Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Intro
[00:00:06] Mark Boudreau: You're listening to the Motorsport Prospects Podcast.
Hey, it's Mark from Motorsport Prospects and welcome to the Motorsport Prospects podcast. This is where we dive into the world of motorsport with the people who live and breathe it. From driver coaches and sponsorship experts to to team owners, pro drivers and more. You'll hear real stories, practical advice and insights you can actually use, whether you're just starting out or already chasing success on the track.
Now, if you've listened to this podcast, you know that I always mention the fact that I've been asked why I started Motorsport Prospects in the Verified by Motorsport Prospects designation. And the answer is always the same. I keep hearing the same question from drivers, aspiring drivers, their families and advisors. And that's always, who can I trust, Mark? Who can I trust? Out there in the motorsport ecosystem, everybody's struggling to find reliable guidance to know who they can trust. So I created Motorsport Prospects to help them make informed decisions. The professionals I feature on this podcast represent that trust. These are trusted motorsport professionals. So if you work with drivers or racing teams, building trust is one of the most important things you can do. I know that because I keep getting that question. Over the years, I found that being clear about what you offer, following through on your promises and genuinely caring about your clients goals makes all the difference. So what I've done is I put together some practical advice in a free white paper called the Three Essentials for Motorsport Business Owners, which shares simple ways to strengthen relationships, attract the right clients and grow your motorsport business. Naturally, you can find it in the show notes or@motorsport prospects.com so now let's get started with today's guest.
My guest today is Jim Bowie. Jim's career spans more than 30 years, working across nearly every facet of motorsport. Racing schools, race teams, race series, several OEMs, tracks and sanctioning bodies, all at a senior level and all with a focusing on marketing, sponsorship and the business side of racing. Today, Jim is focused on re engineering the business model of motorsport from the ground up. And I'm really delighted to have Jim on the podcast. Welcome Jim. Thanks so much for taking the time out to speak with me.
[00:02:28] Jim Bowie: Yeah, no, no, no, thank you, Mark. Great to be here.
Cool.
[00:02:32] Mark Boudreau: Now, as everybody knows, and I have one I always say simple question and the irony is that it's not that simple.
And the question is always based on your experience and expertise as a motorsport professional, what would be the one most important piece of advice you could offer a current or aspiring race driver?
[00:02:55] Jim Bowie: Yeah, just one. The I've listened to a lot of your podcasts, Mark. And.
[00:02:59] Mark Boudreau: Oh, great.
[00:03:00] Jim Bowie: Kind of a. There's been a kind of a theme that runs through them that talks about sponsorship, motorsport, marketing, building your personal brand.
You know, Ken Unger talked about that, Rob Houghton talked about, you know, never giving up. And once in a while they slide in these words like, you need to become a motorsport marketing expert.
Easier said than done. So my one piece of advice, I actually gave this advice, Mark, for the first time, probably in 1994, and it still rings true today.
And it stems from mostly parents coming to me and saying something like, where can I find sponsors?
And the answer I gave way back then and I still give today, and the answer to your one question is, don't look for sponsors, look for value.
And what that is is a mindset shift.
There's many definitions of the word attitude.
The definition I like is habit of thought.
That attitude is habit of thought. And so if you have the mindset of stop looking for sponsors and look for value, it changes the way you.
The way you follow the news, the way you follow the sport, the industry.
I actually had a driver was in a car. This was a driver, this time was in his car. He was driving somewhere. He was in Indianapolis. He said, I'm trying to find sponsors. I said, look out the window.
I said, every company you're driving by right now, sponsors, they all sponsor.
The difference between what they sponsor and not sponsoring you is not that they don't know who you are. They don't know that you're trying to live your dream. I heard you talk about that, Mark. They don't give a crap about your dreams and how many championships you've won.
They.
So you need to be able to identify a value proposition that they're not aware of yet that helps them solve a business problem.
So don't look for sponsors, look for value. And I want to, if you, if I can, Mark, I want to give a couple of quick examples.
[00:05:04] Mark Boudreau: Sure, absolutely.
[00:05:06] Jim Bowie: When I was at PacWest, we ran two Indy cars, Mark Blundell and Mauricio Guzman, and we ran to any lights cars. We had a nice 35,000 square foot shop, you know, hospital clean, all the whole deal.
One thing we were missing was a machine shop. We didn't have CNC machines. So when I got to PacWest, I met with the team there and it was like, what are our team needs? What are the things that we need to get better? And the first thing out of somebody's mouth was, we need CNC machines.
