Business of Speed Podcast - Launching the Paddock's Hottest Consultancy

Episode Date: October 2, 2025

Vincenzo Landino, founder of the six-year-old Business of Speed newsletter, and legendary Creative Director Lali Michelsen, define the DNA of your new essential motorsport briefing.Discover how a LinkedIn video of a champagne saber led to the formation of a strategic content consultancy and media empire built on one core premise: Speed is the only sustainable competitive advantage.We unpack:The Unlikely Kinship: Waking up at 5 AM for F1 in different countries and the shared "fringe of the fringe" obsession with speed. The Blueprint of Money & Tech: How the newsletter was engineered in 2019 to go beyond the track and investigate the power players, politics, and technology that fuel racing. The Consulting Pivot: Defining our mission to evolve beyond the "logo slap" and drive real-world operational and cultural leverage for sponsors. The Speed Lesson: Passion Meets Strategy. If you want to think and move at race pace, you need the right co-driver.

So one of the things that I'm worried about is that the people are millions of listeners and followers. They've never seen me with my glasses on. So I don't want to scare anybody. I know, I know. Roll your eyes already. So I just want them to see me, me, like the normal me that they love and adore. And then now we're going to do the world premiere. Not for Vincenzo.

He's seen me in worse conditions. But for the people, we're going to do the glasses. So that's me with the glasses. And they will come on and off. They're kind of self-diagnosed. For the people that are probably listening and not even watching this episode of the podcast, she's wearing glasses and she thinks people are going to be scared of her. I know.

I look like a, like a, I don't know, like a very chic teacher, though. I was going to say, you know, there are a lot of people that have like a teacher thing, right? Well. Or like a librarian is what I'm going for. Then, hola, bonjour. Bonjour to the people with the librarian thing, because that is what. Welcome to the first episode zero of the Business of Speed podcast. We wanted to get together, introduce ourselves a little bit about what we plan on bringing on the podcast, talk about our origin, the origin of, I'll talk a little bit about the origin of Business of Speed, and then we can talk together about the origin of the new Business of Speed.

The new. We have a meet cute, everyone, that I'm excited to share with everyone. Okay, so I didn't know what meet cute meant. You had to Google it? Until, no, no, no, no. I knew what it meant when you said it, but I didn't realize what it meant. up until like very recently it was maybe a few months ago somebody said a meet cute and i was like a meet cute what the hell is a meet cute and i was like oh okay anyway i had no idea so we have

a meet cute that you don't you're not even aware of our meet cute but i'm gonna explain it to you in a little bit yeah i'm gonna hear what your version of the meet it's another world premiere like the glasses yeah we uh why don't you tell people who you are yeah i so my name is vincenzo londino i am the founder of business of speed motorsport sports fanatic for all of my life yes formula one was on my radar long before many were probably even born that are listening to this podcast yeah you know motorsports and just going fast speed has always been something that i've been interested in it's never been scary you know people they get scared of i don't know going too fast on the highway or too fast on their bicycle and i for me it was can i go faster how do i how

do i increase the speed how do i maximize what i can get of speed even though the car that i have probably can't handle that uh like doing 165 miles per hour on a two-lane freeway in the united States here when I was like 16. It was my first car. Stupid things we do. Similar story with a Ford Focus, yellow Ford Focus. His name was Lance after Lance Armstrong. And I would time myself how fast I could get from like downtown Miami to just outside of Miami where I lived. And I would just like clock and I would like be so proud if I could shave like a minute off the time. Scary, scary stuff. Very scary.

Just like Vincenzo, obsessed with motorsports from a very, very young age. I think that Vincenzo and I have talked about this extensively on our own, and we will talk about this in future podcasts, that we were both really sort of the oddball children that were very much into motorsports growing up. And even though we both have talked about our love for NFL and other sports, there weren't a lot of other kids that were watching open wheel racing as early in age as we were. So we grew up watching these sports. We grew up separately. Of course, I was in Colombia. I haven't mentioned that yet. That's a miracle.

Wow. That's the first mention of. I hope there's an ongoing counter. Hola, mis amigos colombianos. Okay, so I grew up in Colombia. Vincenzo was in a little town in Connecticut. it we were both waking up at 5 a.m all throughout our childhoods and teenage years to watch formula one while our friends were all sleeping in and this just became and and i speak of this all the

time this lifelong love affair that i've had with motorsports open wheel specifically motorsports but that led me like you into other forms of speed we were talking the other day on our own about how sad we were that the air bull racing those airplanes what was that called the air race i think there yeah the red bull i yeah like i got hooked on that you know like i will get hooked on anything that is about beating a clock and just being the fastest which is why a door grants into recycling so anything that goes against a stopwatch i'm very much a fan of it's funny because you mentioned getting up at 5 a.m and whatnot and now we live in a time where we're talking i digress a little bit but formula one specifically the calendar is now catered to the

