Ken Hill: Mastering Motorcycle Fundamentals with a Pro Coach

Ken Hill is one of the most respected motorcycle coaches in North America. He works with riders at every level, from street riders looking to build confidence to experienced track riders chasing faster lap times.

In this episode, Ken talks about the value of professional coaching, the fundamentals that most riders overlook, and why small changes in technique produce big results on the bike. We cover body position, visual skills, throttle management, and the mental side of riding well.

If you've ever thought about working with a riding coach but weren't sure what to expect, start here.

Link to Ken Hill Coaching:
https://www.khcoaching.com/
Youtube    / @khcoaching 
Instagram @khcoaching
Soundcloud https:\\soundcloud.com\ken-hill-534763963

Transcript

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Angus Norton (00:10.03)
Hey everyone, it's great to see you again. Now when I started this channel back in January of 2024, I had no idea that the content that I've been working on would be so popular. So I want to thank all of you for liking and subscribing to my content. This is not my day job. I have a day job. Now.

The founding of my channel and the inspiration behind it was actually it started out as a bit of a joke. A bunch of my friends said, know Angus, you've been riding motorcycles for 30 years. You actually know a thing or two about motorcycles and you have a face for podcasts. So let's not do any video. Of course, I took that as a challenge as well. And while they were right on the face part, I definitely have really enjoyed making this content. Now.

One of the founding principles of the channel was I believe that there are a lot of people out there that know a thing or two about riding motorcycles. They know a thing or two about the technology behind motorcycles and have a really good way and a perspective of helping others learn. I've certainly felt throughout my 52 years on the planet that I've learned a lot about riding motorcycles and I've learned a lot about what I don't and like and what I do like.

But I've also learnt that there's always more to learn and nothing could have explained that or really brought that into perspective more than my last five years of learning to ride a motorcycle on the track. I turned up at a track day five years ago after riding on a motorcycle on the street for 30 years. I've ridden all over the world. I thought I knew a thing or two. Turned out, my first day at the track, I realised that I've been riding the wrong way for 30 years.

That was a big ego pill to swallow. But from that point forward, I invested a lot of time in training, a lot of time in learning how to ride really well on the track. And that has translated to riding way better on the street. So having a learner's mindset when it comes to learning something that you thought you already knew a thing or two about, takes some courage for folks. And it certainly requires you to put your ego at the back door.

Angus Norton (02:18.325)
So I've done a few motorcycle reviews, a few gear reviews, and I've interviewed industry experts who are at the top of their game, from coaches to pro riders and up and coming pro riders. At the center of my interview has always been an inherent curiosity that I've always had to unpack what differentiates the highest level performers in our sport from the rest of us. My hope is that

we all learn from these interviews. Personally, I was never a great listener or learner in my youth and frankly in my early adult years. It's really only been in the last 20 years or so that I finally learned the art of listening and really learning from the collective wisdom of others. I wish I'd had this skill earlier in my life. Maybe my lap times would have been better.

So on that note, I'm really excited to introduce you to Ken Hill.

Ken is one of the preeminent coaches in the US. He's a highly respected and experienced motorcycle track riding coach, and he's known for his deep understanding of the dynamics of motorcycle racing and his ability to translate complex concepts into practical guidance for riders of all skill levels.

Over the years, he's competed in various racing disciplines, but it's his role as a coach that has truly defined his impact on the sport. His coaching methodology, the order of the sport, emphasizes the importance of fundamentals, bike placement, vision, motor controls, brake adjustability, turn in and body position, while also incorporating advanced

Angus Norton (04:13.365)
techniques tailored to the needs of individual writers.

Angus Norton (04:20.301)
In 2024, launched the Master Class program. This is a new two-day track school that teaches this methodology and provides a comprehensive approach to motorcycle riding and track performance. The Master Class is the compilation of Ken's decades of experience, and it combines personalized coaching with a strong focus on mastering the fundamentals of a motorcycle.

The program also emphasizes mental preparation and toughness. It uses cutting edge technology like data logging and telemetry to provide precise feedback that helps riders make targeted improvements. So whether working with a seasoned pro or a first time track rider, his contributions have left an indelible mark on motorcycle racing community. He's seen as a true leader and innovator in the world of track riding. So sit back, relax.

Enjoy my chat with Ken and if it hits a chord with you, feel free to like and subscribe to my channel. This is not my day job. I have a day job outside of this and anything you can do to help. I really appreciate it. So let's get over and have a chat to Ken. Well, hey, everyone. So, yeah, so I'm really excited to have Ken Hill with me here today. Ken is someone that I met during my local track days here in Seattle at the Pacific Northwest region.

at the Ridge. So Ken, welcome. It's awesome to have you here and thanks for making the time. Yeah, no, I appreciate being here and I love doing these things. I do like to talk about our sport and of course, you know, I'm very passionate about it and passionate about not only improving myself, but improving the people that I work with. Yeah, that was super clear to me when I first discovered you and I started listening to your podcasts.

how I remember you said like, I don't just do podcasts for the sake of it. If I have something that I think is interesting, I'm going to share it with the community. And you know, I already struck me. mean, honestly, it's it's easy. Well, first of all, if you're in motorsports, you're not making any money. That's just how motorsports is. But it's easy, especially in this world, you can, you know, you can do click baity stuff, you can do these crazy topics, you can slam people. And I'm just not into that. I'm into

Angus Norton (06:48.351)
I'm into getting better and I'm not only am I into getting better, but I want my clients to get better. And yeah, that takes work, meaning that you have to internalize these things, figure it out, understand how you're going to communicate it, how they learn and being a very curious person. Yeah, my curiosity is really sort of what's led me down that journey, but yeah, you can easily do things that

that are again clickbaity and produce something once or twice a week. And I just don't do that. I'm working on two different things for my sub stack right now. I spent the morning here writing and there are topics that are essentially impactful in that. How do get people to improve? And what are the big main references? If we focus on this particular reference, then a lot of other things will take care of itself. So yeah, long answer to your...

your thought. But yeah, that's that's sort of what my journey is about. Yeah, that's that's something I really want to dive into, because I know that you're a very experienced and respected track riding coach. But I also know that the dynamics of motorcycle racing and the way you translate those concepts into practical guidance is a real superpower of yours. And I've met a lot of really great athletes in my time. And I've met a lot of great athletes who have gone pro

and those who haven't. And it's interesting when I talk to them and I try to unpack the difference between someone that is a really great track writer, a group goes fast, but and one that is willing to crash a lot and hurt themselves along the way to becoming the best at what they do. Right. And you probably saw I interviewed Simon Prefer recently. I interviewed a young kid yesterday, Cormac, who's just who's racing in the world, FIA in Junior Cup. And they all tell me, Kayla as well.

They'll tell me that they crashed a lot along the way. It was painful. And I was trying to unpack that. So for you in terms of your journey, can you just help me understand like the, suppose the, the, the, the, the type of writers you work with from the track groups to the pros? Cause I know you've got a raw group of writers. Yeah. So, yeah, I mean, there's so much to unpack there. We're going to be, we're going to be chatting a lot. So I think it starts off with my journey because my journey actually happened.

