46. Eric Gundreson - Former Professional Race Car Driver

Hailing from San Diego, CA, Eric Gunderson is a former professional racer car driver who get his start in the world of karting. By the time Eric was a teenager he was testing cars for an opportunity to race within the NASCAR world before eventually suffering from such severe burnout he chose to walk away. 

In today's episode, Eric dives into the aforementioned, starting his own business from the ground up and turning into a million dollar company, suffering from depression and stress, selling his business for a fraction of what it was worth purely to alleviate the stress, his fight with cancer, mental health, not wanting to exist anymore, and much more. 

This was a powerful conversation with a lot shared about parents raising their kids to be athletes, mental health, burnout, and the search for happiness that I hope many can find comfort and inspiration from. Thank you, Eric, for your transparency and vulnerability. 

Follow Eric on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ericgunderson

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Transcript

SPEAKER_02 0:00

I'm gonna do this up front so it's done with wish list of guests because that's what we're doing today. Uh Jenny Taft, Adamson Cerella, Justin Braden, Molly Carlson, who I actually emailed uh via uh who I believe to be her agent. Um in a shocking turn of events, uh never heard anything because that's what agents do. Because small podcasts like this are a waste of their time, most likely. So uh ghosted there, but if anyone uh knows Molly Carlson, or can connect some dots, that'd be cool. Uh Max Anstee, Brandon Blaine, David Kennedy, Kitty Maloney, West Portland, The Williams Trio, Justin, CJ Corey. Um Nick Evenu, I should probably bug about that because he was helping. And uh who else? Uh uh Jordan Poondick, or Jordan Pundick, I should say, uh Buddy Nielsen, Alex McKenna. I might have said that already. Um Nick Romano. And um I have two separate lists. I have a wish list of guests, and then just my guest list. And my guest list is like just people I actually know or have some sort of connection with, uh, where I can reach out. Um and it's Amber Barcha. Even though she's not on my wish list, she's on my uh my uh I guess everyday list of guests. Um her and I have talked about it over the last couple years, and she's down to do it. It's just about timing and when is going to be the best to make that happen. So I have a feeling it's still gonna be a little bit, but I figure I'm just gonna start throwing it out there just as a way to manifest that situation into uh becoming a reality at some point. So Amber Barcia, she knows already. But we're just gonna start putting it out there. Um, okay, I think that's it for the wish list of guests. Um yeah, okay. Uh what is this? Episode 46. Yeah, that sounds good. 46 with Eric Gunderson. Um Past guest of the podcast, Nathan Avila, had reached out to me quite some time ago about Eric. Um, sometime last year, actually, and I was kind of in a weird spot with the podcast where I really didn't know how to carp out the time or if I really wanted to make a whole lot of time. Um I think it was right around the time I did the episode with Britney Force, who was a wishlist guest, by the way. I should say, we have checked off one wish list guest, which was Britney Force. Uh so that is cool. Uh but yeah, Nathan had reached out around the same time as the Britney Force episode about Eric, and the story was good, but I just didn't uh mentally know that I had the bandwidth. But obviously, I figured it out. We're doing things. And reached out to Eric and we made it happen. We recorded several months ago, probably three months ago, four months ago. Um and similarly to episode 41 with summer Joe Hansen Graham. Uh, you might not recognize the name, but it doesn't mean that the story is not of interest, and Eric's story is really good, and he's very well uh spoken and very articulate in sharing his story. Um I guess for essentially was a professional race car driver, came up through the karting circuit, and then um positioned himself to start testing uh cars to potentially go race in the NASCAR world. And then when he got to that point, um just things happened and transitioned and ended up starting his own business, which ended up being a very successful million-dollar a year business. However, just because you were having success and making a lot of money doesn't always equate to happiness. And Eric talks about having this million-dollar business that he built from the ground up and being just so unhappy and struggling very heavily with mental health and um such that he ended up selling the entire business for pennies on the dollar and walking away from it. And uh gets into what happened after that and where he ended up, and then his battle with cancer and going through that, and where he's at now with uh Fream Racing, Freem USA, um within the karting world, um, and just trying to build back up, essentially. Um that's a pretty wild story. Um a lot of what he experienced in the karting world is very similar to the amateur motocross world in terms of just pressure and being burned out by the time you're 16 and living by yourself as a teenager. Um it's wild. It's this was a really fascinating conversation, and Eric is a super rad dude, so I'm stoked that we made this happen. Um thank you, Eric, for taking the time to come down or come up from San Diego. Really hope everyone enjoys this one because it was it was good, and there's a lot of very well told very well told stories from everything aimed towards. So thank you, Eric. I hope everyone enjoys it. Um yeah, I think that's it. Um yeah, if you haven't already, uh follow on Instagram at underscore the failed experiment. Uh leave a comment, review thing, rate it, subscribe it on Apple, Spotify, wherever you listen, that would be super helpful. And if you want to donate or support the podcast beyond just uh subscribing or leaving a nice review, you can uh Venmo at Kyle Cowling. A couple bucks. Help support this little DIY thing and keep it moving along. Or uh link in bio on the Instagram page or in the show notes on Apple or Spotify support show. Uh you can become a member and for three bucks a month get access to the episodes five days before they drop to everybody else. If for some reason that float shit broke. If not, all good. Um okay, I think that's everything. Episode 46, Eric Gunderson. Hope everyone enjoys. Let's do it.

SPEAKER_01 7:19

Have you listened to any of the episodes, or Nathan send you any of them?

SPEAKER_00 7:24

I listened to his. Okay. Um, and I'll be honest, my memory's not the best, so I I forget some of it, but some of it stuck with me. I listened to the Britney Force one. Oh, nice. Um, because I know that was a huge deal for you. And she's also really cool. She was. Yeah. When I saw that come on the podcast, I was like, oh, I have to follow that. Oh, fuck. Um I haven't I haven't listened to all of them. Yeah. I remember listening to his and just the premise of what I think kind of your podcast is about, is why I kind of raised my hand and was like, hey, like I've got some stuff to say. Like I want to share. So yeah. But I'll follow your lead. Cool. Whatever you want to talk about.

SPEAKER_02 8:06

Yeah, I always tell everyone, like, laugh, scream, cusses, cry. And um Nate was like, Don't hold back. And I'm like, well, I mean a little bit. I mean, yeah, it's uh you whatever you're comfortable with, like it's yeah. Um yeah, I always like to kind of start at the beginning and um start there and just work our way to present day, and I'm sure at some point we'll kind of jump around and whatnot. And um yeah, always like feel free to like ask me stuff too. Like it's try to keep it as conversational as possible. Um I like doing episodes like this because I don't know a whole lot about your story other than like what Nathan's shared with me. So it's like I have like he gave me like highlights, but I like that because it's like I'm learning on the go, and it for me is cool to like Yeah, maybe the easiest way is just start with whatever he's told you and go from there. Um, yeah, let's start um at the beginning. Um are you originally from San Diego or you from elsewhere?

SPEAKER_00 9:14

Uh I guess for all interns and purposes, yeah. I grew up in San Diego. I was born in Torrance, so not very far from here. And then we lived in Austin for a little bit and then uh bounced around and ended up in San Diego. So pretty much most of my childhood. Yeah, I grew up in San Diego.

SPEAKER_02 9:30

Okay. What took you guys to Austin?

SPEAKER_00 9:32

Um work for my parents. Okay. Um my dad is an engineer by trade. So I think he was working for like Epson or something. I don't know. I was four. So I don't really remember. Yeah. Um whatever he was doing. And then my mom um worked for a pharmaceutical company. She's a pathologist. So she looks at the slides and tells people if they have cancer or not.

SPEAKER_02 9:57

Okay. Yeah. Interesting. Uh um, so then what took you guys from Austin to San Diego?

SPEAKER_00 10:03

Again, it was work. Um, my dad got a job with I think it was called DriveCam at the time. They were basically one of the first people to put those cameras in vehicle, fleet vehicles. Um so again, I didn't really like know it at the time, but it was work, and then my mom was able to transition to work at Scripps Hospital to continue kind of doing what she was doing. And all I know is I was seven and suddenly in San Diego and going to Sea World and Legoland and like just enjoying that.

SPEAKER_02 10:36

Yeah. Any uh siblings?

SPEAKER_00 10:38

No, I'm an only child. Um yeah, pretty much the focus.

SPEAKER_02 10:44

Okay. What was it like for you growing up in San Diego? What do you remember from that?

SPEAKER_00 10:52

Um, I guess the biggest thing I remember is just really becoming attached to to San Diego and liking where I lived. Um as I got older into high school, I think I started realizing that you know La Jolla and where I lived was kind of a bubble. A lot of people that you know have a lot of money and have a certain expectation of a way of life. But I think now that I've lived away from San Diego coming back, it's a very diverse place. You have a ton of tourists, but you have a lot of different cultures. Obviously, you have the huge Hispanic influence, you have a lot of Asian Americans, you have some pretty big college campuses, so there's just always stuff going on. I liked being close to the ocean. But you know, as I'm sure will come up a lot, like racing became a really big part of my life. So in a way, I kind of lived there, but didn't really interact with the city nearly the way that I do now. Yeah. In a lot of ways.

SPEAKER_02 11:49

Yeah. Um for you education-wise, how was that? Was that something you enjoyed or not so much?

SPEAKER_00 11:56

I think I found it interesting, certain subjects. But both my parents, you know, went to college, got master's degrees, took it really, really seriously. And I think just our generation, it's okay, you're gonna go to college, get a degree, get a real job. That's like the expectation. So my parents pushed me pretty hard in school. I think I did fairly well, but um I would say it was more stressful than enjoyable at times. Okay. I liked writing, I liked uh science. I was quote unquote gifted at math, but I hated it. Uh and uh yeah, I don't know. I mean, like especially once I started the racing, the deal was you know 3.5 GPA or no racing. So it was pretty straightforward. Like I had to do well. And yeah. Um but no, I I think both my parents really stressed like it's important to pay attention in school and do well. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 12:50

So how um how did racing and like karting, all that kind of get introduced to you?

SPEAKER_00 13:01

So I think like a lot of parents, my my parents really wanted me to have some sort of activity. And have you sorry? Like close to lean closer. Okay, yeah, my bad. No, you're good. Um and you know, when I was a kid, they tried like basketball and soccer and baseball, and I kind of just like never really took to any of it. But my dad, his passion is flying. Okay, and he's always been a very mechanical type person. So growing up, um, I would be involved in projects around the house or working on the car or whatever it is. And um I think one day I saw a picture of a go-kart in a magazine when I was like 10 and mentioned to my mom like I wanted to try it because I was like obsessed with cars when I was a kid. I would read like Cart and Driver and Road and Track and all the different stuff. And um so we went to Jim Hall carting school, I think it was, or Jim, maybe Jim Russell up here in near Ventura. Okay. It's the coolest location of a track ever. I didn't realize it at the time, but it's like basically right in the dunes on the beach. Oh wow. Um and uh drove a cart and uh clearly liked it. So my parents got a cart after that and off we went.

SPEAKER_02 14:18

What um so I don't have a whole lot of knowledge of the carting world. I think in my whole film career, I did one carding project, and it was like a crossover between a dirt bike racer that raced supercross and then a professional carding guy. They like swapped roles for a day. Oh, cool. Um the carding guy, his I don't even know if he's still around. I think his name was Andrick Zin.

SPEAKER_00 14:42

Yeah, I know him. Okay, yeah, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 14:44

Yeah, so it was with him, and then the Supercross guy was Sean Borkenhagen, who was been on the podcast in the past. Um that was my only experience. We went out to a track in Fontana by the I think it was by the the NASCAR track out there. Probably Cal Speed. Yeah, yeah, it was there. This was like 2010 or 2011, and I was like, whoa, this is like it felt like a very small, like very niche type thing, but like pretty gnarly.

SPEAKER_00 15:09

Like yeah, I think karting is maybe less so now because of things like drive to survive, but it's kind of a best kept secret in motorsport. I mean, it's the foundation of a lot of four-wheel motorsport. And you know you look at any professional racing that people do that isn't on two wheels or isn't you know in a boat or whatever, it's probably where people started or something similar. Okay. Um but I think in a lot of ways, a lot of people in motorsport that aren't in that industry look or that particular subsector of motorsport look at as like the minor leagues or the junior leagues, or only as that starting point. And I think that's a pretty narrow interpretation because there's a lot of very talented people working in that industry. But compared to motors motocross, it is small.

SPEAKER_02 15:57

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 15:58

Um my God.

SPEAKER_02 16:00

You're okay. You're okay. It's okay. I guess it's just like she'll get embarrassed that this is her being embarrassed. You're fine, Bubby.

SPEAKER_00 16:12

Um I knock stuff over all the time.

SPEAKER_02 16:15

Me too. Um yeah, I had yeah, so like I was saying, that was like my only real experience with carding. Um and then when the drive to survive thing became all the rage, I was like not really paying attention to it. And then I was on a project where like the inspiration was like drive to survive, and I was like, okay, I should actually probably watch this. So I watched I started at the beginning, and this was in 2023, so I was like kind of late to it. So I had a bunch of seasons to watch. So I would watch them while I was on an airplane traveling. And my biggest takeaway was like, oh, all these dudes that are in F1 all came from karting. Like I had no clue.

