Honestly. Walking into this, I had no idea what to expect but I also hadn’t invested much time into thinking about it. Things have been so busy here. But my first thoughts as I drove to the Founders Only retreat in my hometown of Austin, TX was: Would it be guys I related to? Interesting dudes? Douchey dudes? Alpha dudes? What would the vibes be? Would I learn anything?
But I’ll admit I was hopeful. Sine being added to the Slack group one week ago and watching about 40 founders introduce themselves online, I still had no idea what to expect but could tell you, it seemed like a lot of guys who were passionate about building companies, connecting, health, raising families, and still getting up early to run, lift and race.
And that’s my kind of people, at least on paper.
Because here’s the thing about getting older and busier. The circle gets smaller and this is something a lot of us discussed over the course of the weekend. You just don’t have time for it all. Work, wives, kids and training eat every hour, and the chance to sit across from people chasing the same big, hard things you are gets rarer every year.
A short weekend built entirely around that? I wanted it to be real and was hopeful it was as advertised.
So I packed my running shoes, plenty of workout clothes, an open mind, and went to find out.
Who Is Eric Hinman and What Is Founders Only?
Maybe it’s because I live in Austin, where fitness is a personality trait, or maybe it’s because I’m a dude on Instagram who focuses on fitness and business but Eric Hinman is seen as a leader in both.
But if you don’t know the name, here’s the quick version.
Eric Hinman is 46 and his online persona is that he is an absolute savage.
He’s a sub-9:30 Ironman, and the reigning HYROX World Champion in the 45-49 age group. Where most slow down, Eric is still pushing through both physical and business endeavors.
He’s also a founder, an investor and a guy who has built a career out of putting the right people in the same room. He’s a master at brand and think of him as a jacked Jesse Itzler, with more burpees, and less children. All thats to say, the way he thinks through, connects people together and sees the world is just different. Much like Jesse.
And ‘Founders Only’ is one idea that turned into a business. Get founders, investors, entrepreneurs and creators out from their phones and into a room together, then make them sweat and connect over early runs, hard workouts, small-group workshops and interesting speakers who have actually built things.
The Austin retreat was 48 hours with a curated group of 30ish people. The $2,500 ticket covered prepared meals, workshops, activities, branded gear and lifetime access to the Founders Only community. Your flights, hotel and rides are on you, and you don’t need to be a member to go.
Austin is just one flavor, too. It launched in 2021 and they also so smaller, more intense trips, like a 10-person Moab experience with whitewater rafting, mountain biking on Slickrock and an optional tandem BASE jump.
Eric is the face and Wyatt Ewing is the operations who makes it run.
Prior to Friday, I’d never met either of them. I knew the Instagram version of Eric. And that’s the catch-22 with anyone you follow online. You have an idea of who they are, but you have zero clue what they’re actually like until they’re standing in front of you.
Day One (Friday)
Things kicked off at 3:00 p.m. from The Colosseum, a big gym on Austin’s east side.
One by one, guys walked through the door. Some locals but mostly guys from all over the country. And one guy from Ireland too. Some knew each other, some I recognized from seeing other places, or online and some were brand new like I was.
But right away, it was dudes just chucking it up, saying what’s up and everyone giving each other some love through a hand shake and chest pound.
Then Eric walked in.
Same big smile you see on Instagram and he went straight around the gym shaking hands and introducing himself to every single person. Looking you in the eye and saying how great it was for you to be there. He acted just like he was the new guy, himself.
Within 30 minutes, my douchebag radar went quiet. Everyone in that room was just like me. Open-minded. Looking for connection. Looking to hear other people’s experiences so they could get better at their own, in business and in life.
And the icebreaker? Genius. Mostly because it was competitive.
We all ran through a gait analysis with RunDNA, and every single person walked away with a score. Hand a room full of type-A founders a number and you’ve got instant camaraderie. Everyone wanted to share theirs. Everyone wanted to know who had the best one.
And more importantly, who had the worst.
Sorry, Wyatt.
From there we went out for a 5-mile run which was definitely too fast to start but everyone wanted toi get after it. And that’s where small talk started turning into real talk about who you were, what you were doing and just general bull shitting. But there is something about running next to a stranger that gets you to the good stuff faster than any happy hour ever will.
