Ep. 331 | The women of 23XI Racing - The Racing Writer's Podcast

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:07):
Hey, everyone, Welcome to the Racing Writers Podcast. I'm your
host Kelly Crandall. We have a jam packed episode today
and we're gonna meet for really incredible women from twenty
three to eleven racing. We're going inside the walls to
talk about different areas that you can work in this sport,
in different areas that these women are dominating in their profession.
We've got finance and accounting, engineering, sponsor partnerships, and marketing.

(00:29):
We're covering all of that and within we are getting
some great stories not just about what these ladies do
for twenty three eleven racing, but their backgrounds, how they
got into the sport, how they landed at twenty three
to eleven racing, from a blindly applying for the job,
to a few of them being non NASCAR people before
they began working in this industry. We even talked to
one of them about being a movie executive from Los

(00:51):
Angeles that now works in NASCAR, as well as one
who came from Germaine Racing and wonderful memories of that organization.
So to meet Carrie, Cherokee, Avanna and Jamie, all working
in different parts of twenty three to eleven racing as
we have just a bit of girl power today on
this show and highlight diversity and the many, many fields

(01:11):
in this sport and with race teams so jam packed.
As I said, I hope you enjoy it, hope you
learn something or really just find how incredible and how
interesting folks in this sport can be. And that's what
we do with the podcast. So let's jump into it.
Here we are first with Carrie, then we're gonna go
to Cherokee, Havannah, and we're gonna end with Jamie on
the Racing Writers Podcast. All right, Kerry, welcome to the show.

Speaker 2 (01:41):
Thanks.

Speaker 1 (01:42):
Have you done a podcast before, but you listened to
a podcast? Okay, See that's how I was before I
started the podcast. I sit at my desk and I
work and I was like, oh, these are great. I
love listening to these. It's so easy. It makes the
day go by better and you learn so much. And
now we're gonna learn about you. Right now. The table's
a turn though, right, Okay, don't be nervous, we're gonna
have a little bit of fun. Director of Finance and Accounting,

(02:05):
let's start with just the layman's terms of breaking that down.
What do you do.

Speaker 3 (02:10):
Well, I'm responsible for all of the financials and all
of the accounting twenty three to eleven racing. A lot
of it is compliance, a lot of it is tax related,
a lot of it is making sure that our owners
are protected.

Speaker 1 (02:25):
So okay, when it comes to finance and accounting for
a race team, as you just said, there, you know
a lot of it is taxes and you know things
that maybe from the outside none of us are like,
oh that that's boring, but I guess when it's tied
to a race team, what else can you tell us
just some details of what does that mean accounting and financing?
Like are you the woman with the spreadsheet? Like, oh,

(02:46):
keeping track ofingadsheets? Okay, so there we go. How does
it work for a race team?

Speaker 2 (02:51):
Because yeah, we have a system.

Speaker 3 (02:53):
I mean we kind of know everything that's going on
because everything costs money, so everything comes across our desks
in the finance department. They can't pay for anything. All
the contracts come through us, so they like to think
that they're, you know, keeping the wool over our eyes
and not letting us know how much they're spending.

Speaker 2 (03:14):
But we know exactly what's going on.

Speaker 3 (03:16):
So we're kind of the go to for all of
that stuff, and we have to make sure that everything's
properly accounted for. Everything with our sponsors, are properly accounted
for anything that we have to build back our sponsors for.
So we're just making sure that everything is following the
processes that we've said. And it's a lot about internal controls.

(03:36):
It's a lot about making sure everybody's following the rules.

Speaker 1 (03:41):
That's an interesting way of putting in following the rules.

Speaker 2 (03:46):
Accounting has lots of rules. Really, Yes, there's a whole.

Speaker 3 (03:49):
Accounting board that all CPAs and I'm a CPA have
to abide by.

Speaker 2 (03:53):
It's a very ethical profession. You have to take an.

Speaker 3 (03:57):
Ethics course every year to written your c It's a
very ethical and rule following profession. And I guess sometimes
I don't know, after so many years that I've been
doing this, if I actually belong to the profession, because
I tend to be a rule breaker, but not with
my accounting stuff.

Speaker 1 (04:18):
The ethical part doesn't surprise me. The rules. Can you
give an example of what is a rule?

Speaker 3 (04:24):
Just the way that you have to recognize revenue, the
way that you recognize your expenses, what you can take
a tax deduction for so kind of you don't like
to say it, but there's kind of two different ways
you present your financials. One is like a book financial
and the other is a tax financial, and legally there
can be book to tax differences in the way you

(04:47):
report things.

Speaker 1 (04:48):
So, working in this department, then when people start talking
about the expenses of racing and how much things cost,
would you be the woman who actually knows because you
see it all, like you know, you're the one literally
knows how much everything costs.

Speaker 3 (05:01):
Yes, And I work real close with our competition department.
They are parts department, and the people who oversee that
they really know exactly, like by part how much things cost.
I'll probably know like the overall. I probably I could
look at the drill down and tell you each component,

(05:22):
but they over there know each component.

Speaker 1 (05:26):
In my note here it says that you started at
your main racing in two thousand and six, So I
want to ask a little bit about that. But as
we keep it just on the finances for a second,
with that much experience in racing, and as we talk
about cost of stuff, you really must have seen how
much the sport has changed from that aspect of it.

Speaker 3 (05:44):
But I was just coming into the sport. I was
always amazed at how much money was spent, right Like,
the minute we get the money, it goes.

Speaker 2 (05:52):
Out the door.

Speaker 3 (05:53):
It's always like, wow, I've never worked anywhere because I
had experience in other industries before coming to racing, and
it was always about you know, saving money and giving
money back to our owners and that kind of thing.
And yeah, you spend as soon as it comes in.
It's pretty much.

Speaker 1 (06:11):
Yeah, so you learn right away. What's the saying that
if you want to have a small fortune and racing
start with a big one.

Speaker 3 (06:18):
Exactly better to come into it with money. I think
you're going to leave with money. But it's you know,
it's all about making the cargo faster, so you want
to kind of make every other department as efficient as
possible so you can spend every extra penny making that
cargo faster.

Speaker 1 (06:37):
Yeah. That's an interesting approach too, right, because it really
at the end of the day, yes, you're the team
owners are running a business, and every department has their
importance and what they're doing, But it's about that competition
side and how do we you know, again, not skim
or not neglect the other areas, But how do we
really make sure the competition is the be all and

(07:00):
all right?

Speaker 3 (07:00):
And pretty much, I think and I look at it
as we're all kind of customer service to that purpose
of making that cargo as fast as possible and winning
those races. You know, I also oversee our travel department,
and you know our job. I know, I did travel
for years and years until I finally got Someboddy.

Speaker 2 (07:22):
In here to help me.

Speaker 3 (07:23):
And yeah, I mean, it's all about making sure those
guys that travel have a very smooth and easy, you
know day traveling because we don't want any distractions when
they get to that race track. So pretty much, you know,
it's about customer service and taking care of our guys
and taking care of those competition groups.

Speaker 1 (07:46):
I've never heard that way, but I really like that, Yeah,
I really.

Speaker 2 (07:49):
I think it's that team mentality.

Speaker 3 (07:51):
Yeah, you know, because they it's reciprocated because then they
respect us and they communicate better with us. And I
think if you just really which we stress a lot here,
is that respect for everybody's job. You know, everybody's busy,
everybody's got a lot going on, and you need to
learn to respect that interdepartmentally.

Speaker 1 (08:13):
Is there something you enjoy the most about the job,
because again, this is something that you know, a lot
of people unless you really love I guess numbers or
and all of that, right, Like, it's not something that
most people think of as an attractive or like a
job of like, yeah, I definitely want to do that,
Like you really have to be so interested in numbers.
I'm assuming and and.

Speaker 3 (08:33):
I think for me, you know, based kind of when
I was coming up out of college and you know,
taking courses in college, it was about taking care of
myself and finding a career that was really open to
pushing women and promoting women and where women could advance.
And that was at the time accounting, and it still is.

(08:54):
It's a great field for women to go into and really,
you know, excel in advance. So that's why I picked it.
When I was younger, I loved English and I loved writing,
and I wanted to be an English teacher a social worker.
So but for practical purposes, and I'm a pretty practical person,
I went into accounting and it has served me very well.

Speaker 1 (09:17):
All right, So what is the misconception or what do
people not realize that makes accounting so interesting or like
why why it is so good for women.

Speaker 3 (09:26):
Because I think it really you really understand the whole business.
My being in the ice see because you see everything
and you really have to understand every aspect of the
business in order to you know, properly account for things,
explain it to outside users of your financial statements, Like

(09:46):
if you're in a situation where you have to get
a loan, you have to explain your business, or you're
getting audited, you have to be able to explain your
business to outside people.

Speaker 2 (09:55):
So it really allows you.

Speaker 3 (09:57):
I mean I worked as an auditor for years, so
I that years just trying to understand other people's businesses.

Speaker 1 (10:03):
So okay, and sounds like if you like to be
in charge and kind of lead something and feel like
you're making a difference and just in I guess, in
control of something. Yeah, that kind of boss ass bitch mentality, right,
Like that's the only way I could think of it.
I was trying to find another professional way to say it,
but that's what comes to mind.

Speaker 4 (10:24):
Yeah, I mean there's like in yeah, I mean for sure,
I mean kind of my motto, you know that I
try to impart to younger women, especially coming up through
Like my interns that come in is you know, when
you're young, you just kind of are sitting back absorbing,

(10:44):
taking everything in, and you kind of are taking everybody's word,
you know, for what they're saying.

Speaker 2 (10:49):
And then as you go through years.

Speaker 3 (10:52):
Of experience, you become a little jaded and you start
to not believe people as much and you start to
question more.

Speaker 2 (10:58):
And I always tell them if.

Speaker 3 (11:00):
Something doesn't seem right, ask questions, you know, and don't
take crap from anybody, because they're going to give you
more crap if they're not telling the truth.

Speaker 1 (11:09):
All right, So Jermaine Racing, as I said, I was
always struck by with that team. It felt like they
just they did so much with so little. What are
your memories of working there and kind of things that
stanned out.

Speaker 3 (11:20):
Oh, it was my first entry into the industry. And
the people that work there, the team feeling there, the
family feeling.

Speaker 2 (11:31):
Was just the best.

Speaker 3 (11:33):
It's hard to replicate that. Our owner, Bob Jermaine, was
just the best, the funnest, the most sincere, and just
all he wanted from his employees was loyalty. I was
there for fifteen years from beginning to end. I made
some of the best friendships. Yeah, it was just we

(11:54):
had our ups and downs.

Speaker 5 (11:55):
You know.

Speaker 3 (11:56):
We started with truck teams and ARCA racing and at
one time we had seven different teams running out of
those buildings with a very small group of people, and
everybody just it was all hands on, Like, yeah, I
was the controller CFO there, but I also helped our

(12:17):
pr girl at the track on weekends.

Speaker 2 (12:19):
I also did all the travel.

Speaker 3 (12:21):
I also anything that was thrown my way, you pitched
in and did because that's how we had to run
because we weren't even ever fully funded.

Speaker 5 (12:30):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (12:31):
Again, I was that more with less mentality, but that
everybody always made it work. It seemed like over there,
always there was that car. Truck was always at the
track if it could be.

Speaker 2 (12:41):
At the tralways.

Speaker 3 (12:42):
Yeah, and you know, was performance always you know, top
of the road.

Speaker 2 (12:48):
No, but we were proud.

Speaker 3 (12:50):
We were a really proud team of our accomplishments, and
the drivers that came to work there all became family.
I mean it was just such a nice environment, you know,
to be and it was really sad when it all ended.

Speaker 1 (13:02):
Absolutely, and you never heard anything negative but those of
us on the outside, I never heard anything negative about nineteen.

Speaker 2 (13:09):
No, or I can't and I would.

Speaker 3 (13:10):
I don't think I could ever say anything negative, you know,
like I said, internally, we had our ups and downs,
but it was never anything that you know, pitted anybody
against each other.

Speaker 2 (13:21):
Everything was handled with class. Yeah, what was.

Speaker 1 (13:24):
The draw to twenty three eleven because you've been here
since the start, since.

Speaker 2 (13:28):
The very beginning.

Speaker 3 (13:29):
Yeah, I actually was looking to get out of the
industry after Jermaine was ending, and I was approached by
a couple people that told me that twenty three eleven
was looking for a financial person. I'm from Chicago, so
you know, like the whole Michael Jordan thing was like
I can't even fathom, you know, saying that Michael Jordan

(13:50):
is my boss. You know, in the nineties, that's you know,
when I was watching the Bulls, you know, at their peak,
and it was just a phenomenal time. And then I
had a conversation with Steve Laletta, and after speaking with him,
and then after speaking with Gene Mason, who's part of
Michael's ownership group, just the way that they wanted to

(14:12):
enter the industry and kind of disrupt it and try
to do things differently because I was even tired at
that point of hearing you know, well we have always
done it this way, and that's something that Steve is like,
I don't ever want to hear anybody say that, you know,
we want to do things.

Speaker 2 (14:29):
If that's the best way to do it, prove it
to me.

Speaker 3 (14:33):
So just and the way that you know, they wanted
to do things in the community and bring a fresh
face to NASCAR, bringing different fans from different backgrounds that
all really appealed to me. And you know, I think
I made the right decision.

