Ep6 Jesse Iwuji

Hey, everybody, welcome back to another episode of Car Stories.

With some King and Amelia Hartford, and today we have a exciting guest from fighting for our country to becoming a professional NASCAR racing driver. We had a great conversation

about racism and dealing with negativity in the space and how he overcomes that.

With all smiles. Yeah, I call him like the real

life Superman, Like he is amazing at everything he does.

He never lets anything hold him down. He's always, like

you know, aiming for the highest peak and everything he does.

And he has just such a great, great inspirational attitude.

He brought some great energy and has some very real conversations about anyone aspiring to be a racing driver, what it takes, and how it's never too late in your career to go after your passions. So, without further ado,

Jesse wujie everybody.

How do I pronounce your last name without butchering it?

E wu g Jess e wougi Jesse?

Is it Jesse or Jess Jesse Jesse? Some people call

me Jess, not too many though, because it's so short already, they don't leave out the fifth letter.

Except for me, I just go Jess you can collage.

If you want. Jay j W that was my jame

and style. I used to freestyle really back in the

day in college.

Yeah wait, don't make me put you on the spot here.

So I'm not the cleanest on my freestyle, so it probably wouldn't be good.

So where did you go to high school?

Jess? Yes, so I went to high school. Actually got

that nickname in college, so high school people that when they hear Jay Wo like what he wasn't Jay, he was Jesse. But no, I went to high school in Dallas, Texas, Carrollton,

to be exact, Hebern High School. Played football there all

four years. It was amazing experience. When I first started

playing football, really wasn't that good at all. But from

my parents, everything I've learned from them is at the end of the day, in order to achieve anything in life, you got to really put a ton of effort in.

So I figured, Hey, if I don't have as much talent as everybody else, let me just out effort everybody else and I'll get past them. Because there's a lot

of people who came into high school with a ton of talent. They could catch football well, they could run well,

run routes do this and that. For me, I couldn't

do that. But I figured, hey, if I just continue

to work on it every single day, since they're super comfortable with their skills, they won't continue to work on their skills and and their abilities, and I'll just keep on getting past them. So especially got to the point

where into high school, I started getting recruited by some schools, and one of those schools was a naval academy. I

was like, this is a great opportunity to go to a good place, get a great education, play football in college for a great team, and then when I graduate, be able to serve as an officer in the US Navy.

Wow, So you didn't grow did you? Were you born

in Texas? Your parents aren't from here.

Though, Me and my brothers and my sisters, Yeah, we were born in Dallas, Texas. My parents, though, are from Nigeria,

Nigerian by trade, first generation here in the US. My

dad grew up in a very very poor area in Nigeria.

My mom as well. You know, I draw a lot

of strength from them because my mom, every time I hear her story is just like crazy, because she at twelve years old would climb trees to pick fruits off of it and go to the market and sell just to help her family out with extra money. She would

go fetch water from rivers after school just to help her family have clean water for cooking, for cleaning, for whatever they needed it for. Imagine being twelve years old,

middle school, going to a river and fetching pills of water.

That's what she used to do. You know, she threw

all that suffering and through everything she had to do.

I remember one time she had told me that she was walking to the market and saw a group of people walking the opposite way and they were speaking English, and at that time, she didn't speak English. And she

got down on her knees and started praying, and she's like God, please, like, if anything good ever happens to me in life, please allow my children to be able to speak English. Because she saw that these other folks

who spoke English dressed by her, looked less stressed and looked like life was just better. So she figured the

common denominator was that they speak English. So that's the key. Well,

you know, fast forward later, she obviously got to America and we all speak English here and life has been better and She's worked really hard to get to herself to a better place. You know, a woman of a

crazy amount of faith and a woman who just works so hard. She's owned businesses, she has multiple real estate properties.

Now she's a nurse. Wow. I used to watch her work,

you know, one hundred plus hour week. So she would

literally work seven days a week from seven pm to seven am as a nurse, and then from nine am to five pm. She had a store that she would

open and close herself every single day, so she would only sleep a couple hours in between that time every day for like multiple years. The woman is just wild,

but she's she's a mom. She's she's given me a

lot of strength, for sure.

What a strong role model to have in your life.

Oh yeah, most definitely. My dad's super hard work or

two did everything he could keep come to America. And

because he came, he was able to bring my mom and yeah, they started her life here in the US.

I think it's so great that your parents taught you at a young age that hard work can out beat talent, because I think that's so important. It's so good for

people to hear that and your proof of that, and I mean your family entirely.

Yeah, yeah, no, it's it's absolutely necessary. And I think,

you know, in today's world, there's a lot of people out there who need like the instant gratification. It's like, hey,

if I put in a little bit of effort, I need to get massive gains. And that's just not what

it is, right, I mean, in order to get anywhere in life, no matter what you want to do, you have to put massive effort in. You have to put

massive crind, You got to put action in towards your goals every single day. It's not just going to happen.

