Joe Apgar - President of PELOTONIA: Surviving Cancer, Sharing Your Story, and the Power of Family and Friends

Joe Apgar  00:00

Because I went through an experience where I almost lost my own life, like, I'm not going to waste anything. I'm not going to waste my own time. I'm not going to waste my own effort, and like if you don't take pride in your work and do the best you can do every time you produce something, and that's not just producing work, it's like anything in your life, then don't do it.

Callan Harrington  00:28

Welcome back, everyone to a another episode of That Worked. This week, I'm joined by Joe Apgar. Joe is the president of Pelotonia. Pelotonia was established in 2008 with the objective to fund life saving cancer research and today is a rapidly growing nonprofit. They've raised over twenty five million dollars in 2023, and have raised over 283 million dollars today. Before Pelotonia Joe spent eight years working at Rockbridge Capital, a highly respected, Columbus-based, private equity firm, he was named to the 40 Under 40, Class of 2020, by Columbus Business First, and the Future 50, Class of 2021, by Columbus CEO Magazine. In 2022, he was selected as a member of the Young American Leaders program at Harvard Business School. This was one of the most impactful interviews I've held. Joe's a cancer survivor. Hearing him tell his story, what he went through, how that changed his perspective, and impacts his life today, served as a wake up call to me. Many times I am so focused on achieving the next goal, that I completely lose sight of what's in front of me. Our conversation made me think about what's really important. And I am super grateful that we had it. With that, I'm going to keep this intro short and sweet. Let's jump right into Joe's story.  Joe, welcome to the show.

Joe Apgar  01:59

Thank you. Thanks for having me.

Callan Harrington  02:01

I'm excited! When doing my prep for this, I can tell you, I've got so many questions that I want to ask, because you have such an amazing story. It's a story that that you've shared quite a bit. And a lot of it is with your lived experience with going through cancer personally, of course makes total sense with your work and Pelotonia and the impact that you're having there. You know, one of the places I'd love to start out is just hearing that story. Where did this all begin?

Joe Apgar  02:27

Yeah, I think you know, it's really not my story. My family's cancer story, I would say, first sort of starts in 1992. My sister was actually diagnosed cancer. So she was five years old at the time. I was seven. And so she had kidney cancer, Wilms tumor, she was kind of old to have it. I think it usually presents sort of in a two to three year old, and she was five. So cancer has always been a dinner table topic at our house. We've always been involved with Make-A-Wish Foundation. She was a Make-A-Wish kid, we did the whole Disney thing back in the day, and they sort of rolled the red carpet out. And I think my guess would be going to Disney World is still the number one wish for Make-A-Wish kids. They've like built this entire infrastructure down there. And she's now thirty-five years old, she's a nurse, she's healthy. She's you know, so far removed from her cancer experience, but I think has really defined a lot of things in her life, how she thinks about life. And then, you know, fast forward must have been almost fifteen years. When I was in college, I was twenty-one. It was my final semester. So I was at Penn State in State College, Pennsylvania. First week of my final semester, and I had programmed out my final semester to be like, you know, I liked going out to the bars and doing the whole thing.

Callan Harrington  03:49

You don't gotta sell me on it. (laughs)

Joe Apgar  03:50

You know, making sure I could do Wednesday night trivia every week, and like all that sort of thing. So I'd like programmed out this amazing final semester. I had back-to-back weightlifting and jogging, like it was going to be like this semester of dreams. And very first week back after holiday break, I found myself, you know, sort of in a situation I never thought I would find myself in, getting diagnosed with cancer and it sort of started. It was a Friday around lunchtime. I was in my apartment. I lived in a place called Beaver Hill Apartments. 711, very top floor, was not the penthouse, but it was a nice little quaint apartment. I lived with two other guys, Tom and Zach. And Tom, my roommate was a nursing student. And so we were laying on the couch, and watching TV, playing video games. I was a big Mario Golf guy. So N64 Mario Golf, you couldn't touch me. I was unbelievable.  And we would play this game every day. It was so stupid. So I said Tom, I gotta tell you something. I've had something going on. I think one of my testicles is enlarged. It doesn't hurt, but I think it's enlarged. And like I'd sort of read online, you know, did a little reading online and stuff before that. And I think a lot of times can present with pain, and I didn't have pain, so I didn't really mention it up to that point. And that was probably a couple months of noticing something, not mentioning it to a single person, because I didn't have pain. I mean, I had zero pain, you'd never know.

Callan Harrington  04:49

(laughs) So if I'm hearing you correctly on that, it's other symptoms were there, but because you had read this, and this one symptom didn't show it was like, I'm good. It doesn't matter.

