Welcome to the Merchant of Dirt Podcast episode number 6. Thank you for joining me for the merch as a dirt podcast. This is your insider's guide to practical recreational engineering, where I teach you the art and science of building, promoting, and directing off road races. I'm your host, professional recognier in race promoter Kyle Bondo. Coming up on this episode, we're going to get into why developing systems that is sets of repeatable processes is essential to building successful races.
How the techniques of documentation, consensus, and orchestration form the corestones of your race promotion business. And we'll get into how to put those cornerstones into practice by building your 1st race promotion system or what I like to call your road map. First. First base, first place, first step. Everything starts with the first something. Race promoters have a difficult time with first. What to do first? What to buy first? What to promote first?
You know, instead of what they should be doing first, like learning how to build a business, or maybe watching other race promoters who are successful in how they do it, or each and simply writing things down so they don't have to learn them again, they wing it. And Mister Murphy loves the wing it crowd.
Mean, those are his people. I think Mister Murphy has a whole waiting room full of race promoters who just wing it. Yeah. Exactly. He just told me that that's how he was able to pay for his monster Ford Hennessy F 2 50 Super Duty Velocirac or SUV. It's from all those wingate people because he's destroyed so many races. Just imagine the kind of money rolls in with all that destruction. Anyway, if you don't know what a
f 2 50 Super Duty Velociraptor is. And the show notes at merchants of dirt.com, I'll put a link to that because it is a seriously scary vehicle. Like, a $160,000. Super, super scary. So I imagine this is something that that Mister Murphy loves driving because he loves to run over people's dreams, and you need a big truck to do that. Let's not give Mister Murphy any more money. Right? Because we like to hear at the mercy of her podcast, make Mister Murphy upset
by doing things the away. Unfortunately, if you like me, your eraser term promoter. Okay? And as a eraser, the first thing most likely feel comfortable tackling in your brace plan is the 1 thing you know best. And that is, of course, your course design. Your course design, this is the eraser's comfort zone. I mean, don't feel bad. I started there too. I started with course design. You everyone arrives at their first step in different ways. For the for the Razer Trim promoter, first is
what you know. And, of course, the course is what you know. Of course is a course or or so. But if that is your first You have to do something difficult. You have to figure out what comes next. What comes after you've thought up the course? I mean, you have a vision of what you plan on doing? And of course, I hear the the crowds out there. Like, no. I see fine. I don't need a vision. Sure. Okay. How about a strategy to guide you?
You know, sure. 1st, build a race, then hold a race, and then repeat. Right? Piles the money roll in after that. Right? Yeah. What about Kohl's, marketing, insurance, permits. And, of course, what I hear the most is I'll figure all that out later. Right now, my course is rocking, all that business stuff. Well, That'll come later. It's recent time.
Unfortunately, this is where most recent voters businesses start to go out of business. I mean, after creating a course. There's this like reverse engineering process that starts to take place in an attempt to make all the decisions you made while you were wigging it. Fit into the right boxes. Your next is to build a business after the race stuff. The result is a mixed up sequence of activities. Resulting in an environment where nobody knows what comes next.
In my episode titled, be a race promoter, not a race director. I talked about how the race promoter runs the business, while the race director is the role within the company, the role that runs the race. I also talked about how when you first start out, the race promoter and the race director are often the same person.
And if you if you have the chance, please go back and listen to that episode. You can find it on the merchants of dirt.com or you can download it. I believe it's episode 4 on iTunes. And it will give you some really good insight into what I'm talking about. And what I'm about to talk about next. And what is that? To surgically remove the race promoter from the race director. Okay. I know. This is gonna get messy.
But I have a highly trained recreational engineer, so I will do my best to limit the pain that you're about to experience and hopefully teach you something in the process. And if you make it through this, you will be equipped to promote your races like never before. You could think of this as the true insiders look into race promotion, and I guarantee you will not get this anywhere else. Are you ready?
