Ep. 47 Our Tesla World Record – We did it!

Our Tesla World Record – We did it!

On Saturday, December 12, 2020, we attempted to set a world record for the longest Tesla parade.

Torie Mathis and her cohost Sean talk about the attempt, the results, and what they learned getting 340 Tesla owners to parade 15 miles down the GA Hwy 400.

We also reveal how much we raised so far for Operation Underground Railroad.

You can donate until the end of the year at: https://my.ourrescue.org/fundraisers/…

You can find out more about Miles Through Time at: https://milesthroughtime.com/

Recommended Tools:
Kartra https://toriemathis.com/kartra
Constant Contact https://toriemathis.com/constantcontact
WP-Engine https://toriemathis.com/wpengine
Grammarly https://toriemathis.com/grammarly

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EPISODE TRANSCRIPTION –

(transcription is auto-generated)

SAF 47

[00:00:00] Sean: We have so slaughtered that record with 340 Teslas officially a part of the parade.

[00:00:15] Torie: Hey, Hey, welcome to Smart AF on your host Torie Mathis. We’ve got a great show for you today. So let’s get started. Hey, I’m your host Torie Mathis here. My buddy, my partner stash. 

[00:00:28] Sean: Hey. 

[00:00:29] Torie: And we want to give you an update on our world record attempt that we had, Saturday, December 12th, and we actually just got done with it. So we wanted to give you a little bit, a bit of an update about how it went. 

[00:00:46] Sean: So the record we were trying to beat was 145 Teslas for the longest Tesla parade. That record has been held by China since 2017. And as Saturday, December 12th, 20, 20 unofficially. Until we submit the packet again, we have so watered that record with 340 Teslas officially a part of the parade and that is every current model available. To buy right now which includes an oh eight Roadster, which is really neat. And that actually we made a point to have the Roadster lead the parade, which was pretty cool, pretty neat. 

[00:01:27] Torie: So we actually had more that registered. We did a pre-registration and then once we got the information from Guinness about what we need. We actually reregistered everybody with the information that we needed using event bright because that bright uses QR codes, which may check in really easy for us. So we ended up having how many, over 419, I believe QR codes actually go out. It was 81%. Of the QR codes, QR codes that went out actually attended the actual record attempt.

And so we had more people than that, that actually registered, but never registered far enough. 

[00:02:04] Sean: You gave me before that we had, we had over 500 people originally completely sign up. So once we shifted over from just requiring the email address, once we got all the required information from Guinness and added that.

There is still, I think 150 plus people that, we didn’t have all their information to be able to send them the QR code. 

[00:02:26] Torie: We’re only giving people QR codes. If we had every single item, which included their phone number, their bin, their license plate number, their model, their year, and then the driver’s name, which we had everybody’s of those. So once they gave us all that information, that is what their requirement that issued the QR code. We also had numbers made for all the cars. And then once cars got the QR code checked in, we had the, a special sticker so that we were, you know, checks and balances all the way and making sure everybody was accounted for, which was, was something that I know some of the people that we’re working with us were really worried about that process.

I actually felt pretty comfortable going into the checkout process because of the QR codes that it was, that it was going to go pretty smooth. What did you think, did you think that. 

[00:03:07] Sean: The QR codes was actually it was one of the things Guinness recommended for us to be able to verify the count because it makes it real, it’s almost a. It’d be really hard to fake it. Let’s say, let’s say that like, if, if we were doing the QR codes and it says, you know, 342, our codes have been scanned, but we try to submit some packet to Guinness and say, no, 470, and they’re like, well, that’s not what this says. And so it just, again, it’s one of those using technology to our advantage that makes Guinness more comfortable to, to accept the, you know, the number that we submit to them versus any kind of question.

Originally I had looked into Event right? Initially. It was a little complicated to where I, I couldn’t really figure out how to capture all the information Guinness required completely and Eventbrite which is why we didn’t use it initially. And even if I would have used it initially. 

[00:04:11] Torie: Wouldn’t have had all the requirements now.

