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Ep.323 – RE-HEATED: RJ Valentine
Ep.323 – RE-HEATED: RJ Valentine
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About this episode
RJ Valentine shares his remarkable journey from a tough upbringing in South Boston to becoming a self-made millionaire and influential figure in motorsports and business. The conversation covers his early life, multiple business ventures including insurance, real estate, and quick oil change centers, and his extensive racing career in IMSA and Trans-Am. RJ's candid storytelling includes hiring private investigators, navigating high-stakes business deals, and memorable racing moments like winning the 2009 Rolex 24. The episode also touches on his colorful personality, relationships with key figures, and ongoing involvement in karting and motorsports business ventures.
Topics:
rj valentine biography
business ventures
motorsports career
imsa racing
trans-am series
private investigator story
quick oil change business
karting industry
2009 rolex 24 win
business negotiations
The FIRST of our RE-HEATED series, where we re-issue episodes that might share something with racing stories in the news… Episode 150 featured RJ Valentine. RJ Valentine is one of sportscar racing’s greatest characters, and beloved by our hosts. A businessman first, RJ grew up under tough circumstances in South Boston through the 1940’s and 1950’s, building a hugely successful series of businesses which eventually led him down the path of racing. Funding his own way, RJ has driven in Trans-Am, IMSA, and Grand-Am, all in their heyday, ultimately leading to his career highlight, winning the Daytona 500 (listen to episode for details). What makes RJ most entertaining is his complete zero-apologies character, not afraid to share his opinions on politics, people around him, and life at large. Dinner was served at Davios in Burlington, Massachusetts. Thanks again to Continental Tire and Acura for making it all happen.!
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Lincoln Nautilus
"...e Los Angeles class. What they were known as the Nautilus class. He said Boilermaker."
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Chevrolet Corvette
"...me guys up in New York, 75. I found a production Corvette owned by a guy that owned like a chain of muffle..."
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Pontiac Firebird
"but got into road racing. He built a Pontiac Firebird for me. And I think we were in 82, 83 after the ..."
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Pontiac Gto
"Right. So you still own the Pontiac GTO that you race back in 005. You didn't go out to ..."
Select text to request an explanation
So, uh, a Boston original.
Self-made millionaire.
Uh, friend of such folks as Brownie and Dick Seckes.
Georgie.
Georgie.
RJ!
Mr. RJ Valentine.
If you could describe this dinner, we just had one word.
What would it be?
Inspirational.
Oh, that was way cleaner than I expected.
I thought you'd be angry as s*** and just saying f*** a lot.
Too good to give that word.
Would you like, by the way, do you like the word?
Yeah.
Yeah, the word's good.
Okay.
Inspirational is good.
Can you say f***ing inspirational?
No.
Oh, now you're underbager.
Who are you? Come on!
Say it.
I guess tired already.
What about, what about what you want?
Yeah, yeah.
So you want to put words in my mouth?
I thought you said one word.
Say it.
F***ing inspirational.
Would you say wicked inspirational?
Is that what you want?
Yes, sir.
Wicked inspirational.
Sold.
And now for Dinner with Racers, presented by...
Continental Tire.
...with your hosts, Ryan Eversley and Sean Heckman.
Please hold your radio set.
Oh, it's cold!
I've been driving very angry in the sound of a driver on the radio during a race.
What do you think I should go ahead and change?
Hey, everyone, and welcome to sort of another edition of Dinner with Racers.
Sean here.
We are trying to figure out a few new ways this year to put out more recurring content,
but also not screw up the way we always do our show.
And when I say that, I mean, we are still recording.
We're still doing the normal Dinner with Racers that we're going to put out at the end of the year,
which everybody looks forward to.
But at the same time, we're trying to find ways to keep putting stuff out in a more recurring way.
It's sort of been the number one feedback from a lot of our fans, which is to say,
hey, even if it's old stuff, we'd love to have it put back out with special stories.
So we're going to try that today.
So this is the first of our reissue episodes.
So today's episode is literally the exact same episode as episode number 150 with RJ Ajay Valentine.
So the thing we're trying to do with these reissue episodes is we're trying to put out
episodes that are concurrent with sort of the things going on.
As everyone knows, Ryan and I do not like to do sort of a topics of the week kind of show.
There's a million of those.
And honestly, I feel like people like our stuff because it's about the guest
and something that you can listen to for years, not just the stuff that's going on this week.
So what we're going to do now is maybe put out old episodes with sort of behind the
scenes stories that are relevant to what's going on today.
And the RJ episode we want to put out for a couple of reasons.
The first one is there's been a lot of stuff in the news in the last few days about
private investigators being hired to suss out what potential employees are doing.
And I want to put this episode out because that's not the first time that's happened
of the many stories of RJ Valentine in this episode.
There's an amazing hiring a private investigator story and I figured, okay,
this would be good just to remind the world like this is not the first time because RJ's
story goes back to I think the late 80s and it's about transam racing.
Anyway, so hopefully you'll enjoy that.
But this episode is a personal favorite of both Ryan and I.
I think if you're going to ask either one of us what our favorite episode is,
you get sort of a different answer.
Obviously, Ryan's very favorable to the story of his father.
I have a bunch of different ones, but this is both kind of a mutually appreciated episode
because this is an episode where Ryan and I basically showed up and I don't want to say
didn't give a s**t, but kind of didn't give a s**t.
Not in the sense that we didn't want to kind of immortalize RJ and put his story out there
because it's one of a kind.
But this was an episode where we knew RJ was going to be a character.
He was going to be completely off the rails.
So if RJ is going to go off the rails, then we're going to go off the rails.
So I would say I don't want to speak for Ryan, but I can confidently say,
I think for both of us, this is like a top five episode for the two of us.
Because for us in terms of the chemistry between Ryan and I,
we truly just showed up like whatever, let's just enjoy this one and not worry too much about it.
And I think it shows because RJ, I don't know how to put it,
there is no one like RJ in this planet.
And if you hadn't heard episode 150 and you're just listening now,
there's a reason we're putting this one out today.
So one of my favorite people in the world.
I can't honestly say I've ever had sort of a business mentor in my life,
especially in the motorsport sector.
But if I did have one, it would be RJ.
He's probably been more tough, love and honest with me than anybody else,
especially early in starting TNB Creative, which obviously has a heavy motorsport episode.
So RJ is a special person to me.
So I'm glad we're kind of paying tribute to him yet again.
But again, this is the exact same episode as episode 150.
We just sort of wanted to put it back at the top of your queue.
We're going to be doing this in a more regular way to try and keep up with
current events.
And so hopefully enjoy it, let us know.
And as always, this is completely thanks to Continental Tire.
Be sure to let them know that you appreciate that.
We're always trying to figure out ways to keep you happy.
Hashtag dinner with Conti if you're on Instagram.
And please on our website, on our Instagram,
we got a bunch of trackable links that let Continental know that we were there.
So appreciate that.
And of course, if you want to hear some more behind the scenes stories,
check out our Patreon, patreon.com, the DWR show.
We're putting out a monthly kind of behind the scenes deal
on a lot of the fan questions and things like that.
So anyway, hope you enjoy it.
And that's all I got.
Take it away, RJ.
All right.
We're going to start in five, four, three, two.
Can you hear is OK?
Oh, perfectly.
You're obviously a huge podcast fan, right?
Well, I don't really listen.
How do I get into podcast?
We'll take care of you.
I know.
There's an icon on there because some of my secretary,
my old secretary showed me.
I'll start using it.
Secretary, by the way, I've known you 15 years, something like that.
And every time I've been to your office,
same secretary, it seemed like forever.
Oh, yeah.
Well, she was 19 years.
That was Laura.
Laura, that's all I've ever known.
Diana was 15 years.
Is that Danny?
Was that her name?
She just started Monday.
OK, so it's Thursday.
So it's been four days.
You're not one who holds back when he talks.
Is there a whole HR process where they have to sign
eight different documents saying they're OK with hearing
all kinds of s*** out of your mouth?
What I do is I interview him beforehand.
Then Karen gets them.
OK.
Now, Karen.
Karen has been your right-hand person for a while.
Well, she's one of them.
Yeah.
But she's hearing an ankle.
And she's tough as nails.
She can't hear anything.
But she goes and she talks to them.
She says, look, this is what he's like.
It's a political office.
And not a political office.
But everybody's up there polarized.
And, you know, they're f***ing Trumpsters, you know?
And that's it.
So anyway, she tells them what I'm like.
And, you know, when she came in, I asked her, you know,
I said, you know, I do political fundraise.
She says, I don't, you know, I don't mind.
I pretty much don't.
I stand in the middle of it.
You make it very clear.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
So yesterday, I come in, right?
And typically, when they turn the TV on, they mute it.
They put it on mute.
Yeah, yeah.
She's got it.
And she's got the voice going for me.
OK.
They got Mule on you.
OK.
Oh, for the hearings.
Yeah.
The Mule are hearing for yesterday.
Yeah, yesterday.
So anyway, she's got it up.
Yeah.
She walks in and she's looking at the TV.
She says, what do you think of this?
I said, well, I said, this is a game changer.
She says, she turned out she's a f***ing Trumpster,
but she didn't want to say anything.
Oh.
Well, then you and her, like, pees in the pod.
We'll get it.
So we'll see.
We'll see.
All right.
Look, I know people are different.
You know, I can't.
So I just can't help it.
I'm just sick and tired.
You may accept people are different,
but you're not one to hold back on arguing.
I just take, you know what?
What it does, Sean, is it wastes f***ing time
if you don't, you know, you don't say what you feel.
Sure.
That's a, I agree with that.
Yeah.
100%.
Yeah.
Yeah.
You know, a lot of people disagree with me, but look,
I'm going to f*** an age.
I don't give a f*** how old.
So how many interviews have you done?
130 something.
Yeah.
We have like 120 episodes and probably 100.
This is going to be really good.
Oh, well, how else is this going to go?
I'm season five.
All right.
Well, I mean, for people like ourselves
that are in the business, it's going to be fantastic.
Yeah.
So you're predicting that our show will,
we'll get some downloads.
Oh, I mean, f***.
Well, now that we have your seal of approval, I'm happy.
Yeah.
I wasn't sure.
But now I think we should commit to it.
Everybody wants to hear what everybody had to say.
Well, that's why your name's come up so many times,
because everybody loves to hear your opinions on things,
because you don't hold back.
Yeah.
Well, you know, some things I do, but you know, for the most part,
listen, I've been, I've been doing this since 1974 or five.
Yeah.
Right.
I've been racing.
And I'm at an age now, my mother went to 99.
Okay.
Okay.
And she was in good health, right to the end.
My father went to his late 80s.
I've got good genes.
Okay.
And I still love and enjoy life, you know, fantastically.
Okay.
I do.
But you know what?
You runway get shot at and you say to yourself,
I don't have to put up with the f***ing likes of pretty sanders.
Okay.
Kamala Harris.
Here we go.
No.
No, no, no.
I'm just, I'm just, I'll get off it, I'll get off it.
I'll get off it.
What the f*** are you stopping?
I like the fact that you're saying at your age
and what you've done with your life.
You're like, I don't care.
I'm not going to put up with s*** anymore.
These people are f***ing socialists.
They're f***ing communists.
All they got to do is look at Venezuela.
They got to look at Cuba and say to yourself,
why do you want a socialistic country?
I mean, look, you guys have been on the road for how long?
Too long.
Yeah.
But no, no, there's a story here.
You f***ing working.
You're working, you're doing something productive.
Thank you for saying that.
And, you know, you...
Can you call my mom?
My mom's very proud of me.
You know, I absolutely love what you do.
And the point is you're in play all the time.
You're in action.
Yeah.
You're meeting new people.
You're talking.
If you could commercialize and productively make what you're doing.
We talk politics doing political stuff at one point.
And I'll tell you, right now, you go to guys like,
what you did with the s***.
Don't know what you're talking about, RJ.
What you did with the s***.
But anyways, do you want to start with...
We started.
