Tyler – All Roads Taken

Tyler is a lifelong adventure addict, proud father, and husband. He and his wife Jada, co-founded All Roads Taken with a belief that adventure is an essential part of life, fostering a deeper connection with the planet, each other, and ourselves. Their mission with All Roads Taken is to inspire individuals to take a chance on adventures near and far, knowing it will always be worth the drive.

I’m Tony and welcome to the Jeep talk show the talk show where we talk about all things Jeep from trail riding to overlanding and everything in between Sit back grab a cold one and get ready for another great guest right here on the Jeep talk show. Are you ready? It’s time for the Jeep talk show with hoes Tony Josh Wendy and Chuck

In episode 442 we spoke with Sean P Holman of Motor Tram. I’ve raced in the Baja 1000 I’ve been all over the world testing everything from you know Range Rovers to Ford trucks everything in between just it’s it’s been an amazing Journey on just bought a new JL But was it the right color in gray it red was in the running I just and I told us to mark out and I said Bring back flame red. Yes firecrackers just a little too orgy for me It your argument is it wasn’t read enough 100% support that a Jeep talk show has well over 400 past episodes for your entertainment Yeah, there is a lot of episodes out there. I think it’s I think that promo just said 400 We’re over a thousand episodes in our back catalog. So go back and get some Jeep talk show goodness

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Or from your city and Sometimes just down the street had a neighbor. It’s the Jeep talk show interview I Do boys and girls is tough another Jeep talk show interview We’re gonna be talking with Tyler and Tyler is a lifelong adventure addict proud father and husband He and his wife Jada co-founded all roads taken with the belief that adventure is an essential part of life Fostering a deeper connection with the planet each other and ourselves Their mission with all roads taken is to inspire individuals to take a chance on adventures near and far Knowing it will always be worth the drive and Tyler I think we sometimes get into our mindset that I don’t want to do that because I’m gonna break something or something’s bad it’s gonna happen or even my luggage is gonna get lost and It quite often is something that you just learn to deal with When you do it and it turns out not to be a big deal. It’s kind of like fear ruling her lives Sure. Yeah, we have a saying in our family that we all buy shrines You buy things to enjoy them, you know, and once you get over that part, it’s like getting that first little nick on the new car Once you get into it and you’re like, this is worth it the whole time, you know, so we don’t buy shrines and You know that that we try not to be guided by that fear that happens before you go off and do something right, there’s always a little bit of friction or apprehension of the unknown and Typically once you find yourself on the ground

The situation is a lot more friendly and approachable than you might have thought it was You know the outset so we try to give her that hump and once we’re there things usually pan out Now I’ll tell you one thing that I see I don’t know if you’re a jeeper or not, but there’s one thing I see on Wranglers where they do the spare tire delete That’s over the line for me

Especially for going off-road Yeah, I am a jeeper we have we started out with our first Jeep in 2019 it was a JK and we loved it Unfortunately totaled it on the way out to Colorado. And so now we’re in a JL you but I can’t you know the places that we go tend to be places far away and You know really adventurous type destinations and I can’t I can’t really wrap my head around Going without a spare But you know folks that are folks that are in off-road parks and things and really want that extra Departure, you know, I get it but not probably not for me Yeah, I and also to this the whole idea of putting a tramp stamp on your Jeep. You’ll love Jeep I don’t know. I guess stickers are like tattoos though That’s the the only tattoos that I approve of is the the ones on the on the stickers on the jeeps So tell me if you don’t mind tell me about the the totaling of the Jeep Was it one that you were in when it got totaled or hopefully not? You know was

Certainly protected us we had a

2017 as I said, it was a JK and it was the the hard rock which we loved was awesome I feel like that’s kind of the Jeep that the JL use were largely based off of if you look at the Steel bumpers and the hood structure and kind of the accents and everything that hard rock was really the predecessor to that and Anyway, we loved it. We love U-ray and tell your ride in that southwestern part of Colorado and have been going there for many years and we were headed out there again Just on a quick week long getaway to go experience that in September for the first time when the leaves start to change And we had an unfortunate incident in a little town called Salida this there in southern, Colorado and We powered through though speaking to that opening line of our conversation here today you know, we we dealt with that there in rural, Colorado and Managed to get a get a transportation the rest of the way the u-ray and rented a Jeep while we were there and had a great time Wow, that’s amazing because that would be a killer for me the whole Jeep was total that would be stuff be tough To keep going a day emotionally tough to get going was hurt No, it’s hard, you know, at least in terms of things we couldn’t work through and and again once we got to the u-ray We were able to get a Jeep and enjoy the week, you know pretty much in the same way I’ll be it with just a little bit of shadow I’m sure is in the back of your mind and you probably even be considered about is am I pressing my lock is This like whenever you’re on a losing streak at a casino Well now it’s time to cash out and just take my losses and go home

Keep your head up. I guess, you know bias bias toward the positive And I know if I’m dealing with one of those situations I’d sure rather be dealing with it on the trail in the mountains then and back at my house. Yeah. Yeah, that’s true That’s true. Well, it’s good that you continued on and I think that shows a lot of character So I didn’t mention this at the start. So I’m gonna mention it now Your website is all roads taken roads plural all roads taken calm now Tell people about this site. What do you what do you do this site?