[00:04:13] Sean: And so we still would’ve had to go back in there and do it anyways. But Tyler Young he did the logistics of pretty much all of this and trying to get everything to work. And that includes event brite. He had. Him. And some of his contacts went into the back end event. Right. And figured it all out and was able to, to build that forum that had all the required information that we actually needed in that.

And that, I mean, that saved the day. Otherwise, our other option was going to be to print out everybody’s information and check it off old school manually and then put it all together. And just in case I got that method approved again. Like they would have accepted it, but it definitely would have taken a lot longer than how long it took for us to just quickly scan the QR codes in.

And then if anybody, you know, there’s any issues with QR code or they didn’t have it, we were able to pull them over to the side, either figure out what the issue was or just redo it real quick. Eventbrite sent the QR code within moments to their email, and then we got them back in line scanned and they were done as.

[00:05:20] Torie: People were amazing. Like I thought there was going to be a really big deal with trying to get people registered that showed up that didn’t have their QR codes, but what’d you say maybe 20 people and you had to register on site. 

[00:05:31] Sean: Yeah. I mean, if that, and that included like one of the police officers came in a Tesla is an actual Tesla police car, which was pretty neat. And then we had a few people that had multiple cars in their family and the QRS just didn’t match up. So once we figured that out, it was all good. So not even like everybody that I saw going in. The area to get repaired actually needed a new QR code. They just needed something to figure out. And we just moved them up to the size so that we could keep the line going as fast as possible.

[00:06:02] Torie: It was really cool to be able to use some different technology and some things to make this easy, because yeah, trying to do this by hand, which is originally what we thought. I mean, I was trying to think of a Google spreadsheet, like on site and like trying to figure out how to bring this all together that the QR codes and event right.

Really ended up working out really great. And I think it made it easy and it was really professional for everybody that was involved, that they actually had a ticket that had to be scanned rather than it’s like pulling out a Google sheet, you know, a Google spreadsheet or something to try to click them off.

So that was awesome. I thought it worked out really, really well. 

[00:06:32] Sean: And we’re still gonna, we still have stuff to do with that. So apparently there’s some reports and all that kind of stuff that we can generate from the back. And use that data to then verify for ourselves who actually participated in the parade. And then Torie is going to design some certificates and we’ll get all those sent out to everybody. 

[00:06:50] Torie: Which I’m really excited about. So the big, the big thing with obviously it was to set a Guinness world record. But another thing that we were doing was to raise money for operation underground railroad, and again, technology man, they have a Website set up that you can set up your own campaign for taking in donations.

Correct. And so we sent everybody to that link so that we weren’t getting money for them. And then having to transfer money, worrying about like bank fees and bank fees. So that was set up really. And then another thing we did, is it a Teespring campaign? So we designed some t-shirts and we were, you know, we had to go through the process to get the Tesla logo on the shirt.

So that was fun. But we did end up getting that. So we were, people were able to buy t-shirts ahead of time. And again, all that money is going to go directly over to, oh, you are going to be pretty seamless. Like I’m pretty stoked on how you had it set up that, that we’re not, you know, we always talk about, we don’t want to be a bank.

We don’t want to hustle, you know, shuffle money from one place to another because you end up getting bank feed and it’s just harder to keep track of all. So though we did get to make-up, you know, a big check to hand over to our, for over $8,000. We’re going to have more money, you know, coming in through the end of the year and really excited about.

[00:08:06] Sean: That number is already higher today than it was On Saturday. So it’s, it’s pretty neat D and we actually extended the fundraising efforts specifically for this event to the end of the year, so that we can continue to, to generate the buzz and everything that’s going on with, with this and give people an opportunity to continue to donate to our, either directly through our fundraising page so that we can watch that number grow specifically for that.

Or buy the Tesla world record attempt gear that’s available and all those proceeds go to OU R as well, which is really cool. Yeah. 

[00:08:39] Torie: Awesome. And so we had a representative from our fish, had a couple there, but we had one that came up and spoke and told everybody about. They gave us bags. They gave us some information.

