Seven Tenths of a Second, page 7
The people who back me at that time are people I treasure to this day. It means so much. People like Mack Astin, who is a very successful actor, sees how hard I am trying and loans me seven grand and I put his nickname on my car: Mackeez.
He and Josh Abelson are two of my best friends to this day. Tony Podell also sponsors me and loans me money. He’s been one of the most influential people in my life, and without Tony’s support, I wouldn’t be doing what I’m doing today.
I pay back every single person I’ve ever borrowed money from. It’s all about honour and integrity and doing what you say you’re going to do. Otherwise, there can be no trust.
Richard Dean remains a very generous friend to me. He gets a lot of grief from people who keep asking him why he is friends with this Yank when he is on top of his game and the Yank isn’t going anywhere. They keep telling him I have no money and there is nothing in it for him, but our friendship has never wavered and we’re now partners at United Autosports and have won the 24 Hours of Le Mans together twice.
So at the end of 1991, I take the forty grand that my parents offer me and I get a deal to compete in the Opel Lotus series with Eagle Racing Management. I have to find ninety grand in total to race for them for the season so I have to come up with another fifty grand.
They say they’ll work with me to help me find it and they put me up in digs with a bunch of other drivers in a place called Heathfield, in East Sussex. It’s in the middle of nowhere and they rent us this house where the only way to get hot water is by heating it on a log-burning stove.
It is quite an experience, but it is another huge life lesson for me. I am by myself in another country, trying to keep my head above water, trying to compete as a racer, trying to find money for sponsorship, being independent, being entrepreneurial.
It doesn’t end well. Less than halfway through the season, the team goes bust, and that is the end of my forty grand. I am not sure they were the greatest business people.
It is also the end of life in Heathfield. All of us young racers, with our dreams of being elite drivers and living a glamorous, fast life, are evicted from that house with its wood-burning stove.
So now I face the choice of either going home to LA or trying to figure out another way of surviving in European racing. I figure it out. I move into Richard’s sister Bev’s house in Sheffield and pay her £200 a month to sleep on an air-bed in her living room.
Richard gets me a job with him at the Jim Russell Racing School at Donington Park, so we drive an hour and a half from Sheffield to the track every morning to make a hundred quid a day, freezing our balls off, being racing instructors.
By then, my mom has given me some more help. She is a travel agent so she has a lot of contacts in the travel industry and she gets me a meeting with someone at TWA. They say no to begin with, and they say no again, several times, but in the end they give me airline tickets that I use to raise sponsorship money.
TWA becomes the most important thing in my life because I know they are my ticket to my racing career. It teaches me another business lesson. I know TWA represents my shot at success so I do everything I can to prioritize remaining in favour with them.
I learn everything about TWA. I start coming up with promotional initiatives. I immerse myself in their frequent-flier programme and suggest partnerships with rental car companies. And when I fly TWA, I’ll be at the airport, meeting baggage handlers and being an ambassador for the company.
I start to become good at understanding sponsorship just by studying what TWA is all about. What are you trying to do? I know you’re trying to sell tickets, you’re trying to upgrade people, you’re trying to promote your new seats, you’re trying to get your baggage handlers happy at the airport, you’re trying to get the best flight attendants. If I know what they want, I know how I can sell myself to them.
A lot of the time, that comes down to offering TWA hospitality at races for their clients. So my life starts revolving around TWA to the point where it is probably detrimental to my racing because I am always clawing to get budget. I am always a dollar short.
And because I am so dependent on them, where other racing drivers are laser-focused on racing, I am more laser-focused on my sponsors. Without my sponsors, I can’t go racing.
So unlike the majority of other junior formula drivers who have financial support from their families, and whose lives are racing, racing, racing, my life is sponsorships. So I go to a race and I’m more worried about whether everyone is having a good time than how I can improve a lap time.
Did everyone get to the suite? Did everyone get their passes? Is the catering arriving on time? I’ll be thinking about all this stuff while I am sitting in a debrief with the team. So I am a racing driver, an account manager and a sponsor-finder all at the same time.
I don’t know it then, of course, but it is my apprenticeship in the business that makes my fortune. By that, I mean marketing, not being a racing driver. So I try to build on the TWA sponsorship and I meet CEOs and influential people at the corporate days at the racing school. They take to me and I persuade some of them to back me.
I get Spring Ram, which is a bathroom and kitchen company. And so on, and so on. I am constantly networking. This is how my mind works: when I go into a grocery store and I look at the cereal, I am weighing up whether they might be a sponsor.
Everything is a living billboard. I’m looking at a packet of Rice Krispies, wondering if I should call Kellogg’s. My brain is whirring: should I call them, would they be interested? I become totally immersed in commerce.
I work incredibly hard at it, and it isn’t easy. There is a tremendous amount of rejection. I am successful enough to keep my career going, but never successful enough to have big budgets or to be able to focus solely on racing.
I am always biting off more than I can chew. If I need twenty grand but I only have fifteen, I’ll commit to it in the belief I’ll get the next five. So if I can only afford three races, I’ll commit to four because I want to do five. It’s a way of putting pressure on myself.
