Offering The Premier Supercar Driving Experience, With Adam Olalde

J.R. Lowry sits down with Adam Olalde, founder and CEO of Xtreme Xperience, to explore the thrill and accessibility of the Supercar Experience. Adam shares how he transformed his passion for high-end cars into a unique business that lets anyone step into the driver’s seat of luxury vehicles like Ferraris and Lamborghinis. Discover the story behind Xtreme Xperience and how Adam turned a simple idea into a leading “autotainment” venture that brings excitement and unforgettable memories to car enthusiasts across the nation. Tune in for insights on the journey, challenges, and vision behind this ultimate driving adventure.

Check out the full series of “Career Sessions, Career Lessons” podcasts here or visit pathwise.io/podcast/. A full written transcript of this episode is also available at https://pathwise.io/podcasts/adam-olalde

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Offering The Premier Supercar Driving Experience, With Adam Olalde

CEO And Founder Of Xtreme Xperience

This is the show brought to you by PathWise.io. My guest is Adam Olalde. Adam is the CEO and Founder of Xtreme Xperience, the nation’s premier supercar driving experience. Shortly after graduating from Miami University in Ohio, Adam was working for a luxury car rental service when he noticed that many of his customers who were interested in renting Rolls-Royces and Lamborghinis weren’t one-percenters but were average people who were willing to pay for the experience and the thrill of driving a high-end sports car. Thus, Xtreme Xperience was born.

Adam spends each day continually improving upon the Xtreme Xperience Program, leading the best team, and making the world’s most exotic and luxurious cars accessible to anyone who has ever dreamed of driving them. In this episode, we’re going to be talking about Xtreme Xperience and how Adam and his team bring that to bear for their customers, his journey as an entrepreneur, his broader career journey, and what he has learned about himself along the way as well. Let’s dive in.

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Adam, welcome. Thank you so much for joining me on the show.

I am happy to be here.

Give us an overview of Xtreme Xperience.

In a nutshell, we’re the nation’s largest provider of supercar driving, racing, and lifestyle experiences.

How did you get started in this?

Every human being has cars in their DNA. If they tell you they don’t, then they’re lying to you in some capacity. Some of us notice some when we’re little kids in the backseat of mom and dad’s car. Some of us have to drive one every day and we wonder why we don’t know so much about them. Some of us picked up a wrench at three and never looked back.

I was in the first category. I really enjoyed looking at cars and naming what they were. You then grow up and forget about that. In my early twenties, I came across the luxury car rental business specifically where there’s the possibility to rent exotics, Ferraris, Lamborghinis, Bentleys, Range Rovers, and stuff. That spoke to me. I said, “I’m a young guy. I’m in sales. Why not be doing something cool?” This reignited in me my passion for cars. I got re-engaged and saw where I could help and where I could grow a business like that. I ended up transforming it into my own business.

Building The First Fleet

How did you get started? What was the first car in your fleet? How did you build your business from there?

The fun answer to that question is the first car in my fleet was always the car that you called asking for. I would find a way to get it. I built this whole business by being able to say yes to customers. That’s what we wanted to be able to do. I didn’t want to try to start a program and say, “These are the cars we have. You have to want to drive them. Here’s where you’re going to want to have to drive them.”

I said, “If I’m flexible, can you call me and say, “I want to test drive a Ferrari and I want to do it on these cool race tracks or roads. Can you make it possible?” We did. The first car in our fleet was a 2007 Lamborghini Gallardo. Everybody wanted to drive a Lamborghini, so we ended up getting one. From there to the 70 cars we have, we primarily allow our customers to dictate our fleet because we want to have what they want to drive.

In those early days, if you didn’t have a car, how did you get a car for them to drive?

That’s where the fun part comes in. The good part is that I was linked with the luxury car rental business. Since I was in the luxury car rental business, I can make phone calls and start to assemble a fleet. It didn’t take long for me to say, “Everybody’s calling about Lamborghinis, Ferraris, Porsches, and then a few other cars.” In the early days, I would have to rent them all from other constituents and friends in the industry of rental business and then start saving up to buy the cars one at a time. That’s how we did it. We’ve got a fleet that represents what we know people want to drive. We figured that out.

Did you finance this whole thing yourself or did you have backers along the way?

