Visit Wausau: Wisconsin’s Basecamp for Outdoor Adventure, Vibrant Culture, and Unique Events

SPEAKER_01 0:06

Hello everyone, this is Howard Fox and welcome back for another episode of the Outdoor Adventure Series. Today's episode was facilitated by Travel Wisconsin, who, along with Destination Madison, are hosts of the 2026 Outdoor Writers Association of America's annual conference. During today's episode, we hope to share with you why Wisconsin and the communities that make up this great state, including the Greater Wausaw Area, are the perfect destination for family vacations, couples getaways, outdoor adventures, meetings, conferences, and inventions. Tim White is our guest today. Tim is the executive director of Visit Wausau, and he and his team are responsible for promotion of the Greater Wausaw Area. Tim, it's great to have you on the podcast.

SPEAKER_00 0:58

Welcome. Howard, thanks for having me. I uh really appreciate it. Really excited to be here and talk with you about everything.

SPEAKER_01 1:06

Fantastic. And what seemed like such a long time ago, we knew we're gonna be coming to Madison for the conference. It's in August. We are in August right now, officially, and we're a couple of weeks away. So I'm looking forward to not only chatting with you today, but meeting you in a couple of weeks.

SPEAKER_00 1:23

Yeah, me too. It's gonna be a great conference. We in Wisconsin, we love hosting uh outdoor rec type of uh meetings and conventions. We've done a number of things up here, and we can talk about that too. But uh yeah, we uh we love the outdoors, and and that's one of the biggest draws to come to this state.

SPEAKER_01 1:43

No doubt. I grew up in the Midwest and also spent time in the in the your neighbor to the south. And I I made it up to Wisconsin a few times and it just anytime you can get out to nature and see trails and trees and water, you can't beat that. You cannot beat that at all. And and I would love if you could share a little bit about your background and how did you get into the destination marketing space?

SPEAKER_00 2:11

That's a great question. Kind of by accident. So I actually lived for a while. I'm from central Wisconsin, uh, and I've lived in different parts of the country. I ended up in Chicagoland for 20 years before coming back to this state. And uh I was in the music industry first, uh working with national label artists. I owned a management company and a resurrected old uh indie record label. And so I really loved music and and and the whole thing about um managing bands was connecting the artist to the fan. And so we would always use the latest technology or the trends that were coming around the corner, and of course, this will date me, but the internet was new, and there were all kinds of things happening with that, and uh and then digital files came, and we were one of the were really kind of early adapters of that, even when the major labels weren't so the music industry had some issues in the early 2000s, retail, that kind of stuff, and I kind of morphed into uh general marketing and branding and uh worked with a lot of different organizations in the Chicagoland area, ended up uh kind of still working with musicians who wrote uh big kind of themes and ended up being the curator of One Shining Moment, which is this kind of cheesy song that's like 35 plus years old, but is the theme song for the men's uh NCAA tournament uh championship uh championship night when they show the highlight reel at the end of the tournament with all the games that have happened. And it's sung by Luther Van Ross, and so we were the caretakers of that, everything from ghost tweeting um to uh which which was insane because that tournament's a long period of time to uh like let's say Coca-Cola wanted to put one shining moment on uh their cans. We would work with them, work with Turner, ESPN, CBS, all that kind of stuff. And so, yeah, so I this is a long answer. Sorry, hopefully it's okay. I just became aware of that. Ultimately, um, I ended up coaching um CEOs and presidents of boards and stuff. Came up during the pandemic to central Wisconsin, wanted to get back to Wisconsin. And uh this was a happy accident, wasn't looking for this, and so I didn't even know that this like this whole industry existed. I guess I never thought about it much. Like, how do you promote an area or a destination? And so, along with uh taking my marketing and branding acumen and and being able to transfer that, it's just connecting fans right to uh to a vacation and stuff. So learned a lot from my peers as well, which is great. Wisconsin has a great connection of of uh great uh destinations really working together.

