Welcome to Momentum, a motorsports podcast powered by High Gear Success. I'm your host, Heather Wilson Schiltz Here we share the stories and strategies that keep the world of motorsports moving forward. And joining me today is Mikey Waynes, a racing announcer for some of America's biggest series, like GNCC's Pro Motocross, Loretta Lynn's, Minio's, and even a global event like Motocross of Nations held here in the States. So Mikey, thank you for joining me. Thank you for having me. I've looked forward to this and like always kind of wanted to do it. You put out the post and so I thought, man, now's the time. I love it. Well, and it came kind of on the edge of a big announcement for you and we'll get into that later in the show. Um, but fans have definitely gotten to enjoy your humor throughout the years, but maybe they didn't know that your first start with a mic was actually through standup comedy. So how did that training kind of play into how you engage a crowd? It definitely benefited. like the quick backstory of that was it was something I always wanted to do stand up. And it's one of those things where all your friends are like, you're funny. You should do standup comedy. that is very, very rarely does that work out for people. And I can't really say that it worked out for me, ah but I loved it. And, you know, it was, it was a lot of fun. uh humble bragging here, but I was very good at it, but I was also in my early twenties and I was married. still married to the same girl. And it becomes very apparent quickly that that is maybe not the best environment for a young married guy to close down comedy clubs and then let's go have a few drinks. So I kind of chalked that up as like, man, this was a cool experience, but I'm gonna move on, like go do something else and just went back to the normal boring day job. um And then my wife, uh one of her friends had like a small modeling agency. And one of the gigs that she worked to get was working as trophy girls for a local off-road series. And it kind of came about because we were at a motorcycle expo and I ride street bikes, my buddies ride street bikes, but they also raced primarily motocross, but they wanted to kind of dip their toes in off-road. So I would just tag along to the races. I say I was pit crew for my buddies. That's a lie. Like I would just go and drink beer on Saturday and help them refuel. That was, that was really not pit crew. uh But primarily, I just wanted to make sure these guys weren't like hitting on my wife. were much younger then. Um, and she was like the 30 second card girl. So. You know that I joke about that, that there was some seriousness to that, but I was just going to have fun with my friends. Um, but the promoter, they started kind of like this YouTube channel and he needed someone on the mic to interview kids. So he's like, you have some mic experience. You're not racing and, but you know enough about this that you can ask questions, right? I was like, sure. So thank God he didn't see me because the first like post-race podiums I did for like kids on P dubs, it was so bad. I got so confused and like, I remember a dad was shouting, a friend of ours used to do the interviews and she's very attractive, like young female. And a dad in the crowd like shouted, where's the hot girl? And I'm like, oh, they're never inviting me back to do this. I'll never do this again. Thankfully the promoter never saw it. Um, and he invited me back the next race to do it again. So at that point I'm like, all right, let me, let me kind of apply myself to this. Um, and that snowball did that for, you know, three, three, four years and GNCC put out a post that they, they needed to hire, um, a part-time announcer and I read it and I thought, man, that would be cool. But you know, there's no shot they ever asked me to do something like this. And everybody thankfully from Indiana kind of got behind me and they were tagging, you know, at the time, Chelsea Taylor and Tim Cotter and a bunch of people and take a look at this guy from Indiana and like the rest is history from there. That's so cool. Do you remember, so you kind of talked about your first experience at that local race and, uh, interviewing the kids and maybe it not going so well, but had you kind of stepped up your game by the time you got to GNCC's and what do you remember of that first weekend as an announcer? Because that's probably a whole different ball game. uh Absolutely, yes. know, I do in locals and you know, when you do a local series, you're one of one announcer. Like there's nobody, there's not two, you can't key off of one another. So those three years kind of grinding it out of doing race starts, of then going to do the play-by-play commentary and these kids are out in the woods, the adults are out in the woods. You can't see anything. You're looking off a scoring computer and you're watching the finish line. So you got very, very good at not BSing, but kind of creating the story when there wasn't a story. And that helped tremendously with the GNCC gig. And I would say my first race, big buck 2017, extremely nervous. I had never done live broadcast and you know, that's a part of, GNCC with racer TV. And, um, I just remember, you know, doing locals and this isn't a knock on the locals. The races would always be delayed. it would just snowball and it just, that's part of, part of the, animal that goes with promoting a local series. GNCC, expected the same thing and we do occasionally run behind. Um, but it was pretty much dialed and I'm like, man, these