Things aren't just going to magically fall in place at the end of the day. You know. They talk about

when you're building skyscrapers, the higher you want to go, the deeper you're going to have to dig. And I

learned that early in life, and that's basically what I've been able to, you know, continue to kind of push everywhere I go so that I could get wherever I wanted to go.

With immigrant parents, something that I think we can relate to, right, did they want you to follow like a traditional career path and this race thing is like very foreign.

To Yeah, anyone who knows any Africans or no African parents all know that their parents all want them to do three things. It's or one of three things. It's

either you got to be a doctor, a lawyer, or engineer.

That's it. You can literally type it in on Google

and I promise you what's gonna pop up.

Sam, I think it's every immigrant family.

Doctor, lawyer, or engineer. That's it. There's no other career path.

Nothing else makes sense. Like if they're going to put

the effort to come from their home country to the US and all the grind and and everything they got to go through to get here, They're like, you have to at least be able to do that. So that's

what my parents pushed on us at first. As time

went on, they became a little bit more open to other things. They saw that, hey, there is more to

life than becoming a doctor, lawyer, engineer. So for me,

going to Naval Academy was different, right, That career path obviously was different than the doctor, lawyer, engineer thing. So,

but they were happy with it. They thought it was cool.

But then going from Navy to NASCAR, I was met with a little bit of resistance. My parents, You're like,

whoa what are you doing.

What was that shift? Because that's a big shift to

be like mom, dad, I want to be a race car driver.

Yeah, it is a massive shift. Basically, how it happening

was I've always had a passion for cars and racing my entire life. When I was five six years old,

I used to watch Night Rider and I love that show was amazing and that stayed with me for a long time going into middle school. In high school, I'd

always researched things on cars. The Fast and Furious movies

came out, started watching those in two thousand and one, watched every single one of them a lot of times.

And then going into college, when I would have free time from football, I would go on YouTube and just you know, type in anything racing, and I mainly watched like top gear and stuff. Kim Block when he came

out with the original Gimkana videos, I would watch those and that slowly built up my passion for cars. But

I never thought I'd get into racing ever in my life.

I just thought it was just a thing I liked, thought it was cool. Whatever. Graduated college, graduated from the

Naval Academy, bought a Challenger and SrTA and I was building that thing, built it up to nine hundred plus horsepower after going on a deployment, saving up a lot of money and horsepower. Yeah, it is, especially for that

time we were building healthcats.

Okay for people listening, that is a crazy amount of horsepower.

Especially that's like almost ten years ago.

Yeah, that car got built originally in twenty twelve, but it was on its way getting there, you know, prior to that. But yeah, I was. We didn't have Hellcats

at that time, right. Hellcats came in twenty fifteen, So

people sometimes hear that number now they're like, oh, yeah, it's easy with the Hellcat. There was no Hellcats. Then

we had to create the first Hellcats. So a lot

of trial and error and a lot of money went on a pretty much almost a year long deployment. Saved

a lot of money from that and use that to do that. But I had made this goal on deployment

that I was going to get in a magazine. I

was going to go break some records. I was going

to go two hundred miles per hour in the mile.

I made all these goals and then started grinding to make it happen. Obviously, it was financial stuff that pretty

much made that happen. But putting that effort in basically

kind of got my first taste at racing and competing in competitions. Right. But after walle doing that one day,

I was just like, man, it's fun going fast in a straight line, but I want to learn how to go fast around corners. So that's when I bought my

C six Z six back in twenty thirteen and started going to road course tracks on open track days. And

I was at that time, I would fit all four tires in the car and then trunk open a little bit, drive six. I was living in Monterey.

Drive me to know you love something six hours down with an extra set of wheels and tires in your car, Yes.

The entire way, And then I would change all my wheirs and tires at the track, do all that stuff, go do a track day for a whole day, and then drive six hours back home.

And then you made the decision that you wanted to take it seriously. What was that next step for you?

Yeah? So the next step was doing some research, right,

because I didn't know anything about real racing. I wanted

to figure out how do I get in? So I

went on Google, went online started. I literally typed in

how to become a professional race car driver, and it was I was met with a lot of negativity, a lot of people saying in the forums, you can't do it because you're black, rightcan Americans don't race? Right? You

can't do it because you don't come from money. You

can't do it because you didn't start racing when you're five, six, seven years old and karting. You can't do it because

of this that, I mean, all these different things that I saw in the forums. Every time I would like ask,

I was just everyone was telling me that it's not possible.

You're twenty Where does that mindset come from?

It's a real thing. And we're with twenty twenty three

right now, and we're still dealing with those same issues.

I mean, last year for our race team, we had a crew chief that we had hired and he wasn't getting the job done. We had to part ways, right.

