Transcript: Tommy Nook on Resilience, Reinvention, and Pushing Limits

Good morning, and welcome back to the show. We are here with University School Class of 2017 alum, former two-time Boston University lacrosse captain, Project 25 marathoner, and founder of Half-Hitch Pretzels, Tommy Nook. How are you, Tommy? I'm great.

Thanks for having me, boys. Yeah, of course. And so we did a little research, you know, obviously, your friend Glenn went to the U.S. When you picture your childhood, what does home feel like?

What kind of kid were you? Oh, I was wild. I think if you ask my parents, it might be a little bit different. But in my eyes, I think I just never wanted to stop moving.

I was always inclined to be playing sports or running around. So growing up in Ohio, I actually grew up a little bit east of here. So like Chardon area. I had a bunch of friends in my neighborhood I think I you just like lean into things you naturally like and I was someone that just loved to be outside running around playing sports and I think growing up my dad was a big hockey guy so that was kind of my life when I was little was just playing hockey if I wasn't on the ice I was playing mini sticks but yeah from an early age i knew athletics was sort of like where i i was going to live you know you've kind of been around athletics your whole life do you remember that first game like i feel like all of us can remember maybe some of those like early like low league days or even just playing random sports so do you remember some of the first time athletics really became important to you in your life i could think back actually early though my dad tried to get me into hockey and i quit because i I hated it.

So I got my first pair of skates probably when I was four, went to a couple of practices and I was like, this is not for me. So I was like, and he was devastated. And then I thought I was going to be a football player, but I grew up really small. I was fast, but small.

And I remember this kid, his name was Harrison Craffey. And we did a, like, what's the Oklahoma drill. And I was like, yeah, I'm not built for this. And I quit that day.

He just ran me over and his cleat was on my hand. And I was like, dad, I'm not playing football anymore. Went back to hockey and I honestly I was fast but I never really picked up the sport that quickly so it took a while and then I say by the time I was 11 was when I really like felt like I knew how to play the sport um and I wasn't just a fast kid so that would probably be my moment that I would say I'm not a football player but um I think later on for lacrosse and maybe hockey it was probably you know when I was 11 or 12 that I started to like really know how to play the sport you also grew up with two siblings I believe how did that kind of shape it was their competition in the house or had that shape you're growing up I had a unique household so I had an older sister Emma so we were all a year and a half apart so she's three years older than me then I had an older brother Joey um and then obviously me um my oldest sister we were competitive but I it was hard to like go head to head because you know like a young kid you're trying to like beat up on your sister and your dad's like hey you gotta take it easy um my older brother he had special needs so we didn't get to compete like that he loved sports but for me you know I was like yearning for someone that was gonna like beat me up play basketball one-on-one maybe football um but I think that molded me into the athlete that I was because it taught me how instead of being competitive all the time and having that edge to like learn how to be patient with him learn how to actually maybe like adjust to other people that I was going to be with on a team. So it was really unique.

And I think that's why my dad and I became very close with hockey was he sort of became that person around the house that was like teaching me those things and being competitive with me so that I had that built in. You know, you eventually became a pretty intense kind of competitor. Do that come naturally? Or was there a moment when you realized, oh, yeah, I like winning, like I like competing I it was I knew it really young and my parents would always tell me like even my sister still jokes to this day she's like I can't believe you didn't get sent to anger management like I was a psycho kid and I can remember it and it wasn't like uncontrolled like I wasn't trying to be mean but I can remember like losing even like if my sister was like oh I'm gonna run to a certain place and she beat me like I would be pissed um and I think over the years like once I started playing with people in organized sports I don't know if I was that person that I think you sort of like glorify in sports like you see like the Kobe Bryants the world where like people want you to have sort of like that killer mentality I don't know that I necessarily like had that um at least I didn't show it that much but I hated it when you could tell other people didn't really care about it so like I cared about winning and losing but I wasn't going to be like outright in people's face, like, you know, like pushing them to do something.

But yeah, I knew from an early age, it was just like, you know, if I'm going to do something, I'm going to do it as hard as I can. And if someone else beats me, I'm going to be pretty upset. And so now moving into your time at US, what was that journey to US like? When did it enter the conversation for you?

What ultimately made you make the decision to go? So I was in fifth grade and I went to Notre Dame elementary school, which is kind of out towards that Chardon area. Grew up going there my whole life. Uh, my dad was a U S grad.

