White Fence Living
"White Fence Living: Real stories from New Albany, Ohio, hosted by a local dad, youth sports coach and community member. From community leaders to everyday voices, we share what makes 43054 tick—with a history sprinkle, no politics. Uncurated chats over the white fences."
White Fence Living
From Patient to CEO: Joe Apgar's Pelotonia Journey
Use Left/Right to seek, Home/End to jump to start or end. Hold shift to jump forward or backward.
What happens when 7,500 cyclists, 3,000 volunteers, and tens of thousands of spectators come together for a common cause? Something truly extraordinary.
Joe Apgar, CEO of Pelotonia and a cancer survivor himself, takes us behind the scenes of the organization that has raised over $320 million for cancer research at The James Cancer Hospital. His personal journey from testicular cancer diagnosis during his senior year of college to leading one of the most successful fundraising movements in cancer research exemplifies the full-circle impact Pelotonia creates.
The magic of Pelotonia lies in its unique funding structure – corporate sponsors underwrite all operational costs, ensuring 100% of participant-raised dollars go directly to research. This model has funded breakthroughs ranging from life-saving drugs to the country's first FDA-approved telehealth clinical trial, which allows patients anywhere to participate without relocating near a research hospital.
New Albany has been instrumental to Pelotonia's success since its earliest days, consistently producing more participants and fundraising than almost any other zip code. The community's embrace of the event – from decorated streets to emotional "spirit stations" where patients thank riders – creates powerful moments that transcend the physical challenge of cycling.
As Pelotonia expands beyond its flagship Ride Weekend to include gravel rides, hiking events, and kids' rides across twelve communities, the organization maintains its laser focus on excellence while evolving to engage more people in its mission. The recent recruitment of Dr. Kimron Rathmel, former director of the National Cancer Institute, to lead The James signals even greater possibilities ahead for cancer research in Columbus.
Ready to be part of something bigger than yourself? Visit pelotonia.org to discover how you can contribute to groundbreaking cancer research through riding, volunteering, or donating to this remarkable community movement.
Awesome, we're good to go.
Speaker 2I'm ready to go.
Speaker 1We can start whenever. Well, joe, welcome to the podcast man. Yeah, thanks for having me. I'm excited. No, I'm like. I'm going to be honest I'm a little bit nervous for this one. Why?
Speaker 2Why are you nervous?
Speaker 1It's an honor to have you in here. I appreciate it. No, I appreciate your time and I know your time is valuable and you're a busy guy. So thank your time and I know your time is valuable and you're a busy guy, um so so thank you Truly truly thank you for coming in. Um, we didn't get really get a chance to tour brick house blue but hopefully we've got some time afterwards.
Speaker 2It's a cool spot, yeah. Yeah, I got the feel of it. It's neat, it's uh. I saw the sign sort of from outside maybe a couple of months ago on the highway and been to the bridge park version which is awesome. I've got a friend who offices there, so it's cool to see them popping up.
Speaker 1Yeah, it is. It's really neat and it does it like when you see the building from the highway it just looks like another office building. Exactly exactly. And then you come in and it's like you don't feel like you're in an office building. But yeah, hopefully I get to show you some of the space a little bit afterwards. I get to show you some of this space a little bit afterwards. So, joe from Pelotonia, you are the current CEO, right, current CEO? Yeah, how's that going? It's good.
Speaker 2It's good. I've been in the role almost two years now. I've been with the organization. June of 2026 will be 10 years. Oh wow. I've been with the organization almost a decade, which has been really fun. I've been riding for 15 years, so longer than I've been working there. It's been quite the ride.
Speaker 1That's awesome. So how long have you been the CEO? Almost two years. Two years, okay, great, 2023-ish or so.
Speaker 2Beginning of 24, like January of 24, was the official announcement.
Speaker 1Yeah, we just got through COVID. Hey, congratulations, take this thing on, yeah.
Speaker 2COVID was a crazy time for the organization, obviously like doing outdoor events and stuff, and uh, I've had a bunch of different roles. I think I don't know probably five different titles, since I've been there, so yeah.
Speaker 1Um well, that's a good thing, right.
Speaker 2It's great. Yeah, you know it's. I've had a lot of different opportunities to do really fun stuff and the prior CEO, doug Oldman, who a lot of people know mentor of mine, friend, he's the one who hired me and brought me on 10 years ago and you know I've just been given a lot of cool opportunities and jumped at the chance to do new things and stretch myself.
Speaker 1That's awesome.
Speaker 2You know, things have fallen into place?
Speaker 1Yeah, cool, so I'd love to get to know you a little bit more. Yeah, right, so where are you from family?
Speaker 2Yeah, so I'm from Edinburgh, pennsylvania, a small little college town used to be called Edinburgh university. Now it's the state schools in Pennsylvania rebranded to Penn East and Penn West. So now it's called Penn West, the Edinburgh campus. But it's a town of like 1,500 to 2,000 people when school's not in session. When the university comes, I don't know what enrollment is anymore, but it used to be five or six 7,000 people when students were there.
Speaker 2But about 30 minutes South of Lake Erie uh 15 minutes maybe from the Ohio border, so Northwest Pennsylvania. Uh grew up in you know, it was one of those towns where everyone knew one another. You know, you couldn't really do anything without getting in trouble. Uh, there's always a lot of watchful eyes, which which was good, I was, um, you know, I didn't get myself into too much trouble anyway.
Speaker 1Did you ever go to Three by the River?
Speaker 2Were you close to that I've never heard of that.
Speaker 1Oh, okay, like Quaker Steak and Lube. Yeah, yeah, we just called it Three by the River, so I'm from the Youngstown area. Okay, so it's real close. Yeah, very cool.
