You Learn By Getting It Wrong; Advice From A Rally Racing Champion I Texas Dave - AO 53 I

What if the best training for business leadership didn’t come from a boardroom but, from the racetrack?

In this episode of American Operator, we sit down with Texas Dave to talk about how his background in racing and high-pressure competition shaped the way he builds businesses, leads teams, and takes responsibility when things go wrong.

Dave shares how racing taught him discipline, preparation, risk management, and accountability, lessons he carried directly into entrepreneurship and day-to-day operations. This isn’t theory. It’s leadership forged under pressure, where mistakes cost real money and reputations are earned one decision at a time.

This conversation covers:

• How racing became Dave’s foundation for business leadership
• Translating competition, preparation, and discipline into entrepreneurship
• Why accountability matters more when you own the outcome
• To build trust, you got to engage with your folks, on and off the track
• Lessons learned from failure, pressure, and high-stakes decision-making
• Why operators — not spectators — win in the long run

This episode isn’t about hype or shortcuts. It’s about applying hard-earned lessons from the track to business, ownership, and life, and showing up ready when it counts.

If you’re interested in leadership shaped by experience, entrepreneurship under pressure, and what it really means to operate at a high level, this conversation will stick with you.

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• Newsletter: https://americanoperator.substack.com

Transcript

00:00:00:00 - 00:00:04:03
Unknown
how did Yamaha decide to make jet skis and pianos, you know?

00:00:04:05 - 00:00:08:04
Unknown
Right. So we are a new company. Yeah.

00:00:08:04 - 00:00:19:17
Unknown
All right, team, welcome back to the show. I got special treat today Texas Dave. Man I'm gonna I'm going to say your name last night I was going to say you're going to get you're going to go for I'm going to go for it. But it's only just because I know.

00:00:19:17 - 00:00:35:00
Unknown
It's like the thing about Dave's last route, like his real last name, it's almost hard to ever get, right. Yeah, yeah. But I feel like as long as I've known you, I got to at least try again. Yeah, yeah, you can try. I'll just tell you now. You best you can hope for of this is an eight out of ten.

00:00:35:00 - 00:00:54:09
Unknown
And that's if I'm being generous. And that's not a that's not a reflection of you. That's just, 38 years of this game. So let it rip. Deal. Karapatan. That was really close. That was actually. I might give you a nine. Oh, really? Okay. That. John. Oh, that is he. It's a little bit of the some of the instructions on the words.

00:00:54:09 - 00:01:17:20
Unknown
You don't know. Yeah, yeah. Just remember if you're thinking about how it starts, it starts with the car. It's way easier that way. I mean that's how I'm like that's that's why I say that's the first time I've ever said that. But that's because the only correction was that it's car, but that's it. So also, to be clear, I can make up a score because if you talk to within my like, close extended family, aunts, uncles, cousins for different pronunciation is a train wreck.

00:01:17:20 - 00:01:32:18
Unknown
And they're all wrong minds wrong too. So what is the most like guttural way you've ever heard? Somebody got a pitch. And it's supposed to be like with a K and an iron. But my great grandpa, when he immigrated here from Armenia, he was like, no, no, Americans are terrible. They're they don't they're not good at stuff.

00:01:32:18 - 00:01:49:08
Unknown
So what's make it y. And that'll be way easier for Americans to pronounce. They don't really speak very well. Other things, you know, we're coming to America. We'll make it easier for Americans. Wrongs made it so much worse. And it's so much worse. And I'm like, I don't know what to do that word because it's got a Y in the middle of it.

00:01:49:09 - 00:02:12:14
Unknown
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. At the end. That's easy. Yeah, it's just a mess. So yeah. Carpathian. But just. Okay. Yeah. Texas day. Well yeah I mean for those that don't know Texas Day, you oughta know. I mean, not only is founder CEO rally ready arguably one of the best not only rally schools and training facilities, but experiences in the world for people who've never done it before.

00:02:12:14 - 00:02:29:02
Unknown
To folks who are absolute pros, you can see them all. They're all walks of life any day of the week. Right outside of Austin, Texas, in a booming metropolis called Dale, Texas. That's it. Well, I mean, really, it's really more like Linton Springs, but the mail comes from Dale, so the mail coming from Dale was on the air?

00:02:29:03 - 00:02:49:05
Unknown
Yes, it's on the air. Yeah. What's the zip code? 79616196. Man. Back in, as we like to say here in Austin, when you made it to the one six. Yeah, I made it for sure. It's the 6168 because we're in the seven, eight seven here. But once we get to that seven, eight, six, you know, it's getting a little weird, you know, not often weird, different kind of weird.

00:02:49:07 - 00:03:09:01
Unknown
Weird abandoned dogs. Things like that, you know? Yeah. Gunshots late at night. Various airstreams that aren't airstreams all kinds of things ain't wrong. But, I mean, everything from Baja champ multiple times, rally champ, Pikes Peak. It's done it all in the racing community and just all around and good human. So, brother, thanks for having you on. Cheers.

00:03:09:01 - 00:03:12:11
Unknown
But. Good to see you, man. Yeah. Always a pleasure to sit with you,

00:03:12:11 - 00:03:15:05
Unknown
for folks tuning in right now, there's some new we've been doing.

00:03:15:07 - 00:03:41:04
Unknown
It's been fun to get audience questions and other owners asking owners what's on their mind. It's a Jeff from Colorado goes, how much time do you intentionally spend mentoring and building your leadership team? Things like one on ones or treats, kind of just spending time away from just the normal quick check in? He's asking like the intentional time man, that is that is like probably the biggest growth in the past year.

00:03:41:06 - 00:03:54:07
Unknown
Okay. He's like man if we so we run on iOS the entrepreneur operating system. That's kind of our that's our I call it my intervention. I dragged everybody in. I'm like, guys, we're going to burn us down. If you don't bring some adults in the room, and if we don't have a system, then it all goes to hell.

00:03:54:07 - 00:04:14:23
Unknown
And so iOS for us has been a hugely important focus. And I know a lot of people have done iOS. We're like we're aggressive. We're like to the to the T by the letter. Oh yeah. Textbook on you have to I mean to me it's like if you don't if you choose a system and then you're like, well, but you know, it's like if you're the kind of chef that can take a recipe and can do whatever you want with the ingredients, more power to you.

00:04:15:01 - 00:04:35:10
Unknown
I don't have enough, business culinary skills to start improvising. So, like, that's what it says. We're going to do that. And, which is great. Got my one on one with my, my integrator, you know, sort of right hand person CFO who's an amazing he's a consultant and contractor with us right now and best, best humans I've ever worked with.

00:04:35:12 - 00:04:54:21
Unknown
And I've got Mike on my, my, leadership team or CRO, who's been with me for years now and is just a sales engine. He's like a he's like, oh my gosh. He's like a give people a diesel, cruise ship engine. It's just like, I don't know how much horsepower this is, but what it's not it's not, you know, it hasn't been moving fast, but it is just an enormous amount of power.

00:04:54:21 - 00:05:11:13
Unknown
And he's just now getting up to speed. Those one on ones are everything. I mean, I will, I will that comes before everything else. My my one on ones with those team, those team members. It's always the easiest thing for us to be like, hey, we're both pretty slammed. Let's push it to tomorrow, let's push it to next week.

00:05:11:13 - 00:05:31:16
Unknown
And I'm still guilty of it sometimes. And every single time we get in and we go, because that alignment just goes everywhere else in the entire company, everywhere else in the org chart. The accountability chart is just like when we are, when we are all lined and we're all rowing in the same direction. I'm not problem solving anymore because those folks are managing their teams and they're moving their people along.

00:05:31:18 - 00:05:51:02
Unknown
And my vision dreams ethos is also getting corrected before I get it out into the team accidentally. Because we're still small. They're helping, like play racquetball and like, yeah, they're helping me like, hey, listen. So love that, you know? And that's the whole U.S idea is like, I'm a big idea guy. I got all kind of, you know, we could do let's have a rally school on a cruise ship, right.

00:05:51:02 - 00:06:10:09
Unknown
And say, well, I didn't even been on a cruise and I was coming to. You had ship engine? Yeah, let's. Yeah. Right. That team is the ones to come in and who know how to have the healthy, positive conflict and dialog and go to war, you know, in a safe container where nobody's nobody's getting their feelings hurt, nobody's angry.

00:06:10:10 - 00:06:24:00
Unknown
Everybody's raising voices, but nobody's rolling over. And those one on ones are just a nice mirror of that where it's like, hey. And that the dynamic is always, you get five, six people on a call. You're always in the dynamic of 5 or 6 people. There's always going to be something that the two of you get on a 101.

00:06:24:00 - 00:06:39:07
Unknown
You say, hey, you know, was I too harsh? Was I ball? But you know, and you get you get that peer feedback. And I think the part I'm most excited about is like, everybody knows that. I'm like, man, I don't know how I got all you guys, but thanks for showing up every day. And like, I'll keep paying you as long as you'll keep coming.

00:06:39:09 - 00:06:57:07
Unknown
And then that feeling is really reciprocated and, and, and they, you know, feel really lucky to get to be a part of it. And every day, every single one of those meetings is, is reiterating that to each other is like, hey, I feel incredibly lucky to sit with you and learn from you sitting in my seat. I'm like, I feel so lucky to have these people coming in mentoring me.

00:06:57:07 - 00:07:18:08
Unknown
I'm mentoring them, sure. But like, man, I hired all these folks because they have skills I absolutely do not have. Yeah. And so it's it's both ways. And for a lot of people who are founders, who are operators, who are, you know, passionate people with a niche skill or interest, who a smoke master who wants to open a barbecue joint, you know, that's very different from somebody who's like, hey, I want to start a profitable business.

00:07:18:09 - 00:07:48:04
Unknown
My buddy smokes a good brisket. Let's start a, you know, a barbecue. That's the visionary. You're in the integrator seat. My case is reversed. That powerful, connection to a team of people who see the magic and see they see the. You know what we describe as our, you know, our individual gift or our sweet spot, our unique ability, as we call it, who can nurture that and who can support it, and who will remind you that the other parts, we don't have to call them liabilities, but they're not your unique ability.

00:07:48:04 - 00:08:13:12
Unknown
So let's stay focused on that. We don't have to criticize these pieces of you because you're, you know, financially deficient. Let's focus on your vision and your unique your unique ability and nurture that. And that's just I mean, the the sense like the grounding confidence and belief in what we've built in what we're doing totally changes when you get all these amazing people around you, you know, otherwise you're just one guy who's like, yeah, this is this is cool.

00:08:13:12 - 00:08:31:00
Unknown
I think I know, you know, the internet says so I got a lot of social media followers, you know, but then you get those people who, you know, are the world class best, best there are, and you sit with them, changes the landscape. So that's that's it above all else. That one on one is important. And so that's why it's important is probably ten is a mix of professional and personal stuff.

00:08:31:00 - 00:08:45:15
Unknown
I mean you practice. Yeah. For has to be real. Like we're only talking shop here. No I mean I'm not a believer and I'm not a believer in professional and personal life. Like, if I don't know what's going on in your personal life and you show up and we're only talking shop and I'm like, man, what's up? And you're not allowed to talk about your personal life and how are we getting anything done?

00:08:45:15 - 00:09:00:00
Unknown
You know, your kid's in the hospital. What? You know, why are you here? Yeah, 100%. So, like, you know, and in any OS, we have a container for that, you know, segue at the beginning of the meeting. Hey, quick check in. You know, that's how I work. Where you at? How are you? In my departmental meeting in the shop.

00:09:00:00 - 00:09:14:11
Unknown
Our stand up is like one, two, five. Where you at? One is. Don't look at me. Don't talk to me. I'm having the worst day ever. Five is I'm radiating positivity and I have an abundance of energy. And I want to help you all do your job more effectively. Most of us are three, four. Those five are a little weird.

00:09:14:13 - 00:09:27:20
Unknown
But. But I had a five yesterday, man. I was like, what's up? What do you guys need? I'm ready to party. And, And I got a two from somebody yesterday. It's like, you don't need to tell me what's going on, but. Got it. So like, you got to have a container for for bringing your personal stuff into work.

