Reflecting On 30 Years Working in the Powersports Industry

Dale Spangler:

Welcome to Pit Pass Moto, the show that brings you deep dive interviews with the motorcycle industry insiders and racers that make the sport move.

I'm host Dale Spangler. No guest this week, but we have a special episode where I'll discuss some of my experience working in the power sports industry for the last 30 years.

I often get asked, “How does one get involved with the power sports industry? Or how does one get a foot in the door?” With that in mind, I thought I'd share some of my stories about my time working in the power sports industry for the last 30 years.

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Let's get started.

As I mentioned, I often get asked how I got involved in power sports and how does one get involved in power sports. It's not the easiest industry to probably break into. It's a very small industry, everyone seems to know everyone else.

And so, with that in mind, again, I thought I would share some of my experiences after 30 years of working in the power sports industry and what exactly that entails.

So, to start off with a little bit of background about myself, pretty much have been power sports enthusiast since I was eight years old. I got my first bike around eight years old. It was a Honda Z50, and I felt like I was hooked after that.

Then again, I wasn't racing, hadn't really thought about racing at all until my dad took me to a local race at Ohio International in Ravenna, Ohio.

That was it. Like once I saw that first motocross race, didn't even have a bike at that time that was capable of racing on a dirt bike track. But once I saw Jeff Hicks win the pro class at the local race, he had so much style.

He had this amazing Keystone white jersey, white pants to go with it. Thought it was the coolest thing I'd ever seen in my life, but I just knew I was hooked after that.

So, at 12-years-old, I believe it was Christmas before the start of 1981 season, got my first bike, 1981 YZ80 was under the Christmas tree that year. And that was the start of a career, a lifetime of motorcycles being a part of my life.

And so, I was racing again, until I was probably around 19 or 20, 1989. I was racing professional at that point, supercross and motocross, and didn't land a factory ride.

Like my dad and I had made this pact that if I don't have a factory ride by the end of 1989, it was time to start thinking about a career outside of power sports.

And so, I ended up quitting at the end of 1989 and thought I would be air quotes “normal and do normal things.” Worked at a hardware store, had some other odds and ends jobs, realized it wasn't really all it was cracked up to be being normal.

And so, I started racing again in 1993 and things were going pretty well. But I was working construction at the time, and I thought, “You know what, I need to get out of this job before the pay gets too good and I don't want to leave.”

I was a union carpenter, a commercial carpenter in Cleveland, and after two years I decided, “You know what, I need to need to get out of this.” And landed my first job in the power sports industry with Cometic Gasket out of Mentor, Ohio.

Of course, I had help landing the job. Good friend of mine, Steve Johnson, who's been on this show as a guest. He was working at Wiseco Piston at the time, and he mentioned that they were looking for someone.

I was actually hired on to Cometic as a computer-aided draftsman. I had gone to school during that period where I was trying to be normal and got a associate degree in computer-aided drafting.

So, when I was first hired at Cometic, I was actually drawing all of the gaskets that they were making, whether it was die stamped gaskets or water jet cut gaskets. I would basically hand draw the gaskets that we were going to reproduce.

And so, at this time, we didn't have a scanner, we didn't have anything like that. So, I was literally measuring with calipers, rebuilding a gasket, basically reverse engineering it into a CAD drawing that would then be made into a die to stamp out the gaskets or be cut out in a water jet.

It's kind of funny, most of my career has been marketing jobs. But this particular job, my foot in the door, my first job in power sports was as a computer-aided draftsman.

So, kind of the lesson there, I think is take a chance. If you really want to be involved in power sports, maybe it's not your perfect job that you enter the market in. It's something you might not like, but it is a foot in the door.

And I feel like once you have a foot in the door in power sports, once you're in, you're in. And so, the hardest thing is just getting in. If you really want to be involved, don't be afraid to try a job that you might not enjoy that much, but it's a foot in the door.

Part of the reason I got the job with Cometic too is, I'd broken both my wrists at the same time racing, and I needed a job that was less physical. Obviously, I couldn't do construction with two broken wrists.

So, I was able to teach myself how to use my mouse with my left hand, and I was able to work even with my broken wrists at Cometic Gasket. So, it was nice to be able to have that job. And so, I really appreciated being able to get that leg up and foot in the door.