Speaker 2Yeah, so that rust belt, sort of snow belt in the winter, oh yeah, A ton of snow, which you know. When I moved to Columbus, one of the first things I thought was like, oh, it's going to be nice, there's not going to be like hardly any snow. What I quickly learned was a little bit of snow shuts this place down, it might as well be or back back home.
Speaker 2you know, if we got two feet of snow, you were still going to school, so it's actually worse to have snow here than it was was back home growing up.
Speaker 1Yeah, it is. It's like uh, and we don't get much, we get, we don't get much.
Speaker 2No, it gets cold but we don't get much. But I grew up, you know, in a really nice neighborhood but across the street from a Buffalo farm, so it was a pretty rural, rural area. Um, you know where it was Friday night lights, you know, everyone was at the high school football games and I played sports. Growing up, uh, you know, and had a younger sister. You know both my parents, um, my dad was a truck driver, my mom was a, you know, a secretary in an office, wow, and, uh, you know, a great family, close knit family. We had a great group of friends and my parents had a great group of friends, uh, and over time all of the friends ended up moving into the same neighborhood. So all my parents' friends, they all coordinated to build houses in this little cul-de-sac how cool is that Together. And so it was just like every Friday, saturday and Sunday growing up, there was a picnic.
Speaker 1That's awesome.
Speaker 2You know kids running around playing. You know kick the can and capture the flag and all that kind of stuff. So just a great environment to grow up in.
Speaker 1Yeah, that's neat. That's neat. I kind of similar, kind of a similar experience, small town and like, yeah, you just kind of know everybody around you. Yeah, it's really neat, so. So where are you living now? You're in Columbus, obviously. We're in Upper Arlington.
Speaker 2Okay, I've lived.
Speaker 1I've lived everywhere you know I've lived downtown arena district.
Pelotonia's New Albany Connection
Speaker 2I've lived everywhere. I've lived downtown, arena District, grandview, new Albany. For a few years we lived in German Village, ended up buying our first house in Worthington. Now we live in our second home, which is in Upper Arlington. Great, we've been all over the place.
Speaker 1Yeah, upper, arlington's really nice.
Speaker 2Yeah, it's good, we're like walkable to the football stadium. Oh, that's cool, which I really like. You know, every neighborhood's got their own sort of unique pieces about it, and it's a good spot for us.
Speaker 1Yeah, the stadium's really cool. I was there this past Saturday. I coach freshman football.
Speaker 2Oh nice, we got our butts kicked Nice, there you go by the Golden Bears there you go Great football program.
Speaker 1Well, that's neat. So you mentioned living in New Albany. This is obviously a hyper-local podcast based in New Albany, so maybe we could start with just kind of like what are the ties with New Albany and Pelotonia? And then maybe we can go back and kind of jump into what the organization is, yeah, and then maybe we can go back and kind of jump into what you know, the organization is yeah, so New Albany is generally one of our most populous zip codes from a participation standpoint.
Speaker 2Yeah, and you know, if you go all the way back to the very first year of Pelotonia, the very first ride was in 2009. The CEO, the very first CEO of Pelotonia, was a gentleman named Tom Lennox, who lives in new Albany. He's an Albany resident and, just you know, he really launched this thing with a handful of people on our board and leadership at the James at Ohio state, and Tom just took this thing right out of the gate to, you know, I think, blew expectations out of the water, created this amazing brand that is, just you know, synonymous with town, with Columbus. Now, and you know, right from the jump, new Albany was just always, we always had the most participants, or, you know, top two, top three participants coming from a New Albany zip code, yeah, and I would wager to guess it's usually number one. What we don't know, because a lot of people will sign up using their work address- and so someone lives in new.
Speaker 2Albany and works downtown at Huntington and they put their work address and you know our system captures it as a their downtown address but uh, new Albany has got a huge presence. We uh, the first three years the ride went from you know campus at Ohio State down to Athens where Ohio University is. But then in 2012, we switched to go to Kenyon University for the long route from downtown and when we did that, new Albany came into the mix from a finish line standpoint.
Speaker 1Yeah.
Speaker 2And so we've had these finish lines, or you know finish lines, and riding through new Albany for the longer distances every year since. And it's been amazing, the people you know, the city government and officials and city council, everyone's just so great to work with.
Speaker 1Yeah.
Speaker 2So supportive. You see signs all around. People decorate it's, you know, to be welcomed into a community with open arms like this, I think, makes things so much easier for us.
Speaker 1Yeah.
Speaker 2Logistically. It's. You know. People ask me all the time what's it? Like you know, trying to organize 200 miles of routes, you know an event for what ends up being 15 to 20,000 people over the weekend. You have all these different sites. You know it's a crazy puzzle. It's really really hard and to have communities like new Albany makes it a lot easier than it otherwise could be. But a really fun stat is you know, we've raised, you know, 320 plus million dollars over time and new Albany has driven, you know, the most fundraising.
Speaker 1Yeah.
Speaker 2Right, so so new Albany, uh, riders and volunteers and participants have raised, you know, at least $10 million uh of that money. But if you really look at sort of the network effect, it's considerably more.
Speaker 1And uh, I don't think pelotonia would be what it is without new albany well, yeah, that's, that's cool and uh, yeah, it makes you feel good right to live in a community like that. So, um, that's really, that is. It's really cool. It's funny because I've known of pelotonia forever and you know if you're new to new albany and you see it, it's almost like it honestly almost feels like a new Albany event.
Speaker 2Yeah, it's like a Barnes painted, you know, on one 61. Yeah, you see arrows and stuff and yeah, it does, it's, it's, it's, it's got a good vibe and it's wild to hear three over $300 million.
Speaker 1Yeah, that's awesome. Well, let's jump into like the most important part of all this is those funds. And jump into like the most important part of all this is those funds, and and what they do, right?