We tried to do it in a very calm, cool, collected way. He decided to fire back. He dropped the

end bomb multiple times on his exit interview, multiple times, and he ended up getting suspended from NASCAR and all that stuff, and it was all bad but anyways, that happened, and this is twenty twenty two. I mean he's working

for a minority owned team with me EMMITTT. Smith. I mean, yeah,

so anyways, that's our fault for not screening him enough to really know his true nature.

But it's not your guys's fault.

You know, NASCAR has a bad stigma that it's a bunch of good old boys that drop the N word and they don't want anybody that doesn't look like them.

Do you feel that they're still today?

You know what, I think it's gotten a lot better.

I mean, obviously that has happened probably, you know, obviously, you know, people have dealt with different levels of it, you know, over the years, but it has gotten a lot better. I mean I felt comfortable enough to pursue

going into the sport. I didn't go into it because

I wanted to think that I was going to go against the grain. I wanted to get into it because

I felt like there was opportunity. I felt like I

actually was welcomed. I didn't feel like I've had a

lot of resistance going in. I felt like there was

a lot more people who wanted to help versus people who didn't want me in right now, there's always going to be your bad apples who are out there who either whether you know who they are or their fans or whatever it is, who just don't want you to do it right. They they're jealous, they're envious, they don't

like you for whatever reason. That's just always going to

be it no matter where you go. I mean, I'm

sure you dealt with it too, you know, just getting into all the stuff you've been doing, I mean, killing it grow and growing, growing, and I'm sure you see it on social media and negativity people who don't want to see female succeed.

Oh yeah, it's still very prevalent. And although you know

different sides of the spectrum. I can relate in the

sense of being a female, and I'll be able to relate in what you're going through. But there's unfortunately, you know,

you'll have one hundred or thousands of positive comments, but sometimes or just interactions, but sometimes it really just takes that one or that few, and then it's hard not to focus on the few. Even though you know, I

do see the shift, I do see positivity and light coming into the industry, but unfortunately, you know, it's it's hard not to focus on the negative at times. Yeah,

but you didn't let that happen to you. You you

saw these negative comments, what these people were saying on the internet, and and you what did you do from there?

You're just like, I'm going to prove these these people wrong that I can do this and I don't need to come from money, and I don't have to be white.

All the above. You know, I listened to a lot

of motivational speakers and one of my favorite ones was Less Brown, and he had something he said that was super powerful that really helped drive me in the right course so that I was going in the right direction and could grind the way I need to grind to get past the negativity and stuff. And he has said

someone's opinion of you does not have to become your reality.

And when he said that, I was like, that is so powerful, because there's so many times we box ourselves in these small boxes because we let everybody else's opinion of us become our reality because they can't see our goals and dreams, like our goals and dreams are put in our minds. You know, I'm a super religious person,

so God puts it in my mind that I'm supposed to go somewhere, become someone, do something right. Nobody else

has given that vision. You weren't given my vision. You

weren't given my vision, so you might not be able to see it for me. I have to see it

for myself. So just because someone has an opinion of

where I should be or what I should become, it's not for them to know where I'm supposed to go.

Only I do. Only I was given that roadmap and

I got to go after it myself. So I basically

took that on board and everything I've done, whether I've been met with negativity or met with positivity, I just continue to remind myself at the end of the day, I'm the only person with my vision. Nobody else has it,

So no matter what anyone else says, don't listen to them, and at the end of the day, to stay strong enough, long enough, you'll get there.

That's great.

Yeah, that's powerful.

Yeah, that's what I got to tell myself every day because you deal with a lot of stuff every day.

I think that's kind of where and correct me if you guys feel otherwise. Imposter syndrome can come from is

when you're listening too much of what other people think of you instead of internalizing it and being like, no, this is my path, this is what I'm here to do.

So you start questioning where you want to go or the position that you're currently and even though you worked hard and you're there for a reason.

I think everybody to a degree have imposter syndrome, right, Like it comes from the insecurity of who you are until you have a solid definition. What takes time and age.

Like I've always felt, man, they're going to find out that on set, I have no idea what I'm doing.

They're kind of someone show.

Up, you don't know, why are you? That's funny.

Yeah, I didn't celebrate when I found out about Grown Turmo because I was too scared. They're going to be like, wait,

why why is she here? What's going on?

It happens. It happens because there's so many voices out there,

no matter what we think, they're just always going to seep in, no matter what. And then those voices are

sometimes we internalize them and think they're our voices and they're not our voices. Like if we only listen to

ourselves and nobody else, we will all go accomplish the biggest and best things.

So too, You're supposed to talk to yourself like you would talk to like five year old you. You know,

you wouldn't say, oh, that sucked. You messed up there.

You'd be like, no, it's okay, keep trying.

You got this speaking of kids, right, what age you start walking to? I don't know, two years old, I

can't remember whatever age you start walking. We all felt

hundreds and hundreds of times at any point. Did we

ever be like, you know what, walking's not for me, I'm just not going to do it. No, We kept

on pushing no matter what, because we all that it was possible. Somebody else did it, why can't we. Right,

we've seen people do all the things that we're probably going after and trying to achieve. If they can do it,

why can't we do it too as well? If you

have the vision you see yourself doing it, just put action.

