Passing the Torch: The Evolution of Cars Yeah with Mark Greene and Ginger Baker Rust

Ginger Baker Rust - Host for Cars Yeah!

Ginger Baker Rust is a motorsports sports agent, land speed racer, and NHRA dragster pilot, according to Apple Podcasts and LinkedIn. She is known for her work behind the scenes in NASCAR, particularly in corporate partnerships and contracts. She also holds a land speed record and is recognized as a top female racer in the ECTA. She's earned the nickname "Lady Mavrik" within the motorsports community.

Contact: Ginger Baker Rust at ginger@carsyeah.com | N/A | Visit Online!

         

This Break/Fix episode discusses the history, transition, and future of the Cars Yeah podcast. Hosted by Crew Chief Eric and Garage Style Magazine’s Don Weberg, the episode features former podcast host Mark Greene and new host Ginger Baker Rust. The conversation covers the origin and journey of Cars Yeah, the reasons behind Mark’s decision to hand over the reins, and how Ginger was selected as his successor. The episode delves into the challenges and processes involved in transitioning the podcast, highlights favorite moments and episodes from Mark’s time as host, and outlines exciting plans for the show’s future under Ginger’s leadership. Discussion points include inspiring loves for cars, memorable podcast episodes, advice for aspiring podcasters, and Ginger’s vision for expanding the podcast’s reach, particularly among younger audiences. Additionally, the episode touches on notable guests, including the potential appearance of Hulk Hogan, and emphasizes the importance of passion, dedication, and inspiration in sustaining long-term success in podcasting.

• Mark, after hosting Cars Yeah for so many years, what inspired your decision to pass the torch, what was your process for selecting a successor – How did you find Ginger? 
• Ginger, tell us about your personal journey with cars and storytelling, and how do you think that will shape your approach as the new host?
• Mark, looking back on your time with Cars Yeah, what were some of the most memorable moments or interviews that defined the show for you?
  
• What do you think makes a great automotive podcast, and how has Cars Yeah managed to keep listeners engaged over the years?
• Mark, when you were stepping away from the hosting chair, what advice did you give Ginger as she took on this new role?
• What’s next for Mark? What’s the NEXT BIG THING? Are you officially retired now? Or is there more to come?
• What’s next for Ginger? Any Spoilers? Who are the special guests…

Crew Chief Brad: [00:00:00] Break Fix podcast is all about capturing the living history of people from all over the autos sphere, from wrench, turners, and racers to artists, authors, designers, and everything in between. Our goal is to inspire a new generation of Petrolhead that wonder to. How did they get that job or become that person?

The Road to Success is paved by all of us because everyone has a story.

Mark Greene: We’re rev it up and welcome to uh Yeah, the Break Fix podcast, not cars. Yeah. But we are gonna be talking about cars. Yeah. Today

Crew Chief Eric: for years, cars Yeah. Has been a go-to destination for automotive enthusiasts, industry insiders, and anyone that finds inspiration in the world of cars.

Hosted by the legendary Mark Green. The show has featured in-depth conversations with some of the most fascinating people in the automotive space. Today we’re shifting gears and heading into an exciting new chapter as Caria Transitions to its new host, ginger Baker [00:01:00] Rust.

Don Weberg: Ginger brings a fresh perspective, a deep love for cars, and a passion for storytelling that will keep the spirit of Caria alive while taking it to new heights.

What did this transition mean for the podcast? How will the show evolve while staying true to its roots? Knuckle up as we take a behind the scenes look at this exciting shift and hear from both Mark and Ginger about what’s next for cars. Yeah.

Crew Chief Eric: And joining me tonight is returning co-host Don Weiberg from Garage Style Magazine, one of the many personalities on the Motoring Podcast network.

And with that, let’s welcome Mark and Ginger to break fix.

Mark Greene: Thank you. It’s nice to be here. And I wanted to remind your listeners that Eric and Don were on Caria back in October, 2023 together. And then Eric was a guest August 16th, and Don was, I think he was a three timer. He was show number 27. That’s how old Don and I are.

And then he was also show, uh, number 1,341, I believe. I get [00:02:00] that right. Maybe you’re just a two timer. I’ve heard that about you. No, I think I was three, but the third was with Eric. That’s right. Okay. We, we won’t call you a two timer then, but Yeah, it’s great to be here and it’s very special to be here with Ginger because this transition has been so unique for me and so much fun.

Ginger, we did do some shows together in, in December of January, right?

Ginger Baker Rust: Yes, sir. We did.

Mark Greene: Which was fun and kind of odd for me too, because I’m always used to being on one side of the mic and not the other. But yeah, it’s great to, uh, talk to you guys again. Feel like I’ve known you guys forever and, uh, it’s, uh, gonna be a unique thing to be here on the show with Ginger, because I’ve been editing her shows for her and that’s really weird too, because I hear cars.

Yeah. And I don’t hear myself. What’s with that? Oh, you mean the voices in your head have stopped? You know, like most people, I don’t like to listen to myself. And for 10 and a half, 11 years, I had to listen to myself because I edited almost all my shows. There was several years here where I was having somebody else edit the shows, but I did like to edit them [00:03:00] because.

I would learn things every time I edit the show, and that would help me try to improve for the next show. I did have some great editors. The ladies that were helping me were doing a great job, but then Covid came and some of the sponsors at that time went away. So the money factor was like, well, I think I should take this back.

Kind of reinvented myself a little bit at that time and learned a lot more, and I just kept doing it from there on. But yeah, it is odd listening to the beginning a rev it up and welcome to cars. Yeah. And it’s, it’s not me, it’s Ginger, it’s, it’s still very hard to get used to

Crew Chief Eric: see Don. He’s a pro seasoned podcaster.

He did the whole setup for us and he’s created a segue for me to introduce the first question, which is really what is on everybody’s mind. Mark, you’ve been hosting cars yet for over a decade. What inspired your decision to pass the torch and what was your process for selecting a successor to such a legacy that was behind cars yet?

And how did you find Ginger after all that? How long is this show? As long as

Mark Greene: we need it to be as long as we need in 2022. I had a long [00:04:00] time friend. Come to me and say, have you ever thought about selling your podcast? I would like to take it over. And at that time I was getting a little bit, I wouldn’t say tired of it, but you know, when you do something for 10 years, it’s like, well, maybe there’s something else for me to do.

I’m not so sure. And we, we had a long talk and then I said, you know what? Maybe this will work. So we negotiated a price, we talked about how we were gonna do it, and then sadly he got ill and he had esophageal issues, which kind of affects a podcaster, right? Being able to speak properly and so forth. Or normally, I should say, not properly.

So almost that entire year, I was waiting for him to get better and he, he had some surgeries, he got better, then he got worse, then he got a lot worse. And then finally he said, I don’t think this is gonna happen. And by that time, almost seven, eight months had gone by. And you have all this momentum and in your mind, when you’re ready to let something go, I hold this all to like selling a car.

We’re in love with our cars, and then you decide to let it go. And all my listeners cars yeah, know about Orange Crush, the turbo [00:05:00] that I had, I was all jazzed up to do this and then it all fell apart. So, and it was like, oh, okay, now how do you go about selling a podcast? That proved to be way more difficult than I ever thought it would be, because people think of a podcast as your voice.

And so I started to pitch it out there. I got a lot of response from a lot of people. I think I talked to almost 36 different people. One of the other things I did was I did research on have any podcasts ever sold and I found three. Out of those three, two of them were very reluctant to talk about much of anything.

One of them gave me a lot of great information. I think he was doing a horse podcast or something like that. There was a podcast for everything. And so I went, okay, well there’s a process for this. So I started in 23 trying to sell it. I had all these people contact me. I had many meetings signed, lots of NDAs, went through a lot of things, and it usually came down to a couple things.

Once the person found out how much work this is, and you’re [00:06:00] shaking her head and you guys are shaking your head, they went, well, don’t you just talk to people and have fun? And it just happens. I actually had somebody say that to me. I said, what do you mean it happens? That’s a bumper sticker mark. Yeah, yeah.

Just do it right. At that point, I started to get a little bit frustrated because I would pitch the whole thing and talk to people. I even had a couple big name, I can’t say who they were because we have NDAs, but big names. If I mentioned you’d go, whoa. But then for those companies, and even for some other people, you’d get down to the finance part of it, and usually it was the finance guy.

The bean counter said, why don’t we just do one ourselves? This is easy. Okay, well, you’re just gonna start a podcast and have, at that time, I think I was having 85, 90,000 unique downloads a month. Really? You could do that. Good for you. Okay, go for it. None of those companies have gone on to do a podcast. I think they just realized it’s not as easy as it looks.

I was getting kind of frustrated and I was starting to think, well, you know in your mind, again, you’re ready to sell the car. And then the guy that was supposed to show up at the cash doesn’t show up. And then some [00:07:00] other people come and kick the tires and, and you go through that whole eBay sale thing or marketplace on Facebook or whatever it is, and you start to go, maybe this is gonna happen and your steam is starting to kind of blow out a little bit.

And then one day this lady named Ginger calls me on the phone. Now Ginger, I had been chasing Ginger. Well, I’m married, not that way, but I’d been trying to get Ginger on the show. What was it? Ginger, all the way back to oh seven or oh six.

Ginger Baker Rust: Uh, it’s like eight or nine years. Yeah,

Mark Greene: it was a long time. And I have a list and Ginger owns it.

Now the list of all the people I’ve chased and she probably looks at it every day and goes, oh my gosh, mark. Now remember back then I was doing five shows a week, so I was pumping out a lot of shows. So you know, the phone rings and I went. Ginger, what’d she call me for? I go, ginger, how you doing? She goes, hi Mark.

I said, are you finally ready? ’cause I had contacted Ginger maybe two, three times a year for seven years, like I do. Everybody, you know? And she goes, well, I don’t know if I’m quite ready to be on your show, but I’d like to talk to you about buying it. And I went, what? And [00:08:00] she, he caught me off guard so much because I didn’t know a lot about Ginger.

I had heard about her. She’d been referred to me by another previous Kaja guest, like many of the guests there did. And so we started talking and I think our process from signing the deal from the beginning was probably seven months.

Ginger Baker Rust: Oh yeah. At least

Mark Greene: eight months. It was a long time. This was something completely outta her wheelhouse.

