Latest / BREAK/FIX the Motorsports & Vehicle Enthusiast Variety Show / Matchbox Dreams to Podcasting Legends: Mark Greene’s Journey Through the Automotive World

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Matchbox Dreams to Podcasting Legends: Mark Greene’s Journey Through the Automotive World · BREAK/FIX the Motorsports & Vehicle Enthusiast Variety Show

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BreakFix podcast is all about capturing the living history of people from
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all over the autosphere, from wrench turners and racers to artists, authors,
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designers, and everything in between.
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Our goal is to inspire a new generation of petrolheads that wonder How did they
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get that job or become that person?
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The road to success is paved by all of us because everyone has a story.
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Our guest calls himself an incurable automotive enthusiast, interviewing
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successful entrepreneurs who live a lifestyle around their
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passion for vehicles of all types.
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Be it cars, motorcycles, trucks, or something more.
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Guest interviews include industry leaders, celebrities, racers, artists, builders.
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If it's related to the automotive world, you'll more than likely find
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it in his huge catalog of episodes.
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Our guest takes you on his journey, gets under the hood and aims to provide
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his listeners with inspiration with us tonight on break fix is Mark green, the
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founder, producer, and host of cars.
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Yeah.
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Cars.
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Yeah.
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Is a five day a week podcast where Mark talks with inspiring automotive
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enthusiasts, people who have wrapped their passion for automobiles into
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their careers and lives, and we're delighted to be sharing his story
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with all of you, so as he puts it, sit down, buckle up and enjoy the ride.
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That's right, Brad.
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And welcome to break fix mark for this boomerang crossover episode.
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Guys, Eric, Brad, thanks for having me break fix.
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Let's see, what are we going to break and fix today?
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I've got some tools handy and I'm ready to go.
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So thanks for having me.
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This is awesome.
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If there's a claw hammer in your toolbox, you're definitely ready
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to work with us in the pit crews.
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Wait a minute, a claw hammer?
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The sign of a real mechanic.
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Okay, well I do have one of those too, so no worries.
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Like every good story, there's always an origin.
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So let's talk about the who, what, where, When and how of Mark Green,
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the petrol head, how did you get your start in the automotive world?
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Did you come from a car family or a racing family?
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Not a racing family and kind of a car family.
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My father grew up on a farm in Texas and was the only one of five
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kids that came West, went out West.
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He became an architect, met my mom in college.
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Actually in Oklahoma, and then they came out west and I grew up in La
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Jolla, California, which is in Southern California, just north of San Diego.
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It's kind of a beach community, grew up surfing at the beach every day, that
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whole lifestyle skateboarding, biking.
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But my father, when I was about.
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Five.
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I think it was, he bought a 1949 MGTC.
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And when you're a little kid that age, you're used to, I think we had
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a, he called it a Pontiac lemon.
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It was a Lamar, but it was a lemon.
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It was the worst car.
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One of the worst cars we ever had.
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The other was an Audi long time ago though.
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And when he brought this little car home for me as a little boy, I just went.
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Is this for me?
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Because it was like a little toy compared to that car.
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And then the later car, we had the first gen of the Oldsmobile Vista Cruiser.
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I thought it was the coolest thing.
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Plus it had the steering wheel on the wrong side.
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It was on the right side.
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So when you got in the car, you set where the driver was.
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My dad had a spare steering wheel and those old cars had these Banjo
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steering wheels that were really unique, cool, super lightweight.
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And he used to give me the spare one and we would drive, I would sit
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there and pretend like I was driving.
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And we pull up next to people and they'd look down and go,
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who's that kid driving the car?
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And I'd hold the wheel up and laugh.
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And we had a great time.
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I really think that car is what put the bug into me for sports
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cars, especially European sports cars, which we'll talk about today.
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And I always remember and remembering five years old, it's getting harder
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and harder at this point in my life.
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But I do remember one day we went to the hardware store and we went inside.
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My dad was an architect.
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He was always building things and designing things.
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And they had this little display on the counter called Matchbox pre Hot Wheels.
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And I said, dad, look at the cars.
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And he said, well, I'll buy you one.
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He bought me the first one, which was a red Jaguar XKE coupe.
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And I still have it.
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And that was kind of the beginning of the collection of the Hot Wheels,
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which led to Matchbox, which led to building model cars and go karting and
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minibikes and motorcycles and cars.
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And there we go.
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And that's where it really all took off from.
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You're entrenched in the car world from a very early age.
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That's awesome.
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Well, yeah.
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And it's interesting, my mom was never into cars.
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My dad was into his car for a while.
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And then as I got older and his responsibilities grew, the idea
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of an MGTC to drive to work every day was a little bit ridiculous.
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Car.
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Many mornings had to hand crank the thing.
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My mom didn't like it because in the sixties, women were those big,
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what's the name of the Simpsons?
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Wife?
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The beehive.
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Yeah.
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The women wore the teased hair and my mom would have to put a
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scarf on because otherwise the hair would fly all over the place.
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She didn't really care for that car that much, but I thought
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it was the coolest thing ever.
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I remember the big grill and the dashboard was.
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Supposed to be wood, but the guy he bought it from had taken that off and
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put an engine turned aluminum dashboard.
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You know, back then I didn't know how that was made, but all these little
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circles and these beautiful Jaeger gauges that were kind of green tinted
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old fashioned, and it was super cool.
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And when my mom and dad would take my sister and I, there's a
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little platform behind the seats.
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There's no back seats in those cars, of course.
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There's a little platform where you actually sit up above
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the driver and the passenger.
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My dad bought us these, he went into the surplus military store, these goggles
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and leather caps, like flight caps.
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And there was a little bar across the back of the seats.
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And he used to say, If you're a chicken, you'll hang on to the bar.
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That's the chicken bar.
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Now, of course, these days he would have been arrested for child endangerment
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because, you know, super dangerous.
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I mean, if we'd already been hit or something, we got
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flying out of that thing.
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No seatbelts.
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It was like going on a rollercoaster ride.
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Every time we went for a ride, it was super fun.
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Good memories.
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Looking, you know, in your background there, I see you've
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got the nine 11 on your wall.
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Were there any other cars that maybe your family hadn't owned that
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influenced you as well as a child?
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What were some of the posters on your wall?
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Posters were Porsche racing cars primarily because I've
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just been a Porsche guy forever.
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That started with a neighbor up the street.
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He was kind of this cool dude because he was a bachelor.
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I would say he was probably in his mid twenties or something.
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I'm thinking he was some kind of a trust fund kid because we lived in La Jolla,
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which was a more affluent neighborhood.
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He had his own house.
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He wasn't married and he had cool cars.
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And one of them was a 58, 59 Porsche Carrera.
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Speedster, that car was cool.
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And I just say, take me for a ride.
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And he was a surfer.
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So he would take me down to the beach and we'd stick our surf boards.
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Believe it or not.
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Now, back then the boards were short, but we'd stick them behind the seats, nose
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down, and he'd put this strap around.
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I mean, we drive down to the beach.
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We were just five, six blocks away and go surfing.
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And I think that influenced me along with many of my friends, parents,
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fathers had very nice, Sports cars.
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A lot of them were doctors and lawyers and business owners and finance guys.
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And so I would go to friends houses and the first thing I
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would do is what's in your garage?
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And I'm talking about things like Miras and Jaguar XKEs and the first
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450 SL Mercedes and old Alphas and these cars that these dads would have.
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And I'd go visit friends and I'd End up in the garage with their dads.
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In fact, junior high girl, I was very smitten with she invited
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me to her birthday party.
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I thought, Oh man, this girl likes me.
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And I went over to her house and she said, you know, my dad has a Porsche
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Speedster and I know you like cars.
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So I went out in the garage.
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And the whole rest of the birthday party, I didn't even attend.
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I was in the garage.
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She was very mad at me.
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Never invited me over again, but I spent the whole time out in the garage
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with her dad because he was getting it ready to take it to a Concord event.
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And so I was helping him clean it.
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I remember Q tips in the tires and we put these wrappers on the tires.
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And next day I actually, my dad took me down to the car show where
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it was and he let me sit in it.
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Very fortunate to grow up in that community where there
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was lots of very cool cars.
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So you could see them Southern California.
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There's cool cars everywhere anyway.
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So, yeah, but on the wall for me, we're either surfing pictures and posters at
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a surfer magazine or posters of European sports, racing cars, mostly nine 11s,
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of course, nine 17s, five 50 spiders, three 56s, all those kinds of things.
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And the, the, on the wall here is a painting from a listener in Russia.
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And he painted that for me and mailed it to me, got a picture
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of me in my Porsche 930 turbo.
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And I called my orange crush.
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We're going to be talking about that car today, I think.
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And he sent that to me and that's me in the car.
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If you look at it, look, actually it looks like me.
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And I thought, what a nice guy.
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I invite him to be on the show, but his English is still, he's working on it.
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We'll get them on the show on these days.
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Yeah.
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And if you walk through my house, I have a wife who's a saint.
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We've been married 38 years in about a week.
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And all the pictures and paintings in our house are all past guests, photographers,
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artists, painters, and so forth.
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So the whole house is car stuff and a couple of guitars.
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Cause she's played guitars a lot.
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The fender straddle in the back is a limited edition hot rod.
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Fender Shadowcaster.
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So makes it kind of cool.
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So Mark, I think it's time for our first pit stop question of any in this episode.
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All right.
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So what we like to do is throw in these just random off
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the cuff opinion questions.
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And in this case, you've named dropped some serious cars.
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If our listeners were paying attention, things like three 56
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speedster and Mira and Alfa Romales and all sorts of other things.
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So that begs the question in your opinion, what is the sexiest car of all time?
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Now this is very difficult because I have a saying, if it rolls on rubber, I
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probably love it or some aspect of it.
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But boy, sexy is a specific word.
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So I'm going to stick to that.
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And I'm probably going to answer this in a way that a lot of my regular
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Cards Out listeners may go, what?
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But there's a reason for this.
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One would be Lamborghini Miura.
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That car when it came out, and I remember there was a doctor in town
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in La Jolla that had one, it was orange, and I just couldn't believe
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that thing when I saw him drive by.
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And I wanted to go find that guy.
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I did end up finding him actually.
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To me that car is sexy because it just got these curves and the
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eyelashes and the headlights.
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And the way it's designed.
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I grew up with a dad who was an architect and a designer.
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He really influenced me from a design aesthetic.
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And I ended up going to school and getting a degree in both business
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administration, but also in design.
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And I worked in design for 11 years.
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That would be one.
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Alfa Romeo 33 Stradale.
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Again, round, voluptuous, kind of the same as one of my favorite cars,
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550 Spyder, although I guess I could call the 550 Spyder sexy, but the
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Stradale goes to a whole nother level.
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I mean, it's just, it's Italian.
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I mean, hey, the Italians know how to make sexy cars.
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Now let's go to England because the Aston Martin DBR2 has a
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lot of those same feelings.
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You see what's going on here.
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50, 60 sports cars, kind of my background.
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So that Aston Martin to me, and there was a local guy up here that is in
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the Pacific Northwest that had one of those cars, used to bring it to
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the historic races when I was racing.
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And it's just, That car to me is just so, so cool.
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Of course, you can't forget the Jaguar XKE, probably one
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of the sexiest cars ever made.
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The Series 1.
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Although I had a detailing business, I 14, and one of my clients had a 72 V12.
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I used to ride my bike down to South Mission Beach and drive it back home.
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And when I drove that car, I just, I still feel it, smell it.
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That started to get a little clunky, those 72s, that third gen,
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I think it was, but the first gen Jaguars, I mean, it's so delicate.
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It's just little, wonderful little piece of automobile that I think everybody
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has to say it's one of their favorites.
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So I could go on and on, but those, I pick those as kind of my first
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choices when you use that word.
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And the best part about the last one that you selected,
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which does come up quite often.
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The E Type Jag is probably one of the best looking designs of all time,
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right up with the Miura and some of the other ones you mentioned.
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But the irony in the E Type is that as beautiful as the cars were that were
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coming out of Ferrari, Enzo always said that the E Type, Was the best looking car.
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Some people are probably saying why there is, is there not a Ferrari in there?
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But to me, one of my favorite Ferraris is the 250 short wheelbase,
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but that's not a sexy car.
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That's a masculine car.
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I mean, it's a little bulldog.
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Got that sense of feel.
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And I love that car.
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It's spectacular.
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The GTO, I guess you could say sexy, but again, I think of that more as
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a masculine race car type thing.
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The TRs, 250s, I mean, I don't know, but I'll just limit it to those.
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Cause we could talk on that question for a long time.
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You hinted when we asked you that question that you could find
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something you like about pretty much anything that rolls on rubber.
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So we're going to ask you what's the ugliest car of all time and
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put that statement to the test.
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Yeah, I live by a motto that my mom taught me, and many people have heard this.
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If you don't have anything nice to say.
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Don't say anything at all.
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I'm not going to answer that question because there's lots of them that I
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think were probably cars designed by committee and you just kind of look at
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them and go, what were they thinking?
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And even some of the new supercars, I kind of went.
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Okay.
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How many people got into this kitchen and threw some salt and spices into the pot?
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They kind of went a little bit the wrong way, but ugly, every
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car has something about it that has an element that's interesting.
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And when you have a design background, you always look for that in everything, even
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if it's something that's not so great.
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Take a great piece of art, for example, you go, that's a really Weird painting.
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When you start looking at little elements of it, you'll find something you kind of
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like, or you think is kind of interesting.
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So if you'll allow me, I think I'm not going to answer that question, or at
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least I answered it the way I just did.
