Today on the merchandiser podcast episode number 17, I'm gonna teach a new strategy. This strategy has everything to do with obtaining the legal permission to use a venue. That's right. We're gonna talk about permits and how you get your permits approved each and every time. How do we do that? Well, you could buy land because they're not making that anymore. You could hold your own race anyway and beg for forgiveness later or in the moment of deciding what to do, the best thing you can do is the right thing. Well, the worst thing you could do is be late on your paperwork. Let's roll.
Thank you for joining me for the merchandiser pod past. I am Kyle Bondo, your professional recognier and racing business coach, and I'm here to make the art and science behind building, promoting, and directing off for races, simple and understandable. Along with me is my cohost that everyone loved to hate, Mister Murphy, and together we're on a mission. To teach you how to build better races. Our website is merchandiserdirt.com.
And if you're new to the merchandiser podcast, welcome aboard. I'm gonna get into this into the topic that all race promoters worry about, getting your permits created and approved. But it doesn't need to be something you have to worry about. All you need is a strategy for approaching the permanent bungee. And it becomes another part of your overall system. In fact, if you can streamline this process enough, you can
actually give someone on your staff the ability to prepare these permits. Without you, all I need is your signature when they're ready. Wouldn't that be nice? This is also a process that you can reuse over and over again when applying for race permits. So let's break it down. When it comes to attaining the legal permission, for any public venue, you need to have a process for getting your permits approved. And I say this because
any public land no matter what it is requires you to have a permit. It's the way that public land decides who gets priority over who. So it's usually on a first come, 1st served basis, but sometimes the needs of the park might outweigh 1 groups do permission over another group's permission. And it's a way of kind of deciding what is fair and what is not fair when it comes to Who gets to use the park at a given time?
So you need a process in order to have the best shot at being approved for your permits. Well, 1st, part of that process is you need to have done some race planning. It seems pretty obvious. Right? This is where you decide what your race idea is, and you ask yourself, what will I build? And then with that question,
you need to do some research. You need to figure out how does the idea that work for real. In those escapes. There's gonna be a trail run. There's gonna be a mountain bike race. There's gonna be an adventure race. There's gonna be a canoe race. There's gonna be an obstacle race. What is it? Orienteering, you need to understand how it works. And in understanding the research and going through there, understanding how it works, you then need to understand the rules.
How will this race work for you? Now each race has different rules and different ways of judging, who's the winner, who's the loser, different ways of judging, what's a category and what who fits in that category, a special gear and required gear they used to have and There's there's all sorts of different kind of strange rules. If you think of like a mountain by dual slalom, depending on where you're at, might require full helmet and body armor.
With with trail running is pretty easy 1. I mean, shoes and a shirt. But you may prevent Ipods from being worn while you're running a canoe. Yeah. Might need a canoe. Right? So you go through the understanding the rules of how your race works, and then you decide on some requirements. What you need to do to make it work? This is your constraints. This is the thing that boxes you in to make decisions.
So if you decide you can do a canoe raise, Obviously, you need some water. You can't hold it in a venue that has no water. Right? Unless they're packing the canoe around everywhere. Portage races, that sounds kinda fun. Right? No. Actually, no. That sounds horrible, but but I'm sure there's someone out there thinking right now. A portage race. Yeah. I can make that happen. Anyway,
so this is your race idea. This is your plan. Is you've you've come up with the idea, you've done some research, you know the rules, you have your requirements. The output of your race planning is your primary input to what your proposal development process will be. See, pretty simple. Right? All decisions you make will will be written down on a piece of paper, and you'll be able to see those decisions on a piece of paper and go, I made those decisions. Pretty simple. Right? That's a proposal.
And that's all it has to be. It doesn't have to be anything super complex. Something just as simple as that, just for understanding right now. Now you have you have to have these outputs for your race planning before you start your proposal. You have to make the decisions before you know what to put in the proposal. That sounds pretty obvious. So for the sake of this episode, let's say you've already have all your race planning completed.
And all the thinking is complete, and you are ready to begin preparing for your first proposal. And that's where we'll start today's story. So what is a proposal? Each venue has its own form that you'll need to fill out based on the policies in place. National Parks have a different form than regional park, which is a different form than a local park. And there are even some strange weird places in between
that you're gonna need different forms for. These are usually special access forms or special event forms. In order to hold a In this case, a business function on public land, and a race is a business function. You're asking for people to pay, you to be in the race that is being held on public land. And that's how that's how the that's the permit works. Usually, there's a small fee attached to that. But this will require you to put some basic information onto the form.
