Keanu Reeves on Building ARCH Motorcycles, Racing, & Life Beyond The Matrix

Here we go, it's on, man. It's on, let's go. It's doing wheelies down the street. Like, woo-hoo! Has anything in your life professionally ever got you this excited? Well, you know, when you first walk on the set of The Matrix. Wait, so you took three years to build? Oh, no, the bike took five years. Oh, that's quick. It almost feels like you guys are stoned all the time when you talk to each other. I just figured whatever we couldn't finance, we'd make up for in, you know, blood, sweat, and tears. Yeah, I mean, we're not making a lot of money here. We don't recommend this to anyone. That's the fun part. You're an entrepreneur. It's structural. It's a shape. It's a bridge. It's a doorway. It's a connector. So you are stoned sometimes when you're talking about this. Yeah, it kind of does. There are kids who are kind of going back to tactile experiences. The only counter to the imminent doom of AI. We're just going with the sound like this? You're at a racetrack, brother. What's up everybody, this is Rich Kleinman, another episode of Boardroom Talks, a very unique different episode today we are in Austin, Texas at the racetrack and I'm sitting here with the founders of Arch Racing and Arch Motorcycles, Gard Hollinger and Keanu Reeves, I'm sure you've all seen Gard before but this man new to all of us, uh Keanu Reeves so we're going to do this interview live on set because the bikes will be part of this entire conversation so I will speak loudly um guys watching the first season of your show the biggest thing that I took from it I have so many questions and I'm so deep in it now because i just watched it um thank you for that it's the partnership uh the uniqueness of your guys partnership i run a business with a partner also a partner who came into it with this very big platform like you have with Keanu and those are unique partnerships and when they go well they can be incredibly successful when did the two of you first meet and in what context was the meeting and what were kind of the first impressions of one another the origin story of our friendship is through a motorcycle I would assume yeah yeah yeah so i had a harley davidson dyna and 2005 and i was looking to get it customized um i wanted to get a sissy bar and a seat and i had a friend i was like how do i get this and he was like i know this guy he's a custom shop he's a custom builder his name's guard hollinger and la chop rods and i was like cool so we drove to guard shop um what was it the off the 405 in gardenia california came in pulled parking lot low buildings industrial bam with keith and he knocks he goes he disappears and he comes out of this building with this guy and he's like what do you want in the parking lot in the parking lot he's like what do you want and i'm like well i'm thinking you know i want to get the the seat and i want to get the back rest and sissy bar on that thing on the custom and he looked at me and he goes i don't do that Did you know who he was when you walked in right away? Oh, of course, yeah. I mean, I was asked by this mutual friend, do you want to build a sissy bar for Keanu Reeves? And I said, no. And what I meant by that was, I could build the most amazing sissy bar and the most expensive sissy bar in the world, and nobody would really appreciate it for what it was. And then he said, well, can I bring him to the shop? And I said, sure. And then this happened. Oh, wait, Keith didn't tell me the no part before I got there. Yeah, well, of course. You told me the no part. I guess he still wanted to bring you to the shop. Did you guys have this, you have, like, this funny chemistry where, like, I hope you take this as a compliment, but it almost feels like you guys are stoned all the time when you're talking to each other. Because you're just, like, laughing at each other while you speak. Was that type of, like, chemistry pretty immediate when you first met? No. Oh, yes and no? Well, no, man. so I go in this room this building this shop and it's like him like there's like couches with motorcycle magazines piled on it and then there's a table and you can't put anything on the table because it's just motorcycle magazines then there's reference material then there's a computer and a desk but you can't put anything on the desk because it's just like mail unopened mail mail and motorcycle magazines to be done and then and then he like pulls me to the back and then there's like there's like you know a press and a couple of bikes and then these amazing examples of custom motorcycles and i'm like oh okay so do you want to take this harley and do a custom bike and he went okay what do you want and then i went on to like i wanted to i wanted a cruiser american cruiser that could handle yeah with a with a king with a throne seat with a sissy bar with a sissy bar All right, I see so watching it three years later Three years later. I come back. I mean we have a you know This is where our friendship was born trying to design this custom motorcycle He basically got rid of everything but the engine and he comes back and so now he's built a frame and he's like no sissy bar. He goes. Do you really want the sissy bar? And I'm like, I guess not Which you took three years to build what it was. Oh no, the bike took five years. Yeah Well, that's quick what