0118: Inspiring Automotive Enthusiasts™ with husband, father, keynote speaker, founder producer, CEO and Host of the Cars Yeah Podcast & TV Show Mark Greene​

Ea interviews, episode 118, inspiration, transformation, success stories and the imperfect action round. Seven days a week. Join Mario Ficcini for today's expert Authority Effect interview. Have you ever wanted to start a business? How about from the age 14? Pretty impressive, huh? Are you an automotive enthusiast? What if you could pursue your passion and not only speak on it to audiences and, and motivate them, but also race cars? What if you could parlay that into not just a podcast but a top ranked podcast with over 1400 episodes and a TV show. I'm excited to have Mark Green here with the Cars yeah show he's going to be sharing with you right after we thank our sponsor, Winning with Google in 2020. Of course you want to. I'd advise Google search advertising and YouTube specialist Rosh Sillers download the Winning with Google in 2020 guide at eainterviews.com forward slash roshtips. Here he is, ladies and gentlemen, Mr. Mark Green. Mark, how are you?

I'm doing great, Mario. Thank you so much for having me today. This is fun. This first time live for me. I'm in the editing world so I better not screw up.

Well, you got a TV show, it shouldn't be a big, big problem for you, but take us on a story because I know a little bit but I want to know even more. You've got a racing license, you've got your podcast, you've got the show. How, how did you even get into all of this? Take us back to when you were 14. Who starts a business in their teens?

Well, yeah, thanks for letting me share my story. I'll try to be as brief as possible. 14 was a long time ago for me so you know, I have always loved cars and when I was a kid I was trying to figure out a way to raise some money to buy a new surfboard. I grew up in Southern California, love to surf and my dad said, well, you know, go out and make some money. Well, my next door neighbor, his name was Mr. Swanser and he had just bought a brand new, it was 1974 brand new Mercedes 450 SL. And I went over and I said, Mr. Swancer, could I wash your car for you? And he said, yeah, sure. And he let me back it out of his driveway and put it in front of my house. I was 14, didn't have a driver's license. That in and of itself was pretty cool. Worked on that car all day, took it back to him and I said, well thank you. And I started to leave and he said how much do I owe you? I said, well, you're going to pay me. He said, well, I didn't expect you to wash my car for free. And a light bulb went on over my head. I could make money doing what I like, cleaning cars. That's really where it started. And I had a paper out at the time, so my dad helped me produce some flyers. I put them in my newspapers, and before you know it, the phone started ringing, and I had my own business and did that all the way through college. In fact, that paid for my college education, which I'm really proud to say. And even after I met my wife, we've been married 35 years now. I think I got that right. And even after we were married and I got a real job out of college, what I saw called a real job, but working for somebody else, I still continued to detail cars. Only the ones I liked, of course. And that helped us buy our first house, helped with the down payment. So that's where it all started. And in school, I studied graphic design and advertising, and I ended up getting a job out of college at an ad agency. And about six months in, I went to my boss and I said, how can I make more money? He said, well, you can be an executive and go out and bring work in. Like, go find clients. So three days a week I put on a designer sweater, and I was a creative guy. And two days a week I put on a suit. Now, this will date me. But there were no cell phones or Internet back then, So I had to drive downtown San Diego, go into high rises, knock on doors, cold call people to convince them that we could do graphic design and advertising for them. If you think cold calling is hard, doing it that way is really hard. You sometimes don't even know who you're asking for. And you got to get past that receptionist. But I did that for 11 years. And one of the accounts I landed was a company that was a startup at the time called Griot's Garage. They were a mail order catalog company. I thought I'd found the perfect client because I love cars. This guy was starting a business all about cars and products. And so I went up and met with him, landed that account, started doing that book, and after two years, he asked me to join him, and I did. Left my other business. He gave me a part of that business. And together I was. I was there 20 years. We helped build that business and to a very good size. I ended up being the president of the company the last four or five years, until I Left. So that's kind of the car journey for me. That takes us up to about five and a half years ago, six years ago, when I found myself at home trying to figure out what's the next chapter for Mark Green and what am I going to do? And it was a really hard time for us. My wife was in serious medical jeopardy. She had a tumor in her leg and had to have surgery. My dad had just broken his neck. He was 80 years old and needed help. My mother in law had just been diagnosed with cancer. So we got kind of the triple whammy in our family. Plus I had a son who was attending a very expensive school on the east coast and I had to pay for that. So the first time in my life I had money, only going out, not coming in, and I had to be home to help my wife because she couldn't even walk for four or five months. So while I was home, my son came home one weekend from school and I said, what am I going to do with myself? He said, dad, you've been taking me to car shows my whole life. What's the one thing I tease you about? You can't walk by a guy with a car without talking to him. Ask him about his car, ask him about his business. I used to race vintage cars, as you mentioned. I did that for 12 years. So I love going to vintage races and being around that group of people. And he said, why don't you do that for a living? I said, how do you make money doing that? That just costs money. He said, no. Have you ever heard of a thing called a podcast? I had never heard of a podcast. I had no idea what he was talking about. So I was home caring for my wife. I really couldn't go anywhere. So I started studying podcasting. You and I have an affiliation through John Lee Dumas, very successful podcaster. So I started following what he was doing and others. I started calling people and I built a business plan and I launched May 28, five and a half years ago, Cars. Yeah, Podcast. And that ramps us up to get to where we are today. That was 14, 20 something interviews. I mean, it's been a credible whirlwind. As you mentioned, I launched a TV show this year. It's before we go into the TV.

Show, let's unpack the podcast. And also when you started out, because you're sharing a lot of wisdom here. And I call them for my show expert authority insights and we make sure they're on the show notes page.

Cool.

When you realized you could get paid for the detailing.

What made you. What made you say, I want to turn this into a business versus this is nice. I'm going to go buy some candy and then just drop off and then just flop around to the other thing. Because there's two different personalities. Because I know people that say, well, I got paid to do this. I know what people. Even now, they've got businesses. And there's people that kick it with a stick and go, I'm going to go to the moon with this.