00:09:27:20 - 00:09:41:15
Unknown
So at least we know where you're at. Got to know where your head's at in order to be effective at work. And you spend more time here than half of us do at home. So let's make it a positive space and then, yeah, let's not let's not try to to sanitize that personal touch out of it.

00:09:41:15 - 00:10:01:19
Unknown
Hey, y'all. Quick break. Here at American Operator, we believe that small business is the backbone of this country. But more and more Main Street getting swallowed up by big corporations, wall Street or some of them are just shutting down. If you've ever thought about building something of your own, or just being a part of saving the American dream head on over to American operator.com.

00:10:01:21 - 00:10:12:01
Unknown
It's your one stop shop for inspiration stories, and you'll get to join this really great community of patriots that believe our country still worth fighting for. All right. Back to the show.

00:10:12:01 - 00:10:28:14
Unknown
having somebody who's grown up run a business but also grown up in the racing industry like to me, does offer cocaine history. And I think something that I'm hoping a lot of folks tune in and will get just kind of out of it before we get into the weeds on that, can you tell over to folks like, how do you get into rally?

00:10:28:14 - 00:10:41:13
Unknown
I mean, is this something you like as a young kid? You're like, this is what I'm going to do is not only race cars, but do it in something that doesn't make any sense. Yeah, and I was a terrible decision. It's led us to here. So, you know, it's it's that, like, you know, I'm really glad for everything that's happened in life.

00:10:41:13 - 00:11:00:09
Unknown
He's allowed me to here except for that. Well, and that probably would have done that differently. Well, you're very gracious and, an exceptional host, as always. And thank you all. I'll do my best to, to own the accolades like anybody. It's kind of like, well, you know, do I deserve all that? But but yes, now we've got to do some really cool stuff.

00:11:00:09 - 00:11:19:16
Unknown
And I mean, yeah, I mean, I got here, I grew up in Austin, in Hyde Park, and I, you know, I rode my bike to school, I think I was I'm 38 and in 1987, baby. And so I think I'm like that I'm pretty confident that there's like up to, you know, 85, 87 maybe a little, little bit younger.

00:11:19:18 - 00:11:36:11
Unknown
You rode your bike to school and you came home and mom kicked you out. And, you know, you you lived a hybrid life of kind of like you're in the 50s and, you know, in the 90s, and then that changed so dramatically for folks that are even five, you know, a little bit younger than me. And all of a sudden Halloween was dangerous.

00:11:36:13 - 00:11:57:08
Unknown
You you had to be staying outside of school to pick up your kid. The whole landscape shifted a little bit. You kid had a cell phone in second grade? So I grew up in that. Just sort of the tail end of a time when, like, I, you know, we had a, Tupperware that I, that I drilled holes in and tied to the end of a wooden stick, and I'd go to the golf course and scoop golf balls out and sell them back to the golfers.

00:11:57:09 - 00:12:16:07
Unknown
And that was my first business. And then go buy chili dogs at Pronto Food Mart in Hyde Park around town. Yeah. Classic. Classic. Like, I'm pretty sure that chili was the same chili for like all six years that I went there as a kid. Just got, like, a sour dough dude. Oh, got so much worse. Just like, put a quarter can of wolf in there every three days.

00:12:16:09 - 00:12:45:04
Unknown
The only people that buy this is those weird golf ball kids. But, so, so, you know, Austin local grew up here. And hindsight, it's easy to look back and be like, oh, yeah, I kind of always had this vision of, of, I just don't know how to operate in the world. I don't know how to like the idea of going and getting a job at subway is the most unimaginably challenging thing, especially is, you know, a young person, I was like, I don't that's that's not my neuro pathway, like, my brain did know how to do that.

00:12:45:06 - 00:13:10:09
Unknown
So, you know, I had big dreams, big ambitions, big ideas, and was terrified of participating in the world. So dropped out of high school and told my dad when I was 16, I was like, dad, I got my whole life figured out. I'd been playing in a bunch of punk rock and hardcore bands at the time, and so we, we played, you know, old emos back on sixth Street, back in the day and black Cat lounge and all these super fun old, old institutions.

00:13:10:11 - 00:13:25:06
Unknown
And, so music was my was my path. We were, you know, playing five shows a week and kind of my dad, when I was 16, as I got it all figured out, he's like, this is this is going to be great. Let's hear this. I was like, I want to keep playing music. I want to learn to fly planes, and I want to race rally cars.

00:13:25:08 - 00:13:43:14
Unknown
And he's like, who's paying for that? I was like, oh, you know how hard he was? Like, I have no money. You have two older sisters who went to out of State College. First one I squeaked your through. Second one, it's just the loan party. All right, bro, I got nothing like, what are you talking about? And,

00:13:43:16 - 00:14:02:17
Unknown
So I was fully convinced that was my career path. And again, it's like any good we were talking, you know, but earlier, it's like it's all part of the book. If you go from there to here. Looks pretty glamorous. Pulled it off. We're doing rally car stuff all the time. But the reality is, you know, like any good story, it was it was fraught with whose idea was this?

00:14:02:17 - 00:14:20:13
Unknown
Every step of the way and constantly be like him with the problem with with being an entrepreneur or, you know, being a visionary, being an idea person, is it you just you do like a full 360 turn to find somebody to point at and you go, oh, every time, demon. Yeah. Yes. Like liar, liar. You like it was me, you know.

00:14:20:15 - 00:14:45:14
Unknown
So yes. Great movie man. He was so classic. So, you know, I was, I was that age and brought that to my dad. And the real secret sauce there, and like, the real magic moment was like, my dad was like, okay, let's sit down and talk about it. And we did. We sat and talked. And, you know, he did his best to take it seriously, which like, I can't imagine as a parent sitting down and trying to take that seriously from a teenager like me and like, okay, we'll hear it all here.

00:14:45:14 - 00:15:04:08
Unknown
Yo, what's what's the plan? What's the vision? What is what is a rally car? Right. And, and so I made my case and I, you know, wrote my business plan, and I sold him on all the reasons that if you just bought me a race car, I would, you know, become a professional race car driver. He borrowed some money from a family friend.

00:15:04:08 - 00:15:16:10
Unknown
And for my 17th birthday, we went and bought a rally car, and he was like, there's the car. You want to be a carpenter? You need a hammer and a tool belt. That's your hammer and tool belt. Like good luck. I got nothing else because I don't have any other. Now, I don't know what this is or why you're doing it.

00:15:16:10 - 00:15:35:15
Unknown
I don't know anybody who knows anything about race cars. I know nothing else. I have no other resources other than my skepticism and my love and, and like $6 and 75 more since I can invest in this with you. And so the the CliffsNotes is found some folks on the internet who are like, we want a rally team.

00:15:35:15 - 00:15:51:08
Unknown
They were in Austin. I was like, I got a rally car. And they're like, great, let's do it. No idea how that worked. Nobody should write that down as a plan. It will never work. I think my dad's vision was I would be like, oh man, this is I really want to do this so much that I'm going to go get a job to pay for it.

00:15:51:10 - 00:16:09:12
Unknown
Had he understood the costs of motorsport, had he had a clue what it cost to do anything with the race car, he would have known that that plan was also destined to have a race car in storage in perpetuity. But I was fortunate enough to have, a shop in round Rock at the time. Was this a group of friends?

00:16:09:12 - 00:16:31:16
Unknown
And they, you know, they were super excited about it. They'd volunteered at a rally and they're like, oh, that would be so cool. We did two rallies together, and they sort of funded those first two events. And, and because I got to do it, it's like once you've done it, that's it's game over, you're not you will find, you know, if you haven't done it and you've played video games and you've dreamt about it, it's easy for it to be a dream.

00:16:31:16 - 00:16:48:04
Unknown
But once you've tasted it, once you've been there, once you've done it, once you've gotten in a rally car and you've experienced what it's like to drive on a gravel rally stage with a co-driver next to you, and you're coming up to a blind corner and somebody's describing the next corner, and you commit to that. You know it's going to be approximately this much of abandoned.

00:16:48:10 - 00:17:05:02
Unknown
You turn in and the car slides and guess what the road's exactly. And you like, feel that connection. That is what you described earlier is when you're when you're in a business and things are really, really hard and you're struggling, it's frustrating. And then you hit that, that portal, that like that accelerator when like something clicks, a system works.

00:17:05:02 - 00:17:21:08
Unknown
You get the right people in the right seats and it starts moving. That's what rallying is. And it's the magic for me was the team of having it's not me, it wasn't me. It's not I'm a race car driver. You know I'm not Max Verstappen. And then there's a team behind me. You're with somebody else in the car.

00:17:21:10 - 00:17:57:01
Unknown
And for somebody with, extreme social anxiety and somebody who, you know, reasonably neurodivergent in a variety of ways, that was really appealing to me when I, you know, first sort of found out about about motorsports. So that's the that's the CliffsNotes of kind of how we got started shortly after 3 or 4 years in, I started mentoring with Big Brothers Big Sisters, and that was a a massive shift for me because you, you get to how, you know, you get a what with with rallying and I'm done a few events.

00:17:57:01 - 00:18:20:13
Unknown
I'd raced the Pikes Peak Hill Climb, I guess, you know, 3 or 4 times at that point. And then and then the why happens when you get that, that like, oh, that's the good stuff. When you can facilitate all the terrible decisions you've made, mistakes you've made, you know, dumb stuff you've had to do to learn all the different roads you had to go down to, to come right back to the hub and go, okay, let's try this one, let's try this one.

00:18:20:15 - 00:18:41:14
Unknown
Let's open that door and then you get to have somebody else come there and you're like, don't open that door, that door, that door. Don't walk that path. Can't tell you anything about those two. Try one of them. Right. So I can't give anybody an answer. But getting to mentor and provide that, that conduit to to being like just opening doors for somebody else that like changed my whole outlook.

00:18:41:14 - 00:19:07:09
Unknown
And so we developed, driving school rally school from that and start on that in 2009. Didn't teach our first class until 2012. And that's what rally really grew into. Now we're a little different. We don't we still do our rally schools, we still do our training. But the real magic for us in the real hub is, is being a conduit for world class events, for like, wild, unhinged things you can't possibly imagine.

00:19:07:11 - 00:19:25:23
Unknown
Brands have some vague idea of something they want to do, and they kind of like, I just wanted to like, you know, it's like, you know, I need that like umami, you know, I like I don't want to just do a thing I like. Yeah. You know, we're like, I know what that looks like. It's funny that, like, the only way you can describe that as a, as, like an owner, as a leader is like, add noise.

00:19:26:01 - 00:19:49:21
Unknown
Yeah. It's like there's no word for. Yeah. You know, when you're like. No, like, Yeah. It's like like, right, like, right there, you know. Sure. I need that, you know, like the you get just the right scratch spot for the dog and the toe starts twitching. That's that. Yeah, yeah. So, so that's, that's, you know, our landscape now, the pitch this to my dad when I was a teenager, bought me a rally car.

00:19:49:23 - 00:20:08:04
Unknown
I hope I paid back whatever family friend. We borrowed that money from us. Probably ask him that in hindsight, my dad's a pretty stand up guy, but I was like, that was. We're estranged from them now because we just. Yeah, that was your, that was your uncle. Ron, I've never met Uncle Ron. Well, yeah. Yeah. What do you think?

00:20:08:04 - 00:20:27:07
Unknown
That. Thanks for that day. What do you think? I'm like that whole thing. Like, what do you. What was it? Your conviction. What do you think dad said? Yes. Why do you think he said yes when you could have talked you out of it? I mean, we we talked about it a lot then, and some of that was I'd spent the previous three years playing music and taking it really seriously.

00:20:27:07 - 00:20:44:09
Unknown
And that was like, you know, when I first came home, it was like, oh, I'm going to start a band with my buddies. He's like, oh, Mark, this kid, this is so like, this is not it's not going to get better, is it? And then, you know, we started writing music and it was a plan and we were calling all the, you know, all the, venues downtown.

00:20:44:09 - 00:21:00:08
Unknown
And when they were like, sorry, we can't do any shows, under 21, then we're like, well, why? And he's like, tabc. We're like, well, how do we get around it? Like, we can't really it's got to be something. And then we, we were like, well, what if we what if we do it? Underage only? And so we created a whole entire ecosystem of matinée shows for.