I have Mister Murphy, my cohost here to assist me in case things go off the rails, which, ironically, exactly the kind of rails he enjoys. But he promises to behave. He promises to behave? He nodding, he said yes. Okay. So here we go. We talked a little about where most parade race prone voters find their first. And what they often do next, but we what we haven't talked about is why any of that is bad to do. That is where we will start taking this apart.
With the y, you should not start with course design and races before you build a business. When you wing it, you have all the control. And you are the only 1 who knows what comes next. Now only you, if you have the time, can get anything done. Why can only you get anything done, because everything is still in your head. Remember, you winged it. Nothing's written down. Nothing has followed. If just you and your gut, riding off into the sunset, meanwhile, You can't share a single task
with anyone else. Not unless you take the time to explain all the whats and the whys of doing it. That sounds exhausting. I don't want to have to explain it all the time. Why can't they just get it? Right? Why? Why can't I just tell them something and then just get it? Why do I eating everything all the time. You wanna know why? Because you never taught anyone to get it. Welcome to your single point failure. You, the first cut is made.
Miss Murphy is telling me blood pressure is slightly elevated. That has to be expected. I mean, time for some more cutting, and we'll see how all the blood pressure works. Why is having everything you know about racing only in your head bad? So if you listen to episode 4, you might already know where I'm going with this, but don't get ahead of me. Okay. Don't worry. Yes. Everything is in your head. When you get sick or get stuck in traffic or need to go out of town or win the lottery,
You might do some racing when the lottery. But chances are you're gonna go traveling. So bye bye racing. Right? Who knows what comes next? If you're not there, who knows what steps to take next in your race promotion business. The answer Can you guess what it is? That's right. It's nobody. And that is the biggest reason race promoters do not make any money.
Boom. The second cut is complete. But your breathing is good. No sign of bleeding. Mister Murphy's giving me the thumbs up. Okay. Time for some more. The number 1 reason race promoters do not make money is that nobody can do what they do. Why? Because they don't want anybody know what they do. Too many race promoters argue with the corn, snowflakes, 1 offs, and they never do anything the same way twice.
They don't like to share their process that's in their heads with anyone but their closest coffee knots. Why? Did they keep it all themselves? Why the hesitation? Well, okay. This is kind of alright. Here's Kyle's opinion on this. But I think it has a lot to do with this misconception that if they teach somebody what they do that they become irrelevant.
They teach others their special way of doing it. Those others are gonna run off and do their own race promotion business, and they'll their business will crumble and die AI. If they have control the process, then everyone has to come to them. They maintain all the control. Unfortunately, with all that control comes, the unintended consequence, everyone has to wait for you to make a decision. No 1 can act without your input. Your direction, your authority.
This kind of thinking has a name, Mister fee. Can you remember what their name is? Yes. It's called control freak, micromanager, tyrant. Yeah. Those are a few. Ouch. I know. That cut hurt, didn't it? You don't wanna be called a control freak. No 1 wants to be called a micromanager. But being unable to share your process
is what that is when you control everything and everything has to come to you before anyone can make a decision. That's called the control freak, and being unable to share your process is incredibly inefficient. And it violates 1 of my main principles of race promoting, which is show value. And in the show notes, I have a blog post on rickinger.com
about the principles of Profropower Race. And 1 of them is showing value. Do you think you being the only 1 who can run your race and no 1 can make a decision? Do you think that's valuable? I know. But actively involved, isn't that going to produce some value? If your process is on your head, then how do you share it? Or do you even try to share it. You cannot get everyone engaged
or to take initiative. No 1 knows what comes next. Or what the goal is supposed to look like nor can you execute your plan with any speed? Because they will always be waiting for you to make a decision. Not just the important ones, all of them Your team will be stuck
after each action waiting for you to tell them what to do next. Do I fill the coolers? Yes. Feel the coolers? Do I string the tape? Yes. Just string the tape. Do I put up the table? Yes. You still put the table. Oh my gosh. Why do you keep asking all these things? Because he didn't tell them.