Speaker 2Yeah, I think you know a little background on Pelotonia. I think one of the key decisions that was made up front was that the organization would be structured in a way it was really unique at the time where there'd be a handful of you know companies or foundations that would underwrite the costs of the employees, the cost of the event, the cost of the police and the food and the marketing and all this stuff, so that a hundred percent of every dollar the community was out raising would go to cancer research at the James and what that did was make it a lot easier for people to ask their friends and family for money, just knowing that a hundred percent of their money was just getting passed right through right to cancer research and that, you know, the Huntington banks of the world and L brands and AEP and Cardinal health and safe flight and a couple other organizations were funding the operations and it's completely separate.
Speaker 2It was funny. Actually, years later, after riding for a few years and then joining the organization, realizing, like it's all separate bank accounts, like it is just so clean and separate and it makes things really easy from a fundraising standpoint.
$320 Million for Cancer Research
Speaker 2And so you know this idea that you could drive all this money to cancer research at a time when you know, in the two thousands, there's a lot of federal cuts not as significant as happening right now, but there's, you know, there's a lot of federal cuts um, not as significant as happening right now, but there's you know, there's been a decline in medical research funding from the government for a long time, and that's coupled with it's gotten more and more expensive, right the talent in the talent pool is more expensive.
Speaker 2The technology to do this research more is more expensive.
Speaker 2Rent is more expensive right everything's just more expensive yeah in space of research, and so you've got costs going up and funding going down and it presented a real challenge, and philanthropy is what has really been able to fill that gap, not just locally but nationally too. And so communities have done a really good job, have been really able to rally their community in a kind of decentralized way where you know there's still a lot of communities where one or two you know billionaires drives the community in whole.
Speaker 2Columbus is not like that right. Columbus is is very, very philanthropic. If you go around to a lot of the other different nonprofit organizations, you know thousands of donors and, um, you know 50 and a hundred dollar donations really make a big impact. We're getting tens of thousands of them and that's what's happening with Pelotonia, and when you have fundraising at that scale, you can do a lot of really big things. And so Pelotonia has funded everything from clinical trials for drugs that are now on the market and drugs that are keeping people in remission of cancer that 10 years prior, people probably would have been sent home and to put their affairs in order.
Speaker 2Now you have people taking a pill every day and living a completely normal life and Pelotonia was the funding that got that over the hump. You know different technologies where you know there's technologies that are helping make surgery safer or allowing surgeons to get better margins, things around mental health things, sort of mental health around like you go through a cancer diagnosis. I had a cancer diagnosis myself almost 20 years ago and it's sort of three parts right. There's the life before cancer, life during cancer and life after cancer. And historically you know, the medical system has focused on the during cancer part.
Speaker 2Yeah, absolutely, and then you're sent out of the hospital. You ring the bell and you got to go. Try to live the rest of your life, and what people don't realize is you carry that with you every day. And so what are the mental health components and physical components that you know we can learn and help people thrive and live a better life?
Speaker 1after a cancer diagnosis.
Speaker 2There's so many cool things happening. I think one of the big things that is really important to understand in the world of research is you know it's a knowledge business, and so a lot of people think of research and they think of these labs and test tubes and beakers and Bunsen burners and all of these things. Research is really a people business and more and more it's being driven from a computer, and so you've got data analytics and computer engineering. You know people with these talents. You're competing against you know the Facebooks and the Amazons and the Googles for that same talent right Of people that might be really good at AI or or computer science and data analytics, and you've got to pay these people really well, right. And so that's like a dynamic. That's happening is how do you keep the best and brightest and smartest people in this field Cause you don't need them going to create another MySpace.
Speaker 2Yeah, Like you know, the world doesn't need another Instagram.
Speaker 1No, it does not, but the world needs.
Speaker 2You know more drugs and more prevention protocols and things, and so how do you keep these people in this field? And so that's one of the things that James has been able to do a remarkable job of is we've been able to recruit some of the best people in the world here, and nothing has made that more clear than what happened this spring. So, um, john Warner, who is the, the CEO of the Wexner medical center, so the entire Ohio state university medical system. He's a new Albany resident. Uh, he's a great guy, he, you know, he was really charged when he joined the organization three years ago. Go find the next great leader of the James Cancer Hospital. And we got her. We got the best free agent on the market probably in the world she joined in May of this year.
Speaker 2Her name is Dr Kimron Rathmel. She was the former director of the national cancer institute. Wow, and so it's like getting lebron james yeah, absolutely it's, you know, tom brady, whatever sports analogy you want, and she came here because the breadth of talent is so broad and so deep yeah and the opportunity here is so big to have an impact not just on Columbus, not just on Ohio, but on on the whole country.
Speaker 2But when she, you know she got to visit every community right and in the country and see everything going on around the country and around the world from a cancer standpoint, and you know a lot of places are doing things really, really well. We are lucky to live in a country with just top-notch healthcare, top-notch research. What every community does not have is a community.
Speaker 1Yeah.
Speaker 2Right. And so there's a lot of cities that are just that they're cities. They don't have a community. Yep, columbus has a community and that was one of the things that really drew her. Wow, right, you land at the airport and you see signs for the cancer center, signs for Pelotonia. You drive through neighborhoods and you see cars with magnets on them and yard signs, and if you're a researcher, yeah, that gets you excited. It gets you excited. Your career is built on failure. So I mean, any scientific field is built on failure.
Speaker 2You're doing experiments and you fail and you fail and you fail, and you fail until you don't, yeah right, and it's the persistence to keep going that really drives you, except just think about how demotivating that's gotta be every day fail, just dead end, dead end, dead end. But to go home at night and know that your neighbor has a yard sign yeah in their yard because they're riding in august and raising money to you to help you do your work. It's a pretty magical thing.