SPEAKER_01 5:05

So okay. I have to share uh a couple things. One is as someone who is growing up around music and just total aficionado and being in the industry. I actually lived right from Chicago before I came to I live in Boulder City now, but before I came, and you and I left Chicago about the same time. I left right when COVID started. Yep, and I literally live right down the street from the original chess records.

SPEAKER_00 5:35

So I would I always thought that was pretty cool. Oh yeah. Oh my gosh, that whole story is amazing. Yeah, yeah. And uh and it's yeah, I mean, there's so much history with chess records and just how they evolved, and it it's it's really interesting too, if you look and how as a side note, but a lot of times it's like new technologies kind of led the way for uh for music. There was a furniture maker in like Waukesha or Watoma or something outside of Milwaukee. And so, in order to, when the record players came out, they ended up starting a record label and brought a lot of Chicago blues artists up to record. I mean, there's like these crazy stories about music and how the technology and the marketing of stuff really kind of led uh to uh some of the some of the ways to get music out. So, yeah, chess records, amazing story. Great, great movie too.

SPEAKER_01 6:30

Great movie. Oh, very good movie. And the other thing that that you said that real that really triggered is you moving from Chicago up to Wisconsin. When I moved to Nevada, I came, I'm a my day, I have a day job, I'm a coach as well, leadership development, career development. Yep. And I moved out here for a coaching project, and I wanted to get out into the desert. I wanted to see dark skies, the Milky Way, go car camping. That's how I discovered the outdoor space. You know, because I'm always I was always an urban kid, and occasionally I'd go to a local county park, but it wasn't until I got to Nevada and the real that's what how I was introduced to the OWAA as well, and this whole idea of these destinations and chambers who were promoting the outdoors. So I I appreciate your in the journey you had had. What are some of the real I don't know, golden nuggets, so to speak, or the the highlights of you because you had this career in the past in the music and you're still involved with it. But from your understanding of just giving a good product and experience to a customer, how has that really helped you translate on what it means to promote uh Wasaw and visit Wasaw and the surrounding communities as a potential destination? Like you need to come here and as your website said, park yourself here and then go sell, go elsewhere. But how has that helped you really kind of take off in this in this work in promoting the the area?