And so at that point in time, my sister had already made the move cause she's three years older than me. She had already made the move to Hathaway Brown. Uh, and my parents kind of just posed the question to me, like, Hey, do you want to go to this school? And you're like fourth grade going into fifth grade.

I was like, I don't know, like an all boys school out like 45 minutes from where we live. I don't know anyone. So I didn't really know what I wanted, but I was I trusted the fact that my dad had gone there. So, you know, you go from Chardon to the Shaker campus and it's a bunch of people that you don't know.

But naturally, like 12 of them love playing sports. So you're just like, hey, let's go play football during recess. And so it became really easy to get kind of like acquainted with everyone at the lower campus. And I think that's how I formed like some of my best friends was going to the lower school.

And yeah, I mean, it turned into some of the greatest years of my life. But at the time, I think when I told some of my best friends from the old school, like, hey, I'm going to a private boys school, all boys school now. And they're like, what? And I'm like, I don't know. you know you're like 11 or 12 years old and you're like i'm just gonna do it but i think it was all for the better no a lot of people call us a pretty intense school in a good way yeah how was that fit once you transfer from nd or notre dame like notre dame lower school to us either socially or just like time management wise or academically what was the switch and what was the kind of that biggest push that you remember early on gosh uh that's a good question that i've never really thought of the difference of it i think being so young at notre dame i don't even know that i like thought about it um and i had like a couple really good friends but i never was like i love this school you know it was just kind of like school um and then when i got to to us i think what was cool for me was to have so many different people that i could connect with in my grade that loved different things so there was like the group of people that i was friends with them because we all like playing sports and like that was just built in like when we had to go outside i was like those are my guys and then there were people in my homeroom that like geeked out about like geography stuff and like at the time i remember like i like that stuff too and like i found them naturally so you get 70 or 60 guys whatever it was in your grade and at a young age or 12 years old most of them are interested in something that you're interested in so you kind of have all of these friends and it turned into where like you explain to people i go to an all-boys school it wasn't a bad thing it felt like you're going to hang out with like a bunch of your friends and like that was it and so i feel like those teachers at the time probably thought it was chaos because they're like wow there's a lot of kids here that are just maniacs but yeah it became one of the the best things for me because i think it taught me how to get along with so many different groups of kids um whether it was based on what you like to do so i it was awesome i think that was the biggest difference for me coming from notre dame when you look back is there a teacher or coach whether in middle school or even in high school that just really stands out to you and taught you what you really can't carry through all of high school all of middle school the rest of your life I would say someone that stands out to me in terms of someone that was like, Hey, get, get your stuff straight was Mr.

I came here. That was my freshman year. I think it was Western Civ teacher. And at the time I was, I sort of transitioned onto the track of being the person that knew he was going to go play a college sport, but I still really enjoyed the academic side of school.

But that being said, I knew everyone was kind of like, Oh, Mr. Aliazzi's class. He's going to, he's going to teach you how to learn. You like, nobody gets an A.

And I think it was the first week. He just like called me out right away, pulled me aside after class and was like, Hey, this is the way you're going to do it. If you want to be successful, here's how you take notes. Here's how you take tests.

This is how you pay attention in class. And I think the way that he taught me how to learn was a lot different in terms of other teachers. I I think there were other teachers that maybe from a personal standpoint impacted me more, but I can say in terms of like focusing on my learning, Mr. Aliazzi was definitely the one that sticks out the most.

And then when you moved to the upper school, what did you jump into right away? Was it mostly sports and hockey, lacrosse? Was there any other extracurriculars would you kind of get yourself into? I would say it was mostly sports. being at the time I was what 15 when you get to high school at that time I made the decision so I grew up playing hockey I was gonna move to Detroit to like pursue that at a young age but you know you just move to a new school you start making new friends and then you're like hey I'm gonna go move in with the billet family in Detroit and I was like I'm not doing that so I was like, I'm going to play high school hockey and then I'm going to play high school lacrosse.

