Shannon Welch: humble beginnings to influencing land use in Episode 277

In this engaging episode of "Conversations with Big Rich," host Rich Klein sits down with the dynamic Shannon Welch, a prominent figure in the off-road community. Shannon's journey from her humble beginnings in Rochester, New York, to becoming a significant influencer in the off-road and land use sectors is highlighted in this riveting discussion.

Shannon shares stories from her upbringing in Rochester, her academic journey at Ithaca College, and her initial career in tech recruiting in Southern California.

Discover how a chance encounter with public lands and off-roading led Shannon to a new and exciting lifestyle, full of unexpected adventures and challenges.

Learn about Shannon’s pivotal role in supporting Kevin Secalas and the Big Ugly Racing team, which led her to a deeper involvement with King of the Hammers.

Shannon discusses her transition from a corporate career to working with Dave Cole on King of the Hammers, emphasizing the trials, triumphs, and the significant impact she made in the off-road community.

As a board member of the Blue Ribbon Coalition, Shannon is passionate about preserving public lands for recreational use. She reflects on her ongoing efforts in land use advocacy and her future aspirations.

Shannon Welch's story is one of resilience, innovation, and a profound commitment to the off-road lifestyle and land preservation. Her journey serves as an inspiration to those looking to blend passion with purpose.

Transcript

[00:00:05.100] 

Welcome to Conversations with Big Rich. This is an interview-style podcast. Those interviewed are all involved in the off-road industry. Being involved, like all of my guests are, is a lifestyle, not just a job. I talk to past, present, and future legends, as well as business owners, employees, media, and land use warriors, men and women who have found their way into this exciting and addictive lifestyle we call off-road. We discuss their personal history, struggles, successes, and reboots. We dive into what drives them to stay active and off-road. We all hope to shed some light on how to find a path into this world that we live and love and call off-road. Whether you're crawling the Red Rocks of Moab or hauling your toys to the trail, Maxx has the tires you can trust for performance and durability.

[00:00:54.900] 

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[00:01:12.060] - Big Rich Klein

My next guest appeared on my radar at K-O-H, and since then has become a business owner and a board member for the Blue Ribbon Coalition. Shannon Welch is moving and grooving into the future. Hello, Shannon Welch. So good to have you on the podcast. I'm looking forward to this conversation. I first met you or became aware of you at K-O-H, and have followed you since, so it'll be good to get some background on you.

[00:01:44.720] - Shannon Welch

Hey, Rich. Good morning. Thanks for having me on. I'm honored to be on the show.

[00:01:47.980] - Big Rich Klein

Yeah. So let's jump right in with both feet and ask that first question, the very beginning of life. Where were you born and raised? Sure.

[00:01:58.340] - Shannon Welch

I was born and I was in Rochester, New York. And then, well, born in Rochester, lived there. And then in a little town outside of Rochester called Hilton, New York, is where I spent my first 18 years. Yeah.

[00:02:10.680] - Big Rich Klein

Okay. And that's a fairly It's a fairly populated area. I wouldn't call it rural. Is that correct?

[00:02:19.640] - Shannon Welch

That's a tough call. Rochester is fairly populated. I think people are surprised when I call it the Rust Belt, but it is. That's where Eastman Kodak was founded. When I was young, it was Eastman Kodak, Xerox, Bauch and Lomb. We're the three big companies, and the biggest employer now is the university and the hospital system. There was a city It was thriving, but I would say it was during the manufacturing era. But I grew up on 20 acres. We had horses, that thing. So not totally city, not totally rural, somewhere in between. Okay. Yeah.

[00:03:03.740] - Big Rich Klein

Yeah. And, Rodchester, when my schooling, I got my degree in Commercial Photography, Product Advertising.

[00:03:10.460] - Shannon Welch

Oh, yeah.

[00:03:11.160] - Big Rich Klein

I had three choices going to college. Where I wanted for photography. And I chose Santa Barbara and Brooks Institute, but there was LA Art Institute, and then there was the RIT, Rochester Institute of Technology, which was the Kodak School, basically.

[00:03:30.960] - Shannon Welch

Basically. That's where my sister actually went to college.

[00:03:33.340] - Big Rich Klein

I almost ended up there. Almost.

[00:03:37.380] - Shannon Welch

But Santa Barbara- Santa Barbara was a better choice, I would say.

[00:03:40.240] - Big Rich Klein

I thought so.

[00:03:42.060] - Shannon Welch

At least for the winters. People do not understand how cold and how much snow there is in that part of the country. It's a very different way of growing up, for sure.

[00:03:50.260] - Big Rich Klein

You guys get the Lake effect, don't you?

[00:03:53.180] - Shannon Welch

We do. Absolutely. We get absolutely buried. When I When I was in college, I'd go in to type a paper and come out and I couldn't find the stairs. You have to do this real funky little trick to actually get back out. Digging your toe in to see if there's a step underneath it because it will drop two feet in just a very short period of time.

[00:04:18.380] - Big Rich Klein

Hilarious. You said you had horses and stuff in 20 acres, so that was probably your major activity besides regular family life and school?

[00:04:34.800] - Shannon Welch

We had a hectic... Well, so I moved in with my aunt and uncle. My aunt and uncle took in me and my two sisters when I was 11. They had the 20 acres, so we lived with them. They had three kids of their own, two-step kids. There was between 8 and 14 people that lived in that house from 11 to 18 years old. Wow. Yeah, there were horses, there were a lot of small kids. That was There was a lot to take care of all of that. It was good. I mean, learned a lot about work ethic living with them. My aunt and uncle owned their own businesses. Really, you were going to school unless you were dying, and you were going to do chores before you went somewhere. I think that work ethic really helped define me a lot. Yeah, it was good. I was the oldest of the six kids in the house, and so there was always something something that needed tending to, whether it was the animals or somebody had split open a finger or dinner needed to be cooked or whatever. Being the oldest of that many is a lot sometimes, but it was good.

[00:05:42.720] - Big Rich Klein

Right. Being the oldest, you had the most responsibilities?

[00:05:46.540] - Shannon Welch

Oh, yeah, for sure. 100%. Well, I think that's always how it is when you're the oldest, right? But if your sister gets in trouble, it's because you weren't watching her. It's like, wait. It had nothing to do with the fact that she had her own bad ideas there, right? But, yeah, it was good. There was a big age gap. The youngest is 15 years younger than me. There was me and my two sisters and then my three cousins. The older ones took care of the little ones.

[00:06:24.660] - Big Rich Klein

Was it all girls? It was good.

[00:06:28.060] - Shannon Welch

I have two biological sisters, and then it was two boys and four girls.

[00:06:34.440] - Big Rich Klein

Okay. All right. So a little bit of balance there.

[00:06:37.920] - Shannon Welch

A little bit, but the boys were 11 and 12 years younger than me. So my growing up- That was still in estrogen overload. Yeah. Well, and there wasn't girl tasks and boy tasks when I lived there or chores. You know what I mean? I mowed the lawn and I did the drilling. And if my uncle needed heavy lifting, I was the one helping him with that thing. Because there wasn't a boy to do it, and it needed to get done, which is good. Honestly, I think it toughened me up quite a bit, I will say.

[00:07:13.820] - Big Rich Klein

There are some periods in your life where you probably needed that.

[00:07:18.300] - Shannon Welch

Oh, yeah, for sure. I remember my... I had a terrible... My first car, I think it was a terrible car. I spent $550 on it. But it got me to and from work in school and sports, which was all I needed it to do. But I came out my last day of my senior year of high school and had a flat tire, and my sister had missed the bus, so I had to take her to school, too. I didn't know how to change a flat tire. My uncle was busy dealing with something work-wise. He's like, Come on, Shannon, you've got this. Me and my sisters figured how to change a tire. We learned a valuable lesson, don't check it up, and then loosen the lug nuts up. Right.

[00:07:57.410] - Big Rich Klein

That's the first step everybody messes It was an interesting morning.

[00:08:02.840] - Shannon Welch

Never forgotten. But yeah, the first tire change was done. The three of us spinning the tire. It was not the smart way to do it, but we got it done. Got to school a little late, but it was good.

[00:08:13.780] - Big Rich Klein

And the tire didn't fall off on the way to school?

[00:08:16.260] - Shannon Welch

No, thank God. I think my uncle came out just in time to check the lug knots before we drove off. Perfect.

[00:08:26.020] - Big Rich Klein

So what were your major chores back then, living on a mini ranch.

