Brooks On here so you see the timer there is gone and then i record on here both for video and just have like a backup recording in case this thing fails for some reason okay so, test test test that's working okay um, welcome to the awesome mountain biking podcast i'm brooks lawson your host aka the mountain biking realtor and you can find all things brooks at brookslawson.com today is march 7th is the date we're recording and i'm with ret jones from station mountain bike park thanks for joining me ret yes for sure um i do want to give a quick disclaimer because i think there was some confusion about the the last podcast i i am affiliated with the awesome ridge riders but this is not an official ridge riders podcast in any way um also i have have no affiliation with any people that i interview and i receive no compensation for the interviews i was wearing a dialed shirt in my last interview but i did actually buy that one and i asked ret for a shirt and he declined so i didn't get one from here either hey no that was um so ret uh you just wrapped up your first and second race at station mountain bike park um i believe is that correct uh.
Rhett Yes no about to wrap up our second race.
Brooks Okay you haven't done the second one yet okay soon though yeah um so the first one was the trail party race correct yes correct uh tell me how did that go oh.
Rhett That actually went really smooth uh putting tape on stakes in the ground for three hours made me really respect a lot.
Brooks More how.
Rhett Much work goes into setting up a race and i'm actually like not really looking forward to setting up the next one because i thought it was gonna be easy and now i realized it's actually.
Brooks Gonna be really hard.
Rhett But the vibes are through the roof so it was so so worth it i i think it was our second biggest weekend behind opening weekend.
Brooks Yeah i don't know.
Rhett If we're ever gonna top opening weekend but, hopefully soon show.
Brooks Party always puts on a good show.
Rhett Yeah and uh it's.
Brooks A good like party vibe for sure.
Rhett Oh the yeah the vibes are so good and seeing like a hundred people camping that that was cool yeah yeah um.
Brooks So you told me you've done a few interviews how many would you say that you've done this thus far.
Rhett Thus far probably around 10 i've done a lot of interviews yeah and.
Brooks I know when i was there they were like signs up uh for opening weekend that like netflix was shooting or somebody was shooting video or something like that.
Rhett Oh yeah that.
Brooks Was for netflix it.
Rhett Is a hopefully for netflix so the documentary is done you can see it on vital mtb and youtube but we haven't really gone through the process of sharing the documentary throughout all the major streaming sites yet the plan is to get it on netflix if we can make the right connections we're gonna try and hopefully all of these other platforms too and.
Brooks What other like interviews have you done and what companies and who with?
Rhett I've done one with BetaCamp, which is like the entrepreneurship camp for high scores that I went to in summer of 2022. I did Singletracks, Texas Monthly, oh there's so many that i'm missing now uh mountain bike action uh trust me there's a lot that's quite a few yeah that's good stuff yeah um.
Brooks So the reason i want to have you on your on here today i want us to tell us your story like the full story from beginning to end so kind of start with your history with you know biking not necessarily mountain biking specifically, um how did the idea for station mountain come about how did you find investors like the whole story so go ahead i'm gonna let you take it.
Rhett All right sounds good so it all started started during covid uh my sports stopped no games and i was like i'm bored and i'm in eighth grade and i want to do something fun and some of my friends are mountain biking so i decided to hop on a mountain bike and i was like wait this is so cool and i was on this like crappy 400 hardtail and this is in like march of 2020 and i started riding this bmx bike too for like three months, i decided it was way too hard so i decided to only do mountain biking because like i couldn't even, bunny hop like sucked uh and then i went to angel fire for my second time actually i went like a year prior but i sucked and that angel fire trip is what made me fall in love with the mountain bike and i was like bro i'm gonna do this every single day this is so fun there's no way i'm ever gonna quit the sport like this is my thing like is that the seven days in angel fire like like i just found my love so then then on from june 2020 i started riding every day i started getting into filming i always rode with people better than me i actually started riding at cat mountain like when when I wasn't that good but Cat Mountain made me so good so fast it has and I yeah yeah I spent I'm not kidding I was I was at Cat Mountain like five days a week for like all of late 2020 all of 2021 and I got pretty good pretty quick I was riding 20 plus hours a week racing and I'd and I really fell in love with it so then I got into trail building the first trail I actually built It was Grom Trail at Cat Mountain. It's like a small little single black trail. And I found out that trail boating was really fun and I loved it. But at this point in time, I was like 16 years old, zero entrepreneurial ambitions at all. Like being an entrepreneurial business owner didn't even cross my mind. Didn't even think of it as being a possible future life path for me. And then about two years later, summer of 2022, two things happened. So first of all, I joined Baiting Camp, which is this online program to teach teens about entrepreneurship. That got me really hyped on entrepreneurship. I was like, oh, I could actually make this happen. And I successfully pitched with a group of people to make Ruff Hollow Bike Park in Lakeland, which is no longer a project. Uh but it showed me that this whole making a bike park thing could be possible yeah i actually.
Brooks Want to hear more about the rough hollow bike because i was like blown away that anybody would number one let you do that or that it stayed standing as long as it did.
Rhett Yeah so what.
Brooks Was the process like to get approved for that.
Rhett Oh so i had a few connections to these dads in lakeway that have been wanting to make a bike park for a while but you know never really got the spark to do it and i was kind of the guy that pushed them over the edge of like hey let's actually go make this happened but they had all the connections to the hoa the neighborhood like i made the pitch deck but they did all the talking i mean i wasn't really involved in founding rough hollow that much, and then we got approval didn't build until november because it was so hot throughout summer you couldn't really find builders i mean it was kind of a hard thing to get started so it was like a six month period between getting the approval and actually building the park and building it I was out there for two weeks straight with two other builders and got it, halfway done and then I just had a lot of other things fall on my plate I was out of town for three weeks and then once I got back in town station mountain pitches were starting and I just kind of decided to move on from rough hollow which in hindsight probably one of my. Biggest l moves bro uh i kind of caused a lot of beef there yeah for leaving a half done project and not being hyped on it because i because i wasn't hyped on it it was like a half finished bike park even though i really should have finished it uh yeah that was that was one of my biggest mistakes i should have finished where i follow i should have showed more respect to that community and the builders there but it once i saw like a potential of raising three million and making the best bike park in texas i didn't really want to focus on rafale anymore so i'm never there.