I was like, I think I would like to do this and it would help augment the other businesses that I do, but I don’t know if I can do it. And we had lots of these intellectual talks about why I thought she could, or she would tell me why she thought she couldn’t. And then I would tell her, well, here’s what you have to learn and all that kind of thing.

So eventually we struck a deal and we decided when that was going to start. The rest is history really, because we did some shows together end of January, I think. Ginger, you started doing them yourself? Yes, because at this point we’re doing one a week. I think we did four, six, something like that. And I finally said, ginger time two jump up.

Yeah, the [00:09:00] training wheels off. Yeah, I’m getting outta the car. You’re gonna drive down the road now and don’t crash my baby because I spent, you know, and I don’t want this to fail, not only for her personally, ’cause I’d be become friends, but I built this brand in a way that I felt it could continue on forever.

You know? It’s like somebody, again, buying your car and then driving it off a cliff or butchering it, you know, in a way, even though it’s hers now, if you wanna put fender flares on it or turbocharge it or whatever. Wait, I already had a turbo. Anyway, that’s the process in a nutshell, and that really was a two and a half year process.

All told, maybe even three years. It was a long time, but it was a bit of a challenge. But I’m very happy with how this has all worked. Can see by the smile on Ginger’s face. She’s done a great job. Again, like I said, when I’m editing her shows, it’s just very still bizarre. It’s just like, where’s Mark now? I did do her a special intro and outro and she’s still using that.

Yep. So my voice is still there for a while. I guess you really have weaned yourself away when Someday I turn on cars. Yeah. And hey, what happened to me? [00:10:00] I’m gone. That’s how it all came together, and

Crew Chief Eric: I’m very happy that it all worked out. Ginger, before we dive into your background a little bit, let’s pull on this thread for just a second.

Mark’s trying to get you on the show. No, no, no. And then one day the phone rings and I want your show. I don’t wanna be on your show. I want your show. When did that realization happen for you and how did it happen?

Ginger Baker Rust: It wasn’t all those years that I didn’t wanna be on a show. It was just. Because of what was going on in my career and personal life.

And I was on the road all the time working in NASCAR and other racing series and I was just, I mean, I was home a day and a half a week traveling, you know, 10 months a year. And it just was difficult timing more than anything. I. But I had listened to his show for years and I had gotten to know him and the show, but I think I, I was coming to a transition in my career, in my life.

You know, I’ve done a lot of stuff. I’ve done a lot of things, marketing and corporate marketing and racing and in numerous other industries, pitching a hundred million dollars deals for media [00:11:00] companies. And I’ve always been comfortable being the one, being interviewed or pitching deals or getting on stage and singing in front of people, you know, or, or giving speeches.

That’s never been a problem. But getting behind the mic is totally different. I mean, I can sing all day long to a huge crowd on the mic, but being able to carry a show, that was something that I was a little nervous about, especially his, because it’s such a legacy. So, yeah, I thought about it and I talked to a couple people and, and I reached out to Mark and, you know, I was like, you know, I had this like, crazy idea.

I don’t even know, you know, but let’s talk about it. And, you know, so he started telling me about it and, and I told him what my ideas were and why, but that I was really nervous taking over such a legacy. Also, it’s beyond that. It’s not just about being on the mic, you know, it’s also understanding the business side of it, of what has to be done on the business side, what kind of priorities that you have to give to it.

And it’s not just jumping on and recording. I mean, you have to schedule you all these things. Then I’m actually still learning a lot of pieces of it. I, I had, [00:12:00] I had an understanding primary foundation, but understanding all the pieces of parts totally different. I mean, I’ve written TV, commercials, radio commercials, you name it, but I’ve never.

Done a podcast. So, you know, I wanted to make sure that I was fully prepared and wanted to make sure that I was not biting off more than I could chew because it was so important to me to carry on Mark’s legacy that he built more than anything. And that internal fear of, oh my gosh, you know, is people gonna accept the fact that it would be a woman taking it over?

Would they still listen? Would they be open to that? Would they care that I come from the racing side? Not necessarily from the car collector side. All these different things were going through my mind. Those were all the things that I was considering and whether I could carry his toe, but more than anything was making sure that I protected Mark’s legacy and what he built.

Mark Greene: Yeah. I told her, don’t wreck this thing.

Ginger Baker Rust: Yeah. I absolutely would not do that outta my control, but nothing within my control, for sure. Yeah, no pressure by the way. Yeah,

Mark Greene: well they say in racing it’s yours to lose as they [00:13:00] transition the, uh, endurance driver to the next driver.

Crew Chief Eric: If you’re not first, you’re last.

Mark Greene: That one too. That one too. Yeah, I particularly love endurance racing and, and I didn’t get to do much of it when I was vintage racing, but I did get to do a few. And I remember jumping into a car, I was co-driving and the guy that got out said, okay, I’ve got us in first. It’s yours to lose, psyched to go.

And I’m like. Wait, what did you say? Oh, crap. And then you take off and you’re like, I could lose this thing. And he put us out in front. The pressure’s on, so. Exactly.

Ginger Baker Rust: Yeah. Well, I’ve jumped in a couple of different seats, other people’s race cars, you know, and I was just fine. That didn’t make me nervous, you know?

But this was a whole different race car that I was jumping into.

Don Weberg: New kind of ride.

Ginger Baker Rust: Yeah.

Don Weberg: So Ginger, what you’re saying though, it is not like the meat and the gravy, the gravy doesn’t just come when you cook the meat?

Ginger Baker Rust: Oh, no, no, no, no, no. You have to develop, I mean, you, it’s, it’s almost like going back to Betty Crocker cookbook.

You gotta go back and you gotta learn the old school, and you’ve gotta learn the [00:14:00] business of it. And you’ve gotta learn all the ingredients and the recipe of what makes it work and what doesn’t work, and how you can screw it up if you put in sugar instead of salt. Right? I mean, and, you know, those kinds of things.

That’s the way I looked at it in, in the way I approach everything in business. Is being able to take things one piece at a time and look it at it from all directions on what can be successful, what can wreck it. It’s like a setup on a car too, right? You gotta understand the technical part. You gotta understand what makes it work in order to drive it.

And it’s the same thing.

Mark Greene: Did pride myself in creating systems and procedures for this. That’s the only way I could have done this for 10 years. So I had it all very tightly dialed in. And would you agree that probably helped you a lot? Because I learned that at the beginning when I started this and I had to do that because when I was doing five shows a week, you’re on a treadmill that is spinning super fast and it never stops ever.

If you go on vacation, it’s still going. The listeners want those five shows, or in the case of now one show they want it. As Ginger’s taking this over, I’ve said, okay, uh, when’s the next [00:15:00] show? Come on, you gotta get a bunch of them in the can. Come on. She’s like, I know I’ll put three people canceled today.

And I said, yeah, welcome to my world. Yeah, it’s a challenge, but she’s doing a great job. I feel good every day.

Ginger Baker Rust: It’s been interesting because, you know, I’ll have stuff lined up or ready to to record and then we have a power outage.

Mark Greene: Yeah.

Ginger Baker Rust: It’s happened a couple of times.

Mark Greene: Yep.

Ginger Baker Rust: Or you. Have these people scheduled and then they have an emergency or something like that.

Plus just learning the procedures. Again, taking my rookie runs down the track. I, I’m learning a lot of things and I’ve already bumped the wall a few times. I’ve definitely got my Darlington stripe, you know, on this, but it’s going better. I, I’m getting to where I’m getting things a little bit more ahead and just learning the systems and then, you know, thank goodness I’ve had Mark as a guide on this, because I would’ve definitely had to pull into pit lane and crash and burn a couple times if I didn’t have him, so.

Mark Greene: Well, you’re welcome. That’s 10 years of learning right there. Take it for granted. Why go here?

Don Weberg: What is it that, I mean, you’re leading [00:16:00] into it and, and you’re kind of getting real close to the wall and you’re not touching it. You’re going away from it. It’s killing me to wonder You have good stuff going on.

Yeah. And all of a sudden you decide, ah, what the hell? I’ll just take on this podcast. Gosh,

Ginger Baker Rust: I am always been the one that likes challenges that other people would not necessarily think about doing. I mean, I love a challenge and I’m an adrenaline junkie. It’s kinda like anything else. When I sit at World Land Speed Record, I didn’t go there to do that.

I didn’t even know I was gonna get in a car and do that. I didn’t even know I was gonna race. So I was going there to be with a client, and then an opportunity presented itself. The client offered me to run his car, and I did, and I broke a record, and I hadn’t raced in 30 some odd years. I, I’ve done a lot of things in my career where I’ve been the first one to get bloody through the wall.

And so that’s just kind of my mo and, and also I have a, a really good. Intuition on looking at things and what things are capable of being and what they are already tying it in. [00:17:00] Also, with the business side of what I do in racing and in motor sports, for me it was kind of a natural transition. There’s a lot of things that I’ve been trying to work on in the racing community and the car enthusiast community, but one in particular is, is keeping racing alive.

Crew Chief Eric: Amen.

Ginger Baker Rust: Our beloved racing is in trouble. Our car culture’s in trouble. Our love with cars and our passion and our history with cars is in trouble. That honestly was the biggest driver is ran against the wall, not walls that were supposed to be there, but that were put in front of me just ’cause I’m a female in, in a sport.

But kind of looked at this also as a way to be able to break some more barriers. For a lot of people, including myself, but it’s not the woman thing I’m, that’s not my platform. It’s not the Me Too thing, it’s not anything about that. It’s about the love affair that I have with cars in the racing community.

First and foremost, being able to use this platform to help save it in some way, and that that really [00:18:00] was what made me, made me pick up the phone was in some way, maybe I can use my voice in this direction when maybe it’s not being listened to in other directions. So that was part of it. Part of it. That was part of it.

Don Weberg: But wait, there’s more.

Ginger Baker Rust: Yeah, there’s more. I have a lot of big ideas. I’ve been in corporate marketing for 30 years. I, I, like I said, I’ve been the first one bloody through the wall many times and it has always worked out for me. And that’s just who I am. I lacked big challenges and I knew that this was gonna be a big challenge and it just seemed to be a natural fit for where I was outta my career.

Mark Greene: I’ll say too, that tenacity and persistence are two things that made Kaia happened for so long. Just bulldogs. And that’s something that when I spoke to. Ginger over many months. I learned that’s who she is. And I was just talking to a longtime car listener to the other day. He actually called me and we were talking about Ginger.