No backers. We’re privately owned and we’re very proud of that. Our cars are ours. Everything that we have is ours. The secret sauce, which is not all that secret, is that we’re an event-based business. We have the flexibility to plan future events and sell tickets to those future events, which, in the early days at least, help us acquire some of the assets we need via ticket sales for then delivery down the road. We’re a self-owned business.

When you got started, did you have relationships with test tracks or racing tracks so you could let people go out or were they primarily taking them out on the street and driving them on public roads?

If you want an extreme experience, loan a supercar to someone and put them on the streets, especially here in Chicago where I live. We did that for a little bit, like less than a year, because we saw how dangerous and unpredictable traffic and everything like that is. We quickly struck up relationships with racetracks. In the beginning, it was challenging because you had a 27-year-old kid going to racetrack owners that he didn’t know saying, “I’ve got a plan. I’m going to bring a bunch of strangers out to your racetrack to let them test drive supercars for the first time ever that they don’t own. It’s going to be safe. No problem.” I had to be a good salesperson at the time to get that pitch across. Since we’ve been able to execute the program for so many years, we’ve got a great relationship with all the tracks. We’ve started to go back to roads because we’ve learned a whole lot about safety over the years.

Adam Olalde: If you want an Xtreme Xperience, loan a Supercar to someone and put them on the streets.

What types of things have you learned about how to put people in a supercar safely out on the road?

Ensuring Safety For Participants

The most important part of our program is always the person. The car is attractive and it’s exciting, but it’s the person that’s behind how that car operates. I’m not talking about you or me as the participant. I’m talking about the people that we employ and the training that we put them through. Whether it’s on the racetrack and you have an instructor in the right-hand seat with you who fully understands the course, how you’re managing the vehicle, and what the vehicle has a tendency to do in any particular circumstance or you’re out on the street, we take that tactic and parlay it across all of our driving programs.

Even on the open road, we send you out with a tour guide, maybe not in your car, but that tour guide understands road conditions, has scouted the roads, and understands the weather. To the minute details you don’t even think about in your own car like tire performance and things like that, we’re always there with you, making sure that communication and a helpful hand are not far.

What does your client base look like? How much of it is people coming to you individually, like people wanting to do it for a bachelor party or something like that, and how much of it is corporate?

About 25% of our clientele are organized groups or private entertainment as we categorize it. That could be businesses, prospects, bachelor parties, and bachelorette parties. The other 75% are people buying tickets. The majority of those are buying tickets, to go back to how we started our conversation, to check one of those boxes because they had the poster on the wall as a kid or their neighbor had one, or they knew they were never going to own a Ferrari. Who doesn’t need to get behind the wheel of one? We help a lot of people a year to check those boxes.

You’ve got something like 70 cars. How many cities are you in?

More Cities, More Car Models

This 2024, we will go to shy of 40 cities in our track program, and then we’ll go to another 11 cities for our open-road scenic driving tour program. We’ve got a couple of multi-day programs. All in all, it’s about 60 cities. In some larger markets, we repeat. You’ll find us in New York, Chicago, and Atlanta multiple times a year. That’s our thing. We don’t own any of the venues. We own everything else, people, cars, and all that equipment. We rent the venues out like a concert tour. We’ll come back to major markets and make probably close to 70 stops this 2024.

What are the most exotic cars in the fleet?

Our strategy is to keep it safe and keep it accessible. The third one is to always keep it affordable. To do that, we try not to break my bank or your bank on 1 Bugatti or one Pagani. I know those are all attractive names, but at a few million dollars a car, by the time that I’m charging a customer to drive that, it’s going to be outside of their price range. All of our cars fall anywhere between $100,000 and about $450,000 or $500,000. The brand new hybrid Ferrari 296 is the flagship car that we’ve acquired. We’ll be getting new Lamborghinis in 2025. Otherwise, Ferraris, 911 GT3, and GT4 RS are some of our more expensive and more fun cars to drive.

You’re in Chicago. I’m in London. Here, you see Ferraris, Lamborghinis, and Bentleys on a pretty regular basis. What’s crazy is that people park them on the street. In so many places in London, they have no indoor parking arrangements. It’s amazing that people put such expensive cars out on the street. You talked about Pagani earlier. I was going to dinner with my wife one night at a place around the corner from where we used to live. We passed a car I’d never seen before, which was a Pagani.