00:21:00:10 - 00:21:20:17
Unknown
So these bars are like, oh, well, yeah, we can actually open, we can do it before 6 p.m., but tabc or whatever the law was, you know, requires ABC. And so we're like, cool. So we found the loophole. So we started going to these these like, you know, folks who were into the music and into the scene and basically made an appeal to be like, hey, can you host underage shows, you know, and charge more cover.

00:21:20:18 - 00:21:35:14
Unknown
So we so then all these other bands of, of young people started springing up because there became this ecosystem and by the end of our, our run, playing music in that era, at least, you know, Warner Brothers was coming to our shows and was trying to talk to us. And we opened the Austin Music Awards in 2002.

00:21:35:14 - 00:21:54:10
Unknown
And so he had enough data to be like, you know, not the confirmation bias of, that's my boy. Let's, you know, he can do anything. But like the healthy skepticism of any parent of their teenage son. Yeah. Intersected with like, we did this, you know, me and a group of friends, and we proved that we could be reasonably efficient.

00:21:54:12 - 00:22:10:13
Unknown
We didn't spend all of it on chili dogs that time. We put out two seven inches on vinyl. And and we didn't do any drugs. We weren't drinking, you know, he knew that we like we got into the appropriate kind of trouble. Like I would steal cones from parking lots to set up sketchy autocross courses and the sheriffs, like, you know, there's cameras.

00:22:10:13 - 00:22:30:12
Unknown
I was like, right, I shouldn't do that. We need more viewers. Yeah. It's like it's, Yeah. So the short answer is because he had enough data to, to not just, you know, blindly believe in me, but to take his love and belief and mix it with, like, all right, he's made reasonably good decisions up to here.

00:22:30:14 - 00:22:49:04
Unknown
That's pretty powerful, man. I mean, not a lot of fathers or mothers would. I'm going to be easy to just go. You don't know what you're doing. And instead he seems like he saw kind of the the raw ethic there and maybe the yeah I don't know your creative ways of navigating things. That's powerful man. I mean, that's cool.

00:22:49:06 - 00:23:03:19
Unknown
That's not something a lot of us get to. A lot of folks out there in the world get to grow up with. Yeah. That's awesome. And you don't know it when you're in it. You're like, oh, it's my dad. Yeah, that's the worst. Yeah. You know, but but I also think that it's, it's it's not just it's not just parenting.

00:23:03:19 - 00:23:23:08
Unknown
It's not just good parenting. It's just good leadership. Right? It's like you how do you create a good leader? How do you create a good, you know, how do you raise a, you know, a stand up kid? How do you create a functional, high and highly engaged member of society? You don't intuitively believe in yourself. Somebody's got to tell you that you're doing the right thing.

00:23:23:08 - 00:23:36:20
Unknown
Somebody has got to tell you that they believe in you, and somebody's got to put you in a position to make mistakes, still love you through it, and still continue to invest in you. Somebody's still got to be able to say, hey, it's not about that you that you, you know, bonked your head or you fell down or you did something stupid.

00:23:36:21 - 00:23:58:01
Unknown
It's the integrity you showed on the back end when I was like, hey, there's a security camera. And we saw that, and you double down and you become, you know, narcissistic little shit, or you say, yeah, that wasn't a great choice, was it? And then you sit down with humility and you and you face a problem. And I think for me, it's like, yeah, I owe my dad a tremendous gratitude for just who he is and how he handles things.

00:23:58:03 - 00:24:20:08
Unknown
And and it but it's so much bigger than that because it's not he that's that's raising a kid. And sometimes it happens when they're 17 and 18 and 20 and 25 more than it does when they're, you know, eight, ten, 12. But that that was you know, stands out as just good parenting is as absolutely unhinged of a bullet point as it is.

00:24:20:08 - 00:24:39:23
Unknown
Good parenting equals buy your kid a rally car for their 17th birthday. Absolutely not. But if we really get into it and we go to the Super Bowl, it's it starts to look pretty good. No. It's awesome. Now, that story alone just kind of you. They actually have even deeper gratitude for our folks. There's just a lot of that I have these macro memories that were coming through, as you were saying, that I think it's yeah, there's some cool gifts in there.

00:24:39:23 - 00:24:58:11
Unknown
That one talk about good parenting mean good leadership, and maybe vice versa. That's a cool kind of. It's a cool way to look at it. And I think for a lot of the times we'll use like, I've always found it fascinating that the tools that we use sometimes at the office, we don't use them at home. And the ones we use at home, we don't use in the office the good tools.

00:24:58:11 - 00:25:16:01
Unknown
Yeah, yeah. But dang, they're pretty applicable both ways, it turns out. Turns up the treat. Turns out love everybody. Treat everybody with a lot of integrity. You know, maybe put some boundaries around certain behaviors that you might, you know, have with people that you love and are you intimate with versus your colleagues, coworkers, etc. like, yeah, we should have boundaries.

00:25:16:03 - 00:25:32:03
Unknown
But I'm a firm believer that how you treat somebody is how you treat everybody. And the way that we often will code switch between, you know, work you get in your car, you go home and you become a different person to your family. It it's well, I think that's super important to have these containers where you can be uniquely authentic.

00:25:32:03 - 00:25:51:20
Unknown
I also think it's something that we've created in a, in a, in a really unhealthy way. That's it's put up guardrails and doesn't we don't allow people to show up authentically in a workspace because, you know, they feel like it's gonna be an HR problem. You know, it's like, well, don't make it an HR problem. But, you know, I, I'm a firm believer that that how you, how you interact with one person is how you interact with everybody.

00:25:51:23 - 00:26:19:19
Unknown
And I think that's a super crucial thing to see people emulate in, in, you know, from a leadership position, what's the first what's the first leader we look up to? It's our mothers and our fathers. Yeah, man. Well, one thing I've always observed you do, I think as far as, like putting your I think you, you thread that needle really gracefully of, like, you get incredible sense of humor and I think one that just like laughter is powerful and I can see that you make your people laugh at the same time.

00:26:19:19 - 00:26:35:06
Unknown
There's this interesting balance you have with also, like they respect that you're the guy who ultimately has to make the call and things. Do you find that tricky or how would you give someone advice out there who's trying to go like, yeah, this is like when I'm behind closed doors, this is how I get my wife to smile.

00:26:35:08 - 00:26:50:08
Unknown
You know, this is what I'm great at. I don't feel like I get to do that in the workplace, because it feels like it might not be, you know, kosher or might not be appropriate, or it might just be too weird. Any thoughts around that? Like how folks can maybe navigate something they're just like at their core. Great.

00:26:50:08 - 00:27:03:22
Unknown
And I see you do it all the time making people love you. And right now we're just laughing around. But at the same time, you don't ever lose that level of like, I don't even know that you're doing it intentionally. You don't lose that level of respect of like at the end. I'm still the guy who has to make the call on things.

00:27:03:22 - 00:27:21:23
Unknown
Yeah, yeah. You know, so at some point we do just kind of have to shed up in color sometimes and get going. How do you manage this? How do you do that? You know, I go back to sort of some of what that I've learned in the past 5 or 10 years, especially about myself as like I used to.

00:27:22:02 - 00:27:44:05
Unknown
So like I didn't have until probably 2011, any social friends and I it sounds, sounds more ominous than it is. But like, I was so hyper fixated on the thing I was doing, and I was also so nervous and didn't know this right, I didn't realize that I'd put up these sort of blinders and boundaries. If you wanted to hang out with me through my 20s, you were going to find me in a shop working on a car or, you know, working on business.

00:27:44:05 - 00:28:03:17
Unknown
There's something because that's the only place I felt safe, because I could curate the context, the rules, all of that. And and then outside of that, I would do the exact opposite, any in any interaction I had as a kid. And, you know, it still happens periodically. I become such a chameleon. I'll just mirror whoever I'm with. And so and I didn't know it was happening, you know?

00:28:03:17 - 00:28:22:22
Unknown
And so like, I was friends with this kid Chris in sixth grade. Chris was the worst. My poor family. I remember in sixth grade, sitting around the dinner table and realizing that I just sounded like this kid that I didn't even really like that much. But like, he was a year older than me. We'd hung out a bunch and like, all of a sudden I was this kid and we've all watched kids go through.

00:28:23:00 - 00:28:49:08
Unknown
You know, these phases. For me, humor has always been the grounding element of, like, I can come back to authenticity through humor. I can also disarm the intensity of, of an experience with, with humor. And you can help other people know that, like, hey, we're always allowed to be comfortable and to be having fun. We can be having the hardest conversation in the world, and we can still just take a minute and be like, hey, I still love you were good.

00:28:49:10 - 00:29:09:16
Unknown
I'm going to continue to tell you why. The thing you just did will result in a termination. If I see anything that can even remotely reflect that ever again. But that doesn't change how I feel about you, and it doesn't change that. I still am a believer in your integrity. And like, we're still good. So, like, keep it safe, but don't be a dick, you know, and and humor is that really powerful tool.

00:29:09:16 - 00:29:28:23
Unknown
And for me, it's it's it's always been more intuitive and it's been like grounding sort of safe space to come back to when I, when I, you know, don't really feel grounded. But I don't think it's the same for everybody. Right. Like, humor comes really naturally for some people. If you, you know, it's know your audience. What's the like first rule of comedy.

00:29:28:23 - 00:29:45:16
Unknown
Know your audience. Right. Second one is what is Mitch Hedberg say? Don't be like pancakes. All exciting at first, but then by the end you're fucking sick of them. So, too much sirup. That's it. Yeah, I just wanted, I think I wanted an eighth of a pancake. So humor is that tool right there, right? We're like, we can be serious.

00:29:45:16 - 00:30:02:23
Unknown
We can then just, like, pull something that's completely unexpected. It's the surprise and delight of communication and interaction and that surprise and delight that we all try to figure out how to build into our businesses to, you know, give our employees a unique experience to take them for an offsite and be like, you're getting paid to go, you know, do a ropes course today.

00:30:03:02 - 00:30:19:18
Unknown
Yeah, yeah, we're going to it's team building. I'm putting it in the name so that you guys know that, like we have an objective but like just enjoy yourself. Humor is that surprise and delight that can help ground interaction. And I think everybody's got a version of that. Even the most stuffy person who is like, I'm just not funny.

00:30:19:19 - 00:30:36:20
Unknown
You're funny to somebody. And if you can tap into what that is with some people and find another container to share it and great. But if it's not humor, then just write somebody a note and be like, hey, look, I'm sometimes real bad with my words and, I don't really know how to talk. Good. But I do like you, and I hope you know that.

00:30:36:20 - 00:31:04:22
Unknown
Whatever. Right? Yeah. Right. So for our team, one of the tools that I found is really powerful for that is look for it in onboarding. Look for it in one on ones and explicitly ask, hey, how do you like to receive positive and negative feedback? If we we've got all these like we live in such a you know, everybody said this since the dawn of time, but like our access to information is so overwhelming, it will ultimately be our demise.

00:31:04:23 - 00:31:23:03
Unknown
And it's such a powerful tool. We all, we can say love languages, and 99% of people we interact with are going to at least know what we're referencing it. That's crazy. Nobody knew what that was. Ten, 15 years ago, right? That was like woo woo stuff. That was in my mom's, you know, next to her birthday book and astrology stuff.

00:31:23:03 - 00:31:40:07
Unknown
It was Woowoo stuff, and now it's science. Now it's like, hey, no, these are the ways that we that we feel most comfortable and most programed to give and receive feedback and praise. If you ask for that early without being like, could you share your love language with me? But you just say, hey, look, there's a few ways we're going to have a hard conversations because this is a workspace.

00:31:40:09 - 00:31:53:14
Unknown
How do you want to have those conversations? Which of these things feels best and worst? Same thing. How do you want me to say thank you? Because for some people, if I buy you a Chili's gift card, you're going to be like, I don't want a Chili's gift card. All you needed to do was just in our meeting.