Joe Apgar  05:35

Yeah. And I think, you know, when you're young, and you're fit, and you're, you know, on top of the world, and in your early twenties, like, I'm not in pain, I'm good. If something bad's gonna happen, it's pain's gonna show up somewhere. Pain wasn't showing up. But I just decided to tell him this, on a Friday, you know, around lunchtime, and he paused the game, looked at me, and he was like, "what are you doing? Let's go to Ritenour." Ritenour was the, like, nurses building, the health building of campus. And so, I mean, it was like, right up the hill, probably three quarters of a mile walk, on actually on the street that we lived on. So he's like, "I'm coming with you. I'll wait outside." So I walked in, I walked into the building, it was like, you know, a typical waiting room. There's a receptionist desk in the middle. And, you know, the woman says, "what are you here for?" And I'm like, I don't really want to say what I'm here for in front of all these people, but it was a Friday, so she's assuming I did something bad on Thursday night, needed to get checked out or whatever. So I wait, I go back in, see a doctor. And he asked what's going on, I tell him, you know, he does a quick exam. And I literally watched his eyes open more in the like a surprising "oh, man" fashion. At that minute, I knew something was wrong. He looked at me and said, "do you mind if I go have one of our residents come in, because I want her to see what this looks like," without still yet explaining what this is. So this- and I said okay, sure. He goes out of the room, comes back like two minutes later. In walks the resident doctor, who is in training, and is gorgeous. And it's like, you gotta be kidding me. So like, I call timeout right there. And I was like, I'm sorry. This is too uncomfortable for me. Like you're- I didn't say this, but you are way too good looking for me to be in this situation with you at this moment. And they were totally cool about it. And he ended up basically telling me, look, you need to go to the emergency room and get an ultrasound done. You know, it looks like you might have a tumor or growth on your testicle. You need to get the ultrasound done to confirm things. And he's like, I'm going to call the hospital so they know you're coming, you'll get right in, whole thing. One of the things people don't appreciate about Penn State is we don't have a hospital, like Ohio State does, on campus. So the Penn State Hospital, and like the Penn State Medical System, which is a great medical system, is actually in Hershey, which is like over an hour away. I think it's like two hours away from campus. And so it's not on the main campus. So like, it's like a rural general hospital that's next to the main campus of Penn State, called Mount Nittany Medical Center. And so it's not like going to the Wexner Medical Center on Ohio State's campus, where it's like the world class, everyone is there. So I showed up, my roommate drove me. He's like, you want me to come in? I was like, no. I just kept thinking this was gonna be like, I'd walk in and get checked out. They'd be like, you're all good. Go home. That's what I was curious about is, at this moment, are you really stressed out? No, it's always taken a lot for me to get stressed out. And I sort of have always, like, defaulted to, it can't be that bad. Like, how bad could it be? And remember, I'm not in pain, right? If I was in pain, it would have been a totally different circumstance, my headspace would have been a totally different space. I was in no pain, like I could have just kept on going and never seen the doctor. If it wasn't for my roommate, Tom, I might have.

Callan Harrington  09:19

If I'm hearing you, it's almost, this is kind of a detour in your day more than it is, oh, man, something serious is going.

Joe Apgar  09:27

Totally. I remember getting the ultrasound, sitting in a waiting room. I was texting on my BlackBerry Pearl. Remember those? With the little leather case, you'd slide it in, whole thing. About going to Chili's with my friends that night for happy hour, because Chili's had a great happy hour on campus, and it was close to my apartment. And I was like, yeah, I'm at the doctor's office right now, but I'll meet you guys there. You know, if you looked at those texts today, it would be like God, that was stupid. Like you weren't going anywhere, buddy. I mean, I literally thought within an hour I was going to be out in night on the town. What really happened was a nurse came in, and she said, you know, we have a doctor that is on the phone for you. We're going to give you an office, a private office that you can take the call in. And that's when I was like, oh, man, this sounds bad. So go into the private office. It was a room like this, had a desk, phone, picked up the phone, said, hey, this is Dr. Scola. He was like two or three hours away at this point. He said, I'm a urologist. I'm actually traveling to the hospital now, to prep you for surgery tomorrow. I think you have cancer, testicular cancer. And I was like, oh, shit, like, really? And surgery tomorrow, like on Saturday? It was like time stopped. Right? And so you know, this was sort of getting later in the evening at this point. And I asked him if he would call my parents. I said, I'd like to call my parents first, but I don't want to like misrepresent or explain something poorly to them about what's going on. Like, would you mind calling them after I call them? He said sure. So I called my parents, got both my parents on the phone. My mom picked up and then I said, can you get dad on the phone as well. So this is a landline in those days. And so they picked up the one phone, and he had to go to another room to get the other phone. Immediately she knew something was wrong. And so I told him, I said I am here at the hospital, I just had an ultrasound done, and they're telling me I have testicular cancer, and that I'm gonna have surgery in the morning. But you guys, like don't need to come or anything, like I don't think it's gonna be that big of a deal. But just want to let you know. And I gave the doctor your phone number, so he's going to call in like ten minutes. And my parents were like, are you sure you don't want us to come down? Like, well come down, we'll be there. I was like, no, no, no, you don't need to come down. We sort of ended the call with like, if you come down, fine, but I'm just going to be sitting in this hospital room.

Callan Harrington  11:57

Was that a matter of you not wanting them to be stressed out? Especially since kind of what happened with your sister, and this is almost like the second time around? Or was that more, you thought this was going to be pretty routine?

Joe Apgar  12:15

I think that was like my way of like trying to will it to be routine, trying to not make a big deal out of it. You know, like me, I'm gonna have the surgery, and I'll be right back on my feet. And if my parents come down, it's gonna be a big production, like, where are they going to stay? Like, gotta start thinking through all that stuff. Like, I wasn't even thinking about school at that point. But they ended up showing up in the hospital like three hours later. And that's important because it's a four hour drive. (laughs) Oh man. (laughs) So did they drive a Corvette?  No, I don't know what kind of car my dad had at that point. But, you know, he had a heavy foot, and they got down there. I saw them actually, in my hospital room, probably around midnight. Midnight, Friday night, Saturday morning, but after they had given me relaxing pill to help me sleep. So I was like, sort of in and out of it and, then woke up the next morning, they were there. And had surgery. So got wheeled into surgery and pretty quick surgery, it's called an orchiectomy, where they remove sort of your whole testicle, and tumor, and all that stuff. And it's, it's pretty simple. It's like, you know, got a five inch sort of incision on your pelvis. And it's routine- well, no surgery is sort of simple and routine, but as routine as you can get, I think. And woke up to, you know, a room full of my parents, and my sister was there, my cousin had stopped by, my roommates, and a couple other friends were all there and like, no one knew what to say. I was waking up, you know, in my room out of surgery, no one quite knows what to say. Because it's like, what are you supposed to say? Like, you know, I had drool dried on the side of my mouth. And I'll never forget my, my roommate, Tom, the guy had taken me to the hospital. Really the reason that I got it checked out in the first place is Tom. He said, "hey, Lance, you got some shit coming out of your mouth." And because I was a big Lance Armstrong fan. I actually was diagnosed wearing a LIVESTRONG bracelet, funny enough. Because I always wore a LIVESTRONG bracelet, because my sister, to support my sister.

