The Dale Jr. Download - Business of Motorsports with Budweiser's Steve Uline: "There Wasn't Going To Be a Bigger Deal in My Career."

Episode Date: November 20, 2024

Kelley Earnhardt Miller is back for another session of the Business of Motorsports with longtime sports marketing executive Steve Uline. With the recent announcement that JR Motorsports had secured the rights to the DEI-Styled number 8 and plan to run the iconic Budweiser red paint scheme at the South Carolina 400 in a new partnership with Anheuser-Busch, Kelley wanted to chat with the mastermind and driving force behind the memorable sponsorship campaign. Steve fills listeners in on his journey to becoming a sports marketing director, which involved stints in the service industry before coming on at Anheuser-Busch as a director for Bud Sports TV. He admits that he applied for the position in sports marketing several times before finally getting the job, a process that took eight years. He and Kelley relate on the value of exposure and experience in the workforce and how that prepares you for any situation encountered in professional settings.Steve explains how the Dale Earnhardt Jr. and Anheuser-Busch partnership came to be, which took the place of a longtime deal with Hendrick Motorsports. After the Bud car at Hendrick was underperforming, the company began looking for a new driver to get behind and realized that Dale Jr. was making his way through the NASCAR ranks at a rapid pace. Kelley and Steve talk about how Dale grew into the role as a brand ambassador and how his level of stardom elevated Budweiser back into relevancy in the beer market. Steve shares several hilarious stories from the Bud-8 days and still considers the campaign to be his finest achievement in his sports marketing career. 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 business of motorsports. It is yours truly, Kelly Earnhardt Miller. You know, one thing that I really hope that this series does is open up people's horizons. I got in a lot of trouble, and I got challenged. I don't know why you're coming here. You don't trust us. I said, no, it's not I don't trust you.

I'm running a business. A lot of people kind of feel like, well, we're, We're never getting back to where we were. Why do we ever get to where we were? There's so much more involved in decision. I mean, I want to rip somebody's head off every day. I say yes to me.

Oh, you say yes on the phone. Well, you made me say. All right, great. It's Kelly Earnhardt Miller here from the Dirty Moes Studio, and I'm excited for another episode of Business of Motorsports. Welcoming remotely for the first time, so please bear with me. This is my first remote interview for Business and Motorsports.

Steve Uline. Steve is a longtime advertising executive for many companies, but we're going to talk to Steve today about Budweiser. Steve was one of the instrumental folks on the Anheuser-Busch relationship when Dale drove, and it seems only fitting that we spend some time covering that partnership with Dale's race in Florence. and the return of the Budweiser Red Number 8. So welcome, Steve.

Well, thank you, Kelly. And I was pretty excited when I read a couple weeks ago about the number eight coming back. That's exciting. We are excited. That was a, you know, I think, now I'm very biased, but I think that was the best era of for Anizer Bush racing was that red number eight car going on the track.

It was a beautiful car. Well, we're going to talk a lot about that. So I'm very excited. You know, for our listeners that haven't called it, which I hope that they have, we were able to secure the number eight in that trademark that was iconic with Dell Jr. at Dellenhart Incorporated. And in doing so, we put together a program with Anheuser-Busch to bring that iconic red number eight back. And I do want to point out that, and I know we're going to dig back into the archives and dig back into that. relationship. But, you know, I'm so thankful that Anheuser-Busch is still a part of our sport with their Bush-Busch-Light brand in the Cup Series. And, you know, while they've transitioned from the

Budweiser days and all of that, they've got a great presence with Bush Light and the different things that they do with Track House and Ross Chastain. So we're super thankful for them coming on board with this partnership, even though they've kind of moved on from that market. NASCAR and Budweiser. So let's dig in, Steve, and go back and talk about, you've had a very expansive career, but talk about your career at Enhouser Bush and really kind of how you came to be on the sports marketing program. Sure, sure. Well, I was, I tell this story a lot because when I went to college, I was a terrible student. I like to say I was on focus, which is a nicer way of saying I was lazy. And when I got out, you know, I was a St. Louis person. And

Anheuser-Busch and St. Louis, as you might guess, is the company or was the company, certainly. And it still is a very important company to St. Louis. But at that time, you needed to, basically, you needed to be an NBA or you needed to be a soccer player because the president at the time was a soccer fanatic. And I was not a soccer player. And I've already told you about my grades. So I certainly wasn't getting an NBA. So I opened a bar. And I knew the bar business, and I had a lot of Anheiser-Bush people come in, and I mean, I was working, Kelly, trying to get a job, you know, anything. And sports, obviously, would be most people's dream, but I just wanted a job there. And it took a long time.

And by then, by the time I finally got the nod, I was living in Dallas, Texas, and working in the restaurant business still. And I got the call, and the call was, hey, are you interested in a 30-day contract? you know, 30-day contract. 30 days. So my wife, we'd been married a while and she was pregnant with her first child. And I say to her, hey, I want to move back to St. Louis. And she wanted to move back to, you know, family was there. So we packed a U-Haul. We drove to St. Louis. We never even knew where we were going to move. We had my parents found an apartment. We drove up to it on a Saturday, basically, unloaded it. And I went to work in Anheiser-Busch. And it was in television production of all.

things. Now, Kelly, this is in the mid-80s. I know nothing about TV production. I barely work my remote control, but it was kind of that, you know, fake it till you make it type thing. And 30 days, turned it at 30 days and more 30 days every month to get another contract. And now we have a child, and we have no benefits. And, you know, we're paying for the insurance and we're losing money, but I'm there. And I just said, you know, if I can get in the door, I'll just work, work as hard as I can. I just want to get in the door. So it was, you know, it was sports production, which was great, TV production. It was a heck of a lot of fun, did that, and then got moved over to the media side, which was, you know, one of the powerhouse areas at Anizer Bush, as you well know,

with all the advertising. And I was actually on sports media, buying our spots in college and pro sports. And then I kind of got the big break, and that was, and you'll remember this name, Tony Pompuro, became the big. DP of media and sports marketing and he made me as assistant. And the assistant role is, it's a demanding role, but it's such a learning opportunity. And you meet so many people. And you had the opportunity, you know, either get exposed or you get good exposure, you know. And so I worked for Tony then, and I had been working for him in the media department, but with someone between us. And then at some point, the Bud Sports, which was,

the TV production job came back open for the director, and they moved me over there, which is great. So now I'm back in sports. I'm doing TV production for ESPN and all the networks, and we're doing every sport. And it's a blast. It's a blast. But deep down, I wanted that sports marketing job. You know, that was the dream job for me. So the funny thing was a year later, the guy that's leading it, a guy by the name Mark Lamping, who's now the president of the Jacksonville Jaguars, he leads and goes and becomes a president. president of the St. Louis Cardinals. So I go in there and I interview for the job. Now, I've just worked for 20 for a year. What's there to interview for? You know, I mean, we're together.