Yeah, that's it.
Fishing gears.
No, you tell me.
This is your show.
No, apparently it's your run-in.
It's the RJ.
It's the RJ show.
Well, chronicles.
What I thought about, you tell me if this makes any sense.
Okay.
Okay.
What I was going to do is go back until the beginning
and then evolution and s*** that happened all along the line.
So, yes.
So, the short answer is that is exactly what we want now.
Here's what I want to make clear.
You can't know RJ without knowing where RJ came from.
So, I want to know your background.
I want people who don't know it.
Because we meet a lot of wealthy people,
but very few people started with s*** nothing.
Oh, also we're willing to just talk about it.
Yeah, all right.
But what we don't want is in a 90-minute recording to be like,
and then in 1980, this happened.
Like, we don't want...
No, no, no.
Yeah, yeah.
But like, just kind of start from the back.
Okay.
All right.
So, obviously, Ryan and I know you.
You and I have got a lot of history together.
People in sports car know that the fame is RJ.
RJ.
But a lot of our fans are either younger,
they're IndyCar and they're NASCAR folks.
They may not necessarily know you as a household name.
And what I find particularly remarkable about you,
it's not just the stuff you've done on track,
but like your character, you're full of life.
But you started basically with nothing
in the rough parts of Dorchester.
Right.
And you've built it up into a...
Which is South Boston.
South Boston.
And now your business-wise have been incredibly successful.
I think that's extremely rare.
Well, listen.
So, where were you born?
I was born and brought up in Boston.
I was born at St. Margaret's Hospital.
Okay.
Okay.
That was in 1944.
Evolved into living there in Dorchester as a young lad.
And then, you know, I started working when I was 13 years old
in a famous department store in Boston called Filings.
What did mom and dad do?
My dad was a boiler maker.
Had no interest in cars.
My mother was a designer and a dressmaker.
And the two of them together, you know,
we didn't have a lot of money, but my mother was a driver.
What I mean, she worked extremely hard all the time.
My father did, too.
But he was a functioning alcoholic.
You know, he didn't drink during the day,
but at night he would drink.
Right.
And they were American?
I mean, Valentine's, obviously, Italian.
He was born in Italy, but he came here when he was six years old.
Six months old.
Okay.
Okay.
And my mother was born here.
And I remember you tell me, so you were Italian,
but you grew up in the Irish parts of Dorchester.
Oh, yeah.
Yeah.
So how'd that go?
Well, in the beginning, it was kind of tough in the very beginning.
You know, I was hanging around with a lot of kids.
Some of them were Irish and, you know, we get into it.
I mean, we were called guineas, okay?
And so anyways, my first encounter was with Ronnie Corbett.
My mother made all my clothes for me by hand.
I mean, shorts, socks.
Yeah.
We looked like we were brought up in a high income area.
Okay.
My sister and I.
Oh, because you had custom-made clothes.
Oh, yeah, my custom-made clothes.
So I'm walking down the street and Johnny Corbett grabs me.
And you're like seven years old?
No, I'm like 10 or 11.
Okay, all right.
He's choking me when my mother's hand may tie.
Nice.
So I come to the door crying.
My old man says, you're not getting in this house unless you beat the s*** out of that kid.
So I had to go, he says, give me the f***ing tie and you go get him.
So I was scared of my father.
So I went up and I got a hold of Johnny Corbett.
It was like three years old of me.
And I beat the s*** out of him.
Good, good.
I looked at my hands.
I said, I look stocky kid.
And that was the end of it.
Okay.
The mother came down with the boy.
So look what your son did to my son.
He says, well, you tell your son, the next time he lays another hand on him, he says,
he won't be walking.
So after that, I used to hang along with my friend Frank and this other Jewish kid,
Bobby Shulman and his kid, Polish kid, Jim Pay.
See, nowadays we can't just say that.
You can't be like, oh, that's my Jewish friend, Sean, you know, because they're like, whoa,
wait, hey, that's not us.
But that's how it was.
Yeah, that's how it was back then.
Because I mean, parts of Dorchester were genuinely separated by sort of ethnicity
to an extent, right?
There was an Irish part and a Polish part.
How many fights did you say you got into?
You know, I wasn't looking for fights.
So I just, I just, you know, I did.
You're going to stand up for yourself.
Listen, fighting is like fighting.
You know, what the hell are you fighting for?
Because you get somebody's going to get hurt.
Sure.
But you just want to defend yourself in the case of somebody, you know.
So I went to work in the Phylian's basement, 13, 14, 15, 16.
And then I ended up high school and then getting out of high school,
not basically the last year of high school.
I didn't know if I wanted to go to college.
So my father got me a job in a meat packing factory.
Oh, wow.
Yeah, that'll teach you to go to college, right?
So at the end of the summer, I said, I'm going to college.
So while I was in college, worked in the meat factory,
tended bar in the weekends, and after work, I drove a taxi cab.
Jesus, okay.
But I always had a buck in my pocket.
Yeah, right, right.
I paid for my education.
You have to write.
I had, I had a 62 Chevy back in, you know, 69, 70.
Yeah, because it was like you weren't on scholarship.
Your parents weren't paying for your college.
My old man, you know, he didn't go to college.
You once told me, like when you were young, on cold nights,
your mom literally would iron sheets.
Well, we had a sunroom.
We only lived in like a thousand square feet, 800 square feet.
Wow, sure.
And we had a sunroom that didn't have any heat in it.
Right.
And my mother, this was when I was a little bit younger,
she would iron the bed with a cast iron iron.
And she'd put a stocking cap on me.
Wow.
And I swear to God that my constitution at that point
was so good that it was helpful.
I think it was helpful.
Maybe it was right.
Anyways, my mother and I were very close.
I was a mama's boy.
Okay.
So my father was good to me too.
He put me on skates.
Okay.
Okay.
He loved me and they both loved my sister and I.
And, you know, even though he had his demons,
he worked in big, you know, big stacks, smoke stacks.
And, you know, he worked in the Second World War.
He was at Groton, okay, the sub base down there.
He worked in the Los Angeles class.
What they were known as the Nautilus class.
He said Boilermaker.
Honestly, there's a lot of kids under 40 that don't know
what a Boilermaker even is.
Yeah, it's a welder.
That's a welder.
So anyways, that always, that he belonged to a union,
but he was a Republican.
Okay.
Okay.
And he hated the union because the union used to work on
mobile.
They would choose who they wanted to.
And I can remember him supporting Eisenhower.
Okay.
Okay.
He thought Eisenhower was pretty good.
Yeah.
He knew Jack Kennedy.
Right.
Oh, wow.
But anyways, so we're going through the,
I'm working three jobs.
I go through college at Suffolk University.
And then I get out of college.
Still had the three jobs.
And I found this company called Remitting Services
Incorporated.
It was doing work for these two guys.
And, you know, we were collecting premiums for
health insurance and for attorneys and accounts.
They were second to die guys.
Sure.
Do you know what second to die guy is?
No.
Okay.
Okay.
Let's say you were married.
He was husband and wife.
Okay.
You die.
Second to die policy pays Yard widow off.
Okay.
Okay.
So that's a second to die.
So they were looking to generate leads
through these, this health insurance,
a remitting service.
Okay.
So I'm working there.
And I went, I said, you know,
we're only doing it for attorneys,
accounts.
I said, let me go talk to these guys and talk to them
about going to all businesses.
So I went to them and I said, you know,
I got an idea.
Why don't we go to grosses and florists and
professional people, et cetera, et cetera.
Okay.
So make a long story short.
They said, Hey, it's a great idea.
I said, well, can we talk about,
you know, can we talk about equity?
So when you're kind of young,
like I was 25 years, you're kind of young to be talking
about equity.
Wait.
So you're selling all this, but they're not letting you
get a cut.
No.
So I said, well, how old do you have to be to get equity?
Right.
What's the limit?
Right.
Exactly.
So I go off on my own and I was in,
I had a broom closet and a good address.
And that literal broom, that was my office.
Wow.
So then I went out, I got a book, a book from Blue Cross.
I knew the manager there.
He and I liked each other.
He's, I don't know what you can do with this.
If you can write, you know, a couple of two or 300 accounts,
you know, maybe you can make, you know, pay your bills.
Yeah.
Right.
So I went out and three weeks, I couldn't sell anything
because I didn't know how to sell.
And then finally this guy, Mel Gross, took me in.
He was a junk man.
And he took me in.
What's a junk man?
Like sold junk bonds?
What does that mean?
No, no, junk.
Like an actual junkyard.
Junk, you know, junkyard.
Oh, okay.
So I go into his office.
He brings, opens his door and his dog
and everything and it looked like a wall street office.
And I'm looking around and he goes,
you didn't think a junk man would have something like this.
Well, Mel turned out to be one of my best friends.
He bought the policy and then networked with me
in the junk business.
Okay.
And that was the beginning.
Instead of selling 300 a year, I was selling 300, 400 policies
a month.
Then I brought other people in and it was all fee based.
Okay.
Okay.
So like, you know, and it's heyday.
I was making 29, 30 bucks per head per month.
I ended up with 52,000 companies
in about almost 480,000 subscribers.
So you multiply that up, we were making a fortune.
Okay.
And then I started building businesses.
I went in from health to life, to disability, to 401k.
And then I started doing real estate development
with different people that, you know, I was good at marketing.
So we bought 128 lots, when I say bought it,
we made a deal with a bank.
Sure.
Okay.
There's some guy who couldn't sell the lots and Georgie,
my partner, he walks in one morning, he says,
Chopper, you're going to love this one.
So we go down to the bank to the board of directors
and literally talk to them about moving so many lots per month.
And they said, well, we said, well, out of the 128 lots you got,
what's going to be the requirement?
He said, well, you got to sell six or eight of these a year.
And then in the second year, you got to sell another 14 a year.
So we walked out of Georgia.
I laughed.
What happens next is I show, we show up, get off the,
it starts raining, I says, we're screwed now, Georgie.
He's don't worry about a thing.
We are all these school buses that we hire from the school.
Go to the subdivision.
Okay.
It's raining like a son of a bitch.
We get out there and I'm saying, this is going to be a bust.
There's this big, huge tent out there.
Georgie's got whiskeys, got beer and all the people are walking around in the rain.
But I saw this big board in the 120 lots on there.
He's got like 78 of them with flags on them.
And Georgie, I said, what's this?
They were soul flags.
He says, keep your mouth shut.
So people are walking around.
A few people bought them and one moment comes up and says,
I want lot number 22.
He says, Agnes, somebody's got a hold on that lot.
But let me tell you something.
If they blow out, I'll call you.
So Monday morning, he had like 30 or 30 people.
Joe Agnes, lot 22, just blow out.
I got three people behind you, bring the check in.
He closed all the sales.
Right.
So basically he faked the demand.
Right.
He faked the demand.
Like some people I know that do nice films about that.
What are you talking about?
So anyway, make a long story short.
We had to pay the bank on a lot release 10.
So it went from, we were 12, 15, 22, 27.
We were making way more than what we had to pay the bank.
Sure.
And the bank called us up and they said,
look, we have to have a meeting.
And I said, well, what's the meeting about?
He said, well, come down.
We'll talk to you.
So they go in there and said,
all of our stockholders are pissed off
because you guys are making so much money.
I said, well, what do you assign agreements like this with us?
I said, you want to talk to my attorney,
Charlie Cratton maker?
I said, he's a Harvard.
He's a Harvard.
You know, he's a top five Harvard guy.
So they don't name people like this anymore.
Yeah. What was his name?
Charlie Cratton maker.
Charlie Cratton maker.
So Charlie caused or Chuck Cratton maker or whatever.
So we sold that subdivision out.
And what happened was everybody in the Boston
around this area found out what we were doing.
They hired us.
We made a lot of money in the real estate business.
Okay.
Okay.
Then we started doing our own subdivisions.
Yeah.
Then I got into several other business.
I get in the oil and gas drilling business
because we were going in, you know, I'm going to tell you,
I mean, we were going like 20, 25 million personal,
you know, income per year.