Telehealth Clinical Trials Breakthrough
Speaker 1Yeah, that's incredible, that's it's. It's interesting Cause like, of course, like the average person like me, I don't think about things like that. Like the talent pool, right, yeah, yeah, I would imagine that it's like, yeah, going out and living in California and working for Facebook is is a little sexier than doing cancer research, yeah, um, which I've like I've never thought of it in that way.
Speaker 1Um, so that's super interesting. Um, well, it's good to know, and it's good to know it's in our backyard. It's cool, really cool, it's amazing. So, um well, so you, you touched on a little bit of like, like, do you have a specific? Or it doesn't have to be super specific, but like something that the research recently, like some story wrapped around that, or like Pelotonia funding, that like led to a specific thing that is just really stands out.
Speaker 2Yeah, something cool, really, really recent. And this sounds, you know, to some people after COVID a little sort of elementary or rudimentary, but it's, it's really a massive breakthrough. So you think about clinical trials, right, and what clinical trials are is the opportunity to sort of test, you know, new drug, new combination of drugs, new protocols. It might be a brand new drug, but it might be old drugs used in a new way Right, and you know there's a very rigorous process that the FDA, you know, says you have to go through to. You know, test these and ultimately bring them to market.
Speaker 2Historically, what's happened in clinical trials? And there's thousands and tens of thousands of clinical trials going on, not just in cancer but in all types of diseases throughout our country. And the James actually has one of the biggest clinical trial centers. I think there's 1,500 or 2,000 clinical trials at any given time open and you have to enroll patients in these and you got to enroll a certain amount of patients to get a trial going and it can take years. And one of the real problems with clinical trials is you need to be here to do the clinical trial and so now to enroll 75 people. You might not have 75 people at the hospital today that could be in that clinical trial. So it takes a long time to actually enroll and fill a clinical trial.
Speaker 2There's a researcher, a Pelotonia funded researcher, named Samik Roy Chowdhury, who had this idea coming out of COVID that we did so many amazing things through telehealth, why couldn't we do a clinical trial through telehealth? And so he had this idea for a pancreatic cancer telehealth clinical trial and, you know, using existing drugs in a new combination in pill form that could be sent to a patient that lives anywhere. They could be seen by their local doctor in collaboration with him, right, yeah, and to do the blood draws, and so they don't actually need to come to the James.
Speaker 2They could be in Minnesota or California or Nevada, and what the breakthrough really was was not the clinical trial itself, it was the format and the structure. So this is the first telehealth clinical trial that's been approved and active in the country right now and he's going around to different conferences and speaking and people's minds are blown that he basically just had the persistence with the FDA to continue coming back to the drawing board and figuring out how this was going to work, and so you know, I hope his trial and sort of the pancreatic cancer trials massively successful, but what this really does is just open up this entire pipeline and opportunity for clinical trials for all different types of cancer centers to go out and do telehealth medicine clinical trials, and so you can roll patients faster.
Speaker 2Something that might have taken four years to do a trial might take less than a year because you can get all the patients quicker and you can get them on the drugs. And so that is a really good example of a traditional funder. The government or some sort of traditional foundations aren't going to fund that. They would look at that and say, well, that's not how things are done. Clinical trials don't work that way. We're not going to take that risk. Pelotonia and the James, having Pelotonia money, had the flexibility to say go try this, because if it works this could be a game changer.
Speaker 2Yeah absolutely, and so that's ongoing now. It's an active clinical trial. It's and I'm really excited to see there's a lot of people right now at the James that have their ideas for, oh, that format could be perfect for this or that, and so I think that's going to really be something that's really big and really impactful, not to just people here, but to people everywhere in the country around the globe.
Speaker 1Any clinical trials?
Speaker 2Yeah, it's really cool.
Speaker 1That is really interesting. Covid did do some good COVID did do some good oh man. So all right. So that's the research side of it, the funding side of it, the ride itself. So why don't I get on? Maybe I'll back up a little bit. So it's Brandon on your team who I met through Irene Adams.
Speaker 1Oh yeah, he's a hoot oh man, he Irene's like you, you gotta have them on, you gotta have them on. So I was like hey, brandon, will you do it? And Irene's like I don't know if you can match his energy and I'm like absolutely not, not a chance.
The Ride Experience
Speaker 1Don't even try to you and Irene, bring the lower energy guy on, yeah, something I could keep up the pace with. But yeah, so Irene, who I love, and just what she does is incredible, and so I've heard lots of her stories and oh man, just so many. I've got a close friend and a classmate from Otterbein that um that had his battle with cancer and and like so just just tell me a little bit about the like the ride itself, how people volunteer, maybe any like neat stories you have, yeah.
Speaker 2So this, this was year 17 for the ride, so so we we now have two sort of rides. So we have ride weekend, which is our big sort of traditional on-the-roads ride. Now we have Gravel Day, which will be in its third year, which is October 4th this year. It's more off-road trail but much more rugged, much more adventurous. Most people when they think of Pelotonia, they think of Ride Weekend. So we had 7,500 people out there riding. We had 3,000 people volunteering Wow. And then tens of thousands of spectators. And what it typically looks like is, on a Friday night we have opening ceremony. It's our big opening kickoff party. We've got a great program. It's, you know, people come down downtown Columbus. We had about 20,000 people this year. It's food, drinks, it's music, it's an expo. It's people are buying merchandise, they're dropping off their bike, they're having dinner, they're taking team pictures. The energy is just absolutely incredible. And then we finished the night with a concert. So OAR played a private concert. It was unbelievable, that's awesome.
Speaker 2The weather was perfect. The sun was setting. I mean it couldn't have been better. And then Saturday and Sunday of that weekend people ride anywhere between 25 and 100 miles on Saturday, so we had routes that were you know. Basically the simple way to think about it is 25, 50, 75, 100 miles, and then on Sunday you can ride 30 or 90.
