The Dale Jr. Download - 496 - Business of Motorsports Part V - Driver Representation w/ Josh Jones

Episode Date: October 3, 2023

Class is back in session as Kelley Earnhardt Miller returns for another episode of the Business of Motorsports. On this edition, she and co-host Mike Davis sit down with Josh Jones, the Vice President of Sports Marketing and Entertainment at Kevin Harvick Inc. Management. The main topics of discussion on the docket are driver representation, how to attain sponsors and what goes into contract negotiation. Josh explains how KHI transitioned from being a race team to a sports management firm, all stemming from a conversation had with UFC fighter Cowboy Cerrone. Since then, KHI has gone on to manage several race drivers, professional fighters, and PGA golfers.The interview also highlights Kevin’s ability to keep sponsors for long periods of his career, and what kind of work happens behind the scenes to keep all parties happy. Josh emphasizes the importance of media training in young drivers and how it’s not enough to just be a winner in today’s racing industry. Social media and branding for athletes are also covered, and how active content creation goes far for building a person’s brand. Finally, they dive deep into the make-up of today’s standard driver contracts and how much of negotiations rely upon sponsorship and bonus programs Check out Dirty Mo Media on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@DirtyMoMedia  Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

The following is a production of Dirty Mo Media. Welcome to the Dell Jr. Download. It is yours truly, Kelly Earnhardt Miller. This is actually a little bit different segment, the business of motorsports. This is something that I've wanted to do with you for a long time. Do business-related podcasts. Do business-related episodes. Open chats, right?

Open chats about the business concerns of our industry, which there are many. I hope this series opens people up to the broader, bigger picture. All right, welcome to the Bojangles Studio and episode 496. It's part five of the business of motorsports. And I'm Kelly Earnhardt Miller, and I'm here with the lovely co-host, Mike Davis. How are you? The regular host got way more lovely this week. I mean, you are way more lovely than Dale Jr.

I called the wrong. No, no, no. I called it wrong. Definitely more lovely than Dale is. But no, it's good. We haven't done a business of motorsports in a while, and it's so good to be back and have you back in here. It has been a while, and so long that there's some cool new guidecast out here from our friends at Linail.

That is true. They came in the broad gifts. I know. I haven't seen this new late model car of Dale's, the Bass Pro Shop car. Some cool new stuff out here. So, yes, look at that number five, Hendrick Cars car. It's pretty sporty. Oh, my gosh.

Yeah, yeah. And Dale was ecstatic. Looking good. Linole hooked us up and that was nice. A few weeks ago, they brought those gifts. In all honesty, even the new cup car here. Because our store only has the Xfinity cars, I don't even get to see those very often too. So cool stuff. Looking good.

So how have you been? You good? I've been good. Yeah, seemingly crazy it feels. But that's just the world, right? That is. Every day, all day, we're doing something between trekking around with Wyatt racing, working, for on this, that, and the other.

Gosh, lately, school started back, so that always throws, right? That's right. You have the same issue. That always throws a wrench. Yeah, I love the routine of school, but it's like... We're still trying to get into our routine. Yeah, right.

It takes a while. It's something. And this week we've got the homecoming thing. That just disrupts the routine, right? Like now you've got homecoming, homecoming dances, homecoming, shopping, all that stuff. I mean, my gosh. I just did that.

Yeah, it's crazy. Yeah, I'm coming off homecoming from Kennedy. so yes, I hear you. You know, I also want to compliment you and one of your kids for sure because, and this isn't the business of motorsports, but we got some things. We had to catch up. We got to catch up. You know, last week, Dale and I went to Lernerville Speedway up in Pennsylvania,

and Wyatt came along. LW did too, but Wyatt came along. And this was the first time, I mean, Wyatt's in our office all the time. And he and I, you know, he'll come in the office, we'll putt, we'll do stuff. I got a little putting green there. But this was like the first extensive time that you got to spend with White or I got to spend with Wyatt. And man, he is so funny, first of all. He's brilliant.

I don't know if his grades at school match his intelligence in racing. Yeah, they do. He's a good student. But oh my gosh. I thought Dale is sort of like Rain Man when it comes to knowing numbers and drivers and paint schemes. I think Wyatt actually might have a beat. Certainly in the sprint car world. especially for his age.

For his age. He is nonstop on YouTube. I always can hear him listening to old racing broadcast, sprint car, NASCAR, motorsports. I mean, for the longest time, he was watching Dan Weldon's kids. I had no idea. Like, he was talking about their names, and I'm like, how do you know that? He's like, I'll watch them on YouTube, Mom.

So, like, all these things that he does. I know us parents are supposed to know everything our kids do. But, but yeah, he is, it's like an encyclopedia sometimes. So not only does the kid get talent behind the wheel, and we all know, we love watching him race and how he's sort of ascending and doing all the things that he's doing, he also is quite engaging and fun to be around. He really is. Well, I'm glad to hear that because there was a time where he was super shy. He was. And even in interviews for his racing and stuff, he's still, you know, a little timid.

He's gotten a lot better. So I was excited to see that. I listened to the Thursday show of that week. We were on the airplane. Saw some of the videos. And yeah. Well, the airplane was a good example of like, we were dog tired after leaving the racetrack. And we, Dale and I were like, you just want to like do this later.

Like we had had the crew there and they were planning on. They left early to go set up the airplane and the cameras and all those things. And we were like, oh, my gosh, we're just dragging. But it's like, wait a second. If we do this another time, we won't have Wyatt. Right. He can't miss school for that. And so we assumed that, right?

What about the fact checker job? Did he get the fact checker job? He is a fact checker. He is a fact checker because he is the one that knows more than all of us. Like, he is really good at that. So we did that. However exhausted we were, we wanted to do it when we had access to Wyatt. So anyways, I couldn't wait to come back and tell you that.

That was a lot of fun. He loved it. So go ahead. All right. Yeah. So today our ally guest is Josh Jones from Kevin Harvick Management, Inc. And we're going to talk about driver representation, which is really fun. It's kind of weird at the same time.

because I feel like that's what I've done for Dale all of these years. That is what I've done, not feel like. I have done driver representation for Dale. But I am excited. I've worked with Josh. You've worked with Josh. We've worked alongside him on quite a number of things. But excited to kind of quiz him and see, this is one of the questions that as a mom of a young racer I always get.

Where do I go for sponsors? How do I need to be talking to? What does my kid need to be doing? And so I'm excited to be able to ask some of those questions. I know my answers to many of those parents out there. I'm excited to hear his answers. He's had a long and storied career doing this for Kevin Harvick and so many others. Here's what I hope we get out of Josh today.

We know that there are hundreds, if not thousands, aspiring race car drivers out there. And you know what? There's some talented ones. Dale Jr. always says that there are way more drivers out there that were better than him. you know, and he just got opportunities. Well, this is a conversation that those young drivers can listen to somebody about how to get those opportunities. How much do you have to pay attention to your brand?

How much do you have to pay attention to your social media? What about negotiating your contracts? What about just getting, you know, on, you know, influential people's radars? How do you do all these things? Yes. Dale Jr. had a lot of, you know, things done for him. Did a lot of work himself, you know? Wyatt, born into situations that help him out.

Yeah, absolutely. Like, nobody's denying that. But there are a lot of incredible race car drivers out there and they would love to make a living, make their careers out of racing. How do you do it? Well, that's why we wanted to have Josh Jones. Josh Jones doesn't even consider himself an agent.

The way you don't, your title was an agent, but then you both end up representing drivers when it comes to getting them their jobs or their next contracts. all that. Josh does this not only, he's not only done it for Kevin, but he's also done it for a lot of the other drivers that KHI represents. And so he's a perfect person to have in here to talk about this very thing. Yeah, he's, he's perfect. I'm excited about it. So let's get down to it. Let's welcome our ally guest, Josh Jones. There he is. There you are. Hot diggity. This is you. This is you. This is you. The hot seat. Kelly, I got to tell you something. As Josh puts his headset on,

I got to know, Josh, I think we're doing his first ever interview. Like, he doesn't do interviews. You know, most of these guys don't. We are special. They try to stay behind the scenes, and I understand why, but this is, he might be nervous. Are you nervous? No, I'm not nervous. But no, I don't, I don't do these.

I get asked a lot to do different stuff and talk about it, but I'm just the guy behind the scenes, so I try to stay behind the scenes. So, Mike, when you called me, I said I'd do this. Wow. Why did you do it? Why did you say yes to us? A couple reasons. A couple reasons. My first one, I mean, you were with me when I came in the sport, and there's only a few of us left when we came in. I mean, I started in 2002 with Kevin as PR, and you and me went through that whole deal for a while. And I mean, I did some other stuff too at the time,

but that was kind of a focus of mine, and you're kind of the only lone survivor left besides me. I think there might be a like-minded company. We've been around a while, haven't been around a while, have a while. Yes, yes, you have. Well, I'm glad you said yes, because, you know, the business of motorsports, has been pretty popular so far. This is our fifth episode. And this is a topic that I really wanted to talk about

in terms of driver representation. And I get asked often about, how do you go about it? What do you do? So on and so forth. I'm sure you do too. And so it's a great opportunity for us to have that discussion.

But I think first you should just kind of set the field. What do you do? What are you doing now? You know, what do you do for Kevin, KHA? So still KHA, still vice president of sports marketing, kind of put myself as like a business manager. I don't consider myself an agent. Yeah, we were just talking about that.

I don't like that word. Whenever I think of that word, I think a lawyer. Yeah. And the first thing, because it is contract negotiation, stuff like that. But I do a lot more than just that. So I don't look at it like that. I look at it more of PR, marketing, sales, keeping my athletes out of trouble. That's a big part of it.

Not so much in the NASCAR world, but in other sports. I mean, that's a key. And then just kind of being a middleman. I'm a middleman for a lot of my sponsors to clients, sponsors to the sport, the governing body. There's a lot of times where our sponsors have a lot of problems with getting activation, and we've got to be there. So a lot more than just an agent manager, but it's across the board. What's your title?

Vice President of Sports Marketing and Entertainment. But that's kind of, that's what I tell people. but I just use the word VP. It's simple. So what do you do? I'm just a vice president of a sports marketing firm because there's nothing that we don't do. I mean, right now before I came in here, I was sitting in the parking lot finalizing Kevin's foundation events. So I kind of work on that stuff too. So it's a little bit of everything. That's what somebody asks me what I do for now. I'm like soup to nuts. I mean, I can be working on investments. I can order lunch. I can be negotiating a contract. I can be babysit his kids.

Babysit the kids. I mean, you name it. Yeah, running the cars tour. I mean, you name it. That's what we're doing, right? So yeah. So, KHA, number of employees, kind of the setup, because you just said it. I thought of a couple things. Relationships are one. That's what you do, right? But number two, you wear a lot of hats. You know, it's not like, I know there's not this big vertical organization and you

wear a lot of hats. There's five or six of us that we're small. We're a boutique agency. We're not looking to be massive. Whenever we do land a home run with a client, whether it's a golfer, a UFC fighter, against a big agency, it feels good because we're small. But that's what we are. We're small.

We've got seven-rate NASCAR drivers, a couple UFC fighters, PGA golfers. But we basically put all our emphasis on making sure our sponsors are happy and our clients are happy. It doesn't matter if it's on the track or off the track. We want everybody to succeed. That's our goal. Yeah, absolutely. You know, Kevin is one of the guys I think about. And I often talk about when it comes to keeping sponsors, partners.

We weren't even call them sponsors, partners for a long period of time. We know that when Kevin came here to JRM, he brought some of his long partners with him. And when he left, they went with him. And if he jumps, he can go and do whatever. They will stick with him. And it's like, wait a second. That can't be luck. That's got to be something deep into the core.