[00:08:33.360] - Shannon Welch

A mini farm? Yeah, a hobby farm. Really, we had a lot of grass to mow. My aunt and uncle had planted these trees. We had a 500-foot long driveway, and they'd planted these maple trees, and they were little. In the summer, I had to go out and water them, and I couldn't stand them. But honestly, it's amazing now because the way the fall colors change there, they have this entire canopy that covers their entire driveway for 500 feet all these magical colors. The fact that they had that vision from the minute they built that house and that they wanted that is cool. At the time, I hated it. I hated watering those trees so much.

[00:09:10.240] - Big Rich Klein

You never drove over them?

[00:09:12.520] - Shannon Welch

I wanted to, but no. In fact, it's funny. My husband now, I brought him home and he was like, he just really wanted to mow the lawn. I don't think he'd ever seen a lawn that big because he grew up in Southern California. My uncle's like, Don't hit my trees. Just don't hit my trees. Chris goes out and my uncle's standing there, he's like, he's going to hit my trees. I'm like, no, if I didn't kill him, he's not going to kill him. Don't worry about it. He just didn't hit the trees. But that's the one thing my uncle's stressed about. It was pretty funny.

[00:09:41.700] - Big Rich Klein

So then what student were you? I would imagine most of the time when I have women on the podcast, the women were much better at school than the guys I've... The ratio is like 99 % of the women were good students, 98% of the guys were not so good students.

[00:10:09.020] - Shannon Welch

I can totally see that across the board. Yeah, no, I was one of those straight A honor roll students. They didn't really know what to do with me when I was a kid.

[00:10:19.020] - Big Rich Klein

The ones that always screwed up the curve.

[00:10:21.820] - Shannon Welch

Probably, yeah. That was probably me. It was interesting. First, I was in Inner City Schools when I was really young, and they skipped me a couple of grades because I got there and they didn't really know what to do with me. It was a little young Sheldon-ish, if you will. I wasn't that bad. But that was weird because here's this little five-year-old sitting in classes with eight-year-olds, and it didn't quite work. So they just kept moving me around for quite a bit. Then when I moved out to the country, if you will, Hilton, where I grew up and graduated from, they put me in this, I don't know, it was this We had experimental class. There were five of us in fifth grade that they did this thing where we only had a teacher every other day. Really? Yeah. No, it was interesting. There were five of us. We only had this gifted teacher every other day. And then on the days when we didn't, we were allowed to sit in the back of another class or go to the library and do our own work. So that was my introduction to this. That was my first year in the Hilton Schools.

[00:11:29.020] - Shannon Welch

And then we went into junior high, and then they had honor programs and stuff like that, and they put us on that track. But yeah, it was a little weird, a little different. Actually, it was really cool. The internet was just... It wasn't what we know of it today, but we had this computer that was connected, and I had a pen pal in Australia, and I would go in and type on this thing, and I'd get a letter back the next day. I really was doing my own research and my own stuff at 11: 00. It was a unique time.

[00:11:57.860] - Big Rich Klein

Awesome.

[00:11:59.180] - Shannon Welch

Yeah.

[00:12:00.360] - Big Rich Klein

I didn't do any research. I mean, we had encyclopedias. I love encyclopedias. I don't remember getting involved or really enjoying school until sixth grade. Okay. Then I had a teacher that opened the windows for me, you might say.

[00:12:21.500] - Shannon Welch

You need those teachers. It was that library for me. Her name was Dr. Sherwood. I don't know, she saw something in me, man. When I didn't have a teacher that year, she just point me in a direction in the library and be like, Go check this out. Libraries are my... Card catalogs, which kids don't even know today, the smell of them. That was my Google. I loved it. I loved it.

[00:12:47.060] - Big Rich Klein

As you got into high school and you're in the honors programs and things like that, were you collecting college credits at that point, or was it just prep?

[00:13:01.220] - Shannon Welch

There were some college credits collected there. My grandfather was very big. Nobody in my family had gone to college before. He pretty much told me from the day I was born that I was going to college come hell or high water. That was the goal. That was always the goal. I did collect some college credits. I played field hockey. I was that girl who did a lot of the stuff. I was in the senior play. I did the head of the debate team, you name it. I did all the stuff.

[00:13:31.860] - Big Rich Klein

You were in a play. What was your role and what was the play? Do you remember?

[00:13:38.220] - Shannon Welch

Oh, my gosh. It's going to come to me. I want to say it wasn't Crimes of the Heart. What was it? Wow. No, it's not coming to me right now. It had been made into a movie. I was the lead. Gosh. Diane Keaton. It was a movie with Diane Keaton. It's not Crimes of the Heart, but I cannot come up with the name of it now. That's so funny.

[00:14:03.660] - Big Rich Klein

But you were the lead. Okay. You weren't like, Third tree, stage left.

[00:14:08.480] - Shannon Welch

Oh, no. In fact, it was really vulnerable. I don't like singing. My dad is a singer. I have professional singers in my family, and I don't sing. I can't carry a tune. The play opened with me singing Happy Birthday to Myself with a candle in front of the entire audience. That was probably one of the scariest things I've ever done in my life.

[00:14:29.220] - Big Rich Klein

Did your voice crack?

[00:14:31.200] - Shannon Welch

I think it did. I think that was purposeful on the whole thing, so it worked out all right. But yeah.

[00:14:37.220] - Big Rich Klein

You weren't supposed to belt it out professionally?

[00:14:40.380] - Shannon Welch

No, I was supposed to be pathetic and singing Happy birthday to Myself. Okay. All right.

[00:14:48.200] - Big Rich Klein

Then you get through high school. Well, let's go back to this first car because that was part of high school. $550 first car. What was it?

[00:14:59.320] - Shannon Welch

Yeah. It was a Citation 2, which honestly, most people hadn't even seen because it actually had a trunk versus the hatchback. Power steering didn't work in it, but it drove and it got me to where I needed to be. I had a four-mile radius that I had to do things in, and it did that for me, and that was the goal.

[00:15:21.840] - Big Rich Klein

After that $550 car gave up the ghost, what was the next vehicle?

[00:15:30.000] - Shannon Welch

So I went a long time without a vehicle. I went to college without a vehicle at all. So I went from driving on these country roads where there was one stop sign on most of my routes to four years of college. I went to school in Ithaca, which is they really didn't want you to have a car on campus to begin with, and my car wasn't going to make it there. And then I moved to Southern California, so I literally We learned to drive on the 405 freeway, which was terrifying. My next car was... My boyfriend had a Saturn, so I drove that for a while.

[00:16:13.400] - Big Rich Klein

I got to ask, was it green?

[00:16:15.020] - Shannon Welch

Yeah, it was purple.

[00:16:16.680] - Big Rich Klein

Purple, okay.

[00:16:19.580] - Shannon Welch

I drove that in Southern California. Then I think a Grandam. I bought a Grandam. I don't know why I bought a Grandam. It was a Sedan. I really wasn't a car person. I didn't want to be a car person. My dad was a mechanic. My uncle was a mechanic, especially in Rochester, New York. That's a really hard life. My one thing I told my girlfriends in college that I didn't want was to ever be involved with a guy who had any interest in vehicles. Really? Yeah. No. Automotive was not going to be my world. I was hell-bent on it. How did I do?

[00:16:57.860] - Big Rich Klein

You failed.

[00:16:59.540] - Shannon Welch

Yeah, not so great.

[00:17:05.840] - Big Rich Klein

Coming after college, what was your major in college? What were you studying?

[00:17:14.620] - Shannon Welch

Well, again, I ended up in this weird thing where they had this unique honors program where I got to do cross-study between a bunch of different stuff. It was called Media Studies. Big part of that was something... There were a lot of things emerging at the time. The Internet was just emerging when I started college. My first day, I'd never really heard of the Internet. My first day, they were like, You have to have an email address for all of your classes. I'm like, I don't even know what an email address is.

[00:17:43.300] - Big Rich Klein

So was it a Hotmail?

[00:17:44.430] - Shannon Welch

So I was right in that Bubble. No, you had to get it through the college, which actually... So Ithaca at the time was the most connected college, most connected city as far as Internet goes, and this was '95. So Half of my classes were online, which was unheard of at the time. We were collaborating with Cornell and stuff like that because Cornell was really big on early internet stuff. Ithaca had two colleges, Ithaca College and Cornell. And so we were really collaborating and doing really advanced stuff with the internet at the time. So that was my jump into college. I got to study the internet in different ways. Organizational communication was part of it. I didn't know what social media was going to be, but my senior thesis was on that social media was coming, and I could not wait for it to come because I thought it was finally going to be a game changer for people. So that was really what I studied all four years was how we were going to take communication away from three major television stations and five companies that owned every newspaper and how the average person was going to be able to tell their own story was basically what I spent four years studying in various ways around their communications program.

[00:19:00.000] - Big Rich Klein

And you graduated with a bachelor's or did you get a master's? Bachelors.

