Joshua Nelson Talks Creating a New Sport, Being a Black Memphian in Tech + MORE

I'm good, man. I'm heavy excited.

Stop, drop, open up shop.

The love song by Rihanna and Future.

Fight... we gon' fight... and Bing and ready.

Magic? Only song I can think of with magic is Bruno Mars, I think '24K Magic'.

Well, I was just in my living room one day, and I was kind of frustrated. I was talking to my wife. I was like, 'I got all these ideas, and they come in from emotion.' I was like, wait a minute, Emotional Ideas. I was like, I want to create a sport tech company and call it Emotional Ideas. So any idea I have that's created from emotion, we'll know where it came from. So that's coming from the heart.

Well, just to give you guys an overview, like I said, Emotional Ideas is an amusement and entertainment sports technology company. We take amusement products and the games and attractions that most people grew up with and we found a way to revolutionize it for the next generation. So it happened we started with motorsports, more specifically go-karting. I wanted to tap something I could easily get into, and go-karts is something that's fun. And I figured, okay, what if I could change the way people race? It really started back in 2014 here in Memphis. I went to putt-putt with the go-kart, and you had what they call overtake—you're always looking for the right opportunity to surpass the person in front of you. And the person I was racing against, they were just too good; I couldn't see past them. I was like, man, what if I could take a page from Mario Kart and throw a turtle shell at them and slow them down? And when I got off the racing, I was talking to friends and family, and I was like, man, you can't stop talking about it—maybe you should be the one to make it happen. So I started trying to understand how to make it happen, and a little project kind of morphed into this potential billion-dollar sport type of thing. So Battle Racing is essentially the introduction to a new way to race, or a new industry vertical. I'd like to say we're kind of like a mix between esports and real motorsports, essentially creating this new hybrid industry vertical.

I like racing with Baby Mario. Oh, and for some reason, I just... I just... Peach, 'cause she was the girl. I just had to go ahead and do that one.

Man, it took a lot of work. I kind of almost gave up on the idea like twice because I didn't come from money. I don't have a trust fund. So I've had to kind of bootstrap and be patient, build relationships. Relationships got discounts. I had to just stay in it. And it seems the longer I worked—I've been working on this since 2014, so we're at 2024 now, so I've been working on it since I was 21. So I would say my biggest path to success is networking. Different people that came into my life, they pitched in and helped with different parts, and that's what built this whole new beast.

Yeah, so this is a patent document stamped by the US government. I have three of these, and basically it goes into how we build the technology. You probably can't see the graphics, but yeah, wow, this is the most official thing I've ever put my hand on. That's what everybody says. It goes into how the technology is built, the scope of it, how it's laid out. This patent gives me exclusivity in all of America until the year 2040. Now, patents really only give you the right to sue, but I have that ability now. It covers a lot of different things—how the go-karts communicate with each other using gaming technology, a selfie camera that streams you in real time over social media, things that bring everything together in a whole new experience, from a mobile app to how the go-karts communicate to the streaming. It's very comprehensive, but yeah, I'm thankful for it. I will say it normally takes people about three to five years to be granted a patent. The government granted me that in about two months because it's so original.

Well, really, that patent is like my reward for contributing to the advancement of knowledge—that's what they say. So that's the benefit of them giving me exclusivity, to say that I contributed to the advancement of knowledge. Once 2040 hits, then they claim that I should have reaped any benefits I would have or could have reaped during that time period, and at that point anyone can do it.

I work with a patent lawyer. But because it's so unique, I'm one of those people who always tries to do it myself, so I tried to write it out. I'm not a patent lawyer, but I was like, y'all got to get this right. Someone else helped me write it a little deeper—shout out to Joseph—and then we filed with Bill Hussey, which is our patent law group. And we went from there, and we just kept adding ideas to it, and they kept approving it.

Well, I maxed out my credit cards, refinanced my home, raised angel funding of close to around $300,000. I used all of that to push the business. We have not received any institutional funding yet. We're in the process now talking to equity firms, venture capitalists, more angels, just trying to see who believes in it first.

