Be a Weeble.

“If you want to be successful in business, you have to be a Weeble,” says Pikes Peak region entrepreneur JW Roth, whose dream of a nationwide network of luxurious amphitheaters kicks off Aug. 9 with the opening of Ford Amphitheater.

Weebles, an egg-shaped toy popular in the ‘70s, “wobble but don’t fall down,” as its advertising stated.

Like a Weeble, a successful businessperson might get knocked down, “but they bounce back up, because failure is inevitable,” Roth says. “Staying down is where you lose.”

It’s a philosophy that has helped Roth, a fifth-generation Coloradan, found, finance and/or govern and help take public a host of startup and early-stage companies over his decades in business, culminating in Venu, the entertainment and hospitality company behind Ford Amphitheater.

The amphitheater is set to open with three nightly shows, Aug. 9-11, by pop band OneRepublic. Acts announced for the rest of the season range from the Beach Boys to John Fogerty to Dierks Bentley.

“It’s gone from close your eyes and imagine it,” Roth says, to musicians taking to the stage in just weeks.

Beginnings

The idea of even attending a show at a “luxurious outdoor music venue” would have been a stretch for Roth in his childhood. Roth, now 60, grew up on a small ranch just north of El Paso County; his parents got married in their teens and his dad did “a little bit of everything to make ends meet.”

Rabbits and deer culled from the property helped fill the dinner table. “I was not born with a silver spoon in my mouth,” he says.

Roth had various jobs as a teen, including helping clear trees from the site of the then-future Renaissance Festival in Larkspur and selling the resulting firewood.

He saw an ad for a job as a jailer and dispatcher with the Douglas County Sheriff’s Office, but it required a high school diploma or the equivalent; instead of waiting to finish school, he got his GED in the summer between his junior year and what would have been his senior year.

He started work with the Sheriff’s Office on his 18th birthday in November 1981. He also worked other jobs “to keep my head above water” and ended up working at a small food distribution company — “so Sheriff’s Office at night and a food sales guy during the day.” He went from Douglas County to working a radio car with the Denver Police Department for a few years, then left his fledgling career in law enforcement to work on his business ideas.

“And then my break happened,” he says. He was asked to be one of the founders of AspenBio Pharma, an animal-health company based in Castle Rock. When that company was sold, it gave Roth the capital to make investments in packing plants and other ventures.

In 2015, growing out of his agricultural investments and fulfilling a desire to start a business he could run with his son, Mitchell, he founded Roth Industries, which manufactures premium prepared foods under a family of brands tied to Roth and under other companies’ brands. Roth Brands includes Ioli, Prep Chef and the nutrition brand Whole30. It was Mitchell’s idea to acquire the rights to Whole30 a year or so ago, JW says.

“My son has done a better job there expanding the business than the old man did,” JW says. Mitchell is now CEO while JW is the chairman and controlling shareholder. That’s so JW can focus on Notes Live, now doing business as Venu, which in addition to the amphitheater includes the music venue Boot Barn Hall, Bourbon Brothers Smokehouse & Tavern and Notes Eatery in Colorado Springs. (There’s also a Bourbon Brothers and an adjacent Boot Barn Hall in Gainesville, Ga.)

But the centerpiece of Venu is Ford Amphitheater (initially Sunset Amphitheater before the naming rights were sold) and future amphitheaters in other cities.

Bouncing back

Not everything Roth touches, of course, turns to gold.

Take Kilyn’s Kitchen, a line of prepared foods rolled out in 2018 by Roth Premium Foods, part of Roth Industries. Kilyn’s Kitchen’s meals — with recipes from Roth’s wife, Kilyn, and her mom, that were fine-tuned by the chefs at Roth Premium Foods — were designed to feed a whole family; unlike most prepared meals made to toss into the oven or a microwave, the Kilyn’s Kitchen meals came in a pouch and were heated by being put in boiling water.

“If you can boil water, you can eat like a gourmet chef,” Roth said at the time. Initial meals in the line included chicken alfredo over fettuccine, smoked meatloaf with seasoned roasted potatoes and carrots, and pasta and meatballs.

“It didn’t work,” Roth says simply. While he believes the product was good, the market wasn’t there. Most consumers who grab prepared foods are single or are older couples who don’t want to cook, he learned. “The family market for prepared foods didn’t exist like I thought it would.”

And while AspenBio ended up as a resounding success, it wasn’t always so; the company struggled to get FDA approval for a key product, SurBred, a bovine pregnancy test.

“Our first three runs through the FDA,” Roth says, “were a failure. … We had to recapitalize that business three times before it became successful.”

Such struggles are not atypical. “One step back, two steps forward is kind of how I built my businesses,” Roth says. “I’ve had far more failures than I have had successes.”

Which brings us back to the Weeble.

“Oh, yes, he talks about the Weeble,” says son Mitchell. “Everybody is going to get knocked down. It doesn’t matter if you’re the smartest guy or have the best business plan, you’re going to get knocked down and you have to get back up.”

And he has seen his dad emulate the Weeble. There were times when things were really difficult and others might have thrown up their hands, Mitchell says, but that didn’t stop his father.

“His willingness to take risks, coupled with his determination and his hard work, is really sort of the recipe that has created the success that we are all now witnessing.”

When his dad presented the idea of a network of amphitheaters, “I said, that sounds like JW Roth. One of the things about my dad, he doesn’t like to think small. When he comes up with ideas, they’re big.”

Birth of an amphitheater

It was a visit to winemaker Peter Mondavi’s property in California’s Napa Valley, where Mondavi had “kind of a super cool, outdoor amphitheater set up literally in his front yard,” that sparked Roth’s vision of a luxurious amphitheater on property he owned near Gleneagle.

But that vision also resulted from a lifelong passion for music, particularly live music. As a kid, though, “the problem was coming from a family that didn’t have a lot of money, so going to a concert always involved climbing a fence for me; that’s just the way it was.”

That love of music is reflected in his extensive collection of guitars — more than 1,500, he estimates — plus a collection of 2,500 to 3,000 “of the most classic albums.” He also has a bandstand in the backyard of his home along with what he believes is the largest residential firepit in the country, where he hosts private concerts for family and friends.

But why music?

“Music is a uniter,” Roth says. “Nobody hates music. People gravitate toward different genres, but nobody hates it.”

His vision for the 8,000-seat amphitheater at the Polaris Pointe mixed-use development, southeast of Interstate 25 and North Gate Boulevard, wasn’t a uniter, though. The project was opposed by some residents in nearby neighborhoods who worried about noise, congestion and people parking on their streets.

“Is entertainment more important than housing?” one homeowner asked during hours of debate. “I don’t believe so.”

Following approval, a lawsuit was filed in September by a homeowner and a newly formed homeowners group, alleging, among other things, that sound from the amphitheater would violate the state’s Noise Pollution Law. Early this year, though, an El Paso County judge dismissed the suit; the Northside Neighbors Association went on to appeal that ruling. That appeal “is going through the process,” Roth said.

Still, he says, “the support has far outweighed the criticisms.” And he’s dedicated, he says, to being a good neighbor to those around the amphitheater.

Roth has a medallion he passes out to select people that’s inscribed with, “Be generous, be grateful, be kind, work hard.”

“If you do those four things,” he says, “something will have to have gone very wrong for you not to be successful.”

He was lucky, he says, to have had some great people and mentors to emulate in his life. “God’s dealt me some really good cards.”

He grew up in a family that didn’t have money, but they were still grateful, he says, and still generous.

“At the end of the day, you have to have that heart about you.”

Rich Laden of The Gazette contributed to this report.