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If you'll let me get away with that.
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I believe that's the automotive equivalent to pleading the
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fifth mark, but we'll take it.
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It's okay.
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Yeah.
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I hate those guys to plea the fifth, but I've never been on, I've never
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been in court in front of a judge.
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I'd probably do the same thing.
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Yeah.
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That was the wrong answer.
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The correct answer is Pontiac Aztec.
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Here's something funny about that.
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My wife and I just started rewatching the breaking bad series.
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And I remember that car, of course, in that, and I chose that car.
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I'm sure for a reason, but yeah, that's a tough one to like, I'm still trying
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to find the right angle on that thing.
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I shake my head and go, who, what, why?
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I wasn't in the room.
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And when you start getting into General Motors, and I've had a lot of
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designers, car designers on my show, and they talk about the difficulties
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of being in a big company and you think, Oh, this guy designed the car.
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It's never that case.
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Now, maybe back in the day, Scaliette, Vittorini were designed the Bertone's.
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I mean, all those guys, DeGiario's.
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The lure car, there's just too many people in the room and it's kind
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of like that scene out of Ferrari versus Ford and that great line
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where he's in the office with Mr.
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Ford and he said, you know, I saw that red envelope get passed
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around among five or six hands.
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That's not how you do things, not how you win races.
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And I would assume it's also not how you design cars.
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We'll leave it at that.
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All right.
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So let's jump back in the timeline a little bit here.
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And you foreshadowed a couple of things.
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You talked about working with your friends, three 56 and
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preparing it for a concord.
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Then you dropped a hint about starting a detailing business at 14 years old.
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So a lot of people may know you now for cars.
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Yeah.
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But some of us remember Mark Green as the president of Griot's garage.
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So take us on the journey of how you went from From this inspiring automotive
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enthusiast at the age of 10 or so to being the president of Griot's garage.
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I studied graphic design at a state of business in college.
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And my first job was actually in a design firm in San Diego.
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Part of our many client lists were catalogers back in the day.
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This is pre internet.
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So that's how you, your mailbox was full of catalogs.
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And I received a catalog in the mail from a guy named Richard Griot, his first one.
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And in fact, I had a white 72S on the cover, which ended
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up being my car for a while.
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It's back in his garage now.
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However, we were designing catalogs at Warner Design.
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I worked with another Richard, Richard Warner.
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So I called on Richard because I get this catalog.
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My wife said, I came home.
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She said, Hey, check this out.
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You guys should be designing this catalog.
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And I looked at it and I went, yeah, we should.
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It needs some help.
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So I contacted him multiple times.
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He was very busy back then.
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There was just.
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He, another guy and a lady answering the phone.
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That was it.
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It was the very beginnings.
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And so I think I had to call him seven or eight times.
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And I finally, he just said, I have somebody, I don't need you.
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Well, our firm was the first company in San Diego to use Mac computers.
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Now it was the Mac SE, if anyone remembers those little goofy box, but you could
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design things on it using PageMaker.
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There might've been another software before that.
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I talked him into allowing me to come up by saying, I'm going to come up
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and buy a bunch of stuff from you.
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I'm not going to pitch you.
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I just want to buy some stuff.
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And what's he going to say?
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No.
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I was driving an 84 Porsche Cabriolet at the time.
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I drove up there in that car, parked right in front of his window.
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So he would notice it.
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I figured this guy's a car guy, has a Porsche on his first catalog.
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Long story short, got to know him, landed the account.
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We started designing the catalog for him and we became friends.
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After a couple of years, he said, you know, I'd like you to come on
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board and help me build this brand.
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I still need somebody to do the marketing.
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And Wear a lot of other hats.
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I always say I wore so many hats at Griot's.
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I wore all my hair off, which is pretty true.
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And so I decided to leave the firm I was with.
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I'd been there for 10, 11 years.
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And now I worked with Griot's for about two and a half years
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before I became a real employee.
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In fact, for about three, four months, I was working both jobs.
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I would do my job in the design firm.
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And then at night I would do stuff with him.
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And I did that for like three months.
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It was not easy.
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Didn't want to leave my old business partner in the lurch.
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He was trying to find somebody new.
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We built that business up.
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So we had a lot of clients and I joined Griot.
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So I was there for over 20 years, essentially.
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And initially I was, we all had titles, but we did everything.
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I did all the graphic design and advertising, started traveling
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around the world, looking for products that we could brand.
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We were trying to develop.
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The brand, part of it was pretty quick for me to see that the
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real value was the car care.
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There was only three or four car care products.
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When I started there, we were selling a lot of hard goods.
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The problem with hard goods is when somebody buys a tool, they
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break it and they expect a new one.
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They never buy that tool again.
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But when you buy a bottle of wax, you use it up and you buy it again.
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We started steering down that path.
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Long story short, I was there for a long, long time, did a lot of things,
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eventually became the president of the company and ran the company.
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And as the company grew, we decided very quickly, he'd already had in
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his mind, we were going to move out of the state of California.
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We were some of the earliest APs from California because it just wasn't
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conducive to business taxes, name it.
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There was a lot of challenges, even 30 years ago, not as many as are now.
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So we came up here to the Northwest and I came up here kind of crying
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and screaming because I had this.
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Porsche Cabriolet that when it rained, it leaked because those old
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Porsches didn't have waterproof tops.
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Believe it or not, they got saturated water, started
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dripping right through them.
19:04
I remember in the owner's manual, it said top is not conducive to inclement weather.
19:09
Very German explanation.
19:10
I love it.
19:11
Yeah.
19:11
Yeah.
19:11
And by the way, there's no cup holder either.
19:13
Shouldn't be drinking while you're driving.
19:14
I sold that car.
19:15
I bought a, 911 coupe Carrera 2.
19:19
We moved the business up here.
19:20
Eventually we ended up buying a company that was making products for us so we
19:24
can make our own car care products.
19:25
We moved the manufacturing to the Midwest because of shipping.
19:29
We had a warehouse that we built.
19:30
Shipping was a lot less expensive from the Midwest than Pacific Northwest.
19:34
Most of our clients were California, Florida, that region.
19:37
Learned a lot, traveled a lot, did a lot, did everything.
19:40
And during that time started racing, which we may talk about vintage racing.
19:44
It was a wonderful experience.
19:45
I learned how to do so many things in business.
19:48
We built brands, we built products.
19:50
I traveled and met people.
19:51
We branded things.
19:52
We find people in Germany that made screwdrivers and
19:55
we'll help them redesign them.
19:57
In a way we thought was better and put our name on them.
19:59
So I learned a massive amount of information and
20:02
knowledge in that time period.
20:04
And it was really, really fun.
20:05
We were fortunate because Richard had the means to expand the
20:08
business whenever we needed to.
20:10
So he bought this old Coca Cola bottling building, and he tasked me with designing
20:14
it into our new corporate headquarters.
20:16
Kind of said, do whatever you want.
20:17
And so I got to bring that old design aspect into my career, marketing,
20:22
passion for cars, products, travel, racing, associating with clients.
20:27
It was, it was really a really great time.
20:29
So since you have that design background and the vision, and you got started with
20:34
Griots from the very early days, are you responsible then for the current logo?
20:39
And if so, there's a debate always about what the car actually is.
20:43
Cause it's kind of ambiguous.
20:45
Sort of think it's British, could be an AC, could be a JAG, could be an MG.
20:50
So what's the answer?
20:51
What's the secret?
20:52
Well, I'm not going to reveal the secret because I didn't do the logo.
20:56
The logo was already designed when I came on board.
21:00
They had printed the first catalog and mailed it to me.
21:03
We started producing, I think it was the Third catalog.
21:06
Now, keep in mind at that time, Grails was doing four catalogs a year.
21:09
And then there were three titles of each catalog.
21:11
So at one point we were doing like 17 or 18 a year.
21:14
However, that was already done.
21:16
I wouldn't say I was stuck with it because I think it's a nice logo and it's great.
21:19
But I had an ongoing debate with Richard all the time that that was a Jaguar.
21:24
No, it isn't.
21:25
It's no car.
21:27
I go, yeah, some car it's, you know, and I would even overlay some of the
21:31
Profiles of one twenties with that car.
21:33
And they almost were exactly the same to this day.
21:36
I don't even know who designed that logo.
21:38
I'd like to talk to them and find out where they got the inspiration because
21:42
you don't typically design in a vacuum ideas come from your surroundings
21:46
or places you go as a designer.
21:48
I know that.
21:48
So I don't, I wish I could reveal the secret, but, and if Richard
21:51
knows that he never revealed it to me in all the years I was there, he
21:55
vehemently said, no, it's not a Jaguar.
21:58
But in my world.
21:59
It's a 120.
22:01
So see, so this is what makes it fun.
22:03
And maybe one day we will find out and listeners, if you know the
22:06
secret, we'd love to hear about it.
22:08
Yeah.
22:08
I don't think anybody out there knows except Richard.
22:12
And if he really doesn't know, then whoever designed the logo.
22:15
And again, I have no idea who that was.
22:17
Yeah.
22:17
Cause we were involved so early.
22:19
I mean, I wrote.
22:20
The copy from almost the first time I got involved there, we were
22:24
taking the photographs, designing products, page layouts, and so forth.
22:28
In fact, the difficult thing for me, and it's a funny thing, Richard
22:32
originally wrote the copy first person.
22:34
I came from a world where copy for selling products was problem solution based.
22:38
His was I'm using it.
22:40
Therefore, You should.
22:41
When I started writing all the copy, I had to think like he
22:44
thought, which not the way I think.
22:46
So I actually had a hat that had Richard on it and I would put it on and try to,
22:50
okay, if I'm him, how would I think?
22:52
You know, I traveled the world with him.
22:54
We spent massive amount of time.
22:55
I was at work 10, 11 hours a day.
22:57
I mean, seven days a week sometimes.
22:58
So I got to know him really well.
22:59
So I got the flow down.
23:01
The trap was that it kept me writing long into much Further past, I should have been
23:07
spending my time on that, but I did a lot of that at night at home, but it was fun.
23:11
I always wanted to keep that creative side going because that's where I came from.
23:15
And I still get to do that with cars.
23:17
Yeah.
23:17
I designed my own website with cars.
23:19
Yeah.
23:19
All the photographs you see on my site.
23:21
I shot all those.
23:22
I write all the copy, the scripts for everything.
23:24
I'm kind of a one man paper hanger here sometimes with one leg.
23:27
So, Well, the griot story is very fascinating to me, but I want
23:33
to hear more about the racing.
23:34
You know, you've mentioned, you mentioned the racing a few times.
23:37
Yeah.
23:37
So let's talk about your racing, dare I say, career and your performance
23:41
driving history wasn't a career.
23:44
Well, I'll tell you how it started.
23:45
Uh, Richard Griot had some vintage race cars, but he wasn't running them.
23:48
He worked at Skip Barber way, way back before he started Griot.
23:51
And one day he said, Hey, how'd you like to go racing?
23:53
And I go, well, yeah, but you know, it's very expensive and I kind of work a lot.
23:57
I don't know when I'm going to have time.
23:58
He goes, well, we'll figure it out.
23:59
So I ended up getting a car that he actually had restored 1960 Lotus formula
24:04
junior 18, but I'm going to back up from there because when you decide to go
24:07
racing, it's not a good idea to just buy a race car and go race because you may
24:11
not like it, you may not like racing.
24:13
You may not like.
24:14
Or be comfortable at speed.
24:15
You may not like the race car you bought.
24:17
You know, you hear these stories about a lot of guys get to the point in life
24:20
where they can buy their high school dream car and they buy it and they get
24:24
in it and they go, this thing sucks.
24:26
Never drive your heroes.
24:27
There you go.
24:28
Yeah, exactly.
24:29
So I started in an E36 M3.
24:32
Now I've had four M3s.
24:34
I was always driving 911s and I had a lot of them.
24:37
But I bought an M3 from a college student, a gal whose dad had bought
24:41
her a car and then she hardly ever drove it and she had to go back to
24:45
China, I think is where she was from.
24:46
So I ended up getting her car for really cheap.
24:48
She had to unload it.
24:49
I was at the right place at the right time and it was a really nice car and I went.
24:53
These M3s are kind of cool.
24:54
And at the time I was in part of many car clubs, member of many car clubs.
24:58
One was BMW.
24:59
And so I met a guy and he said, why don't you bring it to the track?
25:02
It was specifically Pacific Raceway.
25:04
Say that five times, twice, 10 times fast.
25:07
And so he said, why don't you come up and try it?
25:09
So I went up and I did a driving school where they took us all out for a day.
25:13
We're all novices.
25:14
Taught us all these different skill sets and helped us learn
25:18
if we wanted to be up speed.
25:19
Well, this is where it gets interesting.
25:20
And they had all these instructors, one for each driver.
25:23
At the end of the day, the instructor would take around the track in their car
25:27
at speed because they're much faster.
25:29
And they said, this is what's where you're going to be going.
25:31
When you do this more, you'll get up to speed.
25:33
This guy had an M3 just like mine.
25:35
I went, okay, cool.
25:36
So we get in the car, we take off.
25:37
And if you've ever been to Pacific Raceway, it's a wonderful track elevation
25:40
changes, kind of a Laguna Seca ish, but not as cool is smaller and tighter.
25:45
And you've got to be really careful.
25:46
There's some very bad places to go off there.
25:48
So all day, they had told us through this one corner five, a five B that
25:52
you had to be in this one location.
25:54
So we went through it and he was in the lead of all the other, the master driver,
25:58
master trainer, whatever they call him.
