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Bill Bader Jr.’s email in-box was filling up with messages from concerned associates.
The common remark was “We tried to call the office and nobody’s answering the phone.” For anyone who knows Bader and his always-accessible staff at Summit Motorsports Park in Norwalk, Ohio, that was cause for alarm.
Bill Bader, Jr. (left) with Courtney and John Force at the annual Night Under Fire.
It turned out they had closed the office for a bit while the entire staff walked together about a mile down Highway 18 to watch the World War II-era Nickel Plate 765 steam locomotive pass through town. This is something perhaps quirky that offices in small-town America can afford to do once in awhile. With the family-centric Bader operation at the NHRA national event racetrack, it’s part of the camaraderie, the stress-venting, the corporate culture.
Bader, Jr., the company president who has slipped comfortably into his father’s enormous and energetic shoes, earned a degree in accounting and corporate finance from nearby Ashland University. But thanks to some advice from his dad, and some inherited instincts, he’s not a bean-counter or constant calculator. He never has forgotten seeing his dad sitting at his desk, holding up a pencil.
“I just want to remind you that you can’t always run a business like this with one of these,” Bader Sr. told his son. “So don’t concern yourself with the bottom line. Concern yourself with your guests. If your guest is happy, the bottom line will take care of itself.”
Every day, every month, every year, the son has discovered that his father’s formula works. While many racetracks nationwide are struggling against encroaching urbanization, cranky new neighbors, economic erosion, and escalating costs, Bader has thrived, not just survived, by playing offense. His strategy isn’t smashmouth offense. It’s one of finesse.
… don’t concern yourself with the bottom line. Concern yourself with your guests. If your guest is happy, the bottom line will take care of itself. – Bill Bader, Sr.
He’s doing okay, for sure, overseeing this month the installation of a $400,000, upgraded two-sided track lighting system.
But he said his playbook is open: “It’s hidden in plain sight. It’s not rocket science.”
Bader Sr., who never had laid eyes on the property and never had driven a hot rod or even attended a drag race, simply bought the rundown facility, overhauled it, and opened it in April 1974 on common sense and The Golden Rule. “We’re a blue-collar family. It’s not like we threw money at the project, because Lord knows we didn’t,” Bader, Jr. said. “We just worked hard and we treated people well and we were sincere and available.”
Family patriarch and longtime track operator and race promoter Bill Bader, Sr.
“The Norwalk Experience,” as the family likes to refer to it, has grown into one where the Baders’ “Four Ts” (tickets, traffic, toilets, trash) are under control, $1-per-pound ice cream rules, race winners receive a commemorative silver ice-cream scoop, and fireworks displays that rival anything at Epcot gives fans a rousing send-off. Those are end products of what Bader called the team’s “passion for our guests,” the substance of the diplomas from so-called “Summit U” — the 430 employees’ annual training session in which they learn “empowering and enabling at every level to ensure the guest experience is the correct one.” They learn they can fix any concerns on the spot, because, as Bader tells them, “These are guests in our home.”
I gathered our management team … and we made a choice to not participate in the recession. We said, ‘You know what? To hell with that. We’re not going to participate in it. We’re going to go about our business. – Bill Bader, Jr.
During the recession of October 2008, Bader, Jr. said, he thought, “We borrowed $7 million and the world is collapsing. And I’m making $1 million-a-year principle and interest payments and what do I do?”
He figured it out quickly: “I gathered our management team … and we made a choice to not participate in the recession. We said, ‘You know what? To hell with that. We’re not going to participate in it. We’re going to go about our business. We’re going to continue to do the right things. We are not going to make bad decisions in the short term that could impact us in the long term.’ We continued to reinvest. We continued to play offense. We continued to be aggressive. We continued to take on new events, to take risks with events, to experiment with new and different marketing strategies.”
“I get terribly bored, and I am probably one of the most impatient people you will ever meet,” Bader, Jr. said. “If I’m out in the middle of the ocean, I’m swimming in some direction. I don’t know which direction, but I’m going in a direction. I am not going to tread water and wait for somebody to come to me. I think it’s probably our nature. Certainly it’s my father’s nature and mine.
“We’re going to continue to do what we do. As general rule, we’re not on our heels. We get back to those core competencies: What is the right thing to do? What’s best for our guests? If we stay true to that, that’ll get us through the tough times. People continue to come to our racetrack, despite people out of work,” he said, calling the Detroit/Northern Ohio region Ground Zero for the unemployment crunch. “Our guests continued to support us. We continued to invest in shows and ratchet up our offerings on the entertainment side. We don’t play defense. That’s not in our DNA.”
What’s best for our guests? If we stay true to that, that’ll get us through the tough times. People continue to come to our racetrack, despite people out of work. – Bill Bader, Jr.
However, he said there are some dynamics you need to be careful of when functioning within a family-structured organization. He started working at the track when he was 10 years old, and looking back, he said, it was difficult to process the context. “When I would be corrected. I struggled with the idea that my father was my boss. I have to remember that my wife is a co-worker and not my wife. You have a tendency to treat them differently. You’ll be much harder on your wife than you will your operations manager. You will take criticism from your father far differently than you would another employer you’re not related to.”
The Summit Motorsports Park is truly a familiar affair, spanning three generations of the Bader family, including (from L to R) Deb Bader (Bill Sr.'s wife), Jayme Bader (Bill Jr.'s wife), and Bobbie Bader (Bill Sr.'s daughter).
“If you’re not careful, you can hurt feelings and then that manifests itself in other aspects of your life. People develop unhappiness or hard feelings. I think the key is just communication. You need to be a little thoughtful, a little self-aware,” he said.
“My father probably took advantage to some degree of his family, especially when we were first starting out and we were struggling and dollars weren’t there, Bader, Jr. said. Then, with a chuckle, he said, “I’m amazed my dad didn’t have 10 kids so they could all work and be grossly underpaid at the dragstrip. So yeah, it’s hard.”
Sticking to his dad’s approach, managing to finance his extravaganzas (including Night Under Fire and The Shakedown) hasn’t been hard.
(From L to R) Bill and Jayme Bader, Jr.'s sons Garret and Evan, along with Nathan Maggard (Bobbie Baders' son) are also a key part of the track staff.
“We put together a show we believe will sell tickets. When I’m in creative mode, I don’t have a column that says, ‘Fireworks. Okay, that’s what this is going to cost. John Force. Okay, that’s what this is going to cost.’ You can very quickly financially price yourself right out of the creative stage of building a show. So don’t concern yourself with that. Build the show you believe will sell the most tickets, and if you build the show correctly, you’ll sell enough tickets to justify the expense,” Bader, Jr. said.
Summit Motorsports Park is world famous not only for its on-track entertainment, but for the pound of ice cream you can get at their concession stand for just one dollar.
And, it’s less of a racing business than an entertainment business.
“You can watch cars going down any highway in America, and technically, that can be a drag race. So the sport, in and of itself, in the absence of choreography, in the absence of presentation, in the absence of the window dressing – setting the table, selling the story, creating the subplot, using the accents: pyro, music, lights, the pageantry — it can be uninspiring,” Bader, Jr. said. “We are an entertainment company. That’s what we are. We don’t make decisions based on the bottom line. We make decisions on what is best for our guests. We take an entertainment approach to it as opposed to a purist approach. We’re very value-conscious. We under-promise and over-deliver.”
And occasionally they’ll dawdle away an hour or two down by the railroad track, watching a steam engine chug through town.
Photos courtesy Mary Lendzion/Summit Motorsport Park