Speaker 1 (14:48):
Why were you thinking initially of leaving the sport.

Speaker 2 (14:51):
I think I was just burned out.

Speaker 3 (14:53):
I think because I traveled a lot at Germaine and
I was just kind of burned out, you know. I mean,
everybody in the industry can get to that point, and
after fifteen years it was a lot. But coming here,
I knew that I wouldn't have to travel. If I
wanted to or if I was needed at the tracture,
I can go, but it's not like I have to

(15:13):
go fifteen twenty races a year.

Speaker 1 (15:16):
Yeah, you come to twenty three eleven from the inception,
As I mentioned here, we are how many what has
it been we're in yeah, five years already, so time
has flown, yes, it has. What was it like seeing
something from the ground up?

Speaker 3 (15:31):
It's really cool because like especially with Steve and what
his vision was, and especially how the creation of the
business operations departments came to fruition and just seeing how
you know, he would always say just do this for
me now, and I promise in a year we'll have

(15:51):
somebody else doing that for you. And just to see
how this place has grown, and from being in those
other buildings in Mooresville and being in this state of
the art facility, it's just kind of been a little
mind blowing. And sometimes, you know, you just don't realize
how fast time is going because that's racing. I mean,

(16:12):
the last twenty years of my life have just been
you know, a flash racing memory.

Speaker 1 (16:18):
Right, That's what I was gonna say. You make a
good point. I think for anybody who works in racing,
is it all starts to blend together and then before
you know it, it's twenty twenty five and it's like, wait,
I was just in twenty fifteen way.

Speaker 2 (16:30):
And like there's no off season. That's when I'm my
busiest because.

Speaker 3 (16:34):
It's year end you know, we're doing year end stuff
and then we're getting ready for the new race season.

Speaker 2 (16:39):
So everybody's like, oh, you have an off season. No
we don't.

Speaker 1 (16:44):
That's a good point. Touch on that for a minute
of what does it look like during the off season,
because obviously the teams are always preparing race cars, they're
never stopping working. But from finances and budgets and all
of that, when you say it's the busiest time of year,
explain what that looks like.

Speaker 3 (16:59):
Our budget process starts around July, so we'll be coming
around to that and it pretty much doesn't end until probably.

Speaker 2 (17:07):
The end of the season.

Speaker 3 (17:08):
But in that period of time, also when we're trying
to close out our budget, your end is approaching, so
we're getting ready for that. We have taxes that we
have to get ready for, any audits, you know, we
have state audits, workers, comp boudits, all kinds of things.
So much fun, and then we're starting to get ready
for the next race season. We have to get everybody licensed,

(17:31):
everybody drug tested. We have to get all the NASCAR
forms completed for every team, all the driver owner agreements,
so there's just a lot of things we're having to
tick off. Of our list to get ready, you know,
finish off this season, yeah, and get ready for the next.

Speaker 1 (17:47):
So more falls into your bucket. Then maybe you would
think it's not just budgets and taxes.

Speaker 2 (17:53):
It's a lot. Yeah.

Speaker 3 (17:55):
I do a lot of the NASCAR stuff, with all
of the entry forms and all of the reforms at
the beginning of the year, making.

Speaker 2 (18:02):
Sure we got all of our stuff.

Speaker 3 (18:04):
With all the ladies in NASCAR, you know, they're so
helpful to us.

Speaker 1 (18:09):
You mentioned the word community a minute ago and again
looking over some stuff here of help you help with
the Community Relations Committee effort. So I wanted to know
first what that is.

Speaker 2 (18:20):
It's a committee.

Speaker 3 (18:21):
When we first started twenty three eleven, a lot of
it was being thrown on our HR department. So I
was like, that doesn't seem really fair to me. Why
don't we start a committee to kind of spread the
because I I've always been very interested in community service.
It's always been real important to me. So I was like,
I'll head up the committee. I'll be happy to do

(18:43):
that to take some of the load, you know, off
of our HR department. But we all work within the
Business Operations Department very closely with all of our community initiatives,
and we do have some people from our competition department
on our committee. But you know, we've done back to
school backpack with our partner Colombia every year. We've done

(19:05):
turkey drives every year with our with Walmart. Last year
we went to Western Carolina and partnered with Second Harvest
Food Bank and did we provided meals for over fifteen
hundred families and there was still a car line you know,
waiting to come in when we.

Speaker 2 (19:23):
Had to shut down. So it's just about.

Speaker 3 (19:27):
Helping and providing and showing appreciation and giving back into
the communities where all of us live and work. But
we also try to get out into the communities where
we race. You know, we're trying to plan something a
community event in Indianapolis in July. Last year, we did
one in Saint Louis with the Boys and Girls Club.

(19:48):
So it's just about not getting it to the point
where it's like interfering with my job, but just you know,
trying to make a.

Speaker 2 (19:57):
Presence in those communities.

Speaker 3 (19:58):
And it's something that I need, you know, to do
because my job is so you know, non public facing
that it really helps me feel like, you know, yeah,
I'm doing my job, and I'm making a difference within
my company, but I also am making a difference in
my community as well well.

Speaker 1 (20:19):
Along those same lines, as much as it means to
you to be able to use the platform of a
race team, why is that important for a race team
to be as public and as in touch with a
community as it is?

Speaker 3 (20:33):
Because I think it's important to our fans. I think
it's you know, our fans come from all walks of life,
and you know, I think by getting into communities where
maybe NASCAR is not as popular or people don't really
know about NASCAR, it's also educating them about our sport
and we could possibly create a be creating new fans

(20:55):
as well. So you know, it's kind of a double
edged thing. You know, tent is to go in and
provide for our community, but you know we can grab
a few fans while we're at it.

Speaker 2 (21:06):
Why not?

Speaker 6 (21:07):
Right?

Speaker 1 (21:09):
Last question, I'm going to ask this to everyone that
I'm talking about today, But you had said the word
about when you came over here, of disruption and getting
tired of hearing that's how it's always been done, which
is so true, not just in racing, I think in
any business. Right it's very easy to become complacent or
just content. So coming over here to twenty three eleven,

(21:31):
what has it meant or what have you seen? Because
they've been very they were very outspoken about being diverse,
being a company that does something different, and obviously being
a woman. We know exactly what that's like. So again,
what have you seen it? Do you feel it? Has
it lived up to what you've expected? And what does
it mean that this organization wants to be that way.

Speaker 3 (21:53):
I think the desire is definitely there to achieve all
of that. I've seen it in you know, the makeup
of our business Ops department. I think all of our
leaders except for Steve are female, you know, of every department. Yeah,
So it love's pretty cool, yeah.

Speaker 2 (22:13):
And it's very diverse.

Speaker 3 (22:14):
The challenge, I think more is in you know, the
competition that area, exposing people in automotive programs and stuff
who generally generally wouldn't think that, you know, this is
a career for them, that it is a career, you know,
potential for them, something they may have never heard of.
So our HR department does a great job of getting

(22:37):
out to the schools and educating them and you know,
saying that this is this.

Speaker 2 (22:42):
Is a job opportunity.

Speaker 3 (22:44):
If this is the route that you want to take
and this is a career, you know, there's potential for
you to come work here. So yeah, I think for
sure that we've made great strides in that. And the
few times that I have been to the track, I
definitely see a difference from like when I was at
your Maine at the makeup in the face of who

(23:06):
our fans are, you know, when I'm around the haller,
I definitely see a difference in more diverse crowd, you know,
at the racetrack.

Speaker 1 (23:14):
So love to hear it. I love that about I
didn't realize about all the department heads.

Speaker 2 (23:20):
Right, oh yeah, that's awesome.

Speaker 3 (23:22):
Every department in business ups, yeah, finance and hr.

Speaker 2 (23:27):
Yeah, we're all females. He's the only male, so we
got them out numbers, all right.

Speaker 1 (23:32):
I have new respect now for my friends at twenty
three or eleven. How about that, Carrie, thanks for coming by.
You've now listened and been on a podcast, so I
don't know if that's a resume thing, but you know,
chet yeah listen like right, like we will take our
flowers or we can get them, So there you go.
Listen to appreciate it very much. Have a good day, Jerockie.

(23:56):
Thanks for joining.

Speaker 7 (23:57):
Yeah, of course, thank you for having me.

Speaker 1 (23:59):
Junior project engineer. That sounds like nothing that I would
be good at and something that I don't even know.

Speaker 2 (24:05):
What it is.

Speaker 1 (24:06):
So I have a few notes here, but I want
you to break it down for us and just explain
I kind of just in the best way of what
you do.

Speaker 8 (24:12):
Okay, So overall what I do on a day to
day basis, I work mainly with CAD systems, so we
actually use Autodesk fusion here and we kind of utilize
it to create parts for like the road crew or
the pit crew. We make specialized parts for them, or
we even make parts that sometimes go on the car.
It's kind of a mixed bag of things that we
do because then we'll also take those CAD models and

(24:33):
we'll use them to measure things. So it's kind of
like a big summary of a million different parts all
in one. So that's why it's kind of a very
broad title. But outside of that, I also do other
things that are like on the I'm in the war
room on the weekends and other things like that. So
like the title kind of is broad but also doesn't
cover everything. So it's kind of funny to say over

(24:53):
and over again because whenever anybody asks, you're like, yeah,
this is what I do, but I'm gonna have to
explain it for like a good two minutes for you
to understand it. But yeah, it's definitely it's a lot
of fun though, And overall.

Speaker 1 (25:04):
When anybody hears the word engineer, though, I think it
automatically stands out as, Oh, that person's important. Yeah, especially
in today's NASCAR, right of this is the way the
sport has gone and they are very, very important to
how these race cars are going fast. I was also
told that you're at the track this weekend, right, so
for the twenty three So what is the at track

(25:26):
experience like and kind of hands on for you and
what you're doing.

Speaker 8 (25:30):
Yeah, So this weekend I went and I shadowed one
of our engineers, Jared Houston, just because I've only been
out of college for two years, so I kind of
wanted I kind of wanted to broaden my horizons because
I mean, when you're in college, you don't really get
to see everything that's out there. You don't really understand everything,
especially with the engineering degree. Whenever you tell anybody that
you have mechanical engineering degree, they're like, so, what can

(25:52):
you do with that? And it's more of a question
of like what can't you do? Because I mean I
remember when I told my parents that. My dad like
automatically went to Google and was like, what's a mechanical engineer?
And I was like, which find out and he was like,
I don't know. I'm even more confused. And when I started.
But when you're at the track, you kind of get
the chance to see how tech works.

Speaker 7 (26:11):
That's people don't.

Speaker 8 (26:12):
Really realize it, but the engineering group kind of has
to know what's going on with that because then you
have to figure out, like if you feel for something,
you have to figure out how that affects your setup
and then how it all kind of snowballs into everything
else of how your results will be at the end
of the day. But with what we were doing on
like Sunday and things like that, I work with race predictions,
so as cars cross the finish line, we get like
these little data points and from there it's put into

(26:35):
a graph and you can kind of trace a graph
with it, and you're able to figure out like when
the best time to pit is and what window you
have or how long you can sit there and get
gas for. So it kind of all barrels down to
like a bunch of little data points. But like whenever
you tell someone that, they're like, oh, good lord, I
do not want to do that. But it's kind of fun.
It's a lot more intense than what you probably expect,

(26:58):
but it is fun at the end of the day.

Speaker 1 (27:00):
Well, I I want to ask you that what stood
out or what was the most interesting part about the
hands on at track experience that you were able to
learn or take in and maybe see for the first time.

Speaker 8 (27:11):
I have never been through tech with our cars. I
did a student Formula SAE with the college and like,
there's tech there.

Speaker 7 (27:19):
But you have no idea what's going on.

Speaker 8 (27:21):
No, I mean at that point, at that point, it's
like a for lack of a better word, like a
redneck engineered car that you kind of like put together
in a lab and you're like, I think we're good,
and it's just it'll roll, possibly maybe it'll blow up.
I mean there was literally a car that caught them
fire at the track. So I mean not for this weekend,
but at the student organization. So I mean, you kind

(27:42):
of have like a watered down version, and then you
go to this one and you're like, holy crap, this
is like very intense, and it's like you see all
the officials and you're kind of like, okay, so if
someone's a little bit nicer the officials, then they're a
little bit nicer to you, which is like a given thing,
but it's just kind of entertaining to see like stuff
like that that like you don't see you're here, and
when you're here you kind of have like a stolen

(28:03):
valor kind of feeling because if you don't feel like
you touch the car while I was here, and if
there's like a win or something like that, you're like,
oh cool, so our team one, but like you don't
really register it as something that kind of applies to
you sometimes. So being at the track, you kind of see,
oh so because this person did this, we were able
to pass Teck the first time, so you kind of
see like everybody's work going into the car a little

(28:25):
bit more.

Speaker 7 (28:25):
Which is kind of cool.

Speaker 1 (28:26):
That is interesting what you just said about how involved
you feel if you're not at the track, because I
do wonder about that with race teams, right, because no
race teams or they employ so many people. Oh yeah,
And I always wonder what is it like for those
folks that either do or don't touch the race car?
How involved or how a part of it do you

(28:47):
feel of the success? So to hear you admit that,
even though you are someone who is having a direct
impact on performance, maybe not necessarily feel that way by
not being at the racetrack is fascinating to me.