That's why it was.
Yeah.
So I was taking the money.
It's like podcasting.
Yeah.
Yeah.
We do the same thing.
Same thing.
We do the same thing.
Yeah.
Remember our first mill?
Yeah.
Yeah.
So anyways, we're going along and I'm investing and investing
and investing money.
Okay. So business is going good.
We're building business.
So in 1974, we're going down to my wife's, her father bought
a condo in Palm Beach.
So we're going down.
I said, part of the deal is we're going to Palm Beach,
but I got this friend of ours, Malcolm, was with us.
I said, we're going up to Daytona.
There's 24 hour race.
I read about it in the paper.
We're going up there.
All right.
So let me, let me pause you there.
Go ahead.
I have two interrupted questions.
Go ahead.
I'm sorry.
The first, did people call you chopper?
Yeah.
Well, he could know.
The only guy that called me chopper was Georgie.
Georgie Pissotti.
Georgie Pissotti.
Georgie could call you chopper.
Can we call you chopper?
Can we bring it back?
Call me whatever you want.
Yeah.
All right.
Chopper.
Okay.
You heard about this race.
You read about it in the paper.
Right.
So we go there and we get our tickets.
Pardon?
Were you a car guy at any, in any of this?
Oh, I've been always a car guy.
Okay.
I was a kid.
I mean, I put an old set, the 62.
Before that, I had a Studebaker, a 53 Studebaker,
with an old Z88 engine with tri-car,
tri-power.
I did that, put a LaSalle transmission on it,
and had some people help me make it.
It was an okay car.
Yeah.
It's a good car.
But anyways.
Where'd you park the car?
I parked the car outside.
Boo-boo.
All right.
So in 70, actually 72, watching the race,
and let's race that at three o'clock or two o'clock.
Forget what it was.
And about seven o'clock, she says,
well, are we going to dinner?
I said, why don't you and Malcolm go?
I'm going to watch this.
So she comes back around 9.30, 10 o'clock.
She said, well, what are you going to do?
I said, I want to watch this.
I'll be, I don't want, I'll find my way back.
So she leaves.
Malcolm stayed a while, then he left.
And two o'clock in the morning, I'm still there.
I'm down coming out of the infield onto the banking.
And I'm looking up to him.
Bob Tullius was in a car.
I was in a Jaguar.
I see this thing rocketing off the infield onto the banking.
And I'm saying, these guys have balls.
They have real balls.
So we were going out there the next day.
I stayed up all day and all night watching the race.
I didn't even take a shower.
She says, well, she got to get the stuff with me to the airport.
So we're banking out of Daytona.
I'm looking down.
She said, you know, you're looking at it so hot,
it looks like you should be doing.
I said, I'd love to.
She's wanted to buy a car.
So I found some guys up in New York, 75.
I found a production Corvette owned by a guy that owned
like a chain of muffler shops.
OK.
And I started campaigning that car.
And I went, you know, I did my regionals at Skip Barber,
Open Wheel, Formula Ford.
Then I bought the car and I did regionals.
I think I did four or five, six regionals.
Then I went into Nationals and I was doing OK.
I was doing pretty good.
And you're self-funding everything.
You don't have sponsors.
Oh, yeah.
I had my open wheel trailer.
You're playing with your money.
I'm playing with my money.
Nobody was giving me any money.
So anyways, I do that and then I decide in 1978,
what I want to do is I want to try, you know,
this is all fun, but these other guys look like
they're pretty competitive.
Yeah.
So that was, I stepped up and I got involved in IMSA.
Yeah.
I met John Bishop, who I really like.
It was when Hurley was in his prime when Peter Greg was in,
you know, his whole thing was in there.
And I was racing with those guys.
I mean, I mean, I wasn't doing very good, but OK.
So, 78, 79, the Whittington brothers were in there.
And I was going, who are these guys?
They're from Fort Lauderdale.
And I go into an, you know, a pisser.
I think it was at the Glen.
I'm looking down as this guy, this guy standing next to me,
baby, what I didn't know what they were,
they were Baby Blue Ostrich Boots.
So I'm looking down.
It was Whittington's father.
So, you know, I went on, I'm watching the show.
They had all the best equipment you could imagine.
And I said to somebody, the guys that were,
I said, what the f*** are these guys?
He said, he's just doing the RV business.
The RV business.
I said, Jesus, I didn't know there was that much money
in the RV business.
So, anyways.
If it's fully loaded.
There's not.
Yeah, and they had Ostrich Boots on.
Well, you got to have them.
Yeah, yeah.
Yeah, and then there was, then there was Ted Field,
Danny and Gaius.
Yeah, I understood.
I mean, all of, all the big, big guys.
Right.
And, you know, I was just a pimple on a camel's ass.
I mean, I'm in there, I'm in there racing.
These guys are going by me and, you know, I'm,
you know, I didn't have anything.
Right, right.
So, but you're out there, you're down there.
Doing it and having fun and trying to, and trying to.
Well, you're, you're a big hockey guy, right?
Oh, I didn't tell you, I played hockey in high school.
But it's not like you could go run and,
and play in the Stanley Cup out of nowhere.
Like, you know, this was, this was a cool chance.
No, no, I played semi-pro for, for a year.
Okay.
So that's pretty good, but I didn't want to lose any teeth
and get my bones broken.
So anyways, I still played hockey while I was doing it.
Did you feel pressure to go out and buy some Ostrich boots?
I have like seven pairs of May Piers of them.
They never, all the colors.
Got to have them.
Do you like Ostrich boots?
No, I've never even heard of that.
I don't even know what this is.
You want some Ostrich boots?
I'll give you some of them.
Can we give, can we give, can we give one set of
Ostrich signed Ostrich boots to a fan?
Yeah, they have to be signed.
They have to be signed.
Would you sign a pair of Ostrich boots?
I'll do whatever you want me to do.
Anyways, anyways, at that time, and then I was watching stuff.
We went to the 24 hours.
And at the middle of the night, in the pits, and I see the
Wittington Brothers and Ted Fields is selling them an engine.
So anyways, I see these guys open up a briefcase with cash in it,
and they're giving cash.
From the RV business.
$50,000 from the RV business.
What I thought was, I'm going, Jesus Christ,
maybe I ought to look into the RV business.
Maybe I'm missing something.
I'd like to invest in your company, sir.
Make a long story short.
There was Preston Hen.
Yeah.
Okay.
Swap shop, Marty Hines.
Okay.
There was Randy Lanier.
Yeah, we had him.
We had him.
Anyways, that's going on.
I'm watching the Wittington Brothers.
I'm watching all these guys that have really, I mean,
they're like superheroes.
Yeah, yeah.
Okay.
And you're getting to play with them.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
I mean, listen, I wasn't, I didn't have what they had.
And then there was a lull in there.
I met up with Dave Watson.
Okay, out of Wisconsin.
Okay.
He was, you know, he was a NASCAR guy,
but got into road racing.
He built a Pontiac Firebird for me.
And I think we were in 82, 83 after the IMSA thing.
And we're getting back 88.
I end up getting some guys out of,
there was a guy by the name of Ken Murray.
Okay.
March 82, 82G.
I think we drove with him a couple of times.
Okay.
And then I ended up going over to hire this guy
who ran my car out of Florida, out of Fort Lauderdale.
And they, couple of those guys worked for the Wittington's.
Okay.
One big guy.
So I said, well, what did you do for them?
He said, well, he says I, he was kind of a gopher.
What year was this?
This was like in the 80s, right around, you know.
Had they already gone away?
Mid to late.
No, no, they hadn't gone away yet.
But what happened was he worked for Randy.
Okay.
Okay.
And I said, what'd you do?
It's a little story.
He's like, he says that Randy would tell me to go down and get,
you know, get McDonald's.
And he said, well, we got any money?
He said, just reach under the seat.
He says, there's plenty of money.
He reached in there.
The money was, it took $10,000.
It's great.
Big Macs for everyone.
So he goes down and he works for them for a number of years.
88, I'm running Trans Am with the guys from Fault Lauderdale.
That's 88, 89.
And then what happens is, I'm in the Trans Am series now.
I started off in the Trans Am.
I think I have 127 stats.
You can check it on there.
I think it was like third or fourth deep.
127.
127 stats.
That's okay.
So I was with this guy and then I went to Sobi.
I did okay.
I wasn't that great.
And in 1992, Greg Pickett spots me.
And Greg was a championship driver, a great driver.
So he says, why don't you come with me?
We're going to run a three car team.
And so I decide that what I'm going to do to, you know,
from the old Trans Am cars, they were **** cars.
So I bought Scott Shops championship car.
And I said, is this what a race car really should be like?
I had all the setups.
I come on the team and I had a brand new trailer.
Kick-ass **** trailer.
Okay.
Best kind of.
I was the only one that had three engines.
Okay.
Okay.
Even Pickett and the other guy only had one or two engines.
And I had them in rotation up at Kate Tech.
He says, I want you up at Groton in a week and a half.
So I'm going, where's Groton?
He says, it's north of, it's right around Grand Rapids.
Have you been there?
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Okay.
So we, it's like in March, it's **** freezing up there.
So to get the cars all there and everything,
everything's back to condition.
He did, Riley Scott did a great job.
So make a long story short.
I get in the car and I'm driving the car.
Now Brian Till was driving the other car.
Right, yeah.
And he had Brian Till there and he was trying to get Brian to help me.
Yeah, say a little coaching.
So I went out in the car and he said, well, what's the car doing?
I said, it doesn't feel good.
He said, I asked you whether it felt good.
What's it doing?
And he was, you know, right in my face.
I said, well, it seems like it's fallen down in the front.
He says, what side is falling down?
I said, on the left, it's fallen down.
He says, okay, we're getting somewhere.
So he says, I put a 250 pound spring on the left front.
It should have been maybe a 500 or a 700.
Right.
He was just testing me.
He was testing me.
Okay.
So finally, he taught me how to do springs.
He taught me how to do shocks.
And then I started getting better and better.
Learn how to use the bar.
The cars were beast.
I don't know if you ever drove up.
I never got to drive a Trans Am car.
And I wanted to so bad.
You got to f***ing things.
He was just unbelievable.
I wanted to be Tommy Kendall, you know.
I was there when Tommy, when he was doing his thing.
Have you done him yet?
Yeah.
Oh, yeah.
Yeah.
Two-parter.
First season, yeah.
So now, all of a sudden, I'm starting to finish in the top 10.
Yeah.
Okay.
And I'm feeling good about the car.
It was like an old shoe.
Yeah, right.
And you're there every week and you're testing in between.
And it was just, we just, I was really having a lot of fun.
Yeah.
So now, what's going on?
It's in the heyday of Jiffy Loops.
Of Jiffy Loops?
Yeah.
Okay.
So I'm not paying anymore.
So Jiffy Loops is actually sponsored.
Wow.
We just skipped a whole part of your company that I don't think is out there.
So you went from going to insurance to real estate.
And then you...
That was another deal.
Let me back up.
Oil and gas, we were buying and drilling existing wells.
Not existing.
We're taking over existing wells, redrilling them, refracking them.
Did you ever work with Daniel Plainview?
No.
Okay.
What about a son?
HW.
HW?
HW Plainview?
No.
I think he's a Mexican.
We were on our own.
Yeah, that's right.
We were doing shallow wells.
Okay.
Oh, yeah.
It's a different business.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
So, Pensoil, I saw it at Road Atlanta.
I saw it quickly in Atlanta.
It's called Pensoil.
That's how I get into the business.
Okay, what the f**k just happened?
That came out of nowhere.
Well, I'm at Road Atlanta.
Okay, so you're driving, so this is like 80's.
He's like, let's wait, so let's get it.
Let's get it.
Let's...
No, no.
Nope.
Eat some more weight.
No.
Hold on.
I go, we were running a 50 weight motor world.
Yeah.
Okay.
Yeah.
Because we had a big block Chevy.
Yeah, right, right.