Um, yeah and nah. The whole landscape of investing is a little funny. I would almost say it seems like the system is set up to keep the poor poor and the rich rich, because there's stuff that stops the general public from truly investing—there's red tape in different areas. But you have things like crowdfunding and Reg A. I may do another crowdfunding campaign; I tried to do one, and it's kind of hard to get people to support when they don't really see the vision. They only want to support after you're already successful. Most definitely. So you know, I feel bad for the guy, but you know, should have did it earlier. I saw something online that said people don't support you until it's popular to support you. So yeah, you got to believe in it when it first comes.

Well, I want to give a shout out to everybody who's ever worked on this project. But I've been through different groups. I had one group when I was first working on this in college, working with a whole bunch of young people. People get tired, people don't understand the grind. So I kind of had to respectfully—a lot of those individuals left the team. Then I got a partner that's been with me since 2015, my co-founder Bill. We revamped the team, brought more experience on, and just kind of found people through passion and networks and introductions. Some people I've met through a friend of a friend, some people I've connected with over LinkedIn, we started talking, kindled a relationship, and I saw a benefit or value add with them being on the team. We just kind of grew like that. I've got people calling me for jobs now, but it's not for everybody. A startup really takes the right type of people, because a lot of people can't handle a startup. It's normally more work than a typical job, not as much certainty, because in a startup, you work your day job, and then when you finish that, you work on the startup. So not everybody is as committed. Then people start looking at ownership percentages, and motivations change. For the most part, I just lean on myself. I don't call on a lot of people as much. I have my team members, but we meet when we need to meet, we get certain tasks done, and then we go from there. But I'm looking forward to bringing that investment check in-house so I can let everybody quit their jobs and we work full time. They're going to reap the benefits for staying down that long.

Yes. My goal is to create an entertainment venue that's like Top Golf meets Battle Racing—a place where we can have a recreational league for the general public. My goal is to take one facility and copy-paste it in all the major cities across the US and globe. Essentially, create a recreational league where you can say, 'I'm the best Battle Racer in Memphis, the best Battle Racer in Tennessee, the best Battle Racer in America,' then we fly you out to Japan, and now you're the best Battle Racer in the world. My goal is to create a league sport out of this, but allowing the general public to get some spotlight.

I think right there is where our patent for the selfie camera comes into play. On every vehicle, there's a selfie camera that streams you in real time locally inside the facility on different TVs, showing your lap count, player position, your power items, how much health your vehicle has. It's enough data that spectators have something to watch. I told my team time and time again: entertaining somebody in the go-kart is the easy part, but can we entertain people that are just watching? If we can entertain those that are spectating, we'll have people coming back just to watch. So the goal is to have a go-kart track with bleachers around it. I do have a video on YouTube that shows the concept for the facility. It's going to be pretty exciting, like a mini arena.

That's the thing about the selfie camera: we can stream you over YouTube, Facebook, Instagram. So essentially, the goal would be, let's say I was in the vehicle and I went live. All of my social media friends would get a notification saying, 'Joshua is Battle Racing live. Would you like to watch?' And they could tune in, see me, hear me because of the microphone in my helmet. They'll even be able to see me like an emoji thumbs up that I see on my vehicle. I can't respond because it's dangerous. I see that there are people watching me, and I see that people want to watch racing. It's trying to bridge the gap between spectators and drivers. It's going to introduce a whole new thing, and streaming is really big now. I might need to bring in some people that are known for their streaming. I'm looking forward to that.

Yeah, funding being at the top of that list. It takes money to make money. In this world today, as we established, people don't really want to get behind you until you're already popular. I feel like it's the same with investors—they don't want to get behind you until they feel like you're already popping. It's like, well, how am I supposed to... So having a good idea, building it, getting patents, it's always this next, 'Well, can you make money from it now?' So it's always 'what's next?' Sometimes it feels like they're moving the goalpost. But funding, and finding good help. I do believe I have good help now, but sometimes when you first meet a person, you may not fully understand who they are until you start working with them. As a CEO, I'm starting to learn that process of people. I have the business, but I have to be a people person. I have to understand people, be a manager of people. Sometimes I don't feel like dealing with people; I just want to get to work.