Speaker 6 (29:00):
Yeah.

Speaker 8 (29:00):
I mean, like, I'm sure a lot of people around
here that have been in racing for a really long time.
They've had all these different career paths, so they know that,
like it's kind of set in stone that what they
do is important. But I mean when you're two years
out of college, you're like, I feel.

Speaker 7 (29:13):
Kind of like an intern.

Speaker 8 (29:14):
Sometimes it's like, do not ask me questions. I don't
want to tell you the wrong answer. So I mean
it's kind of cool to see like, oh, this is
a three D printed part I made. Oh that's how
they work or use it at the track, because I
mean they ask all the time for random parts and
you're like, I have no idea what you're doing with this,
but sure I will go and cat it for you.
I will put it on the three D printer and
I'll have it.

Speaker 7 (29:34):
To you on Friday.

Speaker 8 (29:35):
So it's kind of cool to see, like all of
how it kind of lands at the.

Speaker 7 (29:39):
End of the day.

Speaker 1 (29:40):
Going back to what you were saying about your parents
when you were talking and deciding about this career path.
First off, I guess what drew you to it. And
then even as a female, it's a very it's a
very unique position and career path to take. So yeah,
I guess I'm kind of curious of how that comes
about for you.

Speaker 8 (30:00):
Overall, my family had absolutely nothing to do with it.
My mom is in business and finance. My dad or
our family was part owners of two different golf courses,
So I had no background.

Speaker 7 (30:11):
In racing, okay whatsoever.

Speaker 8 (30:13):
If you have asked me about ten years ago what
I wanted to do, I would have said, like forensic
science or something like that, because I always thought that
was cool. But when I was going into high school,
we had like where these students from the high school
would come into the elementary school and they would tell
you about different electives that you could take. And when
I was in the class, they talked about an automotive class,
and I was like, Oh, that'd be kind of cool

(30:33):
to do. I was like, I kind of want to
know how to work on my car if I got
stuck on the side of the road.

Speaker 7 (30:37):
I don't want to be abandoned.

Speaker 8 (30:39):
We also watched Big Driver, that was a Stephen King
movie when I was in eighth grade, terrifying me. The
dude would like kidnap people off the side of the road,
and I was like, Yep, Nope, that would not be me.

Speaker 6 (30:49):
So I mean I.

Speaker 8 (30:50):
Kind of took all those things into consideration. I was like,
if I ever had to go to the dealership, there's
like a common thing that if you're a woman sometimes
it's kind of like they kind of just like talked
down to you. And I'm just like, I don't really
want that. I kind of want to know what I'm
doing where it is. And I grew up where my
mom would call my grandfather and be like, hey, they
told me I need to do this.

Speaker 7 (31:09):
Is that okay? Yeah, And like I kind of wanted
to be able to do that on my own.

Speaker 8 (31:12):
So I was like, all right, I'll take those classes.
So I took my first one in my freshman year
of high school. All of my friends were taking business classes.
I was the only girl in all the classes, and
I was like, this is actually kind of cool. I
really enjoy doing this. And so I kind of like
grew a relationship with my teacher, who was Tony Martin,
and he kind of was like a second dad to me.
And I was like, Hey, I really enjoy doing this.

(31:34):
Can I take this all four years? And so I
was able to take it all four years, and then
my senior year, I was able to kind of do
adual moment in the elective and I was able to
restore sixty seven Mustang and I was like, Okay, maybe
I want to do something with this. This is kind
of cool, But how can I do this where you
still make money and you still make like kind of
an impact on things that are around you. And so

(31:55):
then I started looking around. I was like, oh, you
can do NASCAR, and I was like this is a
perfect little area. So I kind of did all of that,
and meanwhile I'm taking ballet, playing golf, doing all these things.
My parents are like, where the hell did this come from?
I told my ballet teacher one day. She goes, huh.
So it's kind of entertaining just to kind of see

(32:16):
like everything that kind of played into it. Yeah, but
I mean like it came out of left field for
my entire family. I mean my grandfather was like, I
used to like Nascar. I know nothing about it now
I guess we gotta watch it now.

Speaker 6 (32:27):
Yeah.

Speaker 8 (32:27):
So, I mean it's been kind of fun. There's just
it just kind of snowball. There wasn't really a set
direct path or anything. It just kind of was one
thing after another led to engineering, and then there was
I think me and one of my other friends we
were the two girls from our high school that went
into engineering. And so she's doing something else, I'm here

(32:49):
and we're just like, wow, it's kind of crazy. They
told us it would be hard, and yeah it was hard.

Speaker 1 (32:53):
So are you from North Carolina?

Speaker 7 (32:56):
I am, okay, I been two hours away from.

Speaker 1 (32:58):
Here normally North Carolina, and I mean a lot of
North are like okay, well, you know, like I'm not
into Nascar, but I've heard of it. You said your
grandfather was like, oh, I used to watch it, But
it still sounds like it was far out there enough
for you, Like it wasn't it wasn't anything on your rightar. Yeah,
until an opportunity.

Speaker 8 (33:13):
Yeah, where I'm from We live right near Southern Pines,
so like all you ever hear is about golf courses
and stuff like that, So I mean it's very centered
around things like that. I mean, my hometown's called Sanford,
and so people joked that it was the sand trap
and that you'd get stuck in Sanford. So I was like, oh,
that's not a good stereots ip. I don't like that
too much. But I mean, I wouldn't trade my hometown

(33:36):
for anything. It was a small town. You couldn't go
anywhere with anybody knowing you. It was kind of nice.
My mom's like, you never realized how nice it is
till you have kids.

Speaker 1 (33:43):
And I was like, okay, oh my gosh, you say
that about Stanford. I was looking at your LinkedIn page
and I looked too quickly and I thought it said Stanford,
and I was like, wait, colt for it, Like.

Speaker 7 (33:52):
Wait, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 8 (33:53):
Every time you have to tell someone that on a form,
you're like, okay, let me spell it for you, because
you're definitely gonna add an extra character that is num
meant to be there.

Speaker 1 (34:01):
So I don't know, Yeah, okay, I get it.

Speaker 7 (34:04):
I get it.

Speaker 1 (34:05):
The restoring the Mustang that you mentioned. I am so
fascinated by that because I come from a place that
if they had that option, I didn't know about it,
or maybe we didn't have that option. But I am
so curious about folks who get their start either in
high school or in college where they have these automotive
classes and it's you know, either the Formula SAE project

(34:25):
or as you said, you're restoring a Ford Mustang. First off,
I mean, how in depth is that? Like what was
that project? And I guess how much as you were
talking about I guess kind of further led you to say, yeah, this,
I actually enjoy this, maybe more than I thought I did.

Speaker 8 (34:41):
Yeah, so with that class, because it was technically only
me in that study, it was taking place at the
same time as like one of his normal like I
think it was intro to automotive classes. So I kind
of had to find like a project that would keep
me busy. And it was ironic because one of our
family friends, their entire thing was whenever they could it
became of age, they would get like an old muscle

(35:03):
car or some type of car that they really liked,
and then they would spend the time restoring it with
their dad, so that whenever something broke on it, they
would know how to fix it or service it or
something like that. So I always thought that was really cool. Well,
they actually had a sixty seven Mustang that they had bought,
but they had gotten it from like a random field
in Georgia, and they were like, we really want to
do an engine swap on this, And whenever they started

(35:24):
getting into it, they were like, holy crap, we're gonna
have to do a whole lot more work than we
thought we were gonna have to. We don't want to
do it anymore. So I was like, hey, can we
buy the Mustang from you? And can I use as
by Cuvier project, which, ironically and luckily, my automotive teacher
really enjoyed Mustangs, so I was like, this is gonna
be a really nice selling point.

Speaker 7 (35:43):
Hey, Martin, can I bring this in? So whenever we got.

Speaker 8 (35:47):
The car, we were like, all right, we'll do it,
and we'll restore it to a point, and we'll make
the curriculum to where if it had to pass like
a today's state inspection, it could pass because ironically, after
a certain amount of years, your car no longer has
to do an inspection in North Carolina. Like it could
be the oldest car and it does not have to
get an inspection. It makes no sense to me, but
like my sixty seven Mustang does not have to get

(36:09):
an inspection every year.

Speaker 2 (36:10):
Yeah, you would think could be the other.

Speaker 8 (36:12):
Way around, but for some reason it does not have to.
So we were trying to make it to where if
it had to pass one of those today, it could.
So it had to have like the windshield wipers working,
the the headlights had to be working tail lights.

Speaker 7 (36:25):
All of that had to.

Speaker 8 (36:26):
Be road ready, road safe, not be like breaking down
the side of the road every five seconds. So as
we were going through that, we were also realizing that
we could do like more cosmetic stuff as well well.
When we were going to start doing it, we tore
back like some of the carpet to replace the carpet,
and we realized it was a flintstone car. It had
so much rust in it and like someone had just

(36:46):
put bondo over everything, And that will forever be ingrained
in my nose because the smell of burning bondo as
you're trying to like grind it away is the worst
thing ever. But we realized that we're gonna have to
replace saw the floor pans, so that went into that.
We did a desperate conversion to the front because otherwise
it was just the break drums and everything. So like

(37:08):
the way it was originally set up, if you hit
the brakes, it was like really hard and it would
jerk your wheel and it already has no power steering,
so it's a big, clunky car that has no power
steering and you're trying to break and turn the wheel
at the same time. So we wanted to avoid all
of that, and then we just did a lot of
like body work getting it ready to do, like all
those things. We traded out the radio in it because

(37:30):
none of that was working at the time. So it
was just like a lot of little tiny things that
like originally we weren't planning for, but we kind of
just tried to make sure that it was like ready
able and a working car that you would see on
an everyday basis.

Speaker 1 (37:43):
What happened to that car once you're done with it.

Speaker 8 (37:45):
It is still at my parents' house right now, Okay,
so we still have it. I would have it, so yeah,
it's mine. I just have to get really a good
deal better at driving stick shift because that thing is awful,
like normal to every day my stick shift is okay,
I still am not great at it, but in a
sixty seven it is so hard and it is so heavy,

(38:07):
and you're like already stressing out enough because you're like,
holy crap, I gotta turn, I gotta do this, I
do that. So but yeah, it's still at my parents' house.
It'd be up here, but I don't trust Charlotte drivers.

Speaker 1 (38:18):
Probably not a bad idea, especially with seventy seven. Oh yeah, okay,
So you go from that that was in high school,
you and see Charlotte get your degree? How did you
land at twenty through eleven?

Speaker 8 (38:30):
So when I was in college, I was in college
during COVID, So during that time it was really hard
to get like internships and stuff. I was actually talking
to a couple of other teams at the time when
it was like my freshman year, trying to get the
foot in the door, and I was like, all right,
this is gonna be quite difficult because right as I
was like talking to one team getting ready to do it,
COVID hit and a lot of the teams were like,

(38:51):
we're not doing internships anymore just because we can't for
the sake of we can't bring people in. We can't
risk the people that are going to the track getting
sick and stuff like that.

Speaker 7 (38:59):
So that got really hard. And then I.

Speaker 8 (39:02):
Just kept doing stuff at the university to try and
like keep my foot in the door of like some
other avenue. And then my senior year, I was on
the formula team and I was like, all right, I
really need to figure out like some way to get
in because I know that racing is the world's hardest
thing to get into. So I was like reaching out
to different people. I knew someone that my mom works with.
He knows the wife of Brad Gozlowski, and then like

(39:24):
someone else knows someone else. So it was just like
a bunch of networking and I was like, all right,
who can I talk to? And there's one guy that
we know that is actually friends with Joe Gibbs, and
so I was like, hey, please, please please take my
resume with you or send it to somebody, or give
me some contact somewhere and I will do the rest
of the work from there. I will do whatever it takes.

(39:45):
And so he gave me my information to Joe Gibbs.
Joe Gibbs gave my information to an engineer that was
over there, and I talked with him from probably December
of twenty twenty two all the way until like May
of twenty twenty three, and I was like, all right, so,
so do you have any positions of men? And they
kind of didn't have anything. It was just like going
back and forth with them, and he was like, I

(40:06):
do know some people that are at twenty three eleven though,
and I was like, okay, can I get their information?
So he gave me Michael Wheeler's number, and so I
was just annoying the ever loving crab out of Wheels
for probably six months until like I graduated and I
was like, hey, so you got anything please hello Hi,
And I probably just like talked to zero off twenty

(40:27):
four to seven. Was annoying the ever loving crab out
of him.

Speaker 2 (40:30):
He was.

Speaker 8 (40:31):
It was funny because one day, whenever I was at
the track, his wife and his kids were there and
he was like, this is the one that keeps calling me,
this was the one that kept annoying me to try
and get the job. And I was like yeah, sorry, yeah,
but it was just a.

Speaker 7 (40:44):
Whole bunch of networking. I mean, it was and that's
the business. Oh yeah, yeah.

Speaker 8 (40:48):
I mean it's a small world. Once you meet people here,
you realize that this person worked with this person from
another team on this date from this time to this time,
and they changed different jobs eighteen times over and it's
just like okay. So so when you realize that, you
just have to find somebody to talk to over and
over again.