After about, I'd say maybe a year or so, I basically went to the management and asked if I could start a marketing program, mainly just dealing with racers, sponsoring racers.

So, I started going to the races again, with Steve Johnson from Wiseco. He was kind of my mentor, and so, he kind of took me under his wing and showed me what he does at the races.

So, we'd go to High Point and Steel City, and a lot of these other racer productions events that the Coons family put on and that Wiseco and Cometic both sponsored. And so, I kind of learned to be a field marketing person.

And so, as that continued to grow, the program expanded. We started sponsoring more racers and events, and it kind of took off from there.

Well, in 1997, somewhere around there, I began to look for what I thought would be my next step in the industry since I really enjoyed marketing so much I thought, “I'd really like to have a position where I could learn more about marketing.”

Well, at that time, I'd reached out to a friend of mine, Davey Coombs, the managing editor of Racer X. We knew each other from growing up, racing together in the Ohio and West Virginia, Western Pennsylvania areas.

And so, I asked him if he happened to know of anybody looking for any positions, if he wouldn't mind putting my name in the hat. Well, sure enough, two days later, he gives me a ring and says, “Hey, I got a job for you, but it's in Europe.”

And so, wow, I didn't really know what to do at first, but at that point in my life, I thought, “You know what, why not?” And so, the job was with Alpinestars in Asolo, Italy, which is in the Veneto region, not far from Venice, Italy.

And my job with Alpinestars was to be media relations manager and basically travel around to editorial offices or go to races. Anything to promote the Alpinestars brand and their products.

And so, for example, I went to Jerez for the MotoGP, which back then, of course, was 500cc two-strokes. This was during the Mick Doohan era when he was dominant. And so, being able to experience these 500cc two-stroke road race bikes was absolutely incredible experience.

And same thing, I went to MXGP races, Cingoli, Italy. Went to a race in France, went to the UK for the Sheffield Supercross, because Alpinestars wanted someone to be there to represent them when Jeremy McGraths was on hand racing the Sheffield Supercross.

And so, my job was to drive from Asolo, Italy to Sheffield, UK and just be there to support him and his weekend of racing.

And so, fascinating job. I know a lot of people say, “Oh my gosh, you're so lucky.” There were tough times though. Like there was a lot of sleepless nights traveling all over Europe. If you can imagine, back then there were no cell phones, no smartphones, I should say. So, no GPS apps or any of that stuff.

I was looking at maps that had words that I didn't even understand and know how to pronounce in most cases. So, navigation was a serious challenge, especially when I was by myself.

I'd be in Paris, France, for example, trying to find an editorial office based off of just an address and finding it on a map. So, as you can imagine, it cost some undue stress. And so, that said, I wouldn't take it back for anything.

My time in Europe changed me, changed who I was. Like a lot of the guests I've had on this show who have experienced racing in Europe, it tends to make you grow up and mature a little quicker. It teaches you how to be able to be confident on your own.

And so, I definitely highly recommend anytime you could ever have an opportunity and it works out for you to take a job overseas or even just to travel overseas, to go to a race, to experience other cultures, other food. I highly recommend it.

Definitely, it was something that kind of helped define who I was going forward in the industry and just taught me a lot. Like I learned so much about media relations and building those relationships with editors and other people, with other companies.

It's so relationship driven, this sport, that I can't say enough about when you're out and about meeting people, if you're at the races, wherever you're at, introduce yourself. There's nothing wrong with that.

Most people are so friendly in power sports that they want to talk about what they love. Don't be bashful about it.

So, yeah, I spent, I would say around 16 months at Alpinestars. And near the end of 1989, I pretty much had just had enough to where I was burned out, needed a break from all the travel.

So, I returned home to the United States. And not long after, I got a phone call from a friend at Smith Optics in Ketchum, Idaho. And my old friend Hook Taylor, who was running Smith Optics, the motorsport division at the time.

Funny enough, they were one of my personal sponsors when I raced. And so, I had that connection already to begin with.

Well, Hook wanted me to apply for their motorsports marketing manager role, and so I did. But at first, after returning from Europe, I thought, “I don't know if I'm ready to move to Idaho.”