I mean, when they say you have a vision, you have to believe in it first. So if you feel like something's not attainable, then you don't believe in it either. For me, when I first started this idea, everybody told me it was silly, that I was wasting my time, that it would never work, that I could never build it. I had people call me and say, 'I looked at all your documents, it's not possible,' or 'You're telling me it's not patentable, but I got it.' So a lot of times you have to believe in it more than waiting on someone else to believe. And as we learn, most people won't come on board until they see that you truly believe. So go for it.

Resilience. Diligence. There's a lot of rooms I go into, I'm the only one that looks like me. Like, 'What are you doing here? You're in here with Jay-Z? No, you're not here.' So I go into places and they don't expect me to be there. Then you look at the excitement I get about the project—it's undeniable when you get excited about it. As a Black founder, you just have to have thick skin for a lot of things. I've heard whispers that because I'm from the South and I've got a country accent, they look at me like I'm unintelligent. That played a part, stopped a lot of opportunities because they didn't want to talk to me. I had situations where a member of my team may be Caucasian, and they go to an event, the people there are excited about the project, want to hear more. But when I reach out and they find out that I'm African American, they no longer want to talk to me. Things like that hurt too, like 'Dang, we still on that?' We have to work five times harder to get beside them, and they can be like, 'Ah.' I feel like I'm swimming with my hands cuffed and my feet tied, but I'm still going. Imagine if my hands weren't tied, you know? Imagine how much more I could do. And that's not just me—that's a lot of individuals of color. Imagine if we didn't have this weight on us while we're in the race, how much faster we'd be. And it's not just us against other races and ethnicities; we can be our own worst enemy too. We got to keep trying. In our community, we want leaders, we desire leaders, we need role models. But the issue I typically see is that when we get one, we tend to tear them down. I don't understand that. I told my wife that's one of the things I'm nervous about. I know my people need a role model, need to see hope, but we tend not to do well with those that have it. We get excited for them at first, then it's like, 'You doing too well,' starting to question it, take them apart. Even with See the Good, I had to delete comments on stuff I posted on TikTok because people come with so much negativity. You can't complain about all these other media outlets trashing us and tearing us down, and then when someone comes and tries to uplift you, you just pick it apart. It's hard. We have so much to fight against. A lot of us are used to competing with each other, because at one point that's how we knew—let me get in master's house, I got to do better than you. We ain't got to do that no more. Some people want to see you doing good but not better than them. It's a lot. It is sad.

Most definitely. The crave and desire for something that will stand out and entertain us. This city is in need of that. It sparked my creativity. A lot of talent comes out of this city. It just kind of sucks to see the dark cloud there a lot of times. But there's a lot of hidden talent. They talk about how pressure makes diamonds. There's a lot of pressure in this city, so there's a lot of diamonds coming out. Whether people are doing anything once they become a diamond, I don't know, but there's a lot of good people coming from it. It's just hard to make that outshine the terrible things that happen so often.

I think I've matured past the 'God don't hear me' part. I'm just trying to hear Him. There's a scripture, I believe it's Matthew 6:33, that says, 'Seek ye first the kingdom of God and all these things shall be added unto you.' So when things weren't going my way, I recognized because I didn't prioritize how I was going about things. I noticed when I started putting God first—not just saying it, but doing His principles—then I started to see things happen around me. In understanding God, I started to understand how He operates and works. I think a lot of people get frustrated because they don't understand how God operates. Most people want God to be like a vending machine: 'I come to you when I want something, and I need it now.' And God doesn't work like that. God is like a good father or good parent. He would give you what you ask for when He's prepared for you to receive it. What good parent would give you something you're not ready to receive? So I've started to get into a mindset where I ask God to prepare me for those things, or to put me in a position, or close the door I'm not supposed to walk through. Because I've started to understand what He wants for me. What would it profit a man to gain the world and lose his soul? That's big to me. I don't want everything if I can't have the things that mean the most—family, children, friends. A lot of people end up chasing the world and forgetting things of value and principle. So with the potential my business has, I needed to nip that in the bud. I ain't trying to wait till I get rich to figure out how things work. I want to learn those things now so when I do finally get the wealth, I know how to use it adequately.