Right? It was my dad. My dad grew up in Texas on a farm when he was a kid. Farmers never take vacations. I remember my grandfather, the one time he drove from Texas to San Diego to visit us. He was going to stay for three days. And I said, grandpa, why are you only staying three days? He said, because the cows don't take vacations. Mark. I got to get back to work. So I learned a really strong work ethic from my dad. He had his own business. He was an architect. By the way, today is my dad's birthday. I lost him two and a half years ago, so it's kind of a special day for me to remember him. But I'm glad we're talking.

Happy birthday. But sorry to hear I also lost my dad. It's interesting, you say two and a half years ago, April 2017.

For me, May. Yeah, May was a May for me. Yeah. You know, and today's the day to celebrate him and what he taught me. And he did teach me. Incredible work ethic. He worked all the time. He worked very hard, but he loved what he did. He didn't want to be a farmer, didn't want to be a rancher. He wanted to be an architect, a designer, a painter, an artist. And so I watched how hard he worked, and I just learned that's what you do, you know, you just work hard and things will come to you. So for the car thing, all of a sudden, I could do what I loved. I liked washing cars, I liked detailing cars, and I liked being around really cool cars. I was lucky because I grew up in La Jolla, California, which is a very affluent part of San Diego. So I was surrounded by people with money and good cars. So I remember getting my bike and riding into downtown and putting business cards on all the cool cars. Only the cool ones, right? I didn't want to be doing any crony domestic cars. I was into sports cars, European sports cars in particular. So that's when it clicked in my head. And I'll tell you, I got to Be so busy that I had to hire people. And then I got to learn about hiring people and the challenges with that. People that didn't work as hard as you do. And how do you deal with that? How do you motivate them? How do you keep them engaged?

How do you motivate them and keep them engaged?

Well, first of all, and I've learned this much later, because when I worked at Grios for 20 years, I was responsible for hiring and firing people. Moved a business up here, then we moved half the business to Indiana, where we had a manufacturing facility for car care products. And I learned the hard way. And I've been mentoring some friends lately. It's funny you asked that, because I have a good friend who I've been mentoring. He's a young guy, he's a young CEO, and he's dealing with some issues with personnel and everything he shared with me, I said, let me just tell you what I did wrong. So you don't do that wrong. You find the right people, you hire the best people you can, you pay them as much as you can, and you let them do your. Their job. You don't micromanage, you don't look over their shoulder all the time, but you got to hire the right people, and you got to find people that love what you love, that want to do what you want to do, and that enjoy cars. And for me, finding just some young kid who knew how to wash a car but didn't really like doing it, I learned pretty quick those were not the teammates I wanted on my team.

You want to have them, to have some passion and share your excitement.

Of course. Yeah, yeah, exactly. And we'll get onto that. About my passion and how I interview passionate people and share their stories with other people so that we can inspire them as well.

So let's jump back up to the podcast because. And I appreciate you for sharing that, because.

One of the things I don't want to say, it's a challenge, it's a great opportunity. I have such successful people like yourself on the show. They're like, oh, I did this. And then, you know, I built a spaceship and went to the moon and went around back, and then I won the. And it's so nonchalant. It's like you just gave a small TED talk in about 35 seconds there. So I always like to dive deeper and go, okay. Because, I mean, even saying starting a business at 14, you could have just taken the money, did five or six, and been done with it, but you didn't you pursued it. So now we're coming back to starting the show. You knew nothing about podcasting, but you knew you wanted to do something, and your first question is, how? How do you make money with this? How do you monetize it, if you will? So how do you. It's similar question, different venue or avenue, whatever the word is. I'm not worried about details. How did you just. How did you not only start a podcast, but keep it going? I'm noticing a pattern here. 1400 plus episodes.

Persistence, tenacity, bullheadedness, unwillingness to quit. And many times I did want to quit. I just went, this is silly. Why am I doing this? And luckily, I married a wonderful woman, Jill, as I mentioned, and I've been married 35 years. She's very supportive. She's also a lot smarter than me. She's an engineer. We met in college. I was studying art and graphic design. She was studying engineering. But mom always said, marry a woman who's smarter than you and she'll keep you on your toes. And that definitely has happened. But for me, I loved the idea of what podcasting was doing for me. And I'll tell you a funny thing here, Mario. When I was working at griots, we had 60, 78,000 people that I was responsible for. 12, 14 managers reported to me. And I used to joke, my next job's not going to include any employees, because employees are a challenge. They teach you great things, but they are a challenge. My daughter manages a Nordstrom store, and she's always calling me about, how do I deal with this? How do I deal with this, dad? And she's young, she's 30 years old, but she manages a whole store full of people. It's like herding cats a lot of time or walking goldfish, as I used to say. So, yeah, you know, I wanted to do something for myself. I'd help two other people who had started businesses grow their businesses to be successful, added value to those businesses. I was rewarded quite well for them, and the experiences were, you couldn't buy those as an mba, but I wanted to do something for myself for a change and just give it a try. Luckily, I built a long Runway as far as saving and investing money, so I didn't have to worry about an income for a while, which is something I always tell people before they start their own business. How much money do you have saved up? None. You take. You go on the wrong path, pal. So if you do those things and prepare, and I'm a. I'm a Very, I'll say it, anal retentive nutcase. Everything's got to be perfect for me. I mean, when I wrote my business plan for my podcast, it was multi. Multi page is probably way too intense, way too detailed, but I wanted to cover every element of it. And I'm really proud to say I had a great guest on my show once, Denise McCluggage. She was a wonderful, inspiring woman who in the 50s, raced cars. No women were racing in the 50s. She became a journalist. We lost her a few years ago, but when she came on my show, I had asked her probably 20 plus times to be my guest on my show. I met her in person at car shows, at races, and she said to me, mark, you're the most persistent gentleman I've ever met. And you're polite on top of it, which is very rare. And I thought, well, that's very nice of you. But she said, you know, the reason I want to come on your show is because you have a passion for this, I can tell. And you want to share people's stories and you're giving other people's stories away for free. You're not charging for this message because she listened to some of my shows. So I like that. Politely persistent. So that's the key, I think, with anything, if you want to be good. You've done how many shows now, Mario? 80 plus shows?