SPEAKER_00 8:08

Yeah, that's a great question. And so I have a master's in philosophy, which is strange in and of itself too. So I can get very philosophical about why we do what we do, right? And that's including with promoting the destination. So obviously, you take a look at the resources and and what you have, and part of it too is it has to resonate with you as well. And so one of the reasons that I moved back to central Wisconsin, but particularly WASA, was because of the terrain, right? The terrain that leads to the outdoors. So we are in a place, again, being aware of the place that uh the resources that you have, not only city resources and that kind of stuff for people, but but you know, it's really all about the outdoors here. So you look at we have Ribb Mountain, which is a 1.7 billion-year-old Modanac, which is uh older than the Rocky Mountains. We live in some of the oldest uh geologic uh rock in the world. And it creates all this great terrain. And so when you look at your resources, you look at all the things that are happening here, uh, and hopefully you're enjoying them yourself, then you're thinking, okay, how do we connect? How do we tell the story? How do we show authentically the point of view of what it's like to visit? I mean, because it always starts with a visit, and that's an old uh destination uh international phrase. It always starts with a visit, and then of course, when you have a good visit, uh you think about what's life like living here and working here, investing here, right? So if it's a really good visit, you think about that. And so my goal is always to understand what we have from an asset standpoint, understand what uh that type of customer, I guess if you want to put it there, visitor is like who who really enjoys, you have to enjoy outdoor rec here. Like we've got amazing urban assets too. Like we have a new Indian restaurant uh that just Zika is a year old, and it's as good as Chicago's Indian restaurants. It's amazing, right? And we have a lot of other cool things like that. We've got three art museums, we got a grand theater that's in the top 10 pole star for market size all the time. But we're not marketing that first and foremost because if you're coming from the Twin Cities or you're coming from Chicago, you have that. You have the arts and culture, right? You come here for the outdoor rec because of the terrain, and then you discover all this other great culture and art. Wow, I can't believe this stuff is here in the middle of the North Woods. And so that's the kind of audience that we want to cater to, right? The ones that are really gonna enjoy the outdoors, uh, that are, you know, like you, a Chicago kid, right? Who is like, oh my God, look at all these great trees and all this water and look at this amazing mountain. I mean, it I I guess it qualifies as a mountain, but it's stark, right? You can see it uh anywhere uh in the Wa area. And then all the other weird little things that you discover here. And so it's my job is to connect those people to that core, um, which again, we branded this area as Wisconsin's base camp, right? It's this outdoor wreck kind of thing, and then it's got creature comforts. The definition of base camp is you know, it's a place where you kind of set your camp and then you go off on adventures and you come back and get your comforts. And so that uh all of that is intentional uh to try to fire up people's imaginations to give them a vibe and a feeling of, oh, this is a place that I need to check out. And so we layer the things that we market and tell the stories about to people so that they go, oh, and there's this, oh, and there's this. So it's like a circle, right? Ultimately, it's layers of an onion. And this is the same thing in the music industry. You have your core fan, your core fan loves everything about the artist or the destination. They're the ones that tell others about it, they'll like buy all kinds of stuff, they're your biggest fans. But then you've got rings that that go out like an onion, and you're gonna get people who are only gonna be interested in a few things and and and then the general public. And so our job is to pull those people in, right? And to uh show those people and the general public, oh, there's some things for you too, and to make them fans because ultimately, when you make someone a fan of a destination or a product or an artist or anything, they're your best marketing, they're gonna tell their friends and family, right? And so and and and we use data uh really robustly too for outdoor rec. That's another thing we can talk about. I'm a big proponent. Once I found out that you can pull data from GPS, um, we're able to, we've we've totally kind of flipped uh data in the outdoor rec world. I'll I I'll go and speak at workshops about data and outdoor rec. And outdoor rec people are like, what? You could do that? Oh my gosh. So that's we want to be well informed. We can look around and go, my gut says this about who's coming, but data helps confirm it, or shows me that I'm my gut's wrong. So or you your gut changes, uh yeah, exactly. Exactly.

SPEAKER_01 13:30

So yeah, so yeah, it's all about pulling people in to becoming fans and okay so so where Wassau sits in the communities within the Wausau area, you literally are north-central Wisconsin. Yeah. Where are you pulling your ideal visitors from? Is it like a one, two? Well, it's gotta be more than a one, but four to six hour radius or or or more.

SPEAKER_00 14:01

No, so I know all that the data sets. We use this for a company called Zartico. Excellent, excellent data. We they work really close with us. So we know that first and foremost, there's a lot of people that come over here from the Fox Cities, which is Green Bay, Appleton, Oshkosh area, just to come over to do something unique. My uh my peer, Pam Seidel from the Fox City, says we have the terrain that they don't have, right? We have all this stuff. And so we get we get a lot of people that come over for some of the biking, the mountain biking. Now we're the basically the red granite capital of the world for gravel biking. We have a thousand miles of trails that we just developed, um, which is amazing. They'll come to hike the national. We have two national park trails, the the the Ice Age Trail, and that's always a fun thing for people to experience. And then the uh Great Pinery Heritage Waterway, which was became a national waterway, national park waterway last year. And again, we're you know, we're part of developing that. But so Green Bay, that area is big. And then we get uh a lot of people from Milwaukee, Madison that come up. Uh, because again, you know, you know, it's kind of outdoorsy in Madison and a little outdoorsy, you can get out on Milwaukee, but this is really outdoorsy to them, right? It's like you're gonna not you're you're gonna be able to paddle in a place and not see anybody, right? You're gonna see tons of wildlife, and yet still at the same time, at the end of the day, you can go to Chow and get Scratch Italian or lemongrass ease and effusion, really amazing food, or go to an art museum that are free. They're all free. So we pull those, and then we get a lot of folks from Chicagoland uh that come up. Um, and we can't market as much as any as others because we don't have the budget, but uh people will come up for events, they'll come up especially for skiing. So we have uh really what is considered the number one ski resort in the Midwest, Granite Peak, which is on Red Mountain. It's been a ski hill for a long time. It has a 750-foot vertical drop, which is a really great, that's great vertical. And um, and so we have that. And so we get a lot of Chicago residents that come up for skiing, uh, they'll stay for longer periods. And then we pull Twin Cities, uh, people that are coming over again. It's outdoor rec, right? So we know the kind of the suburbs and the places and the cities where people are coming from. They have a lot of outdoor rec too, and they have a lot of art and culture. So why do they come here? They come here for some of the uh outdoor rec events, like Trek as a base camp uh race uh that they they call it. We have you know Wasa 24, which is the uh second largest 24-hour mountain bike race in the United States, the first largest in the Midwest. We've got Iron Bowl, an event organization that puts on all kinds of outdoor rec um races and events, the Red Granite Grinder. And um so we're we really have this niche area of doing this, this, these races, these outdoor wreck events, the trails. We know on the new um red granite trails in uh Marathon County, we already have seen because we've been able to pull in uh data that 6,000 plus people in the past uh quarter um are using the trails from out of the area, and 14% of those people are from out of state. We've heard stories of people that are buying land in our area so that when they retire, they can just ride gravel. So I love it. Yeah. And so you look at those assets, right? And you go, how can we help the visitor way make easier, right? How can we put signage up? How can we curate that? And that's really a sustainable type of destination development, too, right? We don't have to build a bunch of buildings, we just need to put up bike stations and kayak launches and signage. Uh so yeah, those are the biggest well, and then we get some people from uh the UP as well that come down, so because there's better shopping here, which is funny.