So I'm making a long story really short here. I go to Dayton, Ohio, to a trade show for. For automation, for robotics, for CNC machines.
I go to every booth that's got CNC machines. One of them was Haas Automation.
I speak to the people in the booth. What are you doing? What are your goals? Who's your market? What are you trying to achieve? I get information, and I also found out who the decision maker was. The guy standing on the trade show floor in Dayton, Ohio, would not have the ability to make a sponsorship decision. I knew that.
So then I get the person's name in Oxnard, California. I call up, and there's two ways you could go here. Well, there's many ways you could go here, but most people, what they would do is say, hey, would you like to sponsor our race team?
And, you know, we'll be proof of concept for your. For your CNC machines and your. Your capabilities.
I didn't think that was enough. I wanted to find extra value here.
Oxnard, California, was the only place that Haas CNC had a showroom.
And Indianapolis, as you would imagine, is probably one of the greatest cities on planet Earth for precision machining.
So I offered the deal I offered Haas was we need four CNC machines, and we will allow you to use our race shop as your showroom in the Midwest.
So we set up a complete system where there's sales reps. They had sales reps in that region, could bring prospects in, walk them through our shop, walk past indy cars. Bruce McCaw was a big car collector, so there could be a Ferrari Formula one car sitting there. And we tracked sales back to that program, so it was very, very successful. And the value I brought to them was they didn't have to have a building that was staffed to set up their showroom. They knew that this was going to be the highest profile facility, that they'd have no problem bringing prospects in, and we'd get that extra bump from the environment.
So that was one. The second one was when I was working with Team Penske, I went through this due diligence process with them, looking for value.
And I found out that one of the ways that Penske operates his car dealerships was he lets them run autonomously or lets them do their own purchasing decisions on some stuff. Most a lot of stuff was enterprise wide, but a lot of stuff was done right at the dealer level.
And I identified two categories where they were buying local and they should have been buying national.
The first one was tires.
So, again, making a long story short, I invite Tire Rack to Team Penske in Charlotte, Bud Denker and I get on one of the jets, we fly down, we do a whole day with Tire rack. Ultimately, Tire Rack turned down the opportunity.
And about 20 months later, Mark, Team Penske announces a deal with Discount Tire.
And what they did is consolidated the purchasing of over 300 car dealerships. So again, look for value, not for sponsorship. And you know, to bring that story full circle, Discount Tire, a few, few years ago, purchased Tire Rack. So that's why you now see some of Team Penske cars have Tire Rack and somehow some have Discount Tire. They're owned by the same company now. So that's the kind of mentality that, that the kind of attitude, the kind of habit of thought that leads to looking for value instead of sponsors now.
[00:09:13] Mark Boudreau: So that's a mind shift. And often mind shifts are easier said than done.
What, how do you recommend a driver?
Changes that mind shift. That changes that. I'm looking for sponsorship to. I'm looking for, I'm trying to find value.
[00:09:32] Jim Bowie: Yeah, well, the first thing, as soon as you say I'm looking for sponsorship, you're putting the benefit all on the driver or on the team or on the asset on the sponsorable property. So you can't think that way. You got to think, how can I solve a business problem? How can I put the benefit on the other side?
Most companies, Mark, have the same exact problem. Almost every company in the world has the same problem. We need more customers, right? Some, some companies are B2B and there's only 20 potential customers in the world. The other companies are Red Bull that want to sell to every consumer on the world.
In motorsport, it's, it's wiser to focus on B2B and to get in the middle of a transaction.
To your question, I've been running motorsport marketing seminars since 98. I did them at PacWest, I did them at Treadway, I did them at, at Skip Barber. We actually did formalized program at Skip Barber that they paid for.
Then when I got to Mazda, Mark, I did, we had the Mazda Road to India, we had the miles road to 24.
So between those two ladder series, we had about 350 drivers.
So every year I would do a seminar and I, I started the seminar like you do with this podcast. I started it with one question.
If I woke up today and I had no contacts, I had no circle of influence and I needed to find company to get involved with my motorsport program, what would I do?
So I go. And what I did with these seminars, Mark, is I went through the process of where do I look? What kind of companies do I look for? And then I built them an actual mock proposal.
And that part of it was really important because again, as you said in one of your podcast, drivers tend to put the very first line. There's. There's thousands and thousands of racing proposals. The first line is, it's been my dream since I was six years old to race in Formula one.
