The following is the manuscript from a LIVE interview of Joey and Tony with Tyler from www.allroadstaken.com  We discuss what he has done in the Overlanding and Off-Road community to bring everyone together.

Listen HERE to the PODCAST – LIVE with All Roads Taken

LIVE with All Roads Taken

Joey – How did you get that, Tony?

Tony – I went up to the merch table at Overland of America and I said, hey, I need one of those.

Joey – They had it there, huh?

Tony – Yeah. I got in trouble because I didn’t have the forethought to get two of them.

Joey – Uh-oh. So, you got one and your wife does not have one.

Tony – Since I’m an only child, I’m not sharing.

Joey – Did you get the speech about you don’t ever think of me and I’m just over here and you always look for yourself and no, my legs are broke, so I can’t walk up to the table myself, but you were there.

Tony – I don’t recall it being an actual speech. I got all of that through a look. It was a beat down just through a look, pretty much.

Joey – Okay. Well, that’s good. Well, hey, everyone. We are live on the Overland Podcast. Thank you for joining us. We’ll have some people that join on here. We just went live on Instagram. Instagram, Facebook and YouTube, so we should have people joining us here in just a little bit. For years, we have traditionally been a vehicle-based podcast, but recently we’ve done a few things. We’ve spread our wings and talked about a lot of different things. I’ve had some backpackers on here, some bike packers. different people, but it’s all about moving over land, whether it’s with your feet, whether it’s with two wheels, four wheels, six wheels, a holler. Everybody for the podcast stand up and holler. But anyway, we’ve been spreading our wings and it’s pretty cool. And we actually camped beside Tyler at Overland of America a few weeks ago and got to visit with him just a little bit. We were both kind of busy. But I wanted to have him on because I wanted to talk to someone who’s living the life, but also has ventured into a small business that’s kind of growing into a medium sized, almost large business. It’s really, really become something.

Tony – Yeah, it’s become cool.

Joey – And I mean, not that it didn’t start out cool, but it has become something that everybody’s really taken a hold of and kind of grasped on to. So Tyler, thank you for joining us. We appreciate you being here.

Tyler – Thanks for having me.

Joey – You bet. Tell us a little bit about yourself. Where are you from?

Tyler – Sure. So, I grew up in Missouri outside of a little town just outside of Joplin called Carl Junction and spent my childhood there. My family and I are in Springfield, Missouri now, so not too far down the street, but a couple of hours. And we’ve been here since two thousand eight. So, I’m proud to call it home. right at the top of the Ozarks you guys are a little bit more toward the middle bottom end of the Ozarks but we all share that really great area there in in north northern Arkansas and southern Missouri and so we really enjoyed it here and you know for the time being plan to stay around travels and everything like that.

Joey – that’s cool I love the top end of the Ozarks. Don’t get to get up there much I’m on Tony’s like to the west of them and I’m like to the south of them, but don’t get up to the north end, but I love it up there. When we go up there and ride through, like ride on the Missouri-Arkansas line, it seems to be a lot different than it is down where we are. A lot of really nice rivers that you can float, and it’s cool.

Tyler – For sure. I think the lakes, you know, like you get to the Missouri-Arkansas border, just some of the best lakes in the country, honestly. You know, people come from all over to – to visit those and there’s some good wheeling too, which is fantastic late camping and other types of water sports rivers like you mentioned it’s one of the best for that yeah exactly what how that started a love for the outdoors for you how did where did where did all that come from how’d that start yeah that’s a good question I don’t feel like a traditionalist in that sense I mean, I grew up in the eighties and nineties and stuff and being outside was kind of just the norm, I guess for a child. So, I wouldn’t say I really fell in love with the outdoors until I got a little bit older… late teens almost early twenties and started really discovering like the aspect of the outdoors that that is adventure and so you know things and covering a lot of ground and I didn’t really have you know that opportunity until my early twenties and then into you know the rest of adulthood so that was really what did it for me the adventure side.

Joey – Now, I see in the background there, I love your background. Okay, so I’m a guitar guy, so I noticed a Breedlove Acoustic.

Tyler – Yeah, exactly.

Joey – That’s all electric, so I’m guessing you’re a guitar player.

Yeah, I am. Had both of those for a long time. The Breedlove was actually the first, it was like a college purchase. I’m sure you had some of those.

Joey – Got one sitting right here. It’s got Taylor on it.

Tyler – Yeah you know I I’ve uh I think my wife and I are both happy that I had that hobby like as a real focus in college because you know it was a struggle and so I’ve just got a couple of nice guitars that I really love if I would have taken it up now in adulthood I think I’d have a room full you know but I just didn’t have the means at that time to do that and kind of protect me but Yeah, I got the Gibson and the Breedlove, and those are both great. I got a Stratocaster just around the corner that you can’t see. You know, I wish I played them more. I did put them out because they used to be in cases, and I found that I do reach for them a lot more when they’re out, but still not nearly as much as you think you will.

Joey – Yeah, you’re right. I’m the same way. I started – late in life and I actually am what you feared if you would have started late, I actually had a huge collection and was able this is this is how much I had invested I had two guitars I was able to sell and buy a Harley-Davidson so I had a lot invested in guitars and so that was yeah achievement unlocked yeah that’s impressive and it had a Taylor custom walnut twelve string that I could have sold and bought a truck for. It was just absolutely insane. But yeah, I totally get down to… I’m down to just two. I have a 1976 bass. It’s a really, really old bass. And then I have my Taylor guitar. And I love that I have… decided not to keep them in the case because you’re right you reach for more when they’re out I used to keep them in the case because I was always taught you want to keep them in a controlled environment you know with less humidity and things like that and they’ll last longer but if it’s in the case you just it’s out of sight out of mind and um For sure.