SPEAKER_00 16:54

Like I just didn't really know like where, like yeah, and I think that's that's commonly the thing. I mean, you know, the reality is if you go to any cart race, right, there's no spectators, there's no fans. I mean, that's changing a little bit now with um cart chaser, and you know, Nate's kind of tied into that a little bit. Yep. Um but the sport itself and the people in it don't really haven't invested a lot of time in really building an audience, which is something I wish we did. But yeah, it's it's amazing racing, uh, close to the competition. Um to me, just endlessly interesting from an academic standpoint, like a lot of the people. But yeah, for the drive to survive, uh pretty much everyone in F1, yeah, probably started in the go-kart, you know, when they were in their single digits.

SPEAKER_02 17:45

Yeah. Um so when you get your first go-kart like I know how much motor bikes cost, um, but like for karting, is that investment quite a lot of money for your parents? Like, is there convincing you have to do, or is it?

SPEAKER_00 18:01

Uh well, I mean, I'm not necessarily proud to admit this, but it just is a reality. I grew up in a pretty well-to-do family. Okay. So my parents were never flashy with their money. They were never uh I would say frivolous in the same way that some people can be where they're buying expensive cars or whatever. But no, it was not like a huge leap for them, I guess. Um and looking back, you know, now that I have to pay for my own stuff, it definitely was a huge investment. It is a huge investment, but when you're a kid, you don't fully understand that. I think I had a pretty good concept, but you just are excited to do the thing to go drive the cart. Yeah. And yeah, they just bought a a used go-kart that was you know probably 10 years old or so and um got me the adequate safety equipment, and we just started going to the track and practicing a lot. Okay. Um, I think you know, some people get the newest and greatest of everything, and some people start with kind of just something to to see if you like it. So I think that was kind of my parents' approach, right? Because they had seen me in other stuff and they're like, well, I don't know if he's gonna like really stick with this. So let's not go crazy. Let's just get, you know, the equivalent of like just a used bike, right? That you can go pan laps on.

SPEAKER_02 19:20

Yeah. Okay. And is there I know you mentioned you you spent time up in Ventura, but is there like locally in San Diego, or is there anywhere you guys were going, or is it pretty far drive to get anywhere?

SPEAKER_00 19:32

Pretty far drive for us. Okay. When I just started, there was a track out on the Indian reservation called Amago that we went to like once or twice. But even that was basically going away. I think the Native American reservation out there didn't really care about it. There weren't races being held there. Um the closest tracks to us were about two hours away. Okay. Like San Diego proper isn't really what I would call a motorsports town. If you know where to look, you can find a lot of it. Right. Because you know, the motocross industry has some tendrils there, a lot of off-road, like Baja type stuff. Yeah. But a lot of that is more what you would call East County. Like you go out to like Santee or Imperial Valley or stuff like that. Yeah. Um but where I was living, no, no one's really racing.

SPEAKER_02 20:14

Okay. Um so what once you get in a cart, like were you like right away like fuck yeah, this is awesome?

SPEAKER_00 20:24

Yeah, um, I think so. I mean, I think I just really liked the sensation of driving. I think I enjoyed it uh and getting better at it and learning and racing, and I think more than anything, just driving I enjoyed. I don't know necessarily why. I guess maybe just growing up just loving cars as much as I did. But um yeah, no. Um I just just loved it. Compared to anything else that I had done up until that point, I just I just wanted to do it.

SPEAKER_02 20:55

Yeah. And in terms of like a timeline, what year would this have been?

SPEAKER_00 21:00

Um I think I showed interest around 10. Uh and then, you know, by the time we like actually caught a cart and started going to the track, I was 11. Okay. Um, so that was 2004. Okay. And a lot of the kids that I would start racing against, they had been doing it since they were like five. Okay. So in a way I was a little late. Like, I know that sounds wild to say, but like I was kind of late to start karting. I came to find out. Um but my dad, he doesn't he doesn't really do anything like less than like 120%. So it quickly turned into, you know, we were practicing all the time and testing and local club races and regional races, and like it it I don't really understand. Uh he'd have to explain it, but I don't know when it turned into hmm, we're gonna make the we're gonna try and make Eric a professional race car driver. But it was pretty quick. Um and um I mean to give you an give you an illustration of of this guy, right? He he grew Up uh with my uncle in Oregon. Their dad came post-World War II, built um a large hydroelectric dam, and then built the uh oversaw the project to build um the Air Force Base in Kodiak, Alaska, built their house in Klamath Falls, like with his two hands. The two kids learned how to braze weld and oxyacetylene weld, like all this stuff. He started flying when he was 14. Nowadays, his quote-unquote retirement is building his own airplane and woodworking and winning prizes at the local fair. Like it's not necessarily bragging on him, but like he's just if he sets his mind to something, whether it's my kid's going to do carting or I'm going to, you know, go and make this really nice cutting board, like he just is obsessive. Yeah. So his whole thought was like, okay, he's interested in this. I can use this as a tool to teach him about life, teach him about really applying yourself to something. Yeah. And so he just at the time it felt like I just got like 25 textbooks of pressure put on top of my shoulders. And it was like, okay, you're gonna go take this really seriously. So we're gonna get you a coach and we're gonna go practice and we're gonna do this and that. And you know, in fairness, like I wanted to do it, but at the same time, it was like we were taking this seriously. Yeah. So from what I can recall, that was somewhat almost immediately we were doing that.

SPEAKER_02 23:25

Okay, and sounds like there's some parallels to the dirt bike world because it's kind of somewhat similar with a lot of stories you hear of like kid gets on a dirt bike, really young age, like three, four, or five years old type thing. And mom and dad, usually dad's like, I got the next Jeremy McGrath already. And they're like, We're gonna do the biggest stuff, and then at some point the kid gets burned out, hates it, resents the parents, or like becomes pro, but is like burned out by the time they become a pro.

SPEAKER_00 23:57

And like by the time I turned 16, I was at that point. I I don't think I necessarily hated racing, but I had a lot of mental health problems with myself. May or may not have been there from racing ultimately if I look back on it. Um but I was just exhausted, like I was just not I felt like I could never meet the standard I needed to meet, and I put so much pressure on myself all the time. Yeah. Um to get back to kind of earlier on, I mean, I think it was just my dad really wanted me to to really really try at something. And I think it was all well-intentioned, but what came from it made me really struggle to you know enjoy something that I was passionate about. Yeah. But um, yeah, uh, it's funny you mentioned motocross, right? Like I was telling Nate, um, you know, every now and again we'll show each other videos or stuff that we like, and you know, obviously his native love language with that is motocross. Um, and I showed him the introduction to um I I happened to happen upon it, it was uh I think CBS did it, it was Supercross Behind the Dream. Yeah, the the intro to that, that first five minutes resonated with me more than like anything I've ever seen on TV. I was like, that's me. Like it's a pressure cooker, you've got to be ready when you're 18. Like, and if you're not, like you're just a failure. And I think in some ways that's a beautiful journey because I look at so many things as it's given me in my life and has changed my life and helped me overcome other things. But on the other hand, if I'm being real honest, like it it fucked me up pretty good too. Yeah. So um, I don't think I would not have done it though.

SPEAKER_02 25:48

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 25:49

Um, I mean, we we took it really, really seriously. I mean, by so we started, like I said, 11, and pretty soon I was doing club races, and then pretty soon I was doing three or four, you know, uh series at the same time. And I think the last year I did karting, I raced 49 races in a year. Okay. And there's 52 weekends, right? That's so you think about that. We're we're going and racing, we're practicing every Wednesday. We're going to the track on Friday to practice, then we're doing a club race here, then we're doing a club race at the next place, then we're doing a regional race the next weekend. Like that's no small small sacrifice for me, let alone my parents, right? I mean, my dad and my mom were working full-time jobs traveling in addition to this. I mean, it was just crazy. Yeah. Um, so it was intense, but it did get us results.

SPEAKER_02 26:38

It's I haven't heard that reference from Supercross Behind the Dream in a long time, because I know exactly what you're talking about. That that opening montage.

SPEAKER_00 26:48

It was the just that opening shot of where that guy's just dripping with sweat, looking like he's like in the middle of a trench, like on the I think it's the erg, you know, the rowing machine, they show a lot of that. And I'm like, I've not necessarily on in the gym, but I've been in that place. Yeah. Where I've been like at Adam's cart track when it's 110 in the shade, and I'm just like almost about to have heat stroke, and my coach is like, do this, do that, and I'm like, fuck. Like, and I'm really grateful that I had that opportunity. A lot of people don't have opportunities to have so much support around them, but yeah, you also get a little bit of like flashback.

SPEAKER_02 27:27

You're like, ah, okay, that's traumatizing. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's I I remember when that came out, that was the that was a big deal. And the filmmaker that did all that, Troy Adamitis, um, they did that series again the next year, and he was uh not rehired because the promoters felled, didn't like it. It was too dark, it was too real, we can't show that side of sports. So when they did it the next year, it was uh it was basically the Disney version, and it was not good.

SPEAKER_00 27:56

Well, it'd be and you look at Drive to Survive, right? Like I I've been, I guess just by being in the industry, I've been a student of watching people like myself evolve, move along the ladder. And yeah, you do have to tread that line. At the end of the day, you're trying to encourage people to engage with the sport. You don't want them to be like, this is child abuse. Which, you know, maybe looking at that, that yeah, I can see that maybe you would take that away from it. But yeah, I mean, it's really hard. I mean, I I do driver coaching now, and I have to step back and recognize that, like, for any person, you know, controlling a go-kart or a dirt bike, going 35, 40, 70 miles an hour, clearing triples at age nine, I don't care who you are, that's hard. And then to try to do that really well, that's really hard. Um, so I I tell parents a lot, like first track, not bubble. Yeah, can't decide. Um, like this is really hard what we're doing for anybody. Yeah. So, you know, when the parents are like, Well, I don't get it, why he's not doing well, and I'm like, Well, it's this is hard. Yeah, you know, yeah. So it asks a lot of people, but I think that's what kind of keeps me involved in it, because it's all consuming. When I go to the track, you know, whether it's for free now or for my own racing, like I I don't think about anything else. I think that's probably a big reason why it sucked me in, is like it's it's all consuming. Yeah. And I like get really frustrated when other stuff tries to tread in on that time. Like I don't want to think about other stuff. When I'm at the track, I just want to think about racing.

SPEAKER_02 29:35

Yeah, yeah. How um so in that world, what's kind of the process like to I guess reach a professional level? Like within dirt bikes, you have local series in your area, and then from there, if you're willing to spend the money, you can go nationally and like travel out of state, and then the pinnacle would be Loretta Lynns in Tennessee, yeah. Biggest amateur national in the world. That's like the pinnacle, and if you get to that point and you make it there, especially at a high level, like usually that means you're gonna find your way into racing supercross or motocross professionally. Um, in the carding world, what's kind of the process like to get to the top level?

SPEAKER_00 30:19

The politically correct or what I would say traditional picture that I'll paint you is you know, you start at your local club level, then you go race some regional races, then you go do some national races. Um currently, the the Soup de jour is the Scusa Pro Tour Soup Carto. Um, but you know, insert whatever series you want in the next 10 years. Um, and then uh maybe if you have Formula One ambitions, you go to Europe and you race in Europe and hope you're discovered. That would be kind of the way that I think a lot of people in karting would like to present the sport. The reality is from what I've seen, the people that succeed or become professionals at it do a lot of cross-training. They, you know, they'll do some regional racing and karting, but maybe they'll have a little side quest in off-road racing, or they'll dabble over here, or they'll dabble over there. There isn't one way to do it, and I think that's what makes it so challenging to become a professional in the sport, is it's really easy for very talented people to spend time, money, and effort on some kind of road to nowhere that they don't really necessarily is gonna be that road to nowhere. But generally, the traditional model is do cart racing. If you're if you're gonna be a professional race car driver, you probably need to be out of carts by at the latest, latest, latest 16 into some sort of formula car or something like that. Okay, and you've got to be ready by you know 18 to 25 is kind of your sweet spot. But like a lot of things, it's really your mileage may vary.

SPEAKER_02 31:53

Yeah. What for for you guys? Was there a goal to try to get into like a formula car or was it just to stay within carding?

SPEAKER_00 32:03

Um no, the goal was for me to become a professional race car driver. I don't really remember me sitting down and watching one specific thing and being like, I want to do that. I think from a fairly early on age, like I thought NASCAR was cool, I thought IndyCar was cool. Formula One I followed, but I always thought it was a little hard to relate to for me. Um I think probably where things got more serious was you know, my third year, I was 14. I won a regional championship and a grand national title, um, which was pretty big deal. And I think my dad, he had started talking to a few people, people were starting to kind of pay attention to me, talking about what was next. And my dad, you know, he's he's a race fan, but he's not a racer, right? I'm I'm not like the third generation in my family. So we went to the PRI show, which is kind of like the SEMA show, but much more specific for motorsports. Okay. And they had the Sprint and Midget classic at the time, which was sprint cars and midget cars. And we went and looked at it. And um at the time, I think my dad was debating like, does Eric go the open wheel route? Like, does he like like do we put him in a skip barber car? Because some of my coaches had done that uh ladder, or do we do oval racing? And we started talking to people, and he kind of came to the conclusion that going the NASCAR oval track ladder was probably the smarter way because you could probably get further along for the same amount of money. So that's kind of the direction we ended up going. Okay. Um, I don't know if I necessarily had a huge say in it one way or the other. Um I can't I can't recall there being like a dream, like, oh, I want to be this driver or that driver. I was just so focused on like trying to just do well at what I was doing, which was kind of the end of end of my horizon at that moment, you know, talent-wise.