So, you know, the night before we were still stuffing bags and making bags so that we had one to hand out to each of the people that were registered. So O U R came out after the event and spoke. We had an outside, so it was very, you know, social distance and spaced out. And then we had Eliza Blue there who was a sex trafficking survivor.

They got to come up and tell her story. And it was really nice to bring. And she even talked about that with me afterwards to bring like these two different crowds together that didn’t really know anything that much about each other. And now like they’re both fighting for each other and supporting each other. And I think there was a lot of different connections made and like, there’s going to be a lot coming out of this. Did you feel that way too? 

[00:09:27] Sean: Yeah, I think you know, oh, you are, does a lot of great things in regards to human trafficking, but I think what we did on, on December 12th with this world record attempt was just raise a whole lot of awareness for what’s going on with human trafficking and the sex trafficking world and all that kind of stuff that nobody wants to think about or talk about but happens all around us.

And at the time. Of something like this happening, where we are in Atlanta, right before we started this whole journey kind of took us down in his path that, that made it so that we wanted to do this specifically for our, to help make a difference in this. So, I mean, no matter what, in the end.

Record, no record whatever happens in the end. You know, officially, I think we still made a really big impact hopefully, and know combating human trafficking and hopefully, you know, these few dollars that we’ve raised, you know, maybe save some kids or change somebody’s life. I, I like to think that, you know, we did something really good and I think everybody else.

You know, whether they’ve donated directly to the event for this or someone else, or maybe they volunteer, or maybe now it’s just on their radar and they can continue to do something about it in the future. It’s really cool. I think we made a major impact. 

[00:10:48] Torie: I do you, and speaking of doing things for the good and, you know, we did another video earlier today, just updating everybody that participated. And I mentioned that there, and I really want to mention it again, but I talked to quite a few people that came up to me. Thank you so much for doing this. I have been in my house. I haven’t gone out like this is, I needed this. This was such an important event. Like you guys did it safe and people were you know, everybody felt really comfortable with how we did it.

You know, people wore masks, people stayed away from each other as they felt comfortable. We had things outdoors like, so it was, it was pretty easy that way. I had a lady come up to me that was from North Carolina that drove down here and she was like, we haven’t left the house. We haven’t done anything. Like they brought their dog with them and they stayed in a hotel. We, we so needed to come out and just get fresh air and just be with other people. You guys like it. Like, I never thought of that. Like, we’ve, we’ve really stayed at home during this whole entire thing too. We’ve stayed close, we haven’t traveled.

But we still do go to the gym and we do a couple little things. You know, we got to one from, we can small things, but you’re thinking of these people that haven’t really done anything at all. And to have this opportunity and you, everybody was so nice and it was just such a great time. Mellow. Everybody was happy. Everybody got along. Like, I really couldn’t have asked for more in that kind of way. 

[00:12:10] Sean: It was really cool to see everybody come together and, you know, the way we laid everything out. It’s a challenge with all the COVID stuff to, to do anything like this yet alone to do something like this with no COVID. But we, we really tried to make it so that if people weren’t comfortable getting out of their cars, they really didn’t have to. Although we had some technical difficulties with the the live feed, it didn’t really prevent the attempt from happening and it didn’t, it didn’t really change anything in the end. As far as still going to the same destination and still being able to see the same. So it was really cool. It makes me really excited to do something like this again, you know, post COVID. 

[00:12:51] Torie: Absolutely. Yeah. You know, having the after you know, get together, we were really like, our hands were tied on what we could do with that.

Having something maybe the night before a meet and greet, like with really couldn’t do that. I wanted to feed everybody. I wanted to like cater some snacks or something. Like if you’ve had everybody sit in a parking lot for hours, You know, and then drive down to Atlanta freeway. Like, I, it would’ve been really nice to be able to, it would have been nice. It’s like, there’s so many different would have been nicest. But how it came together considering like.

