Fly With Eagles – don’t run with turkeys!
Interview with “Nasty” Ronnie from Born To Ride
ALAN TECCHIO – http://metnights.com
Your history Involves fronting heavy metal band Nasty Savage In the late SO’s and professional wrestling but since this Is a motorcycle column, I’d first like to talk with you about your magazine Born To Ride and the TV & radio show you also produce. How did that all start?
Well, in the 90’s I was co-producing IWF Wresting at Universal Studios in Florida and also working a day job. All my friends started riding motorcycles and going to bike nights and stuff. I had surv ived my crazy days of riding a Suzuki 750 back in high school but had sold that yea rs ago. I bought a Harley and soon after that my wife bought a Harley and we started riding and really getting into it. I saw how fanatical people were about bikes and the intense fever pitch that motorcyclists have. I came up with the Born To Ride concept in 1995. I got www.borntoride.com and kept going out with my friends every week and j ust started bringing a camera and filming demos and stuff. I would interview people and do reviews… Eventually I talked to a production company who initially did not believe a motorcycle show was viable and said, “Let me take a film crew to Daytona Bike Week..
Ron Gall etti riding the Black Hills of Sturgis. ’95 and if I get a gig you guys can be my production company. So there I was in Daytona Beach on camera saying, ” … and now a word from our sponsors” but we didn’t even have any sponsors yet! (laughs) Sure enough I put the demo together and got a bunch of contracts for sponsorships and I sta rted my TV show Born To Ride. So the magazine was actually born from the TV show. 23 years and 1,156 episodes later Born To Ride TV is still going strong.
How long after the TV show did the mag start?
The magazine came about five years later. I said to myself, ” If I can be a TV producer, marketing and salesperson I can damn su re publish a magazine.” In my background from my heavy metal days to even the wrestling stuff I was always making flyers and cutting and pasting and laying stuff out, so it was natural for me to be a publisher as well as a producer and a performer. So I created Born To Ride Magazine and was able to give my sponsors and advertisers a full multimedia reach.
Your magazine has a wide range of coverage In terms of charity events, bike nights, concerts, etc… but there’s also a section about motorcycle safety which being an MSF Instructor myself, I found to be very cool.
Well you know when I created Born To Ride I wanted to document the motorcycle lifestyle in a proper manner. So it’s very diverse and it’s the life and times of motorcycles and the people who ride them. So when you talk about diversity and being “Born To Ride” it doesn’t just mean born to ride a Harley. It means born to ride anything and everything. It’s about all people, young and old … Everybody’s riding motorcycles! Did you know women represent the fastest growing segment of the riding population at over 30%? It includes all kinds of people- Latinos, Asians, African Americans … there’s no limitations. That’s the coolest thing! And you can do it your whole life. I kind of equate it to McDonalds – Motorcycling gets you with the dirt bikes when you are young like McDonalds gets you with Happy Meals and in the end you enjoy a senior citizen discount and can still ride a t rike til your 99.
So the safety segment Is about keeping this wide array of people who are united through riding, alive?
Yeah, it’s very important to talk about safety in the magazine for that reason. Some riders don’t respect the power of their machines or even road conditions and that can lead to t rouble. If the road sign says 45 mph there’s a reason for that! There are certain parts of the la ne you should be riding in so people can see you. So I looked to include a message about safety and who better to go to than The Motorcycle Safety Foundation?! I mean, that’s what they do! We want to perpetuate safety and try to get riders to j ust be smart. I mean, why die? There are hundreds of things you need to be aware of while riding if you want to survive.
Has that had an effect on the magazine in terms of advertisers?
Sure, say a GM of a dealership happens to see our focus on safety in the magazine. They may think, “Hey, these guys get it! They care about safety!” That may give me an edge over my competitors who don’t even care about safety. All they want to do is show a bunch of drunk guys shooting birds at the camera and acting cool. To me, safety is a big part of motorcycling and if you are a publisher we have a duty to put some positive stuff out there beyond charity rides and benefits and st uff. How often do you publish Born To Ride, the magazine? We print eighteen to twenty thousand issues every month of the Florida edition. We’ve got editorial and photographer assignments as well as interviews, etc … I’m kind like Perry White the publisher of the Daily Planet newspaper who sent Clark Kent, Lois Lane and Jimmy Olsen out to get the stories. If they didn’t get what he wanted he was like, “Go out and get more, you didn’t get it right!” (laughs) Perry’s always push, push pushing … But along with that you have to sell, sell, sell and market and just really hustle. It’s about hustle but it’s good hustle. No smoke and mirrors … You have to be a visionary to be a publisher just like Perry White. So we started with the Florida magazine and then branched out to the Southeast into Georgia, Tennessee, Alabama, North and South Carolina. Then we do a whole ‘nother magazine involving sell ing, marketing and promotion. We try to educate sales reps and all that kinda stuff. It’s a lot especially when you add in the TV show, radio show and social media stuff. But we make it happen every month.
I don’t want to totally neglect your metal band Nasty Savage since it’s where I originally heard of you. What can you tell us about the band and are you still gigging these days?
Yeah, Nasty Savage was a band I put together around 1983. We made a demo tape called Wage Of Mayhem and marketed and promoted it. When I th ink about it, I’ve been a marketer for more than forty years. We did six albums and toured t ill about 1990 and then broke up. That’s when I started doing the wrestling stuff and then of course Born To Ride. But through the years we’ve always done reunion gigs so it’s never really died. We’ve had a couple of changes in the band but last year we played New York at the Defenders of the Old Festival. That was in Brooklyn and we went to Portland and Germany last year to play at the Metal Assault Festival. This year we have four gigs lined up. In Tampa, FL, Milwaukee, WI, Lima, Peru and in June we are headlining the Strikefest in Los Angeles. I think we are also going to do San Anto nio, Houston and Dallas. So it’s going and it’s great to get the band back together and play. It’s just cool to be able to play and still be notorious onstage. We still burn images in people’s brains.
The biggest thing I am getting out of this Interview Is that you have always followed your heart In life when it comes to careers. From singing heavy metal to wrestling and now Born To Ride, you have consistently pursued a path that you are passionate about. You didn’t just get any old day job and work It your whole life.
Well, you’ve got to be all in. If you’re going to commit to something you might as well go for it. You’ve got to be a leader and not a foll ower. Blaze a trail man! Don’t look back- look forward. You can make mistakes but you can learn from them and it only takes one good thing to really be successful. But if you don’t feel the pain of fa ilure you’re never gonna enjoy success. But then, how can you enjoy your success if you want more? So you really have to be on point as a leader and a visionary and not listen to what other people tell you how. You can take ideas and suggestions but you have to know in your own mind where you are going. Like in the band days, if I were to have listened to th is or that guy who told me to sound like a certain band I would have had no direction. Two months later that same guy wasn’t even into the band he told me to sound like so … You have to just hunker down and set your goals in order to achieve them. And keep setting more goals. It’s all about how to be a better leader, be a better boss, be a better person. If you are a better person in your life and can add va lue to other people’s lives that’s the key. Work with other people’s passions. I’d rather give somebody the ball and let them run with it and score a touchdown tha n me be the person to score the touchdown. I’ll throw a block but I want to be on a winning team. You’ve got to win baby, win! If you’re not winning, you’re losing. I’d rather fly with eagles than run with turkeys.