Sure. So if I step back to the high level We we just have this fundamental belief my wife and I Jada we started this business together and we’ve got this fundamental belief that Adding adventure as an ingredient into life is it’s just really important. Yeah, it’s one of those things that creates opportunities Like like you read when you introduced me a while ago Creates these opportunities to get to know each other in a different way in a different setting to get to know yourself really I’m sure you’ve been to places where you’ve challenged yourself kind of explore outside of your comfort zone and those tend to be opportunities where you you get to buy out a little bit more about who you are and test those boundaries and really get to know yourself and stretch your limits and they end up being core memories and so While it’s unreasonable to think that every day of life is going to be that and inherently it just kind of can’t Adding that into your life once or twice or a handful of times a year as much as you can And especially for your kids if you’re their family Yeah, it’s such an important thing to do for perspective and and just building kind of that worldview And so we want to encourage that and we realize that There’s a lot of folks on really different points of the spectrum there Some folks are adventuring a lot But maybe they need some encouragement to do a new type of thing, right? To get out of their comfort zone again and and maybe go further or go to a different type of location or experience a different activity Others are you know as much as we’re in it the The barrier to entry to any sort of adventure travel is still really pretty high You know, there’s a lot more resources now to be able to do that than there were before but for somebody who doesn’t have any experience in that world having the easy entry to that Seeing what other people are doing and kind of being able to copy some of that to get started and Understand what to do and where to go and all of that. There’s just a lot to process and

Especially when you’re out in the middle of nowhere, right? So we’re to ease those barriers of entry and provide encouragement for folks No matter where they are on kind of that spectrum of adventure to choose it a bit more and incorporate it into their lives So we thought you know as we look at our travels We’ve been all sorts of places and we have all sorts of pictures and things like that But what we don’t have when we sit down and we want to look at it or talk about it or think about it is a really nice way to keep track of what we call our adventure log The really cool places that we’ve been or the the kind of just incredible special moments that we’ve shared You know around a campfire or maybe at a sunset or some beautiful vista or just a moment with the kids You know at a national park and we wanted to create that for ourselves Honestly, a lot of this was you know Kind of that selfish need that drives something that you think other folks might might be interested in to Want to create that for ourselves and wanted to create that for other folks in the sense that Seeing where you’ve been whether that’s been a lot of places really far away or a number of places close You’re just starting out is is both a nice to have and also a really encouraging thing for where you’re gonna go next It sort of sets the tone helps create some new goals and and Inspiration for where you want to go next and so we wanted to do that and we knew we wanted to do that we also wanted a way to connect it to Something you could touch right and so we’ve always you know We’ve traveled many many places and tried all sorts of different collectibles along the way Kids are always wanting something to remember the trip and we find ourselves there too And I know on our camper especially we always used to buy stickers and They’re cool. We tend to be really bright colored and fun and and we loved them But they also wear out really fast. And so

Taking kind of two parallel lines here. We thought okay What if we take an angle and what if we create something that’s gonna last for a really long time that gives you a nice Way to kind of acknowledge on your camper or your rig or even on your wall We tend to put these under photographs in our in our kind of gallery downstairs

Whatever it may be give this sort of timeless way to Commemorate different adventures and then tie that into this concept of building an adventure log So whether you’re building that online first and you start traveling and you’re able to purchase these badges In a shop or maybe you see You know somebody’s rig or somebody’s camper going down the road with the places that they’ve been you stop at a gas station Talk about those trips or you see them at a campground you talk about those trips It’s a it’s a way to start up a conversation when there are people see these things It’s a physical representation of this log that you’re building on the on the more online side And it kind of leads both of those those angles for people and encourages discussion Which is sort of the reason why a lot of us travel anyway, right? You’re finding stories or they’re making stories of their family Of course you want to talk about those things and those stories also really encourage other folks to kind of do the same thing whether that’s a new place or a new type of trip or maybe the inspiration to take their first trip, so That’s a general sense of kind of what we’ve been trying to push forward with the first couple of products that we released And what we’re looking to do more of in the coming years So let me tell you what what I think this a cursory examination of the website It looks like to me what you guys are doing is very similar to the Jeep honor badge So it has a location and it’s made to go I mean you can put them anywhere of course just like you can do the honor badges, but it primarily The way you have it on your site is it’s it’s been the position where a lot of people on the the front front panel

Fender where that these things are stuck to again You can put them anywhere you like and they’re they’re very similar, but not the exact shape of the honor badges I think they’re a little more squatty and longer

Yeah, so but basically you’ve got these badges, but in addition to that you have an app for a phone Maybe I don’t know if it’s also works on a desktop or laptop, but where you can I Would assume that you have something similar where you have to? Prove that you’re there before you can get the badge Sure. Yeah. Yeah, so a lot of a lot of similarities there and I would be the first to say we always kind of lead With this especially with the off-road community We love the Jeep badge of honor. We got our that first that hard rock Jeep that I was talking about it was great and

You know we started out doing trails and It was such a cool thing to see how having a program like that Allowed for my kids Even to start getting more motivated to for us to go in those types of trips Yeah always generate motivation right for yourself for your family for the whole group because that Unable so much more right and my kids really bought into it because it was like this preset

List of things that you could go do and the conversation as soon as we went You know one place and did a trail that conversation was always was next You know, what are we gonna do? That’s great. We loved that and You know, we really saw