I believe over a hundred.

A hundred. Congratulations. I mean, that's no small feat. And what you're doing is way more complex than what I do.

We use the word fun not to scare people.

Well, yeah, it's fun as well, you know, but you've got a face for video. Me, I've got a face for podcasting. So, you know, you make it look really easy and really simple. But I realize the work that's involved, it's very intense. But I've said that to many, many people I've mentored is find what you want to do and just work really hard at it and realize it's going to take a lot of work. This isn't simple, it isn't easy. But if you just stick with it, good things will happen. And sometimes it won't be what you want. It's kind of like that visual image of a iceberg where the top is sticking out and that's your success. But the bottom of the berg is where all the guts and blood and, you know, sweat went into it. And all the things that you don't want to show everybody because they think we're just perfect at Everything, Right. So, yeah, yeah.

One of the things I did, even as far back as high school was go on to IMDb, the international movie Database, and if you, whenever it was like, wow, oh, that person's a cool actor. And we hear about them for the first time and it seems like now all of a sudden they're in every single movie for this one to two year run before they blow up. I'd always go back and be like, yep, he's been doing it for 11 years, she's been doing it for 16, eight. I don't think there was really any less than nine or 10. Most of it was 14, 16, 18. You know, they've done 38 other movies we didn't hear about and, you know, now it's an overnight.

Oh, yeah, absolutely. Well, I'm part of that IMDb, I've got my show there and I was just this weekend going in and trying to figure out how I could make it look better and make myself look better and so forth. So, yeah, none of this is simple. But you know what? If you're doing what you love and if you're careful and you're smart and you surround yourself with really great people, you'll get there. You really will. It'll happen.

So I always ask, what's been the biggest transformation, you know, what's been the biggest transformation from starting your show? And I'm curious if it's the one I think it is from starting Cars. Yeah. What's been the biggest transformation you've been able to have?

Well, you're probably going to think the TV show. I was. Yeah. And the TV show has been very interesting. We could talk ad nauseam about that, but I'll try to condense it down. Because I was originally approached by a major network. One of their executives listens to my podcast. He called me one day and said, I think your show would make a great TV show. I said, who is this mom?

And he said, no, I'm serious. And so he said, if you think that will work, go out and shoot what they call a sizzle reel. An example, I never heard the term sizzle reel. And so I had to figure out how to do that. Found some people that had shot TV shows, so spent a little bit of money and did that and showed them and they said, this is great. And we were on track. We were about to sign contracts. I was going, I'm going to be on tv. Wow, mom, call mom. Right? And then all of a sudden it went quiet. Nobody was answering my phone calls. Nobody was Returning my phone calls, I'm like, what is going on? And probably four or five months went by and I thought, I guess they don't like me anymore. Nobody even calls me back. What I didn't know and I found out later was that major network was being disbanded and a new network was coming in. So my executive had been fired, all the people had been fired, and a whole new group was coming in and they had their own ideas of what should be on tv, which didn't include cars. Yeah. So you go from being a possible wow to, you know, now you know why movie stars drink and use drugs so heavily. Because their life is just a disaster.

It's a giant roller coaster.

It's horrible. You got to have pretty thick skin to deal with that. So, long story short, I decided to take another route. We ended up talking to mavtd M A D td. They're an all car network, a smaller network, they're on DirecTV network. So it's if you have Direct TV, which is pretty big, you can find cars. Yeah. They gave me a platform, but I had to go out and raise the money to produce my own show. So now you're back to cold calling, dialing for dollars. Hi, I'm Mark Green. I'm a really nice guy. Send me a lot of money so I can have a TV show. Hello? Hello? They hung up. It's tough. It's really tough. But we did it. We raised a bunch of Money. We did 13 episodes season one. We also got picked up by Lucas Oil Racing Television, where you. Which is cool. Well, here's the deal. Lucas Oil Racing is owned by Forest Lucas. He's a billionaire oil man. He also owns MAV TV network so they're all integrated, but it put us out there so people could see us. So now we're working on season two, but this time we're doing some things a little bit differently. And once I get all that done and happening, I can share that with my audience. It is not easy. If you think podcasting is a lot of work tv, because now you got the complexities of, well, you know, you've been in the industry, you got to hire a crew, you got to go on location. It's very expensive to do television.

And so how did you get the first, were you cold calling? Did you send out emails, text? How did you get raise the money to initially get it off the ground?

I started first calling my sponsors that were my sponsors on my podcast and saying, here's an opportunity, can you help me? Work with me Be my partner. Some of them could. Some of them, the timing was not right. But you just start calling people, that's all you can do.

And there's another tip I hear in there. It's start with the people you already have the contacts with.

Oh sure, yeah, they're the first ones. Cause they already believe in you. And they look at the fact. Because here's the deal with network television. You have to deliver shows. There's a lot of people that say they can do TV, but can they deliver 13 episodes? That's not easy to do. And then you got to tell your sponsors, how am I going to promote you within these shows? You can have a commercial, we can integrate product, which is what we did in many cases. In some cases, two of my major sponsors, we went and shot shows at their facility. So now they've got their own TV show. They love that, right? Because these shows have been rerunning all summer long. My show runs three times a week on MAV tv so you can watch me Saturday mornings, Thursday mornings you'd have to DVR it because it's pretty early in the morning. I don't have a prime time spot, but I have a show and I'm there. So now pitching new people, I can say, go and watch the show. I have a Vimeo page I can send people to. So it's again, we're back to the same thing, Mario. Hard work, you know, just keep working. Convince people that you're a good spokesperson, a good partner for them. Because these days just to say send me money for a commercial is not enough. You need to do a lot more for people.

So how did you position it when you were calling them? If they're an existing sponsor and they're already paying for spots on your podcast, how did you position it as far as, hey, we're looking to raise X amount, what did they get for it?

Much larger exposure, bigger audiences. Because television has a much bigger audience. So that was something. Although I didn't know what the audience was going to be, but I figured it was going to be bigger so.

There was more visibility.

