Meet Terry Majamaki | New Global Adventures

We had the good fortune of connecting with Terry Majamaki and we’ve shared our conversation below.

Hi Terry, what was your thought process behind starting your own business?
Honestly, we started this business by chance. Our background from working in the corporate world is in creative, tech, and e-commerce, mostly doing websites for various well-known companies. At the time, my wife Jenny was into running and going to races, we were traveling around the nation to run half marathon and marathon events.

My wife always wanted to run the Great Wall of China Marathon, she signed up, but as the date got closer a conflict came up and she was unable to make it. She had a running friend who had relocated to Beijing, and she asked her to go to the race to pick up her packet and grab a medal for her. One thing led to another, and her friend became a volunteer coordinator with the race and was tasked to help promote the event to international audiences. She reached out to my wife to help make a website to promote the event, but our normal fees were too much, instead we partnered together to create the website and split any profits on it.

The first year we had 2 people sign up through our website, the second 25, the 3rd year we had over 600. That year my wife went to China to help support and care for the runners to ensure they had a great experience. We had packages with lodging, activities, shuttle buses, and of course the race.

At the same time, distance relatives who live in China had noticed that Jenny was in China and reached out to see what she was doing. She invited them to come witness the Great Wall of China Marathon so they could see it first-hand. After they did, they were inspired and motivated to create races with her in China.

That year we realized there is more of an opportunity here and potential to grow the event to be world class. After that year we had some ideas and suggestions to elevate the race and attract more international travelers. Unfortunately, the race owner was comfortable with the race as is and did not wish to put forth effort to improve it.

We decided to continue promoting the event but jumped at the opportunity to create new races on our own with Jenny’s relatives. They took her to the Yunnan province where they scouted the Yunnan Puzhehei Marathon and the Shangri-La Marathon in the Himalayan mountains. The following year we launched both of those races in China, both incredible locations and bucket list experiences for adventure runners.

All this time we were living in Valencia, California, and that same year we started to create the races China, I started think why we don’t create some in our own backyard. The process and effort would be a lot easier, and we have some awesome locations for people to experience. That year we launched the VALENCIA Trail Race, Sugar Daddy Race, and SPACEROCK Trail Race, all located in the greater Santa Clarita Valley of Los Angeles.

At that point we made this our full-time focus and business, leaving the corporate world behind and solely relying on our efforts for the success of our business. Utilizing our passion for running and outdoors combined with our expertise in creativity, websites, e-commerce, logistics, and marketing to drive sustainable growth forward. Since then, we have grown to 7 annual races in California, and we are looking to expand with a few more in the next year.

Can you open up a bit about your work and career? We’re big fans and we’d love for our community to learn more about your work.
Early in my career I focused on graphic design and being creative. I worked with several companies as a web designer and working my way up to creative director. The one company that taught me the most would be Beachbody, famous for their P90X, Insanity, and Turbo Jam infomercials.

I was the 5th person in the web team when I started, 7 years later I was running the web department with close to 70 people in various teams for graphics, coding, quality assurance, project management and ecommerce. Beachbody was and is a company that excelled in direct response marketing, analytics, logistics, quality, and passion. It was a great company with great leadership that allowed you to flourish. I learned so much in my years there and applied that knowledge and experience into our making race business successful.

Any places to eat or things to do that you can share with our readers? If they have a friend visiting town, what are some spots they could take them to?
Hard to say, as in 2018 we moved out of the city and into the country. We needed more space and wanted to enjoy a simpler lifestyle. We found Stallion Springs (about 20-minutes West of Tehachapi) and fell in love with it. About 2-hours north of Los Angeles it was close enough for us get into town to do our races and business, but far enough to break away from the hectic city lifestyle.

People often say that Tehachapi is heaven between two hells, located between Mojave Desert and Bakersfield. They key thing that transforms the experience is elevation. We are around 4000 feet into the mountains, the climate gives us 4 seasons which makes life very enjoyable and quite beautiful. Then you get into Stallion Springs and it’s a total hidden gem that allows you to feel like you’re in another world. Especially when you get into the hills overlooking the central valley. We fell in love with it and haven’t looked back since.

The Shoutout series is all about recognizing that our success and where we are in life is at least somewhat thanks to the efforts, support, mentorship, love and encouragement of others. So is there someone that you want to dedicate your shoutout to?
As our business is about bringing a community of runners together, we would not be where we are today without the incredible support of runners and volunteers who join our events and become a part of our race family. We are humbled and blessed that we can do this full time to support our family.

Runners love our events, and we are honored to have a growing legacy of return runners who use our events to stay healthy and achieve their running goals. Our reward is seeing them cross the finish line knowing they have pushed themselves to be greater, achieving another milestone, and earning an awesome finisher medal.

We always remind ourselves that it takes a village to organize and host a successful event. Our races average between 50-100 volunteers depending on the race. There is an incredible community of volunteers that come out to volunteer at each race, to support their friends and fellow runners, and give back to their local community. Over the years we have had over 1000 volunteers, some volunteer once, while others volunteer at almost every race and have become close friends. The volunteers are all the true superstars of our race crew family.

At the same time, it’s very humbling to know that all the efforts help to provide a healthy and positive impact on people’s lives and the communities involved. It’s a labor of love that gives back in abundance of personal joy.

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Image Credits
All images owned by New Global Adventures. Gave you more than needed, we have a ton of awesome photos, over the years we have captured over 400,000 photos which we provide free to everyone to enjoy. See here: https://newglobaladventures.com/races/photos/