You might fall a little bit more times than everybody else, but it's all right, Like you can continue to fail forward, Like at the end of the day, failing is just your first attempt in learning. I mean, just take that

in every single time and you'll be all right.

Yeah, and when you get to meet your heroes and like a true hero and you see them fail, it actually inspires you. You go, well, it's okay they do.

I remember Denzel Washington had hired me on his first directing job. There's a film called Antoine Fisher, right, and

I was so nervous, Like I was nervous, going, oh, they're going to find out I don't know what I'm doing, right, And he was directing and acting in it, and so I had this scene with him and the makeup artist was, you know, coming up to me to like check my face and egene, and he goes, are you all right?

And I go, I'm so nervous, man, I'm gonna mess this up. And then he goes over to Denzell like

he's nervous, nervous, he's totally ratting me out. And I

hear he's nervous. What do you mean he's nervous?

Right?

And then we're doing the scene and I had like one line it's like uh wait right there or something like that, shaking and sweating.

I'm like and writing the line on my hand, right, I can't forget this one high, right, And then he comes over to me and he holds my hand right, and he goes, hey, don't worry about it, Like, if you mess up, this is film, will do the end.

We'll do it again. Don't worry. And he goes, I'm

gonna mess up. He goes watch right, he goes watch

me today, and then I would see him do his scenes and he would mess up here and there, and you know, forget a line here and there, and then you know, he looks over at me. It kind of

gives me this wink and I realized. I was like, yeah,

we're there's nobody. No one's perfect. I mean, we're we're

all gonna fall. And it's and it's your attitude on

how you get up. And for me, it's really important

like mentorship, you know, like meeting these like heroes of ours and and seeing that they are human too. They

have to get up, they have to eat, they fall, they mess up. I think we're so afraid to fail

or to fall on our face, right, Yeah, I think that that's what makes you better. I mean it shows

who you really are in the sense of like if you're able to get up and thust yourself off and continue exactly.

So, what was the first I guess professional series you ran afterwards, when you started taking things more seriously than you already were.

So twenty fifteen is when I decided, Hey, I'm going all in. I'm going to become a professional race car driver.

I had just came off deployment. I was I spent

like five months of my life out in the Middle East.

I was on a ship. I was dreaming this whole thing,

trying to figure out how to do it. Quickly realized

racing costs a lot of money. I wasn't rich, so

I had to start my own small business is just to make extra money to support myself in racing. And

I did that once I came back from the deployment and lately yeah, oh yeah, that's a very important thing. Yeah yeah, yeah.

So I started putting on these drag racing events in Bakersfield for most of Raceway. They're awesome. I've been doing

this with them since twenty fifteen.

Now that's my home dragstrip.

Yeah yeah, yeah, it's it's the best one. Actually, it's

the best one in California. It's the best one in

the West actually. But I started putting on these events there.

Basically I would use my knowledge of like Instagram, Facebook and social media and stuff to basically promote the crap out of these events.

Were you scared you were going to lose money and not make your return on that?

I was so afraid. But for whatever reason, I had

the vision that I was going to become a pro driver and I wasn't getting any sponsorship during that time, so this was the only way to get money. So

I remember I was in by rain in the Middle East when I first got this company. Going my first

ticket sales, I was still on deployment. I was like,

I had put it out on social media and I'm putting this event on in one of my friends he has his nicknames Nacho, but he has a twins Turbo Camaro, and I told him, hey, I'm putting on this event, dude, I would love if you could come, and he bought his first He was my first ticket sales ever. I

think he bought like two hundred and seventy five dollars worth of like spectator tickets and racing tickets and all that stuff. I was so pumped then I was also

so scared because I'm like, holy crap, I just made a sale. I have to have this event. Now there's

no quitting. There's no going back. Eventually got enough people

out there which covered my track rental, covered all the expenses, and then made a few bucks right enough to basically pay for my first race I did, which it was only a few grand, but it was enough. Right. It

was a lot of stress, but it was enough. And

did that, and then I needed more money to get to my next race. I did a crowdfunding campaign, made

some extra money to do that, ran out of money right after that. Again, I was like, Okay, I need

more money to get to my third race. Got my

credit card, maxed it out to get to my third late Model race, and then after that literally had no more money. And once again, this is that point where

everyone quits because they're like, I ran out of resources, it's time to quit. I was like, no, no, no,

I saw myself becoming a pro driver in NASCAR. It's

going to happen. Just don't quit. So I got on

the phone and called and called and called, kept on networking, networking, networking.

One person led me the other to the other, to the other, and then I eventually landed my first big sponsorship of twenty fifteen, which covered the rest of my late Model racing at Erwindale Speedway. And what he did

was he had a son who ran a nonprofit organization and he was like, Hey, I'm going to sponsor your races, but I need you to work with this nonprofit because I need you to help them continue to get more awareness.