You didn't tell them what comes next. They're waiting for you to tell them what comes next. And when each activity has to be delegated by you, involves you, and has to be managed by you, You are the single point of failure. Does that sound very valuable? If everyone's waiting around for your permission, nothing is getting achieved.
That's why keeping everything in your head will eventually doom your business. You are the single point of failure, and I will say that a hundred times. Times until it gets through your head, but there's rays on shine. There's a rainbow with a golden bucket of gold. Golden bucket of gold. That's a new 1. There is a way to stop doing this.
How do you stop from being the single point of failure? Well, that's an excellent question. I'm glad you asked that question. Shut up, Mister Murphy. Mister Murphy doesn't want you to know this question, to answer this question. But that's why you're here. Right? Okay. So let's learn how to stop being the single joy failure. And this is part of our surgery. We're gonna cut that race promoter from the race director. So first, we're gonna go back to kindergarten and remember
a primary thing that we learn there. And what is that? Sharing is good. Sharing. Sharing is the same as teaching, coaching, and mentoring. It's good. It's good to teach. It's good to coach. It's good to mentor. 2nd, learn to let go of some of that control. That's for some people. Right? You need to share the way you want your racers and your race to go with others. Release all that fear that someone will walk away with your process and go start their own racing company. Let them.
It takes more than just knowing your process to build profitable company. But you have to let go of that fear. Can you do that? I think you can. Problem is, are you willing to let go of that control? And learn how to share your process. Because sharing can create you the value you're looking for. And if you're ready to do that, then you're ready for what comes next. You see my first 3 podcasts or first 4 podcasts are linked in a very special way.
The first 1, titled Welcome to Merchant substrate. Set the stage for understanding why you are here. The second 1, what I wished I knew before my first race, detail the challenges you are certainly going to encounter along the way. Kinda prepared you. Kinda get you ready for, you know, should I really be doing this? The 3rd podcast your first strategic vision quest, that's the 1 where you got all, like, you know, weird and squishy. Right? Gets you focused on what you actually wanna build. Seeing
your destination is. The 4th 1 started you down the path of separating yourself from your race direction rule. And more into leading the company as a race promoter. These were your first. Your first steps towards building a race promotion business in had another chance, I'd recommend you go back and listen to the first 4 Merchants River podcast. You can go to merchantship.com. There's links all over the place for any kind of device you wanna use it on. Because all all 4 episodes are linked.
They're building you towards the beginning of what I call your road map. If you remember, when I'd Willie's treasure couldn't be found until the goonies found the map. But once they found the map, that led them through a huge adventure
on actually finding the giant pirate ship full of gold and silver ring diamonds. This is the same kind of thing a road map is simply a step by step approach to getting to where you wanna go. That's it. There's nothing really nothing really complicated about that. But those 4 episodes lead you down that road. The 5th 1, 5th 1, well, I experiment a little bit. It's still some valuable stuff because, you know, there are all sorts of things you need to worry race builder. But the first 4, those lead you to what we're doing today, which is your road map. Alright. So how do we get to your how do we get to the road map? Well, the key to your road map is
3 parts, and you get there by leveraging the techniques of documentation, consensus, and orchestration. These are the cornerstones of successful race promotion. Yeah. You're Mister Murphy going cornerstones. Okay. Let me explain because Mister Murphy doesn't seem to get this. Because he doesn't want you to have cornerstones. You want you to wing it. Right? Yeah. We're not winging it. We have cornerstones.
These are big old rocks put into the ground. Right? Cornerstones, hold up buildings, hold up structures. This is gonna hold up your racing framework.
Scary word. Right? Framework. It's it's not scary word. It's simply the foundation for which you're going to build your successful race promotion business on. Okay? So let's get into those. Back mutation. Number 1. Is just getting your process out of your head. When you put it into this form, everyone can see it and share it. I mean, you're beginning to remove yourself from being that single point of failure. That's all that is documentation. That's it. Consensus. Number 2
is where the race promoter turns a race into something of value. I mean, value is good. Right? Because when you stop doing everything yourself, you start involving your team, you increase your capability to see the things you never noticed before. It kind of takes you out of that role of being too they call it in the weeds. Takes you out of being the weeds. You get that 10000 foot level. You start to see things like, oh, hey, that's interesting.