[00:19:05.470] - Shannon Welch

Bachelors, that was interesting. My advisor, when I said I wasn't applying to grad school, told me, Well, if you want to waste your effing life, you go ahead and do that. She was absolutely pissed at me. But I grew up blue collar and I was like, So what am I going on to get a master's or a higher education? And unless I'm just going to stay in higher education, And one of the things I found really interesting in college, I grew up with hard working blue collar people around me, and college felt... The professors I loved were the ones that hadn't lived in academia their whole lives. They'd come to it later in life thing. They'd had practical, real world experiences that they could share. And so I wanted that. I was like, they wanted me to go down this professor route and all of this stuff. And I was like, I just couldn't see it. I just couldn't imagine taking on more debt for no reason. I mean, I was pretty fortunate, actually. I got a pretty expensive education, and it was mostly covered through scholarships and whatnot. So I left without a lot of debt.

[00:20:09.140] - Shannon Welch

And I just couldn't imagine taking on more debt for what? A degree that would only work to stay in academia? So, yeah, I was like, No, I got to get a job. I ended up applying for a temp agency the summer before, and they offered me recruiting gig with them, which I had done the summer before. Actually, they kept hiring me while I was away at school, so I kept recruiting for them my senior year. And then when I was graduating, I applied to a number of different I don't know. I could have gone to work for the Big Five and a couple of other ones. But the highest offer I got was back from that agency. They brought me back to California, where my then-fiance was. I spent 13 years with them doing high-end tech recruiting, which mostly ended up being for international law firms based out of the LA area and stuff like that. So tech industry was becoming a big thing. I understood tech. I was also help desk for our college My then-fiancey worked for a video game company. So the whole tech world was really my thing and being able to talk to people I could do.

[00:21:26.010] - Shannon Welch

So did that for 13 years.

[00:21:28.840] - Big Rich Klein

Okay. And after the Saturn, how long were you in the Saturn the whole time, those 13 years with that boyfriend? No.

[00:21:42.600] - Shannon Welch

Well, I bought a Grand Am brand new. I don't know. My dad was a car salesman, and my dad said, This is a solid, reliable car. Go get this car. So I went and got that car. He'd gone from fixing cars to selling them. And he lived in Pennsylvania at the time. But he was like, No, this will be a solid car for you. Go get that. So I just got a Sedan, did that. And then after that, got an Explorer Sport. So the two-door small Explorer Sport, not four-wheel drive. I laughed. I'm like, Why would anybody in Southern California need four-wheel drive? You don't have snow. And I wasn't a car person, not at all. So then I had that. I really fell in love a little bit with that Explorer sport. That was probably the first car I had that I enjoyed. I had that when I first experienced off road. That was my car.

[00:22:41.280] - Big Rich Klein

Okay. What was that experience?

[00:22:46.280] - Shannon Welch

I did get married. We dated two years, engaged two years, married two years. I wanted more adventure. He worked in the video game industry. History and lived and breathed video games. I'm a very successful man in the video game industry to this day. But I was like, I need to be outside more. I need to do things. I don't think we thought much about that in our courtship until, established our career, bought our house, got started with life, had the wedding, and then all of a sudden I'm like, Well, so what do you want to do now? I want to go adventure. And he's like, I'm good for sitting home. I'm like, Oh, this has got me a problem for us. We separated, and then I ended up meeting a friend who had a dual sport, and I was not in a motorcycle at all. I was like, Yeah, good luck with that. Have fun. He's like, I lived literally at the base of Saddleback Mountain in Orange County. He's like, Have you ever been to the top of it? I'm like, How do you get to the top of it? Somebody's got to own that, right?

[00:23:55.580] - Shannon Welch

He's like, No, it's public land. I'm like, What's public land? He's like, Seriously? I'm like, Yeah, I have no idea what you're talking about right now. He took me to a parking lot, put me on the back of his dual sport, taught me how to act like a potato sack so I wouldn't throw off the balance on it. Then he took me up a dirt road to the top of Saddleback Mountain in Orange County, which is probably the least exciting way to learn off road, but it changed my entire life, actually. On the way up there, we saw a bunch of Jeeps. I told them I'd always wanted a Jeep, but I'd been told that they weren't practical or reliable for a girl, and they're really not great in Rochester, New York, when it's minus 15 most of the time.

[00:24:34.680] - Big Rich Klein

Oh, I understand. I drove a TJ across the northern route, 90, 94, and in the winter. Not the thing to do.

[00:24:47.380] - Shannon Welch

No, which is why they'd been really frowned upon when I said I was looking that route. But here we were. This kid, a Marine, he was back from I think he had a tour in Iraq. He was so young. I wasn't that old. I was 28, 29, but he was maybe 21, was sitting at the top of Saddleback and just wanted to talk. He talked to us for probably 2 hours up there, but he was telling us about this new Jeep called the Rubicon. If you're going to get a Jeep, you should really look at the Rubicon. Really passionate about Jeeps, just talked about them a lot. Then my buddy actually became interested in getting a Jeep. He needed a new vehicle at the time, so he got a Jeep. Then I went out with him a few times. But really, from the time he introduced me to public lands, I was like, This is amazing. People need to know about this. How do people not know this is a thing? How do we keep it clean and how do we work on it? This is so awesome. How do people not know that they can just go out and explore like this?

[00:25:48.310] - Shannon Welch

I was like, All right, well, aren't you interesting?

[00:25:52.380] - Big Rich Klein

Then you found out there's a whole bunch of people that do know about it.

[00:25:55.880] - Shannon Welch

Yeah, it turns out there are. At the time, I didn't know that. I thought it was the best kept secret. It is still to people who really have never experienced it. I don't think I really... I was almost 30 before I really went exploring or did anything off-road related and all.

[00:26:17.280] - Big Rich Klein

Okay. Then so how long after that trip to Saddleback did you go until you bought a four-wheel drive?

[00:26:25.820] - Shannon Welch

I bought a dual sport first. Oh, really? Yeah, that felt more affordable. Really, that was the adventures that I was doing with my buddy, and I really enjoyed it. Just being out in nature like that. Turns out I wasn't very good with the dual sport, though. I think the hardest test I've ever taken in my life was my motorcycle safety class. I'm not a naturally coordinated person, and I'd never driven anything with a clutch at that point. The bike was my first clutch. I remember the instructor telling me, Don't make me fail you because you can't keep this thing running. You know how to do everything but keep this bike running. So he didn't fail me. But yeah, that was the most exhausting test I've ever taken, but I passed. And I did the dirt bike thing for probably two years. And when 12-year-olds were flying past me on the trail, I was like, this is probably not the smartest thing for me. I dropped it. I'm only 5, too, so I could barely touch the ground on the what a dual sport we could find, which was a XT225. Then I was like, I want a Jeep.

[00:27:36.760] - Shannon Welch

At the time, I was going out and helping rebuild trails. I would literally show up in my two-wheel drive Ford Explorer Sport and be like, Anybody got a right seat? I jump in and go rebuild trails in the Angeles forest on the weekends for fun. Really, I needed my own Jeep, I think, at that point.

[00:27:55.680] - Big Rich Klein

When you bought that first Jeep, what did you do?

[00:28:02.280] - Shannon Welch

Oh, gosh. They had 0% financing, and it was like... I think I bought it on February 29th. I think it was literally the 0% finance was going to be that. I was like, I have to go buy this brand new Rubicon right now. I bought it. And then I didn't... I was so afraid of not doing it well around other people that I grabbed a girlfriend of mine and I was like, We're going to go do this trail called Clegg Horn, and I'm going to figure out how to put this thing in a four-wheel drive and do all these things. I've seen all the other guys do it. I just don't know how to do it. I don't want to embarrass myself if I go with them. She went and ran this trail. It was probably one of the jobstings I've ever done. My friends that all knew me were like, Why didn't you just call her Shannon? But I had to learn it for myself the first time. She and I went and did this trail, and I learned a bit about it. Fortunately, the people that I'd gotten involved with with rebuilding the trails.

[00:29:01.010] - Shannon Welch

They had their own Rubicon Owners Club of Southern California. There were a few of them that I really got tight with, and they were great. Honestly, they were starting to swap up their Jeeps to go from short arms to long arm kits. Anything that they were taking off their Jeep, they basically sold me as a hand me down thing. So I got it for half off. They helped me install it. I learned how to work on my own stuff, and they were an amazing community. I mean, they're still my closest friends, I would say. Awesome. Yeah.

[00:29:34.820] - Big Rich Klein

And you're still doing the tech and- Tech recruiting, still working in corporate America full-time.

