How Running Helped a UNO Alum Find His Stride and Launch a Wellness-Inspired Apparel Business

Dayton Schumacher never planned on becoming an entrepreneur, especially for an apparel brand for runners.

“I used to really hate running,” he said.

All that changed when he started running as a college student to improve his mental health. It became integral in his life and something he wanted to share with everyone. Now, it’s the basis behind Your Pace Your Peace, the running-inspired apparel brand he launched in late 2024.

Schumacher, who earned his master’s degree in business administration from the University of Nebraska at Omaha (UNO) in 2024, began his career in clinical research. Working as a regulatory coordinator at the University of Nebraska Medical Center (UNMC), he saw an opportunity to expand his skill set through the university’s tuition benefit for employees of the University of Nebraska System.

“Coming from a chemistry background, I didn’t really have too much knowledge of the business area,” he said. “I figured it could only help me going forward.”

Soon after graduation, the beginnings of a creative project grew out of his personal journey with running and improving mental health.

Living in Phoenix, Arizona, he came up with a simple idea for a logo—a yin-yang-like symbol of effort and ease. He sketched it in a notebook, unsure if he would ever set it aside.

“I wasn’t really thinking I was going to do anything with it,” he said. “But it just stayed in my mind.”

A meeting with a local T-shirt printer who he knew gave him the push he needed. Seeing the logo on an actual shirt made the idea feel real. So, he took a leap. He made a Facebook post letting friends and family know he was selling shirts and donating part of the proceeds to mental health causes. Orders came in, enough to convince him that the idea had interest.

From there, Your Pace Your Peace grew, and Schumacher tapped into what he learned at UNO’s College of Business Administration: website design, e-commerce, and marketing. Market research became conversations with friends and family. He kept the brand’s aesthetic clean and simple—soft neutrals, minimalist designs, pieces that reflect “the meditative state you can reach through self-improvement,” as he described it.

Every quarter, Schumacher partners with a different organization supporting a different mental health or drug addiction recovery cause, including some based in his hometown in Sioux Falls, South Dakota. Other causes he discovered from attending races, which he participates and uses to help promote the brand.

Looking back, he credits UNO faculty for helping him feel prepared to run a business, even a small one. In his early days as a new business student, he dreaded the concept of an accounting class. But he felt UNO’s faculty, especially lecturer Steve Nath, made it accessible and even fun. Oliver Maisondieu-Laforge, an associate professor of finance, banking, and real estate, provided his personal experience with finance that Schumacher still draws lessons from.

Today, Schumacher hopes to keep growing Your Pace Your Peace—maybe even by hosting a race of his own someday. He hopes the brand stands as an example to UNO students to pursue their own ideas.

“If you’ve thought about it long enough, just go for it,” he says. “If I didn’t try this, I’d always wonder what could have happened. And that would’ve eaten me alive.”