But recruiting back then for lacrosse, some guys were already committed to D1 at the time before they even got to the high school campus. So in terms of like where my time was at all summer, I was traveling up the East coast trying to get recruited. You even had a fall stuff and then balancing that with then still playing hockey. So that was really my life was kind of pretty much around athletics you know us has a pretty strong sports culture here i would like to think and because it's not really just sports for sports but it's also just bigger than that it's kind of playing for such a large identity and culture that we've created for 136 years so what did playing at us teach you about being part of something bigger than yourself it was tough for me to come to us my freshman year and i i sort of grew an identity around being a hockey player and i actually didn't make varsity my freshman year which was it was sort of the first time that i felt i don't want to call it diversity but you just you sort of have to look inward and be like okay maybe there is work that needs to be done and it sort of makes you focus on like okay I'm not going to put my attention where I'm at right now in terms of myself but okay here's the situation at hand I'm going to play with these 20 guys on my team and that JV year freshman hockey team was probably the most fun I've ever had playing a sport and it was because it was the first time that I really was just focused on enjoying the game with these you know you have some juniors that you never met before so there all of these different classes of guys that come in and still to this day some of my best friends are not even in my grade because the sport just brings you together and I think back to some of the memories of being at Kent going to play these regional finals and looking in the stands and there's hundreds of U.S. kids that bust out there to come watch you and it just makes you realize how much more important the game is to the school and not so much like the focus on yourself and how you're performing and I think that's why I enjoyed hockey so much was it's just a culture of guys that I don't care how much you've played or how many goals you've scored it was just all of us trying to enjoy the game and and be a good team and so I think that's what that specifically that moment had that year taught me about sports and just the importance of the culture around it and you ended up playing varsity hockey i was at us making senior all-star game um do you have a hockey memory that sticks out maybe a big game big play yep our junior year so we we were really good at hockey pretty much the whole time i was here and but we just never got it done i think that it's probably like everyone can say that through whatever sport you play but same with lacrosse uh and it was a pain because we would get to state finals and it just wouldn't go our way but uh our junior year we were in the state semi-final i think it was double overtime or overtime and we had already just been like exhausted we're like okay this game is not going our way like it kind of felt like it was tilted the other direction and uh there was just a moment where i got the puck and skated up the ice and kind of like to be honest it was one of those moments where you're like i'm just gonna rifle this thing in front of that and uh robbie and goliath skin on our team is probably our best goal scorer i just kind of fired it at him i have no idea how he put it in but it went in and i would say like the moment before it was cool to like think back of it in my head but we were playing in columbus at whatever the nationwide arena um looking back and seeing like all of the nhl like quality footage of it was really the coolest part because you see all of your teammates like going nuts like all their students are in like your friends are in the stands going nuts and like the play was cool but the celebration was also cool and in hindsight like yeah it was the semi-final so it didn't really mean that much but like it was so cool to like have all of that footage and like real announcers and i think that sticks out as one of those moments where like we didn't win anything but it was like a huge memory for us and then you also played you know started all four years i believe for lacrosse um what do you think that taught you about development obviously you have to see the varsity stage for all four years so how did your experience kind of transition through those four years sure coming into a team as a freshman it's uh it's difficult uh but it requires you to adapt quickly i think and it's also really important that you have a good coach some of the leadership helps to uh to like teach you how to be confident because a lot of times you come in and if you're a younger guy you'd feel like okay maybe i have to not try and be do too much to take over whoever's on the team but I think at that young age I was sort of just excited to be there and we had some really good leadership on the team uh Clark Jones was our captain that year he was a really good uh player ended up at Bates but I think from my time as a freshman to a senior it was it was two different players and I think what what the early years taught me about myself was I used to focus a lot on myself again like you were asking how did I end up focusing maybe less on myself in athletics and more as just being a part of a team I felt like I put a lot of pressure on myself to perform early on because I was like oh I'm trying to get recruited I want to play division one I got to score a goal today and so those freshman year I can remember being like tense before I play it and like really trying to prove to others that I was good.

Whereas by the time I got to senior year, I was just sort of like showing up, putting the gear on and doing what you love to do. And so I think that's what changed throughout those years of being a 15 year old to 18. Their high school, a lot of what us talks is leadership. So what did leadership look like you at us?

And were you more vocal? Did you lead by example? What do you feel kind of feel like your style was yeah my leadership style I was sort of born from playing hockey to be honest I think a lot of what it was was hockey but I I always was someone that as soon as I felt something I always talked and I didn't really care if it was the wrong thing to say but I felt like saying nothing is worse than saying something and so I don't think I was always talking and I think that was a detriment of mine was sometimes coaches would be like hey you need to talk more but i think it was a skill set as well because if you talk too much there's some point where people are like i'm not gonna listen anymore because he doesn't shut up and so for me it was a lot of like doing all of the simple things right like leading by example it is a great way to put it but i think that's that goes without saying like the greatest leaders aren't going to make those mistakes they just do those but for me i think it was choosing only to speak when i felt like there was going to be some conviction so what i mean by that is like i could be playing lacrosse and just non-stop yelling and my teammates are probably paying dude what is he even talking about or i could wait until we go in for the second half and i get five minutes to talk about some like compelling stuff that people can be like, okay, that makes sense. Let's actually adjust and do that.