26:00
Chief instructor.
26:01
There you go.
26:02
And so, well, I'll call him something else in a minute.
26:04
So we went through that corner and I went, that's weird.
26:07
This guy's in the wrong location.
26:09
He told us to be over there and he's going in here.
26:12
So we went around and we came out of that screeching and I'm
26:15
like, whoa, this guy's going fast.
26:16
Went around again.
26:17
He went through there and completely lost it.
26:20
We spun the car 180 degrees.
26:23
And all I remember was coming around and seeing this train of cars coming.
26:26
right at us, eyes as big as saucers.
26:29
I grabbed the armrest.
26:31
We didn't get hit.
26:32
We almost got hit by the guy behind us.
26:34
Went off the track backwards, car flipped upside down and
26:37
went down the hill upside down.
26:38
Whoa.
26:38
Yeah.
26:39
And we stopped and the car's running and I looked at him.
26:42
I said, does this part of the lesson?
26:44
And he uttered some, uh, Uttered some words we can't say here.
26:48
And I said, you might want to turn the engine off.
26:50
So he turns the engine off and the mirror had folded and shattered the window.
26:54
And this is where I learned, if you ever go on a track and do a track
26:57
day, even if it's hot, keep your visor down because when a window
27:01
shatters, that glass goes everywhere.
27:03
And I had my visor up and it went in my face and ended up cutting my mouth
27:07
and my lip a little bit, a glass in my mouth and stuff didn't get hurt.
27:10
Cause he had four point harness.
27:12
So we were pretty good.
27:12
pretty safe, but he messed his car up pretty good, crawled out of the car.
27:16
So, uh, yeah, that was my first experience.
27:18
So I kind of came home and, you know, Jill, my wife, she
27:20
said, so how was the day?
27:21
And I said, Oh, good.
27:22
Anybody crashed?
27:23
None of the students.
27:26
Yeah.
27:27
And she looked at me and like, and read me like a book.
27:29
She goes, so what happened?
27:30
And I told her, and so that was kind of the beginning, but I realized,
27:33
okay, well this guy, for whatever reason, you made a mistake, pick one.
27:37
There's a lot of reasons to crash on a racetrack.
27:39
So I decided to buy some slicks and start taking my E36 to track.
27:43
So I did racing here down in Oregon, not racing, but track days.
27:47
High speed performance days where you could do passing and things.
27:49
And after doing that for, I think about a year and a half, maybe two years, I
27:53
bought another E36 M3 and I went, you know, I think it's time to buy a car.
27:57
So ended up getting the Lotus and started racing that.
28:00
If you know a Lotus 18, it's a small, tiny car.
28:02
This was a junior.
28:03
So it had a thousand CC motor drum brakes.
28:05
I mean, It can't go that fast, but it can bite you.
28:08
I never felt safe in that car ever because you were so vulnerable.
28:12
Colin Chapman was known for lightness, right?
28:14
He didn't care about his drivers, I don't think.
28:16
So my shoulders were way above the sides of the car and never crashed that car.
28:20
Went off a few times, but never crashed it.
28:22
So yeah, we got to do that with Sovereign, Pier Pacific Raceway, interbracing
28:25
that car at Sears Point, Thunder Hill, different places in California.
28:29
And then we ended up doing three day driving school, Skip Barber
28:32
back at Road America and got to drive some cars back there.
28:35
Richard has some real fast, cool race cars and ended up also getting, uh,
28:39
actually it was Richard's, but I got to drive it 67 Lola T290 sports racer.
28:44
It was supposed to have a two liter, but it had a 1.
28:47
7, but still way faster giant slicks compared to my little
28:50
Lotus, a whole nother experience.
28:52
All of a sudden I was at the front of the pack versus.
28:54
The back of the pack and the Lotus, they'd lumpy in with Formula
28:57
Fords, which were 1600 CC cars.
28:59
You couldn't keep up with them.
29:00
So it was a little disappointing, but there were two other guys
29:03
at Sovereign that had 18s.
29:04
John Shirley was one who has quite a car collection up here, including a
29:07
GTO and is what I call garage mahal.
29:10
He calls it spinner garage, but it's the garage mahal.
29:13
And there was another gentleman we've since lost him, but he had an 18 too.
29:16
So yeah, the racing I did for 10 or 12 years, something like that.
29:19
Super fun, super expensive, but.
29:22
It was a nice escape from work because when you're racing, kind of like,
29:27
and we may talk about motorcycles because I got into those a little bit.
29:29
When you're on a track, you can't think of anything else.
29:32
All of us know that when you drive to work in the morning, sometimes you
29:34
get there and you don't even remember what the drive was like because you're
29:37
thinking about work or whatever.
29:39
I can't do that in a race car.
29:40
So the focus factor there was really cool.
29:43
I had some great instructors.
29:44
Met a lot of cool people, got to do a lot of fun things.
29:47
So yeah, if you have the means, I highly recommend it as far
29:50
as Buehler said in the movie.
29:53
And then you just touched on motorcycles a little bit.
29:55
Tell us a little bit about your, your motorcycle, I guess, experiences.
29:58
Well, I've always loved motorcycles.
30:00
When I was real little, my parents got us, uh, my sister and I each a Honda trail 70.
30:05
Because we used to take a camper down to Mexico camp on the beach.
30:09
And we'd ride those things up and down the beach.
30:11
And to this day, in fact, I saw one down at car week that was for sale.
30:14
And I'm like, Oh, I'd love to buy one of those.
30:16
And I think they're like 5 grand now or 6 grand.
30:18
And then I go, what the hell am I going to do with one of these things?
30:21
Nothing great little track bikes.
30:22
But I had a friend in junior high and high school, Bobby, who.
30:25
Raced motocross and he had a garage full of bikes, he and his brothers.
30:29
So I'd go over there and he'd loan us bikes.
30:31
We go, we could ride from our house out to Miramar neighbor layer station, because
30:35
back then there wasn't as much development San Diego, and you could ride, do canyons
30:39
and get out there and ride all day long.
30:41
Or we take them out in his van and go riding.
30:43
So bikes were always a big part of my life.
30:45
But then when I grew up.
30:46
They went away and life gets busy and then met my wife, we got married, had kids, and
30:51
so I wasn't into bikes, but then I kind of got back into bikes and I love Italian
30:56
stuff, so I ended up getting a Ducati Monster, a 750, and also an MV Agusta
31:02
F4, which was probably one of the most stupid bikes I could have ever bought.
31:05
Just insane.
31:07
I think they revved to 19, 000 RPM or something.
31:09
Just wicked crazy bike.
31:11
They were so beautiful and I wrote them for a little bit on the streets,
31:15
but I realized after a couple of years, everybody's out to kill you.
31:18
There's too many people not paying attention.
31:20
Every time I went out was a close call and I tried to ride
31:23
on roads that were out elsewhere.
31:25
And if it wasn't a, somebody in a suburban trying to hit me, it was a deer jumping
31:28
in front of me or a dog chasing me.
31:30
Or every time I came back, I'd go, you know, I've got kids.
31:33
I got to put through college and a wife and this is a little bit silly.
31:36
So, uh, yeah, common sense took the better of me.
31:39
So I sold my bike to a guy in my office who really wanted it.
31:43
And the MV ended up going to, uh, Butch Denison of Denison International.
31:47
His wife, Nancy bought it for him as a gift.
31:49
He has a collection of Italian bikes in his home and it ended up.
31:53
living in his house.
31:53
I think it's still in his entry.
31:55
Appropriate place.
31:55
I should have kept it and put it in my office right here behind me.
31:58
I didn't know I was going to be doing this back then.
32:00
So there you go.
32:00
But I love bikes.
32:02
Every time I see one, I, I like to have another one of those, but I don't know,
32:06
maybe that's the best idea these days.
32:08
I did take both bikes to the track once thinking maybe I'll
32:12
get out and do high speed.
32:13
But the group I went with, they said it was a beginner's group.
32:17
These guys were crazy hot shoes.
32:19
After about an hour, I went, I'm in the wrong group of people because
32:22
these guys are like, you know, knee drop sliding two corners.
32:25
And I'm going to die out here.
32:27
I'm going to wreck my bike.
32:29
Uh, this was a bad idea.
32:30
So, um, I came home.
32:32
That takes time to ride a bike like that.
32:34
A motocross, you know, fly around, fly in the dirt.
32:37
You're fine.
32:37
No big deal.
32:38
But I loved motocross.
32:39
You know, that's another time I probably should have taken up instead.
32:41
Was motocross pretty fun.
32:43
Your knees probably thank you for not doing it though.
32:47
Yeah.
32:48
At this point in my life, a lot of parts of me, thank me for not doing that.
32:51
But you know, I had a couple of friends who got hurt really bad and actually
32:54
a couple who died on bikes, not by their own fault, somebody hitting them.
32:57
And so you just kind of go, Oh, Uh, yeah, I had this thing called mortality and
33:01
like I said, I had children I needed to take care of and sent to college and a
33:05
career and a job and a wife and family.
33:07
And, uh, it seemed a little selfish, uh, kind of vintage racing was a lot selfish.
33:12
I'll put it that way.
33:14
And that's part of why I quit doing that.
33:15
Cause college was looming.
33:16
I always say my sponsorship.
33:17
Money changed to a couple of private colleges out of state.
33:20
So I'm happy to do that though.
33:22
Yeah.
33:22
And I totally agree with you.
33:23
Like, I love the idea of bikes.
33:25
I've had a couple of bikes in my past as well.
33:26
The juice isn't worth the squeeze.
33:28
If you can get that similar feelings in a car, you've got a little baby now.
33:32
So you've got a, you've got a whole nother line of responsibility.
33:36
You got to really think about because that little, little boy, right?
33:40
He needs to have you around for a long time.
33:42
So, uh, yeah, your priorities change, but you know, there's other
33:45
ways to get out there and have fun.
33:47
Exactly.
33:47
And speaking of getting out there and having fun, are you still
33:50
tracking and what's your home track?
33:52
No, I'm not.
33:53
After I stopped racing, getting on your street car and attract
33:56
just didn't seem fun anymore.
33:58
And that may sound a little silly, but when you drive a purpose built race
34:02
car on a track and you get in a street car, there's so many differences.
34:06
And I love my street cars, man, I enjoy driving them spirited,
34:11
but you beat them up on a track.
34:13
And at that point I had started focusing more and more on work because
34:18
I'd become the president of Griot's.
34:19
I had a lot more responsibility there.
34:21
My children, like I said, college was coming and my wife had retired long
34:25
ago to stay home and raise the kids.
34:26
So I was the sole breadwinner, if you will.
34:29
So I just thought, you know, I think I'm not going to do this anymore.
34:32
Every once in a while.
34:33
Get out there and have a little fun if I got invited to something,
34:35
but no, but my home track here would be the Pacific Raceway.
34:40
There's also one out in Shelton.
34:41
They're building a real track just north of me here.
34:44
That's going to be real racetrack.
34:46
And, uh, I call Laguna Seca my home track because that's
34:49
where I got my racing license.
34:51
I love that track.
34:52
And I got to race on it a few times.
34:54
I've driven on it many times.
34:55
That track to me is I feel at home when I'm there.
34:58
And so, yeah, I would say those two, but I've got to drive on a lot
35:02
of different tracks, road America.
35:03
I did a three day open world driving school.
35:05
That track was awesome.
35:07
I mean, so long and there's so many technical aspects, but then now
35:10
I can say that about Sears point.
35:11
Cause I raced there a bunch.
35:13
So here's point, that's delicious too.
35:15
So, yeah, well, that brings us to our next pit stop question.
35:19
Oh, okay.
35:20
Any bucket list car and track combo.
35:23
And I'm going to throw in bike as well.
35:24
Are there, is there any bike car track combo on your bucket list?
35:29
You'd want to drive or ride.
35:31
Oh, sure.
35:31
A nine 17 S bar.
35:33
Um, now some may go, that's kind of.
35:36
That car is spa.
35:37
Hmm.
35:37
You know, not endurance car spa.
35:39
I don't know.
35:40
You guess you could say spa endurance racing, but there's other tracks,
35:43
but the portion nine 17, because it's a Porsche nine 11 heritage,
35:48
I never been able to drive one.
35:49
I've been able to sit in one, but that car to me would be pretty darn cool.
35:54
I've become friends with Bruce Kanepa, who's credible driver, and
35:57
he's got one and is driven one.
35:59
I've spent a fair amount of time just talking to him about what that car's like.
36:02
Compared to the nine 11 and, you know, he's an incredible driver and spa to me.
36:08
I mean, so many great tracks, but spot to me is just one of those
36:11
tracks that has some magic to it.
36:14
And it has that elevation change in the backside.
36:16
And of course, coming down the front and up the Hill.
36:18
Yeah.
36:18
So I do that.
36:19
I can't say I would want to do any track on a bike at this point, maybe
36:23
back when I was younger, but, uh, yeah, portion nine 17 is Bob would be.
36:27
You throw me the keys.
36:28
They haven't have keys.
36:30
Maybe, uh, throw me the keys to that and say, take it around.
36:33
I probably wouldn't be very skilled at, at this point, but
36:35
I certainly would have fun.
36:36
So that leads into a follow on pit stop question, which is, do you
36:40
follow any motor sports disciplines?
36:42
Do you watch any of the racing on TV or live?
36:46
You know, I used to a lot.
36:47
This is an interesting question.
36:49
I'm so busy with what I'm doing now.
36:52
I just kind of try to steer as much away from television as I can, focus
36:56
more on what I'm doing and people.