Brooks Weren't any problems with like soccer moms in the neighborhood that got upset that existed.
Rhett Uh a little bit a little bit but honestly not as much as you think that community was generally supportive of the bike park and interesting also i i also kind of feel bad about this the soccer moms always got mad at like the dads working on the project and not me so like i i i never really got any hate they're like oh cool kid cool ambitious kid but they'd like yell the 50 year olds and then it was kind of my fault but yeah yeah so.
Brooks Gone i interrupted you uh what happened after rough hollow.
Rhett Uh after rough hollow well i kind of just gradually moved away from it and, didn't didn't really show up anymore and in january like january 1st pretty much of 2023, is when i got all of the entrepreneurial motivation on all the entrepreneurial motivation to go ahead and make the best bike park in texas to you know not like a small 40k park that i work on with people i'm talking like a full-on let's go raise three million dollars let's get 12 employees let's make a for-profit bike park a business like the big real real deal and in like six months before then like in June of 2022 I would have thought that raising money and making a bike park as a high school would have been outright impossible no way I could ever do that right but because of beta camp and mainly because of my mentors at school and my masterpiece program at school which I can get into all of these entrepreneurs in my life told me Rhett you can make a business this has a high score right you can actually go make this bike park happen like i know it sounds crazy but raising three million at your age like you can totally do it like just go ahead and try to reach out to investors just see what happens you know maybe you fail just come on like this is way more possible than you think and after i had like 10 of these really impressive entrepreneurs like telling me one in one-on-one conversations that i should go ahead and try to make this happen i was like man that's crazy i guess i will and do you.
Brooks Want to name those folks.
Rhett Name those folks uh The ones that had the one-on-one conversation with you?
Brooks Yeah, go for it.
Rhett I mean, I guess so. Salman, he actually invested in the park, was the leader of BetaCamp. He was a really cool, motivational guy, but he wasn't like an old 50-year-old investor. He was like this 24-year-old startup founder that kind of knew my humor. That's cool. Joshua Baer is the owner of Capital Factory. And the way I met him was funny. I actually met his son on like a random trip in the Caribbean and we just started talking about mountain biking they were like wait you live in Austin wait do you know about mountain biking wait your dad is the owner of Capital Factory and then I was like what and then I went back to Joshua Bear and I was like hey I know this is the randomest email ever but like I just met your son I'm trying to like I I have this random idea of making a bike park just want to talk about entrepreneurship but then he really motivated me to go out and chase my dreams of making this bike Black Bar Cabin. And... None of these kids would know me, but I always read online stories about teen entrepreneurs. Like, I haven't spoken a word to them at all, but I read this news story about this, like, girl in Dallas who raised, like, $2 million, like, started a candy business. And I was like, huh, she's in high school. What? She did that? And then Eric Zhu, this kid in California that raised, like, $20 million at 16 years old, like, from a school bathroom. It's a crazy story. you can go look it up and all these other kids who like made businesses as high schoolers and i was like dude that can be me no way that can be me and the biggest one the biggest motivator of them all was at my school alpha it's this tiny private school in downtown i'm i'm the first graduating class it's a startup school it's it's really weird there's like no classrooms no tests and they and the people at that school always drilled this thing into me of like hey you got got to make a masterpiece which is a which is a super ambitious project for a high schooler to do so throughout your four years of of high school at alpha all the students are supposed to make a super ambitious project not just like a senior capstone project like something that is as impressive as being an olympian in high school and they were like ret we want you to go ahead and make this masterpiece happen because they didn't really start the masterpiece program until i was a junior like ninth and tenth grade the masterpiece program just wasn't really a thing and then the the Mastery Program started, and then all these people at my school were like, Rhett, you should go take a huge leap. Like, Ruff Hollow is not it, bro. Like, you need to go raise $3 million and make the best pike work in Texas. You need to make a whole business at the high school. And I'm like, that seems way too ambitious. There's no way I can do that. But these people at my school just kept on telling me and telling me and telling me that it was possible and that I needed to change my mindset. And then I just needed to go out, make a pitch check, message investors and see if it goes anywhere. And I was like, okay, okay, fine. I'll try. So basically, all in all, here's the the summary. After hearing the motivational speeches from hundreds of entrepreneurs, and after compiling my resume, January 1st, 2023, that's when I officially started, put my foot in the ground and said, I'm gonna make this happen. So it started there. So the real story starts January 1st, 2023. Yeah. So then I was like, all right, where do I start? I guess I got to make this happen. So I made a pitch deck, like a 10 slide pitch deck that you can like something on Google slides about, hey, if we make the best bike park in Texas, it's going to cost this much. It's we should do it in Texas because it is the only place in the world with sufficient terrain, a bunch of riders and a lack of bike parks. Parks you go to utah think about it you have so many bike parks yeah you have a bunch of riders you have good terrain but it's saturated you go to florida yeah you have a bunch of riders but there's no terrain and vermont like yeah it's full of bike parks and there's not that many riders like vermont would be the worst place uh so i was kind of adding up the factors and i realized that out of all places in the whole world texas is the only place in a free market, economy with a bunch of riders with the lack of bike parks and sufficient terrain so i was like like all right i think it's only going to work in texas so i'm glad i live here and that's the general pitch i gave to investors so yeah i think.
Brooks I think spider mountain went far too long without any competition and i think it showed and i think it showed when you came along that i think things changed and it was pretty noticeable at spider mountain.
Rhett Yeah i noticed that too yeah oh and by the way i don't want a dog on spider no no so oh i gotta say this really quick yeah there's so many people online that are like oh yeah spider mountain sucks bro station mountain is so much better like i'm like i don't believe that and i don't want people to talk about that like all the beef you see between station and spider is all third-party beef like none of the actual crew at station mountain or the actual crew at spider mountain like hate the other park in fact we really support the other park like i will like i have ridden spider mountain a lot and like i raced there and is awesome and like their employees go to station and we talk that's not like like like we're homies and we're not hating on each other at all, but there's all this third party beef that tries to make it a big deal, and I wish those people would just stop.
