From Bike Magazines to YouTube with Ben Delaney

SHOW TRANSCRIPT with Ben Delaney of The Ride:

Hottie (00:00.538)
It doesn't all go up. Yeah, I use for the.

Ben (00:02.371)
Yeah, just like little snippet or something, sure. I'm just wondering like how much time I should spend with my finger in my nose, you know, or if I should try to keep this somewhat presentable. It's like he didn't even put on pants for this. He's just walking around in his boxers. is...

Hottie (00:08.1)
Well, if you end up, yeah. Well, yeah, I'll...

Josh (00:08.366)
As much as possible as much as possible

Hottie (00:16.612)
I'll probably come begging for pictures too, Ben, at some point, if you have some good stuff, some pictures of you that I can maybe cover, action shots, something like that I can cover up video or people picking their noses or whatever, but that's cool. Okay, all right, here we go. I'll kick it, I'll...

Ben (00:30.233)
So let me know what you need.

Hottie (00:38.584)
the party started and there'll be a pre-recorded thing that walks us up to the interview band so there won't be too many formalities here I'll put I'll do a little bio in the in the run into the interview so

Hey, Ben Delaney, thanks for being on the show today, taking time today. A YouTuber, what's a day in the life like a YouTuber? Are we really screwing things up for you here today?

Ben (01:06.369)
No, not at all. There is no one typical day in the life. Hi, Hottie. Hi, Josh. Hi, listeners. Great to see you. talking with you all. My wife and I have very different jobs. She is a financial analyst for...

Josh (01:13.207)
Amen.

Ben (01:19.766)
different scientific groups here in Boulder, Colorado. And I will often look at what she's doing in meetings back to back to back from like 8 a.m. on staring at spreadsheets on multiple screens. I'm like, babe, when do you actually like do work? And she's like, you, mmm, expletive. This is my job. Meanwhile, she will come out into my garage, which I call a studio here. And I'm walking around in my bib shorts, clack around my bike shoes. And I've got greasy bike parts in my hand and like getting ready to go for a ride. And she's like,

You've grown child, like when do you actually do work? And I'm like, babe, babe, I am working. This is my job here. And she's just shaking her head and disgusted. Like how did I get stuck with this fool? So I'm always working when I'm playing and I'm always playing a bit when I'm working. there is some work as you guys know, displaying bike parts and bike rides. Like there is some work involved, but I feel grateful to.

Hottie (02:00.461)
Yeah, we accuse.

Right.

Ben (02:16.591)
be in a position to do this for my career.

Hottie (02:19.543)
Yeah, Josh, do you get the same from your wife? You're in the bike industry. What do you do all day? I mean, she's a professional in the medical industry, very high up there in Indiana. Do you get the same treatment?

Josh (02:30.51)
Not so much anymore, but yeah, for a while, especially during like the work from home kind of COVID period where she would go in and like, you know, 24 hours of like life saving and then come home to me and I'm on a zoom call talking about bike nerdery. And she's like, I don't even know what you're talking about. Why does anybody care? Like people are dying. I'm like, yeah, but they do care. it's, we love

Hottie (02:37.401)
Yeah.

Ben (02:44.303)
you

Hottie (02:45.049)
you

Hottie (02:49.849)
.

Ben (02:56.991)
Right. Wax efficiency is important. People are fired up about this.

Josh (02:59.412)
Yeah, we love bikes and people really want to know about waxing their chains. Like, okay, so, yeah, no, I feel that. I will say, and I am, you know, whatever, 10 years ago, probably looking at YouTube, you know, my kid who's now 20, so he probably would been 10, looking at Mr. Beast and being like, Jesus, like, really? These people make all this money, like, making these videos? And then we started our own YouTube channel.

Ben (03:24.559)
you

Hottie (03:25.037)
Mm-hmm.

Josh (03:28.374)
and you try to make these videos and I'm just like, my God, this is fucking hard and time consuming and like a 20 minute video is like hours of work and even the ones that look like they're relatively like, I don't know, like you just threw it together and put it out there. Like there's hours of work in there and if there's any props and complexity, holy smokes, it gets complicated. I...

Hottie (03:34.221)
Yeah.

Josh (03:54.138)
I will give it to you because I watch all your content. I mean, you're one of the ones that make it look easy. Like, this guy's not working. He's riding his bike and playing with bike parts. And I look at that and go like, man, I bet he's been three, four hours editing this and shooting the B-roll and doing the what, you know, like there's just so much that people don't see or think about in there. So I get it. I fully get it now that YouTubing is real work. It's hard.

Ben (04:01.481)
You

Hottie (04:20.547)
Yeah, it is. Well, Ben, we always like to start these interviews with Josh's favorite question, and that is, how did the bike enter your life? And then maybe we'll add to that, how did journalism enter your life as well?

Ben (04:20.771)
you

Ben (04:33.839)
Sure. I started riding bikes as a kid, like most of us. My first job was riding bikes and slinging stories, and I've been kind of doing the same ever since. I had a paper route back in the day. I had a clanky old 10-speed shifters up on the stem. I rode a BMX bike, not as a BMXer, but just as a kid, cruising around.

Hottie (04:46.776)
Anyway.

Ben (05:00.463)
school and with my buddies on that. Collegiate cycling was a pivotal thing for me that got the bug of bike racing into my blood and some of my best friends to this day were from the scene and I'm often trying to get back to that feeling of collegiate cycling. I went to school initially for creative writing at a little hippie school on Warren Wilson.

in North Carolina called Warren Wilson. After a few semesters of that, I was like, what am I gonna do with a degree in creative writing? And some of my older cohort answered that question, like, well, you can work in a bookstore where you'll be underpaid and in debt for the rest of your life. I'm like, well, I can do that now. I don't need a degree for that. I dropped out and worked as a plumber for a little while, which is good life experience, know, like dealing with other people's poo, literally and metaphorically, that's, you know, a good life skill.

Josh (05:44.909)
Right.

Ben (05:57.007)
back to school at University of New Mexico, which is where I'm from in Abukurki, and studied journalism. I feel like that was a kind of a halfway between of like a airy fairy liberal arts degree that was fun and engaging with the trade school, like get your butt a job kind of thing. And did that, worked for a newspaper for a bit and I always thought the newspaper would be the fallback plan whenever, if ever I grew up.

You know, you can go back to having a real job, then two things happen. Yeah, two things happen. Yeah, yeah, when I get my life straight, I'll do that. But yeah, two things happened. Yeah, one, newspapers went away, and two, I never grew up. So here I am on YouTube. And watching media develop, I'm a slow learner.

Josh (06:25.997)
There will always be newspapers to go back to, right? They'll always be there. That will never go away. wait.

Hottie (06:30.135)
Mm-hmm.

Ben (06:46.251)
Typically a cynic and a scoffer. So for instance when I was the editor-in-chief at Bell News Magazine The magazine was a thing we took very seriously and we had a website but it was like yeah That's sort of like a yellow pages ad like it's something what you need to have but like that's not really a thing and then you know cycling news came up and This steamrolled everything's it. maybe maybe the internet will actually catch on maybe we should do something on the internet and yeah similar with with video and in general YouTube in particular my cat that's something

Josh (07:05.238)
Yeah

Hottie (07:06.745)
Maybe.

Ben (07:16.025)
that like punk kids do that's not like a that's not really a thing that adults should engage with. Now I'm like that's actually the second largest search engine in the world and it's a fantastic way to communicate whether you're Mr. Beast or Bill Nye the Science Guy or some chucklehead like me it's you know it's a medium it's not there's certainly stereotypes of the type of people that use it but like any big medium it's it's up to you what you put into it and how you interact.

audience. yeah just all that to say I am grateful for the various opportunities and communities out there and often I've just kind of fallen into it or been dragged into it more so than I've had any particular great vision that led me to it. Just enjoying playing in the space now.

