Epic Entrepreneurs

How Running Paved the Way for Business Growth with Tim and Leslie Grotenhuis

• Bill Gilliland

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Tim and Leslie Grotenhuis join us for a remarkable exploration into the world of race directing and entrepreneurship. After moving to Asheville in 2005 and immersing themselves in the running community, this passionate pair transformed their volunteer work into Kick It Events, a flourishing business birthed in 2014. They reveal how Leslie's production coordination skills and Tim's web design expertise paved the way for their success, and how they turned the challenge of directing races such as the Thomas Wolfe 8K and the Hot Chocolate 10K into a thriving enterprise. Their journey underscores the unpredictable paths that hobbies can take, shaped by creativity, community involvement, and a shared love for running.

Join us for an inspiring conversation that challenges you to keep an open mind and push the boundaries of your ventures.

Kick It Events Management is a small, family owned business producing outstanding events in Asheville and the surrounding Western NC area. The company launched in 2014, but their journey of becoming running event production coordinators begins much earlier. 
Originally, they donated our time as volunteer race directors to the Asheville Track Club for the Thomas Wolfe 8k and to the Isaac Dickson Elementary School PTO for the Hot Chocolate 10k (now the Hot Chocolate Races) from 2006 to 2013.  After many requests for help with other events they launched the race direction side of the business in 2014 and became professional event producers. In 2020, as the world screeched to a halt they used that lull in the event schedule to add race timing to our list of services as well as adding some event marketing skills to their resume.

Leslie and Tim currently produce over 15 races a year and have a handful of race timing only clients. They also work with and help support through partnerships over 15 local non-profit organizations.  

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All the best!
Bill

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All the best!

Bill

Bill Gilliland:

Hey there, welcome to this week's episode of Epic Entrepreneurs. I am with Tim and Leslie of Kick it Events and we're looking forward to learning what we can about their business and about what they've been up to so welcome.

Leslie Grotenhuis:

Hi, thanks for having us. And I'm going to pronounce our last name for you, because it's a toughie it's "Groton

Bill Gilliland:

House, I would have gotten it right. Groton House Tim and Leslie. Groton House See, I would have gotten it right, but I made the mistake of not asking ahead of time. Since we're doing this, that's on me y'all. So tell us a little bit about your business and how it came to be and sort of the origin story.

Leslie Grotenhuis:

Sure, I mean, it's definitely a pretty organic origin story to the business. So we are both runners and we moved to Asheville in 2005. Moved to Asheville in 2005. And when we moved right away I had two small children and was pregnant with twins. But Tim connected with the Asheville Track Club and wanted to be a part of the running community from the get-go via the track club, and that was really at that time there weren't a lot of running groups like there are now and so that was like the running group and they had a race that they wanted help with, the Thomas Wolfe 8K, which was Asheville's oldest running event, and he basically signed up and said you know, I want to be the race director. And came home and said we're going to be race directors.

Bill Gilliland:

Surprise, yeah, no, I love that. I might as well get involved. If you want to get to know some people, we'll be race directors, okay, yeah.

Leslie Grotenhuis:

That's right, we are jumping, uh, full throttle. So, um, yeah, and so by the time the race came around, uh, it was no longer pregnant with twins, we had twin newborns and two small children. So it was a family endeavor and we learned a lot. You know, as a runner, being on the other side of a race is very eye opening and you don't think about all the details that go into it. So we kind of volunteered, race directed that race. We were asked to create a race for our school, which was Isaac Dixon, and that became the, eventually the hot chocolate Asheville hot chocolate races.

Leslie Grotenhuis:

And I mean, my background is, before becoming a stay-at-home mom, was in production coordination, which is the same thing as race directing. So I was working in the music industry coordinating pieces of, you know, pulling something together, and really that's just a skill set that if you, you know, have an interest in something, you can morph those skills into other, producing other things. And so that's what this basically came, how this came about as a business, as people began asking me to help them with races, or you know, we came up with some race ideas and then and Tim is actually his background is in computers, he's a web designer. So this wasn't his full time gig but it became my full time gig. It because I, you know, like the example of us moving here and jumping full throttle into helping a local nonprofit. We get to work with so many local nonprofits and businesses and organizations and are really interwoven into the community with our events. So, yeah, so that's how it came about is we kind of volunteered and then it became a viable business.