He should have known, right? Every day, yeah. But I go through the process and I don't land it. And I'm like, oh, but I had a great job. So things are good. And the guy that got it, I didn't think he was going to stay in there long. So then a year so later, sure enough, it comes open again, and I don't land it this time. And there's politics that go in to everything. So I don't get it. And I just said, and this person, he wasn't leaving. I knew that it was his dream job. And he was a close friend, really, really, you know, there was no backstabbing or anything. I mean, I love the guy. And so we worked hand in hand. And about a few years later, I just got a call one day and said, you know, Monday you're the head of sports marketing. And I'm like,

no interview. Okay. No interview. Five. Three times a charm. And even to go back further, years before I had interviewed just for an entry-level job in sports marketing and didn't land it. So either I'm a really bad interviewer or just, you know, the timing wasn't right. So how many, what was the time frame of that years? Yeah. What was that? How many years did it take to get there? So I had, it took about eight years.

Eight years. I want to point that out because of what you said also about, You know, just picking up and moving and having a 30-day contract and the sacrifices. Because this business of motorsports podcast, you know, is, I mean, you know, we'll learn and reflect on a lot of things, but, you know, to pull out those lessons. And that's so critical in today's people ask me all the time, you know, how do I get involved in NASCAR? How do I do this?

Sure. You know, it, it, back then and now it takes effort, it takes determination, it takes sacrifices and compromises and here you're sitting there talking about that, you know, going on a whim with a 30-day contract to get the job of your dreams and then it taking eight years to get there. Wow. Maybe I'm just, maybe I'm just slow, you know? Well, no. I mean, you know, things take time.

They do. And it happened, I'm going to guess when it should have happened. Like, what if it would have happened sooner or whatever, right? Kelly, you nailed it. And when I looked back on a couple of the jobs I didn't land, when I was honest with myself, the person that did land it was better, better suited. They were more prepared at that time career-wise than I was. And, you know, like I said, the great thing, the lucky thing for me was I had such a good

job in television production that I was having a blast. And I just said to myself, you know, there's two things you can do. You can either say, you know, I got screwed and pout. and the only person you're going to hurt when you're pout is yourself because your performance is going to go down, or you can just keep working as hard as you can and do the best job you can and hope that next time they don't have a choice. You're clearly the person. And recently I got the opportunity to go lecture a graduate sports management class for college in Wisconsin.

And I was talking to them, and, you know, we're all impatient. And, you know, somebody told me it was going to take me eight years. I was in no way. You know, no way. But it did. But the time flew. I was always learning. And when I landed the job, I felt I was very prepared to be successful at it.

So like you said, you got to be patient. You got to have determination. You got to believe in yourself. And, you know, the other thing you really have to have, and I think that a lot of young people don't realize this. And I'm sure it's the same in your business is you got to have a sponsor. You got to have somebody that's, you know, helping you, that believes in you. You can't do it all by yourself. Yeah. And you said too in that conversation, exposure, I was just on a phone call earlier and talking about exposure and experience or just two things that you can't not have to be successful and grow in a position. And I think that's another thing that a lot of people miss. You know, it's like they think they're capable. And they might be, they might have that MBA that you didn't get or they, you know, whatever it is. But they don't have exposure and experience to the job, to the things that you're going to tackle.

in the job and come across. And all of that is just so important for you on how you, you know, react and you problem solve and you do your, and you do that job. I think you really, you hit it with that problem solve because part of the, part of the job of sports marketing is a lot of leading the group and you lead a major group is not only the vision of thinking forward, where am I going to take my company or where am I going to take my department, but also just how to work with so many different people, because everybody's different to get the success. I mean, some people, clearly, you got to give them a boot and a button. Others, you got to put your arm around them and say, you know, you got to give them that love.

You know, everybody's a little bit different to get them motivated and get the most out of them. So I don't think that you come out with an NBA with that type of knowledge. Yeah, absolutely. As I told these students the other day, I said, you know, don't take this wrong. and you're spending money for a graduate degree. I said it lays a great foundation. And I wish I had had that. I may have moved quicker through the system.

Right, right. But I said, to your point, I said, experience is so important. It is. So that you hit problems and you know how to react. That's so true. So let's fast forward and let's talk about and get into the nuts and bolts. You're in this position and the sports marketing position. And when does the idea around Dale?

And I know sponsoring Dale Jr. And I know this has to have a good Dale Earnhardt story in it somewhere. It's got a lot of good stories. Well, the timing was I came in the beginning of 98, 1998. So as you well know, 98 was when we put the deal. So at that time, we were with Hendrik. So, you know, we're with as good as there is out there, Hendrick Racing. And they just won four championships in a row between Gordon and Labonte.

So they're killing it. We're the third car. I think we were the 25 car there. We'd had Kenny Schrader, who we loved because, you know, he was a St. Louis guy. He's been known to have a beer or two. And we love Kenny, but we just weren't having the success. And then we had Ricky Craven and we had some other drivers. Ricky got hurt.

And Rick Hendrick was battling leukemia at the time, and his brother, John, was running the business. So John came in to meet me early in 98, and we talked because we hadn't. had that we hadn't had near the success that the other two cars were having and uh you know to this day people said what do you think that you know that they weren't giving the attention or whatever i said no i i just think it was it's unexplainable it's just one of those things it just didn't work but i never felt like we were getting a short shift on anything it just who knows grimlins you know well we talk about it in this sport all the time it's it's i mean every single thing has to line up So, you know, and it is, there's so many variables.