So that was a skill that came more naturally to me, but there were times that I had to almost, you have to like have a good internal clock, you know, you have to have sort of calibration of knowing like, okay, is this something that I should talk about or is it not? So I would say that the bad side of that is you could question yourself a lot and be like, I'm not going to, I'm not going to say something right now. Cause you don't. So I think my leadership style was trying to pick the right times based off of energy and maybe situation to actually get something out of it rather than to just say something to say something, if that makes sense.

Yeah, definitely. And obviously this year we got a new lacrosse coach and coach Perino and obviously leadership changes. But what are some things that you think should stay constant with us lacrosse in terms of the culture and the way that the game is played? And what are some things that you think make that championship standard for sure?

Coach B is the best. I grew up. We were sort of kind of that age gap apart where we never crossed over in high school. but since the Ohio lacrosse community is pretty tight knit, him and I grew up knowing each other for a long time. So when I heard he was getting hired, I was really pumped for the program because I know who he is.

I know what he stands for. So I think first and foremost, it's in a great spot. In terms of what leadership, I guess, tendency, what needs to stay consistent to build the right culture. I would say someone that when they, when they ask you to do something, they're not asking you to do something they wouldn't do.

And I think that that's the most simple thing that you can have is someone who sort of embodies the exact values of what they're trying to teach. And so that's why I think hiring him as a coach, it fits because all of the things that he's going to put onto these kids and to ask out of them is something that he's already lived and continues to live and so i think you can look at our motto um as sort of like the backbone of what we want but i think within that system like responsibility loyalty consideration okay you could have that and i think that's just sort of built in as a student here but then within your team okay what does that mean to us? And I think that's the more important part is however long you've been here, you know, I've as a fifth grade student, all the way through 12th grade. I don't know that I thought about it that much.

You know, you've, you're like, every day, you might see it on your jersey, or someone might bring it up in assembly, like, but it's more important for you on your baseball team or hockey or lacrosse team that the coach makes sure that you know what that actually should look like like what does it mean to even be responsible to your other teammates or how are we going to be loyal so i think it's important for the coach to to have clarity and i think that's really the biggest leadership quality is to create clarity within the culture what part of college across let's kind of move into college yeah when you commit to boston university for lacrosse what was the biggest reason you choose you chose bu over everything kind of else on the table and what part caused across really surprising the most we talked to a lot of people who were like the game was just different when you get to college so what was that eye-opening experience for you sure i'll start with how i chose it so being a ohio lacrosse player especially at that time i don't want to say it wasn't i mean it's not a hotbed but i don't want to say i was at a disadvantage but you really you fall short of some of the hotbeds, like the Long Islands, the upstate New York's, the Maryland's, those guys are all going to get recruited before you. So you're already sort of at that disadvantage where it's like, if I get an opportunity to go play, I'm going to take it. So I had three schools that were really recruiting me. Like I, like we were talking about earlier, I went to some camps, but it was, it wasn't really, I was just paying to show up.

And I kind of knew that, but so it was air force uh a small school called firman and then bu so i started by going to air force beautiful campus i was like this is great um but i was i don't know if i really want to be in the air force um so that that made my decision there kind of easy and then firman was just a tiny school i think there was maybe 5 000 people and i was like i don't like this so i was like wow i've got one option left i gotta go visit bu i'm like i'm hoping this one works or else i might be going to air force and it honestly it was a pouring rain freezing day in boston and i was like this this couldn't be worse it's going to be freezing here and we were walking the campus that was our plan with the coach and um it ended up being just what i wanted which was amazing i left there and committed the next day and so that's how the decision came about in terms of like my learning process once i got to campus it was like i don't want to say it was a completely different game but the way that people viewed lacrosse and played it in terms of like their knowledge was totally different i grew up i played i started playing lacrosse when i was like 13 12 so i didn't play for that long but i think i just leaned into my athleticism then you get dropped into a team of 50 guys who are just as athletic but they've played it like it's something they've studied like you would they're like students of the game so they're the way that they move the way that they think is completely different and so i got there and knew really quickly i was like oh okay this is how you actually play and so it wasn't necessarily the speed that shocked me but it was the way that coaches talked about it, players talked about it, and how much more you had to actually use your mind and not just your body. And then you ended up being named, I believe, back-to-back captain at BU. And I think, did that come after your two injuries as well? So how were you able to lead when you might not have been on the field as much as you wanted, but still gain the trust of your teammates and be able to be a captain?

