How NASCAR Builds High-Performance Teams in Just 12 Seconds | Mike Metcalf Jr.

Welcome to the Legacy All-Stars Podcast. We feature inspirational stories from people who dedicate themselves to helping others. Here is your host, Alan Pavlosky.

All right, everybody. Welcome back to Legacy All-Stars Podcast, where we spotlight people using their success to leave the world a better place than they found it. I am super excited today because I had the recent pleasure of meeting this gentleman at a sports philanthropy world conference that both of us were a speaker at. And it was really exciting to hear him talk about what he does And what he's done. My guest today built his career at 190 miles an hour, literally. Mike Metcalf Jr. spent nearly 2 decades on NASCAR pit crews, working his way from crew member to world pit crew champion to head coach for teams like Chip Ganassi Racing and Trackhouse Racing. When Mike broke into the garage in 2006, he was one of the only Black, Latino, or Asian faces in the entire building, and he felt it. Instead of letting that experience close the door behind him, he spent the next 2 decades holding it open for others, mentoring young crew members and helping NASCAR build real pathways for people who don't always see themselves reflected in the sport. That same drive led Mike and fellow pit crew coach Sean Peet to co-found DECC Leadership, where they translate the discipline of 12-second pit stop into a framework Diversity, Efficiency, Culture, and Kindness that helps organizations build teams that actually last. Mike is also the co-author of the bestselling book, 12-Second Culture. Today, we're going to go beyond the pit box. We'll talk about what it means to lead with intention, why slowing down is sometimes the fastest way forward, and what Mike calls the daily arrival mindset. Mike, great to see you, man. Welcome to the show.

Thanks for having me. That's quite the intro. I was trying to make sure that Mike Metcalf was actually the guest today. I was like, man, whoever this guy is sounds great. Is

that me? Oh, man, your humility is infectious, but not necessary. I've seen all the great things you've done, so I'm excited to share you with my audience.

I'm glad to be here, Alan. Thanks.

Yeah. Take us back to 2006. What led a college football player from Appalachian State into the NASCAR pit crew of all places?

So there's 3 things kind of happening at the same time. One is wanting to stay in a professional sort of sporting environment. I mean, to me, college felt like a sports business. It's even much more so of one now with NIL and just the way it works. For sure. But I mean, it was training, it was traveling, it was teamwork. And man, I loved it. And I had 2 ACL tears. I kept training, wanting to be a professional. But things are— it's kind of hard to have the stats and playing time if you're recovering from knee injuries while everybody's getting ahead of you on the field for 2 years. So I kept training. I got an opportunity to go do a Work out for some professional teams, and the guy that trained me got hired by a race team to take over their pit crew. And that was sort of new at the time. Traditionally, the mechanics were responsible for pitting the race car. This was Ray Evernham's team. This is 2004 or '05. He started sort of flipping that model and saying, man, we, we're losing ability to find, you know, tenths of seconds of speed on the racetrack with motors, with aero, everything. The technology started making it easier for everybody to see what everybody else was doing. And so those margins for gain had to now become people. And so they started pulling in athletes. And so my knee surgeries, I was still athletic enough. I got a tryout for the team. I did really well. I wanted to do it maybe 5 years. I was a finance and banking major. Charlotte's a banking town. That's where I'm from. And so I thought, okay, maybe this would be something fun to do for maybe 5 years, get that professional sports itch, and then I'll go work for a bank. And then I'm still waiting on that whole go work for a bank thing to happen. I just—

Yeah.

I think that ship sailed at this point, 20 years later.

Yeah, that's so great. I personally had an— I've told you this. I personally had an opportunity to sit in a pit with the computer operators and watching as this was going on. And this was one of the most exhilarating things I've ever seen in the sports world. People don't understand just how incredibly fast and agile these pit crew members are. And I think it would be really great to explore this with you. Like, tell me more about how the pit works together and how the crew really interacts with each other to make this thing really hum.