[00:29:45.060] - Shannon Welch

Absolutely. So it would be pretty funny because I'd be in business suits in downtown LA or Orange County or whatever all week long. I'd pack my Jeep up Thursday night so that it was ready to go, and I'd leave work on Friday still in my suit and just go wherever everybody was going to go camping and wheeling for the weekend. I'd show up in my suit and my tent and get myself set up and throw all my business clothes in the back of the Jeep and then just go wheeling for the weekend.

[00:30:16.620] - Big Rich Klein

Nice. And what places did you wheel mostly down there, Southern California?

[00:30:22.260] - Shannon Welch

Well, Johnson Valley was a big one. Big, big one. That's probably what built me more than anything. The first time I went out there, I I didn't even have a four-wheel drive vehicle. I was still in my two-wheel drive Explorer sport the first time I went out there, and I didn't wheel. I right-seated that day. We did sledge, and it was amazing.

[00:30:42.380] - Big Rich Klein

What year was that about?

[00:30:45.220] - Shannon Welch

If I didn't have my Jeep yet, it must have been 2005, 20 years ago. 2004, 2005. It had to have been 2005. Yeah.

[00:30:55.400] - Big Rich Klein

And any names we'd recognize from that trip?

[00:31:01.440] - Shannon Welch

The only one you would recognize would be Kevin Sicalis, who he's not really in the scene anymore, but Big ugly Racing. If anybody was around during those days, during Ultra Four, King of the Hammers days, Kevin Sicalis was absolutely there. I met him through that whole group of friends. He didn't have a Rubicon. He'd built a TJ up to be like the Rubicon, so he was allowed to come out with some of them that weren't snooty about that. He was wild and reckless and the fastest one, and it was How fast can he get up the trail? And that thing. He was definitely there that day, and he was probably the only person... There was a lot of carnage that day. It was 33, 35-inch TJs going up sledge, and it was a very long day. That was the only name, I think, out of that group that anybody would perhaps recognize. Okay.

[00:31:56.500] - Big Rich Klein

Their next job after the tech recruiting, was that King of the Hammers?

[00:32:04.100] - Shannon Welch

It was. What happened, I guess, in the middle there a little bit. Kevin, he became my little brother. We did everything together. He's six years younger than me. When I met him, I was a divorcee with a new Jeep, and he was still in college. But he was this kid who just... He liked to build things. He was really good at it. He was a phenomenal driver. And mine was a daily driver. My TJ had to get me to and from Orange County on a daily basis, take clients out for lunch, that thing. So I could not destroy it at the hammers. So usually when I'd get out there, I do little trails, right? And then I jump in with Kevin and do the more extreme stuff. And so he and I were just, I don't know, thick as thieves back then. And one day I went to a shop because he'd always helped me work on my Jeep. And one day I went to a shop and he had parts. I'm like, Those won't fit a TJ. What are you doing? And he's like, I think I want to build one of those buggies.

[00:33:05.520] - Shannon Welch

And I'm like, Oh, no, that's the stupidest idea you've ever had. What are you doing? And I think the first fight we ever had was actually over that. I'm like, That's going to ruin everything. We're not going to Jeep anymore. You've never built a car. You don't know what you're doing. And then he spent six... He tried to qualify for King of the Hammers in 2009. Yeah, 2009 in his TJ, and he missed the LCQ by one spot in his TJ, which Dave thought was really hilarious being a Toyota guy himself and all of that. But also he was impressed that the TJ did reasonably well trying to get a backdoor and all of that because that's where the last chance qualifier was at that point. Then from From February to August, Kevin decided he was going to build himself an ultra four car. It wasn't called ultra four yet. He was going to build himself whatever it was that could qualify for king of the hammers. I was out wheeling every weekend with my friends, and I'd show up at a shop and be a complete brat because it was always on the way home and be like, We did this, we did that.

[00:34:22.700] - Shannon Welch

Then he'd also help me because I'd usually have broken something or needed to weld something or fix something on when I came back from the trail. He was slowly putting this big tube chassis thing together by himself on the weekends, and I was still resentful, especially because my wheeling buddy wasn't with me anymore. And about June, I'm like, This thing's really starting to look like a vehicle,. He said that he had to race this thing called Vegas to Reno. If he raced this thing called Vegas to Reno, he could qualify for King of the Hammers that way. All he had to do was finish. He didn't have to win or anything like that. I'm like, Okay, cool. Sounds interesting. Then he asked six or seven of us if we wanted free rooms in Vegas to come with him while he did this qualifying thing in August. We're like, Sure, why not? That was it. I didn't I didn't really know anything else about it. Then July comes around and this thing's really starting to look like a vehicle. I'm like, So how long is this race? What do we need to do? We're just going to come watch you qualify?

[00:35:42.780] - Shannon Welch

I'm thinking LCQ. That's all I know. That's all I know at this point is what LCQ looks like, which is 10 minutes tops. And he's like, No, it's this three-day race. I'm like, What? So it was Vegas, do we know the long way? A thousand-mile race. I was like, What? Nobody has any idea what you're asking them to do. Like, Kev, what are you doing? He's like, No, we got this. I'm like, Oh, we do? He's like, I'm really going to need your help. I'm like, Oh, you are? I start looking into it. I start realizing just how insane what we're about to do is that you need multiple pit crews. It's literally three days, 1,000 It goes through the Nevada Desert in August, so it's going to be 115, 20 degrees. You have to figure out where you can get fuel, where you can do all these things. And I'm like, This is insane. But really, what got me into it, that same guy who got me that dual-sport motorcycle or got me into riding with that dual sport. I was a geek. Like I said, my ex was a computer game guy, so I had a first-generation Tevo before DVR and streaming was a thing.

[00:37:00.320] - Shannon Welch

And so he had hit me up and asked me, he's like, Hey, could I use your Tevo for something? I'm like, Sure. He's like, There's this thing on in the middle of the night that I really want to watch. I'm like, Okay. So this is like 2003. I'm like, Okay. It was Dakar. He was watching Dakar because it was only on at midnight. It was when they'd air the episodes. He's recorded this at my house, and I'm sitting in my living room, and I'm like, This is insane. I'm more like, fascinated with the Bivouacs and how they're getting from point A to point B, and the logistics involved from going to country to country with that car. I didn't know anything like this existed. This guy, Jimmy Lewis is on it, and he's talking about navigation. There's this kid, Chris Blaze, who's amazing. I'm just following this like, This is the most amazing. How do people not know about this? Why is it only on at midnight? When this Vegas to thing came up, I was like, Okay, so this is my own private Dacar. Okay, I've got a chance to make something like this happen.

[00:38:06.500] - Shannon Welch

I jumped in with both feet and I turned our wheeling group into our race team. People who are good with radios, I made them the comms people, the good mechanics. I put them on different pit crews. I put three pit crews together, and we went and raced this race with the biggest, ugliest car anybody had seen. We got laughed at so hard when we showed up at Tech and Contingency. I mean, literally pointing and laughing at the vehicle, like pointing and laughing at Kevin's vehicle. I was like, These people are the meanest people I've ever seen. Why are they so rude? I had to keep calling Casey folks because there were hike requirements for getting under tunnels and stuff, and our vehicle was too big to fit under those. And he's like, What the hell are you bringing? Casey's yelling at me. I'm calling him with questions, and Casey's just the meanest guy I've ever talked to. He reminded me of my uncle. It was great. And He must have been like, Oh, please don't show up at my race. Once I got into King of the Hammers, I can only imagine what Casey thought of me with all those calls early on.

[00:39:09.200] - Shannon Welch

But we showed up. I had no idea there was this whole group of all these people It was the first time it was called Ultra 4. Was that that Vegas Dorena Race in 2009? Nobody used the word Ultra Four before that. I had no idea that all the rest of the Ultra Four teams were all part of a group called Team United, and they were all trying to help each other out. They'd all shared pit support resources, all these things. I knew nothing about any of that. I hadn't been on pirate. I didn't know that world at all. Apparently, that's where everything was happening then. We showed up as this independent team, and Kevin knew of some of the people. I didn't know of any of them. And they're looking at us a little sideways, too. Like, who are these guys? Kevin's last name is impossible to pronounce. It's Sicalis. So people didn't know how to even say his name. And we just had to finish every day, and we ended up winning it. We won, which nobody expected. We didn't expect. We just wanted to finish it. But for the ultra four class, we won.

[00:40:16.460] - Shannon Welch

And that was where I met literally everybody. Jeff Noel, Dave Cole, Charlene Bauer, the Watson brothers, the Lovell brothers. Adam Woodley became a dear friend of mine after that. It was, I don't know, trial by Vegas to Reno, and it completely changed my life. Completely changed my life.

[00:40:41.280] - Big Rich Klein

You'd say for the good?

