A lot of the information we talked about in our podcast came from our own individual experiences, which allowed for more diverse perspectives. For instance, last summer James had the opportunity to travel to Kenya to practice competitive long distance with members of Kenya’s Olympians. His unique experiences in a foreign country very different from our own allowed him to understand a completely new perspective in the running world from some of the world’s greatest athletes, which aided us in our discussions. Similarly, I had the opportunity to live in Germany for a year and compete competitively against other German track clubs. Believe it or not, the methods my teammates in Germany used when making their decisions of which shoes to buy were very different from the of here in America. Without a strong brand dominance, you had a more limited selection of shoes that you could buy. Meaning that when my German teammates would select shoes, they would put more effort into ensuring that these shoes would last them for a longer period of time, and high quality was of the upmost importance to them. These experiences helped the three of us to have open ended discussions. For instance, we discuss how prior to two years ago, Sketchers were considered to be shoes that grandparents wore, and never would you see a pair of Sketchers trainers at a professional track and field event. Yet as we discuss in our podcast, Sketchers partnership with top athletes has allowed them to enter the market, and potentially become a top rival to Nike and Adidas in the years to come. The reason we chose to record a podcast as the creative medium was to allow for natural conversations to be what inspired new discussions and raise new research questions. Using the same example of Sketchers, the question of how a ‘non-reputable’ shoe company could enter the track and field market never would have come up, but because we allowed for the conversation to stray away from the topic at times, we created new ideas that we were then able to talk about in the moment. Since the three of us have been friends for a number of years, we were able to openly criticize each other’s’ opinions when we disagreed, while still maintaining the respect for one another.