Callan Harrington  14:26

Really?

Joe Apgar  14:30

I always sort of really admired the organization. And so I had been wearing one, and had followed Lance, and all of the cycling and stuff. And so that sort of broke the ice, and I ended up getting out of the hospital from that surgery, I think on that Monday. So I was only in for a couple of days, and got back to you know, my room, and sort of had to communicate with some of my professors and other friends that I hadn't seen, you know, over the weekend or whatever, like, hey, here's what's going on. And that then started sort of, what was going to be next in my treatment plan, and looking at options, and having those conversations, and all that.

Callan Harrington  14:30

Yeah.  Where's your head at at this point? What's going through your mind? How are you feeling? What does that look like for you?

Joe Apgar  15:12

You know, I think after any surgery you are a little tired, sore, sort of a weird spot to have an incision, like in terms of walking around and stuff, just with like pants. And so like my dad, went in and bought every pair of size extra large, Penn State Nike sweatpants at the Student Store. I mean, I probably had ten pairs of these things, because I couldn't wear jeans, just with where the incision was. I was just like, alright, I guess I'm gonna wear sweatpants. I was most concerned about having to drop out of school for the semester. I was so close to graduation, it was like meaningful to be able to graduate with my friends, you know, walk at graduation. And so I was just like, really focused on like, how do I make school work. I had had a light course load anyway, because it was I had sort of planned it that way. But I still had some challenging classes. And I had had, you know, a pretty high GPA up to that point, I think through seven semesters, you know, had like a 3.85 GPA in school. And that was something that was really important to me, was like having good grades. And so, but I had already had a job secured, I was already coming to Columbus. So I had signed a job offer in December of 2007, to come work at Rockbridge. And so it became very much to me, like, I'm going to make it to Columbus. Because if I make it to Columbus, that means I didn't have to drop out, that I did graduate, that I finished my school, and that I'm probably healthy. Because if any of those things didn't happen, I wasn't making it to Columbus. If I wasn't healthy, I wasn't going to Columbus, if I had to drop out of school, I wasn't graduating and then wasn't going to Columbus. So Columbus to me became this- I gotta get to Columbus. What impact did having that goal have on you?  It's just sort of, you know, the way I think about goals is like focusing in a direction, right, like points you towards something. So just knowing that there was a place I wanted to get to, and there was a bunch of things in the middle. And so, you know, how do you take one day at a time and make sure you're making incremental steps towards that? Really, the next couple of weeks this was- the first surgery was January 26, of 2008. And so those next couple of weeks, they biopsy the tumor, they determine what type of testicular cancer it is, which there's a bunch of different types of testicular cancer, which I didn't know at the time. What stage it was, if it had spread, they did a lot more imaging. And we sort of went down this path were met with a doctor, and he's like, you've got a couple options. One of the options is to just do surveillance, just like you wait it out, you get observed, hopefully nothing sort of spreads. And you can sort of go on with your life. But if something has spread, like the type of cancer I had, would spread sort of through your lymph nodes to your lungs, and ultimately, to your brain, which is what happened with Lance Armstrong, then that's really going to derail things, you know, at that point, and you don't know when that might come. And that comes with a lot of anxiety. Right? Just, I mean, that's a weight over your head. My other option, given the type of cancer I had, was actually to do a what's called a retroperitoneal, lymph node dissection, where they basically open your entire stomach and chest cavity, and take out all the lymph nodes and biopsy all of them. That all comes back clean, you're good. You might not need radiation, you might not need chemo. But it's a really major surgery, major major surgery, comes with all of its own risks, all that stuff. And so we sort of got that information, he gave us about a week to sort of think about it, and then we were having another meeting in early February to determine which route we were gonna go. And so we could plan for that. And went to the doctor's office, and I'll never forget, my parents basically left the room, the doctor's office room. They said this was my decision, they were going to support whatever sort of way I wanted to go. I had not really made up my mind walking in there. But that was my decision, they were going to support whatever, and they didn't want to be in the room and sort of have me think that they were going to weigh in on it. Which is very much how my parents raised my sister and I, like they're very trusting, they, you know, have a lot of respect for us, they've always sort of treated us in a very respectful manner. And so I chose to have the surgery, because I felt like knowing myself, that sort of stress and anxiety of waiting, and not knowing what might happen would weigh on me, especially for my last semester. I felt like I could have this surgery, be out for a couple of weeks, but then come back to school and finish. I could arrange that with my professors, and I would have certainty. Like I could get to, call it mid-March and know kind of where I stand. And with surveillance, it would just be this constant okay, am I gonna get like- is something going to happen this week? Like, am I gonna have a recurrence this week, or like is it going to spread this week? I just didn't want that, sort of, the distraction, is really what it would have been, and I think would have impacted my psyche for a long time. So I had the surgery, it was a really long surgery, really intense surgery. And then following surgery, I ended up having blood clots in my lungs, and it was a really dark couple of weeks, having really an evening where I almost lost my life. The hospital I was at couldn't take care of me, and I needed to move hospitals, because they like didn't have the equipment or the doctors necessary to basically keep me alive. My blood clots in my lungs were that bad. It was like suffocating me. I couldn't breathe, in a ton of pain, I've never felt pain like that before. But by mid March, I was doing pretty well. I had recovered. I had like an amazing group of friends, was still rocking those sweatpants every day. By then sort of all my friends, professors knew what was going on. The physical education teacher, I said, you know, I had the weightlifting and then jogging, and actually was the same professor. So like, what a job that guy has. I like went to him really early on. I was like, hey, the first week of your class was great. I was really looking forward to getting in shape. But I have cancer, and I can't participate in your class. But I need the credits from this class to graduate, because that's one of the requirements at Penn State is that you have these three physical education credits. And he's like, okay, and he looks at the calendar, it was, I think in May, the first week of May or something. This is the last week of class. Do you think you could just email me that week, and remind me to give you an A?