[00:40:45.540] - Shannon Welch

Oh, God, yeah. I couldn't go back to a normal life after that. It was the most bizarre experience. To jump into something like that, it rewired me. Money didn't matter. We We needed a fuel pump. Welcome to off-road. Yeah. Yeah. Literally. Just jump right into, oh, my God, Dean Bullick. I think we pulled him into a pit. That was when I met Dean. I'm like, who is the Marlborough Man? Where Where did he come from? He comes rolling in with a cigarette in his mouth and he's like, Cool kid. Thanks for helping me out. I'm like, What just happened right now?

[00:41:21.630] - Big Rich Klein

Open face helmet so he can smoke.

[00:41:24.180] - Shannon Welch

Yeah, it was amazing. The whole thing was amazing. We're bartering liquor for Our Tools. We ended up in this small town looking for a fuel pump. The Napa was closed. The girl who went to get it ended up with a police escort to the owner of Napa's house to get the part. I was like, Where are we? What is happening? There was no self-service. And yeah, like ice and tools and parts and what you're bartering for them, it was a whole different world. And then I came back and I'm trying to shop in the grocery store in Irvine. I live in the snootiest part of Orange County. That's where I live and work. I'm just like, this doesn't even feel like real life anymore. It made me question everything.

[00:42:12.900] - Big Rich Klein

How long were you with the Bigugly team?

[00:42:18.820] - Shannon Welch

I'd like to say I'm still with the Bigugly team, even though there's not really a Bigugly team. But yeah, no. Kevin built that car in 2009, qualified at Vegas Turino that year. So from 2009 to 2011, I was Bigugly. Well, we didn't even call it Bigugly. I tried everything else. I tried calling it 4-4-3-5 Racing, Sacalus Racing, all of that. But every time I try to talk to somebody about sponsorship, they're like, That's the Big ugly thing that won. I'm like, Screw it. We're going to own this name. We are going to be Big ugly Racing. We are going to be this grassroots team that people are going to root for. And it worked on a big level, to name us Big ugly. We were proud of that. And it just really drew people to us that really got it. So I did that for two, two and a half years. And what would happen is Jeff and Dave, who founded King of the Hammers and Ultra 4, were trying to piece together series races so that the only So it wasn't just King of the Hammers for these ultra four cars, right? Right. So at the time, it was probably 12 to 13 consistent racers showing up at the races.

[00:43:43.600] - Shannon Welch

But I was about the only person showing up that wasn't trying to race when I'd go with Kevin to these things. So what would happen is, I don't know, Dave or Jeff would ask me if I could do some posting about what was happening and keep people updated on it if I was there. And I'm like, I can do that. My communications background gets to kick in here, this social media stuff that I knew how to do. I'm like, Yeah, I can do that for you. Then it became like all of the drivers started coming to me being like, Hey, Shannon, do you know what time the driver's meeting is? I just became like... I was literally the only person not driving, co-driving at the events. I just became the coordinator, I guess, over that period of time. Worked closely with Jeff, worked closely with Dave, was helping Jeff out a little bit with the social media. Jeff asked me if I'd come and do a marketing presentation at King of the Hammers in 2010 or 2011. I don't remember which year it was. I was really shocked that he asked me to do that.

[00:44:50.680] - Shannon Welch

He was like, We need everybody promoting their teams like Big ugly does. So can you help the other teams with that? Sure, I could try to do that. Jeff was actually the person to ask me to help out in that way. Yeah. Okay. Yeah.

[00:45:04.800] - Big Rich Klein

And I'd already moved away from King of the Hammers at that point, the first time stepping away, because I was involved with the very first official race.

[00:45:19.300] - Shannon Welch

Okay. 2008.

[00:45:20.660] - Big Rich Klein

Because we helped with the... We Rock was basically the sanctioning body at that point, helping with the insurance and doing the rules. Of course, the rules back then were like, make sure everybody's going to be safe, but we don't want to disqualify anybody. We want everybody to be able to race. So it's like, okay, you're telling me to make them safe, but make sure they race. So it's like, how safe do you really want them?

[00:45:51.920] - Shannon Welch

Yeah, I get it. Completely. You know I do.

[00:45:55.470] - Big Rich Klein

And then when they went to Best in the Desert, that's when they started using Casey's Rulebook. Rulebook. And then morphed it into the KOH book. Yeah.

[00:46:05.700] - Shannon Welch

That was a little bit before my time, but obviously, I began to learn about those things as I got more involved with King of the Hammers.

[00:46:14.480] - Big Rich Klein

Right. Then you became more involved with the King of the Hammers because you became an employee.

[00:46:23.960] - Shannon Welch

Yeah, that was crazy. I mean, I had a very successful job in corporate America. It started with... I'm trying to think of where that really started. Well, obviously, I was involved in Big ugly and all of that, but I was out for some event in Johnson Valley, and Dave was supposed to lead a run and didn't have a car. So he decided he was going to use my TJ on 33s with me driving to lead a run up after shock, which I will Nobody's going to be happy that we're doing this, Dave. He's like, You can wheel it. I'm like, I know I can wheel it. I just don't think the guy showing up on 40-inch tires are going to be stoked to see me at the front of the line. Dave and I had this weird adventure day where, yeah, he did a phenomenal... If you haven't been spotted by Dave Cole, I highly recommend it. He's probably one of the best spotters I've ever seen. But he promised me no body damage. That was a lie. Mostly my fault. I will own that. But we got me... I led the way up after shock on my TJ with 33s that day.

[00:47:39.460] - Shannon Welch

While we were out there, Dave was like, We're killing it. We're doing a great job. I'm like, No, you're not. He's like, What? I'm like, If I have to go to pirate and know your name is Jeep Recovery Team to find out where the next event is, you are not killing it, pal. I gave him a really big earful out there. He was, I think, a little surprised, but I don't know. I've never kept my opinions to myself. He was like, Okay. He's like, How could we do it better? I'm like, You need to do this, you need to do this, you need to communicate more. Communication is really where it all needs to start from. I think by the end of the day, he's like, Well, what would it cost me to have somebody doing that for me? I'm like, I have no idea, but you need it. He's like, Shit, I'm what I'm asking is, will you do you do? I'm like, Oh, hell no, absolutely not. Not going to happen. He's like, Okay. This was probably six months before. Then it was a really weird year. That was the year the MDR crash happened and all those kids died.

[00:48:48.640] - Shannon Welch

All the spectators died out in Johnson Valley, which was not related to King of the Hammers or Ultra 4 at all. But it really changed what King of the Hammers was between 2010 and 2011 because BLM, to date, for the record, that was the biggest payout the BLM has ever done, was all of those deaths around that tragedy and that off-road race that happened in Johnson Valley. 2011 looked very different. Blm was all over safety. I mean, the year before, people were touching the cars, you know what I mean? On sludge and stuff like that. I remember. You know exactly what I'm talking about. It was absolute chaos and mayhem and all these things. Blm was just like, none of this is going to happen. I I think that... I mean, it was a really pivotal year. Dave had actually been at that race where those people died, so he got it, but he also was not going to let BLM shut him down. I just remember there was just a lot of tension between Jeff and Dave at that race. And I could see how hard it was them trying to manage the new requirements from BLM for safety at that point.

[00:49:51.240] - Shannon Welch

Race happened. I get home. I'm at work. I'm actually on the phone with Kevin. It's seven o'clock at night, trying to catch up on stuff. And I think it's like a week, two weeks after King of the Hammers that year. And Dave's calling me. I'm like, That's weird. Dave's calling me. What does he want? Jeff was like, I don't know. Maybe you should answer it. So I answered it and I'm like, Hey. And He's like, Hey, you're the first person to be hearing this, but I'm now the sole owner of King of the Hammers. I was like, What? He's like, Yeah, Jeff and I are separating. I'm like, Well, that's going to be a problem. And he's like, Why? I'm like, Because you're the crazy one. He was like, What? I'm like, Well, it's the truth. Things sometimes don't change.

[00:50:39.280] - Big Rich Klein

No.

[00:50:41.380] - Shannon Welch

I was like, Come on. You know I'm like, You are a lot, and you're all over the place, and that's going to scare people. And he's like, I don't know how to handle the social media. Can you help me? I'm like, Yeah, well, first you need to put out this announcement, and we need to do this. I was like, Yeah, I'll help you stabilize this, but this can't take over my career. And he's like, No, it's fine. I tried for, I don't know, four or five months to try to help stabilize that while keeping my full-time job. Then Dave's like, I said, This isn't working. You need to find somebody. He's like, I need it to be you. I'm like, That would be the dumbest career move I could possibly make.

[00:51:33.360] - Big Rich Klein

Right.

