Business Reflections Podcast Episode #20 - Pivoting Your Business with bRUNch Running
Episode Transcript
Meredith Matics: Welcome to Business Reflections with your host Meredith Matics, and we are here to reflect on the business topics that are affecting you today and how you can better run your business. Today, I have Alex and Courtney, two guests, Founders of bRUNch Running. Can you each introduce yourselves a little bit, Alex? Why don't you start?
Alex Weissner: I'm Alex. I live in Denver. I like to run. I like to eat brunch and started this fun business with my best friend almost eight years ago now.
Cortney Logan: I'm Cortney Logan. I'm one of the co-founders as well of bRUNch Running started with Alex almost eight years ago as she had mentioned. Started out as a hobby turned business, turned into an events business. But COVID had different plans for us. So here we are.
Meredith Matics: Yeah. Let's get started a little bit and you both have so different backgrounds. How did you guys first meet?
Cortney Logan: We met actually through my best childhood friend who happened to be Alex's big sis and best friend in college. A big sis sorority sister. Alex came home with her one year to Colorado for Thanksgiving. Alex and I just really hit it off. We both have a love for running and our friendship kind of started on that, and then we were running a bunch of races together. Alex would meet us.
She was living in Arizona and she would meet us wherever we were running. We talked her into moving to Colorado and we were running and running and that kind of led us to brunch.
Meredith Matics: What were each of your career paths prior to starting bRUNch Running?
Cortney Logan: I was going to be an attorney. I was working in a law firm. I took the LSAT. I was applying for law school and that's what I thought I was going to do. Actually my boss, who's an attorney really talked me out of it. My husband, he was really supportive and said, I'll put you through law school if that's what you want to do, but I just think you have more passion and other things.
You're a people person, you love events. So I transitioned to this brunch thing. We were kind of toying with it while I was working at the law firm. It was a hobby and Alex is background's PR and Alex really was like, let's just dive in and do this. We just jumped in and I decided not to do law school and quit the law firm.
Meredith Matics: So tell our listeners, what is bRUNch Running?
Cortney Logan: It's a socially fit community. It started off as weekends in Denver, Colorado, meeting at different local restaurants and going for a 5k, 10k runs, walks, skips, or stroll. We always were saying that the run option was optional, but the brunch was not.
And it was just a way for people to really, for people to really just get to know each other in the community. Find like-minded people, just really get to connect. So that's how it initially started and then we added on a race to that. A timed 5k, 10k race in Central Park in Denver.
When you cross the finish line, it's all you can eat, all you can drink brunch, libation, and food and music, and just really fun. Then it evolved into an online community cause we had a lot of friends and family from all over going, Oh my gosh, we want you to bring this here. And it's just Alex and I.
We started events in Arizona cause Alex has family in Arizona and then we did some pop-up events in New York City and Austin, Texas, and California. Because we find out that people really love running, love, brunch, love community.
Alex Weissner: It really just kind of evolved from our own habit and became other people's weekend habit as well.
Meredith Matics: You've had to pivot your business a couple of times. It sounds like, or I wouldn't say had to, but you have pivoted it. In particular, you've had to pivot it pretty hard recently I understand?
Alex Weissner: A hundred percent. When everything started happening last year in March, we were still producing events, through February of last year.
At first we're like, oh, maybe this will just be a few months. We can't do events through the spring. We hadn't canceled our race for October yet. All of a sudden summer hit, we saw things weren't changing and there's no way we were going to do a race.
It's not possible. And that was one of our top income stream for the entire year. And we're like, all right, back to the drawing board, what do we do now?
Meredith Matics: So what did you do?
Cortney Logan: We really went to our online community. We have a pretty big online presence. Virtual was the first step that we did.
Virtual races are not unheard of so we were like, well, we'll do virtual events. Just to get people out of their houses in a safe distance capacity. We noticed a lot of people were starting to run during COVID as well. Since people couldn't get to gyms and didn't have that access so we did do some online events. We would encourage people to do a 5k or 10k on their own. We've done training plans. That's been really important to really help people who've never ran before or people who wanted to get into running or just set goal and accountability for themself.
We do apparel, so that's a fun element that we've added to things. We're really punny. Fun slogans, fun sayings. We put it on our clothes and people rock that. We really transitioned from in-person events to online community, online engagement.
Social media is great for that. It really connects us all if we can't be together in person.
Meredith Matics: How did you determine what direction you were going to take the business in when you had to pivot?