Hottie (08:02.745)
Sure, yeah, Yeah, mean, my career was in radio as a broadcaster on the hard news side. So I stuck with your original plan. I said, okay, instead of newspapers, there's radio and I'm gonna do news, hard news, hard news reporting. And yeah, it was just.

kind of stumbled along and then the right thing kind of fell my way and next thing you know I do 30, 35 years of reporting and anchoring and being an assignment editor and a managing editor and all those things. How did you find the cycling side of journalism?

Ben (08:43.498)
I loved it. know, coming in in the end of the of the century. Sort of like in 04, I want to say. Initially, what was ordered for bicycle retailer and industry news, which you guys know that you know, it's a trade magazine. And that was super educational for me, because up to that point, I had

Josh (08:52.397)
When'd you start at VellaNews?

Ben (09:11.379)
I thought business is a boring thing, who cares about business? Turns out the whole world does. So being able to speak to people at...

Josh (09:16.427)
Yeah.

Ben (09:21.871)
American companies and international companies and going to Taiwan and China and seeing how and where bikes are made that blew my tiny little mind. It was super educational and what I loved about, to answer your question, what I loved about covering cycling, whether it was the manufacturing or the pro racing, which is what I did for much longer, was just having the excuse and ability to ask anybody about anything just by having this.

pretext of like, hey, my name is Ben with da da. What do think about this? Why'd you do this? And that's, and then try to figure out what the story is and how to cover it. I love that whole process just to be able to indulge your.

Curiosity and and work with others about trying to figure out what the heck is going on in the world And drilling in on like, okay, what's the story here? How do we find out who do we ask? And is having that be the job. I thought was it that was a treat

Josh (10:22.953)
And the travel, right? I that's one of the things I enjoy the most. You get to talk to interesting people. I mean, don't do journalism, but I love talking to industry people, talking to the racers. But travel really opens your small mind into something different, right? I think we've all had that experience in this industry.

Ben (10:42.613)
Absolutely, absolutely. it's, you sometimes it's literal travel going to places and sometimes it's travel from your desk, just a mental travel of trying to go on a journey. yeah, you're never doing the same thing twice. You know, trying to figure out what good and best practices are for things, but it's different than a lot of other jobs I have.

Josh (10:54.829)
You

Hottie (11:10.957)
Hmm. There was also a stinted specialized. yeah.

Ben (11:14.511)
There was, I yeah. Yeah, I did a hot minute at Specialized. I think a lot of people in the bike world for a while, I've got a love-hate relationship with that brand. They make a lot of really good product and they're pretty aggressive in terms of their business. And so I was a little wary going in.

Hottie (11:32.131)
I do.

Ben (11:44.079)
So I didn't move to Morgan Hill, which is where their world headquarters are. I would just parachute in once a month, stay in Boulder. And I did, I was working in global marketing and I had two main jobs. One was dealer facing and the other was media facing. And dealer facing was communicating with dealers of like, here's why you guys have to do this. That was a little challenging for me. The media facing stuff was a hoot, which was like, hey, get.

spiff out your friends and former colleagues with very nice products, cook up ideas of how to promote them. And coming from journalism where the question from the...

business people at the top like Josh was always, okay cool idea but how can we do that efficiently? know in journalism there's, I don't know what you all have heard and what your experiences were Hottie but there was never a glut of cash flowing freely for editorial purposes. At Specialized, Mike Signard, the founder, long time CEO.

Josh (12:42.733)
Yeah.

Hottie (12:44.867)
Yeah.

Ben (12:53.293)
not have that attitude with marketing. It's like, how can we do this bigger and better? So I'd be like, hey, let's go to, you've got a new Roubaix bike coming out. Let's go to Belgium and ride the Kappenberg and then go to Roubaix and take a bunch of journalists and do this. You'd be like, okay, great. How do we get the Asian markets involved? How do we get the South American journalists involved? I'm like, So that was, yeah, that was a lot of fun. But I guess I lack the, I don't know if I lack the,

Josh (13:14.134)
Yeah.

Hottie (13:14.137)
Ben (13:23.235)
Self-disciplined to stay on message with like specialized the best special the time. It's the best the best bit You know, I just kind of like wander off or Parts fit in many ways. It was the best job I ever had There was a lot of things were fantastic about it, but it was not really a great fit for me ultimately so a lot of respect for a lot of the smart hard-working folks there, but my happy space is just being a

Hottie (13:41.561)
Hmm.

Ben (13:52.175)
free-range monkey wandering around bugging people with questions.

Josh (13:58.989)
Yeah, certainly a brand known for being a revolving door of the industry, right? I mean, think everybody I know has worked at Specialized for nine months. And it's kind of rare to find people who've been there for more than a year, and then every once in a while, we had Mark Cody on the show, and I think he was there for like 12. You're like, whoa, 12 years? I think there's like four of them have made it that long, but yeah, I can say that.

Ben (14:09.676)
yeah.

Ben (14:15.875)
Yes. Yes. yeah. yeah. Yes.

Hottie (14:16.961)
Hmm? Hmm?

Josh (14:23.402)
fully transparently like, Sinyard hates my ass. So we do not get on at all. Which I think is true of a lot of other, I'd say, relatively senior people in the industry, right? I he's a polarizing guy and he plays a slightly different game, I think, than lot of other people are playing.

Ben (14:44.751)
He is. He is. One little tidbit about Mike as pertains to writing, some of the most posh writing I ever did was from Mike, which is funny because I don't think I've ever received a text or an email. Usually it was texts from him that had proper punctuation or capitalization. know, he was just like a lot of high powered...

full gas CEO types and also very much like teenagers, they can't be bothered with capitalization, punctuation. that point being like he was not like a buy the book, associated press style book communicator in written text. So was kind of surprising like why would he drive some crisp writing for me? it's the way he approached the marketing was the way he approached the products, which is like just keep pushing on it.

until it's as perfect as can be.

You know, so I'd be like, hey, here's a press release, Mike. It's like a little one pager going out to dealers. You're like, okay, that's good. Now run it past these dealers and see how they react to it and take their feedback and incorporate it. I'm like, okay, do that. And then send it to the next group and then next group. And so I like go through so many revisions, like, dude, it's done. He's like, no, no, no, no. We've got to take to this group and take to this group. And the same with product. You know, like the shoe designers would spend a year on something going to factories and athletes. But I finally come forward exhausted and be like, Mike, here's the shoe. And he's like, that's a good start. What about this and this?

Josh (15:46.614)
Mm-hmm.

Josh (16:05.226)
No.

Ben (16:07.845)
And so that would drive some people bananas, you know? But the end result is like, get, especially at the top in S-Works level stuff, you get some pretty good stuff. And he sticks a big old fat price tag on him.

Josh (16:10.676)
Yeah, yeah.

Josh (16:17.568)
Good stuff, yeah. mean, it's undeniably good product, right?

Hottie (16:18.467)
Good stuff. Yeah.

Hottie (16:26.605)
You know, on your about page for the ride, which is Bendolini's current project, you mentioned the arrow is everything and you say, about that. Is there a joke there or something? Deliver the punchline, what is that?

Josh (16:36.364)
Hahaha

Ben (16:36.417)
You

Ben (16:44.299)
Our man, Mark Cody, loved that guy. We overlapped there at Specialized. And I was writing a release for a Shiv model to be used at Kona. Crow was riding it, like they just come out with a screaming fast new bike. And I put in the context of that, like when it comes to the bike leg at Kona, aerodynamics is everything. And Cody was like, that's it. I'm like.

what do mean that's it? He's like, that's it, aerodynamics is everything. I'm like, well, yeah, mean, not everything, but he had the marketing brain to distill the punchiest thing out of it. And that became a whole marketing campaign for years and years.

As Josh can attest, there are other factors that go into propelling a bicycle forward. Like aerodynamics is the big one, but it's not technically everything. But marketing doesn't care about technically marketing. Marketing cares about good punchy things. So yeah, I'm both like proud and a little bit embarrassed of that. But to be frank, the credit all goes to Mark Cody for doing that, not me. But.