[00:51:34.740] - Shannon Welch

And then I made it.

[00:51:36.520] - Big Rich Klein

Of course you did.

[00:51:39.120] - Shannon Welch

I took a pay cut. I literally 30% of what I had been making. I was fortunate to be in a position where I had no debt. The Jeep was paid off. As long as I could pay my rent, I guess I could try this thing for a while and see what would happen with it. Yeah.

[00:51:56.880] - Big Rich Klein

The worst best decision you ever made, Mm-hmm.

[00:52:01.760] - Shannon Welch

100 %. It broke me and built me. Sometimes you have to be broken to be built. I think that's true. I think that's very true.

[00:52:14.060] - Big Rich Klein

So A lot of great things happened. I mean, no matter your relationship or anybody's relationship with Dave, whether it's love or hate or both, he is the one One thing that he has done is brought the right people together at the right times to create this monster.

[00:52:38.580] - Shannon Welch

Yes.

[00:52:39.300] - Big Rich Klein

And by the monster, I mean, K-O-H.

[00:52:44.060] - Shannon Welch

Yeah.

[00:52:44.820] - Big Rich Klein

Not necessarily Dave. I mean, Dave does that all on his own. No, no.

[00:52:48.740] - Shannon Welch

I knew you meant K-O-H.

[00:52:52.260] - Big Rich Klein

It's amazing that... I guess it's not amazing. Some people have that knack, and he put something together that was really great, but it was the people that he got involved in it that really made it that way.

[00:53:10.560] - Shannon Welch

He is phenomenal. There are a lot of things that Dave is really, really brilliant at, and his ability to see the potential in people is at the top of that list. To challenge them to bring out the best parts of them is really something that is a unique quality to Dave. Yes, I would agree with that.

[00:53:38.100] - Big Rich Klein

But he's left awake behind him, you might say.

[00:53:44.720] - Shannon Welch

I don't know how somebody like that doesn't. Actually, as I've done more in business throughout my career, there's a book. I love this book so much. It's called Traction by Gina Whitman. It got introduced to me. It was like the was telling me I needed to read this book. One of the things that really it helped, I wish I'd had it all of the years that I was with King of the Hammers and Ultra 4, because what it really does a good job of is explaining how most businesses start because there's a visionary, and how most businesses succeed because that visionary has an implementer or an integrator. Really, I don't care if you're talking about Dave Cole, Steve Jobs, Elon Musk. I know those are weird people to put in the same category. But the thing that I have learned in my career is that real visionaries are these like tornadoes, and they suck things into their world, and sometimes amazing things come out of it, but they also spit a lot of things out around them. And if they have the right integrators, implementers around them, they can actually accomplish a lot if that person can help keep that visionary on the right track, and they come up with a really good purpose and a really good vision of what they're trying to do.

[00:55:07.760] - Shannon Welch

You can accomplish amazing things in very small amounts of time. But people like that are always going to be that volatile. They're always going to be that because what they chase and how they think and where their brains go, and we need them. We need them. Those are the pioneers, those are the visionaries. But how we harness that energy into something useful becomes becomes the real key element of things.

[00:55:33.600] - Big Rich Klein

Harnesting that, yes.

[00:55:37.960] - Shannon Welch

Yes.

[00:55:38.650] - Big Rich Klein

That's an interesting phrase. So then your time with KOH, King & Hammers, lasted from, say, 2012 to...

[00:55:53.980] - Shannon Welch

11 to '19. It was about a decade. Okay. Yeah.

[00:55:57.620] - Big Rich Klein

And when you look Back on those, what do you think your single biggest accomplishment was?

[00:56:05.960] - Shannon Welch

Oh, that's so hard. Saving Johnson Valley, saving the Hammers. Perfect. But there was a lot. We did so much. We did so much. But Saving the Hammers, I think, is at the top of the list. Yeah. Okay.

[00:56:20.740] - Big Rich Klein

And what other thing did you bring out of that to help Shannon?

[00:56:32.980] - Shannon Welch

I mean, it was everything. That's...

[00:56:37.160] - Big Rich Klein

A heavy question, yeah.

[00:56:40.460] - Shannon Welch

Yeah, that's a heavy one. I learned so much. Again, it started with that Vegas Territo Race and trial by fire, right? But then it was literally 10 years of trial by fire. Dave didn't like to go to the same place a lot because he loved new and exciting and adventures. Every year, I mean, we created the Ultraforce series during that period of time, like straight Ultra force series that were all our own races. Right.

[00:57:08.830] - Big Rich Klein

I know because I offered to do it today for Dave for a problem That's probably a 20th of the price that you guys did the races yourselves.

[00:57:21.700] - Shannon Welch

Yeah.

[00:57:22.680] - Big Rich Klein

Because we were already doing Dirtriate.

[00:57:25.920] - Shannon Welch

And it would have made sense to do some of that. I mean, I didn't I didn't know anything about it, right? Again, I jumped in with two feet, and that was hard, too. Everybody's like, Where did this girl come from? I wasn't a pirate girl. I hadn't been around. I didn't grow up in this. And there was definitely some people that were like, Why is this girl here? And why is she running things now. That was a lot to overcome. But I think everything was new. Every time we had a new race, it was like a new business model to a certain extent. Learning how to get things done with limited resources in remote areas was amazing. The community was amazing. I don't know how to even quantify those years because there was just King of the Hammers, and then there was this little UTV race originally. So my first year, Dave let me name it Every Man Challenge. I was the one that came up with that name. So Every Man Challenge. And then because I told them what I loved about Dakar and what I loved about this world and what it had given me, that was a crazy thing because I was like, You don't understand these Dakar riders, these guys that go out there.

[00:58:35.700] - Shannon Welch

They're my heroes. And all of a sudden, he calls me, I don't know, a month, two months before King... I don't remember. He called me and he's like, Hey, I'm sitting here with a guy you might know him, Jimmy Lewis. I was like, Yeah, he wants to put on a race call King of the Motos. Do you think you want that to be out at King of the Hammers? Because I told him I'd come from this dual sport background in Dakar and I'd watch Jimmy Lewis. I was like, Are you kidding me right now? It was crazy. Bringing all of that together was huge. The Every Man Challenge part of it was enormous because what I loved about this community is you built yourself up from the ground up. I really felt like Every Man Challenge was the way to keep that spirit alive. I don't know, Rich. I learned so much. I could write books on it, and I'm probably not doing a good job of articulating it right now, but it was every day was so intense.

[00:59:30.440] - Big Rich Klein

For a decade. No, I understand. I understand completely. Because there's only a few people in rock sports that have stuck with it. As long, well, as myself, for one. Yeah. Started in 2000 and brought in Jake Good as a partner now three years ago and walked away, not walked away, but cut my duties back just two years ago in '23 to where I go to maybe less than half of our events. So I understand that longevity thing, and the changes, and everything being different. But so we go through King of the Hammers, and then you step away and you start... When did you get into the whole cold storage thing? Because that was the next step, wasn't it?

[01:00:41.640] - Shannon Welch

Sort of. I really didn't have a plan when I left King of the Hammers. I needed peace, I think. I didn't know what I was going to do next, and I really thought about it. It was really interesting because The day that I said that I was no longer with it, it was a great run, my phone blew up in a way that was really, really unexpected and overwhelming and awesome. How many people reached out to me saying, Hey, come work for me, come work with me. A lot of them, it was, Come work for me. One of the things that I really felt the whole time I was with King of the Hammers was that I felt I had ownership in Being able to build it was really important to me. Kevin, Sicalis, the Big ugly, he had left the racing world. He had gotten married and was working on rowing and evolving his family business at the time. I remember having lunch with him.

[01:01:48.380] - Big Rich Klein

Which was trucking, correct?

[01:01:48.940] - Shannon Welch

Trucking, yeah. Refrigerated trucking was what his family was in. He had actually done some things to convince his dad to retire so he could really take over leading that business more and had gone from leasing a building to building one from the ground up. Not dissimilar to how he built the two big ugly race cars. He likes building things, right? Our worlds really diverged for a while. With him doing that and then with me growing ultra poor and king of the hammers. And so I just was talking to my friend. I'm like, I don't know what I want to do next. I think I just want to hang my shingle, consult with some people. I I have a lot of people I love in off-road, and maybe I can work with a few of them and help stabilize them in some way. But I just don't think I'm ready to be team somebody else or go to work for somebody else at this point. And he's like, Yeah, I get that. Fourwheel Parts was really trying to convince me to come work with them. And I was like, I just don't think I can do it.