So, yeah, I hear what you're saying. So what was funny was we were, you know, we're using, we're either qualifying at the back of the pack or sometimes we're even using a provisional to get in. And then we're finishing, you know, 18 to 30th. And every Monday morning, the wholesalers and field people are calling me going, did you watch the race? Do you know where you finished? I'm like, yeah, yeah, I kind of do know where we finished. Yeah, I watched the race. You know, well, what are you going to do?

what are you going to do? So we started tackling it early and I had really good people in the department on the motorsport side and we spent a good part of the summer just looking at all the drivers, you know, call the top 10 drivers that possibly were going to come up whose contracts that could come up that we could maybe, you know, pull something off with or we looked at people that we that weren't top 10, but maybe they just didn't have the money for the right equipment, for the best equipment, looked at them. And then we looked at the young, drivers coming up. And Dale Jr. had not won a Bush series yet, you know. And we obviously, we had a relationship with your father with Bush beer. He'd go hunting with a group of guys every

year down in Texas, so we knew your dad. And so we were looking at Junior. And at the same time, you know, we're a big sponsor. You know, we're big in the sport. The biggest. Yeah, probably, you know. And certainly we've got a big presence in NASCAR where the official beer of NASCAR. We got the Bud Pole Award. We've got the Bush series and we've got a driver. And every week, Rusty's kicking our butt in the two car, you know, and we like Rusty's St. Louis Guy. So you had some motivation too. Oh, there's a lot of competition in the beer world. You know, you don't want, we didn't want Miller beating us at anything. And they clearly were and they had a great driver, a charismatic

driver and one that was well loved in the sport and he was getting all the attention and so we spent that time and we decided to go after with with junior and the story on how it came together and you've read it in the book and that's pretty much jade wrote it you know very well in the book was i flew down there with a guy named mike hargrave who oversaw the the motorsports forest and we went over to hendricks and we met with them and talked with john and said it's just not working. I don't know why. And we don't believe that we're getting short-shifted, like I said,

but we got to make a change. And, you know, is a change going to be better? You hope so. And I'm not saying that to him, but I say we've got to make a change. So what we did was we said we're going to, we'll race next year, which was 99. And our thought was, we were going to try to sign your brother, have him run five races, you know, to keep his rookie status. And so we get through it.

And they were obviously not happy, and I don't blame them, and they were upset and disappointed. And we got through it, and they were very professional. And we literally drove over to DEI and knocked on the door. And I still remember going, and they're like, you know, who are you? What do you want? And we explained who we were, and we sat down that day with Don Hawk and Ty Norris and gave them our idea of what we wanted to do. And we had also heard that, and I think that there's probably truth this, that Burger King was looking close at your brother. And we certainly didn't want to lose out.

So we went in and we started to construct a deal and we made good progress in what we wanted to do. And I think it's pretty important that you're, you know, we did have that relationship with your dad that he knew who we were and knew we were, you know, we were company. And I think that helps. I mean, we were big in the sport. We were big in all sports. So that's how it, that's how it came together. Wow. Yeah, it was wild.

Yeah, so that's cool. I mean, you guys, just hearing you sitting there and talk about the work that you did as far as looking at drivers, I think that's another important thing for people to catch on to it. It hasn't changed, you know, that process of the sponsor looking at the options. And like you said, you know, looking at the young drivers, looking at whose contracts are available and all these kinds of things. I mean, that's kind of the, you know, still the process, whether you're doing it from the sponsor standpoint or the team standpoint or the driver standpoint trying to look for your next opportunity. So that's really cool to hear that. What drew you to Dale Jr. like what was the expectation, you know, for An Hazerbush Bedwiser. Well, you know, we knew he had the magic, the magic name. And he had, for us, we felt like he was going to have the right attitude, the right personality. I mean, we're a beer company. We're not selling milk. We're not selling Kleenex. We're not selling M&Ms.

No, you know, no offense to them. But you've got to have the right person. You've got to have the right personality that it matches up because it's real then. It's truly real. I mean, he was a beer. Now, he'll tell you he didn't like beer in the beginning and that. I remember, but he sure the hell ordered a lot of it down to his place from the hotel. You know, you heard the story that Ty told when he was on Dirty Mo Paz.

see what junior, he told the story when the wholesaler called Thai and said, or we called Ty, I mean, Tim Schuller and I called Ty and said, hey, the wholesaler called wants to know, you know, what's going on? Junior's ordering more beer than a lot of retail accounts are. And we're like, yeah, that's good. That's good. So what drew us to him was, you know, the name was great, you know, and you believed that his dad was putting together something special.

And it was a, you know, it was a big change really in NASCAR at that time because it had been a time in NASCAR where the drivers were more in the, you know, let's call it in the 30s, 40 years old, were what most of the drivers were. Yeah. And all of a sudden, I'll call it the young guns started coming. Kinseth and him were coming up and some young guys were coming up. And it was going to be exciting. And our feeling was, you know, if junior is what we think he is, this could be a very,

very long-term relationship. That's going to be great for both of us. And you probably know when we first, when we offered to do the deal, we said six years. And, you know, most people would have said four years. And what I had sold into my management, which was Tony and August Bush, the fourth, was, you know, if he's what we think he is, we don't want to be renegotiating with him three years down the road. Yeah. Because, you know, he's going to be more expensive. He's going to get more expensive.

Let's do six years. Let's put our chips on the table and go for it. And, you know, the other thing, we didn't even tell the Budweiser brand we were doing this. And that was a bone of contention. because, you know, there was always contentionate. And who owns the sport? Does the brand own the sport? The sports marketing on the sport.

There's a jealousy part because it's cool, you know. So when we had put it together, it was really Tony and Augreth and myself. And as I said earlier, Mike Hargrave, and nobody knew because we were afraid the word would get out that we were interested. And, you know, how the word leaks. I mean, so that day after I left Hendrik, somehow somebody said something. And ESPN reported it that afternoon that Budweiser had broke their deal with Hendrick. Didn't say who we'd gone with because we hadn't done it yet, you know. And the Budweiser guy called me that night, the head of Budweiser, and he said, you can't do that.

You can't do that. You can't take my race car driver. I said, it's done. Be patient. I said, it's done. If you got a problem, you go to talk to the guy whose name's on the building, you know. So you talk about the age and the beer, you know, you're the beer drinker, that demographic. What was the demographic that you're trying to reach?

And how did you see that changing from Kenny Schrader and your relationship, just overall in the sport, because you had such ties to, I mean, obviously the name helps from Dale Jr's perspective and my dad and that connection. But what, you know, did you, were there things you were afraid of? Did you have concerns? Where was, yeah, where'd you sit there? Yeah. All brands, especially beer, but a lot of brands, everybody's looking for that younger demo. You know, we're all worried about aging out, and it happens. You know, it's a battle, no matter, like I'm doing a lot of work in conservation now,

and they have the same problem. You know, people get older and you got to keep bringing that younger generation. Well, how do you do it? You have to be relevant to that younger generation. Well, you know, Kenny Schrader, great guy, but he was older. and he wasn't winning for us. I wish he had been because we loved him. Yeah, I mean, you can't get a better personality. You can't. You can't. He was so fun to be around, you know, but with junior, here he was. He was relevant. He was that young guy. He was that young gun. So we just felt that