37:00
And I, I interview a lot of authors and books and things like that.
37:03
So I don't, you know, I say that to people, they go, what's wrong with you?
37:07
Now I used to follow F1 religiously from when I was, before I was even married
37:12
and all through that time period.
37:13
Now here's a funny thing.
37:14
My daughter is the oldest of two.
37:16
He's 33.
37:17
My son's 28.
37:18
And I try to get my daughter into cars.
37:20
I took her to vintage races.
37:22
I introduced her to Christie Edelbrock.
37:24
I took her to car shows, took her to Monterey car week when it was only three
37:29
days, when she was one carried on my back.
37:31
I mean, I tried so hard, never interested, just.
37:34
Eh, yawn.
37:35
Not interested, Dad.
37:36
They came out with that series a couple years ago, where they
37:39
did a documentary on Formula 1.
37:41
She is now, and her husband, who has no interest in cars, they're Formula 1 fans!
37:47
So when I say, oh, Dad, did you see the race this weekend?
37:49
Could you believe he did that corner like that?
37:51
I'm just, oh, I get, and I'm like, Who are you?
37:54
That series I think has done more.
37:56
And I've talked to Zach Brown.
37:57
He's been a guest on my show.
37:58
I saw him down at car week and talked to him about this very thing that
38:01
has done more for formula one in the United States than anything ever.
38:05
And if you think about it, people love drama reality shows, and that turned
38:12
formula one into a personal reality show about the people, not the cars.
38:17
And that's why I think it's exploded.
38:20
And now they're talking about doing that for NASCAR, motor GP.
38:23
I mean, all these other elements, because now when people see the
38:26
people behind it, they're interested.
38:28
Otherwise it's just a car going around a track.
38:31
You also talk about going to races.
38:33
My wife's never been into cars at all, but we lived in Delmar, California
38:36
when we were first married and they used to have the IMSA races that the.
38:39
Delmar racetrack.
38:40
It was basically in a big parking lot, but still we could hear him from our house.
38:44
And I talked her into going with me one time and she was
38:48
just, I want to do that again.
38:49
So I've always said to people, if you've never been to a race, my dad
38:53
used to take me to drag races in Orange County when I was a little kid.
38:56
And I was like, In fact, I met Evel Knievel at one of
38:58
them, which was pretty cool.
39:00
He jumped a bunch of school buses at the end of the drag races,
39:03
but Don Garlitsch was there.
39:04
He ended up being a guest on my show.
39:06
So it's kind of cool.
39:07
I remember you, you signed a picture for me when I was like eight years old.
39:10
Going to races is cool, but yeah, I've just, I've kind of.
39:13
Excuse the pun, steered away from it of late.
39:15
I guess I'm just so busy doing other stuff that I just haven't gotten back into it.
39:20
I kind of watch it from the outside a little bit, and sometimes
39:23
I'll go back and watch a race.
39:24
But I probably just blew my whole career and the weeds.
39:27
Thanks to that question, guys.
39:29
Cause at all, he's not a car guy.
39:30
Stop listening to cars.
39:31
Yeah.
39:31
Geez, for anybody that's listening, that may not know.
39:34
I believe the TV show he's talking about is on Netflix called drive to survive.
39:39
Yeah.
39:39
And that is a show that we are desperately trying to get Eric to watch, but he is
39:45
very adamant that he will never watch it.
39:47
I think I'm going to, the next time I see him, Eric, you can mark my words.
39:50
We're going to have to pull a clockwork orange on you.
39:53
Sit you down, hold your eyes open and you're going to, you're going to watch it.
39:56
I got disenfranchised from the beginning because the title alone drive to survive.
40:01
I thought it was about world rally championship, which is my discipline
40:04
of choice, and then when I realized it was about formula one, I was
40:07
like, I'm done with this noise.
40:09
You know, give it a chance.
40:11
Give it at least three episodes.
40:13
Okay.
40:13
Just give it three and I think you'll find it interesting and perhaps it will broaden
40:20
your world a little bit like it did mine.
40:22
Get you energized about that discipline.
40:25
Oh, don't get me wrong.
40:26
I'm a Senna and Schumacher fan from way back.
40:30
That's where it stops though.
40:32
That's the thing after Schumacher retired, I was like done.
40:37
It's gotten to be a bit of a circus, but I think this is why I got into it.
40:41
And that is I'm about people.
40:44
Karjaz about people.
40:45
It really isn't.
40:46
I should have called it people.
40:47
Yeah.
40:47
But.
40:47
You know, who would listen to that?
40:49
Cars, yeah, if you're a car person, makes sense.
40:52
And cars are the catalysts that bring people together.
40:56
Car Week is a great example.
40:57
You know, I spent six days down there.
40:59
The friend I go with every year, poor Bill, he just rolls his eyes and walks
41:03
away because I can't walk five feet.
41:04
feet without meeting somebody that's been on my show or has listened or
41:08
I get to talk to about their car.
41:09
And he just, in fact, I went to one of the shows with him and I
41:11
said, Bill, I'm going to walk the show the way you walk the show.
41:14
I can 20 minutes.
41:15
We were done.
41:16
I'm like, you didn't even talk to one person.
41:19
He's like, well, I don't talk to people.
41:21
That's not what I do.
41:23
Yeah.
41:23
Just give it a chance.
41:26
All right.
41:26
All right.
41:27
Okay.
41:27
I like the clockwork orange reference.
41:29
That's good.
41:30
Well, speaking of giving chances and one of Brad's favorite questions,
41:34
we did a whole episode around this called Regrets in the Desert Island.
41:37
I want to talk about the one that got away specifically.
41:41
Ouch.
41:42
Your Porsche 930.
41:43
And what's unique about this car is first of all, if you don't put
41:47
Mark Green and the orange crush together, it's all over the internet
41:51
and social media and everything.
41:52
I don't know that I've seen another 930 in that color.
41:55
So let's talk about.
41:57
Is that a factory color?
41:58
Was that a factory acquisition?
41:59
What led you to that car?
42:01
And then the question that everybody's been asking you
42:03
now, why did you get rid of it?
42:06
I know.
42:06
Okay.
42:07
Let's go back to the beginning.
42:08
That car was ordered by a guy in Ohio named Mr.
42:12
Four tens who owned.
42:13
410s Porsche Audi back in the 80s.
42:16
He saw a car that was a Porsche press car in 86, a turbo that Porsche brought out.
42:22
It has since vanished unless someone out there knows where it is in that color.
42:26
It was not a stock factory color.
42:28
Porsche painted.
42:29
It's a three stage metallic pearl orange.
42:32
And so he called Porsche and he said, I want to order a car in that color.
42:35
And they said, nah, we're not going to do that.
42:37
It's too complicated.
42:38
We not going to do that.
42:40
And so he said, well, please.
42:42
And he kept bugging them.
42:43
They finally said, if you can find three customers who will buy cars in that
42:48
color, turbos, we will do three cars.
42:51
He had a little trick he used to play with Porsche back in the day.
42:55
If you ordered, or your customers were ordering a lot of special
42:57
cars, you got better allocations.
42:59
You got more cars.
43:00
So he would tell Porsche that people were ordering these cars, but they weren't.
43:04
And then he would get them in and sell them.
43:06
And that gave him better allocations.
43:07
So in the case of this car, he invented three people to buy the car.
43:12
They were people that worked for him.
43:14
He sent them to Germany.
43:16
So they were European delivery.
43:18
And I don't know this for a fact, but I do know for a fact that back
43:21
then, if you bought a European delivery car, it was cheaper.
43:24
Even if you just gave the keys back and they shipped it home,
43:26
it was less money for us buyer.
43:28
And so he bought these three cars.
43:30
Well, he sent his employees over.
43:33
One of them was a woman and her husband, her husband was the finance manager, and
43:37
she pretended to pick up her new turbo.
43:40
And then she handed the keys back and said, I don't want
43:42
to drive it, ship it back.
43:43
He did that with all three cars, my car, there's a sister car to my car,
43:48
exactly the same, but not as many option.
43:50
My car was highly option.
43:52
And then he ordered a slant nose, which was an expensive.
43:55
addition to the options.
43:56
So the story goes that he was trying to save money and he called, I think
44:01
it was Lufthansa, and he said, I can't want to fly these cars back.
44:04
I don't want to put them on a ship.
44:05
And so there was a ability to be on a waiting list.
44:08
So they shipped the cars over to the Lufthansa shipping center
44:11
and they sat there for a while.
44:13
Along many weeks and he goes, why are my cars not here?
44:15
Well, because all our loads are full and you said you wanted discount load.
44:19
Well, he finally had to give up and ship them all home.
44:21
They all came home.
44:22
He brought them to his house.
44:24
He didn't want people to know he had three in the same color.
44:27
So he put the first one in his showroom.
44:29
which was not my car.
44:30
I think it was a slant nose and he sold that car.
44:33
Well, here's where things start to get really crazy and bear with me because
44:36
the story is much longer than we have time for today, but I'll narrow it down.
44:40
The buyer of the slant nose ended up being a guy named Russell Flurry.
44:44
Russell Flurry started a company called Road Scholars, which
44:47
is now owned by the Ingrams.
44:48
He was a Porsche guy.
44:49
He bought that car and had it while his wife, and he had other Porsches,
44:53
his wife ended up getting cancer.
44:55
And so he had to sell all of his cars so he could stay home with her.
44:58
When she was essentially dying.
45:00
We lost Russell last year.
45:02
Great guy.
45:03
I became friends with him.
45:04
He was a guest on my show.
45:05
Awesome man.
45:06
Sadly COVID got him, but his car ended up going to Richard Sloan, a Sloan cars.
45:12
Now Richard's another guy we lost to cancer several years ago, but
45:15
his son, Brett runs Sloan cars.
45:17
And so he had that car when he had it, it only had like 14, 000 miles on it.
45:21
He or his son, Brett, I don't know which ended up selling
45:24
the car and it's vanished.
45:24
It's in a collection somewhere in a garage.
45:27
Somebody that's not on social media.
45:29
The second car, not mine, but the second car, the twin to mine was then sold next.
45:34
And that went to a family in Texas.
45:37
It's still with that same family.
45:38
The gentleman who bought it died and left it to his daughter.
45:41
His daughter still has it.
45:43
His daughter's husband contacted me when I sold my car to talk
45:47
about it because there's.
45:49
thinking of selling it.
45:50
My phone just started ringing off the hook, but they're not sure, but
45:54
they're not really car people, but there's a sentimental value there.
45:57
But my car was sold last.
45:58
Now, the reason I share the story is I have since met Mr.
46:02
Fortenza's son, Marcus, who works at Penske Porsche.
46:06
He was in high school at the time.
46:08
He reached out shortly after I got my car.
46:10
And when I left Griot's, I had it for about A year and a half
46:13
of grios and I left grios.
46:14
I had it for 13 years and I started using it on social media, calling it my
46:18
orange crush because I had a crush on it.
46:20
And he reached out to me and he goes, where did you get that car?
46:23
My dad ordered a car like that.
46:24
And I used to sit in it in our garage at home because it sat in our garage for
46:28
four or five months before he sold it.
46:31
And he used to dream about.
46:32
owning that car.
46:33
And I said, yeah, this is one of your dad's original ordered car.
46:36
So I've met all these people around this car.
46:39
As the story goes, you asked me, why did I sell it?
46:43
We all know what the car market has done lately.
46:45
It's gone crazy.
46:46
And I don't buy cars to hope to make money.
46:48
I buy cars because I like in the eighties.
46:50
I wanted, well, in the seventies, I wanted a turbo because I was a kid.
46:53
I couldn't afford one.
46:54
And then in the eighties, I wanted one.
46:56
And I was the so called adult with a new house and a.
46:58
wife and a baby.
46:59
I couldn't afford one.
47:00
So I always wanted one.
47:01
So that car fit the mold.
47:03
But when I saw that car on eBay, which is where I bought it from, from a
47:08
broker in Florida, and I won't get into the story of how it got down there,
47:12
but it basically was a one owner car.
47:14
But if you look at the car facts, it shows.
47:17
Some woman who owned it, i.
47:18
e.
47:19
the lady whose husband worked there.
47:21
Then the original owner who was in Indiana, who had it most of the time.
47:26
And then he sent it to a broker to sell it.
47:28
The broker sold it on eBay.
47:30
And that's how I got it.
47:31
The car shows all these ownerships, but really when I
47:33
got it, it only had one owner.
47:35
There was all these convoluted stories behind it.
47:38
And this onion that I kept peeling away every year, as I learned a little
47:42
bit more, a little bit more, just became kind of a blossom of this story.
47:46
Which added to the, the wonderful story that are all cars have,
47:50
but it had become too precious.
47:52
I'll put it that way.
47:53
I like to drive cars.
47:54
It had become very valuable.
47:56
It was all original, never damaged.
47:58
It was an incredible shape, although it had 41, 000 miles on it.
48:02
I just couldn't drive it without freaking out.
48:05
So I was afraid somebody was going to hit it.
48:08
I would never leave a park somewhere.
48:09
Somebody might steal it or back into it or maliciously scratch this car
48:14
just because, you know, and so it just sat in the garage way too much.
48:18
And I finally, at the beginning of this year, told my wife, I said,
48:20
I think I like the idea of owning the car more than I like owning it.
48:23
And she never really liked the car anyway.
48:25
So she goes way too flashy for you.
48:27
Thanks, dear.
48:28
We decided to sell it.
48:29
I got smart.
48:30
I found a guy who was the past guest on my show, Rafi Manasian.