guys, GNCC racer productions, everything they've got their, you know, stuff together. And I just remember being intimidated. and, the scoring computer actually went down the very, very first race. And so I just kind of had to fake it. And I remember, I think it was Rodney Tomlin came over and he kind of panicked, like, are you okay? I'm like, yeah, I'm fine. The scoring computer is down. He's like, well, the race call, can't tell that it's down. You're still hanging in there and delivering. So just keep that up. Um, but yeah, it was intimidating, but it was. It was intimidating to work with a guy like Rodney too, who, you know, had all this experience and like, there was this lore about like his 10 second call and all of that. So it was a lot to take in, but I just tried to be a sponge. And the number one thing I tried to do was say, Hey, if I suck at something, tell me, and I want to fix it and I want to work on it. And I tried to just carry that with me even now, like I'll do it outdoor, promote across. And I talked to my co-announcer, the, know, everybody like, Hey, did I suck? was anything bad, let me fix it. So trying to be an open book on stuff like that. Well, and like you said, announcing isn't just calling the action that's in front of you or on the screen or looking at scoring. It's being able to tell that storytelling aspect of it. So how have you kind of honed your craft over the years? Because that's a lot of information to keep in the, in the back of your mind. You don't have notebooks sitting in front of you telling you everybody's stats or about what they were doing last weekend, if they got injured, if they were training, like, how do you keep all of that in your mind? Yeah, that's something I picked up from Rodney about how to kind of bury yourself in your work for lack of a better term. Jason Weigandt was another guy I spoke with who I've said, I can't take credit for this. A lot of people have said hardest working man in motorsports media and I have to tend to agree. And that was... Kind of, you know, we get a program. I would, I would go through that program and I would read about the pro riders and I just went and I started following them all on social media, Instagram, Facebook, uh, at the time, a little bit of Twitter, um, and just, okay, did you train this week? Where did you train? Are you coming in with any injuries? and then on top of that, I started to do it on the amateur level too, because you know, the kids that were calling in 2017, uh, some kid named Grant Davis. is doing has done very, very well. He, you know, rose to the top. So just kind of entrenching yourself and getting to know the families, talking to the families at the track, mom and dad at the podium, you kind of get to know the personalities and that contributes in those off-road races. Because like you said, we can't always see the action. So, Tim Cotter says, you know, if there is not a race on screen, create one for the fans, like make, make the action happen, portray that on the mic. So knowing those things, learning about everybody helps. So social media was probably the number one part of that and just entrenching yourself in it. for me, like doing an interview is one thing where we can sit here and have a conversation. But when there's nobody talking back at you, like the riders are out there racing, you just have to keep filling that time. And so, you just have to be very gifted and it is a gift to be able to, to fill that void with conversation and entertain the fans. And I think you do that really well. Well, thank you. try. I've always, I always tried to, you know, I was never a pro rider, obviously, but, I grew up like I was a janitor. had all these jobs and my dad always told me I got to work with him a lot when I was a teenager turning wrenches. And he always kind of instilled in me, like you treat the janitor the same way you treat the CEO or you treat the CEO the same way you treat the janitor. So I tried to bring that into racing and I always wanted to treat that little like four year old on the P-dub. If he's on the podium or she's on the podium, treat them like Walker Fowler, Brycen Neal, Kailub Russell, Jett Lawrence, like make it their time to shine. And that definitely helped me along the way to make sure I was treating everybody with the same kind of like clout, I guess. love that. And I kind of live my life by that same philosophy. And I will say, sometimes that's gotten me in trouble, but I don't apologize for it because sometimes there are those, uh even though they're higher ranking people, I look at them the same and not everybody appreciates that sometimes. But I view it the same way as you that we're all kind of on a level playing field. all just humans and we're here to have a good time. That's it. have a real quick funny story on that. There was a, and I'm not picking on Ryan Villopoto because he was huge in my day, but I did a little bit of work with Supercross, technically with Toyota. So we would do these halftime shows. We do a FanFest experience and it was probably, I don't remember what year it was exactly, but Villopoto had been retired from racing for maybe two seasons and he's walking through the pro pits and this is when FanFest is going on. And I see, think Anaheim A2, I can't remember exactly, but I see all these fans um in line to meet riders and I'm not taking anything away from those riders Some of them privateers. You got fans in line to meet maybe a privateer that we don't even know anymore to get an autograph. And here