Sports professor Rick Harrow inside the $1.3 trillion business of sports and sometimes just interview people that you have no idea who they are.
Sometimes you have a 30 year reunion with someone who you used to remember in earlier life and has now come back stronger and even better.
Cindy Sisson, the executive director of Women in Motorsports.
North America's Vinny, absolutely great to see you.
Thank you very much.
What an honor, Rick.
It's been a long time.
It's a lot of fun.
So you've been in motor sports for a long time.
First of all, we'll talk about what you do today.
That's so significant.
But how did you get into motor sports in the first place?
I remember you when you were dealing with the LPGA.
You know, the story I like to tell is that I was born into it.
My dad.
I worked at General Motors, so, um, that was a natural progression.
My first car was a 6415 Mustang, then a 68 Camaro, so I had a passion for cars, but the real story tells I used to work at, I went to Pepperdine and Pepperdine was hosting the US Olympic Academy.
And it was 2 years before the Olympics, and I actually was giving a tour to all the the Olympic wannabes in the United States and I parked my boyfriend's car at the top of the hill at Pepperdine and I turned around and it had a mind of its own and rolled all the way down the hill.
And I crashed the car and it was a Porsche 914, so that's how I told people that I really got into motor sports and you've been working to pay that car off ever since, probably pretty much how interesting but obviously you've come a long way and the industry has come a long way and when you lead the efforts promoting the bio, who promotes Cindy inclusivity and leadership for women in motor sports across the continent.
Um, you would think that there aren't too many women to promote wrong.
What's it like?
How's it grown?
It's phenomenal.
Um, I don't know if you remember, Rick, but in 1991, the golf industry was suffering like the motor sports industry, and I raised my hand and said, you know, we're gonna have a golf summit.
We're gonna teach the economic value of the woman golfer.
We had 450 people show up.
We had people like Paul Spangler who headed up Pebble Beach, Judy Bell, who were the USGA.
And 3 summits later it totally changed the golf industry.
So why reinvent something or why not reinvent something?
And I started a summit 5 years ago in Nashville in a honky tonk bar with 110 people showing up and uh Lynn Saint James and I did it together and we said, you know what, we're on to something.
It took us about a year uh after Lynn Saint James was at the Indy 500 with Beth Pareto who had the all female, almost all female IndyCar team.
And Lyn cried and said, you know.
I I don't feel alone anymore, and that's really how women in motor sports are when that started.
Well, it's an interesting story, and this is a microcosm in many ways of how early days of the Women's Sports Foundation, early days of women's sports generally, but it's come so much farther than day one.
Do you remember some of those early days?
I remember all those early days.
I mean, if you remember I worked at Gatorade and I was a sports marketing manager.
Uh, after that I started my own agency and had a lot of first then as well, but then I went on and I ran the US Postal Service cycling team.
I was the managing director of that.
Same scenario, not a lot of women involved, but I'm so proud of where we've come with uh women in motor sports.
It's, it's exponential in the growth and you know a lot of people think, oh, you're trying to make change in a industry.
We're not trying to change the industry.
We're not trying to buck the industry.
We have friends, lots of male friends that are supporting us and I love walking down the paddock to any kind of race series and.
I see that woman and that woman and I see a lot of young women say, hey, it's because of you, Cindy.
I have an internship or a mentorship or a job and that's what is very exciting.
What's it like?
I assume it's it's helpful that.
Lisa France Kennedy has been running NASCAR or the ISC for so long and all of the empowerment started from the top there.
How's NASCAR been?
It's fantastic.
Not only Lisa, but Steve Phelps.
He's an incredible leader and they Been one of our partners since the beginning.
They have an organization called WIMI Women in NASCAR.
They have 360 members and we're in conversations about joining our forces now.
Same thing with globally we're being reached out from the FIA and Countries like Australia and on and on seeing the business model that we're creating here in the United States and we want to not only grow it here in the US but globally as well but I also have to add John Doonan from IMSA.
