Today on the merchandiser podcast episode number 47. How you treat your last place finishers and your volunteers tells me a lot about you. But how your staff treats people who come in last place and the volunteers that you bring in to run your race That tells me volumes about not just you, your company, and your complete lack of leadership. Your staff is selected by you, trained by you, and paid
by you. But if they are absent, if they're mean, if they're lazy, you have nobody to blame but yourself. And this kind of behavior, if it happens for 1 season, that's a tragedy. And it will maybe it'll only repel a few customers However, if your staff has have been jerks for years and your company is a reputation for that behavior, then maybe you're just a bad leader. And do you know what they call a bad leader in the racing industry? Out of business.
Buckle up because the ear is about to go on a rant. Thank you for joining me for the merchandiser podcast. I am Kyle Bondo. And as you can tell from the intro, I'm been saving this 1 up. Anyway, I take the mystery out of outdoor race direction. And alongside me, of course, is mister Murphy, who is he's hiding. He helps me find those things that can go wrong or that will go wrong in your race strategy.
But he heard the intro too, and he's he's nowhere to be found. He's like, under the desk or something. It's it's kind of scary. I I can't believe I scared mister Murphy. Well, together, we're gonna help build better races. But today, I'm gonna talk about leadership. And more specifically, how a lack of leadership creates a bad race staff. And like I said, I've been saving this 1 up.
And I've been saving this 1 up to a point where I've been to some recent events that just kinda got me a little steamed. So I wanna talk about these things and I'm going to talk about these things in 3 parts. I'm gonna introduce
the problem and talk about kind of the story behind where I got it from, and then the solutions I think that could be could be you could utilize. So as a race director, if you listen to this and you think, man, maybe maybe I'm a bad leader or maybe my crew is bad because I'm a bad leader. Take this the heart. Now, this is this is a both barrels episode, so you're gonna really wanna to buckle up because I am going to try to keep my powder dry as much as I can.
But these are 3 topics, and I'm gonna leave the race director and the company names and where it was and try to leave all that stuff out of it. So this will be agnostic. You can just, you know, it could be open source
strategy for today. But if you If you know who I am, where I've been around, you might be able to glean some of these things, but trust me. I've been to enough events where a lot of this stuff becomes like a combo of just seeing bad race directors out there and doing things that are just just frustrate the living star out of me. So let's get into to this episode of the Burgerster podcast, The Ranch. Let's get into problem statement number 1.
As a race director, you have a good idea on how long it takes for people to complete your course. You have a very good hopefully, if you've done any testing and you understand what if you just walked it or the slow person, the slowest person, you have an idea of what it's gonna take for them to finish. And if it's gonna take longer, then you have permission to be in the park, then you should probably plan for that. Maybe of cutoffs.
Maybe you organize it in a way where people who are too slow can't finish certain parts of the course because if they're gonna be here till the, you know, till o dark 30. So the problem statement for this part is, if you know all this, why did you allow your crew to pack up everything and go home before the last people finish their race? Now, this is this is a huge frustration for me. I was at a race where
we followed everything correctly. We got the cutoffs correctly. It was a long endurance race. And we did everything we were supposed to do. We we we followed the rules exactly. We had the time. We weren't slow. We weren't necessarily last either because some people who didn't make it to certain checkpoints got cut off and were told that they only had to go to back to the start. But we made all our checkpoints. And interesting enough is we came into the the race finish line in place.
The only problem is when we came in there a place, the only people left was the race director, the timing people, and my wife and kids. That was it. That was the finish line for me coming across this finish line. And I was handed our, you know, congratulations. You made the place. Here's a cup. Now, get the hell out. Get out of the park. We don't we don't want you anymore. You know, we're done. We're prepared for this. You know, this is the way it is.
And that is frustrating, a sec. There's nobody clapping. You know, and there's nobody there. The the music gone. The tenth's gone. The pizza's gone. Everything's gone. Everything's packed up. Everything's gone. Parking lots practically empty. Everything happened.
And you showed up and nobody's there. That is just I I don't understand that. Do understand how that works. Now, granted, crew members are gonna have different things that they're gonna wanna leave early. And granted, volunteers, they're they're not beholden to you. They can leave when they need to leave. But if you are paying your staff, And you realize that you made a mistake and your race
needs to be to go over the time limit and to to cost you whatever you're paying them 10 and $12 an hour to work that race and you might have to actually eat a 100 or $200. Guess what? You should eat a 100 or $200. If you plan that race improperly and you did not plan to have people stay longer than they should, Because everyone did everything right, you shouldn't let your crew leave.