was your business at that point like what was the shop i built custom motorcycles and i i designed some some like aftermarket parts for harleys that i sold yeah i just i'd owned a indian motorcycle dealership indian that's a whole different story but um he's underplaying what he said the guy's a legend well that's the feel by the way that's the feeling i got it it felt like there there was this like cachet or aura to like you had to drive out to this shop and this was in some ways like the Jedi who had the answer to everything did you have a dream bigger than that like did you say to yourself at some point I'm gonna build a racing team or build this brand no that was never a dream was I was gonna move to Mexico I was gonna move to central Mexico and build some motorcycles and then maybe the next week learn how to be a sculptor and then maybe after that build a wrought iron fence for somebody so having a show on on samsung and and building a racing team was never in the um no in the cars yeah at what point in this like three to five year evolution um of the bike getting fixed and i know it was around 2011 did the two of you over i'm sure many a conversation say you know what it'd be cool if if we maybe started to build something out of this okay let me try to do this like Reader's Digest version so the motorcycle that i started building for him i was using a lot of more modern techniques than i had so some digital work and this type of thing right and so while it was being created in the real world it was also being created in the digital world and early on Keanu started to say things like this looks familiar to me this you know if this is what we think it might be we should make some more of these and share it with the world and I kept saying why don't you just let me finish this one and then when it was done and we wrote it he started to speak about this again and then I was like okay well let's talk about why and then I spent a couple months trying to talk him out of it you it's funny you I in doing some research obviously you have the career that you've had for decades now that you've been as successful as anybody in but you've had all of these like hobbies or passion projects that you take far in some ways into businesses did you have a vision for this or is that just your DNA where when you're so passionate about something you want to maximize what could be there a bit yeah i think so i think it's for me when i thought about it upon reflection and after that reflection kind of knew what i was doing which was storytelling you know yeah you know like let's build this bike that turned into okay what is the motorcycle then who is it for then our customers and build the story of it the the name of the company Arch Motorcycle what was the story behind that like and um and i like making stuff yeah you know i really like being a part of collaborating being a part of making something you know and um so yeah yes it's funny you say storytelling that's the part of this that connected with me and then made me want to understand all of this i've asked so many questions over the last 24 hours understanding the different levels of racing understanding the financial investment needed how big Harley Davidson is what Hooligan is and i realized that like there's a brand that you're building and the brand needs a story to build a community and the product is this bike and the racing is the platform for the storytelling it all started to make sense to me um as you started to put the business together the actual product and like the investment that's needed and i remember you went to get advice from somebody in the series that I was watching. And he said, it's going to take a lot of time and a lot of money. And you were like, I wish I knew this six months earlier. Did you not go into it understanding that like this story you were trying to tell and this passion that you were following was going to entail like a real investment, the amount of time that was going to have to be put into this? I think we had an understanding and I've always been a bit of a bootstrap guy and so i think i just figured whatever we couldn't finance we'd make up for and you know blood sweat and tears yeah but um yeah no there's been a major investment in time financially you know have you had to raise outside capital or have you guys funded it no this has been primarily uh sponsor funded so the the way the these teams like no different and then Formula One, sponsorship revenue is the main generator, right? And then the selling of the bikes, how big of a business can that be? Because you are very sacred about who buys it, right? And it's a limited amount of product that you make of each bike. I don't, would you say we're sacred? We're not really sacred, but our motorcycles are very expensive, and I guess that maybe fosters that. I don't know, yeah, yeah, sacred is a profound concept. it's a profound yeah it's a way up but but when you have something that's priced a certain way that's so specific in the technology and the care who's buying it just naturally i'm sure who gravitates towards it is a certain type of person and there's a community around it have you started to sense that there's a community that you're building around that way from the day one that was our hope you know it was the arch owners and you know we found them most of