Speaker 2And so 90 comes back from Kenyon College, which is where the Saturday 100 goes. So Saturday there's three rides that start downtown. So 25, 50, 100 all start downtown. So 25, 50, a hundred all start downtown. The 25 and 50 end in new Albany and the a hundred ends at Kenyon college. Yeah, and then the 75, and it varies between 55 and 75 miles every year, but this year I think it was 63. It goes from new Albany to Kenyon and so, new, there's a lot of new Albany presence, right, and so our new Albany finishes. We finish at the schools, uh, the beautiful campus that the schools have here, and then abercrombie and fitch their headquarters and um, it's so fun.
Speaker 2I mean, it's just the the roads are packed. You see, we 10 000, not 10 000, 1 000 survivors ride this year wow, and it's the most we've ever had. And you just see, you know, you come up on someone riding and they're wearing a survivor jersey. And they might be, you know, someone like me, that's, you know, almost 20 years into their survivorship, or they might be someone going through active treatment yeah right.
Speaker 2We had people that you know had their chemotherapy or radiation or immunotherapy that week and got on a bike and road. That's incredible. And it's just, you know, that's where I think the full circle moment comes, because there's a lot of people wearing those survivor jerseys out during the weekend that a decade ago might not be here.
Speaker 1Yeah.
Speaker 2And that's really powerful.
Speaker 1Man, it's, that is it. I've heard so many just amazing stories about it and so I got to see it this year. Just because I'm at the school, so much. Um man, it just like the tense takes over. Yeah, it does, it's. It's really cool. So, um, again, awesome that the schools work, you know, work with you on that, like, cause it is? It just makes it. It's just such a big space. The, the, the parking lot is perfect for it.
Speaker 2Yeah, oh, it's perfect. They're beautiful schools, right, like everyone that's not familiar with it, they you know people from out of town. They're like wait, this is like a middle school and a high school elementary school. I'm certain this is a college campus.
Speaker 1Yeah, that's great. So tell me, like like when people come out to watch, right, so what's that? Like Like where people line the streets and and like what's the? What's the craziest fan you've seen, or craziest sign, or like, oh man.
Speaker 2I don't know about crazy, but there's, you know, more sort of touching and emotional. We don't tell people to go spectate.
Speaker 2So, we've never said, like you know, newsflash, go spectate. Like, get out on the streets, people just do it. And the last few years, you know so, we've never said, like you know, newsflash, go spectate. Like, yeah, get out on the streets, people just do it. And the last few years, you know, we've had some volunteers organize spirit stations and so tents and dj and they'll have food and, like you know, it'll be a little party as you're going by and some of the companies do that, but the mass of spectators shows up sort of organically. That's just really cool. And, um, you'll see signs. You know that so-and-so doctor saved my life, or I'm here because of you. And you know, I've had moments riding with some of those doctors who see a sign and their names on it. Oh, man Right, they don't necessarily know exactly who it is, or it might've been someone from 20 years ago, but I mean, it's really, really touching.
Speaker 2And I think sometimes the spectators have this perspective on the weekend that it's hard to have as a rider. Right, you're riding, you're in it, you're in it. So many spectators go sit at the end of their driveway for eight hours with with a sign and just they say thank you to every rider that's passing by. It's. It's really, really cool, and when you hear people recount their stories of the weekend, usually the first thing people will bring up is I saw this sign or I met this person like it doesn't actually have anything to do with the music and the food and the route or the bike itself.
Speaker 2It's. It's something you know about, something they saw, a spectator or something like that.
Speaker 1Yeah, and you can't measure that Like you can measure dollars raised. Right, that's easy, but, um yeah, just you can't measure the impact. And we?
Speaker 2have no idea how many people are out there Like I. So I ride in in the ride and it's like I'm I'm always shocked, I'm like holy cow, like you know, like all these people are out here, you know, and they're at their house and they're at the end of their driveway or they get together with the group, they make their own party right, they have their own picnics and it's really cool.
Speaker 1Yeah, that's neat. So I actually did an episode with Aaron Westbrook from form five.
Speaker 2Oh yeah, he just did a big bike ride.
Speaker 1Yes, he did so, I, I, I went to his finish, um, which it really and I just think so Pelotonia, right. So he had a client who said, hey, I want to ride in Pelotonia. And then, like, now that's turned into, you know, he's developed a product they're going to help who knows how many more people be able to ride a bike Right which, in in, in the end, like, contribute to Pelotonia. So just talking about, like, how immeasurable it is, I mean that's, I mean that's what kind of sparked that idea for him.
Speaker 2Right and it's going to turn. He's such a passionate young guy I mean you talk about persistence, right, like he's, he's, he's a great guy. So yeah, I saw on social media he had just finished his ride and just super cool. So yeah it was really neat.
Speaker 1I got to see, uh, I got to see the, the. Um, oh, shoot, I should. The attachment that goes on the bike. Um, and man, it's just, it's really neat. It's just like to go from, you know, using a 3d printer at new Albany to where he is now. Is just, it was really cool, it was great to see him. You know. Finish the race and he was. It was a great turnout and you know he's working towards his goal to take this thing to market and get it and you know.
Speaker 1so really really cool. Um well, I know I know you you're, you've got a tight schedule, um, so I just want to kind of finish up with like your personal experience with cancer and and kind of like how that led to where you are at Pelotonia.
Speaker 2Yeah, so I went to Penn state, uh, which is not always the most popular thing to say around here, Um but you know I we talked. I grew up in a small town in Pennsylvania. Penn state's the only school I applied to Um. You know I grew up watching football Saturdays and Joe Paterno and you know my mom went to Penn state. Uh, so I was you football Saturdays and Joe Paterno and my mom went to Penn State. So I was blue and white from the get-go.