More visibility. And then how do we integrate those products into the show? And in the case of two of my major sponsors, which were Covercraft and Edelbrock, how about if I come and do a show at your facility and give you a 30 minute TV show for free? Well, not really for free because they were writing a check, but for little bit of money compared to what they would get to do their own TV show. Right? So yeah, it's just it's constant working with people, and it's like racing these days. Race car drivers can't just come to a team and say, I'll drive. They've got to bring sponsors. They've got to convince sponsors they're a good spokesperson for them. It's become a whole different business. And that's a lot of what you and I do. I mean, it's a whole different business. We've got to convince people that we're their partner, we're their promoter, we're an inspirer. We're. We use their products, we like their products. And that's why the people that follow us should do the same.

See, that's why I like sales and marketing and love helping companies and entrepreneurs with it, because it's the one thing every company needs. And frankly, it is a lot of fun because you get to talk about all the good stuff. If you're trying to sell this microphone or that cup you got there, it's like, let me tell you, all the good stuff and all the benefits of it. It's not the hard work, it's the fun part. And a lot of people don't realize it. With publishing, they go, I want to get traditionally published. And I keep hearing all these stories. It takes 18 months. And, you know, they'll help you edit the book. You can get anyone to help you do that, really. But you still have to do all the promotion. They think just because you're going to go with xyz, they're magically going to make you Oprah overnight or something.

Right.

And it's not the case. You still have to. They help, by all means. They have their place. But it's still, what would you say, 70, 80% on you?

60. Oh, at least. I've interviewed hundreds of authors on my podcast. I just communicated with one this morning, Sean Kridlin. He's been on my show several times. He's written some wonderful books. One was about Hurley Heywood, a famous endurance racer. He's doing a new book right now, and, yeah, these books take a year or more to write, and then he's got to go on the road to all these car events and sit in a little booth with a stack of books and maybe with the person he writes about and sign them. And you got to do that every weekend on your dime to get this book sold. Books are tough. I've had people say, mark, why don't you write a book about all the things you've learned? I'm like, no, no, thank you. I'M not that crazy. Maybe someday when I've got more time. But books are very hard. They're really, really hard to make money at. We can't all be a Harry Potter author. That's an anomaly.

Talk to me about speaking. What's that done for your business?

It's helped me in many, many ways. You know, anytime you get a chance to be like today, out in front of people and talk is a good thing. Because it's typically this. I heard once that people would rather die than get in front of an audience and speak, which sounds bizarre to me. As my wife would say, I have no problem talking to people. But what it's helped me is get me out in front of people. And it all started several years ago when one of my past podcast guests, who is a CEO of a car manufacturing parts company, high Performance apr, he said, mark, would you come to our annual event where we bring all of our vendors in, all the people who buy our products from us, and give a motivational speech? We got about 400 people coming from all over the world. We're going to do a track day. You can drive our race cars. I said, yeah, that'd be great. And I didn't think he was going to pay me. Now, if he's listening to this, I'm thinking, okay, when do you want me there? And he said, well, what's it going to cost?

Oh, let me think about that. So I hang up the phone, I go, this guy's going to pay me to come and talk. Holy cow. This is like dream come true. It's like Mr. Swanson with the Mercedes. He's going to pay me to do something I like to do. So we worked out a deal. They flew me there, I spent four days with them. They had two groups come in. I gave two talks. Got to drive race cars at a track, got to have fun, got to see the manufacturing side of a business, which is a lot of what I was doing. When I worked at Grios, we were manufacturing products. So I know how that works, importing goods from Europe and so forth. And then I thought, okay, well, now I've done this, now I can work off that and tell other people. And so. And I haven't really promoted it a lot. It's very kind of just quiet word of mouth. But I just spoke at a Porsche Club event couple weeks ago, which is really cool. They paid me a little bit to see it wasn't as big of a group of people. I'm going to be at the annual Porsche Club event this year I've done some other keynotes. I've been working with other organizations like Concord Events. I'm about to go to Dubai in December and give a talk at a Concord event in Dubai. Wow, that's pretty darn cool. So the speaking is just. It helps you get yourself out there in front of people. It's. It doesn't make you a fortune, but it can make you a nice little chunk of money on the side and it gets you to places. You get to physically go to some really cool places.

It's kind of fun. When you're going, I would do this for free. Like when you're going to get to drive the race cars, they're going to fly me out.

Yeah, edit that part out, would you? Now I'm in trouble.

It's fun because you have the passion for it and you're like me, you would do it either way. But when they go, hey, there's going to be this extra little bit in here, it's like, well, this doesn't suck.

Oh, no, it's fantastic. And yeah, now if I could just get somebody to pay me to go vintage racing so I could get back in a car, that would be pretty cool, too.

But keep speaking it. Someone's going to hear this and go, you know what? Let's have them out.

Yeah, yeah. Who knows? Who knows? So I think that that's something that could happen. We'll see.

So what's something you've always wanted to do that you're still aiming for?

Oh, gosh.

Well, I think just get better at what I'm doing. Just continual improvement. I go back and listen to old shows that I did at the beginning and I just go, oh, my gosh. I don't know why anybody was listening to me. And then I think, well, in another five years, what will my shows today sound like? Will I say the same thing? Probably because I'll just continue to get better. So it's constant improvement. I think it's that old Japanese kaizen sharpening of the saw. How do you keep improving yourself? How do you keep exploring new things? I was just sitting here this week thinking about next year. Because I'm so busy all the time. I don't sometimes stop and think about the future. Now. I used to do it in the businesses that I ran. You have to do planning, you have to get all your managers get their budgets together. You have to have meetings, you have to talk about how are we going to grow the business more next year? What areas are we going to trim? Are we going to fatten up. But I haven't been very good about that with myself. So the other day I was sitting and just spending some time thinking about that and asking myself that same question. What have I not done yet? What do I want to do more of? And I think going to more events and speaking more would be one thing I'd like to do more of because I love getting out amongst people and talking with people, that kind of thing. So I would say that's probably one of the key things right now. Of course, the TV show, we need to get financing done for season two. I want to see that continue. And I just presented some networks with a whole new idea for a second TV show that I'm really excited about. Can't talk about it yet, but I'm really excited about that because if that can happen to me, it would almost supersede the show I'm doing now. I'd like to do both. But this one I think is a lot more exciting. So we'll see where we go with this.