They should be the people at the finish line clapping everybody in. They should be the ones there and the last ones to go. That is the whole point of being a race director is you wanna have that experience for everybody and that includes people coming in last. And in this case, when the people come in last, it was just the course was designed improperly.
The people did come in last gotta go back to the finish because they told them they couldn't race anymore. But the people still in the course who didn't come in last just, you know, just took a longer period of time to finish the course because that's how it was designed, shouldn't be penalized. You shouldn't be coming into an empty parking lot and an empty race venue
because the race director messed up. That's mess this is not the way it should be done. So that's really kind of the solution for this is your crew needs to stay
Sure you can pack it up, but they need to stay. They need to do one's cheering. Because if your crew is not cheering, then who are you? Who are you to be in that business where you're not even interested in who's coming in last? Because you should at least know that people are still out there. Right? I mean, wouldn't wouldn't you want someone there when you showed up to the finish line? I mean, racers can leave, but your crew, if it's not present,
it doesn't really it doesn't show it shows that you don't care. And this is a big pet peeve of mine. And I try to I try to to to make sure I'm conscious of this at every single race I ever directed or ever will direct
is I am the last person to leave that venue. I am the last person I will be at that finish line if I'm not being pulled around other things. I only have to finish line cheering you on. I am a super cheerleader. I'm a super fan. I actually yelled for everybody. Good job, way to go. People even come and tell me, man, dude, you're like, too intense. Screw you.
If I'm too intense, you're at the wrong place. It should be intense. In fact, I wish there were like 15 more people as intense as me at the finish line. You know how awesome that would be? Do you have a cheering squad like that? That would make racing fun. They have people coming in dead last and getting 15 people screaming their heads off for you're doing awesome. You finish the race. That's so cool.
That's how that should happen. And if you have few of a crew, that can't be bothered to stick around for an extra hour or 2 at the end of that, then, you know, I hear McDonald's does franchising. Why don't you go try that for a while? Okay. A little coffee, a little time relaxed, a little deep breathing exercises. Alright. That 1 got me a little steamed up. This 1, however, is probably gonna make it even worse.
So I I'm gonna throw this into the they kinda like they they kinda like stack on each other. And this 1, the problem statement kinda goes like this. If your crew treats the person that comes in last, badly or mocks them or snickers at them? You have a serious problem with your company. I would almost consider that to see crew members do that to say that the soul of your company is corrupt. Nolan, let me give you an example of this. I was at a triathlon
where there was an overweight woman who was racing in her triathlon. It's a sprint triathlon. So it's not big distance. Right? You got swim in a pool. And you do some running and you come back on a on a on a on the road bike. You do the road bike and then you do the run. Right? That's right. Swim bike run.
And this woman, her triathlon ever. Mother's Day, she's a mom of 4. She's in this race. The race goes all you go and there's waves there's stages. She's in the last stage. She gets in the pool. She struggles in the pool, gets out, but finishes.
Gets on the bike. RISE the bike does pretty good on the bike. You know, the last pack, but still, you know, we're able to keep up with some people. And then you get on the run. And the run was really hard. The thing about triathlons for a lot of people are hard races. And she is struggling. In fact, she's struggling so much that she has to walk a lot of these these these segments. And she's coming in. And the race has had a podium. They've given out prizes.
They have people have left. There's still t shirts and all stuff. People are leaving. They have some food. Those people are gone. She's last. And this race director's crew is standing out there, waiting for her to come in. They know she's out there. They're waiting for her to come in. And there's still some volunteers left over because there's still a race going on. And being a volunteer at this place, wanted to be, you know, show the flag, be as present as I could be, my wife and I,
to make sure that, you know, we are there for everyone to come in. We we gave our words, the race director, that we were gonna be there, tell the race was over, we're gonna be there the race was over. So this woman's coming in. And these crew members stand there, and they're making comments, and they're snickering, and they're laughing, and they're making things like, oh my gosh. I can't believe this, come on lady hurry up kind of stuff.
This is this is happening next to a whole group of volunteers who are cheering her in and even a couple of volunteers helping her do the last leg of the race to the finish line. While staff stood by and mocked this woman. Now, everyone's an individual. Everyone has, you know, their own ability. You know, it's a free world. You can see what you want. Right? But you're there's no you're hold you're held accountable what you say. You can say what you want, but you still have consequences.