48:33
He handled the whole deal for me.
48:35
He sells cars for people.
48:36
He's a car designer on bring a trailer.
48:38
I know Randy, he's been a guest on my show twice.
48:41
And so we did this whole thing.
48:42
I had Randy on my show the day the car went live.
48:45
And to this day, that car still holds the record.
48:48
I'm bringing a trailer for an 87 turbo for achieving the highest price point.
48:51
Now here's where it gets even more fun.
48:53
The car lives an hour north of me with a collector and it sits in a
48:57
garage that I'd like to live in.
48:59
This guy's house is insane.
49:01
It lives amongst a whole bunch of its brethren and sister and
49:05
other brightly colored Porsches.
49:07
This guy likes to drive his cars and his curator.
49:10
He worked for me at Griot's when I picked my car up originally, his name's Tim.
49:16
So now he is taking care of Orange Crush and it's kind of like, I feel
49:21
like I've loaned it to a museum and I've got visitation rights.
49:24
And, um, probably if I go up there, I could even give it a drive.
49:28
So it's a wonderful rounded story.
49:30
And honestly, I don't miss it because it's in its new place.
49:34
We all know cars are going to their new caretakers and they always will.
49:38
We'll be long dead and the cars we've had hopefully still be around
49:41
and people will be enjoying them.
49:42
Maybe they'll all be in museums if they outlaw gasoline,
49:45
but they'll still be around.
49:46
So that's a long winded and there's a lot more to it, but I tried to be as brief as
49:50
I could, but it's a very complex story, but that's what cars are so cool about.
49:56
That's why we say everyone has a story, right?
49:59
They do.
50:00
Yeah.
50:00
So that begs the question, did you replace it with anything?
50:04
Not yet.
50:04
I will.
50:05
I have an E46 M3 that I bought new.
50:08
It was my fourth M3.
50:09
I bought new in 05.
50:11
It's just a wonderful car.
50:12
And what I'll be doing is selling that car, because it's now worth
50:17
probably what I paid for it.
50:18
If you look at bring a trailer M3 prices and my car is pristine, highly option.
50:24
It's got the competition package option.
50:26
It's a really, really nice car.
50:28
Sunroof delete.
50:29
I will sell that car when I get the next car and the next car will be a Porsche.
50:35
It won't be an old Porsche.
50:37
It'll be a newer Porsche that I will drive even when it's raining,
50:42
even when it might be snowing.
50:43
I'll put snow tires on it.
50:44
I'll enjoy it.
50:45
I'll park it and walk away.
50:47
I'll still look back, but I'll walk away and not fret about
50:51
it sitting in a curb somewhere.
50:52
Yeah, that's what's going to happen.
50:54
So I've got a couple in mind.
50:55
I know what you're going to ask me, I think.
50:57
Do you?
50:58
Will it be a petrol powered Porsche or an electric Porsche?
51:02
No, it won't be electric.
51:03
Nothing against electric cars, but no, it won't be electric car.
51:06
Now this could change because things change.
51:08
It'll probably either be a 911 GTS or more likely because all my 911 diehard
51:16
fanatics are steering me towards this car, a 718 Those are both solid choices.
51:23
You know, I'm long done with the wing stuff.
51:25
I'm not going to get a GT3.
51:26
I'm not going to get a GT4.
51:28
I want a car that's comfortable, but fun.
51:31
The challenge for me is color.
51:33
I want a crazy color.
51:35
And I talked to Porsche about painting it orange crush orange.
51:39
And they said, well, we can do anything for the right price.
51:43
It's a very complex problem.
51:45
Very expensive.
51:46
It's way more than the 11, 000 they charge for paint to sample.
51:50
I don't think I like it that much when they started quoting
51:52
me 25, 30 grand, if maybe.
51:55
And the process takes seven to nine months for them to even determine
51:59
if they can do that or not.
52:01
Because the surfaces are all different now on cars and not just metal anymore.
52:05
So that's kind of where I'm leaning right now.
52:07
I used to have lots of cars, bikes, and I'm trying to simplify my life.
52:11
My focus is on cars yet.
52:13
And I've got a new grandson where a lot of focus is now.
52:16
Hopefully we'll have more grandchildren.
52:19
I'm trying to simplify.
52:20
I want a car I'll get in and drive and enjoy the Porsche 930.
52:23
I just wasn't doing that.
52:24
And it was just a shame.
52:26
I know it sounds ridiculous to some people, but I'm very picky with my cars.
52:29
And yeah, I'll be picky with a new one, but at least if something happens,
52:32
it's like, eh, okay, fix it, move on.
52:35
You've simplified and added lightness to your life.
52:37
So yeah, yeah, yeah.
52:40
I, I, I follow this guy on YouTube.
52:42
I think his name is Joshua.
52:44
Who talks about minimalism.
52:45
We've always lived kind of a minimalistic life.
52:47
We have a contemporary home, but even minimal, minimalizing your life more.
52:51
I've been a pack rat my whole life, and I'm trying really hard to change
52:54
that, to lighten all those, what I call burdens, I'll tell you, it's freeing.
52:58
And I'm trying to focus more now on experiences instead of things, which
53:04
Well, I don't think I know it's a lot healthier way to live a life.
53:07
My son has taught me that lesson.
53:08
He's very much an experienced guy versus a thing guy.
53:11
I was always a thing guy and I was sacrificed experiences for things.
53:15
And I realized now that was not the right thing to do.
53:18
Well, speaking of experiences, we got to jump back into your timeline a little bit.
53:22
So reminding our listeners, you were the president of Griot's
53:25
garage for nearly 20 years.
53:27
Well, let me correct that because I wasn't president for 20 years, but for
53:31
about the seven or eight years I was.
53:33
But again, it was always a small company, so we wore lots and lots
53:37
of different hats, but when I ended there, yeah, I was president.
53:40
Yeah.
53:40
So that said, I never realized how much competition there was in the world of
53:44
car care and detailing and all that.
53:46
And there's all sorts of names.
53:47
Yeah, exactly.
53:48
The craziness that goes on there.
53:50
So I would suspect that after 20 years, like you've been talking about, it was
53:53
time to downsize, it was time to purge.
53:56
It was time to change your latitude to use your terms.
53:58
Right.
53:59
What inspired you to do that?
54:00
To create cars.
54:01
Yeah.
54:02
How did that all come about?
54:03
And where did the name come from?
54:05
Great question.
54:06
We had kind of a three part catastrophe in our family.
54:10
For one thing, agree is I've been there a long time and I was starting
54:13
to go, you know, been here a long time.
54:16
Maybe there's something different to do.
54:18
Richard was changing his focus and things.
54:20
And it was just like, you know, maybe it's time to do something,
54:23
but I've always done this.
54:24
I don't know.
54:24
It's fun.
54:25
What do I do?
54:26
Well, my father was 80 at the time he fell and broke his neck.
54:29
His C2 vertebrae.
54:30
That is the doctor said the Christopher Reeve break.
54:33
My dad was always very active, very physical.
54:36
He did yoga.
54:37
He ate well for an 80 year old.
54:39
He exercised every day.
54:40
He was always working on his home and he fell off a deck that he was building,
54:43
smashed his head and broke his neck.
54:45
Luckily he wasn't paralyzed, but he was in a bad way.
54:47
Then my wife's mother.
54:50
got cancer.
54:50
And so we had these double whammy going on.
54:52
And then my wife ended up having what's called a large cell tumor in her leg.
54:57
And so that required a major surgery and required her to be
55:01
in bed for quite a while, months.
55:03
I just felt like I need to stay home and focus on her.
55:06
and take care of her.
55:08
At the same time, we had just gotten through putting
55:10
my daughter through college.
55:11
So she was off in a career.
55:12
My son was in his first year of college.
55:14
I went, okay, time for me to sell back my shares of Creoles were and
55:19
come home, take care of her and find something different to do.
55:22
And my son came home from college and I said, look, Blake, I'm trying
55:25
to figure out what I can do from home so I can care for your mom.
55:28
And also I need to make some money because your tuition is really expensive.
55:31
You know, so he was on the East coast and private school.
55:35
And he said, dad, you've been taking me to car shows my whole life.
55:37
My son's been to pebble beach car week, 18 times.
55:40
I've been 32 times.
55:41
I've taken him to car show.
55:43
Now he was a car guy.
55:44
So I got to do all that with him versus my daughter.
55:46
And he said, dad, I always tease you.
55:47
You can't walk by somebody without stopping and asking them about
55:50
their car and their career.
55:51
Cause I'm in a business, entrepreneurship, how do businesses
55:55
work and asking questions of people, which is what I do all day long.
55:59
He said, how about a podcast?
56:01
And I, this was about nine years ago.
56:02
And I literally said, what's that?
56:04
I was dad, get with the times.
56:05
Now I was not a tech guy.
56:07
I had people at Grills doing that for me.
56:09
I was running the business.
56:10
I was trying to focus on brand building.
56:12
And Product development, all this different stuff.
56:14
And then remember this nine years ago, things have changed a lot in
56:17
nine years in tech and in the world.
56:19
So I said, okay, well, let me look into that.
56:21
So I started investigating what a podcast was, studying it,
56:25
calling people who do podcasts.
56:26
If they would talk to me about it, ran into a guy named John Lee Dumas,
56:30
who does a wonderful podcast, very successful entrepreneur on fire,
56:33
joined his group, learned how to do it.
56:35
And three months later, Launched cars.
56:38
Yeah.
56:38
One year from the day I left griots May 28th, 2013.
56:42
You asked about the name, try to find a domain name.
56:45
That's not taken with the word cars in it.
56:47
I'm a creative guy.
56:49
I'm a writer, a designer.
56:50
I'd come up with hundreds of names.
56:52
And every time I go to go daddy or wherever you go, blue dot or
56:55
whatever, and it's taken, it's taken.
56:57
Well, one night my wife and I were watching TV commercial was for hotels.
57:01
com I think.
57:02
And we were sitting there and I was pretty like, well, I got to.
57:05
Come over the name.
57:05
I'm designing this whole concept of what I'm doing.
57:07
And they said hotels.
57:09
com hotels.
57:10
Yeah.
57:11
And Jill looked at me and she said, Cars.
57:14
Yeah.
57:14
I said, what?
57:15
She goes, cars.
57:15
Yeah.
57:16
That's your name.
57:17
Yeah.
57:18
And I went, yeah.
57:19
And she goes, yeah.
57:20
So I ran in and I looked and it was not taken.
57:25
I couldn't believe it.
57:26
So I bought up, you know, every version of it.
57:28
I could.
57:29
And I'm like, okay, that's the name.
57:31
It just makes sense.
57:32
And it flows.
57:32
So I designed the logo because I've designed hundreds of logos.
57:35
Maybe obviously the six gated shift gate with the microphone is, and
57:38
it's kind of cliche, but it works.
57:40
And that's where the name came from.
57:43
And so it took about three months for me to figure out how to do
57:46
it, how to learn, how to record.
57:47
I mean, you guys know all the technical side of this.
57:49
This is not easy.
57:50
And I've had lots of people call me and say, I want to be a podcaster.
57:53
Go great.
57:54
In fact, I've even been paid to help people get their podcast up.
57:57
I did one for a guy who wanted.
57:59
Yeah.
58:00
He mimicked what I did, but for golf and I said, okay, if I don't mind call it golf.
58:05
Yeah.
58:05
But once we got into it, they all say the same thing.
58:08
And you guys know this, this is a lot of work.
58:11
I mean, there's a lot of moving parts to this thing.
58:13
You don't just these so called YouTube stars.
58:16
Put a YouTube out, you're rich.
58:17
That doesn't exist.
58:19
Podcasting, it really doesn't exist.
58:20
So I had to learn all these components while Jill was back in the bedroom
58:25
convalescing, I'd be up all night learning how to code, build a website.
58:29
I'd never done that before.
58:31
How to record, use Adobe audition, how to move tracks around, and then Put
58:37
it all together with this deadline.
58:39
I set for myself.
58:39
Cause I'm all about deadlines and business.
58:42
I'm very methodical, set up how I was going to do it, practice with
58:45
a few friends of mine and Rick Cole, who did the first auctions at
58:49
Monterey car week was my first guest.
58:51
Thanks to a lady named Cindy.
58:53
She was handling his PR and she called me and said, Hey, Mark.
58:55
I knew her from before.
58:56
She goes, you're doing this cars.
58:58
Yeah.
58:58
Thing, but.
58:59
Like who's going to be on your show?
59:00
And I said, well, I'm trying to find people.
59:02
But every time I call somebody, they go, what's a podcast?
59:04
I mean, nobody knew what a podcast was.
59:07
She said, well, I have a client.
59:08
Would you like Rick Cole?
59:09
And I said, yeah, I know Rick.
59:10
And so he was the first guest.
59:12
I decided to do five shows a week because nobody in the
59:14
automotive sector was doing that.
59:16
I don't think they still are.
59:17
And everybody said I was crazy.
59:19
Just like they did to John Lee Dumas, he did seven a week.
59:21
But I said, I want to just get into this and I need to start
59:25
to monetize as fast as I can.
59:27
And within about four months, I had a first sponsor and
59:30
it kind of went from there.
59:31
So that's how it all happened.
59:33
And now it's just like you guys know, tenacity and bulldog in this.
59:37
Don't quit.
59:38
Sometimes I get up and go, this is crazy, but don't quit.
59:43
And I'll tell you, I've only missed one show and that was my dad died.
59:47
It was rather sudden.