Brooks Yeah, I mean, they talk a lot at my workplace about the abundance mindset is like, you know, we're all at my place, we're all competing with each other. But we're really like, we're very collaborative, we work together and help each other. And I think that's super important in an industry. And certainly you and Spider both serve the benefit from each other. Because somebody could come out there for a weekend and spend a day at Spider and spend a day at Station.
Rhett Which they do all the time.
Brooks Yeah.
Rhett I see so many people coming from Dallas and Houston that do the one day, one day or the three day weekend with Reveille involved. And I think it's actually getting more people riding.
Brooks Yeah.
Rhett I don't think it's hurting each other's business.
Brooks There's no good reason for any sort of adversarial mentality, I don't think.
Rhett No, not at all. But anyway, back to the story. Back to the story.
Brooks Yes.
Rhett So I got, okay, I got sidetracked. Okay. Anyway, I made the pitch check and I found people on LinkedIn with both mountain biker and investor in their profile. And in fact, I made a list of every single person on LinkedIn with mountain biker and investor in their profile. It was like 550 people. I messaged every single one saying, hey, I'm a 17 year old making a bike park. Texas is best bike park. Like, here's my whole pitch. Like, here's how much it'll cost. Like, hey, if you're interested, let's talk more. And then I got like 10 responses of the 550. So not only did I technically get told no, like all but 10 times, but just like ghosted. And I was like, man, that's kind of disappointing.
Brooks Yeah.
Rhett So the first step, I was so hyped to get into this entrepreneurship thing, and I got 10 responses. Not even anything close to an investor, after getting so hyped to get into the entrepreneurship thing. So that was kind of hurtful. And then, just to add on top, all the 10 investors who were potentially interested said, hey, you need to land, or then we're not going to do it. And I started messaging every single ranch owner in Texas with more than 300 feet of vert within two hours of Austin. Which, by the way, took deep research. I got to message realtors as if I were going to buy a property just to ghost them so I could get the contact info of these guys.
Brooks No, you shouldn't be telling me that.
Rhett So then I got the emails, phone numbers, and I wrote 123 handwritten on-flobes, cold calls, emails to every single ranch owner that fit the requirements. And not only did these guys not ghost me, every single one, 123 out of 123 said, no, I'm not allowing a bike park on my property.
Brooks Wow.
Rhett Wow and then at that point 123 like every single potential landowner said no like 10 guys responded like zero interested investors and like it just sucks because i was so hard to get into entrepreneurship with literally off the bat everyone said no and this was like march 1st at this point like two months went by and i was just like man i think i want to give up, i really did like i wanted to persevere but i mean everyone's saying no off the bat it just didn't even seem remotely possible so i thought about giving up and i went back to my mentors course. And they're like, no, this is the thing. You have to keep on persevering. And they showed me all these like kind of cliche stories about persevering and entrepreneurs and what happens to them in the end. It was super cliche. And I was like, all right, you know what? Okay, I guess I'll try for one more month and let you see where it goes. And then some good news started happening. I reached out to investors again with like a different pitch. I revised my pitch check, made it better. And people started to get interested. And they're like, oh, I actually might want to invest in this. You just need to get land. And then through one of the potential investors, he worked at this company where he knew a guy who could invest in land, like not an already owned cattle ranch leasing from them. This is like outright purchasing land where I would lease from him, right? right? And he's like, hey, if you find me a property that I can purchase, go ahead and do a temporary lease with me. We can make it happen. It just needs to fit these requirements and it needs to make financial sense. And I was like, okay, okay, okay. So I started looking for properties. There was one property in the whole entire Texas market for sale with more than 300 feet of vert within two hours of Austin. That was for sale. So then I messaged the guy and I was like, hey, this is the one property that we should make it work. And he's like, all right, I'll give you a 45k per month lease and I was like what no that's way too high. And I was like man maybe I could squeeze some numbers to make that work and I messaged these other bike park founders for advice and they like laughed and they heard 45k a month so I was like oh okay I guess not so then we I actually negotiated him to do 25k per month plus 40% in equity so that so still really high but the goal from day one was that this was going to be a temporary lease where two things would either happen one we start making enough money to get over 25k a month which actually might happen like we're kind of on track to hit that or we sell the property to a guy that doesn't need a land lease and that's what we're trying to do i mean i think we're going to get over break even but it's not going to look good for investors with the current 25k a month so something that we're trying to get around more but anyway this is a year later back then I was like wait I can get property land lease that is like kind of sort of somewhat doable you know what sure let's make it happen like this is the only way that I can get property I'll just have to cope with the high land lease this is my only option I gotta make it happen so I went back to him and said all right let's make it happen I'm gonna get investors by the property and then I started pondering the situation thinking man I'm about to make a three million dollar deal like Like when literally nine months ago, I thought this was absolutely impossible. That is pretty crazy. So he went ahead and bought the property for. 2.8 million and i went back to my investors and said dude we just got a 2.8 million dollar property like y'all gotta invest the the y'all gotta invest the 350k no way the 350k is hard to get if i get a 2.8 million investor right but no it's super hard to get because everyone wants to invest in land because like worst case scenario you get all your money back right and like 350k when you can go to zero k if it goes worst case scenario like no one wants to invest in that so these investors weren't interested so then i was like i only have 30k right now like only 30k of the 350k that I need and I got like three weeks to get it this is crazy and I was on this three week crunch time now this was in like late May and early June so I did the LinkedIn thing again where I messaged a bunch of people on LinkedIn mostly the same people and I went more than that I went I went on the local mountain biking Facebook groups like I'm an awesome Dallas mountain Dallas mountain biking Facebook group saying like hey I'm a high schooler making a bike park if you know any investors let me know and I way more than that I started going to these startup conferences in downtown because I knew that I needed to do more networking than just linkedin right so i just i was working like 12 hours a day just on my computer like which for me my personality is really weird like i like actually was not writing seven days a week because i because i had to get this done and i was on my grad so i went to all these conferences linkedin facebook one-on-one networking emails all this and basically after learning networking techniques after learning cold email techniques. And whenever someone said no, I would ask them for five connections. I was like, hey, how about five people that you know that might be interested? And I actually, believe it or not, because I learned the hard way, was able to raise 350K within three weeks. I couldn't raise 350K over the course of five months. But once it came time, once I was at crunch time, using these networking techniques, cold email things, and then cold calls, I closed $358,000 in late June, early July. $2.8 million property closed and it happened. And then like one day I woke up and looked at my bank account. I was like, I have $350,000 in my business account and I'm 17. It was so wild. And I don't know, for those who know me, I'm definitely not your... Humorously average dude so i went back like i don't know i guess when i talk to people i don't, come across as that smart for like my mountain bike friends so i went back to them and i was like yeah look at this like i have 350k and they were all like no way they like didn't believe it they didn't believe it at all and then i actually bring me back to the thing in february of 2023 i I told them, I'm going to do it. I'm going to make the best bike park in Texas. I'm going to get investors. And they all called me crazy. And they're like, yeah, yeah, whatever. None of them believed it. And I went back and I was like, dude, there's $350,000 in my business account right now. Do you see this? This is happening. This is so wild. And they're like, nah, bro. Ain't no way that's real.
