We were lucky to catch up with Chris McWatters recently and have shared our conversation below.

Hi Chris, thanks for joining us today. Are you happier as a business owner? Do you sometimes think about what it would be like to just have a regular job?

There have been several moments along the way where second-guessing business ownership has hit me hard. With little children and multiple passions, I sometimes wonder what it would be like to clock out and have all the company’s problems be someone else’s problems. This especially hit hard most recently as we have come out of Covid-19 mandates. Even though I was full of gratitude and thankfulness that our small business survived that craziness, a lot of people may not be able to fully grasp how much work and unending decisions are required as restrictions have loosened up. It’s fatiguing to say the least. However, every time those thoughts hit me and I feel myself wearing out, someone will ‘randomly’ tell me how our events and community have changed his or her life for the better. It’s funny how the negative thoughts get washed away in that instance and motivation returns. It’s always worth it…whatever it is.

As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your background and context?

I began endurance event directing in the sport of track and field as a meet director for major track meets. From there, I somehow ended up working at a big camp and retreat center. That career was absolutely amazing, and during my stint there (at a place called Camp Eagle) I was also able to be an event director and course designer for multiple types of off-road endurance races. I learned a lot about the outdoor industries through those 8.5 years. Throughout this time I was able to take part in some of the longest and hardest ultra distance races on the planet, including multiple 50-100+ mile races, Primal Quest (a 10-day Adventure Race, where we were on foot, biking, paddling, climbing, rappelling, caving, and orienteering through 600+ miles with only about 20 hours of sleep), a Double Iron Triathlon, and some other craziness. Throughout that time, I also got married to an amazing woman and we had a child born after that. Around that time, we were offered to acquire and take the reins of Tejas Trails. Tejas Trails was one of the original trail running event production companies in North America. Sort of doing this before most others were, as far as running a full on company solely offering off road racing goes.

We have now been owners and race directors for about 8 years. We have since had another little girl. My wife and two girls love trails and the outdoors. So, we try to incorporate family time with work time as much as possible. When we took over Tejas Trails, there was for the first time officially competition in that other companies were creating dozens of new races all around us. It was intense, as the industry grew, so did the number of choices.

We have since then grown from 8 races to 20, with more coming. We not only survived that effort but also survived Covid shutdowns.

I’m most proud of the community we have been able to help create. Our racers are our volunteers. Our volunteers are our friends. Our friends are really our family. Our company is an extension of ourselves, so it all makes sense. But it is incredibly humbling and really means something to us.

Over the past couple years we have grown a new company called Endless Loop Fundraising. Our new company is really cool! We do a very specific type of fundraiser called a “Lap-A-Thon”. So, now we are able to help entities raise needed funds, and help families be healthier and exercise, and help these fundraising entities grow their communities. We absolutely love being able to offer this service. Especially as non-profits, clubs, teams, churches, etc. all need help raising funds more than ever.

Do you have any stories of times when you almost missed payroll or any other near death experiences for your business?

Back at the beginning, not long after we made the acquisition, we had a good number of sudden expenses hit at once, both company and personal). I refused to withhold payment to vendors and contract labor, so I continued to pay everyone as soon as the next event was over and the invoice came in. But I was watching the account getting lower and lower. I did the math and realized exactly how much revenue had to come in during the upcoming days before the expenses were higher than the income. To make a long story short, I hatched a plan to create urgency for some events I could open up for registration that were still quite a long ways off. I gave it a name, a story, created an advertising campaign around it, and did the legwork to make sure as many people as possible heard about it. I spent every waking moment trying my best to create that FOMO feeling around it. The plan worked. Registrations came flooding in. Revenue went way up just in the nick of time. To this day, we still do that same exact Registration Opener / Drive the same time of year. To all our runners it is just when registration opens. To me it’s an annual reminder to be thankful, to be willing to do hard things, and to never be willing to throw the towel in.

Can you tell us about a time you’ve had to pivot?

An obvious memory comes from 2020, when the pandemic hit. We literally went from another growth year trend to making $0 dollars per week. We only make money when people can gather together (for a race), so when gathering together was banned for an unknown amount of time the future of Tejas Trails grew dimmer and dimmer by the week. My thoughts just kept returning to “we had been through too much to go out this way”. I just couldn’t accept it. My mind was constantly on it…desperately trying to think of anything possible. Our community was amazing. We sold all the merchandise possible on our online store. But that wasn’t going to make it float for long. One night, we had an idea to where I could go out and mark a route in the woods with the permission of the land owner. I re-created the regular race course layout to where runners could get near a main road repeatedly throughout the race so they could access their own drop bags and ice chests, which they were to put out on their own before they started racing. Racers were then on the honor system to go and run as fast as possible at various distances I offered. Then they submitted their results on our online platform (which my amazing timer and good friend customized to make work for this). I left the course open for 3 weeks at a time. Then went and did the same process at a different location. At some point, this transitioned into Phase 2 as we called it behind the scenes. For this phase (as things loosened up a little bit more), I got permission from local Counties to have people sign up, 10 people to a 1 hour “Start Window”. I basically had mini-races of less than 10 people entering the woods at one time. It totally worked. We were able to offer touchless packet pickup and aid station support, keep people safe, and people could race again in person! We made them make their way out of the finish line area once recovered and then on back to their vehicles, making room for the next few starters. This all required 80-100 hour work weeks, along with trying to keep myself and my family sane around our house and yard. But it worked! We slowly have been integrating our normal processes since then, and actually hanging onto some neat things we would have never thought of otherwise. It was a wild experience, but again, I’m so glad we didn’t throw in the towel.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.tejastrails.com & www.endlessloopfun.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/tejastrails/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/TejasTrails