Tyler – With instruments, it’s really the same with vehicles. My wife and I have kind of adopted this mantra in our family that we don’t buy shrines. And all we mean by that is that you use the stuff that you buy. And the more I ever got into music or even looking at vehicles, same deal. You start to appreciate that patina. The guitar you typically reach for the most often is the one that speed up a little bit, that you play at a time. It’s really comfortable. it may not sound perfect, but it’s got some character to it. And, and so I’m a big believer in that.

Joey – Yeah. Leave them outside. Yeah. And, and it, it’s also like, it’s also like our rigs, you know, you, you develop a relationship with it and it means more when you spend that time with it, put that time into it. So, speaking of rigs, I know you’re a Jeep guy. How did you fall into that trap? I mean, how did you become a Jeep guy? Sorry. I threw that in there for Tony.

Tyler – You know what? Yeah, I heard the dig. Honestly, oddly enough, I don’t really consider myself a Jeep guy, actually. I do. I love my Jeep. I’ve got a Wrangler, a JL, had a JK before that. I do love the fact that it’s like this vehicle that can do all the things. So, you know, when I saw you guys last, it was outfitted with my tent and awning and camping stuff in the back and all that. But I’m just as likely to strip all that stuff off, put the fridge in the back and all of our mountain biking stuff and go do that for a weekend or whatever. We traveled across the country just a few weeks ago and it was stacked full of bags and snacks and stuff or hiking backpacks or anything like that. So, I love that aspect of it. And there’s few things that are as utilitarian as that. And honestly, I love taking the top off in the summer and having that whole vibe as well. And there’s very few vehicles where you can do all those things. You know, new Broncos are coming close in a lot of ways. And that’s kind of cool. A lot of older, there’s some older cars that are really cool. Some of the older Broncos or even the four runners where the back comes off, you know, that’s kind of cool. Yeah. But that’s what draws it to me. My wife, we’ve got her daily driver’s a Lexus GX for sixty. So totally love the Toyota side as well as a great, fantastic cars, especially for a lot of cross-country miles or something. So, we’re kind of middle of the road, not a hardcore Jeep guy, just like a lot of features. You know, you need one of those license plates on the front that says house divided and has Jeep and Toyota on one side.

Joey – Oh, yeah. Perfect. We’ve got several people that have joined us on Instagram, and we won’t see those comments when they pop up here. But Justin Williams asks, are you and Jada making it to a rendezvous? Is that something that’s on your calendar? You know, is that this weekend? It’s not this coming, but next, yes.

Tyler – No, we’re not going to make it. I would love to. I’ve actually never been. And we met two this year. We were at, of course, Overland of America. We’re trying to do a lot of stuff, too, with the national park system. And so, we were just at an event last week doing that, talking to those guys and trying to get into stores and kind of create a special opportunity or moment for folks that are visiting and camping or whatever with the badge product. um and then this weekend we’re headed to Maris Adventure for a special event down there and uh those basically four weeks in a row can’t, you know, we’ve got a family as well. So yeah, Rendezvous was going to have to wait this year. We had to do the same thing for a Big Iron, which we enjoyed a lot last year, but weren’t able to make it this year. Same time.

Joey – It seems like the fall, fall and spring, both are just filling up with events, which is great for the community, but it’s, it’s hard to make it to everything. Whereas used to a few years ago, you could basically go to all of it. Right. Yeah. You know, the best time of the year for us is the end of heat and the begin to fall when it starts to cool off, when you actually want to get out and go camping. And it seems like there’s an event every single weekend and, and you just kind of have to pick and choose. So, I love that. I love that you’re getting involved with the national parks. And I want to talk about that here in just a little bit. When we get into the, the All Roads Taken part of, of this, but, you know, travel is such a huge part of this lifestyle. And I’ve noticed on your Instagram that y’all have done quite a bit of traveling. There are so many places in the world. Tell us about a few places that you have visited that should be on everybody’s bucket list.

Tyler – Okay. sure you know we have uh it’s sort of cliche but I have to say it anyway because it’s always been a special place for us and that is um southwestern Colorado that was sort of our introduction to adventure vehicles right so this whole overlanding kind of thing or off-roading we had some friends that got us into it we had our first jeep and we went straight out to uh southwestern Colorado which is kind of like know jumping in the deep end you know in terms of beautiful places to go uh many ways harder to top the views that are there and so we’ve loved that telluride Ouray Silverton type area and there’s a lot of people there and that you know at this point isn’t very adventurous but it was for us initially and I think for a lot of folks it’s a great a great entry point because you’ve got so many towns there and you can wheel all day but still you know, have the security of an Airbnb or a hotel or something at night if you’re not yet comfortable planning a more, you know, backcountry trip. And it’s just a really, you know, fantastic, beautiful place to experience it. Great hiking there too. So, you know, we’ve been traveling most of the miles that we’ve covered have been as a family and that’s been our goal. And, you know, Overlanding as a family is not nearly as friendly as overlanding as an individual or as a couple. And so that’s a place that is really family friendly because of the accommodations, because of the food availability or just different things that may or may not happen. while you’re out, it’s a great spot for it. There’s really good hiking there too, which we find is a nice mix up for overlanding. You know, the kids get tired of wheeling all day, but if you can add some hikes in there, it makes a huge difference. Get them outside. Yeah. We love that area. If I was to ask my kids, their favorite place that we’ve been so far was Southern California. I’ve worked remote for a long time in my day job and I’ve been in the software space. And so, we’ve had a little bit of flexibility there where we could kind of travel longer term and I can work really from anywhere. and um you know props to those who can uh get that opportunity for themselves it’s worked out very well for us and really tried to take advantage of it but um we had an opportunity to go out to southern California for a little while in the really the pit of winter uh here which you guys are aware of kind of that February period is the worst spot you’re out of the holidays it’s not yet spring a lot of times it’s wet and cloudy so we went out there and spent a few weeks and The kids loved it. And there’s fantastic overlanding and wheeling and all of that. You know, you head out to Anza Borrego. There’s a ton of trails in the San Diego area, which is where we were at. You can head up to like Big Bear and Joshua Tree. And it’s all just right there in kind of a couple of hours. uh one of the best apple pies you’ll ever eat in your life uh thanks to Marco Hernandez who kind of yeah initially showed that but Julian pie company oh my gosh I still I can actually order one They will overnight you a pie from there. And I do it every year for my birthday. Very reasonable. And they don’t even freeze it. They overnight the whole pie in this big foam container like next day. And it’s the best thing in the world. Yeah, like fifty dollars or something, you know, which is amazing.