What is it, Josh? How does Kevin Harvick keep all those sponsors? And how does that carry over into what you guys have built in a company? company? Kevin himself. I mean, he started this company, but the one thing about Kevin that you'll learn that, and you've known Kevin for a long time, you too, Kelly, it's like, it doesn't matter if it's, he's mad, he's happy, he's being a parent. If somebody reaches out to him, whether it's work-related, client-related customer, he will stop what he's doing and work on it. And in this case, he has a relationship with these sponsors. They're not just sponsors, they're

friends. They text Kevin after races. Whether he wins or lose, they'll send him a text, and Kevin response back. He's that kind of driver, that kind of owner of his management company, that he communicates with them directly. A lot of our, a lot of our guys in our sport that have done this for a long time, there's a middleman between the sponsor and the driver. But Kevin has never had that. It's always been, hey, Kevin, how's it going? Good. I actually just got off the phone with Hunt Brothers Pizza today. They want to do this. Awesome. If they call Kevin, we're fine with that. That's a relationship that we have. Kevin has always been hands-on with our company. It doesn't matter what we're doing. I mean, He sits in our meetings. He gives us huge input, him and his wife Delana. Delana sits in a lot of them, too, especially in the PR side. But they are hands-on. And you don't have that in a lot of place. A lot of these owners of these management companies, they're not hands-on. But he is 100% hands-on. We ask him, hey, have you ever heard of this race car driver? Hey, have you ever thought about getting this golfer. And if he's about it, we're about it. So we're just one big family. And you've got to look at the people that have worked for Kevin. Fred's going on, I think, 23 years.

Say who Fred is. Fred Lexi's our president. Okay. Fred has, Fred's basically the guy that keeps us out of trouble. He started a long time ago with Kenny Irwin. He did Greg Biffle stuff. He's been with Kevin forever, but he basically keeps Kevin and I straight. And when we have a question, we call him. And I love Fred, and he's been around with us forever. So Fred's our president. And then there's myself. And then there's Cindy. Cindy is our office manager, human resource manager. She's been there longer than me. I mean, I'm 20 years. So she's got to be 22, 23, maybe even longer. And then Kelly's been with us.

Kelly Kahn's been with us for almost 10 now. So we've been, our people are loyal. Our people are loyal. So Alicia worked with us a long time ago. She left for a couple years and she came back. So we're just one big family, whether it's our clients or our employees. Has Kevin always been hands-on like that, like from the very beginning of his career to now, would you say? Because, I mean, I've seen drivers of Dale in particular evolve and grow, right?

So I'm just curious if Kevin... I would say going back to our shell days. He used to sit on those shell calls with RCR, come up with ideas, way to do paint schemes, way to do marketing stuff and all that. So I would say it started then. And then you fast forward into 2012 when we closed the KHA doors

so the Harvich family could have a family. And we had the infrastructure already there with employees and the sponsors. And we just kind of rolled it over to a sports marketing firm. We still had the building. We had everything. So it was an easy transaction.

transition from one to the other. And it was just Kevin for basically about a year. And then when I just asked them one day about opening the doors and bringing more clients in and then it just went, boom. Let's talk about that. Whose idea was it to go from a race team? I understand why the race team closed. You said so they could go build a family. But whose idea was it to go do sports marketing? Cowboy Seroni or UFC fighter. Okay. Texas Motor Speedway 2012. He came with a sponsor called Tapout. They were doing some big clothing line promotion at Texas Motor Speedway. We had some mutual friends. They introduced us to Cowboy. Cowboy came over to Kevin's bus. We were still sponsored by Budweiser at the time. So it was after qualifying on Saturday,

and they were sitting on the back outside of Kevin's motor coach and just drinking beer. And Cowboy said, I need some of this NASCAR money. You guys have sponsorships like, there's no tomorrow. He's like, I've got all these small sponsors on my UFC shorts. I need some, I need some big sponsors. So we kind of laughed it off. then in 2012 and then when the when the they decided to shut the doors and let me go back to the when they shut the doors when kevin and delana came into fred in my office back in 2000 late 2011 beginning of 2012 and just said hey after the season we want to have a family can't do both because they were so dedicated kind of like you guys are to your race teams you can't do both it's a lot of work

and you guys know i mean i think you just said a minute ago you babysit the kids sometimes too so it's a lot of work so we basically took that uh and said hey we'll do this this will give us a year to start closing the doors. We want to make sure everybody had jobs. We sold the race teams to a couple different teams. Richard Schilders kind of absorbed some of the teams. We had a gentleman come in that won the lottery. I can't remember his name. Bought our truck teams. Joe DeNette. Joe DeNette bought some of the truck team stuff and everybody was fine. I think we only had a couple guys that ended up not having jobs. We took a couple of them. Yeah. Our shop forming today. Yeah. Yeah. So but we made sure that

people had jobs, made sure the sponsorship went. We brought some sponsorship dollars here, too, to run after the RCR days. But we did all that, and we did it in a way where Kevin had a vision. And his vision was to don't just shut the doors. Shut the doors over time, make sure everybody has jobs and do this. That transitioned into this sports marketing company. But Kevin came in my office one day. We were just sitting there just working on his stuff, and he was like,

you think we should get Cowboy? And I'm like, for what? And he was like, manage him. He said he was looking for a manager at Texas. when we talked about it. And I was like, I mean, I guess we can look into that. And we ended up talking to him and literally three days later, he was like, I'm in. So it went from one step to the next step. And we went from Cowboy and he got us hooked up with the UFC female champion, Misha Tate. Misha went into Rose Namunis, who's a female champion. And it just started doing this.

And then we had a relationship with Jason Gore in the PGA tour. And we called him and he was still with a management company at the time. But we told him that we had some interest. And then And sure enough, like three weeks later, he called us. And we went from Jason to the Wells Fargo winner, James Hahn and Charlotte, to another golfer, to another golfer. So, how many athletes do you represent currently? I think we're at 12. Okay. I think we're at 12.

And that's a lot. That's a lot for the employees we have. Especially for the size of everything. And we have all different kinds. We've got a bull rider. We had a motocross kid and rider. He was really good, but we didn't know much about the motocross stuff. And he was getting ready to get to the level where he turned pro.

so we passed it on to Ricky Carmichael's group RC4 management group so we kind of passed them on but we're mostly NASCAR and PGA golf still have some UFC fighters still have a bullrider kid here and there that we're working with and Nicholas and but yeah it's I love it I love a challenge do you guys offer you know

kind of soup to nuts from like the personal side of things to I would say like what do they call those places that have like family office right where you kind of do the banking and investments and all that all the way to sports marketing yes we do That's a great question. We do, but we pass it on like we have banks. Yeah, yeah. Relationships. Yeah, we don't tell people what they have to do.

Yeah. We give them guidance. Hey, if you'd like to use our people, that's Fred's forte. We pass it on to Fred. Fred gets them hooked up with the right people. We mostly focus on the driver contracts, the sponsorship stuff managing it, just that kind of stuff. The UFC's a lot different. It takes a lot more in the UFC because there's a lot of contracts.

There's a regular contract that you're under than there's a fight contract. And there's your whereabouts clause for the drug testing. So there's a lot we have to do in the UFC stuff. That's a very hands-on deal. but the NASCAR stuff, I mean, just like you guys have been doing this forever, you can do a lot of this stuff with your eyes closed on the racing stuff. Kelly, I did tell Josh before this is that I'm so interested in the UFC side of the business that it's going to be hard for me not to go and start asking questions because I'm going to have

to really discipline myself to keep this focused on what we have him here today, and that's driver representation. So just know that there are a lot of things that I'd love to unpack about the difference between UFC contracts and driver contracts. maybe we'll get there when he does his second interview of all time when we talk about the business of I mean that's a good question though because you know what if there's well I mean what if there's up and coming drivers

that like maybe they excel in another sport so I mean that's a good topic in terms of knowing the differences well yeah I mean that's a good topic in knowing the differences in the various sports I'm curious just from because my background is nothing but racing motorsports it's different I mean they're all different but I'll tell you what the thing I like about the UFC is everything is so detail-oriented. You know what you have to do every single day.

Every single week you get the track or get to the fights. You know what goes on. Golf, you don't really know what goes on every week because you don't know if your golfers playing. They don't have to play every week. You know what I mean? But when you have a contract in the UFC, they give you a schedule and that's what you go by. You don't have to go, you don't have to go show up at the hotel.

Let's go grab food. They tell you when your break is. They tell you when you have time because you're not really eating in the UFC. You're cutting weight. But my point is they give you, they give you. give you break. So the UFC is very detail-oriented from the day you sign your fight contract, your media is three weeks out. You've got two weeks out. You've got to do all your drug testing. You're one week out. You show up to this facility. You have to be there at 2 p.m. I mean,

it's a regiment. All these things, though, you did not know the day you and Cowboy are having beers outside of a motorhome. And so when Kevin says, let's go rep Cowboy Cerrone, who's who was great. And a lot, he's a big fan favorite. Everybody loves Cowboy. Yep. what was the acclamation about how did you go learn that like at some point you had to go from not knowing how UFC works to UFC work how how it works and and what was that period like is it a couple years is it what what is it no it's uh it's getting to become friends with the like the head of PR the head of marketing and listening then the guy uh his name was Dave

back then and when Dave was there I'd call Dave and say hey we're uh we're racing in Vegas this weekend you want to come to the race and he'd be like yeah if we're not fighting, I'll come. And sure enough, he came. And I sat in a suite with him for four hours and said, okay, tell me what I need to do. Because Cowboys, Cowboys going to throw me to the wind. I mean, he's going to throw me and say, get in there, buddy. And you get in there.

But these guys said, hey, here's the deal. You don't want to go in Dana White's room on Fight Day because that's a no-no. Managers, managers are no. Don't go in there. Okay. You can be wherever you want. When the fighters are up there, getting ready to do their stare down, back up. Don't be in the video.

don't be in the video, which I've learned that, and don't try to steal other fighters at fights. That's the biggest thing. And that's just like in the PGA. Don't try to say, hey, here's my business card. For client. Oh, yeah. Same thing in the PGA tour.

PGA tour, that is a no-no. Like when you're on the PGA tour and you're sitting in the dining room, the player's dining room and you're eating and you're hanging out there, you do not go up and try to recruit another golfer. That is a no-no. But in NASCAR?

Do we need some recruitment etiquette at NASCAR? Yeah, but in NASCAR, I can walk up to somebody right now and say, hey, man, how are you? On pit road, you can't do this. NASCAR is a beautiful sport because you can do what you want. Wow. Who knew that we were in the Wild Wild West of the sports? Right, yeah, right.

No rules? Yay, for no rules. We might have built a podcast built off of complaining about the rules every week and all the different restrictions. But the fact is that from a management standpoint, you can go do that. Now, then what is going back to the driver rep? It's interesting that you guys were doing fighting before you were doing NASCAR. One would make a bet to say that, no, of course, Kevin Harvitt's company would have gone NASCAR first and then branched out from there.

So when did you start taking on driver clients? Well, Kevin was our first. Well, yeah, but I'm not counting him. So Kevin was our first. I would say, I would say probably 2016, 2017 is when we started looking at it. the Ricky Stanhouse Jr. is probably the one that comes up first to me because we were going after a couple guys at that point. And the one thing that we do when it comes like Ricky and stuff, Ricky approached us about, hey, can you help me when my stuff's up? And we were like, yeah,

whatever you want to do, we'll do that. And we help Ricky. But the crazy part about helping Ricky is how Ricky's deal came about. We literally got him seven days before he was released from Roush. So you want to talk about getting him. getting thrown to the wolves. Ricky, we got with Ricky. I got him as a client and I've known Ricky for a long time. He's a good friend of mine. And I was like, yep, I'll help you, no problem. And then we got that phone call. Ricky was just in here a couple weeks ago doing his thing. We got that phone call. And I just was like, didn't know what I was walking into, to be honest with you because I thought we were just having a competition meeting. And Ricky sent me a text,

like you might want to sit in this one. And I don't sit in competition meetings. The drivers do all that stuff. I might be the bad guy behind the scene with Fred and we're the bad guy sometimes, but we won't be sitting at the competition meetings. But when that all went down, I was like, okay, this is real. Because Kevin, it never happens with Kevin. I mean, it's a different situation with them, with their sponsorship and what they owed Ricky and all that kind of stuff. But it was one of those deals where, all right, now it's time to show Ricky what we can do.