Speaker 1 (41:04):
So two years in, where is reality versus expectation of
when you walked in the door of kind of what
this would be, what the sport would be, what you'd
be doing type of thing.

Speaker 8 (41:16):
This is a lot better than what my wildest dreams
could have ever been. I mean, I pretty much got
my dream job right out of college, and that's pretty insane.
I mean I have family friends and friends from when
I went to high school that still have no idea
what they want to do. And so going out of
college and then coming here and just seeing how inclusive

(41:36):
and how just accepting.

Speaker 7 (41:40):
This entire industry is.

Speaker 8 (41:41):
I mean a lot of times do you hear like
nightmare stories of people from left and right.

Speaker 7 (41:45):
You hear all.

Speaker 8 (41:46):
Types of gossip about how hard it is to get
in or how you're not going to get to do
what you want to do and how you're gonna have
to do X, Y and z to be able to
get there and be able to come into a place
and people actually listen to you and help you get
the opportunity to do what you want to do or
try everything. So I mean, like going to the track
last weekend that wasn't in my job description, but I

(42:06):
asked around and I was like, Hey, is this something
that I can take on? And they're like, yeah, sure,
we'll give you the opportunity. So I mean that's something
that a lot of people, and even in this industry,
at other teams, they don't get the opportunity to do.

Speaker 1 (42:18):
The at track experience. To go back to that for
a minute, because you were talking about inspection, that seems
to have stood out with you. Yeah, it seems like
you saw something that I think a lot of even
us in the media and the fans are trying to
still learn, which is if you fail for whatever reason,
and we're talking right about like it's not even inches.
Sometimes it's so small. What could quote unquote fail and

(42:42):
inspection for. But if you have to touch one thing,
it can suddenly throw off something else. Whereas when somebody
hears X car failed inspection, it's like, oh, what were
they doing? It's not even about that, right, It's really
all about these tolerances, and that is so fastating. Yeah,
you can't touch one thing on this car without offsetting

(43:03):
something else.

Speaker 8 (43:04):
Yeah, And I don't think people realize, like two, your
tolerances are like five thoul and so that's like point
zero zero zero five, Like yeah, it's a very small
and minute number. And so like when you're already kind
of close in the shop and you're like, okay, this
should be fine, but then you I mean, you'll see
teams walking around with umbrellas, and the reason they walk
around with umbrellas is because heat and the sun everything

(43:26):
like that, all these different factors they affect the way
the car is. So like if something's cold, if something's hot,
it changes and alters, like the structure of metal, and
the cars are made out of metal, like you have
different types of aluminum and things like that, so when
it's hot aluminum it grows.

Speaker 1 (43:42):
Yeah.

Speaker 8 (43:42):
So I mean, I don't think people realize like how
hard or how easy it is to fail because of
how hard the tolerances are.

Speaker 1 (43:49):
And it seems like ninety eight percent of the time
it is tolerances. It's not necessarily somebody has something.

Speaker 8 (43:54):
Which I granted there are times that some of the
teams do try to get away things.

Speaker 6 (43:58):
Yeah, but that's yeah.

Speaker 1 (44:01):
But it's like when you're hearing about, you know, fifteen
cars not getting through tech the first time, and it's like, okay,
and again I'm guilty of it. Is we all need
to just better educate. I feel like everybody of like
what is actually happening in that garage. But anyway, that's
a separate story. I also wanted to ask about the
war room because they have come so far in this
sport in a short amount of time. And the cool

(44:23):
thing here with twenty three eleven is that now you
guys have this whole partnership obviously with Exfinity, so you
guys have named it, you know, it's now the Xfinity
Speed Center, And it's just I've seen a couple of
them and they're so in depth, they are so incredible.
What has stood out for you coming into this job
and realizing how much can get done away from the
racetrack basically in conjunction with what is going on at

(44:46):
the racetrack.

Speaker 8 (44:46):
Yeah, so when we're in the Xfinity Speed Centers, so
all of the different teams are there, so you have
about three different representations for each team, and that's like
the twenty three, thirty five, and forty five. And I
know for like a lot of teams, they kind of
work separate entities so you have like a better chance
of winning per se. But in our war room, everybody

(45:07):
works together. So if the forty five is having issues,
the twenty three and the thirty five will also look
at those issues and see if maybe it's something that
they're also experiencing, and then they'll all try to figure
out like hey, at the next piss stop, we can
try tim to do this. And that's something that like,
if you're at the track, you are so focused on
a million other things, Like you'll have media coming up
to ask you questions in the middle of a race,

(45:27):
or you'll have where you have to yell down and
tell them like what the air pressure and the tires
to be like you have to. There's so much going
on that you don't have time to acknowledge everything that's
going on around you. And then at the same time
you're trying to figure out, Okay, well this cars in
front of me this car is behind me, but when
I pit, this other car is gonna be in front
of me. This car's gonna behind me. Are they gonna
get there before me? Can I get around them? Different

(45:48):
things like that, So having the ability to like talk
to other people and be like, hey, can you listen
to this person's calm and see if they're pitting the
same time as us, So that way we can ask
them to hey, can you make sure all of your
guys are out of the way, because I mean that
happens a lot of time.

Speaker 7 (46:03):
Like pit interference is about every.

Speaker 8 (46:05):
Other flipping weekend, so you're trying to just kind of
narrow it down so you don't have as many issues
whenever it comes time to it. And that's kind of
cool to see, like everybody working together, everyone trying to
do their best and just be there for one another
as opposed to working separately and just be like, oh,
we would like the win this weekend. We're gonna avoid
helping you in any way, shape or form.

Speaker 1 (46:27):
So it seems like it's it's something to where it
is easier to have something offsite to really analyze and
look at the bigger picture and all of the data
than just as you said, when you're on that pit
box and there's so much going on, you really can't
dig into and see the bigger picture of what's going
on around you.

Speaker 8 (46:44):
Yeah, and like having the ability to have other people
watching the race, you can also acknowledge what other teams
are doing at the same time. I mean, you can
look at different strategies and how it ended up working
for somebody. So like if someone pitted five laps before us,
that person can watch them and say, oh, well they
put it five laughs, But now they're having issues with
their tires, and that's something that, like later on, you

(47:05):
can take into consideration whenever you go back to that
same track.

Speaker 1 (47:08):
It's fascinating how far and just the continued evolution of
the and the technology in this sport. My last question
for you, and I told Caro, I'm gonna ask everybody this,
but obviously twenty three eleven has made no bones about
you know, disruption. We want to be different, we want
to be diverse. You know, obviously this podcast we're talking about,
of course, all the females or a chunk of the
females right here at twenty three eleven. What has stood

(47:30):
out for you in the two years you've been here,
about the diversity efforts, being a female in this field,
and just the support of twenty three eleven of doing
things differently, I.

Speaker 8 (47:40):
Would definitely say that they are not shy about giving
you opportunities, and that is something that I am extremely
grateful for. I don't think that I would have the
opportunity anywhere else. I mean, I literally my job title
was junior Project Engineer, but I mean war room was
not a part of it, or excuse me, Expinity speech
center was not a part of it. Going to the

(48:00):
track was not part of it. It was just supposed
to be me doing cad in of office over there
and going back and forth to the printer every now
and then. But being able to talk to people, and
they openly tell you to do that.

Speaker 7 (48:12):
They're like, look, if.

Speaker 8 (48:13):
There's something that you want to try, even if it's
not here, we will try to help you get that opportunity.
And you can't say that about many other places. I
mean most places are like, no, we want to keep you,
or we want to make sure that you've learned, staying
kind of in your title doing what you need to do.
But not here, they try to give you as many
opportunities as possible.

Speaker 1 (48:31):
Well, I appreciate the education. Thanks so much for doing this.
And man, we're gonna be running these race teams out
of these out of the Expinity Speed Center before too long. Right,
I'm not gonna have anybody's track talk the way it's going.

Speaker 7 (48:43):
Well, see, we'll get you as we can.

Speaker 8 (48:44):
And I'm sure I talked to mile a minute, so
I'm dearly sorry.

Speaker 1 (48:48):
Oh, I appreciate it, thanks so much. Yeah, thank you, Evana,
welcome to the podcast. Appreciate you being here.

Speaker 2 (49:00):
Thank you.

Speaker 6 (49:00):
I'm excited to be here.

Speaker 1 (49:01):
So, senior account manager. That sounds very broad and not
very specific. So as I've been joking, it's kind of
like speed dating, so let's know who you are and
what you do.

Speaker 6 (49:10):
Yeah.

Speaker 9 (49:11):
So, like I said, my name is Evanna Howell and
I'm the senior Partnerships account manager for IT' twenty three
eleven Racing so and Nat Shall. I get to work
with our amazing partners so I get to do really
cool things as far as executing programs on their path
and making sure we're delivering value for them and making
them happy.

Speaker 1 (49:26):
I hope I can find the right question to ask,
because that is interesting because especially with race teams now
having so many partners and how the sport has evolved
to where there's not just one big anchor partner anymore.
So all right, we're going to dig into this and
hopefully again I know where.

Speaker 2 (49:41):
To go with this.

Speaker 1 (49:41):
So give kind of an overview maybe of So today
is a Thursday, it's before race weekend, so maybe just
a little bit of what you've even just done today
so we can get an idea of kind of what
you have going.

Speaker 9 (49:52):
Yeah, for sure, So it's been meeting heavy, which it
usually is, but good meetings, whether it's internally to align
on things or meetings with partners, so the day to
day partners of making sure we're going into the race
weekend or looking ahead of the race weekend, of just
making sure we're covering all of the bases as far
as their priorities or what they're looking to activate as
we go each race weekend.

Speaker 1 (50:12):
Okay, So I'm glad you said that because it sounds
like you have to kind of liaison between you work
for the race team and kind of have an idea
of how we do things quote unquote, and then okay,
now I need to listen to what are they looking
for and how do we combine.

Speaker 9 (50:28):
These exactly exactly, bringing all the worlds together and making
beautiful things happen. So both on the racetrack and off
the racetrack. So, like you said, we are currently racing
three cars, sometimes four cars at certain races, so each
weekend is a different paint scheme and a different partner
that we're helping support and help amplify.

Speaker 1 (50:45):
Can you give an example of what that means on
the racetrack of working with partners.

Speaker 6 (50:49):
Yeah, So, I mean it's all the things.

Speaker 9 (50:51):
So when you look at the driver's uniforms, when you
look at the logos on the race car, when you
look at how our crew shows up to the race,
our whole all of those things, so making sure our
partner has shown up the best way possible.

Speaker 1 (51:04):
For them, and then off the racetrack, Yeah, I.

Speaker 6 (51:07):
Mean, it can be a merit of things, right.

Speaker 9 (51:09):
It can be how we're executing with McDonald's on a
national campaign. We did a really cool campaign with them
last year in Chicago around the anime specific launch and
tying that into products, So it varies.

Speaker 6 (51:22):
It can be anything.

Speaker 9 (51:23):
With Jordan Brand, it's specific to a shoe launch, so
it just varies kind of what that partner is looking
for in that time and what we have going on
as well.

Speaker 1 (51:31):
So, as I said a minute ago, when there's so
many different partners in brands, how interesting or unique is that?
Because I would assume everybody has a different approach, So
it's not a plugin for all of This is how
I do my job. You have to tailor it right.

Speaker 6 (51:46):
One hundred percent.

Speaker 9 (51:47):
And I think that's what makes it fun, right because
no one partner is the same, Like I said, They're
all looking for different things or a different goal or
a different priority, and kind of what's going on in
summer may not be a to X yic partners, So
it makes things fun.

Speaker 1 (52:03):
So much of even from a partner's perspective, has changed
of kind of what they get from racing. It used
to be we're on the car and then we want
the drivers to do this, and we need appearances here.
Now it seems like a lot of it is can
we just bring our folks to the racetrack? Am I
wrong in understanding that? It seems like instead of it
being so much like the driver still do appearances, but

(52:25):
it's it really seems like a lot of these companies
want to have a presence at the race, trust Sure.

Speaker 9 (52:31):
And I think the other way to look at it
too is like a lot of our partners are doing
things on such a national level that where another lever
within that. So we're another piece that's amplifying that message
or another piece that's helped pushing it to kind of
keep that continuing on that national storytelling level.

Speaker 1 (52:49):
Do you have some examples or projects you've worked on
that you really enjoyed or you're really proud of that
you point out of, you know, against something that I'm
glad that I did that, or or look at what
we can do partners.

Speaker 9 (53:00):
Yeah, I mean, of course the Jordan Brand things that
we always do were always so fun. But to that
I can think of that we've already done this year.
So we kicked off the season with their Unbannable campaign,
So not only were they activating with us at the clash,
but they were also activating with the NBA and a
lot of their influencers, So again we were a piece
of that larger puzzle. Then also with the Jordan Brand,

(53:22):
we just did something with that highlighted their gems campaign
with Seworski Crystals and their AJ One low that came out,
So we teased that with Tyler in Texas and had
a whole paint scheme around that where they were able
to bring out women influencers that may have never been
to the racetrack out to Texas. We were able to
do a piece with Alexa and Tyler and surprising her
with her name on the car. So there were kind

(53:43):
of elements of that of that larger campaign that we
were able to have our foot in as well.