In my can-am looking car.
Engine ran hot.
Run on a motor world.
So, the Pensoil Rips is this.
Summit a quick loop down in Atlanta.
Okay.
So, I had five or six hours.
I said, what's a quick loop?
He said, well, do you want to see one?
I said, well, how long does it take?
Take about an hour to get there
and then an hour to get back.
So, I drove down with them and I looked at this.
I said, what a great f**king idea this is.
Because this is late 80s?
1980, early 80s.
Early 80s.
And the idea of like the quick oil change
and that's all it is was not a thing prior to that.
So, you show up in Atlanta and there's this quick glue.
I come back.
Now, remember, if that office had all suits in it,
bankers and CPAs, right?
What office?
I said, I got a great idea.
His office.
So, Gallagher's my right-hand guy.
Gallagher.
So, what's the idea?
He said, Chopper, talk to me.
I said, we're going to get in the quick glue business.
And to this point, it's been all real estate insurance.
Feed-based s**t.
No dirty hands.
No nothing.
Okay.
So, there was a palace insurrection.
I don't know what the f**k you just said.
Gallagher was particularly doing this.
Okay.
He wants a state of transaction.
Hold on.
Good.
Gallagher's out, man.
Yeah.
Huh?
Let's just swallow the salad.
Could I actually think the Jiffy Loop thing
is a big part of your career
and explain some of the sponsors you had?
All right.
But it doesn't work with a mouthful of salad.
I like it.
I mean, it sells that this is real?
No, no, no.
I'm actually loving this because most people don't eat
because they're just telling the story
and then they're like, I didn't eat much.
And I like the fact that you're like,
I don't know how to eat.
You're going to hear this s**t whether I'm not.
Salad's good.
I can't eat, boys.
Maybe a long story.
So I go back, bring it back to the office,
just fight in fighting inside the office.
So Pat didn't want to do it.
Bobby, my accountant was passive
and then Brownie who worked with Pat at the bank.
And that's a nickname?
Brown, Dick Brown.
Okay.
I call him Brown.
So this day's still coming.
He was in today.
Now, was the office,
was it the same one over here on Wood Road in Braintree?
Yeah.
No s**t.
So this has been the same office forever.
Well, I converted that over from a trucking terminal
to an office building.
Wow.
So this has been the same place for decades.
Yeah.
Anyway, so the infighting is just that
like it's too different of a business or it's like.
Yeah, it was, it wasn't your wheelhouse.
It wasn't in their wheelhouse.
Okay.
But I'm eclectic.
You're sure.
But anyways, the stores as they exist
never really made a lot of money.
They're making, they were averaging 31 cars a day.
The quick loops.
Yeah.
Okay.
And then a guy could make 40 or 50 grand.
He took three and a half years to break even.
They're asking, well, why would you want to get in a business?
It wasn't the kind of metric that we were used to.
They didn't make a lot of money.
So in fighting for like four months,
and finally I called them in my office one day.
I said, look, lead, follow, get the s**t out of the way.
This is happening with or without you.
Well, okay.
Cause that was one of my key things that was clued in on there is that
you say for four months there was in fighting.
So it's, it wasn't when it starts.
It's not, it doesn't start from day one.
It's like, I'm in charge.
Go f**k off.
We're doing it my way.
You, you allow collective discussion.
I was at a point now where I wanted to do it.
Okay.
But you allow the opportunity to be talking.
You try to be, you try to be democratic.
You know, there's nothing like a, like Bill Francis and not like a benevolent dictator.
Now, do you say, uh, uh, is it, is it democratic or more that
lets some other opinions talk you out of something?
Well, no.
But it's ultimately your call.
If I listened to everybody, including MBA, if I started that,
people would have said, but my friend said, what are you out of your mind?
Why would you get in a business like that?
Right.
Okay.
And just to be clear, when you say MBA, it's not a degree.
We're talking about it's the Massachusetts Business Association,
which is sort of your holding company.
It made me a fortune.
Yeah, we know, we were there.
So anyways, calm down.
So anyways, finally, Pat walks out of the office,
slams his door in this window, and window shatters.
I've seen this movie.
So I come down to the door and I take the door and I slam it again.
Just to make the point.
This is like, like two o'clock in the afternoon.
So at five o'clock, it comes down my office.
He's, what do you want me to do?
I said, go to all your friends and raise.
I'll put the money up for the first one or two stores,
but you got to, we got to build more of these.
So we lined it up and we're building the stores.
He said, well, we should go to Pennzoil first.
So Pennzoil puts us in touch with the first National Bank of Boston.
Now, there was a big difference that we didn't do,
which saved our lives.
We never signed a Loop Center Agreement,
which means that if you sign a Loop Center Agreement,
they give you $75,000 worth of equipment,
but they own you for 20 years to buy them.
Oh, I never signed that.
Right, okay.
So they wanted, after we opened the first four stores,
the first store opens, okay?
So I called Dean and I said,
Dean, we got to put together a marketing piece.
So we put together a marketing piece,
and the budget to open a store was like 10 grand,
excuse me, eight grand.
So I go and Pat, I said, he's 40 grand.
He says, 40 grand for what?
I said, you know, to open the store.
He said, well, it says in the manual, eight grand.
I said, do you still do it in a missionary position?
He says, you wise prick.
Kids, time to go to bed.
Yep, so anyways, we opened the first store.
The store opens, and the first day we did was 197 cars.
Yeah, when it was an average of 30 a day or something, right?
So that's the formula that we had that really grew this thing.
And we just, we were killing it, okay?
And then they came in, they tried to raise,
Penns Oil tried to raise the price.
Okay.
Oh, carrot.
Did they sell you guys were making big money or?
Yeah, they saw it, we'll make some too.
And quick loops were owned by Penns Oil?
No, they were the franchisors.
They brought the franchise from the guys at Jiffyloo.
Okay, I see.
And they kept the name.
I moved my business, the whole business wholesale,
because they wouldn't, we went to the bank,
and the bank was a lot of Harvard Yale guys.
And we were going to get, what you knew,
and when you get to three or four,
you need to have a forward loan commitment for 25, 30,
40 million dollars to build stores real quick.
Right.
So, we go, we put together this great proposal
to hide this kid from Babson,
and we're supposed to meet all the principles
of First National Bank of Washington.
Okay, and like you said, it's all like Harvard,
big college types.
Yeah.
Big Ivy League.
Right, right, right, right.
So we show up at the first meeting
to pre-do the presentation.
The deal was, we go down to Joe Tecchi's for dinner,
then we go over to their box at the Bruins.
Okay.
Good.
And we show up at the, you know,
at the First National Bank of Boston.
We sent out big, thick business plans.
Well, seeing you, Brownie, Pat and I.
I like Brownie.
Brownie's my guy.
Brownie's cool.
Brownie and Chopper hanging out.
Brownie, you like Brownie.
I already did.
Brownie, Pat and Chopper hanging out.
Yeah.
So, no one's calling you Chopper at this point.
No, that was Georgey was the only one.
And now what?
Georgey's my boy.
Yeah, yeah.
Okay.
You'd love Georgey.
God, shit.
So anyways, we go to the meeting.
Nobody's talking.
I was just talking Harvard Yale football.
I said, what's going on, Pat?
He said, well, they're probably.
Are they wearing like vests that are like in blazes?
No, they, let me tell you,
these guys were Ivy League, pinstripe.
Were they in a a cappella group?
Were they singing together?
No, they, you know, they had the, you know,
Boston Lockjaw, Joe, how are you?
Joseph, how are you?
How's the game on Sunday on Saturday?
You know, Saturday.
So it's like from Harvard.
Right.
Yeah.
He's smarter now.
So when I give a s***,
the only one is the money.
Right.
So we go to dinner, same treatment.
Okay.
Then we go to the box.
I'm going, Pat, one of these guys going to ask us.
And he says, they'll probably ask it now.
First period, second period.
So I grabbed the two guys who were the lead guys on the deal.
I says, did you get a chance to look at the business plan?
So this whole time there's been zero business?
Well, not, not a lot of talking.
You know, they're trying to be polite new,
like they didn't really want to deal.
So anyways, make a long story short.
I finally called them over and they said,
well, you can usually get a lubrication job at a gas station or a dealership.
So I'm going, whoa, everything's explained in the business plan.
So I said, who's your team leader?
He's, well, that happens to be Mr. Brockner.
I said, could you get him over here?
I said, Mr. Brockner.
I said, did you get a chance to read the business plan?
He said, well, the boys read the business plan.
I said, you fucking guys didn't even read it, did you?
He goes, what, what do you mean?
I said, look, I said, Pat, I'm out of here.
Fuck him.
Next morning, I got a call at the office from Bill Welcher.
Okay.
Oh, right.
Why Bill?
Right.
Potter, what's going on?
I said, don't you ever put me in a situation like that again, ever.
So he was the right-hand man of Hugh Lidge.
You know who Hugh Lidge is?
No.
What?
No.
He was the chairman of the board of Penza.
He started Penza, tough guy from Pennsylvania.
Right.
Okay.
Because all you're trying to do at this point is get a whole expanded line of
of Lube's, Lube Center's.
Okay.
So anyways, look, right.
Shut up, Sean.
Sorry, stick to the handle.
Pat agreed with me.
He said they really didn't give a shit.
He says, what do you think we should do?
I said, look, go to the Jewish aristocracy because Pat worked for a very smart guy.
Okay.
Who ran.
Wicked smart?
Wicked smart.
Okay.
Was that like the term?
Was the Jewish aristocracy?
Oh, yeah.
Can I tell you something?
Please.
They were entrepreneurial bankers.
Okay.
So I'm trying to think of the guy that he worked for.
He worked at the bank with the first guy, Alan Levin.
He says, let me tell you what, go over and see Jack.
Jack Seidel.
Okay.
Okay.
Now Jack had a humpback.
He was a great, I've met him at different functions.
Wait, he actually had a physical humpback?
Well, kind of.
Not physical humpback, but he, you know, he, he had scoliosis.
Oh, well, that's a real thing.
But let me tell you, the guy had balls.
I like that.
Does he done deal?
He done a lot of deals.
All right.
He had a physical ability.
Yeah.
So he had a hunchback and giant boss.
Jack is interested in the deal because he looked at the numbers
on the first three, just three, four stores.
Right.
And he shows up down at the, at the quick loop in Norwell.
Okay.
And he goes in there.
He's got like a Brooks Brothers suit on.
Okay.
I mean, not a Brooks Brothers.
It might have been in a mine.
It was like a $10,000 suit.
He goes in a black car.
He's a very analytical guy, reads everything.
We show up.
He says, what are you guys doing here?
He's, well, Jack, we're here to, he says, get out of here.
I want to talk to your people.
Talk to the manager.
Talk to the guys underneath.
And we go back to the office.
So we're, of course, we're calling the manager.
What's going on?
He says, Mr. V.
He just, he went downstairs and he was on the,
working with the guys that were draining you.
He says, he got oil on his suit.
He says, what would you do?
He's, don't worry about it.
So he's asking everybody in the place what's going on.
And he asking about how many cars you're doing.
Very smart banker.
So there was a guy by the name of Dick Saka.
Dick Saka was...
You're making this up.
Honestly, you're making, come on.
So how many cars?
Dick Saka.
What's so funny about that?
Are you hearing yourself?
What am I saying?
Dick Saka.
Dick Saka.
That didn't help.
That didn't help.
You literally just made it worse.
It's S-E-C-H-E-R.
Do you know that?
This is brother Cooke.
So he was a team leader.
Anyways, we go to, we go to the, I wanted that all of,
so anyways, Saka says he's going to go before the board.
He says, now Jack, we were looking for 25 million.
To expand this whole fleet of loops.
Right.
So we're not, obviously we're not at the,
at the board of directors.
Sure.
Sure.
So it's 11 o'clock.
They have their board meeting and there's a phone call that comes to me.
It's Saka.
He says, you'll never believe what happened.
I said, what do you mean?
What, what happened?