And thank God lucky enough it happened and we fixed it. Yeah, so that's a good question. One of your newest clients happens to drive here with us, Josh Barry. And so what, you know, how do you go about? You said Ricky came to you. I know that there's competition in this. this sport for representation, you know, how do you go about that? What's a difference, you know, what sets you guys above the rest? Do you want to be in that competition?

Or, you know, you only want to be a certain size? Yeah, we do want to be a certain size, but racing stuff, I mean, Kevin's retiring. So with Kevin leaving, it is a huge void. Yeah. Huge void for a lot of different reasons. So when Kevin decided to hang it up, we knew a year in advance, and he told us, and he said, hey, 20, 23 will be my last year. We won't say anything in 2022 until the time is right. And I said, okay, no problem. We'll figure it out. But then my question to him was, who's going to be the replacement of four? Because that's a big deal. I mean, it doesn't matter what ride you're in it. This past, this past one, it was, who's going to go in the 18? And nobody went in the 18. They kind of

took the 18 number and parked in and brought the 54 out, which is perfectly fine. But I asked Kevin and Kevin, at that point, it was like still too early to decide because we were still a year and a half out. But then over time, we started picking up some more drivers here and there, like Todd Gillen and Harrison Burton, and we picked up some young ones as well. But we were to the point where, okay, these guys are all under contract. They're not available to drive this four car. What are we going to do? And Kevin is the kind of guy when it goes back to this driver development stuff. Kevin likes these young kids or these racers that can race a lot of different stuff, whether it's a late model, whether if it's dirt racing, Brent Cruz is a good example.

I mean, we heard that kid can race anything and he can win in anything. And that's what Kevin likes to look for. Kids that can race a lot of different stuff. If you keep winning at your little short track and that's all you race at, you're good. But until you can go out and drive other cars on dirt, on asphalt, on road courses, that's the difference. But going back to this, Kevin and Rodney, I asked him one day probably in Daytona, maybe a little before Daytona. It was probably Daytona in July last year. And I said, what are you guys thinking?

and Rodney said Josh and Kevin had already said Josh too and that that's kind of where they went with this but my mind was like he's got no money that's my first thing is he drives over there with their sponsors and he does a good job and he wins but those aren't his sponsors so I was like I don't know if this is going to fly because in the way this world works right now in NASCAR the first question that these owners or these sales guys and managers are asking is what does he have what can he bring to the table and I thought about that and I was like these sponsors that are on Kevin's car right now are Kevin's sponsors. Not sure they'll want to stick around in that,

but over time, SHR came to the equation and said, hey, we'll sign them without sponsors. And we were like, and it was like old school. It was like, you're telling me you want our driver? But it happens every once in a while. Carson hosts. Happened with Josh for us.

Yes, happened with Josh for you. So when Josh was available, first thing I did was I texted Dale and Kelly and I said, hey, we would like to talk to Josh about KHI management. also, KHA manager representing him and putting him in that four car and trying to sell SHR on this. And they were like, we love it. He deserves it.

He's won. He can do it. So I went and sat with SHR, talked to them. And they were looking at a couple people, but they like that. And toward the end of last year, I forget which race Josh won last year, but he won a race. And it was basically right when we started talking to SHR, and they were like, okay, we're interested. And then we kind of let the offseason kind of fall through. go through and then the beginning of this year we picked the talks back up and it was quick i mean

literally happened when we went inside s hr the second time it literally happened in like three weeks because we had to communicate with you guys to make sure we were good and i would say that would probably happen around probably the all-star race this year it was a little before the all-star race because josh was in the nine card nothing was done yet and it kind of got in there and then he got in the 48 and after that was what it was he won the all-star last chance race and that and that was when it was on they We're like, okay, this kid, this kid, we want him. And that's fast forward to where we are now and a couple weeks away from him getting in the forum. And so back up to, you know, him not having sponsorship money or having sponsorship money.

Because that's kind of a question, you know, with Wyatt Racing at 11 years old and you're going through this with Keelan also. You know, all the parents want to know, how do you get your son? How do you get them started? Where do you get sponsorship money from? And we're in a unique position being that, you know, the Harvick. and our company have relationships with people that we can kind of tie in. And it's always a hard question to answer. But you go back to not having sponsorships and driver representation because in driver

representation, when we have young drivers come here, they want to know who can I sign up with that can help me with sponsors, right? And so there's that dichotomy of how does it work and, you know, what that looks like, you know, in terms of what you guys do. That is a big question. That's the question I get all the time. I actually met with probably five or six kids in the last two months through mutual friends. A couple really good ones. I met with this one kid. Doesn't live here in North

Carolina, but he actually met with a couple of them, but this one kid, the one thing I caught with this kid was he could race. He was a really good racer. But his problem was, and he was, I would say, 10, I was probably 13 to 15 years old. His communication skills and his people skills, he just sat there. And so when we got done, his mom called and we were talking and this was all through a mutual friend. and I just said, hey, the best advice I could give him is get him hooked up with a PR agency, get him some media training. Because if you look at these kids right now, like William Swalich, okay? William, we got hooked up with William a couple months ago.

That kid can talk like he is 30 years old. And he just turned 16. His people skills, the firm handshake, the not being afraid of talking in front of a camera, when you ask him a question, he'll look you right in the eye and answer it. Those are skills that you need for sponsor. sponsors. So you can be the baddest race car driver in the world. But if you can't communicate with a sponsor and they look at you like he's a rock, he just sits there. It doesn't work. So I tell kids right now is we do media training right now. I mean, we got Keelan does media training.

We bring in, we bring in some of the Fox people and they do media training with our young kids because they need that. So the first time we put them in a room with CEOs, they're ready. They can already race. These kids can race. All these kids can race. Right now, this sport, even NASCAR, it's a youth movement. I mean, you're seeing kids from the truck series, go to the cup series. When I got in the sport 20 years ago, that did not happen. No. So my point.

Well, and that's the other thing, because I, you know, I don't even know if that's what we as a sport won't, right? I mean, certainly as a team owner, it's really difficult to get an 18-year-old in your car and then represent, because that was where my next question was going in terms of consumership. Like, these guys have to be able to influence consumers, right? So yes, it's about relationships. It's about being able to talk to the CEO. But then fast forward to that, they've got to be able to influence buyers and consumers.

And that's a really difficult thing for that age, you know, to also do. It is. I actually told there's one, another kid I talked to the other day. He was probably about a month ago, but he was really good. He could speak. He could do it all. But the problem was I looked,

and I'm not a huge social media fan because sometimes I think social media can be the devil. Yeah. but social media is so good for these kids if they're young to start building their fan base up to by the time they turn 16 or 18 the first thing that we talk to when we're talking with william or brent cruz who's still who's still 15 these young people just turned 16 you just got a driver's license so you look at these kids and you look at these kids and why all these kids when they turn 16 or they turn 18 or whatever it is and you're going to walk into a sponsor and when you look in there it used to be the the VP of marketing the VP of sales and the CEO now when you walk in in there. It's the VP of marketing and VP of sales and a social media person. I mean, I just sat in a meeting the other day trying to sell sponsorship and this lady was in there and I said, and title and she's like, I'm the social media director. And I was like, this is important. When they got to see the

table, it's important. So those social media numbers have to grow because that's the only chance you have right now. I mean, on the social media front, you have, when you're a 10 year old kid, I mean, my kid plays travel baseball and travel golf, okay, but we got their social media handles when they were eight years old and I post videos and pictures of them, mostly of my family, but it's now 800 followers, 1,000 followers, and who knows one day? They might be good golfers, might be good baseball players, and they want to go out and get an NIL deal. You want to get an NIL deal, the first thing they look at, besides your performance on the field or the track, is how many social media followers, because when you tag them, are people going to see it? Yeah. So how do you advise

that? Because if you're talking about, first off, it's scary, like the age of, you. the kids that are on social media and their ability to be mature about what they're doing or too immature or whatnot. Or the things you're making them susceptible to or accessible to, which is the bad parts about social media. Yeah, absolutely. If they're not even mature enough to deal with that, right? The parents, the parents do it.

Well, absolutely. How do you, what do you tell, I wrote down, I mean, PR and communication, that's one thing that they need to be good at, right? So I want to see if your answer is similar to mine. So the first thing when someone asks me, I'm not going to take my answer. first, but they say, you know, how do I go about this? So what is not, not PR? I mean, I'm a new kid. I'm in racing. What do I need to do to like get my name out there? When? Okay. What else? Oh, you're talking about racing? No, just to, to, to get sponsors to do whatever, right, to network.

I mean, you got to market yourself. You got to build your brand. Your brand is, your brand is you. I mean, that's, that's what it is. I mean, I'll say content, content, content. 100% right like at their age they need to be building that following list they can do it through content but then you've got the question of are they the Kardashian type content are they the this type content like what are they right the Kardashians are the ones that do the content without the wins the 100% but but you look at you look at that like there was a kid the other day he I honestly I probably get five or six racing resumes a week that come to us whether it's a mom or dad or somebody but there was a kids I saw the other day

and I looked at his social media and he had 500 followers and 1,500 posts. I was good with that because it was good content but then I went over to his YouTube page and it was big. I don't do YouTube.

My kids do YouTube. A lot of people do YouTube. YouTube is a great place to put your videos but it goes back to I always run everything by Kevin with these kids. If a kid called, like with the William Swalach Brent Cruz. I use Brent Cruz as an example

Kevin, when they asked me about him, I asked Kevin about him, and he's like, oh, he had the dirt racer. He's legit. And I was like, what do you think? Should we talk to him? I mean, Kevin was like, I mean, I was one that made the introduction to you. So I went to Stenhouse and I went to Larson, both of them who are dirt racers. And they both told me that kid can win on anything on dirt. And he's a good road course racer, too.

So we got with Kevin. Kevin started working with his dad and started putting a schedule together and what we need to do. And fast forward a year and a half and he gets a Toyota deal. And now he's a full-blown Toyota kid. So we did that just because Kevin made him run different stuff. We put him in the T2 car, Trans Am car. He goes out and wins there. Put him in an ARCA car this year.

He goes out and won an ARCA race already this year. So Kevin is a huge guidance to these kids because he knows what they need to do. I can't tell you what you need a race. I can probably help you get sponsorship for it or help you with social media or stuff like that. But Kevin's, Kevin is basically the leader for the youth movement at KHA when it comes to telling these kids what they need to race. What goes around, comes around, and what happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas. For the first time ever, Dirty Mo Media is taking its hit podcast to the streets. We'll be live and we'll be in front of real people, uncensored, unapologetically authentic and totally unprepared.

So it's business as usual. But here's the catch. We'll be talking about our real lives and racing like we never had before, stories that we never dreamed would be broadcast in front of a live audience. Until now. And the only way to hear these stories is by coming to Dirty Mo Live, Dale Jr. and Friends at the Westgate Las Vegas Resort and Casino. It's Friday, October the 13th. Go to Dirtymobedia.com slash live or Ticketmaster to join me and Mike Davis from the Dale Jr. download and Brett Griffin, Freddie Craft, and T.J. Majors from Door Bumper Clear. And we're going to spill the tea on each other.

When you have decades-long careers in NASCAR, you have highlights, lowly. lights and more stories than you know what to do with. For example, the time me and Mike Davis got an argument during the race, or the time that T.J. Majors went completely radio silent on me while spotting for me during an event. Yeah, we're going to hear those stories and more. So come out to the Westgate Resort and Casino on Friday, October 13th, to see Dirtymo Live, Dale Jr. and Friends, get your tickets on Ticketmaster or visit dirtymodea.com

slash live. That's dirtymomedia. dot com slash live to get your tickets or you can find them on ticket master come join us on Friday the 13th for dirty mo live Dale junior and friends things are bound to get crazy I'm glad your answer to Kelly's question was when first because to be honest with you there's there's millions of social media influencers I'm using the air quotes I'm using you know and to be honest with you in a lot of industries and Kelly you know this we know this to be like true in the in the outdoors in the hunting industry Like the people that are influencers in hunting, probably not the best hunters or the best outdoors people, but they've got, but they, they, they are savvy and they've got the content and all that stuff.