We walked into this Italian restaurant and the guy said to my wife, “Table for one?” She goes, “Where did my husband go?” I had stopped to look at the car and take a picture. They said, “What kind of car was it?” She said, “It was a Pagani.” The waiter is running out of the restaurant. He doesn’t seat my wife. He goes running out to look at the car. Every single person in that restaurant went out to look at the car that night. We were like the mild celebrities for getting these Italian guys who worked in this restaurant all excited about one of their homegrown small-batch cars.

That’s how it works. I’m sure that your wife was still impressed by it and would’ve driven it given the opportunity. We all have it inside of us. I learned that. We’re taking full advantage of it and making it a reality.

What’s your personal favorite?

There are two ways I’ll answer that question. On the racetrack, I will take a Porsche 10 days out of 10. I love the way that Porsche built their cars. I love all the different models. I could drive them all day. I’m a Mercedes guy. I love Mercedes-Benz. Going back to one of your earlier questions, it wasn’t our first car, but one of my favorite earlier cars was the SLS AMG. I’ll always have an affinity for those gull-wing doors and big V8 engines. Those are a lot of fun to drive. We’ve had newer iterations with the GT, the GTRs, and some of those fun cars that Mercedes has made. Porsche and Mercedes are my top two.

I assume your everyday car is not a minivan.

It’s not a minivan. I do have two kids, so I had to compromise a little bit. We’re a Mercedes family. The wife has the GLS 450 with the 3 rows and everything for the kids. I drive a G 63 so that we could have a little fun and still be able to carry things.

What would you like to get into the fleet that you don’t have?

That’s a loaded question. It has been interesting over the last few years. One, the pandemic disrupted the supply chain and the launch of new cars. We missed a few models of cars. You could look at the Lamborghini, for instance. I can’t wait for new Lamborghini models to come out. We’ve been working with the Kuracan for almost ten years. They’ve iterated a little bit but it’s still the same body. We’re very excited for the new Lamborghini to be coming out in 2025.

In addition to that, there are, unfortunately, cars that I love to drive. The new Maserati Mc 20 looks pretty phenomenal. Lotus has got some great cars out there. The Acura NSX, what a great fun car to drive. Why do we have the cars we have? I have to stay true to my roots. Those are the cars that we get called on the most to have. There are still more people who want to drive Ferraris and Lamborghinis, so I get to sneak in a Mercedes-AMG GT every once in a while, but then it leaves the fleet and becomes a Ferrari 296. Keeping it diverse is exciting for me. It’s exciting for us who work here. That is where we’re at with how we got to keep the staples and then we can add in some flavor.

Your liability insurance costs must be a pretty big part of operating costs.

If you’ve ever been on a racetrack, there’s liability in cars and all that. Once you get in a car on a racetrack, even insurance companies say, “Good day to you,” and they walk away. A lot of what we have to do is balance insurance. We protect the people and our assets when they’re on their way to the racetrack, but once we get on the racetrack, our cars, a large portion of them, are self-insured. That’s a piece of the ticket price that you buy from us so that we can make sure to maintain coverage and peace of mind for everybody while they’re out there. For instance, even says, “If you don’t know that person and they’ve never driven a Lamborghini on a racetrack, this is not for us.” That’s part of the risk of the race car game.

Adam Olalde: Once you get in a car on a racetrack, even insurance companies say good day to you and walk away.

Has anybody ever wrecked one of your cars?

We’ve had a few accidents. Statistically speaking, we do 80,000 or 90,000 driving experiences a year, so to say I’ve had a few in the last couple of years is a pretty good track record. It happens. It’s a game of numbers. People walking away from them is what’s most important. That’s what we’re proud to hang our hat on.

I would imagine, given what you said about wanting to do what the customers are looking for, that word of mouth is a really big part of how you’ve grown your business.

It’s a challenge for us because this industry as a whole, not the automotive industry, but the experiential side of the industry, isn’t one that has a lot of traction. In Europe, it has far more traction since that’s where most of these cars came from. Especially in the United States, these cars are not from here. They’re looked at as exotics. They’re looked at as expensive, dangerous, and fast.

When we came onto the scene and said, “You can drive these cars,” we had to overcome a lot of objections from people that it was going to be too expensive and too dangerous. We spend a lot of our time trying to break down those barriers. Until you do it and tell your friend, “This was great. This was easy. This was safe,” it’s tough to get the word out. We spend a lot of our time, money, and energy getting the word out that it’s fun to do, and then we encourage everyone who has done it to go tell a friend because that makes our job that much easier.