00:31:53:14 - 00:32:07:15
Unknown
We just had to say, hey, I'm super proud of, you know, Greg's work on that. He did an awesome job, you know, was just love languages. So you sometimes do more harm by picking the wrong thing than you do. Like, you could save yourself a lot of time and money. You can save $80 on your Chili's gift card.

00:32:07:15 - 00:32:27:20
Unknown
If you just said thanks, you might have just punched me in the face with that gift card. Yeah, 100%. You know, and it's just, I mean, the number of times I think any of us who have who have managed a team have been blindsided by our good intentions, creating a massive fallout or a cultural rift or whatever. Those are the the those are like, this is going to be a good chapter.

00:32:27:20 - 00:32:48:00
Unknown
This is an important tuition. I'm learning, I'm learning, I'm learning. But yeah, humor for me is that tool. It's that bring it back down. Let's get everybody sort of we're all alike when we're laughing, we're connecting. Right. So, it's a pretty universal language. It's powerful. Me how did Dave go from Dave the rally champ to Dave the CEO?

00:32:48:06 - 00:33:14:02
Unknown
Like, and maybe not even how? What did you find in your reflections? What were the big evolutions of that that made you one? I mean, there's obviously an intensity with Bo. There's like a, a true investment of the craft in both those kinds of roles and seats that you said. And I'm curious what you've seen back in the day, and maybe the counties of folks who are trying to make that bridge, you know, step across what has to change or what did change for you.

00:33:14:04 - 00:33:29:17
Unknown
I guess I'd be I mean, I as you, you know, because we've been friends a long time and as you're, you know, our listeners and friends here also know I'll talk. So, I'm curious, what what do you feel like is the bridge that that somebody's walking that that we're trying to you know what, what part of that story are?

00:33:29:18 - 00:33:45:21
Unknown
Because that's a big story. And I think for me, I didn't go from a rally driver to a CEO. I was just never a rally driver. Right. It was, I it was a fake it til I make it. I said I was a rally driver until I was, but then I got there and again, that false summit, I got there and I was like, I'm a rally driver.

00:33:45:21 - 00:34:05:06
Unknown
What? By what measure will I drive rally cars? Well, what? But then you always. We all live in the imposter syndrome of like, well, that person gets paid to do that and I don't. I'm not really getting paid. So am I really rallied yet and and it's there's always somebody more legit in any category. And so I mean I see the same thing.

00:34:05:06 - 00:34:40:09
Unknown
It's like people say CEO and I'm like, yeah, we have a business that generates, you know, seven figures of revenue, does very well. I and I do CEO shit all day long. We have the number of three letter acronyms that I know for my like general financial literacy and ability to, you know, blaster PNL and the way that I'm able to manage a leadership team and work with employees like, oh, I'm a really good CEO, which feels really weird to say, partially because we've all been trained to be overly humble and to to you know, I'm rubber glue, bounce off any, you know, kind words of affirmation around, you know, our, our positive attributes.

00:34:40:11 - 00:35:18:03
Unknown
But I didn't I didn't go from being a rally driver to a CEO. I drove rally cars until I found a thing that I wanted to flywheel that into, to make a living in a career out of, and in doing so, found that the natural seat that played to my strengths was the visionary leader CEO role. Because I am so operationally deficient, I can't even begin to describe to you like as I said, I can read a PNL, but if you give me the edit button on anything that involves finance, it will go so, so, so fast.

00:35:18:08 - 00:35:45:01
Unknown
We making zero money? Yeah, yeah. That's it. Yeah, yeah I got the delete key. Yeah yeah yeah. But but it's, it's having a vision of being in service of others for me was, was is what drives me to like stay engaged on on my leadership roles. If it was me I'd be like I'm fine. But we've built this thing so big now, there's so many people counting on this for their well-being and that's, that's employees first.

00:35:45:03 - 00:36:15:03
Unknown
But it's also the companies that we work with. It's the businesses that rely on us to be a meaningful partner. That's that's what, you know, drove to the seat. The transition, an endless need for finding humility and growth. Those two pretty much being mutually tied together of finding that, like, the more you can remember that you are capable and able and also, you know, endlessly flawed, like all of us, there's no clear destination.

00:36:15:03 - 00:36:28:20
Unknown
We're not we're not go. We're not aiming for perfection. We're just we're just trying to have the gap, just trying to have the gap. And and as you do that, you know, you build this team of people around you and you look around the room, you go, I am not the smartest person in the room by a long shot.

00:36:28:20 - 00:37:01:17
Unknown
I'm not the most capable person in the room by a long shot. And these people, these were truly remarkable people. Great example. You a remarkable person. Trust me to share my wisdom, my experience with you and these other people who are still with us. That's a huge responsibility, the same way it's a huge responsibility. Whether it's my, you know, entry level lube tech or, you know, you know, car washer to my CFO, those people all have a whole massive chart of beautiful, brilliant, amazing people relying on them for a contingency.

00:37:01:17 - 00:37:23:09
Unknown
And that pressure is the greatest pressure there ever was because you just won't fail. You will not fail when you love those people that much and you care about them that much, you will wake up whenever you need to wake up. You will get whatever you need to get done. You will stay motivated through those impossibly hard moments and those really challenging, you know, HR calls and those all of the stuff that feels insurmountable when you're looking at it on your calendar.

00:37:23:11 - 00:37:37:07
Unknown
You get to the end of the day and you're like, I can do anything as long as I'm feeding them, because sometimes I can't find it for myself. And it's, you know, like there's those moments when it's like, oh, I'm easy, I don't need all this. It's like, yeah, but it's not about me. And it never was. I wasn't me.

00:37:37:09 - 00:38:01:01
Unknown
Now that's the bridge. I think a lot of folks out there, I think they don't know they're struggling yet, but I think they realize something's not working. It's like they were built to be the very best at this thing. You know, this particular function at a company or something. You know, they were, we're talking about PR now, so they're they're just like really brilliant accountant, you know, they're just like, they've protected and perfected the last ten years.

00:38:01:02 - 00:38:17:08
Unknown
Just get in there. Yeah. And then they kind of decide this one day that they're going to potentially do it for themselves. Or now they've got to run a team of folks that do this. And the one that I hear a lot is a lot of the times when there is friction or something that doesn't go right, they just go fix it.

00:38:17:08 - 00:38:40:03
Unknown
They're just like, and they kind of push everybody saying, like, I'm just going to go because that's what they were trained to do. And I realize I imagine as a racecar driver that like the that of course is what you're doing and now you're realizing that, like, you get all these awesome humans. I imagine that's a that's for a lot of folks making that, like jump in across that, you know, to the next, you know, going across the bridge into this thing.

00:38:40:05 - 00:39:03:06
Unknown
That's always a hard thing because there's a little bit of that now. A little bit is a lot of letting go. Yeah. But also like you're ultimately responsible. A weird feeling like I got to let you do the thing. But I also got to still take it like as my, my first ever, I would say military mentor slash right hand man used to say he's always pointed me and he goes, we argue about something or exchange things, and at the end he goes, all right, sir, your call.

00:39:03:06 - 00:39:18:11
Unknown
You're the one on the red carpet ultimately, like you're going to get to live with the decision. Yeah. So I don't know, just I mean, thoughts on that. Like how how did you begin to let go or realize that like, okay, I do get let these people do what they do. I can't fix everything. Try to trust somebody else's wisdom.

00:39:18:11 - 00:39:33:09
Unknown
I don't know, I never been down that road. I mean, you got to read books. You got to you got to listen to podcast. You got to ask questions. You got to find mentors. Whether you can have an actual mentor, or you've just got to rely on. I mean, again, it's the access to information you can take in.

00:39:33:11 - 00:39:55:12
Unknown
You can listen to anything anybody has ever written anywhere within 30s on your phone. No matter what you're doing, you can be walking through the desert a thousand miles from civilization. You can open, you know, this or pull your Starlink out and you can. Anything you want is at your fingertips. And and it's super easy to forget that because that convenience comes with the flip side of, like, everything's so easy.

00:39:55:12 - 00:40:20:12
Unknown
Let's just do nothing. Yeah. So you have to be. For me at least, it's about being regimented and being like, I'm not growing. If I'm not challenging myself and challenging my beliefs, challenging my politics, challenging my my, prejudices, my assumptions and asking maybe not the literal question, but but being open to just ask the question of like where?

00:40:20:13 - 00:40:43:21
Unknown
What's my next step to improve? What's the next thing that I can I can find growth in? And when you get into the when you're in the opportunity, I think it's kind of as you described that you get in the portal, you get in the fast track. And sometimes that's not about it's not a portal, as in, oh man, all of a sudden, you know, we got the right phone call or got the right sponsor for the race team or got the new investor got whatever it's like.

00:40:43:23 - 00:41:00:06
Unknown
Well, we figured out why our marketing outreach wasn't working because we had this these two steps in our flow wrong. And you flip them and then all of a sudden, again, that motivation pops. If you do that, but then also find that for yourself in, I can just read a book and take something out of that and go, whoa, you know?

00:41:00:06 - 00:41:14:21
Unknown
And I think about it all the time. I think about like whether I'm thinking about, you know, Jocko, when I'm wanting to blame somebody else and I'm like, oh, yeah, right. You know, or I'm thinking about, you know, the e-myth when I'm when I'm getting stuck in, like, did I build myself a job again or did I build a business?

00:41:14:21 - 00:41:28:21
Unknown
You know, it's like any of these, there are so many people who have gone way out of their way to write all of this down and be like, here, don't do these things. And that's all that we do as a business. And that's all that, you know, we should be doing is our goal in life. It's like going back to parenting.

00:41:28:21 - 00:41:43:10
Unknown
We just want to be a little better than our parents were. You know, we want we want our cars to be a little faster, maybe a little bit, you know, less emissions, maybe the tires will last a little longer. We want our businesses to make little more money. We want our kids to be a little bit smarter, a little more, a little higher.

00:41:43:11 - 00:42:07:12
Unknown
You know, emotional IQ. We just want to everything is just a little bit iterative. And and for me that's it's just that, that daily iterative internal narrative of I'm driving here, I can listen to music. Great. Listen to music if I, you know, I need a break because it's been a day or maybe do music for 20 minutes and then let me go back to a chapter of a book that's always super impactful and grounding for me.

00:42:07:14 - 00:42:29:17
Unknown
And then inevitably, I'm going to go into the next meeting. I'm like a, you know, a college freshman in their first sight class coming home for Thanksgiving. You're like, well, actually, what the typical dad you're actually mirroring. You know, it's like is you just become that cliche. But then over time, these things do become a part of your psyche and your ethos, and you do find yourself sharing things that you're like, I don't even remember where I learned it.

00:42:29:17 - 00:42:45:08
Unknown
It's just so ingrained as a part of my behavior patterns and of, you know, and correcting. So again, all of that is it's mentorship. And it's and mentorship doesn't have to be go out in the world and find somebody to meet with every week at, you know, using that Chili's gift card up, buying them some southwestern egg rolls and asking for advice.

00:42:45:08 - 00:43:05:12
Unknown
It can be go read a book, go ask somebody else you know or care about to read that book with you. Go, you know, find a collaborative person who's at a similar place who wants to grow with you and just sync up with people who are on the same frequency. You know, we say vibes now. It's like vibes is the thing we remember vibe.

00:43:05:12 - 00:43:26:09
Unknown
Vibes is vibrations. It's energy. It's finding people whose energy we match. It's finding people who who have walked in a similar enough path, who have, can mirror or relate to a challenge. So they can support you and be like, oh yeah buddy. Yeah, I was there last week, and then they call you next week and they're like, I'm going through this and you're like, oh, buddy, screenshot a text message.

00:43:26:09 - 00:43:45:09
Unknown
You're like, yeah, you get it. You know, that's what we're looking for. So find that mentorship and and it goes both ways. You know if you're going to get it give it. Yeah man that investment in the craft. And to your point there's no rival I think you just I think if you ever feel that you've arrived somewhere then I think you've already kind of shot yourself in the foot.

00:43:45:10 - 00:44:00:16
Unknown
You know what I mean? Like I made it. Y'all just say everybody in the office knows I made it. Yeah. You know, y'all need to get on my level. Yeah. Welcome. Yeah, well, look at me having made it. Yeah, I think I've met one person who made it, and that was. That was my buddy last week. Who? I was there when he passed away.