My grandfather. My grandfather passed away, and he used to spit a lot of game to me about a lot of things. God has been very merciful to me. I did things that could have gotten me killed, locked up. But He put the right people around me, gave me enough sense to pay attention before things got worse. There were things that happened to my friends that God spared me from. I was like, 'Oh, that could have been me.' When things like that kept happening, I felt God was sparing me or reserving me for something. I could have had a criminal record. How many opportunities are off the table just because you have that on your record? God shielded me from that because I didn't know I was going to be working on this. In my last year of high school, I made a comment: 'I haven't really seen anyone that looked like me be successful and do it the right way without shady deals, without snaking.' I never knew I was going to be in a position to potentially be that. Because I had this desire for our people to see somebody that's trying, I didn't know I was going to have the opportunity to be that person. Maybe that's why God put me in this position, because I have this desire to uplift my people.

Well, I don't believe in Chinese cookies, but I know God uses different ways to encourage His people. He knows my understanding enough to know that I have enough maturity to not look at that as my fortune, but to use it as hope and encouragement. I used it that way. I was like, 'How? Running? Motorsport opportunity is in your future.' I just laughed. I was showing it to everybody. I was like, 'You don't believe that you wrote that? You put that in that cookie. You told them what you told them. He was on the way. You had them put it in your bag.'

Most definitely. I tell people you don't know God until you spend time with Him. I think a lot of people, if they're struggling to hear God or understand what He's saying, it's because they're either not spending enough time with Him to recognize His voice, or they haven't dedicated in their heart that they believe yet. It's about that relationship. I tell people I almost went atheist. I'm not scared to say it. I remember my auntie told me to start reading Matthew. I was on my lunch break and said, 'Before I just completely turn away, I'm going to give God a chance.' I remember reading a scripture about whether He will not open up the windows of heaven and pour out a blessing that there's no room to receive. It was basically 'Try Me and see.' I felt like God was challenging me to give Him a chance. So I did. That specific day, I also read in Matthew where He says don't worry about what you'll eat or wear, because if the birds don't gather or reap and they have food and a place to sleep, aren't you worth more than a bird? I took that verse seriously. I had a dollar and some change in my pocket. At a gas station, I saw a guy getting a whole bunch of chicken tenders. I was like, 'I know I can't afford that.' The guy said, 'Hey man, you want some?' I said, 'No, man, I got...' He started filling up a container and gave me all them chicken tenders for that dollar and some change. He didn't know I had just talked to God. How ironic is that? I called myself trying to buy a bag of chips, but God used that opportunity to humble me. So ever since then, I've been looking for signs or things from God to keep me going. God feels like people have forgotten about Him. He created us, gives us breath, and we just play God to the side, only calling on Him when we need Him. When I started to understand, I said, 'I think I'm starting to understand how you operate.' God operates off of faith, but He operates off of free will. He doesn't force us to do anything. But you want somebody to love you because they want to love you, not because you made them. When I saw that, I was like, 'Oh, so You take the first step to love us, and we're the ones who act like we don't want to hear.'

Everybody figured it out. God. It's not that hard.