time zone that we want so early for um so it's funny it's come full circle and and now here we are talking about it serving clients in that arena something i don't know that either of us grew up thinking was possible especially in formula one or you know in the united states we had cart at the time which is you know now indycar and nascar but formula one yeah you love it formula one it was if you if you knew somebody else that also watched formula one you were that was shocking like shocking but also the kinship would be instant right you couldn't believe that somebody else would watch it it was beyond fringe i'm telling you more people watch skateboarding you know it was probably x games all that stuff extreme extreme sports yeah and you and i were

actually also fans of x games because we've talked about this talking about that we were talking about that and and our our remember we talked recently about our friend jeremy mcgrath jeremy mcgrath shout out if anybody even knows who he is like drop us a little comment because not a lot of people probably remember him legend but the reality is that it was fringe of the fringe nobody watched formula one nobody watched formula one and then suddenly it's it's it's interesting because nobody watched formula one for instance where i was from and then all of a sudden juan pablo montoya came into f1 and then vincenzo something incredible happened in colombia everyone was a fan of formula one kind of like for some reason none of them could admit that

they had just like jumped on jpm's bandwagon everyone had to be oh no i've been a lifelong fan of formula lifelong everyone became a lifelong fan of formula one which isn't true because as soon as jpm left formula one nobody watched formula one again you know so the reality up and down yeah it goes it went up and down now now we have a lot of people obviously since 2019 and the drive to survive card now luckily people are are watching again but yeah we were pioneers right can we say that definitely ahead of most but we could say that let's fast forward to you know 2019 you brought up 2019 perfect segue i identified the opportunity uh while i was running my own production house to you know i i'm very uh what is the word i'm looking for i i have like add

sometimes not diagnosed that's sometimes i just i'm like a squirrel right like i see things shiny oh look like a crow look so while i was producing and traveling the world for global customer you know clients and and whatnot i said okay well what can i do that brings me a little more joy right because you get into a grind and you start doing things that you're just you know you're collecting a paycheck but it doesn't fuel your your fire passion la passion and i said well i I want to start talking about Formula One somehow online. And I didn't know what form I wanted to take, but I've always been interested in behind the scenes.

And in the United States, there's the saying of how the sausage is made, right? Can you peek behind the curtain? I'm always more fascinated with that than even a lot of the on-track. You know, you have a lot of people that are so interested in the engineering of the sport and the aerodynamics and every little detail of the car.

I've always been interested, But I don't know. And I've never paid attention to the level of I mean, some people can look at two cars and they'll notice the difference right away in, you know, suspension or the brakes and play changed. It's not the same one that it was last weekend. And you're like, yeah, and that's that's great. And I can if you give me some time, I can look at it and say, OK, there's some different. But I'm not I've never been that level of detail with with the cars. I like I like the speed. I enjoy the strategy aspect of it. But there are people that focus on that way more than I do. So for me, it was, well, the money that's powering the sport, the money that is the government, the politics that is behind it, the movers and shakers, the who's who that are actually making decisions, who's pulling the strings, that was of interest to me. And so that was where Business of Speed was born. It went through a couple different name changes. I landed on Business of Speed, but it was a few other things before that. And I wanted to focus on the money, the technology, the culture that really is behind specifically Formula One, but all motorsport and all racing.

Is it right? It just propels it forward and advances the whole. You know, there's so many conversations had online, in the paddock, in the grandstands, maybe less so in the paddock, but in the grandstands. Folks that just genuinely don't understand economics. I actually went to school for economics, so it's always been of interest to me. And there are folks that just refuse to understand how basic principles of economics works. And Drive to Survive, the Netflix, the marketing blitz that Liberty Media has put Formula One through has created demand. Well, there's only so much supply, so something has to go up. What is it? Prices.

Yes, it sucks for many, many people who can't afford and who used to go to races for 50 pounds for an entire weekend. It doesn't exist anymore. It just doesn't exist anymore. So to me, that was always fascinating. And so that's where Business of Speed was born. It has always been a newsletter and only a newsletter. This is the first time we're dropping a podcast, a proper podcast, both video and audio. My dispatches have gone out anywhere from three times a week to once a week, sometimes more, depending on the action that's happening on and off the track that matters and is pushing the sport forward.