00:44:00:16 - 00:44:22:06
Unknown
And he made it because that's the only destination. That's it. That's the finish line, man. We got, you know, and that's depen that's again, that's just just depends on your spiritual beliefs. That's that chapter. Are we moving to something else? I don't know, but but for this plane, this space, this planet, this life, that's the only destination we know we've got is to work for at some point, it's going to flatline.

00:44:22:08 - 00:44:42:09
Unknown
Yeah. What did we do between here and there? And how did we get there? And do we. Are we aiming for retirement. Are we aiming. You know, so like just that that roadmap for me that's such a fun one. And it's so grounding when I'm like, oh yeah that's right. Okay. It's I'm always in a project, this business as a project, you know, my career my entire life.

00:44:42:09 - 00:45:05:05
Unknown
It's a project, you know, it's all a path towards. What's the next thing I'm going to do? Not in that seeking, looking for the next thing way, but rather, you know, this is going to be a really exciting chapter. And then who knows what's next? You know, it's like we sit here and talk. We might leave here and walk to the car, and all of a sudden, both have this exciting idea and boom, we're doing some other thing.

00:45:05:05 - 00:45:19:13
Unknown
And six years from now we're like, dude, that all happened. We were sitting on a podcast. That's crazy. I mean, I say one thing, yeah, no, that's right man. But, condolences on your buddy there. Yeah. Thanks, man. I can't talk about it too much because every time I do, I start. I'm like, yeah, it was really.

00:45:19:13 - 00:45:36:10
Unknown
Oh, no. Yep. There it goes again. But but it was. It is one of the most magical things to be there with somebody in their family in that, you know, in that moment, it's the most important thing, man. When you think about as you reflect on your life or for being current, to your point, it's a thing that's still happening.

00:45:36:11 - 00:45:51:13
Unknown
You know, this world that you live in with, with rally. And I could spend this whole I was thinking to myself, like, I could spend this entire episode asking you about all the race car stuff, and right now, I, I, I hope you don't take it bad. I don't, I don't like, feel compelled to because I know that race cars at all.

00:45:51:15 - 00:46:06:19
Unknown
I know a ton of people have asked you. I know a lot about that. So maybe I'm being selfish for a second. I just know that inside Dave's brain, there's a lot of other things taken. So if you don't mind, I just keep going down that path. A race car is a hammer. If you want to talk to me about building houses, and you won't spend the whole time talking about hammers, we're not going to have a lot of fun.

00:46:06:19 - 00:46:21:14
Unknown
It's a tool. It's a really cool one. Yeah. Anybody's welcome to hit me up anytime about race cars. But yeah, that's not what I'm with you. I'm not. That's not what you're in. You know, I know it doesn't mean you got a ton of killer stuff out there for anybody who wants to tune in that you've been right on the nose with that.

00:46:21:14 - 00:46:41:09
Unknown
I think the thing that gets through my mind is the one thing that I do know from that life that you live similar life that I lived before this one. It's I find it sometimes my perception of risk is not almost never the same as everybody else around me. And what I mean by that is not so much not recognizing that it's not dangerous.

00:46:41:09 - 00:47:03:03
Unknown
But I I've always internally feel that, hey, man, we're the red team. We're going to be good. And if it's just cars like, let's rock and roll. And I've always found that sometimes it's difficult to get folks to come along because in their life experiences where I have no control over, this is not true to them. To them it is like you're asking us to jump off a cliff without a parachute.

00:47:03:03 - 00:47:30:21
Unknown
Yeah. And am I now the cliff that high? Yeah. And we're tied with rope. And there's a couple other points that we can step off and we'll be okay. How have you? Have you navigated not only your own perception of risk because I imagine is is you have a higher tolerance, but how have you also brought people along for the ride, specifically in your business, being in your line of work, like any any thoughts or reflections on how you get folks to come along with you when you see it so clearly?

00:47:30:23 - 00:47:54:02
Unknown
Yeah. The it's a, that's a, it's the word risk that I like. I, I'm still stuck there because risk is such a unique word because for some, you know, I something I stumble into regularly. And when we do you know you and I've talked before about when we're doing coaching, when we're offering, you know, advice or support, we're doing a, you know, a leadership, you know, coaching exercise.

00:47:54:02 - 00:48:11:21
Unknown
And you and I, we're fortunate enough to do this together once. And I think I mentioned this there as well. It's like we we say risk in every single person who heard that word has had a different experience and emotional reaction, a different inference. They've put it in a different bucket. They've got a totally different lens on risk.

00:48:11:21 - 00:48:33:18
Unknown
And so for some people they're connecting. You said race cars and risk like, oh, that's a dangerous business I didn't even go there for at first. Risk was like that was like number nine on the risk list. And there's liability exposure. There's risk to bodily harm and injury. There's financial, you know, loss there's risk is just it's just everywhere.

00:48:33:18 - 00:48:56:09
Unknown
And as soon as you as soon as you see it, it's like looking at the source code. You're like, oh, anybody can sue anybody for anything, you know? And you're like, oh, we there's no amount of insurance that can protect us. Oh no. And but sometimes, you know, I go back to what we talked about earlier, which is like the biggest risk for me is way scarier.

00:48:56:11 - 00:49:14:19
Unknown
And to this day, way scarier for me to go be a sandwich artist than it was for me to author this psychotically insane machine of a business that's like a I use this analogy about four times a day already, but it's like a toddler with a fork running around trying to look for outlets, and I'm just desperately trying to find the breaker box.

00:49:14:19 - 00:49:29:02
Unknown
I'm like, just I can't get the fork out of the toddler's hand. Let's just kill the outlet power. We'll deal with them stabbing themselves in the eye later, but let's just get them. Let's keep them from shocking themselves to death. Find the breaker, flip it off. Then we're going to move to trying to figure out how we get the fork out of the hand.

00:49:29:04 - 00:49:48:15
Unknown
It's like, you know, and throw a facemask on that kid. It can't something. Yeah, yeah. So the risk is just everywhere and it's you know, and in this space specifically, it's like we're not selling SAS as in software. There's no margin in this to begin with. The cars are also a little suicide machines. You know we're building race cars and they they're all expensive and they all want a break.

00:49:48:15 - 00:50:01:16
Unknown
We're not on a racetrack. We're on a bunch of gravel roads that we built. Every time we drive on them, it's ruined. And we got to riprap the whole thing. And I spend a 30 grand a year on on grater blades for one implement, and we use 12 implements to prep the track. This is never going to work.

00:50:01:16 - 00:50:24:11
Unknown
Right. So risk is aggregated into so many places. And it again it's it's it's the trust right. It's like grounding in humor. It's getting that team together for me and getting them back to like hey, this is what we're doing. And it's also, you know, again leaning into that sort of extreme ownership container of being like, hey, I'm asking you guys to do this, and I'm asking you to trust me.

00:50:24:11 - 00:50:43:15
Unknown
And here's all the ways it can go wrong. And they're all my financial burden to bear. Right. If you make a mistake, I pay for it. If I make a mistake, I pay for it. If you make a mistake, I pay for it. Right? At the end of the day, you're trusting me to be the controller, to be the leader, to be the visionary and planner.

00:50:43:17 - 00:51:05:04
Unknown
And I'm trusting you to execute your portion of it. And I'm also 100% fine with you making a mistake within this container, because at least we're jumping into water. So next time we might be jumping on the land, we might not have parachutes, and we might we? There's a no mess. But right now we're doing it in a space where here's what it's going to look like for you to fail.

00:51:05:08 - 00:51:21:06
Unknown
It's just the expectation management, right? People just want to feel okay knowing what the potential outcomes are, and they want to know that you're not going to be angry. You're not going to hate them. They're not going to get punished or penalized, or that if there is a possibility for that, how can they avoid it? What are the pitfalls?

00:51:21:07 - 00:51:42:07
Unknown
How do they manage that? So for me, risk is almost always just tied to expectation. New thing. It's okay for like do you think, hey, I got to get these folks on my level or you're like, I just need to be able to figure out how to meet them at theirs and just understand, like, how I can get them to move, especially if they get paralyzed with it.

00:51:42:09 - 00:52:02:20
Unknown
Like, paralyzed. They can't do their job because they feel like, yeah. I think levels is always an interesting one where it's like, I definitely don't need anybody on my level. I don't know what my level is, but nobody else should be here. It's not fun. It's chaos. The. But I want them to feel like they I want to help them be like, do you whatever you perceive to be this level.

00:52:02:20 - 00:52:26:10
Unknown
Right. You know, if we're talking in those terms, you want to work towards whatever that North Star is, whatever that you know, that growth is going to enable you to do that and it requires mistakes. It requires risk. You like we talked I talked about this with the team today. It's talking about a, you know, a budget. And I'm like, we're getting we're not getting killed on $10,000 transactions because everybody is smart and careful.

00:52:26:10 - 00:52:48:08
Unknown
Everybody knows what $10,000 cost. And everybody knows regardless of the scale of our organization, they can feel the weight of a $10,000 decision. But nobody feels the weight of a $35 decision. Nobody feels the weight of a $10 decision. Some people feel the weight of a $300 decision. But if I give you a purchasing threshold, that's $399, and anything below that you can purchase, you can spend $4 million a day.

00:52:48:10 - 00:53:17:07
Unknown
So that doesn't work. And so we were talking about, the, the intersection of judgment, of approval and of buying the wrong shit and how important those three things are, and that we can't write an SOP for every single thing, or we're going to kill ourselves in meeting hell and approval hell, and we don't trust our team. And I was like, we only way we get better at spending and managing budgets is you guys got to buy the wrong shit.

00:53:17:09 - 00:53:34:08
Unknown
And then I got to go look through it and we've got to get and every it's just got to be iterative. We've just got I've got to trust you guys to screw this up. Just please screwed up with $10. Don't screwed up with five grand. You know, because we we pay enough for $5,000 mistakes and 10,020 that we've all.

00:53:34:10 - 00:53:59:21
Unknown
I haven't had any seven figure mistakes yet that I know of, but but I've had six. So the tuition's my answer that a long time ago. Just take those ones and those are tuition. We're just paying tuition. These are these mistakes are all tuition. And so I use that today is like buy the wrong shit. Just every time you're buying something, think about, I'm going to go back through or somebody's going to go back through and we're going to audit this and we're going to cross-reference and look at transactions.

00:53:59:23 - 00:54:13:19
Unknown
Nobody's going to motherfuck you. Nobody's going to tell you you're a bad person. Nobody's going to. But we're going to ask what your logic was, and then we're going to find ways to improve this. But I don't I'm not going to ask ChatGPT to tell me how to prevent people from spending the wrong money and writing soap from a robot that's not going to do anything.

00:54:13:19 - 00:54:31:00
Unknown
So you have to trust people to make mistakes. You got to give them a container to make mistakes. Got to go give a sandbox, you know, for that personal development. And then just have dogs around you. That's the last piece that always, you know, they can't see you, you know? Oh. Craig decided to make his little cameo appearance in here.

00:54:31:01 - 00:54:53:05
Unknown
That's my buddy when used in midway. Yeah, a good nap, but then he had some pets. Yep, yep. There's this part now, man, I think the. Yeah, you nailed it. I think it's not being able to put so many, so much tightening down the batches that now your folks are like, I'm not doing anything. Yeah. Well then you just you really shot yourself in the foot on that one.

00:54:53:05 - 00:55:04:17
Unknown
And you can't give him like, rounds. You can never give him a live round if you don't give him, you know, you got to give him you got to give him a sandbox, you know. Yeah. You can't just send him in with live rounds. And that's that's the biggest piece. And even there it's like, hey, we're going to live rounds.

00:55:04:19 - 00:55:24:21
Unknown
There's going to be friendly fire. At some point we're going to meet, we are going to screw this up internally. We're going to screw it up to clients again. It's not about whether we do that. It's about and to for me, the biggest, most powerful tool that I have to remind myself as well is like, you have to tell people you're every step we take, every process we improve, everything new.