Tony – So Julian Pie Company, Julian Pie Co.

Tyler – Yeah. Not a sponsor. No affiliation. Just love the pies. Those are the best ones. that area is cool and for families again I really hype that up because you get the beach and you get that whole vibe and San Diego is a great town to explore as a family it is old town coming into the yeah for sure and coming into the desert did you guys you ever watch magic school bus as a kid or did you kids watch that yeah so driving from the coast into the desert is like being in a magic school bus episode about ecosystems, because you start at the beach, you head into that kind of brushy post beach, California scrub, you head up into the mountains and the trees and kind of dense forest. And then when you cross over the edge of the mountains and drop down into the vast basin that is the Ants Borrego desert, it’s immediately arid and dry and stuff. And you get to condense that into like a ninety-minute drive. which for kids and I mean for me I’m kind of a nerd about that too is like being in a you know magic school bus episode it’s all just so condensed there so we love California we love the desert that’s definitely been one and then you know one that really surprised us and this will be my last I’ll give you three but We did about a seven thousand sixty seven hundred and some mile road trip last summer from Missouri up to through the Dakotas, up to Lake Glacier, over to Washington, down through Oregon, through Yellowstone, Tetons and came back. epic road trip. We’ve been trying to hit all fifty states with our boys. So, if it seems like we’re swinging wide for those trips, it’s on purpose, you know? Yeah. And the Dakotas like South Dakota was like over delivered. We were expecting to be a stop and have some fun there on the way to Glacier. but we wish we could have stayed there so much longer yeah Custer state park area the black hills yeah that just fantastic I feel like there’s a tremendous amount of uh wheeling and exploring and hiking and stuff that you could do there that that we’d love to go back and do so definitely loved it there. I know I said I’d do three, but I’ll do four. The last one would just be Idaho, like northern Idaho. We stayed a few days in Coeur d’Alene on that trip. Didn’t get to explore nearly as much as we wanted to there either, just trying to keep the schedule and get the miles in and cover the places, but absolutely beautiful area. I’ve never been there before either. And its forest as far as the eye can see. Every tree almost looks fake because they’re so perfect. Every tree is perfect on the mountainside. And there’s a tremendous amount of public land. So, I’m going to get this stat wrong, but I think Idaho is something like eighty percent. public land or state it’s in the top three I think in the yeah so you can explore just almost everywhere which is such a cool a cool thing for folks that are into what we’re into

Joey – So I’ve never been to Idaho it’s high on my list mine too and we’re going next summer.  You almost described to a t the only state my wife lacks ever be into is North Dakota so we’re going to have to swing wide to go to North Dakota and then go right across the top and we’re going to Oregon and Washington doing all that next directionally.

Tyler – I don’t know which way you’re planning on going but do you know about the North Dakota thing I don’t I don’t know about the North Dakota thing so North Dakota is actually well known now in the community of people that have figured out they want to do all fifty states for being the quintessential last state.

Joey – Really?

Tyler – They’ve got a big marketing push about it. Yeah. There’s not enough to do there. There’s been much of a draw. So, they really embody that. And their whole thing now is being the last state to visit.

Joey – Oh, that’s awesome.

Tyler – Your wife said it right. Yeah, that’s exactly what they want.

Joey – I was there probably seven, eight years ago. We rode our motorcycles to Sturgis. And we had a free day, so we just took off and rode straight north, went to the North Dakota sign, took a picture of the sign, and turned around and came back. So, I’ve been to the sign, but I’ve never been in state. That’s it. And it was cold, and it was first of August, and we were freezing to death. So that’s probably why people don’t go up there much is because the winters are like ten months long.

Tyler – When you guys go together, there will be a ton of swag that you can get, T-shirts and all of it for like my last date was North Dakota.

Joey – Oh, that’s awesome. It’s a big deal. She will love that. She will love that. So, I like asking this to all of our guests. Oh, he’s done got the pies brought up on his phone. That’s hilarious.

Tony – Bro. Can’t order too many, man. Yeah. Dutch caramel apple. Dutch caramel apple. Yeah. Okay.

Tyler – That’s the one you’re in. That’s the birthday pie every year. Yeah. It’s a never-ending prize. It’s insane.

Joey – As far as travel goes, if you had all the time in the world and money was no option, where would you go? That’s a good question. I feel like one of my talents is optimizing constraints. To have no constraints is a completely greenfield question. It’s a big one. I think probably one of the coolest things that I’ve seen folks do vehicularly, I’ve got two answers here. Vehicularly, it would be probably the Pan American. I think that’s a really cool trip. You get the right rig. You get to see a tremendously diverse set of land, diverse set of cultures, people. A lot of the folks that I work with are in Central and South America. So being able to explore those countries in addition to what we’ve done in North America would be really cool. So, Pan American probably would be my biggest target. vehicularly right now and I feel like I would be reasonably comfortable doing that uh where I would I don’t think I would you know I’d have to learn a lot to overland in in Central Asia or something you know I’m not quite ready for that yeah uh number two which has been on my bucket list but we have to raise our kids first is what Jada says is I’d love to fly around the world in a single engine plane very small list of folks that have done that and uh, I just think that would be the coolest thing. So, she was gracious enough to let me get my pilot’s license, a number of years ago. And it’s always been on my list ever since. But I have to wait, you know, again, until the kids are raised. I may quickly turn into the grandkids are raised after that too, but we’ll see.