And now you and I, we'll talk a little bit about that in a second, but fast forward six years and it's still the newsletter. We're still communicating to decision makers at brands and rights holders, different racing series, different teams who are all subscribed to the newsletter, which is great. But we, we, you and I, and I'll let you tell the story, but I'll just say this really quickly. You and I both had a very similar vision as to how we wanted to position ourselves in the racing world, Formula One world. And our conversations led to what we're doing now with Business of Speed, which we'll talk about in a little bit. But I'll let you kind of jump in and surprise me with our meet-cute. I'll just tell a little bit about me. I was a writer from birth. I really was writing poetry and songs since I was five years old. I was that kid, you know, the theater kid, the dramatic kid. I was very much a creative, straight out of the gates. I played piano, I played guitar, I was in theater. I was always a creative and that's where my career took me. I started advertising as a writer and I went up the echelons and I became a creative director, which is amazing. I adore my job. I adore creative.

I love creating big ideas and then thinking of a strategy and how to execute these ideas. And I really have a passion for that. But I've always struggled because I have this in my bones love really for motorsport, right? And I was doing things tangential. I have worked on the Ford account or the Honda Acura account. I did radio spots for a Jaguar Land Rover, but it's not the same, right? I really wanted to be in motorsports. And I was at a point in my life recently where I was wanting to pivot, so to speak. And I was like, I want to do this now. I don't want to wait. And you hear me say this all the time. I have this mission of being

unapologetically happy. I don't owe anything to it. I just want to be happy. Happiness is my my goal in life that I'm happy. Everyone around me is happy. And thinking of that in the process of that, that was going through my head and I'm, and I'm on LinkedIn one day, here comes the meat story. I'm on LinkedIn one day. And for some reason, the algorithm fed me, fed me this video of this, of this gentleman in a tuxedo, very, very gentlemen, gentlemen, very posh and doing something that has been done since the days of Napoleon but is not often done which is opening a champagne bottle with a saber and I was so intrigued by the whole thing first of all because I'd never seen someone actually do it so I was already like wow that's cool and also why is he

putting it on LinkedIn like the whole thing just intrigued me very much and I just commented on that and somehow Vincenzo and I connected through that for through my commenting on that on that post and then i i just followed his contact i started following business of speed and then when i was going through this transitional thing in my life where i want to do something different i think i want to get into motorsports more actively i want to i want to go all in on this i said to me joseph can we have a call to be quite frank i did calls with a lot of people sorry but he was one of the calls that i did yeah i'm so sorry you're so hurt oh my deus mio i don't know that's telling of me or, or, or telling of you? No, of course. I'm a very smart woman. I'm going

to not going to put all my eggs in one basket. I needed to do like, I just wanted to, to be quite frank, there was no agenda. I just wanted to talk to people who were in any way involved with motorsport and, and get their, get their opinions and, and just sort of pick their brains as they say. And when I was on a call with Vincenzo and he was talking and I was asking him questions, et cetera, this idea in my head was kept like, it was so loud, this drum in my head, like, I think he and I could do something. I think he and I could take business speed in a different direction. And I don't know.

No, no, no. And I didn't want to say anything at first because I didn't want him to think that that's why I took the call because it was 100% not why I set up the call. And then eventually I say something and he's like, I already thought about it like five minutes ago. He's like, I'm way ahead of you. I've already had this idea and I think you're on to something. I was like, OK, that's good. Wait, let's see. Do you actually remember the first time we were supposed to talk?

Yes, you stood me up in New York. I did. I did. You stood me up in New York. I will say this. I wasn't going to bring that up because that's such a painful memory. Genuinely felt bad about it because I wanted to come and last minute things just fell apart. I also got myself confused.

I was able to come during the day. You were expecting more of an evening. i was in new york from work meetings so i yeah which i didn't realize he didn't realize so i was expecting him to meet with vincenzo after five o'clock when i was done with meetings he was thinking we were meeting in the daytime yeah i remember i confidently was like oh yeah so i'll meet you for lunch coffee whatever around noon one o'clock whatever and you were like wait what absolutely not i said well then i guess we're not gonna get together negative that was the first time that was i think before we actually got in a call i forgave him for that because you

did but it was a few it was a few months that a few months after that i was like okay well i was i'll still talk to him okay even though he stood me up in new york oh well you should tell people i'm in toronto that's why i was traveling to new york and for those who don't know she's in toronto for those of you that don't know but it's also a 45 minute flight so i go often to new york so i wasn't like also colombian if you didn't know i'm from colombia did i mention i'm from colombia she also also speaks spanish and french and portuguese a little bit anyway we finally had the call we were like let's try to do something like i think that we're on to

something and guess what we executed on our vision and and here we are now the podcast and we're taking client meetings we have some things in the works that we can't talk about quite yet let's just say that we are both our hunches separately we're correct that that yeah this could be a nice partnership and here we are may we long live now that we evolved to the point where now you know we have set up business of speed as a consultancy strategic content creation c-suite education activations event hosting really working in ways that we both can leverage our strengths and corporate lunch and learns which a lot of people might not people have asked me what a corporate lunch and learn is because there's two facets to it which i love so coming from the