Callan Harrington  22:01

Yes! Oh, that is fantastic.

Joe Apgar  22:04

Yeah, I think I could do that. So I got out of, you know, got out of my physical education credits. And then my other professors- I ended up having a professor that had had a child sort of go through something similar and was super understanding. I had him for two classes, actually. So it all worked out. Professors were super great, friends were awesome, and my family was there. My parents were there for over a month, they stayed at like a Hilton Garden Inn, down the street, and my mom was cooking me and my roommates and friends spaghetti and like, we're eating like kings as college kids, and for a couple of months, which was really fun. But it was sort of a crazy experience. But I think really the last like month and a half of college got to feel like a normal student again. I couldn't drink alcohol, just given some of the medicine I was taking. But you know, still went out with my friends and did all the sort of normal year-end stuff, senior crawl, all those things. So it was kind of a wild ending to school.

Callan Harrington  23:05

What were kind of the range of emotions? And one of the things that I've noticed is, I've heard the story now a couple of times, and it's an incredible story, and especially kind of how you went through it. One of the things that I'm curious about is what were the range of emotions? How did you feel throughout this whole cycle? And how did those change as you went through each one of these different stages?

Joe Apgar  23:25

Yeah, I think, you know, at the beginning, it was like, man, I don't want to inconvenience anyone with this, right? Like, that's why I told my parents not to come and all that stuff. So it's like, almost feel guilty. Actually talking to a lot of, you know, especially younger people that have had cancer. There's like this weird, like sense of guilt. Like, I'm inconveniencing people in my life with this diagnosis. What you learn is no one cares. No, they're not inconvenienced, they just want to help you. I think sort of the first emotion was like inconvenience. And then nervous about, not about the cancer, but about derailing my life, wanting to graduate, wanting to move to Columbus, all that stuff. And then going into that second surgery, so that second surgery was like, I think it's February 22nd. My birthday is February 18th, and my doctor said, you can go out for your birthday, have a few beers with your buddies, like that's okay. And we did that, and it was super fun. And for the first time in weeks, I felt normal again, right? We went to a couple bars, and had beers, and dinner, and the whole thing. And it was like man, this is a great way to not think about the fact that in four days I'm gonna have massive surgery, where there's like a vascular surgeon standing in the room in case they accidentally cut an artery, and like it's very just a serious heavy lift surgery. And then going into that surgery, I was really nervous. I think you, of course, think about dying, but it's not really that, I think, dramatic as you think about it, and like the way you're feeling, you just start to like appreciate the things you have in life. And you know, appreciate that I had two parents who are still married and loved each other, and they loved me, and they were here supporting me. And I had these great roommates and some other friends that sort of rallied around me. And my roommates are the two guys I was living with, Tom and Zach, and then two other friends, Alex and Josh, the night before my surgery, they all came over, my mom had cooked a meal. And so it was like the five of us plus my parents. And we were now playing Tiger Woods Golf on an Xbox, because I had never really liked birthday presents. And I still don't. My wife and I don't exchange Christmas presents or birthday presents. But for my birthday that year, my parents were there, took me and my roommates to Best Buy. And they're like, just buy something like, you know, we've been talking about like an Xbox or something. So like, I got an Xbox for my birthday, which is sweet. And I only got an Xbox for my birthday because I had cancer. So, which is great, I still have the Xbox actually, just like the white one with the green buttons and stuff. And so we played Tiger Woods Golf from like, probably 7pm the night before my surgery, until 3:30 in the morning. My parents picked me up at four in the morning for my surgery. I didn't sleep. I was so nervous, and never said that. I never told anyone I was nervous. My friends knew it, and they basically just did this thing. It was a school night.

Callan Harrington  23:25

Yeah.

Joe Apgar  23:29

Like everyone had school the next day. We all just stayed up laughing, playing video games, like joking around until I had to leave. I knew what they were doing. So that I had that surgery, and I came out of the surgery, which was great and a ton of pain, you're on a ton of meds, you got wires and tubes coming out of you, all sorts of stuff. But I remember feeling a sense of relief. Okay, like that was supposed to be the hard part. Now, every day from here should be up. But then like three days later, I had this blood clot. And it was like, I thought sort of that surgery was like the bottom floor, the blood clot thing took me like way below. And so then it's, you know, you start to feel a little depressed, like, you try never to get into the like, woe is me, you know, gosh, I'm feeling so sorry for myself, all that stuff. But like, you kind of can't help it. It's like how much bad stuff can happen? Like, what did I do wrong? Like, all, you know, all these sort of emotions start to creep in. But I was sort of for a few days in such a dire situation, that all of your concentration has to be on just what's going on and, you know, basically sitting in a hospital bed watching TV and listening to music. The one thing that I think turned my mindset around was, I got moved to this other hospital, sort of in eastern Pennsylvania. And this was a hospital where you had a roommate, so there's curtain between you and then but you had a roommate that had something else going on. So I ended up getting put with his roommate, who was a young guy, his name was Kevin, and we just started chatting without seeing each other. It's like a really weird dynamic in a hospital room. And like you're like, well, I'm basically- we're both sitting here naked with this gown on, with tubes and wires coming out, and both feeling like crap. And you know, so we just start talking, hey, you know, what's your name? And so we started chatting. And he gets telling me that he was in the hospital- here I was in the hospital, had done nothing wrong, had something bad happen to me. And I'm feeling depressed. Kevin is in the hospital, because he gave his kidney to his dad, who was across the hall in like an ICU room from us. And said it just like that, "oh, yeah, I gave my kidney to my dad and my dad was dying. I gave my kidney to him. I think he's doing great now." You're like shit, really? And you're like, would I give my kidney to my dad? Like, yeah, I think I would. So I had this great conversation with this guy, Kevin, and he was from rural Pennsylvania. Probably never been like a big city in his life, like didn't care about a lot of the things that people get caught up in, in life, money, job, status, all that stuff. He's just like, a good old dude. And, like he kind of had life figured out.