So the thing that got me was right out of the gate. It was— I was like, you know, what does life look like for a pit crew? Because I didn't know anything about it. They're like, okay, well, we race on Sunday. Monday's sort of a debrief, you know, get your body back, maybe yoga, something like that. I'm like, okay. Tuesday, there's film review. You'd have a breakdown with your driver and crew chief. You've got to practice, maybe individual practice. There's a team practice Wednesday, Thursday. There's some workouts in there. There's some rehab stuff in there. There's car prep, getting everything loaded for the next week. And then you're out and doing it again next week. Oh, man, sounds just like football. There's film, practice, workouts, the whole— you got a trainer. So the flow of it was the same. In those practices, you're working on little things like the angle of your wrist for your angle that you're shooting the pit gun into the wheel. That can be the difference between a lug nut being tight or loose. And so it was all these little finite little Minuscule things that we were meticulously breaking down, looking at film, trying things, going out to the practice pad, changing it, going back, looking at it, studying it, just to find 2/10 of a second. My first few weeks, I'm like, why is everybody talking about tenths, tenths, tenths? What do we got to find tenths? We got to find tenths. Well, we get to the Daytona 500, my first race, 2/10 of a second is $1.1 million. And so I'm like, oh, OK. So that's why those tenths of a second matter. Yeah. Because there's money on the line, and there's pressure. And you've got 40 other people that are training, and prepping, and practicing just like you to beat you. And so now I'm saying, man, this is an incredible team environment. All of everything that we do each week matters. And it's— the driver is in the car. We're the only ones that touch it. So there's hundreds of people back at the shop. There's manufacturers back in Detroit, literally hundreds of people touching this car. And then it comes down to us being that final 5 or 6 on that crew that really get to decide whether we win or lose. But there was a lot of pressure. There's a lot of practice. It felt like home. I was like, man, this is for me.

Nice. You know, for the audience, if you get a chance— and we won't talk about this anymore today— but if you get a chance to watch some footage of a pit crew in action, do so. You will not regret it. And if you get a chance to see it in person, even better. But that's rare. So, Mike, you've talked about the fact that you were one of the only Black, Latino, or Asian faces in the garage when you started. Yeah. What was that first year like, and how did it make you feel?

I remember walking into Daytona. So I'd never been to a race, so I didn't know exactly what to expect. I did some YouTube and internet research, but as much as you could do in 2005, '06. Man, I get into Daytona, and we land, and we get to the track, and I'm just like, oh, man, I think I've made a mistake. I mean, it's Confederate flags everywhere. It is hundreds of thousands of people. Daytona is massive. And then once you're on the team, you hit the racetrack. You get in the garage, everybody hits the ground running. So you're just, all right, hey, go grab this, get this set up. All right, we got to get these tires over here. And it's like boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. I literally thought I'd made a mistake. And the worst part about that was, I mean, I had some friends, Black friends, that were just saying, what, NASCAR? No, dude, what are you doing? Like, that's not, that's not for us. Like, you're never gonna make it, you know? And these are friends that I still have to this day that were just like protective of me, right? Like, they're not trying to say that I can't push through hard things, but what they were just saying was like Hey, man, you're going to have some challenges. And I saw those challenges. I mean, even my literally first race weekend had some just interesting conversations. I could tell that there were some people that were happy to see diversity, happy to see athletes come in. There were some people that were very much so opposed to it. And some of those were people on other teams. And some of those were people that I would have to work with. And so I had to figure out, all right, what is the best lane for me to sort of stay in to where I'm learning, contributing, adding value? Because I would always come back to that. Yeah. If I'm making the car faster or if I'm helping her finish, that's more money. That's more bonuses. I don't care if they like me or not. They're going to appreciate my effort to the team. And so I really just focused in on, hey, how do I add value to making things better for everybody around me? And that was my focus. And it carried me through those first few years.