Joey – Oh, that’s awesome. So, you have started a, that’s great to get to know you, you know, just a little bit better. You know, a lot of people see you and meet you like we did at an event or something like that, camp next to you, sit down and visit with you. But as far as the ins and outs, you know, being a pilot, playing the guitar, things like that, that’s why we have this. So, people can get to know you a little bit better and things like that. And that’s so interesting and such a treat for us. So, in your small business, you talk on your – so when you go to your website, you actually posted a thing on your Instagram about what to do. You go and register on the website, and then the whole process starts. But when you do that, when you register on the website, I immediately got an email saying, and in this email, it was very personal. I was very impressed with that. You introduce you and your family, talk about you and your wife, your two sons and your dog. And you talk about how all of this started, how All Roads Taken started in August of 2022 on a trip back from Ouray, Colorado. So, let’s talk about how you came up with the idea. Where did this stem from? Take us conversation in the Jeep on the way home.

Tyler – So, you know, it really starts before that. That’s the punctuation on the end of a process. We, throughout our marriage, have had this general kind of feeling that we wouldn’t have been able to describe early on, but have learned over the years. around this concept of adventure and how important it can be to individuals, to couples, to families to have some of in your life. It’s an opportunity in an otherwise relatively easy world to be challenged and to discover yourself and create some isolation and have special moments together. test your limits to an extent, get to know yourself in a way that you won’t be able to do kind of just coasting. And we discovered that early on. I had a couple of mentors that had really encouraged that as a way to know yourself and to self-differentiate and kind of discover how you tick. And so, we took some steps early on. We moved away from home, moved away from family, took some jobs that pulled us out into a brand-new space. And in early twenties, folks, that’s an adventure. It has nothing to do with the outdoors, but it’s an adventure. It opens up this whole new world. And we really just piggybacked off of that. for the rest of our lives up to this point in trying to look for, identify and choose adventure wherever we could, wherever it made sense as a way to just keep exploring that side of ourselves. And so that’s the backstory.

That’s taken shape in a number of different ways. Again, with jobs, with kids. That’s an adventure in itself. And then with this aspect of the outdoors. And what’s so cool about adventure in the outdoors is that uh it has so many other side benefits you know you get out into big spaces you connect with each other it’s so much easier to connect with somebody over a campfire or you know over an outdoor meal uh sitting on top of a huge vista looking over the world and kind of make sense of yourself and your problems than it is you know at a bar or something like that right so um being able to get out and introduce those natural places in your life is like the icing on the cake of adventure and that is really what motivated us to keep you know we kind of see it this way everybody’s on some sort of spectrum with the with respect to like the amount of adventure in their lives you know some people are doing crazy stuff a lot of the folks that we talk to at overland events and stuff are actually pretty far on that on that spectrum to the right they’re doing pretty crazy things staying out for weeks at a time you know a lot of people are doing cool things All Roots Taken is definitely about that. Wherever you’re at, we’d like to push you a little bit more to the right, incorporate a little bit more adventure, take a chance and go someplace that you haven’t been as opposed to going back to the places that you always go. Get out there and see the world and appreciate it. On the other side of it, there’s a lot of folks that never camped or maybe are on the fence about getting a pop-up camper and hitting the state parks in their area. And we’re just as excited about that because that represents the same level of introduction of adventure and experience in the outdoors and time together and just that whole context as the folks that are heavy into multi-week overlanding and stuff. So, we wanted to provide something with all roads taken. or we didn’t have a name for it then, but we were like, man, we would love to do something that just enables that, encourages that, maybe even breaks down the barrier of entry to that sort of space. The outdoors is hard to navigate, right? If you want to just get into overlanding, it’s pretty easy to buy the gear. It’s much more difficult to like take that first trip and understand how to plan and where can I, I can really just camp here or I can’t, or what can I do? Like, how do I take care of my trash? What trails can I go on? You know, there’s a lot of things that we know that we take for granted. So, anything that we can do to ease all of that and encourage people to take one step from the left to the right in terms of their, uh, the amount of adventure in their life and choose it a little bit more. Yeah. that’s what we want to do so our life had grown up to that point the conversation back from Ouray was we had kind of reached this decision point where you know my boys are getting older they’re by no means raised but they’re ten and twelve and you guys have been through that cycle and so they’re starting to differentiate more they’re doing some of their own things uh Jada is not here tonight but she runs the operational side really all of the business day to day and she’s got so much capability and tons of education and all that and we wanted to have she was ready for something to do right she’d love being a mom at home but wanted something to do and it was just a perfect moment you know like we’ve wanted to do this we’ve wanted to introduce something really positive into the world Jada is more than capable of doing it like let’s give it a shot we love the idea of tracking your travel, which is obviously a core component of All Roads Taken, because it helps you appreciate the investment that you put into this. At least for me, I forget pretty quickly all the cool places that we’ve been. But when I look at that map, when I look at that log, and I see, oh my gosh, we’ve got of investment into this whole thing. And we’ve been some pretty cool places. It helps me appreciate it and motivates me to do more. And then we wanted to provide like an encouragement mechanism for people that are just getting into it. And that’s kind of where the badges came. We can talk about that a little bit more if you’d like to. But if I go to a state park, I’ve just got my new tent or my new camper or pop-up or whatever. I go there and I realize, oh, I can collect all the badges for the state parks in my state. that’s twenty percent more 15% more chance that we’re going to get those folks motivated to get out there and do all of those things that’s perfect and uh they look really good to boot so you know we kind of wanted to find out just a motivator that connected to the rest of the platform and exposed people all these cool activities so yeah 2022 all the way home it clicked we decided to go for it you guys have started businesses I’m sure you know that there’s always just a little bit of extra starting fluid that you need to kick those things over from idea phase into execution phase and so we found that moment and really tried to capitalize on it and have been running ever since.