Hottie (17:34.137)
you

Hottie (17:50.283)
Okay. Okay.

Josh (17:51.383)
who Mark who when he was when he was on our show last admitted that he was the one who first said cobble gobbler. Which so I think if if there's anyone who has anything to be sorry about it's it's Mark for that. But yeah. Like really. The what the pardon me.

Ben (18:07.939)
Yes. Yes.

Yeah, we had some jokes about that too. That also came out when I was there. I'm like, we're really going to call it what? The cut.

Okay. And it's shaped like that.

Josh (18:21.292)
How are we gonna split?

Yeah, okay. I will give you, at least though, you didn't go like, you know, there was that period where the German brands would have, had they had your marketing prowess, would have said stiffness is everything. And that would have been even way, way, way, way, way, way less accurate than arrow is everything. So mean, at least, you know, the thing you said was everything was the thing that's like the biggest of the things and not.

Hottie (18:25.245)
Mmm. We love you, Mark.

Hottie (18:39.116)
Yeah.

Ben (18:39.164)
You

Yeah.

Hottie (18:51.927)
Hmm

Ben (18:52.175)
Yeah.

Josh (18:54.12)
the smallest of the things. you know, take some solace in that, guess.

Hottie (19:00.301)
Yeah, you bicycle retailer, two stints at Velo News or Velo or whatever they were calling it, God, they've changed their name a number of times, both as a managing editor and eventually editor in chief, covered specialized, you're editor in chief at Bike Radar US, doing more of like product examination and reporting. So it's quite an arc there over a number of years before you even.

Ben (19:13.369)
Yep.

Josh (19:26.124)
They're also angry at me right now, so we'll just keep piling. You just keep mentioning them, Hadi.

Hottie (19:29.385)
really, bike radar's pissed off at you now, really?

Josh (19:34.189)
Yeah, I mean, it's actually, I think, interesting segue into this had kind of come up in our pre-show, you the state of media in the industry. yeah, they're frustrated at me because I got frustrated at them. They did an entire article and video basically just saying what I said in a thing. And it just reminded me of when, like, you know, you'll like, you know, see an article in USA Today or something and it's like, you know,

Ben (19:42.445)
Yes, yes.

Josh (20:02.988)
Trump tweeted this, and you're like, that's not fucking news. I don't, like, it isn't news that somebody tweeted something and they did a, well, and they didn't backlink us or any of that stuff. And so I was just like, guys, if you're doing a whole story that's Josh said this stuff, and then you're almost verbatim like, oh, and then he said this. Oh, and then later he said this. Like, you could have just called me. Like, I'd have gotten on a thing with you and like, we could have done this organically and better, like a...

Hottie (20:09.049)
.

Hottie (20:23.747)
Mm-hmm.

Ben (20:26.711)
Hmm.

Josh (20:32.586)
you know, a 12 minute YouTube video where a guy says what I said, like, I don't know, like, is that really where we are with journalism? And they did not take that well. Actually, they did not take that well at all, which was a little bit surprising to me because I'm like, I'm not saying you're bad people. I'm not saying you're doing bad things. I'm just like, try harder. But that didn't go down well. but I mean, I...

I don't know, what's your, you've done the real journalism and I look at like you now spend your days kicking out your own creative content that's visual. I'm sure you're writing and scripting all this stuff. You're shooting your photos and videos. To me, that's like, we need more of that and not so and so tweeted this thing or this guy said this. I don't know. That's my mini rant on the current state of cycling media.

Ben (21:33.176)
Yeah, I mean seems like we've fractured into a couple of different camps. One is traditional media, which is now websites, Which is funny to call websites traditionally, but like large organizations that have a staff and then independent media of individuals.

like myself or James Wong on Substack or others where it's one individual. And there are big upsides and big downsides to both. So I'm certainly not of the mind that traditional media is stupid and needs to go away and independent individuals are the only way forward.

I think we need both and I'm concerned about just general best practices for both. And some of it's like a structural thing, an economic thing. Like you, Josh, I want, yeah, people are gonna make mistakes for sure, but ideally for the media, if you've got just some like house rules of like how we cover stories.

you know, how we attribute quotations to people, how if we're going to talk about somebody, like, you gotta call them. And if they don't want to talk to you, fine, you say, like, here's the story, this is what this person said, we reached out for them for comment, and they declined or responded, like something, just some basic things put in place. You know, ideas of fact-checking and stuff, and we're seeing an erosion of that at both traditional media, because...

I like it's a lot of junior, not super well paid folks just being pushed to grind out as many click baity stories as they can per hour. And then individuals who don't have a publisher to blame for that pressure, but they're kind of pressuring themselves just looking at what works for getting people to their...

Ben (23:31.919)
podcast or YouTube channel or a sub stack and often it's the same sort of click baity confrontational outrage, know, outrage is a, it's an effective thing. yeah, it sells. Yeah, yeah.

Josh (23:41.427)
Yeah.

Yeah, it sells. Outrage sells, right? We know that. Yeah, I think the surprising one to me that I feel like we've seen maybe more overall is the sort of inversion of the poor behavior. We just had this thing a few months ago with the guy at Velo who was plagiarizing James. And to me it's like, okay, I feel like...

Hottie (23:47.555)
Hmm.

Ben (24:07.651)
Yes. Yes.

Josh (24:13.567)
I would be less angry and it would make more sense if you had some 22-year-old in his dorm room trying to build his substack plagiarizing legacy media or some well-known, know, plagiarizing VeloNews, right? But instead we have senior people at VeloNews plagiarizing a guy right now. That guy happens to be James, who's a total badass at what he does and,

Ben (24:37.059)
Yes.

Josh (24:43.403)
really does exceptional work. But, you know, it's not the first time we've had that. And so it is that weird, like, yeah, the traditional media is like under so much pressure to make money, keep costs low, hire the greenest, cheapest people you can get, and then force them to create as much work as possible that it does feel like when these things happen, and there have been others, that it is going.

in the direction that I feel like traditionally you would not have expected it. Maybe that's just me, but.

Ben (25:18.339)
Yeah, that was a great point. I just pause there for folks who are unaware of what happened. Velo did a gravel field test with a number of bikes. There was a video component, there was a text component. James Huang has long been, his work has been liberated by others quite freely and he keeps tabs on what's going on. he used to give bike roomer hell all the time. Like, y'all like.

Josh (25:40.907)
Yes.

Ben (25:42.576)
What are you doing here? Like you're just lifting and something like, you know, like early on it was like where it was people who not that have to go to journalism school to do this, but like you can't steal the people's work without attribution. Like that's just sort of a basic thing. But there was a mindset, you know, years ago, if it's, if it's on the internet, it's free. You just copy paste whatever. It's not, that's not real. I'm not going into someone's house and taking their thing. It's just, it's just, it's just copy paste. Yeah. You would think Josh, to your point that we were.

that point of like yes, intellectual property is a thing, but anyway, James had written a review about a state titanium bike and then some text very, very, very similar to James's text appeared on VelaNews and James called that out in screenshots just like side by side and

fell and did not address this directly. But my assumption, and I've had this somewhat verified by other people in the company, is that, yeah, he didn't just go to James's substack and steal that blatantly because who would do that? But it seems most likely the Ask ChatGP, ChatGP, something similar, hey, write me a review on this. ChatGP went out there as it did to scour the internet. And normally instead of synthesizing a bunch of different things to distill it into one, like James's review was the one thing out there. So that was the one source and it just dumped it in there.

Josh (26:53.16)
Mmm.

Josh (27:04.427)
Mmm.

Ben (27:07.823)
So Alvin I presume just you know looked at chat GPT is providing this not an individual But like the only source was James and that just brings the whole thing like chat GPT is now like professionally stealing harvesting the work of actual people without attribution so that was like a cultural phenomenon as much as like a know a typist in the cycling teapot, but But yeah

Josh (27:27.199)
Yeah.