you have one of the greatest, arguably one of the greatest riders. And he's walking through the crowd and I look around cause like nobody realizes it's RV. And in my head, I'm like, We all have a shelf life. don't care who you are. Eventually, people are going to start forgetting about us. So you've got to check your ego no matter who you are. That's just part of it. for sure. When it comes to race day, do you feel like you have your own sort of adrenaline? Like, do you get nervous? Do you still get nervous even after nine years of doing it when that green flag flies and your live? Yeah, I think if I think I'm one of the kind of people like if you're not just a little bit nervous, ah there's something wrong with you and It's not the same kind of nerves. I had it like that very first GNCC. It's different. It's more of Okay, I need them especially a GNCC there's so many moving pieces because I'm watching Ricky Towery in this in the in turn one and waiting on his signal and I have to make sure I'm looking at my announcer sheet of the class that is up And I'm calling those names as they're going into turn one while watching the action to see who's getting the holeshot while glancing back to make sure I'm not going to get hit and then still paying attention to Ricky. So there's so many moving pieces and to hit your marks as an announcer, you've got to really have the rhythm and you got to be able to, to, to adapt quickly. So the nerves that I have now are more like, I want to make sure I tell the story that is happening on the track. while entertaining everybody watching. That's like the number one job. And then Pro Motocross has its own challenges. We get basically a run of show that is everything down to the minute from 7 a.m. until the last checkered flag flies. And we coordinate with the TV broadcast. So it is minute by minute, we have to have this done. So the pressure and the nerves there come from. I gotta make sure I nail this pro rider's name, his sponsors, who he rides for. I gotta get all that perfect and it's gotta be perfectly done in this time to make sure we stay on schedule so that NBC or whoever is not yelling at us that we mess them up. So the nerves are different, but the nerves are still there for sure. You mentioned getting the names right. I would imagine this has to be an immense challenge, especially as people continue to name their kids different names, different spellings. Like, my goodness. Like, you know, I grew up Heather Wilson. couldn't get any simpler than that. And so, yeah, but I I'm reading these lists of names and I'm like, Oh man, it would be a challenge. So how do you, how do you tackle that? I'll, I say this every year at Loretta's and I usually, I'll say it at GNCC too. Like one, if we're saying your kid's name wrong, come tell us. We don't take offense. Uh, we absolutely don't take offense to it. And even when you tell us, and I write down like a cheat sheet for myself, for my hooked on phonics, like this is how I say it. we may still mess it up a few times, just stay on us And then the joke I always tell is like, make me say your kids name on the mic. Like if they're doing well out there, if they're in a battle, a top five, whatever, we're going to have to say their name repeatedly. So my challenge to riders and parents both was like, hey, go do well on the track and you're going to force me to learn your name. So that's kind of the serious, but the joke about it. But yeah, there's still names I mess up. It's tough. It's very tough. tackle it like kind of with a guess as you're saying a name if you're not sure? you just confidently say it even if it's So my day job, I'm in sales and I had an old sales guy tell me one time, you say anything with enough conviction and people will believe you. So the last names a lot of times, I just, I'll ramble it out there with confidence. And the only people that know I got it wrong are typically the family and anybody that knows them very well. And everybody else is just like, okay, that's how you say it. That's great. So we talked about kind of the different pieces of the race weekend, but kind of walk us through your schedule from when you maybe wake up and you get to the track, like what's first on the agenda through the end of the day. It's chaos. ah I would say like a GNCC weekend and this was this was part of my decision that okay I've got a you know step away and move on and let somebody else take the reins that Really starts like Wednesday evening and that's you know I'm at the point now where I know exactly what's gonna Be we're gonna be looking at into a race weekend as far as the pro race goes in the broadcast But it starts with packing the truck making sure I'd get everything for me, my wife, our Shih Tzu, Presley going with us. So it starts then and then the road travel, but uh a day at the track race day is for me, I'm up at 5 a.m. usually we drive to the track, drop my wife off at rider registration, and then I'll go and either fire up speaker trees. Normally they're already fired up. Thank you, George Murphy. Shout out to him and Griff Cotter for that. but if they're not, I'll fire those up. And then every morning, 7 a.m. on the dot, I hit them with a good morning. We play one song, we're thanking sponsors. And then I go right into kind of previewing the race day or recapping the previous race day. And from there, it is, it is nonstop. I'm going to registration to get my announcer sheets. We're doing race starts. Um, the guys are calling the amateur races and youth. I'm doing more