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I remember going out to a race course when I was 17 with my teammate and writing his name in big chalk letters all over
the steep part of the road. Â Go Aaron! Â AB! Â Crush it Aaron! Â Luckily he did the same for me!
We had learned that the best riders in the Tour de France had fans who wrote their names all over the big mountains climbs so the racers and TV viewers could see when they were racing by. Â Well, we didn’t have any fans yet, so we had to be each other’s hype man. Â On race day, it turned out we were the only ones in the race who had our names chalked onto the race course, but it worked! Â We set the course record that year and Aaron lent me one of his shirts so that we could wear matching “uniforms” when we went up to the podium.
In episode seven of the Art of Adventure Podcast, my guest is one of my best friends from growing up in St. Louis – Aaron Barcheck.
We were both short track speed skaters, both got our eagle scout award on the same day, and we used to go for long rides in the countryside, dreaming about they day we would open a bike/donut shop, where he would be in charge of the bikes and I would invent new types of donuts!  Well, Aaron actually followed through, and now is one of the most well respected hand built bicycle makers in the world, winning the NAHBS show award for best cyclocross bike.
Aaron opened the doors of Mosaic Bespoke Bicycles 5 years ago, and has made 1500-2000 bikes by hand in the past decade.
What you will learn in this episode:
-Whether building bespoke bicycles is more engineering or art and design
-How to change bicycle frame performance by altering the design
-What you need to start making bespoke bicycles
-How to figure out the starting goal of your business
-How to make the tools to solve your own problems
-The basic of scaling a business as it can apply to all business
-How business changes when you bring on new people – personalities make their way into a product
-How dealers are an integral part of the process because they have the in-person/hands-on relationship with the customers
-How a cycling race team does product testing and bicycle development
-How your definition of success changes as you grow
Links:
Mosaic on Instagram – the best place to find amazing photos of the Mosaic process
Subscribe to The Art of Adventure Podcast in iTunes or Stitcher
Loved the interview with Aaron. Nice to hear about and see his success as a bike builder.
Enjoyable interview. Thanks