I was it was really unfortunate. I I got hurt It was actually senior year here I like stepped on a ball like backpedaling and it just kind of did something to my ankle I was like all right I gonna get it cleaned up before I go to BU Thought it was fine Then I started like getting a knee injury And that ended up being the thing that kind of just never went away But you figure out quickly when you get to college that there's so much time that you spend with these guys. Like it's every single day that you're going to be in the room. And if you can't bring value being on the field, then you have to provide it elsewhere.

Otherwise, you're just like sucking energy out of the room. And so my freshman year, I played, I think, four games. And then before one of the games we were playing Navy, I tried to step down and my knee just like gave out. So I quickly knew like, all right, I'm going to have to figure out a way to like provide value.

Otherwise, I'm just going to fall to the side and everyone's going to forget about the freshman who just showed up. So it was from that point that I was like, I got to work as hard as I can to get healthy, but also provide value to my classmates. to the guys above me and so i think the injury honestly shaped me into a better leader because it forced me to be more vocal and to do things that maybe i wouldn't have had the opportunity to do if i was focusing on performing um and my injury i ended up actually you know you college lacrosse season 16 games it's like nfl and i played 14 i think for my entire career because of injuries so i didn't even get a fall season so i could probably go back and play three more years but i think part of that was it like that led me to just lean into the leadership aspect more you know you asked like how did i end up becoming back-to-back captain i don't think i ever tried to be a leader i think sometimes that might be a fault of some people because you you lose the authenticity of it. Like you're trying so hard to lead others. Not that it's a bad thing, but I think it just forced me to like look inwards and be like, okay, I'm not going to be able to perform anymore.

That was something in my identity that I wanted to be the top goal scorer. And I was like, all right, I can't be that. How can I provide value? And I think that's what kind of pushed me into the leadership position.

That 2020 era was pretty weird, especially coming with covid yeah and you captaining both years so how did the uncertainty of that period affect your routines lacrosse college even as a whole yeah i mean it was weird for everybody i i think it's funny like it's like a meme now on like twitter where like college 2020 grads are like we didn't get a graduation i was 2021 but it was definitely strange uh i was junior captain that year and i i can remember vividly like the nba put out a tweet that was like the nba season has been suspended and it was like just like a graphic and someone sent it into our like group me and was like boys it's over and like at the time you don't really know what you're joking about but we're like or is our game against colgate and three degrees gonna get canceled tomorrow because we're kind of like we don't want to play in three degrees and so you go through that and then four days later every single person on the team is sent home and your season is done and you're like oh okay we actually do have to go home and then the seniors are like wait we don't get to play anymore so it was so strange because you just didn't really recognize how fragile and like how quickly everything can be taken away from you so we go home for the summer it's really hard to provide any leadership because everyone's kind of just like i'm going home i'm not thinking about lacrosse and then we come back for the 2021 season which is my now senior year kovitz still sort of thing um but they're letting us play and so you get there everyone has their own mask in their on their like strapped to their lacrosse helmet like we're playing with a mask on the helmet and you can only be in the locker room with 10 people at a time so there's freshmen coming in that i haven't met as a captain and i don't get to meet them because kovitz preventing me from doing that so we would literally zoom contact these kids and i'd be like hey how's everything going you need any help with anything whereas the year before we'd be having team dinners we'd be having them over our houses so it was weird and i don't think anyone knew what to expect there was no direction nobody knew what the right answer was i think what it caused was a lot of friction between myself and the head coach because he's telling us to do one thing i'm trying to tell him there's 55 guys on the team that i haven't i can't control them and he's like you gotta you gotta figure this so it was it was really a tough situation to navigate um but we ended up playing a bunch of games which was i mean it was kind of funny because there's guys you haven't practiced with and then you see them at the game and you're like here we go like let's play you know what i mean and it was i mean it is what it is we got to play some more lacrosse but it was definitely strange and then after graduation what were you thinking what do you think what did you think that first chapter was going to look like how's that transition and i've talked about the transition out of sports uh what was that like for you yeah so i as someone who built sort of your identity around you kind of lean into what you're good at like i said um as soon as sports were coming in And I think what you were asking, like that year with COVID, it almost gave me the opportunity to be like, I'm kind of done with sports because of just how weird that year was. Didn't even feel like you were on a team. You were just showing up to play some random other team. Nobody in the world cared about it because there's something else so much more important going on.