59:48
I learned a lesson to have what we call shows in the can, because back
59:52
then I would maybe record a show on Monday that would go up on a Wednesday.
59:55
And I was always kind of trying to catch up.
59:57
Now I'm two to three weeks ahead of myself.
59:59
So that taught me.
1:00:00
So I was really upset.
1:00:01
I needed to go down to San Diego and I.
1:00:03
Said to Jill, I don't have a show for tomorrow.
1:00:06
And she goes, Mark, your dad just died.
1:00:08
People will understand.
1:00:09
Your sponsors will understand.
1:00:10
Just do a rerun.
1:00:11
They do it on TV all the time.
1:00:13
They do it on a radio.
1:00:14
So I reran Jonathan Ward of Icon because I thought it was a cool show at the time.
1:00:18
While I was down there, I was able to edit another show.
1:00:20
And then, but that was the only time I've missed a show.
1:00:23
Thanks dad, but not thanks because you died.
1:00:25
I don't mean that.
1:00:26
Just thanks dad for making me realize there's an alternative way.
1:00:30
He was such an awesome father and he taught me my work ethic
1:00:33
because he grew up on a farm.
1:00:35
And as my grandpa said, the cows and horses don't go on vacation.
1:00:38
Yeah.
1:00:38
That's where that all came from.
1:00:39
Here we sit.
1:00:40
I just did this morning, Oh, 161st show.
1:00:45
Yeah.
1:00:45
Crazy.
1:00:47
It's fine.
1:00:48
For people that aren't aware of the cars yet podcast is one of
1:00:51
the leading automotive podcasts out there I mean you've been on
1:00:54
the air for what eight years.
1:00:55
You just said a little over eight years over 2, 100 episodes Yeah, so
1:00:59
for those that are hearing about it for the first time, what is cars?
1:01:03
Yeah all about what's your thing?
1:01:05
What's my thing?
1:01:06
Well, there's a couple things since I come from this marketing background
1:01:09
and I overdo everything I built a whole business plan for this Podcast.
1:01:12
But the first thing I had to figure out was the why.
1:01:14
And if you ever listened to Simon Sinek, great series, Ted Talks, he does YouTubes.
1:01:19
He talks about the importance of your why.
1:01:21
This relates to everything.
1:01:22
Why are you doing that?
1:01:23
Now we went through this at Griot's and we were trying to come up
1:01:25
with what our slogan was, which became have fun in your garage and
1:01:29
understanding why people buy from us.
1:01:31
There's a whole nother backstory to that.
1:01:32
But for me, I decided that was going to come down to three words,
1:01:37
inspiring automotive enthusiast.
1:01:40
I was going to interview inspiring automotive enthusiasts so that together
1:01:44
we could inspire automotive enthusiasts to help them realize they can work in
1:01:50
a field that they're passionate about.
1:01:52
And that came from many of my friends who were very successful neurosurgeons,
1:01:56
real estate brokers, bank owners, finance guys, business owners, but they loved cars
1:02:02
and they weren't working in that field.
1:02:03
And they would always say to me, Mark, you're having so much fun.
1:02:06
You're working around cars all day.
1:02:07
I was at Griot's.
1:02:08
It was all about cars.
1:02:09
I want to do that.
1:02:10
But I live for the weekends or I live for retirement.
1:02:14
Well, if anything, COVID taught us is you may not get the weekend.
1:02:17
You may not get retirement because we're all mortal.
1:02:20
Things can happen to us.
1:02:22
And I think that COVID, if it did anything good, did a few things good.
1:02:26
And it didn't do them good.
1:02:27
But it taught us valuable lessons that you don't have as much time most of
1:02:31
the time as you think you might have.
1:02:32
And we all do this.
1:02:33
We think, oh, I'll start it next year.
1:02:35
I'll go do that thing next week.
1:02:37
I'll do it when I retire.
1:02:38
I wanted to show people by interviewing people who figured
1:02:41
out the secret sauce to life, that there are a whole lot of people.
1:02:45
And I remember my mom, when I started this thing, aren't you
1:02:47
going to run out of people?
1:02:48
And I said, never, never run that.
1:02:50
There's so many people in the automotive industry.
1:02:52
And the great thing now is for the last few years, I don't have to chase people.
1:02:56
They come to me now because I've got all these relationships with PR firms,
1:02:59
publishers, racetracks, concourse events, celebrities, and they bring people to me.
1:03:04
So that cuts down one big hassle and that is trying to find, there's
1:03:08
still a few people I reach out to, but most of the time, my weeks
1:03:11
are filled with people that are.
1:03:12
coming to me.
1:03:13
So yeah, that was the whole goal in that discovering your why is
1:03:17
the idea of in your business.
1:03:19
What is your mantra?
1:03:21
You know, the proverbial 32nd elevator ride, you get an elevator with somebody,
1:03:24
you can tell them everything about what you do by the time the doors open.
1:03:28
A lot of people can't do that.
1:03:29
And I worked a long time on this podcast of how to do that.
1:03:32
So I say, I'm a podcaster cars.
1:03:35
Yeah.
1:03:35
Is a five day a week podcast for an interview, inspiring
1:03:38
automotive enthusiasts, people who have figured out a way.
1:03:41
To wrap their passion for cars, trucks, and motorcycles into their lives,
1:03:44
their careers, and their businesses.
1:03:46
And I've interviewed over 2, 100 people.
1:03:49
The door is going to open in another 15 seconds.
1:03:52
Cause I've got it all out.
1:03:53
What I just gave you took a long time to get squeezed down to that, but that's
1:03:58
what I think everybody needs to do.
1:04:00
We did it at Griot's.
1:04:01
Our goal there was to sell products so people could have fun in their garage.
1:04:05
That's why our mantra was have fun in your garage.
1:04:08
That's why we sell products.
1:04:08
So if you can do that with your career, and I've gotten pretty good at it now with
1:04:13
people, even people haven't figured it out to show them what theirs is all about.
1:04:16
That's what the whole thing is all about.
1:04:18
And the best thing is I get to talk to people from all over the world.
1:04:22
This morning, I was up at five o'clock talking to a guy in Thailand, who's
1:04:25
building electric motorcycles, high performance electric motorcycles.
1:04:28
Then I was in London.
1:04:30
Talking to a broker.
1:04:31
And then I was in New York talking to a guy who's an investment banker, who's
1:04:35
getting into investing in electric cars.
1:04:37
And then I was in Florida and now I'm talking, where are you guys by the way?
1:04:41
We're in the DC area.
1:04:42
And while I'm back on the East coast, so you know, you just travel all over,
1:04:45
but that's the other thing COVID did.
1:04:47
It taught us that we didn't have to go places.
1:04:49
I'd love to get my private jet and fly around and do all this,
1:04:51
but the motors are always broken.
1:04:53
Every time I call the airport, they go, Mark, you don't have a private jet.
1:04:56
Quit calling us.
1:04:57
So there you go on that.
1:04:59
Do you have any favorite moments from your 100 plus shows favorite guests perhaps?
1:05:06
Or is there anybody on your Mount Rushmore that you haven't had yet
1:05:10
that you're you're striving to get?
1:05:12
We'll start with the easy one.
1:05:13
Yeah.
1:05:13
I I'd love to have Jalen on the show.
1:05:15
I've walked up to him four times in the line of Pebble.
1:05:18
Very nice man, handed him my card, trying to get to him.
1:05:22
I don't know him personally.
1:05:23
I, I can talk to his secretary about once a month and hello, Mark.
1:05:26
How are you?
1:05:28
Uh, he doesn't need me to do anything.
1:05:30
So maybe one day he'll have mercy.
1:05:32
I've tried mailing him stuff and stuff.
1:05:33
Jay, if you're listening, throw me a ball in here.
1:05:37
You know, I would love to have you on the show.
1:05:38
Chip Foose is another one I really would like to have.
1:05:41
I've just.
1:05:42
I've had him booked several times.
1:05:43
He's had to cancel and just haven't been able to get him back.
1:05:45
I ran into him at Car Week.
1:05:47
We were at a private event that Radford Motors put on at
1:05:50
the racetrack Tuesday night.
1:05:51
He was there.
1:05:52
Talked to him again.
1:05:53
He's always super nice.
1:05:54
Yeah, no problem, Mark.
1:05:55
Some of these guys are so well insulated, trying to get their phone number
1:05:59
or email is a bit of a challenge.
1:06:00
Those are probably two guys I can think of.
1:06:02
There's so many more.
1:06:03
I've had a few that I had lined up.
1:06:05
They were all scheduled and we lost them.
1:06:08
Dan Gurney was one of them.
1:06:09
Another one was Sir Sterling Moss.
1:06:11
And so those are people that I wish I had had, I had them
1:06:15
all scheduled, talked to them.
1:06:16
They said, yes, we were all booked and agents or whoever called and
1:06:19
said, I'm not feeling very good today.
1:06:20
And eventually they passed.
1:06:22
Denise McCluggage.
1:06:23
I had her on the show about a month before she passed.
1:06:25
I didn't know she was so sick.
1:06:26
She didn't mention at the beginning before we recorded
1:06:28
that she'd not been doing well.
1:06:30
I didn't know she was that ill and we lost her.
1:06:32
So I'm grateful for the people that And it's sad because I've lost 10
1:06:36
past guests this year alone, 10.
1:06:39
The good thing about that is I record, this is in perpetuity.
1:06:43
And a good example would be Nicole McGuire, Barry McGuire, Car Care King.
1:06:47
His daughter was on my show.
1:06:48
We lost her a few years ago.
1:06:50
And Barry, I remember he called me on her birthday last year and said, Mark, I want
1:06:53
to thank you because we realized the only recording we have in Nicole is your show.
1:06:57
So we can go listen to her on her birthday and we relisten to the
1:06:59
show and we get to enjoy that.
1:07:01
So thank you for doing that.
1:07:02
I tell you favorites is a tough one.
1:07:04
It's like your favorite kid or your favorite car.
1:07:07
I'll answer this without getting myself in trouble because when you have 2150,
1:07:11
60 people, why did you mention me, Mark?
1:07:13
You know, I like guests that go into a different path than I ever thought they
1:07:19
would go because I have a script that I work with my show that I send people
1:07:24
in advance for a very specific reason.
1:07:26
Cause most people are very nervous being interviewed.
1:07:28
In fact, I don't even call it an interview.
1:07:29
I call it a conversation.
1:07:30
But they're very nervous.
1:07:31
And if they don't know what you're going to ask them, and you guys know this
1:07:34
with your show, they kind of freak out.
1:07:35
And a lot of people are more likely to say no, but the scripts can go many places.
1:07:40
And I've had guests where the scripts have gone, where I can't even believe
1:07:44
I'll mention one, Tim Medvitz.
1:07:46
He was a guy that built choppers for movie stars.
1:07:48
He dated Cher for four years.
1:07:50
He was going to marry her.
1:07:51
This guy was a hell's angel.
1:07:52
He was a pretty wild, crazy party dude.
1:07:55
Dude building choppers for the Hollywood stars.
1:07:57
He was in a terrible motorcycle accident, almost lost his leg.
1:08:00
And during recovery, he became addicted to pain pills and alcohol.
1:08:04
He was very depressed because he couldn't walk.
1:08:07
He needed to have care.
1:08:08
He felt like his manhood was gone.
1:08:10
And he really went down a black hole.
1:08:12
Now I was interviewing him to talk about his motorcycle bill.
1:08:15
And all of a sudden we went down this other path.
1:08:18
And I just let him go.
1:08:19
And you know this, when you interview people, sometimes if you just let
1:08:23
them go, they'll take you places.
1:08:25
Now, this is something that I wish I'd known in high school
1:08:27
when I was dating, ask some great questions and shut up, right?
1:08:31
So he took me down this path.
1:08:33
We went where he's doing the heroes project and he ended up going to the top
1:08:37
of Mount Everest, climbing Mount Everest.
1:08:39
He didn't make it the first time he got within 300 yards, you could see it.
1:08:43
And they made him come back because they said, if you go to the top,
1:08:45
you're not going to come back.
1:08:46
You're going to be dead.
1:08:47
Because you're out of oxygen, you're worn out, you'll never make it back.
1:08:51
And so he came back two years later, he went back and he made it.
1:08:53
He has since started helping veterans who've lost limbs go hiking.
1:08:58
And in one case, he helped a guy climb Mount Everest who had no legs.
1:09:01
The best part of this story is Tim figured out And this is where I'm
1:09:06
going to share the secret to life, the real secret to being happy in life.
1:09:11
And this is what I've learned after all these interviews is Tim learned
1:09:14
that life was not the Tim show.
1:09:16
Life was about helping other people.
1:09:19
And when you figure that out, you make your life so much better.
1:09:23
And that's what I've learned because those serious talks I've had with
1:09:27
guests that have gone through really serious things, had a guest on the
1:09:30
show whose father killed her mother.
1:09:32
He was a violent man and she learned that if she went out and helped other
1:09:35
women get out of those relationships, she could save them another woman
1:09:39
whose husband died and she started a car show so they could detect prostate
1:09:43
cancer in men before they died like her husband did all of these people.
1:09:47
that figured out what really makes them happy, figured out how to do
1:09:51
something to help other people.
1:09:52
And so I try really hard with the concept of Kharjah that by sharing
1:09:56
stories, I'm helping people find a better path in life so that they
1:10:00
don't go to a dreary job every day.
1:10:02
They don't wake up going another day.
1:10:04
I wish it was Saturday.
1:10:06
I mean, I see people that go, it's Friday.
1:10:07
Yay.
1:10:07
And I'm going Friday to the weekends here.