Tim Grotenhuis:

Just to add a little bit to that back in 2007, when we created the Asheville Hot Chocolate 10K and then that became the races. You know we did that as a volunteer parents as part of the parent teacher organization, and so you know we were volunteering for the Asheville track club and then we were volunteering for the school and the PTO. And then, six years of that, you know, we got to the point where it was. It was a lot of work and we said, hey, we need to transition this to other parents at the school. And they go hmm, what if we paid you to put on the race? And we went, oh, that's an interesting idea. And that really was the genesis, you know, in 2014, of the start of Kick it events.

Bill Gilliland:

Oh, we can get paid for this. Oh, that's cool.

Tim Grotenhuis:

We can get paid.

Bill Gilliland:

Yeah, we're doing it anyway. We might as well get paid for it. But it sounds like to me, tim just said let's do this thing. And then he and he knew you had a skill set, leslie, and so he, he volunteered. Essentially he just said uh, you know you can, you know we can do this, because let's put it to work yeah, let's, let's get the skill set.

Bill Gilliland:

No, that's cool. And then, hey, and now, and now it's a morph to the fact that somebody will actually pay us to do it. So, yeah, so, so that's cool. So then what? Like, then, all right, we can get paid for this. Now, what?

Leslie Grotenhuis:

Now what? Yeah, I mean then it's the realizing that you have to work really hard to get enough clients to have it be a viable business. Business. And and now I mean we, we have a, we have clients, so we have nonprofits that hire us, like from that origins of working with nonprofits, volunteers. We also have our own events, so we were able to create an event ideas and then partner with nonprofits to be a benefactor of our own events. So we basically had to build from their ideas and relationships and clients, like any other business. You know building a client base business. You know building a client base.

Leslie Grotenhuis:

And then with the pandemic, you know that was a year of no racing. So we had a race in January and then we had races in December. So we had a year for me of soul searching and really thinking is this viable, can we continue? Well, tim was deciding he were going to not only are we going to continue, but he wanted to build another side of the business. So we really have to continue to be dynamic with the business. But he expanded the business from COVID by adding timing. So that just broadened our client base so that we can have timing services and that also increases our revenue because we're not paying somebody else to do timing. We are doing our own timing for events. So I mean, yeah, that's where it goes from there. As we just are now, continue to kind of roll with the punches of the event world and, um, grow from, yeah, any challenge. You gotta dig deep and figure out how you can grow from it and expand the business yeah, so we've had a few challenges.

Bill Gilliland:

Uh, in the last four years or so, we've had, you know, we've had a few challenges in the last four years or so. We've had, you know, we've had, we've had stuff. So let's talk about challenges, like what are some of the challenges that you have faced and what are some of the learnings that you've had from the challenges? Yes, yeah.

Leslie Grotenhuis:

So challenges like let's talk about the most recent challenge so we just had, you know a good bit of many of our event area flooded and destroyed Greenway, along the river, and we've been running along the river since our first hot chocolate 10K. So, like 2008, we were running along the river. I think we were the first race to run along the river when it was industrial and not so pretty, and now it's gorgeous. It's gorgeous, and now we have to wait for it to be revitalized again. So it's basically pivoting. Where else can we go? How can we support those nonprofits that are going to revitalize um with our events? Um, and then you know we're talking about expanding into more than just the area. So can we use this knowledge that we've been doing this for over a decade, um? Can we consult with other non-profits that want to do races but have no idea where to start and don't have that skill set um but, might you know, have the passion to want to put on a fundraiser race?

Bill Gilliland:

yeah, so is. So is. So is the model 100 non-profit, like there's always a non-profit partner?

Leslie Grotenhuis:

with our. It's typically a nonprofit, so it's typically somebody who's hiring us to put on a race. It's. I'm trying to think oh actually, once we did put on a whole running series for a for the radio station, so we had like a four race series, but typically it's a nonprofit. Yeah, I mean this is the idea that people want to produce a well-done fundraiser 5K or 10K or whatever. When we are producing the race, we always have a nonprofit that we are partnering with for volunteers and for just like to benefit. So we'll donate a portion of the proceeds but we kind of flip that relationship where we have control over the raise totally and then they can do less work and still benefit. But yeah, there's usually a nonprofit component.