00:55:24:21 - 00:55:41:19
Unknown
We do. We're going to fuck that up too. And again, it's never about whether or not you have made a mistake. It's always the five minutes or the day or the week after. And it's how you show up. It's how you walk in with integrity. You're like, I did that. Yeah, I need help. I don't know how to fix it.

00:55:41:19 - 00:55:59:19
Unknown
And and how we sit in that space. That's what defines growth. That's what defines leaders. That's what separates the team players and the people who want to be a part of where you're going and are in a rowing in the same direction from the people who are there to collect their their paycheck every week. So you'd say, anybody step in in this role, leadership or ownership would not have you.

00:55:59:20 - 00:56:19:13
Unknown
If your objective is to build a system and run one where you will never get your knees skinned or punched in the face, is not that same. Yeah. Don't stay. Don't do that. Yeah. Stay home. And you know, again, we don't want to tell people how hard it actually is because they won't do it right. And I'm pretty sure that applies universally in everything in life.

00:56:19:15 - 00:56:36:21
Unknown
But yeah. No, I mean, you've got to you've got to be you got to know, you got to be like, Travis was trying to get on a dirt bike, man. You got to know, like I've broken every bone in my body four times at least, because the doctors lost record of that when he was, like, 17. Like, he's so.

00:56:36:23 - 00:56:54:01
Unknown
And you've still got to be able to get up there and be like, this is going to hurt. And then go do it. And like, how do you land a double backflip? Not on the first try, you know. And the bag, the bag jump still hurts, but at least you got a bag jump before you. You get out and do it on dirt or on the pavement or, you know, with the live rounds, right?

00:56:54:01 - 00:57:11:02
Unknown
So you got to create that sandbox and you got to do it for yourself too, right? It's like when you're learning new skills and you're that freshman coming home from your first sight class and you're, you know, go see a bunch of dumb, terrible, awful, cringing stuff to your family. You know, go do it to go do it around the Thanksgiving table first.

00:57:11:04 - 00:57:25:16
Unknown
Don't go. Don't go read a book and then try and deploy it to your team. It's so cringe. You might see a phone calls it business cringe, and he likes to periodically send me a little note on the side. I'm like, oh yeah, right, right, right, right. Because it's cringe. And then you just read that. Yeah, yeah. Like I don't think you read what you think you read.

00:57:25:16 - 00:57:42:01
Unknown
Yeah. You give it a second. You keep using that word. I don't think it means what you think it means. Yeah, yeah. No, it's, it's something that on the other side of it, I got to imagine, for as hard as it is for you, Dave, like what?

00:57:42:03 - 00:57:57:17
Unknown
Why do you keep doing it, then? Because you don't get easier, I think. I think you get better at it, but I don't know that it gets easier. I don't know. I mean, I think it does, because I think I think it gets easier. Yeah, I think it for it for sure does in a variety of ways.

00:57:57:17 - 00:58:29:13
Unknown
One, because your relationship with hard changes so much, it's like, I don't have kids. So, you know, I'm, I'm, I'm, projecting other people's experience here, but, like, I can't know, sitting here right now, I can not know how hard it is to have kids and everybody who's ever had kids. Is that a different experience? But I do know that my friends who accidentally had, triplets have a very different lens on life than I do when they have a very different relationship to the word hard than I do.

00:58:29:15 - 00:58:48:23
Unknown
And I think everybody who does hard things, it just changes your definition of hard. And all of a sudden, the things that you felt like were just impossibly hard at some other portion. You've walked through so much stuff that you go by. I mean, you think about being a kid, right? You fall down and, and, you know, you're, you know, your ice cream falls off and you're like, this is the worst pain in my life, man.

00:58:49:04 - 00:59:10:09
Unknown
This is it. I'll never. I'll that that was it. That was my ice cream. There's an ice on it, I mean, and the just relatable suffering of a kid losing their ice cream cone. Then they fall down a week later and they scrape their knee and they're like, that's worse. That hurts. That properly hurts. And then they, you know, jump BMX bike, break their arm and then, you know, they have their first heartbreak and then they lose a loved one.

00:59:10:09 - 00:59:44:06
Unknown
And our capacity for our just ability to absorb and understand hard and pain and gratitude and love it. It's always evolving. And so every step we're taking in anything in life, operating, whatever it is, is always related to how hard of a thing we've walked through. So when you've been through those just impossibly hard calls and those those really challenging decisions and you've you've had a task, something you hired three years ago and you delegated, and now you're right back to square one, doing the thing that you thought you'd never have to do again.

00:59:44:06 - 00:59:59:05
Unknown
You know, you're packing the orders again, or you're, you know, picking up the phone again or whatever. And that humbling experience of I got in the portal and I built this amazing thing, and I'm right back where I was, and I got to start over. It's like we said, you start on the path, you tried that door, you went down that path and you're like, this path is great.

00:59:59:05 - 01:00:30:04
Unknown
Up. No. And you had to walk all the way back and start again. It gets easier and it gets so much more fun when you've got the right people there with you doing it. And and it becomes so much more clear how important it is that we've got to prioritize the business above everything else. Because in order to prioritize our employees and prioritize our team, we have to prioritize the health of the business because they we can't they if we take care of the employees, the business won't be there to take care of them.

01:00:30:04 - 01:01:04:02
Unknown
And and understanding that caring for the business and prioritizing the business is not callous. It is the greatest gift. And inevitably, running a good business is taking incredibly good care of your people and nurturing those relationships. On a personal level. Who will then turn and nurture the kind of clients that you want. But it's in that order. For me, every time it's the business, it's the employees, and the clients are always going to get the net of that by having a world class experience and by having that really intentional connection because they the people love what they're doing.

01:01:04:04 - 01:01:19:14
Unknown
Yeah. I think that's a hard thing for most folks to have to jump into, which is understanding that it does seem callous, but it's not if you really think about like how that structure of service is, you know, you want the captain taking care of the ship. Yeah. Like, dude, man, love, take care of your hands and like everything else.

01:01:19:14 - 01:01:39:05
Unknown
But right now we're going to sink. You're not going to have a boat to be on. Yeah. What do you seems like part of taking care of the. Taking care of the business. Take care of the ship. You mentioned that. Hey, you know, the business has gone through an evolution of where, like, it's like, you know, an experience is what you are, but you are an experience more like more front center about it.

01:01:39:05 - 01:01:56:02
Unknown
I see it too. Can you talk a little bit about how, especially in a world where you think it'd be easy to kind of be cocky and beholden to be like, no, we are racing innovation, you know, how do you how did you get to that point? And where are you all at now with that? Yeah, I always immediately go, I'm like,

01:01:56:02 - 01:02:00:05
Unknown
how did Yamaha decide to make jet skis and pianos, you know?

01:02:00:07 - 01:02:04:06
Unknown
Right. So we are a new company. Yeah.

01:02:04:09 - 01:02:25:09
Unknown
We like we like to sell things that you'll use twice. That's there. That's the core of the Yamaha model. This seems like a good idea. Financed. No, I mean, I, yeah, we are. We're an events company. We're an experienced company, but we're we the thing that I love the most is like, it's this man.

01:02:25:09 - 01:02:48:06
Unknown
Like I want to build. I want to build the thing that matters. And I want people to have an experience that's connective and genuinely impactful and selfishly, I want to be a part of. I want to be a really genuine and memorable part of people's life. I want to be a core memory. You know? That's my selfish. My selfish drive is like, it's not about Dave, but like, I want rally ready to be a core memory for you.

01:02:48:08 - 01:03:15:21
Unknown
And that's not our it's not our, you know, leading core value in what we do. But it but it it has historically sort of defined how we, how we interact with people. And what we found in doing that is, again, it's a toddler of the fork looking for outlets. It's very hard in this industry. And if you look at the turnover of, you know, people doing what we do in businesses, nobody starts this because, you know, we went in and said, what's the most profitable business model?

01:03:15:23 - 01:03:34:21
Unknown
And and so inevitably these are like many other entrepreneurs, you know, you're really good at baking cupcakes. Next thing you know, you haven't baked cupcakes in five years. You're sitting in the back room doing paperwork, and you've got other people baking cupcakes. You know, same thing for me is like, we we got into it and we haven't taught a class and, I don't know, six years.

01:03:34:21 - 01:04:01:07
Unknown
I don't get in cars anymore. I get motion sick. Two that doesn't help, but, terrible, terrible thing to motion sickness and and, race car instructing do not mix at all. Fortunately, I don't have any any stories to to mix that with. So it's been okay so far. But, but I, I, you know, when I got to start working on the business more and start, you know, you started to pull back and you start to kind of see where we're, you know, we're operationally really high functioning.

01:04:01:07 - 01:04:24:02
Unknown
What our what our just inherent, skills are and what our gift is as a team, i.e. the aggregation of kind of who we've built and what their gifts are and what we do. So like we host the best events on earth, we do the coolest stuff and we can we our goal is always to try and stretch somebody's budget into a higher impact than they thought they would be able to get for, you know, that amount of money.

01:04:24:04 - 01:04:53:04
Unknown
Some of that is being really intentional about who we curate, who we bring in. But a lot of that is the operational efficiency to make sure that, like, we can afford to give all the stuff that we want without, you know, losing our ass. And the school and training side of the business is that's the like that's where we started, and it's what we love and it's what we started it as a driving school, as a rally school, a race car driving school, a place to learn how to slide cars around on gravel and take those skills and apply them, whether it's, you know, driving, do the you're going to Vail next week, you're

01:04:53:04 - 01:05:16:00
Unknown
going skiing with the family in a rental minivan and you hit a patch of ice. Same skills you're going to learn in in rally school with us. You're an F1 driver or you're a, you know, sports car driver and you're looking for another skill set or experience. It's just tools in the driver's toolkit. But more interestingly, and as I've sort of grown in my own space, like, man, I just really like having high impact experiences that move the needle for people.

01:05:16:00 - 01:05:52:19
Unknown
And and rallying. Is that unique? I described it earlier in like that dynamic with a co-driver, that passenger riding with us, and we're authoring our own custom language. And it's this like life or death, communication and communication is life or death in a marriage, in a business, and certainly in a rally car. And so there's so much stuff that I found is really fun to connect with people and with brands and create not just these memorable, impactful, in-person experiences, but then try to figure out how do we convert those into impactful content and media and other deliverables, and how do we use this as a launchpad for you to create your own inspiring narrative for

01:05:52:19 - 01:06:10:06
Unknown
your brand? So that's, that's what we've become is a hub for a hub for super rad shit. You know, you want to shoot, paintball guns out of a helicopter. Yeah, we can do that. You want to, you know, bring a group of 300 people and run through 12 activity stations in three hours. We'll figure it out.

01:06:10:06 - 01:06:26:20
Unknown
You want to bring four people out, and you want a two day full off site to dive deep in. And as a leadership team and and start to uncover some big challenges. And you want to do some trust exercises and you want to drive and co drive. We'll do that. And I can't do the same thing repetitively very well.

01:06:26:20 - 01:06:47:01
Unknown
So it's a really good container for us to always be building new relationships, authoring new challenges. And and getting to be, you know, I want to be a logo on the bottom of of brand's, you know, accomplishments the same way that they are in ours. You know, I don't want to just brag that we got to work with you know, a Red bull or a for Fulcrum Technologies or any of these companies that we love working with.

01:06:47:01 - 01:07:09:05
Unknown
I want them to also be able to brag that they got to work with us, and not from a place of ego, but because they're so proud and they're so excited. That was a core memory for for the businesses as well as the individual. Yeah. And y'all, do you have a I mean, if anybody gets a chance to go out to rally ready, I would say that the the environment, the cars, the activities, the entire thing is great.

01:07:09:05 - 01:07:31:21
Unknown
But y'all, I think of course you know this, but I brag on y'all quite a bit. It is the professionalism and the ability to make anybody feel at home very quickly in this very intense kind of place can be if you let your brain wander too much. It's a, it's a, it's a skill that I'm not sure how you've done it, but y'all have done it there, man.

01:07:31:21 - 01:07:46:23
Unknown
It's awesome. Everybody you talked to for the first person who answers the phone all the way to the first, and I don't know what it is, man. It's just like, I think it hits you in the face right off the bat. It still pleasantly surprises me that there is in this. I don't know, you probably expect like, these intense kind of.