Yeah, absolutely. Sounded like Frederick Douglass over there. So listen, I wanted to recap something I heard you say. And we were at the Sports Philanthropy World Conference. And I heard you speak about chipping away at the stone. And I may be paraphrasing. But I would love for you to share that with the audience. Because what you're talking about with tenths, and with teamwork, and with preparation, and with getting an opportunity to get someplace where you were not really represented in the past, you talked about chipping away at that stone and how that really metaphorical representation worked for you. Can you share a little bit about that with our audience?

Yeah, yeah. So it's the Stonecutter's Creed, Jacob Riis. And it says, when nothing seems to work, I go and look at a stonecutter hammering away at a rock as much as 100 times with nothing to show for it. But I know that at that 101st blow, that rock's going to split in 2, not because of that blow, but because of all the blows that came before it. And I thought winning was going to be easy. The first year that I got in racing, I showed up. We had intention. The team was shifting to athletes. That was Kasey Kahne's breakout year. We won 6 races. Wow. I would spend the next several years not getting any wins at all. And so sometimes life can give us this sort of false narrative that success can come really easily, that things are going to just work out, that you can hammer away as much as 100 times, but you'll get something to show for it each swing. After that first year, and then even in college with the ACL tears, I mean, I'm learning, man. There are days you have to show up and convince yourself just to get there. Like, forget knocking it out of the park and crushing it and writing bestsellers and doubling your valuation of your business. Some days the win is just that you showed up. Right. And so to me, it's just that hammering away, man. There's nothing to show for it. But here's what you can rely on. The energy to swing. Okay, man, you're alive. That's a beautiful gift. Thank God. Do I have something to swing with? And that's your values, your core principles, man. I'm swinging with I'm going to bring value. I'm swinging with I'm going to be a good experience for people that I come in contact with. I'm swinging with I believe in who I am and that I have a purpose and a vision here and that it's going to pay off. And so if you keep swinging and you got the right how and you believe in what you're swinging in, eventually dedication, determination, A little bit of luck, man. Now you got something that split in two that you're really proud of. And so I'm really proud of the career I was able to have. But yeah, it took a lot of swinging away, a lot of mistakes, a lot of hard days, a lot of like, I don't know if this rock's breakable. And I think that's very normal. I was talking to somebody recently just saying, man, I think I've wanted to quit about every every good thing that's happened in my life. You know whether that's marriage, parenting, deck leadership, this business I'm running. I've certainly wanted to quit that multiple times. NASCAR. I had moments of like you know. Maybe I should just go get that banking job. But I kept going and kept swinging, and I've seen the success of it. And I'm not doing anything special other than just showing up and being consistent. And so I think if that's a takeaway for listeners, you know, just, just keep showing up. The way you show up matters, and it creates opportunities for other things, other magic to happen. But if you don't show up, don't give up, man, that rock's just going to sit there and keep looking at you.

Yeah, 100%, man. I love that. You know, you've also been recognized now by NASCAR for your work advancing diversity in the sport. What does that actually look like for you day to day?

So it really put some wind in my sails because it sort of came a little later. I kind of thought, man, I don't know if— same thing, Henry Waythe Rock— man, I don't know if they really appreciated what I was trying to do. And I know people feel that all the time. You know, it's like, man, I feel like I'm here, but I don't know that they appreciate or see the value I'm bringing. I'm working really hard. I really care about this. But to be acknowledged in front of my peers and just say, hey, you know, you've been a champion of diversity, of trying to open doors. I mean, there's definitely moments where I didn't necessarily feel welcome, but it was important for me to keep going because if I stopped, man, are they going to bring the next guy in because they think maybe he's not going to keep going either? You know? And so I, I was trying to be cognizant of who's coming behind me. And with that being said, man, it's grown from just trying to create opportunities with the teams I was working with to working with the head of inclusion for IndyCar, working with Mission 44, which is tapped into Formula 1 and run by Lewis Hamilton's foundation. Right now. And so working on some sort of global initiatives to just create more opportunities in motorsports is where this has come from, just from that wind in my sails, from being acknowledged by my peers saying, hey, no, actually, I know you get frustrated and maybe it's not happening. as quickly as you want, but what you're doing matters. Keep going.

