Welcome to the merchants of dirt podcast episode number 4. Thank you for joining me for the merchandising 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 extraordinaire, and race promoter Kyle Bondo. Coming up in this episode, we're going to discuss why all race promoters are race directors. But not all race directors are race promoters.
What does that mean? It means the answer will decide the future direction of your business. Yikes some intro. Right? Hopefully, I got your attention. You know it's gonna be a good discussion when you say something like all race promoters are race directors, but not all race directors are race promoters. And then all sorts of people come out of the woodwork to challenge it.
I first brought this topic up on my blog at regular.com a few months ago. I immediately heard from race directors that objected to this character decision. Why did they object? Because they own their own companies and direct their own races. And they claim they can do both and claim they could do well. And I agree with some of it I do believe they can do both. Yes. I do believe that they are actually running their companies and directing their races. But where I kind of go off the rails on this
is I asked the question, can they do both well? And I say to can't. I hear the mob forming again right outside my door. Nobody expects the Spanish ink position, but before all you race director slash race promoters go grab your torches and pitforks, Let's establish some facts first. As a race director, it is your job to run the race from beginning to end. Right?
And as a race promoter, it's your job to sell the race, and all the other races too, while making sure the entire racing business is successful. Right? Okay. So far we agree on both those points. Now, I also hear race record say, that the term's race director and race promoter mean the same thing, that they're interchangeable. Here's where I wanna set the record straight. A race director and a race promoter are not the same thing. I'll let that sit with you for a minute.
If you're getting the fire ready to burn me at the stake for being a racing heretic, please hear me out first. Why do I say that race directors and race promoters are not the same thing? First off, I see a race promoter as the founder of your racing company. The overall career strategies for each race and responsible for the leadership and future direction for business. And what is your business? Why it's promoting races, of course. In my second episode, I titled
what I wish I knew before my first race. I stated that over half your time has spent building your race And the other half, you guessed it, is selling your race. Actually, it's plural. It's races. You spend half your time selling your race. The promotion part is probably the most important part of your race. Because if you wanna build a racing company that makes money, selling Only 1 race is not enough. In simple terms, the racing motor is the boss, the driver, the 1 making all the decisions.
Fair enough so far? Okay. Time to cross the streams. While the race promoters running the racing company, I see the race director, as a role that manages the race promoters plan. The race director is a job within the race promoters company not the owner of the company. Essentially, the race director is a subordinate role to the race promoter. I see those torches again outside my window. If you're still in disbelief of what I just said, then let me sum it up like this.
The race promoter runs the company and the race director works for the race promoter. Now, Can that race promoter be the race director, certainly. In many smaller racing companies, the race promoter and the race director are the same person. Key point that I said person. And that's okay. You know, if you want to own your job, What? Oh my job. What the heck does that mean? Wow. Even Mister Murphy is grabbing a torch now. Okay. I guess, better explain myself even more. Wait, there's no time.
I see you brought friends and gasoline. Okay. Very well. Then let me sum up. In many racing companies such small ones or racing companies race companies are just getting started, there are few key key people available. Everyone wishes they could hire more help. If you're small, cashless is tough and a tough issue to overcome, you are really kind of bootstrapping your your company.
So aside from part timers, your entire company is most likely made up of just you Maybe some free help from friends and family. That's always nice. And the occasional volunteer or 2. Without a big staff, most of the roles in your companies will be filled by the founder. And that's you. Their race per motor. And the positions you don't feel, well, they'll probably get neglected until you get around to actually filling them because making It kind of makes a lot of slack for 1 person to pick up.
This means you're technically 2 people. You're the owner. And the only employee. Remember, you're the race promoter, you're the owner of the company, and the employee, the race director. You know, this is going out to those who think that's, you know, they're they're synonymous. So you pay your own salary if you get 1, and you let yourself know when you're doing a good job or not. Hopefully, you're nice to yourself.