And it's like, it's, you know, I don't know, it's a bit disconcerning, to be honest with you. It's like, like, where people, where our kids are putting all their, you know, all their interest in if they don't come with the, with the street cred. You're saying, you better win, Josh. You're saying you got to win. And I love that because frankly, let's keep our priorities aligned here. If you want to get into racing, you dang sure better be good at it. 100%. Okay.

Absolutely. And to be honest with you, it'll spit you out as quick as it can take you in. And I think it spits you out for a couple different reasons. But one, we know for sure. If you cannot win, you're not going to last, right? That's a fact. I'm glad you said that. when you get them in and they are winners and you rely on you're saying Kevin Ricky you go to your

other guys and say hey does this guy race they say he can race now you take that guy that can race and now you're going to go polish him and now what if they don't have what if they have not built up a social following what if they don't care about their brand how do you start first you say media training but what but what do you do with a kid that doesn't know anything about media what do you do with them when they go to media training our guys go to immediate training to learn how to speak because the kids that we have, they've been fortunate enough to win. And when you win and you go do the podium interviews and all that kind of stuff, you're like, I don't know what to say. Yeah. So you got, yes. And the word, um, um, um,

that happens a lot. Sure. So we work with that on, on that side of it. But going back to your question, it happens at all levels. I mean, look at my, look at my cup guys. I got cup guys that haven't won. Some got cup guys haven't won at all. Some of my drivers. Okay. Winning is hard. Okay, so going to that thing too. So winning at your short track level, I mean, you can win, but go win a late model race. And there's a reason Millbridge is getting so big. And so many people wanted to run there because when I just turn on flow and I turn it on and there's, there's NASCAR Cup drivers, truck series drivers, exfinity drivers running dirt now because they want to win. They want to see what it's like to win over there. You want to win in everything you do.

Now, these young kids that are coming up that I tell, I always ask him, hey, cool, is he a track champion? No, but we finished third last year. Okay? What kind of advice could you give somebody that finished third last year that doesn't have it? One, the first thing is, are you in the right car? Are you with the right team? Well, I race for my dad. Okay, that's fine.

You can race for your dad. Does your dad have the right employees? Well, it's my dad. Well, does your dad have a job? He's a fireman or he's a police officer or he's a sales guy. We just do it at night for fun. That's great. You don't need representation.

Not right now. You need representation when you are, in my opinion, when you are racing for somebody else. When you are racing for a different, when you are racing for your family's race team, you don't need representation, okay? That's fair. You need representation when you are racing for somebody else,

when you are trying to get from A to B to C, climb that ladder is when you need representation. And I tell these kids, I mean, I help these kids that are in their cage, I fold, these young kids, but it's on them right now. I mean, they have the equipment, they have the teams, they have everything they need to go out there and win.

Okay, so I can't help that. What I can help them doing is if, like, William just wins the ARCA East Series championship. Right now, I'm trying to get more truck races for him next year. Tricon is right around the corner. I'm trying, I'm going to go see Kevin Ray as soon as we're done and just say hi to him. But, hey, man, I need more truck races next year. This kid's good. He can do it.

He's got a couple top 10 finishes already in the truck at 16. Give him more races. And we'll find it. Just get it. So that's the kind of stuff. Yeah, it's such a challenge in our sport compared to other sports in terms of where they can go play league ball or go play, you know, school sports, etc. There's also a similarity that a lot of those things take money as well.

And that's something that some of the parents for me, you know, don't really get sometimes. It's like, well, this is so expensive for me to bring my kid out to Millbridge to race our car, to do whatever. You know, I need sponsorship. I need this. Well, it costs, I don't know, three, four grand to go do some travel ball from some of the parents I hear about, you know, seven grand, eight grand. You know, and so that's that's a thing that's a thing that I fight in trying to, you know, communicate with parents on the age and what they're doing. And, you know, you're talking about Brent Cruz and these guys are 15, 16.

But their parents have been racing with them since, you know, whatever age. I mean, Brent's race since he was about three. So talented. Kids got seven championships on seven different continents and countries or something. It's incredible. These kids are great. But like you said, like you said, these, I mean, it doesn't matter what sport. If you have a kid and he wants to be a professional athlete, it costs money.

Yeah, you got to, yeah. I mean, you want to play golf? These 15, 16-year-old kids are golfing. They live in North Carolina. They're playing in Phoenix. They're playing in Charlotte or California. They're playing in Florida every weekend. You want to be, I mean, cheer moms.

Chearing is expensive. Yeah. But it doesn't, I mean, travel hockey. I mean, I got a buddy that lives in Florida. Tells me how much money spends on his son's travel hockey because they live in Florida. Yeah. So, I mean, all sports are expensive. If you want to invest.

It's an investment. And to your point of moving around, I like that one too. And not being stuck still at one home track or whatever that might be. Moving around. That's my biggest thing. Getting acclimated to those tracks and being able to win. And not that, you know, I mean, it shouldn't take you years to do that. I told somebody the other day, a kid was from South Carolina.

He was a track champion in South Carolina. I can't remember his name. But yeah, he called me and talked to him a great kid. And he's 16 years old. And he told me, hey, I got, I think he said like 200. $200,000 a year to race. What should I do? I'm 16. And I told him because he's trying to get a name for himself. And I was like, cars tour. And here's why. For $200,000, you can find a decent ride in the cars tour. Yeah. The cars tour right now with Justin Marks, Kevin, Jeff Burton,

and Dale Earnhardt Jr. Those guys, they see it. I know, and me being who I am with Kevin, I feel like a part of that series as well, I know half of the field. every week now. I know who these kids are. I love mini. I just see these guys' names and see who these are and Lane Riggs and all these guys that are racing are now are becoming household names in the Jones House because not only do we watch the races, but I know who these kids are now and some of them are getting X-Finity rides, some of them are trying to get truck rides. That's where it's at for these kids. Yeah. And I'm not just plugging that because of these people, but that's a series where now the ownership is a part of NASCAR who, you got two of them then on a cup team

and an Xfinity program. You got two of them in the TV booth. You got a couple of Hall of Famers. I mean, they know it. And these guys walking around the garage, I've been to two races already, seeing these guys walk up to Kevin and Dale and talk, that's what it is.

Yeah. I mean, when one guy asked Kevin, how do I get to KHA management? We've had a couple of them ask. And Kevin's like, you don't need us right now. You just keep doing what you're doing here in the cars tour. People will be calling you.

But that's what it is. That's such a good example. Yeah, because by default, we start paying attention a lot more to the cars tour. Now all of a sudden I have my favorite. Many's a great one. Butterbean, I like watching him, and they're getting opportunities now. Going back to the example, though, you gave Josh, when you say $200,000, a kid says

$200,000 I got to race on, do you guys have an idea about, do you go pour all of that into the race team, or do you carve out a percentage to work on the other things that you all talk about? Because it sounds like both of you are saying that there's some investments to, you to be made early on that you can do for yourself to, you know, to go ahead and start building a foundation of some sort that may come pay off later on if you start, if you continue to win and all those things. So how much money does it cost just to do the things that, to set yourself up even more, right? Like just you're all trying to be set apart from the rest. There's a lot

of people out there. How are people going to remember you? What's, what kind of investment were we talking about that's a that's a great question i don't know that answer uh because i don't know what each series costs but i think to social media and content and communication the investment's low yeah for that for that costs anything to have an account does it right right i mean it costs us five hundred dollars a session with the media yeah that's two hours a phone a 500 a session for the media training yeah for the media train for two hours got it which is nothing and when and when we do it we've done it a couple times i think we've done it four or five times uh we do it We do it separately.

But when Keeling comes out, Keelan speaks really good anyway. A lot of these kids do. But when he comes out, it's a breath of fresh air because he's learning more. And then when you go watch and doing it, same thing with Brent Cruz. Brent Cruz's interviews are tremendous now. He looks right in the camera. He does a great job. And he has come a long way.

William, William has it. So some kids have it. Some kids don't. But it's a big, big, big opportunity for people if they can do it. You know, it's no different than when we tell our kids, at least I can speak for myself, is that, you know, I tell my daughters, like, when, when somebody's speaking to you, look them in the eye. Absolutely. I can promise you that most of your friends do not do this, and therefore, if you are the one that does this, you will be remembered.

You'll be remembered for that. Remember for the right reasons. I mean, it doesn't seem like it's too different, right? You're trying to make an impression with the people that matter, right? And you don't even know who it is all the time, right? So it's like, it's almost like a 24, 24-hour job interview. you're always on audition or at least you got to treat it that way if you're a driver and then oh by the way win you still got to do that yeah don't suck that that sucking will hurt you when no matter how much you also notice this is a this is sort of a fault of my own because I'm like so controlling and want to be like handle everything but I've noticed with Wyatt um in particular when I'm not around he's so much better at speaking and so much better at taking care of himself and so on so like

an example of the rate when we did the race hub thing um when he took them up to his room and he was just describing you know wins and trophies and this that and the other and then when we got to the racetrack they interviewed the three of us together and you know what he did turned and look at me seriously like either are they asking you the question or are you going to answer for me mom and that's a fault of mine because i'm i often do that for my kids you know i'm often like step in the middle of it. But I think that's a good point that like they've got to do that. Parents need to tell them. Look someone in the eye. Give a firm handshake, so on and so forth. But at the same time, I think that, you know, we can get too involved, you know, and like let them be themselves, let them have a

personality, let them make a mistake or whatnot so they get it and learn, right? And figure it out. I'm so glad you brought that up because that's a great question for Josh. Josh, have you ever had to have conversations with parents of drivers? And maybe let's not even. put you in that. Let's just say, is there a time when K-H-I management might have to say, or if there's situations that happened where you would be comfortable going and having a real heart-to-heart with parents saying, you're causing more problems than it's worth. Let's step back and let's let this guy or gal mature as they make the mistakes, do that kind of thing. Absolutely. But we haven't had that opportunity yet because when we bring these kids in,

I mean, it's a parent first. I mean, we talk to the parents first, and we just say, hey, here's how we work. Because at the end of the day, these kids are, they're 11 years old and 16 years old and 14 years old. So we work directly with the parents, but we tell them what we can offer. But then we also ask, we also say, here's what we need out of you. Okay. We need you to be the parent, not the coach. We need you to be positive.

These kids, I mean, it happens a lot, but like, they're already hard on themselves if they don't win a race. they don't need the parents to be hard on them too. You know what I mean? And I have that problem for myself at home. I get on my kids and then we have that problem in our family. Yeah, I get on my kids. I'm like, dude, come on. We got to hit better, Mason.

Come on. Right. Hustle. Hustle. Three for three. I've learned that you need to have those conversations the next day. Man, in the heat of like after a race, you want to sit there and talk about the mistakes or whatever's going on or what you could have done different.

I'm like, oh. Yeah. Let's talk about that tomorrow. Yeah. And I give Kevin, I give Kevin a lot of credit because, I mean, he went. I mean, he's a race car driver, he wins, and he wants his son to win, and he does that. And Keelan does win a lot. But what I like about Kevin, and the first thing I ever saw going to a race and watching him is

Keelan goes out, and this was in go-carts, and he qualifies. I think he's on the poll. And Keelan made some comment to him about something, not a smart-ass comment, but just kind of a cocky comment. And Kevin kind of walked over, and I saw him talk, he was over there talking to, like, the tournament or the director of the series or whatever. and I forget how it went, but it's something about he told him to start him in the back. So Keelan started in the back of the race

because he was like, it was too easy or something like that. And he made the comment, but he started him in the back. But Kevin, what Kevin does with Keelan, I try to do the same thing with my kids. I watch Kevin and how he does a lot of stuff. And when I see him say that, I'll go do that to my son in his golf world or his baseball world

because when Kevin says, hey, you need to watch this guy right here. You need to follow everything. Whatever he says to him, I take that and I use it in other sports. So Kevin's guidance to these kids. And I mean, I talked to Kevin yesterday and he was like, I just got the phone with William. So these kids ask the veterans.

And the cup guys do. I mean, the cup guys, when they go to certain tracks, they'll call Kevin that represent KHA. And it's like, how the hell do you get around this track in Phoenix like this? Why are you so good there? And he helps him. Yeah. I noticed too when Keeling came and ran a few dirt races at Millbridge, Kevin stayed up in the stands.