And so it kind of felt like a gradual removal from sports for me. So by the time I graduated at the time, I was like, I'm ready to be done. Um, and then probably a year later, I was like, dang, I kind of want to play sport again, but I didn't know what I really wanted to do. Um, I didn't get to, I wanted to get a banking internship the summer prior and then COVID shut everything down.

So I came back home here, interned for my dad's company. Cause I was like, I got to figure something out. um it was like maybe i'll work in finance took a job in florida working door-to-door selling solar panels so i i get on a call one day with the kid he was actually a u.s grad um two years above me played hockey with him he was working down there and i was like i don't know where i'm gonna go but i don't want to work in a cubicle with all these covid things going on so i went down there and that led me down a path of like where i've gotten to today um but the transition out of sport was like you were asking i i don't think a lot of people ever know fully what they want to do but for me i was like i just need to i need to do something different um because my whole life was revolved around being that athlete now we're going to talk about a second but how did you stay competitive after sports did you immediately find something to chase even before like marathon running or did that take time what was kind of your relationship with fitness right after college and did you take a break and what was that like post-covid getting into post-covid era looking like yep i i didn't play sports i when i moved down to florida i sort of used my job at the time as like my competitive it was a sales job and so you you have leaderboards you know how well someone's doing and you every single day it was sort of like a sports team built in obviously it's you're not working out and doing all these things but it was numbers based and you can kind of gamify it and so i feel that the culture that they built was to try and have people treat it like a game and and that you're competing against one another so that was sort of like the outlet for that energy almost i stayed working out but after four years of doing it being banged up the whole time with a knee injury i was like we could take we could take a break so i took a break for a little bit but um like you said i got back into the itch was there again maybe a little bit later and then you set the goal of doing project 25 as you call it which was running 25 marathons in 2024 where'd the idea come from and what were you trying to prove to yourself maybe yeah so what year is that 2023 at 2023 I lived in Los Angeles with two of my best friends from college and that was about the time that I took another job in sales but I was looking for that sort of a new outlet to to kind of get back into that mindset and I wanted to run a marathon and it might've been, it might've been like December and the LA marathons in March. So like not that much time to train, but I was like, I'm just going to do it. And I just like went out for a run and started running as fast as I could and did that for like two weeks and injured myself right away.

So I was like, uh, didn't work, canceled the marathon. I was like so pissed. Cause I was like telling people that I was going to do so well. So I got like really irritated by the fact that I couldn't do it because I'd seen people do it.

So another year goes by, I'm sort of nursing the injury. I'm like, maybe I'll do an Ironman. I was like swimming in a pool, didn't have a bike. I was like on one of those stationary bikes.

I'm like, what am I doing? This is not what I'm, and I was like, all right, I don't want to do an Ironman. And I had this mentor that I grew up with. He was actually my dad's college hockey coach. and he was just a soundboard for me a lot through even through my career at BU and I would call him and we would sort of talk about like what was going on during COVID like leadership tactics he was sort of the person that made me look inward and and say okay how can you go through these periods while also reflecting to know what you want to live by the values that you feel are important to you.

And I told him, I was like, I want to do something really hard. And in my mind, I had already written down on a piece of paper. I want to run 50 marathons next year. And I was like, that's going to be insane.

This guy's going to be like, this guy's nuts. So I hadn't even told him about it, but I was like, yeah, I want to do something really hard. I want it to be endurance based, maybe run marathons. And he's like, that's perfect. knucker just run 25 marathon you turn 25 this year right and i was like yeah he's like run 25 of them and just figure it out sign up for him and do it and i was like looking at the i already had them all written down i was like that's a good idea like as if i'd never thought of it but i was like yeah it's a much more doable number not that it was like easy but i was like that makes my life a little bit easier and so that was really where it was born in terms of what like influenced me to do it was i grew up really fascinated by like pushing yourself to what you felt like your limit could be uh like if you you guys probably did the beep test at some point in your life uh maybe like been in running races those things like fired me up for some reason because it was a chance not only to beat other people but for me like i was like when i got to the point of feeling like i might pass out that felt like okay this is this is a point that like I can push myself to a limit and be like, wow, that was okay.

I went as far as I could go. So I never, like I three months prior or a year prior, I tried to run one marathon and failed in three weeks. So I was like, let's do 25 of them and let's see if I could do it. That's how it was born.