Angus Norton (09:16.843)
a lot to do to segue into how I communicate with people. And, you know, my journey started where I didn't get started riding motorcycles till very late, not till age 30. And this is back when there was no track days, right? There was no Thunder Hill. was none. There was no like in Northern California, right? There was, there was one track Sonoma. So you, you wanted to go race. signed up for AFM. They did eight races a year. You took new rider school on Saturday. You raced on Sunday. That was it. There was, there was nothing else. And I bought a bike.

I wanted to race cars, couldn't afford to race cars. I was in the car world for 20 years and couldn't afford to race cars. So yeah, I'll do the, I'll do the something cheap thing. I'll race motorcycles, right? Completely dumb. And yeah, I threw myself right in, right into it. And I had a good first year meeting. I survived the second year. I decided that I really wanted to step my game up. I became an expert. So of course I knew everything and, my technique of going fast was to go fast. And yeah, I started crashing, right? Getting hurt.

And at this point, know, career, starting a family, that's, not a sustainable way of staying in this. And so I ended up going to school. I ended up going to Freddie Spencer school. At that point we had either code or Spencer. I chose Spencer because he's a three-time world champion and I wanted to learn from somebody that was the best and having a little bit of an athletic background. You know, I wanted that, that world champion, world champion's view. So I went to the school, realized how much I didn't, I didn't know. Oh my gosh.

And I, can't, the funny part though is I, came away kind of with this, this, I don't want this, this is going to sound wrong, but I sort of came, came away not with way more questions than I had had answers and I still didn't get it. And so that started my journey of let's, let's understand this as a sport, let's treat it as a sport. And then that took me through the next couple of years of starting to move up the club ranks, ended up going back to Freddie's.

Um, as a sponsored riders, started winning in Northern California, um, ended up being a guest instructor with Freddy's and her full-time instructor with Freddy's, um, ended up racing professionally, um, in 2004 through 2006 AMA super bike. That's back, you know, that's back with the boys, right? That's back in the last, these two humble days. And yeah, it was luckily lucky enough to get even top 10. got top 10 of super bike at that time, which was a crazy, I looked back at that. know how the hell I did it, but I did it.

Angus Norton (11:43.167)
And so, you know, that journey of starting late from nothing and having to have essentially with, you know, family and work figuring out how do I dedicate time to train? Like, how do I get good at whatever breaking or whatever, whatever the heck it is, acceleration. So I had to set time aside to do that. And as I got better on the club ranks and started instructing people are like, well, what's this old guy doing? You know, he's going pretty well. Cause I was.

at AMA, mean, I was age 41, 42, and 43 when I did that. it's like, how is this old guy going well? And then people wanted to have me start working with them. And so this journey of mine and how I communicate things really did start with the schools. And I spent 13 years at schools, seven with Freddie and five with YCRS, helped found YCRS with Nick. And that journey of being able to communicate

whether it's somebody that's never ridden a motorcycle to a pro rider, fundamentals or fundamentals, right? How you use your eyes, how you use your brakes, the technique is the same. It's just the degree of application. And that's really what we narrow down things with. And then to kind of finish that up a little bit, because it is such a massive topic, is during my time there and my time now is we attracted a great group of people that really

pushed my learning envelope. I mean, they basically, I wouldn't be here if it wasn't for these people. And these are people that are outside the industry, but are very, very good in their world. So we're talking, you know, Ivy league professors, we're talking top gun pilots, we're talking special forces trainers, you know, we're talking, you know, top 50 CFOs. So, I mean, really how you do anything at the sharp end is how you do anything. It doesn't, it doesn't matter. And so,

That's learning how to communicate to somebody that's never done it, to somebody that's at the last 0.01%. That's really where the magic is in having the correct fundamentals and having the correct objectives. But more importantly with that is also understanding the evaluation process. You evaluate where that person is individually and being able then to place the fundamentals where they need them.

Angus Norton (14:05.869)
I know that's a lot of information in a short amount of time, but that's really what I'm about is how to communicate something that's incredibly difficult to do in very simple terms. And the reason that that happened was because honestly, this is how I make my living, right? This is how I pay my mortgage. This is how I put my kids through school.

The reason that's important is that if I wasn't successful in learning how to communicate with different types of clients, couldn't make any money. So all the time spent figuring out and writing things out and trying things and seeing what worked and what didn't. mean, it's basically very simple. Either you survive or you don't. And again, I'm lucky that I have such a great essentially peer group.

that allows me to try things. And this is why I've also, I mean, I've done a lot of keynote speaker talks. I did typically do one or two keynote speaker talks, keynote talks per year, just depending on what the topic is and who it is, is being able to distill this information and have people learn. Oh, that's really helpful. Because one of the things I was wondering is how you define the moment from sort of your racing career that sort of shaped your approach to coaching and

You nailed it really well there. some it's your methodology is definitely is very highly regarded. And it's one of the things I've been trying to understand is, you know, if, if you, if you had a rider that asks you, should I just take the bike on my track and learn my own way for a few track days before I do coaching? Or should I just start with coaching from day one, you know, and start developing that? Do you have the point of view around that?

Oh yeah, absolutely. I mean, the problem though. So we have a little problem in our sport, right? This isn't volleyball. This isn't running. This isn't cycling, right? Where you have access to being able to go for a run or you have access to go play softball or whatever it is. Just to track time is very difficult. The point of entry for track time is difficult. It's expensive. Um, you know, you have to travel to a track. You have to have the right equipment. So the point of entry is very, very difficult, quite honestly. And.

Angus Norton (16:29.325)
I guess the way to look at it is that's funny. just, again, I'm just completely enthralled with the learning aspect of it. And one of my, one of the people in my peer group also the same deal is, is going to go do something that is completely out of their wheelhouse. And this, this, this person in our, in our little peer group, decided I'm going skydiving. And it wasn't that he was going to go skydiving. He went skydiving with basically the people that are teaching.

the highest end in the military skydiving. And so there, you know, he had to go do something that had consequences and do something that's dangerous. And it wasn't, he wasn't doing it for the experience. He was doing it to learn and how, and how you learn. So the way I look at it is when motor sports, motor sports has consequences. mean, honestly, they're deadly consequences. So to treat it like you're going to go play softball or go treat it like you're going to play tennis or cycling or whatever it is.