Joey – That’s cool. Tony is the expert on running his own business. So, I used to do that. It’s not for me. I had my own business. I had like two or three at a time and it was just not, not something that I enjoyed. I like working for people and when I’m not there, I still get paid. So, it’s totally against my nature to have my own business. Tony’s in his new studio back there. You’re looking good, bro. You’re looking good in the new studio. If you want to know what an All Roads Taken badge looks like, just look on Tony’s microphone because he’s got his Overland of America badge stuck on there where everybody can see. It just… I get most of my information from social media when I do the background of who I’m going to interview for the podcast. I go to website, Instagram, whatever. You have a ton of people tagging you in Instagram about their travels. It’s really taken off. It just seems like it was just yesterday that, you know, I went over to Matt McClellan’s house to help him put a tent on his gladiator and he had all these badges on his Jeep. And I’m like, what is that? Where’d you get all those from? And then he posted a video about it. And then all of a sudden, boom, it’s, you know, you’re more expo, you’re everywhere. And, um, it’s really taken off really fast. I’ve been super impressed with how people have embraced it.

Tyler – Right. Thanks. Yeah. That’s a, that’s great. Matt, Matt and Kara have been fantastic supporters and, and, uh, you know, what’s cool about that is we’ve had some, some great conversations about it really early on. And, and I mean, you guys know them well, they just get it right. They get this whole thing and they get the importance of that adventure and it means a lot to them. So, we connected, you know, just right from the beginning and, and have been, you know, really, really close ever since.

Joey – Well, on your, on your website, it’s, it’s really easy to navigate. You sign in, you sign in with Google. It didn’t take me five seconds and, uh, and I was in, and then you can choose your first badge and, and then it’s where you can join a community. And this is where I did not know this aspect was there. And I think there’s a lot of people out there that see the badges and think the badges is what it is. They think that’s all there is. But if you go to the website, it’s so much more than that. It’s all about the experience and the travels and how you can log that. And I really enjoyed that part of it looking at that.

Tyler – Thanks. I appreciate that. And any suggestions that you can, can have for us to continue to share that message would be, would be great. Honestly. It’s, it’s sort of a, you never want to complicate the message too much. So, the badges are easy to talk about. The Adventure Log is a little bit harder because it’s pretty easy to navigate, but it’s just a big concept. And it’s not necessarily something that when you hear it for the first time, you’ll understand what it is. We’ve got really what we consider to be the initial version one of the Adventure Log out now. If it’s okay for me to talk about it, we’re working really hard on what we would consider to be version two, really building off of that. Right now, there’s the ability, and as Joey’s kind of working through this now, you can add trails or national parks that you’ve been to or states that you’ve been to, national forests, all sorts of things. Events like we did with Overland of America have been really popular and really important experiences for people. But the idea is that you can add all of those places that you’ve been and keep a record, right? That’s version one is help me keep my stats of all the places that I’ve been. as we move into version two, what we want to do, and this will be even harder to describe. So, as you guys use it, I really love feedback, but what we want to do is help folks that are interested in, in that log, then actually move to the next step, which is helping you tell your story. And so what, what you’re doing as you travel is you’re actually creating all these memories and, and stories and moments and, important core things right in your life that you’re tracking and outside of social media, which is really a way to share that with the world there are not a lot of good tools out there for you to really help you kind of share that with yourself and write that story for yourself.  So we would like to experiment in that area and help folks uh start to think about their travel a little bit differently in that way in a way that helps them as they’re going along tell that story.

I know storytelling is can be some somewhat of a struggle it can be a struggle for me yeah but tools that help that prompt you at the right time give you the tools to organize your thoughts about your travel whether it’s like a special a moment right I may not know how to how to write an essay about my trip but I can certainly gather a couple of photos that were really special to me in this moment. You know, I just went camping with my son. I guess it was a couple of months ago now, but we had this just amazing evening and all alone out, out down by the Mulberry actually at this campsite that, that, was I believe it was one of the ones listed on that was our Overland adventure trail actually fantastic little campsite right on the mulberry my son and I had it to ourselves we just had this beautiful evening a swimming hole made some dinner all of that that’s a moment right like this this moment in time a couple of pictures that I took while we were there a little bit of a description and to be able to package that up and put that in the adventure log that’s what we want to really enable next right to keep some of those core memories and stuff looking back a year or two or even six months from now that’s really going to be what’s special on top of just keeping track of those places that we’ve been so that’s the that’s the direction we like to have and we’d like to make sure that we keep it multi-genre so we want it to be just as easy to add hikes as it is to add trails that you wield or states that you visited or even cities that you got a burger in you know people are tracking all kinds of different travel and, we’re pretty dynamic on where we travel. I’m sure you guys are kind of the same way. We want it to be open for that kind of thing and, and help you keep track of that story. So definitely look forward to that.

