, twitter and IG. Closing music by Tony Lee Thomas Band.

Bryn Carey is CEO and founder of Park City based Ski Butlers, which offers delivery of ski and snowboard equipment rentals in ski regions across the western US and Canada. In Episode 35 AK and Bryn discuss launching a new business based on an idea of how to improve on this very common transaction (renting skis). We also touch on what it's like to roll into everyone's condos at all hours of the night. Season 3 of Wintry Mix is supported by www.Snowbird.com, www.Worldcupsupply.com and www.Liftopia.com. Subscribe to Wintry Mix on iTunes. Follow the show on facebook, twitter and IG.

There are plenty of well equipped New England ski areas including Saddleback, The Balsams and Tenney that haven't stayed open consistently. Ascutney had been dormant since 2010, but thanks to land grants and community spirit there's a new future of recreation on this historic ski mountain. Episode 34 catches up with Laura Farrell of Ascutney Outdoors, the non-profit leading the effort, on a recent community volunteer day. Season 3 of Wintry Mix is supported by www.Snowbird.com, www.Worldcupsupply.com and www.Liftopia.com. Subscribe to Wintry Mix on iTunes. Follow the show on facebook, twitter and IG.

Incoming! New as part of season 3 are "Storm Tracks" where I catch up with regional meteorologists when incoming winter weather warrants. In our first attempt I grabbed Tim Kelley of NECN and Ski The East fame to discuss the first useful dump of the year. Season 3 of Wintry Mix is supported by www.Snowbird.com, www.Worldcupsupply.com and www.Liftopia.com. Subscribe to Wintry Mix on iTunes or follow the show @wintrymixcast.

Raising awareness is so 2010. Climate, public lands, and attracting outdoorsy businesses seem to be the three key pillars of the recent surge in outdoor activism aiming to influence the state and national political landscape. Non-profits like Protect Our Winters and the Outdoor Industry Association head to Washington while individual states navigate their own local priorities influenced by their increasingly engaged outdoor industry citizenry. Episode 33 is an evening behind the scenes at a Sue Minter For Governor fundraiser with an outdoor industry focus. Candidate seeks donors and support. Donors seek policies that can help grow their industry. It's not always so scary, and it's happening nationwide on a variety of issues. And yes I tried to get both Vermont campaigns to talk outdoor biz for episodes, but Minter's was only one to respond. Creative Commons photo by https://www.flickr.com/photos/jonathan_king/ Season 3 of Wintry Mix is supported by www.Snowbird.com, www.Worldcupsupply.com and www.Liftopia.com. Subscribe to Wintry Mix on iTunes or follow the show @wintrymixcast.