Now this this however, this basic information is not enough detail to get a park manager to take your permit seriously. And often the box of the information that they want you to fill in for what your event is is incredibly small. It's hard to describe a race in a box that it's meant for maybe, I mean, like, Twitter size, 144 characters. It's hard to describe all the details of your race, and all it does is make a park manager ask questions. Right?
That's why you need to build a proposal with every permit application you submit. In offered racing, this sometimes is referred to as a bulletin. And you'll hear this mention of it, you know you know, the bulletin of a race or even sometimes a flyer is sometimes another word used. But what do you call it a bulletin or proposal? And for the sake of this we're gonna call it a proposal. You need to provide the right amount of detail
in it to get the park manager's attention. Property managers aren't gonna have questions. It it will never fail because there are plenty of park managers who maybe never heard of your flavor of race. And they're gonna wanna know, what does that really mean? Right? I mean, are you Are you gonna put people in harm's way? Or is it something simple like just people running around on the trail?
So with that, if a park manager has questions, You need to read this as your permit is going to be delayed until a satisfactory answer is given. This means your proposal has to do the talking for you. Well, how does the proposal do that? Your proposal should have all the relevant details outlined in an organized way. You should have race overview, course design, category schedule, venue layout, prices, rules.
Every detail that you would have included that for your racers when they preregister, or what you would have on your website. That seems pretty, pretty simple enough. Only in the proposal, you have to have it in a presentation form that breaks each tail down in an easy to understand form. Because again, you have to make you have to let the proposal to the talking for you. You might not be there. And we'll get to that about some different proposal strategies.
But let's just for the sake of this, Think of paperwork going into the ether, showing up on a park manager's desk, and that paperwork has to be understood by the park manager. Enough to go, yeah. Okay. Approved. Because questions mean delays, and delays mean time, and depending on when you submit your promote proposal or your permits, time could ruin your race. And Mister Murphy would love for you to cause questions and to to submit late. But we're gonna move Murphy proof this.
So that's that's the secret sauce right now. So the secret to a good proposal is to remove the fluff and keep it simple. Just remember that. Remove the fluff. You don't need any all the descriptions and and deep depths, you know, I'm talking about the Indian heritage or park. That's for later. When you're doing a proposal, you're just looking for the fluff to be removed and to keep it simple. So what specifically is in a proposal?
Well, proposals the proposal usually has 8 parts. And when you go, we're gonna talk about each part individually. So you get a good understanding of what a proposal should have. So let's talk about the first part. This is the cover page. This is the snapshot. This is where you'd ask yourself some some questions that you should have already made decisions about. These are simple questions.
What's the event called? What kind of event is this? Is it mountain bike race? Is it trailer on? Who's in charge of it? Is it you? Is it an organization? Is it a college? What date is it going to be on? That's very important.
Barrett Rangers is gonna wanna know what date he's looking at here. And then you have to do maybe do some other things like think about what date you will have if it rains. Maybe some optional dates to have on there. That's your cover page. That's all your cover page needs to have. There's some simple some simple metadata
So the park manager has an idea of what the heck they're looking at. Part 2 is a schedule at a glance, and this is where you're gonna tell the park manager what venue you're asking for. And what events are going to you're going to have on that day. And what time are those events gonna happen? And Is it only gonna be 1 day? Is it gonna be a 2 day or more? Is it gonna be a whole week? This is the the schedule at a glance tells the park manager How much time are you going to be on his property?
That's it. It's a very high level. Part 3 is the details. This is where we start to get into. What is your event all about? And break down what will happen on your schedule. During each time in your schedule. So say you have 3 different events. So you have the the 8 o'clock race, which is the beginners, some of the the men and women's start to start in that that particular category. Maybe you have a junior's going.
And then around 9:30. When that race is starting to clear up, you're starting you've been finishing up. You send out the masters and the media the intermediate people, the sport class folks, and they all go out and run their race. And then around to 10 o'clock, well, with a 9:30 go. 11, say, We do the experts. We do the the really super fast guys who are, you know, there to to really compete on point series, whatever.
And that's gonna be kind of a description within our details of what each 1 of those categories actually is. And then we're gonna to say, when this starts and when that's over and when what next what starts next? And finish it off with I have an award ceremony. At some point, I'm going to have a podium. Right? Depending on which podium I'm having. Maybe I do them all at once. Maybe I do them each time the race rate each individual races over.
And then when the entire thing is over and you plan on clearing the park, that's the details. That's where you get into actual, you know, hours and a half hours that you're there at the park. Okay? That's part 3. Part 4 is now deciding what it is What part piece of the park correction to use? So this is maps and locations.