Um, and that meeting was probably October of October of 23. Yeah. So we, we probably talked in the end of 2023 and i had like three months to train to then run my first one in january 2024. wow you know out of project 2025 and your success in pushing yourself to that limit came a totally different idea with half hitch pretzels yeah you said that it kind of started during your goal to run 25 marathons in 2024 and then after that 10th marathon that someone handed you pretzels and kind of the ingredient list kicked the whole thing off so can you take us behind the scenes of that moment what flipped in your brain and just how it's been so far definitely yeah so i ran the 10th one that was here in cleveland so i came home it was may of 2024. at the time i was living with my best friend in boston and he was like you're a psycho because every weekend i would go and run a marathon like i would leave or i would just step outside of our our apartment i would start running around boston and just like clock a marathon and come back and i was a lunatic also about what i was eating so i would get back home and i'd be like no i'm not eating that i'm not eating this and it was really just because i was like i'm not failing the goal i'm already like nine marathons in i gotta eat clean and in cleveland they just handed like a little roll gold packet or whatever it was probably like nine pretzels in it so like it would not have hurt me but i was like my mom's like here you need to eat this like you just finished i was like no it's got corn syrup in it and like at the time i wasn't like aha moment but that was really the first time that i was like recognizing that i wasn't going to eat something so then you know fast forward i end up finishing the last marathon down in florida and I like I went and got like a massive meal like I think I ate like 30 buffalo wings and like just went crazy on eating but then I was also like I don't even want this right now and so I think that was the moment that I realized like okay there's something there and I just didn't think of it um so that was where the idea kind of was born but in my mind it hadn't really like crystallized like i wasn't like this is a business idea so my best friend and i were still living together we're working sales jobs i was like miserable i was like dude i can't do this like it's just sucking life out of me and so on the side i was always thinking of like things that we could do and i'm like what about this this is a good idea like well this will be kind of a funny story it's not he'll laugh you guys might be like this guy's an idiot so we're walking down the street in boston and he's like wow look at all that dog piss like it was just like a pile of really yellow dog piss and i was like those are some dehydrated dogs and he's like do dogs drink electrolytes like him and i at the time were like drinking electrolytes every day because i'm running and everything and i'm like no but they should so like that was like one of the ideas that we so like that's like the level of what we were looking for like we're like we gotta find something that we could like create and i'm like we can't create this is so dumb so we like took like two hours for us to research dogs don't need electrolytes but that was where our mind was that was like searching around us like we just felt like something has to be close to us that like we could create and just go with it and so that's when i i thought back i'm like dude i feel like we could create healthy sourdough pretzels and i think we could do that in our kitchen like we don't need to learn we don't need to like go get someone to teach us about the electrolyte imbalances of dogs like this is a food that you can just put a couple ingredients in and see if you can even make it that's how it started like we literally had a ninja air fryer that we grabbed off of our street that our neighbor below us put on the street that was like free and we just grabbed it put it in our house started mixing them and like there's a video of me trying the first time was like god tastes like a pretzel and then we just kept doing it we kept making them walking them down the street to my now fiance's house like giving them to her and her roommates and they'd be like those are like i could break my tooth on that pretzel so like there were months of it being terrible and we got to the point where we signed up for a farmer's market and um we didn't even know how to make the pretzel like at this point it was like either moist or really hard and we're like this is not good so we went into this commercial kitchen that we were now paying like a pretty good amount for because you had to be in there in boston and like we're panicking it's like 10 p.m the night before we had to go the next day on a sunday and my roommate at the time phil he's like dude we just got to shut this oven and just let it sit for like like we just threw out a number i'm like all right that's all we can do and he like puts it in there pulls him out it's like 10 30 this is our last chance he's like these are great and i'm like they're good and then we start eating like oh they're actually good so we we like stumbled on how to make these pretzels um and then obviously we've gotten to where we are now but it was hilarious beginnings how did that knee hold up throughout those 25 marathons oh it was uh so i met a guy uh who was actually a really big piece of kind of like how i've gotten to where i am also his name's drew Depp and he was a chiropractor in Boston and he he had run 100 mile races he was kind of like kind of had that same psycho mindset of like being like all right I could do something hard like let's just do something way too hard so he had done all these races he had worked with Olympic athletes on helping them get through training and my fiance introduced me to him so before I even had ran one of the marathons i went in and i told him i'm like i'm gonna run 25 and he's like have you done one and i was like no he's like okay like we'll see how this goes so i i would literally run a marathon and then go into his office and he would just sit there and he he was like a mad scientist he'd be like what hurts here okay that's your foot that's affecting your knee or your hip so if I didn't have him I probably would have been done by like marathon three because there were even times like marathon 13 I'm in Salt Lake City I'm running downhill the whole time and my knee like gives out and I like email him and I'm like hey my knee really hurts like I'm on the track I'm like my knee really hurts I like take a picture pointing at where it hurts I'm like is this okay to run through he's like yes okay won't cause any more pain just get through it so like without him, I probably would have given up much earlier. So I think just having a resource of someone who knows more than you, who's, who's got that professional, like background was so vital to me.