this was going to help us bring down the demographics to a, you know, that more entry-level beer drinker, that 21-plus-year-old beer drinker. And, you know, it's interesting. When we did that deal, I said to myself, I mean, I didn't share it with people. I might have told my wife, I said, this is going to be the best deal I ever do in sports marketing, not the NFL deals, not the major league baseball deals. And I originally wasn't even a motorsports. Aficionado. You know, I learned it quickly because we had so much money in motorsports between drag racing and indie and NASCAR. But I felt then that Junior was everything we thought he was going to be. this I'd never top it, which was fine. And I stayed to this day it was. And from a beer drinking perspective, you know, once in a while, as you know, your brother would do something that would just floor us. And we, and we can get it. Positive or negative. Some of both. We know, some of both for sure. We can get into a couple of those funny stories. But the team would come back. The brand team would sometimes come back. Do you know what he did? He did this, you know. And I'd say, I always used

the same line. I said, who do you want? Who do you want? What driver do you want? Who's going to sell more beer? You know, Jeff Gordon's the best driver out there right now. Dale Earnhardt, senior, best driver out there right now. You want them? Are they going to sell more beer for you? Or is junior, what are we in this far? We're in it to sell beer, you know, and he was the guy, and he did. And when you look back, I can tell you that he took us places that we would never have gone through a racing, using racing as the impetus. Give an example of that. well what's a standout i was going to ask you let's talk about rolling stone and yeah okay you know those type of that's where i thought you might play yeah and i think that we also took him places

that he wouldn't have gone had he been with a burger king for instance yep because of who we were the cash we had we were cool he was cool put the two together we're pretty darn cool and you just were super cool yeah we were super cool and he did he just he was rock star you know can you remember the first um like can you remember a first thought a conversation or group with your team where you were like what was the first thing when you were like this was the right decision like this yeah you know well this is good the the motorsports team the hargrave who is the senior manager and his people on it everybody's thrilled i mean we're tired of getting that call on monday morning from our field people and our host that was going do you know that you

203rd, you know, that's not a fun call every Monday morning. So the excitement that it created through the whole system was immediate. It was no sell-in necessary. And I don't know if you remember your dad and he came to our first convention after we had signed them. So now this is 1999, our conventions, and he comes to it. And you know how shy your brother was in the beginning. I mean, he was shy. He was an introvert in the beginning.

You know, it was like pulling teeth at times. But he got up there on the stage. There's 500 wholesalers. And he said, you can call this something to the fact of you can call the search off for NASCAR to win NASCAR. And 5,000 people are like going crazy, you know, that he said something like that. It was the perfect thing. And now you got all these wholesalers are like, we got Dale Jr. And, you know, how do you gauge something like that?

Well, in our world, a lot of it is, you know, what we've got all these sports. We got every sport there is, basically. And we've got point of sale for everything available to the wholesalers. And when you look and you see, Hamid, what's the percentage of people buying Dale Jr. NASCAR point of sale to put up on and off premise? It was equal to the NFL. It was about 98%.

We got people in Hawaii, wholesalers in Hawaii, who are putting up Dale Jr. in bars. One of the problems was, believe it or not, NASCAR season be over and I'd go into a retail account or something going, and NASCAR still be up, you know, because everybody loved it. They just loved it, period, yeah. Yeah, the season's over.

How about we talk about the NFL? You know, it's January. It's December, you know. But it worked. And from the merchandise standpoint, it was unbelievable. It was unheard of what we did from a merchandise standpoint. Because we had a group called PPG. They did our merchandise.

And we would get a percentage back, as you know, from what we sold or for what you all sold and you all get a percentage from what we sold. And it was a check we'd never seen before. It was a seven-figure check, you know, which helps the sponsorship. That's right. But not only does it help the sponsorship from a financial perspective, it was getting us everywhere.

Every retail account is got that red number eight car, your brother in his driver's suit, and we were everywhere. It was just, it was a special, special time. I remember, and I never understood this, and the more that I work in it on, you know, the junior motorsports side and talking about categories for partnerships and, you know, what you're actually promoting and those kinds of things. On the Budweiser side, I don't know. There was a word that you guys used or something, but basically, you know, Dale couldn't

have a relationship of anything else. liquid drink wise except for Budweiser. Cher of stomach or something? Share of stomach, yeah. And I'm like, but. Which we created that. You know, there's no gauge for that. But it was so funny, though, because I'd be like, like, orange juice. It's like, nope, you're going to have a Budweiser. Here you go. Like, exactly. I'm like, but, but I didn't want a Budweiser for breakfast. I wanted orange juice for breakfast. It always, I just thought it was always funny because like everybody, you know, they would, you know, you know,

different people would get riled up about the categories or this, that deal. It's like, man, Budweiser just had us locked in over every single thing. And so you guys did it well there. You nailed it. Absolutely right. We took it very serious. So what was one of your favorite campaigns that came together? Wow.

I think it was when we took them into the Super Bowl creative. you know, Super Bowl, it was then, still is the most expensive 30 seconds you're going to buy in anything. And when we took a NASCAR driver and put him in a Super Bowl spot, that's when you knew that we totally were, we bought in 100%. Our brand team had bought in 100%. Our sales teams had bought in 100%. Obviously sports, we already bought in 100%. But they won a junior in a Super Bowl spot. that's that's the tip of that's as high as you can go in our world of spending all that money between buying the 30 seconds and doing the creative you know actually producing the spot those would have been that's you knew that everybody was rowing in the same direction yeah and did you what was did you see the lift for bedwiser like what was is was oh my gosh you know and i mean not just the brand i just mean like pure sales like what kind of lift and Yeah, you got, we got a lift from not just the sales, but just the morale of salespeople, the people in the brewery. I mean, there was a sense of pride that we didn't have before. It gave us, we were a cocky group.

There was no question. We had swagger, but we had more swagger after we signed Jr. And our wholesalers, when they would be in the marketplace and go into a retail account to try to sell more Anheiser Bush, like you said, not just Budweiser, but. more hand i said bush there's no question the fact that you know you're going in and and you've got dale junior on your team it it made a difference and absolutely i mean that's why you do you know you the whole reason you're in whether it's sports or you're buying an advertising and a comedy whatever at the end of the day you got to remember for us it was to sell more beer you know it's great to win and it's great to be able to say hey we've got this sponsorship or that sponsorship but

if they're not working for you you're you're really just talking to yourself then it's just more of an ego plug maybe, but there were certain sponsorships and there were certain advertising that you knew were moving to the dial. And yes, sales were good. We were growing every year. It was, but I think just as important was the morale, the pride of employees at all levels. Which goes so, such a long ways. I mean, oh my gosh, you know, it, those job, all jobs are hard if you're doing them right. And when people are loving the association, it's not as much of a job.