[00:13:20] Sean: I ideally, you know, we could have had food trucks at the beginning. We could have had the whole banquet area at the hotel and had a big feast and all parties and all that kind of stuff. It just, it wasn’t something that, you know, we can really do at this time. So, you know, we had to make, do as what we had and I think it has worked out well, the names, 

[00:13:43] Torie: I think people understood that and people seem still really, really happy. And a lot of people stuck around afterwards. A lot of people didn’t then they went home. Yeah, I think that it worked out pretty good and you know, both of our kids were there and they helped out. We’d also like in the morning before, like when the volunteers first got there, we did some nice community service and all of the volunteers went and picked up a crap ton of trash out of the parking lot. So it was a nice thing for the city of Alpharetta there that we could help clean up some of their, their area. Cause we had it and we started in Park and Ride. So that was really nice. And, you know, my kids were out there. Our kids were out there, you know, helping out and everything. And so. But we thought about like, not having the kids be there. Like we could leave the kids at home. It’ll only be for a few hours or, you know, maybe having them, you know, get watched or something like that.

But I’m really happy that they were there. And so that they can see everything that we put into it and be a part of it so that like, they might’ve thought it was kind of a drag. So the time, you know, like, oh yeah, just sit in a parking lot forever. And you know, we helped do some stuff. But then like years from now, I think they’re going to remember, like, remember when we did the Guinness record. 

[00:14:45] Sean: And like commissioner Tim Echols, wasn’t afraid to put them to work there. He said, go do this, go do that. And right. As I was walking down the line, making sure everybody had their QR codes ready so that when they got to where they were going to get scanned, they didn’t have to fumble around and try to find it. That was huge. 

[00:15:03] Torie: Yep. Bella, a little bit shyer stuck with mom, but she still, she helped me with some technical things and, and she was kinda my go-to girl and, and both of them did really great, but one thing I do want to mention, and I think it’s super important.

Like. Guinness had a lot of requirements and some of the requirements were pretty strict and trying to organize this many people to do a very specific thing, especially when you can’t like gather everybody together and talk directly to them, like trying to make sure, even if we did that, like there’s a lot of people in vehicles to.

Organized to do one thing. So it’s possible that we didn’t get the record. I don’t know. Like we had some, like, after the whole entire thing happened and we were some of the last cars that went out because we were still trying to help arrange everything. We had stuff to pack up. So we didn’t really know how the beginning of, of the parade went.

But towards the end, like, and I bet we were car, you know, but three hundred and thirty, thirty five, like we were in the end the parade was broke up. Like there was no way that like, everything had stayed together, but we didn’t have to have 340. We only had to have more than 145, but really we don’t know.

And so we hadn’t seen any of the drone footage. We hadn’t seen anything yet. It was just like us in our car. And we’re like, man, I don’t know if we did it, you know, maybe we did it, you know, it’s not really that important, but, but we’re, we’re really wanting to kind of know like how everything went because it’s so out of our hands and if we didn’t get to see it all and Riley was like, if we didn’t get it, like we shouldn’t have done this.

He was so upset in the car, but it wasn’t about that. And if we don’t get it. Fine like that. Wasn’t the point. 

[00:16:43] Sean: And so I don’t get is literally just the word, the name Guinness, like ultimately, yeah. That’s the largest gathering of Teslas. That was the largest parade of Teslas that wasn’t the quiet tesla parade. I mean, that was that there was so many things. I mean, we definitely knocked out of the park. We just, whether or not we put a title to it is to be determined. 

[00:17:08] Torie: Well, and I feel now that I’ve seen some of the drone footage, oh my gosh, you guys, it’s amazing. Like go to the Mile Through Time Facebook page. And I know Sean’s been posting a lot of it there and sharing some of the things that are coming in. You guys, it’s amazing. Some of this drone footage and everything, like, I feel very confident about it now that I’ve seen some of them. But just that, you know, you gotta, you have to try to do hard things.

Like don’t just go for the easy stuff. And if you don’t. Accomplish what you set out for, maybe you don’t accomplish that one thing, like maybe we didn’t get the Guinness world record, but we raised a shit ton of money. We brought a lot of people out. We brought people together Eliza flew in from somewhere and spoke to everybody about.

So many other things that we accomplished.

[00:17:53] Sean: In three months. 