And then these these staff members, more than 1, 3 or 4 different staff members standing there, snickering and laughing and things like and then talking about times in which they've done past races where this stuff has happened, where volunteers can hear them. The race director comes by to see what's going on. Here's them snicker and laughing. Snickers and laughs with them.
That is what I'm saying about the soul of your company is really dark if that's what you think of people coming last. If you're there only for the gazelle's and the people who do place and stand on the podium, and who are, you know, on the magazines and doing the circuit and going to the Olympics or going to world championships. And everyone else is just a cash contribution to that thing happening. Then you need to go find another industry to be in. Go do football.
Like sports, like high level professional sports. Go do some other thing because racing ain't it for you. Because in professional sports, You're there because you're a professional player that's top of your league, your top of your ability. And if you can't cut that anymore, they cut you like yesterday's cheese and you were gone.
But in racing, especially in, like, triathlons, mountain biking, trail running, all those kind of races where people who were starting for the time ever maybe doing this, getting fit, getting back in touch with their athleticism, are gonna struggle. It's gonna be a lot of struggle. It's gonna be a whole day full of people struggling.
If that's not you, if you are into that, if that doesn't get you excited to see someone who a month ago or 6 months ago was on the couch eating Cheetos and realized that the triple bypass or the diabetes or just maybe the the the lack of energy caused them to get off the couch and walk to the mailbox and run down the street and run a mile and run 2 miles and now they're riding a bike, now they're swimming, and now they're going to your triathlon, and you don't find that awesome.
Instead, it's a source of entertainment. You're in the wrong business. You're in the wrong business of last places and important to you. I like people who come in and are super fast and the drama of that. That's awesome. But I'll tell you what. Someone who I know has to get off their bike every time they come to a log not even 3 inches in diameter to put their bike over, but still manages to get out there and do it. I find those people inspiring.
And as a race director, If you have crew that finds that not inspiring, who finds that irritating, because they can't go home, then you need to either get rid of that crew and fire those people immediately, the minute you find out about it. But you sure as heck don't join in on it. You need to rethink your entire reason for being in racing. And if it's for money and money only, I have a very difficult thing to tell you, buddy. You ain't get me in business long.
Because the more people to find out about this, the less people to come to your race. And that's just that's just the year you've people find out about it. Now I learned a customer service and well, I used to work as a younger guy. I used to work book sales before I was in the military. And we were told customer service all the time, is that the person who enjoys your customer service the way you react to the customer and the way you treat the customer, they'll tell about 5 people.
And maybe not in a long period of time. Maybe over the next week or 2, they may tell 5 people they had a positive customer experience at your business. But if you make that person angry, if you treat that person badly, they have a bad customer experience. They're gonna go till 20 people, maybe 30. And now with the advent of social media, have the ability to tell hundreds of people their experience.
That is the kind of environment you're creating when you do this kind of thing. When you look at staff members behave badly, when you see staff members behaving badly. And you don't do something about it, You don't get rid of those people? Because if you do they do it more if they do it once, I guarantee you they've done it more than once. Those are the kind of people that are going to eat your race apart from the inside.
You're gonna push people away. People are going to start sensing this kind of behavior. Because not only is that reputation going to start following you, you're gonna start hearing all sorts of other people sort of talk about these type of oh, that race. Oh, yeah. That group of people? Yeah. I hear they're cheaters or oh, yeah. I heard they they mock people or they scallop people. Oh, you were a little overweight. Yeah. Don't go to that race. They're gonna make fun of you.
Those are the kind of people because this is the problem that race breaking has. And this is this particular problem in in particular is because you hire your friends and then you treat them like your friends. It becomes a buddy group, it becomes the troop of people that you hang out with all the time, you go have drinks with all the time, you have social events with all the time because you wanna build team camaraderie, you wanna build a crew.
But if that crew is nasty and mean and judgmental like that who aren't inspired by people who are trying to do this for the time, who aren't in that customer mindset and don't have their Disney hats on. You gotta get rid of them or you gotta go find something else to do because this that is this is not the industry for you. Okay. Some more deep breathing. That's right. Breathe through the nose 4 seconds. Breathe out through the nose 4 seconds. And that piece. Right? Time for
segment 3. Right? Problem statement 3. This 1 probably burns me more than anything. And this has everything to do with how you treat your volunteers. And if I ever go to a race, ever go to a race. And I see a race director or someone on the staff treat a volunteer badly, I will never come back to your race. And I know a lot of racers who think the same way. If you treat a volunteer badly as a staff member as a race director, what the heck are you doing in this business?