He actually met Ginger at an event and he said, yeah, she’s, she’s a bulldog like you. She just doesn’t stop. And he also knows your mom and knows all about that. Yeah, [00:19:00] Raleigh. Yeah. And you gotta have that to do any kind of business. Go through the highs and lows, of course. But that was something that many of the people that wanted to do this, I could just tell they didn’t have that.

You gotta commit to this. As I said, it’s a treadmill. You can’t be successful in podcasting and let time lapse, because listeners nowadays, especially when I started this, there were only three car podcasters, just three NPR, which was the old Click and clack show. Adam Corolla had a show car cast, you know, and he’s still famous and doing all sorts of stuff, and I forget what the other one was, but Caria was the next one.

Now there’s. Everybody has a podcast.

Crew Chief Eric: Us too. Look

Mark Greene: at that. Well, it, it was interesting over time because more and more people would come to me and say, Hey, I wanna start a podcast. I get a lot of it now, three emails this morning, Hey, I wanna start a podcast. Can I talk to you? And I, I finally started saying, I’ll do some consulting.

Here’s my hourly fee. Yeah. Call me if you’re interested because otherwise you can’t just spend 30 minutes and explain this. No, it’s way too complicated. There’s too many [00:20:00] aspects of it. So I usually give a polite response and just say, no, I’m not interested. I’m not doing consulting right now. When I am, I’ll contact you.

Ginger Baker Rust: Yeah. Mark’s right. I mean, you gotta have tenacity and you’ve gotta be a bulldog. And yeah, I talked about with Mark when he first talked to me about the art of no, learning how to use that in an effective way, not taking no for an answer. That just means maybe another way or another time. But also I spent a lot of time doing a lot of research.

I do a lot of research before I go into anything generally if I can’t, you know, so I really researched it from all directions. Okay, well, you know, how would you do this marketing wise? How would you do this guest wise? You know, do I know enough people? Am I far enough in the industry that I could carry this?

You know, who could I rely on the editing? You know, all these different ideas, the website, I mean, there’s just layers and layers and layers and layers and layers that people don’t understand. And then, you know, also understanding the business of it, of how making successful and doing the research of, okay, how do you sell a podcast?

[00:21:00] How do you buy a podcast? How do you make it have value? Gosh, there’s so much that went into it. It wasn’t just a couple of phone calls. We literally talked back and forth for seven, eight months and, and quite frankly, I mean, there was a couple times, I mean, mark had to really say, okay, you know, you can do this.

Yeah, I get to the point that I was getting a little bit discouraged and, and not even that. I think more so that. I was having that little bit of internal doubt of fear, but fear to me is just something that you just have to walk around and say, you know what? Get behind me. ’cause it’s, I’m gonna lead. But when it finally came down to it, and you know, I was just like, like anything else, I’m just, I’m gonna jump in and put the seatbelt on and I’m gonna stomp the loud pedal and here we go.

Mark Greene: There were a lot of great questions and some of the people that I talked to before that were interested, they wouldn’t ask me any of the pertinent, important questions. It was just all, you know, little things like little things. How do you get somebody to guess? Yeah. Okay. Well, there’s uh, many ways to do that.

And, and at some points, ginger and my wife will, I’d say, I don’t know if this lady’s gonna ever get in the car and drive because it’s just dragging on. Come on. But I could sense that with [00:22:00] Ginger. And we became friends over the phone. We’ve never met in person, which is kind of silly, but she’s quite a ways away.

North Carolina, I’m up here in the Pacific Northwest so many times when she would drift off a little bit and I could sense, what’s worrying you today? What, what do you think you can’t do? And she would say something. I said, okay, well here’s how you do that. Because I had answers for everything. ’cause I’ve, I’ve done it.

Yeah. There’s very, and there’s things that, she has strengths that are far exceeding me because of her marketing. I mean, she just did an awesome, huge deal. She had some strengths there that I didn’t have the technical side and she’ll self acclaim is the weakest part. But she’s got two sons that are techie guys.

And I actually had my first meeting with one of them that I thought was gonna be with Ginger about how to do it. And I thought, you know, I figured if Ginger doesn’t know all this, this is gonna be an all day meeting. I think after an hour and a half, her son goes, okay, we’re done. I’m like, well this guy knows more about tech than I do.

You know, he’s a cyber tech expert and all this stuff. So I went, okay, she’s got good people on her team. Because again, when I started this, I had nobody so. I had to figure out everything, [00:23:00] build a website and how to record. And you know, there’s just all these things that go wrong and can go wrong and every time they do, you just, okay, how do I do that?

Thank goodness for Google and YouTube. I stay up all night long watching YouTube. So why are these wave tracks doing what they’re doing? I don’t under what is going on. So.

Crew Chief Eric: There’s a lot of pieces to the puzzle to use a cars Yeah. Analogy here. We have blown through first and second gear and we’re tacking like 9,000 RRP M right now.

So we gotta shift into the next gear. Cool. And talk a little bit more about the legacy of cars. Yeah. So, mark, as you look back over your 2,500 plus episodes of cars Yeah. Before the transition, there’s some memorable moments that you’ve mentioned over the years. You know, some of your favorite episodes and things like that.

I wanna highlight those for the listeners that are like, man, I gotta go back and check out cars yet, you know, I don’t know where you’ve been, if you haven’t listened to cars yet episode yet, and Ginger, you’re still defining the next generation of cars yet is gonna be, and what those memorable moments are.

So I want both of you to kind of touch on the [00:24:00] highs of what you’ve experienced so far.

Ginger Baker Rust: I can tell you I’ve been very grateful and blessed in the fact that my very first show by myself was with my really good friend, Kat DeLorean, John DeLorean’s daughter. I had thought a lot who my first guest was gonna be.

And I really wanted to be able to give a platform to Kat to be able to tell her story and to clear up a lot of stuff about John DeLorean, especially with some of the documentaries and things that had just come out. So it was just really, really good timing, but be able to capture, I think one of the biggest things for me so far that’s been really surprising is several of my guests, they’ve actually gotten emotional.

And that’s something that I wasn’t quite prepared for. And Pat got emotional, and a good friend of mine, Danny Drynan, he was going through some stuff, you know, so I told Mark, I said, you know, that was something I wasn’t prepared for when I’m recording and someone got emotional and here these are my friends, and I’m like filling all this emotion for ’em and you know, and then your voice breaks and all these other things and you get [00:25:00] thrown off.

Right? You know, I prepare, prepare, prepare. And then like it just threw me off. But in a good way, I realized that that was okay because it actually made it more authentic. And I think that’s been the biggest surprises. So far other than, you know, just the stuff that we talked about that just things that happened, they’re outta your control.

Right? But I think that has been one of the most special moments. And every person that I’ve had on there, a lot of them have been my really close friends, and it’s been wonderful to be able to share. I. Finally share their stories. Also, the biggest thing that I was, I, I will be honest that I, part of the things I was worried about it, you know, like I mentioned, was how are people gonna react to a woman taking over the show?

And then how are they gonna react to the fact that I’m gonna have more women on there? And it’s been interesting, you know, there’s always the one percentage of the little bit of pushback that it’s like, oh, well you’ve had three women in a row on the show. Well, okay, well one, it was March, it was Women’s History Month, but two, do you ever hear that?

And saying, okay, well they’ve been three men on the show in a row. You never [00:26:00] hear that, but you hear, oh, well you’ve had three women on the show, so is it all gonna be about women? Well, you know, these are women in worldwide motorsport that have some incredible achievements. I think that’s been the thing so far.

That’s been a little bit of a surprise to me on one hand, but not a surprise to me on the other, I mean, it’s not anything different I haven’t faced in the motorsports world or corporate world, so,

Crew Chief Eric: so Mark, you have a lot of memorable moments. Can you pick one? No, sorry, I can’t.

Mark Greene: Funny, my start was so different than Ginger’s because my first show, I, I had set a definite date to start 2014, May 28th.

That was a, an anniversary for me of one year after leaving Grillo’s Garage, figuring out I was gonna do this and then doing it. I said, I have to have the first show. I did my website, which I’d never done before. I’d been in the design world, graphic world like Ginger, but I’d never built a website. I didn’t know how to do that.

I was coming up to that date. I made the crazy decision to do five shows a week and it was crazy. I mean, it was nuts. Looking back, I honestly, I’ve said this to Ginger, I don’t know how I did it. I really don’t. I mean, it was just, I guess [00:27:00] you could ask my wife, she didn’t see me for 10 years ’cause I was just in my office here doing this.

But the first show was coming up in. I didn’t have anybody lined up. And I had called, I knew a lot of people. I called people and people say, what’s a podcast? Because again, this is 11, 12 years ago, but nobody knew what a podcast was. They go, is that like a radio show or, and I had some friends that I thought were gonna be really great, and they just said, no, I don’t wanna do that.

Sounds weird. I don’t wanna talk about myself. And I was literally a, I think it was about five days away and I went, I wonder if this is gonna even happen. Uh, Cindy Mele, who’s in the car marketing world, she reached out to me, I’d known her from long ago, and she said, Hey, this thing you’re gonna do, plus I didn’t have any social media presence at all.

I didn’t even have a Facebook page. I just wasn’t into that stuff. So I had to like invent this thing. And she said, Hey, you’re gonna do this podcast thing, right? And I go, yeah. And she said, well, who’s gonna be your first guest? And I said, I had no idea. She goes, mark, it’s like five days away. And I said, I know.

I’m starting to kind of freak out. And she said, well, how about one of my clients? I said, who is it? [00:28:00] And she goes, Rick Cole. And I said, Rick Cole, the auction guy. Now, Rick Cole was the first guy to do auctions during Car Week. When Car Week was just three days, but still he was the first guy. Now there’s auctions at every single event.

I went, wow, Rick Cole. Yeah, I know Rick. I hadn’t thought of calling him. I don’t know him that well. And so my first show literally was recorded the day before. I went live, he was at an airport ready to fly to Europe. ’cause otherwise I would’ve lost the opportunity. So I did the show. It was horrible. I was horrible.

He was fine. But he was at an airport. So every few minutes it was like flight number 73 ready for morning. And I’m like, how am I gonna edit that out? And so we did it. He’s been on the show again once more later, much later on. But, but somehow it happened. Editing. I remember I learned the hard lesson with show number seven.