Well, you definitely got that sales and marketing down. You tease us with it, then say you can't talk about it.

Not yet. I'm sorry. Nope, not yet.

Do you have a site we can sign up to, be notified when it's available?

Well, I'll tell you, and I'm glad you asked that if you just go to my website you can click on my free book button. Just go to Carsia.com and there's a little red box that flies in says free book and I'll send you my what I call my filler up book. I love photography and everything you see from me on my social media, my website, I've shot all those pictures and so I love you finding you do have great photos. Well, thanks. Thanks. I wear an Instagram of course that's kind of the photo place. But I love details of classic cars and I started shooting gas filler caps. Now I know from non enthusiasts are going to go, how boring is that? Well, if you look at some old French cars and English cars, even American cars, race cars, their gas filler caps are very unique, very elegant. So I created a book that I call Filler up because my whole philosophy in life is it's half full, not half empty. The gas tank's always half full. Life is always full, always filler up. And then I laced in some quotes from some of my guests on my podcast into this ebook. So if you click there, then you'll get my daily blog like every Tuesday. Today's Tuesday, my blog went out. You can read it in a minute. It's very inspirational. But you'll be on my mailing list as well, which includes a weekly recap of that week's guests. And that's where I announce things that I'm doing. And of course, if you follow me on social media, two Facebook pages, Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn. I'm getting more and more active on LinkedIn. I think that's a really nice platform that a lot of people ignore that I think they need to be paying attention to.

Especially for business.

Oh, yeah.

Especially for business.

I'll tell you, Mario, this morning alone, I got four messages from my LinkedIn post from yesterday from people who want to be on my show. I'm finally at the point where I don't have to chase as many people. People are coming to me that want to be on my show, which is really nice when you're trying to do five shows a week.

It's a nice feeling, isn't it?

It is. It's good. You feel loved, right?

I set a goal to have that problem because I totally get it. And I remember when John goes, I get 400 requests a month. And I'm like, oh, let's get there. That just seems fun.

Yeah. Well, here's the deal. My whole philosophy, and we touched on a little bit my mantra, inspiring automotive enthusiasts has a double entendre. I want to inspire automotive enthusiasts by talking to inspirational automotive enthusiasts to convince people that if you're not doing what you love, if you love cars, but you're not doing that for a living, there are now 1400 plus people you can listen to who've figured it out on the Cars. Yeah. Podcast. And I'll tell you where that came from. I used to do a thing on Thursday night calls, Boys Night out, when I was working at Brio's. And a good friend of mine, Bill, used to come over. He's a neurosurgeon, this guy, I put him on a very high pedestal. He's a very sharp guy. And one night he said, I wish I could do what you do every day. And I said, what do you mean? He said, well, you don't work around cars all day. I love cars. I'm just waiting to the day I can retire and play in my garage all day. And I said, bill, you save people's lives. He's a pediatric neurosurgeon. You save babies lives. What are you talking about? And he said, yeah, but I'm just a mechanic. Crack open a skull, I go in and fix it and I leave. But what you're doing is what you love. And he said, not that I don't love what I do, I do, I'm passionate about it, but I like cars. That's what I really want to do. So I've never forgotten that because I've talked to so many people now that and people that I mentor young people that haven't figured out what they want to do, but they love cars. And I'm part of this group called RPM foundation where we're trying to help young people realize that there are viable jobs in the automotive sector that you don't have to have a four year degree to go do. There's a whole group of these mechanics, restoration people that need people to fill these old guys that are starting to retire out. And there's really wonderful jobs in that sector. So RPM foundation, we help that. I'm a spokesperson for them, I go to their meetings, I help them. Same with Techforce. Just had the president CEO of Techforce on. That's another group that helps young people find viable, very high paying jobs in the sector of automotive repair and any kind of service repair that used to be looked at as kind of bad blue collar jobs. But these jobs can become your own business. You can end up being a restorer, a painter, a fabricator. I've had hundreds of these people on my show that have figured out how to make very good careers out of restoring and building cars, custom cars. Some of them become incredibly famous and very successful. Rod Emery builds 356 Porsche Outlaw cars. John Wilhoyt builds wonderful restoration. Bruce Canapa, one of the best restorers in the world. Phil Riley These guys have really real viable careers and they love cars and they get to be around them all day long. So just substitute anything for cars if you like boats, golf. I helped a guy start a podcast called Golf. Yeah, he wanted to figure out how to have a podcast and so he hired me to help mentor him and teach him. So every week we had a three hour meeting and I got his podcast up to speed, much faster than he would have the way I did it, which was just trying to figure it out by watching a thousand YouTube videos. Now John Lee Dumas site helped me quite a bit. Got me way ahead. But yeah, so you know, you can do what you love, but you need to talk to people who've done it. And what I'm doing is providing a platform for thousands of people eventually to talk about what they've done and be successful.

I'm really happy I'm glad that you are, because ever since we got connected in podcasters paradise, it's just been fun watching you and it's really a treat for me having you here because I get to learn a little bit more about the backstory, too. And also, and I mean, you do have great photography. I've been watching what you're doing, and it's just inspiring. 1400 episodes. I was all excited about my hundred, but, you know, I'm just getting started with this. So I got one more question before we thank our sponsor, and that is we're talking about cars. I got a couple of favorites. I'm sure you do. And what has been your absolute. Let's do a couple of them. I'm sure it's not just one, but what are some of your favorite cars?

Well, I love Porsches. They're probably the mark of choice for me. I love German sports cars. I always have. I've had many BMW M3s. I have one now. I've had many Porsche 911. I have one of those now as well. So I would say Porsche is my favorite mark. And, you know, I asked all my guests and I'm going to ask you this question, Mario. I asked all my guests at the end of my talk. I call it my real doozy of a question. Okay, you ready? Today I'm going to buy you a car, Mario. Any collector car. If you want a supercar as a daily driver. But any collector car, something special to drive on nice sunny days, I'm going to park it in your garage. But here are my rules. You can't sell it to buy a bunch of other cars with. So if you pick a Ferrari GTO, you and sell it for 70 million bucks. That doesn't work here. That's what I would do if someone gave me a Ferrari gto and think about how could I invest that money. Also, I don't want you to just park it. I want you to drive it. But it's the only one cool car you can have. So what can I buy Mario today?