[00:17:54] Torie: Less than three months. Yeah. Three months. So in this short period of time that if we just didn’t get that one little thing, like it’s okay. I really think so. And so you’ll talking to Riley about that and explaining that to him, I think was really important.

[00:18:07] Sean: Plus the lessons learned the experience we have from this. And everybody involves that had never done anything like this. Like we’re all experienced now. I mean, including just the, just the people that just participated in the parade, they kind of. What to expect when it happens again, we’re going to check them out.

We’re going to go flow. We need to get moving. It’s not new anymore. 

[00:18:31] Torie: Right. And you don’t know until, you know, like you can’t read a book and learn to swim, right? Like you have to get in the water. Like there’s no way we could have planned this to know how, I mean, it’s something totally new for all of us.

[00:18:44] Sean: And like, most people don’t realize, like this was not the original. None of, none of it was the original plan. Really. You know, we, it was like three months ago. We, we just saw the record decided to go for it. 

[00:18:59] Torie: Because we were new Tesla owners. Like we’ve only had our Tesla for four months and 

[00:19:05] Sean: you know, there’s no, no clue completely green on this, not knowing anything other than.

145 Teslas didn’t seem like that much. It now seems like a ton of Teslas and I see why people haven’t been. 

[00:19:20] Torie: Oh my goodness. You guys like permits and, and oh, how many people we had to get together? 

[00:19:27] Sean: That’s the original route that I had anticipated doing didn’t work out the original spot to start to parade didn’t work out at the spot that I wanted to end the parade. They never got back to me. It wasn’t until Sean, the director at the Western actually responded to me. Yeah, we’d love to have you guys all come to the Westin that was the starting point. That is all we had to go off of. 

[00:19:53] Torie: And that took just a while to get just to that.

[00:19:56] Sean: Ate up about a month, just trying to figure that part out. Then it came down to, well, where do we start from? Where can we fit this many cars and start from and not be in people’s way? I had already been told by other police officers. Your intersections are our issues, which is why the original route had too many intersections. And they’re like, yeah, we’re not going to be able to do that for you.

And so then at any, and he was the one that actually is like, Well, have you thought of the parking rides there right off of highways because it was his suggestion, you know, a highway is going to be your best bet cause there’s no intersections and the parking Rides or public space, so we can just park there.

And so the Windward Parkway parking ride was the closest, largest parking lot that I could find to the Westin there’s actually a park and ride a little bit close. But it definitely would not have fit all the cars in there. And so that obviously would have been an issue. 

[00:20:50] Torie: The hard part too, is that not only do you have to plan all of this, but you don’t know how many people are going to show up.

We could have had a hundred, we could add 140. We could have had 340. Like you really don’t know. 

[00:21:00] Sean: We could have had 146 people sign up and then 60 show up. I mean, you, you, you realize no idea. 

[00:21:07] Torie: Like usually for a lot of things, like when people cause we had people sign up for free, we didn’t charge people, which I think we talked about that today.

If we did it again, maybe charge something very small so that it, that people only people that are serious. 

[00:21:20] Sean: Even a donation for the nobody’s profiting off of this. 

[00:21:24] Torie: To save your spot, then it would have been a couple more dollars, you know, to give to O U R and then maybe it would have helped to weed out some of those people that maybe wouldn’t weren’t really serious about it, but they were like, Hey, it’s free.

Let’s line up, you know? Cause it was months ago. So that might’ve been a good idea just to kind of get a better idea. The turnout was insane. Like I’m so impressed with how many people actually showed up and people showed up from all over the place. I know I, I Instagram message somebody yesterday.

That was from St. Aug. The lady that I talked to, what that brought her dog, she was from Charlotte. Other people from North Carolina, 

[00:21:59] Sean: Virginia, North Carolina, Chicago, somebody saw an Alaska plate, Pennsylvania, Alabama, Tennessee, Kentucky, South Carolina, North Carolina, Florida. Yeah, there, I mean all over the place. So that, that, that was, and that was all during, you know, what we’re experiencing right now in the economy. So you can, I mean, you can only imagine what it would be. Under normal circumstances. 