SPEAKER_02 34:01

Yeah. Um were you still in school at this time, or was there like a homeschooling thing that came into play at the end?

SPEAKER_00 34:10

Homeschooling was kind of never really an option. I don't even really think it was ever discussed. I think you know, my dad, right, he's a numbers guy, he's an engineer, so he looked at it and he's and I mean he told me multiple times, he's like, Eric, like your chances of becoming a professional are one millionth of a one millionth percentage, right? And he like would break down the numbers. He'd be like, you know, for every NASCAR driver, there's 43, you know, how many people are you know trying to become that? Yeah. So again, going back to school.

SPEAKER_02 34:38

Violet, Violet, give me that. That is so gross, dude. I didn't realize he actually had water in there.

SPEAKER_00 34:44

Is that bubbles or water?

SPEAKER_02 34:45

No, it's water, but it's like do you want like real water? You want me to put real water in there? You want this water?

SPEAKER_03 35:01

Okay, that's gonna answer.

SPEAKER_00 35:05

I'm not sure if this stays in the show or not. But Kyle, for those that aren't here, uh just realized that his daughter was, I think, drinking bubble water.

SPEAKER_02 35:17

That's yeah, something it's not good. It's not good water.

SPEAKER_00 35:21

We've got bubble water, we've got Shrek. It's a whole thing.

SPEAKER_02 35:27

It's a whole thing. It's a whole thing. Why I always say this is a DIY podcast. It's just Well, you're trying to be dad at the same time. I know, yeah. Um, sorry, okay.

SPEAKER_00 35:38

No, you're fine. Um so yeah, so we I guess he kind of made the decision, like, okay, he's gonna, you know, we're gonna look at oval cars next. Um, and so we got a legend car, which is uh would be the next step after that.

SPEAKER_02 35:54

Okay. With your dad being a numbers guy and him understanding like the small chance that it would work out to be a professional why still push it?

SPEAKER_00 36:11

Um, I think to be blunt, because they could afford it and because I was still doing enough I needed to at school. I mean, he's you know, he just looked at it as like, look, he's gonna do this thing until he hits some sort of glass ceiling. And, you know, I don't think he told me that at the time. He he was fully behind me, but the reality is it was pretty unlikely that I was going to, you know, become a professional. So to get back to what you were asking, like I was still taking fairly advanced courses in high school, a couple college classes, like I knew that college for me was on the horizon, but I kind of like was just so sucked in in my own racing that I just didn't really think about it. I mean, fast forward to like my freshman or sophomore year, I was I lived in North Carolina on my own for three or four months at 16 and uh was racing in North Carolina with two cars that I would maintain and set up myself and drive to and from the track. And okay. Did she say she needs coffee? Yeah, she's got a coffee.

SPEAKER_02 37:12

Oh no, like a like a mug and she pretends she's drinking coffee.

SPEAKER_00 37:16

That's awesome. Yeah. Um and um and then my parents were like, okay, well, you need to study for the SATs, you need to, you know, here's the list of colleges that we think you should apply to, which is my parents' code of you're gonna do this. And then I'm like, oh shit. So yeah. Um yeah, I mean their their intent for me was always just go get a normal education and have a normal life.

SPEAKER_02 37:43

Yeah. Um I would I want to say like being 16 and on your own in North Carolina is pretty gnarly, but again, going back to the dirt bike world, like that's a pretty common thing that happens with kids that are at kind of that level.

SPEAKER_00 37:59

Like it was gnarly, and looking back, like I wasn't ready for it. Yeah. Like I I grew up in a family that I wouldn't say catered to my every whim because I I think I pulled my own weight, but at the same time, like I wasn't very independent. And I was also really depressed and really struggling with a lot of mental health stuff, and so you know, I I had some flashes of success when I was out there, but like honestly, like I just was not doing well on my own. I was all the way on the other side of the country, and really cool opportunity. I mean, very glad that I got to do it. Um some people that are listening to this may actually know. I mean, he unfortunately just passed away, but I was racing out of a guy, his name is uh Chase Pastoni. Um he was a pretty well-to-do in that region shop, um kind of tuner guy. And so yeah, I'd have my cars there and I'd I'd go in and during the week work in the shop, and then you know, two or three o'clock, I'd go meet my SAT tutor and study for my SAT and then go back to my extended stay hotel and try to figure out how to cook dinner and then realize that I had no idea what I was doing and go get little Caesars. And you know, like it was it was it was just a weird thing. Yeah. It was a weird, weird time in my life. But yeah, like I learned a lot. I got to I got to see a lot of the underbelly of the NASCAR industry, just living around it and seeing it. And I think in a way, when things kind of didn't work out, or I didn't, you know, become the professional that I had always dreamed, I was like, you know, it's a pretty brutal industry out here. Like I don't I don't know if I'm necessarily missing a whole lot because it's motorsports as a whole. I mean, it'll chew you up and spit you out in a second, it doesn't care. Same way that like the ocean will um when they're surfing. So it's just I think it gave me the confidence that, like, okay, I'm good enough to do this, but at the same time, like maybe this isn't for me. Yeah. So at the end of that summer, um, I had an opportunity to do a test with uh Rula Brothers Racing, which was an ARCA team. Okay. So that's like a real NASCAR team uh at the time racing in ARCA, which is you know one step below the trucks and the nationwide and all that stuff. Um, their driver at the time uh was Chris Boucher. Okay. So he races in the Sprint Cup series now. I think that year he ended up going and winning that championship. And as I recall, I did well enough for them to be like, okay, now you guys can pay us $150,000 a race for him to go, you know, drive for us.

SPEAKER_02 40:26

You you pay them?

SPEAKER_00 40:28

Oh yeah. Oh yeah. I mean, if you look at whether it's IndyCar or ARCA or realistically, there's very few drivers out there. You know, maybe in the Cup series, there's probably about 75% of them that are cash positive, right? That are actually um making an income. But unfortunately, for a variety of reasons that you know we could spend 16 hours dissecting uh the oval racing market and the open wheel racing market, the reality is you're paying your way until pretty much the end. Oh. So, you know, it's just that's just how it is. Now, every now and again, I guess I wasn't a generational talent enough for someone to come along and be like, okay, you know, you're you're so good, we'll pay for everything. But um, yeah, I mean, that's I mean, to run a season of Arca at the time, I think was you know, probably one to two million. You know? Jesus. Um I mean, because you're paying for, you know, 10 to 15 guys plus their travel plus the cars plus the engine development. I mean, it's just it's insane.

SPEAKER_02 41:34

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 41:35

Um and um and I think you know, the numbers I'm throwing out are are to to go and win, right? That's not to just go and just drive around because you can do it for a fraction of that, but that's not what we're trying to do.

SPEAKER_03 41:47

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 41:48

And you know, again, being very candid, like my parents did quite well for themselves, but at a certain point you're like, okay, that's not sustainable. Yeah. So um I had a few sponsors, I had a few partnerships, but nothing like that. So we were like, okay, well, this is cool, but like we can't really capitalize on that. So after that summer, I went back and raced regionally for um a couple years and then went off to college.

SPEAKER_02 42:16

Were you so there's that opportunity there to go chase that obviously with the price tag and you guys chose not to do it?

SPEAKER_00 42:25

Were you okay with that decision to not do it, or were you bummed that you didn't take that chance I think mixed emotions, I think there were a number of things that kind of all happened around that age for me where I was just kind of clinging on to life with like my fingertips from a mental health standpoint, from applying to school, from um I mean, literally, I would I would go race somewhere in like Texas, and I would come back Monday morning at six, I would land and take some red eye at 6 30 in the morning and like go to school the next day. And then, you know, Wednesday we're off testing late model or whatever it is, and it was like just it was all happening so fast, and it was we were just over our skis, my family and I. Like, like the talent was there, the timing was there, we were talking to the right people, but it's almost like we kind of didn't know where to focus our energy. Um, and then I think I just had a had a moment where I kind of bumped into again that glass ceiling for us, where I was like, okay, I don't know if like I'll get another opportunity if I had if we had the money and let's call it the family support versus Eric's gonna go do these other things, you know, school wise. Because you hear those stories, right? You hear about the Villa Potos. Or whoever like mortgaging their house and betting everything and putting it all on black. And I don't think it's because my parents don't love me, but you know, they wanted to retire and like have a life. So they weren't about to do that.

SPEAKER_03 44:14

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 44:14

Um, and I don't resent them for that. Um, and they were also like, look, you know, you had your opportunity, you can always go be a doctor or an engineer and pay for your own racing. Like, we've done enough. So I think there was a lot of that kind of just like going on. And um, so no, I don't I don't resent it. I think what I recognized is like, again, kind of like I was saying, like, I had seen enough of other people around ish my age or maybe a little bit older that were had pursued the dream and clung on a little too long and were in a situation where they didn't have school to fall back on, or they didn't, and and what I saw is a lot of people that were trapped in the racing industry that like that's all they had.

SPEAKER_02 44:58

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 44:59

And so like they couldn't pivot. And so I think deep down I was like, okay, like I should probably continue to be passionate about this. And I think there was also at the same time a realization of like I'm I was at the point where aside from you know very advanced stuff, I was doing everything on my cars myself. I was doing all the setup work, I was doing all the chassis changes, I was doing all the oil changes, all the maintenance. And I think in a way that kind of just sucked me in. Like the last couple years that we did racing, like we would go to racetracks we'd never been to with a setup that we didn't necessarily know was gonna work, and just try to figure out how to win. And that was like a really huge challenge. It's probably the best, best time in all of the racing for me was kind of that barnstorming, like just trying to do that. And I think I just kind of somewhere a switch click where I was like, look, you know, whether I'm a professional at this, like if I'm paid or not, I can approach this as a professional at any level that I want to. And it's always gonna be hard doing it that way. So then you kind of get into this like choose your own adventure sort of thing.

SPEAKER_02 46:01

Yeah, yeah. Um yeah, it's funny, you uh kind of talking about the NASCAR world and being able to see it um for maybe what it is, the um last episode that I just recorded with uh this guy, Tanner Yeager, he's a stills photographer, he shot NASCAR for a little bit. Yeah. He talked about working for uh, I believe Kyle Bush.

SPEAKER_00 46:29

Sure.

SPEAKER_02 46:30

And um just talking about the amount of money that he is making and they're flying private and like all the stuff, but he's being paid like I forget I forget what he said, but it was like almost nothing for like the workload that was being asked of them. And like, we're flying in your private jet, but you like can't afford to pay me like a a correct wage for my work.

SPEAKER_00 46:57

Well, and the reality of that, right, is there's maybe it's a little bit less this way now because the economic reality of what we live in now is a little bit more on the fringe. But yeah, go get it, Bubby. Go get it. For every person that's working in motorsport, there's other 10, 15 other people that will eat their hat to take your spot. Yeah. And that's incredible. It shows how much people love and how passionate they are, but it's also seems to be part and partial with working in the in the sports industry in general. Yeah, it's a passion-driven thing. And so if you're passionate, you're gonna do way above and beyond the normal quote unquote normal employee will do.

SPEAKER_03 47:39

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 47:39

And I mean, in my current work, I still feel that way to an extent, right? I still work in the motorsports industry. Um but I think um, yeah, there was a lot of that where I just looked around and and you know, growing up the way I grew up, where I didn't really have to want for anything, and then seeing a lot of people that whether they didn't end up going to school or maybe just kind of didn't start out on the right familiar track or whatever it was, like you could just tell like they loved what they were doing, but also really wish they had more time with their family or more time to go do something else. Yeah. You know, at what point does um you know, your your passion for something outweigh all these other things? And I don't think I really not nearly the way that I've understood it now, um, understood that then. But I think there were the little kernels of that where I was like, okay, you know, if I keep trending down this path, I'm probably just gonna end up stuck here.

SPEAKER_02 48:40

Yes. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 48:41

Um spoiler alert, I ended up stuck there anyway, but you know. You'd think I would have learned, but I didn't.

SPEAKER_02 48:52

Yeah. Um yeah, no, I I feel that. I mean, I grew up riding and racing dirt bikes, started like chasing, thought I was wanted to go be a pro, and then realized what that next step was gonna take, and I was like, nah, I'm good. Like, which I guess credit for having the self-awareness, but then I was like, oh, I'm like photography. So then from I mean, really, 2003 to 2023 was like that was all I did was like chase that dream, and it worked. I mean, 16 of those years was full-time paid, but like you're self-employed, you're don't know when your next job is gonna be, when the next paycheck's gonna come in, if the client's gonna even pay or pay when they say. Um you're missing all of these things in life personally, and um I really did think that's what I was gonna do my whole life, and my wife knew what she signed up for, and she like just kind of I don't know if accepted it, but like she knew what what this world was like. Um so she was always super supportive of it. Um it had caused issues at times, like when we were dating, like there was definitely times where we had broken up and like hated each other because I was like, I'm gonna go do this job for 500 bucks, and that means but it's on your birthday and I'm not gonna be there for your birthday.