A couple of, is it okay if I share a couple of other ideas that we’re kind of throwing around? We don’t want it to turn into social media. So being heavily, heavily community driven in the way that it starts to approach like a Facebook group, we don’t want to push it in that direction because there’s just already great tools for that. Facebook groups are fantastic tools for building little, small communities. We do get some requests to be able to connect though when you’re out and you meet people, which I think would be cool. One little concept that we’re working on right now that I’d love your feedback on is what if you could get a badge for your vehicle? would be custom to your vehicle you know maybe says the name of your vehicle put that on your vehicle with the combination of a QR code and an NFC tag I actually got a prototype on my desk now or anybody you meet when you’re out you can actually scan your tag and pull up your stats right oh this vehicle’s been so many cool places this is the badge wall for this vehicle you know Tony drives it Joey drives it And maybe even connect, maybe just leave it as that, where you can kind of connect with people and see where they’ve been. Maybe connect or follow or something like that, but with no feedback mechanism at all. We don’t want it to turn into like posting stuff for likes or anything like that. Not that that’s wrong. It’s just a different space. But being able to connect with people that you physically meet would be a really cool concept, I think. And tie in well then. Some people like to have the one, a bunch of badges, show everywhere they’ve been. Some people like to put their favorites on their rig. Some people are really particular about certain aesthetics and maybe don’t like the way that a lot of badges look on their rig. And maybe we just want the one that would then connect to that log in the app and everything else to be able to track all the travel. So that’s one idea. I definitely have your feedback on that. And the other is moving to a native mobile app. So, we’ve been working on that over the last couple of months. And we’ve tried to create, you’ve experimented a little bit with it, Joey, where you don’t have to be there to check in. We allow for check-in while you’re there or with a photograph that you took while you’re there to kind of verify your location. Or, and this can be more or less popular depending on the group that you’re talking to, you can just say you were there with the honor system. We’re not going to question you. Believe it or not, that’s not actually a major problem. A lot of people aren’t saying that they’ve done trails or places that they really haven’t done. There’s no incentive for that. And so, we make it really easy to work with so that the last thing that we want while you’re in the middle of a really cool trail, having a great experience is for you to have to pull your phone out to check in. You know, if maybe you’re laying down in your tent, you want to capture a moment from the day and write a little something about that. That’s great. But yeah, we want to minimize that. So, we haven’t needed to develop a native app as of yet. But we’ve got a lot of folks asking for the ability to check in offline where they’re at, maybe later at night, or that’s just part of their workflow. And a native app is really the only way that you can do that since connectivity is so sparse in some of the areas that we travel. Yeah. Those two things are kind of areas that we’re looking at in addition to that adventure log V two with, you know, the journaling and companions who you’ve traveled with. We think that’s a really cool feature. So, you can keep track of, you know, we used to travel with these guys. We went to these places and in this other group and we traveled kind of differently with those guys and family and pets and all of that.

Joey – Right. It’s kind of fun to keep track of all that. So, yeah. Yeah. That’s cool.

Tyler – Anything sound cooler or not cool?

Joey – I like it. I love the vehicle one for sure. Yeah. Back years and years and years ago when we were going to FJ Summit, um I was there the first year and I met so many people you know because I had an FJ cruiser everybody had an FJ cruiser and I wanted to connect with these people and so I would try to get people’s names and I was trying to write all this stuff down but everybody had they had printed their own business cards had their name their social media and so everybody just handed out business cards. I’m like that’s perfect. I mean that’s genius you know so that everybody handed out business cards and then the QR kit code thing came out where you can just show it on somebody’s phone and you can look at that. So, there’s all kinds of different ways to do that. But having something on your vehicle is even better because a lot of times you’re not in your vehicle when somebody walks by your vehicle and wants to follow because a lot of times they don’t want to follow you they want to follow your vehicle you know because they’re like oh this is a cool rig you know I want to see where this rig goes what it does and so a lot of times you’re not even there so having that available as well is yeah that would be that would be genius I think it’d be okay cool

Tyler – thanks for the feedback.

Joey – Another thing that I was thinking you know I’ve got and I want to talk about this here in a little bit, but for years, the Jeep badges of honor was all there was, you know, and I always saw these badges of honor on all the Jeeps and things like that. And the Toyotas were kind of left out. You know, the Toyotas, the Land Rovers, we’ve all been left out in the cold, but all we’ve ever had has been grill badges, you know, something to put on the grill. So, I’ve got a couple from FJ Summit. I’ve got one for a hundred thousand miles, one that Jeeps will never have, two hundred thousand miles. And you know, uh, other things like that.

Tyler – Just darts, throwing darts. Just throwing darts.

Joey – But what’s cool about this is you’ve brought us all under one roof. You know, you’ve brought us all together. It’s not just a Jeep thing. And one that’s, you know, the thing that has always just ticked me off for so many years is that all the trails out west, they call them Jeep trails. And they’re not Jeep trails. They’re off-road trails. But they call them Jeep trails. And they’ve had the Jeep trails and the Jeep badges. They’ve had everything. And here we’ve had nothing. And so, I love how you’re kind of bringing everybody together and creating something that we all, all can use. So what I would like, what I would like and what I’m thinking about making is a, wall of honor to put all the badges on my wall at home like decoration you know I was into rode Harley Davidson’s for years and they have the poker chips so every time you visited a dealership they would have a poker chip and then they created these poker chip wall things where you put all the poker chips in there and you would hang it up and people could see everywhere you’ve been. And this is kind of the same thing. If you have something in your home, you invite people to, they can see everywhere you’ve been. If, you know, a lot of people, like you said, don’t want a hundred badges all over crammed all over their vehicle. But if you had a place in your home to put the badges up, that would be cool. You could post that. And that’s what I’ve been thinking about doing.

Tony – So, yeah, you know, my wife on the headliner, Oh, yeah. Yeah. Headliner.

Tyler – That works great, too. You know, we do at our house, I’ve got actually a little sample of it here with a slightly larger frame. So, if you notice, this is a picture of me on Black Bear Pass the first time that we were there. You see, I’ll take it off the wall. This is a live demo. So, it could go.

Joey – Uh-oh. World premiere. World premiere.

Tyler – Yeah. We do this on our initial wall downstairs sometimes. This is a photograph on Black Bear Pass. We’ll actually take the badges and you can order them this way with the surround separator. If you look at Tony’s badge, it’s ready to go on the vehicle for that. You can order it online with the metal faceplate separated from the plastic. So, you have a few more custom mounting options. And so, we’ll actually put them in a frame like this. I can’t get super close to my camera, but it looks fantastic. You put it on the mat underneath the glass and it really has almost like a museum feel. And we’ll put that on our adventure wall, which is a way to document, you know, the date and the place and a picture. A lot of times with a smaller frame than this, because we’ve got a bunch of them out there, but yeah, it’s sort of the same vibe as what you were describing, but with a little bit more context from the photograph as well.