I love that. Can you tell me about a moment when you saw someone else get the opportunity you had to fight for, and how did that make you feel? And were you proud of that moment for that person?

Yeah, incredibly proud. Incredibly proud. I probably wouldn't be able to talk too deeply about it without tearing up or anything, but I know that there are, there are people that are gonna not have it Maybe it's tough. Maybe their way in was easier. And some folks my era looked like, man, they didn't have to claw their way. And I'm like, good, you know, man, they can come in, they can get a fresh start. They don't have to spend the first 2 years trying to figure out if people like them or not, man. They can just focus on the craft. They can just work on the skills and the technique, and they can be better than I was, right? And so I'm seeing these guys and Couple ladies even come in and just do remarkable things. And I think that's what legacy is about. It's about leaving it better. Not easier, but better. Right. I don't care if it's easier. I want there to be challenge. They need to push themselves. But if they have more opportunities and can get to a— man, I started making $20,000 a year. I don't want anybody starting any job anywhere making $20,000 a year as a college graduate. You know what I mean? It was literally this. I just barely got in the door and then just tried to run with it. So for people to be able to come in, earn a salary that allows them to breathe and show up and not feel like they have to work a part-time job, which I did to sort of make ends meet while I was trying to learn and figure out how to make it in racing. Yeah, this is great.

Trailblazer, man. That's amazing. Let's move on and talk about from the pit. And let's move on to what deck leadership means to you. The 12-second pit stop is one of the most pressure-tested team performances in sports. What did that teach you about how teams actually function under stress?

Ooh, man. We don't have enough time for this question. But there's a couple of things that you think about. For example, I would try to do certain things like get people's heart rate before pit stop practices because fatigue and pressure sort of have the same function on the brain. And so I wanted to know, Under pressure, how you were going to respond. Well, it's no different than in a boardroom or in a team environment. Fatigue is something we all deal with. People don't get a good night's sleep. They got kids. They're stressed out about a report or something. They're going to feel pressure. They're going to respond different ways. All of it did was just teach me how to study people. And so I'm looking at nonverbal cues. I'm looking at energy. I'm looking at if somebody comes into a room, do people gather towards them or do they dissipate? I'm looking at all these sort of things that all buy into the chemistry of a team. I studied successful pit crews that have sort of— the ones that were really good when I first started, once I started coaching and training. And there were some commonalities. There was a mixture of old and young. There was a mixture of energy. There was a lot of different things that sort of went into what made those teams successful. And so I just tried to replicate So I would say more than anything, I'm just a student of studying success and then just trying to implicate it, you know, or replicate it. Yeah.

I mean, nothing new, right? It's all been said before. But you and I and other leaders being able to reframe that in our own terms to help other people gain access to that kind of impact is really important.

Yeah.

Walk us through the DEC framework. I really want to talk more about this: diversity, efficiency, culture, and kindness. Why those 4 words in that order?