We don’t have any interest in like copying that or really being like a trail badge But at the same time we saw a tremendous amount of value in a program like that that again that has this physical Representation alongside this more digital log of something you want to remember long term and we thought this is a huge opportunity to Not only expand this in something like the off-road community to everyone who’s not driving a Jeep Yeah I was just gonna say because you don’t have to have a Jeep to get these where the other ones you pretty much do I mean, you don’t absolutely have to but it does. I guess people would call it. What’s the thing? Unclaimed valor. I’m forgetting the exact name, you know, you put a Jeep badge on a non Jeep. It’s like hey, you can’t do that Exactly. Yeah, and so we wanted to we wanted to expand that but then open it up to so many more like

Opportunities for adventure so really increase the aperture so we’re not talking about just you know Really world-renowned trails across the country as cool as those are There’s a tremendous number of trails that are more regional that are just as good They’re just less well known and and and those create opportunities for people that are closer They may not have the legs to go as far to reach some of those cross-country destinations, but right outside of that National parks the park systems national forests that are in your state or in your region

Events, you know, I one thing that I’ve learned through this process is how important these event

Like local and regional events are to folks that attend them or or things like your expos and stuff people have community there They camp there they go on rides there. It’s you know, it’s part of their adventure log personally to them so being able to have something that we can do to capitalize with those event hosts and Continue to commemorate and make that even more of a memory for folks Is really cool. So we can open up that aperture

Why right whether you’re into mountain biking or off-roading or off-road parks We’ve added a tremendous experience working with off-road parks and continue to expand You know that offering and we do it in such a way that it doesn’t highlight One particular trail, you know and a lot of our parks have appreciated that so, you know You could go down the road to we have southern Missouri off-road ranch just down from us in Missouri there in southern Missouri Or somebody like Maris or Windrock and enjoy the park Get a badge for the park support the park But not necessarily you have everybody run down the road in through the park gate into this one trail That’s great, but it’s surrounded by a number of other trails in a whole park experience. It’s just fantastic so We love that idea of a system that that drives some motivation and being able to open that aperture up to a number of other Adventure activities so that we can get as many people outside, you know experiencing and making these memories So I think you’ve explained this but this are a clearer understanding I think a lot of people know the Jeep honor badge system. How does your System how does it differ from the Jeep honor badge? And for those of you that don’t know the Jeep honor badge system you get the app you get it on your phone They use the GPS to see if you’re you know Close to the trail or wherever the badge is and then if you are you submit it and then Jeep will send you a an honor badge that you can stick on your Jeep or anywhere you like it frankly and That’s and I think that’s about the end of it. So how does your all roads taken? work in comparison to that right, so we you know if you approach it from The kind of most basic view if I want to go run. I am a gene path That’s a well-known trail in southwestern Colorado I can do that and and we’ve really tried to emphasize

Creating a platform that that encourages you to be in the moment as much as possible and I say that because As it as a Jeep owner and a badge of honor user myself. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve forgotten Yes, Oh damn. I was John. Oh man 20 hours and now I’m back where I am Right. So that was an element of personal feedback And and then there’s this other aspect that we got both from ourselves and from a number of users Around things that I did before you know Epic trip out to Washington where I ran some trails or out to California is fantastic But maybe it was five years ago, you know before I even knew about this, right? How do I do that? You know like for me the importance is the story and keeping track of all the places that I’ve been and sharing that with folks Not driving out there again to do that. So we try to make it flexible So if I want to add something like I’m a gene past to my adventure log I can do that a number of ways I could check in while I’m there in the same way that you described, right?

Create a little marker there and add that that particular trail as an activity to my log I could also use a picture that I took while I was on the trail You know one advantage that we have in modern times that unless you’re using a pretty old camera Which those were really cool to do but you’re using your cell phone or even a lot of yes, LRS They’re geotagged. So you can upload a picture and we can still pull the point. You know, that’s a good point I didn’t think about that. Yeah, and what I like about that is I’m always taking pictures I may forget to check in an app I’m always taking pictures and that makes it really easy for folks who want to verify their location to be able to do that Afterward, you know, maybe I’m Compress decompressing for the night really had a great day I’m gonna log things that I did that day but I didn’t necessarily want my phone in front of my face while I was doing those things

So we do that and then we you know The reality is that that you know based on user feedback and the realities of this Get a ton of people that just wanted to be able to add things on the owner system You know, I went this is the date that I went And it’s on the owner system, right? And the reality is as much as the location check-in is important to some folks to the majority Well, you don’t always have cell service and internet service when you’re when you’re at certain places, especially the really good trails, I think So yeah, I think that’s a great our biases You know if you want to add it to your adventure log is because you said you were there We’re generally gonna believe you. Yeah, you know the world will decide I guess if right when the the 30 questions start whenever you Oh, I see you got that badge. What’d you think about this? What’d you think about that? Ah, you didn’t go Yeah, so exactly making it overly restrictive just didn’t really fit our goals Encouraging people to travel more and so we tried to allow for it You know for folks that are consider that to be an important part verifying that location but also provide for folks for historical travel or for folks that That’s just not as important to them. But the travel is mmm. So the app itself Basically is like a database for your travels Can you do comments and text and maybe stories along with the pictures? Is that is it in that in-depth or is it just pretty much I went there and here’s pictures yeah, so We’re we’ve got a few different features and we’re getting ready to roll out a bunch more at this summer you continue to compound on that capability of building an adventure log and capturing moments and and even journal entries and thoughts and and you know feelings at a particular time so much of this And I’m sure with your adventures as well Like you can think back and and the trips are cool in the places that you’ve been are cool But inside of that there’s these moments that happen to be really important, you know in the context of that trip We want folks to be able to capture those even in retrospect Because that’s what you want to see when you look back a couple of years from now You know, I love looking back and seeing some of the first camping trips that I went on with with my oldest son