our clients entrepreneurial in some way um and i would say that's the whether it's telecommunications um medicine uh real estate finance finance everyone seems to have multiple kind of things going on and an appreciation for having aesthetic sense and the engineering that's gone into the motorcycle um you know how guard works is like it's a it's obvious like in terms of form and function but the aesthetic of how something looks and how it works is very almost sacred profound i feel and what does one thing how can it serve multiple purposes and how does it fit in um and that as a concept is actually what arch meant in a way which was it's structural it's a shape it's a bridge it's a doorway it's a connector um a part which is part of the machine which is part of what we are making it which is part if you ride it the community you're in all of that kind of holistic point of view is going into how we approach what we're doing sounds sacred yeah it kind of does it sounds pretty sacred um yeah from a racing perspective racing i was watching in the in the series like there weren't a lot of fans at some of the hooligan races um is that a loss leader is the idea that the storytelling around racing um and another platform for sponsors to invest in is just a driver for what is ultimately like the real main focus of the brand or is there a real business in the racing side of things and collaboration right so with MotoAmerica this goes that back to the relationship with Roland Sands too which you have um who created the series Super Hooligan in partnership with MotoAmerica which runs the championship with uh mission yeah um the food companies you know putting sponsoring the race itself um us being a part of it we were hoping to we're hoping to bring fans bring the company that were involved in V10 also worked with MotoAmerica to help try and get distribution the show is like in this with Samsung TV Plus is also going international you know since we've been a part of it even the grid people involved with MotoAmerica have said you know thanks maybe you'll bring some more eyeballs appreciate it um people have watched the show they like it they're like i don't know anything about racing but i ******* love it and i'm following you guys and that's how i that's passion yeah that's how i felt i mean so we're looking and hoping to grow together or be a part of their growth and what can we do what's if what's the core difference like to a layman in the hooligan league from like the MotoGP of it all in terms of like how the race is conducted and what the kind of rules are i mean the the class was designed to have it be more um attainable for privateers so a lot of these classes the motorcycles are so technical and they're so far from what you just go buy off the showroom floor and the hooligan class was designed where a guy that wants to go racing could go buy a fairly inexpensive motorcycle he could take some stuff off and put some stuff on it and if he's quick enough he can compete and race with everybody else right um obviously with that and with the popularity of the series you start to bring interest from manufacturers because it obviously brings attention to their motorcycle and and sale and hopefully promote sales of those motorcycles so i would say we're somewhere in between those big factories and the privateers um but yeah that was the idea of the class it looks a little bit different the privateers just build a bike to race but there's not an entire company and brand that's being built yeah and is the goal to continue on and one day compete at MotoGP with this brand no but we we went to we you know actually part of what we've done too is we're trying to promote the class itself super hooligans are fairly new it's an old american concept kind of coming out of dirt racing dirt track racing um and but we're trying to promote the class itself so it's a straight bar it's a naked bike um you can have water cooled air cooled very different it allows for different um displacements um but you know we went over to the Isle of Man uh which is a very famous road course race we want to race in the Northwest 200 um already MotoAmerica has added around so we've gone from five race weekends to six this year Maybe more next year. Maybe more next year. Please. So, yeah, promote the series. Again, I guess we're brand ambassadors. Got it. So you're locked in on the Hooligan League, and you believe that's the right league for your bike and for the brand in general. Yeah, but there's other stuff, too, that we could do with it. With a fairing? With a fairing. We could go to the Northwest 200. Which is in Ireland. We just need to get another 50, 60 horsepower out of our engine. we have the rider Jeremy McWilliams, we could maybe go do that race so of the partnership he's he's the dreamer and the one that's like yeah he wants to do it for sure but it's you know it's it's he calls himself a cheerleader but really he could develop it's inspiring with it like with this bike so we could do race replicas right we designed our own engine we started to design our own engine five years ago because we're Arch Motorcycle but we didn't make our own engine and in order to be Mark, Harley-Davidson makes their own engine, Indian, Yamaha, Kawasaki, Suzuki, Ducati, I mean like they all make their own engine. So we wanted Arch to have their own engine, and