Ben (27:33.519)
Just like you feel frustrated that bike radar didn't reach out to you, James felt very frustrated. Like, hey, I did this work. If you want to reference it, great. But like just straight up stealing intentionally or otherwise, not great.

Hottie (27:49.677)
Mm-mm. Yeah.

Josh (27:49.771)
Yeah, it's totally different if you reference it and put a backlink, right? mean, that's important for the backend SEO internet nonsense that most people don't have to worry about, but we worry about that. Yeah, I think that's a, yeah, hey, the only review we could find was James. Here's the link to his thing and some snippets of his comments. Like, that's quite different.

Ben (27:59.738)
Sure.

Ben (28:17.049)
Yeah, yeah, so like that's a problem at proper media, traditional media, whatever you want to call it, as well as individuals. yeah, Josh, to your point, expect it more from just green individuals than companies, but you...

Josh (28:33.162)
Yeah.

Ben (28:35.577)
Yeah, that's a frustration.

Josh (28:36.202)
Yeah, I did the flip side of that is, and we've all done it, but it's like everybody who comes into cycling for at least a year or two gets bicycling, right? And we all did it a couple of years and eventually you're like, eh, it's a little, I don't need the 10 best ways to lose weight for spring again. But I know people love to hate on them with their shills, but I will say, they are the one media out there.

Ben (28:47.619)
True.

Hottie (28:56.366)
Mm-hmm.

Josh (29:06.078)
that like anytime we're in there, you get the fact check call. Right? mean, they like, like they are so stinking hardcore and and legit at the back end. know, even down to I mean, interviews I've done with them that were recorded and then I'm quoted and they'll, they'll call and play back the recording on the call and say, you're quoted as saying this, here's the recording of you saying that, you know, you, you understand this is in the

Ben (29:34.019)
Mm-hmm.

Josh (29:36.159)
You know, and so I have to give them a ton of credit on that front because I, you know, that you can certainly sense just living through it. You're like, wow, this is expensive. this is, you know, like, but it does, does pain me sometimes the people like, do you see the bicycling reviewed, whatever, like they get paid to say that. And like, actually I can tell you firsthand, they are the more so than anyone else. Like they,

Ben (29:48.367)
Yeah. Yes.

Josh (30:05.162)
That's not how that works there. But yeah, I I feel like we've definitely been through this period where it's a lot of cowboy. I mean, it's a little bit of the wild west out there with some of these things. I guess take me through, I was so excited when you started your channel and obviously we've known each other forever. We give away our ages, but a long time.

Ben (30:31.439)
Yeah.

Josh (30:35.05)
But you you go off on your own, which is kind of exciting. I you're off on your own. James went off on his own. Leonard's on his own. I mean, all people I talk to probably, I don't know, twice a month, like did something or another. But I mean, that's scary. I went off on my own 11, 12 years ago to do this thing. Like, that just take me through the thought process there and like what the startup and it had to be a pretty emotional, I don't know, stressful thing.

Ben (31:04.271)
Sure, some things I'd like to think I'm brave about and some things I'm straight up chicken about. I'd like to think I'm brave with stories and concepts and being willing to make a fool of myself. I'm kind of a chicken with business and money. So I've been thinking about doing my own thing for a while and video seemed to be the way to go. But a steady paycheck was nice and insurance was nice, So...

just being laid off by outside was the catalyst as to why I decided to start. So again, like state of the state of the Venn diagram of state of the bike industry and state of media overlap. I've got two marks on my wall for layoffs. We have one from bike radar when.

Josh (31:38.588)
Okay.

Ben (31:56.602)
they realized that the Americans need to get paid a lot more and we need these pesky things like insurance for one case. So they closed down their US operations, so got laid off there and then from outside as they were consolidating.

Josh (32:00.029)
you

Ben (32:07.631)
But our buddy Josh Patterson holds the record for his second and last with seven, like two of those from like newspapers, one from like the same Kansas newspaper. So all that's that's that's kind of part and parcel that that was really what kickstarted it. know, previously I'd had, you know, I was watching guys like Ray Maker, good old DC Ray just crush it and look like he was having a great time doing his own thing. So watch that with envy of like, maybe I

Josh (32:20.234)
Wow.

Josh (32:31.699)
Yeah.

Ben (32:37.585)
I should do that, but just having a job seemed to be the way to go. Also had learned video editing on my career goal list, but I had just been lingering there much like, know, learn Italian was on there. Like, I want to, I'm actually taking any tangible steps to do that? No, but turned out necessity is a mother, so going.

Josh (32:53.578)
Right.

Ben (33:02.959)
To answer your question, why? Because I got laid off, Josh. I needed a job. And people are like, oh, you're so great. You always land on your feet. like, no, I landed on my face. But then I stood back up, and then I started getting going again. The why YouTube was because there's some monetization built in. As much as I like to smack talk my friends who are salespeople, that's a needed skill that I don't have. And having YouTube do that part.

Josh (33:06.62)
Okay, that's a...

Ben (33:32.268)
of it and have the built-in audience. That seemed to be the way to go. So I feel much more competent with writing. But with the exception of somebody like James who already had a big following, I just didn't see a way forward as an independent person to just.

put out the hat for tips and start writing a newsletter and hope that that would work. Like I just had seen others try better than other folks, more talented than me, try and fail at that. So I was, I was bearish on that, but I was bullish on YouTube as a medium.

Josh (33:57.899)
Mm-hmm.

Hottie (34:10.948)
Yeah. So the ride was born. How long did you, I mean, I'm guessing that it's successful now when it's something that can keep rolling as long as you keep rolling. How long did you give yourself though from the outset? Did you set yourself a personal deadline? Like if I don't have this thing, if I'm not making money or if it's not successful by X amount of time, that's it, I'm calling it.

Ben (34:33.121)
I read somewhere that like three years was a mark as to whether like half businesses fail within the first three years. like that was kind of roughly it. The first year I was working part time for my buddy Frank Overton at Fastcat doing content marketing for him while I was trying to get this thing off the ground because it turns out my wife wanted me to contribute to the mortgage and not just be like in my garage making videos. don't know why she's so demanding. I had a dream babe. I've got a vision here.

Josh (34:59.792)
Yeah.

Hottie (35:02.073)
you

Ben (35:02.895)
Bike parts I want to talk about and I remember telling going for a bike ride with James and he was asking how YouTube was going and you have to hit these certain thresholds before you can start making money, right? And a certain number of viewed hours and certain number of subscribers and then once it turns on, know money starts coming in. So the first time I got a check from YouTube, it was like $7.45 and he's like, you're an idiot. This is not going to work.

But now, yes, after three years in, to be frank, I'm making more money than I ever did working for Bike Media, which isn't necessarily saying a lot. Some of that's YouTube and some of that, absolutely. Thanks in part to the support of Josh and Silke. I have annual sponsors that help keep me afloat and are separate from the...

categories that I cover so I don't take sponsorship for bikes and for tires and things that I review editorially. But I do have sponsors whose product that I love using every day and I'm happy to talk about and I do make that very clear in my videos. So like the combination of those things has made it work. that's, I'm super grateful for that.

hope to keep it going. like the question, whether it's James or myself, is like how long can, you know, if there's like analogies to the privateer scene in gravel racing, if there's just a single individual, what happens when that single individual crashes out or gets sick or can't show up to the race or can't write the newsletter that week? Like how sustainable is that, you know? So that's, you know, as much as I love...

Josh (36:42.794)
You

Ben (36:49.635)
many aspects of what I'm doing and what James and others are doing.

Hottie (36:54.233)
We see a lot of people in cycling, mean a lot of the outlets do take money from the products that they cover. Is it a problem? No, you've been there. Are there conflicts there? Conflicts of interest, real ones? Or can they shield themselves?

Ben (37:08.409)
There's some, there's some, both. There's definitely tension there.