You always make a copy because. The whole thing disappeared on me and we had to redo the show. Thank goodness. It was a friend who was very nice to me. Jonathan Ward of Icon. He said, [00:29:00] no problem, mark, we’ll do it again. Oh God. I thought for sure you just go, this obviously isn’t something you should be doing, mark.

’cause you don’t know what you’re doing when you come back to favorites. I’ll say this for me, the shows that are most memorable, I don’t have favorites because there’s things about many, many, many, many guests that were very enlightening, fun. Unlike Ginger, I didn’t do shows with hardly anybody I knew.

Even my first a hundred shows where people I didn’t know, they weren’t close friends. So I went in cold. Every one of these things is Baptism by fire. I kind of started to like that. The, uh, grittiness of it, the scared factor of it. I don’t have a problem talking to people. I’d never have. So, you know, my wife always says, when we go to events, you just start talking to people.

She’s more shy and she’s like, I don’t wanna talk to anybody. I’d rather be home reading my books. And so, I would say the ones that stood out for me are the people that shared, like Ginger said, emotional times in their life. But there was a consistency. They all learned a major lesson through a horrible thing, a catastrophe, something [00:30:00] that happened in their life that was very challenging, and they learned that they needed to start helping people in order to be happy.

I’ve even done some keynote talks at events over the years, and it’s always the same thing. It’s what I learned after 1000 conversations. What I learned after 2000 conversations, what I learned after all these shows, and that is that we are happiest as people when we find a way to help other people. And I was really excited when that started to happen.

And some of the shows were very emotional. Uh, John Neas, who’s a car guy that many people know, a writer and does a lot of things, he got me crying. I just stopped in the middle of the show because the story he was telling just had so much emphasis. And it was at a time when I just lost my dad and it was like all this stuff just came.

And I just, he goes, mark, are you still there? I couldn’t even talk. I was like, so choked up. And I go, I, I, I had to stop for a minute, you know? And he’s like, what? And I go, just a minute, you know? And I just had to compose myself. Today, he wears that badge of pride. He goes, I made Mark Green cry. I’m the only one that’s, [00:31:00] but you do, you get emotional with people when they start telling your stories.

I had a, a guest on the show, Barry McGuire every become friends with, I’ve known Barry since way back my Rios days, and his daughter, who’s since passed away, but she was on the show and she shared this story about this horrible husband she had who was abusive. And she decided one day to take her own life.

And she went to go do that. And thank goodness it didn’t happen. And there’s a long story. You have to listen to the show. It’s the great thing about podcasts. You can go back and listen to all the podcast shows if you wanna hear some of me. But you know, that show I, as she was saying it, I was like, oh my gosh, what I, I had no idea.

And there was many shows like that and out of that horrible situation where thank goodness she didn’t get to, she didn’t take her own life and. Things happen and you have to listen to the show to hear the rest of the story, as Paul Harvey says is that she learned I need to start doing things for others.

This horrible part of my life is about me. I need to help others. So she started a car show, the Castle Show at the castle there in Los Angeles, helping young kids who are runaways on drugs, having trouble in their [00:32:00] lives, terrible life with their families abused. She found ways to help them, but there’s a repeat to this that goes on over and over and over again, and that’s the secret that I’ve learned is find a way to help other people.

So that was the key for me to learn that lesson. And there’s some Tim Med vets who figured out how to take paraplegics, climbed them out Everest. He was about to take his own life because he was addicted to drugs after a horrible motorcycle accident. He was actually a builder of choppers. He was gonna marry Cher, and I think he found out she was a little woo woo woo.

So, uh, she, he decided not to. At any rate, that’s how I answer that question. I can’t just pick one. And there’s ginger mentions women. I, I think I had close to 450 women on the show before Ginger came on, and she was a guest on the show before she took over. And so having women on the show was always fun for me and different, I think the youngest guest I had was a 12-year-old racer.

Ginger just did a show with a 17-year-old racer, a young woman who’s coming up through the ranks. And then Ginger will have to get to her old guy or [00:33:00] old woman show because I think the oldest guy who was ever on my show was Ed Arian Isky, right before he turned a hundred. And then famous people. And Ginger’s already had some famous people ’cause she knows more famous people than I do.

But you know, as you guys know, for me, my white whale was Jay Leno. And I always said, I can’t stop doing cars yet until I get Jay Leno. And he was very hard Yes. To get. He’s just so busy. You know, he’s just, but you did it, that was the crescendo, right? And then you kept going. Well, and it was the Christmas morning show and I, I seriously thought about.

Just ending it at Christmas. It was the end of the year and I thought, okay, I’ve done it. Yeah, I mean there’s a couple others that I really, sir Sterling Moss, I had him lined up many times and he had to cancel ’cause he was ill. And the last time he canceled his wife, lady Susie called me and said, he just can’t do this.

He’s not well. And he just will come across as not healthy and not sharp minded and that would just not be a good show for him or for you. A month later he passed away. Same with Dan Gurney. Had him lined up many times, had to cancel. And then the last time I had him lined up, his assistant called, said he’s just not doing [00:34:00] well.

And he passed away soon after that. So, you know, those are two that I really wanted to have. They were like childhood stars of mine, you know, that you kind of think about, there’s a few others that I wish, but Ginger will get ’em.

Ginger Baker Rust: Yeah. Well, luckily I already got to meet Jay Leno a couple years ago. He came out to a land speed event that was doing at Spaceport in New Mexico, and he came out and filmed with us out there, and that was really cool.

So I got to have my Jay Leno moment on that. But there’s some more people that I definitely on have on my list that I would like to get on the show, and hopefully that’ll be soon.

Crew Chief Eric: Some spoilers there. Ginger, can you,

Ginger Baker Rust: uh, let’s see. I can potentially say it had to do with the big deal. I just did.

Mark Greene: Yeah. Maybe you should ask her about this deal.

This is a huge deal and it might bring a very unique guest to cars. Yeah, right. Ginger,

Ginger Baker Rust: absolutely unique. And I, I’ve had a, a unique guest on already that people wouldn’t expect on Boston be a man who’s a celebrity influencer that does satire about men being a man. But this one would be. Off the chain. So looking forward to [00:35:00] it.

Mark Greene: Can you say who that might be?

Ginger Baker Rust: Can’t yet.

Mark Greene: Not yet. Okay. I will. I know who it is, so Yeah. Yeah. I’m not gonna give it away, but

Ginger Baker Rust: I, I can talk about the deal, but I can’t do that yet.

Don Weberg: Real, real quick, you know, because Eric, you didn’t touch on it. Mark, I’m a little disappointed you didn’t talk about your best looking guest, and we all know.

Here we go. Right here. That was me. The Don. The

Mark Greene: Don, that’s right. Yeah. We’re not talking about the president. We’re talking about Don Weiberg. So.

Don Weberg: Oh God, the day he looks better than me, just, you know, just forget about it.

Mark Greene: Yeah, forget about it. Forget

Don Weberg: about it. But, no, for both of you though, what do you think makes a great automotive podcast, and how has Haria managed to keep listeners engaged for all these years?

Is it the guests? Is it the comradery? Is it the stories? Is it just good looking people? What is it? Well,

Mark Greene: it’s a podcast so nobody sees you. So sorry. Whatever.

Ginger Baker Rust: Woo. Way to played him. Yeah.

Mark Greene: Do you wanna go for this first, ginger, or [00:36:00] you wanna

Ginger Baker Rust: Oh, it is absolutely. The stories for me, the best thing about the racing community or about the car community is the stories.

When you sit around and you share the stories and you listen, talked about this a little bit. When Mark did my interview, when I moved out to Mooresville. And went into Big Daddy’s restaurant and I’m sitting there and in walks, Bobby Allison, and he’s sitting down next to me at the next table with other legendary racers.

But just listening to the stories and being in NASCAR and being around the racing community, I think that that is the biggest thing that I’ve absolutely love is I get set for hours, I get set for days just listening to the stories. And I think that that is really what makes a podcast successful. And that’s what I really liked about Marx, and I love the stories.

I think that’s the number one key.

Mark Greene: I would agree. The thing about podcasting is interesting is I, I have a format and listeners know that I ask the same questions again and again. And some people that I’ve talked to said, well, you asked the same questions over and over [00:37:00] again. I said, but the answers are never the same.

Now, they might be in some ways, like who is the person that really inspired you? Well, my parents. But why? When I had Jay Leno on, I didn’t stick to a script with him. I just let him go because the idea was a Christmas morning show. So I did devise a few questions for him, but even he. Drifted into the same thing.

He told a wonderful story that I’d never heard, and you’d think you’ve heard all of his stories about his parents and his first car. And it was this crummy jalopy that had broken windows and he drove it to school and it started raining. And he was sitting in class looking out the window and rain was going into his new car, his new old car, and his dad and mom got in the car, drove over and put a tarp over the car.

While he was sitting in class. Now what a heartwarming story, even though it was this crummy old car with broken windows. But I thought, I’ve never heard that story. And after the show we chatted a little bit and I said, I’ve never heard that. And he goes, I don’t think I’ve ever shared that with anybody before, because I got him to reminisce.

Because the idea of the Christmas show was Christmas morning. What were the cars that you [00:38:00] got? What did you wish you could get every Christmas? My birthday’s right after Christmas, so I get all the leftover Christmas gifts nobody wants. They repurposed them. And every birthday I, my mom would say, what do you want?

And I’d say A Porsche, you know, my parents would laugh like, you’re gonna get that. And one year my mom baked a cake that looked like a Porsche. She goes, now you have your cake and you can eat it too. You have your Porsche. You can eat it too. But those kinds of memories that people share when they get into their personal lives.

And if you can make them feel at ease, and that’s. The key with podcasting. When the person called me for almost every one of my shows, I had never spoken to them. A lot of people say, well, could we have a phone call first? And I’m like, I don’t wanna do that. Number one, when you’re doing five shows a week, you don’t have the time.

But number two, it takes away the spontaneity and then it’s like what actors have to do. I did it my own TV show for a year. I decided I’m not gonna script this because I don’t remember lines that well. I would rather just ask the person to tell stories. So that to me was the most exciting [00:39:00] part, not knowing where we were gonna go.

And if somebody started to drift off course, I just let ’em go and you never know where they went. Sometimes they went to weird places and you had to kind of pull the, you know. Get ’em back in the boat. Yeah, it’s the stories of the fun part. You can tell with people, and I had some guests that didn’t do it.