It's, you know, it's a passion. So how did you, you know, come up with a lot of different things that you had Del do? I mean, because like you said, I mean, he was everywhere doing everything. And, you know, some of them were very far reaches that you're like, wow, you know, very edgy, you know, and, you know,

and yeah, lots of, I mean, I'm just in here, like, thinking through things, you know, and like, yeah, did your team plan and do? Did Dillon-Hart Incorporated come up with a lot of that? Like, where did all that come from? It really came from the brand team. I'd like to say, you know, it came from my team. My team was more on the execution part of it and working, you know, closely with JR and with your mat, with Ty. I had the relationship with Ty fortunately, but we'd have to call Ty and go,

hey, we got this idea. And I'm sure Ty would go, oh boy, you know, what are they coming with now? You know, and it goes back to, you know, your brother grew so much during those years. And I watch what he's done now, and it's just like, holy cow, it's so cool to see.

And I know you're a big influence on him because I have always watched what you all have done long after I was out of it. to continue to watch just how you guys have grown. You've grown the sport. You've grown your company to be a powerhouse. And he had to grow to be able to, for you to do the same, the things that you're doing today,

we had the same issues in the beginning that he had to grow into them to be able to be successful at him. I know we stretched them. I know we pushed him. Even little things like, you know, we'd say, hey, do you want to go to this boxing event and just be with us? You know, or do you want to go to the, he went to a lot of all-star games, baseball, all-star games, because if you remember, we'd do a different car for the All-Star game.

Yep, yep. And we would do that, and he'd go there. We'd be down on the field before the All-Star game, and here's all these great baseball players and managers. I could still remember these guys, they wanted to come over and talk to him, you know. He was that big. And in his mind, they were so much more. bigger than he. Oh, totally. Yeah.

Totally. I can remember walking by him, you know, and you could tell that he was as in all of them as they were as in all of him. And it was, it was a, it was a cool thing to see because they were like, oh my God, you think I'd be okay if I went over and said hi to him? And I go, yeah, I think, I think that'll work, you know. And, and it was fun. But, you know, like the car, when we did the white car, the first time that we did that white car that was to promote the, all, The race, as it would have been the Daytona summer race. Yep. And then in July, and then the next, like, Tuesday would be the All-Star game.

And we ran that car and it had the stitches on it. And it was a successful, you know, it was successful. And then that's back when Authentic was doing the die cast. I think at that time it was the number one selling diecast. It just was unbelievable. Were you working for Fred at that time? I was. And so how, how, what was the brand's perspective? I'm curious just then what the brand's perspective was on changing because, you know, that's a big deal to a lot of brands and you have this iconic red and, you know, what your cans look like. And then you would go into, I mean, sitting here on the table is the Bud born on date car. But you talk about the All Star car. You guys, I think we did something with Elvis Presley. Like, there was a lot of things that, you know, a lot of programs that we worked on together. I can tell you, Kelly, before, um, what we started doing there, we had never stretched ourselves like that. Never.

Even to the point of doing commercials with our athletes, or not even the athletes, because there's always a touchy back then with what you could do with an athlete when it came to alcohol, but even to promote a sport, you know, to do a creative for baseball or creative for football or creative for hockey, we did so little of it. You know, we kept to our, you know, we were, humor was our play on most of our commercials. We kept that recipe. And then when we did get junior, the brand team, and again, it wasn't us. It was a brand team. They started stretching themselves, and we all started doing the promotions and the campaigns that everyone was familiar with, and it was a blast. How big is, you know, you keep talking about the brand

team and then your team from sports marketing for execution. You have all the different brands of Budweiser, which all have their own team, right, at the time. And I know that there's lot of competitiveness and things like that within. Just briefly kind of explain so that just the audience can understand. Because I think people are so quick to be like, well, why did you do this or why do you do that? It's not like one or two people are making these decisions. Like, what's the team? When you talk about the brand team looking at their brand Budweiser across all the different things, you know, that they're involved in.

Well, it was, you know, obviously they stubbed their foot big in the last year or year and a half with the whole but-like fiasco. And people will say, you know, how did that happen? And I don't know how it happened because I'm not there anymore. But to your point, when we were there, it couldn't have happened because it was such a team. And so wherever the idea maybe it generated from, it had to go through so many layers to get to the final approval. And something like Junior often went all the way to August the 4th to make the decision. So we may have gone to the brand team and said, hey, we've got an idea. The brand team may have come to us and said, we have an idea.

We cook it and get it ready. And then we just start running it up the ladder until we finally got the green light. An interesting story was that white car, that was actually, if I remember it right, the first time we did a white car, your brother, it was his idea because you're, dad had driven a white car. So he wanted to drive a white car. So way back then, he was still thinking that way because he still does that to us today. Yep. So we were like, you know, our team was like, yeah, sure, you know, we'll, we want them happy, you know, and we go to the brand and we, and now, to your point, here we've been riding this beautiful red number eight car and I go in there and say,

hey, we want to run a white car for a race. And they're like, what? You know, white's not Budweiser. You know, so we explain the situation that why Dale wants to do it and, you know, it doesn't hurt to keep Dale happy, you know. So we get, we go up the ladder with it and it got to a point where someone didn't take it to the fourth. And we're ready to roll with it. And the force says, no way. You can't. And he just puts his feet in the ground because he didn't, wasn't part of the decision making. Now, if he had been, he would have said yes.

So now, now I got a big problem. So I had to call down to DEI and say, you know, we're not going to run the white car. And I was talking to Teresa at this time. And she pretty much put me in my place because I was 100% fabricating the reason for why. And she read right through me. And I went back and I said, you know, I got taken to school today. And I should have been. And what are we going to do here?

And finally, cooler heads prevailed. and we got the white car pushed through and the rest was history. Yeah, but it was a challenge. In, you know, your relationship with Dale, I mean, you know, for people that may not have experienced that era, you know, you're talking about, like you said, Rolling Stone covers, you know,

videos with Jay-Z and music with Cheryl Crow. Yeah. I'm just trying to think of, you know, just, I mean, so many. When was a NASCAR driver going to be with Jay-Z? Right. You know? Just so many iconic things. Yeah.

And so, you know, I mean, Dale is just literally, I remember, you know, the schedule going intense. Oh, it had to be a nightmare for you guys. What was a, what's a Dale Jr. pet peeve? What are some things that you went, oh, my gosh, you know, like, I can think of one that if you don't say it, I'm going to be shocked. I can think of a few. something from as simple as he went through a stage where he would always throw on a baseball cap. And I think it was a Yankees cap. Oh.