SPEAKER_01 18:17

So I love the youpers because as a as growing uh uh being born and raised in Detroit and gotta get gotta give the UP credit. So I'm curious, you you said something uh about the I mean you've got these uh great outdoor activities of sporting and really some great races and these events. I imagine you're pulling in a a fairly decent sized international crowd.

SPEAKER_00 18:44

Yeah, we just got done. This is a funny story. So we just got done two for two weeks. We held the the world horseshoe pitching tournament championships uh in at the Green Heck Turner Community Center. We have this new really great indoor greenheck turner, and um it's so funny we got the bid for we didn't even know this was a thing. I didn't even know. I mean, and we got got the bid for 2026 and 2029, and they loved it so much here for two weeks. So we had pitchers from all around the world, Japan and Canada and South Africa, and I mean it's just like wow, and about 3,000 people, almost a thousand uh pitchers for the competition, and then of course family and friends. Some restaurants ran out of food. We told them they were coming, and uh, we had some restaurants that ran out of food, which is in 2029 they'll be ready. But um, they love it so much uh that um they and usually the organizations don't do this, usually you have to bid it again. They said, Hey, we want to come back for 2033 and 2037, which feels weird to hear those dates because it feels like Star Wars or something. And so, yeah, we do. We also get a lot of, so here's another thing. We do get a lot of Asian uh visitors coming in, more so, you know, a few years ago before some of the uh economic and tariff issues. We are the number one exporter of ginseng in the world. So Marathon County, yeah. Marathon County's ginseng is considered the top in the world. We export more ginseng than anywhere, anybody else. A lot of Asian buyers come. We also are the home of the, and this is a funny thing too, and it's kind of tied a little bit to ginseng. We're the home in our county of the only place in the center of the hemisphere where you can stand. So we're at the 45, we have the 45 by 90 marker, which is the center of the northwest hemisphere. The northeast hemisphere center is in uh Himalayans and you can't get up on it. The southeast and southwest centers are in oceans. Uh, we it's our smallest county park. You can go there and stand on this geologic marker, feel the vibes, and we give you a really nice coin if you come in and uh and and and tell us you've been there, uh, that looks like the marker. But uh supposedly there's a a little magic about uh growing ginseng 45 north, um, and and that uh that parallel.

SPEAKER_01 21:23

So God, who knew? I mean, it's uh right you've got something Sedona, Arizona to now. That's good, right?