Bill Gilliland:

Got it, got it. Yeah, it's a good model.

Tim Grotenhuis:

I mean it's yeah I was gonna just jump, jump back into the challenges piece of it that you asked about oh, yeah, yeah, absolutely, yeah um, you know, when we were first starting out, after every event that we would have, we would all, we would get back together and we would say, all right, we would kind of retrospect on it and we'd say what went well, you know, and what didn't go so well, and how can we improve, improve it for the next time. And so every time we retrospected, we had, you know, things that we needed to fix and we would work on trying to do that, uh, iteratively, you know, through the next race and the race after that. Um and uh, uh, you know, covid Leslie mentioned COVID that was a huge challenge, right, there were right. When it hit, we were like that's it, there's nothing we can do. You know, we're, we're, we're done until you know it.

Tim Grotenhuis:

It, uh, you know, until this is done. And uh, we were thinking about giving up because, uh, you know who knows how long this is going to go on. But we didn't. We got over that. It took us a little while and, you know, we bounced back from it and came back stronger, I think, because we did use the opportunity to expand the business and build some timing systems and really think more about the business. It was kind of a good downtime actually for us.

Bill Gilliland:

Yeah, I want to ask you about the business. It was kind of a good downtime actually for us. Yeah, I want to ask you about the timing. So what's that about? How does that, how does how does that work and why is that a big deal?

Tim Grotenhuis:

Sure, well, every race that's out there has you know when, when people are crossing the finish line or the starting line and then the finish line, you know they get their time from the race. Uh, and that's typically a third party vendor will supply the timing. Race directors generally don't have their own timing equipment. Um, it's expensive to build. You have to have someone that that knows what they're doing to maintain it. Um, because leslie and I, uh, you know, have this, you know partnership that's built in. Uh, and I've got the tech side. I was able to bring in the, the technology piece of it, and man, the timing system, while leslie and uh rihanna were able to take over and and do, um, you know, all the course planning and and all the other things that race directors do, and I could focus on that timing aspect of it. Um, and it's expensive, but I, instead of buying a pre-packaged system, as mentioned, you know the technology side that I have I went through and said, all right, well, how am I going to build this?

Tim Grotenhuis:

And it was kind of like, you know, it was kind of like, oh, legos for adults or, uh, you know the erector sets of of of old and, uh, that was a lot of fun, so ordered a, a big timing, truss, big, you know structure that we put together for every event and it's, you know, has these large banners. Now that we can promote our races and promote, you know, for our clients that are hiring us, we can, you know, order these banners that really make it look like a championship sort of race, you know.

Bill Gilliland:

Yeah, so essentially you were paying somebody outside and so you just bring it inside. So there's an investment up front, but now you can save that money or just make more money, I guess on a raise because you don't have to pay. That's not an expense you have anymore.

Leslie Grotenhuis:

Right, yeah, and it allowed us to come back from COVID quicker. Because that raised expense Hiring somebody. It became, you know, a big hurdle. So when we were coming back from COVID it was basically like the city only allowed 50 people at a time. Say like in Carrier Park or in any park. Say like in carrier park or in any park, right? So we were allowed to like, say all right, well, we, we're just gonna have our timing and do it as much as we need to do the timing and then roll it um into like our registration and it doesn't cost us this like big hurdle of having to hire somebody, some big flat fee to come in time when there's only going to be you know 100 people.

Leslie Grotenhuis:

Yeah, yeah, right, so we were able to actually yeah, and then come up with, like, more creative events and um, yeah, so I it. Actually I think the the challenge of covet and then tim, using his expertise to kind of give us this tool, allowed us to be more creative with the events we did come up with coming out of COVID so that you know, we could have events where maybe there's less people but people were dying to do something and have events and go to races again so go to races again.

Bill Gilliland:

So, yeah, that's yeah. So, and you and y'all, just because you like, it seems like you could go into other kinds of events, but y'all specialize in running because you like running yeah we have done other events, so we we actually, um, we've helped with the Mountain Sports Festival.

Leslie Grotenhuis:

I don't know if you're yeah, so Tim was the executive director of the sports festival for I don't know how many years Tim two, three years.