SPEAKER_00 50:19

Well, and that's that's you're hitting on another thing that I noticed is like a lot of people that were you know five to ten years older than me, like that I looked up to. Like, uh, you know, I'm not gonna name names specifically, but just like like drivers or mechanics or whoever, you you did notice those things where you're like, okay, I've on one hand I've got my my family dynamic, you know, which is a nuclear family, right? We've got me, the child, and then we've got my mom and my dad, and they have a house and they have jobs, and then I've got these mechanics over here who I think are just like the coolest people in the world, and I respect the hell out of them. Yeah, but they're divorced and they look burnt out and they look tired. And motorsports is a very, very selfish endeavor. Yeah. Um, and over time I've paid the price for that personally. Yeah. Um and so, but to to get back to kind of the life story point we're at, I don't think I really understood that then. I just observed things and was like, I don't think I want that for myself.

SPEAKER_02 51:20

Yeah, yeah. I yeah, I uh as I was getting older, I you start to think about like I don't have a retirement plan. There's no like I'm gonna have to work till the uh day I die. Like there's no like there's no other like real option, unfortunately. And um when um we got Karen got pregnant at the end of 2022 or September, October, right around there is when we found out, and then she was born May of 2023. Two weeks before she was born, I got a phone call from a client saying, Hey, we want to do this drive to survive thing. Go to all the yeah, thank you, Bubby. Do you need another one? She likes another balala? Okay. Um I've told this story a thousand times on the podcast, and I apologize to the people that have hearing it for the one thousandth time, but like um it was like two weeks before our kid was born, and they were like, we want to do a drive to survive thing, we want to hire you. Um, but the outdoor series starts in two weeks. We want you to go to every round on and then stuff during the week. And I remember my wife and I were in bed, and it was on speakerphone, and my wife just kind of laughed and she was like, You you need to do that. Like, that's a pretty gnarly opportunity. Um it's still there's still more in there. Yeah. Okay, you want me to hold on to it? Um so I was like, Okay, here's what's my situation. Like, we have a kid do like any day now, and they were like, all good, just let us know, and like if you gotta miss a race or two, that's fine. So probably two weeks later, after that call, she's born. I missed the first round. She was born on a Friday. We were discharged from the hospital on a Sunday. Tuesday, I was at the track shooting. Thursday, I was on the airplane, and I was gone for four months traveling all over the country. Oh no. And I would be home for like a couple days during the week. And then that whole thing blew up in my face at the end of 2023. There's unpaid invoices, and I'm out of a job, and um I was like Meanwhile, you missed a lot. Yeah, I missed a lot. My wife was basically a single mom for four months, and we thought that there was a lot of opportunity in this thing, and like where it could what it could turn into. And so when that happened, I was like I've done this for 16 years, and I've given my I've given a lot to this career and this craft.

SPEAKER_00 54:08

Like I'm like it goes back to what I was saying, man. Like it'll chew you up and spit you up in a second.

SPEAKER_02 54:13

Yeah, and that's literally, yeah, it was like it was literally a two-minute phone call that was like, hey, it's done, and we're not gonna pay your last invoice. It's like that's kind of fucked. Sweet, cool, great. Um and so that's when I was like, yeah, I'm like, I'm not doing this anymore. Like fuck it. Sold all my stuff, um, got a job at Trader Joe's, and it's been almost two and a half years. And um the last episode I was talking about this too, but I look back on it and I still wrestle with like what was any of that for? You know, like I did a lot of cool stuff, I got to work with a lot of amazing clients. It gave me an opportunity to do this podcast and like have a fraction of people think that I'm interesting enough to want to like come have a conversation and listen to this stuff. So that's cool. But I'm like, it put me in debt. We lost so much financially, and like it's yeah, was not good. Like my mental health spiraled, like I didn't want to exist anymore, and we have a newborn, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 55:18

Like yeah, cool. Yeah, but you just got your purpose yanked from you.

SPEAKER_02 55:24

Yeah, and I yeah, yeah, and it's like well, your professional purpose. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, yeah. That you worked, I mean, 2003 to 2023, that's 20 years. Sure.

SPEAKER_00 55:34

Like and I realize it doesn't owe you anything, but like No, the sport doesn't owe you anything, but it is something where you pour so much into it, you I wouldn't say necessarily want to get something back, but you want maybe not re I don't know, not necessarily recognition. You want you want I think that's the biggest challenge, right? Is I talk to so many people in any form of motorsport, certainly karting, where people pour their heart and soul and blood and sweat and tears into the sport and they want you know just the basics, like to buy a house, to be able to retire, those sorts of things. And um for meta big picture things that are way beyond you or I to solve, it's just a it's a challenging reality. So I'm very grateful to all my time in motorsport, and it's it's been a net positive change for me, but it's also been hard. Yeah. You know, I could have chosen a lot of things to be just as passionate about that may have set me up a little bit better in life, but yeah uh you know, the mind or the heart wants what it wants. I don't know. Yeah. So um computers back to the looking for your power court?

unknown 56:46

Yeah, one of these two.

SPEAKER_00 56:48

That looks like a power court.

unknown 56:50

I think it's this one actually.

SPEAKER_02 56:51

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 56:53

Um this would be me if I ran a podcast, by the way. Like I'd be like, fuck it. Oh, it's about to die. Oh shit.

SPEAKER_02 57:00

Yeah, no. We're good. I got this one. Yeah, this yeah. Um I like it, I like it this way, though. It just keeps it real. Yeah. Um, so for you, college, did you know what you wanted to No, I did.

SPEAKER_00 57:19

Okay. No, I mean that was again, I was so focused on racing, I was like, well, my parents say I'm good at math and science, and my dad's an engineer, and he thinks that's what I should do, so that's what I'm gonna go do. So that's what I did. Um, and I started into it and kind of ran myself into the ground in about two years. Okay. Um again, mental health stuff came along really depressed, really unmotivated, really just feeling like a complete, total failure. Um, and just got to a point where like I just wasn't able to get myself to class, I wasn't able to like function. And um eventually wandered my way into geology, took a couple courses, and I was like, okay, like I feel like I have to do something quote unquote respectable to get a respectable degree, you know, for my parents, because they I took the football that they had put in my head and ran with it, and it was like, okay, I I can't, you know, I I can't get like a psychology degree or whatever. Not that there's anything wrong with that for anyone listening, but um yeah, ended up in geology and uh got a degree in that. I found it academically interesting, but I think I got most of the way into it and kind of realized, oh, like the things that you can make this into a career for, I'd have to go and get a master's and probably a PhD, or be just a career academic, and I just didn't have that in me. And maybe it was the mentors around me at CU. Really, really fortunate to go to that university, really, really fortunate to have that paid for, have the opportunity, right? But I think I just realized like a lot of those people, they wanted to be a researcher and be left the fuck alone. And that's what they wanted in their life. And I just wanted something with a bit more practicality. If I were to go do something with that, which I I very well might, um, I found hydrogeology, the way that water, groundwater moves around, uh water management, and in a way like water law, like that has a real-world application that I could find interesting. You know, I mean here, right? We're the result of several states that things have to pass through. How do you manage it? How do you uh manage infrastructure and not, you know, have things fall apart. Um and I don't know. I guess my logic was like, well, if I learn about the earth and how the earth processes work, then everything else will kind of fall into place from that.

SPEAKER_02 59:48

Yeah. So interesting.

SPEAKER_00 59:50

It is a really interesting field of study, and at least in science, like it's still really young. Okay. Like plague tectonics was only really considered a valid theory, like 60 years ago. Oh wow. So people are still making real, legitimate discoveries about the earth now. Yeah. So that that part I think kind of sucked me in.

SPEAKER_02 1:00:10

Yeah. How interesting. Um, yeah, is that something you think you'd ever revisit all down the road or I'm not ruling it out.

SPEAKER_00 1:00:19

Yeah. Um, again, I kind of have a hunch of like where I think I would shift my focus, but I think it's one of those things where I guess the analogy I would draw is like my mom, she's a pathologist, and she her whole life, she's always reading papers and reading research and studies, and she's always sharpening her knife, she's always learning about the next. And I think if you're really gonna do that, A, you gotta want to do it, and B, you have to have a you have to be a student of it.

SPEAKER_02 1:00:50

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:00:51

Um and not opposed to it now, but you know, I think like a lot of people you're like, ah, I'm too old, I have all these other things, I have this inertia in my life already.

SPEAKER_02 1:01:00

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:01:00

So probably not, but maybe.

SPEAKER_02 1:01:02

Yeah. Um and where did you go to school for?

SPEAKER_00 1:01:05

Uh I went to University of Colorado at Boulder. Okay. So most people call it CU. Okay. Um, so Boulder, Colorado, kind of northwest of Denver. Yeah. Um, right near the Flat Irons. And um, I got accepted into the engineering honors program out there, which was like this very specialized, obviously engineering-focused college dorm and things. And I toured a bunch of campuses, and I, as sad as it sounds, like in my head, I was like, well, I'm probably least likely to fail at this whole college thing, like here. And um, it was a good experience. I just couldn't get myself to get through all the math. Everything turned into a gigantic math problem, and I was more interested in like building things, and obviously you need math to build things and for them not to fall down. Yeah. But I spent a lot more time doing calculus than like you know, using a drill. Yeah, I just I don't know. I just couldn't couldn't keep myself motivated to do it.

SPEAKER_02 1:02:01

Yeah. Um I know you mentioned your mental health struggles throughout. Do you think do you think that that was always there, or was it something that was caused by racing and karting and being a part of that whole world?

SPEAKER_00 1:02:20

I think no matter where I go in my life, whatever I do in my life, it's going to be something that will follow me. Um I grew up in a situation where I now recognize really probably screwed me up pretty good. Um my dad, both my mom and my dad, I'll just say, are you know amazing people. My dad, I think I've now come to realize is someone that the the politically correct term would be neurodivergent. Some people would maybe call it borderline autistic. It makes him incredibly, incredibly good at practical problems. But it means that he has almost zero EQ. And so growing up as a kid, there would be multiple situations where I just out of nowhere, he'd be just screaming at me, super mad, and I'd have no idea what the fuck I did wrong. And, you know, they you know, they talk about the first five, right? And that combined with putting me in the pressure cooker of racing, where he expected really intense things. I put all this pressure on myself. I just developed these really toxic things in my head that I I will build up. You know, if someone's upset with me, I'll I'll build up a lot in my head, I'll spin out about it. Um, struggle a lot with suicidal ideation, with depression. Um, I started going and seeing a therapist when I was like 14 or 15, and I've been on and off in therapy through that. But as I look back at like a lot of the bigger challenges in my life, I'm not gonna necessarily use depression as an excuse because I don't view it as an excuse, but if I can draw a lot of parallels between my mental health struggles and why I fizzle out with some things or why I've not pushed through with certain things, which is interesting.

SPEAKER_02 1:04:12

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:04:13

It's been it's been a big factor in my life.

SPEAKER_02 1:04:15

Yeah. Um she's got Ana in I think that's Olaf.

SPEAKER_00 1:04:21

She's making her own Disney musical.

SPEAKER_03 1:04:23

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:04:23

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:04:26

I think this is what my girlfriend would have been like at her age. Okay. Because she loves uh the sound of music. Okay. And so she sings like a ton. Like I'm not a musical person. Yeah. But like I could totally see this. So Allie, if you're listening to this, this is probably what you were like at this age.

SPEAKER_02 1:04:40

Yeah, she's big into um We love Frozen, Cinderella, and then Nightmare Before Christmas. I don't know where that one came from. That's like totally out of left field, but she's like obsessed with extensions. I just think of it as so novel, though.

SPEAKER_00 1:04:56

I think that's the thing, is like as a kid, like you look at Nightmare Before Christmas and like it's all stop motion animation and you know, clay and thread, and yes, I mean I I still look at it and I'm like, that's cool.

SPEAKER_02 1:05:07

Yeah, we literally we were watching it, she wanted to watch it last night, so we watched it last night before bed, and I'm like watching it. I just go, I like I'll sometimes go back to like my cinematography brain, and I'm just watching this and I'm like, this was made in 1993, and this is like gnarly to me. Still relevant, yeah, it's still relevant. Like, this is so like first of all, this whole concept was in someone's head. Yeah, like this was in Tim Burton's mind. He's like, this is the world I have, like from a creative standpoint, that's just insane. And then like, how do you execute that? And like, what are the steps? Where do you start? Like, I was just like kind of picking it apart last night. I'm like, this is not a good thing.

SPEAKER_00 1:05:47

That's why I admire like you or Nathan. I can I I I I'm a fan of that stuff, watching on the sideline. Yeah, but then when he gets you, he or you gets into like that again app academic fascination. Of like the how, that's where I'm like, all right, I'm checked out. I just that's like where someone's like, well, you know, I cook my steak at 350 degrees, and I'm like, I look, I just want the good steak. Yeah, you know, yeah, yeah. I'm not saying I'm not saying that it's not interesting. It's just it's that's where I'm like, all right, like philosophy. Yeah, I totally I get that.