Yeah. Yeah. Doesn't help me as a vice president of marketing, move my company forward, build my resume and help me keep my job.
So. So I did that. And the way I did that, mark, was those seminars was I would go through a process where.
And if you don't mind, I'm going to look at my notes so I can be smarter here.
I would go through the process of what kind of companies are we going to look for?
What kind of companies not to look for. Guys, people tend to think about Coke and Pepsi and Walmart and McDonald's and Nvidia, you know, because they have a lot of money.
So I identified, here's what we're going to do. We're going to look at companies that are. That there's a B2B play so we can get in the middle of a transaction. We're not going to try to move consumer product. It's too hard to measure.
It's too hard to give credit to the actual program that it came from motorsports. Okay, so what are the challenges that we're looking for? So here was the criteria identified to wrap your thinking around. We want companies that are experiencing high growth.
And again, this comes from. You know, I attended the IEG sponsorship conference in Chicago for 13 years.
And there's one thing I always heard. Somebody might walk into Kellogg's and say, we're going to increase the sales of Kellogg's by 3%. And it immediately disqualified them because if you can move Kellogg's 0.01%, it's a miracle. So we want companies that are experiencing high growth. There's a couple different ways to measure that. One great way is increase in headcount. We want companies focused on B2B. We also want companies that we can build a relevant marketing communication story around motorsport. So how we use technology, clear communication, clear set goals, teamwork, speed to market, very intense environment where we're measured to the thousandths of a second.
So that was kind of the criteria. Then I went into. And again, this mark was 10 years ago, so I didn't exist.
So I showed them where I'm going to look for these companies and I built. This particular presentation I'm looking at was presented in Indianapolis. So I just ran a Google search and the Google search was what are the fastest growing companies in Indiana? And you get this list. There's a list called the Inc. 5000 list. It still exists today.
It's the 5000 fastest private owned companies. And then you can bear it, you can, you can use the list to set your criteria. I want them based in Indiana. I want them to be in the tech space.
You get that information, you go through and you, you, you have to do. Back then you had to do all this research to go through it.
Finally we, we figured out a company. In this case it was a company that was in logistics and transportation.
And then I went through the process of showing them how to do the research, how to find an ally inside the company, how to build a story around what they're doing, why they were important. We had drivers in the ladder, Mark, that were from all over the world. So I showed up. If you're in France, you can do the same Google search, what are the top fastest growing companies in France? We had a driver from Norway. We did the same. Then I got into the proposal and I'm not going to go through all this, but the order of the proposal is really, really important. And I'm using the word proposal. I use that so that people would understand that I'm talking about creating, I'm capsulizing or want to communicate the opportunity here. But it's important to understand no sponsor has ever done a deal based on a proposal that they got. It's never happened. It's a two way negotiation. You need a place to start.
So this is a thought starter document and again, the order is very important.
The company I set up, the race team I set up for this, Mark, was called It's Not About Me Motorsports. Because I'm trying to get them to understand you. You got to get that in your head. It's not about me. It's not about me.
And then the, the opening first page of this thought starter document. I want to read this to you, Mark, because again, this shows the difference in mindset. It does not say motorsport sponsorship proposal. It doesn't say we're going racing, come and put your sticker on our car. Here's what the front page says.
Business growth and marketing communications opportunities through partnership presented to and the company.
Then I go in and I showed how we used language from that company.
This company happened to be in logistics. So it talks about stuff like we're going to activate the Time, certain supply chain and logistics, environment, environment as used in professional sports.
And I'm not trying to bore your audience here, Mark, but I'm. What I'm trying to insist on is you've got to use their language and address their business and the way they operate.
Then I go into a table of contents and all of the proposal of this thought starter document is meant to affect every single person in the org chart at the company. So I go through, I show the, the table of contents, I go through and I build up the proposal. I do have graphics that show what the, what the branding would look like.
Talk about how we're going to leverage partners, how we're going to do pass through rights which nobody's ever heard of. And they say stuff like, oh, I didn't know we could do that. How we leverage their charitable programs at track entertainment, increasing employee morale, proof of concept, R and D. And I go through the whole thing and then I talk about where their bio goes. So in this particular proposal or thought starter document, the first mention of the driver is on page 20 of this document.