I know a decent number of people have gone and done the BMW racing experience, the Mercedes racing experience, or the Porsche racing experience in the US. The automotive manufacturers themselves are doing it to try and sell cars, but do you feel like it’s a different pitch coming from them than it is coming from an independent like you?

It is a little bit different. We built our product and our program in the industry on an even farther end, on a more introductory end to amateurs. By the time you have attended the AMG Academy, BMW M School, or whatever it might be, there’s a high likelihood that you own that car already so you’re familiar with sports cars and performance driving so this is the next step or you’re looking to buy it. They’ve got these programs that the dealerships offer so that they try to get you as a customer.

I’m marketing primarily to people who have never even thought about this before and like a fancy car when they see one. I’m getting them to say, “Instead of going to a sporting event or instead of going to a concert, now I’m going to test drive a car that I’ve never even considered owning or driving in a performance aspect before.” We are really at the beginning of, “We know the car person is inside of you, what are you going to do about it?” as opposed to meeting them on their journey where there’s a little less friction. That’s been our marketing and advertising challenge.

Is social media an important part of the mix for you?

It’s probably the biggest part of it. Especially when you’re getting a business started, there is no better way to see direct conversions and reach your target audience than to go through social media platforms. We are big users on Meta, ABC, TikTok, Pinterest, and where you find an eclectic mix of gift givers, gift recipients, drivers, neighbors, friends, and family. That’s where we have our hugest foundation of brand awareness and client prospecting, so to speak. We also know that that’s not how everybody consumes media. What does your mix look like? How are you going to spend the advertisement dollars once you reach critical mass on the social media channels?

How do you differentiate yourself relative to your competition?

Competition And Growth Plan

We don’t have much competition. I’m proud to say that. When we got into the business, I was unaware of any competition. We did run across a couple of companies. That’s where being a 27-year-old entrepreneur and the ignorance is bliss thing work in your favor. I didn’t overthink it or do too much research about who could potentially be our competition. As we struck out in the market, our biggest one ever was that we’re a logistics company. I’m headquartered in Chicago but we operate in almost 60 different cities. That’s something that the scope and the commitment to that, nobody else was willing or capable of making.

Along our journey, we either inspired or gave our ideas to other groups who would pop up. They would try it in their local market or think that buying a few supercars and putting them on the road was easy and everyone could make money doing it. That clearly wasn’t the case. Our secondary competitive advantages were always having the newest cars and keeping them in great condition, paying money for that, attending the nicest racetracks, and keeping it on racetracks and not pivoting to autocross experiences or things like that.

We spend a lot of money to make sure that you get what you pay for. There’s value in the product, which is a nice car in a nice location on a nice track. Quite honestly, your support system which is your instructors and your classroom folks are always training. They’re at the top of their game because we want you to maximize your experience. Those things added to the fact that we’re willing to travel the country. It gives us a good edge.

I would imagine it does. What’s ahead for you in the growth plan?

I walked out of my CMO’s office before jumping on the interview with you. It’s amazing because you can brainstorm all day, and then you’ve got to figure out what are the realistic things that the organization can get into. We’ve been in business for twelve years. We’ve always had the opportunity to organically scale up how many operations we have, how many cities we go to, and how many programs we offer. We will continue to do that.

We’re trying to get into more family-friendly things as well. We know that the car enthusiast doesn’t start at 21 years old or 18 years old. They start in 3, 4, and 5-year-olds. We want to work in partnership with some other brands and other venues to create more general admission programs where you could bring kids and they can see cars for the first time, learn how to work on a car, go for their first ride in a car, or meet a professional race car driver. They can do this immersive world of automotive experiences so they don’t have to stand on the sidelines until they’re 18 or 21 to drive one of these cars.  That’s the next big thing for us. In the back of our minds, being an experiential company, other than cars, what other experiences do we need to bring to the market because somebody wants to check it off their list?

Learning The Ropes Of The Business

Let’s talk a little bit about you as an entrepreneur. You mentioned you got started when you were 27. How did you learn the ropes?

I mentioned earlier that I ran into the luxury car rental business. That was at 25. At 25, I was doing sales where you eat what you kill. What a great way to learn how to do life. I was not enjoying what I was killing. I couldn’t see myself doing that for the rest of my life. When I met these guys who were in the luxury car business, I said, “This is awesome. This ignites an inner boy in me and a car enthusiast. Let me come give you my sales skills and let’s see what we can build from it.”