Those 4 in that order because we were able to look back, sort of, you know, hindsight and say, man, it took us a couple years, but we were able to take pit crews that were middle of the pack and then just shoot to the top of the board. And we really put a lot of time and thought into like, what was our formula? So people started asking— this is how I started speaking. This is why we met. I'm a speaker now and an author and And I talk to people in teams. I work with businesses. Can you come talk to my team? OK, yeah, sure. What do you want me talking about? Well, your pit crews are incredible, and they weren't a few years ago. What did you do? And I'm like, I don't know. We practice. We do the same thing everybody else is doing. But on that real deep dive, it was diversity to start. It was just bringing in different views, different energy systems, personalities. We wanted to get a plethora of viewpoints on how to attack things. So we would have these big town hall meetings, and it wasn't just myself and Sean and a couple guys that were driving the direction. That was what every other pit crew was doing. We wanted 20 eyes on this issue and how do we solve it. And then it was efficiency. Hey, how do we eliminate waste and unnecessary steps in our processes, even in just how we talk and communicate? So we just started streamlining things and measuring out everything. All right, so the rear tire carrier has 56 movements. The front tire carrier has 58 movements. The jackman has 72. We just started itemizing all of it. All right, now which ones can we start and cut? And we wasn't trying to go from 72 to 50, it was just 72 to 71. What's one thing that we can do that can we eliminate? And so we just started finding those one things. And then even just in the efficiency of communication, efficiency is all about trust. And so it is very important that we only say things that we plan on backing up. And so if you're saying stuff just because it sounds good, that's not helpful. Like, let's communicate efficiently so that we know that when we do say something, it matters and it's meaningful. And so we really started to hone in on communicating. That led us to creating a culture and where people were excited about it. Man, I can actually trust these people here. We're not here just because we got to fill hours. We're here because we're doing something that matters. And then we're also going to embrace the other ideas. And if I can't figure something out, there might be somebody here that might be able to Help me get faster. If I get faster, we do better, we get more bonuses, I make more money. Man, this is all sounding pretty good. But the glue to that was, okay, that could lead to selfishness, that could lead to— so now there's that element of kindness that has to be super important. That, man, we got to be kind to ourselves because we're going to go fast and go hard. So we're going to make mistakes. If we're not kind to ourselves, if we're not learning how to take care of ourselves, we dang sure aren't going to be able to do it for others. And it's important that we take care of each other because we're going to win or lose as a team. And so So we just started thinking, it was like, man, all these words sort of started lining up and it was like, man, it was diversity, it was kind culture. Oh, deck. Let's just make a— this is our framework. This is our formula for speed. It was diversity, efficiency, plus kindness, plus culture. And so that's kind of how that was born. And unfortunately, I still get phone calls and emails about building decks for people's yards and boats. I always say, I can try. I don't know if you're going to like it or not. But that's the wrong business.

Wow, that's funny. You know, you talk about the importance of thinking about the end and taking intentional pit stops in life.

Yeah.

What does that mean in practice for a visionary who's used to moving fast?

Yeah, you know, it's— I spend a lot of time thinking about stuff like this just because, for example, like, I'm a dad. I got a 9 and a 6-year-old, and there's so many days where I'm playing with Legos at 4 o'clock when they get off school, or I'm doing things that are sort of counterintuitive to who I am or what I want to do or my ambition. But I know that I want to be mindful of what is 90-year-old me asking me to do right now. Right. Because at some point, all of this is going to be completely beyond me. It'll be 20, 30 years past, and all I'm going to have is memories or Or wishes of things that I have done. Am I doing those things now that's going to make 90-year-old me be like, yeah, hey, man, I'm so happy you sat on the floor and played with Legos instead of scheduling another meeting. I'm so happy you took that time to just go walk and sit with a friend who's going through a hard time instead of catching an earlier flight so you could get somewhere faster so you could do more networking. I struggle because I'm an entrepreneur and I'm a businessman. If I'm not working, then it's on me. So I need to be actively doing things to grow the business and the brand, but I don't want to do it at the expense of having memories or moments that I know actually bring me the true fulfillment that I'm going to want downstream. And so there's that tension of present and future. I think if it feels like you're seesawing, I think that's good. If you're like too one or the other, man, you're probably missing something now. Or you're going to be screwed later because you can't go back and get it. So it's just trying to live in a healthy tension of being mindful and being present.

Awesome. Tell me about the daily arrival mindset. How did you land on that?