I didn't know I could do that before. Consensus gives your team a chance to start noticing things that they can improve on too. Imagine that. Together, you and your team will become will begin to create good value out of bad and new value were none exist before. And number 3, the final cornerstone is orchestration. Orchestration is simply the execution of your process. This is how the race promoter turns a documented plan to do a profitable race. But this is all tied together to create value,
It does. Now, enter the road map. If documentation consensus and registration are the cornerstones of race promotion, then the road map is the structure that those stones support. Without 1 cornerstone, the structure falls. This makes the road map a fundamental tool used for sharing your overall plan for the team. It allows everyone involved to see the big picture and agree
on how it will be implemented. I mean, grieving this key here Without agreement, you know, without consensus, that's the agreement part of what is being documented, then orchestration will be difficult. If you as a race runner are going to be efficient in executing your plan, everyone needs to be going in the same direction and they need to go in that direction the same way each
time it's used over and over. No, 1 cornerstone outweighs the other. They all have to be in sync for the road map to work. Let's say it again. If 1 of your cornerstones is missing, the other 2 will not provide you the benefit. It's that simple. Once you have a balance to your road map structure, you will begin to choice and benefits. 1 of those benefits is having the ability to review
how well your plans are processed or executed. Could you imagine that? You imagine looking back on a race and race before that. Race for that, and being able to evaluate with actual measures and metrics.
How well you did? Can you do that right now? I'm sure some of you probably go, oh, yeah. Oh, I can do that right now. Can you really? You know, except for dollar signs and the number of people showed up, can you actually evaluate how Wheeler did? I wonder. This is where the race promoter learns what worked and what did not work. And that's the key to a lot of this. Since every race is essentially your laboratory, you need to review
and have a review cycle for modifying your road map before you use it to build your next race. And none of this happens. If you do not document your process, share it with others, and follow each step of your plan exactly as you laid out, documentation, consensus, and orchestration.
This is your blueprint to how you build races. Your road map is your guide creating value in multiple areas within each process, but you cannot modify something you don't have. I mean, do yourself a favor and get a road map developed. I mean, don't build a race without it. Because if you can write down these processes and you can get everyone to agree that those are the correct processes and then you execute them, then you have a review cycle.
And you say, hey. What didn't work? What did work? Well, this didn't work, and that did work. And we had a we thought we did great here, but we really did great there. We had really poor
preregistration numbers, but we had great race day registration numbers. Oh, so and so didn't show up. And that's the person that usually all the people like. Oh, we didn't have marshmallows in our cocoa. People like marshmallows. I mean, those are the kind of things you start to think and you can't do that right now because when's the last time you did a lesson learned? When was the last time you wrote me thing down? A long time ago. You think about, ah, I'll be sharing the down to lessons learned. And then you go back and you don't follow those lessons learned, and you go, dang it. I remember that from last time. I should have remembered that. Should I remember that medical kit? Yeah. Bleeds, you know. Dang. I've got those little tiny guys. I've got the big guys. Or I should've remembered to charge the radios. I forgot to do that. These are the things
that frameworks, roadmaps. Documentation consist of this orchestration. These are the cornerstones that build your races. So once you have understanding of the cornerstones, you know, your documentation and your consensus and your orchestration, you start to understand the framework in which
sits your road map. And your road map consists of 2 basic things. You'll never guess what they are. They're really, really complicated. Okay. I'll tell you. It's a start and a finish. I know. Totally caught you off guard. Right? It's that in between part, that's where people get lost. They think the wrong trail. They go off, bush whack through the woods.
They think that tree looks at the same tree, that corner looks at the same corner. Oh, I know where I am on the map and your compass is lying to you. The road map can contain as much or as little details you want in the middle, but you have to follow it. For it to be of any use to you. Now if you're like most race pro owners, you have some kind of process in your head, but you've never written it down. Or produced any of your races the same way twice. So hopefully, I have your attention
with that. Because we all we all do it. We all think we have time to write it down, how we did something, how we learned something, and we never do. Some of us do.
