We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Ike Bancroft a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Hi Ike, thanks for joining us today. How did you come up with the idea for your business?

I first had the idea for my company when I was guiding for a mountain bike company based out of Nevada. The whole process was so exciting and fun, but one flaw that kept presenting itself was how thin most guides were spread. We would guide in any of 15+ states across the American West, sometimes in a different one each week. While this made for an exciting, varied life for us guides, there was no possible way for us to be deeply versed in the ins and outs of each region.
This was when the idea popped out at me – what if a guiding company placed deep local knowledge at the heart of its mission and product, and found ways to bake that ethic into all aspects of the company? To me, it became a no-brainer. Clients will be able to sense the difference palpably, the whole business structure will promote more responsible recreational tourism, and guides will be able to utilize and deepen their own connection to the region.

Ike, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?

While I have been obsessed with mountain biking since I was a teenager, it wasn’t until I moved from Bellingham, WA to Moab, Utah in 2018 that I began to turn it into my career. That shift only deepened my love for the sport, by turning it from something that brought me immense personal enjoyment, to something more selfless that I was able to share with others.

Dig Deep Tours is a mountain bike guiding company based in one of the most special places in the country – Bellingham, WA. Dig Deep focuses on “travel” over “tourism” and finds it our duty to share some of the deepest qualities that make our region unique. While mountain biking is a super fun, exhilarating activity, when all is said and done, it is really about exploring the world, challenging ourselves, and becoming better people. Keeping these core tenets in mind is what sets us apart – we offer tours that go beneath the surface and leave a lasting impression on our guests – based not only on the sport at hand, but also the uniqueness of the region they are temporarily inhabiting.

Another things that makes us different is the amount of focus we give to each unique tour guest. Clients can tell that their tour is curated to their personal desires and needs, rather than a rigid on-size-fits-all tour.

Dig Deep offers mountain bike-guided tours around the best trails in Bellingham and NW Washington. We offer half-day trips, full-day trips, and mountain bike rentals all in one package and plan to begin offering multi-day trips starting in 2023. Our mountain bike tours are for everyone and anyone to experience – one doesn’t have to be a hardcore cyclist to enjoy a Dig Deep tour!

What do you think helped you build your reputation within your market?

Reputation takes a long time to build, and cannot be forced. It starts from your deeper ethics and worldview, and bubbles up to your actions and optics naturally. I think the fact that I truly love welcoming people into the sport of mountain biking, as well as our local region, is something that my clients and overall market can sense.

Also, being involved and connected within my community long before attempting to start my business has helped me greatly. I have good friends with successful local businesses, that I never realized would be become a benefit to my business. What could have been seen as competition, had instead been approached as collaboration and support, which stemmed from the deeper, genuine friendships and connections and I’ve made over the past decade in Bellingham. This is what I mean by “can’t be forced”. The best reputation is not one that you set out to make, it is one that is built when your focus is elsewhere, and people take notice.

Let’s talk about resilience next – do you have a story you can share with us?

This is an easy one! I began to prepare the foundational work of Dig Deep Tours in the fall and winter of 2019… we all know what happened just a few months later. I was lucky to not have taken any large steps or made any significant investments at that point, but the indefinite pause in my plans was deeply disheartening. Going from my most driven state in a long while, to experiencing the loss of my dream was very difficult.

It wasn’t until two and a half years later and the world coming to more stable place with the impacts of Covid, that it felt right to dive back in. The truth was that for a lot of that period, I had lost most of my motivation/drive for the idea entirely. Coming full circle to finally start Dig Deep this past winter gave me more confident in my long-term endurance with my dream that I expected. There’s nothing like being shut down by a global pandemic for years, to test one’s determination and resilience.

Contact Info:

• Website: digdeeptours.com
• Instagram: www.instagram.com/digdeeptours
• Facebook: www.facebook.com/digdeeptours

Image Credits
Lincoln Humphry, Sophie Frankenburg.