So what part are you of what part of the park are you asking to use? I mean, not using the test courts for doing a trial run, are you? Of course not. You're using the trials. So you're gonna have a map that will dictate where the pieces of the trail that you're using and obviously the piece of the trailer you're not using, where you could potentially have conflicts. So the park manager gonna wanna know, Am I closing the course? Is it not closed course? Can I prevent people from coming in?
Could do am I gonna have a problem? And if I'm gonna have a problem, he's gonna wanna know how I'm gonna deal with problems. Right? So he's gonna wanna see the map of his venue or her venue and know where The pieces of the trail that I'm gonna use are located. Pretty simple. Google Maps, run the GPS, do strava, and, you know, do a screen capture. You could do this in many different ways. You could even pin and ink it, draw down a piece of paper. As long as the the perk manager's idea,
what the the overall view of your race course is gonna look like, but you also need to go a little further. You need to pick out parking where your registration's gonna be. And where you are gonna be during the race. Where is the the the kind of the epicenter of your race? Where is the command center? Where is the HQ?
And he's gonna wanna know a couple other things about the venue too. Like, will participants be using a bathroom of some kind, or is it gonna be, you know, do a natural into the woods? Well, that could be a problem. In some events, there are bathrooms that are there nearby in in a random some parks here in Virginia, we have
public rec centers that are near the venue. The people can go off and do that. It's kinda far away. It's kinda it's not that convenient, but it can be good enough. In other parks, you gotta get porta potties. So the park manager's gonna wanna know, where are people gonna doing this? Because obviously, they don't want people doing it, you know, right there off the trail. And bushwhacking and do all sorts of crazy stuff like that. Also gonna wanna know what if there are any roads that are involved within your race.
Now in off road race, normally, you're not gonna use roads. But when you're within the park borders, you may wanna use the park roads. You need to dictate what those are. And how traffic will be controlled. They're gonna wanna know when people come in to visit the park and your race is going on, how they're gonna prevent people, how you are gonna prevent people from hitting, you know, hitting racers or etcetera. So he's gonna wanna know these kind of things.
And this is an interesting thing that came up last year at Park in Virginia. We found out that county roads, regardless how desolate they are, require a police officer from that county to be present when you are having people cross that road. You can't physically
be the road guards for that area. See, these are the kind of things you you find out when you do these kind of races. A piece of the trail was across a county road. Didn't think anything of it. We're gonna put some parking guards up there or some traffic control people, some orange vests. No big deal.
But the park manager told us, oh, if you cross that road, you better have a police officer there from the old county police force. Otherwise, It's a violation of a county law, county code, and you could be at at worst or at best, you could be fined. At worst,
You could be a class 3 misdemeanor, and they could come and arrest you. So these are the kind of things you need to understand is or or, you know, maybe that's a that extreme level they'll arrest you because certainly prevent you from running a a race there at their park next year by violating these kind of rules. So you need to understand
what you are using in your race. So the park manager understands that too, and you guys can have a dialogue of what is something that needs to be handled in a way that you may have not predicted. You also need to be understanding about creating new trails. Some parks will allow you to connect trails or use grassy areas to connect parts of your course. Some parks will not.
So you need to understand what those parks are and where those places are. There are some parks that where there are trails designated for mountain biking and mountain biking only.
So other trails worth foot traffic and hiking only and a no mountain bikes no matter what you would do ask 4 can be allowed on that on that trail. You need to know the difference between that. Because if you put mountain bikes on that trail and we're talking national parks are really big sticklers for this 1, you put a mountain bike trail on a trail that is not allowed to have mountain bikes, that's fine. It's crazy.
Not only that, that could be felony because you're you're filing federal law and not to mention the other snappies me in, you most likely will never race there again. So do yourself a lot of favors and understand What trails are used for what? And if you have to make new trails, you are having a discussion with the park manager before you do that. Okay. Let's move on. Part 5. Categories and classes.
What kind of diversity are you gonna have in your race? The park managers going on and don't wanna know. Are you gonna have a lot of little kids there? Is it gonna be a genius race or tenant under? Is it gonna be broken down men and women? Is there a certain level of experience categories are going on? Is there a certain time of the trail where
traffic's going through and foot traffic from other from people just wandering through is gonna be no problem. And other times, or it's gonna be a serious problem. They're gonna wanna know that. So you're gonna list all your categories and classes, and you're gonna list all the requirements each 1 of these groups have.
So in particular, like in mountain biking, single speeders. Yeah. They're gonna go in a single speed category. Women's master's go in a women's master category. You're gonna list all that stuff there. This is all the road stuff you'd made a decision about of what classes you're gonna include in your race, and the experts are gonna go in a certain category. And then how many racers do you expect in each category.