[01:02:49.220] - Shannon Welch

And so then I met with Kevin again, and he just having lunch with him, hanging out, talking, trying to figure out my moves. And all of a sudden, he likes me. He was being weird the whole meeting. I'm like, Is he sick? What does he want to tell me? And all of a sudden, he's like, I have something to ask you. I'm like, Okay. He's like, You want to build another race car? What? I'm like, What are you talking about? Your wife will kill you. Do you remember all your accidents, dude? If you don't know, anybody listening to this, you can research Big ugly Crash, and you'll have some entertainment there for a while. His last major one at King of the Hammers was two months after he'd gotten married and right in of his wife, his new wife. That was not great. I was like, What are you talking about? He's like, No. He's like, I really want to build these cold storage facilities. He built a little one as a trial thing when he built his own business. He filled it in six months without even trying. He saw that there was this business model there.

[01:03:52.500] - Shannon Welch

I'm like, What are you talking about? He's like, I want to build cold storage. I'm like, Dude, I don't know the first thing about cold storage. And he was like, Yeah, you didn't know the first thing about raising either. And he's like, But the most fun I've ever had building anything was building Big ugly with you. And you're a get shit done person, and I know you can figure this stuff out. I watched you figure out way harder stuff than navigating the city and getting a building built and all of this. So I was like, Okay, but this was just a concept, right? So this is 2019 and just a concept. So I did hang my shingle. I took on a number of clients. I think the one that most people from off Some of them, actually, I still work with, but they've asked me to not really say who they are, but I do work with a few offer of manufacturers, still consulting with them. But I worked with Mel on his experiences, Mel Wade and Lisa Wade, on their experiences. Got to go do that for a couple of years, which was really fun, and helped them out.

[01:04:50.780] - Shannon Welch

I did that while I was slowly helping Kevin work on getting city approvals, buying the land, finding all the right things we needed to get this building built. So, yeah. So did that for a few years, got to work with a lot of amazing businesses, and helped them grow while I was also working on this side thing that's That's not my primary thing.

[01:05:17.820] - Big Rich Klein

Let's talk about the Mel Wade and the experiences. You guys went all over the United States to different parks.

[01:05:30.000] - Shannon Welch

Yeah.

[01:05:31.100] - Big Rich Klein

What was-Yup. Then invited people to come out. Were they just customers or were they potential customers?

[01:05:38.280] - Shannon Welch

It was industry people and customers was really what it was. Chris Corbett with Nitto would regularly be on it. The owner of Sky Jack or Lonnie McCurry, would be on it. Who are some of the other people? Dave Schlossberg, Pauley, would be out there. So it was industry people. I was like, Why? It was so very different from Ultra Four and King of the Hammers doing that stuff. I thought, Oh, God, this is going to be a breeze, right? It's just 12, 15 regs for a week. I mean, I'm used to 200 drivers and all this. This is going to be easy. It was not easy. It was completely different because how Mel set those up was really cool. I mean, literally, he'd tell them they'd agree to go. He'd give them the dates, and then we'd tell them, You have to be here at the start. It's in this city, in this location. Start here. And then at the end, this is the day and time and place that it's ending. You got to figure out how you get yourself home from there. That's all they knew. They'd show up. It was planning the hotels or the camping experiences, the restaurants, the VIP experiences, everything for a 7-10 day period of time across multiple states, as much off road as possible.

[01:07:07.740] - Shannon Welch

That was really interesting for me to understand. I knew how to do all of that stuff, the insurance side of it, I knew. Then also the permits and everything that you need to pull. I knew how to do all of that. But usually, I was used to doing it for one location for each event. This was 10 locations. Figuring all of that out was really interesting between state land, national land, all of that private land, and getting it all worked out. I wasn't responsible during the off-road race stuff for feeding people or their VIP level experience, if you will. I was just responsible for making the whole thing happen. It was a different level of customer service and concierge and all of that when I put those on. It was It was fun. I learned a lot doing it, too.

[01:08:01.770] - Big Rich Klein

So it was like an ultimate adventure, just at a higher level?

[01:08:06.480] - Shannon Welch

Yeah, absolutely.

[01:08:09.480] - Big Rich Klein

And then so from there, Kevin convinced you to become the cold storage queen, basically?

[01:08:22.760] - Shannon Welch

The cold storage queen, yeah. I learned some things along the way. So one of the One of the things that I said was, I'm going to have ownership in this, paper ownership in this. And he's like, Yes, you are. And he happily agreed to that. Ownership in everything that I do with Kevin. It's been pretty cool. We built the building in 18 months, which everybody said would take five years. And then I was responsible The recruiter background kicked in. We put a team of 50 plus people together in under four months. We were profitable in the first six months. We opened the doors. It was really cool. All of the things that I'd learned from King of the Hammers and working with different government agencies and all of that, while I didn't think any of it would apply, it absolutely applied and came in very helpful. During that period of time, I had all of the land use groups reaching out to me, all of them. It was really cool. They wanted me to either consult or whatever. And then in the process of all of that, Steve Garner introduced me to a guy named Spencer Gilbert, who really didn't feel like an off-road guy at all, but he had somehow become the executive director of Blue Ribbon Coalition.

[01:09:58.720] - Shannon Welch

Steve Garner was like, you really need to talk to him. Steve Garner, if people don't know who he was, was just such an amazing and special soul. Absolutely. Probably one of the best human beings I think I've ever known. He would be responsible for coordinating the volunteers at King of the Hammers for years. He was responsible for the letter writing campaign around Save the Hammers. He was just such a solid, stable guy. He, I guess, told this guy, Spencer, You need to talk to Shannon, and you need Shannon. And so this guy, Spencer, just started courting me to be on Blue Ribbon Coalition, which honestly, I didn't know really much of anything about. I thought it was Dell's private nonprofit or something because I only knew it from Dell. And this guy was like, No, we need you, we need you, we need you. And I'm like, I don't even understand what you guys totally do. And then he really started explaining to me what they did. I was like, Well, all right, let's see if we can get some stuff done here. That's how I ended up on the board of Blue River Coalition.

[01:11:10.240] - Big Rich Klein

How long you've been on the board now?

[01:11:13.880] - Shannon Welch

Three years, four years? Okay. I don't know.

[01:11:19.120] - Big Rich Klein

Then Spencer left. Maybe longer. Spencer left, and now it's his bar, the one that took his- Ben Bur.

[01:11:26.220] - Shannon Welch

Ben. Ben Bur.

[01:11:27.950] - Big Rich Klein

Ben Bur. Not bar.

[01:11:30.000] - Shannon Welch

Yeah, no worries. No worries. Yeah, I don't think Spencer was there for six months after recruiting me. He got really sick, unfortunately. So it wasn't like he... Yeah, some real significant health issues. And so, honestly, he wasn't where he was going to live. I do believe he is alive and thriving at this point, but I think it was a major life change for him. But yeah, he did not really fit the off-road mold at all. I really He had a difficult time understanding what he was doing at the head of BRC. But he also was one of those visionaries, was one of those brilliant minds who was talking about doing really big things. If he could do even some of the stuff he was talking about, it excited me in the way that talking to other visionaries like Dave and Kevin and that thing did. I'm like, Well, let me see if I can harness this power. Cool.

[01:12:25.420] - Big Rich Klein

You're still on the board?

[01:12:28.200] - Shannon Welch

Still on the board. A blue with it. Yes, sir. Yeah.

[01:12:30.840] - Big Rich Klein

And then cold storage.

[01:12:34.360] - Shannon Welch

Yeah.

[01:12:35.000] - Big Rich Klein

What's the future?

[01:12:39.320] - Shannon Welch

Of cold storage?

[01:12:40.420] - Big Rich Klein

No. What's the future for Shannon?

[01:12:42.960] - Shannon Welch

Oh, well, we're definitely building another cold storage facility. We're working on building a second one right now, which is so fun in California. I can't even tell you how difficult it is to build from the ground up in California. But that's actually part of the value of what we're able to do because we can navigate that. If we can put on off-road races anywhere in the world, I can figure out how to get a building built in California. At least that's what I tell myself. We're in the process of working on that. I do still do... People ask me what I do, and my answer is whatever I want, and I don't make money for assholes. You know what? At the top of my question.

[01:13:29.480] - Big Rich Klein

We We have a very common... That's very common for you and I, because that's Shelle and my motto. That's a reason there's places I will never go back to.