that's what we're racing. I love it. You know, the Arch 120 LS. Has anything in your life professionally ever got you this excited? Well, you know, when you first walk on the set of The Matrix. There would be a lot of people happy that you said that. All right, good. Are you going to play Constantine the first time? So, John Wick, the first fight in the John Wick in the house fight. Here we go. It's on, man. It's on. It's on. It's on. Let's go. So, you still love that? Yeah, man. What about being a rock star? I'm not a rock star. I play bass in a band, but enough about me. The business of this. Excites you more than any business, maybe? Yeah, I mean, we're not making a lot of money here. we don't we don't recommend this to anybody you're an entrepreneur this is your success in Hollywood can't help you in this it could get more eyeballs but at the end of the day like you guys have to build this brand and build this engine and compete and oh for sure and even constructing the team felt no different than an NBA team or NFL team i'm watching you guys bring on corndog or whatever it was and you guys went and got this like eclectic group of people and have to become general managers of a sports team um and there was like interesting moments like i remember when uh cory was standing over them fixing the bike and he had to say to him basically like you know get yeah get the hell out of here it it was amazing to see the building of that kind of organization that's got to be so rewarding seeing like even that time he came in fourth place was must have been the greatest feeling oh yeah i mean that's part of the storytelling thing and i think as Keanu said it's that's always been sort of something I think we've shared too enjoyment of storytelling however that is an Arch motorcycle used to be is that a Harley no yeah now it's like oh my god that's an Arch it's the first time I've seen one in the real world oh my god and this journey that we're on you know yes we hope to bring the next generation of motorcycles to new owners we've we're we're developing the engine that we want to make for the brand, the collateral of that is relationships with sponsorship, with TV, your show, with Samsung TV where the production company V10 um deepening relationships with the partners that make component that we have component our partners of making the motorcycle stuff, so Motul and Suter and Ohlins and working with Alpine Stars and like you know what else do we got we got DST we got that's really cool man but all of that is like you know when you start making partnerships with people who support and stuff you believe in yeah you lock in you know and you do new things you do different things you learn yeah so i would imagine that like and do you feel like you've been energized in a way that you never thought you could be about something because for somebody that sounds like he was planning on biking off into Mexico you wanted to learn how to sculpt now you are an entrepreneur with a tv show and you're competing in a racing league has this brought a side of you you didn't think you actually would ever have i mean i've always been ambitious and entrepreneurial And I think I knew that when I said eventually said yes to this, that this was a different dream. I think I've always been a fork in the road guy, you know. So instead of having like this vision and path, it's like, well, I'm at a fork in the road. Which way do I go, you know? And this seemed like something that was an opportunity, which is something we talked about, to maybe leave something behind that we both cared about. And so I knew that it was I knew that the Mexico thing was bye-bye. Yeah but no, it's been a lot of wonderful opportunities like Keanu says I I think this idea of Partnerships and how you look at what? Creativity is or what design means The partnerships have opened up opportunities, you know to be able to do stuff with Canada Goose and Rick Owens, you know be a part of him designing clothes for our race team and those are all things that we hope you know to be part of the commercial enterprise at some point the motorcycle business as a whole in reading about Harley for instance just if that's embodying of the industry there's been like a slight decline over time in motorcycle sales is it something like i see you're you seem to be saying that that's constantly one of those things all right so there's my answer um it's not an industry that you worry about in the future this is a very uh core tight-knit community maybe i mean Harley-Davidson's over 100 years old yeah i mean they they grow contract continue to develop so it's a constant evolution of that industry i mean i think i think where new riders come from is changing the world's changed right i think 20 years ago 30 years ago young kids probably did more activities outside and parents were looking for things to involve kids in and and maybe that's where early love of motorcycling would come from for people and now maybe it's a little bit different when kids have other i was at the airport and the flight that i was on got delayed and Sky sits down next to me he's like hey aren't you and isn't that with the arch thing and the thing and i'm thinking i've just saw the thing and i was like yeah yeah man how's it going he's like hey i want to show you something my kid he's 12 check this out so what's