Callan Harrington  29:27

What was it from, from that perspective that made you kind of feel that way?

Joe Apgar  29:31

I think, you know, when you look around, like at the end of the day, like, if you have a good family, if you have good friends, you've got everything you need. Right? And like he figured that out. I mean, I got to know him a little bit over the following days. Guy had- they had no money. They were poor. They had sort of everything on paper that you would sort of look at and go like, that's a really tough situation. And he was one of the happiest people I've ever met. And had just given his kidney to his dad.

Callan Harrington  29:58

What impact did that have on you?

Joe Apgar  29:59

I think it's just like, recognizing that that's probably, like, that's probably life in a nutshell. Like, that's actually what success should look like. That's what you should aspire to. How do I aspire to have that relationship with my family, so that I would want to do that. Like, he clearly had an amazing relationship with his dad, his dad was his hero. And so it's like me, and I've got a great family, I've got great friends, I don't have it that bad. You know, Kevin's got it figured out. And I've got a pretty similar situation to Kevin. Him and his dad both ended up getting out of the hospital, I got out of the hospital, and then it was it was sort of day by day up from there. So yeah.

Callan Harrington  30:41

Man, that is such a powerful message. I mean, the whole story, I mean, obviously, you can see I'm getting a little emotional, just kind of hearing the just kind of the friends and family part, because it's easy to get caught up in the ladder to success. And, and, you know, I think it's important for a lot of us, because a lot of us are doing something that we really love to do. But I know there's many times where I don't have an ability to shut it off and create forcing functions for me to do that. But hearing that, it just puts things in a totally different perspective. You know, one of the questions that I have that's kind of aligned to this is, so you ended up coming to Columbus and worked for Rockbridge. And for those of which aren't in the Columbus area, Rockbridge has been a very successful investment firm.

Joe Apgar  31:38

Yeah.

Callan Harrington  31:39

And I know you had also, as I understand it, you turned down a job to be in New York and work in investment banking at Merrill Lynch, when it was, you know, that was like the job.

Joe Apgar  31:47

That was the job. Yeah. And I also turned down a job to work in private equity at Morgan Stanley. And there's something about Columbus and the people at Rockbridge that sort of really clicked for me when I interviewed sort of that prior fall. But yeah, I mean Rockbridge is an incredible place full of incredible people. And they've done some amazing things. They've got some pretty cool stuff happening right now too.

Callan Harrington  32:08

Oh, they've been they've been doing it for a while consistantly. One of one of those groups that you know, unless you're around that you don't really know of, but are just absolutely crushing it. A question that I'm curious about is, so you're now kind of in the you've got this totally different mindset. And you move into this role in finance. And one of the things that I'm curious about is you mentioned before that you started writing these letters, and when you first kind of got involved with Pelotonia, can you walk us through that? What that looked like?

Joe Apgar  32:41

Yeah, which letters are you talking about?

Callan Harrington  32:42

The letters where you were sharing your personal story for donations and things like that.

Joe Apgar  32:48

Oh, yeah. So, you know, I think, sort of just even to step back a little bit, at Rockbridge, relatively youngish company, when I started, and they've always been super involved in the community. And so like, even when I started there in 2008, they were involved- still are, I think, one of the biggest sort of fundraisers and teams for Big Brothers Big Sisters. They do this incredible event called Bowl for Kids' Sake, every March. February or March,  is a really cool event. So it was really interesting for me to see, to come into a company and see oh, wow, like, it's not just work, work, work, work, work. It's this company wants to be part of the community. So Pelotonia started in 2009. First ride was in 2009. And there's actually a person or two at Rockbridge that had ridden in the ride those first two years, just by themselves. They were someone that loves cycling, you know, and people that love cycling, love signing up for these century rides, which seems really crazy to ride a bike a hundred miles. And then in 2011, we decided to start a team. So we were going to start a team Rockbridge and rally sort of some of the employees and make it like a really fun, engaging activity. And that was the first time I had like, figured out how do you fundraise and how do you ask people for money. And one of the pieces of advice I got was like, share your story with people. And so I would write these letters to friends and family and you know, the idea of writing down sort of my story- and that was like the first time I had really like articulated, beginning to end, here's my story, here is how cancer has impacted my life and my family's life and all this stuff. It's certainly part of the healing process, which I don't think I appreciated at the time. I think I thought and hoped like, you know, couple months after that surgery, like that was a moment in time, and I'm done with this and sort of can move on. That's not exactly what happens. Like it's a very much over time you sort of become introspective about it and learn from it. And it's the same thing with gaining perspective from it. Like I didn't wake up one day in March of 2008, and like have completely different thoughts and perspective on life. Like I was focused on getting toColumbus, and then when I got to Columbus, I was focused on doing my work. I wanted to be like a really good analyst, and I wanted to perform really well. And it's sort of over time, and talking with people, and writing, journaling, doing all these things that you start to like pull out of your head, sort of the- you build the perspective and the appreciation for what you went through. And I think the only way to do that is sort of by yourself in that manner and it became really powerful. And it's still, you know, I think still, to this day, I think about my cancer journey every single day, when I look in the mirror, I have a scar that goes from my heart down through my pelvis, you know, and it's a half inch thick, and it's never going away. It's like the very first thing I look at every morning, very last thing I look at every night. So it's, you know, sticks with you.