race starts. Pro race and the next thing we know the day is over and I feel like I didn't even blink. It goes quick. It is one right after another. When you mentioned that, wake up song, it's like playing in the back of my head now because I've been at enough races, whether GNCCs or ATV motocross, to have that song like now playing in the back of my head as you're talking. So. That's one everybody always asks, who is it? It's Lonnie Park. And I think it's called Almost Showtime. I inherited that one from Rodney. Full transparency, I can't stand the song and a lot of people can't, but the people, associate it with the morning. And it kind of grew on me in that aspect because people would come up and man, what is that song that gets me hyped in the morning? So it kind of grew on me to the fact that just because people love it, I started to enjoy it because it reminded me of. of race day morning. Well, and it doesn't necessarily have to be good, but if it's catchy enough, it's just going to be stuck in your mind. Exactly, exactly. That's exactly it. Have you had any moments where things have gone totally sideways on the mic and how have you recovered from that? Yeah, several times. um Sometimes we don't recover. I would say the biggest challenge on the mic ah is GNCCs, you know, we're setting up in the middle of nowhere. We create the internet. We create the FM channel to go across sometimes 12 miles of track. nature doesn't always play nice. If there's too many people, radio interference. If there's, you know, bad weather, trees. rolling hills, mountains we're trying to get over, whatever it is, sometimes it just doesn't like our equipment. And that's probably the biggest challenge and uh just, hey, I know you guys can't hear me right now or we've got an audible real quick on live on air. So those are the biggest challenges. um like hot mic issues where you're like oh Oh, badly, badly. We've had some doozies at like Loretta's is always one and some of those stories I can't even share of the things that we've said that subtly goes over air. Like a hell or a damn will slip in the broadcast once in a while. Those aren't bad. The worst ones are the ones we say under our breath when we think our mic is muted. We kind of laugh about it after the fact and we just wonder, okay, is Carrie Jo gonna pull us into the office and give us a talking to, and we have had that as well. But yeah, those might be best shared off air, some of the details. Overall, not too bad, but it definitely. imagine just the blood draining out of my body over some of those mistakes. Yeah, absolutely, absolutely mortified. we had one, man, I'm trying to remember. That's terrible with me. I can't remember. There's a, there's a guy I say older. I think he's maybe five years older than me. So like 45, maybe close to 50. His name is eluding me, but he was riding like a madman at Loretta's and we were loving it in the booth. Like we were like all rooting for him off air. Man, I can't remember his name, but Northeastern guy, very thick, like New York accent, Boston accent probably. And. He ended up wadding up, he crashed, he was okay. But when he, he went back and he watched the broadcast and he thought we were kind of making fun of him. And he called us out, he called us out on the podium and Wes Kain had to jump in and be like, no, dude, listen, we, like we were rooting for you. This was awesome. You were the highlight of our day. And now he's like, he's kind of our buddy. um So it works out. So even when things kind of go crazy and we laugh on air about something a guy did. It's usually because it's like, dude, we relate to you. This was a blast. Thanks for making it fun. that's awesome. What are some of the powerful or emotional moments that you've witnessed when calling a race? Um, I, you know, I'm, I'm getting old. just turned 40. So there's part of me now that, that loves seeing like the old guy get one. And, uh, I can think of two times that outside of this last weekend, Ironman, which the whole weekend was, was low key emotional for me on the back end, but for different reasons, um, seeing Walker Fowler on the ATV side come back from an injury where We didn't know that he would ever even really have a normal life again, let alone be able to compete for overall wins. And seeing him come back, not just compete, but go out and get that first win when he came back from an injury that for a lot of guys would have been like it on their career and rightfully so. uh That one made me very emotional to see him come back and have that success at the top. And then, uh What John Penton this year, uh, kind of had some of the same experience, you know, Kailub Russell coming back and by Kailub Russell standards, you know, this whole year did not perform. I would say by normal people standards, like to come off, to come off the couch, he was training whatever. but to not have that, that race pace for four years to finally grab a win at John Penton, was just extraordinary. And, know, he may not. I think I can say this with confidence and I think he'd agree. He is not the racer that we saw retire with all those championships. He's different. He's older and it happens to all of us. But at least for that one day, that any given Sunday kind of kind of moment, he was the best and, to get to see that one last time and me at that time, knowing this is it, this is my last season and I got to watch the goat, grab one more. That was freaking awesome. And that one got me, got me teared up a little bit. And then I'd say the third one