And he specifically said to me, this isn't my willhouse. I'm going to let the people that are helping him and working with him do this because this isn't my wheelhouse. And I think parents need to realize that as well, right? I'm not the expert here in this. Maybe he's, you know, he's definitely an expert in pavement racing and whatnot. But I think that's another thing that parents can learn and understand, right? Because a parent can ruin a kid's career. I mean, and I haven't seen it on the KHA side, but in this world, you hear a lot of stuff about, oh, man, don't bring him over there.

his parents are, whew, but that happens. But that happens in all sports. Yeah. I mean, all sports have the same problem. Parents could be the trouble. Well, the ball family comes to mind in terms of whether or not they're, you know, those kids are successful and they play in the NBA, but, you know, you couldn't have a conversation about the kid without about hearing about the dad or the dad doing all the interviews. And it's just, you know, it's like, wait a second, that can't be, that can't be helping them. How many times are we at our school games for our kids and we like see that parent? Right? And you just try not to be that parent.

And we try not to be that parent. I'm not that parent because I go ahead and volunteer to be the coach. Because the coach can't, coach can say that. So that's why I coach everything. That's the key. So when I'm the coach, I can't be the parent. I'm the coach. So we're good.

So let's step away for a second from the young ones that are trying to get in. And let's talk about the season veterans and the stuff like that. I'm curious about what challenges there are right now when it comes to contracts for drivers and the things that they are up against. And this can also be an athlete, just if you don't want to go specific to drivers. But what are the challenges today in today's sports climate that these athletes are facing when trying to get good deals,

fair deals? Yeah. Sponsorship, contract, all of it. I would say the number one key to all driver contracts now are sponsorships. There is a number that the team needs to get to, to make sure that driver gets paid what he wants to get paid. And what I've seen lately, Fred and I,

we were actually just discussing this today earlier, is when we see a contract and it is heavily based on bonus programs, they don't have a lot of money for that car. That's right. That's the number one thing. When you're reviewing a contract, and it is heavy, heavy, heavy, heavy bonus program,

that means they're basically banking on you not making the playoffs, you not winning a race, because they need that sponsorship fund to continue the car, which is fine. This, that's how this sport is. I mean, you have $20 million in that race car, your driver's making a pretty penny. You have $3 million in that race car. Your driver's probably only making purse money.

But that's what this sport is. And this sport's been around for a long time. So it works. Okay. But what we're seeing right now, and we talked about this earlier when we were talking, that you don't see a race car with 38 races with the same sponsor anymore. No. Doesn't happen anymore.

2010, 2013, 80% of the cars. I mean, I remember, this is how crazy it was. I was telling Tony Stewart this a while back. I remember when he had an Alpha Bravo paint scheme. You know what I mean? With Old Spice and Office Depot. And I was like, two sponsors on one car? How is that going to work?

But he made it work. And then all of a sudden it went from that to, okay, you got two sponsors, three sponsors. I mean, for the longest time with Kevin, he had GM Goodrich for 90% of his races, and then 10% with that. Reese's. And then Jim Goodner's kind of way, and then went it to Reese's and Ream, and then they went away. Then it went Jimmy, Johnson. And now today, 21 years later, he's got seven

cup sponsors for one guy. So, but you look at that, but that's the new norm. So sponsorship is what drives our sport. And if you don't have a sponsorship, your driver's not getting paid. So you have to, you have to risk it. I mean, I risk it with a couple guys and say, hey, man, go out there and win a race or sneak into the playoffs and you're going to get paid. So that's how it is. But bonus programs are the key. When I look at a contract and the same thing when I send it off to Fred and we're both reviewing this stuff, the first thing we say is, okay, here's what we think he's going to make, but projected if he gets one win, his salary is going to base, or his money is going to make, he's going to triple. It's going to be like that because that's how they have to, it's just a balance act.

That doesn't sound great for the driver. I mean, like, to me, like, it's just less guarantee. There's not money to guarantee anybody in a big contract as well. All you're saying is that the sponsorship landscapes to sort of, I don't know, precarious or whatever it is. Is that what you're saying? It just depends. Some drivers. I mean, the top guys, they're fine. Yeah, let's not talk about that.

We're talking the middle tier. Let's talk about basically 13 to 30th. Okay. Right. Those guys are fighting, risking it all, racing hard, and all that stuff. I mean, look at Ryan Priest's an example the other day. I mean, after Daytona. Yeah.

I mean, Ryan, he is probably one of the hardest working. athletes in general that I have because not only is he a professional race car driver, but he brings 90% of that sponsorship dollars on his own. All that stuff, he works hard for that. Now he's got relationships and he works hard for that. And he works just as hard on the racetrack as he does off the racetrack to keep everybody happy because that's how he is. You know what I mean?

So he is the kind of guy that I look at and say, does he make a lot of money? He does good. He makes great money. He does great. He's got a beautiful family. Just had a kid. He does all that. But he busts his butt, both on and off the track,

to be able to get what he has. And that is key. That is key. I mean, you look at a lot of these guys have sponsor dollars. A lot of these guys have it, whether it's family, friends, whatever it is. It works. Some guys don't.

So the guys that don't have to bust it to get to where they need to be. Now, they're all professional athletes. They make left-hand turns for a living. So life isn't bad. But at the end of the day, some guys work a lot harder for their sponsorship than other guys do.

And Kevin, and you look at like, for instance, with Kevin, we talked about this earlier. Kevin works hard for his sponsors because he's kept him for 20 years. Yeah, I was going to say, I think everybody has to work hard these days. They work hard. But Kevin's working hard is different. I mean, Kevin has, Kevin's working hard is, I mean, he's, that four car is fast. He's won a lot of races, a lot of races. He won championships.

So it comes with the name. He's a champion. These younger guys that are coming up, I mean, you look at Harrison Byrne, you look at Todd Gillen, you look at some of these guys, they're good race car drivers. They've won at Xfinity series. The cup is hard. To win in a cup series, it's very hard. And once you win, you're still not guaranteed a spot. Okay. There's cup drivers that have won in the last eight or nine years that aren't racing anymore. So, but my point is, when you get to the top level, you're not, it's not like

baseball and football where, ah, 20 years or $200 million on seven years. It's not like that. Like, you have to bust it. And if you're, and you're busting it and you're not getting it done, they will make a change. Be specific. When you say, when it's busting it off the track, What specifically are you needing them to do to better their opportunities? Off the track? Is it cold calling? No, no, no. Is it showing up at the local Ace Hardware?

Is it signing? Is it doing free autographs? What specifically are they doing? Working to build your brand. These guys are still building their brands in the Cup series. I mean, they are still building their brand. So we'll use Ryan an example. Ryan had that crazy wreck the other day.

Okay. Crazy wreck. And he went from here. in a week or overnight to hear. I mean, we were turning down ABC News, turning out, we had a lot of opportunities. His brand grew like that. Would he want to do that again?

Absolutely not. No. Okay, but my point is, is that how you want to do it? But my point is he went to there. Now, we have sponsors that are excited about the future with him, and he's a couple top 10 finishes of late, but he busted in the gym.

When he's done in the gym, he goes straight into the marketing office, he goes and meets with the sales guy, he goes and meets with the crew chief, he goes to meet with the content team. Then he comes over to KHA and meets with us. he works. He is a hard worker. He is a hard working kid

for sure. But he does it all. Like he has to. Like he's got eight or nine sponsors in that car. He brought those sponsors to table. So he wants to make sure in the marketing office you guys doing everything right for these sponsors. You know what I mean? Anything I could do to help you? And stuff like that. That's a personality thing too because I've heard drivers, you know, that have come through here

that talk about and L. Dub says this from time to time for himself whenever he was trying to make it in the Bush series is that he wasn't persistent enough because persistence can be negative or positive, right, depending on what's going on. And, you know, you have to be persistent. You have to work hard.

You have to be diligent and, you know, just work it hard. If I saw every one of my drivers in here every day of the week, that would be amazing. If I see one that's in here every day of the week and one that's in here once every two weeks, I've obviously got a different opinion about how hard they're working, right? and what they're doing for themselves. So, yeah, I think that persistence is necessary. Yeah. And when you get to this level, when you get this level, you need to be around your team.

Yeah. I mean, Ryan works out with this team every morning. He works out with his team. I mean, Harrison Burton is in the shop visiting his guy. Todd Gillen goes over to see his guys. Take him out to dinner. Be a part of it. Just make it one family.

Kevin has, it's amazing what Kevin does with his team. I mean, since I start with him in 2002, basically, I mean, whether it was a hockey, game or a basketball game or a football game we take the team we just call up and get a suite and do all this stuff and entertain them to make them feel like because they bust those crew guys they bust their butts so hard on the old days when you'd leave Thursday morning and you'd come home basically Monday morning or midnight like they were gone four days and they worked from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. And there was no time to enjoy it. So we we do that and that's the same thing with these young kids. You have to take care of people. These young kids. I mean William does an amazing job. I mean with his race teams he does an amazing job for

these kids. He helps him out. He goes out to lunch with him. He takes him to dinner. He takes his archer crew chief out. They talk like that's what you need to do. Build a relationship. It's not just show up, race the car and go home. Yeah. You have to put effort into it. And that's what I like. During the past few months, our friends at Lionel Racing have been busy making the new late model diecast tools important to Lionel that fans can get die cast cars that accurately represent what's run on the racetrack. And that's also important to race teams, drivers, and to me personally. So our licensing team at Junior Motorsports has been working hand in hand with the production team at Lionel to make sure that these new late model diecasts have updated details and are something

that collectors will be happy with and I think that we have nailed it. From several of the late model stock cars that I've driven over the last several months to late models of other drivers like Kevin Harvick, Kyle Larson, Josh Barry and some of today's biggest names in short track racing, fans can now get a brand new late model diecast that not only has this new body, but also an updated chassis and interior. Lionel Racing's new late model diecast is available to order in both 124 and 164 scales at Lionelracing.com. And if you use promo code late model 23, you'll get free shipping.

So check out the 2003 late model diecast on offer. at lionelracing.com and be sure to use late model 23 to get free shipping on your purchase. What about social media? You talk about how they need to be working on their social media to get, you know, to get opportunities and to start building followings and that. But we all know that can also come backfire on you with just, you know, a slip up here. There's not a lot of forgiveness. It can, it can, you can lose a job fast. Okay. So my question, I guess, because we get this a lot too. I mean, Kelly, you got four drivers that at any one time you're responsible for and how they're behaving on social media. You can't be, you can't be keeping out on them and your own kids and everybody else. So what do you guys do in terms of trying to manage, follow, keep in touch? You know, are you checking social media a lot? Are you having conversations with your drivers about how they, You know, how they engage with people on social media matters.

What's your take on all that? Well, 90% of my clients are grown men. So I kind of let them do what they want to do until they mess up. And we talk to them. I mean, every blue moon will get somebody who'll send a note and say, hey, should I post this? Golf, those guys speak their mind a lot, especially when the Live Tour came about.

Oh, wow, yeah. So a couple of my golfers, well, one of my golfers love to go on and post his opinions on a lot of stuff. and we got a lot of heat from fans and the PGA tour itself. We're honest about it. But he talked to the PGA tour why he did this and why he said that. And it kind of was his fine there. But I tell my NASCAR drivers, especially the young kids,

and my young kids, their parents are still doing their social media. So it's fine. But my UFC fighters and on them, nothing good happens after 9 o'clock to 9 a.m. The 99 rule. The UFC came up with that many years ago in a meeting I said, and it's the 99 rule. Nothing good happens between 9 o'clock.

P.m. and 9 a.m. on social media. Nothing. Unless you have a schedule post to go out. When you're posting something at 11 o'clock at night, you've been drinking or something, and you'll probably regret it. So it's the 99 rule. And the UFC came up with it five or six years ago, and basically don't post after 9 p.m. or before 9 a.m. And that was the 99 rule. And we've been pretty good with our UFC fighters on that and our golfers and stuff. I'm not really worried about the NASCAR stuff. Honestly, Kevin doesn't even post. I mean, he looks at it. We post mostly forums. KHA does because we post for a lot of our kids. kids when it comes to sponsor plugs, pre-post race reports, or tuning alerts.