Some parks have a cap for how many people can participate there. So you need to think about, okay, if I, in my best possible outlook, got every registration sold that they could possibly have. How many is that per category? I should probably know that. If I'm only allowed to have 300 people in a park and I have 15 categories, I better know pretty quick
what categories I expect to have percentage of people in when I have a low percentage of people in. And maybe I need to make some changes, maybe I need to cap it different. Maybe I want more experts than I want beginners. Maybe I want more beginners than experts. Maybe it's a junior race, and I want more juniors than I want older kids. And these are the kind of things that you'll put inside part 3, the categories in classes. Part 6, pricing, or prices. How much are you gonna charge participants?
Park, Manager's gonna wanna know how much money you are charging for your race. In particular, you're gonna wanna know because they're most likely gonna come out and see your event. They're gonna see what you're doing. Some don't, but a lot do. And they're gonna see the number of cars that are parked in the in the parking area. They're gonna see number of races out there. And at the end of the day, when you give them their cut and some parks are 15%,
some parks are more, some parks are less, but 15% is pretty average. They're in Virginia these anyway. They're gonna find out you're shorting them. I saw way more people than you said that you had on this piece of paper. What what what's up with that? See, they're gonna wanna know how much you're you're charging because they're gonna wanna they're gonna do some math in their head, and they're gonna figure out
what money you're kinda making, and then they're gonna see what kind of the people are showing with the race and then see what kind of money they're making. They're gonna wanna know that. Plus, they're also wanna go to 100. They're pricing because they're gonna wanna tell people who visit their park, who may not have heard of your race. They're gonna wanna tell people, oh, yeah. That race, that race is him. They're gonna mount bike up there for $20 a a person.
Now they can they can share that price. They might actually take your prices and put them in 1 of their publications here in here in Virginia, especially in in Fairfax County. They have a magazine called perktakes, and perktakes is the what's going on in the parks for a given period of time. Well, if you have a race on a if a permit in at 1 of these parks early enough, you can get your prices and stuff in a park takes article.
And that's kind of a cool thing. That's free advertising. They're not gonna charge you for that or they're gonna charge you a minimal amount of fee if they do. And that is something that you want to give away. You wanna tell people gonna cost, and with the website, the basic information, this is the kind of stuff you're gonna put in this area. You're also gonna wanna put your scaled price index so that when you have an increase in a price from preregistration,
you let the park manager know what's going on. And I'll give you a there's a reason for all this here in a minute, but, dude, we're not just telling the park manager, we're doing this for another reason, but that's a secret now. So just bear with me. Okay? So all your all your all your price increases, and then what else they can buy at the event? If you're not selling anything else in the event, then you're not selling anything in the event. But if you're selling t shirts and hats
and maybe you're you're you're selling other things, maybe vendors there, Park manager gonna want to know. Because sometimes that requires a different permit. And if you're not permitted for doing something on a public property,
You can be fined. There can be consequences, and you don't wanna have those. So if you have, you know, Joe's barbecue truck showing up, He's gonna sell barbecue at the side, and that's cool until the park manager finds out, well, you didn't get a vendor license. You only got a special event permit. You don't have vendor permission, so now we have a problem. Why? Well, this this the
the dirty the dirty answer is, the park manager wants his cut because he gets a limited amount of funds to operate his park. And he's gonna he needs those funds in order to do things like new signage, new trails, trail maintenance so that everyone can enjoy the park. Now you being out there to do an event gives him some things to work with.
So having all your permits in place allows him to understand what kind of proceeds he's gonna make up an event. And when he actually gets those checks, he's gonna see hey, your event brought in a lot of people, which gave me a lot of 15% off the cut off that gave me a pretty good percentage of the of the revenue. You had a venue truck out there. And that permit,
a lot of people bought stuff, and that permit was pretty good for me too. The total amount of money that I got from this race was excellent, and I would like you to have you I would like to have you back. In fact, maybe I wanna introduce you to the change over congress who would love to give you some money so you'd come back and make it bigger. Or do better
or expand it. These are the things that can happen. So that's what's going in part part 6 is your pricing. And your pricing for all the pieces you have going on in your event. And you might also wanna put in there things like, you know, if you're on a kids race, you know, parents gonna wanna know things like that, but pick kids race. And juniors and what kind of pricing strategies you have. Plus,
you don't wanna be offering, you know, $200 a raise. Chances are no 1 gonna show up, but a park manager's gonna look at that and go, something's wrong. So understand what that's with the pricing. Part 7 is your emergency response. Now if you listen to the past 4 episodes of Merchant Center Podcast, we did a whole month on emergency response and risk management and contingency planning.