So that's again how important it is to have that mind shift that it's company first. The first line item in the driver's bio has nothing to do with racing. It shows case studies of what they've done with past partners to grow their business or solve a business problem.
And then it's got action items and contact information. So that was something I did for hundreds of drivers. We did it for both the sports car ladder and the open wheel ladder. And race car drivers, Mark, as you know, if they have a choice between working on gaining an extra tenth of a second on the track or learning the nuance of marketing, I think we know which way they're going to go. So it's, it's a steep hill to find. But there were drivers that would take the initiative to do that.
So that was, that was a long answer to your question.
You start with don't look for sponsors, look for value. And then how do I do that? Where do I look, how do I, what kind of categories am I looking for? And that's how we did that.
[00:19:05] Mark Boudreau: Well, and it's interesting, it actually wasn't long because you often hear and look, I've said it myself, you know, you need to, you need to identify a business need that you are saying that you can solve.
But often that is said, but there is no, well, okay, how do you do that? What is the process involved? How do I action that? Even how to identify companies so no, this is actually very valuable and very, very action oriented, which is really important.
So what, so you said you've been working with multiple teams. Just out of curiosity, what are you up to now?
[00:19:47] Jim Bowie: Yeah, before I answer that, Mark and I appreciate the question, today we've got AI. So that part where I said Google and we did the search, what, what we do today is we would never do that today we would use AI. And I've actually built out a three prompt process to do all that research on AI. I mean you still have to have a, you still have to have a business mind, you have to understand what marketing is.
And by the way, I've sat across the room from people who had marketing in their title who did not know what marketing was.
Yeah.
So, and the reason it's three prompts is I, is, is one prompt is too much. So you gotta, the, you gotta build this out. And I've stress tested this.
The three prompts start with you set that criteria. I'm looking for companies in London, Ontario that are in the tech space, that are experiencing high growth, that have a minimum revenue of $50 million a year, that have had at least 50% headcount increase over the last three years. So you build all that in and say give me the top 25 companies that fit that criteria.
Then you ask ChatGPT or whoever your AI is, I now want you to take, and add another filter, which is motorsport, and give me the, give me a top 10. And then once you get that top 10, you have to do your own work now. You have to go in and look at what they're doing, look for lawsuits, look for any negative press, look for capital investment, look for rounds of financing, do all that stuff and narrow it down to a single company. And then once you have narrowed it down, you get the AI to build you the table of contents for your thought starter document to help you build out something that fits that company specifically like I showed on that presentation.
So I, I want to, the reason I wanted to bring that up, Mark, is if any of your listeners on the podcast are interested in the mock proposal I did while I was at Mazda for the, for the ladders or my three ChatGPT prompts that I've stress test, I would be happy to send them to your listeners if they, if they're interested in having them.
[00:22:12] Mark Boudreau: Fantastic. Absolutely. And I'll, and I will put in the show notes the contact information for you so that they can, they can contact you directly to ask that because I, Yeah, you know, I, I think this is really important because is like I said again, it's always about, it's actionable, it's, you know, it's not just theoretical, it's what people can actually do today to start the process. And you're, you're kind of reinforcing what so many people say where motorsport is 80 business and 20 racing. And you know, clearly there's a lot of work that has to be done and you're absolutely right, not everybody, not everybody necessarily, it's not that they don't want to put in the work is they might not understand the importance of certain things because they just, they don't know what they don't know.
[00:23:03] Jim Bowie: Yeah, yeah. And you know, and again my experience is most of them just don't put in the work, but some do. And I've never, I've never said no to somebody that had the appetite that wanted to try and learn this stuff. So.
And so your other question was, what am I doing now?
[00:23:23] Mark Boudreau: Yeah.
[00:23:24] Jim Bowie: So here's what I'm doing now, what I've been working on for the last 25 years. But more and more recently, if you woke up today, Mark and motorsport didn't exist.
It never existed at all. It never happened, it never occurred, it had never taken place. There's no history, there's no conflicts of interest.
He says without naming names, you had the ability or the opportunity to create motorsport from scratch today.
That would take the benefit of all your knowledge, but also take into effect what we know about how consumers consume live sports. We know about the opportunities with data, we know how, we know what streaming is, we know what shoppable TV is, we know all that stuff.
That's what I'm doing. I'm building a brand new from the ground up motorsport business model where if you really, every single aspect of the, of the business, I've changed and not change for change sake, but to take motorsport to a level to aggregate so that it has the ability to aggregate and monetize mass audience like traditional stick and ball sports. So the, the way the business is owned is different. The way the rights are done is different.