We do all that kind of stuff. But we haven't had that problem. Now, is there social media problems? Yes, NASCAR's got some problems on social media that we've seen. But I think it's about the people you surround yourself with and staying on them and bringing it up. I mean, and I'm not saying anything bad about anybody, but we, as a company, when we bring a client in, we go through everything.

Here's who's going to do your social media. This is Kelly. Here's going to do your marketing. here's going to do this and they know. So they reach out to Kelly if they want to post something and she helps them with it and it goes from there. But it's social media for us has been fine, but it's not fine for a lot of people. I think it kind of goes back to what you said earlier. You know, you have to have a certain level level of credibility, integrity. I was laughing hard yesterday on Denny Hamlin's responses to so many people on social media. It was hilarious

because, you know, they said he calls the wreck and da-da-da-da-da. And just his responses were just great. Very sarcastic. Very sarcastic. Right. Like, but, but you, they were sarcastic, but he couldn't get in trouble for him. You know what I mean? And you knew what his was, he was implying, but they were straight up, good, solid,

nothing to get in trouble for comments, right? But there's a level of credibility for Denny Hamlin in doing so. He wins. He's a champion. He's got, you know, great sponsors. And so I think, you know, at some point you, there's that obviously certain things can get in trouble. Don't get me wrong. But there's a credibility of how you can interact on social media with people, you know, and doing that kind of stuff.

And being yourself, because you want to be true to who you are, right? Oh, yeah. You don't want to be fake. Well, okay, but on that point, let me play devil's advocate for a second. You don't want to be fake. But then you also said that you guys, the company, the management team, does a lot of the posting for the, for the other. That's the easy stuff. Yeah, that's the easy stuff. They don't want to do that stuff. That's not them. That's not them. What we're saying is though is... That's a PR role. Yeah, like, if Denny Hamlin's being real and giving these funny responses knowing he's not going to get in trouble, he's not going to say, I didn't mean to do that. Everything is fine. I'm sorry. Like, that's fake. Or he's not going to say like F off or something like that, right? I mean, he's going to give a reply. You know he's... Yes. You know. Denny Hamlin is a great example. Denny Hamlin is a great example. And you look at all our sports. Like she just...

said, Denny Hamlin can post stuff like that on his social media, but he's got to be careful because if he doesn't have sponsors at the top of our game, just like Kyle Bush with Mars and M&Ms. You have to be on your game, but in basketball and football and baseball, you can make those comments and still play tomorrow morning or still play the next day because that's a team. You know what I mean? That's a team sport. Not saying anything bad. Like you can't be bad stuff.

But they're not going to penalize you. But if Denny says, if Denny just made a comment of, I don't even know what it is, of nice shirt or you should put a shirt on, you should tell him somebody with a post, or just saying something like that, those fans could turn around and go right at Denny, write it, start tagging FedEx, start doing all the stuff. That's right, the sponsors. Just tagging the sponsors. That's right.

That's when it gets bad. But in other sports, they don't have sponsors. They have a team. And usually the person that's running the social media, the team is not going to go and say, hey, don't say that. They just tag the Detroit Tigers. and said that doesn't matter. But when FedEx or Anheiser Bush or any sponsor you can think of,

doesn't have to be any sponsor, if they start getting tagged on comments, the first thing they're going to do is we've got to protect our brand. Who cares about the driver? Right. And so your response to that is what? If a sponsor called me and said, hey, your driver. I have a problem. Let's use the golfer, for example.

And you didn't use a name. So we'll just say this golfer who is very opinionated. We want them to be opinionated, don't we? We want people. But then all of a sudden it starts affecting the people that pay, which is the sponsors. And they're calling you, Josh, not them, but you saying, hey, shut him up. I got a problem with that. What do you do?

We actually almost had that problem. We actually stayed ahead of it. When we saw the post that were coming and Rory McElroy, Rory came out and made a comment about him, we stayed ahead of it. We called the sponsors and just gave him all heads up. We screen shot at some stuff and said, hey, this little few. going on right here, just FYI, and a lot of our sponsors didn't care. They were like, cool, cool, whatever, but we stayed ahead of it. What we don't want to do is have them call you. If you

can beat them and call them first, you're fine. But if they're calling you, you're in trouble. We haven't had that. We lately, we had that with a UFC fighter about seven years ago. We had one of our, one of our fighters no longer with us. She's not a, she's not a, part of KHA anymore, but we had a sponsor call us and basically said, hey, we don't like a post that. She just posted. Can you get her to take it down? Well, we asked her to take it down and she kind of got defensive. So we had to pick it, we had to pick. Do we keep this client? Or do we keep the sponsor? And this sponsor's paying millions. So we had to part ways with the client. And it was mutual. With the person, not the sponsor. With the, with the athlete,

with the athlete. We parted ways just because of that. And it worked. But we still have the sponsor today. So think about that. That was seven years ago. So that's the, if, If you can stay ahead of everything, it's no different than a suspension in NASCAR, a suspension in any sport there is. If you can get to the client or get to the sponsor, but if they read it on social media, you've got a 75 to 80% chance that everything's going to be fine. It's so funny because I say this about that, I say to start Dirty Mo team. Don't let, we don't need to, I don't like us finding out problems or errors by Dale Jr.

texting me. Oh, perfect. If Dale Jr. is texting me. It's going too far. Yeah, I want to identify these things before it gets to Dale, and we don't know when he's on social, that kind of thing. And so like that that's the same principle, right? Like when you, Kelly, you know this all too well. But when Dale calls you up at some absurd time, whatever, it's usually, all right, you know, you look at it and like, oh, God, what is this about, you know, and it's because there's probably something that's set him all for not, that he's not happy with. Yeah, you don't like it. Yeah, absolutely. What else can they do for you guys to drop them as a client? We don't drop clients.

That was a, no, no. They dropped themselves. I'm saying this. No, this is a message to the current clientele who you guys are in great relations with. What can they do that forces you to go, I can't be, you can't be part of KHA anymore? That would probably have to be a social media post or, something that is negative toward our clients, sponsors. That's the thing.

I mean, the one thing about KHA, when you look at our portfolio of athletes, there's a common denominator. And the thing is, they all get along. They're people skills. They can talk. And they're all winners. Okay. And if you look at it, whether it's golf, whether it's UFC, whether it's NASCAR,

everybody's won at some level, okay? golf, we've got 10-time winners in the PGA 2, our golfers are combined NASCAR, it's hundreds of wins. But my point is, when everybody, not only is a professional athlete in a winner, they know what each person needs. I fly with Kevin 95% of the time to the races. Even though I'm managing all these clients, they don't look at it and say, oh, there he is with Kevin. He's Kevin's his favorite client. Kevin says, no, Kevin owns our company. We talk business.

I come to you. We're all in this together. So that's kind of how it is. But I get that question a lot. I get that question a lot for people in the garage. Other drivers. I'm talking to other drivers right now. And the first thing they say, especially last year, was one is,

will Kevin know everything that when I come to you, will Kevin know what my salary is? Will Kevin know this? It's a great question. That's what we get that a lot. We say this. Kevin oversees our company. He gives input.

He sees it all. He's a part of everything. 99.9% of the time he's given the right information. Nobody's perfect, but he gives the right information. To the point where. He was a big part of the Ricky Stenhouse deal because I texted him and I told him where I was. And within five seconds, he told me the three teams that had drivers available. You got to remember this.

This was after the Roval is when this happened four years ago. This was after Roval. There's not much time left in the year to find a job. And we were fortunate enough to find it by working together. And we had Ricky, Ricky was let go. He finished the season out, but Ricky was let go. And four hours later, we had a contract in hand reviewing. Ricky told us, you know, in vivid detail how that whole thing transpired on the download when Ricky was on talking to Del and I.

It's pretty fascinating if anybody wants to hear that story. I mean, you know that, but that's where I remember very specifically Kevin being very vocal right off the jump, right after he was fired. I remember that. Kevin was automatically vocal in the media, completely unimpressed of how he was let go. and that obviously wasn't a strategic thing that's Kevin being who he is right that's Kevin you know going to bat for for the thing that's right versus the things that he sees are wrong and I always appreciated that so so what is the answer by the way when when those guys ask if Kevin knows their salaries the answer is yes of course he does right well he knows he knows

everything he doesn't review their contracts and stuff that Fred and I do that but he wants to make sure they're happy yeah they're making what they need like he'll get on us and say, get him more or get him this or he deserves this, he wants to make sure everybody gets exactly what they want. That's the thing. And that's a big part of our sport right now. Everybody wants to get what they want. But then when they look at the breakdown of what the team is bringing in for sponsorship,

it goes back to that bonus program. You can look at a contract right now. And you don't even have to look at at the end where it says the salary and the base paying all that. If you look at the bonus program and you see half a million dollars to make, to make the playoffs and $300,000 for a win, you know that, one, they're not expecting for you to win, okay? And I'm dead serious. It doesn't matter what sport that is.

That's how it is. It's the bonus production. It's no different than if you look at an NFL team. His contract's $90 million. Well, he's only getting paid $32 of the 90. He's got to make a Pro Bowl, be the MVP, win the Super Bowl, and there's his $90 million. So my point is, like, there's a lot of stuff that goes behind.

Yeah. Could you imagine? I told something this the other day. Could you imagine if NASCAR and the teams released, released the numbers of what these guys make, whether it's truck, Xfinity, and Cup? Like you watch baseball,

these guys get $2 million signing bonuses out of high school and they're going to play single A baseball. Okay, they do this. But the sport would be crazy if they released. They used to release the purse, which was awesome because people would text me and like, holy cow,

you guys get that much money to do circles that don't know anything about racing. They don't get it. But if they saw this, I tell this people today, like, NASCAR drivers, there's a lot of money out there. People walk in, you go shopping in a store, you see people wear all still Dale Jr. stuff or still whatever it is. They're wearing that stuff because that's their guy, okay?

That's what it is. You go to a football game, everybody's wearing that stuff, but this is nation. Panther fans are here. There's some Panther fans all over the country. Other places. But there's race fans all over this country, and they wearing the same stuff. So NASCAR drivers, if we would just release that stuff, which I don't want them to, but I'm just saying if they ever did,

I think the sport would be bigger because I think people would be like, I'm going to go watch this. This dude's making this much money to drive in a circle. I got to see what it's like. You know what I mean? Because you think about that.

Everything is so quiet and private. In golf, all the purses are shared, and they know what you make. They don't know what your sponsorship deals are, but they know what that is. NASCAR is like the only sport in all of professional sports. When we fight, when the fights over,

we fight's over, we fight Connor McGregor, a cowboy did. As soon as the fight was over, two hours later, boom, there's your pay. And they were like, wow, look at how much money these guys are making. I never thought about that. But that's NASCAR. NASCAR doesn't do that, which is fine because it is kind of all over the place.

But they're still all professional athletes, but the money, I'm telling you, it would open people's eyes if they saw how much money a lot of these guys made or how much least money money they made. Both ways. Both ways. That's what I'm thinking, yeah. Hey, Kelly, are you doing what I'm doing when he's talking about, you can tell based off the bonus structure of the contracts on whether the team's got money? Are you thinking about what our contracts are with our drivers right now? Yeah. Yeah, but ours are. Yeah, a little different, but yes. That's what I'm thinking.

I'm like, oh, my God, who's he talking about? No, I'm not talking about anybody. The good thing about this sport is a lot of the managers talk, just like the owners talk. A lot of the managers talk. So we kind of see what a lot of guys are. And I'm not even talking about any of my guys. I'm saying in general, when I picked up a lot of these guys,

they were already under contracts. They have good. If you're a cup series driver, you're living fine. Yeah. Okay? That's fine. But what I'm saying, though, is some of these race teams, whether it's trucks, Xfinity or Cup,

if they only pay purse, they can't pay salary, the salary is low. It's just because they're trying to break even to race. It's not that they're doing anything bad. Our model is so heavily concentrated on sponsorship. That's the bottom line. But you race to break even here too on the race course. Oh, absolutely. See, that's what we always did too.