This is where that thinking goes, at least at a high level. You wanna know, they're going to a park manager I'm gonna have medical staff on-site who they are. I'm gonna tell you how I'm gonna escalate injuries. What's the emergency the nearest emergency centers?
If I'm if I'm being sanctioned, do I have USA cycling insurance that's being applied to this? And if that's the case, then then I'm covered with insurance. But if not, what insurance do I have? Do I stay informed? Do I have Progressive? Do I have some other kind of policy? It's covering my race. Who's underwriting all this so that if there's an injury. Because in most parks, especially United States, parks are protected from gross negligence.
If someone gets hurt in a park, park usually doesn't have to pay a dime. It's, you know, kind of the thing like, hey, when we go into a park, is inherently dangerous in some places. And if you get hurt, what's kinda your own fault? That's kinda the way the law kinda works in at least in the United States. However, it doesn't protect you from gross negligence, and a park managers wanna know what's covering people so that they're protected.
Because he knows that inherently dangerous walking around is very different than running and riding a bike or doing whatever. So that he's gonna wanna know what's covering you and how are you being protected it as well. Part 8, contact. This is kind of the the final sheet of your proposal. You're gonna tell the park manager who's ultimately in charge.
What's this call what's the contact information of that person? Are you the 1 in charge and you better have your name and your phone number on there? So the park manager can call you. Makes sense. Right? And you're gonna also tell him or her, who else is in charge? What other what other people are involved in your race?
And where can you find this information online? What's the website or what's the website going to be? And who are your sponsors? You know, what kind of other companies or people are involved in sponsoring your race because a race that looks like it's got more backing is a race or park park manager is gonna want in on his venue. So these
are these are logos don't even have to include who they are. Just put the logos across there. You put your name and contact information, who else is in charge, maybe you have maybe you're working for a university, This is a collegiate race and you have the university contact information on there as well, and then you have all your logos. And that is it. That is what it is in a proposal. Even though the proposal process
works to convince the property manager, that you have thought through your event. It is essentially your race plan organized in a way that you can share. It goes a long ways to making you look organized. Being organized in the eyes of a property manager is a very good reputation boost. When you appear to know what you're doing, Park managers are less upper have less apprehension in approving your event.
Which in turn will lead to an easier application process and future events. If you know what you're doing, park managers are more likely to approve your permits sometimes without a lot of the information,
but you have to build that reputation first. So if you're just starting out, this is the way to gain a park manager's trust. At least initially, your race actual execution will be the other part that we gain his trust. Or trust. And then the actual payout at the end and the conclusion of the event, that's kind of the the big picture. But this is the first step. This is the first step to getting that reputation started. And as they say, they say in the military, reputation starts now.
So earn it. Earn it with a well thought out proposal. However, there are there are additional benefits to putting your race plan down in presentation format. Your proposal contains the same content you need to build your website, and you probably already guessed that when I said that before. But your website is going to include all this same information.
So really what you're doing is you're organizing your thoughts. So that you can create the content for a, your proposal, b, your website, and it also is all the same content you're gonna need for configuring your online registration site.
So that's that's c, that's your online registration site. And it's also the same information you're gonna need. If you're gonna sanction your event with, say, like, USA cycling or USAT or ATAR, any of those other other events, USAR USAR when you go to get a sanctioned application, it didn't ask you all the same questions. You already have it there. It's cut paste,
or it's submit in, you know, in addition the additional form. And that is why you plan your race first and answer every question before you have to. And it'll go a long ways towards building other things you need to make erase work. And that's why we go through this process. That's why we go through this process. Of planning our race, writing it down so we can use it
to gain the content that we're gonna use over and over and over again. It builds not only a a consistent plan so you can understand what you put down a paper and what you decided, but it builds consistency between all the different media project products you're going to create. Permit's gonna look just like your website. Your website's gonna look just like your registration site. Your registration site's gonna look just like your sanctioning application. You're not gonna have any difficulty
making them all look the same. Because when they're all different, that's when confusion happens and confusion creates delays and problems and we don't want that. And that is the purpose of a proposal. Remember, a proposal with your permit is that document that does your your speaking for you. When you can't be there, to do the speaking for. So as we said before, permits are the lifeblood
of your race on public land. Without a permit, you have no legal permission to use the venue. And all the insurance in the world is not gonna protect you if someone gets hurt. The permit is a single document that unlocks access resources, and liability protection. No permit, no race, period.
Even if you're using private land, You need to have written permission from the landowner to prove you're legally allowed to use the property for your race. The only exception to this rule would be if you, yourself, own the land. But then all the liability of the of an injury or death would be yours too. This is why many private landowners lease the land to a race promoting company.