Callan Harrington  35:42

I'm curious, when you see that, as you had just kind of described, how does that serve you? And is that a reminder of what's important? Or what what is kind of, in your mind, what is that? When you see that, what do you think?

Joe Apgar  35:55

I think it's changed over time. It was an incision that was stapled together. So I had these staples in there for a while. And so, you know, early days, it looked pretty gnarly. And then it sort of, over time, fades. But it's such a big scar, it's never going away. You know, I've had like other sort of stitches and stuff that, you know, it's hard to find at this point on my body, but this thing will never, never go away. I kind of look at it now, as I'm getting a little older, and you know, thirty-seven now. I was twenty-one, twenty-two when I had cancer. Sort of like a daily reminder of like how important your health is. And that it can be taken away at any time. And that's something relatively new for me. I've always been pretty healthy, would eat decently healthy, but like, would try to work out, but have not until the last couple of years been like really focused on like, I actually want to live a really long, healthy life. I want to be around for when my daughter is an adult. What's all that look like? What's that mean? What are the choices that I'm making every day? And so like now, when I look at it, I sort of try to ground myself and like, alright, let's make some healthy choices today. And like just get a little healthier today. I think that's sort of where it sits with me today.

Callan Harrington  37:12

A question that I have is, has it been a change for you? So Rockbridge, great company, doing a lot of great things from from a fundraising perspective, and giving back to the community and things like that. But now you're at Pelotonia, which has a direct tie to a very impactful thing in your life. It is a full blown, I mean, I can't even call it a mission driven company, because that's what it's- everything about that is purely for that reason. How was that different?

Joe Apgar  37:43

Yeah, I get asked that a lot. You know, what's it like working in Pelotonia versus a place like Rockbridge? I would say there's a lot of things that are different. There's a lot of things that are the same. You know, I think one of the things that makes Rockbridge great and successful, and I think some of the best people in the world work there, there's really high expectations when you work there. There's really high expectations of doing really good work, of getting things done the right way, of getting them done on time, like all these things. Like it's just- it's a culture of really high expectations. It's the same thing at Pelotonia. It's the reason we're sort of as big, and as known, and as good as we are. The experience is first class, not just in Columbus or Central Ohio, but across the country. I mean, we get feedback all the time and people that ride and people that helped produce our event. Pelotonia is one of the best cycling events in the country. Bar none. It's because it starts with high expectations. You have to have a lot of pride in your work. I have always thought, and my boss at Rockbridge, my very first boss, a guy named Brett, always told me, like you're putting your name on your work. So you should be proud of what you're producing. Like you shouldn't do anything halfway. Anything you're producing, is going to have your name on it. And so like think about it like that, like take pride in your work. And everyone that works at Pelotonia takes a ton of pride in their work. I think the differences are, you know, Rockbridge is an investment firm. They invest in hotels, and real estate, and one of the end goals for them is to make money for their investors. So they're, you know, their business is set up where they have outside investors who are looking to make money. And if the investors make money, Rockbridge makes money. The investors don't make money, Rockbridge isn't going to make money. Peletonia, no individual at the organization is there to make money personally. It's just not how a nonprofit is setup. No one has any wealth creation mechanisms. No one has any sort of long term compensation mechanisms. It's you know, we're all there because we're very community focused, community oriented, and we're trying to build an experience that is worthy of us asking our volunteers to go ask their friends and family for money. It's a very personal and sensitive thing to ask people for money. There's a lot of people that don't like to do it. And so we've always thought about, like, how do we put on such a great experience that unlocks the value and unlocks people's ability to, you know, lets the fear down on going to ask friends and family for money, that they want to because the cause is so great, the work that's being done with the money is so great. And, you know, our job at the end of the day is to just create that experience for people. That's an unforgettable experience. We're not the scientists, right. So we're sort of the conduit of the community and that money to the research enterprise at the James. And so we fit in as delivering this amazing experience. But I think back to the similarity of Rockbridge and Pelotonia, and any other high performing organization, there's tons of high performing organizations in Columbus. It's like the pride in your work. And like nothing disgusts me more than someone that doesn't take pride in their work. It's a waste. And because I went through an experience where I almost lost my own life, I'm not going to waste anything. I'm not going to waste my own time, I'm not going to waste my own effort. And like, if you don't take pride in your work, and do the best you can do every time you produce something. And that's not just producing work, it's like anything in your life, then don't do it. Like, what's the point? If you're not going to do it really well. That's not to say things are perfect, or done correctly, or whatever. But it's like that effort that goes into something, you have to take a lot of pride in.

Callan Harrington  41:38

So if I'm hearing what you're saying, it's yeah, there's definitely that emotional attachment to the job that I'm at. But the reality is, it's no different than anything. We hold ourselves to a very high standard, just as a very successful for profit company would hold themselves to a very high standard. I almost wonder if it's almost more so because what you're doing that for has just a deeper meaning to it. Now that I'm saying that, do you ever find it to be a challenge? And what I'm really interested in this question is your wife, Jill, was also on the podcast. And so both of you have been extremely successful. And hearing a lot of what you're saying in regard to how important that the family, friends, both of you are very successful roles. How do you make sure, especially given you're at a role that you could probably work twenty-four hours a day at, that's my guess, because of the deeper meaning to it? How do you balance all of it?