advertising world yeah big agencies for a long time it was really fun when sometimes they would say hey on friday we're having a lunch and learn what that would mean is that a speaker of any topic it's just a just a very fun du jour topic was gonna come in and was gonna everyone brings their lunch and you sit at some kind of you know communal area that the office has and they would do a very dynamic presentation on the most random of topics that were awesome they were never about advertising that was the only thing they can't because i was at agencies they could be about anything and they were so fun and engaging and invigorating and they sparked conversations etc So Vincenzo and I are doing these corporate lunch and learns for two reasons.

One, because sometimes if let's say you work at Petronas, for instance, a big Formula One sponsor, I would venture guess that a lot of the people at Petronas, a vast majority, don't really even know Formula One 101. So we can come in and like, hey, Petronas staff, let's teach you a little bit about Formula One. But also for the random non-Formula One connected companies, an ad agency, a bank, an insurer who just wants to bring in a little fun, spicy Friday afternoon for their, for their crew. That's also what we're doing. So it's, it's sort of like two pronged. And I personally have been

involved in many, many fun lunch and learns and they're always like a hit. Yeah. From an employee engagement perspective, it's important, especially for if you're a sponsor or if you're a brand looking to you want to get involved in sponsorship the our biggest thing and we'll talk about this episode or the next episode so after you're done with this episode go ahead and listen to episode one this is episode zero technically so listen to episode one we'll talk all about our manifesto what we believe what we think is changing but one i'll give you kind of a sneak peek one of the biggest things that we truly, truly believe is sponsorships, partnerships need to go beyond. Actually, sponsorships should be partnerships, right? They should be true collaborations, but

they need to go beyond the logo slap, which is a word or a phrase we'll use a lot, the logo slap. It's easy enough to throw your logo on a car or throw your logo on, well, it doesn't have to be a car. It can be anything, right? You can sponsor anything. It could be a football kit. It could be a basketball jersey, whatever it is. You can have your logo on there. If you're not engaging beyond that you're just in it for vanity metrics vanity impressions and views which don't really move bottom line they don't engage your employees which is where the lunch and learns and c-suite education come from but also they don't give you any advantage over really anyone else that can pay the money to slap their logo on anything and that's what we're looking to change and so we'll

talk a little about that more about that in episode one but we are glad that you're here we're glad you're listening to us this podcast is going to be geared for the folks that care about the behind the scenes what's happening in the racing world and we say racing not specifically motorsport because there's so many different racing series out there there's electric boats there's electric cars there's sail powered cars or sail powered boats like sail gp america's cup there's bicycle racing racing in there is such a large world out there of racing that i think people tend to like in the united states if you said racing most people might stuck might say nascar that might be the first thing they say when you say racing maybe globally maybe they

do say formula one but there are so so many different racing series my lover's an indie car but i yeah i mean there's there's and there's all of the extreme the extreme racing like dakar extreme now there's the hydrogen racing series you know hydrogen power so the technology and the different applications that you can you can see this technology getting slapped onto it's wild but here's a cool thing a lot of that technology ends up trickling down into our everyday lives it's one big cycle right it's just one one big cycle formula one the things you see happening in formula one now are probably going to be in road cars in you know five to seven years just like things that were in well a perfect example is the the hybrid system curs exactly

that's that's how you see hybrid systems and in cars all the time now right and you see kinetic regeneration is in cars that's one example anyway we like all that we love all that stuff so that's what we're going to be talking about on the podcast we will eventually have interviews we will eventually have you know campaign breakdowns from a creative director herself right over there we want to talk about all this stuff so we may have right we may have we will have plenty of rants we'll have plenty of rants especially maybe after the end of this let's see what happens with the championship etc and we'll talk a little bit about that i have my feelings but we're not going to talk about today because we want to get the people hooked but there will

be rants of course and and vincenzo and i often don't agree on things unfortunately or very fortunately for our listeners so that fortunately for you we don't agree on a lot of things literally anything pretty much nothing but besides the point we want you to help us shape the podcast as well so if you have questions and comments please leave them wherever you are hearing or seeing this if it's over on youtube drop a comment it's on instagram drop a comment if it's on spotify you can drop a comment i think the only place you probably can't leave a comment is on apple but if you really want to let us know leave a review and in the review ask a question we'll make sure that you get answered first on that note if you're gonna leave a review i'm going to tell you

five stars or nothing oh yeah five stars or nothing right don't even bother don't give us four stars please just five on that note this is business of speed with vincenzo and we will see you on the next one ciao ciao