And also you're also an arm that they can use to help with their veteran programs because they have a lot of stuff where they're doing these veteran experiences for those who have been wounded in combat. So I was like,

this is perfect. I'm racing. We go to these tracks.

We can bring these vets and their families, wounded vets and their family to the track. That's great, put them

in suites, put their name on a race car, all that stuff. So we were doing all these cool things

for these wounded vets and they were absolutely loving it.

So for the Late Model, did you win your first few races?

Now, if I would have won, and I think there have been something completely wrong. Most of the Late Model

races that I ran, I was like midpack. So for

me that was a positive sign because I'm like, Hey, I've never done this before and there's all these people here from racing. Yeah, like I'm like, I've never done

this before, and these folks have been racing five years, ten years, twenty years some of them. I'm like, if

I'm out running half of the field, that means like this is meant to be.

Why did you go from road racing, let's say, to circle truck driving opportunity? Okay?

Yeah, So if you look at all the different forms of racing in the US, right, the one that gets the most attention is NASCAR. It's been around a long

time and it's just the most popular motorsport in the US.

So for me, I looked at it as if I'm going to go up any motorsport route, I need to go up the route where it's going to be, I would say the easiest to find sponsorship, right, and sponsorship really comes with just viewership, and NASCAR got the most out of all the different racing forms in the US, So I figured that's the route I'm going to go through.

And also I was different, right, I'm African American. I'm

in the military active duty at that time. I'm in

the reserves now. But to couple me being this naval

officer racing and NASCAR, I felt like it was a great story, a lot of people could rally behind it, and I felt like a lot of companies with all their different military programs and their support, it would be something that they could help support.

You look at it as a business, which is very smart.

I'm sure you probably get the question all the time, Hey, how do I get a sponsor or I'm getting in the racing? You know, just the people ask that question

thinking it's just go ask a company and they're going to fund your dreams.

Probably one of the number one questions.

No one wants to fund your dream If a company's going to put money into your racing, it's because they see some type of return on their investment. They're using

you as a tool to basically get to where they need to go. Right, It's just straight business. It's nothing personal.

That's just how it is. If they want to use

me to advertise, well, it's going to also help me in racing too. So you have to look at it

on both sides, where it's like if they put a thousand into me, ten thousand, a million, five million, six million, that I'm doing everything possible, So every single dollar actually makes sense for them and they're getting something out of it or else you will never see that smontship again.

Did you always think this way or is this.

Something you learned does since the beginning? Because I was

fortunate enough to not come from the racing world, right, So I didn't come up just thinking, Hey, just be a really, really good driver and it's just all going to take care of itself, because it's not. I've seen.

I've seen. I've watched drivers in NASCAR win a championship

in the very next season be sitting on accounts because they ran out of funding. They don't they don't have anymore.

So when I saw that, learning the marketing side, learning how to fund raise, learning how to give a good return on your investment to the people that are funding you.

Doing all that will keep you in. You can get

good at racing. You can learn over time. You might

suck at first, but it takes understanding the marketing side for sure.

Yeah, walk us through. Then your first NASCAR race, did

a team reach out to you? What was that next

step for you? So?

Are you winning?

No? No? It wasn't winning. No, No, I know. So

that's the crazy thing about racing, right, So you can win all the races you want. There are short track

guys who race late models all around the country who've won so many races and never made it up to the next level. There's multiple levels of NASCAR, right, So

you have your late models just local LASCAR, weekly NASCAR, it's not on TV or anything like that. You have

your ARCA Series. Now you're not on the national stage.

You're just regional stage down. Once you get up to

the national series, that's when you have the NASCAR Truck Series, Xfinity Series, and then the.

Cup Series, and Cup is the highest you can go.

Cup is the highest you can go. Yeah, I haven't

run any Cup races. Not there yet. I gotta get

better and find more money. But I've so far run

ARCA trucks and Exfinity.

So you're working your way up there pretty well. Yeah,

considering you start in twenty fifteen.

Yeah, twenty fifteen.

Yeah, that's incredible.

Yeah. Yeah, And I still have a long way to

go and no way to say or form. Am I

the best out there at all? Like I'm still learning

a lot. I have good days and I have terrible days.

They changed everything of this year, right.

Everything for Cup. They changed the body, they changed the chassis,

they changed the drive train, like from the motor transmission, everything.

I mean, even wheels now they got I think eighteen wheels eighteen months.

So where the changes for safe? Their quickness, that's.

Safe, the modernization, I think, and I'm you know, I this is just what i've what I've read, what I've heard.

I don't know why they change. I think just to

grow and scales of business and keep things fresh and fun.