Yeah. The consequences aren't nearly as high. It's, it's funny because the reason I brought up the skydiving story is they were relating talking about motorcycles and cause this guy obviously, guy obviously rides motorcycles quite a bit and their trainers, which are the best of the best. mean of, of, you know, the paratroopers and the special forces, they think it would be absolutely bat shit crazy.

to get on a motorcycle without coaching. They think it's insane. So you think about, you know, somebody that's going to go, I mean, you can go buy a brand new BMW 1000 and you can go to a track day and you know, you can go to a track that yeah, I mean, you know, the area at Pacific Raceway, they have the death shoot. I mean, so, so to do something like that without training is, is insane. And of course we've all done it. We all kind of, we've all kind of done that, but

Yeah, I guess the short version of that is, yeah, you want to survive in the sport and you want to get really good at it because I do believe with the right fundamentals and the right community, right, the right community around you, then you can, you can go as far as in the sport as you want and, and mitigate consequences. Yeah, I love this. This is a really great, really great area to unpack. I know you've heard my story a little bit. I, I had

Angus Norton (18:51.949)
I literally toured a million miles around the world, four different continents, millions, a lot, I rode a lot of miles. And I knew, I turned out to the track and my first day I was at typical, I've been riding on the street all this time, I got on the track and realized it's very different. And while some say the track is safer than the street, I do believe that for a number of reasons, but the consequences are high and...

I think I read Keith Coates book in 1986 or something, and I really liked that, but then things have changed. And so do you believe that motorcycling and learning to be great at motorcycling is something that is a learned thing though, like inherently, or do you think some people are just born with the skill? I know in a lot of sports you see this, but I've heard conflicting opinions on motorcycling. If it's true, like...

Or are there people that's literally a born to ride in your opinion? yeah. Um, we spent a lot of time there and meaning that, you know, um, when we designed the professional training that we have, so we, we, we have one of the things I've been blessed with is we've been able to, you know, work a lot with, with the very 0.01 percenters and

You have to remember once we solidify what the 0.01 percenters do, that actually makes it easier to train the first one percenters because we know what's right. We know what works under consequences. We know what works under stress. So when you're when you you work and solidify that last 1 % that last 0.05 percent, right? You work on that. It actually makes it easier and clearer what works in the beginning to get to that level. So that's that's.

first part of it. Second part of it is, yeah, we really studied this when it came to vision, as you probably know, I'm big into vision, visions, because vision is one of the silver bullets of the sports, even though there's there's kind of no silver bullets. But yeah, I mean, and that's one of the keynote speakers, one of the keynote speeches I did this year was actually at the International Sports Vision Association in San Diego this year, I got I got asked to do an hour talk at at at

Angus Norton (21:10.369)
their event. And it was, I learned more, think, than, anything that I, that I did, but you know, that the, the real, I've always had a belief that natural athletes, like natural motorcycle racers have better vision. That's my thought is right. In other words, they can intake the information, they see it. And because they can see it better, essentially they can perform better. And basically we prove that.

And, I have a vision performance specialist that we created an evaluation process for motor sports. So he's a, he's a great guy. He's in Ohio. He's a porch club instructor, incredibly fast in a car. So he understands vision and we do a lot of things with vision with him. And we created an evaluation process. So we actually ran all of our athletes through this evaluation process and it was no, mean, there was, there was absolutely correlation between.

the riders that were the fastest, you know, basically, they come up from a young age. They're fast. They had the best vision to this day. This guy, this guy works with pro hockey teams and pro baseball teams. And when we've, we've developed sort of the scoring system throughout all this, process, the motorcycle racers that I've worked with have the highest scores out of all these people, baseball players, hockey players. I think the first part of it is I think the innate vision skills.

probably are one of the biggest drivers to that. So how they take in information, how they recognize that information, how they react to that information, right? Is it fight or flight, right? So there's a lot of information based there and luckily vision is something, regardless of where you're at, whether you start low or start high, vision can be trained. So I think that's one thing. And then the other part of it is you think about, well, all these kids are really good and these kids are coming up and you have to realize that

Well, a lot of these kids, call it natural talent, but they've also been writing for, you know, they're, 23 years old and they've been writing for 20 years. So, you know, it's easy to go, well, this kid is just, where did this kid come from? And you realize, well, actually they've been writing for, you know, a very long time. So yeah, the long answer to that is I think that that vision vision is, is really where that, that, where the, some of the innate,

Angus Norton (23:35.415)
where some of that innate, I guess, capabilities come from, right? Where you're being able to showcase that at an early age. And the other is, yeah, a lot of these natural talent writers have been writing a really long time. that's really helpful. And I think it's going to be a good lead-in to your masterclass program, which I want to talk about next, because I can see for your masterclass program that I know it launched this year is the compilation of all these years of experience you have.

and I'm really looking forward to breaking it down. But before I do that, you touched on vision and you also touched on the professional application of vision across different types of sports. One of the pieces of your masterclass program I know is mental training, which I want to get to. When I talk to some of these young kids, what strikes me is the difference between the kids that are really fast and the ones that are like, you can just tell they're going to go places is they seem

wiser than you would expect. Kayla Yakov was, when I talked to her, I felt like I was talking to a 35 year old woman. Her level of maturity and focus and Cormac who's 17, I spoke to him, he's like this kid, but he acts like he's 30. It's this level of maturity and mental belief in himself is just outstanding. that, maybe people are saying, well, yeah, but like for you, that,

Is that also a thing? They're outliers. So yeah, they're outliers. I mean, I've worked with a lot of kids and how we work with kids is we have a very specific way of working with kids. And obviously, you know, again, just to just sidebar real quick, you know, my training is all about individuality. And this is why part of some of the reasons why I struggled at the schools were I didn't feel that I was able to

bring the individual attention that I want to bring to this, to the sport and teaching. I don't like catchphrase coaching and I don't like how that works. And with kids, again, there's a special way, how you communicate to them, how you get them to learn is very, very individual. So I think in your case, the two that you mentioned are very individual. I know Kayla a little bit, I know her dad a little bit. And I mean, the way that she was trained

Angus Norton (26:00.097)
to listen and the way that she was trained in, in techniques. Yeah. I think that that was very, very, very, very individualized and specialized for her. So she's able to connect with that. That's why she can articulate it very well. so yeah, I think it's, I think there are, there are, I think. Yeah. I don't think they're honestly, in my experience, they're not the norm when it comes to kids.

You'd be surprised at how many just don't know what they're doing. They just haul ass. That's really helpful. okay. So if I wind it back a little bit, because I want to get deep into how all this is accumulated into what is a very structured, very respected program. It's really interesting. I spent time in the forums and your name comes up like all the time. I was looking at a site on a forum and someone said, know, Ken Hills and I think Florida right now.

Like I think you must have been Florida recently or something. He's in Florida. You've got to go see him. like I tell you, it's not like a random thing. It's all the time. And so when I first meet you, you're involved in, obviously you had done Yamaha's Champs school, how found that you have experienced coaching with Freddie Spencer. And I've done the Yamaha school by the way. I thought it was great. And, but then, you know, I saw you in the local view and the local track days and

I saw you working with individual writers and I always wondered like what else you did because I listened to your podcast and it seems that you got to a point where you felt like you needed to bring the structure to something a lot more sophisticated, right? And so at the time I knew your Moto Pilot program and I think that's changed, right? So can you sort of tell me a little bit about all these years of experience of cumulative very individual program? it's

Okay. Yeah. This is a little bit of a long story, but, obviously it has merit and obviously always. I'm always trying to develop and of course I'm trying to improve as well. So about 10 years ago, when I met, um, my, my flying, my flying buddy, uh, my top gun pilot, he had to come to one of the schools and he came one of the schools and we didn't know who this guy was. He was just this, this, guy that's riding around goes really well and listens well.