They were either very corporate or very tightly wound or very nervous. That was another big problem. A lot of people really nervous. And so I would spend time before I hit the record button, talking to them, making sure, look, I’m not gonna trick you. I’m not Barbara Walters. I’m not gonna trick you with some question and bring up an illegitimate child you had back when you were in college or something.

This is gonna be about cars. We’re gonna not gonna talk politics, and if you wanna get into religion, that’s fine with me, but this is about your passion, your love for cars, and that mantra that Ginger’s picking up and caring forward inspiring automotive enthusiasts. It goes back to that question you asked about the why.

When you asked Ginger about the why, that was really important to me in developing and it’s really fun. And sometimes I would get off shows and I’d go, wow, that was [00:40:00] cool. Or I’d get off a show and go, I would like to go work with that guy or that woman, or, I had no idea we were gonna go down that path.

This is very interesting. Yeah, it’s, it’s like a blind date a little bit, I guess. Been so long, so, you know, I’ve been married 40 years, so I can’t tell you what those are like, but, uh, you, you don’t know what’s gonna happen and there’s some excitement to that if you’re the kind of person that likes that and I am, it makes it a lot more fun as long as you can get that ease.

And, and you know, Ginger’s got that southern style to her. I’ve teased her a little bit about she, she says she has this accent and every once in a while I hear a word come out here and there that she’s, uh, fought that off. But that southern comfort, southern style friendship comes through, which is helpful for the guest, which is the most important thing with the guests at ease.

’cause we’ve all watched interviews, especially with celebrities. Yeah. And I will say celebrities to the most challenging. And in fact, I even had a, I’m not gonna mention his name, but I have big time celebrity planned and his agent called the day of the show and said, uh, he is not interested doing the show.

Your questions are too different for him. Like, what do you mean? [00:41:00] Well, he is used to answering the same questions from everybody. Well, wouldn’t that be more interesting? Uh, he is not, not interested in that. It’s too scary for him ’cause he is got a script in his mind and this is a big name person. So that was a really disappointing day.

I was all fired up to get him. But I think for the most part, and I think people have found this with Ginger in editing or shows and listening to her, she has a way to put people at ease and make them feel comfortable.

Ginger Baker Rust: Mark said it best. I can say this about the first show that I did with Cat DeLorean.

There was. Some truth bombs that she released on there that I had no idea was coming that she literally had just learned about her mother and father.

Mark Greene: Oh yeah. That one on. ’cause you did a two part show. Yes. I still talk to people about that. Do you know John DeLorean that this Yeah. You gotta listen to that show.

Ginger Baker Rust: Yeah, you do. Mark and I both, we were blown away and it was really interesting. I mean, you know, all this stuff that’s out there about Jalon, DeLorean, and documentaries and the books and all this, that, and the other. Then she had just learned this part of history about him and her mother that she had [00:42:00] no idea.

And I mean, it was a huge truth bomb. And it was great. I mean, it was great.

Mark Greene: Look at Don Smile. He’s a big DeLorean guy, so, uh,

Don Weberg: I don’t know what you’re talking of. I don’t,

Mark Greene: yeah, right, right.

Don Weberg: No clue. Not one in my garage. No.

Mark Greene: There you go, Eric. There’s that character. It always comes out,

Don Weberg: you know, ginger, you talk of accent.

People tell me all time you have accent. I don’t know what they’re saying.

Ginger Baker Rust: Let me talk about that. ’cause actually a store behind that, I actually really do have a very thick southern accent when I’m around my people, so to speak. When I was, but when I was, when I started out in corporate advertising, I was in my early twenties.

And I’m going in front of boardrooms full of, you know, middle-aged men as a 22-year-old blonde, you know, five foot nothing pitching deals. You know, my boss, he said, you know, this is nothing against you. He said, but your accent makes it difficult to take you serious because you’re just a southern belle, right?

So he said, you need to talk more like a [00:43:00] Yankee. Okay, well, I’m trained in singing growing up, so I understood what he meant. I worked on to where I lowered my voice, I talked slower, I got rid of most of the accent. Now there’s some words that will come out that I just can’t help because it’s just difficult to say.

I had to actually learn that to do it this way, and now it’s just muscle memory to be able to, to get taken seriously in business. But like I said, when I’m around people I’m comfortable with, or it’s my people, or I’m around my southern folk, so to speak, then the southern accent’s right there, you know, it’s still there, but it’s so muscle memory now after 30 some odd years of having to speak more, that I could be taken seriously in business.

Mark Greene: Every once in a while when we were talking, she’d say something. I’d go, what? Yeah, what’d you say? And she’d, oh, oh, okay.

Crew Chief Eric: Start

Mark Greene: the

Crew Chief Eric: show. How y’all doing? Yeah. Yeah.

Ginger Baker Rust: Well, it’s like the word heal. Okay. It’s, for me, it’s heal. Okay. HILL or HEEL. It’s heal. Okay. It’s healed. You know. Or Mooresville. Or Statesville or Louisville.

It’s not Mooresville. [00:44:00] It’s uh, yeah,

Mark Greene: rave it up and welcome to car. Yeah,

Ginger Baker Rust: rave it up and welcome to car. It sneaks out once in a while. Like I said, any, in any business situation, it’s generally just that muscle memory comes in from having to do it so long differently.

Don Weberg: Accent aside, you’ve got a kind of a big role ahead of you.

You’re stepping into. A new old show. What excites you about the opportunity most, you’ve kind of touched on a few things, but what most excites you about this and how do you plan to really make the show your own?

Ginger Baker Rust: First of all, I’m gonna be updating the website, revamping and, you know, 2.0. Because you, you have to evolve.

And so I’m gonna be doing a lot of things with that as well. And to where there’s gonna be storytelling section and you know, some, and then highlighting a couple of different things. I can’t tell everything yet, but I’ve been working on potentially some co-hosts at some point and I have a lot of ideas that are on the table that, again, I don’t want to be premature on announcing ’cause I’m still [00:45:00] working through the logistics of it.

And again, I spent a lot of time researching and thinking about what I want to do with this show. The biggest thing is I want to make sure to keep the listeners that Mark built, I want to make sure to maintain that culture as the foundation and, you know, the car enthusiast and the car collector and, and I mean all the things that Mark built, what I think I bring to the table that’s going to extend it is.

The broad aspect of motorsport from every genre, right? Whether it’s NHRE or NASCAR or it’s off-road or dirt racing. There’s so many different aspects of motor sports. People understand. I think most people that are outside of Motorsport in the in the car community don’t understand in globally how actually a tight knit community it really, really is.

And so my biggest goal is to bring people that are not in that community and never, especially youth that have never been educated. Or introduced to the car world [00:46:00] to introduce them to that and to bring new people in that maybe know who I am or I’m familiar with or don’t know who I am, but maybe I have a different voice than Mark does that will bring it to them in a little bit of a different storytelling aspect or from a different aspect that will actually make them interested.

Like I, I stated the first of the show. It’s important for all of us. This is our love. This was our passion. We have to figure out a way to keep it alive and to keep the history alive and, and to keep motorsports alive no matter what the technology is. Those are the things that I think are the, that I’m focused more so on, on building on further,

Don Weberg: you want to bring in more youth, is that what you said?

Ginger Baker Rust: Yes. For instance, uh, the young lady that her show will be airing, there’s a lot out there that don’t have a platform or a voice and they don’t get interviewed because they’re young and up and coming. And I want to be able to give a voice to some of those up and coming youth that are actually taking interest in the car world or actually trying to make it up in racing or actually trying to climb the ladder.

And, [00:47:00] you know, she’s not experienced at speaking and it’s a short show, but I wanted to give her an experience that she needed just to be able to not only survive, but to actually try to be able to take the next step in Motorsport in her career. Most of the youth don’t get that. Actually, most of the adults or even professionals are, are running every week.

Don’t even get that opportunity. But my big thing is being able to bring youth in a more diverse playbook. As far as a larger community at hand,

Don Weberg: how are you outreaching to the youth of America or the young people of America? What is your game plan? Or if you can even go into that?

Ginger Baker Rust: Oh, absolutely. Oh, no, no, no.

Don Weberg: So what is the game plan? How are we gonna engage with more youth?

Ginger Baker Rust: I mean, here’s the thing. I come from a very tiny, tiny, small farm town in South Missouri from the Ozarks. Where I grew up, at the time, women and children would be seen and not heard. Okay. I mean, girls weren’t allowed, women weren’t allowed even in the track, the pit area, let alone you didn’t race a [00:48:00] car.

I mean, that was just unheard of. And so, I mean, I was the only girl in town. I was sneaking the car outta the garage at 12 years old, in the middle of the night going and racing with the guys. But I never saw myself ever being able to be in the race community or, or even be around it because it was not made available to me.

And it was shown to me that this is not for girls or women. This is not for you. This is not feasible. This is, you know, nothing. I, I had no way, no intention of even knowing that I could do this later on in life. And it did take place later on in life. And so I take that and every youth, I try to take as many as I can to erase.

I talk to ’em about racing. I tell them what I do, especially girls, but I want them to understand that it’s not about just getting into a car and being able to race a car. It’s about being an engineer. It’s about mechanics, it’s about mathematics. It’s about all these other things that people don’t understand that are involved in racing.

Even the marketing side or, or the business side. I just start talking to them. I bring them to races or I [00:49:00] take ’em to car shows. I’ve worked with a, a lot of youth in my career and in my personal life. I’ve had the opportunity to help care for a lot of kids, especially troubled kids. One of the things that I introduced them to was racing and showing them that this seems beyond your reach, but it’s not actually giving them introduction to something that they were not familiar with, and you would be amazed how much the experience gave them on being able to just look and see that there’s a whole different world out there that they had never even thought of.

Also being able to talk about the history. The history. The history. The history. We have to talk about the history. I I do it all the time. All the time. Anybody I meet,

Don Weberg: where are you meeting these people? How are you getting yourself in front of the Youth of America?

Ginger Baker Rust: Okay, well, so I’ll give you an example.

One of my sons, he was a all-star competitive cheerleader. Now, most people will not understand what that is, but it’s not like what you see In high school. He made the equivalent of a Junior Olympic team. He made a world’s team. He competed [00:50:00] against 800 other teams from around the world. And we traveled eight months out of the year to these competitions.

And I would talk to these kids about racing or tell ’em about a race that I went to, or I invited them. I have been a foster mom to kids that were hurt in war torn areas of Afghanistan. And I brought kids from Afghanistan over and took care of them and gave them medical care. Guess what I did? I took ’em to a race.

