Today we’d like to introduce you to Aaron Ross.
Aaron, we appreciate you taking the time to share your story with us today. Where does your story begin?
Where to begin.
I was born and raised in Corpus Christi Texas. When I graduated high school I spent the first year traveling back back-and-forth from Corpus to Austin Texas while traveling the world riding BMX. On my 20th birthday. (Aug 2, 2006) I officially moved Austin and moved in with my friends. I’ve been in Austin ever since. I was lucky to have a 20 year professional BMX career. I was the number one writer in the world in 2009. I wrote in 10 different X games. Medaled at 4 of them. Had signature products with bike companies/shoe companies. And my product sold all over the world. Had one of the number one selling bike products of all time I was early to adopt social media, and I drew a large following early. One of the most followed action sports athletes for a little while. Used that tool to continue my career in a bunch of other directions, whether it was influencing or commercial and TV work. I was sponsored by Hotwheels for a long time and got to participate in a movie alongside a bunch of well-known actors and actresses and famous racecar drivers. At the same time is doing all this I was traveling the world nonstop riding BMX filming all over the world and putting together video parts.
While all this was going on, I was able to purchase some properties in Austin Texas, and then along the way I met My wife and then we continued. We mostly do a lot of real estate today. We own a bunch of rentals. A bunch of Airbnb‘s. We have honey‘s house in Austin Texas. We have Sunday house in Fredericksburg and we have the weekender house in Bentonville, Arkansas. The mountain bike capital of the country.
We also do larger development projects where we take land and develop it into commercial or residential. So we kind of do everything. Some days I don’t know what we do in the next day. We do everything.
I grew up with a dad who was always into cars. Restoring old cars and about 13 years ago I bought my first classic car Porsche 911. About three years ago we started a car show at Top Notch called Gruppechat night. It focuses on pre-1999. European cars.
It’s a hang. Everyone comes to the old burger hop and stands around a bunch of cars and talks. Takes you back a little bit. That’s grown into a pretty big show monthly. 2 to 300 people on the fourth Thursday of the month. That led into us starting 🏁 Manual Focus 🏁, which is a art show car show combined where we let Artist of all kinds of mediums whether it’s painting photography sculpture have a place to display their car focused artwork. We had our second show this past February and we had about 2000 people show up. We worked with some amazing local brands as well as some national brands and we will do it again on April 31/May 1 of 2027 at distribution hall in Austin Texas.
Rambling on about myself is tough because on any given day we do 1 million things. Around 2012 or 13 I met Justin Burrow who had started Burro Cheese Kitchen on South Congress and him and I became great friends and business partners and we owned Burro for 10 years… We opened on South Congress on rainy Street and we had five different trucks or trailers doing events all over Austin Texas. We were one of the biggest sellers at ACL for a long time.
Recently, we opened Mantle Thermal house on Mayor Road. It’s a wellness focused, cold plunge sauna red light therapy and Massage house on the east side. Justin has a collegiate running background and a ultramarathon background. I come from action sports so wellness and recovery is very important. I’ve spent the majority of my bike riding career on the ground all over the world getting beat up. Bumps bruises breaks and at this point in my life… Turning 40 this year wellness and recovery matters more than ever.
We do a bunch of things. My sister-in-law and co-owner of Sunday haus owns mylk collective. So with her help, we do all kinds of stuff. Go to all the restaurant openings and all the parties. She helps promote a lot of our projects and we thank her very much for that. One of the things I try to focus on with all the things that we have going on is community. Friendships and family. If I don’t get to do some of this stuff with my best friends and my family, I’m not super motivated to do much of it.
I could go on and on and on, and I’m sure there’s a lot of things I am forgetting, but that is a quick rundown of my story. There’s plenty that I am forgetting.
My Wife and I have a daughter named Honey James. A true Covid baby. She’s very outgoing she is regular at the car events. She’s a good traveler. When we do a lot of these Airbnb projects. It’s a big remodel restore. We are very hands-on. We do all of the metal work and landscaping ourselves. We’ve remodeled a couple home projects that turned into rentals. Honey James has been there the last six years and as much as a six-year-old can’t help she has helped. She poured concrete. She’s leveled concrete. She has been handing me tools and on job sites her whole life. We really focus on showing her anything as possible, and if you want it, you can build it. That goes for My Wife as well. The ultimate artist developer. Go-getter. I am the dot connector and My Wife is the executor. Without her I would never be able to do anything and the majority of what we do is because of her. I don’t even know if I would know how to book a trip without her more or less renovating entire project. She’s the real boss. She’s our boss. And we thank her every day for that.
I can answer more questions about any of these if you need anything. But that’s it for now off the top of my head.
We all face challenges, but looking back would you describe it as a relatively smooth road?
I don’t know if it’s been a smooth road… I’m a pretty easy-going guy so I take it as it goes. But with anything there’s ups and downs. Especially when you’re in the real estate world. We are lucky to be holding onto a lot of projects. But waiting for the ups and downs to go up again. As we bike riding besides getting beat up, I would say the majority of that was always good times. The ending is always sad. I’ve been riding bikes. My entire life and father time is undefeated. which is OK. And like I said, I’m always been pretty easy-going but that doesn’t mean you don’t miss it. If you ask My Wife the struggles she would have a very different answer. But I’ve always been a glass half full person… Forever optimist and take it in stride. It’s gonna be all right. So far, we are happy and healthy with a beautiful family and a beautiful daughter so as much as there is struggles here and there the core is good and we are lucky.
Can you tell our readers more about what you do and what you think sets you apart from others?
I would say I am mostly known for being a professional BMX rider. I was known for bright bikes. Wild ideas and going against the grain picking unique songs in a very hard-core world. A little more bright when it comes to song choice color choice. I tried to prove that you didn’t have to wear all black and be the traditional action sports stereotype. That was just my personality. I took odd jobs and odd sponsors because I enjoyed bike riding and I wanted to let my dream last as long as I could. I had a lot of fun doing it and still do.
One of my favorite things about my career… This goes for bike riding and everything else we’re doing now is meeting people. I want to meet people I wanna make friends and I love hearing other people stories and success and it just makes me happy to see people following their dreams and doing cool stuff.
Risk taking is a topic that people have widely differing views on – we’d love to hear your thoughts.
I’m 50-50 on this. With bike riding I was 100% a risk taker. But I wouldn’t consider myself a daredevil. I’d like to think I was a little more calculated, but in general, jumping down 15 stairs are off a roof is obviously risk taking…
With real estate or businesses… I lean to be a little more conservative with spending. But at the same time when I make a decision, I do not lose sleep over it. I think that’s the forever optimistic person in me. My Wife at times is a lot riskier than I am. And I just smile and support. But yes, in order to be an entrepreneur you have to be risky. You have to be OK with risk if you’re gonna be an investor, you have to be OK with that money being gone or that business failing. And I am OK with that. I don’t worry about what people may think if I have a business or something that does not work. Shooter shoot and I’m out here trying. We try and try and we have failed plenty of times. We have plenty of ideas in businesses that didn’t work or didn’t happen but it wasn’t for the lack of trying.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://Manualfocusshow.com
- Instagram: @theaaronross / @gruppechat / @manualfocusshow / @honeyshouseatx / @sundayhausfbg / @theweekenderhouse / @mantlethermal