Angus Norton (28:24.939)
And then we figured out on the second day or third day, whatever, two or three days school, figuring out who this guy is. And we're like, crap. Right. He at that time was a three star general that time. He was one of the, mean, he's probably one of the 10 best fighter pilots live. And he's that good. And yeah, the stories are, the stories are epic. And so at the of the school, he took Nick and I aside and he goes, you know, I observed the school. had a great time. Obviously I want to be back. He's like, you know, tell your students, they don't take this seriously enough.

I was like, holy crap, what a state, right? So in other words, observing the dynamic of the students and seeing what's going on. So I started working with Bob individually after that. And at one point, Bob came up to me and he says, Ken, I'm doing what you tell me because I trust you. But he goes, you got to write this stuff down. we were just kind of,

I won't say going through the motions, but we're collecting information and doing our thing. But, but I hadn't really sat down and written everything down. And this is, like I said, 10 years ago. So at that point I was, I was very humbled by that. And basically for the next two years, I wrote everything down. Literally for two years, I wrote every objective, what we were doing and notebook after notebook filled with information. And then I have all this information and I'm like, what the hell do I do with it?

So at that time, was a years later, he put me in contact with it at that time. Well, who's the current commandant at the top gun flying school. And I got to have some conversations with him. actually got to meet him at, at Bob's retirement, which was just an incredible honor, but I got to spend time with him and he was able to, showcase to me how they teach at the school and, and, and basically how their curriculum is written.

So I basically spent two or three years with a brain dump of all my stuff. And it took me two or three years. wrote six guides and these are, these are very intensive guides where the guides start off with a base, a base level, advanced level. And then they go, actually there's two instructor levels. And I wrote all these things down and I thought the guides are going to be awesome. And they are actually awesome. The problem is they're completely not executable.

Angus Norton (30:55.723)
Meaning that they were written just like they would for somebody who was sitting down at a Top Gun school. So in other words, somebody's paid to sit there for six months and have a, you know, fleet accessible at any time. And so while the guides are great, they just were not executable. And there's the whole, the whole thing, right? There's, there's a way you have to test out of each, out of each level, the whole bit, right? All that's there, but not executable. So.

It's like, okay, great. How do we then, how do we actually make this executable? How do we make this work? And I had been doing classroom talks for well over a decade, meaning that, know, a track day company will hire me to come talk, do, you know, talk some classroom talks, maybe go ride with people. And it's just to introduce that, hey, you can get better. You can get better at this sport. So actually I want to, I want to pause here for a second and talk about, you know, when we wrote those guides,

the guides, what we really found out was not only how we were teaching, but what we were teaching and more importantly in the order of what we were teaching. And that really was sort of the breakthrough. And that's where my, fundamentals that I I've developed. So I think that's actually a you, you, if you Google volleyball fundamentals, you Google tennis fundamentals, you're going to get page, right? You Google motorcycle fundamentals, you get, you get nothing. Well, hopefully you get my stuff, but there's

There was no order in what things were being taught, let alone what was being taught. So that was one of the things that we, we literally took these years of notes and we would say, I mean, we literally debrief with my instructors. We debrief with them and say, what did you work on today? And what was the order? And we'd, literally write this stuff down and we'd say, okay, this group worked on this. This group worked on this. Why did you go back to this? So we would debrief every single day on what they're working on and why.

And that just led to this gigantic data, this amount of information that we could pull from. So the fundamentals that we have, the fundamentals that I developed all came from that. It came from literally a decade or more of thousands and thousands and thousands of students, what their experiences were, what the instructors experiences were. So that produced the fundamentals, but not only that, it produced more importantly, the order of the sport, right? The order of the fundamentals.

Angus Norton (33:22.593)
because you can have the correct fundamentals, but if you're teaching them in the wrong order, it doesn't do you really any good. So from there, when I'd been doing these classroom talks, I was honestly getting a little bit frustrated. And again, I've been doing them for years and they're fun to do, but I was getting frustrated because when I'd come into the classroom and we'd talk, I'd have people say, well,

I, you know, I'm working on whatever my vision or this, but my instructor's telling me this or my instructor's telling me not to do that. And so it was getting very frustrating that I'd spend about 50 % of my time basically debunking or changing what was, what was happening. So kind of at the end of last year, I'm like, I'm not doing these anymore. These are just aren't fun. And I'm not, I'm not, I'm not getting through. So I had a couple of track day companies get ahold of me and say, Hey, we want you to do classroom talks. And I said, well, I'm not, really don't want to do them anymore.

And if I do them, I'm going to completely revamp them. And they're like, well, we're interested. So that's really where the masterclass program came from, which is it's taking all those guides that I had and distilling them into one single guide that we actually provide that guide when people sign up. The track day providers will essentially purchase that guide. so the students get that guide.

The important part of this is I wasn't going to do it unless I had the instructors in the room with me. So meeting that the instructors, typically will do, let's say we're doing 20 group, you're going to get 10 instructors and those instructors are handpicked from the track day company and they go through an online vetting process. We train them initially online and we do some training with them. Those instructors have to sit next to their students the entire time. So they're taking the class.

At the same time, the students taking the class, because when we looked at how we built instructors, it all came from being at the schools. There's no other way. No one, I hate to say this, but no one's really going to pay for instructing and they're not going to pay at the price point. That would make sense, right? To be able to rent a track and to be able to do things to train instructors. No one's going to pay five, 10, 15, 20,000 bucks to go through a training process like that. It's just, it's just not going to happen.

Angus Norton (35:48.023)
So how do we train instructors and the way we're training instructors is we have people that already have some instructing experience. But they they're in the classroom. They have the same book as the student. The way the book is written, it's written for the instructor just as much as it's written for the student. And they go through the exact same process as the student. So that way there's there's typically a two to one or even one to one instructor to student ratio. So

There we're dealing with, you know, not, some of the big numbers, not five to one, not four to one. It's usually two to one or even one to one. And that way the instructor then can also help be a little bit of my eyes and ears of, this particular writings rider, we're working on bike placement, but we're, we're, turning into early. How do we fix turning into early? Okay, cool. So not only does it become incredibly individualized, but we're working with the instructor as well as the student.

And that format has gone, it's going very well. And the other part of it is to your point earlier is accessible, affordable training is very difficult. You know, the schools, know, like, like, you know, CSS and YSRS are great. They're fantastic, but I don't have to tell you how expensive they are. And so we needed something that was in between those very, very expensive schools and basically a hundred or $200 track day coach.

which you don't know what the hell you're getting. That's the reality of it. So these schools are priced about a third of what those bigger schools are. And typically they're, they can be held the way they're designed. They could be held as standalone schools. could be held at a track day where we take up a session of one of the sessions and we work it that way. So it's good for the track day provider. He's getting, he's getting his instructors trained, right? And we're getting students that are learning.