He says, well, he says the came, then came up for a vote.
There were 11 guys and he says, seven or, no, there was seven or eight of them.
We were overwhelmingly defeated and Jack says, we're still doing the f***ing deal.
And he says, it's not going to be 25 million.
It's going to be 35 to 40 million.
So the other guy, he runs the bank.
Yeah, right.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
I kind of want to go back to the funding side of it.
So it's interesting that she go to one bank and it's basically just like a bunch of,
First national bankable, one of the biggest banks in Boston.
And it's a bunch of hoity, twitty, prep call itself.
They're all Yankees.
Oh, f***ing Yankees.
And, the worst.
And by the way, Massachusetts was in the union.
Right.
But, but basically because it's such a blue collar deal.
Okay.
And, and I see the way you saw it.
Think about some of the greatest little companies in the city.
Right.
Okay.
We're done by merchant bankers.
Okay.
Yeah.
And they were like, you know, I think they funded big companies like Exxon and f*** it like.
And they, they seeded a lot of companies that made a lot of money,
but they were non-traditional thinkers.
But that's, that's where I'm going with that is like,
if you stuck to the Harvard and Ivy League guys,
they weren't going to get anywhere because you're this like gruff,
Dorchester guy and you're doing with oil business.
You know, they don't, they don't, they probably didn't get me.
So rather than say, we're f***ing, you literally thought like,
okay, well this kind of Jewish group of lenders don't necessarily think.
That's what I'm saying.
Well, they're, they're, they're blue color guys who are working,
as opposed to purely Ivy League.
Exactly.
Who've never been dirty.
Exactly.
And you were smart enough to see this.
Well, I wasn't smart enough to see.
I just knew that there were people that could do that kind of thing.
Right.
Okay.
Anyways, we were just killing it.
Okay.
We were killing, we had the, out of the top 10 stores in the world,
we own seven of them because of our numbers.
What happened next, I'm in Paradise Valley, Arizona.
I go to breakfast and this guy by the name of Claude Bean.
He used to run all the Western auto stores out of, out of Kansas City.
He grabs me at breakfast.
Ah Jay, got to talk to you.
I says, listen, I'm very busy.
I knew why he came to me.
I'm very busy.
I got a golf game to go to.
He looks at me.
He says, when did you start playing golf?
Because I never played golf and they all knew it.
I says, you know, I've been working on my game real hard.
So.
Wicked hard.
Wicked hard.
Yeah.
So he, he doesn't get the meeting.
11 o'clock at night.
So many reps on my door.
Claude Bean.
Clyde, what's up?
Because I want to talk to you.
I said, well, you know, it's kind of late, isn't it?
We want to buy you.
As I told you, I'm not for sale.
I'm going to build 95 or 100 of these things.
So now they're pursuing it.
And they bring an attorney in who's going to do the negotiation.
He was in negotiation.
Negotiated.
You know, racehorse.
Hanges.
Okay.
Do you know who Joe Jamile is?
So they come in to start the negotiations.
They bring like 12 people in the, you know, the negotiating.
What is the total number of franchise you have at this point?
What's the total number of franchise you have at this point?
31.
Okay.
But killing it.
Another three or four in the pipeline to be built.
So stack strides into the room, an electric green suit,
and canyon colored ostrich boots.
Again?
Again.
So the secret is success.
Is ostrich boots.
Ostrich boots.
So anyways, we sit down.
There's Pat Brownie, Joe Kachubis, who's the head of...
Joe Kachubis.
He's the, he's the head of Bingham, Dana, and Gould.
It's all fake.
None of these names are real, but I love how you sound it.
Anyways, we sit down.
I said, Bob, welcome to Boston.
My name is Robert, not Bob.
I said, Robert, Bob, you, I'm out of here.
I didn't like his attitude.
So I walk out of the room and Gallagher is, he's aghast.
Now let me remember, they've got nine people.
They've got Lemonair, Collins, the whole thing.
Kachubis comes out and he says, Kachubis comes out.
He says, you got to come back.
I say, you tell him to come out of that f***ing arm,
and you apologize.
Hell no, apologize.
So we're not coming back at him.
I'm going back to the office.
He walks out.
Waiting for Kachubis.
Maybe he says, stacks us, maybe we started off on the wrong foot.
I say, well,
Bob, I said, let's sit.
So we're sitting here, we're negotiating the deal.
Okay.
So now what happens is we go to the final
and they're pulling all the paperwork out
and he pulls out the rent rolls.
He said, what are the rent rolls for?
He said, what do you mean?
We're going to the real estate.
He said, no, you're out.
I said, you're leasing the real estate.
We'll sell that to you later.
Yeah.
Getting a long-term lease for 20 years.
No, wow.
Nice.
He still had the recurring income.
Right.
Yeah, yeah.
There's all, you know, they're all kind of pissed and everything.
And they call home quarters and,
Welch just says, I don't give a s***.
Do the deal.
Get them out of the deal.
Then we're getting, they're starting to wrap up.
I says, we have one last detail.
They go, what's that?
A racing car.
Ah, snuck it in at the end of the deal.
Yeah.
A car to young plan.
Okay.
Five-year racing deal at a million and a half a year.
S***, I was spending eight and nine hundred.
I was spending eight and nine hundred.
The first time I ever made.
You're going to get paid.
So now you're going to be a pro driver.
It was the only time in racing that I really made money.
And plus, I got them to throw heritage,
a merchandising was the people that supplied the,
um, air filters and all that.
So now you're a paid professional driver.
Well, you hear that kids?
If you want to make it as a racing driver,
go earn.
And salt a man.
Millions and millions of dollars.
Tell the guy in the merger to go f*** himself.
And then.
Have a friend named Dick Sucka.
Yeah, Dick Sucka.
And, uh, and a good old Cachubus.
A lawyer named, uh, Cheddar cut.
What's the lawyer's name again?
Sucka.
No.
Oh, Charlie Cardmaker.
Yeah, that guy.
He wasn't, he wasn't, he didn't have any.
Yeah, but he's still a big person.
No, no, I'm just, I'm just for the overall.
By the way, he was a Harvard guy.
All right.
But a good Harvard guy.
Well, the last name is.
Cardamaker.
Crattmaker.
Crattmaker.
Because I got Charlie Crattmaker.
Henry Rose Garner.
Choketubus, Dick Suckas.
Brownie.
Sucka.
Brownie.
And it was led by Chopper.
It led by Chopper.
And at that point, then you were able to make
a few hundred grand on your pro driver.
That's all it took to finally be a pro driver.
Oh, I was putting 600 grand a year in my pocket.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And all the best equipment.
Everything perfect.
Make a long story short.
Oh, that'd be great.
It's 1993.
I got Scott Schaub's car.
Yeah.
And we're going along and everything's going great.
But all of a sudden, the clear blue.
There's a guy running.
Did you do genitals yet?
No, I don't know that we ever will.
I don't know whether I want to mention his name.
Yes, you do.
You do.
So this is like three years into into Trans Am.
And I'm saying, come on the straightaway with him.
And he just doesn't be five, six, seven comments.
Generally, I suppose.
Yeah.
Well, he's really good at corner exit.
Yeah.
Right.
So him, Tommy Kendall and Goody.
All look like they were distant.
They were running away from everybody.
What the fuck is going on here?
So we were at K Tech.
Engine builder.
Right.
So I'm saying, where's he getting his engines from?
Nobody knew.
So I was in the investigations business.
So Pickett goes, what are you thinking?
I said, let me handle this.
I'll break his legs.
So I put a fucking tail on him.
What?
Everything you say is amazing.
OK.
So anyway.
Was it like a guy in a bowler hat?
A dick.
A dick.
So you had a private dick.
What?
Pullman.
Pullman.
Private dick.
No.
Would you like to walk around in like a French boat?
No, I'm not talking.
Take a snap photo.
So this guy.
He's following for like four or five weeks.
Tailing.
Gentle Losey.
Yeah.
Finally.
Gentle Losey leaves his place.
Come here.
Can I just interrupt you for a second?
When this happens, do they give you a written report?
Your tail.
So that means there's documentation somewhere.
I'm talking on my phone.
So he's.
You're not like meeting him in a parking lot with like photos.
He's a.
We need a copy as I'm getting there.
Oh yeah.
Everything's documented.
OK.
We need that.
I'll tell you a story about when the girl got abducted.
But anyway, I'll tell you a story in a second.
Gentle Losey and abducted a girl.
So no, no, no.
He didn't do anything.
So anyways, he's getting on a plane.
So he's going down to the airport.
Gentle Losey though.
Yeah.
So this guy's following him.
So I'm going, well.
Which you've hired him.
He says he's getting on a Qantas jet to New Zealand.
Wow.
I said, really?
I said, get on the plane.
Yes.
He follows him over to New Zealand.
And this guy by the name of Craig Pullman, he had a big hat.
Yeah.
And that's who he was getting his engine.
Now KTEC engines was 680, 690.
Yeah.
So he had more.
Yeah.
So it ultimately ended up a seven and a quarter.
Right.
OK.
So what was wrong with this fucking picture?
So does Gentle Losey know at this point,
like that I mean today that you sent a tail on him?
No.
Yes.
Why would I tell him?
Well, he's going to hear about it.
I don't know now.
So anyways.
I like that that's the levels that we went to in the early 90s over.
Trans Am.
Trans Am.
Trans Am.
Up Trans Am.
This wasn't F1.
No, no, no.
It was more than 500.
There's more in Trans Am.
Right.
Just Trans Am.
Just Trans Am.
Anyway.
There's more.
Wait, I was talking.
What was the cheat?
Like, yeah, they've got this Australian engine builder.
What?
But what's the cheat?
What?
What?
I'm so confused.
What the cheat is?
Like, yeah, he's got some.
I'm not sure what would you, I'm going to get to him.
I'm going to fucking re-sign.
That's the amount.
Jesus Christ.
I'm sorry.
I'll, I'll pocket.
So let me tell you what he's doing.
So what was happening, Ryan, Craig would come over here.
I said, Craig, tell me, he's, I can't.
I said, let me tell you, I'm paying you a lot of fucking money.
It's between us.
What he was doing.
That's the Craig Pullman who was building the motors in New Zealand.
Right.
He was taking a Chevrolet engine.
Pouring his own fucking heads.
And stamping with General Motors numbers on it.
Why not?
Nice.
Basically, the General Motors engine went like this.
He had it, had it going,
blowing down into the combustion chamber.
Just building more power.
Building more power.
So we had that.
If you find a picture when I came around track,
I went from nine to four to fifth at Long Beach.
Okay.
Okay.
On three wheels.
Did you ever see that one?
But I need to.
Toward the end.
It sounds amazing.
I'll find the picture.
So anyways, everything's going good.
Okay.
And we're, you know, we're not winning,
but we've been finishing up.
Greg's doing well.
I'm doing well.
I'd like to point out,
you didn't ask when you took my Friday, you just took it.
Yeah, you just took some rides.
That's just RJ.
And I'm fine with it.
We're cool.
We're cool with it.
But I'm,
We're cool with it.
Thank you for letting me know.
Can you come on this road trip with us?
Yeah.
I think you would be so much fun on the road.
Because you would be a great third party.
Yeah.
Yeah.
You just take our food.
So Trans-Am deal comes to, it ends in 97, 98.
Okay.
For me.
Okay.
So.
And at that point, it's kind of getting rough anyway for the series.
So.
I still love the idea of this like tail.
Still in a trench coat and there's like saxophone music and it's raining.
And he's.
Who's this?
Your tail in New Zealand.
It's like at some machine shop.
Yeah.
In the middle of wherever in New Zealand.
Like taking photos through like an upstairs corner window.
You'd love this guy.
You'd love.
Yeah.
I'm all in.
Everything about this.
Yeah.
I can hear the music.
Very innovative people.
So now it's the Trans-Am is over.
Okay.
So I'm, I'm driving here and there and in 2003.
Buckler approaches me.
Buckler brings me into the web.
Okay.