Tim Grotenhuis:

Three years I was the executive director and then I was on the board for another. I was a total of eight years, I think, on the board. I was total of eight years, I think, on the board. So that was the big festival we had down at Carrier Park to highlight the outdoor opportunities in and around Asheville, to bring people to Asheville, which we did successfully, I think.

Bill Gilliland:

Oh yeah, absolutely, I think anything you do.

Leslie Grotenhuis:

So I think that's good. And then at one point I was hired on as the festival to produce running events for the festival and help manage the festival village, so like the vendors and the sponsors within the festival village, and then all of the sporting events and then creating sporting events for them. So we've yeah, we've done some other things as well.

Bill Gilliland:

Yeah, so you've dabbled in some other things along the way, but it's sort of it's sort of been opportunistic. It seems like people come to you or you've have an interest anyway, and so you get involved and there's a good theme there Get involved in something you never know it might be a business. Yeah, it's, it's, it's pretty good. I have this theory. I've had a number of clients that are runners, that are good runners, I mean some. You know, I have one guy who was, you know, ran in college and he he had a fast enough time in the to run in the Olympic trials and some things like that. But you know, so it was. It was uh. So I have a theory that that, that that runners make good business people. So what have you learned from running that you've been able to take over into business?

Leslie Grotenhuis:

Oh gosh. Well, I mean, let's go to the challenges again, where when you're running running long distance running you have to dig deep. When it's uh, it's getting hard, and you know like, if you think about running a marathon I mean like I have run the New York marathon and the um, external, um energy that you're getting from the crowd and cheering you on is so helpful. So I feel like that's something that maybe not all runners need or enjoy, that I know there's lots of people that run to likes to run in the quiet of the woods, but for me and I know, for my business and events, I am also praise motivated, so I will work, work, work for my client and to have them say that was amazing, this was so great. Or our runners just to have a great like, oh, that was so great. You know, we love this T-shirt, we love this prize, whatever Similar similar mindset.

Leslie Grotenhuis:

I feel like surprise, whatever Similar similar mindset. I feel like like I need that external energy. Definitely. We've talked, tim and I have talked about how we're praise motivated, cause I mean we started this by just getting like accolades no money, volunteers, people just being like great job and we'd be like yeah, we did a great job. So I don't know, maybe that, tim. I don't know if you have other thoughts about.

Bill Gilliland:

Yeah, no, I'd love to hear what Tim has to say about this.

Tim Grotenhuis:

Running experience. I mean I think maybe you touched on it all I mean, in all of our events, you know we do like you mentioned the New York City Marathon we try to bring that enthusiasm and that positive attitude to all the events that we do to try to make those runners uh, you know, want to come back for more.

Bill Gilliland:

so yeah, no, I like it, and I think there's something about always knowing there's more and what the runners keep proving that, that you there's. There's always the next distance or the next right, the next let's run up to the top of the hill to that there's always the next distance or the next speed.

Tim Grotenhuis:

Let's run up to the top of the hill to see what's on the other side.

Bill Gilliland:

Yeah, the next personal best, the next something, yeah, so I think there's, you know. And then look, there's going to be painful times in business and they're not nearly as painful as some of the things you feel running. So, yeah, it's good. Let me all right. So you've had some challenges, so what are some of the biggest lessons that you've gotten along the way?

Tim Grotenhuis:

Can I jump in here, les? Yes, for sure, for sure, I think. Pay attention to the opportunities that present themselves. You know, back when I was the director of the mountain sports festival, I had an opportunity to do a radio show for the local uh radio station, called the mountain sport show, where I interviewed uh local sporting personalities and one of the dudes I interviewed, one of the people I interviewed was um Jim Brendel from the Smoky Mountain Relay and uh we had a great hour of chatting back and forth and got along really well.

Tim Grotenhuis:

And soon after that he called me and goes hey, I've got the. He's the director of the Smoky Mountain Relay. I've been director of this relay for years, you know, and I want it's too much because he lives out in Oregon. I want to. I got to find someone to transition it to. And he goes what about you and Leslie? And Leslie and I went well, that's an interesting idea. And uh, and so we thought we'd give it a try. And you know it's, we took it over and that was back in 2000. Was it 19? Was our first year? Less, I can't remember. Yeah, yeah, 2019. And we did it. We did it well. We've made it better. I think jim did a great job, but you know we, we've been working on trying to improve it and, uh, you know, it just presented itself. So look and see what is out there and take advantage of it yeah, I know I love that listen.