Joe Apgar  42:41

I think there's all sorts of literature, and feel like, you know, people like Jeff Bezos and all the popular figures, Elon Musk, everyone has something to say about work-life balance, or work-life integration, or there's no such thing. You know, my role, it's very, like public facing community role. And so there's never- if I'm in Columbus, and that includes in an airplane that's leaving Columbus, like I'm working. I always see someone, always see someone from the Peletonia community. I love talking to people, you know, you go through the airport, or go to a restaurant, someone's wearing a t shirt, like, it's amazing. Also sort of never lets you shut off. And you know, my wife has her own business that she's growing, and previous to that she was in corporate retail. And we have a daughter, we have a four year old daughter, that is sort of the center of our world. And I think for us, including each other in what we're doing is really important. The idea of work is not like this thing that dad goes and does and then comes back to, and like same for you know, my wife. Our daughter doesn't see my wife work on her business, building her business, and sort of then come home and be a different person. It's just like part of sort of who we are. My daughter knows everything about Pelotonia. Like she thinks Pelotonia is so cool. One day she wants to be a scientist, thinks science is really cool, which I think is a direct factor of just, you know, being around Pelotonia. But she sees that, she feels it, she understands it. When we go out into the community, she gets introduced to people that are part of the Pelotonia community, like all this stuff. So it's not there's no like, sort of fence up between our work and our personal life. I very much love what I do. I mean, you know, organizing a bike ride for adults is great. Like it's super fun. I love cycling. I love the end mission of what we're doing. I love talking to researchers. Last night we had a happy hour with ten researchers that we funded, and like just to hear why these people were so passionate about the research is incredible and so motivating. It's all sort of integrated into my life. And it was really easy because when I was working at Rockbridge, my outlet away from work was actually to go ride my bike and train for Pelotonia. And so now it's just like, I mean, I haven't had a day where I've driven to the office and not wanted to go to the office. I love what I do. My wife loves what she does. And we have just very open conversation about what's going on. How do we make our schedules work? How do we prioritize? You've got to- people don't like to always prioritize things over another thing. But at the end of the day, you've got to like force rank and say, these are the things that we need to prioritize over these other things. Like having that sort of foundation at home's been really helpful, because we're never really off.

Callan Harrington  45:38

That makes complete sense. And I say that because I just think the more successful you become just in general, you have to be ruthless with what you cut out. Not necessarily ruthless, like tell somebody no, in a mean way. It's just, I don't know, I find that I want to try to help everybody. Reality is, I can't, and as much as I want to be able to do that, I have to cut things out of the schedule. Is that what you're saying?

Joe Apgar  46:01

Oh, yeah, we cut a lot of things out of our schedule. I mean, a lot of times, it's just, we've got five things we could go to in an evening. And you've got to pick one, right? That's like, the most common thing is a lot of nighttime events or weekend events. It's like you got to pick something. It's hard because you want to be everywhere. What you realize now it sort of ebbs and flows, even for me to this day. Like, I'll over commit myself for periods, weeks at a time. And then I'll get to the end of that and be like, ugh, just exhausted, I need to say no to more stuff. And then I'll like over clear my calendar, a little bit, right? You know, and so it's like, how do you find that, that happy medium? I think for us, and this is where I feel super fortunate, most of the things I go to are really fun. There's rarely stuff that I attend or go to where I'm like, this is gonna be a drag. I can't even remember the last time I went to something and like, didn't want to be there. Most Pelotonia events are really fun. It's people throwing fundraisers or, you know, happy hour, you know, we go to these company meetings, and or other sort of private events and stuff. And so it's always generally fun, which makes things way, way easier. But I think, for us, we also like have a vision of what we want our life to look like, what we want our daughter to see us doing, like we want her daughter to see us, giving back to the community. That makes it really, you know, my job makes it easy for her to see that, right? Being a good sort of community member, a good neighbor, all these things. And so, you know, just sort of making sure that she can see that. We still spend a lot of time with my family. And my family lives here now. So my parents moved here, my sister moved here from Pennsylvania, during the pandemic. So like, every Friday night, we have dinner, like my mom cooks dinner, and we go to their house. And it's super fun. Like, that's something I rarely miss. And so we've prioritized that over some other things, but it's hard to say no to stuff. It's hard to say no to stuff that you want to do. But you can't do everything you want to do. And I don't know that everyone's in that same situation, where people are having to say yes to things that they don't really want to do, but that might be good for their career. When you start thinking about it in that way, like, I'm very fortunate, I get to say yes to a lot of fun things.

Callan Harrington  48:21

And you said this, but what going on in my mind is, you got to say no to a lot of fun things.

Joe Apgar  48:24

You got to say no to a lot of fun things too. And sometimes those are personal things. I've missed weddings of some really close friends, you know, because of prior commitments. I'm missing a wedding this summer with one of my best friends. And, you know, I talked to him about it two days ago. I said look, you know, it's just, I'm not gonna be able to make it work. And I feel terrible. But let's figure out this other thing we can do together and sort of celebrate at the end of the year. And that kind of stuff used to really beat me up. I think what I learned over time was you got to trust your gut when you make those decisions. And like, as long as I feel good about that I'm making the right decision, like I'm cool with it. Really sad to miss his wedding, but I also know that staying here and going to the couple events I've already committed to is the right thing to do. I gave some people my word that I was going to be at this event, and so I'm gonna be there. If you don't sort of feel comfortable in that area it'll eat you alive.