Speaker 1Well, you've been in Columbus long enough that you say Pennsylvania, not PA. I know Well.
Speaker 2I had to learn that, because when I moved here for a long time I used to say PA, and if you're really from, if you go actually to Pennsylvania, it doesn't even sound like the letter is P-A. No, it's P-A Yay and everyone knows what you're talking about. You're from PA, but yeah, now I say Pennsylvania because it's more proper and I don't get the weird looks. Exactly.
Speaker 1Yeah, you're like, what did he say?
Joe's Personal Cancer Journey
Speaker 2Like. Is that a different country? He's tall, he looks Nordic country. Um, so my senior year at at Penn state is my finals first week of my final semester, uh, so we had just had the Martin Luther King sort of long holiday, uh, in the winter, in January of 2008. One of the things we would do as students you're actually not far from the East Coast, yeah, in state colleges so we would drive to Atlantic City. We'd like go gamble for a week Go to the boardwalk, yeah, just do all that fun stuff.
Speaker 2And came back that week and you know I mentioned my college roommate who was a nursing student. I said you know, something's just not right and he's like how long has that been going on?
Speaker 2I said I think a couple months and he was just he's kind of a he's from a town called Butler, pa, which is like no frills, like you know, steel town sort of thing and he just, you know, a couple of explicitives and get your butt out of the couch and I'm taking you to the health building you know which is the nurse's office uh, on campus. And he's like I'm taking you there, I'll wait outside. And you know, we walked there and I thought nothing of it and walked in, told the doctor what was going on and he gave me an exam and five hours later I was in the ER and was diagnosed with testicular cancer. It was on a Friday night. I was making like this is how like oblivious I was to the whole thing and the immediacy of it. But I was in the ER on my Blackberry Pearl Remember those oh yeah, my Blackberry Pearl making plans to go to Chili's for happy hour. Wow, I was like I'll be there in like an hour and a half. I just got this doctor's appointment.
Speaker 1Yeah.
Speaker 2And never left.
Speaker 2I never made it to happy hour, so the next morning I ended up having the first of of two surgeries um an orchiectomy which removes the tumor um testicular cancer, and then a couple of weeks later I ended up having what's called a retroperitoneal lymph node dissection, which sort of opening up from your heart through your pelvis and take all the lymph nodes out of your pelvis and your retroperitoneum, which is the sort of inside of your back and chest cavity, and ended up having a bunch of complications and it was made for a chaotic final semester of school. My parents kind of pseudo moved into like the Hilton garden in and state college and, um, you know, we're there really for for a few months and I ended up graduating. I stayed in school. I had great professors, uh, who were really flexible with me.
Speaker 2I really, really didn't want to pause school. I already had a job offer lined up to come to Columbus. I started my career at a place called Rockbridge Capitol, um, and I already had that job offer. I was so looking forward to getting to Columbus and Columbus became this sort of North star for me, like I just got to get to Columbus, like get to Columbus and so I graduated.
Speaker 2I was still not what I would have considered healthy, still being seen really closely by physicians, and was on some medication, and I moved down here and most people don't realize you take it for granted when you live in Columbus that Ohio state has this amazing hospital and hospital system and it's right on campus. That's not the norm, no, even in a lot of these big campuses, and so Penn state's hospital system is not in State College. It's two hours away in Hershey.
Speaker 1There's not much in State College. There's not much in State College, and so it's a really.
Speaker 2It's actually. It's called Mount Nittany Medical Center. It's a rural hospital that serves the county and, you know, they didn't have an oncologist there for me or a surgeon there for me to do my surgery, so they brought one in from another state, like this whole thing, and I ended up getting referred to a urology office here in town and was not followed by a oncologist and it my first meeting with them is, you know, and you just feel like something's not right here. And I had one of those feelings when I, when I moved here and it was the very first thing I did was, you know, before I even started my job I, you know, went to establish this appointment. Well, two weeks later, livestrong, which was in its heyday, was having a presidential summit here because 2008 was a campaign year and they Livestrong got all the candidates presidential candidates to wear.
Speaker 2Livestrong got all the candidates presidential candidates to wear Livestrong bracelets so that when they would raise their arms and wave and pictures. You'd see the, you'd see the bracelet and it was amazing.
Speaker 1Yellow right it was yellow, yellow wristband.
Speaker 2So in three cities around the country they did these summits. Columbus happened to be one of them and it was hosted on Ohio state's campus at Marshawn auditorium and Dr Mike Calagiri, who was the CEO of the James at the time, was sort of the host and he spoke a lot at this conference and I got myself invited. I emailed the general inbox at Livestrong and was like I just moved here. I really want to go to this thing and meet people and here's my story.
Speaker 2So I end up going. I met a bunch of people. My story. So I ended up going. I met a bunch of people and there was a final party, you know sort of reception at the zoo, the Columbus zoo. The final evening it was a Sunday evening and I saw Dr Calgary with his wife, like looking at the tigers you know the animal exhibits.
Speaker 2And I walked up to him and I said, introduced myself and said, um, I got referred to the serology office and I didn't have a good experience and I heard you talk about the James and um, I didn't know any of that. You know out of town and is there any chance I could see someone there?
Speaker 1Like I didn't even know how to get into a hospital. Right, you meet him at the Tiger, yeah, right.
Speaker 2And the next morning I had an email from him copying the person who still to this day is my oncologist, and I saw my oncologist, I think, that week or the week after, and I've been seen at the James ever since. The week after, and, uh, I've been, you know, seen at the James ever since. And, uh, you know, one thing led to another and I ended up riding, you know, in Pelotonia in 2011 was my first year and I worked at Rockbridge I mentioned. So we grew our team to be really big and, um, in 2015, 2016, got to meet the person who became the second CEO of Pelotonia, doug Ullman. He and I hit it off in 2016. He, you know, twisted my arm and convinced me to to come try out the nonprofit world.