Ben (37:19.279)
I mean, just in how you go about it, and I think the whole thing as pertains to people who are listening is like, can I trust this person? Can I trust this outlet? Right? Like, that's the whole, I think the whole game. Some might argue that entertainment's the game. It's just about attention, and it doesn't matter if people trust you or not, but I'm still naive and foolish enough to believe that trust is a key part of it.

some outlets back in the day would do what we call pay to play. Like, yeah, you buy a certain number of ads, you get a certain number of pages of coverage. Some was more implicit, you know, as I can, you know, there's different levels there. But it certainly creates some skepticism, and rightly so from readers, as if you're seeing, you know, ads every...

page of a magazine or every you know the topic website has a big ad here and the review is like this this product that you're seeing advertised there is fantastic it definitely creates pause you know i've worked for publishers that like ted constantino for instance back in the day was the publisher of velo news and velo press

Hottie (38:23.437)
Yeah.

Ben (38:32.367)
He took all kinds of help from advertisers. He'd go to Italy and spend a month there, controlling advertisers to spend money and then come back and he'd have some wise asses like us spouting off about how we didn't like this or didn't like that. He came back, did a Made in Italy special on Andrew Descites, who's now been in marketing at Giant Global for the longest time, wrote something like, hey, Campy, the 80s called. They want their bottom bracket back, about a square table of honors, and Ted was just like.

Josh (38:43.337)
You

Hottie (38:57.123)
Mm-hmm.

Ben (39:00.513)
I hate you guys. I hate you. I'm not like, but we know let us let us run with it. So and then other places. Yeah, it's more like if you if you're an advertiser, you pay, you're going to get good coverage. So it's tricky for sure. But the.

Josh (39:00.585)
You

Hottie (39:17.697)
And what about the companies that supply items for review, bikes for review, what have you? know, oftentimes, you know, reporters, cycling journalists, I would imagine have to go back to that well very often, specialized, for instance. You are hopeful that they will continue to leave product at your front door for review and that product translate into content that people want to learn about. So...

Ben (39:25.529)
Yeah.

Hottie (39:47.138)
Is there a careful dance there too that happens? If you get super critical obviously on the latest tarmac, specialized might say, forget him, we're cutting him off. Is there a dance that happens there?

Ben (40:02.295)
Yeah, absolutely. And I think that's the more pertinent one is access is a thing. know, media, whether they're individuals or companies often get accused of like, yeah, the average is of course you're going to see that. As we mentioned, that can play into it. But the bigger thing is access that if a company, if you're antagonizing a company aggressively.

And just like normal human life, if you're just talking smack on somebody, why is that person going to keep coming around to talk to you? So that's a part of it. Some brands or individuals are more calculated than others of how they approach that. Almost all brands will never say something directly of like, you gave us a bad review, so we're cutting you off. But sometimes you can read your own tea leaves, like f-

Just to give a personal example, especially when I came out with the Diverge STR, the full suspension gravel bike, suspend the rider, I was still in the early days of trying to get my YouTube thing off the ground. So I was like, hey, here's what I'm doing. Can you please send me a bike? Just like, was it bike radar? Sent it to me, I'll review it, send it back. No money exchanged, of course. But I just, would you give me access to this? That's where I was. So did the review and I said, I didn't like it at all.

And I said what I liked about it, I didn't like about it, but my bottom line was like, not the thing, not the thing. And then subsequent, a few subsequent products after that, was just crickets from Specialized. Like a thing would come out and I'd just see it out in the wild, you know, on other media.

communication to me. Did they tell me like Delaney your jerk face were cutting you off? No of course not like when I asked him hey could you please put me back on your mailing list? yeah absolutely you know so am I just being paranoid? Maybe like am I right? Maybe so that's that's a thing but but that's it I think

Ben (41:57.072)
most brands of any size, just like the audience respects and I'd to believe can tell when an individual writer or outlet is trying to do a good job, right? And if you have a problem with it, the particular product and reach out to them and like allow them to say something about it, kind of, you know, Josh, kind of like the inverse of, mean, not even the inverse, like what we're saying with bike radar, like.

Josh (42:19.952)
Hmm, yeah.

Ben (42:26.031)
If you're going to take issue with something that I say or do, fine, but like ask me about it. Don't just like throw me under the bus, like with your own assumptions. So there have been there have been other products where like like, know, SRAM, for instance, the new Explorer derailers on shorter chainstays, which is well within their specs is kind of getting the weeds. Tick tock. Sorry, but I can my heels come whacking down on the derailer of these 13 speed Explorer groups.

Josh (42:35.964)
Yeah, and I think that's true.

Ben (42:54.317)
And I did a few videos about that. But reached out to SRAM and went back and forth and back and forth and told them what I going to do, put it out there. They weren't stoked on that, but they didn't cut me off because I wasn't just maliciously slandering just for giggles. But yes, to give you a very long answer, Hottie, to a short question. is a thing. And so like recognizing that we're all playing together in this.

bike pool and we need to be respectful to each other I think is important.

Josh (43:29.736)
It's a hard one. mean, I, you know, we do a little bit of not journalism, but you know, like this show and, you know, we try to, you know, this isn't the Silke show, right? It's the, and we try to cover some other products on our YouTube channel here and there, things that, you know, things that I like or don't like. But I really do feel like I understand that the tension that you guys have to face. And I feel like there's always, I think it Charles Manitain at PES said this years ago of like, you you really like, like the reality anymore is like all this stuff has gotten.

pretty darn good. You know, it's not like there was absolutely a period of time where there was product in the market. We're like, well, that's Right. I mean, you know, growing up in bike shops in the 90s, I look back and think, man, we sold some crap. Right. mean, you know, like, like, oh, here's single finger CNC brake levers and CNC 6061 crank sets that fail 100 percent. Awesome.

Ben (44:07.081)
Yeah.

Ben (44:16.751)
Right, right.

Ben (44:27.413)
Mm, mm, yeah, yeah.

Josh (44:29.554)
But know, the stuff today is, you know, a lot of it's pretty darn good. And then of course you get the complaints from people of like, well, you're getting paid to love everything. And you're like, no, like this stuff's actually like, you know, mean, joking here, of our people got a bike for his wife and it's like Tiagra or like whatever the low end, you know, and I rode it around the parking lot and I'm like, my God.

Ben (44:39.032)
Hmm.

Ben (44:49.677)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Hottie (44:56.345)
All right.

Josh (44:57.0)
That's just better than any race bike I ever had in my life. I could not believe how good this thing was, know, and it's like a $1,200 bike or $1,400. mean, was, but you know, Charles thing was like, like, you know, hey, like in every review, like I got to find something to be a con or to pick, you know, to pick on because otherwise it looks like we're getting paid. And, you know, sometimes it was, was funny. I think he's one of the ones, you know, with like,

Ben (45:00.045)
Yeah.

Josh (45:25.904)
Hot wax amazing love it. It's the best is great like like I don't like the smell. I'm like really like does it have a smell he's like I had to have something you know.

Ben (45:31.759)
On the back on the back end of our website We've got these forms we need to fill out and there's a con when I can't if I leave it empty I can't hit save and publish. I've got to put something in there

Josh (45:42.265)
Yeah.

Hottie (45:43.745)
Yeah.

Josh (45:44.809)
Yeah, but I do feel the tend- and kind of the same thing, I loved when you got started and I will give you some kudos here. I think with the background you have, we get- I cannot tell you how many people in my inbox or Richard's inbox, Richard's marketing director here at Silco for the listeners and-

You know, I mean, it's every week, you know, I have a channel, I have an Instagram, I'm this, I've got a team, you know, I mean, it's, it's just crazy how much of that stuff comes through. And same thing with athletes, you know, it's, you know, I'm the best in the, I'm the best in the world, or at least in my county in, you know, Western Wisconsin, where I've won my championships two years in a row. But like, when you first came to us was like, Hey, here's my thing.

Ben (46:25.729)
Yeah.