01:07:47:04 - 01:08:04:02
Unknown
Yeah, you know, race car type folks and you show up and folks. Right. You get Rob Winter the best human being on Earth. Yeah. It's like the least race car human. You could possibly imagine. Yeah. What is this, like a rally monkey man? Yeah. 100. Yes. Yeah, but it's just like the environment. Awesome, man. No, I appreciate that.

01:08:04:03 - 01:08:26:06
Unknown
No and no, it's I don't that's y'all, man. I and people feel it right away. As soon as they hang out with y'all. Well, I'll, I'll challenge you on that and just say it is us. But we I can see the things that we do well. And like any business, I also I it comes with the curse of seeing all the things that we're I don't say operationally deficient in, but the things that it's not our strong suit are the things that we know we're refining.

01:08:26:06 - 01:08:44:01
Unknown
And and it's not that customers, clients, people don't also see or experience those things in that space, but the goal is to create a container where, look, man, we're authoring something together and we're doing something that doesn't exist. This isn't you didn't choose to go to Lowe's versus Home Depot here, right? Like you're not you're not this is not a this is not a transactional implement or kind of deal.

01:08:44:01 - 01:08:58:21
Unknown
We're doing something that doesn't exist and hasn't been done. The business is doing something unique within the confines of, yeah, there's other businesses that that do rally things, but nobody does what we're doing. And and we want to match and mirror that with people who are the same way. And so working with you is always the same way.

01:08:58:21 - 01:09:12:03
Unknown
It's like, hey man, you get it. And if you get the culture, then like, this is so much easier. Yeah, we don't have to discuss the bullet points. We don't have to. It's just like, you know, where you can ask for things, you know where you can. And we and it's just you get in that flow state with, with a customer.

01:09:12:03 - 01:09:33:11
Unknown
And so that culture only exists because we're so curated with the people we work with. And when you get that mesh, man, it's it's the best thing ever. And and I see the same thing, you know, to be honest, the same thing with you. It's like why we've always meshed really well is you've got the ability to just like, you walk in your mirror and you can hold space for and with anybody and to flip the script on you a little bit.

01:09:33:11 - 01:09:51:03
Unknown
I think one of the things for me that's, that's so fun about the kind of friendship that we have is like, I can't you as a friend, I will not think to call you 90% of the time that I would be like, God dang it, that would have been perfect. I should, because we're not we're not around each other all the time because we're doing our stuff.

01:09:51:05 - 01:10:07:20
Unknown
And and then we'll leave this podcast and, you know, like any good friendship or be, you know, a week, a month, six months of being like, dude, I got to introduce you to so-and-so. You got to come do this thing. And unless we make the concerted effort and the commitment to be like, hey, we're going to do stuff together, we're going to be friends, and we're going to like, not do the hey, come be on my podcast.

01:10:07:20 - 01:10:17:16
Unknown
You know, every four years you lose that. And yeah. And so like for me, man, like I'm stepping in here today I'm like.

01:10:17:18 - 01:10:42:05
Unknown
Jay dog my man. What what you've been up to. So I similarly I'm, I'm really genuinely curious. And I know this is your space. I don't mean to, you know, come on Letterman and then interview David, but like, but like, dude, we're sitting in an amazing space with an amazing team. You're doing something really special. It feels so incredibly aligned for my personal mission and kind of what we do in our space, you know, our business.

01:10:42:05 - 01:10:59:15
Unknown
I'm super curious, like, you know, it's your own show, so you can tell me to shut up whenever you want and kick it back to me. But, buddy, what you been up to the past couple of years? Yeah. I mean, you know, just arts and crafts and things. Yeah. You've been making some of your Hobby Lobby. That's nice.

01:10:59:15 - 01:11:19:19
Unknown
Yeah. You seen that? Yeah. Pipe cleaners? Yeah. Got some woodworking. And I learned a little bit about lights, man. I, I think the the the short version. And I'll give you the friend version, you know, later is longer and maybe, maybe not more interesting, just more like, you talk about these portals you hit and you go like, I can't explain that, but I'm going to tell you what happened.

01:11:19:19 - 01:11:45:20
Unknown
And you kind of maybe there's some reflection there. What I will say is, over the last few years, I've been blessed with a couple things have had for me and, ones on a personal level and the other things just with like, great teams and teammates around. You know, after getting out of the service for me, my journey and walkthrough business has been a bit of like, I, I thought I'd be a career guy and I'd be like, the 30, 40 years.

01:11:45:20 - 01:12:08:15
Unknown
It wasn't any. I was a guy doing his dream job. And I think as a calling, it was, you know, time to to step out and go do this. Head felt very deep calling, you know, like God's calling. Hey, man, go out and I need you to do something else. And so as I've been walking that it was interesting what I've learned even about myself is I feel like, in a weird way, we're all kind of getting back to that five year old version of ourselves.

01:12:08:15 - 01:12:29:12
Unknown
Yeah, always outlive me. I do race car stuff all day. I'm a grown. I'm a grown adult. Yeah, grown adults doing it, but I, I what I get to do now and this is just context for your question, but like maybe for the folks who don't know me as well, but like what I get to do now is really what I've done since I was a kid walking up to folks, sitting with an old timer on a bench.

01:12:29:12 - 01:12:45:10
Unknown
I could, if my folks needed to find me. It was probably because I was just asking somebody questions. I just I've always I don't have a single like favorite type of life. I just find everybody interesting, you know, and I find them just genuinely remarkable. Like, I don't know what it is. I just find what folks do just interesting.

01:12:45:10 - 01:13:03:04
Unknown
And it's always been something I could ask folks. Yeah. And I think over time I realized that was a thing that you could do. And I didn't know it was a thing you could do is just. But I think as a classically trained operator, somebody who's run businesses, run teams, run things, I didn't realize that that was maybe part of what I was doing.

01:13:03:06 - 01:13:35:09
Unknown
My part of that seasoning, that kind of made it work. Well, I kind of thought of training. Yeah. You know, I didn't realize that seasoning maybe was the main dish. And so to answer your question, that context is there only to say that, you know, when we first started hanging and learning and getting to know each other, this was something that I was just kind of even reconciling with myself, like, can there's naturally the natural curiosity that I have and my true genuine care for human, like just the people.

01:13:35:09 - 01:13:48:19
Unknown
I just, I just, you know, and it was that way when I was the military, too. I just deeply cared about more of my guys were from what they were about, why they tick the way they did all those things. Is that something I could do all the time? Like, and I don't know if anybody paid me to do it.

01:13:48:20 - 01:14:05:07
Unknown
Sure. Nobody paid me to do for years. Can you give a shit for a living? Yeah. Could I just. Can you give a shit for living? That's a question. Yeah, well, are a lot of me. I'm sorry, but. Yeah. That's it. Can I do that? Yeah, yeah. And, you know, and I think more than anything else, it just felt like the place I feel most alive is doing that part.

01:14:05:07 - 01:14:26:21
Unknown
And, and I so for years when we first met, I was just doing it for free. I mean, I didn't have any. I will admit to you that I didn't have any kind of real, I didn't have any real understanding where at where I was going with it. And maybe it's because of being this classically trained operator just knowing that, like, that's probably what's going to continue moving the needle for a professional standpoint.

01:14:26:23 - 01:14:47:11
Unknown
I'll just do this thing. But you're kind of seeing now if I can just point to what we've been up to, I think it's somehow that gift has been and I hope it's okay to call it that. But like, yeah, that that thing is making its way into something that's also related to I think it's being kind of used as a catalyst for purpose for other things.

01:14:47:11 - 01:15:06:00
Unknown
And I found that especially with work, and now that Sam Helm, I've been blessed to team up with this, I mean, build this team and be around folks who are like the people I get to talk to. But for the people I get to talk for and have these conversations, I think are all folks maybe trying to they're one of two folks.

01:15:06:00 - 01:15:27:14
Unknown
And I think it just makes my ability to storyteller means something more than just my personal curiosity. It's either folks trying to find their courage to go do something they just know innately they should step into. Yeah, they just don't know how to yet. Maybe they just hear one thing, Dave says. And then that moves. And they had that convo with their wife or husband that night, and then they make the step to go do this thing their community needs.

01:15:27:16 - 01:15:44:22
Unknown
Or it's that person probably in the depths and bounds of just like struggling to hold this thing together. Should I, should I get up tomorrow and keep doing this, or should I finally file bankruptcy, bankruptcy and whatever, you know, and they hear just a bit of somebody telling some raw truth and then going, oh, I'm not by myself.

01:15:44:22 - 01:16:18:09
Unknown
Yeah. For right now in my life, that chapter has been something that I've been really focused on. And I think for me, it's just been something that again, I'm happy to I was happy to do it for free forever. Yeah. And for some reason it's resonating beyond that. And I think it's something that kind of we talked about before we put a record on the show here today that like, I don't know why sometimes, like, you don't like, have a I'd like to say that I have a clear understanding of how it all came together and then God providing and me just hopefully leaning into the things that.

01:16:18:11 - 01:16:39:10
Unknown
One of our teammates did something yesterday and I thought it was really remarkable, he said, I think we're all supposed to be on a quest. That's good. The good thing is it's usually not easy. Yeah, I've never found it to be easy. It's not a single time, but our life should be a quest of good. And I don't know, I suppose that's that's in some ways what's going on.

01:16:39:10 - 01:16:54:15
Unknown
And kind of what you see is some things that I can and again, I'll give you the longer version later. But like I, I think part of it is that and I think the other part of it is, I maybe it's something that you guys are doing. Also, I think he just like, is like a genuine care for humans.

01:16:54:15 - 01:17:10:14
Unknown
And I think for some reason it just people feel it and then it just becomes more of a thing and more people want to participate and be part of it. Yeah. So yeah. And the technical answer is we're just trying to get more good people. I think we see a time and a, you know, we just gave Dave a make business local again hat, you know.

01:17:10:20 - 01:17:27:07
Unknown
But I think we're at a time where like we're really seeing that independent ownership and folks that are there's, there's a lot of different ways you can villainize business and stuff. But at the end of the day, it is one of the hallmarks of a really great country that is not perfect but means well. And I think it always has the right intentions.

01:17:27:07 - 01:17:45:12
Unknown
And I think if we can just remind folks that, hey, like, don't complain. Like, maybe you ought to step in the arena and go do something. You know, it's hard, but it's like it's part of the move. So that's what we're doing, man. And it's cool to see so many folks rallying behind us. Like, that's just a thing that I don't know.

01:17:45:12 - 01:17:58:09
Unknown
Sometimes you kind of wonder if, like, your ideas, you know, the, the, your purpose is a thing. Like, only do I care about it. And then you're fortunate to look behind you and go like, oh, there's a lot of people behind there. Like, yeah, yeah. It just kind of feel like it's part of it. So I don't know.

01:17:58:09 - 01:18:33:21
Unknown
I hope that answers it. I just, I mean, and I think that there's one thing there that like, I feel like for people in your shoes, mine, anybody who's as you, as you describe who's chosen to be here with us this far, they're still with us. One of the hardest pieces of the of humility and of getting to a, you know, a place of that confident, grounded space is being able to say out loud in front of people you love and trust in other people what your gift is, what your lane is, what you have conviction and you know about yourself to be true and what you believe in about yourself.

01:18:33:21 - 01:18:55:21
Unknown
And if there's one thing that I think we all need to see a little bit more, and we all would stand to be to emulate more, is that kind and humble conviction in the things that we know for sure we who are who we are and what we're good at and again, it's not finance for me. That's not me, dog.

01:18:55:21 - 01:19:33:14
Unknown
You know, like that's not done. And it would have been tapped to pick for me. Yeah. No I don't care. I got one for Dave. You describe Dave. No members. Yeah yeah he's a real Pemdas guy. The frequency by which Pemdas comes up in my life. Anyways. And to hear you sit and talk about your gift, I think is we have to we have to feel comfortable if you're going to step in to the arena or step into, you know, this challenge, or you're going to pick up the sword or you're going to take on the next chapter, or you're going to get out of your, your, your I would say it's

01:19:33:14 - 01:19:58:04
Unknown
your comfort zone, but the reality is it's your discomfort zone, right? For most people that place where they're comfortable, you're not comfortable, you're reasonably miserable. Thus why you're seeking and you're looking for, you know, the next, hit of sugar or the next drink or, you know, the next thing to buy on Facebook Marketplace for some people, but, you know, you're seeking because you're having a hard time being like, okay, I'm actually not comfortable.