Joey – Right, right. That works really well.

Tyler – We do the same thing when we sell a rig. We’ll take the badges off the rig and put a photograph. Like we sold a camper trailer last year and did this. We had gotten about six new states in that camper. And so, we put that in a frame along with the badges and a photo of the camper and put that on the adventure wall kind of as a fun way to remember that rig and where we took it.

Joey – So, yeah, I want your opinion on this because this has always been a hot topic with my Jeep friends. So, with the badges, do the badges follow the person or the badges follow the rig?

Tyler – I guess, you know, I don’t know that there’s a right and a wrong there. I can tell you what we do. Okay. Generally, anytime we get a new vehicle, I start from scratch myself and only add the badges to that vehicle for places that I’ve been. Sometimes if it’s a camper, it’s like everywhere we go. If it’s like my Jeep, it’s my favorites that we’ve been to in that Jeep, trails and stuff. I really add the badges to my rig for the purposes of fantastic conversation. It’s such an easy way to start a conversation in any parking lot that you’ll be at or any campground because folks come up and look. They want to see where you’ve been. They want to see if it’s similar to someplace they’ve been or someplace they haven’t heard of. So, I think that’s the most fun thing just in terms of encouraging and inspiring adventure in terms of reasons for putting the badges on the side of the vehicle. Yeah. that’s one of the main reasons behind that concept of maybe we could do a vehicle badge and get badges on even more vehicles even for folks that maybe don’t want to do as many again for the purposes of just starting conversation you know um being friendly with each other so we always keep the badges to the rig that they were earned in or traveled to in. And then we’ll typically remove those when we sell it to somebody else because they’re not interested in it, interested in our accomplishments. And then we’ll start with theirs and we’ll keep them. Some folks like to keep the badges for every place that they’ve been, regardless of what vehicle they might have gone in. I can really add up to a lot of space. So, we don’t typically do that. I’m not going to judge. Matt’s the bedside of his whole gladiator.

Tony – The whole bedside, yeah. That guy has been an impressive number of places. All the conversations that you can have on either side of that truck bed are pretty fantastic.

Joey – Pretty amazing. I love also… what you’ve done and not just done trails. You have trails on your website. You can search by name or state. You have national parks, you have off-road parks, national forest, state, state parks, and you also have events and sounds like you’ve also done some special, occasion things like for Matt and Kara’s pup that, that passed away. So, that’s, that’s pretty amazing what you’ve, what you’ve got into, with that. Now, is all roads taken compared to what you thought or what you dreamed it would be in the beginning? Is it kind of going how you envisioned it or is it taken to, is it went off into something you never dreamed it would?

Tyler – You know, there’s this saying in the software business and I believe in other lines of business as well that no product ever survives its first encounter with a customer, which is kind of a funny phrase, right? But you just, it’s never, it’s honestly never what you think it’s going to be exactly. Yeah. I think initially we thought there, looking back, we’ve had great momentum and a great uptake. Initially, it was probably less than we thought it would be. We thought everybody would be really excited to have an alternative, to have sort of a program like this. And I think, you know, I tend to blame myself for that. I think we weren’t as good at explaining it, you know, explaining the concept of the badges and the log and how it works together and how it drives this adventure. And as we’ve gotten better at that, it’s been much easier to talk to new folks. One of the things that, you know, I underestimated was… the importance of local events. So, we do a tremendous number of event badges now because we partner with folks to do those. And, you know, those are really important experiences for folks. They’ve got their local communities. They do events together. We do a lot of, and this is just for awareness if it’s not clear on our website, but we do custom events as well. So, you know, maybe an off-road group.

Joey – Yeah. That was my first one was the GoXplorUSA.

Tyler – Absolutely. We work with folks that do guided trips like that or maybe have a club or a group that has a special trip every year. We work with manufacturers who do a customer appreciation event or something like that. what’s cool about that is that it’s an important experience for the customer or for the for the group member or whatever that may be and not only can we do a badge for that but as part of that we can also make sure that that’s part of the catalog for folks to add to their adventure log on the app side right so yeah you get a way to add like your glacier national park experience right next to your Rendezvous in the Ozarks experience or your of native America experience and that’s what that that’s really been a surprise for me and I think it’s so cool we just initially went in kind of thinking about the big targets in our minds which were Yellowstone or Imogene or you know those types of things and folks have enjoyed that but what’s even more special a lot of times are the events that where people are getting together and you know camping and spending a weekend together and all that so That’s been cool to see. And, you know, we definitely got that wrong at the beginning. We wouldn’t have thought that that was as big of a deal. So that’s a little bit, I guess, you know, first contact with the customer and you’re always trying to make things easy to use. So, your feedback on how easy it was to get signed up and navigate, man, that’s really helpful. I appreciate that feedback. Software on that side is hard, you know, to try to make it as easy as it can be to navigate. So that’s great feedback.

Joey – I like what you’re doing, thinking about people being able to check in when they’re offline because a lot of companies don’t think about that. You have to do so much preparation before you go wherever you go. Like if you’re using Gaia, if you’re using any of the other stuff, you have to download where you’re going to go before you go because everywhere we go, there’s no service. Everywhere. And so being able to do anything offline or being able to take a picture and upload that later, you know, to prove that you were there, say that you were there, or just do it on the honor system, like you said, that’s huge. Because if you require somebody to be at that particular moment, and that’s what I get most frustrated with apps, is you have to be right there at that particular moment before you get credit for anything or anything like that. Being able to do that later at a time is going to ease and minimize that frustration that people have and keep people going. And I’m glad that you’re thinking. That’s our thought.