Brooks They didn't believe you, huh?
Rhett No. But then after I talked to them, they were like, yo, no way that's real. And then they're like, dude, it's happening. And then I was full of excitement. I was like, there's money. Money. I have money. This is crazy. And then that kind of happened like right on my 18th birthday as I like closed the investment. And then reality struck and I was like, I have money. Like I have land. Like my life path is going to be completely different. And I realized like I need to go build a bike park. Like I actually need to go live on this property and start making trails. I mean, it was crazy. It was crazy to think that I persevered and that all of this happened going going from a kid who didn't believe that making a bike park was remotely possible or making a business was remotely possible to like having that money in the span of less than 10 months. That was wild. And it was wild to think about. And you know, I'm still definitely not a mature guy at all. And it's just not, not at all. And, uh, and, uh, it's kind of weird to think that like I had that much control and I was like, how did these investors believe me? Seriously i was like thinking this.
Brooks But well i think a lot of people see like a young entrepreneur like somebody reaching out to them to start a business and you know some people invest to make money and some people invest in things that make them happy you know yeah and i think seeing a young entrepreneur that that wants to be successful and like asking the kind of questions that you are like nobody else nobody who's not business savvy is asking them those questions yeah.
Rhett And also on that note i want to make some clarification for some people on the story some people hear like oh, he raised $350K. Like, he just got his daddy's country club friends. They're like, oh, he raised $350K. That's because people donated the money. Like, no, these are serious equity investors. These are, like, guys, like, these are angel investors.
Brooks Well, they were investments, not donations, right?
Rhett Yeah, like, investments. Like, these are people who have equity. It was, like, $358K for a 20% stake, to be specific, that, like, are all in the bookkeeping and the financials and, like, plan on making their money back. The total family friends investment was $19,000. Like the investment is like serious investors and it's not something that i had like my dad's, connections or anything uh total family friends is like 19k so like this is a legit investment like people that plan to make their money back and will yeah so then it was july and i realized i can't just bullshit this i can't just get friends out here to start making trails i need to like hire builders. I need to go out and get proper trail builders professional and make 23 trails and make a real bike park. So I just started messaging random people that I saw did projects out throughout the nation and said, Hey, can you come here for like a nine week project? Some guys from Alabama, South Carolina and Arizona came over in their vans. And I rented about 100k worth of machines, got seven skid stairs and many excavators to the property, All the hand tools that we needed the buildings the water lines the fuel tanks and. And like 100 more things to the property. And we all sat down. It was like August 28th, to be specific, and said, all right, this bike park is going to open on November 3rd. We haven't built a single trail. I want 20 trails done by November 3rd. Here's my basic idea of how the trails should work. And we got to work. So right off the bat, I sucked at managing, dude. I was a bad manager. I got into a lot of arguments with the builders. I kind of just let them dominate me and take control of me when i was like hey let's build the trail this way and they said no let's build it this way and i like tried to be a little bit pressing with it but no one wants to listen to a high schooler that hasn't really built trails before they didn't respect you no they didn't respect me they're like i'm gonna build this trail how i want to except greg greg dupont is a great guy i love greg yeah shout out to greg uh no he was also very good always keeping the vibes pretty chill but i mean i don't want to hate on any of the builders at all because i totally totally get what their minds are thinking like oh i don't listen to like a high score tell me what to do like i want to build my own trail that's just that's just a trail builder mindset i'm not hating on any of the builders of the project and i really respect them all it was just frustrating, because i wanted to get my bike park done and the thing is that i sucked at managing i couldn't tell people what to do and. I just, yeah, I just let them take advantage and take control of me, which I don't, I mean, I don't mean that in a negative way towards them. It's just what was going on. And it wasn't going well. So we were like three weeks into building. Trails weren't being built as I wanted to. The tech trails weren't coming along. I wasn't really even, I wasn't, I wasn't even able to be there that often because I had to be at school like four or five days a week. So I told my school like, hey, look, Station Mountain, it's not being built as I wanted to. And I want to make the best bike park in texas i need to be at school never for the next nine weeks yeah and then how.
Brooks Did that go.
Rhett Yeah well actually they were they were supportive of it because they were like oh this kid's making some serious progress on his masterpiece so we need to have like an advertizable student for a future to show that our first class is successful yeah sure we'll we'll we'll let him do it.
Brooks They sound like a very progressive school.
Rhett Yes very very interesting interesting school.
Brooks Very interesting school.
Rhett And also, on that note though, there's still a lot of other really cool masterpiece projects at Alpha. I don't want to act like I'm like the only one or the first one.
Brooks Tell me about some of those.