So, a place I knew nothing about. I knew where it was on the ad, on the map, but I had never been there, didn't know anything about it. Just seemed like such a far place to go, especially after just returning from 16 months in Europe.

And so, I questioned it. I let it sit for a while and actually decided not to take the job. But then about a month later, after not making any money, and sitting around, and trying to wonder what was next, I ended up accepting the offer. And that was my move to Idaho in 1999. And I've been in Idaho ever since.

My mom moved out here, who moved out about 10 years ago. So, I am now, an Idaho resident. I've spent half my life in Ohio where I grew up. Cleveland, Ohio area. And now, I've been 24 years in Idaho.

So, anyways, the Smith Optics job, I landed that and wow, what a great group of people. What a great organization. In hindsight, I think that was probably one of my better experiences in the power sports industry. They treated me so well.

And one of the perks of the job was, I think on the third day on the job, they said, “Well, you need to have yourself a dirt bike. You're the power sports slash motorsports marketing guy, so you need to have a bike.”

So, ordered up a KX250 from TUF Racing, and it showed up about two weeks later in a crate. So, got to go out and test goggles during the week, go to the races on the weekend.

And so, at that point, we split it between three different people who would alternate going to all the supercross and motocross races as goggle guys. Air quotes, “goggle guy.”

Definitely one of the most thankless jobs out there, being a goggle guy. I've talked about this numerous times with other people who've done the job. It's a difficult job.

When you're at a race and rain is threatening, it's a scramble. Goggles are one of the most critical pieces of equipment a rider can have. And so, you can be a hero or zero being a goggle guy if goggles don't function the way they're supposed to and someone has to throw their goggles off. That's not a good scenario.

So, as you can imagine, after doing that for a couple of years, just traveling a lot, I had tons of sky miles from, I think I've traveled over a hundred something thousand miles that last year in 2003 before I left Smith.

But what a job though. I mean, I got to go out and experience supercross and motocross from that perspective behind the scenes being one of those industry associates that goes to the races.

But I was ready to move on for something a little slower. I was getting a little older in age, and so, I thought, “Well, this might be the time to make my exit and try something different once again.”

After contemplating it for a little while, I decided to resign from my job at Smith and move to Boise, Idaho, which is about two hours from Ketchum, and decided to go to Boise State University. And something that was a personal goal of mine to be the first one in my family to get a college degree.

So, while I went to school for four years at Boise State, I worked at the local shop named Carl’s Cycle Sales as a parts associate and e-commerce specialist.

And so, strangely enough, I don't know why I did this to myself, but I took full class loads of 12 to 15 credit hours while working 25 hours at Carl’s Cycle. So, needless to say, that put some gray hairs on my head after four years of grinding that way.

And oh, I also, did a short stint with Pro Moto Billet and Fastway during this period and helped them with some of their marketing and web content projects until I graduated from Boise State in 2007 with a degree in English.

It's funny, but if only my high school English teachers knew that I ended up getting an English degree, they would just be at a loss for words because I was horrible. Probably one of my least favorite classes in high school, and I ended up getting a degree in English.

I was 35 years old when I went to school, so definitely an unconventional student. But as I said, it was a personal goal of mine.

After graduating in 2007, was offered a position with distributor, Western Power Sports as a content manager, where I spent the next 11 years helping them build their marketing department.

Ironically enough, when I landed the job, I was actually hired into the IT department of all places because there was no marketing department at that time.

Basically for the first three, four months, all I was doing was crunching data, fixing product descriptions in their dealer system.

And so, I don't know, it was not a very glamorous job, but again, like I said, it was a foot in the door. And after a few months, I approached them about doing some media relations since I noticed no one was doing that. And then just kind of built from there.

I ended up taking over the advertising, the media buys, PR, web content management. I helped them create marketing and advertising campaigns and manage the brand websites and maintain media relations with the press.

And as things kind of moved along, we hired more and more people. I think there was maybe three of us for probably the first five or six years. And then everything kind of just kept growing from there to where when I left the company in 2018, there had to have been probably close to 20 people in the department.

So, as we've seen with their FLY Racing brand, Western Power Sports was on a huge growth curve during that time, and they just kept getting bigger and bigger. It was an exciting time to be a part of the company.