Outside of you know a picture I can remember kind of but being able to write some things down and and remember some of The routes that we went on During that trip, you know one we just took to that was our National Forest I want to be able to look on those on those things later Right now you can add pictures and you can you know recommend, you know Give a thumbs up so we can kind of provide some recommendations to folks on on Popular trails or new trails or things like that But the vast majority and I think I don’t want to commit fully But the way we’re leaning right now is that we’re going to continue to buy us toward this being a very private

There’s a lot of ways right now that you can Share reviews and trail reviews for instance You could go to trails off-road and do that or on X or something and leave your review of a particular trail All right, so there’s a lot of ways to do that. And of course, you know, there’s a tremendous number of ways to share Photos and trips and things like that through social media now What there’s not is a great way to keep an adventure log Right nor memories and some of the things that you don’t want to share publicly and some of the spots that were really important to You but it’s not like a waypoint you want to publish in guy or something for everybody else to see it So we want to create a really, you know more internally focused service for people to use and Record some more of those private moments that they wouldn’t otherwise want to share and then feel free to continue to share photos and stuff Like that on Facebook or Instagram or whatever you like Not that you guys are gonna go away But for example if somebody went through the trouble of creating this private log Is there a way or do you anticipate a way in the future of them being able to download that to absolutely? Yeah, good. Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah, I would want that myself, you know I don’t have any intention of going away either but it’s your day then it’s not ours And we’d certainly prefer for you to be able to pull that down anytime that you’d like to ensure you can always keep that Well, this is a wonderful thing because now you have a one place that you can go to keep up with all your adventures and you can get that data and copy it off to your Local hard drive or in the cloud someplace so you have a copy of it and you have that like I said that one place Stop to be able to do all this So I would assume the the app is free or do you pay for it or how does that work? Yeah, everything is free for now. The only thing that folks pay for are badges. Our goal is twofold. So Badges, of course are our product line So that will continue in in any area that folks are interested in having it and the on the app side What we would really like to be able to do and this is more of a goal There’s an opportunity here that we’re kind of giving up on that, you know as part of the mission of the business our goal is to keep the basic adventure log as Something that anybody can can sign up for for free There’s things beyond that like being able to capture trips or potentially add more of a journal aspect to this Things beyond just the places and activities that you’ve done or even being able to add Places of your own, you know We have a family farm over in a different part of the state that we go to and write ATVs And we’ve done that every year for the last 25 years That’s important for me on my adventure log But it’s not something that’s going to be added as a catalog item on our platform like a national park or something and so if those you know if you want to take it beyond our catalog and basic places and activities like trails or hikes or you know bikes that kind of thing then there will be an option in the app for that to Read or subscribe for that and that’ll be rolling out this summer So in doing that it kind of allows us to balance this idea that we want to encourage adventure travel We can provide some things to folks On our dime to to get them out there and doing those things and if it catches on like we hope it does then You know a lot of folks will then want to want to increase what they can keep track of and organize on that adventure log And then we can provide some services for that So I think what I’m hearing here is is that you have a catalog of places? That that you can just yeah, it’s on the catalog here. This is where you went select this now You’re done, but you can also put your own

Destinations your own adventure sites in there. Is that correct? That that is correct in the sense that that will be rolling out this summer with the more premium log Okay feature set so how does that not as important everybody aren’t might not important initially Until you start to build that log and you’re like, oh, I’d love to start tracking things right now Tony we have trails across the country. We have national parks all of the national parks in the US All of the national forests in the US We have all 50 states my family is my wife and boys and I are we’re trying to do all 50 states before they graduate So, you know putting that on the side of a camper or something when you go new places is really cool and we do state parks We’re about 50% done with that and we’re rolling out the remainder of the state parks across the country. There’s about 2800 of those The data entry must be fun. Do you tell the kids they have to do data entry?

It’s even more so Tony in the sense that we have to have boundaries for all of those so that we can let people check in and stuff right and right those geo reference That’s

We do events as I told you so we worked with a number of events like Overland expos or jeep events or even certain private events that folks do With guided trails or you know, some of these concierge type services Really important memories of folks and they want to you know They want to be able to put a batch for that and then what’s cool is Anyone that we work with on a private level like that for an event We can do a batch as part of the event But we can also then allow that event to be added to folks adventure log which ties it all together as that is a memory You can keep some pictures Write down some notes of who you camped with and you met and you know, but continue to build that story being that that’s a part of it

So if you if you in the future, you’re gonna have the ability to put in your own locations Does that also mean that you’ll be able to have badges for those made for those locations? I mean, can you do just a few badges on a run or do you have to do a large number? I think that’s where Jeep is where they are with their their stuff is they don’t give you individual badges like, you know Bob’s Road from Twister for example, it’s you’re not gonna get a Bob’s Road trail for your Jeep because they print a bunch of them What’s the minimum? I guess what I’m saying is what’s the minimum order if not now gonna be?