Now, razor's treating volunteers badly. That's 1 thing. And you need to deal with that. You need to kick those people off your course. There's no business for them being bad. You know, unless your volunteers being bad, which could also be a problem. But if you have staff,
treating volunteers like they're like like they're cattle or they're the, you know, they're their brick and call. They can utilize them in any way you want. Or you're a race director who treats your volunteers like like cannon fodder. You have a huge problem. You shouldn't be having volunteers. Because volunteers are here. They're they're ricks. They're helping you race. They're helping you build this whole thing out. For free.
This is the kind of thing that you need to be understanding. They're doing this out of the goodness of their heart. Yeah. A t shirt or some free pizza. Come on. Think about how much you prepay staff. You're paying staff 10 to 12 to 15 to $20 an hour. Now you put a volunteer in that role and they're doing the exact same role the staff's doing for free.
T shirt ain't gonna cut it because especially since we all know a race director spent tons of money on t shirts now. Don't we? I told you this is a rant. Right? Kyle's getting getting little little frosty here because this bugs me more than anything else is and here's the scenario is I'm at a race, my wife and I, and even my kids were volunteering, were involved in everything,
you got some snarky attitudes coming from staff members who treat you kinda like you're in the way or that, you know, you're not of any use or, you know, you're not allowed to make any decisions. Fine. That's a totally understandable if the staff wants to, you know, be blunt and they can be blunt. It ain't cool, but they're being blunt. Right? But then the staff and the race director all go off to the side and have a beer. All the whole staff have a beer. All the volunteers
are picking up trash and finishing up the race cleaning, they're off having a beer and having a good time because they think because they've been there since the day before and they set everything up and they've done run the race that they get a chance to cool their jets and take a break because they've deserved it. While volunteers are picking up trash, they're sitting 10 feet away all having a beard a good time and joking it up.
While some of them are even looking at the volunteers picking up a trash, are you out of your mind? This makes no sense. Crew wants the party and you're partying with them. Don't expect people to come back especially volunteers. You know how hard it is to get a volunteer. Now how hard it is to get people to come and help you with this race for free or for pennies, and then you go and have a beer because you work so hard. Because you had to earn your pay. Right? You're getting paid.
So you get it you you know, I'm getting paid. I get to have a vacation. I get to sit around because I'm a paid staff member. You're a volunteer. You're a nobody.
You don't matter. I can interchange you with another volunteer next week. No, you won't. This is the kind of thing that really bugs me to the most because those details matter and your crew reflects you and it speaks to who you are But if you don't if you don't understand how volunteers work and you think it's party time and your crew doesn't respect volunteers time because it's party time, You don't deserve to have them. You don't deserve to have volunteers on your on your race.
This is unbelievable. It just oh, it boils my blood to think about this. And because of this event in particular, My wife and I stopped volunteering. It really turned us off to volunteering for a long time. It took us a long time to get back to volunteering even just me. She won't do it unless it's 1 of my races or 1 of the races of people that we're friendly with.
If it's a different kind of race or something something above and beyond, some kind of like, you know, I wanna go experience this to understand how it works, that kind of thing. She won't do it anymore. She used to be a hardcore race volunteer But watching these people sit around and have a beer, well, she's picking up trash and I'm picking up trash and the kids are picking up trash and we're looking over there. We're not getting paid.
It should have been the other way around. The race director should have called over all the volunteers, had the staff finish up the trash, had the volunteers crack a beer, tell him how much you thanked them, how much enjoyed having them there, and how essential it was to running his race, and that he that you really appreciated their time and effort. And their time there was finished. There's no need to be volunteers anymore. They've done enough work. Have a beer. Have a Coke. And now it's time for you to go home because my staff is gonna clean up and do the rest. Because it's staff and that's what they're supposed to do. They're the heart and soul of that race organization.