They're probably thinking long term vision too, you know, nascars really trying to open up its audience. Even I feel

like F one has grown in popularity now in the US, so with more street courses probably coming for F one in the US and all that stuff, NASCAR is also doing more street course stuff. So all these different changes,

I think they just want to make sure that these cars can run not only just on the ovals, but really well on the road courses as well.

Yeah that's important because a lot of people when they hear NASCAR, they think oval track, But NASCAR does a lot of road courses. Yeah, they do.

Could you explain how a race team could justify having four hundred million dollar budget or a thirty million dollars NASCAR, because there used to be this like you win on Sundays and you sell the car.

Yeah yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, right, so I got to grow from that to yeah, where it's at now. Competition. Right,

So you're a team. Let's say you have you know what,

forty teams or whatever. You got all these teams, right,

and you see your neighbor team and they're like, Hey, we're going to go test this new idea. We think,

you know that we can use on the car to make it faster. Right. They're like, well, if they're testing that,

then we need to create something like that and test it.

And they're like, okay, if you create that, then I'm gonna go spend ten more dollars to create this. For

the big teams. If Joe Gibbs is doing X, then

Hendrick and all them they're gonna try X as well because if that gives them the advantage, then they can go win and be on top. It's just a competition.

That's car. The NASCAR Cup Series cars look kind of

all the same.

They look yeah, they're not they're not, they're not. Yeah.

Yeah, so there is innovation and maybe it's some funny business that can happen.

Yeah, there's there's some there's some documentary stuff on that like on how people try to script by the rules.

But yeah, all of the cars do look very similar on the outside. It's not that they're doing anything majorly different.

It's just like, how can I get an eighth of inch here, a quarter of inch there, an eighth of an inch there, Because all those little minute details end up adding up in the long run. You might you

might not see it with a car standing still, but once you start moving you're going one hundred and eighty one hundred and ninety miles per hour, every little thing you just did at zero miles proor now gets amplified to a lot more. All of a sudden, you are

a tenth quicker, and that tenth that you're quicker, after two hundred, two hundred and fifty laps, you're how many seconds ahead of your competitor. So that's all you're looking

for is these minor, minor, minor details which puts you just a little bit ahead. And at the end of

the day, you only have to win by point zero zero zero zero zero one to win a race.

In your experience, when you meet all of these great drivers, right, what makes a good driver? What are the character traits

that you see?

What makes a good driver to me someone who one has all the patients in the world right, because you can't win the race on the first lap. In order

to finish first, you must first finish, so patients is key. Focused.

I think the most elite drivers have the most insane focus.

They're able to get on the track and just hit their line every single lap, over and over and over and literally get to the same point, are within a few inches of the same point every single lap, and then as their car is either falling off or getting better throughout the race, they can adjust their lines to make it work, but they find the ragged edge and they stay on the ragged edge every single lap as much as possible. If you are driving a car and

it's way too comfortable, then you're probably not going fast enough.

You got to find where that line is, find a way to maybe barely overstep it a little bit, bring it back just a little bit, and do that every single lap. And the drivers that can do that the

best are the ones who end up having the best races and usually usually will win as long as you don't get taken out. You know, there's some drivers who

have terrible races or the car feels horrible and they only have to lead one lap, which is the last, and then they win.

Do you have like a routine before every race, something that you have to even superstitious, or like a workout routine or something that has to be done, and then also how do you prepare for a race?

Yeah, definitely don't do a workout before the race. I

see other drivers do that. They go like on these

multi mile bike rides, and for me, I'm like, aren't you like sweating too much? You're gonna be dehydrated before

the race. For me, my routine each day on race

day is to figure out a way to stay as calm, cool and collected as possible, because you got to be able to focus. When I played football, I had to

get as hyped as possible before a game because you're like a human being about to put your body through another human being multiple times. Like that's not like normal,

so you got to get like hyped up for it.

Whereas for racing, I'm like, hey, I gotta be calm because I don't want to make any mistakes. And for me,

my routine is really just dangkom cool and collected, drinking a ton of water. Right. Designing water all day, and

I want to make sure that my car is as fast as it Sminity Tenji, and also make sure I have my phone on me, which is AT and T the largest nature ye network with the fewest drop calls and also an LT network you can trust at and T the News Singular. They're not sponsoring me though, but

that was so good.

This is something that the listeners need to learn from you, Jess, is that at the end of the day, you can't take it personal. It's like even in Hollywood, if you

see yourself and you understand the business that you are a product. At the end of the day, if you're

the buyer, why am I going to choose you this product at and T over T Mobile?

Yeah?

Right now you have to be able to pitch that yeah.

Oh yeah, no, it's it's absolutely you got to be ready at all times to be able to just drop it.

But a lot of yep, yep, yep.

I always make sure I pray, you know, before the races.

Got the end of the day, it's in God's hand.

Do you do you eat the same breakfast every day? Like,

is there something that has to be the same every day?

You know what I don't, but I usually love eating Chick fil A, So yeah, yeah.