Most of us don't. So now it's it's kind of time to write it down. It's time to write your road map based upon those 33 cornerstones we talked about. And you have it written down, you don't need to do all the work over again. And you only need to document your process once and then modify it as you go. Learn from the experience of doing it. I mean, the real benefit of the road map will become very noticeable when you go to repeat your race process a second time.
All the work you put into building your first race becomes incredibly useful when you go to create your seconds and therein lies the value. This is what the business world calls a repeatable process or a system. Just by having your processes written down, you've already on your way to becoming a mature company.
Oh, that's a that's a big business word. Right? They're mature company. Remember in a in a past episode, talked about mature companies. Are those companies that last past 2 years? Do you wanna be 1 of those companies? Writing down writing something down is that important to your business. I mean, think about it. If you don't document your process, how do you know what comes next? I mean, you may know off the top of your head, but eventually, You're gonna forget something, and we all know that when you forget something, it will cause you some sort of pain if that something is important
maybe a critical step, then that pain could be financially devastating. I mean, don't ruin yourself that way. If you have to, think of a road map as your brain on paper. You know? Like, the frying eggs. Right? This is your brain on drugs. Think of this as your brain on paper. Your brain is a medium, the you can share. So how do you do that? How do you share your brain? Well, we go back into surgery again. Right? We're gonna divide,
separate the race promoter from the race director. Let's start thinking let's start thinking like a race promoter. So what's the first thing a race promoter would do to share his brain or her brain. Well, the first thing we do is we'd start with high level processes. That sounds really kind of not scary. It's a very and it's a strategic re kind of word, a creative street tea tree. So your map should include all your important destinations.
Wow. That was really complicated, wasn't it? High level processes and strategic reading strategy. That's it. It should include your high level. Your important destinations, there might be numerous routes to take you to get the destination. But this 1 is your specific path. I mean, that can be tough if you've never built a race before or never built 1 well. So when it comes to race erosion,
I suggest you begin at least at a minimum with these high level processes, and we'll we'll talk about these individually. First 1 is planning. This is where you decide what your governance will fall under. I mean, you will stay independent
and do it all yourself or you will be sanctioned and follow the national rules for your race, and all requirements constraints that involves that. And you know what I'm talking about. You know, if you're if you're trail runner, there is a national organization that guides you and what you do. If you're mountain biker, we all know who that is, and that's, you know, USA cycling. If you're a triathlete,
that's usat. Right? There is 1 for everybody. And they have rules and those rules give you requirements constraints. Now if you're independent, those restraints are different. If you're sanctioned, you can get insurance through an association. If you're independent, you get to buy insurance yourself. If you're a sanctioned race, you can get officials. You gotta pay for them. You're independent, and you gotta provide drone officials. So planning, that's not all that stuff is kinda deciding
who's going to run the show in in the business world. They call that governance. How you will make decisions. And this is, of course, how you can make decisions in officials? Well, the governance of your sanction. Those decisions are made for you. That's planning. Next 1. Building. This is where you break out your processes for developing
your branding, your venue, your course, your structure, and your budget plans. I mean, the outputs of each of these plans will feed into your master implementation plan. There's another big Right? Implementation. That's just how you plan on doing it. Implementation. How you plan on doing it. Right? And it used to create a presentation or a bulletin, you'll include your permit.
That's it. This is the design. This is where you get the cool creative stuff. Think the name of the case, where you're gonna have it, which, of course, it'll look like. You're gonna think about, oh, okay. How much is gonna cost? You're gonna know how much the park's gonna want. You know, structure of your race. Gonna have those classes and categories. Gonna have a fat bike category or a fat shoe category.