Josh (46:36.168)
Here's the pitch, here's the schedule. Here I'm like, whoa, man, Ben's got a plan. It's pretty rare, so for all of those of you out there listening, it's pretty rare that anybody comes with their plan. And I your plan was, you still, you'll send emails, hey, here's my next 12 weeks of travel and what I'm doing. the thing, I'm just like, man, this guy, he's detailed and he's planning. And then even more impressive, you actually execute to it.

Ben (46:42.479)
You

Hottie (46:44.195)
Mm.

Josh (47:05.992)
I think from day one I was like, shit, this is something I'd like to support. And even knowing, because you were super transparent, like hey, I'm not taking any sponsorship from these categories where I'm going to product review. And I think we'd even talked about, like hey, if someday you feel like to grow the channel you need to review product in the categories we're in, then we're happy to, like I want to see you do well because we need more better cycling journalism.

Hottie (47:10.137)
Mm.

Josh (47:35.987)
there's a tension on both sides, right? Like of course I want to win and of course I want my product to look good, but at the same time, full well, it looks way worse if you've seen the Tade Pogaca chain lube video where he's like holding the chain lube of a competitor and he's like, this is the most amazing ever. And I think the first comment in YouTube is like blink twice if you need to be rescued, you know? And you know, it's one of those things of like, yeah, I...

Ben (47:56.121)
Yeah.

Ben (48:01.136)
You

Josh (48:05.958)
want everybody to love my product and say it's the best, but at the same time, if it's at all disingenuous or whatever, that's even worse. I think that's worse than a bad product review. So there is that tension. I mean, feel it a little bit from my side. I'm sure you feel it a ton from your side, but I love that part of the relationship game of, I tell my employees, the long arc of your career. At the end of the day, it's a relationship game.

We collect all these people over 20, 25, 30 years as our careers have gotten long. it's like, hey, don't be a dick. Let's talk to each other. We've been here for 25 years together. I assume we're probably going to be around together for longer. if you don't like the way my thing smells, OK. I'm not going to hate you for it.

Hottie (48:44.857)
Mm.

Ben (48:58.319)
You

Ben (49:03.535)
You should start doing reviews of media of pros and cons, you know.

Hottie (49:06.201)
He does.

Josh (49:06.344)
Oh man. Well, I will tell you the funny that was a real and I don't know if it was I can't remember if it was actually Charles who said that but that did come out in a thing and you should see like the employees in the front office like we're like passing around a bag of chain wax. They're like I don't think it has any smell like like it doesn't smell good or but like I don't think it has any smell at all. You know what do you know it's kind of like when the milk goes you know what do you think about this. Like putting it in people's So yeah it did generate it you know some

Ben (49:19.255)
How does this smell to you?

Ben (49:30.262)
Right.

Josh (49:36.558)
actual genuine conversation within the office and we did all kind of come to the like, yeah, I don't think there's a smell at all to it. But, you know, is what it is. But yes, maybe that could be our, I'm going to review your review.

Hottie (49:51.034)
I think what we're kind of leaning into now is the term, and boy, this term really makes me shiver a little bit, is the term influencer. Ben, where does this sit now in the overall scope of things regarding media, traditional media? Now we have people, these people have obviously come up and started to become a real impact since your time in cycling in Jerusalem, and that is people who...

get a following going on social media, then can get a tracked product or what have you and start kind of running their own little media thing using an Instagram account. Is the public served by this? Are we being just improperly influenced? What's going on here?

Ben (50:43.295)
Yeah, all the above. My daughter is 19 and she loves to goad me and one just surefire way to get me steamed is to call me an influencer and she loves that.

Hottie (50:55.321)
Mmm.

Josh (50:56.315)
No

Ben (50:59.407)
Because for me, back to the credibility thing, influencers are definitely a thing in our society now and they can have a lot of super positive impact, but credibility is not chief among them. If you're sick, do you want a consultation from a wellness influencer or a physician? Yeah, true, true. True.

Josh (51:22.504)
Depends on who you are, I think.

Hottie (51:25.207)
Yeah.

Josh (51:27.954)
Sadly. Yeah.

Ben (51:29.037)
Yeah, but for me, Influencer says you're...

mouthy and opinionated and happy to shill for whoever's paying and you're not a reliable person. That's my negative take on that.

Hottie (51:44.185)
Mm-hmm.

Ben (51:48.176)
to your question is, know, just anyone, the exception of low bar to getting into media is kind of the best of things and the worst of things. Like it's, on the positive side, it's great that you don't have to go through a bunch of gatekeeping or live in the right place or have the right parents or go to a certain school to get a crack at being a storyteller and building an audience. In some ways that's, it's like the internet's the new printing press of the democratization of media. So.

conceptually the freedom there for anybody to make great things or make foolish things is fantastic. For cyclists trying to figure out who is worth following, again, like it can be fantastic that all you have to do is like sit there on your couch with your thumb and you can come across all manner of amazing things from people all over the world. That's, that's can be super cool.

Hottie (52:30.563)
Mm-hmm.

Hottie (52:35.833)
Hmm.

Ben (52:44.045)
when you're trying to tease, now I think we're at a point where there's so much stuff, we just want to be able to get to the good stuff quickly. Right? And that's why it's good for cyclists to have brands where we can trust, like, okay, if Silke is doing this, it's gonna be good because I've like, I trust what they're doing. And I don't have to, every time I'm thinking about buying something that's category, go research the entire internet for...

Josh (52:53.468)
Mm-hmm.

Ben (53:11.951)
10,000 different brands to find a thing like just go with so got done and I May be foolishly thinking that there's a similar Desire for media like I don't want to read all the opinions on the internet I just want to read a few ones that I believe in and are hopefully entertaining too So I don't know if that answers the question or muddles it but

Hottie (53:38.201)
You

Josh (53:39.74)
I certainly think,

I think, I would say my coming to terms with YouTube the last few years, you was 10 years ago hated it. I don't know, pre-COVID was like, you know, really just like, this is a waste of everybody's time. you know, now I think there are people out there. I mean, I think of like, you know, my people I follow on YouTube. mean, there's like some of the best journalism happening is happening on YouTube in various categories, you know, like things like, I love cars.

Some of the best car content out there, YouTube. I'm a big plain nerd and I have a couple of things I follow. YouTube, know mean? Hottie and I talk about I have zero musical skill, he likes, was it Rick Beato, the guitar guy? I stumbled into his videos and I'm like, this is amazing. This is so good and you're not getting content at that level anywhere.

Hottie (54:29.58)
Mm-hmm, yeah.

Josh (54:41.125)
Right? I think that's the, to me, that's the, you know, think influencers, you know, they can be on Instagram and TikTok doing their short little bits of mind numbing, whatever. But yeah, I mean, to me, the YouTube thing is really separated out and you know, you've got like the weird politics and ranting and that stuff that people fall into and you know, and that's always, that's always been there, right? That's always been like AM radio.

Like, you know, the people who I actually had a mechanic in a bike shop I worked with years ago who, quote unquote, ironically, listened to some crazy preacher guy on AM radio. And over the two years that I worked there, he became a crazy religious nut following this preacher guy. we're like, wow, you really can rewire people with this stuff. And I think that's happening as well.

Ben (55:11.727)
Sure.

Josh (55:38.344)
But holy smokes, the quality of your content or Rick Beato or if you're into planes, there's this guy, Mentor Pilot, a Swedish guy who covers incidents and airspace. The level of the content is so good that you keep coming back for more. And I think it really is. It's displaced. I haven't had a television in 25 years, so it's displaced TV for me because I got rid of it years ago.

We just need more of that, right? That good quality, trustworthy content. So that's my little rant and also to say thank you for providing quality content.

Ben (56:16.303)
I'm

Ben (56:21.519)
Well, yeah, thanks for your kind words. Two quick asides, one on the airplane thing. On Instagram, there's this account, Airplane Facts with Max. Have you seen this? This guy mashes up hyper detailed Lord of the Rings, J.R.R. Tolkien references at length, can recite like a Shakespearean actor, just crushes it and then dovetails in like the minutia of airplane facts because he's an airplane mechanic, so he'll be walking through the hull of an airplane.