They saw the value in what I brought to the table and they said, “Have some more of the reins. In addition to doing sales, why don’t you run our marketing and branding? Why don’t you start to run the operations? In fact, why don’t you run the whole office?” They gave me the reins to really figure out how to run a business without me being the one who started that one.

That was a lot of fun. I was able to explore my strengths and weaknesses as a leader, a salesperson, and an operator. That quickly transformed into me taking those businesses, doing experiences, adding on things that weren’t originally offered like private jet charters and private yacht rentals, and saying, “We’re going to create this concierge luxury experiential business. Let’s get in the deep end. Let’s make this for everybody and then let me build a team to support it.” Eventually, I said, “This sounds like my own business, so why don’t I go start my own?” By 27, that’s what I did.

What’d you get right and what did you not get right in those early days?

When you’re young, the best thing that you can do to get right is to get it done. I will always remember when we started the business. I went online and ordered those motivational posters that you’d hang on the wall where they said, “The future belongs to those who prepare for it.” Mine said, “Get stuff done.” It was spelled differently.

That was because, at 27, I was trying to check off my to-do list faster than the guy next to me. I was trying to create and build things that other 27-year-olds weren’t building. I was trying to move fast, break stuff in a good way, and see what I could break to fix tomorrow. I was trying to grow and create another layer of business, success, or career. I don’t even know if I knew what I was exactly looking for at the time, but I knew that if I wasn’t active and I wasn’t getting stuff done, then I wasn’t going to be able to build. That’s what I got right, I got right that I got stuff done.

What did I get wrong? Everything else. There’s a spectrum between being under-prepared, making decisions, and being in the sweet spot and being over-prepared and having analysis paralysis and not making decisions. Colin Powell was a famous General right here in the United States. He said, “The 40/70 rule has always been my rule. If you’re before 40, it’s an immature and irrational decision because you’re not prepared. If you’re more than 70, move on because you’ve overthought it already.”

In the early days, we functioned in the 25% to 30% prepared to make decisions. I paid for that. Trucks were late to events. We were driving through the night. People were always tired. Attrition was high. Those were the startup days. You have to go through some of that. I love living right in the middle of, “I’m not going to overthink it, but I’m not going to be irrational. How do we  go with our gut and make good decisions that we’ve learned over the years?”

The number of things that can possibly go wrong when you are 27 trying to buy a bunch of cars you can’t afford, rent them back out to people you don’t know, and drive them on racetracks they’re not qualified to drive on, we could be here a while. My objective was, “Don’t hurt anybody. Make tomorrow a percent better than today. We will march towards the right direction.” Twelve years later, we’re still marching.

Team Building And Company Culture

How did you build your team? What do you look for in the people that you hire?

That was an interesting part of building a business. I’m sure that you’ve gone through this. In the beginning, you call people you trust because you don’t really know what you’re going to ask of them. You need to know you can trust them. When you say, “Can you start a marketing department?” or, “Can you get in that car with a stranger?” they’re going to say yes or they’re going to do a good job because they believe in the direction you’re taking the organization.

Eventually, that turns over because then, the business gets a trajectory of its own. It gets momentum and a path of its own. A lot of people are not on the same path because they’re not on the same trajectory, and that’s okay. They fall off. You go through this shedding of the first exoskeleton and get into round number two of employees. We start to hire the people who have the qualifications for the job to get the business where it needs to go, not that you can trust so that the business goes somewhere in the first place.

That’s what the first three to six years looked like. I had a lot of best friends and a lot of family who worked for the business because I trusted them, but it wasn’t their business. They didn’t come up with the idea. They weren’t trying to get it to the end result. They were trying to make sure it got off the ground in the first place. Knowing when to transition those people into people who are more qualified for a specific position is all about timing. That’s what the 2nd and 3rd rounds of those hires look like.

Are there core attributes that really matter the most to you?

We have a handful of values, but we have three pillars. I run all of our people and all of our decisions through these pillars. Everyone has values. Everybody should have values. You should have a bunch of values. We have integrity, flexibility, respect, and communication. We have a whole list of them. I always tell my people, “Run it through the pillars first. If they don’t meet the pillars, whether it’s a customer, an employee, a decision, or an investment, then we’re done right there. If it does make it through, then make sure they also support our values.”