SPEAKER_00 21:30

Right, yeah. And I also feel like it's probably a time portal. Yeah, you if you step on it, you'll be transported somewhere else. So yeah.

SPEAKER_01 21:38

So I would love if we could take a tour of the website. I've got a couple other questions I'll ask when we're there, but because let's do it. I love our listeners to learn more about this. And with the miracle of technology, this will go smoothly. So my fingers are crossed. And yeah, one second, let me get that. Up there. Okay. I am starting. Sharing. All right. I may have to refresh the page, but we should be seeing your home page. Let me just refresh it. There we go. Look at that water. Oh, yeah, yeah. Look at that.

SPEAKER_00 22:18

So take us on a tour. Yeah. So one of the things that we do, so we're unique as a DMO destination marketing organization. And most DMOs uh hire a creative agency to get their content. And um we don't. We have an in-house creative. So we have uh Emmy and Tele award-winning content that we uh that we create ourselves. We use authentic people that live here uh as quote unquote actors. But well, basically so we're heavy visual, so you'll see like this like that's the Dells of the Eau Claire, which is uh we have a uh international light water park right downtown, which is what you're seeing there. A lot of races. Uh, again, um the Wisconsin River, the national uh waterway. Uh, you can paddle right downtown. And it's it's really all about, again, just the outdoor road back and enjoying the outside. You can have any kind of experience, right? You can have this total wilderness experience, and you can totally just paddle downtown, be downtown. We have some of the toughest uh races, uh, mountain bike and and whatnot. But really, outdoors is such a big thing for us that it's uh top tab on our our menu. And so um the the biggest things that people we have about 60,000 uh unique visitors every month to our website, which is really good.

SPEAKER_01 23:44

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 23:45

And so the the whole point is to showcase the area. And so the biggest usage of that that people uh almost half of our visits are local people too, um, at any given moment, too. You know, we put down all kinds of things to do. You'll see the outdoor tab really has a ton of stuff. Events is uh yeah, it'll I mean like all kinds of outdoor stuff, right? So four seasons, we're a four-season destination, and that's what really makes us unique.

SPEAKER_01 24:12

And so if you're gonna be uh question of mine, are you a four-season? I kind of knew that answer, which Rose here.

SPEAKER_00 24:20

Yeah, and so if you look at any particular area uh on the website, it will take you like the events calendar. That's a big thing. The uh yeah, if you just click on that, you'll see all the different events that are going on, uh, all the annual events we just got done with Wings Over Wausau, which was uh right downtown. We have a downtown airport um right off of downtown. It's kind of a precursor to the EAA, uh, which is an Oshgas every year. But um thousands of people come to see all kinds of stuff. We had an F-18 jet that was here as well. Um where the Wisconsin Valley Fair is happening, which is one of the biggest uh countywide fairs in in the uh state of Wisconsin. Uh, and on the weekend of uh the the first weekend after Labor Day, we have Artrageous, which is three different art things going on at the same time in Wasa. And there's about 80,000 people that show up to that. And so really people are always checking our events tab, and our our partners and stakeholders are able to put their events up at any time. So we encourage them to do that. So so yeah, uh that's a big thing. Of course, our website has all the places that you can stay from hotels. We have meetings and sports. Again, if you are yeah, there's the horseshoe tournament uh that we had just had, and you can see all the info about that. And uh we'll even make a create a logo, which we'll do that too. So, again, we do a lot of cool in-house creative things and uh offer a lot of stuff. So it's a it's a good website on and as all right, websites are always changing. Like if you yeah, click on insider guide, that's our blogs that we so one of the interesting facts about uh about AI in the DMO world is you know, generative AI, but like when you type something up in Google and AI comes up with an answer first and foremost, we have to fight that. And it's not really a fight. There's really kind of an easy way to deal with it. We uh want to be we want to be the expert when it comes to travel in our central Wisconsin area. So we want AI to use us as the source, right? And so the more content that we put up, uh the more consistently uh that we put up things, uh the more uh AI and Google will read that and they will use us as the experts. So, like when you type in something and that generative AI comes up, a lot of times it'll put the source. And if it doesn't say visit Wasa in the source, I'm like, okay, we got some more work to do, right? So so that that's a really interesting thing to kind of deal with as well. So, but yeah, with things to do, you can see all the different areas. You have the online visitor guide. We are another thing we're doing is itineraries, which is yeah, or 45 by 90 marker. Yeah, itineraries is a big thing too. Again, from a content standpoint, it helps. But also, I think when I've done trips and planned out trips, a lot of times I'll look at people's itineraries. Here are 10 things to do in that area or on this trip. And I won't necessarily do all of them, but I'll go, oh, that's great. I'll do this, this, and this, right? And so we know that that kind of um writing those kind of things are really, really important because again, it just kind of helps people tip them over the edge. We just did a blog called what you're gonna what what what can you do in 24 hours in Wassa? If you have 24 hours, here's a bunch of things to do, right? And so, yeah, yeah, a lot of stuff on the website. Never change it, never static, it's always changing. I love that. I I've got to go check out this 45 by 90 club. Yeah, there it is. That's the coin that you get right there. That's the coin. So, and again, it's just this, it's kind of on the edge of a cornfield. It's so it's so weird, uh, but just so cool. People um people put it on their bucket list. People come from all over the place. Sometimes I'll go out there just to check our signage, and they're like, Oh my gosh, I came all the way from here, and that's just been on my bucket list, and they're like so excited, and it's like this little spot. Like, oh my gosh. So it's pretty funny.