I took them to a race and exposed them to things that they had never seen before. I never even heard of, you know, let alone they come over and they see the grass on the ground or swimming pool or things that they had never, you know, did in their life, but to take ’em to a race and they went back to Afghanistan with these stories and these pictures about things that they could tell Other people have traveled in Europe and I’ve talked to, to kids there, or kids that, that were friends of my son’s.

You know, when they would come over, I’d take ’em to a race. That’s how you do it. I mean it, it sounds very simplistic, but that’s how you do it

Don Weberg: Sounds like it’s just [00:51:00] major networking.

Ginger Baker Rust: Yes.

Don Weberg: Working within, yeah. The community, you know, or the community you’re exposed to.

Ginger Baker Rust: Yeah.

Don Weberg: And kind of making it your own.

Ginger Baker Rust: Yes, absolutely.

Well, what’s interesting is you can set and you can watch these kids listen to, you know, their dad talk about it, but it’s interesting when they hear a woman because they look at you and like, really, I’ll just give you an example. I interviewed a young gentleman today for a job and was talking to him and you know, I told him a little bit about me and I said, you know, I’ve been in racing.

And he’s like really racing even. Wow. I would’ve never thought about that for you. I’ve never expected that. I get that over and over and over again, especially when I talk to young males. They’re like, really? Wow, I didn’t know women could do that. No, I’m serious. I mean, that’s a reaction. It just like, oh, you don’t look like the type of person that would do these things.

And that has actually been the greatest part about it is, and that’s what I’ve learned, is talk to more males. Talk to more youth. You know, youth and females, but the same thing. I’ve got little girls. I own another business that, that come into the business and these little three or [00:52:00] four or 5-year-old girls, you and I’ll be talking to ’em or their mom or whatever, and I’ll always mention racing in some way, or a car or whatever.

They just look at you like really? Even that young, really. There’s not one time so far that I’ve run into that. It hasn’t been a Wow. That’s interesting. And that’s the way you have to do it. You gotta talk to these kids like it’s something that they should know, but they don’t, other than what they’ve seen on the cars movie.

Don, did I answer your question to your satisfaction?

Don Weberg: You did. Oh, believe me, I could keep going. I think you and I could go back and forth. Probably Banta, that’s what they call it back east. They call it Banta. You know, Banta

Ginger Baker Rust: Banta.

Crew Chief Eric: Well, switching into top gear as we round out the last segment of the show here we turn back to Mark.

We really wanna talk about podcasting again at its core, because that’s what we started off talking about. And so stepping away from the hosting chair, stepping away from the microphone, you’re still in the editing room, you’re making sure things do hit the cutting room floor in some cases. Because I’ve heard you speak to other podcasters before.

You’ve been a mentor to me as well. You’ve helped a lot of people along the way. But what advice did you give to [00:53:00] Ginger as she took on this new role?

Mark Greene: I would say maybe one of the first things was be yourself. Don’t try to copy me. Don’t try to copy somebody else. Don’t try to be somebody else. I was given that advice when I started this by a, a very, very successful podcaster.

John Lee Dumas, who does Entrepreneurs on Fire, I mean, super successful guy, and I was able to actually get him on the phone for a little bit. That was one of the things he said, just be yourself, be enthusiastic about what you do. She’s enthusiastic about cars. So that was pretty easy. I, I, I think that was probably the main thing, and just being encouraging, saying, you can do this, and I’ve got all the tools.

Here’s the toolbox. Open it and use them. Because I’ve created this whole system of procedures. And the other thing I asked the why question. Why do you wanna do this? Because that exposed what the many of the people that were interested in taking over the show, that’s where things crumbled. They didn’t even know their why.

I always tell people, if you’re gonna do anything in life. You need to ask yourself why. And I always say, go and listen to Simon Sinek. He does a YouTube, uh, [00:54:00] Ted talk about why, and he explains the importance of whys. I just deal with a guy yesterday he contacted me. He has a podcast, but he’s kind of new at, it’s not really going anywhere.

And he wanted to bend my ear again, would’ve been a eight hour bend. So I just sent him this question and I said, you need to define why you’re doing this. This will answer all the other questions you can’t figure out yet. And you need to write it down. Write it down in detail your why. From that, you’ll be able to define your mantra, your slogan, like the Nike slogan.

Just do it. Mine. I mentioned, uh, and all the listeners who’ve listened to cars. Yeah, inspiring automotive enthusiasts. That became my why. I remember when I started this, there weren’t many podcasts out there, and I had so many people, why are you doing this? Why don’t you go run another company? I’d been running GRE’s Garage and you know, had all these employees and all those things and I said, well, I wanna do something for myself, not for somebody else.

Even though I was part owner at Grios and I had a joke, I said, my next [00:55:00] job will have no employees and no commuting. So I got that operate from my home here. I didn’t have to go anywhere. I didn’t have to deal with anybody, although I had a lot of employees. ’cause all my guests were. Like employees. So I kind of got that back, but that’s okay because when you’re done with a podcast, you fire ’em and they go away and you don’t have to talk to ’em again.

It’s one way to look at it. Yeah. Kind of the way it is. So I, I wanted to inspire automotive enthusiast, and it goes back to the, the second thing I said is, define your avatar. Define very clearly. Write it down. I’ve got a three page writeup at the beginning of this journey for me on my avatar, and that is, who is your listener?

What does his or her name, are they married? What age are they? What do they do for a living? But that comes back to why do they wanna listen to you? And in my case, it goes back, my avatar was a guy named Bill. He was a very successful neurosurgeon. He loved cars. It went back to a friend of mine, I’m still friends with him.

We raced vintage cars together for a dozen years. We even raced in the same class. We both raced Lotuses and Lola’s and had a lot [00:56:00] of fun. But in Bill’s case, he would come over every Thursday night when I was at Rio’s to Boys Night Out, and I would invite a bunch of friends over, had pizzas, and we would work on cars.

I had an ulterior motive. I had new products that we were bringing to market, and I would give them to test them, and I’d kind of watch, how did that work? Do you like that? What do you not like about it? They thought they were just having fun with cars. They were all test beds for me. But Bill, one night he was there with me late.

We are the only two people there. And he goes, you know, I wanna do what you do. And I said, bill, you’re a freaking neurosurgeon, pediatric neurosurgeon. You operate on baby’s brains, on people’s spines. I mean, you save people’s lives. And in his dry way, he goes, well, most of them, he’s a very funny guy, but he’s one of the best.

He said, no, you’re working in the field you love, you love cars, and you come every day and you. Work around cars. I wanna do that. So my goal when I retire is just to play in my garage around cars. It always stuck with me because I had him on this huge platform. This is a guy that saves people. I mean, the brain surgeon jokes, right?

The [00:57:00] only person smarter than a brain surgeon is a rocket scientist. Well, the brain surgeon might disagree with you there, but you know what I mean. So that defining why, and then creating that avatar gets you back to your why. And then from there you can start to figure out what you’re doing. And as far as the rest of the podcasting, once you get that figured out, you’ll be able to do what you wanna do.

And, and in Ginger’s case, when we had our many, many talks, I asked her all these questions, why? And I was excited. And you just heard her answer in a way that she wants to take this to another level. And that was my dream too, is that this would live on forever. And at some point Ginger will be doing other things and she can transfer it over to someone else.

Maybe it’s somebody that is working for her and her business, maybe it’s somebody else who comes along and then they can make it their own. And by then, who knows, maybe we’ll all be driving flying cars and it’ll be fly. Yeah. I don’t know. So,

Crew Chief Eric: so Mark, earlier you talked about having that plan and that readiness and preparedness.

Ginger used an analogy with cooking and it’s been [00:58:00] sticking in my mind that you have to have what they call in the cooking world, Nissan plus everything in place before you get started, because podcasting is a career. And if you read between the lines of what you were just saying, there was some advice there for the newbies that are getting into this even today, because more and more podcasts are coming online every week at a scary rate.

It’s one of the biggest booming industries in the modern era, unlike a lot of other things. And so. You’ve given sage advice many, many times over, and a lot of that surrounds perseverance and tenacity, which happened to be my middle names. But that being said, I wanna pick your brain on Sticktoitiveness the long game, because even with you transitioning to Ginger and Caria living on, it’s still one of the longest running podcasts, one of the most episodes in its catalog in the industry as a whole, you know, 2,600 episodes, let’s say.

How do you keep going? How do you motivate yourself, and how do you give advice to people to say, get past the early milestones and set your sights on 500, a thousand, 2,500 episodes? How do you do that [00:59:00] every morning? It goes back

Mark Greene: to why you have to ask yourself every morning that you get up and you go, I don’t want to do this today.

Well, why did you start it? Did something change in your life? Well, for me, I’ve been a car guy since I was a little kid. No, it didn’t change. Now maybe it didn’t move as fast as I’d liked or maybe it didn’t generate as much income as I dreamed of or whatever those types of things would be. But if you go back to the why, why am I doing this now?

Your why can change. Certainly the way you do it can change. The great thing about this, there’s so many supportive roles Now that didn’t exist when I started try to find somebody to edit a show. When I started, uh, nobody did edit a pod. What? Now there were some people, but. Not really, but now there’s this giant infrastructure around podcasting businesses that support podcasting in all these different ways that I could have only dreamed of.

Like, I wish I could have found a person to do that, but I had to figure it out myself. But for me, it was important to know how to do everything because there wasn’t that support. Like my website now, I’ve worked in design and advertising forever, so I can design [01:00:00] anything you want. But when I had to create a website, when it went goofy, something went wrong, it needs to be changed.

I’m still very proud of what it looks like, but it’s the old WordPress structure. I always say, you know, these people that do programming or uh, coding, I should say they’re a different breed. Because to me it was like having to build a carburetor on my kitchen counter. Then going out to the garage to see if the carburetor worked.

I came from a design world where it now used Illustrator, Photoshop, InDesign, all these things that are just do magic and now ai. There’s a podcast group that I’m still kind of a part of. I don’t do a lot with them anymore. Two years ago, created a podcast out of ai. With two people editing a chapter in his book and he played it for us.

It was 12 minutes long. And he said there were no people, they didn’t read the book ’cause there was no people. I just put my book online and went, and you know, now you’ve got Grok what it’s doing. Have you played with that? Oh my gosh. It’s like having a conversation with somebody. It’s magical [01:01:00] what you could do now.