Speaker 1 (53:47):
How does it work of kind of serving both hands right,
because as I said, like you work for the race team,
but you work with or for I don't know what
the correct way of saying it is with the partners.
How do you balance against serving both sides?

Speaker 9 (54:04):
Yeah, I mean it's a balance for sure, But I
think the beauty of it is the partners that we have.
We all have the same missions, we all have the
same goal, so we want to do cool things right
in the sense, so like all our partners are able
to do those things, and we're able to plug at
it from different areas, different audiences and bringing that all together.
So yes, it is that balance and act, but we're

(54:25):
all here kind of with that same mission and same
goal of what we're looking to achieve.

Speaker 1 (54:28):
It was interesting talking to Carrie earlier because when she
came over here, something for her was getting out of
the mindset of well, this is how we've always done
it right, that this, and it's not just in this sport.
It's as I told her, it's very easy to become
content and complacent. So for you with such a unique job,
is it something to where you don't have to worry

(54:50):
about that because it's I have all of these different partners.
Everybody is going to approach it different, so it doesn't
have to be an automatic no right of this is
not how we do it right type of thing. Right.

Speaker 9 (55:02):
The other mindset is that we bring is like there
are things we've never done before. Right, We're still a
new race team. This is my fourth season with team,
so like, yes, we've done some really cool things, but
we will try any and everything and we're open to
all of those opportunities.

Speaker 6 (55:16):
And yeah, maybe some.

Speaker 9 (55:17):
Things don't necessarily work, but at least we're able to
try it and we can tailor it last next time
or test and learn different things.

Speaker 6 (55:25):
So it's fun.

Speaker 1 (55:27):
Yeah, all right, walk me through how you got here?

Speaker 4 (55:30):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (55:30):
Twenty three eleven.

Speaker 9 (55:31):
Yeah, for sure. It's kind of a full circle moment
in a sense. So I went to undergrad it Winston
Salem State University. I was a sport management major. So
the year I was graduating, I actually did an internship
at Daytona International Speedway. So that was my first entry
into the sport. And that was when the fourth of
July race was happening in Daytona. Not to date myself,

(55:53):
but it was fun. It was, like I said, it
was my first experience into NASCAR world. I didn't know
what to expect. That was just going in with a
open mindset. I was on the guest services side, so
you can imagine I saw a lot go on that weekend.

Speaker 6 (56:05):
But it was a good moment.

Speaker 9 (56:06):
And like I said, I throughout my career, I've tried
different things to see kind.

Speaker 6 (56:10):
Of what I like and what I don't like.

Speaker 9 (56:13):
So I think guest services probably isn't something necessarily that
I liked in that moment, but it allowed me to
kind of build that of, you know, working with people
and how to treat people and working with customers per se,
to help translate that into what I'm doing now and
working with partners and how to handle difficult conversations or

(56:34):
difficult situations. So from there, like I said, different experiences,
I did go back to grad school after that, so
I went to the University of Central Florida where I
have my master's in Sports Business Management and then my
MBA as well. From there was that felt entertainment for
a little bit. So they do live family entertainment shows.
When you think of Monster Jam, Supercross, Disney on Ice,

(56:55):
so live entertainment properties. But honestly, when I saw Michael
and Denny were starting the team and the awesome partners
that we had, I had to find a way to
be a part of it. So blindly applied and here
I am.

Speaker 1 (57:08):
There is so much there. You have to touch on
your degree that you mentioned, you repeat it so I
don't get it wrong.

Speaker 6 (57:14):
Yeah, so I have my sports business sports.

Speaker 1 (57:17):
Business Okay, I've heard that so many times over the
years of that degree. Can you break it down of
what that covers because it sounds fascinating. Yeah, I mean,
because it sounds like you're combining two things.

Speaker 9 (57:30):
Yeah, it was so Yeah, to your point, it was.
It was all things business focused, so like the finance
of business, the accounting of business, ethics of business, So
all all areas of sports business is where we were
focused in.

Speaker 1 (57:44):
And like I said, so you're you're taking business and
then it's just like looking at it from because again
sports are a business exactly exactly, So no racing background,
no no racing interest. How did you see I guess
the list or just hear about twenty through eleven to
even go about applying, like how did it get on
your radar?

Speaker 9 (58:04):
I think for me, I'm always looking at things in LinkedIn,
Google is my friend, the Internet, Instagram, so just all
of the things of finding and staying close to pop
culture of things, just always looking at things.

Speaker 1 (58:18):
And the listing was a hook enough to be like,
has reality met expectation? I love asking that question for sure,
right because we all do it for sure with anything
in life. So how has reality met expectation?

Speaker 9 (58:33):
I think what I love the most about a NASCAR
and working for a NASCAR team is that sponsorship is
so different when you think about the NBA and the NFL,
Like when you work for a specific team and a
specific market, you can't go outside of that market. And
where as here our partners are basically almost at the

(58:53):
center of everything we do. So like we can look
at it from so many levers. Yes, we're based in Charlotte,
North Carolina, but we could be activating in Louisiana for
a partner. We don't necessarily raise there, but yeah, we
could one hundred percent be doing something for a partner
in that market.

Speaker 1 (59:08):
Can you dig a little more into that about not
going out of the market if if you were working
somewhere else. Yeah, So that's not something I ever think about.

Speaker 6 (59:16):
Yeah, for sure.

Speaker 9 (59:16):
So, like if you think about it, the Hornets they
can't market with outside of their range. I don't know
the exact number of that range or what that distance is,
but they're they can't promote in say Texas, because the
Texas has you know, teams that are specific there. So
the Mavericks and the Spurs, like the Hornets can't market
outside of their market.

Speaker 1 (59:37):
That's interesting now when you say market, what would that
even look.

Speaker 6 (59:41):
Like like a city or area, town estate.

Speaker 1 (59:44):
But as far as like if they if they wanted
to market, like would it just be like promoting themselves exactly?

Speaker 2 (59:49):
Mm hmm.

Speaker 9 (59:50):
Yeah, So they can't promote beyond beyond the Charlotte metro area,
like I think they can go down to like South
Carolina and stuff. But outside of that metro area is
where they're limited to.

Speaker 1 (01:00:01):
I never thought about that. And I'm a big sports fan.
I've never thought about how it doesn't reach. So I
guess this would explain why Again, if I'm a big
sports fan, I go into a store and I can't find.

Speaker 6 (01:00:13):
Exactly a team exactly. Yeah, I just learned something.

Speaker 1 (01:00:17):
I didn't even think about that.

Speaker 9 (01:00:19):
So to your point, like, our reach is just so
massive and the opportunity that we have here is just
so different than any other professional sports team.

Speaker 1 (01:00:28):
So again, I'm a sports fan, I go into a
sports store or target or whatever it is. Yes, I'm
gonna find the sports team in that region. But I'm like,
if I'm in a big sporting store, I have the
expectation of, oh, why can't I find other teams? Well, now,
I know because you're but with racing, I could walk
down the toy aisle and I'm gonna find the little
die Cast cars, or if it's one of your brands

(01:00:51):
and your partners, they may be doing some kind of
activation exactly in whatever state exactly.

Speaker 2 (01:00:57):
Damn.

Speaker 1 (01:00:58):
I love that. Not even think about that. You mentioned it,
you came here from or you have a background. You
worked at Feld Entertainment. I hope I'm saying that correctly,
Feld Entertainment. And you said kind of like live events
and different whether it's live events. I think I saw
like Monster Jam or something was on there, super Cross.

Speaker 6 (01:01:15):
I believe you have a background in What was.

Speaker 1 (01:01:17):
That like, experiencing a little bit of everything right over there?

Speaker 6 (01:01:20):
It was It was fun as well. It's very unique.

Speaker 9 (01:01:23):
I feel like a lot of my experiences are very
unique and you don't typically see a lot of people
going down that path.

Speaker 6 (01:01:30):
But it was again something.

Speaker 9 (01:01:31):
For me to try to kind of see where I
wanted to be in my career path. So that was
like really my first entry into partnerships. So our team
was called the Global Partnerships Team, So again it allowed
me to touch almost any and everything, and we weren't
just similar, we weren't just in the US. We were
across all aspects of the world as well.

Speaker 6 (01:01:51):
So it was really cool.

Speaker 1 (01:01:52):
But something like that probably makes you feel diverse or
you can adapt exactly, versatility exactly, you know, kind of
seeing how different partners or different again, whether it's a
sport or it's Disney on ice exactly of kind of
getting experience of seeing how different things work exactly.

Speaker 9 (01:02:10):
I think that truly to your point, gave that jumping
pad of like what that world could look like beyond
just your normal stick and ball sports, Because.

Speaker 1 (01:02:17):
Then I was gonna ask, I'm sure something like that
has to be the perfect background coming over here. And again,
you know, an organization or a company that wants to
do things different doesn't have kind of a set mindset
way of doing things.

Speaker 6 (01:02:31):
Yeah, it was the great segue and a great translation
for sure.

Speaker 1 (01:02:34):
What stands out or what do you remember from that
experience in that work job that you have brought over here,
Like are there things that you kind of fell back
on or are you learned or did that you've applied here.

Speaker 9 (01:02:45):
Yeah, it's it was kind of the same mindset of
like just trying different opportunities. But then when I look
at some of the partners, there was a lot of
crossover too. So Toyota was a partner of ours on
the supercross side, so I was able to translate that
over Monster and as well as was had presents at
that time. But yeah, to your point of like we
were exploring different activations and other ways to show up

(01:03:09):
with our partners, that were just so so unique and
so different.

Speaker 1 (01:03:12):
Yeah, you come over, you start working in racing, What
was that experience like of just getting into this world.

Speaker 9 (01:03:19):
Yeah no, I mean every day it's it's still a
new thing, right, Yeah, But I don't think I realize
the amount that goes into preparing for a race each weekend. Right,
Like most people see drivers jump in the car and
then go race, but there are so many people that
are behind it, back at airspeed, back prepping that takes,

(01:03:44):
you know, the time from Monday all the way till
we're racing on Sunday. That just it takes a full
team to really get out there and race, and there's
a whole strategy behind it and there's a reason for
things to happen. So as funny as it is, that
that's what was eye opening to me.

Speaker 1 (01:03:59):
Yeah, thank you. Enjoy the most about being in this
role for however many years you've done it now and
again just continuing to find different ways to as we
talked about, kind of just serve both sides and then
just this overall crazy racing world.

Speaker 9 (01:04:16):
So yeah, So, like I said, it's my fourth season,
so I think it's the impact, right, It's like I said,
it's all of us coming together for an ultimate goal,
and it's the things that we're doing on the track,
as far as when we're winning and when Tyler is
this season champion winner, to things off the track, the
awesome things that we're able to do with our partners.
But it's the impact that we're able to make and

(01:04:37):
drive value for everyone that's a part of this.

Speaker 1 (01:04:39):
When you say impact, I haven't hear in my notes
about giving back to diverse communities, educating folks on racing,
which again, now you seem like the person from the
perfect person to do that, right Like you have you
have first hand experience of what it's like to come
into NASCAR and the opportunities in NASCAR. Can you just
talk a little bit about that and kind of why
that's important to you to kind of have I guess,

(01:05:01):
like a g I would describe it as like community outreaching.

Speaker 9 (01:05:05):
Sure, Yeah, I mean that was also a big sticking
point and a reason for me for joining twenty three
eleven Racing. At the time, we were running a scholarship
program for Dr Pepper where we were giving opportunities for
students that necessarily weren't familiar with this board and necessarily
had experience. So coming to a team that's really you know,
finding a mission and really standing on it was key

(01:05:27):
to me and it is important to me, like I said,
as making impact and to be able to give back.
And then just the different programs that were able to
bring different students along with us to really show them
that there is world beyond a normal stick and ball
and there's opportunities for them here.

Speaker 6 (01:05:42):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:05:43):
Well, that's what I wanted to ask next, is kind
of what is your biggest message about either twenty three
eleven or NASCAR when you're speaking to folks to try
to get them interested.

Speaker 9 (01:05:52):
Hmmm, that's a good question, I would you said, biggest message?

Speaker 1 (01:05:59):
Yeah, I guess, So what's the one thing? Is there,
like one thing that you find yourself routinely kind of
making sure to mention or explain or kind of like
how can I get people hooked or what can I
explain to them that maybe they don't know or wouldn't
think about.

Speaker 9 (01:06:12):
Yeah, I would say that to the point of, like
there's opportunity for everybody, right, there's not necessarily doesn't have
to be in partnerships. It can be in pr can
be in social but there's room for you here and
there's a place to find your footing.

Speaker 1 (01:06:25):
Yeah. My last question I've been I'm asking everybody this
is because again this podcast obviously is highlighting many different
females because to your point, there are many different opportunities
and different things in this sport for people. So twenty
three eleven was very much at the forefront and being
out there when this company started of we want to

(01:06:46):
be different, we want to be diverse. You know, being
a woman is right on that list, right, and especially
a woman in racing. So what have you found in
the four years of doing this of just the company
trying to live up to that being diverse, of giving
opportunities and just being different.

Speaker 6 (01:07:03):
I think we do a great job of that.

Speaker 9 (01:07:05):
I think, like I said, just one one showing up, right,
That's that's the first part of it. But I think
that you know, we're able to have a seated table,
we have a voice here. So I think a lot
of the women here were able to, like I said,
go back to that impact, like we're all making an
impact here and able and able to help drive the

(01:07:26):
message and show up as twenty three eleven racing.