A sponsor, it's not.

Yeah, one of the one of these days I need some Chick fil A in my life.

I love Chick fil A. It's so good, it's so.

Good, like amazing. But yeah, I try to eat that

usually on race day because it's like, for whatever reason, it's like a light enough meal to me, plenty enough calories and it's like not.

Calories, protein, good immediate sugars.

Yeah, exactly, Chick fil A.

Yeah, it's not healthy.

Not healthy. I'm saying.

It's healthy.

Healthy, I'm saying.

I'm saying because you have fast when it comes to carbohydrates, No, you have your fast releasing and you're in your slow releasing and fast is you know, like your your white white rice versus you know, your complex carbohydrates soutrition. So

I can see why that's a good go to.

Yeah, that's what I eat. And like I said, hydration

is key, right, We lose a lot of water in these race cars. So everybody out there who's like I

want to be a race car driver, you better be ready to sweat your butt off in a race car.

Any normal hot race day, I will lose five to six pounds of water in one race.

Yeah, so are you putting like electrolytes in your water?

Are you like eating straight sugar after the races to replenish glycogen levels?

Like so yeah on the electrolytes side, No need to put it in the water, right, because all I do is just go grab a power aide, right, But they're all far Cocacola. This is great, grab a power aid,

a drink, a power aid because that's plenty of electrolytes.

Because it's not just only water that's going to get you buy. You can have all the water in the world,

but if you don't have all the right ingredients that are keeping your body going, you're gonna cramp. And I've

never cramped playing football in my life, and I've played at the highest level of college football. I've cramped in.

A race car during a race.

Yes, it's not good. It was my right leg too,

so my gas pedal leg, my hamstring. Have you got

a Charlie horse before, Yeah? Yeah. Imagine getting one in

the race car and you can't move around. You can't

there's no stretching. So imagine getting a Charlie horse and

just taking.

It, so elect your lights help them.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, and you have to have plenty of it leading up. You can't wait till race day. You

have to start at least two to three days beforehand.

Some people will say you gotta start seven days. You

don't need to start seven days at least, I don't have to start.

And want to ask the scientist what electric lights are and he goes, ah, that's good for you.

It's just the minerals your body. Yeah, yeah, so potassium,

and I don't know what the other ones are, seeing as it is different. It's just ingredients that your muscles

need to operate, right, So you need water for sure, but there's also these other little ingredients that it needs, like the salts and all that stuff. To make sure

that they do with it, because if they don't have it, they will cramp. I've seen people go full body cramps

on racing, but in football, and it's not cool.

Yeah, that happens in swimming, right, Yeah it was a swimmer.

I don't know if you ever got a cramp in the water, if you feel like you start drowning, Oh yeah, yeah, it's all about I would load us up with bananas.

Yes, bananas, are a great way too.

Yeah yeah, do you practice on the truck before the actual events.

They do not let us practice at all. You cannot test,

so your only practice you get is race day, like the set practice that NASCAR has. It's just twenty minutes.

Would you get in trouble if you just run out of the track.

Oh yeah, like yeah, I mean if you could. Yeah,

if you get caught, it's massive penalties. You cannot go

testing because that's how they help us. That's how they

help us save money is by making it to where they don't let anyone test, because if they.

Do, like yeah, that's fair, then be an unfair advantage and someone would just run it out for.

Weeks before yeah yeah, yeah, they do that, and they spend all the money. And what about the small teams.

We don't have the money to go rent tracks and for multiple days. It's just too much. So that's how

they help us save some money. But it also makes

it harder because let's say you've never been to this track.

You get twenty minutes when you get there to practice twenty minutes. And by the way, these laps are, depending

on the track, anywhere from thirty seconds to road course tracks sometimes two minutes, so you might only get five six laps of practice period and now you have to go race on national TV. So even though we can't

test at the tracks running, you can't test anywhere, so it's not really any anywhere. The car does not turn

on to drive until you are on track for practice pretty.

Much, so they'll fire the car, make sure it runs and yeah that's yeah, So they run on a dynam make sure it goes through the gears properly. But when

it comes do actually cornering, like.

Not to the first corner and your first laps on track, I mean, you're the moment it hits green flag for practice, you are wide open hauling the mail into the corner and you better hope it sticks and you better hold everything works.

So days have done. There was misleading.

Time because times have changed. So back then you used

to be able to test and like so that's why NASCAR got away from it because they're like, hey, this is costing these teams a lot of money, like they're running these tracks doing you know, imagine someone going to renting Daytona to go practice. You know that's just crazy. So, yes,

you used to be able to test back in the day, but I think I can't remember when they changed the rule, but over the last few years they basically cut down to where at first they're like, okay, teams can only test like a couple times or so. Then it make

it's where only rookies can test, and now it's just like basically only people can actually go do a test.

Is a rookie, you have to be a real rookie, like never race that series before.

