It was around 9 o’clock the other night, sitting in the Outpst cutting fabric for the Gunnison Crested Butte order. Music playing, rotary cutter in hand, measuring everything out on the table, trying not to screw up expensive fabric.
I remember stopping for a second and looking over at my to-do list. Calls, follow ups, product development, content planning, emails, catalogs, sales tax, wholesale outreach, photo shoots, athlete management, budgeting, website work, product shots, logistics, payroll, invoices. Looking at it all at once, I had this realization that every section of that list could realistically be its own job. You could have someone handling sales development, someone working product design, someone focused entirely on content, someone doing operations and communication. But right now, most of it still funnels through me.
And I think that’s the part about building something people don’t really talk about much. It can get pretty lonely.
Not in a dramatic way. I’ve honestly learned to appreciate a lot of it. There’s something peaceful about late nights in the Outpst with music on, working through ideas and trying to build something meaningful from scratch. But when your entire life starts revolving around the workload, it definitely creates this isolated feeling. Most of my friends hang out after work. I usually go back to work after work.
But at the same time, I’ve started realizing this thing doesn’t really feel like just mine anymore either.
That’s the weird balance I’ve been thinking about lately.
This week alone we had athletes helping us shoot the Columbine collection, people setting reminders for the drop before we’ve even officially announced it, friends hyping up the Moab content harder than I was, customers constantly sending ideas, feedback, and messages, and a community that somehow keeps finding ways to show up for this brand. Even thinking back to Aspen Fashion Week earlier this year, seeing everybody come together around Outpst was one of those moments that made everything feel way bigger than product.
I think that’s the coolest part about all of this.
From the outside, it probably just looks like hats, hoodies, and reels. But underneath all of it, what we’re really building is a community of people who genuinely want to be part of this thing. People who care about getting outside, creating things, exploring more, supporting each other, and building culture around experiences instead of just products.
That’s honestly all I ever wanted Outpst to become.
Not some massive corporation. Not some polished marketing machine. Just something real that people feel connected to.
I’m still building a lot of this alone. But lately it’s started feeling a whole lot less lonely.