Otherwise, you have a very tough job. And as the owner, and the only employee, you plan, promote, and direct every aspect of your race. You're the only 1. After trying to convince park managers to let you race Sunday in their parks and the only 1 selling your race to anyone who listen. But your boss is a slave driver because your boss is yourself. How's that for split personalities? Your boss That would be you again,
makes you go to the park before the sun comes up. And your boss, yep, still you, will not let you leave until every bit of the races have been picked up. You might be the best employee in your racing company, but your boss, still you, never gives you a break. Never lets up. Never tells you you're doing a good job. Let's face it. You have a crazy person for a boss, and it's you. When you are both the race promoter and the race director, you are your own boss. Congratulations.
This is what it means to own your own job. Still not clear? Okay. Try this. Mister Murphy, my cohost wants to know. Alright? What if you want to take the weekend off? The same weekend is 1 of your races. That's kind of like sacrilege. Right? But say you wanna do it. In what you might say, I'll just plan around it. Dang. Mister Murphy, that was a snappy answer. What's that? Okay. Mister Murphy wants a second shot at this. Very well. Okay.
Right? Mhmm. Okay. So Mister Murphy now wants to know what happens when you get sick on race day, that's a excellent question. Can you call your boss? And ask someone else to fill in as race director. Guess what? You're both the race director and race promoter. You have to call yourself. And if you're sick, guess what? Both you are sick. Right? So that might be seen a bit bit weird calling yourself. But anyway, to that question, you might say, I'll just work through it.
Oh, Mister Murphy takes a second stiff arm. This is what thousands of self providers say all the time. They don't have time to get sick. Right? Yeah. Mister Murphy doesn't look happy. It can be a good side. No 1 likes an angry Mister Murphy. Maybe something more serious will do the trick. Okay, Mister Murphy. I'll give you 1 more shot to shake up these race directors and especially the ones you think direction and promotion are the same thing. Triple or nothing? What do you have? What's that?
Ouch. That's a good 1. Okay. Ready for this 1? It's gonna hurt. Mister Murphy now wants to know, what happens when you have a family emergency? And you need to be both directing your race and at the hospital the same time. No stamping answer this time. Between you and you and Mister Murphy does not play around. Too serious? Well, it's a fair question. And 1 that causes all sorts of businesses to go out of business every year. And it's also 1 of Mister Murphy's favorite kind of events.
It's called the catastrophic event. Could your company survive an emergency like that? Could you survive a catastrophic event? If the answer is no, I could not. That I'm sorry to say, you own your job. The reality is you are the owner, the manager, and the talent. If 81 of you takes a break. The entire company comes to a screeching halt. Boom. That's the sound of the door shutting on your business or good. Mister Murphy for the win. That's why nobody likes Mister Murphy.
If you're lucky, some of you can weather the storm and manage to reopen at a later date. However, most of you will never open again. How do I know? Because I have data course, and data doesn't lie. Okay. Not all data is create data is created equal, but This data is US government data. And you know the US government never lies. Right? Okay. Don't answer that. This is an off road racing podcast after all. Besides, Ibrahim Lincoln once said, 67%
of all statistics are made up on the fly. Police type. I don't think he said that. Anyway, I digress. So where were they? Oh, yeah. Alright. The big data. There's an interesting art article over at successharbor.com, and I'll put the I'll put the link in the show notes. That states, according to the US Bureau of Labor Labor And Assist, about 50% of all new businesses
survive 5 years or more, and about 1 third survive 10 years or more. So the more mature your business this is the better chance you had to survive. Sounds pretty good. Right? Okay? Well, here's the bad news, unfortunately. This article also states that according to the Small Business Administration, you know, the SBA, about 50% of businesses fail during the 1st year of business. With close to 34% of small businesses not surviving, their 2nd year of business.
So if you survive the 1st 2 years and mature your business over time, you have a good chance of staying open. Now there are many different reasons for a business to close. The article argues that we shouldn't treat closing a business with the same thing as feeling businesses. But you should also not confuse a business owner that retires 1 day shuts down their business with an opportune reviewer that got sick or died. Remember, it's called a catastrophic event for a reason.