I don’t even think it’s deliberate. I want more and more because what I want always seems just out of reach. It’s still kind of how I roll to this day, quite frankly: I always want more. So I’ve got fifty cars in my collection but I want sixty. And so it goes on.
I do well in the Opel Lotus series. I come fourth in the standings in the 1992 season, and I’m really happy with that. I love my team and I can tell how much they like me and rate me as a driver. I always need a warm environment, knowing the team’s behind me. I need an arm round the shoulder.
I finish second in the national class at the F3 event at the British Grand Prix in 1994 and I keep trying and trying to improve my circumstances and the machinery that I have access to. All the time, I am doing my best to blend into British society. I do that by being one of them, not being arrogant, but doing what they like to do.
But the truth is that I am frustrated from the moment I arrive in England because I don’t have the best equipment. Most of the drivers come from personal wealth and can focus 100 per cent on driving. I never have that luxury. I never have the money and always have second-rate equipment.
I race for a while in Formula 3, but I don’t have a good relationship with my team. There is a blame culture whenever we lose, and we lose a lot. We have a year-old chassis and a second-class engine.
I keep going. It is a hand-to-mouth existence, but I don’t really have a Plan B. There are days of loneliness and boredom and I start to think maybe I can’t do it. I start going into races doubting myself and it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.
I pick a team to drive for based on the budget that I have, so I can’t afford to target the top teams. The teams that are just trying to get by are happier to accept drivers on lesser budgets. I end up at Mark Bailey Racing and I am never really happy there.
My teammate gets all the preferential treatment. He has a big budget so the team throws its energy behind him. It’s just a bad situation. He feels threatened by me and refuses to share information and our relationship is never warm.
I begin to get burned out. My career has stalled in Europe. I know I am getting to the end of the age-range window to have any chance of making it to Formula 1, and it isn’t as if there is any sign I am getting closer to that goal.
And by then, the seeds of another plan have started to take root. I’ve started to get a reputation as someone who is at the top of the game for raising sponsorship money. Other drivers come to me to ask for help and advice.
All the deals I have done up to that point are for me. They are to raise money to try to further my career. But a switch flicks in my brain and I realize that I am good enough at this to make money out of it as a deal-maker for others.
I stay in England for four years. I give it everything. I don’t leave anything out there in terms of trying to make it, but I have to accept that Formula 1 isn’t going to happen for me. Other opportunities are starting to appear. I decide to head back to the States.
Chapter 7
A Passion for Deals
When I get back to the States, things start to move faster. I start to move faster. It’s like something’s been unlocked. I start to work more and more on sponsorship. I start to realize that maybe it’s not the wheeling and dealing that’s been holding my racing career back. It’s the racing that’s been holding my business career back.
I mentioned that I’d got a sponsorship deal with Spring Ram when I was still in the UK. What I didn’t mention was that I beat Sir Jackie Stewart to the Spring Ram deal. Sir Jackie is not only a three-time F1 world champion but, at that time, he’s the king of sponsorship in motorsport.
I’m proud of that Spring Ram deal. This is how it happens. I’m an instructor at the Jim Russell Racing School at Donington Park. We’re having a corporate day. I’m waiting for my next client, and that’s when the Spring Ram CEO, Rob Hassell, climbs into the passenger seat.
As a starving, struggling racing driver, you’re always hoping your next sponsor might be someone that hops into your car. You immediately create a bond with people when you drive them around a race circuit at high speeds.
For the most part, these people have no idea what a car is capable of and so there’s a good chance that they’re thinking you’re Ayrton Senna. Maybe it’s something to do with the trust you form, too. You’re giving them a thrill and you’re keeping them safe. It creates that bond really fast.
Sir Jackie Stewart’s team is the dominant team in Formula 3, and they have been chasing Spring Ram for a sponsorship deal for some time. The deal’s close.
Then Rob Hassell gets in the car with me at Donington. I look over at him and see he’s wearing a nice watch, and I think, ‘Okay, this guy must be important.’ He tells me what he does and he talks about the company a bit and we hit it off real quick. And then we effectively do the deal together, circumventing the full process.
I remember it so well because Sir Jackie is the absolute best. I mean, he’s Roger Penske level of CEO to CEO. And so for me to be this young, pimply kid who beats the almighty Sir Jackie Stewart to a sponsorship…people are saying, ‘How did that happen?’
Sir Jackie Stewart’s the god of everything commercial in the sport. No one beats him to a deal. So I get back to the US with a bit of a reputation. Not so much as a racing driver but as a guy who can get you money.
It’s 1994. I’m twenty-two years old. I know I’m not going to get to Formula 1. I’m starting to build up a nice Rolodex. I’m not closing a lot of deals, but I’m working like a dog and I’m meeting a lot of people. I’m calling everyone. I’m taking notes. People like me. I get a deal to race back in the States so I tell TWA and ask if they’ll sponsor me there.
They say they will. But they say they’re happy with the way I’ve been organizing things for them in Europe and they’re sad they’re going to be losing that access. They say they kind of hate to stop with all that. They ask if I can place the sponsorship they’ve been giving me with somebody else in Europe.