And it's also profitable. So it really is right now it's, it's, is a pretty good, it's a pretty good program. Well, that's an amazing journey. I really love the way you break that down. and I don't think people realized that it wasn't that long ago that professional coaching on the track was not a thing. You get ideas. So still a pretty new industry and you're basically being there, from the beginning. And it's, love the way you break it down. am.

Angus Norton (38:09.837)
I interviewed a physics teacher the other day, he's actually a friend of mine. He's super interesting. He's really fast. He's raced. He's one of those really fast acro riders. And I was just talking about the physics of motorcycling, right? And he talked about that you're on a gyroscope, and the gyroscope wants to go in a straight line. And usually when it falls over, it's a human on top that makes that mistake. I'm sure he's a lot more sure than that. obviously, you talk about the fundamentals.

throttle control and vision and braking. But obviously there's mental, physical preparation. There's a level of technical depth to understanding the physics of a motorcycle and how that plays into it. What's your point of view on those elements? Yeah, great. I mean, that is one of the problems with our sport. Listen to what I said, sport. So

problem is, is that we're still old school, right? We think that unless your dad was a dirt tracker or unless your uncle had a bull taco, you're, you, you suck and you're never going to be able to ride, right? No, it's a sport like any other sport. The thing is, is that because we've not had identified fundamentals that are executable, people don't think they can do it or they think they just have to have, you know, balls or whatever to do it. And it's absolutely, it's absolutely wrong. Right? I mean,

I got started very late in it. My dad's a retired attorney, right? He never sat on a motorcycle. So it has nothing to do with that. So, you know, I do have some athletic background before I got into motorcycles. So when I looked at this, I thought, well, wait a minute. If this is a sport, you train for sports. Okay, great. If you train, basically there's three elements of an athlete.

Right. You, have your technique, right? So you've got your technique. It's what you do. So you have your technique. Second one is you have your physical fitness. And the third one is you have your mental fitness. All three of those to be successful. All three of those have to be looped together, but all three are separate and all three are trainable. So if you can be the, you know, I mean, again, you can be the fittest guy in the world with the best technique, but if your mental fitness sucks, you know, you're not, you're not going to do well.

Angus Norton (40:32.417)
You can have the best mental outlook on it and it'd be physically fit, but if you don't have any technique, that's not going to work. So yes, we, what we do is we actually, and I've got articles, you'll see articles in my sub stack on this about the complete athlete. And that's how we look at it. And, know, one of the things that, again, one of things that I was, I've been blessed to do is be in a position to develop and train athletes in this world. So one of ways we did that is we.

We designed a training protocol for motor sports and we worked with Max Testa. Max Testa is a multi-time Tour de France trainer and coach, and he loves motor sports. And so we actually designed an evaluation process and training process for motor sports. We would send our athletes to Park City, Utah. We'd send them to the facility. It undergo a day's worth of evaluation. We'd come up with their program, whether it's cognitive skills, whether it's physical skills, mental skills.

They to go physicals, to go concussion protocols. So we've developed all those things and we put the athlete in a position to figure out what's holding them back within those three elements. And then they get to work on it. And so I think one of the things that people, everybody wants like, you know, this, everybody wants like the silver bullets, right? want, and realize the guys that are really good, they're just better at the fundamentals than you are. That's it.

Fundamentals are looped. So as one fundamental gets better, the other one lags behind and you got to build that one. That one gets better. Yeah. Right. So you just, it's always a stair stepping on the fundamentals. So yeah, my, my point of view is that if you have the right fundamentals and you have the right community, you have the right discipline, you can go as far as you can. You want in the sport. Absolutely positive. I I've seen it. I've seen people that should not be riding a motorcycle should not that are incredibly good at it because

They've gone through the process. They've developed the discipline to do it with the right fundamentals and they're very, very good at it. That's great. Yeah, I would say I put myself in that category. So I've never been a natural sports person, but I love to learn. you know, for you this will be slow, but I'm doing like a 205 at the ridge now. No, it's an old 52 year old is okay. But the thing that I've struggled with is

Angus Norton (42:59.753)
really worked on the fundamentals, but there's also a level of bravery. If I can break this down. So one of your coaches at the YCS school, when I did it, he asked me, he what are you doing? I said, what do you mean? goes, you're like nailing all your, all your apexes, your, your entry points are great, but you're just so lame on the throttle. You got to get on the throttle. And I'm, and it's kind of like, I'm too scared to like, my God, I got a full throttle. Like, my God. You know, and

They're like, no, you've got to get on the throttle. And so there's an element of me not being brave enough to really get on the throttle because you know, you'd argue if my fundamentals were great and I was breaking well and I was, I learned how to trail break by the way, the way CS school for the first time I'd never done. I thought I was breaking well. And so what I said is bravery important or is it not important? I think leap of faiths are important.

But I think leap of faiths with proven objectives are more important. like, I mean, yeah, being afraid to break, right? What's the biggest issue we have in learning motorcycle racing or riding is trusting the front tire and braking. I mean, that's just, that's all there is to it, right? That's where everybody's freaked out about, I don't want to do this or that. Well,

by having a proper understanding of what the front tire's job is, understanding about how you apply the brakes and what brake timing is, and then going running the proper drills to build confidence for that, then you will absolutely positively overcome that. I think, yeah, bravery, I think leaps of faith of committing to the process are important, but in my opinion, yeah, I'm not gonna jump out of an airplane.

hoping my parachute open. I want to know, right? yeah, I want to know that it's going to open. it's funny people talk about in this case, bravery or even fear. Well, fear hasn't happened, right? It hasn't happened. You're fearful of something, but it hasn't happened. So it's having the right techniques to mitigate that fear. So you want to work on acceleration. It's understanding that, okay, what kind of corner is it? Enter corner, exit corner. Where's the slow point?

Angus Norton (45:23.061)
What are the objectives for what are the objectives for that? So is the bike in the right place? Is the bike in the right place? Is my hands in the right position, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. So there's a lot of things that you can do to figure that out. Hang on, I got to plug in real quick. forgot. Yeah, no worries. Yeah. So I think that there's a lot of things that you can do.

Good to go. Yeah, so I think.

It's understanding that you're getting into a situation to have techniques that mitigate that risk. So for whatever reason you don't want to accelerate, is it because there's too much weight on your inside arm? Is it because your bike's not placed correctly? Well, if you know your bike's placed correctly, you're going to organically end up on your exit apex. Is it not having an identified exit apex? I mean, there's things that allow you to say, okay, how do I know? I think this is important. How do I know I'm doing it right? And that's actually...

In the, in the original guides I wrote, that was part of the top gun format is how do I know I did it right? And those are the, basically the, I talk about report cards and those are the report cards. And I think it's really easy to think about how you did something wrong, but instead let's think about what you did. Right. And how does that, it actually makes that window is much smaller. So if my bike is pointed correctly at the apex.

and it's an exit corner, am I starting positive throttles? go past the apex and if I've identified moving my eyes at the right time to my exit apex, you're organically going, I mean, you're just going to get there and you're going to be taking away leaning as you do it. That's just how it works. So you focus on the positive objectives and it actually gets rid of all the negative objectives. So it seems so obvious, but to people that haven't had 30 plus years in a sport,

Angus Norton (47:25.968)
or haven't had that level of writing 50 books and pages and pages of notes like you have over your career. It's not that obvious. And I often find, yeah, the getting it right piece. I remember the first time I dragged my knee and I scared the shit out of me. thought, oh my God, I was going to crash. I didn't know what it was. And I realized I was dragging my knee. one of the more experienced guys said to me, yeah, that's because you're actually writing properly now. You're actually...