There are a lot of people out there with podcasts just trying to get views. Their mission is not to uplift, but to get as many views whether positive or negative. As you know, it seems our people thrive off chaos and drama, because that's what we know. Daddy's baggers, we know that. It hates to see that, but you see the world capitalizing off our struggles. I wish we would stop struggling, but it seems like we're perpetuating that at this point. That's our story, so we just keep running with it. But when do we get out of that box? We're the only people stopping ourselves from getting out, because we're not having the positive conversations. Where are the conversations that encourage the older principles that the younger generation may have let go of? I don't feel like everyone's having them. And when we try to have them, somebody always gets in their feelings, and we never truly have a beneficial conversation.

Keep in mind, everybody has a story. Some people only want to talk to those doing something, but a lot of average individuals are doing good work. Your podcast is 'See the Good'—there's a lot of good to see in different things. It's a matter of perspective. Some people don't think it's good unless there's a dollar attached. With social media, it's all about clicks. Especially with these social media bloggers or pages on Instagram, someone clicks a link in their bio and they get paid. They want to reap the benefits from the bad things we go through.

So just back to Emotional Ideas and Battle Racing as we're about to close out. I wanted to know before my final question: what athletes do you think would dominate Battle Racing? Who's your top three? You can pick them from any sport.

I see Emotional Ideas essentially being like Wilson—like football is to the NFL, or Spalding and basketball to the NBA. Emotional Ideas will be the company that creates the technology that founds a whole new sport. Unlike Formula One, where you get sponsors and try to build the fastest car, we want to create an environment where Emotional Ideas leases custom vehicles out to teams. Teams will use these vehicles to race, with no cheating. Where I really see this is a recreational league, which is the entertainment franchise, but I ultimately want a professional motorsport comparable to NASCAR or Formula One. Our technology is patentable on both small engines like go-karts and larger scale vehicles. Once we introduce this product on recreational commercial go-karts, we want to build a custom vehicle from the ground up to compete against NASCAR and Formula One, offering a more gamified motorsport. As far as Emotional Ideas, I have a lot of ideas in the think tank. We're just going with the flow; I'm asking God what He wants, because I don't really know.

Yeah, we got merch. Everybody asks how they can support. There are two ways: go to battleracing.com or battleracing.shop and sign up with your email to be part of the newsletter for exclusive announcements and discounts on merch. Or we have the Alpha Team, a special group of supporters who purchase merch—a t-shirt or hoodie. Over time, we want to do something special with that group. So a free option: sign up for the Pit Crew newsletter, or purchase merch and be part of the Alpha Team. Or watch this video, share it, all those cool things.

We're raising like $10 million right now for one location. I'm trying to make it like a food court at the mall, with two floors where you can go up and look over the balcony and watch the go-karts. I want bleachers, a commentary booth, stadium lights that turn on and off every race. I want to make it like an actual sport, an actual experience. I used to tell my wife, 'People pay all this money to go to Disney World. Why can't we have Disney World in a local city?' I want to make this place feel like you're in a FedExForum, watching people compete, seeing them get off the go-karts and look up at the scoreboard to see where they are, then get interviewed about how they won. It's a fun environment. We have a lot of visions for this thing.

You know, I didn't explain how Battle Racing actually works. Want me to quickly explain?

So what makes Battle Racing different than other motorsports is that you have a battle gauge, which is your health in notches. Each notch represents 10% of your speed. As you drive, you receive two power items at a time, like the ability to shoot someone, a speed boost, shoot behind you, or an EMP blast to slow down all vehicles on the track. There are different power items you can use to get into first place. But there are also landmines on the track. So this is a game of strategy and speed. Instead of just pushing the pedal to the metal, you monitor your health to keep your speed up. If I shot you, your vehicle goes 50% slower. Then you look for landmines, floor tags that change colors—red, yellow, green, blue, purple. You want purple landmines to restore 10% of your health. It's a game of driving and strategizing at the same time. There will be a learning curve, but I hope people enjoy themselves so much that when they get off they say, 'I got to do that again.' They got to come back, spin the block, and get first place. So like I said, support by going to battleracing.com, sign up with your email, buy some merch if you want. Follow us on TikTok, YouTube, Instagram. We're just going to keep going.