When Helen Megennis and her husband set out to support their kids’ passion for racing, they didn’t expect to build a motorsport business from the ground up. But what began as a way to raise sponsorship and cover racing costs quickly grew into a full-time operation—one that now hosts VIPs from global tech companies at race events across the U.S.

With no big team behind them, Helen found herself wearing every hat—from logistics to marketing to guest experience. She needed a better way to communicate with guests, streamline race-day details, and showcase the content that made their events so memorable. That’s when she discovered Movement.

Using Movement’s Done For You service, Helen launched a custom event app that looked polished, reflected their brand, and was easy to manage on her own. Now, instead of juggling PDFs, emails, and outdated tools, Megennis Motorsport delivers a seamless digital experience—built to impress, and built to scale.

Can you tell us about yourself and your business?

Motorsport is a family business for my husband and me—it’s his side hustle alongside a full-time job, and for me, it’s become a full-time job running this business. We started it because we have two children who wanted to race cars, and that’s an expensive sport—especially when you're starting out. We had some ideas for how we could raise money through sponsorships, and honestly, that’s the only reason we started this business. We wouldn’t be doing this or representing other drivers if it weren’t for our kids. It’s all for them.

What led you to create an app?

Most of our sponsors are technology companies. At certain race weekends, they’ll ask us to host their guests—many of whom have never been to a racetrack before. These are big events at big venues, and it can be overwhelming if you don’t know motorsport. They’re usually a great group of people who are up for a new experience, so we really needed a way to communicate with them clearly and concisely.

What brought me specifically to Movement is that I didn’t just want to relay information. We have great content—videos, photos, polls, surveys, fun things like that—and it felt like such a shame not to use them.

"A lot of the other apps we looked at were fine for sharing text or maps, but they felt very geared towards conferences or corporate events. Movement was the one platform that really let us have fun with the experience. It just looks better than the rest—I did a lot of research, and I’m really confident about that."

Anything that might’ve looked as good as Movement would’ve been a totally different proposition in terms of price, and honestly, this business is just me and my husband. I’m not a marketing person—I do all the marketing. I’m not a finance person—I do all the accounting and taxes too. I wear every hat.

"I didn’t have the time to build an app from scratch or learn how to do that, or even manage someone else doing it. Movement made it easy, and it still looks really good. When I say there was no other option that gave us what Movement did—I truly mean it. That’s how we ended up here."

Why did you choose the Done for You service versus doing it yourself?

When I started with the trial, I was able to play around and I knew I could build it myself. But I realized every time I added something, I was doing it a little differently. It looked okay in the app—but I’m sure on the backend, it was a bit of a hot mess. I was duplicating, deleting, dragging things around... just kind of winging it without much structure.

That’s what really appealed to me about the Done For You service—I knew it would be created with a more thoughtful structure. My approach was more like, "just put a photo here," but I knew there was more going on behind the scenes that needed to be done properly. What your team produced gave me that structure.

Do you have any tips for someone building an app with Movement?

This goes for Movement or any app, really—I think the best advice is just to come in prepared. Have some idea of what you want and what you need it to do. If I had come in on day one and said, “I’m kinda thinking maybe this,” that would’ve made it hard—for me and for your team.

But because I already had a sense of what it needed to be and look like, it made the process smoother. So my advice is: come a little prepared.

Also—definitely take advantage of the free trial. That was super helpful for me. I got to play with the builder, see what was possible, and figure out what I could and couldn’t do myself. Then I could come to the team and say, “I see I can’t do this—can you do it for me?” And with Done For You, you were able to take care of the parts I couldn’t handle myself.

Have you  seen any tangible benefits or measurable impact since you've launched the app?

We had a recent event, and everyone showed up—and nobody got lost! Honestly, for me, that’s the biggest win.

"No matter how great the app looks, the information is what’s important. And everyone was able to access what they needed. They downloaded the app, found the info, and got where they needed to be. That alone made it a success—the app did exactly what it was supposed to do."

From a company perspective, we always want to show off how great our cars look and how fun it is. That part’s harder to gauge, but we got a lot of compliments—people telling us how great the app looked. 

Have you received user feedback on the app?

No. But for me, feedback is usually something like, “I can't figure out how to do X.” So the lack of it is its own feedback, quite frankly! We've used other apps in the past, and people would say they couldn't find things or couldn’t load something. We haven’t had that this time—so it’s working, and that’s great. That’s all I need to know.

I was a little concerned about the downloading part at first—because you're not going to an app store, and it’s web-based, so people need to learn how to save it to their home screen. But no, we haven't really heard anything, which is a good sign.

"I was a little concerned about the downloading part at first—because you're not going to an app store, and it’s web-based, so people need to learn how to save it to their home screen. But no, we haven't really heard anything, which is a good sign."

Before creating the app, how were you managing event information and logistics?

So it started with emails and we were like ‘this is crazy—it looks terrible.’ Then we moved to PDFs, but those were tough because they often get flagged as spam. A lot of our guests are getting emails at work, and sometimes their systems block external emails with PDFs for security reasons. So we had people saying they weren’t receiving them, and that had to go out the window.

We moved on to what used to be called Adobe Spark. It looked okay and it was fine, but it was very limited. We were able to get the info across, but it wasn’t ideal.

Then we used another app that actually worked well, but it didn’t look as good as we wanted. And that’s really the only reason we left it. And that brought us to Movement.