So I just sit there and I go, wow. If I’d had that tool, if I’d had this tool. So Ginger’s going into this with the toolbox analogy, an entire different set of toolboxes and tools that I could have only dreamed about and it’s quite wonderful. So again, there’s more competition. Yes. Again, back when I started, I can’t tell you how many times I would reach out to somebody and say, would you be on my podcast?

And they’d say, what is a podcast? And a lot of them would say, I have no interest in that. Nobody must be listening ’cause. What is it? I don’t know what it is. And then I would do some keynote talks. I remember one I did with a, uh, company that built high performance parts. I went back to Alabama, got it in front of 300 people.

And I said, how many people in this room listen to a podcast? Two hands went up and there was literally, I think there were 320 people in the room. And I went, okay, how many people know that on this device you’re holding in your hand, there is a button you can push and you can become a kaja listener? And that evening I picked up 280 subscribers.

I just showed ’em by pushing three buttons. Now you’re a [01:02:00] subscriber. My show every day will come to your phone and you can listen. So that was a key thing for me going, okay, I gotta figure out how to tell everybody how to do this. But I was still new to social media still. So again, you have to go back to your why.

To answer your original question, why stick with this? You have to go back to your why. You just gotta get up every day and do it. That’s what every good person does. And if you’re lazy, this is the wrong sport for you. The treadmill never stops. It never stops. I, I, the longest vacation I took during this was I went to India for 18 days when my son got married.

And the work I had to do to plan for that trip to have all those shows lined up for almost a, well, I did it for a whole month. And then of course when you’re in India, they have the internet there. Yeah. They’re, they’re techie. Right. But I still had to go and make, and I remember one show didn’t load for some reason, you know, so I’m midnight India trying to make, you know.

Uh, you just learn. You just do it. Try not to take it all so seriously, which I don’t listen to myself when I say that.

Crew Chief Eric: So, mark, you used the phrase, the original question. You know, I’ve been thinking about that. And for [01:03:00] old times sake, let’s throw in some classic cars. Yeah. Questions for you and Ginger to answer.

Okay. If you’re a fan of the original cars, yeah, you kind of know how the format goes. So I decided to pick one for each of you. All right. So Mark, since you’ve got some extra time on your hands these days, please share a great book or two that you’ve read and you believe others would learn from.

Mark Greene: Thank you.

That’s a great question, Eric. I will remind everybody listening. There is an, and I hope I haven’t even asked you, Andrea, this, she’s gonna keep this on the website, guest recommended books. Thank goodness she’s nodding her head ’cause it’s a huge endeavor. But there are over 3000 books listed there on the website.

’cause I asked all the guests that question, ’cause I think learning is important. You have to learn all the time and reading is a good way to do that. So that’s one way I’m gonna answer your question is go to the caria website, click on the resources tab and go to guest recommended books. And there’s over 3000 books there with quick, easy click to buy.

Most of ’em are car, but some are business related. The other two books that I’ll recommend are by a good friend of mine, Chris [01:04:00] Pento. He is a financial advisor and really sharp young man. The first one is Capitalize your Sales. I wish I’d had this book when I was doing my podcast because my weak link was trying to get sponsors and.

Being good at that. Ginger’s gonna be an all star at that, so I don’t worry about her there. But this book is all about learning how to do sales. It’s a very quick read, 172 pages, so you can read it in evening or two. The other one he wrote is Capitalize Your Finances Again by Christopher Pan, O2 P-A-N-A-G-I-O-T-U.

Try to spell that and say it doesn’t work, but he’s a great guy and I wish I’d had that book when I was younger ’cause I’d have a lot more money invested and saved up right now instead of spending it on race cars and sports cars and other cars. And more cars. And more cars. But those two books I would suggest they’re great for younger people trying to get a grasp on their finances and also who need to be in sales and let’s face it.

No matter what you do, you’re [01:05:00] always trying to sell, you’re trying to sell yourself to your boss, to your clients, your products and everything. And it’s a world that Ginger lives in. So, uh, those are my recommendations right now. But I will say I’m in the process of categorizing my car library. I counted, did over 900 books back there.

What, this is one, the advantage of having so many authors on the show. And, and Ginger and I have had a few authors together and she’ll have more, I’m sure they send you books. So I have a car library that I always say when I’m too old to get up and get outta my easy chair, I will be able to read books until they just find me in there with books piled on top of me and I’m dead.

It’s pretty cool, but I’m trying to categorize ’em all so that someday, and my son is an avid reader, he will know what’s there and he can either hand ’em off to a library somewhere or add ’em to his big library. There you go. That’s my answer.

Crew Chief Eric: Alright, ginger, your classic cars. Yeah. Question. Tell us about a really special car bike or truck in your life.

Share great memory or experience you had with that vehicle.

Ginger Baker Rust: Well, I’d have to say it was my father’s [01:06:00] 1957 Chevy. It was blue and silver metallic. My dad raced local stock cars when he wasn’t racing stock cars. He moved over to racing local NHRE events. And if you’ve ever watched the movie Heart like a wheel about Shirley Muldowney in the very beginning scene of that movie, she’s sitting on his lap when she’s little driving the car and they’re going really fast and hilltop in a little bit.

Well, I did that with my dad in that car. That car’s the car. He took me into my very, very first race when I was about six or seven years old. The first racer I ever got to meet was Charlie Mulani, you know, and listening to, and watching her and seeing the cars, and listening to the cars and meeting Big Daddy Don Garlett and Connie Colletta, and, you know, all those.

But, but it was the sound, the smell, the energy, all that, but. You know, watching Shirley, but I didn’t have really very much times with my father. He was pretty absent most of my life. And I think that’s part of why racing was always so [01:07:00] important to me was that was the one connection that I had with my dad was racing.

And the one connection that we had, the only connection that we had was that car. And that was really, really special for me. And, and when I decided later in life to go into racing, going through a very, very difficult time in my life personally and medically, I was going through a very life-threatening situation right after a very difficult divorce.

And I was in the hospital and I woke up from surgery and I decided right then that I wanted to feel exactly the same way I did when I was at a racetrack. And while I was in the hospital, I actually wrote a poem of why I love racing, and I’ll share it with you if you don’t mind, but it has to do with this car.

And it says. I wrote this little piece a few years ago about my love for racing. The words seem more appropriate now about just restoring the rumble of life, and it’s called When the smoke Clears and it says, the heart begins to beat from the roar of the rumble. As you feel the earth [01:08:00] shake, the walls start to crumble.

When you smell the sweet air, it ignites the fire to desperately fuel that winning desire As the winds blow by drafting its way, any darkness subsides to the light of day. When the smoke clears from the victory circle, your passion in life is renewed for your miracle, and I decided that day I was going to go and get a career in racing.

No matter what.

Mark Greene: So will Shirley be on cars? Yeah.

Ginger Baker Rust: You know, I hope to have Shirley on. I really do. I got to meet her again a few years ago at Bristol, and, uh, she hasn’t changed a bit, but, uh, I hope so. And I, I actually, I plan on it and I hope so, and I hope she can do it, so that’d be great. But that’s my special car.

Don Weberg: What’s next for Mark? Are you officially retired? Is there more to come? What’s going on in Mark Lane?

Mark Greene: Well, yes, right now Jill and I are in our fourth month of a major remodel here at the house, and that is eating up all my time. We went through this 19 years ago in a much bigger way, [01:09:00] and I was run off every morning to work all day and leave Jill with the kids in a house full of contractors and.

Chaos. And uh, I think to this day she has PTSD every time a power tool starts up from that experience. But now I’m here to help and I’m glad I am because there are a lot of very minute details. And I grew up with a father who was an architect and a contractor, so I’ve got a bit of that in me. So we’re almost done.

I think we’re one month away. Uh, other than that, we’ve been traveling a little bit. We have our third grandchild now. So we head off to Arizona about every two months to see them and see my daughter and her husband. My son and his wife travel a lot, so they, I was gonna say dump, they drop off their child, which is a dog.

We’ve never had a dog, so it’s like having a toddler in the house this morning was especially challenging. It was like, leave me alone. I want the dog would not leave me alone. But he, he’s gotten us out for some very long walks and my wife does like six miles a day. So we go out on these long, long walks with the dog, which is good.

We’re having a beautiful week here. I have some trips [01:10:00] planned coming up very soon. I’m going to the La Jolla Concor, which is my hometown. Ginger’s had three people from La Jolla Concor on the show recently to talk about that event. I’ve attended lots of Concord, has been to 32 Pebble Beach car weeks and historic races and pretty much, I dunno if not all the Concord, ’cause there’s as many concourses as our podcast, as seems m these days.

But I’ll be going to that. And I’m going to Patrick Long, who’s known for endurance racing with Porsche, his air water event, which is part of his lu cult events. And that’s happens to be the same weekend. So I’m gonna go down to see my mom while I’m down there. My sister took off for Paris, so I’ll be staying at her house.

I will get to see her, but I’ll see my mom, which is good ’cause he’s going through certain challenges health-wise right now. But I’m gonna sneak away for two days with an old college surf buddy. See Bernstein. He’s gonna come and be the official car Caria photographer. He does that for us. We’ll do that for Ginger, hopefully in the future, going to racing events and.

Takes pictures and kind of thing. So I’m gonna meet up with him and he’s gonna go to both those events with me and take pictures that we can hand off to ginger for social media, [01:11:00] temp, things like that. Yeah. But other than that, I don’t have right now, any big thing, as you say, planned, I have some ideas in my head, but every time I start to think, uh, do you really wanna start that at this point in time?

Crew Chief Eric: You gotta find the why Mark.

Mark Greene: I find the why. Yeah, I’ve heard that. Yeah. You know, I’ve worked since I was about 12 years old, and so right now it’s a very weird time for me because to get up in the morning and go, oh. I don’t have to do anything. It’s kind of cool, is unique for me, trying to focus more on my health, so more exercise, need to lose some weight.

Same old, same old. So try to get myself in better shape because as you age, that’s very important obviously. But other than that, we’ll see. I’m playing around with some ideas for some things, but I think I, one thing I’d like to do is get back into photography. I was very into photography for a long time, and then I kind of steered away from it other than just the iPhone thing.

Sold all my Nikon equipment, thinking about getting all new equipment with the digital Sony cameras. I’ve been talking to friends of mine who do that for fun. [01:12:00] Talking to my friend Steve. I don’t think he’s a Nikon guy or a Sony guy. I think he’s a Canon guy. But, uh, at any rate, yeah, there’ll be some fun things to come and, and trying to help people out a little bit.