Speaker 1Yeah.
Speaker 2You know, and it was just one of those things like just come for two years and see how it is. You'll meet a lot of great people, you'll get to do a lot of meaningful work, and yeah, um.
Speaker 1So 10 years later, you know that's great Still there. So crazy how those things work out. Right Like that's awesome yeah.
Speaker 2It's been fun.
Speaker 1Yeah, Well, you talked about talent and and obviously you're, you're super talented and Pelotoni is in a good place, obviously, and just by the recent growth man, you guys are just killing it.
Speaker 2It's awesome.
Speaker 1So well, thanks again for your time. I can't thank you enough. I appreciate it. I hope that, like you know, I say all the time like if one person hears this and joins, or if it helps one person out, I'm super happy with it.
Speaker 2No, I appreciate you having me on and I mean, new Albany is just such a keystone PA reference, by the way, by the way, but it's just such a keystone piece of of Pelotonia and in our history and our future. And you know, we're just, we're lucky to live in a community and be in a community like Columbus and like new Albany. And you know you mentioned it before new Albany kind of feels like home base, you know, for for cycling almost in Columbus, which is really cool, and you got one of the best bike shops in Columbus, bella science here, which is awesome, and Jeff's just a phenomenal guy. And so new, new Albany is always going to be a central piece of Pelotonia.
Speaker 1Well, that's good to hear, and I guess I need to learn to ride.
Speaker 2I guess I don't guess, as you know how to ride. Here's the thing about Pelotonia it's not a race. You will see every bike you can imagine. Yeah, you will see it.
Speaker 1Yeah.
Speaker 2Every type of cyclist you can imagine you will see them has nothing to do with the bike or the speed, and everything to do with the mission and the passion For sure. You know, towards ending cancer, and I think that's what. I love about it we have more non-cyclists people that would identify as a non-cyclist than cyclists in our ride, which which makes it really fun. Sometimes makes it a long day for people.
Expanding Beyond Ride Weekend
Speaker 1but, uh, it's part of the fun. Yeah, for sure. Well, uh, if you've got time, it's, it's, it's 10, 15. Um, you'd mentioned the gravel ride and like just in general other things, cause Pelotonia is not just that ride weekend, right. So like maybe you know on the gravel ride and like other things that Pelotonia is involved in.
Speaker 2Yeah, yeah, you know Pelotonia is not just a single weekend, right? Uh, you know we are a year round organization. We have 20 employees. I think the way we think about the organization is we can be this massive microphone and advocate for the work going on at Ohio State and the James, but also a huge advocate and microphone for cancer advocacy generally, right and prevention and screening and all these things.
Speaker 2So how do we think about our organization and the reach we can have and the impact we can have across an entire year? We've always wanted to have more events and sort of a portfolio of things. Not everyone likes to ride a bike, not everyone likes to cycle. Even if they do like riding bikes, they don't always like to ride on the roads, and so there's tons of opportunities for us to grow. So a few years ago, we just kept hearing from people hey, you got to look at gravel cycling. Hey, you know, gravel cycling would fit really well into your brand and the vibe, and so I don't think I know what gravel cycling is.
Speaker 2It's, uh, you know dirt roads, Okay, and so it's not like single track mountain biking and it's not road cycling, it's it's sort. And so a gravel bike looks like a road bike with mountain bike tires, a skinny version of mountain bike tires, and the idea is you can kind of go on all terrains. And so in Ohio we actually have a ton of connected dirt roads.
Speaker 1Wow interesting, so we don't have an ocean or these big mountains.
Speaker 2We actually have a ton of connected dirt roads. And you get down into Hawking Hills area it's beautiful, or you go out East it's beautiful and so, but it's not all paved right, it's not all paid, no, and so a good gravel ride might have. You know, half of the roads are dirt, half of them are paved.
Speaker 1In quotes because they're you know, they were paved 15 years ago and they haven't been taken care of.
Speaker 2Yeah, and so it makes it really fun. It's a little more technical riding, it's slower, you just can't go as fast on the terrain but way less traffic. The scenery is completely different, and so we built this event. We start and finish in Nelsonville, where the Nelsonville Music Festival is, and we use that property to sort of loop route, and so this year we'll have like a 12, a 25 and a 50 mile ride. We'll have about 300 people on their bikes riding, and so very different in scale from the 7500 people yeah ride weekend but allows us to do different things.
Speaker 2We can do different food and beverages and just completely different setup and we sort of have a camp out night the night before, where people camp in tents and we have bonfires and country music and all this stuff. And um, this year, and just hearing from the community, right, it was, what does the community want? Well, what if we could develop something not on bikes? And so the property we were on had this amazing hiking trail and so this year we'll have about 300 people that come out and hike and they'll do it's about a three and a half mile course. I actually did it last week. It's, it's awesome, uh, through the woods, and we're going to keep it open for four to five hours.
Speaker 2And so we'll have people that come out. My dad will come out and that's that's how he's doing Pelotonia this year. He's going to come out and do the hike. He'll do it once.
Speaker 1Yeah.
Speaker 2Right, but we have some people there's a a crazy amount of people who do like ultra running, which is just you know, beyond me, Um, but they'll like run the trail for four hours, so it'd be really fun, and so you know it was. That was our sort of one way to expand.