Or maybe canine category. I mean, come on. Big Sky is the limit. This is design, building. Yeah. Cool stuff. This is the part where race promoters love stuff. Right? The big building stuff. Purpose of this is to create a presentation or bulletin. Yeah. This is just a fancy word for saying,
all your stuff on paper. Right? All those details I talked about because you're gonna include those with your permit. Right? Give that give that park manager all the things you ever wanted to tell them. They'll love it. Okay? That's the building phase. Part of your road map. Right? Do all that creative stuff. Then we go into the next phase, which is promoting.
This is where you use the time between the permit submission and the permit approval to develop your processes for the for developing your marketing, staffing, lab management, services and emergency plans. And the output of your marketing plan will be used to initiate and manage your communications, your sales, your customer engagement plans.
Well, each of your other plans will feed into the master race direction plan. And that's that implementation plan again. Right? So this is where you're gonna you're right down. How do you sell your race? How do you plan for using the venue? How do you plan on emergencies, contingencies.
Someone gets a boo boo. It sometimes says booboos are bad. How do you plan on doing with that? This is where you do all that. The the promoting part is you get people to come to your race 3 different ways. Right? You get people to sign up, pre reg, you get people to come and volunteer or staff work for maybe some a salary or something. You get people to come to do the technical stuff.
That's timing. That's emergency response. Those kind of things. K? That's promoting. How do you do a lot of stuff? K? You gotta write all that stuff down. Directing. This is where you finalize all your inputs, into your race day process for gear staging, on-site setup, event execution, event services, cleanup, outputs for these activities will feed into your to all your measurements and metrics
used to evaluate your race value. I mean, this is the what the race director's role is. That's a separation. Now you're a race promoter and you've been a race director. What is that role. What does that person do? What is directing involved? What race day activities, pre race, post race? Does a race director do? What do they do? How do you measure it? How do you know? I mean, some of the numbers are easy. How many people showed up as an easy number? How much money did you make? That's pretty easy number. Right? Many incidents did you have? Incidents meeting people with booboo's? How many spectators showed up? Keep track of that?
How about where the boob parts were, where people got injured, etcetera, etcetera. All that stuff. Cleanup, where's the trash cans at? Execution.
Know, your schedule, how did people go from going from the start to, you know, on the course? I mean, that's got that's got something to do with your registration process. Where do they stand? Where do they sign waivers? Where do they get the Bib number? How do they get their goodie bag? If they do you have goodie bags? How do people talk to them when they go to the goodie bags? All that stuff. Write that down. That's the direction part of your of your road map. And then growing. That's got the last piece. This is where you review your processes and evaluate evaluate how each process in your road map performed, how your lessons learned impact the overall road map framework, and how you will go about making changes to your road map. Now remember, talk about the cornerstones.
Right? Documentation, consensus, execution. So all those processes, that's all the writing it down. Then you have to go through and get consensus on this. Right? And then you have to execute, and that will help finalize these processes. So just because you write them down, it's making perfect, and they'll have to be perfect. Write them down the way you think they should go and then run through them as if you would a real life race and you could do it even during a real life race and learn
where it needs to be edited. That's where we're at now. Okay. So that was step 1. Okay? That's the high level processes. We're gonna write all those down. So we're gonna step to document your processes.
Right? We talked about the high level process. We're gonna write them all down. This road map can include some very heavy topics. But trust me, doing this work now will give you incredible benefit in the near future. K? A simple way for to get on the right track with diagramming your first road map. At a minimum, your overall goal should be to document how you go into building a race. Think about your race in sections like I just talked about. The first
is plan, then build, promote, and direct, and grow in the order of how you would orchestrate an event. For a race, start with a high level big picture activities first. Use a big piece of scratch paper or even a white board if you have 1 and drop boxes. I know. Boxes? Yes. Boxes. You draw your 1st bike box on the paper. What process does that represent.
Write it in the box. Each additional box you draw is a process that connects and flows to the next box in the process. Now draw a second box right next to the first box. Think about the sequence activities that occur after the process is the first 1. When it's complete, What's that process called? Write that in the second box, then draw a line between the 2 boxes with an arrow pointing to the second box. Boom. Your drawing in its raw form represents the basic form of a road map, and that's it.