Speaker 1 (01:07:29):
Yeah, well, it's great to have you such a fascinating background.
I love the fact that it's just let me I
see this listening. This is fascinating it. Yeah, exactly, that
is so cool. Well, I appreciate the time today and
thanks for just sharing your journey.

Speaker 6 (01:07:41):
Thank you. I appreciate you.

Speaker 1 (01:07:49):
Jamie. Welcome with the podcast.

Speaker 2 (01:07:50):
Thank you so much for having me.

Speaker 1 (01:07:52):
This will be painless, I believe, because we're talking about
racing and your job and that's fascinating, right, I mean,
you clearly love it.

Speaker 5 (01:07:59):
So someday, yeah, the fascinating part. Yes, yes, it's fascinating
some days.

Speaker 1 (01:08:03):
Okay. Well, I want to know all about you and,
as I joked, kind of who you are, where you
came from, how you got here, type of things. So
let's start with just your title, which is vice president
of Marketing, right, correct. So I've been starting off all
of these letting everybody just kind of break it down
in Layman's terms for listeners of what you do, What
does that mean? What does your title mean?

Speaker 5 (01:08:23):
So I think for me and my title, you know,
marketing is a very generic term that we use here.

Speaker 2 (01:08:28):
At twenty three eleven.

Speaker 5 (01:08:28):
So there's a lot of things that fall underneath that umbrella.
So under there is social pr, comms, brand development, creative
and licensing.

Speaker 2 (01:08:36):
Basically all fall under that.

Speaker 1 (01:08:38):
That is a lot umbrolla.

Speaker 5 (01:08:39):
Somehow, and there is also building design and aesthetic and
was really integral and helping it Airspeed kind of come
to life.

Speaker 2 (01:08:45):
So I was like, oh, I'm an interior designer now
to who knew?

Speaker 6 (01:08:48):
And that's an the rest of that exactly.

Speaker 5 (01:08:49):
But yeah, So I mean that that really kind of
encompasses a lot of different disciplines in the marketing umbrella.
And I think what makes that really interesting is you
lean into a lot of different expertise.

Speaker 2 (01:08:58):
You know, my marketing back is.

Speaker 5 (01:09:00):
Purely mostly like a brand marketing, retail marketing, very traditional
and so you know, coming from my background where you
came from very corporate life, you had lots of floors
of humans that did that. So it's been really fun
to kind of com pact it all under one. But
it's been a great learning experience.

Speaker 1 (01:09:16):
Okay, let's dig into that. So to give an example,
it's Thursday, What I guess, what have you been doing today?
Just to kind of highlight kind of what's been on
your plate or kind of some of the things that
you do.

Speaker 2 (01:09:28):
What have I done today, I just had lunch that
was memorable.

Speaker 5 (01:09:32):
No, I mean, I think you know, my day is
usually very meeting heavy, and so you know, it really
depends on what we're talking about. So that could be
partner meetings that we're sitting in on for planning. We're
obviously racing this weekend, so we're looking at what's from
the weekend ahead. But you know, for me today it's
been really I've actually been focusing on some of our
brand initiatives, which is really at the core of why
I was brought to.

Speaker 2 (01:09:50):
Twenty three eleven, which is to grow the twenty three
eleven brand. So I actually have been doing that today,
So that's great, you know, and in some of this
is kind.

Speaker 5 (01:09:56):
Of what we're doing now and thinking about, you know,
talking to partners about how we're highlighting some of these
initiatives that we're doing from a brain perspective. Then you know,
of course there's always the fun status one on one
meetings that I do. I know, I have eight people
on my team, so I meet with them pretty much weekly,
just checking on what their workflow is and seeing where
they need my help to.

Speaker 2 (01:10:13):
I try to stay out of it, though I really too.
I'm like, do you need me to do that? No,
you go, You're good.

Speaker 1 (01:10:17):
What is the twenty three eleven brand?

Speaker 2 (01:10:19):
The twenty three eleven.

Speaker 5 (01:10:20):
Brand at the core of what it is is we
basically want to be a brand that happens to be
a race team. We don't want to be a race
team brand. So really it's how are we showing up
in unexpected ways? And the things that I always usually
tell partners or people that I'm talking on the phone
is I want people out there saying, who the hell
do they think they are?

Speaker 2 (01:10:38):
Right?

Speaker 5 (01:10:38):
Like, why do they think they can do this? In reality,
it's because we're probably.

Speaker 2 (01:10:42):
One of the only teams that can do it right.

Speaker 5 (01:10:44):
Like we don't have a well built lineage and heritage
that we have to adhere to. We can kind of
go outside the lines. We can color outside of the norm,
and that's where we're really thinking about, you know, whether
that's showing up at music festivals and basically for me
being someone from the West Coast who never watch NASCAR
a day in their life, like I don't want people
now that I'm in this world and I understand it

(01:11:05):
and I respect it so much more, Like there's a
lot here to unpack and people should be interested and
could care about it. But we have to find those
fans where they are. We can't be like, hey, come,
we want to reese for three hours of people turning
left like that's not intriguing.

Speaker 2 (01:11:18):
So it's about building the brand affinity.

Speaker 5 (01:11:20):
And like, you know, I used the analogy of like,
if you've been to a concert and you've seen the
opening act and all of a sudden someone you never saw,
you're like, but because you experienced it live, you're like, man,
I dig this band and this is great. That's the
kind of experience in affinity I need them to build
with us. Is that we came to them. We didn't
say here, come to my house and watch racing. We
came to them, whether it's a concerts or fashion music,

(01:11:41):
and we said, look like, there's a reason that we
connect and there's a reason that we can do this together.

Speaker 2 (01:11:45):
And now they have a positive connectation of who we are.

Speaker 1 (01:11:49):
Have you found that have you achieved? That has twenty
three eleven achieved that of what you said there about
you want people to ask, you know, who do they
think they are?

Speaker 5 (01:11:57):
I think too in small steps we have I think
there's a lot more or that we can do. I
mean even in stuff that from just like our peril
and you know the way our haulers show up.

Speaker 2 (01:12:05):
And you know, we came out with four new.

Speaker 5 (01:12:07):
Colors this year, like, we have a color palette that's
very at the core of who the brand is, and
that's red, black, white, and that's obviously inherent in air Speed,
that's inherent in Michael. But when we kind of went
to design things at the beginning of the middle of
last year, we were like, do we need to do red,
black and white? And I was like, who told us
we do? And so we just all of a sudden
added purple and teal and orange to things, and it

(01:12:28):
showed up in our apparel and people were like, what
on earth? And you know that shakes people even in
the building because obviously there's a lot of people that
have been in the.

Speaker 2 (01:12:36):
Sport for a very long time and here we are.

Speaker 5 (01:12:39):
Being like, yeah, I know, you've always done it this way,
but now we're gonna do it this way.

Speaker 2 (01:12:43):
Life get weird.

Speaker 1 (01:12:44):
I'm not laughing at you. I'm laughing I've done. You
are the fourth person I've talked to today, and that
has been the theme of twenty three to eleven is
just because that is how it's always been done, right,
or just because that's how it's always been done in
the sport. That does not apply here, that does not
seem like it came into this building.

Speaker 5 (01:13:02):
And whenever we do start to slip back into that,
because it is easy to slip into because absolutely existing business.

Speaker 1 (01:13:08):
Yeah right, you fall back onto your familiar things, and
you know, you have people like me, I'm like, wow,
I wasn't here three years ago.

Speaker 2 (01:13:14):
I don't know what that was.

Speaker 5 (01:13:15):
And then nothing drives me more crazy, and people on
my team can attest this and when they're like, well,
that's just how it's always been done.

Speaker 7 (01:13:20):
Yeah, for who, I don't care.

Speaker 5 (01:13:23):
So, I mean, I think it's one thing to talk
about it, it's another thing to do it. And you know,
we don't hit it out of the park every time,
but at least we're trying. And as long as we
keep that at the forefront of how we're thinking, at
least we're trying there.

Speaker 2 (01:13:35):
Even if it's two steps forward and three steps back,
we still got there.

Speaker 1 (01:13:38):
Am I correct? You've been here four years? I believe,
was it twenty twenty two?

Speaker 2 (01:13:42):
Twenty twenty two? Yeah, just over three years.

Speaker 1 (01:13:45):
Yeah, so almost since I'm the first year here was
twenty twenty one, so you've been here except all that
first year. So first off, time flies is something else
that we've also talked about in this room, especially in racing,
in the four years that you've been here. Then how
it's the or I guess how you came in maybe
thinking of how it was going to go to now.

(01:14:06):
The way I've been saying is does reality meet expectation?

Speaker 2 (01:14:10):
I think it does.

Speaker 5 (01:14:10):
I mean again, you have to remember I was still
living in LA when I started working for twenty three eleven,
so I was working in my house.

Speaker 2 (01:14:16):
I want to talk.

Speaker 5 (01:14:16):
About it on East Coast hours and done by like
two in the afternoon.

Speaker 2 (01:14:21):
I was like, guess I'll go do something else now.

Speaker 5 (01:14:23):
Didn't know who anybody was and never met half the
people face to face and was only in meetings that
they didn't There'd never been this role, like at the
time I was the director of marketing, it didn't exist.

Speaker 2 (01:14:32):
So like all of a sudden, they're.

Speaker 5 (01:14:33):
Like, here it is and here's people to report to you,
and they're like, who's this person? And then from you know,
I think back to it.

Speaker 2 (01:14:40):
You know when we were in.

Speaker 5 (01:14:41):
Our old shop in Raceway up in Morville and then
to where we are now, and it's like, it's kind
of crazy to think about how much has changed, how
much I've learned, how uncomfortable I've been in such a
short period of time. And you know, truthfully, I hope
that doesn't change too much, because if you get comfortable,
that means we're being stagnant.

Speaker 1 (01:15:01):
I want to lean into that. The idea of being uncomfortable,
that seems to be something well, first off, it's something
personally I've tried to do in my career, but it
seems like that's become more of something A lot of
athletes and really even in racing, a lot more people
are talking about the idea of getting comfortable being uncomfortable. Correct,
it seems like that's become a more a big philosophy

(01:15:23):
all of a sudden, or at least openly talked about
in this sport.

Speaker 5 (01:15:27):
I think that you know, inherent in people is that
we do what we're comfortable with.

Speaker 2 (01:15:31):
We live where we're comfortable, we know we're comfortable.

Speaker 5 (01:15:34):
Like again, you're talking to somebody who moved across the country,
was not comfortable, moved into a sport and knew nothing
about into going from big corporate companies to a startup
for all intentsive purposes, and you have to either you're
going to embrace that or you're going to crumble. And
there don't believe me. There's plenty of times where I've
just been like white flag, I give up done. And
there's been times when.

Speaker 2 (01:15:53):
People will say to you like I can't believe this is.

Speaker 5 (01:15:56):
What you do now, and you're like, you know, And
there's days when I'm like me either.

Speaker 2 (01:16:01):
But you realize, like.

Speaker 5 (01:16:01):
If you're not helping drive that change, or if you're
not being part of that, then you're just by nature.

Speaker 2 (01:16:09):
Letting it be.

Speaker 5 (01:16:10):
And then if you can't make a few people uncomfortable,
then I don't know what you're doing. But also the
thing as somebody who's like worked out and trained my
whole life, like you do realize that there's a correlation
there of like, well, I'm not going to get stronger
if I don't fail this weight, I'm not going to
do this lift. So like it's just kind of inherent
my personality and I'm competitive by nature.

Speaker 2 (01:16:29):
Oh so you know, I don't like to be beat.
I don't like to lose.

Speaker 5 (01:16:32):
I don't like to give in sometimes to my own detriment,
but you know, it happens.

Speaker 1 (01:16:38):
But working and racing, I think that's a good mindset
to have. Obviously, I mean, it's all about winning in
this sport.

Speaker 5 (01:16:44):
So yeah, I mean, and it's interesting being from the
business side because again I'm competitive, so like when I'm
at the racetrack, and yes there's things that are going
on from a business perspective of like I'm constantly there'
stays when i must look like a weirdo as I'm
walking around looking at the other team's equipment in their
clothes and I'm just staring at things or all sit
in the pit box like a creepy little like spy
and just like watch what's happening because as I'm thinking

(01:17:05):
through like what do we want to show up as
how do we want to look to people I'm watching.
But then once the race starts, I'm like fully in
I'm like, you know, I'm talking to the trainer of
like what do the guys need?

Speaker 2 (01:17:14):
He looks like he's dehydrated.

Speaker 5 (01:17:15):
You need to get him some water, Like I'm fully like,
i go into like mama bear mode, and it's all
about racing. To me, it's like, you know, the business stuff,
it's it's somebody needs text me if they need something.

Speaker 2 (01:17:23):
But for the most part, I'm fully honed in.

Speaker 1 (01:17:25):
I did not realize until I sat on a pit
box for the very first time last year with Chris
kae part I spent race day with him, that it
is a prime people watching opportunity. I did not realize
how perfect those pit boxes are set up to where
you really can just sit on top of that pit
box and just take and see everything.

Speaker 2 (01:17:44):
Yeah, and the things you see it's fascinating.