1:10:10
I still have too much to do.
1:10:11
I mean, I don't care if it's Friday.
1:10:13
That's the real big secret I've learned.
1:10:15
And when I've been hired to go do keynote talks at Concord events and people's
1:10:20
businesses, that's what I talk about.
1:10:21
And I get into more in depth about the specific stories.
1:10:25
They're much more convoluted than what I've done here, but probably the wrong
1:10:28
word to use, but that's the secret.
1:10:30
And I will tell everybody listening here.
1:10:32
If you haven't figured out how to help somebody in some way,
1:10:35
go figure out a way to do it.
1:10:37
Because you will discover what you probably never knew is
1:10:41
how good that makes you feel.
1:10:44
It's like we go back to, I talked about instead of things, experiences.
1:10:48
And if you look at one of the three top ways to be happy in
1:10:51
life, it's helping other people.
1:10:52
And a lot of people never figure it out.
1:10:54
We know selfish people in our worlds, right?
1:10:56
That they never figured that out.
1:10:57
It's always take, take, take.
1:10:59
But the ones who figured out how to help, whether it's just tithing at church or
1:11:03
going and helping in a soup kitchen or whatever way you do it, pick one, there's
1:11:07
so many ways to help people, that's it.
1:11:09
So that's the real secret to our discussion today, how to be happy.
1:11:13
That is how to be happy.
1:11:15
Well, in addition to teaching people how to be happy, do you have any words
1:11:19
of wisdom for young aspiring podcasters specifically that you'd like to share?
1:11:25
Maybe some do's and don'ts.
1:11:26
That'd be a long winded answer, but what I will say is you
1:11:30
need to be realistic about it.
1:11:32
Number one, it's like starting any company, you need to have
1:11:35
a runway in front of you.
1:11:36
If you think you're going to start a podcast and within the next month
1:11:39
or two, you're going to be making money, probably not going to happen.
1:11:42
You need to save up some money, maybe do a side hustle.
1:11:46
First, keep your main job.
1:11:48
Hopefully you're doing a job you really like, but do that on the side and
1:11:51
start to build, because you guys know this, you got to build an audience.
1:11:54
And unless you have a lot of money to go out and advertise,
1:11:56
I did this all bootstrap.
1:11:58
I've never spent any money on advertising.
1:11:59
I figured out creative ways to co brand, promote a magazine,
1:12:03
get an ad in a magazine.
1:12:05
Promote a company, get them on my show.
1:12:07
Promote a concourse, get guests on the show, get free passes to the concourse,
1:12:11
meet people at the concourse, invite them to be on your show, meet potential
1:12:15
sponsors, get to know people face to face, go to SEMA, all those things.
1:12:19
I would say you've got to build that runway first.
1:12:22
Financial runway is what I'm talking about, the term runway.
1:12:24
Have some money out there.
1:12:26
Secondly, Study people who've done it successfully.
1:12:30
Entrepreneur on fire, John Lee Dumas, that guy is a rock star.
1:12:34
He makes a ton of money.
1:12:35
And so I followed him.
1:12:37
I joined his group and I basically tried to mimic what he's doing.
1:12:41
Still have not reached his high level of success, but I just look
1:12:45
to him as, okay, what did he do?
1:12:46
And how can I relate that to what I'm doing?
1:12:48
When I was in advertising, Tony Robbins, we all know who Tony Robbins is.
1:12:52
I landed him as a client in our advertising company.
1:12:55
This is way back when he was just starting.
1:12:57
He did his personal power cassette tapes.
1:13:00
I met him one morning when I was coming out of the ocean.
1:13:02
I've been surfing and he was running down the beach.
1:13:04
You don't miss Tony Robbins.
1:13:05
He's a giant and ended up doing his marketing for him.
1:13:08
We came up with this whole new look for this packaging and he
1:13:11
goes, no, no, no, no, no, no.
1:13:13
I wanted to do this.
1:13:14
I'm doing this stuff with Gunthy Ranker.
1:13:15
This is what we do.
1:13:16
And I said, well, that's what everybody does.
1:13:18
And he said, well, yeah, because it works.
1:13:20
And I remember him saying, don't reinvent the wheel.
1:13:22
Look at what other people have done.
1:13:24
Mimic them, but do it in your own style.
1:13:27
That's what Tony Robbins has built his entire career around that.
1:13:30
He just tells you that I read a hundred books.
1:13:32
I picked the best things out of a hundred books and I did all those things and I
1:13:35
repeated it and I shared the message.
1:13:37
That's all Tony did.
1:13:38
And I say all he does, does a lot more, but that's the simplified version.
1:13:42
Now, if you ever get around Tony Robbins, Ooh, that guy's an energy package.
1:13:46
Um, incredible person.
1:13:48
And it's done a lot for people.
1:13:49
He's learned if you listen to him.
1:13:51
The secret to his life's happiness is giving back.
1:13:54
He's feeding people, millions of people, because when he
1:13:56
was young, they had no food.
1:13:58
They didn't have money.
1:13:59
And so he learned that I'm going to help people by feeding people.
1:14:02
And he has this whole program.
1:14:03
So if you're going to start anything, I think study the masters.
1:14:07
Talk to as many people as you can.
1:14:09
Maybe go work, offered to work for them for free.
1:14:12
The first three months, I was a great as I worked for free.
1:14:16
Cause I was doing my other job and show them that you have wherewithal.
1:14:19
They may be able to give you some insight and perspective and help steer you down
1:14:23
the right path, but be realistic because this superficial world of social media,
1:14:28
we see of all these successful people.
1:14:30
I I'm a firm believer that if it looks fishy, if it smells fishy, it's fishy.
1:14:35
And most of this stuff is fishy, you know, it is.
1:14:40
I mean, cause now I know cause I've done it and how hard
1:14:43
it is and it's always hard.
1:14:44
To this day, I'll call people about being sponsors and they'll go, what's a podcast?
1:14:48
Okay.
1:14:49
Now I need to educate you on, but that's part of learning your craft and learning
1:14:52
how to do something for somebody.
1:14:55
And again, when it comes to advertisers, you got to think about what do they need?
1:14:59
Not what you need.
1:15:00
What do they need?
1:15:01
Can you do that for them?
1:15:02
Realistically?
1:15:03
Can you really do that for them?
1:15:04
I learned that in advertising because that's what we had to do all the time.
1:15:07
When you work in advertising, you What are your needs?
1:15:10
When you used to work in real estate clients, we need to rent
1:15:13
this building to tenants so you learn about what tenants want, what
1:15:16
do they want in an office space?
1:15:17
So you gotta be realistic, but follow experts, determine who the real experts
1:15:22
are too, because there's a lot of so called experts that really aren't.
1:15:25
Well, Mark, we have a little bit of a surprise for you
1:15:27
before we close out the episode.
1:15:29
Oh, good.
1:15:30
Okay.
1:15:30
I know that you're accustomed to being on the air all the time, but you're usually
1:15:36
listening to people recounting their stories rather than being the interviewee.
1:15:40
So we figured we'd put you in the hot seat and ask you some Karzya
1:15:45
inspired pit stop questions.
1:15:47
Okay.
1:15:48
Why don't we get under the hood?
1:15:50
with a challenge.
1:15:51
All right.
1:15:51
Here we go.
1:15:53
Oh, he looks really serious.
1:15:55
If you were a car, if you were a car, what kind of car would you be?
1:15:59
If you were a car, what would you be?
1:16:01
And more importantly, why?
1:16:03
Where did you come up with this question?
1:16:05
Imitation is a sincere form of flattery, Mark.
1:16:07
Well, thank you.
1:16:08
I appreciate it.
1:16:09
That question was quite interesting.
1:16:11
If you'll indulge me.
1:16:12
That was not my original question.
1:16:14
That question came from Harold Kleeworth, who's an artist.
1:16:17
When I asked him the original question, he said, I don't like that question.
1:16:20
Why don't you ask it this way?
1:16:22
And he gave me that question, which is a much better question.
1:16:24
It's more about getting into the mind of somebody versus
1:16:27
just what's your favorite car.
1:16:28
And so I've said, okay, Harold, I'll ask it that way.
1:16:32
And he had a very unique answer.
1:16:33
You can go back and listen to his podcast on the car show website.
1:16:36
I actually interviewed him twice, very talented guy.
1:16:39
So if I were a car.
1:16:41
Not what I want to be, but who I am.
1:16:44
And this is going to probably, people are going to go, Eh, you're chinstapped.
1:16:48
But no, I'm a 911.
1:16:50
And a 911 is because a 911 is very purpose built.
1:16:54
It's not flashy.
1:16:56
I'm not really a flashy person.
1:16:58
Like I said, my wife looked at my orange crush and said, Why are
1:17:00
you driving a bright orange car?
1:17:01
That's not you at all.
1:17:02
Always driven silver cars.
1:17:04
And I've always been very conservative and safe and, you
1:17:07
know, done things the right way.
1:17:08
I was the kid that sat in the front of the class and raised my
1:17:10
hand every time and try to be a good kid and not get in trouble.
1:17:14
And so the 9 11 to me is a purpose built car that has lasted through time.
1:17:19
Think about it.
1:17:19
65 66.
1:17:21
That car came out.
1:17:22
It's still around.
1:17:23
You can only name two other cars that kind of done that, I think.
1:17:26
And that would be the Mustang, which I think they're about to kill off.
1:17:29
And why they named that E thing a Mustang, I have no idea.
1:17:33
And that must've been a boardroom nightmare.
1:17:34
And the Corvette, which I think Corvettes really come a long way, baby.
1:17:39
The new Corvettes to me are Ferraris and like, wow, that's pretty cool.
1:17:43
So for me, it would have to be a 911 purpose built, not flashy, gets the
1:17:48
job done very well when it has to.
1:17:51
It can be some different things.
1:17:53
It can be a great street car.
1:17:55
It can be a great race car.
1:17:56
It can be a great track car.
1:17:58
It's always been pretty much the same.
1:18:01
And my friends tell me that to this day that have known
1:18:04
me since I was a little boy.
1:18:06
You're the same guy.
1:18:07
You've always been the same guy.
1:18:08
I mean, I started a paper route.
1:18:10
Who does a paper route for five years?
1:18:12
I'm an idiot.
1:18:13
I mean, I had a reason four in the morning delivering papers so I could
1:18:17
go to Don Patrol surf before school.
1:18:19
So there was kind of a reason behind that.
1:18:20
My point is the Porsche just, it gets in, it starts.
1:18:24
Bruce Canapa has become a friend.
1:18:26
I was at his shop one day and there was a Kona SIG in his paint booth.
1:18:29
And I said, Oh, somebody already wrecked their Kona SIG.
1:18:31
He goes, no, these guys buy these cars and they think they're going to be great
1:18:34
driving cars, but they're one hour cars.
1:18:36
I mean, they're marvelous cars, but they drive them for an hour and they
1:18:39
go, I can't use this for anything.
1:18:41
Park it in my garage and it's a trophy.
1:18:43
I'll take it to a cars and coffee.
1:18:44
That's about it.
1:18:45
But he said, I always tell people, if you really want to drive a car, buy a nine 11.
1:18:49
And if anybody knows it's Bruce, cause that guy can drive.
1:18:52
He can race.
1:18:53
He builds and restores probably some of the best cars on the planet.
1:18:57
The guy has a meticulous eye for design impeccable taste and nine 11s.
1:19:03
Porsches are the cars for him.
1:19:05
So I'm definitely a nine 11.
1:19:07
I've got some German heritage in me.
1:19:10
So there's kind of a little bit of that.
1:19:11
Germans are known for doing things away, getting it done,
1:19:14
being very orderly and focused.
1:19:17
I'm that way.
1:19:18
Everything I do is that way.
1:19:20
Just ask my wife about the sock drawer, or she plays games in the pantry and twist
1:19:24
the labels after I straighten them all.
1:19:25
You know, I think there was a movie about it.
1:19:27
Killer that did that, but I'm not that guy.
1:19:30
Um, yeah, I think it was called the stranger within, or I don't know.
1:19:33
Anyway.
1:19:34
Yeah.
1:19:34
I'm very spit spot.
1:19:36
That's just the way I have to be.
1:19:37
Maybe there's the term for that OCD.
1:19:39
Is that what that is?
1:19:40
A little bit.
1:19:41
Yeah.
1:19:42
I get a little upset when things aren't in the right place and Porsche's have
1:19:45
everything in the right place and they always have, and they probably always
1:19:49
will, at least I hope they always will.
1:19:51
So one of your other questions you ask your guests all the time, because
1:19:54
as you said, you're an avid reader.
1:19:56
What about some great reading?
1:19:58
Share a great book or two that you've read and you believe
1:20:00
others would learn from as well.
1:20:02
Boy, there's so many and I've interviewed probably if you look on my category,
1:20:05
my resource tab on my website, authors and journalists are the best.
1:20:09
Biggest category by far of people I've interviewed.
1:20:11
I guess tomorrow, the day we're recording is tomorrow is an author
1:20:14
of a great new book about the 51st breakthrough wins of NASCAR drivers.
1:20:19
Cool book.
1:20:20
But there's a couple, one of my favorites, Stephen Covey's Seven
1:20:23
Habits of Highly Effective People.
1:20:25
I read that book a long time ago.
1:20:27
I still go back to that book.
1:20:29
The best part is number five, which I paraphrase first, listen to
1:20:33
understand, then speak to be understood.
1:20:36
If only everybody would do that.
1:20:37
And I'm guilty of not doing it.
1:20:39
I try to do it.