Fortunately, though modern technology, there's sim racing, so you want to get familiar with the track. I'd imagine you have

a simulator that you practice.

On, YEP. So that's what helped me a lot to

get into racing. So when I was even getting into

late models, I was like, I've never driven a late model, and even though I went and tested the late you can test late models. So it's just once you get

to a national series you can't test anymore, but stuff below that you can do some testing. And so I

got on my simulator and trained because in the Navy we trained on simulators before we got to the real thing, So I learned how to drive a ship on a ship simulator. Yeah, so when I was getting the racing,

I'm like, okay, we got ship simulators in the Navy, Like, I wonder if they have racing similarities in racing. So

I got a racing simulator trained on there used you know I Racing, I Racing, you know, one of the better ones for NASCAR stuff. Did that and then that

helped me out a ton. Once that helped me, I

knew that it would help other people. So I actually

started my own sim racing league called E Racing Association.

And if you have like I Racing or even some other platforms. We even do Mario Kart events and stuff

like that. Yeah. Yeah, So we put on events and

people can win real cash money.

So how does someone join that?

If they go to www dot e r a gaming dot gg they can register for our events. And we

actually just had one last night. The winner of our

event at home, they're sitting in their home on a simulator, won four thousand dollars to win the event. Four thousand

to be at home and playing on the SIAM.

Jess, I want to talk about a lot of kids today.

They're opting out not to go to college because it's so expensive. But if you were to talk to your

younger self today and where you are you know, in terms of like your career choices, do you think going to university is important today? It's so expensive?

Yeah, I know it is expensive. I can tell people this.

You don't need universities and colleges to go make it in life, right, but I highly suggest it because it teaches you a lot of things. You can go to

school and yeah, like the the I don't know calculus.

I did a lot of classes at the academy. The

negus do Calculus one, Calculus two, Calculus three, Physics one, Physics two. I got through algebra, thermo dynamics, all that stuff.

So all that is great and all, but I'm not really using those things I learned in there in my normal world. Right now, you are going to learn how

to critically think past what you learn in high school.

Right They're going to give you problems. It doesn't matter

what the problems are. They're giving you problems, and you're

gonna learn how to solve problems and not complain about it.

Right now, the formulas and the theories, who cares about that.

That's not the point of college. A point is to

go learn how to critically think and solve problems and do it with your peers because you're gonna have a lot of group projects. You're gonna learn how to be

how to live on your own and be away from your parents. Right. You got too many people who you know,

they never they never leave their their nest because they're too scared or whatever it is. And it's just like, hey,

you can and you can leave, you can go, you can be on your own. That's what college taught me,

how to be on my own and how to critically think.

And I don't remember half the things I learned in college, but I do remember those two things, and that's what basically helped me get into everything else I've gotten to in life because I learned how to critically think at a younger age. You can go learn how to critically

think and a lot of other things. But if you

do have the opportunity, go do it. Don't get in

a lot of debt to do it though, So I high they should just get in scholarships and all that stuff.

But you know, just be smart.

I can't ask you a weird question, what time do you wake up at every day?

I'm not like a crazy early riser, so I would assume.

So I don't know why yeah, No.

I'm not. I'm like, like usually, yeah, seven to seven

thirty or something.

In the navy, what time do they make you guys wake up at.

It depends right what you're doing. So on the ship,

we all had weird hours because we're on watch at different times. You know, there is a time where the

ship goes into working hours, you know, at seven am, so you know, depending on what you're doing, yeah, you got to be up by six something, but it's not that we got to every day be up at like five am, four am or something crazy like that.

You'll start waking up really early, both of you and you get older.

I don't know if it's going to.

Get older because you guys are young when you get older.

Because I used to be able to sleep till two pm.

So I can't do that, but I still need like my eight hour.

Special skill on my resume was sleeping, right and now for me, yeah, now I wake up at four am, like yeah, four, and I'm up and sometimes I wake up at two up at two twenty and then I have to I sit there and I'm like, I'm like, I wish I could go back to bed. What time

do you go to sleep at though I try to go to sleep around like ten eleven. You don't need

a whole lot of you do I do.

I just can't sleep.

It's I prefer eight hours. Then I feel really healthy.

But you get older and just I think it's because as you get older, we have less time on this earth, so something kicks in your body is like, no, you gotta you don't have much time left go do something life, so just just enjoy it. You guys enjoy like, yeah,

really enjoy it. But Jesse, we could sit here and

talk to you for hours.

This has been such a joy.

Yeah, learned a lot.

Yeah, thank you, thank you.

No, this is great. I think it's great. Great for

the audience to listen to this, to learn from them, because you can apply your lessons to anything.

You know.

I think from here on, I'll like approach me as like a product within the Hollywood system. It's like very clear,

you know, I don't feel like I'm alone in my thinking. Yeah,

so thank you so much.

Yeah, thank you for coming on.

Definitely, thank you for having me.

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