But there is other reasons businesses fail beyond the cataract event. You know? What's that? Well, such as campfire bills? Maybe you're offering something nobody wants. Maybe you're failing to attract paying customers. Maybe you don't have any business skills. You're unable to build the team or being unable to create systems at work.
This may be tough to hear for most of you race murders out there. Many of you love being the face of your company, and you might think that your customers only come to your races because of you. When you're first starting out, that's okay. In the early days, you don't have the money to hire someone to fill in as a race director role anyway. Plus, You haven't been directing races long enough to know how you would want your higher race director to be in the first place.
And you need experience, and you need written processes, and time to build a job description that defines what your race director will and will not do. Right? But you can only do that by working in the job yourself. However, once you're you have a strong understanding of how you want your race director to focus on managing and delivering your races, You need to start stepping back. Begin defining and refining the other jobs in your company too.
You need to decide to be the boss and mature the business. Remember what the big data shows, about 50% of new businesses survive 5 years or more, and about 1 third survive 10 years or more. Does maturing your business mean remaining as a risk factor? I don't think it does. I equate maturity of business with growth. How can you grow if your business is too interconnected to survive a catastrophic event.
Besides, think of all the cool things you could do you could do when you're not the race director. I mean, how do you run race day registration? Write it down the way you would do it. How do you build courses? Write down the way you do that. How do you draft proposals that go with your permit? Write down how you would do that. Write down every responsibility you think each position should have, and do it as if it was yourself in the role.
Each draft draft version of these so called you know, position descriptions will help you do something you didn't know you could do, which is you can establish a job description for your company's future employees. You want those. Right? So what does all this talk about job descriptions you find roles and standard to the standards, but standards are implied. Right? Have to do with not owning your job. Easy. By borrowing a concept from Michael Gerber's great book called The Emith revisited.
I'll put a link to that in the show notes as well. Mister Gerber, his book summarizes that if you're going to run-in a business, you have to first go to work in your business before you can work on your business. Okay. That might be a difficult concept to understand from many race promoters, especially those who have been self proprietorship for some time. So I'll approach it from different direction.
Hope it becomes clearer. Imagine your first job interview that you plan to have as a business owner. Now imagine your first employee sitting across from you, okay? Can you picture that? What do you need to know about the position you want them to fill within your racing company? What do you want, expect, and require of them? Those are the standards. Right? How will they know what to do? Will you stand over them all day long and monitor each aspect of the job? I sure hope not.
Or will you give them a guide to what you expect them to do in their job? Because if you've already find it yourself, you can give them those instructions. And they can learn from that without having to be there. So how will they know what is expected of them? How will they know they're doing good job? How will you know they are doing what you want them to do and when you know, especially when you're not looking?
By working in that job and doing that job yourself, you know exactly how you want that job to function. That all you have to do after working in that job is write down what you did, the write down the way you want it done, then the written discrepancy becomes version 1 to any future employee, and you can judge your own efforts against your provided standard. So if if they go in that position and they have some ideas, some improvements,
Maybe you have some ideas and improvements, version 2, version 3. You can refine it as you go. Of course, 1 of the most important positions in your racing company is gonna be the race director position itself. I mean, you cannot cut your ties with the race director role. Without first defining the elements of the work that you think the race director should do and how they should do it. You don't want your future race director to do what they think they should be done in that position. Right?
You want them to do what you think they should be done in that position. The goal is to communicate how you want the work done by explaining it as if you were doing it. So once you've written down, then it only then can you think about hiring someone for the position? You cannot build past your symbolic relationship with the race director and race promoter roles until you decide that someone else could and should do the job in your stead.
If you think about it, you are essentially trying to work yourself out of the day to day tactical functions of directing your races. Why do you wanna do this? So you can go to work on more important things like actual race promotion. In other words, being able to go to work, selling your races full time, that's what I mean about going to work in your business. And what rate this is what race promoters do.