in hindsight, although I didn't kind of grasp it in the end, but stands out as like a big memory for me was my very first season. two things first, my very first season, very first race was Stu Baylor's very first XC one overall win. so it was very cool to be a part of that. And in the moment, I didn't realize how monumental that would be for me, or, I guess for him being his first. But I look back on that and like, man, that was cool. I was a part of that. And then the other one would be Johnny Gallagher's one and only ATV overall win in Indiana at the X Factor. Again, it was my first year. I'd known the man personally for at that point, what, six months. So it didn't quite hit then, but I look back now and I'm like, man, that was pretty freaking cool because that's my buddy. That's my... uh, race call partner for the last near decade. So that one, that one stands out as being emotional in hindsight after the fact. So let's talk about transformation. You've literally watched, like you've, you've just mentioned these circumstances over the years. You've watched kids and their families grow up in front of you. But what you may not realize, or maybe you do, is that we also, as fans, have watched you evolve as an announcer and just kind of as a human in general. And, uh, you've been very open on social media about your personal life and, sharing aspects of that. And you mentioned that in your early twenties, you were shunned from a religious cult. that your family belonged to, that led to some pretty dark times and you've been able to work through that thanks to resources like therapy, health and fitness and racing. So looking back, are you proud of what you've been able to personally achieve during these last nine years in racing and in life? Big time, you know that that started before the national level of racing that I got to a GNCC, Pro Moto and everything. That started, you know, before I started doing locals, you know, and this is a story I've kind of, I've touched on a little bit, but I've never really dived into it that deep. And there was a time in my life where I was very kind of embarrassed and scared to even share it. And then the more I kind of let out little nuggets about what I went through. I would get DMs from people and messages and texts of people who went through similar things ah that they don't feel comfortable talking about. I was kind of, over the years, I'm glad I opened up about it because I know now I'm not alone in those feelings. And to preface, ah I have no problem with religion. I'm not necessarily a religious person myself, but I respect people that uh need that and have that in their lives. I think it's great. I think that gives them a true north. et cetera. But for me, was, you know, I was silly in my early twenties and it put me in a bad situation. And then it put me in a worse situation because I lost everything that I thought I had and it damaged relationships with my family. And, know, at a time where I was depressed, um, you know, bordering on the line, not an out of control alcoholic, but it was like daily. I would say, man, I got to have a drink or two or three. to unwind and I'm on antidepressants, et cetera, et cetera. It was just a bad, bad for me mentally and for my health. And racing kind of provided like, these people in the racing industry, they knew nothing about me. They had no idea I was going through this and they just welcomed me for me. And it really started to like, okay, I got some purpose in my life. And then somewhere along the lines, I... ended up going to therapy and it helped me. that's another thing that like as a guy, we don't talk about that kind of stuff. Like you bury it deep down and you move on, you pick yourself or you strap your boots, whatever that saying is, and you go to work and you don't complain. And I just like, it gets to a point where something's gotta break, something's gotta give. So yeah, therapy helped with that tremendously. I credit my wife for hanging in there with me. And going to the racetrack, you know, for the first time in a long time, felt like for lack of a, not to be too dramatic, but like I have a purpose to live. I have a purpose to, to want to be here and contribute to something. Um, and racing any time in the last decade plus where, you know, things in my life get hard. Uh, I just had a career transition. you know, things like that life gets in the way for all of us. racing was the outlet. that kind of drive me and push me forward. And that made this decision to walk away from GNCC even harder because I, know, in my head it's like, what if Carrie Jo tells me, well, if you're not gonna do GNCC, we don't need you for Pro Motocross, we don't need you for Loretta's. So I had in my back pocket like to plead my case of why I still wanna be as involved in the industry as I can. And thankfully, uh her and Tim Cotter both were like, you know, we want you for anything we can get you for. Which is not to say I'm nothing without it. Life goes on. We can do different things with our life. But I'm very glad that I have that outlet. And it's been very kind, the comments that people have made to me over the last week about, you know, some of the impacts I've had on them, which I never really thought about. until parents are telling me and kids are telling me. It's been quite the ego boost and I love it and I'm very, grateful for what it's done for my life. Well, and I think that your story is like incredible and how it's helped you, but there's also so many other stories where racing has