Uh, Greg Gill from SRO, Doug Bows, uh, from IndyCar IMS right now.
In fact, Allison Malanton, who's, uh, Roger Pensky's, you know, go to gal, not only is she on our board, we have a very strong, uh, board, but she also is the, the chairman of our annual Women with Drive summit, which is we're in our 5th year.
Every year we sold out, started with 110 in Nashville, moved on up, uh.
To 350 in Charlotte, 470 and Phoenix last year 650 and in Indy and this year we're expecting 700 to 800 people.
It's amazing and we ought to before we forget, we'll come back to other stuff.
CCON is an incredible conference, you know, 2nd year, and Sean and UNLV and Syracuse together have put together a thought leadership conference like nothing I've ever seen, and I've been around the block for, you know, 200 years.
When you think about the over 100 speakers and 500 attendees, it is powerful, is it not?
Well, I'm here because of them.
I mean, Because of Syracuse, because of Rick Burton, um, we work on a project together called Racing Prodigy, which is the first racing series that sim to real racing, and he started introducing me to the Syracuse folks, and I can actually maybe go on record as saying they're going to be an official partner of Wina not only from the standpoint of a feeder system.
We did a project this year with one of their sponsorship classes where all.
36 students.
I introduced them to female race car drivers, and they did case studies.
Now we're looking at data analytics, case competitions at the summit.
David Faulk was also a sponsor of a coloring book that we created, so that's his style.
That's yeah it's really a special project that I'm really, really proud of, but David Faulk, the university stepped up and The woman that created the coloring book gave her a $1000 scholarship, so I'm a big fan of Go Orange even though I'm a Pepperdine go orange.
I have Syracuse in my heart as well.
And Syracuse obviously has ridden risen to the top of the sports business ladder, not just law marketing, but development and everything, hospitality you see, and this alignment with UNLV is pretty significant, isn't it?
It's brilliant.
It's absolutely brilliant.
You know, today was a special day.
The team from Syracuse, we went over to the F1 drive experience and You know, just to see the two universities collaborate like that, that needs to happen more in the United States.
I'm doing a lot of work with Purdue on the engineering side.
I could see them all working together as well in this world of motor sports.
Let's talk about women's sports and then we'll come back to a couple of things too as far as Um, your importance in the industry because I can't overemphasize it.
When you think about the Caitlin Clark effect, one of the things that I've seen as a kind of a semi-academic is that Everybody kind of rushes to conclusion that she is the reason why women's sports is here today.
She's one of the reasons, but not clearly not anywhere near the only reason.
Oh my gosh, you know, you got to remember the folks that got us there, the Billie Jean Kings, the Lynn Saint James, that list goes on and on.
But the Caitlyn Clark effect is the catalyst we needed to take all women's sports to the next level.
I, I admire her very, very much, and I think.
Um, it's gonna hopefully make my job easier even though we're motor sports and she's basketball.
Corporate America is finally realizing that 52% of the population actually enjoys sports and hopefully more money will be, you know, given into women.
Uh, women in sports in general, we're, we're challenged women in motor sports for racing sponsorships.
I mean we're dying on the vine, but this whole Caitlin Clark effect allows me to open the door easier.
I don't find sponsorships for women drivers.
That's not what our foundation's about.
We're about all women, all jobs in an industry that that needed uh some growth.
But at the risk of stating the obvious, the more corporate support and the more money that comes top down, the easier it's gonna be to expand the sport in all context.
The metrics, um, are pretty easy when you talk about corporate America and what it means that women make what, 118% of the buying decisions or something, something like that, some significant number, but when you think about.
What it means finally to have a day to day approach where all of these seminars around the country are focusing on how women's sports is the way to go, I assume that gratifies you.
It really does, but I mean, even back to my industry with the automotive, women make incredible decisions on buying power for cars, but you know, the automotive industry, we're so blessed we have General Motors and Ford and Uh, Mazda, oh my gosh, Mazda is investing incredible amounts of dollars.