his photo his kid's 12 years old he's got like an e-bike motorcycle but he's like yeah he's doing wheelies down the street that's amazing like just and he's doing trick riding yeah like full-on like and i'm like and i'm like what and he said yeah but only down the dead end street you know i don't let him go the kids are playing so that's hooligan by the way yeah he didn't even say hey i liked you in devil's advocate no no no no no it just went right a little bit yeah yeah and he's like hey check him out and i was just like wow because there are kids who are playing there are kids who are kind of going back to tactile experiences you know whether it's buying vinyl or going out or interacting you know experience like the only counter to the imminent doom of the end of the world of ai um do you think there's a transition of neo-humanism transhumanism yes the the the reality of in the physical seems more valuable than ever before um is there a film here is there hollywood uh theatrical film of what this all is i don't i don't isn't um isn't channing tatum doing something with isle of man brad pitt and channing too yeah i think you i think guard would play himself though oh you mean of this whole shenanigan yeah playing myself on hooligans on we need you playing the theatrical release no hollywood film in the future i would i would never say never but i don't think it's been a plan i mean we even wait let's do a bank heist so we're going to become international spies there you go we could travel with the race team there you go guys we do intel but then we're also like gonna do a heist i mean listen this morning we're driving here and he starts riffing on an arch racing version of somewhere over the rainbow and all of a sudden i was thinking well maybe you know he's been in broadway recently maybe a broadway play about arch racing i wasn't that far off are you guys on the phone all day every day talking about this no no he's busy i'm busy i'm not gonna bug this guy he's got like stuff to do guards you've got guard all in this man you need to see he needs to hear from you every day you know there's arch racing and there's arch motorcycle yeah you know and i can you talk about dreaming or checking in or what you know like we have to figure out what we're gonna our lease is coming up we're you know what's our release plan what are we going to do with this engine how's our company what are we looking at for the next five years you know that stuff for me checking in on the racing it's like did you guys solve that or is this going on or why aren't you sometimes yeah it's seen that way in the show you're like standing inside like yeah yeah i'm like yeah but then let's go and like figuring ---- out and trying to help yeah get resources yep without question you know we need resources you need resources well to buy time to buy Yep. Well, I'm sure you guys will continue to to evolve and grow in ways you probably didn't even imagine, because it seems like that's the beauty of this thing that you're building is like even listening to you guys in the early days and like some of your reticence about racing and kind of the ways in which you guys made these decisions. and then you like cut to Corey finishing fourth and the excitement and it feels like there is potentially like you know just no real path for where this can go and that's like the fun in all of it yeah and we want to get into design are you not are you not arch design of things bigger than yes yeah or smaller than mice or the arch lamp or the thing like arch design yeah I just thought so yeah tell me what I'm getting the partnership this is a brand this is a lifestyle you're building yeah we want to try arch means speed and uniqueness and your structure structure of tunnels bridges all right supports support but pass through and they cross over connection arch design so you are stoned sometimes when you talk yeah well on design and life but that's a good time for creativity and design conversation we've never actually been stoned together we made some not some red wine yeah yeah whiskey yeah all right well i see i see it in the future no no but i mean that part but that's you know and also talk about legacy and what can we do what can we do with this what can we make yeah i i get it and you know there's similarities in what we're building and i think that the beautiful thing is like when you're able to build a brand with with an identity that embodies who the two of you are whether everyone else sees it or not there's really like it's limitless what this could be and be built into so i would imagine that's super exciting i'm super excited to see what the future holds um i know Cory's hurt and you have Michael filling in good luck in the race i'm locked in now i'm gonna i'm gonna watch this so there's a new fan you've done a lot for this brand already um and i hope our audience sees how cool this is and watches the show and tunes in stuff like this is fun it's necessary i found it exciting and i think you guys have a really special partnership so congratulations to the two of you guys thank you and i hope to see more and more so this is Rich Kleinman Garth Hollinger Keanu Reeves Arch Racing Arch Motorcycles a very interesting and unique story and i hope everybody enjoys tune in subscribe boardroom.tv we will see you all soon thank you so much thank you Bye.