How do you see the app growing or evolving in the future?

Right now our app is primarily being used by people who come to the track as our VIP guests so we don't market or publicize the app. 

It’s seen by a small group of people, but that group includes C-level executives from multi-billion-dollar companies—like the Chief Technology Officer at Wayfair, or executives from Pepsi, Subway, and others. So it has visibility, just in a very specific, high-level group.

"If we were ever going to expand, I imagine it would be to explore how we could create something for the masses. Right now, our programming isn’t taking us there, so the need hasn’t come up yet but I can absolutely see how, if we did open things up, Movement would be a great fit for that."

Motorsport has long been seen as an exclusive, traditional, and male-dominated space. How have you and your family worked to challenge expectations and create new opportunities for your team?

Motorsport has become more popular recently—thanks to some movies and television shows—but when we first started, it wasn’t like that at all. You couldn’t really watch Formula 1 races on TV in the U.S., and the focus here was almost entirely on NASCAR. You didn’t see open-wheel or sports car racing like you do in Europe. So yes—it was very male-dominated and very exclusive.

When we entered the sport, we had no motorsport background—neither my husband nor I. We had to figure it out as we went and probably made some decisions that, to people in the industry, seemed pretty dumb. A lot of young racers have dads who raced or come from families in the sport. That wasn’t us.

"But I think that worked in our favor. We had to be thoughtful. We didn’t come into it with expectations about how things were “supposed” to be done—how money should be raised, how things should be paid for. So the program we’ve created is actually quite unique. There aren’t many drivers doing what we’re doing, and we’re proud of that. It was hard to figure out, but that’s part of what makes it work."

In terms of breaking tradition: our younger daughter Georgie is a trans woman. She started her career as a young boy, and now she races as herself. We live in New York City, so maybe we live in a bit of a bubble when it comes to how the world might react—but we kind of stay in that bubble. She wants to race, so she races. That’s how we see it.

"We don’t go out of our way to make any kind of statement about it—but her presence on the grid is a statement in itself, and it’s hers. As her parents, our job is to support her. How she chooses to exist in this world is up to her."

She doesn’t race as frequently as our older son—her type of racing isn’t as common in the U.S.—so it’s not something we’re navigating all the time. But I’m sure we’ll experience it all eventually: positive and negative. It’s a tough sport to break into—on many levels.

One of the documentaries on Netflix brought a lot more attention and a lot more people to motorsports. Would you say that it's changing in terms of representation or accessibility? Or is it still just as difficult to break into and be represented?

It’s definitely bringing in more people. Not only are more people of color showing interest, but a lot of the different racing series now have diversity scholarships and programs that are really sensitive to that. But with that, there’s also pushback. I think in a more progressive sport it wouldn’t be as divisive or as big of a deal—but in motorsport, it can be.

That said, yes—Drive to Survive and the other shows and movies have brought a lot more attention to motorsport, and that can only help. We’re now seeing people who might not even be fans of the sport itself, but fans of specific drivers or just the lifestyle. That’s completely new to us, and honestly, it’s kind of hysterical—but it’s great. It can only help in terms of making motorsport more accessible and open.

What is the best advice you’ve ever received as a business owner—something that’s helped shift or improve your business?

I’m not sure if this is advice exactly, but I really believe there’s just an element of—you’ve got to grind. You’ve got to put in the work. At the end of the day, you’re trying to do something different from most people, and small business owners just have a different work ethic. My husband’s parents were small business owners, my parents were too—it’s just something we both grew up with.

You know other people are clocking out at 5 or 6, and you just can’t do that. You’re still working at 9pm with your laptop on your lap, and that’s just part of it. I don’t think we feel resentful about it because we’ve always known that’s how it would be.

And honestly, I don’t know what this would’ve looked like if we were trying to do it 15 years ago—before the technology existed to support small businesses the way it does now. I wouldn’t have been sitting there on a typewriter typing press releases—that would’ve been beyond me! But now we have tools that help us actually look and feel like a legitimate business.

"When you have a great-looking app, a real website, beautiful materials—even if it’s just using Canva or whatever—it all makes a huge difference. It’s like, “Hey, we’ve got letterhead. That makes us real.” That’s how we felt about the app—we wanted it to look good because what we do is so visual. It’s video, it’s sound, it’s images—and we wanted people to really experience that."

"Having a company like Movement that can help us do that easily, because you’ve figured out the tech side, has been everything. I genuinely don’t know how we would have done this without that."

When I was looking for an app, I probably looked at 10 different platforms, and I couldn’t tell you which ones were massive brands and which ones were tiny mom-and-pop shops—there’s just no distinction visually anymore. And that’s what levels the playing field. When you’re a small business owner, having something like that makes you feel more confident. It gives you the tools to go out and actually do the business you want to do.

For Megennis Motorsport, Movement has become more than just a tool—it’s a foundation for delivering a premium guest experience, expanding visibility in a traditional sport, and helping a small family-run business stand shoulder-to-shoulder with big brands. Whether they’re guiding first-time spectators through a track day or sharing stunning visual content from the pits, Helen’s app gives her team the professionalism, polish, and structure to make a lasting impression. And when it comes to what’s next? That same hands-on, thoughtful approach will keep them on track—wherever the road leads.

Ready to launch with ease? Our team has you covered so you can focus on the why, while we take care of the how.

Check out the Megennis Motorsport app or find Megennis Motorsport on Instagram.

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