Sure note the fair question. So we work with a number of private groups varying in size from a large expo like here in April we worked with the more expo which was here in Springfield pretty large expo for the region and We did a badge for that event and they have a rally ride as well. We did a badge for We also work with smaller groups like there was just a Razorback ramble in Arkansas, which is part of the Toyota Land Cruiser group in that state So that’s you know smaller than like a large expo, but still, you know

20 30 40 50 type range or more for those groups and we’ve also done stuff with individuals who have You know a special group of friends who have met together for the last 10 years There’s about 15 of them and they get together and do a trip every year now. That’s that’s really cool I mean just to have the ability to do that That’s really cool because that really that’s such a big meaning to those people that have done that To actually have a badge for that event. That’s right. It was a lesson for us, you know, just to be transparent with you We didn’t initially come into this thinking that that would be As big of a part of the story as it was But that was that was really on us, you know, we just under appreciated those more private Experiences that folks have with with folks that they’re close to and so in short to answer your question We do allow we have a path for creating what we call, you know, private or custom badges for certain types of events We’re not really in the business of doing anything like, you know, like a mall crawler badge or something like that There’s a lot of those out there. Yeah, and you’re welcome, you know to get as many of those as you want But we won’t work with folks and we’ve got a basic, you know Beat or creating a new badge and then a you know, a kind of a minimum order on that But if it’s important to you, you know, we could scale down to five or six if you want to sort of thing, right? So

Happy to work with those folks, you know We want to be as part of part of as many stories as we can be and that’s one great way to do it Yeah, that’s really neat. I like that flexibility so The the the next thing it comes to mind actually the thing I wanted to mention was if you if you haven’t already gone You should go to all roads taken calm and look at their their badges. There are companies out there that make Things that look like honor badges and they’re generally flat or or if they’re not flat They’re very nearly flat like one layer might be a little higher than the the base that it’s done on printed or whatever Yours isn’t like that yours is very 3d very

Engaging much like the the Jeep honor badges not exactly of course because I’m sure they they wouldn’t appreciate that So it’s a little bit different shape But you can think that the style is very much like the the Jeep honor badge And they’re very nice looking badges I mean I think anybody would be proud to see those and but I think it would catch your eye too if you know about the jeep honor Badges you would see that there’s a difference in these things. They’re similar, but there’s a difference in life The question there would be and I’m sure you guys are happy with this is where’d you get that?

They’re gonna and then they’re gonna tell they’ll tell people that the all roads taken comm is where I got that Right. Yeah, and and we you know, we don’t The comparison especially in the off-road world the comparison with the Jeep badge of honor happens all the time So if we don’t shy from that we tried so many different designs this was a fun project for us because I’ve been in software for many many years and and my wife and I had always kind of had the goal to Understand what it was like to deliver a physical product to a market, you know just it was kind of a black box and so we went through the design and the and the Production and and just all of those different steps and we went through so many designs What what it turns out as Tony is there’s only so many

possible paths to create

The concept of like a badge that works across a wide variety of vehicles and generally, it’s going to be rectangular and generally it’s going to be kind of in the size profile as our badge or the Jeep badge of honor and then even more so beyond that there’s a relatively limited number of materials that exist in the world that are capable of Lasting a long time in outdoor high UV road chemical type Situations, you know or tough enough for the trail and so once you take all those factors into account

It’s you’re gonna arrive someplace like what we did In terms of in terms of building that our goal with these was to create something that would last as long as we could We sourced that actually a very specific type of material. We originally thought it would be cool to have some colors Yeah types of you know the material that we use only comes in black

and

It’s it’s only we’re the only ones using it and and it’s other purpose is actually to make like a vin plates on farm equipment Which are designed to last for decades without fading? That’s the whole point of a vin or like a serial number on a piece of equipment is that it never goes away So right we’re able to utilize that same technology and create this badge. That’s you know effectively You know indestructible in terms of you know normal situations that you can throw out on the road And it just so happens that it’s gonna be black and the letters are gonna be white and you know We we create a nice a nice automotive grade surround for that so that it fits in and matches the contours of A number of different types of vehicles. So that’s really kind of a story Behind it to demystify any of the you know inputs that Causes to arrive at what we arrived at Mm-hmm now I don’t know I’m assuming that the the the part that has the information on the badge is a Separate part from the backing and I don’t know if that part that is in separate though the one that’s up front that shows all The details I don’t know if that’s metal or not and the reason why is it okay? well this probably wouldn’t work because I was thinking the a million dollar Jeep talk show idea and you’ve probably already thought of this would be to embed an RF ID chip in there that That would actually link to the website and then you could scan it Anybody could scan it and go and see the story But right yeah, but the metal the metal thing would make it difficult for it to work That’s exactly right you and I are on the same wavelength and we we actually have you know, I’ll tell you here We have a couple of prototypes with a slightly modified kind of bezel that do exactly that I thought it would be fantastic to you know to be able to tap on a badge and connect with someone Yeah, that’s although we want the adventure log itself to be private the idea of finding new folks to connect with would be kind of cool Using the badges to do that and we’ve experimented with that both with QR codes and with RF ID and And as you said RF ID wise that that metal plate certainly Grounds out any intent that we would have there with a with a sticker or a tag behind Well, I guess you can always put a little wreck Yeah, you can always put a like a little square Where the like I don’t know the difficulty that this would be in getting those little those pieces made But you could always put a little square that was clear and then just make sure that the RF ID tag is right there in That little window. Yeah, we did actually that the the prototype that I that I built Was it kind of takes our standard bezel or a badge and extends that To the side enough kind of with a similar call tour doing encased the chip. Yeah, that’s really cool I think that would be so much fun now and then you mentioned about the adventure log. Is there a public and private or only private Because I would think that if he had a public side of it, okay I was gonna say cuz I was thinking public would be perfect for that RF ID Yeah, the big question is just what to include, you know And and we want to it’s delicate We want to continue to bias this toward you know a story that you’re telling yourself and not let it drift too much into A story that you’re telling, you know for other folks That’s just part of our mission. And so we want to be careful about you know, certainly want to encourage community without drifting too much into the Through the more shared shared media space I could see a whole thing going on like with the ducking like, you know Scan this tag if you duck my Jeep and then you could say where it was ducked where I saw it You could do all kinds of thing and then it could show up in a murder trial down the road Because it was the Jeep was someplace or the vehicle is someplace for a murder was was committed