Along the way, I had to pee behind a tree and jumped back in as the group went off in the distance out of sight. But it was there I was able to meet up with Will in the back of the pack and we ran the remainder of the run together. Will was from New Mexico and didn’t have a strong group in his city and Founders Only was his way of making that connection. And that’s something that came up a lot with the guys throughout the weekend. The ones that flew in to Austin we’re missing connection in their cities. Whether it was because they were small towns or simply their friends were not the Founders Only type, this was the answer to their issue.
Following that run, it was over to Eric’s house in East Austin.
Calling it a house undersells it. It’s a social space built around a pool and sauna. It was built exactly for this kind of weekend and every weekend in Eric’s universe. Its chill and welcoming with enough fridges stocked with Cadence, Huel and everything else to test out and drink for the first time or the 50th.
That’s where Mike Aidala took over. Mike runs The Offense, a mental health and coaching business, and he split us into small groups. Every 15 minutes, we rotated to a new one. New people, new introductions.
And the prompts weren’t “So, what do you do?”
We jumped into the deep end quick and talked about the things we regretted, the things we wished we were better at, and the things we wanted to change about ourselves and our businesses.
It all escalated quickly but in a good way when you only have 48 hours together and by the end of the night, I knew more about a few of these guys than I know about some of my neighbors.
One of my groups had Wyatt in it who I mentioned earlier. Wyatt is the guy behind the scenes, running Founders Only. He was quiet at first, like the rest of us. Then he opened up about life as a dad running businesses who, like everyone else in that room, doesn’t have it all figured out.
That set the tone and the people running this thing weren’t above it, but we’re just as invested in the weekend as everyone else.
And then there’s Sarah, Eric’s wife, who was at the house all weekend and might be the most patient person in Texas.
I can only imagine what her week(s) look like with Eric cycling dozens of different personalities, friends, and opportunities through their home. But she was dope, moved through the whole weekend like an ocean wave, saying hi to everyone, talking about their life split between Colorado and Austin and don’t you dare leave the gate open, because if her beloved 14-year-old dog goes missing, we’d all pay. Kidding. But maybe not? But she would understandably be pissed.
Greg LaVecchia of Bloom
Friday’s closing speaker was at the house and we wall gathered around the pool to listen to a conversation between Eric and Greg LaVecchia, co-founder of Bloom Nutrition.
Let that sink in for a second. Night one, and the guy who helped build one of the biggest brands in the women’s health & wellness and energy drink aisle space is sitting in front of 40 of us, telling it straight and open to having a real conversation with the whole crew.
And this conversation was hugely important, especially for the guys who came to town that were in the CPG space. Outside of knowing my wife buys Bloom collagen, that’s about the extent of what I knew about the company.
And that didn’t matter because Greg gave one of the most genuine talks of the weekend, let his guard down, and he was just as open about his failures, and pivots as his wins.
His story: he went from selling booty bands to building an energy drink company worth close to a billion dollars.
The wild part? He never planned to make an energy drink. He just kept following what his audience was telling him.
That one got me. I’m a planner. I go after one step, then the next, then the next. There’s a lot of intelligence, and a lot of bravery, in going wherever the journey takes you instead.
And he didn’t bolt when the talk ended. He stuck around, and guys lined up to pick his brain one-on-one. Generous and attentive is how I’d describe him.
If you’re in CPG, that hour alone was probably worth the price of admission.
Day 2 (Saturday)
Day 1 ended around 9:30 p.m. and day 2 started right at 6:30 a.m. And here’s what I love about Founders Only. It’s work hard, play hard.
Except the play hard is working out, so when we arrived to Squatch, the gang was reeling to go. This was a room full of high-energy, very successful entrepreneurs from every space you can think of and not one of them was out all night causing a ton of trouble in some random city.
So at 6:30 on the dot, We rolled an 8-mile run through downtown and parts of Lady Bird Lake.
Paces ran from sub-7 (the Eric group) to my group where I held 8 minutes and eventually 8:30, to other groups that we’re a whole lot more conversational. Nobody cared which group you were in, just tat you were picking up on new conversations or ones you put a pin in from the day before.
Something hit me on that run too.
You group was really diverse in terms of age.
I’m 44, and I’m pretty sure I was somewhere in the middle. Now, I’m not sure there was a single 20-something in the crowd but the 30’s probably led and then the 40’s were not too far behind. But almost everyone had a family and kids at home, and they’d left them for the weekend to be here.
And I only bring that up because that changes the energy and vibe. Nobody was there to goof off but instead wanted to maximize the short time we had. And I found that inspiring for a Saturday AM run at 6:30 when most of the city is still waking up.