Bill Gilliland:

Keep your eyes open, look around, see what's see, what's see what's out there yeah, I, I and I think a little bit.

Leslie Grotenhuis:

I mean, there's, you know, caution is good, but you also have to be a little bit. Do things that are scary, you know, like take on an event that's 200 miles, or you know things that you think I don't know if we could do this Um, but let's try, um, and you know, I guess with a skillset that becomes less scary. But I think, you know, taking risks is always it's a good thing to try to push yourself um to try to push yourself um with.

Bill Gilliland:

You know events and ideas. Yeah, it makes sense, I mean always. I mean, how are you? I'm a like, better, like how do we make it better person and sounds like y'all are too. Because I mean, what you're doing is when you, when you look at an event and then say, well, hang on, let's review the event so we can be better next time. And it's the same thing with running right, you're always looking to how do I be a little bit better? How can I become something different or better than I am? So I think, yeah, pushing yourself to take a little risk and then do some stuff, that's scary. I love that. Let me ask you all we'll wrap up with this one question that I almost always ask everybody, and that is what do you wish you had known? In other words, what do you wish somebody had told you that you know now that you didn't know at some point in the past? I'll start with you, leslie what do you? What?

Leslie Grotenhuis:

I mean, I think that I wish I had known that marketing is everything. Every business is also marketing. So, um you know, wish I had learned, I did go back. That was like a COVID thing where I went back and I did like an extra kind of class on more marketing skills, but that's that. If you're a small business owner, you're also marketing unless you're. Unless you're, you know, are hiring somebody, but that's part of the the gig as a small business owner yeah, every business is marketing.

Bill Gilliland:

You're just marketing something, whatever it is that you provide, whatever service you provide. So every business is marketing. So it's a good. It's a good learning. It's a good learning. What you got, what, what, what? This is one of the great things I get. I get. I get all these learnings from from business owners that I can use, so it's good. It's what part of the stick here? What do you? What do you? What do you have, tim? What do you have for us?

Tim Grotenhuis:

That's a great question, um, I mean, I'm I'm still learning, uh, you know um, of course what do I wish?

Bill Gilliland:

uh well, maybe you should rephrase or say restate the question one more time what is just something that you know now that you wish you had known a long time ago, yeah, or before you started the business?

Tim Grotenhuis:

Yeah, yeah, yeah, I think it's kind of a subset of what Leslie said. You know, google Ads, seo, all those things that I've, you know, key marketing metrics being able to, you know, read the output from Google ads and do something with it. You know, and that's I've been learning that over the years and if I, you know, if I had been able to start with that 10 years ago, we, we maybe would be. I mean, I wouldn't further, definitely, but you know, then then there's all kinds of other things about how do you grow with employees and stuff that I still don't know anything about.

Bill Gilliland:

so, you know, it's a, it's a learning process, whatever you do yeah, of course, yeah, well, I think that's one of the things is always have to be learning, always have to be. If you want to be better, you got to become something different, which means you always got to be learning. So somebody wants to have an event, they're a nonprofit or they're not a nonprofit and they just want to have an event. What? How do they get in touch with you?

Leslie Grotenhuis:

I mean our website is kickiteventscom or they can email info at kickitevents, you know, if they want to see what we're up to. We're on all this socials right. So kick it events on Instagram and and then we've got you know any of those events. Everybody, everyone has a social media Instagram, facebook, so many places to see what we're doing. But yeah, to reach out and we'll send you. You know, we will help you figure out whatever you want to do.

Bill Gilliland:

Yeah, yeah, yeah and yeah, that's, that's, that's awesome Great name. By the way, kick it events, I think. I think. I mean there are some. You know some companies have it and some don't. And you know kick it events has it, some don't, and you know Kicking Events has it. So well done, thank you. I'm picking that out. I don't know what the process was for that. Maybe that's another story for another podcast. So anyway, thanks for taking the time to be with us today. I really appreciate it.

Leslie Grotenhuis:

Thanks, bill, thanks for having us.

Bill Gilliland:

And until next time, all the best.