Like, and then I, and then I remember I got to a point where I actually didn't care about speed. know that might sound weird. I actually felt, well, I got a lot of joy out of just knowing that I was almost perfectly hitting every apex, getting all my lines right and being in flow. I just didn't care about speed, but then all of a sudden I was going fast. And so I'm sure you have a sort of time, but are those examples of knowing you're doing it right? Yeah. Well, you have to be a little bit careful with the lab time, right? Because lab time.

Laptime comes at the end of your lab. It doesn't tell you what you did to get to Right. Right. So, and this is why, you know, part of what we do is we want you to know how you did without a lap timer. And we want you to know how you did in real time. And so a lot of our objectives are based on what you're doing in real time. So it's funny. I just had this, I mean, I've, I've worked with JD Beach for many years.

And, I started working with JD in 2015 and I just had a conversation with him this week because I'm writing a thing. One of the things that's going to be coming out in the next couple of weeks, I have so many different things to write, but I'm kind of jacked up on Apex's right now because I'm seeing the bottom line is if you're missing your Apex's, your point of reference for success is off.

So in other words, apexes really are the singular biggest reference we use in our sport, whether it's a rider or as a coach, because there's so much information that comes from them. And I won't go into the details of that one, but yeah, there's a lot to that. But with JD, it's like, even though I've worked with him, I call him up and I'm like, I know we've talked about this, but never so specifically. It's like, when you're riding, how much are you thinking of apexes? And he goes, that's all I'm thinking about.

Angus Norton (49:51.351)
So it's like, yeah, mean, being able to have these points of reference and these fundamentals, regardless of where you're at in the sport, it actually makes things simple because there's people who have so much information, there's so much crap out there, but if we can distill what is right,

and distill the timing for what is right, man, doesn't make your job a lot easier. Yeah, this is gold. It's amazing how quickly time goes. Hope you can keep talking because it's a nice little role here. I want to make sure that viewers, I often get questions from viewers who are track enthusiasts and I've met a few that are interested in becoming coaches, but.

In your, like in your experience, what do you think are the most common mistakes? And I'm sure it might be a hard question to answer, but what are the most common mistakes writers make on the track? Like if you were either a top five or is it a hard, is it impossible to answer? No, no, no, it's certainly not. the top five, we say the top few or top five mistakes riders are making on track. Is that correct? Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. I mean,

I mean, the biggest one for sure is not having the bike in the right place. having the bike in the right place, bike placement is why it's the number one fundamental solves so many problems. It solves, your vision problems. solves bike setup problems. It solves your safety problems and it solves consistency. mean, all those things. So I would say.

Not understanding bike placement is probably the single biggest one. I would say the second biggest one is funny how, I mean, I'm looking at this as I will veer off this in a second. Second biggest one is not using your eyes correctly. Of course, those are the first two fundamentals, right? Bike placement and focus. If you've got good bike placement and good vision and focus, you can do really, really well.

Angus Norton (52:10.977)
I would say the third one is placing way more importance on their equipment, meaning riding a bike that doesn't allow them to train or ride properly. I can't tell you how many people I take off of. I mean, there's nothing wrong with the V4R or V4S. There's nothing wrong with the BMW 1000. I love them. They're the most intoxicating things in the world. But to train with,

No, they're not. And to get good in the sport. No, they're not. You're not going to learn to ride a BMW 1000 standard one, right? Well, right at the limits. If you don't understand how a 400 works at the limit. I would say that the biggest thing is, is placing too much importance on, having the basically having the wrong motorcycle.

And now if you're, if it depends on what, obviously it depends on what your goals are. If your goal, if your goals to go to the track and hang out and be gear head. Awesome. That's fantastic. That's great. Just don't expect your lap time to be good and don't expect your writing to be good because you're not placing your, correct importance there. But if you want to get good at the sport and you want to improve and stay in the sport, it's having the right equipment to train, to get good. And if all of your brain space is on, I don't want to die.

because this thing is so fast, you're not going to do all the training for that. So yeah, I don't know. guess the first two things would be bike placement for sure, vision and focus, the wrong bike. And I would say the fourth one is, yeah, not hanging around the right community. The community that's not supportive in you and your goals and not placing you in a position where ego does it.

We also have ego, trust me. mean, not guilty as everybody else, but if ego gets in the way of your training, then, then yeah, you got to issue. Yeah. I all humans have ego, right? Those of us who say we don't align the community side. can't, can't agree more. I, I've been absolutely touched by the community and I've seen some communities are very organic and like everyone is there to help each other. doesn't matter if you're like a top gun pilot or not. I was the guy that turned up on a Jucati V4S.

Angus Norton (54:34.637)
And then after the first session, actually first track day, sold it. Now I'm on a six 60, that's my bike. I love it. have a Ducati V2 Panigale, which I love, but it's angry. I love it, but it's very angry and you have to respect. I you have to like, I've written about this a lot, right? Is, is trust me, there's no bigger gear head than me. I just love stuff. You have a YZF right? Have I seen you on your beautiful Yamaha that I see right now? Yeah. I mean, I, mean, right now.

I'm actually getting ready to purchase another instructor bike and I am in between a bunch of stuff. I mean, I've got my trusty FZ1, is just, it's just, you can haul ass on the thing. does two rides wonderfully. It never breaks. And it's just, it's just the best. They're just the best bike. So that's the bike I love the most. Um, but I'm looking at a new instructor bike and I haven't decided what I'm getting. So trust me, I'm, I'm just as big a gear head as everybody.

But what I don't do is I don't let my gear head get in the way of my training. I don't. So I need something that allows me to do my job and to do it well. And I'm not going to obsess over, you know, I'm not going to obsess over whatever the latest pipe is or whatever the latest, whatever it is. the other joke, cause the joke is, you know, you're worried about one millimeter of preload and you're breaking 300 feet too early. So it doesn't, it doesn't really do you a lot of good.

It is good fun. know we have seven minutes left. I want to respect your time. No, Yeah, we can. I have to say it is a lot of fun when you are nailing your apexes and really nailing your vision. I find like at the Ridge, I've ridden at the Ridge, I've ridden at Laguna, Thunder Hills, I've ridden a bunch of track days. But what I really love is on my little bike, if I'm really good in the exit and I'm really nailing my apexes,

at the straight at the front straight at the ridge aren't able to still stay ahead of people. It just, I'd love it. It feels so good on a small bike to be able to do that. It's just, it's a feeling that is an ego thing. But as you look back on your career and obviously, you you've had a lot of learning. Are you able to talk about like a particular student or success story that, I'm sure you've had a lot of proud moments, but are there any that stand out as your proudest or is that a hard question to answer?