Nobody likes a lawsuit. Liability is a big deal in the racing world. Wavers have their place. But some states don't even allow racers to sign their rights away no matter how well a waiver is written. This makes the permit a critical requirement A permit not only gives you permission to legally use the property, but shifts the liability to your your racing company. Who then becomes legally responsible someone actually does get hurt or or dies. The permit is the property owner's protection
for the risk of your race. But it does not provide them complete immunity from lawsuits. To be blunt, the property owner does not inspect you or park manager doesn't inspect you or even the details of your race promotion company's reputation correctly, the blame of an accent or injuries can come back to haunt them.
Megiving permission via a permit is akin to a property owner or a property manager stating that he or she thinks You and your company are qualified, professional, and competent enough to direct a race without any major incidents. Think about that for a minute. And if you're not any of those things, they know that they will be equally punished for the oversight.
This makes the permit process a number 1 way for property managers or public lands, you know, park wildlife for reserves, beaches, to vet race promoters. If you are not prepared, not trustworthy, or not experienced, they will not only go over every detail on your event with a fine tooth comb, but they will use the permit process to protect themselves. A poorly prepared permit is the fastest way to get your permission to use the park denied.
So how do you make the permit process work in your favor? So I've got some this is this is really starting into the permit strategy itself. After we've created the proposal, some quick tips for surviving the permit process and get the property manager, the park the park manager to approve your event. Which is what we wanna do. We want we want that permission. So how do we do that? Well, I got I got 3 strategies to consider. Or 3 tactics within our strategy. The first 1
is make an appointment and put your face to your name. Now, this may seem like common sense. But you'd be surprised how many people will submit a permit in the blind and never follow-up with it. Just just sit around and wait for permission to show up via email or in the mail or something like that. Park managers are busy people, and getting your permit approved is usually handled via an administrative process.
You could actually get a permit approved without ever meeting with anyone in the property manager's office, but that is on the case by case basis. It's only you said before. That's usually a reputation gets you that advantage. And right now, if you're if you're new to racing, you don't have any reputation. So this normally only happens on the local level as well. If you get into the regional and
national level of parks, they're gonna wanna see you. They're not going to permit per they're not gonna approve a permit without talking to you. So regional national parks are not gonna be kind in that. So they now expect a level of detail, a little higher quality level detail. They also wanna meet you. So don't wait around for the invite to the meet with them. Make an appointment with the property manager, the park manager, and walk your permit in before applying,
or the special events coordinator, whoever is in charge. Why is this effective? Well, park managers are people. They are funny, rough, mean, kind, flawed, and smart, just like you. And like most people, making a connection, a a human connection is important. And by making an appointment to discuss your pending permit, you can often alleviate any of the concerns the park manager has with you and your event.
If you flake out in the meeting or in front of people on on 1 on ones, send in your negotiator, you know, that person everybody likes and help present your event. Because there are some there are some people who do races out there who are not very good people person. So find the person within your organization or in your staff or friend That is a good people person to help give a good, you know, good foot forward. The point of the meaning is not to sell your event, not overtly.
But to talk to the the park manager about how you wanna host your event on their property and wanna know some of the issues that they might have concerning the type of event you're trying to do. So this is the this is the perfect venue for a park manager to ask questions to
to understand what is it you're going to do. The part part managers is for a living, so they will certainly give you an earful for what works and what does not work within their domain. But sometimes, what they think is a bad thing for your for your event, you might see as a feature. You know, case in 0.1 park manager thought a bunch of rocks placed over a sewer line that they had done for recent construction
by stop mountain bikes from crossing. He was really concerned that mountain bikers would not be able to go over that. Turns out the rocks made an excellent technical challenge, but even the novice riders could cross. So trying to be a feature. He thought it'd be a problem. Your race is not gonna happen. These rocks are there. They're gonna have to walk their bikes over.
You didn't understand how mountain bikes work. So this is the perfect opportunity to help him understand that his fear is not may not be a fear that you have in vice versa. Like I said, what an issue is for them may not actually be a race stopper or show stopper for you. But you won't know this to actually talk to them in person. So make the effort, go in and see them. Tactic number 2, within our strategy. Trail maintenance. Trail maintenance is a nice carrot.
Park managers have a limited funds. And they're always short staffed. And there are some parks where the property is so big, the staff doesn't get there for weeks or months. So they will get to that down tree that someone pointed out, but it might take them a long time before they get there. And due to the 100 of the things they need to fix and maintain and replace, its chances are they're not gonna get to it anytime soon.