Callan Harrington  49:15

It's 100%. This is something I've had to personally work on, probably the past couple of years, I was doing too much and just burned myself out, trying to do it all. And then you end up, for me, what the issue would be is like, man, I don't know who to say no to here, and then it's 25th hour, and now, nobody's happy. And you don't give yourself that opportunity, like you just said, to say, hey, I can't do this, but let's try to do this. And I think that's super important. But if you're waiting for the last minute to do all that, like you're not going to be- like it's gonna be impossible. It's like, oh well, how are we going to plan this? Yeah, it's gonna be really challenging. So the last question I want to wrap this up on, you probably already answered it about thirty to forty different ways, is: if you could have a conversation with your younger self, what would that conversation be? What advice would you give them?

Joe Apgar  50:07

A couple of things. You know, one is, kind of figure out what makes you happy. I think one of the most important things you can do in life is figure out what makes you happy. And understand that the things that make other people happy aren't necessarily the things that are gonna make you happy. There's a lot of, especially with social media and sort of social media is just head garbage, you know, for most people, and a necessary evil for a lot of people too, right, like businesses and all these things. But you know, when people start going into these sort of rabbit holes, and comparing themselves to people, and seeing what other people are doing, and they're not doing, makes it hard, but you got to figure out what makes you happy. For me, I really like surrounding myself with what's really like a smaller group of people that are like my really close friends and family. And then I've got a much wider group of people that I enjoy spending time with. And so my relationships, and my friendships, and my family are really important. Having a really good marriage is important, being a really good dad is important. Also, especially people that are younger in their careers, like being conscious about money. I can't stand when older people give advice of like, don't think about money. I think that's irresponsible to be like, just follow your passion, don't worry about the money, that'll come. Like, I actually think that's like irresponsible advice. It costs money to live. And you need to make a certain amount of money to not have the stress of living paycheck to paycheck, and all those things. So like, I think you have to make some very conscious decisions about money, what you want to do with money, how much money you want to have, is all sort of different for everybody. But like should be on the table as a conversation, because there's, there's real conversation and like real sort of necessary conversation that should happen. So like a lot of people think, oh, like I worked at Rockbridge, I was paid very well, I took a huge pay cut to go to Pelotonia. Like, I must have just never thought about money, it must have never been like an issue. And the fact of the matter was like it was an issue.Like, I very much negotiated what I needed when I went to Pelotonia, my wife and I had saved money for a long time so that we can have flexibility. Money was the thing that let me go do Pelotonia. Like if we hadn't saved money, or we hadn't been thoughtful about our money, or had conversations about money, I'm never at Pelotonia. We would have just looked at it and been like, can't make it happen. And so I think figuring out what makes you happy, the cost of the life that you want, and there's no right or wrong answers there for people. It looks different for everyone. And getting an understanding of that earlier in your career, I think it's really important. Also recognizing that that might change. As you have family, if you have a spouse, as things go on, like your money needs might go up, your friendship and family needs might change, maybe you need to shrink your circle a little bit, do things like that, if you sort of fast forward to the end of life, there's very few things that are really going to matter. And the one thing that is gonna matter is the people that are sort of there with you at the end of life, the people that show up to your funeral, whatever that might be, and how do you work backwards from that. And so I try to spend a lot of time thinking about what makes me happy, doing things that sort of are in honor of that, or work towards that. And sort of just being content with that, not needing more than I need. I'm not like chasing anything. If I was chasing something, I never would have left Rockbridge, right, I would have stayed, I would have tried to make as much money as I could, and done all these things, and who knows what my life would look like. But I think just having that understanding of, want to be a really good husband, I want to be a really good dad, want to be a really good son, and brother, and friend. And if I can sort of do that every single day, and treat people really kindly and well, and help people develop in their careers, and all that stuff. And to me that's very successful.

Callan Harrington  54:08

I love that. And, I mean, I would tell you one of the things that you hit on, especially if you want to be an entrepreneur, is you got to save. I was fortunate, I saved a lot leading up to it. And as a result of that, I could take a little bit bigger risks.

Joe Apgar  54:25

Yeah.

Callan Harrington  54:26

And it afforded me that, and then even in the first year, where for us the first year went really well. Second year kind of going into the market dip, not so well, but I'm not stressed about it at all, because the cushion that was was there. And if you're operating from a "I'm really stressed" mindset, that can make things a lot more difficult. Something that you may have loved doing might not be something that you enjoy doing under that kind of stress.

Joe Apgar  54:50

Yeah, you make bad decisions when you're stressed. And I don't know what you got into when you talked with my wife on your podcast, but like she's run her business like so lean, and from like this vantage point of scarcity and like, trying to sort of be really thoughtful about the money side of it, because I think poor financial decisions sink a good business pretty quickly. And so it's just, I always tried to tell people, like, don't make money your thing. But don't leave it out of the equation, either. It's got to be a table topic, sort of, you know, all this stuff. And it's important. So that's why I've always said like, it's don't listen to those people that are like, follow your dreams, like follow your passions. Don't worry about the money. Like, that's kind of hard if you have $100,000 in school debt. Right?

Callan Harrington  55:37

Like, yeah, for sure. It's, I think you said it best, right? I've never heard it said that way. But it doesn't have to be everything, but figure it out. So it's not something that's going to be in the back of your mind at all times. I love that. Joe, I could talk for hours on this. This has been incredible for me. Thank you again for coming on the show.

Joe Apgar  55:38

Yeah. Thanks for having me.

Callan Harrington  56:03

I hope you enjoyed Joe and I's conversation. It served as an excellent reminder that if you've got great friends and family, you have everything. If you want to learn more about Joe, you could find him on LinkedIn in the show notes. Also, if you liked this episode, you could find me on LinkedIn to let me know. And if you really want to support the show, a review on Apple Podcast or Spotify is very much appreciated. Thanks for listening, everybody, and I'll see you next week.