They have a series on prime right now called First to the Finish, and it's about two female race drivers and a female race owner, and it's helping, helping us do our job to tell our story.
It's a really good time.
How, how significant is the opportunity for expansion to be.
Synergistic with teams, leagues, the obvious women's sport, you know, Jessica Berman, women's soccer and obviously the WNBA folks are the obvious people to talk about, but it's so much deeper than that.
It is deeper than that and there's an organization called Parity.
I don't know if you've ever heard of them.
And they're really the only group out there that they have over 1000 athletes and I think 212, whatever the number is, verticals of women's sports, and they're out there every single day telling the story of women's sports and trying to raise capital to invest not just in sponsorship but social media get these gals, they're getting paid nothing, Rick.
It's, it's, it's deplorable.
I mean the numbers are.
Just astounding how much a male gets versus a female, but there's groups like that parody who's doing a great job of trying to change the narrative.
Is capital raising in women's sports broadly defined easier than it was a while ago?
I don't know if it's easier because it's just as hard for men and women.
Let's be honest, it is, especially after COVID, yeah, and you know your CMO now today wants ROI, ROI, ROI.
The sad thing for our industry is.
A lot of sponsors measure ORI on the number of Facebook or Instagram likes.
OK, you might be a driver that has 2 million followers, but that doesn't mean you can race on the racetrack, and that is something we're facing all the time that's very, very frustrating.
It's got to be about performance on the track, and when I see some of these drivers going out there trying to prove themselves, but they have high social media numbers, it ruins it for the rest of the industry because social media it doesn't make you become a faster race car driver.
Uh, but social media given the world of NIL, everybody wants to excel in it today with men, women, anybody else, right?
Yeah yeah, interesting.
So the future.
Uh, we'll get into the future in a second, but I have one series of questions about what makes Cindy's assistant special.
You've had the ability to transcend, you know, the golf industry.
You did the summit.
You've done a whole host of things.
Your Gatorade experience in the background.
What advice do you have for kids or people just starting out?
How do you, how do you survive, thrive, then transcend?
Uh, with a big smile on your face, but no, you know, one of the things I don't like right now is the injury industry always ask me what was your barriers?
Why was it so hard?
It wasn't hard.
It wasn't hard because I had a really good attitude and I surrounded myself with amazing people like you, Rick, that believed in me.
Yeah, give yourself a kiss, but um, you have to, it's all about the attitude and I'm starting to do, I hope a little bit more public speaking on.
Um, just that networking little tools and tip tips and tricks.
LinkedIn is the savior.
I am a huge LinkedIn gal for almost 12,000 followers, but those followers are people I know.
One of my favorite stories to tell is, um, my bathroom, and I have over 4000 business cards and everybody above the toilet I like.
Everybody will below the toilet.
What's the ratio?
Ratio of the top of the toilet above or below.
It's above is about 3900 and about 100 below the toilet.
Wow, there you go, ladies and gentlemen.
That probably sums it up.
What is Cindy Sisson?
Let's first start with Wimna and Sidney Cindy Sisson 3 times.
Cindy can't do it.
Where do we see you in 10 years?
Oh Lord, um, I want to write a book.
It's called you want the title How to succeed in Business without really crying.
OK, that's great.
I've cried a lot, um.
I want to do public speaking and I'm hoping my 24 year old son has a baby and I could be a good grandma.
Wow, how about continuing to revolutionize the uh women in life and women in sports?
How about that?
You know, it, it's a good thing.
What I'm really doing right now, Rick, and I shouldn't probably come out publicly with this.
I'm trying to find the mini me.
And there's a woman out there I wanna coach.
I want her to have the same passion and love for what I do.
I don't sleep.
I work 24/7.
The number one question I get from people all the time when do you find time to do it all?
And when you love something and you have the heart for it, it's not work and so it doesn't bother me and I love doing what I do.
I guarantee you this, ladies and gentlemen, Cindy Sisson is going to keep looking for the mini me, but she ain't gonna find it because there is no one else like her.
Sports professor Rick Harrow, speak with you soon.