SPEAKER_02 1:06:20

Um it's funny. Yeah, she's the Jack Skellington Nightmare Before Christmas thing is so like I said, out of left field because we love Frozen, Cinderella. Uh but it's a musical.

SPEAKER_00 1:06:32

It is a musical, yeah. And it's kind of positive.

SPEAKER_02 1:06:34

I mean it's a little creepy, but it's a little creepy, but like even last night I looked at my wife and I'm like, I think from a parenting standpoint, there's probably a lot of people that would look at us and be like, how can you let your two and a half year old watch this movie because it's scary and like she she loves it.

SPEAKER_00 1:06:48

By modern standards, dude. I watched Jurassic Park, like the original. Yeah. I made I think I wasn't it wasn't on purpose, but like when I was like three, okay, that fucked me up. Yeah. Like where the scene where the car was like upside down and the Tyrannosaurus is like scraping it around. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:07:03

That that was not yeah, that's gnarly at three.

SPEAKER_00 1:07:06

I it was like one of those things where I was like at home with my babysitter and it just happened to be on, and it wasn't like something, but I was like, I remember being like, oh, what?

SPEAKER_02 1:07:16

People can die? Yeah. Oh, that's so scary.

SPEAKER_00 1:07:19

Yeah. Anyway.

SPEAKER_02 1:07:20

Yeah. Um after you get through college, what are kind of the next steps for you? Are you still driving racing, or is that really coming to an end at this point?

SPEAKER_00 1:07:33

So when I went to college, racing basically just got turned off like a faucet. Okay. Um, I mean, I was still into it and I still pined for it. I would uh one of my friends, I I like helped him with his little social media page called Arnaj Corner, which went absolutely nowhere. But I would like re-share news from other actual news outlets, and like I had this like poster that I built like in my dorm room with like all these photos of racing, and like I would watch NASCAR races and stuff. So like I was still involved in it, but I couldn't participate in it. I didn't have a car, I had school, I had all these different things. But pretty soon after that, I I started finding ways to engage with the racing community in Colorado. So um, you know, I tried to engage with the local Oval Track stuff, and that kind of fizzled out. Um, tried to be mechanic for like one of the local guys racing a legend car, and I would literally like get on a bus to get on a trolley to walk. I would take like an hour and a half one-way public transit to go like work at this guy's shop for free when it's cold, because like I just missed it that much.

SPEAKER_03 1:08:42

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:08:43

Um but that kind of ran its course, and then um in 2016, I was pretty close to the end of my college. I was like in my junior year, and um I don't really remember how I came across it, but I found um the Colorado Carting Tour, or I think it was then the Colorado Junior Carting Club. And I reached out to them, I was like, hey, if you guys ever want like someone to like do driver coaching or like help, like let me know. And they're like, Well, we don't really need that, but like do you want to like be a head flagger? So I was like, okay. So then started my what turned into felt like a full-time job with the Colorado carting tour. So I got I got heavily involved in that, which was a regional cart racing series. Okay. And then simultaneously I graduated in December of 2017. No idea what the fuck I wanted to do. Uh went on a job board like lots of college people, and I found a job, you know, which probably looking back was basically, do you have a college degree? Do you have a pulse? And answered yes to both of those and interviewed, and it was a title insurance company of all scintillating things. Um, and um it was actually a very unique program because their whole idea was look, everyone that works for us is a dinosaur, let's try and get younger people into this industry. Yeah. So I spent six months traveling around to all their different branches and learning all about the business, and then we were supposed to have this big meeting at the end to present like what we were gonna do to change the title insurance industry at 21 years of age. Um, meanwhile, uh my role at CKT had evolved from an official to um I was uh I I did like all the different volunteer positions, all the officiating, like the race director, the grid marshal, uh I ran the social media, I did, I would run the you know, the reports for the board meeting minutes. Um it just kind of turned into this thing where I was at the heart of this series. And I got to work with some really good people that mentored me, and I learned I got to view the sport from a whole different perspective. You know, the the race administration and officiating standpoint, um, and you realize how much goes into that. And in many ways, that was way, way that's probably the hardest job I've ever done, to be honest, was was keeping that series going in the right direction. And as I got over I think I was I was really heavily involved in it for about three or four years. Okay. And by the end, I was very involved in making the schedule, reviewing the rules, managing the politics of all of it. And um that coupled with I started doing driver coaching on the side. Um and then in 2017, I got called into this meeting. We had just gone out to Miami for my normal job, and we had this meeting with all these big important people at the corporate headquarters or whatever, and they were asking us about our program and what we did and what we thought and all this stuff. Week later, I'm working at one of the local branches and they call me into a meeting, and my boss is there, and my boss's boss is there, and they're like, Hey, well, um, there's been some organizational changes, and uh you're getting laid off, as well as like 50 other people at the company. And my world just went like I just shattered because like my whole thought process was like, Okay, Eric does well in school, he goes to college, he gets a degree, he gets a job, then he can like finally be like an adult and like do what he wants to do because he has money and security now. Well, that just shattered. Um but at the time, like I said, I had CKT. I had this coaching thing that I was doing on the side. I was basically working seven days a week at that point, like whether I was at North American or CKT or uh doing the coaching on the weekend, you know, like whatever it was. Um, and again, that was, you know, I guess it was money, but it wasn't really like I was not making anything. The timing of this was like May or June, and I remember just being like, Well, I'm never gonna work for somebody else again because that was a lie. Like, I did all this work for like nothing. I just got the rug pulled out from underneath me. Um and I was like, Well, I've got this coaching thing, like if I really focus on it, maybe I can like pay my rent through the rest of the year. And I guess I in my head I was like, I can be kind of like a ski boom instructor, like except just do the coaching thing. Yeah, so I really focused on that. Um did that uh throughout the rest of the summer. And I think by the end of the summer I I had worked with a lot of people. I was financially solvent barely. You know, I was I was traveling to and from racetracks and and doing the thing that I wanted to do, and it was okay. You know, I I think I enjoyed it well enough, but eventually it became kind of a grind. Yeah. Um and the Colorado region is really small, but um, there's not a lot of racing going on there. Um so I think that winter I just sat around and I was like, well fuck, like it's winter now. I can't work, so what am I gonna do? And um that's when the idea kind of came to place for point guarding, which is what kind of was the next significant chapter, I would say, which was my own business.

SPEAKER_02 1:14:31

Is that I'm trying to remember in the synopsis that Nathan gave me that was yours that you like built into this pretty big thing, right?

SPEAKER_00 1:14:41

Well, I'm now finding it real, you know, from a in the broad scheme of things, it's not a big thing, but at the time I think yeah, it was. Yeah. Um, and it is. I mean, it's still a going concerned business, and I'm really proud of Tyler. So yeah, it started from nothing, it started as an idea which was born out of pure distilled frustration, observing how local shops and just the industry as a whole felt like they treated racers. The more I looked at it, the more mad I got, the more frustrated I got. Um relevant backstory. One of my projects uh that I took on, and that's really what CKT was a gift in this respect because I worked with um two really amazing people, Tim Trostel and Scott Williams, uh, president and vice president of the series. And whenever like someone the great thing about a 501c3 nonprofit that has got basically three people keeping the lights on is there's always work to be done, and people always need to do it. So um one project that I took on was like trying to redo the website, and I realized like we didn't really have any documentation to like help people understand what the fuck carding was. So I started writing this thing, and I got 50 pages in, and I was like, oh, this is kind of a book now. So I ended up publishing a book called Carding 101. Oh wow, which was it's now dated, I need to redo it, but it was basically an introduction to the sport, saying, hey, this is the sport, this is kind of how it works, here's all the classes, like this is how things are split apart. Like if you're brand new to this, read this, and you kind of at least like when you my whole goal was like if you show up to the track, you kind of understand what you're looking at. That was the the purpose of the book. It wasn't like this is how you're gonna be a good driver or whatever, like it's it's just this is what you need to know to go. Um, and that again started as just a project, like part of a much larger thing with CKT and turned to that book. But that started me kind of recognizing like okay, if I go to the grocery store and I walk in, you know, the aisles are organized and there's explanations. If I want to learn how to cook, there's YouTube videos. But if I'm trying to get involved in the sport of carting, short of just opening up my checkbook if I'm an Uber rich person, if I'm more of a DIY person or like your grassroots, it's really hard to be for the sport to be accessible. And all that does is damage the sport because it makes the beared entry so high. You know, um, I would see time and time again, my customers would bring out their friend or whatever, and instead of showing them, like, hey, this is my go-kart, this is super cool, they would start talking about like how much money they were spending and how hard it was and all this stuff. Then I started looking at the websites, and a lot of them had these like pretty poor resolution images, descriptions that didn't make a ton of sense. And now, you know, keep in mind, right? I've been in motorsports for like 15 years at this point. I know what I'm looking at. Um, like I know what the spindle spacer is for a CRG California that from 2004, like I know how to figure that out, but most people can't, in the same way that if I was gonna go repair my Toyota Camry, I have no idea what the fuck part number it is. Yeah, it's just really bad. Things like that. And then I thought, like, okay, you know, I call the cart shop, the local cart shop. They don't answer the phone, it goes to voicemail, and they don't call me back. Or people send emails to a company and they don't respond. And I was like, if I just like this is just disrespectful to people. Like, what are we telling the customer? And I just the more I thought about, the more mad I got because I'm like, this is just like these people that they want to be involved in this sport, they're super passionate about it, and we're making them work so hard to be able to take part in it. And the more I thought about that, I was like, that's just that's just not okay. We've got we can do better than that. So then point carding started from that. So I bit off way more than I could chew. Way more. Um, but I basically created a website, I started gathering vendors, and I would go and I take their photos and put it in Canva and get it on the website, and I'd write these really long product descriptions like that would like be like, you know, this is what this does, this is why you want it, notes. Like I would write it from like an enthusiast standpoint. And um so point carding kind of came to life, and I spent, you know, several years building it. And um we grew from Apex Pro L C, which was mainly a coaching business, to this point carding website, which you know, at I would say for the first year and a half to use a medical analogy was essentially a patient on a table that you were manually um, you know, massaging their heart and pumping fluids into to something that had a heartbeat. Okay, it's got a pulse now, okay. Now it's got you know brain activity, okay. Now it's like actually, you know, and so it was a massive labor of love that I just threw a ton of time and effort at, and then it started to make sales. We started to ship product all over the place. And um, we were a website not just for people in Colorado, we were you know shipping all over the country, and by the time I sold it, I mean we were doing about one and a half million in revenue.

unknown 1:19:59

Wow.

SPEAKER_00 1:20:00

And that started from nothing. Now, I want to be very clear, like I I didn't, you know, take out a massive loan or uh do it all on my own. I had a tremendous amount of help. But it started with a very simple premise of let's just try to make a better experience for cart racers and target a market that the sport as a whole is not really servicing. And we then, you know, by the time I sold it, we're really like bumping elbows with these other pretty established e-commerce websites that have been around 20, 30 years. Yeah. And um, I'm super proud of what I built, but quite frankly, what I lost as a consequence of that project was probably greater. So similar-ish to my college career, like it it haunts me a bit. But I'm it it was it was something that I set my mind to do, and I just in my head was like, I can't fail at this. I remember walking off of the plane, coming back from Christmas vacation where I had gone through this depression spiral, and this, like, I wrote out this business plan for point carding and showed it to my parents and showed it to a few other people. And walking off of like in the jeopherage, I can put myself there, and just the fear I felt of like I cannot fuck this up, like I have to succeed at this. Because I didn't have another plan. Um, I mean, in you know, retrospect, like I could have done a million things, but in my head, somehow, Eric Brain decided this is what I have to do, and I have to succeed at this. And I have to do it with like no external help, which is such a negative mentality. But here we are. So um, yeah, I I would stay up till two, three in the morning just building the website, just you know, just in my little dungeon, just fucking doing it.

SPEAKER_02 1:21:46

So what uh what is it you think you lost from that experience?

SPEAKER_00 1:21:54

I met an amazing person uh in college in my junior year. I walked into a room and I saw her across the room, and it was one of those like just like I couldn't take my eyes off her. And that was my college sweetheart, and we were dating for five years. Um and I worked this wasn't her choice for me to do this point guarding thing. You know, she graduated, she got a computer science degree, she had a very normal career, and she worked so hard to support me with my dream. But I was so locked in on trying to succeed at that. I had this death grip on that, that I didn't water and feed and nurse that relationship at all. Um I mean, I think we got along okay, right? We had a good relationship and we had we dated for five years, but I ended up basically in a situation where I just couldn't let go of my work and couldn't give her what she needed. And we ended up in a situation where she she suddenly to me seemed like out of the blue, but in real reality probably wasn't. Changed her mind on some really big things, and we broke up, and that just again shattered my world because I a little bit before that had like in my head decided like I wanted to marry this person. And I felt like in many ways I was working this hard, almost killing myself, I mean, literally, mentally and physically, to succeed at this because I wanted her to be proud of me. And suddenly now my rock, my support, my everything that I was doing this for, because uh my parents, especially my dad, did not want me to do this. You know, he thought it was a waste of time, he thought it was stupid. And I think, you know, at the end he was really proud of me. But at the beginning, I I knew that like they did not approve. My mom did. My mom just wants me to be support, you know, happy and play in the daisies, and you know, as long as I'm happy, she's happy. But yeah, my dad is much more pragmatic, and so I I fought that the whole way through. Okay. Um but you know, um, I was also able to do something really, really hard, which is build a small business. Yeah. And um so but at at a significant cost that you know I don't know looking back if I would have done it that way.