Boxes and arrows. Simple. Don't make this too complicated. This is just simple. K? Third is just add in the details after that. So once you have all these boxes and arrows lined up, start adding in the details. Can it get complex? Sure can. Some boxes can connect to more than 1 box. I mean, some of these processes have more than 1 output, but the simpler your road map is, the easier it is to be understandable.
I mean, if are if you're still having problems, then let's think about the road map in terms of how you will approach your race.
It is a starting point, the middle point, the finish. Where do you start? You start with something easy like naming your race, and I have a process for that. On wrecking.com, I have a in the show notes, I'll talk about the good race name that gives you an advantage. There's a blog post I wrote about naming race. And you were racing. It was a perfect place to start. Every race needs a name. Do you have a process for naming your bet. Give me your race. This is where it would go. The output of this process would be a name, but this is the bot. But this but this box
is the process for naming erase. What is that process? I mean, you could decide it later. All you need to know is you need to have some kind of process to resolve in a race name? I mean, here's a more complex 1. After naming your race, you need a process for selecting officials. Okay. Selecting officials is a trick question. Why is it a strict question.
Say you're building a mountain bike race. Will you have your own officials doing their own thing, or do you have the USA cycling permit? What you have to pay for in addition to your venue permit that comes with USA Cycling officials that you also have to pay for. This makes the select officials process box similar to an iceberg, this box is clearly a high level process with several of smaller process hidden under the surface. Don't panic though. Write down all the high level process first, then come back to start finding out what hidden decisions are needed underneath.
Remember, documentation, then consensus. Sometimes the consensus part will help un you know, uncover some of these hidden things you didn't think about. That's why it's great to do this do this over the team and not by yourself. May take several drafts to get everything you think is important in place. But remember, the goals are righted down, the big stuff first from start to finish. The details comes after
you have the course structure written down. So just like we talked about the cornerstones, the fourth 1 is really simple. It's you need to share it with your team. Once you have a draft road map,
share it with your team. And if you don't have a team, share it with your friends, share it with the family, Does it make sense? Does it flow right? Does step 1 and step 2 make may some of your family members have been at more races and then more volunteering than you remember, give them a run through this. Does it sound like something that they would understand? Get some feedback. Ask them if it makes sense. Is the order correct? And if they think something should be added or removed,
you know, take their take their advice. A few more eyes on your road map will help you find the holes it'll be filling the gaps and spot any of your problems. And don't forget that if you build it right, your road map will be a working document
and working documents are things that change over time, especially each time you go through the loop, you go through the cycle. Each time you go through your process, you will discover things that work and things that do not. You also learn a better way to do what you're doing now. And when you find these things, you need to go back and document them on the new map, and share it again, you know, version 2.0. Consensus is a cornerstone of the road map with each change comes consensus.
Remember that. Every time I could change, does everyone agree to that change? I mean, hopefully, if it a few times through this process, you and your team will already be looking for how to make things better. And that's and that's the simple the simple part of a road map is writing is the thing of those high level processes. Writing them down, adding in the details,
and sharing their team to figure out the holes. And then after you have your road map in place, what comes next? Because remember we or documentation road map, orchestrate or was it consensus? Sorry. Everyone agrees, orchestration. That's the execution part. You go through the road map, you use the road map to build the race. And if you find a step that's out of place, change it. If you find a step you don't use, you remove it. And that is your road map, and that's how you build repeatable
races, repeatable business structure. That is a system for building successful races. Because once you have have that, now you can start doing things like measures and metrics. How long does it take you to go through that process? How many days? When do you start things? Did you find that the purse sorry, the permit's process earlier or later was any different? Did you find but by planning out your races at a certain time, you got better chance getting venues, you find out that preregistration opening a month earlier gave you better numbers. Maybe it didn't change at all. Maybe it was was relevant to to your numbers. These are the kind of things you can learn when you have something written down, agreed upon, and you've battle tested it through orchestration.
That is the gold mine of the road map. And that is where you start. And now you know.
