Jason, what I’d like to see hard numbers on is, anecdotally, the explosion of “mud run” events such as Warrior Dash, Spartan Race, or the one I recently completed, Tough Mudder. Folks pay good money to jump into cold water, crawl through muddy sections of pipe and yes, be electrocuted. It even sounded insane to the great minds at Harvard Business School:
Dean had $8,200 for advertising and he blew it on a flurry of Facebook ads. It worked. The event sold 4,500 spots in five weeks. Two other events last year and two earlier this year also sold out.
This time around, the Tough Mudder at Bear Creek booked 10,000 spots months in advance.
“I was told in no uncertain terms that I would never get more than 500 people to do one of these things,” Dean said of feedback he received during a business plan competition while at Harvard. “I’m not going to pretend for one moment that I expected this sort of result.”