In Xtreme, always number one is to ensure safety, whether it’s a person, a car, or whatever. Number two is to cultivate teamwork. If you’re not a team player, this is a crazy industry. We’re at racetracks from dawn until dusk. We’re traveling the country. You’re rooming with people who become your family, so ensure safety and cultivate teamwork. The last one at our company has to be to deliver a positive experience. Whatever you do, deliver a positive experience. Those three have proven us pretty well. And I love saying, “That’s how it stacks up. If you don’t match those three, then this isn’t the right place for you,” or, “It’s a decision I’m not going to make.”

You’ve got a little bit of scale to this. You’ve been at it for twelve years and got people in the organization. Where do you tend to focus your own time, and what do you leave to the team?

That is one of the harder transitions for entrepreneurs, knowing when to get out of the way, especially when things aren’t going the way you want them to go, and knowing that there’s always a learning curve. Your job is to flip it and not sit at the top of the pyramid anymore but to sit at the bottom and support every single person who makes the company possible on a day-to-day basis. I couldn’t do what the front lines do, so I knew I needed to work for them.

There’s been iteration after iteration of times when I’ve wanted to get back involved, but it is to understand that my role is vision. I have to be the visionary. I have to make sure that everybody who works here knows where we’re going, why we’re going there, and how I’m going to support them going there and getting there. It is to create a strong executive team of integration in finance, accounting, all the marketing and sales, and human capital resources that we need to support it.

I work most of my time during the week supporting my executive team so that they can take care of the integration and execution on a day-to-day basis. I then spend the end of the week working on vision and growth so that we have a purpose for where we’re going and there’s clarity when I can present to our team how we’re going to get there and why this is good for all of us.

I know you’ve had some exposure to both YPO and Vistage. I’m curious how they’ve helped you become a better entrepreneur and a better leader.

As I was giving you my last answer, there’s a third element to that, which doesn’t get to go on LinkedIn. That’s simply what you immersed yourself in. What kind of inspiration were you surrounded by before you even were exposed to things like YPO and Vistage? I give a lot of credit to authors like Cameron Herold and Simon Sinek because those guys really help frame, “I know I have purpose, but how do I turn that into vision? I know that I have a vision, but how do I create that into something deliverable?”

I give an unprovoked shout-out to some guys like that, Brené Brown and some of these fantastic authors that help you. Patrick Lencioni is one as well. The list goes on and on. They really help you frame how you’re doing it and why you’re doing it, but you can’t just take stuff out of books. You have to then put that into your own filter, mold it up, and become the CEO or the entrepreneur that you’re going to become, which is where great groups like YPO and Vistage come in.

I’ve been a member of Vistage for over six years. I really enjoy sitting at the table with a bunch of other entrepreneurs thinking that you’re all a bunch of different people and realizing that when you take off construction, real estate, cars, business consulting, and all that other stuff, we all have the same opportunities and the same problems and we’re all trying to work and build teams to pursue vision.

Both of those organizations challenge you to step up your game because there’s a little bit of competitive rivalry but also to realize that the playing field is pretty level. We’re all very much the same. Why not surround yourself with smarter people that you can talk to, talk through things with, and encourage you so you can keep growing your business?

Does Vistage do their group things like YPO Forum?

Yeah. Vistage is even, in my opinion, slightly more rigid because every Vistage Forum has a moderator or a chair. Vistage will do individual coaching, one-on-one, every month, and then we’ll have our executive session hosted by our chair where all the other C-level people sit around the table as well. YPO is a little more socially focused as well. There’s the element for spouses, travel, and all that type of stuff. Vistage focuses a lot more on issue processing, business growth, speaker training, and business development-type stuff.

How have you found the entrepreneurial experience overall? What would you do over if you could do it over?

That’s one of those questions where I’m obligated to answer, “I wouldn’t do anything differently because every single thing was a learning experience,” and it really was. I couldn’t be more grateful to have made the decision to become an entrepreneur when I did. I loved starting early. I don’t think that there’s an age that’s too late, but why not start early when you’ve got nothing to lose? I’m grateful that I did that.

My business partner and I always laugh about the saying, “Heavy is the crown,” because that’s really what it is. You get all the freedom in the world to create a brand and call it what you want. My kids said, “Dad, you got to name the company?” I said, “I did get to name the company. It’s my company.” However, with all of those fantastic privileges like being the boss and naming the company comes all of the responsibilities, like making sure your people are paid, their families are taken care of, your customers enjoy your product, there’s value, and you grow.