‘Yeah, I can do that,’ I say. I think I can probably make some money. So I do my first-ever non-Zak deal with a British Formula 3000 team called Mansell Madgwick for TWA. And it involves Nigel Mansell, who’s just won the F1 world title and the IndyCar world title in back-to-back years.
I’m awe-struck to meet Mansell. And I start negotiating with him to make one appearance as part of this sponsorship deal. I make an offer to him of about £70,000, and he says, ‘Nope, not enough.’ I want to get this deal done. I don’t take no for an answer.
I say to him, ‘Man, how much do you get for an appearance? Eighty grand? Man, you can’t get many of those?’ Nigel looks at me and smiles, and says, ‘I don’t need many of those.’ That’s a good comeback. We get the deal done.
And that enhances my credentials, too. People hear about that deal. It raises my profile even more. Some of these teams start to see me as a sort of genius deal-maker. They think I might be able to raise money for them. Everyone’s desperate for sponsorship in these junior formulas.
The light bulb goes off with all the teams that I brought my sponsor to the party, and so now suddenly everyone’s my best friend because I might be able to make them money.
And a light bulb goes off in my head, too. So, wait a minute, what if I go back to all these people, these potential sponsors I’ve met, who like me, and take meetings with me, but I can’t quite close? What if I go back to them and say, ‘What if I could take you anywhere in racing? It’s the Wild Wild West. I know who the good guys are, the bad guys. I can get you a great deal.’ What if I can sell them that?
I can make way more money than a hundred quid a day at the Jim Russell Racing School. And that’s kind of the moment when I think I’ll keep racing in the States, maybe try and get to race in IndyCar and just do deals while I’m racing. Do deals for me, do deals for other people.
And that’s how the idea is born. I start Just Marketing. I still have my first business card and my first fancy brochure. I want to have the flashiest brochure, so I do some bartering and get it made up. I trade for everything.
Things are crazy. Things are going at a million miles an hour, and I’m all over it. I sleep with a notepad next to my bed in case I dream an idea. That way, I can wake up and jot it down.
I move back to Los Angeles. I’m working at a ski shop to try to help with my racing. Tracy, my girlfriend, now my wife, is working as a waitress and we are sharing a car. The house we’re renting gets rattled off its foundations in the Northridge Earthquake in January 1994.
We pick up and move to Indianapolis. I’ve never been to Indianapolis before. But if you want to race in F1, you move to England. If you want to race in IndyCar, you move to Indianapolis. I get a job at a racing school that pays $14,000 a year plus commission and so I drive an hour every day to this little town called Greencastle where the track is.
I get there, and Tracy and I rent a place with a motor racing journalist called Tim Tuttle. I set up an office in the spare bedroom and try to start cutting deals. And so I duck and dive and wheel and deal and the Indianapolis Star does an article on me and my company.
And I’m just dialling for dollars, working, hustling. And I want to name the company Just Marketing, because my brilliant marketing idea is that I don’t want it to say ‘racing’ in the title, because as soon as you call someone and they hear ‘racing’, they know you want sponsorship and won’t take the call.
Around then, it’s the start of 1995, the racing school I’m working for at the track goes bust. The bank takes the cars. I’m the one who’s got all the corporate customers. I go back to the customers, say, ‘I’ve started the racing school, I’ve acquired the racing cars.’ I haven’t actually done that, but I say I have.
I get deposits from the customers, I go to the bank, I open the bank account, I buy the cars. I start my racing school. Maybe I’m a bit economical with the truth, but the result is the same. I’m just being creative.
And that entrepreneurial stream kind of comes back to my troubled time at school, of just talking your way through things and getting out of trouble. Where there’s a will, there’s a way.
So I’m going to go to customers who I’ve delivered for and who like me. If people like you, they trust you. I’ve traded off of likeability and trust my whole career.
I rename the racing school Zak Brown’s Track Attack. I run the whole thing. I’ve got six employees and six race cars. I concentrate on corporate days because I feel like that’s where the money is. I do pop-up stores in the local mall to publicize the place. I do everything to make it work.
At the same time, I’m starting to do small deals, some in IndyCar, and I’m continuing to race. Everyone’s telling me to stop racing, just do the sales and marketing stuff, but I’m still pursuing my racing career. It’s still my dream.
People telling me to stop racing is the last thing I want to hear because it’s my passion for racing that’s driving the business. I have a passion for building a motorsports agency. I have a passion for doing deals, keeping myself in business, so that the dream I have doesn’t die.
Pretty soon, I’m starting to do IndyCar deals. I’ve not done any seven-figure deals yet, but I’m doing 250 grand deals and I’m making twenty grand on them. I’m getting by, but I’m not building a nest egg. I’m spending more than I’m getting. So even though the company’s small and growing, it’s always water up against the dam because I’m trying to grow.
What I’m doing is, I’m finding the corporation. Let’s use, say, Xerox, as an example. I’m going to the Xeroxes of this world and telling them that there’s this wonderful world of motorsport out there and that I can take their clients anywhere – to Nascar, to IndyCar, anywhere.