So can I have two?

No, you can't have two.

So there's one on the tip of my tongue and I actually have it. It's been framed since high school, but. Oh, and here's. Here's the other thing. When you said vintage, what timeline are we talking about? Well, vintage now is like, I could go back. I'm not going to date myself and say when I was in high school. But some people might say that's vintage. But I think in what's your reference?

Well, reference for me, vintage is probably 70s or older, but the key here is a fun, cool toy car. So if you want a Pagani as a cool toy car, I'll buy you a Pagani. Okay. But if you want a 1958 Porsche Speedster or a 550 Spider or 300 SL Gullwing, I'll buy you those, too. The key is something special that you can go out and go, I'm gonna go have a nice drive in the sunshine today.

So as much as I want to say black and yellow Lamborghini, that would be more of the newer one, I'm gonna have to go with the one that's framed. The McLaren F1 194.

Oh, okay. Nice choice, my friend. You are not a cheap date, I'll tell you that much. Those are very expensive cars, but they're very, very cool cars, Very special cars. So I'd be happy to buy you one of those in any color that you want. That would be pretty cool. Nice.

I'm conflicted on the color. I like the one I have framed since high school is the silver one, the classic. And I know it's got the gold under the hood and all of that, which. Which is interesting, but I kind of like the silver or black. I mean, it's just. It's.

It's.

It was one I get in a bright yellow. The Lamborghini tinted black windows with the yellow. Like this. Absolutely.

Yeah. Like a new Aventador or something like that. But, you know, the F1, I got to go to the McLaren factory when they were building those cars, because I was importing FICOM tools at the time. And Falcombe was a major supplier to McLaren, their F1 racing. And they even had a little compartment in those cars where they had their own select set of FICOM tools. Fulcombe is a French tool maker. I used to import those into the US they're not imported anymore because Stanley bought the company and they kind of cut that off. But the F1 is a very special car, a very unique car. I've never been able to drive one. I'd love to. Someday maybe somebody will let me jump in the seat and take it on a driver on the track. But that's a pretty cool car, so. Nice choice. I'm impressed. Thank you. Very cool.

I also like the three seat configuration with the center driving.

Yeah, exactly. Yeah. My son used to go to pebble beach every year with me to the Pebble Beach Concord during car week. Best week on the planet. If you're a car person is to go down to Monterey, pebble beach. And a guy had just driven his into pebble beach, parked in front of the lodge in a silver one that he had driven from Colorado covered in bugs. I'm like, you are my hero. Because most of those cars never get taken out anymore these days, you know, they're so, so valuable. One just sold for multiples of millions and millions of dollars. 17 million or something like that. So they're very expensive. Like I said, you're not a cheap date, Mario. But I'm happy to park that car in here.

I'm just wondering if that one would be cheaper than the Maybach Exelero where they made one, and it's like 8.1 million.

No, the McLaren's more expensive. Okay. Yeah, you don't want a Maybach. You want a McLaren. Yeah, you're way too slick of a guy for a Maybach. Yeah, that's for old people.

They're nice, though.

Well, of course they are. Yeah. But no, you don't want one of those. Maybe a Bugatti Sharon or something like that. But no, I think. I think you picked.

Yes, absolutely to that, too.

Yeah. Yeah, that would be really nice. So I think you're. I picked a good car. But, you know, that question is a question that every car person asks themselves. If I could have one car of my dreams. I had a guest on my show that I had to ask that question to. He's got over 570 cars in his collection. His garage is over three acres. Big one building. Three acres with all these cars. But he was able to pick one. Yeah, he still had one if he only had to have one. So. Yeah.

Was it a spaceship? I was 570 cars.

What.

Do you remember what his was?

You know, I don't, but his name's Steven Plaster, a very successful businessman. He and his wife Amy let me do something this summer at pebble beach that I've never done before. I've been going for 31 years. They let me ride in their 1913 Rolls Royce on the tour. So I spent the day in a 1913 Rolls Royce. If you go to my website, my Facebook page, you'll see it's the main picture there of me waving from the yellow Rolls Royce. I. That's a day I'll never forget.

That sounds like fun. When I was working with the auto show in Lexus, I had my pass. And I'm also into photography. I went over to the Lamborghinis, the Ferrari, all the ones you weren't allowed to go into. I just walked up to them and I, I went in the Rolls and was taking some dash pictures and they're beautiful. They're absolutely beautiful. But I have a question for you about Lykin. Hypersport.

Hypersport. Now I'm. Oh, the lichen. Oh, what about it?

Have you ever been in one of those or been around one?

No, I have not. No. What do you like about that car?

It's just obnoxious.

When you go to Dubai you might see some. They're very. I don't even know how many they have, but it was the red one in the Fast and Furious movie.

Oh, okay.

That they drove out of about an 80 story building into the next one.

Good CG there.

Yeah, it's a 3, 4, 5 million dollar car. And I think they're all hand built, custom. I mean it was just to my knowledge, it just represents like there's already these great ones out there. But we want to be the best. What can we do to like to the point, you know, always improve. It's not like Lamborghinis and Ferraris are bad cars, especially the Enzo. But how can you improve on it? And when you go, well, what if you take the budget out of it? Well now you can have some real fun. And that's basically what they designed.