SPEAKER_01 1:24:16

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:24:17

Um and I know eventually you sold that business, correct?

SPEAKER_00 1:24:24

Yeah, I was in a position where I just I mentally, after losing her, I kept going. Um, the business kept growing. But my mental health issues kept getting worse and worse and worse. And at first I kind of just didn't really do a whole lot about it. I'd been like, you know, I've been depressed all my life, whatever. Um, and then started seeking help and really went through some really, really difficult periods. And it just it just became clear that I think two things. One, I realized like, okay, I've built this business, this is great. I've achieved this dream that I had, but it's cost me everything. At least at the time, it felt like it cost me everything. And I thought, like, okay, I could keep doing this for another 20 years, but I don't really want to keep going to the track all the time. I don't think this is really gonna give me the life that I really want. You know, I started changing, getting a little older, and like actually thinking, like, oh, I'd like a vacation, or oh, I'd like, you know. And those two things coupled with just the severity of the mental health stuff, I was like, I have to make a change. So we put some window dressing on the business and found buyer for pennies on the dollar of what it should have been worth. And I walked away. Um now I'm really happy with who took it over. I'm extremely proud of him. Um, but I took something that I built and I lost I I think if I had kept it going and kind of pretty up the books and we could have sold it for a lot more money than we did. But I needed to stop. I needed to. I had to. Yeah. And I had to do some really unfortunate things. I mean, I had to take this whole thing that I had built and box it up and put it in a storage unit, leave the inventory and hand the case to somebody else and walk away.

SPEAKER_02 1:26:24

Yeah. Do you looking back on it now, or do you think that was the right decision?

SPEAKER_00 1:26:31

100% the right decision. Okay. Uh I do miss it. I do in my current work I get to interact with Tyler and point guarding as a vendor. And I get to see the stocking orders come in, and it's super exciting. Because like other people at my company are like, oh shit, point guarding is like a real thing. Like you guys are actually moving product. I'm like, yeah, we didn't fuck around with it. Yeah. And it and that's cool. Um, I don't a little I missed it a little bit, but not enough to to do it. Yeah. Um, and I was I was really struggling. If I had if I had continued down that path, I probably would have killed myself. Like I remember sitting and I I I found a really good therapist, and it got to the point where I felt like I was just clinging on with like the fingernails of my fingernails to life to not kill myself. And like she just punched me right in the stomach one day. She looked at me, she's like, Eric, if you keep living the way you're living, like you're going to die. And I'd been severely depressed many times in my life, but I had never I was getting into this zone which felt like uncharted territory. Yeah. Like I was eating like once a day, I wasn't showering, like I was getting up and going to work and functioning at work, and then I would get home and immediately go to bed. Yeah. Like I just I just was technically alive, right? But like my world was very, very, very small. Yeah. And You know, I don't know if it was one thing, but I just I was pulling back from friends. I wasn't spending time, and like I was like, in a way sitting there like as a third person, almost observing, being like, oh, this is how this happens. Like, this is how people end up killing themselves. Because like they like I'm I'm watching the arc of my life kind of trending in that direction. That coupled with um my mom and dad getting older, right? My dad had been somewhere around in my middle school age, he he told me, Hey, by the way, I have this heart thing, and I have to wear this heart monitor, and it sounded really scary. And that was kind of the last time he talked to me about it. And then around the time I was going through this, he started having those issues again. And then my mom got in a car accident where she, I think she was turning in an intersection, and she ended up a bicycle was coming and like hit the side of her car. And when I talked to her about it, I was like, Well, what happened? She's like, Well, I don't really know. I don't really understand. And I was like, Well, that's not okay. So not only am I in a really bad spot, but now my parents are like, I know something's going on, but I don't really know what's going on. And I think I had this moment where I was like, I don't want to be half a country away when something happens. Because Colorado is like a 10-hour drive. Yeah. And for so much of my life, I just wanted to get away, get away, get away, get away from my parents. And something shifted where I was like, I I don't not I don't want, I don't think I can handle something happening. And me doing this and um not being near them. I knew something was wrong, which turned out to be correct. I went back and um about a year later, my dad, with two weeks' notice, because he's an extremely per personal person, he's like, by the way, I'm having open heart surgery, they have to crack my chest and do all this stuff, and I'm like, great, like I knew it. Like, I knew something was wrong. So that um that was the end of point guarding for me. I mean, there's a whole lot that went into it, but that was kind of the speed speed run.

SPEAKER_02 1:30:16

Yeah. Um, so what's kind of the next thing after all of this is happening for you?

SPEAKER_00 1:30:25

Uh I come back to California. I live with my parents, which I felt super ashamed to, right, after building this business and feeling like I should be able to stand on my own two feet. And um I'm trying to find a job, trying to find a job, trying to find a job. And you know, here I am thinking like, hey, I've got a college degree, I'm educated, I'm a smart person, and I'm just struggling, applying to what felt like hundreds of places and just rejection after rejection, rejection, rejection, rejection, rejection. Yeah. And every time I'd kind of get partway through an interview, maybe I I wasn't selling myself well enough, whatever. I mean, if you look at my resume, right, like I don't make sense. Yeah. I I lived in Southern California, I worked for a go-kart series, I got a G geology degree, and then I built my own business, and now I want to like be a director of marketing at an off-road van company. Like, connect the dots here. And like I would really try. And I'd be like, you guys realize like I have literally built a business, like I know what I'm doing, but people would be like, No, we'll go with a guy that has 10 years of experience doing the thing. Thank you. So I I got to a point where I just felt like I couldn't do anything. Like, I literally remember trying to apply for a pressure washer position in the city of San Diego, and that was like my most promising option. Not again, not that there's anything wrong with that. Um, but I just was losing my mind because I'm like, I know I'm better than this, I know I'm worth something, but man, I just felt like absolute shit. Yeah. So I um I went to PRI and I walked around, and I didn't really want to. I had I after point guarding, I had absolved like I don't want to work in racing, I don't want to do this ever again. Like I motorsports has taken way too much from me. I need to go live a normal life and like recover and try and rebuild my life. Yeah. And then I um I met Darren, uh, one of my coworkers now. And I was like, hey man, like I if you guys are hiring, let me know. And he's like, Oh yeah, for sure. And I thought, like, okay, well, that's probably not gonna go anywhere. I come back and I'm sitting at the YMCA. Um, I managed to get myself out of my little depression hole and like go and work out or whatever, and I get a call. And um he's like, Hey, our are my director is gonna be in town. Do you want to come do an interview? And I'm like, Okay. So I walk in and we talk and I do my research the night before and we have a good conversation, and we have to it took me a long time to finally get them to hire me. I had to knock on it a lot, but um here I am. I work for uh Freeman and K1 Race Gear, and I'm mostly a sales guy. Sometimes I get a big head and think I'm more than that, but um yeah, mostly what I do is sell suits and uh work with customers. Um and frankly, I I I have a really good job right now. Yeah, um, they've they've been incredibly supportive to me through you know what most people would call the hardest period of their life. Um and um, you know, genuinely the work itself I I really really like a lot.

SPEAKER_02 1:33:38

Yeah. How long so how long have you been there total?

SPEAKER_00 1:33:41

I started in August of 24 officially, so coming up on two years.

SPEAKER_02 1:33:47

Okay, nice. Um still learning a lot. Yeah. Um so I know somewhere in this you got sick. Yes, I did. Um however much you want to share with that, like no, I mean the mental health stuff is a lot harder for me to share, and I've been very candid about that.

SPEAKER_00 1:34:08

The cancer stuff's easy. Okay. I mean, I you know, I've people look at me like I have three heads when I say it, but like it took cancer for me to realize how much I have suffered from the mental health stuff. Yeah. Cancer by comparison, I mean it sucked, don't get me wrong. Like zero out of ten recommend to you or anybody else. Yeah. But it was maybe a tenth of the misery that I've dealt with. Anyway, um, so yeah, I was uh employed by K1 Race Gear. Uh I don't know why I didn't do this until recently. Uh, if you live near the ocean and you're listening to this, please go surf. Um please do it. Um, but like growing up in San Diego, I didn't do it. I was I was racing and like I think I went to the beach to go to the beach like twice the last year I lived here. Anyway, so when I came back, I was like, I'm gonna surf all the time. Like I've been away from the ocean for 10 years. This is amazing.

SPEAKER_02 1:35:01

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:35:02

And um I was paddling out uh 45 minutes into a session, and uh, as you can see, I wear glasses. Yeah. But then I didn't, I didn't, I don't wear them in the ocean. I don't really like contacts, all that stuff. And I was trying to go up and over a wave, and um out of my blurry vision, I realized someone was like dropping into the wave right next to me, so I rolled the board to the side to like give them a little bit of extra space. And in doing so, um, I kind of didn't get far enough up over the wave, so the wave picked me up and like threw me back up and over. And I guess I'm assuming what happened is the board underneath me basically landed on the sand like vertical, and so I fell and like landed with my back like on the rail of the board. Yeah, and I've been really lucky in my life where like the worst thing that's happened to me until then was uh a dislocated shoulder. But you know, when people like break bones, they're like, Oh, I felt it break, I whatever. Like as I as I was falling, I was and I felt that impact, I was like, Oh, that's not good.

SPEAKER_03 1:36:07

Uh-huh.

SPEAKER_00 1:36:07

So I pull myself up to the top of the water, and I'm like treading water, and I'm thinking, like, I just broke a rib for sure. And like, I'm like freaking out because it hurts. And I'm like, I'm bleeding out internally, like all this stuff. I'm like building this stuff in my head, which is what I do. So I get myself back to shore. I'm in a lot of pain. I like manage to limp myself onto the um onto the beach. My girlfriend was not too far away, so she comes and she's helping me, and we get we get my uh wetsuit down, and I go to the lifeguard station, and I'm like freaking out. I'm like, did I just like semi-paralyze myself? Have I broken my rib? Whatever. They check me out, they're like, Yeah, you're fine, but like maybe you want to go like get checked out. Keep in mind, I'm like 30 at this point. I don't really have a primary care because I'm stupid. Um, I didn't really have a primary care doctor. Had I think Medi-Cal was my no, I had I had proper health insurance. Um, and so I go to urgent care, and I'm sitting there in my wetsuit in pain, miserable. And they're like, after an hour, they're like, Well, our x-ray tech isn't here today, so you could come back later. And I'm like, Well, fuck this. So I just went home. And being a guy, I was like, you know, if it hurts in a couple days, I'll deal with it. Well, fast forward it hurt in three days, so I went and got an x-ray. And the doctor called me, and I wish I had saved the voicemail, and she's like, Well, your rib's fine. But I see something on the x-ray, and you you you need to get a CAT scan. And so I go and get a CAT scan, and that's when they find the tumor. And at first everyone's being very like vague. They're like, you know, it's probably a benign mask, but but it might be cancerous, we don't know. And so where it is was in my center chest. So to get to it, they have to do this very fancy surgery. So we talked to this doctor at UCSD, and he's all confident. He's like, Well, we don't know what it is, but we need to go do a biopsy just to be sure. So we're gonna we're gonna get in there. And the complication is if you if you go in there and you puncture it, you know, kind of like a balloon, if it is cancerous and they pull that out when they do the biopsy, that can spread it everywhere. So what they decided to do was to flip me on my side, knock me out, cut me open on my side, and go in with this very fancy robot and get there. Well, when they got there, they said that the tumor had grown around my vein. That the analogy they said it was like moss on a tree. So they couldn't they couldn't cut it out. So my girlfriend remembers this. Like I woke up from the from the surgery, and I'm like, did they get it?

SPEAKER_03 1:38:55

And they cut it out.

SPEAKER_00 1:38:56

Because in my mind, I was like, okay, they're just gonna cut this out of me. No, we, you know, I'll go on with my life.