helped people as well. whether they're actually physically racing or they're just family and support, whether they're a volunteer, whether they're announcing, like there's so many different aspects of this industry that people can get involved in and can support them as individuals. So I think that's pretty cool. Yeah, that, you know, my, my story is unique because it's unique to me. Um, but I, know, in talking with so many people, you know, they're on the same level. We, you know, I've talked to guys that are, you know, they'll hit me up and Hey, I'm a recovered addict. Um, I did time in jail. did time in prison. And when I came out, like racing saved my life and I hear those and I think, well, man, I didn't really go through anything. And that's true on one hand. I'm also the kind of person that believes that two people can go through identical situations and how we cope. and how we deal with that and how we recover can be completely different. So I've tried to never tell someone, hey, I know how you feel because we really don't. Everybody's on their own journey. ah But to see it help so many other people as well is something that I relate to tremendously. Yeah. And I think that society is getting a little bit better at being a little more open and sharing and being willing to talk about people's struggles and, um, help them through it. So I hope that continues. Cause I do think that we need more conversations around that. and especially, guys that they feel comfortable and safe and willing to open up, whether it's to their partner or their friends or, a therapist, like those things can be helpful for sure. Yeah, that's, that's exactly it. mean, I've had X, I I won't call anybody out. You know, they, think they shared that maybe in confidence or private, but I've had pro level XC one guys, ATV side bike side and GNCC, reach out to me and just say, thank you. Like, you know, I felt like kind of alone on this and like seeing you be public about it, like really helps me realize like, man, I got this like, and I'm not alone in it. Um, and it's kind of funny, you know, outside looking in, you look at. Maybe a guy that runs pro ATV or pro bike and you're like that, that's the life I want. Like if you're a young kid and yeah, go get it if you're, if you're capable, but like those guys have hard days too. I mean, they're still paying bills like the rest of us, you know, life ain't easy just because you're at the top of your profession. absolutely. And like you've, you've had a full-time job throughout this whole process. then announcing is what I would consider another full-time job. wouldn't even consider that a part-time job or a weekend job. Like that's another full-time job. So I would imagine that that has been incredibly challenging at times and that's kind of contributed to your decision to step back. So what made now the right time to do that? So, you know, I was very fortunate that pre 2020, uh, I literally went to my, my boss. went to our director, I went to our human resource and I basically laid out my entire year and my schedule. And I said, I have the PTO to make this happen. I just want your blessing. And if at all possible, could I flex my schedule to where, I mean, I'll work 10, 12 hour days to be able to ensure I can be at a race weekend. So fortunately I'm in sales at the time they all agreed, hey, this is a sales job. If you are performing, if you are hitting your numbers, we have no problem with you doing this. Like what we support you work the hours you need to work, just keep us informed, et cetera. So I made that work for the first year and then I made it work for the second year. And then after that, you know, I had manager changes again sales, so it's high turnover. And every manager I had, they were like, Hey, you're doing your thing on the side. that seems to keep you happy in the office and uh you're still performing, do your thing, we're not gonna bug you. And then when 2020, the silver lining of that, we all got forced to work from home. And then I could take the laptop on the road with me and it made it much, much easier. And then kind of what, I don't wanna throw my old employer under the bus, but things changed at the very, very top as a very large company. And you could kind of see the writing on the wall, lot of downsizing in other departments. And basically before I, you know, we, to give you an example, we were a department of over a hundred reps. And before I left, I think we were under 20 and that, that change happened over the last four years, just gradually. So it kind of became a point of, you know, talking to my wife and it's like, man, I love what I do. I love the freedom. allows me. I don't think this is sustainable and if I don't take action now, I'm gonna be forced to take action to find a day job. And I don't know if I'll be able to find something when I have to find something that will allow me to still race. So I started looking, I found a job in the same industry, so it's very boring and I won't go into the details, but I do recruitment marketing for companies. So the new job, basically we help build career sites for companies. We beef their career sites up. work with veterans, which is very cool. We do like a military skill translator for companies. So if you are in the military, you retire, you can punch. I don't understand it all, but you punch some military codes in tells you where the jobs are. So again, it's very boring, but it's, it's, pays well and it's rewarding. the new job I've been doing this for over a decade. you