And the hard physical stuff early made everyone sharper for everything that came after. We got back from the run, ate breakfast and then jumped to the next thing where we had a working session talking about what we were good at, and where we needed help in our businesses. With which people jumped in to offer help or discuss similar situations they faced.
From there, it was on to the first talk of the day.
Matt Johnson and the Infamous Cigarette
First up was Matt Johnson. Ultrarunner. Army veteran. And a guy who has absolutely exploded on social media. People love him. Others hate him.
He went from basically sleeping on the floor to more than a million followers and making a ton of money. He’s also genuinely one of the nicest people you’ll meet; don’t let the online persona fool you. Or maybe he wants you to hate him. If so, f*ck Matt Johnson, he’s a total asshole.
His personal brand took years to grow though and then it was truly one of the weirdest by chance happenings that kicked him into rocket growth. He was on a treadmill in his driveway, completely drenched in sweat and for no reason anyone can explain, a pack of cigarettes sat there. And he decided to light one up, with his best friend Drew behind the camera and post it.
The clip went viral.
His point wasn’t “smoke on the treadmill” and the cigarette was a metaphor. It was that he experimented with a ton of stuff until something finally worked. The idea was never to be the guy smoking but his personality is to push against the grain. Counter-culture stuff. He talked about how there has to be some level of relatability, and a cigarette mid or post run said to him, “who gives a shit” better than anyone was saying. He was essentially tired of showing the perfect athlete – the macros, the grams of protein and whatever else.
He also made the case that every good storyteller has to be able to tell multiple stories. Motivation. Comedy. Who you are. What your brand is. You have to think things through and don’t get to be one note. He compared it all to chapters in a book.
Then came the stuff you could take straight back to your business.
He doesn’t set big expectations anymore. He hates the word expectation and putting it all on yourself. Instead he chooses small goals, all the way. In particular, Matt said you can’t think about the finish line when you start a 200 mile race, and business is the same. So much is out of your hands. Control the controllable.
Eric and Matt talked about giving people value and that if a door closes, it was never meant to be anyway and probably would have been a pain in the ass.
Then lastly, your attitude. So much of everything around you is your attitude and how you think about yourself and what is happening around you. If its always the world hates me, then yea, no shit, things snowball; but the power of positivity is what drives these two ultra-successful individuals forward.
Trust is everything. Matt said this is the first time he’s really been able to sell to his audience. It took him four years.
Four years. That’s the part everyone skips.
The Workout That Ended Me
From that discussion, we all needed to get the energy back up and I’ll just say this. Eric Hinman is a goddamn beast. He’s built an insane engine in that body. And it’s even crazier that he’s 46, based on the way he runs and the way he crushes a HYROX-style workout.
For the pre-lunch workout, here’s what we did. Six rounds of:
40 squats, 30 push-ups, 12 burpees, 100-yard bear crawl.
Eric double-lapped me.
Not lapped. Double-lapped.
And once it was over and everyone was absolutely dusted, he was quick to rally the troops. “Just 50 more burpees” he shouted.
My god that was brutal and I just cut that up like a pizza in my brain, tackling 10 burpees at a time over 5 rounds. Just brutal.
The dude is physically insane. If you’ve ever wondered whether the Instagram version is real, it is. If anything, it undersells him.
Once I stopped nearly dying and replenised my sodium and water intake, we all had lunch and then listened to Collin Chartier sit down with Eric.
Collin Chartier Gets Honest
This was the talk that stuck with me most.
I’ve known the name Collin Chartier for years. From following Ironman and racing to seeing him at the very top to the absolute lowest. I’ve never reached out to him, or said positive or negative things about him, I just always watched. And hoped he was doing well.
For those that don’t know, Collin was a pro triathlete with a short but very successful career, one that ended with an EPO ban, something he admits to doing. He’s spent the years since on the outside of the triathlon world, rebuilding a life outside of sport.
During this completely open book and honest discussion, he talked through all of it: the highs and lows of training, the highs and lows of life, and the pressure of the expectations that come with being a professional athlete.
He didn’t dodge a second of it.
He admitted he knew exactly what he was doing when doping. He talked about the shame, and about how severely depressed he became. The hardest day of his life was telling his parents. He was sure they’d disown him.
They didn’t.
Someone asked if years later getting caught was the ultimate way to break the chains of struggle he was living through. And unhappy life. And he said, yes.
The part I keep coming back to is why he says he turned to EPO in the first place.