Yeah, well, you know the lighter side of that is that you do meet people the reality is you meet people while you’re traveling all the time yeah, whether it’s jeeps or camping or or hiking or whatever and and one of the important aspects of your Adventurers the people that you’ve met and so being able to use some of those cool technical things to then

Have those people to your log, you know as sort of a moment on your log meeting those folks Would be would be cool Even if that means you’re not really sharing anything being able to really conveniently add them to your story would be cool Yeah, yeah, we’ll keep exploring that So I had this idea a couple of years ago when I was interviewing the Toledo Jeep fest people and they were they they’re constant communication with Jeep corporate because they’re right there right there and Toledo and I made the suggestion to The Toledo Jeep fest people that they should get Jeep to make an honor badge for their parade I don’t know how much you’re familiar with Toledo Jeep fest or not But they have a parade every year with a thousand or more Jeeps right there on the the right there downtown Toledo and I thought this would be a just a wonderful opportunity for Jeep to make these things and Everybody the parade would get one of these things but that hasn’t happened yet I don’t know if the Toledo Jeep fest people haven’t talked to Jeep or Jeep went no We’re not doing that But this would be an opportunity because of what you said even it didn’t even take anything Nobody has to talk you into it. All they have to do is order a thousand badges and you say sure We’ll be ready for you, you know a couple days notice, let’s let’s go I told him just to get the city don’t fill in the potholes and now you get a trail because The parade route would be something you had to navigate Yeah, but you make a you make a really good point, you know All kidding aside, we’d love to do something like that. The reason is it’s important, you know, it’s a defense It’s just part of folks log as part of their story and the more people that are sharing that you know, it inspires more people to participate and then we kind of build this flywheel of folks Adventuring evermore and so now we’d love to do that That’s a that’s a perfect example of the types of events that we work with now and then we’d love to continue to do And I want to make sure we’re talking Jeeps here because you and I both are jeepers But this isn’t just you mentioned before this isn’t just for Jeeps This is for anybody and I would assume it doesn’t matter if it’s a four-wheel drive It could be a Subaru that is or isn’t a four-wheel drive. It could be a Prius It’s all about the adventure not the vehicle that you’re doing it in Sure, I you know if anything I’d get even more excited, you know to see you know, like a

Four or five six state badges on a minivan. That’s a trip. Yeah, like that’s that’s fantastic National parks things like that. I love seeing the badges on campers you know people that are traveling around with their trailer be in an overland trailer or a fifth wheel or really anything in between buses now we’ve got all of those and

and love seeing that because For one they look great, but for two You’re you’re sharing your story everywhere you go, you know, that sparked so many conversations inspired so many more trips So that’s the that’s why we love the badges, right? It’s just such a loud expression of the places that you’ve been and it starts those conversations for you So any kind of rig you’ve got, you know, my wife drives more of a Toyota We’ve got a ton of customers driving Nissan’s or Ford’s or or when a bag goes or what what have you A lot of folks in the van world kind of keeping track of those same things on their journey. So we’re up for all of it

So let me ask you this I’ve got a let’s say I don’t but let’s say I have a JK I got a bunch of your badges on it and I total it and now I have a JL you How hard is it to move those badges over? That’s fair question we use a Specific type of 3m adhesive on the back. There’s there’s all sorts of those that was the learning opportunity for me Going through this process, right? You would think there’s maybe a handful maybe a couple of handfuls of 3m adhesives for something like that. There’s you know thousands of those so we talked to those guys are very helpful and Long story short we use an adhesive on the back that really it’s not gonna come off by accident But if you needed to a combination of a really a hairdryer and a little bit of fishing line or something like that And it’ll pop right off and you can and you could take it off and not damage the surface of the Jeep the paint That’s for anything. So if you’re reselling it you could pop those badges off Yeah, what we do is actually, you know We’ve gone through a few campers and things like that and one project we did recently was to pull our badges off of our latest camper for the states that we have been to and visited in that as part of our 50-state goal and My wife put the badges in a nice kind of matte frame downstairs along with a photograph of that, you know camper that tool Idea and so we can kind of keep a record of those things on our travel wall Even though we we don’t have them anymore. So different people do different things, but we found that to be fun. Mm-hmm Well, I would think it just to remember the adventure it would be worth doing Even if you didn’t care about keeping the badges or cycling them but the memory of that it’s just like photos You love taking photos you like keeping those we used to keep them You know in individual boxes and type things and now you can just go online and see all the pictures or your phone And I and I’ll mention this really quick for anybody that hasn’t lost or damaged their phone and lost all those pictures You got a copy those someplace else occasionally Thousands of photographs that only reside on your phone