Yeah, I started just studying, again, success. And so much of it started back to the creed of the stonecutter. It started with just starting. It started with people that showed up with energy. And, man, I could see it just carry them. This guy named He would just show up, he'd just like, let's go, like fired up to start the day. And 5:00, he's still fired up. So I start studying, I start researching, start looking at people, started to learn about rockets, how they work, how 70% of their fuel can be used in the first minute for a weeks-long journey. And it's like that thrust at the start really gives that whole journey a chance. And so, so many of us start so slow, we never really give ourselves a chance to get off the ground. And by the time we get to 11:00, o'clock, we've just been beat down by so many meetings and calls and emails. We just never feel like we're getting anywhere. So I just really thought, man, if we can show up with the mindset of, man, this is going to be a great day. It's just no different than how people buy a new car and then will start seeing that car as they're driving around. There's a reason for that. It's because your brain is being made aware of a decision that you've made. So it's like, I decided to get this car. Now my brain is finding And validating that decision. And so if the decision that I'm making to start the day is that this is going to be a good day, a fruitful day, I'm going to impact people, people are going to impact me, I'm going to learn, I'm going to fail, but I'm going to learn from those failings, I'm going to challenge myself and others, I'm going to grow. And I write some of those things down, maybe make 2 goals, like an easy win and then maybe a big win. And I get to go back and reflect on that. Now we got a little streak going, we're winning, goals are being checked off, and you really create momentum for yourself. I mean, we talk about it in sports. Oh, man, the momentum swing. Why don't we think about that for our own lives? We all have momentum and our stock's falling or rising every day, right? So let's do the hard part for ourselves to just try to create that base for it to go up every day. And I've seen it just create wins and wins and wins for people year after year.

All right. I'm going to ask you the most important question of the day. And you talked a little bit about your 9- and your 6-year-olds and playing Legos versus having a seesaw effect of being able to pursue your professional goals versus your personal goals. When you think about your own legacy, what do you hope it looks like 20 years from now or when you're 90, as you said?

I hope that I was able to manage that tension of being present but being mindful. I hope that— I mean, I really do hope that there is a female crew chief Team lead, principal, you know, in NASCAR, IndyCar, Formula 1. I'm hoping there's an F1, IndyCar, NASCAR competitive driver, IMSA, something like that. I'm hoping that there is awareness just in women, female, minority, Latino communities about all of the opportunities that exist in motorsports and just automation Because it's a huge industry and it's just one of those things where you sort of need to know about it in order to know that you can go be a mechanical engineer and then go work for Aston Martin and some of these iconic brands. I mean, they're looking for talented people every year. And so just creating some globalized STEM programs that people can learn about, just pathways into motorsports. And then I can be ambitious. I can push myself. I can go days at a time working and not eating and just focused on things. And so I'm hoping that my family and kids, you know, know that, man, Dad made some sacrifices, or Mike made some sacrifices to be— I know what he wanted to do. He wanted to be at a racetrack. He wanted to be working. But he put those things to the side just to be present. And so that's a goal. I don't know if I'm always doing it well, but I do want to have a legacy of, man, he was the busiest man that I ever met that always made time for us. If that would be cool, like something like that would be cool.

I love that, man. That would make a great epitaph. Not to talk about something morbid, but that would be awesome on a headstone, right?

Yeah, I think so.

All right, Mike, man, it's been so great talking to you that we've come to the end of the show. But I really want to thank you for reminding us that speed and intention aren't opposites, that the fastest teams, the fullest lives are built by people who know when to pit, When to reflect, and when to lead with kindness. Your journey from the garage to the boardroom is proof that opening doors for the next person is its own kind of legacy. For our listeners, we will include information on Mike's DEC leadership concept and his business and hiring him as a speaker if you think that's going to help your organization, which I can't imagine it wouldn't. We'll also leave links to 12-Second Culture, Mike's book. You can bring these principles into your team, and I'm just very grateful for you coming on the show, Mike. Thank you. Thank you.

Thank you. It's been a pleasure.

All right. I'm Alan Pavlosky signing off for Legacy All-Stars.