Rhett Yeah, so some girl's making a teen dating app. Some other girl's doing a bunch of like cancer research stuff and she's going pretty far and like has a bunch of hype on social media. And some other girl's becoming an author, like writing all these newsletters and books and stuff, you know. Projects like that. And we only have like eight people in our first class. We only started the Masterpiece program like a year and a half ago. So it's still really in its beta stages, hence why not that many projects, but it has a bunch of potential. But when it comes like real Masterpieces, yeah, I'd say I'm like the first one to make a real Masterpiece, but like a bunch more in the future. And I don't even feed that as like a flex or anything. But anyway, back to the story. Yeah, so I said, all right, so this is like mid-September. And I was like, hey, look, not going well with the builders. I need to be there. Just let me be there. And they're like, okay, okay, sure. Go ahead and live at Sage Mountain. So then I was able to start working five or six days a week. And then building started to get better. And a good reason why is Steve Gonzalez. So he kind of noticed what was going on. And he's like, Rhett, you're like my lost son or something like that. I don't know. And he's like, I don't know, maybe like a nephew or something. And he's like, I need this kid to succeed. Like, I see my 18-year-old self in you. And he's like, I see that you're not managing that well. Look, I'll be your project manager. Let's get this done. And Steve was so supportive, bro. Like, Steve, like, kind of went away from his normal current life to literally just help me at Station Mountain. He didn't like the job, but he pursued through and he helped out so much throughout those eight weeks. So I really don't know what I would do without Steve. And I really want to give a big thank you and shout out to him for kind of saving the whole project and getting it together. I really don't think we would have built station mountain successfully he seems like a really great guy without Steve yeah yeah he's cool. He's interesting. Very interesting character. But yeah. So he came in. So I love that. And then builders started to listen to him. So I tell Steve what to do. So he'd tell them and the builders actually listen. Yeah. And then the lines are actually starting to come together. And now since I was there all the time, I could just focus on the single track tech trails because I was really good at building these single track tech trails on a machine. Like I'm okay, but I'm not as good as a professional builders. And Then started to crank out more and more trails like that. And then most of the Alabama builders left in early October. So at this point, okay, it's looking way, way better than it was in mid-September. We made so much progress in three weeks. See, you've got stuff down. I started building more tech trails. Like, we have four weeks until opening. It's looking pretty good. And I still sucked at managing. Like, I was not acting like a boss. I was just acting like a kid that didn't put his foot in the door. And that's one of my biggest mistakes. I wish I was able to be more assertive.
Brooks Well, live and learn.
Rhett Yeah, live and learn indeed. Learn a lot. But then we came into a problem where we had to get so many logistics set up. We had to get a trash system set up, port-a-potties, work on the septic. We need to buy tractors. We need to get trailers built, shuttles built. we needed to set up the containers with like the AC and the planks you need to get rental bikes you need to make a shop I mean the list goes on and on and on and I just wasn't even able to build trails anymore because I had to do all this online work I had to order all this stuff uh I had to set up all the online systems the payment system and for the last four weeks of the project I wasn't really putting any shovels in the ground because I just had to uh set up all of the logistics but I got to work and I made a whole list of like 500 things I need to get done by opening and just one one by one, every single day. I got these tasks done, all the boring chores. But the mission was in mind, so even when I was doing the boring chores, I was like, oh, this is so fun because the grand mission is so cool. And finalized the trails over those four weeks, and then the vibes were getting better. I was like, oh, we're two weeks away from opening, but ever since August 28th, it's actually gotten better, and we slowly, slowly got better and better at building. And November 2nd rolled around, and it was kind of like a last day build panic of like oh we have to get everything set like the shuttles weren't working and all this and all that but we got it set and then, We opened on a Friday on purpose because there's less riders on weekdays. So we could have like a basic opening day with November 4th being the real opening day. Like a test run. Yeah, like a test run opening day. And I told everyone when they got here, I was like, look, it's not going to go smooth on opening weekend, but I'm so glad you're here and supporting the park. And everyone was like, yeah, I don't care at all. And yeah, I was there.
Brooks I think it went well.
Rhett Yeah. And like, yeah, we had minor issues on opening weekend, but it went smooth. And it was like probably like the best weekend of my life to see like all those people there. and I was like, bro, how did I generate all this demand? Like I was a high schooler, like, oh my God, I have a business now, like I have customers, like I have employees, I have people at the bike shop, I have people driving shuttles, I have builders, like it was a real thing. And I was astonished. I was so astonished. It was crazy. So then as I also look back in the build process, I want to give a huge thank you to my ranch neighbor, Justin, which a lot of y'all might see around Station Mountain. All of the ranch maintenance tasks, such as fixing the well, building the road, road uh seating you know random ranch related maintenance tasks justin helped with that the whole project because i actually remember back in july i was like flagging these trails, and this old ranch dude stopped by and he's like i was like oh i'm about to get a talking to but he was the nicest guy ever and he's like hey i'm your ranch neighbor what are you doing i'm like oh i'm a kid making a bike park and he's like no way and then he's like i'm down to help you in any way possible look you might get some stingy people around here but i'm on your side and like i'm down to help you anyway for this bike park and since then he's been working every single week on ranch main it's still up to this day and he's been super nice super inviting to his home he's a super funny guy he has a son garrett eight year eight years old didn't know what mountain biking was five months ago and it's like one of the best eight-year-old mountain bikers i know now he rides there all the time because he lives right next to the bike park, and so on and so forth but that whole family has been amazing i i also don't know how i do this without Justin so that was cool did.
Brooks He volunteer for the whole thing.
Rhett No paid I mean we didn't really get that many volunteers yeah that was cool and then so I guess the other builders to mention, Dial Dirt is like the crew from Alabama that came and they built all of Sunny Fat Pits like the whole, top to bottom run that was that was their trail and again I want to specify when I say like I got arguments with the trail voters and whatnot it's not like i disliked them like i totally get the reasoning for not wanting to listen to high school like there's nothing wrong with that at all and i totally get it and they built a sick trail and like it was uh very successful and couldn't have done it without them because like the 75 hitch trail is like the most essential trail at station and that took a bunch of work like that bottom part crazy amount of work and a lot of skill too. Uh and alfonso is a guy from arizona that came he's super cool he built the el cinco line in Byrne Park, and I, greg's whole crew was but was the rest so greg built like the rest of the flow lines at station, and then and then the tech trails were mainly me so and then we had a few others there's a guy named jonathan there builder from houston he was cool he was the best guy listening to me and i think jonathan was one of the most like underplayed at builders at station uh huge respect to him and this other guy named logan that actually stuck around for like four months after too uh old spider mountain builder in fact and he he he he always had the best interest for the park and the best interest for me the best interest financially so that meant a lot and, i don't know there's a bunch of other guys i think like look look i'll be honest i could go on for 10 i could go on for an hour thanking people to be honest i could go on for so long because there's so many people to thank there's so many investors to thank but like if you're involved at station mountain like i didn't have beef with you that's all i'm gonna say like i and And I'm very thankful for everyone's help. I'm not like a hating guy. And there's so many people involved, like all the investors too. Dude, there's so many people to thank. But yeah, so many people made this project.