SPEAKER_03 1:39:01

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:39:02

And she's like, no, they didn't. So at that point they come back with the biopsy, and it's uh they thought it was what's called a thymoma, which is a very rare form of cancer. There was a lot of hemming and hawing over the next couple months. Um, they eventually decide that I I had Hodgkin's lymphoma, which is cancer, you know, like it's like it's like the basic, most basic form of cancer you can get. It spreads through your lymph nodes. Um and when they first told me I freaked out because I I had met someone that had non-Hodgkin lymphoma. Um, and that is in your bloodstream, and that's a lot scarier. Anyway, so we start talking about what we're gonna do and all these different things, and um, you know, they they couldn't quite figure out what it was. Um and all the meanwhile, I'm getting these bigger symptoms day to day. Whenever I bend over, my head feels like it fills with blood. And when I go to stand up, I can't like I feel like I'm gonna pass out. Yeah. And then one day I was at home and I sat down on the couch and I looked off at the TV, and suddenly I realized like I couldn't really I couldn't really process what I was seeing. Like, I don't know how to describe it. I just I realized like I wasn't able to take in images. Yeah. And um then my vision started getting all starry. So it was almost like those little kaleidoscopes you look at through. Like that was my vision. And that went on for 30 minutes, and I'm like freaking the fuck out. Yeah, I'm like completely panicked. Yeah. I lay down, I try to meditate. Somehow I go back to normal. We did the turn it off, turn it on again, and somehow, but I'm terrified. I'm like, I don't know what the fuck just happened. I'm going to the hospital right now. So I go to the hospital and they check me out, and pretty soon after that, I'm getting whisked in that night. I think I was 12 hours straight of just doctor after doctor after doctor after doctor, you know, the neurologist, the cardiologist. Like at one point there was literally like a line of doctors out outside of my room. And they didn't tell me at the time, but what they had found was that the tumor had basically I was getting what's called superior vena cava syndrome. So there's a big vein from your brain down to your torso, and the tumor had pinched around that vein to where it was about 12% of the size it normally is, and a blood clot was forming. And so they didn't really again, they were very vague, but like they started chemotherapy on me like the day after.

SPEAKER_02 1:41:54

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 1:41:55

So they they had been, it felt like to me kind of fucking around to that point, like trying to figure out what it was, and we were at the point where like, this is gonna kill you if like we don't do something now. So they hit me with really what's called R eChop chemotherapy, which in the world of chemotherapy I've come to find out is it's not a joke, like it's heavy duty stuff, but it's not the heaviest stuff that they have, but it's pretty nasty. So they hit me with some pretty nasty stuff. Um, and then I went through five or six rounds of chemo. Um, they tapered it off a little bit at the end and told me I was in remission. Once they figured out it was hydrogen lens FOMO, they're like, okay, we've been treating this for 30 years. We can we can do this. Yeah, yeah. So that was my cancer.

SPEAKER_02 1:42:44

How um it was not a fun time.

SPEAKER_00 1:42:50

Like I said, zero out of ten. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:42:54

Um from the time you got the diagnosis to when you were officially in remission, what was that?

SPEAKER_00 1:43:05

I was diagnosed in late March, I want to say. March or April, somewhere in that time period, and I was in remission by late November.

SPEAKER_02 1:43:15

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 1:43:16

So by last year? This was last year. Okay. So by comparison to a lot of people, I had a pretty short run with cancer.

SPEAKER_01 1:43:23

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:43:24

And I think that's what hit me over and over and over every day, every moment, was just being in the hospital with other people realizing like I'm really lucky. Yeah. Like obviously this sucks, but like I'm really lucky. Yeah. We found it when it was stage two, not when it was stage three or four. And they showed me the scan, and I mean my body just lit up like a Christmas tree, like in my groin, in my shoulders, in my back, like everywhere. Yeah. And that's scary to see, but then you you meet people where they're you just have this look. You have this that moment of you know, where you're walking from hospital bed to hospital bed, and you you look at them and you know whatever they're going through is gnarly. Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:44:04

Man, how um so how did it feel like once you finish your treatment and you find out you're in remission? Like, is that a what's that feeling emotion like for you?

SPEAKER_00 1:44:19

I mean, obviously there's happiness, yeah, but I remember the day that I went to ring the bell, uh, you know, they have this whole ceremony thing. I had really, really big conflicting emotions because I was like, you know, like I made it through this thing, but it it feels kind of like I'm like spiking the football in the end zone. And there's a lot of people that don't get to do that. And I felt very conflicted. I think I still feel very conflicted. Um I think I have felt increasingly lost since then. I've felt kind of like walking through the kitchen and tripping over something and like I'm off balance and like I'm on my way to face planting, but I'm not. Like like everything in my life just feels off.

SPEAKER_03 1:45:09

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:45:10

Um but also grateful. I feel like I have a lot more gratitude towards a lot of things, things that I didn't want to do before. There's a little voice in the back of my head that's like, no, but you get to do that now. Like you get to go to the pharmacy. Yeah. You get to wake up next to your girlfriend, you get to not that I didn't want to do that before, but you you get to you get to do all these things. Yeah. And um then I think there's the best analogy I could describe the feeling right after is imagine you woke up one day from asleep and you're on a bus and you kind of recognize where you're going, but you don't really know. Like you're looking out the windows and you're going really fast, and the bus driver isn't telling you where you're going. Um and at a certain point you're like, Well, I'm just along for the ride here. And then all of a sudden they pull over with no warning, and they hit the air brakes and they hit the door, and they're like, Alright, get off. And you're like, what the fuck just happened? That's how my cancer journey has felt. Or, like, like I said, like it's just doctor after doctor and test after this after that, and you go through this period where you get into a state where you're like, okay, this is what's gonna happen next, and that's the outcome. And then the doctor is like, Whoa, we don't really have the answer. And you're like, What do you mean you don't have the answer? Like, I'm not used to that. Like, what but you go through three or four cycles of that, and you just get to a point where you're you just feel so shitty and you're so tired, and you're so just you don't have the emotional capital where you're like, All right, I guess this is next. Like, I guess that treatment didn't work, we'll do this one. I guess I gotta go to the appointment and get this needle or whatever, and and you just and then when that's over, you're just like what did I just go through? And I I don't know if I necess I mean I probably have some PTSD or whatever from it, but like I think the biggest thing is I'm just still kind of not sure what I just went through.

SPEAKER_02 1:47:16

Yeah, yeah. Um have you gone like since getting through this? Um have you gone back to therapy at all?

SPEAKER_00 1:47:28

Or like yeah, and I mean I I was in therapy when I came back after selling point carding. I I think I finally got to the point where I recognized like I probably need to be in therapy the rest of my life to a certain degree. Yeah, it helped me get through that period of really feeling worthless when I didn't have a job and believing that like I could keep trying because I didn't want to. Then when I got cancer, it helped me get through that to the point where honestly, my therapist and I, we would look at each other and be like, Why aren't you more upset? Like we were Eleanor. We were she talks a big game.

SPEAKER_02 1:48:08

She does, she really does, but she's uh all bark no bite.

SPEAKER_00 1:48:11

Yeah, our dog is too. Um, I mean, I I had I had a psychiatrist and two therapists, and and I would see them regularly. And honestly, I got to this point with all the medication and everything where like I was kind of chilling.

SPEAKER_02 1:48:28

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 1:48:28

Like you just it's just a roller coaster. Some days you have energy, some days you don't. Yeah, some days you feel great, some days you feel terrible, and you're just kind of you take it day by day. Yeah. Um now I have one therapist and one psychiatrist, and and um, you know, I I try to work on things every week. I've got a lot of things that I have to work on. I've made a lot of progress, but I have a long way to go. Yeah. You know, um, whether it's processing past relationships or current issues at work or current issues in my personal life, um, you know, I think it's it's something that I'm probably going to should do the rest of my life because tendencies from childhood or tendencies that I struggle with are things that I have to work at consistently. Um and I think earlier it was one of these things where therapy was kind of a band-aid and like something where it's like, oh, you feel sad now, do therapy for a while, oh you're feeling better, okay. You can wean yourself off of it. And I've gone through enough cycles now where I think, at least for myself, I recognize two things. One, I'm okay with being very public and admitting like I really struggle with my mental health, like, really struggle with it. It's a real problem for me, and I really have to work at it. And two, for the sake of other people around me as well as myself to keep myself alive, I need to do it.

SPEAKER_02 1:49:51

Yeah, yeah. You need pants? Okay, I'll help you because they're buried in your bed. One second.

SPEAKER_00 1:50:04

Kyle has this amazing little dog. Hi, Eleanor. Would you like to share with the podcast? You are so cute. I don't know if it's okay to pick her up or not, but she kind of she kind of wheeze.

SPEAKER_02 1:50:26

She's like, Yeah, no, she's done that since she was a pup. That's so funny. Yeah. She just wants to be loved. Um yeah, I appreciate the transparency with your mental health and it's not.

SPEAKER_00 1:50:43

I mean, that was kind of my goal is coming here. It Nate, he's like, don't hold back. Just like be on like I absolved that I was gonna be like very honest. Yeah with this.

SPEAKER_02 1:50:51

Yeah. No, it's I appreciate I it's super appreciated. Appreciated. Um I've I've been in therapy since 2021. Um still going. Not as much as I was. Um but yeah, it's uh Eleanor! Eleanor.

SPEAKER_00 1:51:17

There's a presence at the door.

SPEAKER_02 1:51:22

Eleanor. Eleanor. Um hey. We you're ten. Come on. You know.

SPEAKER_00 1:51:34

Our dog is the same. She's a I don't know what breed she is really, but she's a territory dog where you know if something's outside, she's gotta make sure everyone in the house knows.

SPEAKER_02 1:51:43

Yes. Yeah, she's the same. Um yeah, I've been in therapy since 2021. I haven't I was going for like two years every single Monday. Um, and then backed it down a little bit. Um, and then with all the changes the last couple years, it's been a little more tough financially to go. But luckily, my therapist, she's fucking she's so rad. There was when all my stuff happened, she was like, hey, don't worry about it. Like, I'll give you a I've it was a few sessions like on the house. She's like, You're I'm not like you need I'm not gonna deny you care um when you need help at this moment. So I was like, okay. And so I have had the same therapist, I think at this, I probably go maybe once a month now. Um but it I remember I got a diagnosis of uh very severe generalized anxiety, um uh severe social anxiety, and then uh mild PTSD, and I was like it made me feel a lot better just because like, oh, there's like is something, like I'm not just yeah, you know, making it up or like I think yeah, it was just it was it made me feel better to know okay, there is actually something here, I'm not crazy, and there's ways to not fix it because it's there forever, but like when those feelings do come up, like how like tools in place to try to navigate it to make it less uh challenging.

SPEAKER_00 1:53:24

I think for me it took me a long time to give myself the grace to admit that there was something wrong. I think for more than half of my life.

SPEAKER_02 1:53:36

There's a lot happening right now.

SPEAKER_00 1:53:38

There's a lot going on right now. I think I was the same when I was her age. When I was a kid, I would take cans and I would roll them in the floor. Oh, okay. I don't know why I wanted to do that, but that in addition to driving the little trolley like Eleanor.

SPEAKER_02 1:53:54

Eleanor.

SPEAKER_00 1:53:57

We are a long way from school candy studios right now. It's you know it's that was my expectation, Kyle. Gotta be honest.

SPEAKER_02 1:54:06

Yeah, sorry.

SPEAKER_00 1:54:07

No, I'm just giving a shit.

SPEAKER_02 1:54:09

Um you know what's so funny about that is I did that because Ryan, who was running that whole thing, he'd been wanting me to get over there for like a year, and it just wasn't working out. And then it weren't the whole thing with Britney, like it just the timing was just perfect. Yeah. Five days later, he texts me, hey, just so you know, um, everybody here got laid off and we've closed the studio down. I was like, oh.

SPEAKER_00 1:54:31

Makes this look a lot more attractive.

SPEAKER_02 1:54:33

I was like, all right then, I guess back to the dining room.

SPEAKER_00 1:54:38

So there's no more school candy?

SPEAKER_02 1:54:40

School candy. I mean, there's the the headphones, but yeah, they're still a thing, but like that whole like because they had this, it was a massive like creative space, podcast studio, a live event space, um, editing rooms, all this stuff. Um that's all they got rid of it, shut it down.

SPEAKER_00 1:54:56

Some accountant was like, no. Yeah, I guess this is la la land. No, thank you.

SPEAKER_02 1:55:01

Because they were like, it was all for free. Like anybody could come in and use the space for free. You just had to schedule it. And it I think they were using it as a way to like market their product. Sure. It didn't, I don't think it I don't know, but the ROI wasn't there. Yeah, I don't think so. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:55:17

Um Yeah, no, I appreciate you being candid about that. I mean, I I just I think it's it's something that I have I spent a lot of my life saying, oh, I'm just lazy, oh I'm just unmotivated, oh I'm just not good enough, oh I'm stupid. And those things to a certain extent are true. Like I am lazy, I do really stupid stuff, but I've had enough moments where everything else around me is going great, and I still just want to die. Yeah. And like I I can't you that happens enough to you, you can't reconcile it. And you have to just face and say, oh, well, something isn't right here. You know, is it medication? Is it therapy? Is it is it things in your head, you know. So um for me, I've I've had a very significant shift in my relationship to my mental health in in terms of finally I've noticed this thread with me. Like, someone can tell me 10 times, hey, don't do that. Hey, don't touch that electric fence. But like until I do it and shock myself, like I've gotta, for whatever reason, that's how I've gotta be. So it took a long time for me to recognize these people are here to help you, they're not here to attack you or threaten you. Yeah, you can trust them, and more to the point, when you go there, you should have something to talk about.

SPEAKER_03 1:56:41

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:56:42

Um, because that's one of the biggest struggles I struggle with, is you know, a lot of therapists, like you go there and like they ask about you know how things are going, and you're like, Oh, it's fine, and you like try to hide.