SPEAKER_01 28:42

I discovered when interviewing other destinations or chambers about their communities, you never know why people are coming to your area. I mean, I I did an episode or series with um Newberry Springs, California. They're right on Route 66, so and they're known for the if you ever watched the movie The Baghdad Cafe, that's like the that's the big pull. And but when I was out there, one one of the uh one of the interviews I did was with a gentleman who was at at geocaching. Oh yeah. Okay. So I imagine there's hundreds of geocaches in this Wassau area. Oh, I may not know them all. Yeah, I mean who knew? I mean, it's like it's like the the horseshoeing. Who knew it's a thing and they're coming here for it?

SPEAKER_00 29:37

Who knew these geocachers are coming? Yeah, the geocachers are coming. There's a thing in the film industry talking about film, right? Called set jetting. Yeah. So I'm gonna go to the set of where this was filmed. So we're uh Wisconsin is has got a newly formed film uh industry uh department to uh to work on getting more NS film credits now, which is great. We kind of lobbied for that. And the interesting thing is like the sci-fi network had this great show called Revive, Revival on, and it was from adult comic uh illustrator Tim Seeley, who's from our area, and he it's it it says Wassau, right? It's it it's filmed in Canada, uh, which is kind of sad. But um the interesting thing is he'll show like the Welcome to Wassau sign and and the skyline of Wausau, right? And then you're hearing all these characters to him, I gotta get the hell out of Wassau, which sounds so weird and just so funny, but but that's the thing. Like, we would love to have like revival actually film in Wausau, right? We have some really interesting architecture and stuff, and so then we would get scent jetters, we would get people that would come to see the the movie where the movie or the series was filmed. So I love it. People are interesting, I do too. Okay, by the way, I'll be able to do that. And that's outdoor. That's outdoor rec too. That's outdoor rec. Yeah. Oh, yeah. If you click on or you put your mouse over certain things, what happens is that uh things will pop up and you'll be able to click on it and get information and go to that. So if you just click on a particular area. So we also you'll see the um you'll see that little icon on the bottom right of your of the website. That actually not only is an ADA thing, but we also you can translate the website into 160 some languages.

SPEAKER_01 31:37

That's true.

SPEAKER_00 31:37

We have yeah, we're just gonna uh PR that out. We have um we have about 15% of our population in the Wasa area is Asian, which is really high population, mostly Hmong. We have an amazing uh Hmong uh population. We have the largest um Hmong festival we just got done last weekend in Wisconsin is here, and uh the the Hmong culture are amazing, Hmong people are amazing, they've been here for over 50 years, and so there's generations of successful Hmong families here, business people, restaurant owners, all that kind of stuff too. And we like to uh highlight that, all that culture too.