Yeah. You know, some of those hypercars, super select one offs they build, a couple of them are pretty incredible cars. But you know what I call those cars? Some people maybe get a little upset with me. I call them one hour cars. Because when you go out and drive them, there's really nowhere you can drive them to their potential except on a racetrack. And most people that can afford a 4, 6, 8, 10 million dollar car probably is not going to drive the car on a racetrack. So I call them one hour cars. You take them out, you drive them to a car show, cars and coffee, you bring them home and they're more of a garage trophy. That's why I like cars that are more you can drive. They're cars you can get. That's why I love Porsches. You can buy the best Porsche that exists, a GT3Rs or an R or a Turbo S and you can drive them to the store, you can take them to the track, you can drive them all day long. I've driven 911s as daily drivers, commuter cars forever. They just do everything. They're not as fancy as some of the cars that we've talked about, but they're way past being one hour.

But you could also buy 10 or 12 of them for the same price. There's something to say, you know, get a different color for every day of the week and drive it down the pch.

Yeah, those cars are in a whole different league of, let's say, income streams than I may be in right now, so. But they're beautiful, incredible cars. The Pagani. I had Christopher Pagani, son of Pagani, on my show not too long ago. Incredible cars. I got to spend a day with with those at Esoteric, a car care company. My friends there, Todd Cooper, writer, does some great videos about car care and their products that they sell. And I got to see that car up close for a whole day. Got to sit in it, go for a little ride.

It works. Jewelry, works of art, they're just exquisite. But it's hard to imagine having one and actually driving it anywhere because again, for me, they're kind of one hour cars. Not a disrespectful to them. I guess if I was a multi billionaire I might have a few. Sure. Because they're cool. Right. But I'm not quite there yet. So I'll keep working on that.

Well, you know what you like. And that's the thing. There's such a personal preference and I remember checking out the Zonda and I mean there's so many great ones and I actually like the ones from yesteryear, if you will, because it's like they had the Foresight in the 50s, 60s, 70s to your point. And they still look good.

Yes. Yeah, there's some beautiful cars. I love European sports cars. So you talk about the 50s or the 60s. There were some cars. The Alfa Romeo's were just stunning. The Ferraris were stunning. The old Porsches, beautiful cars. Not as sexy as the Italian cars, but they'd start and they'd run every day, so they're a lot more reliable. But there's some beautiful sports cars, Scarab race cars. I mean some cars that were really genuinely works of art. And you get into like Pete Brock's Daytona, the new movie that's out right now with the Cobra fighting the Ferraris and The Shelby, the GTs, the GT 40s and of course the new Ford GT, which is just incredible, stunning, stunning cars. So yeah, don't get me started on cars. We could talk for hours about cars. I love cars. That's what cars.

Yeah.

Is all about. Right.

Well I'm glad you were able to share on it because I have a fair amount. Another one I like is the Saleen S7.

Oh yeah. In fact I just spoke to Steve Saline. He's going to be speaking at Lamay museum, which is 15 minutes south of my house on November 16th. They're having a special event with him there. My daughter's getting married that day, so I won't be at the Lemamie Zoo.

I was just going to say you better be live streaming it. That sounds awesome.

I wish I could, but I'll be at my daughter's wedding. That's a bit more. More important to me.

And congratulations again.

Well, thank you. Yeah. But Steve, Celine, I'm looking forward to having him on the show as well. He's incredible guy in the new cars that he just came out with, which I saw at the quail event this past summer, are absolutely stunning. There's a whole racing group of those cars that are racing now. In fact, Martina Kwan, who's been a guest on my show is driving one of those Salines with a team of four women, which is pretty cool endurance racing. So Steve's been incredible what he's done with that business over time and again. People think, oh, he's been a success forever. Took a lot of work to get to where he is. A lot of work.

That persistence you're talking about.

Yeah, yeah. And he loves what he does. He's, he's a passionate guy. So, yeah, the Salines are very, very nice cars too. Very expensive, too.

Well, we're going to talk more about. I got some fun for you coming up. You gave me the question about the narrowing it down to just one car. 99 Diablo SVT. I got a lot of them. I could talk about it for a while also, but I understand we're gonna go to thank our sponsor and come back for the imperfect action round. Winning with Google in 2020. I have no doubt you want to for your business, but who do you trust and where do you start? I'd advise Rosh Sillers. Not only was he episode 22's feature featured VIP guest, but he's also a Google specialist with search advertising and YouTube. And I had him put together this free Winning with Google in 2020 guide for you to get started with right now. Go to eainterviews.com rushtips to get your free download. Now once again, that's eainterviews.com rush tips. All right, we are back with the imperfect action round. Mark, are you ready to take imperfect action?

Buckled up here. The five point harness is cinched down. You know, my looks like my head looks like a helmet. So if I could just paint Some stripes on it. I'd look like I was wearing a. I wish I had hair like you, Mario. What's the deal with that?

You know, like you said earlier with the movie, maybe it's just special effects.

Okay, well, maybe you can have your guys put some hair on my head before we put this out there. So. Oh.

All right, first question I got for you. What's the fastest path to the cash?

You know what? Don't seek the fastest to the cash. Don't. Don't go there. Don't think about that. That's the wrong approach. If that's the way you're starting things, you're starting things all wrong.

How would you. What would you say you should focus on?

Well, focus on, first and foremost, what you want to do with your life. Secondly, how are you going to help others in the doing of that thing? Because after talking to 1400 plus people, I have discovered the secret to life and happiness. You want to know what it is?

Absolutely.

It's helping others. We as human beings are at our best by far, whether we know it or not, when we're helping others. So find a way to do what you love, helping others, and the cash will come. But if your focus is just cash at the beginning, you got the wrong focus, my friend.

Excellent. What is the biggest problem.

You see your prospects making in the fastest way, they can fix it.

Who? Well, since I don't sell anything other than ideas, I would say people need to start doing what they want to do sooner. People wait too long. Time is very dangerous. I'm a lot older than you. Time is our enemy. Time is relentless. Time beats you up in so many ways and it never ends until you end. So don't wait. If you think you're going to start something, figure out a way to do something today to get it started. Don't wait till tomorrow. Even a one little tiny step can get you going and get that momentum going. Whether it's working out, exercising, starting a business. You want to buy the car of your dreams. You mentioned putting the car of your dreams in a picture on the wall. I did that with my first job out of college. I wanted a red Porsche. I found a cool poster. I put it right above my desk. Every day I looked at it and I'd ask myself, what did I do today to get closer to that goal? Well, I didn't go out and eat lunch and waste money. I saved a few of my shekels so I could pay. Because my idea was to pay cash. I didn't want to Finance anything. I don't like being in debt. So, yeah, start doing what you want to do now, today. Don't wait. Because time is a killer.