Josh (56:28.283)
With Max, yeah. yeah. my god. Yup.

Hottie (56:30.186)
he it.

Josh (56:38.407)
my god. Yeah.

Ben (56:50.191)
That guy is incredible. Yeah, that is not something that would have come out of traditional media. God bless him.

Josh (56:53.595)
Yeah. Yeah, for sure. For sure. Well, and he's funny to me. So like, I'm a hardcore airplane nerd, was never a Tolkien or Lord of the Rings, D &D, you any of that stuff. My daughter loves that stuff. so he, right? Yeah, and so he, like, we're constantly sharing the airplane facts with Max, with each other.

Ben (57:11.471)
That's your meeting place. That's the happy meeting place.

Josh (57:19.719)
Because it's this crazy thing of like, hey, here's this thing that you love mishmash with this thing that I love. And it's funny and yeah, I love that. Yeah, and like you said, that never would have happened in traditional media.

Ben (57:25.163)
That's great.

Ben (57:32.976)
Yeah, you mentioned you haven't had a television in 25 years. YouTube, I'm just bringing up this YouTube studio is the back end app that I use and it gives you all manner of statistics on what people are watching and how and on what medium. And for the longest time, going back to bike radar, we saw desktop usage going down and mobile usage going up. And similarly the...

Josh (57:33.099)
which is fantastic.

Ben (58:03.297)
of people reading a story was going down and I thought that was just gonna decline, decline until all we in the media had was like somebody standing at the urinal at a bar looking at a phone for like two seconds like that's our shot like that's all we get is like but with the advent of smart TVs I've seen TVs come up and is now the majority medium for what people are

reviewing my content, which is kind of cool. The duration is longer. It's also a little bit of intimidating because it's easier for me to think about, somebody's just like looking on their phone. It doesn't matter how good it looks. But if like I'm on some giant screen, like I should probably zip up my fly before I start recording and talking about what's going on. Yeah, like, oh, oh, oh, that's a little too much, a little too much.

Josh (58:27.269)
interesting.

Josh (58:41.351)
Wait a minute, my face is in 4k?

Hottie (58:53.561)
Mm.

Josh (58:53.755)
That is fascinating. had not, okay, now I gotta go. Richard and Phil who do the editing and all the YouTube stuff for us, I'm gonna go ask him. what's the, I hadn't even thought about people watching this on a TV. So I feel like I'm an outlier because I hate doing stuff on my phone and I feel like the whole world is only ever on there. My whole family, like everything on the phone. I'm like, give me a laptop. I hate the phone.

Ben (59:05.295)
Yeah, you know, varies by region.

Ben (59:15.395)
Yep.

Josh (59:19.931)
But now there's a TV. Maybe I do need a giant TV that I can do stuff on.

Ben (59:23.818)
you

Hottie (59:26.177)
It's always surprising in podcasting too to learn that a surprising number of people listen to podcasting or podcasts, should say, at home over a Bluetooth speaker instead of the way I think most of us think about it, which is in earbuds, out doing something, but they'll listen at home too. Again, the YouTube channel is The Ride. Ben Delaney is our guest. He is the one and only person with The Ride as far as any of us know.

Ben (59:35.887)
Mm.

Ben (59:41.535)
Mm. Mm-hmm.

Josh (59:51.623)
for now.

Hottie (59:52.29)
Yeah, for now, right? The Ride is a gravel-focused YouTube channel. You still race, Ben, and quite well, I might add. You've had some wins since The Ride came to be, the Ride the YouTube channel came to be, some nice wins and some Masters categories. So you continue to pedal not only for review, but for results, which is great to hear. I want to get into the equipment side of things a little bit with you. And feel free to...

mention any of your fine results in the process. tell us, give us some trends, some gravel trends and surprises too that you've come across since the ride came to be.

Ben (01:00:34.127)
Sure, part of why I started the ride with gravel because it's so weird and evolving and growing unlike the road racing scene, which is obviously much larger, much more prestigious, but it's pretty well established. know, the aerodynamic shapes have not changed greatly in recent years, but what fast is and what good is in gravel is still...

the wild wild west. So trends, I the tires, tire width is clearly the still a hot topic is what, how big is big enough. We've gone from 40 being 40 millimeters being pretty standard for a gravel bike to that being scoffed at as you can now fit a 40 millimeter tire on many all road bikes, which is the category halfway in between a road race bike and a gravel bike.

So that the argument of or the balancing of aerodynamics and weight on one side and rolling resistance on the other, that's fertile ground for discussion. Whether it's the Keegans and Zofias, the gravels power couple at the front of races or...

the vast majority of us who make up the participant fields. That's just fun to talk about and argue about and experiment with. So that's probably the biggest thing. Manufacturers have been caught a little bit off, I should say frame brands, frame manufacturers that specialize the of how quickly the demand for ginormous tires.

came on and that lot of brands are operating two and three and even four years out in terms of development and bringing product to market.

Ben (01:02:25.839)
with the COVID whiplash.

We're seeing some starts and stops there as far as how big frames should be to accommodate huge tires. And personally, I enjoy, it's a treat to be able to play with all these different ones. And big tires are definitely faster on rough stuff. people love to bag on gravel bikes. Like, that's just a 90s mountain bike. You know, you gravel bikes are good, why don't you get on an actual mountain bike?

And turns out fat tires and suspension work on rough terrain. Duh. Many of us ride gravel bikes on many surfaces. And while a big fat tire feels great on rough stuff, a big fat tire riding down the street from your house feels like riding a big fat tire on the street. So I feel like stuff in the 45 mil to 50 mil range is a pretty good all rounder.

Yeah, just arguing, talking, debating, tired, that's an ongoing thing.

Hottie (01:03:31.385)
Mm-hmm. would have been some of the surprises that you've come across? It really opened your eyes up regarding the technology in this space.

Ben (01:03:43.408)
surprises. Josh was talking about how surprising relatively inexpensive stuff can be. continues. That's a thing for sure. know, Keith Bontrager is, is widely attributed to the quote, strong, light, cheap.

pick two. And that truism holds true. With electronics in particular, the fall off in performance is getting quite small. So the difference in a SRAM Red shifter, Axis shifter, and a SRAM Force Secondary...

you know, even Apex, the fourth tier, I often joke there's only two ways to tell the difference. One is with your wallet and the other is with a scale, you know, because often it's the same parts that are being used, the same design being used, it's just a difference in material. The more expensive ones get lighter, goochier materials and the...

Less expensive ones just use heavier, more affordable materials. So that's a positive thing. On the other direction, I continue to be surprised by how much brands are charging for bicycles and bike gear. It's funny talking to buddies, like I mentioned that some of my best friends to this day are from cleat racing back in the day, and some of them have gotten busy with life and kids and careers.

kind of gotten away from cycling and then come back to it and get texts from them asking things like, so I want to buy a pair of shoes and it's $500 for a parachute. Well, You know, like, yeah, man, that's kind of is. And some more things with, you you can spend 16K on a complete bike and that's.

Hottie (01:05:35.437)
Hmm.

Ben (01:05:44.1)
That's a shocker, the vast variety, we often tease each other in the bike industry for being passion driven. Just the vast variety of choices out there and the number of companies that are throwing all kinds of different things into the mix that continues to be a pleasant surprise might not be the best financial decision for a of these brands, but as a consumer, you don't have to buy the most expensive thing all the time. get...

frustrated with people saying, the bike business is trying to rob us of our money. It's like, unless you're an idiot, no one's taking your money. They're putting something in front of you, and you can choose to buy it or not. So shut up about, robbing me.

Hottie (01:06:18.755)
Right.