Angus Norton (57:01.677)
Yeah, it is a hard question to answer. and I don't I mean, don't take it wrong. But I mean, yeah, I've there's so many that I don't I don't it's hard to articulate just just one. Because there are there are so many I mean, I had I was just at Rocky Mountain Motorsports Park doing the first master class up there in Calgary this year. Congrats. I had a student come up to me and say,

that he's been listening to the podcast. He subscribes to my sub stack, got to take the class in person and he goes, you basically saved my life. And he goes, saved it for not only on the track, but you know, just from having some personal issues that he's like, I needed a process. I needed to be able to, to focus on something. And he goes, you had a process that I could understand. I I get, I have a lot of those stories and yeah, I mean, it's, it is, it's pretty emotional, right? It's, it's, it's pretty humbling. And

yeah, I mean, like I said earlier, there's a lot of people that honestly should be riding a motorcycle, but they want to, they want to have discipline too. And those are the people that I will give. I'll give everything to those people because I understand to your point, when you ride well, there's nothing better. Why do you think the top gun pilot, all he wants to do is be on a motorcycle, right? Because it's, mean, he does some cool stuff and why some of these other people in my peer group that do

really, really cool things, motorcycling trumps it all. So we were very blessed that we're doing something that is very difficult to do, but is incredibly rewarding. And yeah, when you do it correctly, there's just, there's, doesn't, to me, it doesn't matter the bike, right? Whether it's a 400 or a thousand, I have, I have just as, I literally have, I guess my, in my own,

success for my own gratification has come on 400s. It's come on thousands. It's come on 600s. It's just riding really well and knowing that I got the most out of the bike, that particular lap, and got the most out of myself, that lap. yeah, there's honestly, there's just nothing better. Yeah, I can see that. And you've ripped past me so many times doing the two uprides. It's pretty crazy to watch you out there.

Angus Norton (59:23.885)
Very impressive. For those of you who haven't been on the track or can, and I'm going to make sure we put all your links here too, because I want to make sure everyone knows so get a hold of you. So if you were to go back then in time and give you the younger self a piece of advice around as you started your journey on motorcycle racing,

especially, know, would you have a piece of advice that you would, you know, you would maybe give yourself that you wouldn't, you know, yeah, I would say that, I mean, I, I did get coaching fairly early, but I didn't get coaching consistently after the first time. So I would say the first one is to, is to have, I'm going to say it different than a coach because

I think this, I think this terminology is very important is to have a trusted source that you can, that, that you can run things by and basically hold you accountable. spent way too much time fiddling with the bike rather than working on my fundamentals. And of course I didn't know what the fundamentals were then, right? I just rode. whole goal was to go as fast as I could, but I would spend so much time working on the bike or thinking about things that were so incremental.

they made no freaking difference or if anything, they made me go backwards. So I spent too much time on focusing on incremental improvement rather than fundamental improvement. And again, that's why the fundamentals are developed is so people will have the ability to think about what the fundamentals are and work on them. So yeah, I think the biggest piece of advice is fundamental improvement over incremental improvement.

I get jacked up about it because I see so much time wasted, literally years of people working on something, years on working on something that absolutely positively does not matter. Same thing, had this happen at the Rocky Mountain Motorsports Park where one of the coaches came up to me talking about he had an arm pump issue. He's been having an arm pump issue, sold his thousands back on a 600 because he's got arm pump and the work struggling this with

Angus Norton (01:01:44.919)
for years from some advice that somebody gave him. Remember what advice is, right? Advice is an opinion. Advice is not technique. And advice is typically what is for what they individually do, not what the best in the world do. So we basically changed how he was sitting on the bike, changes ergonomics, and in one session, done, gone, problem fixed. And he's been struggling with this for years. So yeah, I mean...

I think it's important to have a trusted source that allows you to go through that journey and hold you accountable that you can run things by that stand objective to your circumstances. And that is gold. I don't think people realize what you just said, how golden that is. That should be for life too. it's so great. I'm joking.

Yeah, I talk about this in some of the keto talks. yes. It's obvious, but so great. And like, I know that this is a competitive industry, but you know, I've done, I've done a couple of your, your, what were previously your schools like YCS. I've done a few of those now. I've done a bunch of the Kelly Superbike school days. I've learned fundamentals from all of them and they, and you all, I know it's a competitive industry. You guys all get on pretty well, generally.

I certainly do. least I, I like to hope that I do. the problem is, if I start badmouthing them or they start badmouthing me, whoever it is, then what we've done is we've actually screwed our whole training up, right? We, we, people don't want to train because you've, you bad mouth somebody or you've spoken ill of somebody. My opinion is, and this comes back from sort of my, my retail background is it's let

Let people go to wherever they want to go and they can make a decision on what's the best, what's best for them based on performance. And that's an incentive for me to get better. mean, every, all of these, all of these places do, you know, all of them have some really good curriculums and all of them have some really big pluses. Now, whether that fits for you or not, I don't know. Someone might take my stuff and go,

Angus Norton (01:04:05.985)
That stuff's shit, I don't want to deal with it. Okay, fine, no problem. It doesn't work for you or whatever your individual circumstances. But the idea is that we should let the market decide that, we should let people decide that. And that's an incentive for me to get better. It's an incentive for me to communicate better. It's an incentive for me to bring out products that allow more people to have access to professional training. Yeah, I love that. Well, I have two more questions and then I'm gonna, I wanna be respectful of your time.

So the first question is, you told me you're a gear head and I know you have a life outside of motorcycle, you have a family and all that fun stuff. But I've noticed that you've gotten into four wheels lately as well. whenever I drive a car, it's funny, in my head, I'm always thinking about where my car is on the road. I don't ride on track. There are so many things that cross over. What is it about motorcyclists at your level that

All of us, know it sounds like you started out in cars, but tell me about your car journey. What brought that on? So yeah, I mean, honestly, cars have always been my first love, right? I in the business for four years and parts and service and then running dealerships. I did that for a couple of decades and cars have always been my first love, right? I mean, I can, I can still like literally remember the license plate number out of every car my parents owned, right? So I just, I just love cars.

So that really satisfies a big gear head part of me is I love to tinker with cars and deal with cars. love drag racing, drag racing is just intoxicating for me. I love it. So yeah, that's a big part of my gear head thing. And the car thing is really interesting. And this is another very, very long article that's going to be coming out probably over the winter. it's, it's going to be a while. Cause I think I'm at.

I don't know, four or 5,000 words right now. And it's going to go double that probably. So it's like my, basically how, how, why, I you know, how cars and bikes work together, how I got in from one to the other. And really, you know, I've always loved cars and it wasn't honestly, Nick, I not just the one that kind of got me into it. Cause he was in the car. And I always thought with cars that I couldn't do it. thought cars were so foreign that there's no way that I could ever be good in a car. And I know he's very good at a car. He's incredibly fast in a car.