Gotcha.
Look.
Now burn for me.
We've all had our problems with Kevin.
But I'm going to tell you something.
Speak for yourself friend.
He and I are great.
Have you talked to him?
No.
I was invited to a wine tasting thing last year.
On one very specific conditions.
I remember.
Don't make fun of me on the internet.
Oh yeah.
He actually did say he's like, yeah, you can come to this wine tasting.
It's Sonoma for World Challenge.
Yeah.
But you're not going to make fun of me on the internet.
I was like, I'm not going to go.
Make fun of me on the internet.
Was that supposed to mean?
Yeah, I don't know.
So he puts me in with Gleason and Ian James.
Yeah.
Okay.
And we, you know, we did okay.
We did okay together.
We each, you know, Ian was, he was the pro.
But Gleason and I had fun.
The following year, we raced again with Ian.
That's 2004.
And then Tom Milner comes up and he says,
Okay, I'm going to talk to you.
German, you know how he is.
He's a great guy.
So he's a bunch of the come with me.
I said, Tom, I said, you got guys, you got pro drivers here.
You got Billy Oberlin.
You have Joe.
Joey and Marks.
Kelly Collins.
And he had, who the hell was, there was one of the guy there.
Boris.
Boris, Boris, Boris.
And then, then he had, which his name come in, who was a German?
Hans Stuck.
Never heard of him.
He came into some, he came into some racing.
Okay.
So I was, I said, you know what, I says, why is he doing this?
But he did it and you know, could have been money, but we had like four cars.
And then they took the advantage away the year before.
And they took, you know, they made the bodies less wide and they did a whole bunch of,
they f***ed over them.
But the car still, he still made the car run.
I went through that year and Buckla wouldn't talk to me.
Because you'd left, you violated him.
Because you left like an amazing program opportunity with like factory BMW team.
One of the best BMW teams at all time.
So anyways, but somehow when your money was still green, he was your best friend again.
Well, let me tell you what happened.
Wasn't talking to me.
And we were somewhere, maybe it was the Glen somewhere.
And all the trailers are packed.
Right.
So I'm walking down and he's walking toward me.
And he's got his head down.
And I grabbed him by the collar.
I said, look at you f***ing asshole.
I said, things changed.
How do you know I'm not going to come back with you next year?
Right.
Well, you said, really?
I said, yeah, really?
That's a possibility.
Yeah.
So he decides he's going to take me to dinner.
Oh, how nice of him.
Oh, wow.
After you grabbed my collar.
Weird.
After you said that you'd be enjoying his team again.
But let me tell you this.
Spending a lot of money.
You got to know something.
Kevin and I did have a lot of fun.
And then he delivered wins.
You know, we had some wins.
Yeah, Andy was really good.
Yeah, about, say, you know, seven.
You know, Andy.
Lars and Andy were good crew.
Oh, Andy was just, you know, and he brought me along.
You know, he could, he told me he wouldn't even see the turn.
And he'd tell me what to do.
Andy.
Oh, yeah.
Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.
He could just sit there with his mind's eye
and kind of coach corner by corner.
And Andy and I became very close.
We had a lot of fun together.
And like your 0-7 season was probably the best one.
Five out of five wins, two seconds in a third.
Just barely missed the championship.
He did some things.
He did some fucking crazy things.
Andy.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I think that would probably be the season
that really put Andy on the map is like forced to be reckoned
with GT driver.
Yeah.
And you allowed that opportunity to happen.
Yeah.
Well, you know, I was a, I was a, you know, a gentleman driver.
But Andy, let me tell you, he did the majority of the driving.
He's just a strong crash to car, keep it on the same lap.
And I was able to do that.
Yeah.
Right.
Okay.
But there was, I mean, I used to watch this guy,
his fucking discipline was on off the Richter scale.
And he was just a good, Andy's always been a good person.
I think probably as a driver learn more from him than any driver.
I can actually say the same.
And the rules were a little different than versus now.
Like how much, how much drive time would you say you did in 07?
45 minutes.
Total?
Of the whole season.
No, no, per race.
2008, I only did a bunch of races with Brian Sellers.
Yeah.
2009, I did the 24 hour, won the 24 hour with the crew.
I like that you just kind of set it nonchalant,
like won the greatest race that's hard as shit to win.
Well, I did it 26 times.
Pontiac, we were leading when the pit button broke.
In 2007, we should have won the 24 hour, but Buckler got in the car
and got hit by a DP car at eight o'clock in the morning.
After Spencer and Andy drove their hearts out.
He decides he wants to get in the car.
Weird.
That really pissed me.
I still bring it up to him.
Good.
And then, you know, that was that.
The last pro race was 2010.
And Andy and I won the Paul Revere.
That's right.
That's right.
Yeah.
Yeah, I forgot that was your big race.
So can we talk about 09 Daytona?
Yeah, because like your first exposure to professional car racing is going
on just sort of a fun trip with your friends, with your wife.
And so you go to the Daytona 24 and 74.
And after that, it becomes unfinished business for the next 26 years, right?
You go and it's whether it's like the Pontiac, that's what you and I met in 05
when you first started driving that in the 06 in the Daytona 24.
And that race, you had a pit button go out and you had a frozen gearbox.
That was 06.
It seemed like if there was a race that was the race you had been wanting to conquer,
it was Daytona.
Everybody wants to win the 24.
Absolutely.
So 09, it's you, Justin Marks, and then this all-star cast of characters.
It's Patrick Bergmeister.
And Andy, I think.
And I think that, yeah.
They won the race for us.
And what was, so you got to, but you closed that race out.
Yeah.
Like they put you in for the last little bit.
Let me tell you, you know, as bad as Kevin could be.
Right.
He did some nice things.
So Rolex 24, 2009.
So 2009.
You drive the car and you finally, you get to run the final stint or last few laps.
There was a big enough lead that it was like pressure was sort of off.
You just had to keep it on the good stuff.
And what was that emotion?
Because this had been such on French business.
Listen, after 26 years of doing and spending millions of dollars to get there
and going down and crossing the checker, you know, I mean, it was like,
I get out of the car.
I was so confused.
I thought I won the Daytona 500.
Well, I'm glad you brought it up.
All right. We brought it up.
So if we can be honest.
So we've been searching around some close friends to see like what dirt can we bring up?
Yeah.
And Ryan, what's the one thing that everyone comments on?
How much you and Matt Kenseth have in common from 2009?
Because you both won the Daytona 500.
Yeah.
So for those who don't know, so finally achieve your dream.
You've won the Rolex 24.
TV cameras come out.
You're excited and you go, I've won the Daytona 500.
I never lived that down.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
It is the most common thing people told us to ask, you know, and these are all our friends,
right?
But I like that.
Yeah.
I was so goddamn excited.
Yeah.
Totally.
Totally.
Yeah.
That was that was the big win.
I remember being so stoked for you guys.
Yeah.
And Andy's won it.
How many times?
Five.
Four.
15, 20 at this point.
I think he's at five now.
Yeah.
I'd like to see him win another one.
Yeah.
Maybe.
Absolutely.
Absolutely.
Yeah.
So you still get about that?
People bust your chops.
You know, I'll tell you, I see Lee Diffie every once in a while.
But I mean, I think it's kind of blown over.
We're bringing it back.
Yeah.
I know you're going to hear about it.
I know you are.
Yeah.
I know you are.
So as it's leaving your mouth, are you like, that was the wrong thing to say?
Or did it take time because you're just so overwhelmed with the moment that you didn't
realize you said it?
I didn't realize it.
Yeah.
Right.
When did it first get brought up?
When we were being interviewed.
No, but like when did it first get brought back?
Because you didn't, you said it, you didn't realize you said it.
Like, was it a week later at dinner?
No, it was the same day.
Okay.
You know, Brian Till was the one that I was talking to.
But I was zoned out.
I was.
No, I understand that.
So when was, if you don't remember saying it, when was it, like, when was it brought back
to you by somebody like, hey, do you know what you said?
No, nobody actually, I think Diff might have said, you're the one they told in 500, right?
19, 2000.
We were somewhere.
Yeah.
I was down in Connecticut.
I think it was at line one.
But.
Is that the big win of the career?
Not really.
Really?
It was a big win.
Don't get me wrong.
But that's not the one that you're like down to say.
The ones, the, in 2007, the, I mean, I was elated when I won, you know, 24.
But when Andy and I, I can remember jumping off in Iowa, the heat was subdued.
They had a drag Andy out.
He was just fucking roasted.
And he did such an incredible job.
Chasing down.
Well, that was a Farnbacher Lowes guy.
Yeah, it had been Werner.
So, and the one that really, really, I don't know if you remember seeing what Andy did
to, to wizarding Westfall or West.
Oh, no, it was before.
It was Watkins Glen.
And it was like the synergy poor show.
Yeah, right.
Who was that guy at the time?
He was a little bit older.
No, West, Westfall, the English kid.
I thought it was Westfall.
But Westfall might have been in your car.
But you're thinking of Huizman?
It was, I thought it was Patrick Huizman.
Yeah.
Who?
Patrick Huizman.
No, no, no, no, no, no.
This was Westfall was in that car.
Okay.
Okay.
Not Jeff Westfall, the Californian.
Just pointing this out because people are going to think it's.
Westbrook.
Maybe I'm, maybe I'm wrong.
But Westbrook.
Westbrook.
It had to have been Westbrook.
Yeah.
Because I remember being in the pit and watching it.
And they both came out of the, the kink.
The bus stop.
Okay.
The bus stop.
Okay.
And they're going down.
It's how calculating Andy is.
Okay.
He goes down underneath him.
I remember this move.
Okay.
And West goes on.
And Andy goes on the other side of him,
comes around and wins the round.
I go, mother, I can't believe it.
I mean, it's the kind of things he would wow you.
Yeah.
In different races, like Laguna, he'd push the car.
It was really neat to watch him be able to have the chance to.
He's a, he's a master at planning and watching.
Absolutely.
And he just analyzed the other things.
And you say, where did that come from?
Just in general.
I said to Bob, I said, you know, I was close to, been close.
Bob has stepped in.
He stepped in.
Bob, Bob and Bob.
Bob and Bob.
Yeah.
I'm saying, what was he like when he was a kid?
That's Barb and Bob.
For those not listening.
Two different names.
Barbara.
Yeah.
So he, and they, and he said, well, you know, he's just,
Bob would, he said, he was always a great kid.
And I've never seen Andy really get pissed at anybody.
Oh, really?
Well, not around me.
Not around me.
Who did, who did.
We know a different Andy.
Are you going to do these by the numbers?
I'm sorry?
What are you going to do?
Well, in other words, each podcast, you're going to do them in sequence.
So what happens is everybody is their own episode.
That's it.
Yep.
And so.
So you can pick and choose?
Yeah.
So what we do is, if you notice, we're not talking about the news of the week,
right?
So we're not like, well, not on that, but like.
Talking about somebody's life.
Yeah.
So in other words, whether you'll hear it now or a year from now,
it's still relevant.
Okay.
Right.
Yeah.
Okay.
So if I go in now, how do I get into it?
Dinners for races.
Yeah, I saw it on the, I saw it on the internet.
Dinner with races?
So I click on dinner with races.
Yeah.
So like on your, I can show you how to do it on your phone.
I'll do this now.
Well, just, oh, so I click on this thing that says 129 episodes.
So if I scroll down, you can listen.
So it's like David Spain, Bobby Allison, Dennis Aussie.
Oh, you got Jack Baldwin.
You got any good Jack Baldwin stories?
Yeah.
You got to have some good Jack.
Oh yeah.
Jack was always 48.
So I mean, I remember the Dallas one time.
Yeah.
When the championship, that year, when the championship,
he said, Jay, when I got on your ass,
just breathe and let me, and let me go by.
So yeah, I'll pack the f***ing thing in the lawn for you.
Yeah, why don't you go f*** yourself?
Did you know he was the first guy to do everything you've ever thought of?
According to his podcast.
He was the first guy to what?