Alex Weissner: We didn't really have any other option at that point. We knew talking with the City of Denver that even as they were starting to allow events again, so much of our community events that we were doing on an ongoing basis at local restaurants, the restaurants in Colorado and Arizona and Texas and wherever we've done pop-ups.
Their capacity was cut down to 25% of their original capacity. Our events are bringing in sometimes a 100 to 200 people on any given Saturday or Sunday morning. There's no way that they would be able to have that legally in their places of business at this time, but also could support it.
We knew working with our restaurant partners was not an option. And for our big race, we knew that the way, and maybe it's our own personal standard, that we wouldn't be able to bring that to our community. If you can't have people hang around at the finish line, it's just another race where our festival afterwards was just such a huge component. We still wanted to do this in some way. We just had to figure it out, whatever the new way of bRUNch was.
Meredith Matics: Yeah. I think it's been really interesting to see how different businesses have evolved or changed during this time and brought in new ideas and new things. So what were the overall steps that you took into pivoting your business? What was step one between you two?
Alex Weissner: Step one for us, like Courtney had mentioned, we did a virtual race this summer. The way we did it was a combination of a four week training plan.
And then at the end of it, it was a one mile race. It was training to run one mile as fast as you can. That was really fun for the community. We created like a really cool template for it, some cool metals, people got some great swag from us and our partners, and people had a good time with it.
Then we kind of started doing some more training plans. We partnered with Bird Coach out of Chicago and they're a training app. We've been now using their platform for all of our coaching programs, so that we're able to coach via an app versus, creating a PDF and all that.
It connects to Strava so we're able to really analyze people's data as they're training and see how their runs are going. By fall, we were researching that and planning that launch. At the same time, launching new merchandise and saying, let's us go all in and start seeing how this is going to progress.
We did a few other things here in Denver, where we've been testing out with some of our restaurant partners, new ways to kind of activate with them. We took over an outdoor space for a morning. People were able to pick up their swag bags, go for a run on their own, and then use a coupon at a local coffee shop or a restaurant to get a free beer with their brunch. Just be innovative and looking towards what our partners across the board are able to do right now. We knew marketing budgets were cut because events were cut.
Meredith Matics: Yeah. I mean, I was initially thinking when you brought up that you partner with restaurants after the run, not to be negative, but my thought was, Oh crap, well, how many of them are still making it? Because I know so many have struggled so hard during this time.
Cortney Logan: We unfortunately did have some restaurant partners that we worked with that are no longer in business because of this. We also did try to, especially, right when everything happened and we continue to is really encouraged our, we call them brunchaterians, it's our community. We encourage them to support local businesses and restaurants when they can, especially on the weekends, to do their run and then go and support mom and pop restaurants or coffee shop, just to really help keep them going. To touch on what Alex was saying, we went to our community, we went online, we saw what people wanted, and people were craving that community.
Even though we can't do in-person, what helped us pivot was people still wanting that connection. People still looking to us being like, well, I know we can't do it in person, but what are you guys recommending? And just providing that fun. We call it Lace Up and Brunch on the weekends. So lace up and brunch, place your tennis shoes up, go out on your walk or your run, and then go, have brunch, share your photos.
We all can talk about it online. It's not quite the same. Nothing beats the in-person events, but it keeps us going right now. The community is a big driving force for us.
Meredith Matics: What was really helpful in this whole process of having to pivot? Did you have any good resources or mentorships that were able to help you with this process?
Cortney Logan: I think our relationship with our community and our online presence that we've established over the years was to our benefit for sure. That was helpful. I think some of our restaurant relationships and promoting what they were doing and them promoting what we were doing.
It was definitely just go with it, we'll just take each day at a time and see where it takes us.
Alex Weissner: It also helped both of us are certified run coaches. We were really able to utilize a skill that we hadn't really started promoting and using fully.
Doing a lot of media relations as people were getting into running to continue to get our voice and our brand out there, offer advice to new runners, existing runners, all of that, and really just providing a new way of thinking about running wherever we could.
Meredith Matics: What were some of the positive surprises that came out of this change in your business?
Cortney Logan: Like Alex said the run coaching, us being able to really highlight that. We're really lighthearted and easygoing. If you've ever had an opportunity to come to our events, they're really informal in the sense that they're not timed and it's more of you push yourself and there's other people around you and you can go fast, you can go slow, you can walk, you can just show up for the brunch.
But I think that the positive, it's just taking everyone's running fitness to the next level. If they choose that, we're really able to guide people who maybe have never ran before and have dabbled with the idea. We're a resource for them. They can come to us with questions and concerns and is this normal and really tailor a plan for them and set them up for success.