Speaker 1 (01:17:48):
Just a side note, You said it, and I just
i because again, of all the things I learned that day,
that was one of the ones that stood out was like, oh,
I like.

Speaker 2 (01:17:56):
Amazing statistic, good call. Did you see that person over well?

Speaker 1 (01:18:00):
And also me being the self conscious thinks everybody is
always looking and watching me when nobody even notices I'm
in the room. It also made me realize that I've
now changed my perspective on those pit boxes because now
I'm like, I don't want to walk down pit road
because now I know what they all.

Speaker 5 (01:18:16):
Can see your going, like, oh gosh, yeah, shocking.

Speaker 1 (01:18:22):
Let's talk about the transition from California and North Carolina.
First off, how did Nascar enter? How did this all
come about? Because you said it's not your background.

Speaker 2 (01:18:32):
It's not my background. So my background is in film
and entertainment.

Speaker 1 (01:18:36):
Which I want to talk about as well.

Speaker 5 (01:18:37):
I was at Universal Pictures for twelve years in the
marketing capacity for home entertainment, and then I moved over
to Warner Brothers, where I worked in consumer products for
four years. You know, initially we were still working from
home at Warner Brothers. We had been working from home
for almost two years. At this point, there was not
a hurry for everybody to get back into the office.
And so at this juncture, a lot of people were
moving out of California, Like there was a lot of
problems happening in LA just from COVID and left over

(01:19:00):
residuals from that, and so you know, a lot of.

Speaker 2 (01:19:02):
People were moving.

Speaker 5 (01:19:04):
My husband was kind of at a stopping point. I
was getting So we were like, well, you know, we've
been to North Carolina. I was really great, Like what
about there? And we'd visited and we were really pretty
and so at first I was Warner Brothers was talking
about letting me keep my job and move. So I
hadn't been looking for a job, and that was going
through the approval process and all the way up the ladder,
and they eventually came to me and said, like, you know,

(01:19:25):
we're still working on it, but it hasn't been approved yet.
I'm like at one point, I'm like, well, shoot, we're moving,
so I guess i'd better find a job. And so
I literally went on too LinkedIn and started just perusing
to see what was even in North Carolina. And I
knew NASCAR was here, but as somebody who wasn't a fan,
it wasn't on my top ten list.

Speaker 1 (01:19:42):
Of yeh to do? But you at least knew of it.

Speaker 6 (01:19:43):
Oh yeah, I know.

Speaker 5 (01:19:44):
I knew it, like I had family members that had
been like my great grandma was a huge NASCAR fan,
so I knew of it.

Speaker 2 (01:19:49):
I just had never watched it myself.

Speaker 5 (01:19:51):
And so you know, when twenty three eleven popped up
on LinkedIn, I had to google it because I didn't
know what it was.

Speaker 2 (01:19:56):
And then I literally said out loud to my.

Speaker 5 (01:19:58):
Husband and say, oh, did you know Michael Jordan owns
a NASCAR team?

Speaker 2 (01:20:01):
And He's like no, And I.

Speaker 5 (01:20:01):
Was like that looks interesting and I literally hit the
LinkedIn apply button, like I didn't change my resume, I
didn't update anything.

Speaker 2 (01:20:08):
It was whatever I had updated with class. I was like,
that's the laziest application ever.

Speaker 5 (01:20:12):
And I think it was a couple of months later,
I was like getting my nails done and like my
phone rings and it was in North Carolina number and
I was like, who's calling me from North oh I
should take that, I'm like, and I like took it.

Speaker 2 (01:20:23):
And it was it was hr tell me that, you know?
Could I interview with Steve Lellatta On Monday.

Speaker 1 (01:20:27):
When twenty three to eleven was founded, there was the
expectation or from the outside, I think a lot of
people looked at it and said if Michael Jordan and
Denny Hamlin, particularly Michael obviously is attached to something, they
should have no problem hiring people, like people should flock
to them. And you are the second person that had
no NASCAR background but saw the name Michael Jordan and

(01:20:50):
that was enough of a hook to be like, well,
let me check it out right, let me apply.

Speaker 5 (01:20:54):
Yeah, I mean it does it has its own magnetism, right,
you know, you know something that's attached to him as
he doesn't do things halfway. And even if you know,
like right, he had a Moto GP team before he
ever in a NASCAR because he's always been in this
and that didn't you know, it wasn't around for a while,
but you know, I know that he probably committed everything
to that. Like again, he doesn't do things because he's
like bored. So I just felt that that could be

(01:21:17):
with an entertainment background. The reason sports was always attractive
is that there's synergy there in the fact that it's
a commodity that people don't need. It's not a short,
it's not a phone, it's not glasses, it's something that's
disposable and so but people built big affinities.

Speaker 2 (01:21:31):
To entertainment and what they're fans of. So I was like, well,
at least I.

Speaker 5 (01:21:34):
Have some experience understanding brand affinity. Yeah, So it just
made sense. And when it's attached to Michael, that makes
it a little bit of an easier leap.

Speaker 1 (01:21:42):
All right, I like timeline, So let's break this down.
So twenty twenty one is when twenty three to eleven
start their first year. You have been here since twenty
twenty two. Yeah, this building though tech what I guess
technically last year was the first functional, fully functional year.

(01:22:03):
When did you move from California to North Carolina?

Speaker 5 (01:22:08):
I moved, so I think I think I started with
twenty three eleven in February of twenty two.

Speaker 2 (01:22:12):
Yeah, I was here in April. We've heared that law,
so not too long.

Speaker 1 (01:22:17):
But as you said, you were still basically working and
communicating from a far.

Speaker 5 (01:22:21):
Yeah, so can someone send me anything anything for me
to read all the like, Steve was just emailing me
decks and presentations and I was like, but you just can't.

Speaker 2 (01:22:29):
And I did come out here for a week and
worked for a week out here.

Speaker 5 (01:22:32):
I think it was right before maybe a Vegas race,
because then I just took the team Planet of Eggs
and then flew.

Speaker 2 (01:22:36):
Back to LA from Vegas. But yeah, no, I was
working from a far I had no idea.

Speaker 1 (01:22:40):
Yeah, we laughed when you said about the whole building
design and all of that, but I am curious, I
mean being involved in that, I mean, what how did
you contribute?

Speaker 2 (01:22:50):
That's the fact. It's really entertaining for me too. So
when we got here, you know, because.

Speaker 1 (01:22:54):
It's not a normal building, and Dandy and everybody have
been very clear that this was going to be a
special and I wasn't.

Speaker 5 (01:23:00):
Part of the design, like why they built this or
this hot walk.

Speaker 2 (01:23:04):
So then all of a sudden it was like, well,
what's gonna go in this conference room? And I'm like
I don't know?

Speaker 5 (01:23:08):
And then I'm like, or what's going in the lobby?
I'm like, well, you built an inset into the wall.

Speaker 4 (01:23:12):
I don't know.

Speaker 2 (01:23:12):
I assumed you had a plan for the inset and
you know, what do we how do we get this there?
And how do we do that? And I'm like I
literally don't know.

Speaker 5 (01:23:18):
And so, you know, it was things like or that,
things that they hadn't thought about, like you know, just
it's glass.

Speaker 2 (01:23:23):
There's a lot of glass.

Speaker 5 (01:23:24):
Everywhere, and like, are you gonna put like a line
on the glass these no one runs into it.

Speaker 2 (01:23:27):
I'm like should we?

Speaker 5 (01:23:29):
And I was like yeah, And it looked like one
week where someone ran face first in the glass and
I'm like lines, we should we should put.

Speaker 2 (01:23:34):
Some safety lines on the glass.

Speaker 5 (01:23:36):
And there was just things like that where it was
like putting people's names on doors and what does that
design look like that They're like, Jamie'll do it. I
was like, Jamie's gonna do what Like, I had no idea.
I had no idea how to do any of that stuff.
So it was just really kind of I had to
figure it out. And it was just another one of
those twenty three eleven surprises where it was like, Hey,
now you're gonna do this, and I was like, great,

(01:23:56):
how do.

Speaker 1 (01:23:56):
I just stacking on the resume already a full resume.
Now I have all these other skill sets that I
can do, very very eye opening. I want to compare
where you came from to what you do now. First off,
I'd love to know anything you can share about projects
and things you were involved with when you were working.
And I guess is it just safe to say the
entertainment world right between Universal and Warner Brothers projects and

(01:24:20):
things that you were involved with that I'm sure many
people are going to recognize if you say it, right.

Speaker 2 (01:24:23):
Yeah.

Speaker 5 (01:24:24):
I mean when I was at Universal, right, I started
my career pretty much there at Universal, and I just
had built my work my way up, right, So I
started as like an assistant to a VP of sales
and you know, in the home entertainment, So it was
DVDs at the time that then eventually went to digital.

Speaker 2 (01:24:38):
Yes, I'm that old.

Speaker 5 (01:24:39):
And worked on you know, a lot of Fast and
Furious movies, worked on Jurassic World when it came out,
worked on Pitch Perfect all.

Speaker 2 (01:24:48):
Like any Minions, Despicable Me.

Speaker 5 (01:24:50):
Like, I worked on all of those films when I
was there, in various capacities and roles.

Speaker 2 (01:24:54):
But really on the retail.

Speaker 5 (01:24:55):
Side was working with the Walmart's targets and best buys
of the world at the time to get retail programs
for movies sold in.

Speaker 2 (01:25:01):
So it was really creating, creating marketing plans.

Speaker 5 (01:25:04):
And you know, again, things are different now there's content
and social media, which we didn't have to worry about
as much, but you know, so worked on that stuff.
And then when I went to Warner Brothers, on the
consumer product side, basically brands like Batman, Harry Potter, anything
DC related, any cartoon network thing you can think of, right,
it was also coming up with retail plans for those
and selling that into retail.

Speaker 2 (01:25:22):
So anything that you saw a Harry Potter logo on,
that was what consumer products worked on.

Speaker 1 (01:25:27):
Nice. I'm a big Pitch Perfect fan, big and Furious fan.

Speaker 2 (01:25:31):
We just keep going.

Speaker 1 (01:25:32):
They're on like movie twenty seven now, I mean just
when you think they can't come up with more, they're
suddenly flying cars through space. And even me sitting there
in the movie theater, I'm like, this is ridiculous, but
I'm gonna come back and watch the if they make
another movie.

Speaker 2 (01:25:44):
Oh yeah, for real.

Speaker 5 (01:25:44):
Like I remember when we screened one of them and
it was I think I can't remember which one it was,
but it was one where like they're on.

Speaker 2 (01:25:49):
The ice and I think, yes, what's his name kicks
the missile, so it doesn't.

Speaker 5 (01:25:53):
Everyone in theater is just laughing hysterically because you know,
they're so ridiculous happening.

Speaker 2 (01:25:58):
But they were out selling you every single time.

Speaker 5 (01:26:00):
The box office was like, yes, upward trajectory every time.

Speaker 2 (01:26:04):
So we're like, I guess we'll keep making them.

Speaker 1 (01:26:05):
It was absolutely crazy. It's absolutely crazy how that franchise
took off. And yes, it just continued as crazier as
the movies got. To your point, it's just the numbers
just kept spiking.

Speaker 2 (01:26:16):
People love them.

Speaker 5 (01:26:17):
Yeah, And it's funny when you go back and watch
the first one now and you're like, this is so basic, right.

Speaker 1 (01:26:21):
I was just about to say that the first one
is so realistic, so basic and now nobody remembers that
because again you're yes, kicking missiles and flying cars through
space and I'm.

Speaker 2 (01:26:31):
Like, and they land and it's totally fine. Yeah, nothing
will happen to the chase. It's good. Yeah, gosh.

Speaker 5 (01:26:38):
But when you look at some of that if it's funny,
like I think back to when Despicable Me first came out.
We were working on that and we couldn't sell that
into retail to save our lives, right.

Speaker 2 (01:26:44):
No, really what a minion was?

Speaker 5 (01:26:46):
No one knew, And the minute it came out theatrically
all the retailers like, we want minions, So now you
want to make because that took off too correct. So
it's like similar to like you know, like everybody talks
about big blockbuster movies.

Speaker 2 (01:26:57):
Those are easy to sell.

Speaker 5 (01:26:58):
It's not easy to sell is movie that no one's
heard of, with no name, talent and all that stuff.
And so it's very similar to like a startup capacity
where you're like, I'm trying to sell twenty three eleven
and they're.

Speaker 2 (01:27:07):
Like twenty three XI, twenty three XL, twenty three x one.
I'm like, oh my, no.

Speaker 5 (01:27:11):
One knows how to read real numerals anymore. Do we Nope, Okay,
we need to educate people. And it's literally starting at
the very basic of brand marketing.

Speaker 1 (01:27:20):
Yeah, I think I was guilty of that of yeah,
how do you read it? Everybody was And then I mean,
now I work in the in the business, but it's
very easy to look at it at first and be
like that, first off, it's unique, but then yes, how
do you read it? How do you say it?

Speaker 2 (01:27:33):
Correct?

Speaker 5 (01:27:33):
And I mean I think the funniest thing I got
here ready a year and a little after the team
had started, and my first question when I walked the million,
I was like, okay, what are the brain where are
the brain guidelines? And everybody, to me, they're like they
pull out this one piece of paper of like, that's
that's not what that is. That's those are a bunch
of colors on a page. It doesn't say like the
size of specifications, the usage, the spacing, the clear space.
And I was like, okay, we really do have to
start at the beginning.