Tyler – Yeah thank you and just to make sure for folks that are listening and for you guys that it’s clear one of the other keys and why we did that is because we didn’t want you to have to redo everything you’ve already done so uh when you go on and start building your adventure log you can go back as far as you want you know if you went to rocky mountain national park for the first time in like you can add those things to your adventure log and build it back. It doesn’t have to start from today. And for me, that was one of the key parts that had to be there from day one, is you have to be able to build backwards to be able to create that map of all the places that you’ve been. Otherwise, it’s underwhelming. It’s still cool to start from today, but not nearly as powerful as seeing that big map from fifteen, twenty years ago.

Joey – Yeah, that’s cool. Also on your website, you have a way to contact you. You have a lot of disclaimers because of everybody that’s able to post on your website. I know that you have several different partners. Many of our good friends are on there. You list all their partners that you partner up with. I did notice that you do not have an official podcast on there, so you may think about that.

Tyler – You want to have it?

Joey – Yeah, of course. Throw that out there. But anyway, how can we keep up with you? Where are you going to be in the coming months?

Tyler – So you know in the same way that the industry kind of goes to bed a bit for the winter you know we really try to focus our winter post fall through you know very early spring activities on uh building new relationships um getting set up for uh you know really the season to kick off the camping season uh next year so we’re going to be working heavily with some really exciting things um can’t really share details but you know we’re working heavily with some national park organizations to get into their stores and be part of that program we’re working really closely with a number of states um to work on uh providing a badge program and a passport program for their for their state parks which is really cool and I think going to be a fun thing um for folks and uh we’re hoping that this year will be a great example for us to get some anger tenants in both of those spaces that we can then expand on through the rest of we’ll also be really doubling down with less travel on getting uh the adventure log v two out and the native mobile application out on the on the technology side so that we’re rocking and rolling and ready to go for folks kicking off adventures in um you know spring and even some of the winter campouts and stuff that happen there you know we want to be ready for that so um we won’t be too many places um in the winter but uh a lot of it is just because things dry up there so uh keep following up with us on uh certainly online I would I’ll be the first to share with you I don’t think we’re great at social media just to be honest with you um you guys are great uh we are not super you know great yet so, we’re kind of learning that side And we’re also trying to make sure that we’re sharing really cool content and not too much that’s not valuable for folks. One thing that you may see and you can go back and look at on our feed is that we’ve been doing an adventure highlight. And we do one of those every week. And those can be across the board. So, we just did a great one on some hiking opportunities in Colorado. We’ve done a lot of overlanding highlights with some of our customers and connections. And I say that because if you guys have one, if folks that are listening have an adventure that they’d like to highlight, think about it in terms of sharing that adventure with folks so that it’s much more accessible for them to replicate in some sort of way. That’s what we’re trying to target with the adventure highlight. Break it down. Turn it into a little bit more than just a pretty picture. and talk about how you approached it where you went what some of your itinerary was some of the cool places that you visited how long you took to get there you know those sorts of aspects and that’s what you’ll see when you look back at that content or feed what I hope is that that’s uh you know content that’s not incredibly frequent for folks but it’s really valuable when they see it and helps kind of encourage what we’re trying to encourage with the business as well. So, follow up on those and definitely reach out to us through the website or through social media if you have some story that you want to share. And we’d be happy to partner with you on it, organize it kind of into our framework and then, you know, co-post those things on social media to maybe get some attention to a trip that you want to provide some attention to, expand it to our network, you know, really just kind of share that story and make it accessible for other folks to do some of the same, which, you know, is the goal. That’s the goal, right? Get more folks outside, enjoying it, taking care of it and building those memories.

Joey – Exactly. Well, I want to encourage everybody to go. If you’re on Instagram, All Roads Taken official is the site there. And if you have and go on adventures where you do have your badges or, or do want to share some of the stuff on, on all roads taken, make sure that you tag them and you do collaborate a lot with people that do that. I noticed that. So quite a bit of that going on. You do have a Facebook page. where people are able to keep up with you there, and also on the website, www.allroadstaken.com. Find a badge and tell about your adventures. It’s easy to do, and everybody should do it. Man, we have entered into the end of the podcast. I greatly appreciate you taking time away from your family to come on here and visit with us and let us get to know you a little bit better. Tell us a little bit more about the ins and outs and behind the scenes. And I really enjoyed that. It’s good to get to know people a little better. So, we really appreciate you doing that.

Tyler – Absolutely. Yeah, we should find another opportunity to have a campfire together and camp again.

Joey – Definitely. We’re not that far.

Tyler – A little more free time this time maybe than the event would be great.

Joey – Yeah, exactly. Exactly. Last time we were busy and a lot of stuff was going on during that. Anyway, everybody that’s listening, Tony, man, your stuff looks good. Your new showroom or whatever you’ve got back there, all your stuff looks really good. Appreciate you working hard on that.

Tony – Yeah, thank you.

Joey – Putting your badge on there and really repping the All Roads Taken. My All Roads Taken is stuck on the back of my FJ stuff, so I couldn’t get out there tonight to show it.

Tyler – Oh, fantastic.

Joey – Yeah, yeah. Well, I hope everybody has gotten as much out of this as I have. This is something completely new to a lot of us, and it’s great to get to know a little bit more about it, that there’s a little bit more to it than what we see on the surface. So, I hope everybody goes to the website, checks it out, gets you a badge, and uh, get out there and go on an adventure. It’s, uh, that’s what it’s all about. Um, I hope you have, hope everybody has a wonderful week. We’re signing off on the Overland podcast. This has been, uh, Joey, Tony and Tyler. Thank you again for being on here. Hope everybody has a wonderful week. Uh, good to see y’all…and as I always say at the end of every show, look out for number one and don’t step on number two.

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