He, every story started with, I was the first guy to do that.
He invented racing or whatever.
So I learned something, how to do a podcast.
Podcast is simple.
God damn it, RJ.
What are you doing?
What are you doing?
I wish I could tell you more stuff.
But, well, all right, well, let's talk some,
let's talk some modern racing stuff.
Do you follow racing today?
Oh yeah.
So do you know how the driver rankings and all that work?
Are you talking about in IMSA?
Yeah, like the gold and the silver stuff.
My question for you is like, you would be considered a bronze,
I think, by age, silver by experience.
Why were you willing to race Trans-Am against some of the best
race car drivers in Trans-Am's history?
Because you were a gentleman driver.
You had to go to work on Monday.
Yeah, well.
But why would you?
Can I tell you what?
Back then, there were a bunch of us.
Look, I wasn't a Tommy Kendall.
Right.
But Tommy Kendall, I'm not taking anything away from it.
He did a great job.
What I'm getting at is that IMSA seems to think that people
like RJ Valentine won't show up in race
if they have to race against people like me, Ryan Eversley,
because you don't think it's fair.
Can I tell you what?
I don't think it's unfair.
I mean, I respect people who dedicate their life
to being a good driver.
Yeah.
Okay?
I mean, it's a relevant that I'm not as fast as everybody else.
I mean, I'm with you.
I'm in fun with you, and I have my moments.
And in other words, there's certain times
like Andy would say, unbelievable when I qualified
better than I ever did at Daytona.
You know why?
Because of him.
So again, I don't understand why you would want to race
against all these pros because it's not fair.
What is so unfair about if somebody is going out there
and busting his fucking ass every day to be fast in a car,
you would say to yourself, you know what?
That's good.
Yeah.
So what are you racing now?
Because you're still out there.
You're doing like HSR.
Well, I'm getting the Pontiac ready for the Glen on the fifth.
Right.
So you still own the Pontiac GTO that you race back in 005.
You didn't go out to the garage.
Did not.
You know, I get the 6607 car, the one we won five races in.
OK, that Porsche.
It's got a four liter in it now.
I've got the BMW Aero car.
Not the cars we drove in 005, but the year before that.
OK.
Did you know that there's only four of them in the world?
No.
Three of them in the Munich Museum, and I own the fourth one.
Yeah, cool.
And the GTO.
I got a GTO and I got a Viper too, which is a piece of shit.
So our next guest is probably somebody you don't know.
He's a video guy out of New York.
His name is JF Musile.
JF is a couple of years younger than me,
has exclusively does videos in sort of the car world.
OK.
So he's not necessarily a household name to like racing drivers or fans,
but he's a guy that I respect a ton.
So if you could ask any question of a sort of a guy who's made his entire
living on automotive video production, what would it be?
I wouldn't know what the fuck to ask him.
I really wouldn't.
That's fair.
That's fair.
Dave DeSpanne, what is he doing now?
That was your question?
I love to listen.
We're going to ask that for JF.
Yeah, I'm writing it down.
So how many times a week do people ask you why you are yelling?
Um, how many times a week?
Yeah.
Nobody ever asks you.
No one?
Really?
OK, OK.
No, it's just accepted.
Well, I mean, I do get in discussions.
It's mostly over politics.
Yeah, we've noticed.
OK, OK.
It's mostly over politics.
I mean, I don't yell all the time.
Sure.
Yeah, I mean, you didn't yell at us, but I could just sense that you're a passionate guy.
I'm a passionate guy, but you know what?
It's like very seldom do I get upset with people.
I really don't get upset with people.
I like to, I do, I think I have some compassion.
When I see people like tomorrow at two o'clock,
I'm meeting with a neighbor of mine that's leaving where he's at.
And I know I can help him.
He works for big companies.
He should be working, doing deals like we would do, you know, like what you are doing.
Yeah, right.
He's a, he's a brand specialist.
I see.
So I'm going to help him put together a vessel that he can go to smaller companies
and take what he knows from bigger companies and pass it on to them.
Interesting.
OK.
Well, I would, on the compassion side, I mean, if you look at people in your office,
a lot of the same people have been working for you forever.
That's usually a sign of being...
Can I tell you, listen, do I still argue with Pat?
Yeah, I argue with Pat, but you know what?
I love the guy, Pat Gallagher.
He's my right-hand guy.
Oh, Gallagher.
Gallagher, sorry.
He's a guy I only know in Gallagher.
I only know him in Gallagher.
And then I talked to Trazieland on the way over here.
OK.
That's not a name.
You know, Traziel is a guy who lives in Hawaii for eight, nine months of the year
and then comes here.
He lost a thousand pound tuna today.
Poor guy.
Brought it right up to the side of the boat and the kid didn't spirit properly and he lost it.
You still stay in touch with Kushevis?
What's that?
You still stay in touch with Kushevis?
Kushevis.
What was his name?
Now I've lost it.
Yeah.
What about Cutterman?
What about Dick Suckers?
Dick Suckers is dead.
Suckers.
Oh, Dick Suckers is dead.
He died about five, six years ago.
Billions of people cried out.
Well, what's the lawyer's name?
It was Charlie Croutonmaker.
Croutonmaker.
Goddamn Croutonmaker.
You like names, you guys.
Well, these names are amazing.
Now it's like Alex Jones, like Tom Snow.
Like these are names you get now.
Charlie Croutonmaker.
That guy was doing things.
Joe Kushevis.
Joe Kushevis.
Kushevis is who I want to.
Kushevis is my goddamn guy.
Kushevis?
Well, Dick Suckers is your guy.
Yeah, Dick.
Okay.
Yeah.
All right.
Speaking of which.
Wow, that poor guy.
One last thing.
How many times a week do you hear people say,
sir, the language?
Like, is that a phrase that you're familiar with?
I don't use the, I use the f*** word, you know, on occasion.
I don't know.
Oh, f*** God, no, you don't.
You call it the f*** word.
I can't.
Can that be a word?
We were in your office for maybe a second.
It was like, oh, the f*** are you?
That was like what we both heard when we walked in.
You're telling us, you barely f***ing say it.
I don't know.
How many, you're going to hate this question?
Please don't punch me.
Punch him.
Punch him.
How many men do you think have seen your penis?
How many men have seen my penis?
I've heard a few stories of you freely urinating in front of people.
Not like in a stall.
Oh yeah, I do.
I do.
Can I tell you what?
Yeah, thank you.
When I was like, where is this going, Sean?
Didn't you like piss on a plant in front of a politician
because you were waiting to talk to him and you really had to go?
That's a f***ing real story.
No, no, no, no.
Oh, we have a thing to talk about.
Let's finish this.
How are you going?
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Can I tell you something?
Yeah.
If I get a piss, right?
Yeah.
Okay, I'll pull over the side of the road and piss.
Oh, sure.
Yeah, you're not going to.
Oh, you know.
We'll kill you that.
Like in the morning, when I park my car,
in the morning, if I got to be where did you sit?
Boo-boo, what?
Where you what?
Where you did what again?
I pissed right by my car.
By where you did what again?
Right, and then when I get home tonight,
if I get a piss, my wife will open the garage door.
I'll be pissing outside.
She's beyond asking me why, but I'm mocking my territory.
Yeah, well, you might as well.
You own the house, but not the yard.
So if it's between the need to pee and walking another 30 feet,
you'll just go right there.
Oh, yeah, why not?
All right.
What about you?
No, I usually wait.
No, no, he's asking you the number of times.
How old are you, shorty?
How old do you think I am?
It's too late now, but...
Can I tell you, the older you get, the more you want to piss.
Oh, all right.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Hydration's important.
Yeah, I had a turf.
Get a turf?
What?
What was that for?
Trench, urethral remediation process.
I think I said it like we would know.
Yeah, yeah.
What they do is they put a roto rooter up your ****, you know.
Wait, they put a what up there?
Put a roto rooter up your ****.
Get into your prostate to widen it.
So Will Turner had a story.
Well, tell me about, oh, the ****, the phone.
Yeah, let's have you tell it your way.
Okay, so anyways, anyways, we went out to dinner.
We get together, Will and Darius, when he's here.
Is that Grahla's Grahla?
Grahla, Peter Bassett, Dana White.
I know she had Dana White.
Dana White, he's a human band, so...
Dana, whatever Dana's last name is.
And we get together, we're going to get together on August 8th.
Okay.
And we have fun.
Okay, we have a lot of fun.
So anyways, we're in this restaurant in Boston.
I get up and I had my phone, so I go...
Well, so you go to the bathroom, you leave your phone behind?
I leave the phone behind.
What he does is he brings some **** and he puts it on my phone.
So I go to look at it, I'm going, holy ****.
And this chick here, that's Karen at the...
Yeah, yeah, I know Karen.
Okay, so anyways, I have to get on a plane the next day
and all this **** on there.
I don't know how to get it off.
So I call Karen up and I said, Karen, you got to help me.
It's like midnight.
Yeah, it's late at night.
So her husband answered the phone.
It's brandy, where's Karen?
He said, hold on a second.
So I get on.
I said, I'm **** up.
My phone's got a thing on them.
There's a picture on the phone.
I can't get it off.
I go to her house and she gets it off.
Right.
But he can't do it.
You can't do it now because, you know, you got...
This thing goes into, you can't, if you can't...
Now you got the screen lock?
Right.
So, okay.
That's probably from Karen.
So to recap, you're at a dinner.
A buddy put something graphic on my phone on your phone
and you call your, what's Karen's title?
Like executive assistant.
She's a GM of a bunch of ****.
She's a boss.
Karen, like Karen runs a lot of your businesses.
So the point is, is that Karen isn't just like some,
like new kid on the block.
It's literally a boss and you're like, can you fix my phone?
And you got robbed to her house at midnight.
Yeah, she'd fix it.
So Karen's running X1, boss.
Right.
And she's doing, she's doing the barrier,
helping me with the barrier.
The barriers.
And then she's doing, we're a safe fluid.
Okay.
Okay.
We're going to do small boats and big boats.
You roughly, how many businesses would you say you have
at this point in the, in the company?
16, 18, 16.
All right.
And then I'm doing my big sign company,
you know, big electronic signage.
Oh, we should get in on that.
How do we **** in business?
Can we invest?
Find me a site.
Find me a site.
Find me a site with a minimum of 80,000 vehicles per day.
How do we get 85, done?
How do we get a big dinner with racers logo
on one of these signs?
Like how do we get a big ad in like Indiana?
Right.
Near the speedway.
What you do is basically find me a piece of property.
Look, prologics.
Look up prologics.
And see if they have a site in around the Indianapolis area.
Okay.
You guys are onto something.
Yeah.
You guys have something.
And I'm saying to myself, let me go take a plea.
Oh, yeah.
Oh, okay.
Yeah, no problem.
Take your time.
I like how you just made sentences like,
I'm going to do it right here.
Yeah, well, there's a plant somewhere.
Do you mind talking about the F1 deal?
Oh, no, no, no.
Because so like we went to, we went,
so I, you and I have worked together for years.
I've done a lot of promotional stuff for F1 Boston.
Yeah.
Which is now.
Well, let me tell you what happened.
After 20 years, they decide.
They as in F1 people.
Formula one.
Yeah, okay.
Okay.
That they want the name F1.
Now, we said no.
So we started fighting them.
And this is way back when, right?
Right.
So the one thing I didn't program in and never thought of it,
it was an F1 New Jersey.
So what they do is they establish.
They established me down there and they drag me into.
Different districts.
I had F1 here, F1 Boston, F1 this, F1 that.
And we started fighting them.
Now.
And this is way back.
No, it's not.
Just about five years, four or five years ago.
The one that made the news, I think,
I thought was like the third time this had happened.
Maybe I'm wrong on this.
Well, no, they came to us and lost us.
They dropped the suit some time ago.
Okay.
That's where that's the first one.
Okay.
And that was.
So now they came back and they reignited it
because I think they were going to sell
and they wanted to tie everything up.
So yeah.