He had zero community. Nobody held him accountable. He felt no love. It was travelling and racing, and comparing. It was a hugely lonely world for him in his 20’s.
As someone who has spent years building and being a part of community around endurance sports, that one landed hard on my heart.
When it all came out, he left and bikepacked for five and a half months. Along the way he found breathwork, which he says has been therapeutic and truly grounded him. It brought back clarity, focus and discipline. He also talked about taking the energy a crowd gives you and giving it right back to them. His worst race in his professional life, at Kona was also a shining moment because the crowd did love him and he learned to love back.
Today he seems in a genuinely good place, with new passions and a life that looks rewarding. He launched a breath app you should download, called GroupUp. He’s grown businesses and is using everything he’d learned in his life to help others and continue to improve.
The message was simple. Everybody fucks up. It’s OK. It’s not the end of the world.
I don’t personally know all 40 guys who were at Founders Only, but I’d bet every one of them has had a moment where they thought their life was done. Putting Collin on the speaker list was a really smart call by the team, and probably the most impactful hour of the weekend.
He left us with a line I wrote down immediately: “The toughest mile is always the first mile.” Get through that and you can achieve anything.
The AI Revolution
Finally Saturday afternoon closed with Dan Ragan from UGC Factory (here in Austin) talking about all the ways in which AI needs to be implemented for any one of us. He talked through some doomsday scenerips for industries like agencies and how you can maximize agents to free a lot of research and building time.
I wont go into a ton of detail here but it was a great mix of Q&A, to insightful knowledge sharing and ultimately showcased that holy crap, I need to be utilizing AI so much more, especially when it comes to agents.
Our Thoughts
So, is Founders Only and Eric Hinman for real?
Yes. Full stop.
I’ve said this probably half a dozen times now in this write up but there we’re just so many instances where one session, or one connection alone felt like it was worth the price of admission.
And over two days (note: the retreat was 3. I just had some family obligations), what I saw from Eric was a totally genuine guy.
He doesn’t demand to be the main character but instead listens and actually takes in what you’re asking. The greatest example of this was on Saturday after al the sessions were over and we all were doing contrast therapy with 10 dudes in a sauna not mean for 10 dudes. The conversations were light and everyone was joking around. And then there was Eric, just sitting and listening to the banter. He didn’t feel the need to chime in, instead letting everything flow organically. And then finally, he stepped on and said, “Hey Collin. You lead breath work, why don’t you lead a quick sesion now and tell all these guys how to do it.” It was thoughtful and caring.
During the time we chatted, he gave me thoughtful answers to things I’m struggling with. Like with Front Pack. I asked him, people follow people, not brands. How much do I make Front Pack the brand versus me being the brand and letting it sit as it’s own thing. And we talked for 10 minutes about it, he asked more questions and almost like a therapist, let me talk through it to myself until he finally pushed me down the road I needed to head.
Founders Only and Eric Hinman care about the people in this orbit, even the ones who only come through for a weekend. He’s built a team and community that’s wired the same way. That’s the part that tells me this isn’t a one-man show propped up by an online follower count.
“Life is about speed bumps,” Eric told us, “and you are going to go through a ton in life.”
This weekend was a room full of guys comparing notes on their speedbumps and successes.
If you live a busy life, it’s really hard to meet people who want the same things you do, unless you go way out of your way to join a run club or start signing up for Ironmans. Founders Only is a shortcut to that room.
For some, it isn’t cheap, and at $2,500, you’re booking your own flights and hotels too.
But I walked away having learned 10x what I knew walking in. And now I’ve got at least a dozen guys I can text tomorrow, plus a phone full of numbers and emails. Whether you use them is on you but the opportunity is absolutely there.
It’s not a one-trick weekend either. Between Austin and trips like Moab, Eric never does the same thing twice. He’s always chasing something new.
Do we Recommend Founders Only?
Yes. Absolutely. We’d be a part of it again in a heartbeat.
It comes down to the people. Totally genuine dudes. Hard workouts. No douche bags. Guys really thinking about how to get better in their own lives, not just their businesses.
It is for every age and I will say, yes, it is male dominant but we hope to see that change or maybe they offer up a female Founders Only led but someone equally as invested as Eric.
If you’re over 30, and especially if you’re trying to build something, this feels like the right room. You’d rather do the hard stuff with other people than grind it out alone. So do they.
If you ever get the chance, be a part of it.
Just stretch before the burpees, because holy crap am I sore as hell today.
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