LOAM has taken a few different forms over the years.
It started with coffee.
Then, as my own work and interests continued to evolve, LOAM Coffee eventually became LOAM Cycling Journal. The idea was to create a place for stories about cycling, adventure, people, places, and the culture surrounding riding bikes.
And now it is time for another change.
I am folding LOAM into my personal brand and bringing everything together under my own name.
In fact, if you follow LOAM on social media, you may have already noticed the change. Those accounts have now been renamed and transitioned over to my personal brand.
This article is the final piece.
Why I’m Making the Change
The simple answer is that I don’t have any interest in running another cycling publication.
I already have one.
Trail Builder Magazine has grown into a publication with a very specific purpose and audience, centered around trail building, trail organizations, land managers, professional builders, volunteers, and the broader world surrounding trails.
Creating another cycling platform alongside it increasingly felt unnecessary. At the same time, the work I do under my own name has continued to expand.
Cycling is still a significant part of that work. Probably always will be. Bikes have shaped how I travel, explore communities, tell stories, create content, and even think about economic development and tourism.
But the story is bigger than cycling.
What I’m Working on Now
Much of my work today sits at the intersection of cycling, storytelling, tourism, community development, and content marketing.
I work with bike races and race directors who are trying to grow their events and build stronger brands.
I work with rural communities and tourism organizations that want more people to discover their towns, trails, events, and outdoor recreation opportunities.
I spend a lot of time thinking and writing about rural and adventure tourism, especially how outdoor recreation can create visibility and economic opportunities for smaller communities.
I also create content about social media, photography, video, long-form storytelling, email marketing, and the practical tools small organizations can use to tell better stories without needing huge budgets.
And, yes, I still write about bikes.
A lot.
You can expect stories about cycling destinations, gravel roads, trails, races, outdoor events, rural communities, content creation, tourism, and the people building interesting things in these spaces.
In many ways, this isn’t a dramatic departure from LOAM.
It is simply removing the walls around it.
Why Bring Everything Under My Own Name?
Over the years, I’ve launched, built, changed, and occasionally retired a lot of projects.
I’ve learned something from every one of them.
I’ve also realized there comes a point when creating another brand, another website, another social account, and another newsletter creates more fragmentation than opportunity.
Sometimes the best move isn’t to start something new.
It’s to simplify.
Rather than trying to maintain LOAM as its own publication, I’d rather bring the people, ideas, and conversations from LOAM into the larger body of work I’m already creating.
One name.
One place.
A wider range of conversations.
What Happens to This Email List?
If you’re subscribed to the LOAM newsletter, your email will become part of my personal newsletter list.
That means future emails will come from me rather than LOAM.
I’ll be sharing new articles, ideas, resources, observations from my work, and occasional behind-the-scenes looks at projects I’m involved with.
Some emails will be very cycling-centric.
Others might be about a gravel race in rural Arizona, why a small town should think differently about social media, how outdoor recreation can help a rural economy, what race directors should post after their event is over, or why long-form content still matters in a short-form world.
That’s where my work is headed.
And I’m excited about it.
But You Also Have an Off-Ramp
I also recognize that you may have subscribed specifically because you wanted LOAM.
If the broader direction I’m describing doesn’t interest you, there are absolutely no hard feelings.
Once you receive an email next week from my personal email, you can unsubscribe, and you won’t receive future newsletters from me.
But if cycling, outdoor recreation, rural places, bike races, adventure tourism, storytelling, and content creation sound like conversations you’d like to continue having, I hope you’ll stick around.
The Next Chapter
I’ve always been interested in the places where ideas overlap.
Cycling leads me into rural communities. Rural communities lead me into tourism and economic development. Bike races lead me into storytelling and content marketing. Trail work leads me into nonprofits, volunteer organizations, land management, and advocacy. Photography leads into social media. Social media leads into long-form storytelling.
And somehow all of those threads keep connecting.
Instead of separating them into different brands, I’m going to spend more time exploring those intersections under my own name.
So this is the final LOAM article and newsletter.
But it isn’t really an ending.
Thanks for following along with this chapter.
I hope you’ll join me for the next one.
Sean Benesh is a social media strategist based in Portland, Oregon. He works with rural communities, trail organizations, and race organizers to help them tell their stories, grow their online reach, and build momentum through photography, writing, and social media. He is the founder and editor-in-chief of Trail Builder Magazine and a digital media & communications instructor at Warner Pacific University.