SPEAKER_03 1:56:50

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:56:50

Well and we do that so much in our day-to-day lives. Yeah. Um, but it's it's really changed for me. Yeah. Um, and I view it as a tool, I view it as something that allows me to take things that I'm not really sure how to work through, like cancer or relationships or my parents' mortality or whatever it is, and like start to chip away at it. Yeah. And yeah, I would say honestly, the biggest thing is just hearing myself actualize things, things that are in my head, and just getting them out into the universe or to someone else.

SPEAKER_02 1:57:23

Yeah. I feel that. I I was thinking about it the other day. I always joke that the best version of myself is like three beers deep, just with like a nice little buzz. I'm like a very happy, outgoing, like just very just like a really um life of the party. I yeah, I don't even know if life with the party is the right word, but just like freed up. Freed up, yeah, 100%. I'm not in my own head, I'm not like overthinking, like, oh, if I say this, is it the right thing to say at the right time? Or like is this the right wording? Like all that shit. Um and then I was also like so I was thinking about that, I always joke about that, but then I was like, is the other like same version of myself but sober is when I'm in therapy, like when I'm with my therapist. I walk out of there and I'm like, man, why can't I be like that outside of this room?

SPEAKER_00 1:58:14

It's a blessing and a curse for me, I think. Because like everyone at work is like, you overthink. You think too much. And I'm like, but like that's I I I'm just me. I turn myself on in the morning and this is it. Yeah. So I'm trying not to. I'm trying to be more of a sales guy where I just, you know, like just limit my brain. But yeah, then I go to therapy and I I want to look at the sun and the moon and the stars and the angle of this, and like I just so it's in some respects, like I wonder if it's a huge deficit to me. But I think I need an outlet. Yeah, you know, and like if I look at point guarding right, that was a huge outlet for things that I wasn't addressing. I turned myself and I leaned into my work and I worked obsessively to keep my mind off of how bad I was feeling. And I'll I do that now. I have a really unhealthy relationship with work, I I've gotten a lot better compared to a lot of people. And I I there's two schools of thought either figure out how to take your mind and not feed it and enable it, or do I just give it something to munch on? And it seems like when I'm the panda eating the mental bamboo, I'm happier. Yeah, so I I I I need something like that, I think. Yeah. That helps me get through the day, you know, some big picture thing that I can ponder on. Oh, I guess for me lately, it's you know, how do I dig us out of whatever hole we are in with a customer, or how do I put together these really complex suits or whatever it is.

SPEAKER_02 1:59:52

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:59:53

Um when was the last time you were in a cart and you drove last time I drove a cart was October of 24, I want to say. Okay. Um I'm more motivated to do carting now, but I'm on blood thinners and I still have some lingering symptoms. So whenever I can stop doing that, I hope to, but I really haven't been hitting the gym as much as I should be post-chemo. Um, I have a lot of moments like day-to-day getting around, getting up, everything I feel way better. But yeah, to do something like that, I I genuinely would have to go and train for three or four months just to be able to drive.

SPEAKER_02 2:00:32

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 2:00:34

Um I want to, but time and money and all the stuff. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 2:00:42

Um there's a few things at the end I ask everybody, but for before we get to that, is there anything else we didn't touch on you wanna you want to hit on right now?

SPEAKER_00 2:00:55

I mean, I think we went through a lot of the big stuff. Um I guess I just really am grateful that I am here and I'm able to talk about all this stuff.

SPEAKER_02 2:01:09

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 2:01:09

I feel like I've got it's been a cathartic exercise. Um, but I just hope that the evolution and the trending of mental health care that I've seen since I was a child to now continues to go in the right direction. I'm worried that it won't. Um, where depression, anxiety, PTSD are viewed as real illnesses with real effects on people. Yep. Um and we can move away from some of the stigma and some of the reasons that people don't have an open discourse about it. Um I I have a lot of frustration around that. Um it's very personal to me, obviously. Um so I hope that we can do that. Um I hope I can establish a good, healthy relationship with racing, which I'm still trying to do. Um and just continue to try and figure out what the hell I want to do. I'm I I'm genuinely lost. Like I don't know what I want to do at this point in my life. I I don't know. Um which I think I've been lost before, but I don't think I recognized my life didn't have so many dimensions to it like it does now. Yeah. And so I think in a way I just feel it much more now than I did before.

SPEAKER_02 2:02:27

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 2:02:28

So like what's next, I don't know.

SPEAKER_02 2:02:30

Yeah. I yeah. Um the mental health stigma thing. I I'll have to had you on Instagram, like my personal because I I when I started going to therapy, I asked my wife, I was like, I think I want to post about this on Instagram. Because coming from the dirt bike industry, it's a very like you know, tough, rugged. Pick your pick yourself up by your bootstraps, and like like mental health isn't like a real thing type of, you know. And um I struggled with it and I was like, I think I want to share. And so I started taking these elevator selfies because I'd have to like take an elevator to get to the third floor where she's at, and I would write these really long captions, just like, hey, I am going to see a therapist, and here's why, and just like sharing my journey over these last since 2021, and I still do it. And it's uh like doing the podcast, like even sharing those is a cathartic experience for me. And it's also like I told my wife, I'm like, Instagram is so full of bullshit and just fake. Like, oh look, I'm over here doing this cool thing and doing that cool thing. Like, I want to use this opportunity to like show what real life is like, however, like that's my idea of like showing, like, hey, life kind of sucks sometimes, and it's not it's not being on airplanes and traveling to cool places and doing cool things with cool people, like this is what like real life is. So, like I started doing that and I still do it in some people are like hey, you ever just like go work out? Like maybe try like doing something like that instead of this, yeah. But the overwhelming amount, which is funny because like I love to run, so like after we do this, I'm gonna load her up and go to the beach and we'll probably go do like a five-mile run. Like, I love to run. Cool. Uh, but um, the overwhelming response has been like a lot of people.

SPEAKER_00 2:04:41

Like, I started going to see a therapist because you started sharing this, and people that you and I know have started to go get help and you're hitting on something that I've tried to be more intentional about since point guarding moving out here is I don't go out of my way to make a big public spectacle about it, but like I'm not gonna hide how much I'm struggling and how much because I feel like in my own small way, being just very honest about that, and another reason why I wanted to do this is if it gets even one person to be like, Oh, like it's okay to not be okay. Yeah, or it's a like look at this person, not that I'm like super successful, but like look at this person that a lot of my friends will be like, Oh, I didn't know you were that unhappy. And I'll be like, Yeah, I'm really good at hiding it. I've had 15 years of being a functional person. Both things can be true, yeah. So I hope that other people that both want to live a full life and also struggle with these things can recognize that like you're talking about, like it's okay to deal with real life and also aspire to going and being on the beach or having the great life. Like people have problems. Yeah. And um, I'm just trying to deal with mine.

SPEAKER_02 2:06:06

Uh yeah, I feel that. Um yeah, there's a few things I ask every single guest at the very end um to wrap it up. We're kind of just on the spot questions. Um first thing, uh, do you see yourself as a realist, optimist, or a pessimist?

SPEAKER_00 2:06:28

Realist with shades of optimism, no. Okay. I come off as a pessimist initially, and I'm like, that's stupid. I hate that. But like my girlfriend's so good at calling me out. She's like, you just hate on stuff until you try it.

SPEAKER_01 2:06:40

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 2:06:41

And then immediately I'm like, oh, that's not so bad. Yeah. So I think realistically I'm somewhere in that spectrum.

SPEAKER_02 2:06:47

Okay. Um guilty pleasure.

SPEAKER_00 2:06:52

Netflix, Mexican food, carne saw fries. Okay. Sleep. Sleep. I'm a koala. Okay. If I could sleep 20 hours a day, I would, I would. I love sleep.

SPEAKER_02 2:07:03

It's like my wife. She would sleep all day if she could. Okay. Um does uh I know everyone always says San Diego has the best Mexican food. Is that is that true, would you say?

SPEAKER_00 2:07:19

I mean, I haven't tried every single place, but I'll say it's better than Colorado. Yeah for any of my friends that are listening that live in Colorado, sorry, you know. Um it does, but I mean, you know, the the best Mexican food is the stuff that makes you the happiest and that is going to feel the best. What's cool about San Diego is obviously we're so close to Mexico and there's different regions in Mexico. So you can go to a good restaurant and you can have the same dish, you know, whatever it is. And depending on who's cooking and where they're from, it can taste different. Yeah. Um I'm not the be-all end all person, but I am a total snob when it comes to my California burritos and things like that. I'm sufferable. Yeah. Yeah. I'm very critical.

SPEAKER_02 2:08:00

Um music, what are you into right now?

SPEAKER_00 2:08:06

Right now, for whatever reason, um, we have a so my girlfriend and I live in uh we rent a part of a house and we have a younger roommate. Um, it seemed like the day I turned 32, I've just realized that like every day I get smacked in the face that like I'm old now. Um but she went to a concert, uh, Baby No Money recently. So I've been listening to him. Okay. Um I don't know if I like him, but that's been I don't know if necessarily into it, but that's been in the back of my head. In terms of what I'm into, I think I'm now again kind of getting to be an old head where like I like what I like and I listen to what I listen to, and yeah, I don't listen to as much music as I'd like to. I like Daft Punk, I like uh really my first band that I really like was The White Stripes, uh a lot of a lot of 90s gangster rap, um pretty much anything other than like country country I'm into. Yeah, you can put it in front of me and I'll probably like it. Oh, uh but the the actually the correct answer is is Taylor Swift. Um I love Taylor. Taylor is a god, Taylor can do no wrong. Um and uh honestly, so I didn't really realize this. My girlfriend said, You knew this when we started dating. Um I didn't. Um there is a religion around Taylor, so I I end up spending a lot of time listening to Taylor Swift. I am a fan of her music, genuinely. I'm not blinking twice. Um, but I don't know if she's my favorite, but I end up listening to her a lot. Um so I guess Taylor Swift too.

SPEAKER_02 2:09:42

That's fair.

SPEAKER_00 2:09:43

What I've tried to point out to my girlfriend was like, well, a lot of the music and the influence that Taylor has, like, there's all these other artists that we should probably listen to. Yeah. You know, that like came before. But I I don't know. I'm one of those people that like likes certain songs but isn't like obsessed with a certain artist.

SPEAKER_02 2:10:00

Yeah, yeah. So I get that. Um and then last thing, if you'd have dinner with three people dead or alive, who would they be?

SPEAKER_00 2:10:09

I think one would definitely be Steve Lewis. Um so he's the former owner of the performance racing industry trade show. And um I've only had a handful of interactions with the guy, but he's been very influential in my life. My mom, maybe my dad. He's temperamental. Sometimes he might want to have dinner. Um Scott Williams, who is another great influence. Um, I'd like my girlfriend to be there just because whatever I do, I like her to do. Um it'd be really cool to sit down and have dinner with Mario Andretti someday, because I think that'd just be so cool. Yeah. You know? Yeah. I don't know. I could keep listing off people, but those are some people off the top of my head.

SPEAKER_02 2:10:53

Okay. He's unloading his truck, Bubba. I think we're gonna go go to the beach. Actually, you need to have some lunch. And then we'll go beach, go fast. Yeah, we are. We run, she says, go fast. Last time she was yelling at me, go faster, daddy.

SPEAKER_00 2:11:12

You can only go so fast. Can she keep up with you?

SPEAKER_02 2:11:15

No, I put her in the stroller. Oh. I have bring a Bluetooth and we put on I have a playlist.

SPEAKER_00 2:11:22

This shows how much not of a parent I am to be like, oh, can a two-year-old keep up running with you?

SPEAKER_02 2:11:26

It's it's to be fair. I had no experience with children until we had her, so I yeah, yeah. Yeah, I get it. Um fuck yeah, dude. That was a little over two hours. Cool. It was solid.

SPEAKER_03 2:11:38

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 2:11:39

We did it. We did it, yeah. Episode 46.

SPEAKER_00 2:11:44

You're in deep enough. You have a real podcast now because you don't know what episode it is.

SPEAKER_02 2:11:48

I know I had to think about that. There's 40 out, and then I'm like, my plan is to try to record like 10 episodes. So this is 46. I have like I think at least three more scheduled. Six. So I'm trying to get to 50, and then that way it gives me like 10 weeks of consistent stuff to just release. Yeah, yeah. So um, yeah, that's the that's the plan. Okay. So it's been fun like getting back into this because I didn't I think last year I only did like two or three, and then the year before, and like two.

SPEAKER_00 2:12:21

Yeah. Um yeah, you're doing it pretty consistently now from what I see.

SPEAKER_02 2:12:25

Yeah, so I'm like, it's been fun to like get back into it. It's a good like creative outlet for me too. Yeah. Like 'cause I still have I people are like, oh, you want to come like hop on a project and shoot this or do that? I'm like, fuck no.

SPEAKER_00 2:12:38

I haven't touched a camera in the cereal premise of what this podcast is about based on what I've picked up. So I'm I've been looking forward to this and I appreciate it.

SPEAKER_02 2:12:46

Yeah, no, thanks, dude. I'm stoked. This will be good. Um sweet.