So that's a pretty good process for how I would approach building a road map. But some people building road map is not is not as easy as it sounds. And I understand So what if you didn't have to write it all down? I mean, what if you could follow a simple road map that included all the necessary steps? And when that freer brain up for other things like course design, marketing, customer service. I'm building an easy to follow road map that will help you identify these steps, structures and timelines that you need to generate your own road map. This road map will show you the exact path you need to use to build a race in 90 days. 90 days. Yes. 90 days. This is the minimum of time you need to get a small race off the ground. I mean, it doesn't sound like a lot of time. But if you follow this road map and you 2 can build a race in just 12 short weeks and I want to give this to you entirely free. Just you and your fair you know, your fellow serious race promoters,
build a race in 90 days with my starter road map. And when you're done, you use it to do it again and again and again, you can change it to modify it to your own race in special conditions and requirements. It it's just a head start so that you don't have to reinvent the wheel. I mean, are you ready to build your race? I don't wanna make you wait. Are you ready now? Alright. Right now, go to reckoner.com/roadmap, and I have all the the details there for what it is I have created.
And put your email in the box at the bottom of the page. And I will send you my 90 day road map, just a PDF, absolutely free. It's not quite done yet, but if you were you request the 90 day road map this month, the month of November,
I will also include the 90 day road map supplemental ebook that I'm writing for absolutely free as well when it's released. Okay? And that's a $39 value just for for providing me your email address, and that's a that's a pretty good deal. I think it's pretty good deal. Want for you you want a free road map, just go there. Again, that's wreckingear.com/roadmap,
and push your email in the box. And that'll let me know that, hey. You know what? I heard your podcast, and I I really could use a road map, especially just a road map for or building races where I'm, you know, you're having a difficult time. This road map will hook you right up. So drop your email in the box and when I have the road map ready, I'll send that to you. And then when the supplemental ebook is ready, I'll send that to you too. And just right now, just for the month of November, if sign up month of November, it's completely free. No cost to you except your email address. You know, which could sign you up for my newsletter.
I send you my exclusive contents and stuff. So give you exclusive content for some of the other things going on, some of the other products, my other educational things, my podcast release. I think this 90 day road map will help solve a lot of your problems. When I do send this out, by all means, please, send me feedback, tell me to think, tell me we can work better, tell me what work good for you, any of that stuff. And again, that's $39 value. It's gonna be after November. It's gonna be 39 bucks. But if you sign up now, I'm gonna give it to you for free and the book for free. And that's free for life. If I update this thing, if I make a new change to it, if I add your feedback to it and make a whole new thing, it's free for life. And again, that's that's only for the November 2016.
So send me your email, and I will send that stuff to you as soon as that is ready. That's it for this week's podcast.
Hope you really learned something with this episode. I know the road map and developing a road map is kind of a difficult topic to get your head wrapped around. But really feel that this 1 is gonna be the 1 that that people go back to time time again to learn about how develop road maps and do good things for the business. If you really did learn something good from this episode, by all means, join my newsletter atreckonier.com/join,
and you'll find a box there to put your email in. And I'll send you out all sorts of goodies, exclusive content, new blog posts when the new episodes come out. 2nd, wanna hear back from you about this episodes in particular. Did you learn something useful? If you did, contact me on Twitter. That's merchants of dirt. No spaces. No at merchants of dirt. Let me know. Let me know what to what you thought about this. 3rd and most important, if you like this episode, if you like this podcast, I would love for you to go to the Merchant of podcast page on iTunes and give me a quick review and a 5 star rating. I have a link on merchandisinger.com
that'll take your right to iTunes. Just, you know, tell me to think of the episode. Write it in there. I have star rating that goes a long ways to help in this show, help me make more shows. You know, plus case my confidence up, let me know you're out there. Let me listening, let me know what you think. I'd love to hear from you. With that, I'd like to thank you for listening to this week's merchandisinger,
Kyle Bondo, hoping you take what you learned today and go weave Idol into Epic. Until next time.