I love that a lot, a whole lot. And I could get in a whole other discussion about that, but that is a great point.

We're in the middle of a show. The third question is.

What is the best way to maximize customer lifetime value?

Okay, this is a great question because I love business books and I have a whole category on my website. You can go to carsjet.com, click on the resources button, and there are literally over 1500 books listed there that my past guests have shared. It's guest recommended books. I've made a real easy, quick click to buy to Amazon. You just click. It takes you right there. You can buy it. Amazon sends me a couple pennies, and it's literally a couple pennies. That's about all you get. But it's a great reference. One of the books that I read early on when I was trying to help build Griot's garage was Carl Sewell's Customers for Life. He was a very successful businessman with car dealerships, and he realized the importance of a customer for life. And a lot of people that sell cars go, how often do people buy cars? Why do you need a customer for life? Well, read the book and you'll learn why. But he developed some cool techniques. So that's one reference I can give you. Another one is Michael Gerber's the E. Myth book, which is a tremendous book that I also learned incredible, invaluable lessons from that I even take forward in today. I bought so many copies of that book for people who were trying to run businesses and couldn't get out of their own way. It's a wonderful way. The E stands for entrepreneur is to get out of your own way so you can run a business better. So lifetime value is so important with everybody. It's the same with friends. It's the same with family. I always say, what are you doing to build a good lifetime value with your children? Because I grew up around a lot of friends whose parents were absent. Mom was off at the country club, dad was off so busy making money to pay for this lifestyle, and the kid was left at home to do nothing. And so what were those people doing to build lifetime value with their children? So I always try to think about that with my kids, even though they're now grown and moved away on their own. What am I doing to build that with my spouse? Am I doing things every day? To help build that lifetime value. So she's a more value to me, I'm more value to them. And with our friends. Are you ignoring your friends because you're so busy chasing the almighty dollar to get that next new car or that next bigger house or whatever it is? Because at the end of the day, all those things that you're accumulating really won't matter to you at all. And if you're doing it and doing it in debt, even worse, because the shininess of that shiny object will be long gone when you're still trying to pay for it. So lifetime value applies to people, relationships and things. That's another valuable lesson my dad taught me. He said, if you want something, pick the best you can and wait and save up until you can afford it. Afford doesn't mean finance, doesn't mean credit card. It means pay cash.

Great wisdom right there. And it's a perfect segue. I'm going to give you a bonus. Or you can claim the first two you said. Because this is where I ask you, what book? What book has made a big difference? But you already mentioned two. Two of them. Is there a third one you want to shout out here?

Oh, gosh.

You'Ve caught me up. Because there's so many great books.

Just like cars.

I know, I know, it's really hard. I'll tell you one I gotta mention.

The Hummer H1 also, that's the other one that's framed, because that's a cool car, too.

My son gave me this book. You see, it's a picture there. All right, Jordan. 12 rules of life.

For Life. It's basically a guidebook on how to behave.

Written in a very creative way. My son gave it to me for Christmas. I referred it to many, many people. The audiobook is really good as well. So I would say that's a great book. You can go and watch hundreds of videos about Jordan Peterson. He's become a bit of a character that some people don't like. I think they've wrongly tagged him in some ways. If you read the book and just try to get information from it, it's about how to be a good human being and how to be a better human being. Another book I'll leave you with. I'll give you a fourth one. Can I?

Absolutely.

Okay. The Art of Racing in the Rain by Garth Stein. It's a movie that just came out. Garth is a Pacific Northwesterner like me. He lives up in Seattle. I live in Geek harbor, which is an hour south. He wrote this book and it's the most recommended book by all my automotive enthusiasts who come on my show, the Art of Racing in the Rain. Get the audiobook, it's wonderful. And go see the movie. I've not seen the movie yet. I've heard it's pretty good. It's not just about racing, though. It's about life and the things we've talked about here today. Values, family values, personality, the kind of human being you are. So there's four books for you. How's that?

Thank you so much for sharing that. So you've mentioned it before, but where would you like people to learn more?

Well, first and foremost you can go to karsia.com, my website. You can click on the free book button, which just signs you up for my blog again, my blog, I come out every Tuesday. You can read it in less than a minute. I don't believe in big long. We don't have time these days. You also get a weekly email which is a recap of all those guests and announcements. And I also do Christmas time. I'm going to be doing some free giveaways here, so you'll be on the list for a free giveaway. You can also find me on Instagram at Cars. Yeah. Podcast. You can find me on Twitter. You can find me on LinkedIn. You can find me on YouTube. You can find my TV show on Mav TV, which is Mav TV on the direct cable network. Or you can stream it on Lucas Oil Racing and watch me next year for season two of Cars yet tv and hopefully that other one that I gave you a little teaser for. I'm hoping that we can make that happen too. All it takes is time and money and hard work, right?

Well, you definitely have the persistence for it and you've demonstrated that time and time again. So thank you for all the recommendations. Thank you for your Expert Authority insights and for sharing with Expert Authority World. It's been an absolute pleasure, Mario.

This has been fantastic, great new experience for me, my friend. Fun to follow you on Facebook. Really proud of what you're doing. Next time I'll put a tie on so I can look a little sharper like you and grow some hair. Thank you.

Well, the pleasure is mine. I appreciate it. Expert Authority World. We have another great episode here. I'll see you tomorrow. Have a great day and God bless. Why every business needs a book, including yours. Would you like to save five plus hours with every prospect? Generate more leads and profit in your business? Now visit businessbookchecklist.com and learn how you can implement implement this in your business today. Hey, thanks for listening to today's episode. I hope you got a lot out of it. I know I sure did. If you haven't done so already, I invite you to subscribe to the show and also be sure to check out eainterviews.com for complete show notes, the full interview video experience, links to the resources we mentioned, and more. Have a blessed day and I'll see you tomorrow.

I.