And our brand guys are going nuts because he's not wearing that bad hat. Cardinals or bud. Yeah, exactly. But really the bud. Yeah. So, you know, I think Kenny Schrader talked to him about it. I think Kenny was one of the guys that talked to him in system. But some of the funny stories, and gosh, there was a bunch of them.

but one time the car is just, you know, some days the car's just not going to, every lap it's coming in and getting worked on it. It's one of those races, you know. You're just trying to finish the race. At one point, they get out some spray paint and they sprayed on the side of the car, DMP. Oh, yes. Oh, my gosh.

So I get him on the phone, you know, like on Tuesday, and I say to him, hey, you know, the DMP on, and he says, I still, hey, wasn't that cool? I said, no, that really wasn't that cool, you know. I said, I kind of look at it as graffiti on our car. Yeah, your brand people didn't think too kindly of that. Oh, they didn't think it was that cool at all. And so there were those, I remember another time I get a call from our PR people and they said, the National Enquirer called and they are going to run a story in a couple days that he was at spring break

and he had gone to a phone party and he got into a fight with Truex and there were people under 21 in the hot tub with him and drank at it. So I got all this. I'm like, oh, my gosh. So I call him and I say to him, I said, I said the same thing. I just said to you, you know. Now, I'd just been at the race that Sunday and he didn't have a black eye. So that makes me suspect right there.

But I call him and I say to him, I said, this is what I've been told. Now, you got to tell me the truth. You cannot tell me a story here because we got a couple of days that it, this is true. We got to react. We're going to have to really get a spin going. And I still remember he said to me, I promise you this didn't happen. I said, okay, it's all I need to know. I went back to our PRP before.

I said, you know, it's fabrication. It's typical national inquirer. We don't need to react to this. They don't have a picture. And they ran something that was like a picture of a condo complex. You know, it wasn't, it wasn't junior in a hot tub with a bunch of girls, which I'm sure. I thought, that's what junior girls. I know, right.

I thought that you were going to, I can't believe you didn't bring up the fact that maybe he was just late. I don't know. Oh, my gosh. 50% of the time at least. For everything. Oh, my gosh. And it was always, well, he overslept. I would dread that.

I mean, I was part of some of that from time to time of, of like, having to less. that, you know, his team at the, and that was the kind of the jade gurses of the world or whatnot. Yeah. And then, you know, get to you guys. And I mean, I mean, sometimes it was bad, like a couple hours. Oh, yeah. Well, even at a race when he'd have to go do the meeting greet, you know, he couldn't take the golf cart because he'd hit mob. So have a suburban or a Tahoe to drive them to wherever the that it was set up. And you'd have all these fans there, wholesaler, you know, people there. And he wouldn't be there. And you're, you got somebody. and there's about juggling, you know, anything to keep people's mind.

Yeah. And I'd be on the phone if I was there or whoever from the team that was there talking to Jade. And you're going, he's, he's out of bed now. You know, he's moving. It's like, well, moving's good, but we really need him. Oh, he was liked everything. I think we just got, we probably started telling, you know, him that something was at, you know, 11 o'clock when it wasn't until 12 o'clock type thing with him. You know how terrible he was on, on, over sleep.

Oh, you're terrible at it. Yeah. It was bad. Yeah. Poor Jade. Yeah. Really poor anybody that was having to deal. It was bad. It was just so bad. Is he better now?

Oh, he's so much better. Yeah. He's even early sometimes. Whoa. But hey, he's a dad. So, you know, he's calling you. He's also calling you at 7.30 in the morning nowadays. And you're like, what?

What are you doing? You know, and he's on the way to take the kids to school. And I'm like, well, I'm still trying to blow dry my hair to get out of here. But no, he's come a long ways. in terms of that responsibility aspect. So the Budweiser brand and Dale Jr. and NASCAR, like, why do you feel it's just become so iconic? I think Budweiser itself and Anheuser-Busch's big brands are iconic

just because of the money spent, the good marketing that we've done through the years. They've become iconic. And so kudos to us. but kudos to the people that we associated with, whether it was the sport or whether it was your brother. Like I said, he took us places we wouldn't have been able to go before. So it was a combination of, it was getting married to the right other person. You know, it was just, we could have had, there's a lot of great race car drivers out there, you know,

and we may have been with one of those, and we wouldn't have had the success. that eight car would not have been as iconic as it was because one junior one what is fifth or seventh race coming out as a his first year and then he won enough you know he won some races that first year that gave him the credibility that you wasn't just you know Dale hornhart's senior son that you know has been handed a car he can drive and drive very very well so that certainly helped but it was just being with the right person i think is the and like i said being with the right sport and and people working together for success. I can remember, you know, merchandise was always a big, big deal. And you know very well when we first started,

he was breaking records left and right and merchandise sales. Everybody else would pull up with one truck and he'd have two or three trucks and the lines would be a mile long and we were selling everything and people couldn't get enough of it from our perspective and from y'all's perspective. It was a beautiful thing. It just, it was magic. Like I said, when I did the deal, not that I got, you know, ESP or something, I just knew that there wasn't going to be a bigger deal in my career when it came to sports marketing than when we got together with Junior. And I believe that today that there hasn't been. And I'll tell you this, that when he left and went to Hendrick and we lost him, I was no longer ahead of sports marketing. And I don't think that the relationship

They had maintained the relationship quite as tight Because I'll tell you, I would have fought tooth and nail To find a way to continue that relation Because it just wasn't going to get any There wasn't someone better for our company And it's nothing against Casey Kane I think is who we signed next. Nothing against Casey or it or Harbick or anybody that's run for us

And Ross Chow Seine is I think excellent for the Bush brand But there's only one Dale Jr., I know. Would you go as far to say that, you know, you talked about the change from Hendrick and Kenny Schrader and what you needed to do from a Budweiser perspective, that the relationship with Dale has, I mean, Budwires are still involved in the sport today. There's an obvious reason for that, obviously, with the demographics and the sport. But, I mean, to me, it's almost like it could have been a savior kind of thing, you know, just thinking back through, right? For us and for the, I think it was good for both.

It was great for Natchar, and it was great for, there's no question it was great for us, because Budweiser at the time was starting to have a decline. It kind of got branded, and it happens to all brands at some point. Oh, that's your father's beer, that's your grandfather's beer, and I got to find something cool. And, you know, so I'm not going to do that, even though you might like it. And it happens in, you know, it happens in apparel. It happens in everything. Yeah.