That’s right iCloud Google Photos get one of the ones that does it automatically it’s worth it’s worth the money in and a piece of Mine. Yeah, especially if they’re children photos because your children will write books about you about being a horrible parent if you don’t have any pictures right

All right So Tyler is there anything that we haven’t covered here that sticks out in your mind that you need to let people know about your service and your products

You know, I think we’ve done a good job here we’re open we would love to hear from folks so we reach out if you’ve got any questions We’re always looking to hear more about what would be important You know to individual users about how they how they want to remember and keep track of of their travel and that’s how we’ve arrived at things like the journal or capturing of moments or Waypoints or routes or you know a lot of those things some of that comes from our experience You know, we all share different perspectives on that So we’d love to hear more about how we can make that, you know interesting We’d love to hear about your events or you know things that you’re doing with your offer of group There’s there’s offer groups and pretty much every community and most all of them have a yearly event or something like that We love to participate and help to help make that more special If we can both in terms of badges and allowing people to add that to their log and kind of get started that way

So, you know definitely reach out We’re in a learning mode and we would love to know More ways that we can continue to make that special for folks and keeping those memories now and you correct me if I’m wrong On this I’m assuming that this is for America probably North America at least Is there any plans on going international with us?

you know, we’ve I Would I’ll give you a Closet yes, we’ve had a number of requests There are some logistics for that and we’re kind of working through those now What we didn’t want to do was underserved the US and do that too quickly All right, so we’ve really been trying to to get things smoothed out I do anticipate that we’ll be looking to move into a number of things in Canada soon There’s been a lot of requests for that. And of course, it’s just right next door We’ve had folks, you know, really curious to get things going as far as Australia. So We would love we’d love to work anywhere Adventure isn’t really bound by any any You know one sovereign country or anything like that So right we’d love to continue to expand what we don’t want to do is Be ignorant in the areas that we’re expanding to so we have a tremendous amount of familiarity a tremendous knowledge base here on You know what we can add to our catalog and and where folks can go and even you know in the in the way of trails Have the legalities of those types of things work We don’t want to be encouraging usage of a particular trail or something that that’s again used by the police for evidence. Yeah So so you know the further away from home that we get the less of that that we know and so you know if anybody’s in one of those those areas that wants to connect with us and kind of Serve as a hub for us to continue to expand and have really core knowledge. That would be fantastic But at the moment we’re really heavily focused on North America

England Germany, I just found out recently. There’s a very big interest enough for there to be a company building beadlocks and Third I didn’t realize Germany could put 39 inch tires on their jeeps. Oh, really? Yes. I was very very sure I had no idea but I mean, it’s a beautiful country. I’d love to explore it myself Baguarian look look up Baguarian comm we interviewed them and I was really surprised With the the owner that I interviewed he gets his a himmy-powered gladiator on 39s out on the Autobahn

Yeah, I’d like to see some video on that but anyway, yeah, it’s like a monster truck England Germany and certainly we have a lot of listeners in Australia and even in New Zealand. So yeah, it’s really cool That’s one of the reasons why I asked you about the international thing because if it hadn’t bit you bit you yet I was sure is going to because there’s some rabbit off-roaders and jeepers out there all across the globe Alright, so so we’ve already mentioned all roads taken offroad comm so that you can see the product go find out about the app I would imagine you could go to the the Google or Apple store and download the app on your phone on your smartphone Yeah, thank you for bringing that up The app is coming out as part of the that premium feature package There will still be a free version on it and that’s being released toward the end of this summer Everything that we’ve had for this for this first couple of years or this first year and a half is through our website at all Roadstaken comm so the web app works on desktop mobile, you know Whatever, but it’s web driven and then the the native app comes out at the end of this summer Okay, so there’s no app for the phone yet. I’m glad I’m glad we pointed that out So you go to the desktop and you can go pushing that right you can go to the web the browser on your phone And do the same thing just it’s not through your throne not through an app. Good. I’m glad you point. Yeah Yeah, thanks for clarifying and we did that initially kind of still basing off that that idea that a lot of folks do this when they’re Decompressing for the night after they’ve been adventuring all day And so the native app was a little bit less of a focus for us starting out But we’ve got a lot of use cases for it now. So so we’re excited to have that underway Well not having the Apple app is a thousand dollars You still have in your pocket because I believe it cost a thousand dollars to get an app floating on the on that is Complicated and relatively expensive. So yeah, we’re happy to provide it if it’s a solid need for folks But until we had a good reason, you know, there’s a lot of reasons to not and save our time Well, you’re in you’re into programming. So you probably know this. I don’t know if people out in the world know this you can install the apps directly like from a website

You may have to turn a few things off put it in Not scripting mode debugging mode scary things But you it’s it’s it’s would seem probably sketchy. Yeah, so it does it does seem very sketchy But you still can’t do it You don’t have to go through the stores to get some of these apps in any way any rate We’ve talked about the website all roads taken calm, you know how the kids love the social media Where could people find you on social media?