1:20:40
If you first really listen to people, and that's something that podcast, when you
1:20:44
guys are great at it, really listening to someone and not be formulating the
1:20:48
next question or an answer or a comment before they're done speaking so that you
1:20:54
really understand what they're saying.
1:20:55
And then when you do speak, speak eloquently and speak to be
1:20:59
understood, that would be one.
1:21:01
Uh, the E myth by Michael Gerber is another.
1:21:04
Game changer for me in business.
1:21:06
It was, he's written several books about business and about structuring
1:21:10
your business and so forth.
1:21:11
That's an excellent book.
1:21:13
Uh, Jordan Peterson's, I think he's written one since, but the 12 rules of
1:21:16
life, I think is the title might be wrong.
1:21:19
My son gave me that book and I really enjoyed that book.
1:21:22
And I know he's become a bit of a controversial person and I.
1:21:26
I kind of understand why, but the other part of me goes, no, this guy's just
1:21:30
telling you how to be a better person.
1:21:32
And especially specifically a better man, a better husband, a
1:21:35
better boyfriend, a better business leader, whatever it might be.
1:21:38
I really love that book.
1:21:39
And when I first read the first chapter about lobsters,
1:21:42
I had to stop and reread it.
1:21:43
I'm like, what is this guy talking about?
1:21:45
I think it's marvelous.
1:21:47
And I really enjoy watching him and reading him and watching YouTubes.
1:21:51
His whole philosophy and focus and so forth, I think is really
1:21:54
spot on, especially for the time.
1:21:56
So that's a more modern, I guess, more modern book, but there's so
1:21:59
many, I always tell people go to my resources tab on my website.
1:22:02
I've, I've got an Amazon affiliate made it really easy
1:22:04
for you to click and buy books.
1:22:06
They send me a little stuff.
1:22:07
Diapans every month, which is kind of nice net for coffee.
1:22:09
Maybe I've amassed such a massive library because of all my guests.
1:22:13
My wife said, have you read all these books?
1:22:16
I'm well, no, I have to be honest.
1:22:17
I haven't, but someday I'm going to be too old and decrepit to cruise
1:22:20
around maybe, and I'm going to sit and read and enjoy all these books.
1:22:24
I think it's really important.
1:22:25
And I think a lot of people don't read anymore.
1:22:27
They get all their information from these little headlines and these snippets.
1:22:30
And I always encourage people pick something you like and sit
1:22:33
down and really get into it.
1:22:35
You know, you think of Napoleon Hills, think you grow rich.
1:22:38
I mean, I think that title is terrible for that book because it messes up
1:22:42
what the real message is in that book.
1:22:44
Here's a little secret, another secret.
1:22:46
Ah, another scoop for you guys.
1:22:48
My wife learned this.
1:22:49
You can get books for free.
1:22:52
You don't have to go through Audible, nothing against them, but you can get
1:22:55
free audio books from your library.
1:22:58
She gets three, four books a week.
1:23:01
If they don't have it, they'll get it for you.
1:23:03
And they're free and they come to your tablet.
1:23:06
They come to your phone.
1:23:07
All you have to do is go in and get her a library card.
1:23:10
You do it all online.
1:23:12
It's incredible.
1:23:13
I tell people that and they go, what was the last time you went to a library?
1:23:17
Never.
1:23:18
Well, why not?
1:23:19
Well, cause it was kind of weird and stinky old books.
1:23:22
Well, no, they've come out of the dark ages.
1:23:25
And some of them, if you can get into like the Phoenix
1:23:27
library, Oh, that's the good one.
1:23:30
There's a couple around the country that are even better than others.
1:23:33
So read books, listen to books.
1:23:35
You can do it while you're driving or walking or exercising, which
1:23:38
we should probably all do more of.
1:23:39
So, There you go.
1:23:41
So we're going to close out the surprise section here with the ultimate drive.
1:23:46
And if anybody who's listened to the show knows what my ultimate drive is, it's
1:23:50
riding with Eric 13 hours to Kentucky.
1:23:54
Neither one of us saying a word.
1:23:56
That is like the pinnacle of the ultimate.
1:24:00
Well, I'm not sure what that says about him.
1:24:04
It's a miracle because I never shut up.
1:24:07
It's either absolute silence or we're listening to NPR.
1:24:10
That was the ultimate drive.
1:24:11
But for you, if I could wave a magic wand and arrange for you to go on the
1:24:15
ultimate drive, who would you be with?
1:24:18
What vehicle would you be in?
1:24:19
Who would be driving and what would you talk about with this person?
1:24:23
Okay.
1:24:23
This is going to be a little bit of a challenge to get through.
1:24:26
Um, be my dad and it would be in a turbo S a brand new one.
1:24:36
And we just talk about life, you know, what I've done and what he did for me.
1:24:43
Yeah, that's who it's a good answer.
1:24:47
Would the Turbo S be a drop top or a coupe?
1:24:49
No, I, you know, we're both follicly challenged.
1:24:52
It doesn't work very well.
1:24:53
I got that from my dad.
1:24:55
You know, I lost him about five years ago too soon.
1:24:57
And he's the one that initially we started the whole talk with him.
1:25:02
instilling that passion for not only cars, but for doing things right,
1:25:05
having integrity, honesty, hard work, all those things he instilled.
1:25:09
And that's why I was a paper boy for five years in detailed cars all
1:25:13
through high school and college.
1:25:14
And even into my first job, I did it on weekends.
1:25:16
So we could save up for a house.
1:25:17
I mean, I think back how many years I've worked a lot of years,
1:25:21
I mean, just constantly, but he taught me all those things.
1:25:24
I love Porsche.
1:25:25
So it'd be a brand because that's a car that You can speak in it's quiet.
1:25:29
I could say, look, look at what I, cause he never, you know, I lost
1:25:33
him as I was just kind of starting to make this podcast thing work.
1:25:36
And he was always a champion of that.
1:25:38
I think he'd be pretty proud of where it's gone.
1:25:40
Also, he'd be able to meet his first great grandson.
1:25:42
So that'd be kind of cool.
1:25:43
Maybe throw Gunnar in the back seat.
1:25:45
He's not quite talking yet, but he could blab a little bit
1:25:47
and throw some food around.
1:25:48
Yeah, that would be it for sure.
1:25:50
And as far as the drive, it doesn't matter.
1:25:52
I mean, there's so many great places to drive in this country.
1:25:55
And the cliches are always, you know, up and down the coast,
1:25:58
but I've done that thing so many times, even did it on a bike once.
1:26:00
So bicycle.
1:26:02
Yeah.
1:26:02
It'd just be with him.
1:26:03
Yeah.
1:26:04
Just talking about life.
1:26:05
And yeah, he kind of choked me up there a little bit.
1:26:07
I have a guest on my show named John Nikas.
1:26:09
I ran into him again.
1:26:10
Claim to fame is the, is the only guest.
1:26:13
It's gotten me to cry on air and he wrapped me around an axle.
1:26:19
And every time he introduces me, he goes, Hey, I'm the only guest in cars.
1:26:22
Yeah.
1:26:22
They got Mark to cry.
1:26:23
So you guys got a little close.
1:26:25
Today.
1:26:26
Oh close.
1:26:27
Okay.
1:26:27
All right.
1:26:28
Mark, any shout outs, promotions, or anything else you'd like to
1:26:31
share that we didn't cover this far?
1:26:33
Well, you guys, thank you for doing this with me.
1:26:35
It really an honor to be on someone else's show and get a different perspective.
1:26:39
It helps me learn some things.
1:26:42
I learn every time I'm on another podcast, how to be better.
1:26:45
At talking with people and you've taught me some great things.
1:26:48
Of course, Eric's been a guest in the show.
1:26:49
Got to get Brad on next.
1:26:51
Most definitely.
1:26:51
So the invitation remains open to you as far as shout outs.
1:26:54
I just, you've not heard of cars.
1:26:56
Yeah.
1:26:56
I'm easy to find cars yet.
1:26:58
com.
1:26:58
I have a website.
1:26:59
All my shows are there.
1:27:01
You can listen to them all there.
1:27:02
You can find Carja on virtually every mobile podcast app.
1:27:05
I think I'm on 85 of them now or something like that.
1:27:08
You can find them on YouTube, although you're going to go to
1:27:10
YouTube and go, nobody listens to this show, not on YouTube, but you
1:27:13
guys know it's free to load it there.
1:27:15
So I load it there and I'll encourage everybody go to my website, click
1:27:18
on the free book button so you can sign up to get my weekly emails.
1:27:22
I promise they're very fun and easy and fast.
1:27:24
The blog that I do also, I'll send you my free ebook, which is called filler up.
1:27:29
Which is an ebook I designed from photos.
1:27:31
I've taken a very cool gas filler caps and I've surrounded the design.
1:27:35
I know it sounds silly, but they're really cool.
1:27:36
I've designed it in a way that it's multiple pages and it's surrounded by
1:27:40
some of the great inspirational quotes from guests who've been on my show.
1:27:43
So you can go there and sign up for that.
1:27:45
I encourage you to do that.
1:27:46
And, uh, yeah, just listen.
1:27:48
Also, if there are people listening out there that work.
1:27:50
Or have careers or lives in the automotive sector.
1:27:53
I'm always looking for inspiring automotive enthusiasts.
1:27:55
So reach out to me.
1:27:56
I'm easy to find mark at cars yet.
1:27:58
com and we'll get you on the show and expose your life and
1:28:01
inspire others with your story.
1:28:04
You can enjoy over 2000 interviews on cars.
1:28:06
Yeah.
1:28:07
Hosted by Mark green.
1:28:08
He aims to bring you something new to think about each day.
1:28:11
Answering the tough question.
1:28:12
How do I link my life and my work into my passion through the stories of others?
1:28:16
You can tune in to Cars Yeah!
1:28:18
today on all your favorite podcatchers or music apps.
1:28:21
Log on to www.
1:28:23
carsyeah.
1:28:23
com to learn more.
1:28:24
Follow Mark and his guests at Cars Yeah!
1:28:27
on all your social media platforms.
1:28:30
Well, Mark, I cannot thank you enough for coming on and doing
1:28:34
this boomerang crossover episode.
1:28:35
So with us here on break fix, and I have to say, you know, you talk to
1:28:39
inspiring people all day long, but you also have to realize that you're
1:28:43
one of these inspiring automotive enthusiasts in the community, folks like
1:28:48
Brad and I have been looking up to you for years and what you've been doing.
1:28:52
And obviously we hope to imitate and if we get half as good, maybe that's
1:28:55
good enough, but truly seriously, what you've done for the greater community
1:29:00
over almost a decade now is just amazing.
1:29:02
And we look forward to what comes in the future.
1:29:05
Well, now you're going to make me cry again.
1:29:07
Well, thank you.
1:29:08
That means the world to me, this world of podcasting.
1:29:10
You guys know, this can be lonely because you produce these shows.
1:29:14
And typically even the best shows you listen to, how many have you
1:29:18
ever reached out and said, great job?
1:29:20
Most people just don't.
1:29:21
I mean, we just don't do that.
1:29:22
You can go to Apple podcast and click on the five stars and do that.
1:29:26
And that's kind of nice and fun, but most people you don't get feedback from,
1:29:30
but I really appreciate that because.
1:29:32
Every once in a while, I will, I'll mention Ramsey Potts.
1:29:35
He's a guy who was listening to my show, hated his job.
1:29:38
And one morning his wife said, why don't you just do what Mark says,
1:29:41
go work in the car industry, Ramsey.
1:29:43
And that's what he did.
1:29:44
And he has built in a burgeoning career.
1:29:46
Now he works for Broad Arrow Group.
1:29:48
He worked for RM.
1:29:50
He came up to me on the lawn at Pebble again this year, gave me a big hug.
1:29:53
Thank you, Mark.
1:29:54
You changed my life.
1:29:55
And you realize you can do that.
1:29:57
And we talked about that, helping other people.
1:30:00
That's what makes it all worth it.
1:30:01
So your words are awesome.
1:30:03
Make me feel really great.
1:30:05
And I really, really appreciate it.
1:30:06
And mostly I tell everybody this, I appreciate your time.
1:30:09
You gave me time today.
1:30:10
That's the other thing I've learned.
1:30:11
Time is our most valuable asset.
1:30:14
Don't waste it.
1:30:15
Do something you love every moment of every day.
1:30:19
And you know what?
1:30:19
It's possible.
1:30:20
It's not a cliche.
1:30:21
You can do that.
1:30:22
You get to choose what you do from the moment you wake up to the moment
1:30:25
you go to sleep, choose wisely.
1:30:28
With those words.
1:30:29
Thank you again, Mark.
1:30:31
Thank you guys.
1:30:31
This has been awesome.
1:30:32
Really appreciate it.
1:30:38
That's right.
1:30:38
Listeners.
1:30:39
If you enjoyed this episode, be sure to check out our Patreon for
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1:30:47
So check that out on www.
1:30:50
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1:30:50
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1:30:55
content from this episode and more.
1:30:58
If you like what you've heard and want to learn more about GTM,
1:31:01
be sure to check us out on www.
1:31:05
gtmotorsports.
1:31:05
org.
1:31:06
You can also find us on Motorsports.
1:31:09
Also, if you want to get involved or have suggestions for future shows, You
1:31:13
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1:31:21
We'd love to hear from you.
1:31:23
Hey everybody, Crew Chief Eric here.
1:31:26
We really hope you enjoyed this episode of Break Fix, and we wanted
1:31:29
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1:31:34
And our goal is to continue to bring you quality episodes
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