I’m a builder. I don’t think I would function well without the pressure of wanting to build and grow, but for all the benefits that come along with it, heavy is the crown. I enjoy the heck out of it. I would never change it. I’m spending a lot of my time going back to my alma mater high schools and colleges talking to younger kids because the world needs more entrepreneurs. They need to hear it from people who don’t know a lot about it. I didn’t go to school for any of that. I got out into the world and said, “This is my path.” More people need to know that that’s an okay path to choose and that there’s a support system out there of entrepreneurs who want to see the next generation take it over.

You went to Miami of Ohio. What did you envision yourself doing when you were going through college?

As a political science major, I wanted to be in the FBI. There is no clear path to how I ended up where I am. I ended up taking a lot of business classes. That’s what led me into sales. Ultimately, I was a people person, so people were what I was attracted to and who were attracted to me. I got into sales and clearly saw that I could have success there by leveraging relationship-building and professional knowledge to close deals. I did that.

What I really enjoyed most was learning about leadership and learning how to guide a team with a vision. While I could do the sales and the deal negotiation and that’s all fun and well, there is nothing I love more than getting in front of my people and having a vulnerable heart-to-heart on how we’re making our lives all better by doing this.

Did you grow up in Ohio?

No, I grew up outside Chicago. That’s how we ended up back here, but I enjoyed Ohio for a few years.

I’m an Ohio native. I had a lot of high school friends go to Miami.

What a fantastic place. I love Ohio, and I’ll be in Cleveland up at Nelson Ledges race track, but I’m a Chicago native.

Lessons And Advice

Through your journey over the years, what have you learned about yourself?

The most important thing that I’ve learned is that if you’re not uncomfortable, you’re not growing. I wish that was a lesson I had learned about myself when I was younger. I probably would’ve tried a little bit harder at those peewee sports or I would’ve studied a little bit longer for some of those exams at Miami of Ohio, but that’s in the past. Now, I love making myself uncomfortable and saying, “If I sit here status quo, then I am going to get the same results year after year.” The definition of insanity is simply doing the same thing and hoping for different results.

I’ve learned to get uncomfortable. I’ve learned to say things that need to be said. I’ve learned to have candor. That’s a big word in our organization. Have candor and talk about it because if you don’t, especially in the racing industry, somebody could get hurt or something could not make it where it needs to go on time. Speak up. Be uncomfortable. If this is your comfort zone, the magic is all out here. Get uncomfortable and learn that you’ll survive outside your comfort zone fine. You can build some really powerful stuff. That’s what I continue to challenge myself with every day.

Adam Olalde: Get uncomfortable and learn that you’ll survive outside your comfort zone just fine and you can build some really powerful stuff.

You talked about some of the authors that you have drawn on, the Lencionis, the Sineks, Brené Brown, and others. What other ways have you pushed yourself to get out of your comfort zone and grow?

There’s no better way to do it than leading my own team. I’m very big in health and fitness. I believe a healthy mind and a healthy body are directly correlated with each other, so I push myself physically as much as possible. That is always a good start to my day. As a business gets larger, it’s very easy to be complacent. When you get complacent and say, “We’re only $100 off our budget over there,” or, “That person was only two minutes late,” or, “We’ll catch that on the next meeting, suddenly from the standardization of deviation, you’re not pointed towards your target anymore.

I’ve got to challenge myself once I’ve done it physically and mentally to come into the office, meet with my teams, lead my people, and say, “Are we being all we can be? Are we a high-performing team or are we just a performing team? We need to be a high-performing team.” There is an endless supply of challenges once you build your own business to be as great as you can be.

Have you changed your approach as a leader over the years?

Yes. Hopefully, that’s the right answer. Hopefully, it’s inevitable. Who I am as an almost 40-year-old and who I was then as a 27-year-old has changed. My approach is a lot less, “This is the way we’re going to do it. Follow me.” My approach is a lot less, “Let me do it for you. I know what I’m doing.” My approach is, “Can I create a sustainable executive team that could run this business long after I’m done running it?” or, “Run it while I’m not here,” which they do a great job of doing.

Most importantly, can they grow it? Can they keep it valuable and profitable? Can they scale it organically and into new territory? That’s my biggest project. My approach is to be a lot more vulnerable and create products and services with them and for them. I’m no longer handing the products over to my team and saying, “Enter these into the marketplace.” I’m saying, “What do you want to enter into the marketplace? Let’s build them together. These are going to be your products as well. With how well they do and how well they’re created, you got some skin in the game here. That’s my next big thing, to create longevity for the business and to be able to allow myself to get out of the driver’s seat quite so much.