Anyways, I fight them.
I decide I'm going to go.
I hire a big trademark lawyer in New Jersey.
And I said, change the venue to Boston.
So it's going to cost you a couple of hundred grand.
If I had had it, if I changed the location,
the judge, the fucking judge down there said,
we have to try it in New Jersey.
There's only one F1 name down there.
So he kept it in New Jersey.
So if he, if it wasn't in New Jersey and in Boston,
I'd have fought them in one.
Yeah.
Because you'd had such a proof of having F1.
Right.
Do you know what latches is?
No.
It's a law that after seven years,
if you don't take possession of your name,
then you lose it.
Right.
And you'd had F1 forever.
Yeah.
So anyways, was I going to spend another half a million bucks?
So I got, I did a settlement.
They gave me some money.
So you guys settled and then everything became X1.
Yeah.
And that's the end of the story.
Yeah.
Pretty simple story.
Okay.
The end.
How do you like the indoor carding business
or the carding business in general?
Because I mean, it's like anything else.
That piece of land that you sit there,
it's not the highest and best use.
That land is probably worth the one up here on the road.
Okay.
It could be worth between 25 and 35 or 40 million.
It's a housing development.
Really?
Yeah.
At some point, somebody's going to come in there and,
you know, I mean, look, every deal,
it's like Jiffy Loob.
Every deal has a, has its life.
Right.
Now I got the outdoor track.
You've seen that.
Well, so this, yeah.
So let's, let's set up because like,
because you didn't grow up carding or anything,
but yet carding is quite a bit.
Let me tell you, I was down there Sunday
down at the outdoor track.
Yeah.
Have you been there?
F1 outdoor.
Yeah.
I made the goddamn video for it.
Oh, that's right too.
I'm sorry.
Why are you cussing now?
But anyways, there was racing down there
like a dream about.
I mean, you caught it.
Did you do carding?
Very minimal, but yes.
But I'm telling you, it's, if I, you know,
I drove quite a bit.
I drove the RM1 at two speed.
Then I did a six speed paddle shifter.
I mean, there's nothing like carding.
That's why all these guys like Senator and,
you know, Tony Kanan and all those guys drive go-karts.
So you own what is now X1 Boston.
Is it now X1 outdoor also?
Yeah.
Not too far from here.
And then X1 New Jersey.
Right.
And then you still doing SSC East?
Is that?
No, close that down.
But so you were a major carding importer
for level carding.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
And then.
But what happened with the Europeans
is they kept squeezing you
and they didn't want to give you any more than 30%.
I'm saying, I'll fucking make any money at 30%.
SSC, because SSC was importing all the like
Tony carts and all those guys.
No, no, we were just doing CRGs.
CRGs.
Okay.
But listen, they're socialists over there.
They want you to fucking just only make so much profit.
Okay.
So you also decided to,
do you know what I'm going with this story?
I do.
Ryan knows.
And I'll let Ryan kind of run with it
because it's better to have somebody else tell the story.
But in 2009, you start your own carding organization, CKI.
CKI, right.
You're right.
Yeah.
All right.
Do you remember the first race?
That's CKI.
Jersey.
Newcastle, Indiana.
Indiana.
That's right.
Newcastle.
Do you remember anything happening during that weekend?
Was there anything happening?
Do you remember anything that sticks out as a high point
or a low point of the weekend?
No, with Bobby Rayhall.
Oh, that's cool.
That's cool.
Well, Bobby Rayhall witnessed something that weekend.
Yeah, he probably did.
He mentioned it to Jason because he was like,
were you the guys?
Oh, yeah.
That's a real thing.
So Bobby Rayhall remembered.
What did he remember?
There was an ambulance involved.
A guy got hit by a go-kart.
Yes.
Who was that?
Yes, yes.
And who the f**k was the guy?
He was you.
Yeah.
That was me.
And what happened to you?
I f**king was on crutches for six months.
What do you mean what happened to me?
Yeah, yeah.
How the f**k did you get his?
My favorite part just for the people that couldn't see R.J.
is that he was looking to his right,
Sean's on his left, and he went, oh, it was you.
That's right.
Oh, I forgot.
So how bad was it?
It was, well, it didn't turn out.
How did you shoot us?
We got a plan.
Oh, well, I'll tell you the aftermath,
because I remember.
Is it too late?
Yeah, it's way too late.
But so I was standing where I believe I should have been,
but it's Newcastle.
Like, there's no such thing as your back,
not to something, and two kids got together.
R.J. May, being one of them.
And then some other kid.
Would it break your ankle?
Yeah, my foot broke in a couple different spots,
and then the recovery wasn't.
It was a long process, but.
Yeah, long suit pending.
So.
I was with, trying to think of the guy
that was my partner in that.
He's from Arizona.
Begins with a D.
Dick Sucker.
Not Dick Sucker.
Damn it.
So I'm on the ground.
Well, wait.
Shoot, go ahead.
Okay, you're laying on the ground?
I'm laying on the ground.
No, no, no, no, no.
When it's over.
Like, I get hit.
Oh, okay.
So I'm on the ground.
People might not have listened to Marvillar's episode.
I was actually not in that much pain.
A little shock.
Yeah, that's what I'm saying.
So just in case you hadn't listened
to the Marvillar episode,
Sean is filming,
and it's one of these parts of the track
where you basically are,
where you think to be in a safe place
because it's so far away
that nobody should really get to you.
Right, that's fair.
And you're pointing the other direction,
but again, it's like,
you've been filming both directions.
Well, and it's like, it's what,
it's five eighths mile go-kart, right?
Like, there's no such thing the way it snakes around.
There's no such thing as not having your back.
Exactly.
So.
And Ari Weemay and another person
that we're not really sure.
Ari Weemay, yeah.
100% Ari Weemay, whatever his name is,
100% his fault.
He and another kid get together.
They both don't lift out of the gas
because they're assholes.
And then they run into the camera guy
who's like a quarter mile off in the grass.
Yeah, and my back's too.
So I literally don't know.
How the f*** did they reach you?
Yeah, exactly.
I don't know.
Because I only know I got hit
when I'm halfway through the air
because I heard it before I felt it.
That sounds like.
Yep.
And then I'm floating through the air.
Slow motion.
She was floating, not okay now.
I'm more or less fine now.
Oh, there's a little bit of.
Well, I've got some metal pieces,
but I'm a little bionic.
But other than that, I'm fine.
So did your shoes come off?
My shoes go off my land.
My shoes are over here.
My camera's over there.
Pieces of my camera in other places.
How long did it take for people
to realize something had happened?
I don't remember exactly.
Because you're kind of out there, right?
Yeah, I don't remember.
But the race stopped.
So they did stop the race.
So I don't.
It's the Sean Little.
I will say that Newcastle track workers
stopped the race.
I would say fairly quickly.
But I'll never forget the first thing
out of the guy's mouth is,
you're all right.
You don't need the ambulance, right?
Who said that?
I don't know.
What, a flag guy or something?
Some guy who doesn't want to have
to shut down the race.
Because if the ambulance leaves the track,
they can't race.
So he's like, you're fine.
You don't need an ambulance.
I'm like, hold on.
Hang on.
No, that doesn't point that way.
Yeah, because I'm looking at my foot
and I'm seeing how things.
Still to Laos.
Oh, yeah.
It was to Laos.
Oh, my God.
You know him?
Yeah, I raced with his brother.
Really.
Anyway, so I'll shortcut to, OK,
finally, eventually it's clear I can't walk.
Yeah.
And so they load me into the ambulance.
My partner, or as you like to call him,
RJ, my assistant, Jason Medbury and Tom Morningstar,
who is a cameraman for JF Moose Island,
or had been.
They load me into the ambulance,
shut the door, ambulance drives off.
You're gone.
I'm gone.
RJ now walks up to Jason.
Do you remember what you said to Jason?
First thing out of your mouth?
Jason, Jason, who?
Jason, my partner, Jason.
What?
So they put me in the ambulance,
first thing out of your mouth
when you look at Jason.
You got a plan B?
Do you remember?
I don't remember seeing that.
And Jason's like, yeah, we'll be OK.
And Sean's OK.
Sean's going to make it.
His leg's going to be OK.
Yeah, yeah.
But I remember, like, I mean, look, we've always been.
We've always been friends.
All business.
But I remember I got more phone calls from you
for the next six weeks, one out of concern.
But it was like, it was a little bit of like,
you're not going to sue me, right?
I'm not going to sue you.
Did I?
Yeah, you kept calling.
And I was like, I'm not going to sue you.
But I didn't want to let you off the hook that easy.
Yeah, right.
So I was like, I wasn't ever going to say, dude,
I'm not going to sue you.
I was just talking to my lawyer,
and I don't feel so good.
I got to get going.
But I got a lot of attention.
Do you have insurance?
Uh, I don't remember.
You should have sued us.
Just for the insurance money?
But this is good advice.
I didn't want, I probably should have,
if you wouldn't have cared.
I didn't want the reputation of the guy
that gets injured and sues everybody.
You know, stand up guy.
That's why.
Can I tell you what?
If that, I'm not, I'm not the,
I'm not, I'm the same kind of way.
I wouldn't do it.
I mean, if something happened to me on my job,
that's the risky take.
So anyways, that was, that was a,
you know, that was a deal with the Europeans.
Again, the fucking Europeans
would not let you make money.
Yeah.
Sean's leg's okay though.
So let's just cover that.
Just cover that.
That's the important part.
So when are you going to drive down tomorrow?
We're leaving tomorrow morning.
We're going to go to Jersey City.
Jersey area.
Yeah.
And we'll do two days there.
What time are you leaving?
Early.
Yeah.
Like 11.
You're right.
Like you're sleeping.
Right when we get in, get up.
Yeah.
All right.
Well, would you say Continental's got the check?
I would say that Dick Sucker would get the check,
but he's passing on apparently.
So, Continental's getting it this time.
Any time with Ajay is a good time.
I am so thankful for that.
And I'm really happy we were finally able to do it.
Also, hopefully this met the expectations of
John Lechan and Steven Taney,
both who recommended we sit down with him.
And he was high on my list and I wasn't disappointed.
But we will close this out with a song called
Layaway by Alexander Lewis, available on musicbed.com.
She and these streets get no sleep.
Just give me the fat pockets and the fatter stays.
Let the smoke go in the air and let it fade away.
I'mma put a bin dollars online.
And wait till the devil catch up that nigga mayonnaise.
Got swag, got spots, got jocks, got blocks.
Red eye, 12 o'clock, I'm in the sky, going fuck.
300 Hooters, pink sleeves.
Mama told me succeed.
Tarzan, I'm climbing trees.
They don't want you in double G's.
They don't want you in AMG.
Mama don't want me in these streets.
The hustle don't want me to get no sleep.
My bitch don't want me to fuck her room.
They ain't us if it ain't our fleet.
They don't want you to rob, blame, blame.
They don't want you to ride in foreign.
They want you to have endorsements.
Just give me the fat pockets and the fatter stays.
Let the smoke go in the air and let it fade away.
I'mma put a bin dollars online.
Wait till the devil catch up that nigga mayonnaise.
Just give me the fat pockets and the fatter stays.
Let the smoke go in the air and let it fade away.
I'mma put a bin dollars online.
Wait till the devil catch up that nigga mayonnaise.
I'mma put a bin dollars online.
Wait till the devil catch up that nigga mayonnaise.
Just give me the fat pockets and the fatter stays.
Let the smoke go in the air and let it fade away.
I'mma put a bin dollars online.
Wait till the devil catch up that nigga mayonnaise.
Just give me the fat pockets and the fatter stays.
Just give me the fat pockets and the fatter stays.
Let the smoke go in the air and let it fade away.
I'mma put a bin dollars online.
Wait till the devil catch up that nigga mayonnaise.
Just give me the fat pockets and the fatter stays.
Let the smoke go in the air and let it fade away.
I'mma put a bin dollars online.
Wait till the devil catch up that nigga mayonnaise.
Fatter stays.
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