Hottie (01:06:22.669)
Right? Silke faces that all the time. mean, they make high-end products and they make no bones about it. Like, look, our stuff is more than other people's. If you don't like the price tag, there's other product out there to fit your need. Like you said earlier in the show, you covered the sport from many different angles, including covering the biggest races in Europe, which gets me to my own personal question I have a hard time answering, and that is regarding gravel.

Ben (01:06:36.601)
See ya.

Hottie (01:06:51.683)
big of a sport will this be? Like can it reach, you know, road racing levels where you have not just people who participate in said activity following the sport, but maybe people more on the periphery. Like, I obviously the tour gets an entire nation behind it, but.

You know, set the tour aside, mean, a lot of people still kind of know road racing and know that, you know, when the tour comes up and have a general idea about it, gravel still, I think, is struggling for that identity, at least, you know, the racing, the pointing into the spear type stuff. What's the potential here? Is there something beyond what we're seeing now that, you know, make this thing more of a fascination for the general public?

Ben (01:07:42.384)
Gravel cycling is never going to be the Tour de France. Part of what makes gravel so compelling to do makes it a terrible spectator sport. I think it's akin to long course triathlon. It's fundamentally a participatory activity. And yes, there are elite level, incredible, exceptional athletes who do it. And if they're...

Feats can be captured well in media that can be entertaining to watch, but I think at this point there are more obstacles and hurdles to gravel being a easy to consume spectator sport than there are avenues for it to happen easily. So that's the...

Yeah. I'm skeptical and I don't feel that that's like a failing. Like, well, gravel is never going to be real. It doesn't, sort of like jogging is a very popular thing to do. I don't want to watch anybody else jog. That doesn't mean like jogging is a terrible thing. mean, personally, I hate jogging, but I think it's an apples and oranges thing.

Hottie (01:08:48.301)
Right.

Ben (01:09:08.751)
It is interesting to see how it kind of ties back to the independent versus traditional media. It's been fascinating to go to races like Unbound Gravel and see the rise and swelling of who is in the media rooms. So at Unbound, not too many years ago, there would be like three or four of us in there. There'd be somebody from the local newspaper.

there'd be one of us from, know, Vela News or Bike Radar, one of us from Cycle News, and that was it, right? Now the media room will be packed with 200 people, and almost all of them are from brands. And so they're there to cover their guy or their gal, and like that's what they're presenting to the world is, and that's their mission, is just to chase that, you know, get some cool shots of that one racer, and that's a fundamentally different thing.

than the media trying to encapsulate the whole event and tell that story.

you know something like closed course Red Bull cross-country racing that's made for spectating right the duration the excitement the fact you've got cameras everywhere great 200 miles out in the middle of nowhere

put a vehicle in front of the pack, you're gonna smoke them out, you can't see anything, the racers can't see anything, you can't transmit the signal. There's just not, logistically, it's a bear. And it's kind of boring, like would you want to watch 10 hours of anything? So, yeah, it's a challenge. Media hasn't found a way to make that work. The races like Lifetime Grand Prix is doing the best. They've got...

Hottie (01:10:44.291)
Mm-mm.

Ben (01:10:55.119)
money to throw out of that and they're also getting assistance from things like the Walton family will like lend a helicopter to help cover it and so like having a helicopter cover part of a gravel race can help. saw just last weekend at the Mid-South they've got know vehicles on course it was a challenge for a number of ways one almost crashed into the two leading women just in a moment of invitation so like there's there's a lot of problems in trying to to cover gravel racing.

Hottie (01:11:15.225)
Mm.

Ben (01:11:23.439)
and there's not the money to support it. These obstacles could be overcome with infinite money, but there's not infinite money. Most of these races are put on by a small group of folks one time a year, and they've got another job the rest of the year. So there's no ASO, like the organization that runs the tour, and many of other organizations. There's not television rights. There's not this huge thing around it. And I don't foresee that happening.

Hottie (01:11:46.883)
Yeah.

Ben (01:11:52.728)
And I think that's okay. I don't think it needs to be... I think it needs to be on par with... Professional racing doesn't have to be on par with professional road racing in order for the experience of the rest of us riding gravel bikes to be a worthwhile endeavor.

Hottie (01:11:54.327)
Yeah.

Hottie (01:12:20.193)
Mm-hmm. Yeah, right. Yeah, I agree. mean, hats off to Lifetime. They're putting their chips on the table and they're giving it a go. And they have faith that they'll be able to develop an audience that can help sustain this thing. Because they do. You need coverage, right? You need interest to keep that machine going. I think expectations need to be set. So you understand, OK, here's

Here's what we think we can achieve as opposed to throwing everything you've got at it and coming up short. Let's talk about The Ride a little bit more before we sign off here. The Ride, the future of The how do you see this band? How is it gonna play out? Are you gonna keep a one man band? Would you like to grow it to have correspondents and something bigger? What's your feel on that?

Ben (01:13:12.355)
Yeah, that's a great question. And the short answer is I don't know where this is going. And it underscores a downside of the individual media thing in that.

Yeah, what happens in five years when I'm, or 10 years when I'm kind of feeling the strain of going to races all the time myself. Yeah, or James Wong is getting burned out. Like, does he have an intern there to pick up the slack? So I would like to incorporate a few more folks into what I'm

But I don't know how exactly. I've talked to a few, excuse me, a companies or a few individuals who are thinking about, how about we start a gravel website? You know, that conversation is just, we just had one yesterday.

Hottie (01:13:51.961)
Mm-hmm.

Ben (01:14:10.219)
And there's an allure there of going back to the old way of doing things. But I'm still, think where I net out is I still like the freedom of doing whatever the heck I want. And so that's alluring and it's working well, knock on wood.

So yeah, give you a rambling answer to a short question. I hope I will still be doing the same thing down the road, but with the addition of some other folks, because I do miss, I do miss some of the collaboration.

of being able to take a mediocre idea, and right now I've got a mediocre idea and I just roll that out, If you mediocre idea in a group of people, of your colleagues, you can kick it around and you can improve it. You can critique each other and you end up with a better thing. And then also there's like the best practices like Josh was talking about, like fact checking and just going through a process of coming up with a better editorial product, so.

I'm certainly aware of my limitations, enjoying the ride, so to speak, of doing it solo. Do you tell me, Hottie, where should I go? What should I do?

Hottie (01:15:24.537)
Hmm.

Hottie (01:15:28.621)
Well, Ben, we want to thank you. don't don't ask me that. I'm just a little little YouTuber, not YouTuber, but a little podcaster here. So I I mean, you know, I love your content. Would would I like to see more than a video per week? Yeah, that'd be great. But I think, you know, I feel like anything more than a video per week, I'm kind of guessing here would take right more manpower.

To get that done, mean, you're probably maxed out as it is right now, so. But I'm like you, like, finances and business, not my forte, like, I don't know, sustainability with that stuff? Boy, I just don't know. And it seems like, you know, Josh mentioned Rick Beato, like, he has five and a half million subscribers on YouTube. But it's, well, he has, he does have some people now coming in to help him, but he still does his own editing.

Ben (01:16:06.211)
Yeah.

Ben (01:16:23.087)
Interesting.

Hottie (01:16:25.015)
And there's his own booking and does a lot of the makes his own thumbnails and does all of that stuff. So it can be done as a one man band to build quite a little empire.

Ben (01:16:38.959)
Yeah, I mean, it's working now. I'm not aspiring to be McDonald's. I'm happy to be a weird little boutiquey thing. So I'm just gonna try to keep it rolling.

Hottie (01:16:49.293)
Well, Ben Delaney, thanks for coming on the show. We appreciate it. We'll let you get back to your, I guess, YouTube comments. So you got to respond to all the people who are on fire about your latest review or something like that. So thanks for coming on.

Ben (01:16:59.747)
Thanks for having me, on. I really enjoyed the conversation. Keep up the good work over there.

Hottie (01:17:03.577)
Thanks.

I'm gonna hit, oops, don't hit leave, hit stop.