You race to break even. That's the key. So that's why when you see this stuff, they need this money. They need this just to break even to have it. Because at the end of the day, it doesn't matter what team you're on, and make the money you make if the people on that team aren't getting paid and aren't making the right money to get the good guys on your team you're not going anywhere right exactly people don't believe me when i say that but the racing to break even most most teams that you think um you know just rake in money

they're just really breaking even they may be making their money in other other businesses yeah but for the most part i mean like yeah it's such a hard difficult arduous arduous sport right and you are signing up for it for another whole generation by the way you know well i know but i think you know i was trying to i don't know if you could articulate the differences between some of the athletes that you represent like on you know i'm just sitting here thinking about being a golfer okay you're you've got to you and only you have to be good golfer period you don't there's nothing i mean you know you got to learn to i guess golf the course and whatever but you you you it's just in your hands, right? You've got the talent, you got the golfer. On the football team or the

baseball team or the baseball is probably a little different because you've got to be able to hit well and not at a lot. But so many other variables go on in some of those sports, right? That is the team depending on a lot of other people. Same thing in our sport. It's like dependent on so many different variables, right? I mean, you've got to be talented. Don't get me wrong, but there's so many other variables. And so I mean, I'm just, I was just sitting here thinking like how to articulate the differences in the sponsorship and I don't know. I don't even know. It's just complicated. I mean, motorsports is complicated at the end of the day. It is the hardest. It is complicated. It is. It's the hardest sport I work in. Yeah. From from the driver's perspective to making it to

the team's perspective of operating to the sponsorship model because we are so heavily dependent on that sponsorship. You know, as you were talking earlier, I was thinking about, you know, when you're talking about all the different paint schemes, I mean, that really changed after 2008 and the economy and then now being able to go to market the way you can in social media and content and there's less expensive ways than versus the traditional ways of, you know, TV and billboards and so on and so forth. And so there's just so different to be.

to be able to do all that. And these other guys, golfers and ballplayers and all that, they're not dependent on how much money they can bring to the table. They get paid based off of their talent. They got to make a cut to get paid, right? Correct. Correct. Like if they don't make the cut, it's hard.

Yeah, I mean, they have sponsors. So they have sponsors and they have club deals and ball deals and shoe deals and glove deals. So they make the money. But I will tell you this about the PGA tour. And I've learned this over the last 10 years. it is the only professional sport where you can lose money as an athlete

and here's why James Hahn is one of my golfers okay James Hahn when the season started he made like let's just say he made a tournament or two and he made 30 or 40 grand whatever it is the first two tournaments by making the cut

then he missed seven straight cuts in a row which you're paying for hotels flights car rentals rental food a caddy catty gets salary that's right caddy caddies per die Caddy's hotel room,

Caddy's rental car. Okay, so you're putting all that in there. So you're every weekend. That's seven straight weekend and let's just say $10,000 a week. Yeah, to go. You're out $70 grand

because you didn't make a cut. Okay, and you're gone seven days a week. So you miss seven straight cuts. You're down. Okay. Then he comes to Charlotte that year after missing

seven straight cups and wins the Wells Fargo Tournament and it puts in the paper $1.2, $1.3 million. So then he makes money. Okay. But my point is, you look at some of these golf golfers that are 128th in the FedEx Cup, 129th the FedEx Cup,

they're not guaranteed spots every tournament. They got to get in, they got to play in a Monday qualifier, okay, and all that stuff. Golf is the hardest sport of all the sports I work in because it is so hard to win a golf tournament. You're playing against 170 people every weekend. You make a cut, you're down to 60 or whatever it is. Okay. In NASCAR, you're racing the same 36, 40 guys every weekend. Some guys make the cut if they have a Daytona 500.

But it's still hard. get me wrong, but golf is different. Golf is a sport where the live tour has come in and kind of taken, taken over their side of it, where there's guaranteed money over there now. The PGA tour is changing their model. There will be guaranteed money as well coming in to some of these guys to pay for caddies, to pay for travel. Because you got to remember, not only do they have the travel, you got golf coaches, you got strength coaches, you got mental coaches, you know what I mean? So you got all this stuff. So, which is a big part for the NASCAR kids, too, is going back to what you were saying.

Watching these, these kids need to be, I don't want to say lifting weights in the gym, these young kids, but they need to be getting trainers, working out, training, and learning as they go. Mental coaches are big for a lot of stuff. I'm so glad you said that because that is another thing. I wanted to ask you both, frankly, how invested do you allow yourself to get in when drivers who we know can be head cases? And I say that as a compliment.

They got a lot going on to mind. I get a lot on the line. Or said another way, their confidence. is worth two-tenths, right? A confident driver is at least two-tenths faster, and I just, I've seen it too many times. I remember when Dale Jr. is like, I'm the best race car driver on a track.

He would win races. When that just ounce of doubt started infiltrating and getting into his mind, it snowballed. It snowballed into a, what was that? We went two years or something without a win, and it was like, wow, this was a, I'm, the best race car driver on the track to, you know, I'm just trying to, you know, now you got, you know, Lance McGrew keeping him out there just to lead a lap on old tires. And it's like,

what are we doing to his confidence? So my question to both of you is that like how often, even as, as much as you want to just be into the business side of this, whether it be running Junior Motorsports Kelly or, you know, in all these drivers careers for you, Josh, you sometimes end up in the personal stuff and the mental and the confidence. Do you find you end up, how? having to coach them up, having to be their psychiatrist or something. How often does that happen? And do you enjoy that part? What do you know, what's the line on that on getting too close then?

Yeah, I mean, we get pretty invested because, I mean, they're in our cars, week in and week out. And so you're right. That confidence is a difference maker. And it's not, I mean, it goes to the crew chief and their team and everything just really jelling together and those people getting along and not having any issues. And I mean, you have to get in the middle of that when you see that go sour. So, I mean, very heavily invested from my standpoint.

I think her standpoint is more important than my standpoint. Well, sure, because she's got her team. Because you have teams and employees. You're having to maintain it. Yeah. What I do on my side a lot, I listen a lot. After races, my phone's open. And I get a lot of phone calls and a lot of venting.

And they want to get their frustration out of how bad the car was, how bad this. And it's not even just that. How bad the catty. was this weekend reading putts how bad my my coach trained me this week you know i mean like it's it's everything i'm kind of a i don't want to say like a i'm kind of guy they just lean on for advice and what do you need to do here do and i'm and i'll say do you want me to make a phone call do you want me to call somebody i'll call somebody for you you're a voice of reason yeah usually they don't they just want you're available it's what sounds basically and your voice to raise it

Because, I mean, it comes down to like, God, we were awful today. We were awful. Terrible. Okay. Okay. That's fine. Hey, we're still in this. We're good.

It's only one race. Okay? It's only one race. We're still, we've got 35 to go. You know what I mean? It's stuff like that. So a lot of part of my job is a voice of reason. I mean, it doesn't matter.

The biggest one is when a UFC fight, it loses a fight on Saturday. That phone call Sunday when they say, hey, I'm sorry. It was terrible. I wasn't ready. I froze up or whatever it is. It's part of it, or her. I think another part of it too is like being able to mentor them on the bigger picture, right? And sharing that experience with you.

And I won't name names, but this has happened at Millbridge. I was innocent bystander to a situation where you have two teammates driving for a particular owner out there in the micros who personally have issues with each other. So therefore, they're in the same dash and they, you know, have an issue with each other, but they're racing for the same team. And they come in and the team owners livid, you know, and so they, you know, they're going to them. And then it's that voice of reason, like you said, that bigger picture of why is this important, right? Where do you leave things? What do you do? So, you know, in your role of managing and coaching drivers, and I mean, I do this with Dale often, you know, it's like you want to listen. And I'm in a unique role being

sister and, you know, the business person. And I have to figure out which hats sometimes put on, right? But you want to listen, but then you also want to offer up advice and mentorship and suggestion or whatever it is. I don't know much about the competition part of it. I love my role here because I like take it like the motherly figure, right? I let competition yell at them, getting the meetings, do whatever, whatever. And then when I know they're done, I go out to the drivers and I put my arms around them or whatever, you know, and give them whatever kind of encouragement they need because I don't, I can yell at people.

I don't do bad at that. That's true. but like I don't want to gloss over this. I'm not to get mad over person. What about the Cars Tour though? How deep did you have to get into all those other parts of the business in the Cars Tour? And Josh, this is going to come to you as well because I mean, both, everybody knows, Dale, Kevin, Jeff Burton, Justin Marks, all four owners of the Cars Tour. But there was a lot of work to be done in a short amount of time. Well, I think that's from the business perspective. And, you know, Josh and I've worked closely on that. and you kind of, we all have our different

expertise, right? So Josh works a lot on the sponsorship side. That for me, that purchase for me, I look at obviously running Dell's businesses and was able to look at it from Kevin's standpoint and Jeff's standpoint and Justin standpoint too of just making sure everything was buttoned up. And that's, I love that stuff.

That's my expertise. But I also like to sit in pretty much everything right now just to understand. You know, when you have four personnel, involved in something, different ways of thinking about things. Then we have the business people behind the scenes thinking about things. You've got a previous owner in Jack McNally who we need his expertise and how he's ran things, but we also want to be able to look at things differently and more open-minded.

So it takes a lot to kind of make all that work. But, you know, I want to get in there and learn and listen, you know, to all of those kinds of things right now. because I need to know how it works so that when I do have a suggestion or I have a thought, you know, you've kind of went down the checklist of everything that absolutely could go. But one day, I hope there's a day when we can, we build it up and we back away, right? I feel like you're all in on that car's tour. I feel like you're the leader of the pack. Well, I tell you, if nobody is leading the pack, then, you know, I mean, you see how it goes, right?

you send something out on a text messages and you know everybody has their thought but somebody's got like bring the thought back together like somebody's got to have a final fault and organize the final thought okay so you're saying they'll say cool and they'll be like I need an answer cool cool Kevin will say Justin or Dale would be like or the one thing I love about the group text for the carster thumbs up yeah there are so many thumbs up and I don't know what okay what does the thumbs up mean there's been 50 texts we either heart or thumbs up yeah all the time all the time all the time You got, she said, she mentioned that you're, you know, sort of been focusing on sponsorships, the Cars Tour.

Explain that, expand on that a little bit. So I think everybody has kind of their own, all four owners have kind of different parts of what they're helping with. So KHI with Kevin as being the owner, Kevin kind of just brought us, I would say probably this January, February and our first meeting was like, hey, we need you guys to help out on the sales side. We're like, okay, but we're going to do it different. We're going to try to get somebody different. We don't want to just keep going to the same sponsors. We want to get something different. So we're talking to a couple right now for some different opportunities in the series.

Keeley has been great to work with of late and getting all the other sponsors reassigned that she's had. So it's fun. It's just it's a challenge. It's a challenge. But nothing is easy. Of course. Nothing is easy. But it's a challenge, but we're just digging along.

We like it. It's just another thing to put under our umbrella. Yeah. That's all it is. That's all it is. I'd be remiss if we didn't ask him about Kevin going to TV also. Yeah. Are you interested in this?

Absolutely. I am curious on when Kevin would have started expressing interest in TV. We know he's good at it. We know he's been in the booth plenty of times. And I think that it was probably, you know, not even a secret that Kevin had a career in TV if he so wanted to go that route. Right. Yeah. So like I'm curious on whatever you're willing to tell us from when he wanted to start.

exploring those avenues and all the way up into his deal with Fox. How involved were you with that? It was Kevin's idea. It was Kevin, Kevin everything. So like I told you in the beginning, Kevin is very hands-on with his sponsor. So he talked to Eric Shanks and Jacob many, many, many years ago at Daytona and said, hey, I want to call one of these truck races or ex-FINI races one time. So they were like, okay, let's do it. So fast forward, I want to say only a couple months. I want to say we did like the Bristol truck race in the beginning of the year, that year. And he liked it. He liked it.

And then it was like, hey, you want to do more? And we started doing more. But then we started looking at a lot of them. And then a lot of them, as soon as you were done with the old school way of practice, you qualify or you practice, you qualify on Friday. You practice on Saturday. And then there would be team meetings, but you'd have to go right to the TV booth. You know what I mean?

