An Inspired Chat with BRIAN ROSE of Bristol, Tennessee

We’re looking forward to introducing you to BRIAN ROSE. Check out our conversation below.

BRIAN, a huge thanks to you for investing the time to share your wisdom with those who are seeking it. We think it’s so important for us to share stories with our neighbors, friends and community because knowledge multiples when we share with each other. Let’s jump in: What’s the most surprising thing you’ve learned about your customers?
The most surprising thing I’ve learned, especially here in Southern Appalachia, is how a lot of small business owners view marketing.

They see it as an expense, sometimes even an unnecessary one, and that really surprised me at first. I mean, we live in a world where advertising is literally everywhere—it’s almost unescapable! Yet, getting a business owner to shift their mindset from, ‘How much is this going to cost me?’ to ‘What is the return on this investment going to be?’—that is a huge challenge, particularly in this region.

It’s about helping them understand that modern marketing, especially things like good SEO and targeted content, isn’t just throwing money away. It’s a tool. It’s an investment that should bring in more business than you put into it. It should make your company grow. My job is often less about doing the marketing and more about showing them the data and the real-world results so they can see that shift from expense to investment.

Can you briefly introduce yourself and share what makes you or your brand unique?
My name is Brian Rose, and I’m the owner of Track Bar Media. I’m a West Virginia boy originally—I spent ten years down in the coal mines before I got my degrees and started building this company. It’s a bit of an unconventional path, but it gave me a real appreciation for hard work and small businesses.

We started out focusing on motorsports marketing, but quickly realized the biggest need was helping the everyday small business owner navigate the digital world. So, that’s what we do now. We handle all the things they know they need but simply don’t have the time for: Local SEO, Social Media Content, running Digital Ads, and even creating professional commercials for streaming services. We step in to be their whole marketing department.

What makes us special? It’s that motorsports background. We believe in being affordable—we aren’t here to price gouge small budgets. But beyond that, we offer serious value. We facilitate real-life sponsorships, connecting local businesses with drivers on the track, both locally and nationally, to help both sides achieve their goals.

And here’s the really unique part: for clients who want that excitement but don’t have the huge sponsorship budget, we offer an avenue through Esports and online racing. We get their logos onto custom-designed virtual cars, and those races can be nationally broadcasted, complete with driver interviews! This is all offered at zero cost to our clients who use any of our other services. It’s a way to give them high-octane exposure and ‘Get their brand on track!’ without breaking the bank.

Appreciate your sharing that. Let’s talk about your life, growing up and some of topics and learnings around that. Who taught you the most about work?
This is an easy one for me: I would have to say my dad. Not only did he have an incredibly strong work ethic that he instilled in me, but I believe he taught me the most powerful tool—not just for work in marketing or sales, but in life in general.

He taught me to speak with anyone, no matter their title, as if I’ve known them forever. Talk to everyone with respect, but like you’ve been friends forever. From the janitor to a CEO, no one is above you, and no one is below you.

That small comment he made out of the blue one day has shaped my personal and professional life more than anything else. He probably didn’t even know he was giving such powerful life advice at that point, but it’s something I carry with me every single day at Track Bar Media and beyond.

Was there ever a time you almost gave up?
Oh man, absolutely! And let me tell you, it happens way more often than people think when you’re building something from the ground up. Everything about starting a business from scratch—the long hours, teaching yourself every single in and out, the pressure—it’s nauseating, and it’s all you have time to think about day after day.

The first time I almost completely threw in the towel was when I had put in months of work, serious effort, and was seeing almost no return—just one or two clients. You start thinking to yourself, ‘Maybe a typical 9-to-5 job is worth it just to release this stress and have a steady payday again.’ It’s a dark moment.

But here’s the kicker: if you stay diligent enough, you will eventually find the niche that works, and you’ll start to see the foundation you laid begin to take form. When that happens, when the clients start seeing results and the growth starts happening, you realize you could never, ever go back to a normal job. That moment when you see your brand finally on track… that’s what keeps you going. The struggle is worth it.

So a lot of these questions go deep, but if you are open to it, we’ve got a few more questions that we’d love to get your take on. How do you differentiate between fads and real foundational shifts?
This is a tough one, because the digital world moves so fast! But it’s also probably the most important question in this business.

For us at Track Bar Media, differentiating between a passing fad and a real, foundational shift comes down to two things: data and principle.

A fad is usually something flashy that promises huge, immediate results but doesn’t actually add any long-term value to the client or their customer. Think of some of those quick-fix social media challenges or platforms that pop up and disappear within a year. They’re noise. We keep an eye on them, but we don’t bet our clients’ entire strategy on them.

A foundational shift, on the other hand, changes the way customers behave or makes a core principle more efficient. Take AI, for example. We’re using AI for things like our Reputation Management and generating social media images. That’s not a fad; it’s a tool that makes the foundational work—like responding to reviews—faster and better. It’s a shift because it improves efficiency in a core area. Same with Local SEO; the shift isn’t the core idea of being found, but how Google’s algorithm forces us to think about content, mobile optimization, and trust.

We stick to the fundamentals: great content, strong Local SEO, and measurable results. If a new tool or platform can make those fundamentals better, more efficient, or more accessible, then we adopt it. If it’s just a shiny new object, we let it pass. We don’t chase every rabbit; we build a strong, steady track for our clients.

Thank you so much for all of your openness so far. Maybe we can close with a future oriented question. Are you doing what you were born to do—or what you were told to do?
Honestly, for the first chunk of my career, I was doing what I was told to do. Coming from a small town in Southern West Virginia, you aren’t given a lot of direction outside of high school. I was basically told how and where to get a job in the mines and figure life out from there—and that’s exactly what I did for a decade. I hated every part of that job except for the good people I worked with.

See, when you’re raised between the mountains, you often can’t see the sky, so you really don’t know what else is out there. But even as a kid, I was always picking up an old VHS camcorder and making videos, creating signs, and thinking about how to get people to watch them. I never knew it at the time, but that was called marketing!

After leaving the mines and my time in healthcare, I was offered a chance to learn the ins and outs of insurance. While I wasn’t a fan of someone else’s quota hanging over my head, the sheer marketing side of it—the advertising—I found absolutely fascinating. That was the spark. I went back to college, focused on business and marketing, and never looked back.

Now, combining my deep love for motorsports and all that hands-on marketing knowledge, I’ve been doing what I was truly born to do for the last five years. It’s about finding that path that makes sense and then going flat-out down it.

Contact Info:

Image Credits
All designs and photos are my own and credit to Track Bar Media.

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