[01:13:44.660] - Shannon Welch

Yeah. There are people I won't work with. There are things I won't do. But ultimately, if I see that there is a brilliant idea there, and so I can help. If I can be the implementer and the integrator, I do. I've gotten to do a lot of that and really helping rebuild BRC from the ground up and being a part of that. That's probably been one of the harder things I've done. I've learned I like to build things from scratch versus fix things, but I do both. I do both, both with a number of businesses, I'm trying to help stabilize them, rebuild them. With BRC, it's It's been really amazing to see. There's another book that I use a lot with anybody involved. It's called Fierce Conversations by Susan Scott. There's a concept in there that if you put in the work every day, every day, every day, it's this gradually then suddenly. I don't care if that's weight loss. I don't care if that's... You have to show up and be consistent and do the thing. Brc has been quite a few years of gradually then suddenly to the point that now we're having meetings in DC and we're being asked to help this administration rewrite the rules of what we do on national forests and on BLM land and that thing.

[01:15:15.000] - Shannon Welch

We're looking for our advice as a nonprofit. When we got involved, there was like... When I got involved, there was maybe 20 grand in the bank, and we weren't sure we were going to be able to rebuild it. But BRC has been such a critical part of being a part of the fight for so long. Because at first I was like, Why are we going to try to rebuild something that has fallen to the wayside versus why don't we just start over? And one of the things that Spencer taught me very quickly was BRC has something that a new organization couldn't get for 10 to 15 years. I'm like, What's that? He's like, Legal standing. Name, recognition. What is it? Well, legal standing. Oh, legal standing. Legal standing, and precedent. There's almost no fight that happens on land. That the government can say, You don't have a seat at this table, because we can show that we've been publicly commenting on it for years. They can't keep us out of the room. A new nonprofit would take over a decade to get the level of precedent that BRC has. We've won Supreme Court cases. Long before I was involved, before I even knew public land was a thing, we won Supreme Court cases.

[01:16:26.160] - Shannon Welch

But that is worth preserving. Rebuilding it and turning it back into the powerhouse that it was has just been awesome. Really being able to work with... I mean, some of the people on the board, Jack Welch, badass. That man rode a snowmobile through Alaska in the '70s or '80s or something like that all the way across Alaska. He's one of our board members. These guys have been involved in this fight since the start of BRC in 1987. I think they were really afraid that we were going to lose BRC, and they knew how valuable it was. It's been amazing for those guys to finally be able to rest and feel like it's in good hands and feel like we are leading it in the right direction. That's been a real honor to be able to do that with something that I think is the single most powerful voice on a national level when it comes to fighting for motorized recreation on public lands.

[01:17:20.580] - Big Rich Klein

That's the thing I've liked about BRC is that they're willing to go and fight, not just try to negotiate.

[01:17:29.160] - Shannon Welch

That's also the It's the hard part, right? From a money standpoint, it's so hard because I get it. I get if you're Polaris, you're not going to be like, I probably support BRC who sued the federal government every other week. I get why that gets real hard. It becomes like, we really need members to understand that this is the insurance policy. If you own a gun, you probably need to belong to NRA. If you own a motorcycle, you probably need to belong to the AMA. If you off road, if you have a a motorized vehicle that you take on water or land, you definitely need to be a member of BRC. That's the thing that I don't think people totally get sometimes. But really, there's nobody else out there doing the fighting that we're doing. True.

[01:18:14.300] - Big Rich Klein

Very true. Yeah. God, have we touched on just about everything?

[01:18:23.280] - Shannon Welch

I don't know. Have we? I think so. I mean, yeah.

[01:18:26.230] - Big Rich Klein

Well, except in your personal life, you're married again I am married, yes.

[01:18:32.320] - Shannon Welch

Mr. Porter. It's funny. I literally met Chris the week that I quit my corporate career and went to work for Dave. Right. So, yeah, that was the first week when I met Chris was the weekend I quit my corporate job. I was like, Hey, I'm about to embark on this crazy adventure. I don't know when I'm going to be around. I don't know. He's like, I'm in. I'm like, Really? That sounds like a terrible thing I'm going to be in on. He's the perfect person for me. I mean, he traveled the world, well, traveled the country with NASCAR for years, was a crew chief doing that for a long time, raced circle track racing for years and years and years. So he understood the world from a little bit of a different perspective, but also understood what I was doing and really got it and was this grounding voice of reason for me a lot of times because he'd been in it. He'd left it and he'd done racing and now he's in corporate America. I left corporate America and went into racing. So, yeah, we I mean, I was hardly around for a decade.

[01:19:47.520] - Shannon Welch

I'd be in town two weeks, out of town two weeks thing, and he was so stable and so there for me. We've put down roots. We own a house. We got married. We did all of the adult things. This maturing thing is interesting, Rich.

[01:20:03.680] - Big Rich Klein

I wouldn't know. I'm 67 and I'm still not maturing.

[01:20:12.720] - Shannon Welch

In some ways I am. In other ways, somebody calls me and goes, I got a dumb idea. I'm like, Let's do it, right? I'm in. I'm trying not to do the maturing thing. That's fair. The experience is the good part. The stopping doing the fun things, that's not the good part.

[01:20:33.130] - Big Rich Klein

Travel is still goal one. Absolutely. Getting those adventures in.

[01:20:44.240] - Shannon Welch

We just do it- Adventure and travel.

[01:20:45.670] - Big Rich Klein

We just do it quietly now.

[01:20:48.220] - Shannon Welch

No, I get it completely. I get it.

[01:20:50.920] - Big Rich Klein

I don't have to share everything on social media anymore.

[01:20:54.320] - Shannon Welch

No, it's crazy because I don't think I share a 10th of the stuff I do social media these days. It would be too weird. I'm just so busy. But I still get myself involved in controversies. I've always been pretty good about that. You know that. But yeah, no. Off-road changed my life completely. Land use was at the core of it. I think one of the things that really worked on the growth path with Dave and I when it came to King of the Hammers and Ultra 4 was... Simon Sinek, who's most people in business have, I'm sure, heard some of his talks, but he has a book called The Infinite Game. And in that book, he talks about how growth happens when an organization has a just cause or a worthy purpose or something like that. And I think that one of the things that I've come to realize when it comes to the trajectory I mean, the years that I was with King of the Hammers, it was hockey stick growth. I mean, so many things we did during that period of time. Like the US series, all the additional races that happened at King of the Hammers.

[01:22:11.820] - Shannon Welch

We had an NBC Sports television show and all of those things. But really, it came from one worthy cause or just purpose or just cause, whatever you want to call it. And that was that we kept getting told that nobody cared about the hammers, nobody cared about Johnson Valley, that there was no way to save it because there just weren't enough people to go up against the Marines to stop that from happening. And every day for six years, Dave and I woke up with the same goal, and it was to make King of the Hammers so big that we could fight the Marines and keep that area for generations to come. So it really what looked like what we were doing was to grow King of the Hammers. It was to grow King of the Hammers, but the just cause was saving it. And we knew that we had to have enough people that gave a shit about that area. And the way to do that was to turn it into the biggest, the Super Bowl, everything it could be, and to let people know that there was a chance that they could lose it if they didn't get involved.

[01:23:15.170] - Shannon Welch

We really activated people around that. It was probably one of the worthiest causes of my life. We just had such a clear vision while we were doing that, that the rest all just fell into place around it. Then really after that happened, after the negotiation happened and we got to keep most of it, I don't know. It was like, Okay, so are we doing this to just make it bigger to make it bigger? Are we doing this to add more racers? The cause for me, got a little cloudy after that. It was weird. There was a lot that happened during that period of time. Dave was really sick with cancer at one point. So then the goal was to just make sure that he had a business to come back to when he got through cancer. And there were a couple of years after that. But really, for me, I think it's always been about Protecting the land, making sure that somebody else can have the experience that I did, not growing up with it, finding it, and having it change their entire life, and making sure that that legacy exists is really at the core of why I do what I do at this point.

[01:24:32.780] - Big Rich Klein

And that is perfect. You can't ask for any more than that. And it's an honorable goal to try to fulfill. So thanks, Rich. Shannon, I'd like to say thank you so much for spending this Sunday morning. What a great way to spend a Sunday morning is talking about yourself and sharing your life and your history with us, and I really appreciate it.

[01:25:02.380] - Shannon Welch

I appreciate you asking me. Thank you. Give my best to Shelle, and I'll talk to you soon.

[01:25:08.880] - Big Rich Klein

All right. Sounds good, and thank you so much.

[01:25:11.380] - Shannon Welch

All right. Thanks. Bye, Rich. Bye-bye.

[01:25:14.320] - Big Rich Klein

Well, that's Another episode of Conversations with Big Rich. I'd like to thank you all for listening. If you could do us a favor and leave us a review on any podcast service that you happen to be listening on, or send us an email or a text message or a Facebook message, and let me know any ideas that you have or if there's anybody that you have that you think would be a great guest, please forward the contact information to me so that we can try to get them on. And always remember, live life to the fullest. Enjoying life is a must. Follow your dreams and live life with all the gusto you can. Thank you.