But many race promoters cannot move past this phase. They cannot see the position of race director is a job in their company. While the position of race promoter is really emission. A mission to grow a successful racing company. They stay race directors and never go beyond in their comfort zone. Well, there's nothing wrong with that. And there are many small racing companies that do fine by staying small. Their attention will always be split between race director and promoter.
They will have extreme difficulty focusing on the much broader and more expansive challenges within the company. And growth, It'll be determined how much energy the race director has in any given year. 1 catastrophic event, 1 emergency, 1 bad day could jeopardize the whole operation. Because when you own your job, your company stops working when you do. Think about that for a minute. Meanwhile, there are some positive benefits replacing yourself as just the race director.
1 of the most important benefits is your new capability to start going to work on your business. Right? On your business. When you work in your business, you define the parts that make your company run. When You go to work on your business. You will finally have choices. Choices? Yeah. Choices. Kind of choices I'm talking about, choices or what you didn't have as a race director. Choices like deciding if you wanna be there in race day or take the day off.
Imagine that choice. That's a huge choice. We thought about that 1, or maybe the choice to go on vacation and have 2 race going on at the same time while you're away. Oh, jeez. That's like that's like razor brace promotion orvana. When you were the race director, you didn't have those choices. Either you did it or didn't get done. But with proper delegation, you can grant yourself the freedom you so desperately sought out when you started building a risk company in the first place.
Now you can decide what your company does and does not do, not just how it gets done. You are now free to think about trends, new types of races, new territories, or even equipment with other disciplines. You can begin to leverage your race promotion systems
and finally be able to spend a significant amount of time building your business and selling your race is, let me say it again because I think it bears repeating, the race for motor is responsible for selling the race. So as the race for motor and not the race director, you will finally be unencumbered to put all your efforts into selling your races. By going through the effort of building a race director role They will implement your methods, process systems, and controls.
You will allow yourself something you have never been able to do before. Have time to enjoy running your company. And now you know. So hopefully, I've convinced a few people out there that race promoters and race directors are different roles within your company. And they shouldn't necessarily be the same person forever. I mean, these are the kind of things that you have to think about when you're trying to run a company.
Because if you're just trying to do 1 or 3 races, you're not really running a company. You're Having fun with a hobby, the company requires you to actually make money, build, grow, and be successful. The hobby is just something you do for fun that if it fails or succeeds is really relevant. So if you're building a company, these are the kind of things you need to think about. This week's podcast is brought to you by Rick's Roasters Coffee Company run by Sean and Kelly Ricks in Fredericks.
They were kind enough to donate coffee to the Mason cycling club's event in September called the wolf bouncer. And I'm drinking their 4 horsemen coffee right now, which is keeping me awake at 2 o'clock in the morning. But get a chance, go over to rixroasters.com. I'll have a link in the show notes and get some of the 4 horsemen. It's good stuff. If you learn something for all this and you wanna learn more, I have a few things I want you to do right now. 1st, go to wreckingear.com/join.
And drop your email in the box. That way I can tell you about new episodes that are coming out. 2nd, I wanna hear back from you about this episode.
Hopefully, you're not 1 of the people in the crowd who wanted to burn me at the stake, 1 of your pitch forks and torches. Hopefully, you're you're convinced that maybe Kyle has a point, right? I hope so. But if you did find this useful and You think I can I can do other topics that you're interested in, or maybe you can make it better, maybe there's something more you wanna see added to this? Let me know. I'm on Twitter. At merchants of dirt, no spaces.
3rd most important, if you like this episode, I would love for you to go to the merchants of dirt podcast page on merchants of dirt.com. And click on the iTunes button. On the iTunes page, get merchants of dirt a quick review on a 5 star rating. That would be fantastic, and it'll help help keep this podcast going. Thank you for listening to the Merchant Center podcast. I am the Rechinir Kyle Bondo, and I hope you take what you learned today and go weave Idyll into Epic. Until next time.