Brooks Can you talk about some of your larger investors and like what their backgrounds are and what they usually invest in? Is it, you know, have they invested in like mountain bike and sports stuff before?
Rhett Yeah. So no, not really. So the biggest investor is a guy named Scott. And he is actually a plumbing truck owner, a plumbing company owner in Dallas.
Brooks And he first i met him we were parked next to him he seemed like oh that's cool was he out there on the little blue e-bike yeah yeah yeah.
Rhett He's super cool i don't know if it's blue but he has an e-bike.
Brooks But yeah uh so he uh.
Rhett First heard about the idea in June off of one of the Facebook posts. His friends sent him a Facebook post. And for some reason, he just knew this is going to be successful. I'm going to invest in this kid. I know this is going to be successful. He told all of his friends and his business partners and his insurance guys, like, I'm going to give 100K to a 17-year-old. And they all laughed at him. They're like, are you crazy? No, you aren't. Like, I'm not allowing you to give 100K to a 17-year-old. Are you crazy? And he's like, I just know this is going to be successful. Let's and gave 100k to a high score and he got called crazy and stupid by so many people but he did it anyway and he's like ret here's the money i just know this is gonna work so super super cool guy and he's also like huge beard full of tattoos not your standard investor at all yeah he's also a really funny guy yeah and the netflix maybe documentary that we filmed uh he has a famous quote and he's like well i gave 100k to him and then i thought is he just gonna spend this on hookers and blow the valid question yeah but i see you had like a pitch.
Brooks Deck and you had a plan and you had a business.
Rhett Plan yeah maybe i'm undermining this i was spent 300 hours making a really good pitch deck i made an in-depth pnl very in-depth pnl like i'd a lot of bookkeeping i spent a bunch of time perfecting my pitch deck to make it as good as possible, hence why i raised the 350k in only three weeks it's because i wanted to make that pitch check way better than it was back in january uh and so on like yeah maybe i'm undermining it a bit there's still a bunch of work that went into it so.
Brooks What kind of progress have you made since opening and what are your plans for the future.
Rhett So since opening we have been pretty up and down but overall profitable like all four months since opening have been profitable by a by a significant amount too we've spent thirty thousand dollars on stupid things that we should not be spending thirty thousand dollars on like a broken tractor broken decision was that broken elasticity i don't know a group group minded we were also super over employed bro build crew was over employed, overpaid we were over employed for the first few weekends so the expenses are through the roof and And I was like, why are we breaking so many things? Why am I paying so many people? So then I got it figured out and... Dude, if I went back to November 3rd, I could have gotten us to March in literally half the expenses. So super high expenses. But I think those are just growing pains.
Brooks Hindsight's 2020, right? I know. Everything's easier to, decisions are so much easier to make looking back on them.
Rhett Yeah, exactly. Exactly. So, and then on the revenue, just really up and down. So here's what's weird. No change in weather, no change in event. It's not like another event's going on in Texas. Like no change at all. Like one weekend, we'll have like 50 people and another weekend, we'll have 250 people. It's just like that random. And like the revenue, like if you look at the bookkeeping, it's like up, down, up, down, up, down, up, down. And it's kind of hard to track and I can't get projections off of it. I know that month by month it's been decently profitable, but then that ties back to the whole thing of with the land lease right now, we are not profitable. I think we can get to above break even because we can also do youth camps in summer, like a thousand bucks a kid, 40 kids, that's 40K in a month. That's crazy money. And I think we can get above break even for the land lease for sure. But I'm trying to give my investors a good return here. here. I'm trying to give them the returns that I promised, which I don't think we'll be able to do with the land lease. So the big thing that I'm really, really focusing on right now is selling the land. Because if we can get a buyer, we will be able to have no land lease, ensure a great future for the investors, ensure a profit for the current land investor, the guy who bought the land, and the guy who buys a property is going to own a sick property with the bike park that's increasing in value and has a bunch of benefits. It is literally a win-win-win-win situation if if we sell this property. So right now, the current goal is to sell the property. It's going to go live in a week or two or maybe like three weeks.
Brooks So what kind of buyer are you looking for? Is it going to be somebody like an investor, like a business owner? Or is it going to be somebody who just lives on the property and lets you take care of everything?
Rhett I'm looking for anyone that would buy the property.
Brooks Yeah. There's probably a specific kind of person that's going to want that kind of property, right?
Rhett Yeah, yeah, yeah. So if you're a purely financially interested investor, investor like if you invest in the S&P 500 or something else you're going to make a better return year over year because that's just how land works like look land value does increase and yes you will get a percentage of profits if you buy this land but no one no one really wants to do it for purely financial reasons so we're taking a little bit of a different angle and saying okay so here let me back up a little bit if this was the cattle meadow hunting property that it was back in June, it would be able to sell at its value of $3 million within like, 45 days 60 days just like as a normal ranch property in texas would know the listing price is 3.175 million so i don't know if we're gonna sell it at 3 million or lower we'll see that's more, uh logistical stuff if you're interested in the sale let uh reach out to me but yeah reach.
Brooks Out to me i'll help you.