It’s demanding being an entrepreneur. You know as well as anybody. What do you do to recharge your battery and keep yourself energized?

I love working out. I love health and fitness. That’s my number one place to go. They say meditation isn’t the act of just sitting there, closing your eyes, and crossing your fingers. Meditation is about focusing on the one thing that’s in front of you and nothing else so that you can clear your mind and get a clearer presence of your direction.

Ironically, if you drive a race car, what a fantastic way to meditate because you cannot focus on anything else other than what’s in front of you. I recommend it to anyone who hasn’t tried it. I also take that same approach when I’m at the gym. I take that same approach when I’m hanging out with my kids and traveling. Those things allow me to balance my life so that I can get back. Being an entrepreneur is an important part of it. It’s part of your life. It becomes who you are. That’s not a thing I’m trying to run from. It’s something I’m trying to compliment with everything else I do.

It’s hard to not have it integrate fully into your life. When you’re running a company, there isn’t work and home. Everything bleeds together much more so than it does for the average person.

That’s a great thing. That balance across the board is exactly what makes a holistic human being. You have to learn how to balance it. It’s not about compartmentalization or shutting it off. It’s all about balancing it. My company is important and so are my kids, so is myself, and so is my sense of adventure.

For somebody reading this who’s thinking about being an entrepreneur even more generally and about to enter the work world, you talked about going out to your alma mater schools and having those kinds of conversations. What would be a couple of pieces of advice that you would give to people about their careers and about entrepreneurship?

For me, that’s pretty simple. The good part about not being an intellect, and I will self-proclaim that because I don’t have some of the credentials that you have or that some other folks may have who start businesses, is I didn’t have to overthink it. I couldn’t overthink it. I walked into business on day one and I said, “First and foremost, failure’s not an option.” That doesn’t mean that the plan that I came up with is going to be the plan that I ultimately accomplish, but failure is not going to be an option. If there’s an obstacle, we’re going to pivot, improvise, and overcome. People think that failure is a four-letter word. I say it is a hurdle you’ll have to overcome. Number one, failure is not an option.

Number two, I’ve always said to jump first and build your wings on the way down. If you’ve got an idea, jump in the deep end. Jump in feet first or head first whichever direction you enter the water and figure it out. You will learn how to swim. When you stand on the shore too long, you’re never going to jump, and I hate seeing that. I hate people who have great potential and great ideas and never do anything about them. Failure is not an option. Jump first and build your wings. Last but not least, make tomorrow a percent better than today. When you add up all those percentages, you’re going to get places.

Thanks for doing this. I am glad we were able to connect. It’s interesting to hear about a business that is pretty unique in the US. Those are fun conversations for me because it’s not like it’s an industry that I  had an inside view on before this interview.

It took a lot of creativity and a lot of pivoting and overcoming. We’re having fun doing it because the world is a better place for having extreme experiences.

That’s awesome. You’re creating something that people are checking off their list, something that they’re going to remember for a long time. Those lasting memories and experiences, people carry those with them. In your own way, you’re making a difference in people’s lives. That’s pretty cool.

I am grateful to be in the position.

Thanks. Have a good day.

Thanks. Thanks for having me.

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I want to thank Adam for joining me to discuss how he built a category-leading auto team and business, his focus as a leader, and what he has learned from his entrepreneurial and broader career journey. If you’d like to work on your own career, you can visit PathWise and become a member. Basic membership is free. You can also sign up on the website for the PathWise newsletter and follow us on LinkedIn, Facebook, YouTube, Instagram, and TikTok. Thanks.

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About Adam Olalde

Adam Olalde is the CEO and Founder of Xtreme Xperience, the nation’s premier supercar driving experience. Shortly after graduating from Miami University, Adam was working for a luxury car rental service when he noticed many of his customers who were interested in renting Rolls-Royces and Lamborghinis weren’t one percenters, but average people who were willing to pay to experience the thrill of driving a high-end sports car.

He started renting them out for one-hour test drives throughout Chicago and eventually began offering test drives at a nearby racetrack. Thus, Xtreme Xperience was born. Today, Adam is responsible for growth and business development. He spends each day continually improving upon the Xtreme Xperience program, leading the best team, and making the world’s most exotic and luxurious cars accessible to anyone who has ever dreamed of driving them.