And as I said earlier, he took that brand and made it so relevant and so cool again that people, that people were, it became the badge that it had always been again. And I think we got a lot more life out of the Budweiser brand. And then Bud Light took over as the number one beer for us during that time period. But it was a badge. You know, it's, do you want to be seen with that in your hand, then it's a badge? Yeah. Do you want to wear whatever, North Face or whatever, you know, on your jacket?

If you do, it's a badge. You know, Yeti Coolers. I mean, that's a badge. and he made it a badge for us. What other, we got a, I know you got some more good stories in there. Just maybe a memorable event, a memorable race win. Well, there's no question that Daytona was a fabulous win. And fortunately, you know, I was there.

I remember I was talking to Tony that weekend. He was at the NBA All-Star game. And my number two person, Kathy Kassel, was there. And they go, oh, it's so, for him, so much fun. We're having so much, well, when we win, I call them. I go, how much fun are you having to how much fun I'm having it? Because we had won that race. So to me, that was, that was, you know, so great.

It was just to win the 500, which had been elusive for us was very, very special. There's no question. We won one, I remember we won NASCAR gave us marketer of the year one year. And I get up to give the speech at the banquet. And I was like, well, you know, I'd like to say it was us, but I mean, how hard is it to win that? How hard is it to win marketer the year when you got Dale Jr.? I mean, anybody wouldn't want the marketer of the year. If they could get him to do the things that you all had him do for us and build in some extra time because he might be late.

Yeah, right. So as you were talking, it kind of made me think because I kind of just glanced over the fact that, you know, you signed this deal. And the first five races were 2000, is that right? Or 99. 99. 99. The first five races were 99. And then obviously we'd lose my dad in February of 2001.

We haven't talked about that transition just in terms of maybe, you know, guys, I mean, were you guys nervous, what that would look like, what were conversations like with Ty, Dale, et cetera, you know. Yeah. You know, we weren't. And but I think your brother was because at one point your brother said something to the point of he was concerned that the reason we had signed him was because of your dad. And there's no question your dad was very influential in it because our respect that we had for him and what he was building at DEI. Yes, a part of it. But he was our guy. Junior was our guy.

And I remember, you know, I was at Daytona when that happened and then down in at the funeral and everything. And we from a company, zero, zero. question. We were, you know, we knew there was going to be even more pressure on him because a lot of your father's fans became his fans. Yes. There's going to be more pressure on them. There's, you know, there's pressure when you have a magic name. You know, you live it. I mean, there's positives and everybody thinks it's all positive. Oh, my gosh, your name's Kelly Earnhard. I bet everything's easy for you. Well, there's also an expectation greater because of that last name. And it's going to, I used to say, Yeah, it opens doors.

There's no question. But then you've got to perform to stay in the room. You've got to have the talent. And there's people that want you to fail because you do have that name. So there's a pluses and minuses to have. And whether your last name's Earnhardt, it's Bush or whatever. There's challenges to it. Was there something, I kind of want to dig into a little bit of like marketing during the time

because I'm just thinking about marketing in this day and time and thinking about all the different things you guys did with the brand and Dale and the commercials and the extent that marketers did back then. It's so different now with digital content and social and all of those things. And, you know, we don't see the TV commercials or we still see the Super Bowl ads, thank goodness. But was there some insight that you saw during this, you know, relationship that kind of emerged that, you know, you had always maybe said, no, that'll never work and it did, or something of that nature, you know, just some learning. Yeah. I don't think there's any question that, you know, during, at the beginning of the relationship, everything was about the 30-second commercial.

And that's how everybody consumed their advertising. And as, you know, at that time, we had TV, we had radio, we had outdoor. That was kind of what it was. And you had some print, you know, you'd get in magazines. And if you checked all those boxes, you were probably hitting your consumer, you know, you were going to talk to them. Yeah. Did you see that start to change in your time at A.B. or not? Oh, absolutely. Because when the Internet came on, that was a completely, you know, that was a change. I mean, what we're doing right now, podcasts. Yeah.

No one ever heard of something like that. There's just so many opportunities. But you, so when you pick someone like that, you know, fortunately for us, I can't say that we had the foresight because it, hadn't been invented yet, but your brother, we had the ability because of who he was and his willingness to be cool, if you want to go out, he would stretch himself and do things that I don't think we could have done with a lot of the other drivers. They just, they, even though he was shy in the beginning, and I think he was intimidated by some of the things that we took him to do, he did him, he did him well. I think he probably was shocked at how good he was at a lot of

these things. And he grew from it. became very good at doing a lot of the things. So it was luck. I'd like to say we were just as farthest people on the block, but I don't think that would be honest. But I got a good, you said something about a story with your dad. Yeah. So do you remember the race? It was a Bristol race and your dad was in second and he, I think he, it might have been Labani. He moved him out of his bed. Rattled his cage. Yep. And he came in and he went. So the next, early that week, he and Waltrip were over the bush track over across St. Louis in Illinois, right across the river, because they could go over there in practice because at that time it wasn't a cup track.

So we're having dinner. This is right in the beginning of the relationship. We haven't even got everything stuff. We had the deal done, but I couldn't get the merchandising deal done with you all. Hawk was too tough for me. We just couldn't get it done. So we're at dinner one night, and it's a long table and your dad's at one end of the table. I just happened to be at the other end of the table. I wasn't the biggest hitter there, but I was at the other end of the table. And there's a lot of, you know, my bot, Tony's there other people. And then there's a lot of people that are just there because they think they should be there, you know, because they want to see your dad, basically. And Michael's there as well. So we're having dinner. Everybody's having wine and

beer. Everybody's happy. At one point, your dad says, you line, do you and I have a problem? And, you know, it was like at the old Eweb Hunt and commercial, the whole, room goes silent and your dad could be intimidating. There's no question. But I had built a relationship by then that, you know, I felt comfortable, even though we were still young in the relationship, that we were going to be good together. Everything was going to be fine. So he says that, and the whole room goes silent. And I said, and he's going like this, do you and I have a problem? That finger. You mind? Yeah. It could have been worse. You could have been in the arm hook that he used to give people. Well, we had that long table. Thank God. And I go back. I, I

went back like this and I said you and I don't have a problem hawk and I have a problem and he goes okay I'm going to fix this everybody everybody's back there so then the next morning my phone rings and it's donned and he says um I heard my name came up at you know at dinner last night I said yes it did he said would you tell me what was said I said no I said walk down the hall and talk to your boss he was there senior and I never had a problem. And we got the deal done. I was going to say, how much, how much longer did it take? You were, it's not long. That was, that was, that was, that was, that was the icebreaker. I think it helped. I know it helped. How would you just kind of sum up the whole An Hazerbush, Dale Jr. partnership? What are you proud of? What did you take away from? And I, you've said,

it's the most iconic standout deal that you've done in your career. Yeah, I mean, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, personally, from a personal level, couldn't be more proud. And I'm proud that it worked, obviously. We had great success with it. I'm proud that here we are years and years later. And we've maintained friendship. I mean, I can't, you know, how many times do I call you going, hey, Kelly, can you go with a charity or what do you think about this? And you've always responded. And, you know, you guys have moved on to bigger and better things. You could have blown me off like the snow and the rain. And you never have. I mean, that's what I'm, I'm proud that we're We built those relationships.

