Meet Adam Levinson | Event Owner

We had the good fortune of connecting with Adam Levinson and we’ve shared our conversation below.

Hi Adam, can you walk us through the thought-process of starting your business?
I come from a family of entrepreneurs so it’s probably in my DNA. Also, I spent many years in sales and realize I was good at developing great trust with people which led to some amazing business relationships. However, I was always working for someone else. One day I realized I was good enough to do it for myself and made the leap to start my own business.

Can you give our readers an introduction to your business? Maybe you can share a bit about what you do and what sets you apart from others?
The funny part about my business is it wasn’t even meant to start out as a business, rather a side project. My business partner, Tim Herr, and I were co-workers in a sales/marketing role. We were both avid runners and were sitting in my office one day in 2016 coming up with concepts for 5K races that didn’t exist, but could do well in this market. We came up with the idea for a Corporate 5K race where companies would sign up and then internally recruit a team of employees to compete against one another and determine who the fastest company in Houston was. This concept had been around for many years in other big cities around the country but wasn’t in Houston at the time. We decided to explore whether we could find a venue and how to execute this concept. We were lucky enough to sell Memorial Park on the idea who allowed us to hold the event there starting in 2017 even though they had never really let any outside running events at the Park. We ended up organizing the event to see how it would perform…we didn’t quit our jobs. The event went well in that first year despite Hurricane Harvey hitting us 6 weeks prior to that event.

After that first successful event we came up with the idea for several other running races in Houston and executed on those shortly afterwards. We realized we had something that was more than just a side project and both quit our jobs and dove into the business full time.

In 2018, we thought about ways to diversify our business and revenue stream. Hurricane Harvey scared us a bit into thinking that one or more of our events could be destroyed by a weather event in any given year. To protect ourselves, we came up with the idea for Medal Dash Virtual Runs. A virtual run is themed like any other 5K or 10K event, but anyone can do it anywhere at anytime. One records their time on a smart watch or any other device, submits it to our website or social media page. What they are paying us for is their race packet which is mailed to their home and includes a medal, shirt and race bib. This is their motivation/reward for completing their run or walk. Only a couple of companies had ventured into the world of virtual running at that time since it was a fairly new concept. We thought there was room in the space for us, plus it could provide an ancillary source of revenue, we could market and sell it anywhere in the country and develop our brand through a running community on social media. We started to execute the idea then and our first full year of organizing virtual races was in 2019. We had to educate people on this concept since, back then, the word ‘virtual’ didn’t have the same meaning it does today.

In 2019 we were getting about 1,000-1,500 people per month around the country to sign up for our Medal Dash virtual events from all 50 states so it was a nice extension to our core live event business which was continuing to grow immensely at that time. We had a record year for our live event business in 2019 so everything was great in our world.

When Covid hit in March of 2020 we immediately had to shut down one of our live events slated for late March that year. However, since we had several virtual events planned out already for the year, we decided to dive 100% into the virtual runs since we had that infrastructure already in place. We also came up with the concept for an event called ‘Crush Corona’ which we launched in March, 2020. While many businesses struggled to figure out what was going on, we knew we could still put on virtual runs since we had started doing them before Covid. Covid ended up making our business explode nationally with growth like we couldn’t have ever imagined. At the height of Covid, March-May, 2020 we were getting thousands of order each day. We learned that people needed to stay active and motivated when they were relegated to their homes for so long. Running/walking was one of the only safe things people could do outdoors and we became an outlet to so many of around the country. Our biggest challenge was executing the orders and making sure our vendors could produce enough of our products to keep up with demand. We also had to pack and ship on our own since many shipping facilities around Houston were shut down. We often times gathered in a hotel conference room…nobody was staying in these hotels…and packed envelopes all day, delivering to them to the post office each afternoon.

Our business continued its explosive growth through 2020 while our live events were sidelined until further notice. Luckily we were so busy with Medal Dash, not having live events had no impact on our business. When we got to the end of 2020 we thought surely Covid would come to an end soon and decided to figure out how to even come close to sustaining what we had just accomplished that year. Given our sales and marketing background, we decided to venture into the licensing world. Instead of coming up with our own concepts for virtual races, we decided to try and partner with movie/tv studios and other recognizable brands to build themed virtual runs around those brands. Different brands were impressed with what we had accomplished and decided this could be a good marketing outlet for them both short term while Covid was still around, but also long term. We ended up striking deals with many big brands including:
-Peanuts (Snoopy/Charlie Brown)
-Warner Brothers – Godzilla vs. Kong movie
-Coca-Cola
-Sonic The Hedgehog
-Peeps (Easter Candy)
-Halloween Franchise of Movies

Much to our surprise, because of these licensing deals (and Covid still being around in 2021), we had a better year in 2021 than we did in 2020. To date in 2022, with Covid mostly in the rear view mirror, we’ve had a better year than we did in 2021. We are proud that our business has been able to continue to grow and not have it be classified as a ‘Covid’ business. What we are most proud of is the community we’ve built on social media of tens of thousands of people around the country who support one another being active and completing our events. It’s a supportive virtual cheering section (Medal Dash Virtual Group). In our niche, we are now the biggest virtual run company in the country and continue to operate that business to this day along with our live events here in Texas.

Remember that event we started the business with, the Corporate Run? It is now the Hess Houston Corporate 5K (our title sponsor is Hess Corporation) and it is largest standalone 5K in Houston. Our most recent event in October, 2022 had 6300 participants from 170 different Houston area companies, up 25% from our largest event which was in 2019 before Covid. We are positioned well to continue growing both silos of our business!

Any places to eat or things to do that you can share with our readers? If they have a friend visiting town, what are some spots they could take them to?
I think Memorial Park has grown into one of the nicest spots in the city and when construction finishes it will be one of the premiere parks in the country. I’d take any guest there for a run or walk. Eating is a necessity in Houston and there are so many spots to choose from. I’m from out of town so I have friends/family who come to visit. Two places I always make sure to take them are true Houston institutions and those are the original Ninfa’s on Navigation and Rudy’s BBQ. All outsiders need to experience those two spots as well as El Tiempo to make sure they get their true fill of great Tex-Mex. I think many of our museums in Houston are underrated and worth exploring. If it’s the holiday season a drive through River Oaks to check out the amazing holiday lights at those houses is another great experience.

Who else deserves some credit and recognition?
Starting with my father who’s had his own business for 50+ years and proved to me that you could take an idea and sustain it into a business for the long haul while still maintaining a good work/life balance. Additionally, 20 years ago I worked under two people who owned a small business in Miami, FL, the late Jim Mandich and Randy Kassewitz. Each of them taught me how to sell and other life lessons both in and out of the work environment. I wouldn’t be on the path I am today without these people in my life.

Website: https://www.medaldash.com/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/medaldash/

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/groups/medaldashvr