So it wasn't a lot of time. And Kevin was so focused on racing, racing, racing, racing, that he was like, hey, I'll do a couple of these a year, two or three or three of these a year, four of these a year. So we did a couple truck races, a couple of those, and he really liked it. And then he looked at doing it full time at the end of 21, okay, because he had, because he resigned for a couple of years. He looked at going full time, but he wasn't ready to step out of that car yet. He had just won nine races the year before. It was fun. It was still fun. And he was doing it. We were loving it. We were loving every

second of it, because when you went on Sunday, it is easy to sell on Monday. He told us that he knew the new car was coming. And he wanted to drive that new car. He wanted to have the new car because he wanted to be able to go to the TV booth and be someone that said I drove that and talk about driving the car. So important. Yeah, so important. So this was his idea and him and Fred and they all sat down as a group and said, hey, we're going to do this at the end of 23.

I'm going to hang it up. And of course, me and Kevin will still tell you this. I'm like, you sure you don't want to keep racing? You want to race Keelan and a truck racing a couple years and try to do the father's son deal? And I mean, Delaan is still. gets on me every once in all, I'll send her a text and be like, like when we won last year at Michigan, I'm like, dude, he's got it. Let's keep rolling.

And this year, I mean, Phoenix, he had an eight-second lead with eight laps to go, and the caution came out, and he had a bunch of chances this year. And he was top five in points, basically, all year long. And I'm like, you sure, you sure? But it was his time. I mean, he's done, you ask him, he's done everything he wanted to do in the sport. He is ready to go to TV booth. He's ready to have time off to watch Keelan race. Kielin is at the point of his career right now where he's still,

doing the legend stuff, but he can be in a late model at 12 and just test him. So Kevin is ready. I mean, he's built KHA. I give him and Glenn a lot of credit. They built KHA to where it is today. And it can run on its own without Kevin racing. So that's good. He's got this late model program that he's building for the family and the kids and all that

and different. That's growing. His foundation's going. And he's got the TV. And as you know, Dale, I mean, TV's half a year. So when the first half season is over, he can go be dad and go. to all the races. So I've been with them 20 years. It's going to be tough watching him walk away here in Phoenix, but you guys did it with Dale and Dale runs part-time still. I think Kevin's

going to get in that late model and have a lot of fun. But yeah, he's ready. He's excited and I'm happy for him. So that made me think of a question when you said that it was Kevin's idea and how involved he in. I think that we could all say, I mean, most everything we do is Dale's idea too, right? So do they ever, does he ever bring you an idea that you go, I'm just not so sure how that's going to work, right? Or do you just roll with it? A lot. A lot.

But the cool part is, the cool part is when there's ideas like that, I ask me, do you tell that to Delana? Yeah, okay. Because Delana, what I love about Delano is we call her the dream killer. So like, if we have an idea, we know we need to get shot down and we don't think it's a good idea, we bring it up to her. And she's like, that's terrible. Thank you.

And like stuff like that. So she is our voice. reason for that kind of stuff. But I mean, it's not a lot. It's not a lot. But every blue moon, he'll be like, you guys want to do this? I just find myself sometimes in that position with Dale, like, I don't want to be the dream killer. But I want to be, I want to talk about the pros and cons. Like, I'm not trying to talk you out of it, but I want you to understand. It does sound very exciting for these reasons, but did we think about this, right? And I think we're in that position. But with the cars tour, but buying the cars tour with those guys has come up, come with other avenues

to buy other stuff and some other stuff. Oh, yeah. And I'm just like... Like, let's do this first. Yeah, let's just stick with this. Yeah, let's be good at that something before we go. Yeah, let's just wait. But honestly, he is, he is very smart on the business savvy side of it, so he gets it.

But every blue moon, I mean, he shoots me down a lot. I mean, I have an idea. I'm like, what about this? The answers to all your questions. And I'll even call, I'll even call him on like a Tuesday afternoon about something random. And he'll answer the phone. The answer's no. And I'm like,

Dude, I mean, so he gets it. But we have a lot of fun. The KHA group is a lot of fun. As you saw, we've been together forever. So we really enjoy that. All right. Last thing. Who did the content for the retirement?

Jessica at Stewart. Jess at Stewart House Racing. What fantastic content. I have so enjoyed that. Amazing. You know what's funny is Kevin, when we sat down, we brought our whole team together, and Kevin was brought everybody in the office,

and we sat there and we said, all right. And that was the place where he told the other ones that he was retiring. We all knew it was coming, but we told all of them. And Kevin said, what I want to do is I want to come up with a game plan of special gloves, special steering wheels. I want to give steering wheels away. I want to do special helmets. Like, he was so organized. And this thing has gone perfect to date with five races to go.

But he has done everything the right way. But what we wanted to do, we started talking to these agencies, other groups outside of us that could help us with this retirement tour, these videos. all this stuff. And we gave SHR a heads up that we were doing this. And this lady named Jess, Jess Smith, she kind of raised her hand. And I was like, what's up? And she was like, give us a shot. Yeah.

And we were like, what? Give Stuart Haas a chance to do this right. And she came from the Yankees. So I don't know if she was there during Jeter's retirement time, but she came from the Yankees and she's at Stuart Haas. And she's like, give me a week, give me a week to build something. So we gave her a week. We came back to SHR.

and she's like, here's what I want to do this. I want Kevin to handwrite this letter with his voiceover, which, where he cried and he was just like, hang. But she did that one. And then, I mean, she's done. She made all the crew guys the other day, pick up the phone, and act like you're leaving a message for Kevin.

What would you say to him? Yeah. So those are the ideas that she comes up with. So she has done this, her and her team. It's a team. But like, the video that we have coming out that Kevin hasn't seen him to end it. is like, holy cow.

Like, she is that good at what she does. So Kevin, they'll tell people, it's Jess at Stewart House racing. Her team, her team is incredible. But every video, we hear that from people. Yeah, I really enjoy it. People that don't even watch racing send us text and says, that video is incredible. Listen, you know, all of us in the content game, we may not have favorite race car drivers, but we have favorite content people.

And that's just because we're all nerds when it comes down to it. Jess is one of my all-time favorites. And I didn't even know her until recently. I had never met her. I was a fan of her long before I met her. I met her because of that series that, Forever a Prankster, Kevin Harvick, Forever a Prankster. I was on it, and it was a lot of it.

It was about you, Josh. That was the old me. That was the old me. Before kids, before kids. No, no, no. I mean, I guess the point I wanted to make on that was that it did, it reminded me a lot of the things that we, a lot of the fun we used to have, right?

but at the same time a lot of people know you as that guy as the mother function guy is all that stuff but the fact of the matter is is that you like i hope me and kelly and everybody else like when we we've built up businesses around these guys and they rely a lot on us on these businesses right we run these companies and and so the forever a prankster thing sort of i had a bit of a mixed emotion about it one was boy did we have some fun back in the day but two this isn't exactly what Josh brings to the table. He's not the punching bag here, much in the same way as I'm not the JRM 360 guy.

You are kind of the field goal kicker still, Josh, just so you know. But the fact of the matter is is that, like, there was a lot more. And I'm glad that you accepted our offer to come on this because I want people to know what Josh Jones is all about. And sure, there's been the fun, and we've done that. We've had it, and we've shared that a lot with fans. But the fact of the matter is, is that Kevin, man imagining him without you and without Delana without Fred my goodness and

SHR without Jess and obviously like well there's a lot of important awesome talented people and positions that have helped help these guys along the way absolutely yeah that's that was a good way to say it that was good but yeah we've we've been around for a long time just like you guys have as well I mean I well it sounds like you got with 12 clients you're going to be around for a while for a while and and and with the retirement of Kevin I told the other day. You can't walk away either, buddy. We're all in this together. And it's going to be funny. Kevin's going to be more hands-on. So I'm actually looking

forward to the next chapter, not only TV, but having Kevin be involved in all stuff and Delaina having more time and watching Keelan. The one thing I want to say about this sport, we're talking about this youth movement earlier, the kids, your kids, Kevin's kids, the Bush's kids, Larson's kids. Cash Boyer. I mean, literally in 10 years from now, we could have a truck race with like 15 of the same names. Because back in the Elliot, Burton, stuff like that, Blaney. There was three or four of them. I mean, there literally could be, I mean, Ryan Priest's kid's going to be there.

I can promise you that. The whole field is going to have, I mean, just get used to it because I'm telling you, I'm going to stay on this show right now in 2037, half the field could be kids of former parents that we worked with or been with. I'm here for it. I'm here for it. I'm here for it. I can't wait to be honest with you.

It will be awesome. It will be awesome. All right. All right. Well, it has been a great episode. Thanks so much for saying yes. We appreciate it. No problem.

Thank you guys. We'd like to be the exclusive. We are the exclusive interviewer of the Josh Jones story. That's a good point, Kelly. If we go hear him doing an interview somewhere else, are you going to be a little upset? I am. Just give us like 30 days.

Yeah, yeah. You have 30 days to enjoy it. Sign a non-compete. There you go. Thank you guys very much. Thank you. Man, I'm really excited to have Ally help us bring the guest segment every week. It's one of my favorite parts of the download.

We get to talk to so many different people in racing, outside of racing. But everybody that comes in here, I want them to have had a good time. I want them to want to come back. I want them to feel like an ally to Dirty Mo Media. Thank you, Ally, for your continued support of the download and the entire Dirty Mo Media team. All right, everybody, it's White Flagtime. That's right. We're going to cover some stuff here. Important stuff that you need to know.

First of all, on Thursday, Dale will be visiting Whiskey River at the Charlotte Douglas Airport at 10 a.m. If you are flying in for Roval Weekend, stop by, you know, sample some menu items and take a photo with Dale. The first 75 fans will receive an autograph copy of Buster gets back on track or racing to the finish. Don't forget about that book. Yeah, that was a New York Times bestseller. Whiskey River is located at Concourse E Rotunda near Gate E20. Most of you probably have seen it. If you've flown into Charlotte in the past, you definitely have stopped off at Whiskey River.

But yes, Concourse E Rotunda near Gate E20, Dale Jr. will be there this Thursday. The Cars Tours back in action on Saturday from South Boston Speedway. Catch the late model stocks and the pro-late stock models live on Flow Racing Saturday night at 6.30 p.m. Eastern Standard Time. Here at Dirty Mo Media, you know, DBC had plenty to say yesterday about Talladega. So if you haven't listened already, go check that out. Actions detrimental drops today. And this business of motorsports show will be the only download episode this week

since Dale Jr. is out of town. Speed Street will drop on Wednesday and the Dirty Mode. Doe Boys will give you their picks for the Roval on Thursday. Can't wait for that. Speaking of the Roval, if you're in town this week, check Out Doorbubr Clear Live. That's right. They're going to do live.

Brett, Freddie, T.J., and Casey. They're live at Charlotte Motor Speedway on Saturday in the fan zone after the Xfinity Series race. and that will be fun. Last but not least, this is actually last but best. This is the best part of White Flag. Friday, October 13th, mark your calendars and plan to be at Westgate, Las Vegas Resort and Casino for Dirty Mo Live, Dale Jr. and Friends.

That's right. We're going live to Vegas. A live show in Vegas. We are looking forward to this so much. We've been planning it. We've been getting together. We've kind of getting our stories right. boy, it's going to be a lot of fun.

So yeah, you got to get tickets and here's how. Go to Ticketmaster or Dirtymodea.com slash live. That's right. Ticketmaster, they got a website. You can also get them on the Ticketmaster app. But DirtyModemot Media.com slash live also get you there. By the way, speaking of Ticketmaster, each Ticketmaster ticket will come with a voucher for two free drinks.

That's right. It would not be a Dirty Mo live show without free drinks. free drink. So come drink. Come drink, have fun. We're going to have a lot of fun. It's going to be fun. It's Dale Jr. and Friends, Dirty Mo Live, Westgate Resort, and Casino. And that's it. I hope everybody has a great week. Got a lot of fun stuff coming up and check us out on social media. Leave us a rating and review. You know, we always love that. Dale Jr. will be back soon, hopefully. And yeah, we'll talk to you later. Check out Dirty Mo Media on Twitter, Facebook, TikTok, and Instagram. I don't know.