Rhett Yeah yeah that's more logistical stuff on the numbers every three 3 million-ish, probably higher, maybe lower. But now, because a bike park is operating on a weekend, someone who would otherwise buy the meadow cattle hunting property is now not going to buy it, right? Because they're like, oh, no, they're running a bike park on Saturday and Sunday. Now, no, that sucks. I'm not going to go spend the $3.175 million anymore. But here's the thing. Look, I'm going to give you free ranch maintenance. So if your septic tank breaks or if the road needs maintenance, I got you. I'll give you free ranch upgrades. rates if you want cows for free i'll do it if you want your pond stocked if you want the grass seeded if you want fish in your ponds i will literally pay for all that and do it all for you uh if you want free access to to the bike park i hope that's obvious that you'll get it, uh and if you want a percentage of profits yes like a percentage of weekly profit or weekly revenue i like i will totally do that and i'll just hand you a check every week and a huge list list of other benefits as well, like free animals, we can do hunting rights for you, we can cover all the insurance and liability, obviously. So there's really only one downside to buying the land, which is, look, we're going to have a running bike park on Saturday and Sunday. But other than that, completely private to you, if that is weak, the house is always private to you, bike park or not. And the upper 40 acres that we don't touch are always private to you and quiet and you can't hear the bikers or see the bikers like it's like just your private 40 acres. and I hope that someone who's. Sees a list of benefits and realizes that it outweighs the one con of a running bike park on Saturday and Sunday. So I'm seeing a buyer that sees this property as a kickback property, where they don't want to deal with ranch maintenance. And if they want to get ranch upgrades, they don't want to pay for it. They just want to kick my property that they can go and enjoy life on. That's the type of buyer that I'm looking for. And on top of that, the kickback property owner is going to get some money back. And it's still a sufficient return, a return that's going to beat inflation, a return that's like, you know, year over year, year making financial sense maybe it's not a great investment but like it's really not that many downsides to the land sale and from the realtors and brokers that i've talked to it's looking pretty likely that we'll we'll be able to sell within 12 months but i'm looking to sell within three months and worst case scenario we don't sell look bike park's still going to be more than make even hopefully we get the bike work to be to be more than profitable i just want to give my investors a sufficient return and when you take away 25k a month it makes investors returns way better yeah.
Brooks I don't i don't think i would consider a bike park at my house a con personally but.
Rhett Yeah uh.
Brooks So you mentioned something to me in a text yesterday that's happening in south texas is that something it's a done deal or something you can talk about.
Rhett Oh yeah i'll talk about it yeah so i think it's like a 90 chance that i'm building a bike park for spacex in like like three weeks so i had a mutual connection to spacex well basically a guy from my school was talking with a guy who knew a guy that worked at spacex.
Brooks That's how business works right.
Rhett Yeah and the guy who knows the guy and the guy who knew the guy that knew me was like wait isn't there that one kid at that one school that's like making a bike park and the guy that knows me was like yes there is a kid and then they're like hey look we all just moved from california and we're used to biking and now we live in the most boring town in Texas and like life here this town is kind of lame, can we get something fun here and like have that kid maybe go over here and he's like yes bro that, That would be such a good idea. Let's go send an email to my boy Rhett and see if he's down. And I'm like, yeah, of course I'm down. SpaceX wants me to build a bike park for them and make their life more fun there. And like, yeah, that's the dopest opportunity ever. So I visited SpaceX three days ago and it was a really fun trip. Got to the whole property, met a bunch of amazing people at SpaceX. And I think I'm going down there again in three weeks to make this bike park happen.
Brooks That's by Brownsville, right?
Rhett Yes. So flattest land you'll ever see. And just a jump park, like 9th Street. But more for mountain bikes is I guess the best way to describe it.
Brooks It's smaller.
Rhett 9th Street, same property size. Just imagine those jumps but instead of 60 degree loops, 30 degree loops.
Brooks Looking forward to it.
Rhett I know. I really am. That's cool. Now, if you want to talk about future opportunities, I'm down to get into that. Go for it. Cool. Now that Sage Mountain is fully open, I guess this is my first time I'm publicly saying this, but I don't really plan as being like an entire 100% devoted full manager to Station Mountain in five years. Like I plan on passing it off to a manager and kind of gradually getting less day-to-day involved at Station Mountain, just like a bunch of people do with other bike parks and other ski resorts. There's nothing wrong with that. To go chase my dreams of doing something bigger. I really, really, really want to make the world's best bike park I do I want to make the next Whistler I want to make something better than Whistler I think it's a huge opportunity Because think about it If you're Vail, And you have a summer bike park It's very average And there's hundreds of average bike parks in the US That don't make great money Such as Vail Bike Park itself Or North Star. Or Angelfire, Taos, like all these other bike parks. I mean, maybe not Angelfire, but they're getting like 200 riders a day and they're kind of at break even. They just do it as like a summer marketing program. If someone gets hurt, that's a $20 million lawsuit. If they're going to get $2 million, they're going to put that towards snowmakers instead of their bike park. Like, you know, running a bike park just doesn't make that much financial sense for the ski resort industry because bike parks don't get that much demand. demand. So many ski resorts are very closed to making good bike parks. But, here's the thing. There's a difference between an average bike park or a good bike park. Like, there's not much of a difference between an average and a good bike park. But there's a huge difference. A huge difference between a good bike park and Whistler. Like, Angelfire, in my opinion, is way more fun than Trestle. And I. They're not getting that many people because they're great. Like they're a great bike park, but they're not amazing. Like this is good versus great versus amazing. But Whistler, because it's so amazing, because it's just the outright definitive world of best bike park, is literally, not even kidding, getting 30 times more demand than Angel Fire. They pulled in 300,000 people during their Crankworx weekend. They added $50 million to their economy in one week because of their Crankworx weekend. They're getting more people during these summer events and their winter events. Their hotels and restaurants are booked during the summer the total economic impact on the canadian gdp and the whistler slash squamish gdp for biking is like absurd it's through the roof and veil resorts actually owns whistler and they're making bank through whistler and they focus on whistler and they know that like they're going to get their money there and the amount of money and demand and all that that whistler makes is crazy and whistler is one of the few. Summer towns other than aspen and a few others that you can go to and see booked hotels and booked restaurants it was rare to see that in the summer at any other resort so my pitch is to go to the ideal resort is park city and say look i know you don't want to make a