They should've been the 1 finishing all that up. Instead it was the flip. And if you think the flip side, you think the race staff having a beer and sit around and joke and and and smoking, while volunteers are doing the last bit of work, you have your priorities mixed up. That is not how it's supposed to work. Volunteers go above staff when it comes to your gratitude and generosity and your your dealing with their generosity to give their time to your race. They come
They are the most important people. Next to racers and customers, your volunteers may even be more better or maybe more higher on the level than racers are. And I mean that in all seriousness that when you have a race that is a poor a poor profit business, which most races are, and you have a paid staff and you have customers that pay a fee, they're expecting a certain level of experience and a certain level of customer support for that. You're gonna deliver a service to them. Volunteers
are different. They're special. You do not disrespect them by taking them for granted. So check yourself when you decide to have your crew around for a beer or a post race. Look over your shoulder. Look around. Look who's watching you. Look who is over there doing trash while you're sitting around having a break. Take a look around because those volunteers will never forgive you or forget what you did
They'll never come back. You'll never see them again. And you will wish you would never done it when that happens. Because volunteers are not something you just create at a whole cloth. Especially volunteers that know how to do timing and how to do aid stations and how to do setup and breakdown, who know how to do every aspect of your event. Some people have just become fans of your racing who race and also volunteer to race.
They will not come back as volunteers, and they certainly won't come back as racers. You will never see them again. And if you do, it will be years later. Maybe to see whether or not you've changed or not. They come to find out that nothing's changed. It's still the same old show as it was before. Not only will they not come back a time or time, but they're gonna tell everybody they know exactly who you are and what you do. And if you want that kind of reputation,
you go ahead and have that beer and sit down with your crew because you had definitely earned it. Way more than the person who volunteered their time to help you with your race for no money. You go ahead because if you don't get it, if you don't get it by now, how you should be looking at volunteers and erasers and the way your crew should be behaving and who's watching your crew behave this way, if you're not taking this seriously, then your company will not last much longer. Anyway.
So if you have no interest in actually staying in business, you just keep going going the way you're going, just keep on doing exactly what you're doing, and treating volunteers like they owe you something, and treat your staff like they walk on water. See how far that gets you. I guarantee you it will come back to bite you in the end. My host, [email protected], has has provided me with something called an Alexa skill.
And that is the little device that you can buy for Amazon, the Echo Dot or the Alexa, whatever it is, that you have in your house that you can talk to. And it can provide you with my podcast, which is fantastic. And the way you do that is you and, of course, if you with the volume on, I would turn it down if you have an Alexa in the room. And you do that by simply saying, Alexa, enable merchants of dirt.
Welcome back. Would you like to continue where you last left off with yesterday? Is too late for insurance? Model 4 4? Yes. Hears yesterday is too late for insurance, Motto 4 4. At which mister Murphy just laughed and laughed and laughed. Mister Murphy loves that joke. Alexa, stop. Okay. Come back anytime to listen to your podcast. You just have to say, Alexa, resume. And there you go.
That is my podcast with an Alexa skill So please, by all means, go find your Alexa and ask it to enable merchants of dirt. Thank you so much for listening to this presentation, the Merchant of Turkey. It was very ranty. I did a lot of yelling, so I don't know. Tell me if you like this version. Right? I'd love to hear from you whether or not you like the rant.
Versus the, you know, the business education and the strategy. Sometimes, I see things that just bug me. And this was 1 of those episodes where I've I've just been I've been adding. I've been collecting them like like stamps and just just decided that this was the show to bring out all the ones that really kind of bothered me. And it has a lot to do with race leaders. And I think race directors need to understand
that they need to stop if they they're gonna hire their friends, their friends better be on on the ball. And with the mission of what they're planning on doing because
bad crews have worse leaders. Your crew is not bad because they're a bad crew. Your crew is bad because the leadership is bad. And that's the kind of thing. So email me merchiserv dot com or on Twitter at merch Dirk. Let me know. Would you like the rant? Did you not like the rant? I'd love to get some feedback from you. And of course, you can find my show notes for this at at merchandisinger.com
or even other episodes on there too. If you wanna support the show, By all means, please go to merchandisers.com and click the Patreon button. Meanwhile, while you're figuring out
whether or not you're a bad leader or not, your crew is bad, and maybe you need to do some feedback, you need to do some customer surveys and go find some people or just become they undercover boss, you know. Be that guy who no 1 knows if, you know, if your staff is being bad. Maybe you need to hire some investigators to find out. Anyway, whatever dude whatever dude that takes
to work on your leadership do it. Whatever you need to do, clean up your crew, do it because your company and your race will benefit greatly from it. Until then, I hope to see you on the next episode of The Merchants Adirt podcast and I hope what you learned here today helps you build better races. Take care. Merchant's Alert is brought to you by Gagopod. For storytellers that need a strategy, a platform, and a chance to be heard, learn how to create your next podcast at gagopod.com.