Speaker 2 (01:27:53):
So it's starting at the beginning.

Speaker 1 (01:27:55):
How fascinating or unique was that though? To be involved
in something just and really put your and I'm sure
there's other people involve this well, but to have something
that you're you're also putting your mark on from the beginning.

Speaker 5 (01:28:06):
Yeah, I mean it's that's the balance, right. It's like
super rewarding because you see it and you're like, I
did that. But at the same time, you know, having
worked on the brands that I'd worked on, I mean,
Harry Potter's you know, Wizarding World, sorry, Wizarding World Style
Guide is you know, and brand Guidelines is over one
hundred pages long. I didn't have a single page that
said what the color was that.

Speaker 2 (01:28:23):
Was used in the logo.

Speaker 5 (01:28:25):
So like all of a sudden, you have to dig
deep and you're like, Okay, what else do I need
to think of that I'm not thinking of because that
had been established for so long. Yeah, And I caught
myself all the time. I'm like, yeah, we're good. Oh gosh,
I forgot to do this and it wouldn't hit you
at the weirdest time, but like it's it's really rewarding.
But at the same time, some people, because the way
the team started and it was like get going, we

(01:28:46):
got to get on the track and we got to
do this and we got to roll. And I come
in like a year and a half later and I'm like, Hi,
time out, stop really quickly, we need to do all
these things, and people are like really really, you know,
and so you have to kind of take it on
the chain every once in a while and just be like, welly, sorry, So.

Speaker 1 (01:29:01):
You just made the comparison to the Harry Potter brand guidelines,
and I want to ask that of what applies or
what could you take from all of that experience to
putting it into a race team and what you're doing here.

Speaker 2 (01:29:11):
Yeah, I mean I think about that all the time.

Speaker 5 (01:29:13):
And I still have a lot of assets from just
you know, working in there for so years, and I
still go back and look at them and I like,
I literally pulled out a Despoable Me.

Speaker 2 (01:29:20):
Theatrical one page the other day and was like.

Speaker 5 (01:29:22):
I want this to look like vix to somebody on
my team, and they're like, uh huh. But we don't
have the assets that you have when you're in a
film capacity, right, creative. We have a logo and we
have some colors and maybe some prints. So it's kind
of trying to figure that out. Like I've been constantly
rattling my brain of like how do I do more
with what I.

Speaker 2 (01:29:38):
Have to work with? But stay within the it's not.

Speaker 5 (01:29:42):
The confines of what we're working in because again, we
can be pretty loose with it, but I also don't
want it to be disconnected. So you can't just like
do whatever you want without some sort of storytelling behind it. So,
I mean, I'm constantly looking back to try to look
forward because I do think there's value in what I've done,
But it's hard because it's not the same at the
end of the day, like when you're new team that's
not a well established brand.

Speaker 1 (01:30:02):
Yeah, well that's the things you said. It's not the same.
And that's what makes it fascinating to me though, is
that how do you apply things from an entertainment world
to a racing world. But they're I guess they're there
can be crossover.

Speaker 5 (01:30:15):
There's definitely crossover because it's the it's the way fans
feel about you, right, You're basically trying to conjure a feeling, right.

Speaker 2 (01:30:21):
You know, you may not like our drivers, you may
not like Denny, you may not like the color red,
but if you have some sort of positive.

Speaker 5 (01:30:29):
Association and you had again, like we just had our
fan week here and you might not have been the
biggest fan, you could have been a big fan of
Chase Ellie if you came here and we gave you
a private tour and you're like, man, I don't hate
those people anymore, right, Like, you know, it's it's those
small things.

Speaker 1 (01:30:42):
Yeah.

Speaker 5 (01:30:42):
It's kind of like if you're ever watching sports and
you're watching two teams you really don't care about, You're like, well,
I dis like them less, so I'm gonna root for them, right,
you know, Like you're watching the super Bowl, You're like, well,
I don't.

Speaker 1 (01:30:52):
Yeah, yeah, and you find ways to justify You're.

Speaker 5 (01:30:56):
Like, I mean I really like the color of that shirt.
So I mean it's it's little things like that. And
if we can do small things like that and make
little inroads like that, like they still progress.

Speaker 1 (01:31:04):
So for clarification, you've said a few times the phrase
brand guidelines. How would you explain I think I know
what it is, but how would you explain what that
is for a company?

Speaker 5 (01:31:15):
Yeah, I mean it's basically the short, short version of
here's my logo, Here's how you can use it, Here's
where you can't use it, here's if it needs an
outline on it, because it's on a pattern background versus
on a black background. Here's when you can mix it
with certain colors. Here's the spacing requirements. Here's the center point,
because by the way, our logo does not have a
proper centerpoint.

Speaker 2 (01:31:34):
It is a not true center.

Speaker 5 (01:31:35):
It's the colors that what are the PMS colors hex
codes for all of our colors, so that if you're
repurposing them, you're not using whatever red you just felt
like waking up and using which we had that problem
when we first started too.

Speaker 2 (01:31:45):
I was like, this red looks different than that red.
No one else, just me.

Speaker 5 (01:31:48):
And so it's just at the basic and ours is
only probably around like ten pages right now, you know.
But I'm hopeful that eventually as we get more assets
center our tool belt and we allow more flexibility with
how people utilize it, then little grow.

Speaker 1 (01:32:00):
How does that apply to social because I think you
mentioned that's one of your areas.

Speaker 5 (01:32:04):
Yeah, so under social it primarily used Like so when
we kicked off twenty twenty, what years at five?

Speaker 2 (01:32:10):
Sorry I'm already in twenty twenty six, but yeah, I'm
planning twenty six again.

Speaker 1 (01:32:13):
I really plans together in this business.

Speaker 2 (01:32:15):
So you know, I we switched a little bit.

Speaker 5 (01:32:17):
We shifted from utilizing a red logo more primarily, and
now we're using a white logo, so I kind of
changed things over and what kind of backgrounds that could
be on and and so when we did social, my
big thing was I want when you're looking, let's say
at Instagram and you're looking at the grid of everything
that's been posted, I want there to be a very
clear delineation between when twenty twenty four ended and we're twenty.

Speaker 2 (01:32:38):
Twenty five begins.

Speaker 5 (01:32:39):
So the creator the graphics are all different, the backgrounds
are different, the color was integrated, so it was like
twenty five four ended and now we're in our twenty
twenty six look and feel. And that's what I want
everything to look like. I don't want them to look
the same every year. I want something to be like,
what are they doing now?

Speaker 1 (01:32:54):
So if I go to Instagram later when we're done talking,
am I gonna should? I should notice?

Speaker 2 (01:32:58):
Then?

Speaker 1 (01:32:58):
Yet it's different as I scroll, well, yes, oh fascinating. Yes,
I like having homework. I'm going to do that. What
do you enjoyed most about all of this, James? I
mean you come from as we talked about a background
that wasn't racing, then you come from the other side
of the country and you come from the entertainment business,
what is the most enjoyable or what have you? I
guess kind of settled in and really like not just

(01:33:22):
about this world, but what you're doing now.

Speaker 5 (01:33:24):
I do think it's been such a great growth opportunity
for me as a person, as a business leader when
you come from I use corporate all the time, but
you have to remember that Warner Brothers in Universal were
both borned by Comcast, and they were both worn by
AT and T DirecTV. These are big companies that have
very big company ways of thinking.

Speaker 2 (01:33:44):
Structures are much bigger.

Speaker 5 (01:33:47):
So coming here in where I can and where it
makes sense to bring some of that knowledge to what
is generally considered smaller business thinking and saying like, oh,
let's look at how we evaluate talent by doing this,
or let's look get how we you know, develop employees
and create development.

Speaker 2 (01:34:03):
Paths for people. Those are things that I enjoy doing.

Speaker 5 (01:34:07):
But it is I do get called the corporate personal
line and you know that's not how racing is. And
that makes me, as we all just covered, it makes
me work. But I think the growth for me I
would have never done this had I stayed where I
was right.

Speaker 2 (01:34:18):
I was very comfortable.

Speaker 5 (01:34:19):
I knew exactly what the cadence was of a theatrical
at least to a consumer products line.

Speaker 2 (01:34:24):
We were planning eighteen to twenty four months out here.
I'm lucky if I can get us to the.

Speaker 5 (01:34:29):
Playoffs right now, like you know, as let alone, I'm
already planning twenty twenty six.

Speaker 8 (01:34:32):
Yea.

Speaker 5 (01:34:33):
So it's just been such a stretch for me as
far as bringing in new talent, developing a team structure,
hoping I can help shape the organization from a leadership
perspective like I would have never gotten that in that
in that same environment.

Speaker 1 (01:34:45):
Yeah, my last question all of your coworkers have answered
as well. So I'm trying to end on a familiar
note for everybody. But because again this podcast is highlighting
a bunch of different areas and women in this organization
and twenty three eleven, what I keep repeating is because
it was very much the philosophy and the motto when
this company started is being different, being disruptive, being diverse.

(01:35:09):
So from your perspective of now being here a couple
of years, do you see that? How do you feel
about just you talked about your opportunity, but just what
overall this company is trying to do in that regard.

Speaker 2 (01:35:19):
Yeah, I mean, look, I'm grateful. You know when I
got interviewed and.

Speaker 5 (01:35:22):
I asked Steve Loletta, you know, the last question I
asked him my interview is like, why are you talking
to me? Right, I'm a movie execut from LA who
knows nothing about racing. And he said to me, I
already have a lot of NASCAR people around me.

Speaker 2 (01:35:32):
I need marketing people.

Speaker 5 (01:35:33):
And I was like, okay, and so, yeah, I've seen it.
Do I think we could continue to push it?

Speaker 1 (01:35:38):
Heck?

Speaker 2 (01:35:38):
Yeah I do. Do I feel like we hit speed
bumps along the way?

Speaker 5 (01:35:44):
Yes? Do I think that, you know, there's still a
lot of growth to do in this business, in this sport.

Speaker 2 (01:35:51):
Yeah. Do I think we're doing the right things?

Speaker 1 (01:35:53):
Yes?

Speaker 2 (01:35:54):
I do.

Speaker 5 (01:35:54):
Do I think we look at it that way? Absolutely?
Do I think it clouds are judgment?

Speaker 3 (01:35:59):
No?

Speaker 5 (01:36:00):
I think we are trying to do what we believe
is best for the structure, the organization, the team in
the long run, and that is bringing in more different
people from different backgrounds. That is saying I don't care
if they haven't done social media at a sports team,
but you know they've done it at this team, you know,
in this capacity, and seeing how does that translate. It's
really about having vision and sometimes you miss and that happens,

(01:36:21):
and then you make a decision and you move forward.
But like you, I think we're always looking for that
way to make people a little bit more uncomfortable.

Speaker 1 (01:36:29):
Yeah, I love that. I love that great way. And Jamie,
I appreciate the time. And if there ever comes a
time where you're cleaning out your office or anything and
you come across Pitch Perfect or Fast and Furious or
Minions or Harry Potter stuff you don't want or need,
the nerd in me will be happy to say you got
your hands. So I appreciate it.

Speaker 2 (01:36:49):
Thanks so much, Brom, thank you for having me.

Speaker 1 (01:36:57):
One more time. My appreciation to carry Cherokee, Evanna and
Jamie for sitting down with me, taking time out of
their day at airspeed so we can chat, learn something
new and just cover so much diversity and just girl
power and what you can be in this sport. There
are so many different professions, so many different layers, and
it is awesome to be able to take time and
learn some more. And thank you Sidney as well from

(01:37:18):
twenty three to eleven. It was her idea she pitched
it to me. I loved it. We finally made it happen.
So thank you to everyone, all of you for bringing
me into the shop and making this podcast happen. I
hope everyone enjoyed it as much as I did, so
please leave a rating and review. You can also engage
with me on social media from X to Blue Sky,
Facebook LinkedIn. It is very easy to find me, interact

(01:37:40):
with me, let me know what you think. Instagram as well, TikTok.
I am all over the place. Maybe I don't post
as regularly on each of those, but it is very
easy to find me, send me a message, let me
know what you think. And I hope you are clicking
and subscribing and listening to the podcast when it's available
on your Mondays. In recent news, since we last had
an episode here on the podcast, the official nast Car

(01:38:00):
cookbook titled NASCAR Race Day Eats is coming out in October.
I am blessed and thrilled to have been a part
of that project. It looks absolutely fantastic. I hope you
will consider pre ordering or looking for it in stores
when it comes out at the end of October. You
can also find all of that information on social media
as well as in the description of this episode to

(01:38:20):
where you can go check it out, pre order, or
maybe mark it down in your calendars to check it
out and buy it from anywhere you can get books,
any bookstore when it comes out in October. And with
that we're gonna wrap up this episode.

Speaker 6 (01:38:33):
It was jam Pack.

Speaker 1 (01:38:33):
Thanks for hanging, thanks for listening to it once again.
Hope you enjoyed it, and I will see you again
real soon on the Racing Writers podcast at

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Ep. 331 | The women of 23XI Racing

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.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}Ep. 331 | The women of 23XI Racing