SPEAKER_01 32:18

So very good, very multicultural. I love it. Well, listen, I am going to uh head us back to our just you and I stopped chatting. So technology work, that's a good thing. Yeah. A question I was gonna ask, uh while we're on the side, I'm gonna ask it now is as the executive director, you're not, I mean, you gotta be you're a busy guy. You're also you also have learned you have the best career in the world. If I had to start my career, I mean, you and I are not that far apart age-wise. Yeah, I'm thinking for doing all these interviews, I need to go become an executive director at a DMO somewhere. Totally. Because it's the best career. I think it's the best career.

SPEAKER_00 33:01

It's so much fun. It's like it's so much fun. Where can you I mean to promote an area that one you love, but then to be in relationship with uh everybody that's trying to do the same thing, too, right? Businesses and municipalities and uh hoteliers, and we just want people to feel the hospitality of the greater Wasa area. I mean, oh my gosh. And then of course I have to do all the things too, right?

SPEAKER_01 33:26

So yeah, well, that's that's what keeps you fit, and that's what keeps you young. And that's heck yeah. See, I'm here I am trying to put the outdoor and the outdoor adventure series, and I'm sitting behind a banner. Or uh, but I get out there, I'm getting out there. You are, yeah, definitely. So, quick question. You're a busy guy, but I know you're not and you have your creative team, but you're not you all are not doing this all by yourself. You've got staff, imagine some vol lots of volunteers, given all the events that you have to be a part of. Let's uh give a shout out to them.

SPEAKER_00 34:01

Yeah, I've got a great staff. We have a small staff, four full-time uh folks, and then three part-time people. We also have a number of people on retainer, um, which is kind of a thing where we pay them and um they're on call, mostly creative stuff. But yeah, our volunteers, volunteers are uh really the people that are in the community that are helping to put the events together. We don't have to run those events. There's other organizations that do that. We just have to really promote it, but we work hand in hand with them. Not only, yeah, our team works with those partners. What do you need? How can we help promote? How can we do really do best marketing practices for you and with you, by giving them some advice as well? And so it all starts with a great staff. We've just we uh yeah, we've got creative folks, we've got partnership people, we've got director of operations. I mean, we've got someone that puts we have 34 racks where we put our visitor guide and other pamphlets and stuff all around town. And so, and a lot of it's done online, right? So we have a very robust website, but also behind that, we have a customer relationship, uh CRM tool too that uh partners get to use. And so, yeah, the the future is really bright. We're we're continuing to stretch the technology to do more things with it to help our partners. So shout out for all of us nerds who want to use technology too. But yeah, I love it. We're just all working together. I mean, Wasa's just got a great group of people that want to just roll out the red carpet for uh people as as they visit. I love it. I love it.

SPEAKER_01 35:42

If you look back now on your career journey, and now you again you have the perfect job, okay. And uh what's been your what I would call your aha moment of like, wow, I get to do this.

SPEAKER_00 35:59

Yeah, I have to think about that too. I think it's when so like I'm always thinking ahead, right? Like, oh, we can do this and we can do that, but then somebody else stopped me. Like, we had a tour, we had the Wisconsin bikes that do the healthy community summit here, which is really good. It was with the Office of Outdoor Rec, too. We we took people on tour, some some groups did different things. We took people downtown on and we took it at the top of the Dudley Tower, which is the tallest building north of uh Milwaukee, by the way. And they were looking around uh the area and they're like, man, I can't believe how Waussow's changed. How amazing this is. How and so when people stop me, or I'm just in conversation with them, and they just are kind of share their giddiness about what's going on in Wausau. I gotta go, oh yeah, that's right. We've got some, we're we're doing great things. We've got some amazing things. I have to stop for a second and just kind of enjoy that and bask in it and go, we are doing really well. We're we do have so many good things. Okay, and then let me let's work on this. So yeah, but that's those were my that's my aha moment when people kind of give me feedback and stuff. So okay, very good.