[00:22:22] Torie: And we definitely learned a lot and there’s a lot of things that we help. It was not just us. Like there were so many people involved to make this happen and 50 volunteers. And then, and we could have used more, you know, and we had just even like the people that were in charge of things and organizing it was, it was more than not. It’s like we could not have done this by ourselves. Though, you know, we just had an idea. We came up with an idea and ran with it and ran really far.

We’re pretty good at doing that. And I think that’s cool. 

[00:22:54] Sean: Absolutely. 

[00:22:56] Torie: But we learned a lot if we did it again and you guys were going to do it again. A lot of things that we learned that we could do a little bit better, but none of those things, like in, in retrospect, in hindsight, like yeah, we could say all kinds of things would have been easier. The important thing is we did have a small fender. Did happen on the highway and, but everybody was fine. It was very minimal. There’s nothing that, I mean, people are driving, we don’t have any control over drivers. So there’s nothing that we really could have done for that. The live stream that we have.

I live stream that morning for hours and everything was fine. And then the whole site crashed. I was able to get it back up, but it took a while. Like we had some, some things that went wrong and even though we have things that went wrong, we had a lot of things that went right. And I think that we could do it again and do it even better.

[00:23:41] Sean: Yeah. Yeah. Some of that, that tech, like, you know, right before the parade started, I went Facebook live on Miles Through Time page and I was it, we just checked not too long ago that done reached 42,000 people, 

[00:23:56] Torie: 42,000. So that was a mistake that we made also because Sean ended up being one of the people that had to be there that was an event bright person to scan the thing. So he wasn’t able to go live or talk to people or do anything. And so I think if we did it again, we would make sure that Sean had no job because Sean needs to be the guy that’s out there, like doing those things. And then once the live feed went down and then we did the new live feed that Sean just did on the Facebook page.

Like it reached so many people, but he was just not available to do it because you were busy bee out there, work, work working. And, and so that’s definitely something I think that we could do different next time. Yeah. 

[00:24:35] Sean: Yeah. The other thing is going to be the route, you know, anybody that watches this, that, that was actually there. That’s not going to be the same place. We do it again. The parking layout is going to be different. Like I said, we have time we’ve got knowledge. So yeah, everything that worked well, we’ll obviously do again, everything that we see how we can improve. Consider it done next time. It should be that much better. 

[00:25:02] Torie: Easier, safer, quicker we learned a lot. 

[00:25:06] Sean: So, I mean, originally, even at, at the route that we did it on, we were just going to jump straight on the phone. And even that had changed where we were able to accomplish the actual Guinness record minimum of two miles prior to ever getting on to 400. And we had GS enough parallel highways road space to get that done.

And I was told by other people that were at the front of the parade, they were already getting on the 400, a couple of miles. And we still had cars in the parking lot, funneling out into the print that tells you we had over two miles long of cars, which that in itself creates a challenge. 

[00:25:45] Torie: That’s a lot of people, a lot of people to get out of a parking lot.

[00:25:48] Sean: But ultimately, like I said, we have the record, whether we say Guinness or not is to be determined, but we also only need to get 146 cars to be confirmed by Guinness. And we still get the Guinness record. It may just not say, well, I can guarantee Guinness. Isn’t going to say three. But as long as it’s 346, we’ve got it. And everybody 146 and as long as you know, everybody that was there, that’s part of it. You’re all getting. 

[00:26:15] Torie: It was awesome. So if you liked this episode, please subscribe to our channel and definitely go to the Miles Through Time, Facebook page, and check out what we’ve been doing, you know, follow us there.

We’d really appreciate that Miles Through Time also has a YouTube channel that you could go check out and subscribe to them. 

[00:26:34] Sean: Playlist specifically for this Tesla record. So. Creating content and it’s putting their YouTube videos on there. We’re going to put them on this playlist so that everybody knows where they can go to see all the content that was created. Cause there’s, there’s a ton of it. 

[00:26:49] Torie: So definitely check us out and like this video and we will see you next time. Lots of updates coming up. Thanks.

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