The way the technical rigs are different, the sporting rigs are different, the monetization is different. It's all different. So I'm working on that. I've been, I was focused on motorcycle road racing in Canada because it was easy, it was small, it was a good place to start. But the model that I've built, Mark, is, could be used in any motorsport anywhere in the world. So that's what I'm working on. I also have a passion for sim racing.
I exited an esports sim racing property a couple years ago and I'm working on a new, a very, very early days on a new sim racing project I'll call it. It's very early days but I think there's a big opportunity that's not being leveraged there yet.
So that's what's keeping me busy.
[00:25:41] Mark Boudreau: So what that tells me is that we have to have a follow up interview.
[00:25:45] Jim Bowie: Sure, anytime.
[00:25:46] Mark Boudreau: To hear about more of what you're up to. So and like I mentioned, I will put Jim's contact information in the show notes so that you can reach out to Jim directly. And, and, and you know, after you've listened to this request that the, the information or the, the mock proposals and the prompts that he was mentioning before I let you go. Jim, final question, I promise.
What is favorite racetrack?
[00:26:13] Jim Bowie: Current or historic question?
Nasty question. So first I was, I was fortunate to be on the winning team of the 1997 Indy 500. So.
[00:26:30] Mark Boudreau: Oh wow.
[00:26:32] Jim Bowie: I drank the milk. I mean they, now they, they dumped the milk all over their head.
But back then it took us three days to do the race.
But we got the race done on Tuesday. We get on the victory podium. Ari Lyon Dyke wins the race. He drank the milk.
I was standing right beside him on the podium. He turned to me, handed me the bottle of milk. I took a drink. Wow.
And I mean I, I actually that year mark ice, it's totally against the rules, but I stayed in the Treadway racing suite Saturday night, Sunday night and Monday night at the track. I didn't leave the track for three and a half days.
And the other thing that happened at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway that was unbelievable to me was we did a private test there in 96.
So the year before we were still running the Raynard chassis with the Ford Cosworth turbo engine. And Ari was buzzing around at 238, 239 and testing. And I got to go stand where the pitboard guys stand.
So between pit lane and the track there's a three foot space in there with two walls. And the pitboard guy standing there, Ari's the only one, we're the only ones there. The place completely empty. Ari's doing literally 238 laps pretty consistently. So he's going by me. I was just past the start finish line.
He's going past me at 245, 250.
Wow. And the violence of the tires hitting yarda bricks is something I'll never ever forget. It's unbelievable.
[00:28:02] Mark Boudreau: Wow.
[00:28:03] Jim Bowie: So I've had unbelievable experiences at that track.
But to answer your question, I would never have got there if it wasn't for most Canadian Tire Motorsport park where I lived.
I actually moved my family from Burlington to Bowmanville because I was at Mostport, which it was called then, all the time, every weekend. And then when I did eventually move to Indianapolis in the fall of 95, we moved directly from Bowmanville. So I moved from Mostport to Indianapolis. But my answer is Canadian Tire Motorsport Park.
[00:28:41] Mark Boudreau: You're not the only one. And every time somebody mentions it, I always say the same thing. What I've heard, I'm not a race driver, but what I've heard is that if you can, if you can race, you know, if you can master, if you can use that term, Mossport, you can pretty much race anywhere.
[00:29:00] Jim Bowie: Yeah. Yeah, that's very common about. Among the real professional race car drivers.
[00:29:06] Mark Boudreau: Yeah. Jim, I really appreciated the time.
The information was, was, you know, was really in depth, which is something that I appreciate and I think the people listening will appreciate because you often get, like I said, you often get advice, but, but it's often theoretical and it's not actionable. So this is something that I think is, that's, that sets you apart, to be perfectly honest, is that this is actionable information for those of you listening. Like I said, we'll make sure that the information is there for you to enable you to contact Jim directly.
Like I said, Jim, I'd love to have you again on the podcast in the future to talk about that. Sim racing, I mean, that's a whole other ball game. And then clearly your concept, your motorsport concept that you're working on, I'd love to find out more about that when you're ready. But until then, that's it for this week. This is Mark from Motorsport Prospects reminding you to stay fast, stay focused and keep chasing that checkered flag.
Thanks for listening to the Motorsport Prospects Podcast. For insights, advice and the latest news racers can use, visit motorsportprospects.com.