Before you finish today's episode, first, we have a word from our sponsor.

After that I departed from Western Power Sports and I moved to Texas to work for Western's direct competitor, Tucker Rocky, who is another distributor.

One of what we call the big three in the power sports industry between Parts Unlimited, Western Power Sports, and Tucker Rocky. They're the three largest distributors in the United States that sell directly to dealers.

I went to a similar role at Tucker in the Fort Worth area of Texas where they're located. Yeah, I think I made it maybe a year there, living in Texas. And my wife and I decided that Texas really wasn't for us.

Even though it had nothing to do with the job at that time, it just wasn't a great environment for us. And so, we were able to talk them into letting us move back to Idaho and I continued working for Tucker remotely.

For me, that was kind of the start of probably leading me towards where I'm at today, being a freelancer, working from home remotely, kind of got me in that mode offsite like that. I think it sort of set me up for a transition into full-time freelance work.

So, basically, once the pandemic hit, it was March of 2020 and I was told that I was going to be furloughed at Tucker. And yeah, I mean, the next step I figured it was kind of inevitable.

And in May of that year, sure enough, I was laid off and that was the end of my time working for corporate companies in power sports. And it's hard to believe that adds up to 30 years, but somehow it does.

But anyways, that led me to where I'm at right now. Of course, hosting this show on a weekly basis, but my main day-to-day job these days is a business I started called Buzz Media LLC, where I'm a writing and content creation services company.

And so, what I do is I specialize in writing copy, creating blogs, any type of written copy, writing and copy editing specifically for power sports. And why I say specifically is as each industry has its own language.

People that are outside of power sports typically don't understand the language and it's very apparent when someone is “an outsider,” air quotes again.

And so, that's my specialty, is to come in and help them craft content, written word that reflects the industry lingo, the language. It just sounds right for the industry.

Of course, it's a Catch-22 situation, being your own boss. As much as I love the freedom, it can be mentally tricky. Sometimes there's uncertainty, the inconsistency with freelance work. And so, there's pros and cons to both.

Like it's probably would be hard for me to go back to a corporate position. I love the freelance lifestyle. I'm able to get things done much easier, quicker.

That said, it's definitely gratifying being a small business owner. I'm proud of the work that I've been able to do in a short couple of years. Super proud of the work I've been able to do for some of the industry brands I work with as clients. And I very much appreciate them trusting in me to deliver what they need.

And so, a few overall observations though, as I wrap this up. I have zero regrets about spending my life in power sports. As I said, 30 years in this industry. There have been many times where I've thought, “You know what, I should probably find another job outside of the industry. I need to make more money.”

But it always comes back to money isn't really what drives me personally. The day-to-day satisfaction, the passion for what power sports is all about. That's what gets me up every day. I'm excited when I wake up in the morning.

I can't wait to kind of just dive in and see what's happening in the power sports world. What's new, what's the latest breaking news?

If I was back in a corporate job, especially one outside of the industry, I could be doing something like marketing potatoes for Simplot here in Idaho. Don't think that would be very fun. I don't see much passion there.

So, one piece of advice I'd give listeners out there who have aspirations to maybe get involved in the power sports industry, is just be real with yourself.

If money is your career objective, you may want to stay away and work at a more air quotes, “normal job.” But if passion is what drives you, power sports is a fun and satisfying career. I mean, I have so much fun on a daily basis. I could talk about it for hours. And so, it really doesn't feel like a job.

For me, this is my life. Power sports is my life. It has been since I was 12-years-old when I first started racing. So, no regrets for me. I just absolutely love the power sports industry and probably will end up finishing out the rest of my career here.

And again, no regrets. I think it's a fantastic group of people, an industry that tries to support its own. If something happens, people circle the wagons. They do what they need to do to help that person out and keep everything moving forward.

Well, I hope you enjoyed this brief dive into my career in power sports and what it's been like after 30 years in the industry. I'm always up for talking about power sports. So, if any listeners have a question, please drop me a direct message through my Instagram account @DaleSpangler.

Really appreciate everyone listening and hope you have a good week. Thanks for listening.

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I'm Dale Spangler. I hope you'll join us next week for another episode of Pit Pass Moto. Thanks for listening.