Speaker 2Uh, we started a kid's ride program and so you gotta be 14 to ride in ride weekend and it misses this whole generation under 14. And so we've we're really inspired by a couple of very organic kids rides that had been happening in uh, in Bexley, in Arlington and Granville over the years and decided to really package them and put a program together. So we had 12 kids rides all throughout different communities this year. Um, and that partnership specifically raises money. It's a collaboration between the James and nationwide children's hospital to fund cancer research, which is really cool. And so we're we're trying to think of you know what's next? That's the question I always get what's next, what are?
Speaker 2you doing next? We have done things so well over the years that and people are like, oh it's, you know, shiny penny syndrome, what's?
Speaker 1like the new thing.
Speaker 2And if I go on the news, that's like the first question. They always ask me what's the new thing this year?
Speaker 1and you're like, have I not done enough? No, well.
Speaker 2What we need to talk about internally is you've got to do your core things so well, like that's what gives you the opportunity to do new things. You cannot, you know, let things slip in the core. Yeah, because you're going to do new things, we'll never sacrifice the experience of ride weekend. That is the core experience for us. Yeah, we'll never sacrifice that experience of ride weekend that is the core experience for us.
Speaker 2We'll never sacrifice that experience to go build something else. We can't do that, um. But we've got a really good foundation. We feel really confident in our ability to continue to deliver ride weekend and have tried to figure out what are the skill sets we have internally to build ancillary things. And, yeah, we're not going to build another ride weekend. We're not going to build another 20 plus million dollar a year fundraiser. But what if we had a portfolio of four to $5 million events? Right, that's still a really big event. It's a lot of reach, and for us we look at like, what's the Like? If we can spend $150,000 on an event and bring in a million, that's pretty good. That's pretty good. And so that's how we're thinking about things. I have a finance background and so that's how we really look at everything we're doing. We're a fundraising organization and so we've got to deliver on that and we've got some ideas for what could be sort of next and in the future. I am very curious how the hike is received, um yeah, so when is so?
Speaker 1when is so the hike will happen with the gravel gravel, right yeah?
Speaker 2so we'll the the party. It's all in one place and so we've got sort of this party it's in the woods. It's amazing like people will park in like grass and like, yeah, so this party in the woods, it's all fenced off. And you know the gravel riders, they're start and finish, shoot, you know we'll be over here and the hikers will be right over here and they'll all be finishing together into the party. Oh, that's cool. And there'll be people that ride their bikes and then go hike yeah, uh.
Speaker 1So is there an age limit on the hike?
Speaker 2it's still 14 although that's something we're going to really look at, because, you know, does that need to be the case? Um, I think, as a question we're asking ourselves and uh, you know we're we're always balancing impatience Like we want to do all the things now and fix all things now with you. Gotta be really reasonable and thoughtful and have a lot of focus. Uh and and.
Speaker 1I will lose a kid in the woods, so it's probably a good idea. It's uh, you wouldn't. I thought the same thing, um but it's, it's a good path.
Speaker 2Uh, but for us, like you, can't have a really high performing, efficient organization without a lot of focus and saying no to things and being really dialed in, and so that's our constant sort of push-pull, which is we always want to go explore all these new things, but you got to be really dialed in.
Future Vision and Ohio State Partnership
Speaker 2And you got to continue being really great at the things you need to be really great at, and there's moments during the year where we put our heads down and we say no to a lot of stuff and I do it too. I say no to a lot of meetings, and the core has just got to be so great and that is what has persisted for us over 17 years. 17 years a long time to be really relevant.
Speaker 1Oh, for sure.
Speaker 2For 17 years. That is a word we talk about internally. You mentioned live strong.
Speaker 1I haven't thought of that.
Speaker 2Yeah Right, so they obviously had a lot, of, a lot of different things happen.
Speaker 2Yeah, different things happen, but they were really relevant for a long time and that wore off at some point. And so for us it's like how do we maintain relevance? How do we maintain this amazing participant first experience? All of it is in support of this world-class institution, the James, that is at the forefront of research. None of it. Pelotonia would not be good, even if we did all the things right. Pelotonia just wouldn't be the same if the James wasn't great.
Speaker 2Yeah, of course, if we were fundraising for the number 75th institution in the ranked. Uh, you know cancer center that wants to be number one.
Speaker 1Money well spent right, it's money well spent.
Speaker 2And you know as much as I. You know, kind of close my eyes at Ohio state football. Uh, they're the number one team in the country Penn state's number two, but Ohio state's number one football team in the country and it's probably the second best thing they have at the university.
Speaker 2Yeah, because the cancer center is just absolutely incredible, and the entire medical system really and to have leaders at that institution John Warner, kim Rathmel who want to be number one, and they don't want to be number one to beat everyone else, they want to be number one to lead everyone. Yeah, exactly, and to bring everyone else along with them, and that is to me like what gets me up every day, like to know that we're supporting those leaders and those people at that institution is what gets me up and what keeps me motivated and excited, and I'm more excited now than I have been in 10 years.
Speaker 2Wow, yeah, there's so much momentum. There's so many great people coming from all around the world, bringing they're moving their families here, bringing their work here, because of what we have going on here, um, and it's really special yeah, you're a lucky guy.
Speaker 1Yeah, you get a.
Speaker 2You get a pretty cool job I got the best, I got the best job well, you're.
Speaker 1You're the man for the job I appreciate that hey, joe, thanks so much, man. I really appreciate you taking the time and we'll. We'll get some people to listen. We'll get some. We'll we'll help grow Pelotonia.
Speaker 2Perfect, that's awesome.
Speaker 1Thank you All right. Yeah, we'll have to do this soon, maybe closer to the event or before it. Yeah, we'll get Brandon on here too, it'll be. Uh, I'm going to have to like it won't? We can't do that in the morning.
Speaker 2I know, yeah, that in the morning. I know, yeah, you gotta wake up all right.
Speaker 1Well, thanks, joe.
Speaker 2Thank you awesome, I think he's.