The Profile AMA: Landon Cassill, NASCAR driver
Landon Cassill, a NASCAR driver with experience, interests, and investments in crypto, participated in an AMA chat with Profile readers. He spoke about the rigors of training for race day, how professional athletes view business investments, and how he balances his professional pursuits with his personal life.
Here are the highlights:
Q: I’m interested in hearing how professional athletes think about investing, specifically in public & private equities? How much is off-loaded to “professional managers” vs decisions being a product of primary research?
CASSILL: I think that is all very personal to each athlete. I know a lot of people that rely on managers to manager their interests outside of their discipline, but those are typically guys who aren’t very business minded to begin with. In the NASCAR scene, I think most drivers are quite hands on with their money, and do a lot of their own work when it comes to outside business. A lot of that likely comes from the independent culture of our profession (no collective bargaining, no unions or retirement programs for drivers)
Q: Do you foresee autonomous vehicles being required by regulation for all drivers or will it be an individual’s choice? Also, what is the timeline for this to be viable in either scenario?
CASSILL: This is a tough one to answer. I think self driving cars will likely take over dedicated routes between large metro areas with the infrastructure to support it, and blend with human controlled cars for a long time before it is common in rural areas or small times. It wouldn’t surprise me to see large cities like NYC, LA, Chicago, have large portions of their cities near center city where the only cars allowed on the road are self driving cars.
Q: What was your journey into crypto? What projects are you most excited about?
CASSILL: My journey through crytpo has been a fast one. I will humbly admit that I was not an “early” adopter, although it has been on my radar since 2013, I got into it early enough that I enjoyed the gains through 2017. I feel like trading crypto is a very tough thing to do, and I simply do not have the skills or time to day trade, which has led me more interested in crypto mining. I am very attracted to the cash flow infrastructure of crypto mining, and have spent a lot of time educating myself in that space, and building my own mining interests, preparing to scale to a much larger operation. I would also call myself a bitcoin maximalist.
Q: How much are we talking, on average to fund a team for a season? What does sponsorship cost, I imagine there are different levels of sponsorship. How much for instance, did (does?) Snapchat pay to get that cool hood spot?
CASSILL: Out of the 40 car starting field, there are probably 20 teams who spend between $500k-$750k per race, 10 teams who spend between $250k-$500k per race, and the bottom 10 teams spend between $75k-$250k per race. Keep in mind the prize money (which the team receives, not the driver) is on average $100k per race. If you want to field a competitive car, you MUST have sponsorship and/or manufacturer support to subsidize those costs. My Snapchat Sponsorship in 2016 was a one race sponsorship that was brought to my team from NASCAR’s relationship with Snap
Q: Can you elaborate a little more on what putting together a sponsorship looks like?
CASSILL: Getting a sponsor for a race team is one of the hardest things to get done in our sport. Corporate marketing budgets are as tough to crack as ever, and there is a lot of competition in the world of marketing. NASCAR has a huge, loyal fanbase, but it is still very very hard to quantify the ROI of sponsoring a race car if you are focused on branding alone. The most successful sponsorships in our sport are the ones where there is a Business to Business relationship driving the funding of a program. The branding on the car can be the cherry on top. If you’re watching a race, take a look at the Kroger or Menard’s sponsored cars. Those two companies are very good at leveraging their vendors (think Klorox, Bush’s Beans), who want prime placement in their stores nationwide. The big box retailer can use the NASCAR sponsorship as an asset to leverage those vendors into contributing to (and benefiting from) the sponsorship, as a way to complete their placement in the stores.
Q: I’m interested in how you balance your professional life with your personal life. How do you make sure that your family gets a good amount of attention/time even when you’re incredibly busy with work & sponsorships, etc?
CASSILL: It’s quite hard, because the business is high pressure, and the travel is so demanding. Especially when security of my job is not always guaranteed by on track performance, but by sponsorship support. Honestly, right now is as tough as it has every been because I’ve started this season without sponsorship. I have things I’m working on, but my next realistic shot at racing for a championship will have to be 2019. I honestly have a genuine interest in owning a team, and driving for myself under more of an “independent” operation if that opportunity presented itself. That’s an idea i have considered for the past few years now, in order to do that i would need to buy a “Charter”, which is NASCAR’s version of a franchise (guaranteed starting spot in the race).