And I remember one time I got a call. It was one of the books that was being ripped. Was it Earnhardt Nation? Was that one of them? I think so. Yeah. Yeah. So I got a call on that.

And somebody said, would you be willing to give us some information, quote on it? And I sent you an email. Oh, yes, yes, yes, yes. And said, I said, is this something you all are cooperating? Is this something that you want me to do or don't? Because if you'd said, we'd rather you wouldn't? I would have said no.

Right. That was the relationship and respect that, you know, that I had for you, that we, the company had for the Earnhardt's. And I felt it was mutual, you know, like today I'll text your brother or something that I'll see. And he gets back to me. I'm proud that we've been able to maintain a relationship because he's, you know, he's a rock star and I'm still grinding away as a marketer.

I know. So tell me, tell me a little bit about what you are up to these days. Yeah. Well, you know, after A.B. Soul, a lot of us, you know, went on to. other careers. I went on and went, uh, we did a turnaround up in Minnesota with an outdoor company called Gander Mountain and we actually did some NASCAR work, which was pretty cool because, um, there was a, when the Sandy Hook, uh, massacre came about, we wanted to do something about

locking your guns up that, and we came up with this with rights comes, uh, responsibility. Basically, if you own a gun, you need to keep it in the safe place. And I called Ty at the time and he was, he was with Walter. I guess it was. Yeah. Yeah, Michael Watcher. Yeah, racing.

Yep. Yep. And we did a deal with, and we had it on the car with rights comes to responsibility. And it was at the Texas race, you know, a great place to be talking about guns in Texas.

We continued to, you know, we didn't have it. I never had the budget again. I used to have an analyzer push, but once in a while, just because it was the right audience and NASCAR could deliver it. And those relationships

with someone like Ty, I was able to, you know, to do that. So thank goodness for NASCAR and relationships. And relationships. That's a key. That's another really point to bring home is relationships, integrity, honesty, not burning bridges, you know, always doing the right thing, right? That's how you develop those relationships. And every name that you've mentioned, Kathy Caso, Tony Pontaro, Mike Hargrave, I mean, those are names that are like embedded and imprinted because of. the two-way street relationship that just went back and forth with every one of those people.

I mean, you can't say a negative word. I can't think of a story. Oh, yeah, I remember that. I remember when she did that. I remember when he, yeah, none of that. I mean, because, you know, it was a win-win for, you wanted it to be a win-win for everybody, and that's how it was treated. And so those relationships, you know, still carry forth.

For sure. And I think that's one of the beauty of being in sports. You know, the world's become so transactional, and it's also become so where people are texting and they're not picking up the phone. And, you know, there's a generation that may not even be able to communicate coming our way. Everything will be a text, you know. Or AI might just do it for them. Or AI might do it all for everybody. Yeah, exactly.

But we, you know, I think that that's the beauty of sports. It was about relationship. And that's what, that's one of the, yes, I love sports. But I also love the aspect of you said, building relationships. people and then maintaining them you know not just during the course of the maybe the sponsorship but maintaining it forever I mean that's that's that's that makes that's good that's fun makes life better it does so I don't I don't let anyone go away from business of motorsports without asking them this question and you know as part of

this podcast we just want people to you know just learn and understand and get a greater appreciation for the business world especially in our sport and motor sports, but what is the best business advice that you've been given? And if we all share, who gave it to you? Yeah. I think it's, I think it's, there's multiple pieces, obviously. I think though, I think one of the pieces is having a sponsor, having someone that believes in you that's above you that can help pull you up.

And when you do make the mistake that they keep, they make it a learning versus a beatdown. and believe in in yourself. It's so important to believe in yourself because you're going to make those mistakes and I can remember being paralyzed at times because I'd made a mistake and it hurt us and then I was afraid to make a decision for a while. I had to get that confidence back.

And I remember one time I, and this wasn't a person above me, it was a person, it was Kathy Koso. And I was kind of frozen for a call it a week or so just because I had screwed up and I felt terrible about it and everybody knew I did and she just came to me and she said, you know, you've always made great decisions. You're going to continue to make great decisions.

You know, I believe in you. She was my number two person. And that kind of was the kick in the butt that I needed to, you know, to get back at it. Get the faith back in yourself. Yeah. Yeah. And I think the other thing is we talked about at the very beginning is patience. And it's hard.

You know, when I spoke the other day at this college, I said, how many you are coming out of this with your grad degree? Want this to be your end-all job. And they're all like, I said, well, I said, one of you may be in this room gets lucky, but it's never a linear move. You're going to be, but learn from every place you land and you'll be ready to your point, you know. Make sure you're ready. And I wasn't ready for a couple of those jobs I got passed over for them. But when I did get them, I felt like I was ready.

So patience. Yeah. And it's hard. It's still hard. It's hard. It's hard no matter how old you. Patience is hard in every day. life and you're talking to an Earnhardt here so patience and Earnhardt don't go well together

I hear you well well Steve thank you um you know just uh like I said it's very fitting with this partnership that we're doing with AB now um and just kind of revisiting the most iconic partnership I feel like in NASCAR um and just so glad that you said yes and you would be a part of this and just thank you so much. much. Well, thank you. I mean, it was an honor. And you know, I told you earlier, my feelings for you and your brother have always been, you know, you guys have been great to me through the years. And when I got the opportunity, I was talking to Mike and he said, you know, Kelly's got this program. I said, I'd do anything for Kelly. I said, I owe her. So, oh, thank you. So just, I,

I live my NASCAR through you guys now. So keep killing it. Keep having fun. Awesome. Thank you so much. All right, well, that concludes another episode of Business of Motorsports. I hope you enjoyed it. It's been really fun revisiting the Anheuser-Busch-Dell-Jr-Dolr number eight relationship. And see you again next week. Check out Dirty Mo Media on Twitter, Facebook, TikTok, and Instagram.