So if you wanna make a reputation with a park with a park manager, that he'll notice, start doing or showing up on trail days. Trail maintenance does not have to be chainsaw, swinging, trench bucket shoveling effort. Sometimes, tools like shovels, axes, and leaf clippers can be very effective in fixing overgrown trail. I mean, you can use a shovel to to clear a a to drain a persistent puddle,
and you can use your chainsaw or even an axe to remove down limbs. It could also be simple as picking up trash or fixing signs. Whatever makes the park look good. I know some of you will be saying that Trail Mains is something that you don't do for the credits. You know, the leave no trace, you know, is a big believer in just getting out there and doing the work for the sake of the trail, not for reward. Or the work gets its own reward.
But we're not talking about your personal relationship with the trail here. We're talking about your race Business relationship with the park manager. Park managers love to have folks come out and clean their trails. I mean, improved trails brings out people. People use the trails, improves the demand for the park. The more demand for the park is directly related to how the park gets funded So better trails equals better funding. Seems pretty simple.
So better trails can also cause the park the park manager to know you are serious about keeping his or her property in good shape. When you think about the principles of being a good steward of the land and leaving no trace, will give you your race promotion company yet another reputation boost. If not something
you can only do once and expect amazing results, Park managers know how they know this trick. They know how this trick works. They will see how far you are willing to go and use it to their advantage. They will see how much of the trail you'll fix and how far you will go. They'll use your advantage, but then use it to your advantage too. You may feel like all they're using me for work, but you're using them too. Using them to to produce
a reputation that you'd maybe didn't have. It's about 50 hours. This is a rough estimate. But I say about 50 hours worth of work is a good number to shoot for. This is roughly 5 people working for 2 hours a day for about 5 days. You can do that in a couple weekends. You don't have enough people? Well,
here's where the clever part comes in. There are a ton of clubs and trail advocacy groups out there. When you think about the like, with mountain biking International mountain bike Association, keeps a large list of mountain bike advocacy groups. So do trail runners, so do every orienteers? Leave no trace does the same thing. Believes in a trace organization as does like the American Hiker Society. You could even get the equestrian people who use the horse trails out there.
Leverage the power of like minded organizations in your area, and then take credit for it. They often have a hard time getting people to come out to do their trail days. So they will use you just as much as you wanna use them. This is a win win partnership. It could also lead to some of them sharing your race information with their friends or even coming out to the race event themselves. So this is not mischievous or devious or backhand in any way.
Get organizations involved. Be the point because a lot of these organizations are short staffed also, and they can only do so much for so many parks. Be that point person. Make those connections because connections with your community, obviously groups, can be a great way to promote your race and get the park manager to take you seriously. An excellent strategy. You've used it multiple times. It works every time it's tried.
So don't take this 1 lightly. Definitely put some effort into this. It will help your permit. Alright. 3rd 1. Always apply early. This is a no brainer. Right? If you remember the point from 2, getting your permit approved is usually handled via administration process. Well, that process has rules. And 1 of those rules is how early you get to you need to apply for your permit before you were rejected outright by the process. So why is this important?
Park managers have to give a fair and equal access to public lands. Like, I talked about that at the beginning. They do this through that first come, first serve process and is weighted at that needs of the park. The park manager usually has the last say in who gets what date on the calendar, but that is only if the involved, followed the process correctly. And this is a bureaucratic thing that no 1 likes and no 1 likes to admit.
But following the process, sometimes get you better results than trying to go through a backdoor or hookup. If someone is requesting the same date as you, is a perfect example. The first 1 who have submitted the permit will normally get the spot. Politics aside, because like I said, park managers are people too. But if you submit your permit late chances are, you will not get any date. Some parks have the power to wave this process of, you know, read the the time required process.
Other parks, you know, I'm talking to you national parks, they do not. If you go into the bureau land management or the US park service and you wanna put your permit a week before a race, Good luck. That ain't gonna happen unless you have a senator or congressman in your back pocket. Or the only time I've ever seen it, be waived. Is when the US Navy Academy, the naval academy, wanted to do a road race at a park. And Bape submitted their their their permit late.
And the park went, oh, okay. No problem. Why? Hey, federal to federal. That's how that works. If you're nobody off the street, you're not gonna get that treatment. So you need to, don't shoot yourself in the foot. Right out of the gate by procrastinating your permit submission. You know, a week submission is better than no submission at all, unfortunately.