As my wife says, I need to learn to say no, and I’m learning that from Ginger, her no rule. That’s, there’s some things you need to say no to, otherwise you can end up helping people all day, which is fine, but at some point you need to know when to stop that in. Go do something for yourself. So, um, yeah, but right now I’m just kind of enjoying this bit of freedom and my goal this year is helping Ginger be successful.

So helping her edit shows, answering questions she has going along and nudging her. I feel like I need to give her a little nudge once in a while. Yep. Over certain things. So,

Don Weberg: yeah. Pointing the divining rods at you, ginger, what’s the, the next thing we’re working on you? Any spoilers, any special guests?

Wink, wink, nudge, nudge. How about this big deal? I was gonna say yeah, right? Yeah, yeah. Mark, you hit it head on. I didn’t want to hit head on. I was trying to be subtle about it, you know?

Ginger Baker Rust: Yes. There was a announcement that was released. [01:13:00] Nationally that I had put together a, a very large deal, especially in the dirt world of dirt racing between Hulk Hogan and his company, real American Beer and, um, the World Racing Group and the Five Dirt Series under that umbrella.

And when you talk about World Racing Group and the world of outlaws, especially the world outlaw’s late models, you know, you’re talking about people that aren’t familiar with is basically the NASCAR of dirt. There hadn’t been a deal like this in a very, very long time in the dirt world, and I was very excited that a gentleman by the name of James Case, who’s the senior VP of partnerships for real American Beer, called me one day and said, Hey, we are going into Motorsports.

We wanna go into Motorsport, and we want you to lead us to it, and we want you to take us where we need to be. We announced the deal. So there’s a lot of things gonna be coming out of that. It’s growing really, really fast. It’s been fun that this partnership’s gonna be fun. I get to play Switzerland ’cause I get to work with both sides, right?

People always ask me to [01:14:00] explain kind of what I do, my, my job. And I ask them, well, if you’ve ever seen the movie Jerry McGuire? And they’re like, yeah. And I say, well, I’m the female version of Jerry McGuire. Letting the motor sports world is a huge deal. And there’s a lot to come from that and more things that I’m working on.

And probably some people on the show in the near future from that partnership. We’ll just say that.

Crew Chief Eric: I knew it. She’s gonna have Hulk Hogan on the show I called it. There it is. Brother.

Ginger Baker Rust: I’m pleading

Crew Chief Eric: the fifth, ripping his shirt open, you know,

Ginger Baker Rust: so, but no, I’m very grateful to Hawk and his crew, and James and Conrad and Terry, all of them that are leading this charge with that.

And then also really proud of doing this deal with the world racing group in, in their group of guys and, and gals. It’s gonna be fun. And there’s, there’s more to come in a lot of other series that I’m working on right now. But that’s to remain

Mark Greene: in, I got to meet Hulk at sema just by chance. I walked around a car and he was standing there.

We both turned right in each other’s faces and Hulk Hogan, and he got a big smile, you know, everybody was [01:15:00] trying to talk to him and just, he was the nicest person. Took time, listened, you know, unlike some stars, you meet and you can like, eh. Get outta my face. He was super, he was super great guy. So yeah, this is a big deal.

Congratulations, ginger. This is awesome. And this will have some great ramifications for Caria and using that Caria platform to carry things forward. So really proud of you.

Ginger Baker Rust: Thank you. Yes, it was a multi-year deal and yes, and Caria was very much part of this conversation for something in the future.

Crew Chief Eric: Woohoo. Well, folks, we’ve reached that part of the episode where I like to invite our guests to share any shout outs, promotions, thank yous, or anything else you’d like to share that we haven’t covered thus far. So we’ll start with Ginger.

Ginger Baker Rust: I’m in Victory Lane and I need to, oh, yeah. And I need to do the,

Mark Greene: you need to drink the milk and say something.

Ginger Baker Rust: Yeah. The Burger King and the, thank you. Thank you. Real American Beer. Thank you. World Racing Group. Thank you Mark Green. Thank you guys for having me on this show. I especially wanna thank Mark for believing in me and giving me this [01:16:00] opportunity to share my voice and, and share my passion. But most of all entrusting me with his legacy.

And I, I couldn’t be more grateful and humble about the opportunity. And thank you guys for having me on here today. It was wonderful to meet you guys and, and talk and I’m sure we’ll be talking more in the near future.

Crew Chief Eric: Well, mark, you get the last

Mark Greene: word. As always, I encourage everyone to listen to cars.

Yeah. Ginger’s weekly show. And she, she said to me one time she might bring back more shows and get to the crazy world that I had. That would be awesome. I know she could handle that. I’m excited by the new guests that she’s bringing the new voice, the new thought process, which is exciting for me. ’cause as I said, I want this to live on, you know, having handed what I say the keys over to Ginger.

I wish her the best success and, and encourage her to have fun with this show and keep bringing all those wonderful people forward. And of course, if you wanna listen to cars yeah, you can find on any mobile podcast app, new website will be coming. I’m excited to see that, which will be very, very cool. And of course, the social media sites.

Car, jazz kind of [01:17:00] everywhere, YouTube and Instagram. And I think the only place I never put it on was TikTok just couldn’t get into the TikTok thing. But we’ll

Ginger Baker Rust: see if that still exists soon. Yeah,

Mark Greene: maybe Ginger will en enlighten me. And if any of you want to keep up with me, I just started my own Instagram.

I think I have 16 followers, so Woo-hoo. I am backing away from social media a bit because I spent so much time on it and trying to spend more time on reading and learning. And with my wife Jill, we’ve been married, as I mentioned, for 40 years, so she’s carried me and promoted me. And the times I was gonna give up on this, she just said, you gotta keep going.

Why’d you start it? Why’d you start it? And, uh, spending more time with my kids. Being a grandparent is just insanely cool. Still can’t think of myself as a grandpa. I think that’s for old people. But, uh, I guess I am. So three little ones is awesome. Hopefully there’ll be more in the future. So, uh, yeah, but you can find me there.

And I have my own Facebook page too, so you can find me there. Happy to accept, uh, anybody that wants to, uh, hang out [01:18:00] with me and, uh, I’m trying to promote Ka as much as I can, but I’m, I’m trying to take some steps back away from it too.

Don Weberg: As we wrap up this special crossover episode with Caria. It’s clear.

While one chapter is closing, an exciting new journey is just beginning. Mark. Your passion and dedication has shaped cars. Yeah, into a go-to destination for automotive inspiration. And your legacy will undoubtedly continue and resonate with listeners, ginger, as you take the wheel. We can’t wait to see where you steer Kaia next, bringing fresh perspectives while honoring the spirit that has made the show so beloved.

Crew Chief Eric: And with that, I can’t thank you both enough for coming on the show. And Mark, I have to say, you know, you talked about tenacity, perseverance, the why. Inspiration is at the core of Kaia. I’ve been thinking about it this whole time that you guys have been talking. Like you say, you never know what’s gonna come out at the end in the story.

And I thought to myself, there was a moment, even in, in my motorsports career and and getting into [01:19:00] podcasting that I said one day I’m gonna be on cars. Yet it was a goal. And to use a phrase that the young kids use now. I visioned it, I put it out there, it manifested itself and I ended up on cars. Yeah.

And so it’s been an incredible ride. It’s been an absolute honor to call you a friend and a mentor and to be involved in the cars. Yeah. Universe. I want to thank you for joining us on this crossover episode, and we really do look forward to what comes next. We’re staying in tuned for those new stories, the new voices, and of course, the most incredible automotive journeys and passions that are out there.

So in my best impression of Mark here goes. Until next time, keep the engines revving and the inspiration rolling, and we’ll see you down the road.

We hope you enjoyed another awesome episode of Break Fix Podcasts, brought to you by Grand Tour Motorsports. If you’d like to be a guest on the show or get involved, be sure to follow us on all social media platforms at Grand Touring Motorsports. And if you’d like to learn more about the content of this episode, be sure to check out the follow on [01:20:00] article@gtmotorsports.org.

We remain a commercial free and no annual fees organization through our sponsors, but also through the generous support of our fans, families, and friends through Patreon. For as little as $2 and 50 cents a month, you can get access to more behind the scenes action, additional pit Stop, mini sos and other VIP goodies, as well as keeping our team of creators fed on their strict diet of Fig Newton’s, Gumby bears, and Monster.

So consider signing up for Patreon today at www.patreon.com/gt motorsports. And remember, without you, none of this would be possible.

Skip ahead if you must… Here’s the highlights from this episode you might be most interested in and their corresponding time stamps.

• 00:00 Introductions
• 00:52 Transition to New Host: Ginger Baker Rust
• 01:25 Behind the Scenes of the Transition
• 02:49 Mark Green’s Journey and Reflections
• 10:06 Ginger’s Perspective and Challenges
• 23:32 Mark’s Memorable Moments and Emotional Stories
• 35:34 The Future of Cars Yeah
• 39:10 Overcoming Nervousness in Interviews
• 40:24 Ginger’s Southern Style and Celebrity Challenges
• 44:19 Revamping the Show and Engaging Youth
• 47:29 Empowering Youth Through Racing
• 52:33 Mark’s Podcasting Advice and Legacy
• 01:15:29 Final Thoughts and Future Plans

There's more to this story!

All of our BEHIND THE SCENES (BTS) Break/Fix episodes are raw and unedited, and expressly shared with the permission and consent of our guests.

Bonus content available as a #PITSTOP mini-sode.

Consider becoming a GTM Patreon Supporter and get behind the scenes content and schwag! 

About Mark Greene

Mark Greene is an incurable automotive enthusiast who spent the last 10 years interviewing successful automotive entrepreneurs who live a lifestyle around their passion for automobiles. His guests included: Artists, celebrities, journalists, authors, concours directors, racers, designer, builders, and more!

Taking you on their journey, Mark got under the hood, and went behind the garage door, while providing some inspiration. You will find over 2,500 shows on the Cars Yeah website (hosted by Mark) and on all the major podcast apps.

[Editors Note]: Mark & Ginger thank you for joining us on this ride. We look forward to what comes next, and we’re staying tuned for new stories, new voices, and, of course, more incredible automotive passion. Until next time—keep the engines revving and the inspiration rolling!