know, when I got the offer, they asked, you know, what salary wise and I threw out a number. that I knew this would allow me to kind of have some more freedom. And surprisingly, they said yes, and I was very, very grateful. And as I looked at the schedule for next year, I got this uh in July of this year. You know, I've got a good amount of PTO, but I would basically have to burn through everything I have to make the GNCC schedule work along with everything else. And after probably a million talks with my wife, Um, I said, you know what, listen, I told her a long time ago, she said, how long do you want to do this? And I remember telling her like, I feel like when I turned 40, I'm going to be ready to like move on and do something else. I can't believe, I don't know if it was just putting that in the universe as cheesy as it sounds, but it worked out that way. And I told her finally one day I'm like, look, it's 50 years of GNCC. I don't know that I'll ever be able to call a race season as monumental as this one. We have MXON coming up this fall in October. It's in the states. It's in my hometown. I'm announcing it. This is the pinnacle of my career. No matter what I do from here, the MXON in my hometown, 50th season of GNCC, I'm like this year is going to be the biggest in my career, regardless of what I do from this point. So maybe it's time to take a step back. um decided like, okay, well, do we say it now? Do we tell the staff now? And in hindsight, maybe I should have, because I don't know if they're bringing in someone else, but it would give them more time. But I told her, like, I've always like my job at the races is to tell the rider's story. I'm going to hold this one close to the chest and, and I'm going to, don't want to go to the race and I don't want it to be about me. Like I, I'll get my moment, whatever. But right now it's about the racers. So. literally until the checkered flag flew at Ironman and I told Johnny Gallagher on the walk back to the GBC truck, no one knew. There were a few that knew on the low, but for 99.9 % of people, no one had any idea. And I felt like now that I've had a week to process it, I feel like I did it the right way. And then at the banquet, I'm down to party. Like, let's go. GNCC banquet. It's on. I'll take all the love then. But um yeah, so that's kind of how that all came about. A very emotional decision. It's hard to step away from something that you've been so involved with for so many years and also like have built up and become so invested in. So that's always, always a tough time. you mentioned that you spent all these years telling everybody else's stories. If the roles were reversed and someone was announcing your final race, I know you're not completely stepping away, but we don't want this to be your eulogy or anything, but what would you want them to say? Uh, I, I, that I made it fun. made it fun. You know, we, I, I've got to talk to, you know, the arguably the Mount Rushmore of Supercross and Pro Moto. And I've talked to the, interviewed them, the Mount Rushmore of GNCC on the ATV side and the bike side. Like I've been able to talk to all, a few of the biggest names in our sport, that I can think of in my lifetime. And. You know, through all of that, as cool as those opportunities were, like my main goal, I hope that people take away was, we're racing, at the end of the day, we're racing dirt bikes and we're racing ATVs. This should be fun. And I hope that my race call, you know, people got the information they needed and wanted. And my hope is that I made them laugh a little bit along the way, even if it was cheesy dad jokes during a broadcast. My hope is that people, you know, got back to the roots of why they threw their leg over an ATV or a bike and that was to go have fun. That's what I want to leave for any kind of legacy I leave behind. I love that. And you're still going to be involved, like you said, with Pro Motocross and Loretta's, maybe some Ironman events. So you're not completely leaving the race circuit, just getting to enjoy a little more free time for yourself, maybe. Yeah, that's it. um I'll be around for outdoor next year for Pro Motocross. Iron Man is a whole 10 minutes from my house, so there's no way I'm missing that. be there and I'm sure I'll hop on the mic here and there to say hello to people and be able to hang out. And then yeah, Loretta's next year. Minio's next year as far as I know. Unfortunately, I won't be able to be there this year. With starting the new job, I don't have the time off here at the end of the year. So I've already talked to Wyn Kern and apologize and you know, he was, he was very gracious and understood. So the guys they'll be fine down there, but yeah, ah I'm leaving, but not, not entirely. So I'm still going to be around. Tell people where they can connect with you online. Sure. um primarily Instagram is a thing. I don't know if the kids are still doing Instagram or not, but ah I can't either. cut off it. um tiktok didn't download threads. I'm done. Like no more social media. But yeah, I would say primarily Instagram and Facebook. Mikey Waynes on both. I do a little bit of tiktok I should probably get better at that because it is fun, but I'm not on there as much. And that's pretty much it. That's me. Well, thank you so much for joining me and thanks to everybody for tuning into Momentum. This has been a production of High Gear Success. If you want to connect or recommend a guest, head to MomentumMotorsportsPodcast.com. Until next time, keep the momentum rolling.