01:19:58:04 - 01:20:13:20
Unknown
I'm really unhappy, and I'm not comfortable where I am, and I need to make a change, and that change is going to suck and it's going to hurt, and I'm going to wake up and be like, oh, the last thing on Earth I want to do is get on a rowing machine right now, and I'm going to do it for just ten minutes anyways and be like, God, I regret that and I'm so glad I did it.

01:20:13:20 - 01:20:29:11
Unknown
And you know, and that pain that comes with it that that is that and only comes from a sense of conviction in and belief in, in yourself and picking that thing that you're like, look, man, I don't know what I'm doing. I didn't know what I was doing. I didn't start a rally school because I was like, this is it, here we go.

01:20:29:11 - 01:20:46:07
Unknown
We're off, you know, wrote the I wrote the, you know, pro forma and was like, all right, here's our ten year projections and we're going to lose the weight. Okay, I didn't that was just like, that's what I want to do. And I know without a shadow of a doubt that if I can figure out a way to get people in rally cars, it's going to have a positive impact on their life.

01:20:46:07 - 01:21:09:11
Unknown
And the first class I ever did, my buddy Chad was one of our customers, and he came up to me at the end of the second day. It was a two day class or three day class maybe he came to the end of the second day and he goes, dude, I've been watching rally on TV since the 80s, since Group B, when I was a kid, and I have dreamed my entire life of getting to experience what it was like to be in a rally car in any capacity, as a co-driver, as a driver, as a passenger.

01:21:09:11 - 01:21:30:07
Unknown
I don't care. And not only have I gotten to do that now, but in two days I know how to drive a rally car and I know what it feels like. Maybe I can't do what the WRC driver can do at that level, but I can make the car do that, and I know what's happening. And just the connection to that is so like, he it's so crazy.

01:21:30:09 - 01:21:55:08
Unknown
And the part that like, has every single day stuck with me forever is these like, what else can I do. It's like, oh right. And like that is so again, it's so cheesy and cliche and like, it feels absurd and like cringe central. Not business cringe at least. But like, man, that's it. Dude. We've got, you know, in a rally car, we're like, look, all we're doing is you're taking in data with your eyes and you're you're outputting it to your hands and your feet.

01:21:55:08 - 01:22:13:13
Unknown
And all we're here to do is instructors is help rewire those neural pathways so that the data that comes into your eyes can go out to your hands and feet as quickly as possible so that as a driver, much like, you know, a business owner or an operator, you've got all these problems to solve. Don't get stuck doing all the things that you need to find a hoofer, right?

01:22:13:14 - 01:22:32:22
Unknown
Like don't get stuck doing every task. But when you're driving, you're responsible for all of those corrections you're responsible for. You're going to turn into a corner and you're always going to have a correction. There's going to be a small input that's required. And our job as your your instructors, your coaches, your mentors for the day, week for your life, whatever are to help you refine those things.

01:22:32:22 - 01:22:59:07
Unknown
So all those tiny mistakes that you're making become less and less and less and less, and you get faster and smoother and quicker until it becomes muscle memory. And you can self coach and you can self-regulate. And I think all of that starts from a seed of, you've got to truly believe this is my thing. This is what I feel compelled and called to do through God or through whatever your your channel, your path from here more than here, it's almost always from here.

01:22:59:07 - 01:23:17:04
Unknown
And then it cost you here. But if you can lean into that and find a path, it's just so much more powerful than anything that we can write economically or, you know, on a panel or it's you can't describe it, you know, same way said you can't describe how hard it is to have kids. I can't describe to you how hard it is to do this.

01:23:17:06 - 01:23:35:07
Unknown
But if you are motivated by that same North Star like kids, you know what it means and you know how important it is. And so you get out of bed every day and you show up. For those kids, a business is the same way when you realize how important and how big it is, and you feel that calling and you know what that thing is, it's just nothing like it.

01:23:35:10 - 01:23:49:14
Unknown
Nothing like it, man. And to your point, you start getting things put in front of you that almost hard to make sense of it. But, you know, you got to say yes to them or you got to like, rope them in, I think. Yeah. I appreciate you asking that question, man. I don't know that I've had it asked before or anything.

01:23:49:14 - 01:24:04:08
Unknown
I mean, typically it's not the case on this show, but I appreciate you asking me and. Yeah, and I think you're right. I think leaning into our gifts is not I think I know you're right. It's a hard thing for guys like us to do. I think because it is something that it's come to that a lot of people are close to us.

01:24:04:08 - 01:24:21:12
Unknown
See? So clearly. Yeah. And I think in a lot of ways and my wife says all the time she's like, let that thing rip, man. Like, yeah. Because it's like, well, she's wiser than both. Yeah. So much. But she's like, hey, look, I mean, your wife and mother probably both like, hey, look, if people who know who you are.

01:24:21:15 - 01:24:35:01
Unknown
Yeah, you ain't got nothing to worry about because they like it. Knows coming from a good place and they know you're just going to try to care more about folks and whatnot. And it just and let them think what they think. I get so stuck. I get so stuck thinking, anybody cares about me and cares about anything I'm doing.

01:24:35:06 - 01:24:54:04
Unknown
Nobody cares about me. Nobody cares what I'm doing. Nobody who has any judgment for me has anything to contribute to to my life, to my what? Like they got their own shit, man. And honestly, they don't know. They don't care because we're all stuck in our own world, you know, it's like, yeah, I show up here because I want to be with you.

01:24:54:04 - 01:25:08:23
Unknown
But we're also all showing up because we got our own path, and this is a part of our chapter in our journey and where most of us are so blinders on and we're so focused on our next thing and our thing, nobody's paying attention to anybody else. So like, I have to, like, kick myself all the time and be like, get out of your own way.

01:25:08:23 - 01:25:25:19
Unknown
Nobody cares. Stop aiming for perfection. Nobody cares. Yeah, that's good enough. It's fine. They don't care. Yeah. Do. You can pick another font next time. Send the email out to the people with the proposal so that they can get the numbers. And they can make a decision. And you can on the next one, you can put another font or you can change the typeface.

01:25:25:19 - 01:25:41:14
Unknown
I don't nobody cares. And that is like, man, that's a hard one. And it's good to have people around here like, honey, I love you. You're in the weeds. Yeah. You need to chill out for just trust your magic and just let it go. I mean, yeah, let it rip. I'm going to write down, down now, man. It's,

01:25:41:20 - 01:26:00:19
Unknown
It's, it is. It's why you always need a really grandma. I think doing this live for that somebody who's like a great your probably most important director on the board, which is usually at a dinner table with you at night. Yeah, yeah. I don't know anybody. True. Yeah. You just have absolutely no place in my life. Yeah.

01:26:00:21 - 01:26:15:22
Unknown
Every I know decision in my brain doesn't go through without at this point, it's not even like because I think she's going to give me the answer. She's going to give me a look, which is more like, okay, that's that's what I should do, or okay, that looks like I'm off. Yeah, yeah. You're like, why are you looking at me?

01:26:16:00 - 01:26:48:05
Unknown
Yeah. This is baseball coach Cody. He's like, yeah. Like no. Yeah. Got it instead. Yeah, yeah. He's going to steal home. You're right. Yeah, yeah I had the same epiphany recently with my wife. I, we were talking about something and I was like, I, I'm just I'm just fucking this all up. She's like, whoa. How so? I was like, because I have the smartest person who is equally invested because this is all our life that we're building together, and we've got our independent lives and we got our separate stuff, and you've got your businesses, your world, your stuff.

01:26:48:07 - 01:27:02:12
Unknown
But I've got the best consultant on earth, and I, I chose you. I was like, that's my that's it. That's the one. That's my coach, that's my friend. That's my, you know, and you don't need to be everything to me. And you don't have to also be my my coaching consultant in addition to all of the other roles that you feel in my life and others.

01:27:02:12 - 01:27:23:14
Unknown
But like, I don't think I tell you enough how much I value that input, you know? And we talked about that and I was like, I want you to help with these decisions within the container of whatever you feel comfortable providing. But like, man, we stood there and said a lot of nice words in front of a lot of our friends and family about how much we trust each other and how excited we are to do all this together.

01:27:23:16 - 01:27:41:05
Unknown
And then I forget to go ask for your input. And guess what? Every time I do in the least number of words possible, as you said, I get the best advice I've gotten in five years. Oh yeah, I mean, right, yeah. As we spent so much money on that whole party because you're that smart and because what? That's the kind of trust we have.

01:27:41:05 - 01:27:59:17
Unknown
So yeah, man, you got if you're fortunate enough to have that kind of support, if you're fortunate enough to have a partner at all, no less one that you trust and have that kind of faith in and family and other people to, to support, like, you got the team, you got a board of directors right there. You know, put them in coach now put them in there.

01:27:59:20 - 01:28:18:23
Unknown
It's the best thing ever man I think for anybody stepping into the arena I don't know how you do it by yourself. You can't no you can't man. No no. Yeah. Good lord. Oh man. Imagine man this man ego Joe Rogan long format here. Pretty soon you're you're seven hours man or whatever. But brother I, I could talk to you for hours and hours.

01:28:18:23 - 01:28:35:08
Unknown
Man I, I appreciate not only you coming in, but I know without a doubt there are folks out there, they're going to hear more than a few things that you've said, and it'll help them. And I know I see everybody who sits in that seat, but I know specifically you like I think, you know, there's no doubt that somebody out there is going to get moved in the way they need to.

01:28:35:08 - 01:29:04:04
Unknown
So I always appreciate your raw candor and the humor that you bring with it and, and your friendship, man. So I appreciate you coming in and sharing some words, brother. Thanks, man. It's a pleasure. Always. This part's fun. The friendships are even more important. And I'm. And I'm grateful for it as well. And anybody who it does resonate, you know, I, I had somebody reach out to me once who was my sales rep at a wholesale parts company, and he told me that we were on a call one day and we were chatting and he was selling me shocks for a rally school car when I had no idea what I was doing.

01:29:04:04 - 01:29:21:00
Unknown
And you know, those moments somebody says you do something wise and you're like, I did. Oh, and I apparently said something to the effect of, you know, I just try to do something, don't care how small every day to try and move myself towards the thing. And, now he's got this unbelievably amazing company called Gearhead Homes. They sell these.

01:29:21:01 - 01:29:44:10
Unknown
He basically aggregates all of the cool houses anywhere in the country that have garages and stuff. And, and that stuck with me because that meant so much to me to know that like a conversation in passing can have an impact. And, and, so anybody who, you know, and I say this for your benefit as well, if you're listening to this and you, you're moved, you're empowered, you make a meaningful change.

01:29:44:16 - 01:30:00:14
Unknown
One of the most powerful things you can do is turn around and share it. Share it with me, share it, Joe. Share it with with us and let us know that, like, hey, the stuff we're doing. Yeah, yeah. Everybody always thinks the person over there has got it all figured out. Yeah, we're making this this up. I we didn't we didn't talk at all before this.

01:30:00:19 - 01:30:23:01
Unknown
We exchanged two emails. There's no script. There's no plan. Just like in our business, it's absolutely unhinged chaos. And those words of of reinforcement can can go a long way to to help. And you show up here every day and know that what you're doing is really resonating. And, to be fair, to be selfish. I really just came here because you I say nice things about me, and I knew I was gonna feel good about myself so that I never changed.

01:30:23:03 - 01:30:26:13
Unknown
I never changed. Yeah. Let's do it again soon. Yeah, buddy. Thanks, man. Cheers.

01:30:26:13 - 01:30:52:19
Unknown
Thanks for tuning in to the American Operator Podcast, where we celebrate the backbone of America small business owners and operators like you. If you've enjoyed today's episode, be sure to subscribe so you'll never miss out on more of these stories and insights from people who keep our community strong. Until next time, keep building, keep operating, and keep America moving forward.