Built on Passion

Josh sits down with Gnarly Nutrition founder Eli Kerr & CPO Shannon O’Grady. Gnarly makes sports nutrition that focuses on making natural, effective products that taste delicious (and they’ve pull it off in spades). Gnarly was originally created with the goal of creating clean, natural supplements that focus on providing everything you need to elevate your performance without sacrificing taste. Though there are plenty of supplement options out there, few truly hold true to these values, which gave Eli the extra push to develop Gnarly Nutrition. With an array of supplements to help you out pre, during and post-exercise, Gnarly is trying to bridge the gap between functionality and taste of their supplements to create natural products that people look forward to using.

Josh sits down with Megalith Climbing founder Ben Browning. Megalith Climbing makes climbing holds AND customizable panels so you can turn your home, office, or even home-office into a climbing gym with their classy designs. Browning, originally grew up in Washington and while he has always had a fiery entrepreneurial spirit and passion for the outdoors, it wasn’t until he made the move from Washington to Utah that he got seriously got into the climbing scene. Noticing some barriers with getting into the sport, he wanted to create a way for people to easily bypass those barriers, whether it was not being able to afford a monthly pass or having the time to practice. What better way to make climbing more accessible than turning your abode into a gym? With his extensive background in engineering, coming up with a design for something that’s easily installable, decorative, simple, and with clean look wasn’t difficult at all. For many climbers, a well made and installed climbing wall can be considered art. Megalith is what happens when the lines of art, passion, and fitness become blurred in the best way possible.

This podcast episode was originally recorded on Oct 4, 2016. Since Weigh My Rack is a part of our current climbing gear giveaway we wanted to bring this episode back from the archives. We've cleaned up the audio a bit and hope that you enjoy the episode with co-founders Allison Dennis & Andreas Unterschuetz talking about how and why they started Weigh My Rack.

Josh sits down with Alison Dennis and Andreas Unterschuetz to talk about their website Weigh My Rack. Weigh My Rack is website where you can compare climbing gear to help climbers find the exact gear that they are looking for by providing specs, reviews, and the history and evolution of various brands. By laying out all the options that are on the market, Weigh My Rack helps its users find gear based off specific needs and preferences with just a few clicks. After Alison and Andreas got fed up with their corporate jobs they decided to hit the road and fully committed to building this invaluable tool to help climbers find the gear they’re looking for. Now they travel and adventure while building their business and helping to remove the stress of gear hunting

Josh sits down with Hiker Hunger co-founder Emily Vincunas. Hiker Hunger is a small, Boston-based, outdoor company making hiking gear for hikers and made by hikers. After graduating from college Vincunas, and her co-founder Rory McGonigle didn’t know what they wanted to do career-wise, so they did what any other outdoorsy person would do...they went hiking! On their hikes, they’d spend time reflecting, and it would be on one of these very hikes that they’d decided to start their first business venture, creating a subscription-based service that allows people to order/create care packages to send to thru-hikers on the trail (including healthy eating options). After a year of slaving away, they ended up shifting their focus on creating products. The more they hiked, the more they figured out what they liked and what they didn’t like. So what prompted such an abrupt change in their business model? You’ll have to tune in to find out!

Josh sits down with Lever Gear founder Mike Scully. Lever Gear makes small everyday carry tools will make you prepared in your everyday life to tackle whatever problems might pop up. Their flagship product is a credit card-sized multi-tool with 40 different functions on it that even has a money clip attachment. Scully had always been interested in developing products throughout his 15 years as a product consultant in San Francisco. He’s helped a lot of companies but, always had the desire to make his own products, and eventually came up with a simple idea for a smart tool with a TON of uses. Sometimes you just get the feeling that something is ‘right,’ and Scully took that feeling and let it carry him to success. Since then Lever Gear has developed a couple more products with many more on the way to help people in their daily lives!

Josh sits down with Swayy Hammocks founder Seth Hill. Swayy Hammocks makes insulated hammocks designed to conquer a serious issue in the hammock camping community, CBS, better known as Cold Butt Syndrome. If you’ve ever slept in a hammock, chances are you’ve experienced this and have fought to prevent this and luckily Swayy has found the perfect solution. Instead of having to lug around a sleeping bag, hammock, straps, pod, and a ton of other gear, Swayy has developed an all-in-one sleep system that does it all so when you get inside and snuggle up in the great outdoors you won’t have to deal with that nasty CBS… So how did Hill develop this game-breaking idea? You’ll just have to tune in to find out!

Josh sits down with HandyShower founder Zdzisław Iwanejko and Zuzanna Iwanejko. HandyShower is a 3-in-1 portable, efficient, and lightweight personal hygiene device designed with water conservation in mind. Did you know that ⅙ of humankind do not have access to running water and basic sanitation? HandyShower was created for the very reason of tackling this issue while offering a product that is designed to be more effective at conserving water.  Zdzisław, is an engineer specializing in fiber optic sensors originally created the first prototype of what we now know as HandyShower, as a means to make washing your car easier however, it wasn’t until Zuzanna got involved and help shape the scope of HandyShower and the good it can (and does!) provide the world. We are absolutely head over heels with HandyShower and are expecting great things from this rising company!

Josh sits down with Roofnest founder Tim Nickles. Roofnest is a brand offering affordable and extremely spacious rooftop tents which are an improvement on the traditional method of car camping. They’re hardshell tent so they collapsable to be compact but expand to become basically, a bedroom on your car. Nickles developed this idea back in 2016 when he wanted to make his own camper. He wanted to get a rooftop tent but, were hard to get and expensive. Having dabbled in selling things in bulk from Chinese producers, he started looking for Asian manufacturers for rooftop tents, but wasn’t satisfied with his options. Although he never planned to start a business, he decided to make his own and make drastic improvements, and as things started to develop in such a positive life, so did Roofnest.

Josh sits down with DUER founder Gary Lenett. DUER makes pants with the perfect mix of fashion and technical, designed to perform in active settings and have you looking good while doing what you’re doing. Lenett is no stranger from the fashion game, having over 33 years in the industry. Starting in the early 1990’s, Gary was in business with just about every major jean pant-player in the world but, after a while, the fashion side of the industry felt like a rerun and he lost his passion. Ready to wind down and downsize his life, he ended up trading in his car and started biking but couldn't find anything to wear if he had a meeting. He wanted to live simply and he wanted to have clothes to wear that fit his new lifestyle, so he got to work. It was his first time getting involved in outdoors lifestyle and, while DUER started small in Vancouver they now reach 50 different countries.