mediocre bike park i get it i don't i i don't recommend that but if you want to go all in and build 150 trails build a huge indoor woodward style facility build like a 1000 hitch jump line not a 75 hits like 1000 hits It's like a crazy amount of World Race Cup tracks. If you want to get World Cup races here, like if you want to get all the pros here, if you want to maybe hold like a hard line here, like I'm talking like if you want to go all out on you're going to make the outright, definitive world best bike park, I guarantee you, you're going to make so much money. And I guarantee you, your hotels and restaurants are going to be booked and your summertime won't be that depressing. I mean, there's so many benefits. So my goal is to convince a resort to allow me to make the world's best bike park. Not just a bike park, but the world's best bike park. Outright definitive, better than Whistler Best. And these resorts, such as Park City, are the perfect place to do it. They have a huge base area. So think about Park City, huge town in the base area. And they get a bunch of people visiting there just for like hiking and having fun in the town. They're right next to a giant airport. There's already a bunch of mountain bikers in Salt Lake City and a bunch of bike trails in the Utah area. They have a really good mountain full of lifts, like 3,000 plus feet of vert. And it just baffles me. I'm like, why aren't you making a good bike park? I mean, they literally just have cross-country trails. And they're like, oh, liability, ooh, insurance. And I'm like, but you don't understand. Like, here, think about it. I'll make a shell company. So I'm gonna go ahead and raise your 30 million necessary to make this bike park. I'm gonna handle all insurance and liability. I will pay for your lift cable decay. I will pay for your restroom usage, your parking lot usage. I will pay for literally every single expense even related to the bike park that you can think of. You don't have to put any money towards this. If we get sued, they sue me, not you. You don't have to deal with us dealing with any of your facilities. We'll pay for literally all of it. Worst case scenario, nothing happens. Best case scenario, you're making bank. I'm just asking you to allow me to make a company that's going to build a bike park on your property and we'll give you like 50% of profit or something super high. I mean, how can you not turn, like, how can you not say yes to that offer? And my goal is to send this pitch to 50 plus ski resorts and hope that one says yes, just like I did with Station Mountain Investors and Land Investors. So maybe instead of 123 out of 123 saying no, it's 49 out of 50 saying no.
Brooks Yeah. Well, you get something to refer back to, like, look, I already built a bike park.
Rhett Yeah. Because now I have much more of a resume than Ruff Hollow.
Brooks Yeah.
Rhett Much more.
Brooks Well i we refer you know when we're talking with the city and like trying to get parks built and stuff like that we refer back to bentonville all the time because they have managed to make an attraction out of the middle of nowhere in arkansas yes like it's it's walmart town there's not anything else there but people from are constantly moving from austin to arkansas and that city's all in on that and they you know they obviously are making money from it and they're They're obviously investing and getting more people living there. And I just don't see why the city of Austin can't see that same kind of growth and just kind of, they're not super supportive of mountain bikers, I don't think.
Rhett Yeah. Yeah. I see that same thing. But same with almost all cities.
Brooks Yeah.
Rhett Bentonville is just built different.
Brooks Yeah.
Rhett Yeah.
Brooks Well, I think we need some kind of massive investor to start building trails like that around here.
Rhett Maybe so. So, well, I tried with public land a while before I kind of coped with private land when I had the initial idea for Station Mountain, but it's just, it's almost possible. It also takes way too long. No one wants to wait 10 years.
Brooks Yeah.
Rhett Yeah. No one.
Brooks Lenny Manant, I think we got a pretty good time going here. Is there anything else you want to talk about before we wrap it up?
Rhett Anything else I want to talk about? Hold on. There actually might be. Let me think. Oh, yeah. Well, I also want to clarify something that I've been getting some hate for sometimes of me seeing Station Mountain as a selfish thing as a way to make money. Bro, all right. This whole time, been a volunteer project. I haven't pocketed a single dollar from Station Mountain ever. Not during the whole building process, not during me being out there. I work on Station Mountain, computer work plus trail work plus riding 60 hours a week, and I haven't made a single dime. I don't plan on it. I reinvest everything back into the business. My goal with Station Mountain, the reason why I want to be profitable, is only for the investors. I see Station Mountain as an entrepreneurial stepping stone to my future. My goal is to give a return to my investors. All my equity, I always reinvest. I don't care about it. And the only reason why like, I have these big entrepreneurial billionaire-esque dreams, like to make the world's best bike park or even do something more than that. Like the reason why I have these dreams is specifically because like, I want to help people out. Like I want to use my money towards charity. I could live in a van if I want to do. Like, if you ask like, what do you see your 50 year old self to be like? I see myself as like a billionaire that lives in a van. Seriously. That's like my ideal future. I could really, really care less about anything to do with money, but my overall life goal from a more. A real standpoint is i want to make the maximum positive impact possible so i want to like make as much money as possible to go donate as much money as possible towards like maximum impact. Uh philanthropy so like not something like mountain biking where like the impact per dollar is pretty low like something like malaria or hunger where like you're getting a really good impact per dollar so like my my life goal is like use this money towards charity just like a really high impact per dollar thing and i don't want to like make any money to like get lamborghini's or fancy cars or anything but yes i do plan on making as much money as possible from the world's best bike park that's the goal of entrepreneurship it's the goal of business and the golden thing about entrepreneurship is that making a business can actually benefit society like i guarantee this world's best bike park will benefit society but no for all the people that are saying oh you're chasing entrepreneurial dreams you want to be selfish because you want to use your money you're you're paying yourself compensation. No, I'm not, that's not any of my goals.
Brooks I mean, even if you were, there's nothing wrong with wanting to have a business and wanting to be profitable, I don't think.
Rhett No. Well, I definitely do want to be profitable, but.
Brooks Yeah, yeah. I mean, there's nothing wrong with taking money home. Everybody has a job, everybody has, either works for a business or has a business, and I don't think there's anything inherently wrong with that, you know? Yeah. Oney Ray Ritt, it's been a pleasure speaking with you. I think I can tell, and I think probably our audience can tell what a smart guy you are and how driven you are and um it's exciting to see somebody so young working so hard and making things happen um do you want to share any kind of socials or carding information station mountain website instagram all that follow at.
Rhett Station mountain bike park on instagram follow at ret rides my personal riding page that's where you can get all your info.
Brooks Awesome well i am brooks lawson this has been the mountain biking awesome mountain podcast uh you can find all things brooks at brookslawson.com all right thank you have a good one thank you peace.