Surprised by simplicity

Author

Ian Campbell
May 01, 2025

When I first met Tim, I was surprised how much he said the word "simple."

As I peppered him with questions during our first conversation at Barnaby’s, he was like Bill Belichick at the “We’re on to Cincinnati” press conference. Only instead of saying “We’re on to Cincinnati,” Tim repeatedly said “Our simplicity.”

Ian: Why do races like Run The Day?

Tim: Our simplicity.

Ian: What is so great about Run The Day's registration platform?

Tim: It is simple.

Ian: How does Run The Day manage to accurately time hundreds of races every year?

Tim: We keep things simple.

Ian: Why do races switch to Run The Day?

Tim: Our simplicity.

Surprised, frustrated and confused, I scratched my head. What else could I ask to learn more about Run The Day?

The truth was, just like the Patriots beat writers at the “On to Cincinnati” press conference, it didn’t matter what I asked. Tim’s response would be the same.

And for good reason. Simple might not sound sexy, but it allowed Run The Day to endure for more than 20 years. And that is not easy to do. Only 1 in 5 businesses in the USA survive that long.

Now, I have a great appreciation for the value of simplicity.

Organizing a race can feel like hosting a wedding for hundreds of strangers. With a million different moving pieces, simplifying the number of pieces not only feels nice, it proactively reduces opportunities for things to go wrong. And when an unexpected fire starts, a simple process makes the fire easier to put out.

This is one reason why we’ve gotten good at to saying "no."

We say “no” not because we like to disappoint people (we strive to do quite the opposite!), but because we don’t want the negative impact of more clutter to outweigh the positive impact of something more. This is true whether it is a new physical component to race day or a new digital feature in our software.

On a personal note, I have always hated clutter. So, selfishly, it makes me happy when we remove pointless steps from our systems and unused features from our software.

While we are not perfect, our focus on simplicity seems to be working. People tell me all the time how Run The Day makes organizing a race easy. I hear things like:

  • "It used to take me 2 hours to setup our race page, now it takes me 5 minutes."

  • "With registration and timing under the same roof, it not only gives me fewer vendors to deal with, the communication has gotten much easier."

  • "Ever since we switched to Run The Day, we stopped having the issues that we used to."

Now, simplicity does not surprise me. I expect it.

-Ian

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Ian Campbell

Ian Campbell

Uniting communities.