A week's mission can be followed up with a proposal and an appointment. You can you can do a quick and dirty proposal. And build a permit and get it early. Just get your foot in the door. And then come into the meeting with the park with your actual proposal all flashed out. With nice pretty colors and logos. I mean, no submission only leaves your targeted date wide open for someone's
family reunion to take it from you. It's not just race promoters you have to worry about. You gotta worry about other things. Family reunion reunions, high school graduations, softball tournaments, soccer tournaments, high school cross country, you name it. They can come and snake it right after underneath you. Because they submitted our camps. Camps are a big 1 at parks. Or campers,
depending on the kind of park you're looking for. However, this tactic is something you'll notice competing race promoters do all the time. Just as their season is ending, Sometime between November January, they will submit all their permits at once and secure their dates for the year. Long before any 60 day process window comes due. This gives them first shot at the good dates. And I say the good dates,
Yes. Those dates that are important to that race promoter that don't conflict with any major holidays or events and mesh well with potential marketing benefits like regional national championships. Those are good dates. It also gives them plenty of time to hear back from the product from the park manager and helps them make other plans when conflicts emerge. So apply your permits early and give yourself a huge advantage over other promoters. It will give you more time to plan
and sell your event because that's another thing you have to consider. Last minute permits hurt you immensely because it gives you such a short window to actually sell your event. So applying late only gives you sleepless nights and useless stress. And you don't want useless stress. So reduce your stress. Apply early. And this is in we're the we're in February. So, hopefully, if you've listened to to past podcasts, you know how to pick your dates, you've done your strategic thinking,
you have figured out what your dates are going to be, for the rest of the season and what you're gonna offer. And this is permit time. This is what we're talking about. It's February. It's permit. It's permit month. Some race promoters have already started submitting their permits back in October, which is silly. Park managers usually sit on that stuff.
And sometimes they'll lose them. Sometimes they say, I don't know what happened to it. You know, it sat around for months. You wanted a date in August and you told me in October. That's not gonna happen. Other parks, however, you submit for a year in advance, they stick to that. So sometimes submitting early, really, really, really is an advantage. Other times, it's not. Again, park managers are people.
Go meet them. Go into who they are. Go understand them. Go understand what makes them tick. Go understand what trail maintenance and what kind of activities in their park they like to see, what volunteer efforts they like to see. And get people involved and release those sleepless nights and useless stress to your advantage. And now for some final thoughts. Get the permit now. Don't worry about the rest later. Your permit is the single most important document in your race. You cannot afford
to spend any money on your race until you have it or know you're going to get it. So stack the deck in your favor. Go meet the property manager or the park manager. Provide way more detail than you would than they would ever ask for. Partner with the park, but being a good steward with the land, and do it all early. The permit is essential, but it's not difficult to get if you work the system correctly.
So keep in mind, that the more park managers that you work with, the easier it will become to obtain future permits on the dates you need. And now you know. In our next episode, Venues. We talked a lot about venues today. Venues are important. Some might say that your venue is the most important aspect to your race. Now I just said permits. The permits is the most important document in your race. Then you is the most important aspect of your race. But once you have it selected,
You then need to make sure your course works. Your customer flow makes sense, and everyone knows where to go. On the next episode of The Merchants Group podcast, I'm gonna talk to you about the importance of venues and the 7 venue areas all your races need to have right on the next merchandiser podcast.
Thank you so much for listening to the Merchant Center podcast. If you have any questions or comments, please reach out to me on Twitter at Merchant Center. But you can also go on the website and and go to the contact form and reach out to me. I'm also you can go to reckoner.com, the contact form, reach out to me. Facebook, You can find me on Facebook, the recognier or a website or a Facebook page, or is that merchants of dirt race promoters forum, Couple different places you can go.
Should be should be something. Let me know what you're doing. Let me know what you're thinking. Let me know how how your race promotion progress is going and what problems you're having. Maybe maybe I can I can put that in a future future episode? So that we can solve a particular problem that you're having. I already have a couple, you know, like, for for Dave out there. I'm thinking about, you know, how do you price a race promotion business. That's a big deal. For Doug, it's about risk management, so interested in that maybe we'll talk a little bit more about risk management in the future episode.
And definitely gonna have Sizak on here. Probably, we're looking for maybe next maybe March or or April. We're gonna have income do interview. Asked. And a couple others, we're gonna start doing some interviews and do that later in the spring. So I'm hoping to to expand this a little bit so we can some more knowledge for people to come in and talk about their race promotion experiences so that you are always learning something new.
With that, if you wanna subscribe and make sure you never miss an episode, mercadirt.com, is how you do that. 1 click hits you everything for free. All you do is is click on Android, you know, iTunes. I've got Stitcher, Google Play, and low and behold, we now have it. I don't know if I mentioned before, but iheartradio, you can find merchants dirt, iheartradio,
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