Meredith Matics: What was probably the hardest thing about the change?
Cortney Logan: Not being able to hang out with our brunchaterians, not being able to actually have the in-person events, highlight the different restaurants and really being able to sit down and have brunch with our community. There's something about the vibe and in-person and the excitement and having our race.
That was really hard this year. It would have been our seventh annual one, and that was really disheartening, but. But we'll be back. We'll be back when, when I don't know, but we will be back.
Alex Weissner: Yeah. High fives are not the same online as they are in person.
Meredith Matics: Definitely not. Reflecting back on the overall process of having to change your business and pivot, what were some of the lessons you learned?
Cortney Logan: I think the biggest thing is being flexible.
You're always going to have a plan and an idea and a way that you think it's supposed to happen. You're going to have all these obstacles and they're going to lead you down different, different places than you thought. That's COVID or not.
With how Alex and I had started brunch running, it's corny, but the only thing that consistent in life is change and that's very true. I just think really being flexible and embracing change. Change isn't a bad thing and being flexible isn't a bad thing. Just because it's not going, as you would thought, doesn't mean that it's not successful and it's a failure. I think that's a really important thing to take away from that.
Meredith Matics: I think we've definitely seen that the businesses that have been able to be flexible, be willing to change and are not so stuck in their rigidity, have been the ones that are thriving still.
Alex Weissner: 100%. We can also make like this into a running thing where when you're going to go out to run a marathon, all these small training runs that you're doing that get you there. You're never actually running 26.2 miles at all in your training ever rarely. It's the same thing with life and for running a business, like if you want to be in this for the long run, Pun intended. You need to be able to be adaptive and see how things are going to go. One day you might not feel good, one day you might not want to get out of bed and do all these things.
You need to be flexible, and know that it's the small steps to get you to that big goal.
Meredith Matics: Yeah. What is one piece of advice that you have each received, but want to share with a small business owner?
Alex Weissner: For me, I think the biggest thing is, I love to be in control. I'm a planner. I will write out a plan and strategy and everything all the time. I think sometimes you just need to throw that out.
I think the best thing is just keep a notebook with all those ideas, because those ideas are always going to be floating around. Just being open to it and going with the flow of it, instead of trying to force everything to go the way you think it should go.
Meredith Matics: And did you have any idea when you first started, obviously not COVID, but even the shifts you have had over the years, do you think that embracing that flexibility has helped your brand grow and change?
Alex Weissner: Yes. And for us, even in our partnership, our personalities are different, so me learning how to be more flexible and all of that, because Courtney is very good at that. For me, that's something where I'm like if we're gonna do it, we're gonna do it this way, because this is the way that we do it. Instead of sometimes looking back and saying we can change it. We don't always have to do the same thing over and over again. It's our business. If we want to change something, we can change it.
Meredith Matics: Yeah. And Courtney, what about you? What's one piece of advice that you want to share with a small business owner?
Cortney Logan: My biggest thing is go for it. I think that so many people are afraid of actually going after exactly what it is that they want, because they're fearful of what other people are going to think of it.
You will have people tell you left and right. They don't understand what you're doing. It doesn't make sense. I would never do that. They'll have their opinion and that's great. They can have their opinion. But you have the vision. And I think truly going after what it is that excites you and what you want. If you're really authentic to yourself and you really have that vision.
You bring that to people in an exciting way, it's going to resonate with them. Really just taking that chance and sometimes people won't understand it and you adapt and you change and you put it out there again. The biggest thing is just go for it.
Meredith Matics: Yeah. That's probably what stops a lot of people from ever starting a business is just taking that jump and that leap of faith into the unknown.
All right, so where can our listeners find you on the internet so that they can join your brunch crew or your bunchaterians and learn to run better or run more or run at all?
Cortney Logan: Sure. We are on social media, Instagram, Facebook and we have our own website, but if you just search bRUNch running, two words, brunch running, you will find us. We pop up the first Google search. Otherwise we're at brunch running on Instagram and then brunchrunning.com is our website.
Meredith Matics: Wonderful. Well, Alex and Courtney, thank you so much for coming on with me discussing a little bit about bRUNch running and the changes you guys have had to go through. Is there any last comments that you guys want to throw out for our listeners?
Alex Weissner: Just go run, have fun. Live life.
Meredith Matics: And embraced the puns.
Alex Weissner: Yeah. Embrace the puns and embrace it all right now, that's all we really can do.
Meredith Matics: All right. Well, thank you.
Cortney Logan: Thank you so much.
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