Angus Norton (01:06:26.293)
And so, and I know from other people like say Scott Russell, Scott Russell, know, Scott Russell got out, got into cars and immediately, you know, basically was, was, know, at the, at the Rolex 24 hours. So it's like, what the hell. And yeah, Nick gave me some really good advice. goes, Ken, he goes, just drive the car. Like you're riding a bike. He goes, steering wheel angles, lean angle. There's no difference. Once I kind of adopted that and then it was able to get on track. I realized, yeah, I can actually go pretty well in a car.

So yeah, I started, I started doing in car and structuring and we, and we actually do car driving as a big part of our professional training. So yeah, we do what we call slow car driving because how you drive a car is how you ride a bike period. I don't care who you are, it proved it thousands of times. So we actually, the reason that the car driving is important for the bike side is because we can share the same time and space. I can be in the right seat and we can talk you through how you use the brakes, how you release the brakes, where slow points are.

This is a massive part of our training at a very, very sharp end. We use we use cars for that because again, we're sharing the same time and space rather than watching video or following or leading or whatever it might be. So cars are big part of that. So yeah, I love cars. I got a track car myself. I love going to the track and when I can afford it because yeah, it's not it's not it's not for the faint of heart.

But yeah, it's fun going out there and beating up on a lot of people. That's great. Yeah, so that's where, quite honestly, I do have a little bit of issue on the ego side there. Hey, you you know I'm a Kiwi, right? So for a small country, we have a pretty proud history in motorsports, especially four wheels. Bruce McLaren is a Kiwi. Scott Dixon in Indy cars, most willing as driver in history, is a Kiwi.

you know, on the motorcycle side, know, Britain motorcycles is one of the more famous sort of innovations. one of the most creative, creative groups there is. I mean, when you look at, when you look at motorsports technology and being creative, oh my gosh, crazy. Yeah, we're pretty proud us Kiwis. Hey, so the last question is might seem kind of boring is what obviously we're going to put links to all of your stuff here. And I'm a subscriber to your sub sec and I listened to your podcast. So I haven't heard one for a while. The last question I'm to ask you is,

Angus Norton (01:08:48.013)
Do you ride on the street? I don't. it's something that I actually want to do. I'm going to be hopefully making a few changes to my deal next year because it's, this is my ninth year of not missing a mode America race. so between that and the other stuff that I do, I'm, don't think I've done under a hundred days of travel, for the last 10 years. And so typically a hundred, 115 days a year on the road. And it's, it's, it's tough.

And there's a lot of things that I want to do, whether it's street riding, I'm not riding as much as I want to. I have so many things that I want to be able to showcase, obviously to everyone. And I need to be on the track in order to make that happen. So next year will be a little bit different where I'm going to step back from some of the mode America stuff and be riding a lot more. And street riding is actually going to be a part of that.

Yeah, I got to say personally, just having listened to your podcast for a long time and following you, I really enjoyed watching your journey because I think when you first started doing your podcast, I know you were very deliberate in saying, look, I'm not going to release podcasts all the time. I'm only going to release podcasts if I feel like I have something to talk about. You're very humble about it. You're like, you know, I'm doing this and I'm really glad. I want to congratulate you that you also realized that, like this is a business and

what you have people are willing to pay for. And I think that's awesome. I think it's great that you're pushing that envelope. And I personally learned a lot from you. And I really appreciate you making the time and are you super busy and with what you're doing and I hope it was a good use to your time and I'll put links to everything, but what are the best ways for folks to get hold of you and your team or access your content today? Obviously I'll links here as well. But yeah, let's let we'll talk a little bit about that because

The podcasts are great. They're wonderful. And I think if I look at all of the, the platforms that it's on, I think it's a, I think I'm at like 1.6 million or 1.8 million, you know, listens. And of course I've made nothing on them, which is they weren't designed to make money. They're designed to get the message out because I was the, at the time when I started them before podcasting was a thing. I was just pissed off at the misinformation that was out there. It's like, I got to tell somebody. Yeah.

Angus Norton (01:11:08.057)
so that's sort of where they started. And yeah, to your point, I'm not, I'm not going to do one unless they have something to say. I actually have one. I recorded it and I don't like it, but yeah, actually I have one where I've got a great article that, that I've, basically going to read this article that I really, I really connected with and I'm going to put it in the motor sports theme. And it's a great podcast. It's really good for podcasts because there's no graphs or videos or anything. So that one's going to be the next podcast here in a few weeks.

And yeah, I basically the pod there still will be podcasts, but the substack has sort of taken over for that because the substack is just a much deeper application for me. So I can take an old podcast topic, for instance, and then actually talk about why did I do this podcast? Where did the information come from? And then even back it up with some graphs. it's, it's even though I haven't done that many podcasts, I think I've done one this year. It's there's still 40 something.

45 or 50 articles on Substack that I have done this year. Yeah, there's a lot there's a lot there. And the same thing with Substack. There's the list just keeps getting bigger and bigger. And it's almost a little bit of analysis paralysis with some of the stuff that I have. So yeah, the big focus, there will still be podcasts, the Substack I really want to double down on because I'm really enjoying it. It challenges me to have to write and put these things in words. I know it's certainly challenging for my editor, that's for dang sure.

So yeah, you see a lot of stuff there. We'll be doing more master classes next year. think that I'm to I'm budgeting. I think I'm going to budget probably eight master classes next year. So it will be eight all over the US and I think I think there's gonna be one or two in Canada as well. So we'll go with some of that. And then yeah, I mean, to your point about, yeah, this is a business, right? So it's how, how do you survive? How do you actually make a living doing this?

it's very, very difficult. It's very difficult. having the right balance and the right mixture. mean, I have to pay my mortgage and, you know, pay my bills just like everybody else. So it's having the right mix of things that allows me to advance, but also allows my students to advance. And that's, that's sort of how I basically how I choose who I'm working with. Am I going to, am I going to advance them? Are they going to be committed to the process? And

Angus Norton (01:13:35.945)
Am I going to be able to advance as well? Yeah, it's a righteous mission, man. We could talk for hours, but I'm sure we'll have the opportunity to do that again. I'm going to sign up for your, I was going to sign up for Thunder Hill this year and I run my own company as well. you know, I didn't get the time, but I do about 25 days a year on the track, which I'm pretty fortunate to do. I'm definitely going to do your class next season. So I'm looking forward to that either in California or in north west. I think you partner with,

too fast, think. they've been great. Yeah, yeah. I'm doing basically too fast, sort of in the Pacific Northwest. Out on the East Coast, I'm working with Precision Track Time. They're also wonderful. Canada working with Rocky Mountain Motorsports. And then I've got a couple of other track day companies that are also interested. I think there might be something in Southern California as well next year. Great.

Well, I'm looking forward to seeing you again, Ken. It's always a pleasure. It's honestly an honor because you're just so well regarded and I hope everyone got a lot out of this and I'm sure that they'll visit your content and I'll let you enjoy your time on DC today. Get out and have a good day. Yeah, thank you very much. Yeah, I appreciate it. Yeah, I'm gonna stop recording and say goodbye properly.