SPEAKER_01 37:15

Do you have a quote or a philosophy, maybe perhaps a book you've read, uh The World According to Tim? Something you'd like to share with our audience before we head out today.

SPEAKER_00 37:27

Yeah, well, I'm always reading uh a lot of books. I have uh bookshelves of especially philosophy and stuff. But um been telling people uh who have come up to me lately and said, Oh my gosh, I feel like I'm too much, or like, how can I be my authentic self? And there was an author named John Eldridge. I usually tell them this quote um said uh that it basically says um let the world feel the full weight of who you are and let them deal with it. And it's like be your authentic self. That's what we're trying to do in sharing the destination with people, authentic. Here's what you got here. I mean, isn't it amazing? And uh and I encourage people to to be the same. You be your best self and be authentic and let them deal with it.

SPEAKER_01 38:20

So fair enough. I love it. I can appro I can uh I can leverage that in my coaching practice. Yes, you can. Very good. Now, in addition to the uh visitwaha website at visitwasa.com, what are where are the others uh sites that we can uh direct uh our listeners to?

SPEAKER_00 38:39

Oh yeah, you can and you can get this from visitwasa.com too. But we're on Facebook, we're on Instagram, very robust uh seeds on that. We're on TikTok. We get a lot of crazy responses from that. Those are the main, those are the the the big three that you can go and see reels and all that, and YouTube, of course, as well. Too. So we've got a lot of content on there.

SPEAKER_01 39:02

Very good. Well, we will provide the backlinks to uh is it Wausaw, uh Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok. We'll have some photos from your uh that you're gonna share with me up on our show notes and also on the banners as well. Tim, it's been a pleasure to uh chat with you this morning. I'm looking forward to uh having a chat in person in Madison later this month. There's some other questions that I have, and I want to hear more about the data. I know we probably could have gone on one huge tangent there. Oh, sure. I'm looking forward to hearing about that. But really, just visit Wausau, it's a fascinating area. And uh you have officially been inserted in my next place to live list. So uh you did well. So thank you for your time today.

SPEAKER_00 39:50

Yeah, thanks for having me, Howard. And when we meet, I'll give you a big Wausaw hug. Okay.

SPEAKER_01 39:55

There, get rid of it. There you go. Well, listen, stay in the line. We're gonna do a real quick close, and you and I can have a final chat, okay? Yep, sounds good. Thanks. All right, all right, folks. We have just been chatting with Tim White. He is the executive director of Visit Wausau, and he and his team are responsible for the promotion of the greater Wausaw area. Great conversation. Really, I'm I'm always like everybody knows it's listening to this episode when I'm talking to a DMO or Chamber of Commerce. I'm always looking for my next place to live. Now, there's there's a certain CEO of a certain chamber that does not want me to sh say that. And I I respect her for that, and because I have to live, I live in this community here in Boulder City. However, what a fantastic area to to really to make it your base camp, which is a part of their tagline. Visit Wausau and great place, lots of outdoor activities, and also anchored by a really wonderful uh urban area. It's got some great food and some great culture to be shared and experienced. Now, do remember go out to the uh visit Wausau website at visitwassaw.com and they are on Facebook and Instagram and TikTok. I still don't get TikTok, but that's just me. However, but it's going to be there for you and really plan uh visit Wausau as your next destination. And again, we want to thank Travel Wisconsin and Destination Madison for some for facilitating interviews like we just had with Tim. All right, folks, wherever you are, whatever you're doing, go out there, have a fantastic day. Don't forget our website and our podcast on outdooradventureseries.com. We're also on LinkedIn and Facebook on our Outdoor Adventure Series pages. The video of this episode will be up on our YouTube channel, and that'll include the tour of the Visit Wausau website. And of course, you can listen to this podcast wherever you get your podcast from. Okay, folks, go out there and have a fantastic day. And for the folks that are joining us in Madison later this month, we hope you enjoyed this episode too, and are gonna look forward to having some great conversations with you. And hopefully you're gonna have another great conversation with him as well. All right, folks, go out there and have a fantastic day. Take care now.