Sure, so we’re at both on Instagram or all roads taken official on Facebook We’re all roads taken and you can connect with us very easily on either one of those platforms And then as I said, you can reach out to us through the website and our folks will be happy to talk with you Are you on YouTube?

We’re not we’re not creating a large large format video content right now We’re working with a lot of folks that already are And so, you know, you’ll see us in a number of those channels to the folks off-roading and going on big trips And and we’d like to you know, our angle right now is we’d love to help contribute to their stories Sure, and and so we’re not creating a content right now. That’s not to say that we won’t but well You have enough work to do without editing videos is what I’m hearing. That’s right. And those guys are so good at it, right? Yeah, you’d have to you’d have to compete and there’s so well There’s a certain amount of credibility to if they’re if they’re well received by the public and they’re talking about your stuff Then that’s good credibility for you guys and speaking of that We actually found out about you the Jeep talk show found out about you at Toledo Jeep fest hype event here last weekend I think it was Chris was out interviewing folks and went by the discovery

Emmett put it my notes

Discovery four before adventures calm and spoke with Carrie we’ve had them on the show several times and She was actually out there with with your badges and talking about their events and and I would assume that they’re They’ve got badges that they can sell to people whenever they do one of their off-road events So it was really it was really cool to find out about you guys and also too is really cool That you made it here on our interview episode so quickly. We really appreciate that I think you have a really cool idea going here and the really neat thing is even though I’m not interested in other off-road vehicles I think it’s wonderful that other off-road vehicles other off-road vehicle owners can get in on something similar to the Jeep badge program because Everybody has a spirit of adventure. You don’t have to have a Jeep to be an adventurer You don’t even have to have a four-wheel drive to be an adventurer so this is great that you guys are doing this and you’re instead of a niche a niche market you’re Opening it up for a large number of people and I think you’ll be successful with it Especially without good the badges look because I think crappy badges mean what how why do I want that? This it needs to have some quality look to it and y’alls certainly do Thank you so much. We appreciate that we certainly We’re shooting for that. So that’s great and thank you to Paul and Paul and carrier fantastic So yeah, if you’re out there and you’re looking for a guided trip up north In and around Michigan, I can’t imagine there’s a better group to go with and they put those trips on all year long So many thanks to them and we’ve been working with them really since the very beginning. So great people, right Tyler Thank you so much and we’ll have to have you on again Especially when you’ve made changes these changes you’re talking about so we can tell everybody about those that they’re there funny fantastic Yeah, thank you. Thank you here. Great. Thank you

Hey, thanks again to Tyler of all roads taken visit their website right now all roads taken calm Come up next week Todd of real truck calm, you know real truck calm supports the show with advertisement and we really really appreciate them and especially such a big and This amazing company with so many products and so many vendors that you will recognize the name of go to real truck calm and check them out and Support them because they support the show you love the Jeep talk show So many of you have reached out asking if we you know me and the family are doing okay after hurricane barrel Some of you may not know that studio a is located in southeast Texas Specifically Katie to my surprise barrels. I passed directly over Katie and from all prior indications Yes, we would have been on the dirty side of the storm, but not the freakin eye

Anyway, I was looking forward to the rain and cooler temperatures But I wasn’t prepared for a long duration power outage that many in our area are experiencing again We are not we we lost power for maybe two seconds at one point and that was before the I even got here So I really don’t know what we would have done if we didn’t have power for a week or two for the show I mean beyond the staying staying cool in this June heat. I’m sorry July back I’m behind here this July heat is even worse in July Still looking forward to August Not but anyway, not sure what we would have done. We would have figured something out But yeah, we really need to take this into consideration hopefully As time progresses, we’ll get more support from advertisers on the show and maybe some Patreon subscribers and we can make it do a make maybe set up a backup where we have a backup Computer and other things and people in place so they can record the show if I’m unable to of course I guess I could always get in through the phone the cell phone as long as there was cell service Anyway, we’ll figure it out But all is good and thank you for your concern

And that’s a wrap for today’s episode of Jeep talk show I want to give a big thank you to our special guests for joining us today and sharing their knowledge and experience Remember we have five episodes a week and it’s understandable if you may have missed past episodes You don’t know what you’re missing unless you unless you listen You can always find us on your favorite podcast platform or on our website Jeep talk show comm with over 1,000 episodes There’s plenty of Jeep talk show to entertain you while driving to your destination Working out at the gym or mowing the grass improve your day by listening to more Jeep talk show If you’re watching us on YouTube and yes We are on YouTube every episode we have is on YouTube and I’m not saying is a static image I mean, this is people talking and moving around and you can see what’s uh, what’s on our faces and maybe maybe see me coming up with a Coming up with something funny to say You can just go over to YouTube and and check them out and when you do make sure you like and subscribe Hey, we love hit hearing from you our listener reach out via email phone social media Anything you can think of really we use your voicemails on the show Until next time keep on jeeping and we’ll see you on the trails. Remember Fridays are red. Remember everyone deployed broadcasting since 2010 You

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