And I didn't even seek it out. My fiance had to like literally force me. She's like, please just go. He will help.

And I'm like, I'm so stubborn. And then I'm like, no, I know how to do this. So it was a good thing that I had him. Otherwise the knee probably would have given out. you know zooming out you've had a stretch of being an athlete then a captain then a runner and now doing something and kind of doing something extreme and now an entrepreneur so what do you honestly feel like this next chapter of your life is is is and really is going to be like and what do you want it to be what do i think it's going to be i think it's a lot of being patient i think my whole life it was uh especially as an athlete you there's an element of patience but i think also it's like super dynamic you play a sport that like this game's only going to be an hour long i can do whatever i want in this and then it's done and then like you have a season that's 16 games and it's done and it's very trackable of how well you're doing not that being an entrepreneur isn't but i think for me like we're such a small company right now that it feels really easy to be discouraged when you're like looking at numbers and maybe not tracking backwards so one of my biggest focuses is I don't think that there's ever going to be a point in time over the next even like 10 years where I'm like sitting in it being like I'm so satisfied where we're at like you're always going to be chasing where you're supposed to go so like even just telling you guys the story of me not knowing how to make a pretzel that was like a year ago and so for me it's like okay how can I use the next 10 years to just constantly be measuring backwards rather than like okay here's what i want to be at like i know i have a goal of what i want this company to turn into but i think you're you're always going to probably not you're always going to be chasing that so for me it's like how can i measure back to like what i want or what i where i was even a year ago um and i think that's sort of like the good thing and the bad thing of being an entrepreneur is like you have flexibility you can do what you want but but you also have a lot of pressure on you to perform and you have to like stay very focused on the now instead of too much of like where you want to be.

When all is said and done, whether it's sports business or just how you treat people, how do you want to be remembered by teammate, whether it's teammates, friends, or just the community that you came from and are in now? I would say it's important to me that, when people think of whether it was growing up as a student or an athlete, I think it's always important that the first thing that comes in your mind is that you're a good person. Uh, I, I'd say like my, my biggest focus in meeting new people is to try and learn more about them and connect with them in the way that feels like I could give you my phone number and we can talk in the future. And so I think that's one of the most important things for me is being someone that's remembered as someone A, who's very passionate, but also cares a lot about the people that you get in contact with.

And I don't think that that means you have to like try and please other people, but I think it's really important that other people can feel the energy that you're giving. And I think that's contagious. And so if I were to be remembered for one thing i would hope that people would say he was a good person we'd like to end with this question in every one of our episodes because it connects everything your family foundation your u.s years being a captain at bu battling through injuries finding purposely running building half hitch and now stepping into whatever's next for you when you wake up on a random tuesday nobody's cheering nobody's watching what is your why what do you hold on to when all all that motivation disappears? That's a good question.

I think motivation for me is interesting to look at. I think if I were to think about your question and break it down when motivation disappears for me who am I like what is my why why what's my purpose I think everything that I've always done was to sort of figure out what's my top level like how can I be the best version of myself not for others like I never wanted to run 25 marathons and have others say, wow, like you're an amazing runner. Like I never wanted that. But for me, it's when I wake up and I do a hard workout or when I put effort in, it's more so in a way to feel that I am using my time effectively to be the best version of myself.

And sometimes that looks like sitting down on a couch, like relaxing. So there's, it's not that every waking hour of my life, I'm going to be maxing out. Like I'm going to try and put all this energy in, but my why is to be while I'm on this earth, while I have the time to do so to be the best version of myself. And what that looks like in practice is putting myself in very uncomfortable situations and then also being very intentional about how can I learn from this instead of just being on autopilot.

And I think that's my wise, being the best version of myself, but being very intentional with the time that I have. Well, Tommy, it's been great having you on the show. Thank you so much for taking the time to share your stories, insights, and experiences with us. To our listeners, thank you so much for tuning in and we'll hope you'll join us next Wednesday for another episode of The Late Start Show.

Thank you, guys. you